Ask HN: Who's making $300k to $1m as a cloud engineer? - <AUTHOR> This article touts a pay range of $300k and up for "cloud computing engineers." Are you making this much consistently (not just from one-time stock pops), and doing what?<p>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/technology/tech-companies-new-and-old-clamor-to-entice-cloud-computing-experts.html<p>"Many of them are the kind of jobs that now pay $300,000 to $1 million a year."<p>"With five years of experience, $300,000 along with a range of stock or job opportunities..."<p>"LinkedIn or Facebook can offer an engineer with a few years' experience a package close to $1 million" <comment><USER2> I have a friend who is a cloud architect at a big-4, he is making a little more than $300k in total comp in NY (base is lower, a lot of RSUs etc), but he is more than just an engineer.

He has a friend at another big-4 in NY, also a cloud architect, he is making $400k

I think that the $1 million package is incorrectly calculated. This is perhaps the total package for 2-3 years, including signing bonus (vested over a couple of years) and RSUs (vested over a couple of years)

Annual total compensation for any big-4 Sr software engineer with a lot of experience in SF I assume is around $300k and can get up to $500k if you are really good.

I don't know of anyone who is making $1 million a year, even senior directors at big-4s. Perhaps if you are a Phd who worked at Google cloud / AWS / Azure for 5 years, wrote their software, talk at cloud conferences, wrote "Cloud computing for experts" type of books and published a seminal paper on distributed computing, then perhaps you will get a total compensation nearing that.

If you are just a cloud architect at a big-4 I think the lower part makes sense in total comp, the upper bound sounds completely ridiculous. I have friends who got offers from Amazon and Google for very, very senior cloud positions, way more than "just a cloud engineer", and the total comp is around $300-$400. If the stock goes up though, then the RSUs might be worth much more.

If LinkedIn / Facebook are offering engineers an annual $1 million I'll be very surprised.

<comment><USER3> Quick question, who are the "Big-4"? I count Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft at a minimum.

<comment><USER4> I see "Big 4" on r/cscareerquestions a lot. It seems to have been invented by that sub as some kind of mythical club of golden programmer employers.

It came from accounting/consulting where there are four really big consulting giants: (KPMG, Earnst & Young, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and Deloitte). Interestingly enough, the above aren't known for being particularly nice employers.

On the sub the inclusion in the "big four" varies a bit, Google is the only one who's always in it. Others sometimes included are Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Adobe.

<comment><USER5> I honestly never hear anything about Adobe. MS seems strikingly average and Twitter seems like a place I wouldn't want to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People seem to be getting confused between salary and total comp.

Making 300k+ in total comp is pretty easy at the big Tech companies. Most level 5 Software Engineers make around that and there are >10 thousand of L5 SWEs at just Google; and I don't think Facebook, Microsoft etc pay any less. This might change if there is a downturn and these companies stop giving out significant annual stock refreshers since the base salary part of the 300k is only about 140-170k. But as of now, the numbers are"normal". To reach the close to 1 million level, you need to be at least a level 7, and there are very few of such.

Now salary is a different matter. A 300k+ salary is very rare, and you probably need to be a director at least to command that. As you rise up the ranks, salary goes up at a much smaller rate than the annual stock grants/bonuses.

</comment><comment><USER7> The article seems to be using "cloud engineering" to mean what I would call "data engineering" or "distributed systems engineering". If so then the numbers they're throwing around seem high but attainable. I would call myself a "data engineer" (I build ad servers, recommendation engines, etc for clients) and have been getting offers in the low 300s for full time work with about five years of experience.

<comment><USER8> Does the low 300s number include the value of offered equity, benefits etc? Or it is just the base salary?

<comment><USER9> I don't know what a particular recruiter told a particular reporter, but in general, benefits (including benefits with fairly calculable cash value) are generally not included in numbers in the US but base salary, anticipated bonus, and present value of restricted stock grants in public companies are generally fair things to quote at people.

Does $300k sound reasonably achievable for an infrastructure engineer with a few years experience? Well... yeah, yeah, it does. Literally tens of thousands of engineers at AppAmaGooFaceSoft have that package.

<comment><USER10> This might help support the argument I've seen you make tons of time. You can use h1b data to show real people who don't need to raise their hand on hacker news and declare their income publicly.

Here's H1b data for Google and Facebook. Lots of people are above the 200k mark. Lots above 300k with options and RSUs etc, I'll wager a bet.

[http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=google&job=&city=&year=All](http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=google&job=&city=&year=All)

[http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Facebook&job=&city=&year=Al...](http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Facebook&job=&city=&year=All)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's a joke.

I can disclose that, in a recent past job as VP in a tech company, I had a very generous package which was a bit above $0.5M, all included (base, bonuses, options and RSUs) - then the stock went down (options became worth nothing, stock lost more than half its value), and the actual annual comp went down by about $70k-80k.

I am sharing this here to benefit the discussion, please do not make a big thing out of it.

I know it's a ton of money, but I'm pretty sure that most purely technical jobs don't surpass 300k-350k. 1M is simply foolish.

Furthermore, if you consider income taxes, and the cost of living in SF, the number is still high but not as nice as it seems at first.

Netflix, however, consistently pays way more than any other company in the valley - and yet, it is still an exception.

<comment><USER12> which tech company matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> See Dan Luu's post about working for big corps:

[http://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/](http://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/)

He describes a boundary around $250k at "senior", and to get above it you'd need to become some kind of principal/lead.

</comment><comment><USER14> Include about 100K worth of stock in that 300K package, which will vest over 4 years. So your annual salary goes down to 200K + 25K (assuming the value of the stock doesn't move at all). 225K per year is slightly above what a 5y standard SWE makes here in the Bay Area working for a big guy. Really nothing exceptional here... By the way, 225K/y after income tax would be about 140-150K net income per year. Where are these $300K? :)

Also, any key hire like a scientist/data analyst/PhD working in a big company would easily get $1 million offers from other big companies.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's definitely possible, but typically that sort of package will be long-term employees at IPO/buy-out with an incentive-to-stay package (You just got 4MM$ from your options, but we'd like you to stick around for a couple of years, so we'll give you another 4MM package that vests over 5 years).

