China conducts first manual space docking - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/06/2012624513097350.html

<comment><USER2> The title is a little bit ambiguous, so here's a clarification. This is China's first manual space docking, not the first one ever performed. The US first accomplished this in 1966. Nevertheless, it is a big stepping stone for the Chinese space program.

</comment><comment><USER3> Was in Russia a few years ago, staying in a high tech hub city that was built to work with the space station - heard a story about the Russian Space agency hiring a Chinese mathematics genius - he couldn't speak a word of Russian and had to go everywhere with a translator. Because of this the Russian scientists were a little less diligent with what they said about him, and what they left lying around. A couple of months later he had disappeared, turns out he had studied in St. Petersberg and spoke fluent Russian - at that point the Chinese space program made a huge jump forwards, and a few years later had launched their first manned capsule.</comment>


Dimer – simplest way to write and publish beautiful docs - <AUTHOR> http://dimerapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Wow. This app looks beautiful and so simple to use! Can't believe this was missing from my technical writing app arsenal.</comment>


Publicly Available Standards - <AUTHOR> https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html <comment><USER2> Nice list! I noticed that the list also contains several corrigenda. However, there are corrigenda that are also publicly available yet not on this list.

For example, the hitherto published corrigenda for the Prolog ISO standard (ISO/IEC 13211-1:1995) are also publicly available, or at least you can "preview" the entire documents from the ISO site:

[https://www.iso.org/standard/50405.html](https://www.iso.org/standard/50405.html)

[https://www.iso.org/standard/58033.html](https://www.iso.org/standard/58033.html)

[https://www.iso.org/standard/73194.html](https://www.iso.org/standard/73194.html)</comment>


The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/308134/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Seems like we've entered some sort of post-modern neocolonialism. How do we "fix" the broken countries of the world. The neocons under Bush tried to remake the middle east by invading Iraq.[1] Debated with someone here who felt we just needed more time in Afghanistan so a generation could understand good governance.[2] In this article, the thrust seems to be benevolent foreign powers and businesses will lead the way to prosperity. All seem like colonialism without the name and all seem to totally disregard secondary effects.

Read a great article awhile back on HN that talked about the impulse to fix other people's problems far away from your own.[3] Seems that SV and Stanford could do a lot more to fix the issues closer at hand in the Bay Area (homelessness, unaffordable living, rising inequality) and the US in general before solving all the worlds problems. Lead by example sort of stuff. Instead my main takeaway from the article is get rich in the startup lottery then proselytize your grand vision and plans from your bubble of prosperity. Sell the dream but don't look in the mirror.

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

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11412172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11412172)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10884840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10884840)

<comment><USER3> I'm expecting a resurgence in colonialist-like approaches. Especially in the context of the Middle East. It's exactly failures like Afghanistan and Iraq that make some consider solutions involving total governance for much more than just a few years. A case can be made for the US having been morally obliged to basically colonize Iraq (and Afghanistan tho I'm less familiar with that one).

<comment><USER4> I chatted to some educated Afghanis and they thought the period of greatest peace and prosperity in their life times was the Russian occupation which the US went to some effort to end. I sometimes wonder if western policies to bring democracy to Islamic areas by bombing them really do much good. We could perhaps just bribe the dictators to up their human rights a bit.

Syria is an ongoing case where there remain options. I think our tactful new foreign secretary may have the right idea that we should hold our noses and work with "the linchpin of a vast post-Soviet gangster kleptocracy" who looks "a bit like Dobby the House Elf" and the "manipulative tyrant Assad". [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/12036184/Lets- deal-with-the-Devil-we-should-work-with-Vladimir-Putin-and-Bashar-al-Assad-in- Syria.html)

<comment><USER3> Yea the big problem with "opening up" the colonization game is you'll have people fighting over who's the colonizer (tho it's still sort of happening anyways). No doubt Russia might have been decent for them.

Pretty sure he'll back off from that after getting briefed [possibly by Israel if internally won't be enough]. I'd assume the same for Trump if he wins.

Operation Orchard [0] is a good example that Assad's nastiness wasn't just an internal issue that could be ignored. Unless of course he somehow promises to behave this time.

Everyone realizes the "rebels" could turn out to be even nastier guys so no Western power has a clear interest in letting any of the 3 parties win.

As such a ground invasion makes little sense if you have to cede power eventually - there's no guarantee some "good guys" will magically emerge, they won't.

That's were establishing an international colony comes in. Or as some suggest just an international safe zone on some portion of Syrian territory.

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

<comment><USER4> We'll see. The UK doesn't have much power in the region compared to the US, Turkey, Iran, Israel et al so what Boris thinks probably won't affect things much. Still a US, Turkey, Assad Putin deal could probably bring some sort of peace and we could still bomb Assad if he tries to get nukes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shorter version: Create corporatist deregulated cities in corrupt third world countries and assume that rather than enriching multinationals via lax oversight the project will make poor people less poor. Hard to see what could go wrong with that plan.

<comment><USER6> Well, it sort of works: massively increasing the wealth of any third world country will shift it from "if you're poor then you starve and die" to "if you're poor then you are begging on the street and sometimes working a lousy job for little money".

It's not much of an aspiration, but it is, strictly speaking, an improvement. It's also not a hypothetical: supply-side economic demonstrably works, to some extent. It just doesn't work very well, and we should be able to do better.

<comment><USER7> Two counter examples to your first statement about positive benefits of massive increases in wealth: Nigeria and Venezuela.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, the failings there had to do with the source of wealth being natural resources, rather than innovation per se. I'd also add Russia and Brazil to that list, but there are others. See [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse)

Personally, I think it's the difference in mentality between lottery winners and builders of successful products (who often work within difficult constraints and have to become very good at problem solving to succeed). There's a reason why lottery winners do not typically compound their success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This idea is brilliant. The problem of finding outside countries to run the cities is perhaps less difficult that it seems. The Hanseatic League and Lombard League cities prospered in large part because they were free from feudal control and could develop local, non-agrarian industries. The cities need enough outside control to allow the economy to develop but not necessarily complete sovereignty like Hong Kong.

As for making it economically worthwhile for the "overseer" nation and particularly individuals, perhaps that could be solved by sharing in the high economic growth rates that successful charter cities would achieve. If you get that right there would definitely be takers give the current low growth rates in most industrialized nations.

(Paul Romer is one of my favorite economists of all time so maybe I'm biased.)

</comment><comment><USER10> This American Life & Planet Money did a follow-up on this idea three years later: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/483/s...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/483/self-improvement-kick?act=2)

Against the odds, Honduras was actually willing to give the "charter city" model a go, but the project turned into a disaster before it even got started. Mostly because Paul Romer is an egotistical, antisocial control freak and nobody could work with him.

There's a lesson here for silicon valley types: Being a genius with a great idea doesn't count for anything if you can't work with other humans to bring your idea into reality.

<comment><USER9> This is character assassination. I've met Paul Romer and have followed his work for decades. People ignore his ideas at their peril. You can't blame him for not being an outstanding administrator at the same time.

It does not really sound as if this project would have worked under any circumstances due to the political issues.

<comment><USER11> It's basically a political project, so political issues seem like a fundamental problem, rather than some external factor to blame.

<comment><USER9> That's a fair criticism of Romer's idea and one that deserves careful scrutiny.

It does beg the question, however, exactly what political problems stopped the Honduras project from going forward. The Podcast cited above focused on the personalities and personal resentments but there was clearly more going on behind the scenes. Romer himself was very circumspect about what actually happened.

For example in the Atlantic article Romer suggests driving things through non- US countries. This might not be pure coincidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _WHEN ROMER EXPLAINS charter cities, he likes to invoke Hong Kong. For much > of the 20th century, Hong Kong's economy left mainland China's in the dust, > proving that enlightened rules can make a world of difference._

Charter cities are only possible because they concentrate capital, trade and workforce from mother country. It can not be done globally, entire China can not turn into Hong Kong

<comment><USER13> China's government is far from perfect, but ever since Deng took over, it has been been implementing policies that resemble British Hong Kong more than they resemble Maoist China -- and it's working just fine.

Life is not a zero-sum game. Rich places get rich not by stealing the cream, but rather by being less evil and stupid as other places.

<comment><USER14> Most things work better than Maoist China... Getting away from actively sabotaging your industrial and agricultural output with ideologically, rather than reality-based five year plans is a good start. Leaves a lot less dead bodies, too.

<comment><USER15> Someone should try this in the US.

Of course it's called "off-shoring" not "Maoism", but the effects on US industry have been very similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Assuming this ever worked, and produced good results, what happens when ten or fifteen years later, the corrupt local dictator takes over, all of the administrators flee before the mobs take their lives or nationalize all of their property, and all of the expertise and institutions that kept things going evaporate. Because we have a lot of examples of that happening.

