Should I learn Scala or Clojure next? - <AUTHOR>

I've got lots of experience with Ruby and C++, been doing mostly Ruby for the past three years.  I have experience with Scheme from school.
I want to learn something new, and something that runs on the JVM sounds interesting.  My initial project would be a scientific GUI that uses Swing for the windowing toolkit.
Both Scala and Clojure sound interesting to me.  But I'm having a hard time figuring out which one to use.  Clojure definitely seems more of a mind-stretcher.  Scala seems to have gotten more traction recently.
Thoughts from anyone who has used both?  I suppose I could learn both, but it takes me a long time to really know how to properly use a new language, so I'd rather focus on one. <comment><USER2> Neither sound great for your proposed project. If you are stuck on that type of project, look at something like Griffon instead.

Otherwise, if you are more interested in expanding your mind and thinking differently, Clojure for sure. Scala is nice and a great Java replacement language, but it is quite a bit like Java and looks like Java and can be programmed like Java.

Clojure is different. Clojure is lisp but if it was written today instead of 50 years ago. Clojure is as close to pure CS as we have today on a modern platform.

I encourage every developer to learn a Lisp at somepoint, but today there is no excuse not to as Clojure works on the JVM so easily. Clojure will change your way of thinking and get you exposed to functional programming (FP) and that is a great thing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I hadn't heard of the griffon project before.

I do need to learn a lisp. Clojure's probably the most practical one to learn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In the end picking up both might be worth while (since the two languages can interact with each other in reasonably sane ways thanks to both being JVM languages) but similar to others comments I would start with Clojure as it really feels so powerful. All the advantages people have been praising Lisp for over the years but with massive block of available libraries really is a powerful thing.

I can't comment on the scala community since I don't hang there, but I can also say clojure's will certainly be glad to help, the majority are amazingly friendly on freenode for IRC as well as the google group.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would go with clojure because the documentation is more developed but it really depends on what kind of project(s) you work on.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmm. JavaFX might be a better choice for a GUI app.

<comment><AUTHOR> I dunno, Java FX looks better suited for webapps.</comment></comment>


Find maintained forks for your favorites GitHub Repos - <AUTHOR> http://forked.yannick.io <comment><USER2> I wish this were a Github feature. Active forks of repositories aren't that easily discoverable, even the network graph isn't always a help.

<comment><USER3> +1

An open source project is a _human_ thing. Github forks and stuff are neat, but to have a real project, some coordination is necessary, and I really wish that Github would provide more tools to encourage this. It's really dismaying to see some project with 2343232 forks, many of which are newer than the 'main' one, and see little to no coordination between them.

<comment><USER4> I believe the best tool Github could provide to encourage this would be to make forks _subsidiary_ to the project they're forked from.

<comment><USER3> The solution would involve some kind of communication and perhaps a way of electing a 'leader'. I don't claim that it's a particularly easy problem to solve, but it seems to have been done when people just used a mailing list and cvs, so it is possible...

<comment><USER4> > _I don 't claim that it's a particularly easy problem to solve, but it seems > to have been done when people just used a mailing list and cvs, so it is > possible..._

It worked back when we had a mailing list, CVS, and a web page because a single individual or set of individuals owned the top-level project infrastructure associated with the name in question.

Github broke that model by making forks largely non-subsidiary to the projects they fork. They exist at the same namespace, they have independent bug tracking, wikis, and author information.

This breaks the social economy of contribution that previously existed; even if you choose to not participate in Github, your project will be forked hundreds of times via published Github-based mirrors that _look like every other top-level copy of the project_.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I have the readme be the same everywhere... uff!

I think that is important a distinction between a full fork and a "I do a single fix" fork... but how?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I made something similar to this but used bubble charts: [http://www.toddsifleet.com/projects/github- forks](http://www.toddsifleet.com/projects/github-forks)

<comment><USER7> Much more useful!

Show some of the details sooner if possible (hover?) and you've pretty much solved the problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will add a better metric than simply the stars this week end. Do you think of something you really want to have for a metric?

<comment><USER7> Thanks for following up; I'm not the perfect person to ask but it would make sense to allow all the metrics to be specified as sort criteria. Here are a few ideas:

      * number of forks
      * days since last commit
      * ratio of open to closed issues
      * days since commiter response to issue

Definitely copy the default / demo repo implemented by the OP too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Commits-since-fork might be a better measure than stars, e.g. most of the starred forks of brianfrankcooper/YCSB have no commits more recent than the mainline.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I'm actually trying to figure out a better metric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice site - it has the potential to be easier to use than the github graph. It would be nice to see how many commits the forks have ahead of their parent, or something like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking of a way to give a better view of the forks. with a lot of different aspects of the repo

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome, thanks for this, Agreed on the commits (vs just stars).

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks, this is a useful complement to github's network graph. The ability to sort repos by last update would make it even nicer IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is an asked thing and will be done this week end:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Neat - I would love to see/read about how that's determined (especially for repos with many or few forkers/contributors)

<comment><AUTHOR> For the moment it is as simple as using the stars from GitHub. I just wanted to do a quick prototype to see if people want more or not. And now, I'll try to enhance the rate algorithm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does not seem to work when I try "mrdoob" or "three.js" or "three"... nice idea, if it worked.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have to put username/repo like jquery/jquery or ys/chekku

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice. Ability to sort (stars or last update) would be neat.</comment>


The Price of Perks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@seerobertarun/the-price-of-perks-687b069000d5#.h3enz1hdf <comment><USER2> > However I feel the most valuable thing a company can do for their employees > is to provide them with an environment that lets them feel like they have > ownership of the company's mission and empower them to execute it.

I strongly disagree. The most valuable thing a company can do is provide good compensation (which may or may not include perks). What the author suggests is also important but hardly the most important.

<comment><USER3> It is the dominant reason people join companies. Perhaps the author just assumed this to be understood? Seems that she is speaking more to what makes a 'motivated' employee - mastery, autonomy, and purpose - according to author Dan Pink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> $25K/year on perks, and AFAICT Dropbox still has an open office plan. Keep your sodas and laundry service, and give me a door that closes.

<comment><USER5> The rent for office space is around $75 dollars a square foot per year in SF. So, and 18 by 18 office space will run you about 25K a year. That's a pretty big office, but we still have to put up the walls and the door.

<comment><USER4> _The rent for office space is around $75 dollars a square foot per year in SF._

Oopsie, forgot we're talking about SF here. Haven't looked at Seattle-area office space in a while, but I'm willing to bet it's nowhere near $75/sq. ft.</comment></comment></comment>


Reading disks from 1988 in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/01/reading-disks-from-1988-in-2018/ <comment><USER2> For me the interesting part of this article was the author discovering that he barely recognised his old self. I wonder how common this is? When I reflect on myself, I have a notion that there's a kind of continuity to my ego over the years that - despite the changes in the intervening years - I would recognise. But I'm not a diary writer nor do I have a stack of old disks from a distant part of my personal history, so I can't confirm either way.

Has anybody else experienced what this author describes?

<comment><USER3> I have written quite a bit over the years. And some cartooning. I feel amazingly in tune with my fourty years younger teenage self.

<comment><USER4> Its easy to check, just go to gmail and rewind to first emails you ever sent.

<comment><USER5> Your comment makes me smile :) I was 49 when it was released from Beta. Luckily i kept a journal for most of my twenties. I am making a concerted effort to get back in the habit now. It is great fun to see what my concerns and day to day events were 25 years ago.

<comment><USER3> Welcome to my age range :)

Yes, Gmail is one of those recent things. _Google_ is one of those recent things.

Though that is not my reason for using neither.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let me leave a plug here for the rare hacker news commentator that has Apple II nostalgia, C++ skills, and Linux or Windows GUI knowledge.

After having tons of fun getting my Go Apple II emulator basically working, I realized my efforts would be better spent improving an existing emulator than bringing mine up to parity, and switched my efforts over to working on OpenEmulator.

It has a portable emulation library at its core, and a relatively thin layer of Mac OS GUI to show the windows, etc.

If someone with the right skills helped to create GUI layers for Windows and/or Linux, I believe it would become much more popular, and start attracting more development to add functionality, peripherals, etc. It already has some of the best disk emulation, and almost certainly the most accurate CRT emulation of any Apple II emulator.

If you'd like to try it out, try 4am's build: [https://archive.org/details/OpenEmulatorSnapshots](https://archive.org/details/OpenEmulatorSnapshots)

<comment><USER7> What does it offer over MAME (which merged in MESS), the grand-daddy of multi machine emulators?

