Show HN: Snabbt.js – a minimalistic animation library - <AUTHOR> http://daniel-lundin.github.io/snabbt.js/cards.html <comment><USER2> Extremely impressive demo. This is how a Show HN for a front-end library should always be: take me straight to a demo of the coolest part.

What exactly makes this so fast? I'm not familiar enough with JS/CSS to know from the code. The 200-element sticks demo was by far the smoothest animation I have ever seen for that many elements.

<comment><USER3> JS animations are inherently very fast, most likely because you're running a modern browser. :)

The code is basically just computing a 4x4 matrix for each card per frame built up from some tweened position/rotation/etc. Then it applies the matrix to the element's CSS. The code doesn't look optimized (ie allocates lots of typed arrays) but as the demo proves, its already pretty fast.

<comment><USER4> > allocates lots of typed arrays

Out of curiosity, can you show an example and how it should be done properly?

<comment><USER3> A better approach is to re-use arrays instead of creating intermediate ones, which is what gl-matrix[1] advocates. Each tween might still need its own matrix instance for start and end points, but at least these are not created per tick.

A similar approach is to use a "pool" of arrays[2] which allows you to re-use them without having to manually keep track of the temporary arrays.

[1] - [https://github.com/toji/gl-matrix](https://github.com/toji/gl-matrix)

[2] - [https://github.com/mikolalysenko/typedarray- pool](https://github.com/mikolalysenko/typedarray-pool)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Snabbt" is Swedish, and means "fast".

(I've translated a couple of these Swedish named things on HN over the past time, I hope it's not off topic)

<comment><USER6> I was puzzled by the name, thanks for pointing this out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The demo is certainly impressive, but the API doesn't look very idiomatic:

\- JS is a camelCased language. While I certainly appreciate snake_case in Python, it doesn't belong in a JS library.

\- The Matrix APIs are needlessly terse. rotate, multiply, translate, and identity are only a few characters longer than your choices, but they're oodles more intuitive and easier to read.

<comment><USER8> Maybe I'm just naive (probably), but is it really that off putting that the casing convention isn't the same?

To be honest, I don't know what most languages "are" with regards to the casing convention..and I've never been explicitly told what they should be either.

<comment><USER9> I was once turned down for a coding job based on stylistic complaints with my code, one of which was that I used snake_casing instead of the (apparently preferred) camelCasing in Java.

Since then I've resolved myself to the fact that in almost all things CS, there are many different ways to get to the final answer or finished product and _your_ way of doing it is fine if it gets the job done in a timely manner while minimizing future complications. Anyone claiming a "right way" to do something at the level of irrelevant casing either has a larger organization to worry about in terms of code readability, etc and is therefore justified if your project is meant to be shared with others OR is professing code piousness as a way to stroke their own ego.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's reason to turn somebody down, but it can be fairly annoying using a library that doesn't follow standard naming conventions. If your code brings together four different libraries and they all use drastically different conventions (case, wording, parameter style, etc) it can quickly lead to a messy and difficult to maintain codebase.

<comment><USER8> Fair enough, I can definitely see that being an annoyance. Especially in the context of this being a light library, it's undoubtedly going to be utilized with any number of other libraries. Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Velocity.js [http://julian.com/research/velocity/](http://julian.com/research/velocity/) is pretty damn good already and just 12kb Gzipped.

<comment><USER3> Competition is healthy. :) [https://www.npmjs.com/package/tweenr](https://www.npmjs.com/package/tweenr)

Besides, different authors will tackle the problem a little differently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have to say, I'm glad I can now build a house of cards using JavaScript. I've tried and failed too many times in real life.

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks very similar to [http://famo.us/](http://famo.us/). What is the main difference of Snabbt.js as compared to famo.us?

<comment><USER13> Obviously famo.us is more famous than snabbt.js. But seriously, they both do the same thing. Instead of using css transitions they both use request animation frames and then only do the transformations that are fast to do. The main differences is the size of Snabbt, which only does animation, and Famo.us which handles touch events has a larger physics engine and more utility functions.

There are efforts being done to implement parts of Material design using famo.us:

Demo [http://skelware.com/famous-material/demo/1/](http://skelware.com/famous- material/demo/1/)

Source [https://github.com/StephanBijzitter/Famous-Material- Examples](https://github.com/StephanBijzitter/Famous-Material-Examples)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice library.

The current implementation leads to a lot of garbage since you are allocating several typed arrays per tick for each tween.

Also looks like gimbal lock and Euler interpolation could be a problem for some 3D rotations. I guess fixing that would lead to extra complexity.

</comment><comment><USER14> Really impressive! I like this a lot. One thing I noted however, was when I resize and refresh to a smaller browser size the squares turn into long rectangles. Is there a way to make them scale together so they stay as a square in a narrow view?

</comment><comment><USER15> Unfortunate name similarity with " _Snabb Switch_ ", as featured here on HN six months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008963)

</comment><comment><USER16> An impressive demo, but I'd like to see this being done with photos of varying quality and see how the performance fairs. I've got a Chrome extension that I could probably use this with...

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice demo dude! And indeed it's really fast. Well done and thanks for sharing. Will try this out.

</comment><comment><USER18> These are awesome animations! I'll add this to Toolyo.

I'm creating a new category for these kind of items :)

</comment><comment><USER19> This looks great at a glance. Looking forward to tooling around with it this weekend.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is incredibly impressive. Thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER21> This looks amazing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Very fluid on my phone too!

(Nexus 5 on lollipop)

</comment><comment><USER23> Jaw dropping demo, great work!

</comment><comment><USER24> Those crazy sticks are crazy!

</comment><comment><USER25> how would one do the equivalent of the createjs timeline?

</comment><comment><USER26> How manipulate the DOM without reading it actually work?

</comment><comment><USER26> Impressive.</comment>


Palo Alto has 3X jobs as employed residents - <AUTHOR> http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/51071 <comment><USER2> Conversely, there are -3X affordable apartments for those of us who are employed, but not working in tech making six figures.</comment>


Working with queue and stack people - <AUTHOR> http://marcesher.com/2014/08/18/working-with-queue-and-stack-people/

<comment><USER2> First, I believe wanting to fix broken windows and technical debt is everyone's goal. The author mentions a couple of times that fixing technical debt is just a stacks' preference. I disagree with that. Not least because fixing technical debt can sometimes take quite a lot of time and boring, error-prone work - not quite the stuff of heroic tales - but also because I have seen many examples in my career of technical debt created by people wanting to hack something together quickly, and then never getting around to cleaning it up, leaving all sorts of surprises behind them. I think generally it's good thorough thinking that gets rid of technical debt (see, e.g., Rich Hickey's work, and his Hammock Driven Development "methodology").

Generally, I'm sorry, but chasing the quick-fix is immature, and a sign of a desire to please. That is completely normal, and it's healthy to let off steam through a quick fix now and then. But the "stack" model here sounds to me more like what happens in my head when I procrastinate...

IMO for a project to succeed someone will ultimately have to keep track of what is done. Do you want to be that person, or do you want someone else to do it while you get lost in your stack overflows?

</comment><comment><USER3> On a funny note, for mathematicians, "analysis vs algebra" bend predicts if they'll eat corn depth first or breadth first.

[http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2010/08/analysis-vs-algebra- pre...](http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2010/08/analysis-vs-algebra-predicts- eating.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> The examples are very relatable, at least for me personally. Judging from this fragment, I would consider myself a stack person: "For tasks that represent pain that must be immediately alleviated, it's not that the stack feels I must fix it; rather, this must be fixed. The task is painful not because the stack must fix it, but because it exists, period."

The frustrating part about this is that it is very hard to explain to coworkers why you feel this, because you intuitively expect them to feel the same way. I can recall some cases in which this has caused some friction when working on group projects.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've always thought of myself as a stack person - if there's an issue that can be fixed now, get it done. Having something languish in a queue means that by the time you get round to looking at it you may not have all the information you require available / it'll take a lot of time to refamiliarise yourself (most of the time you'll have had to do at least some investigation when the issue first came in in order to determine the impact / priority of the task anyway; if queued all that work needs to be repeated months later). Also, if there's something in a queue which has been there for a year it's probably not that important. If the same thing keeps recurring and you're a stack person, that thing will automatically be jumping to the top of the stack each time - so you can resolve it, then remove any duplicates further down the stack as you hit them.

Queues are generally better for project work, Stacks are generally better for support.

Regarding the time taken to prioritise and log work, XKCD's nailed it again: [http://xkcd.com/1445/](http://xkcd.com/1445/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's great to think about this and perform a bit of self-analysis, with the intention of improving one's behaviour. I am very much a stack person, with an added serious flaw: my stack is very shallow due to poor memory management :) I'm typically working on one or two long-term tasks, a few medium-tasks, and lots of short-term tasks which just get dealt with as they arrive. The long/short-term tasks are easy to manage, but the medium-term tasks always suffer; colleagues typically have to remind me time-and-time again until I can finally prioritise one. This desperately needs solving.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think your preference (stack or queue) is dependant on the nature of work you are doing.

For instance, at my current job, I've been here for 2 years. I know the codebase pretty well. If an issue comes up, I can almost always get it resolved in a few hours or less. For this reason, I am currently a stack person.

On the other hand, when I first started this job, I didn't know the codebase very well, so it usually took me at least a week to complete a typical issue. Back in those days I was a queue person.