<comment><USER11> Its a good point. To put it another way, Romer focusses heavily on the system of rules in place, and that is no doubt import in attracting migrants and capital investment, but what about defense? Nobody is going to want to build factories, ports, and the like, unless they are well defended.

The reason Hong Kong worked well wasn't merely the system of rules, it was also the presence and backing of the British military. In the charter city setup, the risk of changing regimes in the host country, and the bad press if the governing country were to intervene, is just too great.

<comment><USER5> And the British civil service, which regardless of what you think about colonialism have a deserved reputation as one of the most efficient and least corrupt administrative organizations in history.

<comment><USER16> Interestingly the modern British civil service was based on the Chinese system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is particularly relevant because it appears Romer will be the chief economist at the World Bank soon: [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/07/it-...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/07/it- seems-paul-romer-will-be-chief-economist-at-the-world-bank.html) [edit for a better link]

<comment><USER18> Yes I wonder if taking the World Bank job indicates an end of this effort, or a platform to push it harder?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting to see this actually advocated as this is exactly the thing I tell my wife when we solve world problems at the kitchen table.

The Syrian refugee crisis got me thinking. Why on earth should so many people travel so far to get to European style rule and safety. If that is what they want, why could we not provided it where they already are?

The current system of dealing with refugees doesn't scale. There ought to be a way where you can allow in a lot of poor people without bringing severe economic strains on a rich country.

The problem when Syrians come to a rich country in Europe is that so many of their valuable skills can not be utilized even marginally, much due to different traditions, language requirements, procedures etc. However if there was a European enclave in Syria which they could move to, that could function using Syrian language and customs combined with European rule at the top.

Obviously Syrians would not naturally want to be ruled by Europeans but that is what they volunteer to when they move to Europe. A European enclave in Syria would be the same. You don't have to move there, but if you do, you have to accept European rule. The benefit is that, while not democracy it means freedom and rule of law.

Hong Kong was never a democracy but people there had freedom. Freedom and democracy is frequently mixed up, but they are not the same. By Freedom I mean that there is a free press, independent courts which apply the same law to all people, not just for the benefit of the rich and cronies of the rulers.

</comment><comment><USER20> The idea if carried out, likely would work, I think, but would be fraught with many issues centered around power and influence.

This neocolonialist idea would likely not sit well with lots of the same people who have issues with capitalism and historical colonialism. The specter of European colonialism would be hard to escape.

Then there is power and influence. These new cities would who up the host country and would be the envy of the non neocolonial zones. And further has to potential of subverting local culture for a western, Chinese or Japanese one, in a more immediate manner.

So, I feel there are too many cultural factors we would find hard to ignore, even if in practice, the result would be a net positive for the local population. In other words, politics would get in the way of practicality.

Imagine, Baja becoming a US state, in a few decades, it could be like New Mexico, not the richest state but a lot better than it is now. Now imagine how locals would take to the idea (even if individually they might like to immigrate into the US). And then how the Mexican government would take to the idea -a non starter.

<comment><USER21> >Baja becoming a US state

Baja is already well to do.

Try that with Chihuahua and maybe I can agree with these proposals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> 2010\. I thought maybe it had come along further because it was on HN again, but this article is dated.

</comment><comment><USER23> The concept of smart cities just seems like an excessively convoluted way of adopting more successful countries' institutions, governance and laws. Which can be great of course, but begs the question: is the host country government (current or the set of most influential parties, assuming it's a democracy) interested in adopting this foreign system at all?

<comment><USER11> Right - it's a little bit like a design for a perpetual motion machine, using some convolution to distract from the simple reasons for it not working.

The things that make cities open and successful are fairly clear to those who study these things, it's not a secret or a mystery. The things that have prevented potential host countries from adopting those practices successfully on their own (political instability, corruption, whatever) will also prevent them from being a good place for anybody to set up a charter city there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here's a politically incorrect thought: we don't need to develop Africa.

We shouldn't assume that everyone has to be like us to be happy. We shouldn't try to "civilize the barbarians" \- to use a colonial phrase. Let them live as they live and let them develop themselves at their own pace.

Over the next decade, Africa's population is poised to explode. The great wilderness of Africa will all but disappear, and Africa might become just another blob of concrete, mining, and agribusiness. Desirable? Good for the human species? I think not.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Enlightened foreign powers", who might that be?

</comment><comment><USER26> I prefer [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_worl...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world) AND [https://www.givedirectly.org/efficiency](https://www.givedirectly.org/efficiency)

</comment><comment><USER27> If anyone is interested in the main webpage for the project, I think it's this:

[http://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/programs/new- cities](http://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/programs/new-cities)

</comment><comment><USER28> Another way to end poverty in the third world would be to convince the poor people simply not to breed anymore.

</comment><comment><USER29> 1st Problem of this article: How do WE "over here" fix THEM "over there".

You cannot "fix" another group of people in another country. They have to fix themselves and go through the necessary procedures to stabilize, weed out problems and corruption, and change their culture, people, social mindset, and traditions. All the stable rich countries of today were once violence, corrupt, and environmentally dirty during their earlier years, suggesting a sort of "puberty period" that all nations go through.

One group cannot build a country, achievements, stability for another group. If they try it is almost always only a temporary success, followed by complete failure as soon as the original "building" group pulls out. Google "the white foreigner effect" [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268115...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268115000906) the most horrifying side effect is that natives purposely handicap themselves to signal need to an outside charity. This leads to dependency.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito- nets...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito-nets-for- malaria-spawn-new-epidemic-overfishing.html)

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083)

In the short term good is done and hearts are warmed but in the long term a nation doesn't develop an immunity to its problems. A charter city would be no different. People would become dependent on the charity, funds, resources, and achievement coming out of the foreign created character city. What incentive do they have to create their own city? If they tried how could they compete with the foreign city?

2nd Problem: The solution and problem in the article is based on an emotional desire to uplift another group of people. Don't you think they want to lift themselves up? Do you believe they want you to lift them up?

What the article suggests, which is basically "nation creation communism" will actually do more damage to a country than good. Because now the native original people of a country cannot compete with the success, wealth, and power of the "colonizers" who are trying to uplift them out of poverty. This is the same series of ideas that sound good and make you feel good but actually cause damage. Countries grow and mature and stabilize on their own at their own natural rate. Trying to artificially "fix" each country ahead of its time, I believe, is immoral. That's like giving your kid steroids because you want them to hurry up and grow faster.

<comment><USER19> Your arguments are against the current development model not against charter cities.

The problem with the present arrangement is that western powers are not in charge, they merely give the money. This is causing the dependency you speak of. They are trying to solve the development problem merely with money. That fails for exactly the reasons you quote.

A charter city doesn't need to offer money. The idea of a charter city isn't about pouring money into a foreign country it is about offering western quality rule and regulations. Hong Kong was not an expense for Britain. It was an income. Hong Kong did not prosper because Britain poured money into it but because Britain ran it.

That is a big difference. People would not depend on charity, funds or resources from the charter city because it would not provide any of that. It would only provide the rule of law and uncorrupt government without red tape. That means people can go to the charter city to start a business without being tied down. You know in your average developing country setting up just a simple bakery legally requires over a hundred days of full time work dealing with bureaucracy. That is no joke, you can read Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto about the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> tl;dr: good discipline reduces poverty.</comment>


Elon Musk's TED 2017 Full Interview - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPaYrhUZSYQ <comment><AUTHOR> I found the talk cool

Things that stuck in my mind -

Self driving LA - NY without touching the controls coming about Nov 2017 (15m)

Hoping to build the Mars rocket in about 8 years (34m)

4 or so new gigafactories being planned. He figures we need about 100 to get the planet electric (27:40)

Semi truck on its way shortly - Musk has been driving the prototype around the car park (19:40)

Trying to make a tunnel boring machine go faster than a snail - presently they are about 14x slower (5:30)</comment>


Growth hack: How to reach 20+ countries with less than 10 minutes of work - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getinch.com/reach-20-countries-5-minutes-work/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love your comments so please share your experiences!</comment>


Flying robots: nature inspires next generation design - T-A http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27496737 <comment><AUTHOR> Commercial drones are maturing incredibly fast already. The DJI Phantom II Vision has amazing capabilities for under a grand already. But it still seems to be only research/hobby interest in drones (or dronies). What's the "killer app" for drones going to be?

<comment><USER2> Land surveying.

Maybe a farmer uses them to monitor the state of his crops and even spot treat unhealthy areas without installing a huge static sensor network.

Could also be used for intrusion detection on a large property. A small group of drones could detect and instantly let you know when somebody trespasses on your land. Again, without installing static cameras/sensors.

Search and rescue could be made more effective.

