We need to do the math, even on "small" projects - <AUTHOR> https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/6/16/do-the-math-small-projects <comment><USER2> There is another degree of freedom here: project cost. Why on earth does 0.32 miles of residential road cost $1.5M? Having just managed a construction project much larger than this stretch of road myself, I am certain that a lot of the blame here lies with the contracting process as well as outrageous fees (and just sheer inefficiency) from the engineers and contractors. There is no valid reason this should be so expensive. In the rest of the world, I guarantee you they are not paying over a million dollars for something like this and their standards are just as high if not higher.

I'm not sure there is an opportunity to fix this - I've spent a lot of time thinking about this now and modeling it out - by building a better construction company: most of the problem is, instead, essentially political.

<comment><USER3> I read somewhere that China builds things at 1000x the efficiency of the US.

If that's speed or cost or if it's really only 100x doesn't matter.

This is a fundamental superiority Chinese society has, and I don't see the US switching to a pro construction stance anytime soon!

<comment><USER4> I've seen Youtube videos of collapsing buildings in China that were built not terribly long ago (someone on HN posted a link in a related discussion a while ago, but man, I would have to dig). So I would need some additional data to conclude that China is doing it better than anyone else.

<comment><USER5> In response to claims of progress and efficiency, constantly claiming it is done via smoke and mirrors, with what appear to be extreme examples, seems like a good way to be left behind, because it implies there's nothing to learn from others, which is always false.

<comment><USER6> Uncritically accepting propaganda of an authoritarian regime about the superiority of it's system seems to be a good way to get oneself crushed under the boot heel of authoritarians, either of the same regime or another taking advantage of the attraction driven to that system.

<comment><USER7> I've been to China repeatedly over the last 15 years and you can see the pace of change with your own eyes. Large cities built so fast that you can literally walk through neighbourhoods and not recognise where you are after two to three years, that's not propaganda.

The real danger today doesn't lie in authoritarianism but in a lack of state capacity. Decades of fearmongering have led the US and significants chunks of Europe to a point where governments can't provide cotton swabs during a pandemic and can't build housing in their cities.

<comment><USER6> > The real danger today doesn't lie in authoritarianism but in a lack of state > capacity.

Yes, it does lie in authoritarianism, and that ("lack of state capacity") is literally _always_ the defense of authoritarianism, especially from those who like to pretend to be merely reluctant supporters rather than ideological devotees.

> . Decades of fearmongering have led the US and significants chunks of Europe > to a point where governments can't provide cotton swabs during a pandemic

I'm not going to talk about Europe, but there is absolutely not a "state capacity" problem produced by "decades of fearmongering" I the US of that kind. Both the material capacity and the administrative capacity for the federal executive to direct that material capacity with no effective veto points exists. The present federal executive deliberately choose to apply that power in the worst possible way, withholding it from practical and useful supplies, preventing subordinate authorities from acquiring supplies they had located despite the lack of federal cooperation, and applying federal production mandates to prevent major disease spreading centers (meat packing plants with major outbreaks) from being closed to constrain the spread of the disease.

<comment><USER7> >Yes, it does lie in authoritarianism, and that is literally always the defense of authoritarianism.

One can turn this around trivially. Vague allusions to tyranny are always made to justify present-day dysfunction, without any clear expanation of how concrete steps actually lead to said tyranny. It usually just resembles a sort of vague, primal fear of authority.

And on the second point, the US doesn't just have implementation problems. It also altogether lacks power. One reason why construction is so expensive is simply the extreme difficulty to overrule local interests when it comes to acquiring land, and related the threat of litigation.

That's a structural issue, not just a sort of temporary failure. The reason Europe can build rail at one fourth the cost per mile is (among other reasons), that local homeowners don't rule supreme. Just look at California to see what a mess it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Expenditures for McKinney TX [0] show streets as the third lowest cost department, accounting for under 5% of the city budget. The largest expense, like most other cities, is the police department, at nearly 25%.

While smart spending is important, it's hard to see street paving as something which threatens to bankrupt this municipality.

[0] [https://mckinneytexas.opengov.com/transparency#/1687/account...](https://mckinneytexas.opengov.com/transparency#/1687/accountType=expenses&embed=n&breakdown=ac4a3220-88f1-4bc2-a02c-6871819fe8e7&currentYearAmount=cumulative&currentYearPeriod=years&graph=percentage&legendSort=desc&month=5&proration=true&saved_view=5683&selection=34D386D3BDD5D267554C6CB2146EE3BF&projections=null&projectionType=null&highlighting=null&highlightingVariance=null&year=2020&selectedDataSetIndex=null&fiscal_start=2015&fiscal_end=latest)

<comment><USER9> If there's one thing this "defund the police" movement has shown me, it's how much money is spent on police departments. I would have never guessed that the police department in McKinney would be upwards of 25% of the city budget.

<comment><USER10> I have read that in a lot of municipalities in a few decades police and firefighters will use up 100% (and more) of the budget once they have to pay out pensions. A lot of them go into retirement at around 50 and will probably live for another 30-40 years more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an idea about society I've been musing a while. As a society hits prosperity it invests in infrastructure with a limited lifespan (even if decades) and therefore there is a certain depreciation rate of infra happening each year. Eventually the infrastructure will rise such that the depreciation rate will have equilibrium with income. At that point the society cannot take on any new projects without deciding it will abandon something else.

A similar thing often happens in software -- Product Managers are given scope to build projects of a certain size, but rarely does the business commit to keeping a certain percentage of engineers on to maintain the project forever. So the project decays and the customers eventually walk away. But the Product person has already moved on to other things so they're no longer accountable for the long term picture....

Just some musings, not really sure how widespread/factual it is or solutions...

<comment><USER12> Sure that happens to some products but it's not inevitable. The current Microsoft Word code base has been actively maintained and enhanced for over 25 years. Customers aren't walking away yet.

<comment><USER13> Software is more like a Ship of Theseus in a way that roads are not.

That is, the cost to "switch out" one version of software for another is effectively zero, so if makes sense to "maintain" the product in perpetuity.

For a road and other capital expenditures with heavy dependencies, your "lifecycle" is

As few changes as possible; and then, all of it changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of roads are pure waste and should probably be reverted into simpler gravel roads, or left unmaintained. Take a look at this one in Columbus (1). You have full storm drains, nearly a mile of sidewalk, and generous street lighting, for a road that connects between the highway and the city inpound lot which closes before dark. I'm willing to bet not a single person has laid foot on that sidewalk ever, given that the neighborhood around this road is simply the impound lot and a concrete factory, connected to the outside world by a single highway connection; you couldn't walk there if you tried without hopping a fence and tresspassing somewhere.

1\. [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-82.9996459,3a,75y,1...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-82.9996459,3a,75y,188.68h,85.67t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1so4RiX7yjurMh9gDPKrwobQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Do4RiX7yjurMh9gDPKrwobQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D153.82936%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192)

<comment><USER15> Meanwhile most streets in Seattle north of N 85th St still don't have sidewalks at all. The estimated cost to add them is in the billions of dollars.

<comment><USER4> Different agency, but meanwhile King County is spending money to pave a "rails-to-trails" path near Redmond (along Willows Rd. for you locals) that I run on regularly. Until the virus thing, I have never seen another human being use the quite usable gravel trail that's there now. Probably because it's out- of-the-way, no place to park, and it parallels a major paved trail that is less than a mile away. But I'm sure someone's brother-in-law needs a paving contract.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Author discusses their nice daily walks on that street, and questions the need for improvements like sidewalks and ADA compliance.

Author should be thankful to not need the ADA compliance.

<comment><USER17> I was just thinking about that. If I were in a wheel chair there's no way I'd just roll down the middle of the street like OP does. If a car comes down the street, what am I supposed to do? It doesn't matter if only "people who live on that street use it." That just means people in wheelchairs can't really live on the street

<comment><USER18> Even where there's good sidewalks people in wheelchairs often just "roll down the middle of the street." It's smoother, easier to be seen (.˙. safer) and you're less likely to get blocked by an unexpected obstacle.

<comment><USER19> Off topic, but unicode actually has a "therefore" symbol ( ∴ ). Not sure how universal it is, but it exists

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As an Australian, every time I see roads like this in the USA, they look positively third world.

Potholes all over, lacking (or practically lacking) a footpath, drainage, or space for on-street parking.

Pine St looks like something I'd expect to find in a developing nation in South America or Asia, not a developed industrial nation like the USA.

<comment><USER21> Climate is a massive factor in the deterioration and accelerated wear of roads. Australia doesn't have harsh, freezing winters with lots of freeze/thaw cycles creating potholes and expanding crack lines in your roads.

It's a lot more expensive to maintain "good" roads in climates that have wide temperature cycles throughout their seasons.

