Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride - <AUTHOR> http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride.php <comment><USER2> Actually I worked as a synthetic organic chemist in a previous life and I was always much more afraid of the chronic systemic poisons than the things that blew up. It's one thing to have something go boom in your fume hood and quite another to get a drop of something on your glove that you don't even notice and then later that week all your hair starts falling out and everything tastes like metal. Organo-selenium, tin and tellurium compounds are particularly nasty.

I'm much happier now with nothing more serious than RSI to worry about.

<comment><USER3> _a drop of something on your glove that you don't even notice and then later that week all your hair starts falling out_

Anyone who doubts this can happen should read about Karen Wetterhahn [1], who was killed in 1996 by a couple of drops of dimethylmercury that went through her glove. Another nasty chemical to avoid.

[1]<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn>

<comment><USER4> Why do some dimethyl compounds penetrate the skin so easily? Dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) will even carry various other compounds into the body as well.

<comment><USER5> DMSO ((CH3)2SO) is a polar aprotic molecule, which means it's neutral _and_ polar. It's easier for a small, neutral polar molecule like DMSO to pass through the phospholipid bilayer of your cells than it is for acetate (CH3COO-).

The "dimethyl" is not what it's important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Always worth a reread for the combination of gripping content with good writing. Just to pick another one in this series: [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_sa...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time.php) (about stuff that will burn sand (not: burn _in_ sand)

<comment><USER7> "... _every-man-for-himself exotherm_..."

Excellent, absolute hoot. I've only had to use hydroflouric acid once (leather apron, double gloves, goggles, fan on) and that was enough...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So it's a no on preparing some in your pressure cooker?

<http://what-if.xkcd.com/40/>

<comment><USER9> I'm fairly confident that comic is the reason this thread's article is getting a bunch of attention now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is the last discussion on this post, 3 years ago. There may be relevant comments there: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148425>

(although it looks as though the link has changed to the main archive on this site, but all the comments and post title refer to this article. Odd.)

</comment><comment><USER11> I loved this quote from [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/11/11/things_i_won...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/11/11/things_i_wont_work_with_hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane.php)

Synthesizing polynitro compounds is no chocolate fondue party, either: if you picture a bunch of guys wheeling around drums of fuming nitric acid while singing the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore, you're not that far off the mark. You really have to beat the crap out of a molecule to get that many nitro groups on it, which means prolonged heating of things that you'd really rather not heat up at all.

<comment><USER12> Derek Lowe has real high class humor. I always end up knowing new things while laughing like a maniac. It just makes things a little awkward at office though. I always had to keep watching over my shoulder just so that no one would notice that I was reading things which can blow up with explosive power which will make TNT feel like baby powder and laughing like a maniac :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/)

The other articles in that category are mostly equally exciting.

</comment><comment><USER14> So much stuff like this in Chemistry. It's why I gave up on my Chemistry career and went into programming. When computers blow up, they don't destroy the building or make you change color.

<comment><USER15> Unless you are programming drones with missiles.

<comment><USER14> Then it's supposed to blow up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's many days since I laughed so much. Especially "If the paper weren't laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you'd swear it was the work of a violent lunatic."

</comment><comment><USER17> I passed this link to my dad, who actually spent a good chunk of his professional career working with fluorine compounds. His comment: "The guy is just chicken -- or ill-equipped for fluorine work."

</comment><comment><USER18> Seriously considered naming my band "Satan's Kimchi"

<comment><USER19> that's what a top poster on the article's comments said

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So this is like 10x worse than plain Fluorine [1], which is already evil?

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtWp45Eewtw>

</comment><comment><USER21> And this is why I'm happy to be working on computers now, and not in a wet lab. And I never even had to work with any of the _scary_ stuff...

</comment><comment><USER22> After reading about the risk in the work of a chemist , i wonder: what prevents automation for safety becoming common place?

<comment><USER23> Production can be (and often is) heavily automated, research is not. Just like any other field, it doesn't make sense to design robots to do a task requiring high precision that might only need to be preformed a few times. Thats what lab assistants are for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone have a link to the original paper that doesn't require me to pay $38?

<comment><USER25> Not necessarily for this specific paper, but in general if you want a paywall protected paper, check your local public library's website. Most offer proxy database access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Did anyone else find this article to be meandering waffle that has no bearing to anything else on HN? I fear the airplane toilet incident has inspired a host of chemists to start posting on hacker news, creating a subculture.

And yes, I'm totally expecting someone to point to the HN posting guidelines that state that anything that may be of interest to geeks is appropriate...

<comment><USER27> I won't point you to the HN posting guidelines since you obviously know where to find them but with 11 karma I think you should work a bit harder to show by example rather than by voicing your dissent what you feel HN should be like.

<comment><USER26> To be fair, the comment was downvoted, which I accept, but if you disagree with something it's perfectly valid to voice that disagreement. If Karma is a measure of the validity of an opinion, HN becomes a meritocracy.

<comment><USER28> HN is a bit of a meritocracy. Since you get down-voting power when you hit 500 points (or was it 600)?

<comment><USER29> 500.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


One-Day Apple Shopping Event 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://store.apple.com/us/browse/holiday/shopping_event

<comment><USER2> What is mysterious about it? It's the annual thanksgiving day sale... Pretty much non-mysterious as it can get

<comment><USER3> I think OP is commenting on how they are calling it "One-Day Apple Shopping Event" rather than actually mentioning black friday.

<comment><USER4> Black Friday's a US thing, while the Apple sale happens world-wide. No mention of Black Friday = one theme across all international sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be pretty damn mysterious if they were just now announcing a shopping event for October 23, but actually the HN headline is just wrong.</comment>


Ask PG: Nickb seems to have dropped off the leaderboard? - <AUTHOR>

Does that mean you had a sign of life from him ? <comment><USER2> Answered in this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1048301>

<comment><USER3> pg: "A couple weeks ago I added a recency threshold for the leaderboard. It's currently 100 days."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh crap I am on the leaderboard now.

Time to turn on noprocrast.</comment>


Paper books are the new vinyl records - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/2014/09/02/paper-books-are-the-new-vinyl-records/ <comment><USER2> I have a rather pedantic observation of the difference between books and vinyl.

Are not paper books digital to begin with? Characters in a book can be converted to binary with no change in information content. Vinyl records lose some information when converted. (I'm not going to wade into the argument of whether this is a good thing or not).</comment>


Computer Networks: A Systems Approach (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://book.systemsapproach.org/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17824472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17824472)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> PDF and eBook versions at [https://github.com/SystemsApproach/book/tree/master/publishe...](https://github.com/SystemsApproach/book/tree/master/published)

> Suppose you want to build a computer network, one that has the potential to > grow to global proportions and to support applications as diverse as > teleconferencing, video on demand, electronic commerce, distributed > computing, and digital libraries. What available technologies would serve as > the underlying building blocks, and what kind of software architecture would > you design to integrate these building blocks into an effective > communication service? Answering this question is the overriding goal of > this book—to describe the available building materials and then to show how > they can be used to construct a network from the ground up.</comment>


My First (and last) Groupon Experience - <AUTHOR> http://kevinlochner.com/my-brief-stint-as-a-groupon-user-learning-aga

<comment><USER2> My girlfriend has bought several groupons. We've had pleasant experiences with all of them. Admittedly, we never would have gone to these venues without the groupon and admittedly none of them made us feel like becoming return (non groupon bearing) customers. The whole scheme seems to prey on small businesses and it does seem valid that it will collapse eventually.

</comment><comment><USER3> Minor nit-pick. Groupon doesn't make money on the float. They give the money to the retailer pretty quick.

My understanding is the the retailer gets paid even when the groupon isn't redeemed. One would think the retailer would make up some money on the non- redeemed groupons, but groupon claims a higher than 90% redemption rate.

Other than that I completely agree about service businesses. I saw a local bike shop sell over 1000 tuneups for $7 each. Meaning the bike shop received $3.50 for a tuneup, and their techs would be booked solid for a long time preventing them from being able to perform as many higher profit services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I put in an edit on the blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use groupon and similar services (LivingSocial, some more local sites) constantly. It is a GREAT way to both save money and to discover new things. I feel like the author is being a little overly harsh on Groupon when: A) He admit's he should have done the back-of-envelope math to determine it could be difficult to get the dentist appointment. B) He had no issue getting a refund.

