Linux Documentation: fix formatting to make 's' happy by 4yo - <AUTHOR> http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=690b0543a813b0ecfc51b0374c0ce6c8275435f0

<comment><USER2> This diff does not seem to change anything:

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt index eb8a10e..aae9dd1 100644 \--- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt @@ -1272,7 +1272,7 @@ softirq. 1.9 Ext4 file system parameters \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>- +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> While the number of hyphens is equal in both lines, the first hyphen in thr removed line is a diff char.

The commit does exactly what it says, adding one extra hyphen to go below the 's' at the end of the preceding line.

<comment><USER2> Good observation!</comment></comment></comment>


Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital on the Paradox of Ego and Humility - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/business/corner-office-chamath-palihapitiya-social-capital.html <comment><USER2> I've read many articles like these but I think ultimately... it's luck. I can work hard, but it's luck. Right place, right time.

And then if/when someone finally gets there they can pontificate all they like about how successful they are and how they know what it takes to get there, when in reality, almost everyone who is actually there knows it's mostly luck (and hard work, but mostly luck) that got them there.

In college I stopped comparing myself to the guys who set the class curve and asked if i gave it my absolute best effort and suddenly I was much happier, and doing better as well.

<comment><USER3> Luck is when you don't know the reason. The reason actually might be ugly, not luck.

<comment><USER4> It's useful to identify such things as luck because we really can't orchestrate those moments by sheer will. To identify a reason is the first step towards controlling the circumstance but for the average situation I'd wager it's hard to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > ...combination of ego and humility. Let's be honest, a lot of C.E.O.s are > ego-driven people. But they also have to be humble in some very precise ways > around ideas and decisions, and being able to change their mind. That's an > idiosyncratic combination.

That sums up what I consider to be a good CEO in addition to being good at motivating people.

<comment><USER6> Arrogance is what gets you started, humility is what takes you to completion.

<comment><USER7> Well, arrogance is what gets you started, yes; however, if I may, it's the ability to hide it while maintaining one's own goals, and not the ability to be humble, that takes you to completion. Otherwise one gets distracted by what others want or how others feel; in a sense CEOs that can generate strong reality distortion fields, as it has been put, tend to be extremely successful in spite of market conditions. I would imagine that it's a fine line to walk.

<comment><USER8> Humility is the opposite of arrogance, but that doesn't mean you don't have a fixed vision of your goals and will stick to your guns to achieve them. It just means you don't try to show everyone just how good you are at achieving them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He has good and true advice: If you approach challenges with tenacity, always be curious to learn, and be open and thoughtful with your team, you too can be an early employee at the next FB and become a billionaire.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, there are a LOT of early employees at Facebook that got churned through, or who didn't make it to the executive tier. Chamath almost got churned through, but he hit it big on the Growth team. That's the difference between an early employee with $10M and an early employee with $500M.

Moskovitz (now Asana), D'Angelo (now Quora), Vernal (now Sequoia), Bosworth (still at FB on hardware/Building 8), Cohler (now Benchmark), Hammerbacher (now ?), Chamath (now Social Capital) ... those are some of the standouts off of the top of my head, out of hundreds of early employees.

<comment><USER11> But what's the difference between $10M and $500M? In both cases, you can stop working for a living and do whatever you want with your life instead.

<comment><USER10> Only if "whatever you want" means lounging on a beach or a yacht. Most of the people on that list had aspirations to impact the world as much as possible, and there isn't a limit to the wealth you can use to do that.

You couldn't start Social Capital on $10M, for example.

<comment> aaron-lebo You can change the world on 10k, we believe otherwise because we're lazy, and to be fair, it's a lot more fun to have 10 million than 10 thousand.

Sure, if you have a bunch of money and throw that money at things, you'll "change the world", but that doesn't mean that's an effective way of making lasting or useful change.

<comment><USER10> Of course you CAN impact the world on $10k.

But the Gates Foundation doesn't run on $10k. You can found zero biotech companies on $10k. Money, alas, has value, believe it or not.

<comment> aaron-lebo Well, the Gates Foundation is funded by a monopoly that intentionally restricted competition and progress in the computing industry for at least a decade, so maybe there's a better way of obtaining it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can I do to impress you as a Front-End Developer? - <AUTHOR>

Seems like everyone is a "front end developer" nowadays. What can I do to set myself apart? <comment><USER2> _your best portfolio is a github account full of code, and mailing lists full of civil discussion_ \--icculus on Twitter just today: <https://twitter.com/icculus/status/340954525907181569>

I heavily weigh the latter against the former.

</comment><comment><USER3> The product of your work goes directly into my eyes; show me something I haven't seen before (an interface, design style, interaction point, etc).</comment>


My relentless pursuit of the guy who robbed me - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2010/09/20/tracked_down_my_thief/index.html <comment><USER3> I did some amateur sleuthing as well, but unfortunately the most high tech thing I used was a zoom lens on a digital camera.

You see, my neighbourhood thief was knocking off pot plants and outdoor furniture. I saw him walking up the road several times with these items, but the guy looked like a 'roid rager so I wasn't about to start asking questions and figued he might be moving house locally.

But then he made the mistake of knocking off one of my plants, a delicate specimen I'd taken months to get going. And he was silly enough to put it in his window across the road.

I got some snaps of him, the plant, and dug through my photos to find one of the same plant in it's original location to show it was mine.

I took the lot down to the police station and handed it over. They couldn't believe it - and promptly drove straight around, knocked on the door and found an apartment full of stolen goods.

He was wanted for assault, had tipped a pool table onto someone in a drunken fight, was already on probation.

I had to go to court to give evidence and tell my story while this meathead stared at me. It was quite unnerving.

But he went away to jail and I've since moved, so now it's just a story to be told. The detective told me he wished all cases could be that easy.

<comment><USER4> Given that you gave a photo of your "pot plant" to the police, I'm going to assume that it was not what I first thought it was....

<comment><USER5> Depends on where he lives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This highlights the value of contingency planning and tenacity.

With the suspect's photo in the McDonald's, the police might have been able to find him, and convict him for possession of stolen property, especially with his criminal history. But the author wasn't done! She turned his email address into his complete online identity. This provided an extra link to the crime, the stolen GPS, and some extra supporting information, like the comment on MySpace about hitting the lottery. She made life easy for the police by finding the suspect's name. She stopped the case from falling through the cracks, and gave the police enough leverage to get a guilty plea.

This is why I don't believe (very strongly) in luck. Many facets of the case were fortunate: the Craigslist ad, the email reuse, the McDonalds surveillance picture, the MySpace profile, etc. But she was given multiple trails of breadcrumbs that she followed to their inevitable conclusion.

<comment><USER7> Does this illustrate the value of contingency planning, though?

It doesn't seem as though the author had any prior experience tracking down a thief, or that she was executing a pre-existing plan when she eventually needed to.

Instead, she relied on her adaptability and her general base of knowledge to deal with a new contingency as it arose, without advance preparation.

If anything, the lesson here is to maintain your capacity to decide and act on the fly, and make use of whatever opportunities the situation affords, instead of trying to predict the unpredictable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Given Johnny's dozen tattoos, given his weakness for skank, I made a leap -- and assumed he was on MySpace"

</comment><comment><USER9> "If I were mathematically inclined, I might even observe that in my tale, the good guys outnumbered the bad guys, by about 10 to one."

An amazing ending to an incredibly interesting and well-written piece. That's just how I think about the world - so much more good than bad. It's a shame _most_ articles seem to focus only on the bad!

</comment><comment><USER10> > "By now it was Friday afternoon, and Inspector Vargas does not work weekends > or Mondays, thanks to the California state budget cuts."

The movies would have you believe that detectives work around the clock and would do anything and everything to catch a crook. Rude awakening.

Seems like a lot of crimes must go unsolved because of this - time just seems like such a critical aspect of a lot of cases.

<comment><USER11> > The movies would have you believe that detectives work around the clock and > would do anything and everything to catch a crook.

Well, to be fair, movies tend to deal with international espionage, zillions of dollars of diamonds/gold/cash/whatever, heinous murders, nuclear weapons, and things of that ilk, rather than stolen GPS devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> FWIW, this is completely the opposite of what pg suggests:

<http://paulgraham.com/top.html>

 _Turning the other cheek turns out to have selfish advantages. Someone who does you an injury hurts you twice: first by the injury itself, and second by taking up your time afterward thinking about it. If you learn to ignore injuries you can at least avoid the second half. I've found I can to some extent avoid thinking about nasty things people have done to me by telling myself: this doesn't deserve space in my head._

<comment><USER13> That is the short sighted view though. If everyone always turns the other cheek then there is little consequence to hurting or screwing others, which then reinforces the wrong-doers behaviors and perhaps even encourages others to join in. Within reason, one should always make it clear that certain actions are simply not acceptable and that there are clear consequences for those actions. If not for your self, it may save someone else from that same injustice.

The long term results of action vs. inaction will always have an impact on society as a whole and on one's personal quality of life; it just might not immediately noticeable.

If however, one is driven solely by revenge then it might cause one to expend way too many resources or cause one to take things too far but, still, intention has little effect on the external impact of an action.

<comment><USER14> This is referred to in behavioral economics as the "second-order free-rider problem", and is an active area of research, e.g. <http://www.cirano.qc.ca/ee/ESA2005/papers/Kiyonari.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tucked into this tale is also a cautionary warning: be careful about what you post online. In this particular case I applaud the victim on her tenacity and the thief was a not-very-tech-savvy person. However if the roles were reversed and the offender was the tech savvy one, imagine the havoc that could be wrought on someones life.

