Save 50% on All O'Reilly Ebooks and Videos - <AUTHOR> http://shop.oreilly.com/category/deals/b2s-special.do

<comment><USER2> Maybe this is bad to say, but whenever it comes to "me needing a book" the first thing I do is google "$BOOK_NAME pdf" and check it out.

There is a catch though.. if I find the book a good asset, then I make sure to buy it, but otherwise it just doesn't make sense to gamble $20+ on a book that will be outdated in a year, unlike literature.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty unnecessary here.

</comment><comment><USER4> BTW, Oreilly books can be bought on Google play(epub only) by less than 4 eur. Not the newest ones, though.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=O%27Reilly+M...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=O%27Reilly+Media)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to see them do a Steam-style sale where all eBooks are $0.99 for 24h (or something similar).

</comment><comment><USER6> O'Reilly uses a department store pricing structure.

There's almost always a sale, and for eBooks, the sale price is usually not much cheaper than Amazon.com's (or other sellers) "everyday" price. Only suckers pay full-price for their eBooks.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's silly to keep posting every O'Reilly eBook sale to HN. This is basically just free advertising for them. The 50% discount is nothing special: If you sign up for a membership you get a permanent buy-one-get-one-free discount that O'Reilly interprets as a 50% discount on each book. So just sign up for a membership, wait until you have two books you want to buy, and get a 50% discount without having to wait for a sale.

<comment><USER8> If I'm not mistaken, and I may well be, you can actually use that code on a single book and it'll work just fine as a 50% off as well. So basically you can get 50% off at any given time, the sales are completely a marketing technique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just picked up _Understanding Computation_ and, having made it through the first two chapters at this point, heartily recommend it. If anyone wants to have a little reading group, I'd be interested.

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025481.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025481.do)

<comment><USER10> Author here. Thanks for the recommendation! There's already a reading group in London ([http://lanyrd.com/series/compbookclub/](http://lanyrd.com/series/compbookclub/)), but that may not be of any use to you.

If anyone else is interested in the book, there's more information at [http://computationbook.com/](http://computationbook.com/).

<comment><USER9> Absolutely. I'm glad you wrote it, seems like an unexpected way to approach the subject, and I can see where e.g. this comment[1] comes from. But I think it's quite valuable and inspires me (lacking any CS degree) to pursue further study.

[1]: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1isawq/understa...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1isawq/understanding_computation/cb7r54k)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish they'd have some sales on physical books. Maybe it's just my traditional thinking, but I have a hard time paying $20+ for a pdf. I understand the publisher needs money, the author has to eat, and the printing costs aren't really a whole ton that you can reduce the price with, but it still just doesn't sit right with me.

I feel like and old curmudgeon.

Side edit: In what kind of strange world does the 2nd edition of an eBook still fetch $32 while the 3rd edition is $36?

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780735618794.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780735618794.do)

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145385512.do?code=B2S3](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145385512.do?code=B2S3)

<comment><USER12> I'm with you: I like good old dead tree books for so many reasons such as writing in the margins. They should follow Manning books philosophy and also discount physical books as well, a feature which has resulted in my acquiring 10+ books by them.

<comment><USER13> >dead tree books

Go back to reddit, kid.

<comment><USER14> >Go back to reddit, kid.

The one-hour-old account says to the two year old account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> O'Reilly is having sale and discounts so often that I avoid buying books at the full price while waiting for a coupon. This often ends with me forgetting about the book and not buying it at all.

<comment><USER16> Same here. But on rare occasions when I do avail the buy-one-get-one-free offer, the second book invariably goes unread.

Also does anyone know why these 50% discount offers are limited to ebooks only?

<comment><USER17> Because the margin is obviously higher on ebooks than print books. I imagine that more profit is made on an ebook sale at 50% off than a print book at full price.

<comment><USER18> As soon as you involve Amazon, that's surprisingly not true. Really.

O'Reilly makes more on e-book sales directly through their on-line store then they do on print. However, every e-book they sell via Amazon, their margins are very, very different. Here's a rough guide for a $40 book:

* O'Reilly E-Book Online Store: Approx 99% margin or $39.60

* O'Reilly Store selling print book (bulk print discount assumed): 95% margin or $38.00

* Amazon selling print book (bulk print discount assumed): Approx 90% margin or $36.00

* Amazon selling kindle e-book: 35% margin or $14.00 (minus the Amazon processing fee so it's actually worse)

Odds are the bulk of O'Reilly e-book sales are probably done on Amazon, where the margin is AWFUL. The constant huge sales by O'Reilly are a way to recoup the painful margins insisted upon by Amazon.

Yeah, Amazon makes boatloads off of kindle book sales.

<comment><USER16> <quote> * O'Reilly Store selling print book (bulk print discount assumed): 95% margin or $38.00 </quote>

Is that really the kind of margins they operate at or is that a typo?

<comment><USER19> No. Those numbers above are ill-informed.

But yes, the average _print_ costs for a single-color book per unit are in the 2-4 dollar range (that is, manufacturing alone, no design, marketing, editing).

And how would it be possible for Amazon to "keep their lights on" selling physical books at 40% off list price, if they pay O'Reilly $36 for a $40 book? Amazon buys from O'Reilly and most other pubs at 60% off, non-returnable. So the math for the publishers' take from Amazon on physical books looks like this:

[list price] * [.4] - [print costs / overhead] - [author royalty]

<comment><USER16> Thanks. I was mixing up margin with pre-tax profit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-realized-putting-radium-in-everything-was-not-the-answer/273780/ <comment><USER2> If you are interested in this subject, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Deborah Blum's excellent 2011 book _The Poisoner's Handbook_ ([https://www.amazon.com/Poisoners-Handbook-Murder-Forensic- Me...](https://www.amazon.com/Poisoners-Handbook-Murder-Forensic- Medicine/dp/014311882X)), which tells the stories of a bunch of different chemical catastrophes from the same period. Radium is covered, as well as such other "what were they thinking?" stories as the introduction of lead into gasoline and the poisoning of industrial alcohol by the government during Prohibition in a misguided effort to keep it from being turned into bootleg liquor. It's full of fascinating case studies, and Blum has an engaging writing style that makes it a good read.

If you prefer to watch your history, PBS' _American Experience_ documentary series did an episode based on Blum's book (see [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poisoners](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poisoners) ); it can be streamed via a bunch of different video services.

<comment><USER3> We still poison alcohol not only for prohibition reasons but also tax reasons.

<comment><USER4> In the EU at least the denatured alcohols sold to the general public (e.g. as cleaning products) don't have enough actual poison in them to cause much damage.

The main thing they shove in there to stop you drinking it is denatonium benzoate ("bitrex"), which will make you _regret_ putting it in your mouth, but won't kill you because you'll immediately want to spit it out instead. The other ingredients are mostly to stop you trying to get the bitrex back out and then selling it as bootleg booze (thus evading the tax).

<comment><USER5> I think Nintendo coat Switch cartridges with the same thing, to prevent kids from putting the tiny cartridges in their mouth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you go to the Wikipedia Article for Radium Girls: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls) \- You'd see it's an exact mirror of much of the text that's _re_ posted on theatlantic.com article.

<comment><USER7> I did, and I searched for several random 4-6 word phrases in the Atlantic article from the Wikipedia one, and I didn't find anything making it obvious much of the content is an exact mirror.

<comment><USER8> Its lazily reworded, still plaigarism

<comment><USER7> > ...an exact mirror...

It might be lazily reworded, but hyperbole like that hurts the commenter's credibility and makes me less likely to believe them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When you think people had learned their lesson by the 1930s, don't forget about watching atomic bomb tests from the side of the road in Nevada in the 50s: [https://allthatsinteresting.com/atomic- tourism](https://allthatsinteresting.com/atomic-tourism)

<comment><USER10> If totally do it if it were even close to safe. Is a small yield blast dangerous from 75 miles?

<comment><USER11> You can use Nukemap to work that out:

[https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)

I think it would be perfectly safe - though you probably don't want to live directly downwind:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Makes me think that regulation moves very slowly.

