If borders were open - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/world-if/21724907-yes-it-would-be-disruptive-potential-gains-are-so-vast-objectors-could-be-bribed <comment><USER2> >European countries, such as Sweden, migrants are more likely to get into trouble than locals, but this is mostly because they are more likely to be young and male.

I don't even know where to start with this. Could it be that young and male aren't the core of the issue?

I like how the article almost dismisses the realities of religious and racial conflicts.

Then there is this:

>If the worry is that immigrants will outvote the locals and impose an uncongenial government on them, one solution would be not to let immigrants vote—for five years, ten years or even a lifetime. This may seem harsh, but it is far kinder than not letting them in. If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits? Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, thus avoiding big, sudden surges

This seems like a very sane system. Why is this not something we do? Do we not care about local interests at all as long as immigration isn't "too high"?

As an immigrant, I think this would be fair.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention the social welfare systems would collapse.

<comment><USER4> Milton friedman spoke 40 years ago of how people in america changed their views on immigration. In the 1800's and early 1900's, immigration was open and considered nowadays to be one of the great processes that got america to be what it is. Bring me the poor and the sick and all that. 60 years later, turns out immigrants are lazy welfarers.

As MF says, the moment you put welfare, suddenly you end up wanting to restrict people's freedoms. In any case, being inelegible for welfare is a lot kinder than having quotas of how many people can come in, absurd legal fees, the unpredictability of lotteries, and all of that.

<comment><USER5> This is a good point. Once welfare systems exist, you don't know if immigrants are coming because they believe in the host nation's cultural values or if it's just because they want free stuff, and have no intention of assimilation.

<comment><USER4> It is one of the terrible side effects of all welfare programs. If you have socialized medicine, suddently it makes sense to ban products and practices for public health (since it lowers costs). If you agree to split the bill with the friends, you end up having to make rules on what people should be able to order to make sure things dont go too out of whack.

<comment><USER6> Meanwhile, if healthcare is profit-driven, suddenly it makes sense to recommend pointless treatments for revenue reasons.

Obamacare is basically the worst of both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >One seemingly simple policy could make the world twice as rich as it is: open borders.

In this utopian paradise the author describes is he willfully ignoring the fact that different cultures exist? Not all cultures are equal, no matter what the current narrative tells you. This is a terrible, empty article.

>If lots of people migrated from war-torn Syria, gangster-plagued Guatemala or chaotic Congo, would they bring mayhem with them? It is an understandable fear (and one that anti-immigrant politicians play on), but there is little besides conjecture and anecdotal evidence to support it.

Alright now this empty article turned insidious.

<comment><USER8> The article doesn't purport to understand or comprehend cultural differences, it's simply exploring the economic case. It's not call The Culturalist.

For an empty article, you've had a very strong reaction to it.

<comment><USER9> > but there is little besides conjecture and anecdotal evidence to support it.

He had a strong reaction because he's tired of these kinds of lies being perpetuated by our media. Everybody knows mass immigration from problematic parts of the world brings a huge burden on the host population.

<comment><USER4> Was that true for america when it had the immigrant influx in the previous centuries?

<comment><USER10> >> Everybody knows mass immigration from problematic parts of the world __brings a huge burden on the host population. __

> Was that true for america when it had the immigrant influx in the previous > centuries?

Lets ask all the dead native Americans about that.

<comment><USER4> Gotta be that apex predator, thats what all legislation is really about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any kind of immigration restriction is an act of oppression.

Think of how insane a proposal to limit people moving from a state to another in the US would be, how many arguments would be concocted against that, but so many arguments in favour of international restrictions.

I have no doubts that free movement would have drastic positive economic and social effects. What is truly incredible is how adamant people can be to categorize and justify creating rules to prevent other people from moving around.

<comment><USER10> >Any kind of immigration restriction is an act of oppression.

That seems quite naive, to the point of outright stupidity.

If I was a large nation state with a very large population, it would be very easy to take over another smaller nation by just migrating a huge population to that country. This was used by the USSR post-takeover in many of their satellite states.

Looking at state-to-state movement restrictions is silly because all of the said population is under the same federal jurisdiction, same constitution, and same supreme court system.

I can promise you that the Netherlands doesn't want 20 million far right fundamentalist christians moving there and influencing policy. San Francisco doesn't want a few million Wahhabi Saudi's saying that gays should be beheaded. Small Pacific islands don't want a few million Chinese showing up and claiming their area as new territory.

Free movement will have dramatic effects. Some may be positive, but you seem to steadfastly think it will not be manipulated in horrible, horrible ways by the nation states that already exist.

<comment><USER4> > If I was a large nation state with a very large population, it would be very > easy to take over another smaller nation by just migrating a huge population > to that country. This was used by the USSR post-takeover in many of their > satellite states.

That is always true. Its called an invasion, and the rules of warfare and immigration are pretty different.

> Looking at state-to-state movement restrictions is silly because all of the > said population is under the same federal jurisdiction, same constitution, > and same supreme court system.

When a foreigner enters the us, he is under the same federal jurisdiction, constitution and supreme court system. There is no conflict of law. There is conflict of interest, only if you portray the issue as an us vs them.

> I can promise you that the Netherlands doesn't want 20 million far right > fundamentalist christians moving there and influencing policy. San Francisco > doesn't want a few million Wahhabi Saudi's saying that gays should be > beheaded. Small Pacific islands don't want a few million Chinese showing up > and claiming their area as new territory.

The netherlands doesn't want anything, because it's not a person. San francisco is a city, it doesn't have a will or a life. Individuals want things and do what they can to do it. If a bigot or an intolerant wants to move to San Francisco, who the hell is a government official in san francisco to forbid him to do it. Funny you mention SF that has a movement to kick out software developers and startups, because it's "destroying the culture of the city".

If 1 million saudi conservatives move to san francisco, they would pay so much money to achieve such a ridiculous demographic goal that the residents will have plenty of money to move and change another city to their own liking. That is, unless they are forbidden to do it by another government official.

<comment><USER11> > If a bigot or an intolerant wants to move to San Francisco, who the hell is > a government official in san francisco to forbid him to do it.

And if the bigot/intolerant guy then throws acid in the face of your sister because she's wearing a skirt that's too short, for example? We see this quite often in London and other enriched European cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is only a good idea if we ignore that a billion people would migrate in a few months in an attempt to escape poverty. The results would be catastrophic.

<comment><USER13> FTA:

> If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge > them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access > to welfare benefits? Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of > migrants, thus avoiding big, sudden surges

<comment><USER14> FTA:

> open borders

also FTA:

> why not charge them more for visas

Someone forgot what "open borders" means.

<comment><USER13> Does anyone on HN actually read the article anymore? They specifically address this:

> To clarify, "open borders" means that people are free to move to find work. > It does not mean "no borders" or "the abolition of the nation-state". On the > contrary, the reason why migration is so attractive is that some countries > are well-run and others, abysmally so.

You're using a different (and unspecified) definition of "open borders" than the authors of the article.

<comment><USER14> If his "open borders"' "free to move" does not include "free to move across borders", then it's a troll piece. If it's "free to move, if immigration law permits", then it's a tautological piece.

<comment><USER13> Maybe you should try _reading the article_ to see what the article is about.

<comment><USER14> Rereading did not help make the thesis any better founded, or its abuse of the term "open borders" any more acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge > them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access > to welfare benefits?

What do you do when after a couple of years those very same immigrants starting protesting and rioting for civil rights like equal access to welfare benefits, equal taxes, right to vote and attribute racism as a motive for denying it to them rather than the original policy goal of making them pay their way and not overwhelm the locals in elections?

</comment><comment><USER16> As a legal immigrant myself I'm baffled at how little typical American knows about immigration. Everybody's usually very surprised when you tell them that even the in the best case scenario a highly-educated specialist with a degree, 5+ years or experience, and a job offer needs to eat a ton a shit, pay a lot of money, go through nine circles of bureaucratic hell, and wait a few years to fully immigrate and gain a permanent residency status. How many people get visa rejections with no explanation. How many people can't enter their country even temporary as a tourist.

In a world where low skilled workers get replaced by automation more and more, where even local citizens are having troubles finding or keeping a job, where the most common source of income for non-educated people is freaking driving professionally, sure, let's let in 160m+ folks escaping poverty and running from countries with no education, oppressive regimes and weird religions. Surely it'll turn out just fine. Surely they all will find decent jobs real quick, learn the language, integrate and bring huge benefits. Uh-huh.

</comment><comment><USER17> Open borders == immediate destruction of the low-skilled and unskilled labor market due to oversupply of labor.

<comment><USER4> This is the exact same argument to have collective bargaining rights and unions.

I don't think the tech-crowd is a fan of unionization in general.

<comment><USER17> Tech crowd is doing pretty well as it is. Low skilled and unskilled workers are already kind of f#$ed, with more to come due to globalization, and (later) automation.

<comment><USER18> Enter raising taxes stage right. As long as productive and automation exists and can be taxed, we'll be fine.

<comment><USER17> Enter automation moving to China, stage left.

<comment><USER19> Factories need consumers. Already trade agreements require a certain percentage of American material on a product or allow import in exchange for US export.

<comment><USER17> But they're arguing for open borders, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Gallup, a pollster, estimated in 2013 that ... 42m would move to Britain.

That's about 5 London's. Where would these people live? Will cities magically appear from the ground?

UK favellas?