<comment><USER6> Areas where OpenEmulator is better: GPU-shader CRT emulation that looks almost just like a real CRT (I have real monochrome and color CRTs for my Apple IIe, and did a _lot_ of comparisons while implementing double hires support for OpenEmulator). Also, better disk emulation that (because of a quirk of how it works) can handle some copy-protect schemes better.

Areas where MAME is better: cross-platform, and you can set breakpoints and debug etc. More devices. Probably more positives, but I'm not super familiar with it. I mostly used it to compare bugs while working on [https://github.com/zellyn/a2audit](https://github.com/zellyn/a2audit) :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a contrast in backwards-compatibility, PC floppies from 1988 (MS-DOS, FAT format) would be immediately usable in a newish PC, just connect a suitable floppy drive.

<comment><USER9> For some definition of 'newish' \- motherboards have stopped including a floppy controller years ago. There's nowhere to plug it in.

You'd have to get a USB floppy before everyone stops manufacturing them.

<comment><USER10> The Intel DQ67OW motherboard has a floppy connector and an LGA1155 socket for Sandy Bridge (maybe Ivy Bridge too).

3.5 GHz Core i7 with a floppy drive is not too shabby.

It also has both PS/2 and serial ports if you would like to plug in a mouse.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I think that's the last generation when they included 3.5" floppy controllers. I'm on an Ivy Bridge mobo and there's no floppy.

5.25" controllers were gone a long time before that though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently did a deep dive into all the 5.25" disks I could find around. I do sort of remember some of the stuff I found, but some of it was rather foreign.

I now have a handful of "flippy" disks and have to set up an old 1541 drive to read these.

I was surprised how much of it was readable, the amount of dust and bad smell these things developed over the 25 years in a basement, but also that I only had about 200 megs of data at the end of the multi-day process.

I also spent some time digitizing Super 8 film too, so it has been a nostalgia trip.

<comment><USER12> Some time ago I listened to my old casette tapes. I was amazed by the 'CD' quality some still had.

Tape is more durable than I thought.

Also: most floppy disks have dust cleaners. So they are not affected by dusk that much.

Also remember drilling holes in the disk for more storage? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> About 5 years ago, I got a 1541 drive and an XA1541 plugged in the parallel port. The purpose was to 'rip' some disks (last used in 1997) I found in my mother's loft.

Most notably, I found an old story I thought was lost, and a trove of insane Boulderdash caves/levels I wrote with a friend - in the Boulderdash level editor - in about 1993.

I'm amazed that the disks survived. But finding the lost story - and some letters from high school - was great.

Find instructions here:

[http://decompiler.org/doc_c64_disks.htm](http://decompiler.org/doc_c64_disks.htm)

</comment><comment><USER14> He would've been better off buying a Kryoflux board. [https://kryoflux.com/](https://kryoflux.com/)

He used an emulator anyway, why not using a faster and easier method, that even has error correction?

</comment><comment><USER15> I had a slightly easier task when I found some of my old 3.5" PC floppies, and I recovered some old ASM and Turbo Pascal work.

The best part was rediscovering the ASM code for a PC program that wrote out the current time in words - I was inspired by a similar program by the late Jim Button ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Knopf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Knopf)), and I remember that at the time I had some fun working how to shave the code down, saving a few bytes here and there by using different coding or optimising the storage of the text data.

There's also a map editor for the PC game 'Rockford', although, sadly, it doesn't work with the only version of the game I've found still available, which seems to be a 'gen 2' clone using a different PC game engine and a different map format.

Anyway, I put my nostalgia here:

[https://github.com/linker3000/Historic-code-PC-Pascal-and- AS...](https://github.com/linker3000/Historic-code-PC-Pascal-and-ASM-)

</comment><comment><USER16> I had a similar adventure about ten years ago. That story is here:

[http://blog.rongarret.info/2008/06/bugged- life.html](http://blog.rongarret.info/2008/06/bugged-life.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Also the USB FC5025[0] controller, which unlike kryoflux reads floppies* like floppies and does not create multi-hundred-megabyte flux-transition maps requiring post-translation but instead gives you a bit level disk image, for many common disk formats.

Also the Device-Side page is very HTML 1.0 and should appeal to HN peeps.

*5.25" floppies.

[0]: [http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html](http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're interested in reading old Apple II disks, track down John Morris' recent AppleSauce work. It's fantastic. He's @DiskBlitz on twitter, and gave a talk at the last KansasFest about AppleSauce: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMrOiYCEuxc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMrOiYCEuxc)

</comment><comment><USER18> What I want to know is how I can get all my old term papers off these floppies I used in the DEC Rainbow PCs in the computer center.

<comment><USER19> They can probably be read by any CP/M or DOS system (depending on which mode you used it in). Though this article says "don't bother."

<comment><USER18> It was actually meant as a joke, the Rainbow used odd disks (SSQD) and a somewhat unique drive. I'm sure extracting the data would be possible but likely much more awkward than in the posted article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Acornsoft sold their games in 5.25" floppies inside some very nice black plastic covers. I found that floppies that had been stored inside these covers had survived, while those that were in the typical paper or cardboard sleeves had not. This was about 10 years ago, when they were about 25 years old.

</comment><comment><USER21> Such articles show how useful cloud solutions for storage can be : the data is disconnected from the underlying hardware.

When hardware progress occurs, files are transferred to new hardware and you could expect that 30 years from now, your files will still be there.

<comment><USER22> Well the ide interface has been there for quite a long time.

<comment><USER21> Yes, but disk drives (readers) are harder and harder to get.

I have 5.25" floppy disks with some awesome software I wrote at the university which is now probably lost (even if I had a drive the content is probably gone). Same for 3.5"s, zips,...

<comment><USER6> Unless you left them near something magnetic at some point, allowed them to mildew, or left them in a _very_ hot car, they're quite possibly still readable. They are remarkably stable over time. See all of 4am's work for examples :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interestingly, I still have the monitor from my IIc. I no longer have the computer, but the monitor is sitting in my garage. Sadly though I think it has water damage.

<comment><USER24> Do you still want the monitor?

<comment><USER23> I have no need for it, but I would be VERY surprised if it is functional

<comment><USER24> Are you in the SF Bay Area?

<comment><USER23> No, Chicago

<comment><USER24> Ah - make sure it goes to a good home

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just yesterday I acquired 3 5440 ibm disk cartridges.. I have no clue how/if I'm ever going to be able to read them, but some day I will try:)

<comment><USER6> Contact Jason Scott at the internet archive and he'll put you in touch with someone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have a pile of similar stuff, including Zip disks (I still have an IDE drive for that, but nowhere to plug it in). Need to clear those out some day...

<comment><USER27> That might be a herculean task - Iomega zip & jaz disks suffered from notoriously poor data integrity/longevity, and I'm pretty sure device drivers do not exist for any version of Windows newer than XP.

<comment><USER26> I intend to hook that up to a USB adapter and try it on a Linux box. I'll post a writeup if I get it working.</comment></comment></comment>


What Snow Tells Us About Creating Better Public Spaces - <AUTHOR> http://thisoldcity.com/advocacy/photos-what-snow-tells-us-about-creating-better-public-spaces-e-passyunk-avenue#.UvfSh4tdU4Q <comment><USER2> I wish driving and owning a car started to become discouraged the same way sin taxes and bylaws are discouraging cigarette smoking. Sitting outside on a bench in Honolulu yesterday, I looked around and saw that half of what I was seeing were roads and cars. This space that could be so beautiful (it's Hawaii after all) was overwhelmingly just about being a transportation network.

I love the feeling of driving a car, but I think the cost is too high -- So much financial and mental stress (not to mention so much death -- A classmate from high school was killed in a crash just last week) is caused by these things and they bisect our physical spaces making so much of our world uninhabitable and depressing. I realize people need transportation but I had hoped the rising cost of oil would cause a paradigm shift in how we commute, and that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.

<comment><USER3> When I visited Hawaii for the first time I noticed that something was very different compared to similar vacation destinations in for example south-east asia.

It's the same climate. It's the same relaxed atmosphere. It's the same hotels. People come there for the same reasons. People wear the same kind of clothes.

But the major difference is that all hotels in Hawaii have huge parking garages. It's a ten-minute drive from Honolulu airport to Waikiki, there's excellent public transportation, hotel shuttles, and taxis, but people still just rent cars, because american tourists rent cars out of habit, not necessity. It's so deeply ingrained, it's gonna take a long while to dispel it.

<comment><USER4> Heaven forbid they use these rented cars to stray outside of Honolulu!

Also: The reason there are so many cars, roads, and parking lots in Honolulu/Hawaii compared to SE Asia? Because the residents of Hawaii aren't poor - in fact they're quite well off by SE Asian standards.

