Letter to a Young Procrastinator - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2190918/

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of a thesis I once read titled "The Mythos of Engineering Culture", that claims engineers "procrastinate to introduce challenge, uncertainty, and risk into engineering work."

<http://www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/pltools/pubs/Leonardi.pdf>

<comment><USER3> Just like artists? Artists seem to procrastinate a lot and say they're just waiting for inspiration...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started reading the article and got to _Dear chronically procrastinating young person,_

I clicked my read it later button and closed the window - "I'll read it later" I said to myself, before I realised the irony.

<comment><USER5> But if you closed the window to do some real work... then what?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always had a problem with procrastination and I've always known it's nothing more than fundamental laziness. Perhaps combined with my heightened sense of self-preservation it's why my ancestors managed to survive, after all a few of them fought in world wars and had kids afterwards. My lineage wasn't conceived by a lack of birth control and horny teenagers, my genes actually come from survivors of WW1 and WW2... and as I'm English likely the survivors of many, many more wars, as we really liked them.

Anyway, I'm losing my point. At the moment I'm trying to type up some of my work, which I'm completely ignoring. However, I found a great radio station that's not available in the southern Toronto region (thewolf.ca). Sadly the bastards put a tic-tac-toe game on the audio player, I never knew how distracting a simple game could be when trying to get something done.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just for fun, in my wardrobe you'll find: [http://www.threadless.com/product/487/Procrastinators_leader...](http://www.threadless.com/product/487/Procrastinators_leaders_of_tomorrow)

</comment><comment><USER8> I must admit that the best ideas and solutions I have ever had were born under the heavy stress of almost missed deadlines.

<comment><USER9> I have to balance this by saying that some of the most satisfying and elegant solutions I have found came from a careful, organised, timely approach to the problem where many options are considered, rather than slapping something together in desperation. It's possible to work very quickly under these conditions - and much more pleasant than "crunch time".

I get high-pressure inspiration too though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmmm, hasn't this been posted on HN before?

<comment><USER11> 3 times total <http://searchyc.com/submissions/Young+Procrastinator>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It does show that he was pressed for time.

I don't think deadlines help you focus, because fearing that you won't make it and thinking that you could have done a better work make you nervous.

</comment><comment><USER13> I clicked the link and got the "Get back to work" page. I dutifully clicked the "ignore" link and succeeded in putting off work for another 60 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER14> People procrastinate for the same reason we stay up later than we should, and stay in bed even when there's no point in sleeping more. It's aversion to change. Everyone has this trait to some extent. What the few non- procrastinators seem to get right is that they start the day off working, making it hard to _stop_.</comment>


Users can now read full Kindle books online - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/12/users-can-now-read-sell-full-kindle-books-online.ars

<comment><USER2> Well, that's good! and make things easy! [http://kitcat- kittycat.blogspot.com/2010/12/naughty-cat-bori...](http://kitcat- kittycat.blogspot.com/2010/12/naughty-cat-boring-what-hug-soft.html)</comment>


Apple's butterfly keyboard design has failed - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/7315/apple-keyboards-still-suck-insanely-bad?zd=1&zi=yjjw3wv6 <comment><USER2> Having deployed chunkwm and skhd I am trying to train myself to live in markdown with a view to being more independent of a vendors bad hardware choices. The touch bar did for me, but my stuck 'h' key repeat problem is getting close to a final straw.

The bad luck moment here is that the carbon X1 is being steadily trashed by Lenovo who don't seem to understand their core engineering market.</comment>


Perl 5.14.2 is now available - <AUTHOR> http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2011/09/msg177618.html

<comment><USER2> I like and use Perl and love seeing Perl news on HN, but do we really need the announcements of minor maintenance releases? Since people are voting it up, there is obviously some interest in it, but I don't get it. Plus, there's not even a changelog at the above link.

<comment><USER3> I would have been excited to see Perl6!

<comment><USER4> The last release of Rakudo (Perl6 on Parrot) was in July: <http://rakudo.org/2011/07/29/rakudo-star-2011-07-released/>

The next release is due soon and this includes some heavy refactoring so will be a lot quicker: <http://rakudo.org/2011/08/19/rakudo-2011-08-release- status/> & <http://rakudo.org/2011/09/09/nom-branch-default/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perl has been completely replaced by Python for me. Perl was the second language I learned in around 1995 after learning Turbo Pascal in my pre-teens. Perl allowed me to learn the programming arts freely, the programs I wrote weren't pretty back then but they ran and performed a function. It let me experiment with CGI, GUIs and writing video games.

Thanks Perl. Pity you were so ugly and we had to break up but Python is "cleaner"[1] and I just couldn't stick with you.

[1] Personal preference I am not looking for a fight :)

<comment><USER6> > Pity you were so ugly

> [1] Personal preference I am not looking for a fight :)

Your wordings don't align with the disclaimer. That's like saying "you are an idiot, but hey, it's a personal perspective - I am not looking for a fight".

FWIW, I have used perl heavily, and now a days mostly do Python and Ruby. My reasons for Python/Ruby are basically Nltk/Flask/Gevent, Rails etc and don't have much to do with the languages themselves. They are pretty interchangeable with some syntax difference.

<comment><USER5> My words do. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I prefer many things about Python over Perl not just the syntax. I wasn't claiming that I think others are stupid for liking or using it, just my personal preference of what I like in a language.

Perhaps I could have worded it a little less flame bait like:

 _Pity I didn't like your idioms and we had to break up as my eyes and heart prefer Python._

Any better?

<comment><USER7> On the other hand I see a massive drop in Python's popularity these days. Earlier it used to get all the talk. Coffee tables, forum discussions, debates what not. Also few days back, I used to run into people choosing Python as a language for their project all the time. That seems to falling rapidly now.

The popularity and fan boy crowd seems to have moved to server side JS these days.

We are only days away from how people bash Python for more recent fancier options.

<comment><USER5> It is a well established work horse so it has lost the mystic that attracts discussion and excitement. Never the less for getting shit done Python is a winner for me.

<comment><USER4>
      $ditto_for_me =~ s/Python/Perl/;

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any idea on 5.14.0 for Strawberry Perl? Doesn't send a good signal when the Windows version starts to fall behind.

<comment><USER9> The maintenance of Strawberry Perl is not in parallel with the development of Perl in general. I'm sure the developers are working on it. It has its own architectural issues that go beyond merely compiling Perl and releasing it.

If you really want to know the release date, check in with the guys at #win32 on irc.perl.org.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool. Nice to see the updates coming but it's rather lightweight and minor. Of all my pet projects and scripts, Perl ones hold the most value. Lala.com music downloader comes to mind.

<comment><USER4> This is just a maintenance update to 5.12, ie. the latest _stable_ version of Perl.

The next version (5.16) is due in Spring 2012 and there are regular (monthly) updates to this on the 5.15 development track:

* 5.15.0 - [http://search.cpan.org/~stevan/perl-5.15.3/pod/perl5150delta...](http://search.cpan.org/~stevan/perl-5.15.3/pod/perl5150delta.pod)

* 5.15.1 - [http://search.cpan.org/~stevan/perl-5.15.3/pod/perl5151delta...](http://search.cpan.org/~stevan/perl-5.15.3/pod/perl5151delta.pod)

* 5.15.2 - [http://search.cpan.org/~stevan/perl-5.15.3/pod/perl5152delta...](http://search.cpan.org/~stevan/perl-5.15.3/pod/perl5152delta.pod)

* 5.15.3 - <http://search.cpan.org/~stevan/perl-5.15.3/pod/perldelta.pod>

<comment><USER4> Opps typo! Its maintenance update to 5.14

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Long live Perl! Let's hope we managed the porting of CPAN to Perl 6 sensibly.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand your comment about Perl 6. Where does Perl 6 come into picture while talking about Perl 5?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is this doing here? Flagged.

<comment><USER13> Like all the other release about nodejs, clojure, python, ruby etc. etc. that are submitted to hacker news.</comment></comment>


Life of Brian: The most blasphemous film ever? - vanilla-almond http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190822-life-of-brian-the-most-blasphemous-film-ever <comment><AUTHOR> For all the commenters laughing at those silly religious folks who protested the film, consider this: is there anything you hold sacred? What if a film came out that satirized, I don't know, science, or abortion, or same-sex marriage, or racial equality? Admittedly, such a film may not have much comedic value, but I suspect it would nonetheless induce a decent amount of outrage, at least with the average reader here.

