Penn Effect - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_effect <comment><USER2> This is why I have a big problem with metric called "productivity".

Same service done in New York by the same worker is worth X times more than in a small town. Hence people who move their shop suddenly become 10 times more productive, even if they're doing the same thing exactly as efficiently as before.

Then people look at the graphs and say "no wonder these poor places are undeveloped - look how low their productivity is".

It should just be called labor cost and not productivity.

<comment><USER3> Huh, I didn't know productivity was a measure of monetary production. I always thought it was a catch all, for any and all alternative measures.

<comment><USER2> It's defined as GDP/man-hours worked in the country in a year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can see this on a micro scale in Basel, CH. Buying bread in different countries, just a short walk / bike ride with unenforced boundaries and there are real price differences. For luxury goods it can be even more extreme with Sushi on the french side of the border being affordable, and on the Swiss side... less so.

You would think that the effect of the German and French markets would create a local dip in prices in Basel, but it doesn't seem to be true.

<comment><USER5> What's true though is that Swiss people from the Basel region do regularly cross the border to make their shopping trips - including groceries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The law of one price says that the same item cannot sustain two different > sale prices in the same market (since everyone would buy only at the lower > price).

This is currently a problem with digital goods. How can you sell something, like an indie video game, for $1 in India and $10 is the US, and prevent Americans from buying the Indian version? There are online marketplaces that allow people to buy and sell "game keys" for cheap. People in cheap markets can sell local keys for games, at a small markup, to people in expensive markets.

<comment><USER7> I suppose one solution (for sellers) is to localize the games and their translations and bake those into the game keys. Once one purchases a game in Russian, you can't play it in English.

This excludes pricing disparity between (en-US, en-CA, en-GB), (es, es-US, ...) and the like cohorts, but that may not matter too much.

<comment><USER8> That would mean those of us who play games in multiple languages as a means of language study would need to buy each game multiple times.

<comment><USER9> > play games in multiple languages as a means of language study

I've been studying all night, mom!

Seriously, those who read books in multiple languages as means of language study need to buy each book multiple times and nobody used to find that surprising...

<comment><USER10> Or you just choose one? If you're at the level where reading a book can help you learn more or practice, I wouldn't have thought you'd much want a second copy in your native tongue.

<comment><USER9> Is an exercise common enough for bilingual editions to exist (intended to help learning a language, not to better understand that particular book).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What it doesn't mention is that a Big Mac is really a combination of a product (the price of which should be roughly constant) and the service of cooking and serving it (which is priced relative to local labor and real-estate rates).

If you look at the price of pure products, like barrels of oil, there is little Penn effect.

<comment><USER12> Not true. The Big Mac is mostly sourced regionally. So the raw material prices also vary and factor in labor cost.

<comment><USER13> > The Big Mac is mostly sourced regionally.

Only when it's cheaper to do so, and bulk shipping is pretty cheap. So the raw material prices have a cap on how much they can vary, while the location and service costs can have ridiculous differences.

<comment><USER14> You're assuming free trade, which is often not what actually exists. It's hard enough to get American beef approved to be sold in Canada, let alone ship it around the world.

<comment><USER13> You could do extra certification or whatnot if it was going to save you more than a penny or two.

Most trade is pretty free, even without all of it being so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Outsourcing is an interesting concept when considered this way. My employer can hire me in Silicon Valley for $X or a remote engineer from Ukraine for $Y<<$X.

Now clearly to the employer this is one big market where they have the choice of two similar goods at very different prices. But the two employees are in distinct but overlapping labor markets so they're not going to adjust their own prices.

The employer has a choice of all employees but the reverse is not true. I can't choose to work at a local Ukrainian firm and the other person can't choose to work at a local Silicon Valley firm.

</comment><comment><USER16> This "effect" exists locally in California. Identical products are cheaper in the Central Valley than they are in San Francisco, which makes perfect sense considering that the "product" (if it is a hamburger) includes the convenience of being immediately available in a high-rent high-wage area.

Similarly, Hass avocados from California retail for less in Baltimore than they do in Oakland.

</comment><comment><USER17> There is this thing called "regional prices" in online freelance labor marker, which one could discuss is unfair to ie. workers from eastern Europe who earn less that their western counterparts for the same job.</comment>


Spectre.css – A Lightweight, Responsive and Modern CSS Framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/picturepan2/spectre <comment><USER2> The more web development I've done the more I've swung back to just writing CSS myself rather than depending on CSS frameworks; I've ended up seeing these less as ways to accelerate development for a team that is skilled at frontend, but instead as a way for people who don't like styling or have little experience in frontend development/low design sense to style things reasonably.

But I keep seeing frontend frameworks on HN - am I/teams like mine that include at least one person fluent enough in CSS to write reasonable style sheets/styled components, just not the target audience? Or do other experienced frontend devs swear by UI frameworks like these for reasons I haven't grasped yet? If so, why?

<comment><USER3> As a "non-fluent CSS user", I find it challenging and frustrating to maintain visual consistency and cross-browser compatibility without frameworks. I totally appreciate the fact it's me being lazy to really learn CSS who is at fault.

Think of it like different construction methods - you can build something, let's say the Pyramids, or you can take something already built and beautiful, but is not what you need, and slowly curve Petra inside the walls. Both work.

<comment><USER4> I think you're probably still thinking about CSS as it was 5 years ago. When you had to do weird hacks to get things the way you wanted them. Modern CSS is much easier.

In fact, if you are sticking .row and .column everywhere you are doing considerably more work than just to define a grid layout using display: grid once in your CSS, and then just use semantic HTML thereafter.

<comment><USER5> While the grid and flexbox have made things better, the display:grid is still not supported in IE 11 very well. The grid css model was implemented in IE very early but as the specification got updated, IE remained with a different(older and incompatible) implementation of display:grid. Of course, we can still make display:grid work in IE11 by some additional work. But this is an additional overhead.

Flexbox has very good support and consistent behaviour in all major browsers and for most of the time we can use flexbox model. With some learning for using flexbox and grid I could appreciate their utility. (though I do not use CSS regularly)

The state of CSS is very much improved and these days we don't have to depend on hacks like the float and clear in CSS. But, minor problems like the inconsistent behaviour of display:grid in IE 11 - make the need for a CSS framework relevant.

<comment><USER3> What really amazes me is that wpf was release 12 years ago with _all_ these problems solved. Grid, alignment, center, Center!! You can center something in xaml and it'll just be in the damn center of the parent container. And surely xaml is far from being the first layout descriptor to actually work. But no, with browsers - we have to use fat framework to achieve the triviallest of behaviors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I enjoy about Spectre.css is that there is no javascript and the CSS is readable. It's easy to drop their CSS into a react component and extend it because it's so readable.

<comment><USER7> If you hover the homepage buttons, you can see they _veeery_ slightly change color, to a different shade of purple. It's barely perceptible.

Breaking fundamental rules of user experience right off the bat is not a good sign when I'm evaluating a CSS dependency.

<comment><USER8> What "fundamental rule" is being broken? Personally, I don't worry much about hover effects since they don't work on mobile anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I generally like to see a "kitchen sink" page with everything from the framework in addition to the option of having to go through the various parts and discovering whether they exist and what the defaults look like. I don't know if this is a popular opinion, but if so it would be nice if it became the de-facto practice when these are released.

This applies to all frameworks pretty much - if your web framework supports out of the box internationalization, caching, authentication, etc. the best way to sell me on it is for you to release a demo with all the bells and whistles, written with the conventions, folder structure, architecture, etc. that you advocate.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I kept going through the docs trying to find that. Left disappointed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm just gonna say it.

We don't need another "lightweight, responsive, modern" CSS framework.

It's a solved problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like fast, small web pages because not everyone has a broadband connection at all times. Can you tell me what other mature, tested, well-supported CSS frameworks have a feature set that large in less than 25% of Bootstrap's size?

<comment><USER12> [https://purecss.io/](https://purecss.io/)

[http://getskeleton.com/](http://getskeleton.com/)

[https://tachyons.io/](https://tachyons.io/)

[https://bulma.io/](https://bulma.io/)

[https://picnicss.com/](https://picnicss.com/)

[https://www.muicss.com/](https://www.muicss.com/)

[EDIT] - BTW, I mean this with less snark and more did-you-know-all-these- existed? I knew of purecss & skeleton (and I've forgotten a few, because it used to be very common to see these), and I've seen bulma before but some others were new to me (and I favorited them to give a try on some random project)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I chose Spectre after evaulating every one of these. Skeleton came very close. It's old but still looks incredibly good IMHO.

<comment><USER12> PureCSS was one of my favorites for a very long time. These days I use component frameworks like ElementUI[0] more than anything else to maintain consistent styling (since most things on the page happen to be components).

[0]: [https://github.com/ElementUI](https://github.com/ElementUI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like how the icons are crafted with minimal elements and not requiring font awesome or some other font.

[https://picturepan2.github.io/spectre/elements/icons.html](https://picturepan2.github.io/spectre/elements/icons.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I prefer [https://tachyons.io/](https://tachyons.io/) as a CSS framework that avoids any pre-styled themes and just provides building blocks. Great for SPA/component UIs.