Package delivery.

<comment><USER3> I'm currently consulting on a project which, if all goes well, involves putting a fleet of drones in a box and having them go detect methane gas in certain high-methane-gas regions of the world..

<comment><USER4> Can you share any more on this project?

We're currently working on a project for an environment agency to determine viability / produce a proof of concept for monitoring methane levels over landfills using UAVs.

<comment><USER3> I can't really say much more than that its in the planning stages, and the software challenge I'm going to solve is principally dealing with fleet management .. 'drone is low power, return to base', 'replacement 2-of-3', &etc. The hardware guys have all the fun challenges: field- buildable/replaceable parts, autodocks for charging, etc. I'm just making a pizza app, basically. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


US is running out of aluminum cans - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/22/business/beer-shortage-aluminum-can/index.html <comment><USER2> I started brewing my own beer when the pandemic started. It's a fun new hobby, and I get to just re-use the glass bottles I bought, so it's also not wasteful.

It's also surprisingly inexpensive to get started. Like any hobby you can spend as much money as you want, and supply stores will try to push you to the latest and greatest. But I think I'm going to remain happy with my simple siphon, pair of one gallon (~3.75L) glass fermenters, and glass bottles for a long time.

Also, for whatever reason the homebrewing community in the US seems to have standardized around the five gallon (19L) batch size, but there's nothing wrong with smaller batches. I like being able to have more than one kind fermenting at once, and the space to variety ratio is great. Who really wants five gallons of the same thing when you gave have a few gallons of different beers?

<comment><USER3> That's one of the reasons I stopped doing it. I never wanted 5 gallons of the same beer and frankly it's a ton of work for 2 gallons, especially using all- grain or mostly grain+malt recipes. It was generally the better part of a day to get it done and then everything cleaned and sanitized and I decided I'd rather hike and let someone else brew my beer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Non-issue. Price goes up, consumption of unimportant and completely substutible luxury goes down. You're locked down at home, you can buy a 40oz or 1L bottle instead of cans.

<comment><USER5> 1L not convenient. bottle will go flat on last few servings. single serve cans also help control consumption.

alcohol is absolutely essential - stress levels at peaking and I would never consider it a luxury at this point.

<comment><USER6> Not convenient for you, perhaps. But convenient for larger human groups where multiple individuals like to drink the same beverage. A lot less expensive, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing I have never seen in the US, but seems more common in Europe is 2L or 3L plastic bottles of beer.

I guess being stuck at home, a 1/6 keg with a tap and CO2 system (which is less expensive than you'd think!) is the way to go -- with CO2 it should be ok for a few weeks to a month?

<comment><USER8> As someone with a kegerator your consumption goes way up - counting bottles really does help you mentally track consumption.</comment></comment>


JerryScript 1.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Samsung/jerryscript/releases/tag/v1.0 <comment><USER2> I've tried it. I find duktape to be more feature complete and easier to use and embed.</comment>


Huawei Suspended from Global Forum Aimed at Combating Cybersecurity Breaches - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/huawei-suspended-from-global-forum-aimed-at-combating-cyber-security-breaches-11568805324?mod=rsswn <comment><AUTHOR> The raw text of the article: [https://pastebin.com/SLkqQXfb](https://pastebin.com/SLkqQXfb)</comment>


Gut Wars: One Man's Adventure with Antibiotics and Ulcerative Colitis - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubiomeblog.com/gut-wars/ <comment><USER2> Looks like a candidate for a fecal transplant:

[http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical- upd...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical- updates/digestive-diseases/quick-inexpensive-90-percent-cure-rate)

Most facilities do it the fancy way (use a tube down the nose or up the rear), run tests and, as usual, charge you and your donor out the a __! But I 've read of DIY'ers who simply spun out the solids, held their nose and swilled the goods(I suppose a real man would use a spoon) or took them in an enema:

[http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy- fecal-...](http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy-fecal- transplants-are-a-thing-and-the-fda-is-only-part-of-the-reason/)

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27503660](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27503660)

Either way it works.

"Compatible" donor? Healthy family member(s).

As the author of the article notes, probiotics can't possibly match the variety of organisms that a typical human has in their gut.

Business proposal: a repository where people deposit feces prior to taking strong antibiotics, so that, should they find themselves consequently absent intestinal flora and fauna, those could easily be restored. Kind of a new twist on the old curse "Eat shit and die!"

<comment><USER3> Talk about making a "back up". The possible vowel deficient start-up names for this alone are amusing me greatly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can sympathize with him. While my issues didn't get as far as his, my issue resulted from taking Cipro which killed all the good bacteria in my gut making room for something else to move in. Sadly what moved in was related to dogs feces as I have a pair and you don't have to see it to get contaminated.

End result, new drugs to wipe out the bad then a few months with specific medications and kefir and related food products to rebuild the bacteria in my gut. It is no fun planning any drive, even to work, where the primary issue is knowing who is open and has public bathrooms

<comment><USER5> Reading this makes me feel really fortunate. I had a bout with colitis, but the doctor prescribed me Cipro and it went away with no other side effects.

As an aside, even talking to the doctor made me immediately feel better. Being a pessimist, I assumed the worst and was already planning out my will. This doctor, who looked like Gene Simmons, asked me how many days off I wanted from work, and told me "You gotta take it easy, bro" with a jerky boys accent, he completely snapped me out of whatever I was going through with his amazing personality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think a key component often missing in these discussions is creating a habitat where good gut bacteria can thrive. This article identifies having fiber a critical to maintaining good gut bacteria. [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fiber-famished- gut...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fiber-famished-gut-microbes- linked-to-poor-health1/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm always happy to read this kind of articles. I have a history with C. ulcerosa myself (now under control) and since it begun my gut just hasn't been the same. I am pretty sure my microbiota was left in a very bad shape after some hard periods, and since then I have tried to bring it back to balance... but it seems a hard task. I haven't tried probiotic supplements, like described in the article, but just tried to include probiotic-rich food in my diet, like yogurt and sauerkraut, and also prebiotics like bananas and honey. So it would be just great to get exactly the combination of probiotics- supplements that one needs, based on this kind of uBiome test, and then just wait until you have a balanced microbiota again. But for what the article describes, we would have to wait a bit until the real effects of each particular probiotics-combination are understood.

<comment><USER8> I recommend General Biotics: [http://www.generalbiotics.com](http://www.generalbiotics.com)

David frequents HN (which is how I found it) and he even took the time to personally answer questions for me via email.

There is no probiotic on the market like it and it is based on real science.

<comment><USER7> Wow, thanks! It looks very interesting. I had never heard of it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any recommendations for probiotics? I've tried a couple with no luck myself.

<comment><USER10> Sauerkraut is a good option if you like actual food.

<comment><USER9> I love Sauerkraut on a good sausage. Do you actually eat it on it's own?

<comment><USER11> A beet/cabbage mixture sauerkraut is DELICIOUS to eat on it's own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since this isn't the first time UC has come up on HN (are programmers more prevalent maybe?), may I ask for a quick show of hands of people that have UC or had UC and if you've managed to beat it then how?

Me, I've had UC since 2012. I take Pentasa 2mg granulated mesalazine per day. I am an ex-smoker and internalize stress. My UC is definitely exacerbated by poor sleep and high stress. Antibiotics were also what started me off on this horrible disease. I'd love to get rid of it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't this be a great case for fecal transplant? I have to wonder how effective oral probiotics can really be, give that the oral route includes an acid bath on the way to the intestines. Seems that a fecal transplant would get the desired results near-instantly.

</comment><comment><USER14> The obvious importance of gut bacteria is the health-news flavor of the month, but I don't know. There are definitely two sides to this debate. On the other side some very smart people with nothing to sell (probiotics/prebiotics/tests) argue for a relatively sterile gut. They say feeding gut bacteria with fermentable fibers/starches in general generates LPS and other stressful toxins.

Some lab experiments definitely bear out this idea. Animals with sterilized guts fed sterile diets live way longer, and are stronger/healthier.

Like I said I don't know, but I advise extreme caution on this stuff where there's any tangential connection to probiotics/prebiotics/tests.

<comment><USER15> Disclosure: I work for a microbiome biotech company. I have no connection to ubiome.

I'm sure this commenter means well but this person is severely misinformed. Any person with even a minimal understanding of our gut microbiome would never argue for a relatively sterile gut. We rely on out gut bacteria to digest foods and there is a healthy, normal exchange of metabolites between the microbes and our bodies. Microbes digest foods such as fiber and starches into (for example) short-chain fatty acids that have been shown to have beneficial effects on our bodies. They also prime our immune system so that we are better prepared to combat invasion of potential pathogens. LPS is a necessary component of all gram negative bacteria. Many of our commensal bacteria are gram negatives. The problem with LPS is when it gets to places where it shouldn't be (e.g. crossing our gut epithelial barrier).

