Searchable catalog of Udacity, edX, Coursera, etc. - <AUTHOR> http://www.coursebuffet.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks like coursebuffet.com is going for something different with accounts and learning path planning, but class central [0] has a very functional listing of MOOCs. Filter by initiative or subject, and sort rows by start date or course length. Introductory youtube video are also easily available, so you can get a better idea of the various courses quickly.

[0] [https://www.class-central.com/](https://www.class-central.com/)

Edit: digging a bit further, course buffet has a good writeup of what they are trying to do differently on their about page:

> We know there are other sites listing MOOC courses but they still leave it > up to you figure out which courses are similar. That is time consuming and > frustrating. Remember we want to make it easy to compare. That is why we > have a CourseBuffet Classification System which we use to classify every > course.

> No more needing to figure out which specific courses from Coursera is a near > equivalent to a specific Udacity, Saylor, edX, etc course. One click and you > see all your choices next to each other. We also list if a course has video, > audio, or a textbook so you can choice based on your learning style.

I like their idea. Will be happy to see them be successful at it.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. We like CC also. For now we are sticking to courses that would be considered full or close to college courses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow just found out we were posted about on HN. (we were hoping to be a little more ready for this then we are now)

So what are we doing? Well there are many sites that aggregate courses out there. That is easy. What we are aiming to do is create a simple standard. You can see what a course would roughly be if you took them at a US university.

The US doesn't have a set standard but most universities classify their courses with similar numbering. For example business students would take Introduction to Financial Accounting then Introduction to Managerial Accounting. Both would usually be 200 level (2nd year) courses.

This standard also allows user to make apples to apples comparisons between courses.

There are few errors on CourseBuffet, we are working on them. Thoughts, criticism, comments, please share! thanks!

<comment><USER4> I think this is exactly what open courseware needs. I will be cheering you on and following your progress closely!

I am not sure if you already have this planned but I would love to see an open curriculum or sorts. Basically a curated list of courses (that have proper video lectures) that I can take to get a degree equivalency.

If for example I wanted to learn everything an undergraduate in business learns at a university, I can take the courses in your list in the order you suggest and get an equivalent education. (These courses should be recordings of actual classes and not dumbed down short videos).

I think this curation of courses will go a long way in how open courseware is perceived.

<comment><USER5> check out Saylor.org. they're trying to build a single open education platform that actually has self study equivalents for entire degree programs

<comment><USER6> I like what they do. I see them as a good place for taking on this type of standards definition project, which is an activity better suited for a foundation like Saylor than a startup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks cool but I'll be the guy to tell you that doing this is going to be really hard as a project, and as a company.

To decently organize different subjects you won't be able to stay at the course level for long - too large a grain size. Maybe you can stay at university subject and undergrad/grad distinction, but you'll quickly find edge cases may outweigh standard cases when you define further. You're going to have to start parsing the syllabi of individual courses, which means you're going to have a crash-course on the subject. It'll take time, and you won't get much faster at it in another subject. This is assuming a practical approach rather than a more research driven approach, which would take a lot longer.

That's the first challenge. The second challenge is that tons of colleges are entering the fray and a LOT of courses are going to get put up soon. So the 700 courses becomes 1500 becomes 5000. You may think this is an opportunity but its at least as much a burden. And once you classify them, they'll change, and you'll have to update them. And you won't have access to critical feedback loops on why they changed or their quality.

Between those two challenges you're going to have to find a sustainability model fast. As you note, many others have started to do this, and although they didn't do the particular feature you're talking about w/ matching courses, there's probably a lot to learn from them. I think everyone was going 'platform!' but that involves a LOT of building audience before getting any possible leadgen revenue.

At a much higher level, college itself is going through a pretty big rethink. Its worth asking yourself the question: "why isn't there a standard way that colleges organize their courses today?" (hint: its structural, not just pre- internet). Its also worth thinking about how MOOCs are adjusting their offerings (e.g. shorter lengths, highly multidisciplinary content, topical content, etc), and whether or not standardizing across traditional college schemes is today's and tomorrow's problem, not just yesterday's.

I think its worth learning a bit about library sciences (the nature of classification), talking to MOOC instructors about their experiences, talking to other course listing startups, & talking to colleges about how they think about what makes a college education (or at least read what they have to say). This probably won't require code (gasp, I say this on HN), it's more a get- out-of-the-building problem. Code is kinda your enemy right now, it'll trick you into thinking you're making progress.

The desire to tackle organizing it is noble, but the scope is big. There's lots of other edtech problems out there if you're interested in the space.

And all that said, feel free to prove me wrong!

Source: a long time in edtech, a lot of time spent classifying (e.g. edsurge.com/products), and been involved in lots of discussions with open courseware folks about these very problems.

<comment><USER3> First thanks for taking the time to write out your thoughts it is appreciated.

The classifying is a challenge. While doing it at the course level is a pain we think without doing this the value added is small. We have found the more courses are classified the easier it gets. This being said the edge cases can take a good deal of time to figure out and are frustrating.In the future we would need someone full time just to work on this.

As for "...is today's and tomorrow's problem, not just yesterday's" This could be the case no doubt but some revolutions take longer than initial planned. HN readers might know about MOOCs, gamifying education with achievement badges, etc there are a lots of people who don't, almost surprisingly so. A few months ago we talked with a local prof who didn't know about MOOCs. Millions of people grew up with a traditional college courses and semesters and millions are take traditional college courses. We think that replicating (or near enough) the current setup is easier for people to grasp. There are others who think points/badges are the way to go. . We will have to read more about library sciences As as you point the as MOOCs become less like regular college courses the more our classification standard will be challenged.

I had seen edsurge before but now will have to follow it more closely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note to web designers: don't enforce a minimum width on elements which are hidden on overflow. I had no idea there was a way to sign up or login because the links to them were not visible and there was no scroll bar and thus dmunoz's comment didn't quite make sense.

Edit: Actually, you've got a slightly worse issue... as I resize my browser window, as soon as it reaches ~1000 (1024?) pixels the header jumps and the buttons disappear outright, even though they would fit on the screen just fine. I don't really care _what_ happens to the buttons, but there is no indication elsewhere on the page that one can make an account.

<comment><USER3> Hey thanks for the feedback. We are working on it!

<comment><USER7> Glad to hear it! As another much more minor note, the header logo on the registration page seems to be shrunken a good 75%. It's not a problem but it does look comically small.

See: img.logo width and max-width attributes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The website navigability sucks. Just open this page:

[http://www.coursebuffet.com/sub/computer- science](http://www.coursebuffet.com/sub/computer-science)

Then enjoy clicking "Load More", "Load More" forever. The UI seems to be mobile-optimized, but very bad usability on desktop. Is there are "Show All" button instead of clicking Load More all the time?

</comment><comment><USER9> I have felt for a long time that the MOOCs are broken because there is no holistic learning plan; a strength of one site is a weakness of another. You guys have fixed that. I wish you the best of luck, and I hope that your site becomes a resource I rely on in the future. That being said, there are a few UX issues which would greatly improve signup rate and ease of use:

1\. You should list all of the subjects on the home page not just 6 of them!!! The only way to view classes by subject is via search. But I want to be able to browse! Search is too much effort. Use this as an opportunity to list the highest rated classes by each subject. Put your data to good use.

2\. The only way to browse all classes by subject is by un-checking the subject box in a search results page, but if your browser width is over 1200px the filter results tab becomes static and you can't see all of the subjects and filters :(

3\. What is the main benefit of signing up? Add a CTA in between the search box and browse courses section of the homepage. Maybe also add a screenshot of the learning path, so I immediately know what benefit I am getting/why I shouldn't just use your site to find courses on coursera or udacity.

4\. Have landing pages per subject with a CTA to sign up.

PS I wouldn't have taken the time to write this if I wasn't absolutely in love with your site and what you are doing.

<comment><USER3> First thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts.

1\. You are right. We need to add more/all to home page. 2\. This is a problem. Clearly we need to fix this! 3\. We are working on the learning path and want to keep it under wraps for now. But a better CTA is needed. I always want site to provide me a good reason if I am going to give them my email address. We don't right now. same with #4

I had posted once or twice in comments of other stories about CB but was waiting until we got some of our site issues worked out before trying to get on the front of HN. Well the OP decided the time is now and hey I am not complaining.

I think you will find our offerings in the future to be much improved. Email me firstname.lastname@example.com and I will keep you updated and any other thoughts would welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Search functionality isn't very good: [http://www.coursebuffet.com/s/machine%20learning/0/0/0](http://www.coursebuffet.com/s/machine%20learning/0/0/0)

The direct matches from the front page are much better, though those miss courses that aren't so clearly named ('Learning from Data')

</comment><comment><USER11> I've seen a similar service launching post on HN about a year ago.

CourseTalk: Reviews for Udacity, Coursera, and edX (coursetalk.org) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4640735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4640735)

I'm using coursetalk when I pick up a class. Some of reviewers are giving really valuable feedbacks.

</comment><comment><USER12> This tells me that there is no Ruby/PHP/node.js equivalent to Udacity's Python-based web-development course. Pity.

<comment><USER13> Software as a Service (cs169.1x and cs169.2x) from edX is not exactly the same but fills the Ruby void.