You won't get that sort of offer at an illiquid startup (except as un-valuable options) - but it's certainly within the ballpark of reason for people hiring experienced engineers at highly profitable companies.

</comment><comment><USER16> What the heck is a "cloud computing engineer"? Is that some made-up BS like "customer service engineer"?

</comment><comment><USER17> Total package includes base, stock, bonus. Lower end of that range is attainable for most. Upper-end is also attainable, either joining prior to the IPO and holding on to the stock afterwards, or by delivering outsize impact.

</comment><comment><USER18> $300k+ in _total comp_ is quite common but usual picture is a much smaller base salary + RSU + bonus + [semi-optional] whatever + [sometimes later maybe] something-else

</comment><comment><USER19> Could the reporter be extrapolating from a couple of aquihires?

</comment><comment><USER20> can someone find a job posting with this type of pay scale? I am curious what skills I should develop.

at this point I do not believe this unless you are the lead architect.

for exaple this job posting I cannot see payin more than $165,000 in dc/ny/bay areas... but maybe my previous exposure to the big four has been limited... was anyone able to find a job posting that pays this much?

<comment><USER21> That payscale isn't for "posted" jobs. That payscale is for "poached" jobs (no negativity implied by "poached", I just don't have a better phrase). When companies need someone who is going to cost them $500k a year, they already know who that person is.

<comment><USER20> does this mean there is an old boys club of cloud engineers that are being passed around between big companies?

how else could you get an a position to be poached?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a fucking joke guys. Programming is not the career job that will get you those kind of figures, if it does it sure as fuck will be more of a management position. Look guys, salaried work will never make you 'rich.' Believing it will is the same belief that a startup will succeed. You need to get out of the salary game and work for yourself or do consultantcy if you want big bucks

<comment><USER23> People might not like your comment and have different opinions, but as person who did exactly what you said and now making around 420k/yr for cyber security consulting, I have to say, you are 100% right.

<comment><USER22> I am already getting downvoted for putting the truth out there. These fools like the idea that their web development job can turn into a 300k a year salaried job but its a pipedream. I am not saying those jobs don't exist. But they usually are anomalies or due to other things like a PhD.

<comment><USER23> I would say even with a PhD you can't make 300k/yr for web or any other development. Top notch developer's salary won't exceed 220k/yr

<comment><USER24> I am really happy that you make 420k but I guarantee you that there are plenty of developers who make more than 220k. (I make more than that and in my know plenty of folks personally who make that amount) One easy to way more money than this is to work in finance space in NYC.

<comment><USER25> Indeed, I am 24 year old programmer, 2 years out of a top CS program and I am making $280k (100% cash) slinging C++ for a small quant hedge fund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I know some people at Google and Netflix that make that range. Really solid technical skills, strong communication skills, consistent productivity, and strong negotiation and you can get to $400k / year. I haven't heard of more than that outside of a couple cases (I know a couple high profile women that earn millions a year, but this is more because there aren't that many publicly visible women in the tech world) unless they're working for a hedgefund or as a sales engineer.

</comment><comment><USER27> 300k is 300000, 300K is 307200, 1m is 0.001, 1M is 1000000

to throw around some figures too.

</comment><comment><USER28> A few people that get interviewed by a reporter do not make a trend.

I've heard of _SALES ENGINEERS_ making that kind of money, but not technicians.

The moment a programmer is working at home remote making $300K per year, the employer will find some offshore person to do it at 10% of that price.

Reference Disney and the H1B debacle etc.

The only way somebody as a technician is making that much money is the company they work for hasn;t found a way to get rid of them yet and replace them with cheaper options.

They can find themselves out of a job very fast at that price range.

Once you do the initial setup and things are stable(documented), they will kick you to the curb and replace with $50K worker.

<comment><USER29> It's entirely possible at FB/Google/Apple/etc. They definitely have H1B employees earning that much and I'm sure they are not looking to outsource those jobs. They are looking for quality not the cheapest possible price.

<comment><USER28> Right up until the time the companies are asked to pay taxes.

Anyone can give out $300K per year jobs when they are global monopolies that pay no income taxes in any jurisdiction.

These are short term anomalies not structural jobs indicate any kind of long term trend.

<comment><USER29> Companies pay profit tax, not income. Since employee compensation is an expense, the tax rate has nothing to do with it. The employees do pay income tax, quite a lot of it.

<comment><USER28> You are funny.

Clearly you never owned a company before and had to do taxes and accounting.

You better vote for minimum wage increases too!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trade Trade Secrets - <AUTHOR> http://einfall.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/trade-trade-secrets/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for thoughtful exploration. Here are some of my open questions.

Should patents be abolished and copyright extended to cover non-transcribed acts of copying (e.g. pharma, creating the same program with different source)? Is copyright or short term patents (7 years? 15 years?) a viable alternative?

What are some downsides of not having patents in their current form? In a shorter term form?

How do we move beyond patents as a society and business community?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that copyright, with a shorter term, is a very reasonable model for pharmaceuticals given the current FDA process, but it is not complete. The FDA still frowns upon off label use -- but the challenges in medical regulation are for another, longer discussion.

I do think that patents allow for a brief period, post product release, of allowing one to recoup the costs of initial investment. But if I were to rearrange the terms, I would suggest that the patent expire 3 years post- initial commercial release, or 15 years after filing -- whichever is _shorter._

Generally, I think that we should force more creativity out of our thieves. I think the patent system should revert to something much closer to copyright.

In the meantime, groups of companies could support defensive patent pools, or the patent pledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Would be interesting to be more specific - LightSail actually sounds like the kind of situation people are more likely support patents in: non-obvious research work leading to large improvements over existing methods; presumably it woudld be considerably easier to reverse engineer if you had to the physical device. And I imagine company could productively use huge investment to have huge impact but investment might be hard without reassurance of IP.

So you say you have secrets - are there patents on the mechanism itself? Did investors request/care about those patents?

Maybe is different in this case cos I wouldn't be surprised if author actually was happy for this technology to be successful even if some other company made more money out of it.

Also for anyone who hasn't, read around rest of the website also!

<comment><AUTHOR> We have several patents issued. Unfortunately, as I explain how law shapes the business landscape" one cannot simply choose not to patent their work; others can patent it, or patent "around" it. So we have been forced to play this game -- and we win the games we are forced to play.