<comment><USER22> I live in germany where we do have freeze/thaw cycles. Our roads look better both from my experience when I went to the US and looking at pictures from the US. Don't think climate is a good excuse here. Nordic countries also manage a much better infrastructure in roads from what I hear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is a good article in the Atlantic (I will try to dig it up) about how the relatively unexplainable reasons (or maybe, lazily not explained reasons) why construction and public infrastructure projects in our country are costing so much (billions of $ more than you would expect), is really hindering our development and collective wealth as a country (wealth in terms of infrastructure, modernity of our facilities).

The example was the rail development of the 2nd Ave subway line in Manhattan, but take almost any example of a large project.

Think about how, if the cost of our projects is 2-3x what it "should be", we are doing without 2/3-1/2 of the improvements to our physical world that we could otherwise achieve.

For some reason, it's a confluence of aging infrastructure, cost of displacing entrenched residents / businesses to make improvements, labor cost, insurance, etc.

What it also produces is a country that does not have a lot of practice in doing big, important infrastructure projects. Maybe once every 10 years. Compared to growing younger countries where they have major projects, say, every other month. And as a result, fewer experts are around to bid for such work, and also as a result, the cost of such projects goes up.

It's a big problem as a country ages and gets more expensive.

Some articles:

\- [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york- subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway- construction-costs.html)

\- [https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new-york-second-avenue-subway-phase-2)

\- [https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/05/07/why-is- second-...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/05/07/why-is-second- avenue-subway-phase-2-so-expensive/)

And this article is not specifically on the problem of cost, but how replacing signals in the NYC subway has lessons like managing a massive software project:

\- [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-d...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why- dont-we-know-where-all-the-trains-are/415152/)

<comment><USER24> > confluence of aging infrastructure, cost of displacing entrenched residents > / businesses to make improvements, labor cost, insurance, etc.

What about corruption e.g. ghost employees, inflated billing rates, intentional delays, knowingly letting things be done wrong according to a mistaken spec to bill more hours later, all done by a company owned by the mayor's cousin? Construction is famous for those kinds of things.

<comment><USER23> That definitely may come into play. But I think the bulk of the 2-3x (or more cost inflation) for the average project is larger factors that no particular entity is trying to "cheat". Just a gradual creeping up of expectations and willingness to tolerate higher and higher costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> These guys suck at actually doing the math. Property taxes won't remain constant. They will rise with inflation while the bond repayment stays the same.

<comment><USER26> I was also annoyed by that. However he didn't include interest in his repayment numbers either, and the two errors roughly offset.

<comment><USER25> I'm not an expert, but usually bonds are bought at a discount. The city would sell 1.5 million worth of bonds for 1.3 million, for example. The effective interest rate comes from that discount.

That said, they don't seem to provide a lot of details and I've seen some wildly misleading numbers from Strongtowns. They're not to be trusted to provide objective numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Somehow we afford paving streets in cities. I wonder how that happens when the math is always so bad?

Perhaps it's because we socialize the cost since the paved road benefits more than the immediate houses on that block.

<comment><USER27> There are a number of factors, but the simplest gist:

1\. The models for road funding and development were developed in the 1920s and 30s, were based on much denser areas (old towns) that paid a lot higher taxes per acre, and much simpler roads (which cost a lot less).

2\. The models haven't been significantly updated or reconsidered since, even though the development patterns have been mandated by law to become much less dense, while street standards have also greatly increased, meaning much less tax base to support much more infrastructure.

3\. This often pencils out in places that are growing because there are heavy state and federal subsides for "growth" projects where the up front capital cost is 80-100% paid for by non-local funds. That infrastructure works without maintenance for a while, and likely won't need heavy maintenance for 20-30 years, but at that point it'll need to be rebuilt at about the same cost adjusted for inflation as it cost to build.

In theory what should be happening is cities should be piling up money from taxes on these projects that were subsidized, so that when the maintenance bill comes due they have the funds to do the maintenance.

But in practice, the taxes that come in from "today's" new growth are used to pay for the maintenance on "yesterdays" old infrastructure that needs to be replaced.

Thus, things appear to "work" as long as steady growth continues and new tax income continues to be generated locally while the costs associated are funded from outside. But when growth slows down or stops, things quickly break down.

You can see this pattern of "rolling blight" all over the country, where so many of the older suburbs are falling apart with decaying infrastructure, and people who can are moving farther out to the "shiny and new" suburbs where everything is in good shape.

The problem is especially pernicious in the rust belt, where we have seen metro areas dramatically expand in surface area every decade even as their population has barely increased (or shrunk) since the 1950s.

<comment><USER28> > _The models haven 't been significantly updated or reconsidered since, even > though the development patterns have been mandated by law to become much > less dense, while street standards have also greatly increased, meaning much > less tax base to support much more infrastructure._

This sounds like the utter lack of critical thinking which might result in a failing grade for a college term paper, so what gives? As in, what is the thinking with which sane people could justify using such models and/or approving estimates?

<comment><USER27> A lot of it is time and culture gaps. These problems take 20-30 years to unfold so the people who create the problem are gone before the problem appears, and then the people who face the problem look at the budget and go "I dunno, in the past we made money when we took state subsidies and grew, we should do more of that." Suburbanization is a cultural phenomenon, and the result of a lot of social engineering and propoganda from as early as the FDR administration and continuing into the 80s and 90s. That makes it harder to question.

There's also the old adage of it being hard to get a person to see a problem when their job depends on them not seeing it. [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/12/12/best-of- blog-...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/12/12/best-of-blog-asce- and-the-infrastructure-cult.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _I walk both of these streets every single day with my dog and have not had any issues on either._

This is the urban planning version of "works on my machine." Per the article, the project includes ADA compliant sidewalks.

 _However, if I take off my property owner hat and put on my taxpayer hat things start to look a lot different._

There's also a citizen hat. It doesn't focus on "what's in it for me." Citizens are what makes towns strong, not property owners. Not taxpayers.

<comment><USER30> When you have finite resources, you need to make tradeoffs. We probably don't have money to make every single sidewalk in the US ADA compliant, and there are also other things the city needs to fund. Given that, it's better to focus on streets where ADA compliance would be the most useful, and that's probably not in a street like this. Here, pedestrians, cars and wheelchair users can probably just share the road given that it's not a through street. The 1.5M can then go towards funding other initiatives that would help more people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > So, if we can't stop the project from happening, what can we do?

> 1\. Do nothing. Assume that you will be able to grow and borrow forever.

The Fed is buying individual corporate bonds now. The only thing keeping this American experiment afloat is borrowing forever.

<comment><USER32> I mean, not really, this is just better than the alternatives. Also we own the currency it's not the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Off-topic:

I have developed a habit of hitting Esc when modal dialogs pop up on web pages as I'm scrolling down reading. I never want to sign up for the mailing list. The webinar. The sales pitch. Never.

But on sites hosted by Squarespace, Esc gets you into a login prompt, presumably for the site owners? Try it! Weird choice, Squarespace!

<comment><USER34> I too was very weirded out by this. The worst part is I couldn't even figure out that esc was doing this till I read your comment. Esc is usually used to stop or close something, not open something new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The author seems to suggest that the maintenance of the road 30 years from now will cost as much as the current major reconstruction. I expect the maintenance of a 30 year old road is significantly less. I'd determine the bond required to provide the equivalent maintenance over 30 years, levy a one time charge against the individual properties (as a lien against the property value of needed), equal to the total costs minus the expected post 30 year maintenance costs. Then issue a bond for the expected 30 year maintenance costs. Eventually the properties will pay off the lien, and have a predictable yearly bond. Propose that to all the impacted property owners, let them vote on it, and go with a majority rule. If the property owners expect their property values to increase more than the lien, they should vote for it, if not, it's an inefficient use of resources and they should vote against it.

<comment><USER36> The road in front of my childhoom home was originally built to the blog post author's "new" standard, and then replaced after 30 years. Rebuilding the road involved breaking up the concrete, laying new rebar, and pouring the concrete. This happened over a period of about three days. I think the road was drivable on day five once the concrete had set. Since the concrete comes out in great big chunks, the mould is already ready for the concrete to be poured. It was pretty fast, I think they really had to work to even stretch it out into a three day project.

That said, this project in the blog post is a total upgrade of the street, what exists currently is two ditches, which are probably a mosquito spawning ground several months a year, and in the middle is asphalt on top of dirt which is a small step up from a dirt road. The end result of curbs, concrete road and ADA-compliant sidewalk is huge. People will want to move to this neighborhood after the upgrade goes in. With the bare strip of asphalt, the curb-appeal of the houses in this neighborhood is quite low.

