Where can I hire designers? - <AUTHOR>

I need a new icon and UI for my iPhone app - Definition.<p>Been looking through oDesk but somehow it doesn't really appeal to me. Browsing through Forrst and Dribbble is driving insane too. Anyone has any good contacts experienced in iOS design? <comment><USER2> <http://www.dribbble.com/> is the best source of designers. Browse through it, searching keywords, etc, and then click on the profiles of 10-15 that interest you.

Contact them. Easy!

If not, shoot me an email and I'll hook you up with a designer (emails in profile). I've connected about 20-30 HN'ers with designers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure if you'll find specifically iOS design, but <http://sortfolio.com> is another service for finding designers.

</comment><comment><USER4> My contact information is in my profile, contact me if you want to discuss your specific needs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Try <http://99designs.com/> ?

<comment><USER6> whoa! $1000 for a 2 page mockup?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm interested, maybe we should chat? email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been using brandstack.com for ny side projects.

</comment><comment><USER9> Drop me a line. My email is in my profile</comment>


Apple's stock price falls to lowest point in six months - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/apples-stock-price-falls-to-lowest-point-in-six-months/ <comment><USER4> Eugh. I don't get why anyone wants to read this mindless speculation. What else do your tea leaves tell you?

"many investors were disappointed that Apple wasn't able to blow through Wall Street's estimates"

Well, great. Maybe their goat's entrails didn't predict well enough last time, but this time they were wrong the other way. Almost as if it were random - <USER2> as if the market had already compensated for their predictions?

There is no new information here. So allow me to share my own totally uninformed opinion about the future of Apple with you.

Apple sells physical devices for a massive profit. No one else has been able to sell phones/tablets for so much. Apple will keep doing that as long as it can, regardless of Google's efforts to undercut. I think Apple will pour more effort (or just marketing effort) into their app store, trying to promote it to developers as the "one you make money in, the one where people will actually spend money on apps". Now I leave it up to you to make quantitative predictions off that.

<comment><USER5> > Apple sells physical devices for a massive profit. No one else has been able > to sell phones/tablets for so much. Apple will keep doing that as long as it > can, regardless of Google's efforts to undercut.

The article is about Apple's stock price, and I'm not sure you understand how that part works.

Yes, Apple will continue to make billions of dollars every quarter for quite a while, but their stock is likely to drop down significantly in the coming year.

<comment><USER4> "their stock is likely to..."

Why? Don't just assert that it will do something. Their P/E is 12, so why won't it grow? Why haven't traders seen this "likely" scenario and sold/shorted Apple stock?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (Full disclosure: I bought Apple stock and calls in the last 2 days, for a short term trade. Yes, I was &*!@-ing my pants yesterday when it hit ~$505.)

The difference with Apple and other momentum stocks is that Apple isn't like Netflix, where hype deeply overshadowed the problem they have with increasing content costs, or Groupon, which simply has a terrible business model.

Apple makes an incredible amount of real money and real demand. In this 4th quarter, Apple will make more money than Cisco will throughout its entire year.

My concern isn't that people will all of a sudden stop buying Apple hardware... that simply won't happen. They will continue to make billions upon billions of dollars.

My concern is that there are a number of strategic missteps almost as soon as Steve Jobs died. I think the iPad mini will cannibalize iPad sales completely and I think a lot of strategic decisions appears to be fraught with confusion and desperation, like Apple Maps, releasing iPad 4 6 months after iPad 3, etc. I get the argument as to why they made the iPad Mini (my wife wants to get one because it will fit in her purse easier), but I still think very few will buy iPads, and they will need to double iPad Mini sales to make up for lost iPad sales, but I guess we'll see in January.

The major difference with Apple and a company like Microsoft or Cisco is that they don't have much recurring revenue streams. Most of their revenues come from consumers purchasing their goods quarter after quarter. In order to keep growing revenues, they really have to maintain their amazing pace of innovation.

If they make a really bad strategic misstep, and people slow down in terms of buying the products, it will show up immediately, and they won't have a strong enterprise pipeline to buffer them. In 2011, Apple sales were about $60B. In fiscal 2012, they were over $100B. So, could their revenues drop to $60B in a year? It's not probable, but it's possible.

That being said, their PE ratio is ridiculously low, something like 10x next year's earnings, and they have $120B in cash. They can do something ridiculous like buy Facebook or even Cisco for cash, and still have more money than most other companies out there, so there is a lot of room for dramatic and aggressive action by Apple.

<comment><USER7> I'd argue their willingness to cannibalize their exisiting products is exactly why they are doing so well. The product that finally killed the iPod was the iPhone.

<comment><USER8> Actually it was the iPod Mini that killed the iPod. Then the Nano killed the Mini. Then the iPhone killed the entire line.

So, the spirit of your statement is right on the money. This is Apples truth strength. Their lack of complacency.

The iPad Mini will eat the iPad. I would nearly guarantee that's the whole idea.

<comment><USER9> I saw it phrased as "Better to eat your own young than let something else do it", which is slightly grim but I'd say close to the mark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks like a follow-up take on the similar TechCrunch article discussed at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4791710>.

Let me repeat my comment there.

I would personally not buy their stock any time soon.

I keep meaning to write a blog entry on this. To understand my reasoning it helps to be familiar with The Innovator's Dilemma (see [http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies- Ca...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies- Cause/dp/0875845851/ref=sr_1_2) for the book). The basic assumption of that book (backed up with many examples in industries from ship technology to hard drives to backhoes) is that any technology that has a well-established value proposition will tend to show exponential improvement on that value proposition over time. Users needs also follow an exponential curve, but it tends to be slower than the technology improvement curve. (A lot slower.) Therefore if you have 2 technologies competing for that market, eventually the cheap crappy one will be good enough, and after that point hits it wins. The premium technology will always show great revenue curves even once their low- end users start switching, but those curves hide a great oncoming disaster.

In every market that Apple is in, it is the premium product. It has competitors. And its competitors have a pretty good sense of the value proposition that they need to deliver. Therefore every market line for Apple is doomed. They show no signs of having new ones to wow us with, so Apple has a world of hurt coming.

But, you may ask, why did they not have this problem historically? My answer is because Steve Jobs' genius lay in constantly finding and delivering new value propositions. He found and defined markets for pretty computers, light laptops, smartphones, and so on. The whole Innovator's Dilemma argument depends on competing on a known value proposition, and Jobs never sat still long enough for his competitors to do that.

Of course Jobs is now gone, and there is no sign that Apple has anyone who has that talent.

<comment><USER11> Short-sighted drivel.

"In every market that Apple is in, it is the premium product." Why do you think that is, exactly? Apple has quality products because it is a culture designed to produce Quality. As long as that does not stop, they will continue to absolutely pave the streets with their competitors' remains, because, frankly, no other company in the market has the company-wide culture necessary to produce the end-to-end quality that Apple does. It's far too soon to tell if they can still innovate into new and unexpected markets, but they've only released a handful of products since Jobs' death. But the truth remains: whatever market they enter, they will dominate.

What do they need someone to come up with ideas? Shoot, I'll do it. How desperate do you think they are? If I show up at 1 Infinite Loop claiming to be channeling Steve Jobs, do you think they'd hire me?

Hogwash.

I wouldn't buy anytime soon either, but only because the stock price will continue to fall as short-sighted investors keep believing things like this.

<comment><USER10> You are long on insults and short on specifics.

I guarantee you, as long as quality concerns remain a major motivating factor for Apple buyers, Apple will develop competitors who attempt to deliver it as well. They will never match Apple, but eventually will deliver good enough quality for the buying market.

And it isn't new ideas that they need. It is new value propositions that people will want to buy. And no, they aren't going to believe you if you show up claiming to be able to generate them. So your inability to suddenly rise to the top of Apple is not evidence against what I said.

<comment><USER12> Guys been dead one year and all we hear from people like you is that innovation is dead at Apple because they haven't launched any new $50 billion products in the last 4 quarters. Steve produced a handful of what you're calling "new value propositions" in over a dozen years and most definitely had his hands all over everything Apple has launched from his death to today.

Your claim that Apple probably has no new products in the pipeline is one the most laughable things I've ever read on HN. Apple is not Microsoft or Google, they don't demo a thousand shitty products five years early and hope some of them catch fire.

Your claim that Apple's current product lines are all doomed is also silly and disproved by inspection of their desktop and laptop business. Apple is an innovation machine and everyone else is trying to hit a moving target.

Yes it was drivel and hogwash.

<comment><USER10> You say _people like you_ as if I was in bad company. Read point 5 of <http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html> to see someone who is generally respected in these parts on the exact same topic.

Don't forget, we've seen this play before. Apple on top of the world, Steve Jobs removed from the picture, a guy at the top with a history of execution but not innovation. (OK, the current CEO's history is in a more relevant field than Sculley's background at Pepsi...) The result was very much not pretty.

They are going nowhere for a while. They are clearly ahead of the market, and they have a core constituency of fans. But I'm willing to bet money that in 10 years the luster is off, and in 20 they will be just another technology company to most of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't see any material changes at Apple that can explain this stock slide. Some people are saying that Apple is releasing only small iterations on existing products rather than blockbuster new products, but for every brand new product Apple has released since 1998 or so they've released far more iterative improvements. Some people are pointing to new services that are flawed, but Apple has released flawed services in the past (MobileMe?) and that hasn't had much of an impact on customer demand.

Does Apple face stronger competition from Samsung and others? Yes, but any reasonable investor should have factored in the fact that Apple's competitors would do a decent job building comparable products.