<comment><USER15> Anyone interested in this approach may also like Tailwind [https://tailwindcss.com/](https://tailwindcss.com/)

<comment><USER16> How is this different from inline styling ? this throws class inheritance out of the window

<comment><USER17> A lot of modern CSS frameworks choose to ignore the cascade.

This trend has grown in response to how difficult it is to avoid regressions at scale - large or multiple projects, lots of components, lots of independent teams, etc.

The cascade really is an elegant and efficient idea but it becomes really difficult to manage as projects grow.

The different with inline CSS is that those helpers are the building blocks — that's where your standardize your design system metrics.

As others have pointed out this library provides a mechanism to abstract into components as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One thing I noticed, and Spectre.css certainly isn't alone in doing this, the default button look gives you zero indication that it's clickable.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been using this for years. Did something significant happen with it?

<comment><AUTHOR> New release, but I just felt HNers needed to know about it.

<comment><USER20> Thanks a lot! I've been looking at a lot of different CSS frameworks lately. So far I'm considering Semantic UI, Bulma, Tachyons, Tailwind, and a few others. I initially skipped over Spectre because I thought it was a just a lightweight grid framework, and didn't realize it had so many components in less than 10kb. That's really amazing, and I also love the super clean design. You also get a little bit of Tailwind with the functional classes.

The only thing I don't like is how it uses native browser select dropdowns. They're really ugly, so it would be nice if there was a proper select component (although I can just add my own CSS or use Select2.)

Anyway, this looks really awesome. Especially for a landing page that needs to load really fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://github.com/troxler/awesome-css- frameworks](https://github.com/troxler/awesome-css-frameworks)

<comment><USER22> I wish people would stop using "awesome", especially in a "curated" (don't get me started there either) list that has tens to hundreds of things. There is no way the author could possibly know if all of these frameworks are "awesome".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Confused why this is posted again, it's been submitted many times. (Maybe there was a big release? Just looks like updated docs). Having said that, I've used this for a number of projects and enjoyed it much more than heavier solutions.

There is no js so you just write your own in and it's really easy to mold to your own liking. It was "just" enough and produced polished looking crud apps. Mostly search and form stuff with tables but users have enjoyed it so I give the author credit. I also had to spend way more time working on the backend and this did not get in the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> HN doesn't mind revisiting topics from time to time. It's been a couple of years and HN has grown enormously since then. And FWIW I spent a long, long time settling on Spectre,css, which isn't perfect but which I feel covers a huge range of standard business purposes with an amazingly light footprint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This will probably be a unpopular opinion but I think HTML should be fully semantic with a naming scheme for custom elements (not BEM, etc), take for example classic breadcrumb navigation, the element name would be <breadcrumb- ul> to convey it inherits from HTMLUListElement so the actual structure isn't just an unknown mess of custom tags.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's lightweight and usable but far less complete than other options. How are people picking one framework another?

<comment><USER26> What are some more complete alternatives?

I think there is a blurred line between "lightweight" and "complete", and the various frameworks land either side of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Lightweight => 10 KB

I'm actually more looking for a grid system using flex in a few bytes

<comment><USER28> It's written is Sass, you can simply import only the components that you need such as the grid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Dude, I appreciate your work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not mine (I'm OP), but Yan Zhu, the creator, just needs way more attention. If you imagine an ego continuum with Richard Stallman on one end, Yan Zhu is the exact opposite. It's a little bit of effort just to find his name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Previous discussion from 2016 (50+ comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11758034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11758034)

</comment><comment><USER31> Are there by chance any samples with Arabic in this framework? Hoping it resolves the large size disparity between Latin and Arabic font sizes

</comment><comment><USER32> Spectre is pretty good. I've used it in several projects. It works well.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would like to start using it on my next project Thank you so much!

</comment><comment><USER34> I wish this was a React lib with components styled already.

</comment><comment><USER35> Not a css framework, but I still like to share Material-UI [https://material- ui.com/](https://material-ui.com/) It has many components available out of the box.

<comment><USER36> The example pages are unbearable slow and lagging on my 4-core 7700HQ CPU.

I don't know what the reason is, but it sure isn't a minimal framework.

I am no web developer, mind you, but I have yet to see any case where such heavy load really increases the benefit I get from a site. Usually it is quite the opposite.

It is my opinion that any web-developer using these sort of megabyte-sized frameworks should have their license revoked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "Accessibility - coming soon"

This is not acceptable any more.

</comment><comment><USER38> Who ever came to with this naming?

</comment><comment><USER39> Looks good, I'll use it!

</comment><comment><USER40> Why am I seeing ads on their github.io documentation and example pages?

Is the point to show something cool to devs or pick up pageview pennies?

I'm out!

<comment><USER41> God forbid someone tries to monetize a project he's spent over two and a half years developing/maintaining..

<comment><USER40> Perhaps I should clarify. I've got no issue with engineers seeking compensation for their work. I know the world can be a harsh place, and some people truly need the money.

Michael, you're absolutely right. People can insert whatever markup and JS they choose.

It simply seems an odd strategy for a CSS framework to squeak by on ads in the docs. An unfortunate side effect in this case is it makes it unclear what parts are documentation or examples, and what is an ad.

<comment><USER42> Can you seriously say it's hard to distinguish the ads from content here with a straight face?

Bootstrap 3 docs had ads too.

<comment><USER40> On mobile, yes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Geologist Predicts Major N. America Earthquake Imminent - <AUTHOR> http://www.sott.net/articles/show/225968-Geologist-Predicts-Major-N-America-Earthquake-Imminent <comment><USER2> USGS says the probability of a 6.7M or greater in the next 30 years is 63%. <http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/ucerf/> The ripest is the Hayward fault which last erupted 143 years ago. The historical interval over the last 1900 years is about 155 years. It has a probability of 31% in the next 30 years.

I work in SF about 10 miles from theHayward fault. Maybe I'll work from home in Cambria > 200 miles away for the next month or so. We already had our earthquake in 2003.</comment>


Is the online advertising bubble finally starting to pop? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2016/05/09/is-the-online-advertising-bubble-finally-starting-to-pop/ <comment><USER2> > I started calling online advertising a bubble in 2008.

Then maybe it's time to quit punditry; that was 8 years ago and the online advertising market has grown 2.5x since.

> I made "The Advertising Bubble" a chapter in The Intention Economy in 2012.

The online advertising market has grown 30% since.

Since no market can grow forever, at some point there will be a dip in the industry. Maybe in less than five years, maybe in ten years. And when it finally happens, this kind of pundit will be telling us "they had called it correctly, before anyone else".

<comment><USER3> > _Then maybe it 's time to quit punditry; that was 8 years ago and the online > advertising market has grown 2.5x since._

Isn't the very nature of bubbles to get inflated? 2.5x or more?

The main difference compared to a solid venture is not that they see growth (that's what they do best!), or for how many years they see growth, but that it's an inflated (hence "bubble") growth that can (and eventually will) disappear overnight.

A non-bubble industry will also see growth, and will also see decline. But it will not see a huge sudden drop from hero to zero, unless something extraordinary happens (e.g. a war, alien invasion, etc).

<comment><USER4> The bubble in computer sales never burst - it just leveled off some and some sales moved to phones and tablets, which grew at an even faster rate[1]

The are plenty of similar examples.

[1] [http://static1.squarespace.com/static/50363cf324ac8e905e7df8...](http://static1.squarespace.com/static/50363cf324ac8e905e7df861/t/563e0900e4b0a6d8f0c16c05/1446906116004/?format=1500w)

<comment><USER3> Sure, but computer sales were not a bubble to begin with.

<comment><USER4> What's the difference - isn't it that same thing? New technology opens up a new market, in which we see fast growth which then levels off?

Advertising sales have been growing for ~100 years, through newspapers, radio, TV and now online. AS new technology grows some of the spending migrates, and the overall market expands.

What is the argument that this is a bubble?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TLDR: I feel we, the people in the online advertising industry, have failed at our duties. We have failed to show relevant ads. People who would benefit from relevant ads don't see it, and those who have no interest get ads shoved to their faces.

Online advertising currently feels more tuned to marketing and branding than actual advertising. (Ex: Seeing the same ad 20 times is crappy advertising but good marketing/branding)

Online advertising is a powerful tool: no other medium of advertising offers more efficient tracking and analysis metrics. Unfortunately, it's also the most hard to do properly.

The biggest issue is most clients do not understand online advertising: they assume it's just like TV, in that, you have a creative that you show online to people and then hope for the best.

Online advertising is not a one way street: you can interact with the user, see how they respond and then tailor the advertising to their needs.

No other medium offers this ability.

Consultants like patio11 make a living off this knowledge (and give away this knowledge for free on their sites).

This inefficiency is currently arbitraged by two parties:

1\. People who understand that clients do not understand online advertising: they offer inexpensive CPMs to agencies so that they can meet their "numbers" (like one does in the TV realm). Then they "somehow" meet these numbers, often in ways that does not help the client at all.

2\. Online deal sites who know a certain store/brand is offering a great deal and create pages with deal information so that people click on the links to the product leading to the site getting kickbacks from the store/brand. Some of these sites keep the whole kickback to themselves and some split it with the users, but this is money that the store/brand paid out unnecessarily because they otherwise had failed to convert a customer directly.