<comment><USER16> See: 4chan

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It strikes me that people who are bothered by theft in the modern age just haven't _got_ the whole digital revolution on quite a profound level. She lists the things that bothered her as "the BlackBerry with contact information for dear old friends, the wedding anniversary wallet that her husband bought her when she finished chemo, stuffed with about two years' worth of love letters from her toddlers, hopeful doctors' notes, and other scraps of paper she couldn't bear to part with".

The wallet itself I kind of get, but the rest is just data. With a ScanSnap and an iDrive account, the stuff that matters becomes so many electrons in the grid. Send the bits of dead tree off to Iron Mountain, insure your gadgets and stop worrying.

I think it's a sort of zen exercise, separating sentiment from utility. If suffering really is caused by attachment to transient things, then it seems to me that we have a truly unique opportunity to break attachments wholesale, at little or no cost. Keep your bits in the cloud and treat your atoms as if they're borrowed (which ultimately they are).

If we really want to reduce crime, locking people up isn't going to help - <USER2> have decades of recidivism as proof. There's no such thing as deterrent, not for people with chaotic childhoods who never developed self control or long- term thinking. If I'm robbed from, it's my fault, because I haven't done enough for the people in society with lives so crappy that petty theft seems like an attractive career.

Here in the UK, the average prison inmate is functionally illiterate, mentally ill and addicted to drink or drugs. One in ten is psychotic and one in five has attempted suicide. I imagine the numbers are much the same in the US. I see a lot of comments in this thread about preventing crime, about punishment and deterrent. If it worked, why is recidivism so high? Is the best we can do just locking people up?

<comment><USER18> You need to read the next rest of the sentence and the next:

 _that person would probably prefer you just dump it all in the trash. Because finding fragments of your private life on people's yards and scattered on the street, in the shrubs and gutters, is a unique kind of psychological torment. Suddenly a routine violation starts to feel really personal._

She wasn't upset about the stuff being stolen, she was upset about the stuff lying all over the neighborhood for the world to see. She felt violated and exposed.

The proper digital analogy is having your "bits in the cloud" hacked and posted on a public website for all the world to see.

<comment><USER19> _The proper digital analogy is having your "bits in the cloud" posted on a public website for all the world to see._

So, you mean Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I know HN etiquette dictates that my comment should add something to the conversation, otherwise a simple upvote will suffice, but I have nothing to add: I just wanted to state that this story is awesome.

OK, maybe a few things to add. Snarks would point out that this was overkill, that insurance would have covered most of it (most of it was recovered anyway) and self-sleuthing can lead to dangerous situations. But as someone who's had their house robbed several times, a modern tale of vengeance well-told is much appreciated.

<comment><USER21> > Snarks would point out that this was overkill, that insurance would have > covered most of it (most of it was recovered anyway) and self-sleuthing can > lead to dangerous situations.

Possibly true. But nothing is as cathartic as personally tracking down the person that wronged you.

<comment><USER22> What are you going to do? Kill them? Maim them? Bring it out in blood equity? Or some sort of "bringing them to justice?"

Its just stuff. You never know what the motivations they had for doing it. It could have done all sorts of good, at a cost of some personal sacrifice. Is it wrong? Society says so. But personal "justice" is just as extreme.

And yes, I have had things stolen from me.

<comment><USER23> > What are you going to do? Kill them? Maim them? Bring it out in blood > equity? Or some sort of "bringing them to justice?"

Its almost like you didn't read the story or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What stood out to me was this comment: "Dude!!! How do you not work? You win the freak'n lotto???"

So maybe the criminals often don't even realize that what they do is actual work?

</comment><comment><USER25> Here's my short "Internet investigation" story:

late at night I found a wallet on the pavement and decided to deliver it myself the following day since the address on the driver's license was very close to my place.

Next day I discover the guy moved. But with some of his info, I found the _Google cache_ of an old Craigslist ad he had posted, that gave me his phone number. He was pretty happy.

</comment><comment><USER26> I can't imagine anyone who lives in SF ever leaving anything visible in the car. Even leaving spare change or an old blanket in the back seat causes people to break in within hours (causing damage to the vehicle far in excess of any value of property stolen). One of the worst parts of SF. Contrasted with most Gulf Arab countries where I felt comfortable leaving $10k+ in equipment in unlocked vehicles parked for days.

<comment><USER27> We don't cut off the hands of thieves here...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > I ran his e-mail address through a reverse e-mail finder, which cost me > about 15 bucks for a month's worth of "surveillance."

Can anyone enlighten me on what she means?

<comment><USER29> There are a number of paid services on the net where you give them an email address and they slurp up all the information out there associated with that person.

<http://www.spokeo.com> is one of many and might be the one used in the article, though Spokeo gives you 3 months for your $15.

<comment><USER30> How do they find out what you've used your email address for? Do they buy that info from the websites?

<comment><USER31> I don't know anything about Spokeo, but Rapleaf uses the APIs of various services, and when that isn't enough, they screen scrape.

<comment><USER30> > Rapleaf uses the APIs of various services

Those APIs expose people's email addresses?

<comment><USER31> Yes. If you already know someone's email address, you can get all sorts of information about them from twitter, fB, amazon wishlists...anything where the user's account is keyed to an email address.

<comment><USER30> So... isn't there something in user agreements that avoids this sort of thing? Maybe I should read it closer, but I would expect "will not sell my email address to third parties" would be a common clause. And if it wasn't, I'd expect some sort of consumer backlash.

Sorry for the line of questions, this is sortof a jolt to my view of reality.

<comment><USER31> They aren't selling the email address to third parties - they are letting them access the information for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This would be a good outline of a response to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1705467>

</comment><comment><USER33> She posts with her real name and full details of the case. What if the guy does the same thing she did when he is out of prison?

<comment><USER19> Then he goes back to prison, this time for 25 to life?

<comment><USER33> If he's caught. He could even do it while in prison.

<comment><USER19> You watch too much TV.

Where's he going to get the money? That GPS he stole didn't resell for much...

<comment><USER33> What money? He could ask a favor from his buddies, provided of course he has the same revengeful mentality as the victim. This is quite unlikely but still works as a deterrent for many people that would otherwise take similar actions as the victim. A solution to this problem might help in the battle against crime. Just to give an idea, something like an e-testimony with a digital certification that can be connected to the person's identity details only from qualified public servants.

<comment><USER19> So his friend is going to risk 20 years in prison just to get revenge?

This guy has already been in prison; he got caught stealing and was sent back to finish his first sentence. Not everyone is the mafia don that you see on Law & Order. This guy probably has no connections and no money. Which means he has to do his dirty work himself.

And after two years in prison, I doubt a direct ticket back is his first priority.

<comment><USER34> Statistics would argue with you. Most sources put the proportion of repeat violent crime offenders at around 60%.

<comment><USER35> If you're in jail for theft and then beat the person who got you arrested senseless with a baseball bat, that doesn't make you a repeat _violent_ crime offender.

Of course, the article doesn't elaborate on what his previous sentence was, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it was theft, fencing, scams or fraud etc. and not violence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm all for vengeance but it just seems ironic and unfortunate that Johnny Boi will almost inevitably get out of prison sometime in the next 2 years more hardened and better equipped to be a complete fuckup, undoubtedly progressing to even stupider but possibly more violent and disruptive crimes. Just saying.

<comment><USER37> So, the better option for dealing this thief would be...?

<comment><USER38> Community service. Monitored parole. Work programs...

The guy stole a backpack from an unlocked car with visual valuables. Police in my area once tried to make it a _crime_ to have visible valuables inside of a vehicle, locked or not, because it encouraged crimes of opportunity by casual criminals. It essentially _wasted their time_.

This guy wasn't going to pass the car by and then decide to murder an old lady.

<comment><USER37> Yes, he just stole other person's belongings. Sure, the lady was teasing him with her unlocked car.

Just like the one before her I guess - he was already on probation.

<comment><USER38> There is a gradient of criminality, and committing a non-violent crime of opportunity (where he even discarded much of the proceeds) is pretty low on the scale.

Yet now the justice system is going to spend tens of thousands of dollars+ incarcerating him, and the net result will be that his options after being released will lean even more heavily towards criminality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Good for her. I went through something similar a few months ago. I had my car parked in the driveway and similarly someone broke into it (it was locked, but didn't have an alarm) and they stole my GPS and chargers.

I found the post on Craigslist the next day and contacted the person with a fictitious email and name. He emailed me back asking for my phone number to set up a meeting.

At that point I had three options:

a) File a police report/contact the insurance company and have my insurance rate hiked up (for a < $100 GPS) b) Meet the thief in-person and pull a Chuck Norris on him c) Let it go and pick another GPS up / Fix my car door

I chose C as I didn't like the outcome of A, nor the possibility of him and his hooligans retaliating against my family if I went with B.

</comment><comment><USER40> Hmm... this story doesn't pass the smell test.

I and many of my friends have been burglarized and then tried to track down the perpetrator. Also I am very active in my neighborhood block watch so I get involved in the details of many personal property crimes. Even with the most well meaning law enforcement officials and other institutions who might have information you need to solve your personal crime, the kind of cooperation this lady received is unheard of. In fact, I would be a little upset all these institutions spent this much time on a crime that is partly her fault. The rest of her details don't add up in my head.

