Paying for Dirt: Where Have Home Values Detached from Construction Costs? - <AUTHOR> https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/paying-for-dirt-where-have-home-values-detached-from-construction-costs <comment><USER2> Would like to say: If you would like to reverse these trends, or live in the SFBA and would like to be able to afford a home or condo without needing to commute from Stockton or hit the startup lottery, please pay attention to your local City Council and their zoning/land use decisions. Local decisions frequently don't get that many comments; your voice makes a difference.

\- Brisbane may approve 4400 units of housing, or zero. 4400 units would be close to how many the Bay Area typically produces in a year.

\- Cupertino and Sunnyvale residents frequently oppose new housing.

\- San Francisco has a strong contingent of people that oppose large projects. There is one project near Glen Park BART, and another one with 1200 units at 700 Innes, that could use support in the coming months.

If you're not sure where to get started getting involved, contact me and I can point you in the right place. One good place to start would be to push your executives and VC's to actually work towards making housing affordable here in the Bay Area; for too many it's an afterthought.

<comment><USER3> Will building more units / appartments/ houses bring the price down?

Have other cities seen home prices move toward affordability when more housing has been built?

I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, just that the logic seems flawed.

<comment><USER4> I'm not up on the sources, but a moderately pro-development candidate for Cambridge City Council has often quoted a statistic saying that there are only two ways to bring down house prices:

1\. Make the city suck

2\. Get the housing vacancy rate to 5.5%

And of course he says this to encourage everyone to work toward #2, and the way to do that without displacing anyone is to build new housing.

I don't really understand the opposite logic, which the NIMBYs like to use, saying that building new housing will drive the price up.

I mean, I am not some kind of libertarian free-market cheerleader, but it shouldn't be that controversial to say that a market _exists_ , that the way to bring down the price in the face of overwhelming demand is with supply.

People point to how expensive newly-built market-rate housing is, but that's a symptom of the shortage. People want to live in good cities. If there's not a new home for them, they'll pay even more for a home someone lives in, so prices go up _and_ a community gets displaced.

<comment><USER5> I don't see many people mentioning a proportional value-based land tax, which would probably be about the first thing a traditional economist would recommend?

Brings down prices, hurts land-banking, increases density, generates revenue for infrastructure, captures public benefit from value increase, etc...

<comment><USER4> Hurts grandmas/grandpas who lucked into houses with high property values, who could be rich but don't want to be because they have personal reasons not to move.

These are incidentally severely overrepresented among voters, and their votes are amplified by how easy it is to paint someone following the economic wisdom as an evil grandma-displacer.

It's much more politically convenient to displace young minorities. Nobody will really speak up for them, and they won't vote against you because you displaced them and they live somewhere else now!

<comment><USER6> One solution would be to defer tax payments and put a lien on the property instead, payable upon change of ownership. That way no one will be forced out of their home, and the government can even use those liens as collateral if they need to borrow funds for current operations.

<comment><USER7> Allow those liens to compound over enough time, and eventually they become more than the value of the home. Also, many of these voters want to leave their property to their children, not the government.

<comment><USER6> Many of those voters also don't want to pay higher sales, value-added, or income taxes. The money to operate governments has to come from somewhere.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but just how much government we need is always a political question, subject to much debate. The point is, the solution isn't as simple as raising taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I got sick of living in a HCOL area and moved somewhere super cheap. Put 20% down on a nice house and have a $500/month mortgage payment. My total annual housing expenses are less than the taxes on a similar house in Seattle or San Francisco.

Pay is less on paper, but actually quality of life and savings are much higher.

<comment><USER9> Where did you move to? I'm looking for a good area like this with the biggest requirement of having fiber or otherwise just a very good 250Mbps+ service.

<comment><USER10> If you can telecommute a lot, I recommend Maryland b/w D.C. and Annapolis. You can get a 4BR house for what a 1BR apartment costs in D.C., you can be at a farm in 20 minutes in one direction and a downtown bar in 10 minutes in the other, and I've got two different fiber providers available (I'm getting 2-gig installed soon). Unfortunately, the tech scene in the DMV area seems to be mostly in northern Virginia, which is probably the most overrated part of the entire country.

<comment><USER11> Northern Virginia has very low unemployment and high paying jobs. The area also has all 4 seasons fairly balanced, zero significant natural disasters, plenty of rainfall to stay green in the summer etc. Granted, you may not like that tradeoff, but it has a lot going for it.

Sure I moved to MD due to my current job, but I am seriously considering moving back.

<comment><USER12> Even with high paying jobs (if you are fortunate to have one), NoVA also has incredibly high housing costs unless you decide to live in the less desirable locations (which come with their own problems) or move far out and give yourself a massive commute.

<comment><USER11> Depends on what your comparing it to. Northern VA has a mix of jobs and houses so it's possible to have a very short commute. It's easy to find an nice apartment around 1500$ / month just about anywhere which is not cheap, but not so crazy as NYC or SV.

A dual income professional family can generally afford a 4 bedroom home, but that's hard on a single income without a massive down payment or over sized salary.

In terms of living further out, it's frequent for people to telecommute 1-3 days a week which makes a huge difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> i once managed the product that calculated the cost basis for your property tax bill in most US counties & states (and some international jurisdictions), and it was common knowledge there that home prices were disconnected from construction costs.

construction cost relative to home prices is interesting to a company like buildzoom because they're in the construction business (and finding the coming construction booms is important to them), but if you want to understand home price inflation, it's not that interesting at all. shiller, of case-shiller fame, also showed that home prices are disconnected from construction costs in his book _irrational exhuberance_.

in a stable economy, you'd expect home prices to roughly follow GDP or inflation, not building cost. if you graphed median home prices against GDP, you'd literally see the bubble (between median home price and GDP) starting to form in the 80's and popping in 2008.

why? financial engineering--we turned homes from places to live into investments. greed fueled home price inflation. and real estate investment was accessible to the average american, unlike more complex financial instruments like bonds or derivatives. in classic bubble fashion, people knew (and still know) that prices are irrational, but we all think we can make a boatload and get out before the bubble pops (again).

but these are homes we're talking about, not some abstract concept like a futures contract on the production of black-eyed peas. these are not simple commodities that we can easily replace with a substitute. it's where we _live_.

and yet, we continue to allow financiers and investors to extract wealth through higher rents (now nearing 50% for many residents of big cities), regulatory capture, and collaterized debt (the risk on which is passed to taxpayers). but "everyone else is doing it" so it's ok, right?

<comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism).

Don't mean to boil down your entire well-written post to a single point, but I maintain that Georgism is the only sensible solution to this problem.

<comment><USER13> i'm not familiar with Georgism, but i do agree that the land value tax should be a primary taxing mechanism for a property-ownership economic system (like ours in the US). it's progressive, fair, and according to the wikipedia article, doesn't get passed on to renters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I did a crude analysis of the effects of density on cost in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12362684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12362684)

"Sure. I found this for Canada: [http://www.altusgroup.com/media/4099/costguide_2015_web.pdf](http://www.altusgroup.com/media/4099/costguide_2015_web.pdf) Toronto (average $/sq ft to build given range) Medium Quality Tract House (assume 1 story): 180 Medium Quality Highrise (50-80 stories, average 65 stories): 270 This comes out to $1.38 more per square foot for each additional story. Let's just assume land will be twice as expensive in the city center as at the edge of that metro. Assume the cheapest land is $200 per square foot. Assume that the house will be built on the cheaper land, and assume one dwelling per story for simplicity. As you add a story, the cost of land is halved. After adding the 65th story, it is divided 65 ways. By adding the linear curve of building cost over the inverse curve of cost of land divided by story, you get the cost per square foot per story. In fact, this is maximized for a single-story building as land costs are born by a single tenant. Cost per floor falls until construction costs overcome the falling cost of land. The minimum cost to add a story, $214.67 occurs for the 12th floor. Again, back of the napkin and very naive. A highrise will probably have less square footage per dwelling though. If we halve that the cost of land falls even faster, with building costs plus land costs bottoming out at $203.51 per square foot, for the 8th floor. Finally, I added an $8,000 per square foot premium at city center. With this, the cheapest floor costs $348.44 per square foot for the sixth floor. So as land prices become steeper from city center to periphery, it actually makes more sense to disperse. Likewise reducing dwelling size does not have as much of an effect as rising build costs."

More than happy if someone can poke holes in it, but my takeaway was that costs are minimized at lower density rates than I first assumed. Mid-rise buildings are the most cost-effective, moreso than high-rises.

