Bootstrapping Technology For Eight Bucks a Day - <AUTHOR> http://interfacelab.com/bootstrapping-technology-for-eight-bucks-a-day/ <comment><USER2> Love the price breakdown, jg!

I'd agree with everything except:

1) Basecamp -> Google Docs (I know you said this...)

2) Pivotal Tracker (honestly the worst UI I've ever seen) -> Lighthouse (or Github Issues if you're really cheap)

3) Slicehost -> Linode (but I'm probably biased and I run Rails)

4) Probably not get a CDN up front.

5) Would add Balsamiq Mockups to the list of things to get - true gamechanger

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man.

The thing about Slicehost, and I just had this convo on #startups, is that they can move you to metal when you get too big for your britches. Also, Linode's biggest box is 2G, which is a serious upper limit.

I know you're a mac guy, but you should look at Axure for prototyping. It's ill as all get out.

<comment><USER3> If you're targeting _cheap_ , then Linode is a better bet - you get more for your money. There are plenty of options when you get bigger, but if you really need to save, then deal with getting big when it happens, rather than spend money on 64 bit pointers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A great idea while you're getting your site off the ground is to use Nearly Free Speech [1] as your host. While it's not the best deal for a busy site, a low-traffic site costs $1/GB transfer, with no bottom limit. I'd also suggest using something like OddCMS [2] that serves static content, so you don't have to spend money on a database.

Obviously, using these instead of Slicehost and MySQL (or similar technologies) will restrict what you can do with your server, but when you're really shooting for low price, they can't be beat. I've paid two cents (yes, cents) for the last two weeks of hosting my software company's website [3] (~500 views/day).

[1]<http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/>

[2]<http://www.oddcms.org>

[3]<http://www.tranquilapps.com/>

<comment><USER5> I've used Surreal CMS for sites that don't really need a DB as well, it works well, and the service I got when I had a issue was very good.

<http://surrealcms.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Being able to make a startup for really cheap is definitely good for younger people who are just starting off in the world, as well as the business industry.

I'd love to see a startup that combines all of this into one simple place.

<comment><USER7> really? see, I think having your DNS hosted separately from your other stuff is _essential_ - so long as you control your dns and you have good backups, you can always migrate to a new provider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, it's quite cheap. You just forgot rent, food, utilities (including a broadband connection) and the depreciation costs of your laptop :)

<comment><USER9> Indeed. I know very few people trying to bootstrap that think anything but "payroll" matters for costs. The best cases are single people accustomed to living cheaply from grad school & undergrad. Even in those cases, just making ends meet will cost at least an order of magnitude more than any reasonable hosting configuration.

If you are working on a side project with a legit job, than the cost of the effort is in the noise for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're not in an industry which requires nation-state level scaling, you can get all of the above for close to eight bucks a month. While I wouldn't go back to shared hosting (doesn't play well with Rails, which I migrated to in year two), I did run my business on it for a year and change without major incident.

<comment><USER11> can you pls give the (appx) breakdown similar to what's given in the article? thanks in advance.</comment></comment>


Is there any easy way to invest in startups? - <AUTHOR>

Ive seen secondmarket.com and sharespost.com but they seem to be for institutional investors and not very straight forward. I'm talking about investing sums of around $500-10000. <comment><USER2> You mean something like circleup.com? Do keep in mind that the ink on the JOBS act (which regulates small investments) is barely dry, I think it passes just yesterday!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually outside of America ATM, so I havent noticed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I (and others on HN, I'm sure) would be interested in pitching you, if you can invest with a clear, reasonable, and legally sound seed funding contract/agreement.</comment>


Microsoft installing third-party apps on clean Windows 10 installs - <AUTHOR> https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-please-stop-trying-install-third-party-apps-my-clean-windows-10-install <comment><USER2> Again? Do they not know how bad it makes them look. I dont want your third party apps. I dont mind a placeholder which if I click on it installs the app, but actually putting third party code on my machine is a no no.

</comment><comment><USER3> These days more or less the only bad press Microsoft gets* are the presence of those pre-installed apps. It is unbelievable that the great marketing department of the Microsoft cooperation continues to do this. Removing those apps will more or less make all bad press go away.

* only other frequent complains I see is the windows 10 logging (of course) , but that is not the subject of the article.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder just how much money they make off the back of these annoying installs.

I would think apps like candy crush must be paying Microsoft in the 10s of millions to so directly affect the UX of their primary money maker.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not only after installs, but also with bigger updates.

It's always a reminder that with Windows 10, the user is never in control of the system.

<comment><USER6> This can be turns off with disabling options in the settings app and with a handful of group policy change or reg tweaks depending on if your running Home or not.

I will say I'm not a fan of the defaults and I would like the controls to be in a more visable place but the controls are there.</comment></comment>


NAT66: The good, the bad, the ugly - <AUTHOR> https://mcilloni.ovh/2018/01/20/oh-god-why-NAT66/ <comment><USER2> > This is without considering the false sense of security that address > masquerading provides; I cannot recall how many times I've heard people say > that (gasp!) NAT was fundamental piece in the security of their internal > networks (it's not).

It bugs me when this dogma gets repeated without further explanation, /particularly in the case of IPv6/. No, NAT probably doesn't provide as much security as you think it does, but it does provide benefits. A NAT network is a default-deny-incoming network that cannot fail open, protecting against common boundary firewall configuration errors. A small (but once very pervasive) class of firewall bypass attacks (fragmentation) is eliminated. Obscuring information about the number of devices, and especially (IPv6) their vendors is beneficial. When (inevitably) a bug in your firewall is discovered by bad guys, the presence of NAT limits the kinds of attacks they can make. In the world of IoT, These Things Matter.

It's commonly phrased "NAT is not a security feature, firewalls are", which is midly nonsensical as NAT is a firewall feature .. one which often improves the security posture of the network. Of course there are places you absolutely don't want NAT, but I think it still belongs between the internet and most networks made entirely of desktop, IoT & personal devices.

<comment><USER3> > I think it still belongs between the internet and most networks made > entirely of desktop, IoT & personal devices.

I think your belief has been shaped by the fact that adoption of P2P protocols was hampered by NAT for over a decade, and that developers often write software that trusts the local network. Default deny policies help protect insecure servers for the time being, but I'd like to see servers that utilize encryption and authentication instead of relying on simple allow all/disallow all firewall policies at the connection level.

<comment><USER2> > developers often write software that trusts the local network

Yes, this is still a source of problems - DNS rebinding allowing websites to attack random sockets on LAN and localhost makes my skin crawl. That the protections are being implemented in the browser makes me sad.

> I'd like to see servers that utilize encryption and authentication

Me, I'd prefer architectural solutions further down the stack than /every single service/ that happens to benefit from a TCP control socket having to duplicate the work of encryption + authentication, with the attendant myriad opportunities for it to go horribly wrong. I already mentioned IoT and we know exactly what that's like when it comes to protecting itself.

Yes, I know, pipe dream .. and going off topic .. but I can wish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author's life would be a lot easier by switching to a better VPS provider.

<comment><USER5> Which VPS providers would you suggest for proper IPv6 support? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Maybe Digital Ocean? Vultr? I don't really follow the VPS market.

<comment><USER6> Both will give your VPS a "home" IPv6 address, but if you also expect to receive an IPv6 prefix/subnet, DO only gives you a /125 per VPS (8 IPs). I moved my VPN nodes to Vultr for that reason; they give you a /112 (65K IPs) per VPS.

Neither DO nor Vultr actually routes the assigned prefix to your VPS, so you have to run something like ndppd [1] to answer NDP queries for IPs in the IPv6 prefix you've been assigned if you want the local router to send your VPS any traffic on those addresses.