Some labs utilize germ-free mice to investigate the causative role of the microbiome on the host. While these animal models can serve as great systems in which to investigate certain hypotheses, every germ-free model researcher would no doubt agree that the immune system of germ-free animals is completely different and severely compromised compared to a normal, conventional animal. They, in fact, do NOT live longer and are NOT stronger/healthier.

I felt that the above comment needed to be rectified before people starting actually believing it.

<comment><USER14> Let me boil down your essential claims:

1) Bacteria in the gut make stuff you need and helpfully digest things for you.

2) Endotoxin is only a problem when it crosses the gut.

3) By various magic bacteria in the gut strengthen the immune system.

Well #1 just isn't really true. There aren't any identified compounds that are at all hard to get from food that you need gut bacteria to make for you. Maybe some vitamin K and that's about it, but a serving of liver or some other foods will more than cover your vitamin K dose.

#2 is a silly argument because endotoxin is _constantly_ crossing the gut barrier. LPS endotoxin is a continuous stress on the liver to detoxify. Whether it's a real problem in an otherwise healthy individual or not is a separate question, but the argument presented here is totally specious. It is quite plainly a continuous stream of toxic material the organs work to clear.

As for #3, that's the big totally open question I guess. You see the claim made but nobody ever really breaks it down in detail in terms the experimental physiology proving the idea. It's usually some eye-roll-worthy trials.

The fact that the sterile rats can't survive outside the lab environment is not the point. No kidding they have under-trained immune systems. The point is that absent the chronic stress of bacteria load they do in fact live longer and are in fact stronger in the literal definition of strong. This guy is being deliberately hand-wavy.

<comment><USER16> Look you're being just as hand wavy, and your sterile gut idea is a bit of spherical cow. We will never be able to sterilize our environment to the point where we can easily maintain a sterile gut. No one fully understands the human microbiome, including you.

Are there any case studies of people maintaining a sterilized gut and living healthier lives? Therapies like fecal transplant or helimintic therapy actively introduce third parties into your gut with positive outcomes. Which at least suggests that bacterial balance in the gut is important for some people.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


French Satirical fake news website Le Gorafi down, announcing "it's over" - <AUTHOR> http://www.legorafi.fr/ <comment><USER3> HN needs to keep the "Le" in Le Gorafi for the title - it's an anagram of Le Figaro - the most conservative of the mainstream newspapers here in France.

Edit: For more information see here: [http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2015/08/31/le-gorafi-fini- site-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2015/08/31/le-gorafi-fini-site-annonce- sa-fin_n_8063514.html)

Translated: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.fr%2F2015%2F08%2F31%2Fle- gorafi-fini-site-annonce-sa-fin_n_8063514.html&edit-text=)

Summary: It may only be a marketing ploy - they're using a 302 temporary redirect instead of a 301 permanent re-direct, which some claim is for maintaining SEO...

<comment><USER4> Current title is 78 chars. "Le " is 3 chars, taking it over the 80 char limit.

Which is a shame, because the anagram (at least, your explanation of it) does add to the story.

<comment><USER3> Personally I would get rid of either "Satirical" or "fake" in that case - <USER2> of them is redundant...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Report by another French site:

[http://www.20minutes.fr/medias/1675731-20150831-gorafi- fini](http://www.20minutes.fr/medias/1675731-20150831-gorafi-fini)

P.S. Quoted reply basically says they see no future in web publishing, and expect an internet bubble burst shortly. Which the reporting site interprets as a continuing joke.

</comment><comment><USER6> I want it to be clear for every reader: Le Gorafi is an equivalent to The Onion. It is not a satirical newspapers as Charlie Hebdo, so please stop talking about the immigration.

</comment><comment><USER7> I really enjoyed the Gorafi, sad to see them go :/

Another similar place if you enjoy such content: [http://www.bilboquet- magazine.fr/](http://www.bilboquet-magazine.fr/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't really see how this is interesting for readers on HN?

<comment><USER9> Probably because it's seen as a test of the will to free speech. Question: How many satirical commentators can be killed before their numbers drop precipitously due to fear?

<comment><USER10> If that is the case, then it really doesn't belong to HN. In the background information it says that they closed down due to financial reasons. There is no free speech angle here.

Reddit is currently being overrun by a wave "Islamists/Muslims/Refugees are destroying Europe" fearmongering.

HN isn't reddit. This should not be here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I expect Europe will face some huge troubles in the future, perhaps even a civil war.

And these problems will be caused by mass immigration and multiculturalism. Many immigrants aren't interested into integrating with their host countries and in my country (The Netherlands) the immigrants also put a huge pressure on the welfare state, because of this the social cohesion is breaking down.

In my opinion any country should have a leading culture and immigrants should aspire to adopt the leading culture, since I believe sharing a culture strengthens the social cohesion.

The French secret service is already making preparations for what they call civil unrest: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1182...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11826862/Airlines- told-to-expect-French-911-as-Hollande-warns-of-more-Islamist-violence.html)

I will try to emigrate within the next 10 years or so.

<comment><USER4> > I will try to emigrate within the next 10 years or so.

I hate immigrants, but it's different when I immigrate?

<comment><USER12> legal vs illegal. Basically no one has problems with legal immigrants willing to adopt the local culture.

<comment><USER13> You appear to have completely missed the entirety of the British immigration debate which is almost entirely about Polish plumbers, Bulgarian brick layers, and French financial consultants, far as I can tell.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PrivacySpy – Making online privacy (slightly) simpler - <AUTHOR> https://privacyspy.org/ <comment><USER2> Hi there,

PrivacySpy co-creator here. We were planning on doing a Show HN in a few days (I hope that's still possible, now that it's been posted on here), but it's exciting to see the project on HN regardless!

Here is the "official" tagline: PrivacySpy is an open project to rate, annotate, and archive privacy policies.

PrivacySpy is open source and community run, so please get involved if you can!</comment>


Secret History of Silicon Valley (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ <comment><USER2> This slide stood out: [https://i.imgur.com/t7DAgJo.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/t7DAgJo.jpg)

Failure was accepted as a part of the culture. Today it seems the opposite. Any hint of failure and people seem to distance themselves from your future ambitions.

More and more, we seem to be moving toward a world ruled by massive corporations, where small developers have almost no autonomy or freedom, and we're subservient to the concept of intellectual property and non-disclosure. The age of tinkerers building something huge seems to have been a short-lived historical accident.

That's related, because the only way to build something huge is to repeatedly fail at it. And that doesn't seem acceptable today.

<comment><USER3> When I started in computing in the 80s a lot of people did programming out of intellectual curiosity and fun. People did things like easter eggs and other stupid stuff. Now it's just a career and everything is about money, money and more money. I guess that's a natural progression once something goes mainstream.

<comment><USER4> From my POV (maybe I'm just looking in a different direction?) I see way more people programming out of intellectual curiosity and fun than ever before. As just one example the 2018 Global Game Jam had 8,608 game created in a weekend. The Unity community is HUGE. The Processing community, the Open Frameworks community, the Three.js community. Not seeing a lack of people doing programming for curiosity and fun.

<comment><USER5> There are more people programming for intellectual reasons now than ever before in absolute numbers.

However, that larger absolute number is a much smaller proportion of the total number of programmers than it was in the past.

I think it's also safe to say that the mainstream of programming has moved more towards monetary motivation and away from intellectual curiosity.

<comment><USER6> And look at the quality:quantity ratio...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The computer history museum has done an amazing job of documenting the history of computing. I'd argue they slant heavily to hardware but for the early history that was the coolest part. I wish they'd get BillG to speak.

</comment><comment><USER8> What Steve Blank has told is essentially a golden past... This[1] is the present...Life in SV!

[1] [https://thebolditalic.com/this-is-your-life-in-silicon- valle...](https://thebolditalic.com/this-is-your-life-in-silicon- valley-933091235095)

</comment><comment><USER9> A perennial HN favourite, but well worth reading if you've not already, or re- reading if you haven't lately.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Secret%20History%20of%20Silico...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Secret%20History%20of%20Silicon%20Valley&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

<comment><USER10> 404

<comment><USER9> Seems to be failing intermittantly. Try reloading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Most likely this was posted because it was mentioned on one of the latest A16Z podcast episodes, if anyone is curious.

Edit: I believe this is the episode: [https://a16z.com/2018/07/06/ben-marc- stevenjohnson-summit-20...](https://a16z.com/2018/07/06/ben-marc- stevenjohnson-summit-2017/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Also interesting would be the secret history of silicon valley AFTER 2009. I think it's the biggest boom area all over the world since the 2008 crisis. Would be really interesting to see how NY banking started interacting with west coast engineering or VC circles there.