<comment><USER13> It moves slowly in both directions. If everything had built-in sunset provisions, it would be a lot easier to try things.

<comment><USER14> That seems like a terrible idea because people forget why useful regulations where needed.

Lead is never going to be safe. _Julius Caesar 's engineer, Vitruvius, reported, "water is much more wholesome from earthenware pipes than from lead pipes."_ _Lead was added to cheap wine illegally in the 18th and early 19th centuries as a sweetener._. Note the illegal bit because we knew it was toxic.

But fast forward and... _In the late 1950s through the 1970s Herbert Needleman and Clair Cameron Patterson did research trying to prove lead 's toxicity to humans.[231] In the 1980s Needleman was falsely accused of scientific misconduct by the lead industry associates.[232][233]_

Read the history and we just keep discovering the same issues over and over again. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning) Yet, we still keep adding it to various products today and people still get significant exposure.

<comment><USER13> > _That seems like a terrible idea because people forget why useful > regulations were needed._

To me that seems to indicate that we need to keep a record of why laws are made, so that the case is simply ready to be made when the sun is due to set.

<comment><USER15> > To me that seems to indicate that we need to keep a record of why laws are > made

Whether and why a practice is useful generally has little or nothing to do with people's understanding of whether and why it is useful. The arguments people advance for everything, including valuable things, are almost uniformly nonsense and easy to disprove.

So, a record of why laws are made wouldn't really serve any purpose.

<comment><USER16> Laws should be measured against the reasons they were created.

<comment><USER15> If you start doing a good thing for a bad reason, you should stop?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of the gleeful use of DDT as well. It's a common pattern.

<comment><USER18> Probably a bad example. A lot more people died from malaria than would ever have been harmed by DDT.

<comment><USER19> Most people have no idea malaria was endemic in the USA as far north as New York State. The advantage of the DDT saturation was that it wiped out the disease reservoir completely, precisely because it persisted in the environment. Modern "responsible" DDT usage (treated nets, wall spraying, etc) is just breeding resistant mosquitoes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How long until will it be until we find out the effects of 5G radiation?

The real point of my question is not to raise conspiracy theories about 5G, but to illustrate a point. Our regulatory organisations operate under a "let's do it and ban it later if some people die" kind of attitude.

<comment><USER21> It's just you.

Things have changed enormously from the "let's put radium in everything" era. Nowadays there's a good case to be made that we've swung too far in the opposite direction and we're letting people die because the FDA is too conservative in approving new medications (and old Russian medications with a proven track record that's impossible to patent therefore nobody has the incentive to spend millions on getting through the FDA vetting process, but that's a different issue).

<comment><USER22> The whole anti-vax movement. There is bad things in the vaccinations that are saving us!

<comment><USER23> How do you verify the content of a vaccine? It's not much different to using proprietary software. Yes, it seems to be good for us, but can you trust it fully without being able to verify it's contents and confirm that it wasn't tampered with along the way?

<comment><USER24> It's not reasonable to expect every individual to have the time, resources or expertise to personally run a full chemical analysis on every dose of vaccine or medicine that enters their body.

So... you don't. You don't verify it, because you can't. You can't verify all of science from first principles. You can't inspect every building you enter and verify that it meets code. You can't inspect every electronic device for NSA taps. You can't inspect all of your food, drinking water, or even all of the FOSS code you use. Society is too large, and the domains of knowledge and expertise that feed into it are too complex for any individual to fully comprehend.

You can't eliminate risk or trust from life. As far as vaccines go, you just have to trust that they work and are not likely to be poison and take the shot.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


North Carolina Congressional Map Ruled Unconstitutionally Gerrymandered - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/us/north-carolina-gerrymander.html <comment><USER2> And on the other side of the aisle, this is what Democrats did in Maryland.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland's_congressional_distr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland's_congressional_districts#/media/File:Maryland_Congressional_Districts,_113th_Congress.tif)

<comment><USER3> You're right that this is not solely a Republican issue. But it does have a partisan lean; the GOP set a deliberate target of getting control of state map drawing processes, and have substantially more gerrymanders in their favour than against, as the maps stand.

I'm from the UK, where the idea of letting politicians draw their own boundaries is anathema. We've had a standing Boundary Commission since 1944; it does a very decent job.

<comment><USER4> _have substantially more gerrymanders in their favour than against_

I could be wrong, but this seems to be because Republicans control more states than Democrats do.

<comment><USER3> That's certainly part of it. And part of the reason that Republicans control more states is (as TFA makes clear) that they made a particular effort to win them in order to control the mapmaking process for Congress.

I don't know which party is more likely to gerrymander (or gerrymander more shamelessly) if given the chance, though it should be calculable in principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All parties in power strive to do this, it's neither a Republican nor a Democratic issue. It's a power issue. Unfortunately so long as humans, with a political persuasion, are tasked with drawing these maps, they will continue to maximize the power of one party over another. In some states it has led to a nearly exclusion of one party over another.</comment>


Ask HN: Best beginner book for C programming? - <AUTHOR>

I have recently learned Python using the book Learn Python The Hard Way, by Zed Shaw. I found the book to be very enjoyable, as well as informative. I would love to have a book similar to Learn Python The Hard Way, but for C. If you know of any, please   let me know. <comment><USER2> "Learn C The Hard Way" by Zed Shaw is a good start: <http://c.learncodethehardway.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as I can tell K&R is still the best. Its reputation is entirely deserved.

</comment><comment><USER4> Practical C Programming by Steve Oualline (O'reilly Press) is maybe my favorite beginning coding books of all time, and definitely the best introduction to C I've encountered to date.

</comment><comment><USER5> I looked into a few books but in the end, I always went to the good old Kerninghan & Ritchie book. So my personal favoir is still "Programming in C" by K&R.</comment>


Show HN: Feetlot – Never buy the wrong size shoes ever again - <AUTHOR> https://feetlot.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! I'm Alexander. I love making stuff that solves my own problems.

If you ever ordered shoes online, you know how tricky sizing is. I personally own shoes ranging from size 11 and up to size 13.

Before Feetlot, the solution was to google "SHOE_NAME sizing reddit" and browse through countless threads on Reddit. There, people would post something like "If I'm size 12 in shoe A, what size shoe B should I buy?" Being a programmer, I decided to automate this process. That's how Feetlot was born.

The idea is simple: allow people to enter which shoes in which sizes they wear, then use this data to calculate size differences between shoes.

Example:

User 1 wears shoe A in size 10, shoe B in size 9.5.

User 2 wears shoe A in size 12, is looking to buy shoe B.

Based on User 1 data, we can calculate that there is a -0.5 difference between shoe A and shoe B.

So when User 2 signs up and enters "Shoe A, size 12", we recommend shoe B in size 11.5 to them.

Obviously the real world scenarios involve more shoes.

As of today, 12,152 people signed up and submitted 22,848 sizes resulting in staggering 303,139 unique shoe-to-shoe size differences!

What I love the most about Feetlot is that when people sign up and enter their sizes to get a recommendation, they are actually providing value to other users! I love the "I help you, you help me" model working here.</comment>


An Open Letter to Msjhs: A Bay Area Public School Experience - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ankushswar1/an-open-letter-to-msjhs-23c2333f7f84 <comment><USER2> I think the fact that the author capitalizes _Black, Hispanic,_ and _Native American_ when used as racial identifying adjectives but not _white_ says it all.

<comment><AUTHOR> What does it say?</comment></comment>


12 months of GoSquared real-time web analytics - <AUTHOR> http://appsumo.com/gosqured-special-promo/

<comment><AUTHOR> Being a user of Chartbeat and not having heard of GoSquared, has anybody had an experience w/ the latter that they could share, positive or negative?</comment>


Major Investor Filing Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> My primary investor is filing for bankruptcy, and is interested in finding a replacement investor. In all of my searching, I have only found advice on how founders handle company bankruptcy, but not how to handle an insolvent shareholder. Any tips, intros, or advice on the topic? <comment><USER2> Talk to an attorney. There are lots of little details that need to be understood. For the investor the shares are an "asset" at least as the court will see them and they will potentially be up for liquidation. But there are a bunch of details around that, for example what chapter of bankruptcy? How long ago the investment was done etc.

