EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021 - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90326383/eu-to-ban-plastic-plates-cups-and-cutlery-by-2021 <comment><USER2> Reading these comments makes me sad, but I am also beginning to understand the opposition to limiting carbon emissions.

Introduce an initiative that is "obviously good". I mean, none of the commenters here will be disadvantaged by single-use plastic being banned. It is obviously better for the environment. Whichever way you look at it, it is an improvement on the current state of affairs. And yet, people will moan and complain, criticize, pull out "statistics" out of thin air, say that this "does not solve the real problem", that it isn't important. And this is the enlightened HN community, the epitome of progressiveness.

This is similar to the climate change discussions. Moving away from fossil fuels is obviously better for the environment and for us. And yet, people will moan and complain, criticize, point fingers, say that it's the other guys who pollute, or say that this particular change "doesn't matter", because there are bigger polluters out there.

I am very glad the EU is making this move and I'm happy there are still _some_ places in the world who can effect change. I wish the EU was similarly radical with respect to its beloved car industry, or with moving towards nuclear power (not away from it), but one can hope.

<comment><USER3> >It is obviously better for the environment.

Except it isn't and plastic is for many uses the best material. Take glass for example.

Cons of Glass:

It breaks

It costs more to ship

It is more expensive to recycle

Glass takes twice as much energy to produce

More pollution is created in the manufacturing, shipping and recycling of glass

Glass creates more than 6 times the global warming gases than plastic

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Cons of plastic: Litter (but people throw glass away too)

Some plastics can leach chemicals

Some plastics contain PVCs

<comment><USER4> Unless I'm missing something, this seems spurious, what makes you think a ban on single use plastic plates, cups, straws, coffee stirrers and cutlery means people will use glass equivalents? Or rather, to make the comparison valid, single use glass equivalents.

<comment><USER5> They won't. By and large, people will simply do without these products because the equivalents will be too expensive for most people.

But he's just trying to explain that if people tried to stay at the same level of quality of life then they'd have to switch to technology that isn't advantageous to the environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They're banning single use plastic only. Other plastic plates are not banned. Given how much it costs in Europe to rent square meters to store stuff I wonder if event companies won't just buy multiple-use plastic plates and just throw them away anyway as it's cheaper than to pay personal to clean them, transport them to containers and then rent the space to store them, secure them etc.

<comment><USER7> this is exactly what happened with the previous ban

single use plastic bags were banned, so now instead people accumulate the more dense multi-use bags under their kitchen sink instead

<comment><USER8> This is false. Plastic use has been dramatically reduced by the previous law. Source: Assessment of measures to reduce marine litter from single use plastics, European Comission, 2018

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm going to keep saying it. The issue is trash disposal especially in third world countries. You can't just pile trash on landfills.

I'm countries like Switzerland were most trash is incinerated to generate electricity, getting rid of plastic bags has little impact if not increase overall CO2 use since a alternate bag uses way more CO2 to be produced.

One stat stated that a woven bag would need to be used 7000 times to offset the CO2 vs the amount of CO2 used to make a plastic bag.

<comment><USER5> If you look at the EU's own numbers on it they say that 150,000 tons of plastic are tossed into European waters per year. Single use plastics make up about half of that. This is less than 2% of the 8 million tons of plastic tossed into the oceans worldwide.

We're basically trying to fix less than 1% of the problem with this. Considering how much ire this is raising I'm not sure this is a good use of the time of environmentalists.

<comment><USER10> Sigh. And here's a reasonable criticism of this implementation and surprise surprise - you're downvoted without anyone responding.

You're thinking rationally. Go for the most effective changes first. The low hanging fruit. If that means plastic straws and forks then so be it. But it's pretty hard to imagine this is the best path and it's a lot easier to think it's just pencil pushing beurocrats coming up with _an_ idea to appear progressive.

If there's data out there that shows this move will be significant then fine, but at the rate these bans are going I see nothing but it exhausting what momentum we have to improve our behavior.

<comment><USER11> They were likely downvoted because...

> 150,000 tons of plastic are tossed into European waters per year. Single use > plastics make up about half of that

Regardless of the worldwide issue, the poster themselves states it's 50% of the plastic in european waterways, why shouldn't europe care about reducing 50% ?!?

<comment><USER10> Because 50% of very little isn't a big impact. Look into Asia and Africa for plastic pollution. At the rate they produce Europe could literally be plastic free and it would barely make an impact.

<comment><USER12> It s not with conservative thinking/ whataboutism that we re going to change anything. We europeans are happy with this change. You also dont consider how it make every citizen talk about it : it may spark better behavior about waste everywhere, because why should I care if the power in place doesn't ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 90% of the plastic in the ocean comes from Africa and Asia. First world countries put their garbage, generally speaking, into garbage dumps.

This EU rule will do nothing.

<comment><USER14> First, comments like yours is how nothing ever gets done.

Second, you use citation-free statistics that are misleading. How much plastic waste from Asia is from "recycled" US and European ("first world", to use your dog whistle) plastics?

edit: to repeat myself, _How much plastic waste from Asia is from "recycled" US and European ("first world", to use your dog whistle) plastics?_ \- the research that 90% of the plastic waste in the oceans comes from 10 rivers is such common knowledge that the NY Post is one of the top hits if you search for this. Plastic from those rivers comes from ostensibly "recycled" western plastics, so this is actually _very_ meaningful policy from the EU.

<comment><USER15> > First, comments like yours is how nothing ever gets done.

The politician's fallacy, is a logical fallacy of the form:

1\. We must do something

2\. This is something

3\. Therefore, we must do this.

<comment><USER16> There's also the all-or-nothing fallacy, where you don't do anything because it's not perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why no plastic bottles as well? The vast majority of plastic I use is from bottles.

<comment><USER4> Probably because there is a health implication there, the possibility that people could get dehydrated and not have easy access to bottled water.

<comment><USER18> There are also substantial health implications to eliminating plastic cutlery, cups, etc. We may be largely oblivious to it now and we may fail to see the connection between the cutlery going and an uptick in illnesses after the change.

The California bag ban slightly preceded the uptick in "medieval diseases" in California, which has since spread from Southern California to other cities (possibly by homeless people leaving California and taking their diseases with them). The uptick in such infections is generally traced to lack of sanitation among the homeless, but the idea that the bag ban is an element tends to get dismissed because "we can't prove it, man!" basically.

I was still in California and still homeless when the bag ban was instituted. Following the ban, my sons and I saw more homeless people digging through trash cans, probably for free bags they could use for various purposes. I never did it, but some homeless people use plastic bags as a toilet substitute. They poop in a bag and take it to the nearest trash can rather than poop on the sidewalk.

If you are digging bags out of a trash can to have a bag to poop in because you no longer have ready access to free new ones and 10 cents per bag is a financial hardship for you, well, it shouldn't shock anyone that there is an uptick in disease.

But no one actually wants to believe that or take that possibility seriously since no official health organization has announced that this is an issue.

Meanwhile, I have seen articles that suggest the CDC is actively downplaying the uptick in diseases like hepatitis. They aren't aggressively issuing public health warnings and putting this into the news. It's been slow to get press and the problem gets downplayed as largely an issue for homeless people.

From what I have read, a lot of antibiotic resistant infections are bred in third world countries with poor plumbing and the like, then inadvertently exported via travelers. But, hey, the US and Europe can both readily get in on the action by banning all the disposable items that help make modern life less dangerous than life in a third world country. Let's go with that plan.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/medieval- diseases...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/medieval-diseases- flare-as-unsanitary-living-conditions-proliferate/)

<comment><USER19> So the solution is public hygiene, like public toilets being available. Not handing out plastic bags to poop in, wrapping poop in plastic is the worst option.