[1] [https://github.com/DanielAdolfsson/ndppd](https://github.com/DanielAdolfsson/ndppd)

<comment><USER7> It's actually a /64 at Vultr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've often seen criticism that "NAT is not a security boundary" etc., but never seen them explained.

How is putting your network behind a NAT different from a stateful firewall set to deny inbound connections (and allow outbound and related ones)?

<comment><USER3> It's different because not only does it deny inbound connections, it breaks the end-to-end principle[1] of the internet. You can have the security boundary without NAT by using a firewall, so if that's all you want, don't use NAT.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to- end_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_principle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> NAT66 is also used frequently used for multi-wan egress load balancing.</comment>


Easter egg: Desk photo varies based on referrer (e.g. HN, Reddit, Fark, xkcd) - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.monetate.com/2012/06/13/engineers-take-a-stand/

<comment><AUTHOR> If you don't know how to spoof the referrer, you can also pass it as a query parameter. For instance:

[http://engineering.monetate.com/2012/06/13/engineers- take-a-...](http://engineering.monetate.com/2012/06/13/engineers-take-a- stand/?HTTP_REFERER=http://www.slashdot.org)

[http://engineering.monetate.com/2012/06/13/engineers- take-a-...](http://engineering.monetate.com/2012/06/13/engineers-take-a- stand/?HTTP_REFERER=http://www.facebook.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There are about a dozen variations in all.</comment>


Ask HN: Someone ripped off my app, is there any recourse with Apple?  - <AUTHOR>

I built a simple Android app:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tenromans.birthdaycake.free
And I discovered today that a developer has taken the graphics and rebuilt it for iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/make-birthday-cake/id469010303?mt=8
Frankly, that's the nature of the business.  Things get copied all the time.  But it also kinda sticks because the graphics and whatnot are my IP.
Is there any recourse with Apple to have them remove the app from the iTunes store? <comment><USER2> You should be able to file a copyright complaint with Apple: <http://www.apple.com/legal/contact/>

<comment><USER3> This is definitely the appropriate response, and I've found Apple very reasonable in these situations if you are able to prove copyright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have witness a similar case where one Apple dev rip off another developer by repacking and then resubmit the same app. He submit a request to Apple and then a few days later that clone app got pulled.

</comment><comment><USER5> The was a thread here on HN about another copycat app but I can't find it for now.

It was a slightly different case in that both apps were in the Apple App store, and I guess it would be easy to prove "prior art".

Your case is different in that Apple hav no record of your app being in their echo system, you would have to demonstrate prior art somehow, otherwise it could be argued that you have copied them.

If you have any documentation proving the dates on which your app was accepted into the Android market, that would help.

</comment><comment><USER6> You could send a DMCA notice to Apple for the app, but I find it strange that you would ask people on this site on protecting your copyright when YC is so vehemently opposed to copyright monopolies like yours. I support copyrights though, so good luck. Here is the link: <https://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/claimsofcopyright.html>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Android link correction. This is the paid ($0.99) version: [https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tenromans.birthday...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tenromans.birthdaycake)

</comment><comment><USER7> Quick question, do people buy your app on android?</comment>


The great 1980s Dungeons and Dragons panic - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105 <comment><USER2> > In an era of potent concern over internet pornography, cyber-bullying, and > drugs, it is hard to imagine a game being controversial.

Really? GTA? Every FPS ever? Video games in general?

This "moral panic" behavior is by no means limited to conservative/traditionally religious causes.

As an example that will likely challenge many here, try comparing environmental panics (historical and present) with religious ones. There is a very similar pattern of catastrophic predictions, frantic hyperbole, disregard of contradictory data (usually combined with demonizing those pointing it out), and the inevitable eventual shift to a new topic for panic.

<comment><USER3> > try comparing environmental panics (historical and present) with religious > ones.

Care to name some examples? Because the past ones I can think of (acid rain, ozone hole) do not fit the pattern AT ALL, they were well grounded in reality and abated because things were done that actually eliminated or mitigated the causes of the problem.

<comment><USER2> The easiest, most clearly falsified example is probably Paul Ehrlich's alarmist population bomb. Already too late to avoid hundreds of millions of people dying from starvation in the 70s. Didn't happen. Food production increased. Later editions said 70s and 80s. Didn't happen, food production increased. Instead of backing off the catastrophic rhetoric, he increased it, and was ignored by the community. Oh, wait, no, he got a MacArthur genius grant...

Peak oil (oh, we just mean "conventional oil"). Many resource exhaustion forecasts (it will happen, just wait). Mass species extinctions (it's happening! Dozens per day! Which species?)

Each of these is based on an element of truth, extrapolated without allowing any mitigating factors, and published with forecasts of imminent doom.

Declaring victory over the ozone hole appears premature. Nasa says current changes are driven by wind and temperature, not changes in chlorine levels. [http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/new-results-from- inside-...](http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/new-results-from-inside-the- ozone-hole/#.U0jKh8vnaAg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I never played Dungeons and Dragons as a kid (born in the early 80s, so a bit too young) but I played a lot of Games Workshop games (Warhammer etc) and I played D&D-based video games (Baldur's Gate etc) heavily.

I remember poring over rulebooks and probability tables for hours, and writing computer simulations (in Visual Basic or Excel) to try and find some edge in the game. I think my parents were pretty worried about me.

I now write stock market simulations and come up with trading strategies for a living, using essentially the same methods that I used in the mid 1990s to win at roleplaying games, so I guess it all worked out okay?

<comment><USER5> > I now write stock market simulations and come up with trading strategies for > a living, , so I guess it all worked out okay?

OMG, parents __should __have intervened!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Moral objections don't just come from biblical incompatibility. Back in high- school (not-US), I once had an uncomfortable questioning from our principal because a kid's parent complained after seeing us playing with unfamiliar dice. They equated the probability-driven game mechanics to _gambling_ , or at least believed that it led to a slippery slope.

Then again I later majored in statistics, so maybe they had a point ^_^

<comment><USER7> I've run into christian groups that ban standard playing card decks (so e.g. uno or dutch blitz is okay) due to the association with gambling.

<comment><USER8> That's the reason for the popularity of Rook: [http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1260/rook](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1260/rook)

Which is basically a standard deck of cards but with four colors for four suits, and numbered from 1-14. Just getting rid of the standard symbols is enough for people to pretend that they can't gamble with them. Popular with Mormons.

<comment><USER9> I don't know about 'popular with Mormons'. That or my friends and I are exceptions. I remember fondly having D&D/MTG/card games/board games nights. I personally love card games and usually have a deck with me. Especial during youth/single group game nights with the whole congregation. I can see this for those that are hyper conservative, but this can work for any religion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember this - we had to play D&D in secret because of several of our friend's parents.

It's interesting to have seen, first hand, part of our long unbroken chain of freaking out, from rock and roll to instagram; this giant perennial wave of overreaction that's done nothing but persecute innocents and make the world a less beautiful, exploratory, and lively place.

Is there an example of a popular fashion that's been of actual concern? The only example I can think of off-hand is the dancing plague of 1518, and even that was probably worth the casualities.

It's amazing to me that a mode of thinking that has been so consistently incorrect for so long seems to be dominant, whereas the "let kids do whatever it is they're into this week" is considered a fringe hippie thing.

<comment><USER11> The early rock and roll era was a pretty interesting time.

For the first time, kids had easy access to cars, and thus they could be away from their parents more often. The cultural construct we have today of teenagers being so independent from their parents didn't really exist in the generations prior.

Not only were these teens in their cars, away from parents, they were listening to the radio in the those cars. Outside of adult supervision. And so white kids could hear black music for the first time. So they were crossing racial lines, and eventually the lines became more and more blurred, which is how rock music grew.

