How Porsche fleeced hedge funds and roiled the world's financial markets - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12523898

<comment><USER2> _"They may struggle to sell 911s to hedge-fund managers for years and years to come," says one investor._

Because they'll all be eating Top Ramen for the next 20 years.

I think it's interesting how many different types of failures of transparency we've seen in the financial markets over the last few years; it seems like the system is so complex that very few people, if anyone, can understand it. Lawmakers are going to be expected to "do something" about the financial system. I'm loathe to think of the typical elected person, often so because of their people skills or personality, debating an issue of this type.

<comment><USER3> I get a feeling that it's complex on purpose and the whole finance world could be simplified greatly. Kind of like many telecom provider's marketing strategies.

<comment><USER4> I used to think this too. but it turns out that maturity transformation (one of the financial worlds main businesses) actually is pretty complex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"They may struggle to sell 911s to hedge-fund managers for years and years to come," says one investor._

Or now a 911 is even more required, to claim that _you_ did not get fleeced by them. Appearance is far more important than fact, right?

</comment><comment><USER6> What's the difference between a hedge-fund manager and a pigeon?

Only the pigeon can put down a deposit on a Porsche 911.

</comment><comment><USER7> Excellent hack. I don't get a good perspective on why the hedge funds didn't see it coming, though.

<comment><USER8> Plenty did. This is one of those articles that pretends hedge funds are one big unit, but, in reality, you can find hedge funds on every side of every trade. I would be surprised if no hedge funds made money from this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Hedge funds quickly did the maths, concluding that they could be caught in an "infinite squeeze" in which they were forced to buy shares at any price."

I don't get it. How can you force someone to buy a share at any price? If it's possible why don't more people do this?

<comment><USER10> By shorting the stock.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_selling>

Basically, the hedge funds thought the stock would go down, so they "borrowed" or "rented" the stock from someone else and immediately sold it. The idea is by the time they have to return the stock the price will have fell.

Ie, if the stock is currently worth $100, and they borrow 1 share and immediately sell it, they have $100 and owe 1 share. Later, on the date they have to return 1 share, they go and buy 1 share and give it back. If the share price then is $80 they made $20 on the transaction. If the stock went up to $120 then they lost $20.

So, they shorted the stock, because they thought it would go down, but then the amount of stock available to be bought plunged right as they had to return the stock. So, there was a huge demand for the stock right as the supply was drying up. As such, the price went very high, but they were forced to buy it anyways to due to the previous agreement (that they had to give the stock back).

<comment><USER11> That always sounds strange to me... why would you lend you stock so somebody else can make money out of it?

<comment><USER12> You have to pay to borrow. If you're a small shareholder, your shares are available for your broker to lend if you borrow money against them; a large institution is usually able to negotiate rates at which it will lend its shares.

<comment><USER11> Humm... as a sort of hedging against the stock going down?

<comment><USER12> It's not really a hedge. A hedge would be something with an inverse correlation -- so when the stock went down, your borrowing income would go up. In general, the opposite is the case: if the stock goes down, but the borrowing cost is the same in percentage terms, your borrowing income goes down. The exception is if the stock goes down and demand for shorting goes up so fast that the interest rate on borrowed stock goes up. Even then, it will almost certainly be a small cushion (losing 49% instead of 50%) not a hedge.

That said, it's still income you wouldn't otherwise have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd say that they were clever, but a similar short squeeze attempt on the United Copper Company in 1907 set off a panic that might have destroyed the US banking system if JP Morgan hadn't stepped in to prop it up. Playing games like that in a time like this isn't what I'd call 'responsible'.

</comment><comment><USER14> This sort of stock market manipulation is illegal in US. Nothing to be proud of. Germany already started criminal investigation. Hope that people directly responsible for it will go to jail.

<comment><USER15> As far as I know no (German) laws were broken.

<comment><USER14> [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0a0edf02-a621-11dd-9d26-000077b076...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0a0edf02-a621-11dd-9d26-000077b07658.html)

<comment><USER16> I doubt anyone will do jail time for this, if even any laws were broken. And if Porsche settles for the maximum 1 million Euro fine, that's not even 1/1000th of the profits they made on the backs of the shorts. It's not like their aspiration to takeover VW was any kind of a secret in either the auto or finance worlds.

Frankly, I have no sympathy for market speculators who got reamed here by shorting VW. I do have some sympathy for people who were short the DAX index as a broad-based hedging strategy and got trapped by the leap in the DAX. Then again, "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" is a true today as it was 75 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hey, Porsche figured out how the US Government has allowed the banks to drain our 401ks during the last year!

</comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone know if Porsche are well connected politically? I'm starting to suspect that the markets are being manipulated (well, opportunities are being taken at the very least) and given that governments are moving against private business (nationalising banks etc), this is a worry. Are Porsche privy to insider information they have used to their benefit? Before you scoff, consider that all European countries intercept communications within their borders. It's generally accepted that they do this for financial leverage, not to fight terrorism.</comment>


That Whole Thing with Sound in In-Browser Emulation - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4501 <comment><USER2> The author bemoans overly complex modern web standards, but surely this is an inevitable result of the web's transition from "an easy way to view documents" to "a safe mechanism for remote code execution". I mean sure, in the old days anyone could learn the important HTML tags in a weekend, but they couldn't use those tags to emulate an MS-DOS game. The only way to enable that was to gradually evolve web APIs that safely exposed all the low-level functionality.

Or, the only way apart from plugins, anyway. In comments the author writes:

> In the future, I suspect some group will do it "right" and create a > wonderful plugin or default wrap-in for all browsers that will simply > function as the native environment all this material needs. At that point, > MESS and DOSBOX will be ported to this...

..which is essentially Flash (which has had solid dynamic audio for years, and console emulators built on it with good audio support (see:nesbox)). In a parallel universe where Flash was an open standard, it'd be exactly what the author is asking for. Except in that universe, Flash would presumably share whatever problems the author finds with web standards.

Unless we want to choose One Browser or One Plugin, I'd say we're better off with complicated, slow-moving standards (like Web Audio), even if they are developed and implemented by adversarial companies.

<comment><USER3> I agree... as much as Web Standards and their implementation is suboptimal, I remember a time when you were GUARANTEED that the style and layout you wrote for one browser would simply just not work in any other browser. I don't think people remember how bad it was and how much better it is now.

It was like every browser was it's own terrible brand of IE6. Each with their own weirdness that permeated every aspect of the browser.

You ended up having to write as many stylesheets as browsers you wanted to support (ok,ok, netscape, firefox and mozilla suite shared the same stylesheet).

"Cross-Browser" was as unattainable and desired as the Holy Grail, "This site works best in IE6/Firefox/Opera/Safari" was not a suggestion like "This wine pairs best with cheese" but a warning of terrible consequences like "This milk is best before curdled".

Ok, so we're still not 100% cross-browser 100% of the time, but it's a term people don't often need to think about anymore.

<comment><USER4> You can chart a history of the Web by what you could reasonably do cross- browser.

In the beginning, it was formatted text. That was it. You had bold, underline, italic, and maybe even justification, but images relied on separate helper programs and weren't displayed inline, but in their own windows. And that was assuming the web page and your system had at least one image format in common. (XBM? TIFF? Remember those? I'm not saying they're no longer used, but when was the last time you saw them on the Web?)

By the Here Comes Everybody stage, we'd pretty well gotten inline images and even background images sorted, to the limits of color space (256 color is... better than CGA?) and the few format problems left, but fonts certainly didn't transfer and the only music format which was even remotely feasible was MIDI, which is less an audio format and more like sheet music, in that it has to be played by software instruments on your own system. Interesting concept, but no guarantee of sound quality at the receiving end.

Skipping a bit, we now have inline images sorted out, fonts sorted out, a workable CSS standard pretty well universal, and even video mostly working, despite the political and legal complications.

Now we're annoyed that we can't use our browsers to play games that were written for computers still in use in the Web's early days. 'Progress' is getting annoyed about increasingly interesting and exciting things, it seems.

<comment><USER2> True, and it's worth noting that it was only midway through this process that people started expecting different browsers to render pages identically. In the early days HTML merely structured the information; styling was assumed to be left up to user preference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the main problem with WebAudio is that it was originally designed under the assumption that Javascript would be too slow to fill audio buffers fast enough for low latency buffer queueing, and thus this complex audio-node system was conceived where audio data would flow through black-box processing nodes written in C/C++.

In a perfect world, a low-level web audio API would focus on providing an as direct-as-possible way to stream raw audio data (buffer queueing like in OpenAL, or a wrap-around buffer like in DirectSound), make sure that this works well with WebWorkers (i.e., worker thread should be able to queue new data when required, not when the main loop gets around to it), and move all the complicated high-level audio-graph stuff into optional Javascript libs.

<comment><USER6> That's what Mozilla's proposed MediaStream Processing API was: [https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/audio/raw- file/tip/streams/StreamProc...](https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/audio/raw- file/tip/streams/StreamProcessing.html)

But Google was able to put more engineering effort behind the Web Audio API and get a lot of web sites to use it, so that's what won. The fact that Web Audio's ScriptProcessorNodes run on the main thread instead of in workers is basically a travesty, brought about because they were tacked on as an afterthought to claim "feature parity" with the MediaStream Processing API. Until that's fixed [1], real-time audio generation in JavaScript will always be a joke that only works under ideal conditions where people open just one, well-tuned webpage in their browsers at a time and GC pauses don't exist.

