Starting a Company Is Not Risky - <AUTHOR> http://diegobasch.com/starting-a-company-is-not-risky

<comment><USER2> This post draws an arbitrary line in the sand. There's risk associated with everything you do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have called it "not as risky as most people believe" perhaps. Or "Entrepreneurs are not gladiators."

<comment><USER2> But in an earlier article you do admit that it is quite risky:

"To put it in a different perspective: as a startup founder, you are making a very risky and non-diversified investment."

You're essentially gambling your time. That's what coal miners are doing, too - it's just that their roulette wheel looks a lot different.

(I do agree with your sentiment that people place a lot more emphasis on the 'glory' of their profession. That's quite commonplace, I think.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Gambling with money and risking death are two very different things. You're just nitpicking.

<comment><USER2> Not intentionally - I just wanted to point that everything boils down to gambling your time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Three mistakes. The Path to Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/11/three-mistakes-the-path-to-success/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm 43. If I want to I can spend all day thinking of my regrets (heck, ask my wife, I just did it over lunch). But its a better exercise thinking of the things to look forward to.

</comment><comment><USER2> Excellent post. I've been struck lately with the fear of being old and full of regret. Perhaps the "each day, one thing" mantra might benefit me. I'll give it a shot.</comment>


Planet Startup - Community Aggregator for Startup Blogs - <AUTHOR>

In the spirit of various "planets" in the Open Source world, some of us in the #startups Freenode IRC channel and others have gotten are now syndicating on "Planet Startup".  I finally got around to cleaning the CSS up some last night, so I figured this was as good a time as any to bring it to a wider audience.
http://planetstartup.directededge.com/
Other Planets:
http://www.planetkde.org/ | http://planet.gnome.org/ | http://planet.ubuntu.com/
And so on.  If we hit a critical mass I'll move it over to its own domain.  Got a startup related blog?  Let me know.
This is an opt-in only thing in an attempt to build a community, not an aggregation of Scott's Favorite Blogs.  Among other things, this consolidates some of the news.YC folks' blogs into one feed. <comment><USER2> Cool, I read a few of the other 'planet' sites as well and this would be a welcome addition to the list! It's nice to have topical aggregators for things shared insights or individual company news that aren't quite newsworthy to the general populace (yet! ;).

</comment><comment><USER3> Good job, but there appears to be one feed / source that's nothing but uninteresting (mostly because they're personal responses) Twitter-type entries. @Peter starts a lot of them..

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, there are some good posts in that feed, so I'm going to try to set up a filter that knocks out anything that starts with @.

<comment><USER3> I suspect there are quite a few rules / heuristics that could be used to improve the quality of "planet" sites overall. Those in the topic areas I'm interested in tend to pick good sources, but those sources can occasionally be "noisy" and irrelevant to the planet. This leads people to subscribe more to summary blogs (to my advantage in my main niche).

It's probably rather beyond what you're hoping to achieve, but with some time and thought, I bet there's a way to build planet sites that have an incredibly high signal to noise ratio rather than the almost equal one they tend to have right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think aggregations typically fall into one of a couple of category: topical, from the trenches news, or community building sites.

I'm mostly hoping that this will be a community building site, and in that case I think that some off-topicness is acceptable. I'd say that a target signal-to-noise ratio is about 80% :-)

The other 20% helps to give character to the people that are being tracked. At least for "planets" like the three I mentioned in the original post, the site is mostly for the people that are collectively posting there, and has the side effect of making it possible for fans to easily peek behind the scenes.

<comment><USER3> If that's your goal, then that's okay. Good luck!

I should warn, however, that being included in a planet can cause some people to think a little too much about what they post. My _personal_ blog is included in a planet and I'm often wondering whether I'll get kicked out if I post something irrelevant or cause too much noise. Really, I should be able to get that planet to subscribe to a certain /category/ on my blog so I get the choice. Just bringing this up in case it becomes a point later on..

<comment><AUTHOR> Many blogs do allow for RSS feeds based on categories, and I know of a number of people that have their blogs aggregated based on those category feeds. If a particular feed gets too noisy that's something that we'll deal with (as I've seen done on other planets), but there that usually amounts to, "Uhm, can you set up a category feed?"

I personally just have three separate blogs -- one for a few friends, my KDE blog which is fairly widely syndicated, and now the Directed Edge one. I tend to include bits of personal information in my KDE blog from time to time, but still keep in mind that it's mostly being read by people interested in my open source work, not girls I'm dating. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> jdavid.net for anyone that wants to read about my tech interests, rants, projects, startup life, and or some other personal adventures.

i will be rethinking my blog in summer so any comments on what would interest folks like you would be of value. I also plan to better edit my blog in the next 2 years than i have in the last 2 years.</comment>


A Simple SqlAlchemy 0.7 / 0.8 Tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2012/07/01/a-simple-sqlalchemy-0-7-0-8-tutorial/ <comment><USER2> SqlAlchemy is one of the best SQL abstraction library I've ever used. I loved the programmatical SQL language in python. It is very flexible and allows you to create powerful requests (left joins, ....) in python. A must use if you like python and have to use a RDBMS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. I think SQLAlchemy has helped me understand SQL itself better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Rather interesting to note since I just read through your old Step-by-step (2/2) today.

Thanks for the great resource.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem. I'm glad you've found it useful.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Stack/Hosting plan for a viral social web app - <AUTHOR>

We are preparing to launch a social web 2.0 app that has a strong potential to go viral. (We already know that the chances of our app going actually viral are probably slim to nil; so be kind and spare us the scepticism. :-))
Our basic aim is to ensure maximum availability at minimum possible cost. :-)
The app (nearing completion but not quite there yet) is built on PHP/MySQL/Java/AJAX and there will be 3 major load factors associated with it:
1. http and php
2. mysql
3. images
We're planning to deploy 3 VPS accounts/servers, one for each of the above 3. We're thinking of having all 3 VPSes in the same data centre (with unique IPs).
We believe this will provide not only load-distribution benefits but also the ability to upgrade just the VPS that may be causing slowdown/outage in case of a sudden traffic
burst, at relatively low costs.
(Naturally, we'll optimize HTML/CSS, PHP code, MySQL config, table structures, queries etc. to the max.)
What do HNers with relevant experience think of this plan? What changes would you suggest? What are we missing?
Please share your views. <comment><USER2> Here's one approach on AWS.

Put http and php on an ec2 instance. Crank up as needed. 1 really big server can take quite a bit of traffic. Plan to add load balancing too (or add it straight in). Add memcached layer to take it easy on the db.

Put mysql on an RDS server. Crank up to 68 GB of memory, 26 ECUs as needed. This will most likely be your bottleneck, but memcached should help a lot, and optimize your queries. Later on you can add slave drives and such, but one big server (and memcached) should last you a while.

Put images on a separate subdomain, on S3.

(Also, put all static files like js and css on another separate subdomain on S3.)

Instead of pre-optimizing everything to the max, just use sensible settings and install really good monitoring tools. Then, fix bottlenecks as they happen. The main thing to optimize before launching are your queries, I wouldn't worry too much about the rest, they'd just give you 10, 20% improvements etc., whereas queries can give you 1000% improvements.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could try Windows Azure . <http://ecn.channel9.msdn.com/o9/mix/10/mp4/SVC12.mp4>

<http://ecn.channel9.msdn.com/o9/mix/10/mp4/EX23.mp4>

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you checked Rackspace cloud? They are extremely cheap comparing to other cloud-based solutions.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the input - peter, gspyrou, codingstaff.

Please keep more of it coming - I'm sure it'll help us (for now) and it'll also help many others.

</comment><comment><USER5> As already mentioned -- the images are cheap to fix. Stick 'em up on S3 (with or without CDN), and they'll almost certainly be fine.

General HTTP isn't something we can really answer for you. If your PHP is memory intensive, there's a different remediation plan than if it's more CPU intensive. Regardless, you want to be leveraging a cache wherever you can. For the most part, unless you're excessively out of the norm on either memory or CPU, you'll likely be fine on a fairly small instance, so long as you abstract the DB away from there.

Versus petervandijck's advice, I would recommend a number of smaller, load balanced EC2 instances instead of one big EC2 instance. It might add a little bit of complexity, but if you start off load balancing an $11 a month micro instance, it's easier to spin up additional instances as you need them, while keeping your base cost low. Alternately, you could of course spin up an $80 a month instance, and have less to worry about on the higher end, but it also costs more even if you aren't under load.

As for the database, I'll leave that to my betters, but memcached is your friend.</comment>


Duke Nukem's PR threatens to punish sites that run negative reviews - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/06/duke-nukems-pr-threatens-to-punish-sites-that-run-negative-reviews.ars <comment><USER2> If I found any sites pulling punches on Duke, I wouldn't trust their reviews any more. It's plenty clear how bad the game is thanks to all the honest reviews, and anyone who stands out is going to wish they didn't.