</comment><comment><USER6> > We are living through the latest stages of the online advertising bubble, as > available high-quality ad space is shrinking, leading to a decline ad space > quality, and a decline of ad efficiency.

I don't understand how it's a bubble since the decline has been steady over the last few years. A bubble is spectacular, not gradual. A bubble expands and then suddenly and unexpectedly pops. A bubble ends in a steep and surprising decline. All of the trends here with fraud and growing use of ad-blocking software have been on the horizon for a very long time.

It doesn't sound like a bubble, but talking about "bubbles" gets lots of clicks.

</comment><comment><USER7> I started calling online advertising a bubble in 2008.

His credibility got killed in my eyes after reading that. Predicting the same thing over and over to no avail is called being a broken clock.

What he's really predicting is that the derivative will go negative. It's kinda unbecoming that this is the 'logic' that passes for a blog published by school that is supposed to be really elite and prestigious.

</comment><comment><USER8> A couple days ago Shane Smith said in an interview, "I don't think it's any secret that you're going to see a bloodbath in the next 12 months in digital or mobile or terrestrial because what's happening it's all brand money. This is why people are moving to subcription-based things. What brands are moving to are finding an audience."

I have no idea what he's even trying to say, but it sounds ominous.

[http://digiday.com/publishers/shane-smith-vice-media- intervi...](http://digiday.com/publishers/shane-smith-vice-media-interview/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I just want online advertising to at least be better than trying to sell me a toaster after I literally just purchased a toaster. I only need one toaster.

<comment><USER6> I bought a new expensive GPU on newegg and now every other week newegg sends me emails about new deals for graphics cards. In what market does that behavior make sense? Most pc gamers probably buy a graphics card once every two years at most unless they're filthy rich.

<comment><USER10> It affects your next buy.you will think about that company and those cards next time.

<comment><USER11> GPUs are the _worst_ examples. They change radically from year to year, so spamming right after you buy is a waste of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If someone keeps making the same prediction for 8 years, and it doesn't happen, and _it still hasn 't happened_ and the report the new post is based on is pretty much nonsense (just basic maths: trying to compare growth rates of ad spending vs increase in sales without noting the obvious thing that the increase in ad sales is sustainable so long as it brings in more money than it takes) then maybe it's time to update your priors.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great read and insightful comments as well on the distinction between online display, search, and social media advertising. Each produce similar results.

In my own digital marketing experience, we're still seeing a positive ROI on search only ads. We stopped running display ads awhile due to the impracticality of the approach with the rise of ad blocking software. We use ad blocking software. We developed built-in banner blindness for display ads when not using the software. Display ads annoy us. Why wouldn't they annoy our target audience?

Instead of wasting money on failed advertising methods, we reallocated our time on creating value through our blog and promoting that valuable content (not sponsored content) through email, search advertising, social media, and other avenues.

</comment><comment><USER13> Did HN cover this article already?

<comment><USER4> Yes. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11626967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11626967)

The general consensus was that the author of the report didn't really understand what they were talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the cause of the ad bubble is free VC money pouring into startups whose customer acquisition channel is spending 100s of thousands dollars on advertisement.

And when VC money dries out, startups will start tracking ROI and stop wasting money on branding. And that will cause domino effect.

Of course, there might be no bubble and this is a new normal.

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure the VC money is marginally impacting ad spend; there are real, established business in much greater scale and numbers that use online ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a ton of information that is objectively wrong.

"A customer who has already made a purchase may be bombarded with redundant repeat ads wherever he roams: what we might call the phenomenon of "repetitive irrelevance."

Its pretty easy to not do this on a lot of ad platforms. Facebook calls it "exclusion audiences".

</comment><comment><USER17> Generally, vc backed start-ups nowadays only spend money on direct marketing online, and get a return on every ad dollar spent. The giant established brands buy clicks randomly, but they can afford it. Its pretty sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure ad spending will keep increasing.

It's either that or you stop spending money and lose your market / niche to the big players.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is not a bubble.

</comment><comment><USER19> We expect Alphabet's share price to go down by 75%…

Alphabet consists of a group of companies that are not necessarily affected by ad dollars - no ?

edit - i guess it includes google also:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc.#Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc.#Structure)

<comment><USER20> I'm not aware of a significant source of revenue for them other than ads</comment></comment>


Using core.async and transducers to upload files from the browser to S3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.martinklepsch.org/posts/using-coreasync-and-transducers-for-direct-s3-upload.html

<comment><USER2>
        > I still need to look into some things like
        > how to properly shut down the `go` blocks.

I have limited core.async experience, but one simple solution would be to replace `(go (while true ... (<! report-chan)))` with a `core.async/go-loop` that `alts!` from `[report-chan, (core.async/timeout 10000)]`. If the value comes from `report-chan`, then recur. If the value comes from the timeout channel (10 seconds of no activity) then don't thus ending the go block execution.

For more control, you can pass a poison channel in from the outside. In the go-loop, `alts!` from `[report-chan, poison-chan, (timeout 10000)]`. Like the timeout channel, don't recur if the value comes from poison-chan. And that's a chan that your exterior code will have access to.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure that the alts! block is absolutely necessary otherwise you will deadlock after 10 files (your channel buffer size) because nothing else is taking from upload-chan or signing-chan.

Wouldn't a pipeline be a better solution to this? Taking and throwing away the values from a channel just to trigger a transducer that puts the value in another channel as a side effect is a strange way to do things.

Also a simple println test will show that the transducer function _is_ triggered when you put on the channel rather than when you take.</comment>


Toyota believes hydrogen fuel cells are the future - <AUTHOR> https://autoweek.com/article/green-cars/toyota-really-believes-hydrogen-fuel-cells-are-future-heres-why <comment><USER2> Someone high up at Toyota bet on fuel cells 20 years ago and can't back down now without losing too much face. That's the only explanation. Hydrogen just doesn't make sense from any engineering viewpoint other than "make sure there are still gas stations and a fuel distribution network no matter the cost."

<comment><USER3> I think there is a future in hydrogen fuel cells, but not for personal transportation.

Heavy machinery operated in remote areas like farming equipment have pretty intense energy needs and downtime for charging could ruin a harvest. Batteries are also very heavy and soil compaction is a real issue for modern farming.

I think we're approaching a time where the marginal cost of energy will be 0, but there will still be costs associated with using energy at a specific time or place. I would like to see a lot more dollars being spent on technology and facilities that can ramp their energy consumption up and down extremly quickly to absorb extra power on the grid. Hydrolysis seems like a fantastic candidate since the process is highly interruptible and the result is portable.

<comment><USER4> I've always wondered why you couldn't just string a wire from a tower down to a combine, tractor, or other piece of farm equipment and run it right off the grid. Using very high voltage could allow the wire to not be that heavy.

<comment><USER5> Because farms are huge, and any given unit of area needs to be touched relatively infrequently.

<comment><USER4> Cables can be thin and long. Look at high tension wires which carry vastly more power. It stands to reason that a much thinner lighter cord could run a combine.

<comment><USER6> I won't even use a corded lawn mower. I highly doubt I'd put up with dragging a wire behind a combine through a 400 acre field.

<comment><USER4> Not dragging but way overhead from something about the height of a radio tower. There could be one about every square mile in a grid. It could have a smaller battery too to permit driving between them. Drive up, hook on, unhook, go to next.

<comment><USER6> It occurs to me that because I've operated farm equipment, maybe one should ignore my poo-pooing. Seriously, sure, I can tell you eight ways to Sunday this won't work, and some smarty-pants can show me how I'm wrong. But right now I'm just stuck in a mode of "that's more hassle than filling it with diesel and being done with it". I might be right, but that's not where innovation comes from, so I'll be quiet.

<comment><USER4> It probably is more of a hassle but it would also be cheaper and lower emission. Of course I dont know if fuel is a significant cost to farmers.

There may be ways to make it less of a hassle by automating it somehow. I'm thinking of some standard hook on/off system. It's a tough problem though.

Maybe batteries will just keep getting better and lighter and cheaper and we can just go that way.

<comment><USER5> You're suggesting a large capital investment, with dubious utility, in a leveraged, low margin business with little access to technologically aggressive capital funding.

Furthermore, it's predicated on the supplier developing and marketing a class of equipment for which little demand currently exists.

Against that, the price of diesel seems relatively small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought the Hydrogen thing was a ruse to kill battery electric vehicles, years ago, invented by fossil fuel lobbyists.

It works like this: Hydrogen seems plausibly usable, but nobody is sure. It allows continued use of internal combustion engines so you can carry on as normal for now. Then in 10 years when nobody has figured out how to make Hydrogen work it's too bad we didn't focus on battery electric. And of course you can repeat and rinse because perhaps in another 10 years Hydrogen may be made to work.

We're two cycles in at this point.

<comment><USER8> It also serves to preserve the current refueling experience from fuel delivery to point of sale.

Electric cars are mostly charged at home and at work/parking areas which flips everything on its head.

There are a lot of industries threatened by this.

<comment><USER9> One consideration is the current world political order is built around supplies of oil. Battery powered transport dramatically changes that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it.

It's easy to criticize Musk, but I'm a big admirer of his pragmatism. If I were a billionaire I'd pour money on super capacitors, for instance. Much more exciting and the payoff is potentially huge.

