Speaking Of Dropbox, Here's My No. 1 Phone Prank - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/30/speaking-of-dropbox-heres-my-no-1-phone-prank/

<comment><USER2> That wasn't a very funny prank. I felt compelled to write up one that was a bit better:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2944687></comment>


R.I.P. Microsoft Zune, 2006-2011 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/14/r-i-p-microsoft-zune-2006-2011/

<comment><USER2> The Zune served its purpose as a closed mobile platform where Microsoft could practice vertical integration.

Windows Phone 7 is essentially the Zune Phone. In five years, it managed to evolve from an ugly brown brick of a media player to a sophisticated smartphone platform adopted wholesale by the world's leading phone manufacturer.

From that perspective, Zune looks like a significant R&D success, even if the last chapter in its story was more due to Nokia's resounding failures at software development rather than the platform's absolute merits.

<comment><USER3> > a sophisticated smartphone platform adopted wholesale by the world's leading > phone manufacturer.

"Wholesale adoption" must mean something different than what I was taught, since Nokia was paid a cool billion to take WP7.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-will-pay- nokia-1-bi...](http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-will-pay- nokia-1-billion-for-phone-deal-2011-3)

<comment><USER4> The cool billion was just the up front fee, Nokia still has to pay licensing fee.

from your article, "Nokia will have to sell more than 60 million phones, as Microsoft is estimated to charge no more than $15 per handset for Windows Phone."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand this move. Virtually every ASP.NET programmer I know has a Zune and absolutely loves it. Almost universally, they consider the Zune to be one of the best gadgets they own.

Microsoft is making a big mistake here.

<comment><USER6> Too bad the general population is not a majority of ASP.NET programmers.

Not sure what you don't understand about the move, though. Simply put, the thing just isn't selling. Maybe it's the terrible marketing, maybe it's the choice of verbs to describe the functionality ("squirting"... really?), maybe it's fact that PlaysForSure couldn't play on it, maybe it's because the software delivered a sub-par performance (at least in the minds of consumers) versus iTunes.

Or maybe it's all of that, combined.

<comment><USER7> The "squirting" absolutely killed me. A word you don't want to put through corporate content filters and a word that systems like Google's autocomplete won't complete. The conversation must have gone something like like:

Clueless Boss: I think we should call the lending feature: Squirting!

Embarrassed Subordinate: Uh...are you _sure_ that's a good word?

Boss: It's great, really pushes the fun, playful image we're after. I love it!

Subordinate: It's just that it...

Boss: Yes?

Subordinate: It means...It, uh, I mean...yeesh, I'm going to go grab some lunch. <runs>

Boss: Cool, squirt you later!

<comment><USER8> "Squirt! Say it! Say it!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given the pressure to the WinTel dominance by ARM, Apple, Google and the web in general, it's clear that it's fish-or-cut-bait time at Microsoft.

Zune is being cut as it was never profitable and executed poorly. I imagine MS is looking at a whole lot of other departments that aren't pulling their weight.

This is yet another sign of the end of the PC(1) era.

1: PC's aren't going away, but it is no longer king.

</comment><comment><USER10> Meta nit: Bloomberg broke this story. Seems to me like we should be linking to them instead of a 1-paragraph rewrite on TC

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-14/microsoft-said- to-s...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-14/microsoft-said-to-stop- releasing-new-zune-models-as-demand-ebbs.html)

<comment><USER11> I thought Penny Arcade broke this back in 2007 with the piece "The Microsoft Zune: 2006-2006" <http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/01/10/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not surprised. The future of media players is definitely going to be split between smart phones and the $30 bottom end.

<comment><USER13> Well, the media player market right now is currently split between Apple and the $30 bottom end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very sad news. As I've posted here before, I own a Zune and love it. The Zune software on Windows is terrific and I use it instead of Winamp/WMP/Foobar/etc by choice.

Hopefully they open-source it so the community can keep it alive.

<comment><USER15> Wow. Cognitive Dissonance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That is too bad. As a consumer, I want as much competition as possible.

I predicted that Microsoft would turn Zune into a phone like Apple did with the iPod. This was before the Nokia mess.

<comment><USER17> Apple didn't turn the iPod into a phone. The iPhone is derived from the iPad [0]. Later, they created the iPod touch from the iPhone.

Before the iPhone, there were several Moto phones with iTunes integration [1], but those were less than successful (and frankly, horrible to use).

[0] [http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/06/02/steve-jobs-the- ipad-c...](http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/06/02/steve-jobs-the-ipad-concept- came-before-the-iphone/)

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_ROKR_E1>

<comment><USER16> I understand your technical point, but the iPhone followed up on iPod features and when it was announced, the concept was sold and received as if it was the future of iPods. (And it was.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does Windows Phone have Zune's functionality?

<comment><USER19> Yes</comment></comment>


Django 1.9 alpha 1 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/sep/23/django-19-alpha-1-released/ <comment><USER2> A few days ago I was chit chatting with a young dev who works in a Node shop when he asked:

Young dev: "So, what's your backend?"

Me: "Django"

Young dev: "What?"

Me: "Django, a Python framework."

Young dev: "Oh, right, that old framework. It must suck to support a legacy app that's written in something so outdated."

Me: "Well, we kinda use Django for everything."

Young dev: "Wow, doesn't everyone just use JS these days?"

Btw, I'm 36.

<comment><USER3> Is there a NodeJS framework (or set of libraries) that is as robust and secure as Django?

What are the preferred solutions for:

      * an RDBMS ORM?
      * forms?
      * templates?
      * authentication?
      * permissions?
      * file storages?
      * sessions?
      * REST?
      * internationalization and localization?
      * caching?
      * logging?
      * mail?
      * sitemaps?
      * RSS/ATOM feeds?

and security:

      * XSS?
      * CSRF?
      * clickjacking?
      * SQL injection?
      * ensure secure connections and cookies?

I mostly use Django because I want to get stuff done, and with Node (as of a few years ago) it seems you have to rewrite the world.

<comment><USER2> I agree with all of the above. However, when a younger dev asks me which framework/language he/she should learn, my default response is: "If you're interested in employability, learn Node/JS. Practicality, go with Django/Python. Otherwise, Lisp (Clojure(script), Scheme, Common Lisp, hy)."

<comment><USER4> I'm surprised that Java isn't on here. I have seen piles and piles of Node jobs, and lots of Django positions (in the "cooler" corporate shops), but it seems like Java is still an outlandishly entrenched language, at least in giant companies. Do you think Node is better to learn for employability because every CS program in the country is churning out Java devs?

<comment><USER5> Java doesn't get much love. I've been looking for remote employment opportunities (I'm not based in the US), and a huge percentage of the postings I see are for Node.js and RoR. For Python shops it's almost always a requirement for Django experience.

<comment><USER6> Probably a bit of selection bias. Conservative companies are more likely to use Java, and less likely to offer remote working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lots of good stuff in release notes [1]. My favorite : " Running tests in parallel ". Sounds awesome.

[1] [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/1.9/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/1.9/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I loved Django when I started using it about 4 years ago. Lately, I've switched to Flask and replaced the templating with React. I love the new way, but I still have a place in my heart for Django. Does anyone on HN still start new projects with Django or have you moved on as well?

<comment><USER9> Django-Rest-Framework still seems to beat any equivalent in any language that I've found... coupled with the admin, it's a dream. But I also use React for views, and avoid any HTML coming from the server whatsoever (except the admin, which is due for a more complete overhaul than this brings)

<comment><USER10> We have the exact same setup. DRF + server-rendered React is pure awesomeness.

<comment><USER11> Could you expand on your server rendering of React ?

<comment><USER10> We built an javascript API mapping that's "isomorphic". The express server receives a request, and for each route we have a function that takes the request, uses the API mapping that sends REST calls to our django server to grab the appropriate data, sends the data through to the store (server calling createStore from redux), the body rendered using Provider from react-redux, and using the react-router, which is rendered back on to the express response. The state is pasted onto the page using JSON.stringify (with some caveats to escape </script> tags), and is hydrated back onto the elements on the page by the browser, by calling on createStore on the state pasted onto the page.

<comment><USER12> Hmm I'm still not following. Can you dumb that down a bit? Or is there a simple example you can point to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > New styling for contrib.admin

I've hoped for years they'd use bootstrap, how does this compare?

<comment><USER14> Here are a couple screenshots showing the updated styling (from the 1.9 version of the tutorial):

[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/_images/admin02.png](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/_images/admin02.png)

[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/_images/admin05t.png](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/_images/admin05t.png)

And here are the same screenshots from the 1.8 version of the tutorial:

[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/_images/admin02.png](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/_images/admin02.png)

[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/_images/admin05t.png](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/_images/admin05t.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know of strong examples of Django REST with Angular as the front end?

<comment><USER16> taiga.io (source: [https://github.com/taigaio](https://github.com/taigaio))

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The DateTime field lookup changes are the most exciting. No more start_date and end_date calculations in the code.

<comment><USER18> [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/_images/admin02.png](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/_images/admin02.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A new Meteor and Django in the same week. Feels like Christmas come early

<comment><USER20> You might be interested in this then [https://github.com/commoncode/django- ddp](https://github.com/commoncode/django-ddp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone have a screenshot of this new admin UI?

</comment><comment><USER22> I used to use Django a lot. This news caused me to go back and check the release notes going back to 1.5. It seems like between every major point release theirs about a ~6 month gap. Furthermore the features in each release (bar migrations in 1.7, which IMO should've been in a loooong time ago) are relatively minor. Django also is fairly quick to deprecate older versions (including python versions) which is fine I guess since they're pretty on top of security and provide clear upgrade paths.