You want to have an attorney help you through this, it won't take a lot of money or time but get the advice.

<comment><USER3> It's equally important to do the research yourself as well so that you can make more educated decisions with your attorney. I would, at least, read your local state laws in regards to this subject.

<comment><USER2> Bankruptcy is a federal statue not state. And the law is extremely complex. I don't disagree people should be informed but this requires an attorney to properly prepare.

If the investment was debt equity versus a priced round that also drasticly affects the options available.

OP please reach out to an attorney, and ask lots of questions. And make sure they understand the details of how the investment was done etc.

IANAL but there are a couple of ways this could work out in your Companies favor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! This is helpful. Will discuss further with Cooley. They weren't too stressed about it, but since the investor is getting more motivated to sell, I'm trying to best educate myself</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scott Adams: Shiny Objects - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/shiny_objects/

<comment><USER2> It's always possible that a major catastrophe will destroy our economic system, but its far more likely that we will either limp along or improve. I remember the same fears in the seventies, and the concomitant buying of gold, at the same time as the price of gold spiked to $800.00. Yes, the economy was turbulent, but that's not an indication of imminent total meltdown. In the past year the price of gold has been at record highs. Why this encourages scared people to buy is beyond me; the most likely scenario is that it will go down in value.

<comment><USER3> The idea is to diversify into lower-risk assets _than the U.S. dollar_ or other currencies, _even if those investments will cost more in the long run_. It doesn't matter what gold costs right now if the USD experiences further free-fall, which is not out of the question.

This is generally the same reason there are buyers of sovereign debt (i.e. Treasury Notes) at a negative interest rate.

If the Eurozone collapses, as is more possible every day now, then that's a case in point for diversifying away from Euros. Some other choices in this _Great Recession_ are USD, U.S. Treasury Notes, Japanese Yen, Swiss Francs, etc, none particularly attractive right now. The Chinese Yuan isn't a viable choice because it is pegged to the dollar.

[Edit:] The point is to deal with the current high risk of currency free-fall, _not_ your normal everyday investment ebb and flow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Equating gold to cow manure according to the principle that only that has value which you and others think has value is ridiculous. It ignores several thousand years of history during which gold = money. The question is: Why? Because gold is relatively, but not extremely, scarce; it cannot be manufactured; it is durable; it is easily divisible; and sufficiently small amounts are valuable enough according to the above factors so as to make it practical as a portable store of value.

Since these traits, at least on planet earth, endure regardless of the various cultural and economic trends which overtake economies from place to place and from time to time, gold is insulated from the shifting winds of human whim like no other substance on earth. THAT is why gold has = money for thousands of years. No store of wealth based upon GDP or legal tender laws can compare because all such stores of wealth are transitory, and given time, will fail.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to highlight that debt isn't so much a problem as the trade imbalance is. And the idea that no currently traded specie will have value at some arbitrary point in the near future is silly: the USD might not be the currency of global exchange, but there will still be such a currency (likely the Euro, the RMB, or a synthetic currency) or exchange becomes incredibly difficult.

China is not likely to stop intervening in foreign currency markets, though there is a substantial risk to their economy if they do so. But people forget that long before China was subsidizing US trade imbalances, Japan was. And they'd likely replace China as the purchaser of dollar securities in order to stave off the inflation of the yen.

Please visit [http://www.bookstore.petersoninstitute.org/publications/inte...](http://www.bookstore.petersoninstitute.org/publications/interstitial.cfm?ResearchID=1290) for more information.

</comment><comment><USER6> If things do get that bad, that gold is the only store of value, we're screwed anyway.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, unless you have gold, which you will, given time, without question be able to convert back to usable wealth.

<comment><USER7> "without question"

I question. You clearly take that as virtually axiomatic, but I question. Gold's ultimate value is that it is pretty and shiny, and industry has produce metric shitloads of prettyshiny since the last time gold had any real independent value as uniquely prettyshiny.

Your gold is only worth what people will give you in return for it. If society collapses, who is going to trade you gold for food? You'd better hope enough people buy your propaganda about gold's value because it's going to be your only hope; the market for gold jewelry is going to be pretty small and effectively saturated.

Gold has no value anymore. Yes, historically it was valuable, but times have changed. A lot.

God help those who are long on gold once we start asteroid mining. Be sure to dump your gold holdings before then, ideally several years before; once the market figures out what that means gold will plunge even before the asteroid gold hits the market. (By "plunge", I mean that I could see it losing 99% of its value in less than a year. No joke.)

<comment><USER4> No. Gold's value is in its intrinsic suitability as an instrument of exchange, far more than any other substance on earth. Can you point to any time in the history of civilization where gold has been worthless? I mean, really, any period of time from, say, the days of the Babylonian empire until today? Just what about today's times have changed the intrinsic value of gold? See my other post in this thread for just what that value is. It is by no means arbitrary.

<comment><USER8> This isn't like fiat currency where it's based on "our faith" like they taught us in school. It's expensive as it is because of a) some decadent people's actual demand for it b) other people's expectation for said decadent people's demand for it. Usefulness as a currency I suppose can raise the price, but only because there is an expectation of _actual_ utility in the hands of a final consumer, somehow or other.

Really, I think gold is interesting because it's rare and thus coveted.

edit - no offense if you enjoy gold, I was just making sweeping generalizations for expediency

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gold and silver used to have value because our currencies were based on it. This prevented governments from printing money to inflate themselves out of debt. That is, a government with a fiat currency can devalue their own currency to also devalue the real value of their debt -- debt which is conveniently denominated in their own currency.

Commodity based currencies prevented this sort of shenanigans because of the non-zero cost of adding to the money supply (the cost of mining gold and silver is much much greater than the cost of adding a few billion dollars to a government accounting ledger).

So it seems to me the value of gold is at least in part tied to the sense that governments will need some part of their money supply to be commodity based, and at least in part to the sense that fiat currencies will eventually fail.

Can someone clearly explain the positive argument for going off the gold standard?

<comment><USER10> Money supplies need to be inflatable to keep up with the creation of wealth, which isn't static. While prices rise quickly in response to an abundance of money (booms), they don't fall quickly in response to a lack of it (recessions) and this causes a lack of necessary liquidity that feeds into itself (bank runs) making the recession worse and worse. Prices are sticky, businesses don't like to lower them in accordance with what supply and demand would dictate.

Fiat money was an answer to this, it allows the Fed to inflate the money supply during hard times to keep the money supply liquid enough to keep trade going. Of course, they're supposed to deflate the money supply during boom times to stave off unnecessary inflation and prevent bubbles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Everyone always assumes that the value of gold isn't based in its intrinsic properties. They don't see that gold:

* Is easy to arbitrarily divide * Is scarce * Can't be inflated * Is easy to transport

These are the properties that make it valuable as a currency, not some irrational desire for shiny objects.

</comment><comment><USER12> Gold _has_ been a solid investment for the past 8 years. It went from a low of $255 in 2001 to a high of $1,213 in 2009. So a 475% rise in 8 years.

<comment><USER13> Yes, and in 1981 it was ~$800. Which means a return of ~50% over 29 years while paying no dividends whatsoever.

You can make pretty much anything look like a good or bad investment if you pick your start and endpoints carefully.

<comment><USER14> Some people always say gold is a great investment, other people always say it's a terrible one. Both sides are wrong.

<comment><USER15> gold is a stopgap against catastrophe, not an investment in the traditional sense.

<comment><USER14> That's pretty much how I think of it, but I've also gotten a 39% gain with it over the past year or so.

