SpaceX can't test fire its Falcon Heavy rocket due to the government shutdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2018/01/21/spacex-unable-test-fire-falcon-heavy-rocket-ksc-due-government-shutdown/1052438001/ <comment><USER2> This is easily blamed on the shutdown, but it isn't that simple: Falcon Heavy static fire has been postponed numerous times. On Tuesday (Jan 16th), it was cancelled once again, but with no new target test date. That indicates that SpaceX is still working on the rocket/pad.

I didn't find information on when they'd be ready again, but blaming a delay on Falcon Heavy's static fire test on the Government Shutdown is only half the truth.

<comment><USER3> They _did_ go through with a Wet Dress Rehearsal on Saturday, though, which already validates many things just prior to engine ignition. So if they were confident to continue with a static fire on Monday and there were no other issues known I'd say it's fair to blame it on the shutdown. Of course, more issues could arise during the test, but we won't know now.

<comment><USER4> Shutdown started at Midnight Friday though didn't it?

<comment><USER5> Officially yes, but I can imagine there being some bureaucratic delay until it's in full effect/everybody got the news. Not a lot of time between midnight Friday and Saturday.

In German radio news, the US correspondent explained that the weekend should still be fine, with full effects of the shutdown beginning around Monday with the new week.

<comment><USER6> That's oversimplified. Some agencies continue to operate for a bit because they have enough money stashed to do so. For example, the Smithsonian stayed open over the weekend and is apparently open today as well. The EPA will stay open for another week because they apparently have a nice chunk of cash somewhere. The postal service will operate indefinitely because they earn their own money.

For everybody else, a shutdown means you stop working right away. For most people that means the first day they're affected is Monday because most of them have the weekend off, but people who would work on the weekend have already been affected. There's no room for a bureaucratic delay or people failing to get the news. I'm pretty sure it's illegal for non-essential people to work during the shutdown unless their job is somehow still funded. Anyone who went to bed early on Friday and went to work on Saturday without checking the news would be told to go home.

<comment><USER7> > For everybody else, a shutdown means you stop working right away.

This is not correct; for many a shutdown means you keep working entirely as normal on the understanding that when things are resolved, you'll get paid retroactively.

<comment><USER6> You're right, I forgot to mention that people deemed "essential" in any agency keep on working anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Space-X was supposed to be building their own launch facility in Brownsville, TX, and it was supposed to be open now, but it's still just a vacant lot. They brought in some tracking antennas and some dirt fill; that's it.[1]

[1] [http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/spacex- progress-...](http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/spacex-progress- ongoing-at-boca-chica-site-second-antenna- added/article_c8f0717c-bde3-11e7-a016-9792b5eb6dd4.html)

<comment><USER9> >They brought in... some dirt fill; that's it.

They're doing soil surcharging, so that's intentional. Don't want the castle sinking into the swamp (it's on 300+ feet of silt[1]).

The steps for soil surcharging are:

1\. Pile extra dirt on top of your fill.

2\. Wait a sufficient amount of time (usually months/years; it's important to wait long enough[2]) as the dirt compresses and squeezes out water.

3\. Remove the extra dirt (also important[2]), and build your heavy structure on top. Now the pre-loaded ground underneath won't settle, because it already did that.

[1] [https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/countdown-to- liftoff/](https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/countdown-to-liftoff/)

[2] [http://www.straits- engineers.com/publications_pdf/publicatio...](http://www.straits- engineers.com/publications_pdf/publication_20.pdf)

edit: pictures of the site [https://imgur.com/a/0OXkB](https://imgur.com/a/0OXkB)

<comment><USER10> _Don 't want the castle sinking into the swamp (it's on 300+ feet of silt[1])._

"When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. And that one sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Son, the strongest castle in all of England."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> However Rocket Lab's launch of their new Electron rocket, from New Zealand, has made it to orbit successfully.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/01/21/space- star...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/01/21/space-startup- rocket-lab-successfully-made-it-to-orbit/)

<comment><USER12> Not sure how that launch is relevant, here.

<comment><USER13> They don't need a govt funded/owned/run launch space to launch, they built their own

<comment><USER14> Their government doesn't have a launch pad.

<comment><USER15> to try circling this back to relevancy: NZ is a fantastically business- friendly country where the shenanigans we (US) have to put up with just don't seem to occur (I had a business there for a while, so this isn't just their tourist propaganda talking).

also - I swear I heard a sheep on the launch video for electron.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find this article very frustrating. What do they even mean by "key members of the civilian workforce"? I wish they'd include examples of what kind of people aren't working. Since I have absolutely no connection to this industry, I have no way of understanding the impact of a government shutdown on the space industry. Why is it considered reasonable or unreasonable that they halt certain space-related activities due to a government shutdown?

<comment><USER17> If no on is getting paid, they aren't going into work, simple as that. This can be anyone. Fire personnel, security, gate guards, flight-line / launch pad techs & engineers, anyone. Most civilian companies barely function if the office manager is out of the building. The launch pad is private property with a ton of personnel, they can't just launch without the workers.

<comment><USER18> It's a mixed bag. Some jobs are deemed essential or exempted and so those individuals have to work. But not all are. Most of NASA, for instance, is shutdown as their work isn't considered critical or exempted.

Exempted: Usually a result of the way it's funded. Some government work is funded by the budget, directly. Others essentially pay for themselves (the government workers acting in essence as contractors or a business, they receive payments from others besides the Congress to do work). Most of those have funding that would last 2-6 weeks. They get to stay open.

None of these people were going to get paid during the shutdown, but they were still expected to work. Their paychecks after the shutdown would pay them. Essentially they're guaranteed the pay, but the pay date would slip.

Although now it's a moot point as it looks like the shutdown is ending.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, is SpaceX now eligible for contract-breach money from the government for this delay? I assume SpaceX 'rents' the facility at KSP from the government. If that facility shuts down, then the government isn't upholding their part of the deal with SpaceX.

Say, as a company I had a deal where I rent an office, and the owner of the office decides for 2+ days I have no access to my office, because one-sided reasons, I can claim lost revenue from the owner, right?

<comment><USER20> From the context it is clear that you meant "KSC" instead of "KSP", but I think the typo is quite interesting.

For those unaware: KSP = Kerbal Space Program, a video game about space exploration

<comment><USER21> Additionally, "KSC" is the abbreviation of the space center in the game video KSP.

<comment><USER22> ...and the Kenya Space Corporation in Artemis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Watched the video on the page demoing the falcon heavy concept. The real pictures don't have the water tower at the launch site like the concept video. Is there some reason the water tower was in the demo design but not the real thing ... — maybe the water tower is mobile and only in place during an actual launch? Or is this closer to a case where somebody thought the water tower would look cool so they put it in the demo video ...?

<comment><USER3> That's a CGI mockup created when SpaceX' modifications to 39A weren't even complete. The FSS also looks markedly different.

However, the water tower is there, as you can see here: [https://twitter.com/wsm1/status/953099809803485184](https://twitter.com/wsm1/status/953099809803485184).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> When eventually launched, both boosters _and_ the first stage are designed to return to earth, landing upright for reuse.

That this seems entirely feasible is a testament to how far SpaceX has moved the industry forward (and signifies that they are going to have a huge lead over any competitors).

<comment><USER25> It's not exactly a new idea. The boosters on the Russian Shuttle equivalent were designed to glide back for reusability in the 70s and 80s, but it's amazing the lack of momentum pushing these ideas forward languished in the space tech arena until SpaceX showed up.

<comment><USER26> No, they weren't designed that way. That literally never happened.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_\(spacecraft\))

And if you're talking about just an idea, sci-fi writers were way ahead of USSR.

<comment><USER27> I think this is what the parent comment is referring to:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal_(rocket_booster)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal_\(rocket_booster\))

<comment><USER26> Never took off. Never went to the prototype stage even. All they made was a mock-up.

Plus he's talking about 70's and 80's, whereas that mock-up was made in 2001.

<comment><USER25> The point is that the idea itself isn't new, but space tech has been stagnant for decades before a company like SpaceX appeared on the scene

<comment><USER26> No, the original comment claimed that the USSR boosters we're designed to glide and land, which they never were.

And rockets landing and taking off many times is a very old idea, also not invented in USSR in the 70's.

<comment><USER28> According to the Russian Wiki article, Energiya's first stage was designed to be reusable by the way of parachutes, solid fuel engines and supports, however, the system was not implemented during its two launches and the parachute containers were loaded with other equipment. Wiki gives this as reference: [http://www.buran.ru/htm/09-3.htm](http://www.buran.ru/htm/09-3.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is SpaceX using a recycled rocket like they have in the past?