However the fact remains, as I assessed about two years ago, that the momentum behind the Django ecosystem is as stagnant as ever. Many third-party libraries are deprecated or ill-maintained. This is as much symptomatic of Python as a whole as Django, but regardless it exasperates the slow release cycles when compared to other languages and frameworks.

My money is still on JS/Clojure/Erlang/Go/etc. to carry us into the future of web development. No doubt Django will fight to the bitter end with its strong enterprise support and mature codebase. I'm ok with that, it's just not for me anymore.

<comment><USER23> unless you want to get downvoted , saying things about python/Django in HN is not a good idea .

<comment><USER24> "saying things" is not a synonym for "trolling". If those claims had been less vague and supported in any way, he wouldn't be getting downvoted.

Notice how the people above talking about WebSockets aren't being downvoted because it's both real and specific enough to have an actual technical discussion?</comment></comment></comment>


Tutanotas encrypted email app is coming to F-Droid - <AUTHOR> https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/release-notes-3-35 <comment><USER2> With apps like Signal, and with the expanding adoption of pseudo secure methods like TLS mail transport, easy encrypted mail feels like something that is coming 10 years too late to be relevant.

That said, Protonmail's implementation is probably as easy as it could ever get (with federated PGP ability, no less) and I don't see a crowd kicking down their door with money in their hands. I really wish secure email were a thing, but unless the Big Boys (Google, Microsoft) get involved and push to make it an easily accessible option or a default, I can't see a path to it being widely adopted.</comment>


Broadcom's $2B warning rattles global chip sector - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-usa-chipmakers-broadcom/broadcoms-2-billion-warning-rattles-global-chip-sector-idUSKCN1TF0O1 <comment><USER2> Really lazy reporting. We need the total to know how much $2B really matters to Broadcom.

Putting the math on this here for everyone else:

> Huawei accounted for about $900 million, or 4%, of the company's overall > sales last year. Broadcom, however, also said the forecast cut "extends > beyond one particular customer."

So total sales were 22.5B and a 2B hit is indeed pretty bad!

<comment><USER3> Not to mention this quote in the middle of the article:

> The semiconductor industry has been grappling with slowing demand since the > second half of 2018 with bellwether Texas Instruments warning in April that > a cyclical downturn could last for another two years.

> That has related chiefly to signs that mobile phone markets in some major > economies are increasingly saturated while mass demand in new areas like > self-driving cars and internet of things devices for homes and offices is > still developing.

So the $2B is not just the trade tensions (sure, these are not helping), but the overall saturation of the market for consumers.

While the latest greatest phones are awesome, I personally haven't felt the need to upgrade. When comparing say 3GS vs 4, that was a big leap and upgrade seemed warranted. We'll see if the 2019 announcement season will be more exciting.

<comment><USER4> Has is in-car-entertainment stagnated too?

Not so recently only the high end cars had a screen, nowadays every model in the range of every car manufacturer has a screen. So that growth has came to a standstill. Only if people suddenly start buying more cars more frequently can that sector grow.

Given how slow the main marques are at releasing bona-fide EV cars I think it is a long time before self driving gets to be a thing. Even internet of things is not exactly something the world is desperate for. Maybe the party is over.

<comment><USER5> Funny you mention that because co-habiting the front page of HN right now along with this thread is news that Madza is removing touch screens from its in-car systems. Tactile buttons are best when operating a machine that requires focus. Being able to reach for and feel a button, lever, or dial while focusing on driving is way safer than having to stare a a small screen to press the right area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It shouldn't affected Micron as much considering it already has one of the lower P/E ratios and P/B ratios in the industry. It seems like their declining earnings and exposure to China should already be priced in. With that said it will probably affect Micron just the same if not more considering Huawei made up, I believe, 13% of their sales last year. The idea that this is all happening in what was already a down cycle for the industry will cause people to become fearful and impatient.

</comment><comment><USER7> What I don't understand is, if you are afraid of the Chinese government somehow interfering with the building process, shouldn't they start building everything in US?

</comment><comment><USER8> The trade war with China is reckless and damaging to the US chip industry. This is a self-inflicted wound that should of been avoided.

<comment><USER9> Chinese protectionism and theft of IP can't be avoided. Self-inflicted wound? Yes, but it's meant to make the chronic soreness go away.

<comment><USER10> You do realize that China is now just going to develop its own CPUs, it's own OS's and its own devices now and China will be better suited to sell to emerging markets where the real growth is since US companies can't compete. I also know the 3rd licensee of X86 will be benefiting from these trade wars because their demand will be going up and they're not a US company.

<comment><USER11> Even if this entire comment thread were not a vast oversimplification of these markets, why would this be such a bad thing? Two main points to this:

1\. The United States does not depend on manufacturing as the backbone to its' economic stability.

2\. Emerging markets may use 'Chinese Technology' during periods of major growth, but as those emerging markets mature they will likely require the stability provided by the mature incumbents of the field*

* as long as those incumbents keep pace with the overall technological development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >> The forecast, included in the company's second-quarter results late on Thursday, was the hardest evidence yet of the damage President Donald Trump's trade war with Beijing may do to the global industry.

To pin this on Trump is to overlook the larger picture. He seems to be putting America first, as promised. Also, I dont think it's his idea alone.

<comment><USER13> Mr. Trump surrounds himself with people who has the explicitly stated goals of:

1\. Preventing China growing further thus surpassing USA in economic might and by extension military might.

2\. Regime change in China, the communist party's downfall from power and possible breakup of mainland China.

They even have revived the cold war institution "Committee on the Present Danger" whos public lectures and discussions can be found on youtube.

Secondly I think the anti-China sentiment in USA is so strong that mr. Trump can be reelected on it.

For China this is a sputnik moment where they realize that for them to continue growth beyond this critical point, they need to become completely self-sufficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Of course the media present doom and gloom. But many of these companies have diversified their business. Most companies mentioned in this article have diversified their customer base and while there is some short term pain, most will move past this. Longer term, I think we are creating a competitor in China. I can't imagine the Chinese government, seeing how vulnerable they are, won't invest heavily to produce internal competitors.

<comment><USER15> So you are saying that after the short term pain there will be... long term pain (a strong competitor created)?

<comment><USER16> The US government is not interested in the long term. The horizon is the 2020 election.</comment></comment></comment>


Joini – a new Data Integration and ETL software for managing data files - <AUTHOR> http://www.joini-data-integration.com <comment><AUTHOR> JOINI can be used by professional developers/DBA and by a wide range of users: data analysts, statisticians and researchers.</comment>


Health Care Law Projected to Cut the Labor Force - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/us/politics/budget-office-revises-estimates-of-health-care-enrollment.html

<comment><USER3> This is expected. There is a whole class of people who are working just for insurance because it was prohibitively expensive on the open market for individuals. If you make it affordable for them to purchase healthcare as individuals they'll retire.

Hopefully it means that people who want to work will be able to back fill those jobs.

I think it's a good thing for the economy. It can't be a good thing to force individuals to work when they'd have the means to retire if they were able to purchase healthcare at the same rates as large companies.

<comment><USER4> It won't be a good thing for the economy, more people on the dole is never a good solution. The ACA was only going to "work" if it had enough healthy workers paying into it, having larger numbers of unsubsidized players.

With so many dropping into the clearly subsidized roles this will push the costs of the program up. With the guarantees to the insurance companies built into the law the public will end up footing an even larger bill which requires increase taxes and health care costs for those working putting a bigger drag on the economy.

Having more part time jobs which is what will happen when the employer side of this kick is not better that keeping full timers.

<comment><USER5> Well, take my wife (please): she was working as an employee, taking a job that could have been done by someone else (teaching orchestra at a school), and then we moved and she started a business (private violin studio). While she makes more as a private teacher, prior to the ACA she was previously unable to purchase health insurance on the private market due to a food allergy (a precondition).

We had to move for other reasons than her job, but consider that there are many people doing work that other people do, who are motivated to do things like start a business, but who are otherwise unable to do so because of the US healthcare system.

Additionally, consider my parents, who are also working not because they need the income per se-- they could retire and live well-- except for the costs and difficulties of purchasing health insurance on a private market.

So it isn't the case that people are just universally "going on the dole"... making private insurance closer to the same cost to purchase health insurance regardless of your status as an employee shouldn't affect the overall bottom line of the leeches who provide insurance.

<comment><USER6> _prior to the ACA she was previously unable to purchase health insurance on the private market due to a food allergy (a precondition)._

This is a common misunderstanding. For most people in this situation, the laws on the books already took care of the problem. If she already had healthcare insurance at her previous employer, if she could show continuous coverage, she would be able to continue to purchase healthcare insurance privately, despite her preexisting condition.

Whether the private insurance would be affordable to you is a different question, but it's not true that a preexisting condition was, before Obamacare, a complete roadblock to acquiring coverage privately.

<comment><USER7> I believe you may be oversimplifying the continuous coverage rules.

Under HIPAA, continuous coverage ensures acceptance into _group health care plans_ (for instance, employer-provided coverage) regardless of preexisting conditions.

Further, continuous coverage ensures acceptance into _some form of individual coverage_ , of a kind determined by the specific state you're in.

I do not believe it is the case that continuous coverage guarantees acceptance into individual health care plans.