<comment><USER14> links: [https://www.edx.org/course/berkeley/cs169-1x/software- servic...](https://www.edx.org/course/berkeley/cs169-1x/software-service/1136) [https://www.edx.org/course/berkeley/cs169-2x/software- servic...](https://www.edx.org/course/berkeley/cs169-2x/software-service/1275)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am interested to know how you guys are building this database. At one point we were thinking to provide similar service as part of [http://www.merocampus.com](http://www.merocampus.com) We are interested to know if there are API that you are consuming, scrapping websites or adding it manually.

</comment><comment><USER16> This looks very promising. I've always had trouble with the fact that most sites just list all courses, but there is never a stepped approach to know what to take next and so on. And you have to try to figure it out yourself, from all the very many courses out there. Thanks for doing this.

</comment><comment><USER17> It is a great tool to discover interesting courses and it saves me a lot of time searching. I am not sure if you are working on it, but it maybe a good idea to allow people to subscribe subjects/classes so that they got notified when new courses got created.

</comment><comment><USER18> Tim Roughgarden's Algorithms is highly recommended!

<comment><USER3> [http://coursebuffet.com/cb/computer- science/295](http://coursebuffet.com/cb/computer-science/295)

Leave a review if you wouldn't mind!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome website! Don't have much else to add - others will be better at pointing out UI/UX issues - just wanted to show support!

</comment><comment><USER20> Has been done before [https://www.class-central.com/](https://www.class- central.com/)

<comment><USER21> I am getting significantly more accurate results on www.coursebuffet.com than on www.class-central.com. The latter doesn't seem to have as good keyword search and it often seems to miss even when the word is in the title of the course.

I grant an upvote for doing it better than it has already been done.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. There are still errors and bugs we are working on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> edX and other great open education platforms are crippled when it comes to actually discovering courses. Thank you for this menu card of course, very helpful :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. We are actually missing some edX courses but they will be added in very soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there any e-commerce MOOC out there?</comment>


Announcing Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/03/announcing-ec2-reserved-instances.html <comment><USER3> Amazon has continued to iterate on AWS and execute brilliantly. They're making Google look shabby, and I'd love to know more about how their internal processes differ.

</comment><comment><USER4> The question I'm left with: What happens if/when Amazon changes what you're given with an EC2 instance? EC2 was launched in August 2006 offering the same specs for the same price that they're offering now. Since we're coming upon the three year anniversary, I don't think it's outrageous to believe that upgrades to what we're given might come within a year or so. If I commit to a small instance (1.7GB) for 3 years and in 9 months they have a new 2009 small instance which is 2.5GB, would I get that upgrade?

I hate to be as simplistic as moore's law, but server capacity is increasing when you look at what you can get in a dedicated box. Amazon will have to keep parity over the long term and if you're committing to a 3-year period, you might miss out on the upgrades. In fact, this could be a way for Amazon to roll out newer, better hardware onto their network while not seeing older hardware just disused. And I guess you can't complain about getting a 1.7GB server for $35/mo (which is the three year commitment price).

<comment><USER5> We might not see upgrades any time soon, they may try to push the price of their slowest instances down. Imagine if you could get an instance for $10/mo? $5/mo? They're just buying faster hardware and figuring out how many instances they can effectively run per-machine.

<comment><USER6> if you are willing to pay per month, there is a lot of competition in that arena. I'm one of the cheaper offerings... see <http://prgmr.com/xen/> but then, I don't have the cool provisioning system ec2 has. In fact, I need to finish up my next server before putting people on it. But yes, competition will force ec2 prices down. 4gb dual-rank registered ecc ddr2 is almost cheap enough for me to move to 64GB servers (meaning I'll be able to lower prices again.) - how much cheaper would I need to be before a service like mine became compelling vs. ec2?

<comment><USER4> None of this is meant to sound harsh, but I would like to detail out my impressions:

Mosso is announcing 256MB Xen instances for 1.5 cents per hour (under $11/mo). You're at $8/mo and only have 1 rack. Mosso is backed by Rackspace. You're offering 6GB of space while Mosso is offering 10GB, but you're throwing in 40GB of transfer. So, maybe you're a bit cheaper (considering Mosso's 22cents/GB bandwidth), but if one of the server boxes dies, can you replace it within an hour or do you need to have one shipped from Dell? You probably don't have a lot of spare capacity lying around. Likewise, if I need to scale up, it might take a while for you to provision hardware.

There's very little information on your service in some ways. Like, is the storage RAID? What if I need an OS reload? Is there a nice control panel for things like that? Heck, do you even provide DNS?

Form an LLC. I don't like dealing with some guy. The LLC makes me feel happy. . .even if it's just some guy.

You could be the next Slicehost. From what I know, they didn't start off too differently. I'd simplify the pricing a little (or at least get rid of the 64MB one - it simply isn't enough memory, especially considering the $1/mo cost savings). In fact, start at the $20 level. At that price, you're offering 1GB of RAM and that's a nice level to be offering for $20. All the lower levels just make the service look cheap and unreliable. I mean, how much can you make on $5/mo considering the potential for things like chargebacks? I see that the $8 plan is your most popular (and that you mirror - from your profile). Maybe keep it starting at 256, but for $4 more people could get the 512.

Create an auto-provisioning system. This is a must. It's the difference between looking awesome and looking cheap. It's why Slicehost did so well - <USER2> couple minutes and you were up, faster than EC2 oftentimes. Offer backups, they make people feel warm and fuzzy. If you're really in it, get a second rack and more equipment. That will make people feel a lot more safe. It also means you could start offering HA setups. I'm not stupid, but sometimes I just like a simple control panel. I don't want to learn a new API if I don't have to.

The issue kinda is that your service would be cool for personal stuff, but I couldn't launch production stuff on it. For production stuff, I like having HA setups with IP failover which means having instances on different machines in different racks. If I'm going to go Xen, I might as well get the benefits of instant (or near instant) provisioning from Slicehost/Linode/EC2. Sure, let's say they're twice as expensive or more. They're still cheap.

Offer the ability to snapshot an image and then launch another instance of it. That's really popular with IT managers.

And you don't have to be so cheap. In fact, I'd have to say that's your biggest flaw - you underestimate how valuable you are. Make some money, put time into it. I haven't looked into it, but there's a decent chance that RAM prices follow a predictable decline in price over several years. So, if you find that RAM halves its price every 2 years, maybe offer customers 25% more RAM every 6 months - predictably. That sure beats the nebulousness of Slicehost and others. I'd definitely pay $20 for a 512MB server with the knowledge that I'd be getting regular RAM increases as hardware costs go down. Although you probably know what your costs are better than anyone.

Sorry for the length of this. It's just really cool to get to talk to someone running a service like this. Oh, idea, for backups you could possibly integrate tarsnap which would compress the images before storage and so for people who didn't use much space it wouldn't cost much - yet people pay for good backups. I currently use both Slicehost and Linode and I'm considering that your service might be a nice alternative, but it's still hard to commit to such a young service with so few resources.

I know that Slicehost also lamented the lack of resources to spend on new machines. To an extent, you're not entering the market at a time that will accept a waitlist like how people waited for Slicehost. Well, it's late. Sorry for lacking eloquence in this post, but I'm half asleep. Might try to contact you through your site if I have other suggestions. I really, really hope you become a fourth entrant onto the scene to make sure prices stay nice. Good Luck!

<comment><USER6> thanks for the feedback! I'm looking at eucalyptus for provisioning. I want something standard. the optimal situation is one where you can easily move from me to another provider and back. the idea is that you'd run your backup images on ec2, but mostly run through prgmr (or whoever is cheapest at the time) for your day to day needs. You'd have the instant provisioning if you need to expand right away or if the guy running the cheap provider gets hit by a bus, but you'd be able to save money running with the cheap provider most of the time

Automatic provisioning would also allow me to drop the price on my smaller images. (right now I charge you $4 per account, plus $1 for every 64Mb ram you want every month.)

I give you console access, and access to PVGRUB, so you can change your kernel, or boot into a read-only rescue image I provide if you mess up your own image beyond recoverability. Any easier interfaces will be built using whatever provisioning API I end up with (like I said, right now I'm looking at Eucalyptus, but I haven't implemented anything yet)

the idea is that if you have managed servers before, the concept of a remote rebooter, a serial console, and a read only rescue image (a cdrom in the drive) will be familiar to you.

I don't think I want to get rid of the cheap plans. I meet lots of interesting people that way. I've hired a few of them, with good results. But on the other hand, I think my larger plans are a much better deal. Personally, I agree with you on the 64MiB plans, I'd rather pay the extra dollar to double my ram, but some other people disagree. I sell more 64Mb plans than 128Mb plans. (though, like I said, the 256Mb plan is the most popular.) I've got some people running NetBSD (which runs fine in 64M, if you aren't doing much) and others who upload custom linux distros, replacing sshd with dropbear. But then, I know at least one customer who lives (in China) on what amounts to about USD$200/month, so I imagine he cares a lot more about that one dollar than you or I do.

I like the sort of people you meet running these low-cost services (the big problem is making it unfriendly to spammers and other scum. I run snort on my outgoing traffic, proactively monitoring for abuse, which helps.) and I think the contacts you make on the low end (because even us wealthy bay area nerds can be pretty cheap sometimes.) often help with the high-end stuff, too. It certainly has allowed me to up my consulting rates, and it has gotten me a book deal. <http://nostarch.com/xen.htm> (Yes, I got someone who went to college to help. Also, most of it I wrote when I was not this tired.)