[https://latechnews.org/spacex-launches- bulgariasat-1-recycle...](https://latechnews.org/spacex-launches- bulgariasat-1-recycled-rocket/)

<comment><USER30> The center core is new, but the side boosters are both recycled. See [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches#Future_launches)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> stupid website, autoplaying video

<comment><USER32> Yep I'm more upset about this than the actual news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> When was the launch supposed to take place?

<comment><USER34> Static fire was planned for today. Date for an actual launch hasn't been set yet, because a successful static fire (or several) has to take place before that. SpaceX is taking their time to extensively ground test this one, because the Falcon Heavy has never flown before, and is a significantly more complex rocket than the proven Falcon 9 (27 engines need to ignite at launch vs. 9, plus the booster attachments have never been tested before).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> As a foreigner the whole government shutdown is a thing of wonder: how does it work exactly? For instance, is there no police anymore?

How does Congress stay in session during a shutdown? Where does electricity in federal buildings come from if the Federal govt can't pay for it?

<comment><USER36> One thing to understand about the US is that it is actually a federation of states. Much of the day-to-day work happens at the state or local level, not at the federal level. Police, fire departments, emergency first responders mostly employed at that level, and when the federal government is involved, a lot of it is in doing some coordination between states, setting standards, funding for various programs, and so on. Even things like building interstate highways, which are funded by the federal government, are generally done by allocation to the state governments to actually construct them.

However, the military is entirely part of the federal government, as are many other organizations. In the case of not having a budget, the government is required to shut down all functions that are not essential for safety and security. So things like the military, the TSA, and so on can continue to function, but office workers doing jobs like allocating the funding for highway construction are furloughed, put on temporary unpaid leave from their jobs.

This is, of course, terrible for the efficient functioning of government; when the impasse is over, they will have to come back to their jobs and try to catch up. Oh, and in the time leading up to the shutdown, many of them would have been busy preparing for the shutdown, documenting which functions would be considered essential and thus able to continue during the shutdown; because the deadline was no surprise, and there had been many temporary funding bills leading up to this point, there was always a pretty high chance that this shutdown would happen.

Of course, this inefficiency plays well into the politics of one of the parties, who hold a religious belief that private enterprise is always more efficient than government, and so playing games like this that increase its inefficiency help to sell their case and get government functions sold off to private enterprise, who just so happen, in so many cases, to be some of the largest donors to campaigns of this particular party.

<comment><USER37> "Of course, this inefficiency plays well into the politics of one of the parties, who hold a religious belief that private enterprise is always more efficient than government"

Which is beyond ironic to anyone who's worked in the corporate world, but I guess that's for another thread.

This idea they have that private enterprise naturally evolves toward the most efficient system is laughable.

<comment><USER38> >>Which is beyond ironic to anyone who's worked in the corporate world, but I guess that's for another thread.

>>This idea they have that private enterprise naturally evolves toward the most efficient system is laughable.

Work in private industry AND government and you might find the comparison a bit more apt, not that I'm a Republican.

<comment><USER39> I've worked in both, I find bureaucracy is roughly proportional to the seriousness of the work. Serious work - Law, Healthcare, Finance etc are very bureaucratic regardless of whether it's the private or public sector.

Public sector can sometimes seem worse because there's less money sloshing round and people demand it isn't wasted, which effects a lot of bean counting.

<comment><USER40> There's also something to the notion that we _want_ our regulatory bodies and government agencies to be slightly 'conservative', to avoid waste and avoid short-term folly. Our public institutions should live for generations, and have transparency and ethical demands placed upon them by the citizenry.

We _could_ collectively decide to eliminate a lot of red tape in government, no problem. It's just the effect of unchecked, unsupervised, unaccountable governments that make us want that red tape in the first place. Todays Justification Paperwork is yesterdays front-page scandal...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> We're just gonna have to use the drone ship.

<comment><USER3> They will anyway; the center core separates later and won't do a boostback to land. And there are only two landing zones at the Cape as well.

But that's irrelevant to the launch; they cannot _launch_ from the ASDS.

<comment><USER41> do you have friends inside at the launch team? would help to share some of the conversation here, given what we're planning

<comment><USER3> I don't know anyone at SpaceX, but that info is fairly well-known and public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm thinking losing a billion dollar spy satellite might play a factor here. Also the timing of the US government shutdown couldn't have been more damaging.

<comment><USER15> nonsense. There is no evidence whatsoever that spacex's launch of Zuma was anything but a success. Also, in what way is this the most damaging possible timing?

<comment><USER42> then what the hell is this?

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/the-zuma- satellite-l...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/the-zuma-satellite- launched-by-spacex-may-be-lost-sources-tell-ars/)

are you saying they conspired to announce a false failure to hide the spy satellite?

<comment><USER43> You're welcome to push whatever conspiracy theory you like, but Occam's Razor is currently voting for the satellite failing to separate from the second stage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Government shutdown fatigue

</comment><comment><USER45> Warning: Video with sound autoplays when opening the page (in Chrome on macOS)

<comment><USER46> 1\. Go to "chrome://flags" in the URL bar and hit Return/Enter

2\. In the search box at the top, type in "autoplay"

3\. Look for "Autoplay policy" and pull down the submenu, then choose "Document user activation is required"

4\. Relaunch Chrome for the setting to take effect

It does work all that well, but it is something...

<comment><USER47> For Firefox:

1\. Go to "about:config" in the URL bar and hit Return/Enter

2\. In the search box at the top, type in "autoplay"

You'll find two variables to modify. `media.autoplay.enabled` and `media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground`. They do exactly what they say they do. Turn them off/on as you wish by double-clicking, changing true to false and vice-versa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is SpaceX using recycled rockets?

They have in the past.

[https://latechnews.org/spacex-launches- bulgariasat-1-recycle...](https://latechnews.org/spacex-launches- bulgariasat-1-recycled-rocket/)

Government is normally getting in the way or at least slowing down the process of innovation. Hopefully that doesn't happen here at to much a cost to SpaceX and the U.S. tax payers.

<comment><USER48> Not for this one. This is the first launch of the Falcon Heavy vehicle.

<comment><USER49> Correct me, if I am wrong, but I thought the outer two cores are recycled ones?

<comment><USER50> They are indeed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Startup Pixel – Develop your MVP in around 30 Days for around 7777 USD - <AUTHOR> https://startuppixel.com/?HN <comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

I am from the team. If you have any query please send me will reply.

Everyone has one or other kind of Startup Idea but most of them lack technical knowledge to convert it into reality.

So here we are bringing solution for all such people, StartupPixel we will help you develop picture of your startup pixel by pixel!

We will develop your MVP (Web & Mobile App) in around 7777 USD in around 30 Days. Checkout [https://startuppixel.com/](https://startuppixel.com/) for more info.</comment>


Ask HN: computational chem/bio - <AUTHOR>

Fellow HN'ers:<p>I'm in university right now, and I'm looking to work with some professors in the computational sciences.  I'm wondering if you guys know of any cool intro projects I could hack on before approaching professors.  I'm really just looking for suggestions, because I can't think of a good place to start.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> It's such a big area that it's hard to know where to start. Have you taken an intro class or something? That might be the best way to figure out what's out there.

I'm not sure what your computational background is but if you're not familiar with the basics like sequence alignment I suggest you check out a book. I'd recommend An Introduction to Bioinformatics Algorithms by Neil C. Jones ([http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bioinformatics- Algorithms...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bioinformatics-Algorithms- Computational-Molecular/dp/0262101068)). In addition to describing the algorithmic techniques, it gives synopses of current research issues and big names in the field. There are also hundreds of sample problems - some of which are active research problems - and no answer key (because often these types of problems don't have clear "best" answers). It's kind of like being taught how to swim by being thrown in a lake. If you survive, you're better off for it.

Also, before approaching professors it helps to have read and understand their description of their research interests and maybe have read a few of their recent papers. This will give you an idea of whether they're doing something that you might be interested in or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> And then there's quantum mechanics, molecular modeling, microarray analysis, protein folding, drug design, structure visualization, and still more.

If you want good initial projects, try one of these: 1) make a structure viewer (to start, read a PDB file and draw colored spheres in some sort of UI), 2) implement a sequence alignment then use it infer the family tree from a set of related sequences, 3) build a web site which lets someone do full- text or other complex searches of UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot. When you display a record, also render the sequence annotations graphically.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a masters in computational biology. I did some work on flux balance analysis (FBA), which is a pretty interesting topic.

FBA simulates the metabolic system using linear programming, which is a technique used most extensively in economics, but applicable to biology. Basically, linear programming is a mathematical method of determining the maximization of some linear function given a set of linear contraints.

The assumption behind applying FBA to metabolic systems is that the cell acts to maximize its growth based on what is available in the environment and the stoichiometry of the metabolic reactions that can occur in the cell (ie the constraints of the system).