<comment><USER18> I would love to see more public bathrooms that are well maintained and genuinely accessible to the homeless. The public library is often the only obvious source for a public bathroom available to absolutely anyone and homeless people are frequently asked to leave the library for various reasons and sometimes banned from it.

But way to go to completely miss the point. Disposable plastic bags have myriad other uses, such as carting trash away from your camp or even carrying some of your possessions when you can't currently afford a new bag and your last one broke or whatever.

Pooping in plastic bags in just one use that homeless people have for free plastic bags routinely acquired every time they purchase something. Every time you eliminate one more free resource from the lives of the poorest of the poor, it winds up being a hardship with myriad consequences.

<comment><USER20> If people need certain necessities to live, the way to help them best is not to provide them a random assortment of free (subsidized) materials without consideration of the negative side effects of the subsidy, but to directly give them money.

<comment><USER18> I keep hearing that. It strikes me as a way to decide _now_ to screw people over on _this_ specific detail on the theory that, someday, there will be UBI and everything will work just fine.

 _Someday_ never seems to come on such promises.

I was openly homeless on Hacker News for 5.7 years. Plenty of people here are UBI proponents who argued that I of all people should also be a UBI proponent due to my poverty. Such people were not throwing money at me.

I'm old an cynical. If you aren't willing to open your wallet right here, right now and help out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that "someday" will ever come.

A lot of people on HN make quite good money and routinely espouse a lot of high-minded ideals. You would think of all places, this would be one where someone trying in earnest to make their life work via some kind of online income would most find help to readily solve their financial problems and stop being desperately poor.

I'm no longer homeless, but I still live on under $20k annually. I get treated like a whiner with no real point for using myself as an example in these discussions.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they usually aren't.

I'm incredibly skeptical of such arguments. People on HN expect good, well- written content on the front page of HN all day, every day. They aggressively use ad blockers, actively find ways around pay walls and routinely tell me that writing doesn't deserve to make money and I should get a real job.

Writing is something I am capable of doing, in spite of my handicaps. I have six years of college and I know a lot of stuff and I can be on a computer at home and write.

If well-heeled, high-minded people who regularly come together in large numbers on HN can't be arsed to help me stop being poor, then it seems really extremely unlikely to me that the poor will ever get anything like UBI.

I'm not for UBI. I don't think it works. But, moreover, I don't think it will really happen.

I think talk of UBI is like when so-called friends tell you that _if_ they win the lottery, they will give you half of it. In reality, that's typically a lie. It's an easy thing to say because winning the lottery is so very unlikely.

People actually willing to help are willing to do whatever they can in the here and now, no matter how small. But most of what I hear is promises of _someday_ while I continue to flail and most people react to my flailing by making me feel like I am doing something wrong. I'm an embarrassment. I'm doing something socially inappropriate.

Perhaps I shall just go away at some point and leave HN to the well-heeled, high-minded types who like to talk a good game and do nothing. Then I won't be actively making them look like the hypocrites they so obviously are in most cases.

I'm tired and trying to do some paid work. If I don't return to this discussion, everyone here can just assume that's why.

<comment><USER20> Cash transfers to the homeless enough to cover sanitation and other basic needs doesn't necessarily imply a universal basic income policy.

> _If you aren 't willing to open your wallet right here, right now and help > out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that "someday" will ever > come._

I sometimes buy lunch for homeless people in my neighborhood, and have given people blankets and cash before, and donated to charities focused on helping the homeless, but it's pretty hard as an individual to fully help someone who has lots of problems to find all the help they need and get into a stable comfortable situation, without making it a significant long-term project, and taking on huge amounts of personal responsibility. This is frankly a better job for publicly funded social workers, but I have a ton of admiration for any private citizens willing to take it on.

Myself, I don't have the spare attention or resources to drive someone to work every day, talk to them every day to make sure they stay on track, put them up in my house, hire them for a permanent job, etc. I have enough trouble just taking care of myself and my own small children. My meager bits of help (one meal, a blanket, a respectful conversation, lending someone a phone for a few minutes, ...) might be appreciated but are hardly life changing.

Some of the homeless people I have talked to had trouble getting a job because they didn't have a regular place to shower, didn't have clean unripped clothes, etc., and then had trouble holding down a job once they got one because they had substance abuse problems, didn't have enough structure in their lives to show up on time every shift, and so on. Of course the biggest and most obvious problem was a lack of housing. Which I really have no fix for. It's a large-scale social problem which can best be tackled collectively.

<comment><USER5> I think you're missing the point she's trying to make. She's saying that these types of bans have negative unintended consequences for the poorest people. These consequences get brushed aside "because we can just do X to _really_ help them", but X is never actually done to the degree that it offsets the problem. Her mention of HN is that, this would be one of those places of high ideals where you would expect X to be done, but it isn't. So if it's not even done in a place like HN, then what's the chance that it will be done by the general public? And so X gets brushed aside and the negative unintended consequences pile up.

<comment><USER20> So your argument is something like "if any system or policy incidentally helps the poorest people while also doing lots of unintended damage, then it is immoral to stop doing it, because replacing the incidental aid to the poor now cut off is politically intractable"?

This is precisely the same logic that says we need to continue to use coal power plants because otherwise the coal miners will lose their jobs, and it's impossible to support them except by continuing to hire them to mine coal. When the people who want to eliminate coal power (e.g. Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016) suggest cash transfers, reeducation plans, other industrial investment, etc. to coal-mining regions to offset the loss of coal jobs, the supporters of coal mining reject the proposals as politically infeasible.

Instead of setting up advocates for the homeless and environmentalists as enemies, it would be more productive to find mutually acceptable solutions.

<comment><USER18> _So your argument_

They are not making an argument. They are trying to translate my words in hopes of bridging some communication gap.

 _Instead of setting up homeless activists and environmentalists as enemies, it would be more productive to find mutually acceptable solutions._

I'm an environmental studies major who gave up my car well before I became homeless, in part for environmental reasons. (In the US, this is routinely interpreted as "Obviously, you are just one of the useless and incompetent poor, not qualified to do any well paid work" rather than "Obviously, you are an extremist nutcase environmental enthusiast willing to walk the walk -- literally! -- not just talk the talk." Cuz: logic (by which I mean prejudice and classism).)

So, I don't know why on earth you think I personally am setting up homeless activists and environmentalists as enemies. I see myself as qualifying for both labels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So what is the best replacement for fast food and takeaway purposes? Bamboo cutlery?

<comment> incog-neato Why not:

Fast food: metal cutlery at the restaurant that gets washed and reused.

Take away: your own cutlery at home.

<comment><USER22> And what if you have motor control issues that makes it impossible to wash cutlery to any standard of cleanliness?

I've said it before, and I've said it again: these anti-plastic laws are actively hostile to people with disabilities.

<comment><USER23> That's interesting. I have no experience with motor control issues, so that comes as a complete surprise to me.

Eating involves fine manipulation of the cutlery to load it with food, and then hitting a relatively small target surrounded by things that you really don't want to, say, stab with a fork if you miss that target.

I'd have expected that if one has good enough motor control for that, washing cutlery in the sink or a dishwasher would not be a problem, as all the movements required for washing seem to require less accuracy and consistency than do those for eating with the cutlery.

