Prototype to production: How to build and design a PCB prototype - <AUTHOR> https://blog.particle.io/2018/03/06/proto-to-prod/ <comment><USER2> If you're starting from scratch now as a hobbyist or novice PCB designer, I'd recommend KiCAD over Eagle. KiCAD is fully open-source and has now progressed to the point where it's viable.

Autodesk, on the other hand, has shown signs of crippling Eagle after they bought it, such that I have my doubts about Eagle being viable in 5 years.

If you already know Eagle, it's a tougher call, but if you have just begun learning, I think you're better off with KiCAD.

<comment><USER3> How's its library management? Last time I tried Kicad it was impressively bad.

There are other options which may be of interest. Altium have one, I think it's called circuit maker, and digi-key have schemeit.

Its hard to try new things when you have access to a professional package and library. I'd really like to try something free but the motivation has been a challenge.

<comment><USER4> _How 's its library management? Last time I tried Kicad it was impressively bad._

Yes, KiCAD, for some reason, has a GUI for library management which is both nonstandard and confusing. The schematic symbol library manager and footprint library manager have similar GUIs but behave quite differently.

Schematic editing isn't bad, although it has the worst approach to wire junctions ever seen in a schematic editor. The dot where wires connect is an entity separate from the wires, and can be omitted or moved, with negative effects on the netlist.

Layout is OK, but, as mentioned, the footprint library isn't very good. Expect to spend time looking at manufacturer data sheets and drawing footprints to match.

There's an autorouter, but due to some political problem you have to download it from another site and rename it. The autorouter and the design rule checker don't quite agree on some tight clearances, which can be a problem.

It's open source, and widely used, so you know it's not going away.

<comment><USER5> > The schematic symbol library manager and footprint library manager have > similar GUIs but behave quite differently.

Just to expand on this, KiCad is an abomination stitched together from the corpses of about six different programs. There are four different graphical editors (schematic part, schematic, pcb footprint, pcb layout) which look somewhat similar but have notably different user interface conventions for selecting, moving, copying and deleting objects, making it frustrating to switch between them. To make it even better, the PCB layout program has three different options for the "canvas" (ie. the layout area) which again have different interface conventions, and additionally some features are only available in some canvases and will simply fail to work if another canvas is selected.

These programs communicate via export/import functions instead of being properly integrated so the process to add a component to a circuit board involves five different programs and four export steps. You also can't back- annotate any changes at the PCB level back to the schematic (or at least, it's a royal pain to do so.)

Once you get your workflow going and you've pushed past the worst of the confusion, it works _just_ well enough that it's easier to put up with the pain for now and allow your resentment to simmer than it is to figure out how to build the damn thing so you can fix it yourself.

(For comparison, I used EAGLE back in 2004 or so, and I thought it was pretty good. I'm not sure what they've done to it since then to garner such animosity.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hardware folks are generally underpaid, FWIW. I had an idea and was able to get an almost genius level HW guy to do the grunt work for $75/hour, and he seemed thrilled with the comp level. He worked for a very recognizable brand name, but did side work for peanuts. I wasn't lowballing either. I bumped his intitial offer by 50% just to make sure I had his attention.

His design worked out of the box with no issues, and he even had solid advice on dealing with the end Chinese PCB suppliers.

I'd advise hiring an expert because they generally aren't priced the same as software experts. I'm pretty sure I'd have spent _a lot_ more fumbling around trying to do it myself.

Kind of a shame really. It's arguably a harder skill to master these days.

<comment><USER7> I've observed the same thing regarding EE and embedded software compensation vs. pure software pay. Big difference, and very unfair feeling when you look at the skill involved with being an EE.

I'd argue that maybe EE's aren't underpaid on an absolute scale, but that software has completely different market conditions and rather, it's software people who are doing uniquely great.

<comment><USER8> +1

Back when was re-evaluating where I wanted to go with my career(post-gamedev burnout) I briefly considered getting an BS in EE and getting a hardware job since it's an area that interests me. Did a bunch of research and found similar things.

I think it largely boils down to a couple factors:

1\. _Everything_ in hardware has to be spec'd to the teeth since re-spin of HW/Masks can easily run into the 7-figures. That means there's very little flexibility and opportunity for the "10x" EE to manifest.

2\. Since everything is still heavily spec'd you get a lot of "replaceable cog in the machine effect".

3\. A lot(but not all) HW is really removed from the end customer so you aren't as deeply tied with the business side of things which hurts visibility/etc.

4\. Software is just more flexible which means you have a much easier opportunity to be "full stack" and not get pigeon-holed to a specific technology.

At the end of the day I scratch the hardware itch in my spare time and I still find SW a ton of fun. Plus there's a ton of value in being a software dev that can speak/understand hardware language and fit it into the larger picture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really cool! I wish more universities included this sort of training during their undergraduate ECE programs.

Also worth noting (didn't see this mentioned in the article, and maybe this is obvious...), it is usually wise to make your prototype on a breadboard/perfboard first, before ever printing a run of PCBs. This is especially true if your board is interacting with other parts of a system (E.G. you are building a power board for a robot). This let's you get a proof a concept working right away, and helps ensure no unexpected integration problems crop up that might call for a redesign.

<comment> Max-q Making a breadboard prototype used to be common practice, but with a lot of new technology it's often not possible anymore. High frequencies requires small tolerances. Luckily, getting a pcb prototype made, isn't as expensive as it used to be.

<comment><USER10> Not to mention that most interesting parts just don't come in through-hole packages, and the time it takes to wire up anything even remotely complicated. Yes, there are some prototyping boards that have various SMD package footprints, but PCBs fabrication is generally cheap and fast enough now that it's not really worth the time anyway if you're reasonably sure everything works in theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would recommend you find your enclosure before you even start the PCB and design the PCB with all the correct sizes, screw holes and cutouts. This might be useful [http://rodyne.com/?p=415](http://rodyne.com/?p=415) (re-using existing cases for your design)

<comment><USER12> For runs of maybe 5-10+ boards, SLS 3D printing is pretty competitive because you can design everything to fit exactly. The setup cost tends to be high (minimum order of £40/$50), but individually a small printed enclosure will cost the same or less than a box from Hammond or the like. Certainly compared to the cost of customising a name-brand enclosure (short run), it's a no brainer, and you can add awkward structural elements that simply aren't possible even with CNC machining.

Once you get a bit bigger (physical volume), the cost becomes prohibitive and you can look at etruded aluminium. If you're clever you can design a PCB to act as end panels. 3D printing is also a nice stepping stone before getting a machined enclosure made - saves a lot of cash if you find you've missed something.

And yes - too easy to forget things like standoff holes, or where a connector is going to be mounted. I suspect because it's annoying having to double your board area so you can fit an M3 clearance hole/keepout. Cheaper to not bother. If you go with 3D printing you can do things like add slots and slide your board in.

<comment><USER13> Dangerous Prototypes offer SLA printing for $0.95/gram. They also do very cheap laser-cut acrylic panels.

[http://dangerousprototypes.com/store/print3d](http://dangerousprototypes.com/store/print3d)

<comment><USER12> That's not bad for SLA (we have a Form1+ at work and I would happily pay someone else to deal with the mess it makes), but it works out to be very expensive for even moderately sized parts. You can get 10-20c/cm3 of SLS nowadays and the tolerance is great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FWIW, PCBShopper[1] is a convenient web service for querying several popular PCB fab houses based on your design requirements. iTead Studio[2] has been my go-to fab house for personal 2/4-layer and simple flex designs, mostly because they haven't fail me in 5+ years.

[1] [https://pcbshopper.com/](https://pcbshopper.com/)

[2] [https://www.itead.cc/open-pcb/pcb- prototyping.html](https://www.itead.cc/open-pcb/pcb-prototyping.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there free software to create and simulate virtual populated PCBs? Fritzing allows creation, but it doesn't simulate the board.

For simulation one needs the exact behaviour of all parts. That excludes board with parts that have a closed design, or insufficient documentation. But for many parts, and hopefully soon with CPU-ICs thanks to RISC-V, we can do simulation.

I don't expect real-time simulation, but at least a solution for letting the machine compute over night to see if the board successfully does X.

Any suggestions? Is this a problem waiting for a solution?

<comment><USER16> You can do SPICE simulation with pretty much any CAD. I'm pretty sure that Eagle can do that.