I'm glad that the BuildZoom study confirmed my exercise somewhat, but it's still disappointing that sprawl seems to be the best way to make housing affordable.

<comment><USER16> Midrise can be very dense. Think Paris. So can lowrise. Think rowhouses.

So no, sprawl is not the best way to make housing affordable. Doubly so if you account for transportation costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> hey, i'm looking to buy a small plot of land and build a house on it in the next few years. my goal is to be able to have land and a house of my own without taking a loan, or a very big one at least. ive been looking at land in northern california and there seems to be a lot of promising deals. lake county california seems to be a pretty good spot.

if anyone has experience with buying land to settle on, in northern california or otherwise, i would be eternally grateful for advice and tips. in fact, i would greatly appreciate any advice or tips regarding anything that has to do with buying land, building a house, or owning property and a house.

<comment><USER18> Check out the book "County Property: Dirt Cheap". It has some good tips.

Note Lake County is high in fire danger, so depending on where you buy you'll want to take that into account for insurance cost or building style. Neighbors are also pretty critical to whether or not you'll be happy with this dream of yours.

<comment><USER19> This is a pretty old book, being >20 years old. I wonder if anyone knows of a good book that takes into account searching via the internet.

<comment><USER18> Well, the principles still hold from the book, you'd be surprised. For internet searches, just looking at landwatch.com and Zillow. Between those two you will pretty much see all there is out here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They really should normalize the costs on a per square foot basis and the numbers would be even more start. Homes tend to be smaller in areas with really high per square foot costs.

It just seems so sad. When you're driving along the highway and you see all these tiny homes jam packed together like some sort of Gehtto, only 2 feet between each home and yet there's miles and miles of space in every direction, outside the complex. I'm talking about the exerbs that surround the bay area. According to one govt report i read, Only 5% of CA land is currently being used!

</comment><comment><USER21> Lol they should do this for London, where 150 year old tiny apts cost millions.

<comment><USER22> > 150 year old tiny apts

Tiny is bad, but what's wrong with old?

I find older houses are usually built to a much higher standard (may just be those that remain but that's irrelevant), and have much more character.

<comment><USER23> Build quality in the UK is generally dire. Mortar and bricks of old buildings crumbles. Lots of asbestos. Leaky pipes cost too much to fix, electrics are old and a hazard... New buildings favour low cost over quality. Staircases crack away from walls 12 months in. Insulation is designed to meet green targets, but not to actually insulate. Compared with the standards-obsessed Germans, I suspect many buildings in the UK should really be demolished. It's but one of the reasons I'm selling up in London and moving to the mainland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> TL;DR: Proximity to water and density of rich people drive up the cost of land.

It ain't rocket science people.

</comment><comment><USER25> Densification. Wish we would learn some of that in the SFBA.

</comment><comment><USER26> Do they not have RSS enabled?

<comment><USER27> Here you go: [https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/feed](https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/feed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Real estate values have always been rooted in location, location, and location (land).</comment>


Commit Every Day, Blog Every Week - <AUTHOR> http://nathanleclaire.com/blog/2013/10/16/commit-every-day/ <comment><USER2> I find it helpful to end the day by defining the first task for the next day of coding. The task needs to be specific and it needs to be quick and easy. I write it on a scrap of paper and leave it on the keyboard.

This gets me into the project with little to no friction and provides a quick accomplishment.

It helps avoid the mind-wandering morning thoughts of "where was I" and "what should I do today".

It's basically the Hemingway hack that's been mentioned plenty of times...

"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start."

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of Joel's classic "Fire And Motion" blog post: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm on day 55 of a github streak, and it's been really good for me. It has motivated me to take my main project [0] farther than I would have otherwise, and it has pushed me to improve my overall git workflow.

One thing that might affect my streak is the use of feature branches. I'm a hobbyist-getting-more-serious programmer, and I am just getting away from the lazy habit of pushing every commit to master. But branch commits don't count towards your contributions until you merge them, and I'm not sure how that affects streaks.

That said, if the point is to just make a commit each day and you're not measuring that with a github streak, there's no difficulty. I like these goals; I'm always curious to see if announcements of good intentions like this go anywhere.

[0] - [http://introtopython.org](http://introtopython.org)

edit: s/commit/merge/

</comment><comment><USER5> > 'Blog Every Week'

Make sure you use that blog title generator posted to HN few days ago, that'll guarantee you benefit the humankind.

<comment><USER6> what's the link plz?

<comment><USER7> Medium Maker ([http://benjaminhawkyard.co.uk/medium/](http://benjaminhawkyard.co.uk/medium/)) from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6645925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6645925)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good luck!

And a suggestion on the design front: if you're going to be generating that much content, make sure your blog is friendly on the eye, constraining your fluid width layout so you get a maximum of 12-15 words/line would be an easy win :)

</comment><comment><USER9> The "commit every day" part reminds me of this [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6389019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6389019)

<comment><USER10> I am the author of [1]. This post actually has motivated me to start a similar effort. Perhaps not the GitHub streak (again), but the blogging for sure! A blog post per week sounds like a very reasonable goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Committing every day is hard. I had a third of a year going, and then, after an intense month of travel, my first day back at home I forgot to commit and broke the streak.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER12> Good luck! If you blog with Jekyll, at least you can easily check off the 'commit' portion for one of the days of each week.

</comment><comment><USER13> Pushing every day commits to GitHub is easier than writing blog posts every week. But I wish you all the best man! Keep it up.

<comment><USER14> putting the blog in a repo on GitHub will turn commits into blog posts ;-)</comment></comment>


Daily Programming Puzzles for Interviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/codebnk

<comment><USER2> Good effort</comment>


Get Creative Insights on the Boundary Between Sleep and Wakefulness - <AUTHOR> http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/02/18/hypnagogic-nap/

<comment><USER2> This was very interesting and a technique that I had never heard of but was implicitly using myself. I have a bad back and after a few hours of work at my desk I often have to lie down and rest my back and end up napping. I'd rest by reading on my laptop but would sometimes drift off to sleep with my laptop resting on my chest or stomach and eventually the laptop sliding off my body would awake me and I would have new ideas to pursue on problems that I was working on. I think I'll put a notepad nearby and try to capture more insights when I wake up.</comment>


The Dropbox Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/news/company/announcing-the-dropbox-foundation <comment><USER2> It is huge that they give unrestricted grants. I've been involved in the nonprofit world a lot in the last few years, and the most surprising thing I've learned is how depressingly common restricted grants are.

Restricted grants are when you give money to a nonprofit to do what you want, rather than what they want. Usually this is some highly visible thing that the donor can then claim credit for. These projects are almost never what the nonprofit would have chosen to do themselves. Often they damage the nonprofit significantly. I was talking to a nonprofit a few months ago that had branches in two different cities quite far apart. I asked them why they'd chosen to expand to another city rather than expand in the city they were in. Wasn't it a distraction? They said it was, but that they'd gotten a restricted grant to open a branch in the new city.

The less powerful nonprofits have no choice but to take such money. And they don't dare complain about it, which is why you've never heard about this issue. Exactly the opposite, in fact: they have to issue press releases lauding the generosity of the donors. Which then perpetuates the problem, by making it seem to future donors that restricted grants are how you're supposed to do charity.

I don't know how Dropbox figured out that they should do unrestricted grants. It's a remarkably sophisticated insight for beginners.

<comment><USER3> > The less powerful nonprofits have no choice but to take such money.

Why can't they just say no if it's a not useful to them? How do the donors force them to take the money? I can't donate money to you and tell you to spend it on something - you'd just tell me to get lost.

<comment><USER4> But it's tough when much of the available grants of size are restricted. Sure, you could just shut down the nonprofit due to lack of funds.

But sitting in the nonprofit's shoes, when that grant is what you need to stay alive, and is related to your mission, but doesn't reflect your priorities within that mission, you're still going to take it unless you want to lay everyone off and move on. And many nonprofits are in that position.

<comment><USER3> Right so the grant _is_ helpful and welcome, that's why they accept it.

<comment><USER5> What/who are you arguing against?

<comment><USER3> The idea that charities take donations that damage them. They must be a net benefit, as otherwise they are free to turn them down and they would do.

People are using language like 'damaging' and 'no choice'. What they really mean is the donations are useful but they could be more useful if unrestricted.

Well yeah lots of things are more useful when you don't have any responsibilities along with them.