Also also, concrete residential roads typically have a 40 year lifespan, not 30. My town could have easily ground down the top 1/2" of concrete road surface for a fraction of the price and gone another 10 years without any further maintenance.

<comment><USER14> Concrete roads aren't as good where it winters. They shift as the ground changes temperature and expands or contracts, and trucks and plows destroy them at the seams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I can easily walk my dog there so there's no need for the sidewalk. If you break your leg, if you're old or disabled - tough luck. I stopped reading after this ableist argument. Those overreaching regulations trying to make life easy for disabled - how are we going to pay for those?

Locally we had a similar response to the idea of replacing pedestrian overpass bridges with regular crossings. Cost of maintaining the bridge and its accessibility are less important than those poor cars which may now have to stop on a red light.

</comment><comment><USER38> Lots of city infrastructure changes are under the assumption that the city may keep growing. So revenues keep growing, and the money borrowed today may seem small tomorrow.

Its a ponzi scheme. But with population growth pretty much constant for a century, this has worked in lots of towns. Now with the new norm being replacement (families have 2 or fewer children), the assumption is going to be challenged. The infrastructure-debt bubble may burst.

<comment><USER14> All but the eastern U.S. is growing in population.

<comment><USER38> Yeah but the growth rate is half or a third what it once was, and declining.

<comment><USER14> Even out east, we are seeing rural areas depopulate and nearby metros absorbing that local population. For instance, Columbus is often cited as a fast growing city. However, almost all of that growth is from people already living elsewhere in Ohio and moving into the city for greater economic opportunities. As a net it looks like there isn't growth or even decline, as the population of Ohio has been relatively stagnant since 1960, but it's a shift of where the population is located that is also playing out everywhere. Part of it is also due to a lower need for labor in rural areas as farming and manufacturing become more automated, and cities are increasingly centers of knowledge workers and research, rather than industrial centers.

In the context of climate change, it is also better to favor investment in cities which are already well scarred by human activity, and have a lot of infrastructure and capital already in place, than to expand into or increase the existing environmental impacts on our natural and rural areas. In California, we've built to the edge of what is sensible given the fringes of civilization perennially burn to the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> That's why giving the government even more money never works: it's not theirs, so a third of a mile of a road nobody uses costs $1.5M, and it will get built anyway. Because why the fuck not. An illustrative example was when after the recession the federal government allocated a shitload of federal funds for infrastructure. A busy local road which _did not need repair_ ended up getting torn down and re-paved several times to use the funds over the course of a couple of years. Why? Nobody asked the question why or did the math. There were roads immediately adjacent which did need repair, those still have potholes. Where I live it costs about $1M to install traffic lights on a simple intersection. A local hospital (which I don't even use because it's out of network with my insurance) is raising hundreds of millions of dollars for "renovations" through levies (which are, thankfully, voted down repeatedly). If I were to vote in favor, they'd still charge me hundreds of thousands of dollars if I get cancer and end up getting treated there. Same with "cancer awareness" campaigns. Dude, you're charging an arm, a leg, and a first-born already, why do you need even more money for "awareness"?

</comment><comment><USER40> Looking at the rest of the economy, public infrastructure projects like this are the only hope to keep the economy running. Yeah there will be some paper debt on municipal books but the net benefit of the money unlocked from this is much higher. At least from an economic sense. In a perverse way the more these projects costs, the more money is redistributed.

<comment><USER41> The Strong Towns book goes into this in more detail. What you say might be the case sometimes, and when it is the case, the money unlocked is reflected in higher property taxes, so the municipal balance sheet stays even. If the town can't somehow get higher property taxes for its improvements, then it spent more money than it will make on the project. If you do that enough time, municipalities start going bankrupt. If people aren't willing to pay higher property taxes for the improvement, then it isn't really helping them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > Yearly Property Tax Paid to City in Project Area: $44,030

Why is this being calculated based on the project area tax contribution only?

<comment><USER27> Because if the numbers don't work on overhauling a single block based on the tax revenue generated by that block, they also don't scale up to work if you draw the tax revenue in from "elsewhere." Everywhere else ALSO has its own road, sewer, etc. to maintain, not to mention fire and EMS services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Municipal law, spending, etc. seems to me like a ripe avenue for software being used to improve society. Here's why: most people don't even know what things are happening in their area, much less do the math to see the full picture. There's an enormous gap between what information is technically available to the public and how that information is put on people's radar so it can influence voting and activism. I feel like I've also read that, for this exact reason, municipal governments are some of the most corrupt parts of our system.

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder how well road projects scale in terms of length - if it would be better or worse per mile to have to do 50 or 500 miles of contiguous road vs 0.32 miles. The absolute cost would be far higher of course but if it it scales slower than linear it suggests a consolidation process as more efficient or whatever the "peak efficency segment" may be.

</comment><comment><USER45> Has anyone done a high-quality analysis on the actual cost of implementing ADA compliance, both in public and private contexts? There are going to be a lot of social and opportunity costs that are hard to capture (e.g. the social losses associated with fewer swimming pools due to high ADA-related costs), but even the raw construction costs would be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER46> So much doom and gloom in that article. The town in question is McKinney TX, and I grabbed their annual budget[1]. Property taxes make up 50% of their ex- services (water, sewer, trash, parks/rec, airport, etc) revenues.

And, the bonds in question will yield ~1.5% at today's rates. In other words, less than inflation. Meanwhile, McKinney has lowered property tax rates in response to higher appraisals (inflation is a major driver of increased appraisals on balance).

So, I take 2 issues with the article. First is the payback period, since property tax revenue only makes up 1/2 of the ex-services income and will increase with inflation. And second, with the idea that every area must cover its own expenses. In general commercial, high-dense and/or rich areas subsidize projects in other neighborhoods. You're going to be able to cherry- pick a project that can't be paid by its beneficiaries in every single city.

[1] [https://www.mckinneytexas.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/22...](https://www.mckinneytexas.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/2210)

</comment><comment><USER47> > Better with some vehicles parked on the street. Most everyone would drive at > a safe speed here.

[author shows picture of a street so crowded with parked cars, even a single car cannot safely drive through without swerving]

The author has bad taste

</comment><comment><USER48> I get the StrongTowns argument in the US, and on my travels there it's fairly easy to see the blight rolling over.

but in the UK i find it harder to spot and wondered if anyone has pointers?

</comment><comment><USER49> One simple reason these budgets get approved: Kick backs.

</comment><comment><USER50> StrongTowns is an org to keep an eye on

</comment><comment><USER51> 4 feet sidewalk is a joke. It is not enough to keep the social distance.</comment>


Commits.io – Create a poster from your code - <AUTHOR> https://commits.io/ <comment><USER3> We will be adding private repo support soon, it's just the mechanics are very clunky (ssh keys and such). You could however generate a temporary token (until you have purchased the poster, at which time you can delete it). You can enter the repo address on the home page as such: [https://<auth- code>:firstname.lastname@example.com/user/repo.git](https://<auth-code>:x-oauth- firstname.lastname@example.com/user/repo.git)

<comment><USER4> Doesn't doing it this way mean that there will be a publicly accessible URL containing your code? This would be a good caveat to mention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice idea but not sure about the execution, the generated poster looks just like minified code. Something is missing...

<comment><USER6> My initial reaction was "oh is that all". I mean don't get me wrong, the way the site works is nice, but I was really expecting it to move the code around such that the whitespace formed a picture, or have all the lines of code in random text sizes, or allow you to prioritise different sections so that some were highlighted or something like that.

As it stands it's not really something I want on my wall.

<comment><USER7> This reminds me of Litographs, a company that puts full text of books in poster form. While the concept works fine for prose it doesn't translate well for code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty cool! Was wondering how it would transform a whitespace sensitive language like Python. The service seems to be slow. But it looks like it would strip out all the indentation leaving it rather meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is great.

I recently shut down two small firms that I've run for years and years - <USER2> opportunity cost of not doing contract work or something else that paid decently was too much to keep at it.

...but I loved the code base, as clunky as it was. It had warts, scars, and stretch marks that documented its path through the years. I don't miss running the firms, but I do miss the code.

I'll be buying posters to hang on the wall and remind me of the good times.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! It was a fun and rewarding moment when it generated a poster from its own code this morning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool! Does this use Lob[0] for posters (the size selections line up)? I've been wondering about their quality for a few side projects and am interested in any feedback about their quality.

[0] [https://lob.com/services/sps/posters/pricing](https://lob.com/services/sps/posters/pricing)

</comment><comment><USER11> I managed to get something for syncany [https://github.com/syncany/syncany](https://github.com/syncany/syncany): [https://commits-io.s3.amazonaws.com/71712d74724.pdf](https://commits- io.s3.amazonaws.com/71712d74724.pdf)

<comment><USER12> THIS. IS. AWESOME.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks nice but seems to crash upon clicking the "Do Magic" button. I'm guessing it might be getting stressed by the traffic from HN.