I compete on price because I don't have sales skills. I understand I need to make my website look better (and start buying hardware ahead of time) but I will always be at a disadvantage there. From my point of view, selling 10x as many images at 1/2 the cost (which seems to be about what happened last time I lowered my prices) seems like a damn good deal. I don't have to deal with salespeople or even focus on sales skills. I focus on building out new hardware and keeping my system reliable, and people keep coming.

with the price of dual-rank 4GB registered ecc ddr2 modules coming down, I will soon be able to move to 64MB ram per server rather than my current 32GB ram. (to give you an idea, right now each 32GB ram/ 8 core box sets me back around $2K, including disk.)

I've been doing this since '05... well, I was jerking around with FreeBSD jails before that, but I moved to Xen (Xen 2.0 on NetBSD) in December of '05. when ec2 came out, they were cheaper than I was. It looked like the end, and I even warned my customers and quit. (I kindof screwed myself there.) But it became clear that ec2 had no intention of lowering prices.

With my next server, I will experiment with providing more disk space (via NFS or ISCSI from an OpenSolaris storage unit.)

but yeah, this is all home built. Dell? why would i pay extra for a box with only 8 ram slots? There's almost always enough spare parts for another server in the garage. My new workstation (the parts are in the mail) will also use the same hardware, so that's something else I could pull from. But since I switched to new hardware (sometime in '07) the only hardware failure I've had was a disk (and that was half of a mirrored pair, so I was able to replace it at my leisure.)

It's all standard stuff, though, so if worst came to worst, I could always run down to fry's and get the parts I need. (not that I regularly buy anything but retail-packaged hard drives from Fry's, for quality and price reasons. But if someone was down, I could do it.)

Really, assembling computers is easier than jerking around with the salesguy long enough to get the 'real price' at least for me, and I'm something of a paranoid asshole when it comes to ESD (you see, for quite some time now I have been the guy who gets woken up in the middle of the night when a server mysteriously reboots. It doesn't take many of those before you are willing to perform any ritual that might make your server even slightly more reliable.)

Now, I do have a lot of good price competition in the below-512MiB size range... but it seems that few competitors discount the higher ram amounts. I wonder if it is because they are using Dell or other hardware that only has 8 ram slots, requiring the more expensive 4GB modules? or if it's just 'If you need eight gigabytes, you can afford to pay through the nose' ?

<comment><USER4> Wow, I didn't know that you could get a 32GB/8-core server for only $2,000. That makes the economics of it a lot less scary (and your prices a lot more understandable - I was a little worried that they you were significantly underselling your costs).

I do like that larger RAM servers are cheaper. I hope all your images don't sell too quickly once you get the new box provisioned! Oh, what do you charge for bandwidth overages? Not that I have a ton of traffic, but still.

Also, play up your history. Knowing that you've been around since 05 makes you a ton more credible - you aren't a me-too service and rather someone that's coming into their own.

<comment><USER6> right now it's $0.10/gb. (hopefully I'll lower that when I get to my new location later this month. My goal is to keep everything below half what ec2 charges.) - Nick finished up the new server and put ordering on last night, it's got 30GB still free. there are parts for two more 32GB servers in the UPS system as we speak, so hopefully there won't be a gap between when this one fills up and when I get the next one installed.

the key to cheap ram servers is twofold. 1. get motherboards with 16 ram slots. this is changing, but 4gb modules are still more expensive than 2gb modules. 2. get motherboards that support registered ecc ddr2 (not FBDIMM- they take a whole lot of power) I use the low-power quad-core opterons. then don't go crazy on the CPU. (most of mine are 1.9Ghz bartons. if you go that route, make sure you don't get a broken stepping. one of the new servers will be a 2.1Ghz low-power shanghai that just came out. they are cheap! Shanghais look really good.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IMHO this is great, but not perfect. The model of reserved instances takes EC2 users back into the business of provisioning planning. How many instance/years should I buy for the next year? How many is too many? EC2 users are still unable to to spread the 1 year time credit over multiple instances. In principle, it costs the same to run one instance for 1000 hours than to run 1000 instances for one hour. In practice, the current model makes it impossible to capture the discount. What is needed is to able to buy a year worth of CPU time at discount, and then be free to launch as many instances as needed to use up the time credit. (more on [http://weblog.smirnov.ca/2009/03/12/ec2-reserved- instances-a...](http://weblog.smirnov.ca/2009/03/12/ec2-reserved-instances- are-great-but-not-perfect/))

<comment><USER8> I don't buy the argument that this somehow puts a big provisioning planning burden back on users.

Most small users of EC2 know that they are going to need one or two instances on all the time. Amazon just lowered their base costs, making it easier for them to choose EC2 over another VPS offering.

Most larger users also know they have a "base load" that they have to meet. It's not hard to imagine that a lot of sites will have 2 machines as redundant load balancers, two as redundant web/app servers, and two for a DB failover cluster.

Paying in advance for these instances is a no-brainer once you've decided EC2 is for you. If figuring out the rest is too much work or involves too much uncertainty, the on-demand pricing is still compelling.

"In principle, it costs the same to run one instance for 1000 hours than to run 1000 instances for one hour."

This wouldn't be true if you were operating your own datacenter, and it's not true in Amazon's datacenter either. In order to offer on-demand instances, Amazon has to keep idle capacity in reserve. There is a difference in degree, since Amazon is averaging over a lot more customers, but they still have to build and maintain capacity that will sit idle for significant periods of time. By creating a new pricing tier for reserved instances, they can both reduce their uncertainty about unused capacity, and give customers a better price for making that commitment.

What's really missing here is another low-priced tier for low-priority instances. These would either be suspended and paged completely to disk during times of high load, or they'd be started and killed automatically to make use of idle capacity. They could be used for long-running batch jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If your capacity requirements are very steady, you could save more than 30% on CPU time with this. At the very least, figure out how many instances you need at 3am and buy that many reservations.

That's what I'll be doing tomorrow.

<comment><USER10> I always have at least one instance running so it's good for saving money...

At this price point it's actually cheaper than a vps at slicehost: 325/12 + 720*.03 = 49$

slicehost for an equivalent instance it's between 70$ and 130$ (but need to count the included bandwidth from slicehost to be more fair)

<comment><USER11> Slicehost prices are dropping (looks like 2x) on Monday.

<comment><USER11> Correction: They're switching from a prepaid bandwidth quota to per-GB pricing, so if you use less bandwidth the price is lower but if you use the full quota the price is higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's a look at the new prices with different bandwidth scenarios: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=514056>

</comment><comment><USER13> This is actually very interesting news for someone like me who would open up a good number of high CPU instances at any one time but only for short periods to do some rendering. Typically a few hours

Now I guess I gotta do a cost analysis and figure out which will be better, as both models have their strengths and weaknesses for my particular use.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, this is really great news. I use Amazon EC2 for all my web hosting and absolutely love it. Total control of a not-too-shabby box for 70$ a month was a great deal. For 40$ a month it's a downright steal.

Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Or, "slightly _less_ elastic" instances.

Is there a resale/arbitrage opportunity here? Buy a bunch of reserved instances, resell at a price less than "full elastic" instances but higher than your cost (taking the risk that sometimes you might not have buyers for all your prepurchased capacity).

(Amazon could make this easier or harder by controlling whether reserved quotas can be delegated to others, or how easily AMIs and traffic can flow between billing accounts.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Save around 300/yr on a small instance based on a 30day month

</comment><comment><USER17> Can someone create a nifty JavaScript calculator for this?

<comment><USER18> Sure.

Copy to clipboard, then middle click in firefox:

javascript:var%20si=prompt(%22how%20many%20of%20your%20small%20instances%20run%2024/7?%22);var%20sip=(si _(0.1_ 24 _365_ 3)/3/12).toFixed();var%20sip_1yr=(si _(0.03_ 24 _365+325)/12).toFixed();var%20sip_3yr=(si_ (0.03 _24_ 365 _3+500)/3/12).toFixed();var%20li=prompt(%22how%20many%20of%20your%20large%20instances%20run%2024/7?%22);var%20lip=(li_ (0.4 _24_ 365 _3)/3/12).toFixed();var%20lip_1yr=(li_ (0.12 _24_ 365+1300)/12).toFixed();var%20lip_3yr=(li _(0.12_ 24 _365_ 3+2600)/3/12).toFixed();var%20xli=prompt(%22how%20many%20of%20your%20extra%20large%20instances%20run%2024/7?%22);var%20xlip=(xli _(0.8_ 24 _365_ 3)/3/12).toFixed();var%20xlip_1yr=(xli _(0.24_ 24 _365+2600)/12).toFixed();var%20xlip_3yr=(xli_ (0.24 _24_ 365*3+4000)/3/12).toFixed();window.location.href=%22_blank%22;document.write(%22
Potential%20savings
%22);if(0<si){document.write(%22
%22+si+%22%20Small%20instances
%22);document.write(%22%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22%20 	%22);document.write(%22%20Normal	%22);document.write(%22%201yr%20Reservation	%22);document.write(%22%203yr%20Reservation	%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22%20Effective%20Monthly%20Fee	%22);document.write(%22%20$%22+sip+%22	%22);document.write(%22%20$%22+sip_1yr+%22	%22);document.write(%22%20$%22+sip_3yr+%22	%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22
%22)}if(0<li){document.write(%22
%22+li+%22%20Large%20instances
%22);document.write(%22%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22%20 	%22);document.write(%22%20Normal	%22);document.write(%22%201yr%20Reservation	%22);document.write(%22%203yr%20Reservation	%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22%20Effective%20Monthly%20Fee	%22);document.write(%22%20$%22+lip+%22	%22);document.write(%22%20$%22+lip_1yr+%22	%22);document.write(%22%20$%22+lip_3yr+%22	%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22
%22)}if(0<xli){document.write(%22
%22+xli+%22%20Extra%20Large%20instances
%22);document.write(%22%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22%20 	%22);document.write(%22%20Normal	%22);document.write(%22%201yr%20Reservation	%22);document.write(%22%203yr%20Reservation	%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22%20Effective%20Monthly%20Fee	%22);document.write(%22%20$%22+xlip+%22	%22);document.write(%22%20$%22+xlip_1yr+%22	%22);document.write(%22%20$%22+xlip_3yr+%22	%22);document.write(%22
%22);document.write(%22
%22)}void%20(0);

<comment><USER4> Could you possibly put that on a site like dpaste.com so that the comments don't just all scroll to the left and then link to it.