You may protest that this is a false equivalency, that the above-mentioned things are different from Christianity, which is merely belief. But that would simply be picking and choosing what you personally feel is open to ridicule - what's left is, by definition, sacred.

You may say, "I'm secure in my beliefs - go ahead and mock." Well, to be honest, we'd be in the same boat, you and I. As a Christian, I suppose I wouldn't mind watching "Life of Brian".

But to put ourselves in the shoes of the protesters - would you want the next generation to grow up in an environment where, say, the science of evolution is the target of mockery? (I imagine in some parts of the US that's not so far from the truth.) My point is, laughter is a powerful weapon. And children laughing along at the jokes may not catch all of the nuance outlined in the BBC article. Even if nothing is sacred, some things may still be important enough to try to influence the culture over.

Were the protests silly? Did they end up achieving the opposite of what they intended? Sure. But that's a matter of results, not purpose.

Maybe we should all learn to think twice before we laugh.

<comment><USER2> "You may protest that this is a false equivalency, that the above-mentioned things are different from Christianity, which is merely belief. But that would simply be picking and choosing what you personally feel is open to ridicule - what's left is, by definition, sacred."

Is it? You've tried to distill things down to belief or sanctity, but if we go one step further, we're talking about opinion. E.g. "It is my opinion x is sacred."

The actual false equivalency to me would be that we can freely strip down facts and science to mere opinion and sanctity. "The Earth is sphere-like is an opinion and I hold it sacred." Sure, people are welcome to question facts, but the bar is higher if you actually want others to believe your version.

And that's the difference. If I have a differing view challenging a fact or theory, well, prove it. Do the work beyond just opening my mouth. Science is always trying to self-correct. One man in the system may hold firm to a belief without merit, but his colleagues may not, and what is provable lives on. But if one decides to have a different religion or decides gruyere is better, they don't have to prove anything to anyone, except maybe themselves.

If there is a time where the science of evolution is mocked and laughed at, because of the inherent bar of provability, I think we'll be fine either way.

"Maybe we should all learn to think twice before we laugh."

I personally think it would be healthier for people to learn to accept constructive criticism and be the butt of a joke once in awhile.

Which, if we get back to the heart of the matter (rather than "science"), The Life of Brian isn't just mockery for mockery's sake. It's satire and satire is meant to provoke and challenge thought, to raise questions. It is the opinion's humorous version of an opposing scientific view. The bar of quality is not so high as a scientific proof, but satire generally only works when the questions it raises are valid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response. Many fine points, here and in sibling comments. There was one point I did want to reply to:

"It's satire and satire is meant to provoke and challenge thought, to raise questions."

That's a good way to separate mockery and satire, but unfortunately on sensitive subjects I get the feeling that some people may be so used to getting the former that it's hard to distinguish the latter. Humour can open up a conversation, but it can just as easily shut it down. And with a movie, it all comes down to the one watching; even well-meaning satire can end up being received as mockery, by both those who agree with the views presented and those who disagree. The result may end up being less thought-provoking and more calcifying pre-existing opinions.

Anyhow, I didn't intend to stir up debate re. science vs. faith. There's a much longer conversation that could be had there. My original intent was simply to try to provoke a bit of empathy, regardless of what one's beliefs may be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just began watching the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus (the TV show) for the first time last night (it was released almost 50 years ago today), and I could not believe how insanely funny it was.

I assumed that because of it's age, it would be at least a bit outdated.

Perhaps it was just way ahead of it's time?

<comment><USER4> You may also like The Goon Show. [1] It's a BBC radio comedy show that ran in the 1950s, and was way ahead of time. Some episodes make references to then- current events that are little known nowadays such as guerilla war in Malaysia, but many are timeless. Episodes "The Canal" [2], "The Jet-Propelled Guided NAAFI" [3] and "The Whistling Spy Enigma" [4] are among my favourites. They have a very playful style and a refreshing lack of cynicism and profanities.

John Cleese has said that the Goon Show "influenced us enormously", and many well-known Monty Python's sketches like "The Funniest Joke in the World" [5] can be traced to the Goon's jokes like dropping 1918 calendars on Berlin to force Germans surrender (in episode "World War One").

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

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-69K1MQ4YJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-69K1MQ4YJE)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwSQ0CBQuA0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwSQ0CBQuA0)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nMjk-- OVR4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nMjk--OVR4)

[5] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9FzUI8998U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9FzUI8998U)

<comment><USER5> Are you also familiar with _The Men from the Ministry_ ? Written by Edward Taylor and John Graham.

For some reason, it also made a successful radio show in South Africa, Finland and Sweden. The latter two are translations (but set in UK like the original). Taylor wrote new episodes for Finland even after the show was discontinued in UK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you watch the 1979 "debate" with those two old fops, ou find that most or all of the current BBC article is sourced from that show.

Coincidentally, youtube suggested it to me last night, and I watched it. That Archbishop of whatever was generally lying when responding to Cleese's (very commonly held) points about how nobody tells you we don't know who wrote the Gospels, or even in what city, and that there's quite a bit of argument about when they were written. And even more about the common content, and why it's in different orders in each gospel (except John, which is really different, and Jesus is 40 years old at the time of the crucifixion). It was as if the two old fops hadn't even watched the movie in question. I'm surprised Palin and Cleese didn't just tear into them. Maybe I'm just used to folks live- tweeting events like that nowadays.

<comment><USER7> There has always been a lot of argument about the gospels, as they put forth a radical idea that is unacceptable to many. However, just because people argue about it does not take away from the claims made there, or the internal consistency of the accounts. Are there claims of inconsistency? Sure, but they don't stand up to inspection.

Monty Python was a genius comedy troupe, but all you have to do is look at the sad life that Cleese ultimately led to see they may not be a source of inspiration for how you should lead your life.

The disciples of Jesus on the other hand were, with one exception, killed for their beliefs. The one exception being John, who died in exile on an island.

<comment><USER2> "Sure, but they don't stand up to inspection."

Please elaborate.

<comment><USER7> This statement is in response to the broad claim of inconsistencies in the accounts. If anyone needs to elaborate, it is the original claimant.

Is there a claimed inconsistency you would seek to have explained?

<comment><USER6> Nowhere did I say they were inconsistent - merely that different gospels have different stories, or different versions of the same story, and they appear in different orders. This is beyond dispute. It's also not something that christianity as a whole makes clear. The Gospel of John is radically different than the other 3 gospels. You can see that by reading maybe a page of each one. Beyond dispute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All this talk of banning films seems so anachronistic now. And George Carlin's 7 dirty words routine [1] and its related Supreme Court legal fight is now nearly 40 years old as well.

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

<comment><USER9> American expectations of censorship are so interesting, as the whole society was formed by film and radio's attempts to market to the whole country at once, specifically restrictive middle America.

Its clearer now that broadcasting hot spots of New York City and Los Angeles were not prudish about content in the early 20th century, while the Oklahoma's of the nation only wanted fully clothed people, speaking very cordial language, as long as all the actors were white or portrayed segregated culture. Strange to think how that influenced a dynasty of casting decisions still seen today.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I think it's interesting how we didn't have nearly as much formal government censorship, but that commercial interests converged on the same sorts of outcomes.

And yes, I think the history is especially interesting around visible versus invisible minorities. Plenty of people in the Hollywood of old were GLBTQ and got away with it because they could hide it. But that didn't work for racial bias.

<comment><USER9> There was rampant government censorship, it was at the state level all because the Supreme Court said motion pictures weren't protected by the 1st amendment in 1910, reversing itself in 1950s after the damage was done and culture wide censorship was expected by American families. Circumstances like this are why industries don't lay off on lobbying.

To add to your second point, a lot of European and Middle Eastern people changed their names to blend into the white majority power as their subgroup was not seen favorably for most of the 20th century and were many times not considered to be part of an amorphous "white" group which meant worse treatment in jobs housing credit and court rulings, this issue and distinction has mostly evaporated with "white" being expanded and reduced to skin tones in the later 20th century in the US with there very little interest or cognizance of pre-US heritage. This just being another example how invisible minorities and ability to "pass" to attain privileges, where people with different skin tones and visible phenotypes simply could not change those things and discovered that people with other similar phenotypes experienced surprisingly similar outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you made a similar film about Muhammad today it would be banned everywhere. Things haven't changed that much

<comment><USER11> I'm not so sure, because the Life of Brian didn't make fun of Christianity, although it did poke fun at the throngs that were searching for a messiah. Similarly, I think you could pull off a comedy about a bunch of Bedouins in 7th century Arabia who are generally ignorant of the actual current of change in their time and seeking a different, abortive attempt at overthrowing the established order.