<comment><USER3> Server is getting a lot of hits unfortunately. And generations take a lot of resources. Sorry :(

<comment><USER13> Makes sense, you should keep some high resolution pictures on the front page as examples (ones you could zoom in on to see what they really look like). That way people can get an idea of what these look like without unduly stressing the servers.

Other than that, looks great. Well done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How many passwords will soon be hanging on the walls of various cubes and conference rooms?

</comment><comment><USER15> No full resolution examples that I can look at?

<comment><USER16> I just ran their example (Rails): [https://commits.io/builds/de927875458](https://commits.io/builds/de927875458)

<comment><USER17> Here's some more:

iojs/io.js - [https://commits.io/builds/1e68cd56c34](https://commits.io/builds/1e68cd56c34)

progit/progit - [https://commits.io/builds/12e3174c300](https://commits.io/builds/12e3174c300)

torvalds/linux - [https://commits.io/builds/c594eefd2a6](https://commits.io/builds/c594eefd2a6)

dotnet/coreclr - Never finished extracting. Waited for 5 minutes.

chromatic/modern_perl_book - [https://commits.io/builds/028f52f571c](https://commits.io/builds/028f52f571c)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there some type of estimate of how many character you need to fill up one of these posters? I wouldn't mind getting one of a particularly tricky module I wrote as a POC for my presentation at the SAM conference last year but it's probably only 300 LOC total.

</comment><comment><USER19> If anyone wants the linux kernel on their wall : [https://commits.io/builds/88548595a3c](https://commits.io/builds/88548595a3c) (or at least a chunk of it)

I find this service a bit expensive for something that can be made in 10 minutes with illustrator - maybe if I get fantastic glossy paper, but it doesn't seem to mention much about the paper specs.

<comment><USER20> > 10 minutes

Basically what it does is grab some files from the repository, removes newlines and prints it.

        cat $(find -type f | shuf -n 1) | tr -d '\n' | print

That didn't take me 10 minutes to come up with, let alone run.

<comment><USER21> They should really be caching the poster after each render. I've been staring at a loading screen for a while now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Awesome idea. Is there are also a similar service in a do-it-yourself way, without having to put your code into the open as that's a no-go for companies with private code bases.

For example I work for a game development studio and this seems like a cool idea to make some posters of our games, but giving our code base to a company like commit would never be allowed by management.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think you should let people know you plan on cloning the entire repo. You are currently cloning chromium.git, sorry :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Server is being hugged to death. Can't seem to do anything at the moment. The idea is very cool though I would definitely use this, I'd perhaps even pay for it. Most Devs are fond of their code because they put work in to it. It's a cool idea for a bedroom or living room talking piece.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, went to Product Hunt front page and HN front page in the same hour. I don't think I can do much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It looks nice, without a doubt. But I'd be more inclined to buy a poster that I can look at and remember that particular piece of code that was a pain to write/debug[#].

The poster can be a good thing to get after shipping a milestone!

[#] maybe displayed as a big "snake" with all the code put together

<comment><USER3> Good insight. Will be working on some of the features people have suggested. First milestone was the original use case I had. I shy away from changing the code _too_ much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Would be nice if it would exclude comments. My poster seems to be mostly made out of GPL ramble.

<comment><USER27> It looks like you can exclude certain files, did you try excluding the licenses?

<comment><USER28> She/He probably has a GPL "comment header" in every source file, that might be a little bit more tricky to remove :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do the repo owners get a cut? :)

I tried it on Clojure then imagined how guilty I'd feel buying it knowing Rich Hickey wouldn't get any money but the printers would get lots, hah.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nice. Also try [https://code.google.com/p/gource/](https://code.google.com/p/gource/) for visualizing the git history.

</comment><comment><USER31> It would be nice if you could add Support for IPad. I cannot copy/paste the url. As soon as I tap on the url field, I toggle the info text box.

<comment><USER3> Should be fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Pointed it at Dolphin Emulator:

[https://commits.io/builds/e217f8be3dd](https://commits.io/builds/e217f8be3dd)

Doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER33> I applaud you not only for this idea, but for keeping the site up because I imagine everyone will be pounding it just as much as me :)

<comment><USER3> You don't know the half of it. Hopefully people are understanding and try again at a later time. Runs flawlessly when the user load is under a thousand :D.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just a quick heads up, United Kingdom is between Gabon and Grenada.

A few other countries seem to be in the wrong place too when ordering.

<comment><USER35> Perhaps they use country code GB as an internal name for sorting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sweet! Make sure to allow typing in repository address without the http(s):// protocol

</comment><comment><USER36> Make the code conform to the form of an image that the user uploads, and I'll buy a dozen.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is awesome!

I need this printed on t-shirts!

</comment><comment><USER14> How do you indicate you want the shape overlays, like the Rails logo and such?

</comment><comment><USER38> Fun stuff, also, is this typo on purpose? "Comming soon"

</comment><comment><USER39> This is so cool, I need to get a print of that.

</comment><comment><USER40> for me it just adds all the code in all the files and displays it in a small font.. something wrong in my repo?

<comment><USER41> you need to click "customize" and add a logo or other graphic</comment></comment>


Why doesn't Britain have a Huawei of its own? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/08/britain-huawei-general-electric-company-thatcherism <comment><USER2> The article talks about GEC, although a more pertinent example might have been Racal which spun off Vodafone, but in turn was bought by what became Thales.</comment>


Quick and dirty distributed locking using a database - <AUTHOR> http://documen.to/quick-and-dirty-distributed-locking/

<comment><USER2> Neither quick nor dirty - nor trivial. You need to set up a reasonable time- frame (timeout) for the lock.</comment>


Show HN: WeHatePasswords – Ditch passwords for easy to remember pixel art - <AUTHOR> https://wehatepasswords.com <comment><USER2> I am not sure how this prevents the 2 problems with passwords. Mainly password reuse them or people choose something to guessable.

I suspect people here will choose only simple shapes and won't use all the colours. It also is not currently compatible with password managers. I suspect there is even users of a password manager might reuse what ever they drew here. Secondly, it has the problem that this input method can't be easily obscured from an over the shoulder snooping.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Today I'm introducing you all to a new project of mine called WeHatePasswords. The project's goal is to make your password inputs more intuitive by allowing your members to use a memorable picture for their password as opposed to some complicated text. While this approach to security looks simple on the surface there is 28,430,288,000,000,000,000 possible password combinations so it's definitely not an easy task for somebody to brute force a pixel art password. I have a working demo available on the homepage and instructions on how to add WeHatePasswords to your own site; it's a quick and easy process! Thanks for checking out WeHatePasswords I hope you found it useful or entertaining

</comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting idea (although I don't think it would be very practical as an actual password) but you should also have some indicator other than colour to differentiate different types of input, for people who might be colour- blind.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really great idea I will add icons for each color</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your opnion on Elon Musk's Covid-19 related tweets - <AUTHOR> While most people say the epidemic is serious and definitely not under control, he's of the opinion the measures are way too strict and the public is being scared for nothing.
His proof is very limited, mostly hospital bed ocupancy being way bellow the predicted values.
His pinned tweet says "FREE AMERICA NOW". <comment><USER2> I'm tired of the people who are demanding we all stay confined to our house indefinitely. I've seen tons of buzz on twitter that seems to think leaving with a mask and practicing social distancing is akin to murder. Suggesting that there's a responsible way to resume some activity with appropriate caution is viewed as reckless and inhumane.

Has anyone tried quantifying the human cost of house confinement? If people are so concerned about the risk of not leaving, I think we need to start putting hard numbers around what these draconian measures are costing us. There _is_ a cost and it's not even clear that have a good grasp of what it is. Outside of the human cost, there's major precedents and political ramifications.

Are we entering a world where we'll constantly do similar hysterics around trendlines of deaths and micromanaging policy? Clearly preventable, chronic disease is a far more potent killer but less visible since it happens over a long time period.

<comment><USER3> That's the thing. It currently seems to be "obey the law or people will die and you're irresponsible" vs "I want my freedom to do as I please"

I swear, I feel like we're at a time where American's can't agree on whether or not fire is hot.

I saw someone reference Elon's tweet as being "MAGA" because he wants to reopen. So it's incredibly sad to see how the debate over reopening has like everything else...turned incredibly partisan. Why do I have to be a Trump supporter just because I want to get back to my life?

I've seen people mention that the "one size fits all approach" \- meaning that an elderly at risk woman and I, a young healthy person both have to follow the same rules, may not be helping the situation.

No doubt here that that our local and federal leaders have failed us once again.

Just a really unfortunate time here the ol' US of A.