I'd hope that's a bigger threat than this PR person's.

Also: Why does he still have a job? It's obviously that he doesn't understand that PR is supposed to be GOOD relations, not bad.

His company should be immediately stepping forward and promising EVERYONE that got a review copy that they'd get more review copies in the future, even if they'd normally be blacklisted for being complete lying jerks. (Which someone reviewers are, unfortunately.)

<comment><USER3> Their company is called "TheRednerGroup" it seems while the guy himself is named Jim Redner. I guess no one's gonna fire him from this job..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apparently 2KGames has severed ties with The Redner Group now. <https://twitter.com/#!/2KGames/status/81056724546633729>

<comment><USER5> That's exactly how a company should respond to something like this! Excellent on 2k's part,

<comment><USER6> Right, very unprofessional to publicly state their private policies that would obviously reflect badly on the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish I read these reviews before buying the game, because every last one of those reviews is well-deserved.

I know no game can ever be good enough to match the 13 years of false starts and anticipation inherent in DNF. If I waited 13 years for Half Life 3, even a Valve masterpiece would feel a little anticlimactic (BTW, pretty please, Valve, please don't make us wait 13 years for a Half Life sequel).

I expect some degree of toilet humor and raunchy jokes, because that's what Duke Nukem was all about. But DNF is fraught with slow loading times, tedious cutscenes you can't skip past, and in general from the hour or so I've played it, it just isn't that fun.

<comment><USER8> The load times are a feature. I figured it out last night when I sat down to play it. It takes so long so you have time to go grab a beer, snack, etc.

The game got better the longer I played it for some reason...

<comment><USER7> With how many times it seems to stop to load, I'll go black-out drunk if I went for a beer every time the game offered me the opportunity.

I'm playing the 360 version and haven't loaded it to the internal disk. Maybe that will help the load times.

<comment><USER9> It definitely will; the demo load times weren't nearly as bad.

Microsoft should add a requirement that any loading screens that require an action to continue (DNF requires you to press "A" once loading is complete to start the game) make some kind of noise when they finish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So ... this means that sites will be punished approximately 15 years from now?

I'm sure that they're shaking in their collective boots.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just to play devil's advocate...

Surely the company isn't obligated to provide free software to every reviewer, right? Why should they subsidize a review that they know will likely not benefit them?

And I have no data to back this up, but I bet really BAD reviews get more traffic than reviews that fairly discuss the pros and cons of a mediocre game. I think there's at least a temptation for less scrupulous reviewers to really slam mediocre or overhyped games more than is deserved.

<comment><USER12> There's no question that game reviewers can be cruel, but it tends to be limited to games that aren't produced by major publishers, because they can strike back by withholding review copies. Blackballing isn't about cost; (which is trivial) it's about early access to the game so that the review comes out immediately after the press embargo lifts. Gamers want to read reviews before the game hits shelves in the same way moviegoers want to see the reviews before heading out on Friday night. In exchange, game publishers get free publicity. It should be a symbiotic relationship, but the publisher has more power than the reviewers, and in my experience the bias is almost always toward over-kind reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oops. Well, another reason for me not to buy the game. Thanks to everyone who wrote honest reviews, because audience goodwill is far more important than pleasing one game publisher.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is why I rarely buy anything that has just come on the market. The publishers whose business model depends on being first to market with the reviews has an incentive to water down criticisms to avoid upsetting big advertisers, and thus the first wave of reviews is heavily tilted in favor of market heavyweights. This made a certain amount of sense back in the days of print dominance, since review copy needed to be prepared weeks ahead of a product launch in order to remain current. In the age of the internet, though, advance access is worth much less than it used to be, and is certainly not worth the cost of lost credibility.

It might be interesting to see a review site built around the necessity to purchase the product being reviewed rather than getting it free from the manufacturer.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wait, they're going to punish them by _not_ sending more games?

<comment><USER11> Not being able to review a game until weeks after your competitors would be a problem.

<comment><USER16> Publish a review on release day with everyone else: "Now, based on our poor reviews of their poor previous releases, their PR agency declined to allow us to review the game before release lest we review a poor game poorly once more. That said based on their previous poor releases, and without ever seeing the game, we give it 4/10."

<comment><USER15> Or, "the publisher declined to give us a review copy, so here's a golden oldie from the archives: Duke Nukem Forever."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This PR firm was probably paid good money to make sure the reviews are good and that the game sells. I guess they just went a little far, but they did apologize in the end at least.

Negative reviews or no, it's just a review. The writers may be able to influence some portion of the game-buying populace but in order for it to work they have to be honest with their audience. It seems disengenious to try and manipulate that relationship in your favour.

</comment><comment><USER17> This PR person needs to read the Cluetrain Manifesto, because he doesn't quite get how the world works now.

<comment><USER18> Yea, I have been saying "legacy" PR based on controlling the message is fundamentally flawed for a while now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is something every PR company does tacitly. Why wouldn't they? If you give journalists your product and they shit on it, you're going to go to other journalists next time.

I'm surprised a PR doesn't know enough to not state that publicly, but still.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ironically, I get the feeling 2k won't be sending any more games to this PR agency.

edit: _"2K Games does not endorse or condone the comments made by @TheRednerGroup and confirm they no longer represent our products."_</comment>


Why B2D marketing gets it wrong - <AUTHOR> http://blog.devrel.net/opinion/why-b2d-marketing-gets-it-wrong/

<comment><USER2> Microport used to advertise that its SystemV port supported Berkeley Job Control. I got a lot of complaints about that while working tech support.

"No, we don't support job control. I don't know that we ever plan to."

"Look at your own magazine ad," a user finally pointed out.

I showed a copy of our ad in a trade rag to our marketing guy. "We don't support that."

"Oh, ok," he replied, then used an exacto knife to remove it from his master copy of the ad layout.</comment>


Ask HN: Pushing code to personal GitHub from work - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, need your opinion.
I often do tutorials (PluralSight etc) at work in downtime and sometimes push that code to my personal GitHub account so that I can work on it after going home. I have never copied or pushed anything remotely related to my actual work.
Does this sort of behavior discouraged and can be used against me in any way by the firm? <comment><USER2> It might be worth asking your employer, if you feel you can ask.

Getting the response in an email would be helpful.

If you don't feel comfortable asking, perhaps that answers the question.</comment>


Anonymous releases NSA documents - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/MPpT7xaf

<comment><USER2> What a waste of my eyes!

As someone who spent years working in government-ese, there is nothing new here at all. None of the documents are actually classified. They are standard policy propositions layered with heavy technical/government jargon. The intelligence community and DOD is meticulous about properly classifying even the most mundane information that could be connected to anything of consequence for national security. Hence, it has been the standard for decades that every single classified document must have a header and footer with its classification level clearly posted. I was put on the spot once in a brief for not having a footer with the brief's classification on one slide in a PowerPoint. None of these documents have the required headers or footers. Logical conclusion, none of them require it because none of them are classified.

The real government is far more boring than the one that appears in popular conspiracy theories and movies. Trust me, the real government is a boring employer...great health insurance though!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you don't want to download all the docs to view, there is a mirror on Google Docs with web based viewers:

[https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bx25s45t4-d_eE0xbklZ...](https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bx25s45t4-d_eE0xbklZN183ME0&usp=sharing)

<comment><USER3> I skimmed those docs and my eyes started to glaze over at all the government- ese in them. Most of those documents seem to be high level proposals for things like PRISM and some of the other programs that we more or less already know exist in some form or another, but it's unclear whether they're just proposing the creation of such networks, or whether they're documenting what already exists. There's also a lot of "System A must conform to Standard B Sub-Section C unless interaction with System D Sub-Section F (See Req E)" type gibberish all over the documents so it's really hard to understand exactly what any particular piece of it is describing.

Aside from that the only other thing I see is a list of what appear to be boilerplate redaction requests for a list of NSA spies posted on cryptome, with ironically most of the information redacted. Mildly interesting in that they'd be so transparent as to use near identical wording on what should be apparently unrelated requests, but otherwise not particularly notable.

Can someone with a higher pain threshold for bureaucracy please try to go more in depth on some of these and let us know if there's any meat to any of these documents, or is this all sound and fury signifying nothing.

<comment><USER4> The more government-ese, the higher the chance that it goes over-budget or never gets completed / never does what it was supposed to / is working but not usable in real world. I like that kind of text in things that should be never completed. I hope they also contract out each piece of it to a different country and lowest bidder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would love for someone to go through these and let us know if there is anything worth while looking at.

This looks, on the surface, like run-of-the-mill process related docs for the various aspects of the defense department.

<comment><USER6> At the very least, the documents lay out in uncertain terms the stated goals for GIG and NetOps.