<comment><USER12> "nuke anything" works: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/951>

<comment><USER19> also, firebug has a "delete element" function.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kevin Rose: Digg Failed Because 'Social Media Grew Up' - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/07/13/kevin-roses-exit-interview-digg-failed-because-social-media-grew-up/

<comment><USER2> Digg failed because they took every web 2.0 trend and implemented it about as poorly as possible for version 4.0.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, and it didn't even look like they did any A/B testing. The UI changes alone, spacing, colours, etc. totally killed the flow of the site.</comment></comment>


Interesting example of responsive design - <AUTHOR> http://bigbangtechnology.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks,

We just released a new version of our site and worked really hard to make an enjoyable experience for folks no matter if they're visiting us on mobile, tablet or desktop.

If you have any comments about it, we're all ears.

Thanks

Max</comment>


Show HN: I wrote a feature for GitHub - tutorials.github.com - <AUTHOR> http://tutorials.github.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I've always wanted to customize documentation/tutorials for me, and what better way to contribute than to let programmers use their favorite text editors and a workflow/website they already know: git and GitHub!</comment>


Will Technology Cause or Solve Humanity's Biggest Problems? - <AUTHOR> http://insights.berggruen.org/issues/7/institute_posts/76 <comment><AUTHOR> curated insights: [http://insights.berggruen.org/issues/7](http://insights.berggruen.org/issues/7)</comment>


How to automatically migrate all your images to the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/how_to_automatically_migrate_all_your_images_to_the_cloud

<comment><AUTHOR> This blog post describes a method that combines the advantages of automatic image fetching from existing online locations with the advantages of managing new images directly in the cloud using Cloudinary. This method allows lazy migration to the cloud as well as other powerful origin pulling options. Sample code included for Ruby on Rails, PHP, Python & Django, Node.js, .Net and Java.</comment>


Women, less-attractive men lag in the effort to find financial backing - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/study-says-attractive-men-fare-best-in-gaining-venture-capital.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but not necessarily surprising. Especially if any of the research that suggests that attractive people are also smarter, i.e this one (links to PDF): [http://www.researchgate.net/publication/41752961_Why_beautif...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/41752961_Why_beautiful_people_are_more_intelligent/file/60b7d51830634c6013.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a whole bunch of blogs (from MIT, CBS, NBC) talking about that. Numerous things have been written, and I bet you anything that none of them actually read the article.

Here it is, by the way: [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/03/06/1321202111.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/03/06/1321202111.full.pdf#page=1&view=FitH)

They only say "An article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences". Yeah ? If they'd read it, they'd at least cite the authors or give a link to the _original_ work.

And the information gets diluted: MIT writes about that(info dilution), CBS and NBC pick it up and dilute it even more, some distortion, and low-life bloggers pick it up from CBS and NBC and completely miss the point.

<comment><USER4> Since the article looks like it's behind a paywall, can you give us an idea of how the information has been diluted, specifically?

<comment><USER3> It's not behind a paywall, slvv. Just clicking on the link opens it. (I haven't paid anything to anyone).

Or you can just Google "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences female entrepreneurship", then click on the PDF icon and you got it.

For example: There was a HN post here of a blog post wondering why there are very few women led backed venture. They cited the article (well, the journal) but if they had read it, they'd know that the authors hinted at the reason of that: That there are simply way fewer women pursuing this than there are men. And the women who end up being entrepreneurs, mostly focus on women's stuff (cosmetics, etc). It's right there, in the article. But they didn't do their reading.

It's like talking about some book character after reading Cliff's Notes. Worse, imagine if Cliff's Notes were written from summaries of summaries of summaries.

People are just lazy. This is why "Did You Know" in Facebook is such a hit. They give you pseudo facts (often taken out of context and a lot of times resulting in a superficial reading and a hurry to draw a conclusion from a Wikipedia entry). Most people will read them, accept the fact and think they're smarter by the day.

<comment><USER4> I've read the whole, original PNAS article. I have to say, I don't see a major distortion/dilution of it in the submission's linked article.

<comment><USER3> I may have been generalizing. But there was a post here on HN with a link to such article about that PNAS one that was a bit selective on the parts it picked and ignoring some answers already in PNAS article to questions it asked, and that's what I don't like.

For instance the reason why there wasn't enough backed ventures that were led by women.. The PNAS article hinted that the fact women pursue less (and those who do, do mainly in cosmetics and such matters) has something to do with that.. Yet the article chose to ignore that and asked the question as if there were no answer to it, and _then_ picked the part good-looking men get funding, and used that to answer the question.

Sorry for late answer.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bruce Willis' Fight: Do You "Own" or "Borrow" Your Digital Music? - <AUTHOR> http://www.conceivablytech.com/10339/products/bruce-willis-fight-do-you-own-or-borrow-your-digital-music

<comment><USER2> Interesting. A startup which facilititates transfer of digital property anyone? It will be cool if we have a digital "will" to handle this.</comment>


Game Failures Graveyard Tour - <AUTHOR> http://kevinw.github.io/2017/09/25/game-failures-graveyard/ <comment><USER2> Great write-up. I've seen the lessons you describe here echoed by many experienced game developers- the dangers of increasing scope, the importance of seeking feedback, and so on. The fact that you're able to identify and communicate those lessons after looking back on your work says a lot about you. Self-reflection is absolutely easier said than done, so props to you for putting in that effort and improving.

In my experience, the most common advice that professionals give to new game developers is to finish their projects. You're past the "new" stage, but I still think you'd find value in cutting your scope back and releasing projects like these. If you have 16 + 40 levels that aren't finished, polish 7 of them and ship it. You've already got these on itch.io- is there an extra 5% that would let you change the tag from "in development" to "released"?

The only parts of this post I didn't understand were "Tech dolt dramatically chucks pencil..." and the bit about interdisciplinary mountains. I think I figured out your intent but the cutaway metaphors lost me. You're good at describing what you did, what you learned from it, and what you want to do differently. I value that way more than vague self-deprecation. Just my personal opinion.</comment>


Ask HN: I am quiting HN, its rigged - <AUTHOR>

I have raised this issue a lot of times of hn being
rigged, and this is the final time I am doing this. here is some more evidence.
front page => http://imgur.com/GwtT4pF my link => http://imgur.com/K3nZ8dL enjoy your time here. <comment><USER2> It's not a straight votes vs. posting time chart, but weights submissions by other factors, like how fast the voting goes and other factors I don't even know about.

Anyway, why do you care? I have stupendous amounts of karama but a lot of my submissions sink like a stone anyway, other times I post something that I consider amusing but unimportant and am surprised to find it sitting at the top of the front page hours later. It's not like there's some special store where you get to exchange karma points for cash/equity/delicious cake, although if anyone wants to set that up I would be totally supportive of it.

This isn't the first time you've got upset about this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9241171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9241171) I suggest you stop worrying about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> If your point is that your link with 7 upvotes was not promoted to the front page like another link with 7 upvotes, then... I'm afraid it's not rigged at all: the rank algorithm has more inputs that just upvotes. Which should be obvious: otherwise the article that had the most upvotes in history would still be ranked #1.

</comment><comment><USER4> 'Rigged' makes it sound like you're trying to win / earn something from participating here. What's your goal in participating on HN?

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're just here for the karma, you're going to have a bad time.

Also in the pictures they are completely different titles. I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to prove.

</comment><comment><USER6> More votes doesn't mean front page.

Surely you would agree that the algorithm should consider other factors, such as time between votes, who voted, and so on?

</comment><comment><USER7> I dunno, this seems like you might have triggered the "vote-ring detector."

