Web login using SSH - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/altitude/login-with-ssh <comment><USER2> This is something I've had the occasion to discuss before, and it's a good idea not because "it's ssh" or "it's decentralized" (those are just good benefits), but because it moves the authentication to an _actual authentication protocol_ and, were it to catch on, would have to be done from the browser itself.

Does this ring a bell? That's right, it's BrowserID ladies & gents. I'll never let this go, Persona was a _great_ thing for the web and its death is mourned.

I think I've seen ssh auth implemented before but this is the smoothest POC yet. Your next step: Make a firefox extension that integrates this, as a proof of concept for in-browser authentication.

<comment><USER3> I'd disagree. My personal opinion is, BrowserID/Persona was a bad thing for the web and it's a good thing it haven't hit any big. Sure, it was better than most popular protocols out there, but it was still wrong.

My opinion is that BrowserID had a very flawed core concept. I firmly believe that my _identity_ is something that I [can] naturally _define_ and _possess_. But everyone since OpenID had stolen this from the end-user and identities became something that you're provided with - and I find the very term "identity provider" unnerving.

With identity providers you're not you anymore, but merely your Facebook account or your email address or your domain name - a things you only temporarily _lease_ from a _third-party_ like an email provider or a domain registry. Sure, there's some common sense, legal protections and stuff, but I'm don't like merely relying on those. I think, in a sane world, at least personal (i.e. non-group) identities must be merely asserted, not provided - and they must originate from a person themself.

On the contrary, this login-with-ssh thingy and few other schemes (gpgAuth and WebID) are much closer to what the things should be like. While they don't yet completely resolve the distinction between an identity and a credential (it's really hard), they root your identity in something that you can actually define for yourself and handle without depending on anyone else - a key pair.

<comment><USER4> Normal people will lose key material. Systems administrators sometimes lose key material! In a sane world, it needs to be possible for someone with common sense to revoke and reissue your credential if you lose it. If this is categorically posisble, then your identity is leased, not owned.

Your SSH private key is not your identity, it's just some bytes. Your identity is determined by _what public key is considered to be "you"_, i.e. what's in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. Your infrastructure provider can usually change this, with or without your permission.

Unless you own the _land_ where the hard disk public key -> account mapping resides, your identity is leased.

<comment><USER5> Here's an idea: you can designate "emergency contacts", other keypairs that can be used to recover your identity, perhaps those of your family members. They could declare the intention to recover your credentials, and then you would have 2 weeks to publish a signal that you still possess your keypair, to block the recovery. You could also revoke their designation at that point, if they are abusing it.

If two weeks pass without incident, then they can publish a new public key half which is considered yours, and presumably give the private half to you.

<comment><USER3> This. And maybe even use Shamir's secret sharing (or a similar scheme) to split the backup/recovery key among the family members or trusted close friends - so a single person won't be able to compromise your security.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Public key authentication of _clients_ (as opposed to _servers_ ), has been part of SSL since v1.0. This is just adding a misdirection, the underlying protocol is the same X.509 we've had since the late 1980s.

The main problems are:

1\. Certificate authenticity -- the key has to be added to authorized_keys on the server. This includes certificate revocation and expiration, and re- establishing trust after certificate is lost.

2\. Private key management -- how do I migrate keys to a new browser or a new machine? Where are the keys stored anyways? Absolute PITA in every existing implementation.

3\. Key generation -- we need some more user-friendly tools if this is to catch up

<comment><USER7> The U.S. Military does a passable job of this with the Common Access Card (CAC). You insert it into a smart card reader and then visit the restricted- access website. Your browser/OS prompts you for a PIN which, I believe, is used to decrypt your private key. Your browser validates the remote site against a set of DoD-provided root certificates that you configure on your computer before hand. Then, some kind of key exchange happens--this has always been a bit fuzzy to me--and the keys on your CAC card are used to authenticate you to the remote site.

It's not perfect, of course. You can lose your CAC card and then you're screwed unless you have a way to get new one. It requires a smart card reader which is not standard on most computers. The cards themselves can get damaged by corrosive liquids or sweat (learned this the hard way). Still, it's not a bad way of authenticating and I feel much better about it than a SSH private key that hasn't been encrypted with a passphrase.

<comment><USER6> For example in Estonia, every citizen has an ID card, and every ID card is an ISO-7816 smartcard. So they can have this nationwide. Then again, that's a country of 1.3M, and you only get the card when you're 15yo. Foreign visitors obviously don't have one.

These examples illustrate rather the near impossibility to implement this kind of a scheme successfully, even when backed by a state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The is a great idea, but the usability is probably not good enough to make it work.

What I like: I am authenticated by some proof of ownership, and, unlike with password authentication, the "thing I own" is never transferred over a wire or stored at the server. This is even better than what I have now (unique passwords for every site, managed with 1Password, and 2FA for important sites).

But the SSH callback would have to be automatic - Via a browser plugin, or even better, implemented by the browser itself. I don't think I want to start a terminal and past a string every time I log in to a site.

The "paste this into your terminal" also opens up a completely different can of worms - Social engineering!

<comment><USER9> So...basically you want SSL client certificates but with a slightly less sucky UI?

I mean, https already supports this, it's just that setting up servers to deal with client certs sucks and the UI for users is also pretty bad. But the infrastructure is already there without poorly reinventing the wheel over SSH.

<comment><USER8> Right, that's exactly what I want. Or something like BrowserID / Persona was supposed to be. It has to be slick and frictionless, otherwise it won't stand a chance.

You know, there is a reason nobody uses client certificates...

<comment><USER2> Aye in the end I don't think the protocol itself matters as much as the concept of doing (asymmetric) auth in the browser rather than layered over http. Yelling "but it already exists! client certs!" is kinda unproductive, like you said there's a reason nobody uses them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Neat idea, but I think there's a confused deputy(?) attack possible here.

Specifically, I think there's a missing binding between the SSH session used for authentication and a user's web session.

Let's say that Alice has an account on bob.com. Mallory sets up mallory.net and sets up demo-ssh.mallory.net as a DNS alias (or TCP proxy) pointing to demo-ssh.bob.com.

1\. Alice visits mallory.net, which Mallory controls

2\. Mallory visits bob.com and starts an authentication session.

3\. bob.com presents an SSH challenge to Mallory

        ssh demo-ssh.bob.com -l 7d7662f63f70de7714 -p 2222

4\. Mallory forwards the challenge from bob.com to Alice, optionally substituting their own hostname:

        ssh demo-ssh.mallory.net -l 7d7662f63f70de7714 -p 2222

5\. Alice runs the command to authenticate to "demo-ssh.mallory.net". But this actually authenticates Mallory as Alice to bob.com!

6\. Upon detecting a successful login, mallory.net accepts Alice's login to avoid raising suspicion.

The only sure sign that this has happened would be that demo-ssh.bob.com and demo-ssh.mallory.net would have the same host keys, but OpenSSH isn't designed to prohibit duplicate host keys.

<comment><USER10> One potential way to solve this would be to include the origin in the challenge, which the server could check:

        ssh demo-ssh.bob.com -l 7d7662f63f70de7714 -p 2222 https://www.bob.com

Mallory's attack then would have the possibility of being detected:

        ssh demo-ssh.mallory.net -l 7d7662f63f70de7714 -p 2222 https://www.bob.com

However, this still relies on the user manually checking the origin of the challenge every single time, and users aren't very reliable. It might be better suited to a browser extension than to a manual copy-and-paste process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would argue that using a client certificate would be a much more practical way for web authentication. This would eliminate the need to start a SSH session when trying to login.

<comment><USER12> My university uses client certs for some services. It's a pain with tons of odd error cases. With a technical user base, this might actually have better worst-case experiences (but worse average-case, when client-side certs work and you always use one machine they are smooth).

It would be awesome if YubiKeys or other SmartCard-like devices were more widespread and better supported in browsers, because it would make client-cert workflows way easier. It's really mostly an UX issue.

<comment><USER11> I can agree with this, but I think the hardware tokens compared to regular client certificates have the same issue: better average case (if it works it much easier to use it on multiple machines) but worse worst-case (a missing driver will completely shut you out).

<comment><USER12> It should be possible to build tokens that work without special drivers, requiring "just" application support. (Many 2FA tokens emulate HIDs/keyboards)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sweet. You can fetch keys from GitHub by username without authenticating, so that could be a convenient way to avoid having to paste keys.

<comment><USER14> I'm confused. Would this mean I could just grab anybody's public key and log in - as them - to a service that supported this?

<comment><USER15> No, you could just grab anybody's public key to verify their login (when they use their private key).

SSH keys are asymmetric. Think of public keys as locks and private keys as ... well, keys. You hand out copies of the lock but you keep the key to yourself. Anyone can put a lock on a box and know you're the only one who can open it. You tell them what lock to use and then use your key to open it to show them you are who you claim to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This topic (not this project) was last discussed 5 months ago with 150+ comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8970402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8970402)

There has also been mention of a few other SSH + browser ideas:

[http://sshkeybox.com/](http://sshkeybox.com/)

[https://www.minaterm.com/](https://www.minaterm.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17> So I like this. Here's how I see this working for the majority of people who don't know what SSH is:

1\. Browsers support syncing between different devices using some type of cloud provider (think Google's sing into Chrome, Safari's iCould integration, etc.). This obviously would need some type of client side encryption to be secure. Could be achieved with a plug in as a stop gap.