That's good information to have. As this story develops and more information comes to light, it is handy to be able to compare what we know, with what we know they want to achieve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most, if not all of these documents were constructed/finalized in 2005-2009. The latest I saw was a 2012 document.

Don't mean to point out the obvious, but the GIG (Global Information Grid) is more than underway.

</comment><comment><USER8> Bull*.

Here you can find links to sources of all those "top-secret" documents: [http://blog.pawelk.pl/post/52419889998/anonymous-lie-and- try...](http://blog.pawelk.pl/post/52419889998/anonymous-lie-and-try-to-take- credit-for-others-work)

Almost all are publicly available on USA government sites.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nothing of interest to see, was hoping for a season three insight into Persons of Interest, that would of been more worthwhile a read.

Suggest save time and avoid unless you are in need of a cure for insomnia.

</comment><comment><USER10> BTS Mirror: R54FPPPVT3I7B3RC72GYBFK3NMXGAJLJ5</comment>


PRISM = Palantir's product? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/prism-is-also-the-name-of-a-product-from-palantir-a-5-billion-tech-startup-funded-by-the-cia-2013-6

<comment><USER2> this is really really really bad reporting on the level of Glenn Beck's chalkboard ramblings. And it's all okay, because we're "just asking questions"

"Can we say for sure that Palantir's product, Prism, is the big data engine behind the NSA's secret tool PRISM? No, we cannot. A call into Palantir has not been returned. As secretive as Palantir is, we doubt anyone we could reach would confirm much for us, anyway. But it would certainly be a coincidence if there were a big data NSA program was named PRISM and a Palantir product was named Prism and they were not the same."

<comment><USER3> Ok Palantir rep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> CIA != NSA and I'd be pessimistic on the CIA funding projects for the NSA. They aren't the same org and they have reasons to not be, so they aren't all chummy.

This reminded me of how ham-handed we should expect the media handling of all this will be and how many windmills will be put up for people to teeter at while the real story and grander plan continues to roll past and evolve.

</comment><comment><USER5> Typical BI blogspam. Should be flagged.

</comment><comment><USER6> Please take this off of the front page. Terrible blogspam.</comment>


[Ask HN] What are some of the must visit startups/company when being in NYC? - <AUTHOR>

I am visiting New York (Manhattan) as part of a vacation, research and possible intern positions. I am from Europe and want to visit some startups while me being there.<p>What are the must visit? And what is the best way to contact them? <comment><USER2> Try to stop by General Assembly. As the largest coworking space in Manhattan, you'll see a lot of early-stage work taking place. They also offer classes and workshops on different topics (for a fee).

</comment><comment><USER3> Foursquare, AirBnB, Weebly (I believe they're in nyc too?).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I totally forgot about Foursquare :o</comment></comment>


Cool Spotify Excel Dashboard - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/dijpm0/oc_my_spotify_excel_dashboard/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a really cool dashboard. The creator posted a video on youtube showing how he did it. Unfortunately it isn't live data, but requires some manual massaging to get the data in the form needed. Still worth a watch. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwnHoaY2hEk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwnHoaY2hEk)</comment>


Ask HN: Why are load balancers so expensive? - <AUTHOR> If it wasn't for kubernetes, I probably wouldn't care about load balancers in my personal projects. But since things are the way they are, why do load balancers have to cost so much? <comment><USER2> Probably depends on the provider... Haven't played much K8...

But I know it seems with clouds they offer regular VPSes, but can get managed databases, load balancers, etc... I guess cost more than setting it up on your own raw VPS, but less op's tasks...

Personally I'd probably just install something like HAProxy on a VPS. Smaller VPS but as growing scale it up on a larger VPS.

I guess though load balancers are prefect for stateless stuff, but websockets sounds more messy. My plan was if I ever used web sockets load balance in the application level itself... like ws1.whatever, ws2.whatever and just assign them a session token and a specific server to connect to. So stateless REST API and a separate stateful WS servers.</comment>


Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I <comment><USER3> I really dislike the marketing around "autopilot." The common defense of Tesla's autopilot is that there are disclaimers, and the driver should always be at 100% attention.

Well, look at this, copied from Tesla's website:

> _Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars_

> All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the > hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level > substantially greater than that of a human driver. [1]

An average person is going to read this and think, "This care drives itself, and it's safer than me!" The rest of the page describes space-age features like switching lanes to get to an exit faster and self parking:

> All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go ... Your > Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even > without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, > stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars > moving at high speed ... and park itself.

They're selling a car that full on drives itself. This is not being sold as adaptive cruise control.

FWIW, they included a weasel phrase by saying "hardware" is there, as opposed to software, but come on! An average person is not going to understand that distinction. I think they need to dramatically scale back the hype around this feature until it actually delivers what it promises.

Edit: I'm also confused by why they need to hype up autopilot so much. They are already selling more cars than they can make, and a sexy electric car appeals to lots of people. I think it would be enough to stick with that.

[1] [https://www.tesla.com/autopilot](https://www.tesla.com/autopilot)

<comment><USER4> could be a well-meaning tech culture screw up; Most tech people know that airplane autopilots weren't end-to-end automated for the majority of their existence

<comment><USER5> >Most tech people know

most tech people also know how "better than human" sounds to the public and the average driver. This isn't well meaning tech culture, it's a PR statement that is misleading and formulated the way it is precisely because it is a sales pitch.

It's irresponsible and unethical. It should be called a 'driver assistant' and have a warning label in font size 100 that tells drivers to not treat it as autonomous and infallible.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't even ask for the size 100 font, but Elon musk and Tesla to stop hyping their amazing autonomous capabilities (which are all non existent)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really sad to see Autopilot is a joke and nothing more than adaptive cruise control found in common cars, despite Musk claming it was a year ago [1]

Any one who owns Autopilot knows the warning at :20 is NOT a crash warning at all and is just the usual warning every minute to jiggle the wheel if you don't hold the wheel firmly enough when it can't detect you holding it.

1\. [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823632597284691969](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823632597284691969) " Yes, safety should improve significantly due to autonomy features, even if regs disallow no driver present 23 Jan 2017"

<comment><USER8> The bad state of the road plays a huge role. There should be a "report unsafe road conditions" function in these cars to get US roads up to Belgian standards. Doesn't Ttump want to spend money on infrastructure anyway?

<comment><USER9> Whatever state of the road, a self-driving car shouldn't run heads on into a large static obstacle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This (video) is another instance where the lanes split apart but the part in the middle has absolutely no markings to indicate that you shouldn't drive there.

This (photograph) is what it should look like: [http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/24/67/2246762_3a6ea81...](http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/24/67/2246762_3a6ea811.jpg)

Is this (bad line painting) common in the US?

Edit: on a second viewing, I think it actually does have some chevrons, but they're very faint.

<comment><USER11> There is a solid white line. It's forbidden to cross a solid while line on the freeway.

What does a solid white line mean to you (in your country)?

The linked video is a different story, but the image you linked makes it quite clear not to drive there.

<comment><USER10> I didn't see the car cross a solid white line in the video that this thread is about.

The image I linked is showing what it _should_ look like. I agree the image I linked is perfectly clear.

<comment><USER11> Ah, I misunderstood you. I thought you linked to another example of a failure situation because you wrote "this is another instance".

<comment><USER10> Just realised I used the word "this" 3 different times to mean 3 different things :). I've disambiguated this now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Part of me wonders whether or not we're going to see mutual improvement of infrastructure with self driving cars in the future. This seems like something that you could obviously fix by adding in some kind of passive or active flag that, to a self driving car, says "woah, you're /really/ not supposed to be here."

I know we're supposed to be focusing on building systems that are as capable as humans are as drivers. However, if we approached the problem from changing the roads with some kind of guide beacons, it would probably be really trivial to detect them and improve trustworthiness a lot more.

We already have lane markers and chevrons and all sorts of things for humans to interpret and react to. What if self driving systems got guides that were optimized to them? Instead of having really luminescent paint, they would be radio noisey or have some other electronic fingerprint that's just as "loud" as visual and audible markers are for humans.

At some point, if we want self driving cars to be the real future, we should start working the problem from both ends. When properly implemented, self driving technology is safer than normal humans -- and if we can accelerate that by adding stupid easy electronic markers to some roads, then why not?

<comment><USER13> We should also not allow software that hits a static object, the car should be able to detect solid object, should be able to detect it's speed relative to the car and to the ground, and it should detect a possible collision and take action.

You can put electronics on the roads but if the cars will depend on those then it will fail when those electronics are missing.

<comment><USER14> Not sure why this point isn't being more widely discussed, especially as it is a known problem[0] of almost all 'auto-pilot' systems based on radar.

To me it would seem to be self-driving 101, namely - don't hit a stationary object.