It seems to me that Apple's potential for growth remains unchanged - even if you don't factor in some new blockbuster product, in PCs they are growing at the expense of other manufacturers and they still have a lot of room for growth internationally. I don't see anything that's justified a 25% drop in value.

</comment><comment><USER14> Two issues I have with the prevailing narrative of these discussions:

1\. The idea that Steve Jobs, while immensely important and influential, was some sort of indispensable man. Yes, Sony faltered after Akio Morita passed, and Disney after Walt was gone. But is history so certain to repeat? Are corporations really impotent without the leadership of Randian ubermensch?

2\. The idea that Apple simply _had to_ create a new product this year. Not every year prior to Jobs' passing had new Apple products appearing. Certainly everyone is anxious to see what the company can produce in the post-Jobs era, but is it really realistic to expect the next iProduct within a year after Tim Cook became CEO?

</comment><comment><USER15> The risk is that Apple becomes Microsoft. Microsoft has traded in the same $20 - $30 range for more than 5 years. Microsoft is still a cash cow. But there are not enough new hits to propel the stock. Apple's not leaving any time soon but until we see a new hit its staying flat to falling backward.

While I don't buy into the "Maps would have never happened with Steve!!" the one thing that was undeniable was the man oversaw the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Unbelievable. Cook et al shows no signs of opening an entire new market. The iPhone is 47% of revenues today and now has several peers where even 2 years ago it had none. A lot of fund managers parked cash in Apple because it was assured of a better return than interest rates. Now that's gone away etc. So all of these things will add up and the stock will trade flat to down over the next few years (unless they change the TV or computing device market again etc)

<comment><USER16> It's worse than a risk, it's almost a guarantee.

MSFT was $26.x 14 years ago (even though this is all ignoring the ups & downs between, it's still dramatic).

Megacap stocks are horrible investments on average if you're seeking good returns, specifically because the law of big numbers cripples the ability for any truly massive company to keep a high growth rate. Not to mention that large companies typically begin paying their large profits out in dividends (rather than using it toward growth), and Apple will do the same. Microsoft has paid out the equivalent of half its current market cap in dividends over the past ten years.

It'll be little surprise if Apple is $550 ten years from now, and that's a good scenario given the history of big companies tumbling from the top of the mountain.

Unlike Microsoft, Apple has no 'monopoly' in anything, and they have a vicious annual upgrade cycle. If Apple screws up one version of the iPhone, their stock would crash spectacularly, probably losing at least 1/2 of its value. Microsoft botched a few versions of Windows, and took their time on releases, but their desktop monopoly shielded them from the fallout.

Whether we're talking McDonalds, Boeing, Coca Cola, Walmart, Berkshire Hathaway, Exxon, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, Dell, Chevron, etc. - <USER3> the growth boom ends, and stock returns race toward sub 10% annually. Walmart hasn't moved much in 12 years; McDonalds is now 'growing' at zero and their stock will follow; Coke hasn't moved in 15 years; HP and Dell are disasters, ditto Cisco's stock; Berkshire has returned about 3.x% annually over the last 14 years (with no dividend), radically below Buffett's historical record; Boeing has returned around 2.x% annually over the last 16 years. It's a very long list.

It's real simple in premise: you want Apple at $7, or $35, or $90, but not at $500 or $700 when the future returns are likely to be mediocre. Specifically, you want the next Apple, not the last one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Analysts say that Apple has had a string of misfortunes lately, ranging from missed earnings estimates, management shakeups, missteps on mapping software, supply chain problems, and increased pressure from competitors."

I think the bigger issue is that Apple has accumulated a ton of technical debt recently by having a ridiculous number of products in the market. To keep the plates spinning they've been forced to hire a massive number of new employees, which in the long term at best limits their growth potential and at worst is setting them up for a Microsoft-style lost decade.

<comment><USER18> Compared to almost any other company near their size, they have a ridiculously small number of products in the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's absolutely staggering that this article and commenters here have failed to pick up on the fact that the markets are bearish at the moment and that this is a post election market too.

<comment><USER20> Apple has fallen beyond markets, and it started before the election.

Not that it means a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The AAPL-watchers at ZeroHedge.com take the view that hedge funds are heavily invested in AAPL and that if they leave the stock price will go down due to heavy selling. Further an avalanche of selling could be set in motion if 1 hedge fund sells enough to cause other hedge funds to decide to sell as well.

See e.g. [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-08/apple-enters- gravti...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-08/apple-enters- gravtitational-singularity-hedge-fund-hotel-evacuation-begins)

Note: VWAP means "volume weighted average price" and ES refers to contracts that track the price of the S&P 500 : [http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity- index/us-index/e-mini...](http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us- index/e-mini-sandp500_contract_specifications.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Apple's real or fictitious woes aside, if the stock closed up 2.06 to 527.68 on Friday, how is Friday's close the lowest Apple has been in 6 months? Wouldn't that be Thursday's close of 525.62?

<comment><USER23> The original article does not mention closing price, and it was written on Friday. Either they mean the sharp drop during the day on Friday or the closing price on Thursday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What you are seeing. Is a reversal of sentiments from all front. Steve, is a scary negotiator to go against, that's why apple got the deals it got.

If you are buying based on PE, good luck.

Yes I put my money where my mouth is. Sold AAPL, bought TSLA.

</comment><comment><USER25> Buy now :o)

<comment><USER26> AAPL is where RIMM was 4 yrs ago. Rest all is history!! :)

<comment><USER27> I do not see them failing like RIM. They might well fail like Sony (i.e remain largish but slowly fade into irrelevance). I can totally see that happening.

<comment><USER28> Or, like Microsoft? (flat stock for the last ~10 years)

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure whether that's a good comparison, but that could be down to personal taste. Microsoft made tons of money by selling an extremely boring product. That's never something Apple did. Plus Apple sells hardware, Microsoft software. They are fundamentally different companies.

I can see Apple having a stock like Microsoft (i.e. flat for a decade), I can't really see them being like Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well, then. Buy buy buy.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn Just going to leave this here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3507420>

</comment><comment><USER30> Growth at breakneck speeds can't continue forever, Law of Diminishing Returns and all that. Jobs is dead, and the market is a little spooked by that. Pull up a long-term chart of AAPL and note the trendline since '08. It is reverting to that line, which is not particularly worrying. If it falls below that trendline, it will become the next MSFT (in a stock sense). Actually, the question is not whether AAPL will become the next MSFT, but when. If you're looking for growth, I suggest looking elsewhere.</comment>


In 3 NY restaurants won't open after lockdowns - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/14/the-fat-radishs-unlucky-cohort-1-in-3-ny-restaurants-wont-open-post-pandemic.html <comment><USER2> The actual title is: "One in Three NY restaurants ..."

Submissions automatically have a leading number removed, but it can be put back if you edit your submission.</comment>


Show HN: SFTPGo 0.9.4 Released - <AUTHOR> SFTPGo is a free and open source full featured and highly configurable SFTP server written in Go. It works on Linux, macOS and Windows and has no runtime dependencies.
Here are its main features:
- Each account is chrooted to his Home Dir.
- SFTP accounts are virtual accounts stored in a "data provider".
- SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL and bbolt (key/value store in pure Go) data providers are supported.
- Public key and password authentication. Multiple public keys per user are supported.
- Quota support: accounts can have individual quota expressed as max total size and/or max number of files. - Bandwidth throttling is supported, with distinct settings for upload and download.
- Per user maximum concurrent sessions.
- Per user permissions: list directories content, upload, overwrite, download, delete, rename, create directories, create symlinks can be enabled or disabled.
- Configurable custom commands and/or HTTP notifications on file upload, download, delete or rename and on users add, update and delete.
- Automatically terminating idle connections.
- Atomic uploads are configurable.
- SCP is supported.
- Prometheus metrics are exposed.
- REST API for users and quota management and real time reports for the active connections with possibility of forcibly closing a connection.
- Web based interface to easily manage users and connections.
- Easy migration from Unix system user accounts.
- Portable mode: a convenient way to share a single directory on demand.
- Configuration is a your choice: JSON, TOML, YAML, HCL, envfile are supported.
Binary releases for Linux, macOS and Windows are available:
https://github.com/drakkan/sftpgo/releases
If you want to suggest a new feature or you find a bug please open an issue here:
https://github.com/drakkan/sftpgo/issues <comment><USER2> You should edit the title to "Show HN: SFTPGo 0.9.4 Released"

I like that this has more user flexibility than OpenSSH implementation of SFTP. Creating local accounts and setting shell to /bin/false and group to a chroot sftp is risky.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I updated the title.

SFTPGo supports virtual quota and bandwidth throttling too. I think they are hard to implement using OpenSSH.

For the next release I'm working on Git support so that you can host git repo over ssh with virtual accounts, quota, bandwidth throttling. I think this could be an interesting feature too</comment></comment>


Shenzhen trip report – visiting the world's manufacturing ecosystem - <AUTHOR> http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2014/09/01/shenzhen-trip-r.html <comment><USER2> One anecdotal story: One summer I went back to Shenzhen and decided to get a PlayStation 2 with a mod chip installed so I can play pirated games (I was a poor student).

Now, there was this one mod chip that was really good but requires a bit of soldering work to get it installed right, and me, being an EE student, was no stranger to a soldering iron, so I planned to do it myself after buying the chip.

So I bought a brand new PS2/mod chip combo from this small electronics store and the shirtless owner actually offered to solder it for me for free. I took up on the offer since I get to test the chip on the spot as well.

