How Germany is able to run the world's second largest export economy - <AUTHOR> https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-germany-shock-the-largest-economy-nobody-understands <comment><USER2> What is often overlooked is this: Germany was export-oriented before the Euro, during the transition and with the Euro. Germany was export-oriented before reunification, during reunification and after reunification.

The industry will adopt to those external factors: Germany was 'Exportweltmeister' with the super strong DM (which dominated European currencies) and it is a leading export nation with the Euro.

There are a lot more factors that support the German model. For example Germany is not a centralized economy (like the UK or France, which are grouped around London and Paris). Thus lots of federal states and cities have strong economies: Munich, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Berlin, ...

The extreme angle is the concept of 'unknown medium-sized world market leaders' \- so-called hidden champions. Germany probably has almost 50% of all hidden champions world-wide:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/07/15/the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/07/15/the- leadership-secrets-of-the-hidden-champions/)

You'll find many of these companies in rural regions.

Many of these companies are export-oriented, based on a long tradition and they don't care what the current currency in Germany is.

<comment><USER3> Some members of my extended family own a company (actually a small family of companies) in that category, and of course it's in Swabia.

They are market leaders in some very high-margin things most people never think about, and interestingly they sell a lot in Asia, where one might expect them to be more vulnerable to competition. German Quality is a huge brand worldwide.

I also have a friend in Berlin who's sort of inheriting the family business, manufacturing something so random I always forget what it is. Involves rubber I think. High margins, privately-held family business, etc.

I really think a lot of these companies, if they were in the US, would either go public (the bigger ones) or be sold up to a bigger concern. But in Germany you'd have to pay a really big premium to get your hands on someone's multi- generational family business. As long as there are kids to inherit the factories then that's what they're gonna do.

<comment><USER4> Another way how this kind of company would likely fail to continually thrive in the US, even when it's not sold: those niche markets are so small that even when completely dominated the profits would be insufficient to get date-in- Hollywood rich or groom-yourself-for-presidency rich. So if you have bigger ambitions than the niche allows you'd hand over the reins to a "maintenance manager" and focus on something more promising. Those small niche specialist businesses reach excellence through a loyalty to whatever field that made them big that is fueled by limits to ambition. (I think I already posted this idea on some other HN that)

(and the businesses tend to be filled with a weirdly self-contradicting mix of nationalistic hybris and massive imposter syndrome)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who lives and works in Germany I'm always surprised when I hear of the strength of the country. I've worked for several very large corporations here, financial and automotive, and how anything is achieved at all remains a complete mystery to me. It seems to me that all the success reported is directly in spite of their attitude towards technology and IT in general instead of because of it.

The culture here is to outsource everything besides PM, then every few years when the projects fail or are over budget (time or money) to replace the partner with someone new and lose all the domain knowledge those teams had and then they have to start again. I've seen millions of euros wasted in this manner, the only way it'll be fixed is when the current generation of management retire.

I'd be keen to know if anyone else working here has a similar experience, I've tried to 'fix' this culture several times and haven't succeeded yet.

Weirdly, in the last 6 months Azure seems to be making huge inroads, perhaps that'll help.

<comment><USER6> If you only work for very large corporations, you work for some of the most inefficient corporations. You get a higher salary for the resulting frustration. That's the deal.

If you want to work in an environment that works according to common sense and achieve something, take a pay cut and join a smaller company. Of course, you still have to do your research and choose wisely.

<comment><USER7> That's why I call those salaries "Schmerzensgeld" :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The most un-understandable thing is that none of this export wealth reaches an individual, especially a guest worker, a foreigner. It's quite shocking to discover by a foreigner specialist lured to the country by the multitude of positive economic news. Cost-cutting and exorbitant charges and contributions everywhere. The entire export wealth is captured by the oligarch families and the highest level executive caste.

<comment><USER9> Someone with a regular job can not afford a house close to a major city any more and for sure can not afford any desirable German car. People dress cheaply, buy used cars and many live in frugal appartments, buy in stores that many American or Canadians would consider third world (never ever go buy stuff in an Aldi when you are used to Canadian standards...).

<comment><USER10> Indeed, expats are lured here thinking Germany is the Promised Land but realize too late that they can't afford to buy a family worthy home on your average white collar wage and due to how German corporate politics work, most of the non-natives are locked out of the lucrative careers even when speaking the language.

Like someone said, Germany is a rich country of poor people.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. I live in a "third world" country (Argentina, one of the worst- performing economies in the world) and just had an interview with a German company (a large SaaS in Berlin) offering relocation to me and my family.

Not sure what to do, I have a shit boring remote email marketing job for a US company. But with my small US salary, I live quite well here (own a big house w/ 1000 sqrt. m. garden in a nice small town, good car, no commute, kids go to private German school, good weather, ..).

Not sure if our quality of life in Berlin (me being a data scientist) will be better as our quality of life here in the third world (me doing monkey work but in a cheap country).

<comment><USER12> I'm german. In 2004/05 I was in argentina a whole year as an exchange studen. Last year I visited my guest family again. Let me tell you that argentinians are very good in talking argentina way worse than it is. I also travel quite a bit, argentina is _far_ from being third world. In Berlin you will only be able to afford a smallish rented flat with a typical IT salary... used cars in good condition on the other hand are quite cheap - but won't be of any use in berlin traffic. As an argentinian you probably won't like the weather here. There definitely are upsides and downsides to both countries.

Feel free to ask me anything.

<comment><USER11> Awesome thanks! I live in a small city near Cordoba surrounded by mountains, lakes and rivers, and don't like big cities like Buenos Aires or Rosario. How much do you think is needed for renting a medium comfortable appartment or house in Berlin? In a not expensive neighborhood, but neither a bad one.

Will send you a PM if I have more questions :)

<comment><USER12> I live in Braunschweig myself, but you can check rent prices for Berlin for example here: [https://www.immowelt.de/immobilienpreise/berlin/mietspiegel](https://www.immowelt.de/immobilienpreise/berlin/mietspiegel) so now probably about 12€/m² - obviously more expensive in better locations. What I heard from friends the market in Berlin is a bit difficult so really get that relocation service if you plan on moving to Berlin. Those prices typically include tax. Salary numbers on the other hand are before tax. You can roughly estimate your income tax with simple online tools: [https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/](https://www.brutto-netto- rechner.info/) (ya hablas aleman?) It's way higher than e.g. USA, probably similiar to Argentina.

I think i spend about one week near Cordoba in 2004 but I don't quite remember... My guest family back then lived in Ushuaia (very very beautiful landscape!) where I spend most of the time, but also a while with their extended family in Rosario. Last year I revisited Ushuaia again but spend most of the time in Tigre where my guest family lives now.

Feel free to contact me by pm or mail (kiney at-sign kiney.de)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good article, but the model is too simple. UK used to produce more cars than Germany, but it's the opposite now. Why? They haven't shared the same currency. German cars were better.

> And it means those same workers in Spain are less equipped to compete for > Manufacturing jobs — because Elon Musk has to pay them in German Euros > instead of cheap Spanish Peseta. If you've got to pay everyone in German > Euros, you might as well get the most productive workers for your "buck", > right?

If that was the reason then he should move his factory 50+ miles East. Why the factory is near the Berlin? Network effects. They have the logistic, supply chain and talent. Even electric car project, created by Polish government is designed and build in Germany.

<comment><USER14> That point also ignores the fact that spanish workers are indeed cheaper than german workers. You can't focus on the unit of measure (the currency) while ignoring the accompanying number...

<comment><USER15> You're right. Unsurprisingly, in some countries workers are paid more "German euros" than in others countries.

[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/8516126/Comp...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/8516126/Compensation+of+employees+2017/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The analysis is incomplete. It does not take services into account.

Yes, Germany has a positive trade balance in goods. But the trade balance in services is negative. This ... well ... balances the balances.

The UK has shifted its economy from production to services. Hence the negative trade balance for physical products excluding services.

<comment><USER10> This! Germany's manufacturing supremacy can't last forever with lower cost countries catching up fast. UK realized earlier it can't be competitive in manufacturing anymore. Knowledge work is the future in the West, not volume manufacturing.

<comment><USER17> The number of "Hidden Champions" (SMEs most often in manufacturing of high tech machinery & components which are world leaders by market share in their respective niche) in Germany speaks to the contrary. Same situation in Japan.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, I myself worked for one such niche high tech machinery German company. The problem is, due to the thin margins in these hardware gigs, the salaries are piss poor compared to the skills needed (M.Sc. and up) as even making iOS Apps paid better. Only the execs and the couple of grey beards who were with the company since its inception were well paid, everyone else not so much.

That's the reason youngsters aren't gravitating towards these gigs anymore and prefer to be web devs instead. The margins are higher and the entry bar lower.

I'm not saying they'll go bust tomorrow, not at all, I'm just saying they don't have an easy future ahead, due to low margins and unattractive career paths for youngsters, especially once their patents expire and China will be able to make the same stuff at half price. That's why the UK's decision to focus on services/consulting is a better long term bet IMHO.

<comment><USER18> The same stuff? What about quality? Newb here.