Edit: not sure why I got drive by downvotes.

[https://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/blog/spice- simulatio...](https://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/blog/spice-simulation- part-1/)

Edit2: for KiCAD [http://mithatkonar.com/wiki/doku.php/kicad/kicad_spice_quick...](http://mithatkonar.com/wiki/doku.php/kicad/kicad_spice_quick_guide)

<comment><USER15> I'd like to for example create a PCB with some sensors, LEDs, and a microcontroller, specify the sensor input over time and the software on the microcontroller, and let the computer figure out the behaviour of that system, so it can tell me state of the system (i.e. what LEDs are on, or what values are in the registers of the microcontroller?) at a given time. For performance reasons, that would require both low-level simulation (electrics) and high- level simulation (software on the microcontroller) simultaneously in a compatible way. Can SPICE do that?

<comment><USER3> SPICE can do a lot, but you're asking a LOT. Modelling internal states of a micro is generally a different package than the mainly analog simulation that SPICE does. It is rare for them to be tied together.

Practically speaking, your interface ought to be separate enough that you can define the range of states the micro's inputs should see, and the range of outputs it should drive, and separate the two. There are times when I've wished for a combined simulation but it wasn't worth the hassle to set it up. Honestly for the accuracy I expect I usually prefer to just build the thing rather than simulate it.

LEDs are really boring to model anyway.

<comment><USER15> I also think that I ask for a lot. And I know that simulation is hard, error- prone, and often more expensive than just buillding the real system. However, building the system does not always give the insight that a simulation can give, and it's sometimes prohibitively expensive. More specifically, I already had built the system, but I couldn't get the information out of it without disturbing it too much. That's why I wanted to simulate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's the best option for PCB CAD on Mac?

Last time I checked, the most popular options didn't even support HiDPI mode. E.g. KiCAD on Mac feels very "out of place", e.g. two fingers control zooming instead of scrolling (panning), not to mention other usability issues / general unpolishness.

I've tried [https://circuits.io](https://circuits.io) (Autodesk Circuits web app) and it's surprisingly good (for a beginner, at least).

<comment><USER18> FYI, touchpad panning was enabled a year or 2 ago, but you have to turn it on in the preferences. As well, I strongly suggest switching to OpenGL rendering. With those 2 changes Kicad on Mac went from barely usable to outright pleasant (still not a huge fan of their library management though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I suppose this is only the first article, but before you commit components to a manufactured board, I recommend you do a schematic layout and then a wire- wrapped or bread-boarded version first. Manufacturing takes time, and can be costly in mostly time if you make a mistake.

I made a few PCB's using [http://aisler.net/](http://aisler.net/) which seem fine for prototype manufacturing. They can also make the laser-cut stencil for SMD component mounting. You can upload Eagle BRD files directly (my experience with KiCAD and Fritzing was a lot less than stellar). Cost was around nine euros for three small PCB's and another nine for the stencil and took about a week to be delivered.

<comment><USER20> Is this the same as oshpark?

<comment><USER19> OSHPark also allow you to upload Eagle BRD files, but based in the US. I think it's a separate company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> He speaks a little bit about RoHS compliance... If you plan to make a real product, make sure you work with somebody that has done that before. Having certification can be tricky as soon as you start having high-frequency components, and it's always the case today...

<comment><USER10> Are you confusing RoHS (reduction of hazardous substances) and EMI/EMC (part of CE certification)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Solid PCB design article. However, I want to come out and state clearly what they seem to be just implying: _talk to your PCB vendor and your assembly house before you pull the trigger on a prototype!_

You have two great resources on designing for manufacturing/test right at your fingertips. Building electronics is what these houses do _every day_ , and they possess an immense amount of knowledge about it. Give them the chance to review your designs so you don't make dumb, expensive mistakes!

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been designing PCBs for guitar amps and pedals for the last year or so and I highly recommend OSHPark for fabricating PCBs. It's not the cheapest, but the quality is great and it's still quite affordable. Mainly, though, it's the ease of use of their ordering system that makes me recommend it so highly.

</comment><comment><USER24> > (when in doubt about any particular UI solution, check how it has been done > in a certain proprietary app that is very popular among OSHW folks and do > exactly opposite).

This is currently listed on the CERN roadmap for KiCad. Given all the complaints about the UX here I thought it might be relevant.

</comment><comment><USER25> Thanks for linking this. I had a pretty tough time getting quotes on a custom PCB a few months ago. If I'd had this article ahead of time, everything would have made quite a bit more sense!

</comment><comment><USER26> I once wanted to make a custom PCB for my mechanical keyboard layout. I was so frustrated and disheartened by how difficult it was and all the pitfalls that could occur I decided to just stick to hand wiring.

I'd love to be able to just hire someone to make me a custom PCB the way someone would hire a developer to write an app, but unfortunately it seems there is no market for this.

<comment><USER27> There is a market of freelancers who do this, but the cost is probably not what you are expecting from the software market.

<comment><USER28> I have a small prototype I need to get from a schematic stage (needs additional checking & decoupling caps, etc added) to a few PCBs - I was thinking of hiring someone to do the PCB layout. forum.eevblog.com was mentioned above, there are hardware designers on upwork - anywhere else I should look?

<comment><USER29> I do this - my email is in my profile, or poke me on IRC and we'll talk.

<comment><USER27> Same - I still do it from time to time. The EEVBlog forums have ended up as the main discussion area for professionals and small-time operators/hobbyists.

Do realize that keyboard-sized PCBs will be expensive in single quantities past the design stage as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Price of Hype: The Public Now Has Unrealistic Timelines for Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.science20.com/science_20/the_price_of_hype_the_public_now_has_unrealistic_timelines_for_science-153946

<comment><USER2> These are all entirely reasonable points. I do take some exception with the "now". Has it ever not been the case?

Cold fusion. Real AI. Hotels in space. Nuclear powered cars and kitchen equipment. Self-guided cars by the 1990s. Robots as personal valets. Those are part of a long list of unrealistic expectations in the last century.

(Okay, I think there's one non-reasonable point: I don't think the faster- than-light neutrino publication from OPERA was oversold sizzle.)</comment>


OCR by uploading images to Google Docs - <AUTHOR> http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=176692

<comment><USER2> In case anyone wonders: I tried if Google could solve its own captchas. It can, if each character is separated, but once they overlap, like they usually do, it doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know if this uses Google's open source tesseract-ocr software?

<comment><USER4> I was unable to find any reference regarding this. Personally gocr worked better for me than tessearct/pytesseract. Google docs inbuilt OCR gives pretty satisfactory results too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it tremendously frustrating that so many people are creating this problem for themselves.

Anything that needs to be data should be data, not images. Except for some very specific cases, you're not doing anybody any favors by outputting PDF. That format is a data black hole. It allows you to transmit very well- formatted output, but it absolutely _stops_ you from reliably _using_ anything in that content.

I beg you all: if it's anything that contains data, or really, if it's anything for which layout and formatting is not absolutely critical, please don't use PDF. Send data as data.

<comment><USER6> 99% of the time I want to OCR a document or image I am not the creator of said item.

<comment><USER5> Obviously. But if we could make _everyone_ understand, then we'd be covered.

Every few months here, we get a customer asking why we can't automatically handle purchase orders that they send us in PDF format, and every time they get the same explanation.

<comment><USER7> If we could make _everyone_ understand, we wouldn't need computer programmers. We could just have computers talk to each other, and all their formats would be magically compatible, and the vast body of data conversion code wouldn't exist.

The problem is that computers are made for humans, and humans are often wantonly illogical. You're not going to change this, short of Skynet and the rise of the machines. So it makes sense to put up with a fair amount of coding pain to make things easier for your users. It's lucrative, at least.

Think of it as a full-employment theorem for data-miners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone checked to see if this works with Japanese, Korean, or Chinese? What about Arabic or Hindi? This would shed some light on whether it's likely to be tesseract or ocrpus....

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow I just tested with an image, and you get a GDoc with the image on top and the OCRed text in the bottom.

Pretty cool.

I wonder what are they using for Google Goggles and this

</comment><comment><USER10> Incidentally, I noticed that if you try to use tesseract on an image taken from a Google Books page, you get terrible OCR accuracy. Anyone know why that is?

<comment><USER11> I recall that on some google-scanned books, there was some metadata from abbyy finereader. So that may be why.