<comment><USER6> I think this is meaningless pedantry. It's like saying if I hold a gun to your head and tell you to dance, you always have a choice. Technically true but diluting the term choice past the point of usefulness.

More subtly, it's assuming that costs and benefits are somehow quantifiable in a single "benefit function". This is a modelling assumption that is often not true. There can be a benefit ("at least we can get some money to some people") that you can't turn down ("ethically can we turn down some money for some people like this?") while also being deeply damaging ("we are 'selling our soul' by acting as a PR arm for companies that want to improve their reputation rather than lives. This is damaging the ethical undeprinning and structural integrity of our organisation").

Summarizing this complex situation as a net benefit is naive and a bad model that will lead you to incorrect conclusions (like: "well they must get a net benefit, so it can't be that bad" rather than "we need to eliminate the structural factors that lead to such situations.")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A foundation with 20M$ and these ambitious goals is a gift for the society. However, it is also the typical American way of company-society interaction. The actually intended way is called "paxing taxes". Dropbox, like a good part of the US tech companies, has it's European site in Ireland, a country known for its low tax rates [1].

[1] [https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business- spectator...](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business- spectator/dropbox-confirms-irish-tax-dodge/news- story/1b9ac0b9df2139eb4d42d00c4bf21969)

<comment><USER2> It is a big mistake to think that merely paying taxes is a sufficient substitute for donations. Governments are like the biggest of big companies: they tend to be very conservative about what they'll fund. Individual donors and small foundations play a crucial role in funding the sort of risky outliers that new ideas come from.

<comment><USER8> There is also something to say for the continuous, reliable stream of spending that is permitted by taxes. The world can't run on risky outliers alone.

Actually, it's exactly the reliability of SS/medicare/etc that make people take it for granted and give it less attention than its dollar value would suggest. People can plan for it to be around in 20 years which can't be said for charity schemes.

<comment><USER2> That's true; nor are donations a sufficient substitute for taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is really great to see unconditional grants! It would be really wonderful to see this catch on as a norm for aide.

It seems a lot of time the specific conditions that are attached to a grant are used as a way of trying to hedge against the PR risk for a foundation/nonprofit that a grant was used improperly. I don't think empirically it's that effective of a hedge against money being used poorly anyway, organizations that will squander money will squander money.

It's also super exciting to see that they're offering in-kind support from employees as well. We're working in rural Kenya where the internet can be really challenging and I know that we'd be incredibly excited to work with some of Dropboxes team on sync'ing problems. My impression has been that the reliability and seamlessness of sync'ing at Dropbox has been primarily driven by some absolutely world class distributed systems talent, and it'd be phenomenal for organizations to get access to those employees/teams.

</comment><comment><USER10> > A big part of our mission has always been helping our users achieve their > missions.

Do these types of PR lines from companies that make productivity tools actually resonate with folks? At Dropbox's scale, they probably materially increase economic productivity, which is great. Why push some narrative about helping aid workers achieve their mission?

This sort of language seems especially strange to me when announcing something that actually can make significant social impact. The juxtaposition between the Dropbox product and the work of this foundation jumps off the page.

Maybe it's just me as I get older, but it seems so patronizing.

Anywho, this seems like a great project — great work DB, PR quibbles aside :)

<comment><USER11> > Do these types of PR lines from companies that make productivity tools > actually resonate with folks?

In the case of Dropbox, for me, it comes across as cynical virtue signalling.

If Dropbox were funding the EFF or the FSF or even dropping some funding to CCC or FOSDEM then I could start to overlook their ties with the sort of people¹ that create clients for Warchild.

As it is this stuff comes across as pretty horrible, and I keep on thinking about Dropbox as being part of a network of businesses closely tied to the military that create the problems that they now care about.

I realize I am not their target audience, but this PR has the effect of making me dislike them more than ever.

1\. [http://www.drop-dropbox.com/](http://www.drop-dropbox.com/)

<comment> shaki-dora "Virtue Signalling" was a stupid concept to begin with.[0]

But if you insist on using it, at least use it according to its _actual meaning_ : proclaiming some supposed virtue without costs.

In this case, it doesn't apply because they are, actually, spending $20 million.

[0]: Because it's a cheap way to disparage anyone, cynically using the perceived virtue of their stated opinion against them.

<comment><USER12> I doubt that's a widely accepted definition of it - I see it in [1] but there the author claims to have coined the term in 2015 even though it clearly predates that. However, the idea of signalling theory strongly includes the idea of costly signals, the obvious example being the peacock's feathers. I can't imagine that wouldn't be what a large part of what people mean when they say "virtue signalling" even though they do mean it by "signalling" in a broader context.

[1] [https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/i-invented-virtue- signal...](https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/i-invented-virtue-signalling- now-its-taking-over-the-world/)

<comment> shaki-dora The usage here clearly refers to what Wikipedia calls "Pejorative Usage"[0]. The clearest definition there is "public, empty gestures intended to convey socially approved attitude without any associated risk or sacrifice". This does not apply, because the $20 million are clearly an "associated sacrifice".

The Dropbox Foundation does better fit the traditional definition in signalling theory, i. e. "costly rituals, performed publicly, as a hard-to- fake sign of commitment.". But OP did not intend to use that definition, clearly shown by their term " _cynical_ virtue signalling".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling#Pejorative_u...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling#Pejorative_usage)

<comment><USER12> Sorry, I don't understand. Are you saying that "costless/riskless" is part of the "actual" definition? That's what your first post said, but this one citing Wikipedia appears to suggest you think that is _misusing_ the term in a pejorative sense. Though, in fact, that quoted you pulled form Wikipedia is from the same source that I cited in my previous post as an author claiming they invented the term at least 5 years after it was already in use. So I'm not sure we should take it to be at all definitive.

Either way, I think you can use this idea pejoratively with or without that part of the definition: Dropbox _says_ they support the community and these stated values, they drop some money on it and go back to doing whatever else they were doing that ignores these values. That's "signalling virtues" (by some definition) that you don't actually live by, except when it suits you to signal them.

(Note, I don't know enough about Dropbox to say that they are not actually living by these virtues.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > For the past 10 years, we've seen the impact our products can have when they > free up our time to focus on work that truly matters. Medical researchers > share data sets to develop vaccines. Musicians compose scores. Aid workers > access and coordinate information from the field.

Is it just me that think this is very cringy and reminds me of [https://youtu.be/J-GVd_HLlps?t=31s](https://youtu.be/J-GVd_HLlps?t=31s)

I like that they help fund stuff but I just think the statement is kind of hilarious.

<comment><USER14> Dropbox following the tried and true path of taking credit for tangentially "enabling" the contributions of others. Kind of reminiscent of Apple's statements about the massive impact of their company on the economy and job creation in other industries.

Heck, as long as the bar is this low, Microsoft could write a similar sounding PR statement to put some lipstick on their file system patent trolling - "At Microsoft, we have an unwavering commitment to the fight against poverty. Our storage technology has been crucial to the success of the one laptop per child program."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I suppose when you're not able to give an unwavering commitment to protecting your customers data, coming up with a completely unrelated corporate social responsibility plan like this makes sense.

<comment><USER16> This. It's amazing how many big companies use Dropbox with how limited their commitment to protecting customer data has been.

<comment><USER17> I suspect that corporations have much more leverage in this than consumers...

<comment><USER18> For US corps maybe, but many foreign companies also use dropbox even though they have little to no leverage in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> <bus joke>You wait all day for a Foundation to come along...[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16431800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16431800) </bus joke>

</comment><comment><USER20> I'll take an open source client and changelogs with each release please.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks like a PR stunt to jack up the hype before going public.

<comment><USER22> I've always felt strange metaphorically waving the flag of my employer while doing charity work. I don't help people because of my paycheck, so it seems inaccurate, at least, to brand my humanity with the name on my paycheck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Open Question: What's the consensus of opinion regarding Dropbox while they still have Condoleezza Rice on the Board of Directors?

Personally, I want to love them. I think Drew has built up a decent company. However choosing Dr. Rice for the board, although she probably brings a lot to the table, was an unforgivable act. The creation of the foundation is laudable but feels a bit of a band-aid to solving their image problem. The choice of War Child UK just rubs more salt into the wound for me however.

<comment><USER24> I don't think there's a consensus. I've stopped using Dropbox due to that choice, but their success tells me that this is not too problematic for most of their users. I think it's one of those things were the product is just too good for people to quit, even if they disagree with the business practices.

