Edward Snowden in His Own Words: Why I Became a Whistle-Blower - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/edward-snowden-in-his-own-words-why-i-became-a-whistle-blower/ <comment><USER2> I read three quarters of the book over the weekend, and for anyone remotely interested in anything surrounding Snowden (whether the motivations of a whistleblower, a dive into three-letter agency corporate structure, or Snowden himself) it is excellent, and heartily recommended.

There's a point where he talks about metadata, how the NSA is able to justify their "bulk collection" by not considering data accessed until someone actively _looks up_ something from their wide capture net, and that metadata isn't just a byproduct of bulk collection, but the downplayed gem itself. It was at that point I wished we had that information with Snowden's understandable and informative writing style, that I could recommend to people who have no or negative interest in Snowden. I love the book, but regret it's only going to reach the hands of the choir already preached to.

<comment><USER3> I am about half way through the book.

Do you feel he revealed additional details in the book that the CIA/NSA does not appreciate?

IE, location and purpose of buildings?

<comment><USER3> I am really curious why I got a down-vote or two. I was not being facetious.

Outside the classified materials Ed leaked and we all know about, he shares details about hotels he stayed at during training and his trips into what seemed to me as classified information about government building locations.

I was really curious if this is 'common knowledge' or if other readers felt he disclosed additional classified information.

As others have recently said, it seems like this site has changed quite a bit in the recent years from the site I once knew.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I would say sort of the breaking point was seeing the Director of National > Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie on oath to Congress. There's no > saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and > the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions.

[https://edwardsnowden.com/2014/01/27/video-ard-interview- wit...](https://edwardsnowden.com/2014/01/27/video-ard-interview-with-edward- snowden/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't believe we label this guy a traitor.

I never understood how someone who tells the American people/journalist's that their government is breaking the law is a bad thing.

We need less politicians and more people like him in office.

America needs to stop being solely capatial driven and more democracy driven.

Money buys laws.

<comment><USER6> > I can't believe we label this guy a traitor. I never understood how someone > who tells the American people/journalist's that their government is breaking > the law is a bad thing.

I can give a few reasons for those genuinely wondering.

1\. Ends can not justify means.

2\. He fabricated auth keys to gain access to confidential material he didn't have access to.

3\. He shared the information so-gained as soon as he could.

4\. He shared it with geopolitical foes of the United States.

5\. Many reasonable people recognize Wikileaks' objectives are well-aligned with Russia's and feel strongly they are collaborators.

6\. My knowledge is limited here, but does Snowden claim he used any of the actual, legal whistleblower processes before escaping to Julian Assange? My understanding is that he did not.

In short, he could have been a whistleblower, but instead acted against the USA's interests, preferring to break into government systems and share the data with anti-US actors. In so doing he exposed truth it's good for citizens to know, but did so in a way that has had far-ranging, still-harmful effects on the USA today.

* [https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1268209/snowden-...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1268209/snowden-sought-booz-allen-job-gather-evidence-nsa-surveillance) * [https://www.thedailybeast.com/greenwald-snowdens-files-are-o...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/greenwald-snowdens-files-are-out-there-if-anything-happens-to-him?account=thedailybeast&medium=twitter&source=socialflow) * [https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB436/](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB436/) * [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/europe/wikileaks-ju...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/europe/wikileaks-julian-assange-russia.html) * [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-director-calls-wikileaks-a-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-director-calls-wikileaks-a-non-state-hostile-intelligence-service/)

<comment><USER7> Regarding objections 5 and 6, Snowden distributed documents to the Guardian, Washington Post, and Der Spiegel - not Wikileaks. He did insist that these newspapers only publish information that is in public interest, and warn the government according to correct whistleblower protocol [1].

The Wikileaks legal team helped Snowden once he was already in trouble.

He also said that "Even the NSA admits that Russia wasn't my intended destination." [2] so objection 4 is also moot.

[1] "the journalists would then in advance of publication, warn the government about the story they were about to break." [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/edward-snowden-nsa-cbs-this- mor...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/edward-snowden-nsa-cbs-this-morning- interview-today-2019-09-16/)

[2] [https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with- ed...](https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-edward- snowden-about-his-story-a-1286605.html)

<comment><USER6> > Snowden distributed documents to the Guardian, Washington Post, and Der > Spiegel - not Wikileaks.

That's an important distinction, thank you for making it.

Late May, Snowden fled to China. Days later, documents he stole were first published. Less than a month later, he and the Wikileaks legal team were moving him to Russia where he requested political asylum. Many people reasonably find it hard to believe that Snowden's introduction to Wikileaks personnel happened in that less-than-one-month timeframe. Like any journalist will tell you, though, the story is a very complex one.

<comment><USER7> I wish I could send a message to Ed, to encourage him. If the worst allegations his enemies can accuse him of are related to other people, that means his own life choices are blameless.

From Snowden's autobiography, Permanent Record, page 239: "Enter Sarah Harrison, a journalist and an editor for WikiLeaks. The moment the news broke that an American had unmasked a global system of mass surveillance, she had immediately flown to Hong Kong. Through her experience with the website and particularly with the fate of Assange, she was poised to offer me the world's best asylum advice. It didn't hurt that she also had family connections with the legal community in Hong Kong. ... after a sharp disagreement just a month after our first, text-based conversation, I never communicated with [Assange] again... Though I never was, and never would be, a source for Assange, my situation gave him a chance to right a wrong... he seemed, through Sarah, determined to do everything he could to save me... That said, I was initially wary of Sarah's involvement. But Laura told me that she was serious, competent, and, most important, independent: one of the few at WikiLeaks who dared to openly disagree with Assange."

Details that are so personal, openly admitting his distrust and disagreements with Wikileaks, while still writing kind words speculating as to why they would help - this doesn't sound like a long-standing conspiracy and a clever cover story. It sounds incredibly believable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quite frankly, Edward Snowden is the only person I can think of that is "beyond reproach".

He put his life on the line to let other people (us) know about what was happening. He gave us the option to choose our fate. That's more than anyone in the government did for us.

We chose to do very little, but that's in us.

<comment><USER9> I am a big Snowden supporter but I wouldn't go as far as "beyond reproach". A whistle blower is seeing wrongdoing, and reporting it. What he did instead is grab all the files he could get hold of, send them to journalists and tell them "I know there is wrongdoing there, find it among all this legitimately secret stuff that should have never left the NSA". You can see why the NSA would find the approach more than cavalier.

I think given how it affected the public debate, he should certainly be given leniency if not pardon. But that is not to say he did nothing wrong.

<comment><USER10> Snowden's trigger was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, lie under oath about mass surveillance to Congress when specifically asked about blind data collection.

When the head of the organisation commits federal crimes without reproach(he was not prosecuted after the details were revealed), who are you supposed to report to except the public?

<comment><USER9> I am not arguing against reporting wrongdoing, I am arguing against leaking secret files that have nothing to do with these wrongdoings.

<comment><USER11> The claim is so big that I think without those files he would have looked and treated as just another conspiracy theorist.

<comment><USER12> So laws exist, but people don't always adhere to the law for reasons like ignorance and malicious intent. There are also laws which are bad laws & regulation, easily exploitable by clever people, financially lucrative in some cases.

The intelligence services have a difficult task, they need to be on top of their game so they need to know everything and try to prevent problems snowballing unless its not particularly harmful and could be quite educational for future improvement. You have a blank sheet of paper, what would you do to maintain or reduce harm to society?

I say this as someone who has met Andrew Parker, Stella Rimmington and Jonathon Evans and is wise to their ways but not someone who has signed the official secrets but has arguably an "autistic" interest in secrecy and quantifying all walks of life.

<comment><USER13> > but has arguably an "autistic" interest

A) Please don't use autism as a slur, and

B) Please don't imply that if someone cares about privacy, it's because their brain works differently. Hold yourself to a higher standard of argument.

<comment><USER14> I don't think he meant this as a slur. As I parse the sentence, I see a high probability that he meant to use the word "autistic" on himself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What Snowden made me realize, is that how all countries in the world are fighting for a buck, and their own interest. It's difficult to understand what is at stake because there is a duality between the peacefulness of civilized life, and the distrust between countries, even when they're allies, which we call diplomacy. Civilian life is structured by law, but there are no courts to sue countries when they harm each other.

Snowden highlighted a trivial fact, which is that intelligence agencies will spy. Countries will fight for their self-interest. It's important to remember that countries can do whatever they want if the citizen see that it's in their interest.

Snowden just reminded us to always keep Machiavel in mind. That's how nations operate, and I don't think the UN will change this. It goes for terrorism, oil, climate change, standard of living, electronics, trade. If something is not in the interest of a country, it will probably be dismissed.

<comment><USER16> I nodded at first, but something rubs me the wrong way.

I don't know if you intended it, but I read this a little defeatist. I also agree countries will forever jostle their power against each other, because there is no higher court to take complaints.