</comment><comment><USER8> _hn being rigged_

HN is "rigged" in that it has a set of rules that influence ranking. If you don't like those rules, yeah, you won't like it here. If you have some overdeveloped idea about how much attention you "deserve" or something, yeah, you probably won't like it here. HN doesn't exist as some venue for your personal convenience. It is a) part of the business strategy for Y-Combinator and b) a community. Every community has to find ways to balance diverse interests. And since it has a bona fide business purpose, that will come first, before other things. You can thus expect it to remain "rigged" and not live up to whatever imagined ideals you think it should ascribe to. FWIW, I think the fact that it is "rigged" is part of why it is one of the better things on the web.

ciao

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> clicks front page => [http://imgur.com/GwtT4pF](http://imgur.com/GwtT4pF) mylink => [http://imgur.com/K3nZ8dL](http://imgur.com/K3nZ8dL)</comment>


Approaching a state shift in Earth's biosphere - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder when we'll see more startups focusing on exactly how to cope with that.</comment>


How We Track Our App Reviews, And Why You Should Too - <AUTHOR> http://discovr.info/2012/07/how-we-track-our-app-reviews-and-why-you-should-too/

<comment><USER2> You can track reviews for an iOS app by subscribing to its rss feed.

        http://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/customerreviews/id=[your_apps_apple_id]/sortBy=mostRecent/xml

For example, here's the RSS feed URL for the Facebook app.

[http://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/customerreviews/id=284882215/...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/customerreviews/id=284882215/sortBy=mostRecent/xml)

<comment><USER3> This is what I do!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While there are some tools and apps that do this (AppSalesMobile), it is important to gain and then read those reviews. Good or Bad, ratings/reviews drive sales

There are some pretty spammy ways of getting reviews. Popup an alert that says "Show us some love" which redirects to the app store review page and "leave feedback" which sends an email to developers. (I think that article was on HN a while back)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a really good tool, I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the big analytics tool taking this idea. Signed up and looking forwards to getting any new reviews.

I'm also impressed that I can specific reviews per region, it might be nice to off an "all regions" option at some point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thought that might be confusing, you'll get reviews from all regions. The country on the search is just to specify what store to search. That was added because someone had an app only in Australia and it was searching the US store and hence not finding it.

Will try and clear it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks like it would be great for competitive research as well. I just created a digest of 10 apps or so that I want to keep tabs on. I'll probably eventually go back to iTunes Reviews RSS/Google Reader but getting an email digest will be personally helpful in the short term. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER7> That is quite neat. Asking for a review after a few usages is definitely a good idea.

Does anyone know some similar tool for reviews in the Android (ehem, Play) market?

<comment><USER8> I use this lib <http://code.google.com/p/android-market-api-php> to retrieve reviews and show them on the app site.

It's a little tricky, though</comment></comment>


OSI: The Internet That Wasn't (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/cyberspace/osi-the-internet-that-wasnt <comment><USER2> Having used Honeywell's implementation in terms of DNS/DSA, I find the networking software that came later as being of a more primitive style. I was involved in writing networking programs in a variety of languages and the OSI Model made that significantly easier.

But there is no point crying over spilt milk. It has long passed away and the technology of today is a completely different beast.</comment>


Germany eyes a four-day week to help prevent mass layoffs - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/germany-four-day-week-industry-covid-19/ <comment><USER2> Economists (Keynes and others) in at the beginning of the 20th century projected that based on increasing productivity we would only be working about 15h a week by now. They actually did predict that this could become a significant problem, because many people need work for their personal fulfillment.

Now the productivity gains actually did happen, however what the economists didn't predict is that all the gains went to only benefit very few (essentially the holders of capital) and inequality would increase significantly preventing most people to reduce their work hours even if they wanted.

<comment><USER3> However, people also want to spend more money and have more things / higher standard of living than people had at that time.

I'm curious if you would adjust your own standard of living accordingly, you could finance it with a 15h workweek just fine. But this for sure does not apply to low wage jobs.

While inequality is now clearly on the rise (and it's a big problem), afaik there also have been times in history when it was consistently higher. [https://ourworldindata.org/income- inequality](https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality) seems to have some good charts and context here.

<comment> Spartan-S63 Well, so this kind of thinking is really part of the problem. The number of hours you put into something should never matter. What matters is the value of the productivity. We should be getting paid on the marginal value of our labor, not the minimum we're willing to bear. In addition, if the job can get done in 15 hours, then we should get paid the same, regardless. It's the conflation of hours to productivity that's destructive in this conversation. They're not the same, and a reduction in the work week should not be a salary- reducing event.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that one of the points of a salaried job versus hourly? You're paid the same regardless of how long it takes you. Many companies sometimes don't care if it takes you 5 or 10 hours to do the task as long as it's done by the deadline.

<comment> Spartan-S63 It totally is, but companies don't treat it that way. Most expect you to work at least 40 hours at all times, especially in office situations, and if you have to work overtime, that's on you. So, company's are having their cake and eating it to, while salaried folks are more likely to be abused by employers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen studies that indicate that reducing the work week can improve productivity per hour. It can be a net gain, allowing people to be more focused, make fewer mistakes, etc.

Sort of like when you pay people a bit better than average for the industry, thereby fostering improved employee retention and lower turnover. It pays for itself over time and has additional benefits down the line.

This seems like a good idea to me. The 40 hour work week grew out of technology improving productivity such that some people were making good money and then there was higher unemployment to go with that. It was intended to share the wealth, primarily. Now we look back on normal working conditions prior to that and deem them to be inhumane.

<comment><USER6> Henry Ford introduced the 40hr work week in 1926, for productivity reasons.

That is likely already close to the sweet spot, at least for automotive workers.

<comment><USER5> I did write a reply and then HN wasn't responding, so that's here:

[https://butterflyeconomy.blogspot.com/2020/08/shorter- work-w...](https://butterflyeconomy.blogspot.com/2020/08/shorter-work-weeks- may-be-necessary.html)

<comment><USER6> Personally, I am a big fan of the four day work week, I just do not believe it will maintain productivity levels. I would sooner believe a six hour five day week would.

<comment><USER5> My guess is that probably falls under "different strokes for different folks."

Some people really, really like having a regular three-day weekend and will do just fine getting in their hours in four days. Others may well prefer a five day week with fewer hours per day.

If we could cut hours and give people choices as to how to allocate them, more people might get on board with the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The weekly numbers on the map are off. In Switzerland a full-time job is usually 40 to 42 hours a week. Some professions work much longer. 48 hours a week is not extraordinary.

Probably they took the average of all employments. Because many people have a part-time job the average is pushed down. This makes the numbers less useful.

<comment><USER8> Full-time job in Germany is also usually that long. But it's an average, not a median.

<comment><USER9> Which shows how inadequate the statistic is for the discussion of the subject. The reduction of working hours applies only to a subset of work (industry full-time employment).

I would bet the average is so low because of a large part of low paying part- time jobs, which are heavily subventioned / pay no or low social security & taxes, saved likely also the disincentivation of pmarried mothers working full time (not by law, but in effect).

<comment> em-bee full-time work is 35 hours.

from the article: _In 2018, it won workers the right to reduce their working week from 35 hours to 28 for two years to increase flexibility, particularly for workers with caring responsibilities._

this is not talking about averages, but about full-time work hours.

<comment><USER9> It starts right with:

> At 34.2 hours, Germany already has one of the shortest average working weeks > in Europe. And there are loud voices calling for it to be shorter still.

And then the "graphic of usual hours of work of employees", and then goes on with 35h per week (in the metal working industry).

As others pointed out, 40h per week is quite often the standard, the lower average cited right in the beginning can be explained differently, than large parts of the population enjoying a relaxed safe full-time employment with less than 40h per week, which is kind of implied by the setup of the article.

<comment> em-bee but in germany 35 hours IS the standard (not just in the metal industry) . if 34.5 is the average, then that's not far from the standard. so the claim that part time work influences the measured average does not really fit.

<comment><USER9> Then you better correct the Wikipedia page listing the nominal working hours most of them exceeding the 35h ([https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wochenarbeitszeit](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wochenarbeitszeit)), and I and the people further up in the thread have to sue our former /current employers, which contracted us with 40h/week.

<comment> em-bee all those entries list the hours in specific industries. what we can't tell from that table is how many jobs that actually covers.

ig-metall is the largest union representing about 2/5 of all unionized employees in germany. keep in mind that in most cases a union agreement is applied to all employees, not just the union members, so many more jobs than union members are affected.

that said, there is likely something wrong with that 34.5 average because i found other articles claiming an average of 37.5 and yet another of 41 hours.

while i still believe that the 35 hour week has a large impact on the result, it is less large than i thought.

<comment><USER9> > ig-metall is the largest union representing about 2/5 of all unionized > employees in germany. keep in mind that in most cases a union agreement is > applied to all employees, not just the union members, so many more jobs than > union members are affected.

Yes, but those union agreements are per industry and/or company, depending if there is an industry agreement or not. That's why the hours are listed per industry.

And they only apply to non-members, if the union has the mandate to negotiate on behalf of all workers, e.g. there is not another competing union with a sizable membership (not sure about the exact criteria).

I worked at SAP, and ig-metall is a union there (not the only one). Different industry, no industry-wide union agreements. Ergo 40h per week. This is also the default by law, if the exact hours are not defined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In many jobs you can easily work 4 or less days a week in germany because there is a law that gives you the right to part time work. Obviously your wage is reduced accordingly.

<comment><USER9> Define easily. I bet, that while the law is there, the practice is quite different. There is still social pressure.

I bet, you won't see much part-time work in many fields and professions.