In 19 years of working, and (more relevantly) 15 years of marriage, I have never had a lapse of health care coverage for myself or my family. When we started Matasano, I had just previously left a full-time, full-benefits job at a larger company where I'd been working for 4 years. I elected COBRA when I left, and started shopping for individual coverage.

We were unable to get family coverage at any price in Illinois because of preexisting condition concerns for two members of my family. In both cases, the rejection cause was a total surprise, because the "condition" wasn't an ongoing health problem, but rather a piece of medical trivia that caused underwriters concern that there might have been more significant issues down the road.

I shopped for insurance myself, and then with a professional broker who I paid to deal with the problem, and who could not find a way around it.

We solved the problem first by my wife taking a full-time job outside Matasano, which got us group coverage, and then by starting group coverage at Matasano.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think its important to note their correction:

"An earlier version of a headline accompanying this article on the home page was incorrect. The health law is projected to result in a voluntary reduction in the work force equal to 2.5 million full-time workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office, not two million fewer jobs."

<comment><USER9> Seems like a rather glaring error to make. It's a huge difference between retirees and the unemployed.

<comment><USER10> I think it would also be a glaring error to assume these are retirees. What evidence do you have that they are retirees and not 30 year olds that are purposely holding back productivity because of the incentive the government is now giving to not work?

<comment><USER11> Uh, what? The government isn't really giving an incentive at all. If I were young and didn't have a lifestyle that required a full-time salary, I certainly wouldn't be shackled to a full-time job just to keep insurance. I think that's the case for a ton of people.

You also have to consider the small business case. I can't tell you how many technology workers I know who have health issues and would otherwise be building a startup or working as a consultant, but before the ACA they could never dream of getting or keeping health insurance. I mean I'm a relatively healthy 20-something and was denied health insurance several times, and when I was approved, was paying ridiculous amounts per month because I was 10 pounds overweight.

Putting those prices back in line for most people and not tying health insurance to a full-time job is the whole point. I fail to see how this is government offering an incentive of any sort, unless that's what you meant and it was poorly phrased?

<comment><USER10> _The government isn 't really giving an incentive at all_

This statement is incredibly naive and shows a complete lack of knowledge of economics. When the government gives incentives for making less money, then they are giving an incentive to make less money. It's that simple, but let me explain.

To get a bronze family plan on healthcare.gov, I was quoted $12,000 per year with a $12,700 deductible. Basically, I'd be paying $24,000 per year for healthcare.

That's the list price, which is what I have to pay if my wife and I make more than $96,000 per year (1/4 of the income goes toward healthcare). The cost goes down the less I make below $96,000. This is government giving me an incentive to make less money.

<comment><USER12> * This is government giving me an incentive to make less money.*

Or at least report less income. I bet a lot of people will move into the shadow economy, and get paid in cash. Instead of getting a W2 with 50k on it, I can work a part time job and report 20k, and do some off books work for 30k. I would qualify for the subsidy, and get a chunk of cash that I don't pay taxes on.

<comment><USER13> Of course, prosecution for tax evasion when you're noticed living beyond your means is an incentive not to do that.

<comment><USER14> Funny enough, it's just been reported that under Obama criminal tax prosecutions have gone up, e.g. [http://news.yahoo.com/u-fighting-increase- tax-crimes-under-o...](http://news.yahoo.com/u-fighting-increase-tax-crimes- under-obama-watchdog-205905030--business.html)

" _[...] under Obama the average annual number of tax crime prosecutions sought by the Justice Department has been 1,568, versus 1,303 under Bush._ "

Doesn't sound like that's going to strike fear in the hearts of many. Plus I suspect detecting small fry like in byoung2's example is rather difficult.

<comment><USER15> How many off the books $30,000 jobs do you think there are?

I'm sure there are lots of them, but I wonder if there are so many that it is something to worry about.

<comment><USER12> _How many off the books $30,000 jobs do you think there are?_

Given the audience of this site, web design would be the obvious choice. But here are some more:

[http://livesafely.org/financial-freedom/67-jobs-that-pay- und...](http://livesafely.org/financial-freedom/67-jobs-that-pay-under-the- table/)

<comment><USER15> That's a list of roles that does nothing to establish that they provide opportunities for $30k and nothing to estimate how many such positions are available.

I'm not arguing that cash jobs are rare or nonexistent. I'm wondering how prevalent "really good ones" actually are.

($30k being a real good cash job is just like my opinion, but whatever)

<comment><USER12> It would be very difficult to count the number of people doing these jobs for cash since they aren't reporting the income, but it isn't hard to imagine that these jobs could pay 30k if you combine some of the lower paying ones (e.g. $10/hour of gardening and day labor for 60 hours a week), or if you have skills that pay more (I did test prep tutoring for $60/hour in college).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The whole discussion is baffling. The US health care system consumes almost 20% of GDP. That is twice as much as any other developed country - <USER2> seeing better health care results.

Making changes to a system that corresponds to one fifth of the annual economic output will obviously have massive consequences. However, it is hard to see how you could possible make the economics of US health care worse. ACA gives more people the ability to individually choose their health care insurance, thus increasing competition and hopefully giving the health care buy side more incentive to drive down prices.

<comment><USER17> Choosing not to have a certain level of health insurance or any health insurance at all is also a choice. Or rather, it was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This title will be read by people and a lot will interpret it as 'less jobs'. But the _exact opposite_ will happen: Some people will work less, so more people will need to be hired. Plus wages will have to go up to account for the shortage.

In a way, the ACA is creating jobs. Or at the very least, it'll increase wages. That's a selling point.

EDIT: I thought I wrote the "increasing jobs" in a "wouldn't it be funny if this were true" sort of sense, guess I didn't.

As for the wage increase, Business insider seems to think so at least ([http://www.businessinsider.com/the-buried-lede-in-the-cbo- re...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-buried-lede-in-the-cbo-report- obamacare-will-raise-wages-2014-2)).

<comment><USER19> Your interpretation of the article is not supported by the body. If the CBO believed in the effect you postulate, they would not predict fewer jobs (more precisely, reduced effort equivalent to fewer jobs).

According to the body, hours worked and full time employment will drop. This is a straightforward supply shock, along the same lines as the oil shortage of the 70's (assuming of course you believe in reducing the entire economy to 2 graphs, as the Keynesians often do).

Also, increasing wages in a recession is a big no-no if you believe in Keynesian economics. Assuming this effect is not taken into account by the CBO's headline number, it means there will be further job losses.

<comment><USER20> > If the CBO believed in the effect you postulate, they would not predict > fewer jobs.

They're predicting a smaller labor force (non-institutionalized population of working age working _or actively seeking work_ ) resulting from the reduced health insecurity from the ACA, not fewer jobs. [1]

To see where that fits into the unemployment picture, understand that the unemployment rate is (1 - (Filled Jobs / Labor Force)).

> Also, increasing wages in a recession is a big no-no if you believe in > Keynesian economics

We're not in a recession. We're in an expansion in which both wages and employment rates have recovered slower than normal -- which was also true in the _last_ expansion between the 2001 recession and the Great Recession -- which is why it _feels_ like we've been in a 13 year recession to many people who aren't major capitalists, though there have only been 26 months of official recession in that period.

[1] The ACA effect is described on p. 14 of the report [2], which is linked from the NYTimes article, in the section under the heading "Labor Force Participation" (heading on p. 13).

[2] [https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments...](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45011-LaborMarketReview.pdf)

<comment><USER19> _They 're predicting a smaller labor force (non-institutionalized population of working age working or actively seeking work) resulting from the reduced health insecurity from the ACA, not fewer jobs._

According to the CBO, the difference between actual and potential GDP will decline to 0.5% by 2017. At that point (and possibly before) a reduced labor force is reduced jobs and (more importantly) reduced production.

It could result in reduced jobs/production even before that if workers who choose to reduce output are not interchangeable with unemployed [1] workers willing to take those jobs at the same wage.

 _We 're not in a recession. We're in an expansion in which both wages and employment rates have recovered slower than normal_

Either we need fiscal/monetary stimulus or not. If we need stimulus, increasing wages is a bad idea according to all mainstream economic theories (Keynesian, Monetarist, Structuralist). Which is it?

Here is the report, btw: [https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments...](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45011-LaborMarketReview.pdf)

[1] Including discouraged, at least if employers can find the discouraged workers.

<comment><USER20> As we are in an expansion, we don't really need stimulus, we need retraction of the policy changes of the last 35, and particularly the last 15, years that redirected more of the gains from private sector expansion to the capital and the very upper end of non-capital income earners, at the expense of everyone else; stimulus in these conditions doesn't really address the fundamental problem. At best, it provides a short-term backstop against the fundamental weakness of a poorly-distributed expansion crashing back into recession, but even that is hampered by the same distributional problems when using traditional monetary and fiscal stimulus levers.

Sure, from the POV of much of the workforce the economic. car isn't going anywhere, but stimulus is like trying to give it a jump start when the engine is runnin but the transmission is in neutral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The economy is a measurement of the productivity of the workers. By cutting 2 million man/hours, or whatever metric they use, you are cutting the economic productivity that much. So, it will hurt the economy no matter how you spin it.

Further, it is not like they are getting health care due to an efficiency in the system. The government is taking resources from the productive (taxes) and giving it to the unproductive (subsidies) in order to purchase insurance. This will further erode economic productivity.

<comment><USER22> This reflects a misunderstanding of the study, the article written about the study, the words "productivity", "economics" and the phrase "economic productivity". Jesus christ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> People who would otherwise spend time with their families, friends, hobbies and side projects will no longer be forced to work more hours at their jobs. Others who don't have full-time jobs will have an easier time getting them. Some good news for once.