I know we are a society of convenience, but are we really at the point of boycotting and writing rants to influence other's to follow simply for being slightly inconvenienced with no direct financial loss?

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to be fair in pointing out that Groupon issued a no-hassle refund. It was one of the easier refunds I've ever received.

With respect to my own calculations, it's asking a lot (or at least asking something new) of the user to vet the likelihood of actually receiving the service. Again, I tried to be fair in saying that it will take time for both vendors and consumers to flesh out the best way to interact with Groupon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Uh, is there some kind of calculated Groupon smear campaign going on right now? This is the third Groupon negative story to hit the frontpage of HN in the last 4 hours...

<comment><USER6> It's trivial to figure out where the stories are coming from if you actually look - no conspiracy needed.

<comment><USER5> Oh, you can tell who voted up the stories? Didn't know that..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't believe that the author wouldn't try Groupon again if his favorite restaurant offered one. The value is just too great.

And if the Groupon doesn't live up to your expectations:

From the Groupon Blog:

"If Groupon ever lets you down, we'll return your purchase—simple as that. Why? Because when we do a bad job, we want it to be easy for you to punish us. We believe that when a customer has a bad experience, companies pay for it sooner or later—so we'd rather pay fast so we can make things right before it's too late."

And from their About page:

Unbelievable customer service. Like you, we've suffered through hour-long "transfer-athons" with customer service departments, or waited days for an email reply to to a simple question. If you contact us, we'll do what it takes to make things right - and we'll do it fast. Email us, or speak with a human (during normal business hours): (877) 788-7858"

I can understand why a business might have a gripe with Groupon (even if its their own ignorance that caused the gripe), but I can't imagine why a customer could be disappointed by Groupon with that kind of policy.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the wrong question to ask:

       Would I want a deal from my favorite restaurant?  Yes.

       Do I want to evaluate the deal every day to figure out if it's worth buying?  No

<comment><USER7> All you need to do is read the subject line of one e-mail a day, and maybe look at a few e-mails that catch your eye. I've saved hundreds of dollars on stuff that I would have already bought. That's probably not good for the businesses, but it's good for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not saying it has no value, just that personally I've decided the daily deal isn't valuable enough to distract my attention every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It sounds like Groupon isn't the problem in your case, it's the service making a deal like that with no limit. Groupon's can/do have limited quantities, and the dental place should have probably used that. They cooperated and gave you a refund (I've received a refund as well before, the customer service has been amazing), I don't see how you would point the finger at them before the business on the other end of the deal.

Anyways, that would definitely piss me off a bit as well, crappy deal. I'll keep using Groupon, I can't pass up half off concert tickets and delicious foods :D.

Edit: Oh, this guy says it much better: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=1698788>

</comment><comment><USER9> I've had mixed experiences. Generally a positive feeling from saving money, but one of the Groupons I bought (a champagne cruise in SF) still has yet to come in sight of being redeemed. The Groupon itself didn't specify that the cruise was only available at weekends, and the company insisted on doing everything by email with a 24-48 hour turnaround, so booking became a nightmare. After reading in this thread how easy refunds are, I may well do that instead.

I've also had trouble scheduling a discount spa treatment, and the one I did redeem came with a very heavily upsold expensive beauty purchase - sure, I could have stood firm and hassled my way out of it, but she was _very_ persistent and I value my time and sanity more than the price of a bottle of facial cream.

The Groupons for "$5 for $10 of $ethnic food" I just don't bother with. To be honest, I only go for these group buy discounts if it's a really good looking deal right now, as I know what I'm getting into booking-wise.

And it does work for some; I just got my hair cut at a salon that had been Grouponed, leading to a handful of new positive Yelp reviews, leading to me finding them in the first place. Happily paid full price, but all the smug Yelpers boasting about their Groupon left a slightly acidic taste in my mouth.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looking for discounted dentist (or any doctor for that sake) without any recommendations is not a good idea in the first place. Your health is not something to joke with.

</comment><comment><USER11> Groupon has recently started serving different coupons to different people (in the same location) based on variables and preferences- so, in theory, this should cut down on future issues like this.

<comment><USER12> that could help a lot. that was my own personal beef with them as a potential user. i don't want to get a totally random "deal" each day, solely based on my location, that has nothing to do with what I'm actually interested in in buying/using. hair salons? no. tires? no. now something related to games or books or a restaurant, sure.

<comment><USER13> It's interesting how difficult "location" is as well. Most groupon offers here are spread out all over metro Denver. I live in Central Denver, and rarely visit the rest of the metro. That disqualifies a lot of offers for me.

<comment><USER12> same issue here, and i'm also a Denver area resident. that plus the absence of any preferences-targeting makes it useless for me. i just unsubscribed from Groupon a few hours ago because of it. was wasting my time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Minor nitpick - how is Groupon at all similar to Woot?

<comment><AUTHOR> The business model is to offer one deal per day, getting eyeballs on the deal via a massive opt-in mailing list.

They're only really different in that Woot is for tangible goods and Groupon is for local services.

<comment><USER14> They're only really different in that Woot sells a physical product (they don't promote a business), they ship it themselves, and make a profit on it like a regular store.

The only way that they're at all similar is one possible thing to purchase per day. Otherwise they're completely different.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're saying the same thing, just disagreeing on whether it constitutes similarity.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


For a Long Life, Retire in Manhattan - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/for-a-long-life-retire-to-manhattan.html <comment><AUTHOR> I was pretty depressed about leaving Manhattan and at the thought that if I ever came back, I wouldn't be as young as I was or have as many friends (many have also left to start families elsewhere). Reading this essay reminded me of all the days I could walk around for hours by myself, not knowing a single person or expecting to meet anyone I made eye contact with ever again, but still enjoying myself just the same. If I'm at that age where most of my close friends and family have passed and I have the money, I would definitely love to live my last days in Manhattan.

edit: Another characteristic of New York is the rate of change. Construction is never finished. I still keep in touch with my roommate on FB and she's constantly posting photos of decades-old restaurants and businesses closing shop, and she's been in the apartment for almost 30 years. I'd have that same disappointment/outrage when my favorite places shut down but -- as long as they aren't replaced by sterile condos -- I've loved the variety of new stuff that came in their stead. Living in NY definitely makes you realize that nothing is forever and just about everything can be forgotten or replaced, and you learn to be at peace with it.

<comment><USER2> > _all the days I could walk around for hours by myself, not knowing a single > person or expecting to meet anyone I made eye contact with ever again, but > still enjoying myself just the same._

This is one of the things I love best about the city. If I want to be alone, but out in public, I can be. I don't have to worry about running into some acquaintance and having to make small-talk when all I want to do is go for an urban nature-walk.

<comment><USER3> I've very recently moved from the city to the suburbs and I've probably spent more time making small talk with my neighbors in the past 10 days than I've spent making small talk with my neighbors in the 10 preceding years, despite the fact that then number of people who could be considered my 'neighbors' has dropped by an order of magnitude.

I am really not too sure how I feel about this.

<comment><USER4> Similar situation. I realize now that the best neighbors are the ones you never see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most notable for me is when I go out to a restaurant in Manhattan I see many tables full of grown ups and seniors having lively discussions. In SF it's like that Star Trek episode where a virus kills off all the adults and leaves only children.

<comment><USER6> This smells to me like confirmation bias. The actual demographic data shows SF skews older than Manhattan:

        Population by age range, SF vs Manhattan:
        20-24:  3.8% /  7.4%
        25-34: 21.5% / 22.7%
        35-44: 16.3% / 14.6%
        45-54: 14.0% / 12.8%
        55-64: 12.4% / 11.4%
        65+:   15.2% / 14.4%

<comment><USER7> Even if SF's population "skews older" than Manhattan's, it doesn't refute the original commenter's anecdote. Older people in SF may dine out less than older people in Manhattan do - perhaps for financial or logistical or cultural reasons.

<comment><USER8> Or they dine out somewhere else and appear in someone else's anecdotes. Many restaurants attract or repel specific age ranges, often as a deliberate marketing policy: if a restaurant is full of young people it is, usually, a restaurant for young people, for example because it plays trendy dance music fairly loud or because it's close to a university campus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a tourist my immediate impression is that the infrastructure is quite old compared to other world cities (why are the subways so hot?) and the touristy areas are a lot dirtier than I would have expected. There are also some NY- isms that I haven't seen in other American cities (terror alert levels, garbage bags piled up on sidewalks, ubiquitous taxies, tourists literally everywhere)

I like how it's basically a microcosm of the entire world, and you can reach all of it without a car, but I'm not sure it's worth the inconveniences plus 3x cost of living.

