Arrogant Anti-virus Doesn't Appreciate Your Choices - <AUTHOR> http://rants.effu.se/2013/03/Arrogant-Anti-virus-Doesn%27t-Appreciate-Your-Choices <comment><USER2> AV software bothers me so much. It's not just that it's generally ineffective. It's that when you bother dissecting it, you usually find it make users less safe (e.g. non ASLR/NX injected binaries, dangerous root certs, vulnerable hooks and format handlers, etc.). That said, Avast has caused me unique pain, and my personal experience correlates with the author's.

Chrome's sandbox blocks all access to system resources, so it's a very bad idea to inject hooks into our sandboxed processes, because they usually just break. So, we often have to use the sandbox's loader hooking mechanism to block third-party DLL hooks that are known to cause crashes (ie. "security" software and other process-hooking utilities). Of course, Avast shows up regularly as a crasher, so eventually I added their DLLs to the block-list and then tried to start Chrome.

So, imagine my surprise when blocking the offending Avast DLLs breaks Chrome by preventing all content--even internal content--from loading. I dig into it a bit more and find that Avast is hanging all our sandboxed processes, because their system-level hooking is so invasive that they won't let any process run if their injected DLL hooks don't attach. At that point I was forced to give up, because there's not much you can reasonably do against such recklessly invasive software already present on the system. It's really not very different from malware.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft Security Essentials does so much right. When they put their mind into it, Microsoft really does great software.

<comment><USER4> You have to take into account that Microsoft can modify their own OS and implement what needs to be done in a proper way. On the other hand, third- party vendors can only use the public interfaces exposed by the OS, or resort to unreliable and/or undocumented methods that may break at any time.

There probably is no solution to that, any third-party software that needs tights integration with the OS is going to have that problem.

<comment><USER3> MSE for windows XP had no associated patch or service pack, was using the same api as every other AV out there, and was about a thousand time better.

One could argue Microsoft doesn't need to turn a profit so they can afford to be less intrusive, but the truth is that I would pay for MSE. I wouldn't pay for any of the others.

<comment><USER5> _a thousand times better_

I was under the impression that MSE routinely did OK in AV benchmarks and rarely even ever held the top spot. How is it a thousand times better?

Or does it's ability to keep you safe not really factor into your analysis of the software?

<comment><USER3> To be honest with you, my point of view is that no antivirus is going to protect me 100%, I always have to care about what I open, where it's coming from, ...

What I want from my AV then, is to catch the most obvious (and thus numerous) ones, and do so in a way that doesn't bother me. MSE just doesn't get in the way. It updates silently. It scans silently. It detects silently, ask you for something but take the safe course by default. You are in a full screen app ? It doesn't crash everything trying to take control, it just deals with the threat and show a red icon in the tray.

It doesn't make my computer safer than the other, but it makes me lose way less time when it does its job.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough, I use Lavasoft because its free version is incredibly well featured and it routinely outperforms MSE in AV tests.

I'm just confused by all of the mad-love for MSE. It's good, but I never thought it was the best myself, and I've not seen any objective reasoning for calling it the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't get it. You use an Anti-Virus software to protect you from threats, a common threat vector is email, so the software scans emails to detect such threats. All consideration of how well that actually works aside, _it's doing exactly what you wanted it to do_.

The software needs elevated privileges to do that, and you granted them. You have given it the keys to the castle and now you complain it's using them to install an extra certificate? That might come as a shocker to you, _but all security is compromised if the system ensuring it is_. They don't have to install that certificate; they can patch software and APIs all day and it wouldn't show up in any fancy GUI. You don't have to break the crypto or MITM it if you have exclusive control over the software performing it. Nobody tries to break disk encryption; they sneak into your room and replace the TrueCrypt bootloader on your laptop with one that looks the same but phishes the password.

<comment><USER7> You're missing the point. The author can understand it doing these things by default. But it appears to be regularly loosing / ignoring his opt-out.

Something with full privileges, ignoring your specified preferences? That's far worse than something that has them by default but allows you to change it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's unfortunate that more people don't understand just how serious a breach it is to install special root certificates. This actually does a complete home run around the entirety of web-based security.

It's very close to having every physical lock sold by a company having a special key that can open all of the locks they sell. Even if you trust that company to buy your lock from them, it's going much too far in allowing them to open up your safe whenever they want to.

<comment><USER9> Sure, if you don't trust your AV. But if you don't trust your AV, you've already got problems.

<comment><USER10> I think there's a difference between not trusting an AV, and not trusting that the humans who created it didn't make any mistakes. By assuming that your AV is perfect and can in no way be compromised is a dangerous assumption, because if it fails even the tiniest bit, you are royally screwed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I haven't used any antivirus software in years, IMHO they're just annoying and reduce performance (used to use NOD32 until 2007, loved it back then). Here is what I do instead:

      - surf the web consciously
      - do not open any email attachments from unknown senders (seriously, it's 2013, who does that anymore?)
      - do not open any URLs from unknown senders (same as above)
      - disable unnecessary browser plugins (i.e. everything but Flash)
      - use NoScript-like browser addons
      - only run executables I 'trust' (tough one, I know)
      - run executables I do not 'trust' in sandbox or VM
      - properly configured router firewall settings
      - * software firewall to monitor & block/allow incoming *and outgoing* connections (Comodo Firewall)
      - * work with a user that does not have root/admin privileges (*Power User* privileges are sufficient for daily work)

Esp. the last two points are important and unusual. This requires a certain level of knowledge about IT, computers and some common sense, though.

If I really need to check a file for malware I use webtools like <http://virusscan.jotti.org>

<comment><USER12> What you described is similar to my process (though on Windows I always install MSE now too), but it's important to acknowledge the limitations of such an approach. For example:

        - do not open any email attachments from unknown senders (seriously, it's 2013, who does that anymore?)
        - do not open any URLs from unknown senders (same as above)

These only work as longs as no one you know gets hacked. You're vulnerable as much as the weakest person in your trusted network, and I guarantee others in your network aren't as careful as you. So it's not just avoiding URLs and attachments from unknown senders, it's avoiding URLs and attachments even from people you know and trust that you weren't expecting them to send you. I've come really close before to clicking links from friends that said something along the lines of "Holy crap, this is you", which is actually sometimes expected because I have friends who see articles or pictures written about or by me.

<comment><USER11> True, even mail from known senders has to be dealt with care as well.

        "holy crap, this is you"

This scam could be avoided easily by checking the links actual URL before clicking on it. And even if you click and end up with some malware infected website, disabling all unnecessary and insecure browser plugins and using NoScript should be enough protection. If it's not, the restricted privileges hinder the malware from doing serious damage (e.g. rewriting/deleting system files).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have recently purchased Avast and I regret it. While free version serves as an anti virus well, paid version does all kind of strange things with system. It made Wi-Fi stop working under Windows 8, rendered OpenVPN drivers uninstallable and what not.

Anyone with a good AV suggestion? I want something light on system that has Firewall as well(can go for separate Firewall as well), free options preferred.

<comment><USER14> If you have W8. why don't you just stick with what is built in? There is really no need to have AV software on W8

<comment><USER15> I don't know why this was downvoted. Windows 8 comes with Microsoft Security Essentials (rebranded back to "Windows Defender"), Windows Firewall, and Windows Smart-screen Filter all set up by default. Additionally, every browser (including IE10) now does its own phishing/malware site flagging protection.

Together, that's about the sum of what AV packages provide you--so I don't really see the need for one any more, as long as you leave all the defaults on.

<comment><USER16> Further reading on this: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/15/protecting- you...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/15/protecting-you-from- malware.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Avast also installs plugins on every single kind of browser you have to monitor urls and the newest version now has a remote support agent I assume to help fix problems but remote control in an anti-virus product? What could possibly go wrong.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've never understood why you'd want an antivirus snooping on your email. Assuming you have an up-to-date email client that doesn't auto-execute attachments, and a filesystem scanner that runs on file save, what value does this intrusion add?

</comment><comment><USER19> It is amazing the level of trust we give anti-virus on windows. By its very nature it needs access that you would not want a user level program to have.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone have the text ? The site seems down.

<comment><USER21> [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&biw=...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&biw=1680&bih=952&sclient=psy- ab&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Frants.effu.se%2F2013%2F03%2FArrogant-Anti-virus- Doesn%2527t-Appreciate-Your- Choices&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Frants.effu.se%2F2013%2F03%2FArrogant-Anti- virus-Doesn%2527t-Appreciate-Your- Choices&gs_l=hp.3...12661.13554.1.138126.96.36.199.0.0.2.141.550.0j5.5.0.les%3Bcpsugrccgaiagame..0.1...1.1.6.psy- ab.FR_qLBMDObQ&pbx=1)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have frameworks taken over? - <AUTHOR>

It seams like web app/services nowadays are always built on top of something, be it Ruby on Rails, Django, Sinatra etc.<p>Does anyone write their apps from scratch anymore? <comment><USER2> Well, normally frameworks give you for free a standard set of practices that make it easier to build a secure and maintainable application, so it's normal that web development is being moved to frameworks.

I find that most web applications or websites built from scratch, normally in PHP, to be written by amateur developers that have little knowledge of security, maintainability, best practices, database design, etc.