<comment><USER24> These are houly people that need the hours to make ends meet. They are being forced into part time so that they aren't eligible. This is definitely a net negative, but not the least bit surprising.

<comment><USER25> Part time jobs have already been leveraged by companies to reduce obligations. I'm not sure if there's much left to squeeze out at this point.

<comment><USER14> With a deadline of the end of this year, I suspect we've only seen a fraction of what'll happen when the employer mandate goes into effect. Especially since a bunch of regulations for big companies, the ones that self-insure, haven't been finished yet, so it's probably up in the air if such maneuvers will help (i.e. would D.C. pass up such an opportunity to squeeze more cash out of them?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _Correction: February 4, 2014 An earlier version of a headline accompanying this article on the home page was incorrect. The health law is projected to result in a voluntary reduction in the work force equal to 2.5 million full- time workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office, not two million fewer jobs._

If true, this is a good thing. We, as a society, don't need "jobs" or hours worked. We need stuff made. Voluntary attrition of the least productive 5-billion person-hours per year won't hurt us much, but that will cause wages to rise (which will, over time, improve what is produced).

We're already producing a lot of stuff. What we need now is a qualitative focus, serious consideration of sustainability and, above all, better leadership. Taking some pressure off the lower and middle classes (i.e. peeling back the wage serfdom that gives power to feudal strongmen) is a start.

There used to be a Fordist connection between general prosperity and the well- being of businesses, rippling up to the very rich. But the consumer credit boom killed that (sort of). Instead of letting wages rise or prices fall, the poors could be pumped full of loans they couldn't afford to repay. We saw, in 2008, how well that works out, but the fundamental structure of society hasn't changed.

Obama has made many tactical mistakes with the PPACA, and I wish he had started at single-payer to make public-option the compromise, but if "Obamacare" is bringing us back toward a more cooperative, progressive society, then that's a good thing.</comment>


Nick Tredennick speaking on "Computing in Transition to Performance Per Watt" 16-Apr-08 @ Bay ACM - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfbayacm.org/events/2008-04-16.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Nick is the author of "An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists" <http://ycombinator.com/tredennick.html> and a dynamic and insightful speaker. You can get a sense of his humor from the bio for the talk:

Nick Tredennick has the usual degrees from typical universities and has held an uninspiring assortment of run-of-the-mill jobs. For example, he has been a fry cook, Air Force pilot, janitor, university professor, dishwasher, design engineer, truck driver, naval officer, oil field worker, and corporate executive. He even helped start a few companies, but was soon forced out. However, despite an appalling lack of knowledge about programmable logic and electronics in general, he was once chief scientist at Altera, a leading maker of programmable logic devices. Through what could only have been a monumental bureaucratic foul-up, he was also once a Research Staff Member at IBM's prestigious Watson Research Center. Tredennick has put considerable effort into finding something he could do well. No luck so far. He started his career as a working engineer (nerd), but moved to management when he found watching people work was easier than working. He moved to a university when he found talking about work was even easier than watching it. He has finally reached the pinnacle of his career in a position where he doesn't even have to talk about work. He is a technology analyst for Gilder Publishing.</comment>


Re: Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband Services [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/100319291940/2016-10-03%20Google%20Letter%20%28WC%2016-106%29.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Source document is an FCC filing of Google's from October, 2016. Full title: "Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services, WC Docket No. 16-106"

Material:

 _[O]pt-in consent is appropriate for the sharing of sensitive data (health, financial, and children's information, social security numbers, precise geolocation data, and content of consumer communications) with third parties, whereas opt-out or implied consent is appropriate for other uses of customer data. This model is familiar to consumers, has worked well for them for many years, and contributed to today's thriving, innovative, and free Internet._

Which is to say, _other than the excepted content_ , Google aver that all other forms of subscriber information are fair game for disclosure to third paries on an "implied consent" basis.

It's not straight party-line GOP votes that are the only threat to American's online privacy, security, and protection from blackmail, or worse.

<comment><USER2> Wild, thanks for post.</comment></comment>


Introducing S2n, a New Open Source TLS Implementation - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/introducing-s2n-a-new-open-source-tls-implementation/ <comment><USER2> This is from 2015.</comment>


The race is on to develop new strategies for storing nuclear waste - <AUTHOR> https://ensia.com/features/radioactive-nuclear-waste-disposal/ <comment><USER3> Our nuclear reactors are essentially the beta product. There are alternative reactor designs that create much less waste like LFTR ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor)) and others like TWR that cab consume our existing spent fuel ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor)).

There are a lot of reasons we predominantly use solid fuel light water reactors, most of them being the decades of sunk costs + commitment inertia that was created by the government investment in the technology... because it was good for the military (submarines, maybe bombs).

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/the-s...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/the- search-for-a-better-safer-nuclear-power/72765/)

There are some companies trying to address this like Flibe Energy, who is working on LFTR designs ([https://flibe-energy.com/](https://flibe- energy.com/)) and Terrapower with TWR ([http://terrapower.com](http://terrapower.com)), of which Bill Gates is Chairman of the board.

Nuclear could be great. We need massive investment in these alternative technologies.

<comment><USER4> Molten salt designs have somewhat unsolved waste and proliferation issues, but you are correct in general.

<comment><USER5> Isn't there also a corrosion issue, that hot salt tends to corrode normal stainless steel? The usual Achilles heel of these things is welding issues.

It seems research is ongoing: [http://www.electrochemsci.org/papers/vol13/130504891.pdf](http://www.electrochemsci.org/papers/vol13/130504891.pdf)

<comment><USER6> You think hot salt is bad? Now let's add 1/3 of the periodic table to the salt.. But yeah, people are working on it. The Americans had something in the 60ies (hastalloy), the Chinese are working on it today. In the short term, many o the MSR startups are planning to replace the reactor vessel every few years to get around corrosion issues, as well as the graphite moderator going bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nuclear power is almost always brought up as a low carbon alternative to fossil fuels to power our civilization. Some even quote how cheap nuclear power is compared to fossil fuel based power. But, those advocating for nuclear power almost always discount the cost involved in dealing with this radioactive trash. To put it in another way, by switching on nuclear power, instead of handing out next generation a warmed/messed up planet with dangerous levels of green house gases, we would be giving them a pile of dangerous radioactive waste several miles under the ground. Not sure whether it can be argued if it is really a better alternative.

Even if not supplying all of our energy from Wind and solar, it is crime of our irresponsible generation to not invest in solar panels in sunny places like Florida, Texas, Middle East, southern India, Southeast Asia etc. Use the safe option first, and wait for nuclear option to mature until we get a better grip on what to do with its dangerous trash.

Florida even actively prevents businesses from engaging in roof top solar panels. If that is not a facepalm moment of stupidity, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER8> They talk about 'great stockpiles' then quote a figure of 22,000 m3 of high- level waste. 22,000 m3 of material is a tiny volume. Speaking from a bulk material moving perspective, that is maybe 12 hours work with a big excavator.

Speaking as a mining engineer, in an active mine site you'd need to take special precautions to make sure a 22,000 m3 stockpile didn't get lost. If you don't put it in a designated spot, you're not going to be able to find it again. We aren't talking a big pile of dirt here.

At volumes that small, if someone irresponsibly dumped it in the middle of the Sahara with a thick layer of rubble over the top it would be _unlikely_ to be found and cause anyone any measurable harm.

Literally the only reason anyone cares is because the volumes are so small we could reasonably achieve 0 net impact. You try achieving that with lead mining, coal mining, rare earth mining for renewables, etc, etc. The volumes of material involved would overwhelm any attempt. So people don't bother talking about it. Only for nuclear fuel does it start to matter. We already churn out larger volumes of nastier substances as part of our industrial supply chain.

 _postscript_ the other good reason to talk about it the volumes are so small that if it doesn't get attention the aforementioned oops-we-lost-it problem will crop up. I mean, wow. 22 kcm of material. Going to need special markings just to distinguish it from a roll in the turf.

<comment><USER9> Sure 22 000m3 isn't that big, but the rate could increase sharply (currently new 34 000m3 of high and intermediate waste produced _per year_ according to the article). The question is : should we invest and build 10 times more nuclear reactors for future energy needs ?

Build 10 times more reactors in the world, multiply per 50 years of operation and now you have _17 000 000 cube meters_ of high level waste.

Renewable energies introduced long-term thinking about impacts. The nuclear waste story only tells us we cannot scale the current nuclear technology, but we can still moderately use this tech for the next century to transition to more renewable methods.

<comment><USER10> > _Build 10 times more reactors in the world, multiply per 50 years of > operation and now you have 17 000 000 cube meters of high level waste._

So now you have 17 000 10x10x10m cubes to stuff somewhere. Still very little, and completely manageable. And that's assuming we'd build up old-school nuclear reactors. If you allow for using the new reactor designs, a lot of that would be reused as fuel.

<comment><USER11> "But energy from the sun man!"

At this point most of the arguments about nuclear power are philosophical in nature. They watched the Simpsons with the three eyed fish and evil Mr. Burns and took that as fact. It's the future, it's the way things will ultimately have to go, and future generations will be mad at modern day environmentalists holding up progress in the way that they are currently. Solar and wind is nice but it does not provide consistent enough generation for our purposes. Nuclear power is a drop in replacement for things that are much worse. Solar and wind require a new grid and new devices across the board to even get started. You want to wait a few decades for everyone to replace all of their appliances, heating and cooling mechanisms and for society to shift to this new model or do you want to make progress today?