<comment><USER10> New York had one of the first subway systems in the world. It's not air conditioned because they didn't have AC at the turn of the 20th century. The street grid was also designed without alleys, hence the trash bags.

<comment><USER11> Upper West Sider here: Subway cars of course have AC. Older cars sometimes break AC but the newer ones have backup compressors so that doesn't happen.

I _do_ think they could at least have some high speed fans in parts of the subway stations, esp. for the elderly who don't tolerate heat as well as others.

<comment><USER2> New York City is a great place to be old and either healthy or rich. Otherwise, you run into problems not addressed in the article - such as the tremendous lack of handicapped access in the subways.

We lived at 145th on the ABCD line. There's precisely one escalator that takes you from the lowest platform to the mezzanine, skipping the mid-level platform in between. Then there are stairs to get to street-level. There are no elevators. So when my father, in his 70s, came to visit us, he had a hell of a time getting _down_ the stairs. We ended up specifically planning trips so that we would arrive on the lower platform, so we could take the escalator.

All the walking does have health benefits, but if you're not capable of it, you better live near some accessible stations, or you end up being reliant on cars and access-a-ride (which, granted, I know nothing about - maybe it's fantastic.)

Having typed all that, I'd rather be old and feeble here than, say, in Dallas, where I _have_ to drive, until I'm no longer able to, and then _have_ to rely on others for transportation. I'd gladly take a 20-minute journey down a stairwell that takes others 20 seconds for the freedom it would afford me.

<comment><USER12> how long until self driving cars in dallas?

<comment><USER2> Probably awhile.

I can't reply to parasitius, because his comment is dead, but it's also nonsense.

> _Just because you get to zone out all the while doesn 't mean your day isn't > deprived of an immense amount of time._

I'm glad that Austin is working out for him, but we can't shrink all cities, nor should we. 45 minutes of free time is still 45 minutes of free time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I used to live in upper west side and some of the delis there looked like retirement homes at times. I loved the diversity of cultures and generations there. Unfortunately, not everyone is wealthy enough to retire there.

Another place where I was surprised to see lots of elderlies (many more than in Manhattan) was Hong Kong. Many retired men hanging out in traditional restaurants.

</comment><comment><USER14> For the benefit of Non-New-Yorkers:

NYC is a spread of 5 administrative sections called boroughs; Manhattan is the smallest and Queens is the largest (5X landmass of Manhattan). 6X more people live in the 4 outer boroughs when compared to Manhattan.

Posts below, which mention cost, often talk about Manhattan. As you might have guessed, other boroughs tend to be cheaper and are well connected via Subway and MTA bus systems.

More than half of New Yorkers do not own a car (ref below), and even those who own patronise the public transport significantly for their work commute (no data, but personal experience from having lived there many years).

If you remove the car ownership, and strain on time and resources that come from living in the suburbs, living in NYC is cheaper, as long as you don't consider Manhattan alone as NYC.

Ref: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borough_(New_York_City)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borough_\(New_York_City\)) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_households_without_a_car)

Edit: Typos and population.

<comment><USER15> Parts of other boroughs might be cheaper but the desirable parts of Brooklyn(Cobble Hill, DUMBO, Williamsburg, etc) and Queens(LIC) aren't any cheaper than Manhattan. There was a time when you could say Brooklyn was cheaper than Manhattan but that hasn't been true in a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think most people would have very short retirement in Manhattan. They would run out of savings.

<comment><USER13> Actually, I've always wondered how they manage to pay their bills. Of course, there are tons of super wealthy people in Manhattan, but there are also many elderlies that don't look particularly well-off. I suspect they've owned their apartment for a long time, or that they pay little rent. Maybe they receive social benefits from the city...

<comment><USER17> As imgabe said, a lot of older families (both in age and amount of time living in Manhattan), at least in the Upper West Side, have rent control, are in low income housing, or something similar.

If you ever walk around the Upper West Side, farther away from the park, you'll see a _ton_ big, tall apartment complexes. Huge ones with hundreds of families, if not more. I doubt everyone there makes the mid or high $100ks it takes to rent an apartment there now as a new resident.

<comment><USER18> Can someone explain to me, why this exists. How come, as a new resident I need to pay 3x the amount of rent compared to someone who has been there for a while. As a landlord wouldn't I be mad that the going rate is much higher? Can someone explain to me as I've never understood how come this happens or why it is the default. Why not just have free market? Forgive if it's obvious, I would love a lay-mans explanation

<comment><USER19> Rent control, as it exists in NYC, is a damper on how fast rent can rise (both when you're in a lease, and during vacancies of a property between tenants), for people and properties whose income/rent are below certain thresholds where the government considers them to be either paying for or capable of paying for luxury apartments.

Rent control lets you have some reasonable expectation that you can plan expenses for more than a single lease term, as well as attempting to limit how much damage to the economics of the surrounding area real estate prices are going to do (it's a commodity that is hard to increase the supply of in any great quantity, and demand far outstrips supply...this probably would eventually stabilize, but it'd be quite messy in between, and probably not in a net positive way for the city).

Absent rent control, the lower bound of prices would go up, the ceiling would not go down.

<comment><USER20> >Absent rent control, the lower bound of prices would go up, the ceiling would not go down.

Pretty vapid statement. The ceiling is whatever the arbitrary asking price is for something overlooking central park on the 100th floor of some high rise. Nobody cares about the ceiling.

The question is what does it do to the market price in general for a specific size apartment. It will cause a price decline because so many more apartments will actually be on the market. The current price is where supply is meeting demand so if you increase the supply the price will decline.

Of course it will screw up the people on rent control since they likely won't be able to afford it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The actual life expectancy in NYC is actually not too bad.

> New York City's life expectancy rate has increased by three years since > 2001, far greater than the nationwide increase of nearly 1.8 years over the > same period.

[https://www.mikebloomberg.com/news/life-expectancy-for- new-y...](https://www.mikebloomberg.com/news/life-expectancy-for-new-yorkers- surpasses-all-time-high/)

</comment><comment><USER22> About this:

"Certain Manhattan neighborhoods (I live in one on the Upper West Side) have already achieved NORC ("naturally occurring retirement community") status."

I also live on the Upper West Side. What surprises me is that everyone my building appears to be under 40, certainly everyone is under 50. It reminds me of when I lived in Brooklyn. But I expected it in Brooklyn. I didn't expect such a youthful building on the Upper West Side.

<comment><USER2> Same here, for the most part - but I live in a coop, and I fully expect that 90% of its residents plan on retiring either in their current apartment, or moving to a slightly cheaper place and subletting their current apartment to pay for the rent.

The neighbors across from us bought two units over two decades ago, and joined them. They're a couple with two teenaged kids, and what is almost certainly a 3-bedroom apartment that will likely be paid off by the time the kids go off to college. I envy their awesome position :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Having lived there, I always thought the same thing. The gotchas though... For one it's a filthy city, really. Noise, light, and air pollution. Piles of older buildings still use heating oil to operate their boilers, the soot gets everywhere. Blow your nose, it comes out gray. But OK, OK, no place is perfect. I think the biggest problem is on what sort of retirement plan does someone move to NYC, Manhattan in particular, and buy or rent a place for maybe 20 years? It's like...um?

<comment><USER24> Many old people downsize to a condo because:

1\. The kids are out and the house is too big for them.

2\. They are usually one floor units and have an elevator.

3\. They don't have to maintain nearly as many things.

And a place with a metro is good if you can't drive any more.

<comment><USER23> I get all of the other logistical arguments why Manhattan works well for old people, I've seen that first hand.

But a 1 BR condo in Manhattan is in the $3500-$4000/month range. What sized house is that they're downsizing from? Because if it's in Colorado, that's a 5BR 4000+ square foot house. If it's Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia, you've got that on a dozen acres, with a guest house, a barn, and horses, and staff.