Instead, he goes for 20th century tech and infrastructure that's proven to work and tries to squeeze every efficiency drop out of it. We have a problem that needs to be solved now. From a risk assessment point of view, it's the best call.

<comment><USER11> > Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it.

That's not even the biggest issue for "the future": the "hydrogen economy" is based on cracking fossil fuels, producing CO2, so it's not exactly green.

Electrolysis is energy-intensive (50kWh/kg) and quite expensive, it's used for a small fraction of the production (2%) and mostly for uses which _need_ very pure hydrogen (cracking fossil fuels yields pretty "dirty" hydrogen which is unsuitable for some applications).

I guess at capacity that would make it suitable as a sink to dump excess electricity from renewables in, but then you hit the storage issues you mentioned.

<comment><USER12> > Electrolysis is energy-intensive (50kWh/kg) and quite expensive

Solid oxide electrolysis cells have been producing hydrogen at >93% efficiency (LHV) for over a decade now. Some research cells have reached 99%. It is still considered expensive but only because hydrogen derived from natural gas is cheaper. I personally have produced hydrogen via electrolysis at a cost of $2.72/kg. After a 60% efficient conversion back to electricity, that's $0.116/kWh.

<comment><USER13> You might know: why do large electrolytic hydrogen projects being built or planned today still use alkaline or PEM electrolyzers? I haven't seen any announcements where projects are using solid oxide cells. I assumed that the technology wasn't commercially available yet.

<comment><USER12> I'm not aware of any large electrolysis projects using PEMs, unless the purpose is for research and development. I know of a few using alkaline cells, but those are quite efficient. At least as efficient as solid oxide cells, just a bit harder to work with. Most of the research and development for solid oxide cells is for fuel cell usage, with a focus on usage of liquid or gaseous hydrocarbon fuels, due to the easier technological transition (I'm working on a project like this).

Without subsidies or carbon taxes, electrolysis is likely to be done only on a small scale. At large scales, hydrogen from methane is still cheaper, and there is no penalty for carbon emissions, and consumers typically buy in large quantities at limited endpoints.

However, if fuel cell vehicles (more likely to be commercial vehicles than personal vehicles at this point, as the economics are more in their favor) become more common, there will be growing benefits to electrolysis because the logistics are so much simpler for a large amount of end points.

<comment><USER13> As in this recent story:

"World's largest green-hydrogen plant begins operation in Austria"

[https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/worlds-largest- green...](https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/worlds-largest-green- hydrogen-plant-begins-operation-in-austria/2-1-708381)

It's using PEM technology from Siemens. It reports that an even larger PEM project should finish construction next year. It mentions one other project, even larger but further out, using alkaline electrolyzers. They are all part of decarbonization research projects, but operating at megawatts to tens of megawatts scales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tanaka explains their strategy pretty clearly here, and it's about functioning in an entirely renewable energy context.

Hydrogen is better than batteries for longer term energy storage. To run a battery powered system twice as long, you need twice as much battery. To run a fuel cell twice as long, you need a bigger tank.

Japan is an energy insecure nation. Post Fukushima, Japanese companies are dealing with figuring out how to store energy from intermittent or interruptible supplies: not for hours but for weeks or months.

Hydrogen does that. It is a synthetic fuel that can be made from electricity and water. Fuel tanks scale well, and a large tank with thick walls can store a lot of hydrogen for quite a while.

So the strategy is anchored in a hydrogen energy architecture on a grid level. Mirai is a technology demonstrator for that. Critiques based on the current lack of hydrogen infrastructure are missing the point.

<comment><USER15> As a desert dweller, I prefer a drive train that outputs water just in principle. We need water out here, it's only getting more dry, and there will be no big project coming to pipe water inland. Buuuut, batteries and electricity are here today.

<comment><USER14> The principle is cute, but on a regional environmental level the water emitted won't make a difference.

And batteries are here already. Buy a Tesla.

<comment><USER15> People have been saying the same about carbon emissions for a long time.

<comment><USER14> Yes, and if we were talking about releasing fossil water into the atmosphere there might be something to the comparison. But water emissions from a hydrogen car are just moving existing water around and don't compound over time. It's minuscule compared to the hydrologic cycle even over desert regions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Toyota is ready to make BEVs at scale: [https://www.thedrive.com/tech/28424/toyota-subaru-suzuki- and...](https://www.thedrive.com/tech/28424/toyota-subaru-suzuki-and-mazda- throw-their-combined-16-million-might-behind-bevs)

And is investing in making solid-state batteries affordable at scale: [https://www.sae.org/news/2019/09/battery-show-solid-state- ba...](https://www.sae.org/news/2019/09/battery-show-solid-state-battery- roundtable)

<comment><USER17> Many companies are "ready" to make BEVs. Where are all the BEVs, then?

<comment><USER15> They're coming. Mini announced all of their models would be electric in 3-5 years, I think. Most or all have some plan for BEVs in coming car generations.

<comment><USER18> Your exact comment could have been posted three years ago, and three years before that, with Chevrolet, or Audi, or Volkswagen named.

And yet, here we are, and only one company in the world is actually building the factories you'd need to sell a half million EVs in a year.

There's too much money in _not making EVs_ for any of these companies to start making them a day before the market forces them too.

<comment><USER16> After 10 seconds of Googling, here are the new (BEV: 11 models / PHEV: 9 models) models shipping _in the US next year_ : [https://evadoption.com/future-evs/new-electric-vehicles- in-2...](https://evadoption.com/future-evs/new-electric-vehicles-in-2020/)

I will leave as an exercise for the two of you to Google:

1\. How many new EVs arrived in 2019, in the US and worldwide? 2\. How many are committed for 2021, in the US and worldwide?

You might start with VW committing to 27 models in 2022: [https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1118857_vw- plans-27-ele...](https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1118857_vw- plans-27-electric-cars-by-2022-on-new-platform)

<comment><USER18> None of those models are planned to sell 100k let alone 500k. They are compliance cars—a tax break, basically, so they can keep selling internal combustion engines without paying penalties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hydrogen definitely is the future, it just may not be the future for cars. Much more likely to be used for transportation modes that have long running and consistent speeds. Long distance trucks, cargo ships, planes, etc..

The problem with cars is that they're so intermittently used and the loads are so variable. The only fuel cells that are really up to that task in particular are PEM fuel cells, which are expensive and inefficient compared to solid oxide and alkaline cells. Solid oxide cells might have a chance if used in a more plugin-hybrid form, where the fuel cell is used as a range extender.

</comment><comment><USER19> There's a real prospect of a worse is better outcome. Hydrogen is way more energy dense than oil-based fuel, never mind battery tech, and can be refilled just as fast. But it's a bigger technical leap, and people won't be able to refuel at home. If most vehicles are used for commutes, I can see battery tech winning the war, except perhaps for trucks, which today may take LPG and can more easily live with bigger distances between refuels.

Hydrogen fuel cells may be the solution to aviation though.

<comment><USER14> Depends on how you view density. Energy per unit mass - better than hydrocarbons. Energy per unit volume - worse.

<comment><USER11> They're technically wrong as energy density is per volume, "specific energy" or "massic energy" is per mass.

Also while the specific energy of hydrogen is good, you have to account for the weight of the container. You can store fuel in a bucket, not so hydrogen.

<comment><USER12> Compressed hydrogen containers are pretty heavy and that's a bummer, but they're still better than lithium ion by an order of magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > the most cost-efficient method (of making hydrogen) has been using natural > gas to reclaim the hydrogen.

So this wasn't clean energy to begin with, but now they're improving:

> solar energy and wind power and wind-generated energy, to make hydrogen > using electrolysis

And this sounds definitely less efficient than using electricity directly.

Maybe hydrogen cells will have the density advantage, but at what cost to overall efficiency?

<comment><USER21> _> And this sounds definitely less efficient than using electricity directly._

Not necessarily. (1) There are losses transporting in storing electricity. If hydrogen was made on the spot, and if the losses storing and transporting hydrogen were smaller (unlikely), that would be a gain. (2) Hydrogen can be produced at solar peaks, when energy prices turn negative, and stored... huge (net) efficiency gain!

<comment><USER22> Why not charge 2-3x as many cars during the solar peaks? Hydrogen might be in the far future for long-term storage of electricity, but then it will get used to power the grid in times of lacking sun/wind, rather then propelling cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just browsed google maps. By my count there are more public EV chargers in a mile radius of my house (east bay) than hydrogen fuel stations in San Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa, and Alameda counties combined.

It appears that even among early adopters of new energy sources, the market has spoken.

<comment><USER24> Hmmm. We could use this same reasoning to prove that the market has spoken in favor of gasoline instead of electricity... Not really a relevant measure when technologies are in transition.

<comment><USER6> Every house on my block can supply my car with electricity, and I don't think our neighborhood is unusual. Knocking on someone's door to borrow a cup of hydrogen would probably be less productive. Borrowing a gallon of gas might be possible, assuming my neighbor hasn't purchased an electric mower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Makes much more sense to keep striving for electric solutions so our whole infrastructure can be uniform.

<comment><USER26> As long as you don't get your hydrogen from natural gas it's just energy storage like batteries. You can make it from electricity or directly via solar-powered reactions.

<comment><USER27> How efficient is hydrogen as an energy storage medium compared to e.g. Li-Ion batteries?