<comment><USER5> For comparison, Singapore is pretty well off, too. And only heroic efforts by the government keep the car population in check. Eg there can only ever be around 1 million cars on the island, and permits are auctioned off. A ten year permit goes for around 100k SGD at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a bike commuter, I look at those areas marked in green as places where I can escape to if I get cut off, or where I can let a car overtake me. In fact, the narrowing of roadways due to piled up snow is one of the main dangers of winter cycling.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a bike commuter and I commute on these streets. I don't think this is as much of an issue in Philadelphia as it is elsewhere. The roads are all small, one-way streets with stop signs at every block. Cars are rarely going fast enough that they need to overtake a bike before they reach the next intersection where they can pass more easily. Less anecdotally, New York has been making these changes with many intersections and finds the roads are safer for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.

<comment><USER7> Anecdotally, the number of car drivers that have the miniscule intelligence required to foresee that overtaking me would yield zero benefit at extreme risk is 0.

<comment><USER8> The extreme risk to them is zero. If they run you over their insurance goes up, and they can complain to their friends about how some "hipster, commie, hippie biker" was in the wrong for even being on the road.

I know someone that was run over by someone that ran a red light. Her arm was broken, and the lady in the car was in the wrong. The lady that hit her had the gall to call her up later and complain to her that her auto insurance rates had gone up. No shit! You run a red light and hit someone, what do you expect?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is neat. It reminds me of being on college campuses where students have created new paths through grass bypassing sidewalks and paved paths. I always thought the worn paths should be incorporated into the "official" infrastructure somehow.

<comment><USER10> Rem Koolhaas' design for the IIT Campus Center in Chicago takes this idea and uses it as a basis for generating the floorplan:

      "...OMA carried out a study to map the "desire lines" of student foot traffic across the campus. These intersecting diagonal paths are maintained inside the Campus Center itself..." - from the project description

Check out the third image here: [http://www.oma.eu/projects/2003/iit- mccormick-tribune-campus...](http://www.oma.eu/projects/2003/iit-mccormick- tribune-campus-center)

One of my favorite buildings!

<comment><USER11> It is a remarkably easy to navigate for how unique it is. Really a treat for the eyes! Crown Hall is also very beautiful:

[http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp- content/uploads/2010/05/12...](http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp- content/uploads/2010/05/1273704810-crownhall2.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems like quite a few of these photos have snow with tire tracks in them. Also, people drive quite differently under these conditions and in a constrained, slower manner. It would be foolish to say that area isn't being used by cars unless you are trying to keep traffic slowed to a crawl.

<comment><USER13> Looking around here in the winter, we could make some major changes to how roads are laid out as well. For example, most of the freeways are just one lane during and right after a heavy snowfall. The cars are also traveling tens of miles an hour under the speed limit. I've even seen two-lane roads become one-lane roads, because people only want to drive where everyone else has proven it's safe to drive.

Driving in the snow is much more dangerous than driving in perfect weather. It's only natural that people are going to change their driving habits. This article has a good premise, but poor execution.

<comment><USER12> "This article has a good premise, but poor execution."

Makes sense, but I take the view the premise is flawed. Its one of those "oh, that seems so obvious" type premises that describe the skin of the onion but fails on pulling back the layers. It seems to happen a lot while dealing with complex systems. The fun part of this one is that it seems like they don't realize they are dealing with a complex system. The illustrating pictures even show some cracks and the author skims over them.

<comment><USER13> If the premise is "we can learn how traffic flows from watching traffic patterns" and that's accomplished by watching where the tire marks go, then it seems pretty good to me. However, watching where the snow disappears first from the roadway isn't an accurate measure, because people drive differently in the snow.

Another example based on the premise in the article: you can find the best racing line on a race track by looking at where the track is darker, because rubber and any leaking fluids will stain the track directly under where the cars are always driving. That's where racers will be driving during normal conditions, but it'd be inaccurate to say that the race track should only be exactly that line, because drivers will occasionally go off that line to pass, avoid an accident, or participate in an accident. In both racing and normal driving, the best line isn't always the _only line_.

That's what I meant by the premise is good, but the execution is bad. It's just a faulty measurement.

<comment><USER12> Don't get me wrong, I think your reasoning is sound and I think I could argue your view with pretty good confidence. Your example is quite good and I like the idea of taking the totally opposite driving circumstances to prove the point.

but.....

I took the premise as "there is a lot of wasted space on the road and we can reduce it" with a methodology of "removed snow will show us what is not wasted". So, I thought the premise was hogwash, but the execution fit their twisted premise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a driver I see the areas being sectioned off as stress inducing. I haven't lived in a city very long but I see a lot of short sighted ideas in this post. Parking is a concern, a place without parking is inaccessible to people from other areas. Plenty of the examples make turning impossible even for small sedans, let alone full sized vehicles. A fun concept that hits a bit too close to home for me right now. City planning like this has kept me from exploring my own downtown area.

<comment><USER3> >City planning like this has kept me from exploring my own downtown area.

Have you tried walking there instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some of us don't _want_ to make our entire life centered around an urban area. I have friends from South Philly who've never been outside of Philadelphia. For all the people here with their vitriol towards cars, that sort of provincial attitude is just as disgusting to me. New Yorkers are the worst about it. They can't imagine there is anything worthwhile that is not in their city.

I've been freelancing from home for 2 years now and the thing I miss the most is driving. I loved driving. Getting out, doing things, seeing different things, rather than going to the same, old places all the time just because they were in walking distance. Getting to places 10 miles away on time without having to leave an hour before hand. It was great.

</comment><comment><USER16> When did roads become the only meaningful public space we have?

<comment><USER17> Such a depressing question. I reckon the book "The high cost of free parking" goes into detail on this question.

<comment><USER16> Walkable City and Happy City are also both fairly good books. Walkable City is better in terms of suggesting actual changes, but Speck's tone is unrelentingly unconstructive. Happy City is better on tone (passing a low bar there), but the meat of the book is in the title and probably better captured by Enrique Peñalosa's TED talk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Aren't the paths just the places where the plow passed? Cars may very well use the rest of the road if it was plowed too, no?

<comment><AUTHOR> The supposition is that if enough car traffic or parking would eventually remove the snow on its own, which is accurate in my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What happens if I take photos of a sidewalk after a snow storm, note the areas that are covered with snow, and argue that the unused space should be used for additional car lanes or parking?

</comment><comment><USER20> It's clear that in the author's world everybody drives a Prius. I guess Amazon and Google shopping drones will deliver everything in his utopia. No need for trucks to be able to navigate the streets. Hey! I'd like to see a plow on a Nissan Leaf!

</comment><comment><USER21> And that's why I only shovel 2 straight lines on my driveway.</comment>


Lisp Cycles - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/297/

<comment><USER2> You should invite Randall Munroe to the demo day :)

</comment><comment><USER3> :)</comment>


The New Hotel Key: Your Smartphone  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304856504579339130820876304 <comment><USER2> If this happens, I will hide my phone and insist I don't have one until they give me a real key.

This is a complete privacy and security nightmare both from the potential of cracking it and from installing an app that will probably grab every permission it can.

It's also going to be entertaining seeing people with dead batteries begging a charge from people in the lobby.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> This is a complete privacy and security nightmare both from the potential of cracking it and from installing an app that will probably grab every permission it can.

Aren't hotel room locks already easily cracked? I remember seeing it on HN last year. As for permissions - if you don't like them don't install the app, they aren't going to deny you a key.

>> It's also going to be entertaining seeing people with dead batteries begging a charge from people in the lobby.

Presumably in this case they would give you a key.

<comment><USER2> >Aren't hotel room locks already easily cracked?

They are, but this will only make them worse.

<comment><USER3> There is no reason to believe that an nfc controled lock is any less secure than a traditional physical tumbler lock. In fact, if set up correctly (well sealed pannel, sound generation of keys, etc), it could be significantly more secure since well set up cryptography is a hell of a lot harder than simple lock picking.

<comment><USER4> That's a big "if". Big enough to be implausible - even nuclear missiles were sitting in the silos for years with launch code set to "000000"; what makes you think that hotels will care more about their security? See e.g. this: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/hotel_door_lo...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/hotel_door_lock.html)

Moreover, the electronic mechanism pretty much never opens the lock: it activates a relay, which opens ... drum roll ... the physical lock. So the old, mechanical lock vulnerabilities are preserved, and new electronic ones added on top. What could posibly go wrong?

<comment><USER5> "mechanical lock vulnerabilities are preserved"

I've never been to a hotel that uses an ordinary key since those can be easily replicated, so that point is moot: all the electronic locks (most common these days) already have this "vulnerability" ("so why put a lock there in the first place?").

Second, since this system is being developed to use a smartphone, the security is easier to manage than a PIN code (such as 000000...). One can use centralised key-servers, etc.