Median retirement income in the U.S. is ~$31k per year. So again, they're doing this how? Great idea if you're old and reasonably wealthy. This is not something the typical old fart is going to be doing for retirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There has been a concreted effort by the Dept of Health to improve health outcomes beginning in 2001, so we are seeing results. MPOWER is a plan that dramatically reduced tobacco use. There were attempts to lower the consumption of sugar-added-beverages which significantly contributes to obesity. The legal attempts failed, but the publicity of the legal challenges has contributed to a decline. There are many FQHC (Federally Qualified Community Health Centers) here so that essentially everyone has access to care (of course the elderly have Medicare) all of these things help to increase the life expectancy in NYC.

As pointed out by others, this is a mass transit and walking city, often the mass transit is far faster than using one's car or a taxi (depending on the time of day). For a Meetup I was attending a couple of weeks ago, I received an Apple Warning to leave 40 minutes early because of heavy traffic. It took me 15 mins by subway and a short walk.

A number of the apartments are old and the lowest of these buildings are "walk up" eg, no elevator which also leads to lots of exercise to keep one healthy.

</comment><comment><USER25> My parents are in just now in the process of retiring. They have an apartment in NYC and a house in an expensive suburb in Boston.

One of the reasons why they are going to have to stay in NYC before moving for some time is to continue to make additional money (ironically). They just don't have enough money yet to retire the way they want and/or not ready to retire. They just don't want live in the South despite my some family members urges to.

From visiting NYC and having family live there I would gander that there are three groups of retirees.

1\. The super wealthy that probably have another mansion somewhere else and generally were born into money.

2\. The rise the corporate ladder but in debt most of their lives 1980's yuppies (not born into money but have the ambition)

3\. The never left the city born and raised and probably have family owned businesses/property.

My parents coming from absolutely zero money are from the second group.

After growing up in "privileged" areas in the ugliest smallest house in the neighborhood with working parents I can observationally say it is amazing how many people that are wealthy that can retire that probably didn't really earn their wealth or at least were significantly aided. There are a lot of trust fund retirees all over and there are a lot of retirees that want to retire like them.

I'm not saying I know for sure the author had/has the silver spoon in his mouth and thinks everyone can afford NYC (group 1)... but simple googling of his name certainly paints a picture of that (his father was a medical doctor and he went to Harvard... maybe scholarship but I doubt it).

</comment><comment><USER26> Do they live longer because they walk around more often in Manhattan?

<comment><USER27> They live longer because you need money to live in Manhattan, and socioeconomic status is correlated with life expectancy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> You need to be rich or have a rent-subsidized apartment to retire in Manhattan.

I love Manhattan. I've lived here for 4 years. But I'd never consider retiring here unless I was rich enough to have a nice apartment (minimum $3,000/month for anything decent). Even then I'm not too sure I'd stay here because the little things do wear down on you - the dirty smelly overcrowded streets, subway stations that are as hot as saunas in the summer, ghetto/homeless people everywhere, constant obnoxiously loud sirens, shabby old infrastructure and housing stock, etc.

But I do love the fact that you don't need a car, and there's an energy to this city that I haven't experienced anywhere else. I just don't like when people use this as an excuse to ignore its weaknesses. It's 2016 and most people here live in old tenement buildings.

<comment><USER29> Amen to that. I live in Astoria so I don't end up spending as much but I am always amazed how many people buy into the greatest-city-on-earth mentality and ignore all the shortcomings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There are a lot of mentality ill elderly people in NYC, and unfortunately, many seem to be forgotten and left to their own devices. The city can definitely be very taxing on the mind.</comment>


New micro-lattice material is world's lightest at 0.9mg/cm^3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmag.com/ultralight-micro-lattice-material/20537/

<comment><USER2> Does the 0.9mg/cm^3 number seem strange? The density of air is about 1.2mg/cm^3 at STP[1]. Can it be less dense than air? Wouldn't that make it float?

1\. <http://pdg.lbl.gov/2007/reviews/atomicrpp.pdf>

<comment><USER3> I thought the air density might have been a mistake, but I checked and your numbers are correct. Theoretically, it should float, right?

<comment><USER4> If you put a vacuum in it and shrink wrapped it it would float.

But I don't know if the material is strong enough to result air pressure if it was shrink wrapped (i.e. would the air pressure squish it?)

<comment><USER5> So, basically, it would be ideal for building a zeppelin. Put a bunch of it into a container, and evacuate it to go up. Fill the container with air again to go down. Nothing flammable to explode.

Awesome.

<comment><USER6> It's still heavy compared to helium gas. Air is 1.2 kg/m^3 helium is 0.164 kg/m^3 and this stuff is .9kg/m^3

<comment><USER7> Of course, if this could be used for large portions of the structure, that really changes the equations a lot. You don't need nearly as much lift for a given weight of cargo.

The Hindenburg used 200,000m^3 of hydrogen (generating a lifting force of approx. 215,000kg. Net useful load was only 10,000kg.

<comment><USER6> When selecting materials for building aircraft weight is only one of many concerns. Durability, flexibility, strength, cost, etc are all major issues. Considering the design goals for this material seem to primarily just be weight I would be surprised if it's strength to weight ratio was impressive enough to overcome cost issues.

Also compared to a modern blimp the Hindenburg an ancient design that's been far surpassed. A modern Zeppelin is much closer to 20% lift to weight ratio than 5 for the Hindenburg despite using less efficient helium gas. _Their maximum permitted takeoff weight is 10,690 kg, with a payload of 1,900 kg.(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT>) _</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Russian Parliament offers to decriminalize cybercrimes - <AUTHOR> https://en.crimerussia.com/gover/russian-parliament-to-decriminalize-hackishness/?lang=ru <comment><USER2> wonder if that community service is hacking for the government.</comment>


Ask HN: How do startups build trust with customers? - <AUTHOR> Given that every technology startup's stack is immature compared to more established players, how have you gotten people to trust your startup? Is it in the marketing? Transparency? In the availability/speed/features of the product itself? Does it simply come naturally as you treat your users with respect? I'd love to hear what you all think either as founders or as users of various startups.<p>I run a bootstrapped hosting startup (SSD Nodes) and I'm happy to hear about what else we could do, too. <comment><USER2> In short: It takes time to build trust. What I did for my company was to put testimonials from relevant customers.</comment>


SSLMate – Buy SSL certs from the command line - <AUTHOR> https://sslmate.com <comment><USER2> Take a look at [https://letsencrypt.org/](https://letsencrypt.org/) which will (mid-year) let you get a cert from the command, for free!, and automatically renew it as well.

<comment><USER3> Is this live? It says it's coming 'mid 2015', and the standard (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, I believe) repos don't seem to have any mention of it.

Edit for anyone else curious about this: No, the letsencrypt CA isn't ready yet; there are test builds available for all of the software, but any certs you get will not be properly signed, and your users will get nasty browser warnings. Something to keep an eye on in the future, I guess.

<comment><USER4> No, it is not mid 2015 yet.

<comment><USER3> Hence the edit, man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why are wildcard SSL certs so expensive? I want to use SSL certs on my personal subdomains, but they are usually priced at around $150/year at least. I hope let's encrypt will support multi or subdomains.

<comment><USER6> StartSSL offers as many wildcard certs as you want for a low fixed yearly fee (50$)?

<comment><USER7> StartSSL is very much "you get what you pay for", though. Their web interface is sporadically unreachable, and their validation is rather sloppy – as long as you pay up, you can happily break their terms of service and still be re- validated.

<comment><USER8> I never understood how that matters, though. My visitors will see a green bar, job done. Breaking the ToS or not, I don't care as long as my address bar is green. How is Verisign any different from StartSSL, in that regard?

<comment><USER7> > I never understood how that matters, though.

It will matter if StartCom is abused to print certificates for foreign domains. Even if your domain isn't targeted, browsers and OS vendors will probably react by invalidating all StartCom CA certs. That means no green bar.

<comment><USER9> Has this ever happened before? I'm genuinely curious, as I've heard this warning often but it seems more like FUD than anything else.

<comment><USER10> Google just removed CNNIC as a trusted CA from Chrome because of their sloppy security and trust.

<comment><USER11> CNNIC had provided "unauthorized digital certificates for several Google domains" and in an update on April 1st Google said that "To assist customers affected by this decision, for a limited time we will _allow CNNIC's existing certificates to continue to be marked as trusted in Chrome_ , through the use of a publicly disclosed whitelist" \- [http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.ro/2015/03/maintaining-...](http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.ro/2015/03/maintaining- digital-certificate-security.html)

So, I doubt they would treat StartSSL any worse than they treated China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really interesting. It's very annoying to always fire the browser the renew/buy a certificate. I would definitely git it a shot for a standard one, the wildcard looks quite expensive honestly. In other sources you can find it at half-price with promo codes.