<comment><USER25> > I think it's one of those things were the product is just too good for > people to quit, even if they disagree with the business practices.

This or most users don't even know/care about the company / software. They just installed it to solve a problem and it works fine

<comment><USER26> This may be highly anecdotal, but I'm a Dropbox user, live in the US, read HN probably daily, and still don't know much about Condoleeza Rice or why it would be good or bad having her on the board.

Very much installed it to solve a problem and it works fine

(But now I guess i have some reading to do)

<comment><USER27> Some information is available here:

[http://www.drop-dropbox.com](http://www.drop-dropbox.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wasn't Dropbox "a feature, not a product"?

<comment><USER29> That's what Steve Jobs said. He can be wrong.

<comment><USER30> Dropbox should've been a feature of the operating system, but it isn't, because OS vendors have convinced themselves there's nothing left to do since the Internet is just going to solve all the hard problems now.

Seriously, I rue the day someone decided not to build-in such features as Internet-wide file sharing into my operating system, giving me full control over my content - subjugating me, instead, to the whims of yet another un- trustable third party.

<comment><USER28> Dropbox is a company that hosts your files.

If it was a feature of the operating system, who would host the files?

<comment><USER30> There are no good reasons I couldn't host my own files, with my own bandwidth, on my perfectly cromulant server/mobile device.

The only issue is, it hasn't been considered of any importance to maintain user agency; better we steal the users agency over their data/computers, put it out 'in the cloud', and get them addicted/dependent on third parties, than to make the operating system deliver similar levels of service, at scale, at the local level.

What if, instead of getting all hot and bothered about browsers, OS-teams instead focused on making source-/locality-/ownership- of user-generated data, within the context of the local machine, available at scale?

Like, gimme IPFS open and operating by default, in my regular distro, and I'll never have to host a site on a cloud server again...

Todays computers/bandwidth/connectivity can handle the load.

<comment><USER28> No, they can't.

Also, the battery can't handle your laptop open 24/7 just to serve a couple of files you _might_ need someday in your phone or other computer.

<comment><USER30> My systems can certainly handle the load I would impose upon them by sharing content to my personal social network.

What they can't handle is the load imposed on them by the farming of data by third-parties from my feed. But thats okay - because thats exactly what I want to get rid of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> No JS = blank page? Tab closed.

</comment><comment><USER32> So I guess they'll be sued any second now? Because people on the internet keep telling me companies can't just give away shareholders' money? /s

<comment><USER33> They aren't a public company. If they were, this might indeed cause some activist investors to take measures that might include lawsuits.

<comment><USER32> They obviously do have shareholders, though. And I doubt that they got explicit consent from every single employee that owns shares or options, and every single investor. I've also never seen the argument made with explicit reference to _publicly traded_ corporations only.

They also filed for IPO in January. I doubt that they will shut down the Foundation a few months after announcing it when they go public.

<comment><USER33> There is less of a chance of activist funds buying up your stock when you aren't public. This lessens the effect of activist investors.

Most shareholders don't care about the 'Do everything to make me money short term'. Some activist investors do. Those are easier to keep out if you are a private company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > The Foundation will instead offer flexible, unrestricted grants that our > partners can use to meet their greatest needs.

When you read that and have the recent Oxfam scandal in mind, it creates some interesting pictures.

Btw. I don't want to criticize the decision for unrestricted grants in any way, as I don't have enough expertise in the field.

<comment><USER35> There's always a risk when you give money that it will be used in a way you don't approve of or that is generally unsavory. Restrictions are one way to try to control that, but they're not foolproof. I think ultimately if you're willing to give money to an organization (and your goal is not just to get a building built and named after you), you should feel comfortable enough with its management that you're willing to trust it to make the right choices. If management won't make the right choices, your money will probably be better off elsewhere.

There are exceptions for organizations that are large enough to have multiple organizations nested under them with competing or independent goals (such as a university or a large charity with independent projects targeting different issues).

<comment><USER36> > There's always a risk when you give money that it will be used in a way you > don't approve of...

I've seen people on the left get upset when they find out that the ACLU defends the rights of people on the right in addition to those on the left.

<comment><USER37> In the wake of Charlottesville I recall some ACLU workers resigning.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TechCrunch Is A Fame-Hungry, Media-Manipulating Hypocrite - <AUTHOR> http://collaborable.com/blog/techcrunch-is-a-fame-hungry-media-manipulating-hypocrite

<comment><USER2> The TechCrunch post he is attacking here at no point attacks "the concept of publishing leaked state secrets". It attacks Assange. The article wants you to separate Wikileaks from Assange, but the author apparently cannot do it himself.

Of course, this is in no way endorsing TechCrunch, which is fucking terrible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Again, this was just the last straw, not the entire pile of evidence. A quick search will reveal plenty of attacks on "the concept of publishing leaked state secrets".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I thought this was just some linkbait article, but the title is a quote lifted from TechCrunch, and it makes a pretty good point about a spectacular failure of common sense on the part of one of TechCrunch's most controversial authors.

To be fair, Paul Carr has written many other articles, some of which are very sharp and to the point, and doesn't usually pander to the mainstream media views, so this is fairly unusual for him.

That said, anyone who's surprised that TC is fame-hungry hasn't been around the block :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> You only give 1 example why TechCrunch is a Fame-Hungry, Media-Manipulating Hypocrite you shouldn't read.

If they spit out news every few minutes this is only a marginal reason.

It is possible that every media has editorial where they give opinions on stories. As long as you know you are reading an editorial it is ok. You don't have to agree with everyones opinion.

Think this is weak shot on Techcrunch and you could have done better!

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe that came off wrong, but I didn't mean the speed of TC posts to indicate anything specific. It was more of a take on the quote used by author Paul Carr.

Maybe I could have done better flaming TC, but my main point was to make my argument for Assange and show my frustration for TechCrunch.

<comment><USER4> To take the loop from don't like the comment on Assange from an editorial jumping to Techcrunch sucks is a little bit far fetched.

<comment><USER5> "Fame-Hungry, Media-Manipulating Hypocrite" is a quote from Paul Carr in the TC article itself. The title of this post is a play on that quote and IMHO a very clever one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TechCrunch is pretty awful, blanked it out a long time ago after a few too many articles that had a headline along the lines of "[X] is the real Facebook Killer" or "This Bill Will Be the End of Personal Freedoms on the Internet FOREVERRR!!!!" (I'm just paraphrasing from the top of my head) ...too much hype, too much hyperbole, not enough Journalism.

</comment><comment><USER7> TechCrunch, or Paul Carr?

You seem to be more upset at the subject matter of the post and the fact that it's in opposition to your personal opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I said in my post, it was just the last straw. I've been reading attacks on Wikileaks and Assange on TechCrunch for a while now. I thought it was finally time to act.

<comment><USER8> And so far what have you done? You deleted one link and added another. Then wrote a nasty blog explaining to the world your vague reasoning for your actions. It's kinda funny really. You acted and might sway 5-10 people. A drop in the bucket.

How about instead, you compile these articles you claim attack wikileaks releasing data instead of telling people to do the searches. Why don't you act and put forth some real effort and get this guy fired if he is as bad as you say? Or is it now when people say "It was time to act" they really mean they are going to write a nasty gram and post it on HN to get upvoted?

<comment><AUTHOR> By "act", I meant write my opinion down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Giles Bowket made almost the same point, but he was much funnier:

[http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/never-hate-only- eve...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/never-hate-only-ever- destroy.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> While this post doesn't really link to a 'bad' article in TechCrunch I think it's good to bring up the lack of substance some most of these TechCrunch posts are containing.

I go to TechCrunch in the hope I'll find some new startup working on some new and zany problem but are instead either greeted with something along the lines of how awesome Angry Birds is, why Android is better than iOS or picking up some story thats been dissected to death either in HN or Engadget.

I wish they'd take on the idea of Alt.Engadget and funnel their weird posts to a separate site when ever they feel like they want to say something random (Alexia seems to be the one that does this the most).

(Having said that, today there seems a to be a pretty good day for TC with some interesting posts but other days it can be quite deceptive.)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm having trouble imagining a scenario in which this is not exactly what Paul Carr (the Techcrunch author) wanted. The whole article was designed to stir up controversy and get people's blood pumping. Because controversial posts drive traffic.