There are several fields though, where the innovations necessary to make a great product are scattered around many different companies. Unfortunately the apparatus today makes it difficult to really get the initial consensus to collect the licenses to test the market.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, I've not heard much about multiple patent licensing deadlock before but sounds like it could be common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Watch out for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the motivated, sometimes creative, sometimes brilliant thief that can take your idea further than you ever dreamed.

There's a huge potential value in some types of 'theft' (maybe not according to Xerox). The notion that in fact a thief might not be lazy, and in fact might do radically more with a premise than the originator ever could or would or dared to try to.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do argue that this is neither theft nor transcription, but transformation or inspiration.

Xerox did, by the way, try to commercialize their technology. They just misfired massively. The Xerox Star bombed, because execution matters -- a main point.</comment></comment>


Dennis Ritchie, 70, Dies, Programming Trailblazer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/technology/dennis-ritchie-programming-trailblazer-dies-at-70.html?smid=tw-share <comment><USER2> I'm sure everyone reading this is already aware that he's passed, but it would be worth putting [2011] in the title should anyone unaware of Ritchie's enormous legacy discover this and miss the date.

But as an aside, it doesn't feel like 5 years, does it?

<comment><USER3> >I'm sure everyone reading this is already aware that he's passed

apparently not... [http://imgur.com/a/C5vTx](http://imgur.com/a/C5vTx)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I even remember the HN discussion and black banner from then, but when someone posted it on Facebook mistakenly, I just posted it to twitter, and technically it is correct so didn't delete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Needs a (2011) in the title. He passed away five years ago today.

<comment><USER6> For a brief moment, I thought it was the _other_ C guy.

<comment><USER5> Same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unix serves as a foundation of iOS?

Didn't know that!

<comment><USER8> Darwin, the open-source operating system UI underneath both macOS and iOS, is based on FreeBSD and the XNU kernel, plus some NextStep stuff. And of course FreeBSD is based on BSD, which was a patch set derived from the original AT&T Unix.

It's amazing that in 2016, the two major consumer computing platforms are BSD and Linux, and Windows in struggling to catch up.

<comment><USER5> Depends on how you slice it. Windows still dominates the personal computer market.

[https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share...](https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx)

<comment><USER9> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q)

>And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm working on C as we speak.

R.I.P. Legend.

</comment><comment><USER11> Old news???

</comment><comment><USER12> R.I.P.</comment>


Maze Generation: Weave mazes - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2011/3/4/maze-generation-weave-mazes <comment><USER2> They look like they might be harder to solve then normal mazes. Usually I just follow a wall for a maze. Would that work here?

<comment><USER3> I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. The backtracking algorithm doesn't care what shape the maze is or if it overlaps itself.

EDIT: Since a maze (overlapping or not) can be represented as a tree of nodes, backtracking will certainly lead you through every point.

Even if the graph is not a tree (ie it loops around) backtracking will still get you everywhere if you reverse direction once you come across somewhere you've already been.</comment></comment>


Boulder, Colo., Most Popular City for Tech Startups - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/08/14/boulder-colo-most-popular-city-for-tech-startups-study-says/?mod=WSJBlog <comment><AUTHOR> Seems pretty suspect to me, but interesting, in any event.</comment>


Google is quietly testing Google+ for Domains - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/07/06/google-is-quietly-testing-google-for-domains/

<comment><USER2>
      > their organization name was being used in lieu of
      > a circle when they tried to share something.

I think there are two types of Google Apps users: (1) the Large Organization and (2) the Guy Who Wants Gmail At His Domain.

(1) is okay if their users don't get the quickest rollout of new services, it's just a nice hosted email/calendar/docs solution. Users of (1) probably have personal GMail accounts they use for personal stuff, anyway.

(2) is confused whenever their firstname.lastname@example.com email account doesn't act 100% like a regular GMail account.

Google has to cater to (1) because that's the whole point of Google Apps -- but that means that (2) gets slower rollouts of features that (1) might not appreciate. Perhaps if there were a different product, aimed toward the individual rather than the organization, this type of confusion could be avoided.

<comment><USER3> I use Google apps for both (1) and (2) above (although I'm not confused when mydomain.com doesn't work like my GMail account).

In the case of (1) the biggest issue I see is when people from an organization leave. It'll be interesting to see how Google handles that in Google+ for Apps users.

As an example, right now, when deleting a Google Apps account all of the user's shared docs, calendars, emails, etc. are deleted. I'm not sure if there's a way to preserve information or transition ownership easily.

For organizations like schools I could easily envision someone wanting to take their Google+ content with them once they graduate. For companies there's usually a mix of content that should be removed and preserved that's specific to that organization.

For my personal domain I do want Google Apps features to have parity with GMail. It's not that I don't understand the difference. It's that I don't want to split my information between multiple online identities.

<comment><USER2>
      > In the case of (1) the biggest issue I see is when people from an organization leave.
      > [...] when deleting a Google Apps account all of the user's shared docs,
      > calendars, emails, etc. are deleted.

Wow, that's shocking. I've only ever used GApps for (2), but I just kind of assumed that deleting a user didn't also auto-delete their data in the organization's GApps account.

      > For my personal domain I do want Google Apps features to have parity with GMail.
      > It's not that I don't understand the difference. It's that I don't want to split
      > my information between multiple online identities.

Perhaps I was being overly simplistic. Presumably folks that set up their own GApps account for their domain understand that they're setting up a different kind of Google account. The disparity is always jarring, though, esp. in the case of Google Plus.

<comment><USER3> It looks like Google has improved deleting users since the last time I had to do it. That's a relief! They've been improving Google Apps a lot in the past year.

<http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=33314>

"Shared documents created by the user will be deleted within five days unless ownership is reassigned. You can reassign ownership of all documents created by the user before deleting the account. If you only need to save some documents, spreadsheets, or presentations, ask the user to reassign ownership of selected documents prior to deleting the account."

Shared calendars aren't deleted. Email seems to be unless steps are taken to export the data prior to account deletion, etc. etc.