If the challenge is so great that current technology can't overcome the difficulties of detecting stationary objects in the path of the car (not just those stationary objects to ignore like overhead gantries) then it's time to change the language around 'autonomous' driving to ensure drivers understand the limitations. Obviously this isn't happening well enough right now as people are dying because of it.

From a personal perspective, until Lidar becomes commonplace I think I would eschew the 'autonomous' modes offered in the current generation cars.

[0] [https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash- radar/](https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That kind of lane marking (or lack thereof) seems very unsafe. I realize that often this is due to construction / etc but the immediately-to-the-left lane's marker was Very Clear, and didn't have a visible split in it. I had to watch it a second time to make sure that I didn't miss the indications that the lane was splitting away (other than the highway signs). This kind of thing (lack of clear markings) can be really dangerous when driving at night in the raid (road is more reflective than normal), or in an unfamiliar area.

The autopilot could be better, but the road engineers should have made sure the lines were painted correctly.

<comment><USER16> > the road engineers should have made sure the lines were painted correctly

If this is the intersection, they were painted correctly:

[https://goo.gl/maps/QuuRiixk6Y42](https://goo.gl/maps/QuuRiixk6Y42)

But in this video, the left solid white line was more visible than the right one. For whatever reason -- a trick of light, snowplows tore it up this winter, who knows.

That kind of thing is going to happen and autonomous cars need to deal with it in order to be _actually autonomous_.

<comment><USER17> I believe it's this intersection, judging by the signs in the beginning of video. Paint is not great.

[https://goo.gl/maps/V9qnLYTL2tn](https://goo.gl/maps/V9qnLYTL2tn)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One thing I always wonder about is the Tesla HUD -- my gut feeling is that if instead of rendering three generic lanes, it tried to render the lanes/obstacles it saw, the driver might be more attentive while in Autopilot mode.

1\. The interface changes, and changing things are more interesting to look at.

2\. Seeing something like two lanes when you're on a five-lane high way should make a driver do a double-take and perhaps pay more attention or disengage autopilot.

3\. Ditto for obstacles.

<comment><USER19> or, you know, instead of looking at the HUD, you can look at the road? that interface changes naturally

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This video is from a highway in Illinois. 2000+ miles away from the 3/23/2018 crash. 41.7779557,-87.6309277

<comment><USER21> Does it matter? Do cars act differently depending on which state they are in? Seems like a similar situation to the crash in California.

<comment><USER22> It does matter when the article title claims that it's a reproduction of the accident. If it's not the same location, it's not really a reproduction, even if the cause/effect is the same.

<comment><USER23> I don't think the word reproduction is always used as strictly as your definition. In computer software/hardware the word is used even if the geographical location and hardware is different. I don't see using it to reproduce car issues would be any different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> While Tesla screwed up the marketing on this product and failed to even ensure the driver is looking at the road at all times, I believe the black box approach (recover crash data from every incident and work it back into the product) is exceptionally powerful, as demonstrated in the airplane industry.

It use to be that whenever an accident like this happened, people shrugged their shoulders and blamed the victim, very damaging design flaws were being corrected statistically, after many wound up dead. We now have a corporation to blame, we internalize that the human drivers cannot be trusted and technology must take over and learn from each and every accident.

The safety advances this routine will bring forth cannot be overstated - <USER2> putting presure on Tesla and other manufacturers is the best way to get them.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow, I had to watch the road a second time to see markings of the split. In the beginning of the movie, I was expecting that there would be two lanes on the left and two lanes on the right.

</comment><comment><USER26> Tesla this month pushed out an update which makes autopilot disengage a lot less than it used to. People have been making videos all month showing much improved performance [1], but this overconfident behavior may be a side effect of the same change.

[1] [https://electrek.co/2018/03/08/tesla-autopilot-update-on- off...](https://electrek.co/2018/03/08/tesla-autopilot-update-on-off-ramp- curve-of-death/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Autopilot marketing is bad and Elon deserves a lot of the blame, but do we still expect to be able to trust these systems enough to not put hands on the wheel and look at the road?

IMO we are still in the very early stages of this work in the industry. Personally I think bugs and flaws in systems like this are normal at this stage. I would expect the same with GM Super Cruise and I wouldn't trust that either to let go of the steering wheel.

<comment><USER28> >I think bugs and flaws in systems like this are normal at this stage

I don't think you should be able to license a vehicle to drive on public roads with such "bugs and flaws".

I don't have a choice, I have to interact with public roads. My local, state, and national government owes it to me to keep experimentation off of public roads that modern life is impossible without.

The problem with robot cars is they fail in very alien ways. They will be made illegal after a small number of horrific incidents where a car will kill people in ways a licensed human never would.

I think the usage of the phrase "intelligence" in "Artificial Intelligence" needs to stop. It was cute in the 90s but today people are starting to actually believe it when it's really a vulnerable shallow approximation that is vulnerable to profoundly unintelligent failures and it will continue to be until there starts to be a debate on if a synthetic system is actually sentient.

<comment><USER27> It's a good point about whether they should be on public roads. At the same time, it's crucial to their success that they are and experience outlier situations.

The hope is that by experiencing an outlier and making a mistake, the algorithms will be able to adapt to ensure that mistake never happens again. Humans today don't have this kind of networked, massively parallel mind to avoid the mistakes of others. Again, that's the _hope_.

I think it'll be a long time before learning algorithms will take over the wheel completely - but I think we are at or near a time when these systems can and should let us know of low confidence, insufficient data to make a decision, or equal confidence of multiple outcomes. A networked AI should be able to tell us far enough in advance (e.g. while driving) for humans to step in and make the final call, based on their own rationalization, empathy, etc.

<comment><USER28> > it's crucial to their success ...

I don't care about a company's success if it requires endangering members of the public who have no choice in the matter.

If we were talking about, say, astronauts and test pilots who know the risks they take and make the choice, I'd have no problem with them risking their lives. We're not.

>I think it'll be a long time before learning algorithms will take over the wheel completely

They did. A system called "auto pilot" drove a man at full speed into a barrier and killed him.

I have a limited trust of other humans on the road. The deal is that I understand them. They behave in a way that makes sense to me, even (or especially) the mistakes they make. As another driver or a pedestrian, I can communicate a lot with a car just by looking at the driver and interpreting body language and attention.

> The hope is that by experiencing an outlier and making a mistake, the > algorithms will be able to adapt to ensure that mistake never happens again.

I think people are making a huge underestimation about the number and types of edge cases. If you have to teach a car not to drive into a static object at full speed, the issue sin't going to be about fixing this one problem, the issue is that if this problem exists 1000 others like it do too.

I come from cold climates and country roads, I think the fact that these vehicles are being designed and tested in the bay area (or Arizona) makes them incredibly dangerous because of the fair weather bubble that the people design them in are living. Make your engineers live and work in rural northern Minnesota and maybe you'll get a bit more trust from me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it the driver or the car doing the final braking in the video? Even if autopilot followed the wrong line it should perform emergency braking or evasive maneuver when the barrier is right in front of it. This is not just one error, it's two.

<comment><USER30> I assume the driver didn't want to wait and see if the car brakes at the very last moment, so it's hard to determine if the car would brake in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So it just fails to detect the fairly large obstacle in the road? This doesn't seem very different than the adaptive cruise control in Hondas but people somehow use it as if it's true auto pilot?

</comment><comment><USER32> I dont own a Tesla, but have driven it and I am floored by the whatever level of Autopilot it had, but as a non-owner I still think I'd never trust the Autopilot 100% (its like when riding shotgun, I'm as attentive as the driver, or more). So, I'm not sure if the Autopilot feature is something that makes the owners trust it more, if they use it more often.

Now, Tesla doesn't claim it is Level 5 Autonomous Driving with "Autopilot". Nor does it say one can drive it handsfree.

Accidents can be much worse if someone drove hands/attention free with just the cruise control on.

In this case of the fatal accident, I'm really surprised that the driver (as per the family) knew the problem area very well, and yet was driving with the autopilot on and not paying attention.

Unless he let the Autopilot go on its own, on purpose, thinking that Model X is super safe, so a head on collision with the barrier would prove his point to Tesla, or the Autopilot became too adamant and refused to disengage, leading to the crash, not sure at what point Tesla can be held liable, if there's any.

Also, I thought those barriers are super safe with enough crumple zones. Wonder how crashing into a barrier like that could lead to such a fatal accident.

</comment><comment><USER33> To me this is very strange.

Why do the road markings trump the objects coming up?

Obviously if a giant-ass obstacle is coming up, the car should be prepared to drive around it, and to decelerate as a last resort. Moreover, if the obstacle is moving, the car has to try to extrapolate its movement in order to avoid it.

How else can you pass trucks and such?

Also why can't these cars be tested autonomously with soft tops instead of a metal chassis, so colossions don't really hurt anyone? Basically a pillow on wheels!!