2\. Browser support for this type of auth. Basically, you'd do <input type="identity" protocol="ssh" nonce="abc">, which would render as a drop down with a list of identities the browser has (which correspond to your private keys). You simply choose one, then submit the form. The server sees your public key (which it may remember after registration), the nonce, and the nonce signed with your private key, verifiable against your public key (I am hand-waving the actual authentication here. This implementation is susceptible to at least replay attacks unless the nonce is remembered by the server.)

That's pretty much it. If you think about it, this is how LastPass works now, except instead of sending a one time signed nonce back to the server it sends a username and plain text password.

</comment><comment><USER18> I experimented with an alternative HTTP authentication scheme (like basic or digest, using the "WWW-Authenticate" header) that used ssh keys to authenticate the client. Some of the idea was based on this Joyent blog [0] post about signing the date header, but more robust and meant for a user rather than scripted access. The idea was that the browser would interface with a specific ssh-agent with specific keys loaded for specific sites.

Unfortunately, I didn't get very far and stopped working on it a while ago, but one thing I did learn was that the source code for links was much easier to come up to speed on and use for rough experiments than the source code for a full-on graphical browser.

I still have notes for it... somewhere.

[0] [http://joyeur.com/2012/01/03/a-bit-more-about-the-new- joyent...](http://joyeur.com/2012/01/03/a-bit-more-about-the-new-joyent-cloud- api/)

</comment><comment><USER19> What I've always REALLY wanted to see with regards to SSH and the web is an implementation of the SSH Agent API over web sockets or something. That way if I had some Ansible scripts I wanted to run from a web UI (like something similar to Rundeck) I wouldn't need a key sitting on my server to run those commands. The program invoking Ansible would provide an appropriate value for SSH_AUTH_SOCK that would be connected to my browser and tada. Now, I'm not entirely sure it is feasible, but we've implemented enough crypto in the browser lately, I'd bet it is.

<comment><USER20> I wonder if you could "bypass" the browser by having a socket on your box that connected to a websocket server (?) that then forwarded your request to the remote box. I haven't had coffee so I'm probably missing something.

Edit: [https://github.com/mcavage/node-ssh- agent](https://github.com/mcavage/node-ssh-agent) is interesting.

You could have a browser extension that connects back to a local daemon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've had this idea before, nice to see it implemented. The reason I've never pursued it as I'm not quite sure what the actual user experience or benefit over traditional 2FA systems is.

<comment><USER22> I wouldn't mind if my hosting providers offered this in lieu of password auth. All my servers are already pubkey-authentication only and I always have my keys/an SSH client handy

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been meaning to search for exactly this for 'personal production' use. I think it fits the bill in a great way.

Say you have a blog, or even some kind of small application, only you develop/administrate it, and only you ever will. SSHing in couldn't be simpler, but front-end authentication sucks. Everything available feels overkill to just authenticate that you are you. Most recently, I just used HTTP basic auth, resolving to see if there was a way to use SSH 'soon'.

</comment><comment><USER24> So, what is the advantage over just using Client Certificates, which are supported by all major browsers?

This is how you authenticate with StartSSL.com for example.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is as easy and usable by normal people as would be "web login by signing a string with your PGP key". No way.

The solution for this kind of thing is still something like OpenID, however simpler, so everyone can implement everywhere they want, even using custom SSH-OpenID servers, and normal people can use with their Google emails.

</comment><comment><USER26> With OpenBSD the pf packet filter can block any port unless there is an active Ssh connection from you too.</comment>


An Elm compiler for the Erlang Virtual Machine - <AUTHOR> https://kofi.sexy/blog/elm-beam <comment><USER2> Kudos to Kofi for a nice project and a good write-up :+1: :)

Since you're not planning on continue the project, and are interested on 'Elm on the server', you might look at Purescript, which has a similar syntax, and compiles to Javascript, and also the BEAM: [https://github.com/purerl](https://github.com/purerl)

There are also C++ and C backends at [https://github.com/andyarvanitis/purescript- native](https://github.com/andyarvanitis/purescript-native) and [https://github.com/pure-c/pure-c](https://github.com/pure-c/pure-c)

If having a JS compile option is not a requirement, there are 2 more Ocaml/ReasonML-like BEAM laguages, [https://github.com/alpaca- lang](https://github.com/alpaca-lang) and [https://github.com/lpil/gleam](https://github.com/lpil/gleam)

(I'm kinda partial to Gleam, it seems really clean)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is really exciting. I've just started using TypeScript on my professional front end projects and have really benefited from static typing, and I also love the concurrency model of Erlang and the BEAM. I'm going to give this a try when I finish up with all the .NET work I have to do at the moment.

Great project!

</comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of Elchemy ([https://github.com/wende/elchemy](https://github.com/wende/elchemy)) which uses the Elm compiler to output "readable" Elixir. I wonder if anyone has played with both and can compare them?

</comment><comment><USER5> Very cool to see how this is coming along. I remember when you demoed codec- beam and the early version of a gen server implementation at the Chicago elixir meetup. Good work man.

I have to disagree that elm should aim for assembly. I think that it is a perfect language to use sparingly to build extremely typesafe systems where appropriate. I've found that to be the case on the front end, where I normally use elm alongside vanilla javascript. For me, it is often quicker to develop with regular JS (esp. when need to take advantage of "native" features) but its nice to have elm for certain parts where I want to take advantage of type system. Maybe I'm biased as an elixir dev, but I think you could apply the same logic within our erlang/elixir systems. The existing "type system" (specs + dialyzer) leaves a lot to be desired, so I see room for a typesafe language that compiles to beam. As for using serverside elm outside of the erlang vm, I'm not sure I could sign up for that. Part of what attracts me to elixir is all the erlang erlang ecosystem that we have available to us.

Also, pine was a good name! but I respect the practicality of the rename.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words, and it's fun to hear that you're local! I think I should have clarified more about my view of an assembly compiler:

A "bespoke backend, going to assembly directly" does not preclude the option of integrating with an Erlang/Elixir project. In fact, I think that you could do so via ports or NIFs in such a way that the caller wouldn't know the difference. I think of the Erlang JSON libarary, jiffy. It's largely implemented in C for performance, but the language it's written in doesn't seem to matter in practice. As long as there is an easy way to integrate it into your Erlang/Elixir project.

I think an "Elm on the server" solution would work much the same way. Focused on making a clean integration point—then choose whatever implementation leads to the most performant and reliable artifact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is good thing we have one. Will it be supported in the long term?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't plan to do much more with this particular project. At the end of the article I mention what I believe to be a nicer direction for Elm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slightly off topic but does that syntax highlighting theme in the video have a name? It's rather nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny that you mention that—the color surprised me as well! I used [https://asciinema.org/](https://asciinema.org/) to record, which captures ANSII escape sequences. I'm guessing there's some sort of default colorscheme applied, since I've done little to individualize my terminal.

<comment><USER8> That's cool. Thanks for sharing. Would be great to see some more code snippets to get excited (or not) about the project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool project! I would think Elm would be a bad choice for compiling to other languages because it isn't general purpose. You can only write 1 kind of application in Elm, right?</comment>


Best Curated Gifting App - <AUTHOR> https://www.giftsapp.com/app <comment><AUTHOR> GiftsApp is the ultimate social gifting app that allows you to send millions of physical products without knowing the address of the recipient; designed to make giving physical gifts fast and easy through the use of categorized curated lists. It brings back the fun and excitement of both gifting and receiving something personal in real life, while adding a modern and flexible twist to the gifting process.

All that is required is any social platform (Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, sms, email, etc). The recipients are not required to have the app themselves in order to receive gifts. In addition, gift senders can make their gifts even more personal with greeting cards or videos, and recipients will not be informed of the price of the products they receive.

GiftsApp features a social feed that acts as a sort of gift guide for the app's users. Users can follow their friends and favorite brands, and share on their timeline all the products they like. Your friends can then shop for them, right from this social gift guide, with the confidence that their money will not be wasted. This confidence is backed by the fact that recipients are free to exchange or reject any gifts they receive. Senders never spend more than the value of the gift that is actually chosen, and in case their gift is rejected they are guaranteed full money payback. All of this makes for a hassle-free gifting experience. Download today on the App Store. :)</comment>


Why People think Computers Can't by Marvin Minsky (1982) - <AUTHOR> http://www.kbsc.com/WhitePapers/1982%20-%20Marvin%20Minsky%20-%20Why%20People%20Think%20Computers%20Cant.pdf

<comment><USER2> "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim": Edsger Dijkstra

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I the only one who's getting a 404 error on this link?

<comment><USER4> Huh, the link is missing an apostrophe. How did this get on the front page that way?

[http://www.kbsc.com/WhitePapers/1982%20-%20Marvin%20Minsky%2...](http://www.kbsc.com/WhitePapers/1982%20-%20Marvin%20Minsky%20-%20Why%20People%20Think%20Computers%20Can%27t.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Probably because Minsky rocks, and has a similar writing style to pg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm impressed - we killed the server - how very slashdot!</comment>


Actionable Daily/Weekly/Monthly Goals for Being a Good Product Manager - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@chadwittman/actionable-daily-weekly-monthly-goals-for-being-a-good-product-manager-71a31af55b63#.bihm7rx8h <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this post after reading Ben Horowitz's work. I'm really hoping to open this up into a wider discussion to continue to refine these ideas and see if resonates with fellow Product Managers out there. Would love feedback!