<comment><USER19> China probably has more people at every level of education than Germany, they're just more sparsely distributed. So the one person with really in-depth manufacturing knowledge spends their time supervising a bunch of greenhorns who barely know how to operate the machines, making lots of cheap crap. But they're learning something new every day and may eventually become skilled enough to cost-effectively manufacture high-quality goods instead. Of course at that point they won't be happy with rock-bottom wages anymore, so it's not clear that prices will drop much.

<comment><USER18> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> " France and the UK were opposed to German reunification, and attempted to influence the Soviet Union to stop it.[8] However, in late 1989 France extracted German commitment to the Monetary Union in return for support for German reunification.[9]"

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

<comment><USER10> Yeah, France wanted to use the Euro currency to reign in the German economy. Funny how that ended up backfiring decades later with Germany running the show.

<comment><USER21> As they say in Germany: "Bedenke wohl, worum du bittest. Es könnte dir gewährt werden." ("Consider well what you ask for. It could be granted to you.").

<comment><USER22> The phrasing I heard in the US is "be careful what you wish for, it might just come true".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Theres a reason the Politics is becoming extreme, the largest economy is simply neglecting its citizens and simply saving a lot.

Edit: not trying to troll. Many are thankful, but many are worried aswell. I/we dont consider it difficult to understand. Work hard, save, dont go to wars, its a simple equation, but its not all rosey, and things arent perfect. Many claim this prosperity to be illusory, and fear a harsh crises ahead.

<comment><USER8> Seeing their elites enjoying themselves on the southern French coast, Italian and Spanish islands, Caribbeans, and wherever else the last thing that comes to mind is that they're "saving a lot". It's more like _they_ decide on whose cost the "saving a lot" will happen - employed taxpayer.

<comment><USER24> It's been observed that the German word for austerity - Sparpolitik - is quite a euphemism, and does a lot of work convincing people that it's a good idea to "save" money like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not a word about the fact that Germany simply produces desirable products? Somehow that has to factor in. Financial policy and the education system favors a conservative manufacturing sector that incrementally improves upon what Germany has done for decades.

While I got my ME degree in Germany my dad, who is a solid state physicist, spent all his energy trying to accelerate the development of a German electronics sector. He was always ranting about the hurdles thrown up by politics in Germany, "We'll just continue building cars and machines for the next 100 years." Well, sounds like it's still working although the end of the cold war and the common market has distorted things in Germany's favor, an effect that probably won't last.

<comment><USER26> Economics in a nutshell: "There must be a single number that explains all of this!" It can't possibly be that Germany actually built its exports based on quality. That can't be replicated by tweaking some tax laws.

<comment><USER27> A few years back I worked for a large engineering services company (that nobody has ever heard of) and one of the senior managers from Germany described the quality of Mercedes-Benz cars as a "national disgrace" \- he was genuinely upset about it.

<comment><USER28> The original owners keep them for 5 years max. Nothing has to last longer than that.

<comment><USER29> Why is this downmodded? It's true, at least in America: the people who buy these cars new don't care if they still work 10 years later, because they don't keep them that long. The people who buy cars intending to keep them a long time don't buy expensive luxury cars here.

<comment><USER30> Couple of reasons I can think of:

1\. Most people want cars to run 10+ years, even in America (I live in California). Capital, environmental implications, not many new features etc. are valid reasons.

2\. Higher quality cars are better to ride in 5 years than lesser quality cars. I would rather drive first 5 years of a car than the only 5 years of a car.

<comment><USER28> None of that applies to Merc buyers. These cars use an unusually high amount of plastic parts in critical areas that reliable vehicles don't ever attempt. Modern Mercedes is not the same as it was 30 years ago. Quality has been sacrificed on the altar of profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder how that plot would look like if they separated individual US states and also considered trade between them. I'd guess the big three (California, Texas, New York) would dominate quite a bit there as well.

<comment><USER32> New York, big three? Florida passed New York in population in 2014: [https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os- florid...](https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-florida- census-new-york-population-20141224-story.html) . _Census figures released Tuesday show Florida passed New York as the nation 's third largest state with an estimated population of 19.9 million. New York, now fourth, has 19.7 million._

<comment><USER31> By economy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP#/media/File:United_States_GDP_by_States.png)

<comment><USER19> You can play the same game for Germany: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_GRP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_GRP)

And if you looked at each of the regions at the top, you'll likely also discover large differences between close-by areas. The geographical distribution of economic activity seems to follow a kind of fractal structure.

<comment><USER33> > The geographical distribution of economic activity seems to follow a kind of > fractal structure.

Nah, it's more the result of WW2 and everything that happened after.

North Rhine-Westphalia was lucky to have lots of heavy industry which really helped the country after WW2, almost everything in terms of mining and heavy industriy and so on happened there. So although NRW was hit probably the most by allied bombs, the natural "richness" with minerals helped to get on top again.

BW and BY were "lucky" to have been under control of the USA (which probably took their image of Germany with them from what they experienced in BY) and French, which were probably somewhat more of "laisez-faire" than the Russians.

Well, we all know what happened with the Eastern parts of Germany...

I find this article a good read, although I'm not sure how good the English version is: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied- occupied_Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied-occupied_Germany)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It was a fancy read until

> an efficient & strong military

Now I doubt everything.

<comment><USER35> Isn't it always like this. Things written tend to make sense until they contradict your prior knowledge.

<comment><USER4> The author certainly lost me when he called out Italy as a winner and the Netherlands as a loser in this game. That only ever happens in football.

<comment><USER36> Italy in exports is indeed successful

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What does this game look like with a fixed money supply and no trade or movement restrictions? My naive Econ 101 guess is that wealthier nations would export more, not less, and higher value goods. Why does inflation work to produce a trade surplus? It seems that the only reason is decreasing internally-sourced costs like labor, but this just props up obsolete value chains instead of promoting capital innovation. Does this work long-term? Also, in a game with one inflator, how does that turn everybody else into a leisure services economy without a whole bunch of inflationary distributive spending on their part as well? It would seem that the fixed-supply result would look like deflation plus capital excess, which is perfect for investment in new industries. It seems to me that maybe Germany is in roughly this situation whereas the US/Japan/etc can manage money supply according to political will, so a larger portion of productivity is diverted to leisure services and structural inefficiency. Also, is Chinese currency manipulation an economic success story? What would we see with a free market fixed currency in China?

</comment><comment><USER38> According to American Society of Mechanical Engineers one reason Germany has kept is industrial base are the Fraunhofer Institutes you will find all over the country right next to universities doing essentially free R&D in almost every area of technology for companies that might otherwise not be able to afford them. (I had a student assistant job at one such institute when I was an MSc student in Germany)

[https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/how-does- germa...](https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/how-does-germany-do- it)

</comment><comment><USER39> Interesting that the labor culture in Germany relative to the rest of the EU is not mentioned at all. Germany is one of the strongest nations to be an industrial worker and has various laws that are pretty unique to the nation, such as co-determination, I believe this has acted as a defense vs. outsourcing (and when they do outsource, they go to high cost places such as the US) and has kept it's manufacturing base strong.

<comment><USER40> There is strong pragmatic cooperation between manufacturers. You get free samples and if some parts don't meet specifications there is a shared effort from both supplier and consumer to fix the problem in the process instead of suing each other. Would be too expensive without real results anyway.

Hours worked are pretty low compared to other European states even if you factor in a large part time component. I don't think increasing hours would increase productivity anymore.

There is also a darker side of course with a lot of minimum wage jobs or people working long hours while still being dependent on the state. Even for employees of the same company the income can be quite unequal. Compare development or engineering with production or logistics for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Germany isn't Germany any more. It is a component of the Eurozone - which is a unified currency area - like the USA, or the UK.

What Germany does is 'vendor finance' other parts of the Eurozone. The Greek government buys German battleships and the savings the Germans are famous for buy the paper the Greek government issues to close the circle. Then they blame Greece for going into debt once the ponzi scheme reaches its limit.

You get the same effect with London to the wider South East of England, arguably England to Scotland and no doubt several areas in the USA where outside of the area, but within the currency zone, is encouraged to borrow to buy the output of the area.

China's mercantile currency lock does much the same thing.

The eternal problem is that exporting is giving away the output of your people in return for a shiny bauble. If you don't then exchange that shiny bauble for the output of some other people, what was the point of doing all that work in the first place?

You may as well have used your productivity to have Friday off instead and gone fishing.

<comment><USER7> > The eternal problem is that exporting is giving away the output of your > people in return for a shiny bauble

That's an important point!

In the case of China, I'd guess that it was a strategic decision to do so. Being in debt with others gives others political power over you - at least as long as you are not stronger (ultimately, in a physical sense) than them. I guess China wanted to avoid that as long as it wasn't strong enough. Now that China is getting stronger and stronger, they are starting to invest that accumulated capital in order to gain political power over other, weaker nations. That's btw. a hot topic even on Germany, if it's ok to let the Chinese buy local companies and other assets.

In the case of Germany, I don't really understand why it went that way. The surplus seems to have become some kind of fetish. During the Greek crisis, the risks of such imbalances became visible. The big risk for Germany is imo that a major country like France or Italy will tip over politically, leading to the destruction of the Euro. There's no playbook for how to handle that and I guess it would be a messy and ugly political process which may render quite some of those collected "shiny baubles" worthless. With European history in mind, I don't think taking that risk is worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Related : cars selled by european companies will have to average 95gCO2e/km. But this limit is raised for heavy cars, which Germany sell a lot more than others. France's environment minister is angry. The legislation has been tailored for the EU's biggest industry.