</comment><comment><USER13> This looks interesting. Couldn't figure it out right from the FAQ: If SSLMate is a single-command buy & install, where do the certificate details (company name etc.) come from? From my profile on the website?

<comment><USER14> Founder here. As nailer says, the only detail signed in a DV cert is the hostname of your website. One of the crazy inefficiencies about buying certs elsewhere is that they tell you to use the openssl req command to generate a CSR. This prompts you for all sorts of details like your city, state, and company name. This information is all ignored, and having to enter it is a waste of time.

<comment> ryan-c I've found that CAs sometimes actually do require the country to be present for some reason. Anyway, in case it it useful to someone, here's a one-liner to generate a key and CSR:

        DOMAIN=example.com sh -c 'openssl req -sha256 -nodes -new -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout "${DOMAIN}.key" -out "${DOMAIN}.csr" -subj "/C=US/CN=${DOMAIN}"'

<comment><USER14> Indeed, one of SSLMate's CAs actually does require the country code to be present in the CSR, so SSLMate includes it (we get it from your online profile so you don't have to type it every time). Despite this requirement, the country code is not present in the signed certificate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks pretty cool. Although I do not understand why I would have to sign up on the website. The demo makes it look like it's a minimal-config command line tool. Instead the website makes it look like it's a service and there is no clear indication who stores my creditcard info etc. on the front page. This is explained in the FAQ though. A quick notice about stripe processing payments on the front page would be nice.

<comment><USER14> True, the demo doesn't show the sign up process, but you only have to sign up once and after that, buying certs is as simple as in the demo. (And the sign up process is itself very quick.)

Thanks for the feedback about the credit card processing information. I'll think about how to make that information more prominent.

<comment><USER16> Any reason you couldn't just have me enter the credit card info in the app?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Prices are much higher compared to Namecheap and their SSLs.com [0].

[0] [https://www.ssls.com/](https://www.ssls.com/)

<comment><USER14> Many of our customers realize that fact, but are nonetheless extremely happy to use SSLMate. We're not a normal certificate vendor, and the ease and automation of SSLMate sets us far apart. If these features aren't important to you, Namecheap is a fine choice - I used them myself before creating SSLMate.

<comment><USER17> I understand, but during times when you can buy a decent whole web servers for just $60 per year with traffic and all, the SSL certificate prices are just outrageously high!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm the paranoid type; I would have a very hard time trusting a certificate key which was downloaded over the internet.

Where is the SSL key generated? If I create my own certificate and key, can I pass the signing request over sslmate to get it signed?

I couldn't find the answers to these questions on your FAQ or in the documentation.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/SSLMate/sslmate/blob/master/bin/sslmate](https://github.com/SSLMate/sslmate/blob/master/bin/sslmate)

<comment><USER18> Useful (and confirms that it makes the cert locally), but we shouldn't have to read through the source code to get the overview of how the cert is created and signed.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Your private SSL key is generated on your system and is never transmitted in any way to our servers. The sslmate command is a simple script that anyone can examine to verify that this is true."

[https://sslmate.com/faq](https://sslmate.com/faq)

<comment><USER14> You might also be interested in checking out our security page: [https://sslmate.com/security](https://sslmate.com/security)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apparently you still have to create an account on their website...

And at 15usd/year that is infinitively more expensive than lets encrypt.

So while I might use it today, I don't see how they plan to have much of a future.</comment>


Detailed data on AP CS pass rates, race, and gender for 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://home.cc.gatech.edu/ice-gt/556 <comment><USER2> I think this analysis is flawed. Let's dive into one statistic.

        8 states had no Hispanic students take the exam: Alaska, Idaho, Kansas,
        Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.

Sounds pretty damning. These states are completely ignoring an entire demographic!

First, Wyoming should not be on the list. They had zero students take AP CS.

For the other states, here are the total number of students that took AP CS in 2013.

        Alaska       21
        Idaho        47
        Kansas       47
        Mississippi   1
        Montana      11
        Nebraska     46
        North Dakota  2

It's obvious that North Dakota and Mississippi should also have been left off the list as they had less than five students take the exam. We're now down to five states. Let's look at the Hispanic population size in these states[1]

        Alaska       6.1%
        Idaho        11.0%
        Kansas       11.0%
        Montana      3.1%
        Nebraska     9.7%

With these percentages, we can calculate the expected number of Hispanic students for each state.

        Alaska       1.28
        Idaho        5.17
        Kansas       5.17
        Montana      0.341
        Nebraska     4.462

So we can take take Montana and Alaska off the list. I could go further and get the actual demographic breakdown per city for each included high school, but I think the point is clear: AP CS enrollment for many states is too small to draw accurate conclusions.

The real question we should be asking: Why are so few schools offering AP CS?

[1] [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html](http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html)

<comment><USER3> "I think this analysis is flawed."

I didn't see much in the way of analysis, just raw data and some highlights.

<comment><USER2> It's the highlights I take issue with.

<comment><USER3> They seem reasonable. It looks like you're making a big deal out of the idea that some states expect near zero participation from certain groups but the aggregate participation numbers seem pretty salient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The obsession with race in the US is really fascinating as foreigner.

Are there a lot of other countries where this kind of data is compiled? I feel like I've never seen anything like it in France, but maybe I wasn't paying attention.

<comment><USER5> The United States has a history where over six million people were imported from Africa and enslaved, who continued to be denied basic civil and voting rights for a century after emancipation. And even today one of the strongest predictors of socioeconomic class, voting patterns, health outcomes, urban-vs- suburban-vs-rural residence, likelihood of committing or being victim of a crime, and exposure to quality educational resources is socially- and self- identified race. It's only natural that governments, businesses, and health officials would be interested in statistics on it.

France's national pre-occupations are pretty different, I expect. I suspect a closer analogy would be to the relations between French settlers and indigenous Muslims in Algeria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe this has more to do with CS in public schools versus race and gender issues. I went to Palo Alto High School, got a college degree in CS, and was not even aware my high school offered AP computer science until after I graduated...

<comment><USER7> Our local high school, about 20 minutes away from Palo Alto in another affluent neighborhood, offers AP CS but doesn't have a teacher for it. That means they are counted in the statistics of how many high schools offer it. If you want it, you can take it online. I wonder how many kids bother to take it that way.

The school has a terrific athletics program with great facilities but can't come up with a CS teacher in a neighborhood where most of the parents work for software companies.

<comment><USER8> It could be difficult to find a qualified person with a CS degree willing to work for teacher's pay in and around Palo Alto. There are probably some pretty high opportunity costs.

<comment><USER7> It's unlikely to be about pay, since there are a lot of 50-something or retired programmers around here who could teach Java in their sleep, would be happy with teachers' hours, teachers' vacations, teachers' "delivery dates", and teachers' pay, which is pretty good in this area, and are unlikely to be hired by Google, Apple, Oracle, or a YC startup.

I think the more likely problem is the state requirements for public school teachers, which would come down to about two years of political re-education camp, which such programmers wouldn't put up with. The elite private schools around here pay less than the public schools (yes, _less_ ) and yet they all seem to have CS (and other subject) teachers. Their teachers tend to be quite a bit older and have subject matter degrees and/or professional experience rather than education degrees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's a Google spreadsheet for those of us without an xlsx viewer installed:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ApVHgXTTTuMfdEF...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ApVHgXTTTuMfdEFOaEM2MU5VaFhvSkl1Z1FSNG8yU2c&output=html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Original title: "Zero women, African Americans, or Hispanics take AP CS Exam in some states."

<comment><USER11> Why changed?

<comment><USER10> HN often changes titles when the moderators feel that it's inaccurate or flamebait-y.

In this case, I think it's the entire reason to read the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Curious stuff.

Looking at the sheets [0] for Maryland, where I live...

2007 Black - Pass Rate: 11.40%, Enrollment: 114, Percentage of Enrollment: 14.10%

2008 Black - Pass Rate: 36.48%, Enrollment: 74, Percentage of Enrollment: 8.26%

2009 Black - Pass Rate: 21.66%, Enrollment: 120, Percentage of Enrollment: 11.56%

2010 Black - Pass Rate: 17.89%, Enrollment: 190, Percentage of Enrollment: 14.05%

Things have evened out a bit since, but I'd love to know what if anything was going on there? Changing teachers? Smaller class sizes?