So, clearly, I'm missing something about the mechanics of motor control. Is it because almost all movements involve several different muscles, and so that if one has different levels of control issue with different one that you can get some movements are impossible even though they don't require much precision, and others are possible, even with tight constraints, because even though they involve the same body parts, they differ in the contribution required of each muscle?

<comment><USER24> Running through it in my head, the largest hurdle seems to be the pinching motion required to scrape off a blade or tines. I can imagine someone being able to support a utensil from underneath, move it slowly in the right direction, but not able to apply enough pressure to clean it. It might also be harder to keep hold of a wet utensil in water, or it might be impossible to bend over to fill and unload a dishwasher.

Of course, it could be as simple as just saying that you have to feed yourself, but you don't have to do the dishes. Someone might be able to do 10 things a day, but not 20.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've seen these reusable cups at festivals: [https://www.ecocupshop.co.uk/en/](https://www.ecocupshop.co.uk/en/)

There's a 1€ deposit but some people keep the cup as a memento. Another side effect is thieves breaking into the festival tent at night to steal the plastic pipes containing dirty cups (so they can get the deposit for them).

<comment><USER26> Those might make the high prices of drinks at some events less annoying since you get a souvenir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Like the bag ban in California this will probably just increase trash by causing people to use bulkier disposables. Restaurants and such will replace these with super-cheap glass or metal disposables that also consume more fuel when shipped because they weigh more. Cheap paper alternatives are often from pulp that is not sustainably sourced and in many cases they fall apart and so are rejected by customers. These measures might be well intentioned but they don't work and often backfire.

There is no way we're going to decrease oceanic plastic pollution without sanctioning or otherwise pressuring the nations and industries that are primarily responsible for it. For nations it's largely China, India, and a few others. For industries fishing fleets are a disproportionate source, and most of the culprits here are also not US or EU based.

<comment><USER28> This is what I've seen happen here in Seattle. Every place just gives out bulkier multiple use containers when anyone gets takeout salad or MealPal, and people just throw them away as per usual. There's a Korean Deli all you can fit in a box type restaurant that gives a $1 discount if you bring back your own box, but that's the only place and they were doing it before the regulations anyways.

Regulations can have unintended consequences.

No joke -- McDonalds is the most environmentally friendly takeout in Seattle. The whole thing has been compostable recycled paper for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not that I'm especially surprised but the concept of subsidiarity isn't worth much these days is it?

<comment><USER30> I'm strongly pro EU but at the same time sad that the subsidiarity principle has become so weak. The EU can be better than this. Should be, has to be.

I mean I understand that you can't introduce a bill like the GDPR effectively if every EU country does it differently. But plastic? Come on.

I support the gist of this ban by the way, yet agree with you that it has nothing to do at the EU level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you could build a machine that sterilized the utensils, shredded them, and then 3d printed them. If the machine was the size of a microwave, and cost under $200, you could make a fortune.

<comment><USER32> People keep trying to do this. The problem is the grade of plastic is awful, and 3d printing isn't that fun/useful with bad filament.

<comment><USER31> What about a small injection mold?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sincerely, the point is not of is actually going to reduce plastic in a big enough scale to make a difference, the point is that it will make business come up with alternatives and progress us towards a solution to plastic use that can then be applied in a more extensive way.

The EU, although not bring perfect, is usually the place where these kind of measures start, and I am grateful for it.

<comment><USER10> I have a lot of doubt that removing a negative behavior from companies will cause a positive one to pop up necessarily. It may, it may not. If they want companies to come up with a solution why not offer a bounty for better tech? At least then it's a primary motivator, while with bans there could be any number of other responses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What about single use made from bioplastics? Are they that much more expensive?

<comment><USER35> This still doesn't fix the problem, bioplastics would still take long time to degrade, and they would need specific conditions to do so, we're just offloading the problem to indefinite future and prefix 'bio-' in the name makes us feel good about ourself.

For example PLA for 3D printers, technically bioplastic, but realistically it still needs to be collected and when it comes to breaking it down, the process is still pretty involved, and who is going to pay for all of that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Start firing up the chainsaws to mow down the forests for paper plates.

</comment><comment><USER37> for the economics experts: how could the market eliminate this problem by itself ?

<comment><USER38> It's a market failure that they're trying to correct. Externalities aren't fixed by markets because they're external to those markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Keep this up and the 2nd Brexit vote might never happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> The western world is responsible for 1,25 % of all ocean plastic pollution. Europe is only 0,28 %![0] There is no need to ban single-use plastics in the West. It's just virtue signaling and the so-called 'solutions' lower our comfort, will cause a rise in food poisoning deaths and are worse for the environment.[1]

When you mention this, people reply we should set an example and other countries will follow. The idea that Western countries should set an example to teach those 'dumb countries that can't think for themselves' how to do things seems very arrogant. And there are zero guarantees it will work. If it was as easy as setting an example, every country on earth would be a blossoming democracy by now...

[0] [https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611#f1](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611#f1) [1] [https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...](https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf)

Edit: An actual solution would be if the EU invested in waste management solutions in the developing world.

People mention micro-plastics as a bad thing but we don't know that yet. So far the level of evidence proving micro-plastics as harmful is on par with the evidence linking cancer to cellphones.

<comment><USER40> What if .5% is the biggest single chunk of plastic use you can eliminate in your sphere of influence? Should you:

a) Do nothing, because it's "only" 0.5%

b) Eliminate 0.5% because it's something you can do.

> It's just virtue signaling and the so-called 'solutions' lower our comfort

Oh, right, I see. Yeah, I mean _you 'll_ be comfortable for the next thirty years. Who cares about the next generation, am I right?

<comment><USER41> There's a huge problem with unsorted or poor quality recyling or waste electronics being illegally exported from first world countries [1] and ending up in landfills or just dumped in piles, across the world, fix _that_ first, _then_ move on to something else.

Banning tiny amount of single use plastic is low hanging but infinitesimally small fruit however, and the narratives created around it just conveniently distract from much bigger problems.

[1] [https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-of-tons-of-uk- plastic-d...](https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-of-tons-of-uk-plastic- dumped-across-world-11218595) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQLilXLAIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQLilXLAIU)

<comment><USER40> Why present it as an either or? Why fix one first? Do both.

<comment><USER41> I'd not be surprised if the tonnage of illegal or substandard waste exported from first world countries is 1,000,000 times greater the tonnage of improperly disposed plastic straws, plates etc etc.

So why are the EU making a huge deal about the latter and not the former? Sorry but it smacks of greenwashing and narratives to me...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Video: node.js is stupid and if you use it so are you - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e1zzna-dNw

<comment><USER2> Bzzzzt, argumentum ad hominem (and nothing else); thanks for playing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. Just wanted to see the HN reaction :D</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What problem does Actifio solve? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Please don't use the titles of HN submissions to editorialize. The guidelines ask you to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

In this case the format ("Ask HN") is for stories without URLs anyway, so we'll take out the url ([http://www.actifio.com/](http://www.actifio.com/)).</comment>


A year since Proton's launch - <AUTHOR> https://www.codeweavers.com/about/blogs/aeikum/2019/8/20/a-year-since-protons-launch <comment><USER2> Why no love for Mac? Especially when Catalina drops 32bit support?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep profit (avoid loss) on a multi-currency income? - <AUTHOR> My job rewards me with payment in multiple currencies every week or even more often (USD, EUR, CAD, AUD, etc.) that leads to a situation where keeping a certain amount of money not changed to my national currency can result in profits (or lossess). How do you guys keep a track of this records?
One idea is to keep a spreadsheet where every wire transfer received, gets its own cell and then it's tracked with current rate. But thats manual job, are you aware of any more automated tools for that? Unformtunately my bank doesn't support that kind of features. <comment><USER2> Honestly, the spreadsheet is most likely your best bet, along with some scripted automation.