<comment><USER43> > this limit is raised for heavy cars

Yeah, what's that all about? Surely the entire point is to incentivise people to _not_ buy heavy cars, since the lowest emission models (aside from electric cars) are smaller?

<comment><USER44> Except that the EU is an union of unequal countries, so if Germany (which is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful country in EU) want to keep an industrial edge via a special case in law, they're going to get it.

<comment><USER45> There are several countries in the EU that likes and produces big an heavy cars, Germany is not alone, my guess from this post is that France primarily produce smaller cars. To make any difference we should make it easy and cheap to buy fast electric bicycles since they have a lifecycle emission that is about one tenth of cars (Blondel, Mispelon, and Ferguson 2011). At the moment customs for chinese electric bicycles are really high in EU.

<comment><USER44> I don't think the market is the same between cars and electric bikes. But helping producing affordable electric bike in the EU could be a good idea.

<comment><USER45> I think the markets intersects a lot, at least if you are to trust what the polls made on people who just bought e-bikes, a lot of them used them to replace cars mainly for everyday work and shopping which is HUGE. Research show that more than half of the car users here live 50 min from their work by bike.

If we spent money on infrastructure for bikes my travel time by bike could be 10 minutes shorter, that would the 50 min area above even bigger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The financial side of things is probably the bigger driver - the German government is notoriously unwilling to issue debt, so domestic German savers have a huge shortfall in safe assets that they must purchase abroad to acquire. These foreign financial assets, on net, can only be bought by sales receipts of exports.

</comment><comment><USER47> I blame the lax bankruptcy laws in United States (in comparison to Germany). I think it creates a safety net that is too comfortable that the business can (a) give up too early or (b) use this as a pump & dump scheme where the owners walk away with money they had siphoned off early.

Compared to German insolvency procedures [1]

> The aim of insolvency proceedings is not to protect the cor-porate debtor > from its creditors, but to maximize the insol-vency dividend payable to the > creditors. To achieve this aim, proceedings may be directed either at a > liquidation of the company's business or at a reorganization of the company > it-self by means of a plan of restructuring (Insolvenzplan). In the event of > a liquidation, the company's business operations may be sold as a going > concern to an investor or the business may be wound up and the individual > assets sold.

1\. [https://www.jonesday.com/files/Publication/1ec093d4-66fb-42a...](https://www.jonesday.com/files/Publication/1ec093d4-66fb-42a6-8115-be0694c59443/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/e5b46572-7aeb-4c34-ab2e-bee2f8f3d3c2/Comparison%20of%20Chapter%2011%20\(A4\).pdf)

</comment><comment><USER48> I've said it before in another comment [1]:

>There's nothing I enjoy more than the plight of the German Saver, who's obsession with "fiscal responsibility" has led to shitty austerity politics all across the EU (to be fair some other northern European countries like Netherlands also share the same view) and depressed growth for the poorer southern European countries. Germany has benefited most of all from the unfinished project of the EU. Without becoming a federal union like the US, but having a common currency, Germany's exports have been artificially cheaper and thus more competitive for over 20 years.

>This is the natural outcome from the obsession with running fiscal surpluses. Now Germany is on the brink of recession and they're finally starting to make some noises about fiscal spending, but the politics will likely limit it to modest deficits than anything transformational. Enjoy the negative rates.

The common currency (Eurozone) is deeply flawed and it only allows a rich country like Germany to win at the expense of poorer countries like Greece or Portugal. I find it insane that EU politics have never really dealt with this. I find it absolutely insane that after the 2011 sovereign debt crisis, Germany somehow managed to escape with keeping the Eurozone intact and having the poor countries impose austerity instead.

There absolutely needs to be a political revolution in the Eurozone countries. Either complete the EU project by becoming a United States of Europe, and receive all the equalizing payments of healthcare, social security, and common military spending at the federal level, or get rid of the common currency. It's just hurting the poorest people in the Eurozone to keep the current arrangement.

You might be under the impression "well Germany might be parasitic vis a vis other Eurozone countries, but at least it's good for working Germans", but you'd be wrong.

The US today has a tight labor market which will eventually drive wages up if it persists long enough. Germany on the other hand has similar employment statistics but they did it with the Hartz reforms [2]. The unemployment stats look great because you can get a shitty low wage job [3].

Germany has kept the wages of workers depressed in order to be an export powerhouse. It's parasitic on other Eurozone neighbors but also on German workers. The people who have benefited the most from this arrangement are the German capital class. The shareholders and managerial class of German industry, whether it's giants like Volkswagen or even the small Mittelstand companies. German workers should have gotten wealthier over time which would have made Germany similar to the US in being driven by domestic consumption. That in turn would have made other EU members better off because those wealthier Germans would have been able to consume more of their goods and services. It's truly baffling how even German workers have put up with this. They're losing to the benefit of German capital.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20793982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20793982)

[2] [https://theconversation.com/questioning-the-claim-of- germany...](https://theconversation.com/questioning-the-claim-of-germanys- employment-miracle-106895)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_employment#Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_employment#Germany)

<comment><USER49> You can't complete the "EU project". Politically and economically, it is just very obvious that states want different things from Brussels (btw, the people who go to Brussels are generally very different from national politicians...they are globalists, most citizens in Europe are not)...that is why it hasn't happened already.

You also raise very good points, that most people forget, about how Germany got here: they got here by squeezing the poor and transferring wealth to billionaires (there is a reason German billionaires are low-key). Another important feature is banking: that is how the wealth transfer occurred, and German banks are in a terrible state (they seem to get involved in literally every financial crisis: CDOs, lending to shipping companies, lending to Turkey, lending to Greece...it is unbelivable). That is why the German model doesn't work (Japan copied the German model, and their banks self-destructed eventually...it doesn't work).

One cool stat that demonstrates this is that Germans have slightly lower net financial assets than Greeks. Yes. The richest country in Europe has citizens that are poorer than the "basket case".

What is also forgotten is that two decades ago, it was Germany that was the basket case (the OP also inaccurately says that Germany was a powerhouse in the early 1990s...nope, it was a basket case then too because it had to integrate East Germany). The Euro has benefited one nation above all others (and Netherlands...although their success is partly due to becoming a tax haven) and imposed massive costs on others (Italy, in particular, has had nearly three decades of austerity between the ERM and the Euro...it is madness).

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> > ... Nobody Understands

A pretty grandiose claim. Reading the essay, the "understanding" seems little more than the fairly mainstream narrative that the Euro is too weak for Germany and too strong for the EU peripheral. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER51> This is a very interesting article.

I particularly liked the insight that currency stability may be desirable for the most successful economies but undesirable for the least successful.

Being in the cryptocurrency space, I can see how this also plays out on a much smaller scale as well. When your community is made up of nobodies, one of the few advantages that you have is that your cryptocurrency has more upside potential than established players. This can offset the significant downside of not having a reputation.

</comment><comment><USER52> Interesting choice to use 1993 as the start for the comparison of Germany's trade surplus: [https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/balance-of- trade](https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/balance-of-trade)

<comment><USER53> I think it's right in the text why 1993 was chosen:

> "Indeed, when the Single Market was adopted (1993), ..."

<comment><USER54> There were two major events that make the starting point a lot lower: Recession shortly before and German reunification with its significant economic distortions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> so the point is that Germany takes over euro-denominated industrial export to itself and leaves other EU countries figure out themselves whatever they wanna do to survive.

</comment><comment><USER56> Paul Krugman often rails against German industrial policy vis-a-vis the EU and hits a lot of the same notes in this article. On the other hand, most of the EU countries seem to accept this status quo and many of their citizens end up immigrating to Germany directly or benefiting from the massive EU subsidy regime funded by Germany so there are various forms of wealth re-distribution within the union.

<comment><USER8> > funded by Germany so there are various forms of wealth re-distribution > within the union.

This "re-distribution" feeds an enormous compliance sector in the receiving countries. An useless sector chocking domestic innovation and allowing the politicians to trumpet successes in "receiving the EU grants".

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Very informative. Does this imply that Brexit is the rational choice for the UK?

<comment><USER58> Maybe there's a simpler explanation, in Germany businesses are run quite conservatively in comparison. Nice for stability but probably bad for innovation.

By the way, Germany is one of the top 5 exporting countries since decades, so this has little to do with the Euro:

[https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/WLD/Yea...](https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/WLD/Year/1990/TradeFlow/EXPIMP) [https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/WLD/Yea...](https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/WLD/Year/2000/TradeFlow/EXPIMP/Partner/by- country)

<comment><USER59> In part, it has to do with the fact that many items made in Germany are of high quality. Most goods that are sold in U.S. for instance, are made in China. Often times these goods simply fall apart (dishwashers, washing machines), are defective, or have toxic odors (like full-color books). Not so for things made in the U.S. or Europe, and it just so happens that there are a great many things that Germany makes now, where they are the only high-quality source.