And, of course, those kids were having sex in the back seats of those cars. Away from parent, and while listening to rock music. Which, in the pre-pill era, led to a lot of unplanned pregnancies.

So while early rock didn't really cause negative effects, it's not hard to see how worried parents could make the associations. The kids were indeed literally out of control.

<comment><USER2> > For the first time, kids had easy access to cars, and thus they could be > away from their parents more often. The cultural construct we have today of > teenagers being so independent from their parents didn't really exist in the > generations prior.

You have a very distorted and limited view of history (but then, mine is surely as distorted, just differently!)

My parents were just sharing stories of how, at age 10, a friend would take the sheep, a horse, and a dog, and literally be alone for the full day, before returning at night.

I'd characterize the difference more as "large numbers of youth with no responsibilities", rather than "away from their parents more often". Industrialized societies with child labor laws tend to keep children more separate from adult responsibilities, and prevent them from having meaningful responsibilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This brought back some memories..

D&D was great. I was absolutely obsessed with it as an early teenager in the mid 80's. I carried the rule books around all times and even had a club at the school lunch table. I remember the vice principal...a bearded guy who was probably like 28 coming over and congratulating us saying he played D&D also and he believed only smart people played the game.

I also remember the ridiculous religious hysteria and my parents becoming concerned after someone at church giving them a cassette of some guy warning of demonic possession from rock music and D&D. The were reasonable though eventually let it go after investigating the rule books and my father actually playing a game (he frankly thought it was dumb which in retrospect is understandable). It all seems so tame compared to what is around now.

D&D was my great love at that time. Well... that and my TSR 80:)

<comment><USER13> RIGHT in the feels man.

D&D (and the subsequent Arduin rules) were a HUGE part of my teenage years in the 80s. I had to sell all of my collection to buy tires for my car when I was about 19. Come to think of it, it was more or less my coming of age moment.

I've since purchased _almost_ every book I had as a young kid on eBay, but it's incredibly hard to find anyone who still plays with these rules. Kind of a bummer actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was introduced to D&D at my local library.

I spent a great deal of time in my youth studying the demons and devils sections of the Monster Manual.

Only years later did I learn that the devils were all sourced from actual religions (tiamat, beelzebub, etc). It helped spur my interest in ancient civilizations.

These days, I get calls from friends- all successful, happily married with family and kids- to play D&D.

The people who complained about this back then had NO IDEA how powerful games and myths can be to developing children- in a very positive way.

</comment><comment><USER15> This was really a crazy time, fresh off of a landslide Reagan victory and no doubt the moral hysteria boosted by it, I remember this situation really well.

My parents (mostly my mother) are very religious and I remember being driven around town with the local Christian radio station on and it being just wall- to-wall fear mongering about Satanism, backmasking in rock songs and D&D. Just endless talk, hour after hour, about how all this will lead your child to drugs, pornography, satanism and suicide -- numerous "concrete" examples were included as the local Christian "research team" swept the country (pre- internet! so most of it was probably just invented whole-cloth) for police reports and court records for Satanic rituals, Rock music and D&D. All reported with deep urgency and absolute truthful authority between gentle praise songs I heard in church every Sunday. Of course they'd never play a couple seconds of Led Zeppelin back and forth so you could hear the hidden messages revealed, lest you want to kill yourself during the next commercial break or continuous praise song power hour.

Terse descriptions of D&D were provided. "A game where players assume the roles of various characters, demons are involved, sometimes, like _gambling_ , dice are used!" without any cultural context about how it's exactly like any other game where people assume different identities, like Cowboys & Indians, or super space spy or whatever.

It was a perfect storm of cultural events simultaneously pumped up by various social moralists who, like most groups like this, take tiny kernels of truth and wrap them in heaping piles of agendas, fabrications and outright lies and blanket every form of sensory input to drive the masses into full foaming at the mouth hysteria.

The publicity eventually leaked out into regular media and I remember seeing some of these "issues" (which had all been masterfully woven together into a single moral crisis by the religious media my mother listened to) break into the regular nightly news my father forced me to sit and watch every evening (to build culture and character).

My mother was absolutely obsessed with all this and was driven to hysteria. One time pulling the car over to the side of a busy highway and making me promise, _promise_ , I'd never roll D&D dice and risk letting Satan into my heart - tears streaming down her face while she shook like a leaf -- because I might commit suicide when the game is over. She'd listen to hour after hour of pronouncements of how the country was going to sin...I'd watch her cleaning the kitchen while this played on the radio, her scrubbing getting more and more vigorous as her emotions became more and more upset.

Even at the tender age of...6 or 7, I knew the entire thing was a ridiculous pile of malarkey. I honestly had no clue what D&D was, had only heard rock music in passing (my music selection was pretty heavily regulated) and certainly wasn't involved in Satanism of any kind. I was more concerned with the severe mental instability this seemed to be drawing out in my mother...who seemed to be the only person I knew who couldn't separate fantasy from reality in this situation.

When the D&D cartoon started airing, curious, I'd sneak a few minutes of it in, titillated that something so dangerous was in cartoon form and on television before bed time. The show was pretty tame so I usually got bored and turned it off and did something else with my time. (He-Man was also banned in my house).

I vaguely remember the acronym BADD from those times and the name Patricia Pulling, and the claim that players would get so wrapped up in the fantasy of their characters, with reality and imagination so tangled up, that when your character died, there was some non-trivial chance you would go out and kill yourself, with probably a recently listened to Led Zeppelin tape in the boom box and with some kind of Satanic connection, or sacrificed chickens or something nearby.

And suddenly, one day, the Christian "news" sources my mother listened to moved on to something else and it was all over. Rock music was still around, Led Zeppelin was still for sale, D&D was still a game, but apparently the moral crusaders had stopped _something_ and had moved on to something else. I think this was when all the major lawsuits had concluded with BADD losing all of them.

It was still on my banned list, but the hysteria was over. Like most kids I just ignored it and played a little D&D over at my friends' houses till I got bored of it and listened to rock music just the same. Years later, remembering the hysteria, a friend and I figured out how to reverse a cassette tape and we experimented listening for hidden messages in Rock Music cassettes to little success.

The early 1980s were a really weird moment in American history.

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

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Rop4Zt-S0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Rop4Zt-S0)

<comment><USER16> Until this moment, it never occurred to me that others were also scarred from this period (yay internet!). In our house my father was the one who bought into the hysteria, He Man was also banned, and the D&D cartoon was as well.

We've talked about it since, and he has no memory of telling us (me and my siblings) that listening to secular music would lead us to the devil. He wasn't religious before this episode, and hasn't been since. I've always held resentment toward him from this time, but to find he didn't even remember was a shock.

My question for you guys is: how did it effect you? How did you recover? For me the result was, at the time, going to school and spewing this nonsense to my friends and ostracizing myselft. I had socialization problems anyway an that just increased my perceived isolation. Took years to work thru all that.

<comment><USER15> I personally never bought into it since I could never understand the mechanism that took somebody from playing a board game (my reference point at the time was Monopoly and Chutes and Ladders) to all the kinds of terrible things being discussed. It never made sense to me so I didn't carry that around with me.

Instead I became deeply skeptical of my parent's ability to parse these kinds of issues out for my well being. Which of course led to all kinds of wonderful moments as a teenager ;)

Over the years I also discovered that my mother was deeply susceptible to counter-mainstream, alternative movements. So I also grew up with all kinds of weird fad diet of the year, carb-load, bran, high citrus, vegetarian, soy, uncooked veggies, low-carb, acai, quinoa, dozens of others, or a stint where we all did Chinese medicine and ate lots of ginseng or a brief stint with homeopathy. No surprise my mother eats gluten free today but I suspect that's about to change as the next fad diet starts to infiltrate popular culture - Metabolism B, Dash, Paleo whatever. I usually indulged her at home (after all some of the diets were pretty tasty) and just ignored it all when I was out on my own.