Mark my words: This story will turn out to be more vigilante porn than the truth.

</comment><comment><USER41> Righteous vengeance. Fortunately for her, the demographics of the thief allow the audience to unhesitatingly endorse law enforcement action without blaming the victim. Many people who have been victimized in SF are not so lucky.

<comment><USER42> Care to explain? Thanks.

<comment><USER41> He looked like a neo-nazi. Most people who are convicted for robbery in SF do not.

For the typical Salon reader, if a homeless member of a minority group smashed their window and grabbed their stuff, they would feel resignment. They wouldn't want to throw the book at someone who had suffered so much. In fact, they would actually get more angry at a writer who pushed for harsh penalties and jail time. Contrast to their reaction to this criminal.

From a purely utilitarian perspective, if you are victimized, it is better if your attacker is from a group that has no sympathetic constituency, deserved or not.

<comment><USER43> Interesting point. My car was broken into a few months ago. The thief stole a GPS unit from the glovebox and a $20 mobile phone. The damage to the car was $3500 plus the $150 in property stolen.

I checked the T-Mobile website and saw that there had been two calls to Central America. So I got on Skype and called both numbers. After a lot of rings one of the numbers picked up. The person spoke English. I said, "I'm calling to ask if someone called you from the United States yesterday. My phone was stolen and I think he or she might know something about the theft". The person claimed not to have been called the day before. After a few more minutes he admitted that he did receive a call. I asked if he knew someone in San Francisco and he said he had a friend who was a student who would never be involved in a crime.

I could hear the profound disappointment in his voice. I have no idea if the person who called him was the person who stole the phone, or if he may have bought the phone from someone else. But the general evasiveness of the voice at the other end made me suspect that perhaps his friend was the thief.

I don't begrudge someone a bit of petty theft if they are broke, but it does seem callous to do $3500 worth of property damage in order to steal property that you could sell for (at best) $80.

I also found it heartbreaking to think that this thief had let down someone back home who cared about him. I mean, I'd teach that guy to write code or something. Heck I'd teach anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Good thing it wasn't over state lines. I had done some sleuthing on a fellow that took 2.4K from me, had his name, bank info, dad's name, city - nearly the works. The local police wouldn't get involved since I was out of state, and the FBI wouldn't get involved because the crime totals of this individual wasn't over 10K. That was several years ago and I just moved on, but I remember feeling that justice was for the rich. At the time, 2.4K was a lot of money to me.

</comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps "can't post stuff on Facebook anymore" will become a powerful deterrent against a career in crime :-)

</comment><comment><USER45> The closure I wanted at the end of the story was for her to meet the thief. For her to explain the hurt and worry and anger he'd caused. For him to try to explain his reasons and lack of them.

Also, I seem to recall this turns out to be incredibly cheap for the amount of reduction in recidivism it causes.

</comment><comment><USER46> So, the lack of privacy of social media is not so 1-way after all (picture Zuckerberg searching your personal info from his Dr Evil control room with government henchmen in waiting ;-). It's 2-way: anyone can peer into anyone's life. Sometimes for a good cause, sometimes not...

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm appreciative of the author's efforts in nailing this guy, as it makes the bay area a little safer for everybody.

I'm rather tired of reading about these career criminals on parole victimizing hardworking citizens, while others who haven't harmed anyone or stolen anything sit in prison.

</comment><comment><USER48> In these days of unlimited free e-mail services (gmail, etc) you'd think someone wouldn't use their personal e-mail account to sell stolen goods...

</comment><comment><USER49> I wouldn't have contributed to putting a guy who is engaged and about to have a child in jail for 2 years (which would probably piss a lot of people off) and then posted the whole story, in intimate detail, on a popular site, tied to my real identity.

The story is entertaining but the guy lost a lot more than her and it seems pretty foolish to tell the world it was because of her. If the guy uses craigslist, myspace, dating sites, and facebook, how many degrees of separation can there really be? I hope a lot.

<comment><USER50> He committed the crimes; he is responsible for the consequences. He knew he had a pregnant girlfriend, and chose to not care. To let someone continue on a destructive path against the community around him isn't dong anyone any favors, not him, his girlfriend, or his child.

<comment><USER49> Doesn't mean its not going to piss him and his family off that this woman went to those lengths to make it happen. You can't deny that people have strong, sometimes irrational, emotions. Anonymizing the story wouldn't have made it any less interesting and protected her from any retaliation (from him or friends; even a brick through the window would be a pain to deal with).

Not to mention she does take a few jabs at the guy and his potential girlfriend, saying they look sleazy/neo-nazi/etc.

Not saying what she did is wrong, just saying that clearly identifying herself as the one responsible for his punishment (clearly identifying him too) isn't the smartest move for her safety.

<comment><USER51> She more than likely took the witness stand and saw this guy face-to-face. You can't really charge someone with a crime without identifying yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is a great article. Thanks for sharing.

Reading how one can exploit tech to accomplish something gives way to entrepreneurial ideas.

</comment><comment><USER52> I was glad to read about justice being done in this case.

Its a shame that many get away with so much.

</comment><comment><USER53> In April 2009, at a frat party, this guy asked to use my iPhone to make a call. I had seen him at a different party the previous summer, so I let him use it. He walked away with my phone.

He taunted me over the phone when I called and asked to have it back. I updated my Facebook to relate that my phone was stolen; he logged in via iPhone and updated "nvm got my phone back." A real class act.

I remembered his name was "Chase" and he was into music, so I looked through MySpace for all the guys named Chase in Chicago. Through that, I found his Twitter account and sent him an @reply indicating that I filed a police report and would have him arrested at his next gig. A few minutes later he started the trip back to Hyde Park and returned the phone to me.

</comment><comment><USER54> The ending is written as if the Myspace page was what sprung the trap on him. But was it the photo of him at McDonalds that they used or his online ones?

So it reads more like Credit card statement -> McDonald's photo -> arrest. With all her extraneous snooping around that?

I don't want to make assumptions, but I bet there was one annoyed police officer in California.

<comment><USER55> The photo wouldn't have led to the arrest if she hadn't matched it against the ones in MySpace one that was attached to the e-mail, names, and other people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Dedicated to all the jackasses on Facebook. I can see you.

</comment><comment><USER57> Did anyone else find the attitude of this article outrageous?

Bragging about sending a young man to prison over her blackberry?

<comment><USER58> He should have stolen the entire car before you would have him sent to prison? If someone were to pickpocket a single $1 bill from my pocket, I'd want him to be punished, to try and deter him from doing it again.

<comment><USER57> Well there are different theories of justice. Deterrence is certainly one, but rehabilitation is another theory that should be considered.

I'm not sure what the correct response is, but the article conveyed an attitude that this was a clear cut narrative on the triumph of good over evil, casting herself as the heroine.

Another perspective is that a common thief, desperate to make ends meet, becomes the victim of a vindictive blogger. Guess I'm alone on this one :).

<comment> brown9-2 _a common thief, desperate to make ends meet_

How do you know this?

<comment><USER59> exactly. if anything, this guy was a lazy one who didn't work for a living, mooched off people's things and belongings and had all the time in the world for an active social life.

if one is that desperate to make ends meet, and i've seen such people, they'd be busting their asses and not lazying around in the parks or malls with girlfriends</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hominin head-scratcher: who butchered this rhino 700k years ago? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/deadthings/2018/05/02/hominin-butchered-rhino/ <comment><USER2> There's a small carved figurine of a horse, dated to 32000 years ago, and we know nothing about that society either. It is fascinating and it is fun to speculate about...

<comment><USER3> Wasn't that a lion?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion- man#](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man#)

Or is it a different one?

<comment><USER2> I didn't know about that one, so thanks!

I was thinking of the horse figurine found in the Vogelherd cave: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogelherd_Cave](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogelherd_Cave)

<comment><USER3> I think what's more impressive is that if the dating is correct those artifacts span 10,000 years. This means that that ISS is closer to the great pyramids those are to each other.

<comment><USER4> What's really interesting to me is they had a second expedition after the first wholly within the sediment that the first archaelogical excavation put aside as waste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A time-traveling hunting guide operation will have to pay a big fine in another couple of centuries...

</comment><comment><USER6> This might be a stupid question, but if the hominin needed a boat to get there, then didn't the rhino also need one?

<comment><USER7> The rhino didn't get there by boat, it got there walking. Actually, their ancestors got there walking when the island was connected by a land bridge to Asia, and they lived there happily for a few million years while the sea level changed and the position of the island changed.

The rhino family evolved something like 20 million years ago. See more details in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros#Evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros#Evolution) I still not sure how to read all the data in the table, but 20mya looks like an good approximation.

In Google I got this two maps of the Earth 20mya. Notice the difference in the shape of the Philippine area. [http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~braile/edumod/flipbook/flipbook.h...](http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~braile/edumod/flipbook/flipbook.htm) [http://www.thearmchairexplorer.com/geology/neogene- period](http://www.thearmchairexplorer.com/geology/neogene-period)

I'm not sure that the rhinos reached that place (the current island) 20 million years ago, but they had plenty of time and a lot of difference in the geography that makes a simple walk possible.

<oversimplification warning. See an accurate version in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo#Evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo#Evolution) >

On the other hand, Homo Habilis evolved only 2mya and they lived only in Africa, they had tool but they were not very smart. I think that at that time the Philippines were already isolated from Asia.