<comment><USER3> Right it's the concept of "standing on the shoulders of giants" While there is educational value in writing a web app from scratch, if it offers no core value to your product you are not working in the best interest of the project. A lot of developers go through a "not invented here" stage where they write everything, usually this is a mark of immaturity of the developers part. Understanding and leveraging frameworks helps the industry evolve. If we take the automotive industry for example (because everyone loves a car analogy), at one time there where all kinds of fuel systems and everyone built their own fuel system for engines. Eventually the market consolidated on best practices and companies like Bosch packaged up those best practices into systems like the Common Rail. Now when a car manufacturer designs a new car they generally build on the framework of the Common Rail for their fuel system. Further the entire power-plant is usually an off the shelf framework that they utilize in their design. This helps deliver a new product on a proven and tested framework for powering it.</comment></comment>


Basic Survival Methods in R - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pavopax/gists/blob/master/survival-in-R.md <comment><USER2> Here is a great application of using Survival Analysis in p2p lending.

[http://blog.lendingrobot.com/research/predicting-the- number-...](http://blog.lendingrobot.com/research/predicting-the-number-of- payments-in-peer-lending/)

I built a model in R using this method.

</comment><comment><USER3> Survival methods are very versatile, offer great insights and can be extended.

These are just basic statistics, and quite old methods too (Cox proportional hazards) but still extremely handy to know and use in 2017. I have been learning them since this fall. I haven't been disappointed.

However, for survival analysis, I personally use SAS at the moment.

Its proc phreg offers many weighting options out of the box. I have been warned R packages currently require more elbow grease. It seems easier to learn this way, with "training wheels".

I created a custom made bridge to integrate the ODS output with Rstudio (sasmarkdown didn't cut it for me) but I will be happy to go back to vanilla R once I have everything clear in my head!

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends what you are familiar with. Once you learn tidyverse in R, you won't want to go back to SAS.

But initially, if you have say 20 years of SAS, then yea, SAS will be easier for you and it may or may not be worth switching to R.

<comment><USER3> I have not that much experience with SAS. I first played with it for 6 months several years ago, then again for 3 months a few years ago in very specific jobs (what fun it is to be cleaning data with a pure SAS proc instead of using perl - ouch!)

I have spent much more time with R, but this class is taught with SAS and it objectively shows some advantages that SAS still has today - in the case I was talking about, if you don't want just a log rank test but something more exotic without writing any code, SAS just has it.

Considering how SAS refuses to die, it is interesting to learn with it, before finding a way to do the same in R, as I am likely to encounter some SAS code again!

But in a few weeks, I plan to recode all the examples I see in pure R.

<comment><USER4> Ugh, I hate SAS. So much of your time spent on SAS is spent on exactly that: the idiosyncracies of SAS (why is input labeled "cards", professor? Oh, because folks have been working on SAS in one way or another since data was still using punch cards...).

R does take more work, but at least it's with generalizable skills. I detest spending my time learning something that can only be used in its narrow niche.

<comment><USER3> Alternatively, narrow niches offer many other possibilities for selling skills :-)

<comment><USER4> Fair, but I think "statistician with a strong general programming bsckground" is actually less common than "statistician with a strong SAS background." Its narrow, but common in that niche.

<comment><USER3> Indeed!

BTW I just submitted a link to show HN how I include SAS code inside Rstudio. It is a bit ugly but it does the job. If you still need to do some SAS it could be helpful to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read the title as meaning "Survival Guide to R" which would imply a much broader scope that what was presented on survival analysis. :)

<comment><USER6> "I left stringsAsFactors=True and survived to tell the tale!"

<comment><USER7> 'True' not 'TRUE'? Outed, Pythonista!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I honestly thought this was going to be a basic howto about how to survive using R, perhaps aimed at Pandas users or other such sensitive souls.

</comment><comment><USER9> Have to say that for once I prefer the base R style graphs. There's something so old school scientific about them.

<comment><USER10> You can customize R graphs anyway to make them look exactly the way you want (especially with ggplot).</comment></comment>


Dangers of Internet-facing CMSes - <AUTHOR> http://www.df.id.au/dangers-of-internet-facing-cmses/

<comment><USER2> The internet has struggled for years to become dynamic and we want to make it static all over again ?

I am sorry but I can't agree with this.

Caching is a different thing though...</comment>


Ask HN: I'm non-technical, is Dev BootCamp a good idea? - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in product management, but I don't have a technical background. I came across Dev Bootcamp and I think its a good way to get the technical exposure. Any feedback from someone that is in product management? <comment><USER2> 1\. I know a few people who are in PM roles, some who've been a PM at multiple companies including startups and corporations alike that are non-technical. Being technical certainly helps but there are roles there that exist for non- technical folks as well. (These are in Silicon Valley/SF)

2\. Base on people I know that have went through DevBootcamp, its certainly a good introduction if you have an interest in programming. But from what I've seen, people who graduate (that I know) while can code, still need quite a bit of help. I guess if the goal is to be a PM where you aren't writing code if that is a requirement, it would be a good fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I am looking more for an introduction to programming so perhaps Dev Bootcamp does make sense. I feel that it can't hurt to have a general understanding of coding when trying to get a role as a PM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you go in with the goal of not learning to code, you will be very disappointed. If you go in with an open mind, you'll likely learn a thing or two.</comment>


Dow Tumbles Over 1,100 Points in Biggest Point-Drop Ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/asia-pacific-stocks-fall-to-kick-off-the-week-1517790854 <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16311632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16311632).</comment>


Ask HN: How to land an internship? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Step one: write _something_ about yourself and what you're looking for.</comment>


Seedcamp London 2011 Winners announced - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seedcamp.com/2011/02/seedcamp-london-2011-winners.html

<comment><USER2> First off congratulations to the winners.

I have a question about SeedCamp around the signalling effect by participating.

So with SeedCamp's model that a round of startup get to go through their program but only a few get funded. What happens to the startups that don't get funded, are they negatively signaled? Almost like how if your current investors don't follow on the next round and they have the money, then it signals to the market that something is very wrong.

<comment><USER3> I work at Seedcamp, our view on this:

\- We see more than 200 companies a year at Seedcamp Events. A lot of them get external funding, and very often from people they have met at one of the events. I think that's the strongest "no" you can have. \- Other accelerators are also quite open about their process, and on hackernews you see many startups telling their story about how they did not make it through. \- Often, companies use the feedback, advice, and all of the connections they made during the day for a change in their business model or focus. In my opinion, that's the best confirmation of the value of these events (you see Ben from Geomium agrees).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well done to all of the winners. We (Geomium) got so much out of just taking part, and I know the other teams I spoke to did too! I'd definitely encourage other startups to apply.

</comment><comment><USER5> Congratulations to everybody who participated. A lot of courage is needed and you all deserve an applause.

I'm especially thrilled for <http://www.vox.io>, which are turning out to be a serious contender in the online telephony business.

Also <http://www.psykopaint.com/> is just cool.

Disclaimer: This is my first post. Provoked only by an awesome winning team being from Slovenia, which is my home too.

<comment><USER6> Thanks Jure, appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe it is just me, but I am really uncomfortable with the term "winners"? What did they win? Who "lost"?

<comment><USER4> They "won" EUR50,000 investment for an 8-10% steak in their company, and will participate in the Seedcamp US trip, and Seedcamp week.

Those that "lost" are the 17 other startups that participated in the Seedcamp event, but didn't get investment.

<comment><USER8> they won a chance to take part in SC week, the winners of which will win 50k, afaik

<comment><USER4> That changed this year. Winners of MiniSeedcamp London and NY get funding right after the event, rather than after Seedcamp week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, another winner for Slovenia. We're really killing it!

Congratz to the vox.io guys and tomazstolfa, if you happen to be on HN, congratz to you too!

<comment><USER6> Thanks!</comment></comment>


China's first manned docking in orbit is a success - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/06/18/chinas-first-manned-docking-of-space-module-is-a-success-and-a-first-step/

<comment><USER2> Cool, the more competition, the better for the entire world! Hopefully, humanity is back on track to finally go out there and start the next stage of human civilization. :)</comment>


Remember to Thank Your Star Players - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/business/11corner.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> _Also, one of our rituals that we start every executive staff meeting with is sharing one personal and one professional thing occupying our minds._

Aaaaaaargh (runs away in horror). Is this an executive staff meeting or an AA meeting?

<comment><USER3> It's a totalitarian executive staff meeting.

<comment><USER4> "Personally, I fear giving you the leverage of knowing about my personal life. Professionally, I think this ritual of sharing is bullshit."

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's pretty much what I mean. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where did this title come from? The title of the article is "Remember to Thank Your Star Players", and the letters "fear" occur exactly once in the article.

Flagged. Please change the link-bait title to the original.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mea culpa. I wrote the title from my main take away from the article not the original. Thanks for correcting.</comment></comment>


Giant Chinese Infrastructure Projects (keep scrolling down) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/giant-chinese-infrastructure-projects-2011-6?op=1 <comment><USER2> And now some perspective: The Poverty Line In China [http://damnfreshpics.blogspot.com/2011/02/poverty-line-in- ch...](http://damnfreshpics.blogspot.com/2011/02/poverty-line-in-china.html)</comment>


Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw.de/monsanto-gives-up-fight-for-gm-plants-in-europe/a-16851701 <comment><USER3> The problem isn't GMO plants in Europe, it's the IP system surrounding them that's the problem. The massive upwelling of opposition to GMO's on the part of national governments isn't opposition to GMO, but instead it's opposition to _Monsanto_ and the _legal risks_ surrounding Monsanto's plants.