<comment><USER15> whereas most people experienced catastrophe over the last year or so. commodities move inversely to cash investments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "wouldn't trust your fortune to cow poop" sure I would, if it kept as well as gold

edit - and smelled as well

</comment><comment><USER15> post keynesianism in a nutshell: <http://www.winterspeak.com/></comment>


Japan tsunami was at least 23-metres high - <AUTHOR> http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/world/03/18/11/japan-tsunami-was-least-23-metres-high-report

<comment><USER2> That's going to be rather awkward for California's coastal nuclear plants, which IIRC are about 80 feet above sea level. While I'm generally pro-nuclear, I've always doubted the wisdom of siting plants in earthquake-prone areas. Although the San Andreas fault in southern California is not thought to be capable of generating such a large quake, the Cascadia fault (off the coast of Washington state) probably is.

Plus, the fact that they're operated by PG&E fails to fill me with confidence - the company has a mediocre public safety record, and both plants were beset with construction problems: in Diablo Canyon the seismic supports for one reactor were built backwards, while one of the reactors at the San Onofre plant was also installed backwards. both plants are said to be safe for anything up to a magnitude 7 quake right next to the reactor, but hearings that were due next month to extend operating lifetime have just been postponed pending resolution of the situation in Japan.

The historically unusual size of the quakes at other locations around the 'ring of fire' (Chile, NZ, and now Japan) is naturally worrying to disaster planners in California, and the problems at Fukushima demonstrate the potential severity of a cascading failure. The 50 mile safety radius recommended by USG would include ~7.5 million people if applied to the San Onofre plant, which is midway between Los Angeles and San Diego, and right next to southern California's major freeway. Diablo Canyon is about 60 miles north of LA, albeit in a hilly area that is unlikely to be affected by a tsunami.

<comment><USER3> It is important to understand that California earthquakes are extremely unlikely to generate tsunamis. That is because a tsunami (or tidal wave) is generated by a _subduction_ fault where one plate is sliding over or under the other. When tension is released there is a sudden change in relative altitude on either side of the fault, that if it occurs under water results in lifting up (or dropping) a large mass of water.

California has _strike/slip_ faults, that is faults where two plates are moving past each other. They tend to create large horizontal dislocations along their fault rather than vertical dislocations. This does not result in massive water movement.

That isn't to say that its not possible, at some level all things are possible. But locally generated tidal waves (from a California fault) are even more rare than earthquakes of magnitude 8 or higher.

That being said, two things disaster planners can take away from the Japanese experience are; Storing more spent fuel in the pond than the pond is designed to hold is a huge deal, it should be on the inspection list, there should be mandatory fines if discovered and an immediate shutdown until the situation is corrected, and additional backup power options should be available, with infrastructure immune transport (aka helicopters), within a couple of hours.

<comment><USER2> The Cascadia fault is a subduction fault, and this was the reason I mentioned in the context of risks facing commercial nuclear plants in California (there are none operating in Washington or Oregon).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_fault> <http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/tsunami/research1.html>

edit: I ought properly to be calling it the 'Cascadia subduction zone' rather than a fault, because it spans several named faults where the North American plate meets different pacific plates.

<comment><USER3> You will note I didn't mention that Oregon and Washington :-). If you look at the USGS analysis [1] of the tsunami risk it does not extend below the western most part of California (Eureka/Fortuna area). This is a bit of fortunate geologic structure on the part of California. You might also note that there are no US nuclear power plants near the coast between Eureka and the southern border of Canada [2] so for some definition of risk avoidance, no one has built reactors there.

Point being, in California at least, there is a very very small chance that one of our reactor's disaster plans will be challenged by a combination 9.0 earthquake and a 30' tsunami.

[1] <http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1661b/>

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NRC_regions_and_plant_loca...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NRC_regions_and_plant_locations_2008.jpg)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gromia - Rentals Made Easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.gromia.com

<comment><AUTHOR> A great website where find the best tenants for your room, save public researches and be updated every time there is a new apartment/room that fits for you :)

<comment><USER2> do you know the business model? how do they make money?

<comment><AUTHOR> it is a freemium model: the basic actions are for free, to unlock more features there is a premium service that costs €9,99/month

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you guys believe the time has come (finally!) to disrupt the real estate market through technology and social networks?

<comment><AUTHOR> oh yes of course! nowadays a lot of online services don't need anymore the intermediation (airbnb, uber and so on...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> do you have different premium services or just one? What do you get if you purchase it/them?

<comment><AUTHOR> ehi alcin, right now we have only a premium pack for owners. Buying it, owners are able to: post multiple listings, find the best tenants (regarding to 5 factors as age, gender, worker/student, smoker/not, pets/not) and be featured on first page (with a premium icon on the thumbnail too). Then we will also boost the listing on facebook groups and vertical search engine for 5 days from the submitting :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN:What valuable company is no one building?  - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't know, but if you're looking for ideas, try here:

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

<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

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

[http://www.quora.com/Startup-Ideas/As-of-2012-what-are- some-...](http://www.quora.com/Startup-Ideas/As-of-2012-what-are-some- Frighteningly-Ambitious-Startup-Ideas-other-than-the-ones-mentioned-by-Paul- Graham)

If I had to recommend one area to explore, I'd say something to do with lightweight, portable electrical power. As handheld and portable computing devices proliferate, battery life and recharging shenanigans are becoming more and more obnoxious. Especially at airports like O'Hare where electrical outlets are in short supply. A breakthrough in fuel cell technology or something of that nature would be nice.

Also, anything based on allowing people to self-organize into groups for mutual purposes, in such a way as to reduce (or eliminate) the status of "government" as-we-know-it as the default mechanism for communal / collective initiatives.

<comment><USER3> I'm working on one of PG's highly ambitious ideas right now. That's a great, inspiring list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of my heuristics here is to look for misuse of technology. Look for people persisting in their use of a tool unsuited for a particular task. It means they really really want something new, and might even pay for it.

An example: some of the biggest projects on Kickstarter (in terms of dollars) are about totally unanticipated uses of the site, like consumer electronics and game development. Surely this means something.

</comment><comment><USER5> I haven't heard of anyone working on equity crowdfunding. It's like kickstarter for startups, only you get actual stock in the startup. The JOBS act, signed in April, allows for this. Previously, only "accredited" investors could get in on that kind of thing.

Whoever makes this kind of site will have to jump through some hoops, so that will rule out 95% of the possible competition right up front.

Interesting Forbes article on it: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwasik/2012/06/06/what-you- ne...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwasik/2012/06/06/what-you-need-to-know- to-profit-from-crowdfunding/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Usually its in plain sight ... try something that affects you daily.

For me its paying bills ... it sucks, so now im building something to make it suck less.

When I built my last house I also found things that sucked like components for hanging tvs on the wall. I wanted a junction box that was interchangeable and could work specifically for each tv, so I made that too.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of valuable things no one has executed well on yet, it does not mean no one has tried and just because someone has tried and failed it does not mean it is less valuable either.

<comment><USER7> Just curious, what is the actual pain point for you? Is it the actual paying of the bills, remembering to pay them, splitting them between people, or something else?

<comment><USER6> for me its the amount of bills I actually have and trying to keep track of all of them.

I have about 16-17 bills monthly (mainly because I own two homes) but I have to remember to login to each of those accounts and make sure all of the payments went through even if they're on autopay, I'm also anal enough that I like to check every single bill to make sure there are no charges I did not make etc.

I'm making my version of this now and hopefully launching soon to some feedback.

check it out. <http://cloudbill.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Location based tasking for professional journalists (word, photo, video, radio) that is 100% anonymous (including payment). Disrupt the need for every news gathering organization on earth to maintain ANY foreign bureaus. Users of this app ARE the bureau.

</comment><comment><USER9> An actual, disruptive solution to the US healthcare crisis. There's a ton of economic value to be created, but the current ecosystem is shockingly resistant to non-incremental innovation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Confidentiality agreement negotiations. If you could streamline the process and get an NDA agreed in an hour, take a slice of each NDA signed (licence), you would be rich and loved.

<comment><USER11> This is interesting. Having not had to sign many NDAs (thankfully) I'm not sure that's a large enough slice to pay for the development of a cool tool for negotiation. There are lots of people selling boiler-plate NDAs that seem to work for most people, but if you could create a platform for contract negotiations... that sounds like a winner to my non-lawyer ears.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The question you should be asking is which one of the many complex problems haven't been solved. Company building is a secondary stage. Of-course you'd want to solve a problem that would make you rich.