</comment><comment><USER13> Book of Genesis: [https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyc...](https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyce.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Somebody shared this in a HN comment sometime back and I absolutely loved this video. As a government contractor I had no idea of this rich history. His website is also full of amazing gems too.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting how Silicon Valley owes its existence to defense work, but any hint of it now creates a serious backlash!

<comment><USER16> That's true of a lot of things in history, and doesn't seem very interesting to me.

Some things were instrumental in the past that are no longer necessary.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hacker News Map 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://jmarbach.com/hackernews/the-hacker-map

<comment><USER2> Full size image without the checkout process:

[http://jmarbach.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Hacker- News-M...](http://jmarbach.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Hacker-News- Map-2011-John-Marbach.jpg)

(2.9MB)

Edit: jmarbach, thanks for making this! Also, apologies for the hits to your server.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome! For what its worth at this point, I was able to change the checkout process. Free downloaders will now bypass the checkout page and go directly to the download page.

<comment><USER3> Excellent work, thanks for doing this.

Out of curiosity, why would you have a checkout process to simply download an image in the first place?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a marketing type guy, so I'm very focused on gathering as much user data possible for anything I create. Sort of the "If you can't measure it, then it doesn't exist." philosophy. By adding a checkout process, I can gauge an approximation on the number of downloads.

<comment><USER4> Don't you have serverlogs/analytics for that?

<comment><AUTHOR> The server logs might indicate how many times the image was loaded, however they do not reveal the number of attempted downloads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So who is visiting HN from the center of Siberia? It's funny how people from remote areas will be able to identify 'their' dot.

What a wonderful thing to make.

Thanks jmarbach!

ps: if anybody else wants to do cool visualizations like this here is a set of HN visitor ips: <http://jacquesmattheij.com/hnips.txt>

<comment><USER5> _It's funny how people from remote areas will be able to identify 'their' dot._

Yeah, I was amused to be able to point out "my" dot, though it would have been a lot easier with state borders (or even just the Great Lakes) drawn in.

<comment><USER6> Borders would great indeed.

I opened up the Google Map to check whether the dot around Central Asia could've been "mine". Zoomed out the Caspian sea, equaled it to size in the picture, then estimated the distance towards east... :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apparently there is someone on Hacker News from Churchill, Manitoba (population 923). <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill,_Manitoba>

Perhaps they are simply tech-curious or maybe they are about to prove to the world that you can launch a tech startup from anywhere! :)

<comment><USER8> Or they are here for the great articles and comment. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can see me (possibly twice) in Central America. The only entrepreneurs you find online in this part of the world are on Kiva heh.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is France more concentrated than the UK or the low-lying countries are? Why so empty there?

I mean, it looks empty in California too. A heat map might've looked a bit different.

<comment><USER4> That's actually a really good question. France is relatively isolated when it comes to participating in the international technology scene. There are a few very large French technology companies but for the most part it seems to me (that's not proof) as though France is an island.

One possible reason for this is that using English is discouraged inside of France both as a culture and by all kinds of funny rules and regulations.

Another reason is that France had a headstart over the rest of the world with a system called MiniTel which gave pretty much one in three French households access to a service with a lot of the functionality of the early days of the net but on a system run by the French telecommunications monopolist. When the internet and the web became popular the French lagged behind because what they had was good enough to cause a lot of them to stick to what they had (a French system for the French available everywhere versus a system that was mostly geared towards the English language users). For the rest of Europe there was no such alternative (Local variations did exist but were not as successful and widely adopted as minitel was in France).

Finally, due to labor legislation France has one of the worst environments to do start-ups in.

Taken together that should explain some (but probably not all) of the reason why France with the exception of Paris is a little dark on that map compared to the rest of Europe.

One HN'er that I know lives in the South of France actually commutes to London for work, that's how anemic the tech scene in France outside of 'la banlieue' is (that's French for 'the suburbs' which they use to refer to suburbs in general but specifically to those surrounding Paris, inside that border is where most of the French tech scene is located).

Possibly someone from France can jump in here and give some more background and/or correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER11> here is comments for a french startuper. You give several reasons:

tl;dr : regulation: true but not that much. mintel: irrelevant now as its past problem. langage: very true, crititcs: missed but quite big.

Long version:

\- regulation: yep france got many uselessly complex regulations. This slow you down in creating and running a business.

\- minitel: the impact of this weird custom computer was big during the 90's. Its delayed the arrival of internet in french households. But all that is now way passed. for example: france got an internet bandwidth which is fast and cheap.

\- cant speak english: i believe this one to be very true and true significant. French are well known to be crappy with foreign langage. Even in the computer industry, many french people got trouble even reading english. This impacts the ability to get information by reducing the scope of what you perceive. not sure how to formulate this. but this is big :)

\- critics: i think you missed one tho: french people do love to criticize. this is deep in them, as if it was in their blood. This impacts entrepreneurship, because starting a business is very risky, and taking a risk is to lay oneself open to criticism. many "i told you so" kindof remarks.

ps: yes france is very centralized in paris. even if some delocalisation happens because employees are cheaper outside of paris.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm amazed at Germany's dots. The whole country seems covered with them when the rest of Europe (save for the UK maybe) is sparsely represented.

<comment><USER13> Mostly the densely populated areas in the west along the Rhine, though. There aren't many dots in the southeast (except around Munich), in the middle (where I'm from) and in the east (except Berlin). If you zoom in (<http://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=180379>) you see that the dots in Europe are (unsurprisingly) much denser in the UK, but Germany might take the second place in Europe, even taking population in account. (The Netherlands and Belgium also look busy, maybe they are taking the second pace in Europe after the UK.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Two things I wasn't expecting: Argentina vs Brazil & Spain vs Portugal. What's up with Portugal? And I didn't think France vs Germany/UK would be so drastic. Amazing.

Some of the dots are in strange places. Like the 2 dots off the coast of Africa are in the middle of the ocean. The dot in Tunisia is in the desert.

<comment><USER15> That particular spot in the ocean off the coast of Africa, south of Ghana and west of Gabon, is latitude 0, longitude 0.

<comment><USER4> Good Catch, I think you've caught a data cleaning bug, the geo ip location service used to make the map probably returns '0,0' for IPs that it does not have a location for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> just bought one... been looking for a replacement for my big calendar ever since new year.

</comment><comment><USER17> Israel is looking very busy

</comment><comment><USER18> Very nice looking map. I wish CloudMade would let you use patterns like the diagonal one you have for the water, because it would make for a very nice looking real-time traffic visualization map.

</comment><comment><USER19> Russia's absence is quite surprising. I would've thought more people visited from that part of the world. Maybe it's the language barrier

edit: great work on the map!

<comment><USER20> It's not especially the language barrier. But they have their own communities. I live in Belgium and my wife is Russian. For her western friends she uses Facebook, for her Russian Friends she uses the the known Russian clones.

The same applies for Russian Hackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thanks for the new background.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cool, only a couple of dots around Geelong, Australia. One of them must be me.

</comment><comment><USER23> The dot next to Hudson Bay (North of Canada) => rofl. Who is this? :D

</comment><comment><USER24> cool, it would be interesting to mine that raw data and look for correlations with other geo-related data. ideas?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the raw data that my designer used: <http://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=180379></comment></comment>


MailALetter.com - Mail a letter online...are there other services like this? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mailaletter.com/ <comment><USER2> oldgregg provided this list to me last week in a different thread -

<http://postful.com/>

<http://click2mail.com/>

<http://www.viapost.com/>

<http://www.postalmethods.com/>

<http://www.cfhdocmail.com/>

<http://www.l-mail.com/>

<http://www.pc2paper.co.uk/>

I'm in the process of integrating my app with Postful's via their API. So far, so good.

</comment><comment><USER3> World's Smallest: <http://www.worldssmallestpostalservice.com/>

(as referenced in <http://qwantz.livejournal.com/104142.html> )

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, and free* too...

<http://www.esnailer.com/>

*Except it works by making you complete terribly spammy advertisement surveys: <http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9739899-2.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a pretty decent site. Are you planning to compete with it?

I was recently looking for something related: an online fax service. Most of those sites seemed to ooze sleeze and required a subscription. I finally decided on <http://payperfax.com> which looked much less cluttered and is pay- as-you-go. Much better if you only need to fax a couple times a year and is platform independent (there is a decent looking windows-only Skype plugin service called PamFax)

For whatever reason, some markets seem to get filled with crap. Just do a search for "online fax" if you want a taste.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on a project (announcing it in about 8 hours on here, actually!) that would benefit from giving users an easy way to mail a letter while sitting at their desk.