<comment><USER10> I mean a similar film. I can't imagine it to go down easily.

<comment><USER11> In this case I really think it mattered more that a bunch of people who didn't see the film had preconceived notions about it and took it upon themselves to make a stink. Certainly that could happen in the Muslim world as well, as happened with the Satanic Verses. But that didn't have to happen (although it might have been good for publicity).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article mentions in passing that some councils in the UK banned the film:

> In Britain, opposition wasn't as fierce, but there was plenty of it. Some > local councils banned the film, a measure which did it no harm at all: > people would simply flock to the nearest city where it was showing.

This is a bit confusing but we have the BBFC who gave the film an AA (14 or over) age rating when it was released in cinemas, and then mostly 15s for the home releases, and most recently a 12A.

On top of the BBFC we have local councils who licence venues for entertainment, and some of those councils banned cinemas from showing the film.

Some of those bans were pretty long. I think Glasgow had a 30 year ban.

It's not a good situation.

</comment><comment><USER13> In my country (Spain), there are religion classes from primary school all the way until university. For public (state managed) schools - which are the majority - students choose between religion or an optative class, which usually consists of either ethics, morals, or world religion from a non- believers perspective (sort of anthropological studies).

Every year, the religion teacher at my school would organise a day together with the other class' teacher, where students of both classes would spend the hours together, and the activity chosen was a showing of Life of Brian.

I've always remember that as a beautiful idea. It's a movie that roasts everyone from believers to left wing associations, and yet with pretty clean humor - so it was an amazing tool to teach students of both "sides" the lesson that it's ok to laugh at yourself and to get along with others.

</comment><comment><USER14> What I find hilarious about that debate with the bishop is that they apparently missed the first five minutes or so of the film and didn't understand that Brian wasn't in fact Jesus. What made it more funny is that this should have become painful obvious even without that bit of context.

Of course the absurdity of it is that the film's biggest target for ridicule was the left wing of British politics at the time. It barely touched actual Christianity.

But as the article mentions, it was the next film that leaned in to the criticism of Christianity (albeit mostly mocking the modern day Church and not Christ).

<comment><USER15> Wasn't there a scene later in the movie where the actual Jesus was shown (without any mockery) in contrast to Brian? I think this week was just a case of interpreting the movie on the worst light to create an opportunity for virtue signaling. I notice it when people I disagree do this and wonder how often I do this myself without noticing.

<comment><USER16> > Wasn't there a scene later in the movie where the actual Jesus was shown > (without any mockery) in contrast to Brian?

Yes. And at the beginning as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oops, I got confused and thought this was "Life of Brine", the discussion about the video "A Year Ago I Put Saltwater in a Jar"!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20770682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20770682)

</comment><comment><USER18> I can never understand why religious people can be so insecure about their religion. If you believe that the all-powerful creator of the universe is on your side, why would you care in the slightest about some movie?

<comment><USER19> Is it hard to understand defending your society's values?

<comment><USER15> What values are being attacked by the movie? The movie doesn't make any claim to be factual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This kind of puritanical worldview has now taken over so many aspects of culture.

If you said a joke 10 years ago, i.e. blasphemed against some sacred topic, you can't host the Oscars anymore.

It was stupid then and it's stupid now. It sure looks like humans need to fill the void of religion with something.

<comment><USER21> there is no void. Plenty of humans (myself included) live not only without believing in god but without a need to believe. "It's easy if you try" I think what is needed is some basic education and security in life.

<comment><USER20> My comment was less about religion as belief in God and more about religion as its societal impact. Humans who believed in something with devotional fervor instituted blasphemy laws and censorship. Today's humans believe in other things with equal zealotry and are utilizing the same tyrannical solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> All interesting stuff.

But scratching my head as to why things like this end up on Hacker News? Seems to happen a lot these days.

<comment><USER23> From Guidelines ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)):

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes > more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the > answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

I'd say this type of thing most-definitely applies here.

<comment><USER22> It really does depend whose intellect is being satisfied.

This little thread of mine is an intellectual discussion.

However, I'm fully aware that many in this community deem fit to vote me down for having it.

Curious, indeed.

<comment><USER22> I also note that the title of this post has changed since I posted my first comment. To something slightly more egregious to people of faith.

<comment><USER24> Christian faith, I presume you are referring to? Because there are many other 'people of faith' who are not Christians, and who won't be offended in any way by Life of Brian.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Whitelist SQLCLR Assemblies in SQL Server 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nielsberglund.com/2017/07/23/sql-server-2017-sqlclr-white-listing-assemblies/ <comment><AUTHOR> SQL Server 2017 changed the security model for SQLCLR assemblies. This post looks at a new functionality in SQL Server 2017: whitelisting of assemblies.</comment>


With Credit Card Settlement, Will Ecommerce Software Need an Update? - <AUTHOR> http://callmeed.posterous.com/with-credit-card-settlement-will-ecommerce-so

<comment><USER2> Can't be any worse than the morass that is tax calculation. Even on the US side it can be unbelievably complicated. Take a site I just wrapped up that had nexus in 3 US states, 1 of those states has different sales tax that has to be collected based on the county and town of the purchaser, and another state had a requirement that different goods are taxed at different rates, i.e. a jacket and a fur coat fall in two different categories and are taxed differently.

Like all things web, we ended up using an API for these calculations, from CyberSource in this case. There's no way a few fixed fees could be worse than this mess.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most places using those software solutions are e-commerce only places, and only accept credit cards. This will have pretty much no effect on them, as they should already be taking into account those fees when they set their prices.

The merchants affected by this are those that accept both cash and credit cards for products sold through a given sales channel. Generally, that will be the brick and mortar shops. They'll now be able to advertise the cash price for the item, and tack on a credit card fee at the cash register.

</comment><comment><USER4> This shouldn't change anything on the web where only payment methods with transaction fees were accepted all along. Why would you want to break out the fee into another line-item?

In the offline world, this settlement only offers a new label for an existing practice. Cash discounts were already legal, and a credit surcharge is just a cash discount by another name. I don't expect anyone that wasn't interested in advertising cash discounts to want to start advertising a credit surcharge. That sounds much more offensive to customers that want to give you their money but also want to use their credit card.

<comment><USER5> > Why would you want to break out the fee into another line-item?

It's not unusual in things like concert ticketing to have a headline price of, say, $30 then when you get to the checkout there's an extra $10 in processing fees and delivery charges. I assume companies think this makes them more money than being up front about the total cost.

> Cash discounts were already legal, and a credit surcharge is just a cash > discount by another name.

In one case the customer pays less than the advertised price, in the other case more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hadn't heard about this.

I'm kinda hoping this means American Express will have to fall into line with the other providers on pricing. I'm tempted to enable an AmEx penalty, since it costs more to process AmEx than Visa and Mastercard...that'd probably mean many customers would choose another card, even though it's probably our most popular payment choice right now (I'm pretty sure small business owners have AmEx cards at a higher rate than the average consumer, though I'm not entirely sure why).

<comment><USER7> I'll echo what Dan said for their consumer accounts as well. I always get excellent, fast, friendly, competent, empowered customer service any time at all I have the slightest problem with a transaction on my American Express cards. So, I use them for everything.

I imagine their higher discount rate helps fund that customer service center, but if I saw a place charging more for Amex cards, I wouldn't shop there; I'd just go somewhere else. Amex customers are (at least, statistically,) more affluent and have a higher propensity to spend; you pay more for being able to access those people.

<comment><USER8> Why advertise a rate at all? Just show your price and have a line item for credit processing fees right after tax.

Anyway, it seems a little backwards that the merchant is paying the processing fee, since you're the one who's getting the great customer service.

<comment><USER4> You have to think of credit card fees as part of your customer acquisition cost. You should be willing to pay more if the customer is worth more to you. People and businesses with Amex cards are more affluent than average, so you are willing to pay Amex more to acquire them than you'd pay Visa or MasterCard. That's why Amex can and does charge you more, not because they're simply passing through costs. If that was the case, more businesses would choose not to accept Amex; many of those where customer acquisition isn't an issue already don't (like utilities).

Amex has more affluent customers, on average, because they don't give cards to people with poor credit, and most of their cards have a significant annual fee. Their customers are those who can afford to pay extra for more benefits, which happens to correlate highly with overall affluence.