<comment><USER21> I imagine the migrants would get paid by other migrants to build the hypothetical cities. That is the way literally every US city happened after all — well, migrants or their descendants.

<comment><USER5> Then why aren't the migrants doing that in the places they live now?

<comment><USER21> A significant fraction of the builders in the UK are Polish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> All that money measures is the ability to entice someone else. It does not measure wellbeing.

When it comes to migration, no one ever talks about the consequences of moving from a high context to a low context culture. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-_and_low- context_cultures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-_and_low- context_cultures)

Aladair Macintyre: "Consider what it is to share a culture. It is to share schemata which are at one and the same time constitutive of and normative for intelligible action by myself and are also means for my interpretations of the actions of others" [https://toutcequimonte.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/macintyre...](https://toutcequimonte.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/macintyre- epistemological-crises-1.pdf)

Low context cultures are more atomized and legalistic. Free migration is one of major the things that justifies the national security state powers... which ironically these days in the west there is no sense of a nation outside of the state. There is a weakness in that notion because the internet has weakened the state's ability to integrate minorities because those people can live mentally in their homelands.

Aristotle on immigration: "Another cause of revolution is difference of races which do not at once acquire a common spirit; for a state is not the growth of a day, any more than it grows out of a multitude brought together by accident. Hence the reception of strangers in colonies, either at the time of their foundation or afterwards, has generally produced revolution;"

Aquinas on immigration: "Thirdly, when any foreigners wished to be admitted entirely to their fellowship and mode of worship. With regard to these a certain order was observed. For they were not at once admitted to citizenship: just as it was law with some nations that no one was deemed a citizen except after two or three generations, as the Philosopher says (Polit. iii, 1). The reason for this was that if foreigners were allowed to meddle with the affairs of a nation as soon as they settled down in its midst, many dangers might occur, since the foreigners not yet having the common good firmly at heart might attempt something hurtful to the people."

</comment><comment><USER23> The neoliberal $78 trillion is the same as the nationalist £350m-a-week. Don't ever be fooled by these extrapolated figures.

<comment><USER24> 'nationalist'...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> When I see a post like this I just remember this plot. No matter how much wealth is produced if it is shared unequally. [https://encrypted- tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQyTbD6...](https://encrypted- tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQyTbD6T93Pd_8qE9cf- mTlqa6kU3HbwXfP2lB2ect61K_tlj8sdo9qQA0_)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm already on _extremely_ high alert for an apparently rapidly-growing political movement whose primary demand is that I be forcibly expelled from my home and society for the crime of sharing an ethnic heritage with people who, it is charged, were genetically compelled to impose even a fraction of this onto an unwilling host society.

Let's not.

</comment><comment><USER27> The article says the world would be twice as rich. World GDP/capita is $16k. Doubling this would make it $32k/person. U.S. GDP / capita is currently $57k. Assuming open borders lead to an equalizing effect in all countries, then Americans would need to get used to living twice as poor as today.

<comment><USER4> > Assuming open borders lead to an equalizing effect in all countries

That assumption is both onerous and preposterous

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What if the flow happened from richer to poorer countries?

Developing and undeveloped countries are notoriously protectionists, specially of their visa/labor markets. What would happen if they opened their borders to all, presumably including qualified/entrepreneurial people?

<comment><USER4> I dont know how protectionist poorer countries are in general, but in south america there arent strong restrictions, because it is considered that people from developed countries are a lot more productive, precisely the effeect you are looking for. Sometimes there are rules meant to mimic the other ones as a deterrent (you dont let mine, i dont let yours kind of thing. Brazil and Argentina do this)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Did I miss the part where they discuss the economics of having a larger worker pool? like how that would affect existing workers? that seems like an enormous question to not address fully.

<comment><USER4> It would not affect everyone equally, and wages in many areas would definitely go down. For example, if the US recognized medical degrees from other countries, the influx of doctors would be so large that the income for a physician would drop tremendously. So the physicians that are already employed should (if they represent their own interest) be very against such a policy. But the aggregate would end up being that the total salaries earned by doctors in the us would go up.

i.e. if you had 5 doctors at 500k, and you opened up, maybe you would have 10 doctors at 300k. This is a natural economic progression. Same with software engineers: open borders would definitely have a stark impact on median income, but there would be more startups and more work and more people employed in the sector.

<comment><USER29> The US does recognize medical degrees from other countries and leans on foreign doctors heavily.

We require them to go through a US residency.

Something like 1/4 of doctors in the US are foreign born.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/health/12chen.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/health/12chen.html)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/the- value...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/the-value-of- immigrant-doctors/515694/)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2016/07/12/25-of-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2016/07/12/25-of- docs-are-born-outside-of-the-u-s-can-immigration-reform-solve-our-doc- shortage/#ff3cf5a155ff)

<comment><USER4> Residencies are one of the most grueling experiences for human beings ,and a restriction that makes doctors go through that process twice (in their home country and then in the US) amounts to a strong restriction.

Asking an experienced doctor to go through a residency is worse than asking software developers to get a doctorate if they want to write code in the US.

<comment><USER30> Also, it's not that easy to actually get a place in a US residency, even if you are willing to go through it again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's worth remembering that before the 20th century, the US had more or less completely open borders. And we turned out OK, didn't we?

<comment><USER10> >And we turned out OK, didn't we?

I'm going to have to ask if this was a monumental failure of thinking on your part?

First there are some theories that huge numbers of native Americans died from disease leaving the US a very large empty land mass.

Second, the native Americans that were left got a real bad deal from European immigration.

Third, the US depended heavily on slave labor in the south, something that has left a terrible 170 legacy of racism on our country (so much so our crime demographics look nothing like western Europe's.

Lastly, because the US was a large and empty land mass for one reason or another, it look a long time to 'fill it up'.

Attempting to make any future assumptions based on past assumptions that are very different from now is not going to work out well at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds good, doesn't work.

A world of free movement would be poorer as mass immigration would overwhelm developed societies, increase conflict and eventually lead to even more protectionism than existed before (Brexit).

Rule of law and institutions in developed countries will suffer and mass migration would also destroy the economies of the migrant exporting societies (Puerto Rico).

<comment><USER32> Article conclusions are based on evidence and reason.

Your comment is based on speculation and belief.

You are awarded no points

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A world of free economist articles would be _____ richer.

Yet they built the paywall.

There seem like a lot of obvious objections that are not addressed and raises more questions than it asks.

> Workers in rich countries earn more than those in poor countries partly > because they are better educated but mostly because they live in societies > that have, over many years, developed institutions that foster prosperity > and peace

What are these institutions, and would they be damaged at all by free movement? If the people in good_country made the institutions, and they get demographically boxed out by people in other_countries, what happens? What are "institutions," exactly? Why did other_countries grow bad institutions? Would emigrants damage those countries further? The article semi asks these questions then drops the thread.

I think articles like this tend to simplify or handwave the caveats in unrealistic ways, so their result is always a lopsided analysis. Example of such a simplification:

> But most Western cities could build much higher than they do, creating more > space.

Yeah they could, but most won't. See: The bay area, Boston, NYC. (A few do: Montreal, or Tokyo, which added more housing than all of California last year)

<comment><USER34> These guys basically believe in magic soil, and that the inhabitants of "rich countries" are inherently interchangeable. The institutions just magically appeared separate from culture and demographics.

<comment><USER13> Institutions are mostly policies, procedures and process.

What's the difference between a well-run company and poorly-run one? Would you rather work in a team of geniuses with no process, or a team of average developers who follow best practices?

<comment><USER35> > Institutions are mostly policies, procedures and process.

Which are influenced by culture

> What's the difference between a well-run company and poorly-run one?

Mostly culture in my opinion

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is this article assuming an infinite supply of jobs in any given location?

</comment><comment><USER21> The world will be richer, I personally will be poorer. I'm OK with that if it was evenly distributed, but I doubt my fellow rich caucasian men will be.

<comment><USER14> Even distribution is not appropriate when work value is so terribly unequal.</comment></comment>


Facebook fired an employee who posted evidence of preferential treatment - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-zuckerberg-what-if-trump-disputes-election-results <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077359)

</comment><comment><USER3> I saw a video recently where someone was discussing Facebook's "moat". Essentially, among Big Tech, it has the least defensible moat, which I think is true.

[https://youtu.be/4SrxqfKn9Bw?t=1605](https://youtu.be/4SrxqfKn9Bw?t=1605)

I think Facebook has very little choice right now. Libra could have been a moat, but it is more or less dead now. They are being cornered into being more pro-conservative, because otherwise their moat (engagement, which is what advertisers pay for) will collapse by the time COVID is done. They need to walk the fine line between proving their engagement and hoping that advertisers would actually want to show ads to the group which is engaged.

<comment><USER4> > because otherwise their moat (engagement, which is what advertisers pay for) > will collapse by the time COVID is done.

What makes you say this? I don't quite follow.

<comment><USER3> I read that small businesses' ad spending account for over 90% of Facebook revenue.

If there is one thing you don't want to be right now, it is a small business owner fighting to bring employees back to work in an unsafe environment while operating at reduced capacity. What's the incentive for the employee to return to work? Jim Cramer said it well on CNBC when he asked how he can compete with the federal government to bring people back to work:

[https://youtu.be/qG_Nq7kIojI?t=367](https://youtu.be/qG_Nq7kIojI?t=367)

This is Jim Cramer we are talking about. He can probably even afford to overpay (and outbid the federal government) for a while to bring back his restaurant staff. Regular small businesses don't enjoy such advantages.