Homo Erectus evolved 1.5mya. They were quite smart and hd more tools! They went outside Africa to Europe and Asia, but they never crossed some big sea, and never reached America or Australia. They neither crossed some smaller extensions of water to reach some island that were not too close to the continens. So ... the conclusion is that they didn't have good enough boats.

Homo Sapiens evolved 0.3mya. (I was going to write 0.1mya, the number changes too often.) They could cross to some places no Erectus has gone before, so the conclusion is that they have some kind of boats even in ancient times.

So if the rhino was butchered 0.7mya then it must have be killed by some variant of Homo Erectus that have never been found in an island that is not very close to a continent because they didn't have good enough boats because they were smart but not smart enough. So the lack of boats is a problem for the hominin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm just some guy, but why would hominins settle so high in what are now the Philippines when a lower altitude would have given better access to water and game.

Is it possible there are settlements, they're just under the ocean now, on what used to be large flat land bridges?

<comment><USER9> This is actually a really big problem for studying humans migration across the Bering Sea- most of the lane that was coastal at the time is now deeply under water. Beringia[0] was a huge land mass, possibly full of people and it existed for thousands of years. What we consider the coast now was much higher ground, probably less suitable for habitation, in part because the world was colder (ice age)- and thus, no signs of human habitation in those parts.

All the answers, if any remain, are deeply under water.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My gut instinct says they misdated the bones.

<comment><USER11> Could be I suppose - though before announcing something like this you'd think they'd check more frequently.

In addition, I'm assuming the dating has a margin of error which was not stated in the article, so I'm curious what this margin is. (But even so, I doubt it's a large enough margin to get close to the 600k that was stated, which is already 'far out there')

<comment><USER12> The scientific paper stated that the rhino's age came out to 709000 +/\- 68000 years. The number was consistent with other measurements made of the age of the depositional layer.

Before releasing a claim like this, I would have to believe they were extremely careful in the testing and interpretation. If they have this wrong, it could be a career killer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _According to the conventional view in paleoanthropology, only our species, > Homo sapiens, had the cognitive capacity to construct watercraft. And to > reach the island where the rhino was found, well, like Chief Brody says, > "you're gonna need a bigger boat."_

I think if you throw enough hominins in small boats at the ocean, at least a few of them are bound to survive the trip, right? I wonder how many island settlers in pre-history were just castaways who happened to hold on to a tree long enough to survive a monsoon-spurred ocean trip.

<comment><USER14> Yeh, what concerns me is the boat the rhino used to get there.

<comment><USER15> > Yeah, what concerns me is the boat the Rhino used to get there

I laughed out loudly at the office when I read this. My coworker is wondering if I'm bonkers.

On a more serious note, the orthodox time line of human existence needs revision. There is too much contradictory evidence: oral accounts, human footprints beside dinosaur foot impressions, Gobeki-Tepli and other structures, prehistoric sculpture like lion-man and vogelherd, now this.

<comment><USER16> I did also. Needed that laugh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe the dating is wrong??

</comment><comment><USER18> visitors from another planet

</comment><comment><USER19> Why does it have to be a hominid? I saw some birds crack open bodes for the marrow on Planet Earth

<comment><USER13> > _Researchers working at a site in the northern part of the island of Luzon > report the discovery of 57 stone tools found with more than 400 animal > bones, including the mostly-complete remains of a rhino (the now-extinct > Rhinoceros philippinensis, a poorly known subspecies… having a specimen > that's about 75 percent complete is an achievement in and of itself)._

> _Using the electron-spin resonance method on its tooth enamel, the team > established that the rhino was about 709,000 years old. Thirteen of its > bones, according to the study's authors, showed signs of butchering, > including cuts and "percussion marks" on both humeri (forelimb bones), which > is typical of smashing open a bone to access the marrow._

Birds don't typically use stone tools heavy enough to split a rhino's bones.

<comment><USER3> Brides have been known to use tools and there are a few species of prey dropping birds out there that drop their prey on the ground to crack it open.

Now I'm not suggesting that there was a bird capable of picking up a rhino but possible capable of picking up individual bones and dropping them or like crows picking up rocks and dropping them on the carcass.

The former is actually a thing:

The bearded vulture has learned to crack bones too large to be swallowed by carrying them in flight to a height of 50–150 m (160–490 ft) above the ground and then dropping them onto rocks below, which smashes them into smaller pieces and exposes the nutritious marrow.

<comment><USER13> Sure, but the article makes it sound like these are very specifically hand- tools - but I didn't read any of the actual research. And as I recall, the Pacific is one of the places where some pretty damn big birds live, probably big enough to crack open big mammal bones with just their beaks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Isn't it true that anatomically modern homo sapiens date back 400,000 years? Go back further, and you probably have something close to a chimp. Chimps hunt in packs, so I'm not surprised some hominid group could bring down a Rhino 700,000 years ago.

<comment><USER21> We couldn't have jumped from "close to a chimp" to homo sapiens. Evolution is a gradual thing, and if we've been largely the same for 400k years, then someone 400k years ago could look back another 400k years and also see someone that's largely the same. So whoever butchered that rhino would be much more like us than like a chimp.

<comment><USER22> Evolution isn't necessarily a gradual thing... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium)</comment></comment></comment>


Samsung confirms it will render the US Note 7 useless with next update - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/12/9/13897794/samsung-galaxy-note-7-update-shut-down-inoperable <comment><USER2> Is this supposed to be ok?

<comment><USER3> Of course it's not OK, but it's not really shocking either. The vast majority of people have accepted the non-ownership ideas that have been pushed for the last 30 years. Because these phones are potentially dangerous, people accept it as reasonable.

This is just another small step toward total non-ownership, and the destruction of private property rights. Kitchen fires burn down more homes than an S7 but we don't ban people having kitchens. There was many small steps leading up to this and there will be many after it and people will be happy to give up all personal property rights.

<comment><USER4> What personal property rights?

None of us really own anything, anymore, at least in the most developed countries (that's my only point of reference).

I/e the government can seize even the wealthiest's assets with minimum effort. You don't really own your home, if you're lucky enough to partake in that, because as soon as you fail to pay taxes consistently, they take it. Then again, failure to abide by homeowner's association by-laws can cause your home to be taken away in some circumstances.

Even your car, your bed, your tv... you "own" it until you have no place to put it; then it's just trash or free-stuff for those who come after you.

It's quite fitting if you ask me, given that we're all basically leasing everything down to the atoms that make us up, all to be returned upon our death.

What's most frightening to me is the pretense of personal property rights. It hangs out in the back of most people's minds, encouraging them to resist communal ideals like universal basic income and true public healthcare (at least in the US). So, once something incredible happens, like a house fire, cancer, unauthorized government seizure, etc., we're left to fend for ourselves when these issues would be minor if we were all working together.

That said, IMO, if we're going to have a pretense of property rights, then we need to have inalienable property rights, but if those rights are indeed destined to remain fragile, we should do away with them now to better prepare for a world where robots have more jobs than we do.

<comment><USER2> "What's most frightening to me is the pretense of personal property rights. It hangs out in the back of most people's minds, encouraging them to resist communal ideals like universal basic income and true public healthcare (at least in the US). So, once something incredible happens, like a house fire, cancer, unauthorized government seizure, etc., we're left to fend for ourselves when these issues would be minor if we were all working together."

While that's a great utopian idea ... it never works in practice, and it turns out pretty horrible.

Because you have to justify why someone should work hard to contribute, or why anyone should work harder than the next guy... if the outcome of doing as little as possible to get by is the same as the outcome of busting your ass every day - everyone will do the former and society would stagnate pretty quick...

As much negative weight people put on property, ownership and just about everything anti-socialist/communist ... its the system of reward for effort that drives innovation. Profit drives change.

<comment><USER4> > While that's a great utopian idea

I'm not describing a system without reward, quite the contrary.

For one, basic universal income is cheaper than patch-work social programs because it ensures continuity in fiscal planning, ensures that a minimum amount of money is in circulation and being spent (as a result of additional monetary policy), and helps to curb loan defaults and unpaid bills (feeding back into the first point).

> Because you have to justify why someone should work hard to contribute, or > why anyone should work harder than the next guy... busting your ass every > day - everyone will do the former and society would stagnate pretty quick

Busting your ass to get ahead is an American exaggeration at this point. In general, most employees just get by. I've seen this in the military and private sector. Oppenheimer didn't do atomic research for monetary gains, nor did Einstein, because in the end, they didn't get it, especially O. Plato, Socrates, Galileo, Turing... most people who push the boundaries towards change do so because they want to. Change for the sake of money generally goes terribly wrong; the British empire, fracking, etc. Then again, we can pick and choose on both sides.

> it never works in practice, and it turns out pretty horrible.

And if we're being honest, this has never been tried. Yes, communism spread during the cold war, but it was opposed overtly and covertly from all sides, and from within, by capitalists. Plus, communism isn't true socialism; we've only seen the rise of greedy parties and dictators enforcing socialism for their own gain, profiting more than their people.

The only true socialism/communism to exist comes in the form of insects, who consistently outnumber us by trillions.

<comment><USER2> > Busting your ass to get ahead is an American exaggeration at this point. In > general, most employees just get by

Exactly my point. Now imagine an entire country full of nothing BUT that. Imagine no Elon Musk driving electric cars forward, or space travel.

Answer me this question about what you perceive as the ideal system: Why would you remove a system which rewards effort, and replace it with a system that rewards everyone the same, regardless of effort.