(full disclosure: I work for Mozilla and am not bitter at all)

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_API#Audio_Workers) is the proposal to fix it, only three _years_ late to the party

<comment><USER7> I'm currently trying to get realtime audio streaming over WebSockets to work. I'm encoding audio using libspeex on the server side (an iOS device) and decoding it again on the client using speex.js[1].

Transmitting Speex "frames" (where each frame is a 20ms chunk of audio) over WebSockets and decoding in JS works beautifully. However, I have a really hard time to queue up these 20ms AudioBuffer nodes perfectly, without producing any glitches or pops. I'm not sure its even possible with the current API.

What I would like to have is an AudioBuffer node where I can dynamically append chunks while its playing. Since all(?) source nodes are for one time only use, the browser could free the data that was already played again.

An AudioBuffer that allows modification of the data while it's playing would work too - you could just loop it and use it as a ring buffer. However, my understanding of the spec is, that modifying an AudioBuffer's data is explicitly prohibited once its playing.

[1] [https://github.com/jpemartins/speex.js/](https://github.com/jpemartins/speex.js/)

<comment><USER6> You might be interested in looking at what [https://github.com/brion/ogv.js](https://github.com/brion/ogv.js) does.

Just curious, if your goal is realtime, why aren't you using WebRTC?

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I'll have a look!

I can't use WebRTC yet because I want to have support for IE and especially Safari & Mobile Safari. I want to add audio for an iOS App[1] that's using jsmpeg[2] for video streaming.

[1] [http://instant-webcam.com/](http://instant-webcam.com/)

[2] [https://github.com/phoboslab/jsmpeg](https://github.com/phoboslab/jsmpeg)

<comment><USER6> IE doesn't support Web Audio either. The project I linked above does contain a Flash shim for IE, which you may find helpful.

Any proper realtime audio stack (which ogv.js is not: it targets moderate latency streaming) is going to require a jitter buffer to deal with network/processing latency variation. Writing one is a non-trivial exercise (though not impossibly so).

In any case, I'd recommend using Opus (the audio codec used by WebRTC) over Speex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I put together a mobile-friendly version of a Javascript NES emulator for a hackathon [1], and I converted it to use the Web Audio API[2]. It works, but sounds very janky. I had to divide all of the integer audio samples into floating point values just so that they could be converted to integer values at some point later on. I also wanted to be able to use a gamepad for the emulator, but the last revision to the Gamepad API was a year ago[3], and browser support is pretty lacking[4]. I really like the idea of browser emulation because native emulators are banned from the App Store, but the web APIs are just not there yet.

Side note: If anyone wants to take over webNES and make it awesome, free free to message me

[1] [http://webn.es](http://webn.es)

[2] [https://github.com/conradev/jsnes/commit/6b0ef8d5b5d0a7b17e6...](https://github.com/conradev/jsnes/commit/6b0ef8d5b5d0a7b17e66d7023daa1911b236fa11)

[3] [https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/gamepad/raw- file/default/gamepad.html](https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/gamepad/raw- file/default/gamepad.html)

[4] [http://caniuse.com/#feat=gamepad](http://caniuse.com/#feat=gamepad)

<comment><USER9> I'd be curious to know what's not there.

What's wrong with the Web Audio ScriptProcessor node for example?

<comment><USER10> It's deprecated, for one!

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/ScriptProce...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/ScriptProcessorNode)

[http://webaudio.github.io/web-audio-api/#the- scriptprocessor...](http://webaudio.github.io/web-audio-api/#the- scriptprocessornode-interface---deprecated)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I know several people who have been going over the audio issues in browsers. I remember how painful flash's audio was to deal with, and the browser vendors have managed to make something worse... I do hope that web audio gets better (good for that matter).

To really get where people want to go in terms of browser based gaming (even if the idea disgusts you) is going to hinge on 3D video, great audio composition and good controller capabilities.

<comment><USER12> I used Flash audio back in the day and I hardly found it painful.

<comment><USER13> I didn't find it painful at all too. Neither did these guys - [http://www.audiotool.com](http://www.audiotool.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's hoping that Spartan not only is on rapid release cycle but it's fork of Trident and Chakra are developed in an open source project (e.g. Gecko, WebKit, Blink) so developers can submit fixes and features and not have to wait a year for them to be available.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is a temporary work-around, I would think. Presumably the data that games expect to be driving sound comes out in a byte stream, like anything else, expecting to be passed to a side-effect producing function provided by the environment. You wouldn't need to even write the code that processes that data into sound, you could just sample (perhaps on original equipment) and provide sound resource files, and then make sure to play the right sample for any particular set of bytes passed to your implementation. (Even if Web Audio standardizes, it's not clear to me how you would handle essentially arbitrary output-to-be-interpreted-as-sound from an arbitrary process!)

</comment><comment><USER16> The color choice of that page is insane. My eyes literally hurt after reading the article.</comment>


Show HN: Detect intruders with decoy websites/credentials - <AUTHOR> https://www.tamarin.us <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I wanted to get some feedback on my newly launched service. I'm sure there's a lot of things I need to improve on it, would love to get some constructive criticism.

Here's a promo code for a 45 day subscription with no credit card required: HN45 (good until tomorrow or up to 100 uses)

redeem it at [https://www.tamarin.us/promocode](https://www.tamarin.us/promocode)

usually a credit card is required to sign up for a 30 day trial, but @dang wisely advised me that I'd get a better response by letting HN users sign up without a CC.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a great idea! Can you tell us more about how you came up with it? What's the back story?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I really appreciate it (I'm still in the validation phase so any words of encouragement are helpful)

I write down all my little ideas (I use vym for that, a mind-mapping package), and I think I had this one on my list for a few months. I started to like the idea more and more because I'm always wondering if the systems I work on have been breached (despite scanning for rootkits and other best practices).

I tried to imagine myself as a blackhat intruder, and think about the things that would be cause for concern - and tipping off a honeypot is probably up there on the list. So this is essentially a honeypot that everyone from beginners to experts could potentially use.

<comment><USER2> One idea you may wish to consider is making the honeypot fake sites more detailed. An black hat who can access an electronic device/account might be savvy enough to recognize the site as fake. Certainly is is probably less of a concern for physical access snooping.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I've thought about that, I am thinking about adding a fake contact email and a fake contact phone number, maybe a fake 'about' page.

I actually got the fake sites by registering old expired domains that had real, similar businesses on them in the past - so if the intruder looks on wayback machine, they'll see something there.

Thanks for your feedback, I'll certainly look at making the honeypot sites a bit more detailed.

<comment><USER2> You're welcome. Please don't read my comments as negative. I only meant to offer ideas to consider.

Good idea to register previously used domains. Maybe also add a "sign up" and "pricing page".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I totally understand. I need as much constructive criticism as I can get. If I can find product/market fit for this project I'll take it as far as I can, and if not I'll pivot or move on to the next one, I don't get too emotionally attached to this stuff.

I stepped back from development this week and I've been having ~20 conversations a day with potential customers, it's been very enlightening.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lead, Follow or Get the Fuck Out of the Way - <AUTHOR> https://bothsidesofthetable.com/lead-follow-or-get-the-fuck-out-of-the-way-668000be6e47#.vzo476373 <comment><USER2> Just because somebody doesn't have a better idea doesn't mean your idea isn't terrible... maybe they're just honest. Seems like a great article to justify firing those who don't follow without question.

</comment><comment><USER3> More posturing than insight.

<comment><USER4> Posturing with a side of blustering. There is no amount of money for which I would work for this guy. (Getting the fuck out of the way.)</comment></comment>


Operation Cupcake: MI6 Did it for the Lulz - <AUTHOR> http://techzwn.com/2011/06/operation-cupcake-mi6-did-it-for-the-lulz/

<comment><USER2> I'm a fan of this kinda stuff. Very demoralizing for those sorts of folks and makes the rest of the world laugh!</comment>


9 Out of 10 People Are Willing to Earn Less Money to Do More-Meaningful Work - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2018/11/9-out-of-10-people-are-willing-to-earn-less-money-to-do-more-meaningful-work <comment><USER2> Is it just me or does it seem like this article is trying to teach an organization how to make work appear more meaningful, even though it is the same work and probably not actually any more meaningful, and therefore get away with paying workers less for meaningless work?

<comment><USER3> Not only that, I didn't really see a concrete suggestion of meaning, in the sense that the article only articulates what activity marginally increases some baseline level of meaning.

I don't expect an article like this to actually define meaning, of course, but some anecdotes of what "meaning" actually is to some sample of the working population would have been more helpful than throwing around a bunch of hesitantly low-risk workplace suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So that's why it's hard finding meaningful work - all you more qualified people are looking at the same jobs!</comment>


Elm implementation of "Ultimate Tic-tac-toe" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jjst/ultimate-tictactoe <comment><USER2> That's a great creative strategy twist on ultimate tic-tac-toe. I hadn't heard of it.

Why not make a dedicated website for it?

I guess this no longer applies [https://xkcd.com/832/](https://xkcd.com/832/)</comment>


Amp'd CEO explains how he blew it - <AUTHOR> http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-audio-interview-peter-adderton-former-ceo-ampd-mobile/

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess this is what happens when MBAs run a startup, raise a lot of money, and then spend it too fast. Personal helicopters, 100+ porn DVDs, give me a friggin break</comment>


The Man Who Got Americans to Eat Pollock - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-19/fisherman-turns-80-into-1-1-billion-by-popularizing-trash-fish <comment><USER2> It's all about marketing and perception.