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://theprogrammersparadox.blogspot.ca/2012/02/software- cl...](http://theprogrammersparadox.blogspot.ca/2012/02/software-clearing- houses.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Converting YC internet points into anger management classes ?

</comment><comment><USER15> More ideas: <http://www.ideaoverload.com/Find-ideas/#Finished>

</comment><comment><USER16> A hardware manufacturer that can compete with Apple. Someone should build this company before its too late ..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What important problem is no one solving?</comment>


The Olympics' Greatest Feat: An Unpaid, Highly Engaged Workforce - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/unpaid_and_highly_engaged_the.html <comment><USER2> This is a strange article. It seems a bit gloaty to champion the myriad volunteers working at a for-profit event, but this story isn't about the volunteers. It's about how the organization benefits from them, as a "lesson to business." Well no kidding they benefit!

The R&D scientist, the shop-keeper and their "honest advice," the bartender who knows your name, and other examples of simply giving a crap, are used in service of "engagement," and "alternative customer experience[s]." There is not one iota of critique for how companies breed enthusiasm out of the people they pay, much less those who are volunteering, and least of all how crappy companies are made, but that's obviously not what they were trying to do...but what _is_ the point of this story? Even people given to slavery _without_ smiles aren't going to get anything out of this article.

Coming from the HBR, an site notable in irony for running this story at the same time the top-selling item in their store is a 7-page case study entitled, "PCL: A Breakdown in the Enforcement of Management Control." Maybe PCL just needed more happy volunteers? One thing is for sure: when half of your workforce is unpaid, it's not hard to make your numbers.

<comment><USER3> I thought the more notable take-away was how much unpaid volunteers went above-and-beyond, and how nice it is when one experiences that kind of authenticity from paid workers - they specifically mention that it seems to have "rubbed off" on other people, and that it'd be nice to see more of that.

I can definitely say that at Zipcar, it's quite easy to find people that exhibit that same property, people that are genuinely enthusiastic about doing their job, helping you, and really want you to have a nice day. I think it's an important thing to seek out for any customer service oriented business.

<comment><USER2> Sure, but from a customer service standpoint the article would be too abstract, and from a worker standpoint it's apples and oranges to compare Olympic volunteers with Zipcar employees, who are getting paid. Is the point that it's good to have half of your workforce be unpaid? Is it perhaps that not paying people is the key to good customer service? I really can't tell. I've been thinking about this for a day now and the only concrete positive I can pull out of it is to "have a good product," with the implication that, well, if you have a business that can't thrive with a 50% unpaid workforce, your product must be bad. I may have too much imagination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I will admit to having been pretty cynical about the London Olympics before they started. However, since it started I've enjoyed every minute on it, to the extent that (as a Brit in the US) I decided to get a last minute flight to come back this week to enjoy the atmosphere and see the closing ceremony.

In more relevance to the article: I'm pleased that there are enough British people out there willing to shed the stereotype of being negative about everything, because I was guilty of it. I'd actually love to do it if I had the time (I wonder what proportion are retirees? I've seen a few). Although working as a developer is clearly superior in almost every way to the grocery store job I had at the age of sixteen, I do still miss the personal interaction you get when you're meeting new people every day.

<comment><USER5> The media is so incredibly negative just before every Olympics that I can remember, with almost exactly the same stories. Transport will not be able to handle it, airports will collapse, the facilities will not be ready in time, not enough people. For Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London, the media in the UK and Australia all did the same repeated boring stories.

It is no wonder that you and most people felt bad about it.

<comment><USER2> _The media is so incredibly negative just before every Olympics that I can remember, with almost exactly the same stories._

That's because it's an editorial strategy to lead up with negativity before spending two weeks delighting their readers/viewer by describing how awesome it all is. You spotted it yourself: they don't even bother changing the stories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe it's the "I am doing this for free so I can be myself"

All personal option below, Friday afternoon ramble Example when starting a new job, most people purposely hold back expressing themselves, they just want to fit in and keep people happy. There is a fear of over stepping boundaries, saying something that someone might take offensive all contribute to this "shut up and do your job". The issue is that it's hard to get a job, and people don't want to rock the boat so heads down and work because the job is tied to their ability to live.

The People at the games have nothing to lose, no expectations, they are free to enjoy and present themselves as they wish. Someone in a job at a desk in a call centre for a bank does not get that freedom and never will. The bank needs that person answering phones as quickly as possible to make their wall board stats look good so their managers can get bonuses.

This whole article was interesting from the point of a small company and how a smaller company could empower its staff to enjoy their roles more and in turn the new hire staff they bring in would follow the same patterns. For main street corporates this is the last thing they want, cutting away efficiency for what? Staff that enjoy their jobs, ha-ha don't be foolish drones are easier to control, also the people attracted to upper management jobs are generally in it for the money more than the "lets make a warm and happy team and all live happily ever after"

The guy writing this bit was getting excited over the idea of an energized work force for free, everyone likes the personal touch however in customer service roles they are given scripts and told what to say and how they should say it and told that if they step out of line or say something that is wrong they could lose their incoming and in turn the ability to live their life (who has savings anymore?) until they get another hard to find job.

If you do something for free you can do what you like, worse case you get sent home, in a job you can lose your job over expressing an option or spending too much time trying to help a single customer and in turn you lose your incoming (ability to live). No wonder people are more held back and reserved in their paying jobs than when they offer to do something for free.

/ramble

</comment><comment><USER7> I love it: these unpaid, enthusiastic volunteers are providing real, honest customer service -- as opposed to _the theater of customer service_ one normally gets from the paid "customer support" staff of large organizations.

<comment><USER8> "as opposed to the theater of customer service one normally gets from the paid "customer support" staff of large organizations."

Keep in mind also that the olympics is a short term thing and a job is a long term thing. It's easier to remain enthusiastic over the short term and for something that you choose because you wanted to do it. As opposed to something you have to do.

So the group of volunteers is both self selecting and additionally short term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of Dan Pink's talk on the science of motivation [0]. Ask a bunch of people to do something for little to no reward, and they find the task much more pleasurable than those who are highly rewarded for the same task.

Likely there's a good dose of cognitive dissonance thrown in: people who are highly rewarded justify doing the routine task for the money; those without pay have no extrinsic motivation so their brain fools itself and finds intrinsic reasons to enjoy the task.

In the case of the Festivus of Athletes™ (not 2011, not 2013, but somewhere in between) the volunteers get to have an insider's experience they otherwise wouldn't have, it's short duration so they don't burn out and get bored, and they experience camaraderie with the other volunteers.

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc>

</comment><comment><USER10> Well they aren't paid with money, but there is value in being a part of something like the Olympics. Getting up close to the athletes, seeing the action from the floor, even being on TV in the background of something being watched by millions is exciting for many people. This is something people would probably gladly pay for, so getting to do it for free is a method of payment.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's not just Olympics that capitalize on volunteers. Any industry that is viewed as glorious/glamorous with a potential of high payoff (not just monetary, but also in terms of fame and reputation) exploits volunteers and low-paid workers to death.

Acting ("When someone in LA tells me 'I am an aspiring actor', I ask 'Which restaurant?'"), fashion, arts, music, charity, design and architecture to some extent. Take for example <http://workinculture.ca/> You would never see that many volunteer and unpaid internship positions in IT or engineering.

<comment><USER2> That's a good point, re: internships and spec work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The volunteers were great, but not perfect. They needed to be more selective about which roles the volunteers were capable of handling. This story comes to mind: [http://1045theteam.com/american-tv-neglected-the-saddest- sto...](http://1045theteam.com/american-tv-neglected-the-saddest-story-in-the- olympics/)

The timekeeper should not have been a 15 year old kid.

<comment><USER13> I would like to say that _age_ is not indicative of capabilities. That could have just as likely happened to a 25 year old or 65 year old.

<comment><USER12> I disagree. I think there are more capable 15 year-olds than others and it's not a comprehensive indicator, but brain development is not complete at that age and therefore having an adequate attention span to competently time keep is arguably more difficult to secure from a 15 year old than a 25 year old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who volunteered at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, I can confidently say that the two weeks of the Games was the most exciting time of my life.