<comment><USER9> Agreed.

I have a Platinum American Express. I pay $495/year for my card, plus $175/year for three additional cards on the same account. I spend anywhere between $350K-$500K/year on the card (both personal and business-reimbursed expenses).

Are my charges more expensive for you as a business to process? Probably. I'm also more likely to spend _a lot_ more with you than your average customer.

<comment><USER5> Would such big spenders quibble over a little 1% surcharge?

<comment><USER9> Honestly? I probably wouldn't. I'm in the minority though. Think how many Green charge card, OPEN card, regular consumer Amex credit card, and corporate card customers withe Amex there are out there. Would they quibble over an additional 1%? Or would they shop elsewhere with someone who absorbs the cost?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While it may no longer be a requirement of Visa or Mastercard that merchants not pass on fees on to consumers, I believe that there are laws on the books in several states (California included) that would still preclude this.

<http://law.onecle.com/california/civil/1748.1.html>

<comment><USER3> Note that this only applies customers who elect to use a credit card in lieu of cash or check or similar. For online transactions where credit cards are the only payment method accepted, that section does not apply.

<comment><USER7> While a reading of the letter of the law seems to indicate that you would be correct and would be able to pass on/differentiate charges ("The customer CAN'T 'elect' to use a credit card because we don't take anything else! Suck on that, legislature!"), my reading is that the "intent of the legislature"^ clause would almost certainly preclude you from charging credit card surcharges and that a customer who sued you for doing so would win.

^"It is the intent of the Legislature to promote the effective operation of the free market and protect consumers from deceptive price increases for goods and services by prohibiting credit card surcharges[...]"

<comment><USER3> What about section (c)? That pretty clearly indicates the legislature probably intended my reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm working on this for a client at the moment.

The tricky bit is that the credit-card processing itself is being done by a third party gateway. We pass a request to the third party to go collect a payment for $X and let us know when that is approved. The user's credit card number never actually passes through our system, which is a great way to avoid dealing with PCI-DSS.

But the card number isn't known at the time we pass $X to the gateway. So there's no way to apply a different surcharge percentage to different types of card.

<comment><USER4> If you have a traditional merchant account, there's no way you know what the fee will be beforehand anyway. Passing on the actual fee to the customer is impossible. The interchange rate for a basic card is different from the interchange rate for a rewards card, for a hotel card, for a signature card, for a business card, etc. There are hundreds of different classifications and no way to know which a card is until after you've charged it.

The fee tables are 100+ pages long.

<http://ctlr.msu.edu/download/cashiers/VisaICApr12.pdf>

[http://www.mastercard.com/us/merchant/pdf/MasterCard_Interch...](http://www.mastercard.com/us/merchant/pdf/MasterCard_Interchange_Rates_and_Criteria.pdf)

If you're not dealing with a merchant account, but a 3rd party processor, then you're almost always paying a flat fee regardless of card type. So why would you need to pass on different rates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't help but think this is a great opportunity for bitcoin, pay online with bitcoin for a 1-2% discount. Makes more sense than ever

</comment><comment><USER13> Next, the government will start to put into place laws that force retailers to display information about the fees to consumers. I'm all for fixing this old system, but I agree with the poster that this will have far reaching implications.

</comment><comment><USER14> While I get screwed a bit for almost exclusively using debit over cash I am very excited to see the holdouts of "cash only" start accepting cards under this ruling.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't see what the fuss is. Australia has had this in place for years...</comment>


Cultured meat from stem cells: Challenges and prospects (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://new-harvest.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/post_2012_cultured_meat_from_stem_cells_challenges_and_prospects.pdf <comment><USER2> Cell culture is very finicky and costly. It's profitable when used to produce fancy new antibody drugs like ipilimumab or denosumab, but when it comes to producing meat, the gooey stuff in animals that Westerners won't eat do important jobs and are good at them. Tissue culture protocols generally discard the culture medium after a day or two, with barely any of the energetic substrates consumed when too much lactate accumulates, because there is no liver to keep pH balanced. And you need to keep the whole flask drenched with a cocktail of antibiotics because there's no spleen doing whatever it is that a spleen does. A chicken gets feed conversion ratio of 2-3 these days in modern factory farming, and I'll be impressed if they ever come up with an in vitro system that outperforms that.</comment>


People's Bank of China voiced concern at Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.pbc.gov.cn/publish/goutongjiaoliu/524/2013/20131205153156832222251/20131205153156832222251_.html

<comment><USER2> I'm trying to understand two things here and I really can't figure it out. Help from a Chinese reader to translate the original text would be great.

1) Is the author of this notice (People's Bank of China) actually doing anything that changes, decides, or enforces the law in China

2) What the hell is the author saying, because the translation is _terrible_ and seems like it can be horribly misinterpreted.

<comment><USER3> This story might clarify it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6853305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6853305)</comment></comment>


Facebook's First Female Engineer Speaks Out on Tech's Gender Gap - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/12/ruchi-qa/ <comment><USER3> Take two groups of people. We'll call group A the "Bears", and group B the "Foxes".

The Bears had a strong natural interest and affinity for computers. They were tinkering and playing with them despite society's mockery that they were pathetic nerds. When they found out you could make great money, well, that was just a bonus.

The Foxes joined because they were told the industry was super rad and it paid really well. The Foxes were given advantages like additional Fox-only scholarships, special Fox-quotas in good engineering colleges, and lots of blogs praising Foxes and telling them how special they are, how they bring unique Fox-only insights to the table, and that The Bears have a conscious/unconscious agenda against them.

Now ask yourself, which group would you expect to have more longevity in the industry, the Foxes or the Bears? What would a company have to do to keep more Foxes? Maybe special privileges, like conferences the companies could send the Foxes to that would tell the Foxes how great they are, promotion programs to ensure more Fox visibility, quotas for Foxes in senior management, etc. But the Foxes are still leaving in higher numbers so clearly the industry has a bias against Foxes, so funding for Fox-only programs must increase, until the number of Foxes is equal to Bears (and if eventually there are more Foxes then Bears, that's just great!) What about the Bears? Well, the Bears better sit down, shut up, and remember that they are just Bears and there is nothing unique about a Bear. Some Bears internalize this and start advocating for the Foxes themselves.

And so it goes.

<comment><USER4> You lost me at "strong _natural_ interest and affinity." That could've been said for law or medicine or accounting or any of a large number of professions that were male-only until they weren't.

<comment><USER5> The interesting thing about medicine and law is that they are professions that deal with human needs and social relationships. As formal barriers were removed, the percentage of law and medical degrees awarded to women steadily increased to parity:

[http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/hua_hsu/cohen_do...](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/hua_hsu/cohen_doctorlawyer.png)

The graph doesn't show the last few years, but I believe medicine is over 50% women now.

Compare this to computer science. I can't find easily find data for Ph.D.s or master's degrees, so here is bachelor's degrees over roughly the same period:

[http://core0.staticworld.net/images/idge/imported/article/ct...](http://core0.staticworld.net/images/idge/imported/article/ctw/2013/04/04/women2-100386539-orig.jpg)

Lastly, for contrast, look what happened to vet school:

[https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/PublishingImages/100215g...](https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/PublishingImages/100215g1.gif)

(NB: technically enrollment rather than completion.) That looks to me pretty clearly like a thumb lifting off the scale.

I do not think the quantity of sexism in CS is zero. Yet from my experience of CS and law, I have a hard time believing that there is more bad behavior, (on the order of a 200-300% difference) among computer scientists than among _lawyers_. Maybe I'm wrong about that?

In any case I think comparisons to medicine and law actually raise more questions than they answer.

<comment><USER4> At some level of scale medicine and law are about human and social needs, but at that same level of scale, programming is about social and consumer needs. Yet by that chart you posted, the level of CS degrees awarded to women in the era of Twitter is half of what it was in the era of Lotus 123. And what about accounting? Big 4 accounting firms are close to parity. And I'm not sure how different the professions are at the lowest levels. Poring through a spreadsheet trying to tie-up a number that's off isn't much different than poring over a core dump. Yet half the people who do the former are women.

<comment><USER5> I debated how to present the CS data, because there are a few things going on there. Here are the raw counts:

[http://images.techhive.com/images/idge/imported/article/ctw/...](http://images.techhive.com/images/idge/imported/article/ctw/2013/04/04/women1-100386537-orig.jpg)

The two spikes circa 1985 and 2003 are also present in the men's data.