Third, the company making these locks (the physical part) is ASSA Abloy, which is an extremely reputable lock company instead of the one in your link.

<comment><USER2> >Third, the company making these locks (the physical part) is ASSA Abloy, which is an extremely reputable lock company instead of the one in your link.

Fair enough, maybe they thought about the physical side then; Abloy make what is arguably the best mechanical lock in the world.

Still doesn't mean the authentication side is secure though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Smart locks are awesome, I have a z-wave lock in my house, hooked up to a home automation system I wrote so that my front door unlocks whenever I walk up to it. I love that I've reduced the "wallet/phone/keys" patdown to "wallet/phone".

Unfortunately, many of the smart locks that use your phone as an unlock mechanism don't have a good solution for what to do when your phone battery runs out. Usually the answer is "use a key", but the new problem is that once enough of your locks are smart, you stop carrying keys.

In the home, keypads work well (and they can easily be set up for guests, etc), but that seems prone to memory error in hotel situations.

<comment><USER7> > Unfortunately, many of the smart locks that use your phone as an unlock > mechanism don't have a good solution for what to do when your phone battery > runs out.

The only z-wave smart locks I've seen carried in national retail stores also have keypads [1,2,3]. Isn't that the solution to the battery problem?

What lock do you use? I could never rely on z-wave to open mine; I only use that to automate locking up the house at night in case I forgot. It can take up to 30 seconds for my lock to respond to a z-wave command if it hasn't already been woken by some other event, which is a long time to stand outside your door waiting for it to open for you.

1: [http://www.homedepot.com/p/Schlage-Camelot-Aged-Bronze- Touch...](http://www.homedepot.com/p/Schlage-Camelot-Aged-Bronze-Touchscreen- Deadbolt-with-Alarm-BE469NX-CAM-716/203814066)

2: [http://www.homedepot.com/p/Schlage-Aged-Bronze-Home- Keypad-D...](http://www.homedepot.com/p/Schlage-Aged-Bronze-Home-Keypad- Deadbolt-with-Nexia-Home-Intelligence-BE369NX-CAM-716/203397806)

3: [http://www.lowes.com/pd_497751-350-910+TRL+ZW+15+SMT+CP_0__?...](http://www.lowes.com/pd_497751-350-910+TRL+ZW+15+SMT+CP_0__?productId=4755138&Ntt=kwikset+910&pl=1&currentURL=%3FNtt%3Dkwikset%2B910&facetInfo=)

<comment><USER6> Yep, z-wave locks have keypads - it's what I have (Yale Real Living), and is a great solution. The problem I was referring to was the new class of Bluetooth- based locks that rely on your phone, but don't have keypads (Lockitron, Kwikset).

The lock does have some lag in it, but I just try to keep it awake by pinging it, and rely on early detection of the beacon to get the request in early. Definitely not a great solution though, and I'd love to find something faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can imagine that. "App permissions required: EVERYTHING, plus your firstborn." Why is everyone so intent on messing around with my smartphone? Oh wait, my data.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was able to read the RFID card at an Aloft hotel (they were mentioned in the article) using NFC on my phone. In principle, it should have been possible to clone that room card to my phone so I could have just used my phone, but I didn't pursue that.

<comment><USER9> I always assumed hotel keycards are writable[1], so they just change the code on the card and associate the new one with the room whenever a new guest checks in. Knowing what the code was when you were staying there wouldn't be any help at all in the future.

[1] This sort of thing: [http://proto-pic.co.uk/mifare-one-rfid- card-13-56mhz/?gclid=...](http://proto-pic.co.uk/mifare-one-rfid- card-13-56mhz/?gclid=CPK_gbaGobwCFeXKtAodsnoAVg)

<comment><USER5> Some keycards are even completely disposable (paper / cardboard), though most of them are reprogrammable (plastic). I've seen hotel personnel swipe the card to grant me access to my room (with a new and/or unique key, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I smell a DEF CON talk coming...

</comment><comment><USER11> A side effect of this is that your room security is only as good as your SPG account password. Since someone else can just install the app on their phone, log in as you, and unlock your door.

</comment><comment><USER12> I just installed a bluetooth deadbolt at my apartment the other day. It's actually pretty nice. And no it's not a Lockitron since apparently they don't know how to ship a product on time.

The app requests the key from a server and if it's correct it allows you to send the commands to the deadbolt. Now it's just time to start fuzzing for those commands. The only problem is that I can manipulate wifi pretty easy, but have no clue how to put bluetooth into monitor mode.

</comment><comment><USER13> why cant they just send an old fashioned text message with a pin code... then use that pin code to open the door.

messing around with bluetooth sounds complicated

<comment><USER11> A pin code is observable by someone else.

<comment><USER14> So send a new one on every unlock? Have a button on the door that sends a code to the phone, invalid after timeout or after first use. Invalid codes can generate a new code so if someone tries to access your room you get notified as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seems like a solution looking for a problem. Lost your key? Go to the front desk. Not that big of a deal.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady If it works I like this idea. At least it'll solve the problem of phones deactivating keycards.

</comment><comment><USER16> I always thought you should be able to open the room with the credit card you used to book it.

<comment><USER17> Sounds a little scary to me. Trying to secure it against skimmers seems like it would be impossible. All you would have to do is rent the room, put out the do not disturb sign, then you would have unfettered, unmonitored access to the lock for as long as you like.</comment></comment>


Incognito mode in Chrome on iOS doesn't seem to be  incognito - <AUTHOR> Open Chrome on iOS. Then open a "New incognito* Tab". In the incognito window navigate to google.com. Enter a search term in the web page (not navigation bar). Now open a "New Tab" and once again navigate to google.com. On the results page, if you select the search box, you will see the search term that you had entered incognito. <comment><USER2> Quite well known issue: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/3/4797968/chrome-for- ios-inc...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/3/4797968/chrome-for-ios- incognito-mode-not-private-bug)

Even the chrome support page mentions it[0]:

>Note: Your iPhone or iPad might store information about some websites you visit in incognito mode, even though Google Chrome doesn't. This is because regular and incognito mode tabs share HTML5 local storage in iOS devices. HTML5 websites can get this information about your visit in this storage area.

[0]: [https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95464?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95464?hl=en)</comment>


Is Average Over?: Two Equivocal Graphs - <AUTHOR> http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/01/is_average_over.html

<comment><USER2> It does look to me like massaging the data.

There's a simple question: is the average is over ?

The simplest way to measure this is to look at salaries the average people(50th percentile) vs salaries of stars(90th percentile).

Is there a reason to measure this the way caplan talks in the article ?</comment>


Introducing the Knowledge Graph - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html

<comment><USER2> Google bought Freebase that seems like a precursor to their new Knowledge Graph. I wonder is the same people are involved in both projects. Anyone know?</comment>


Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-19/tech-workers-backing-candidates-looking-to-break-up-their-employers <comment><USER2> Wasn't too surprised to see that Bloomberg neglected to mention a pretty self evident reason why tech workers might want that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

I'm pretty sure that if the anti-trust litigation in 2001 hadn't battered microsoft then tech wages would not be as high today. Competition among employers is good for wages, and the fewer and bigger the employers, the less the competition.

<comment><USER3> I am not quite sure that smaller companies can offer higher wages.

Also, keep in mind a story of Bell Labs - the innovation power house hugely responsible for tens of Nobel Prize winning inventions such as transistor and solar cells. You need an insanely rich and powerful parent company to fund something like this (only Alphabet is kind pf doing it these days)

<comment><USER4> _" You need an insanely rich and powerful parent company to fund something like this"_

Or the US government, which funds the overwhelming majority of basic research in the world.

<comment><USER5> There's a sense in which both systems tax ordinary folk to pay for science.

In the Bell Labs system, the tax is the monopoly price paid by folks on their phone bill. In the other system the taxes are collected by the government.

There's a lot of money to be made migrating such taxes to the private sector where private individuals can take a cut.

This is one of the reasons it's often profitable to campaign against things like the public funding of science (e.g. the recent attacks on the NSF).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is only surprising if you subscribe strictly to Sinclair's quote:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

In reality, many many people work at jobs that they don't believe in. I personally haven't been able to hack it - I'm too stubborn to keep my mouth shut at appropriate times.

But ultimately, people can and will vote against "their own self interest". I vote for and fund environmental parties, despite that meaning I will personally lose out in a lot of ways, because it's the right thing to do.

That's part of what being a mature adult is. Recognizing that it's not all about your personal status and/or livelihood.

<comment><USER7> The quote is highly contingent on one thing, that a man's salary is hard to replace. For most of humanity, it is. I'd wager if you work at a FANNG company you don't view it that way. Hard to get quite as much, maybe, but getting some making $250k to move to $200k a year is much, much different than someone moving from $45 a year to $30k a year, or $25k a year.