But there is no unwritten law which says we must let our spy orgs spy completely unfettered on their own citizens. If we let them do that, we might just as well give them the keys to the kingdom. Democracy will die, the feedback loop between corrupt leaders and the three letter orgs will eventually be to strong and everything will be a charade until there is no need for even the pretense of rule of law.

This is the danger we are fighting. (With mixed success I think.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> DoJ is suing ed snowden for all proceeds from this book.

[https://archive.is/M0L8j](https://archive.is/M0L8j)

<comment><USER18> Somehow I doubt that he cares much about that. Or at least, not about the money, _per se_.

<comment><USER19> Remember he is now rather difficult to employ; and needs to avoid the appearance of inappropriate alegiances. So - making money off of a book should be kind of a big deal for him. Also, it takes a whole lot of time and effort to write a book (which could theoretically have gone towards supporting himself otherwise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While it's certainly interesting, I don't think this excerpt from his book explains at all why he became a whistleblower.

<comment><USER21> Sure it does.

> Over the course of my career, it became increasingly difficult for me to ask > these questions about the technologies I was responsible for and not about > my country. And it became increasingly frustrating to me that I was able to > repair the former but not the latter.

He was trying to repair our government by judicious application of sunshine.

<comment><USER16> Imagine how many tried moonshine before that.

<comment><USER22> There is a reason alcoholism was/is rampant in many three letters, but is quietly ignored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The more this guys is persecuted the more of a martyr he becomes - like the Romans nailing a certain someone to a cross. I don't think that worked out as well as the Romans hoped. Fundamentally this isn't about the 'man' it's about freedom and that idea will transcend no matter what the government suits do or what becomes of Snowden.

<comment><USER24> I would tend to agree.

When Snowden first 'came out', I was 100% onboard that he was a treasonous, self-aggrandizing traitor. Even though we sort of knew what NSA was doing to an extent - there were rumors about NSA or AT&T monitoring all internet traffic in San Francisco since the 90s [1][2] - I would not give the argument that what he did was patriotic even a moment of consideration.

Now that things have settled a bit, and perhaps having gained some more perspective, I do feel that what he did was justifiable, perhaps even patriotic.

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A)

2 - [https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy- hub...](https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This little bit _seriously_ has me questioning myself.

Wow.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have nothing to comment specifically other than to reiterate my profound respect for Edward Snowden.

</comment><comment><USER27> The wired.com link is showing up as a 404 for me.

Here's a mirror: [http://archive.is/CmYkJ](http://archive.is/CmYkJ)

<comment><USER28> I can open that link. Try VPN?

But I cannot open the archive.is link, not even with VPN.

<comment><USER27> It turned out to be an issue with cookies. I deleted all my cookies for wired.com and then it worked. Strange, because the front page of the site showed but not the article.

There's some DNS issues with archive.is that you may run into e.g. if using Cloudflare's resolver: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've been reading the book this article is excerpted from. So far my key takeaway is that just because you did something interesting doesn't mean that your life is interesting or that you have anything interesting to say.</comment>


Elon Musk on Running Tesla Motors and SpaceX - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_19/b4227076914379.htm

<comment><USER2> This whole article was light on hard content, but had some great ideas expressed well. For example:

 _Professional managers—MBA CEOs—are not very creative or adaptable, and their skills don't suit a startup. Business is like a multidimensional probabilistic chessboard. The rules aren't set, and the same moves don't always make you win. A lot of people can be really good in a set-piece battle; my biggest differentiating skill is I can invent new pieces._

expresses an idea that most can't articulate well, but seems intuitively true.

<comment><USER3> I agree that this idea seems intuitively true, but I don't think there is a problem articulating it. It's simply that many will find it offensive that a scientist can be better than an MBA student at managing a company.

Then again, Musk majored in both physics and business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this quote was golden:

 _"Business is like a multidimensional probabilistic chessboard. The rules aren't set, and the same moves don't always make you win. A lot of people can be really good in a set-piece battle; my biggest differentiating skill is I can invent new pieces."_

Really shows you how he thinks. And I think he's correct too. And life is like that, in general, not just business. One big multidimensional probabilistic chessboard. Or perhaps a Rube Goldberg machine, where parts of the machine are not completely ludicrous. Part of the reason why I'm building a startup that simulates life. Because making models of multidimensional probabilistic Rube Goldbergian chessboards is _fun!_

</comment><comment><USER5> The article just ended, felt like the author got half way done and just stopped.

</comment><comment><USER6> Commercial from SpaceX on Mars mission: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p6EruPdoXY>

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing I love about what this guy has done is the fact that he actually sees this stuff through. He didn't just talk about these ideas - he made them happen. It's one thing to do that for a Web site that two guys build in a room. It's quite another to literally put a rocket in orbit.

</comment><comment><USER8> liked his comment on Patents.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. I'm glad that he sees foreign companies as competitors... I'm not itching to get in a fight with China or Russia, but they're frenemies. We shouldn't be giving them any more than we have to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, I'm on board. I knew the name, but until now I didn't know how impressed I should be.

Thanks.</comment>


Scaling Cheddar - <AUTHOR> http://samsoff.es/posts/scaling-cheddar

<comment><USER2> My experiences from writing + running our tasks App backend ( <http://tomorrow.do/> ) on Heroku:

1\. Node.js + expressjs is quite an efficient option for serving API and the static site on Heroku, only the single free dyno is needed for over 3 million installs and peaks of 30-40k site visits. Only rarely have we needed a second or third dyno under an extremely heavy peak traffic period.

2\. A commercial CDN is a good and not too costly option for static files ( <http://maxcdn.com> )

3\. AWS database + file services like DynamoDB/S3 are not that flexible but aren't too expensive, pretty much scale up and down without you doing too much and don't go offline much at all

</comment><comment><USER3> whoa. he was not even using etags? wow. i thought aggressive caching is a given for any website expecting major traffic.

<comment><USER4> Obviously. All of this was dumb stuff I forgot to do. There's a lot that goes into building a product :)</comment></comment>


GitHub Releases API Preview - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1645-releases-api-preview

<comment><USER2> So, just to clarify, GitHub is releasing the preview for an API for the Releases feature that they released last summer.

<comment><USER3> s/last/this past/

[https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your- software](https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-software)</comment></comment>


How to get your connected device into a big box store - <AUTHOR> https://gigaom.com/2014/06/04/how-to-get-your-connected-device-into-a-big-box-store-lessons-from-a-connected-sprinkler-co/ <comment><USER2> _" Klein and his team flew to Atlanta in November to install a prototype in the [Home Depot] buyer's yard."_

I only have stories of vendors that have worked with Wal-Mart, where suppliers can't even leave samples of their products in the office (the skycaps at the airport make bank on all the stuff that salesmen don't want to carry home).

This seems a little shady on Home Depot's part.</comment>


Show HN: Android keyboard + Unofficial Google Scribe API - <AUTHOR>

So here's my latest evening project. It's called Scrybe and it's an Android keyboard replacement that uses Google Scribe to come up with text completion suggestions.
Unfortunately, since Google Scribe doesn't actually have an official API, the whole project exists at the indulgence of The Goog. As such, I decided to just release it for free (warts and all) as a fun tech demo.
To see it in action you can check out the video demo here:
http://www.appidio.com/apps/scrybe/
Enjoy! <comment><AUTHOR> Here are clickable links.

Project page: <http://www.appidio.com/apps/scrybe/>

YouTube demo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUQ0NUnMxQg>

Google Scribe: <http://scribe.googlelabs.com/></comment>


Do You Love Any Dead People? - <AUTHOR> https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2017/11/19/All-Souls <comment><USER2> am I at the right place? what is this?

<comment><USER3> Q1) Perhaps. Where were you intending to be?

Q2) This is a webpage created by Ycombinator. This webpage contains a link to a different webpage hosted by a different party.

I hope this helps. Happy to answer any follow up questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a truly amazing event. I've been given pause at the... well, gravity... of graveyards before and found myself wondering why there aren't gatherings of this nature.

Did you attend this event?

Thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER5> why is this here?</comment>


Ask HN: Get options/stocks/futures market feed via API? - <AUTHOR>

What free or paid API provider lets me stream derivatives and stock prices for my web application?<p>Basically I want to build a simple options profit calculator with real time. I might use Meteor.js <comment><USER2> Something like this ... [http://www.xignite.com/Products/](http://www.xignite.com/Products/)</comment>


Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/2011/12/16/dear-congress-it-s-no-longer-ok-to-not-know-how-the-internet-works <comment><USER2> We're talking amongst ourselves, agreeing with each other. This letter is targeted at us, not congressmen.

I am almost certain every letter any MPAA lobbyist sends to any congressman does not call the congressman a "jack-ass" in the second paragraph. Or any paragraph at all. I tentatively suggest we might have more success if we do the same.

What do congressmen want? Influence, votes and praise. What are we doing? Criticising ("stupid", "jackass", "corrupt", "ignorant") and telling them how to do their jobs. ("They should X, they should Y"). Naturally any congressman will feel defensive as soon as they read our "internet engineer" writing.