Also, tesseract often needs to be configured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there an API by any chance?

<comment><USER13> I suppose this will work: <http://code.google.com/apis/documents/>

You can both upload and specify format when downloading. I guess that includes the OCR applied if necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> G1ver whar OCR locks lice in g00gLe ePubs in g0og1e Buuks, th1s w111 du we11.

</comment><comment><USER15> Trying to improve some scanned forms I have, I got an average of 5 characters per page recognized. Also form formatting recognized as "1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1".

I may not rely entirely on google docs for my OCR needs in future ;)

<comment><USER16> Can you upload your document or part of it somewhere where others can take a look?

I find it hard to believe Google would release this if it was that useless (no jokes about Buzz or Wave, please).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder what's stronger - google OCR or google captcha?</comment>


The Comical Irony That iOS 7 Users Are Suffering From Blue Screens Of Death - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/11/the-comical-irony-that-ios-7-users-are-suffering-from-blue-screens-of-death/

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's something with Apple and the number 7. Bring on iOS 8!</comment>


Dinner-and-a-Movie Theory: Why Reddit Gets it Backwards - <AUTHOR> http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2007/04/dinnerandamovie.html <comment><USER2> I think there's a major problem with this, and it is that discussions come in all shapes and sizes across the web.

Think about it. Some blogs don't have comments. Some sites require you to register to comment. Some sites use flat threading so they are horrible for long discussions. Some of the best discussions are from mailing lists. Is the usual reader going to sign up for that?

No...the current aggregators have it right because they make it easy to discuss content. The problem isn't the medium of discussion, it is the people involved.

<comment><USER3> I agree and disagree.

You are right in that the people shape the discussion, but saying that the current aggregators have it right because of thus is more like complacency: they can definitely be better. Looking back at how discussion systems evolved over the years, it's easy to see that small steps have been taken to improve the user experience be enforcing an overall higher quality of content.

Since users shape the community, you have two choices in dealing with an evolving site: keep your initial vision by implementing rules and potentially alienating certain user groups; or letting your site adapt to the users. Both are valid approaches. Slashdot takes the former, because it has moderators, and digg takes the latter, so it's userbase keeps growing while the quality keeps dropping. I imagine reddit would take the latter path too. news.yc is also facing the same kind of change. Recalling the bunch of "delete me" posts last week, it seems like quality control is done mostly by self-policing of some sort.

It's an issue of how much control and what tastes the users have, and what mechanisms have been implemented to strengthen or weaken the expression these tastes in the system. Most discussion sites fall into two extremes. Total moderator control, or total user control. A very powerful alternative doesn't simply lie in the middle; it shifts back and forth. This is the logical next step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> " How can we solve this? "

The real question is who would back the development of this. In startups, no one cares about solving a problem if this solution does not bring in tons of money.

I was thinking about this the other day. What you are describing, problems faced by a social site _late_ in it's life, are not of particular interest to most startups. Why? Because by the point this solution has made any difference, the exit has already come and gone.

(Not trying to be negative, but figure out how this system will make a substantial difference from the beginning and then you'll be set.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Good post. If I understand your point correctly, you're saying that perhaps we should link directly to the /comments page of certain posts on Reddit, instead of telling people to go there and wade through the garbage. Correct?

I still find programming.reddit.com to be a good place to frequent. We had a post about that last day over there actually.

<comment><USER6> I think linking to a discussion about a topic is better than just linking to the topic but is still flawed. If you think about the scope of what's happening, the scope is usually very tight. At most, the conversation goes on for a few days, then essentially fades away as the topic (really, the post the comments are connected with) slides down the list and gets buried.

Once the post has been fully buried, the conversation has effectively stopped. The thing that would be really great would be to link prior conversations to new, but related topics. Let's say that next week it turns out that Imus made those comments under duress. Some lunatic pointed a gun at him and forced him to say those things. Instead of rehashing all that stuff again, it'd be great to dredge that conversation up as a starting point.

I know I'm not making this very clear. But I tried.</comment></comment>


How to start a social movement - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.unm.edu/~aaron/blog/archives/2010/10/how_to_start_a.htm

<comment><USER2> Its from his TED talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movemen...](http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html)

<comment><USER3> thanks for the link

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow - this is a powerful analysis of a powerful idea. He crystallizes a notion that I've always sensed subconsciously but never realized _actually_. The importance of the "first follower" is now etched into my mind.

Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER5> This was awesome. It's one of the few things I've seen that literally shows a transformative event on video.</comment>


Ask HN: What videoconferencing / telepresence / screensharing services or apps do you use? - <AUTHOR>

A couple of weeks ago I watched a talk that Cisco's CEO gave at MIT (http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/619). He was really fired up about their telepresence / videoconferencing technology. It seems that when you get beyond a certain threshold of quality, the meeting feels real enough to actually be a "good enough" substitute for a meaningful fraction of in-person meetings -- and that can be game-changing.
Having spent more than my fair share of time collaborating across oceans and now living 6 hours from my major client, I would theoretically be the ideal beneficiary of a really great real-time video collab tool -- but for some reason it's never become a regular part of my workflow, even though I do feel more connected with people I video chat with.
So the question I'm asking myself is whether this is the fault of the technology (Skype video sucks compared to a Cisco telepresence room), human interface (we don't have an app that  "just feels natural" enough to make a call with), or slow adaptation (maybe if we spent 3 weeks forcing ourselves to try virtual meetings, we'd get hooked)?
If it's the tech & interface holding me back, then I'm content to wait for something better. On the other hand, if there are people out there seeing great benefits from existing apps/services, then I'd suspect that I'm missing out purely due to the rigidity of my own habits.
Is anyone here doing work in this space? <comment><USER2> It's hard to compete with just a simple iChat / iSight setup, especially when all new Mac's come with one built-in. The quality is pretty spot-on, with little delay, echo, or distortion. And the cost... free.</comment>


Chinese "spy" caught with NASA laptop full of porn, not secrets - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/chinese-spy-caught-with-nasa-laptop-full-of-porn-not-secrets/ <comment><USER2> Whomever wrote that headline missed a much more significant, and painfully biting, point:

"Jiang, a former contractor at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, had recently been let go by his employer _because of pressure from Republican congressman_ Frank Wolf of Virginia. Wolf had claimed Jiang _and other Chinese engineers_ employed by NASA contractors were a security risk."

"But it quickly became apparent that Jiang was _at worst_ guilty of violating NASA policies. [...] Jiang had _not had clearance to such projects at Langley_ as an employee of the National Institute of Aerospace"

" _A press release issued by Wolf after the arrest and copy of Jiang's arrest warrant have since disappeared off the the congressman's website._ In the release (cached by Google here), Wolf had said, 'I am particularly concerned that (the) information (on Jiang's laptop) may pertain to the source code for high-tech imaging technology that Jiang has been working on with NASA. This information could have significant military applications for the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army.'"

Confirmed, the USA has entered back into full McCarthyism. Request title change to 'Chinese contractor fired on suspicion by Republican senator'.

<comment><USER3> Political pressure from ignorant Republican congressmen not only resulted in Jiang being fired over this non-incident, but something even more serious for science in general: the entire NASA technical-report archive [1], with documents dating back decades, has been forced offline indefinitely [2]. Frank Wolf and his ilk are worried [3] that the Red Chinese might be reading some 1970s document in a way that compromises American national security. Never mind that the Chinese likely have copied a mirror of any documents they find interesting already. So now it's only _American_ researchers who can't access it: there are no complete mirrors of which I'm aware, because U.S. libraries and archives naively assumed that NASA was a reliable long-term host for the documents, meaning there were no serious mirroring efforts. Maybe we can ask China to take pity on us and make a mirror available, since ntrs.nasa.gov being down breaks thousands of references in papers and elsewhere.

[1] <http://ntrs.nasa.gov/>

[2] <http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2013/03/ntrs_dark/>

[3] <http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=40365>

<comment><USER4> > meaning there were no serious mirroring efforts

Unfortunately, this is also the case for the majority of commercially- published science. And no, JSTOR is not a good response because JSTOR doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of science. Science is one of the most important efforts in human history, and we don't have backups, or even mirrors. Great.

Edit: does anyone know some orgs with deep pockets that would be willing to accept and host 30-50 terabytes of papers? I can't seem to find anyone that doesn't wuss out. I know it's risky, but it's also critically important.