When I moved North my first year Salmon fishing in Alaska I watched as Northerners through back hundreds of pounds of Chum Salmon, because it's soft, mushy and crap, they said. It's commonly called Dog Salmon because the locals only keep it to feed to their sled dogs.

A couple of months later I was in Vancouver, and was more than a little surprised to see Chum Salmon for sale for about $25/lb. It was labeled as "Highly renowned for it's soft, pink flesh".

Convince people something is good, and when they have little or no alternative, they'll go for it.

<comment><USER3> Lobster used to be used as garden fertiliser and was a mark of poverty eating it.

<comment><USER4> My dad grew up on a tiny rock(just a few square miles) in the Caribbean. He had to "raise" his fish pots every morning before school(primary school at that) to get fresh fish for breakfast and the day's lunch.

Fish was plentiful then and so was lobster. In fact the lobster was a nuisance because it would sometime get into their fish pots and they had little value to locals or people of the surrounding larger islands.

This one time he and his cousin caught a few in the pot and had them in him small row boat, his cousin forgot to carry a bale to bale out water from the boat. There was a yacht anchored nearby and my dad went to ask for a container to bale out the water. The french owner of the yacht didn't have one so be opened a big can of baked bean, quickly tossed its content overboard and gave them the can. My dad and his cousin could not believe what they had just witnessed; To them it was such a waste. Baked bean was something you get from the mainland and it was not easily affordable to them.

The french Yacht owner then asked if he could have a lobster and said that him and his wife loved it so much. My dad was taken by how the man spoke about his love for lobster and just gave him all they had in the boat. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

I grew up a fish snob living in the Caribbean unfortunately and most of the fish served in the U.S at chain restaurants(and even non chain restaurants) I would consider trash fish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having fished Pollock I can confirm that they are typically riddled with nematodes, not sure why, perhaps it's their diet - the article notes they are "ground fish" which might be a euphemism for bottom feeders.

Generally, I think the historical low-value of some fish is a product of fishermen being enmeshed with the markets and communities where the fish they catch is sold. We have lost that for the most part, and therefore lower quality fish becomes salable, particularly if it is heavily processed (hence the fast-food chains being the first to pick it up).

But yeah, you're eating worms buddy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of fishes have worms. In the Bay Area/Northern CA I fish for Pacific jack mackerel, and practically every fish has worms. I don't think they are considered bottom fishes, though.

<comment><USER6> Nearly all wild fish have worms [https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/d755kx/almost- every-...](https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/d755kx/almost-every-kind- of-wild-fish-is-infected-with-worms)

Not really a surprise. Before sanitation massive quantities of people had them too. Parasites are still a problem in much of the world for humans and animals alike.

<comment><USER7> Might it be possible to kill the worms with x-rays or something?

<comment><USER8> The usual way is to kill them with heat when the fish is cooked

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Create a need, then fill it. He managed to convince a few very large seafood- serving companies that this cheap and abundant fish was actually what they wanted, so they bought it -- from him -- in vast quantities.

So... Make sure, in your startup, that you're convincing your customers that they need what you've got?

<comment><USER10> _Create a need, then fill it._

Wait, this is the exact opposite of what everyone around here argues about. It's always "Identify a pain point", or find something existing that people need. NOT create a product and then build the market.

I think there is definitely a place for creating a need, so I agree, but it's certainly counter to the startup mantra.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure if identifying pain is the opposite of creating need. The pain here was fast foods need for cheap fish that has a reliable supply. The need was created when he was able to convince these companies that his fish supply chain was their best solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If anyone wants to try reproducing this in the Midwest we have Asian Carp which you could probably do the same thing to. I think some restaurants are already attempting to do so.

<comment><USER13> As a kid my dad and I would bow hunt these. They have a certain season where they'll breach the surface, letting you get an arrow off easily. We'd smoke them and fill up an entire refrigerator in the basement (No limit as they are invasive), pretty decent tasting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think I've ever had pollock, or even seen it for sale. Does it go into fish sticks, or what?

(The "swordfish" I had in a Palo Alto eatery a few days ago seemed suspiciously soft and fatty for swordfish.)

<comment><USER15> Yes.

[http://www.tridentseafoods.com/Products/Detail?pid=25546ab0-...](http://www.tridentseafoods.com/Products/Detail?pid=25546ab0-dfb6-498c-95bd-93aef94435a1)

[http://www.ljsilvers.com/news-events/item/117-introducing- ha...](http://www.ljsilvers.com/news-events/item/117-introducing-hand-breaded- homestyle-buttermilk-cod)

If its some kind of white fish and its not named, its frequently something like pollock.

<comment><USER16> It's also the major component of most imitation crab meat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pretty amusing that this article (1) doesn't explain how this guy got Americans to eat pollock, and (2) seems to be written exclusively based on assertions on Trident's corporate website.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's worth mentioning that the logistics and engineering side of the Pollock/Surimi production was just as interesting. Paraphrasing the book from memory, [https://www.amazon.com/Catching-Deckload-Dreams-Bundrant- Sea...](https://www.amazon.com/Catching-Deckload-Dreams-Bundrant- Seafoods/dp/1933245344), Trident initially contracted the Japanese and their method/machines to produce Surimi from Pollock, but eventually switched to German-made machines and a more efficient production line methodology they came up with themselves - I believe they used the Pollock not worthy of quick- freeze for the Surimi instead of dedicating a production line specific to it.

</comment><comment><USER19> If it tastes good, then it's not trash.

<comment><USER9> There's a fair bit of nutritional research and a few pop-sci books that cover it saying that in fact, if it tastes good, it probably is trash. If we define trash as food with a lot of caloric content but little nutritional content.

Much of today's food is designed to be addictive. There is little other consideration in its design or creation.

There is a reason there's an obesity epidemic in Western nations.

<comment><USER20> The reason may simply be that food is abundant and cheap in Western nations. I don't see that as a bad thing.

<comment><USER16> I don't think so, considering obesity has skyrocketed since the 90s and I don't think we were starving then.

<comment><USER21> I think research points to a lack of physical activity, at least in children, as a casual factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I use an app called "Good Fish Guide" to show me how sustainable the fish I buy is.

Alaskan pollock gets the second best rating.

[http://www.goodfishguide.org/fish/28/Pollock,%20Alaska,%20Wa...](http://www.goodfishguide.org/fish/28/Pollock,%20Alaska,%20Walleye)

</comment><comment><USER23> It sounds as if he made a lot of his money by regulatory capture and anticompetitive lobbying practices</comment>


Ela, dynamic functional language - T-A http://elalang.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> The language proudly boasts on its home page that its `head` function has the same wart as Haskell's (i.e., not handling empty lists)? Combining this with an explicit use of the `Option` monad just seems like teasing.

(EDIT: Oops, I meant its "distinctive features" page [http://elalang.net/About.aspx#features](http://elalang.net/About.aspx#features) , under "Algebraic Types".)

(It's just my assumption that it doesn't handle empty lists, because it returns the literal first element of a non-empty one; but neither the Prelude [http://elalang.net/docs/Article.aspx?p=lib\prelude.htm](http://elalang.net/docs/Article.aspx?p=lib\\prelude.htm) nor the list module [http://elalang.net/docs/Article.aspx?p=lib\list.htm](http://elalang.net/docs/Article.aspx?p=lib\\list.htm) seems explicitly to mention the `head` function on lists (as opposed to strings or sequences) at all, so it's hard to say for sure.)

<comment><USER2> The "About" page that you linked has the code

        x = head xs //x is Some 1

which suggests 'head' is of type 'a -> Option a' and does not have the wart you are talking about.

<comment><USER3> The example is a bit misleading there. To be more clear using types there's

        xs :: [Maybe Int]
        head xs :: Maybe Int

<comment><USER2> Oh yeah, silly me!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reading about this language gives me such a strange feeling. It makes me think of the cargo cults who worship airplane tributes due to once an airplane landing and providing supplies.

Ela is clearly inspired by Haskell. It copies syntax and surface-level features mercilessly. It's also devoted to being dynamically typed which dramatically undermines the meaning and development of those very features.

It makes for an interesting experiment. I can't say whether or not a dynamic language of this design is easy to work in compared with others.

But I read things like Ela's "algebraic data types" and shudder a bit (and then a lot when I find the "Circle (& 'hello')" example). They're definitely _inspired_ by ADTs, but also definitely nothing similar. These ADTs are that alien from MIB who steals human skin---on the surface you might confuse them, but a different sort of life boils underneath.

</comment><comment><USER4> very similar to pure - [http://purelang.bitbucket.org/](http://purelang.bitbucket.org/) (not purescript).

<comment><AUTHOR> What makes you think of Pure, as opposed to Haskell as mentioned on the page and by howling ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555980))? The influence of Haskell is clear, but it's not so obvious to me that this language uses term rewriting (as in Pure) in any fundamental way. Maybe I missed it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Ela is a type safe, strictly typed language, which is, however, not burden by limitations of any particular type checker._

By nature, a language which is type safe and strictly typed must be burdened by the limitations of a "particular type checker." This is weak type safety at best. And it looks like there are runtime class checks, so you have all of the traditional drawbacks of dynamic languages.

<comment><USER6> In principle, the type checker could be pluggable. That would mean the language isn't burdened by the limitations of any particular type checker, although it would almost certainly be burdened by complications at the boundaries of where one type checker is used versus another. It also might be reasonable to insist that such a system represents a family of languages rather than a single one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Unlike many other languages, Ela doesn't make any trade-offs, trying to > combine distinct programming paradigms that don't fit well together.