It is suprisingly accurate at predicting things like the consequences of metabolic gene knockouts, and has been applied to identify potential drug targets.

The most renowned researcher is this area is Bernhard. O. Palsson. His group[1] has created computational models of different organism that can be used to perform FBA and test things such as, for example, the outcome of gene knockouts. His models are available to download.

There are linear programming libraries available for linux. I used lpsolve, which has Python bindings. As a starter project you could do something like identify the essential genes in a organism like E. coli.

I'd be happy to help. My homepage (in my profile) has my email address.

[1] <http://gcrg.ucsd.edu/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't wait to approach professors. Do it tomorrow. Each of them will have 10,000 ideas and will be glad to help you work on one of them.

<comment><USER6> Agreed 100%, that's what worked for me. "I've got this molecule here... [he then described it a bit, showed me the physical metal model he'd made of it (from a more permanent variety of the plastic models people use in organic classes)], and the current approaches are inadequate..." and then he lent me a book that would get me started on learning what I needed to know to approach the problem.

Basically, if you can largely offer a "fire and forget" proposition, i.e. you need a problem and pointers to learning but not a lot of hand holding, you should be able to find a professor who has one or more things he'd like to investigate but that he doesn't have the resources of one sort of another to do, and that you can offer your particular talents towards solving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any specific types of projects you are interested in? Like bendmorris says, this is a very vast field. Some pointers that might help

Genomics:

Take a look at work that Mike Schatz is doing at CSHL: <http://schatzlab.cshl.edu/>

Or you can check out this recent webcast by C. Titus Brown: <http://oreillynet.com/pub/e/1784>

On the comp chem side, check out Rajarshi Guha's blog. You don't get much better on the cheminformatics side of things: <http://blog.rguha.net/>

There's a lot of folks doing some very interesting research in genomics, proteomics, cheminformatics, metagenomics, etc. You might also want to ask this question at BioStar: <http://biostar.stackexchange.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the links!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From your post I can't tell if you come from a biochemistry or a computational background.

If you have a biochemistry background: I'd recommend that you use your strengths, and maybe concentrate on something that will help in the wetlab. The biological background required for algorithmic problems such as the statistics of protein and dna sequences is a well trodden path for people who know computer science. However, we know nothing about the wetlab and most of the software I see there is ugly, closed and expensive.

If you have a computer background: One suggestion is to install R, Bioconductor (bioconductor.org), and start playing with microarray data in the form of CEL files (<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gds/>).

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a strange background, more of a CS background then bio, so this is a great suggestion. Thanks!</comment></comment>


TBOX: A Multi-Platform C Library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/waruqi/tbox.git <comment><USER2> Looks like a comprehensive and mature personal toolbox, which one would accumulate over years of working on C projects. Not exactly easy to reuse due to the lack of documentation and other reasons, but totally worthy of sharing nonetheless. A very interesting read.

<comment><USER3> It's actually well documented, it's just that it's in Chinese

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice straight forwardness in this lib - love the async stuff for url downloads/access.. its modern.. its C.. its confusingly normal!

<comment><USER5> Thought so too, but then I took a look at the code.

<comment><USER6> Anything in particular you could point out?

<comment><USER7> It looked pretty clean to me as well.

Strange that they don't use trailing commas in aggregate initializers though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just cloned the repository build it and did some tests with asio_httpd (and found a possible memory leak/fragmentation), overall it's well designed and coded. To build it I went to the xmake repository and through it also found this small and performant network library [https://github.com/caikelun/libsvx](https://github.com/caikelun/libsvx) .

Thank you for release this nice and util library !

</comment><comment><USER9> It's great that someone took the time to curate the list. But maybe it'd be better as one of those awesome-X style list of actual repos. With all of these libraries distributed as a mega-lib, it just seems like a bit of a junk drawer.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a little boring to see 'tb_*' wrappers such as 'tb_void_t', why not the standard way? Also I don't like xmake compares to premake.

</comment><comment><USER11> looks interesting. what's the difference between this with glibc/musl/etc.

<comment><USER5> Well, it's not a libc (although it seems to contain one).

<comment><USER12> Well, it seems to wrap one, prefixing the functions with 'tb_'.

<comment><USER13> Only wrap the functions for libm now, but most of libc functions have been implemented.

And will call them if some libc functions are not supported in the current toolchain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I haven't taken much time to read the source, but it might be a good idea to break some pieces off into their own repos, perhaps with a required 'tbox_core' type lib.

Otherwise it's...eminently useful, and boring in a good way.

</comment><comment><USER15> The library looks neat but I'm horrified that he says "optimizates"... repeatedly. That is not a word. The word is "optimizes". The English pedant in me is having trouble getting past that.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, my English is poor, I will try to fix some grammar errors

<comment><USER15> No problem. Sorry, I didn't realise English was your second language. Nice work on the library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This wins the "Fucking Sweet" award for being hypothetically useful. In reality... not so much.

<comment><USER17> On the contrary, my opinion of it is very boring but very useful.

It's the sort of thing one inevitably ends up with after enough C development, but this looks much more complete than average.

<comment><USER16> It's not all that well documented, from what I saw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I appreciate the licenses folder but could you add that information to the readme as well? It's useful sometimes to gather all the information I need about a project in the "readme" at least for me, just the names of the licenses and the files they affect could work if it's not too much trouble, but even just naming the licenses works. Thank you! :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Needs GUI support and statistics support.

Another rewrite of malloc() and string utils is not that useful.</comment>


How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost? - <AUTHOR> https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/27/how-much-does-a-mile-of-road-actually-cost <comment><USER2> I think of this as I drive 30ish miles each way to work. 5 miles of surface roads, 19 miles of interstate (2 lanes each way), and 6 miles of surface (2 lanes each way). One cause for increased construction is the need for more capacity. My frequent lament is poor driving habits. We have regular instances of sub-optimal speeds in both lanes. A 65 mph limit and vehicles driving 55mph in both lanes, frequently with 1/4 of open lane ahead. Vehicles behind begin to crowd and we experience the slinky effect. After 3 years we add another lane. And the cycle continues. Driver education used to emphasize keeping right except to pass. I think this isn't taught anymore.

<comment><USER3> I was surprised to read this in the California DMV driver handbook:

"If you can choose among three lanes, pick the middle lane for the smoothest driving."

When I learned to drive (in the UK), the official guidance was to stay in the left-most lane except when overtaking. And then, after overtaking, to immediately return to the left lane.

<comment><USER4> Oregon has a law that if you have 5 or more vehicles behind you, you must let them pass. It's more for the highways, not the freeway, but I haven't seen it enforced in many, many years

<comment><USER5> California has this:

> _Vehicles proceeding at a speed less than the flow of traffic and moving on > a two-lane highway where passing is unsafe, must turn off the roadway at the > nearest place designated as a turnout or wherever sufficient area for a safe > turnout exists, if a line of 5 or more vehicles forms behind them._

[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/driver_ha...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/driver_handbook_toc/!ut/p/z1/hY6xDsIgGISfyPxYo0lH1IZW2rhVZCEgtZAqEKwdfHpJd- ttl3x3-YADA-7kZHs5Wu_kI_Ur3wlaHYt1SRAl2xojTMvy3BZtRvINXGYA_QhGwJf3p39AMshic2h64EGOZmXd3QMLb_UCZrQagOlopy4KI51W3g9i9LekxefjBbHwZJ96n1dfdmaJZA!!/?1dmy&urile=wcm%3Apath%3A%2Fdmv_content_en%2Fdmv%2B%2B%2Fpubs%2Fhdbk%2Fshr_slow_veh)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm planning to live a car free life soon. I'll be moving in to the city so almost everything is within walking distance and just about everything is accessable via public transport. The only thing I haven't been able work out is how I will continue to go mtn biking since bikes aren't allowed on the bus. But I just can't justify the massive expense of owning a car and a car park for one activity.

<comment><USER7> Mountain biking is one of the things I gave up when I moved to the city.

I thought that maybe I'd occasionally rent a car and drive out to a state park, but what I quickly discovered was that, once driving stopped being a part of my daily life, the idea of regularly driving out to a forest preserve lost its palatability. Largely because I am no longer inured to driving, so any plan for how to spend my leisure time that involves devoting a significant percentage of it to being stuck behind the wheel on a freeway is kind of a non-starter. So instead I road bike 4 seasons and take a few camping trips per year. So far it's working for me. Less time stuck in a car and more time out walking in my neighborhood means I have a greatly reduced need for things like mountain biking to help me unwind in the first place.