<comment><USER5> > Does anyone know some orgs with deep pockets that would be willing to accept > and host 30-50 terabytes of papers?

The Pirate Bay?

<comment><USER4> > The Pirate Bay?

Sorry, but TPB doesn't actually host any content.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but if you threw a torrent up with every published paper since Galileo, there'd be be plenty of people willing to seed.

<comment><USER7> I believe some one already tried something similar, it unfortunately didn't end well[0]. If some one does throw up such a torrent though I'd be glad to help seed.

[0]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz>

<comment><USER8> Had Aaron successfully seeded it a few times (if indeed that was even his intention in the first place), not really much would have changed for him. However I am certain that we would have the entirety of what he seeded.

<comment><USER4> > However I am certain that we would have the entirety of what he seeded.

You guys are all crazy.. torrents consisting of this type of content already exist, and they have only _one_ seeder. For example, the excellent Library Genesis collection. Why should I believe you when you tell me countless people will come to the rescue _this_ time? Your average seeder doesn't have piles of terabytes, and evidently doesn't care to seed one or two parts out of thousands.

<comment><USER8> People hoard all sorts of data, if they are made aware of it and want it. I for one certainly would have seeded the dump Aaron made, had he seeded it himself first. And who _doesn't_ have piles of terabytes these days?

What is your objective, give it to people that don't want it, or make it available to people that do? The later is not rocket science, the former impossible and pointless. If you are telling me that nobody is interested in your content then I am not going to argue with you... If people are interested in having your content then the only thing standing in their way is your weird objection to attempting to distribute it.

If I am so wrong, so what? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

<comment><USER4>
        > the only thing standing in their way is your weird objection
        > to attempting to distribute it.

My point was that people are already trying to host this sort of science content over torrents and _it's not working_. Nobody seeds it. I gave a very specific example to confirm this observation. I would love to hear about possible alternatives.

<comment><USER6> Well, Library Genesis doesn't interest me. A complete history of scientific papers would though.

<comment><USER4> libgen has many journals and compilations of papers, how is that not exactly what you're talking about?

Also, if the collection was only 95%, 98%, 99%, or 99.5% complete, would you mirror it? Keep in mind that you would also have to purchase/acquire about $500-$1500 of storage space.

Thank you, it helps me gauge WTF is going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty clearly, the worse threat to the security of the United States are republican congresspersons.

<comment><USER10> I think we're past the point of needing to prepend "republican" or "democrat" to that particular noun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why would anyone think a potential spy would physically carry source code over the border?

If he was going to leak it, it would have been sent months earlier over the internet, duh!

Especially if he knew that someone was suspicious of him. Someone has been watching too many movies.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Damnit, he's not guilty of anything. Can we humiliate him or something to save face?"

So proud.

</comment><comment><USER13> If he wanted data transferred to China, _why on earth_ would he bring a complete laptop?

The whole thing is so retarded. If he actually wanted to get data to china, he would have already done so, using the internet. Stopping him on a plane for a suspicion like that is just absurd.

</comment><comment><USER14> LOL pirated movies.

How on Earth will he find such things when he's back in China?

<comment><USER15> I think NASA's bandwidth is better than what he'd get on some random ISP in China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The secrets thing doesn't even have to matter.

The guy STOLE a computer from NASA.

The "at worst guilty of violating NASA policies" is complete nonsense.

Theft of items exceeding $200 in value is a Grand Theft and is a felony in Virginia. This person committed a felony which in Virginia has a _minimum_ one year prison sentence and up to twenty years. He should have been arrested and it is completely absurd that he wasn't. It's bizarre that the author of the article believes that a person can just steal a computer and it's not a crime.

<comment><USER13> Stealing for $200 gives you one year in prison? Ouch.

<comment><USER17> Ouch for the taxpayers who pay for the prison places. According to a freedom of information request in 2008, it costs just over £200 _per day_ per prisoner in the UK. About £60 _per day_ is direct costs and the rest is amortisation of buildings &c.

Made me think... weekend prison like in Scandanavia, alternatives to prison &c

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What better material to steganographically hide lots of data in than porn?

</comment><comment><USER19> Weird that a contractor has a employer provided computer. Providing a computer could qualify the contractor as a full time employee.

<comment><USER20> That could be true for private companies, but the government plays by different rules.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unite...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States#Federal_sovereign_immunity)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Steganography + Porn, that's a really neat idea.. You wouldn't easily get officials to analyze those files together with a forensics team. That scenario is awkward.

An error the official did was making his company a public target, by revealing that they might have sensitive data, without being prepared to an attack. Not so clever move, sorry.

<comment><USER22> Surely the NSA has hashes of nearly everything on the internet (bloom filters, perhaps?). Finding images that didn't match would be a simple and automated task. There isn't even a need for the person doing the scan to know that it's porn -- from the point of view of the hash database, porn, system files, and ripped DVDs all fall into the category of "seen before, not interesting."

After the forensics team found files that didn't match the DB, they would have a good reason to investigate further and officials / the media wouldn't let nekked bodies stop them from commenting.

Porn would make a poor choice of background media because reverse image search is ubiquitous. Finding the originals would be easy, and showing that the differences between the stego'd images and the originals didn't happen via compression would probably not be too hard either.

If the encryption is good they probably wouldn't get any further than that. Still, any significant quantity of hidden files would generate a large body of evidence that would be very difficult to explain away.

Why go to the trouble of hiding info on the hard drive of a guy who was already under suspicion when a prerecorded skype call or controlled packet latency system would make for a stego medium that was much harder to detect and easier to plausibly deny?

<comment><USER21> You're correct and personally I would never underestimate the NSA/FBI or any other organization.

 __Remember Aaron Schwartz.

But there is too much evidence that they might be much less professional and less equipped with such high-quality hash-databases.

I don't believe that they could allocate enough professional resources (in such a "low priority" target) to actually give clearance of the case and green lights to the officers with certainty. If the porn movies are avis and 700mb, but with SD-quality, then you couldn't notice the difference.

Take 20 porn files porn-a.avi (500MB original or 600MB with hidden data) There are so many rips or rips of rips that you cannot have a complete porn- database. And phew 2GB of compressed and hidden Data. Even if he didn't have used Steganography, he could easily use imageshack.us, imgur.com and other file-hosting sites, heck even upload to porn-sites to hide the data. Additionally you could get bad hashes into your database, when they upload the porn movies themself.

<comment><USER22> How do you figure this is a low priority target? This certainly falls within their mandate and the guy might have been trying to steal legitimately sensitive information!

> Take 20 porn files porn-a.avi (500MB original or 600MB with hidden data) > There are so many rips or rips of rips that you cannot have a complete porn- > database. And phew 2GB of compressed and hidden Data.

The smallest SSD I own could handily fit that data whole and the bloom filter would fit in an arduino a thousand times over. The NSA's shiny new Utah datacenter had a $2B budget for construction alone, do you really think "rips of rips" are going to be a problem? These guys scrape web traffic by putting a T on major junctions of the internet and duplicating everything that comes down the pipes. You could set all of 4chan to making rips with permuted settings and not begin to stress infrastructure of that capacity.

I don't want to be rude, but you seem to be in denial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> ...now they'll assume all the top secret data is stenoed in his porn collection, so they'll keep him in jail for a long long time until they prove it isn't ...or was that brit law?

</comment><comment><USER24> ROFL I did my MS in computer science from Old Dominion University.. proud of you :D :D

</comment><comment><USER25> Paranoid Americans...

</comment><comment><USER26> Gives new meaning to the term "honey pot" :-p</comment>


Is there a correlation between the number of blogs and Google reader's demise? - <AUTHOR> I always felt that having a high quality and massively used google reader network enabled the rise of blogs that were personal and popular. It also allowed greater DISCOVERY of blogs which has been greatly hampered since RSS never evolved and google just dropped the ball.<p>I always wondered if there wasn't some grand ploy by advertisers of large media companies to streamline public opinion, expression, and thought by removing the competition blogs were giving them but undercutting some of the infrastructure in RSS or Google Reader. <comment><USER2> Nope. Just not enough users. Also Google+

[http://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-google-reader-got-the- ax/](http://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-google-reader-got-the-ax/)

[http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/03/14/former-google- reader...](http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/03/14/former-google-reader- product-manager-confirms-our-suspicions-its-demise-is-all-about- google/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+All+Stories%29)

There's tons of discussion about it.</comment>


A 1 percenter tells the truth about "job creators" - <AUTHOR> http://digbysblog.blogspot.tw/2013/06/a-1-percenter-tells-truth-about-job.html

<comment><USER2> This article is a copy/paste of Nick Hanauer's November 2011 Bloomberg article with a few lines of text before and after added. Here is the original: [http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-01/raise-taxes- on-t...](http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-01/raise-taxes-on-the-rich- to-reward-job-creators-commentary-by-nick-hanauer.html)</comment>


Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99% - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/oct/13/half-world-wealth-in-hands-population-inequality-report <comment><USER2> > The report defines wealth as the value of assets including property and > stock market investments, but excludes debt.