One of the leading politicians of this generation once said "It's more important to be morally right than factually correct". Anti-nuclear folks really took that to heart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article briefly mentions fast reactors, but I think dismisses them a little too quickly. Waste from fast reactors would be short-lived.

Most of our waste is uranium, mainly U238 plus a little leftover U235. This is barely radioactive.

There's also a fair amount of plutonium and other transuranics, made when uranium and heavier atoms absorb a neutron without fissioning. This is the really long-lived waste that needs to be stored for thousands of years.

About one percent of our waste is fission products, the smaller atoms left after breaking apart uranium and plutonium. This is highly radioactive, but only for a couple centuries.

Fast reactors can fission the transuranics, and both isotopes of uranium. Their waste is almost entirely fission products. Encase them in glass, bury them, and in three centuries it'll be back to the radioactivity of the original uranium ore.

</comment><comment><USER13> This discussion always drives me crazy.

What would you rather have inherited from the Victoria Era:

1) complete ecological disaster in the form of a 5-degree average temperature increase and 10 metre sea level increase; causing widespread food insecurity, human displacement, and mass extinctions due to habitat loss

2) a modicum of nasty nuclear waste, some of which can be refined for interesting isotopes

Also, we already leave a ludicrous amount of nasty industrial waste in the form of mining tailings, plastics fill our oceans, we constantly create electronic devices that can't be properly recycled and contain hazardous materials. Nuclear waste isn't even close to the top of the list of hazardous waste problems.

If nuclear power is one of the solutions to climate change, THE existential threat to human survival, then hamstringing ourselves because of handwringing about waste is just setting us up to continue to delay doing anything about this impending threat.

<comment><USER5> Well, from the 1950s we inherited a thin spread of radioisotopes contaminating the entire atmosphere: [https://qz.com/1163140/us-nuclear-tests-killed- american-civi...](https://qz.com/1163140/us-nuclear-tests-killed-american- civilians-on-a-scale-comparable-to-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/)

The problem of nuclear waste management is fundamentally one of public trust. People spent much of the 20th century going from "X is ubiquitous and perfectly safe" to "actually X has been poisoning you and the biosphere for decades". Cigarettes, leaded petrol, CFCs, pesticides, coal power, bisphenol A, and so on. People who object to the "perfectly safe" waste plans do so because they believe you are lying about the safety.

(Personally I believe it's now _too late_ for nuclear, it simply takes too long to build individual reactors, and a big bang plan would involve building thousands of them in parallel. Not to mention that the #8 and #10 global CO2 emitting countries are fundamentalist Islamic petro-states which aren't trusted with nuclear material.)

There is also a complicated motte-and-bailey distinction between high-level waste (spent fuel itself, etc.) and low-level. High-level waste can often be reprocessed and is comparatively small volume. The low-level waste is everything that's deemed too dangerous to landfill, and there's a _lot_ more of it. From used rubber gloves to the entire volume of decomissioned reactors.

On the history of greens against nuclear reactors, mostly dating from the weapons issue: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17774347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17774347) ; excellent rant on the public trust issue: [https://blog.danieldavies.com/2006/05/nukes-and-nukemen- blai...](https://blog.danieldavies.com/2006/05/nukes-and-nukemen-blair-has- lost-it.html) (rather prescient about Hinkley Point C, which is still not built thirteen years later)

<comment><USER4> Fallout from nuclear bomb testing has nothing to do with waste from nuclear power plants - why would you confuse the two?

<comment><USER5> One of the few things that Greenpeace and the US military agree on is that civilian and military nuclear programs are very difficult to tell apart from the outside. That's why everyone watches Iran so closely.

Opposition to nuclear weapons fed back through nuclear testing into opposing the construction of the reactors themselves, because without the reactors there is no weapons programme.

<comment><USER4> The fact that nuclear reactors are used in one step of the long process of manufacturing some nuclear bomb components does not give anyone license to confuse nuclear bomb test fallout with nuclear reactor waste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To get our bachelor's degree in Nuclear Engineering at NCSU a bunch of us looked at a continuous pyroprocess involving molten salt, molten cadmnium, EM pumps, and electroplating. The idea is to plate out the Uranium -- and only the uranium, satisfying nonproliferation concerns -- and precipitate out the minor actinides and plutonium together for HLW long term storage, or a different further recycling process.

This would close the loop and recycle uranium while still keeping the weapons grade plutonium out of people's hands. It doesn't transmute so it wouldn't solve the waste problem. It only solves the Uranium recycling problem.

The US Government is far more concerned about non-proliferation than it is about waste. Hence the lack of political will in fixing the long-known uranium recycling problem with methods like UREX/PUREX, which is not proliferation- resistant.

Was really fun, the tech looked promising, the maintenance looks awful, and the political will isn't there.

Edit to add: once we are able to recycle the Uranium, the theory is that the rest of the HLW can be used in a different kind of reactor (not a light water one) that would burn the waste as fuel, fully dealing with the waste problem. So there's multiple degrees with which we could recycle spent nuclear fuel.

<comment><USER15> It is not just the political will that is lacking. The is no economic reason to do it. The maintenance can not be done by humans and if -- after a lot of investment -- you are able to develop robots that can do it, you get a better ROI by becoming worlds leading robotics company and replace Kuka, ABB and Co.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The best option for dealing with nuclear 'waste' is to use the use up the energy contained within it.

Moltex Energy is one such proposal to do just that: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju59gcdmdvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju59gcdmdvI)

</comment><comment><USER17> This might be a stupid suggestion/question, but maybe it'll become cheap enough to just toss the spent fuel rods into space?

<comment><USER18> This option is brought up alot and while cost is probably one consideration I think that the main problem is for when (not if) one of the launches has a rapid unscheduled disassembly as they call it, and basically become becomes a large dirty bomb.

<comment><USER19> Also, what happens to the stuff we toss into space? People still seem to make the same mistake our ancestors did regarding tossing stuff into the ocean.

To be more precise: achieving a velocity high enough to e.g. detonate on the surface of the sun (in particular carrying tons of nuclear waste) won't be cheap for a long time. [1]

Stuff we "toss out there" would probably just keep floating in an uncontrolled (in the long run) earth bound orbit and might come back at some point.

[1] [https://youtu.be/uNS6VKNXY6s](https://youtu.be/uNS6VKNXY6s)

<comment><USER10> Trying to toss radioactive waste into the Sun would be a ridiculous waste of fuel. To do that, you have to cancel out Earth's orbital velocty; that's 30 km/s of ∆v (or execute some very clever gravity assists).

What you'd want to do is to shoot it out into an orbit around the Sun that's slightly lower or higher than Earth's. The chance of it somehow returning to Earth is so low that the Sun will go out before it happens.

Still, the whole concept is wasteful and dangerous anyway. For one, as others mentioned, a launch failure would mean large-scale contamination on the planet. Two, you can safely store this waste on Earth for many orders of magnitude less money and work.

> _People still seem to make the same mistake our ancestors did regarding > tossing stuff into the ocean._

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." Throwing something out into orbit around the Sun isn't going to be a problem, like, _ever_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I feel like the solution is literally staring us in the face and we're not seeing it:

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

100% safe storage for literally all of our waste, forever. Why are we not doing that? I can only assume that it's because the spent waste is still "valuable" so it's worth keeping around in case someone figures out more and more efficient ways of processing it to recover useful material from it. Putting it 5km in the ground makes is completely unrecoverable by anyone.

<comment><USER21> There is one such site in Finland: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository)

<comment><USER20> That's not quite the same - it's more like a mine than a borehole. The whole idea of a borehole is that stuff sealed 5km under the surface isn't coming back in any way, and is nearly impossible to recover unless you drill another borehole in the same place. There is no known geological process that would bring it back up naturally. The site you quoted is pretty deep(500m) but it's not "stable and permanent for millennia" kind of deep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why can't we just use the waste to heat homes? Is there a magic ratio of isolation that allows enough heat but not enough radiation to use at home?

<comment><USER23> This doesn't solve any part of the waste management problem; it only frustrates safety for a small benefit. High-level nuclear waste generates heat, but is not kept hot; it's stored in cool pools. Allowing it to reach a high temperature and using it for district heating is not sensible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> reuse the energy, create mini nuclear power plant/reactor that can be sent into space to mine bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER25> Make diamond batteries

<comment><USER25> [https://futurism.com/diamond-batteries-made-of-nuclear- waste...](https://futurism.com/diamond-batteries-made-of-nuclear-waste-can- generate-power-for-thousands-of-years)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Make RTGs out of it! [https://xkcd.com/2115/](https://xkcd.com/2115/)

Even with all of these issues nuclear is the least deadly energy source! More people fall off roofs putting it solar panels then have been effected by nuclear disasters.

<comment><USER27> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator)

Most RTGs use 238Pu

Unlike the other three isotopes discussed in this section, 238Pu must be specifically synthesized and is not abundant as a nuclear waste product.

At present only Russia has maintained consistent 238Pu production[dubious – discuss], while in the US, no more than 50 g (1.8 oz) were produced in total between 2013 and 2018.[15] The US agencies involved desire to begin the production of the material at a rate of 300 to 400 grams (11 to 14 oz) per year. If this plan is funded, the goal would be to set up automation and scale-up processes in order to produce an average of 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) per year by 2025.