</comment><comment><USER8> Since I help put out a lot of fires, some of them smoldering and with potential threatening to (eventually) burn down the company, I like to think of what I do as working from two priority queues.

The first priority queue is very small and what will be done today/in the near future. The second priority queue is a list of everything else.

Stuff can get bumped from the first priority queue back to the second priority queue. Both queues are constantly being reshuffled (in my mind, not in JIRA).

I never really understood the agile/scrum thinking that seem to block parallel execution - or management implied could only be executed serially (as in this feature needs to get done at the detriment of this one).

System-level issues trump individual customer-level issues. Long-term fixes for customer-level issues trump individual fixes for customer-level issues (unless, of course, said customer has escalated). Paying off high-interest technical debt that has rolled over to several credit cards is a high priority, as well.

The reality is that when the house is fire, you need to put out the fire. Sometimes the perception is that there is a fire when there is not, though. And, if you see something that is a potential fire hazard/already smoldering, you need to aggressively put that out.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've mostly worked in operations, which IME is a field with a very high concentration of stack people. Sysadmins (including myself!) tend to derive great pain from the presence of a production issue and feel the need to fix it immediately, even if we could provide a greater overall win by focusing on project work. I've sometimes seen this result in five people working on an issue that could have been handled by one or two, simply because "it's broken and I need to fix it".

One of the ways my current team tries to mitigate this is with an on-call rotation and an explicit escalation process. When a new ticket comes in, the on-call decides whether it is something they can fix quickly and easily, or it would require too many resources for an immediate fix. The first kind of ticket is handled immediately, or is added to the on-call's (short) task list for that day; the second kind goes into our regular queue and gets prioritized alongside project work.

Meanwhile, everyone else on the team focuses on their current projects and handles issues according to the queue. Other team members are only called in to help immediately if the on-call judges the issue to be urgent but can't handle it themselves.

</comment><comment><USER10> The question is, for a product, which approach is best? Do you solve the low hanging fruit, and are responsive to clients but with high risk of breaking something else, or do you work methodologically through your product road map but are less responsive to clients.

The Agile movement's aim can be said, is to reduce the feedback loop of software development, so favouring a stack approach (echo'ed in facebooks "move fast and break things" approach), but I have also seen situations where there is no strategic planning, and the team can churn for a year like a dog chasing its own tail. Methodologically working through your roadmap can again be seen echo'd in Steve Jobs approach of saying the client doesn't know what he wants, its your job to give it to him.

<comment><USER11> I think there is room in larger teams for both types. There are always high priority tasks which need immediate attention, and a backlog of tasks which needs to be churned through. If you can have both types of people on a team, you can assign the tasks appropriately and be sure they will all get done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Huh, this is a pretty salient observation. I'm curious about the extent to which it applies -- I certainly am a stack-person some times, and a queue- person at other times. Could it depend on context? Queue for important tasks, Stack for unimportant tasks?

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't put unimportant tasks in the stack; that would mean you do those first.

Fast turnaround tasks are best for the stack. Tasks which involve multiple parties & thus planning and coordinating are best for the queue.

Many organisations already deal with this in having first line and second line support; first line pick off the quick stuff and log the hard stuff; second line then work their way through the hard stuff/ First line will also put a task on hold if a new call comes in; their priority is to answer the phones/get things logged, with working on resolutions taking lower priority.

So first line support's a stack, second line's a queue.

As the blogger mentions though, generally things are mixed; whilst there will be a preference/default working style most people/teams will fall somewhere in between, usually adding some level of prioritisation.

Another point is that prioritisation is generally based solely on the importance of the task & detailed analysis of its implications for queue people, whilst stack people will tend to guess at both the importance and the implementation time to get a priority based on the weightings of both factors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always thought about this as heap and stack people - those that are good at managing ideas with random access and those that prioritize the recent. A discussion between mismatched memory models can be difficult. An old (and revered) team leader described himself as a translator between these different storage approaches.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a heap person.

Am I a heapster ?

</comment><comment><USER15> > If you have a long, narrow, single-door, multi-car garage that fits a > single-file line of cars… that's a stack: last in, first out.

That seems to represent a queue as well. If we assume the last car in is at the end of the line, then, well, we have a queue, not a stack. A stack is hard to represent in real life everyday events. At least it is harder to represent than a queue.

The way I think of a stack is a singly linked list. A linked list where insertion time is O(1).

<comment><USER16> The idea is that you cannot get the first car out of the garage if the second one still is there because that garage, with its single door, is a single-lane dead end street.

A queue would be a single-lane one-way street, like in a car wash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think I'm a stack in the short term, and a queue in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's the stack people, there's the queue people, and then there's the set people who just randomly work on one thing that feels good right now.</comment>


Jorge Colombo sketches New York City using his iPhone   - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/fingerpainting/

<comment><USER2> I think the point is not so much that the iPhone is a great tool for creating art, or at least not any more than a small box of Crayola crayons or mud and charcoal smeared on a cave wall. Rather it's that art depends on the eyes, creativity and skill of the artist. Nice work, though!</comment>


Mechanical Turk Lessons Learned - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.curalate.com/2017/02/01/mechanical-turk-lessons-learned.html <comment><USER2> I wanted to read your article, but the design of your blog really sucks. I can hardly read the text, it's quite small. Monospace fonts are great for programming, bad for reading. Animated gifs every 5 lines is really annoying.

Sorry!

<comment><USER3> I ended up using dev-tools to delete all the gifs. I can live with play-once- then-stop, but the continual repeated movement was distracting.

<comment><USER4> document.querySelectorAll('img').forEach((im) => { im.style.display = 'none'; })

<comment><USER5> \+ document.body.style.backgroundColor = 'white'; = can read now

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We (the PLASMA research group at UMass, [http://plasma.cs.umass.edu](http://plasma.cs.umass.edu)) developed a system called AutoMan specifically designed to automatically manage quality (as well as to automatically compute pay and time) for a wide variety of tasks. You basically invoke people _as functions_ and it just works, with statistical guarantees (it also handles payment, etc. without any additional effort). Makes dealing with MTurk _much_ nicer. Best used in Scala but also can be used from Java.

[http://automan-lang.com](http://automan-lang.com) [https://github.com/plasma- umass/AutoMan](https://github.com/plasma-umass/AutoMan)

Paper here on AutoMan, round one: * [http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/6/202648-automan/abstract](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/6/202648-automan/abstract) (CACM Research Highlight, 2015)

Original paper, not behind a paywall: * [https://people.cs.umass.edu/~emery/pubs/res0007-barowy.pdf](https://people.cs.umass.edu/~emery/pubs/res0007-barowy.pdf) (OOPSLA '12)

New features described here have been rolled into AutoMan: "VoxPL: Programming with the Wisdom of the Crowd" (CHI '17, to appear): [https://people.cs.umass.edu/~emery/pubs/voxpl- chi.pdf](https://people.cs.umass.edu/~emery/pubs/voxpl-chi.pdf)

<comment><USER7> This is both amazing and a bit unnerving.

<comment><USER8> Matroska brain confirmed. But seriously, I was looking for a tool like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For US-based people, I suggest using Mechanical Turk as a worker before creating HITs as a Requester. See [https://www.reddit.com/r/HITsWorthTurkingFor/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HITsWorthTurkingFor/) for decent examples.

It makes me sad that so much of the work available on Mechanical Turk is poorly designed, and that workers have little recourse to bad Requesters.

<comment><USER10> Definitely. That's one of our focuses at Scale API (www.scaleapi.com). We build the UIs and the tooling to make sure they're efficient and intuitive, to avoid the exact problems of requesters making poorly designed work.

<comment><USER11> You mention your business with a hyperlink four separate times in this thread. I have to wonder how much of your purpose in posting is informative after the second or third time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently tested MTurk for my startup. We set up about 500 HITs to collect website URL and email from various businesses. We set the price at $0.05 (Amazon takes an additional $0.01). Jobs quickly got started and within 24 hours we had all of our data collected.

I'm not sure I would do it again though. A lot of the businesses we were targeting don't have a web presence and therefore "No URL/No Email" was a viable answer. However, when I went through the list to see 150 "No URL/No Email" answers I didn't know for sure whether that is true or whether the Turker realized they could just copy/paste and make a quick buck. Amazon does provide the amount of time they spent on the task so I rejected any that were less than 10 seconds as I felt like they didn't give it a good enough try. Over that, I just accepted the answer realize that it may be false.

In the end I think I spent more time going through results and correcting them then it actually saved me. I'm excited to use MTurk in the future again, but only for appropriate projects.

<comment><USER13> I think you probably needed to have some redundancy, have each business checked at least twice.

<comment><USER14> are there any tools that help you do QA on MT data entry in a Bayesian way?

seems like the situation is ripe for such a tool

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>---

start with a subset of questions you have a predetermined answer to, only keep feed questions if the person responding has met a certain quality threshold on those question

every so often feed them a QA question

every so often send the same question to someone else to check it for redundancy

seems like there is a lot you could do to adjust theses based on Bayesian confidence intervals, and exactly how mission critical you need certain data to be

maybe something like that already exists, idk

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>- (edit: is this what the Scale API does?)

<comment><USER15> Yup. My old company (www.crowdflower.com) has a platform set up to do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _So why use Mechanical Turk in the first place? Turkers will work for a single penny in many cases._

Exactly what I was looking for: the cold brutal logic of captialism. It's all good if it's low-cost.