<comment><USER60> The reminds me of when people would ask how it was possible that Madoff was such a successful investor; he's just better than everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Competing with China, Germany and the US _is_ possible -- but you _have_ to be deliberate, disciplined and very very very organised.

</comment><comment><USER62> At what point do we stop talking about commerce between Eurozone states as imports/exports?

</comment><comment><USER49> I stopped reading after the 10th historical inaccuracy. This is why economics/economic history is hard folks (not just the actual economics but creating something readable...this is basically unreadable). Germany, in particular, requires a fairly deep understanding of economics.

</comment><comment><USER63> Germany has also very low net income inequality.

<comment><USER49> It has the highest wealth inequality in Europe though (iirc, it is as high or higher than the US). In absolute terms, Germany's average net financial wealth per capita is slightly less than Greece...and in Germany, they have a substantial number of billionaires (usually very old money that got rich through govt aid/subsidised loans...or, unf, something much worse) which they don't in Greece.

Btw, the IMF actually produced a special report on inequality in Germany. It is a very serious problem and probably more serious than in the US (a trade surplus is just an excess of savings over investment: Germany industrialised through subsidised loans to politically connected companies, this meant very low interest rates...they are basically China, btw China copied Japan's model and Japan copied Germany...insolvent banks, very high inefficient saving rates, very low wealth, very weak savings system, low wages, very concentrated/vulnerable economically, non-functioning capital markets...it goes on and on).

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Article should be named.

Why this time we succeed and conquered our old enemies using capitalism, money and demand for precise machines that save time instead of wasting everything to fight with everyone around.

</comment><comment><USER65> TLDR: economists are imbeciles.

Never mentions hidden champions[1], never mentions the high level of training and morale and hence productivity for the German worker, never mentions German dedication to quality, never mentions the social capital of corporations which are hundreds of years old, never mentions the fact that MBA quarterly profit maximization uber alles bullshit never caught on in Germany, never mentions the Landesbanks.... I submit this article as evidence that economists don't understand any economy.

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

<comment><USER66> If you'd bothered to read you'd realise that the author isn't an economist, and that he does talk about Germany's manufacturing excellence. That doesn't explain why in 1992 Germany had a massive trade deficit and UK had an equally large trade surplus, or how they've been able to avoid the fate of Japan.

<comment><USER65> Gee, what was different about 1992 in Germany? Could it be ... absorbing East Germany?

He may not be an economist, but he excels at economic imbecility.</comment></comment></comment>


Java String Concatenation and Performance - <AUTHOR> http://www.venishjoe.net/2009/11/java-string-concatenation-and.html

<comment><USER2> Maybe I've been away from Java for too long, but I understand why the + operator's implementation is so much slower than that of String.concat(). If concat() uses a StringBuilder, why doesn't the + operator as well?

<comment><USER3> \+ operator does use StringBuilder. But it will use a StringBuilder for _each_ string expression. Take the following piece of code:

      String foo = "";
      for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
        foo += "x";
      }

The inside of the for loop can be replaced with:

      StringBuilder tmp = new StringBuilder(foo.length());
      tmp.append("x");
      foo = tmp.toString()

As you will notice, we are still copying over the string foo each time we concatenate. So building strings with + inside a loop will still give you the feared copy-string-each-time behavior. The new String.concat() trick is only useful for crafting long strings in a single go, i.e. in a single expression.

<comment><USER4> The author has updated the post, string concat takes significantly more compared to the buffer or builder

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not as simple as he makes out. I had a look at the + operator and compiler optimizations back in 2005. Basically, depending on exactly how you setup your strings javac is able to do some optimization. Note that this is a compile time optimization, so compiling with Eclipse (for example) will probably give different result.

Anyway, some details are at [http://nicklothian.com/blog/2005/06/09/on-java- string-concat...](http://nicklothian.com/blog/2005/06/09/on-java-string- concatenation/)

</comment><comment><USER6> And this is why I reject the argument that higher-level programmers don't need to know lower-level things. The string concat issue in particular is something _every single_ Java developer needs to know. I've successfully taken 6-day jobs down toe 3.5h with this alone.</comment>


Why WP7 will dominate mobile - <AUTHOR> http://eric.esft.com/blog_post.php?bid=20

<comment><USER2> FTA: "Unlike Apple, though, they [Android] still need to use the 'success by numbers' approach in order to stay alive."

So, what you are saying is that the only way that Android is successful is that they have lots and lots of people using their phones?

And tell me once again why WP7 will dominate?

FTA: "Windows Phone 7 will receive updates OTA (so it has legacy support), will have the same UI on all devices it runs on, and the same WP7 operating system."

So, WP7 will have OTA's just like Android and iOS. And it will have a consistent UI just like iOS and (according to Google) the next version of Android. And it will have "legacy support" because every handset using it will have the exact same OS image and will be upgradable by Microsoft instead of the carriers. Come again? One OS image for all handset models? Riiiight.

<comment><AUTHOR> Android's success is due to pricing and availability. Would a consumer pay $100 for a great Android phone or $200 for iPhone 4? How about if they get ANOTHER Android phone free for the same Ben Franklin?! On networks where the iPhone isn't available (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobs, etc), are you going to buy an Android phone or a Motorola Razr? There aren't many other options (except Blackberry - no touch screen, no fun).

WP7 will dominate for a few reasons. The UI is slick and snappy. Its touch sensitivity is fantastic. Microsoft is putting God knows how much money behind its marketing campaign. They're gonna have tons of those "buy one get one free" deals for crazy prices. They're really putting a lot behind this release...I will be really surprised if they don't chomp up at least a quarter of smartphone market share within the next few years.

Android is great for tech geeks. I honestly do like Android, I don't hate it. But WP7 is a better phone for the non-tech geeks out there because of its ease of use. Not saying that WP7 isn't good for tech geeks too! It comes with an array of enterprise features that are fantastic.

As far as the "next Android" with the same UI, its vaporware right now. Not worth wasting keystrokes arguing over.

And yes, the OS is upgradeable directly from MSFT, not the carriers. The second that a new update is available you can download it straight from MSFT's servers. The core of WP7 is maintained by MSFT; the miscellaneous drivers and applications provided by hardware manufacturers and carriers are maintained through their own updates.

Snarky today, aren't we? ;)

<comment><USER2> I've seen similar claims from Microsoft before, and it's all very nice, in theory. But as far as I'm concerned, all of this is theoretical until it actually happens. Microsoft has had a long history of making claims during the marketing phase that just do not bear out in the final product. Thus it is a dodgy proposition to prognosticate using their marketing material.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. Like I said in my article, "There is a huge check with Microsoft's name on it IF they pull this off."

I'm betting they do. I also bet on the iPad failing; I now owe my friend Scott an unboxing video of that putrid device. I digress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Summary: Yesterday's predictions for tomorrow's world.

Sorry, but "legacy support" is a pretty weak leg to stand on for future success. Right now, we're watching companies (even large ones) moving away from a monolithic approach to software and marching toward an a la carte future. Not everyone is going to make this leap -- there will always be dinosaurs that linger on past their time -- but the future is small. Small companies providing tools that talk to each other and share information.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of 1 year old Android phones can't receive Froyo. That's a major problem. Why would you buy an Android phone knowing that it will quickly be forgotten by its support teams?

I'm not saying legacy support will make WP7 successful, but its a huge feather in MSFT's cap!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting prediction about history repeating with Apple innovating then MS copying and simply setting up more manufacturers.

Though, totally wrong, Android rocks! customers love it! But everyone already has mental associations of what Windows phones look/feel like, and it's not pretty. They have a lot of expensive customer re-education to do. I don't see it taking off as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually like Android, don't get me wrong! The problem I see with Android is the complexity of the UI. I can find my way around it just fine (cause I'm a tech dork), but a lot of my non-tech geek friends really do become frustrated with their Android devices. My friend Danielle LOVED her HTC Incredible...for about a week. She hates it now because it's "slow, bloated and not as responsive as the iPhone" <\-- direct quote. Once WP7 hits, I think the average consumer will like WP7 more. That's just my opinion though, I could definitely be wrong. I was also the guy who preached the iPad wouldn't be a best seller. I now wear a paper bag over my head in public and I also changed my name to Juan.

You're also right about their expensive customer re-education. It's definitely an uphill battle for Microsoft but it sounds like they are funding one of the largest marketing campaigns in their history, just for WP7. Should be interesting to see what happens :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice flashy prediction, I'm interested how will WP7 do in real life. Tell me technical merits not just some lame predictions.

I seen a WP7 in action(youtube-it) and well it's far from impressive. It looks like a half baked product to me. Especially the under construction pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> No one has seen the RTM version. Not until today at least when WP7 officially launches.

I'm interested in how WP7 will do in real life as well. My prediction may be completely wrong, I know that. Like I said in my article, "There is a huge check with Microsoft's name on it IF they pull this off." It will be pretty embarrassing if their billions invested in WP7 ends up as a failure :/</comment></comment>


VLC reaches 2.1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/2.1.0.html <comment><USER2> What's the point of posting a link to a very old release announcement? 2.2.1 is the latest version.</comment>


Amazon account email addresses disclosed by employee to third-party seller - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-says-third-party-seller-got-some-customers-email-addresses-1538772883 <comment><AUTHOR> Email I received from Amazon regarding the issue:

""" Hello,

We are writing to let you know that your email address was disclosed by an Amazon employee to a third-party seller on our website in violation of our policies. As a result, the employee has been terminated and we are supporting law enforcement in their prosecution. The third-party seller has been blocked from selling on our website. No other information related to your account was shared.