</comment><comment><USER2> Really enjoyed the post. I was surprised when I was given the task of doing product management (along with my dev job) that the resources were extremely poor. Everything just says "talk to customers, listen to customers, etc. etc".

Though Chad also mentions those things, it isn't the top priority.

I came up with a solution that worked for our team which was seriously struggling with focusing on priorities (which is why they asked me to take product management from the CEO).

I came up with 5 questions that we'd answer in our planning meetings, which were supposed to happen every other week, but realistically was about once a month.

1) are we living up to our promises

2) are we able to demo the app effectively and get customers to imagine themselves using it and understanding what it can do for them

3) is anything holding back sales

4) what are our upcoming company milestones, and what does development need to do to accomplish these

5) is there anything else we'd personally like to see or play with.

The first question was measuring us against our mission statement. This will be different for every company, but I found it to be an amazing question because we had a security focus as part of our key values and yet we had a fairly large security hole in our product. This being the first question meant that our promise to our customers was our priority.

The second question about demoing was pretty self explanatory. It wasn't just 'demo' could people come to our website and understand what we do and why they need it. It was the pre-sales and if a feature was missing that would help people see what we could do for them, that is where this got picked up.

Then came the actual sale. This included the ability for a customer to complete a sale, but also feature requests that customers may have brought up where the missing feature was preventing us from gaining a customer. Note: this is different from a feature which is preventing a customer from understanding how our product would help them.

Some may find it strange that we prioritized demo over sale, but we were focusing on customer acquisition growth, not sales growth at the time.

The business goals was a bit non-obvious. For instance we had an important meeting where we needed to show a certain capability to an investor. This wasn't a customer, and was de-prioritized over sales, but these sorts of things need to be captured. This question also catches things like upcoming conferences where we may need a special marketing page, etc. etc.

Anything else. This is 'play time', and to be honest we rarely had any time to put things in this bucket. We normally looked at the list of things to do and went "we've got weeks of work that take priority over anything else we want to do, so customer take priority".

Once we had our tasks from each of the questions, we would do a quick prioritization plan on them, but with the general understanding that the order of the questions had already done the majority of priority planning for us.

I think we had some success with this model, but keen to hear what others have tried as I've just stepped into a new role as PM/Dev.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you sharing this perspective!</comment></comment>


How Startups Can Best Plan to Expand Their Websites as They Grow and Change - <AUTHOR> http://whatarmy.com/how-startups-can-best-plan-to-expand-their-websites-as-they-grow-and-change/ <comment><USER2> Startups will always have room for growths and improvements. Fundraising efforts can help the business grow.</comment>


Learning Differential Equations That Are Easy to Solve - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.04504 <comment><USER2> Have a look at Prioritized Grammar Enumeration. It's a deterministic algo for recovering diffeqs from time series. Or math formulas from data... Or a search across models represented by a trie

[https://github.com/verdverm/go- pge/raw/master/pge_gecco2013....](https://github.com/verdverm/go- pge/raw/master/pge_gecco2013.pdf)

[https://github.com/verdverm/pypge](https://github.com/verdverm/pypge)</comment>


4 Languages you should learn in 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://anassina.com/blog/?p=36 The Pragmatic Programmer Books suggests you learn a new language every year. I suggest you learn 4 that will be beneficial to your career in 2009. <comment><USER2> "It is one of two official languages used at Google and it does power a lot of their most profitable products."

One of 2? I thought 4: Java, Python, C++, Javascript.

And does it really power a lot of their most profitable products? Like which?

(Not bashing here, Python is my main language and I love it.)

<comment><USER3> To be blunt and disrespectful, after seeing the author confusing Cantonese and Mandarin, I am quite skeptical of the assertions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, give me a break! I did approve the comment by the user who pointed out the mistake, kindly thanked him, AND struck the comment rather than try to hide it like so many other revisionist bloggers out there.

<comment><USER3> Pardon me for that, and I was aware of the undertones, but I still didn't see anything particularly informative, especially provided that you submitted this blog to HN: it is almost a _given_ that everybody here programs to some degree. You did not make a strong case for any of your assertions. You merely asserted.

This is different if your audience is, I dunno, designers, or people wanting to get their feet wet. That is certainly not the case in this forum.

Also, a foreign language takes a lot of time and effort to even just become functional in it. If you are thinking in terms of managing a foreign dev team with your foreign language skills, you're thinking in terms of several years. Not just "in 2009."

Maybe I have a bad temper today, but as you said you have over 10 years of OOP experience, one would expect something jucier.

<comment><AUTHOR> You didn't find it informative? That's unfortunate.

What is the audience of this forum. Looking through your list of submitted articles reveals no indication. For instance, your last submission was "Japanese Convenience Stores Thrive Despite Economic Downturn."

Foreign languages are very hard to learn. I know, I speak three. I didn't say anything about managing a foreign dev team, just that you should learn a new language. The world is flattening and I don't always want to speak English.

I don't know how 10 years of OOP correlates to a "juicy" blog post. All I can say is that in 13 hour, with close to 3500 unique visits, some people found it interesting.

<comment><USER3> Alright, well, I just expressed an opinion inelegantly, but may it remain just one. I'll stop trolling already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure I get the logic behind the line: _With the economic slow down, countries with emerging technology sectors and talented, well educated developers will be getting a second look as a means of cutting applicationd(sic) development costs._

Surely with the economic slowdown developers in "un-emerging" economies will be more competitive?

</comment><comment><USER5> I recommend checking out Clojure instead of Erlang.

<comment><USER6> Clojure comes close to answering almost all of my complaints with other languages.

\- The mature libraries and deployment environment of the JVM. So your code runs fast, runs almost anywhere, and a lot of work is already done for you.

\- Data literals for arrays and maps. One of the shortcomings of Common Lisp. And catches up with (surpasses?) Python/Ruby/Javascript in this regard.

\- ISeq interface means that a single set of functions works across all collection types. (Common Lisp has an amazing array of functions for working on lists, but hit and miss for other collection types.)

\- Lisp 1. I know this is an aesthetic thing, but I much prefer how the code looks than Lisp 2's.

\- Steals a lot of arc's good ideas, like abbreviated syntax for function literals and semantics for arrays/maps in function position.

\- Common Lisp style macros. Just more intuitive, for me, than the hygienic type.

\- Interesting place in the space of computer programming languages. Dynamic typing, with an emphasis on programming to interfaces, macros, first class functions, immutable data structures, and built in mechanisms to support parallel programming. I don't know of any other language that chooses this set of tradeoffs.

<comment><USER7> i would recommend clojure if you want to learn "a lisp"...along the positives you cite, it has a growing community, very active development, hype (in a good way), and deployability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Haskell instead of anything else. And then some Factor.

Mandarin is a nice touch. I'll try that. Indians, however, speak English pretty well -- even if their accent might take some getting used to.

<comment><USER7> haskell is the only programming language that made me reconsider most of my assumptions. its not a tacked-on, hacked-on functional layer on something else, its mind-bending at a fundamental level. because haskell makes no comprimises, it also is showing some insane performance on multicore. its no mistake that the google mapreduce tutorials use haskell in some explanatory examples...

ten years from now, you _will_ be dealing with a multicore world, and you will be using something that is conceptually tied to haskell. i see this as inevitable.

factor i have looked at again and again, worked through some trivial problems...not sure i will ever "get" it. i would brute-force understanding it were it to take off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think in 2009, I just wanna dig deeper about python.

<comment><USER10> Same. I only got into Python this year, but I definitely want to say I'm an expert by next year. Of course, won't ever stop learning new tricks even as an expert :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised they didn't mention arabic with mandarin and russian at the end.

<comment><USER12> I just took an informal survey amongst my teammates (including Arabic in the list), and "three out of four" developers said: Mandarin.

The interesting thing is that on my team, two are from Russia, one from China, one from Lebanon, one from the UK, and one from India. The other two are Americans.

<comment><USER13> Classic essay: "Why Chinese is so Damn Hard" <http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html>

"Someone once said that learning Chinese is "a five-year lesson in humility". I used to think this meant that at the end of five years you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that actually the phrase means that after five years your Chinese will still be abysmal, but at least you will have thoroughly learned humility."

<comment><USER14> Classic Moser essay. I thought this would be a post about spoken languages as well, and would put mandarin at the top of the list as well. Since people are still hiring here (especially in tech related fields), I will happily take this opportunity to plug our Chinese learning product:

<http://popupchinese.com>

The ability to roll your mouse over the characters and see exactly what they mean, or just change all of the characters to pinyin on-the-fly makes it an incredibly effective way to learn Chinese.

<comment><USER15> Instead of 5 years how about you move to China and study / communicate (as opposed to having fun) everyday for half a year to the fullest of your potential, you'll be up and talking and blowing Moser's article to smithereens.

I say this because when I moved to Australia (I'm Chinese) I was speaking English in 3 month, given I was 9 yrs old - but it just shows how much more important your environment is compared to how much time you study a language (unless its a very close language).

<comment><USER14> I don't know about English acquisition, but your timeline is way off for Chinese language acquisition, even for younger children brought to China. An aggressive timeline for adults in-country would be about 2 years to conversational fluency, and less for younger kids. This is more or less the pace you see for the faster Korean learners who come to China.