More importantly it's made me very skeptical whenever large groups of people cotton onto something. It seems the more intense the group interest in something is, the less I'm inclined to go along...whatever it is. I grew up almost anti-cool - skeptic kind of personality. It saved me from most of the terrible fashion fads that everybody I grew up with regrets these days.

But in terms of what HN would be interested in, I tend not to really "get" large scale trends either -- since I've basically been trained to revolt from them unless there's a clear advantage to following it. So it definitely had an impact on my thinking in that sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I grew up in the same town as Bob Jones University. So they were really frothing at the mouth over the game (I picked it up just after AD&D came out). They were into picketing at the time, and protested outside a couple of bookstores that sold the game (they also protested Monty Python's Life of Brian, which I am proud of having crossed their picket line into 94 minutes of sin & depravity).

It was pretty counter-culture for the time. Some of my friends would have been called "goth" in later years, but this was before all that.

In college I drove down to Jacksonville for GenCon South, and got eliminated from the tournament pretty quickly (our party wandered the desert, got lost and died - we never even found the temple. Bah.) But it was amazing how many other people were into the game, way more than just the 4-5 people who played that I knew.

<comment><USER18> I grew up in Greer (about 20 minutes down Wade Hampton Blvd from BJU), and my mother, even in 2005, still believed that D&D was satanic. She had converted to Judaism, never went to BJU, and still she held that belief because of the moral panic in the 80s. It's amazing to me how easily some people will accept a moral position on something they know nothing about simply because someone else told them they should.

I actually got her to play D&D with me. It was interesting. We sat down and set up the game, had little tokens for our characters (it was the starter set), and dice and all of that. We selected our characters, entered the dungeon, and were promptly killed by the first orcs we came across. We stopped playing after that, but I think it opened her eyes to the misconceptions she had of the game.

BJU would go into K-Mart and demand they stop playing certain radio stations because the students couldn't shop there if they played rock music. They also caused a shitstorm when they tried to expel some students for holding hands when walking across campus because one was black and the other white, and this was in 2001. I even had a guy in my high school get into their weird religious beliefs trying to tell us in Biology class that the world was 3000 years old and the devil put dinosaur bones there to test us.

This is similar to the moral panic that happened around pokemon and harry potter in the 90s, and the daycare rape panic that happened in the 80s. It seems like moral outrage is a way that some people band together and identify.

It's still happening now, my university I went to is being attacked for giving a summer reading book that is about a lesbian. People are viciously attacking faculty and alumni from the university, and the state legislators have even taken to fining the schools for it.

<comment><USER17> _because the students couldn 't shop there if they played rock music._

In the days when car radios had dial pointers, BJU had a teacher whose job it was to go through the commuting student parking lot each day and issue demerits to those whose radio was tuned to the local rock station -- AM 1440.

Yeah, they finally racially integrated about ten, fifteen years ago. The feds put a lot of pressure on them, and their excuse of "We're integrated - we have _two_ black students" didn't fly (obviously).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In France too there was lots of bad mouthing about role playing games in the mid to late 80s, when it was really popular (while it was nowhere as popular as in the US), and fearmongering in newspapers and media. A couple of years later, (early 90s, basically), video games were targeted, and they made it sound like people who were playing video games were retarded.

There was a documentary about Eric Chahi as he was finishing his work on _Another World_ on Amiga (one of the milestones in Gaming!) in 1991-1992, and the reporters described him almost as being autistic. The media suddenly changed their stance on video games after Sony's success with the PS1 turned most young people into gamers and gained mass approval.

<comment><USER15> I'm actually curious how this all happened in the French media. In the U.S. it spread like wildfire through Evangelical media.

<comment><USER20> UK newspapers are sensationalist, so we had a bit of it over here, although it did tend to concentrate on music or satanic abuse.

On a slight tangent I remember a Scottish religious group in the 1980s who did not let children use calculators because "Satan talks through screens" \- they extended a ban on TVs to include calculators. This is the kind of thing that I find very hard to get results from a search engine with. So, any advice from DDG or Googlers about best way to get that info would be lovely!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I grew up in middle class, suburban Kansas. But, did not experience any of this hysteria. I guess I'm lucky. I've been playing RPGs for 30 years.

Lots of people play today. I strongly encourage anyone even slightly interested to visit local game shops, look for meetup.com rpg meetup and try it out. If you happen to be in austin [http://www.meetup.com/dnd-823/](http://www.meetup.com/dnd-823/)

I'm happy to answer any questions about that meetup (which I organize), finding / starting a game, or RPGs in general. Here or email firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER22> I continue to play today as well, it's a REALLY great hobby for a software engineer in particular, since it involves heavy and somewhat complex rulesets, some minor math, and a great way to socialize with staring at a computer screen. It really makes it easier to connect and talk to others as there is a built and fun subject to talk about. Playing RPG's has improved my life quite a bit since I picked it up again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This echoes Jack Thompson's [1] crusade against video games, really. $NEW_THING will corrupt our children is a powerful meme.

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_\(activist\))

<comment><USER24> And before him there was Jack Chick [1].

1: [http://www.chick.com/READING/TRACTS/0046/0046_01.ASP](http://www.chick.com/READING/TRACTS/0046/0046_01.ASP)

<comment><USER25> The folks behind the Gamers films are currently producing a film version of that as satire: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk2Pr9jXCr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk2Pr9jXCr8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The funny thing is that in the 90s, after the scare was mostly over, when adults would see me and my friends with rule books and pieces of paper full of numbers they'd always congratulate us for being 'studying hard'. ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Ah, we lost our cleric and fighter (they were brothers) to that, since their mom heard that it was "satanic." Most ironic thing is that they were the only 2 in the group that attended the same church as me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Case in point. The greatest item ever!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throne_of_the_Gods](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throne_of_the_Gods)

Is it so bad that my cleric is lawful evil and gets his powers from Asmodeus? Does that make me a devil worshipper? Come on Mom, it's Asmodeus, not Satan.

Edit: Actually, I don't know if a cleric could get powers from a devil rather than a god. Dungeon Master's Guide check please? Ah, well. It's an RPG. We could do whatever we wanted as long as the DM approved.

<comment><USER28> From my memories, a devil would be interpreted as a demon so they might be able to give you limited abilities if they happened to be particularly powerful. But not the full abilities a god could provide.

I was more into Dragonlance so things might be a tad different for you.

Plus, as you say, whatever the DM decides if there's no specific rule defining the outcome.

<comment><USER27> > From my memories, a devil would be interpreted as a demon so they might be > able to give you limited abilities if they happened to be particularly > powerful. But not the full abilities a god could provide.

That's how I understood it as well. In the base AD&D 1st Edition, you had a cleric and no other backstory. There wasn't a backstory to go with the game, it was just the base rules to be applied to any world. Then there were different worlds which came later in expansion sets.

In Forgotten Realms, I believe your cleric could get certain unique powers based on which god your priest followed. For example, if you followed the god of magic, you would gain the ability to cast minor spells as you gained levels.

I also seem to recall the same info about following a devil. I believe you could follow certain major devils (probably had to control their own "circle" of Hell) but that you actually took a hit to your powers. Because these beings were less powerful than gods, you got less powerful abilities.