When these small businesses start rolling over one by one, there will just be a lot fewer small businesses left. And those who do survive will probably shrink their ad budgets.

I once heard a funny comment: Google shows you ads for stuff you know you want to buy. Facebook shows you ads for stuff you didn't know you want to buy (search intent of course). I would say search intent will drive ad spend for the foreseeable future. Plus, if it is a secular bear market for small businesses, ad rates on Google would also come down for those small businesses which do make it out alive at the end of COVID.

<comment><USER4> That all makes sense, I guess I don't follow how the recession of the advertising market would reduce engagement on FB. Sure, FB would probably see a revenue decline, but the users would still engage whether or not there would be ads on the site.

And while I agree that ad budgets are probably about get slashed across the board, I see more companies shifting from older, more expensive ad spending strategies towards online and Facebook. They're in the most competitive position in the aggregate advertising market, way cheaper and more effective than traditional advertising channels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title buzzfeed came up with is misleading as the article isn't really about an employee getting fired or their evidence. Its more a general editorial on Facebook and the US election.

<comment><USER6> Did you read the entire article?

 _The engineer joined the company in 2016 and most recently worked on Instagram. He left the company on Wednesday. One employee on an internal thread seen by BuzzFeed News said that they received permission from the engineer to say that the dismissal "was not voluntary."_

<comment><USER7> It contains that information over two paragraphs but it took a lot of reading to get there. It doesn't appear to be about that issue at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is mildly off-topic, but it is not intended to derail this conversation. Did anyone else notice that Buzzfeednews and Yahoo news gotten somewhat decent ( as in, Yahoo actually had an in-depth analysis that wasn't all talking points ).

<comment><USER9> From my basic understanding is that Buzzfeed != Buzzfeed News. News is apparently a well run organization and it's a shame that it uses the same brand for this very reason.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure they must have had a conversation on the trade-off of having a "known name" attached to their investigative journalism wing and that very "known name" causing them to be negatively associated with vacuous listicles. Maybe once Buzzfeed News becomes a brand strong enough to stand on its own it'll be spun off as a separate organization altogether.

<comment><USER11> IIRC, one of the reasons Buzzfeed News exists was to counter the negative associations with the Buzzfeed brand and its vacuous listicles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It feels like you have to squint fairly hard at this point to continue to see Facebook in the same terms that they define themselves as just being interested in "presenting the marketplace of ideas".

This seems to be the latest in a pretty long series of actions that seem contrary to that idea and that something else might be the real motivating factor.

<comment><USER13> "CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION OF FACEBOOK, INC. ARTICLE III: The purpose of the Corporation is to engage in any lawful act or activity for which corporations may be organized under the Delaware General Corporation Law."

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512046715/d287954dex31.htm)

Facebook is no different than any other Delaware corporation. Facebook exists to do anything and everything that will profit its shareholders. Everything else is just PR.

<comment><USER14> This language is not exclusive to Delaware corporations, or even corporations. It is standard practice when incorporating any kind of business entity.

Source: if you look at the articles of incorporation for my solely-owned and operated LLC, you'd find an identical purpose statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Facebook seems to have a conservative bias. I've never used it myself though, so I can't completely say. I'm also not saying whether or not they should, but they seem to.

Zuckerburg regularly hangs out with conservative political figures, but not liberal or letist ones. [0]

They censor the left regularly [1]. Also, is there even any leftist publications in the FB news tab?

They let the right slide by on things regularly though. They don't censor racism. [2] And they apparently have a bias that allows right publications to break their rules.

[0] [https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-holding- priv...](https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-holding-private- dinners-with-conservatives-2019-10?op=1)

[1] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook- whil...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-while-black- zucked-users-say-they-get-blocked-racism-discussion/2859593002/)

[2] [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook- employ...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employee- leaks-show-they-feel-betrayed)

<comment><USER16> There was also this business about removing fact-checking of a bunk climate science article at the behest of a Republican congressman:

[https://heated.world/p/fact-check-of-viral-climate- misinform...](https://heated.world/p/fact-check-of-viral-climate- misinformation)

My interpretation of this is not that Facebook has a conservative bias (what does it even mean for a company to have a bias?), but that Facebook's leaders are well aware that the company are extremely vulnerable to regulation, and that keeping the current administration sweet is a good way of evading regulation. If the US enters 2021 with a Democratic administration not hamstrung by a Republican congress, i would expect the apparent bias to evaporate or reverse.

<comment><USER17> _> My interpretation of this is not that Facebook has a conservative bias (what does it even mean for a company to have a bias?)_

It would mean that the company's actions benefit members of one side of the political spectrum more than the other.

We're free to speculate about _why_ a company's actions might do that and whether it's deliberate or an emergent consequence of some other intention, but I think it's fairly straightforward to define what bias would mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> bra-ket Good job FB, don't let woke liberals silence opponents

</comment><comment><USER18> It sounds like the issue is that fact-checkers are being overridden sometimes when they flag right-wing news sources. I think that if you asked a right-wing person, they would tell you that many of these fact-checker organizations have a distinct left-wing bias. Maybe they (the fact-checkers) aren't infallible and get it wrong sometimes?

<comment><USER19> Another aspect is that a lot of non-left, or right-leaning viewpoints have been categorized into "naughty idea" territory, despite a lot of reasonable people holding them. E.g. Things such as: Being against mass-migration from 3rd world countries to the west, wanting racially homogenous societies, removing welfare, building a wall, racial profiling, there being no gender pay-gap, protesting spreads the virus, BLM are agitators, etc. All non- inherently "evil" ideas, but we've moved into a territory where they're seen as hateful and as such the mainstream is primed to attack them. That is now manifesting (or stared in?) the internet, and we're seeing the consequences everywhere as a result.

<comment><USER20> Wanting racially homegeneous societies _is_ an "evil idea" because to create one, you have to remove groups of people from a society based on their race.

<comment><USER21> Eastern Europe is still homogeneous and they are being vilified for wanting to keep it that way.

<comment><USER20> Eastern Europe has never been homogeneous, except in myth. There have been waves of different peoples coming through since the ice ages, and there has been mingling all along.

<comment><USER21> The population of Hungary is 98.3% ethnic Hungarians. Other Eastern European countries are similar.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gnosis Retreat Center - <AUTHOR> https://gnosisretreatcenter.org/ <comment><USER2> I became homeless due to the depressive phase of bipolar disorder and alcoholism. I did a 180 and now live a happy and productive life thanks to HVRP (Homeless Veterans Rehabilitation Program), which is similar in ways to this program. I'm sharing this for any veterans reading this that need help. Please contact the VA and receive the help you earned. There are people who want to help you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you say what similarities you've noticed between the two programs?

<comment><USER2> Two sentences from the archive link made me cry: "Suppose you come to the end of your tether, can no longer cope, have a break-down, fall apart, go to pieces. To whom would you turn? Where would you go?... Our program offers a network of fellow travelers who aspire to cultivate skillful means of helping people whose relations with themselves and others have become an occasion of wretchedness and despair."

It's impossible to describe if you haven't been in such a state and don't know where to go. The contempt people have for you when you are on the street is unbearable. Compared to other places, people at HVRP loved me because many of them had been there. That turned out to the magic ingredient. The power of Love is remarkable.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for sharing. For one lucky enough to have found Love, I appreciate your courage.

<comment><USER2> Thank You. Life is good!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems organized around the work of the radical psychiatrist RD Laing. I've admired some of writing in the past, but his theories of psychosis are considered nonsense these days. From the website:

"Legacy of R.D. Laing," Michael Guy Thompson, on Madness Radio. Is psychosis a journey and a breakthrough to somewhere more authentic? Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing was a fierce critic of the mental health system, and saw madness as a rational adaptation to irrational family and social constraints. How are Laing's provocative insights about politics and culture still relevant today?

<comment><AUTHOR> > his theories of psychosis are considered nonsense these days

They were considered nonsense when he first put them out, too. That's what happens when you challenge a field at its foundations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Archive.org to the rescue [https://web.archive.org/web/20190306154203/http://www.gnosis...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190306154203/http://www.gnosisretreatcenter.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome! But so expensive. After traveling abroad in Costa Rica and Thailand, I imagine such a program could have 10-20% the cost, making it much more accessible. I wonder if such programs exist? Maybe I should start one...

<comment><USER6> And the people who are losing their mind due to lack of money lose again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> gruseom: This seems like an interesting initiative. Can you tell us why you shared it?

<comment><AUTHOR> R.D. Laing is a major figure in the history of psychiatry and psychotherapy. His radical critique of how society treats the mentally ill, and advocacy for a more humane approach, are legendary. Laing was also a charismatic guy who became a celebrity of the 60s and 70s counterculture.

The most famous of Laing's experiments was Kingsley Hall, where patients and therapists (though presumably they didn't use those terms) would live together, and where the focus was on helping through simple presence and relationship rather than techniques or treatments. Here is a striking, even astonishing story from one of the houses Laing started after Kingsley Hall: [https://www.madinamerica.com/2013/11/living-one-r-d- laings-p...](https://www.madinamerica.com/2013/11/living-one-r-d-laings-post- kingsley-hall-households/). I posted it here years ago, where it didn't get one upvote ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6713259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6713259)), but I still think it's one of the most interesting submissions I've made to HN.