<comment><USER4> > Why would you remove a system which rewards effort, and replace it with a > system that rewards everyone the same, regardless of effort.

Alright, so a couple of things. First, I think we're starting off with different evaluations of the current system, or at least, different valuations. Either way, let's agree to disagree on its value.

I don't believe the current system rewards effort as consistently as we're led to believe. More so, it rewards workers according to the value they produce and to whom. For example, while a garbage collector's service is invaluable to me, he is almost always paid less than a marketing manager for say Coca Cola, who provides zero value for me. There's an obvious gap between private and public employment in terms of pay. Then, factor in entrenched biases such as gender and race, you'll find a lot more pay inequality there that disputes people being paid based on "effort".

What the system does a great job of, as your comments actually do a good job of highlighting, is allow people to believe that most of the time, their effort can get them ahead regardless of their current circumstance. And, not to totally disagree with you, this is true if you're the marketing manager for Coke. However, this is unlikely to be true for the garbage man, as in his/her current course of work, there is an undisputed glass ceiling.

Given that the top is far heavier than the bottom, then as long as I am classed somewhere in the plain 99%, I will always favor a more equitable distribution. Not only because it benefits me more directly, but because I just find it more ethical. I believe this because of how often chance plays into success. The most successful people often claim that their station in life was achieved through both luck and hard work. We have no control over where or when we were born, and due to existing laws, cultural phenomenons, and other external factors, it's not as simple as moving here or doing that.

We really have to quantify the overall output rather than individual effort and doing so is difficult. There is no easy way to calculate the effects of stress and worry associated with an economy based on capitalism. So, while I believe universal healthcare, basic income, etc. would alleviate much of the stress associated with being a citizen, I can't really prove it because there is no answer as to how detrimental it is in the current system. However, I will say that we've seen articles written recently on how the rich go back to work because of x, y, and z; in my scenario, there really isn't "rich", so I hope that most of us would find the satisfaction in a job well done that was once indicative of community.

Additionally, I just think that below the math it makes reasonable sense. Whereas we see averages distorting things. For example, 4 workers in a capitalist economy average an effort (or good job) of 75% because the one go- getter really wants a promotion. In reality 25% (his products) are awesome, but 50% of them are mediocre because of the 2 average employees, while the last 25% are horrible because the fourth employee knows he'll never be as good as the first resulting in 25% of the products being unusable. Yes, he'll be fired and replaced, but it doesn't do anything to actually fix the problem. I'm hoping that if all 4 employees are well taken care of, in the vein of Google, and are no longer worried about that promotion or raise, each can at least do an average job, some may even do a great job based on pride or skill level. In the end we have products that are about the same, if not better, in quality without the emotional distress.

Finally, while it may not seem like it, there definitely should be some kind of consequence for those who refuse to contribute. My ideal system requires a hardline level of acceptability. There shouldn't be anything wrong with minimally-acceptable effort as long as we do a good job of setting that floor initially.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does relativity lie at the source of quantum exoticism? - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-04-relativity-source-quantum-exoticism.html <comment><USER2> It's nice to know that the superluminal space is not just an isolated fantasy land with imaginary particles like the tachyon. Could be a real place where quantum weirdness actually resides. Very interesting indeed.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TLDR;

"The special theory of relativity is a coherent structure that allows for three mathematically correct types of solutions: a world of particles moving at subluminal velocities, a world of particles moving at the velocity of light and a world of particles moving at superluminal velocities. This third option has always been rejected as having nothing to do with reality.

...

Both theorists have also shown that after taking into account superluminal solutions, the motion of a particle on multiple trajectories simultaneously appears naturally, and a description of the course of events requires the introduction of a sum of combined amplitudes of probability that indicate the existence of superposition of states, a phenomenon thus far associated only with quantum mechanics."</comment>


Show HN: Opunit Simple unit tests for servers and containers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ottomatica/opunit <comment><USER2> ... also known as a monitoring tool

<comment><AUTHOR> From our discussion with folks at Netflix. We had a long talk about their verification checks. In regards to monitoring:

> Monitoring and alerting is a different beast of a topic. Certainly you can > monitor all of these things, but our guidance on alerting strategies is > along the lines of finding the top-level metrics for a service (google SREs > would call these Service Level Objectives) and only alerting people to dig > in when those are impacted. Usually error rates, latency (how many > micro/milli/seconds to respond), and throughput (requests per second). A lot > of this relies on the people writing the application to instrument their > code to store metrics and events. There's only so much much that you can > monitor from outside the application. Some sort of outlier detection is > popular too to terminate bad, one-off instances (particularly common in the > public cloud)—funny thing is you have to alert on whether you're killing too > many instances too quickly (irony of automation).

I would venture we want to separate testing images and infrastructure on startup before receiving traffic or just making it out of CI vs. monitoring the health of instances. But they also can have things in common!</comment></comment>


Blind Spot Removal - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/14-year-old-inventor-develops-clever-blind-spot-removal-1839535002 <comment><USER2> If you position your mirrors properly then you don't have so-called 'blind spots'. Further, when you are about to change lanes you should look over your shoulder before executing the maneuver.

<comment><USER3> This is for the A-pillar, which is the windshield pillar in front of both the side- and rear-view mirrors, and in front of the driver. You can see that in the video.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_blind_spot#Effects_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_blind_spot#Effects_of_A- pillar_angle_on_visibility) shows "An accident caused in part by an A-pillar blind spot". The top image on the page shows another example of an A-pillar blind spot.

The blind spot you refer to is the rear quarter blind spot. Note the comment that one way to check it is "by turning one's head briefly (risking rear-end collisions)".

<comment><USER2> > Note the comment that one way to check it is "by turning one's head briefly > (risking rear-end collisions)".

If you rear end somebody while looking over your shoulder then you're going too fast and/or are too close to the vehicle in front. You should only be performing such maneuvers when it is safe to do so.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you track what you learn? - <AUTHOR> I would like to know your recommendation for a tool to track what you've learned this day/week/month etc.
Some sort of a service where you could easily write notes about the stuff you came accross while developing something.
For instance if I find a very useful link that shows me the correct way to do something, I would like to write that down somewhere with a simple explanation using my own words. <comment><USER2> A few weeks ago there was a post[0][1] on hn from a guy who wrote a daily til for a whole year.

I stole his idea[1] and created jekyll blog on Github, I can just create a new .md file and put the things for the til down. With the new upload feature from github you can also just write the md file locally and just drop it in.

I like it so far, just need to get in the habit of writing it down daily.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11068902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11068902) [1] [https://github.com/jbranchaud/til](https://github.com/jbranchaud/til) [2] [http://arminmsg.github.io/blog/til/](http://arminmsg.github.io/blog/til/) [http://arminmsg.github.io/blog/til/](http://arminmsg.github.io/blog/til/)

<comment><USER3> How do you keep all the markdown files organized and easily searchable? Or do you never reference back to them after you've taken the notes?

<comment><USER2> I do plan to reference back to the notes or else they would be meaningless. My current solution is to add categories to the posts and the use jekyll to generate a page where I create a headline for each category and link to all related posts there. This may not be the final solution, it was thrown together one evening so there's improvement.

I don't know how this will scale since I just started this project.

<comment><USER3> Understandable, thanks for the reply

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apart from keeping track, a related problem I'm facing is making sure that I am able to re-implement what I'm doing.

So what I do is the following:

1\. I break down what I've learned into steps or checklists

2\. I then put these into Scrivener

3\. Each topic that I've learned has it's own page

Here's a small example from my notes around PDF generation + attachments in Rails. This is just the overall picture -- each bullet point expands to another bunch of notes which has actual code details.

* build a mailer with mail(to:, from: content:)

* build a controller what delivers that content

* the controller should render a notice that says that the post has been successfully created <via a respond_to method>

* make sure that you configure the SMTP settings

* build a pdf creator (PrawnPDF::Base) => this initializes a PDF w/ some view_context

* configure a MIME type within config/initializers

* configure a controller that triggers a respond_to for this

* add a button that links to think Printable receipt

* save the PDF into some foldere

* insert a paperclip file type into the migration

* add this intot he user model

* go back to the PDF / order controller and then add a custom path to save the PDF (pdf.render file…)

* then save that file inside teh database & set it to the certificate

</comment><comment><USER3> I usually just keep notes in plain text files and save the likes in an organized bookmark directory of folders so I can easily find relevant links. I do like what the other commenter suggested about the markdown files on github though, but I'm not sure what the best way to navigate those would be.

</comment><comment> julio-r I generally use Google Keep that syncs between my devices, but I'm not completely happy with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> personally I use a local wiki to keep notes, links, research etc.

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


A Concurrency Cost Hierarchy - <AUTHOR> https://travisdowns.github.io/blog/2020/07/06/concurrency-costs.html <comment><USER2> I've implemented counters exactly like this. I actually migrated away from the tls_counter to something like the cas_multi_counter.

The problem with the tls_counter is memory usage that scales with the number of threads. In this example you need 16 bytes per thread because only one counter is supported, I believe we ended up with 48 bytes per thread. So with 10,000 threads you can end up with >=160KB of data for every counter. And 10,000 threads isn't that far-fetched if most are sleeping (though not ideal). Then you end up with 10,000 counters and you're spending >= 1.6 GB of RAM on counters. Where the cas_multi_counter would only be using 40.96 MB. And read() scales with the number of threads, so can get pretty slow, but that is secondary.