 _Even after all of this you will still get bad answers._

...yes, of course, you're not paying for quality, you're paying for quantity and to reduce your costs. If you were paying for quality you would put up a few posters on college campuses and pay more.

</comment><comment><USER17> Those animated gifs are extremely distracting.

<comment><USER18> Dark background, low contrast, ugly font, and the GIFs.

It's almost like somebody was trying hard to make this article unreadable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey guys! I'm cofounder of Scale API (www.scaleapi.com), a YC S16 company building an API for human intelligence. We've been working to obviate the need to tune your system to work on products like MTurk, and instead have a really simple API that _just works_. We've worked to build technology to guarantee quality to our customers and build a simple developer experience.

I really respect your ability to work with MTurk and have it work for you guys. In our experience, it often takes significant effort to get anything remotely functional and reliable on MTurk. That's why we're building Scale :)

<comment><USER19> I listened to you on Software Engineering Daily! Haven't found a use for the service yet but I've been keeping you guys in the back of my mind in case a good use case comes up at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Your profile pic gif is broken. It just shows a still picture of you.

</comment><comment><USER21> There was a great talk by some AWS guys at the aws re-invent summit on ways to improve accuracy using ideas similar to cross-validation...

It's on iTunes - title is: "Getting to ground truth with Amazon web services mechanical Turk"

Video also available on YouTube: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vRtLdeNl7Tg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vRtLdeNl7Tg)

</comment><comment><USER22> I tested out Mechanical Turk back in 2008. I think I was trying to get a YouTube video promoted on some site.

I still have some credits on the system.

I am not even sure if I could come up with a good use. For those with current usage experience, could I create in theory a task where people would look up the best sights to see in the top 10 travel destinations?

Would this be a valid use case, and how would you deal with duplicates?

<comment><USER23> If you have the credits, survey how popular it is to drink and turk. I have coworkers who think its funny and claim its popular in their younger peer group. That anecdote is not actual data. I don't know if its popular or almost unheard of. I don't know if amazon allows meta-gaming like this. Amazon does not tolerate outright identity theft (send me your SS number to verify your accuracy) but a simple question like "how many alcohol drinks have you had today" is probably anonymous enough. Amazon spends a lot on advertising, so you can see why editors would not cover this story assuming it were true (which it might not be)

Drink and Turk is a drinking game where you try to turk enough to pay for your alcohol. I've seen some non-cooperative behavior of trying to find the funniest turk so the group laughs or give the most ridiculous answer still providing payment. Most turking is pretty boring but you'd be surprised what alcohol and youth and a slightly warped mind can do. There is supposedly a weed variation on this game, you can guess its obvious single rule.

<comment><USER24> Want to cofound a bar? You get a tablet at each table, and have to earn enough credits to get the next drink. No need to pay cash, drinks will be paid right out of your turk balance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does a turker make at least minimum wage? (8,50€/h here in Germany)

<comment><USER26> It's very unlikely. I tried it a couple months ago just for the experience, and in the ~1.5 hours I spent, I may have made $5. I honestly don't understand why anyone would participate as a worker on the site.

<comment><USER27> That's more than the minimum wage where I live, and I am in Europe. I suppose there are many countries with people that would be happy to work for that rate.

<comment><USER28> From what I've read, there are 3 popular demographics that are happy working on MTurk: 1) People living in areas where a non-strenuous, $5/hour is hard to come by. 2) People who are bored and find MTurk a somewhat interesting way to make some spare cash (stay-at-home parents, elderly, students) 3) People who are bored of sitting in front of a screen at work all day with nearly nothing to do (security guards, cashiers) and could use some extra cash

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Even Firefox's new reader view din't get rid of most of those things. But it did fix the monospace font and contrast issues.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can turkers be asked to install a chrome extension or run javascript in their consoles?

Also can you include javascript in the HIT HTML file?

</comment><comment><USER30> Needs more animated gifs. What was the blog post about again?</comment>


Weber–Fechner law - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law <comment><USER2> W/F is cool. But it's not the whole story. The dipper function ([https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/APP.71.3.435](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/APP.71.3.435)) describes a deviation from W/F behaviour that seems to represent a direct link between population neuronal activity and perception : basically, neurons respond in a sigmoidal way to increasing input and hitting the steep part of the sigmoid reduces your discrimination threshold. After a while you are past that steep bit and back to the boring old W/F regime.

</comment><comment><USER3> > An illustration of the Weber–Fechner law. On each side, the lower square > contains 10 more dots than the upper one. However the perception is > different: On the left side [10 vs 20], the difference between upper and > lower square is clearly visible. On the right side [110 vs 120], the two > squares look almost the same.

This is exactly what one would expect, since you are adding a smaller fraction of the total population in the second case (i.e. 110/120 > 10/20). If you kept the ratio equal in both cases, then the RHS would also look very different. This would work, up until the point where the dots begin to saturate the medium.

<comment><USER4> I also think the illustration is simply wrong and doesn't describe the content of the article at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's all logarithmic. The most common application of this law in the software industry is the volume control.

<comment><USER6> Brightness too should be done this way.

<comment><USER7> Brightness _is_ done this way. The gamma function of your monitor/game compensates for your logarithmic brightness perception and allows a linear input (e.g., 1, 2, 3,...255) to map to non-linear luminance output.</comment></comment></comment>


Wireless, photovoltaic retinal implants could recharge sight - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/wireless-photovoltaic-retinal-implants-could-recharge-sight/ <comment><USER2> Almost 20 years after <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Light></comment>


A Simple Probability Puzzle (or why humans suck at assessing probabilities) - <AUTHOR> http://toshuo.com/2007/a-simple-probability-puzzle/ <comment><USER2> THT vs THH

If you are looking for pattern #2, and you roll THT, you can start over at the third flip. Thus THTHH finds the second pattern.

If you are looking for pattern #1, and you roll THH, you have to flip a forth time to start over.

I'm not a mathematician, so that's probably not right anyway. Obviously, he's looking for some kind of "trick".

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope that is a joke (especially the guy "solving" it with a emulation in LISP).</comment>


You do not own your own content - <AUTHOR> From Facebook:
> Effective October 1, 2020, section 3.2 of our Terms of Service will be updated to include:
>> "We also can remove or restrict access to your content, services or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Facebook."
So just a reminder, if you want access to your own data, keep an independent copy.
Extra note: A backup isn't a backup unless you can restore from it. <comment><USER2> Attorney here! (Not legal advice, seek counsel if you need legal advice.)

You're confusing ownership with distribution and possession. Ownership is about the rights you have to exclude others from your work (i.e., copyright). When you transfer a copy of your work to a third party such as Facebook, you don't grant them ownership or even an ownership interest. You're just granting them to right—-but not the obligation—-to republish and retransmit your work to others.

Since it is a right and not an obligation, Facebook also has the right not to store or republish your work if they desire. But you still own your content and can otherwise do whatever you like with it.

Whether you keep a copy after you give it to a third party is your choice and responsibility.

<comment><USER3> I love a clear explanation by someone knowledgeable. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You obviously do own your own content. But you usually do not own the platform used to publish it.

I think that's the main distinction that is often overlooked and, indeed, what makes having an independent copy very important.

</comment><comment><USER5> As much as I hate Facebook, I don't see anything wrong or surprising here. It seems reasonable to me that a service might wish to restrict/prevent access to content when required by law or regulation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did I say that's it's wrong and/or surprising? No, I did not. I'm saying that you might not be able to access your own content, so keep your own copy of it.

You may not find it surprising that FB might suddenly make your content inaccessible "for reasons", but many people do. Readers of HN might not be among them, but some of their friends and family will.

So this is providing Chapter and Verse for HN people to quote to those who _do_ find it surprising.

<comment><USER6> It seems strange that anyone wood ever assume they control something held by someone else with no contract in place and ToS they surely didn't read. Anyone who thinks their free Facebook account is something like a bank safe deposit box (which even still is short on guarantees) is... strange.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you genuinely think people realise this? it's all so obvious to you ... and to me ... and yet every time I talk to people about it, they are astonished that they their content might be made inaccessible with no warning.

Try speaking to non-technical people, look at the stories of outrage that circulate.

I suspect you're in a bubble. You know these things, and assume everyone else does. I'm telling you that the majority of people I talk to _have no clue._

So this submission was giving people a precise reference to quote.

<comment><USER7> I think someone just need to switch Facebook off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That obviously refers to _public access_ (i.e. visibility) to the FB-hosted copy of content that causes some kind of problem to FB.

No free hosting service guarantees reliable, enduring access to your own data.

</comment><comment><USER9> Good thing I own my domain, use my own servers and pay for my address....

Otherwise I'm just putting my stuff on other people's machines</comment>


The Joy of PHP Programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/287976447/the-joy-of-php-programming-e-book-and-course

<comment><USER2> Next in the series - "The joy of being kicked in the balls". A lot of things can be said about php. Being joyful is not one of them.

<comment><USER3> I say the same thing about Ruby and Python. Forced white space? not fun!</comment></comment>


Instacart Launches 1 Hour Puppy Delivery - <AUTHOR> https://www.instacart.com/puppies

<comment><USER2> At the end of the checkout process it is noted that all Puppies are located in San Francisco. I am on the east coast of the US. For the puppy to arrive at my location in ~1 hour, it would need to travel at ~2500mph. This kills the puppy :(

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow! Think about all the fun you can now have getting a PUPPY delivered instead of a PIZZA! Authoritarian teachers, power-tripping principals, and mean, get-offa-my-lawn neighbors beware!