As far as losing readers they might lose a handful who were (a) already passively angry and (b) had this as their hot button issue. But 99% of people in the tech community know Techcrunch courts controversy at this point and have either chosen to accept that and continue to read or have already left. I don't think a lot of people are going to

So in the end Techcrunch wins this round (as they usually do on these things)

</comment><comment> wh-uws I look at Techcrunch like this.

TechCrunch is TMZ for our industry.

On one end there is the phenomenal up to the minute, you can't find this anywhere else, everyone will be talking about it nonstop for a week, they scooped everybody stuff

ala the path scoop from yesterday [http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/02/google- tried-to-buy-path-fo...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/02/google-tried-to-buy- path-for-100-million-path-said-no/)

and then there is the tech/startup industry and industry celebrity gossip.

If you look at as such you won't be so surprised and offended when you read it.

</comment><comment><USER12> The whole dedicated to obsessively profiling startups mission is a ploy to drive page impressions, sell tickets to award ceremonies, and launch conferences. Page views are more important then writing about boring startups.

</comment><comment><USER13> You can subscribe to author-specific feeds on techcrunch. I subscribe only to Arrington's posts with <http://techcrunch.com/author/tcmarrington/feed/>

</comment><comment><USER14> My last straw was the fight with Engadget. Mashable will do.</comment>


Small Planes and Lone Terrorist Nutcases - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/small_planes_an.html <comment><USER2> I work at a start up about 2 minutes from where it happened and it scared the crap out of me. Some people say its not terrorism but that's hogwash.

While it might be impossible to detect and stop these types of acts, domestic terrorism is serious, and probably a sign that our government and country as a whole could do a little better.

When US citizens are flying planes into government buildings post 9/11 people need to take note.</comment>


Anthony Thyssen's Homepage (1994) - <AUTHOR> https://antofthy.gitlab.io/ <comment><USER2> What a blast from the past! Anthony was the head sysadmin during my undergrad (circa. the last update of this page) and this page was pretty famous. I was part of a research group and built a bit of a rapport with Anthony since I was bugging him to install/configure random things like Perl::FastCGI.

On the odd chance you're reading this, Anthony, I'll never forget you granting my request of the now-defunct $email@example.com email address when I joined "staff" as part of the research group. I doubt you would remember that, but I thought it was cool as fuck so thanks once more.

</comment><comment><USER3> > What I really am is a hacker (original meaning, not the cracker meaning of > the media) and as such, live on COKE and often work into the wee hours of > the mornings (or at least I used to). A sign which once appeared on my door > says "Real Programmers do their best work between 1 and 5 am", about which I > totally agree. Though my boss, and wife don't!

That definitely resonates with me.

I know why web pages have to be why the way they are today but I really miss fast-loading and information-dense pages like this these days.

</comment><comment><USER4> Countless imagemagick users are probably in debt to Anthony thanks to his imagemagick documentation & samples.

[https://imagemagick.org/Usage/](https://imagemagick.org/Usage/)</comment>


For Wal-Mart, too, IT is a commodity - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/10/for_walmart_too.php

<comment><USER2> I like one of the comments; that everything gets commodified in time, the only thing that will stand is ongoing creativity. - The same spirit as the message of 'The Whole New Mind' (I'm surprised similar books haven't come out, it's not like he can possibly have said all there is to be said on it).

In that vein, John Gero (<http://mason.gmu.edu/~jgero>) and Rob Saunders (<http://wwwpeople.arch.usyd.edu.au/~rob/publications.html>) are researchers in exploring design space, and automatically generating novelty, creativity.

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea of dealing with SAP sends a chill down my spine, and my billing rate up an extra 20/hour.

</comment><comment><USER4> Carr is still beating that dead horse. His silly assumption that IT is a commodity has been refuted by dozens of researchers, CIOs and CEOs. Carr still doesn't wanna let it go... He's like a more cultured version of John Dvorak.

</comment><comment><USER5> A lot of interesting viewpoints in the comments, but no one mentions the real reason for Walmart's floundering: that most people would rather go to the dentist than Walmart. IT has little to do with it. Implementing back office and supply chain software is like striking out the pitcher; everyone can do it. Where is the real business innovation based on technology? That's what people here want to talk about.

<comment><USER6> _most people would rather go to the dentist than Walmart_

Yeah, that's why all of Sam Walton's kids are billionaires, because no one wants to shop there...

<comment><USER5> They're billionaires because they inherited the money he made when people used to like to go there.

They haven't screwed it up yet.

Stay tuned...</comment></comment></comment>


The Best Way to Explain Refactoring to Non-technical Boss - <AUTHOR> https://www.careerdean.com/c/general/how-you-explain-refactoring-non-technical-boss-feel-judging-me-spending-so-much-time-on-refactoring

<comment><USER2> I use a kitchen analogy. Writing software is like cooking in your kitchen. You dirty dishes and utensils, use up ingredients, and the sink gets crowded with detritus. Refactoring is washing the dishes, buying new ingredients, and straightening up the kitchen.

In professional kitchens most chefs enforce the clean-as-you-go rule[1]. The same rule should apply to professional software development.

[1] [http://www.pbs.org/food/features/cleanliness-is-next-to- impo...](http://www.pbs.org/food/features/cleanliness-is-next-to-impossible/)</comment>


Interesting Rich Hickey Interview About the Development of Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10708 <comment><USER2> Please don't editorialize the title.</comment>


Facebook says minimum sign up age is 13, but in drop down it shows 2013 as well - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151589167603076&set=a.137415758075.110368.832518075&type=1

<comment><USER2> Try signing up and see what happens.</comment>


The iPhone case with a Built in Android phone on the back - <AUTHOR> http://www.gadgetdx.com/smartest-smart-phone-case-android-iphone-love-child/ <comment><USER2> I thought this looked familiar: [https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/5x178p/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/5x178p/130_for_an_iphone_case_that_runs_android_71_and/)</comment>


IP fragmentation is fundamentally broken - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/ip-fragmentation-is-broken/# <comment><USER2> Everytime any topic like this comes up with quotes >For IPv6 that minimal value has been bumped up to 1,280 bytes< I get my hopes high to have IPv6 only world.

My ISP Excitel gives only CGN-NAT local 10.x.y.z ip address. I checked their BGP advertisement, and they don't even connect to IPv6.

May that day come soon.

<comment><USER3> Now that in some countries (Belgium) more than 50% of the internet connections get IPv6 hopefully the rest will follow. It would be about time after two decades :)</comment></comment>


Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature - <AUTHOR> http://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7 <comment><USER2> I did some small tasks for people working in bioinformatics and what I've seen is both amazing (the science part) and terrifying (the tools). Apparently I saved hours of retyping for one person who was doing a manual JOIN on gene names between two CSV files. As in ctrl+f name of gene from file A, copy, paste into another window. For thousands of rows. I was trying to explain that you can import CSV files without autoformatting as well, but they didn't believe me... sigh... (at least they were aware that this is a bad idea with default settings, because the formatting changes)

I don't know if this can be fixed and how. Lots of people seem to have their own process and they neither understand that the tools can be used more efficiently / correctly, nor question the long, manual process they follow currently. They basically require an "intermediate excel" course which ends with "if you're doing copy/paste 3 times in a row, you should look for better solution". I'm not even questioning the use of excel at this point...

<comment><USER3> This kind of problem is rife in academia.

Part of the problem, as a sibling mentioned, is that many people get into these kinds of fields from non-programming or even computer-illiterate backgrounds. At an undergraduate level, even in heavily numerical disciplines like physics, there is relatively little coding. Even then, it's tedious crap like F90 and bulletproof C. So people get into a Masters or a PhD in a field they love and are suddenly confronted by data analysis, and they have no idea what to do.

I've spoken a lot to my girlfriend (an astrophysicist) about this, as she's in this position herself. It's not that she isn't smart, she just has little to no experience with data wrangling and she's (in my opinion) been inadequately trained. I've solved things with Python one-liners that she would have spent literally days doing manually. We've had conversations along the lines of:

"But why does this file have 700 lines of input data filenames hardcoded? You know you could write some code to grab them for you?"

"Yes, but in the time it would take me to write the code, I may as well do it by hand." [In the end I wrote a 5 line regex to do it]

So I can assure you, people question the manual process and they think you're magical when you show them a quicker way of doing things. However, often there isn't the motivation or confidence to try and be magical themselves.

<comment><USER4> This is where I take the time to explain to everyone that "Yeah, while it may save you time to do it manually, if you do it THIS way instead, you never have to write it from scratch again, and your output goes waaay up".