One optimization you can use to make the cas_multi_counter more memory efficient is to share the backing memory. You have 4096 bytes, but are only using the first 8 bytes of each 64-byte stripe. You can multiplex 8 counters into the same 4096 byte storage. The first counter gets offset 0, the second offset 8, and so on. This only adds 1 indirection in the hot operator++() path, and doesn't add any extra false sharing as long as the 4096 byte buffer is 64-byte aligned. Construction and destruction is more expensive, but not terribly so, and that is probably cold anyway. Now you're at 512 bytes per counter, and the size is independent of the cache-line size. If you can count the number of active CPUs you can dynamically size your buffer to only have # CPUs cachelines, further saving memory.

<comment><USER3> I'm fairly sure that the spacing between the counters is so that writes on separate cores don't fight over the cache line coherency logic. I'm not sure how you conclude that putting multiple counters into the same line avoids false sharing. That looks like a text-book case of false sharing to me.

If memory is an issue, is your suggestion going to behave any better than simply collapsing each counter down to 8 bytes per thread? Perhaps a bit if there's a wide disparity between counter frequencies and the independent counters tend not to run simultaneously, otherwise you now have contention between mostly unrelated tasks, which are now interacting less subtly.

<comment><USER4> I believe parent means you can pack multiple unrelated counters intended for the same core. The cache line is still uncontended, you're just storing more in it.

If you're building these things up from scratch this should be obvious, but if you're pulling in a library it's easy to not realize how wasteful it is being.

<comment><USER2> Yeah that's right. All the counters use the same indexing scheme, so all accesses to the same cache line should be on the same core.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author correctly identifies the problems with sched_yield() [1], but then used it anyway. In my experience, using nanosleep() with an exponential backoff and a threshold performs well and results in the kind of behavior people want when they use sched_yield(). I think the difference is enough to affect the results, so I'm surprised the author didn't experiment with it.

[1] for an additional reference, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10926654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10926654)

<comment><USER6> Yes, because the article isn't about the best approaches for concurrent counters, but rather the good, bad and downright ugly ways you can do concurrency, and the associated costs. The counter is used as an illustrative device across all the levels, so of course the really slow levels are going to involve something you don't actually want to do!

<comment><USER5> I'm not concerned with the counter itself, either. I'm concerned with the implementation of the synchronization at that level. I'm afraid the solution at that level is a strawman. There is a better solution for the "system call" level.

I also don't think it's useful to think of this hierarchy as "good, bad and ugly." Sometimes the problem you're solving will require being at one of these levels, and you can't perform the optimizations or re-architecture required to drop down a level. When that is the case, it's useful to know the best options at that level.

<comment><USER6> As the article shows, there are basically the reasonable levels, 0, 1, and 2 which are all valid approaches and depend on engineering tradeoffs. Levels 3, 4 and 5 are mistakes you want to avoid: so of course you aren't going to agree with the implementation choices in those levels, because they are mistakes! Those types of mistakes occur in practice along these lines (and in other ways), so I think it is useful to show them.

Note that "system call" level doesn't mean "the best level you can implement with a system call", although admittedly perhaps the naming was confusing. Rather, it means "an approach which implies that a system call is made for every interactive" \- that is, it is almost always mistake, since can generally avoid this.

The levels are named after the dominant factor in their cost.

<comment><USER5> Are you the author?

As I said, sometimes you _need_ to be at those levels for reasons outside of your control. When you are at those levels, it's useful to know the best thing to do at that level. In particular, sched_yield() is a known anti-pattern when using system calls, and there are known better techniques. It's better enough that I think it could have a significant impact on the performance results.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I am the author so I'm especially interested in feedback, thus my desire to get to the bottom of this. If it's a misunderstanding I can fix by clarifying something in the article, I'm open to it.

The goal of this post is to define and give a rough measurement for various concurrency performance levels, and as a pedagogical technique I pick one example (cross-thread counter) and stretch it across all the levels. Specifically, the goal is not to create a "good" counter at all levels, but to pick an example which can _plausibly_ hit all the levels, but that's going to require some bad designs at the upper levels.

No all levels represent good engineering: some are simply dominated. For example, I'd argue that 4 and 5 are dominated pretty much always. For a specific requirement, even more levels will be dominated. E.g., for this job, the simplest counter which uses an atomic add to increment the counter is a good baseline: any slower implementation than this is dominated. You'll never _need_ to be at a higher level for this task.

So yes, the higher levels "do something dumb" by definition, because if you are making a system call to increment a counter every time, you are doing it wrong. That sched_yield is an anit-pattern [1] is besides the point because all of the higher levels are deep into anti-pattern territory. That's the only way I could see to make one example work across all the levels (and having a single example was important to me).

If I understand your concern, you would like (or believe the intent is) that the various levels represent a "best possible" implementation within the constraints of the level? I don't think it is possible, as above above it's always going to be deeply artificial once you start forcing an atomic counter to make a system call. For example, I could use a SysV semaphore as my concurrency mechanism: this also always makes a system call. It is not violating any "no sched_yield" rule, but I think it is equally artificial.

\---

[1] Actually, I don't know that sched_yield is _always_ an anti-pattern, but let's not even go there: for the purposes of this discussion my point stands even if we assume it is always an anti-pattern (you hint at some of the places where it might be useful with your nanosleep comment).

<comment><USER5> I feel like this discussion is slipping out from under me, as I thought we agreed that the counter itself is a contrived example to illustrate synchronization mechanisms. But your recent response seems predicated on the fact the problem you're solving is just incrementing a counter.

I looked at it as just some work that needs to be done. But in the general case, not all work can be reduced to a single, or even a few atomic instructions. And sometimes your synchronization is needed not because you have work to do, but because you are waiting for another thread to complete their work so you can proceed. In those cases, you sometimes need system calls and/or condition variables to correctly synchronize with another thread. And when you find yourself in such a situation, sched_yield() is an anti-pattern.

And your footnote confuses me: I am not proposing using nanosleep() _and_ sched_yield(). I am proposing it _instead of_. What I linked to in my parent comment explains, basically, that sched_yield() does not mean what you think it means, so don't use it.

<comment><USER6> I agree the conversation seems to be going backwards and it seems like more work than expected to get to a common understanding (with no guarantee of success), so let's just drop it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great writeup to use as introduction and reference.

The striping to have a memory location per core is great for performance but can have a noticeable memory overhead.

It would be interesting to have Intel TSX in the mix. It can be a benefit to some workloads and does not require many adjustments to your code.

<comment><USER6> If I get a CPU with Intel TSX enabled, I'll definitely try to add TSX to the mix either as an update to this article or as a new one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really enjoyed this article, thank you for sharing

</comment><comment><USER9> Great article! Will definately keep this hierarchy in mind when writing concurrent code.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow. Hellava good write up. Def appreciated. I learned a lot from last two examples.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great article. Loved it!</comment>


Please contribute to usethesource.com - <AUTHOR> http://news.usethesource.com/news

<comment><AUTHOR> HN has a great community and a lot of intelligent people with a wealth of knowledge that has truly not been tapped yet. There are times when I crave reading technical postings and learning beyond my current levels of understanding but HN does not always permit that unless I sift through the broad spectrum of links. Usethesource.com to me appears like a continuation of HN in a pure technical fashion but is yet to see any community form around it or more than 1-2 postings per day. It would be great if we could help it flourish.

<comment><USER2> I like this idea. Two questions/suggestions (not sure if they already work or not):

1\. Can you make it so I can log in with OpenID/Facebook/something else that doesn't require me to sign up yet again. 2\. Can you make this open source so we can collaboratively work on the algorithms behind it etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> We should probably ask the creator himself whether he can do these things :)

I am merely a user who wishes to utilize the resource and hopefully with the help of HN get others to contribute to it.

<comment><USER3> FYI: The creator is jgrahamc.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jgrahamc>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for mentioning this site here. Hope people enjoy it.

1\. I've added the bookmarklet

2\. I've fixed the weird HTML in the page title on the About and Formatting pages.

If people have suggestions please make them on UTS as I am not monitoring HN very often these days.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is there HTML in the title on the "about" and "formatting" pages?

<comment><USER6> It's called "use the source" for a reason :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> /like but usethesource.com needs bookmarklet feature.

/yes, i could roll my own if the desire burned enough

/em just sayin'

<comment><USER8>
      javascript:window.location="http://news.usethesource.com/submitlink?u=+encodeURIComponent(document.location)+&t=+encodeURIComponent(document.title)

or

      post to news.UTS

I used it to post lis.py with no problem: <http://news.usethesource.com/item?id=728>

<comment><USER7> Missing a double quote after '…u=' and both double quotes (or single quotes) missing to properly delineate '…&t=' for the document title inclusion.

Changed those two and it's working fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe have some sort of link on HN to these offshoots (similar to stackexchange)?

There have been a couple similar experiments trying to draw on HN's community, but fizzle b/c they drop off the radar to quickly.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there any Twitter/RSS feed for it?

Similar as <http://twitter.com/#!/hackernewsbot> ?

<comment><USER11> <http://news.usethesource.com/rss>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a twitter handle so I can follow the articles published?