That said, I think that when I originally calculated it out, I figured out that renting a car 4-5 days a month was still cheaper than owning an inexpensive car. And not too much of a hassle in most cities - out of 4 urban addresses I've lived at, only one wasn't close to a car rental office, and even then it was only about 15 minutes by bus.

<comment><USER8> Consider doing multi-day trips from your front door during the weekends (bikepacking).

I used to live in Denver and never understood why people would find the need to drive 10 miles to the nearest trails when you could just ride to them. Then I realized, once you're done with those initial 10 miles, you could link up routes that covered practically the entire rest of the state.

Now I'm writing a guidebook on those routes.

Bummer about buses not accepting bikes - that sounds crazy to me. They just don't have room underneath or a bike rack up front? I can hardly understand how that could be true!

<comment><USER6> >10 miles to the nearest trails when you could just ride to them.

Because they are usually up in the hills so its a fairly large effort to get there and by the time you are there you have no energy left to do the trails unless there is a ski lift to get you to the top.

<comment><USER9> But if you are riding bike seriously 10 miles is nothing. It's literally 30-40 minutes ride. I am runner not biker and on many occasions 10 miles for me is just a morning run before work.

<comment><USER6> The mtb park is 30km away from the city and its uphill the whole way. Sure its not impossible to do 60km road and then 10km mtb riding but it excludes all but the fittest cyclists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is interesting information, but from the perspective of a high-value urban area, even these fairly eye-watering numbers are a understatement. The capital represented both as infrastructure and forgone real estate usage (i.e. yes, we need roads, but building more roads than we need diverts incredibly valuable real estate from other purposes) is huge.

I'm always amused here in Australia when governments like to make the spending on roads and the amount raised through petrol taxes and registration fees "balance out". Uhhh, ok, you're sitting on billions of dollars worth of capital and you're patting yourselves on the back that it's "breaking even".

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure what you're gunning for here. Spending road money on other projects? Or that real estate used for roads is somehow removed from the overall real estate market (in the active commerce sense, not active listing sense)?

If it's a new project, even if land is behind expropriated, the market value is being paid. (I assume, bring Australia) So it does balance out, even in land value. For appreciated value, it doesn't occur in a vacuum. The local transportation is factored in to the market rates for property.

So I'm not sure in what sense you don't see it as balanced out. Or what you'd like to see as the alternative.

<comment><USER10> The way I see it is that the existing road network is an enormous public capital investment that is permitted to woefully underperform due to political pressure to make roads cheap or essentially free. The idea that roads are "breaking even" when you roughly balance road spending and money raised from roads is artificial.

Given the huge historical capital investment states have made in their roads they should be making money; or if they are not, we should be acknowledging that we are choosing to not make money at market rates when we compare the costs involved with roads with other forms of transport (especially rail).

I don't think we should necessarily do anything different with roads, but we should acknowledge that, well, pretty much _everything_ at this scale needs to be subsidized out the wazoo - roads as well as public transport. I'm not arguing for some sort of dystopia where the government does some crazy user- pays thing on even public asset; just an end to the endless rhetoric about how roads "break even" while public transport "needs to be subsidized".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Perhaps there are many costs that don't inflate as the number of miles increases, like the equipment needed to break down and repave the roads?

<comment><USER13> The relevant number here is the cost to repave, not reconstruct, which is about $330,000-$350,000 per mile for a minor arterial road in a rural or urban area.

As to how small towns afford it--you don't repave that often, and you focus efforts on what to repave. For example, Cedar Rapids, Iowa calculated it would cost $500 million over 10 years to repave everything that needs to be repaved: [https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Annual-road-repaving-to- st...](https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Annual-road-repaving-to-start-next- week-in-Cedar-Rapids-507227201.html).

Cedar Rapids has about 53,000 households, so that's about $943 per household per year. To put that into perspective, we can do a calculation. 18% of DC metro area commuters use Metrorail. If you take 18% of the 2.2 million DC metro households, that's about 400,000 households (roughly) using Metrorail. The rail capital budget is about $1 billion annually, so about $2,500 per household per year. Excluding the cost of new rail cars, its about $1,500 per household.

(Obviously this is a very back-of-the-napkin calculation, but it puts things into perspective.)

[1] [https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/budget/upload/FY19-Propose...](https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/budget/upload/FY19-Proposed- Budget.pdf) (p. 76)

<comment><USER14> _Obviously this is a very back-of-the-napkin calculation, but it puts things into perspective._

You're comparing an all-inclusive capital budget versus simply repaving roads. How much does DC Metro spend on track maintenance annually? How much does Cedar Rapids spend on lighting and signage?

How much do Cedar Rapids residents spend on their cars? The average _used_ car payment runs in excess of $4,800 annually. New cars run around a hundred or so bucks a month more.

The DC metro is a bit of an odd duck since a large chunk of its users don't actually live in DC. The Census Dept. puts metro ridership at about 21% of all commuters commuting into DC, and overall about 34% of all DC residents use public transit (of all modes) as their primary means of transportation.

So even though you're including the cost of things like stations and vehicles, I think the overall cost is much closer (if not slanted in favor of transit) than you're letting on. That said, rail is typically one of the most expensive modes of public transit.

<comment><USER13> Good point--I forgot WMATA is in the middle of major rail car purchases. The 6-year plan for rail systems, track rehabilitation, and stations is $600 million annually. I've updated my numbers above accordingly.

<comment><USER14> Again you're making an apples to oranges comparison. The metro budget also includes expenditures for bus and paratransit service, station improvements, fare collection modernization, fire alarm upgrades, information technology projects, police services, and so-called "business support investments".

Per the budget the plan is to spend _at most_ $249 million annually (less for most years) on track and structures rehabilitation. That's the closest you'll get to a repaving budget and includes things beyond track maintenance and replacement.

With that in mind the six year plan would call for per-capita spending of between $335 and $620 annually, cheaper than repaving the roads.

<comment><USER13> I excluded those items from the Metro budget. I included signaling and stations, because those are a necessary part of subway maintenance that don't have much of an analog with roads. (Traffic lights must be maintained, but train signaling systems are very complex and very expensive to maintain in comparison. There are millions of feet of wiring throughout the Metro system and each track segment is wired up for the traffic control system to work.)

In any event, the point isn't to say that road paving is cheaper, but to address GP's question, which is how cities can afford it. It's an order of magnitude comparison to put the number into context. (For one thing, the road maintenance budget for Cedar Rapids is overstated by a factor of two, because I used the projection of what the city thinks it ideally needs to spend rather than what it does spend.)

<comment><USER14> _I included signaling and stations, because those are a necessary part of subway maintenance that don't have much of an analog with roads._

Sure, because municipalities typically externalize those costs (e.g. police doing traffic duty or parking control). Road signaling itself is simpler than rail signaling but still needs periodic maintenance. You've got stuff like generators (a necessity out here now that PG&E is introducing recreational blackouts. Presumably sensor lights increase the cost of repaving.

Likewise Cedar Rapids almost certainly has to plow the roads for a good chunk of the year where a subway and even a surface rail system typically wouldn't. Of course with plowing comes the cost of more frequent repaving.

 _In any event, the point isn't to say that road paving is cheaper, but to address GP's question, which is how cities can afford it. It's an order of magnitude comparison to put the number into context._

Sure, because governments typically externalize the cost of roads but not public transit. In San Francisco, SFPD will bill the MTA for any sort of police presence on Muni. They sure as shit don't bill Caltrans for the cost of traffic enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This does not address a larger question: how much does a mile of road cost to _keep_? This is the installed base question.

Consider the amount of road that has been built out in the US relative to the populations that road is serving. Maintenance and expansion is paid out mainly from state and local taxes. That's an enormous civilizational overhead the US contends with, not to mention the economic cost of a large portion of household capital being tied up in rapidly depreciating assets: cars.

I'm looking at you, suburbia.

<comment><USER16> Look all you want, but road maintenance costs are primarily a subsidy for the trucking industry, and by extension the businesses that rely on them. Businesses that are primarily located in.....cities. If Middletown USA didn't have to worry about 80,000 lbs trucks hauling kombucha to your local bodega tearing up their roads, perhaps road costs would be a bit more in-line with reality.

More importantly if we focused more on making transport costs in-line with the damage they do to the road surfaces (not to mention the environmental impact of long and short haul trucking, plus the traffic) instead of city/suburbia none issue, perhaps we'd all be a bit better off.

<comment><USER6> The proper solution would be to tax trucks exactly the amount of damage they cause. This would cause the cost of imported goods to go up and the cost of local goods to go down. In the short term you would see the extra cost and lower taxes cancel each other out and in the long term, local goods become more common than imported.

<comment><USER17> This is the right idea, but let's not stop there. Why not also tax privately registered vehicles to some degree by their mass?