We're just poking around to see who's out there. Ideally our users would be able to click a link, fill in a form and have a letter mailed a letter to an address autopopulated from our service.

<comment><USER5> I was just looking around and was thinking that the money was probably to be made in (gulp) enabling junk mailers. But it looks like the US Postal service already has that down:

<http://www.click2mail.com/how_it_works>

In any event, good luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somebody asked about a similar service. I think it's probably a viable business, providing web-service enabled letter printing and mailing. Send a chunk of XML or a PDF up to the server, and it gets printed, and sent out.

Hmm, I should think about it more, might be possible to do it in my spare time. Then if it grows, hire temps or other low cost labor to do it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Before spending a lot of time with this - have you thought out your customer acquisition strategy? At such low price points Adwords will be very expensive. How are the others in space doing promotions?</comment>


Where the missing middle of housing isn't missing - <AUTHOR> https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/5/where-the-missing-middle-isnt-missing <comment><USER2> My concern is whether owning a multi-family home would really give me the autonomy that leads me to want to own a home in the first place. It seems to me that non-single family homes are more similar to rental apartments than they are to true ownership.

For example:

\- You probably can't put in a workshop because the noise would bother the neighbors.

\- You often don't have any sort of yard or outside space so you can't pursue hobbies that can't reasonably be practiced indoors.

\- You can't modify the outside of the house so you are limited in your ability to customize your home.

I guess my concern is that this would lead to a world where only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes. At least in the current system the middle class and the richer end of the working class can often afford single family homes.

<comment><USER3> As someone who owns a townhome, I feel that this is a misinformed, but common, view of the situation.

> You probably can't put in a workshop because the noise would bother the > neighbors.

We hear far more noise from the neighborhood in general than the neighbors we share a wall with. Granted they might just be particularly quiet people, but there is some significant sound-deadening in that wall.

I think this is partly because of fire code that says the wall needs to withstand a 30 minute fire before crossing over into the neighboring unit.

> You often don't have any sort of yard or outside space so you can't pursue > hobbies that can't reasonably be practiced indoors.

This is perhaps unique to our situation, but the area has never been fully built-out, so we have a 5 acre plot of land that the kids can play on as they please.

Since most of our neighbors never come outside, we actually have an enormous yard that we get basically to ourselves.

> You can't modify the outside of the house so you are limited in your ability > to customize your home

This is true to an extent, but there isn't really all that much worth customizing on the outside of a house.

I guess you could pick different colored siding, but that seems like an expense I wouldn't be motivated enough to take on.

> I guess my concern is that this would lead to a world where only the rich > can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi- > family homes.

Honestly this stigma is something I am benefiting from a ton.

I have 1200 feet of living space, plus an attached 2 car garage, plus a 5 acre yard. I paid $106k for all that. I pay $100 / month to the HOA and get lawn / snow taken care of. It's honestly great.

To get an equivalent standalone house in the area I'd be looking at 2-3x the cost.

<comment><USER4> What area?

<comment><USER3> Iowa

<comment><USER5> Shhh - don't tell everyone about Iowa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >> Often, you can find this in college towns. A monoculture of single-family homes is so obviously ill-suited for a population dominated by students

Not sure if that's a great example.

My aunt owned a home in Ann Arbor that she paid $45,000 for. Over the next 20 years, almost every other home around her turned into a rental units for students. Landlords made tons of money, who could blame them.

She was older and didn't like living in between parties and chaos, and let's not even get into Saturdays during football season.

She did sell the house for almost nine times what she paid for it, though. There's no more empty land there, and hasn't been in forever, so what do you do.

The neighborhoods makeup and appearance is very close to UW, you could swap the buildings in the article and never know the difference.

<comment><USER7> > A monoculture of single-family homes is so obviously ill-suited for a > population dominated by students

Don't the students get together in little groups of four to six and rent a family home? That's what they do in the UK.

<comment><USER8> In some areas that is not allowed due to zoning laws. Boulder CO for example limits household sizes to 3 or 4 unrelated people depending on location. Family homes are often over $3000/mo making affordable housing difficult to find.

<comment><USER9> ADUs and Rooms in owner occupied homes can be much more affordable, but people offering a portion of their primary residence to renters are subject to the same restrictions as houses that are part of a landlord's asset portfolio. Move the needle on existing regulations and landlords acquire even more housing stock and raise rents across the board.

Equity based cooperatives and land trusts should be getting more attention in Boulder, since both have solid track records of providing permanently affordable housing elsewhere. Instead, local activists are following the national trend of pushing measures designed to facilitate the large scale transfer of private property into corporate rental portfolios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Madison is a strange example to hold up considering that there's a drastic, almost Boulder-esque shortfall in housing supply, mostly driven by NIMBYism. It's still an awesome city - I'm in the process of moving there - but I know lots of people who've gotten priced out of the city itself, despite (or maybe because of) the coolness of its eclectic combination of architecture.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have a double and what I love about my double is that after it's paid off, one side will pay off property taxes, insurance, etc. All of that meta financial cruft that comes with owning a house is ameliorated. Cruft that can often add up to close to the price of rent.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why does this strongtowns crap keep showing up on HN? All of their "evidence" is just anecdotal information, none of their claims are backed by any actual evidence, and their whole site is designed to get you to pay money to become a member and/or buy their books. It's not technical, and it's not even news.

What is it doing here?

<comment><USER13> What is it doing here? The same thing that everything else is doing here: someone submitted it. And enough people find it interesting that it makes the front page.

Some of us want to _live_ , not just code. We care about how we live, not just what we write.

Mind you, I myself don't find these strongtowns articles particularly compelling. But enough people do for them to "keep showing up on HN". And I'm not going to say that those who find them interesting are wrong.

<comment><USER12> If you want nonsense, go to an actual news site. This site was created for a specific purpose.

<comment><USER13> From the guidelines:

> What to Submit

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

You may be a "good hacker", but you're not the only one. Enough people here find this stuff interesting that it's within the purpose of the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The legislation followed popular opinion. The housing was built to satisfy market demand. If no one bought single family homes, fewer would be built. Every person was a kid, and raising kids is by far more comfortable in single family homes.

<comment><USER15> Most people don't vote in local elections. ~99.9% of the US (by land area) bans multi-family housing, and those laws mostly come from city councils and neighborhood committees dominated by wealthy, retired homeowners.

<comment><USER16> Interesting. In Germany you see kind of the opposite: The (often wealthy and well-connected) people in local politics vote for whatever drives the prices for real estate upwards. Guess who owns the real estate that is not (yet) allowed for building?

<comment><USER17> They vote for higher real-estate prices but that doesn't in general require multifamily housing, scarcity works just as well.

<comment><USER16> Well, say you have 1000m^2 to sell. In Germany, in a relatively dense area, you can build two one-family homes on that real estate. Considering the financing requirements and the relatively small size of the plots you can sell the real estate for maybe 600k in total, assuming that a family can pay 600k for a house and real estate and 50% goes into the latter. (This is a rough estimate for generic metropolitan areas, might be much lower in areas where there is place to build, might also be much higher in some areas.)

If you do a multi-family home, you can easily build up to 8 town houses or largish apartments on that same area. Say you sell each of these for 500k, leaving the family a good argument to move into this more dense configuration. Even if the construction costs stay the same (they won't), that would leave you with 1.6M for the whole real estate.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do you use Bootstrap or Foundation? - <AUTHOR>

I've been using Bootstrap since version 1 and have enjoyed the process by which I build sites with it. But recently I've been wondering why so many of my friends have moved to Foundation. Most of them preach that it's "faster" and "slimmer" but I want to get a better idea from those of you out there that have been using either for a while. What's your take on it?<p>When I build web-apps I build them with as little overhead as possible so I start off with the BS grid, nav, buttons and forms. If I need anything else, I'll add it later. Why would that be any different than Foundation? <comment><USER2> i personally use and prefer Skeleton. Its very minimal and allows me to do new things everytime i build a new project. i personally find foundation and bootstrap creativity stifling. Plus since v3.0, Bootstrap ditched its earlier awesome semantic column classes for confusing new ones.

Though i would prefer bootstrap to foundation, because its more beautiful :)</comment>


Show HN: Find fully functional hosted features for your WebApp - <AUTHOR> https://www.componently.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there! We have just released the first version of our exploration site around building blocks for web applications. It is not perfect yet, but we are looking forward to any feedback :)</comment>


Steve "spez" Huffman of Reddit on The Total Rewrite Decision - <AUTHOR> http://reddit.com/info/2h8kd/comments/c2h9ii

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. I can't seem to find any reason _why_ they wanted to rewrite it, and that's interesting in and of itself.

Given the language change of the past, and now a complete re-write, neither of which had any major impact on the end user, I'm wondering if we're not witnessing some sort of infatuation with coding for the sake of coding over there.