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the more adorable April fools jokes, that's for certain.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not only is it adorable, but it's not a gag. You actually can get a puppy free! You just pick your puppy up at the pound!</comment>


ICFP Programming Contest 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://icfpcontest.org/specification.html <comment><USER2> While I'm a fan of the ICFP, I do feel as if the questions are a bit too full of themselves (for lack of a better term).

While I'm sure they are trying to remove ambiguity, but the way they are couched and their length make them a lot less approachable than they should be. I feel like in about 1/10 the wording and narrative complexity they could create an equally interesting programming challenge.

<comment><USER3> I agree, but I think that's part of the challenge - boiling down the problem to its essentials, and ignoring the unnecessary stuff.

<comment><USER4> No me, nothing beats ICFPC'07 ([http://save-endo.cs.uu.nl/](http://save- endo.cs.uu.nl/))

The whole task was just formulated as "save Endo". A spec of Fuun DNA (a virtual machine), Endo's DNA and a two pictures were provided. That's about all contestants were told. Then, we had to discover Endo's DNA contained loads of fun things inside.

Oh, ICFPC'06 was incredibly cool, too, but I didn't participated at that time and only took the task years after that. Don't want to sound whining but other years are more conventional (a complex, but mostly well-defined task) so less fun in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In the interest of promoting friends/coworkers: The contest this year is a really cool challenge, and was set up by one of my partners in crime, Duncan. (Of course, ICFP is always a cool challenge and is always set up by good people :)

Get a team together and start competing!

<comment><USER5> > (Of course, ICFP is always a cool challenge and is always set up by good > people :)

I agree in general. Only that car engine / fuel challenge a few years ago was really obtuse. (And when I met the guys who set it up, they were so happy about it. ;o)

Lambda the Ultimate and the satelites were really cool!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Enjoyed a lot watching teams live streaming their work on youtube. High value time spender.

<comment><USER7> Do you know if any teams will be doing the same this year? Would love to watch.

<comment><USER6> I don't even remember how I got to follow them. Maybe through reddit

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2bngvp/the_icfp...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2bngvp/the_icfp_programming_contest_starts_friday_1200/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/2blpt6/icfp_contest...](http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/2blpt6/icfp_contest_starts_in_less_than_24h/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So... what does ICFP stand for? I've looked on their site, Twitter, and GitHub, but maybe I'm missing something obvious?

<comment><USER9> One level up, at: [http://icfpcontest.org/](http://icfpcontest.org/)

 _[The ICFP Programming Contest 2014 is the 17th instance of the annual programming contest series sponsored by The ACM SIGPLAN] International Conference on Functional Programming._

<comment><USER8> Ah, missed that in the wall of text. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So the strategy for the GCC (the Lambda-man controller) is that you actually build a compiler/pre-processor for it in some other tool, versus just logically solving the problem with the given instruction set?

The details on the ghosts are dramatically clearer than the details on the Lambda man.

</comment><comment><USER11> The only thing I know about functional programming is that I know nothing about it.

</comment><comment><USER12> (Posted about the contest an hour earlier, only got two votes. Oh well.)

If I am reading the problem correctly, there is no interactive component this year? You get one submission and don't get to test it against anything else.

> It is not essential that the judges be able to run your code

So is this a beauty pageant?

<comment><USER13> > We request (but do not strictly require) that you include in your > .tar.gz/.zip various additional material

That's the part they don't have to be able to run. They won't even try unless your entry is in the running, it seems.

The .ghc and .gcc (the actual submission) does have to run, since that's what's being scored.

<comment><USER12> It makes a little more sense if you don't think about the game as an assembly of parts, which isn't really explained anywhere. For example there is some strategy with trying to make the ghosts be as bad as possible, so they are in a nice neat line immediately after a power pill.

As usual, kudos to the team for making a puzzle with so many layers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For the love of Zeus use logarithmic graphs for the price! [http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zczsg2012-01...](http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zczsg2012-01-01zeg2014-07-25ztgWzm1g10zm2g25zl) It does a lot more sense, doesn't it?

<comment><USER15> It probably makes even more sense in the right comment thread...</comment></comment>


Does a new coal-fired power plant make sense in 2016? - <AUTHOR> Lamu, where a Chinese-led coal-fired power plant is about to be built, is a stupendously beautiful archipelago of Islands off the South Eastern coast of Kenya.
Indeed, Obama wrote of his visit with Michelle to the area in his first ever trip to Kenya before they got engaged in the early 90s.
The main island hosts a UNESCO world heritage site, a 14th century town built up due to the confluence of African, Arab and European (as well as some Chinese, Indian) traders.
Work on the coal-fired plant is likely to begin in 2017 but its construction is starting to face strong opposition from a minority.
Main concerns are environmental destruction due to thermal effluent into the ocean, as well as air pollution.
1400 Chinese workers (nearly half the labor required) will be brought in to work on the plant.
While Kenya desperately needs the power, and is carrying out other major clean energy projects (e.g the largest wind power plant in Africa, which Google has invested in), coal sounds really concerning.
Does a new coal-fired power plant make sense in 2016, given that other developed countries (e.g the UK) are planning to phase out coal power within the next decade?
FWIW, major deposits of natural gas have recently been found in neighboring countries. <comment><USER2> Ask the Australian govt, who still seems to think coal is the future and is pushing for a coal "super mine".</comment>


SEC awards $22M to Monsanto whistleblower - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-monsanto-whistleblower-idUSKCN1152KG <comment><USER2> A corporate whistleblower gets a payday (a good thing). While whistleblowers like Snowden that reveal illegal government programs risk the death penalty if they ever sit foot in US soil again.

This is progress, but we've got farther to go.

<comment><USER3> There is a huge difference you're ignoring. The act of whistleblowing on Monsanto was unlikely to be illegal (at least I do not know what laws that could be used against the whistileblower, ignoring any whistleblower protections). Snowden, however, violated numerous amounts of laws in his act of whistleblowing.

Now I'm not saying what Snowden did was right or wrong but these two are not equatable.

Government protections for whistleblowers are important but protecting someone who had to break the law in order to whistleblow versus someone who did not are two very different things and I think mixing the topics may take away from the importance of one versus the other (protection from retaliation through a corporation versus being locked up due to the government) or worse simply conflate them and their associated arguments.

<comment><USER4> > _There is a huge difference you 're ignoring... Snowden, however, violated > numerous amounts of laws_

The difference that you are ignoring is that it's in the government's power to legalize or even incentivize whistleblowing on a company while at the same time it's equally easy for the government to outlaw whistleblowing on the country. The government of a country _sets_ the laws. It defines what's lawful and what's not.

Therefore when it comes to whistleblowing on a country it becomes borderline irrelevant whether some laws are broken or not as long as the whistleblowing otherwise aligns with universally accepted human values and ethics.

<comment><USER5> Loyalty to your oaths is part of "universally accepted human values and ethics".

The problem is that loyalty to your team (Team NSA, say), and loyalty to your oath, may sometimes conflict with loyalty to your country, which may itself conflict with loyalty to the human race. When that happens, you have to decide which loyalties you hold higher. Snowden did, and I can't say that he chose wrongly. But there are no "universally accepted human values and ethics" that determine what to do in that situation. It's often the stuff of literature precisely _because_ the normal values and ethics are at war with one another.

<comment><USER6> I would argue that Snowden acted in a manner completely loyal to the United States and the Constitution, though disloyal to the NSA. If one believes the oath of allegiance (or the constitution) is more important than an employment arrangement, Snowden seems to be in the right.

<comment><USER7> Snowden didn't break an "employment arrangement", he knowingly broke the law that everyone with a TS/SCI clearance is given. This isn't a one-liner you sign and date the day before you start. Getting a TS/SCI clearance is a __long __process, and you very clearly know you are __not __supposed to talk about it, no matter what you hear or see.

Now, Snowden might have still be right, I'm not debating that, but chalking it up to a breach of employment contract is naive.

<comment><USER8> Okay, he didn't break an actual employment contract, he broke a glorified employment contract. Happy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The SEC had said that Monsanto lacked sufficient internal controls to account for millions of dollars in rebates that it offered to retailers and distributors. It ultimately booked a sizeable amount of revenue, but then failed to recognize the costs of the rebate programs on its books."

This is what happens when you take glyphosate and multiply the cost/production price by well over 50x and package it as some miracle product. If your marketing strategy is to mislead every single purchaser then it is no surprise that you lose sight of how many strands of bullshit marketing you are running.

Roundup is a great example of one of those products that are cash cows for companies that market themselves as "the best solution"

Every.Single.One of the roundup products is glyphosate, and that stuff will kill anything and is very very cheap.

Dear readers be aware - glyphosate is a chemical that is present in all weedkillers (except the really shitty ones) so buying the brand name is a total waste of your money, and the amazing people at Roundup HQ know it. Buy the no-name, unbranded stuff.

I can understand Coca Cola etc selling sugar water for huge margins, but I pull my hair out when it comes to something like glyphosate. That's how I get my roots under control.

<comment><USER10> As another poster has pointed out, there are many, many non-glyphosate herbicides.

In the past, Monsanto has required farmers buying Roundup-Ready seeds to sign license agreements stating that only Monsanto glyphosate may be used.