<comment><USER28> Efficiency as in energy/kg?

Tesla batteries: 207 watt-hours per kilogram (per google search)

Hydrogen: 120-142 MJ per kilogram (per google search)

Conversion from MJ to watt-hours: 277.778 watt-hours per MJ

120*277.778/207 ~ 161 more compact. Assuming energy conversion losses are equal.

<comment><USER27> Efficiency in terms of watts out from the medium divided by watts into the medium over a normal duty cycle.

<comment><USER29> As I said in another comment with some napkin calculations is about 30%. Another user gave a 22% number compared to 73% for batteries. The difference is _hugely_ in favour of batteries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've heard people say that battery storage technology improves at 3% per year.

What's the rate of improvement in high-pressure gas or liquefied gas storage? Is the weight of the container decreasing at 3%+ per year?

</comment><comment><USER31> Toyota is still pushing that? Despite the terrible sales figures?[1] The Toyota Mirai has been on sale in the US for over three years now, and the sales are dropping. Even though they throw in three years of hydrogen.

[1] [http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/toyota/toyota- mira...](http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/toyota/toyota-mirai/)

</comment><comment><USER32> If anything methanol would be a sensible replacement for cars. Much clearer transition path and same end result. But in personal transportation both of those will be a tiny part of the market. Alternative fuels transition should have started 30ish years ago.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have to imagine that a large part of the interest in fuel cells comes from its defense applications (particularly for submarines). It's been clear for years that for cars it's a total dead end.

</comment><comment><USER34> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car) has more details

</comment><comment><USER35> And what do you use to make Hydrogen?

Do fuel cell cars have instant torque like EVs? We recently got an EV, and whenever I drive my gas car, the delay from the gas pedal is extremely annoying now.

</comment><comment><USER36> There was nothing in the interview about how to keep a hydrogen-fueled car from becoming a miniature Hindenburg disaster in a collision. Is that considered a solved problem?

<comment><USER37> It might surprise you to learn that gasoline-fueled cars do not usually explode in collisions despite gasoline being far more volatile than hydrogen.

<comment><USER38> Gasoline is not under pressure and does not burn. Only gasoline vapors burn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Producing hydrogen using electricity and then convert it back.

<comment><USER29> For a total efficiency of 22%...

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is there still concern with explosions with hydrogen cells?

<comment><USER41> Generally less than with gasoline. Both require oxygen but hydrogen being stored in a high pressure tank, in year 2000 design concepts with a burst disc going up

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Excellent belief Toyota! now start experimenting with some Lithium Ion batteries and a motor. Your neighbor Mitsubishi might help you with those.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm not entirely sure if they're wrong. A lot of science for hydrogen fuel cell has not really been studied. I'm curious if we put equal funding into fuel cells instead of battery, today's footing of fuel cell will be much more different. Some cool technology development is the nickel based catalyst (compared to Platinum) but the development is slow since the industrial application is small. Also, there are ways to use fossil fuels directly (with huge caveats) instead of the standard hydrogen gas fuel cells.

<comment><USER44> The problem with fuel cell vehicles isn't really the fuel cells. It's physics. And economics.

<comment><USER43> Which part of the physics though? I am not entirely convinced that a standard hydrogen PEM fuel cell is the only way to generate energy for a car.

<comment><USER44> Current fuel cells are said to be in the 40-60% efficiency range. That's actually not bad, especially if you can do something with the waste heat.

But when you look at the overall round-trip efficiency of the hydrogen lifecycle (production, compression/liquefaction, distribution, storage/leakage, compression again), it's pretty woeful. Many estimates come in well below 20%.

If we came up with a more efficient fuel cell, it wouldn't improve the overall efficiency much.

<comment><USER45> I don't see efficiency as nearly problematic as most seem to make it out to be (as far as the physics goes).

Estimates online roughly estimate that the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth in an hour is more than the entire world consumes in an year. Capturing just 0.0001% of that power would cover our needs. And I don't the worse efficiency of hydrogen being problematic in that regards.. but I can understand arguments regarding the economics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I could believe it is better for the environment to make hydrogen powered cars over cars with batteries filled with toxic chemicals.

</comment><comment><USER47> i don't think hydrogen powered cars are the future but the next mirai looks much better than the current one [https://www.motor1.com/news/375766/2021-toyota-mirai-fuel- ce...](https://www.motor1.com/news/375766/2021-toyota-mirai-fuel-cell/)

<comment><USER48> This does look a lot better.

I often wonder if carmakers purposefully make non-IC cars ugly so too many people don't order them. And if that's true, it's probably main thing that Tesla changed: make those cars look awesome.

<comment><USER49> I still like my Model S quite a bit, but Tesla cars have always looked a little dorky to me, models S, 3, or X (I'm not sure how I feel about the Cybertruck just yet). I certainly didn't get mine for the look. They sure look much better than the i3 or Mirai though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> ... don't all fuel cells currently known become unusable after 100k miles or less?

</comment><comment><USER51> Even if hydrogen is the future, Toyota must realize that the present is battery electric. They can continue research on future tech while they rise to the market demands in the present.

</comment><comment><USER52> They're wrong

</comment><comment><USER53> I own 3 Toyota products and a Honda.

I have great confidence in Toyota's vision and engineering excellence. (This coming from a long-time motoring enthusiast.) If they see hydrogen as the future, I take it seriously.

<comment><USER54> Because Toyota never makes mistakes?

As a fellow Toyota fan and owner I'll take them seriously when they start building industrial scale hydrogen refineries and transportation systems on par with Tesla's supercharger network or better.

Until then these are all compliance cars at best. Doesn't matter how well engineered the implementation is if the design is impractical or of negligible benefit.

The only argument that moves the needle for me on Hydrogen at all is that we have tons of it via seawater, whereas we're not sure if we have enough lithium to produce electric cars for everyone in perpetuity.

<comment><USER12> Why do they need to be industrial scale? Hydrogen electrolysis is fast, efficient, and can be done on any scale. Centralized production is likely never going to be as efficient as distributed production, simply because there are more losses in distribution than there are in electrolysis.

<comment><USER29> Hydrogen electrolysys can't be done efficiently at home. And the efficiency even in industrial plants is pretty bad, about 50% to produce hydrogen compressed for car use, and that doesn't include the fuel cell efficiency that brings the total efficiency to about 30%. Batteries have _much_ better efficiency.

<comment><USER12> I have efficiently done it at an industrial lab with commonly available industrial electricity rates ($.065/kWh). 93% efficiency using a solid oxide cell that was made in 2008. I don't know where you're getting your information but it's wrong. $0.116/kWh after conversion back into electricity.

If I were doing it at home with residential rates, I would be paying $0.125/kWh, which is still feasible, but more expensive than gasoline at the moment. With the way solar prices are dropping, that won't last long.

<comment><USER29> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Efficien...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Efficiency) "Efficiency of modern hydrogen generators is measured by energy consumed per standard volume of hydrogen (MJ/m3), assuming standard temperature and pressure of the H2. The lower the energy used by a generator, the higher its efficiency would be; a 100%-efficient electrolyser would consume 39.4 kilowatt-hours per kilogram (142 MJ/kg) of hydrogen,[23] 12,749 joules per litre (12.75 MJ/m3). Practical electrolysis (using a rotating electrolyser at 15 bar pressure) may consume 50 kW⋅h/kg (180 MJ/kg), and a further 15 kW⋅h (54 MJ) if the hydrogen is compressed for use in hydrogen cars."

What about your sources for 93% efficiency?

<comment><USER12> 93% is what I got in my own experiments with an used cell I bought that was made in 2008. My cell is a slight materials variant of the NASA BSC cell which was also tested at 93% efficiency.

[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20090013708](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20090013708)

Here is a commercially available cell stack that is getting 88% efficiency, despite being a reversible cell (ie not optimized for electrolysis).

[http://www.helmeth.eu/index.php/technologies/high- temperatur...](http://www.helmeth.eu/index.php/technologies/high-temperature- electrolysis-cell-soec)

This research system has already demonstrated 75% efficiency _round-trip_. That is electricity-to-hydrogen-to-electricity. 97% efficient in electrolysis alone.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0333-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0333-2)

<comment><USER29> Even with a 93% efficiency adding the energy needed to compress the hydrogen and the fuel cell efficiency you arrive at an efficiency of 48%, pretty much half as the batteries.

<comment><USER12> I can dispute those numbers too but that is beside the point. Batteries are probably good enough in energy density for most car users, and they do have an efficiency advantage (not as great as you're trying to portray but still better). For 99% of car buyers, that's a better option.