I imagine this was much the same no matter what expansion you went with. You needed the expansions to get a backstory and fill-in for the "lore." It's was a bit of a strange situation. There were specific gods for each setting, but each setting had access to the same "planes" with Hell being one of those. The way I remember this being setup is that each setting had a different world but they all literally shared the same planes. A Dragonlance player might actually be able to meet a Forgotten Realms if they bumped into each other in the planes. I think this was all intentionally left a bit blurry because it wasn't fully fleshed out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Gary Gygax was a Christian. In February 1969, he wrote an article in _IFW Monthly_ explicitly stating he was a Christian and making an argument why Christians shouldn't celebrate Christmas; he justified his argument with Biblical sources. See [http://boingboing.net/2012/12/24/gary-gygax-explains- why-chr...](http://boingboing.net/2012/12/24/gary-gygax-explains-why- christ.html)

Original D&D included Christian symbolism: Clerics used holy water and a cross. Gygax's 1975's D&D Supplement I: GREYHAWK (page 34) states:

"All Vampires are affected by the cross, despite any former religious background, as it is sovereign against them."

Furthermore, the demons and devils in early D&D were presented as _adversaries_ , not as role models.

I started playing D&D in the early 80s. I went to Catholic grammar school. We were taught by priests and nuns. We played D&D in the schoolyard. Nobody discouraged us from playing.

I was also bullied quite a bit in grammar school and high school, and I think I would have gone nuts if I didn't have D&D as an outlet. D&D also got me interested in reading books and studying probability. D&D helped improve my grades from Cs and Ds to straight As. I eventually got a B.S. in math with a 4.0 GPA.

As a grown up, I played in a group DM'd by a fundamentalist Christian, who didn't see any conflict between his religious beliefs and fantasy role playing games.

</comment><comment><USER30> One of the various crimes that the media tried to tie to D&D was the murder of Lieth Von Stein. It became the subject of a few books and made-for-TV movies. Basically the guy's stepson and friends murdered him for insurance money/inheritance, and although they were really into D&D, the real vector (other than greed and malice) was LSD and coke.

One of the books about the case is called _Cruel Doubt_ [1] and in 1997, I listened to the audio book in a road trip with my parents (I was like 14). It's a really well-done book (skip the made-for-TV movie starring Blythe Danner and a 16-year old Gwyneth Paltrow), but it focused a lot on the D&D controversy, because that was so much a part of the D&D narrative.

Anyway, I share all this because a) the book is really good (I got the Kindle version a few years ago and re-read it for the first time in 15 years) and b), my own mother still harbors negative feelings about D&D because of how the book explained the controversy and the supposed associations between the game and the murder.

She'd missed the whole brouhaha in the 1980s, because she had two daughters and the only one who could ever be interested in D&D (me) was born in the early 80s, and thus a toddler during most of the media maelstrom.

Yet the narrative of that book (which again, really isn't against D&D and doesn't make it out to be a catalyst for the murder, beyond sharing the real fact that yes, the murderers did lots of LSD and played D&D all day instead of going to work or school), was enough for my mom to give me a lecture at 17 when I happened to go hang out with my then-boyfriend and his college friends who happened to be playing a tabletop game.

Anyway. This comment adds nothing to the discussion, I just wanted to plug _Cruel Doubt_ because it's a really good true crime book. And I associate it with helping corrupt my otherwise intelligent mother into believing a game was the product of the devil and evil. Don't worry, I set her straight.

[1]:[http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Doubt-Joe-McGinniss- ebook/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Doubt-Joe-McGinniss- ebook/dp/B008H7KH6A/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=)

</comment><comment><USER31> When I got into Dungeons and Dragons, I remember my mother getting worried about something she heard on the news about kids going and playing D&D-inspired make believe in sewers, and lecturing me at length about how I should never ever that.

We lived really far out in the country at the time. Nothing but wells and septic systems for 20 miles in any direction.

</comment><comment><USER32> While the idea of teenagers literally worshiping Satan was a moral panic, I suspect many Christians would find D&D incompatible with Christianity, given its emphasis on violence, personal power, and the occult.

<comment><USER23> Violence, personal power and the occult? You're going to find a lot more "violence" and "personal power" by switching on the TV or going to the library. Anyway, combat is often (depending on who you play with, but it has been my experience when I played tabletop) a very small part of a scenario.

As for "the occult" in D&D, come on. Throwing a die to check the damage of a fireball never turned anyone into Aleister Crowley.

<comment><USER23> The "violence" part is particularly ironic, considering the amount of God- sanctioned wholesale slaughter in the Bible. Maybe the Bible is incompatible with Christian beliefs as well ? :)

<comment><USER33> A large part of the Bible is incompatible with Christian beliefs. Then again, "Christian beliefs" isn't a well-defined term; it ranges from "there is some guy up there" to "gays are causing the hurricanes".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Replaces JavaScript – WebAssembly - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/young-coder/what-replaces-javascript-a6493b4e2d6e <comment><USER2> Only when it can access the DOM, which is more or less the point of the post, or when it can draw the whole window of the browser and handle resizes. Not that I like the latter option: HTML is so much easier to code than anything desktop or mobile I worked with in the last 30+ years.</comment>


A Lazy Evaluation – Why I Find Learning Haskell Hard - <AUTHOR> http://connolly.io/posts/lazy-evaluation/

<comment><USER2> I haven't ever done anything too significant in Haskell, but the Jekor Redo [1] videos are fantastic, and demonstrate the slow building up of more complicated things than "reverse this string." I haven't watched his xmonad [2] or pandoc [3] videos yet, but I would bet that they are highly worthwhile as well.

\- 1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ_nI9E9g0I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ_nI9E9g0I)

\- 2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63MpfyZUcrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63MpfyZUcrU)

\- 3: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCwG9ijQMuQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCwG9ijQMuQ)

</comment><comment><USER3> You may have seen this, but if you haven't, check out this video, 'John Carmack: Thoughts on Haskell':

[http://functionaltalks.org/2013/08/26/john-carmack- thoughts-...](http://functionaltalks.org/2013/08/26/john-carmack-thoughts-on- haskell/)

I it won't solve the problem you're having, but it's an interesting talk that's kind of related

The HN comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6278047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6278047)</comment>


Firefox 5 beta is now upgraded to release candidate - <AUTHOR> http://www.browsomatic.com/2011/06/firefox-5-release-candidate-is-now.html

<comment><USER2> With the release, will they be doing automatic updates for 4.0 users? I think at least 100 million people still need to upgrade to 4? It'll be great having 300-400 million Firefox users upgrading every 2 months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Firefox 5 beta users will be upgraded to release candidate. I am not sure for Firefox 4. On Firefox 5 final release(June 21) Firefox 3.5 users will be auto upgraded to Firefox 3.6. More details here [http://www.browsomatic.com/2011/05/mozilla-plans-to-kill- fir...](http://www.browsomatic.com/2011/05/mozilla-plans-to-kill- firefox-35-and.html)</comment></comment>


London Rent vs. London Salaries - <AUTHOR> http://johnmathews.eu/london <comment><USER2> The article misses the point about the standard of living in London.

It might seem strange that on someone's good sounding salary they can't make ends meet, but if you factor in all the nearby (<1hr walking or spending <£5 on public transport) stuff that's practically free and wonderful then on their salary they're still living one of the best goddamn lives in the world.

I live in South London, not within walking distance of any tube line, but I still have three cinemas, one major, two independent, near me. The cuisines of a huge swathe of the world, shops for things I did not know existed, and the world's major and up and coming acts performing in hundreds of locations that cost me little or nothing to get to (and often little to attend, the big museums are free, universities do tons of free stuff, the Royal Opera House and similar have ~£15 tickets, and I can ignore the cost of traveling to London).