An alternative would be to use an accounting software and connect them to your bank accounts. I know for me Xero keeps tracks of fluctuations as gains or (losses). But that would be a super clunky overkill for a basic ledger.....</comment>


Search Goes Real-Time With Scoopler (YC S08) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/08/search-goes-real-time-with-scoopler-twitter-dominates-results/

<comment><USER2> Cool. But until there are _a lot_ of real time services their value is very limited.

<comment><USER3> Going by the current trend, there will only be more real time services in the future. It pays to be early in the game :)

<comment><USER4> Yeah. Soon I can imagine a time when we could talk to each other online in _real_ time. Like twitter but without a delay. But maybe that's a couple of years off.

<comment><USER2> have you seen mibbit.com?

<comment><USER5> Or some sort of instantaneous messaging or how about a telephonic device that transmits voice over copper lines (or even wirelessly) or perhaps meeting someone for a malted beverage at a public house of some sort.

<comment><USER4> >> "how about a telephonic device that transmits voice over copper lines"

In real time? You're crazy.

<comment><USER6> This is a fun game to play, actually, any time a new technology is introduced.

Imagine the new technology was invented first, and the old technology is actually the new challenger. What are the advantages and benefits of the old technology you can promote over the new one?

<comment><USER7> this is a tradition in the Emacs community: for each release, they publish "antinews", e.g.:

        > For those users who live backwards in time,
        > here is information about downgrading to
        > Emacs version 21.4. We hope you will enjoy
        > the greater simplicity that results from the
        > absence of many Emacs 22.1 features.
        > [...]

[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ant...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Antinews.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> isn't Google pretty close to real time anyways? I know I tend to find things on Google that I just posted 5-6 minutes ago.

<comment><USER9> Yes Google is pretty fast for newly published static content. However, it's difficult to use for events happening right now. From the feedback we've got, people like real-time results because its engaging and effortless, a little like watching TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> " _One element that's really nice, is the Peek feature, which allows you to take a look at pages being linked to in an overlay on top of the results, so you don't have to visit the actual page._ "

Real-Time news for the writer: you actually visit the page. It's an iframe...

In the old days, there was something called _target attribute_. Neat when the target is _not_ iframe friendly.

<comment><USER11> This feature is really curious to me... why would I want to peek when I have a back button on my mouse?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good execution on the trending and the real power here is the deep search on live content. Anybody who does search right has value.

<comment><USER9> Thanks! We're working on adding more data sources to provide broader results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is Scoopler built with?

<comment><USER9> Scoopler is written in Python. We use Cloudant (YC s08) for storing our data. I'm planning to write a blog post about this on soon on our Posterous.

<comment><USER14> Cool. I'll take a note of that using Snipd, upload it to Scribd, then post it to Reddit, then tell my friends to upvote me using Heysan or maybe Chatterous. It depends on whether I'll have enough time, since I'm always playing on DraftMix.

Anyway, good luck with Scoopler. :P

<comment><USER9> Tu Chez!

<comment><USER15> <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/touché>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have one question, are they consuming other companies search API, let's say Twitter or are they crawling and aggregate their own data? Either way it's a great job!

<comment><USER9> We actually crawl and index all the data ourselves. That's how we identify the most popular content.

<comment><USER17> Is this truly crawling the sites, or querying each site's search service?

e.g. for Twitter, are you crawling all the Twitter users' URLs (seems difficult to do - how do you find new accounts' URLs?), or are you fetching results from search.twitter.com ?

<comment><USER9> We take the raw data streams (e.g. a data mining feed from Twitter) and process them, ourselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is really cool - congrats. I'd really like to see google-trend-like features but on much shorter time scales. Even a weekly-zeitgeist tied to news stories instead of having to wait for the end of year.

<comment><USER9> For the most recent trends you can check out the hot topics. We also want to do news updates regularly - follow @scoopler and you'll get updates soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice start. I was expecting more from the twitter feed. It's an rss feed from a query. Maybe a better way is to group similar real-time results ? v2

</comment><comment><USER20> awesome job dude! It would be awesome to have some sort of real-time alert feature, too!

<comment><USER9> It's in the pipeline! Thanks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Not disclosing employment (under an NDA) - <AUTHOR> What would you do if a previous employer asked you to sign an NDA (tied to receiving severance pay) stating that you wont disclose that you worked for them and what you did for them and how?<p>How would one notate this on a resume? Especially if you worked there 9 years and it would create an employment gap. Think finance sector. <comment><USER2> You could try to negotiate. For example, see if they'd go for an agreement where you couldn't talk about the details of what your work was, but you _could_ say where you worked and what your title was, and they agree in writing to confirm that you worked there and give you a favorable reference. If they don't go for that, you can tell them that due to the expected problems that would cause for your future job searches, you'd require a much larger severance payment than what they're offering. If you can't get them to agree to terms that would be acceptable to you, you could refuse to sign and walk away from the severance payment (assuming that your financial situation would allow for that).

But do talk to a lawyer first and find out what your legal rights are in the state where you work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Which country are you in? In Germany (and most of Europe) such clauses are often void as they are overly unfair for the employee. The legislator usually weighs the risk of the company against the desire of the ex-employee to advance his/her career. It's hard to see how merely disclosing your former work relationship with a company might harm their interests or violate trade secrets. In general, NDAs and non-competes (which might be more applicable to your situation) are only enforceable if they have a reasonable scope (i.e. list a number of specific companies that you're not allowed to work for instead of specifying an entire industry), a reasonable duration (e.g. 12 to 24 months) and include severance pay that appropriately compensates your opportunity loss.

Financial corporations usually have very good lawyers though, so I highly recommend you to get one yourself and have him/her check the no-compete / NDA, as this is a complex legal matter and nothing that can be resolved quickly in an online forum.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am in the United States.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your Employment History is likely already available in the public domain via your Credit Report > [https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/is- employment-li...](https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/is-employment- listed-in-your-credit-report/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Would have to be a massive severance package (ie fu money) to consider this. Probably high 7 figures at least. And if knowledge of your existence is so important to them that they would ask for this (I've never heard of such a request before), you can probably get that amount.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't sign it, but if the severance was greater than or equal to 9X my last annual salary then I would consider it.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's kind of interesting and evil. It's not a covenant not to compete (which must be reasonable, and would be unenforceable in some states). It's a covenant to keep secrets in a way that makes you less employable.

If it holds up, you'd have to leave a resume gap. Or put something down like "2017 - 2018 Confidential." Which might as well be "A short stay at Utica."

Talk to a local lawyer, of course. Some states have "service" or "reference" laws that require employers to disclose information.[0]

[0] [https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free- books/employee-...](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free- books/employee-rights-book/chapter9-6.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I am not a lawyer but aren't NDAs supposed to be protecting information about the company but NOT omitting the fact that you worked there for 9 years? I mean how can someone even ask to not mention 9 years of employment. I am not even sure how you can consider something like that. I am sure severance is not going to be that large right?

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, what have you be telling people for the last 9 years? You can't non- disclose already disclosed information

</comment><comment><USER10> Some interesting answers here, but why not just put:

 _Senior RoleTitle_ \- Last 9 Years

Fortune 500 Finance Company

\- Worked on projects related to fieldA

\- Broad general statement of work1

\- Broad general statement of work2

</comment><comment><USER11> Probably just decline unless the severance is good enough to make up for the extra difficulty in job searches.