The author of that piece, who at the time of the story was a young therapist enamored of Laing's approach, is now the founder of the new(ish) Gnosis Retreat Center in San Francisco, along with a bunch of other people who worked with Laing. Here he is talking about it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4-lJWwwRc8#t=8m53s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4-lJWwwRc8#t=8m53s).

I think it's interesting that they are making a fresh start at reviving what Laing did, and that it's in San Francisco. That's why I posted this, though I certainly didn't mean to bork their server!

</comment></comment><comment> david-cako "Gnosis", is this rooted in Gnostic or neoplatonic philosophy? Or just the name of knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.facebook.com/Gnosisretreatcenter/](https://www.facebook.com/Gnosisretreatcenter/)

Gnosis literally means knowledge, but most often it is used to indicate mystical knowledge.

Also [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA1MQyM14pcKhu96Zr5e2WA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA1MQyM14pcKhu96Zr5e2WA)

[https://twitter.com/gnosisretreatc](https://twitter.com/gnosisretreatc)

<comment><USER9> Gnosis is more than just a term and is often quite controversial, particularly to those that do not actively practice it. There are specific practices (generally not divulged in public, but on a one-to-one basis and always for free) on techniques that allow one to verify for oneself the truth of pretty well anything /everything.

This does not appear to be one of those, but rather is formed by a collection of psycotherapists, asking for rather sizable donations. Authentic gnosis will never have fees. These people have a 'free consultation' followed by $100 individual fees for family support, from what I can make out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Database hosed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Must be a rough monday if this is on the front page. Hang in there.

<comment><USER12> And we crashed the site too.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know of a service like usertesting.com but for iPhone apps? - <AUTHOR>

Even if the testing is done only in Apple's simulator, it would still be very useful. <comment><USER2> iBetaTest.com

<http://ibetatest.com/iphone/controllers/welcome/>

New community to link beta testers with iPhone developers. I have not checked it out yet but bookmarked it.

"You can easily download an ADC import file of all of your approved testers - so you do not have to enter them one by one into the Provisioning System."

Via: [http://www.mobileorchard.com/iphone-app-beta-testing- communi...](http://www.mobileorchard.com/iphone-app-beta-testing-community- ibetatest/)</comment>


With 'Siren,' Unreal Engine blurs the line between CGI and reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/22/siren-epic-games-unreal-engine-vicon/ <comment><USER2> It will be very useful for adult entertaiment.

Just imagine the possibilities!</comment>


Declawing Speed Traders Is Goal of Stock Market Revamp Proposal - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-20/declawing-speed-traders-is-goal-of-stock-market-revamp-proposal.html

<comment><USER2> With due apologies to Mencken, this sounds like market Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone somewhere might be making money. In truth, whenever read closely, the "problems" these proposals aim to solve invariably turn out to be nonsense.

There is one truly good reason to put an end to the HFT arms race: it's absorbing the time and talents of some of the greatest minds of our generation. This isn't just true of HFT, though--it's a problem for finance in general. If we want these people doing science instead, though, we're going to have to pay them to do it. Currently we're not.

<comment><USER3> There is also massive expenditure into things that have little value. This is wealth destruction.

The real issue is that time in the real world will stay continuous so high speed traders will still have an advantage across markets and from information updates that occur outside an individual exchange.

<comment><USER2> So?

<comment><USER3> So the result may not be what you expect. It's very hard to identify all the unintended implications and it doesn't seem like proponents of this scheme (which I like in principle) have thought of any.

How do you deal with instruments that trade on both a foreign and local exchange? Or instruments that are highly correlated, one of which trades in a continuous market?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What aspect of your Java programming is the biggest pain in the arse? - <AUTHOR> http://reddit.com/r/java/comments/1xve3q/what_aspect_of_your_java_programming_is_the

<comment><USER2> Java has many great features, but I find it to be too tedious for me to experiment. For example: want to read a file into a string? The Python version is open(name).read(), and I've never seen a Java equivalent be that concise.</comment>


Daily discovery of 600+ startup tool gems; Find the best options for your needs - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone!
The startup environment today is changing at an incredible pace. New technologies, methods, and processes are being formed practically by the hour, and it can be tough to know which things can be applicable to your unique startup. That's why we created Startup Tool Shop (https://www.startuptoolshop.com).
Startup Tool Shop is a database of tools, updated daily, that are useful to startups.
Each resource is submitted, curated, and rated by our user community.
We have 600+ tools that can help grow your next big idea, expertly organized for simple access by you. There are 6 Toolkits (seeing a theme here?) services can be placed into. They are: Learning, Marketing, Money, Product Development, Operations, and Team. Then, each tool can be further defined by applying tags, of which there are over 270 to choose from!
Each day users, startups, and entrepreneurs like you post their favorite finds, and if approved, will be added to the database and featured on the homepage the next morning.
This is our answer to helping our entrepreneurial family. There are so, SO many resources we all haven't heard of out there that are just waiting to be found that would be perfect for achieving our startup goals, with new ones being developed all the time! No one should have to search all over the internet for what they need. Let's bring everything here, in one place, where the best ones can rise to the top.
Thanks so much!
Would love to hear your thoughts!
p.s.- We have lot's of love on Twitter (@startuptoolshop) and Facebook and we would love to connect with you on it! :-) <comment><USER2> You can employ much better marketing methods, this is just blatant screaming for attention -- especially if you analyze the first paragraph after the hello, you and I both know this.

Fake it till you make it... works for some.</comment>


Crackpots in computer security: The neighbors are looking at me weird - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2010/07/07/10035143.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> im NOT ON DRUGS.</comment>


Indian govt adopts comprehensive open source policy - <AUTHOR> http://deity.gov.in/content/policy-adoption-open-source-software-government-india-0

<comment><USER2> URL linked to is just a landing page. Actual link to the policy here: [http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/policy_on_a...](http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf)

I find it ironic that a government that is committed to censorship, site blocking, and internet surveillance cites transparency as an objective when instituting this policy</comment>


Ask HN: Which points in life did you want to completely reset your knowledge? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> None? Why would anyone want to do that?</comment>


The Rise of Microsoft Visual Studio Code - <AUTHOR> https://triplebyte.com/blog/editor-report-the-rise-of-visual-studio-code <comment><USER3> Having gone through Triplebyte's interview process, I'll propose another interpretation: Triplebyte's interview is _on aggregate_ biased against Java and C# developers. I'm not accusing Triplebyte of "being biased", but rather pointing out that Java and C# tend to correlate to a skill set that Triplebyte's test process values less.

My experience of Triplebyte's interview process is slanted towards frontend/backend developers of web apps. Fortunately for me, that was my background. However, in the team I currently work with, the team is in aggregate heavily C# with only secondary experience in web frontend/backend development. That's because their expertise is in low level security. Several developers on this team are exceptions to the "don't roll your own cryptography" adage.

They're all competent developers, but the version of Triplebyte's coding test that I took (and passed) would be in unfamiliar territory for people in this team. That's fine since most of Triplebyte's clients are probably looking for web frontend/backend skills, but I think this means that Triplebyte's test shouldn't be seen as an objective measure of programmer skill, just an objective measure of fit for Triplebyte's clients.

<comment><USER4> Could you give some examples? I keep seeing annoying Triplebyte ads popping up and not sure what it is.

<comment><USER3> What kinds of examples are you asking for? Like specific parts of the interview?

<comment><USER5> [https://triplebyte.com/interview_guide](https://triplebyte.com/interview_guide)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are some warts, but it seems nice from afar. The biggest wart is/was the "FUCK FUCK FUCK" git clean vs git reset UX error: [https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/32405](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/32405) . This is a fantastic demonstration of why i exclusively use git from a command prompt -- i _know_ what will happen and nobody's going to reinvent terms to put on buttons that just confuse me.

In my life:

\- I'm committed to emacs for org-mode and LaTeX editing and daily use.

\- I paid for sublime so i will use it -- and multiple cursors everywhere is a boon for quick and dirty data munging.

\- I write serious python code in pycharm.

\- I write serious c# in full blown Visual Studio

<comment><USER7> > This is a fantastic demonstration of why i exclusively use git from a > command prompt...

Thanks for this. I've always felt the same way but haven't been able to put my finger on why. As more things get integrated into my editor (I use VSCode) I feel like I should use the shiny features, but for source control I think I'm going to only use the commandline forever. (Edit: though plugins such as GitLens that give you source control info inline are fantastic.)

Along with some nice features I've added, such as my 'git af' (add + fzf) shortcut[1][2], the commandline is very usable (don't have to 'git add' and type filenames manually).

[1] [https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/65b3d0abcb34540b43880792e8...](https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/65b3d0abcb34540b43880792e8f7512ee0ec1abd/HOME/.config/git/config#L44)

[2] [https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/65b3d0abcb34540b43880792e8...](https://github.com/kbd/setup/blob/65b3d0abcb34540b43880792e8f7512ee0ec1abd/HOME/bin/gsf)

<comment><USER8> Same here w/o fancy tooling around Git, but a couple of aliases.

I will refuse to use any Git tools or UIs, but the standard CLI, until the end of my career.

Besides that, my IDE/Editor is neither a build tool manager nor should it run my app from within an integrated console having specific settings. The projects people are going to inherit from me will always be editor-agnostic, the environment they run in will never depend on a certain setup that can't be documented clearly and they will always run within an isolated context, i.e. the project root.