Monsanto is predatory to the point of absurdity, and that is where opposition to GMO comes from. They throw lawyers at you until you comply with their demands, and then you pay a tithe to them. It's a modern form of feudalism that centers around abusing the legislative and justice systems.

<comment><USER4> Actually, the problem IS with GMO plants in Europe.

> ...among those [Europeans] who know what GMOs are, 59 percent of surveyed > citizens believe they are unhealthy, with only 22 percent believing they are > not.

> In its history, the European Union has only approved two genetically > modified organisms for cultivation: Monsanto's MON810 maize, in 1998 (which > was renewed in 2009), and BASF's Amflora potatoes, in 2010.

<comment><USER5> > > ...among those [Europeans] who know what GMOs are, 59 percent of surveyed > citizens believe they are unhealthy, with only 22 percent believing they are > not.

It would be nice to correlate this with the percentage of people who are considering dihydrogen monoxide to be unhealthy.

<comment><USER6> You shouldn't joke about that stuff. I know for a fact that every single creature that has ever consumed it later dies.

<comment><USER7> That's just plain wrong. Only about 90% of humans who have consumed it have died.

<comment><USER8> The rest are in various stages of dying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really think there'd be less opposition to GMOs were it not for the fact that this one company -- a firm with a history of somewhat scummy and antagonistic behavior -- didn't control the _entire_ industry.

<comment><USER10> >didn't control the entire industry

While this is obvious hyperbole, I agree with your general sentiment. In fact, GMOs, perhaps more-so than any other modern technology, have an unprecedented potential to save billions of lives. Golden Rice alone could save the lives of one million children every year.

As a biochem major, GMOs are something I'm passionate about, and it _really_ aggravates me when I see armchair scientists (read: people who watched a youtube video) decrying them as dangerous and calling for their banning. I would say these people are partially to blame for the regulatory nightmare that Golden Rice advocates are facing, meanwhile one million children go blind and die terrible deaths each year from vitamin A deficiency.

<comment><USER11> >unprecedented potential to save billions of lives

Potential, yes; but not with massive financial interests behind it. In a world where shiploads of wheat are held back in order to game the wheat market, things need to change before GMOs can cure 3rd world hunger.

I've read that GMOs have to be bought anew for every season because the harvested crops can't be used as seeds. Is that actually true?

<comment><USER12> Buying new seeds every season began with hybrid crops in the 1920s.

"Today, hybrid seed production is predominant in agriculture and home gardening, and is one of the main contributing factors to the dramatic rise in agricultural output during the last half of the 20th century. In the US, the commercial market was launched in the 1920s, with the first hybrid maize. All of the hybrid seeds planted by the farmer will be the same hybrid while the seeds from the hybrids planted will not consistently have the desired characteristics. This is why hybrid seed is constantly repurchased by growers for each planting season." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed>

<comment><USER13> But at least you still have the option of accepting the mixed results of replanting hybrid seeds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Too bad they are getting a free ride with the patent system in US.

</comment><comment><USER15> Good. If EU wants to have inferior crops, let them have it. Actually, I wonder why won't they go the full scale and sow original, unmodified plants - <USER2> wild emmer - and also eschew use of pesticides and herbicides. Of course, there's no chance they could feed the Europe population then, but I'm sure US would be able to sell them all the crops they need, while they enjoy that nice fuzzy feeling of not being contaminated by the nasty modern science.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a great "precedent" in both agricultural and patent law. Even if it wasn't a ruling, it sends a positive message.

No matter how you look at it, the Americas are a huge agricultural laboratory, and we're the guinea pigs.

Monsanto should disseminate knowledge about the science behind its products. Their current effort([http://www.monsanto.com/products/Pages/monsanto-science- and-...](http://www.monsanto.com/products/Pages/monsanto-science-and- research.aspx)) is too shallow and simple. Give me hard data, not PR stuff.

<comment><USER15> It would be nice but useless as 99.999% of people protesting against GMO couldn't care less about science. They don't know the first thing about what GMO are and where they come from, all the know it's some scary stuff that "contains genes" and since it comes from the large corporation it would kill us all unless we march on the streets with slogans. More science helps when there's no information, when there's no interest in information more science would not do a thing.

<comment><USER16> This does accurately describes the _status quo_ , but I think it is Monsanto's (and others') duty to change it. The tremendous advances that have been made in science in the past century haven't percolated down to the populace yet. It takes time and sustained effort, but the level of scientific literacy could increase.

Actually, I think we're at the stage where people know a lot of new terms, but don't really understand the concepts behind them. Like genes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Curve-ball: Europe vs. USA.

Greater population density, greater decentralization of agricultural production, greater variety and cultural attachment to regional culinary preferences, greater (dare I say it) social concern.

Purely on the basis of these base environmental factors, GM monocultures in Europe were never a winning proposition.

</comment><comment><USER18> Imagine if a nation who had a significantly worse obesity epidemic going on that was way worse than in the US. And they were pushing to sell seeds to us.

It's kind of like a hobo who is next to death trying to sell you some health pills while insisting that his poor health is not caused by the health pills he has been taking all the time.

<comment><USER19> I'm very skeptical of Monsanto and their business practices, but that reasoning does not hold water.</comment></comment>


Taking PHP Seriously - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/php-history?utm_source=infoq&utm_medium=QCon_EarlyAccessVideos&utm_campaign=StrangeLoop2013 <comment><USER2> I really liked this talk.

PHP was my first language when I was starting out professionally, and before I went into university and learned "proper programming". Back in 2007-2008, I remember the mess it was, with the internals list being a permanent struggle to implement anything by consensus (no lambdas or JS array notation because it wasn't easy to google, for example), and it really did look like a dead end. The internal source code of PHP was often a mess of macros everywhere, and the whole PHP6 unicode fiasco really did paint a grim picture of its future.

Facebook seems to have given it a bit of fresh air, implementing some pretty interesting stuff (Hindley-Milner with subclasses, for instance), and it really seems like the "feel" of programming in PHP has changed. I'm not going to say "Screw C++ and Haskell, _this_ is a serious language!", but on the other hand I feel I can say with a straight face to someone who is starting programming, "You could check this language out", without a guilty conscience that I'll be ruining their mind.

I'm unsure of PHP's future - if it'll be tied to Facebook (and thus Facebook's future, which I am equally unsure of), for example - but as of now, it seems to be a reasonable, if idiosyncratic, language.

So yeah, good talk :)

<comment><USER3> Being "tied" to Facebook is the best thing that can happen to PHP. I stopped taking PHP core devs seriously since the PHP6 fiasco. PHP is doomed with these guys, trust me, no matter how much effort is put into Doctrine, Laravele ,Symfony or other libs.

At some point , every big open source project team must make tough choices to make the project "future proof". Python team did it, Ruby is doing it,NodeJS will to be compliant with ES6 modules.

They did not.

<comment><USER4> > _Being "tied" to Facebook is the best thing that can happen to PHP. I > stopped taking PHP core devs seriously since the PHP6 fiasco._

The "PHP6 fiasco"? A major featured release was too much, and had to be scoped down. Since then most stuff has been released as 5.4, 5.5 etc.

Did it break anybody's code? No. Did it divided the community? No. Did it halted PHP development? No. At worst, it make some prematurely released PHP6 books obsolete. Big fucking deal.

Compared to Perl 6 (still MIA for actual production development) and Python 3 (only 10% adoption or less after 5 years for an update that doesn't even offer that much), I'll take the PHP6 fiasco anytime.

> _At some point , every big open source project team must make tough choices > to make the project "future proof". Python team did it, Ruby is doing > it,NodeJS will to be compliant with ES6 modules._

Python 6 did it badly, Ruby didn't do much, and NodeJS will have the ES6 modules "update" happen automatically by virtue of them being based on V8.

<comment><USER5> I thought the perl 6 implementation was actually complete.

<comment><USER6> It isn't.

<comment><USER7> Ouch. Sorry to hear it. But good to hear you weigh in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At my job I maintain some PHP that we are slowly removing (and replacing with Scala for the backend and Angular for the frontend). My total experience with PHP prior was writing a tiny wordpress plugin a decade ago that added some anti-spam stuff to comments.

And you know, PHP, it's not so bad. It gets the job done, it deploys instantly (the rest of our code is mostly Scala. Oh. My. God. Just. Build. Already…). It can be pretty haphazard, you can do some funky stuff with it (the abilty to pass by reference on integers and other 'primitives' caught me by surprise) and I wouldn't pick it for new code, but it's certainly not the steaming heap of evil that people make it out to be.

Maybe our code is just awesome, idk.

<comment><USER9> PHP is a server-side language as you might now, so you are not replacing anything of it with Angular for the frontend, that's just an addition.

<comment><USER8> Krapp's right, but to clarify: PHP that generates HTML that uses jQuery is getting replaced with Angular that talks to the server via a REST interface written in Scala / Spray.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting talk , curious about Hack.

PHP is a horrible language with great libraries and a few good features. A lot of successfull projects are written in PHP. The execution model is good enough for some types of apps(blogs,e-shops,...).