I can think of a myriad of reasons why one would want to re-write code, but they're certainly not sharing theirs.

<comment><USER3> > _the old code was essentially two years of hacks and cludges. The new > version is much cleaner, and the new back-end is much more malleable. The > idea is that once we get caught up with ourselves, the actual new stuff will > come pretty quickly._

<comment><USER2> >the old code was essentially two years of hacks and cludges.

That basically describes every piece of software ever written. It's not always a justifiable excuse to re-write the codebase though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chris's comment is interesting...

<http://reddit.com/info/2h8kd/comments/c2hccv>

So I guess Reddit is now on Pylons, using Mako as the templating engine.

<comment><USER5> Yep, I'd say that's a pretty good choice. Pylons+Mako+SQLAlchemy makes an excellent framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Raldi's comment is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER7> A rewrite only tastes sweet after a _long_ process of freaking out that you just threw away all your code.

And since time is the most precious resource in a startup then rewriting is the worst decision you could make, if that logic is correct.

However, Reddit isn't really a startup anymore, so they can probably afford it.

<comment><USER8> definitely, they may (should) be looking at what they will need back-end wise for the next few years. if building on a dodgy base is too risky, you have to build the better foundation. they're not a start-up anymore, it's a new set of challenges</comment></comment>


Lessons from the front: 4 simple rules for success | 24 Ways To Start - <AUTHOR> http://24waystostart.com/2010/lessons-from-the-front-4-simple-rules-for-success/ Who's your customer? What? Why? Get dirty… KISS. Cashflow. Milestones. Sell. Focus. People. Relationships. Repeat… Nathalie Gaveau gives you 4 tips to keep you on track. <comment><USER2> This article reads like somebody put the "Entrepreneurship" section of their local bookstore into a shredder and packed the shreds into fortune cookies.

Come to think of it, an awful lot of entrepreneurial blogging falls into this category.</comment>


BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bitpay.com/multiple-blockchains/ <comment><USER2> Every time there is something mentioning Bitcoin Cash or the scaling issues with Bitcoin Core, the same people show up in these threads attacking everyone and spamming the comments with the same arguments over and over. (I'm not going to name names but look through these comments and see some of the posters calling Bitcoin Cash "bcash" and posting 30+ comments.)

Can we please not turn this forum ito the childish name calling of r/Bitcoin? There are good arguments for and against the two main Bitcoin forks and I'd like HN to be a place where these can be discussed without name calling and personal attacks.

<comment><USER3> I agree. They should be immediately closed. The problem with them is that crypto is a collision between tech and money. It, unfortunately, brings out the worst part of people wanting to get rich. I like yc because it isn't like that, but it just gets brigaded these days.

I would completely respect a complete ban of all crypto discussion on yc. I like the fact that it isn't that.

<comment><USER4> The op is talking about accounts like yours Frogolocalypse. You only comment on crypto related articles on HN and it's always the same talking points over and over.

Edit: I see further down the page someone even called you out for spamming this thread and others with identical comments over and over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was foreseeable when Bitcoin Core rejected Segwit2x. BitPay's business model simply fails unless the blockchain can scale much more than Segwit alone achieves, very soon.

<comment><USER6> While I agree that Segwit2x would have been good for BTC, it ultimately only kicks the can down the road a little bit. If BTC (or BCH) is going to be used at Visa/Mastercard scale then the transactions need to happen off-chain. The Lightning Network is the answer here, a lot of work still needs to be done though, particularly on the software side.

<comment><USER7> This is the major (technical - plenty of political issues) problem I have with Bcash. It's cheap and fast because transaction volumes, and price, are 10% of BTC, yet blocks are 1.5x the size (roughly, looking at a block explorer). As soon as they fill up, they'll have the exact same problems down the line. Increasing the block size doesn't scale long term and is a bandaid solution at best.

BTC was fast and cheap when adoption was low.

<comment><USER8> Why do some people call Bitcoin Cash "Bcash?" It seems to accompany critical statements. I'll assume you're not doing it to save 6 letters, because later you refer to Bitcoin as BTC. You could have saved more letters by referring to Bitcion Cash at BCH. Is this a campaign to rebrand Bitcoin Cash as something other than a Bitcoin fork?

<comment><USER9> It's more a reaction to Bitcoin Cash officially insisting that it's the "real" bitcoin, and trying to actively misleading users by referring to BTC as "Bitcoin Core", creating a false parity to make it seem like they're both equal "forks" that bitcoin split into.

I've tried to refer to them using the less loaded "BTC" and "BCH" symbols instead; but it's kindof getting tiring, hearing people insist "Bitcoin Cash is Satoshi's True Vision". It's like somebody starting a "Apple Phone LLC" and saying it's Steve Jobs' true vision, ignore that other "Apple" company.

<comment><USER10> The difference is that you have to look at the attributes of each coin and see which one most likely reflects the white paper that satoshi himself wrote. He is talking about a P2P cash system, not a P2P gold system.

Just because the first generation of bitcoin was the beginning doesn't mean it still reflects the original vision.

<comment><USER3> A peer, in bitcoin, is a node. If you don't run a node, or indeed if you can't run a node because of its resource requirements, you aren't a peer.

Bitcoin : Peer-to-peer cash.

You went right over the first part, and only talk about the second part, even though in the first part, the word 'peer' is used twice.

<comment><USER11> "The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale. That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server. The design supports letting users just be users. The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be. Those few nodes will be big server farms. The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate." \- Satoshi Nakamoto

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306)

<comment><USER3> 160,000 nodes have a different view than your selective quote, and they control consensus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just this May their CEO was singing a different tune:

"We have carefully studied the most significant alternatives to the Bitcoin Blockchain and have concluded that none of them are compelling" [1]

He's been a bitcoin maximalist for a while, so it's notable to see him finally cave due to the mining fees.

[1] [https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitpay-ceo-we-studied- bitcoin...](https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitpay-ceo-we-studied-bitcoin- blockchain-alternatives-none-are-compelling)

<comment><USER3> He 'caved in' because bitpay was bought by bitmain, the largest centralized chinese miner.

<comment><USER12> Bought or invested in? Bitpay was shooting themselves in the foot by not branching out into other digital assets while fees and transaction time skyrocketed. If it took Bitmain to force the issue congrats to them.

<comment><USER3> The chinese government wanted a crypto they could track, because they want to own all of the mining infrastructure, all of the nodes, all of the code base and the payment gateway to it. So that's what they got. Bcash.

<comment><USER13> Who mines a block or where the nodes are etc is irrelevant, the ledger is open and public for both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. This isn't the place for wild anti-Chinese conspiracy theories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems clear to me at this point that the cryptocurrency revolution is now bigger than Bitcoin itself.

Years ago, I saw three long-term outcomes: Bitcoin being king and altcoins dying on the vine, Bitcoin being one of innumerable blockchains in use, and cryptocurrencies in general failing to gain adoption. I'm scratching the first outcome off the list, and my pen is hovering over the last outcome.

<comment><USER15> The first version of new and revolutionary technology rarely (if ever?) becomes the dominant one. Obvious examples are search (Altavista -> Google) and social networks (MySpace -> Facebook).

<comment><USER3> Where is your second internet?

<comment><USER15> There's always the chance that you can evolve and improve upon the technology instead of something else coming to replace it.

For bitpay's usecase Bitcoin is being replaced by other coins because it fails to embrace on-chain scaling in favor of off-chain scaling which is far from ready. This is exactly as predicted.

<comment><USER3> Yep. If you want to get your transactions tracked by the chinese government, it is cheap. Like PayPal. If you want your transactions to be private, you use a decentralized blockchain like bitcoin.

<comment><USER15> I'm sorry but your continued comments in this thread are just play wrong.

> If you want to get your transactions tracked by the chinese government

That's such a stupid thing to say as with an open ledger everyone can track your transactions.

> If you want your transactions to be private, you use a decentralized > blockchain like bitcoin.

You don't even know what a private transaction is. Bitcoin has an open ledger and all transactions are exactly as traceable.

<comment><USER3> If you don't run your own node, which is the aim of bcash, your ip address is tied to your payment. You have the payment processor, and the node, and the miner, all sharing the same information.

The chinese government appreciates your compliance with its crypto implementation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Finally. I think the bigger companies are starting to realize that bitcoin cash is taking over the smaller payments. Payments on bitcoin cash right now are under 1 penny and confirm in less than 10 minutes. Try it out for yourself, it is pretty amazing really.

<comment><USER3> bcash handles a fraction of the transactions of either bitcoin or litecoin. If you want a cheap option, litecoin is great. It's been around for years, and isn't controlled by the chinese government. In bcash, the nodes, the developers, the miners, and now the payment processor, are all owned by the same chinese company.