Every job I've ever had, I always look at how my predecessors do the job, then automate the crap that I don't want to deal with. :/

<comment><USER3> I'm in the middle of writing a retrospective on my PhD - the stuff I wish I'd done at the beginning. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it mostly boils down to automate and pipeline _everything_. It almost always saves time because inevitably you have to repeat work with parameters changed very slightly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If only someone had warned them! Like, say, 12 years ago:

[https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186...](https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80)

Bonus: the number of errors is positively correlated with Impact Factor (a tool used by statistically illiterate administrative types to judge the quality of research).

<comment><USER6> When researchers stop using Excel as their main "database", this problem might be solved.

<comment><USER7> What's the alternative?

Remember, these are people who don't understand data types, or if they do they are to lazy to declare them.

I don't see them formulating a correct SQL query. Or use any kind of programming language that has strict typing.

It would have to be a custom-tailored system that knows about nomenclature in the field. Sounds not very efficient.

<comment><USER8> > I don't see them formulating a correct SQL query.

Well, neither can programmers, since SQL injection is still the most common security vulnerability in software, so I agree, SQL is probably a bad tool for the job :)

> It would have to be a custom-tailored system that knows about nomenclature > in the field. Sounds not very efficient.

Is Excel a custom-tailored system that knows about nomenclature in the field? The article seems to explicitly argue against that.

I don't think it's a failure to understand data types. It's a mismatch between what you expect the software to do, and what it does by default. Unfortunately, Microsoft has steadfastly refused to allow any way to change the auto-formatting options(check out some people really pissed off for being treated like children here - [http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/office/forum/office_2007-...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/office/forum/office_2007-excel/stop-auto-correction-of-number-into-a- date/9968c54a-221b-4b18-a3d1-cfd3d312a8a6?auth=1)).

There's two useful prongs of attack here - one is to somehow force Excel to conform to the expectations of researchers - perhaps an extension that works to prevent the most egregious cases of auto-formatting gone wrong? The alternative would be what you suggest - creating and marketing a custom solution, the problem there is that you'd need either buy-in from a significant number of researchers to spread it, or you'd need to replicate a lot of Excel features to make the transition smooth for others.

<comment><USER7> > prevent the most egregious cases of auto-formatting gone wrong

Sure, but converting "DEC1" to "December, 1st" is not egregiously wrong, it's a valuable feature and in most of the cases the expected thing.

<comment><USER8> Not to a person who specifically __does not want __that feature - and since Excel does not provide a way to turn it off or customize it, my idea was that an extension might be able to. Of course, I 've never written an Excel extension(macro?) so I have no idea.

<comment><USER7> Of course you can turn it off. By formatting the cells as the correct type.

<comment><USER8> That's a ridiculous argument and you should know it. Forcing users to do manual work every time instead of having an option to disable or configure a feature is just a UX fail. Doubly so because I would bet those formatted excel files don't survive transition, and the data is actually transmitted in CSV or whatever, so you'd have to reformat the data over and over every time you open to edit it, and hope that someone along the way doesn't make a mistake. This a problem software is meant to solve, not create..

You could argue that all you can do is mitigation since CSV files don't offer much ability to influence how Excel will load them, and all you would need is one improperly-configured Excel along the pipeline to break the data. However, this is a significant mitigation - Excel apps would be configured once, and you would deal with a situation 1% of the time, and the solution would be trivial(just configure it!). Instead now you're dealing with the problem every time, and the solution(just mark the cells!) takes a lot more effort.

I don't think Microsoft necessarily has incentive to add this configuration(the science community as a whole is probably a tiny blip on its radar), but this is why we create modular and extensible software - so others can tweak it to their liking.

<comment><USER7> No, it's the correct argument.

Putting an option in to disable something that only a miniscule number of users would ever want is not sensible.

Note bene: I'm only talking about this DEC1-like conversions. I agree that there are lots of conversions that are annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For a long time, I knew I was dropping this gene [1] from my analyses because pandas automatically converted its name to a floating point. With the right combination of flags I was able to get it to work right, but even real programming languages are not immune.

[1][http://flybase.org/reports/FBgn0036414.html](http://flybase.org/reports/FBgn0036414.html) \- short symbol is "nan"

<comment><USER10> "And I hope you've learned to sanitize your database inputs."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Science is probably the least scary thing that an Excel bug can affect. JPMorgan Chase's "London Whale" venture lost $2 billion in part because spreadsheet modelers divided by a sum instead of an average to get a value at risk.

[https://baselinescenario.com/2013/02/09/the-importance-of- ex...](https://baselinescenario.com/2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/)

Then there was the infamous Reinhart-Rogoff paper in economics, used to justify harmful austerity policies worldwide post-2008, that came to false conclusions using a row formula that wasn't updated.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/16/is- th...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/16/is-the-best- evidence-for-austerity-based-on-an-excel-spreadsheet-error/)

<comment><USER11> That's not excel bug.

I've seen co-workers getting wrong results due to a wrong copy-and-paste, where no attention was paid. This is no bug: it's a misuse off the program.

Know your tools is always a good advice.

<comment><USER10> It is a bug. There is no way to stop Excel from automatically turning certain strings in files that it reads in, into dates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At the university I was working on a project to do parsing of gene relationships from literature. And yeah remember the inconsistencies. Also genes have funny names there is a SHH (Sonic Hedgehog), a DICER1 (which cuts something RNA or DNA I forgot), and a bunch of other silly ones.

Ultimately though coming from the world of algorithms and nicely organized data, it was frustrating how disorganized the nomenclature seemed.

<comment><USER13> Don't forget that the genomics folks also renamed a whole bunch of genes a few years ago so now there are two different names for the same thing floating around!

<comment><USER14> For every gene, there are typically at least 3-4 names that reference the gene. In some cases, two genes have the same name- for example, OCT1 and Oct-1. The first is "organic cation transporter 1" and the second is "Octamer binding protein 1". The second was "renamed" to (IIRC) POU2F1 but there are still plenty of references to the old name even in new literature.

This is just one example. The entire gene naming area is a pile of bollocks.

<comment><USER5> And we haven't even touched on the glory of _Drosophila_ gene names.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pathology resident working with big data and an undergrad in physics checking in. I learned SQL. Met Stonebraker before the Turing Award. I taught myself Python in part by working on Rosalind problems. It's not that I don't understand. I don't have chunks of time large enough to quiet my mind, frame- shift, and work on my research at the code level. I've got IRBs and all sorts of oversight to deal with, budgets, etc. and the biology. A central success of my project has been recruiting professional CS people early.

That's my single biggest suggestion for biologists: know that professional computer scientists and programmers are desperately hungry for interesting data and would love nothing more than to help you design the project up front so they don't get sucked into the vortex of technical debt that _will_ swallow your project if you don't set it up right early.

</comment><comment><USER16> Excel is a fantastic tool, and widely used in bioinformatics — but to use any tool properly, you have to learn it. I'm really thankful that it was tought first in my bioinformatics class, before any specific tools or programming languages, so we wouldn't commit stupid errors as this one.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Linear-regression estimates show gene name errors in supplementary files > have increased at an annual rate of 15 % over the past five years, outpacing > the increase in published papers (3.8 % per year).

This still doesn't actually tell us if the problem is getting worse. Or if it does it is badly worded. Even assuming this 3.8% is derived from their own data, you need the number of papers published that contain genelists (I would imagine this has probably risen faster than the number of papers overall).

In other words, the authors should have plotted the error rate over time rather than the number of errors over time.

</comment><comment><USER18> Even worse there is not even a proper definition of what a gene is.

The meaning changes. Depending on who you are talking to, What book you are reading, What part in a book you are reading.

<comment><USER19> Biology (the discipline) is messy because biology (the reality) is really really messy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be interesting to a certain type of person to look back on this in ten years and see if any of those papers were corrected, etc. Some links are in this thread that would allow this to be done now as well. Also check out the fMRI and microarray scandals that contaminated decades worth of publications.

Did using correct data and analysis pipelines actually matter to the conclusions these authors came to?

</comment><comment><USER21> Relevant:

[http://learn.filtered.com/blog/5-excel-bloopers-with-huge- co...](http://learn.filtered.com/blog/5-excel-bloopers-with-huge-concequences)

</comment><comment><USER10> Fucking Excel! They haven't fixed this utterly egregious bug in over a decade.

I'm going to make a sign and picket Microsoft when I'm next in the area.

<comment><USER22> What bug?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have long fantasized about writing a virus that forces Excel to quit if it detects the user is attempting to use Excel to do scientific research.