[https://www.ssjr.com/pubdigassets/presentations/lawyer_7/sbs...](https://www.ssjr.com/pubdigassets/presentations/lawyer_7/sbs_Patent_Licensing_Restrictions_Not_Regarded_As_Tying.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Do you have any "roundup ready" chemical study that can determine, for example, what concentration of glyphosate (over the lesser killers) is in the commercial "Monsanto glyphosate ready" products?

I smell a rat here - perhaps they are selling glyphosate as a name on the product, but in reality there is so little of it compared to 'filler' weedkillers that they can profit from that too.

the whole world knows that glyph kills it all, so "glyph-ready" seems like a contradiction to me

source info comes from my time dealing with sugar cane producers who use pure glyph to increase the sugar content in the useful end of the canes they harvest

<comment><USER11> I'm confused by your post. "Roundup Ready" plants are genetically engineered to be resistant to the effects of glyphosate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I worked in bigag for a while, quit on principle when I understood what Monsanto really was. They are super shady, and honestly they are very damage- control aggressive, so I'm surprised this actually happened, but it's a start. Now can we get SCOTUS to force Thomas to recuse himself from Monsanto cases? Can we also get the FDA to purge it's ranks of Monsanto formers that are subverting the FDA's mandate? How about we use some anti-trust laws to take care of the backdoor deals between them and Dupont?

Don't beleive for one second any of the people claiming Monsanto is a force for good in the world.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have nothing against Monsanto and think they are a great company, but I'm glad to hear this. Whistleblower programs are important.

<comment><USER14> Can you elaborate what makes you think that Monsanto is a "great company"? I am genuinely interested.

<comment><USER15> For one, their executives are known to report accounting improprieties that they encounter to the SEC :)

<comment><USER16> That executive is somewhat less likely to report future accounting improprieties ;)

<comment><USER17> True, but imagine if you were one of the remaining executives. You just saw that guy rat you all out and run off with 22M$. I think that they're going to have to be on their toes, because now the rest of them know exactly what will happen if there's any malfeasance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >A former Monsanto Co (MON.N) executive who tipped the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to accounting improprieties involving the company's top- selling Roundup product has been awarded more than $22 million from the agency's whistleblower program, the executive's lawyer said on Tuesday.

Yes, please -- Let this be the default way it works at the high executive levels of big corporations. The corp should be _terrified_ of committing fraud because they should know that a whistleblower has every incentive to rat them out and walk away a millionaire.

</comment><comment><USER19> So the shareholders in that company got screwed, along with the whistle-blower getting part of that settlement?

Doesn't that create bad incentive for whistleblowers not to do anything until it's too late?

<comment><USER20> The incentive is clear. Whistleblow and you get a reward.

The whistleblowers are humans who can't really wait until later and later. It risks being found out or losing the window of whistleblowing. Also, most people are not this analytical. If they have the balls to whistleblow, they will, usually right away (after some due diligence)

<comment><USER21> It seems like the incentive is to become an accountant and seek employment at the shadiest big company you can find in hopes of hitting a whistleblower jackpot.

<comment><USER20> That's a shitty bet to take in life, considering that the likelihood is as good as winning the lottery. At least the lottery ticket costs just $10 and not a few years of life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> ... as opposed to Obama, who just wants to put them in jail.

<comment><USER23> Obama has not put any corporate whistleblowers in jail. We can debate the merits of prosecuting those who leak government secrets, but that is a separate issue from this one.

<comment><USER22> Yes, he did. The NSA is as much a part of Corporate America as anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Excuse my language but holy shit!

This is more than enticing!

</comment><comment><USER25> Don't worry, I'm sure a company that misstates its earnings will be completely honest about any possible negative side effects of GMO organisms.

</comment><comment><USER26> Cool, he got paid and all, but keep in mind that's $22M of yours and my tax money.

EDIT: Nevermind, I did not read the article before commenting. My mistake.

<comment><USER27> Isn't it from the settlement money?

<comment><USER13> Interestingly the settlement money still does a bit affect our taxes still.

Monsanto makes $80 million less in revenue this year due to the settlement. ~$80 mill less profit ~= $20 mill fewer taxes.

<comment><USER28> Correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't make $80M less, they just lose $80M from the amount they have made in the past (already taxed)

<comment><USER13> This would be counted as a loss for _this_ years tax purposes. So they will pay fewer taxes this year.

<comment><USER29> Settlements that are classified as penalties are generally not tax deductible. Settlements that are classified as remedial/restorative generally are.

This was no doubt a topic of discussion and planning before the settlement was entered into. The article repeatedly refers to it as a "penalty", but it's unclear if that's colloquial or specifically informed language.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Drones Used to Find Toy-Like "Butterfly" Land Mines - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/drones-used-to-find-toy-like-butterfly-land-mines/ <comment><USER2> > _" More than a million Russian-made PFM-1 land mines—the most common > butterfly type, possibly inspired by similar U.S. weapons deployed during > the Vietnam War"_

Possibly? Why is this article softballing? The Russian version of the mine is a DIRECT ripoff of the American version. They look EXACTLY the same.

Here is a BLU-43, the American version: [http://www.big- ordnance.com/subs/BLU43OD.jpg](http://www.big-ordnance.com/subs/BLU43OD.jpg)

Here is a PFM-1, the Russian version: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1#/media/File:Russische_Sc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1#/media/File:Russische_Schmetterlingsmine_PFM-1.jpg)

It's the same damn mine! There is no "possibly" about this. The author didn't lie but he's damn sure being dishonest. The article never even mentions the BLU-43 by name, which would allow more readers to look it up and decide for themselves.

<comment><USER3> Lazy research, not dishonesty, is the far more likely explanation here. From Wikipedia[1]:

> a land mine of Soviet production, very similar to the BLU-43 US Army > landmine. Both devices are very similar in shape and principles, although > they use different explosives.

The author probably reworded the above.

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

<comment><USER4> Hanlon's Razor:

> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Though I'd use ignorance here instead of stupidity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the design process like for landmines? Do they consider if they look like toys? Do they put duds in a toy chest and see what a sample of children will pick out?

This whole concept really upsets me to think about.

<comment><USER6> My guess is that the question never comes up. If you're an adult thinking in terms of an abstract blueprint of a weapon, the thought of a child stumbling on the dirt-strewn concrete implementation of your device is very far from your mind, almost impossible to think of. The only way you would think of it is if someone pulls the possibility off a checklist built from cases like this. Be honest: if you saw the picture in the article _without_ the surrounding context to make you think about toys, how likely would you have been to think of them that way? To think that someone else would think of them as toys? I'm guessing it's low. My first visual impression was of dead bugs or cigars wrapped in leaves (which I'll grant might be just as tempting to a child).

Not that any of that makes it ok. I'm more convinced than ever that failure of imagination is a form of morally judgable (what's the right word here?) negligence. But it would have been hard to see that far into the future in this case.

<comment><USER7> >If you're an adult thinking in terms of an abstract blueprint of a weapon..

You are probably not making mines. I don't know. It makes perfect sense to me the kind of mass murdering sociopath capable of working on such a device would find it perfectly ok to target children.

Only one physicist quit the Manhattan project iirc. Maybe the indiscriminate nature of mass murder is not such an irksome burden for a weapons designer or distributor. Maybe the people that find themselves in that line of work fully understand the risks but just don't care.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't design weapons for the US government today, but if we were facing another Hitler and another WWII-era Germany, along with Japan? Remember that we wouldn't have the benefit of hindsight and know that Hitler would shoot himself in the foot with the Russian front and wasting resources on his insane genocide. The Manhattan project might be one of the most prominent exceptions to the sweeping generalization you're making. It's also unhelpful and unwise to frame people you don't like or understand as sociopaths, or crazy.

<comment><USER9> Since the Hitler period came up, there are great parallels to the topic of land mines for that time period. During Harris bombardment of the civilian population they did not just use regular and incendiary bombs, but also delay- action bombs which exploded hours or days after the impact with the goal to hit rescue workers who dug out the dead or wounded.

Like with most aerial bombs at the time, there where quite a few who didnt detonate. Its one thing to dispose of a regular bomb, but the time delayed ones are mostly just stuck. They detonated since then once some unlucky bloke moved or just touched them. Just in 2012 for example such a bomb killed 3 bomb disposal experts.

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283273/WW2-bomb- ki...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283273/WW2-bomb-kills-G- ttingen-experts-attempt-defuse-it.html)

With them getting older and older, they get more likely to detonate without even any interaction as the trigger guard rots through.

The situation of some south eastern Asian countries with unexploded ordnance and actual land mines is a better example though. Using a weapon like this will continue to indiscriminately kill people for well over a century.

edit:

To be a bit more positive, there is also people doing the opposite, like Aki Ra.

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

<comment><USER8> Yes, land mines are horrible, the incalculable environmental damage and subsequent human (and other) suffering of any war can't be overstated. War however, at least wars of the "necessary" type are the kind of the thing that don't allow for those considerations. It is a _very_ strong argument, not for trying to change how war is fought (minimally effective), but to accept that war is truly an atrocity to be avoided at nearly all costs. Instead we spent the years after WWII trying to make war on anything vaguely "red" and after Vietnam, just sought to make a constant stream of wars and armed conflicts more palatable to the public.