What we see is not women checking out of CS, but much more men getting into it, hence the percentage of degrees awarded to women goes down.

Your point about accounting is an interesting one. I suspect it's explained by this: [http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of- students...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students-by- college-major-and-gender-ratio/)

<comment><USER4> Your first point is a non-explanation. If the conjecture is that the preference for CS is based on inherent factors, that doesn't explain why the preference ratio would change over time. Did the nature of programming change in 1985 and 2003 to make it more attractive to men?

Disclaimer: the sources below are controversial. The below is not necessarily an endorsement of these conclusions, but an attempt to address them on their own terms.

Regarding your second point. At the ranges in question, the male-female disparity is not enough to explain the observed results. I'm going to rely on SAT Math data, because that's more rigorously studied than what you posted. The male-female disparity among people with perfect SAT Math scores is less than 2-1: [http://www.aei.org/publication/2013-sat-test-results-show- th...](http://www.aei.org/publication/2013-sat-test-results-show-that-a-huge- math-gender-gap-persists-with-a-32-point-advantage-for-high-school-boys). So that might explain why only 40%+ of math majors are women. It doesn't explain why less than 20% of CS majors are women, or why that ratio has fallen by half even as the field has become less mathematically rigorous.

Also, there is quite a lot of evidence that women outperform their SAT Math scores relative to men: [http://esd.mit.edu/Headline/widnall_presentation.html](http://esd.mit.edu/Headline/widnall_presentation.html) ("He found that women outperform their predictions. That is, that women perform better as students than their math SAT scores would predict. The effective predictive gap is about 30 points.") It is interesting to note that men also outperform women at the upper range of MCAT and LSAT scores, by similar margins. Yet, differences in observed performance in medical and law school by gender are slim to non-existant, and those professions have an even number of men and women, at least at the degree and entry level.

I don't think aptitude explains the disparity if you actually delve into the data. I think it can be explained by: [http://iangent.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-petrie-multiplier- wh...](http://iangent.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-petrie-multiplier-why-attack- on.html?m=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > They're more organized.

Here we go again.

Based on what? Where does this idea come from? Can you imagine if we all just accepted this as fact about men?

I know plenty of female programmers who absolutely hate this idea that women are "more organized." The result is almost always that they get pigeonholed into the "secretary" role on a team.

This idea needs to die. It does no one any good, and it's probably just false.

<comment><USER7> "There's more empathy" also bothers me. I'm not sure we're doing anyone any favors by generalizing large swaths of people, by gender or anything else. This is pure prejudice, even if it's good-natured and well-intentioned.

<comment><USER8> Prejudice isn't necessarily a bad thing. As a society, we're fighting over where the line is between "bad prejudice" and "good prejudice", and the tech gender gap is just one of many battlegrounds in that fight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So it is okay for a woman to say that women are better organized, that they have more empathy, but as a man I cannot claim that men are better hackers?

I'm all for equality, but every single time I read one of these articles, I seem to read everything but equality. Being a programmer is a job, a male dominated job, at least in 2014. There are a lot of fields where men work which are female dominated, like a chef, or interior design, or fashion, or a nanny, or a nurse. You don't see men throwing tantrums like this. And neither do great female programmers, they are busy making us feel stupid.

<comment><USER10> Most chefs are male - people don't care because its a low status job. Programming is now high status, so now this gender gap is an issue. As many feminists have "misogynistic conspiracy" as their default explanation for any differnces in outcome among genders, they're not in a very good epistemic position to judge these things. Unjust discrimination is economically counterproductive, I don't expect ruthless corporations to support such a conspiracy when defection is more profitable. Aside from blinded applications and maybe interviews, not much needs to be done. We are building businesses here, not collecting data for a census.

<comment><USER11> Being rich, being a VC, being Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates is a lot of status, but despite popular assumptions, that doesn't really rub off on the programming equivalent of a line cook or plumber.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "If you have more women engineers on a team, they tend to bring more diverse opinions, but they also tend to build a collaborative culture. And a result, things get done faster. They're more organized. There's more empathy, which makes for a better work environment. It's just better all around."

If the genders are equal any combination of them are also equal.

<comment><USER6> This comment makes a good point.

It's shocking that so many people fighting the good fight for the equality of women in the workforce also attribute special qualities to women that men just don't have - the common ones being that they're more organized, and can more easily think outside the box.

This is sexist, counterproductive, and false.

Women should be represented in a profession because they're fungible with men and make up half of the general population.

Period.

Once you start saying a team _needs_ women, because they have some special insight or ability, you have to logically accept that a team that is 100% women is not as good as that same team plus a man - which is simply not true.

<comment><USER13> The comment does not make a good point. It conflates the idea of equality with the concept of diversity.

Equality is neither inherently caused or obstructed by diversity.

<comment><USER14> I think it is important to point out that equality has a huge impact on diversity.

<comment><USER15> Most certainly, however you can't say whether that that impact produces a more equal or more unequal ratio.

Citing a racial example, the greater equality (read: more meritocratic) of admissions practiced by CalTech results in a disproportionately Asian composition (~40% Asian whereas Asians are just 4.4% of the population and only like 2% of the students are African American, which African Americans are make up like 17% of the US population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Refreshing to read. Her answers are not carefully rehearsed and perennially regurgitated sound bytes you hear all the time.

From my observation, it seems this gap is prevalent mostly in engineering (not so much in HR, Marketing, Sales etc).

<comment><USER17> The gap in HR is much bigger, but in the other direction of course. [http://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chala...](http://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chalabi- datalab-flightattendants-2.png) (compiled from US Census data)

Computer scientists 72.2% male, HR 16.2% male. Of course there are many more employed in software than in HR.

<comment><USER3> HR knows the score. 83.8% women is only 16.2% away from being 100% diverse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some interesting things were said...

> _Sanghvi - "I don't like being called aggressive. And that reputation has > stuck with me. Any company that I go to, any VC firm that I talk to, > everybody thinks of me as the aggressive person who can get shit done, at > all costs."_

This is a bad thing?

> _Sanghvi - "Men are just more comfortable with men than they are with > women."_

Aren't women more comfortable with women than they are with men?

> _Sanghvi - "The first thing I would say is you need to live life with no > regrets. Always ask yourself—when you're doubting something or you're afraid > of something—ask yourself the question: "What would you do if you weren't > afraid and do that?" I say this because every decision in my life, everybody > told me that I was a fool."_

That's some of the best advice to ever come out of a Wired article.

<comment><USER15> >>Sanghvi -"Men are just more comfortable with men than they are with women."

> Aren't women more comfortable with women than they are with men?

Exactly. Men are generally more friendly with men and women are more friendly with men, where the ratio is, 70-30 men to women, 50-50 men to women or 30-70 men to women.

Go look at the fashion industry and you'll see that the women are more friendly with the women and the men are more friendly with the men. The fact that men or women are the majority and in power is orthogonal to the issue of same gender affinity insofar are fraternization is concerned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am a bisexual male programmer. I don't give a damn what sex you have, and I would prefer not to think about it at all in a work environment, since it's not relevant. But the skewed gender ratio affects interactions amongst my mostly heterosexual colleagues, and I find it disruptive. This is also true of race.

Anything we can do to remove bias and create a non-hostile work environment for everyone is a win not just for our ability to function as a field, but also to serve as a benchmark of social equality for other fields.

</comment><comment><USER15>
        "If you have more women engineers on a team, they tend to
        bring more diverse opinions, but they also tend to build a
        collaborative culture. And a result, things get done
        faster. They're more organized. There's more empathy,
        which makes for a better work environment. It's just
        better all around." - <USER2>

I don't understand why it's okay for a woman to make generalizations like this about the things they think women are better at, but it's totally not okay for a man to openly voice their opinions on what they think men are better at.

If it's not acceptable for men to voice similar opinions, why do we not call out women when they do the same?

</comment><comment><USER20> Anonymous message boards truly are an ugly place. One very accomplished woman speaks out about her mostly positive but colored with some negative experiences in the tech world and the top comment is an anti-affirmative action rant (bears and foxes) that brings out a bunch of old tropes while completely ignoring the history of our industry.

<comment><USER21> How dare people express differing opinions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The expectation that things work on merit and that you should be able to just work hard and succeed, seems to hit many people.

Unfortunately, real merit seems to go beyond one's official role. You are better if you can move stuff forward and facilitate projects succeeding overall. If you can make things happen.