The author may want to tone down that claim - combining Haskell-style FP with dynamic typing certainly entails some trade-offs, regardless of whether or not they think it's a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER8> From what I see it is pretty similar to Haskell besides some minor syntax differences, strict evaluation by default, and dynamic typing. So why should I use this over Haskell?

<comment><USER3> The typing variation feels like it's going to so strongly change the pragmatic use of this language that the best I could say is that it is very distantly inspired by Haskell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh look, one of my pet hates. Displaying a sieve that claims to be the Sieve of Eratosthenes, and yet it does modulo tests, and hence isn't.

 _Edit: It was by chance that it happened to be the example in the "A taste of Ela" box at the top. Reloading the page makes the example change to something else, so if you are wondering what I'm talking about, reload the page until the "taste" box explicitly calls something the Sieve of Eratosthenes. It isn't._

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that the Sieve of Eratosthenes is the algorithm implemented in [http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~oneill/papers/Sieve- JFP.pdf](http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~oneill/papers/Sieve-JFP.pdf) ?

<comment><USER9> That paper does correctly deal with the issue. The conclusions in section 4 give an excellent summary.</comment></comment></comment>


Veblen goods - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good <comment><USER2> Interesting. I often find that my perceived 'luxuriousness' of a product decreases the perceived value of it. Like I'm sure Rolls makes nice autos and all that, but because they are created specifically to be high-end status symbols, they become cheapened in my mind and therefore cannot truly be high- end status symbols. A valuable good or experience is instead one that has an authentic story (which is hard to judge), or is super niche and shows an understanding and appreciation of the field, or is old and unique and difficult to obtain.

I collect camera lenses for example and see people drop crazy money on old Leicas. And they are nice lenses but it's such a stereotypical choice that I can't help but negatively judge anyone who actually buys or aspires to them. Their brand's mystique has cheapened them for me. And let's not even get started on Hasselblad...

</comment><comment><USER3> I've never understood the desire to own things like Rolex watches.

It's a watch. It tells you what time it is. You can get a pretty durable one that'll last you nearly a lifetime for under $100, especially if you get a digital one since there's no moving parts to break.

So why spend $5,000+ on one? I mean, yeah you might want to get something fashionable and shiny, but that doesn't require a $5,000 purchase.

I feel that the only reason to spend $5,000 on a watch is so that you can show off to other people that you can afford to piss away $5,000 on a watch, which is just silly.

<comment><USER4> I own a $25,000 Lange & Söhne. While watches are a time-honored way of signaling, I didn't buy it to show off. I've actually never met anyone who recognized it, and off the top of my head I can't remember ever even getting a compliment on it. I'd never buy a Rolex, because they're too loud :)

Here's the disconnect you're struggling with: you don't value watches. Or more accurately, you don't appreciate them beyond simple utilitarian timekeeping. That's fine, most people don't really care about them. Instead of trying to relate to people who buy expensive watches by valuing watches - which you clearly don't - relate to them through the broader experience of spending a lot of money on a hobby.

Do you have any hobbies you spend "a lot" of money on, perhaps more than what's required just to engage with the hobby? Keep in mind that "a lot" is arbitrary. I have a friend who spends thousands of dollars on card games. I don't see the appeal, but it makes him happy and trading card games can be a fun activity. That hobby "doesn't require" a purchase of the most expensive, collectible versions of various cards, but people do it anyway. I'm pretty sure my friend doesn't do it to signal that he can spend that money :)

The point is this: what's expensive for one person is affordable for another, and what's valuable for one person is frivolous for another. There's not much beyond that. It's all relative - in principle it all comes down to whether or not you spend strictly more than you need to on a thing so you can enjoy it beyond its raw functionality. If you do, then you're no longer treating that thing as a tool, you're treating it as a form of art. Like all forms of art, expensive watches are polarizing and subjective, and they attract a subculture of people who discriminate between things which seem utterly arbitrary to people who don't appreciate them.

<comment><USER5> High five. They have nice watches. Which model do you own?

Jaeger-LeCoultre owner here

<comment><USER4> 1815 38.5mm in white gold, model 235.026. Funny you say that, because at the time I was torn between the Lange and a Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin, model 130842J. I like the form factor and complications of the JLC, but the simplicity and movement of the Lange won out for me.

<comment><USER5> Nice watch! I have a JLC Master Ultra Thin Moon as my main watch, which I absolutely love.

I tried the Ultra Thin, but I found it was a bit too thin for my wrist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds related to but subtly different from a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good).

<comment><USER7> The difference is that Veblen goods are luxury goods whereas Giffen goods are inferior goods ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_good)).

<comment><USER8> Well, the mechanisms are generally different too. Giffen goods can exist even for simple models with homoeconomicus. Veblen good generally involve a signaling/status story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My theory about the meteoric rise in US undergraduate tuition since the early 1980s is that colleges and universities realized they could turn undergraduate degrees into Veblen goods.

<comment><USER10> I don't think demand increases as the price goes up - only that colleges realized demand for an undergraduate degree was inelastic and that consumers could pay any price because they could get guaranteed loans from the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> read some years ago in the context of high end speakers:

"so, you are're just packaging $500 of speakers in nice boxes and selling it for $80K?"

"you don't understand. The people are paying for the price."

<comment><USER12> This is absolutely what happens. Once you go beyond a few $1000s of dollars, you're paying for the privilege of demonstrating that you can afford to pay that much for an entertainment center.

My father-in-law's like this. Every time he visits he tells us all about his home theatre setup and how he's spent $15k on this component and $20k on that other component, and that it was a bargain because it usually costs $35k but he got a good discount because he's friends with the store owner. You bet he is, with the stuff he buys! But hey, it makes him happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Veblen goods offer signalling opportunity, and must be _both_ immediately cognisibly to the intended signalling audience (though not necessarially others) _and_ high in cost in order to manifest credible signalling. They are not _utility_ or _consumption_ goods, but _information_ goods.

They exist where the underlying trait being signalled is difficult to communicate clearly or effectively, a circumstance especially true of social status signalling. Paradoxically, the hyperwealthy need not signal so loudly (they themselves are sufficiently well-known), but as one descends the ranks, say, below the top ten and above, say, the 90%ile (higher or lower as you prefer), that signalling becomes more necessary and costly.

This is similar to a whole set of fad-driven behaviours, ranging from speech and etiquette to clothing, diet, music, politics, management, and programming fashions, where the underlying domain is complex. Eventually the faad itself becomes dominated by _poseurs_ whose false affectation dilutes the signal.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/62uroa/clothin...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/62uroa/clothing_music_diets_art_management_theory_fad_as/)

Related, diamonds & gemstones, and loss or clear signalling effect as inexpensive alternatives emerge. See earlier:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17183929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17183929)

</comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone recall this effect occurring with a software product?

<comment><USER15> Apple software (kind of). It's tied to specific hardware, so it's hard to say if people are paying for the software or the hardware.

I have seen people turn down free software because they mistakenly believe an expensive program must be better. But that's not really the same, since that isn't a form of showing off.

<comment><USER16> I really can't see how that's so. Your suggesting that if Apple products were more expensive they'd sell more?

The only instance I can see where this might be true is with the Gold Apple watch (and that's obviously not a purely software issue):

[http://uk.businessinsider.com/apple-watch-edition-sold- out-i...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/apple-watch-edition-sold-out-in- china-2015-4?op=1)

But in general I can't really see this...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't have a theory fully worked out for this, but I'm half convinced that rents in HCOL coastal cities fit into this framework. Sure, it's nice living in San Francisco, but you can get the same or better weather in smaller coastal towns, get more space and live better on a cost of living adjusted basis in a whole lot of other places. But still people come to the big cities and struggle to make it financially.

The good jobs and appreciating real estate, admittedly limit how well this theory fits together, but a big HCOL city is prestigious and exotic in large part because of, not despite, its price.

<comment><USER18> A HCOL city brings a bunch of things together that you can't get all together elsewhere. Critically:

1\. Jobs 2\. People 3\. Events/activities

You can pay the San Francisco premium and have a massive job market, a million people to befriend/date/learn from/etc, and thousands of activities and experiences to engage in constantly. Or you can live in a small town with far fewer job opportunities, far fewer people, and far less to do.

Small town life is not a bad choice if it's what you want. But if you want to live in a lively city, you're going to pay for it, because a _lot_ of people want that life and you're competing with them for a space to do it.

Now, if you're talking about Palo Alto, maybe.

<comment><USER17> That explains the draw of SF vs Monterey, but not necessarily SF vs Houston. Why do the most prestigious cities reliably stay the most prestigious cities, if not for the prestige itself being the draw?

As I said, I'm grasping a bit because I'm not sure I fully grok it. But there is something that would be lost about Manhattan if it became cheap. I believe it's not just the three items you list, but also the concentration of people that not only want to, but crucially, can afford the price of entrance. Beverly Hills comes to mind as an example, why do the rich and famous want to live there if not to also be surrounded by other rich and famous? Perhaps that's closer to the common link you mention in Palo Alto.

<comment><USER18> Yes, clearly much of the appeal of Beverly Hills is the proximity to wealth. I don't think that's nearly as applicable to San Francisco, given that the proximity to wealth is countered by the proximity to homeless encampments.

I will concede that for some portion of people, the prestige of living in San Francisco is a part of the draw. There are other factors that are probably more important for a lot of people, though. Comparing to Houston, San Francisco is literally 5 times as densely populated, which changes the feel of the city drastically. Houston is larger in terms of population, but it's also massively sprawled. That sprawl drives down the price of homes but also makes much of the city feel like the suburbs (probably; I have not visited).