I'm happy you've had a good experience in Australia. You should remember that the barriers to learning English and Chinese are fundamentally different. English requires mastery of about 100 phenomes before reading and writing skills reinforce each other and learning accelerates: the language gets more difficult as you get better. In contrast, the difficulty curve for Chinese is steep when you start but gets much easier as you improve.

Working hard is important, but equally important is giving yourself the tools to maximize learning. Someone struggling to get through Dream of the Red Chamber with a traditional dictionary is at a huge disadvantage to someone using the proper tools and resources. Learning a language is like engineering in the sense that one should use the best tools for the job, and then put in the time needed to execute.

<comment><USER15> My estimation may be biased because I am Chinese, 2 years sounds like a more reasonably good figure, which is still a lot better then the 5 years Moser claims. Also there must exist at least one language genius who can do it in 6 month :)

Indeed as you say the Chinese language is hard at the start and gets easier. In my case when I moved to Australia I forgot a lot of my Chinese even after 1 year of not reading. 4 years later I could barely read, over the holidays I was forced to study Chinese, I did nothing but read a novel, some 10 pages a day which initially made next to no sense and took almost the whole day. But after two weeks of continuous reading, I could understand a lot more, and was reading much much faster(managed to finish a 400 page book). The trick to learning to read Chinese is to get going and not stop, and skip most of what you can't understand, and gradually you will pick it up.

I would also add that if you're not seriously committed to learning Chinese, why bother? Your progress would be so painstakingly slow it would seem you're forgetting as much as you learn - I'm trying to say don't do what Moser is claiming, tackle Chinese with less than 100% with slow progress and find out it is hard after 5 years.

It is also my view that much of the difficulty is a inherently negative mental illusion that the language is hard, and that also hinders learning. If people learned Chinese as if it were playing their favorite game, instead of something inherently dry and boring (which is another argument) this will speed up the learning process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me to break out my russian books ... I'm getting rusty

</comment><comment><USER17> I recommend checking out Ruby instead of Python.

<comment><USER18> Out of curiosity, could you elucidate why?

<comment><USER19> Chicks love rubies, but don't like snakes that much. :D

Seriously, you should probably learn both.

<comment><USER20> well if you already know one, you might as well spend the time to learn something else that would give your brain a level up.

<comment><USER19> yeah, a good tip, but still if you know one, you should at least go through the other ones tutorial just to know what you're missing :D</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rich People Exercise, Poor People Take Diet Pills - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/rich-people-exercise-poor-people-take-diet-pills/378852/

<comment><USER2> Maybe people are rich because they choose to exercise rather than taking a pill; i.e. long term strategy and sacrifice rather than quick solutions. Who- da-thunk? Oh, and when is making $75k considered rich?

<comment><USER3> Rich in this case i think means above poverty level and can afford gyms and time to exercise. As opposed to someone busy all the time meeting the basic needs</comment></comment>


Cheap Podcast transcript app - <AUTHOR> http://podbox.xyz <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys this is my weekend hobby project - a simple app that uses Google Cloud Speech-to-Text to do algo transcript on any podcast you like, or your own audio file. I simply wanted a simple, cheap and quick tool to transcribe the podcast i liked so i can save it. I've tried best to keep the price as low as possible and I think transcript of good podcast should help promote itself.

Cheers & hope you enjoy this</comment>


Arkansas City Sends Amazon a Dear John Letter Instead of a Pitch - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-19/arkansas-city-sends-amazon-a-dear-john-letter-instead-of-a-pitch <comment><USER2> Yup I agree with mayor of San Antonio. Amazon already knows where it will plant its 2nd HQ. Amaxon is just trying to get extra incentives from the local government.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that sounds right. I am getting a bit sick of all the companies following the lead of Hollywood and professional sports stadiums doing the shakedown game.

<comment><USER4> Then elect representatives that won't play.

The shakedown is only possible because it offers some value in return.

<comment><USER3> Its a question I ask, but really given where I live its not much of a problem. The best we could offer is really fast internet and a lot of quite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Image of the ad: [https://twitter.com/abeaujon/status/920973820239974400/photo...](https://twitter.com/abeaujon/status/920973820239974400/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Ffortune.com%2F2017%2F10%2F19%2Famazon- headquarters-hq2-little-rock%2F)

<comment><USER6> Frustrating twitter replies, to me this is just an ad for the City itself. "We're not the type of city that works for Amazon, were relaxed, cool, smart ..." They probably never even considered bidding for Amazon lol (not to say they wouldn't want to if they could, but it's just a cute ad for the city nothing crazy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can't turn down something that is not yours.

BTW, isn't Toronto one of the first city to jump into the game?

<comment><USER8> Toronto is a great choice although doubt amazon will get the same incentives as an US city

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Imagine that; cities don't want to end up like Seattle, with entire neighborhoods of Amazonians.

</comment><comment><USER10> Indeed, Amazon is too big for Little Rock.</comment>


The Affluent Homeless: A Sleeping Pod, a Hired Desk and a Handful of Clothes - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/715107132/the-affluent-homeless-a-sleeping-pod-a-hired-desk-and-a-handful-of-clothes <comment><USER2> > He's part of a new-ish group of young people. He's educated and owns his own > business. He could be considered well off, but he's also, in a way, > homeless. By choice.

> There are two big reasons for this shift: the price of housing and student > loan debt. A little more than a third of millennials currently own homes, a > rate lower than Generation X and baby boomers when they were the same age.

That's the very definition of not by choice. This current effort to rebrand millennials not owning anything as a positive lifestyle choice based on happy clappy sharing economy "choosing experiences" BS is really nefarious.

Given the choice, Millennials would own. They "choose experiences" because they can't afford to own stuff.

<comment><USER3> The article does say that some do it by choice, but a lot "rent and share because they're broke and they need to save money."

<comment><USER4> It reeks of rationalization. They don't want to admit to themselves that they got dealt a bad hand, so pretend that they own nothing and rent their entire life by choice.

It's like breaking someone's kneecaps, and they say they're in the wheelchair by choice, because walking is dangerous and inefficient, and knees are a horrible leg-joint design anyway.

They never had a choice, so they invent the illusion of choice by retroactively justifying that they would have chosen what they have now if they actually did have a different option that some might have considered to be objectively better.

I am well familiar with this. I consciously unwant the things that I want, but cannot afford, all the time. No, I don't need a car manufactured after 2010. No, I prefer to stay at home for my vacation. Eating out is for people who can't shop and cook. The current crop of movies in theaters seems pretty lame. I can wait another season for new tires. We can have strips of skirt steak instead of top sirloin. In fact, how about roaster chicken instead of beef?

It's bullshit that I shovel over myself, and I know it. If I had more money, I would definitely buy more and better stuff with it--to own and not rent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It always baffles me how the proponents of the share economy do not see its downside: If you do not own what you use, you don't control it. Individual, motorized, traffic has a huge negative impact, that's clear. But how about it enables you to travel whereever you want whenever you want? Owning a house or an apartment might seem unnecessary in our modern society, until the next rent increase or some disturbance in your financial situation (assuming you're not sitting on a huge mortgage).

And why does nobody talk about how we have to pay every fucking minute, regardless what we do, in the share economy? Maybe you spend less money for each activity, compared to owning, but maybe you are just paying more often?

And finally, what about responsibility? If I own nothing, do I ever care about something? Who cares about the gearbox of a rented car? Just have a look at the interior of your average subway train. When the street I live in gets to dirty, why not simply move away?

While I love to be able to rent things that I cannot or don't want to own, I have the impression that this "share everything" paradigm is actually just a toxic mixture of permanent monetarization and centralised control.

<comment><USER6> >It always baffles me how the proponents of the share economy do not see its downside:

They do, that's why they are behind all these PR/fluff pieces like this one that promotes the "affluent homeless" life style.

You to can live the homeless dream and own two pairs of clothes...working when you want and where you want. Best part is you won't get any benefits, like health insurance.

It used to be any riff-raff could achieve the homeless lifestyle without even a job, but big tech is classing up the streets. Now everyone thank big tech making homelessness great again...just don't shit on the sidewalks.

<comment><USER7> You thought this article was _promoting_ this sad life living in a flophouse?

<comment><USER6> Yes, after all the article is promoting rental services WeWork (you to can pretend to be an employed tech worker while homeless) and REI rentals (for the millennial homeless who no longer own their own tents but rent them)...both of which are financial sponsors of the publisher.

And just in case you weren't convinced how great the life is, they throw in a PhD quote promoting these "choices", odds are the PhD will be homeless soon too and hoping their qoute will get them a job.

Curious how you read anything but promotion into this article?

<comment><USER7> > Curious how you read anything but promotion into this article?

So for starters, it's clearly a "straight news" piece, so the overall tone is neutral (not promotional), but the subtext is pretty obviously negative:

1) The tragic photo at the top of the piece.

2) Highlights the role of adverse circumstances: "There are two big reasons for this shift: the price of housing and student loan debt." / "But a lot rent and share because they're broke and they need to save money."

3) Ends with this quote focusing on how unsustainable it is: "It's not something that you can do forever, because you do need to have a place that you can genuinely point to and say, this is my home," he says.

<comment><USER6> 1) tragic photo? It's a promotional photo complete with positive quote from the person how great the life style is.

2) the entire article highlights how this is a lifestyle choice...and you cherry-picked the sole comparative quote acknowledging not all homeless are affluent and homeless by choice.