I propose a three point plan, to ensure the long-term security of our internet:

1\. Tell congressman how important they are, because our personal freedoms and privacy are at risk, and they are the only ones who can protect us.

(Rather than important because they protect content owners from piracy, or being important because of some potential job at Universal when they retire)

2\. Offer congressman the choice of being "Defender of personal freedom/privacy" vs "Distributor's stooge".

(Rather than champion of artists' rights vs protector of pirates)

3\. Educate public of SOPA and tell congressman how many votes they are going to get by defending the public against the SOPA law that cracks down on small businesses on the internet, many of which are operated by your everyday man.

 _I'm sure every congressman, when first elected, thought to themselves about how they are going to change the way the government works and always represent the best interests of the people. I suggest we re-ignite this vision that exists in every congressman._

EDIT: I just realised I'm republican, with all my talk of "freedom", "privacy" and "small businesses". :)

<comment><USER3> It bothers me how, when writing my congressman, the advice is almost always to write in terms of how business will be affected. Sure, that's important, but what about freedom? It's as if citing freedom as a reason to do or not do something is too "abstract" when compared with a predicted effect on business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just wish they'd stop thinking of it as a funny, cute, or self-deprecating bit of humor to stand up and say "I'm no tech wizard, I can't even set my (vcr|alarm clock|mobilePhone).

Its not funny.

It should be as shameful and troubling as getting up and saying "I'm no 'student' and I don't know how to do this 'reading' thing, but here's what I think about books."

<comment><USER5> You could say the same about "techies" who have the same or less knowledge of how politics works.

<comment><USER6> I don't see techies wearing political ignorance as a cute badge of honor. When they want to restrict the rights of politicians, they _learn about politics._

<comment><USER7> Do we not have a standardized org structure for the support staff of each politician:

Who is in the following roles as an aide to each congressman?

* Technology Consultant

* Foreign Policy

* Energy

* Agriculture

....

etc.

We should be able to reach out to EACH layer of aides for all of congress and say "To all the congressional technical advisors, as silicon valley reps, this is our stance on issue X"

These aides should then go to each congressman and say "this is what the tech on the street is saying" and inform them of opinion and reality.

The current system is DESIGNED to keep stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most of us perceive this huge aberration because we are in tech, but the average person is completely oblivious to that and probably thinks that legislators know what they are reasoning about.

The scary part is when you realize that they are statistically just as uneducated in many other areas that they take decisions in (especially those that might touch on scientific issues and require rigorous analysis: ecology, medecine, etc.) and there's not much done to prevent that.

<comment><USER9> Actually looking at the latest approval ratings for congress I don't think the average person is oblivious. They just feel powerless to do anything about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In all fairness, "knowing how the internet works" is a gargantuan task. I doubt even many HN members could comment without making a mistake at the SOPA hearings as well.

The fact remains that something like congress (a group of people to vote on literally everything we do) is required in a democracy, and "a group of people" is never going to know everything there is to know about everything.

There are probably a million farmers out there as well who strongly believe that congress should understand the genetic modification of seeds, for example.

<comment><USER11> I don't think knowing how the internet works is a gargantuan task. The basic concepts, though abstract compared to the physical world, are rather simple: addressing, routing, name resolution...

The tough part is knowing how unpredictable humans and their demands will affect network performance at any given point at any given time. What's worse is mixing in geography and politics, corporations and "peering agreements," etc.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough, as my grandfather wouldn't consider learning seed germination and modification techniques a gargantuan task either, it's quite simple in his eyes.

To fully understand a new topic every day enough to vote on is the gargantuan task I should have been referring to.

<comment><USER12> Isn't that why there are committees responsible for coming up with specific legislation? You shouldn't need all the members to understand all the topics.

<comment><USER13> I thought that this is what aids are for, congressmen hire young hopefully smart ideologically compatible aides who reasearch topics and write good summaries explaining the issues involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From a sufficiently conservative point of view, SOPA outlaws piracy. Of course they're not interested in the pirates explaining technical details of pirating. They know it when they see it.

<comment><USER15> From a sufficiently lucrative point of view, SOPA outlaws potential businesses. Of course, they're not interested in the entrepreneurs explaining technical details of more businesses. They know it when they see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how far we should take this. TCP/IP training for all Congressmen? How about including detailed briefings of how MPLS works as well?

Actually the tubes metaphor is closer (particularly regarding MPLS backbones) than people are willing to accept both because of the pipe metaphor (a socket being two pipes) and the use of label switching (which acts logically as a big series of pipes).

And along these lines, bandwidth was originally a technical term in plumbing.....

<comment><USER17> The complaint here is not so much that they don't know, but that they're unwilling to consult anyone who does before making a decision.

And 'bandwidth' is a technical term from electrical engineering that refers to the width of the frequency band that is usable in a communications system, to which the information rate is directly proportional. There is _no way_ it originally came from plumbing.

<comment><USER18> Maybe GP meant 'throughput'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Actually, I have no problem with Congress lacking knowledge about how the Internet works, as long as they keep their hands off of it.

<comment><USER20> They can't. Congress is responsible for regulating interstate commerce and creating intellectual property laws. Even a blanket statement that US laws don't apply to the Internet would have a detrimental effect. In the long run, the only way for Congress to not harm the usefulness and freedom of the Internet is for legislators to understand the Internet and specifically craft laws to avoid negative side effects.

<comment><USER21> > Congress is responsible for regulating interstate commerce and creating > intellectual property laws.

They're not obligated to do either of those things - they merely have the authority to do so.

> In the long run, the only way for Congress to not harm the usefulness and > freedom of the Internet is for legislators to understand the Internet and > specifically craft laws to avoid negative side effects.

Was that true for electricity? How about railroads or telephones?

Heck - I'd argue that the only thing that Congress has ever "understood" is alcohol, and they've botched that at least twice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dear Congress,

It's no longer okay (and never has been) to listen to people who are paid to convince you to pass a law that benefits only them. Instead, you should listen to the people who know what they are talking about and aren't being paid.

</comment><comment><USER23> I understand the author's frustration that Congress does not understand how the internet works. But does anyone know of any simple article or books that would be able to teach non-tech savvy Congressmen how the internet works? The material would probably need to be short enough for them to digest in 1 full day at a maximum. If anyone has any great suggestions, I would be happy to pass them along to my Congressman.

<comment><USER9> They don't seem to care about learning any of it, in fact seeing how a lot of those congressmen were against having technical experts comment on the bill, I don't see why they would care about reading anything on how DNS works and why securing it from tempering is important.

<comment><USER24> This is the important thing. Would it be useful if they read some Wikipedia entries before they started writing legislation (or, perhaps more accurately, accepting legislation written for them by the MPAA)? Yes. Do they have to? No. They just need to accept that they should bring in experts, and have the experts sit and explain everything to them. They can ask questions and find things out. This is actually accepting that you are not knowledgable with everything, and this is OK.

What they have done is said "No, we don't understand this stuff, because we're not socially-inept _nerds_ like you _chortle chortle_ and if we have you sit here, we'll have you say one thing, the guy from the MPAA say the opposite, and then we'll be right where we started and not know who to believe. So why bother?"

This is amazingly unacceptable. What I find particularly galling is the idea that any single opinion has the exact same weight as any other. The other thing that frustrates is that if, for some reason, you don't trust the private sector to tell things to you straight, there are countless government entities that do know how this all works and are theoretically more impartial. Have a guy from the NSA sit down with you and tell you what's up.

But they haven't done any of this. It's quite amazing that they don't even bother to do any of the song and dance just to give the _impression_ of any due process. It's just "voters don't pay for my new kitchen, but these lovely _donations_ do."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't agree.

It's quite acceptable to me for Congress not to know how technical stuff works. But they _do_ need to pay attention to the input of their constituents and experts in the field. They also need to make sure constituents get enough information, in a timely manner, to allow them to advise Congress appropriately.

P.S. Why the endless mockery of the late Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens? (Because he said "tube" instead of "pipe"?)

</comment><comment><USER26> Dear Congress, it may be okay to not know how the Internet works. "Math is hard!" and all that. However, your oath of office dictates that you uphold the Constitution, including and especially the Fifth Amendment.

</comment><comment><USER27> rather than post lists of ip addresses somwhere (which, btw, won't work on virtual servers that have multiple sites on one ip) we need something the rest of the world can link to if we expect Americans to use the links on our site, so we can write for example href="

          http://uncensoredsite.de/redirect?siteiwant=thepiratebay.org

which returns http-equiv refresh; url=22.214.171.124

\-- essentially a web-based, but trustworthy dns service.

there are sites like

<http://baremetal.com/cgi-bin/dnsip?target=thepiratebay.org>

but they're presumably just doing a lookup on a us-based nameserver, we need a site that uses an uncensored server and that provides an http redirect.