This city is expensive if you look purely within the walls of your home, if you can get out into it, it's like having a comprehensive subscription to a better cultural network than you can imagine.

It's indeed true that prices are indeed inflated by the London-centric nature of a lot of the culture, and purely financial investments in property.

Apologies for sentence structure and formatting, this post impulsively written on my phone.

<comment><USER3> > they're still living one of the best goddamn lives in the world.

Thats very subjective. No easy access to mountains and proper outdoor sports. Not very friendly people. British weather. Much of your time is spent on the underground. So it really depends on what you value in life. (Personally I am not a fan of London).

<comment><USER4> I don't understand how you can simultaneously want to be able to access the mountains, but also be bothered by a little drizzle.

There's nothing wrong with the weather in Britain. It's got more character than the relentless bland sun of somewhere like California.

<comment><USER5> > There's nothing wrong with the weather in Britain. Seriously? What about the > constant grey sky?

Here a screenshot of a comparison I did some time ago to motivate ourselves to _leave_ london: [http://imgur.com/7tdwCoD](http://imgur.com/7tdwCoD)

<comment><USER4> What about it? Apart from garden parties, what does it actually stop you doing?

<comment><USER5> Vitamin D, for a start :)

<comment><USER4> Well that is true. But generally it really winds me up that people moan about the weather in the UK. You can do almost anything in drizzle that you can do in the sun, except for maybe outdoor parties. Sun all year is boring and texture-less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The average cost of a flat in London is 500k

House prices are horrible in London yes, but for transparency that's _central London_.

Prices get better (but still terrible) if you go further out. I just started looking at houses and for 500k you cant take a 40 minute tube journey twice a day and get a three bedroom house. With a yard.

The average room price at The Hilton is high as well. The solution isn't to sleep on the streets, it's to stay in a cheaper hotel.

<comment><USER7> > take a 40 minute tube journey twice a day

Having lived in London for a year and hearing daily talks about delayed and cancelled (not to mention full) trains from coworkers, this sounds dreamily optimistic, as if coming from a real estate agent. London property market, central or not, is horrible.

<comment><USER8> I used to travel from Bow to Westbourne Park and it wasn't that big an issue. Took 45-60 mins each way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This "trap" is connected to the Meditations on Moloch [0] for me. Moloch is the god of child sacrifice, the fiery furnace into which you can toss your babies in exchange for victory in war. In this case, in exchange for "a flat in a high income city". You do not literally sacrifice your babies, but in exchange for living there, you must put a wish to have babies aside, because all the double-income couples inflate the rents.

[0] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on- moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

</comment><comment><USER10> > This requires a higher than average salary from a graduate job, (which is > the life stage when people might reasonably start having children)...

Sorry, it worked this way in mid 20th century. Personally, I didn't even _think_ of having a child before 32, and when it happened, it was still financially challenging.

In Geneva, where I live, the mediab age of the first childbirth is 35.

<comment><USER11> This trend leads to the inevitable question of when the age of being prepared financially for children will cross the point of being unable to bear children physically.

Fifty years ago it was common to have children around eighteen, thirty years ago it was common to have children around twenty five, and now it feels like thirty five is the normal.

This begs the question whether children will be possible before forty five within twenty years, and at that age bearing children becomes a major risk.

Women in large Chinese cities are already feeling unable to balance the pressure of a career and parenthood, opting to not have children at all, or having them very late into adulthood.

<comment><USER10> Prenatal screening, extracorporal, adoption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recommend the article that made the rounds on HN a few weeks ago. It argued that housing as an investment and affordable housing are opposing goals. You can't have both.

If London were to make housing affordable - a worthy goal - it would no longer be a good investment. The author seems to want both.

In other words, if you could afford the down payment, you wouldn't want to.

<comment><USER13> People in the UK are obsessed with housing and property, it's a national pastime.

To be fair, the housing market has been propped up by successive UK governments for years, it's the only thing they have left and it's the only aspiration they try to goad the population into achieving.

<comment><USER14> > obsessed with housing and property, it's a national pastime.

Are you trying to say that the obsession with housing is some how trivial?

I would have thought the lack of land and houses probably prop up the housing market more than the government..

<comment><USER13> Not trivial, I'd say it in the sense that's it's fundamentally ingrained into our culture.

Additionally renters are almost treated like second class citizens, most rental contracts are short (12 months), real estate agent fees are exorbitant and clauses in rental contracts are designed specifically to protect and nurture the landlords investment, i.e. you cannot redecorate, put pictures up, own pets etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> London is shocking price wise...I could never contemplate working there although I once did. I work in Belfast Northern Ireland, earn approx £57k, my spacious detached house with garden and tranquility 20 mins train commute from the office costs around £180K... So there is no financial way I would ever go to London...It seems crazy and illogical to me to work there.. nice place to visit however!

<comment><USER16> isn't it great that we have reached the times when we can put Belfast and tranquility in one sentence.

<comment><USER15> yeah, Belfast has been tranquil for a long time, some 20 years or more, the media perception always inflated the reality even in the bad old days..

the good thing is, that in the ensuing time, the city has become alot more vibrant, the youthful generation are now not as shackled with the past. Belfast feels fresh, and its a town with a great industrial and innovative past. Its about time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm in the exact situation as OP. As a result, I'm moving to lower cost area and continue as a remote worker. Shameless plug: [https://github.com/lukasz- madon/awesome-remote-job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

20% down payment + stamp duty tax is roughly 130k. There is also a nonzero risk of the property bubble. Only Hong Kong is worse in terms of property purchasing power for average salary.

There are serval reasons for high prices:

\- Market is heavy regulated.

\- UK doesn't have any land and estate tax.

\- Developers oligopoly is hoarding the land to keep the prices.

\- Foreign investor are using properties as a insurance for rainy days.

\- Interest rates are low and inflation is high, so people are pumping money into real estate market.

\- Councils cannot build council housing any more.

\- Bank of England schemes to buy.

It's an unfortunate situation. Extreme misallocation of capital which is bound to cause problems in the future. Money don't flow to companies and productive investments, hence there is no growth and the wages are stagnant. What is more, it makes it really expensive to start a company.

What's the solution? 1% estate tax with 80% discount if you pay taxes in UK (British Columbia passed a new property tax and it works well for them[1]). For an average person there would be no change - they would pay estate tax instead of council tax directly or indirectly. That would cause 25-30% price drop in London[2]. Why government won't do it? It would piss off a lot of powerful people which own real estate. Significant portion of the population has bought properties to rent and that price drop could make them go bankrupt. This is an unsolvable problem given the extreme divide in British society, since the Brexit vote. There won't be enough political will to pass the laws.

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12160680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12160680) [2] - my estimation given other big cities salary to price ratio.

<comment><USER18> > UK doesn't have any land and estate tax.

I don't know what do I pay then under the label of Council Tax. It is £800+ pa for a one-bedroom flat.

<comment><USER19> Council Tax is more like a property tax, it's roughly based on the value of your property. Not your property because you're a renter? Too bad, the property tax is charged directly to you, the occupant! ;) (Maybe it's more like an occupancy tax that pays for some of the services your local council provides.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am curious. Where on the planet is it currently attractive to work and reasonable cheap to live?

London, San Francisco etc. are expensive because of the wellknown opportunities there; are there really any places where you can have it both ways - inexpensive and filled with well-paid jobs?

<comment><USER21> Yes please. Affordable living, universal healthcare, reasonable climate. Where?

<comment><USER22> I wanted to say Berlin until you got to the climate part...

<comment><USER21> I'm in Stockholm at the moment so Berlin half-ticks my 3rd box :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> None of this sounds new to me, even if I lived in London for just four months. But the post made me curious about tax brackets in the UK.