This is not a result of anything you have done, and there is no need for you to take any action.

Thank you,

Amazon Customer Service """</comment>


Does anyone in industry religiously use scrum at their workplace? - <AUTHOR> I want to know if there are teams who religiously follow agile methodologies (story time, assigning story points, Sprint reviews etc) and have benefited from that or learnt that it's not for them. Please also mention the type of product that you used it for. <comment><USER2> We used to. I recommend the book: The Art of Agile Development

In there, the author starts by saying,"there is no silver bullet"...and it's true.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did it help you anyway or was it useful for productivity or did it just add more process in development cycle?</comment></comment>


Free, automated SSL certificates for Sandstorm self-hosters - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2015-10-01-free-ssl-certificates.html <comment><USER2> I know this isn't fully related to the blog, but I think I found my favorite Sandstorm contributor: [http://i.imgur.com/nrlbY3f.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/nrlbY3f.jpg)

<comment><USER3> Jas is one of my favorites too. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >To solve this, Sandcats issues certificates valid for only seven days.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that the primary motivation for the 7-day certs was users security.

<comment><USER3> What other motivation do you suspect?

<comment><USER4> A requirement of the SSL provider, it doesn't really do much to protect against heartbleed like vulnerabilities - just limits the time an attacker can use the key to 7 days.

<comment><USER3> The 7-day expiration was definitely something we (Sandstorm) asked for, not Globalsign.

It does simplify recovery after a Heartbleed-like bug, as described in the blog post. Of course it doesn't prevent the bug from happening, but it does greatly simplify recovery afterwards, which is important to me. The security properties are in fact the most exciting thing about short-lived certificates for me personally.

For the sake of transparency, there is another motivation: For a 1-week certificate, we pay 1/52 of what we would have for a 1-year certificate. So if a user installs Sandstorm, gets a certificate, and immediately uninstalls, we don't pay for a full year. More importantly, if a user installs sandstorm several times -- perhaps due to a bug or a misunderstanding -- and gets a new cert every time, we don't take a huge hit. Basically, we get some risk management out of this deal.

<comment><USER4> It would be nice if you included the financial motivation in the article as well. Makes total sense, and I totally agree that 7 day certs are better (security wise) than 1 year, I just wasn't sure that in the absence of any financial motivation whether it would be worth the effort (having to roll private keys every week) for the limited protection it gives you.

<comment><USER5> You eventually have to roll over keys at least once every N years, so if you are automating it, the length of time doesn't really matter.

In this case, they are just limiting the window.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, we were going to do the auto-renewal regardless, so making it every 7 days didn't really add any work.

Meanwhile I really am paranoid about long-lived keys of any sort, especially if they need to be online as TLS keys must. I wish CAs offered short-lived keys more readily (and web infrastructure supported it); I'd love to enable them for all Sandstorm properties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Probably not a top concern for users, but this does look like it would be really difficult to use with HTTP Public Key Pinning unless Sandstorm were also keeping the pinning TTLs pretty short - which defeats the purpose.

More info here if anyone's interested in HPKP: [https://scotthelme.co.uk/hpkp- http-public-key-pinning/](https://scotthelme.co.uk/hpkp-http-public-key- pinning/)

<comment><USER3> Honestly HPKP terrifies me. If you key is lost or compromised, you "brick" your site. How do you recover from the next Heartbleed?

I think it could make sense to pin an _offline_ key which is in turn used to sign _online_ keys -- it's at least somewhat feasible to build secure, reliable storage for offline keys. But with current tech that would require that your offline key is a CA key, and as a regular user you have no ability to obtain such a certificate.

So basically I don't think HPKP is a good idea, unless you are Google.

I think certificate transparency is the most promising way forward here.

<comment><USER7> You can prepare the spare certificate in advance: generate two private keys (preferably with different software on different machines), buy two certs, and only put one of them online. That way, if something goes wrong, you have a known-working certificate you can switch to. It doubles the cost, which may or may not be worth the money.

You're also allowed to pin any certificate in the chain, not just the end- entity cert ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7469#section-2.6](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7469#section-2.6)), so you have some other options. You can pin some number of CAs that you think are trustworthy CAs: pin not only GlobalSign but a few other major CAs that you'd consider using in the future. That doesn't protect you from all the things HPKP could possibly protect you from, but it does protect you from the DigiNotars and MCS Holdings and TURKTRUSTs of the world.

<comment><USER8> You don't need to buy a spare cert in advance. You can use a a CSR, and only get it signed when necessary.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Intel to Double Capacity at Kiryat Gat Fab to Make Most Advanced Chips - <AUTHOR> http://english.themarker.com/intel-to-get-nis-1-billion-goverment-grant-1.375466

<comment><USER2> Kiryat Gat is in israel for those who don't know. Does anyone know what the average salary of these employees is expected to be?

<comment><USER3> This is from 0ct 2010:

[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=iw&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fcps.co.il%2FSiteFiles%2F1%2F14%2F2971.asp)

<comment><USER4> Don't forget to mention that these numbers are in 1,000s of NIS (currently 1 NIS = 0.29 USD) per month.

Besides, except for "production manager" I don't think any of these salaries apply to Intel's production fab, where most employees are (skilled) production technicians.</comment></comment></comment>


ToS;DR gives best rating to secure Swiss email provider - <AUTHOR> https://mykolab.com/news/2014/more-storage-better-prices-and-class-rating-tos

<comment><USER2> What people don't understand about Switzerland is that it's USA's ally. Even being officially neutral, during the cold war it had its own Gladio program financed by the CIA.

And intelligence agencies in the rest of the world, don't need a warrant to spy inside their own country. It's assumed it is to be done and as long they are not caught, nobody will ask any questions.

So Swiss spies may well have cooperation agreements with NSA as every NATO countries. You have to look at countries that are hostile or at least unfriendly toward your country.

If I was an American worried about NSA's 'legal' mass collection of meta data I would rent space on Russian, Chinese or Iranian servers (I have no clue if North Korea provides cloud services* :-)

Of course they can still hack the foreign servers but their job is made harder than to just ask 'nicely' the data to an American company.

My 2 cents.

* perhaps a start-up idea : Juche As A Service or Kim Il Cloud</comment>


POP User Meetup (1/26) in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.eventbrite.com/event/632679361

<comment><USER2> We are visiting SF and would like to meet up with POP users for feedback :)

</comment><comment><USER3> excited!</comment>


Sketch to Code – Uber App in less than 90 seconds - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=597L5cdDeu8 <comment><USER2> What a wonderfully simple workflow you got there.</comment>


Computer Science Learning, Closing the Gap: Hispanic Students [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/computer-science-learning-closing-the-gap-hispanic-brief.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR:

"Hispanic students AND their parents are some of the most interested in learning CS, but they have the least access to computers at work + school vs other groups. The CS learning gap is not due to lack of interest or motivation, but lack of access and exposure to computing tech and role models."</comment>


New Car: An Accessible Minivan - <AUTHOR> https://nicolagriffith.com/2018/05/26/new-car-an-accessible-minivan/ <comment><USER3> This person is truly inspirational in reclaiming the freedom that has been taken away from them, despite the odds. Note Nicola lives in Seattle - <USER2> American standards, a fairly transit-oriented city - and note how difficult it is for Nicola to reclaim that independence.

Imagine having to constantly rely on friends/family to even be able to go get groceries. Nicola alludes to this at the end without getting too political:

"We live at the bottom of a steep hill in a neighbourhood without sidewalks and many blocks from a bus stop. The only way for me to leave the house is in a car. Uber and Lyft have no accessible vehicles in Seattle [if they don't have it in Seattle, we can assume this also rings true for most of America]. There are a handful of wheelchair-accessible taxis but you have to book way in advance, they are obscenely expensive, and, worst of all, utterly unreliable."

And: "This van is insured for $91,300."

I'm guessing Nicola spent a long time gathering enough money to be able to gain the "luxury" of being able to move from A to B like a non-disabled person - so I am assuming moving to a highly urban setting (say, San Francisco) is financially out of the question due to the price of housing in such settings.

Conclusion: in our country, if you're disabled, be prepared to fork up an unreasonable amount of money to gain even a modicum of independence. By definition, this means most disabled people in this country _cannot_ (financially) attain independence, and our infrastructure is the reason why.

<comment><USER4> SF is absolutely hostile to people who have trouble walking.

I spent 10 months on crutches. An example: the useless fuckwits who designed BART made some stations so that, to use the elevators to get from the platform level to the street, you have to

1 - crutch to the elevators on the platform level

2 - get out on the station level

3 - crutch _the length of the station_ to get to the swipe machines;

4 - crutch back the length of the station to get to the elevators from the station level to the street;

5 - stand in a standing pool in the center of the elevator of fucking bum piss and shit on your way to the street.

For those of you who've never used crutches, well, (a) good call, and (b) your armpits look like they should conveniently support your body. In actuality, it hurts. Crutching is uncomfortable, and being unnecessarily forced to crutch station lengths is terrible.