Is there to be direct blocking of ip addresses at all? Will everyone nerdy in America just be able to change their OS DNS settings to something outside the US?

</comment><comment><USER28> Frankly, it's about time Google gets into politics, and starts throwing their weight(and money) around.

Google makes more money than the entire opposition combined. Create a internet freedom pac, fill it with a few hundred million, hire a few lobbyists, and buy back the government.

<comment><USER29> For what it is worth, Google _has_ begun throwing its weight around in politics, although not to the tune of a few hundred million dollars:

This article [1] in the _San Jose Mercury News_ from September reports that Google has ramped up its lobbying spending and notes that 14 lobbying firms have now listed Google as a client:

 _Google has also ramped up its spending on lobbying, with the company spending $3.5 million in the first half of 2011, according to U.S. Senate records -- a pace that if continued over the course of the year would boost Google's lobbying spending this year by more than a third over 2010.

Google has hired well-connected lobbyists, both on the Democratic and Republican side of the aisle, including the Gephardt Group, the firm founded by former Democratic House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, and a firm headed by the son of Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar._

[1] Google's Schmidt to Testify Before Senate Panel

<http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_18938739>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yes Congress it is perfectly OK to not know how the Internet works.

If congressmen/women can pass all manner of legislation without knowing how Medicine or Medical care works, How Car manufacturing works, How basic economics works, How Basic Science Research works, How Global climate works, etc, etc - Why should the Internet be a special case?

Face it Median Age at which Senators take office is 51* years (with a few exceptions) Ignoring all the special interests, Politics, etc etc - How many 51+ year olds (non -IT) are really comfortable with the Web?

[*][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_Senators_by_age)

</comment><comment><USER31> Actually, it's 100% OK to not know how the Internet works. What is NOT OK is to have no idea, but still vote on Internet exclusive issues.

THAT is just outright stupid!

<comment><USER32> To that I'll add:

Active refusal to seek out or listen to those who actually _do_ know how the internet works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I know that this is slightly off topic, but can someone tell me what the site is built with? I looked at the source did not figure it out. Back on topic, I agree that no law should be passed in ignorance and with no intention of expert testimony. The way it is done now makes it seem as if they already made up their mind but they want and go through the motions to make it look like they are debating.

<comment><USER34> If you trust the response headers,

      X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) 2.2.10

      Server: nginx/0.7.65 + Phusion Passenger 2.2.10 (mod_rails/mod_rack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't agree with this. Congress can only know so much, and I would prefer them to understand how health care works, how wars work, and how spending money works way before they understand the internet. In fact, there are dozens of things they should know before the internet.

Actually, if they just outlawed lobbyists that would be a big start.

<comment><USER36> They don't need to understand it, but they need to know that they don't understand it and that they need to listen to people who do.

<comment><USER35> So who do they listen to, the experts from the RIAA/MPAA, or the experts from Google?

Do you guys actually think about this stuff? If you do not know what you are making judgements on (you are the government), how do you find the right experts? You can't. You trust advisers, but everybody has an agenda, including the Universities Professors. This is not a solved problem, and anyone who thinks it is easy is wrong.

<comment><USER37> I don't know about you, but if I were writing a law about the internet, I'd probably talk to Google over the RIAA. The problem here is that they're writing a law about the internet to solve a problem somewhere else. So, instead of asking the people that are being affected, they're asking the people who they're trying to help.

But yeah, to answer your question? If it's a law about the internet, you ask Google, just as if it were a law about the Billboard Top 100, you ask the RIAA. For expert advice, at least.

<comment><USER35> Why would you choose Google? Because you are an expert in the field. Once again, you don't seem to understand what it is like for a non expert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "well meaning"

I don't think we can assume that any more. Not with every amendment being shot down with glee and contempt.

</comment><comment><USER39> I really doubt that they are hell bent on passing this (just) because they are ignorant of how the internet works. I imagine they need to pass this in order to justify certain campaign donors.

</comment><comment><USER40> I have been thinking about dividing Congress/Parliament into working groups focused on a specific topic instead of political parties focusing on a specific ideology for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is what happens when you let companies contribute to the campaigns (i.e. ability to rise to power) of politicians.

The American system is broken, get with the program.

</comment><comment><USER42> Not that this would solve _all_ the issues raised by this bill, but it's really way past time for a decentralised replacement technology for DNS.

</comment><comment><USER43> Quite frankly they don't even know how a normal economy works, how manufacturing works, what generates real middle class job growth, how wealth is created (hint: not from insider deals via political connections). They're like captains of a ship that know nothing about how a ship is built or what makes it float.

<comment><USER44> Or like developers that got promoted to management and have no idea how to actually manage.

<comment><USER45> Actually, if you want to continue the theme, the better analogy would be people managing developers who have no idea how to make software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "This used to be funny, but now it's really just terrifying. We're dealing with legislation that will completely change the face of the internet and free speech for years to come. Yet here we are, still at the mercy of underachieving Congressional know-nothings that have more in common with the slacker students sitting in the back of math class than elected representatives. The fact that some of the people charged with representing us must be dragged kicking and screaming out of their complacency on such matters is no longer endearing — it's just pathetic and sad."

THISSSSSSS</comment>


Flux over the Wire using Websockets and Immutable JS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rotenberg.io/flux-over-the-wire-3/ <comment><USER3> I see that Remutable uses 'patches'. How does it compare with ShareJS? Does it allow collaborative editing (ie multiple people changing the same data structure concurrently, is patch application commutative)?

The idea behind ShareJS (or OT for that matter) is awesome. You never have to think about what to do if two people edit the same document concurrently. It just works. You get undo for free. And you can write the code that it saves automatically in the background. Never again do users have to press a 'save' button.

A while ago I wrote a library which builds on top of the same ideas as ShareJS (ie. OT) but with slightly different focus. You define object types and their properties. This allows the library to automatically parse JSON into JavaScript class instances. It also tracks changes to these objects in a very similar way as ShareJS: each change has a 'path' (where something was changed) and then the actual chang record (currently set and splice).

I use Avers in an SPA which is an editor of fairly complex data structures (90 different object types, nested ~5 levels deep). For rendering I use React. The integration is really simple: Attach a change listener to the root and re- render when anything changes.

[https://github.com/wereHamster/avers](https://github.com/wereHamster/avers) [https://caurea.org/2015/02/08/the-future-of- avers.html](https://caurea.org/2015/02/08/the-future-of-avers.html)

<comment><USER4> Interesting. I'm surprised at how little work seems to have been done around OT (operational transformation, for those who haven't heard of it before).

I have an application where I hold a lot of synced data in the client and the server but I've struggled to find good libraries to help manage that. Generally the work seemed to be around text, rather than arbitrary objects. Sharejs was the best I could find, but my BE system is python (and the object support in ShareJS was a bit sketchy when I looked at it).

Unrelated but looking at your project I saw you were using Sets and Maps. I didn't even know JS had those yet (and they're something I really miss coming from python). Will be switching immediately.

<comment><USER3> Avers supports only two operations, _set_ and _splice_. It is very simple to implement in any language. My backend is written in Haskell. The code dealing with applying the patches is about 200 lines.

With these two operations you can edit arbitrary data structures. The user experience may not be the best, for example if two people edit the same text, because if you only have set then latest change wins. But maybe your data structures are not text heavy. Or they have many small text fields where the 'latest change wins' semantic is actually desireable.

At my previous company we also used and OT based patch system. And we didn't have text-editing support, we only had an equivalent to _set_ in Avers. And it worked alright. Which operations you need depends on the application, ShareJS is good for one particular type, but too complex (or maybe even lacking) for others.

As for maps and sets, see [http://kangax.github.io/compat- table/es6/](http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/) how good the support is. There are polyfills though if you need to support older browsers.

<comment><USER4> I'd be happy with set and splice. Text isn't really a big deal for my use case. Will have more of a read through your code later today too. Thanks for posting.

Great support list! Thanks for that. My customers all use the latest Chrome, so I'm ok with fairly bleeding edge features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, I don't really get it yet, but "single source of truth" sounds to me like it needs extra round-trips to this "source of truth" in order to update the display (even if the updates come from the client itself). Is that correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, although its fairly easy to implement optimistic updates on top of this. Since patch objects are reversible, you can use a simple logical clock and an undo/redo stack to perform optimistic updates locally, and undo them/redo them when the remote SSoT sends updates.

<comment><USER5> Well, it could be me, but that doesn't sound very simple. Isn't that something the framework should take care of?

Also, what happens when simultaneously transmitted actions/patches are in conflict?

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. I plan to include it in the framework ultimately, although it requires implementing an optimistic client-side dispatcher in JS which mocks the optimistic behaviour of the actual, eventually true server-side dispatcher (which may not always be implemented in full JS, eg. if it needs to sync with a db).