<comment><USER6> Because Radar can't see static obstacles

[https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash- radar/](https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/)

And Cameras (Vision) are overhyped, they are not reliable enough to recognize obstacles etc

<comment><USER33> This is why Waymo rulez

[https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo- invests-i...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-in- lidar-technology-cuts-costs-by-90-percent/?amp=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder how easy is it for Tesla to 1) find the exact problem and 2) fix it (provided it is software based). Does it mean that they first have to figure out what some "black box" neural network(s) are getting wrong and then retraining (on simulations), etc?

What if city X decides to repaint all its buses and that confuses the object detection system? How log would it take to get the (hot)fix out of the door...

</comment><comment><USER35> I can totally see how a human driver can crash in this situation if he or she is solely focused on the lane markings. This puts the lie to Tesla and Mobileye's claims that camera-based computer vision is enough for autonomy just because humans use two low-res cameras to drive.

<comment><USER36> > This puts the lie to Tesla and Mobileye's claims that camera-based computer > vision is enough for autonomy.

How are these things related? Are you suggesting that cameras are not sufficient for self driving?

<comment><USER37> The companies are stating that they won't be using LIDAR or Radar, and that cameras are enough.

Cameras tend to rely on markers of some sort - and in cases like the markers on the road were very misleading. Even a short-sighted beginner human driver who was told to carefully follow the lanes would have made the same mistake. And cars running purely on cameras are comparably to short sighted baby human drivers.

<comment><USER38> Tesla uses radar, and are working on improving their radar to return point clouds just like lidar does.

Even then, cameras are enough for accurately mapping the world around the car, it's just that Tesla's state of the art has not matched the academic proofs of concept that have been demonstrated over the last few years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It looks like an overfitting stick-to-left-lane problem.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've driven this road many times and it's pretty obvious where to go. The lanes split into 2 different roads and you see the elevated way turning right in the distance so turning left would never make sense.

I wouldn't be surprised if the chevrons which are pretty worn down would be low priority on the maintenance list given how obvious it is and how annoying work there would be.

<comment><USER41> > low priority on the maintenance list

The impression abroad, from reading about collapsing bridges, is that pretty much all maintainance is low priority.

On my last visit, my friend told me to avoid particular freeways near his home because chunks were falling off the bridge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> What a terrible video till.e Also, why are people recording with their phones while driving (or in this case letting drive)? This doesn't look like a dashcam

</comment><comment><USER43> Fun fact - given the current implementation of Autopilot, it is insane to expect an autonomous vehicle. There should be some kind of common sense/intelligence test for would-be users of Autopilot. So far, every incident involving Autopilot that I have heard about or looked at can be summarised with "Driver was being a dumbass"

<comment><USER44> When most of your users have a problem it's not PEBKAC, it's bad UX.

Just because a door says push, doesn't mean it looks pushable. If it doesn't look pushable, users will pull.

If all the PR and the CEO keep saying "autopilot", users will use it as auto pilot. If it isn't autopilot, it should have a different name.

<comment><USER45> _If all the PR and the CEO keep saying "autopilot", users will use it as auto pilot. If it isn't autopilot, it should have a different name._

The word "autopilot" originated in aviation, where it _is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace human operators, but instead they assist them in controlling the aircraft._[1]

Most aviation professionals understand those limitations. You're complaining that the average Tesla owner ascribes a different meaning to that word?

Sadly, in aviation, over-reliance on autopilot has also led to very tragic results, the most prominent recent example being the crash of AF447, which killed 228 people.[2]

Musk is doing nothing worse than Airbus, which has pushed automation to the extent that many of their pilots no longer understand the basic principles involved in aviation. They aren't pilots, they're operators of a very complex machine which has a UX that is usable in benign conditions, but that is abominably bad under difficult conditions.

When faced with "temporary inconsistencies" from various sensors, the AF447 autopilot gave up and returned control to the pilots. But the pilots' inexperience in actually "flying" the aircraft, together with the awful Airbus UX, caused one pilot to say "We've lost all control of the aeroplane we don't understand anything we've tried everything".

In reality AF447 was a perfectly flyable aircraft. "pitch and power" was all it needed: Holding the aircraft level with pitch at IIRC 6 degrees above the horizon and applying 85% power was all that was necessary.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447)

<comment><USER44> > without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required.

This is exactly what the Tesla autopilot isn't. It requires constant hands-on control. It in fact goes as far as flashing alarms when your hands are not on.

<comment><USER46> It requires constant hands on steering wheel, but not constant control (that's just regular driving) - only readiness, just like in aviation. The difference is that you have more time to react when you're flying so hands on controls are pointless.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wally makes personal finance painless and fun - <AUTHOR> http://www.wallyapp.me/ <comment><USER2> It looks like a nice app, very useful ... But yesterday this app was posted: <http://wally-app.com/>

Different kind of app, same name?</comment>


Email From Jason Calacanis: How To Handle Layoffs - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/22/email-from-jason-calacanis-how-to-handle-layoffs/

<comment><USER2> _The most important thing to realize in a situation like we're facing is that, chances are, you cannot act too quickly, but you can easily act too slowly. For this reason, I decided that we had to come up with, and execute on, a cost-savings plan within two weeks. There is little upside in pushing out hard decisions like this slowly because of the simple fact that you're burning gas while you're deciding._

What? He's got three years of runway, but he can't afford to think about a 10% layoff for more than two weeks?</comment>


Narrative Economics - <AUTHOR> http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2896857 <comment><AUTHOR> I'd stumbled across this by way of the LSE podcast which is _excellent_ if you can't get your fill of meaty academic economics, social, and policy discussions and (almost always) solid Q&A.

Shiller is eminently credible in the economics field, and was awarded the Nobel in economics in 2013. He's the co-creator of the Case-Shiller housing index (particularly commented on about a decade ago).

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

For well over a century, the trend in economics has been toward mathematical and quantitative models. Shiller's focus here on narratives is in sharp counterpoint to the mainstream viewpoint. His focus on epidemiological characteristics of narratives is straight-up brain-candy to me.

For those interested in the audio:

Narrative Economics [Audio] LSE: Public lectures and events Duration: 1:17:55 Published: Tue, 10 Sep 2019 18:30:00 GMT Episode: [http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/pub...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=4730)

Media: [https://media.rawvoice.com/lse_publiclecturesandevents/richm...](https://media.rawvoice.com/lse_publiclecturesandevents/richmedia.lse.ac.uk/publiclecturesandevents/20190906_1830_robertSchiller.mp3)

Podcast: [https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/279428154](https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/279428154)

Speaker(s): Professor Robert Shiller | Join us to hear from Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller who will in this lecture talk about his new book which ar...

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks really interesting, but in the first paragraph of the introduction:

> A recession, for example, is a time when many people have decided > to........express support for fiscally conservative government.

What? I'm not sure how this sentence is showing up below words like Yale and NBER at the top of this paper.

The overall idea that stories can drive recessions has clearly happened: a population buys in to the story that profits are derived from exploitation, they abolish profits, then a major recession hits as the economy ceases functioning.

He does touch upon the "profiteer" narrative as a possible source of the 1920 recession, but skips how that same basic narrative would play a major role in shaping the USSR.

He speaks of the narratives of the 2008 financial collapse, but only in terms of how people referenced The Great Depression. What about the narrative that everybody should be able to buy a house, which led to lower lending standards, which led to horrible practices on the back end to try and salvage the the bad loans being written, which led to a global recession.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an interesting microeconomics paper about a new field or theory of economics, unsure which. Naming itself is probably the first step in successful application towards propagating itself. Doesn't mention within the paper anything about memetics.

On a minor note, minds in general seem better geared to remembering stories, e.g. mnemonics.</comment>


The Netherlands Closes Prisons Because It Doesn't Have Enough Prisoners - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcoexist.com/3067771/the-netherlands-keeps-closing-prisons-because-it-doesnt-have-enough-prisoners <comment><USER2> There are a couple reasons why there are so little people in jail in the Netherlands and not all are positive. Crime reporting rate has never been lower. People have very little confidence that reporting a crime will lead to the criminal getting caught or even convicted.

Many crimes are not solved. The crime solve rate is about 2-3% which means out of that small number of actual reported crimes only a marginal amounts get solved.

Out of those solved crimes only a percentage reaches an actual conviction for the criminal.

It's very common for judges to pass a community services punishment or an electronic ankle bracelet house arrest.

Lastly. Our current police and justice department like to do magic with the statistics to make everything seem like a colourful rainbow world where no crime happens at all.

<comment><USER3> > People have very little confidence that reporting a crime will lead to the > criminal getting caught

I thought that way too, but it's not all bad. I was recently positively surprised when the police actually investigated a bike theft that I reported (online) and caught and prosecuted the thief! Court session is next month, I'm going and will take my daughter (who's bike it was) there to learn...