How does this make the slightest bit of sense? Counting property but ignoring debt is going to exaggerate the wealth of many Americans by an order of magnitude, for example. Beyond that, one person's debt is another person's investment, so you're double counting all that money.

<comment><USER3> I think the Guardian article meant that they had subtracted debt from assets, but they stated it in a confusing way. The original report states:

      Once debts have been subtracted, a person needs only USD 3,210 to be among the wealthiest
      half of world citizens in mid-2015. However, USD 68,800 is required to be a member of the
      top 10% of global wealth holders, and USD 759,900 to belong to the top 1%.

Which is more clearly stated and uses the same numbers as the Guardian article.

See page 11 from: [https://publications.credit- suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi...](https://publications.credit- suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=F2425415-DCA7-80B8-EAD989AF9341D47E)

<comment><USER2> Yes, I believe you're correct. Holy crap is that a terrible way to put it. I wouldn't call "excluding debt" confusing, but just outright wrong. Unless this is one of those dialect things that means something different to the Brits?

<comment><USER4> More of an accounting/finance thing, similar to how net price is price excluding tax, net wealth is wealth (assets) excluding debt (loans/liabilities).

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if that helps, because here in the US "price" is by default listed before taxes! I would read "net price is price excluding tax" as "net price is price, ignoring taxes," and thus "net wealth is wealth, ignoring debt."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wealth disparity may be growing, but I think folks disagree about the source. Some point to tax havens which allow the rich to accumulate wealth without a bit being shaved off and redistributed. They say we need to increase taxes and disallow tax havens to limit wealth accumulation.

I don't think taxes paint the full picture. For the past 7 years or so central banks in the US, Japan, and UK (and recently the European Central Bank) have embarked on aggressive quantitative easing programs, printing and injecting into the economy massive amounts of new cash, propping up banks and stock markets. The first layer that this cash passes through is filled with wealthy folks (i.e. bankers and those with lots of investments). The people at the lower end of the wealth spectrum benefit indirectly through living in an economy which survived and having their investment-backed retirement/pension packages in-tact (for the most part). Thus quantitative easing is fundamentally a regressive stimulus package, with most of the new cash going into the pockets of the most wealthy, and the least wealthy getting table scraps by comparison.

Quantitative easing may have spared us a collapsed global economy, but the effects are increasing wealth inequality. I don't know what the best solution is, and in fact I don't think anybody does. Everyone is kinda shooting in the dark here.

<comment><USER6> We are living in a consumer economy where an increasing number of jobs are becoming automated. QE is effective in relaxing capital constraints for private industry to thrive but trickle down economics not only doesn't work it certainly doesn't work when you take into account the increasing automation. More than half of Americans live on less than $30k a year. If we want to jump start America we need a minimal viable income. Guaranteed checks to every citizen for them to do what they want. You can argue inflation all you want but without free market economics working for labor we need to tax the rich and siphon that cash back into the hands of the consumer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The report shows that a person needs only $3,210 (£2,100) to be in the wealthiest 50% of world citizens. "

Prices between country are adjusted to Power parity purchases (PPP)

<comment><USER8> This reasoning is flawed. It depends what your cost of living is in the region of the planet you call home. Yes, I suppose you could move to a lower cost of living region, but there are issues with that as well (Oppressive government, Lack of hospitals, Sanitation, no English speakers, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> According to census.gov [http://blogs.census.gov/2013/03/21/household-wealth- and-debt...](http://blogs.census.gov/2013/03/21/household-wealth-and-debt-in- the-u-s-2000-to-2011/) at least in the US "changes in overall median net worth observed over the past decade have been driven primarily by changes in one of its major components – equity that American households hold in their homes".

The recipe for greater wealth equality is to subsidize mortgages and restrict new construction, so that everybody's house values move up a notch, which makes everyone feel a little bit better about themselves.

<comment><USER10> > The recipe for greater wealth equality is to subsidize mortgages and > restrict new construction, so that everybody's house values move up a notch, > which makes everyone feel a little bit better about themselves.

I assume this suggestion was made "A Modest Proposal"-style, right?

Those are the policies we've been following, and they cause great harm. It's already nearly impossible to buy a home in many American cities if you're not upper middle class at a minimum, and even then you're paying an unsustainable portion of your income. Restricting construction further and subsidizing mortgages (so that home prices simply float up to their current value + subsidy) will put homes even farther out of reach.

<comment><USER9> Right, this is not the recipe for fair market prices or housing affordability.

This is a recipe for increasing wealth equality, an abstract statistical value the press tells us we should be outraged about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think this is particularly surprising or interesting on a global scale. Not least because of the difficulty in data collection that could lead to different conclusions the next time someone tries.

Wealth distribution within a country is an interesting thing to look at, but I think at the global level it's not nearly as compelling as, say, wealth distribution among countries.

</comment><comment><USER12> In other news, bread comes in white. Glad someone has already posted scale of economy against other sources. Cool beans.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really hate to break it to you guys: It's always been like this. Maybe not quite THIS extreme, but a very small group of wealthy white men have run the United States since the beginning.

<comment><USER14> I don't think you'll find much sympathy for the status quo in this crowd. We like fixing things.

<comment><USER15> We can learn from it though, the history of inequality does suggest that inequality is an attractor, and equality is an unstable state that would require active management to maintain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure if this was addressed in the Credit Suisse report, but these kind of comparisons can be very misleading. The problem is that a lot of people in the bottom 10% have net negative assets (every fresh grad with college loan debt for eg). This skews the distributions, making the wealthy seem richer than they really are.

Suppose A has 50$, B has 30$ and C has -20$ (owes a creditor). A seems to control ~82% of all the wealth, but B is actually in much better shape than that number suggests.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not very related but if you're using Chrome install this plug-in to get a clean "AMP" version of Guardian and many more websites:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%E2%9A%A1%EF%B8%8F...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%E2%9A%A1%EF%B8%8F/igokgmnkplcfgnegidccbgmlnecaffhh)

<comment><USER18> If anyone else was wondering, that's "Accelarted Mobile Pages": [https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml)

Does seem odd me to point that out on a Guardian link - it's never struck me as particularly slow (on mobile or otherwise).

<comment><USER19> Their comment system is really bad (slow and browsing through pages does not work well).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's clear we need government intervention that punishes those that profited richly from the collusion between government and big business. I would recommend letting industry draft any legislation intended to fix this problem.

</comment><comment><USER21> In other news:

Top 1% singers better than the remaining 99%.

Top 1% sprinters better than the remaining 99%.

Top 1% producers better than the remaining 99%.

Where's the surprise here? It's a variation of Sturgeon's Law.

EDIT: the top 1% of wealthy americans are better _producers_ than everyone else, yes. They are not better _people_ than everyone else, no. How is this so hard to understand to HN-level people?

<comment><USER22> I don't think you read the stats right to be honest. The top 1% of producers aren't better than the other 99% _combined_.

And another point: I don't think all of Sam Walton's kids are even in the top 1% of producers even though they are at the very tip-top of wealth owners.

And the top 1% of owners don't have the same wealth as the other 99% in other countries, or even in this country in the past. It's not a normal thing at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Who cares about socialist propaganda like this? There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons. For example, if the distribution were more equal on a relative basis, but all brackets had less money than before, is that supposed to be an improvement?

<comment><USER2> Wealth means power.

Let's take an extreme case: every person in the world has their wealth increased by 10% over what they have today, except for one person who has his wealth increased by $1 quadrillion.

Everybody is better off, right? Except that wealthy person is going to rule the world, and stack the deck to help himself, and there's nothing that says he's only going to do it in such a way that everybody else keeps increasing their wealth too, or even keeps their wealth at all.