Conflicts are handled by the server-side dispatcher logic. Many applications can handle conflicts easily (eg. chat rooms which only append new messages), others can be more complex (eg. document editing). As mentionned in another comment, Remutable.Patch leaves room for rebase-like algorithms. Its definitely a very promising further work! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Alas, I've been working on something like this for the last few weeks on and off, especially the "patching" of immutable data, my solution was to use jiff[1], which generates JSON Patch operations[2], which is then applied to the Immutable object using immpatch[3] (a lib I wrote).

A cursory look at Remutable seems it to be the better and faster option :)

[1] [https://github.com/cujojs/jiff](https://github.com/cujojs/jiff)

[2] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6902](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6902)

[3] [https://github.com/zaim/immpatch](https://github.com/zaim/immpatch)

(edited formatting)

<comment><AUTHOR> That was nearly exactly my initial approach! :)

However I realized actual diffing was really slow, especially for large collections, as it involves scanning the entire structure for changes, when in fact all changes could simply be flagged upon mutation. Conceptually, it performs diffing (ie. it gives you a diff object), its just much, much faster!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Remutable looks really impressive. I'm a little leery of the rest of it, though, as it means my backend is no longer a simple REST API. I'm also rather nonplussed that the full-stack Flux doesn't include optimistic display with loading icon, error state, and rollback handling out of the box. It doesn't even seem like an easy thing to do manually with this setup, though I haven't played with it enough to know.

Few minor questions: it looks like a base Remutable must be an Immutable.Map(). Can child items be any of the Immutable datatypes? Do we get updateIn() and similar?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. Several other comments point in the same direction: automatic (or assisted) handling of optimistic updates. I think this is actually relatively easy, since there are clear hooks in the Nexus Flux API to implement dispatch-time and update-time behaviour, but I will definitely provide an example, or even better, an implementation of this that just works out of the box.

<comment><USER8> This is a really cool implementation! I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible to handle optimistic updates by submitting a request to the server and then submitting an optimistic response from the client to itself. Then, when the server comes back, you hook into the already present optimistic response and just confirm or deny it based on the response from the server. That way you keep as little state on the client as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > We will rather record the mutations (or more accurately, the transitions > between immutable states), and just replay them on the client.

Few questions -

How can we replay all the mutations?

How about instead of replaying, if we just show the last mutation? Will it not be the same thing?

I think this flux architecture will work best only in chatting applications. This approach is also making the app itself very chatter so performance concerns in case you do not have strong machines.

I think on form pages this flux approach may not be required.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, a crashed site presenting a web architecture surely isn't classy! Sorry about that, I'm working on it.

<comment><USER10> Y'know... I quite liked jumping in and reading right away! Didn't notice it was lacking certain assets at first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The best example of single source of truth may be chat, but I believe chat is the best example of a replicated log. This throw me off a bit while reading the article :| Left it, came back to the comments later to see people talking about OT and realized I missed something. Just an obesevation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Synchronising state over the wire? Surely this is a solved problem in games development already - serialise your state into a consistent binary form, send over the binary diff of the previous state (AKA delta compression), deserialise on client side.

</comment><comment><USER13> Take a look at swarm.js for a fantastic way to keep stores in sync - <USER2> works in offline. Matrix.io could also be an interesting option for this, but focuses more on communication than shared data.

</comment><comment><USER14> The single source of truth diagram is so great! :) Was getting tired of turning my head sideways..

</comment><comment><USER15> cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.rotenberg.io/flux- over-the-wire-3/)

</comment><comment><USER7> slightly offtopic question; what are all those `should.be.exactly(whatever)` calls in the Remutable readme?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its shouldJS. An assertion lib with a fun chainable DSL. Basically whatever.should.predicate desugars to assert(predicate(whatever)). See [https://github.com/shouldjs/should.js](https://github.com/shouldjs/should.js) :)</comment></comment>


There Are No Houses for Amazonians - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/migration-issues/no-room-at-the-inn-for-amazon-effda4edc00f <comment> taw-an "That means that what Amazon is really looking for is something else: that special something."

Massive tax breaks and giveaways. That's all this is about. It's a dog and pony show to see who will fork up the most to buy in to the delusion that it will pay off somehow.

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

And what is particularly galling about Amazon is they essentially pay no taxes. Since 2008, Amazon has paid $1.8B in income tax while Walmart has paid $64B [1]. So they're basically leeches demanding public services while contributing virtually nothing. As someone whose name I've forgotten said, the fundamental question surrounding silicon valley / SV type companies is how do you run a country when a company with $0.5T market cap / Fortune #12 essentially pays no taxes. Who pays for roads/fire services/schools.

[1] [https://www.l2inc.com/daily-insights/no-mercy-no- malice/brea...](https://www.l2inc.com/daily-insights/no-mercy-no-malice/bread- crumbs)

<comment><USER5> Do the thousands of employees contribute economic benefit, as well as taxes, to Seattle or other cities?

It's absurd to think that there is no tax money being injected into the city simply because the corporate tax collected is low. They are spending their profits! Some of it in Seattle, and in other places they have physical presence on wages, real estate, etc.

Honestly you need to explain your premise that they contribute nothing... it's illogical. Where is the money going?

Why are "taxes" the only way citizens of a community can prosper? Do wages not count? If they do count, would you like to argue that Amazon is not paying wages to thousands of employees?

Do those employees pay taxes? Taxes aside, are the wages themselves beneficial?

One final point: "tax breaks" in and of themselves seem silly to rail against, like a shareholder being upset at "discounts".

Is your contention that a city giving _any_ tax breaks will see less tax revenue as a result of Amazon coming into their city than if they didn't? Surely it's a question of how much no?

<comment><USER6> It's a prisoners dilemma - if no cities offer tax breaks, then Amazon likely still chooses a site in the US, and we all benefit from better balanced gov't budgets (or if there is enough incoming flow - we could lower tax rates in a fiscally responsible way - imagine that). If some cities defect, then well it breaks down to forgoing taxes and public budgets get harder to meet. Federal grant programs should look hard at cities applying for funding who may have given up local tax revenue to attract private corporations.

<comment><USER5> I dispute the claim that, on net, they would be "giving up" tax revenue. Or at least, the particulars matter.

Above some threshold, which can still be very low, they are going to get _massive_ amounts of tax revenue, aside from the fact that wages, jobs, and citizens paying taxes will increase.

You might dispute this, but I don't see any numbers or qualifiers with anyone saying "tax breaks", in and of themselves are always on balance, whatever the specific details, worse than not having the companies be there.

There are lots of debates on the correct form of taxes anyways. Corporate taxes of non-trivial rates seem pointless to me, or.. detrimental actually. Property tax abatements? No different from a landlord giving rent deferrals to a whale tenant. _It can be a very practical choice_

Politicians' incentives not being aligned with long term goals of a city? Yes.. that is a problem. But still. The _right_ choice could very well be massive tax breaks, even among those of differing political philosophies.

<comment><USER6> Suppose no cities offer tax breaks and Amazon grumpily decides to establish a second headquarters anyway wouldn't the tax revenue in that be higher as a nation than if one city offers breaks?

I sort of agree only on corporate tax breaks - pragmatically there is little point keeping them so high that most international corporations keep their profits offshore. I'd favor lowering corporate overseas rates, but only in combination with increased enforcement against tax avoidance schemes. But to me thats an unrelated to local city/state tax breaks given to corporations.

<comment><USER5> At the end of the day a lot of this seems like sort of an accounting question.

Since Amazon uniquely doesn't earn much profit, preferring to invest / spend as much of their revenue as possible, one could argue that there is an opportunity cost to collecting more money from Amazon in taxes vs leaving it to them to spend how they see fit. The cost is whatever alternative use they would place on that money... more employees hired, higher wages / benefits, more R&D, more capital expenditure, more construction, who knows.

Or course, in every one of those cases, there would likely be taxes involved anyways...

<comment><USER6> We do know. Taxes are already fairly low in the US. Kansas ran a broad scale experiment with dramatically lowering state taxes - the results indicate that some magic growth is not unlocked. My conclusion is that cities are just giving up local budget balance for little benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >> Can any city provide a net increase in 5,000 housing units? Well, that's a speculative question, but one thing we can do is ask if any city did produce 5,000 extra housing units beyond household formation over the last 5 years

Calgary (Alberta, Canada, not Texas) added triple that in 2014[1]. Since the province's economy is commodity driven the major city centers are accustomed to boom and bust cycles and are used to adding housing quickly. Also of note, Calgary has rated quite high based on a number of other metrics given by Amazon[2] (though, to be fair its really hard to trust all bias is left behind in these analyses)

[1] [http://calgaryherald.com/life/homes/new-homes/calgarys- housi...](http://calgaryherald.com/life/homes/new-homes/calgarys-housing- market-experienced-great-growth-in-2014) [2] [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/amazon-headquarters- ca...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/amazon-headquarters-calgary-tops- data-crunchers-analysis-jens-von-bergmann-1.4298204)

<comment><USER8> The #1 problem with the article is that it restricts the analysis to the U.S.. With the current political climate around immigration, Amazon can't easily bring engineering talent from around the world to its headquarters. A site outside the US could solve that. The RFP said "North America".