But fuel cells still have a place where energy density is a major concern. That's likely to be the case for commercial vehicles, where long recharge times and low ranges are unacceptable.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


You're More Likely to Die in a Human Extinction Event Than a Car Crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-human-extinction-isnt-that-unlikely/480444/?utm_source=atlfb&single_page=true <comment><USER2> Article links to Wikipedia page of Stern Review, which mentions nothing regarding 0.1% probability of human extinction event. Even if it did that's taking a wild guess at something we've never experienced. What a bunch of clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER3> How do we know how "likely" we are to die in a human extinction event? Sample size zero...</comment>


Tell HN: HNSearch still not updating - <AUTHOR>

As of now, a search for "Google" sorted by date returns a result that's 6 hours old, similarly "github", "NSA", and others.  It would appear that HNSearch is not updating.  Possibly it's been affected by the CloudFlare/DDoS/Timeout issues, but it may be something else.<p>It happened yesterday too - can someone let us know what's happening? <comment><USER2> Here's another way to check on the status of the HNSearch crawler:

[http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items/_search?limit...](http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items/_search?limit=0&start=0&filter%5Bqueries%5D%5B%5D=create_ts:%5BNOW-1HOURS%20TO%20NOW%5D&pretty_print=true)</comment>


Ask HN: Help with offer negotiation - <AUTHOR>

i got a job offer with a highly reputable startup with ~30 employees and a 50m valuation.
i am a software engineer with a top b.s., state school m.s., and two years of experience (in which i was very successful).  i am currently unemployed;  my last salary was 96k and i had 0.2% of a 40 employee / 20m valuation company.
i was offered 100k and 0.07%.  i thought the equity offered was very low, and asked for 100k and 0.22%.  the company came back with 106k and 0.07%, or 100k and 0.08% (i guess they want to keep their equity).  they claimed that this offer is in 75th percentile of comparable companies.
i am talking to them in person tomorrow.  i'm scraping salary data from angel.co at the moment.  what else should i do/know?
thanks! <comment><USER2> Where is this company located? If it's Silicon Valley, those numbers are very low. If it's Idaho, that's a different story. So we need to know that, and more importantly, we need to know what salary you want (is the $100k and 0.22% what you really want, or what you thought they'd agree to?).

First of all, I hope you didn't tell them that $96k number before they offered $100k. If so, you screwed yourself by anchoring your offer to a low previous salary.

Second, if they are even discussing salary, it means they like you and they have already mentally committed to you. Going back to the drawing board will mean weeks or months of reading resumes, interviews, negotiations, and possibly recruiting fees which will cost easily $20-40k. In that light, giving you $20k extra would be a bargain. The fact that they went from $96k to $106k proves that.

Third, I wouldn't let equity be the deciding factor (that could just be me), since it could be worth $0 (and 90% of the time it probably is).

As far as negotiating, I suggest you read this post in full: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary- negotiation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your help! I am certain that they like me -- I mean, I have an official paper offer that I can sign.

It is in Silicon Valley. I haven't disclosed salary history.

I thought they may agree to 100k and 0.2%, and/or I could use that as leverage to ask for more salary instead.

I would be happy with 100k and 0.2%, 120k and 0%, or anything scaled in between.

I had already read that post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Er, nevermind I guess. My (written) offer got rescinded.

<comment><USER3> Did they take it back because of this post in hacker news or because they didn't like the higher salary request.

<comment><AUTHOR> i'm not sure i will ever get to find out why they took it back. but i think it is very unlikely that it is this post in HN. someone would have to be checking HN very religiously.

<comment><USER3> You should she them just to find out why :P Btw, now that you don't care, can you please tell which company this is.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really frivolous reason to sue. I don't currently want to out the company; if in the future I do, it would probably not be in a random HN comment :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > they claimed that this offer is in 75th percentile of comparable companies.

Empirical data is the best data: [https://angel.co/salaries](https://angel.co/salaries)

Bummed OP had the original offer rescinded, but for anyone reading this in the future, a quick Google search for "startup salary survey" should bring up a few additional resources. I've filled a number of these out in the past and the data is always awesome. Lots of 'em are behind paywalls though, so beware.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think AngelList is not strictly speaking empirical data -- it is what a company provides as advertisement, not what it is actually paying.

How one decides "empirical data", as well as "comparable companies" and "comparable candidate" are all subject to very broad interpretation.

For instance, GlassDoor has way lower salary numbers than AngelList. But they have their share of problems too -- while the numbers are empirical, they are often dated (and have no account of equity compensation)</comment></comment>


Leaving the corporate nest - <AUTHOR> http://bjhess.com/blog/2009/07/28/leaving-the-corporate-nest-fin/

<comment><USER2> Honestly I think about these things a lot, too.</comment>


Weebly Launches Support For Multiple Editor Accounts - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/20/weebly-launches-support-for-multiple-editor-accounts/

<comment><AUTHOR> We're also launching a home page redesign that's a bit glossed over in the article. One of the things we're trying hard to convey is that while Weebly certainly started out as just "Simple", it's now very powerful too.

We now offer:

* Full HTML/CSS flexibility

* A full-blown image editor inside Weebly (crop, resize, rotate, add effects, etc)

* A very powerful form builder

* HTML5 video player, slide shows and photo galleries

* E-commerce features

* Automatic mobile site conversion

* Geographically diverse datacenter-redundant hosting (for free)

* Among many, many other features as well :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Perfect, I was emailing you all about this last week but haven't heard back yet from support. This is really nice and works for the organization I signed up for Weebly to run their site from now.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's unusual, we reply to all support requests within 24 hours and those of Pro users much faster.

I've emailed you to see if we can't get to the bottom of it...

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it's not the same email as in my profile. But I just signed in and I see it's working fine here. Great product; I love it so much I pay for Pro. Keep it up Weebly.

EDIT: I've emailed Dave and they replied to my support request within the same day, for the record. I just didn't check my email.</comment></comment></comment>


The Ruby Style Guide - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/howaboutwe/style-guides/blob/master/ruby.md

<comment><USER2> I also found this useful since it has more diversity of content: [http://codingstyleguide.com/lang/ruby](http://codingstyleguide.com/lang/ruby)</comment>


EFF Wins Access to License Plate Reader Data to Study Law Enforcement Use - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/victory-eff-wins-access-license-plate-reader-data-study-how-law-enforcement-uses <comment><USER2> "The California Supreme Court ruling has significance beyond the ALPR case. It set a groundbreaking precedent that mass, indiscriminate data collection by the police can't be withheld just because the information may contain some data related to criminal investigations."

Good. What other systems would be targeted next by the EFF? Facial recognition systems?

<comment><USER3> Legally it doesn't make much sense to gather a ton of data and say "well something might be in there" and now nobody ever sees it.

Pretty easy to just make big buckets of data nobody ever sees...

<comment><USER4> When you use the Constitution as a base line as to what it's logical for the government to do, then it's absolutely ridiculous to allow it. The only one who can argue otherwise are lawyers who represent cops/FBI/NSA whose sole purpose is to do the best job they can do, which obviously means no limits on their power. It's up to citizens to vote in law makers who actually represent our interests, the CIA/FBI/cops will only ever stick up for what is in their best interests. That swearing to protect the Constitution is really just a formality and not really applied to their daily activities.

<comment><USER5> They all take the oath to to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States". It would be great if those agents of the government were held accountable to that oath, and if found guilty of otherwise face appropriate repercussions

<comment><USER6> Orwell wrote:

>when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on

<comment><USER7> Orwell was a communist, though. It sort of confuses me what he meant by all that. Did he not understand that the kind of mistreatment of humanity was what he supported? I have read his memoirs and articles, I know he was a smart guy who took big chances in Spain and places. I just don't understand why such intelligent people support big, top-down, collectivist structures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Four years ago in this case, the LA police said that _all cars in Los Angeles_ are under investigation. [1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7434448](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7434448)

<comment><USER9> That is not really inconsistent with the principle of implied consent for drivers. Driving is dangerous and destructive and not a natural right. Cars _should_ be under suspicion at all times, moving or parked.

<comment><USER10> Implied consent for drivers is from a bygone era when cars were not the dominant mode of transportation. Mass transit in LA (and most of the rest of the United States) is a woefully inadequate alternative. You can't consent to something when there is reasonably no other choice.

Your argument would only hold water in the future if self-driving cars become widespread _and_ it isn't necessary to display a number plate on a car without a human driver, thereby giving people a reasonable transportation alternative that allows for anonymous freedom of movement. Until then, the government should not be able to simultaneously mandate number plates and use them for mass surveillance.

<comment><USER9> Implied consent passed in California in 1998.

<comment><USER10> The 1998 California legislature was full of people who were adults before the interstate highway system was built. And the Patriot Act was passed in 2001; doesn't mean the sentiment doesn't date to the McCarthy era.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a lot of digital advocacy and letter writing out there that sometimes has me all "Man does anyone do anything that produces a result?". I'm pretty proud to support the EFF who seriously puts in a lot of work to actually do things that seem like they matter as far as the digital age goes (not sure we're calling it that anymore).

<comment><USER11> I'm super-curious how Mars will be governed.

<comment><USER12> There's a Playstation 2 FPS that focuses on a miner uprising on Mars (with destroyable walls) that gamed this out:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Faction_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Faction_\(video_game\))

>Red Faction takes place on Mars around the year 2075. Earth's minerals are being depleted and humans need more of them to survive. The vast Ultor Corporation runs the mining operation on Mars. The living conditions are deplorable, human rights for the miners are few, and a disease called "The Plague" is running rampant throughout the colony with no known antidote available—predominantly within the confines of the mine complex. Parker, a downtrodden miner, came to Mars to make a new start in his life—taken in by the promises and advantages Ultor has to offer in the mines of Mars. After a routine day in the mine with the typical aggression toward miners and cramped living conditions and poor nutrition, he witnesses the spark that starts a rebellion when a security guard abuses a miner at the end of his shift and heartlessly kills him.[5] Parker takes up arms, with the help of Hendrix, a rebellious Ultor security technician who guides Parker through the complex.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, but that's just a common story (repeated throughout history), that happens to take place on Mars, just like it happened on Earth. There's nothing in it that explores the fact that they are on a different planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >The data, which has been deidentified to protect drivers' privacy, will allow EFF and ACLU SoCal to learn how the agencies are using automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems throughout the city and county of Los Angeles and educate the public on the privacy risks posed by this intrusive technology.