I also like the idea of making fines for moving violations somewhat proportional to vehicle mass. The danger posed to others by a 150 lb moped pales in comparison to that of a 4500 lb pickup truck. At least in the U.S., a ticket for speeding 50% over the limit through a residential neighborhood is the same for both, for example. Neither is OK, but considering the disparity in the potential for damage and injury to others, imposing equal fines is insane.

<comment><USER18> Because "privately registered" vehicles don't matter for purposes of road damage.

A fully loaded semi is 18,000 lbs per axle. A really huge personal vehicle, an F-350, is 4000 lbs per axle. That's 4.5x the weight, 4.5^4=410, so the semi is doing 410x as much damage. There's really no point in trying to tax personal vehicles for road damage when over 99% of the damage is being done by trucks.

<comment><USER17> Where are you getting your "over 99%" figure?

<comment><USER11> You need to approach or exceed a roads per-axel weight limit to do any damage or serious wear.

Trucks and permit loads are pretty much the only things that get close.

Beyond the elastic limit, damage is an exponential function of the pavement loading, but only once that certain minimum psf is hit.

For the majority of a highway's loading curve, the damage-per-force is essentially nil. Plastic deformation and serious fatigue only start as you approach the design limits.

It's 99%+ because cars don't do _any_ real wear or damage to pavement from typical use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are expensive roads really needed? What if we see a gradual decline in roadway expenditures in the USA, transitioning our economy to involve less driving and more work from home, deliveries via drone/efficient vehicle, promote self- sufficiency, not to mention biking, walking, trains, etc...my point is maybe we won't need/use roads as much as we do now.

One would hope so, but it seems our VMT is going up over time whilst people are locking in very expensive, long-term car purchases.

<comment><USER20> There are roads in our county in New Jersey that have been transitioned from paved back to gravel, presumably based on usage and the anticipated savings from maintaining gravel over asphalt. I'm not a civil engineer and I don't know what all the tradeoffs are, but it seems to me that we're either going to have to admit we can't afford so much paving, or we're going to have to agree to pay higher taxes.

<comment><USER21> The primary downside of gravel is reduced speed, additional downsides are probably some additional vehicle wear, and lower suitability for heavy vehicle. Also, it's louder, and flung gravel can be a hazard, and it's not great for bikes.

The upsides are reduced cost of building, maintenance, and equipment, and better water permiability. Reduced speeds can be a benefit depending on the application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Major urbanized is incredibly expensive. Tens of millions...

I read somewhere that China spends $30 million per mile of high-speed rail. 22,000 miles and counting.

The US is going to bankrupt itself trying to modernize its aging infrastructure.

<comment><USER23> Despite the US leftist whining about the disappearing middle class, the US middle class is still a beacon to the world in actual prosperity. The Us can afford 80% to own vehicles to drive on its still decent roads, while its only 60% in Europe and 25% in much-touted China.

<comment><USER24> False equivalency with Europe where a lot of people skip cars in the metro regions because public transport actually works. For example in Stockholm 37.5%[0] of the people own cars while being the by far richest region in Sweden.

[0]: [http://miljobarometern.stockholm.se/trafik/motorfordon/bilin...](http://miljobarometern.stockholm.se/trafik/motorfordon/bilinnehav/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what the numbers are like in west EU as a comparison.

<comment><USER26> That would be an interesting question. My experience is that there's a lot more chip seal on smaller roads as a refurbishment (tar + a thin layer of gravel) rather than hot asphalt paving. It's a lot cheaper, but doesn't last as long.

Motorways in France and Germany seem to be repaved more often, and billiard table smooth in a lot of cases.

<comment><USER27> France has private-ish roads that are quite expensive. So does italy, there you have to often literally pay a human everytime you get of the highway. This leads to many people driving on small roads, polluting and wearing down those roads.

Not sure about Germany, but they just have a super strong car lobby in general, and its one of their national pride things, so they tend to find money for that.

Here in Switzerland we have a very high gas price, but that leads to many people going for gas outside of Switzerland and we have no idea what to do when EVy really take off. The true cost of those roads is hidden in the 'normality' of the high gas prices.

Roads are a tricky problem, not just for libertarians.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was always puzzled by how do English-speaking folk communicate such matter clearly? I mean the word "cost". It has two meanings: basically all expenditure that is associated with something or it might mean agreed upon price of product.

That was interesting data set, and here by "cost" I guess "price" is meant.

How much margin/profits is included in it?

<comment><USER29> > How much margin/profits is included in it?

That's where it starts getting dubious. Technically, all roads and transit are built at a great loss on paper. However, connecting locations connects people and enables economic activity, so there is definitely a 'profit' per se but it would be difficult to quantify precisely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> USA is definitely a high labor cost market. The throughput per unit time from each worker is probably much lower compared to developing countries. I am actually more interested in seeing highway cost/mi. stats for each developed and developing country. If anyone got links, I appreciate.

</comment><comment><USER31> This table doesn't include the land cost which dominates in places where land is scarce.

</comment><comment><USER32> Are there any sustainable road construction technologies and materials that do not rely on petrochemicals?

<comment><USER33> Concrete is pretty much the only alternative that can handle 40+ tonnes trucks and be cost effective. It will last longer, but it's more expensive to build - could be cheaper on the long run. You get a bit more tire noise and less traction than on the asphalt.

<comment><USER34> Freeze/thaw cycles seem to absolutely destroy the few segments of concrete roads we have around here. They don't seem to last more than 2 winters.

<comment><USER35> Many freeways around Toronto use concrete and according to the MTO it is cheaper. But the deciding factor appears to be the number of trucks passing the stretch of road. Concretes durability under weight more than offsets the decay from weather.

<comment><USER34> That's where I notice them as well. I haven't seen it recently, but I recall a few years ago there was a highway around here (Denver) that was asphalt for the two leftmost lanes with a concrete slow lane that semi trucks were supposed to drive on.

Maybe Denver is particularly bad for concrete roads because our freeze/thaw cycles get really bad. We have so many warm days in the winter interspersed with cold days and freezing nights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It would also be interesting to know how many dollars per man hour.

</comment><comment><USER37> Depends upon if the work has been privitised or is in government hands

</comment><comment><USER38> Is there a Primer / tldr for Strong Towns? I kind of get the basic idea (maintaining town infrastructure sometimes exceeds revenue) but I was looking for "start here" but don't seem to be able to find it

<comment><USER39> If you're genuinely interested, the recently published book "Strong Towns" is the best possible primer. It's not long, and covers the core ideas behind the movement in enough detail to understand how it all hangs together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Elon will do it for 10% of the cost, it will have the size of a sidewalk /s</comment>


Egil the Mean: The violent backstory of a Viking poet - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/egil-mean <comment><USER2> Interesting article. Could have really used a family tree diagram to visualize the complex family history being described.

<comment><USER3> Would've been especially helpful in the troll lineage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like it is a copy/paste from the author's book.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=aX5fDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT164&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=aX5fDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT164&lpg=PT164&dq=He+sat+upright,+but+with+his+head+bowed+low.+Egil+had+very+distinctive+features,&source=bl&ots=qalj- mlQ5i&sig=0FJUeFmKCx191pCVI- S_xP7E-bY&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=He%20sat%20upright%2C%20but%20with%20his%20head%20bowed%20low.%20Egil%20had%20very%20distinctive%20features%2C&f=false)</comment>


Julian Assange Indictment (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1153486/download <comment><USER3> > "...Manning did not have administrative-level privileges and used special > software, namely a _Linux operating system_ , to access the computer > file..."

Clearly only hackers would use a hacker operating system like Linux.

<comment><USER4> First of all, Manning was trying to crack a system, which has nothing to do with hacking, properly understood. Secondly, they obviously mean "special" in that she was _not_ expected to use Linux in connection with her duties - <USER2> less to boot a system running some other OS. The context is what makes this "special".

<comment><USER5> > trying to crack a system, which has nothing to do with hacking, properly > understood

As much as I'd like that distinction to be made, I think that boat sailed a long time ago. I think the public has a clearer distinction between white/gray/black hat hackers than between hackers/crackers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The indictment charges that he conspired to crack passwords on government computers. It appears that the free press protections extend to only accepting documents, and not pursuing of them. This makes sense to me on its face. Newspapers reporters hacking into government networks goes beyond reporting, and should not be journalistically protected.

<comment><USER7> Honestly I'd rather live in a world where those who expose government conspiracies and corruption are protected than one where they are held to the letter of a law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Manning, who had access to the computers in connection with her duties as an > intelligence analyst

they are gendering her correctly. at least we have a progressive politically correct Stasi.

<comment><USER9> We have finally arrived at Jello Biafra's suede denim secret police.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, seems pretty flimsy, compared to the effort they are putting in. But they need a head for the chopping block and the higher the profile the better the fit.