<comment><USER9> I agree on part of that -- VSCode has a pretty good Node debugger, and you can run it with a listen hook (and therefore set it to run via a npm/yarn package.json script). Similarly, I feel like it's OK for an editor to run a script from the app in an integrated terminal, as long as that script is still accessible from a standard CLI.

Git is complex enough that I don't trust more complex operations (basically anything beyond push, pull, add, and checkout) to be handled by a GUI, but a GUI can make for a great code review tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Engineers who use Go are also especially strong. If you know why, please let > me know.

Because there is almost no reason to learn Go. Most shops want JS/Java/Python/C# etc... The primary reason to learn a language like Go is because you want to for it's own sake.

It's not that you must learn Go in order to be good, or that knowing Go makes you better. Rather it's difficult to be bad and still have the desire/interest to spend time learning something unnecessary.

<comment><USER11> This is what Paul Graham calls the Python Paradox; namely that in 2004, when Python jobs were relatively more rare, you could find smarter Python engineers than Java engineers for any given project.

"[I]f a company chooses to write its software in a comparatively esoteric language, they'll be able to hire better programmers, because they'll attract only those who cared enough to learn it. And for programmers the paradox is even more pronounced: the language to learn, if you want to get a good job, is a language that people don't learn merely to get a job."

[http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html)

<comment><USER12> Both of these are still just very roundabout ways of telling yourself you're awesome because of whatever mildly unusual thing you think you might be doing.

<comment><USER13> And this comment is just a subtextual justification for making sure you still feel valued for not doing anything unusual.

This could go round and round. The point is that there SEEMS to be a correlation with people who learn things for the sake of learning them and folks who do well at exercises that test for adjacent skills.

<comment><USER12> _you still feel valued for not doing anything unusual_

I didn't really express any thoughts or feelings about doing unusual things, real or perceived. Doing unusual things can be great! Telling yourself you are awesome can also be great! I do think, though, that the type of thought expressed in the "The Python Paradox" and related writings (say, the bit about blub language programmers) is pretty lousy. It was lousy then and has aged even more poorly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a good text editor, first and foremost. Compared to netbeans, eclipse, visual studio, even intellj idea in my opinion. The same thing that made textmate, then sublime text successful made VSC successful. I takes a few seconds to launch, even on my celeron machine with 2Gigs of RAM, it's relatively minimal and unlike intellj it doesn't appear to be analyzing my whole hard drive for hours for no reason...

the irony is that Microsoft did hire Eclipse creator to work on that product... hopefully it doesn't end up bloated. Having an open spec for language servers is also a smart move. While others have their proprietary, often non speced protocol, now any text editor can implement the same protocol and basically use any language server already developed.

So kudos for Microsoft, it's a great piece of engineering.

<comment><USER15> > It's a good text editor, first and foremost. Compared to netbeans, eclipse, > visual studio, even intellj idea

Have to disagree with VSC being better than Intellij. I find Intellij refactoring, debugging and autocomplete far ahead of VSC, especially when it comes to supporting leaser known features, or recently released language changes.

<comment><USER16> VSC and Intellij aren't the same thing. If you want better refactoring and debugging there are definitely plugins that do exactly that. Hard disagree on autocomplete, I've never run into a single situation where Intellij did it better.

<comment><USER17> Well, hard disagree on your hard disagreement, I've never ran into a situation where VSCode did better than Intellij/Webstorm :)

Often, the problem is the order of suggestions, it was magically almost always right on Webstorm and not as good on VSC

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> VSCode is fast and it's certainly the best editor/IDE I've used since back when I was a Java dev using Eclipse back in 2006 or so.

But I recently opened up Sublime Text to compare some editor behaviour, and the difference in UI performance is _astounding_.

It's possible that VSCode has regressed a bit the last couple of years. It was always faster than Atom. But comparing it to Sublime shows that there are clear advantages to writing UI code in a natively compiled language. Sublime's widget drawing seems very well optimized.

VSCode has also become slower for me the last few years, simply from the load of extensions. I use the ESLint extension and the Go extension heavily, both of which parse code a lot. Neither is doing any sort of incremental parsing, so there's potentially a lot of churn. There's also some kind of indexing of symbols that happens in the background in the language server or in the extension. I sometimes have to kill the "Code Helper" process because it's sitting there consuming a whole core when idle.

Overall, VSCode is becoming increasingly closer to how I remember Atom, when I used it. I worry that it's slowly turning into Atom, performance-wise.

<comment><USER19> > the difference in UI performance is _astounding_

I could not agree more. I've made numerous attempts to embrace the new hotness that is VSCode but I just cannot get over the performance. Yes, it has some cool features, the plug-in ecosystem is booming, and it sure looks pretty. But at the end of the day none of it is compelling enough for me to put up with the constant lag.

It's funny because after several of these experiments I have literally wondered to myself if I'm getting stuck in my ways or becoming a so-called "greybeard" due to my long term adherence to Sublime Text, but is constantly getting annoyed with how slow an editor is really a hallmark of old age? I'll wait for your web page to load, I'll wait for an ssh command to return. I will not wait for my bloody text editor. I have no patience whatsoever. Now god damn it NOW!

Another thing I wonder is how many of those VSCode users have simply never used anything better. If all you've ever known is an iPhone 5, you probably think it's pretty great - maybe you think that's just how phones are! This impression will be totally ruined of course when you try an iPhone X...

<comment><USER20> I feel like if I took a serious shot at sublime I wouldn't be able to go back due to performance snappiness. Then I'd be miserable because I think vscode is superior in many other ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems strange to me to compare VSCode against PyCharm, IntelliJ, and Android Studio separately. While PyCharm, IntelliJ, and Android Studio are distinct applications, I believe they share much of their code, UI, 3rd party plugins, and workflows for all being JetBrains language-flavored IDEs.

On the other hand, VSCode supports different languages through its extensions instead of having separate language-flavored applications like "VSCode Python", "VSCode Java", or "VSCode Android".

So I feel that reaching for IntelliJ vs. PyCharm vs. Android Studio is roughly equivalent to installing a particular set of extensions in VSCode. If you look at it that way, the data from the article seems to tell a different story - while VSCode has grown significantly in popularity, JetBrains IDEs seem to dominate in terms of overall usage (11.3% + 6.9% + 4.1% = 22.3% vs. VSCode's 16.8%).

<comment><USER22> I didn't see any js or php specific stuff in their list, but have to assume phpstorm or webstorm might be in their 'other' category as well, pushing JB up to closer to 25%(?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> VSCode is fast, stable, and the plugin ecosystem really beats Sublime Text at this point. I was skeptical because Microsoft but it is hands down my favorite editor.

<comment><USER24> I'm also skeptical of microsoft products, but they have come a long way since getting their new CEO. I've gained a lot of respect from them for better integration with non-windows platforms.

<comment><USER25> Someone said big companies are like aircraft carriers, they take a long time to change course and travel to the right destination, but if they do, once they are there they bring massive impact compared to more nimble and smaller sea vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Like it was said in this thread, as long as you have an editor that is built on something js-related like electron or node-js, it just cannot beat alternatives that are made in C++.

I've tried VSCode because I wanted to have UI breakpoints with GDB, I admit that vscode seems better than atom, but for performance I have my doubts.

I really don't understand why engineers choose to use JS to made a text editor. I know that js and the dom have enabled the web, but it's because there was nothing better, choosing js to do non-web stuff doesn't only sound silly, IT IS silly.

<comment><USER27> Do you think it's a coincidence that some of the most used and loved desktop applications lately are written in JS/HTML? import_pkt_ws_btc_deribit_v2.py Could it be that it's extremely hard to do these kind of applications in traditional GUI frameworks?

<comment><USER28> Could it be that many JS devs don't bother to learn how GUI frameworks are able to do stuff where Web is still catching up with the 90's?

<comment><USER29> You're perhaps more snarky than necessary, but I think you're getting to the core of the problem.

The web has unfortunately made JS a very common first language, and created an army of people who know JS. Then rather than learn, say, C++ and Qt for building cross-plattform GUI, they stick to the language they know even though it leads to inferior results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One of my favorite things about VS Code is how usable it is with its default configuration, and how easy it is to customize to my liking. I found Atom and Sublime Text very frustrating in that regard.

<comment><USER31> Interestingly, I found Atom to be much easier to customize. There are still things in VS Code I can't customize that I used to have in Atom.

That said, I've been on VS Code for a little more than a year now and it's grown on me.

<comment><USER30> To be clear, I meant easy in terms of how little I have to do the get it working to my liking. Atom might be easier to customize in general, but it requires more effort overall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> VS Code solves different problems then IntelliJ, PyCharm and Atom. I'm not sure this is a fair comparison. For example, I wouldn't ever code a full Java stack in VS Code. I'd go straight to IntelliJ.

<comment><USER3> Separately from being my JS IDE of choice, VS Code has for the most part replaced Notepad++. It's quite good at being a general purpose "heavyweight" text editor.

<comment><USER33> Has anybody written a Notepad++ to VS Code command translation guide?

I use Notepad++ for all sorts of text related things (cutting, sorting, making 100s of julennne phrases) but not as an editor.

If there was a cheat sheet of VS shortcuts I could ditch Notepad++ completely.

<comment><USER34> VS Code has a printable cheatsheet of keyboard shortcuts that it prompts you to view when you first open the editor.