<comment> 08-15 The USSR manufactured a number of RTGs using Sr-90. Sr-90 is roughly as energetic as Pu-238, but requires more shielding. It has the advantage that it doesn't need to be manufactured, because it is one of the more abundant fission products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel like support for nuclear energy is the acceptable face of climate denial these days.

It's like states rights and racism. Who can be against states rights? That's totally noble sounding. Yet quite a few people who took up that banner were actually trying to achieve racist ends, and when forced to choose between states rights and racism, would choose racism, exposing them to anyone paying attention.

Similarly, it's a weird that nuclear (which is possibly the most state supported energy source) gets so much support from libertarians[1], rather than decentralised wind and solar with carbon taxes to internalize externalities.

Of course if you genuinely believe in states rights, or nuclear power, you now need some kind of introductory proviso to seperate yourself from the people stealing your topic as cover for their own ends.

My litmus test is: do you strongly believe in nuclear only because you think renewables are useless? If so, where did you get this information from? Second hand fossil fuel propaganda probably.

[1] this gets meta for libertarians as I'd say the same thing has occured there. Corporate fascists like a lot of the libertarian ideals and push them hard, while ignoring/fighting the logically coherent principles that don't suit them. Climate change denial being an obvious one were paychecks override principle, when the libertarian idea of carbon fees is probably the single best way to solve the problem.

<comment><USER10> What's there about climate denial in support for nuclear energy? Everyone I've seen who push for nuclear, myself included, do so _because of_ climate change.

Supporting decentralized wind and solar is good too, but it's really ridiculous how the discourse turned into nuclear _vs_ wind and solar, where it should be about nuclear _and_ wind and solar vs fossil fuels. We're sitting on a magical fuel of incredible energy density and zero carbon footprint, suitable for use in base-load power generation - and we're not doing anything with it, because it's too magical for people's taste.

<comment><USER28> As pointed out in one of my other comments, it's not zero carbon, it's slightly more carbon intensive than wind or solar (actually I misread that graph, they're basically tied but all ahead of fossil fuels), both of which are getting better on that scale as they expand.

So it's more expensive and it therefore does less to solve the problem. And every discussion about it devolves into "aren't those silly hippies stupid unlike us rational types, we'd have solved climate change already if the damn hippies hadn't been so irrational" which seems like a great way to hijack people's emotions to drive them towards bad decisions, and basically echos climate change denial strategy.

If your argument for nuclear sound like something a Fox host would say then that's a bad sign, right?

That's why I associate it with climate denial.

<comment><USER29> One obvious benefit of nuclear over wind & solar is that it provides a baseload that doesn't require an as-yet unavailable mass storage solution. This is a common concern on HN, so I'm simply regurgitating what people far more knowledgable than I frequently point out.

\- ed

Actually, is storage included in the CO2 calculation when it comes to wind and solar?

If we want to evolve a non-hydrocarbon based energy economy, we need to shift industry and transport to electric too - how much wind and solar would THAT require?

<comment><USER28> "Baseload" is an amazing rebranding of nuclear's biggest weakness.

It's so expensive that it only makes sense if you run it full out, which means it's terrible for anything but your minimum load.

I'm going to rebrand solar as really good for "peak load" and totally ignore the bits it's less good at. Then when I have a conversation with a nuclear fan I can just say "peak load" and walk away in triumph.

<comment><USER29> A problem here is that you seem to be viewing the equation as zero sum - <USER2> Temporal above and a glance at my comment history might suggest, many nucular proponents on HN are cognizant of potential drawbacks yet keen on the distribution of the industry alongside wind and solar and other renewables.

Legacy III generation's nuclear's a worst case scenario, but still worthwhile as a transition to full electric, never mind the developments in IV, V, travelling wave or fusion beyond.

Frankly, the idea of using fission to somewhat stupidly boil water to drive turbines seems a bit daft to me, but dafter still is the fear of pushing it forward into better technologies.

\- ed

We're going to need a LOT of electrical energy in future. It's got to come from somewhere.

<comment><USER28> Well, to a degree it is zero sum.

I think the answer is a portfolio (an almost infinitely complex one mediated by markets with externalities internalized via carbon fees ideally) but each part of that portfolio will exclude other tech that fills the same niche. One type of insulation will be slightly better than another for a certain purpose

And I have no real philosophical objection to nuclear.

I just despair at people who use nuclear support as a shield for climate change denial. A passive aggressive "well, we tried to save civilization but you weren't grateful for the way we did it so we're just going to let humanity die to spite you. But you can't blame us for _still_ voting for climate change deniers even now because you don't like nuclear which is a perfect solution with no drawbacks whatsoever. Ha, in your face hippie".

Which is where I came in, saying people vocally supporting nuclear often don't seem to care about nuclear at all. Its just a rhetorical club to give them the illusion of the moral high ground.

<comment><USER10> You and I must live in a different universes; in the one I inhabit, people pushing for nuclear are the opposite of climate deniers.

I thought you might have a point when you said pro-nuclear discourse is _like_ climate denial - to quote, "seems like a great way to hijack people's emotions to drive them towards bad decisions, and basically echos climate change denial strategy". But here, you seem to actually believe that pro-nuclear is positively correlated with climate change denialism, which is an absurd proposition in the universe I come from.

<comment><USER28> In the US, nuclear support is correlated with voting Republican, so yes I do think that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Fake solutions for an imagined problem. The unused uranium from a reactor fits neatly into a few parking stalls. Security, transport, and storage of this valuable resource are already solved. Let's put this material to use!

</comment><comment><USER31> Nuclear waste is not really waste. WE should not dispose of it at all. It is literally ZERO problem to keep nuclear waste around easly accessable with no danger for the next couple 100 years.

By then we should really have the technology to consume most of that waste. The tiny rest of it can be stored, we know that this is geologically possilbe and facilities have already been built in Finland.

This is really not a technology problem, but rather a political problem where any progress towards a solution is systematically stopped. So that the 'you can't manage the waste' argument can be used against the nuclear industry.

The US even has a huge pile of money already collected to handle disposle and for decades US sientiests have found the best place to put that stuff. Guess what, its not where the governmnet currently wants to store it. But they can't move it to another place because of politics, and they can't actually store in the place they have selected because politics has greated essentially impossible properties that they need to insure.

This is a political problem, not a technical or financial one.</comment>


Is it environmental friendly to cycle to work? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fraseratkins.com/co2bike.html

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a case for dedicated bike lanes/paths to me. Also, this doesn't take into account other externalities of biking v.s. driving (reduced road wear, fewer cars on the road, health benefits...)</comment>


4chan founder defends online pranks - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/22/chris.poole.4chan/index.html

<comment><USER2> Great start to the rabbit hole of realizing what 4chan exactly is and what makes it different from other online communities. Moot also voices some interesting concerns regarding online identity in the video.

If you've never heard of the place and are about to go visit it for the first time, depending on what boards you want to explore... You'll need a high level of desensitization and a good amount of apathy for the mature boards.</comment>


JavaScript Obfuscations Contest - <AUTHOR> http://www.breakingpointsystems.com/community/blog/javascript-obfuscations-contest/

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems that the contest was already started some days ago, but there is still some time left.

I found this link in this article, which is also interesting: [http://www.kahusecurity.com/2011/brilliant-javascript- obfusc...](http://www.kahusecurity.com/2011/brilliant-javascript-obfuscation- technique/)

Have fun!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apparently, not so many of you were interested. But in case anyone wants to see a solution, here it is:

[http://www.kahusecurity.com/2011/deobfuscating- breakingpoint...](http://www.kahusecurity.com/2011/deobfuscating- breakingpoints-js-challenge/)</comment>


About the Touch Bar – MacOS Human Interface Guidelines - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/AbouttheTouchBar.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000957-CH104-SW1 <comment><AUTHOR> Apple has a clear vision what the Touch Bar is and what it is not.

> Use the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, not as a > display. [..] The Touch Bar shouldn't display alerts, messages, scrolling > content, static content, or anything else that commands the user's attention > or distracts from their work on the main screen.</comment>


Spotify client built using API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Pau1fitz/react-spotify <comment><USER2> Great work! :)

The only downside is that the Spotify WEB API doesn't allow playback longer than ~ 30secs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know, means it is a bit of a gimmick, but was good fun to build!</comment></comment>


4 Ways to Avoid Institutional Memory Loss When Key Employees Leave - <AUTHOR> https://www.schoolkeep.com/blog/4-ways-to-avoid-institutional-memory-loss-when-key-employees-leave <comment><USER3> I believe the number one problem you will run into is what happens to every wiki in the world. Knowledge goes stale and discovery is hard. Especially when you don't know what to look for.

Making content is never the answer to passing on institutional knowledge. This problem was actually solved very effectively a long time ago by trade unions such as the masons.

Start by having an apprenticeship program. Shore up any missing skills and teach someone how to apply them at your institution. Go into the meaning of why you are teaching them.

Second, set up a simple progression where one builds a base of understanding to move to the next phase of institutional understanding. Apprentice (learning) -> Fellow (perfecting) -> Master (can teach).

Masons don't even write anything down and have managed to pass on institutional knowledge for generations. Martial arts communities are similar.

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree with your main point, and I think the apprenticeship model could work wonders in many tech environments. Harder to implement when you have a very migrant worker population, even at normal rates of turnover.

There is however some merit to writing down details to critical or seldom-used processes in a communally-accessed place such as a wiki. Keeping it up to date and having someone review it regularly has to be part of the process.

<comment><USER5> Build instructions, and dependency assumptions for starters.