It'll be interesting to see their take on Google+ content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good! Much better than blaming their paying Apps customers (in front of their users) for things they didn't implement:

[http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...](http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1350411&p=admin_disabled)

<comment><USER5> >Error: Admin disabled >It looks like your domain administrator has disabled access to Google Profiles for your organization[0]. If you think this is a mistake, you can get in touch with your admin. (And if you need help convincing them, try giving them a box of chocolates.)

[0] <http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1258896>

_clicks link_

>We're sorry, but the information you've requested cannot be found. Please try searching or browsing the Help Center.

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is good news. For geeks with their own domain for email the free apps accounts are great. The downside is that they are usually slow to rollout new services. Looking forward to trying G+

<comment><USER7> You're not wrong; I'm still eagerly awaiting a Google Reader account that uses my actual email, rather than dumping me out to the root Apps address!

(I've been eagerly waiting for 2 years)

<comment><USER8> They already have this. Go into your Google Apps admin, go to "Organizations & Users", click "Services", and make sure Google Reader is turned on. Might want to go through and see what others you're missing while you're at it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think many more people have Google+ than realize it. I signed up first day, never got any email, and signing into GMail one day, I happened to look at the upper left corner of the black bar and there was You+. I clicked and had Google+.

<comment><USER10> Is this specifically for Google App customers? You're right I can get the same black bar and You+ in the upper left corner. But going any further results in "Google+ is in limited Field Trial, Keep me posted".

<comment><USER9> Really? Wow. Then it's as someone said: I won a lottery. I'd rather have cash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This could be a huge contender for Jive, Chatter, etc.

<comment><USER12> Yammer comes to my mind, too.

<comment><USER13> Google+ for Google apps will kill Yammer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is great, apps users finally getting some love. I Can't wait to try it out.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is exciting news. Was beginning to feel lonely :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Exciting.

Let me unashamedly open the traditional Google+ invite begging thread.

paul.bridger, gmail. Much obliged!</comment>


Google's Jeff Dean's undergrad senior thesis on neural networks (1990) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I1fs4sczbCaACzA9XwxR3DiuXVtqmejL/view <comment><USER3> As always, Jeff Dean doesn't fail to inspire respect.

Tackling a complex problem (still relevant today) at an early age, getting great results _and_ describing the solution clearly/concisely.

My master thesis was ~60 pages long, and was probably about 1/1000 as useful as this one.

<comment><USER4> I put a lot of effort in my undergraduate thesis, but none of the professors on my committee had much interest in advising me; and after my defense, the only professor who really gave me his undivided attention came to me and said "I'm glad you're not staying here for grad school; you're way too good for this place".

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Comparing your journey to others' is pointless.

<comment><USER5> Sorry you're being downvoted. I don't think you're trying to detract from the accomplishment here, but you are raising an important point: at an age like this, good mentorship, leadership, and guidance is essential.

There is a very small number of truly gifted people who end up discovering things on their own at a young age. Most gifted people who discover something do so with the benefit of a mentor who can work with them to refine their talent into skill.

My masters thesis sucked largely because I tried to do it on my own and didn't even pick an advisor until I was almost done. At that point all they could do with my mess was to say "well, this is a decent descriptive paper and we need more descriptive papers in the field," and then give me proofreading comments. I didn't have a damn clue what I was doing, the end product was mediocre, and I didn't learn nearly as much as I could have. I'm not an outstanding talent by any means, but not seeking out mentorship in school is one of my only career-related regrets.

The fact of the matter is that that some people are deprived of mentorship, either through bad personal decision-making or through bad academic infrastructure. These people have a much harder road to expertise and success than the people who were mentored.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your comment. This was not to detract from Jeff Dean's work in any way - obviously he is a talented, hard working engineer.

This was more to share with 'halflings that comparing one's achievements to someone else's is rarely something that bears much fruit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An underappreciated aspect of this is finding an academic department that would allow you to submit something this concise as a senior thesis.

My experience, mostly in grad school, was that anyone editing my work wanted more verbiage. If you only needed a short, one-sentence paragraph to say something, it just wasn't accepted. There had to be more.

Jeff Dean is an uncommonly good communicator. But he also benefited from being allowed, perhaps even encouraged, to prioritize effective and concise communication.

Most people aren't so lucky, and end up learning that this type of concision will not go over well. People presume you're writing like a know-it-all, or that you didn't do due diligence on prior work.

<comment><USER7> It's kind of remarkable. There really is no literature review in this paper. As a supervisor I would have no problem with a content part of this length, but I would also insist on doing the scholarly work that is not demonstrated here. Don't just throw out some code and describe it but put it into the context of what exists. Give credit to where ideas originate.

That shouldn't add too much. No more than a few pages. It would still concise but then also a scientific work.

<comment><USER8> That seems to be a key difference between science and engineering. One likes to survey the field and insist that their paper offers something novel - <USER2> matter how big or small. The other just wants to do some solid work and get the results.

<comment><USER7> If you want to be snarky: The one is research the other is documentation.

<comment><USER8> I'm not really trying to be snarky, just point out the difference in approach. Research is in fact documentation - of what others have done.

Papers that are entirely surveys or comparisons of different approaches can be excellent and would make good citations in any practical work.

<comment><USER7> Not really. The point is that in research we want to generate and further knowledge. This is distinct from generating and documenting facts. If you don't link into the web of knowledge there is (implicitly: leave that task up to the reader) you are just documenting facts.

This is not academic. What did reading this Master thesis teach me? That two approaches perform reasonably (by what standard?) with a size trade-off. That's an excellent start but also leaves open many questions: Why these two approaches? Are there reasons to expect they are better suited than other approaches in the literature? Were these results expected? Can I expect them to generalize? Do they paint a coherent picture on the performance of different designs in various contexts or are they surprising?

A lot of this is about generality of the knowledge gained. As a mere fact ("Two implementations of two algorithms that solve one problem perform slightly differently") it's not very interesting unless I have that exact specific problem myself. If I do, I would still need to find the paper. But if it is linked into a wider web of knowledge ("In paper [X] it was found that this algorithm performs well on tasks that have something in common with our problem, paper [Y] and [Z] suggest that we should expect a trade off for small sizes. Generally nothing is known about what should be algorithms well suited to the problem at hand.") it allows me to reason about situations.