As a PHP developer , i'm betting on Python and NodeJS for the future, i dont believe PHP has any real future outside a bunch of popular CMSes. While PHP has excellent libraries (Symfony,Doctrine,...) , Python has very good ones too, and it IS trully multipurpose.

When i first came to Python i did not like its OOP model(no interfaces,...),but Python metaprogramming features are unique and very interesting to learn.

The biggest problem with PHP is its core developers, adding some "feature" is not fixing the language. Removing the bad parts should be the focus of the next PHP versions. It is not.

<comment><USER10> >As a PHP developer , i'm betting on Python and NodeJS for the future, i dont believe PHP has any real future outside a bunch of popular CMSe

Same here, having done very large php projects in the past, nowadays I tend to go for python (or more recently node) unless the client requests it.

One thing I foresee being a good niche in the future is updating/fixing legacy php apps. There's just too many man hours into them. It will be the COBOL of the web centric future.

<comment><USER11> > One thing I foresee being a good niche in the future is updating/fixing > legacy php apps. There's just too many man hours into them. It will be the > COBOL of the web centric future.

I've been doing that for the last 3 years. I think it's mostly driven by the recession - firms don't want to rewrite/rebuild their software (rightfully, they don't understand why it can't run for longer than 2-3 years without breaking).

However, updating and fixing symfony 1.0 apps is the most soul-destroying work I have ever done...

<comment><USER10> >I think it's mostly driven by the recession

That and there's still a "it's easy to find php developers" amongst business people IME. Not that I mind php, I've used it long enough to work around it's issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> slideshare link, for those who want to avoid the InfoQ marketing signup maze:

[http://www.slideshare.net/zerutreck/taking-php-seriously- kei...](http://www.slideshare.net/zerutreck/taking-php-seriously-keith-adams)

<comment><USER12> I just realized that the MP3 is also behind a login wall, here is a mirror:

[http://files.nikcub.com/mirror/takingphpseriously.mp3](http://files.nikcub.com/mirror/takingphpseriously.mp3)

37.8MB

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I came to PHP after long stint with C, C++, Objective C, Java and Javascript - and I was productive from day 1. I have programmed extensively, and have come across few quirks, but never got stuck, nor is my code spaghetti. I do not use frameworks where they can be avoided and write extremely simple code and avoid OOP for scripting. I would not do OOP with a language without strong typing. My take is for short lived HTTP requests which need to spew out some JSON preferably(favor headless coding for frontend), PHP is the apt tool. For heavy lifting, use a strongly typed language which can easily handle complexity.

<comment><USER14> Do you have an example of a non-trivial project that was written in PHP that is not spaghetti code that doesn't use OOP as it's foundation for organization?

I want to believe that it's possible. When you start introducing even the most basic complexities of a web app (authentication, access control, database connections, reusable CRUD functionality - all the things that make up a non- trivial application) I find it really hard to stay organized in a procedural style.

I'm not being snarky; I'd love to see a good example of this.

<comment><USER15> As a PHP zealot, I'm _also_ really interested in this. I drink the OOP Kool- Aid 100% when I code in PHP since it forces at least some level of structure, but I'd love to see a successful procedural approach.

<comment><USER16> I believe that Drupal 7 qualifies as a non-trivial PHP application that only uses OO in a minimal number of applications in core (ie, when it's appropriate).

Some would definitely argue that Drupal results in spaghetti code, due to a large amount of module functionality being written in hooks that are invoked to change behavior at runtime. It also has an elaborate theming process that yields many opportunities for module or theme code to modify data as it passes through the layers of data generation, processing, theming, etc.

My personal experience on some large Drupal projects is that with an experienced team that knows "the Drupal way" of doing things, you can write some very well organised code that is easy to maintain and extend. However, I doubt this is the norm with Drupal projects.

I also think that Drupal 8 and beyond will move more and more towards an OO- based methodology, as the learning curve for the current system is very high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> God-damn.

I just spent the last week working on a new language that... turns out, is basically Facebook's new language: Hack. Although, it does seem they've not released it to the public, so I suppose I'll keep working on it, heh.

My new language steals PHP's "shared-nothing", "bootstrap from nothing at request" but steals Typescript (and Hack's, apparently) gradual typing system, along with a saner, less ridiculous StdLib.

<comment><USER18> Have/had you considered using typescript or coffeescript on node.js? Just curious here.. I know there's other options and platforms, just really do like node+npm a lot.

<comment><USER19> Typescript has a pretty broken type system. Subtyping done wrong (and usually is).

Get more mileage out of Haskell.

<comment><USER18> I actually like JS myself.. it's been pretty much my favorite language for a long time (long before the good parts book)... Used it with Netscape's web server, and even in classic asp. There are still a lot of advantages to a single language across your stack. It's also a natural fit with document databases... and even Pg with v8 support. It's not the "best" of all worlds language, but it's definitely the best in terms of coverage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love that he says "if you are a person like me, who is a c++ compiler, I mean c++ person" (16.20)

<comment><USER21> Facebook hires c++ compilers, good to know...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> PHP is a strong language for the web, but the community is not. I really only see Facebook pushing the language and even though Steve Ballmer has been memed to death about his "Developers" rant, the developer community is really what makes languages like Ruby/Rails and Node.JS more attractive.

I definitely applaud all of the work the Facebook team has done in order to push the limits of PHP and turn it into something that developers are actually comfortable working with. With that being said, I still don't think it's better than I thought it was.

<comment><USER23> The PHP community is doing quite well these days. The advent of things like Composer, FIG, and PSRs have brought a breath of fresh air into the PHP landscape. There's a bit of a renaissance going on here.

<comment><USER22> Ah I see. Yeah I haven't kept up with the PHP community really for about 5 years. I'll definitely have to take a look some time in the next coming weeks to see what's been going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is not about taking PHP seriously. This is about taking Facebooks internal development language _based_ on PHP seriously. By the time you factor in a different run time and the various language extensions they have made you no longer have PHP. In fact everything they have done has been to turn their existing PHP codebase into a better language and to their credit they have added some excellent tools to make that migration smooth. The question is at what point are you no longer writing PHP but writing facebook PHP with a VM that still lacks documentation and in the name of backwards compatibility carried forward the warts of the old PHP.

<comment><USER25> _This is not about taking PHP seriously._

The point as I understood was that for all of PHP's faults, (almost by accident) it managed to get certain things right, or at least right for the Web in the time in the time of it's heyday.

These being, chiefly, that the much-maligned document-based scripting model turns out to be _really_ easy to package, deploy, and most of all, to _learn_. And that it also (again by accident) happens to be in some ways easier to program safely in, compared to handler-response based frameworks.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't see these as anywhere close to redeeming strengths for PHP. It's still a crappy language, all the cheerleading and apologetics from the likes of FB and Etsy notwithstanding. But the presentation does make some interesting points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hack sounds pretty awesome, it's strange I haven't seen mention of that alongside hip hop before - also he mentioned "hacklang.org" but that seems completely different

<comment><USER27> I tried looking for something by way of an official announcement or release (preview or otherwise), but as Keith Adams joked, it's impossible it Google it, and the [http://hacklang.org](http://hacklang.org) URL he referenced is not correct.

Someone in the Q&A pointed that out, so he mentioned that there'd be a post about it on the HHVM blog, but there doesn't seem to be anything about it in the last few months (this talk took place in September). Someone asked Keith Adams on Twitter at the end of October, where Adams said there was nothing to announce yet: [https://twitter.com/keithmadams/status/395658859722723328](https://twitter.com/keithmadams/status/395658859722723328)

The only other thing I could find about it was another talk by Julien Verlaguet (to whom Adams credits the invention of Hack) from October: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKWNjFagR9k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKWNjFagR9k)

<comment><USER28> There's a more recent tweet now saying the same thing as well: [https://twitter.com/keithmadams/status/422945745528819712](https://twitter.com/keithmadams/status/422945745528819712)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Whoah! Thank you for linking to this video series. Another video from this Strange Loop 2013[0] conference is on Symmetry in Programming Language Design[1]. I am finding it to be way more up my alley.

[0]: [http://www.infoq.com/strange-loop-2013/](http://www.infoq.com/strange- loop-2013/)

[1]: [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/noether](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/noether)

Edit: Posted to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7054815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7054815)

</comment><comment><USER30> I think this was a worthwhile talk. The speaker makes some interesting points about the importance of "ergonomic properties" of languages.

He convincingly explains why PHP was so succesful: Workflow (just hot reload), Concurrency (in the sense of "shared nothing" HTTP requests), and State (every request starts from a "clean plate", which reduces long-time statefulness bugs if you know what I mean).

An interesting point he raises is that PHP leaks it's GC mechanism to the API, which makes implementing a fast VM harder for the HHVM team.

</comment><comment><USER31> Generally a good talk and a good defense, but I didn't quite appreciate his new definitions of "State" and "Concurrency".

And did he really compare a full operating system to Facebook's web apps in terms of complexity? If that's true, there has to be a _lot_ of accidental complexity in FB.

</comment><comment><USER32> I haven't currently moved on to learning PHP yet, I've been using Python quite regularly for the past few years and a lot of Java Script. PHP could possibly be the next language for me to learn.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does it attempt to refute John Siracusa's _dissertation_ on 5by5? That's the first hurdle for any pro-php article.