The culture of being a volunteer was incredible, and it almost felt like you were part of a cult (in a good way!). I think that biggest reason for the authenticity and commitment of the volunteers was the ongoing emphasis that the actions of any single volunteer could be the difference in ensuring that an athlete, spectator, media person, or official would have a great experience in Vancouver. The organizers made it clear that they were entrusting the volunteers in that responsibility to represent our city and country to the world.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm a London olympics volunteer. I took some time off work. (I contract so its not hard to do). Its fun and makes a change to normality.

I think that what you really get out of it [apart from access to some of the events] is a change of scenery and a break from the routine by doing something 'different'.

Plus we get special pink oyster cards (london transport) .

<comment><USER16> And a ton of free Adidas kit, at least according to the Games Maker I know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Salient fact: most of these volunteers are working for a very short, albeit intense, amount of time.

Other than "an engaged workforce is good," (duh!) it is difficult to draw any key lessons for my organization when we're seeking (like most of you here) retention, investment, and engagement over a span of _years_.</comment>


How liars create the 'illusion of truth' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161026-how-liars-create-the-illusion-of-truth <comment><USER2> _" But part of guarding against the illusion is the obligation it puts on us to stop repeating falsehoods. We live in a world where the facts matter, and should matter. If you repeat things without bothering to check if they are true, you are helping to make a world where lies and truth are easier to confuse. So, please, think before you repeat."_

Someone really should drill this into the head of every reporter and journalism student. Talking points put forward by political campaigns and special interest groups, if they are untrue or deliberately misleading, _should not_ be given air time. Simply parroting such false statements does a grave disservice to society.

<comment><USER3> That has always been a core tenet of journalism, as taught, but the ability to get information from the Internet has put massive pressure on that.

The simplest explanation is that "scoops" (being the first with a story) is more valuable than being second, so there is tremendous pressure to publish first. As your competitors (who are often lay journalists on the Internet) may have a lower standard of proof than you do, you risk being scooped if you are to stingy with your fact checking.

But the Internet is perhaps a _much_ bigger problem in this regard. It is perceived as journalism while it may be either opinion, commercial speech, or simply hate speech. My Dad will tell me something is true and refer to a half dozen blogs that he reads which all say something is true (my favorite was that half the population of LA was illegal aliens). That is a statement which can be generally challenged on its face but it can also be challenged analytically by looking at the tax base for LA county, not to mention Census records vs available housing. The challenge though was that "every source he checked" said it was true, and they all got their bogus information from probably the same original source what ever that was.

As a result, while I think it _is_ drilled into the heads of journalism students and reporters, it is _not_ the standard operating mode of _many more_ bloggers and vloggers, and as a result we get pounded by falsehoods if we aren't critical in our information sources.

<comment><USER4> I think there was never some mythical golden age of pre-internet quality journalism, to be honest. I frequently read newspaper articles in supposedly respectable outlets that are not about breaking news yet are still riddled with serious flaws or biases, sometimes outright falsehoods. This problem becomes a hundred times worse when exploring their opinion columns or editorials. If "journalism school" (whatever that is) tries to teach journalists to be unbiased fact checkers then it's not done a good job.

I think the internet has been a massively positive thing for news in general, as it so quickly allows people to do rapid fact checking, get access to contrary opinions, see comments on the articles and so on. If your dad doesn't do those things he probably wouldn't have been more informed before the internet, he'd have just quoted you other one-sided sources too. Fact checking things you want to believe in takes discipline and commitment, it isn't something that was broken by the internet.

<comment><USER5> You never had the types of crazy claims that you see in partisan media pre- internet.

Crazy stuff existed, but in not easily accessible forums to the average joe.

<comment><USER6> You're forgetting about the Yellow Journalism era of the late 19th century.

Or the role of newspapers like the _Boston Gazette_ during the lead up to the American Revolution, that mostly served to turn the populace against English rule.

Or the mass publication of seditious libels during Restoration England. If you want to talk about whacked-out conspiracy theories, you should see what was published in the 1660s through the 1680s. Popish Plot anyone?

The idea that journalists should be unbiased is a very, very modern one.

<comment><USER7> What I'm really curious about is what changed between the era of yellow journalism and the mid-twentieth century. I absolutely agree that people hearkening back to print journalism as a time when everything was fact-checked and reliable are mistaken, but it really does seem that journalism now is more sensationalist than in the _recent_ past, just not the distant past. That means that print isn't the answer; there's something else to a society that makes its reporting either good or bad. What is it? Corporate power? General partisanship?

<comment><USER8> I've read that some posit that the switch to a subscription model in part effected the decline of yellow journalism. The subscription customer's purchase decision is potentially less driven by in-the-moment attention- grabbing and more by characteristics like informativeness and accuracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have been thinking about the following lately...

Myth: Student loans are not dischargable in bankruptcy.

Truth: Student loans are dischargable in bankruptcy, albeit at a higher standard than other personal debts.

Now the myth, or what one might call the propaganda, is generally attributable student loan debt holders who don't want debtors knowing and worse availing themselves to their rights. However, what I find most odd is the myth/propaganda is now actually perpetuated more by people who know the truth but want student loan reforms. For example, they will generally ignore the ability to discharge student loans in bankruptcy at all or other methods of forgiveness such as "total and permenant disability". Also I notice when confronted with the truth they perpetuate the myth by exaggerating how many people actually qualify for relief.

<comment><USER10> That's not really a "lie" per se. In the USA it would only be dischargeable by 0.01% of people, or some freakishly low number. The standard of discharge wrt student loans is so ridiculously high. The case law shows that a person, to get them discharged, essentially needs to have zero chance of ever being able to hold a job or work again. There have been quadriplegics who couldn't get them discharged for hardship. The bar is so high, it is essentially impossible for all but the severely, severely unfortunate among us. If you have the potential to hold any sort of job at any point in the future, it's effectively impossible to discharge.

So while it's not technically true, the ability to discharge student loans is such an edge case, saying they're nondishargeable is effectively true.

<comment><USER11> It's neither a lie nor a myth, yet the truth is surprising.

A 2011 study found only 0.1% of student debtors in bankruptcy even apply for discharge of student loans. Yet of that self-selecting group, 40% were successful. The question is why more don't apply for discharge, and how successful they might be.

Regardless, this does show that "student loans are not dischargable in bankruptcy" is generally true, given a discharge rate of only 0.04%.

Source: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1894445](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1894445)

Iuliano, Jason. "An Empirical Assessment of Student Loan Discharges and the Undue Hardship Standard." Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Department of Politics. July 24, 2011. 86 American Bankruptcy Law Journal 495 (2012)

<comment><USER12> I guess that means 60% are unsuccessful. My friend who was jailed for 5 years could not even get a deferment. He had large fines added to his loan for missing payments. In prison he could only earn some trivial amount (cents on the dollar) for working, so it was impossible to keep up with the loans.

<comment><USER13> The decision about whether one can discharge or not discharge in bankruptcy is determined by the court. The decision about whether one can defer or not defer is determined by the loan administrator.

I'm guessing that upon release, your friend would be (have been) an outstanding candidate for being able to discharge the loans (and penalties and interest) through a bankruptcy proceeding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is similar to the "Contamination" effect, of how completely false statements can affect a person's judgement, even if they are told the statement are false.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/k3/priming_and_contamination/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/k3/priming_and_contamination/) [http://lesswrong.com/lw/k4/do_we_believe_everything_were_tol...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/k4/do_we_believe_everything_were_told/)

<comment><USER15> I don't know, the Contamination effect seems more like buffer overflow in our neural network and the Repetition effect more like a poor implementation of caching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Consequently, repeating something too many times is a flag to detect a lie. Amateur liars usually forget that rule. Good liars create doubt. Bad liars create certainty. However, the former knowns how to gain ppl's trust.