From the NPR financial sponsors:

>"We're selling joy," he says. "We're selling inspiration when you get out on a trail or go for a bike ride. We're selling the adrenaline buzz at the end of a run, and we're just trying to enable that in any way we possibly can."

3). Right..."you can't do it forever" we shouldn't be speaking about homelessness in these terms. Nothing is going to change to make these homeless people not broke and magically be able to go out and buy a home.

<comment><USER7> Re: #2 -- read more carefully -- I highlighted two separate quotes from different paragraphs in the piece.

And I'll wager the journalist chose that quote about "selling joy" to emphasize how ridiculous it sounds. There's a degree of dramatic irony at work here; you have to understand how to read between the lines.

e.g. here's one of the author's colleagues at NPR retweeting the "Hilarious story from @samsanders" [https://twitter.com/pgogoi/status/1120711647323197440](https://twitter.com/pgogoi/status/1120711647323197440)

I guarantee you NPR journos do not think everyone should live in "PodShares"

<comment><USER6> >And I'll wager the journalist chose that quote about "selling joy" to emphasize how ridiculous it sounds... you have to understand how to read between the lines.

The qoute is from their financial sponsor...the "journalist" is not picking quotes, and they are not mocking their sponsors "ridiculous" quotes, they are being paid ...and they are pushing their sponsors brand new rental business.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, why are you putting the word "journalist" in scare quotes? Is your assertion that Sam Sanders is not a journalist?

I think your interpretation badly misunderstands the relationship between journalists and sources quoted. Every reputable publisher has a strict separation between the advertising/business side of the organization and the editorial side.[0]

[0] [https://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/2012/12/19/breaking- down-...](https://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/2012/12/19/breaking-down-the- wall/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > He rents a bed in a large room with other people who rent beds, for nights, > weeks or months at a time, through a service called PodShare

Cynically, this sounds like we've found a way to reinvent the packed tenements of the industrial revolution

<comment><USER9> Why is that cynical/implying this is bad? IMO We need more tenements. Someone making 50k/year working in a central city should be able to chose if they want a bigger unit and a commute, or a bed to crash in and a walk to work. There is a huge and underserved demand for these by for example grad students, recent college graduates, consultants/long distance commuters (ex, live in Oregon fri - Sunday, fly to SF and work mon - thurs)

<comment><USER10> Aside: I wonder if the rise of the so-called 'incels' sub-culture is more tightly linked to income or to housing. It may be worth while to investigate the self-professed 'incels' and their housing habits. If you are in one of these tenement style group bunks, I imagine that you'd have a much harder time meeting and 'interacting' with your preferred partners-to-be.

<comment><USER11> I think it's more people on the frindges, finally able to share ideas. I know plenty of people that live with parents or in squalid conditions and have no problems. Lots of these incels are socially challenged and / or on spectrum

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think a more accurate term for people who have a living arrangement that isn't within the confines of most people's idea of "home", but is a stable home to them nonetheless is "houseless".

Full-time RV'ers, for instance, would be houseless. A person who has given up their house or lease, and disposed of or stored their possessions to take a long-term trip (gap year, thru-hike, etc) would be houseless. Hashtag vanlifers? Houseless.

Similarly, I'd call somebody living the lifestyle presented in the article houseless, not homeless.

<comment><USER10> Jessica Bruder's _Nomadland: Surviving America In The Twenty-First Century_ is a very good look into the RV'ers and their lives[0, 1]. Though at first, many people profess to love the freedom of the RV life, upon further inspection, most are very unhappy with it. Financial crises typically nucleate the move into the RV and that lifestyle. Per a recent NPR interview:

"And then maybe four days later, a week later, if I'm still hanging around as a reporter, that's when I hear about the foreclosure or the 401(k) that got wiped out, those other details. So people are eager to tell you that they chose this, but their options have narrowed quite a bit in recent years. So, you know, on the one hand, there is the I'm out there and I'm having an adventure. And on the other hand, this is sometimes the result of few options."

In the end, people are involved in complicated choices in their complicated lives. Still, it seems that most people would rather not be RV-ing their way through life, but make the best of it and put on a smile despite their situations.

A similar effect may be occurring with the OP.

[0] [https://www.npr.org/2017/09/25/553532591/nomadland-tracks- ri...](https://www.npr.org/2017/09/25/553532591/nomadland-tracks-rising- number-of-americans-living-on-the-road)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Nomadland-Surviving-America-Twenty- Fi...](https://www.amazon.com/Nomadland-Surviving-America-Twenty-First- Century/dp/039324931X)

<comment><USER13> Full timers range from being forced to live in a broken down car to having a successful exit and buying a million dollar class A. It depends on who you talk to. Some people choose it, some don't. Many who don't are making the best of their situation so they're trying to be positive about it.

I live in a bus. I choose this life. I know many others who also made this choice. I could afford a decent mortgage if I wanted to. Instead I'm exploring the country while I put that money towards paying off other debt and into savings. At some point I'll buy real estate but not today.

<comment><USER10> Thank you very much for the additional viewpoint! Is there a good resource available for others to see this flip-side better? Do you have a blog or other book that you could recommend? Again, thanks!

<comment><USER13> There are many depending on which segment you want to look at. Most RV clubs (eg Escapees[1]) cater to retired people who have sold their houses to travel in RVs. Vanlife / vandweller[2] type sites mostly cater to 20-40 somethings choosing the lifestyle. Some, like Cheap RV Living[3], cater to a wide range including those forced into it.

There are also forums dedicated to people building their own vehicles. Cheap RV Living has one. Skoolie.net[4] focuses on buses. Then there's a whole segment of adventure / overlanding vehicles such as Expedition Portal[5].

1: [https://www.escapees.com/](https://www.escapees.com/)

2: [http://reddit.com/r/vandwellers/](http://reddit.com/r/vandwellers/)

3: [https://www.cheaprvliving.com/](https://www.cheaprvliving.com/)

4: [http://www.skoolie.net/forums/](http://www.skoolie.net/forums/)

5: [https://www.expeditionportal.com/](https://www.expeditionportal.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's surprising to me that we aren't heavily subsidizing the development of high density apartments. Developers are building luxury housing because low and middle income is not economically viable -- the cost of building materials and labor is rising, so why not use tax breaks and permit deregulation to spur more growth?

I was surprised that the 2017 tax cut didn't seem to have any mechanisms to address the lack of middle class housing. I'm not sure if "opportunity zones" is sufficient.

<comment><USER15> _high density apartments_

Light sleeper here.

Apartments are a nonstarter for a lot of people, due to poor soundproofing.

Unless and until soundproofing gets better -- and I mean a _LOT_ better -- apartments will never be practical for a nontrivial percentage of the population, as much as we might otherwise prefer them.

<comment><USER16> I don't get it. If my neighbours didn't renovate their apartments by drilling holes or hammering on the walls I wouldn't even know that other people besides me live in the same building. Sound proofing isn't going to stop walls from vibrating. Just suck it up. 2 days of noise a year isn't a nonstarter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Private quarters with shared kitchen and bathroom? We used to call these "rooming houses." They've been around since the industrial revolution if not longer. Every time I see an article about the strange new living circumstances being chosen by Millenials, it ends up being an article that's actually about the 40-year aberration that was America between 1960 and 2000.

Edit: speling

</comment><comment><USER18> My nephew is 22 lives in his van in SF. He makes plenty each month from his GI bill, and it's a really nice van. I would never call him homeless living in a van.. at this point he's made a lifestyle choice for a guy who prefers to be at the beach on the weekends.

I would say the same for the guy in this article. He's made a lifestyle choice.

True homelessness is not a lifestyle choice.

<comment><USER19> The question is, what is his alternatives? Living in SF making plenty each month doesn't mean he can afford to own something reasonable. Perhaps he would make a different choice if he had more opportunities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's amazing there is still such a stigma around people that choose an alternate lifestyle, or simply choose not to own a 4,000 sq. ft. McMansion that we stoop so low as to call them _Homeless_. The word has such dirty connotations.

I'm quite certain the author of this article would call me homeless. In fact I've been living in my vehicle for 3 years while driving around Africa, and I've never been happier in my life. Certainly night and day compared to when I was working a Desk as a Software Engineer, renting a nice place.

I have no interest in ever owning a home, and I'm sure I'll move between renting and living on the road as I see fit. That I should be labeled _homeless_ for this is partially laughable, but also really disgusting. The drive to force people to consume is intense in the West.

<comment><USER2> > I'm quite certain the author of this article would call me homeless. In fact > I've been living in my vehicle for 3 years while driving around Africa, and > I've never been happier in my life. Certainly night and day compared to when > I was working a Desk as a Software Engineer, renting a nice place.

There is a difference between you, who has taken a conscious decision _not to own_, and has the means to drive around Africa, and someone who has no choice but to do that in order to support a precarious existence as a social media content producer in Hollywood.

<comment><USER21> That social media producer in Hollywood chose that as well. He could move to a number of cities where the cost of living is lower. He could have gone to school and become a brain surgeon which would pay for a nice house even in Hollywood.

<comment><USER2> Different people are endowed with different natural abilities. It's not just a good school that stands between someone becoming a brain surgeon or not.