<comment><USER4> Please reply to your comment and let us know what the outcome is, if you remember too.

<comment><USER5> Is commenting still possible on HN after two weeks? At some point the discussion closes, right?

<comment><USER4> I don't know, but you might be right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For reference: in 2016, the Dutch police only investigated 157 cases out of 50,000 cases of internet fraud. So it's not like we don't have any criminals, the police just doesn't do shit about it.

<comment><USER7> Frankly, investigating internet fraud seems like a fool's errand in most cases. I wonder what's the closing rate for those that do get investigated; probably minuscule.

<comment><USER8> Often they're reporting including bank account details. There is lots of simple to investigate fraud. Meaning: Dutch person using their own Dutch bank account to defraud people. That should be super simple to investigate.

On technical forums you sometimes see loads of people complaining that no action is being taken, despite pretty much giving police everything they need (all details: persons full name, bank account details, etc). It often takes place on e.g. Marktplaats (Dutch Ebay-like website).

<comment><USER9> I was scammed on Marktplaats a couple of years ago, along with about 20 victims who also got scammed by the same person. We gathered a lot of information about the scammer, down to all his personal information, ip addresses, email accounts, advertisement details, etc. After about 2 years we got a form in the mail if we would like to press charges and "sue" for damages. Everybody involved filled in the forms and about one year later this persons trial was canceled because of lack of evidence.

Not sure if it's truly hard to prove internet fraud, are understaffed or they just don't care enough. Anyway, seems like an easy way to make a quick buck or two for criminals. Even tho this person didn't look like a particularly intelligent individual or even a hardcore criminal, he got away with many scams and probably made quite a lot of money in a short period of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Misleading article. I'm from the netherlands and a lot of police interviews report lack off financial support and manpower.

Only criminals that get caught end up in jail.. Criminals who do not get caught are criminals nevertheless.. And they stil do criminal things.

Correlation =/= Causation.

<comment><USER7> OTOH, the murder rate in 2015 was also the lowest in 20 years: [http://nltimes.nl/2016/07/29/netherlands-murder- rate-20-year...](http://nltimes.nl/2016/07/29/netherlands-murder-rate-20-year- low)

<comment><USER8> In loads of cases questionable deaths haven't been investigated on how they died. Meaning: lots of murders aren't being reported/seen as murder. Unfortunately do not have an article/reference for this, despite trying to find it.

<comment><USER11> What makes you think the percentage of questionable deaths has changed? If it hasn't, an all time low murder rate still stands.

<comment><USER8> Murder isn't the same as questionable deaths?!? I don't think that has changed. I said that in not enough cases they're checking if someone has been murdered or not. As such, you cannot trust that murder has gone down. This has been reported by Dutch news within the last 12 months I already mentioned I couldn't find that report via Google.

This is exactly the same as the crime rate. Less reported figures doesn't mean crime rate has gone down. For that one I gave elsewhere their own investigation which shows that crime rate went up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude Internal report of Dutch police / justice : there is probably 5 times more criminality as in the statistics.

I have read here, sometime, from someone, crime statistics are based on a survey in the UK ( instead of relying on the police ).

<comment><USER12> > I have read here, sometime, from someone, crime statistics are based on a > survey in the UK ( instead of relying on the police ).

Both. There are official statistics from the police and Crown Prosecution Service about number of cases reported, investigated, charged and outcomes, but there is _separately_ a survey, which gives important additional information about whether or not people feel it worth reporting crime.

</comment></comment><comment> the-dude 12000 convicted criminals at large, about 3000 for sentences > 120 days. Source, dutch: [http://justitie.eenvandaag.nl/tv- items/69099/meer_zware_crim...](http://justitie.eenvandaag.nl/tv- items/69099/meer_zware_criminelen_ontlopen_straf)

</comment><comment><USER13> The system here is a bit weird. We pay large sums of money to the dutch equivalent of Al Capone then wonder why there are problems with organized crime in Amsterdam.

<comment><USER14> I'm just curious, who is Al Capone in your example?

<comment><USER13> Cees H, he's a (former?) drug lord. Guy had like $700m of his illicit profits in cash. Which is a lot in Holland. For some reason the state paid him ~$2m in compensation after he was released from jail. For being caught?

A minister recently resigned because they lied about it:

[http://www.euronews.com/2017/01/27/dutch-minister-resigns- ov...](http://www.euronews.com/2017/01/27/dutch-minister-resigns-over-cash- deal-with-convicted-drug-dealer)

<comment><USER14> interesting thanks for the reply I'm gonna read more about this

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They need a good old war on drugs; pair that with privatization and they can rake in the money.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe they should rent them out to the UK, we've got loads of spare prisoners.

<comment><USER17> Belgium already sends prisoners to the netherlands ( the project is over now though)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This sounds like a great thing to me. Is the sentiment expressed in the article by MP Nine Kooiman that empty cells means more people should be arrested a common one in The Netherlands?

<comment><USER19> Not really, no. Crime rates have been steadily declining for years. The SP is a minority party which never had a seat in government (even though they were founded in the 70's). They are mostly worried about the job losses this would cause.

<comment><USER20> They could always dedicate themselves to committing more crime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unthinkable here in the USA. When prisons start emptying, just increase sentence lengths to keep those beds full and corporate prison profits up. EDIT: Also effective: simply increase enforcement. Since so many things are illegal, police just need to fish more if they want to catch more.

<comment><USER22> Corporate prisons are a (small) minority; the strongest lobby in favor of increased incarceration is from the prison guards' unions (which often supply a majority of a state's prison staff).</comment></comment>


Why Making Design More Accessible Is Key to Your Product Success - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pixelic.io/design-feedback/ <comment><USER2> Looks promising.

Who do you compete with? Or do you not have competitors?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to get your advice/feedback on what we're working on, if you're interested? chris [at] pixelic.io. Let me know! thanks!</comment></comment>


Rails And PHP Are The Access(es) Of The Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.knowing.net/index.php/2009/10/14/why-rails-is-the-access-of-the-web/

<comment><USER2> There should be a law banning the posting of three paragraph blog posts with no insightful content or commentary. His last paragraph doesn't even make sense.

Why do I constantly have to remind people that Rails and PHP power some of the biggest successes on the Web at a scale well beyond most people's experiences? Calling either the "Access" of the web is dim and ignorant, not to mention it's a lame metaphor that barely makes sense.

Dumb.</comment>


Airbnb host offering the 'experience' of a mock Amazon job interview for $4,600 - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-host-offers-mock-interviews-for-amazon-job-2019-8 <comment><USER2> who the hell would pay to go through that?

<comment><USER3> I can imagine that quite a few would do this. If not at $4,600 I would guess the floor on something like this would probably be 2-3K. If you have the resources and you know that your chances are already good, why not? I would bet that you could also write this off too depending on your tax situation.

Would I pay for this? Probably not. Am I in a position to apply for a job at Amazon with a high likelihood of success, probably not.

<comment><USER4> The article mentioned that there are 4 current Amazon employee who came for the interview, considering (assuming they're software developer) their salary, I would say the price tag is probably justified. (Whether it's worth it or not is another story)

<comment><USER3> I guess the bigger question here is if Amazon is going to be cool with this practice for current employees in the long run.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


1% the Code (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.colorforth.com/1percent.html <comment><USER2> 6 years ago, I rewrote 30 000 lines of C++ code in 1000 lines of Ruby.

A year ago, I rewrote 424 lines of Java+Spring+Hibernate in 18 lines of bash. This is less glorious, but if you compare the size of the deliverable, it's 39Mb for the J2EE webapp against… 772 bytes for the shell script.

At my current job, I maintain an app with 500,000 lines of code that could easily fit in 20,000.

Code bloat is indeed a recurrent problem.

<comment><USER3> 7 or 8 years ago I had to take over a Java project on the order of ~10k lines. I reduced the code size by 77% by rewriting it in, wait for it...Java.

<comment><USER4> Java is quite a bit more verbose than some other languages, but I think the culture is a significant factor; C# is similar. I've noticed the tendency to overabstract and overgeneralise, apply design patterns for the sake of using them, etc. is particularly strong. It's inexplicably hard to trace out the train of thought that makes things like this appear:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4549544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4549544)

I've written small Java apps --- one class only, i.e. one source file --- which needn't be any more complex, yet coworkers have said there's something uncomfortable about my code; but for some reason can't explain exactly why. I'd get comments like "wouldn't it be better if you made this (only used once and very trivial) line of code a separate function?" "could you use more classes?" (for a <100LoC script-ish thing that had almost no duplicated code nor much in the way of loops.) It's almost as if they can't get their heads around how _simple_ something can be, so it somehow feels very wrong to them.