<comment><USER35> Also available here:

[https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/tips-and- trick...](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/tips-and-tricks)

I, too, am making the Notepad++ -> vscode move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Frankly, I think we're seeing the results of the new era of Python paradox. Except it's not Python 3, it's TypeScript, VS Code, and React.

If you look at the education space, many of the deployments are either Chromebooks or iPads. Back in 2012, the "learn to code" sites (like Khan Academy or Code.org) ended up building their lesson plans around JavaScript.

[https://johnresig.com/blog/introducing-khan- cs/](https://johnresig.com/blog/introducing-khan-cs/)

People who were in 3rd- and 4th-grade in 2012 would now be finishing up high school. Someone in 7th- or 8th- grade would have just finished a bachelor's, or maybe be looking for their second job after two or three years in the industry.

For these folks, TypeScript/VS Code/React would be a short jump from these learn-to-code-JavaScript-in-the-browser sandboxes.

As for Go... I suspect that's the set of people who can handle Google-scale software complexity. So either former Google employees, or people who are in the kubernetes ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER22> The "live shared coding" angle in VSCode makes it a great option in many areas where there's a need for it. People have been asking jetbrains for this for a decade, and there's nothing on the horizon as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER37> wow, never realized that was a supported feature. I must have glossed over that feature in that then feature release [https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live- share](https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live-share)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Ok I stopped reading when they started drawing graphs how well the people using certain editors fared better in their test as if the editor could have anything to do with it.

<comment><USER39> Depending on the task and the familiarity of the user with the editor, it can make a big difference! As an extreme example, a good 80s programmer might work efficiently on a file in ed, but nowadays approximately no human could do that.

<comment><USER38> But their tests don't measure "how efficiently" the candidates edit files, do they?

<comment><USER40> OTOH, I've found that having a mastery of Vim helps me out a LOT in interviews where I get a computer to work at. I can actually type faster than I can think at this point, so I get to express my ideas pretty much as soon as they come to me, which allows me to "look more impressive", I guess.

They certainly shouldn't judge based on the choice of an editor or language, but 1) seeing that someone is very comfortable in _any_ editor and _any_ language shows they've been at it for a while, and being able to express the right answer quickly is almost as important as finding it at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Well that settles it, I'm off to program some Go code in Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've told you guys before - my 10 year old son scored 'well above average' on their interview process. We live in the UK but they are still trying to recruit him. And no - he cannot write code.

<comment><USER43> The interview process reminded me of the theoretical exam for a drivers license. If you pick the option that sounds least crazy, you're fine.

<comment><USER42> I wonder if you just nailed being a prog

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm not Microsoft's biggest fan (I switched away from .NET and their platforms a few years ago, switched to Mac, etc).

But I use VS Code, it really is a great little editor with a good ecosystem.

The JavaScript support pulled me in, but it's a pretty decent Rust environment now as well!

</comment><comment><USER45> Another interesting angle on this is that VS Code is free (and open source), while Sublime is proprietary and (nominally) costs $80. I wonder how many people don't use Sublime because of the price? Atom is free too and never surpassed Sublime.

<comment><USER46> Edit: Disregard, I don't know wtf I'm talking about.

<comment><USER47> It's right there on the home page:

"Sublime Text is available for Mac, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses.

Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform."

Are we talking about some other sublime?

<comment><USER46> Shows me for not actually double-checking, I was pretty convinced. Is that a recent addition or is there another editor I'm thinking of?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> "Do Emacs and Vim users have some other characteristic that makes them more likely to succeed during interviews?"

I think the Interview Pass Rates chart makes it clear that the answer is a statistical "Yes", at least for Emacs.

<comment><USER49> Maybe it's because the editor was taught to students at places like MIT, Berkeley, etc?

<comment><USER50> I learned emacs in the late 1980's -- it is now an ingrained part of my brain. I hate when I have to use an IDE w a different editor -- at least most editors (and GUI components like browser textfields) respond to common emacs key- sequences.

<comment><USER51> This feature makes switching from macOS to most other operating systems annoying, because I keep trying to ^E and realize it doesn't work…

<comment><USER50> I hit C-x C-s all the time in IDE's and I think sometimes it inserts weird invisible characters into the source -- fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Newspaper headline: "Emacs text editor makes people smarter."

</comment><comment><USER22> > However, it seems that the average C# or Java engineer who goes through our > process does less well than the average Ruby or Go engineer. I have no idea > why.

Given that they have the test info... and they're the ones deciding pass/fail... it's a bit strange they "have no idea why". Well, perhaps just this person doesn't?

Are people not finishing the projects? Do the projects have syntax errors in them? Or logical bugs? What metrics do they use for "pass/fail"?

<comment><USER53> I have a theory on this. For most interview style coding problems (which tend to be algorithmic in nature), scripting languages such as python or ruby:

1) are less verbose

2) don't require worrying about typing

3) have really easy ways to manipulate strings, iterate, etc., which are often found in interview style problems

Java and C# have many advantages over python and ruby, but I think that they put you at an inherent disadvantage for many interview style questions which often require you to solve an algorithmic or data structure type problem in a limited amount of time [1].

[1] This doesn't explain why people using Go would tend to pass at higher rates, but since the Go community is comparatively much smaller, there could be other factors at play there.

<comment><USER54> My job involves interviewing many engineering candidates, and I see the issue with typing all the time. A competent Java dev is at a disadvantage compared to a competent Python dev, simply because it's statically typed and more verbose, meaning there are more lines of code which means more small problems that can arise. That matters greatly in a short, time-boxed context.

<comment><USER55> > A competent Java dev is at a disadvantage compared to a competent Python > dev, simply because it's statically typed and more verbose

I don't think that the fact that it's statically typed is the problem. For example, I don't believe a competent Rust, Go, or Haskell dev would be at a disadvantage due to static typing, but rather the opposite.

<comment><USER56> As someone else who's run a lot of interviews including tech exercises (as much as I hate the typical way they're done, I haven't been able to eliminate them everywhere I've worked), I have the same experience as the parent commenter. Yes, even with "good" statically-typed languages like $YOUR_FAVORITE_LANG_HERE.

Candidates using those languages can often sketch out the right algorithm and the structure of what the program would look like, but under time pressure have trouble producing something that actually will compile and run properly (and as much as I want "showed they got the right algorithm and how to do it" to be a pass, it isn't always). The "executable pseudocode" nature of the popular dynamic languages is a big advantage there.

It's definitely even worse for C#/Java style languages (though C# is better than it used to be), because of all the heavyweight design pattern stuff you need to implement to do things that are just natural idioms in the dynamic languages. But it's something I've seen happen in a broad range of static languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> > Do Emacs and Vim users have some other characteristic that makes them more > likely to succeed during interviews?

I think it comes down to users of those editors probably are used to keeping code/libraries in their head more. IDEs tend to suggest a lot to you and if you're not used to having that happen you could get more nervous during whiteboarding rituals.

Edit: I guess this really doesn't apply as their interview process is on the web.

</comment><comment><USER58> I have tried VSCode a few times for C++ on macOS and always found it more hassle than it was worth to get it up and running.

I saw it had debugging options and I thought that looked pretty cool but it is a bit of a mess with tasks.json and some other file I have forgotten about now. I recall I did finally get a working setup but it wasn't portable between folders/projects as the binary filenames were hardcoded and I just lost interest in fixing it.

I think the VSCode team could make this a lot smoother. I want my tools to simplify these things for me with automatic configuration like every other editor seems to be able to do. Not sure why VSCode needed a couple of json config files to know to use /usr/bin/gcc on the current C++ file when no other programmers editor does.

<comment><USER59> I'm not sure when the last time you've tried, but in the last year VSCode has come a long way towards "just working" out of the box for C++. They've specifically focused on it. If you've got some time, I'd recommend that you checkout Rong Lu's CppCon 2018 talk. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JME1i3vCRR8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JME1i3vCRR8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> > With 17% of the pie, VS Code was the editor used by the majority of > Triplebyte candidates last year.

Huh? This has broken the world of math for me.

<comment><USER45> Just changed it to plurality. Thanks!

<comment><USER60> Almost! :

>tl;dr Visual Studio Code usage is rising rapidly! VS Code is now the editor chosen by the majority of engineers during programming interviews, and it appears to be rapidly taking market share from other top editors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> It's interesting to me that Go does so well. I have a buddy who convinced his shop to switch over to Go for the following reason: he knew that they were not going to be able to consistently hire good programmers, and he thought Go was a way to mitigate the problems arising from this situation. In other words, Go is a language where newbie programmers can still do okay. He also claimed that Google developed Go for this reason, referencing the infamous Ron Pike quote ("They're not capable of understanding a brilliant language, but we want to use them to build good software").

<comment><USER62> Go makes it really hard to do stupid things, and that makes it a really good language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> This article has some very interesting data beyond just showing the rise of VSCode. Fun read.

</comment><comment><USER64> Just as an aside, there is this sentence in the article: _" On the peninsula, where larger companies tend to be located, you see a lot of Java developers. In San Francisco, where startups dominate, you see more JavaScript."_

None of the non-SF cities is on the peninsula. They're 100% in the Silicon Valley / Santa Clara Valley.

</comment><comment><USER65> I was also surprised to see how much VS Code has grown in popularity among WakaTime users in such a short amount of time. [1]

[https://wakatime.com/static/img/wakatime-editor- usage-2018-1...](https://wakatime.com/static/img/wakatime-editor- usage-2018-12-07.png)

</comment><comment><USER66> Intellij, pystorm, Android Studio (and half of "Other") make up more than a quarter and are the same jetbrains editor with different plugins pre-installed and some plugins unavailable..