We can see this at work in the US where the political process has become pretty corrupted, to the point that half the politicians act like wealthy people in the US suffer under a tremendously high tax burden when they actually pay less as a percentage than the average person, and the other half pays lip service to getting the wealthy to pay more but only proposes weak measures that never go anywhere, and where systematic lawbreaking in the financial sector that led to a gigantic financial crises went completely unpunished, except for the one guy who made the mistake of ripping off wealthy people.

<comment><USER23> I agree, wealth and power are closely related right now. But why? We could focus our energies on the distribution of power instead of the distribution of wealth. We could create a world where power and wealth were not so closely correlated. Arguably, our original constitutional government was a lot closer to that than we are today. That was when we had apportionment of 1:100000 in the U.S. House. That was when State governments elected their senators. That was when it was assumed that any State could withdraw from the Union, that any county could withdraw from a State. It was before a massive, centralized federal government.

<comment><USER2> Wealth is ultimately the codification of power. A dollar is the representation of the power to get somebody else to give you a dollar's worth of value, or do a dollar's worth of stuff for you.

They are not perfectly linked, but I think they tend to come together. If someone has a lot of economic power, which they can use to get a bunch of people to give them things or do things for them, that's an avenue to political power. If someone has a lot of political power, they can leverage that to get economic power.

Your statement about how the original US government was closer to this than today doesn't sound right to me. Weren't only people^H^H^H^H^H^men^H^H^Hwhite men who owned land allowed to vote?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jessica Livingston: Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2014/06/03/jessica-livingston-why-startups-need-to-focus-on-sales-not-marketing/ <comment><USER2> Build a quality product...sell it...back it with outstanding customer service...rely on user experience (satisfaction) to scale it...

Time-tested advice...no argument from me...

Over-reliance on marketing, a cheap way to achieve quick (reportable) gains that end up being hollow is not the optimal ethical approach...

Again, no argument...</comment>


Peak Millennial? Cities Can't Assume a Continued Boost from the Young - <AUTHOR> https://nytimes.com/2017/01/23/upshot/peak-millennial-cities-cant-assume-a-continued-boost-from-the-young.html <comment><USER2> As usual, the NY Times sees an actual phenomenon, but fails to understand it.

Softening rents? That's because you have a limited resource of people willing and able to pay $3000 to $5000 for a single bedroom apartment. It doesn't take much construction to saturate that market.

The problem there is that housing is so insanely difficult to build in a place like New York or San Francisco. There are far more people who can pay $1000 for 1 bedroom, or $3000 for 4 bedrooms (roommates, typically), and it would be insane to ignore that market. But abusive zoning laws and the capricious permit process ensure that that price of housing would be unprofitable. So the big developers and financiers wait until the market goes to insanity levels before making a little boom of construction.

We need to reform housing, allowing increased density and by-right permit approvals, and then the little guy has a chance to build affordable housing.

<comment><USER3> I realize this is super unpopular as an opinion, but why is it always a given that everyone should be able to live everywhere? What's inherently wrong with high rent in San Francisco?

I'm sure we can talk about lots of bad reasons why rent is high, but the mere fact of high rent isn't itself bad, right? Why do we need to reform?

<comment><USER2> Some people paying high rent is fine. You are rich, you get to spend a lot of money. Usually, I don't care.

Cities are important for too many reasons for me to enumerate right now. Basically, if we can't keep cities healthy, then our civilization will collapse, and we won't be able to rebuild.

We have a problem when the option to spend less is not available. Then, to have access to the jobs and opportunities of the city, the workers have to spend inordinate amounts of money on expensive rents and time on commuting, which reduces the social benefit of having jobs.

[https://medium.com/@laurafooteclark/how-do-we-avoid- another-...](https://medium.com/@laurafooteclark/how-do-we-avoid-another- trump-1d4fcf04b9fe)

It also reduces the real wealth, as value is diverted to past landowners (and tenants taking advantage of abusive laws, which are why I never supported the San Francisco Tenants Union) and not to the city as a whole. The Bay Area schools can't even hire teachers for all of their classrooms. We are awash in money, but experiencing poverty.

<comment><USER3> If it were a "real" poverty experience, house values would drop, wouldn't they?

Apparently the issues experienced as a result of high housing prices aren't valued enough to drive prices of the homes down, yet.

I guess my point, if I had one at all, is that it seems like the housing market is absurdly high in such a way that will _eventually_ self balance, one way or another. Either the city will continue to sustain itself on the backs of the long commuters who can't afford to live in the city, or the quality of life in the city will drop, which will in turn lower housing prices until the workers who make the city life appealing can afford to live close enough to again commute reasonably.

If, as you say, education is suffering, people will stop buying the houses, or they'll stop bringing kids to the districts. Either way, problem self- corrects, right?

<comment><USER4> Not everyone is driven into poverty at the same price point.

With a tech salary it's possible to float above the rising prices, but everyone else gets driven out.

Housing prices will not "balance" because demand is extremely high and much of that demand has high salaries, and supply is extremely restricted (by NIMBY's and the laws they support).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In this debate, we should look to cities in other countries. As I understand it, Paris/ Vancouver/ London/ Tokyo etc have never been subject to the "rule" that young couples move to the suburbs once they are ready to raise families. Nor are they subject to the rule that cities are dangerous and have bad schools. If we can fix schools and crime, like other civilized nations, then there is no reason to believe people will move out of cities once they reach a certain age.

<comment><USER6> You say "fix schools and crime" like it is known empirically what to do. It is not as simple as pumping money into the districts.

France, Canada, England, Japan and other "civilized nations" debate how best to fund schools and fight crime just like the US.

<comment><USER7> Japan is pretty famous for having almost no crime. I doubt they're debating crime-fighting. Their main problems as a society seem to be workaholism and a lack of children, not crime or school quality.

Here in the US, crime has been falling steadily for decades now, and no one's really sure why. One big theory is that the elimination of leaded gasoline had a big effect: our population was suffering from low-level lead poisoning from all the lead in the air and environment. But crime here is of course still much, much worse than Japan. Crime in England is probably significantly worse, with the main difference being that you don't have to worry much about getting shot over there, but you have to worry a lot more about being mugged or knifed.

<comment><USER8> _Japan is pretty famous for having almost no crime. I doubt they 're debating crime-fightin_

The reason for this is not generally applicable outside extremely homogeneous populations.

<comment><USER9> What's the reason, then? Looking at Appalachia and southern Italy, I don't see any reason to believe that ethnic/racial/cultural homogeneity is a magic bullet.

<comment><USER7> It's definitely not, proven by the examples you cited.

Where you get ultra-low crime is when you combine that homogeneity with good public education. Take a look at the education systems and levels in places like Japan or Norway, and then compare to Appalachia or Sicily or various middle eastern nations. Also look at the levels of religiosity.

<comment><USER9> But if good public education and low religiosity were the magic bullets, the Soviet Union would never have fallen; if homogeneity was necessary, Singapore wouldn't work and the Ottoman Empire would always have been dysfunctional; if high religiosity was bad in itself, Bavaria would be a hellhole. Some religions get in the way, others don't -- and some actively help to enrich their societies. (Zoroastrianism should come to mind. Rice was the staple crop of Persia before it was the staple of China, thanks to pious Zoroastrian agricultural research; and building an aqueduct or draining a swamp was a fast path to paradise. Down to the present, the Zoroastrians do pretty well for themselves -- the Parsis of India are the main population of Zoroastrians today -- and some of their habits of mind seem to still be present in Iran today.)

I've come to believe that the potential to rise in social position is what matters most, except possibly in Zoroastrian societies. Appalachia, Sicily (including lower-class parts of Boston), and the Middle East all agree that where you were born is where you'll stay, and that ambition is ridiculous or contemptible; while the healthiest societies are the ones where talent can bubble to the top even if you're not the judge's son.

My favorite example of the vitality that social mobility brings is the Ibo of Nigeria -- "the Jews of Africa", the most successful and energetic of West African peoples. Also look at the dynamic nature of the early Islamic world, compared compared to the stagnant nature of the modern one. And what's true of the Islamic world is equally true of the Iberian one; Brazil and West Virginia have the same basic problem. And back in the Middle Ages, too, it was the most fluid societies -- Lombardy, England, the Low Countries, and the Iberian states -- that were the most successful ones.