<comment><USER8> >> The point is that in research we want to generate and further knowledge. This is distinct from generating and documenting facts.

Hence the desire to constantly look for novelty in academic work. Engineers don't necessarily care about novelty, they need to solve a problem at hand for practical reasons. Documenting what they've done, how it performed, and what they learned (if anything) is still important to write down for others who may want to solve similar problems.

I personally find the quest for novelty often reads like some kind of desperate need to justify the work or to get it funded. Solid work can stand on it's own even if there's nothing new about it, while mediocre work seems to stand so long as it's go some element of novelty.

If I've already decided what method I want to use to solve a problem, finding a well-done implementation and documentation on it is all I really want. If I don't know what solution to apply to a problem, a survey that documents the various approaches and makes some comparisons is what I want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess it's not totally surprising that Dean's undergrad thesis was on training neural networks and the main choice was between or in-graph replication. This is still one of the big issues with TensorFlow today.

One thing most people don't get is that Dean is basically a computer scientist with expertise in compiler optimizations, and TF is basically an attempt at turning neural network speedups into problems related to compiler optimization.

I'd like to thank my undergrad university for hosting my undergrad thesis for 25 years with only 1-2 URL changes. Some interesting details include: Latex2Html held up, mostly, for 25 years and several URL changes. The underlying topic is still relevant (training the weight coefficients of a binary classifier to maximize performance) to my work today, even if I didn't understand gradient descent or softmax at the time.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wonder who was his advisor back then, because I don't think it's mentioned in the thesis. Or he did this on his own, which is not surprising by the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://twitter.com/jeffdean/status/1033874204548984833?s=21](https://twitter.com/jeffdean/status/1033874204548984833?s=21)

<comment><USER10> Professor Vipin Kumar for the lazy: [https://www- users.cs.umn.edu/~kumar001/](https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kumar001/).

<comment><USER11> Pretty interesting, reading his short bio I learned for the first time about AHPCRC ([https://ahpcrc.stanford.edu](https://ahpcrc.stanford.edu)) of which prof. Kumar was head of for about 7 years, the US military is indeed involved almost everywhere in SV.

<comment><USER12> Read Steve Blank's "The Secret History of Silicon Valley". The US military _created_ Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER13> I've always wondered what the "secret" in the title refers to. This is pretty common knowledge among people who are from here, is it only secret from the people rushing in to work at FAANG?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Quite incredible that he was interested in NNs back in 1990. He closed this thread very well.

<comment><USER15> Weren't neural nets popular back then?

<comment><USER16> My PhD, which I completed in 1992, was about improving back propagation in neural networks. Neural networks were going through an initial phase of excitement caused by the Rumelhart and McLeland book. My dissertation was on modularizing NNs. [https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&con...](https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&context=eecs_techreports)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Really interesting and innovative early work, and I think it also explains why tensorflow does not support within layer model parallelism. It's amazing how much our early experiences shape us down the road.

My entire career has consisted of reimplementing bits and pieces of things I've previously built all the way back to high school and then reimplementing whatever was new on the previous round in the next one.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone else miss enscript -2G?

<comment><USER19> enscript -2Gr yeah -). used to be my default mode as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a side note, I already have a draft of my essay (not published yet) that replaces the mention of storage costs with a mention of Ruth Porat. The point is why Ruth Porat was hired in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't know anything, but does this work directly inspire DistBelief?

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting coding style with too much whitespace. Is it some standardized pattern? I found something similar in the code written by John Carmack.

<comment><USER23> This is the usual amount of whitespace. A couple of examples

[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/kernel/pid.c?h=v4.19-rc1)

[https://github.com/apple/darwin- xnu/blob/master/libsyscall/m...](https://github.com/apple/darwin- xnu/blob/master/libsyscall/mach/mach_vm.c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's really impressive that Jeff accomplished so much despite going to UMN for undergrad.

<comment><USER25> In the U.S., one's undergraduate institution does not correlate to success as much as it does in certain countries like France or Japan, where universities are a pipeline for elite selection and grooming.

Also, not all intelligent American kids can or want to go to elite schools, even if they are academically qualified. In the U.S., you often hear stories of kids turning down really good schools for ones they felt were a better "fit" (financially, culturally, etc.). And unlike the rest of the world, elite colleges in the U.S. are often private and expensive. Despite need-blind admissions, not everyone can afford them without going into heavy debt. (many middle-class parents make just enough money for their kid to not qualify for substantial financial aid).

So kids go to schools they can afford.

One of my college professors (who attended Princeton and MIT) once told me that in his observation, the top 5 percentile students in (good) state schools aren't that different from the kids who went to Princeton or MIT. I didn't believe him at the time, but having worked with different folks over the years, my experience inclines me to believe that there's some truth in that observation.

Owing to its population and economy, the U.S. has a large enough talent pool that the top percentile students at large, well-funded state schools (of which UMN is an example) are plenty smart. If you were to meet the really smart top-5-percentile kids from such state colleges (I have), you'd have no doubt that many of them could have attended MIT or CMU.

To be sure, good colleges can give you a headstart in life -- but it's what you do with that advantage that counts.

\--

Examples of smart computer folk who went to decent, but non-elite schools for undergrad:

Doug Crockford (Javascript), SFSU

JJ Allaire (ColdFusion, Rstudio, etc.), Macalester College

Ward Cunningham (Wikis), Purdue

Rich Hickey (Clojure), SUNY Empire State (though he did go to Berklee College of Music)

John Carmack (Doom, Quake), U. Missouri Kansas City

Sergey Brin (Google), U. Maryland College Park (before Stanford)

Larry Page (Google), U. Michigan (before Stanford)

Dave Cutler (VMS, Windows NT), Olivet College

Bram Cohen (BitTorrent), U at Buffalo

Ryan Dahl (Node.js), UCSD, then U Rochester

Larry Wall (Perl), Seattle Pacific U (before Berkeley)

Alan Kay (Smalltalk, windowing GUIs), U Colorado, then U Utah.

Brendan Eich (Javascript, Mozilla), Santa Clara U (before UIUC)

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the list but I am not entirely sure about Sergey Brin and Larry Page's alma mater.

<comment><USER27> Interesting fact: those two went on to create the search engine Google. You should check it out.