Schools never taught us to think about life that way.</comment>


Florida boy calls 911 to order pizza, gets lesson and a pie - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/52f69108eb5a4f3caa1d7d82e88c3b5b <comment><USER2> i feel like he may have learned the wrong lesson here</comment>


Is overclocking over? - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/109821-is-overclocking-over

<comment><USER2> I guess the age of overclocking is kind of over. There are some people out there that want to push their systems to their limits and also want more bang for their buck. I remember back in the day when I was still a young lad and into building PCs, that was all that I cared about. Considering now that we have CPUs with multiple cores, larger memory capacities, better graphics cards etc, the edge in performance that overclocking allows doesn't matter as much. We have to also consider that prices have changed in terms of what you can get for your money. I remember my parents buying me a Pentium 3 500 with 128MB of RAM and a CD Burner for $3000 back in the day. For $3000 now, you can get something really amazing.

<comment><USER3> Games are less and less CPU-bound these days as well. A mediocre Core 2 Duo paired with the latest ATI/nVidia GPU can run pretty much anything out there (I speak from experience).

Overclocking still has its benefits; you can save quite a bit of cash by overclocking your 16-slice home render farm or video encoding rig. This is especially apparent in Intel land, where they charge a $600 markup between the second-best and absolute best CPU they offer.</comment></comment>


Image identified as by USA 224, a classified satellite - <AUTHOR> https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2019/09/image-from-trump-tweet-identified-as.html <comment><AUTHOR> Really "cool" how my submission got another title and url, thus, it basically became another submission...

</comment><comment><USER2> PREVIOUSLY

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20842474](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20842474)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20844394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20844394)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20845111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20845111)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20846040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20846040)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20851501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20851501)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20861003](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20861003)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20864354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20864354)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _This image has a much higher definition than anything the US has admitted > to in the past. Other nations probably guessed that the US has advanced > satellite imaging, but now they no longer need to guess._

I think they still have to keep guessing, and here's why:

> _The satellites are believed to have been the source of some imagery of the > Soviet Union and China made public in 1997; images of Sudan and Afghanistan > made public in 1998 related to the response to the 1998 U.S. embassy > bombings;[citation needed] and a 2019 photo, revealed by President Donald > Trump, of a failed Iranian rocket launch[10]._ (Wikipedia)

If these things were flying in 1997, presumably what's up there now is even better. That's over 22 years of time for further developments.

<comment><USER4> >If these things were flying in 1997, presumably what's up there now is even better.

The USA-224 satellite was launched in 2011 and has much better capabilities than the ones that took the 1997/1998 pictures.

The Wikipedia article you quoted [1] is about the entire KH-11 series, spanning >40 years.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being as the image has had some information blacked out (in the corner) I seriously doubt that Trump snapped a pic on his iPhone and tweeted it from inside the SCIF or whatever. Someone looked at this image and approved releasing it, and I really do hope that person was at least marginally aware of the intelligence aspect (specifically, not Trump)

<comment><USER6> While that's accurate, it looks like the classification markers were blacked out post picture. That's important because it indicates that they didn't go and declassify the picture on the original system to share it.

So the picture was taken, the classification markers were blacked out, and then POTUS tweeted it. We don't know the classification of the device which took the photo, the classification of the system on which the markers were blacked out, or when the decision was made to declassify the image.

<comment><USER5> I agree, and I think that's the largest concern here. Only a few years ago a sailor was jailed for a year (later pardoned) for snapping a photo in the general vicinity of certain classified items, and there is no excuse for the president behaving so flippantly with this kind of information.

My original point was that the president may be surrounding himself with people who are green-lighting terrible ideas, and that is what concerns me.

<comment><USER6> I get that. It's complicated because no one knows what happened; did he order it declassified and they just did it poorly or was he instead saving whoever originally took it a huge deal of trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is blogspam.

Significantly higher quality article:

[https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2019/09/image-from-trump- tw...](https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2019/09/image-from-trump-tweet- identified-as.html)

<comment><USER8> To get a faster reply, I've emailed your comment to the mods, since along with other comments it seems like they'll want to correct this, using the contact link in the HN footer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have heard him called a "social-engineering genius" (think The Atlantic, 2018) but this is just childish. So much for our intelligence community.</comment>


Thinking of relocating? These are the best countries chosen by expats - <AUTHOR> https://www.travelgig.co/2017/02/24/thinking-of-moving-abroad-here-are-the-best-countries-as-chosen-by-expats/ <comment><USER2> I really don't understand how Malta came so much further (2nd place) to Cyprus (35th)! They are more or less same thing. Same climate, same language situation, both in EU, similar immigration and tax systems. Except Cyprus is bigger geographically and in population so is more diverse and there are more things to do, on the other hand, it is further away from most places you want to fly, 3-4 hour flights are norm which would be 2-3 hour from Malta. Malta is in Schengen, which is a strong plus though - is this just that?

<comment><AUTHOR> That does seem strange that there's such a difference between the two! It'll be a combination of many factors, Schengen would be a big one, which probably makes for a better expat community.

<comment><USER2> Schengen makes a difference (for an island nation, that is, which you can enter or exit by plane only anyway) only for non-EU citizens. EU citizens are free to move anyway, Schengen or not.</comment></comment></comment>


Everyone in California wants to be the last new resident in their neighborhood - <AUTHOR> http://ochousingnews.com/blog/everyone-wants-to-be-the-last-new-resident-in-the-neighborhood/ <comment><USER2> The thing that drives me bonkers about OC and most California suburbs is the lack of town centers.

On the East Coast home buyers have started to discover that all these previously neglected walkable little colonial & 19th century towns and denser suburbs, often adjacent to rail lines, have a lot of value. The smarter municipalities have been taking the hint and zoning in denser development to grow out the town center naturally as it was intended. The east coast can start to regrow a lot of the character that was lost in the 20th century tract housing boom, and begin to resemble the old world in that way.

On the West Coast, most of the small suburban cities never had a town center to begin with. They were designed by real estate developers using standardized high-profit low-density building plans, entirely focused on cars over walking anywhere. (God forbid you live somewhere that you can walk to buy groceries!)

So you end up with these awkward community layouts where there are zero denser centers to grow out of naturally and permanently zoned that way. Nobody wants to take the plunge in having their house re-zoned and experiment with the costly home investment they're sitting on. Mixed use is still a dirty word. So no change occurs.

All that seems to be getting done lately is locking down neighborhood zoning and building fancier and fancier shopping centers. Something in this is going to change eventually, but unless people voluntarily bulldoze their houses to make room for new town plans, I can't imagine what form it will take.

<comment><USER3> _On the West Coast, most of the small suburban cities never had a town center to begin with. They were designed by real estate developers using standardized high-profit low-density building plans, entirely focused on cars over walking anywhere._

I don't know what you are talking about. I don't believe this to be true of California generally. It is somewhat true of the LA area, but it was always true of LA, before the cult of the car became a thing. In the case of the LA area, it was not possible to develop it without developing large tracts of land in one go because of the cost of bringing infrastructure to the desert. However, when it began, there were trolleys and the like and you could comfortably live without a car. You just used the trolley or other public transit.

Also, the San Francisco Bay Area is one of the few places in the US with population density comparable to parts of Europe. So it has relatively good public transit for the US.

Yes, a lot of America has made it essentially against the rules to create the kind of walkable cities that we once had. The New Urbanism movement was all about trying to find a way to recreate that in spite of the current zoning and legal climate that has whored out development to the cult of the car.

I don't know how to fix it, but I feel like you really don't know the history here that you are badmouthing. It is more complicated than that.

<comment><USER4> You don't need to know the history to be frustrated with Californian infrastructure.

Been living in southern California for most of my life and have hated most of it. I can't go anywhere without a car. The public transportation is terrible and I have to travel 3 miles for a fucking grocery store. This isn't just southern California and the LA area, but most of California from what I experienced. I'm excited for the day that I can leave, but I have no idea when that will be...

<comment><USER3> No, of course not. You don't need to know the history of anything at all to be frustrated with it or hate it. But being frustrated with it doesn't make inaccurate blanket statements about the history of the place more accurate. I was not arguing with your right to be frustrated. I was just pointing out that some of your blanket statements were not accurate. Even if it doesn't benefit you personally, I hope it benefits someone.