<comment><USER4> I blame the media for this. And I don't just mean during this pandemic, but for the past couple decades (and especially from 2015 onward.) Dividing the audience is good for business.

I really enjoyed the book _Hate Inc_ by Matt Taibbi that examines this phenomenon.

<comment><USER5> Dividing the country also prevents real progress and preserves the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would like to point out that in April 30th NASA will be announcing the commercial human lander awards.

[https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce- commerci...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-commercial- human-lander-awards-for-artemis-moon-missions/)

Several politicians from the current US administration share the opinion to open up.

Maybe mr Musk would like to open up the economy. Maybe he does believe that's for the better, for the economy. Is that right? My understanding is that it is not, but I'm no epidemiologist.

Is he biased? Probably! Does a CEO waiting for a federal organization to announce if his company will win a contract from NASA looks OK when he doesn't wait a couple of days to tweet such a controversial tweet?

I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER7> Look at poor countries such as India, over 140 million people face destitution because the economy is closed. Its either death from hunger or covid-19, and I bet a lot of them would gladly take their chances with the virus. [1]

Lockdown is a luxury only the rich countries can afford in the first place, I don't think it makes sense for everyone. Whether Musk is right or not in the American context, will be determined by the end of next winter when the final body count is tallied.

[1]. [https://www.ft.com/content/dec12470-894b-11ea-9dcb- fe6871f41...](https://www.ft.com/content/dec12470-894b-11ea-9dcb-fe6871f4145a)

<comment><USER8> It's not their chances it's the chances for everyone around the world

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I couldn't care less about him, I'm more concerned about what his fan club will do.

</comment><comment><USER10> In the UK here, I have heard the bed occupancy is low because people are afraid to go to the emergency room out of fear of catching COVID. So there are typically a number of people who die every month. Then you have the number who have died of COVID. But now they have a larger than expected people die of non-COVID. Question is do these extras die of COVID but not tested or the fear of COVID and not getting help.

As for Elon Musk, and most famous people, I treat there opinions with no more credibility than I do the grocer or the shoe shine. Just because some media person decides to repeat your words does not make it right.

Of course if I see it on Hacker News thats a different story ... Not that it is more accurate, but it will be better vetted. Others will chime in with counter opinion. Its not a one way street.

</comment><comment><USER11> > _His proof is very limited, mostly hospital bed ocupancy being way bellow > the predicted values._

First, one question would be that _maybe_ hospital bed occupancy being way bellow the predicted values is because measures were taken.

Similar to saying "The military is useless because nobody is attacking us" or "See? It wasn't necessary to vaccinate everyone. Nobody has polio in hospitals!"

Second, the measures can be seen as too strict in retrospective. However, nobody wants to have a retrospective of lackadaisical measures that lead to many more deaths. In other words, when in doubt is it sane to roll the dice. Is it better to say "sorry, I pushed you because I saw the driver lose control and kill ten people already" or "sorry, I shrugged it off and now you're dead". Overzealous measures can be taken down a few notches. It can be hard to recover, especially with loss of employment, but loss of life is harder to recover from.. The consequences of lax measures lead to irrecoverable and irreversible states.

Third, it would have been over-reacting if there were only one country dealing with it and there were no data, but I don't think it's easy _not_ to over- react when you see countries that were hit really hard, even with no real data.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've got more respect for him after those tweets

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not like the first time [1] when he almost got in prison for fraud last two years

1:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102923)</comment>


Microsoft Launches "Next App Star" Competition For Windows Phone Developers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/14/microsoft-launches-next-app-star-competition-for-windows-phone-developers/

<comment><USER2> My only question is, why did it take them so long to do this?</comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite tele-presence white-board system? - <AUTHOR>

What do you prefer to use when working remotely with someone to draw up diagrams and ideas free hand and hopefully collaboratively? <comment><USER2> I recently heard of vyew.com via a local hackerspace but haven't tried it yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> A dual question: what hardware do you use?

Wacom tablets are expensive but drawing with a mouse sucks.

<comment><USER4> The little wacom bamboo tablets are actually pretty cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use a pair of vnc sessions so we can both work in our own space without latency, and also see and help with what the other person is doing. The vnc sessions are routed over ssh and via a server (to avoid nat problems). I use this mainly for pair-progamming, but it's also good for drawing / whiteboard stuff I suppose, you can run gimp or whatever in it.</comment>


Do the rich owe a "debt to society?"  - <AUTHOR> http://jeffreyellis.org/blog/?p=6499

<comment><USER2> Whenever you try to win an argument by dismissing the other side, you aren't really debating.

"The belief that the rich owe some payment to society implies that society paid a cost or made some kind of sacrifice for which it must be fairly compensated.

This is, of course, pure bullshit."

His argument is that since it all has been paid for already, so it doesn't actually cost society anything to raise that person.

I.e. the marginal cost of one rich person to society is no different than one poor person.

However he acknowledges in the post without realizing it that the marginal cost of a person to society is not the issue.

"It's all been paid for already and in the case of taxpayer-funded infrastructure, it's been paid for disproportionately by the rich."

Exactly. The society which enabled the rich the oppurtunity to become rich was supported by previous generations of rich people. Congradulations, as one of the winners you now have the obligation to do what previous generations of winners have done for hundreds of years: support society so that a new crop of winners will have the oppurtunity you had.

Society needs continual investment to maintain the status quo.</comment>


Ask HN: What happened to Urbit? - <AUTHOR> It's been a year since there was some meaningful update from them. Does anybody know if they are getting closer to their goal of giving every internet user their own server? <comment><USER2> A question about urbit: whenever I read anything concerning it, all I see is a weird programming language and warning signs of esoteric technocratic fascism.

What is it that people find fascinating?

<comment><USER3> (I own an Urbit Galaxy, so /very/ biased source.)

Urbit is a platform for building decentralized apps. That's it's entire goal: that everyone will be able to own all their own content instead of data being stuck in BookFace silos. To that end, it's a tightly-coupled environment that provides all the building block it needs to allow developers to easily build those apps, with the reasoning that building a decentralize app on Unix technology would never reached the point your mom could spin up a server by herself. Try to setup a GNU Social instance and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Most of the critisim that I've seen is pretty much the same "what a weird language", but imo that's pretty much just kneejerk from it not looking like C, and APL gets the same reaction (Hoon is probably objectively easier than APL since it's pretty much just Lisp-like under the hood, it just also looks weird.)

As for fascism, the creator is pretty notorious but that doesn't really touch any aspects that I've noticed. The identity hierarchy that people freak out about is basically just a clone of HTTPS certificate authorities, and the entire point of Urbit is removal of power from central servers, not give C. G. Yarvin absolute power of the internet or something.

<comment><USER4> > That's it's entire goal: that everyone will be able to own all their own > content instead of data being stuck in BookFace silos.

How is this any different to just running your own site?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They've had several blog posts in the last year. It's a long-term project so I would't be surprised if progress is slow.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a public forum for urbit that you can check if you want more active discussion on the community (urbit.org/fora), along with the urbit-meta talk room which all the developers and users chat in constantly.

You can use urbit for a lot of stuff already, it's just kinda a hassle since it's still being developed and people haven't developed apps for it. Someone wrote a Tumblr mirror app a few weeks ago, for example, and there's a Twitter client too, but they're both not as easy to setup as is nessecary for wide support.

</comment><comment><USER6> Urbit is snake oil. They're never going to deliver anything. That sale of "stars" or whatever was them cashing out.

Take a good long look at the developer documentation and tell me I'm wrong.</comment>


Is Listening to a Book the Same Thing as Reading It? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/sunday/audiobooks-reading-cheating-listening.html <comment><USER2> Good topic.

I would say that I am mostly unhappy with audiobooks that discuss more technical subjects and happier with novels. In addition I find foreign language texts easier to read than to listen to. That probably supports the author's claim that the additional strategies available in reading are useful as complexity increases.

As regards audiobooks as works of art in themselves:

\- Some readers are atrocious: there is nothing more jarring than hearing a word mispronounced, a change of rhythm or volume, an over-exaggeration of pitch, or even worse a deadpan, flat stilted delivery.

\- Some readers are just not appropriate for the subject matter: USians reading works set in the UK and vice versa.

\- If you like the Patrick O'Briain Aubrey/Maturin stories (set around the Napoleonic wars as conducted at sea) I would like to make a strong recommendation that you get hold of the readings by Patrick Tull. He has the most fantastically appropriate delivery, range and pronounciation for this series: [https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Patrick+Tull](https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Patrick+Tull)

\- Not all audiobooks are controlled by the Audible monopoly. And out of the alternatives Librivox had a (IMO) star reader in the human form of Andy Minter (RIP) who is on cracking form with this rendition of a Ruritanian escapade: [https://librivox.org/the-prisoner-of-zenda-by-anthony- hope/](https://librivox.org/the-prisoner-of-zenda-by-anthony-hope/)

<comment><USER2> Quick question for US readers as a check on my predjudices:

I mostly find it deeply disturbing to hear a strong American/Canadian accent in fantasy works. Does the reverse apply for you?