Houston also spends >100 days/year at >90F, which makes it not comparable to a coastal city for people who do highly value temperate weather.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


You Don't Want An iWatch - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/23/you-dont-want-an-iwatch/ <comment><USER2> The author may be misunderstanding what would be needed in a watch that really was connected through Bluetooth LE aka Smart aka 4 to a phone. It would not need as much of a processor as the nano, which has to do the computing on its own. And my BT4 fitness device batteries last multiple months.

It would need just enough processor to communicate over BT, update the display, and relay inputs back to the parent device. And with a flexible hi- res color e-ink display, the battery could go a month.

Not saying they're making a slave device. But if they are, it wouldn't necessarily need much power.</comment>


Why you decided to use Nodejs and how was your experince? - <AUTHOR> I have seen lots of people complain about nodejs. I have used it in production for 2 years. I know its not the best thing out there. but it gets the shit done. how was your experience overall? <comment><USER2> I tried NodeJS because of the appeal of JavaScript on both the client & server. That side didn't really work out because client Side JavaScript is just so different.

As a web server it worked well. I put Nodejs behind HAProxy & Varnish and ended up with something reasonably robust; good for both dynamic & static content. These days I use if more for server side data handling and it is surprising what you can throw at it really - data collection and even some processing.

As you said its really good for getting stuff done.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought that the concept of NodeJS was fantastic. But in everyday use, I found it bloated and many of the libraries of rather dubious quality. After trying to use NodeJS for several projects, I have gone back to using mostly Python based servers with a couple of performant servers written in C. Have experimented with Go, but so far I haven't used it for any production servers.</comment>


Nearly one in three children have dangerous amounts of lead in bloodstream - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-children-lead/nearly-one-in-three-children-have-dangerous-amounts-of-lead-in-bloodstream-study-idUSKCN24V00X <comment><USER2> HEPA filters should reduce lead. You should be running a HEPA filter anyway.

I get this is India, but once you make clean air normal for the middle class, since they also have to go outside there is an incentive for them to also want pollution reduced.

Make the middle class understand the dangers of PM2.5 and know how to measure it.</comment>


Revenge of the Suburbs - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/pandemic-suburbs-are-best/613300/ <comment><USER2> > But America is not South Korea or Singapore. Americans have been running > away from dense, vertical design for a century. Those who already prefer > sparse, low-slung living will likely use their fear of COVID-19 to entrench > their preference.

More like Americans were sold a very particular dream of sparse living by car companies that later solidified with the racist/practical implications of how inner cities were perceived.

Also, it isn't just SK or Singapore. European cities tend to abhor sprawl as well. In some sense, it unique to the US and countries that culturally draw from the same ford-American dream.

> The pandemic will improve suburban life, perhaps in lasting ways

The idea that suburbs are resilient to the pandemic because of the unsustainable lack of shared spaces and inherent isolation is hilarious to me. Historically speaking, this is a once in a century thing. It won't and should not affect how generation defining decisions are made.

Full disclosure, there are very few things I hate as much as American suburbs and urban sprawl.

But, those who dislike dense American cities often seem to dislike things that have nothing to do with the density in the first place. The crime caused by inner cities is a result of white flight and racially driven policing of the last 50 years. The dead looking cityscape of some dense cities are a result of terrible urban planning. (American Urban design is known to be sub-par. Most European cities with similar constraints have implemented better and more practical solutions)

Chasing naive single minded goals such as "more density" or "more bike lanes" is not what freedom from suburbia looks like. Well thought-out urban design ends up being dense, with public transportation infrastructure and bike/walking friendly. But adding any of those things hap-hazardly to an old system that clearly was not designed to support it is stupidity.

Hopefully people understand that it doesn't have to be a choice between thoughtless dense urban development and Suburbia. There are other proven options out there.

<comment><USER3> > European cities tend to abhor sprawl as well. In some sense, it unique to > the US and countries that culturally draw from the same ford-American dream.

That's absolutely not my experience in Germany. If they can afford it, plenty of people move to the edge of the city or a bit outside it. They want access to the city, but they also want a spacious garden and quiet neighbors and don't need to live "in the middle of it" when they have children (or, at least in my peer group, even when they don't have children but are approaching 40).

<comment><USER4> It varies by country, for instance Spain seems more comfortable with density than say England.

But leaving personal preferences and anecdotes aside, if we look at the data, Europe definitely prefers density compared to the US:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/World_po...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/World_population_density_1994_-_with_equator.png)

<comment><USER3> I wonder if it's a preference or just that there are fewer options. By US standards, all European countries are high density, e.g. Germany with ~25% of the US population is significantly smaller than California, maybe 5% of the size of the US.

<comment><USER5> They're far older concentration processes, which is a factor ignored by other comments about why. The US is still filling in, settling, its vast territory. European territory is mostly settled, the cities are established, their process of forming major new cities is mostly over.

In 1940 the Las Vegas metro area had only a couple tens of thousands of people. Now it has 2.25 million - a metro larger than Slovenia, Latvia or Estonia. In 1940 the Austin Texas metro maybe had 100k people, now it's 2.1m. Texas of course has many examples of rapid population expansion metros, as new, large urban or semi-urban areas get created. Utah didn't exist as a state until 1896 and its population has increased over ten fold since then; its population has increased 300 fold in 150 years. In the late 19th century, Phoenix had only several thousand people, now the metro is approaching five million (equivalent to adding an Ireland, Norway, Finland or Denmark).

Paris by amusing contrast is of course over two millennia old. European populations have been concentrating into their cities, and emptying their surrounding lands, for far longer than the US has existed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem is that the US have very few real dense cities, like what they call a city in Europe. That is, densely packed population, densely packed businesses, walkability, adequate public transportation that covers the entire area, all the things that allow an urbanite to comfortably live without owning a car, and streets are not very car-friendly anyway.

What are these cities? NYC (not only Manhattan but everywhere the subway + buses reach), Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Seattle. Maybe a few others with some reservations, like Washington DC or SF.

I have hard time seeing places like Houston or LA as "cities" in the same sense; they have small downtowns and huge suburb-like agglomerations around them, where you are either inside your house, or inside a car. Silicon Valley seems to largely lack cities, except the ailing SF.

If you want to see what a functioning large city looks like, visit NYC, or London, or Amsterdam, or Moscow, or Shanghai, or Singapore.

[Edited: spelling]

<comment><USER7> I've lived in Amsterdam for a decade, which I affectionately call the largest village I've ever lived. The Netherlands has no cities of 1M+, yet is one of the densest countries in the world. How? Its quite multi centered. There's a lot of 50-500k towns in close vicinity, each with their own facilities and economies. Because of proximity they're of course not independent, but they're definitely not suburbs. There are towns you could say are suburbs, where people usually commute by car, but somehow they're not nearly as car exclusive of American suburbs. Maybe its worth a closer look at this.

<comment><USER8> How is Amsterdam different from LA? They have almost identical population densities in their metro areas (~1000/ sq km).

<comment><USER9> Amsterdam made for people(walkable, cyclable). LA made for cars(wide, multilane roads)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a daughter and a baby boy on the way. A few years ago we moved to a suburb (a ferry ride away and then some, _not_ Bainbridge) of Seattle, and I'm glad we did. The commute is pretty long when I have to go into the office, but thanks(?) to COVID my employer now has a true WFH-friendly infrastructure and a management team that no longer fears remote productivity. I love gardening and walking down to a relatively quiet waterfront, my little downtown, and seeing my kids run around in the yard safely knowing we are far from the burning cop cars of Seattle just a few weeks ago.

Living in Queen Anne isn't much different, it's just 10x more expensive and you have a couple more restaurants. We manage just fine.

<comment><USER11> This COVID-19 induced remote work experiment has really been interesting.

One of the unexpected outcomes of the IT/software revolution was just how much industry centralization (e.g., Silicon Valley, Seattle, and later San Francisco/Shanghai/Paris/etc...) impacted competitiveness & employee wages.

It should have been the opposite - the diffusion of communication infrastructure (and information in general) should have made it easier for companies to outsource work to cheaper locations. This turned out to not be the case, at least in software, for a number of reasons - one of the main ones being that high performing employees on the whole prefer living in and around convenient urban locations.

Now that everyone has had a taste of remote work, it will be interesting to see if this trend reverses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is the pandemic, or is it the fact that exclusionary zoning has dramatically raised the cost of housing in many cities: [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/ne...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/new- hsieh-moretti-paper-land-use-restrictions-economic-growth.html), and those costs are only worth bearing if the cultural and social amenities are also available? Without liberalizing urban zoning, it's hard to say.

<comment><USER13> Preferences are almost certainly a factor. I live in Houston, where we don't have zoning, yet it's specifically cited (and I can confirm) that the vast majority of residents live in suburbs. The article itself acknowledges that, "Americans have been running away from dense, vertical design for a century." People don't want to live in small spaces with close neighbors, or at least, I don't. I don't see the appeal of going to a restaurant on foot given that I never (or very seldom) eat out. Same thing for coffee. I don't shop except for occasional online purchases, and never "go shopping" as many are wont to do. Just about the only things I do are go to the office (which was at least partially virtual, even before corona) and occasionally drive to a business function or symphony performance. Living in an urban area simply holds no appeal for me, or at least, I don't see any appeal. While I can't be sure as to everyone's reasons, it appears others may feel similarly.

As an aside, the article refers to "the suburban wine room." I have yet to see someone with a "wine room"; is this commonplace? A regional difference, perhaps? It also refers to "his-and-hers walk-in closets"; I don't know any guy with his own walk-in closet excepting those that live in apartments that came with one.