Good luck getting out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Almost none of the people currently living in SF will get to see their grandkids. Statistics tell us the vast majority of their children will be forced to move away; even if you have a good career ahead of you and in theory would be able to afford to buy in the bay area, that's typically later in your career.

Are you really going to live with your parents after you've been married for a year and have two kids? (Yes I know some people will but the vast majority won't).

<comment><USER6> This pretty much matches my experience with friends who now in their 20s grew up in the bay. Most are in Seattle, Sacramento, Portland, or other more affordable places. The ones who couldn't/didn't finish college or get into tech live elsewhere.

I have a friend who is coming up on 28, having just moved from his parents house in Los Gatos a year ago. He moved into the slums with 3 roommates, paying around 60% of what his parents pay for their mortgage for his share of rent. He managed to find a job in tech which is how he can afford the place. Basically you move out of a mansion and into a ghetto, stay under your parents, or move away.

I'm up in Seattle desperately trying to save money for a down payment faster than housing prices are going up - if I wait a year it'll be an extra 30-50k for the same property. But if I overextend to try to buy a place and the market crashes I'm completely SOL. Its very difficult to make any long-term decisions or enter the housing market.

But still, if you're not in it, you're giving up a lot of your future buying power. Friends of mine managed to buy a very very cheap place in the bay and lived there for a few years, and used the equity to buy a much nicer place in the Seattle area. No idea really what to do - I feel like the market is totally capping out at some point and isn't sustainable - I have to place a bet whether it will rise continuously or crash and if I get it wrong I'm up shit creek.

<comment><USER7> _I 'm up in Seattle desperately trying to save money for a down payment faster than housing prices are going up - if I wait a year it'll be an extra 30-50k for the same property. But if I overextend to try to buy a place and the market crashes I'm completely SOL. Its very difficult to make any long-term decisions or enter the housing market._

This is why so many people move to Texas: [http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/17/10-reasons-texas-is-our- fut...](http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/17/10-reasons-texas-is-our-future/). Most years, three to six of the fastest growing counties are in Texas. Texas's biggest cities have relatively free land-use laws, so that as demand rises new housing gets built and, in city centers, denser housing gets built.

This dynamic has been going on for a while: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale- of-two-town-houses/306334/):

 _In 2000, my husband and I moved out of our mid-1970s three-bedroom town house in Los Angeles and into a brand-new three-bedroom town house in Uptown Dallas. At the time, the two were worth about the same, but the Dallas place was 1,000 square feet bigger. We've moved back to L.A., and we're glad we kept our old house. Over the past seven years, its value has roughly doubled. By contrast, we sold our Dallas place for $6,500 less than we paid for it._

 _It's not that we bought into a declining Dallas neighborhood: Uptown is one of the hottest in the city, with block upon block of new construction. But the supply of housing in Dallas is elastic. When demand increases, because of growing population or rising incomes, so does the amount of housing; prices stay roughly the same. That's true not only in the outlying suburbs, but also in old neighborhoods like ours, where dense clusters of town houses and multistory apartment buildings are replacing two-story fourplexes and single- family homes. It's easy to build new housing in Dallas._

 _Not so in Los Angeles. There, in-creased demand generates little new supply. Even within zoning rules, it's hard to get permission to build. When a local developer bought three small 1920s duplexes on our block, planning to replace them with a big condo building, neighbors campaigned to stop the project. The city declared the charming but architecturally undistinguished buildings historic landmarks, blocking demolition for a year. The developer gave up, leaving the neighborhood's landscape—and its housing supply—unchanged. In Los Angeles, when demand for housing increases, prices rise._

Seattle has been better about expanding housing supply than most of CA, but it's not nearly as good as Texas cities.

<comment><USER6> Expanded housing supply to me just means sprawl unfortunately. I do agree that Seattle/CA should be building way faster on existing land and upzoning. Its gonna take them 20+ years to put a light rail in, which to my mind is pretty nuts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a perfectly valid reason for this: overdevelopment, particularly in the Californian style of "chew up green space for tract homes", sucks.

There was a time when new development was viewed as a good thing. We built high quality buildings and established new towns. Now we chew up land to produce this:

[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3264/2643280748_7799215dc3.jp...](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3264/2643280748_7799215dc3.jpg?v=0)

What human can look at that, even if they are forced by circumstances to live in it, and not want to hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats?

<comment><USER9> Many places (especially in Silicon valley) restrict the height of buildings, and the number of apartments, etc. When you can't build up, you have to build out.

<comment><USER10> But you can build a community where the houses aren't all identical to each other. With cul-de-sacs and winding roads and trees lining the street, and little boxes every couple of feet for FTTN or FTTP internet, and wide sidewalks where kids feel comfortable walking to school.

<comment><USER9> Very true.. And they do build, but they cost more.. LOTS more.. you can build a neighborhood of 500 homes with 5 plans, and a few tweaks here and there (maybe put the garage on the other side on some houses based on plan A). For a developer, you can now order 100 of each type of front door, X number of truckloads of timber, roofing shingles, can lights, etc. that is known and planned ahead of time. Each bit of customization adds time to plan and build, and special orders that cost more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And it's not just limited to SF. You can go out to Tracy or Fairfield where there's miles and miles of space in every direction and yet, you still see the houses piled on top of each other with less than 5 feet in between each house, all because the greedy government and it's citizens won't allocate more space for residential areas. It's just crazy. Somehow, these democratically controlled areas just feel that everything (traffic, fishes, insects, a river, etc) is more important than basic human needs (shelter). They need to start putting basic human needs first, above all the other petty stuff.

<comment><USER12> This misses the mark from my point of view. Green space is good. Density is good. Density is how you make walkable neighborhoods.

You're advocating for addressing the need for housing in the form of sprawl. Communities need to build, but that's the wrong direction to build in.

<comment><USER13> The problem with low density housing is you then need to drive a long way to get to someplace that isn't just more tract-housing.

I saw this a few years ago, what's interesting is the high variation in density, from 4 units per acre to over 300. A density variation of 75 to 1.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUvR9QNAzvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUvR9QNAzvc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Because of prop 13, each new house costs the EXISTING homeowners money. That's because the taxes on the new house will never pay for the additional public infrastructure (roads, schools, public safety, etc) to support its residents. So, at some point, there will be "parcel taxes" for a new wing on the school, a new library, and a new fire house, and then "sales surtaxes" for a new overpass, a Bart extension, etc ...... In San Mateo county, this is where most of the opposition comes from.

<comment><USER15> Prop 13 favors current homeowners at the expense of future homeowners. This NIMBY-written FAQ[0] exposes the structural unfairness pretty well.

And yes, property taxes are an ideal way to pay for local infrastructure, and California is suffering the consequences of defunding this.

[0] [http://www.hjta.org/propositions/proposition-13/what-do- you-...](http://www.hjta.org/propositions/proposition-13/what-do-you-tell-new- neighbor-about-proposition-13/)

<comment><USER13> I tend to think that cost of a house is the carrying costs, mortgages, interest, maintenance, taxes. In a built up area, carrying costs are determined by what the local economy will support.

Reducing property taxes just drives up the price and thus mortgage payments. Difference is property taxes tend to pay for local services and infrastructure that increase the real value of a home. Where mortgage and interest paid flee to places elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is no hypocrisy at all. If residents [0, N-1], resident N, and residents [N+1, ∞) are all distinct sets of residents. I don't have to apply the same rules and standards to these sets.

Is it "hypocrisy" or a "double standard" if a train car is full and no more people can get on? Surely, a different rule or standard is being applied to the people already on it and to the ones on the platform, right? No; the principle is that the N people already on got the first "dibs" at the resource, making it unavailable for the N+1-th person, too bad.

When you move somewhere, though you are yourself contributing to the traffic and density, the fact is that in that moment it is as quiet as it will be.

It's perfectly human, after discovering something great, not to want to attract others there. If you find a great camping spot in the woods or whatever, you just keep your mouth shut, otherwise it will be spoiled by every tom, dick and harry who will trample everything and leave garbage and so on.

I know of a good bakery and a few restaurants. I never recommend them to anyone, because they will just get more business and get all uppity and raise their prices and lower their quality.

</comment><comment><USER17> As a resident of Irvine there are many aspects at play here, and this is an over-simplification. Though I do agree with the underlying author's feeling; NIMBYs are annoying, and illogical.

I do however take great offense to being referred to as a xenophobe simply because of where I live, that's asinine.

<comment><USER18> Well IMO NIMBYism is perfectly logical and aligned with the residents' self interests.