He opened up the PS2 case, with one hand took up a soldering iron, while the other hand holding a cigarette, started working. I nervously watched him tapping around my brand new PS2's motherboard with just one hand while paying most of the attention to the live soccer game on TV at the time. 5 minutes later he was finished and 8 years later that PS2 is still working and reads all pirated discs with absolutely no problems.

Throughout college I've never met anyone who's as good at soldering as this shirtless electronics shop owner I met in Shenzhen.

<comment><USER3> You can find these people everywhere in China, even Beijing. Weirdly enough, many of them here are Uighers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > In an interesting twist, the factory boss suggested that we could build the > precision molding tools in China and then send these tools to a US shop for > running production.

> This role reversal is an indicator of how the technology, trade, and know- > how for injection molding has shifted to Shenzhen. Even if US has the > manufacturing capacity, key parts of the knowledge ecosystem currently exist > only in Shenzhen.

This is what really saddens me about outsourcing manufacturing from America, is that we lose the knowledge about manufacturing technology. Although we may be at the forefront of software development, in many areas of manufacturing technology the cutting edge development happens in China now.

I'd really like if we could bring about a revival in manufacturing engineering in the US. Other than the ecosystem effect, the main way that China has an advantage is labor cost, so I propose that we could build up a "Shenzhen of America" in the San Diego / Tijuana free trade zone. The repetitive work that takes a lot of hours would be done on the Mexico side, where labor is now almost as cheap as China. The manufacturing engineering and tool-making would both happen on the American side, bringing these jobs back to the USA from China.

San Diego / Tijuana are shipping ports on the Pacific, facilitating importing electronic components from China, Japan, and Korea, and then we could do all of the PCB fab, PCB assembly, injection molding, and final device assembly (as well as all tooling for all of these processes) over here in the Americas.

I'm very supportive of China's development but competition is good and as American citizens we can't just throw in the towel, we have to build our manufacturing knowledgebase back up and be willing to actually compete.

<comment><USER5> >...we have to build our manufacturing knowledgebase back up and be willing to actually compete.

Some days I think this, other days not. There's an old expression "box a wrestler, and wrestle a boxer". Basically don't compete on their strengths if you can avoid it. Better to fight a shark on land than to start taking swimming lessons:-)

The thing is- as huge as America's manufacturing gap with Mainland China is, the creativity gap is equally large. That's a result of our much maligned Western educational system.

Art class in Mainland China is the teacher draws a bird on the board, all the students copy that bird. I'm not passing judgement on that- it's just a different system. When I was a kid in New York Public School- the teacher said "draw a bird" and we had birds in the park, Godzilla size birds destroying the city, robot birds- no two were alike. In China it's very much a color-inside- the-lines affair. There is a little movement here, but it's very slow and only with very well educated Chinese parents who see the advantage: [http://www.dddyin.com/portal.php?mod=view&aid=2580](http://www.dddyin.com/portal.php?mod=view&aid=2580)

Before a project with the scale and ambition of bringing back American manufacturing was launched, I'd like to see how this existing high value attribute could better be monetize and scaled. It will take a long time before we can ever hope to make things as well as the Chinese now do- but we can design better things now. The problem is profiting from that without stifling domestic innovation.

<comment><USER4> You're definitely right - why not both? I'd like us to succeed in all areas. To use a very cliché word, there's a big "synergy" if we have both creativity and manufacturing in this country. For example, the product I work on is a pair of smart glasses with a computer inside. The idea is not unique, it's our innovations in engineering and manufacturing that let us make our product much smaller and more stylish than competitors. Our creativity is applied in solving these technical and manufacturing problems.

To make a metaphor with cofounders at a software startup: right now, the USA buying from China is like the USA is an "idea guy" / "business guy" who has an idea and access to capital, but no ability to implement the tech, and China is like an outsourced coder. But this duo is a little disfunctional, I wouldn't want to be either one of those characters. I'd much rather be the best of both worlds: a smart and creative technical founder who can have the ideas AND implement them. That guy's company will run circles around the other duo... As an example, SpaceX, by having both the ideas (reusable rocket) AND owning the factory, SpaceX can make rockets much more cheaply than competitors who design in the USA but outsource e.g. the engine production (ULA Atlas V rocket uses Russian-built engines)

<comment><USER6> Some capital owners may prefer to use online labor marketplaces (e.g. 99designs, fiverr) to commoditize global creativity, drive down prices and avoid labor law obligations that apply to full-time employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've lived in Shenzhen for almost 10 years (native New Yorker).

This article was a bit better than most for Shenzhen- it was at least willing to speculate that a lot of Shenzhen's advantage now comes from talent and infrastructure. It's still pretty common for people to attribute it entirely to lower labor costs- which is just not the case.

Shenzhen, like New York is an immigrant city. People come from all over China to get ahead, and get rich. Unlike New York it's only a bit over 30 years old- and back then it was basically a fishing village. This is important because of the Hukou system: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system) It's a bit long to go into (check the link) but basically it ties people to their birthplace and gives them a significant "home field" advantage.

If you are in Shanghai or Beijing and have a local Hukou you have access to the best education system, the highest paid jobs in both the public and private sector, and often a large network of friends and family members in local government. People from Shanghai or Beijing rarely immigrate to Shenzhen because they lose that advantage and are forced to compete with what they would consider the rabble. People from other provinces can rarely compete on even ground with locals- both for legal and cultural reasons. The rivalry is less like US States and more like countries within the EU- but worse.

A "local" in Shanghai may feel perfectly entitled to cut to the front of a line if those people are "Waidiren" (outer province people- 外地人). It's considered perfectly reasonable for migrant children not to get the same healthcare or schooling. The local dialog about them in every city is a familiar one- basically "damned dirty immigrants taking our jobs and committing crimes". Needless to say the Central Government is quite keen to keep the provinces deeply prejudiced against each other- because it distracts their attention from the real culprits.

Shenzhen on the other hand is by far the most egalitarian city in China. The city is so young that no one really has an "Uncle" etc. in local government willing to "investigate" competitors or send some easy government contracts their way. There is little difference between those few born in Shenzhen and those who came a few years ago. There is no local dialect that is used to subtly determine who's "local"- everyone basically speaks Mandarin.

So for people in relatively poor provinces (Hunan, Hubei etc), with brains and education but little in the way of prospects due to their Hukou, Shenzhen represents the best possible opportunity to compete in a first tier city almost purely on merit. Success here is based largely on hustle, brains and hard work- while in other cities at least 50% is simple corruption (well placed relatives in banking and government). Most Chinese would place the number even higher.

So Shenzhen gets a lot of China's best and brightest, but also those who are inherently ambitious- because they were willing to leave their hometowns and family (a much bigger deal here). A huge amount of the slow grinding machinery of legacy corruption does not exist here (massive numbers of bureaucrats given comfortable jobs doing basically nothing as a form of social welfare). It happens occasional sure- but not to the point that it does in other cities where merit and hard work is almost meaningless next to the right connections.

The result is a giant magnet for talent and a massive, well funded playing field where that talent competes with significant rewards reserved for the most skilled, clever and hardworking.

There are a lot of incredibly smart highly motivated people here- and that, more than just simple labor costs is responsible for Shenzhen's market position.

<comment><USER7> How comfortable is it to live in Shenzen as an expat? I spent half a year in Changsha and Shanghai as an undergrad and absolutely fell in love with the country in ways I never did for Japan. I found that feeling odd since I spent years studying Japanese and ultimately wound up teaching English in Hokkaido for a year.

I'll probably spend another two or three years stateside with my family, but ultimately I am disdainful of American materialism. I can't come to grips with the price of rent, the long commutes, and the costs associated with living here. Maybe I'm just too frugal. I grew up an only child honestly having more than I needed, and as a consequence I don't want to accumulate anything material that is just superfluous. I'd love to live in a capsule hotel with just my laptop and bike. I suppose I'm getting way off topic...

My Mandarin is pretty bad as I only studied it off and on for six months or so. Do you see a late 20-something white software engineer as being capable of making a living in Shenzhen? Or is this a pipe dream? What recommendations could you make?

<comment><USER8> Hi,

I'm living in Shenzhen for almost 10 months now, after moving from Beijing after three years. I can only correlate living in Shenzhen with living in Beijing for an expat. My Chinese is only basic too. Ok here were go with plus sides first:

\- being smaller city, Shenzhen still have the "wow" factor for foreigners. It's easier to find better paid (compared to Chinese counterparts) job, easier to handle things, easier to survive by being "lost expat"

\- if you get tired of China (and many of us do), HK is just 1h away and you instantly have different experience. It might sound silly but it's very valuable

\- cheaper than bigger counterparts

\- Shenzhen is ~35 years old, build with grow in mind. That means that subway is great, traffic is great. Notion of traffic jam here is very very small compared to other big cities. If you drive, or, very probably, if you use taxi, almost no traffic jams is amazing (there still are, but its way less than what I experienced in other big cities)

\- Shenzhen is one of the cleanest cities in China in terms of pollution. Some people say wearing a pollution mask in Beijing every day is like living in future, but not for me :)

\- if you like warm, you will like weather here

\- taobao - no, really, you can find almost anything there and it's a great asset to consider when thinking about China :)

Now, for the bad things:

\- for IT software, I found it very lacking compared to Beijing. There's not that much talent (yet), not many startups. There's even no coworkers space available. Similar with Hong Kong, where I'm guessing cost of living is prohibitive for having a startup -> IT just goes towards big banks etc. On the other hand, if you treat work as a paycheck thing, check the positive point above, you could find boring, not demanding work in Chinese company just to be "white face". Overtimes are happening, but afaik here expats are more often excluded

\- unless you are willing to travel to HK, foreigner things are harder to get by. If you like to cook especially. Taobao gets you covered in most cases but some specifics are harder to find

\- food and available cousines are terrible. I like Chinese food, but what you can find here is disappointing. I do miss Beijing range of tasty restaurants

\- good english speaking Chinese are much rarer, thus (until you learn good Chinese) learning about their culture, way of life etc from natives (compared to reading some post on internet, cough ;) ) is harder

Now, to answer your specific question: yes, I think it's very easy to make a living in Shenzhen for software engineer. I would recommend two things:

\- making sure that company that you start with gives you a proper visa as now gov is cracking down on illegal or wrong type of visas

\- if you would like to learn more Chinese, do not surround yourself only with expats.