<comment><USER33> I tried to find what you are talking about by goolging, and by searching directly at [http://5by5.tv/search/results?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=dissertation&...](http://5by5.tv/search/results?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=dissertation&commit=Go)

I could not find what you meant, could you provide a link?

<comment><USER34> [http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/17](http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/17)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A post I just made about what PHP has become now.

[https://plus.google.com/118197810020432218051/posts/17fNVWVj...](https://plus.google.com/118197810020432218051/posts/17fNVWVju8D)

<comment><USER36> That's a pretty weak post. You really should add some clarification and examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nice talk Keith. Honest, clear, and informative. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER38> If you use PHP, you can't CDN your HTML. If you use PHP, you can't PhoneGap build your HTML.

I recommend pure HTML (and call API/CORS). (Same is true of ASP, etc.). Pure HTML!

</comment><comment><USER39> i'm waiting for other language as flexible as php.. write code without thinking error message.

<comment><USER40> Visual Basic has On Error Resume Next. This is generally considered a bad thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is such a thing even possible?

<comment><USER42> Of course not. It only runs a paltry ~80% of the web. Just ignore it. Maybe it'll go away.

<comment><USER43> I also find it funny that people who hate on PHP used to hate on JavaScript for many of the same reasons and they now have an unhealthy, public love affair with it. That and people who tried jamming WordPress or some CMS into every use-case 10 years ago are commenting on how they don't like PHP. IMO, PHP has kept it's charm but added a lot of good stuff from other languages like Java. PHP is the language of choice and getting shit done. Oh, and not having to worry about lack of work.

<comment><USER44> > I also find it funny that people who hate on PHP used to hate on JavaScript > for many of the same reasons and they now have an unhealthy, public love > affair with it.

Javascript used to be clunky due to cross-browser issues. These are mostly resolved now (at the language level).

PHP, on the other hand, has always been clunky. For example, it's often said that parsing is a solved problem. Try telling that to PHP:

$x = function() { return function() { echo "Hello"; }; }; $x()(); // Syntax error??!

$y = new stdClass; $y->foo = function() { echo "World"; }; $y->foo(); // "No such method 'foo'"??!

I've written quite a few parsers, but still have no idea how PHP's could end up like this. Here are some recent 'features' from PHP 5.4 and 5.5 which every other parser on the planet would have handled from day 1: \- Passing an arbitrary expression instead of a variable to empty() is now supported. (PHP 5.5) \- Function array dereferencing has been added, e.g. foo()[0]. (PHP 5.4) \- Class member access on instantiation has been added, e.g. (new Foo)->bar(). (PHP 5.4)

<comment><USER45> > I've written quite a few parsers, but still have no idea how PHP's could end > up like this.

Have you ever tried to parse code with a set of context sensitive rules (like, not using yacc, but writting your parser case by case at hand) and context free regular expression (don't use look ahead at all, and you also can't look behind)? PHP errors look a lot like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Yes, more PHP please!.

</comment><comment><USER47> I am a PHP developer and I like it</comment>


Ask HN: Co-founding with your significant other - <AUTHOR>

Inspired by today's thread re: families/parenthood and work-life balance (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8499285), I was hoping that people could share stories about founding companies with their significant others. What went wrong? What went right? What things were easier or harder? Unforeseen pitfalls?<p>JL started YC with PG (and other two letter humans) and that seemed to work out ok. <comment><USER2> Speaking from experience here: you will be co-founding with your significant other, regardless of whether you realise that or not.

If you're in a significant relationship, that person is your _partner_ ; major life decisions surrounding employment, business, balance between home & office, etc. etc. aren't made in a vacuum.

Consider also that in some jurisdictions, your partner may be entitled to a share of the company as part of a divorce or similar proceedings (happened to a colleague of a friend here in Australia).

Also speaking from experience: your significant other will likely be an invaluable source of support, motivation, opinion, experience, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started my company in 2001 and then in 2006 was doing well enough for my husband to join as Director and 50% shareholder.

Since then we've launched a successful product ([http://grabaperch.com](http://grabaperch.com)) allowing us to move away from doing consultancy work, our second product launched yesterday.

It can be tough, we talk about work all of the time. However there are good points. We decided pretty much on a whim to relocate to somewhere we fancied living - as the company is just us two permanently we could do that.

It is a great thing to feel that as a partnership in all senses we are building our future together. The flip side of that is that when things are not going well we tend to end up going round in circles a bit as we only have each other to talk to on a work and personal level.

</comment><comment><USER4> I did this. We broke up within six months after 5 years together. The firm - though no longer a start up (the breakup juggled priorities and set us on the path of a bootstrapped traditional firm) is still run profitably, nearly 9 years later, by us as cofounders. Both of us are now married to wonderful spouses. We found out that we were much, much better as business partners than we were as life partners.

I don't know that I'd recommend it - but I love my life, and this is how I got here.

</comment><comment><USER5> This was here 3 days ago. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8485480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8485480)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thank you. Maybe the mods can merge the threads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The quick answer is simply: don't do it. When one fails, it will impact the other. If one fails, you may not be able to untangle the other...

<comment><USER2> How do you see this as different from founding a startup while in a significant relationship? I.e., say, founding a company while married vs. founding a company with your husband or wife?

<comment><USER6> If your business fails, its not entangled with the relationship. You can't necessarily blame your husband or wife for the failures of the business. It leaves too much in the gray and too many things can go wrong.

Also, think about it this way: if you fail, there is a high likelyhood that you both will be feeling down, blaming each others shortcomings for the collective failure, and be stretched with no money and no jobs between the two of you. A highly stressful situation that only the best relationships will survive. Are you ready for that? The "If you start a business with your spouse, you're going to have a bad time" meme comes to mind here.

<comment><USER2> > If your business fails, its not entangled with the relationship

That is simply false, based on direct personal experience, and observations of other people close to me.

For example, I know a guy who co-founded a company. His co-founder got divorced, and his wife (not involved in the company in any way) got a slice of the company as partial divorce settlement.

My own experience was co-founding a company where my wife was not, on paper, 'involved'. But she was an invaluable source of support, advice and motivation.

Perhaps to ask this question differently: how do you think it's possible to have a significant relationship with someone, while completely excluding them from the other most important endeavour in your life?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you hate all personal finance software? Want to make a better one? - <AUTHOR>

I never liked Microsoft Money though I used it. Then Redmond killed off the product and suggested I switch to Quicken. So I did, and I HATE IT. I think it is terrible. It tries to do 4,000 things and does none of them well. My wife asked my today if I had paid the Macy's bill, I pulled it up, found the search and entered 'Macy' - pretty straight forward use case...alas, no luck.
I am thinking of attacking the problem. Creating something that has the best of the desktop world and the value of the internet world while staying ultra-paranoid secure. Something wholly extensible where hackers can embrace and extend and offer their wares to the rest of the community through an extension market as part of the system.
I look at the position of Intuit in the market, their competitors and feel like they are ripe for a 37signals, do less better type of sniper hit.
Anyone interested in helping? <comment><USER2> Mint is the new standard to beat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mint was bought by Intuit.

<comment><USER3> Mint also forces me to give them my account info. I don't even let my Quicken copy talk to the web (disconnected VM), let alone give all my account info to a 3rd party for storage and use. I'm sure I'm just being irrational, but that terrifies me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have this same idea for a long time. One thing I thought (to gain market) of was to restrict the clients for the app to a single country (personalized by local laws etc.) but in my country there is already a competitor, and making for other countries seems a bit over my hand.

</comment><comment><USER5> Some entrepreneurs at SproutBox are attacking this problem, too. [http://blog.sproutbox.com/2010/07/28/sproutbox-announces- nex...](http://blog.sproutbox.com/2010/07/28/sproutbox-announces-next-sprout/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a very crowded space, even for the whole 37signals style apps. I suggest you do more research into all the other startups and smaller, simpler solutions that exist out there and determine if there's really an opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER7> Xero? <http://www.xero.com/></comment>


Show HN: My personal website - <AUTHOR> http://www.rahulgi.com/ <comment><USER2> You have a strange font issue on android (chrome and edge). When page load the text is strange symbols. When you click (press with your finger) on any element the English text is being displayed

<comment><USER3> I'm not OP, but looking at the source cade this seems to be on purpose. The font is Wingdings :)

<comment><USER2> If that is the case, then his website sucks. If it wasn't because the link was posted here, I would have navigated away instantly without exploring the site any further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are those symbols there on purpose? I find very frustrating the fact I have to hover those strange symbols to read the content behind.

</comment><comment><USER5> Having the text in Wingdings is an awful idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> most definitely

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> anyone knows best structure of node js which include security of endpoints , kind of management of memory leakage and have high scalability with requests

</comment><comment><USER7> Truly this is amazing

</comment><comment><USER8> This is great.