0: [http://home.cc.gatech.edu/ice- gt/uploads/556/DetailedStateIn...](http://home.cc.gatech.edu/ice- gt/uploads/556/DetailedStateInfoAP-CS-A-2006-2013.xlsx)

</comment><comment><USER13> For those who don't know much about the AP CS course, I found it really awkward when I took it in high school. The exam involved a lot of writing Java...in pencil. Not an experience I ever want to repeat.

<comment><USER14> Writing code on paper was a practice I initially resented when taking CS courses at University. However, it made me a better programmer, because it forced me to think about design and data structures first, then about the code.

Let me be clear: I think it's a great way to test students as long as the graders/instructors aren't overly anal about syntax or even API correctness. I was lucky to have teachers who were okay with unbalanced parentheses, made-up API functions, and in upper-division classes, pseudo code was even acceptable (data structures). (However most CS classes will be biased towards imperative programming over functional programming).

To use a cooking analogy, if you have to think about how you are cutting the fish, you won't be able to think about how you are going to prepare or cook the fish. Writing code on paper forced me to think about design first; that is, it enabled me to think about what I was going to do with the fish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How many schools offer AP CS? I know in some areas of the midwest schools had no AP courses and advanced students could take college courses for high school credit.

<comment><USER16> year #schools

2008 1778

2009 1879

2010 2048

2011 1972

2012 2103

2013 2253

According to the spread sheet, this is the numbers per year of schools that offered it nationally. (5A - 12B on Sheet1)

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Who knew Tennessee was so progressive?

Of course percentages are ambiguous without a population size and other factors.

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember there being two tests: A and AB. When did that change?

<comment><USER18> They made it one exam starting 2010.

<comment><USER19> Are they still using the fishies (Marine Biology Case Study)?

<comment><USER20> I still have nightmares involving aquafish.h

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Texas leading the way in diversity!

EDIT: Removed unflattering remark.

</comment><comment><USER21> Number of Japanese trans-men in the 100-meter olympic dash: 0. I think I need a million-dollar grant to raise awareness of this issue.

<comment><USER10> I would hope that on Hacker News it could be recognized that computer science has a bit of a higher position in society than the 100-meter Olympic dash.

Not to mention the relative sample sizes involved, or the methods by which quality is determined.

Basically, this comparison is nonsensical.

<comment><USER21> Fine, change "100-meter olympic dash" to "professional athlete in the USA". Sample size is sufficient (NBA+NFL+NHL+MLB comprise of 3000+ players), athletes hold a much higher position in society than computer scientists, and quality is easy to determine (# of wins, points, rebounds, interceptions, etc). Number of japanese trans-men in pro-sports in the US: 0, afaik. We need to tackle this issue as a nation, immediately.

<comment><USER10> Programming ability is not determined by biology, try again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow. This is completely inexcusable.. what's happening in Mississippi?

<comment><USER23> The two people who took the test in Mississippi were white males.

Pro tip: look at the actual data. The sample sizes are way to small to attempt to draw conclusions like these.

<comment><USER24> We don't know that the two people in Mississippi were white males, because as the note at the top of the spreadsheet says, the College Board does not release information for demographic groups with less than 5 members. That means several of the statements made on the page are not provable using the data provided because the sample sizes are too small.

Also, Wyoming should not even be mentioned. I find it somewhat dishonest to talk about states that had no members of X demographic group take a test when _nobody in the state took it_.

<comment><USER25> It would be much more interesting to weight the numbers to state demographics. Is anybody surprised that North Dakota or Montanna has low incidence of African Americans taking the test? I hope not, considering they represent only 1.2% and 0.4% of the states, respectively.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bing Debuts Social Search with New Facebook Integration - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/bing_debuts_social_search_with_new_facebook_integr.php

<comment><USER2> _So, if your friend liked something that was buried on page 89 of the search results, Bing will in theory bring it to the front page_

Can anyone actually think of a situation where you would want this to happen? I mean, when you are not searching for something specifically related to your friend.

My friend didn't click on result 89, so they must have been searching for something else.</comment>


The Internet but not as we know it: life online in China, Cuba, India and Russia - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2019/jan/11/the-internet-but-not-as-we-know-it-life-online-in-china-russia-cuba-and-india <comment><AUTHOR> It's impressive how the writers and designers of this piece have worked together to produce something that goes beyond what's possible in a static medium like paper.

From what I understand of the history of the motion picture, the earliest directors basically filmed stage plays. It wasn't until directors like Griffith and Eisenstein edited movies in new ways -- creating a film grammar that we take for granted today -- that the medium reached its full potential.

We're a couple of decades into the Web, but I think we haven't yet found our Griffith and Eisenstein.

</comment><comment><USER2> The world desperately needs censorship circumvention tools, that cannot themselves be censored!</comment>


Interview: BT 'futurologist': AI entity will win Nobel by 2020 - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/Man/071015interview/pfindex.html <comment><USER2> Err. It's highly unlikely that _people_ publishing now will have won a Nobel by 2020. If an AI is built tomorrow, it may take that long for its inventors to get the prize.</comment>


Ask HN: Link to Latest Whos Hiring - 100-xyz I am trying to find the latest Who's hiring thread.  Did a search unsuccessfully. Thanks <comment><AUTHOR> Probably the easiest way to solve this problem in the future is to know that the same account posts it each month, so you can just check that account's submissions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

</comment><comment><USER2> For future reference, an easy way to search for the post is to search "Who is hiring" and then sort the results by Date instead of Popularity and you should be able to find it pretty easily.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21126014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21126014)</comment>


12 Factor model for architecting SaaS applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.12factor.net

<comment><USER2> A good sum up, reflects the ideal pretty closely in my experience.</comment>


PE Obama's 1st Big Mistake - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2008/11/08/pe-obamas-1st-big-mistake/ <comment><USER2> I think the post is a bit misguided. The people you talk to about matters of economy and finance are people with a background in finance and economics. For all their other assets entrepreneurs don't know a lot about macroeconomics, big finance, and economic policy.

I'm sure that one layer below this there will be, or at least should be, entrepreneurs that are consulted in order to get the most bang for the buck.

But I honestly don't see Mark Zuckerberg lecturing Robert Rubin and Warren Buffet on how to save the economy...

<comment><USER3> Why did you imply that Mark Zuckerberg would be the candidate? A commentor in the blog post did the same, but I did not expect this from Hacker News, when Cuban did not imply at all it should be Zuckerberg or anyone else inexperienced.

 _The people you talk to about matters of economy and finance are people with a background in finance and economics._

Cuban did not say there was anything wrong with such experts, but that the team should have someone who runs a small business for a living, that's all.

For example, I just thought of an almost identical situation.

Ron Paul's campaign advisor on the economy, and one of the two people who predicted the economic collapse in detail two years ago, is also an active entrepreneur. Now, Cuban did not say it has to be someone who is much of an expert, but it doesn't mean it should be some entrepreneur with zero economy experience.

 _I honestly don't see Mark Zuckerberg lecturing Robert Rubin and Warren Buffet on how to save the economy..._

Cuban clearly implies he wants a good candidate, and not for example, a 23 year old web 2.0 hero.

Also, Cuban went out of his way to include franchise owners, mom and pop store owners, and independent contractor's all over the country in his definition of entrepreneur.

Besides distorting Cuban's points, I think it is very limiting to think that entrepreneurs are 20 year old founders of web startups, when they could be 45 or 65-year-old economists who have also started multiple startups in their life, whenever you hear the e-word.

<comment><USER2> Mark Zuckerberg was just the one that sprung to mind, but I think the argument would be pretty much the same if I had used Jeff Bezos - who was a stockbroker before he founded Amazon, and thus should be somewhat experienced in macroeconomy.

My point is that making economic policy, especially in the current environment, is a difficult and specialised task. The people that have the best shot at getting it right are the ones that have the experience, connections and know-how of how to do it. And entrepreneurs don't - they are in a completely different business.

This is nothing bad about Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or any other entrepreneur - I just think that you should get the best man for the job. I wouldn't want Robert Rubin to be the CIO of my startup either, even though I know he's as smart and dedicated as anyone. It's simply not his expertise.