<comment><USER2> What's your proposed alternative that doesn't require hours to start with? Serious question - I believe no programming languages can be applied here. (at least not yet) The barrier to entry must be minimal.

<comment><USER10> You seem to be asking why people shouldn't do data analysis without knowing anything about data analysis.

<comment><USER2> I'm saying - we've got lots of people who know the science and do not know or want to know anything about programming. If we want good results, we need to enable them to work better somehow. Proper programming is a good idea for adding to university programs now, so that in ~10 years we can have this talk again and point out that people know better tools and shouldn't be using excel, or at least shouldn't be using it badly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visual C++ Refactoring - <AUTHOR> http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/164904b2-3b47-417f-9b6b-fdd35757d194 <comment><USER2> I remember a VS developer once saying that they'd love to include more refactoring functionality; it's just that they want to be very, very sure that it cannot ever destroy your code. Eclipse doesn't seem to have that restriction and manages to mangle my code from time to time. Choosing names for automatically-generated members that clash with variables or fields already there (I know you are in rename mode afterwards, but this shouldn't strictly be necessary), or not recognizing the difference between this and SomeClass.this when extracting a method (it puts it in the wrong class).

Perhaps there are people who take working refactorings over those that sometimes need massaging to prevent semantic and syntactic errors.

(That being said, I probably never really used that much of what Eclipse offers in refactoring apart from Extract Method, Rename and Extract Local Variable. And I do understand that refactoring for C++ code is downright hard, if not impossible in the general case.)

<comment><USER3> I find it really short sighted to say the IDE should never destroy code. Yes in an ideal world. However we have VCS to ensure our code is never lost. Before and after any refactoring you should be checking in.

If the IDE got it wrong I'd revert and submit a bug report, no biggie.

I want my IDE to be stable, fast and do as much for me as possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm constantly refactoring my code. Yes, not all of them are solution-wide changes, but it would be a _huge_ drain on productivity to check in my code between each refactor. I need to be able to trust my IDE that it will refactor properly and not destroy my code

<comment><USER4> Probably an impedance mismatch here, i think the parent is thinking in terms of git (or a.n. other DVCS) where constantly making atomic commits is very natural.

I suspect from what you're saying you're using something else.

E.g. day to day i use subversion. It's possible to adopt this workflow in subversion but it definitely takes more effort on my part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's been in kdevelop and qtcreator for like forever. I'm surprised MS took so long to add it.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Eclipse also has it, and I couldn't believe Visual Studio doesn't. It's so useful to just right click -> Rename an entity in code.

<comment><AUTHOR> VC++ seems to have been given so little attention over the past years. I mean, even something like the new project wizard (which IIRC was due to be replaced when VS 2008 was around) is still untouched and completely different to the managed wizard. Maybe they've been too busy with C++11 feature implementation to actually improve the experience (and before that I imagine that .Net stole a lot of their resources). Of course now with C++14, they've got more work to do, so I'm not sure when we'll ever see significant improvements. It makes me sad, because being a C# dev, VS is very familiar, and to get a similar experience on the odd occasion I do write native code would be awesome!

<comment><USER7> Windows C++ development on Visual Studio is composed of a lot of tribal knowledge. I am surprised WTL isn't even an officially supported framework, while they leave their ATL and MFC kits rotting in neglect.

<comment><USER8> On the Visual Studio 2013 release it was communicated they are still looking to what might be the C++ GUI framework for desktop Windows, but it won't be MFC.

It is too old, based on C++ concepts that don't have place in a modern post C++11 world.

WTL was never an official framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And what about XCode? Yes! That's right! It can't refactor C++! It can only refactor Obj-C and C. Quality!

(I understand that C++ is not the focus of the Mac ecosystem but it was a shock when I attempted to refactor some C++ and it told me that it doesn't refactor C++. I was mildly sad.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Automated refactoring was one of the promises of Clang. Does anyone know how that's going?

<comment><USER11> I ran across this yesterday (posted in 2011) about how google is using clang to automatically refactor their codebase: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVbDzTM21BQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVbDzTM21BQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's wrong with "sed -i"?

<comment><USER13> The fact that it does not understand the language.

<comment><USER12> This IDE refactoring tool clearly doesn't understand the language either, or it wouldn't screw up your code (as they clearly warn you it might).

Personally, I'd much rather use a simple tool (like sed), with reliable, deterministic results, than something that's right "99% of the time".

Sure, it tries to spot edge cases and flag them up to you, but if it's wrong some of the time, who's to say that it won't fail to spot an edge case 1% of the time too? So if it fails 1% of the time, and it fails to realise the problem in 1% of _those_ cases, then it's introducing subtle bugs one time in every 10,000??

The very idea gives me cold shivers.

Note: if they "improve" the tool so that it's right 99.9% of the time, then they've only made the situation worse. Now the bugs only crop up one time in 1,000,000 - and now they are _even more subtle_.

tl;dr - a refactoring tool is 100% reliable, or useless. There's no in-between case.

<comment><USER14> >Personally, I'd much rather use a simple tool (like sed), with reliable, deterministic results, than something that's right "99% of the time".

>tl;dr - a refactoring tool is 100% reliable, or useless. There's no in- between case.

lol..

<comment><USER12> Congratulations. Your refutation of my argument is very persuasive.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The "head in the sand" mentality harms your inbound call flow - <AUTHOR> https://www.queuemetrics.com/blog/2017/04/24/Allison-Smith-IVR-Head_in_the_sand/?lid=H009 <comment><USER2> IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response, that is the menu you can navigate with your phone keys.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct - for non-telephony geeks :)</comment></comment>


How do you recall and apply insights from non-fiction books? - <AUTHOR> I really enjoy books about human behaviour and how the mind works. For instance, I'm currently reading Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
As is often the case with these types of books, I get the feeling I'm not absorbing the content as well as I could or should be. I struggle to see when or how I can apply many of the insights in my day to day life. This seems like a missed opportunity.
I'm curious if anybody has any advice to get more out of these types of books?
Maybe I need to should be taking notes, writing summaries, creating flash cards / cheetsheets, or something along those lines. What has worked well for you? <comment><USER2> I usually make pencil marks (a star, underlining, boxes, etc.) in a book as I read it, to notate things I found especially interesting. Generally I will then also write a summary of the book, rewriting what I learned in a mixture of my own words and quotes from the book.

<comment><AUTHOR> I read on a kindle so the physical underlining is tricky. I guess I could try using the digital highlighter.

I think I will definitely try writing a summary of Thinking Fast and Slow, and see how that goes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My goto in this is to read the book, and when something relevant comes up, stop.

Think on whatever it is and run through related experiences and model possible, alternative outcomes, given whatever insight is at hand.

The way to remember in an enduring way is to make connections. For that to happen, you must invoke what you know.

Simulation and extrapolation are two great ways to do this.

Affirmation, as in "that's why it happened as it did" is good too, but is also easily forgotten.

Extrapolation and simulation make much deeper, enduring connections, and those are what you seek. With this effort will come a genuine change in, or expansion on your perspective. There will also come decisions too. Perspective changes are not always a net positive. You need to give the insight enough consideration to judge this.

Extrapolation can be near future events too. Model them, get your expected outcomes and what drives them clear, then refactor with that insight. Compare to your past or others experiences where possible.

Does it make sense outside the context in which it was presented? Does it contradict that which you hold dear? Why? Is it self consistent? All of these and more will play out for you during this investment of time and thought.

It can be very helpful to do this with others too. Group model, simulate, extrapolate then reassess what makes sense.

Most of the things in those books come down to a handful of words, phrases, ideas. The book is there for context and comprehension, as well as drama to get you through to exposure.

Your own context is where the value is, and the work to realize that can often be done on a live chat with friends, standing in line, at the bar, etc...

Realization does take some human time. That is where the really good stuff is.

My best improvements have come from these activities and some new ideas to process and understand what they mean in my context, not just the context in which they were presented.

Don't pick up the book again, until you have processed these things. A very good indicator is a sense of new motivation or urgency related to something you normally would take as it comes. When you feel that, continue, and it should become more resonant, and when it does, consider action then.

Doing this is also a great bullshit or flash in the pan filter. Shiny things can cost us. Should they remain shiny after handling them for a while, chance of real value is improved.

So handle it. Try to rub the shine off, pick at the seams, find the edges, poke, prod and work to see what it is you have really got.