Likewise, the cost of living in Scranton, PA is proportionate to the opportunity for gainful employment there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Funny enough: (mostly conservative-leaning, old) people complain that the young generation has less kids, has girst time sex much later in life etc., but they seem to ignore the cause: stuff like this. How can one have a relationship without having a space to live said relationship in?

Call me a pessimist but this is going to hit societies hard in the next decades. When there are not enough young people to sustain pension systems, and the people in their 30s or 40s don't have a house, savings or any other asset to make up for not having a decent pension system...

</comment><comment><USER23> Really playing fast and loose with the word "homeless" here...

</comment><comment><USER24> Is this just the modern version of a flop house ?

<comment><USER25> Of course not! Its a 'Pod' .. Thats why its much more expensive than a flophouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Steven T. Johnson, 27, works in social media advertising

What does that mean exactly, in his case? Is he an "influencer" like TheYachtGuy ([https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-lonely-life-of-a- yac...](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-lonely-life-of-a-yacht- influencer))?

<comment><USER27> I wonder if Podshare is one of his clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The short-term inconvenience pays off in terms of saving money to buy a home and invest rather than pissing away the money on rent and other recurring expenses. Rent is a major rain on savings, especially in high cost of living areas.

<comment><USER29> Is this guy living inexpensively? He takes ride-share, which is much more expensive than owning a cheap car. Owning two pairs of clothes doesn't really lower your clothing costs, and my guess is that he doesn't cook much for himself, which is another good way to drive up your cost of living.

Podshare lists rates of $1,000/month in LA ( _not_ SF). I don't know what local rents are there, but my guess is that Podshare is below the rates of studio apartments, but at or around the rates of renting one bedroom in a house.

<comment><USER28> hmm..but The cost off the car does not include insurance, gas, insurance. A cheap old car will probably need a lot of repairs.

<comment><USER29> You pay for insurance and gas (and repairs) on an Uber, too. If your utilization of the car is low, you can get per-mile car insurance and pay a low cost for it.

You can get a cheap new car for a lot lower TCO than traveling an equivalent number of miles with Uber. Like, a _lot_ lower, unless your utilization is crazy low. If you travel under 2,000 miles per year or so, Uber might be the best option for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> That's great if you don't have any responsibility but yourself.

For some people, being homeless isn't a real option.

<comment><USER31> I had the same reaction, that this lifestyle is pretty common for young, single professionals living in the city. 25+ years ago my sister lived in the city and also didn't own a car, washing machine, house or... because of her tiny apt lots of "things". This is another trash (IMHO) article, seeking to depict "millennials" as some sort of new breed of human more willing to share when in act their just young and unattached.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you can't afford to buy a house, then by definition you're not "affluent." Many of the type of people profiled in this article can't afford to buy a house in their locales, and thus should not be labelled "affluent."

The article should be called something like, "The Non-Indigent Homeless."

Words matter.</comment>


FCC considering move to ban NFL Redskins team name - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/30/us-usa-fcc-redskins-idUSKCN0HP2HM20140930

<comment><USER2> I mentioned to my wife while watching Monday Night Football, how silly this debat seems considering the Kansas City "Chiefs" opening ceremony involves a guy beating a large "Native American style" drum and the entire crowd "chopping" in unison.

Or maybe their just next on the list...</comment>


AWS CodeBuild – Fully Managed Build Service - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-codebuild-fully-managed-build-service/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious: How does this match up with CircleCI / AppVeyor / Travis / or other known build services?

</comment><comment><USER3> What the hell is up with all this AWS spam? There's 8 links on the front page about AWS submitted by the same two people. 19 AWS posts submitted in the past 24 hours.

<comment><USER2> AWS is having an event: [https://reinvent.awsevents.com/](https://reinvent.awsevents.com/)</comment></comment>


The Rise of the 'Brogrammer' (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-01/the-rise-of-the-brogrammer

<comment><USER2> I remember reading this article... in 2012.</comment>


FBI Launches Probe of IRS - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324216004578483203153773048.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting note from the end of the article:

 _"IRS agents also could be targeted in private lawsuits by those who were subject to any improper scrutiny. Those lawsuits, called Bivens actions, raise claims of constitutional violations by federal agents and would likely make it difficult for the Justice Department to defend the IRS agents, since it also is investigating the matter."_

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivens_v._Six_Unknown_Named_Ag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivens_v._Six_Unknown_Named_Agents)</comment>


Are Bing's maps now better than Google's? - <AUTHOR> http://www.41latitude.com/post/2392122927/bing-2

<comment><USER2> Yowza, did they test this on Macs? Terrible full-map flickering when dragging or zooming on Safari 5.0.3 on Mac here.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can say that after the most recent update of the Bing iPhone app, I prefer the mobile version to the mobile Google Maps client.

</comment><comment><USER4> Full-screen flicker on Chrome, edge flicker in FF. Less flicker in IE, but slow as hell on IE.

No, not better than Google's.</comment>


Ex-NSA chief is launching a cybersecurity consulting firm - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/keith-alexander-nsa-edward-snowden-106515.html

<comment><USER2> Because he did such a stellar job to keep NSA secrets secret. And he failed in his basic mission to observe the laws of the country he was serving.

I love how failure in the high levels of politics is always awarded with money, lucrative jobs and contracts.</comment>


Ten Days: The Story of My Meditation Retreat - <AUTHOR> http://novemberfive.blogspot.com/2007/11/ten-days-story-of-my-meditation-retreat.html

<comment><USER2> Nice story, but then what...?

(I was half expecting to hear, "I got so much control of my inner chi that I was able to refactor 10,000 lines of code in a single session while doing laundry and cooking dinner.)

<comment><USER3> LOL or perhaps: I haven't coded since...</comment></comment>


Rest interaction in android - <AUTHOR> http://mytechaddiction.blogspot.it/2014/02/rest-interaction-in-android.html

<comment><USER2> What is the status of your PostmanLib? Can I use it in production?

<comment><AUTHOR> Despite the "still under construction" message, the lib is (pretty) stable. It's already used in an app of mine and in this other app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alware.clo...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alware.cloudagent)

Anyway, I'd be happy to provide support if you want to use it.</comment></comment>


Reduced-calorie diet shows signs of slowing ageing in people - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03431-x <comment><USER3> So far in 2018 I have had one ~1300-1500 calorie meal per day for all except maybe ten days (where I have gone out for drinks or have extra food late in the evening with friends).

The strangest thing so far is how much my body has adapted to this - I skip breakfast and lunch every day, yet don't feel particularly restricted (save socially), hungry, or weak.

I am just one person, but I now intuitively feel that whatever passes for a "reduced-calorie diet" these days is what used to pass for normal. It feels normal, at least.

<comment><USER4> In India, there are monks who live without any food (and water as well) for more than a month or so. Initially, I did not believe but then I confirmed from many people and it was true. They basically do meditation during that period and gain their energy from nature.

<comment><USER4> Some proof for down voters:

1) [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Jain-monk- co...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Jain-monk- completes-423-days-of-fasting/articleshow/49616061.cms)

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

<comment><USER4> Watch this documentary and see what people say. Hey HN folks, Sometimes science does not explain everything.

[http://www.lightdocumentary.com/](http://www.lightdocumentary.com/) Trailer: [https://youtu.be/Ul82-jaDmlY](https://youtu.be/Ul82-jaDmlY)

<comment><USER5> These people still exhale CO2 and water vapor. Unless you believe that matter spontaneously appears inside their bodies they have to lose weight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No one's going to mention that the title is wrong? The experiment showed that a calorie reduced diet slows metabolism in humans. The researcher specifically says that a long term study that follows participants until their death would be required to see if they live longer.

<comment><USER7> > to see if they live longer.

This is quite subtle, but whether or not people live longer is not the same as speed of ageing. Still, it could be argued that this subtlety makes the title misleading, which is also "wrong" in a way.

If metabolism is tied to speed of ageing (don't know if that is established or not) then the title would be technically correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's great and all, but you cannot build muscle unless you're on a caloric surplus. Good bye resistance weight training with the goal of having more muscle.

The irony is that having more muscle would also increase the amount of calories you need to maintain (not get bigger/fatter, not get smaller).

What I'm trying to say is that a "deficit" completely depends on what your current lean body mass is. If I want to go on a 15% calorie deficit, I have to eat 2200 calories a day. A much smaller person would probably GAIN weight at that caloric intake.

<comment><USER3> IANA scientist, but the article claims new evidence that a reduced calorie diet can slow metabolism, which would impact the "surplus" side of that equation.

<comment><USER9> But if you don't fulfil the daily macro requirements then from what exactly does the muscle builds?

<comment><USER7> We were talking about caloric surplus, not macro nutrients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> IIRC the big problem with calorie restriction is that it brings along a greater susceptibility to infectious disease. After all if it were a cost-free win, a gradient-descending (is that the right term?) optimization process like evolution would have implemented it already.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/14/ageing-...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/14/ageing- calorie-restriction-diet)

Regarding suggestions made in another comment that calorie restriction represents the preindustrial norm, I don't think this is something modern nutritional science would have missed, considering the amount of research performed into the diets of extant nomadic and otherwise primitive cultures.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been experimenting with it for two years, along with a high-nutrient diet based on vegetables (almost no refined foods). I just did about two weeks at 1,000 calories per day and am on day 3 of a water fast. I'll increase the caloric intake next week.