The problem is the sheer amount of war, constant war, completely unjustified war. Vietnam is a great example (credit to darkpuma for knowing their stuff) of just such a waste, which makes the lengthy fallout all the more unforgivable. WWII by contrast, a subject I didn't raise incidentally and so had no Godwin moment (I responded to a post explicitly mentioning the Manhattan project), was nothing chosen by anyone other than the Axis. Developing and deploying nuclear weapons existed in the context of a fight for survival, against powers that systematically murdered millions of non- combatants. Japan, putting aside Pearl Harbor, was monstrous in China, Korea, and the Philippines. They dropped plague fleas on Manchuria, slaughtered a small tortured prisoners, and Germany... well, we all know about that.

There was no reason to believe that victory over them was certain, or even likely until the war had rages for years. There was every reason to believe that life under the Nazis would be hell, and fatal for swathes of humanity. The Japanese were not particular better, and China and Korea still bear the scars.

All of which is to say, I objected to mixing up people who designed mines for Vietnam, with people fighting WWII on the front, or in the lab.

<comment><USER9> >a subject I didn't raise incidentally and so had no Godwin moment (I responded to a post explicitly mentioning the Manhattan project)

Overworked the the comment it was a bit off.

<comment><USER8> No harm, no foul.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I understand there are many tech workers that flatly refuse to work on drone technology, especially if it may have military applications.

Is there any affordance given for the possibility that some of this military technology will actually be used for good?

<comment><USER11> Military technology is a wide and pretty vague term. A lot of technology is implicitly dual use. A nice example of an unexpected military use case for a completely innocent looking technology was a work that explored potential weak spots in a proposed tank design by using real time 3d graphics and order independent transparency in particular to estimate armor strength against attacks from different directions. Originally, OIT was developed for games and 3d data visualizations.

I think that technology that can be used to protect people, especially civilians, should be developed. I know that I personally draw the line at weapoms platforms and weapon systems. You may develop and build them with the best intentions in mind ("we're at peace and this system is only a necessary deterrent"), but recent history tells me that once these systems are built and sold, they will be used by someone, somewhere to shoot at other people. Even the oh so pacifist Germany sells a lot of weapons and I think every type of weapon system sold to another country by Germany since the second world war has seen some action.

<comment><USER12> I think you've killed less people working on literal sniper rifles for the military than working on the addictive feed dynamics of Facebook, given the Rohingya massacre and other social ills they've supported.

I think a lot of people in tech work on really questionable projects that create huge social ills, then talk about "Well, at least we don't build weapons!" \-- ignoring that when measuring human suffering, their unrestrained manipulation and exploitation causes much more than weapons of war do, in practice.

So when unqualified, I tend to hear your argument as simply trying to hide the messiness of what you do, rather than than it's inherently more ethical than building weapons would be.

tl;dr: I don't believe the military is less ethical, I think they're just more honest about what they do.

<comment><USER11> I never worked on social media; this does not interest me. I will agree that it has caused a lot of change and may have contributed to outbreaks of violence in the recent past. I could compare these conflicts to others in the past that were massively more devastating, but I wom't.

I am not sure of this discussion of social media is framed correctly. At its core, all this social tech tries to satisfy the very basic human need for communication in novel ways. There is nothing bad about trying to achieve that. But somewhere along the way something unintended and bad happened. We need to find out what it is and how to fix it as a society. The underlying tech and concepts will never go away again. It can be used for good. We realized too late that we failed to use it properly.

<comment><USER12> My point is the double-standard in the tech community making that argument on behalf of one kind of technology, while ignoring that weapons extend from the very basic human need for security and agency.

It's a standard human fallacy, which I've made numerous times: we look at the intentions of ourselves (the tech community) while looking at the results of others (eg, the military). But the question we really need to be asking is if our impact on the world leads to better outcomes than theirs, regardless of what either group intended -- and I'm not sure it's so clear cut, once you account for second order effects of social media.

And it's certainly not as simple a moral calculus as "Well, they work on weapons so they're worse people than me!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems odd to me to waste so much time and money and risk to lives when one can simply drive a mine flail through any given area to clear it of mines.

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

<comment><USER14> How expensive do you think it is to operate a mine flail? Especially factoring in transport to remote areas?

<comment><USER13> what price do you put on a life?

<comment><USER14> How much money are _you_ spending on mine clearance globally?

Because not everyone who is affected by mines has infinite money available.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's your favorite children's book? - <AUTHOR> Some books that are aimed at kids are actually full of really good information.  Do you have any favorites?  My friend and I are looking for inspiration. <comment><USER3> Rosie Revere Engineer. [https://www.amazon.com/Rosie-Revere-Engineer-Andrea- Beaty/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Rosie-Revere-Engineer-Andrea- Beaty/dp/1419708457)

Also, I wrote a 900 word review of Brown Bear, Brown Bear analyzing it's subverisve warning about today's surveillance state. Pretty proud of that one.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/cr/0805092447](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/cr/0805092447)

<comment><USER4> Bravo! Easily the best review of a children's book I have read. I would love to read your review of the subsequent Polar Bear, Polar Bear - are the children now actors for the state since they are the ones making noises or are they subversives?

My contribution to the discussion would be The Bear Snores On. Some great phrases in there that keep it interesting enough that I don't mind reading it 3 times a day, yet fun enough the little guy still enjoys it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They didn't have this book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_the_Fuck_to_Sleep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_the_Fuck_to_Sleep) when my kids were young.

Even better than the book is Samuel L Jackson narrating it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDGKK6y8OtQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDGKK6y8OtQ)

It probably would have been my favorite! Just kidding. Maybe?

<comment><AUTHOR> hahah amazing

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is for older children, twelve and above I'd say, but I think the Alice books ( _Alice 's Adventures in Wonderland_ and _Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There_ ) are great. Then they (and you) can read _The Annotated Alice_ by Martin Gardner, which opened up entirely new levels of the stories to me.

For younger children, I'd say _The Wind in the Willows_.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thomas the Tank Engine - teaches you to know your place

I think it depends on age - my wife and her friends are teachers, and they think the most important thing is to learn the structure of language, and rhyming is an important part of that. They always recommend Julia Donaldsons books like the Grufalo, and Jack and The Flum Flum Tree for younger ones

</comment><comment><USER8> Inspiration as in for writing one?

If it's a book for _young_ children (the kind that parents are going to read to them, and therefore have to read _over and over_ ), you need to make it not a bore for the parents. Maybe the best example I've seen is "The Bravest Ever Bear".

</comment><comment><USER9> I read so many books as a child it is impossible to recommend any. I did read a book recently titled 'Absolute Zero Gravity' (Betsy Devine & Joel Cohen) Science Jokes, Quotes and Anecdotes. It is informative, historical, educational, and truly fascinating to read. For a child this can really awaken their cognitive imagination. Fiction-wise I would leave to the child to decide as that list is truly endless. The Witcher series by Sapkowski I couldn't hardly put down (the movie is a complete FAIL). One other I rather liked is titled 'The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe' by Defoe, Lovecrart, & Clines.

</comment><comment><USER10> The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (illustrations by Jules Feiffer)

</comment><comment><USER11> Roald Dahm, The Witches

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witches_(novel)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witches_\(novel\))

<comment><USER12> Roald Dahl, as I'm sure you know.

<comment><USER11> Sorry, this is what I get for typing on my mobile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Grimm brothers

Anything by Verne

Tom Poes (but you'd need to read dutch for that)

Master of the black mill (Krabat) (Harry Potter, but different and much older)

</comment><comment><USER14> Frank Asch's books George's Store, and Milk and Cookies.

Also Robert Munsch's Love You Forever. Warning, make sure tissues are nearby: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z-oBkgJ4Ow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z-oBkgJ4Ow)

</comment><comment><USER15> Oh The Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss

</comment><comment><USER16> The Frog and Toad series had some great life lessons.

</comment><comment><USER17> Come Over To My House - Dr. Seuss

</comment><comment><USER18> Spring Is Here by Taro Gomi

</comment><comment><USER19> _A Wrinkle in Time_ by Madeleine L'Engle

</comment><comment><USER20> Treasure Island - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER21> The Giving Tree</comment>


Single-atom transistor discovered - <AUTHOR> http://www.tkk.fi/en/current_affairs/news/view/yhden_atomin_transistori_loydetty/ <comment><USER2> This is remarkable, but these kind of things are only possible at extremely low temperatures and in high magnetic fields, for example this was done at 100mK and in a 4T field, so you won't be seeing intel pumping these out any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suspect this transistor suffers from the same problem as all other 'miracle' transistors, including carbon nanotube based transistors, that have been announced over the past decade: the gain < 1, which means you can't build anything other than the most simple circuits out of them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it "discovered" or "created"?

</comment><comment><USER5> First steps towards quantum computers...!

</comment><comment><USER6> Amazing!</comment>


Racket 7.6 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.racket-lang.org/2020/02/racket-v7-6.html <comment><USER2> Racket is a great language. I got introduced to it through reading "How to Design Programs" ([https://www.htdp.org/](https://www.htdp.org/)), which is a really beautiful introduction to programming that focuses on big-picture program design, rather than just writing code, but in a way that is accessible even to people who are new to programmers.

I recently got a chance to use it for a medium-sized personal project, and it is one of the most enjoyable programming languages that I have ever used. Unfortunately, its performance, and especially the start-up time, is not that great. (At least this was true last time I checked.)