</comment><comment><USER11> How will this play out I wonder? I thought the current admin "loved wikileaks".

<comment><USER12> Almost certainly done so that Assange can be brought to USA for testimony in the fallout of the failed Mueller probe. Calling it now: Assange will walk free.

<comment><USER11> What is the failed Mueller probe?

<comment><USER13> I assume they mean the same one that secured over ten convictions and secured something like $20 billion in fines and recovered illegal value

<comment><USER14> Fines? Can we see that receipt? I didn't take Papadopoulos for a wealthy man...

<comment><USER15> Was $20 million, it was for Manafort's tax evasion on about $75 million in unreported lobbying income.

>Judge T.S. Ellis ordered Manafort to pay restitution of $6M-$25M

<comment><USER14> Eh, three orders of magnitude, close enough for deep-state work...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if they would count the years trapped in the embassy as time served.

</comment><comment><USER17> So what's the maximum sentence for this?

<comment><USER18> 10 years, not sure how the sentencing guidelines will play out here.

<comment><USER19> I read it is only 5 years [1].

In which case voluntarily staying in the Ecuadorian embassy for 6 years seems to be a miscalculation.

(At least, staying beyond the point that the Swedish rape charges were dropped).

1: [https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder- charg...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charged- computer-hacking-conspiracy)

<comment><USER13> I believe his fear was being locked up in gitmo. I think it was a valid fear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looking at what he has charged with (1030(a)(1), 1030(a)(2))...how would those charges stick? He failed to actually access anything.

<comment><USER21> Read the top of the very first page. It is a _conspiracy_ charge. This is made clear on pages 4, 5, and 6 as well.

Then read 18 USC 1030(b).

<comment><USER22> Link for the lazy:

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is this a scan?

<comment><USER23> Because surprisingly, the real indictment is on real paper. With a real signature and a real stamping on it.

<comment><USER14> Was it typed on a "real" typewriter? Because otherwise, this pretext is bullshit. If it's not searchable it's not really available to the public.

<comment><USER23> Probably not.

But still, I don't understand your view. It's six pages, double-spaced, for God's sake! And you can run OCR on it (and republish it).

There are many other things I'd be concerned about first, when it comes to "available to the public".

<comment><USER14> Lots of people will do that. Wikileaks included, probably. It is still the case that DoJ went to extra effort to print out and rescan an electronic file they already had in electronic form. They did that for an obvious reason; this document falls embarrassingly short of even DoJ's already low standards. Most DoJ personnel are not rabid centrist Democrats. The sooner everyone forgets about this tawdry episode, the happier they'll be.

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure this is just SOP at the DoJ. Where any of Muller's indictments released digitally?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers

This is all there is to it. Assange offered to crack a NTLM hash given to him by Manning, and apparently failed.

It certainly didn't take the government 8 years to investigate this, this is obviously a politically motivated prosecution.

This was widely known for close to a decade [https://www.wired.com/2011/12/army-manning- hearing/](https://www.wired.com/2011/12/army-manning-hearing/) but somehow the indictment is only dated 2018.

Donate to the wikileaks defense fund [https://defend.wikileaks.org/donate/](https://defend.wikileaks.org/donate/)

<comment><USER24> What's with the downvotes? Can I hear a different opinion?

An hour ago a lot of people here were like:

\- He's just charged with skipping bail, innocent people shouldn't run, UK won't extradite him

\- He's charged with sexual assault, innocent people don't run from that Sweden won't extradite him

Well, now we know what's up...

<comment><USER18> The almost decade long defamation campaign to silence Assange has worked to the point where I might as well be defending a pedophile, yet all the DOJ could come up with was cracking a hash.

<comment><USER25> From what I've been reading lately, thats all they need to come up with. The useful idiots have already rendered their verdict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So if you use your computer to read the Guardian or NYT reporting on NSA surveillance, you can be charged with 'Unauthorized use of a computet?'

Or only primary source docs? Ok then, if so, when are they arrestint all those NYT, etc, reporters?</comment>


Let the Free Market Fight Chinese Censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/let-the-free-market-fight-chinese-censorship/ <comment><USER2> Because tyranny and censorship against Britain's colonies in North America, slavery in the southern US, labour rights and protections, Nazism in Europe, self-rule in India and Ireland, and civil, women's, LGBTQX, and other grants of freedoms and protections to the underprivileged from the wealthy, were all delivered by the free market.

Not.</comment>


Nominate Your Company for Sweetness Startup of the Week - <AUTHOR> http://www.sweetnessapp.com/blog/sweetstartup

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, we just launched this week and wanted to start dropping off some free Sweetness at SF startups (esp the ones that don't have fro-yo machines and pastry chefs on staff :). All you have to do is tweet with the hashtag #SeetStartup to nominate your company and we'll take care of the rest.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a morning person! I meant #SweetStartup</comment></comment>


The Impious Delights of Hieronymus Bosch - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/132024/impious-delights-hieronymus-bosch <comment><USER2> [http://boschproject.org](http://boschproject.org) has some extremely high resolution versions of some of Bosch's work along with infrared view and some cool Bosch research.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have to admit that I clicked this expecting to read about a fictional Los Angeles detective.

<comment> X-Istence So happy I am not the only one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This appeared not too long ago on HN also; [https://tuinderlusten- jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en](https://tuinderlusten-jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en) (An interactive/annotated page for Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights)

</comment><comment><USER5> I adore Bosch. His most famous works are almost reminiscent of the surrealist period of the 1900s but with the vastness typical of a lot of Renaissance era art. One of my favorites, however, is Creation of the World [1]. Reminds me of some of the awesome science fiction art of the 80s.

[1] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Hieronym...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Hieronymus_Bosch_- _The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_-_The_exterior_\(shutters\).jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> Amazing painter who seemed to be centuries ahead of his time. Visit the exhibition (or see one of his works in a museum) if you can.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've never read a review of an art exhibition before. I never even thought to question the curators the way I might question the author of the book.</comment>


Billions are checking into digital sweat factories without realizing it - <AUTHOR> https://edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/blog/accept-and-continue-billions-are-clocking-digital-sweat-factories_en <comment><USER2> I want minimum wage to click on facebook and/or google.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any messaging apps supporting Markdown? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to easily send formatted code, and bullet points, etc. through a messaging app without having to resort to a heavy app like Slack. <comment><USER2> Mattermost supports CommonMark Markdown: [https://docs.mattermost.com/help/messaging/formatting- text.h...](https://docs.mattermost.com/help/messaging/formatting-text.html)

Zulip supports ~CommonMark Markdown: [https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/markdown.h...](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/markdown.html)

Reddit supports Markdown. [https://www.reddit.com/wiki/markdown](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/markdown)

Discourse now supports CommonMark Markdown.

GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab and Gogs/Gitea support Markdown.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't consider Discourse/Reddit/Github/etc. to be a messaging app per se, even if some of those have messaging functionality between users...

<comment><USER2> I digress on the category definition. Public messaging (without PM or DM features) is still messaging; and often far more useful than trying to forward 1:1 messages in order to bring additional participants onboard.

It's worth noting that GH/BB/GL have all foregone PM features; probably for the better in terms of productivity: messaging @all is likely more productive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wire supports a subset of markdown syntax, [https://support.wire.com/hc/en- us/articles/115002676029-Use-...](https://support.wire.com/hc/en- us/articles/115002676029-Use-markdown-to-format-text)

You can register for a free personal account with only an email, no requirement for phone number or contacts upload.

</comment><comment><USER5> Riot seems to support a subset of Markdown. You should be able to use any Matrix client you feel like.

<comment><USER6> And their encryption is audited!

riot-desktop and Riot Android are solid.

RiotX on Android quickly catching up, has very modern UI, but no room management/calls yet.

People seem to love FluffyChat.

Don't waste your time with Fractal.

<comment><USER7> RiotX is really nice. I wish the other clients would catch up in terms of UI/UX which I hear is getting a big update soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To respond to OP: [https://volt-app.com/](https://volt-app.com/)

Related discussion: I've built FastComments to be "realtime" and support markdown. Been thinking of reusing the infrastructure to launch a little chat app, but not sure what the killer feature would be aside from being lightweight...

Edited to add Volt link.

</comment><comment><USER9> WhatsApp supports italic, bold, strikethrough, and monospace using backticks you could use for source code, though no syntax highlighting[1].

[1]: [https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-format-your- me...](https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-format-your-messages/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Telegram has some support. I believe it's an incomplete implementation.

</comment><comment><USER11> WhatsApp isn't "markdown", but supports code blocks using triple backquote (and uses underscore for italics and star for bold, which I think is a lot better than markdown anyway).