<comment><USER3> _I wouldn't want Robert Rubin to be the CIO of my startup either, even though I know he's as smart and dedicated as anyone._

While I have to agree that it would be hard to find such versatile people, the argument is not logical. If a implies b, it doesn't mean that b implies a. If it did work that way, then it would mean any CIO could never make a great expert on finance and economy, and vice versa, and that's not qualifiable (or realistic.)

 _I just think that you should get the best man for the job._

It is not qualifiable that Obama has found the best man (or woman) for the job. Therefore, it is not qualifiable that entrepreneurs should not feel they should be represented by some economist or expert in finance who has entrepreneurial experience.

Somebody who has their money tied to their business, as Cuban said, and depends on their business for all of their income, is the kind of entrepreneur who should be represented. I believe Mark's point is that the economists advising Obama make money as government employees, company executives, book publishers, researches, faculty, or similar--I made this up, but if they're not entrepreneurs, they must be getting paid some other way.

(In fact, to add my own thoughts, many high-ranking economists and high- ranking finance experts could have been a part of the problem in the first place, while at the same time, entrepreneurs spent the same years trying to create value for their customers. They: create value in order to make money, actually have contact with real, "regular" people, try to solve people's existing and future problems after listening to these "regular" people, and do so because they've chosen to bet almost all of their income and quality of life on solving problems. This is completely different from being a professor or book author, tv personality, and, in some way, having a hand in creating the problem in the first place.)

 _My point is that making economic policy, especially in the current environment, is a difficult and specialised task. The people that have the best shot at getting it right are the ones that have the experience, connections and know-how of how to do it. And entrepreneurs don't - they are in a completely different business._

I think my points about how an entrepreneurial perspective could be beneficial as well as that entrepreneurs could definitely be experts on the economy argue your point, but I also want to note that Cuban mentions having one experienced entrepreneur representing one person on the committee, not necessarily a committee full of entrepreneurs (never mind all without experience in finance, and all relatively young, and all from Silicon Valley, to boot.) So, of course you need many experts as well as those with political connections on the committee. But at least one expert should have entrepreneurial experience. He even goes out of his way to point out several times that Buffett isn't an entrepreneur in the same sense that most entrepreneurs are small mom-and-pop shops and independent contractors.

Of course, I could be mistaken--maybe Mark Cuban did imply that he wants a great entrepreneur advising on the economy, whether or not they have economic experience--but I just did not read it that way, and it would be hard to argue that a sane person would want any random entrepreneur. I've heard Cuban has an ego, but I don't think it's that big. :)

(And again, such people exist, like the economic advisor to Ron Paul, as well as likely hundreds of other great choices. I think that Obama and the existing committee would not mind having an entrepreneur on board, and Cuban's post is a great way to point out this missing piece.)

I think we (the News.YC users) saw items in the blog post that made us want to discuss it, but of course, we saw different things. In my view, I didn't see anything wrong in his post, therefore causing me to think that it's a good idea for him to try to get a search for an entrepreneur started, and I wanted to provide what I thought. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> I see your points, and what your goals are with this, but I think that you and Cuban are getting in on the wrong level.

He wants to make sure that tech entrepreneurs are heard in the new government - which I certainly agree is a good idea. Both for the entrepreneurs and the economy. My grudge with the post is that he finds it perfectly reasonable that tech entrepreneurs should be represented at the very top level of the economic advisers to the president. My argument is that the tech entrepreneur expertise should be represented one level further down. Both because, as I've argued before, that the expertise that's needed is very different from doing startups, but also because tech startups don't account for that large a portion of the overall economy. Cuban's arguments could just as well be applied to mom and pop stores, which are probably more underpinning of the economy than startups, the biotech sector, the defense industry, the automobile industry, agriculture, advertising, aerospace, big oil, clean energy, food products etc. etc. These are all important, but none of them, including startups, are big enough in an economical sense that they should be represented at the top level.

Yes, an argument could be made that startups are the future of America. But the same argument could be made of mom and pop stores, clean energy and many others.

<comment><USER4> What drives America's economy? Investment or innovation? Where has the most influential innovation come from?

Macroeconomics is a step removed from the people who really make it work. So, to get the best macroeconomics we need to make sure we get things right at the micro level. I don't see this happening with people who've spent their lives at the macro level.

EDIT

After reading the article, I also see you've set up a strawman. Cuban is not arguing you stick a lone group of tech entrepreneurs in Obama's advisory board. He says Obama needs to directly talk with them to see what they need, explicitly including non tech people in this by his mention of Joe the Plumber. Instead, Obama has insulated himself from these people with his advisory board. I agree with Cuban that this is a bad sign.

<comment><USER2> I just reread the article, and you're right about the strawman. Got a bit carried away in the discussion apparently :-)

<comment><USER3> That was the whole point of my response. :) It would have been a lot simpler had I not edited out the first line of my post, which called your original post a strawman and linked to the definition. Since I had read the entire article carefully, and within the context of Mark's posts that I had read in the past, I thought Hacker News would appreciate knowning the actual views expressed in Mark's article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are two ways to use advisors. On one hand, you can use them to help you make decisions. On the other hand, you can use them to lend credibility to decisions you've already made.

Interestingly, the bigger and more prominent your board of advisors, the harder it becomes to use them for the former purpose and the easier it becomes to use them for the latter.

<comment><USER6> Precisely. The membership list of this advisory board is a _marketing document_ , not an exclusive list of the people who get to make the policy. This isn't the NBA, where the people on the roster are also the ones who have to play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had the same thought as Mark Cuban. A PhD in Economics, even winning the Nobel Prize (see my critique of Krugman) doesn't give you the real world feel that starting and running a business does. Economics is full of unintended consequences. Couple of examples, which every start-up person here can appreciate: if you make it very hard to do a lay-off, that leads to businesses becoming extremely cautious in hiring. The minimum wage directly leads to entrepreneurs not taking a chance to hire a less skilled person and train them on the job. These are easy enough to see when you run a business.

It would amaze you how many things that are "common sense" for an entrepreneur are hard for someone sitting in their ivory tower.

This is not just a problem in economics. After I got out of Princeton with a PhD in Electrical Engineering, it amazed me just how orthogonal to the real world much of my adviser's academic work proved to be - I happened to land a job that _directly_ dealt with one of his core areas of research, though I wasn't involved in that area during my PhD myself. My realization led me to write a paper that pointed out that his work was dealing in mathematical models that were not very relevant to the real world, which predictably led to our intellectual parting of ways.

I felt experience working as an engineer should be mandatory for anyone aspiring to be an engineering professor, yet you will find that most engineering faculty have never worked outside of academia.

<comment><USER8> Not arguing your underlying point, but the examples you chose are poor--all economists are well aware of the effects of a minimum wage, and of barriers to hiring/firing. It's people with no background in economics who don't understand those things.

<comment><USER7> I would agree if you said "most economists" instead of "all". On the minimum wage, a couple of Princeton economists wrote a scholarly paper pointing out how that didn't suppress hiring (sorry, don't have a handy reference) or increase unemployment. On barriers to hiring/firing, I grant that most economists would agree they are bad.

On the other hand, Krugman himself has been a strong advocate of nationalized health care. Milton Friedman argued how the health care problem is really one of licensing regulations designed to maximize pay for doctors. Imagine an American Software Association that decides how many licenses to grant every year, and you need those credentials to be a hacker. Yes, Friedman addressed the "quack" argument too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think he, or any politician at that level, for that matter, can help it. The only people they rub elbows with are the established, credentialed, and connected. If he knew the right startup/entrepreneur people he would be a VC or angel, not a politician.

</comment><comment><USER10> Uh, can anyone tell me how "your current group has no one with 100pct of their networth on the line" is a reasonable complaint?

We're talking _economics_ here. Smart people familiar with basic economics don't risk 100% of their net worth.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maverick schmaverick. However, to give you the benefit of the doubt, name 3 startuppers that you would propose. BTW, do you seriously think Warren Buffets advice on macroeconomics would be worth less than someone who has started the corner deli?

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone else see this as a thinly veiled partisan rant along the lines of, "Democrats are Ivory Tower elitists who hate Joe the Plumber and will destroy free enterprise in the USA"?

In what sense does this article have any practical value for entrepreneurs, or even the Obama administration? Seems like Schmidt, Page and Brin have been offering plenty of informal advice along with lots of other successful entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think from the primary polls a good 10% of the country would like to see Ron Paul as an adviser. He has consistently showed that he has a firm grasp of conservative economics and an intellectually honest president would want both sides represented.