That is more than VSCode and these identical IDEs are all over the place in these charts.

So what was I supposed to have learned from this article?

</comment><comment><USER67> Worked with a bunch of them, always come back to Sublime Text for performance and multi-cursor support.

<comment><USER68> Emacs has multi-cursor support. [http://emacsrocks.com/e13.html](http://emacsrocks.com/e13.html)

<comment><USER67> Is that native?

<comment><USER68> It isn't, and it's better because of that.

All "advanced" features should be a plugin so you can pick your favorites. This way, if someone comes up with a better multi-cursor system, there's no politics involved about which multi-cursor system to come to a global consensus on. Just switch your personal config over to the new plugin and get on with your life.

<comment><USER67> Hum. The things is it's probably breaking other features and other plugins then. Try Sublime one once. It's like night and day. Everything works as if you were in single cursor mode.

<comment><USER68> I used sublime for about a month and couldn't get used to it. Maybe I'm just too indoctrinated into Emacs. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> What I would gladly pay 100$/month for is Vim with correct syntax highlighting, intellisense and nice plugins (such as fuzzy finder) by default.

It would not need to be Vim, but I have only tried one Vim emulator that didn't suck and was terminal-first: emacs with evil-mode. Let that be the bar for vim-emulation.

Why is nobody doing this? I think this would appeal to a lot of people.

The criteria for me to to pay for something like this would be:

1\. Terminal first. It would either have to become my main shell or open fast within my shell.

2\. Vim based or with GOOD Vim emulation. Macros, remapping and all normal mode key combinations must be implemented.

3\. Fast terminal<->editor loop. I don't want to wait >300ms to edit a file.

4\. Actual production quality zero-config syntax highlighting, intellisense and fuzzyfinder.

Sign me up!

</comment><comment><USER70> Funny how people analyse data and draw conclusions without applying any statistical method. Yeah, maybe more people use VS Code, but I don't think it has anything to do with people's failure or success.

<comment><USER71> > I don't think it has anything to do with people's failure or success.

Unless the interviewer is a big fan of VSC and they favour other VSC users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> VS Code has taken me off Emacs for Python development on Windows. I was never able to get a clean and speedy code completion, navigation, or refactoring to work with Emacs. I hope the situation changes someday.

<comment><USER73> The same engine that VSCode uses is open source [1]. With lsp-mode [2] or eglot [3], you can have the same stuff working inside emacs. I've actually been writing Java inside emacs lately --- yes, _java_ , and I have had very few issues.

One caveat, development on the emacs LSP stuff is moving very quickly, so I don't recommend using ELPA/MELPA/etc. to install the plugins. I use straight.el [4] to manage my plugins, they're checked out from the upstream source and can be updated at-will. You'll also need an up to date version of emacs, ie: 26+. (That's the current release, but it's not available in some distributions ie: debian/ubuntu yet.)

\---

[1]: [https://github.com/Microsoft/python-language- server](https://github.com/Microsoft/python-language-server)

[2]: [https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode](https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp- mode)

[3]: [https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot](https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot)

[4]: [https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el](https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el)

<comment><USER74> Python-lsp with emacs is dreadful bad. It's slow, bugged and doesn't integrate well. Worst is how often the helper dies.

The microsoft-helper is supposed to work better, but it seams harder to setup with linux, so I hadn't the chance yet to try it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> The killer feature for my switch from Atom was the built in terminal. Enough to let me be ok using a ms product temporarily to try it out. I appreciate their energy behind it - the update schedule, the changelog write ups, the listening to the feedback from the users.

I really liked the json config of atom. the code gui isn't my fave but it's ok.

Two other things helped me transition easily:

\- click a button to edit `PATH` or whatever so that `$ code` opens up the editor from the terminal

\- atom keymapping

The coffee script use in atom was unfamiliar territory for me too, so that part seemed distant.

</comment><comment><USER76> > The first thing that jumps out from this graph is the prominence of Visual > Studio Code.

Maybe to some. 10.2% percent for vim!

For some reason that makes me really happy even though I use emacs. I guess the (d)evil you know...

</comment><comment><USER77> Anyone who still uses VSCode, probably haven't read about all the features IntelliJ and its ilk offer. The local history, for example, and its integration with the test runner (knowing at which point of your editing process your tests started to break) has saved me a tremendous amount of time. (I've accidentally erased changes that were uncommitted with a stroke of a `checkout -f`, and managed to save hours of work with that feature alone.)

</comment><comment><USER78> These conclusions are frustrating to read because they haven't handled the numbers properly at all and have drawn poor conclusions.

Take a scenario where Java/C# are popular and have 20 people applying for each position but Go isn't and only has 5 people applying for each position.

You'd then have a far far better "pass rate" for Go developers. But it doesn't actually say anything about Java or Go in terms of developer proficiency.

</comment><comment><USER79> The only issue I have with VS code is it's awful UI/UX performance - <USER2> behaves like an Electron app or something.

I realize that's a fair insult around these crowds, but it really does have that lack-of-polish, weird-UI/UX feeling. I know Microsoft would obviously never build an IDE off it, but I'm almost curious to see what on earth they did wrong.

Comparing it side-by-side with Xcode is certainly the easiest way to tell.

<comment><USER80> Because it is indeed an electron app

<comment><USER79> Wow. Any and all respect for the app - lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Because of the popularity of VS Code on HN, I decided to give it a try. It's good. Much better than Electron or Atom for my workflow. And much faster IME.

The one thing that keeps me from switching from my current IDE is the lack of Whitesmiths brace formatting. I'd pay up to $15 for a Whitesmiths plugin. Until then, I can't change. But I'll keep checking.

<comment><USER82> For those not familiar (as I was), here's what Whitesmiths style looks like (straight from Wikipedia):

        while (x == y)
            {
            something();
            somethingelse();
            }

        finalthing();

<comment> master-litty The horror!

<comment><USER83> Yep the loop never runs, is infinite, or x and y are member or global variables that are mutated elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> I like VSCode a lot. The only reason why I sometimes switch to other alternative is the multi-file search results. When the fix this, I will be a happy camper: [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/63465](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/63465)

</comment><comment><USER85> What editor do Go devs use??? Their numbers for Go only add up to 12%! [https://d25hn4jiqx5f7l.cloudfront.net/file_attachments/files...](https://d25hn4jiqx5f7l.cloudfront.net/file_attachments/files/original/96551f0f84b87bd438ab1e7be23c269038383620.png?1543937640)

<comment><USER86> Yes, that chart shows that they have relatively few people doing their interviews in Golang, so their outlier pass rate should have correspondingly large error bars (which you have to imagine because the graphs were drawn without any statistical sophistication).

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Sure, maybe it is the old-school nature of Vim and Emacs that makes then standout in performance, but why not throw a years-since-graduation variable into the equation to find out with greater certainty?

</comment><comment><USER88> I recently helped make a VS Code extension during a Microsoft internship, and I found the language server interface really easy to use. It really makes it easy to write an extension.

</comment><comment><USER89> "Do Emacs and Vim users have some other characteristic that makes them more likely to succeed during interviews? Perhaps they tend to be more willing to invest time and effort customizing a complex editor in the short-term in order to get returns from a more powerful tool in the long-term?"

One thing I noticed on Lobste.rs is that a lot of them like the old school editors. That's normal. What was more interesting was that they were constantly sharing and discussing their customizations that made them more productive. Kept making me want to have another go at those editors. I didn't since I came from Windows with big, full-featured editors that could do everything (or Notepad++ or Notepad). Still, I keep reading those comments since there's always new and interesting things people are coming up with.

In other words, I think the author is onto something worth further investigation and comparisons. Especially comparing VS Code programming to experienced folks using highly-customized, full-featured setups in the other stuff. I bet the results would be more interesting than a random person tried using Emacs or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER90> Where is Notepad++??? !!!

<comment><USER91> Hanging out with Bloodshed and Code::Blocks</comment></comment>


Google Dictionary Search Plugin - <AUTHOR> http://blog.arpitnext.com/google-dictionary/ <comment><USER2> Why not just use the url box and type:

define: [word]

None-the-less. Handy plugin.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny how Google just shut down its dictionary.</comment>


3 Lessons from 3 Years on the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/9e30c696d5a0

<comment><USER2> Great advice. Thanks for sharing!</comment>


Show HN: CSS3 transform example - <AUTHOR> http://grondilu.github.io/css3.html <comment><USER2> For the confused: click and drag.

<comment><USER3> and for the really confused, click and drag on the background (not on the video :-))

<comment><USER4> and if it got into a messy transformation, just reload the page.</comment></comment></comment>


The NSA's Web Surveillance Program Is Alive and Well and Living Overseas - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/20/9768778/nsa-web-surveillance-spcma-bulk-colllection <comment><USER2> Overseas where to?</comment>


Never-before-seen "black nitrogen" plugs puzzle in periodic table - sahin-boydas https://newatlas.com/materials/black-nitrogen-allotrope-periodic-table/ <comment><AUTHOR> > the team exposed nitrogen to extreme heat and pressure. It was pressed > together between two diamonds to 1.4 million atmospheres of pressure, and > over 4,000 °C (7,232 °F).