And btw, this stuff isn't rocket science. Anyone who thinks for perhaps 2 seconds about making buildings accessible to people with mobility issues will realize that limiting unnecessary travel distances is one of the best ways to increase mobility.

<comment><USER5> You're not supposed to support the weight with your armpits; keep your arms locked out. The BART probably still sucks for it either way, though.

<comment><USER4> I'm well aware, but after 15 or 20 minutes of crutching...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We have a 2015 Honda Odyssey Elite (same color scheme) and I can honestly say it is the most usable vehicle we've ever owned. Awesome tech, plenty of space for the kiddos, and an unbelievable amount of storage space. It's a great ride and I'm assuming super reliable because Honda. It's fantastic to see the author gaining some freedom and mobility back with this conversion.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's amazing to see how modern conversions work - I'm seriously impressed.

One of my family members has muscular dystrophy, which affects her ability to use and feel her legs. She can still walk very slowly, but she has an adapted car with hand controls. I thought I'd describe it, for those interested in the spectrum of car adaptation.

Her car is a standard mid-size automatic compact, with no adaptations other than a push-pull accelerator/brake hand control.

Unlike Nicola's car above, it doesn't have an electronic bypass for the hand controls - they're completely mechanical, with an ingenious system of sliding linkages connecting the hand lever to the pedals. The sliding links are what allows a pull on the hand lever to push the accelerator without simultaneously pulling on the brake pedal (which would obviously stop the hand lever from moving). They also allow the pedals to be used without the hand control moving, so it's easy for me to swap in to drive the car on long distance trips.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how small/efficient (and compatible with the rest of the world's existing ecosystem without requiring special large parking spots and such, high in a city might be a big difficulty to retrofit) a purpose-built, self- driving vehicle could be. If the wheelchair doesn't need to be in a position to drive, it would be a lot easier to fit it in a shorter wheelbase, with a less expensive mount. You would still need some greater height than a regular sedan, but probably could be narrower and load through the rear. I assume you would still want space for 1-3 other passengers. EV makes this even better — you could potentially make a city car for a wheelchair user which fit in the same footprint as a Mini Cooper.

Even if these were inherently more expensive, and had higher costs due to lower production runs, it might save enough on other costs to be worth it. They would also be viable paratransit or Uber model rentals (assuming self driving becomes the default) so even $200k vehicles could work. If the system were sufficiently on demand and convenient, dropping ADA from existing large buses and other transit, making them cheaper and more reliable, could potentially be a net savings.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think that there is an opportunity for a well known electric car maker to do some wonderful things in this space, the population is ageing and nobody wants to lose their mobility.

One day cars will be designed for people of all abilities.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. Electrification will allow automakers to rethink car design from the ground up, since they are no longer constrained by the conventional layout imposed by the combustion engine and transmission.

As electrics start to go mainstream, we're hopefully also going to see a new era of creativity and innovation in their designs. Something which has been pretty stagnant for decades.</comment></comment>


Email Sucks. We're Building Something Better. - <AUTHOR> http://inboxnone.com/

<comment><USER2> You´re going to have to say more than that to convince me to even put my email there.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's all we're saying for now. More to come very soon, though. :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does Amazon EC2 compare to shared web hosting? - <AUTHOR> Are multiple AMI instances run on the same physical servers? If so, does the load from one customer's server instance negatively effect all of the others on the same hardware? I understand that you can instantly spool up additional servers to dynamically handle load, but do those individual instances suffer from performance issues if they're loaded on busy hardware? <comment><USER2> 1) yes. 2) no. 3) no. ...there is a minimum guaranteed performance level for each instance type. for small instances (1 core), each user gets a minimum of 1/N of the system resources. If you fire up an extra-large instance, you essentially get the whole box to yourself, including I/O.

see: [http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/2008-02-01/Develope...](http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/2008-02-01/DeveloperGuide/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the answers folks. My roommate is talking about needing tens of thousands of dollars of servers for a company he's thinking about starting and and my immediate thought was "why?" I just got my first EC2 instance up and running from the terminal in OS X so I'm doing my little happy dance. Thanks for the help.

<comment><USER3> yeah go with EC2 first... get users... and more users... until EC2 doesn't cut it... then turn the virtual machines into dedicated servers somewhere. Truth is you'd have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get the reliability amazon should be selling you for much less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only downside to them, in my opinion, is that disk access is not super fast. This makes running databases on them much slower than a properly set up real machine.

That said, I fully expect amazon to fix this, just as they have already added high memory and high cpu instances. They seem to take feedback seriously and have addressed most of the major complaints to date.

Being able to provision new machines with a simple command is reason enough to use them over more traditional places.

</comment><comment><USER5> we just ran some extensive testing to move a highly trafficked website from a cluster of dedicated servers (at theplanet) to ec2. note that our application is to use ec2 as a real-time web server. the bottom line:

dedicated servers allow for much faster ip takeover (critical for high- availability) and had lower latency. ec2 rocks for scalability.

in the end we decided to hold off on ec2 until they address these 2 deficiencies.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Are multiple AMI instances run on the same physical servers?_

Yes. A physical server is probably 8 cores and 32GB RAM, so an instance is 1/Nth of that.

 _If so, does the load from one customer's server instance negatively effect all of the others on the same hardware?_

Not much, since CPU and RAM are not oversubscribed. I don't know about the disks and network.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is it so hard to buy a new gaming laptop? - <AUTHOR> I like gaming laptops because, apart from very occasional gaming, they are my favorite type of laptops for daily use - slim, powerful, well designed.
I have taken a look on Amazon.com and other sites to decide which one to buy, but the experience is awful.
There's no way, as an example, to know on Amazon if a laptop is new or not; some of them are ridiculously priced (e.g. launched a year ago, still the same price despite there are new models that cost the same but with better specs).
Do you have any suggestions on how to search more effectively? <comment><USER2> You might try:

Tiger Direct

newegg

If you want to get really serious check out:

Falcon Northwest

<comment><AUTHOR> Tiger Direct and Newegg have the same problem.

Falcon seems interesting, albeit very overpriced.

<comment><USER3> You might look at Mythlogic as well--I got a laptop from them a couple of years ago and have been pleased by it. Falcon, Mythlogic, and a few of the others are using Clevo shells as the base--not super cutting edge tech, but solid, quality build. Worth what you pay for it.</comment></comment></comment>


Tuscanery, your monthly dose of tuscany right at your doorstep - <AUTHOR> http://tuscanery.com

<comment><USER2> If you want feedback and want to avoid looking like spam, then you want to do a "Show HN" post to prevent your submission from getting flagged or worse. Doing a proper "Show HN" post will mean your submission will be listed under "show" in the top menu. If you can still delete this submission, you probably should. The rules and instructions for doing a "Show HN" submission are here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Many tnx and sorry, I add the project on the Show area :) how I can remove this story now?</comment></comment>


Emacs for the HP49G - <AUTHOR> https://staff.science.uva.nl/c.dominik/hpcalc/emacs/ <comment><USER2> To clarify: this is not Emacs. Instead, it is a text editor that features improvements over the built-in editor. It was partly written by Carsten Dominik (creator of Org mode), who is an Emacs user. Some features were inspired by Emacs, but the similarities end there.

<comment><USER3> Insofar as this is true, the original EMACS was not Emacs, either. Instead, it was a collection of Editor MACroS for TECO.

<comment><USER4> I've read the TECO was a nightmare to use.

<comment><USER5> TECO got easier to use with time, especially after the MIT people added ^R (Realtime) mode, which showed a whole screenful of text at a time as opposed to the earlier behavior where TECO would print on command but was otherwise like ed instead of vi. Makes sense, seeing as how TECO originally stood for Tape Editor and COrrector, as in paper tape.

TECO's main claim to fame was its command language, which became its programming language: People wrote programs (including the original EMACS) in TECO's command language, where most commands were non-printable characters in ASCII. There were conventions to print those characters readably (well, readable for human TECO users), such as printing Esc as $, but the fact remained you were programming with line noise. ;)

There's a TECO for modern systems, called Video TECO, here:

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/videoteco/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/videoteco/)

Manual:

[http://www.copters.com/teco.html](http://www.copters.com/teco.html)

Wiki on TECO, with lots more links:

[http://wiki.c2.com/?TecoEditor](http://wiki.c2.com/?TecoEditor)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In case someone else doesn't know what a HP49G is: its a graphic calculator [1]:

"The HP49G is Hewlett-Packard's latest graphic calculator. It has 512K of RAM (split into two 256KB ports: Port 0 and Port 1) and 2MB of flash memory. 1MB of flash memory is used by the upgradeable ROM and the other 1MB is available to the user (in Port 2). It has the same 4 MHz Saturn CPU as the 48G series, but the software is rewritten to make the calculator operate more quickly."

Apparently according to Wikipedia this specific type was introduced in 1999 and discontinued in 2003. [2]

Not sure how popular this specific type was. Personally (ie. my bubble), I used a TI (I forgot the exact type, likely TI-83) and this was more or less mandated by the school (used for mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, and ehh.. "notes"..). If you had a different type you were on your own. From what I remember they were programmable, and you could install software on them as well. I guess I'd expect "that other" text editor before Emacs though _wink_.