Then there's the extremist "premature optimisation is evil" attitude, which I think is completely misguided because more code and complexity is bad not only in terms of computer time but also programmer time --- it takes more time for programmers to design, write, read, and debug more complex code.

<comment><USER5> The verbosity in Java is soon going to be reduced by an extensive degree by the three new features included in `Java 8`, namely:

1\. _Lambdas:_ Lambdas are brief and to the point, the expressions reflect the terseness of `C/C++`. In many situations, you can totally do away with interface creation by just using a lambda instead. Consider all the lines of code saved in a legacy code by just using lambdas in code!

2\. _Default methods:_ Again, `Interface patching` is a curse that a lot of Java projects suffer from. Requirements change slightly and what your typical enterprise Java dev does is add patches upon patches and layers upon layers in an interface. With default methods, you can just add default methods to your existing interfaces without affecting the ABI of your app. Again, tons of redundant code saved here.

3\. _Type annotations_ : Again, your typical Java devs have to resort to ugly hacks to place any constraints on the object properties. With type annotations, all you have to do is:

        @NonNull String str;

And lo and behold! The variable `str` cannot be assigned any `null` value. So, lots of validation code being saved here again.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the above features exist in the `C#` language (yet), so I take it as a Java's edge over C#.

<comment><USER6> If by "soon" you mean a year and a half ago, then yes, soon :)

<comment><USER5> I don't know what major project you are talking which uses these features. I'm not talking about small projects by John Joes, I'm talking about LARGE infrastructure projects. For example, Android SDK is extensively used in Java world, and the Android SDK has tons of Interfaces as either arguments or class helpers which can be substantially overhauled by using these features.

<comment><USER7> Please don't move the goalposts; You stated that c# does not have lambdas, but has for 9 years now.

You also asked "I don't know what major project you are talking which uses these features". As far as I have seen, and I've seen a fair amount, any and every non-trivial c# program (and many of the trivial ones too) use lambdas. Even if it's just in the small-scoped, rote use e.g. of

       var matches = someList.Where(item => item.x > y);

Technically that counts as "using a lambda". Don't knock it for being trivial, it's a gateway drug ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >But I'm game. Give me a problem with 1,000,000 lines of C. But don't expect me to read the C, I couldn't. And don't think I'll have to write 10,000 lines of Forth. Just give me the specs of the problem, and documentation of the interface.

I could be wrong, but I'd wager that a lot of projects that are 1,000,000 lines of C don't have well defined interfaces or documentation.

However, if the author wants to give it a shot, they could try replacing v8 with pure forth. That's a fairly well defined problem, they just have to maintain compatibility with the exposed v8 api.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure the stats on this one, but it seems to be that something with 1,000,000 loc would _have_ to have decent documentation, or it would be totally unmaintainable and wouldn't grow to that size without dying a horrible death.

<comment><USER10> You would think that, but it can grow without understanding by adding code at the edges which expands then starts the cycle over. A code archeologist[1] would see a central island with bridges to developed islands with more bridges and various ships running between interfaces. Its particularly fun with multiple subsystem teams. Each one builds its own island of code and the bridges are scary.

1) please say that exists

<comment><USER8> > 1) please say that exists The term 'software archaeology' has been used for > a while

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

And the wiki page suggests there are some consultants in the field.

Many programmers trying to understand open source projects will dabble a bit in this.

<comment><USER11> I have been just such a consultant/employee doing this, even started calling it software archaeology some time in the '90s. It's a very painful way of earning money, but there's a whole lot of "poorly documented or undocumented legacy software implementations" out there. Generally effectively undocumented, for many projects start out with some documentation, don't keep it up to date, and by the time you get your hands on the mess it all, including comments, are more a statement of intention at one point in time than something directly and immediately useful.

<comment> alch- > It's a very painful way of earning money

But.. strangely fun, in a twisted way? I love a blank canvas or a well-written codebase as much as the next guy, but I find that fixing "legacy"[1] codebases can be pretty enjoyable.

Slowly figuring out and fixing a "legacy" codebase, to me, is basically solving a giant, complicated puzzle that was left for you by your predecessors.

Granted, you're mired in evil gunk from the past, but every time you figure out a small piece of the garbage and refactor it into something nice, you get to feel awesome. Of course, this assumes that you've convinced management that the codebase must be tamed[2] and that this will take time; otherwise you're just fighting with your hands tied.

Then again, maybe I'm just a masochist.

[1] "Legacy", because people don't like it when you call it "evil gunk from the past that must be destroyed".

[2] And it must indeed be tamed, because otherwise it will just grow more and more evil until development grinds to a halt. If management understands this, they'd be crazy to choose the "let the beast grow" option.

<comment><USER12> It certainly has its moments. Hell, just looking through the legacy code and seeing what other people did can be entertaining in a 'holy shit would you look at that!' way. I will never forget when I was working on a codebase in which the author apparently did not know how to loop or how to hold user interface controls in an array or something. There were 10 textboxes on the screen. Instead of looping through the textboxes and calling a stored procedure with the content of each one (it was PL/SQL inside an Oracle Form... a dead structure never meant to be used to create a full application which is what they'd done with it), they first handled the case where textbox 1 had content, but the others did not, with one procedure call. In the else, it handled the situation that textboxes 1 and 2 has content but the others did not with 2 procedure calls.... and on and on and on for all 10 textboxes. Pages and pages of nearly identical code. I would have expected any self- respecting programmer to either have said 'there HAS to be a better way' and stubbornly search for such a way, refusing to proceed along the terrible path I saw before me, or else leave the profession entirely. But someone somewhere went through and constructed the whole repugnant edifice...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The most important idea in Forth is factoring. Breaking complex tasks into small pieces. In an ideal Forth codebase, most definitions are about a line long, contain at most one control structure and reference no named variables.

Forth's stack-oriented semantics make function calls very cheap- a function call and return is literally two instructions, whereas languages which use activation records will turn a function call into dozens of instructions- copying arguments around, backing up registers, etc. Since it's computationally inexpensive, you don't need to sweat over whether your optimizing compiler will manage to inline a function.

Short, simple and mostly pure functions are easy to test in isolation- there aren't deeply nested code paths to exercise.

Lots of short functions allow your codebase to reuse more of those functions- any redundancy can be collapsed together, both shrinking the codebase and improving test coverage. This effect is magnified in more complex programs.

You can do this sort of thing in other languages, but forth's syntax _and_ semantics for function definition and invocation are both very lightweight, and this makes it much easier to apply.

<comment><USER14> It sounds like what Clean Code[1] really wanted. I still think it's a great shame that all his examples are in Java (although, in fairness, they are very pseudocode-ish).

[1] [https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Clean_Code.html?id=dw...](https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Clean_Code.html?id=dwSfGQAACAAJ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think that the author of this article is mistaking LOC for readability. Despite colorForth being wonderfully concise and independent of any operating system, that doesn't make it convenient or readable for future programmers. Just because something is a number of lines longer than another something, doesn't mean that it's less readable.

Take Perl, for example. I often write Perl scripts, and they're very few lines, but nobody can read them, which is really what matters. So, I'll expand it to be more C-like (calling functions with parentheses, using less implied arguments and scalar/vector contexts, etc.), thus making it very easily readable by people that don't even know Perl. I regard this revised version much better than the more Perl-like and obfuscated (although shorter!) version.

<comment><USER16> I do think readability is key, and found the article intriguing so I took a very brief look at some colorForth sample code: [http://colorforth.com/ide.html](http://colorforth.com/ide.html) . It may be that I'm just extremely new to a very foreign programming language, but I did not understand it at all.

<comment><USER17> I thought I was reading a satire article. That was the first source I found when looking through the site. I still wasn't sure if it was satire or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Code is scattered in a vast heirarchy of files. You can't find a definition unless you already know where it is.

Not if you're using a proper IDE (or the right emacs/vim plugins, which are effectively an IDE).

>Code is indented to indicate nesting. As code is edited and processed, this cue is often lost or incorrect.

Not if you're using a proper IDE configured for the project's chosen style. My engineering org also has linters in pre-commit hooks and automatically commenting on code reviews.

>Sometimes a line of code contains only a parenthesis, or semicolon. This reduces the density of the code, and the difficulty of reading it.

Depends on the style guide you choose. Also, some people find this more readable.

>There's no documentation. Except for the ubiquitous comments. These interrupt the code, further reducing density, but rarely conveying useful insight.

The only documentation I've ever found useful (aside from comments) was automatically generated from comments, explaining the signatures of methods and what they do.

<comment><USER19> Not commenting on any language in particular, but you can make any language's issues easier with a combination of a better IDE, commit hooks, linters etc. However, it would require less effort if the language itself enforced these constraints so everyone using it is writing code the same way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > It's strongly typed, with a bewildering variety of types to keep straight. > More errors.