Currently litecoin is processing about four times the transaction count of bcash. They also have a block creation time of 1/4 of the time (2.5 minutes) to bcash or bitcoin (10 minutes), so if speed of confirmation is an issue for you, then they might meet your use-case. It obviously doesn't have the decentralization of bitcoin, but at least it isn't controlled by a single chinese company.

<comment><USER10> bcash still has lower fees. I am using exodus and I am getting quoted 2 cents for bcash. Litecoin I am getting quote of 22 cents while bitocin is like 5 bucks.

Though I would agree that litecoin is better than the original bitcoin. However, litecoin does not beat bcash, IMO.

<comment><USER3> There are lots of altcoins that have low fees. When you are getting a single company to process your payments, it is always likely to be at a lower cost. The only question is why they're even bothering to store the information in a blockchain. It would just be easier if they used an SQL database. Without the decentralization, it is the same risk profile. They know who you are, what you're spending your money on, and they can black-list your spending addresses with trivial ease. Like paypal. Just less efficient.

<comment><USER10> Those altcoins don't have the userbase that bcash has. Bcash actually has an active community that is pushing to integrate bcash into mainstream commerce and that's what I like. Store of value is nice but medium of exchange is what really appeals to me personally.

<comment><USER3> > the userbase that bcash has

The number of transactions on the bcash blockchain gives a different impression of the 'user base'. If you want a faster blockchain with a larger user base, use litecoin. It isn't as secure as bitcoin, because it isn't as decentralized as bitcoin, but at least you don't have all of your purchases recorded (who you are, what you buy, who you buy it from, when you buy it, etc.) by the chinese government. Oh, and you don't have to worry about the chinese government blacklisting your wallet so that they can never be spent either.

<comment><USER16> Can you please explicate the means by which the chinese government could effectively trap your cash in your wallet. Couldn't you give money to any number of intermediaries?

<comment><USER3> It can be trivially done by the existing miners not committing transactions to the blockchain that they control. Because a single company, bitmain, controls more than 50% of the hashing power of bcash, they would only build on blocks that don't contain transactions from their blacklist.

That is what bcash is right now. A captured blockchain. You transact on it at the sufferance of the chinese government. If you think they won't exert that power, if they think it suits their interests, I'm not sure understanding this will convince you.

<comment><USER17> How does bitmain control over 50% of Bitcoin cash?

[https://cash.coin.dance/blocks/today](https://cash.coin.dance/blocks/today)

Doesn't look like any pool is dominating unless Bitmain controls many smaller pools.

However, I'd argue that any domination is a side effect of Bitmain being the 1000pound gorilla in BTC to start with. THeir BTC pool is at 20%. (there are a LOT of people unhappy with Bitmain's business practices).

I mean there is no cost effective hash/kw alternative to Bitmain S9s.

The scary thing is that my friends and colleagues are buying S9s because no real alternative exists if you want to mine BTC(and I suppose Bitcoin Cash too)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fascinating how all the comments explaining that for fast and cheap transactions there is Litecoin (which has SegWit and Lightning) and pointing out BCash (still vulnerable to transaction malleability because it does not have SegWit) technical and governance problems immediately got downvoted into oblivion.

Edit: including this comment.

<comment><USER19> Fascinating how all the "just use Litecoin" comments don't count the value of continuity of the UTXO set, etc.

<comment><USER9> What _is_ the value of maintaining continuity of the UTXO set?

Pretty much any BTC spinoff can and has forked the chain, auto-airdropping their coin to all BTC holders. You don't even have to go that far though, a coin could easily have a smart-contract style method of signing a message with your BTC private key, and get granted an equivalent in free starter coins.

Coins are also becoming increasingly fungible ... there's more exchanges every day, shapeshift/changelly style portals, and lightning adding atomic swaps across chains.

More importantly though, whether this is the end of the early adopter phase, or just a "late end of early adoption" phase... most people coming in _won 't_ want a coin with a lot of baggage and most of the value hoarded into a few accounts (inheriting BTC's chain could be seen as a _negative_ there; and BCH's speedmining run didn't help it out).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if "BitPay Card" will end up supporting BCH?

</comment><comment><USER21> Newbie ... what apps turn BitCoin into cash .... I assume Coinbase can when you sell a BitCoin or a portion of BitCoin to a third party? What other ways and or apps are people using to turn BitCoin into cash/USD?

<comment><USER4> If you are in the USA you have numerous options including; Coinbase, GDAX, Gemini, itbit, and Kraken among others.

<comment><USER21> Thanks, yet how do you find buyers .. do these marketplaces connect you with buyers?

As a newbie i went ahead and bought a tiny portion of a Bitcoin recently from say GDAX. So, since I bought it from them I can also sell it back them at a profit or I have to find another interested buyer like a friend?

<comment><USER4> They all work just like stock markets

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is Bitcoin Cash fast because of greater capacity or with low competition to get into blocks?

Better options for cheap + fast transactions: Litecoin or Raiblocks. Litecoin has a great history and community is ready and willing to innovate. Raiblocks has a good story too: doesn't waste the currency's OPEX on proof-of-work, accounts don't face contention on serialized resources like a linear blockchain and delivers no-fee transactions. No crazy experimental-and- vulnerable-to-differential-cryptanalysis like IOTA.

<comment><USER23> Both, they have much less transactions and their block size is 8x larger so they can do 8x more transactions/sec. But still pales in comparison to Visa's throughput.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bitpay is owned by bitmain, the miner that controls bcash. You will have every one of your transactions tracked if you use this alt. I'm sure the chinese government will appreciate your compliance.

This is nothing more than self promotional spam.

<comment><USER24> > You will have every one of your transactions tracked if you use this alt

I don't think you understand the concept of a blockchain.

<comment><USER25> Actually, I think that it's he doesn't understand that trying to uncover anonymous identities in financial transactions is a problem that governments have been solving for decades (I'd say centuries, but I'm not sure the problem is that old). Pretty much the only difference with a blockchain is that you can no longer rely on banks cooking their books to protect you.</comment></comment></comment>


What is full-text search (and why you need it now) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.indextank.com/70/what-is-full-text-search-and-why-you-need-it-now/

<comment><USER2> Does it feel like google is moving further away from this with time?

It's common that I get search results that don't contain the keywords I searched for. The results will also contain the keywords but in different parts of the page, so short phrases like hacker news will match pages with "hacker" in the first paragraph and "news" somewhere else on the page. Google used to recognize a hyphen as meaning "only return results where these two words are joined by a space or puncuation", now it ignores the hyphen and you have to enclose the phrase in quotes to get that behavior.

Even more interesting than a simple full-text search would be a regular- expression full-text search of the internet.

In either case, I'm happy to hear IndexTank is trying to fix this.

<comment><USER3> I vaguely recall that there used to be a feature (and possibly this was with Altavista before I switched to Google) that allowed you to search for words that were close together. So instead of trying ten different permutations of "like jb hifi in London" I would enter the keywords, and various forms "jb hifi type stores in London", "jb hifi stores in central London" etc would be returned. Or am I dreaming?

<comment><USER4> The wildcard operator – __* – is close to what you want:

<http://www.googleguide.com/wildcard_operator.html>

UPDATE: and someone just posted about the AROUND() operator, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1983930>

<comment><USER3> Brilliant - you have my * gratitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the past I used HtDig (<http://www.htdig.org/>) on my Linux desktop. HtDig's latest release is from 2004 and it doesn't support PDF (only Postscript). Also it is not so easy to set up. More recently I tried Strigi but it seems to be very slow. However it has adapters for many file formats including PDF. I don't use MacOS, so I don't know how about the performance of Spotlight.

I think a fast full-text search for the desktop can be very useful. Collecting all those publications doesn't really help when you can't find them when you need them.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what they're using? I'd guess at Lucene / Solr.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, we need to make that more clear on the site. It's our own search engine, written to overcome some of the limitations of Lucene. In particular, update of relevance formulas on the fly so you can experiment without reindexing.

<comment><USER7> What advantages does your search system have over better search systems than Lucene/Solr, such as Sphinx?

<comment><USER8> Sphinx does not store data, so you have to get it from your database to display results, it doesn't have query auto-suggest, etc.

But most importantly, you don't have to deal with installing, configuring, managing and scaling a sphinx setup. IndexTank is cloud-based, you don't have to deal with servers, RT indexes, hadoop, and so on. We worry about all that.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the reply.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Comcast donating to defeat the mayor who is bringing gigabit fiber to Seattle - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/31/comcast-is-donating-heavily-to-defeat-the-mayor-who-is-bringing-gigabit-fiber-to-seattle

<comment><USER2> $10k does not buy an election. sounds like the outgoing guy is trying to buy a headline himself.</comment>