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill Is there a pool on when Cuban will start expressing buyer's remorse on his Chris Matthews-style leg tingling for Obama?

I'll take "last week of February 2009" if it's available.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am quite happy that Obama won, but I have started flagging pretty much all of the articles with 'Obama' in the title. I don't want to talk about politics here.

</comment><comment><USER15> Finance != Economics.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow. So this post is seriously suggesting we make Joe the Plumber Treasury Secretary? Man I'm in the wrong business. Maybe if I had gone into plunging toilets instead of testing software I could be an economic guru too.

</comment><comment><USER17> Amazing post - perfectly posited imo. The most powerful lines for me:

"Entrepreneurs that start and run small businesses will be the propellant in this economy. PE Obama needs to have the counsel of those who will take the real risk inherent in creating companies and jobs. Those who put their money and lives on the line with their business...Your current group has no one with 100pct of their networth on the line. I promise you that the possibility of losing it all will provide a completely different perspective than any of the "knowledge" the esteemed, learned members of his current advisory team offer."

<comment><USER18> The danger of advice from somebody with everything on the line is a lack of objectivity.

Personally, I don't think we need to make any sweeping changes to encourage entrepreneurship directly. The United States is already a great place to start a business. The key making sure that is true 20 years from now by continuing to invest wisely in education, research, energy...etc.

<comment><USER19> >The key making sure that is true 20 years from now by continuing to invest wisely in education, research, energy...etc.

And by keeping taxes and regulations light and minimal.

I would like to point out that our government's investments in education and energy haven't gone very well, though its investment in general research probably does more good than harm.

<comment><USER15> _And by keeping taxes and regulations light and minimal._

But no more than that.

 _I would like to point out that our government's investments in education and energy haven't gone very well, though its investment in general research probably does more good than harm._

It's also worth while to point out that many other industrialized nations have also made investments in energy and education and had better results. So, we shouldn't abandon the idea (as you seem to be implying) but rather take a good look at how we do things.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


On iOS 14 Picking Up Features Android Had First - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/06/25/wong-ios-14-android <comment><USER2> Not sure I agree with the conclusion here. If you're an Apple fan then you're predisposed to see every new release as a groundbreaking collection of work by people who love what they do.

To me both iOS and Android look pretty similar: they're both very mature OSes and each new release has _maybe_ a couple of truly interesting features but is mostly a lot of polish. And that's fine by me.</comment>


"The Mojave Experiment:" Bad Science, Bad Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://wilshipley.com/blog/2008/07/mojave-experiment-bad-science-bad.html <comment><USER2> I didn't think anyone would expect a marketing campaign to even approximate a valid scientific experiment.

<comment><USER3> Is he anal, or an Apple fanboy? Or both? There's probably a large purple center on that blue/red Venn diagram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bad Science? Yes. Bad Marketing? No.

<comment><USER5> I disagree, it is bad marketing because Microsoft is hitting the wrong market.

The people who make their decisions based on what Dell defaults to are going to end up with Vista - because that is their only option now. There was a time when they had a choice between XP or Vista with a new computer, now you have a choice between Vista or no computer.

So this campaign is aimed at the people who actually make an informed decision and influence large purchases - basically IT guys since businesses are the ones still using XP/2000. Insulting their intelligence is not an effective strategy.

<comment><USER4> This marketing is combative of Apple's anti-Vista marketing. The goal is to change the perception of the general populous which (due to brilliant ads by Apple) believe that "Vista sucks".

This marketing campaign will resonate well with every person who has concluded that Vista sucks without ever giving it a chance. I have a feeling that is a massive target audience.

<comment><USER6> _The goal is to change the perception of the general populous which (due to brilliant ads by Apple) believe that "Vista sucks"._

I don't think it's because of apple ads at all. Most people have an early adopter or someone who recently bought a new machine in their circle of friends. And a big chunk of those people have had problems.

So most people are 1-2 steps removed from someone who doesn't like vista (my dad says copying files is slow, for instance). So I suspect this marketing won't even really work that well. The issue isn't whether vista is prettier or "faster", the issue is whether vista will be broken on my machine.

<comment><USER7> I think it works when the 2nd half of the marketing campaign pushes the idea: "Vista SP1 has fixed most of those issues now". (disclaimer: I have no idea if that is true or not, but it should work as a marketing campaign)

<comment><USER8> Trying to upgrade from Vista to Vista SP1 is what drove me back to XP. I wanted to do a fresh reinstall w/ Vista SP1 and the installer told me "We're sorry, you can't install to that drive because Vista is already installed."

It had other foibles as well and managed to crash due to driver conflicts and other issues. All in all, I much more satisfied being back on XP even though I'm missing out on some of Vista's new eye candy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hate bad science too, when it's sold as science. For instance the arguments put forth by creationists.

When it's an ad, well, it's just an ad. I don't think those Apple ads with John Hodgman are going to be published in any scientific journals any time soon, but they're still great ads.

I'd say this is an effective ad. I can't think of a better way to get the message to people that Vista is getting a worse reputation than it deserves.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a childish rant. I'm surprised it was posted and actually voted up on HN. Maybe things are starting to slide around here.

</comment><comment><USER10> Would have been better without the rant. That is, if the author had just concentrated on exposing the bad science.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure exposing bad science in marketing campaigns is really a worthwhile endeavor.

<comment><USER10> Makes for better reading than a rant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I suspect Microsoft uses good science in its internal studies.</comment>


Ask HN: Examples of beautifully written x64 assembly? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for clear and idiomatic modern x64 assembly code to learn from and imitate.  Are there examples out there?  That is, what's the assembly equivalent of Redis or SQLite that I can use to learn about good stylistic choices.<p>I'm less concerned with what it does, and more concerned with how it reads:  formatting, use of macros, naming conventions.  Most of the code I read is generated by compilers, and I'm worried that it doesn't serve well as a style guide. <comment><USER2> x264? FFmpeg (at least the newer parts)? It is mostly SIMD and suitably abstracted so it runs on x86, win64 and *nix64 but that doesn't mean it can't teach you things. It is what got me interested.

I would say that SIMD is the biggest reason to dip into assembly and for many situations, the only one.

Anyway, you can see how these projects format the source. The general rule is: align instrcutions, and align first, second, and third operands (within reason). Indent loops (like any other language)

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, while we're at it, a good book to get up to speed with x64 assembly would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER4> clear and idiomatic assembly? I don't write assembly code, but when I did. It was for performance reasons, there was no such thing as clear and idiomatic. I needed performance and every spare cycle I could get, and that meant taking advantage of whatever the cpu offered, some obscure things that made no sense, but made the program run faster. Beautiful assembly code to me and my mates was one that made the program faster, as a program, the beauty was in how it was illogical at first sight but made sense when you read into it.</comment>


What if the government prints money to pay the national debt? - <AUTHOR> http://www.realprogressivesusa.com/news/economic-issues/2017-01-26-what-if-the-government-prints-money-to-pay-the-national-debt <comment><USER2> I disagree with this article. My first point of disagreement came when you had the government print $100 quadrillion and lock it away. You claim that the value of M in your equation changed. It did not. M is the money supply IN CIRCULATION. Currency locked away like this is not in circulation. M is unchanged. My next point of disagreement came when you said that neither buying or selling Treasury notes increased your wealth. It is true that buying a $100 Treasury note does not change your wealth but when you sell your matured note for $125 it certainly seems to me that $125 is more than $100. Your argument favoring the government printing money to pay the debt brings to mind the idea of the government printing $330 trillion dollars and sending $1 million to every man, woman, and child. Suddenly we're a nation of millionaires. Nobody lives in poverty any more. (It won't work.) The reason is left as an exercise for the reader. I think that faulty economic reasoning may be the reason we have the situation we are in: [http://www.usdebtclock.org/](http://www.usdebtclock.org/)</comment>


Improving the WordPress User Experience - <AUTHOR> https://www.wpsitecare.com/improving-wordpress-user-experience/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. The work our team put into this was pretty fantastic. Lots of real user tests and a number of real solid takeaways. Name, WordPress might be easier to use than Wix and Squarespace both

</comment><comment><USER3> Great comparison. Insane that Squarespace scored so much worse than WordPress and Wix, and yet is so popular.

</comment><comment><USER4> 13 hours of video testing</comment>