</comment><comment><USER12> Tell them it's too late, you already disclosed it. What can you do other than cash the check?</comment>


Apple Finally Approves A Native Google Voice Application (Again) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/09/17/apple-finally-approves-a-native-google-voice-application/ <comment><USER2> The rejection of the Google voice application is the primary reason I have not upgraded to iPhone4 and was instead planning on switching to Android when my contract was up. I always felt they had the right to reject the app but for me, it was a case of Apple making a decision that was bad for me but good for them, which is exactly the kind of behavior from the carriers and other that I was trying to avoid by buying an iPhone. If they do approve the official gVoice app, I may consider sticking with iPhone over Android. I may finally be able to get rid of my gVoice text message to email to Prowl setup that I am currently running.

</comment><comment><USER3> First the revision of the language restrictions, then the publication of the App Store guidelines, and now this. I suspect Apple had a run-in with the FCC that gave them considerable cause for concern.

<comment><USER4> I think you mean FTC?

<comment><USER5> It's true that the FTC has expressed concern over app store rules, but the FCC was specifically investigating the circumstances of the iPhone Google Voice app: <http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/>

<comment><USER6> And just to be clear, Apple still hasn't approved Google's GV app, which is what spawned that investigation. Will we see the official GV app approved now as well?

<comment><USER7> At this point, I'd be surprised if Google resubmitted it. The reason being that I feel that the deep integration with Google Voice that Android phones can offer is a fairly good selling point when one hesitates between Android and iOS. (when it was initially submitted, Android phones were much less popular)

That being said, if the unofficial apps get popular, it might then be in Google's interest to offer their own to control the offers and make sure their service is appealing to even iPhone owners.

<comment><USER6> I thought that as well, and posted a similar comment on a different thread that provoked an interesting response: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1677715>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Notifo just integrated GV Connect so you can open the Google Voice push notifications in a native app instead of jumping through the mobile safari stuff. More info here: [http://blog.notifo.com/use-gv-connect-iphone-app- notifo-for-...](http://blog.notifo.com/use-gv-connect-iphone-app-notifo-for- google-v)

</comment><comment><USER9> Not the official app.

<comment><USER10> What makes you think there will be one? There is no native "official" Gmail app.

<comment><USER11> why would anyone in their right mind use a native gmail app when you can use it in to iphone mail client for multiple accounts.

<comment><USER7> The Mail app doesn't follow the exact same behavior as the Gmail interface. I tend to prefer the mobile web interface for that reason (e.g. archiving, tagging, mark as spam work the same, whereas are somewhat broken through the Mail app). One could imagine that an official native app would follow the same "philosophy". (though the mobile web app is very well done, and can be used offline to a certain extent)

<comment><USER12> iOS4 actually has great support for gmail finally. You can enable archive instead of delete in the options now (may have to re-add the account). In iOS 4.1 they even changed the icon away from the trash can when you have this enabled.

That being said, I miss support for priority inbox already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe we should thank Android? Competition is a lovely thing.</comment>


Show HN: GAN Playground – Play with Generative Adversarial Neural Nets In-Browser - <AUTHOR> https://reiinakano.github.io/gan-playground <comment><USER2> Source and README: [https://github.com/reiinakano/gan- playground](https://github.com/reiinakano/gan-playground)

(at the time of writing, the HN post points to the demo)

</comment><comment><USER3> Small nitpick, but I feel like it should start training by default. Took me a good minute to realize why no progress was being made.

<comment><USER4> It does for me in Firefox, but I have the opposite opinion. It shouldn't start running compute intensive operations and downloading datasets untill I say go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I gave it a few minutes and got nothing.

Maybe try for something even simpler than MNIST, so we can get the great immediate feedback effect of [http://playground.tensorflow.org](http://playground.tensorflow.org), which I consider the important aspect for learnability?

<comment><USER6> There's just no point getting fancy for MNIST. Using nothing but fully- connected layers and rmsprop, I got good results in less than one minute. [https://imgur.com/a/7xzmQ](https://imgur.com/a/7xzmQ)

Hidden units for discriminator layers - 100, 40, 2.

Generator layers - 40, 100, 768, then "reshape" into 28x28x1.

<comment><USER7> what you're showing is basically perfect discriminator with awful generator, isn't it?

<comment><USER6> Yeah ok it's pretty misleading. And if you let it run longer the generator starts getting a little better. It took me a long time to figure out the UI.

<comment><USER7> well you have the example on the left of graphs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which books have you re-read the most? - <AUTHOR> Books I have re-read the most:

  1. The C Programming Language
  2. The Design of Everyday Things
  3. On Writing
  4. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
  5. Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts
  6. Meditations (Gregory Hays translation)
  7. The Personal MBA
 <comment><USER2> > 33 Strategies of War > 48 Laws of Power

I keep going back to it because it applies in almost every conflict in life, from competitors to personal relationships to office politics. It's also very entertainingly written.

> The Checklist Manifesto

I know it cover to cover but someone impressive always keeps recommending it and I go back for a reread. Alas, it isn't very practical for a software engineer, where you face different situations daily. I really wish it was because I want it to work.

> Never Split the Difference

Negotiation is a very emotional thing. Most of the time it's simply negotiating with kids or the spouse. This book is completely amazing for it, but a lot of techniques feel unnatural. I brush up to find techniques I was using wrong or simply to remind myself to focus on empathy.

> Deep Work > Mastery > Peak Performance > The Art of Learning > The Power of > Habit

My go to motivational books.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. _The Mysterious Island_ \- Jules Verne

2\. _Nineteen Eighty Four_ \- George Orwell

3\. _False Memory_ \- Dean Koontz

4\. _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ \- Steve Blank

5\. _The Discipline of Market Leaders_ \- Fred Wiersema and Michael Treacy

6\. _Mastering the Complex Sale_ \- Jeff Thull

are the first few that come to mind.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Your Money or Your Life - Joe Dominguez 2\. Is the American Dream Killing You - Paul Stiles 3\. The Odyssey - Homer 4\. Collected Works of Ted Hughes 5\. DK Eye Witness Guide to Thailand (on second paper copy) 6\. Lonely Planet Guide to Philippines (on third paper copy) 7\. The Hobbit (about 4 reads to date) 8\. LOTR (3 reads to date) \---

</comment><comment><USER5> The Sticking Point Solution: 9 Ways to Move Your Business from Stagnation to Stunning Growth In Tough Economic Times

> [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6515635-the-sticking- > poi...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6515635-the-sticking-point- > solution)

</comment><comment><USER6> Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner

<comment><AUTHOR> Even though I'm a huge Carmack fan, somehow missed this book. Adding to my immediate reading list. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Usually things I get inspiration from;

Dream Park series

William Gibson Stuff: Difference Engine, Burning Chrome, Neuromancer

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Series

Hackers - Steve Levy

Graphic Idea Notebook & other pasteup era graphic design books

Greetings from Route 66

Old Travel Guides

Old Issues (50s-60s) of home technical Magazines Like Popular Science and Mechanics

</comment><comment><USER8> > Zero To One, Peter Thiel.

> Hooked, Nir Eyal.