As someone who hasn't been following Racket news, I'm not sure if the new Chez Scheme backend is expected to improve performance. I found this blog post ([https://blog.racket-lang.org/2018/01/racket-on-chez- status.h...](https://blog.racket-lang.org/2018/01/racket-on-chez- status.html)), which seems to indicate that it is not, but that may be quite outdated. What is the goal of porting Racket to CS?

<comment><USER3> That report is quite outdated. It's almost 2 years old. There is a 2019 version in [https://blog.racket-lang.org/2019/01/racket-on-chez- status.h...](https://blog.racket-lang.org/2019/01/racket-on-chez-status.html) and I guess Matthew will post the 2020 version soon.

The idea is that someday the CS version will be faster than the traditional version. Now the CS is faster in some benchmarks, and slightly slower (205? 50%?) in others. IIRC the worst cases are in code that uses too many mutable pairs, and the futures block more often.

IIRC Many of the changes of the last year were to improve the transformation from Racket to Chez Scheme. For example, some structs can be used as function in Racket, so in (f 1 2 3) the transformation must add a check to see if f is a real function or a struct that contains a function. If the transformation know which variables contain real functions and which struct, then the checks can be avoided, and hopefully the function can used in the constant folding and other transformation.

(Some of the checks can be eliminated by the optimizations in Chez Scheme, but some are just too difficult, so it's important to improve the transformation. For example, I think that the unnecessary continuation marks are very difficult to remove using only the information available in Chez Scheme, and the continuation marks are used heavily when the debug mode is enabled.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dependent Type Systems as Macros cropped up on HN a couple of times recently...

p30 of [https://www.mpoffald.com/papers/depmacros.pdf](https://www.mpoffald.com/papers/depmacros.pdf) has a table comparing the macro systems of various langs

Seems only Racket has enough juice to do this, for now :)

(though I do wonder if some of those missing features couldn't be provided by libraries in other languages)

<comment><USER5> The Little Typer teaches dependent types with a Racket based language called Pig. Do recommend, fun book.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Joy of Computing, one neat project/hack/etc every day - <AUTHOR> https://joy.recurse.com <comment><AUTHOR> Recurse Center founder here.

Many people have asked over the years what types of things people do at RC. It's a surprisingly hard question to answer, because the work people do here is varied and diverse, from contributing to OSS projects to silly hacks to algorithmically generated art.

We built Joy of Computing to answer this question. It's a daily link aggregation site which posts one piece of work done by a current Recurser or an alum every day.

I'm happy to answer questions if anyone has any!</comment>


Writing udev rules for development boards (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://lab.whitequark.org/notes/2016-11-20/writing-udev-rules-for-development-boards/ <comment><USER2> Well one thing missing is ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1" for /dev/ttyACM devices. This should really be the default, IMHO. Otherwise Linux tries to send AT commands to what it thinks is a modem device, but which is probably a serial port.

There is more: a nice property of FTDI devices is that they have unique serial numbers. So if you want specific cables to match to specific device names you can do it with ATTRS{serial}=="A106YEUY", SYMLINK+="my_special_device"

On the other hand, FTDI is ruined by its own success. Lattice Diamond (an FPGA tool) takes over all FTDI devices. So it's a good idea to keep a CP2102 or Prolific USB to serial adapter just in case you want a serial port and an FPGA programmer on the same system.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does Google get away with such bad recruiting practices? - <AUTHOR> Recently I've been through the on-site interviews at Google and had a terrible experience. The recruiter went silent after my on-site and my calls are directly going to voicemail. The on-site was a month ago and I've heard nothing regarding my status. I've shared this experience with some of my friends, and they've all had similar experiences. My question is - how is Google getting away with such bad recruiting practices? I've never had a company not call me back after I took a day off work to interview, even if it is bad news! Shouldn't bad recruiting practice like this hurt the company's reputation? And shouldn't people be more hesitant to apply to companies knowing that they will be treated badly? <comment><USER2> A buddy of mine interviewed for a fairly senior role at Google (SVP equivalent) and he had about 6 or 7 in-person interviews within a week or two before they went radio-silent. 6 months later they contacted him and asked him to come in for another round of interviews -- at which point he told them he was going to pass.

Edit: This was a half-decade or more ago.

<comment><USER3> The idea that randos are just interviewing to be SVPs at Google doesn't seem particularly likely to me.

<comment><USER4> Why do you think OP's friend is a "rando"?

<comment><USER3> Anybody who claims to be going for an executive position through front-door recruiting is a rando. Look at the SVPs at Google and look at how they got that job. Either they have been at Google since the dawn of man, or they came in through major acquisitions, or they were personally recruited by Larry Page.

<comment><USER2> He didn't go through front-door recruiting. They sought him out. He's had similar roles at major banks.

...and he still had to go through that process. Do 'mere mortals' have to do 5+ in-person interviews?

<comment><USER5> I think their point was that for SVP type positions, especially at Google, if they want you you don't go through multiday interviews. They make a pitch and give you an offer. But even then that is unlikely.

I think what might be happening is some of the titles don't match between banks and tech. At a bank there are 1000s of "VPs" and so your friend may be at that level but really in Google and most tech companies that could be anything from a Senior Engineer/Team Lead/Director level. In tech, SVP is way way up there. An example is Marissa Mayer who only attained VP and never SVP before moving on to Yahoo.

<comment><USER6> I've encountered so many VP's from Goldman Sachs and similar companies that I can't believe the title means very much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People want to be on the side that is winning. Also, they want minions and one characteristic of a good minion is unlimited tolerance for abuse. You might as well start early in the process.

If you join Scientology, for instance, the second thing you do is TR0 Bullshit where somebody screams as you and you just sit there and don't flinch. After that they'll scream at you all the time and if you complain they'll tell you to "keep your TRs in.". If you really cant stand getting abused they don't want you on board.

</comment><comment><USER7> I had quite a memorable experience where a Google recruiter accidentally CC'd their post interview survey email instead of BCC. After the initial "haha" moment we discovered that almost all of the ~2k people in the email list were African American. A private LinkedIn group was started after that, although I haven't followed up with it lately.

Also for that particular interview, I waited for an hour and a half in the lobby before a recruiter finally showed up. It turned out that my recruiter was let go the day before and my interview time fell between the cracks. Pretty much the worst experience I've ever had interviewing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Because they're huge, they have gobs of money and influence, and people want to work for them in the hopes of getting a piece of both. Greed is a powerful force, especially when backed by a complaint ideology.

<comment><USER9> curious what you mean by 'complaint ideology' ?

<comment><USER8> I mean, "Compliant", but autocorrect bunged me again. My bad!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most big companies are terrible at recruiting. Google requires massive numbers of people so they can't spend much time or concern on any one position or one recruitee. Even my employer (non SV) can't even post positions for engineers that make any sense (which is why we get so few candidates).

<comment><USER11> There's no reason why they can auto-generate a "We have decided not to proceed with your application" email when they move your status to rejected at the very least. It costs marginally nothing.

<comment><USER12> It does when you think you might have another position for them and you don't want to burn bridges. Which I assume it likely what they're thinking.

<comment><USER13> Not responding burned bridges not just with him but everyone reading this, sending a polite no would have maintained them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am not defending Google here but plenty of reasons I would guess:

\- Lot of people want to work for Google. Plenty of supply

\- Cost/Benefit. The cost of contacting everyone is not worth the benefit. Probably too many applicants to respond to

\- Because they can. They are Google.

\- They are big. Perhaps a certain division/HR team is worse than others. So it could come down to specific HR team who is the culprit.

I bet if the supply of candidates go down and they need to find people, they will respond a lot more.

<comment><USER15> I interviewed at MS in 2000, they said the same thing during the interview to one of my questions "Because we can. We are MS.". My response is probably why I did not get the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Like with any BigCo, there are always bad apples (recruiters) and things slip through cracks. But compared to other similar sized companies, Google is quite focused on improving their interview processes. You can find lots of resources online from Google employees explaining it. The one I found very enlightening is from Moishe Lettvin given at Etsy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8RxkpUvxK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8RxkpUvxK0)

My own personal experience couple of years ago was good. I failed the interview though.

<comment><USER17> Laszlo Bock's _Work Rules!_ highlights many things that have been tried and implemented at Google to improve recruiting and retention. It might be a bit effusive, but I think the insights generally do apply to many workplaces.

[https://www.amazon.com/Work-Rules-Insights-Inside- Transform/...](https://www.amazon.com/Work-Rules-Insights-Inside- Transform/dp/1455554790)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Go someplace decent which gives you space, respect as an adult, money and ethics instead of joining a centralized, politicized, authoritarian spy network that will treat you like an eternally incapable teenager.

</comment><comment><USER19> Lol I graduated with a CS degree in 2004 and have been searching for an entry level software development job ever since. Google was the first and only company to call me back to tell me I didn't get the job. I think things are getting worse out there.

<comment><USER20> Either you are a really bad developer or you are shooting for the stars. You really haven't found any work since 2004?

<comment><USER21> I'm assuming OP was exaggerating...I don't see how they couldn't be based on the market

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _> Shouldn't bad recruiting practice like this hurt the company's reputation?_

I imagine it has, to an extent, among their pool of potential candidates.

 _> And shouldn't people be more hesitant to apply to companies knowing that they will be treated badly?_

I'm sure there are people who have decided not to pursue employment at Google based on the what they've heard about Google's interview process. But, apparently, there are still many thousands of good developers who are undeterred by Google's reputation. So for the time being, in their cost- benefit analysis, Google has decided they're better off without making major changes in their hiring process.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can we have an explanation on why this was flagged?