<comment><USER7> You make some great points, but for your Soviet Union point I'd like to counter that indoctrination does not equal "good public education". Good public education teaches you to question authority and to think critically. That kind of education is notably absent in authoritarian regimes.

Also, I never said that religiosity by itself would result in downfall of a society. Lots of religious societies have done well in history, but they also had relatively good education. The early Islamic world you mention I think qualifies here. It's when you combine religiosity with terrible education that you're really doomed. The education serves as a check against the religiosity getting out of control and turning into theocracy, or whatever you call the wackiness we're seeing in the right-wing here in America today.

<comment><USER9> The Soviets really did do a good job in some important areas. No one had taken the basic skills, the "three Rs", seriously in Russia before them; science and engineering were also pretty good (apart from Lysenko in biology), and while 20th-century culture was closed off, 19th-century was certainly accessible. (Hugo and Dumas were a big part of Soviet popular culture, not in the sense of "what the state sponsored" but in the sense of "what people actually read.") Insofar as critical thinking is a subset of logic, science and math taught at least a little of it, too. Understand that I'm not defending the Soviets as a whole -- I think they were mostly cancer, and that the historical record backs me up on that -- but deserve credit where credit's due.

I think that the American right is a unique sort of society, and that patterns drawn from their behavior can't be relied on in most other contexts. Their religions look like Christianity but act like non-syncretistic paganism ("worshiping oneself in the guise of worshiping God"), and their hostility to an awful lot of scholarship seems to originate in not wanting to be taken for a ride -- and in the confidence of many peoples, especially relatively backwards ones, that they already know everything that's necessary in order to live well. (The Persians told Chardin as much in the 1500s, as mentioned in _The Structures of Everyday Life_.)

Have you read _Albion 's Seed_? If not (and it's about 600 pages of historical scholarship, so I won't blame you), look up Slate Star Codex's review, which makes the book's essential points in reduced (and maybe slightly caricatured) form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Living with roommates and living in small quarters as well as spending half of your money on housing is okay when you are single and having fun exploring your self and your potential and direction --but once people have children equations change and living in the city becomes less possible --mostly because of the lack of "family-centric" housing stock --whether detached units or multi-bedroom condos and apartment units along with city amenities for kids as well as good school systems. In SF, for example, bad school districts is a very big reason for people to leave for better districts --some parents of means will remain but put their kids in private schools, obviously that does not scale.

<comment><USER11> When you say bad school districts in SF, you mean the one district, right? SF school assignment is a (failed social experiment) lottery system where your kids can be assigned anywhere in the city, regardless of the fact that you live a block from a school.

Most parents leave SF because they don't want their kids being part of a failed social experiment. The SF USD has been playing social scientist since the 1970s with disastrous results.

Want to make it better? Kick the DINKs off the school board and make having an enrolled child a requirement for being on the board.

<comment><USER12> Don't live in SF, but I fail to see how that's inherently bad. It is inconvenient, for sure. But if the school a block from you was terrible and the school your child was randomly assigned to was amazing there would be no problems, right? Doesn't this system simply incentivize all schools to become good?

I do bet, though, that this experiment stemmed from people taking over the areas where the good schools were. You'd just be switching problems, though, by allowing people to go to schools they're geographically adjacent to. See school district boundaries.

<comment><USER11> You end up with universally bad schools instead of good and bad schools. Most parents would see that as a bad thing and the very rich pull their kids out and send them to private schools (which cost $30k+/year). So now you're left with bad schools and the rich have exercised their escape option. The result is a high school population where 80% of students live in public housing. I'm not a classist, but that's not the diversity most parents look for.

To balance it out, you would need some sort of region wide tax on private school attendance. If you want to opt out, you gotta pay. That would never happen so...back to the drawing board.

<comment><USER13> > To balance it out, you would need some sort of region wide tax on private > school attendance. If you want to opt out, you gotta pay. That would never > happen so...back to the drawing board.

I don't understand this. That tax already exists; _everyone_ [0] pays for public schools regardless of whether they have children in the system. If you send your children to private school, you are paying for both public and private school. If you don't have children at all, you are still paying for public school.

[0] Of course, "everyone" likely means "every property owner", as school taxes are usually property taxes.

<comment><USER14> Which is why we need to fight the concept of "school vouchers" \- the idea that if you don't go to public school you should get your share of the public school cash to help pay for private school.

<comment><USER15> Why fight it? It seems only fair that poor people get the same option to choose good schools for their children that rich people get. I honestly don't see what possible argument there is against it.

<comment><USER16> The idea is that public schools should be made good, the government should not be reducing the use of public schools. A good public schooling system is incredibly important for a functioning democracy, because a functioning democracy relies on a well educated citizenry.

<comment><USER17> > A good public schooling system is incredibly important for a functioning > democracy, because a functioning democracy relies on a well educated > citizenry.

A good _schooling_ system is necessary, but must it be public?

<comment><USER16> It's important that it be affordable to everyone, regardless of wealth. If it's private with public funding and a profit motive, that messes things up pretty hard - see what's been happening with college tuitions and unlimited lines of public credit.

<comment><USER17> > It's important that it be affordable to everyone, regardless of wealth.

That's the whole point of giving each child's parents that child's share of public-education funds.

> If it's private with public funding and a profit motive, that messes things > up pretty hard - see what's been happening with college tuitions and > unlimited lines of public credit.

Teachers' and administrators' salaries are private profits from public funding, too.

You are, of course, correct that private schools would see the voucher amount as a price floor.

I think that there are bigger issues with collegiate funding, which have to do that people borrow from their futures (backed by public funds) in order to pay for near-term benefits for themselves. I'd have lived much more frugally in college had I internalised that I'd be paying those funds back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why is it that suburban living is so much cheaper? It's never been clear to me why that should be the case (from first principles).

With the greater density (3x according to [1]), you'd expect lower utilities, transportation, etc. costs. "Shelter" (i.e., housing minus utilities, furniture, etc.) is typically only a bit more than transportation as a category of spend, and about 1/5 of total annual expenditures.[2]

I've read claims that suburban property taxes are artificially low (mainly on articles on HN, but can't seem to find any right now) and obviously funding highways and commuter rail out of general taxes subsidizes sprawl.

I wonder how this cost comparison would look from a balance of system perspective as is, and then what a higher land tax would do. Has anyone seen or done anything like this?

[1] [http://www.demographia.com/db-intlsub.htm](http://www.demographia.com/db- intlsub.htm) [2] [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm)

<comment><USER19> It's not cheaper. It's just that people don't factor in the dramatically increased transportation costs.

Metro Vancouver studied this and found that when transportation costs were factored in, car reliant outer suburbs became more expensive than "pricy" downtown and inner suburbs.

[http://bc.ctvnews.ca/suburbs-pricier-than-vancouver-when- tra...](http://bc.ctvnews.ca/suburbs-pricier-than-vancouver-when- transportation-factored-in-study-1.2364563)

<comment><USER20> That study assumes a lot (suddenly you have a 2 car household if you live in the suburbs vs 0 cars in the city?), looks at averages, analyzes two things that people spend money on, and only considers Vancouver and its suburbs.

That's not quite enough to support the blanket statement "living in the suburbs is not cheaper than living in a city."

As someone who's in this situation right now, I can guarantee you that moving out of my city is the frugal option.

<comment><USER19> The article mentions two car household etc but the actual data comes from the national census where people simply report how much they spend on transportation. There's no assumptions made about what people's commutes are or what their transportation mode is. People just spend more on transport in the suburbs.

The reason is for this is because many of these suburbs are wholly designed for the car and that's the only viable transportation option for anything and the car is the most expensive form of transportation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Several of my friends are considering moving from SF and other popular places on the peninsula to Half Moon Bay (or somewhere like it). When rent for your 2 bedroom apartment goes over $3,000, you notice that you are basically paying the equivalent of the monthly mortgage payment on a $750,000 house. Then, you realize you may be having kids in a few years and will probably want a small yard and no shared walls. Of course, you then must start saving like mad so you can get the ~$100k needed for the down payment on your $800k fixer upper.

<comment><USER22> Half Moon Bay is not that much cheaper...