You won't forget that so easily. You may also find connected thoughts and ideas too. These can have more value than the insight.

I will carry one of these ideas around for some time. Quick is not always good. A genuine insight can take some time, days, maybe weeks even, to play out.

Of course, this does then bring up how to understand what is a waste of time and what is not.

No answer for you there. There is genuine risk in all things. You can abandon a book that does not yield net improvements, but only after internalizing enough to understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Realization does take some human time. That is where the really good stuff > is.

> My best improvements have come from these activities and some new ideas to > process and understand what they mean in my context, not just the context in > which they were presented.

I guess that's really the nut of it.

Thank you.</comment></comment>


Nginx Vs Xitrum (Scala) benchmark - johnx123-up https://gist.github.com/3293596

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR; This post would have been much more useful if the results had been displayed side by side in a table format. As it is currently presented, scrolling back and forth to compare the results is just too much effort.</comment>


Programming advises needed  - <AUTHOR>

Today is my 7 months since i am learning Java , I have completed 3 books for Java till now
1.Java Software Solutions: Foundations of Program Design
2.Java How To Program
3.Head First Java
My average of learning is 3 Hours Daily , TOTAL Of learning till now is : ( 630 hours ) .
Sometime I have a feeling that i am most completed programmer in the world ( i think that i can make everything ) and sometime i have a feeling that i am the worst programmer in the world (LoL).
I also completed Java Lynda.com (Fundamentals & Advance) Tutorials and Thenewboston tutorials i also started to learn Android development 1 months ago .
I am hobbyist and i don't have teacher or someone else to advice me what to do .
My question is should i practice programming because a lot of people are saying to me its your time just to practice , practice , practice some other people are saying just read a lot of books
My goal is to become professional programmer .
If i should go with other books which books should i continue ? some advised me to start with head first pattern and others told me to continue with thinking in Java .
I Also noticed some programmers read 3 books monthly how is this possible ? Are they just reading and not practicing the examples ?
I also want to know about game programming should i know the basic of trigonometry , algebra , physics to make game like mario 2d or should i become advance in math . My math is not very good
Thank you <comment><USER2> Books are good to learn new concepts, but to actually understand the concepts and know when the right times to use them are, takes practice and no amount of books will make up for lack of practice here. So, since you have already read a number of books, I would say that practice is the most important thing for you now.

Also, in time, you will want to learn other programming languages to give you a more rounded experience of what is available both in terms of tools and also concepts which will help shape how you think about and solve problems in java. Ideally you would learn a number of very different languages. At the very least a functional language as this even help you a lot when you begin writing multithreaded programs in java (and also help you design simpler, more composable code).

But for now, practice. Try to set yourself real projects or actually useful tasks and make sure you complete them (ie don't have a load of unfinished projects, but finish them to the point that you could release them to non- programmers if you wanted). Projects should range from both large and small to give you experience and practice working on a range of codebase sizes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your comment :) I really appreciate that

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like Project Euler ( <http://projecteuler.net/>) especially when toying around with new languages. Its is basically a list of shortish problems to solve. You don't technically have to do any programming to solve the problems, but it is a good way to force yourself into doing some thinking. Also when you complete the problem the forums are usually good for finding ways other people of solved the same problem. Try not to pay too much attention to the code golfing.

You could always find a project on Github that is interesting to you and try modifying it.

If you interested in game development I've known some people who have enjoyed playing around with PyGame ( <http://www.pygame.org> ). You'd have to learn python, but its definitely a language worth knowing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, write programs. And go on reading books, eg. SICP <http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/> or The Art of Computer Programming (Knuth).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for all</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you take food supplements? - <AUTHOR> With all the controversy around regular food supplements usage, I was just wondering if any of you took food supplements to enhance or support your body, and if yes which ones and for what.<p>I personally take Magnesium on period of stress, as its level goes down during time of anxiety, leading according to studies to more anxiety from magnesium deprivation. <comment><USER2> On stray occasions I take garlic, vitamin-c, fish oil. The garlic and vitamin-c when I feel like a cold is inbound. Seems to help, but it's an entirely unscientific guess, and I don't get sick very often.

Occasionally metamucil tablets, because I don't get enough fiber in my diet.

I typically consume one five hour energy per day. Whether it's the b12 or b6 overload that produces the focus effect, I like it (could care less about the caffeine, have considered switching to a tab or liquid b12 to see if that produces the same effect, but haven't experimented).

Noticed my vision weakening a bit at a distance (thanks no doubt to sitting in front of a monitor for two decades). 45mg lutein improved that by a non- trivial amount after several months.

Kre-Alkalyn when working out.

<comment><USER3> More likely, the focus effect is from the Taurine and Niacin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A varied diet provides sufficient quantities of everything needed. I wouldn't supplement without a doctor identifying an ailment or deficiency, and then I'd prefer a diet change or even a prescription to a supplement. There's too much research (see: SELECT trials) that supplements feed tumorogensis and cancer mortality, and that the supplements you buy may not actually be what you think you're buying (see: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal- supplements...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal-supplements- are-often-not-what-they-seem.html?ref=science&_r=1&)).

<comment><USER5> I haven't been able to figure out how almost any diet can get the RDA of potassium. I'd be curious what you suggest for that.

<comment><USER2> one medium potato, 900mg; one banana, 450mg; one 3oz serving tuna, salmon or halibut, 500mg; various beans and lentils, 400mg to 600mg; yogurt, 500mg; one cup of boiled spinach, 850mg; cup of prunes, 650mg; half a cup of soybeans, 500mg. You can get 500mg from one cup of most tomato-based sauces. One apple or orange will give you 175 to 200mg. One cup of apricots will give you 400mg; half a cup of dates will deliver 500 to 600mg.

There are numerous other high potassium foods that are easy to mix into a regular diet. You can get the RDA for potassium without trying too hard with just 700 to 1,000 calories. Some greens have upwards of 10mg of potassium per calorie.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for looking it up. I'm still not seeing how to get to 4000 mg/day even with those high potassium foods.

4+ potatoes would be a lot for one day. 8 bananas would also be pretty extreme. As would 3+ cups of boiled spinach.

Mixing and matching those items would work but you'd have to really still work hard at it. And I just don't see enough of those items being in a normal daily diet to come close to 4000mg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently started taking Trubrain's supplements, a subscription piracetam- based nootropic stack with a hefty convenience markup. If I decide to stick with it for more than a few months I'll probably start mixing my own.

</comment><comment><USER7> I take a few (omega 3, B complex..), but I would love to read a detailed report on what supplements Ray Kurzweil takes and why (he's a real supplement freak, but seems to know what he is doing).

</comment><comment><USER8> I take fish oil and a pretty high dose of vitamins and minerals to help recover from lifting heavy objects (powerlifting, weightlifting).

Oh, and lots of protein of course.

<comment><USER5> Does the timing of the protein matter?

<comment><USER9> Yup. These two are good articles on protein amount/timing [http://eprints.qut.edu.au/64117/](http://eprints.qut.edu.au/64117/) [http://eprints.qut.edu.au/64127/](http://eprints.qut.edu.au/64127/)

<comment><USER5> Ok so 20g every four hours after a workout for 12 hours?

So best to work out early in the day?

I guess 20g right before a workout too?

<comment><USER9> Yep you could go pre exercise as well. Give give enough time prior to a workout otherwise it might come back to haunt you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I take cider in the evenings.

</comment><comment><USER11> I take a multivitamin. Also L-theanine + caffeine.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just fibre supplements before my main meal.

</comment><comment><USER13> Metamucil

<comment><AUTHOR> What for?

<comment><USER14> Poopin'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Pros and Cons of an invite-only launch? - <AUTHOR>

Our team has decided to launch CentUp by scaling up to about 5000 users in a controlled manner. We've gone back and forth on whether we should open up to the public or stay on the same path. One one hand, we're dealing with a small team and a complex system that could fail. On the other, an invite system ads steps to a sign-up process that might turn potential customers away.<p>What have your experiences been? <comment><USER2> How many signups have you see / are you expecting? In my experience, it's much easier to open the flood gates and close them if need be than the other way around. Remove all friction and just get users in.

Good luck!</comment>


Ticket Servers: Distributed Unique Primary Keys on the Cheap (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://code.flickr.net/2010/02/08/ticket-servers-distributed-unique-primary-keys-on-the-cheap/ <comment><USER2> Are GUIDs so bad? I've been using and recommending them for a long time, but lately I've been getting a lot of push back.</comment>