<comment><AUTHOR> you're great! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey All

</comment><comment><USER9> pure art, this website lit AF</comment>


Ask HN: How do you generate dummy data for testing? - <AUTHOR> Faker or similar libraries are good enough until you hit a certain complexity threshold. What do you use to generate data that has some complexity in it, like relationships, dependencies etc? <comment><USER2> fakers are a good start, you can also copy "real data" after removing sensitive info. this way your test env will be very similar to production</comment>


Ask HN: Any Cyber Monday deals offered by YC-backed startups? - <AUTHOR> Since it's Cyber Monday, let's do a roundup of what YC-backed startups are offering today. Any good deals around? <comment><USER2> Not YC backed, but we ([https://angel.co/scalable- informatics](https://angel.co/scalable-informatics)) are offering our NVMe appliance at $1/GB usable. See [https://scalableinformatics.com/forte](https://scalableinformatics.com/forte) for more info.</comment>


What I Did After Police Killed My Son (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/what-i-did-after-police-killed-my-son-110038 <comment><USER2> Many police departments do not screen for psychological pathologies, and even if they do would they really work for psychopaths who want to kill people? For someone who is a blood thirsty psychopath who wants to get away with murder, is there anything better than working for police/military since they can just say "It was an accident."?

About 1% of the population could be considered psychopaths, so there would be plenty in the police/military.

[https://fox6now.com/2017/11/09/13-years-later-documentary- gi...](https://fox6now.com/2017/11/09/13-years-later-documentary-gives-father- of-man-shot-by-kenosha-police-new-hope/)

It is also clearly obvious this cop was lying in order to get away with this. The question is why were the other officers also lying?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eBMNHGAFRI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eBMNHGAFRI) The cop talking to the father

<comment><USER3> Do you have a citation or real-life experience regarding that assertion? My understanding is that all law enforcement officers that go on to carry a firearm undergo a comprehensive psychological evaluation prior to or around when they enter the academy. This information may be unique to Oregon, but as an attorney I have worked with tons of law enforcement officers and they have all undergone psych evals... I know numerous social workers that have gone through the application process but been passed over because of their psych evals. Or so we assume - they are otherwise solid candidates.

<comment><USER2> I highly doubt an intelligent psychopath who knows how to manipulate people and knows what to say can't get through this "comprehensive psychological evaluation". If you want to kill people you aren't going to tell others this in the open, or admit it on a test.

Unless those tests include CT scans of brain activity I wouldn't trust it. And that would only disqualify people born with some sort of problem, not people who develop it because of upbringing.

Also [https://thefreethoughtproject.com/dad-confronts-cop- killed-h...](https://thefreethoughtproject.com/dad-confronts-cop-killed-his- son-secretly-records/) mentions the officer that told the guy to shoot killed himself after the event. So it's likely this case might just be a freak accident due to negligence and poor training.

<comment><USER3> That's not at all how psychological evaluations work - the participant is not asked "do you enjoy killing people?" It looks like about 90% of police officer jobs use psychological evaluations as a screening tool: [https://www.thebalancecareers.com/psychological-exams-and- sc...](https://www.thebalancecareers.com/psychological-exams-and-screening- for-police-officers-974785)

The effectiveness of such evaluations as screening tools can certainly be questioned, but given that you had no idea they were even used makes me think you probably have little-to-no-knowledge if how psych evals are conducted or how they may or may not be accurate.

And the notion that a psychopath would go through the substantial process of applying to be a police officer, then go through the academy, then go through a probationary period... just to kill another person, instead of just killing that person, is cooky. Obviously we have significant problems with the behaviors of some of the 650,000+ law enforcement officers in the US, but what your describing is not a part of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> interesting and sad story. It is light on details of the incident, other than a passing reference that it was a DUI, and the cop shot the handcuffed son in the head claiming that the son went for his gun (when his holster had actually snagged on a car mirror)

Would be ideal to have bodycam footage from all officers</comment>


How To: Get Tenure – Matt Might - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you haven't seen it, Might's talk "Winning the War on Error: Solving the Halting Problem and Curing Cancer" is amazing, a must-see. It tells some of the same story, also is an introduction to static analysis..and cancer.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdmQUlD7P40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdmQUlD7P40)</comment>


Ask HN: Not Going Past Seed Round - <AUTHOR>

There's a well-defined flow of investments in startups: Seed, Series A, B, C, IPO etc. Most early stage investors (seed stage) like seeing companies go on to raise more money in a Series A or get bought.<p>Are there any seed stage investors out there that would invest in a company that plans on going profitable straight from seed funding without selling or getting acquired? Are there any good examples of startups that have done this? <comment><USER2> I can't answer your direct question as I'm not an investor but seed investments are often convertible notes that do not convert to equity with further funding. Essentially they become low interest loans at that point. Investors would obviously prefer to have equity in the company and equity at a seed stage level might place pre-mature valuation on the company that is often disadvantageous.

If you expect to be profitable and do not wish to raise, venture debt or other means of capitals might make more sense. Alternatively being profitable does not mean you shouldn't raise. Raising capital helps with bringing on board investors and mentors you otherwise lack access to, capital to accelerate growth, etc.

Unless you expect insane growth and profit without the need of new capital, chances are anyone investing would want the company to scale up quite large.

Again, as a disclaimer, I am not an investor but this is just what I understand being in the startup game for some time.</comment>


World's longest sea crossing: Hong Kong-Zhuhai bridge opens - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-45937924 <comment><USER2> The bridge, while very interesting as a large infrastructure project is laughably useless for many stakeholders.

Own a car in Hong Kong and want to drive across it to Macau? You need to get vehicle registration plates (some "electronic" or temporary) in 3 jurisdictions. You also need insurance for 3 jursidictions. Also, you can only drive to a parking lot outside of Macau and then transfer to public transit to enter the city. And you need to register for a parking space 12 hours before your trip. Watch this hilarious HK government video on the process: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO3bNlB9j9o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO3bNlB9j9o)

But you don't own a car! Like most Hong Kongers, you take public transit. Surely this bridge will make it faster than the 1 hour ferry ride that leaves from 2 ferry piers in the middle of the city every 15 minutes or so all day and night. Unfortunately this isn't the case. The buses across the bridge from Hong Kong leave from the airport and take 40 minutes. You'll have to take another bus from the airport to the city at the cost of another 45 to 60 minutes.

This is a political project to show that Hong Kong and Macau are being integrated into China.

As political projects go, this certainly isn't the worst of them. It's better than the other things governments do to bolster domestic support like wars or locking up people you don't like. At least we'll all get to have a fun day trying out the bridge and something for tourists to take pictures of as they land in Hong Kong and Macau.

Perhaps in the future policies will change and it will become easy to us the bridge as a normal bridge.

If you're interested in learning more, here's a great article with more background: [https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/10/23/explainer-hong- kongs-t...](https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/10/23/explainer-hong-kongs- troubled-mega-bridge-counting-human-environmental-financial-cost/)

<comment><USER3> I would have greatly appreciated this bridge being open when I stayed in Macau for a few days and had to fly home out of Hong Kong. There was a lot of overhead time with the ferry -- even with the Skypier transfer (and ferries to the airport do not run every 15 minutes). We left our hotel at noon for a 6:15pm flight.

<comment><USER4> So it's essentially a bridge to the nearest international airport from Macau?

<comment><USER5> Not even that: Macau has its own international airport. While Asian destinations are well covered, you need to go to HKG for long-hauls though.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macau_International_Airport#Ai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macau_International_Airport#Airlines_and_destinations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, here on the East Coast of the U.S. we have the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. It's 23 miles overall (17.6 miles shore to shore), two lanes each direction, and includes two tunnels of one mile each. The tunnels are part of the original construction and are only one lane each direction so traffic has to merge for the tunnels.

I cross the bridge twice a year. It's a long way. The Zhuhai bridge at 11 miles longer and double the tunnel distance must be quite something. I think I might be a little nervous driving in a tunnel that length.

One thing I've noticed in the CBBT is that cars inevitably slow down on the upgrade out of the tunnel which is a hazard. I wonder if this will be a more significant hazard for the Zhuhai with the longer tunnel and more lanes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge%E2%80%93...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge%E2%80%93Tunnel)

<comment><USER7> I used to regularly cross the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway [1] which was for many years the longest bridge in the world at 23.83 miles. It is a soul- crushingly boring drive and dangerous given how monotonous and narrow it is.

A friend used to have this interesting strategy for staying awake when crossing at night. There are two lanes going each way. He would straddle the pair and take up both lanes. That way, if he fell asleep and started drifting, the Botts' dots [2] on the centerline would wake him up as his wheels drifted over them. Probably not the smartest technique.

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

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botts%27_dots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botts%27_dots)

<comment><USER6> I've driven across the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway a couple times. I didn't recall it was that long. I've also driven the overseas highway many times.

I don't know if there's any truth to it, but I've heard claims that the original Seven Mile Bridge which was built on railroad trestles and was therefor very narrow had fewer fatalities than the modern bridge that replaced it. The idea was that on the old narrow bridge, drivers obeyed the speed limit and paid much better attention than on the modern wider bridge which lulled drivers into being less careful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another thing, bridge's weird trajectory is reflecting decades long conflict of Shenzhen municipality's and economic planners in Beijing. For long, they tried to maximally deprive "Shenzhen upstarts" from economic benefit from them neighbouring Hongkong.

The bridge was more about diverting economic influence of HK's _away from_ Shenzhen, than providing an economic benefit _to_ HK.