<comment><USER6> I don't think you can generalize that much.

Personally none of that stuff mattered once I earned more than like, twice minimum wage. Nowhere near $200K.

Maybe that's a US thing, since you guys have so much tied up in work (health insurance etc).

I just think about having enough money to get by and help people around me, employment fits around that, not the other way around.

Sure, people who are actually earning biscuits as a wage are basically slaves. So it goes.

FWIW I don't work in adtech, I think it's bollocks and that everyone doing it should stop.

<comment><USER8> It goes pretty fast if you have kids in the US. We have twins and preschool alone is 700/month. You're also supposed to save like 500/month/kid for college - we have 3 so that's another 1500/month. Minivan to lug everyone around is 600/month.

<comment><USER9> Student loans can pay public school tuition, and anyway $100K plus a decade of investment interest is quite generous for public school, or private school with a scholarship (aka not a diploma mill) or ivy league school with financial aid for non-1%ers. And counting both daycare and saving college tuition is double-counting on an annalized basis. A minivan costs $600/month only if you buy new and trade in for another new car after 5 years. It's under $400 if you keep if for 7-10 years. Your $2800/month is only $1000-$2000 in the real world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe they are donating to candidates who they believe are good for everyone ( including themselves ) and not just good for their employers who could care less about them in most cases. Voting on one issue is a sure way to get a candidate who is against you when they ignore that issue.

<comment><USER11> Yes, this. I vote for candidates that will do right by my children, other's children, the future of our planet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pretty telling that the idea of voting against one's own financial self- interest, even as a single part of a large platform, is a wild idea to these business journalists.

<comment><USER13> Having a few large companies that have colluded to keep salaries down by having no poaching agreements doesn't seem it's good for tech workers. Having a bunch of companies and a competitive labor market is much better for tech workers.

<comment><USER14> "salaries down"

if anything, all IT salaries need to come back to earth. i assume via massive taxation from the likes of warren and sanders.

<comment><USER9> Why should capitalist do-nothings and mangament capture all the wealth of a company? Lower pay for labor is an acceptable consequence of lowering consumer prices, not a goal in itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing I've definitely noticed is the culture of fear in tech about not appearing "progressive enough". Given that tech workers, especially in the bay area tend to come from fairly privileged backgrounds with relative financial stability and also live in safer areas they tend to underestimate the importance of reducing crime and maintaining a strong economy.

This definitely provides a "psychological safety net" that tends to push a lot of these people to vote for more radical leftist candidates that may be directly against their self (and future children's) interests.

<comment><USER16> Or alternatively, they believe that it's in the collective best interest of the country and future generations to elect candidates who are proposing stronger regulation to address income equality, rather than candidates who propose that income equality either doesn't exist, doesn't matter, or will sort itself out without regulation.

Your phrasing suggests that you think someone like me who believes in the strong regulation approach is just "virtue signaling," but I would suggest that it's because I've looked back at the US in the last century and couldn't help but observe that there's a strong and consistent correlation between market regulation and the economic success of the lower-to-middle class. Income inequality dropped dramatically with the New Deal, the notional "American Dream" largely came about in the post-WWII economy -- and the move toward radical deregulation and trickle-down economics in the 1980s coincides with a sharp rise in income inequality, a concentration of wealth at the highest ends, and dramatic fraying of safety nets for the lowest ends. It is not unreasonable to look at all that and say, "Hey, maybe there was something to that whole 'market regulation' thing after all."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't get why this is so shocking. The future of the company I work at is not the most important political issue to me. I don't want to have a good job in a bad country.

I'll happily vote for Elizabeth Warren and if she does break up the company I work at I'll deal with that when it happens.

</comment><comment><USER18> Breaking up big tech companies is undoubtedly good for the workers, create more competition in hiring. It would probably send money downwards and be a huge boon to innovation tbh.

<comment><USER19> Well, maybe. But on the other hand, the biggest tech companies seem to pay the most? Why is that?

<comment><USER20> Say you write some code that increases conversions by 0.01%. Thats worth 10 bucks to momandpop.com compared with millions to Amazon. No wonder that programmers can make more at Amazon.

<comment><USER21> Analogy doesn't really hold up. Increasing conversions by 0.01% probably takes an hour at momandpop.com and maybe a year or more at Amazon. Not to mention low-hanging fruit already being picked at large corps.

<comment><USER22> A lot of things at big companies aren't ever going to be worth doing at little companies. In cloud companies they spend tens of millions of dollars going after 1-2% efficiency gains that really make a big difference when many of these little gains are all stacked and applied to billions of dollars of equipment. Maybe if these companies got broken up, several little companies could sell these little gains, but that seems much less likely than one of the broken up companies naturally becoming big again and doing it themselves.

This field has a ton of natural incentives to scale as big as possible. I feel like the main beneficiaries of breaking up big tech companies are business people and lawyers getting to insert themselves everywhere to interface between groups that used to be the same company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A decade of working in Bay Area tech meant watching kids of rich parents get rich off dubious business plans by creating a startup in San Francisco while their parents buy them a house, pay their expenses and tap into their networks for seed funding all the while the company loses money for over a decade while they become millionaires from selling shares during rounds of fundraising. Then I go for the big guy where they are profitable, but then we are chasing the quarterly earning report because we are scared of what Jim Cramer will say about us instead of the everyday impact on the people who use our products. Yeah, I'm disillusioned with it all. I just want to practice my craft to build useful software for people and live a nice life.

<comment><USER24> > we are scared of what Jim Cramer will say about us instead of the everyday > impact on the people who use our products

Reminds me of a thing I read by someone that worked Broadway for at that time 40 years. He said the best thing for Broadway would be to take the NYT art critics out for a ride in the country. Because no one was making plays for the regulars or the tourists, they were making plays for the critics. Same complaints have been made about the wine industry.

<comment><USER16> It's a great anecdote, but it's hard for me to read that and not immediately think "then explain Andrew Lloyd Webber, please."

<comment><USER24> Guy made a comment about that, said they've been running cats for the last 1 years because they are afraid to try anything new. If they put on a new play and the critics don't give it a top rating no one comes and they lose money.

<comment><USER24> Opps meant 12 years. Currently Cats has been running for 38 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm not entirely convinced breaking up Big Tech will be a net benefit, in fact that position weakened my support for Warren.

But then again, I also don't work for a FAANG (I do work for a big corporation, and they don't need broken up, they're imploding just fine on their own), so I wouldn't be included in that statistic anyway.

<comment><USER14> breaking up big tech (sanders, warren):

\- US short sellers dream: will truly and finally cripple the US and its dominant IT companies; long overdue as US is at most a medium level country

\- huge rise in Chinese IT companies; left without competitors assume the Chinese giants will simply control everything and everyone; a new era of Chinese world dominance begins

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Are "we" backing these candidates because of their social policies, or because they're going to be the best leaders at this critical point in the fight against the climate collapse?

As a group tech workers are highly educated in the STEM fields. We understand the science and accept the conclusions. So we know what we need to do.

That and Warren in particular is positioned as being so fantastically competent that it's very easy to see our group getting behind her.

</comment><comment><USER27> To some degree I agree that some of these companies have too much control over users and collect too much information and give users too little control in that.

With that said, I feel there's some irony in this. These companies essentially have encouraged and enabled these attitudes in their workforce thinking this would make the employers look like they shared the same goals and had to good of workers in mind. Essentially they thought coöpting the workforce was possible without negative outcomes. History shows this doesn't work, unless you are a tyrant and have absolute control and have real ways to control them outside of work.

For example Mao could have his PLA and could have his Red Guards and use them to achieve whatever policy he wanted, no matter how ill advised.

<comment><USER28> Zuckerberg is known to rave about Emporer Augustus achieving 200 years of world peace through "harsh methods".

So they cherry pick whatever stories they want from history to justify their mistakes.

<comment><USER29> Do you have a source for the Zuckerberg quote?

<comment><USER30> Not hard to find...

I think the original is here: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark- zucke...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg- fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy)

And then there's a ton of commentary about it: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/12/what-a...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/12/what- attracts-mark-zuckerberg-roman-hardman-augustus)

[https://theconversation.com/mark-zuckerbergs-admiration- for-...](https://theconversation.com/mark-zuckerbergs-admiration-for-emperor- augustus-is-misplaced-heres-why-108172)

...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not very surprised. I'm a big fan of Warren but not a big fan of her break-up-tech policy.

But I realize that her heart is in the right place and I think what she says will benefit the country.

So I'm willing to accept what might be a bad idea (breaking up tech) for the good ideas that come with it.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm a tech worker and I'll be voting Warren.