If the data tells you that much, which it sounds like it does, how hard is it to figure out identities from the patterns?

<comment><USER15> De-anonymising data is not especially difficult. [0][1] Combine it with another database or two and you'll have a high degree of confidence you know who did what, where and when.

[0] [http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace- law/bitstream/handl...](http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace- law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/417/vol5_no1_art3.pdf)

[1] [https://news.mit.edu/2013/how-hard-it-de-anonymize- cellphone...](https://news.mit.edu/2013/how-hard-it-de-anonymize-cellphone- data)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this really a good thing?

1\. Indiscriminate collection by law enforcement is bad to start with.

2\. Since we agree it was bad to collect such data, we're going to set a precedent that law enforcement can't have exclusive rights to that data. Instead, now some legal process allows bureaucrats or justices to give data improperly collected about me to third party private agencies that I'm not familiar with.

This is supposed to be a win for me? If data was improperly collected, it should be _deleted_. I don't care how much value Org X thinks it can derive from that data and how many government employees Org X can persuade to share it with them.

I gather from comments here that EFF has a laudable mission and track record, but the reputation or purpose of the organization in question is orthogonal to the reasonableness of the data sharing precedent.

Perhaps I'm missing some crucial facts?

<comment><USER17> FOIA is "some legal process". If we don't want that data getting out, we shouldn't allow its collection.

<comment><USER16> FOIA doesn't usually involve _my_ personal data as a typical private citizen. Personal data that can potentially be traced back to me and affect my life in negative ways. It usually involves data about the work that the government itself is doing... work that is funded with my tax dollars and involving data that ostensibly can't be used to harm me personally. Data sharing increases the attack surface for that data... considering I never consented to that data being collected in the first place, the supposed government of the people should be working very hard to make sure my data isn't abused or hacked.

Agreed on the latter statement though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is for LA "law enforcement" not sure if that's LAPD only... though would appear broader.

Wonder if they'll go after private ALPR systems like in Tiburon/Belvedere.

</comment><comment><USER19> How does having the data tell the EFF how they are _using_ the data? If you give me a spreadsheet with a bunch of data in it, I don't know how you use it.

Are they using it legally? How can we know just by looking at the data they have?

<comment><USER20> How about what parts of town they are collecting this data in and where APLR readers are located. Are all readers based on police vehicles? Are there fixed links location readers? I would assume every entry comes with lat\long and time of day.

<comment> irq-1 In addition to data Creation and Reading, we also have to address Update and Delete.

Do they change the data or delete "special" cars or "special" events. If there are _any_ exceptions to collecting and storing the data, we can't trust it for much of anything: maybe the license plate entry was changed to a different license, maybe seeing a license at a location was added to the data, maybe other suspects are ruled out because data was deleted. And there will absolutly be exceptions: undercover officers, the presidents motorcade, people with stalkers, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I suppose you could register a company in Arizona (supports quasi-anonymous llc), then register the car in the company's name. They could obviously correlate if needed, but would somewhat force probable cause first.

<comment><USER22> Good luck insuring a car registered to an out of state LLC without lying to your insurance company.

<comment><USER21> Wouldn't that be a common thing? Don't LLCs have operations in locales other than where they are registered?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice!

I wonder if they have other tech on premises with the LPR cams doing BLE sniffing for "loose your keys" BLE tags and other UUID fingerprints like 802.11.

</comment><comment><USER24> Does this mean we can download the data set?

<comment><USER25> hope so... it would (maybe) make people realize how bad of a privacy invasion it is... cars should not have a visible tag... they should also not have all these wireless transmitters (like TPMS with unique IDs)

<comment><USER9> Why do you think you should be able to drive, in public, but anonymously?

<comment><USER26> There's a difference between being readily identifiable and actively surveilled.

<comment><USER9> No, the two are isomorphic.

<comment><USER26> In what's-possible-land, not what's-proper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> FINALLY! The best case here is that by scanning plates, you are casting a wide net and investigating without reasonable suspicion - which itself is a violation of your Fourth Amendment rights. The security and usage of that data is a whole other can of worms that also needs to be addressed.

Also, fwiw, if you drive a car made in the last 5 years, in all likelihood the manufacturer is tracking you as well.

<comment><USER28> Most people are completely oblivious to just how far surveillance capitalism is observing their every move inside public and private spaces.

Sad truth is that even if they would be aware, they'd just shrug their shoulders and let it be as they would have been framed to see it as either an inevitable state of things, or, being done in the name of their 'security' or some other vague benefit (personalized service).

Frameworks like the GDPR are steps in the right direction, but unless enforcement is staffed and funded at a scale to match the threat (It is not, not even close on a galactic scale), its impacts will mostly be cosmetic.

Don't get me wrong, I do applaud the work of privacy advocates, but unless we have a systemic change to reign in surveillance capitalism and captured regulation, things will only get worse.

</comment></comment><comment> detail-oriented When the city i live in announced they were deploying these readers i got a response from our police chief, he advised me that refusal to install them would result in their department losing some certification that allowed them to remain as independent as possible.

<comment><USER29> This opens some interesting questions. What certificates and independence requirements the police have?

How would these scanners and help?

Without the scanners who would they be dependent on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've always been curious how much data fixed cameras in Australia is used by LE, how can I find out?

</comment><comment><USER31> Go EFF!</comment>


San Francisco is officially $10B in the hole - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfexaminer.com/san-francisco-officially-10-billion-hole/ <comment><USER2> This is how it starts.

City booms, everyone whines about cost of living going up, unionized public sector employees extract massive concessions from politicians whose campaigns they fund. I'm not saying this in an ideological way; it's inevitable, given that unions get dues by default which most employees don't bother to opt out from, those dues get spent influencing local politics to favor union members, and over 50% of US union members are in the public sector [1] - only 16% of the US workforce is unionized, but 1/3 of public employees are - it's hard to see how this ends any other way.

Eventually business wises up and realizes the obscene salaries and taxes they have to pay their employees go a lot farther elsewhere, then they relocate and (rightly) leave this mess behind, on the hands of the local government, taxpayers, and politicians who ran on promises they could never deliver on, and the public sector employees who all but extorted the taxpayers out of their money.

This is the story of Detroit yesterday, Illinois today, and SF tomorrow. I don't see how this ends any other way. Look at how many companies are already hiring remote employees -- time for SF to wake up and realize how limited their bargaining power is.

[1] [https://www.economist.com/news/united- states/21737318-suprem...](https://www.economist.com/news/united- states/21737318-supreme-court-poised-strike-decisive-blow-unions-are- confronted)

<comment><USER3> Teachers in SF are living in closets, out of cars, two to a bedroom in shared apartments, commuting long distances, etc. Their salaries are comparable to the state average, but the cost of living is dramatically higher here.

The problem in SF is obscene housing costs (and, like everywhere in the US, obscene healthcare costs), not overpayment of public employees. In CA municipal budgeting would also be much more straightforward, effective, and robust without prop 13.

As for unions: the US has seen several decades of intense ideological war on organized labor, with dramatic erosion of workers rights across the board, and in particular legislative and Supreme Court interpretation changes that make labor organizing much more difficult and dangerous than a half century ago. Public sector unions are some of the last hold-outs. The overall result we've seen for the past 35 years is continually rising productivity but stagnant wages and working conditions (for all workers, unionized and not), and skyrocketing inequality. The future does not look bright for the bulk of American workers. (Great for the financial sector though, like the hedge fund manager [and Peter Thiel protégé] who wrote this op-ed.)

<comment><USER2> As a US centrist, I care about the social safety net. But I also care about efficiency. I have no love for a janitor making 200k/year. I don't care what the laws are, that's a broken system someone has figured out how to game.

I think that in the future, decisions about redistributive action will be much more individual and finer-grained. People sometimes forget that nation-states aren't the only way to provide a social safety net, and in fact, they have significant disadvantages, including tons of complex rules and an entrenched bureaucracy that resists change.

I would much rather have the social safety net work like American Red Cross (incidentally, to which I'm a donor) than the US federal government. The key is to install the right social norms so that as the power of states fall, people still feel compelled to engage in some level of redistributive personal donation. Fewer McMansions and boats, more volunteering and donation.

In sum, just because the power of government and organized labor is declining doesn't mean everyone is going to become a cold-hearted scrooge. I think there's a third way, where we could help a lot more people for a lot less money out of pocket.

<comment><USER4> If it costs the janitor upwards of $100k a year to live reasonably near the place of work, then paying the janitor $200k a year is reasonable. If a company does not like to pay this amount towards cleaning staff, then the company can eliminate the janitorial positions and have people working in their own filth, or have non-janitorial staff take on custodial duties in addition to their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like the costs are being driven by offering generous compensation and retirement packages to government employees.