Sometimes the hardest part is just figuring out how to get a project running, or learning what kinds of settings need to be enabled on deployment.

As for craft and actual in-code understanding, I think the masonry example can fit well (see pair-programming as a more fluid example of this). Granted, if you have an API, you probably want to at least document the interface with an example of how to call it. The complex bits of "how is this architect-ed can be better taught by 1:1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm thoroughly sick of advertising masquerading as content. Not that it this anything new, but I still wish ill on those who waste my time so. And it seems to be on the rise in recent years.

This is a puff piece for their LMS and on that basis is not necessarily good advice. Where it is good advice, it is a mixture of motherhood statements, commmon sense, and the bleeding obvious.

Edit/addendum: I'm starting to flag such articles. The poster in this case has never posted any remarks and only ever contributed advertorials and promotional blogs for this one product. That is red flag#1.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, bummed this got flagged. Considering HN shared it on FB & Twitter - <USER2> think that may have been uncalled for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While this isn't a 1:1, the Trades are getting hit hard by this.

With the massive shifts in them(technology)you're losing the generation of TradesPeople that had both the old and new. And were able to draw off the old to work better in the new.

However there isn't the equipment/chance/time to spread that knowledge to the new Apprentices who only get to see the new without building a more solid foundation.

</comment><comment><USER8> TL;DR: People retire, make sure they document what they know in any medium. Also make sure new hires go through the documentation.

Seems like common sense.

<comment><USER9> Harder than it sounds. Specially in companies where only a few are "tech" employees

<comment><USER10> I worked in a small place where this was a huge problem: There were only one or two software engineers working on the (multiple) products at any given time through the company's history. So when one person left, that could mean anywhere between 50-100% of the company's tribal knowledge of their own software is lost. Getting up to speed meant diving into the source code (if someone knew where it was) and stumbling upon old text file documentation basically by accident. Since they did not use source control (!!) there wasn't even a commit history to browse through to get even a clue as to in what state the products were in.

<comment><USER9> That's exactly what I mean. Sometimes management doesn't understand what the documentation is supposed to look like or even the importance of it. They might not be aware of the complexity of their infrastructure that's been worked on by a single developer for a span of many years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I read somewhere that a great employee is one that makes themselves unnecessary, that is, they document everything they do, automate key processes they (used to) complete and so forth.

I wonder if "institutional memory" is just a symptom of a poor process.

\---

For example, say you work at CoolCorp. At CoolCorp you're a sales engineer and you notice that many engineers and sales people alike constantly ask you questions concerning conditional pricing.

You consider yourself to be an amazing employee. So, when again confronted with a edge-case pricing and technical question what do you do?

A. Answer the question and move on to additional tasks.

B. Answer the question and consider documenting this particular question somewhere along with your answer.

C. Answer the question and note the general scheme of this question in order to build an internal tool to give people the answers automatically.

I don't think there's a right answer since there are costs involved with each option, but it's interesting to think about.

<comment><USER12> Great Employees drive themselves to extinction. They documented everything so well that their jobs were offshored somewhere with a lower standard of living. That's why they're so hard to find. The ones that survived learned their lesson and won't make that mistake again.

<comment><USER11> This is a great point. Like you imply, I don't think the incentives are there. After a certain level of "greatness" your compensation will almost never be commensurate with your value.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. For the knowlege they contain I'd bet they get the standard cost of living raise and will probably have to fill out some stupid self evaluation to justify even that.

It's only when the companies are going to loose that employee do they start trying everything to keep that employee. By then it's too late. Always reactive and never proactive seems to be the corporate motto these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We approach this with documentation (using text / wiki), mentoring, and by trading product responsibilities semi-regularly. There are a few cases where specialized knowledge hasn't changed hands, edge cases, but the cross-training from moving products around has really helped. Also tends to reduce overly- protective ownership of pieces of our product base.

On the downside it means not many are "experts" in their product, and it also drives some folks a bit batty. You'll get into a new product, look at a specific bug, pull a string here or there, and then wonder how the Earth is still in one piece.

Edit: Yet when employees leave there's generally at least one entire team still with us that built or maintained the product who can fill in and help, if needed.

</comment><comment><USER13> To preserve institutional knowledge one needs to create business processes and an organizational culture that promotes the "capitals" \- transforming employees (those who know) intellectual capital(ideas and experience)into structural capital (captured in digital form) in an environment where it is shared across boundaries (relationship capital). Knowledge and experience becomes an organizational asset vice an individual asset that goes out the door when people leave the organization.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know about Cray OS? - <AUTHOR>

(http://chrisfenton.com/cos-recovery/)
This guy has built a replica Cray-1a.  He wants to run original (real) software, but is having trouble getting his machine to boot.
This is the kind of challenge that some people on HN should be able to help with.
(I have no connection to him.  I saw this on hack-a-day.  I think the replica is awesome.  And I really like people who keep obsolete software running.) <comment><USER2> click-able: <http://chrisfenton.com/cos-recovery/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Consider alt.folklore.computers, on Usenet.</comment>


Subbable - a new way to support the people who make the content you love - <AUTHOR> https://subbable.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Context: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dYlbz77uzI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dYlbz77uzI)

(started by Hank Green of VidCon/vlogbrothers fame)</comment>


Show HN: Hey Freelancers - <AUTHOR> https://remotehub.io/blog/freelancers <comment><AUTHOR> I'm running this small community site for remote workers and I've been thinking about how to connect freelancers with clients.

As I'm now looking for a freelancer to help me with turning designs into responsive html/css, I thought what a great way to start connecting freelancers through this.

So I wrote a quick blog post about what I built yesterday. It's not just posting freelance jobs, rather it's creating projects and inviting freelancers to join.

I also shared a couple of more ideas where to take this next in the blog ("freelancer friends", "share with my network").

Would be fun to hear your thoughts!

You can read it on my blog: [https://remotehub.io/blog/freelancers](https://remotehub.io/blog/freelancers)

And if you'd like to work on the project, let me know! You can fill in the quick form on the project page: [https://remotehub.io/freelance/mygames- website-development](https://remotehub.io/freelance/mygames-website- development)

One problem I have with Upwork and Fiverr is that it seems to be built on "lowest price wins". I don't like that. I think we could build something more human! Yes?</comment>


My ECMAScript 7 wishlist - <AUTHOR> http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2014/06/03/my-ecmascript-7-wishlist/ <comment><USER2> Shameless plug, but the author should check out Dart.

Dart's core libraries include first, last, isEmpty, isNotEmpty getters for Iterables, as well as a ton of functional methods like map(), where(), reduce(), expand() (flatMap). Not only do the built-in Lists implement Iterable, but so do NodeList, so you can do things like:

      var e = query('#id').children.first;

Dart's annotations would serve as custom property descriptors, and mixins are like traits. Having interfaces in general is also hugely beneficial.

It also sounds like he leans towards wanting closed classes with your requests for deepSeal and defensive classes. This does prevent a lot of errors. Both Dart and TypeScript give you this type of safety.

<comment><USER3> Dart is a Google proprietary product.

<comment><USER4> Its neither proprietary in the sense of closed implementation or in the sense of not having an open, freely implementable spec. Its "proprietary" only in the sense of "not adopted by a standards body".

<comment><USER3> Not adopted by a standards body is a pretty significant factor.

It is also proprietary in that Google is in absolute control of the development process.

<comment><USER5> Pretty significant factor in what? Write down all the reasonably popular programming languages you can think of. How many have been adopted by a standards body? How many have been adopted by a standards body _in their current form_?

I hardly ever write code in a standardized language. Actually, I don't think I know _anyone_ who writes code in a standardized language, because nontrivial programs in "standardized" languages almost always go outside the strict confines of whatever mediocre crap some committee adopted.

<comment><USER3> C, C++, JavaScript, Java, Fortran

Only the vast majority of all commercial code ever written.

<comment><USER5> You've just proven my point while cleverly but unsuccessfully trying to avoid being responsive to my inquiry. Java was never adopted in any form by a standards body, three of the remaining four are an already-small and ever- shrinking share of the industry, and ECMAScript is never up to date with the latest developments in JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> Even if you are right, and I'd only grant you that I am partially wrong about java because the JCP has collapsed since the Oracle takeover - the rest are just you adding qualifiers to minimize the contradiction, so what?

Your position is simply to dismiss the value of standards and state that it's fine that Dart is proprietary.

Also your statement about ECMAScript is flat out disingenuous. JavaScript implementations may move ahead between ECMAScript standards, but it _is_ standardized, and by a real cross-industry group, not just a rubber stamp from one company.

It is hard to take seriously an assertion that the level of standardization between Dart and JavaScript is comparable.

<comment><USER5> Nobody made that assertion. _You_ made an assertion that standardization is "a pretty significant factor". You've yet to clarify what it's a significant factor in, nor have you provided evidence that it is, in fact, significant.

I also didn't state that it's fine that Dart is proprietary, and I'd appreciate you not putting words in my mouth. My position is that your premise is incorrect and Dart is _not_ proprietary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The already said ES6 spec will be delayed again, this time for June 2015.

So it will take until like 2020 to be able to use it without transpilers and hacks for all the non supporting browsers (most of them).

So I don't have any ES7 wishes. Until then who knows even if I'll still be doing web front-end work.

<comment><USER7> I think it would be a safe bet to wish that ES7 has a better support of second generation quantum computation primitives and a good implementation of exocortex interoperability APIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think allowing the negative array index, like "items[-1]", would greatly improve the indexing problem. IIRC, JS strings also don't support negative indexes. Is this intended? I think the backward incompatibility that would be led by the change should be tolerable.