Technology really does have the power to change the world and the lives of the people in it profoundly. It is important to recognize that some of those changes are areas of public interest, public concern, and even public policy. The government will-- and rightly should-- demand that such changes be shaped not to cause unnecessary harm.

</comment><comment><USER33> Keep in mind that the top 1% pay 37% of the Federal income tax receipts. If their wealth was removed, who else would pay that amount?

</comment><comment><USER34> There's nothing wrong with voting against your own (direct) interest. In fact what goes against your direct interest can be more than made up for indirectly by making a fairer or generally better society.

Obvious example: green energy, generally speaking, is less economically efficient than fossil fuels (yes, it's getting better everyday, that's not the point). We are probably all going to be slightly worse off economically while we transition to green energy. But that doesn't mean the transition is not worth doing to avoid all the long lasting, externalized negative side effects of fossil fuels.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm sorry but this article is beyond stupid. It is a narrative in search of data.

Opening line:

>Silicon Valley software engineers seem more loyal to the left wing of the Democratic Party than to their own employers.

Then proceeds to include no data that any donations are actually from software engineers.

Then the actual amounts:

>Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who has called for breaking up Facebook, Amazon and Google, raised more than $173,000 from tech industry employees in the third quarter, according to Bloomberg News's analysis of public data on political contributions from employees at 10 large tech companies.

$173,000? Candidates raising money is usually discussed in terms of millions raised. so 173k? how is that newsworthy? that could be 173 ppl giving 1k.

<comment><USER36> I find it weird that she picks and chooses. Limits the execs but takes money from the low level employees.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warren-limits- donatio...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warren-limits-donations- from-some-bank-tech-execs-11571148004)

<comment><USER29> I see no contradiction there. She's fighting against the influence wielded by those at the very top of the ladder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder what the support is after Warren revealed her tax plans?

I would think that increasing the capital gains taxes and requiring taxes on stock appreciation regardless of they are sold would affect Silicon Valley workers who often have a large part of their competition as stocks/equity.

<comment><USER38> For that reason, big Wallstreet banks have threatened not to support Warren if she becomes the Democratic candidate. But apparently plenty of employees of those Wallstreet banks do support her for exactly that reason: they know better than anyone that the situation at the top of their employer is unhealthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It is odd that so many otherwise tech savvy people are supportive of 20th century solutions to 21st century problems (to borrow Andrew Yang's phrase).

People don't want to use the 4th best search engine or twitter or airbnb. We all know this. These kind of things are naturally winner take all and will pop up elsewhere on the global stage if we push them down here.

Instead, apply a VAT. This would be a productive and holistic solution to a 21st century problem.

<comment><USER40> Honestly, in a way, it is almost two sides of the same coin. Warren knows that breaking up a company will not pass muster through Congress, and we will settle on a compromise which is a VAT. On the other hand, if you start with a VAT, the compromise will be nothing

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I work at Google and I'm voting for Bernie Sanders

</comment><comment><USER42> Smaller tech companies will almost certainly be better for workers.

More competitive companies mean more demand for workers and higher salaries for workers.

More competition also likely means more innovation and better prices and more choices for customers.

The only people possibly losing out even slightly are the preexisting owners.

</comment><comment><USER43> I prefer Andrew Yang's method of adding on a general value added tax in addition to providing a basic income. This ensures a distribution of wealth that guarantees a minimum base while not discouraging people from aiming higher by forcing a cap on income.

<comment><USER38> I support basic income, but I'm not a big fan of value added tax. It's a corporate tax that ends up being paid by consumers. Investments and buying abroad is often except, so it ends up as a somewhat regressive tax.

<comment><USER43> So something in the vein of an increased capital gains tax?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Can someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.

<comment><USER45> I think it's generational. SV in the Gen X era was highly libertarian. The Millenials in SV seem to be mostly left wing or even socialist. Broadly speaking that is, exceptions abound.

<comment><USER46> A lot of social democrats start out as libertarians and then move left once they see the bigger picture of power dynamics beyond the individual.

<comment><USER29> This was my experience as well. Started off as a libertarian. But then I started working, first in the lobbying industry, then in Silicon Valley.

Meritocracy is not as good an idea as it seems to be in practice.

<comment><USER47> "Meritocracy is not as good an idea as it seems to be in practice"

Why not just consider that it is a label which may not apply to the reality you observe? Have we gotten to the point where considering that any X is not Y is considered a "no true Scotsman" fallacy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I work at Google and I'll be voting for Elizabeth Warren.

<comment><USER48> Would you also vote for Bernie if he got the primary?

<comment><USER17> Yes, I'd never vote for Trump.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Standard Oil, Bell, etc. Anti-trust breakups have a history of being good for employees and share holders. I'm fairly confident the same would happen here.

</comment><comment><USER50> Monopolies are also bad for labor, last time I've checked.

</comment><comment><USER51> What a surprise. I'd love to be a billionaire, but I like Sanders opinions about whether they should exist. I'd love to be worth enough for it to hurt me, but I like Warren's wealth tax idea. I'd love to pay lower taxes, or less progressive taxes, but I'm happy to support those less fortunate. As a matter of fact, I'm not even a single-issue voter! Perhaps most controversially, I think altruism is good for society. Shocking, I know.

What a crazy idea, voting against your own interest. _gasp!_

<comment><USER52> Wealth taxes are actually _bad_ for society, and _especially_ bad for altruistic people who care about the less fortunate. A wealth tax is a tax on capital, period - and making capital more expensive hurts everyone, but it hugely hurts those who _need_ capital the most. If you care about lowering inequality without hurting folks more than you have to, what you want is a mildly-progressive consumption tax. (I.e. an income tax which exempts most savings and investments from counting as income.)

(Oh, and perhaps get rid of assorted insanity such as Prop 13 in CA, so that the real estate market can become functional, and those who own lots of expensive real estate pay their fair share.)

<comment><USER53> Government spending in capitalist countries creates returns to capital. Financing that spending almost entirely through taxes on labor, as the US does today, means that government spending is (in part) a direct transfer from labor to capital.

Also, capital is not a scarce resource in the US today. For firms that would be worth investing in but don't have access to capital on reasonable terms, the reason for their lack of access is a combination of incentive problems and inefficiency on the part of e.g. VC firms, not because the capital isn't out there. It's true that a wealth tax would increase the cost of equity, but the Finance 101 strategy of "only initiate a project if the IRR of the expected cashflows is greater than the cost of equity" isn't really meaningful for startups since the future cashflows are so uncertain.

If by "those who _need_ capital the most" you mean charities and not startups, a wealth tax would just incentivize giving more to charities and doing it sooner.

<comment><USER52> > Government spending in capitalist countries creates returns to capital.

Mostly, it doesn't. It boosts the value of _specific_ , scarce assets. The increase in e.g. land values that's directly attributable to government spending is a lot more tangible than any fuzzy effect on rates of return for capital. _This_ makes most government spending basically a transfer from the productive (labor and capital) to the rent-seekers, but that has nothing to do with capital per se.

> isn't really meaningful for startups since the future cashflows are so > uncertain.

Uncertain cashflows make the effect _more_ meaningful, not less. Few investors will be well-positioned to fund a firm with hard-to-assess future cashflow, so capital is meaningfully scarce for those firms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> In re: "Silicon Valley software engineers seem more loyal to the left wing of the Democratic Party than to their own employers." Specifically, _loyalty_ to my "own employers."

These are the folks ("dozens" of companies) who colluded to cheat their own developers of est. $8 _billion_ dollars:

[https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon- valle...](https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most- celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/)

[https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles- wage...](https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing- cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/)

\- - - -

FWIW, "anecdata": I worked at one of the FAANG companies for about two years, and, yeah, hell yeah, the one I worked at should be broken up IMO.

An "exploded view" form would introduce buffers and breaks in very (IMO) appropriate places while still permitting the innovation and economic growth.

Put another way, I don't think the economics of scale apply as cleanly to tech industry as they do to mass production. You want more communication rather than less, and that takes time/energy/attention.

</comment><comment><USER55> The only reason anyone in the US supports these people is because they have never lived in the socialist big government utopia these politicians champion. In fact, not even the politicians themselves have lived in the society they propose! How is that for a brilliant starting point.

Ask anyone who has experienced these ideas in the flesh and you'll find someone absolutely perplexed that US voters don't laugh these people out of office.

As the saying goes: In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

All US voters really know about these ideas are the promises and a distorted theory and history that conveniently leaves out the horror, the reality, of these ideas. They have been implemented time and time again in various forms across continents and time. And they have laid to waste everything they touch.

You'd think people would have learned better by now. Sadly, that required an educational system rooted in fair historical exposure rather than one that pushes a single ideology at every level. This ignorance of history leads to repeating mistakes.