I hope this helped you a little bit, I don't have experience with sharing this kind of information with people

<comment><USER5> -There's even no coworkers space available.

Little bit of progress here- check out 3W: [http://www.weibo.com/sz3wcoffee](http://www.weibo.com/sz3wcoffee) They also host the Startup-Grind events: [http://www.meetup.com/StartupGrindSZ/](http://www.meetup.com/StartupGrindSZ/)

Co-working for Chinese is someone complex due to requirements for business registration (this is why 3W labels itself as a café even though the second floor is all office space).

<comment><USER8> I've been to 3w coffee in June, and I thought coworkers space moved out of there. Guys who were running [1] now rent small space for themselves in Shekou. My feelings there were similar to [2], that is it's a coffee shop feeling with a lot of power plugs.

(difference between coworkers space and working from coffee shops is that I pay a month/day fee and don't need to worry about buying coffee/eating to not feel guilty of taking their space :) )

There's one more place trying to open but their location is really far even for Shenzhen standards :) (Bao'an)

[1] [http://szteam.com/](http://szteam.com/) [2] [http://www.coworkplanet.com/coworking-in- shenzhen-3w-coffee/](http://www.coworkplanet.com/coworking-in- shenzhen-3w-coffee/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Visiting Shenzhen is highly recommended if you have any interest in electronics at all --- I'd say it's definitely an eye-opening experience, and can change your perspective on the manufacturing costs of all the things we usually take for granted.

bunnie has organised another trip there near the end of this month, if you're interested: [http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4087](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4087)

<comment><USER10> I would love to do more factory/production tours but in many countries it seems that insurance and legal issues have made them too difficult. Brewery tours are common (the Budvar one in the Czech Republic is great) but I'd be just as interested in car manufacture, electronics, furniture, clothing, almost anything.

Are there any formal tours in China? I don't mean the sort of tour where you are driven around in a bus visiting factories, but an index of factories that are willing to take an appointment to visit for a fee, just out of curiosity.

<comment><USER4> In the USA at least, a lot of factories can give tours if you have a friend who works there. For example, you could tour the SpaceX rocket factory in Hawthorne, CA, which is AWESOME.

<comment><USER11> I guess this is the case, as they like to wow suppliers/customers or use it as a way to keep a trucker/customer to wait X minutes until the order is actually done without complaining too much.

The "tour for a friend" is probably seen as an opportunity to practice the tour when it doesn't really matter, test new things, etc.

I got to tour a sulphuric acid plant. It was fun. The friend worked in the closest equivalent to hell that I've ever seen (well, the cauldron part anyway). I love walking by a X000 fahrenheit tank with the guide saying as you have to crouch around to get around it "Don't go near, hot!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As an embedded linux hacker I am very happy to see articles like this. I just opened my small firm in Shenzhen to do hardware and embedded linux software. The ecosystem there is just unbeatable and the willingness of engineers there to get job done is hard to find here at US at the moment.

USA, by all means, is under attack in this regard. Unless one day the kids here put education first, I somehow feel the future is hopeless.

</comment><comment><USER13> The most interesting thing to me about China's capitalism is the massive amount of small firms. I think there's a tendency among western firms to use cheap financial capital to acquire smaller firms. I'm not sure if this is the case in China where the government is more directly involved in directing lending and not focused on mergers and acquisitions.

<comment><USER14> Capitalism is pretty new to China. Check back in 20-50 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If anyone is interested in the aspects of reuse and recycle touched on in this article, I highly recommend Junkyard Plant, a book about recycling largely but not exclusively focused on China. There are a couple of chapters on electronics and Shenzhen, as well as other chapters ranging from paper & cotton, steel, plastics, aluminium, etc, and the entire sourcing chain.

[http://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Planet-Travels-Billion- Dollar...](http://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Planet-Travels-Billion-Dollar- Trash/dp/1608197913)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a great write-up about a world into which I normally have no visibility. I didn't realize on a that manufacturing capabilities for small- scale operations had advanced that much.

</comment><comment><USER17> Actually, due to China government policy change and labor shortage, more and more major electronic manufacturers and their suppliers have moved their operations to Eastern China, such as Suzhou in the past 10-15 years and now even inland cities like Chongqing and Zhengzhou. Many of my friends have already moved out of Shenzhen.

</comment><comment><USER18> if some people are interested in a little bit more details than a reverse culture chock blog post, there is a bunch of interesting videos here about the link Shenzen/Hong Kong, shipping your product, finding your factory etc: [https://www.youtube.com/user/iantube/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/iantube/videos)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm curious, someone mentioned me about the (lot of ) empty buildings in china (or big cities).

Banks lend to people with the right connections (it's otherwhise impossible), they get an easy loan with the building as insurance.

They invest 25% of the money, leave with 75%. The bank takes the building back and no one can live in it.

Is that right (asking to the ones living there)

<comment><USER20> > someone mentioned me about the (lot of ) empty buildings in china (or big > cities).

In some smaller cities, yes. The demand is always higher than supply in the big cities like Shanghai/Beijing/Guangzhou/Shenzhen.

> Banks lend to people with the right connections (it's otherwhise > impossible), they get an easy loan with the building as insurance.

Having the right connections will make your bank loan a lot easier, but if you are qualified, you certainly can still get one without connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "What's great about AQS is that, with the help of bunnie, they have started working closely with startups and other projects that previously would have had a very hard time finding a partner in China because of the small volume"

So I guess that is the secret to getting AQS to respond to your request for an assembly quote.</comment>


Brazil's other passion: Malba Tahan and the man who counted - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27254747 <comment><USER2> Great story. I was born (in Brazil) in 1979 and Malba Tahan was very popular among the kids who liked math and/or puzzles. It is one of these books that leave a mark on you. I still have fond memories of reading it and trying to solve the puzzles.

It is not clear in the OP, but the math in the book is usually presented in the form of puzzles that different characters present to the protagonist. So the reader has time to understand the puzzle and try to solve it before the protagonist begins to explain the solution.

I was immensily proud of a particular puzzle I solved before reading the solution. It was fun, engaging and educational in very deep and lasting ways. The deep respect and consideration for a culture so diverse from ours was a huge bonus that just now I begin to understand. Sure, using the arabic world was pure marketing and sure, he paints a world of fantasy, not a historically accurate one, but he could have used it with disrepect and misinformation, but you can tell he cared about the culture.

Great book, too sad it doesn't help brazilian math education a bit, as we are one of the worst in the world at it (for decades). He could have being our revolution hero in the field, but sadly he is just an oasis. A very isolated one.

<comment><USER3> When I read the article, I was thinking, "why couldn't the US have someone like this?" After reading your post, it jogged my memory, and I realised we sort of do (or did): Martin Gardner's writing is a lot like that (though without the fictional Persian frame-story).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The man who counted was my favorite book back when I was a teenager. It is also a very popular book across Latin America. Beremiz Samir was some sort of MacGyver applying math. In overall it is a very proper read if you are a math inclined teenager but it is also very enjoyable in general.

</comment><comment><USER5> Shouldn't it be the man who calculated? Contar is to count.

<comment><USER6> Whatever it might have been in English, the title of his book in English is _The Man Who Counted: A Collection of Mathematical Adventures,_ [1] and the news report in English kindly submitted here refers to the book by its familiar English title. (I have known of this book since before Hacker News existed.)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Who-Counted- Mathematical/dp/03...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Who-Counted- Mathematical/dp/0393309347)</comment></comment>


World's Youngest VC-Funded Entrepreneur? - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/maeghan-ouimet/worlds-youngest-vc-funded-entrepreneur.html <comment><USER2> The idea isn't particularly unique and it wasn't particularly well executed when the first version was built but with the investment he was able to hire some talented people and from what I've seen the application (as is available now) is excellent, however it seems that he is now primarily their advertising vehicle. He's being used to market the app and it's certainly working, it's getting them huge amounts of press compared to the other companies in the same space.

Stephen Fry is in the advertisement video for Summly, he tweeted it to his ~5 million followers: <https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/264066858225905664>

The Summly team: <http://summly.com/about.html>

edit: oh apparently Stephen Fry is an investor, that explains the "free" video.

edit edit: I wonder how he feels about his age being such a huge part of the stories now, back in August 2011 he said this:

        So he kept it under wraps. "It was a conscious decision
        to not disclose my age to Apple and the media," he says,
        because he wanted "Trimit to be judged on its own merit,
        and not the story of its creator being 15."

From: [http://www.fastcompany.com/1772823/15-year-old-creator- trimi...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1772823/15-year-old-creator-trimit-app- makes-regular-old-entrepreneurs-seem-slackers)

<comment><USER3> On the latter point, that's just playing coy. If you have an advantage that people might criticize, you play it down while still revealing it. It's the old "I'm not going to talk about [fact]" (but you just said it!) rhetorical device.