Shenzhen's answer was building their own bridge to another bank of the delta with their own money. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen%E2%80%93Zhongshan_Bri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen%E2%80%93Zhongshan_Bridge)

Once Shenzhen–Zhongshan bridge will be operational, it will completely jeopardise Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge economically.

On top of that, there is a persistent rumour that there is a political will to do a tunnel to Nei Lingding island, and add another connection to Zhuhai from there (so called revived Lingdingyang tunnel.) This is also the very reason why Beijing has declared the tiny Lingding island a "National Level" natural reserve, thus depriving Shenzhen's officials jurisdiction over it.

<comment><USER9> Honest question: why would the government try to drive economic influence away from Shenzhen ?

<comment><USER10> My, completely amateur, idea would be that, there are two major regions in China for centralised power. Beijing and Shanghai. Now with the massive growth in the Peal River Delta region, there is a base for a third major region. Currently it is not, because there is no one leader, you have Macau, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and a large number of other cities in the region.

If Shenzhen, and the people in charge there, are able to become the defacto leaders of the entire region, then you have another centralised regional base, away from Beijing. Which means less power in the central government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> China's going to have a hell of a time maintaining all this infrastructure they're building in a few decades. Maintaining things currently in use is a lot harder than building new, just ask the US.

<comment><USER12> I don't have stats to back it up, but it seems the US is the only developed country that is neglecting their infrastructure.

Don't generalize the problem to include the whole world when it only affects one country.

<comment><USER13> Travel more, and you'll see it happens in almost every nation.

<comment><USER12> this is me theroadchoseme.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No rail link? Only private transport? Seriously? Why put that much effort into a structure that can only move cars and buses?

<comment><USER15> Only 9200 vehicles per day, that's really small. The SF-Oakland bridge does a quarter million vehicles daily. I wonder how they can justify the cost for so little.

<comment><USER16> On the other hand, their cost per mile is a third of the SF-Oakland bridge, meaning we could have had three bridges for the same price if we let Chinese build them.

<comment><USER15> The Bay Bridge happens to have twice as many lanes.

<comment><USER17> It's also in earthquake country.

And it _was_ made in China!

> At $7.2 billion, it will be one of the most expensive structures ever built. > But California officials estimate that they will save at least $400 million > by having so much of the work done in China. …

> [Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company] put 3,000 employees to work on > the project: steel-cutters, welders, polishers and engineers. The company > built the main bridge tower, which was shipped in mid-2009, and a total of > 28 bridge decks — the massive triangular steel structures that will serve as > the roadway platform.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge....](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Despite the criticisms, this is pretty awe-inspiring. I wish the US had big construction projects like this also.

<comment><USER19> You mean like the 'Big Dig'?

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

[https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-facts-and- figu...](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-facts-and-figures)

<comment><USER20> Locals like to call it the "big handout." It was a boondoggle project that just showcased the fact that anyone whos connected can get a slice of the government spending pie. They should have just upgraded the central artery. There's a reason Boston is the goto example worldwide for why you don't put your highways underground.

<comment><USER21> Why? It seems to work pretty well compared to before.

Boston in general is a traffic nightmare, so I'm not sure how to measure success/failure.

<comment><USER20> >Why?

It cost a ton more than any other way of delivering a similiar result. Operating costs are higher than a raised highway because it's underground. The only pro is that a bunch of rich progressives who don't actually live in Boston get to pat themselves on the back about how the old eyesore of a raised highway that "divides the city" (or some mumbo jumbo like that) is gone. That's not enough to be worth the price. It was a boondoggle. They should have just rebuilt the raised highway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _Authorities initially estimated that 9,200 vehicles would cross the bridge > every day._

This is... very few. Should they open it up to anyone that wants to use it? Otherwise it kind of defeats the purpose of connecting the cities.

<comment><USER22> Car ownership in Hong Kong, and even the rest of the bay area is relatively low. Lot of it is probably buses.

<comment><USER23> A look at a satellite view shows the bridge pretty much empty - maybe 3 trucks. And no backup at the 'customs house' on the end - totally empty lanes. Maybe it was a holiday or the weekend; but still.

[https://www.google.com/maps/search/kong-zhuhai- macau+bridge/...](https://www.google.com/maps/search/kong-zhuhai- email@example.com,113.5819902,399m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en)

Oh! The HK end is still under construction in the picture. So its old. The trucks are probably bringing supplies for construction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Fascinating and creepy: The surveillance tech on the bridge attempts to detect sleepy drivers so "yawn three times and the authorities will be alerted". [OP]

<comment><USER25> That's not the most efficient heuristic, however. The best predictor before people crash is a motion of one trying to keep their eyes open, basically with their face opening up.

Source: I know people working on automated machinery to detect this in pilots.

<comment><USER26> Even if yawning and face opening are predictors of a sleep crash, given that they are both methods people use to help keep themselves awake, does creating an environment where drivers feel they are not allowed to perform them actually lead to fewer accidents?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > it was built using 400,000 tonnes of steel, enough to build 60 Eiffel > Towers.

Except the Eiffel Tower is made of iron, not steel.

<comment><USER28> I don't have a good source at the moment, but I think steel is somewhere around 97% iron by weight. The rest is carbon. Stainless steel has about 10% chromium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > _The bridge is not served by public transport, so private shuttle buses will > ply the route. There is no rail link._

Why no rail link?

</comment><comment><USER30> > Authorities initially estimated that 9,200 vehicles would cross the bridge > every day.

I guess it will take a while to break even on the bridge costs.

</comment><comment><USER31> Having made the ferry trip from HK to Zhuhai several times by ferry, I have to admit I'd take a more comfortable bus or shuttle limo ride any day. The advantage will be that now investors who do have the dual residency will be more willing to travel to Zhuhai which is lagging economically with it's neighbors

</comment><comment><USER32> > Special cameras will be on the look-out for drivers on the bridge who show > signs of getting sleepy, among other checks - yawn three times and the > authorities will be alerted, local media report.

Now this is a little bit extreme...

</comment><comment><USER8> Big thing to not: it not only links Zhuhai and HK, but also Zhuhai and Shenzhen through land transit over HK territory

<comment><USER33> This is actually a big deal. You can go right through Hong Kong and never leave Mainland jurisdiction.

Talk about showing who owns who.

There was a bit of moaning about it in HK, but it was off the front page news fairly quickly.

<comment><USER34> I've been trying to see how that works for 15 minutes now and the furthest I get is to Tuen Mun, which is still in Hong Kong. I'm probably missing something trivial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This article feels salty and jealous.

</comment><comment><USER36> "at least 18 workers have died building this bridge"

<comment><USER37> 9 died during construction of the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland. Construction - especially large scale civil engineering, is dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> A skeptic in me makes me suspicious that there isn't another function for such bridges: making it easier to roll tanks into HK if there's an uprising one day.

<comment><USER39> I am sorry but your comment is dumb on so many levels. You do know HK is directly connected to mainland China, right? No bridge is needed if they want tanks over there.

<comment><USER38> I know, I've been to Hong Kong many times. Maybe you should take a look at the map, only part of Hong Kong is directly connected.

Of course, there's tons of bridges already that can be used. But remember, one justification for the US national highway system was easy troop movement, My comment simply reflects on historical justifications of infrastructure having a military purpose.</comment></comment></comment>


Super Digg: Gaining 300k Hits from Google in 24 Hours with January 1 TCP/IP - <AUTHOR> http://www.seobook.com/guest-post-super-digg-gaining-300k-hits-google-24-hours-january-1-tcp-ip

<comment><USER2> interesting stuff - SMO, SEO is so interesting - would like to see more posts on this on YC.</comment>


Beer Mug: contribute something small to an open-source project - <AUTHOR> http://code.dblock.org/ShowPost.aspx?id=188

<comment><USER2> Haha, as the author of that commit, I'm embarrassed to see it here. Maybe it's a story, though.

I heard about Heroku Bartender from <http://devopsweekly.com>

It pushed me to finally use a Linode slice for which I had a $60 credit from <http://appsumo.com> and play with Ubuntu, which is outside my typical skill set.

I had fun installing Ruby, git, Postgres, and <https://github.com/defunkt/cijoe> on that slice. While stuff was installing, I added the favicon to Heroku Bartender.

There's a lot of cool software and tools out there. Open source, DevOps Weekly, etc are awesome for learning and playing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe I'm missing something because I'm not tuned into the Rails community, but what is going on here? Someone submitted a favicon to an open source project, and now it's on Hacker News?

<comment><AUTHOR> A few things happened.

First, the contributor didn't observe, but actually contributed something useful. In turn, that made the developer really excited about it. And finally this is a fun contribution. Open source win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess I'm just getting old but I really didn't understand any of that, and certainly don't understand why it's on HN.

I haven't flagged it, because I now realise that I probably just don't "get it", but I really don't.

<comment><AUTHOR> I encourage YOU to make a small contribution like this to any open-source project. Even if it's as silly as a favicon.

<comment><USER5> I think it's the layout of your site plus the brevity of the post that confused everyone (including me). I couldn't distinguish what I was supposed to look at, what was image and what was post text, etc.