</comment><comment><USER13> No</comment>


Global conflict tracker - <AUTHOR> https://www.cfr.org/interactives/global-conflict-tracker#!/global-conflict-tracker <comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to share this useful resource, a lot of these conflicts can get buried by everything else in the 24 hour news cycle.</comment>


Show HN: Get unlimited small changes to your Shopify store for $99/month - <AUTHOR> https://shopmanager.co/ <comment><USER2> Nice. This is exactly one of the service-as-a-software's I have on my small business idea list. The main reason I haven't pursued it is that it doesn't sound like any fun, really. At the end of the day you're essentially running a design/development agency and everyone else's headaches become yours.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/0h927a8yfzfq88e/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/0h927a8yfzfq88e/Screenshot%202015-10-27%2021.29.26.png?dl=0) < from my list

Obviously you know about wpcurve. They appear to bill 75k-125k monthly (somewhere in that range. I'm estiguessing).

They claim to have ~38 people involved. I can't really get the numbers to work if that's accurate and they are all full-time, but assuming otherwise, I have to imagine that the owner (if Dan is the only one) takes home 25-50k per month or that a similar amount is split if there are two owners. Obviously I'm leaving asset appreciation/salability out of projections.

Reach out to Dan if you haven't and learn as much as you can from him. He basically knows all the problems you will encounter.

It will be a tough road but this business seems like a very safe bet. Good luck.

I think magento would be a great market for this as well.

edit: I just looked at your pricing. With your pricing you don't need to worry at all about profitability. Note that wpcurve has a 3-month minimum. They didn't when they launched. I think this was probably a hard lesson that they had to learn and you should probably adopt the same rule once you are a little established if not immediately. Otherwise people will take advantage.

<comment><USER3> I run a small web design agency, and I have Magento clients. I started offering this kind of service for Magento. Unfortunately, there is not much 'small fixes' in Magento stores. Most issues or corrections take hours to investigate and resolve. I nicely failed, and went back to per hour billing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I founded ShopManager as a side-project after finding that a lot of my clients were asking for a service similar to this.

Happy to answer any questions you might have. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Cool, a little expensive for me but seems great.

Please provide the visitors with pictures of what you can do, not just many bullet points. I think that would make this site much more easy to digest :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! What price range would you expect for this type of service?

Noted for the bullet list, I agree with some images for that part it would be easier to digest.</comment></comment></comment>


Rovio downsizes again, prepares to cut 260 jobs (but the movie is still on) - <AUTHOR> http://tech.eu/brief/angry-birds-rovio-layoffs/

<comment><USER2> Ongoing discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10122295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10122295)</comment>


Interesting whatsapp conversation - <AUTHOR> http://storiesforyourscreen.com/annie96-is-typing/

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow this is creepy</comment>


Should we hire this intern? You decide. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mypunchbowl.com/blog/2009/02/09/the-intern-candidate-responds/

<comment><USER2> Claiming to work hard is different than actually working hard but giving someone a chance never hurts. Just make sure they are what they say they are.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like I'm reading a tabloid.</comment>


Google Sucks Life Out of Old Media - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/google_sucks_life_out_of_old_media_huge_2007_share_shift

<comment><USER2> Shift happens. Old media better shape up and change also. The Internet provides new opportunities for old media in a new context. Through social networking and streaming on line content it provides a new way media can reach its target.</comment>


The economic effects of drinking bottled water - <AUTHOR> http://www.economixt.com/2009/07/in-context-the-bottled-water-industry/ <comment><USER2> I drink filtered tap water at home but when I'm out the only real choice is bottled water. I always thought this debate was somewhat irrelevant since a thirsty person on the go is probably going to buy _something_ to drink. If it's water, soda, fruit juice, tea, etc it doesn't really matter. If you buy bottled water to drink at home a filter would be a very good investment.</comment>


More reprisals for Russian blogger jailed for reposting that Crimea is Ukraine - <AUTHOR> http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1482410710 <comment><USER2> As both Russia and the United States advance towards totalitarianism, more and more laws are passed governing every aspect of human existence. Even incorrect thoughts will eventually be considered criminal acts against the state.</comment>


Mason Gaffney: A Tribute [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://schalkenbach.org/file-12/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Robert-Schalkenbach-Fdn-Tribute-to-Mason-Gaffney-FINAL.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Dr. Mason Gaffney, the remarkable economics professor at UC Riverside whose work was inspired by the insights of Henry George, has died, at 96. A tribute at [https://schalkenbach.org/file-12/wp- content/uploads/2020/07/...](https://schalkenbach.org/file-12/wp- content/uploads/2020/07/Robert-Schalkenbach-Fdn-tribute-to-Mason-Gaffney.pdf) provides a sense of the scope of his writings over the course of 75 years. It has links and commentary on many of his writings.

This ties to a discussion a few months ago at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?p=2&id=23210804](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?p=2&id=23210804) on Georgism.

It starts with Henry George's central philosophical principle:

"The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air—it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world and others no right.

If we are all here by the equal permission of the Creator, we are all here with an equal title to the enjoyment of his bounty— with an equal right to the use of all that nature so impartially offers. This is a right which is natural and inalienable; it is a right which vests in every human being as he enters the world, and which during his continuance in the world can be limited only by the equal rights of others." source: [http://progressandpoverty.org/files/george.henry/pp071.html#...](http://progressandpoverty.org/files/george.henry/pp071.html#p-16)

The corresponding economic principle is that we ought to recognize our equal rights to the earth by collecting all the rental value of land and other natural opportunities as shared public revenue.

Gaffney's work, like Henry George's thought, shows that economics is not a dismal science.

His writing is erudite, witty and hopeful, and provides a perspective most economics majors never get exposed to.</comment>


Show HN: Find free Android apps without ads or in-app purchases - <AUTHOR> https://reallyfreeapps.appspot.com/ <comment><USER2> FDroid gives same functionality in a different mannner.

<comment><USER3> This. I've learned to never even look for anything in Google's store, unless someone has recommended a specific app to me.

If I can't find something ni F-Droid, then I search Google for e.g. "insect id app android site:reddit.com" and read all the comments, and then and only then do I risk installing something.

Based on my experience, I would estimate that more than 99% of apps in the official app store are malware of some kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great -- it would be helpful if the distinction between "free" and "really free" was made more often.

</comment><comment><USER2> Ask OP: how do you plan to make money or atleast support cost of website?

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks you. I was just thinking about something similar last week.</comment>


COVFEFE Act - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVFEFE_Act <comment><USER2> Sadly, Library of Congress was archiving all tweets at the time. They stopped doing so later that year [1]. I don't know if it was ever resumed or not. Fortunately, tons of people are archiving that sort of thing on their own anyway :)

[1] [https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2017/12/update-on-the-twitter- arch...](https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2017/12/update-on-the-twitter-archive-at- the-library-of-congress-2/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Cute retronym, but the act makes sense; if the WH says communications on a particular channel are considered official, then it's just sensible to record them.

<comment><USER4> It's like the Binary Intersectional Tyrannical Cis-Hetero Slave Lord Anti-woke Patriarchy (BITCHSLAP).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not familiar with the US political system here

> The bill would amend the Presidential Records Act to preserve Twitter posts > and other social media interactions of the President of the United States

Does this mean the bill has not (yet) been passed into law? Or has it been voted on already?

<comment><USER6> Has not yet been passed and won't be passed. It's a PR stunt by the congressman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there anything the President says or does that __isn 't __recorded and preserved?

<comment><USER8> Lots and lots of stuff. Presidents walk away with their "papers" and put them in their libraries post presidency. Obama, for one, isn't even planning on making his papers physically available. Also tons of White House records are never made available. Guest lists for parties and other visitors to the White House are not always made available, even if they are not actually classified.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/arts/obama- presidential-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/arts/obama-presidential- center-library-national-archives-and-records-administration.html)

<comment><USER9> White House visitor logs are notoriously withheld by administrations and subject to lawsuits over disclosure.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: HTML5 clone of the classic Snake game, works on mobile too - <AUTHOR> http://snake.coon-and-friends.com/

<comment><USER2> I had a few issues with the game.

* On Chrome/Ubuntu 12.04, the game wouldn't load and crashed that browser process entirely.

* On Chrome/Win7, the body is too large for the browser window. Looks like you need to tweak your CSS.

This brought back memories of DOS and my old Nokia brick phone from decades ago...thanks!</comment>


Distributed Neural Networks with GPUs in the AWS Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/02/distributed-neural-networks-with-gpus.html

<comment><USER2> Whoooooosh!

I love how nearly all of this article went over my head.

Fascinating to read nevertheless, and I personally appreciate companies like Netflix publishing research like this in the open for us all to appreciate.

I'd love to work on this stuff but I'm really not sure where to start. Mathematics have always been a weak spot for me and whenever I start to read a neural networks book my brain is instantly turned to mush as I'm bombarded with mathematical equations that I can't read.

Does anyone know of any good resources that focus on the code rather than the maths? As a predominantly C# programmer, resources in that language would be a bonus.

<comment><USER3> I can now admit that I feel the same way, but it doesn't stop me reading this type of article. It's fascinating in a "this is really cool, but am I smart enough to understand it?" kind of way.

The other thing that I wondered about was: did the performance improvements come from the huge number of cores in GPUs, the increased memory bandwidth, or something else inherent in GPU computing?</comment></comment>


Instacart announces new Covid-19 policies and plans to hire 250k more shoppers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/23/instacart-announces-new-covid-19-policies-and-plans-to-hire-250000-more-shoppers/ <comment><USER2> Grocery stores should really just turn themselves into warehouses and only allow workers in the store. Grocery stores could provide safer working conditions by checking temps of employees before entering the store and providing masks and gloves for all workers. This would help mitigate the risk of covid exposure for both employees and customers.