Here is the other fact that absolutely floors me: Nobody can name a single nation —not one— which, after adopting these policies, has elevated itself to a level even remotely resembling the success and accomplishments that can be attributed to free market capitalism.

Sure, capitalism isn't perfect, nothing ever will be, yet it has elevated more people out of poverty, cured more disease and improved the lives of more people than anything else in recorded history.

The allure of these twisted ideas comes at the intersection of a badly educated public and the promise of solving all problems by taking from those who have more. Easy proposition.

Reality is that it never solves anything and often creates more problems. The $15/hr minimum wage "solution" is one of the best modern examples of this effects.

The other element naive supporters miss is that the politicians proposing these ideas never live the reality they want you to live. They never live it before or after they are elected. See if you can name even a single politician who has, anywhere in the world and across modern history. That should tell you something.

<comment><USER40> I have no idea what you just said. I personally, have lived in Denmark, Netherlands, and Germany - quite socialist, and big government places, with public healthcare, education, childcare, strong safety nets, unions, worker protections, so on and so forth. And life was freaking great. In fact, in Netherlands, you only needed to work for 36 hours. Those were the happiest times of my life.

<comment><USER55> Those are not socialist nations, not even close. This is a common response that has no basis in reality.

For example: Have any of those nations taken over and nationalized large businesses? Have any of those nations grown government so large that a massive percentage of the population depends on it to survive?

Those countries are as capitalist as you can get in practice. They just happen to have one or more well developed social programs that compare favorably to the US. This is commendable, BTW, and there is no reason for which the US should not actually do better than all of these nations put together on these fronts. The reason we do not is because our politicians, well, suck.

When people point at just a handful of European nations and claim them to be examples of socialism doing well, the usually point at Nordic countries and even places like Germany and the Netherlands, as you did.

This false assertion is always based on a single data point: Healthcare. Or, by extension, high taxes and healthcare and maybe education. Nothing else.

Well folks, universal healthcare does not make a country socialist. Show me where Karl Marx explained this was the goal of socialism and you might have a point.

It's even worse when you truly look a the economies in these countries and understand how it is they are able to do as they do. For example, having an oil-based economy that supports great social programs --which is like winning the lottery at a national level and using the money intelligently.

The reason the US does not have an equivalent healthcare system is because politicians, on both sides of the ideological divide, have been focusing on the wrong variable in this complex multivariate equation: Insurance.

The US does not have a health insurance problem, it has a health costs problem. Until that side of the equation is balanced the situation will not improve, whether you go to Medicare for all or do something else. This is a business, and you have to balance costs if you want to improve outcomes.

What are the cost drivers?

The first layer might be a heavy regulatory framework that makes everything more expensive. Regulation is important and necessary. Over-regulation, to the point where the cost of doing business is negatively affected, is bad for everyone. Just try to develop a medical device or drug in the US and see what happens.

I have been wanting to develop a specialized hearing aid for what is known as "Single Side Deafness" for quite some time. It's impossible without a massive amount of money and likely not a large enough market to make it worth investor's funding such an effort. The impediment isn't in technology, it's in the onerous and extremely expensive (in time and money) regulatory framework. We end-up with investors and intelligent folks devoting their money and smarts to figuring out how to get more people to click on links than devoting their time and money to solving important problems.

Why is it that Europe and others pay so much less for the same drugs and devices that are so expensive in the US. Because we develop them here and the US bares 100% of the cost of the US regulatory burden. In other words, we, in the US, pay for what it cost to do business here. The rest of the world pays for the basic COGS on these products plus some profit. The difference is massive. If the various European nations had to pay for the actual cost of developing anything sourced from US companies their medical systems would crack and crumble. The UK's NHS is and has been in trouble for some times precisely due to the cost side of the equation, something that is unsustainable [0]. In 2017 the NHS's budget represented over 30% of public spending. Something like that is not sustainable. The net result is that care goes to hell, people have to wait months for care and others who are able to end-up paying for private care (negating the entire concept of these systems being the solution to healthcare).

That's just ONE of the cost drivers in the US. Next you have to look at tort reform. For those not familiar with the term, it means lawsuits, doctors, clinics, hospitals, medical device and drug manufacturers exposure to being sued.

This is a problem in the US that permeates almost every aspect of life to varying degrees. For example, if you run a website today you can be sued any time if you don't implement ADA accessibility guidelines. I am NOT saying the ADA guidelines are a bad thing, what I am saying is that in the US we use a sledge-hammer in the form of lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits rather than a more rational and less socially costly process.

In the medical field, the cost of lawsuits is massive. Which also means insurance costs are large. Doctors, depending on specialization, have to pay for very expensive protection (insurance) against predatory attorneys looking to make a buck from any mistake they might make when treating a patient. The cost for hospitals and medical device and drug manufacturers is equally massive.

There are repercussions to this structure. A simple example is that doctors will order and perform a battery of sometimes unnecessary tests on patients simply because of the threat. Nobody wants to go to court and have to face severe career-ending penalties, so they order tons of tests to cover their behinds. Medicine ceases to be about the patient when doctors are worried about lawyers.

Yet another cost driver is the high cost of university education in the US, and, in particular, medical education. When a doctor graduates with US $300K in debt they cannot earn below a certain threshold. Their lives will soon include added costs for a house, car and eventually a growing family with their own cost structures. They will also need insurance for their home, cars, healthcare and practice. Without charging enough for their services they become enslaved to the cost of their education. As it is, most will require decades to pay off these loans.

The cost of our education is out of control precisely due to government intervention. When a government guarantees loans as they do universities charge massive amounts of money for their degrees. The result is a chain reaction of costs at every level that affect the competitiveness of our medical industry in more ways than one.

It's easy to point at a few countries in Europe and, just because they have "socialized" medicine and high taxes conclude that's utopia and the US's problems are due to evil capitalism. A more intellectually honest dive into the realities behind these issues reveals a completely different scenario, a truth where most of the failings in the US are easily attributable to failures in policy and politics and government becoming far more involved than they should.

And then there's the "life is great" assertion and yet we don't see hundreds of millions of people wanting to move into any of these nations. In fact, if they don't control immigration tightly they would crumble in short order. Interestingly enough, if the US made immigration free and open we would probably easily double our population in a very short period of time. Everyone wants to come here, including people from the countries you mentioned. I also presume from your comment you no longer live in any of those countries. If life was so great, why not? The most common answer to that question is, lack of opportunity. Everything comes at a cost.

[0] "10 charts that show why the NHS is in trouble" [https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42572110](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42572110)

<comment><USER40> Those are overwhelmingly described as socialist nations in conservative media and is the north star of 99% of democratic policies

Edit: rest of your response. Where do I even start. Hundreds of millions of people are not looking to move to Europe ? Do you even read the news ? Have you heard about the refugee crisis in Europe ? Have you read about the divide between immigrant community in Europe ? Have you read about boats crossing the Mediterranean every day ?

<comment><USER55> What media says, conservative or otherwise, has no relevance here. These are not socialist nations, period. This isn't even debatable. And, frankly, it is amazing anyone would believe this in a day and age when it is easy to google stuff and learn.

For example: Is Denmark socialist?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzEPKrHalaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzEPKrHalaY)

Get this, Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage! How socialist is that?

You are truly confused about a ton of stuff here. Of course I know about what's going on in Europe. I've only been going there for nearly thirty years with great regularity. I have watched as these uncontrolled migrations have devastated entire areas and the culture in some locations. Terrible stuff.

I digress. You are comparing things that have nothing to do with each other. For example, these migrants are escaping war and, in some cases, genocide. They could not care less where they go so long as it isn't where their feet happen to be during the war.

As a descendant of genocide survivors and one who had extensive conversations with my grandparents, I can tell you that they didn't get out their World Almanac and Political Science books along with world economic reports to figure out where to go; they got on the first ship, train, cart or horse that got them the hell out of there.

Please, stop and do a little reading. I'm sure you are an excellent person and one of great intelligence, you are simply operating with the wrong information and, as a result, have reached very flawed conclusions. The good news is this can be fixed if you are willing to consider things might not be as you have grown to believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Turkeys voting for Christmas. If you break up the large companies, this system will collapse. The reason why Facebook and Google are allowed to light massive stacks of shareholder cash on fire (in pay and acquisitions) is because they have a monopoly which churns off cash, and are protected by supervoting shares.

Very good for investors though. They can buy the monopoly and sell all the OSS/moonshot bullshit.</comment>


Cultivating Friendgineers - <AUTHOR> https://tech.lendinghome.com/cultivating-friendgineers-267b1ddba97#.e8kix3ivw <comment><USER2> Do you find that having so much positivity in your retros silences voices that might be going against the status quo? Serious question.