So... perhaps this is partially OT, but: according to a couple sources [1,2], income tax at £50k/year is just 17-18%, and National Insurance another 9%. This makes the total "tax bracket" around 27%. Even if the author means that 50k is his _net_ salary, the same sources put the tax bracket at just 32% [3]. Why does the author say his tax bracket is around 40%? Are those sources unreliable? Are they missing some of the taxes?

[1]: [http://www.netsalarycalculator.co.uk/50000-after- tax/](http://www.netsalarycalculator.co.uk/50000-after-tax/)

[2]: [https://www.incometaxcalculator.org.uk/?ingr=50000](https://www.incometaxcalculator.org.uk/?ingr=50000)

[3]: [http://www.netsalarycalculator.co.uk/74000-after- tax/](http://www.netsalarycalculator.co.uk/74000-after-tax/)

<comment><USER24> If you make 50k your effective income tax + NI tax is about 33%. If you take other taxes (council tax, VAT, stamp duty etc.) Total effective taxation is around 50%.

Now the dividend tax is 15% (in the best case scenario you can always try funnelling money through Man Island or other tax heaven). There is no land tax and estate tax.

<comment><USER18> Divident tax is after you paid 20% corporate tax. At the end you probably save the NI, but you have many other charges (accounting, time spent on paperwork, business rates, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Lesson learned: Don't get children.

<comment><USER26> You're getting downvoted for being flippant but your point is valid. Turns out this family made a big life choice that they couldn't afford and now the reality is setting in, if you can't make ends meet on that salary your expenses need to be reduced, so move. No one deserves to live in London, if it's too expensive move or structure your life in a way that is affordable. Hence why I choose to live in the North East of the UK (and before people say "the salaries are lower" \- no they are not for engineering)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _Salaries and living expenses have become really disconnected._

These are inherently disconnected. Salary is related to the value of an employee's labour. In the contemporary US, the value of a software developer is high. In that same place, the value of unskilled or low-skilled labour is below the federal minimum wage in a lot of cases.

Living expenses are related to the costs of real estate, food, transportation, etc. Some of these things are highly labour intensive so their costs are related to the cost of labour. Things which are not labour intensive have their prices dominated by unrelated supply and demand issues. Real estate is not labour intensive. A single landlord can probably handle dozens of properties.

<comment><USER28> > Real estate is not labour intensive. A single landlord can probably handle > dozens of properties.

I can only suspect you don't own property that you rent out. Tenants of just one flat, if demanding and complaining enough, can easily burden a landlord beyond any extent he considers acceptable. Any landlord whose portfolio extends into the dozens of properties will almost certainly have contracted all the actual work out to an agency with its own staff of multiple people.

<comment><USER29> It's still true though: the agency with multiple full time staff members probably handles hundreds of properties, or has other lines of business as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sadly, Berlin ( although still cheap ) will match the same equation pretty quickly.

Me & gf pay ~900 Euro for top-central ( Rosenthaler platz ) 2 rooms apartment and that's because we took it 3 years ago. Now, since we also talk about kids, we will probably have to pay 1.5k for 3 rooms located ~40 minutes from Mitte. Still not bad, but that's if we hurry up. Rent increase is around 10% per year, which does not match at all the salary increase rate.

Talking with friends, we are wondering how people such as bakery-owners, taxi- drivers, delivery / DHL employees work it out!

</comment><comment><USER31> Yeah, I've lived in London for two years now and I'm planning to move to Birmingham with the end of my current lease. ~£600-700/mo for a nice 1 bedroom flat:

[http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to- rent/find.html?search...](http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to- rent/find.html?searchType=RENT&locationIdentifier=REGION%5E94028&insId=1&radius=0.0&minPrice=&maxPrice=&minBedrooms=&maxBedrooms=1&displayPropertyType=flats&maxDaysSinceAdded=&sortByPriceDescending=&_includeLetAgreed=on&primaryDisplayPropertyType=&secondaryDisplayPropertyType=&oldDisplayPropertyType=&oldPrimaryDisplayPropertyType=&letType=&letFurnishType=&houseFlatShare=false)

It will cut my rent in half which would allow me to travel a lot more and save up for a deposit as well - with an average price of £175k for a 1 bed flat in the city centre.

Birmingham Airport is just 10mins by train from the centre and costs like £2.50! Lots of airlines and destinations. Cheap flights within Europe with the budget airlines or even to Asia via hubs like Dubai with Emirates.

I'm self employed, work from home and I don't have a child yet - which makes it a lot easier to move.

Parts of London are lovely but like you said, unless you own a property or your household income is a few times the average UK salary - it doesn't make much financial sense to live there.

</comment><comment><USER32> A 5% deposit is not actually available from a lot of lenders. In some cases, a new build apartment is only offered at 20%, sometimes even a 25% deposit is needed. Even if you do get a mortgage with a 5% deposit, it will probably be on a new build, which may have a much higher price that nearby property that isn't.

It is true that most of the banks expect you to have a backer, parents, recent inheritance etc. I had a mortgage advisor that was surprised that I didn't have such a situation, which shows the state of those buying in London right now.

Most of the people I know under 30 that have recently bought, had such a circumstance through inheritance, with large deposits going down. A 500k, 2 bedroom flat, with a 100k deposit can have a mortgage of £1000 a month. If you were to rent the same flat, you would most likely play £2000 a month.

The situation that a lot of people haven't talked about is single people attempting to buy, probably because it almost never happens anymore. Even at a modest £250k, this still will require a lot of cash in the bank and high salary, so single people are now stuck with renting until they meet someone.

To those who are wondering why you would buy central London at all, its definitely down to lifestyle. If you go out a lot in the city, getting a uber home is the difference between £15 and £50. The ability to walk to work for some people is also extremely important, as they have a feeling that when they do marry and have kids, they will move out to the suburbs and take a 40 minute train every day.

</comment><comment><USER33> I was looking at the same thing in SF recently. Vs Chicago, cost of living is 50% higher but salaries are only 25% higher.

</comment><comment><USER34> London has an incredible transportation system, why buy in some central neighborhood? Accepting a 30 minute train ride will do wonders for your buying power, and your ability to save. It's the classic conundrum. You want a place close in, cheap, and lots of space: choose two.

<comment><USER35> Spoken like someone who has never commuted on the tube... Season tickets for any London public transport are eyewateringly expensive, and you get to stand in a sweat-box for the pleasure.

Folks prefer to live centrally to minimise their tube-time, although it's always been a mystery to me as to why virtually nobody lives in the City, apart from classic chickens and eggs arguments re: services (it's a graveyard at night and weekend).

There is no cheap within an hour of the city. There is no space within an hour of the city - just endless very expensive suburbia.

<comment><USER13> The tube is a lot of money sure, but it's nothing in comparison to commuter trains from other towns/cities.

For example a season ticket from St Albans, a 25-30 minute or so train ride into the city costs £400+ a month

<comment><USER35> Yeah, I know folks who commute in from Bath, Peterborough, etc., and it's on the order of £30k a year for the pass.

And they wonder why the traffic is shit on the westway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36>
       the value of the property
       increases over time

Is this a law of nature?

<comment><USER37> I'd rather say the value of the property is related to human population. Human population generally keeps growing.

<comment><USER38> As a society, we should address this. I'm more a fan of spreading ourselves across the cosmos and stepping off the planet than say mandated controls here, but it is something we should be discussing. There is a point in time where there isn't enough world for all the people on the world to live a moral life. (and its odd we seem comfortable in many ways that "War" is this answer..)