And to my personal preferences, I prefer "items[0]" to "items.first()", though the latter is more "english". One of the comments from the post also suggests "items.slice(-1)[0]" as a replacement of "items.last()", but that's another case...

<comment><USER9> That would break backwards-compatibility, however. Arrays are just objects with a magic .length property. As such, I can already do `items[-1] = 'foo';` and it'll create a property named "-1" and set it to "foo".

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's what I wanted to say by the "tolerable" part. I know arrays, as well as other plain objects in JS, are capable of having arbitrary properties. But hey, how many libraries or code rely on that specific behavior of Array? For the "Greater Good", they can suppress those minor cases and simply extend the magic to the _negative integer_ range. I believe this change can be landed without too much compatibility pain.

<comment><USER10> Putting arbitrary properties on an Array, in practice, turns it into a hashtable or a 'mixed' hashtable+Array (this depends on the JS implementation.

Dense array layouts are largely an optimization that the JS runtime applies if it's able to. So you 'can' put arbitrary properties on an Array, but you risk throwing away the benefits you get from using it instead of Object.

Sadly the risk of compatibility pain is huge for almost every change you can possibly imagine. I've been participating on es-discuss for a couple years now and tiny, harmless changes end up breaking real web applications on a regular basis - causing the spec committee to have to scratch their heads and figure out a fix. Sometimes there isn't a fix, and they have to rethink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can't the exception throwing on missing property behaviour be created using ES6 proxies?

Anyway, while many of these things would be nice additions, I think ES7 will contain more low-level features which particularly benefit libraries and compile-to-js languages, such as SIMD support and value objects. Personally, I'd love to see tail call elimination in the spec.

<comment><USER11> It appears the author has already answered my question:

[http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2014/04/22/creating- defensive-...](http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2014/04/22/creating-defensive- objects-with-es6-proxies/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting how this author uses WeakSet where a normal set would be completely equivalent; as long as the function is running, the toplevel object is reachable from the local variables, and so are all the "deep" objects, by definition (they belong to the toplevel object's reference graph). Therefore, there is no way that an object becomes unreachable after it has been visited by the algorithm (considering that JavaScript is single-threaded). The only reason I can see for this is if JavaScript has no normal sets.

<comment><USER10> JS has Set and WeakSet, and Set is more powerful (it allows a wider variety of key types). It's actually quite rare for you to need a WeakSet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> On the other side of the spectrum, what improvements could be added to JavaScript the assembly language to make it easier and more efficient to target to ?

<comment><USER7> They want everyone to think same way and use one single multi-purpose scripting language. JS as a bytecode is a less favourable outcome for them for some reason, maybe because everyone would stop caring about using JS directly. Hence the unfortunate lack of news on the asm.js side.

<comment><USER10> If by 'lack of news' you mean 'active development and more tools vendors introducing asm.js targets', sure. asm.js support keeps improving in all the major browsers, while Epic and Unity both have increasingly viable asm.js+WebGL backends. Furthermore, emscripten is moving towards being a mature LLVM backend instead of a separate compiler tool, and other compilers are adopting asm as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Better things to wish for:

\- async / promise / await

\- object merging / cloning (with options / deep)

\- array properties instead of methods (ruby style, array.first, array.last, array.empty, array.contains, etc...)

\- lets not forget other object types that need methods, Number, Boolean, String (.equals, .equalsIgnoreCase, etc...)

Let's just say, javascript could be a lot better :P

</comment><comment><USER15> The author complains about having to type "items[items.length - 1]" a bunch but then shows how to implement last() and first() himself very easily via prototyping 6 lines of code onto Array.

So... what is the problem again?

(a lot of the other stuff in the article is valid though)

<comment><USER16> Extending a browser provided prototype shouldn't be done lightly. You certainly couldn't do something like that if you were writing a library, as you might conflict with somebody elses implementation of the same add on.

There's also value in having things like this standardized. If its a common idiom, its worth including in the standard to allow people to use it without having to worry about what utility libraries they're including.

<comment><USER17> I actually tend to think that this kind of shows the folly of single-dispatch OO in general (prototypical or not), in particular its focus on privileging the first parameter syntactically. The problem here is essentially that a freestanding function looks and thus (subjectively) "feels" different from a method. The syntax is obviously slightly different: "myArray.last()" vs. "last(myArray)". The latter stands out as slightly "alien" when compared to the other methods on Array.

Why should the first parameter be privileged? Why isn't it possible to add a new method to, say, Array which is scoped to your lexical context?

Even classic procedural programming didn't have this problem (as long as you don't need access to private data): Just add a function that does what you want and it'll look and behave just as the other functions on Array.

EDIT: Maybe the focus shouldn't be on adding a few convenience methods here and there, but rather on making the language itself more "pliable" or "growable" as Steele would probably say.

<comment><USER18> Nothing prevents you from using a function (`last(myArray)`). In a dynamically typed language what you are proposing makes only very limited sense.

<comment><USER17> I'm not saying functions are bad or anything. They just "feel" wrong since they don't look like the built-ins.

Regarding "dynamically typed": CLOS[1] got this right. Common Lisp is dynamically typed. In short: Dynamic/static typing has very little to do with this.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp_Object_System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp_Object_System)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> These are all pretty minor things that can already be done in ES5.... The biggest thing I want in ES7 is immutables.

</comment><comment><USER20> Thanks for the article. I agree with most of this, however for empty arrays I find it best just to check length in the "falsy" way. Like -

if ( !array.length ) { //do something }

Seems succinct enough not to require a separate function.

<comment><USER14> if (array && !array.length) { /* do something here */ }

Check existence as well, this also works for a jQuery selection.</comment></comment>


Introducing boot.rackspace.com - <AUTHOR> http://developer.rackspace.com/blog/introducing-boot-dot-rackspace-dot-com.html

<comment><USER2> Awesome :)

We developed our own system like this (also based on iPXE), and it's been wonderfully helpful.

The mildly tricky bit is getting Windows installs working, which they haven't seem to have done here. That's probably more due to licensing issues rather then technical issues.</comment>


Ask HN: How do Internet businesses get around foreign registration? - <AUTHOR>

First, a bit of background for anyone unfamiliar:
Foreign registration is the requirement for a corporation based in one state to _register_ to do business in another state. You can incorporate in Delaware, for example, but there is a registration requirement to do business in California. Two things seem clear to me: First, internet businesses do commerce that is very often out of state, and second, it seems highly unlikely that they register in every state they do business in.
So my question is this: Am I misinterpreting this part of the law? Or is it just not enforced too strongly? <comment><USER2> Every state has a requirement that an out-of-state entity that is "doing business" within its borders register with it as a foreign corporation (or LLC) as a pre-condition to transacting such business.

While the requirements vary from state-to-state, there is always some minimum threshhold that must be met, whether it consists of having a physical presence in the state, having employees in the state, accepting orders in the state, or anything else the state authorities consider a minimum threshhold.

Internet companies, like any other, must register in every state in which they are "doing business" in such a way as to meet the minimum threshhold for that state. Very often, they do _not_ meet the threshhold requirements and thus do not need to register.

You are correct as well that these laws are not necessarily strictly enforced. The normal penalty for failing to register as a foreign corporation, for example, is that the entity cannot sue or defend itself from a lawsuit in the state until it does register. However, an entity can usually cure this problem by registering after-the-fact (and can then avail itself of the courts as needed). This system sometimes causes companies to be lax about doing such registrations even when they technically should do them.

That said, as a rough rule of thumb, most companies do not normally need to register in the various jurisdictions unless they have a physical presence there. Best practice is to consult with a knowledgeable lawyer on the issue to make sure.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I can't confirm your interpretation of this particular law, I'm certain that no internet businesses register themselves in every jurisdiction in which they potentially offer their goods for sale. I'm uncertain whether this is a matter of interpretation or enforcement, but practically speaking I wouldn't worry about compliance here. If you go searching for laws that you must obey, you will likely conclude that there is no possible way to run any business legally.</comment>


With Yelp Knockoff, Groupon's Still Searching for Magic Bullet - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/10/22/with-yelp-knockoff-groupons-still-searching-for-magic-bullet/

<comment><USER2> So more small businesses can be coerced into selling their products at 25% of retail value in the name of "getting their name out there". Plus more clutter in organic search results along with yelp, yellowpages, and thumbtack.</comment>


Banjo CEO steps down as fallout from revelations of past ties to KKK continues - mark-ruwt https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/5/8/21252657/banjo-ceo-steps-down-fallout-revelations-past-ties-kkk-white-supremacist-group-damien-patton <comment><AUTHOR> I can't stand this era of no forgiveness. How can such a religious country founded on Judeo Christians principles miss the mark so badly. So he was a misguided child who wet through his own hell... it's what he has done since that that really defines him. If you can't understand that then you are further from your God than you think. Repentance and remorse and making amends is what frees you from your sins. Those who hurdle them back at you 20-30-40 years later just don't get it. But just know I forgive you and I pray that we will all march in the same direction of peace and forgiveness.

</comment><comment><USER2> Normally I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, as young people do incredibly stupid things. I was prepared to try and find a grain of sympathy for this guy and then read that he participated in a drive by shooting of a synagogue.

I am glad he was removed. Even if he has since reformed himself and is a better person now, people need to know if you do something that terrible the consequences will reverberate for the rest of your life.</comment>