<comment><USER3> Not everyone can afford delivery fees, especially with these layoffs. And those fees are not small at all hey.

<comment><USER4> Those fees are for everyone's safety. If other people have deliveries, I'm less likely to get sick and die.

Delivery fees should be part of the stimulus.

If everyone who can afford them paid delivery fees for everyone who can't, we'd all come out way ahead, both health-wise and economically. This is one of the biggest economic no-brainers since some states started making everyone wear a $2 cloth face mask to reduce R0.

<comment><USER5> "If other people have deliveries, I'm less likely to get sick and die."

Outside of the very worst-hit parts of the world, going shopping while taking precautions does not seem to be capable of raising the transmission rate to unacceptable levels. We're not trying to prevent every and all infection, only to keep the rate of new infections at a sustainable level.

<comment><USER4> Why do you say that?

The US seems to have an R0 of right around 1 with lockdowns. Shopping is the major place people continue to intermingle.

If we brought R0<<1, the virus would die off. If R0 > 1, we all get sick eventually.

And aside from that, school and work closures are much more expensive than food delivery. The ROI of not having everyone congregate in stores seems huge in comparison.

<comment><USER5> I say that because I don't think anyone expects the virus to die off, save for a mutation or herd immunity (via vaccine or otherwise). Lockdowns are not and never were intended to kill the virus. Only to control the spread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My biggest gripe with this headline is the word "hire". Let's rephrase that to: "250k shoppers signed up". They were not hired. They don't have benefits, they don't have medical, and they are most definitely not employees.

<comment><USER7> The word 'hire' has nothing to do with whether the job is full-time or part- time: it applies to both (e.g. 'I hired a babysitter').

<comment><USER8> "Hiring" a babysitter means you have engaged her/him for a specific period and compensation commitment. Otherwise, you're just adding them to your Contacts.

Instacart hasn't _hired_ these people in any traditional sense, they've just added those people to their Contacts with no compensation commitment.

<comment><USER9> That is your definition of hire but it is not what the actual definition of the word is or implies. You can hire a babysitter, 1099 contractor, W2 employee, day laborer, and so on and so forth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone know if they've fixed the bug where someone could set the tip to $50 and then remove it entirely at or after delivery ("tip baiting")?

[https://nypost.com/2020/04/10/people-are-baiting-grocery- del...](https://nypost.com/2020/04/10/people-are-baiting-grocery-delivery- workers-with-big-tips-then-reneging/)

<comment><USER11> You're supposed to tip? I tried Safeway delivery and there was no option to tip. Tipping needs to just go away. It's completely arbitrary.

<comment><USER12> In order for tipping to go away, the employer needs to provide a higher level of compensation equal to the average $tips typically earned. But companies like tipping because it offloads some of the salary burden as an additional line-item expense to the buyer.

<comment><USER13> the companies won't increase wage unless people stop tipping, why increase wage if employees are happy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a consumer I highly recommend Amazon Fresh. No pre-paid tip bull shit if you don't want to and in 50+ deliveries I've had exactly one bad experience that I left a customer support inquiry about - which never repeated itself.

Amazon logistics are unmatched and there is a very clean continuity between deliveries that shows quality control or at least per-location notes on accessing buildings and units efficiently.

Down side is you have to refresh the checkout page throughout the day in order to get a delivery window. Sometimes you luck out and can get same-day delivery, sometimes you have to wait a couple days.

<comment><USER15> _Sometimes you luck out and can get same-day delivery, sometimes you have to wait a couple days._

Which is ridiculous. Why don't they just let me schedule the delivery up to, say, 2 weeks out? They'd retain more customers _and_ smooth out the demand spikes that are as bad for retailers as they are for consumers.

<comment><USER16> Stock availability changes on fresh food in two weeks.

<comment><USER15> Especially when you can't predict demand because you're intentionally rejecting valid market signals.

I don't need a two-hour window. Let me order a week in advance, with a two- _day_ window. This will work better than what they're doing now, which basically isn't working at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are there 250k people that are willing to work a job like this right now? Sure, there's lots of unemployed, but for at least the next few months they're getting ~60% of their base salary (up to some cap) + an additional $600/week.

<comment><USER17> One of my friends sons is making $300 to $500 per day working Instacart right now. Partly because where we live the demand is high and there are not enough Instacarters to meet that demand. The delivery time is currently at least 3 days out. He is young and healthy so he doesn't really have that fear.

<comment><USER18> 500*365 = $182,500

that's amazing

<comment><USER19> As it should be. Food delivery in an emergency is a critical service, and should be rewarded appropriately.

<comment><USER12> not only critical-- lots of jobs are critical (janitor) but don't pay much. This is also hazardous right now. Look at some of the worst states like NJ & NY right now: There's mini outbreaks at a lot of supermarkets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "In March, the company announced it will hire 300,000 new full-service shoppers on top of its existing 200,000 shoppers. It has since met that goal, and with today's hiring news, Instacart's shopper network will be 750,000 shoppers. The company also announced earlier this month that it is more than doubling its care team, from 1,200 agents to 3,000 agents."

I am really surprised they have that many people doing this work! That's not meant to be a comment on the work or the people or anything, just those numbers are HUGE. I had no idea they had so many people.

<comment><USER21> I was too. But then I ran across a thread on nextdoor a week or so ago. Long story short, the poster wanted a legit company as opposed to some random person purchasing stuff. I thought of explaining to the person that a random person is really what you get anyway, but I thought better of it. People do trust a company. They seem to think they do some sort of basic security check.

<comment><USER16> Or the ability to refund if something goes wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know, slightly off-topic, but I wish instacart didn't mark up the price of each item. It feels like it lacks transparency and is some sort of dark pattern because I don't know how much I'm paying for, say, food and how much I'm paying instacart. I'd much rather see a flat % fee, say 10% or something.

<comment><USER22> That's because it is a dark pattern of hiding the true price through death by a thousand fees.

They try to get you from every angle. They mark up the price. They add a service fee. They add a delivery fee. They add a tip (which is its own can of worms...)

If it was just "Buy whatever you want at regular price but we'll throw on $40" a lot of people would balk.

<comment><USER23> Airbnb is also a very big user of this pattern. You can't search by total price, including fees, just the base nightly rate: which makes it difficult to compare options, since one host might have a $20 cleaning fee, and another has a $250 one.

That can make a big difference in total price for short (2-3 night) stays.

I end up with 40 browser tabs. Oh, and if you want to book via mobile app, they charge more for that. Have to use a web browser for the best price.

<comment><USER24> I built a browser extension to help mitigate this type of issue. A lot of people like to think about the cost of lodging in terms of nightly price as opposed to the total, so the extension shows the true nightly price of a stay, after account for all fees, taxes, etc. Unfortunately, right now there's not a great way to get the true* totals to show up in search results, but the extension will show you the real price per night of your stay once you're on a place's listing page.

Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/airbnb-price- per-n...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/airbnb-price-per-night- co/lijeilcglmadpkbengpkfnkpmcehecfe)

Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/airbnb- price-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/airbnb-price-per- night-correct/)

And it's completely open source: [https://github.com/davidsawyer/airbnb-price- per-night-correc...](https://github.com/davidsawyer/airbnb-price-per-night- correcter)

*Airbnb leaves out taxes in their "totals", which can skew the true total by a significant amount

<comment><USER23> I'm more forgiving about taxes being left out, only because it's an equal percentage for each listing. If I have a map of 10 listings, and they're all N% less than they should be -- I can still somewhat easily compare them, as they are all equally wrong.

There might be edge cases to my thinking, as if you map view listings along a jurisdictional boundary, there may be taxes in one city and not another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Instacart needs to fix basically everything, it is in the name but they fail pretty hard at even being a cart and the web app is slow due to client side javascript. Looks like they are competing with AirBnB in how broken their web apps are. Hell some items exist, but are shadowed and in accessible presumably due to id and class collisions.

<comment><USER26> honest question: is server side processing generally preferred? if so, why has there been much more evolution on the JS front than on the Node/Django/RoR front?

<comment><USER25> Instacarts web 11/7ths SPA is slow through their own ineptness. Instacart has failed in that no one should be talking about their site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This sounds exciting but without UBI and UHC (housing and health) it just feels like a half measure. Engaging in necessary skilled labor is the ideal (liberal arts and sciences) - the next best is un-skilled necessary labor (grocery delivery lives here) and after that skilled un-necessary labor (eg visual and audible/musical arts skills crafts games) and finally that leaves us with un-skilled in-necessary labor (Vices live here). If we have universal mutual aid as a guiding principal it would let people move towards where they need and want to be as their lower level maslavian needs would be apriori.

The reality as well is that many necessary forms of labor can be fulfilled by unskilled labor if we try (Automation lives here).

<comment><USER28> Yeah, who pays for that? You burden half the population with 50 hour work weeks to pay for the other half to sit on their ass? You call liberal arts "necessary"? No, farming and trucking is necessary. Blue collar labor is necessary. White collar labor is a luxury.

<comment><USER29> I would go further. If no one is willing to pay for it, it isn't labor, it's a hobby/leisure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Oh wow, 250,000 new employees? That's a lot of benefits and overhead this is going to cost them.

<comment><USER31> > That's a lot of benefits and overhead this is going to cost them.

There are no benefits. It's independent labor

<comment><USER30> Are you positive about that?

I would've thought the U.S. government would crack down on a tech company pulling a stunt like that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Last month, some Instagram shoppers went on strike.</comment>