You learn that with camp fire based games like Mafia/Werewolf

</comment><comment><USER17> I wish people would stop parroting about Goebbels to this phenomena, because the real "innovator" in the propaganda was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays [1] (Goebbels was a big fan of him). His manipulation techniques and tricks are what started the profession of public relations (PR) in USA.

He also helped spreading the lie that helped CIA overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan president [2].

[1] [http://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the- american-...](http://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american- mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393)

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

<comment><USER18> See also Adam Curtis's _The Century of the Self_ , which focuses extensively on Bernays.

Bernays' books are avaialble via the Internet Archive. Fascinating reading.

<comment><USER17> Yep, as soon I've found about him, I've checked out the documentary series, it should be viewed in schools. But that would probably be bad for business as it's not OK for masses to be aware of the techniques.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Obligatory warning about interesting sounding psychological studies that may or may not replicate.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am especially worried by the lies that we all create in our own minds by repeating erroneous thoughts with our own thinking. People being convinced about things that are not true or only partially true can be quite scary, more so when those people are in power. Fair chance that Goebbels really believed what he was saying. What we consider to be the 'truth' is very relative in my perception.

<comment><USER20> It kind of goes both ways, too. If you have a belief, and it is correct, but you don't reinforce it, it may get quickly replaced by some other belief.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This only works if it's something people want to believe. If it goes against some existing strong belief, like, "there is a God that really exists", they will continue to believe what they want to no matter how many times scientists, atheists and the like say otherwise.

Certain things you will just naturally want to believe more often. For example, people are more likely to believe something fearful. Or something that feeds the ego. Or something that reinforces an existing belief. But the opposite of those things might not influence the person.

The illusion of truth is just a heuristic. It's probably how we learn everything as children. We hear things and every time we hear them they are reinforced. Teaching someone that something they've learned is wrong is incredibly difficult.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what would happen if you repeated those same experiments with a neural network. I think it might act the same way as humans do.

</comment><comment><USER23> Advertising explained.

</comment><comment><USER24> sometimes i talk about things that haven't happened yet as if they've already happened because i'm so certain they will happen. i think this throws people off sometimes.

as an example, instead of saying "people will move away from the coasts once the sea levels rise due to climate change" i'll just start with "once everyone has moved away from the coasts etc"

usually people need some clarification.

</comment><comment><USER25> bbc, eh? from the horse's mouth...

</comment><comment><USER26> "Wrong!" \- D.Trump

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm sorry to immediately take this off on a tangent, but the article lists "a prune is a dried plum" as a true statement. I agree with that, but does anybody know why it's "prune juice" instead of "plum juice"? It makes as little sense to me as saying that wine is made from raisin juice.

<comment><USER28> While on the subject of gustatory shenanigans, a few which irk me are:

"Contains 100% juice" \- This one is clever, and true, albeit that the product probably only contains 3% of actual 100% juice.

"Packed in x" \- Packed in x, sure. But in smaller print, Product of y.

"Cholesterol Free" \- Thanks. I was terribly worried that my non-animal product contained some despite it not being an animal.

"Made from: pure a" displayed prominently on front label, while ingredients read: b,c,d,e,f,...etc, etc.

"No _added_ growth hormones" \- Clearly there's little point anyway, in adding hormones to a chicken breast or hotdog.

<comment><USER29> Recently, a friend of mine gave me a box of tea that claimed to be:

\- fairtrade \- organic \- gluten free \- suitable for vegans \- kosher \- halal

Now, I like the first one (and maybe the second one), 3 and 4 are just what I would expect from a product that, according to its ingredients, is just tea leaves. I feel that 5 and 6 are simply taking the piss.

<comment><USER30> Eh? Not all tea is kosher, especially flavored kinds, and those with more processing. So what's wrong with them telling you it's kosher?

And there are non-gluten-free teas, they have barley malt, or roasted barley in them.

<comment><USER31> For some reason (and not being very familiar with kosher law) I couldn't help thinking of shellfish-flavoured tea and wondering why anyone would ever want to drink that. Anyway, here's a little more information for anyone who's curious: [http://www.learn-about-tea.com/kosher-tea.html](http://www.learn- about-tea.com/kosher-tea.html)

<comment><USER30> Tea almost always is (or can be) kosher. However unless a Rabbi actually monitors the production you can't be sure.

For example the same packaging line might have been used for something else that was not kosher. Or a flavoring might have a non kosher ingredient (or more likely, could be kosher, but manufactured on a line that also does non- kosher items).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is it me, or is this title actually not-super-obvious clickbait but clickbait nonetheless?

I mean, the story isn't about liars at all. It implies some sort of insight about the workings of a liar's psyche or their methods, schemes, etc. But instead it's about how repetition affects our perception of truth, and the article (as well as common knowledge) is very clear about how it doesn't matter whether this repetition comes from a singular intentional actor (a liar), or if you get the statement repeatedly from a variety of sources. It even nearly admits as much by hand-waving that of course liars have many other, stronger, methods of manipulation but we're not going to cover any those.

A more honest title would be "How _repetition_ creates the illusion of truth".

But then nobody would click that because people would think "um yeah, cool I already know that". And they'd be right.

Tying into this, are the rather bold and hard-to-believe claims made initially by the BBC article (as opposed to the research):

"people tend to rate items they've seen before as more likely to be true, regardless of whether they are true or not"

"[the] effect worked just as strongly for known as for unknown items"

"For statements that were actually fact or fiction, known or unknown, repetition made them _all_ seem more believable."

Only to, in the second half, completely contradict these claims:

"What Fazio and colleagues _actually_ found, is that the biggest influence on whether a statement was judged to be true was... whether it actually was true. The repetition effect couldn't mask the truth. With or without repetition, people were still more likely to believe the actual facts as opposed to the lies."

Wait, what? You just spent half the article boldly claiming pretty much the opposite, and then _surprise!_ If you found the earlier claims hard to believe, it's because they weren't _actually_ what the research found at all! You don't say!

We'll have a nice and intelligent discussion thread about it on HN, sure, it's what we do, but c'mon the article itself is garbage.</comment>


Show HN: Own your Kubernetes: installation, addons, best practices – as code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ReSearchITEng/kubeadm-playbook/ <comment><USER2> An alternative is Rancher. It can provision clusters with the major cloud providers' managed Kubernetes services as well as with virtually any infrastructure. I wrote a post on setting up a cluster with code using Terraform, Ansible and Rancher [https://vitobotta.com/2019/10/14/kubernetes- hetzner-cloud-te...](https://vitobotta.com/2019/10/14/kubernetes-hetzner- cloud-terraform-ansible-rancher/) \- with this approach you can have more resources for less money compared to managed services. Having said that, I am now using Digital Ocean's managed Kubernetes service because managing a cluster can be quite a bit of work for a single person like me. By the way there's also K3s (also from Rancher) which makes it easier to spin up a cluster on your own servers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your project (as well as Hetzner cloud which are indeed great). Our target was to use official (vanilla) k8s, the official installer (kubeadm) and the official helm charts for all things we deploy. While it would also work on a Raspberry Pi, indeed k3s would be more appropriate. We wanted to have something with the same functionality and HA, and tools like in a cloud k8s: GKE/EKS - but for people that like to own it, and use on-prem (or something like your cloud).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Getting (aka renting) a k8s from a cloud vendor is probably the most common case, but does not cover everyone's scenarios => hence this project.

Along the years we actively looked for best tools and practices and incorporated them in this project. We try to bring it closer to a common/initial generic k8s based platform. (it does not plan to compete with RH's OKD, but only it's basic features: out of the box network, ingress controller, monitoring, HighAvailability, etc). Authentication, better security hardening, logging are in future plans.

Do you find it useful now, when one can simply pay jump to gke/eks/aks/pks ?

If so, what should be the next steps to make it a successful project (measured by users and community around it)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sugarkube [1] is an open source alternative to using Ansible for working with Kubernetes clusters. Because it's focussed squarely on Kubernetes, it runs much faster (it's written in Go), but still supports templating & hierarchical variables. It can optionally create clusters (using Minikube, Kops or EKS) as well as install and delete your applications.