<comment><USER3> As an American I dislike the vast majority of regional accents and would like them to go the way of the Dodo Bird. Even the one I have some fondness for, a Brooklyn accent, would be incredibly jarring in a Fantasy work. Being a resident of Northern California though it's rare to hear 'American' accents, most of the English is either unaccented or foreign-accented.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A Really Simple Blog Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.throwww.com/

<comment><USER2> Nice! I like simple websites like this, with a clear purpose, and no authentication (I built <http://scri.ch/> some times ago, it allows users to quickly draw sketches and share them).

Do you plan to generate revenues, and if so, how?

Your logo reminds me of a mix between Sparrow and the Svbtle logos:

<http://sprw.me/mac.php>

<https://svbtle.com/>

Keep up the good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, man! (assuming you are a man).

Nice scri.ch btw. You still working on it?

And as for revenue etc, I just built this for fun last week cause I was tired of how Posterous kept getting more bloated every time I used it. No thoughts about this as a business, really.

<comment><USER2> I am a man :-)

I'm still working on it occasionally (it's an Open Source Software): <https://github.com/bpierre/scri.ch>

I asked for the revenue because we thought about it after the initial scri.ch release, but we came to the conclusion that there is no real market here. It does not matter: we built it for fun and we are using it a lot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice to use, simple.

<http://www.throwww.com/a/w>

is a repost of mine to test, feel free to delete. I only posted anon as I have no twitter acount

1) How do I edit an anonymous post once made? Perhaps a cookie allowing editing from the same IP as posting for half an hour? Do twitter log ins get to edit?

2) How is the url scheme going to grow. 26^2 at present. Will it be 26^n automatically?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and why would I delete it?

1) You can't edit anonymous posts as of right now. Good suggestion though, I could just use a unique identifier to allow you to edit within the same session. If people besides me actually start using this, I'll definitely add that. 2) Yah, it's 26^n

<comment><USER3> "Thanks, and why would I delete it?"

No reason just the idea that when you 'launch with ordinary people' having tonnes of 'testing posts' might be annoying?

I like to use a little formatting now and again, italics &c. So I will try that in a bit.

456976 for four letters should keep you going for a bit :-) Er, are you going to _skip over_ certain three and four letter urls?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's interesting. There is a trend with this kind of sites (I've seen at least one here on HN before). Is it some evolution of joint anonymous blogging/microblogging/pastebins? Or is it driven by an experience - I want to try blogging, let's start by writing, not registering, configuring, skinning, etc?

I don't believe that this might catch on, but as a branch of online self- publishing it could still live a little.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the trend you describe could be put in terms of disintermediation of web properties. Facebook, for instance, tries to be a platform that does everything. But much like real life, products are beginning to specialize because niche products can just do a better job at meeting the needs of a segment. That's why I disagree with you that this is just a trend.

<comment><USER4> Point taken. I would still argue that most people would not go to bare post composer to write. Personal blogs and websites fill this space. Of course, there are lots of those, who like minimalistic and distracion free environments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have you considered centering the text in the page? This looks good on a laptop sized screen, but on a widescreen monitor it feels very odd to be so far over with half the screen white.

There's nothing wrong with it this way, it just feels slightly off because it's different from most blogging platforms and news sites.

Otherwise, love the simple design and philosophy.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know, I tried centering it and it looked "off" to me. Just my eye, though. I'd be curious if others feel the same. Anyone else's thoughts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice and simple is back in the business, however, this service could leverage more useful activity if you'd allow it to extend the twitter, i.e, something like tweet-longer type of service. Too often people have more than 140 character to say and something less than a paragraph or a blog post.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by extend the twitter? As in post the first part of the article on their behalf?

I was thinking of something like that, but wanted to make the use case as general as possible so people can decide how they want to use it. Maybe I'm wrong :S

<comment><USER6> Well, yes. The thing is, it is practically impossible to trust a stranger service for writing/jotting-down thoughts on a service like this. It is simply hard to build and depend on it (you gave an example of Posterous - it was something I stopped trusting within few months).

I don't know about the technical solutions, but the way Branch currently integrates with Twitter, the way you can be conversing on Branch and still your conversation spills over Twitter...is what I have in mind in terms of this type of simple blogging service. The paragraph or couple of sentences should spill over to Twitter, and/or the Tweets should spill over to this type of service. All this not necessarily in a way it is currently setup by other platforms (like Wordpress, you can cross-post blogs to Twitter) but something naturally with least effort and distraction.

Am I making sense? There may be some services out there providing this experience, but ... anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice, I'm working on something similar myself and it's also in Django.

You might want to switch off DEBUG=True in your settings if you're expecting HN to come knocking :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, and good call :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like this. Clean and simple. Would be nice if I wasn't forced to use twitter to track my blogs though. What about an equally clean and simple user dashboard?

<comment><AUTHOR> The original use case I had in mind was to allow twitter users to write more than 140 characters. I've since drifted away from that, and a plain ol' user registration option might make a lot more sense now.

As for user dashboards, there's just this for now <http://throwww.com/u/sfard>

<comment><USER9> You should make "1 more articles by sfard" a link to take you back to your user page. I missed the list on the right at first glance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love this.Is there any place we can report bugs or suggest new stuff ?

Also I can't login with twitter atm.Anyone else having this problem ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I forgot to change a variable in my settings file, so Twitter was calling back to my local machine. Hence it worked for me but no one else. Fixed now.

As for bugs, for now you can email me... saeidm[at]gmail.com or @sfard on twitter.

Much appreciated!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.throwww.com/a/1>

Here's why I built Throwww.

<comment><USER11> It links to '1 more articles,' even though it's the only one.

My anonymous post was immediately "viewed 2 times."

This is still a nifty little tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yah, hypothetically there should be more there. Just kept it in there for now to show that "more articles" shows up when you post with twitter. Though I really shouldn't have been so lazy and just written a 2nd article.

And thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Clean and simple. I really like it. Thank you, man.

</comment><comment><USER13> Twitter auth didn't work for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn! Thanks for letting me know. Can you tell me what, if anything, it says?

<comment><USER13> Redirected to an internal page: 127.0.0.1:8000

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, forgot to change some settings before deploying. Should work now. Thanks for the catch!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stiff asks, great programmers answer (Torvalds, Norvig, Stroustrup, etc.) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.csdn.net/mudboy/archive/2006/08/07/1033297.aspx

<comment><USER2> This is an example of blatant plagiarism - besides, the content has already been submitted : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=574301>

<comment><AUTHOR> Uh sorry

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Besides the fact it is plagiarism, I'm really annoyed by the wrapping of words!</comment>


Business Lessons I Learned This Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.quicksprout.com/2009/08/31/10-business-lessons-i-learned-this-year/

<comment><USER2> Anyone else tired of these business-advice-self-help blog posts? It's all this feel good generalized advice that just seems to reiterate the same points over and over again. Anything with concrete examples (data is even better) is so much more useful than this sort of stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a market for the business equivalent to "Men's Health"? Instead of "10 ways to get great abs in 5 minutes", it could be filled with similar advice for businesses.

Not that I want to deride the advice - I guess some things one just needs to hear over and over again, until they finally sink in...

</comment><comment><USER4> Although I agree that the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none personality type doesn't make a good hire, the corollary to this is that you need to watch out for people with advanced not-my-job-syndrome. Over the years I've worked with designers who consider any mention of production of their work "techie speak", developers who think design is just "making things pretty", Flash guys who get the creepy-crawlies if they have to interface with Javascript, marketing drones who completely lack any understanding of how a web application is built, etc. Claiming to be a "specialist" is often just cover for a lack of intellectual curiosity.

People should of course always excel at a few specific things, and play off each others' strengths, but remember: specialization is for insects.

<comment><USER5> > Although I agree that the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none personality type > doesn't make a good hire

I'm not sure that I do. I've seen companies that survived because someone did what it took to ship, regardless of whether "it" had anything to do with his/her speciality.

Or, maybe that person's "speciality" was "ships product".

<comment><USER4> +1

As a self-professed generalist I just didn't want to sound too self-serving. ;) OTOH, I believe that striving to develop particular excellence in a few things IS a hallmark of good self-discipline...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I couldn't make it to the end of the article because of the spelling errors. If you're offering business advice, at least learn how to write a coherent sentence!