<comment><USER39> Virtually everyone alive now is going to die on this planet, and their children, and their children's children. It's vaguely possible that someday we may find a place elsewhere for future generations to destroy eventually also, But no more than a tiny few are going to get to go; it will make no difference to the people left behind. We will have to continue to struggle on with what we have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Looking on some London IT job offers in London: [https://jobsquery.it/jobs;page=1;tags=;sortBy=publishedAt%3A...](https://jobsquery.it/jobs;page=1;tags=;sortBy=publishedAt%3Adesc;query=;location=London%2C%20UK)

Average salary is about $70k / year:

[https://jobsquery.it/map;bounds=%7B%22south%22%3A49.82321169...](https://jobsquery.it/map;bounds=%7B%22south%22%3A49.82321169878792%2C%22west%22%3A-4.042779450488297%2C%22north%22%3A52.858621861394546%2C%22east%22%3A4.614447112011703%7D)

</comment><comment><USER41> It seems that a lot of people feel essentially forced to take out a mortgage in order to avoid the high cost of rent.

The fact that they feel forced into it worries me. Maybe the demand for London property is partly artificial. I think that a lot of people who live in very big cities just want to live there temporarily to earn cash and then get out and retire somewhere else.

Personally, I don't want to take a mortgage because I'm afraid that house prices will crash when the next financial crisis comes along.

<comment><USER13> > It seems that a lot of people feel essentially forced to take out a mortgage > in order to avoid the high cost of rent.

Assuming you can get a mortgage in the first place, even just for a modest flat at £250k the banks would probably require you to have an income of £60-£70k, or a hefty deposit

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I had my first child in London at 26. It was very tough financially, but it is possible renting in travelzone 3. I think I was making £40k at the time and we were a single-income family.

Something we didn't expect was that it would be so difficult to meet other parents our age. Most of the time we were hanging out with people 10-20 years older than us, because those were the only other parents we could find. Not that that was a bad thing, though. We made some lovely friends!

</comment><comment><USER43> Leave London? You said yourself that almost anywhere else would be a better financial proposition. Why not move?

<comment><USER44> From his "About" page: _I'm now actively seeking opportunities to move me and my family somewhere overseas._

<comment><USER45> I suspect he could easily double his salary in the US, and if outside SF/NYC, would have lower cost of living. Health care and secondary education would be increased costs, but a lot of that would be addressed by the right employer and right location.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why is both parents working always not an option in cases like this? Here he actually touches upon it, but dismisses it saying that it will be more expensive that way. Are these people wanting a personal nanny for their kid or is it really that expensive with kindergarten?

<comment><USER47> Kindergarten is expensive, a pretty normal nursery that can cover working hours will soak up pretty much all of the earning potential of the person who is paid the least in the relationship. Nevertheless, it's something you can do with one child, but it won't make the finances much easier. If you have two pre-school children, you're back in the exact situation described.

The article is pretty accurate - a single earner providing for a family and renting in London will not find it easy if they're earning less than 90k (much over the average). On the plus side, once the children are school age, costs go down, and it becomes more possible to be a 2 income family again. You can think of it as 3 years of difficulty but then it'll get bearable again.

<comment><USER46> Maybe because it's subsided by the government, but I just checked and here in Oslo 12 months of kindergarten would be lower than the average monthly salary. So going back to work will make economic sense after the first month.

I think it's a loss when women leave the workforce after having a baby. (Or, that they _have to_ )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> When I look at the HN jobs postings every month nearly everything from the UK is in London. I would have thought these companies could gain a recruitment advantage by moving further out where property is cheaper.

<comment><USER49> The further-out jobs probably don't have a recruiting problem. Just the central jobs because... experienced and older folks want/have the cheaper properties and are leaving the central jobs.

Similar problem in Toronto Canada... lots of people start out their careers in the city, then leave with their experience to outerlying areas with more realistic real estate (health care IT).

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The average cost of a flat in San Francisco was over $1mm so almost twice that of London. In my.last visit I thought about moving because the deals seemed so good compared to the Bay.

<comment><USER51> Having lived in both for a few years each I can definitely say that SF is cheaper, at least on a per-sqft basis. You also earn twice as much in SF (plus the equity lottery).

That all said: SF certainly ain't no London. I'd still pick London any day of the week.

<comment><USER52> > That all said: SF certainly ain't no London. I'd still pick London any day > of the week.

Why's that? I've been working in London for a month and was looking into SF for next year. (So far I really like London.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Is one year paid maternity/paternal leave normal in the UK/EU?

In the US it's only a few weeks, maybe a few months if at a really good company.

<comment><USER54> In DE it's something like 4+ months for each parent and one parent can gift their time to the other. It does not depend on the insurance of the company or some silliness like this. However, if you are self employeed you do not get this. Also on top parents get some 100+ eu a month per child regardless of employement, for X number of years.

Perhaps of interest:

[https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/length-of-maternity- leave-p...](https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/length-of-maternity-leave- parental-leave-and-paid-father-specific-leave.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> A part of this problem is that people want to live in nice and secure neighborhoods. If you walk around the city you see plenty of people that don't look affluent enough to worry about 40% tax. These people either got very lucky or live in the neighborhoods you don't want to live. Notorious for crime, immigrants, ugly or bad housing and/or bad public schools.

You basically pay for the privilege to live with other rich people so you don't have to deal with that. Naturally that's expensive.

<comment><USER4> > bad public schools

Huh? Do you really get 'bad' public schools?

<comment><USER56> I don't think anybody outside of the UK would understand the term 'public school' to mean anything other than a state school.

<comment><USER55> Public versus private schools indeed. Public schools can be quite good but it depends on the quality of the students and teachers that are willing to work there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> And yet, London has a population of over 8 million. How do they stay afloat?

<comment><USER58> Firstly, most younger people do not buy property, they simply rent. Secondly, you share with more people. In the article they reference a single bedroom flat at min £1000 a month which is about right. But that's the most expensive way to live. I share with 3 others and on average we pay about 500 each. This is for a nice enough flat in zone 2 (zone 1 is generally for the very wealthy).

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> another good comparison would be the size of london vs the population of UK, compared to rents

e.g supply and demand, assuming demand is linear with UK population size

</comment><comment><USER60> Nothing soured me on "the economic establishment" more than hearing it said over and over and over and over again that rent control is terrible and bad and basically a way to destroy a city.

All while living in various rent-controlled apartments in Montreal, where even people who are working modest jobs get to live happy lives.

<comment><USER61> Rent control is terrible because it lowers supply. The correct solution is increase supply by building more.

<comment><USER60> An "econ 101" explanation plastered all over as ultimate explainer, even in the face of healthy, happy rent-controlled cities.

<comment><USER61> Which cities would that be?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> 40% income tax is abhorrent.

<comment><USER15> It's 40% on earnings above around 45K, below that it's 20%

<comment><USER63> That is still extremely high depending on where you are coming from. The US also uses a marginal tax system and the highest bracket is 39.6% and starts at ~$425k (varies based on how you are filing). ~$38-90k bracket is 25%.

<comment><USER64> You don't pay any tax on the first 11500 either.

So on 44999 You'd be paying 20% of (44999 - 11500) so 6700 on 44999 (effective rate been 14.8%).

<comment><USER15> exactly... its not that bad! includes free healthcare! and in northern ireland, free prescriptions!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> To make an informed decision before getting into such situations, along with you family, I really recommend using numbeo.com</comment>


PyPy2.7 and PyPy3.5 v5.10 dual release - <AUTHOR> https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2017/12/pypy27-and-pypy35-v510-dual-release.html <comment><USER2> Yay, finally a Pypy3.5 release with a binary for Windows. This was basically the final thing I've been missing in Python 3 since switching from 2.

<comment><USER3> please let the team know how it goes. PyPy windows needs more feedback and contributors</comment></comment>