I hope it's safe. Some else posted this link in a comment, and it's worth reading too:

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/14/ageing-...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/14/ageing- calorie-restriction-diet)

<comment><USER12> Fasting is largely safe, but you have to monitor your weight loss. If you lose weight too quickly, you're losing a lot of muscle mass and this can adversely affect your heart.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/magazine/chest-pain- recent...](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/magazine/chest-pain-recent- weight-loss-abnormal-electrolytes.html)

Keep up some cardio and exercise to keep heart's muscle mass and dial down calories slowly.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the heads-up. I lost ten kilos of weight last year without trying due a mix of medication reducing my hunger and a sudden development of lactose intolerance (so "accidental fasting" I guess), and didn't particularly do any exercise. I was aware that I might lose muscle mass but hadn't considered the effects it might have on my heart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> EZ-E Personal anecdote : I always ate little and spend most of my life underweight. I look extremely young for my age. I estimate I rarely eat more than 1500 kcal a day

When I think about it, most visibly underweight people I know tend to look young. Does anyone have the same observation?

<comment><USER13> Humm not really. In my perception, as you age and lose collagen, it seems to be that thinner people tend to show more wrinkled skin on their faces.

A good example to me is Anthony Bourdain. Here's a picture of him in 2014 and four years later:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Bourdain#/media/File:A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Bourdain#/media/File:Anthony_Bourdain_2014_\(cropped\).jpg)

[http://www.bravotv.com/blogs/anthony-bourdain-comic-book- hun...](http://www.bravotv.com/blogs/anthony-bourdain-comic-book-hungry- ghosts)

Don't believe four years alone does that to someone's face skin.

<comment><USER14> He doesn't look terrible for being over 60. Don't forget that the restaurant industry is a stressful job with long hours, and he's known for his incessant smoking, drinking, and drug use. Neither of those things lead to a youthful appearance.

<comment><USER13> Not saying he looks terrible for his age. Just the fact that his face looks way more wrinkled and the biggest factor seems to be weight loss, as not so many years have passed from one photo to another. Also, he doesn't work in the restaurant industry for a long time and enjoys what seems to be a very comfortable life doing nice TV shows.

[https://www.instagram.com/anthonybourdain](https://www.instagram.com/anthonybourdain)

<comment><USER15> I'm guessing it's less comfortable than you're led to believe from the TV show.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is difficult to follow in daily life although not impossible. Given that food is becoming less nutritious as per [1] taking less food will mean less nutrition which can affect general well-being. Figuring out foods high in nutrients, low in calories will require a lot of discipline.

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13179](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13179)

<comment><USER17> > Figuring out foods high in nutrients, low in calories will require a lot of > discipline.

Will it, really?

1\. Skip the snack aisle

2\. Visit the fruit and veg aisle

3\. Eat meat and replace candy with low-sugar nutrition bars

<comment><USER16> You are pointing out foods low in calories(which is good) but as per the link I quoted they may not be that nutritious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I cannot find it right now, but I am quite sure that in last few weeks there was a post on HN with roughly the same statement, but for high protein diet.

<comment><USER19> No, the evidence for high protein is the opposite - shortening life by increasing cancer risk:

"study cohort aged 50–65 reporting high protein intake had a 75% increase in overall mortality and a 4-fold increase in cancer death risk during the following 18 years"

Levine ME, Suarez JA, Brandhorst S, et al.: "Low protein intake is associated with a major reduction in IGF-1, cancer, and overall mortality in the 65 and younger but not older population" Cell Metab. 2014;19(3):407-417. [https://www.naturalmedicinejournal.com/journal/2014-05/high-...](https://www.naturalmedicinejournal.com/journal/2014-05/high- protein-diets-and-longevity)

In my opinion it is likely that the higher mortality is not entirely caused by protein intake itself (although there is some evidence that high-protein enviroments are mutagenic in yeasts), but is due to either the increased cancer risk from processed meat (nitrosamines) and/or red meat intake.

<comment><USER12> From your link, "the subjects consumed 1,823 calories on average per day, of which the majority came from carbohydrates (51%), followed by fat (33%) and protein (16%), with most of it (11%) derived from animal protein. The percent of calorie intake from protein was used to categorize subjects into a high- protein group (20% or more of calories from protein), a moderate-protein group (10–19% of calories from protein), and a low-protein group (less than 10% of calories from protein)."

Strange, that doesn't seem like a high protein diet to me. Athletes, particularly resistance trained athletes, regularly consume 30% or more of their calories in protein.

Further, from your link, "These associations [of protein -> higher mortality] were either abolished or attenuated if the proteins were plant-derived." So protein itself is not the problem, despite the study's authors repeatedly asserting this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When I was young(er) I did CR for a few years. The first 10kg was easy, the next 5kg hard, and the last 5kg a total struggle. What really got to me is that all I thought and dreamed about was food - I still remember some of my food dreams from this time and this was 20 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER15> Likely obvious to many in this group, but I think the right phrasing is "ordinary calorie" rather than "reduced-calorie" diet. People routinely eat more than they need and misunderstand that they are burning most of their calories while working out.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have been on a reduced calorie diet (one meal a day) since the start of february and have lost over 10 kg of both fat and muscle.

<comment><USER22> 10KG? in 6 weeks? that sounds like a dangerously high amount of weight loss.

<comment><USER21> I went from 66 kg to ~55kg, eating only one lunch a day plus some fruits. I think I've gotten way too thin, that around 58 kg would have been better, and that's why I'm thinking of starting to supplement. I also have kept on exercising plenty, muay thai and boxing, and that might be why I've lost this much weight, even though I wasn't obese when I started.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it - <USER2>

<comment><USER24> Quinoa?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jesus christ, just 1-2 months ago there was another HN "scientific" post that it actually does not.

Can we make up our minds already?</comment>


Famine - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine <comment><USER2> History is full of famines, including those which were created intentionally.

It is surprising that in this connected era, it is still possible to create intentional famine</comment>


Open Letter to HP: Saving Palm - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/4/3137527/open-letter-to-hp-saving-palm

<comment><USER2> I hate to say this but Palm was dead by the time they got it. And while I'm not a fan of Meg, I do realize that in order to save HP (which is a worthy goal) she has to kill Palm. To really make Palm work you'd have to make a huge financial bet on it since keeping it on life support won't help anybody. The problem is that if Meg wants to reposition HP as a services company it not only calls into question Palm, but keeping the entire PC division going. It's cold hearted to say this, but she has to not only kill Palm but quite a few other things and give that icon of the valley a new focus.</comment>


Launching.io: A community of tech startups - <AUTHOR> http://launching.io/ <comment><USER2> Not affiliated with this, but seems like a producthunt for startups. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems nice, but there is tons of pages like this and they really need to build a userbase to stand out.</comment>


Replacing a MacBook Air (2011) Magsafe Cord - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/WIWBU <comment><USER2> A goodly chunk of electrical tape, thicker near the charger and tapering off farther away, can provide some bend protection and strain relief.

Also, when you wrap the cord around the charger, use your index finger to prevent the first bend. You need to tape protect near the MagSafe adaptor as well. And stow it in your bag with the first bend facing out of the bag (less strain) rather than in the bag (more strain).

I'm on three years with a MagSafe. It looks like hell but it still works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good advice. There are also some bend protectors you can buy that look fairly nice.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Analytics and Automation Tool for Your Amazon Drop-Shipping Businesses - <AUTHOR> https://jansky.io/index_en.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Everyone,

My name is Ege, and I'm the co-founder of Jansky.

We were struggling to take off our previous idea. So, we started an Amazon drop-shipping business to make money on the side.

This might help us to survive. Eventually, the other one has failed. But we have a steady cash flow from Amazon.

And we noticed there were a lot of problems in the drop-shipping business. We want to have an easier way to manage and analyze our store.

So we built Jansky.

\- You can track your orders

\- Get profits analysis from different region stores.

\- We'll send your monthly personal reports to scale your business.

I just want to show you guys.</comment>


The Master, The Expert, The Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/master_and_expert.html# <comment><USER2> Great story! And I remember another one as told by the Great Master Craig Larman - quote from memory.

When you start working as a programmer, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.

Then you start learning new things, tips and tricks, so mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers.

And a few will reach such a level when mountains are again mountains and rivers are again rivers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1017708>

Yup, same pattern, looks to me like you're harvesting HN's history and resubmitting URLs with a "#" appended.

That feels a bit grubby.

<comment><AUTHOR> you missed this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2393371>

and this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2393387>

<comment><USER3> I'm not trying to be complete or comprehensive, I was just trying to understand. Do what you like, but understand that some people may object more strongly than I.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do understand. As you understand that some people (not me) disagreee with the whole dup-police thing. I like the way you do your thing -- I wish you liked mine -- to each his own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's still a good essay -- I wrote about it at the time.

<http://chester.id.au/2009/12/29/musos-and-masters/></comment>


Americans less likely to trust Facebook than rivals on personal data: poll - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-facebook-poll/americans-less-likely-to-trust-facebook-than-rivals-on-personal-data-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1H10K3 <comment><USER2> To me it is amazing that people trust Google and Amazon more than Apple. I am anti Apple devices so I trust Google more than Apple but I do acknowledge that might be my bias. But I am shocked that it is something others do as well. As far as Facebook goes I stopped using it not because of privacy concerns alone but rather because of Facebook philosophy of corraling the web inside facebook.</comment>


Profile of Tobi Lütke - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/meet-our-ceo-of-the-year/article21734931 <comment><USER2> Tobi is the one that taught me Rails back in 2004 when it first came out.