<comment><USER21> True, it's not THAT much cheaper, but it's a place where can actually find a 3 bedroom / 2 bathroom standalone home for <$1M in the bay area that is within 45 minutes of most jobs. When you can only afford a $800k mortgage, your options are severely limited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I find it interesting that people in this thread are quick to point out that you might not save much money when you move to the suburbs because of transit and extra time costs. I think people are failing to realize a large people do (and I plan to soon) move to the 'burbs is because they can OWN a house. Even if owning won't save money over renting, there's a lot to be said for having something that big to call your own. Something you can create your own lasting memories in.

</comment><comment><USER24> My cousin (born in 1980; just _barely_ on the Gen-X side of the line between Xers and Millennials) lives in Manhattan and has two kids. She told me not too long ago that she's planning on moving out to the suburbs pretty soon because they just don't have enough room. Their apartment is one of the _smallest_ two-bedrooms I've seen, and it took some creative work to stick two cribs in the kids' room.

I doubt they'll still be living in the city by the end of this year.

<comment><USER7> The ceilings are at least 8 feet high, right? The solution is simple: stacked cribs! You have to think vertically in NYC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A whole article on an actual phenomenon.

Allow me to explain in plain English. People born in 1981-1999 are getting older and moving out of cities. Thus reversing a trend that was never meant to be ever-increasing.

</comment><comment><USER26> On the surface, I agree with the author's reasoning that eventually many millennials will "grow-up" and want suburban homes for their kids with better schools. And this makes sense because it would follow trends in the past.

However the author is missing a couple key components that lead me to believe the future will not be like the past. For example...

1.) In the past there were suburbs to move to. For example, in the 80s and 90s, Contra Costa (Walnut Creek, Danville, etc) were being developed as a viable suburb to SF. However, as far as I know there are no new suburbs being developed that provide a reasonable commute time or distance from SF.

2.) Of the suburbs that exists, those that are a reasonable commute time from major hubs are still pretty expensive. Again Walnut Creek maintains its value quite well. So it's not really a "cheaper option" from the city.

3.) Baby Boomers are living longer and staying in their suburb homes longer, which doesn't give an opportunity for millennials looking to start a family to move in. I've long since thought that instead of building new suburbs, we should be looking for options to move empty-nesters from their 4-bedroom homes that they don't need anymore. All of my friends parents still live in their suburban homes because they have no other options for the most part.

4.) Author assumes all millennials are waiting to have kids. (They're not.)

5.) We have plain old population growth to rely on. Cities collapsed in the past because there were places for people to go and a relatively smaller population. I strongly feel that we've exhausted a lot of those options while our population continues to grow strongly (at least in the US). Therefore, cities will remain full simply because of lack of other options and population growth (both by birth and immigration).

</comment><comment><USER27> >Here's one thing we know: People get older. Another is that people's tolerance for entry-level jobs and small urban apartments is highest when they are young adults.

I'm not clear on why they think entry level jobs result in city living. If anything, the cost of living makes it seem like it would be the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER28> The history of America is a series of migrations from rural/suburban to city centers and back again.

Businesses and good jobs start to concentrate in urban downtowns, then the city gets too dense or polluted or expensive, people migrate for a better life to raise kids in a commutable distance based on the tech available (street cars, railways, cars), they go too far for the kids to find a job nearby when they are of working age, and then the kids move back to the city.. and the cycle restarts anew.

</comment><comment><USER29> I live/work near two small towns with efforts to "revitalize" their small downtowns. They're doing a lot of the right things to attract young professionals, but both of them are investing in small 1-, maybe 2-bedroom apartments and not apartments large enough for families.

If the numbers are similar even for larger cities then I'm not surprised why people move out to the burbs - a 1 bedroom apartment gets very cramped with kids - especially when you don't live somewhere like NYC/SF with enough parks/amenities around.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why say millennial when you mean yuppie?

</comment><comment><USER31> Millenials are not very young anymore :)

<comment><USER24> Millennials were born 1982-2004. The youngest Millennials are still in junior high.

Generations are always ~20 years or so. Gen X was 1961-1981, Boomers were 1943-1960, Silents were 1925-1942, GIs were 1901-1924, etc.

<comment><USER32> > Millennials were born 1982-2004 What source are you getting this from? > Looking at wikipedia, a lot of them put the beginning of Gen Z at ~1995-98. > As someone fitting into this bracket (I don't remember 9/11), I'd say it's > accurate to loosely define the cutoff for Millennials as somebody who > remembered 9/11, was in the labor force during the great recession, or was > socially active during Web 1.0. Gen Z doesn't remember life without the > internet, grew up on Facebook/Instagram (vs. primarily chatrooms, forums, > etc.), and didn't have as much experience with desktop computers for leisure > in leu of phones.

This is just my observation as someone who has seen and is currently engaging with a spectrum of youth in the school system. Thoughts?

<comment><USER24> It comes from Strauss-Howe Generational Theory. Strauss and Howe coined the term "Millennial", so I'll take them at their word for the size of the cohort. Here's a table from Neil Howe's website:

[http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/timelines/generations...](http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/timelines/generations.html)

And a Wikipedia article with an overview:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory)

Source for Strauss and Howe coining "Millennial":

[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-05-03/naming- the-next-generation/54737518/1)

> "No one knows who will name the next generation," says Neil Howe, who, along > with his deceased co-author and business partner, William Strauss, is widely > credited with naming the Millennials, a generation he figures spans from > about 1982 to 2004.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Eventually they will settle down and move to the burbs.

<comment><USER34> Will they? Baby boomers are moving into cities too.

<comment><USER13> ... Because their kids are grown and moved out. So they no longer need the space suburbs provide and can move closer to the employment and entertainment available in the city.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Big cities are going to die. For decades, they voted themselves nonexistent money to prop up corrupt politicians, greedy unions, and provide corporate welfare. Now it's coming home to roost and the rest of us don't care.

One big datapoint here is the most recent election: Trump won several _thousand_ counties to Clinton's several _hundred_. This was mimiced up- and down the ballot and was almost perfectly divided as a cities vs. everyone else thing.

You cannot escape economic reality no matter what the vote buyers think.

<comment><USER36> There are more people in the urban counties than the sparsely-populated rural counties. Cities are growing and are expected to continue growing. Meanwhile, rural areas are dying.[0] What reality do you think people are trying to escape?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plains)

<comment><USER37> A few decades from now I can see the trend reversing. If automation makes living in small to medium sized towns in the country more convenient, lots of people who currently flock to cities out of economic necessity will prefer a less crowded life.

<comment><USER38> What kind of automation would make it easier to live in a small town? Do you mean a post-scarcity/jobless society?

Just having more online services like future-Amazon seems like money would leave the economy and destroy the town faster than building a Walmart does.

<comment><USER37> I'm not picturing post-scarcity or a hyper centralized form of automation. It's a possible path for automation to reach a point where it becomes feasible to allow semi-skilled folks in suburban or rural areas to run a farm, manufacturing plant, energy, mining or foresting outfit of their own for low startup and maintenance costs. Especially if human-level AI and human-level dextrous robotics does not exist yet.

Laborers would have a role to play with exoskeletons, being the eyes on the ground, and directing the robotic labor. Technicians would maintain the systems, and managers would organize logistics and resources. And as long as there is industry, there will be all the other types of supplementary businesses and jobs that come with a town.

<comment><USER38> The first problem is that zoning and noise complaints won't let you run a factory in a suburb (but maybe in an industrial district).

The second problem is that globalization and efficiency might mean there is nothing for the factory to do that anyone wants to pay for.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please submit quality linked articles, not the first one you read. - <AUTHOR>

Submitting a story with a topic that is interesting and relevant to HN in order to solicit conversations is a good thing. Most of the value in HN is in the conversations. (Spend an hour rereading your comments over the lifetime of your membership -- you might be shocked at how your style has developed and hopefully matured.)<p>However, please find the time to select the best available article or source. If you come across an article that is topically interesting but poorly written, don't submit it. Find a better article. The jumping off point often determines the quality of the conversation that follows.<p>(I am hungover and somewhat grouchy. If I'm totally off base, apologies.) <comment><USER2> It won't happen. people find a story they like, submit it, and move on. That's why so often the same story appears over and over and over again, each time saying effectively the same thing, each time from a different source, each one with nothing to add.

Finding a good quality version of a story is hard, harder than checking if the same story is already submitted, and people certainly don't do that.

So while it would be nice if people took that much care, they won't.

Move on ...</comment>