<comment><USER4> It'd probably be obnoxious for me to mention here that the word you're looking for is "paralipsis," so I won't.

<comment><USER3> I have a horrible memory for these terms so I both appreciate your humor and helpfulness ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Summly app doesn't create summaries and I don't think algorithms will ever create good summaries.

Nick D'Alosio deserves a ton of credit. He's smart, creative, young, ambitious, pulled together a good team and created a great looking app but I don't believe this will solve the problem.

Before I created Skim That[1], a human powered news summarizing website, I looked into how Summly and other TL;DR algorithms worked to decide which direction I wanted to go in. I concluded that, even if you create the best algorithm that takes the best sentences from a story, you're still going to end up with a poorly written and out of context paragraph.

Try it yourself. Read a story and try to manually find a few sentences that best summarize it. Then, without rewriting anything, try to put those sentences into a paragraph or two. You'll find that you end up with a confusing summary that's difficult to read.

The amount of words Summly limited itself to (one iPhone screen worth) is brilliant. It keeps things simple and easy to skim through but what's produced by the service is so short that it should be called a "tease" not a "summary".

Of course, the Summly app does hit the nail on the head with a summary every once in a while but this hit or miss style makes for a bad experience.

Summarizing algorithms aren't the automation challenge, those will _never_ work right as demonstrated by the "try it yourself" challenge above. The real automation challenge is rewriting the important sentences in such a way that they make sense together and provide proper context.

On Skim That, I'm trying to solve the problem by crowd sourcing the summarizing process and asking readers to summarize a story. I've gotten a few people to give it a shot and several of those continue to summarize stories every once in a while. My challenge is how to get people more interested in participating and how to get search engine traffic to a website that goes against many SEO principals.

[1] <http://skimthat.com>

Edit: Human or machine, I think the summary race is great for readers and helps people be more informed. I wish Nick a lot of luck and hope that one of us solves this problem soon.

<comment><USER3> _I concluded that, even if you create the best algorithm that takes the best sentences from a story, you're still going to end up with a poorly written and out of context paragraph._

Even worse, many (most?) writers are pretty bad at this too. Writing summaries has become one of my main jobs over the past couple of years and it's still pretty tough with a lot of source material where a full read and comprehension is required.

Algorithms currently suck as 'one size fits all' approaches for almost anything, including curation and summarizing, but.. it's an interesting and narrow enough problem space that some genuine AI or natural language processing innovations could come out of it, so as you say, it'd be great to see it come good.

<comment><USER5> _"a full read and comprehension is required"_

Exactly! Not only that but sometimes the original author does a poor job of writing the article and a rewrite of the content is needed just to make the story coherent.

Natural language is interesting and SEO guys are also working on rewriting tools so they could repackage articles as OC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I may be cynical but show me a 16yr old who made a business with a million dollar in _revenue_. Then I'll be impressed.

<comment><USER7> A friend and I did about 30k in _profit_ at age 15 in '02-'03, and it would have been way higher if we weren't having issues with merchant accounts. I doubt it would have gone into the millions, but easily 100k-200k.

Finding a market and executing on an opportunity isn't that difficult of a thing to do - the trick is finding one within your grasp. This was virtual goods, so it required almost no upfront capital and very little development and maintenance costs. It's no massively-scalable startup, but when your goal is just to create a profitable lifestyle business, it isn't actually that complicated.

<comment><USER8> what did you do?

<comment><USER7> Virtual goods for Diablo II.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First off, good luck young man! You've built something and attracted people to your work, and it's paying off. Additionally, you realized your own limitations and used the resources provided to build a better product by hiring skilled developers and engineers, that should be commended.

Now.

 _The algorithm works by selecting words from a given article to build a summary that will perfectly fit onto the screen of your iPhone--no more scrolling to read or waiting to load._

I have a serious problem with this. On The Verge he made the statement that the activity of scrolling was "horrific"[1]. Why? This is mainly personal bias-as someone who carries serious nerdboners for long-form journalism-but I don't think the problem with news on mobiles is something you solve by shrink wrapping content so you don't have to move your finger a few inches on an iPhone.

IMO the problem with reading content on mobile has already been addressed by XKCD [2].

I have no problem with D'Aloisio wanting to change media for the better, to make it more accessible, easier to digest and syndicate written content. I do have reservations however about algorithmically summarizing news articles because of a perceived notion that there is something wrong with reading long articles.

Again, this is personal opinion.

\---

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/1/3583720/summly-nick-d- aloi...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/1/3583720/summly-nick-d-aloisio)

[2] <http://xkcd.com/869/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I like Summrly. It came in to my attention when it was featured in the Appstore as Editor's Choice.

I have been poking around Circa for the last two week as well and I prefer this format better.

It's more playful, more to discover. It took a little bit to get used to the gestures, but I like it.

I like this approach more than getting pushed updates on my pre-selected news stories (how Circa works). Problem with Circa is that you have to make a decision right then and there. You have to decide if you care to hear about this story in the future or not. And the result is a) i subscribe to very little subject or b) I over subscribe to many subjects and get overwhelmed with updates, and this dilutes my interest in all of the subject.

But that's not how we generally read the Newsaper or any content for that matter. We often read the side lines. the news before and after, or the surrounding industries. That's the reason why I think Circa will have a hard time converting me to a daily user of their app. Summrly on the other hand, i load it 5 times a day.

Anyway, Hearing that a young entrepreneur is behind this is even more impressive. Fantastic work!

</comment><comment><USER11> I love that the age for starting such endeavors is getting lower and lower. If more and more people are exposed to the possibility of creating their own solutions (and fostering their own interests) from a younger and younger age, it will become the kind of culture that will change the world.

<comment><USER12> I think it's a return to historical standards. Teenage is a construct of the modern age, which prolonged schooling more and more, keeping young people out of active work life, to an extent that is detrimental both to these young people and society, IMO. Historically, a male of 15-16 was a man, he could work and get married to a girl even younger. Now, I'm not advocating teenage marriage, but teenage implication in work life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I actually downloaded and tried out the app for myself, and I liked it. While an algorithm cannot best a human, this app seems to do a pretty good job at summarizing the news. I think it's feasible - a large portion of any given news article is typically spent expanding on a few main ideas that are typically expressed in one or two sentences. Your typical 1000 word news article follows a predictable narrative structure.

That being said, I found the whole user flow of swiping through sections to be terribly unintuitive and confusing.

</comment><comment><USER14> As an aside it would be interesting to see the legal structure of this transaction. At that age you can't (iirc) enter into a contract, at least not in the US.

Obviously his parents would need to be involved in this. It's possible also that one of the big draws for the investor was the obvious publicity potential (for the venture) of funding someone 15 yrs old vs. someone who is (ho hum) 20. This type of angle plays well in the media.

<comment><USER2> I believe in the UK you can be a director of a company at 16 and you can hold shares in a company at any age. I would guess that Nick has a registered company and the investment is in that company, which probably has his parents involved somehow in some nominal capacity.

edit: upon investigation it would appear that Summly Limited has his mother as a director ("MS DIANA JULIA D'ALOISIO") and he is listed as secretary ("NICHOLAS D'ALOISIO-MONTILLA") -- search for "summly" via <http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk> and then select the option to order information.

edit edit: so from the filing the following is true:

Summly Limited has Nick's mother as a director along with the investors, he is a secretary.

The company has 900,000 shares. 600,000 "Ordinary" are allocated to his mother ("DIANA JULIA D'ALOISIO") 120,000 "Series A Preferred" are allocated to GERSHWIN INTERNATIONAL LIMITED and 180,000 "Series A Preferred" are allocated to TWINHILLS LIMITED.

So it _seems_ that Nick has no actual stake in the company and is using his mother as the proxy for his ownership.

edit edit edit: Something might be worth noting, the site lists "Summly Inc" as the company responsible for Summly, not Summly Limited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> While it's good that building technology is becoming so much more accessible at a young age, you can see the ramifications and consequences of funding this early when the entrepreneur in question says that he doesn't really know how to build this into a company and, more importantly, he has other ideas that he will probably much rather pursue.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is awesome, I am surprised someone this young hasn't received VC funding previously. Whatever you think of the idea it isn't important, the person is important and he is one to watch. Ideas change all the time, and if this doesn't work he will have to change it. If it does work then all the negative commenters can eat their words.

<comment><USER5> I bet younger people have been "funded" before but there should be a clear definition to "VC funding" that guides this race.

What I mean is that it's easy for friends and family to "fund" a child's project but that isn't a fair comparison to what Nick has done.

I'd suggest something like $250,000 from VC that isn't a friend or family member. That would still qualify Nick's earlier round of funding and give us something to rank others in this race to the youngest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> having other ideas doesn't disqualify him from being a successful entrepreneur. successful companies were built by a team, not a single person. as long as the kid is able to gather bright people around he will sell this eventually to facebook for $1b. it looks like some smart and much older folks agreed on that. otherwise they wouldn't have invested.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if there's issues with his age and owning a business? Can anyone speak to this? Would his parents have to be involved?

<comment><USER3> As a self employed sole trader, he could be any age (but it would be rather difficult to take funding). To be a director of a corporation, he'd need to be 16 now (although prior to 2006 it was any age, with provisos).

British people become relatively emancipated at 16. You can leave school (I did!), go to work, join the army, smoke, have sex (sadly, I didn't), and do many things. Just not vote, drive, drink, and a few other things.</comment></comment>


How Britain beat the odds to achieve space flight, and then abandoned it - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/lapsed-historian/an-empire-of-stars-d6b24f92cbc7 <comment><USER2> The UK was so broke in the 1970s they could barely keep their military budget up, most importantly an independent nuclear deterrent. Superpower status was a thing of the past. With Brexit coming up its insightful to read up on post WW2 British history and how it got itself into the EU.