But they are often hypocritical with their other positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> No one wants to spend a great deal of money for a house and then have some changes come in that sees the price of it drop. This isn't just California, it's everywhere around the world, it's simply human nature.

</comment><comment><USER20> Not exclusive to CA! This happens everywhere

<comment><USER18> I specifically recall Google's proposed Boulder Campus expansion eliciting similar sentiment from current residents.

<comment><USER21> A subset of people in Boulder are convinced that the problem is not housing, but "too many jobs". I wish I could send them to spend a year in Greece or Southern Italy or some other such place that is blissfully free of those awful jobs.

<comment><USER18> Interesting... I've heard "It's not the lack of jobs that's the problem, it's the lack of demand. We're out of demand." before, but didn't think I'd ever hear "we have too many jobs"...

<comment><USER21> [http://www.dailycamera.com/guest- opinions/ci_28237442/sally-...](http://www.dailycamera.com/guest- opinions/ci_28237442/sally-schneider-how-maintain-boulders-quality-life)

"A couple of weeks ago, I went to the East Boulder workshop and couldn't wait to discuss my ideas about slowing down job growth in Boulder and other ideas for the housing issues."

<comment><USER22> Wow, I cannot believe this is not the Onion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Author makes blanket absolutes about the State of California and the American Dream. Don't agree. Also, article funnels into a home listing.. fwiw

<comment><USER24> It's a housing news site, with ads. Many tech blogs have a big call to action pitching their mailing list for their info-products or training on every article.

HN is commonly filled with blanket false-absolutes about SJWs, or Republicans, or those of faith, or those into Bitcoin, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great article, but... still politics. Even if they're politics that I think are extremely important in many places in the US right now, it probably still doesn't belong.

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

<comment><USER25> How does some politics not belong on a board that deals primarily with startups and entrepreneurs, neither operates in a vacuum and the availability of good staff who can afford to live where you want to set up premises etc is a crucial thing.

Where I live in the UK we have the fastest average internet speed (by quite a margin), top 5 lowest cost of living and excellent transport links, We have basically no external investment and that is in part down to politics.

You can ignore politics but it won't ignore you.

<comment><USER21> Because politics is more important, and of broader appeal than most of what we discuss here, it will consume the site if allowed to.

Or: how much do you _really_ want to read about Trump vs Hillary here?</comment></comment></comment>


A year ago, I started open sourcing my designs - <AUTHOR> http://logodust.com/?c <comment><USER2> Expensive, but nice design.

<comment><USER3> correction: they are free downloads

<comment><USER2> The "expensive" is a reference to their custom design services.</comment></comment></comment>


Voyager – The Missing Laravel Admin - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/the-control-group/voyager <comment><USER2> I didn't see in the documentation but does this require a fresh install of Laravel or can in be integrated into an existing site.</comment>


Ask HN:Is there still a market for real estate search? - <AUTHOR>

I was looking at the big share of the market that Zillow, Trulia, etc have, do you guys think that this is a saturated market? <comment><USER2> In US Maybe- Outside US- No</comment>


Oregon man spends 900 days in jail without charges - <AUTHOR> http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/03/oregon_man_commits_no_crime_bu.html

<comment><USER2> Insanity and tyranny. It is a complete violation of a man's individual rights to hold him in jail just because he may be a useful witness -- it doesn't matter how long it lasts, one week or multiple years. Is the lawyer competent? where are the ACLU and IJ?</comment>


Run iPhone Apps Directly From Your Browser With Pieceable Viewer - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/11/pieceable-viewer/

<comment><USER2> Meanwhile development of a true iDevice emulator is underway. Unlike XCode's iDevice simulator (it compiles the dev app for the host architecture [x86/x86-64]), this emulator is based off of ARM QEMU with lots of hard work going into emulating the iPhone's hardware. It directly emulates stock iOSes/apps.

Project page: <http://www.iemu.org>

Github: <https://github.com/cmwdotme/QEMU-s5l89xx-port>

Screenshots: <http://www.cmw.me/lcdworking.png> <http://www.cmw.me/ichargetoo.png> <http://www.iemu.org/oibiemu.png>

Author's Twitter: <http://twitter.com/cmwdotme>

</comment><comment><USER3> Aw, TechCrunch. Why do you do it?

These guys put together a cool little simulator and you use it _embed a single app into your article_ , thus forcing all 100k visitors to your site to DOS the thing??? Why not link to the site and let people hit it on their own, thus spreading the load out to a few different apps and giving the server a chance to handle your traffic?

I feel for these guys because TechCrunch did the same thing to us when they reviewed Twiddla. They linked a single meeting room, thus essentially sending 10000 people into one conference call. "wow, this is crowded." "who changed the page?" "why did my drawing get erased?"

It was a full hour of chaos before we noticed what they'd done and pushed a new build to specifically redirect traffic from that meeting to the homepage. Not that TC traffic is particularly useful in terms of long term customers, but guys, at least try to think about what will actually happen if you deep link stuff like that.

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazon is doing some interesting work to drive an EC2 hosted Android simulator with a Flash front-end, letting to you test drive apps in the browser.

[http://gigaom.com/mobile/amazons-testdrive-is-the-real- stren...](http://gigaom.com/mobile/amazons-testdrive-is-the-real-strength-of- appstore/)

That being said, it is ridiculous that there is no built in way to take screens of an app on an Android phone (like the power + home iOS combo). Since Android has the concept of a secure canvas (e.g.sensitive content), this should be stock.

Lack of easy screenshots makes it harder for normal users to blog about and help review and promote an Android app.

<comment><USER5> It's pretty mind blowing - when I was developing Yelp Monocle on Android the best way to get a screenshot was to _take_a_picture_of_the_damn_phone_ because the SDK screenshot utility read out pixels very slowly in a raster pattern and due to the jitter from the sensors this resulted in a screenshot that appeared as if you were fast forwarding through a video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very cool. I'd love to read more about how it works. I think they're running a dedicated iOS simulator for each app and streaming the user input/video output via Flash. Even their $60/mo plan has a limit of 10 simultaneous viewers, so I imagine it's pretty taxing on their hardware.

They must be capturing the output at some deeper layer though since OpenGL doesn't render (but it does run).

<comment><USER7> Maybe, except that these demo apps, Yelp, Hipmunk, etc. are probably seeing 100s of simultaneous viewings right now. I guess they could have racks and racks of mac minis.

<comment><USER8> I'm guessing they increased the limit for the demos for free. I wouldn't be surprised if a single machine could run a dozen or two apps simultaneously, if they were able to trick the simulator into running multiple instances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Since you send them a copy of your iPhone simulator code, they must be running this on some kind of Mac OS X system, and giving you VNC-style access to the app.

Kinda dodgy.

<comment><USER10> iPhone Simulator binary, not source code per <http://www.pieceable.com/viewer>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have needed this product for months now to demo my company's app for prospective buyers. This will allow our technical sales force (who are on PC's) to share this via GoToMeeting with prospects (we're a B2B in a very relationship-driven industry).

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting, but I do find it somewhat ironic that it would be Flash player relaying iPhone apps to the browser.

<comment><USER13> Yes, we do, too :-)

The first version was actually all standard web stuff, but the performance was just a little bit below what we wanted. Flash works for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does this work? Is it an iPhone emulator? If so, that seems non-trivial to get working considering how little is publicly available about it.

<comment><USER15> You can see artifacting in the viewer and a ton of bandwidth usage, so it appears to be VNC to a system actually running the iPhone simulator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The idea is great but unfortunately the technology behind it is limiting. Since their highest pricing plan only allows for 10 simultaneous viewers it's not realistic option to embed it in a popular blog as a demo.

<comment><USER13> Hey - I'm one of the Pieceable founders.

The pricing plans we've put up so far are definitely intended for agencies / dev shops that want to share apps-in-progress with clients. We know there's a lot more we could do with this, though - we're just waiting for everyone to tell us what they want before we add new pricing :-)

<comment><USER16> Can you share what the max connections the Yelp app was pulling from the article? And how many total connections it had?

<comment><USER13> Not sure what the max number of concurrent connections was, but the Yelp app has been opened just over 10k times so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really cool stuff. I'm also looking forward to seeing Pieceable itself launch, the app editor is built with Cappuccino.

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats on the coverage, guys! We missed you at dinner. :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, cool idea. Anyone able to do this yet? Does it work?

</comment><comment><USER19> Very, very cool.</comment>