</comment><comment><USER24> I've had the opposite experience. The recruiter proactively provided updates and kept me up-to-date in terms of expected timeline.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to meet you! I've seen so many good stories about Google recruiting online - but I guess my friends and myself aren't big enough sample size to make a valid conclusion. It is just a bit frustrating, an auto generated email costs nothing.

<comment><USER25> It's possible that your recruiter quit and hopped to a different company. That is one common source for recruiter going dark. It's also possible you got a really bad recruiter... there's an enormous variance of recruiter quality.

Just guessing here, but auto generated emails are tricky because you don't want to send people incorrect messaging by accident (for example if your recruiter wants to swap you between application roles, it may involve a cancel and add, which could send an auto rejected notice - (hypothetical example, I have no idea)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They can get away with it because they have an endless supply of intelligent engineers that want to work there. It's the same effect we see when there is a monopoly over the marketplace.

<comment><USER27> If so, they underestimate the downside of adverse selection. Bad interview processes still let you hire lots of people, but select out the people who care most about processes not sucking. If you do this for a decade, you end up missing an important element in your organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you have any contacts at Google, try asking them to contact the recruiter directly. That usually works.

Of course, this is not an excuse for the poor treatment you're receiving, and I'm sorry to hear that.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is your only complaint that the recruiter went silent? Or is that only one part of the problem? Because it wasn't clear to me from your description what else went wrong during the process for you to conclude that they have bad recruitment practices.

</comment><comment><USER30> 3rd party recruiting agencies get a bad wrap for many justifiable reasons, but this is one area where they provide value. Even though a company may be using dozens of agencies each agency will still have an stream of communication to get real updates no matter how "busy" the hiring HR department is.

Edit: this is assuming the recruiter doesn't go ghost on you themselves that is....

</comment><comment><USER31> Do you feel like you needed a little bit more emotional support from people you probably won't see again?

</comment><comment><USER32> Because people, even very good people, especially very good young people put up with it. I did. Would I now? No. If a Google recruiter contacts me now I say pass. Ain't nobody got time for that (at a certain age or when you've gone through it enough).

</comment><comment><USER33> I had a good experience with Google. The recruiter contacted me at every chance with updates about where things were. It took two months from first being contacted but after I had another offer they sped up the process, scheduling an in person interview two weeks out. After that it was still three weeks until I received an official offer. What probably made the biggest difference was having another offer on the table. It put more urgency on getting me through the process.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've interviewed there a couple of times over the years and I was less than impressed by the process.

Doesn't stop people from applying and they seem to end up with the candidates they want, so it's probably working for them. They have to standardize on some process, this one seems to produce the desired results and with the number of candidates they get, I assume that they're not worried about false negatives, but are worried about false positives...

</comment><comment><USER35> I had a good experience interviewing with Google earlier this year. Sometimes there were a couple weeks between steps of the process, but I always had a clear sense of when I'd be contacted next, and the recruiter and interviewers always held to the schedule. I was rejected, and got the notice promptly (a few days after the interview).

</comment><comment><USER9> any response at all following an interview puts a company at above average these days.

that said, my experiences with google have been _way above average._ probably one of the few companies where i genuinely enjoyed interviewing (i usually hate interviews). follow-ups were very informative as well. sounds like you got a flaky recruiter.

</comment><comment><USER36> Could be that the recruiter left. My perception is that recruiters have greater churn in bi companies.

</comment><comment><USER37> Google called me back and let me know that they position they were hiring for was filled and that they would keep my information on file.

Have been getting their recruiters calling every 6 months since, and that was almost 8 years ago now.

<comment><USER38> Sounds like they kept your info on file tho?

<comment><USER37> That they have. I don't really mind them reaching out every 6 months personally...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Good thing about Amazon is that they consider even interviewees as customers.. and customer obsession is their way to go!

</comment><comment><USER40> Dell did a very similar thing to me a few months ago. I think its just a symptom of large companies

<comment><USER41> It's happened to me fairly often at small companies, although that could just be something to do with where I live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> From my experience, this is very normal. I'm surprised you don't find it normal.

</comment><comment><USER42> if you get the job make sure it doesn't happen to the next person.

</comment><comment><USER43> the sooner you stop expecting employers to treat you well, the better tbh.

</comment><comment><USER44> They pay a lot

<comment><USER45> They do? Czech salary range at google is less than 6k USD/mo i think.

<comment><USER46> How does that compare to local salaries?

<comment><USER45> It seems similar to other bigger IT companies in the region. Nothing special - but then again I never did any deep research on the subject.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ski Jumps - <AUTHOR> https://ski-jumps.pl/ <comment><AUTHOR> Ski Jumps is a new proposal from SuperNova Interactive. This is a unique browser game that allows players to become a ski jumper. This elite sport has never been so accessible! In the game we play the role of a ski jumper, who is just beginning his career. Appropriate training, development and equipment will allow him to reach the top.

The biggest advantage of Ski Jumps is the competition with players from around the world. In each tournament or competition there are other players with whom we can compete. Not only the hill records are important, but also the final classification - it decides about success and fame. The system of international competitions is also interesting, in which the best competitors from each country take part. The greater the skills, the better the equipment and the more experience, the greater the chance of success.

Ski Jumps is developing at a very fast pace, thanks to which not only the game has won many thousands of fans, but is constantly gaining new ones. The creators of the game care about the development of their work, so they regularly provide smaller or larger improvements and news. One of them is definitely the ability to check on a server with faster gameplay. The same number of competitions, much greater dynamics and intensity is something that will appeal to the most experienced players.</comment>


Meeting Japan's cyber homeless - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/world_news_america/7953376.stm <comment><USER2> 5万円 a month is the absolute cheapest he could find? That's hard to believe. A shared room at that time-honoured refuge of newly arrived gaijin, sakura house, runs around 47k/m and that would be way better than the cubicle in that video. And that's in Tokyo proper - Chiba or Saitama would be even less. Hell, I have a friend who lives in minami-sunamachi, rents a one-bedroom apartment and it costs 59k. That's Edogawa ward, 20 minutes from shinjuku, $590/month! That's not including utilities and stuff of course, but still, you get the idea.

Memories of the late 80s/early 90s notwithstanding, Tokyo is not at all expensive compared to other world cities. Compared to Sydney or, worse, London, it's actually pretty cheap. You could definitely do better than that. Weird.

<comment><USER3> Important clarification for many people reading this discussion: the sticker price of a Japanese apartment is not anywhere close to the amount of money it requires to actually move into it. I pay 45,000 yen (approximately $450) a month for my apartment in central Japan. Its quite spacious and very much in the stix. However, three days before movein I had to wire my landlord approximately $2,000.

2 months security deposit (nota bene: as a matter of course, this is not returned in this country), 1 month rent, 1 month finder fee, various insurance, etc, etc

That includes NO key money.

"Key money" (礼金) is a fun little idiosyncracy of Japanese real estate that says your landlord is sort of your buddy in a new town so you should give them a little gift to ensure their good favor. This gift can range from 1 to 3+ months rent, in cash, delivered prior to move-in. You will never see it again. The social justification for the tradition is long since dead (I've never even met my landlord, just the apartment referral service that handled everything) but, like all societal traditions that result in someone making money, it is shockingly durable.

There are other reasons I could name why a pay-by-the-day option is preferable to a traditional rented apartment (lack of a guarantor, lack of verifiable employment, etc) for folks in desperate situations, but I won't bore you too much. Suffice it to say that I'm glad I'm not in that situation but I understand why someone in it would choose to be "virtually" homeless.

<comment><USER4> Sounds near the point where landlords are incentivized to have a high turnover rate. At a 1 year average turnover & the higher key money estimate, that's >50% extra revenue (then indefinite tenants) with <10% extra cost (assuming finders fee & insurance goes to finders & insurers).

Here (Melbourne) You usually need approximately 3X1 month to rent (more if you include average contact breaking costs). Deposits get held by bureaucrats so no one is incentivized in any way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An internet cafe in Tokyo was easily the worst nights sleep I've ever had. The cubes aren't big enough to actually stretch out (admittedly, this might not be a problem for most Asians), so you end up folding your legs over a footrest with 8" of clearance under the desk. Every 40 minutes somebody's alarm goes off.

<comment><USER6> Earplugs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like those people could make it to 'ramen profitable' quickly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hero Protagonist

<comment><USER9> Sorry for being pedantic, but it's 'Hiro'.

Good call, btw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If it was really cheap I wouldn't mind that. The trick is obviously to go somewhere whenever you aren't sleeping.

</comment><comment><USER11> Apparently we won't be forced to enter our "Matrix" pods, the economy will make it the only option.

<comment><USER12> I keep hoping that following a certain level of technological sophistication, and in absence of further sophistication as to make your corporeal body wholly unnecessary that having no possessions and no permanent residence will be seen as normal. What could you need but the clothes on your back, the shoes on your feet, and the terminal implanted in your head?

Maybe I've been reading too many Culture novels.

<comment><USER6> People will probably still have sentimental attachements to souveniers. But apart from that, you may be right --- taking the current the lifestyle of some rich people as an indicator.

Of course we'd have to dramatically lower the transaction costs for short term rents of various goods that you may want to us.</comment></comment></comment>