<comment><USER3> Britain's first attempt to get into the EU was vetoed by de Gaulle; a strange was of repaying the UK's effort in getting France a permanent seat on the UN security council in 1945.

<comment><USER4> Twice in fact, in 63 and 67. His motivations, which he explained at length in a press conference that's easy to find online were that the U.K. was only interested in a strictly limited free trade union, and wanted an extremely bespoke deal, excluding farming etc.

That never really changed, although Britain eventually gave up most of these conditions, when they finally joined.

<comment><USER5> And also that he viewed the UK as a pawn of the US.

<comment><USER6> Seems he was correct in this too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Isle of Wight test facility is free to visit, it's worth a look if you're in the area. There isn't a massive amount left - just the concrete structure and a lot of rabbits grazing the cliffs below.

However, there's enough left to make you slightly sad that the space race didn't end up in colonisation (yet). There are also a bunch of other features within less than a mile (an old military battery, The Needles, great views over The Solent, the colored sands of Alum Bay). Definitely underrated.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, its a good place to explore! I live on the Isle of Wight, its full of interesting historical places. I'd like to discover the Nuclear bunker but yet to find it!

<comment><USER9> This one?

[http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/v/ventnor/](http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/v/ventnor/)

<comment><USER8> Thats the one!

I used to actually work in radar on the Isle of Wight, lots of people think of it as simply a place for tourists and old people. However, at least to recently, its the home of a lot of the worlds greatest radar and antenna designers. Sadly its all in decline now.

<comment><USER9> I'm looking forward to the Corstorphine Hill bunker in Edinburgh opening to the public:

[https://en-gb.facebook.com/BarntonQuarryRestorationProject/](https://en- gb.facebook.com/BarntonQuarryRestorationProject/)

It was the Scottish National HQ though I doubt it was that survivable as its location was fairly well known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Considering the fact that UK is a rather largeish (4th largest) contributor to ESA (which operates Arianne programme and several other scientific programs), does it make sense to say they "abandoned it"?

It seems more like they pooled resources with other European countries to make a meaningful space programme.

<comment><USER11> Several years passed before the ESA was founded, and the UK didn't join until later, so I would say it was abandoned.

<comment><USER12> After Blue Streak was cancelled the UK joined up with other European countries to form ELDO, which was in some ways the precursor to ESA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Launcher_Development_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Launcher_Development_Organisation)

<comment><USER11> Good point, didn't know that.

I'd still characterize the program as abandoned: abruptly cut all funding, everyone left for other work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The UK does have a remarkable habit of abandoning its lead in advanced technologies for rather short-sighted reasons. Nuclear power and high-speed rail, among others.

<comment><USER14> Same thing is playing out at present with wave power.

The Treasury is the usual suspect here, but there's a systematic lack of vision at high level in both the state and private sectors. Engineering doesn't get the same respect as making a fortune from land ownership.

<comment><USER15> To be fair, wave power is looking awfully expensive when compared to wind power...

Not quite sure why, since nearly every wave power device is just a carefully shaped bit of concrete dropped into the sea and some generators.

I could make you a 500 watt wave power device in an afternoon and $500 in materials (big plastic oil drum as an air reservoir, big concrete weight, hobby jet engine expander as the air to electricity convertor), and within a year it would have paid for it's materials cost (at wind subsidy rates).

(I'm excluding the cost of a power interconnect to land here, but the cost of these scales favourably, so ends up not being a big fraction of the project cost for big projects).

Yet somehow commercial projects seem to have decades of payback time even when given significant electricity subsidies.

<comment><USER14> A bit of googling finds a detailed cost breakdown for the Pelamis system: [http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/tna/+/http:/www.dt...](http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/tna/+/http:/www.dti.gov.uk/renewables/publications/pdfs/v0600197.pdf/)

Would the plastic oil drum solution even last a year? A big problem with these things is that the sea is a corrosive fluid with a lot of kinetic energy in it, and it tends to destroy things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Black Arrow's engines had a very remarkable design. For booster stages on space rockets you really need some sort of pump to get a high enough chamber pressure. Most rockets due this by burning some of the fuel and oxidizer in a turbine, wasting a bit of fuel. What Black Arrow did was use the decomposition of the high test peroxide to power the pump and then putting all of the result into the combustion chamber. Sort of like a staged combustion engine but developed much earlier. You'll always have worse efficiency with peroxide than with liquid oxygen but it was some very clever engineering.

</comment><comment><USER17> That's not quite the full story tho'. Where's the bit about NASA is promising to launch British payloads at a huge discount then reneging the instant Black Arrow was cancelled? _That's_ why the Treasury was fooled into not supporting it.

<comment><USER18> I've actually never heard that bit. Is there a link?

But the US was hardly the only player in the game. This was 1971, the technology side of the space race was winding down, and ESA/Ariane launch capability was right around the corner. I don't think "British" satellites really suffered much in the market for this decision in hindsight.

<comment><USER19> ESA wasn't founded till 1973, and Ariane 1 doesn't fly until the end of 1979.

ELDO is more relevant here, as the Europa rocket was a joint project (of which Britain was a major part; it was partly based on the Blue Streak ICBM).

<comment><USER20> OTOH the UK had _left_ ELDO to focus on Black Arrow (hence the replacement of the old Blue Streak stage by Diamant's, and possibly the move from Woomera to Kourou)

<comment><USER19> It _sort of_ left in the mid-60s, AFAIK. (Still, by the end, almost a third of the funding for Europa was British.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> At least one big thing is yet to come out of Britan:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_\(spacecraft\))

<comment><USER22> It doesn't mention it in the article but the design of Skylon is very reminiscent of the Skylon artwork installed for The Festival Of Britain in 1951.

[https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/walk- roun...](https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/walk-round- festival-britain-upstream-circuit/) has quite a few good pictures. Deep image [https://alondoninheritance.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/07/Fe...](https://alondoninheritance.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/07/Festival-of-Britain-8-638x1024.jpg)

This was on the Southbank, near where the London Eye currently is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A bit like Canada's Avro Arrow... state-of-the-art jet fighter that put 15,000 ppl out of work when it got shelved (10 years before this happened in England).

<comment><USER24> The UK's equivalent was probably the cancellation of the TSR 2 [1] that nearly put BAC (predecessor to the current BAE Systems 800lb gorilla) out of business, with the same argument as for the Avro Arrow that manned aircraft wouldn't be needed soon because computers and missiles would make them obsolete (c.f. drones more recently).

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2)

<comment><USER25> They destroyed the tooling and already built prototypes as fast as they could. In particular:

> The only airframe ever to fly, XR219, along with the completed XR221 and > part completed XR223 were taken to Shoeburyness and used as targets to test > the vulnerability of a modern airframe and systems to gunfire and shrapnel.

It was not just a project that was "cancelled" but an industry. At least the Olympus made it to the Concorde.

<comment><USER24> It's implied that the Arrow was destroyed quite so completely to stop the Soviets getting their hands on any useful knowledge.

Olympus was being used in the Vulcan and the 593 project started in order to produce engines for Concorde a year [1] before the TSR 2 was canned, so it wasn't as if they could take those engines away.

Avro Canada were in trouble, and killing the project was the beginning of the end for them but it's not as if they were the only ones. Hawker Siddeley (the TSR 2) wound up owned by BAC in 1977 and Bristol/Bristol Siddeley (Olympus engines) was bought by Rolls-Royce in 1966 (then Rolls were liquidated/state owned by 1971), so things did not go well for them either.

Orenda (manufacturer of the Iroquois) still exists, albeit as a sister company of Bristol Aerospace [2], and Bombardier joined together the remnants of Canadair, Short Brothers, Learjet and de Havilland Canada. It's not like Canada doesn't have any aerospace industry left.

My point, if there was one, was that the 50s-70s was a time when the aviation industry went through huge change worldwide, and everyone seemed to have the same short-sighted view that automation/missiles would eat the world (narrator: it didn't).

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls- Royce_Olympus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Olympus)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The British are thankfully regaining the ability for space launches. There is a new spaceport being built in UK and a number of companies that plan on using it.

<comment><USER27> Yes indeed! Godspeed, Brits!

[http://thespacereview.com/article/3540/1](http://thespacereview.com/article/3540/1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Years ago I read an alternate-history comic book series regarding a massively successful British space program. It was an entertaining and enjoyable read.

"Ministry Of Space", [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Space)

</comment><comment><USER29> As far as the early failures, USA had a similar learning curve. For example, it took 7 tries before the first successful Ranger probe, which took photos of the moon on an intentional suicide mission in order to get roughly 1-foot resolution. But along the way they perfected techniques such as clean-rooms, telemetry, and redundancy.

It seems newbies often try to do too much. For example, an early Soviet Mars probe carried a mini-rover. It was overly bold: they should have kept it simple at the time, putting survivability over gizmos. Add fancy stuff on later missions after the basics are perfected. This incremental approach worked well for Soviet Venus probes. Early Japanese probes similarly tried to do too much too early.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you're looking for a reasonably technical (but not completely rocket science!) history of the British space programme A Vertical Empire by C. N. Hill is really good, although, as a Brit, also quite depressing as you realise what might have been [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vertical-Empire-History- Programme-1...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vertical-Empire-History- Programme-1950-1971/dp/1860942687)

</comment><comment><USER31> These things had a ~100kg payload to LEO which is tiny in terms of space flight. For comparison a Falcon 9 v1.0 could take 100 times as much stuff into LEO and a Falcon Heavy can take 630 times as much stuff into LEO.