<comment><USER9> > With the current political climate around immigration, Amazon can't easily > bring engineering talent from around the world to its headquarters.

A crack down on H1B abuse will free up tens of thousands of spots for companies like Amazon to bring in real talent.

You have companies like Tata getting 5x as many H1B visas as Amazon. And yet they pay their H1B staff on average ~$50k/year less than Amazon.

<comment><USER10> > A crack down on H1B abuse will free up tens of thousands of spots for > companies like Amazon to bring in real talent.

Yes, and unicorns would be nice, but let's stick to things that are actually likely to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It may be true that no city fits what Amazon wants, but I think Atlanta comes very close. It has plenty of housing, low cost of living, major airports, universities, a large population, and a decent rapid transit that could be expanded given a catalyst like Amazon. I think Amazon should opt for a low cost, big city, and let that city build around Amazon.

<comment><USER12> >It has plenty of housing, low cost of living, major airports, universities, a large population, and a decent rapid transit that could be expanded given a catalyst like Amazon.

I live in Atlanta and all of these things are true except that last one. MARTA has neither the coverage or the competence to qualify as 'decent'. Even if they plopped the HQ right on top of Five Points (as is being proposed), most employees are still gonna drive, and encounter that world-class ATL rush hour traffic.

That said, Atlanta is still definitely in play, and our department of economic development (which I used to work for) is one of the most effective in the country. They brought Hollywood to Atlanta already, Amazon shouldn't be that much harder. Culturally, I expect it would encounter a mixed reception.

<comment><USER13> _MARTA has neither the coverage or the competence to qualify as 'decent'._

Compared to New York, Chicago, DC, Boston, or SF sure. Assuming Amazon isn't going to expand to a more expensive city, the only competing subway system is in Philadelphia. MARTA is unpopular, but cleaning it up and buying new trains is cheap compared to digging new tunnels through an existing city. No one points out that the Gulch site is currently a wasteland because we all know that if Amazon shows up, _it won 't be_.

<comment><USER12> The gulch is next to Phillips Arena and MB Arena- imagine the traffic during a weekday ATLUTD game and a hawks/concert. It's alot of wasted vertical space for now, but useful for temporary gatherings; we used it as a basecamp for a film shoot a couple weeks ago. I suppose they could rip out and replace Vine City with Amazon-friendly housing, but that would cause some issues.

<comment><USER13> If Amazon moved to the Gulch, employees would probably live in O4W, Decatur, Midtown, or Buckhead, and take MARTA in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The premise is interesting, but some of the calculations aren't convincing. The first map of cities that "did produce 5,000 extra housing units beyond household formation" is particularly strange. Which city is more prepared for such an expansion, one that built zero units and lost 5,000 residents, or one that built 100,000 units and gained 100,000 residents? Without greater clarity into the data, many of these maps fall into "lies, damn lies, and statistics".

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that struck me as odd too. Under normal circumstances, you wouldn't expect private developers to build that much excess inventory on spec with no expectation of being able to sell quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Completely unrelated to the topic at hand, but I've gain a new-found respect for Medium, having not seen this on the site before:

 _" This embedded content is from a site that does not comply with the Do Not Track (DNT) setting now enabled on your browser.

Please note, if you click through and view it anyway, you may be tracked by the website hosting the embed.

Learn More about Medium's DNT policy"_

I think that's the first time I've seen visible evidence of the DNT setting actually doing something. Now whether or not that offsets the header/footer turds that litter their mobile site, I'm still deciding. :-)

<comment><USER16> It's been there for years, maybe even since the beginning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Am I the only one who thought this would be about housing in the Amazon rainforest?

<comment><USER18> Nope. I actually was expecting to read about a lack of housing for displaced Amazonians due to deforestation.

<comment><USER19> I was expecting something similar too. I'd just like to point that deforestation does not displace people.

<comment><USER20> I don't think that's true. I would certainly classified the tribes in the Amazon who get killed or pushed out of their homes by loggers and ranchers as displaced due to deforestation.

<comment><USER19> If you are imagining a rain forest as something full of people, just forget it. For population density concerns, the main difference between a forest and a desert is that people can traverse the desert, so you will find way more of them there.

When tribes and agriculture exist near each other, you will see economical interdependency, not one population pushing the other away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Everything about this article is kind of dumb. Using this exact same argument, it would be impossible for any company to build any headquarters, and yet somehow the American economy still continues to grow.

It's not like amazon is going to airlift in 50k people on day 1.

Anyway, Northern Virginia is still the obvious place for second HQ, given metro access to DC, Dulles airport, the millions of datacenters, fios penetration and large numbers of local it workers.

<comment><USER22> I agree that the article fails to explain why a city can't increase it's housing creation when the market demands (sort of like most places already do, albeit with issues).

BUT I think it's fair to point out that Amazon going anywhere where it represents a large change in the population will have a notable housing impact. Construction lags behind demand and the current markets in high tech areas have lots of problems with difficult local regulations, extreme rents, very limited availability, and general gentrification issues. Amazon will likely be a net positive for wherever they go, but it's a good idea to anticipate and try to reduce the inevitable negatives.

I want to disagree with your NoVa conclusion, but I can't. It has location, population, infrastructure, though transportation is notoriously bad - <USER2> always ranked worse for traffic than San Francisco and Seattle, usually beating Boston, and challenging LA depending on what you measure. (that's from memory and a few google searches to make sure I'm not crazy, take with salt) North Carolina would be the next natural match, but I don't see Amazon taking on that political mess.

<comment><USER23> With amazons size nearly anywhere would work. They're not resource constrained and the ecosystem will follow them anywhere.

<comment><USER22> But do they want to build that ecosystem from scratch? My amazonian friends imply that while it's easy to get applicants, they have as much trouble finding the people they want as anyone else in their current tech saturated area.

If Amazon moves to Podunksville, it will "work". Given that they're looking for deals, it will almost certainly be successful as far as "does the office function, is it a net positive to our productivity". But what is already at their new location will definitely impact what happens for the first few years as the local economy shifts. Pulling in 90% of their workforce from remote with a tiny hub airport that has only 2 non-stop destinations is very different from pulling 50% of their workforce from remote with an international airport with non-stop flights to most major cities. The reverse effects are true as well - getting people in where the local cost of living makes every dollar worth $1.20 grants a benefit vs a local cost of living giving you $0.90 spending power per dollar.

Heck - Moving to Seattle was wonderful for my wife and I in lots of tiny ways: People aren't confused when asked about vegetarian options, assuming it's not already clear on the menu. Our various hobbies and entertainments are well represented (Heck, I play tabletop RPGs and a good chunk of the major companies are actually _here_) It'd take a notable bit more to get me to go to somewhere where eating out is a chore, where I have to deal with the 5 local adults willing to play a "game" regularly and have to put up with their quirks because I have no other options, where I have to deal with religious evangelism on a daily basis, where you have to drive everywhere, where the weather is extreme, etc.

This isn't a question of success vs failure, it's a question of how to maximize their success. And the success of the local area, including the current residents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I noticed something the article fails to mention.

When I was in Chicago the other weekend there was so much talk about Amazon moving their headquarters there, with a number of possible sites including the Old Main Post Office.

There is a building boom going on right now. Chicago has _54_ high-rises in construction, many with residential living space. Some are smaller 50-unit buildings and the biggest, One Grant Park, has _792_ units.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think Miami makes a lot of sense, and housing has always been one of the top reasons.

Notwithstanding what this article suggests (a little hard to follow), Miami housing numbers are as follows:

About 12,300 new condos are expected to be completed in downtown between between 2014 and 2019; between 2004 and 2009, more than 21,000 units were delivered.

And this is just downtown, "Miami" itself is a sprawling area with development continuing South and West where it's suggested Amazon would set up shop. In fact some of the housing development has even been paused due to to much housing coming on the market and lack of demand (though the demand is actually there, local wages are not, reading between the lines foreign investment is drying up). Still the developers (deep pockets) want nothing more than to keep the good times rolling and bringing in Amazon would be instrumental.

<comment><USER26> I can buy an overpriced condo in Seattle.

rather have a place with a bit of space.

<comment><USER25> I'm sure you can buy an over priced condo anywhere, but are there 30,000+ units available in those markets, which in my estimation is the point of the article vis-a-vis a housing market that can support 50,000 Amazonians.

And I'm not going to knock Seattle, there is nothing wrong with cold, wet, dark and depressing...but there is something to be said about the year round Tropical weather Miami has to offer. Its why Miami has snowbirds and our number 1 industry is tourism (discounting Medicare/insurance fraud).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In my opinion, I don't think cities should be partnered completely with one company. We may be closer to a dystopian future than we think..