<comment><USER14> > I live in Houston, where we don't have zoning, yet it's specifically cited > (and I can confirm) that the vast majority of residents live in suburbs.

Houston doesn't have _explicit_ zoning, which is true, but this doesn't mean that it's necessarily any easier to build dense housing if that's what the market demands.

\- Deed restrictions effectively work as zoning by limiting what a given parcel can't be developed into, and they are city enforced; this restricts dense development, particularly in wealthy, high-amenity, high-convenience neighborhoods that might otherwise be more densely developed by natural forces.

\- While Houston does not prohibit land uses anywhere, it _does_ mandate a minimum amount of parking for various types of land uses and lot sizes. Mandated parking will drive up the cost of dense development because the minimums are set very high, and it means you either have to give over valuable floor space for parking, you have to build very expensive underground or structured parking, or a combination of the two. By indirectly driving up the cost of dense development, minimum parking regulations makes less of it pencil out.

If dense living was not in demand and undersupplied (which I believe it is), dense apartments would not fetch more per sq ft than a house in a low density suburb, at least not successfully.

<comment><USER15> >While Houston does not prohibit land uses anywhere, it does mandate a minimum amount of parking for various types of land uses and lot sizes.

This is an absolute necessity in Houston. It is the 4th largest city in the US and has almost no public transportation. Building an apartment that houses 1000 adults guarantees that 1000 cars that will need to be parked nearby.

Building dense housing without parking in Houston would create painful externalities for everyone on the vicinity, in a more pronounced way than any similarly sized US city.

<comment><USER16> That is also the cause of the lack of good public transportation. You can't have good public transportation when there is so much space dedicated to parking

<comment><USER13> It's pretty hard to do good public transportation in a place like Houston. I've had forty-mile commutes in the past, and once you get that far out, you get that nasty superlinear expansion of area covered. The closest Houston could ever get is park-and-ride, i.e. re-locating the sea of asphalt, because buses are too dang slow. Not to mention walking is absolute misery due to weather from May to September.

<comment><USER14> What the parent comment is saying doesn't disagree with this statement, but rather that this is self-inflicted by the chicken-and-egg nature of "we need more parking". The requirement for parking is what causes Houston to consider 40+ mile commutes normal, because the need for parking physically pushes uses further away from each other, making transit and walking less attractive, driving people into cars, and thus requiring ever more parking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Bay Area born and raised, left 3.5 years ago.

Grew up in the East Bay in the mid/late 80s and was fortunate to get to run around from Pleasanton to Oakland/Berkeley and the city (SF). Traffic wasn't that bad.

Went to UC Santa Cruz for college (BA/BS -> ABD w/ MS in Comp Eng) and still was lucky to get up and enjoy things through the 90s.

2000s rolled around, traffic increased, going to the city (SF) wasn't as fun. The influx of people changed the nature of long time favorites (many no longer around.

That influx and the increase in population has seen long time restaurants close (rezoning - especially in places like Mountain View.

The HN take is "more density", "do away with rules", but there is a lack of respect for the history, the restaurants and markets pushed out because FB needed yet another low density campus off of El Camino and Rengstorff.

From the late 90s through the 2000s, the Bay Area changed. The influx of people from other areas, the demands of tech, etc have ruined it - at least for me. A side interest is preserving history, and Santa Clara County is pretty gungho about making sure most of that is buried due to the mighty dollar.

Where I am now, it's a place. It's not home for the future, but in the mountains, mostly quiet, and I have fiber. I'm privileged in that regard. And my job allows for such.

<comment><USER18> Now this is just an opinion and no doubt others will disagree but I think a very similar thing is happening or has already happened in Seattle.

The dynamics have been driven by "tech", namely you-know-who, named after rainforest in South America nd their newly-minted cloud computing competitors.

Influx of people from other areas, both within US and international. "More density" and "do away with rules".

Another comment in this thread actually proposes the high rents are being driven by zoning. I find that hard to swallow. People in both commercial and residential real estate tell us about demand that is by and large coming from one general source: "tech". This is what has driven the rates higher.

I do not want to sound like another person looking to take jabs at the tech industry however I think some of the folks coming into these places for these jobs lack a certain appreciation for what makes these places special. To put it bluntly their standards are lower. The market has reponded and is giving them want they want; the number of city residences being built for rainforest workers is staggering. Yet I think we are losing something in the process and I am not sure the people moving in really have an appreciation for what is being lost. We cannot expect them to as they are new to the area.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, same thing happened in New York. All these people moved in without any respect for what NYC is really about -- Dutch farming.

<comment><USER18> I have Dutch ancestry, my ancestors were some of the first generations to settle in NY and I grew up there. Truth is that those generations of immigrants that came before the "tech workers" do have respect for what NYC is really about. They made NYC what it is. Just another opinion.

<comment><USER19> A part of what it is, yes. But that's the beauty of it: cities are constantly changing and building upon what came before. It's what makes them cities and not forgotten backwaters.

<comment><USER18> I have no opinion against change, per se. I think that is an unfair and incorrect reframing of someone's opinion. It is only the nature of certain changes I have an opinion about. It is like if someone has opinion about X, a single example of how to implement Y, and then someone else accuses them of being "against Y". Ridiculous.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. "Change is good, actually" is vacuous.

<comment><USER19> "Change is good" is not what I'm trying to say. The point is that change is a fundamental attribute of cities. Trying to claim that a city should retain the characteristics it had when you moved there flies in the face of all the change that took place to make it that way that way. The only thing you can do is lean into the change and try to steer it in positive directions.

I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a fair chance GP was somebody else's version of a "techie" when they moved to Seattle. Most likely that someone else was equally salty about the changing demographics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article itself states that a majority of the US population lives in suburbs, and a supermajority lives in suburban built environments, in central city and suburbs alike.

How could living in the suburbs be so terrible if a supermajority of people live in detached single family homes in residential neighborhoods with suburban style zoning? Are all of these people imprisoned against their will?

<comment><USER22> In many cases, they are "imprisoned" against their will because zoning does not permit any other kind of development. The other problem is they are not paying the full cost of the suburban lifestyle. It is only sustainable through huge government subsidies.

<comment><USER23> > The other problem is they are not paying the full cost of the suburban > lifestyle. It is only sustainable through huge government subsidies.

They're paying for it with taxes right? Or are the minority of people living in dense cities paying these huge subsidies for the supermajority in the suburbs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I live in an 80 sqm apartment within walking distance of our city core. Its a historical mix of new medium-rise apartments, old Victorians, and workers cottages with several public transport lines running through it. Traffic is currently limited to 30kmh on my streets.

What the shut-downs has revealed to me is not "the revenge" of the suburbs, but a foisting of suburban lifestyle onto us against our will. Our libraries were shut, our museums, our parks, our shops, our pools. There was no option to accept or manage the risks locally. Its important to remember, the disease didn't do this to us, this was a political response to it, which is a policy choice, not a certainty.

Meanwhile, the centres of suburban life were left comparatively untouched: shopping malls, big corporate supermarkets, etc, and people drove there and mixed and shopped almost like there was no pandemic. Again, the disease didn't do this, people did. policy did.

In my city, where have the clusters of the disease have been: suburbs. some of that is definitely due to the shutting of the city, but policy has been enacted under the assumption that suburban life is the only life.

We just had a slight tightening of conditions because of a (very small) rise in cases: why? two reasons, putting returning travellers in cbd hotels as part of quarantine, and parties and socialising amongst known infected cases in... you guessed it, suburbia. Apparently, because of this, cafes and businesses in the inner city need to be further restrained for another 3 weeks.

for me, the pandemic simply accentuated everything wrong with the suburban lifestyle (because I'm now forced to live it while my facilities are shut) and I'll continue to wait and lobby for the return of our actual (and personally, better) life.

<comment><USER25> Is the disease here city politics and government? Suburban governments seem more responsive to citizenry?

<comment><USER24> I think this may be a US political thing.

there's no love of local politics here, but I'm not aware of any feeling that suburban/urban councils/local area governments are inherently superior/inferior to the others.

though (obviously?) I like the services my local government provides, here transport, health and education are state level decisions...

<comment><USER26> Are you in Australia? LGAs aren't something many U.S. residents refer to.

<comment><USER24> yes, down under :)

<comment><USER27> It's probably worth noting that the kind suburbia you're talking about, which sounds like Melbourne (same as me) according to your top comment, is different to what is meant by suburbia in the U.S. and thus in the article.

Melbourne's suburbia, where the latest outbreaks have happened, is all part of Melbourne's urban sprawl - i.e., there are no unpopulated gaps between the inner urban area and these suburbs. And the pattern of spread reflects that; cases that begin as returning international travellers, transmitting it to hotel workers, who then take it back to their neighbourhoods further out but still part of the same metropolis. Then families intermingle with others just a few localities away, and off it goes.

Suburbs in the U.S. are more separate from the main urban centres, and are more self-contained, so there's less intermingling of people from one town to another. They're more like what we think of as rural cities like Ballarat, Geelong, Shepparton, etc.

In the past few years my partner and I moved out of inner Melbourne to the Mornington Peninsula to be closer nature and have more space for raising a family, and this feels more like the suburbia of the U.S., with localities like Frankston, Mt Eliza, Mornington and the towns further down all being quite spread out.