<comment><USER9> Reading Zero to One as I write this. I find that reading it each year provides a nice jolt of focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Godel Escher Bach - Douglas Hofstadter

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones - Translated by Paul Reps

Maus I & II - Art Spiegelman

Battle Angel Alita (original series) & B.A.A. Last Order - Yukito Kishiro

</comment><comment><USER11> 1984

A Brave New World

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

<comment><USER12> In case of HhGttG, are you referring to the first Book, or to the whole series? I'm personally most fond of "Goodbye, and thanks for all the Fish" Mostly because it makes me so goddamn happy :)

<comment><USER13> I really like Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency the best, for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Definitive Book of Body Language - How to win friends and influence People - Think and Grow Rich - Self Discipline in 10 days

</comment><comment><USER15> The Stories of Ibis by Hiroshi Yamamoto

</comment><comment><USER16> Man's Search for Meaning

</comment><comment><USER13> Tech:

1\. The C Programming Language

2\. Data Structures and Algorithms in Python

Non-Tech:

3\. Dune

4\. Lord of the Flies

</comment><comment><USER17> Danny Wallace - Yes Man

Clifford Stoll - The Cuckoo's Egg

</comment><comment><USER18> A Dance to the Music of Time - Anthony Powell</comment>


Choosing a front end framework in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/this-dot-labs/building-modern-web-applications-in-2017-791d2ef2e341 <comment><USER2> Worth the read. There is still a bias towards EmberJS but it's subtle and doesn't detract from the article.

<comment> King-Aaron Personally, I felt that the entire article was a comparison between Ember vs everything else... I wouldn't call it subtle. However, it was fairly objective in it's discussion, and hasn't left me feeling like the author thinks there's only one option in their mind. Good article.</comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Rare 2005 Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--APdD6vejI A rare interview with Zuckerberg from the summer of 2005, when he first moved out to Palo Alto.  Shows Facebook's office HQ and Z's vision for the future of the company.<p>Fascinating to compare his perspective then with the reality now! <comment><USER2> Little off topic but the art on the walls was painted by David Choe: <http://www.davidchoe.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Focus, focus, focus, THEN expand out.

What amazing progress - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlQQ_Kcz53I&NR](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlQQ_Kcz53I&NR)

</comment><comment><USER4> at 4:00, when asked what comes after expanding facebook to all colleges, zuck replies "well, i mean, there doesn't necessarily have to be more."

</comment><comment><USER5> Pretty interesting to see an early look at facebook HQ in palo alto. Mark used a quite a lot of "so's" in the interview. Seems like the "other things" he talks about besides just being a college directory has worked out pretty well.

Quick question to HN users that are more informed. at this timeline who was funding facebook?

<comment><USER6> Facebook's funding timeline: "Round one: $500,000 from Peter Thiel, Summer 2004; Round two: $12.7 million from Accel Partners, April 2005; Round three: $27.5 million from Greylock Partners leading the round, Meritech Capital Partners participating, and Accel Partners and Peter Thiel increasing their investment in the company." Source: <http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?factsheet>

<comment><USER5> Wow, thanks for the info.</comment></comment></comment>


After traveling to over 25 countries I created an app I wanted - <AUTHOR> http://tripl.com <comment><USER2> A few small things:

\- you seem to have some crazy js loading on the facebook auth page. In chrome/mac it resized my window to fill my screen length wise. I would recommend going with facebook's default auth popup. Then again maybe you are and their js was just acting goofy.

\- the image resources on the autocomplete for your location suggestions do not load.

\- the video explanation after you sign up could be more clear. Maybe have some steps to go through in order to "complete" my signup process like making my first recommendation and planning a trip.

\- when I create a trip and select that "me myself and I" are going on the trip (ie. I am going alone) the trip shows that two people are going on the trip.

\- A lot of the encouraged interaction on the site seems passive. I suspect people are going to be good about setting up their own trips but lazy about making recommendations for other people's trips. Whether it's gamification or something more you should find some way to encourage or even force people to interact.

<comment><AUTHOR> Daniel seriously big thanks on all the feedback. \- I think chrome is having a bug, its been a pain in the ass \- ok cool we will look into it, it should have been flags \- we are enabling more of a guided tour using png over lays soon \- thats just me be some bug, looking into it \- we have a light gamification aspect that we want to highlight, our vision is the more you help set up recommendations, introductions and interact with people comeing to your city or helping your friends, you earn points that translate to great discounts or freebies when you do get to travel!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The error page is pretty funny :) <http://tripl.com/themes/html5/img/error- pages/503-bg.png>

<comment><USER4> On first look I thought it was a rainbow penis sticking out of the ground. It took a second or two before I realized what the picture was.

<comment><USER5> Heh, the cloud could use some outlines, perhaps silver?

<comment><USER3> It's a transparent .PNG, there is a white cloud in there if you put it on a colored background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could you please remove the 'sign in with facebook' option? or at least allow other methods of authentication (I prefer Google but ideally people should have the options).

As an avid traveler, I've been relying on friends' friends wherever I go. I could see your app flying!

<comment><USER7> The site needs the information from a social graph to be useful. I can see it being hooked up to G+ in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah right now g+ doesnt give you social graph data yet, we are working on linkedin and twitter however with twitter a lot of people follow brands or people they don't know

scaling friends of friends, combined with geo location, timeframe and interest tags has been an engineer challenge but we are starting to look into other graphs like above

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool idea. The user experience of adding tags is pretty terrible compared to the rest. The placeholder text in the input field suggests you can use commas and judging from the tags it suggested such as "Design, Food, Movies" "Beer,Tech,Music" a lot of people noticed that. The suggestion pop-up is also kind of awkward sometimes as it occludes the input field and won't go away when you expect. You'll have to do some serious deduplication on this even after you fix the interface.

Also, it got stuck on me a couple of times after clicking "let's get started", with no way to re-do (it's all AJAX) and refreshing the page required me to do everything over.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know :( we noticed that yesterday, and are now manually having to separate the user generated tags that include commas, we are going to try and push these changes ASAP.

What do you mean it got "stuck on you", it wasn't processing correctly?

<comment><USER8> It just failed to proceed and submit the form on my unreliable 3G connection. No way to cancel and try again though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can definitely see this being very useful but man is it slow right now... Every time I hit a "Loading..." it never finishes. I end up having to refresh the whole page and trying again. Perhaps it should at least throw an error if the server's getting overwhelmed?

<comment><USER10> Things are really slow on chrome at least. It takes forever, but sounds promising the idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great idea! It would be awesome to couple this with a planner type system as well so you can plan your adventures with your fellow travelers. A hook into AirBnB or another service to get discounted room & board with other people might be another cool idea.

Nice work!

<comment><AUTHOR> All good suggestions that we are already working on :) hence why they are so good!

<comment><USER11> Nice! How long did it take you guys to develop the released version?

Also, the name reminds me of the Belgian Bier "Tripel" ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A "dating" site for travel partners, nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> haha use it as you want ;)

<comment><USER12> Heh, I wasn't advocating to use it as a dating service, but the functionality and business models are going to be substantially the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My only criticism so far is that I really dislike the font colors of the FAQ page

<comment><AUTHOR> hahah yeah we didn't much love into these pages for our MVP, need to redo them big time. Putting it pivotal tracker!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> couchsurfing already does this and has a much larger network. how are you different/better? couchsurfing is about quite a bit more than finding a place to stay, so you can't really say that.

</comment><comment><USER15> You might want to improve the page load speed. Some quick thoughts:

\- load above-the-fold content first

\- combine the JS to a single file

\- include the country flags and other small icons as inline base64 PNGs

<comment><AUTHOR> big thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way I should be replaced by we. Although I'm the co-founder this project would be nowhere without our awesome team of designers and developers!

</comment><comment><USER16> Not loading on Chrome for me... I can sign in with Safari but it seems really slow, right now its just stuck on loading... I want in! Arg.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea what this issue is, it seems to happen to me on every facebook auth window like on turntable fm as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did you do all the design and development yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> no I am lucky to have a kickass team of designers and developers building this with me. the team is everything!