Odd complaint, especially to be levied against C.

<comment><USER21> If anything, C is frustratingly weakly-typed. The integer conversion rules and the signed/unsigned mess are its biggest mistakes.

<comment><USER22> Yup. People get static and strong typing murder up.

<comment><USER23> I think you meant mixed up. It certainly does seem, though, that thinking your weak and static type system is strongly typed can lead to errors that could kill a program, and, depending on what the program does, harm people and other systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This post by Yossi Kreinin offers an interesting perspective on Forth and Chuck Moore's general approach to programming:

[http://yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack- machines....](http://yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack- machines.html)

<comment><USER25> Interesting take.

I remember Forth only from the time I was looking to replace `dc` with a more powerful calculator. I figured Forth could fit the bill because it was a stack language.

Whoops we didn't get along immediately. I realized that Forth was not meant to be my calculator, if anything I could have made it my calculator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> When you look at code you wrote in the past, whether it is 1000 lines, 3000 or 100,000 you could always think of a way to remove the redundancies and such and turn it into a smaller number of lines.

But the first time you write it, the first time you are solving the problem, it is much harder to focus on that part.

This is not to say that it's ok to have unmaintainable million lines of code application, but more that it is not something we willingly do to make ourselves look more important in a company.

</comment><comment><USER27> Proclaiming that the syntax only causes problems stands in complete defiance of most people's preferences in programming syntax.

We like syntax errors because they mold thoughts more precisely. Going against that is also going against a lot of "productivity enhancers" \- we build them because we expect to have a lot of code, and we want to reduce the kinds of errors that it may contain. That doesn't mean that we should abuse them to write as much code as we can, but it does turn out that way in practice.

So in an odd way Moore and co are right - we would be more free if we also constrained ourselves more on this point.

But the broader thought is that you can apply such constraints at any time, in tandem with what you already like. And that is more likely to produce an innovation than "just Forth".

<comment><USER28> I think that needless compiler errors is an interesting point that isn't discussed often, so that at least is an interesting point.

We have those productivity enhancers because the language makes it easy to make a mistake there. Ideally we would want to eliminate those mistakes without the syntactic headache.

Although obviously how to do that is a complex exercise, I do think that saying "code bloat is bad" even against "bugs are worse" can provide interesting insights into what we really want from languages.

<comment><USER29> It's discussed fairly often with static analyzers. Static analysis is a powerful tool, but false positives erode user confidence in the tool.

I've worked with code bases where thousands of warnings (and even several errors) were left in place, which meant that you had to basically ignore all diagnostic messages every time you compiled. At that point, you might as well be 2>/dev/null. Someone even wrote a wrapper script that would diff the stderr against the "known good" stderr.

My general impression of that project was that it was dying a slow death unless someone went in and restored developer confidence in the build process, and the most likely person was me :-/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If some C programmers have that _scoff at higher level programmers_ attitude, Chuck Moore is the equivalent but addressed at C programmers (and higher, I guess).

I have a feeling he's not the kind of person a C programmer could say things like "C is high-level (obvious one-to-one mapping) assembly" and "C is (blanket) efficient" around, and get away with it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Chuck Moore came out and spoke to us at work not long ago, and I have to admit I had a total fanboy moment. There are very few people in the world with as clear a view of how to make an entire system, hardware and software, directly reflect the problem to be solved with no cruft. There's alot to learn just from the way he decomposes a problem.

<comment><USER12> As things have been developing, first with virtualization becoming widespread, and then with things like Docker continuing the trend of packing things off into 'separated' containers, I have wondered at what point we will get to the place where a tool is developed which provides a highly modular kernel along with the tools to quickly spin up a whole system which has exactly and only the resources a particular subsystem needs. And, of course, a basic system that spins these things up when needed. Not just microservices, but atto-scale services. It sounds like this is the sort of thing Forth promoters could help us realize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 1% the code, 0.01% the reader comprehension. I'll stick with a good ALGOL or LISP language anyday. Especially with macros plus support for real HW rather than 18-bit etc.

</comment><comment><USER33> I agree with how verbose some of these languages are, but this is a bogus argument. You can shorten almost any design on a rewrite, regardless of language. Not to mention the "density" metric is ridiculous. Minified javascript is certainly more dense than regular javascript, but nobody would argue it's simpler.

</comment><comment><USER34> People like to blame programming languages for programmer's faults.

</comment><comment><USER35> I just started to learn the Factor programming language. I think of it as a modern implementation of a stack based language like Forth (similar what Clojure is for Lisp).

I admit, the first step were a bit brain-twisting, but after getting hands dirty, programming feels relieving. Like a rain shower on a steamy hot day. No worrying about syntax and punctation, elegantly shuffling the stack is fun. For me a perfect demonstration of KISS.

</comment><comment><USER36> As someone who's still doing a lot of Perl: Can't we just ease up on the line count fetish? Some languages are really bloated, but I'd still say that more often than not, the sheer amount of lines isn't the most major factor of a program's cognitive load.

</comment><comment><USER37> You have got to be kidding me. I mean come on, you're joking, right? If you gave me some qualification, maybe. I know that FORTH is more compact than C, and the code decrease in size might be reasonable in some cases, but the reasons you give are insane! come on!

Elaborate Syntax: Your syntax is simple, C's is less simple. If you want elaborate, look at PERL or Haskell. Redundancy and Confusing Types: Fair enough, but the types have to be the ones they are because C's supposed to be close to the metal. Therefore, you need specific bit sized types. It could be better than it is, though.

Strong typing causes errors: Um. Take that up with the angry Haskellers lining up behind you. I'll just duck off this way... Honestly, C's type system is pretty awful, but that's not because it's strongly typed.

Infix:...Yeah, pretty much, but the mainstream won't except anything else.

Parens: Tell that to the lispers. Parens shine for syntax parsing, and the incredibly common editor support makes it even nicer than Python for editing. Unclear how source will be translated: Well, I guess, but more so than anything higher up the stack, like, just to pick a random example, most modern FORTH implementations. Subroutine calls are expensive: Compared to what? 1 mov or push instruction for for each arg, and than a call instruction, at least on x86. Most other processor architectures seem to have similar things going. Those are all pretty fast.

Elaborate Compiler, Object Libraries: Yes, compared to FORTH, the compiler is elaborate, but that isn't why object libraries are distributed, seeing as there's a C compiler for every system under the sun. And distributing object libraries isn't exactly hard.

Lots and lots of files: Yeah, this sucks. But every other system is going to have the same problem, and a proper module system that associates functions to files is really the only way to fix it, aside from oddly specific introspection utilities. Most other languages, say, for example, FORTH, don't have this, AFAIK.

Indentation as an indication of nesting: And you suggest counting braces as an alternative? or just not having nesting? Because most languages, say, for instance, FORTH, have nesting.

No Docs: In BAD C code, this is true. As in bad code in any language, like, for instance, FORTH, as any language designer knows that the language cannot make bad programmers good.

Names are Hyphenated: "I think hyphens suck" isn't a problem with the language, it's just a personal preference. Constants are named: With my passing familiarity with FORTH, I don't know what he's on about here. Could somebody explain, so I can see if I agree?

Preoccupation with Contingencies: Because everybody loves leaky abstractions that fail at critical moments for ill-defined reasons.

Conditional Compilation: This feature sucks. It really does. The problem is, I don't see what else they could have done. So my response here is, Do you have any better way to do cross platform compatibility? Because I would honestly love to see it. I'm serious.

Hooks: Ahhh, I see. You're from the beautiful-diamond camp of software design. I can recognize you guys by your catchy slogan, "Don't Design With The Future In Mind." Programmers best interest to exaggerate complexity: No language can fix this. It's impossible, because this is a social pressure.

Portability: Yeah, basically.

Maybe I haven't seen enough C. Maybe I haven't seen enough FORTH. Maybe I just can't get into Chuck's mindset here. But his claims just seem insane.

EDIT: I read some more off of Chuck's pages, he seems to be thinking more in terms of embedded architectures and single purpose code. Fair enough, in those situations, some of his reasoning makes sense. But the presentation of this page still makes him look like he's off his rocker.

<comment><USER38> > Maybe I just can't get into Chuck's mindset here.

I think this is the crux of it. As far as I can tell, Moore's attitude is basically that "software architecture" in the conventional sense is mostly a lot of churn solving problems of its own creation instead of solving user/customer problems. Looking at it from another angle, the main function of operating systems, virtualization monitors, container frameworks, etc. is to let multiple applications share a single computer. Moore's approach is to make lots of computers so that you can easily afford to have multiple computers per application. [1]

[1]: [http://www.greenarraychips.com/](http://www.greenarraychips.com/)

<comment><USER37> That certainly explains some of it, but some of his points still make no sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It has elaborate sytnax</comment>