And so far, touch wood, the state of viral spread bears this out, with no new cases reported for a few weeks in either Frankston City or MP Shire, and indeed very few cases since the initial wave in March, which was mostly returned travellers. That said, Frankston is not insulated from the rest of Melbourne and is right next to Casey, where there are new cases, and the Peninsula gets lots of visitors from Melbourne, so there's still plenty of risk. (Edit: spoke too soon – one new case in MP Shire today, sigh.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Like anyplace, suburbs can be great or suck.

My last home (detached house) was a in very suburban mega development (about 20k people), but was walking distance to public transit (commuter bus), movies, gym, library, doctors, grocery, dentists, something like 15 different restaurants from fast food to high-end, coffee shop, and so on. It has something like 20 miles of trials, lots of green space, pools and so on. It wasn't a "downtown" but a designed commercial space in the middle of the development that made it pretty nice to live there. Anywhere outside of the development was decidedly not walkable, but not a terrible drive. While sections have very similar looking houses, there's lot of mixed sections with entirely different architecture making it not _too_ boring.

I moved a couple years ago to a new place further in towards a major city, but in another, but much older, mega development (about 60k people). It's higher/mixed density. There's a city bus a 2-3 minute walk from my detached house which connects to the subway, I can walk to work (it's about 3 miles away) and a bit of shopping and dining within a couple easy 2 mile walks. There's several shopping areas scattered around, pools, and so on, and a reasonably large and growing urban core maybe 4 miles away, I usually drive to it, but I could probably take the bus. It was also designed with intense tree cover in mind and most of the area is absolutely bursting in mature trees and nature (including wildlife!). There's also an extensive trail system that provides relatively easy transit around all this stuff for walkers, hikers, bikers, and so on. Homes were built in an impossible number of styles in a wide mix of densities.

My point is, suburbs _can_ be great places to live. Just like there are terrible suburbs, there's terrible urban areas as well -- not everywhere is Manhattan or San Francisco. But it doesn't mean they _all_ suck. There's definitely a movement to make these areas more livable and to learn lessons from the past.

</comment><comment><USER29> Every East Asian polity with 50-story soulless concrete apartment buildings is in the middle of successfully beating it back, so really American cities are _not dense enough_

<comment><USER30> Yes, it sure is confusing why say NYC had a times 5000-6000 new cases a day and yet Tokyo, a city with 2-3x more people and way more crowded trains and offices and stores never had more than 200 a day.

[https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page)

[https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en](https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en)

People come up with all kinds of theories but none of them seem to fit. One theory, Japanese wear masks. They didn't until the lockdown which was late. They've mostly unlocked now and restaurants seem relatively busy. Of course (almost) everyone is still wearing a mask and lots of precautions are in place but at a glance seeing the still crowded trains and now crowded restaurants it's hard to figure out why the numbers stay so low.

Some people claim not enough testing but if that's all it was there would still be a death rate climb and arguably an ICU overflow and that hasn't happened either.

<comment><USER31> > One theory, Japanese wear masks. They didn't until the lockdown which was > late

This is untrue. People in East Asia wear masks a lot more than any place else even without a pandemic. I started seeing a lot of masks in Tokyo in January itself. Softbank tested all their employees and the ones who were working in shops had less infections than the ones who worked at home, even though the number of people WFH were much lower than ones who worked in shops. Which gives a very solid backing to the theory that masks + personal hygiene is enough to keep this pandemic under control.

Source for the softbank tests - [https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/SoftBank- condu...](https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/SoftBank- conducts-44-000-antibody-tests-0.43-come-back-positive)

<comment><USER30> It's not untrue. I've lived in Japan 14 years. I have pictures from late March of people out and about without masks. Sure, it was not uncommon to see a few people wearing masks in Asia (and Japan) before the epidemic but it was not remotely everyone at any time until the lockdown in April. Usually an average train of 200 people might have 10-20 people with masks on (before the lockdown)

Here's pictures March 24th (and one in late Jan which shows zero masks)

[https://photos.app.goo.gl/aUWB5YB6vBnjZk8j6](https://photos.app.goo.gl/aUWB5YB6vBnjZk8j6)

So no, it's not because Japanese wear masks. I'm not saying that doesn't help but it's clearly not enough given how crowded the trains are and how late it was until everyone started wearing them

<comment><USER31> So how else do you explain SoftBank's testing results? The testing pool is large enough to not be an outlier, everything else was exactly the same for all their employees - their genetic pool, healthcare system, their cultural habits. The only difference was their level of alertness to personal hygiene. People working in stores were extra cautious of everything while who WFH were laid back and might have ended up slipping up more often, hence the higher cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is just another article that covers far too many topics all at once.

It says a lot while saying nothing.

And all the articles about COVID-19 will look silly in 3-5 years when it's entirely not a concern. Predicting which aspects of life will stick as "the new normal" is a fools errand.

All the benefits of suburbia in the article are essentially negated by the drawbacks that the article mentions: suburbia sucks wealth away because the infrastructure costs too much to sustain. There really isn't any way to get around that huge flaw.

<comment><USER33> > suburbia sucks wealth away because the infrastructure costs too much to > sustain

While cost to sustain is relatively static, the price homeowners are willing to endure for the upsides of suburbia are dynamic.

In a world plagued by pandemics and social unrest, that price continues to rise. Remote work will only accelerate this trend.

<comment><USER32> It sucks wealth away because American towns have an addiction to using bond money to pay for infrastructure maintenance - infrastructure that will need to be replaced again before the bond is paid off.

They also have a habit of greenlighting development where the builders pay to build the roads and sewers that the town then takes over long term maintenance for, without accounting for the wealth generation of those properties being unable to pay for them.

Part 3 of "the growth Ponzi scheme" illustrates this well:

[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/15/the-growth- pon...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/15/the-growth-ponzi-scheme- part-3.html)

Now, I also wouldn't take Stong Towns as gospel but it's not hard to look around and find crumbling American suburbs. Even the "nice" suburbs are drowning in debt despite good appearances.

And now, you've got millennials who are figuring out that no, they don't need to own two cars (debt on wheels) and hoard _stuff_ like their parents did. Millennials are urbanizing at a rapid rate and it is not slowing down since they aren't universally moving to the suburbs once they have (a smaller quantity of) kids like their parents did.

The boomer generation grew up in an era of crime-laden cities that simply doesn't exist anymore and may never again exist. Without the inner city crime of previous decades one has to ask what suburban life actually gets you in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I live in a small semi-detached house that's walkable to the downtown of our city. I can bike to dozens different places to get take-out, we have a small private back garden where we can host guests, and we have enough space for two of us to work from home in privacy. We also actually see our neighbors outside every evening when we walk around.

There's definitely an in-between, medium density option that this article seems to ignore in favor of focusing on car-focused, isolated suburbs where everyone had 5 bedrooms and a pool.

<comment><USER35> That's exactly what I want except where I am the schools are all awful for any area with houses like that. So either move to car-centric suburbs or add another $20k+ per year to send two kids to decent private schools.

<comment><USER36> I wonder what would happen if well-off folks worked at improving public schools rather than fleeing to private institutions.

Granted, I live in the midwest where public schools are, as a general rule, pretty good. One of the reasons we moved to the town we did though is that they have a unified school system. I heard too many of my more well-off acquaintances making offhand comments amounting to "oh, you don't want to move there. They go to the poor people school."

If you think good schools are a public good, put your family where your mouth is.

<comment><USER30> Unfortunately there is no incentive to wait. I would expect most people would like public schools to be better but have no expectation they can influence them to be better in time for their kids to benefit so they'd separate the two issues. (1) send your kids to private school so you're not sacrificing them on principle (2) push for better public schools.

I wish I knew how to fix public schools. It certainly not with more money. IIRC the USA is in the top 10 on money spent per student. Arguably a bigger issue is all the other problems in areas with bad public schools like poverty and all the problems that come with it.

<comment><USER37> > I wish I knew how to fix public schools. It certainly not with more money.

IIRC "busing" is the most effective thing we've tried—wildly more successful than anything else—but approximately everyone (including a lot of people who weren't rich whites) hated it so we don't do it anymore.

Given that selection bias is a big part of what makes a typical "good" school good it's a hard problem to solve without some kind of social-engineering thing like that that mixes everyone up, though that comes with its own problems, especially if it's still possible to escape the system (moving even farther from the city to areas that aren't doing busing; private schools).

Very early (like... kindergarten or 1st grade) tracking or something like it would probably make mediocre schools more appealing for somewhat-well-off parents and counter the tendency of the rich-enough-to-leave but not-rich- enough-for-private-school set to flee the city when they have kids, since it'd isolate the good students from the bad to replicate some of what the suburban schools benefit from to let the "middle" and "high" cohorts do fairly well even at so-so schools, but there's pretty much zero chance the optics on that would be acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> tl;dr people have been independently railing on the suburbs for centuries, but because they don't all live in dense urban environments they don't know what they are talking about?

or because the good thing about cities was removed and now suburbs compensate by being the exact same drab places as they were, but nothing more alluring exists currently?

what people like about cities, and what they hate about suburbs still exists. the former will just have to be read about in a book.</comment>


Engineering Terror - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html?_r=1&

<comment><AUTHOR> Now, note that with the rhetoric we've seen concerning anonymous and the evil hackers and whatnot, one should not be surprised if the next group prepped for suspicion and tar-and-feathering is programmers.

We've already seen backlash against the "techie/yuppie" stereotype in places like San Francisco (to be fair, you've earned it).