He told me he was working on some new thing called Shopify, but I didn't believe in it.

Later he asked if I could introduce him to Tim Ferriss, and I had to politely decline, because I didn't think Tim would be into it.

Now Tim is an investor in Shopify, which is a huge success, and I'm so happy to be so wrong, as usual. ☺

<comment><USER3> Any reason why you did not ask Tim first before declining? My assumption is that you had a fairly good relationship with Tim which was why you were asked.

I'm trying to understand the thinking when people refuse to do "harmless intros".

<comment><USER2> I've learned my lesson since then, and will do in the future.

I think it was just protecting my friend's time, and not bringing him anything that I didn't feel 100% "hell yeah this is totally your thing".

I'd like an introduction from me to be seen as a real endorsement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tobi is how I got into Rails back in 2004. I was looking for a blogging engine and discovered his Typo project. I taught myself Rails to add some features to Typo that I needed. His code and blog were some of the first resources for Rails besides the 37signals blog. It's amazing to see how much success some of the early Rails adopters achieved.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well-deserved. Tobi is one of the most impressive CEOs I've ever interacted with.

</comment><comment><USER6> Two years ago he said this about golang:

 _I have now completed two projects in Go. I predict that it 's going to be the dominant language for server work._

I'm very curious if he still feels that way. My impression is that it's growing but that the growth is more in its own niche than it is displacing things like Django or Rails.

<comment><USER7> I am guessing there are more Rails people curious about Elixir than Go at this point

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Lütke never went to university. Instead, after Grade 10, he entered an innovative apprenticeship program designed to produce Germany's next generation of computer programmers." ... I've heard about this system in Germany once too often, I wished we would have this in Canada.

I'm glad to hear he decided to keep his German accent. Having a French accent and working in English in Ottawa, I always wonder if I should work harder on getting rid of it, as opposed to focus on less shallow problems such as coding :P

</comment><comment><USER9> Completely off topic, I like how they call him Canadian. If he had moved to the Netherlands instead, people would still call him German, no matter how long ago he moved over. I'm really envious of this part of North American culture.

<comment><USER10> As a Dutch immigrant to Canada and a Shopify employee, I can assure you that the Germany-Netherlands rivalry is alive and well at this side of the ocean :)

All kidding aside, I cannot upvote this enough. The difference in how immigrated is treated is vast between Canada and the Netherlands. Yes, people complain about it here too, but success stories like this and a history of immigration makes sure the general opinion on immigration is favourable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I found the imprecision of this sentence kind of funny, just makes me think of weed:

"Lütke enjoyed selling—as a boy in school, he'd made some money buying items in bulk and selling them at a mark-up to other school kids."

<comment><USER12> Never anything like that. I usually capitalized on whatever fads were around. I went to middle school in the early 90s so it was things like those MagicEye books. I'd buy a box of them from the publisher and sell them for retail price at ( back then ) 200% markup.

<comment><USER13> Hey I used to do the same thing! Yo-yo's were a fad when I was in primary school, so I'd buy the from the flea market and sell them at a mark-up at school. Also, bulk lollies -- absolutely brilliant for making change at school. When we had a "paper hornet" war, I sold prepackaged "ammo" kits!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're curious about the biggest tech companies in Canada, then one source is the annual Branham300 list:

[http://www.branham300.com/index.php?year=2014&listing=1](http://www.branham300.com/index.php?year=2014&listing=1)

You can drill down into various categories (e.g. "Top 25 Canadian Software Companies") by clicking links in the left sidebar.

</comment><comment><USER15> Probably the most exciting computer technology company in Canada ever since Blackberry's heyday in the mid 00's.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice to see a Canadian publication and startup here.</comment>


Why Flutter Will Take Off in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://codeburst.io/why-flutter-will-take-off-in-2018-bbd75f8741b0 <comment><USER2> This post should have a different title: Why Flutter Will Not Take Off in 2018

<comment><USER3> Why? It's a pretty neat framework.</comment></comment>


Ancient Roman Valves (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.valvemagazine.com/web-only/categories/manufacturing/4947-ancient-roman-valves.html <comment><USER2> The sophistication of Roman plumbing technology is not that surprising.

The existence of "Valve Magazine" is slightly more so.

<comment><USER3> Many years ago I learned that the size of the specialty publication industry was just enormous. I don't know if that's still true, but the existence of "Valve Magazine" isn't too surprising to me. We had fun at work thinking up fake industrial specialty pubs, such as "Door Knob Monthly" and "Parking Meter Trends".

<comment><USER4> That's how ad targeting was done before Google and Facebook. Now that you can buy valve buyer eyeballs while they are browsing cat pictures all those multitudes of specialisation are prone to do extinct.

(and to GP: perhaps one day we might discover the remains of ancient Roman Valve Magazine!)

<comment><USER5> Specialty industry magazines are way better targeting than google. Their value also shot up post-GDPR as publishers realized how valuable their subscriber lists were to vendors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The reason why I found and submitted this story is because I came across this image of a Roman valve that was dug up in Pompeii:

[https://i.imgur.com/gX26IYG.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/gX26IYG.jpg)

I found it to be absolutely amazing so I had to find out more about it.

<comment><USER6> Wow. They must have had wrenches and other passable hand tools as well. How in the world could they get that far, without managing to build and harness even rudimentary steam engines?

If someone had described Hero's aeolipile to the people who built this plumbing, it might have made all the difference.

<comment><USER7> I believe metallurgy was a serious issue for any possible Roman steam engine.

<comment><USER8> Still, a stationary power plant would have eminently doable in my not so humble opinion. Even stone for cylinder offers great compression strength. Make it big enough and the scale works out to your advantage. Bronze bearings could be made very durable.

<comment><USER9> The reason is simple - Romans tended to use wood as fuel source. Steam engines started way after we decided to use coal instead.

The wood heat is too low to get high pressure saturated steam, and lower pressure is not that useful and requires a huge boiler or specially prepared wood briquettes.

Metallurgically, Romans knew of brass and copper, which is enough for a decent steam boiler. It would be rather expensive to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's a nicely built valve. Looks like something from 1890.

If the Romans had discovered the Bessemer process for making steel in quantity, the industrial revolution might have happened two thousand years sooner. They had a "steel industry", but could only make enough for swords and such. A Bessemer converter is much simpler than that valve. Would have changed history. The railroad era might have started around 150AD.

<comment><USER11> The Romans were not good at adopting technology when they found it (conquered it). Seems they continued using oxen to pull loads when they had knowledge of horse collars. Would have doubled their 'speed of commerce'. Probably the inertia stemmed from being one of the worlds largest bureaucracies.

<comment><USER12> Oxen are stronger, heavier, and have other uses besides pulling loads.

Horses are faster, but oxen are way more efficient. But were widely used right until transport mechanization, neither replaced the other.

<comment><USER13> Supposedly horse traces were also much more expensive to make & maintain compared to an ox yoke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's striking how wealthy Romans had running water in their homes, 2000 years ago, when my parents in rural Belgium (!), some sixty years ago, had to make do with wells and rain water. Even today, millions (billions?) of people don't have access to clean drinking water, let alone running water. We've come so far, yet not.

<comment><USER15> As it was made out of lead, I'm not sure Roman plumbing would hold up to today's definition of "clean drinking water".

But yeah, todays access to clean drinking water is largely an economical issue, not so much a technical one.

<comment><USER16> The average life expectancy was most likely less than it'd have taken to die from lead poisoning.

<comment><USER17> Kind of.... in antiquity (really anything more than 100-150 years ago), age of average mortality was dominated by deaths of the extremely young... but the reality is that people who did survive, often lived to their late 50s and early 60s.

<comment><USER18> Yep, if you survived childhood, you'd likely live long enough to see grandkids and 'retire' in Rome. In addition, a Roman army field medic/surgeon from the late republic/early empire onward was probably just as effective as any medic/doctor anywhere until the 19th century. Amputations, suturing lacerations, and so on didn't really change at all until antiseptics and antibiotics.

It's crazy to think how medicine didn't really advance for ~2000 years, and then vaccinations, antiseptics, and anesthesia (and later antibiotics) came into use and medicine advanced rapidly. Oh, add in a dash of germ theory and the scientific method, and stir. The Romans were really quite amazing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Valves

</comment><comment><USER20> In many aspects ancient Roman technology was not superseded until the 1800s. 1500 years of unnecessary inferiority.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks like the site got hugged to death. Does anyone have an archive link?

</comment><comment><USER22> The plug insert looks remarkably well made. It looks to have been turned in a rather precise, if crude, lathe (look at the the detail of the groove). This is even more impressive if you think that the first real modern lathes only date from the late 18th century. The plug insert could've been moulded by some sort of near net shape method, but I doubt it (the top part of the plug seems to be much more rougher in nature). The pics are too low resolution to make a definitive judgement.

<comment><USER23> I've read/listened to convincing arguments that ancient Egypt had rather advanced lathe tech.

[https://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/egypt/articles/hrd...](https://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/egypt/articles/hrdfact3.php)

<comment><USER24> Fascinating, those granite pieces seem extraordinary even for today's technology. Of course "buried in the oldest of Egyptian pyramids" is the ultimate in survivorship bias... But they still made at least one of them.</comment></comment></comment>