So it was a solid demonstrator of capability, but Briton would have needed to spend quite a bit on R&D to scale these things up.

<comment><USER32> And with only 47 years to do it in...

<comment><USER31> I am more referencing desired capacity. A Saturn V could get 1,400x as much into LEO in 1967 but that's far larger than most people really needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A video by Curious Droid presenting the whole dossier: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHBGAyIU8Hw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHBGAyIU8Hw)

</comment><comment><USER34> and sadly the UK government is doing it again via brexit - not just via the loss of input to galileo, but killing UK based space companies and research. [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/23/uk_lords_tell_uk_go...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/23/uk_lords_tell_uk_gov_brexit_is_bad_for_space/)

</comment><comment><USER35> "Well, we've done it, lads. We've been to space. Jolly good show, everyone. Now maybe those bloody Yanks won't rub our noses in it at the next NATO meeting."

"Shall we start planning for the next mission, guv?"

"Next mission?"

"Well, we _are_ going back, aren't we?"

"Back? To space? Naw, mate, we just went to say we've been. 'Aven't got the quid to piss away on going _back_. We'll leave that to the bloody Yanks, let _them_ deal with the mess up there."</comment>


AMP is joining the OpenJS Foundation incubation program - ga-vu https://blog.amp.dev/2019/10/10/amp-is-joining-the-openjs-foundation-incubation-program/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey look everybody, AMP is part of a foundation now so it's totally not a power-grab by Google to control more aspects of the web.

We just want everyone's mobile sites to be faster. The only solution of course was to make a restricted subset of rules you have to follow to be AMP- compliant. Don't worry, we'll eventually enable more functionality for certain partner websites, because they've proven to give the best AMP-approved experiences.

Isn't that great - that Google will decide what functionality is allowed for your mobile users? Oh did I say Google? I meant the foundation, yes it's the foundation running things now.

</comment><comment><USER2> AMP will never truly be "Open".

Google, infamously, shot down a request for transparency into the decision making process for the project

> "Our project our rules" > [https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13597](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13597)

To be fair, they did retract their messaging in a later comment

> I first want to acknowledge that we are learning how to run such a big open > source project and so many things are being figured out. E.g. we are > currently rewriting our Governance guidelines to answer many of your > questions more directly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just checking in quick, we still doing that thing where we build hyper- platform-specific components that favor individual companies into an "open" standard?

[https://amp.dev/documentation/components/?format=websites](https://amp.dev/documentation/components/?format=websites)

Just wanted to keep up to date.

Oh cool, I see now the only way to do captchas is reCaptcha v3!

[https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-recaptcha- input...](https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-recaptcha- input/?format=websites)

I'm very excited about the future, and I foresee no negative impacts to web diversity or competition. After all, it's in a foundation now so it can't be bad.

</comment><comment><USER4> The devious thing about AMP is that the file format is tied to the AMP cache. Whenever I publish an AMP page, I give everyone, in particular Google, an implicit license to cache and serve my content on their websites.

If there was an option to disallow caching, I'd consider converting some of my websites to AMP, if only to get an icon in the search results. But the only way to opt out of caching is to make an AMP page invalid:

[https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/learn/amp...](https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/learn/amp-caches-and-cors/how_amp_pages_are_cached/)

I'd also be curious if this implicit license tied to a file format is really enforceable.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is like money laundering right?</comment>


Visual Speech Recognition – Deciphers speech from lip movement - <AUTHOR> https://liopa.ai/ <comment><AUTHOR> _... determine speech by analysing the movement of a user's lips as they speak into a camera. These lip movements are known as visemes and are the visual equivalent of a phoneme or unit of sound in spoken language._

Bumped into this while researching something else. Amazing. Also slightly creepy, in the same way it's possible to eavesdrop on conversations in a room by laser detection of vibrations in window glass.

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

... which evolved from tech originally by Leon Theremin. Cool.</comment>


Affordable Care Act – Journal Paper by Pres. Obama - <AUTHOR> http://ja.ma/29xgcBR <comment><USER2> Is it unique for a sitting president to publish a journal article?</comment>


I love the Victorian era. So I decided to live in it - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/9/9/9275611/victorian-era-life <comment><USER2> It's nice to enjoy the "good ol'" things of Victorian era and bash our "hollow, heartless" society, conveniently omitting the brutal inequality that allowed wealthy Victorians to enjoy that "beautiful" lifestyle.

They see the kerosene burning, but they don't see the 5yo coal children dying lonely deaths miles underground. The workers burning their life away in 16h shifts without barely any rest, medical leave, right to strike, right to unionize, nothing but the might of their bare bodies exploited so a high class Victorian socialite could enjoy her life.

But even that same 19th century socialite couldn't think of voting, or being a member of the parliament. She has strange looks around the city now? Imagine the looks, the back-turning and street-crossing she would get if she wanted to exert a life independently of a man in the conservative Victorian society.

Not to speak about access to culture, education (in 1840 only about 20% of the children in London had any schooling), information, and crucially, medical care. I wonder if this couple follows medical advice, procedures and pharmacopoeia of that era as well. Toothache? Cocaine drops. Surgery? Often without anesthesia or any asepsis. Tuberculosis? Horrific slow death sentence. Small infected wound? Too bad, no antibiotics in Victorian age.

Mind that as an engineer, I marvel at the boost of technology of that era, and the early marvels of engineering and construction. But I cringe at this whitewashing articles that glorify "simpler, truer times" and bash our vastly more advanced, secular, open, just and equal society that so many lives and fights has required.

<comment><USER3> I feel like the Victorian era already gets enough hate for being less "enlightened" than our own. (No doubt they would feel the same about us.)

Much like the 1950s, I feel like it's an era which gets a bad rap because of the way the people immediately following it reacted against it and then proceeded to write all the history books about how much better their own era was than the one that preceded it.

In any case it gets rather tedious when one can't admire something like Victorian architecture and fashion without someone butting in to tell you that the Victorians were less morally enlightened than us.

<comment><USER2> I agree, but my criticism was directed at those who write about "the old days" bashing today's society as "empty", "out of touch", "vane", "mindless", "hostile", etc.

Victorian and post-1945 were both incredible times and I have devoted so much time reading about them! But they weren't some kind of "golden days" either. My grandmother ate country rats to survive in the 40s, and only on lucky days...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord I don't know. The sheer amount of effort they put in replicating artifacts and mundanities of everyday Victorian life is admirable, but there's no way I can ignore the fact that their use of networked computers stands out like a complete blot.

It's hilarious how she notes she's never owned a cell phone, but ignores that crucial detail.

(They maintain a website at thisvictorianlife.com and Sarah A. Chrisman appears to have a Facebook page, so I'm extrapolating that they use computers.)

Looking at some of the pictures on their site is eery. Here they are dressed in Victorian attire... with a landline telephone in the background. [1]

The exercise here isn't Victorian life, it's an odd retrofuturism at best - lots of clashing between anachronistic time periods.

[1] [http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/leisure- activities.html](http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/leisure-activities.html)

<comment><USER4> So they're taking the Amish approach: being selective about which modern technologies they use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a lovely read, thanks for it.

It's true they're no purists - computers, and I'm sure they're glad of modern dentistry, to name two anachronisms in their Victorian construct - but I think they're doing something interesting.

On the infrequent occasions I can get off the grid and away from modernity, I become a different person. Not better or worse than my usual self, just...different.

I can follow a train of thought for a day or two to see where it might lead, rather than having to bookmark myself at email interrupt intervals. It makes a difference in how I perceive and think about the world.

I wouldn't return to Victorian times for anything, but some aspects of them seem worth preserving.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you like this, check out the BBC's excellent series, Victorian Farm. In the show, a historian and two archaeologists live and work on a farm for a year, using only tools and techniques of the Victorian era. Experts in period crafts and trades visit the farm to demonstrate tasks like building barrels or creating lime mortar to use in the building of stone walls. Here is a farrier creating a horseshoe in minutes from a plain metal bar: [https://youtu.be/-x1hP8zisUI](https://youtu.be/-x1hP8zisUI)

Although the farm is the focus of the show, a good amount of time is given to domestic labor. I used to grumble when I had to do laundry, but now when trudging down to the basement, I can only think about how much of my day has been freed up by the washing machine.

<comment><USER2> I read two separate AMAs on reddit of +90yo German ladies. When asked what was the favorite invention of their lifetimes (telephone and electricity spreading, radio, TV, antibiotics, modern surgery/dentistry, aircraft, cheap automobiles, Internet, etc.) the answer of both was the washing machine. It was a real life changer for women everywhere.

<comment><USER7> Now go back another 150 years earlier before the era of carding/spinning machines or industrial looms, and you get even dramatically more time spent on clothing. Making cloth by hand out of raw wool or cotton is an unbelievably time-intensive process, which is why most people only had a couple sets of clothes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Our heat comes from 19th-century gas heaters and from an antique kerosene space heater_

Hope they at least make an allowance for a carbon monoxide detector.

<comment><USER9> If you're in a 19th century house - you don't need one - most of them were and are somewhat drafty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's funny, but I often find myself longing for "simpler times" without the modern day distractions my life is saturated with (by my own choice/fault obviously).

Then I think about the chores I have around the house and realize that "emptying my fridge's water pan" potentially 2 or more times/day would be a giant PITA.