<comment><USER11> _Define easily._

My colleague had a baby. He would like to spend more time with the baby. He asked to reduce his hours. The boss said yes because its the law and we no longer live in the middle ages.

<comment><USER12> How does promotion work in that case? From what I've seen going part-time is essentially hitting a pause on your career goals, it's not sustainable for medium-long term.

<comment><USER10> It probably is a dead end promotion wise. But my impression is that there isn't much of a chance for promotions in most jobs here anyway. If you are trained in some craft in the vocational education system you get a job and do that job basically forever. Most common way to get higher up in that situation seems to be getting more formal education, either by becoming Master craftsmen (Meister) or by getting a college degree. Germany is very finicky about formal degrees. If you already have a college degree things might be different. Still it seems to me that in those cases your best chances to climb the ladder is to switch jobs from time to time. So if you realize there are no promotion for you in stock, or that you have to switch jobs anyway to progress your career, working part time is very much sustainable in the long run. Also if you are lacking the formal education to achieve your career goals you could start working part to have more time to get your degree while working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I recently had to end working 32 hours on 4 days. I don't think, that people sitting in the office 35 hours on 5 days are somehow more productive. But Germany has another huge problem having whole industry building obsolete diesel cars, when world goes electric. These working hour discussions are a tip of an iceberg. The real question where to put hundred thousands of workers and engineers what aren't needed for electric cars.

<comment><USER6> The world is not going electric, urban dwellers are.

Every german car maker has an electric car shipping.

They know the market better than you.

<comment><USER14> And yet they acted soooo late, that they are far behind now, due to capitalistic resistance to change (short term costly) and risk (management not being technical and scientific enough to see the future is electric). Seems they are not so wise after all.

<comment><USER6> Are they really? To date, both Volkswagon and BMW outsold Tesla in Europe, which might have something to do with being able to ship cars on schedule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well they can start by not punishing us with higher tax rates just for receiving short-time work benefits: [https://www.thelocal.de/20200720/why- people-on-kurzarbeit-ne...](https://www.thelocal.de/20200720/why-people-on- kurzarbeit-need-to-prepare-for-a-tax-surprise)

</comment><comment><USER16> Didn't France try this or propose this years ago? Isn't the problem that you would create more overhead due to the additional hires, in addition to having to train more people. I can think of a ton more issues. It could of course be better than the alternative.

<comment><USER17> Yeah I mean the alternative is taxing the 5-day-a-week workers and transferring the money to unemployed people, who while out of work have their skills languish. 4 day a week work-weeks seem like quite a cost-effective crisis response for working around a sheer shortage of jobs.

<comment><USER18> If people want to work five days a week it's probably because they need the money and if there's enough of them to displace other workgroups then why is the party that wants to work harder being penalized? It seems bizarrely European to feel like it's unfair to let people decide how much they want to work.

<comment><USER19> > it's unfair to let people decide how much they want to work.

Why is this confined to only the people already working?

<comment><USER20> I believe there's a large difference between not interfering with someone's choices, and the idea of compelling others to accommodate anyone's choice.

That is: if I have the opportunity & desire to work on something, you shouldn't interfere with it. But me having the desire to work on something shouldn't require you go provide the opportunity.

<comment><USER19> A belief is not a very compelling argument. Frankly, in the context of a job market I see both as interference.

But whatever our beliefs, we already have sets of rules, legal and social, which limit people's choices in the job market. The ability to hire people is a privilege which comes with responsibilities, part of which is a responsibility to society. This is why developed countries have minimum wages.

Now as to what extent or whether at all, you can place limitations on employers without placing limitations on employees, now that is an argument worth exploring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Hofmann says pay should not be reduced in line with hours though

It was a good idea until there.

Why not just get the money off the money tree and pay the unemployed an unemployment wage.

<comment><USER22> More specifically he said "employees should not necessarily see their salary cut _by the same amount_ ". It's salary negotiation, it's not unusual to go into those with a high initial ask.</comment></comment>


Evil Coding Incantations - <AUTHOR> http://9tabs.com/random/2017/12/23/evil-coding-incantations.html <comment><USER2> I know I'm biased by familiarity, but I really like that 0 is truthy in Ruby. I often find that I want to check whether there is a number there at all, whether it is 0 or not, and a truthiness test works well for that.

Is there a good reason, other than expectations brought from other langs, why 0 should be falsey?

<comment><USER3> I hate truthy- and falsy-ness in general. It just seems like it's ripe for messing up expectations. Why not just get an actual boolean?

<comment><USER4> I like the line in the Zen of Python, "Explicit is better than implicit."

You should get a type error if you try to use an int in boolean logic. I hate auto type-conversion. Autoboxing in Java is kinda nice, but really the base types should have been objects to begin with, and operator overloading should have been allowed.

(Although I do admit operators in Scala get confusing as hell. I like one of the recent RFCs that would require every Scala operator to have an actual "word" function alias to go with it so you can tell what the hell it does).

<comment><USER5> But i assume you're ok with upcasting an int to a double. That is, unless you make the Haskell Prelude. There is a real and useful sense in which booleans are a subtype of integers and i think its not unreasonable to automatically cast between them. Can't say if it's a good idea or not though.

<comment><USER6> There is a real and useful sense in which _everything_ is an integer; see Godel numbering. There's also a real and (debatably) useful sense in mathematics in which everything is a set. Even still, we prefer to impose structure and convention because it helps us understand what's going on, by restricting the kinds of things we need to be able to expect.

Booleans are the same kind of thing. We don't normally do arithmetic on them; at most we might treat `bool` like Z-mod-2. But Z-mod-2 behaves very differently from `int`.

<comment><USER5> I'd love to hear of a case where anyone has actually computed a Goedel number.

We very often do arithmetic on booleans, the a canonical homomorphism (Iverson bracket) with 1 ~ True and 0 ~ False where && and || are multiplication and addition. But I guess you knew that.

<comment><USER7> That is not the only homomorphism. You could just as well have 0 ~ True and 1 ~ False, where && and || are addition and multiplication. Booleans don't have enough algebraic structure to nail down a unique embedding. Integers and reals don't have the same problem, because there's a unique ring homomorphism between them.

<comment><USER8> Blessing noncanonical structures and mappings is indeed evil. Let's take this to its logical conclusion and banish type classes.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what you mean by that. Type classes are all about making _canonical_ structures explicit.

<comment><USER8> Type class instances are only "canonical" by fiat. Once you elaborate type classes into record-passing, by no means are the resulting instance types uniquely inhabited.

This is just as bad as the existence of truthy or falsy values.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "is" isn't equivalent to equality in Python. Is specifically checks the memory address, not equality. Equality is checked with "==" like in any other language. The author probably saw the is operator used somewhere and didn't know enough Python and figured that since && and || are reserved for bitwise operations whereas "and" and "or" are used for logical operations, "is" must also be the Python version of "==".

<comment><USER10> Java's == is not used for equality for objects either, so it's a valid comparison because Java's behaviour is equally unintuitive here. It's the same behaviour as is for objects.

<comment><USER11> Java's behavior feels like an almost deliberate trap, though. I have previously lost hours to bugs resulting from a refactoring that changed a value's type from int to Integer, and the resulting change in equality semantics.

<comment><USER12> That seems like such an anti-feature. I'd want the compiler to issue a warning for it by default and the IDE to ship with 'warnings are errors' by default.

<comment><USER11> Instead, we have some $$$$ static analysis tool that nags me endlessly about using Optional<T> private fields, but lets using the == operator for non- primitives sail past without comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am starting to hate languages that are not super picky and precise. We are working with C#, PHP and JavaScript and between them it's almost Impossible to remember what will evaluate as what. I would be perfectly fine if the only input to an if was true or false, no number, no strings.

<comment><USER14> Same here. I've used C for ages and now I've been doing a lot of Swift, where if statements only operate on Bool values. I find it much better to be explicit about any condition that isn't literally true or false. The common style of accepting all types and defining a set of "falsey" values just encourages pointless shortcuts.

<comment><USER15> _where if statements only operate on Bool values_

I mostly use Asm and C, and I have the exact opposite opinion: I hate languages like that. It makes simple problems like "determine if more than 1 of 3 integers are greater than 4" require ridiculously verbose solutions.

<comment><USER14> How can it be ridiculously verbose? Converting an arbitrary expression into C's notion of true or false just requires adding != 0 or != nil or similar.

<comment><USER15> Try to write something more succinct and elegant than this:

        return ((a > 4) + (b > 4) + (c > 4)) > 1;

<comment><USER14>
      return [a, b, c].filter({ $0 > 4 }).count > 1

I disagree that your version is elegant. Succinct, yes, but I don't think I'd like to leave that for the next guy to discover.

<comment><USER13> If you only do C you know this stuff. It gets confusing when you use a few other languages that all have slightly different semantics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The item in the list supplied for index starting at 1 shouldn't be there.

There are valid reasons for using 1 instead of 0 for the first element. It all hinges on whether the address is being considered or the first element is being considered.

One could consider languages that use 0 as the alternative referencing for the end of some value that can be indexed and -1 as the last item of that value.

</comment><comment><USER17> _The "Goes Down To" Operator_

Incredible elegant. If I used loops, I'd use that, too!

<comment><USER18> How do you not use loops?