It's cool to celebrate "small" contributions to OS projects, because it will encourage more to do the same. But, I'd write up a bit more explaining that, especially for HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback. I've edited the post "Even small and silly as this one, open- source contributions are very valuable. I know how excited Sebastian was that his first open-source project had a pull request. I know how users will love to see a cool icon in their favorites when they use Heroku-Bartender. It's an open-source win. Go contribute something small to any open-source project – even if it's a favicon!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And the only comment is on the site is:

"Posted to YC, vote up if you like: <http://news.ycombinator.com/it...>

Sounds like someone seeking karma.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I didn't realize people see it like this. I'll remove. Update: removed. I really just want to tell a very simple open-source story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm. I guess the "I don't have time to contribute to open source projects" excuse no longer holds any water!

</comment><comment><USER8> newsworthy and I shall fork it.</comment>


Ethereum smart contracts in a nutshell - <AUTHOR> http://linuxforme.com/ethereum-smart-contracts-in-a-nutshell.html <comment><USER2> What is the difference between the lottery() and manual_lottery() methods in the lottery contract?

<comment><AUTHOR> lottery() is the final method, meaning, its what we want to be called by owner while we still have the result block available. the manual_lottery() was created for testing purposes only and its going to be removed when on production network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> nice initiative, smart idea to use the future block hash as a base for the lottery result

cool client DAPP with creative icons

<comment><AUTHOR> the icons are also a little open source project [https://github.com/renasboy/eth-address- icon](https://github.com/renasboy/eth-address-icon)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very useful for my way of working, hardcore with a nice lottery example, thumbs up !</comment>


The Cross-Platform Myth - <AUTHOR> http://marcuscavanaugh.com/blog/the-cross-platform-myth/ <comment><USER2> I think one area in which this might not be true is gaming. Since so much of games are abstracted away from the OS anyway, it's not too hard to provide an identical interface on multiple platforms. It's not the best example, but I can't avoid a shameless plug for my checkers game [1]. It's in java, and I like to think the UI isn't horrible on either platform.

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

<comment><USER3> I think you're right. Gaming certainly seems like it would suffer a lot less from this, because the interface doesn't generally function like that of a typical Windows/Mac/etc. application with a familiar look and feel. Your game mostly gets away with it, but it's always subtle things that give away a non- native app. In your case it's using control instead of the apple key as a modifier key, which is not the expected behaviour for a mac application.

Edit: But you're right it's quite a nice interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My Mac-using business associates have told me a hundred times that my (Java Swing) program is an abomination unto the eyes of Jobs and will never sell until I embrace the One True Way to do a Mac interface. (I'm a Windows programmer at heart and my Mac port most certainly has issues -- some of which I'm cognizant of, and some of which I addressed over the years.)

But regardless of my friends' feelings on the matter, my stats just do not say that Mac users are rejecting the program. They convert at fully twice the rate of Windows users. If anything I need to look at what I've screwed up in doing a Windows-y interface that wasn't Windows-y enough, apparently!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your position), users are often content with "good enough". The apps I mentioned (Adobe CS4, Firefox, MS Office) obviously haven't suffered in the marketplace. People complain, but enough buy that it really isn't a huge issue.

That said, having a truly native interface can't hurt: if you were to pit a native interface against a non-native one, the non-native application would have a hard time competing.

<comment><USER5> But I think that the three examples you mention have very little competition ( or competition that has major problems) for OS X users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To trot out a well worn cliche, the only intuitive interface is the nipple. I have recently been sat in front of a Mac; I do not find it particularly intuitive, and had to ask for hints as much if not more than I would in front of a Windows box (I am primarily a Linux user today, though I have used many OSes in the past - VMS anybody?).

What Apple have is a _consistent_ interface. This is the real point here, that if each OS has a consistent interface between native applications, then a cross-platform application will be at a disadvantage because by definition it will be inconsistent with most platforms. This is true to some extent.

But these days the real competitor to a native app is not a cross-platform app - it's the cloud. It would be interesting to see some data as to whether people prefer an inconsistent cloud app (say, gmail) to a native consistent app (say their native mailer). Absent any data, I am not sure what can be learned here.

</comment><comment><USER7> It really depends on the application. If it is in a niche with little competition the users are going to be less interested in eye-candy. But if it has a number of competitors on the same platform the one that doesn't 'conform' is going to do less well than those that do.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to read this article if it would just LOAD :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, haven't had much blog traffic before and hadn't checked to make sure WordPress caching was on. Should be up now.</comment></comment>


A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mint.com/blog/finance-core/a-visual-guide-to-the-financial-crisis/ <comment><USER2> We should've realized there was a problem when low income workers making below the poverty line became the hot new commodity in finance. Whereas in the 80s, young men in finance spent hours calling rich people insisting they give them money, in the last 5 years, they have instead been calling up poor people insisting to give them money.

<comment><USER3> "We should've realized there was a problem when low income workers making below the poverty line became the hot new commodity in finance."

Except for those loans aren't what caused the problem. Rather, the problem was caused by the investment banks betting on those loans.

<comment><USER4> The loans were the consequence of betting. Or, more precisely speaking, of false belief that AAA rated papers, which were betted on, are safe.

<comment><USER3> No, the loans were just bad investments. That is different than betting, at least in the sense that wall street people use the term betting.

C.f. [http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/13/201226/64/403/6...](http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/13/201226/64/403/660641)

Or listen to the NPR series on credit default swaps.

<comment><USER4> But the reason why companies were so happy to lend so much money was caused by a belief, which turned out to be false, that loans securized into CDOs and such papers, frequently rated well, are safe and risk is properly managed.

The betting merely caused a spread of the risk between all market participants, making it systematic risk. Also, the betting was not properly managed because market partipicants weren't able to understand the risk.

Also, one might say that the reason why companies started securization and, then, betting on the papers are low interest rates, but, please, let's don't dig into the whole Fed discussion.

<comment><USER3> The betting didn't just spread the risk, it magnified it.

For every dollar the banks lost on bad loans they probably lost 30 dollars of bets on those loans. No one even knows the exact number because the market is completely unregulated.

<comment><USER4> And the reason why banks, and not only banks, lost so much on the papers is because the loans were basically worthless. Banks knew that loans were worthless but the paper's ratings created a different impression, boosting the loans.

The spread part is very important. If there were no betting, selling and reselling of the papers, then only bad lenders would collapse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Summary: The government create an unhealthy economic environment that bankers took advantage of while the media was clueless.

Result: The media sensationalizes the situation-creating panic, the bankers get blamed and the government is going to save us.

Public: its OK, everything is being taken care of, you can now get back to your reality TV shows.

<comment><USER6> The US administration had the best of intentions: as stated, to improve the home ownership rate of blacks and hispanics. You can find GWB making speeches about this in 2003. They also failed to regulate the markets where the bad debts were being sold with good credit ratings. Incompetant yes, immoral no.

The banks intentionally obscured the value of the bad debts to other investors. And greedy people were encouraged to get second and third homes when they didn't need to by greedy real estate agents. That was immoral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminded me of the "subprime explained" comic as a novel way of getting the complexity across:

[http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?revision=_latest&fs=t...](http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?revision=_latest&fs=true&docID=ddv7hj34_03774hsc7&skipauth=true)

</comment><comment><USER8> That made me chuckle. Of course the fact that I've made it to another Friday with a (nice) paycheck helped.

</comment><comment><USER9> Where's the Community Reinvestment Act? Specifically, the revisions made to it in 2002.

</comment><comment><USER10> I never understood the basis of the current financial crisis. Now I do.</comment>


The loneliest plant in the world (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/10/136029423/the-loneliest-plant-in-the-world <comment><USER2> L'Arbre du Ténéré was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth, the only one for over 400 kilometres ... it was killed in 1973 by a drunk truck driver:

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

[http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/09/30/a-drunk-driver-killed- th...](http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/09/30/a-drunk-driver-killed-the-most- isolated-tree-in-the-world/)

<comment><USER3> How the hell do you not avoid a single object in the middle of nowhere?

<comment><USER4> It's the only thing to look at - and you tend to steer in the direction you're looking...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is such a pregnant story .. its a chapter in human management of the ecological treasures of our planet that is waiting to be written. I hope I live to see the day another cycad is found, and the species returns to flourish on the Earth .. what an enlightening circumstance that would be.

<comment> guard-of-terra I don't think they're going to flourish - they seems to have a evolutionary disadvantage.

However we can devise and island or two for such fauna exclusively. Maybe some day we even get hold on some dinosaurs.

<comment><USER5> Well, given its - at the moment - the absolute last survivor of its species, were a suitable mate to be discovered I think I'd be happy thinking of the result as a flourish upon the Earth.. but I'm willing to admit that's just me. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> if it's a male dioecious plant, then it has X & Y chromosomes (like dates), so you could theoretically clone a female friend for him :)

<comment><USER7> There are more sex chromosomes in the world than just X and Y. It may not be so simple.

<comment><USER6> Very true sir in a small fraction of cases, see [http://www.umsl.edu/~renners/Ming_etal_Sex_chromosomes_2011....](http://www.umsl.edu/~renners/Ming_etal_Sex_chromosomes_2011.pdf) (well, if you wanted to be precise, you could have said "there are more sex determination systems in the world than just XX/XY", since these letters only make sense when it comes to comparing different systems, sex loci relate to one chromosome within the same species)

In this particular case however, it's not true, Cycads are in the XY/XX system, see [http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/2/261](http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/2/261)

So we may proceed and clone those females :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A sad fate known to many woodiis</comment>