> The temperature at the inner core's surface is estimated to be approximately > 5700 K (5430 °C or 9806 °F) ... The pressure in the Earth's inner core is > slightly higher than it is at the boundary between the outer and inner > cores: it ranges from about 330 to 360 gigapascals (3,300,000 to 3,600,000 > atm)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_inner_core](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_inner_core)

There's probably even weirder states of nitrogen and other elements not that far away from us. Whole chemistries and semiconductor-ish effects we're guessing at. Fun!

<comment><USER2> This is why I love science, any field where "what happens if we squish it really really hard and then superheat it?" is answered by "let's find out" is one that has my admiration.

Scientists the world over have my respect for what they do.

<comment><USER3> "Science isn't about why, it's about why not!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dumb question, how does one convince nitrogen, a gas, to sit still between the heads of those two diamonds to be compressed?

<comment><USER5> They employed either a very persuasive graduate student, or a chamber filled with pure nitrogen.

From the experimental method section of the original paper: [1]

" _A BX90-type diamond anvil cell equipped with 80 μm diameter diamond anvil culets was prepared. A 200 μm thick rhenium foil was indented down to 12 μm and a sample cavity of 40 μm in diameter was laser-drilled at the center of the indentation. Two agglomerates of submicron-sized gold particles, each of approximately 2 μm in size, were loaded into the sample chamber to serve as both YAG laser absorbers and pressure gauges. The cell was then loaded with pure nitrogen gas at ~1200 bars._ "

[1]: [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.216001)

<comment><USER6> Here's what a BX90-type diamond anvil cell looks like...

[https://aip.scitation.org/action/showOpenGraphArticleImage?d...](https://aip.scitation.org/action/showOpenGraphArticleImage?doi=10.1063/1.4768541&id=images/medium/1.4768541.figures.f1.gif)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dumb question: with all we know about theoretical quantum physics, couldn't we compute what happens in these extreme conditions? Or is it still computationally intractable? If so, why is that?

<comment><USER8> Only hydrogen has an analytic solution. Even helium requires approximations because the electrons interact. Approximation requires an understanding of the structure of the wavefunction which gets increasingly complex as we add more particles to the system that interact and entangle with one another like electrons in an atom do. Even further, that's for single atoms that aren't interacting strongly with their environment. Here we're talking about an ensemble of nitrogen atoms interacting with each other in a somewhat extreme environment.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartree%E2%80%93Fock_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartree%E2%80%93Fock_method)

<comment><USER9> All of the cool computer science problems are in the other sciences. This one in particular looks like a challenging engineering problem to scale up.

<comment><USER10> According to 'Devs', you just need a few quantum computers and lots of gold tinfoil.

<comment><USER11> Don't forget the vacuum sealed quantum levitating elevator!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _" the new substance is crystalline, occurs in two-dimensional sheets, and > could one day be useful in advanced electronics."_

> _" the material itself remains unstable and it quickly dissolves when the > heat and pressure are relaxed."_

So... advanced electronics that can only exist at 1.4 million atmospheres and 4000 degrees C? What are we building, here, computers that only work inside the sun?

By this insane standard, what material would _not_ one day be useful in advanced electronics?

</comment><comment><USER13> So, when someone mentions nitrogen, high temperatures, and high pressures, in the same sentence, what comes to my mind isn't electronics so much as explosives.

<comment><USER14> Pure nitrogen forms a dimer and is inert. The nitrogen that goes boom involves hydrogen and oxygen molecules.

<comment><USER15> Not quite. Pure nitrogen forms an inert dimer with a very strong bond. The nitrogen that goes boom is the energy released by forming such a bond when you liberate nitrogen from complexes with other things than single nitrogen atoms. Like hydrogen and carbon and maybe oxygen.

But this stuff in the article is pure nitrogen, and _isn 't_ a dimer, and certainly isn't inert (it decayed back to the dimer when pressure was released). It'd be a crappy explosive (needs to be kept in a diamond anvil cell...) but it would have released the energy used to form it. In theory there are other allotropes, like octaazacubane (N8) that might be more stable and would be frighteningly efficient explosives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This makes me wonder, are there are any other elements in the periodic table which seem to be missing their allotropes or was N the only one?

</comment><comment><USER17> Metallic hydrogen is thought to be possible using the diamond stamping method mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER18> More on the metallic hydrogen investigations: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/science/metallic- hydrogen...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/science/metallic-hydrogen- lasers.html)

It appears that one can use lasers, diamond vises, and/or numerical simulation to get properties of metallic hydrogen.

<comment><USER17> I have only read a few short articles about it, but after it is compressed to a certain point, can it remain in the metallic state after the vise/laser is removed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Being previously unfamiliar both with the black phosphorus allotrope, and with newatlas.com, I clicked on the link wondering if this would be the new "red mercury". I was pleasantly surprised that it is much more interesting (and scientifically valid) than that.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can anyone more specifically comment on some of the potential applications for this newly discovered material?

<comment><USER21> None, at least not directly. It's an allotrope which can only exist under extreme physical conditions.

There are many such allotropes of well-known substances. For instance, solid water has over a dozen allotropes (including ice-IX, or "ice-nine", which will _not_ turn you into a human popsicle). Most of the interesting allotropes of ice only form under pressures of >100 MPa, so they are never seen under terrestrial conditions. The same applies to most other allotropes, with a few notable exceptions in metals and metalloids (like tin and sulphur).

It's unclear to me what the author of the article had in mind when they suggested the "potential" that "black nitrogen might have for electronics". Unless the author is imagining electronics which must be placed under immense pressure and heated to thousands of degrees to remain stable?

<comment><USER22> There's always the possibility that a method will be found that will allow the material to maintain at least some of these properties after "returning" to normal temp/pressures conditions.

<comment><USER21> That seems unlikely for a compound which is stable as a gas at STP. You can sometimes stabilize an allotrope of a compound which would otherwise be stable as another allotrope, but there's no real way (that I'm aware of) to stave off a phase transition, especially one as energetic as solid/gas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The significance of this article is that you don't need a big science lab like CERN to do useful experiments.

Diamond anvil cells are under $10,000:

[https://diamondanvils.com/product-category/diamond-anvil- cel...](https://diamondanvils.com/product-category/diamond-anvil- cells/optical/)

<comment><USER24> > you don't need a big science lab like CERN to do useful experiments

Did anyone really ever claim that?

<comment><USER25> No, but that's still pretty cool to hear (even though everything else to conduct the experiment was probably a bit pricier if not just as pricey)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sounds like a new weapon for the next Star Trek or James Bond movie.

</comment><comment><USER27> What are some other open mysteries in physics / chemistry / science? Anyone have some favorites?

Bonus points for simplicity + obscurity. Everyone knows that dark matter is an open mystery, but I suspect not too many people knew about black nitrogen.

EDIT: There are some nice lists on Wikipedia that are fun to dig through: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems)

 _Is Feynmanium the last chemical element that can physically exist? That is, what are the chemical consequences of having an element with an atomic number above 137, whose 1s electrons must travel faster than the speed of light?_ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_periodic_table#Elemen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_periodic_table#Elements_above_the_atomic_number_137)

<comment><USER28> How do glasses form? What order parameter determines the properties of liquids? Are there an unifying properties determining the structure of atomic liquids? What determines the network properties of liquids?

Here's a more tangible one; Is solid hydrogen stable?

I did my PhD in this area and even discovered liquid polymorphism in atomic Cerium.

There are tons of unanswered questions like this! It's bonkers how many things we know we don't know, just think of the things we don't know we don't know :p

<comment><USER29> There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. - Rumsfeld

<comment><USER30> I've never understood why people mock him for saying this. It frequently shows up on lists of stupid political quotes/"Bushisms". But not only is it absolutely true and important for planners to understand, it's stated clearly and concisely. Do most people just look at it and see word salad? I don't get it.

<comment><USER31> It might be interesting to see a list of "often-mocked sayings that have a point".

Two that I know of involving politicians and the Internet are

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_techno...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology#Urban_legend_that_Gore_claims_to_have_invented_the_Internet)

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

I'm sorry to say that I've personally made fun of both of these people for these soundbites in a way that I now regret.

<comment><USER32> Did Gore actually say that he invented the internet? The linked Wikipedia article says that it's an urban legend.

<comment><USER33> The quote is "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" which is often misinterpreted as Al Gore saying he "created the internet" which I doubt was his actual intention. At a political/governmental level, he was actually quite instrumental in legitimizing and evangelizing the importance of network communications as well as funding programs that were necessary for its creation. He probably should have phrased it as "I took the initiative in the creation of the internet" or that he was "instrumental in the creation of the American internet".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > To create the new form [nitrogen] was pressed together between two diamonds > to 1.4 million atmospheres of pressure, and over 4,000 °C (7,232 °F)... It > appears to have good conductivity, much like that of graphene, which could > make it useful in future electronic devices.

Are you kidding me? Kinda grasping at straws if that's the application -- who are we selling these electronics to, magma golems? This is good & pure science, please don't sully it with such foolishness.

<comment><USER35> Everyone knows you can't report on science without promising cellphones that you only have to charge once per week.

<comment><USER36> So, basically, Nokia 3310?

<comment><USER37> What's even more depressing is that most people on this forum will probably not get this reference :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > could one day be useful in advanced electronics

We're still waiting for graphene.

</comment><comment><USER39> I love the sense of humor found in the comments of this thread.

</comment><comment><USER40> The name reminds me of Big Bismuth!

</comment><comment><USER41> 'Tis but a flesh wound!</comment>