Question to fellow readers: what do teenagers use these days on high school? Do they still use graphic calculators? Or is this niche overtaken by say tablets or smartphones? Please do state your country/state.

[1] [http://www.hpcalc.org/hp49/docs/faq/](http://www.hpcalc.org/hp49/docs/faq/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_49/50_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_49/50_series)

<comment><USER7> The HP48G was quite popular among the "tech savvy" in science cursus. One notable feature was that the user interface was based on RPN[1]. Very cool, I've always wondered why this was not the default.

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

<comment><USER8> It was the default for professional engineers and accountants. TI made calculators for school children, so added an algebraic interface, removed anything not allowed by the College Board exams, and simplified and standardized. Great educational tool. Terrible professional tool.

That said, I learned a lot using an HP in high school and porting over all the TI programs provided by the teacher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two of my favorite things in the same title (although the 49G < 48G)

</comment><comment><USER10> But does it run Crysis?

This seems nothing related to real Emacs except for a name and ideas...

<comment><USER11> Emacs is a class of editor these days, not a specific editor.

<comment><USER12> Emacs has been that way for many many years.

Until recently, GNU Emacs has always had competition for users from xemacs at the least.

<comment><USER13> GNU Emacs wasn't the original Emacs, either (that was rms' PDP-10 editor built on top of TECO rather than Lisp), or even the original Lisp-based Emacs (that was Daniel Weinreb's EINE (EINE Is Not Emacs) which also had a successor ZWEI (ZWEI Was EINE Initially)). By the time GNU Emacs came out, Emacs was already a family of editors. GNU Emacs was made as a free software alternative to the first Emacs for Unix, Gosling Emacs (made by James Gosling, who later went on to design Java).

In a 1986 speech, rms discussed the beginnings of GNU Emacs:

"GNU Emacs is the main distributed portion of the GNU system. It's an extensible text editor a lot like the original emacs which I developed ten years ago, except that this one uses actual LISP as its extension language. [...] Gosling originally had set up his Emacs and distributed it free and gotten many people to help develop it, under the expectation based on Gosling's own words in his own manual that he was going to follow the same spirit that I started with the original Emacs. Then he stabbed everyone in the back by putting copyrights on it, making people promise not to redistribute it and then selling it to a software-house. My later dealings with him personally showed that he was every bit as cowardly and despicable as you would expect from that history.

"But in any case, my friend gave me this program, and my intention was to change the editing commands at the top level to make them compatible with the original Emacs that I was used to. But after a little bit of this, I discovered that the extension language of that editor, which is called MOCKLISP, was not sufficient for the task. I found that that I had to replace it immediately in order to do what I was planning to do. Before I had had the idea of someday perhaps replacing MOCKLISP with real LISP, but what I found out was that it had do be done first."

The full speech is really interesting: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman- kth.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman-kth.en.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Modular Encrypted Database - <AUTHOR> Does anybody know of a database where data can never be extracted in bulk. For example, lets say there are the following fields: Name, Address, Date of birth and email. They are put into the db at the same time by a user, but when querying the database you can only get say address and age (With unique random ids) at the same time, or say name and email (again unique random ids) at the same time.<p>The idea is that it would be impossible to get name and address, or name and date of birth and in so doing privacy should always be preserved. <comment><USER2> Look into SQLcipher and SQLite</comment>


On the fact that Bitcoin has a Kill Switch; and how to disconnect it. - <AUTHOR> http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1009 <comment><USER2> Isn't this similar to stocks where a single person owns a large percentage of a company?

Zuckerberg could do some serious damage for FB if he decided to sell everything at once. But it is in his best interest not to.

Over time more bitcoins will be mined, and the 400k hoards won't be as powerful.

<comment><USER3> There is an important difference.

Zuckerberg doesn't try to hide his ownership of his massive stock holdings by parcelling the whole thing out to a million shills. And if he were to try, he could very well go to jail. The hoarders of the Great Bitcoin Hoard, on the other hand, have worked hard to stay in the shadows, and have largely succeeded - until now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, the answer is to take away their money? That seems morally wrong somehow...

<comment><USER3> The only way you could actually take anyone's bitcoins against their will is by whacking them over the head and stealing their private keys. The solution I proposed is instead to create a "schism" Bitcoin network that refuses to trade with the pyramid scheme operators and does not recognize their coins as valid.

Nothing is being stolen from another person. Instead, the schism network's users will be protected from being robbed in the future by early adopters who possess a great many coins without having placed any dollars, gold, etc. into the exchanges.

Yes, my solution is in some ways harsh and inelegant, but if you don't like it, you should be prepared to deal with the Great Bitcoin Flood once Satoshi and friends finally decide to cash out. Or avoid Bitcoin entirely.</comment></comment>


Gardens of the Sun - <AUTHOR> https://www.boulderweekly.com/boulderganic/gardens-of-the-sun/ <comment><USER2> The keyword in the article is 'agrivoltaics', which was also recently written about here [https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/crops-under-solar- pa...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/crops-under-solar-panels-can- be-a-win-win/) about university of Arizona's Barron-Gafford group: [https://www.barrongafford.org/research.html](https://www.barrongafford.org/research.html)</comment>


Repology: compare package versions across multiple repositories - <AUTHOR> http://repology.org/ <comment><USER2> The interface really really needs search.</comment>


Credit Ratings Agencies - Who made them so powerful ? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/04/rating_agencies_who_made_them.html

<comment><AUTHOR> To me - its quite astonishing that the Ratings Agencies still hold so much sway , given that they have been thoroughly discredited in the last 2 years.

I wonder, what it would take to have another ratings agency ? Is this simply a case of Market Incumbency ?

<comment><USER5> Reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis was illuminating.

Essentially, the ratings agencies have done pretty well over the years on corporate and government bonds. There is a lot of quality historical data, and a relatively small number of institutions involved.

Their models broke down when it came to mortgages and how thousands (millions?) of loans hang together. But that doesn't mean their models of corporate/government debt don't still hold up.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't be surprised to discover their models of corporate and government debt contain the same systemic blindness to domino effects. They haven't been fully tested yet, because there's always public money to save companies that are Too Big To Fail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Large pension funds have Terms & Conditions which state what classes of debt/asset each fund is allowed to hold.

These are often defined relative to the Rating Agency score. So when the rating changes (down), they are obliged to sell their holdings and not buy any further debt.

<comment><USER8> Quite true - which makes one wonder why these standards aren't more explicitly stated via a standard model in the contract - as opposed to relying on a supposedly "impartial" source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _All that S &P has done is to say that Greek debt is junk; but surely Greek debt can't in reality be junkier today than it was last week just because S&P says so?_

Ermm, actually it can, because yesterday the probability of a bailout by Germany was different that it is today. S&P in this case is merely reporting what is.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't see how an article titled 'Credit Ratings Agencies - Who made them so powerful ?' doesn't discuss the idea of the Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (Yes, there is a passing mention of the SEC, but this is the answer to the question):

 _Ratings by NRSRO are used for a variety of regulatory purposes in the United States. In addition to net capital requirements (described in more detail below), the SEC permits certain bond issuers to use a shorter prospectus form when issuing bonds if the issuer is older, has issued bonds before, and has a credit rating above a certain level. SEC regulations also require that money market funds (mutual funds that mimick the safety and liquidity of a bank savings deposit, but without FDIC insurance) comprise only securities with a very high rating from an NRSRO. Likewise, insurance regulators use credit ratings from NRSROs to ascertain the strength of the reserves held by insurance companies._

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_Recognized_Statistic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_Recognized_Statistical_Rating_Organizations)

</comment><comment><USER11> Two things make them powerful:

\- The vast amount of people that simply believe the opinions published by the agencies and consider those the absolute truth

\- originators of policies that requires ratings to be put on several financial products before being allowed to be bought by certain institutions, which glorifies the agencie's opinions as the absolute truth

</comment><comment><USER12> It seemed to me that the market had already begun to move against Greece. If credit agencies don't reflect the lack of political momentum (and a plan to pay creditors) then agencies loose their credibility.

I doubt that S&P acts in an isolated manner, and is part a political play and can be influenced by other organisations, economic reports and political moves. This may even be a mechanism to sell the bailout to the German electorate.

</comment><comment><USER13> (this is a bit tongue in cheek but..)

Is there any more powerful and feared financial reporter in the UK than Robert Preston?

The guy - who's essential task is to report on the comings and goings of financial institutions so the rest of us can understand - <USER2> contributed to public panic during the banking crisis of last year.

At the time his doom and gloom reporting on national television caused many uninitiated people (in the UK) to panic about the state of the economy; when a more rational response would have been better.

Peston may claim he is only reporting the facts; but his treatment of Northern Rock may well have helped push things over the edge.

Perhaps I am being over zealous in giving Peston some of the blame. Who knows.

[In all seriousness, though, Peston has a history of disliking almost all financial institutions for some reason - and as a result the BBC reporting of the banking crisis was both skewed and problematic. I know quite a few people who misconstrued things from the tone and delivery of information and as a result panicked like crazy.

He may have the makings of a point here; but I always take his opinions with a pinch of salt :) ]

<comment><USER14> He was certainly rather negative about RBS, HBOS and Northern Rock - <USER3> didn't they rather deserve it?