For incumbent power structures, we represent an unknown, and it would not be surprising to see them market against us.</comment>


US halts recent practice of disclosing nuclear weapon total - <AUTHOR> https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/04/18/us-halts-recent-practice-of-disclosing-nuclear-weapon-total/ <comment><USER2> After a brief period of time when the cold war was over and the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation at least seemed to be a thing of the past, the people of the US collectively decided that there just weren't enough existential threats in their lives and elected morons to make things more interesting.

<comment><USER3> Of course you're being cheeky but "collectively decided" doesn't fit the bill here. We didn't collectively decide anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I also saw russias recent video of their new insane weaponry. I don't have the long term scope on this section of the news, is this just routine flexing on both parts or is something more serious going on?

<comment><USER5> Russia has been publishing videos about ultra high tech weapons and even doing comical leaks of "secret" defense technology for years. I remember one "leak", although I can't remember if it was the nuke torpedo or something else, where they were doing a press briefing about some weapon but "accidently" left a classified poster up in the room detailing some super secret high tech weapon. It was clearly put there so the press would see it and make headlines about secret new Russian technology. Even if legit, they are prone to hype it.

I wouldn't worry about it, anymore than they worry about darpa's latest experiments. Sure maybe one day we will have easily cooled rail guns... But nobody in Russia is worried on the off chance we we actually figure it out in 25 years time.

The worst offenders are definitely Iran who are known to outright fake photos of weapons tests that never happened (or happened poorly).

<comment><USER6> As I understand it, the so called KANYON/Poseidon nuclear torpedo is likely a real project, albeit with somewhat exaggerated capabilities. The Project 09852 / Belgorod submarine is certainly real, and there is some reason to believe it is being created in part to carry and launch those massive torpedoes.

But supposing its claimed capabilities were accurate, 10,000 km at 100 km/h would take the torpedo _over four days_. The original claim of 185 km/h is much faster, but travel time would still be measured on the order of days. It's fast enough to be very noisy but slow enough to be seen coming days away; totally nonsensical for a first strike weapon. The conclusion is that _if_ such a torpedo is in development, it's intended as a retaliation weapon.

<comment><USER7> Or perhaps covert local-ish deployment from places closer than 10 Mm. Essentially a medium range torpedo with higher top speed.

<comment><USER8> Would not that of violated the I.N.F treaty? This is a serious question because I am not sure.

<comment><USER9> No, INF treaty is about ground launched weapons, the same thing launched by boats are fine.

On of the things the Russians did was to take a boat launched weapon capable of INF prohibited ranges, putting it on the ground but only testing it out to ranges allowed by the INF. )I think they put something heavier on it so it wouldn't go as far as the naval version.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do we even know they disclosed the true numbers before? This is a serious strategic game (in the game theory sense) and what and whether they disclose may be just part of the game.

Who can check that the numbers are correct? And could they credibly prove it? Would they be interested in (allowed to) do that?

<comment><USER9> For one thing it was very close to the open source estimate, meaning the number is consistent with other publicly known facts about the program.

There also isn't any real gain from keeping the total number secret above the advantage that keeping their _location_ secret gives. Not disclosing totals probably doesn't even make napkin level invasion planning harder since at that level reasonable estimates will do.

On the other hand it does make _you_ a more suspicious actor in the strategic game as hiding harmless information is a clear sign of paranoia.

<comment><USER11> Keeping totals secret could me maintaining secrecy of some locations -- if your number is much higher than your "enemies" then they're likely to have missed some locations, especially under a backdrop of CND where over- estimation by the state would be politically unhelpful.

<comment><USER9> How so? You can in principle store a nuke in anything with a roof so you need quite silly numbers before before storage space places any important geographical constraints.

Simple considerations on where things have to placed to be on hand for actual use are likely much more useful for locating storage sites; and if you hide a lot of nukes where they can't be accessed in times of need that's just inefficiencies that helps your opponent.

<comment><USER12> > How so? You can in principle store a nuke in anything with a roof so you > need quite silly numbers before before storage space places any important > geographical constraints.

Because countries monitor their enemies. If Russia publishes that they have 50 nukes, and we know of 5 locations that each have what we estimate to be 10 nukes, we can be pretty confident that we know of all of their storage locations.

<comment><USER9> You need five _reliable_ estimates, which a total doesn't give you.

In any case, if you have that sort of access to count the nukes in program that small it is simply not plausible that you wouldn't know of all the bases anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Recent and relevant talk on Nuclear Weapons and International Security by John Mearsheimer here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdvdKdnpCRg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdvdKdnpCRg)

> _" Great powers constantly try to gain nuclear advantage over their rivals > and they do it because there is powerful incentives to do so"_

> _" The ideal strategy is to be the only power in the system that has nuclear > weapons...however desirable this situation is, no state is going to achieve > nuclear monopoly in our lifetime. (So) the best outcome a great power can > hope for is to acquire the capability to launch a splendid first-strike > against each of its adversary"_

Being opaque on capabilities when it comes to nuclear weapons (especially when other great powers are being opaque) makes strategic sense.

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/multiple- whi...](https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/multiple- whistleblowers-raise-grave-concerns-with-white-house-efforts-to)

>The report warns that that White House efforts to transfer sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia may be accelerating after meetings last week at the White House and ahead of a planned visit to Saudi Arabia by the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner

Between the originally posted link, the link in my comment, and Rick Perry bailing out of the Department of Energy, this is shaping up to be a very grim situation.

<comment><USER15> What's wrong with Perry quitting Energy? Wasn't his appointment an elaborate practical joke, in that it was the federal department he wanted to shut down but forgot the name of?

<comment><USER16> >Wasn't his appointment an elaborate practical joke, in that it was the federal department he wanted to shut down but forgot the name of

Do not downplay this appointment. It was not a joke. Attempting to dismantle government institutions is stated republican policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Disclosing military data (like nuclear weapon counts) is just a bad idea. Granted, the approximate numbers are not that difficult to figure out, but why give it away for free; make Russia and China expend resources to get the data.

</comment><comment><USER18> > US halts recent practice of disclosing nuclear weapon total

I think America's biggest error in WWII was the disclosure of nuclear weapons existence. If America was able to keep that secret, it would have had the one and only card in its sleeve that could've stalled USSR's tank armies in Europe.

Remember guys, the nucler detente in Europe was not something given until eighties, and would've somebody more ambitious came to USSR's political arena instead of Brezhnev, even that would be under question.

WWIII in Europe was barely avoided twice with Stalin's unexpected death, and Khrushev's "retirement." That gave NATO 20+ years to prop up defences.

<comment><USER19> I think it's naive to assume that the Soviets learned of nuclear bombs once they were dropped in Japan. It's well documented that they knew and were doing research way before that. If you're developing it, somebody you don't want is always going to know.

> Remember guys, the nucler detente in Europe was not something given until > eighties

Eh? France had their independently developed nukes in the 60s.

This comment also boldly assumes that the Soviets had a stronger urge to march with tanks into Europe than the U.S. has to march into Russia, which is not a given.

But putting all that aside, assuming the U.S. were able to keep it secret, what makes you think that that's necessarily a good thing? Do you really naively assume that all the U.S. cares about are 'liberal values'? The U.S. does not enjoy the universal 'good guys' reputation in many places around the world, for solid reasons.

So to me, it seems far better that MAD exists, it keeps everyone from becoming too drunk with power.

<comment><USER18> Those arguments are very easy to parry. Even in the scenarios where Soviets got a bomb, I believe keeping it secret would've been of great military value

And remember, Soviets gave no shit about the nuke even after first hydrogen bomb test, thinking of it as an impractical weapon. Were not its use in war, Soviet nuclear project could've ended just being a stack of documents on the shelf without political backing, and them not fully realising how to deal with being attacked themselves.

Imagine yourself in such a situation:

You encounter robbers on the street, they demand money. You know for sure that you will either be robbed and killed after you give money, or be killed and then robbed if you don't give them money and try defending yourself.

Now, will you threaten them retaliation from the start, brandishing your weapon, or hide the weapon and play an easy victim until the very last moment, to try your chance in a surprise attack when they let their guard down?

<comment><USER20> > Those arguments are very easy to parry. Even in the scenarios where Soviets > got a bomb, I believe keeping it secret would've been of great military > value

it was never a secret wrt the ussr. the manhattan project was riddled with communist spies.

<comment><USER16> Even Germany had an inkling of what was going on. The research papers before the war were talking about possibilities like bombs, and then there was suddenly radio silence on the issue. The physicists left in the Axis understood what that meant</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How low is too low-level programming? - <AUTHOR>

It used to be that real programmers programmed in Hex/Assembly, then FORTRAN, and now I'd probably say C. And now with web-based apps, cloud computing and distributed systems, will the current low-level languages remain relevant to the average software developer? <comment><USER2> The lower you go the more you will know. But seriously, there is a lot of upside knowing exactly whats going on in hardware when you are pushing bits around at a high level. A downside is you waste time writing at a level where a compiler/interpreter would generate much better code for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> The general consensus among the people I know is that average software developers write PHP.

Based on that, I'd say that low-level languages are already irrelevant for most average programmers.

On the other hand, I'm hoping that's not an accurate reflection of reality.

</comment><comment><USER4> it depends on the developer, and the constraints.

on the one hand, software developers need more powerful languages that can do more and abstract more. these improve their output and efficiency. you can build better software faster with higher level languages. they aren't constrained by the computers they're working with, they themselves are the constraints.

on the other, embedded systems developers need lower level languages because they're constrained by the system. you need to cut efficient code if your entire program is to fit onto a microcontroler with 64K memory, 16K ram.

regular "programmers" used to use lower level languages because they were also constrained by the system.</comment>