</comment><comment><USER28> There's a precedent I'm aware of for a wholesale move. RAND Corporation did this in the 1950s, moving from the east coast to Santa Monica, putting entire families on trains to head west (young man, and grow up with the country...). Mentioned in Martin Campbell-Kelly's book:

[http://www.worldcat.org/title/from-airline-reservations- to-s...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/from-airline-reservations-to-sonic-the- hedgehog-a-history-of-the-software-industry-history-of- computing/oclc/940545837&referer=brief_results)

</comment><comment><USER29> Interesting to see parts of NJ highlighted in the list. NJ used to have a huge tech sector, accommodating RCA, bell labs, AT&T, etc. but hasn't found strong footing in the software age. The old bell labs complex in holmdel ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex)), recently redeveloped, is undergoing a "tech renaissance" of sorts now, finding tenants such as Nvidia. At it's peak it employed over 6000 engineers on site. And it sits on a massive plot of land (complete with it's own substation, road salt facilities, wastewater treatment plant, AC plant, etc.), which is unfortunately now being developed into "luxury" homes. But maybe if Amazon started looking earlier than now when the facility was still dormant they would have found a suitable home here.

<comment><USER30> Hey yeah why not, I'd live in bits of Jersey. If I can work nearby in Jersey and be able hop on the PATH to The City on weekends, that doesn't sound half bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This makes a false assumption - that Amazon would be on top of existing job creation.

Cities already have models that assume/hope for a certain amount of job creation (and loss), with some of that being provided by new entrants to the area.

If existing businesses aren't meeting the model, they go out and find new sources. The jobs and housing numbers are separate (separate orgs, both flowing from the same model).

So, consider this more of a mayor being a salesman meeting their annual quota with a single sale. It's risky, but it's not an issue if it happens - <USER3> have already planned for success.

Now, if they aren't producing housing to meet their plan, that's an entirely different problem.

</comment><comment><USER32> It'd be really awesome if the images in this article loaded without JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER5> Columbus, OH is going to get it.

Growing city with very affordable housing, large university system (OSU), close to international airport, centrally located in the midwest.

<comment><USER33> There are no direct flights between CMH and SEA. Seems like that wouldn't make sense for a company based in Sea.

[http://flycolumbus.com/airline-info/non-stop- destinations/](http://flycolumbus.com/airline-info/non-stop-destinations/)

<comment><USER34> I feel like this is a non-issue. If there is a demand for CMH-SEA flights then surely an airline will cater to it.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, if you build it they will come. Although I'd think Amazon would be pretty good at telepresence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The requirements about the local labour pool and university system are nonsense. People can and will relocate to work for Amazon across the country and even across the world.

My take is that the RFP is a long-list of wants, not the short-list of must- haves. They want lots of suitors knocking on their door, to make the bidding process competitive.

</comment><comment><USER37> The projections for Austin's population growth from two million inhabitants to four million by 2030 require an additional 167,000,000 housing units required.

This seems to be a problem but not uncommon even beyond Amazon.

<comment><USER35> Every person moving in needs 83.5 homes?

<comment><USER38> I'm thinking it was supposed to be 167,000 instead, which seems low unless there's slack space or projected construction (over 11 people/house).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does anyone know of a site where you can bet on the outcome of this process?

<comment><USER40> I bet that PredictIt would be willing to host it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> CA is the last place they should consider, and that goes for any company that considers the cost of labor.

<comment><USER42> Unless, you know, they also consider other factors beyond the cost of labor, which most companies do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Or they could simply embrace work from home. No matter what city they choose, I won't work for them.

<comment><USER34> They have absolutely no need to court you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The Boring Company has a solution for housing: tunnels with no traffic or stoplights. 200kph means you can live far from downtown and still be at work in 15 minutes.

"Without tunnels we'll be in traffic hell forever" -Elon Musk

<comment><USER4> I don't understand how that helps. You can't built very many 200mph tunnels, so housing at the ends will still have to be very dense or people will have to drive far to get to the stations. So this just shifts the housing density problem.

<comment><USER44> Shifting to a less hidebound / bureaucratic location is a great solution. Also: Elon's goal is a more than 10x reduction in costs, and he'll be able to charge related to the value of people's time.

<comment><USER4> I think you're crazy to believe that if you go build a bunch of very dense housing anywhere, you won't shortly thereafter have a bunch of bureaucracy as a lot of people have to figure out how to live in close quarters.

Again, as near as I can tell, the best possible outcome of ultra high speed tunnel transport is you move the dense housing problem (or the traffic problem) elsewhere. That's not actually a solution. I also think it only appears easier than eg fixing sfbay's housing problems.

<comment><USER44> Ok then what's your solution? Or, you're saying there is no solution and we're permanently stuck with commutes and housing prices from hell?

<comment><USER45> Run an S-bahn ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-train](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-train)) through the tunnel for 10x the throughput of humans for a given tunneling cost. Cars are a profoundly inefficient use of space in a dense area.

The only way an auto tunnel network would solve traffic is by charging a sufficiently-high toll to match supply with demand. Otherwise, in an area dense enough that traffic congestion is a problem, induced demand will lead to congestion: [https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.6.2616](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.6.2616)

<comment><USER44> Boring Company tunnels are NOT for cars-only, they do envision public- transportation-like services which will be much better to move between dense areas:

[https://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/img/edit...](https://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/img/editorial/2017/05/26/104494945-Boring- electric-vehicle-2.1910x1000.jpg?v=1495813998)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Where is the data from? How does Detroit not have enough housing to support such a company? I'm guessing a lot of cities can build enough housing. Detroit especially has lots of housing--maybe not new builds in certain areas, but they are tearing down blocks of houses right now and people can buy houses for 15k. I question the article's data.

<comment><USER47> If you want housing that has had walls ripped off to get copper wire for selling to a scrap yard. Yes there is plenty of that.

If you want to pay housing boom sized taxes on a house worth a fraction of that, there is plenty of that as well. Since you aren't allowed to reappraise a lot of property.

<comment><USER46> A fair point. I'll agree that those properties are mostly not 'move-in' ready. However, the 4 year time period allows for redevelopment of properties. Also, my main point is that the author's data source is unclear. How do we know what was factored into the housing supply calculation?</comment></comment></comment>


Why Zoom Meetings Can Exhaust Us - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-zoom-meetings-can-exhaust-us-11585953336 <comment><USER2> > With Zoom, a 10-person meeting is often set up in a grid that reminds us of > "The Brady Bunch." Each person stares right at you from the screen for the > entire meeting.

This has not been my experience. The person speaking is full screen, and you have a floating carousel that shows 4 or so meeting attendee's video (if enabled) or a still photo and/or that participant's name.</comment>


Talk about StackOverflow - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/04/29.html <comment><USER2> The page contains little more than a link to this GoogleTechTalks video:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWHfY_lvKIQ>

Haven't watched it yet...

</comment><comment><USER3> An error has occurred, please try again later. _sad face_</comment>


"We Buy Greek Exports with Bitcoin" - <AUTHOR> http://spartanroute.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Source:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3bwnkv/irish_bitco...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3bwnkv/irish_bitcoin_start_up_provides_new_access_routes/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Need someone on the team with a Greek name and look.</comment>


The Bradbury Building - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/on-location/

<comment><USER2> Also featured in the Outer Limits episodes "Demon with a Glass Hand": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_with_a_Glass_Hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_with_a_Glass_Hand)</comment>


Snapchat VP of Product Tom Conrad Will Disappear from Tech - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/24/tom-conrad-leaves-snapchat/ <comment><AUTHOR> > _"I started making software when I was 18 years old, and it's hard to > believe I've been doing this for 30 years. It's time for me to put my energy > outside of tech, into music, food, photography and things closer to art than > entrepreneurship" Conrad tells TechCrunch. "It's easy to put these things > off forever but I didn't want to wake up 10 years from now and not have > explored these other passions of mine."_

I'm happy for him. If I were a billionaire, I'd do the same.</comment>


AMD's new Zen-based $499 CPU beats Intel's $999 CPU - <AUTHOR> http://www.tweaktown.com/news/55126/amds-new-zen-based-499-cpu-beats-intels-999/index.html <comment><USER2> How does it "beat" Intel, with just frequency and cache size numbers? Seems like marketing material and nothing, yet, to see here.

<comment><USER3> It will probably beat intel in the performance/price ratio when not considering the cost of electrical power.

That low difference (<10%) between turbo and sustained clock speed is a bit troubling, though. It indicates that these processors are not limited by the TDP but by the transistor speed. Combined with the high TDP, this means that AMD is still much behind intel in their manufacturing process.

<comment><USER4> We should all hope they come up with something that's competitive. Even 80% of the performance for 50% of the price would be good enough. And this is because the last 3-4 Intel CPU generations have been simply not worth upgrading to. If some real competition from AMD shows up, things will change.

<comment><USER3> AMD seems to have lost their way back when they merged with ATI and integrated their GPUs into the processors. I remember that in a restructuring they switched from hand-optimizing hotspots in the CPUs to a more abstract approach using design software that worked well in GPUs.