<comment><USER26> I meant I am not sure about their alma mater not being among the top reputed universities in USA, meaning I implied they were indeed from one of the top reputed universities in USA.

Apologies for not making myself clear enough :(</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NIH Scientists Identify Antibody That Neutralizes Nearly All HIV Strains - <AUTHOR> https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/nih-scientists-identify-potent-antibody-neutralizes-nearly-all-hiv-strains <comment><USER2> I read through the original paper ([https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2016.10.027](https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2016.10.027), paywalled).

In essence, an antibody called N6 was extracted from an HIV patient. The patient is a long-term nonprogressor who has had HIV for 21 years, but an exceptionally low viral load of <1000/mL and normal CD4 T-cell count. This indicates that his immune system has kept the virus at bay for all these years with essentially no ill effect.

HIV viruses have a surface protein complex called Env, which binds to the CD4 surface protein to gain entry to T-cells (part of the immune system). HIV cannot transmit without this protein complex, and so certain parts of the complex are very well conserved across different HIV strains.

N6 binds to this part of Env, in some sense "simulating" CD4. However, because it's just an antibody and not a cell, once Env is bound it cannot infect anything. This is what makes N6 a neutralizing antibody.

The thing that makes N6 special (more potent and more broadly applicable) is that it is able to avoid the parts of Env that HIV doesn't need for replication. Imagine Env as a wrench. The head of the wrench is a specific hex shape to mate with CD4 and can't change. Antibodies can grab on to the wrench handle to prevent infection. But the handle can change, and HIV regularly mutates this part to avoid being caught - adding side branches, changing the shape, and so forth. N6 is cleverly arranged so that it can strongly bind to the wrench without grabbing the handle too strongly - in other words, it tightly binds the head of the wrench like a person wrapping a thumb and index finger around it (this hand analogy appears in the paper). The result is that HIV has a much harder time getting out from under the antibody, since mutating itself to alter the head shape would also affect infectivity.

Now that larger HIV screening trials are done, and the technology has advanced to better detect such super-antibodies, more of these clever antibodies may be discovered. We may yet have a good shot at defeating this tricky virus!

<comment><USER3> Just to check I understand this correctly, as a layman:

It stops HIV from progressing in the body, holding it at bay. Someone with HIV would need to take this medicine for the rest of their lives. It doesn't actually cure it. (not denying that holding it at bay is a _significant_ step forward)

<comment><USER4> It's an antibody, so in theory the human body can produce it itself. That's how vaccines work: they trick your body into producing antibodies against the real pathogens.

The question is whether all humans can produce this, or just some genotypes. If it's the latter, then yes, some people would have to take it as medicine and never stop.

<comment><USER5> > then yes, some people would have to take it as medicine and never stop.

Which is a problem since it would probably be a monoclonal antibody and those are the most expensive drugs to make. Like hundreds of thousands or even millions per year expensive (depending on what dose is needed).

If it really does cost millions per year the US couldn't afford it - it would cost over a trillion per year to treat everyone in the US, and more than 40 trillion to treat everyone (and that's just for the medicine).

(For comparison total healthcare spending in the US is 3 trillion.)

So better hope that either the price goes down, or that it only requires a limited course of treatment. Can you imagine a cure for HIV, and we can't afford it?

<comment><USER6> What are the reasons behind such prohibitive cost? Rare expertise, advanced factories, amount of time required, lack of economy-of-scale, monopoly, something else?

If the cure is proven, the society will likely be able to mobilize much more resources, particularly to scale up operations.

Special expertise can be trained to other biologists (the underemployment problem would be mitigated as well). More biologists could be trained. Likewise for factories, materials, etc. Monopolies can be broken.

What factors cannot be scaled up with such an approach? (Honest question. I do not know anything about antibody production.)

<comment><USER5> > What are the reasons behind such prohibitive cost? Rare expertise, advanced > factories, amount of time required, lack of economy-of-scale, monopoly, > something else?

The first 3. Monopoly doesn't help I'm sure, but this drug class in inherently very expensive to produce, there's a reason there is little outcry over the prices charged.

It's extremely labor intensive, and very hard to scale up. They are also inherently dangerous, so there is a need for extreme purity. (See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGN1412](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGN1412) for what a monoclonal antibody can do, you would not want that to happen by accident.)

As of right now this drug class remains the most expensive of all drugs, I would assume if it were possible to make it cheaper they would have.

But we'll only really know once the first generics enter the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not my area of expertise but even if we can address 99% of strains, wouldn't that last 1% just take over and become the new 100% leaving us back where we started? Or is the promise here that we can combine this discovery with another that solves that remaining 1%? Or, do the mutations of that last 1% make HIV less virulent or harder to transmit?

<comment><USER8> It would seem to me that this concept of the strongest strain taking over only would happen if there were some sort of competition for resources. If you have one strain of HIV it seems weird to think that it would stop you from getting another strain and then passing both on. But "not my area of expertise" either.

<comment><USER9> First, it seems very difficult (for a virus) to transmit HIV via vaginal intercourse[1]. Second, most infections appear to start from a single virus,[2] despite the huge genetic diversity of intrapatient HIV that supposedly makes it hard to treat[3]. That means most of the strains found within one person never get transmitted. How do you manage to transmit HIV contaminated fluids but only one infection occurs in the receiving person? Very strange.

Another strange thing, it does not seem all that difficult (relatively) for interspecies transmission to occur: "Scientists have now documented that the SIV virus has jumped from monkeys or apes into humans at least 13 separate times!"[4]

Perhaps those transmissions are due to self-injury while cutting infected meat, etc. The vagina is tissue that _expects_ the presence of foreign human cells, and so has defenses against them. Anal sex, injections, etc are a different story. To me it sounds like an entire cell gets transmitted.

[1] [http://m.jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/191/9/1403.full](http://m.jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/191/9/1403.full)

[2] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18490657/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18490657/)

[3] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2614444/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2614444/)

[4] [http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/081101_hivorig...](http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/081101_hivorigins)

EDIT: Another possibility is that the vast majority of these variants found floating free in the blood are non-functional and serve as chaff to confuse the immune system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this NIH scientist funded by tax money, and if so, what does that mean for a future vaccine or drug? Will it still be patented, and if so, who will hold the patent?