<comment><USER17> Functional programming. Loops usually have some kind of mutated state and in FP you use constructs like _map_ and _reduce_. No _for_ or _while_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19>
        def a
            def a
                "use ruby"
            end
            "dont"
        end
        a
        > "dont"
        a
        > "use ruby

:(</comment>


The EU Is on the Verge of Collapse–An Interview with George Soros - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/02/11/europe-verge-collapse-interview/ <comment><USER3> Soros would be probably the last I would listen to. Money and politics is a toxic mix. He influences politics and markets to create chaos to make profit out of it. He is still upset that his manipulations against the EU and the Euro has failed. In the last few years the news of the collapse of the Euro was daily in the headlines of interested newspapers and magazines, manipulated by persons like Soros.

The Euro is still there and the EU, too. Don't hold you breath to see them collapse.

<comment><USER4> Just to provide the counterpoint (perhaps from a less biased position than Soros): the EU was doomed from the start due to member countries (excluding GB) losing sovereignty over monetary policy (i.e. common currency) but retaining sovereignty over fiscal policy. This is a problem because there is no strong mechanism for 'horizontal fiscal equalisation' (HFE) across EU member countries.

Take Greece and Germany in the lead up to the GFC for instance. Germany's economy is going great-guns and national income is rising thanks to their strong exports. Greece is not doing so well, with low productivity and low or negative economic growth. If Greece was not in the EU, they'd have had two options to stimulate their economy: government spends more (fiscal policy) or its central bank lowers interest rates (monetary policy). The latter option also has the nice side benefit of depreciating their currency, meaning their exports become more price competitive.

However, because they're a member of the EU monetary union, they're stuck with the Euro as their currency. Which has a single centrally set interest rate. So with Germany (and other EU countries) doing well, while Greece (and others) doing poorly, the European Central Bank sets the interest rate 'too low' for Germany, and 'too high' for Greece. Therefore, Greece's only option is to deficit spend. And they have to spend more than normal because EU monetary policy is working against them and they have little to no control over it. And because there's no HFE, they have to go in to extreme budget deficit despite being monetarily yoked to countries like Germany.

I think that the monetary union will eventually dissolve and EU nations will move back to sovereign monetary policy. It's hard to imagine the alternative: an effective and formal HFE mechanism being agreed. It's a hard sell in domestic politics, especially if you happen to be one of the 'successful' countries, who must now cross-subsidise 'unproductive' neighbours.

It's just my speculation, but I suspect they'll hold on to free trade and 'open boarders' within the EU.

<comment><USER5> > It's hard to imagine the alternative: an effective and formal HFE mechanism > being agreed.

I believe a fiscal union is the only viable resolution to this crisis - <USER2> dissolution of the euro would look like a huge defeat for European politics from which Brussels wouldn't recover for decades. You are right that a fiscal union is very hard to imagine - because it would undermine national sovereignty even more. That's why I believe we will see the usual European approach to this problem: Misusing existing institutions like the ECB to create a "quasi fiscal union" (for example by guaranteeing rates for government bonds of poorer countries). It would work almost like a real fiscal union but its true nature would be somewhat hidden behind misleading nomenclature, complex and indecipherable legal agreements and new institutions with fancy names. It's a very schizophrenic situation, because every EU official knows that creating a fiscal union (of sorts) is inevitable for the survival of the Union, while at the same time promoting such an idea would be political suicide for any government in the wake of recent nationalistic movements.

<comment><USER4> I realise I'm replying to a fairly old thread now, but just wanted to say thanks for the insightful comments. After giving it some though, I agree that the scenario you've outlined is the most likely one.

I hope the 'eurocrats' keep an eye out for unintended consequences/incentives that 'hidden' (but more complex) arrangements can spawn. Hidden subsidies, like underwriting government bonds, give me the willies...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like Angela Merkel, and I live in the EU (Ireland). I think she's wrong about a lot of things though.

The EU is on shaky foundations. The original principles of free movement, free trade, solidarity & peace are great. I totally support them. They move the world in a liberal (ie liberty) direction and they really do promote the central goal, centuries of peace. Europe has been at peace for a logn time. It's an achievement, and we need to defend that. But, there was never a truly agreed upon and understandable basis for how these would be promoted and protected and an explicit definition of where and how the EU's authority ends and the State's begins. This has left our national governments with a nice scapegoat, great for populists, nationalists and fringe politicians to use for their purposes.

The Greek saga is a perfect example. Rather than an intelligent abstract policy of allowing Greek to make their own decisions, support with limited liability for the Union we get a German style bureaucratic approach. Regulation an oversight.

I also appreciate her refugee policy. My grandparents (like many's) were refugees in WWII. I think it came from a genuine place of human solidarity. I hope it doesn't sting Germany too badly.

I hope that the EU gets another round of constitutional, foundational work. Take as long as it takes, but do it right. This is for the next 200 years. The problem, as I see it, is that politics has polarized into pro and anti EU. Anti-EU political outsiders from either (or neither) traditional wings using anti-EU rhetoric as an easy populist tools and pro-EU insiders defending the EU as a bureaucratic status quo.

One thing I think needs to change urgently is an exit policy. We need a way for countries that don't want to be in, to get out. It will act as a relief from a lot of populist pressure. If the UK want out, they should have an available option. Similar for Greek. No hard feelings, civilized-like, we can still be friends, just do what the people want.

<comment><USER7> > We need a way for countries that don't want to be in, to get out.

Can you imagine a US state doing that? I don't think unions are reversible at this state in history. The national state is not exactly living a revival. This is majorly a financial crisis.

> This has left our national governments with a nice scapegoat, great for > populists, nationalists and fringe politicians to use for their purposes

That is a very good observation. It's the reason Greece is suffering at the moment. But leaving the EU at this point would be even worse.

<comment><USER8> >The national state is not exactly living a revival.

...unless you look at Eastern Europe. Poland and Hungary show that homogenous nation states are not as much a thing of the past than you'd thought, and that their 'revival' (they were never dead though!) is doing just fine.

<comment><USER9> So, they used EU aid and know how to stabilize and start growing and now they leave?

Sounds like an amazing idea /s

<comment><USER10> It's difficult to attribute success. Heck, it's difficult just to compare your situation to the situation 20 years ago when you were a different person.

The populists in Poland and Hungary made a story where good aspects of the current development (for example: competitive workforce, open borders) are taken for granted and bad aspects like perpetuating big differences (like, wages, or quality of public institutions) between Hungary/Austria or Poland/Germany are attributed to some evil manipulation by the seemingly neutral EU.

Every explanation for the big wage differences is quite complicated: you can't rely on any popular simple ideology. If market is efficient, why the difference? If state-regulated society is just, why the difference? This leaves space for quite stupid populist "solutions" that are not true, but at least short.

Full disclosure: I'm from the Czech republic.

<comment><USER9> Hey, I'm kinda torn on the issue as well. If not for the EU, we would not have that huge brain drain that left our country kinda stupid and slow to develop (lots of unskilled workforce left, as well).

But then again, I am fairly certain that EU integration helped with our progress, especially since we had corrupt ex-commies running the show ever since '89.

It stopped them from being too greedy, plus the aid, advice and reforms did help.

And now if some people who left return out of a feeling of patriotic duty or just wanting to improve their home country, they'll be much more effective with the knowledge they gained in western Europe...

The ability to manufacture for cheap and export without too many taxes and customs headaches really helped, too, and we've set a very low corporate income tax to attract foreign (mainly EU) companies here (which worked).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not terribly interested in the views of a billionaire investor on the EU. I have to say though that I searched for the original interview in Wirtschaftswoche and Handelsblatt Online. And I did not find words as strong as "on the verge of a collapse". Those articles read "on the future of the EU [he] is pessimistic"

All the same the Schengen treaty is at risk with the current flood of immigrants. [1]

As far as the EU goes: I'm a Dutch citizen. And the NL have a long history of belonging to a coöperation of nations. Just after WWII it founed the BeNeLux. And it was a founding member of the EU later on. So I lived in a supra- national organisation for as long as I live. And I have to say that when I work here in the NL with people from France, Spain, Italy, Germany, ... I truly feel that we're all Europeans. It's some feeling of shared fate, shared history, shared culture, speaking their languages, intuïtively knowing their characteristic strengths and foibles. So as far as I'm concerned even if the current EU would fail we'll just start anew with an EU 2.0. Less expansionist and less idealistic probably. Sadder and wiser surely. But in my estimation the sense of a shared EU identity has become stronger than even the current vicissitudes or the meddling from billionaire investors.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/21/dutch-pm- says-r...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/21/dutch-pm-says-refugee- crisis-could-shut-down-europes-open-borders-for-good)

<comment><USER12> Soros is definitely weird at times, and he is almost always too-certain. But your negative characterization of "billionaire investor" is a disservice to you and him. Rather than learn about the world by selling products or climbing a political ladder, he formed opinions and made bets. Massive, massive respect.

<comment><USER13> How does gambling in the finance market worthy of respect?

<comment><USER12> If we throw out, even if momentarily, that there's more to success in the markets than pure luck, then people who have succeeded have done so in a very pure way: you can only make money in trading by being right. When you're right as often and to the extent that someone like Soros is, you have insight that 99.9999% of people don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Soros has insightful opinions regarding Orbán and the internal political struggle arising within the EU, but caveat lector: Soros has a large, literally vested interest in seeing the Euro collapse. That is to say, he has bet a huge amount of money on it collapsing. So he paints a bleak picture about the future of the Euro, because it is the future he desires.