</comment><comment><USER12> Discord works great, lighter than slack.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your best domestic time saving tips? - <AUTHOR> I'm a father of two and I do a lot of housework in the evenings, cutting into my project time. Lately I've been obsessed with finding ways to reduce the amount of time spent on household chores any way I can. Gadgets like dishwashers, bread makers and steam cleaners have made my life easier, and I'm looking for the next thing to shave 10 minutes off my housework. So what are your best domestic time saving tips? Do you defragment your cutlery drawer? Do you swear by a roomba? Did you build a robot to pair socks?
Maybe you just identified some big time sink that you could eliminate? For instance, I'm considering taking up the carpet in my hallway as I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time vacuuming that area vs the rest of the house.
What are your top tips? <comment><USER2> What I'm calling the "Bachelor Socks Pattern".

Go out and buy multiple 6-in-one packs of the same socks (Most economical with black/blue business style socks).

Go all out and get like 8 packs @ ~$5 each. At $40 cost you replace all your socks with a single type and color and have a massive oversupply (about 3 weeks worth in the above calc, prob more than you need really).

No need to sort, just keep them in a big basket of socks, now you have endless matching socks never to be sorted again.

Put your other socks aside in a bag and recycle when your convinced it's working.

[I purchased so many after doing this for myself initially and then finding out the rest of the family were ALL cheekily wearing my socks as they all quietly found it easier to match one of my black pairs over finding exact matches for their socks from the sock basket]

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great tip, thanks! Of course, it only reduces my stock sorting load by 25%, can't force the wife and two girls to wear only grey socks for the rest of their lives :)

<comment><USER2> I can't remember the name but there was an online sock company for girls where all the socks were deliberately different ("odd") (left and right). They were all different but fashionable matched in a kid friendly way. Another way to achieve removing sock finding and sorting process :)

<comment><USER2> FWIW a quick search revealed there are various "mismatched" socks options for girls and women - [https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=is_s_ss_i_0_16?k=mismatch...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=is_s_ss_i_0_16?k=mismatched+socks+women&sprefix=mismatched+socks&crid=2FAZ09623PD8R)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I've been aspiring to a philosophy I call "event based processing" (I know the term has other meanings in computing) or alternatively "Zero Impact Activities".

Regardless of the name the concept is that in undertaking daily tasks the tidy step is completed as part of untaking the task (eliminating a separate tidy phase).

Eg as a Parent I was constantly tidying or managing the kids to tidy the shoes area near the from door as all of us would take our shoes off fairly loosely around the door. I realised I needed as second shoe rack and then after discussing the new goal of an always near shoe area spent around 3 weeks on everyone's back to retrain us all to take off shoes and put them neatly in the rack. Eventually it became just what we all did, I achieved success and tidying up the shoes is now an eliminated task.

Similar applies having the family put their dishes straight into the dishwasher after the meal and better yet have a post dinner family tidy schedule at the end of the meal event.

Think of task flows as a messaging queue :P

<comment><USER2> Related I played with washing up and putting away ingredients as I cooked. Commonly I would stir then grab 30 seconds to wash a cooking pot/throw out packaging/put away in fridge etc.

It's greatly reduced the washing pots phase which commonly includes items that seem less dishwasher friendly.

I found it easy to do for most recipies I know well.

<comment><USER3> When I googled, the consensus was to wash-as-you-go.

My interpretation is that cooking is an act of creation, and when accomplished, it's over. You don't feel like doing washing up, a non-creation act, because that energy/enthusiasm is gone.

Whereas if you wash as you go, as part of the task, it also uses the energy of creation.

So: not literally _time-saving_ , but _enthusiasm-efficiency_.

<comment> cup-of-tea I reckon it also does save time. The reason is there's plenty of "dead time" during cooking. Waiting for water to boil, sauces to reduce etc. But those periods are not long enough to do much else and your hands will generally be too dirty to do even small tasks. The best use of those little sections of time is to wash up.

<comment><USER4> Pipelining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pay for cleaning. This may work better or worse depending on the age of your kids... But vacuuming, cleaning surfaces, changing beds, etc. can be ousourced and saves LOTS of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely considering this. My kids are too young to help much around the house yet

<comment><USER6> +1 for that.

Last year we started to pay for cleaning / washing / ironing and it saves a lot of time - like 6 hours a week to get all done.

Also, doing groceries the right way is important. What we ended up doing:

\- everything non perishable or long time (water etc), buy a lot and put in the basement

\- what you can, buy through Amazon subscriptions for a regular delivery

\- once a week, do the short term groceries - veggies, fruits, meat. We do it with kids on a farm where you can harvest your own food. It's actually a great activity !

As the last one, maybe a bit controversial, but I almost never repair stuff anymore. If it's something cheap and I would need to spend an hour or two to repair it, I just throw out and buy a new one. I may would like to have more time to do those things (sometimes I still do when it's to show the kids something interesting), but overall this attitude is a huge time saver.

At some point, if your earnings are enough, you just have to put time before money.

<comment><AUTHOR> > ironing

I never iron, unless I'm going to a wedding or something. Am I weird? It seems like such an unnecessary step in the laundry process

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Never ever wait until the dishwasher is totally full. It's an efficient device: put it on twice a day, on the quickest setting it has, and don't feel guilty about it.

Result: it's never "a thing" that needs to be handled. Emptying it is easy. Takes one minute. You always have clean things.

Sounds ridiculous, I know. Trust me.

<comment> cup-of-tea Do you have any evidence to support this? What's the usage in kWh per run and the cost of detergent?

On the highest setting mine will get through plates that have been sitting around for a week (don't judge). That costs me one run and one tablet of detergent. You're suggesting running it on the lowest setting 5-10x as often and using 5-10x the amount of detergent.

The cost in time loading and emptying seems to be equal no matter how often you run it.

<comment><USER8> From a cursory look it seems it costs in electricity 1.5kWh for a single load of dishes on my dishwasher.

at my current rates that's 30p per run in electricity, 32.5p for the dishwasher tablet (26gbp/80 tablets). So 62.5p per load.

1.25gbp per day

(1.25*365)/12 =

38.020833333333336~ gbp/month.

<comment> cup-of-tea That's a lot, though, isn't it? That's twice the price of my internet connection and about the cost of annual maintenance on my car. Even if my intensive clean costs twice as much in electricity I reckon I can divide that by 10.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I just ran the numbers because I was curious too, I would consider this to be quite expensive.

My electricity costs are quite high comparatively to other folks though so, YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Marie Kondo's book really helped our family. We took a lot of clothes, books and toys which hadn't been touched in a year or more and donated them.

We also decluttered the kitchen a lot, putting in a few high quality pots and plates rather than the motley assortment of hand me downs we'd accumulated over the years.

Bit by bit we whittled down the above and then some - taking it slow.

I also made some serious decisions like 'do I really need a high end 5.1 surround system and projector?' or would a sound bar and nice TV suffice. 'Do I really need a Mac Pro and three displays?' or would a MacBook and an Ultrawide monitor allow me to get the same work done.

Being a reasonably paid programmer (as a higher than average amount of folk here are) can encourage buying more and having more hobbies and stuff when less will do.

When you eliminate a lot of surplus 'just in case' items you really cut down on your cleaning and maintenance work load.

</comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Since you didn't mentioned any services I would recommend doing grocery shopping via internet. It's not a big time saver on the begining. Chosing products in the "real" world is faster, especially when someone is in hurry etc. But if you use shopping lists usually built into software you can do it faster and also not waste time on commuting to your shop. You even can automate that 100%. 2\. I don't have experience with it but a lot of people are recommending Vorwerk Thermomix cooking robot/device.

Good luck and if you find something interesting please let us know :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> Before you leave a room, look around for things that should be in the room you are moving to and take them with you. Could be rubbish for the bin, clothes for the laundry, dishes for the kitchen, books for the office, etc.

If you get in the habit of doing this every time, even as new items are shifted from where they belong, the house quickly "rebounds" to a more consistent and predictable state.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting that as we developed technologies like dishwashers, vacuum cleaners and washing machines we used these machines to do more work rather than save time. My dad would wear a shirt for a week when he was young, now he puts a clean one on every day.

Perhaps you can just do less, try time-boxing.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, my wife complained about pretty much the same thing: back in the 60's, with the classical division of roles, a typical family had the husband as the sole bread-barer and the wife did all the house-work. Now, with dishwashers, vacuums, washing machines, dryers, second cars, etc. cutting down a lot of the time of the woman's chores, it's not like she actually gained more spare time today: no, now she is expected to get a job! :-)

Of course, it's a bit tongue-in-cheek -- after all, all these gadgets also come with higher costs for the household -- but it is true that while in my grandparents' generation, most families working under the above model could afford a house and a decent life-style, it would now be impossible for my wife and me to buy a house just based on my income alone.