I don't see that changing.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure how you could call that generous give the col of SF. Do we just expect government employees to not be able to live in the city they work?

<comment><USER7> There is a difference between a pension that allows you to live in SF and a crazy generous pension (that encourages gaming the system) that is far more extravagant than anything you'd find in the private sector (who have been moving away from pensions generally).

<comment><USER8> I don't know why public sector workers should give ground on benefits simply because private sector workers have rolled over to corporate interests.

If you don't want a union, cool, but don't complain about the outcome then. Comparing to private sector workers is disingenous.

<comment><USER2> Look, obviously you and I have pretty different ideology, I get that.

But I think you should consider why union membership is declining in the US. It's not some giant right-wing conspiracy. It's because the structure of industry is changing, firms are getting smaller, and the overall economy is getting more competitive. It's not like all the employees just decided, hey, we should all voluntarily decide to take a worse deal, great idea, let's do it.

What upsets me as a taxpayer is why this same thing doesn't apply in the public sector. Like, I get that teachers work hard, but if we paid by outcomes, the way any sane private-sector company does, half of teachers would just get fired. Look at any major big-city school district if you want to see the mediocrity in action, whether Chicago Public Schools (CPS), Oakland Unified, etc.

So yeah, it seems a little unfair that one sector of the economy gets paid for being mediocre at best, and other fires people and demands performance. Yeah, I'm a little upset.

<comment><USER8> I can appreciate we have different viewpoints. I can appreciate that, as a taxpayer, you're upset. I also see the issues with institutions like CPS (having lived in Chicago proper). I don't believe paying teachers for outcomes when outcomes are primarily driven by influences outside of a teacher's control [1], but that is a discussion for another thread.

I don't think it's a secret I'm hard to the left. People first. That's how empathy works, economic efficiency be damned. Are there issues with how pension systems are gamed? Certainly, and fixes need to be put in place (benefit systems should never have the capacity to be gamed). Should public sector workers have reduced benefits or salaries because the American public has allowed their representatives to hand all the gains to Corporate America? Absolutely not.

We have slowly, over decades, mortgaged the future (at local, state, and federal levels, speaking specifically about the US). The bills are coming due, and everyone is surprisingly shocked. I can't tell you what to do, but I have gotten involved in politics and intend to contribute to a solution. I encourage you to do the same.

[1] [https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our- insigh...](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our- insights/drivers-of-student-performance-insights-from-north-america)

<comment><USER9> Pensions (guaranteed payouts) are simply unsustainable - that's why they've gone away in the US private sector. The public sector can't afford it either. I lived in upstate NY, the property taxes were high because of strong public unions.

I moved south 4 years ago, my taxes are less than half of what they were in NY for a 2500sq/fr home compared to our current 4000sq/ft home. The education system is no better in NY than it is down here in my town. The public workers/teachers down here are not unionized - it's not great for them, but I'm not willing to pay for their gold-plated benefits and pensions.

People continue to vote with their feet in situations where the local governments are unwilling/unable to change. In my subdivision, of 100 families 95% are transplants from up north. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why - that old style of lush benefits for public workers is no longer competitive.

<comment><USER10> Why are the pensions unsustainable? The actuaries should be able to estimate how much a cohort will need on average reasonably well. The wage share has been decreasing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_share](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_share).

I suppose it is not sustainable to increase earnings and maintain pensions forever.

<comment><USER9> Because most pension systems are not fully funded.

[http://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-public- pen...](http://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-public-pension-cuts- unsustainable-retirement-systems.html)

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/18/state-pension-funds- continue...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/18/state-pension-funds-continue-to- fall-behind-heres-how-much-you-owe.html)

<comment><USER11> that seems like a different problem than pentions being inherently unsustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Entirely predictable and only a matter of time, but talking about it IRL is equivalent to downvote fodder on HN. I want workers to get fair wages, but it often seems the boomers/Gen X achieve that by loading debt onto millennials and future generations.

>BART janitor grossed $270K in pay and benefits last year

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12852104](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12852104)

<comment><USER13> having seen what BART janitors have to deal with, I say give them a raise and double the headcount.

<comment><USER2> We don't need more janitors. We need to get serious about fare enforcement. Fence in all the fare-paid areas so people don't blatantly jump over them, and get rid of the swinging doors that people walk through with zero consequence.

BART is totally lawless. In the past 4 years, I've had a knife pulled on me, and had someone try to steal my computer. Every day I see dance shows, littering, people passed out on two seats, people blasting music, rampant fare evasion, and drug use at Powell/Civic Center. I'm tired of it and want the system's rules to be enforced.

<comment><USER14> > I'm tired of it and want the system's rules to be enforced.

Won't happen because, let's face it, minorities are going to predominantly be affected by enforcement. SF's far too progressive to let that happen.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't be so sure.

Let's see what happens in the mayoral election. If London Breed gets elected, I take that as a signal that the city wants something different.

Politics in the Bay Area has changed noticeably in the 7 years I've lived here. Guys like Wiener are getting more of a voice passing sensible common- sense solutions without getting shouted down by head-in-the-sand idealists that won't see things for what they are. Long-term, I think SF is going to become more like NY, a place with plenty of traditional progressives, but also a healthy share of pro-business, socially liberal conservatives who just want the trains to run on time, and don't give a damn about political correctness.

Or maybe I'm just dreaming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If Jane Kim becomes mayor it will get exponentially worse. The city is incredibly poorly run and dirtier than any other city in America that I've been too.

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems weird to insist that all future obligations have to be funded with money that's set aside now. To give a small example, it would sound crazy if someone said people had to set aside a fund whose interest could pay all the cost of raising a child in advance.

<comment><USER17> If you're promising someone something in the future (pension) for work that they're going to do now, then you should fund that. If your salary included a big bonus or deferred benefits, would you mind that your manager doesn't set aside any money for that promised benefit?

<comment><USER16> It's the indefinite funding of a fixed obligation that seems weird to me. If my manager said, "I'm sorry I can't pay your $5000 bonus next year because we don't have $111,000 set aside in a fund earning 4.5% in perpetuity" i'd be a lot more upset. Honestly there's probably something about the accounting that I don't understand.

<comment><USER18> Pension is not bonus. You don't get to modulate the amount depending on how generous you're feeling in a given year. Workers have as much right to it as to the wages they've earned and saved into a 401k or IRA. It's the enployee's money; the employer is just a steward. Failing to pay a pension is the same as robbing a former employee's house to take back the wages you'be already paid them.

<comment><USER19> I'd never take a pension over a 401k. I'd much rather be able to pick some of the investments my retirement is funding/being funded by then none. Seems crazy to me not researching and picking the investments, but maybe I'm bias by my understanding and intelligence versus the average American.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Could taxing all the marijuana businesses that are springing up like mushrooms all over SF help?

<comment><USER21> The tax revenue numbers here seem like they would exclude recreational marijuana but would include medical marijuana. Unless you think legalization alone will increase SF-local sales by like $1 billion/annually (that's a lot of weed! and most of that will be in cash, making it harder) it's hard to see it making a big difference.

I didn't see _that_ much marijuana being consumed when I was there last week, and the one recreational dispensary I went to was selling fairly small quantities in dollar terms... (I bought $17 of edibles, so I'm afraid I didn't help much in plugging the SF deficit.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The $300 million per year that SF spends on homeless should be reevaluated. The fact that there is no metrics, targets, or accountability should make this the first thing on their list.

</comment><comment><USER23> Read the article: $10B is the budget, $250M is the amount of that that isn't funded, it's still a big hole, but 40 times smaller - please change the header above

<comment><USER24> No, there's a $250M deficit annually, and a total of $10B in future liabilities. Coincidentally, that is the same amount as the entire annual budget. But $10B is the right number.

<comment><USER25> "Using the official numbers, San Francisco is $10 billion in the hole ($4.2 billion of health care liabilities, plus $5.8 billion of pension liabilities)."

Then later, he estimates that the actual amount is approximately twice that, since the official ten billion figure is based over optimistic assumptions.

<comment><USER26> He states that it could be twice that not that the actual amount is that value.

He was stating that the 7.5% return they wanted is not likely, that 6.5% is much more likely, and that he wouldn't be surprised if the return was less than that 6.5%.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


You can't open-source license morality - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/you-cant-open-source-license-morality/ <comment><USER2> Like unwanted videos on pages that use up all your mobile data? You sure can't.</comment>


Trend Micro Endpoint Sensor 1.6 DLL Hijacking Vulnerability - <AUTHOR> https://success.trendmicro.com/solution/1116827 <comment><AUTHOR> another one [http://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2017-6398/](http://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2017-6398/)</comment>


Jerry Yang's Entire Memo to His Employees on Stepping Down as CEO - <AUTHOR> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20081117/jerry-yangs-entire-memo-to-his-employees-on-stepping-down-as-ceo/ <comment><USER2> Gotta love the all lowercase. It's, unfortunately, the type of thing that once you're dismissed from duty is looked back upon as more evidence that you weren't quite cut out for the job.

<comment><USER3> I don't think all lowercase is professional. But I doubt it has anything to do with his competence for the job. More than likely, it is a reflection of the type of culture he wants at yahoo.</comment></comment>