I would rather think the management of Northern Rock caused the run - <USER4> was just doing his job by reporting it. This might not have been the traditional British way of dealing with these kinds of things but personally I'd rather know that have it all covered up.

<comment><USER13> I think he let his bias speak alongside the facts; the reporting at the time (especially on TV) was a little misleading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ratings agencies must be the most easily forgiven part of the financial system. Why do the markets still move on their advise given that they were proved completely falable less than 12 months ago!

</comment><comment><USER16> It's about time the ratings agencies started rating debt accurately. EU states have some very serious debt problems.

<comment><USER15> As does most of the western world.

<comment><USER17> As does most of the world.

[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/rankorder/2186rank.html?countryCode=#)

<comment><USER18> That graph is a little misleading. For example, Japan is right up there but the majority of their government's debt is internal; not good by any means but not as volatile as the Greek situation. Worst comes to worst, the Japs can just print money on demand - in fact I think there has come to pass a tacit understanding that that is exactly what will happen, as there is no chance of the money ever being paid off by any other means. The Greeks have no such luxury.

I'd like to see a ranking of countries by external public debt.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Economy passengers may rage after being marched through first class - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/air-rage-is-more-common-when-economy-class-passengers-see-first-class/ <comment><USER2> i got bumped to first class once. the way that two people there just expected constant catering by the staff made me frustrated. The realization that a certain amount of money basically entitles you to treat others like shit really got under my skin. of course none of this got under my skin so much as families with obnoxious kids. truth be told, most of the first class passangers just kept to themselves. the real luxury wasn't what first class had, it was what it didn't have, or who it didn't have rather.

</comment><comment><USER3> i thought this link in the Ars comment was interesting. not sure why it was so buried, though. Maybe that's a reflection of Ars more than anything.

[http://andrewgelman.com/2016/05/03/im-all-out-of- clever/](http://andrewgelman.com/2016/05/03/im-all-out-of-clever/)</comment>


Amazon's tablet will make or break Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/94228-amazons-tablet-will-make-or-break-android

<comment><USER3> I note with mild amusement that B&N's Nook Color hasn't exactly destroyed Android. (Even though half an hour on the web is enough to find the tools with which to root it and turn it into an Android 2.2 device -- Honeycomb is still a bit alpha-ish. And I can testify from first-hand experience that the Nook Color makes a _really_ nice Kindle.)

What the Amazon tablet may do is to trigger a shake-out among the Android tablet vendors, because if it's as well-integrated as the Kindle e-ink experience it's going to show up a lot of crappy also-rans for what they are. And it'll likely punch well above its price point because Amazon will be selling the handle at (or below) cost in order to guarantee ongoing sales of razor blades.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems more like Amazon's tablet will hardly be recognizable as Android - <USER2> a focus on it's own AppStore and other services Amazon offers, the underlying OS gradually becomes irrelevant.

With what Apple has done to their supply chain, I'm still not convinced that Amazon can make a tablet with solid hardware specs at a price much cheaper than the iPad. I know that's the rumor, and some people feel they would do it even at a loss, but that's a big if. And there is the possibility that Apple releases it's own cheaper, but smaller, iPad.</comment>


A happy ending for Seattle's Bop Street Records: a nonprofit buys the collection - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/a-happy-ending-for-seattles-bop-street-records-a-nonprofit-buys-up-the-entire-collection/ <comment><USER2> > In a phone interview confirming the sale, Kahle said the goal of his > organization is "to build the Library of Alexandria for the digital age," > referring to the library in ancient Egypt that famously burned down.

> Kahle has a particular interest in obscure recordings, he said. "High school > marching bands, soundtracks for foreign movies you've never heard of — those > are just treasures."

Love Kahle

</comment><comment><USER3> If the purchaser, the Internet Archive, digitizes the entire collection, do they have the legal right to stream the content to the world without paying royalties?

<comment><USER4> They've been digitalizing media and only streaming it when it's outside of copyright. This means many 2050+ for recent music but ~1970s music and earlier is fair game.

<comment><USER5> Copyright for sound recordings is pretty complicated in the US. Recordings from before 1972 were protected by a variety of state level laws, so even recordings that should be in the public domain, like ones from before 1924, weren't guaranteed to be so until the 2018 Music Modernization Act[1], and even so have a 3 year grace period from when that was enacted. It gets even more confusing for recordings from 1924-1978, when rights holders had to file for copyright and then file for extensions, AND the law has changed numerous times for different dates within that range.[2] So no, it's not really fair to say that 1970's and earlier music is fair game.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/new-music- modernizatio...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/new-music- modernization-act-has-major-fix-older-recordings-will-belong-public)

[2] [http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/public-domain-sound- record...](http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/public-domain-sound- recordings.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a Hendrix record they had that I was interested in buying. If someone has a contact there, please let me know in a reply.

<comment><USER7> I can put a note in their mail slot, I live biking distance.

<comment><USER6> I'm about the same distance, but thanks for the offer.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Encourage random act of kindness in the form of non-monetary help - <AUTHOR> https://holddor.com <comment><AUTHOR> Wanted to share how we started and evolved the landing page to eventually get a lot more sign-ups:

1) Offer something in return for sign-ups

2) Quantify the worth of this 'something'

3) Gamify sign-ups with rankings</comment>


Evolving the Python standard library - <AUTHOR> http://sayspy.blogspot.com/2009/09/evolving-standard-library.html <comment><USER2> I remember one of the biggest hassles to moving to Python from Perl was figuring out which libraries to use for some common tasks (making an HTTP request, forking a process, parsing XML). There frequently seemed to be one library that was heavily documented but deprecated, another one that had everybody talking but wasn't quite ready, and sometimes a third or fourth of indeterminate status.

After doing some projects in the language, I began to get a feel for how to choose among competing libraries, but it made the transition to the language less fun than it otherwise should have been.

Having a useful, agreed-upon standard library would be a terrific help to developers moving over from other languages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, yes, yes. I'll be sending out an email to the stdlib-sig later today proposing a logical "breaking out" of the stdlib from "the core". We can offer a "mega pack" download, but there's various (and all good) reasons to offer a split core/stdlib download as well.

Not just downloading though: it has to be broken out in source control. We should have a single, shared stdlib in a logically "split" location for all of the implementations to leverage. It should contain the minimal number of the _best_ batteries.

<comment><USER3> Here's the thread: [http://mail.python.org/pipermail/stdlib- sig/2009-September/0...](http://mail.python.org/pipermail/stdlib- sig/2009-September/000398.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is stupid. The thing that makes python so good is that it has a rock- solid, extensive standard library. I'm all for separating it internally so it's easier for pypy/jython/ironpython to reuse and contribute, but don't make us rely on the cheeseshop (full of abandonware and broken code- try finding a STABLE, production-ready s3 client lib, for example). The standard library exists as a repo of well designed (mostly) and high quality (especially after 3.0) modules, but it's greatest attribute is that it's maintained as much as the core language.

Without the stdlib, python is just JavaScript with some extra syntax. Imagine using java without the stdlib. It's very much part of the language.

<comment><USER5> Particularly with 3.0, it's not rock-solid at all. There are a ton of libraries whose behavior regarding strings vs. bytes is currently unpredictable and undesirable, and several others that should have been deprecated in 2.X and removed befor 3.

I _like_ the standard library, but there's a lot of room for improvement.

<comment><USER6> Keep the standard library and continue to make improvements == good.

Remove it so users can roam the wild countryside to hunt for the bits that they want == bad.

<comment><USER3> Yup, that's the point.

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry, I don't think I understand. Is the plan going to be: keep the "standard lib" but at the same time remove it from "core"?

If that's the case, then it won't make any difference to end users except that the Python that they download will consist of 2 pieces next to eachother instead of one big piece, correct?

That said, I just hope that -- whatever happens -- we still have batteries included. I'd rather not have to forage around PyPI, python module ratings websites, and forums just to figure out which module distribution to use (out of many) for a given requirement. It would be nice if I had the time for that, but for most module distributions I'd rather let the community as a whole come to a consensus, and then just use that (a la batteries included).

<comment><USER3> There will still be batteries included. Brett (the article) was talking about how to clean it up, my point in this thread ([http://mail.python.org/pipermail/stdlib- sig/2009-September/0...](http://mail.python.org/pipermail/stdlib- sig/2009-September/000398.html)) is a break-up which still offers the batteries (as a single download file - the other downloads are "advanced").

No one wants to get rid of the batteries; we just want to move them so they are not tightly-coupled with cpython-core (meaning for instance, Jython can more easily leverage them) and we can fix/clean them up more aggressively.

I completely agree with the foraging around PyPi comment - I hate doing that too, fundamentally what we all want is a cleaner, best of breed stdlib all of the implementations can share.

<comment><USER6> Oh, well, that sounds great then. Thanks for the reply. One thing though: you mention in your post to the ML, "removing things with low test coverage, poor docs or things which simply are _not_ the best option". I just hope, along with that, you have the other side of the coin: liberally bring in new things which have good test coverage, good docs, and which are a pretty darn good option. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be happy if python just had a package manager.

<comment><USER6> It's being actively developed right now: <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/distribute></comment></comment>