When Sugarkube installs your apps, it'll create all the necessary cloud infrastructure you define. It also respects dependencies, so e.g. your Wordpress sites will only be installed once there is a database to back them. You can also choose to only install a subset of your applications (i.e. so you don't need to bother installing the monitoring stack if you just want to work on Jenkins).

Sugarkube can also tear everything down again leaving you with the same clean slate that you started with, so you can use it to spin up and tear down clusters either locally or remotely to your heart's content.

Check out the sample project [2] and accompanying tutorials [3] which demonstrate running a web cluster for a couple of Wordpress sites, and an Ops cluster containing Jenkins, monitoring and Keycloak. Sugarkube supports several advanced use cases, including creating a Kops cluster, installing Keycloak into it, then reconfiguring the Kops cluster to authenticate against the Keycloak instance running inside the cluster. That's all with one command (after you've created a workspace).

I'm happy to answer any questions since I wrote it :-)

[1] [https://sugarkube.io](https://sugarkube.io)

[2] [https://github.com/sugarkube/sample- project/](https://github.com/sugarkube/sample-project/)

[3] [https://docs.sugarkube.io/getting-started/tutorials/local- we...](https://docs.sugarkube.io/getting-started/tutorials/local-web/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice project! Please correct me, but it looks sugarkube is mainly focused minikube or for cloud (e.g. kops/etc), right? We chose Ansible as our primary focus is on prem, and setting up linux vms parameters, for all machines in a cluster, and Ansible sounds like a fit. For on prem "consumable" clusters is what we also do (that's why the project accepts any size, from 1 vm cluster to thousands vms clusters). We should look into sugarkube for AWS cluster activities - Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

Sugarkube orchestrates other tools. In this case where you have to actually SSH into machines to install kubeadm then Ansible may be a better choice for actually creating the clusters (since there's probabaly no single binary that does that).

However, Sugarkube can also be used as a ready-made release pipeline for applications. In general, using Sugarkube to release applications gives you a standardised way of being able to install apps onto different clusters (local/on-prem/cloud), keeping your options open for the future. So you could use it to promote applications through various dev/testing/staging clusters to production, some of which may be on-prem, some on AWS.

If you're looking to create a common set of applications in your project (monitoring, CI/CD, ingresses, etc.), using Sugarkube would allow users to install them into clusters regardless of how they were created (either by your project via kubeadm, or by Kops/EKS with or without Sugarkube, etc), so your applications may be more generally useful to more people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome! I've finished constructing a small repository which runs the following in order to setup a cluster: Bazel, Terraform, Packer, Ansible (which'll run `kubeadm init`), Docker, Kubernetes, Openssl, Jsonnet.

However, it is simply in terms of getting this running. No best practices, no plugins, nothing extra. I think one great thing my little project achieved is that it uses each tool for its appropriate task correctly, without creating hard coupling between tools. I made that repository so others could learn (I pushed to github today under a private repo).

I'm glad a more mature project is out there for this.

<comment><USER5> > I've finished constructing a small repository which runs the following in > order to setup a cluster: Bazel, Terraform, Packer, Ansible (which'll run > `kubeadm init`), Docker, Kubernetes, Openssl, Jsonnet.

It's pretty sad that in 2019, to setup a web app that can properly scale you need to understand and use so many technologies. Developing a scalable website in 2013 was a lot easier than in 2019. Back then PaaS was all the rage (Heroku, Google App Engine, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk). Since then, things have gotten much harder.

I suspect that this development has less to do with technical challenges and more to do with revenue. Cloud providers now provide all of these services, and they make little money getting small folks up and running with something that "just works". The real money is going after enterprise clients that need to tweak every detail and have the resources to devote to all of these technologies.

There have been so many platforms and libraries that have come out over the past 10 years, the industry is more than ready for a period of consolidation.

<comment><USER6> It seems to vary based on your tech stack. I've found the serverless framework with Lambda to be quite straight forward.

<comment><USER5> > I've found the serverless framework with Lambda to be quite straight > forward.

Lambdas are great, and they do borrow much from the ideals of PaaS, including the lack of load balancing or HTTP servers. However, there are so many other extremely common services that Lambdas don't cover, for example: email, background tasks, memcache, databases, search engines, security, and so much more. Nearly every web app needs all of these services, but no one is building a single platform that does all of these things decently well out of the box. Instead, you're pushed towards using a different tool for each one. These custom tools certainly offer more power and control, but having to go chase and evaluate each one is a huge road-block for smaller projects that just want to get off the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been trying hard to find time to setup and play with a Kubernetes cluster for learning purposes.

Considering it is built with Go, why is such a aggregation playbook needed? Shouldn't this be the default documentation of Kubernetes?

Do the following to use Kubernetes for what it is meant for! If you want to simply run containers in 1-5 machines - may be look at Docker/Podman + Ansible instead?

HA for controller,

Software defined networking,

Autoscaling pods,

Deployment policies,

Auto discovering DNS

Disaster recovery etc.

If these are not what you _need_, then looking at Kubernetes is probably not smart right?

<comment><USER8> None of these things are really needs but lets take a look at the bigger picture of what you do want.

You want well tested software?

kubectl create namespace pr-12-fix-banner-clipping

helm upgrade --install --wait --set url=pr-12-fix-banner-clipping.example.com pr-12-fix-banner-clipping . --namespace pr-12-fix-banner-clipping

./end2end --url [https://pr-12-fix-banner- clipping.example.com](https://pr-12-fix-banner-clipping.example.com)

helm delete --purge pr-12-fix-banner-clipping

kubectl delete namespace pr-12-fix-banner-clipping

This assumes infrastructure as code, production like environments, ephemeral compute, etc. It's one of the easiest ways to achieve this and it's available anywhere.

You also don't want something like software defined networking. You want the ability for services to talk to each other, and firewalling at the service level, and when you throw multiple services on shared infrastructure together, the SDN helps you do this.

When you add it altogether, pretty much everyone wants all this stuff if they're going to deliver services at a professional level, but its obviously not the only way to do it, and most people don't want to be working at the kubernetes abstraction level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is excellent in terms of functionality, but I would recommend looking at [https://k3s.io](https://k3s.io) if you want a simple, lean k8s setup.

(I have a set of setup scripts for Azure at [https://github.com/rcarmo/azure-k3s-cluster](https://github.com/rcarmo/azure-k3s-cluster) that can easily be re-used for other environments)

<comment><USER10> what are the benefits of using k3s in Azure as opposed to AKS?

<comment><USER9> I suppose you didn't click through to the README - I am doing that to learn more about k8s internals, not to replace AKS.

(there is always a difference between curiosity and borderline insanity :))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> An issue I've been having with my on-prem cluster is it seems as though all the articles, libraries, and examples are written for clusters running in the cloud. Does anyone have any resources for on-premise clusters?

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly to the point: this project is mainly focused to on-prem: configures kernel params, k8s HA is with keepalived (or your HW LB should you have one), etc. Should you see something important missings, I would be happy to answer/add it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any plans to switch to more commonly used add-ons? Maybe like using metrics- server, Prometheus, grafana, and alert manager out of the box?

Would also be cool to see other CNCF tools included like a service mesh, some DB operators, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, exactly to the point, these are the ones included Out Of the Box: Prometheus (operator, with Grafana, alertmanager,etc), Nginx Ingress, Heapster (next will be metrics server once helm chart will be stable), Kured, etc. Adding any service mesh on top is simply adding the helm chart and its params in the addons.yaml

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is heapster in this? Let it die already...

I feel bad every time I have to deploy that old rotten piece of code because a lot of our dashboards still use those metrics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, it's because metric server is not yet "stable" and fully integrated with dashboard. We keep monitoring it closely and ready to do the switch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> i wonder if it includes basic security hardening. like disable containers running as root. etc ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your question, very good one. We are currently looking to find the right balance of what perms should be OutOfBox and what should be custom setup. E.g. Running things like telepresence CNCF need sshd. And running sshd needs root (and RunAsAny). We are working closely with them and just proposed a work version which should be fine with less perms (currently for Openshift), and then we can tighten such things also in k8s.</comment></comment>