<comment><USER17> The reason I ask is because I'm currently building a product and love the design. Is the team who did the design available to help? =)

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry the guys are fulltime on this, from stockholm, sweden but making our way over to NYC

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why so cryptic... was it 26 countries?

<comment><AUTHOR> hahah cause I never finished counting! I think its below 30 though

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would use it if it wasn't for the facebook thing, I already use couchsurfing, bewelcome, etc

<comment><AUTHOR> we feel the facebook integration creates a better social experience than couchsurfing already provides. I've been a coachsurfer for many years but I really enjoy knowing that this person is somehow connected to me, ie friend of friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I only got 10 friends on FB... so i doubt this would be useful for me, right?

</comment><comment><USER17> I tried to type in Maui as a trip i'm planning and it doesn't find it?

<comment><USER17> Ahh, if I type a specific city on the island (Makawao) it finds that. So its just ignoring the island itself.

It might be nice to define a general area. "Spain", "Maui" and not a specific city, since I plan to travel around the whole area not just a specific city.

<comment><AUTHOR> will defs look into that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Loos nice, but, I'd rather just talk and meet people when travelling.

<comment><USER22> Most of the time, that is easy to do. But sometimes it is not. Sometimes you are so remote, and just stuck in the wrong hotel/hostel and head out at the wrong times. That is fine, but you may want to meet people during those times as well.

As someone who is traveling around SEA at the moment, I will definitely check this you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> it's been saying this for over 4 hours now: Hold on, we are just loading... :(

<comment><USER23> working now!

<comment><AUTHOR> Shit sorry for that delay, we really worked on making that as fast as possible

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great idea. I like it!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks so much appreciate it</comment></comment>


Blog: Gradient descent in spiking neural networks for low-power inference - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/neuromorphic-intelligence/putting-the-neural-back-into-networks-656f26746d00 <comment><USER2> Yann LeCun is right.

Spikes in silicon are perhaps the most power inefficient way to represent numbers. You dissipate power every time you change a wire from high voltage to low, or back again. Think about representing numbers up to 8 bit precision. With a spiking neural network, you need to charge and discharge the wire 128 times (expected value), assuming the numbers are uniformly distributed between 0-255. With a standard 8-bit representation, you need to charge and discharge a wire 4 times.

Every time people make analogies to biological systems, they seem to overlook the truth: we don't know how to engineer biological systems. It's true brains are amazing, but they are not built from silicon. Trying to emulate a crude model of a brain in silicon is like making an airplane flap its wings.

<comment><AUTHOR> You'd be right, if we needed 8-bit precision on activity in a neural network to get reasonable performance. But we don't --- in fact, binarized neural networks (i.e. 1-bit precision) are under very active research as well as HW development.

Our own HW represents weights with a few bits, and neural states with a few bits. Only actual events transmitted between neurons are single-bit.

You can also consider that because SNNs operate in real time, "time" itself is a variable that can represent values. Several architectures use event timing to represent real values.

There are several much more power efficient ways of representing information than the one you suggested.

<comment><USER3> I'm one of those people who research low precision NNs. There's a trade off between network size and network precision, so to get binarized networks to work "reasonably well" you need to make them much larger in terms of weight count.

SNNs are not well suitable for existing silicon based process technologies. It's much more power efficient to perform GEMM computation in analog domain, using non-spiking voltage or current levels (e.g. memristor or floating gate transistor crossbars). A brain uses spikes because of very specific biological constraints. We use silicon, because it's extremely reliable, extremely fast, and very cheap. And it does not have those constraints which shaped brain evolution.

Brain simulation research is welcome, but the current SNN algorithms are just slightly less crude brain simplifications than regular ANNs. Using spikes in silicon to do ML computations does not make much sense, imo. I'd rather see neuroscientists focus on fundamental understanding of core brain algorithms, like what Numenta is trying to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised SNNs don't get more attention. The technology to make efficient hardware for training them exists. The key problem is that current DNNs just take too much power to train. They are fundamentally inefficient and none of the incremental improvements in recent years has changed this.</comment>


FlightCaster (YC S09) on AWS Blog - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/08/flightcaster-awspowered-flight-delay-prediction.html

<comment><USER2> A few stats on delays might be helpful...

25% of all flights are delayed. If you're on the last flight of the day--you have a 36% chance of delay.

That's 400,000 people per day in the U.S. alone that are delayed without much or any advanced notification. 75% of all significant delays (those over an hour) are first posted by the airlines within 30 minutes of departure.

For those that don't want to risk missing a meeting or getting home for dinner, advanced notification means you can change flights or at least warn your family and colleagues.

Stay tuned--we'll soon be posting all our accuracy metrics at <http://blog.flightcaster.com>.

For now, read more about how delays occur and why airlines report them so late at <http://flightcaster.com/faq>

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get FlightCaster and I don't see how it can make enough money to justify external investment. It is not very useful to me to have a "maybe" about my flight - I will still go the airport on time and wait for the flight.

And furthermore, flights nowadays in my part of the world are on time. I've not been delayed in quite a long while.

FlightCaster has to be more than 95% accurate all the time, or its not useful. And I don't believe this tool is 95% accurate.

<comment><USER4> For heavy business travelers, the question is not whether to go to the airport or not, but whether to rebook or not, and they decide that based on probabilities.

<comment><USER5> I travel quite a lot. I don't think flightcaster would be much help for domestic itineraries, from JFK to SFO, for example.

It doesn't deliver much value for the work week frequent flyer (those who travel for 5 work days). Critical stuff happens on Tues/Wed/Thurs for just this reason. It's no big deal if I get in late on Monday--I just sit in the lounge and hack or answer email.

<comment><USER6> When you have families every hour counts. It does matter if I get in late on Monday, even though I am perfectly find hacking away in the lounge

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you know your flight has a certain probability of being late, are you going to risk arriving late at the airport and missing the plane if and when FlightCaster gets it wrong?

Another inherent problem is related to the fact that until the airline admits that the flight is going to be late (and sometimes even after that point) they still require you to check in on-time or risk losing your seat and pay extra for rescheduling. Then, what good is the information?

As customers of the airline industry we have been trained to adjust our behavior and expectations regarding timing without being able to influence the industry. The service will NOT and cannnot change it.

Given the factors involved, it is unlikely that the model used is able to explain substantial amount of the variance. Hence, the ability to predict low probabilities.

Sorry, I will not invest a penny in a company like this.

</comment><comment><USER8> _The transitions I made from FORTRAN to PL/I to C to C++ to Java to Perl to PHP were each pretty painless_

How do you go from Perl to PHP without pain? You lose pretty much every good language feature in the process, and significantly reduce the number of tools and libraries you have access to. This remark blows my mind.

<comment><USER9> What I meant was that much of what I learned with language N was applicable to language N+1.

Some of these new programming models don't seem as if they build on concepts that are familiar to me.

Maybe I'm overstating this, but I get the sense that we are approaching some sort of discontinuity where the developers who can take these new, non- procedural, declarative, loosely typed, implicitly parallel systems and make them dance and sing will be light years ahead of the last generation and their pithy procedural languages.

<comment><USER10> Is pithy really the word you mean to use?

<comment><USER9> Not sure, but I've been up for 20 hours and can't think of anything more to say. Goodnight!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To support the problem identified earlier: "75% of all significant delays (those over an hour) are first posted by the airlines within 30 minutes of departure." Yet, in most cases you have to check in at least an hour before departure. So, this statics actually works against your service.