</comment><comment><USER7> It's always great to look back at successful/unsuccessful marketing attempts and see where they went right and wrong.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1 Advise I Learned This Year. "Don't take any, including this one"

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there are a lot of good gems in there. Especially the one on: the minimal viable product concept by Eric Ries.</comment></comment>


In Praise of Maintenance (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.com/podcast/in-praise-of-maintenance-rebroadcast/ <comment><USER2> Maintenance can also help you in creating new things. You see a good basis, from which to extend with new ideas. You see the beauty and craftsmanship of a well-designed device, system, etc. And that inspires you, and sets a floor for the quality of what you want to accomplish.

Maintenance gives you time to "meditate" \-- performing needed and useful work while keeping a few neurons open for new thought.

And maintenance saves money, allowing you to invest resources in new projects instead of constantly ad-hoc patching and replacing those you've neglected to the point of failure.

It can also provide some redundancy. If model 2015 breaks down, maybe model 1985 can carry you through the repairs.

Finally, some of the old tools I have are better than the new. Better to maintain them, because I can't replace them with their equal or better for any reasonable price.

It's important to know when to let something go. But, it shouldn't be out of neglect followed by panicked necessity. Panic can generate inspiration, but it's not good as a lifestyle.

<comment><USER3> You are so right! It's interesting how this applies to many different fields, including software development. I've seen quite a few projects/products fail because maintenance was abandoned in favor of starting from scratch.

Here's a relevant related article by Joel Spolsky: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170304072731/https://www.joelo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170304072731/https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things- you-should-never-do-part-i/)

<comment><USER4> Why use the Wayback Machine? Joel's blog is still up: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you- should-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never- do-part-i/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Important subject, terrible article. A famous one, by Eric Hoffer, 1958:

As I walked several blocks from the bus stop to the docks, I was impressed by the gardens in front of the houses. The houses, of average size, are fairly old, yet in excellent shape. The people living there are mostly workingmen.

The sight of the gardens and houses turned my mind to the question of maintenance. It is the capacity for maintenance which is the best test for the vigor and stamina of a society.

Any society can be galvanized for a while to build something, but the will and the skill to keep things in good repair day in, day out are fairly rare.

At present, neither in the Communist countries nor in the newly created nations is there a pronounced capacity for maintenance.

I wonder how true it is that after the Second World War the countries with the best maintenance were the first to recover. I am thinking of Holland, Belgium and Western Germany. I don't know how it is in Japan.

The Incas had an intense awareness of maintenance. They assigned whole villages and tribes to keep roads, bridges and buildings in good repair.

I read somewhere that in ancient Rome a man was disqualified as a candidate for office because his garden showed neglect.

<comment><USER6> > It is the capacity for maintenance which is the best test for the vigor and > stamina of a society.

Why? Personally, I think I'm quite good at maintaining my code, but my office looks like a mess. The two aspects are totally not correlated, and therefore I don't know why anyone could make that kind of claim here.

<comment><USER7> The capacity and urge for maintenance is a discrete mental capacity which I sometimes experience, but not often enough. If there was a drug to induce it, I would want to take it.

While it's true that sometimes I put my efforts into one thing and not another, I definitely think maintaining things generally is intertwined with mental health - in fact, the somewhat archaic term "mental hygiene" I've often thought suggests this. I generally experience an irrational need to procrastinate that is the opposite of a desire to do maintenance, and I don't see any positive side to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a very cheap way of restoring a device to an optimal state, maintenance costs are almost like a way to repurchase something without expenses such as fabrication, assembly, transport, etc. The correct molecules are each already in the correct locations, making it much cheaper than modifying other molecules - just restore or replace the most entropic parts.

Described in another HN thread:

> _If you do have a particular attachment to the taste of coffee, consider a > Keurig ($120-$250) with a reusable filter. Each cup of coffee uses ~1 /3 oz > of ground coffee, so a 12oz bag ($6-21) gives ~33 cups. With expensive > coffee, and an expensive machine, at 10 cups per day, after 100 days (1000 > cups), that's $886.36, or $8.86 per day. If you find a cheap machine and > good, inexpensive coffee, you're looking at $301.82 or $3.02 per day.

Add in $13/300 paper filters for easy and compostable cleaning, and you're looking at $3.45 - $9.29 per day, depending on your coffee price._ And 32oz of vinegar for the descaling ($4) for another 1000 cups, increases to $3.47 - $9.30 per day.[0]

In this way, the $4 of vinegar (and associated labor) is almost like the $120-250 for a new machine, from a certain point of view.

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17362292](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17362292)</comment>


Seminal Papers in Software Engineering: The Carnegie Mellon Canonical Collection - <AUTHOR> http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/isr2015/abstracts/15-107.html <comment><USER2> PDF of the Canon for Fall 2015: [http://reports- archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/isr2015/CMU-ISR-1...](http://reports- archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/isr2015/CMU-ISR-15-107.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Now we just need access to the papers themselves. I can't help but think of Aaron Swartz.</comment>


Damn Vulnerable IOS Application - <AUTHOR> http://damnvulnerableiosapp.com/#about

<comment><USER2> Nifty, and—I think—looks worthwhile. But, I'd be far more convinced if it used the word "you" more often, and better explained what's actually going on and why I might want to pay money for what's being offered.

<comment><USER3> Are you a bot?</comment></comment>


The Counted: are US police hiding behind 'suicide by cop' shootings? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/06/suicide-by-cop-the-counted <comment><USER2> I'm all for more police scrutiny. As a resident of NYC, I've had a few interactions with police that have left me with the impression that probably 50% of them here are ineffective _at best_ , and a net negative at worst. I'm sure there are good, well intentioned police officers here, but I've honestly never encountered one.

However, these stories all involve people who wanted to die getting shot to death by the police because they intentionally posed a danger to them.

I can't really fault officers for shooting a man charging at them with a knife and hatchet. Yes, they could have used nonlethal weapons, and yes they could have responded differently, such as shooting his legs.

These officers should be disciplined and retrained to handle these situations, but this is not Eric Garner or Michael Brown.

<comment><USER3> _I can 't really fault officers for shooting a man charging at them with a knife and hatchet. Yes, they could have used nonlethal weapons_

There are no effective ones. Heck, handguns fail frequently enough to stop such attacks; some adversaries who don't get hit in the CNS only stop attacking after sufficient blood loss.

Shooting in the legs is for movies. Besides still being lethal force (especially if a femoral artery is hit), a small, often moving a lot more than the torso target is subpar at best. If lethal force is justified, then shooting at the center of mass is the only reasonable policy, maybe followed up by attempts to hit the head (CNS).

(NYC police, BTW, have some of the worse firearms training in the country. Turns out there are consequences to extinguishing your firearms culture.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the US ipso facto a police state at this point? Well, maybe not. Because "police state" implies a level of involvement by the government/politicization in an organized way.

When I think about what interactions I'm worried about having, those with cops make me more anxious than walking along a dark alley.

Are cops just the new mob?

Of course, you might say .. "No! Look at China etcs", but I don't live in China. I'm not worried about Chinese cops.

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Might just be one of the most important questions that will decide the future of the US. Guards watching themselves isn't working anymore, if it ever actually did.

<comment><USER3> _Is the US ipso facto a police state at this point?_

We civilians have _way_ too many guns for this to be like any police state previously known to man.

E.g., 9 million were manufactured in the US last year, and I could look up the importation numbers if desired. Monthly NICS recorded sales continue to break records. Etc. etc.

To those who say this sort of thing is useless, well, ignoring how much this might be suppressing greater unjustified police violence (or, why are they so eager to kill dogs?), note how all those California police units _completely lost their shit_ when _1_ mostly crazy guy started killing a few of them.

That said, suicide by cop is a real thing, there's even a recorded case of suicide by armed civilian. But certainly some unjustified killings are lurking in the statistics.

<comment><USER5> > That said, suicide by cop is a real thing

A lot of people shot and killed by US police have tiny weapons - little itty bitty 3" blades.

Suicide by cop is a thing in the US where police are quick to kill civilians. The fact that the US doesn't accurately count people killed by police is weird and baffling.

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/08/ar...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/08/armed- police)

[http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the- counted-p...](http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted- police-killings-us-vs-other-countries)

[http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/the-shocking-extent- of...](http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/the-shocking-extent-of-fatal- police-shootings-in-the-us-in-one-graphic--lJkmbhc5yb)

<comment><USER3> A blade that small is entirely capable of delivering a mortal wound (and normal concealed body armor is little hindrance to edged weapons), and are you aware of the Tueller Drill: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill) ?

<comment><USER5> Sure. Police forces across the western world deal with blades that size or bigger without killing the person holding it.

US police are incompetant.

<comment><USER6> When it comes to blades, I'd rather be called "incompetent" than dead. a quick youtube or liveleak search shows more than a few of these 'competent' police getting killed.