<comment><USER11> Look up the Bayh-Dole act. The researcher who receives the NIH funding is free to patent it and sell that patent to a drug company.

<comment><USER12> Are you sure about that? Bayh-Dole covers inventions arising from extramural funding (i.e., the NIH provides a grant to people who are employed elsewhere).

I'm not sure how it applies here, where ~80% of the authors appear to be directly employed by some of the NIH's Institutes.

<comment><USER11> Oops! Didn't catch that. If they work for the NIH, then the patent would be the NIH's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not my area of scientific knowledge, but this is a really exciting field!

One of the current challenges being worked on is how to train individuals to make these complex antibodies. We've isolated these from people with long-term exposures to HIV, showing that the body can generate these broadly neutralizing antibodies.

Some current work is focusing on developing a series of peptides that can coax HIV negative individuals to make these complex antibodies.

<comment><USER14> Are you saying that some HIV positive individuals naturally develop these antibodies over time, curing themselves of HIV? Or am I misreading?

<comment><USER15> Developing antibodies != curing themselves.

Your immune system can and does fight the HIV virus, it does loses that fight because HIV attacks the immune system, can hide for years, and has a cell to cell infection vector.

The immune system is also limited to what it can do, and when viruses can spread cell to cell there isn't much it can do since there is little to no attack surface available for the immune system to work with in that case.

Antibody and therapeutic vaccines can be used as post exposure treatments and combined with other regiments to help slow down or even control the progress of HIV and AIDS in already afflicted patients.

A therapeutic vaccine with a regiment of reverse-transcriptase inhibitors and a treatment to control cell suicide upon infection can probably be developed for HIV and for other retroviruses, well excluding the antibodies it is what we already are doing today mostly.

<comment><USER16> >> and has a cell to cell infection vector.

I am an absolute noob in science, but still want to ask out of curiosity. If a biological virus can have a cell to cell infection vector, can't an anti-body or immunogen also have a cell-to-cell "replenishing" factor?

<comment><USER15> Like mentioned already by another poster antibodies are an extracellular mechanism, they do not function within the cell.

Cell to call transfer and communication happens all the time, cells share nutrients and many other things, some viruses take advantage of that mechanism allowing them to basically cross cellular and tissue boundaries.

Some can exploit this to the extreme by actually replicating only parts of themselves in each cell and using the cell to cell transfer highway to be finally assembled in another cell, this is often used to prevent cell suicide since one of the intracellular defense mechanism is basically the cell invoking cell death upon detecting an infection.

If you want an analogy from the technology world think about it as staged payloads that some malware use, each payload on it's own is undetectable and even non-functional but when everything reaches the final target all the payloads are assembled into the final piece of malware that takes over the targeted host ;)

<comment><USER17> That's fascinating. Are you just speculating or is there some paperwork describing these findings?

<comment><USER15> Speculating about what?

If you are interested in cell to cell infections NIH has an article about it

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3587356/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3587356/)

There are quite a few other sources on Google, overall viruses are pretty sneaky, some of them even ask the cell politely to establish new cell to cell contacts to facilitate cell to cell infection.

You might also like to look up virus assembly and budding, since it's also a pretty interesting topic, you might have viruses that do cell to cell infection of their naked forms then the final polymerization of their shells happens in another cell and they might even do the final budding in another.

Expect nightmares tho ;)

P.S.

Cell to cell transfers might also be called exocytosis (sometimes also called reversed endocytosis) (exit) and endocytosis (entry) so if you are googling and can't find what you need might need to use the scientific terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So in a case like this does the patient own any patentability of their own antibodies? Or did they sign it away in treatment/study?

<comment><USER19> Patents are to incentivise inventions. If an HIV patient could patent their antibodies, that would limit their usefulness while also giving no incentive to anyone to invent better ones, since you can't invent them - just wait and hope if they appear. So I certainly hope they can't do that.

Rather, it's the researchers who went looking for them who should be granted any patent rights. They're the ones who could work harder to produce better results and can have their performance improved with more rewards like a patent's monopoly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would this type of research lead towards a solution that is preventive (e.g. a vaccine) or something that would treat existing cases?

<comment><USER21> I'm not an expert in vaccine development but I believe this _could_ lead to a preventative treatment. Unfortunately, the treatment would probably be very dangerous because unlike smallpox or polio, the human body can't effectively fight HIV and an acute infection almost always turns into a chronic one. If a patient's immune system fails to attack a weakened smallpox strain (the vaccine) and it turns into an acute infection, the risk of life altering side effects is minuscule and more often than not, your immune system will fight off the infection. HIV is different because its only real effect on the body is the destruction of T-cells, which the virus uses to reproduce, and there is no stopping that process only slowing it down. If you take an HIV vaccine developed with this antibody and your immune system fails to learn it (or the strain mutates before it has a chance to, which is a remote but very real possibility with retroviruses), you will eventually develop AIDS or spend a lifetime taking expensive drug cocktails with a long list of serious side effects.

There are tricks to developing vaccines without using the pathogen directly, like constructing a decoy with the relevant surface proteins, but they're unlikely to work with HIV because it's so _simple._ When an antibody finds its antigen, it signals the immune system to consume the pathogen and learn about it if it hasn't seen the invader before. Since antibodies share a chemical structure (like DNA and RNA, except more complex), cells in the immune system can memorize the antibody and produce it even if it isn't present in our genetic code. This process is one of the most amazing adaptations in the animal kingdom, allowing complex organisms to compete with the microscopic in the evolutionary arms race, but the immune system needs to see the antibody and pathogen in order create mature B-cells, which adapt to bind to the same pathogen as the antibody. HIV is small, simple, and doesn't have many unique features on the viral package (which contains the RNA) so it'll likely be very hard to produce a decoy for the antibody to latch on to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> there's a lot of genetic variation in HIV due to natural selection. in the process of replicating they make many different strains -- mostly very similar to one another.

here is an HIV sequence database [https://www.hiv.lanl.gov/content/index](https://www.hiv.lanl.gov/content/index) [https://hivdb.stanford.edu/page/who-resistance- list/](https://hivdb.stanford.edu/page/who-resistance-list/)

if you take medicine, get off them and try to get back on your medicine, you may find your medicine no longer works.

that being said I don't quite know what "neutralize" means in this context, but the NIH seems to feel this result has wide applicability.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can HIV be eradicated completely by all current patients dying (within, say, a century) without transmitting it to anyone else?