But that's again comparing apples and oranges a bit because let's not forget that today's lives typically have higher expectations and higher standards of living. My grandparents, for instance, never did a vacation overseas, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Find a full-service laundry place and pay them to do it. I've got two kids, and the four of us go through a shit-ton of laundry. If you can afford it [1], and you're in a city or neighborhood where one is available, it saves hours every week.

[1] We pay maybe 40-50 bucks a week. We don't use a service and just drag it down the street to the local laundromat once or twice a week.

<comment><AUTHOR> My nearest is 20 minutes away, probably more effort to bag everything up and ship it out than do it in house. Last time we changed the washing machine we got one that could handle a much bigger load with a higher rpm spin. Clothes come out less wet and go straight into the tumble dryer

<comment><USER14> I dunno, you still have to fold it ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Maybe you just identified some big time sink that you could eliminate?

Don't have children or pets, don't live in an oversized place (seriously more space is mostly more junk, which you become enslaved to).

Honestly I'm always kinda uncomfortable with everything that is purely outsourcing to other humans (which is a good part of the suggestions here). It's just creating precarious, low paid jobs. I couldn't bear exploiting impoverished people that way to get rid of minor annoyances. It takes 10 min to hang laundry tops.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I already have children and pets, so that's not a runner.

> exploiting impoverished people

I'm not sure if you're trolling here or what, but somebody is not automatically impoverished or being exploited just because they work in a laundrette instead of whatever it is you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> My family of four found doing Kon Marie quiet revolutionary. After following her process we found a marked sustained decrease in housework attributed to a reduction in time required for tidying, washing and sorting as there was just less stuff to manage.

This book (no affilitate link): [https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1607747308](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1607747308)

</comment><comment><USER16> I've adopted the Zuckerberg way of life. Grey/plain shirts only and I have one type of sock.

It really does feel good being able to pick up a neutral shirt without having to think or mix and match.

I've also started wearing odd socks. Especially when they're hidden under pants anyway. having the one type helps with this approach.

</comment><comment><USER17> Our family swears by a Roomba. I have selected/modified our furniture for the minimal height and removed door steps. Living room and kitchen is vacuumed every day at 3am (we sleep upstairs). It is a magic. Ps: I did a lot of research 5 years ago and back then I could not recommend any cheaper alternative.

<comment><USER18> How would that work in a place cluttered with toys etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I'm thinking it could create work as you'd have no option but to clear the floor for the roomba every night?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Mine is to have a cleaner - my only extravagance. It does worry me that my kids have never seen me hoover or clean a bathroom

Ive always wanted 2 dishwashers - one clean, one dirty - then cycle them. So the as the clean dishes get moved they get moved to the dirty one, then repeat

We've all got to have dreams

<comment><USER20> It seems to me that the two-dishwasher setup only work if you only have a small, consistent set of tableware, and you use it at a consistent rate (you use close to the entire contents of the dishwasher before you need any of the dirties again, otherwise you'll still be emptying and putting things away). But emptying a dishwasher load of consistent plates and bowls is very quick, so it seems to me like you can you can get 80% of the benefit of the two- dishwasher setup simply by rationalising your tableware for consistency and easy unloading and storage (have everything in the same cabinet right next to or above the dishwasher).

If you have five cabinets full of a myriad of variations of bowls, trays, plates, cups, glasses, widgets, pots and pans that you use at uneven rates, even two dishwashers won't be very helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> My biggest gripe with the dishwasher is that things come out of it wet and need drying by hand. Modern dishwashers don't have a drying element anymore. However, just today I read here on HN that plastic items don't dry as well as metal, glass, ceramic. Knowing this will hopefully make a big difference from now on as I can either take these things out immediately after they finish to dry on the counter

<comment><USER21> Hmm try increasing your water temp and or running the hot water for a couple minutes before starting a load.

The residual heat helps dry the dishes.

There's also a post detergent thing you can buy that helps evaporation by breaking the surface tension.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> * Make bed only once a week.

* Do not use dishes that can not be washed in a dishwasher. Save hand wash only for infrequent and fancy meals.

* Reduce the amount of crap you have so that you have less crap to clean (used the Marie Kondo method).

* Use effective cleaning agents (hint, research all the things that vinegar can be used for)

* Learn how to use a slow cooker.

* Keep things clean to begin with. Massively dirty stuff takes longer to clean.

* Clutter hides dirt, grime, and missing things. Kill it with fire.

* Avoid stainless steel appliances. They are the devil to keep looking clean.

* The kitchen area is a not a fashion area, it is a work area and should be equipped with hardy things that can be cleaned aggressively and quickly. Fancy breakable crap slows you down.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The slow cooker is one I should add here myself, saves a lot of time cooking

<comment><USER2> +1 Slow Cooker and also add a Rice Cooker.

My fav recipie is beef stroganoff. I buy cooking steak from the local butcher shop who is happy to cut it into diced chunks for no extra cost. In the morning I chop up mushrooms & onion and throw them with the beef into the cooker with a half cup of ketchup and wostershire sauce and set it on low.

In the evening when I get home I put on a rice cooker (cheapest automatic machine ever) and pour sour cream into the slow cooker and then pretty much serve it up.

It probable took me about as long to write this as to put it on in the morning.

Similar recipie: [https://www.gourmetgetaways.com.au/day-slow-cooked-beef- stro...](https://www.gourmetgetaways.com.au/day-slow-cooked-beef-stroganoff/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard people sing the praises of rice cookers before and I just don't get it. I cook rice in a pot and it takes barely any effort. The most time consuming steps are measuring out rice and cleaning the pot afterwards, and you need to do both of those things with a rice cooker? In fact there might be more parts to clean?

<comment><USER23> I always burn or undercook rice when I use a stove. For me, the rice cooker is amazing, because it comes out perfect every time with no trying on my part.

I don't know how you do it without, you must be magic.

<comment><AUTHOR> I measure 1 cup rice to 2 cups water (often boiling, from the kettle), check it every now and then, and when it's got "holes" \- gaps where water has bubbled and evaporated - I turn off the heat underneath. I never add salt. I can't remember the last time I've burned it but I've made sticky, underdone rice plenty of times. Maybe I'm just not that picky?

Edit: I use a non stick pan, tefal ingenio pans with removable handles which are a great time saver. Nothing ever sticks to them! So maybe I do burn rice and I just don't realise

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cup-of-tea I have a tendency to put things down in stupid places and just leave them there. Over time the clutter builds up which means eventually I'll have to spend time sorting it out and I also can't necessarily find things when I need them.

My "brain hack" for this is to instil a habit: whenever I put something down I ask myself "is this where I want this object to be forever?" The answer is usually no, so I put in a place I'm happy for it to stay forever.

</comment><comment><USER24> How old are your children? Get them started helping out around the house as soon as possible. I highly recommend finding a Parenting the Love and Logic Way course near you and taking it. It's been a life changer for me. Less stress at home, children listen, help, and solve problems at home.

P.S. 3-4 years old is a good time to start them helping around the house. They can't do a ton at that age but every like bit helps. Macro effect of many micro optimizations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our oldest is almost four and we're trying to teach her to tidy up in the evenings with us, making it a family activity

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We used to hire cleaning crew to come weekly but stopped due to not liking random people strutting through our home.

Then we started including our kids in the weekly cleaning. We don't give them money "for nothing" so they see this as a chance to earn some income instead of a chore. Now everyone does their part and noone is feeling like it's a giant deal.

</comment><comment><USER26> Definitely trash your TV.

It's amazing how much extra time you'll get. Freeing 1h a day adds up to 7h weekly.

<comment><USER27> Depends what you watch, surely?

Bit like saying trash your phone because it's possible for boring people to call you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Trash the phone too. Got it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> +1 for Roomba, I'm on my 4th one since 2002, for me it's worth it, I wipe down the tops while he scoots around, unlike many 'gadgets' it really does something I used to spend time doing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cooking for multiple days is great. Which is another good reason to use a slow cooker. Just put 2x the amount of ingredients in and freeze half. No more cooking the next day. (And simpler washing up)

</comment><comment><USER29> This one might seem trivial, but I start cleaning by picking up the floor first. This makes it easier to move around, which is a prerequisite for almost every other task.

<comment><USER30> How bad does the situation have to be that picking up stuff from the ground enables you to move freely?

<comment><USER31> I'll let my kids roam your house freely for 15 minutes and we'll see just how bad things can get.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1, it only takes ten seconds for them to up end a box of toys and make it hard to walk across the floor

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Live near your job, less commute time. Cook once, eat two days.

<comment><AUTHOR> I work from home already. I literally can't love any closer :)</comment></comment>