We've been struggling in our recent retros to find any negatives to talk about, and I've been trying to make sure we're not averse to making suggestions that might feel like complaints.

<comment><USER3> Are your retros a small enough group?

I am more reticent to bring up negative stuff, especially if it's mostly about myself, if my boss's boss, marketing people, lead of product, and the finance person are all sitting in on the retro. If it just manager, project manager and the rest of the engineering team, then I feel way more comfortable sharing in that kind of safe space.

<comment><USER4> this is so important! Our retros are just engineers & engineering-adjacent people (data, design, product managers). My boss sometimes comes to the meeting, his boss doesn't. I think our vp also comes sometimes, but he was one of the first engineers and is always open to feedback, so it's not like "the boss is in the room, we have to be on our best behavior"

<comment><USER4> replying to myself because this is near and dear to my heart: we also do individual team retros as part of sprint planning, which are _just_ teams. (lead, engineers, product manager)

Stuff that comes up in these can get promoted to the all-engineering retro. If it's a controversial topic, discussing it in a small group is super helpful because 1, you can clarify your thinking before bringing it up in front of 30 people and 2, your team has your back and can support you if it becomes a heated discussion.

<comment><USER3> I know you replied 7 days ago, but I've kinda had a crazy week. Having a separate individual team repo definitely sounds good, and I like the idea of things "bubbling up". Things probably do bubble up at my team already, but I imagine my manager shields me from that stuff. Which I'm not sure if I love.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I dunno. I'm a bit more phlegmatic than most, but these sort of things bother the heck out of me.

Most of the things you get congratulated on during these events are things that the company pays you to do, and as other people said, they're not actionable. "Keep doing your job competently!" is not really an action item.

For me at least, pointing out friction and drag is a far more useful way of improving both my own skills and the amount of work the team is able to put out.

Everytime I hear congratulations on things, unless they are truly extra ordinary, I just tune out. This meeting happens every other week. What are the chances of that many extraordinary efforts being exerted every two weeks?

<comment><USER6> I work on the team with OP. It's worth noting that in our actual retros we always discuss things causing friction & drag. All of the congratulatory stuff is done out-of-band in an email sent out after retro.

To your other point: are we celebrating mediocrity? I don't think so. While the things we call out may not fit your definition of "extraordinary", when the main discussion points are around how you can improve, it is important to celebrate wins, even small ones, to see how you have improved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> thanks for posting this Omar!

One of the things I love about LH is how different our retro process is from the places I've worked before. It's in the middle of the day, and it's so open and friendly!

I'd love to hear what all of you do at your retros and what you like/dislike about them!</comment>


Geek love: In an uncertain economy, women choose brains over brawn - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110924/ISSUE03/309249987?template=printart <comment><USER2> But there's a huge geek-fitness movement, so the best of both worlds for women.

</comment><comment><USER3> The most interesting thing is the plug for FeeFighters.com. "marketing ninja" is an appropriate description for someone who can plug something as boring as a credit card merchant account locator in an article about dating.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are girls really being "very subtle" about it, or are we just being dense?

:-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Think "any port in a storm".

Cynical stereotypes. Women are looking for a long term provider, regardless of the length of the entanglement. Men are looking for sex.

Hence men wish to maximise the sex:commitment ratio, women to minimise it. Your mileage may vary.

<comment><USER6> Also need to consider that the ships that find port in the storm are more likely to set sail when it subsides.</comment></comment>


API Rights Management on the Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/aikon/the-open-rights-exchange-protocol-287cffb00a81 <comment><USER2> APIs are the 'present' of commerce on the web.

<comment><USER3> That's fair, but I think they're also a huge part of the future too. Machine to machine transactions are a fast growing part of the economy, and APIs are the most common method for handling that.</comment></comment>


The biggest professional challenge of my career: communication - <AUTHOR> http://tomtunguz.com/the-biggest-professional-challenge-of-my-career-communication <comment><USER2> If you think of communication as a tool, something to keep in mind is that sometimes we use communication in lieu of having a better tool. Once you've made your persuasive argument and have to get to work...

An example, when Wave was still an going concern at google, I ran a team doing Enterprise Architecture designs. As an experiment on one project, we decided to use a very structured Wave/Google Docs approach (I don't remember all of the details). But it cut the communication requirements down to a small percentage of what we typically had been up to. A hundred emails a day might turn into 5-10. Project assets were magically organized and Wave became a simple place to capture the work, ask a couple questions, see where each member was with their portion of the work, offer help etc.

I'm finding similar things with Trello (I'm pretty new to using it) when used for things-other-than-agile-development-management. Emails/IMs/PhoneCalls are way down, assets are already organized, everybody knows where everybody else is at a glance (eliminating the need for most syncing communications/meetings).

</comment><comment><USER3> _When pitching a new product, I detailed the observations, product hypotheses, experimental design, results and conclusion in that order. The discussion focused mainly on the experimental design and the biases in the results and the implications for the conclusion._

I've had trouble putting into words how different mis-communications of mine have occurred, and this sums it up rather nicely. I think many developers I know do this: we're so excited about all of the sound reasoning we placed around our conclusions and the processes that got us there that the actual conclusion is an afterthought tacked onto the end (oddly enough, the conclusion of the communication).

But that's not why you're telling someone something. You're telling them so that they take away _what_ you put all of that work into arriving at, not how you did it (unless they want details later, of course).

<comment><USER4> Some similar advice I heard recently (I think possibly in another HN discussion thread) was to not be scared of "spoilers" when communicating. I have a tendency to try to make my presentations a nice linear development, like a story, which naturally dissuades you from revealing the "ending" before you reach it. However, it's a lot easier to keep people's attention if they know where your story is heading, it gives them the answer to the ever-present implicit question: why do I care?

<comment><USER5> This is the part the I had to break myself. I have always enjoyed telling stories, and they work great in a causal setting but they are not useful (except as illustration) in some contexts.

I did a power point once which was essentially the inverted pyramid in a deck, the first slide was the conclusion, the next two where the problem statement and the conclusion, the next 5 were the problem statement, some constraints on the shape of the solution and the conclusion. Down to about a 22 point presentation on the problem, the constraints, the different paths tried, the lessons learned and fed back into the process, and then the solution.

It was a bit gimmicky but some folks really liked it as they felt they always knew what I was getting at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The book looks really interesting, but at $63 it is out of impulse purchase range. Has anyone else read it? Would you too recommend it?

</comment><comment><USER7> The "Minto Pyramid Principle" looks interesting, unfortunately it appears to be out of print ($60+ on Amazon) do you have any recommendations for similar, perhaps cheaper books?

<comment><USER8> You want an answer, but people don't necessarily want to give you one. So how do you make them want to answer you?

The answer is: sitcom + question = Answer.

Situation (We need to)

Complication (But ...)

Question (So how / what / when / where / can / could ...)

Answer (This is what you want from them).

I think there's a lot of other good communication advice in it, but most looks pretty generic (cut out the crap, use appropriate language, have some structure, etc). You've read Strunk and White right?

(Note, I've just scanned a summary, so that might not be all there is to it).

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a bit more to it. Use of inductive and deductive reasoning. And the process for creation an argument, which I found pretty helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The inverted pyramid method seeks max efficiency under the condition of not knowing how long your audience is going to stick around. That's why it's so prominent in journalism - you never know when the reader might just move on, so get the important parts out first. Outside of that condition, its efficiency breaks down and you'd be better off structuring a presentation within the allotted time.

And if that's the kind of relationship you have with your coworkers, someone's probably being overpaid.

<comment><USER10> His coworkers are overpaid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm going to give this inverted pyramid a try. I'm always wondering why I just can't effectively get my ideas across to certain people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me know what you think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For what it is worth looks like they just released an iOS app as a companion for the book. $15 is the price. It appears to capture the methods of the book plus contains videos teaching the method. No reviews yet.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure if Svbtle has a policy for this, but I'd appreciate an "(affiliate link)" disclaimer after a link to a $63 book.</comment>


The Double Helix of Inequality and Well-Being - <AUTHOR> http://socialevolutionforum.com/2013/02/08/the-double-helix-of-inequality-and-well-being/

<comment><USER2> Hmm. "measure inequality by the ratio of the largest private fortune to the wealth of a typical (median) household"

Seems like using the Gini coefficient (the standard measure of inequality in a society) would have been a better choice than creating a new one.</comment>


Ask HN: What sw do you use to draw simple diagrams for blogs? - <AUTHOR> ? <comment><USER2> Pencil or graphviz / tikz

</comment><comment><USER3> iPad + Apple Pencil + one of Concepts, Procreate, Sketches.</comment>