Of course it all comes down to free time, and I have this assumption that life was lived at a slower pace back then. I wonder how much of that is actually true though. You had a ton more little chores to maintain things, and there was less automation for sure. And a lot of it was highly dependent on your class and wealth. If you were poor, life may have been "slower paced with fewer distractions," but you were still working 12-16hr days in a factory in shitty living conditions.

Ironically enough I'm watching a UK reality series called Time Crashers right now that takes some celebs and sticks them into various time periods in different roles to see how they fare. I normally loathe reality TV and love documentaries, and this is striking an oddly pleasant middle ground.

</comment><comment><USER11> A key component of being middle class in the Victorian era was enthusiastically embracing new technology! A Victorian would kick your ass for not using a smartphone if it's available to you.

</comment><comment><USER12> can anyone comment on the level of affluence that would have been needed in victorian times to meet the standard of living depicted?

<comment><USER3> It's a bit of a weird one, because anyone in the Victorian era who could afford that much _stuff_ could also afford servants.

<comment><USER2> Reportedly, in Agatha Christie's autobiography, she mentioned how "she never thought she would ever be wealthy enough to own a car - nor so poor that she wouldn't have servants". Worth a thought.

<comment><USER9> The cost for living is dramatically higher than it was before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm torn - I'm not sure if I'm envious, or think she's crazy - such a fine line between beauty and madness.

<comment> bra-ket she's a writer on Victorian epoch, it's a perfect way to get "into character", similar to the way actors do

<comment><USER9> Looking at her website, it appears its truthful, more or less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > We live in a world that can be terribly hostile to difference of any sort...

They'd probably like going to a science fiction convention. People at DragonCon are very accepting of weirdos in all sorts of funny costumes.

They'd even find a fair number of people in Victorian garb, though admittedly with fanciful steampunk gadgets attached.

</comment><comment><USER13> As someone who is often incorrectly seen as being like this (and looking on Facebook, the author and I seem to have no shortage of mutual friends), the article is fascinating, even if I don't agree with some of the things being said.

It's very difficult to accurately experience the life of another time period. Minor, seemingly insignificant details can have significant effects on the experience. One example I like to use was an event some friends of mine attended that was trying to recreate the experience of a Regency era country house. The hostess, not being particularly experienced in organizing such a thing, didn't think about lighting.

Yet lighting is extremely important. It dictates the hours that people keep, how people interact, and the appearance of much of what one sees after dark. My friends pointed out the problem, and had all the lighting replaced with candles and lamps. What some there thought would be a minor improvement in environment and accuracy ended up having startling effects: several guests, all adults, having always been accustomed to the constant light of electric lamps, found the ubiquitous moving shadows in a country house lit only by flames to be terrifying, and many of them became insistent that they were seeing flitting supernatural apparitions. One was reportedly unable to walk up the stairs to her room by herself.

Finding all these seemingly minor changes necessary to recreate an experience, knowing what impact they have, and actually being able to change them, is extremely difficult. One thing that immediately jumps out at me, for example, is that the visibility and lack of distortion through the windows in the photographs, and the pane sizes, makes me think they have panes of float glass. How important is this to the experience? I don't know. It certainly changes the way the outside world appears. Are their mirrors made with float glass? Are they looking at the photographs of them? Both would significantly change their own self-images.

And while I would love to know the tailor her husband uses, I do have to wonder about whether the reproductions are actually accurate. Fabric, for example, has changed considerably in the last hundred and fifty years. Over a century of breeding and improved techniques mean that wool today is far finer, and fine wool far cheaper, than it was in the Victorian era. Obtaining wool of the correct coarseness and weight would likely involve commissioning it. Tailoring has evolved, too: understanding of cutting and particularly fitting techniques improved considerably in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Is their tailor intentionally ignoring those advances? I doubt it.

Even beyond these visible issues, there are differences in upbringing, in culture, and in perspective. There are differences in surroundings: the building I live in may be almost 120 years old and in its original state in many ways, but the sounds here are completely different. And there are differences in the people around you. These are not things that can be changed, and they have significant impacts.

The differences in perspective are particularly visible in the article. The environmental focus, and suggestion that seeing resources being used results in an appreciation of conservation, seem to me to be essentially modern views, and I would argue are not reflected in typical Victorian perspectives. Nor do I think that the view on understanding technology is entirely accurate either: the typical Victorian, I would argue, would be unlikely to understand the cylinder process of glass pane production, for example, or methods used for metalwork, joinery, and the construction of much of what was around them. As other have pointed out, very few would know about the production of the resources they were consuming: I'd argue that people today have a much better understanding of those things, given our frequent societal discussions of them.

The idea that modern items are "trash," too, and Victorian ones are far more reliable and usable, is perhaps unfortunate. Yes, there are problems with the reliability, longevity, and repairability of many modern items, but that's a choice in purchasing: there are many modern items that are more reliable. The flexibility of my steel dip pen nibs may be impressive, and my early fountain pens beautiful, but my modern fountain pens are far more reliable and repairable, and modern ballpoint pens are simply so reliable as to hardly ever need repair. Tips of modern alloys last far longer and are far less fragile. Plastic is far sturdier and long-lasting than resin, and fine machining has allowed for far more repairable mechanisms. Watches are not too dissimilar: maintenance for 19th century watches often meant throwing out and replacing parts, which is one of the reasons why they are so difficult to repair today. Modern mechanical watches require far less maintenance, and good quality modern quartz watches require essentially none.

All of this ignores, of course, that in looking for original items today, the author and her husband are only obtaining things that were built well enough to have already lasted for over a century.

I also get the sense that the author has a dislike of the academic study of history. That's unfortunate. Primary sources can help to explain an era, but can also mislead. They assume a certain perspective on the part of the reader. Contemporary writers often have difficultly seeing elements of their own culture, and even when they see them, often have their own agendas. Without studying a wide variety of primary sources and analysing them as a whole, it is difficult to come to accurate conclusions.

For example, I would argue that, in reading a large number of original dance manuals of the 19th century, one would develop a wildly inaccurate perspective on dancing in the 19th century. Dance manuals, perhaps like etiquette manuals, represented the ideal visions of individual dance instructors, pushed complex dances and elegant forms requiring more instruction (for obvious reasons), and were often out-of-date. A preliminary statistical study I'm doing of 19th century dance cards suggests that the vast majority of group dances and round dance variations in dance manuals were hardly ever danced, if at all, outside of dance studios. Analysis of dance instructor commentary, newspaper reporting, letters, interviews, period works of fiction, and other sources also suggest that many people dancing did so very inexpertly, that by the mid- to-late 19th century quadrilles were very unpopular amongst trendier sets, and that dancers often danced in very energetic and rambunctious ways not at all reflected in dance manuals of the era except in their admonitions against doing so. If anything, in "getting their own insights" rather than also studying the era academically, I fear that they may be inadvertently reinforcing their own stereotypes, as reflected in their modern perspectives.

As for the difficulties in dealing with those around them, I have to admit I'm surprised that they would receive such reactions. Perhaps it because I live behind high walls, insulated from the world around me, or because I'm fortunate to live in a more tolerant area, or because I'm more private about my lifestyle, but I have walked down the street for decades in clothes not too dissimilar to theirs, and have never experienced any hostility—nor, I believe, have many of my friends. I don't know why their experiences would be so different.

With all of that said, that they are able to live this life, and be happy living it, is wonderful. I think it gives, if not an accurate perspective on life in another era, then a different and useful perspective on life in our own.

<comment><USER2> I have found your comment so interesting and thoughtful as somewhat shallow and simplistic the article. Many, many thanks for spending the time to write it and share it with us. I really think that you should submit it to Vox as a "letter to the editor".

<comment><USER13> An unfortunate thing about Vox is that they don't appear to have normal letters to the editor or, indeed, any way of responding to their articles. Nevertheless, it's something I might consider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The most impressive part is how she blogs with her vintage 1880s web browser.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's fun to think about what a Victorian era person would think of this project. Having an ice box for fun?!

<comment><USER8> Better than not having an ice box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm sorry, I know it makes me an awful person, but I absolutely loathe the author and her husband. There are people starving around the world, dying because of lack of basic medical care, clean water, etc. Whatever they do in their own home, they live in a society and world of the 21st century. What they are doing is like the worst form of privileged hipsterism I can imagine.

<comment><USER17> "When cheap modern things in our lives inevitably broke, we replaced them with sturdy historic equivalents instead of more disposable modern trash."

There it is, the inevitable disdain, the hallmark of the chronic hipster.

<comment><USER2> The crucial difference is that cheap disposable modern trash can be afforded by almost everyone. The purchase of a single automobile was a village-wide social event when my grandfather was young. Same with a television when my father was young.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What does Pullrequest.com use for code reviews? a Custom IDE? - <AUTHOR> It seems from following post that pullrequest.com uses a custom IDE for doing reviews? Anyone can throw light on what it is? I am working on a side project(public facing code review site) and am looking for a good code review tool.<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15387134<p>>>We combine great backend tooling, a custom IDE, with teams of reviews to deliver first class code review. <comment><USER2> It could just be marketing fluff.

Frankly for code review I don't really use much of my IDE features beyond basic syntax highlighting and easy "go to definition" which any IDE provides.

For code review I'm not sure there's anything more valuable than good old knowledge of the codebase & experience with the language. An IDE can't give you that.</comment>


How to make your open-source project thrive, with Andrey Petrov - <AUTHOR> https://sourcegraph.com/blog/making_your_open-source_project_thrive <comment><USER2> I gave this talk at the Sourcegraph meetup this month, had a great time. Happy to answer any questions here too. :)</comment>