After that decision they fell behind in performance and efficiency. I don't know if that was the root cause but it stayed in my memory as one pivotal point.

It would be interesting to read an insider story on how that decision played out in the meantime.

<comment><USER5> It depends what you mean by lost their way. But ATI has nothing to do with it. Bulldozer was a failure, it was a perfect storm of Intel's best execution since the Pentium 4 Ghz problem and AMD's worst execution. When Intel took a misstep, it cost them 20% of market shares. When AMD took a misstep, it nearly killed them. You could argue without ATI, AMD would properly be dead by now. And AMD CPU was literally uncompetitive even with price reduction for the past 5 years. And they totally miss the boat with the desktop to laptop transition. While Intel, after hitting the Powerwall with Pentium 4 and fortunate enough to have had a team working on a architecture specially for laptop, the original Pentium M, pick up speed in that direction.

But like others have pointed out, I believe it is a operational, internal struggle, and basically a leadership problem.

<comment><USER6> > And AMD CPU was literally uncompetitive even with price reduction for the > past 5 years.

I don't know about that.

The Intel core are very good processors but the entry price for the smallest one is over $100.

I can remember some cheaper product lines from Intel but they weren't that great. AMD had decent CPU for the cheap laptops and computers. Dunno how much volume and margin there is to be done on that segment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sandy Bridge-Ivy Bridge > Haswell-Broadwell > Skylake-KabyLake

That is now 5 - 6 years without much performance improvement. You will need to use those newer instructions (AVX2). So basically we have been getting the same CPU performance at a lower power usage, and at a similar price point.

From SandyBridge to Kaby Lake, there is may be maximum 15% IPC difference. So all AMD will need to do, is to catch up to Haswell or Broadwell, i.e Catch up to performance of Intel's CPU 4 years ago, and offer 20%-50% discount price.

The higher end, Server, high margin CPU that intel currently enjoys are exactly where AMD needs to hit. Theoretically, those who need high end CPU for gaming will also need a high end GPU. But knowing AMD it is hard for me to imagine how two unit within the same company could cooperate.

</comment><comment><USER7> Considering the chip isn't out yet this story should be taken with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone have a link to the story that doesn't send you to a nag page if you have javascript turned off?

<comment><USER9> [https://archive.fo/xgqlz](https://archive.fo/xgqlz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Keep in mind the author isn't exactly a hardware engineer:

> Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with high-end, > custom-built PCs.

So treat the article with a slightly smaller grain of salt as you would a salesperson at your local Best Buy pushing AMD chips.

</comment><comment><USER11> I hope AMD make a comeback. It is all I have ever owned (currently running a Phenom x6), but was contemplating going to Intel.

That being said, it sounds like these are AMD benchmarks so be wary...

<comment><USER3> My Phenom II X4 940 on the desktop machine is still going strong. I couldn't yet justify replacing it because it just isn't that bad yet. I think I'll put off replacing that rig for another year.

Some desktop AMD processors support ECC memory which would need a Xeon and more expensive mainboards from intel for replacement. This tunes up the price quite a bit when switching. That ECC support was the deciding factor back then.

<comment><USER12> With rowhammer reality this should actually be a deal breaker for the conscious...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let me channel the /r/AMD sentiment here:

Wait for benchmarks!

Don't let hype take over.

</comment><comment><USER14> I remember Amd's K10 series being hyped to high heaven before release (something like 40% faster than Intel's competitors) only to be a major letdown.

</comment><comment><USER15> What about power consumption ?

</comment><comment><USER16> I was hoping for $999 cpu but twice as fast as example Intel cpu...

<comment><USER17> They have 16 and 32 core count processors planned. These should be faster for programs with good concurrency although one detail that has gone under the radar is that Zen has half the SIMD performance of Intel AVX chips (it should take 256 bit SIMD instructions but doesn't execute them all at once). Still, this is unlikely to make a difference in the vast majority of software out there.

<comment><USER6> They already have > 20 cores for servers (> 40 with HT).

It is pointless for consumers. Well, except for squeezing a few dollars from the enthusiast who only want THE best, a profitable niche.

<comment><USER16> Why is it pointless? There is never too many cpus

<comment><USER6> Most user applications cannot fully utilize 40 cores.

<comment><USER16> But users run many applications at the same time.

<comment><USER6> Not 40 of them ^^

<comment><USER16> Well, I just started my laptop and I have 179 processes and 2381 threads running ^^

<comment><USER6> Which all together hardly use 3% of a single core.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies - <AUTHOR> http://cato.org/pubs/pas/pa594.pdf

<comment><USER2> [http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies- Polici...](http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies- Policies/dp/0691138737/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222981403&sr=8-1) One of my favorite books. Helps to know a bit of public choice theory.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cato Institute... Smart people you have to be very careful not to let them rationalize you into their particular view of world policy.</comment>


Obama: Pattern of US Mass Shootings Has 'No Parallel' - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-pattern-us-mass-shootings-parallel-san/story?id=35539092 <comment><USER2> There's something really eerie about this observation - perhaps one of the most astute Obama has ever made:

Of course, there have been plenty of cases throughout history of populations descending into epidemics of mass violence -- at much larger scales, even -- but usually they've been what we call "pogroms", based an ethnic or religious hatred, or simple rage provoked by some particular incident.

But (mostly) apolitical, color-blind, religion- and everything else-blind violence -- with nothing in common in the way of a motivation, other than for the sheer _spectacle_ of it -- I'm not sure if there have been any parallels in history, on any significant scale, at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Obama added that there were "steps we can take, not to eliminate every one of these mass shootings, but to improve the odds that they don't happen as frequently," he said. "We should come together in a bipartisan basis at every level of government to make these rare as opposed to normal."

This is an astonishingly level-headed perspective. It's not often you hear the United States President advocate the principle that terrorism is an unavoidable fact of life. It rather goes against the "War On Terror" narrative.</comment>


The Wonderful Awful Browser - <AUTHOR> http://database-programmer.blogspot.com/2008/07/wonderful-awful-browser.html <comment><USER2> This isn't a bad article, even if it is rather obvious. One thing I would like to see though is an understanding that the application programmer understands that he is in a different environment, and therefore is the one that needs to adapt.

In many parts I got the feeling that the thesis was: It was like this on the desktop, so the web should change to be more like the desktop because that way I don't have to change.

That's the kind of thinking that gives us craptastic IE only business apps, and has actually stalled IE improvements over the last couple of years.

<comment><USER3> "It was like this on the desktop, so the web should change to be more like the desktop because that way I don't have to change."

Or "It was like this on the desktop, so my users demand that it be just that way on the web version, too, so they don't have to change."

<comment><USER2> That's a valid point. But it begs the question: Why are you not writing a desktop app then?

<comment><USER4> because managing a stateful client is nasty and costly if users cannot or are not allowed to do it themselves.

<comment><USER2> You can't have your cake and eat it too. Software development is all about compromise.

<comment><USER5> You can have your cake and eat it too, and you don't have to compromise. All you have to do is recognize where the browser's original intent may be different from your own (doc mgmnt versus transactional database mgmt). Making the browser do the job is very doable, but it is much easier if you recognize why it seems hard.

<comment><USER2> That's a very different view that what's being argued in this thread, and I agree with it.

Of course, as I already alluded to, I understood you post to push this point, but felt that you sometimes got a little too close to making the suggestion that there was something inherently wrong with the way the web is set up.

Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This guy should look into XUL Runner:

<http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/The_Joy_of_XUL>

<comment><USER5> Actually I have, it is extremely cool. For my own case I don't know where it will fit in yet, as I currently do fine without it, but its one of those things I follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ironic that the very attributes that allowed the web to be popular (HTML, easy navigation) have turned it into a nightmare for developing actual applications.

<comment><USER8> Well, the web was originally designed for documents, not applications. So I'm not sure where the irony lies.</comment></comment>


Startup Story: A Cautionary Tale - <AUTHOR> http://devcodehack.com/startup-story-a-cautionary-tale/

<comment><USER2> great writing</comment>


An Australian skilled independent visa will cost you 3812 USD in 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.lasselaursen.com/post/an-australian-skilled-independent-visa-will-cost-you-3812-usd-in-2016 <comment><USER2> TLDR: "A skilled independent visa is a perpetual work/live visa for Australia without any requirements in terms of sponsorship."

The author got through the application process in 6 months. A further 3 months were spent gathering documents before the application.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can appreciate providing readers with the most important facts upfront, which is why the information you've re-stated from my post is (essentially) written in the very first paragraph of the post.

Thus I'm left a bit puzzled at the point of you re-posting it here?</comment></comment>


Internet Trends Report 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends

<comment><USER2> I love reading this thing every year. With that said, is it just me, or are there lots of duplicate pages throughout the embedded report?</comment>


Paul Buchheit's acceptance speech at the Economist Innovation Awards 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghKMIQvjh_s

<comment><AUTHOR> "Innovation is as much a function of the environment which enables and supports the innovator as the innovator itself."</comment>