<comment><USER15> Could it be the other way around? Could it be that he sees the bleak picture, and bets his money accordingly?

<comment><USER16> What's the difference? If somebody bets money on X, you can suspect he's more likely to work for X than against X.

<comment><USER17> If he didn't really believe what he was saying, he wouldn't have bet such a large amount of money on it. There is no reason to believe he is lying. Whether he is correct is another matter, but he's not "working for/against" anything, he's just stating his actual opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The whole world today is based on countries and their respective borders. When you want to travel between countries anywhere in the world you must have valid passport, to prove your identity. Countries can issiue or choose not to issue visa, so not everyone can pass every border. Things are working this way, and have worked this way for very long time. A very basic principle. Why is that? Many reasons, and the main is national security.

EU opened borders between their own countries. This is a good thing, it allows free travel and flow of products and money between EU countries. But EU still borders countries that are not in EU.

Now they are allowing everyone without valid documents to pass EU border in Greece and Turkey. You just need to say that you are a Syrian refugee and that you are going to Germany. Sane countries like Poland and Hungary are only reacting to this insane situation. Racism is not involved here, only logic.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady It's hard to care about articles like this anymore. They're like the SV bubble articles. Every month some other genius tells us the EU is about to collapse and they've been telling us this since 2008. The EU has faced some pretty massive hurdles in that time and managed to overcome them and I see no reason that can't continue with the new refugee crisis and the ongoing financial crisis in some of the member states.

<comment><USER19> It's like how people have been predicting the fall of the American empire for over 100 years now.

<comment><USER20> What empire ?

The idea that the USA is a superpower is antiquated and I am still surprised people think it is. It is unquestionably the strongest country but it isn't able to just unilaterally impose its will.

Obama's most notable legacy for me has been the acknowledgement of this and realising that the USA is far stronger and far more successful leading multilateral coalitions.

<comment><USER21> > What empire ?

We absolutely are an empire... which is failing rapidly. But don't take my word for it - Lawrence Wilkerson[1] as a much better explanation[2] of the travails of the American Empire.

[1] retired Colonel and former chief of staff to Sec. of State Colin Powell

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckjY- FW7-dc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckjY-FW7-dc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the fundamental problem with the European Union is the way it's organized and governed.

The reason we don't see a wholly European solution to many of these problems is due to the fact that the decision making progress is functionally biased towards each of the member's states unique interests.

The most important institution we have in Europe is, in my opinion, the European Parliament. It is designed in a way that ensures fair representation of all countries and at the same time enables us to pass legislation for which there is collective support. Its members are elected directly by the people in the European elections, which are separate from national elections, for obvious reasons.

All of this, however, is subverted by the existence of the European Council as well as the Council of the European Union (yes, the naming is a bit confusing). Their members are respectively the 28 heads of state of each EU country and members of their government.

This means that, while the European Parliament is elected with the express purpose of dealing with EU law, the European Council and the Council of the European Union are fruit of very different elections and because of that, they are bound to put their national interests first, since they might lose votes at the national level otherwise.

In my opinion, the European Council and the Council of the European Union should be replaced by a body elected directly by either the European Parliament, or in some way, the European population.

<comment><USER23> > In my opinion, the European Council and the Council of the European Union > should be replaced by a body elected directly by either the European > Parliament, or in some way, the European population.

The EU is never going to work because its people are too different, they don't speak the same language, don't have the same culture and its citizens aren't that mobile (good luck finding a job in France if you don't speak french, good luck expending your business to Germany if you don't understand the German market and law, thinking that the EU can copy the US in anyway is a huge mistake). We have already seen that with each crisis ( the Greek crisis, the refugee crisis ... ) that it is still everybody for himself and rightfully so. Mind you i'm not anti-european, I was fine with the EEC, the EU is an experiment and us citizens are the guinea pigs.

<comment><USER3> > The EU is never going to work

It works already.

> good luck expending your business to Germany if you don't understand the > German market and law

Example: German companies have expanded all over the globe, learning the local markets and laws. What are you talking about?

> that it is still everybody for himself and rightfully so

The Greek are still in the EU.

> I was fine with the EEC, the EU is an experiment and us citizens are the > guinea pigs.

I'm fine with the EU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The situation in Europe now reminds me a lot of the situation of Italy and Germany before their own unifications: for external powers, it was easy enough to stoke up rivalries between the various statelets, and push even the most successful around. Without the EU, this is the future I see for us: as difficult as it can be to unite a continent which lacks a common language, the alternative is to become irrelevant on the world stage - and the world market.

</comment><comment><USER21> EU _is_ in a risky position, but the article seems to only tangentially mention the main problem: shared _money_ without a proper merging of _monetary policy_. The _5 trillion_ euro bank bailout abused Greece with idiotic austerity policies a left quite a few countries (France in particular) with banks that are leveraged many times larger than their host country's GDP.

Mark Blyth[1] has a very good explanation[2] of this mess that covers a lot of the history. More recently, his analysis has unfortunately changed for the worse[3]. We find ourselves in a precarious situation on both sides of the Atlantic, and I hope we can find enough good men willing to actually do something about these problems; if instead we do nothing and let the profiteering and institutional corruption continue to grow, _some_ sort of collapse seems inevitable.

[1] Econ professor at Brown University.

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6vV8_uQmxs#t=674](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6vV8_uQmxs#t=674)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fP6YSCpm8g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fP6YSCpm8g)

</comment><comment><USER25> Spaniard here. Unemployment has reached 20% after 2008 real state collapse, central government is corrupt and incompetent. I guess that any economic trouble could be fatal.

<comment><USER26> Does those 20% include Spaniards employed in other countries?

<comment><USER25> No. 20% is living from subsidies. When economy were at full speed there was 20 milion people working, now there is just 16 millions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ju-st > "Chancellor of the Free World."

Merkel took only charge because everybody else didn't and the other European leaders indirectly expected her to lead them in the Ukraine crisis and the refugee crisis.

In my opinion there are two problems with the refugee crisis: (1) for many years the calls for help from Spain/Italy/Greece have been ignored and the refugee problem was swept under the mat. And now since Syria everyone is unprepared because no sensible policy was created back then. (2) the EU members from eastern europe wanted to join the EU for economic gain and protection from Russia. Now they have to realize that the EU is a union and not a economic aid programme. But this is also a consequence of problem nr.1 because it was politically ignored to set policies for distributing refugees in the EU.

</comment><comment><USER27> Eu is a work in progress. Its end has been announced many times. With every crisis it changes a bit. Organically through pragmatism and consensus. What we end up with is not a thing of beauty but it holds together and works with the help of a bit of duct tape and grease.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd be cautious about an in-depth article about the state of the European Union where the protagonists never bring up the subject of France. Not once. Kind of strange.

</comment><comment><USER29> Says the guy who has put his money to keep the Eastern European countries heads low.

</comment><comment><USER30> One of the things I recommend everybody to do is learning languages. This article is one of the reasons for doing that. You are manipulated by translators' interests.

The original in "WirtschaftsWoche" does not use such a strong wording in my opinion. I am Spanish native but work using German most of the time in central Europe.

In my personal opinion traveling around the world I find the Muslim countries in lots of ways having opposite principles to Western values.

They are not compatible: Mohamed told them that adultery women had to be punished with stoning death, Jesus response was forgiveness.

In Qur'an it is said that anyone that does not believe in Ala, Christians and Jews should be killed, including those that call their selves "Muslims", but are not real Muslims. Of course Mohamed could say who was real Muslim and who was not. In other words he could kill anyone he wished with no consequences.

Jesus told everybody should be respected, including those that believe in something different, or did not believe at all. A great difference.

Mohamed married a 5 year old girl and consummated the act when the girl was 10, so by Western standards he was a pederast.

If you believe that Mohamed is God's prophet you have to believe all he did is ok if you do yourself.

Muslim countries are not open, I have visited countries were they kill you if you define yourself atheist or homosexual. There are atheists there, they will tell you as foreigner, but they could not tell anybody in their own country.

If Europe opens the gates to Muslims, Europe will became a Muslim territory. As a European I don't want this for Europe.

<comment><USER31> "If Europe opens the gates to Muslims, Europe will became a Muslim territory".

There are many caveats to this. For example, the US absorbs so many immigrants of different religions that it's guaranteed to stay secular.

"In Qur'an it is said that anyone that does not believe in Ala, Christians and Jews should be killed"

I have been ignorant of Islam. But, if this is true, is the Qur'an not hate speech ?

<comment><USER32> It seems that most of the time people point verses 2:190-194 as example, but frankly, they only tell to "fight those who fight you" [1].

However, in practice apparently some leeway in definition of what constitutes an attack on believers and reasonable retribution is used to justify things going on in Syria and, recently, in Europe. Or maybe they just don't care that much. It's not like medieval Europe followed the Gospels to the letter. The whole discussion is pretty academic.

[1] [http://www.islamicstudies.info/tafheem.php?sura=2&verse=189](http://www.islamicstudies.info/tafheem.php?sura=2&verse=189)</comment></comment></comment>