<comment><USER2> The point here is that we tell you 6 hours before departure--long before the airline posts anything and long before you check-in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The stats FlightCaster collects is like the stats on road accidents: if you go by route A on Ford you have a 90% probability to broke the car (and be late), so you better switch the route or the car.

How many will do that?</comment>


Piketty's Findings Undercut by Errors - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/e1f343ca-e281-11e3-89fd-00144feabdc0.html#axzz32Z6vP0JO

<comment><USER2> In Piketty's credit, he did make this easy.

Providing data for reproducibility and replicability is relatively new in economics.

There are, however, two kinds of claims here. One is that mistakes were made, which is grounds for schadenfreude for those (like me!) who don't like the slight jumps in reasoning from "inequality is rising" to "something must be done about inequality" to "this is what must be done". For all I know, the key injustice in modern economies is topocracy:

[https://encrypted.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source...](https://encrypted.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Fsrep%2F2014%2F140121%2Fsrep03784%2Ffull%2Fsrep03784.html&ei=aZ1_U8GRK5TLsQSu9oGACg&usg=AFQjCNGi1Zdqk-6pvNbr3_4OOMyjkhEKJw&sig2=SMz95_tUcVbAei7bxXtxmg&bvm=bv.67720277,d.cWc)

But secondly, it is claimed that he cherry-picks. Economists (we) do that. A lot. And it has to be called out.

<comment><USER3> _" But secondly, it is claimed that he cherry-picks. Economists (we) do that. A lot. And it has to be called out."_

The total effect of his cherry picking can't even be discerned from this article. With a lot more work (more than a single blogger probably has time for), it might be shown to be much worse. For example, Piketty chose the U.K., France and Sweden for his list of European countries (averaging them all into "Europe" without adjusting for their populations, as the article pointed out). But why those particular countries? Would the results have been completely different if he would have also included Germany, one of the wealthiest and most populous European countries? We'll probably never know how he came up with his set of countries, and whether he deliberately omitted other countries whose data was available because they would have caused his results to be not significant enough to publish (or even contradicted his thesis).

This reminded me a lot of one of the original studies linking cholesterol to heart disease, which chose a carefully picked subset of European countries even though results were available for several others. Subsequent research showed that including the data from the missing countries would have yielded very different results.

<comment><USER2> Related, useful concept:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox)

See in particular the Berkeley Gender Bias case if you don't want to hack the math apart.

The specific way you slice and dice data matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lawrence Summers' review/criticism of Piketty's tome is worth a read, even for non Summers' fans (in general I mildly disfavor Summers, but I appreciated this piece).

 _" Piketty's timing may be impeccable, and his easily understandable but slightly exotic accent perfectly suited to today's media; but make no mistake, his work richly deserves all the attention it is receiving. This is not to say, however, that all of its conclusions will stand up to scholarly criticism from his fellow economists in the short run or to the test of history in the long run. Nor is it to suggest that his policy recommendations are either realistic or close to complete as a menu for addressing inequality.

...

Books that represent the last word on a topic are important. Books that represent one of the first words are even more important. By focusing attention on what has happened to a fortunate few among us, and by opening up for debate issues around the long-run functioning of our market system, Capital in the Twenty-First Century has made a profoundly important contribution."_

[http://www.democracyjournal.org/32/the-inequality- puzzle.php...](http://www.democracyjournal.org/32/the-inequality- puzzle.php?page=all)

<comment><USER5> The focus on the balance sheet and not just the P&L is important. Unless these are incredibly flawed analyses--rather than minor nitpicks--the main contributions seem to be seminal none-the-less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The more substantive article on ft.com is here: [http://blogs.ft.com/money- supply/2014/05/23/data-problems-wi...](http://blogs.ft.com/money- supply/2014/05/23/data-problems-with-capital-in-the-21st-century/)

This shows the actual errors, correcting for the errors, and the new results.

If you get an unauthorized popup, search on Google and click the top link: [https://www.google.com/search?q=data-problems-with- capital-i...](https://www.google.com/search?q=data-problems-with-capital-in- the-21st-century)

<comment><USER7> Thanks a lot. It is annoying that we can't see Piketty's answer without this popup.

I seriously hate the way this has been reported. No one seems to care about the facts or numbers. All news seem to be "The commie was wrong!" without even trying to explain what the criticism is about.

When I see the FT)reconstructed charts, I have a hard time accepting the notion that his errors were significant. He himself explains that he tries to track a quantity that is hidden from public view by using several indirect indicators. It is doomed to be approximate, but I don't see anything like a contradiction in this article. Just a mere correction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> FT's accusation sounds dubious.

For example, Giles claimed:

"Piketty appears to have added random numbers to certain formula to bend the data toward his hypothesis." (from BI) and Giles: "A 2 is added because the number wasn't high enough — it didn't seem to fit what he wanted to show in his charts, so he just added 2 to it..." Source: [http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/537fa370eab8ea427aa...](http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/537fa370eab8ea427aa0f9d8-517-334/screen%20shot%202014-05-23%20at%202.24.06%20pm.png)

First off, it's not a random number. That 2 is an estimation from the two actual numbers from (Wolff 1994) Table 4. There was neither 1960 nor 1970 numbers available and only 1962 numbers (25.9% & 7.5%) available from the original paper. Hence, for the difference of that 2 and 8 years, Piketty first estimated the 1960 Top 1% wealth share number (31.4%) by (25.9 + 7.5 - 2). Then, the 1970 number is calculated based on the 1960 number and the ratio of "top 0.1% wealth share of 1960 and 1970, with the addition of that "2" which just took off for the 1960 number (2+31.4*10.4/8.7). I would say "2" is reasonable, even though it's arbitrary, to make the whole data series more smooth. Of course someone could use other estimate number for that two years, but it only makes the whole series more bizarre, and it does not change the pattern of that data series.

Second, FT's own conclusion even shows the patterns are almost the same with FT's claimed "correct" numbers or Piketty's. Piketty even pointed out other researches from Saez and Zucman published after his book also confirms his finding in the book.

All in all, FT just sounds like trying to sell more paper/subscription.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Posted links to piketty's response and more detailed explication of the issues on my blog: [http://wcgortel.com/pikettys- problem](http://wcgortel.com/pikettys-problem)

<comment><USER9> Can you get the data out of the website which has Piketty's response/a rundown of the errors? The FT site is not letting people who are not registered read those. And personally, I don't want to create another account just to read that information. (I imagine a good number of people here are similar)

<comment><AUTHOR> I just updated with a couple more grabs. I don't want to pull the full article, but I added in the FT's long time series chart of income inequality and conclusion though.

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Slate has a good breakdown on this:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/05/23/financial_tim...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/05/23/financial_times_on_piketty_his_data_is_wrong.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> If anyone is getting stopped by FT's registration page, you can log in as:

email@example.com / Bugmenot

</comment><comment><USER12> There are a lot of problems, they have been pointed by economists on every side of the spectrum right now, few months after the book has been published. More errors will be pointed during the years, but all the criticisms will be ignored, Piketty will be remembered as a genius for the time being and his ideas will be teached in schools and universities as if they were the God's words.

Just like happened with Keynes.

<comment><USER13> Or with Reinhart & Rogoff, who made a "mistake" in Excel that helped push disastrous austerity all over the world with a 90% debt-to-GDP cliff that didn't actually exist...

<comment><USER12> Reinhart & Rogoff are just technocrats that will be forgotten in two or three years.</comment></comment></comment>