<comment><USER5> Yet other police forces in the western world deal with similar knives, and larger, without resorting to killing the person with the weapon.

A quick youtube search shows police in England or Germany or etc subduing then arresting people with weapons.

Why can they do it while US police can't? It's because i) US police have much less training and ii) US police can use their guns almost with impunity. The fact that the US doesn't even bother to count the number of people killed by police should tell you something.

<comment><USER6> that also happens all the time in the US. Not every knife incident in the U.S. results in a shooting death of the attacker. and if YOU were U.S. police you would use your gun against a knife attacker if you could.

what do you think is on the mind of somebody with a knife? There's no reason to believe they want to do anything but kill you or someone else. And no reason to believe they'll stop at one person now or that they won't do it again. Knife fighting is a good way to get killed.

Bottom line, you don't know it until you're in the shit or you're close to somebody in it. Ever been on a ride along? I'm guessing you haven't and you sit at home complaining about police without learning anything about it.

<comment><USER5> > that also happens all the time in the US. Not every knife incident in the > U.S. results in a shooting death of the attacker.

US police shoot and kill about 1,000 people per year. That's far more than any other country. Some people claim it's because of US gun laws meaning more people have guns, but US police shoot and kill people with small knives. Those same people are not shot and killed in other countries - what are those countries doing differently?

> and if YOU were U.S. police you would use your gun against a knife attacker > if you could.

If I was incompetent and had almost zero training then yes, I probably would shoot people. Maybe this is the thing that other countries are doing differently - providing adequate training?

> what do you think is on the mind of somebody with a knife?

We know that lots of people who are shot and killed by US police have no history of violence against other people, but do have a history of self-harm. We know that some people are attempting suicide, their families call the police for help, and the police shoot the person.

That is clearly sub-optimal. I'm not sure how you could defend such useless policing.

And you keep saying that people with knives are murderous villains - but you ignore the fact that these same murderous villains are not shot and killed in other countries. Why do English police manage to subdue then capture a violent man wielding a machette? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5CPx4RKWw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5CPx4RKWw) This man would be dead in the US.

> Bottom line, you don't know it until you're in the shit or you're close to > somebody in it. Ever been on a ride along? I'm guessing you haven't and you > sit at home complaining about police without learning anything about it.

Why do you feel the need to defend incompetence and brutality?

<comment><USER7> In a knife attack, nobody wins. All will be injured. It is considered correct response to avoid engagement with a knife-wielder. Responding with a gun _is_ correct training.

Also, the final Ad-hominem attack is not helping.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Room - <AUTHOR> https://room.co/

<comment><USER2> Hi everyone. I lead the product, Room. There are quite a few of us working on Room, so on behalf of the team here in San Francisco, thanks for posting this on Hacker News. We hope you like Room. Room's Twitter handle is @get_room. If you have questions, feel free to post or email me: firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


A document that the NSA uses for teaching Python - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/comp3321/page/n89/mode/2up/search/device <comment><USER2> Is this any better than other resources or just mildly interesting because it was made by the NSA?

<comment><USER3> Probably the latter. Anything that reveals how the NSA and other agencies operate is interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I adore governments' classification system which can state things are classified as 'unclassified', and by extension to hijack the meaning of 'classified' to mean 'top secret'.

On a topic relevant note, from the original twitter feed [0] which announced/released this (as part of FOIA) a helpful person also mentioned a lightweight download of the ?same document[1] (18MB vs 118MB).

[0] [https://twitter.com/chris_swenson/status/1225836060938125313...](https://twitter.com/chris_swenson/status/1225836060938125313?s=09)

[1] [https://deeb.io/wrdprs/wp- content/uploads/2020/02/comp3321_r...](https://deeb.io/wrdprs/wp- content/uploads/2020/02/comp3321_red.pdf)

Also, I notice in the top left corner there's a handy little Doc ID: 6689691. It'd be interesting if if it were possible to FOIA all those Doc ID's.

<comment><USER5> Top Secret is only one of several levels of classification.

You really need to mark things as unclassified in the government because other people need to be able to answer basic questions like:

\- what computer am I allowed to view/edit/save/transmit this on?

\- can I talk to my coworkers about this, and if so, which ones?

\- what do I do with printed copies of this document?

Answering these questions wrong can land you in serious trouble, including jail time. So even as a courtesy to your peers, you want to mark them (U).

<comment><USER6> That's apparent to the guy you're responding to. He's pointing out that the so-called "unclassified" is actually the class "non-secret". A truly "unclassified" object would not have gone through the process of classification. It would not have a class.

Of course in English this is fairly common. The object of price zero is said to have no price. Yet clearly it has a price, it is just zero.

I have to say that's an amusing observation and sort of reveals the type errors that occur when we model real world things in type systems.

<comment><USER7> The United Kingdom's previous system for marking school exams (GCSE) had a marking scheme from "A*/A" to "F", and then "U". Where "U" was Ungraded. Clearly it was graded, but as a "U".

<comment><USER8> What are they using now? I went through the system not that long ago when it was still A* to U.

<comment><USER7> 1-9, [https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel...](https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel- gcses/understanding-9-1.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not that great. You can find much better training materials for beginners all over the place.

<comment><USER10> Interesting, I don't disagree, but what better alternative would you suggest?

<comment><USER11> Automate Boring Stuff with Python is a great book to start

<comment><USER12> That book is an introduction to Python libraries, not programming and barely even automation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Page 4 - the NSA uses Gitlab.

</comment><comment><USER14> Better link: [https://archive.org/details/comp3321/mode/2up](https://archive.org/details/comp3321/mode/2up)

</comment><comment><USER15> There's probably nothing to this, but when I try to screenshot the pdf ([https://ia802805.us.archive.org/7/items/comp3321/comp3321.pd...](https://ia802805.us.archive.org/7/items/comp3321/comp3321.pdf)) on iOS Safari, my phone locks up for a moment with a black screen and spinner and then I have to unlock the phone. Doesn't happen on other PDFs on archive.org or after I've saved it to iBooks. Can anyone replicate? Is this perhaps the result of some byzantine configuration state in the PDF spec that Apple has chosen to implement or that their implementation is choking on?

<comment><USER16> >my phone locks up for a moment with a black screen and spinner and then I have to unlock the phone

AFAIK that happens when springboard crashes. Maybe there's a 0day exploit in there?

<comment><USER17> When taking a screenshot in safari on iOS 13 it also tries to save a pdf of the entire page. If you open the little screenshot overlay in the corner there is an option to save as the full page as pdf instead of a screenshot.

Maybe the pdf is just too big to be re-rendered and saved as a new pdf and it crashes somehow.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your best advice for a Senior Software Engineer? - <AUTHOR> Sometimes, we senior engineers seem to lose our way.  What is the way forward for us?  What are the new avenues.  I would call anyone who's been coding for more than 7 years a Senior Engineer. <comment><USER2> One really good thing to do is to switch from the mode of "when someone gives me a problem, I can solve it" to "I can find problems on my own."

This is:

* Much more satisfying, since it gives you control over your environment ([https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-fin...](https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-finders.html)).

* Allows you get more done in less time ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/)), which means you can work better schedule, instead of long hours ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/02/11/working-long-hours/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/02/11/working-long-hours/)).

* Makes you a much more valuable employee, and therefore gives you negotiating leverage - to say "no" to your boss ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/08/16/how-to-say-no/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/08/16/how-to-say-no/)) but also to make more money or even reduce your workweek ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer/)).

</comment><comment><USER3> Take it easy. Work Is not your baby. Don't attach emotions to work. Do all you can for 8 hours and then forget the moment you get out of the door. Don't respond to emails from home. Don't carry work phone unless you must.

Invest in family, kids, hobbies, health, stocks/bonds, travel etc. There's more to life than work.

Remember you work to live not live to work.

<comment><USER4> Good luck finding a job, on the east coast at least, that will actually let you do this and not work you to death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Understand that your junior developers will learn how to treat people from you. So, be humble, kind and approachable. Long term, that will yield an amazing culture full of people who like coming to work.

<comment><USER6> I'd like to add:

Remember your days as a Jr. Dev.

You catch more flies with honey.

Promote growth.

When mistakes happen speak soft, but convey ramifications of the mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always repost this amazing essay in case someone missed it when it rose to the top of HN.

[https://allarsblog.com/2018/03/16/confessions-of-an- unreal-e...](https://allarsblog.com/2018/03/16/confessions-of-an-unreal- engine-4-engineering-firefighter/)

Previous discussion from 5 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16775166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16775166)

</comment><comment><USER8> I would say, just because you have 7 years of experience, one is not automatically a senior developer. It could be 1 year's worth of experience 7 times.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you. I just mentioned it to set a context. Else it would have been very open to interpretation.</comment></comment>