<comment><USER24> Surely there has to be a better way to phrase this.

<comment><USER25> "Could HIV be eradicated by merely halting all transmission?"

Yes.

<comment><USER26> Yes, but that would require an effort by an organisation like WHO of a scale never seen before. I would be very _proud_ of the human species if we could pull this off.

I think, as a species, we'll master time-travel before consensus...

<comment><USER27> Smallpox was a plague of similar proportions, and the world community got together and pulled the massive feat of erradication in a decade.

<comment><USER26> It's not like HIV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've been hearing about "this looks like a cure for AIDS!" at least once a year since the 90s. It always just needs to go through FDA testing and approval and then evaporates. What we've gotten instead is incremental improvements in the treatment of the disease. Maybe if you tell me there is a new treatment that completely cures some 1% of those treated I'll buy it. But this, this is preliminary research.

</comment><comment><USER29> I feel like the frequency of the "scientific breakthrough" headlines that led to nothing has muted my enthusiasm for remarkable findings like this.

There is a huge difference between the NIH announcing a finding and the sensationalist science journalism that is typically inaccurate. I wonder if this divergence erodes the public trust in science.

<comment><USER2> An earlier antibody in the same family, VRC01, is in Stage IIb clinical trials for the treatment of HIV. Medical science is slow and extremely methodical, but it can produce practical results. You just have to have patience.

<comment><USER30> I think the problem is that in popular news you often just get the impression that a "breakthrough" happened but it isn't super clear what the scientist actually did, what are the limitations of their work and what you should expect from future research.

So instead of seeing news that say specific things like "this might lead to a monoclonal antiboody treatment in 10 years" or "this could help vaccine research" you end up with a bunch of headlines that sound as if AIDS is going to be cured tomorrow.

<comment><USER29> Thanks ufo, that's the point I was trying to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Since the discovery of the virus 32 years ago there have been a large number of treatments successful in animals or the test tube, only to fail in humans

</comment><comment><USER32> If you feel these discoveries are important and you are an American, let your Congresspeople know that you support NIH funding.

</comment><comment><USER33> the patient has to take it the rest of their life ...the perfect money maker</comment>


Ask HN: Startup ideas around 4G - <AUTHOR>

With Clear and Verizon covering major cities in the US by the end of this year and first Android 4G phone coming out soon, there must be a huge potential market for apps that take advantage of high speed wireless broadband. What are your thoughts on this? <comment><USER2> I'm skeptical anything too extreme will take off right away, particularly since battery life is such a big problem for 3G-enabled devices at the moment. I haven't read up on 4G, so I'm not familiar with the power requirements, but I can't imagine it'll be much better. I'm taking a "wait and see" stance.

</comment><comment><USER3> the main advantage on 4G is in the bandwidth so I would put some thoughts in the video streaming area</comment>


No, Brits aren't googling 'What is the EU?' because they don't know what EU is - <AUTHOR> http://www.geektime.com/2016/06/25/no-brits-are-not-googling-what-is-the-eu-because-they-dont-know-what-the-eu-is/ <comment><USER2> First politically-related thing I've bookmarked in ages. I especially love the comparison to the "What is the internet?" thing.

The media bias/slander for "What is the EU?" trending speaks more to me about the current state of mainstream media and it's blatant biases than it does the "stupidity of Leave voters" that the media and even a good portion of people is trying to push.

</comment><comment><USER3> Many of the people who voted to leave - do not know what Google is !

</comment><comment><USER4> > What is more plausible? That millions of British citizens don't actually > know what the European Union is

This is very plausible. Look at the terrible UK newspaper coverage of the EU (so poor that the EU needed a mythbusting page[1]).

Ask a few British people if they know what bits of the EU do what.

Add to that the misinformation coming from political parties over the past few decades, and especially from the Leave / Remain campaigns over the past couple of weeks. There are people who voted who honestly think that it would reduce the number of migrants (It won't).

[1] [https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/category/euromyths/](https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/category/euromyths/)

<comment><USER5> The EU debunking myths about themselves is really believable. I especially like the one about TTIP: "Regulatory cooperation under TTIP can help businesses and consumers. It cannot undermine lawmaking powers". Yeah(!) ISDS doesn't undermine national laws and courts(!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> europa.eu seems to be hugged to death at the moment.

And I just want to find out if my wife can force the retailer of her headphones to fix them under the Product Warranty directive...</comment>


Cycling to Redefine Urban Mobility in the Era of Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://finishermag.com/cycling/cycling-to-redefine-urban-mobility-in-the-era-of-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> Not a great article, which is unfortunate given that pro-cycling articles always get the same tired responses in defense of driving (it doesn't work for my particular situation, it's too cold some of the year in some places, etc...).

Public transport doesn't allow for social distancing and there's no space for additional cars.

For urban society overall, more people cycling results in decreased travel times due to less traffic congestion, a healthier population (both from the exercise and distance) and reduced air pollution. Plus there are great economic benefits. Not everyone needs to cycle for everyone to benefit.

</comment><comment><USER3> If American local governments want people to use bikes for urban mobility then they need to tell law enforcement and prosecutors to actually take bike theft seriously. In many cities it's tough to even get police to file an official report for a bike theft. And the few thieves that are apprehended are typically released with a slap on the wrist. I've seen homeless camps in the Bay Area filled with bike parts, obviously stolen, and the police do nothing.

I'm not going to ride my bike to the store unless I can be sure it will still be there when I come out.

<comment><USER4> I use both a heavy U-lock and a thick cable lock. I've never had a bike stolen though I have had accessories stolen.

You don't need to make your bike impervious to being stolen, just harder to steal than another bike near it so that the thieves pick that one instead. That isn't particularly hard in my experience. In my case I have two different types of locks as that increases the chances that a thief won't have the right tools to defeat one of the locks. E.g., if a thief has something to pry a lock off that would work on the U-lock, that won't work on the cable lock.

Having an ugly bike probably also helps.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I use a heavy D/U-type, a thick cable, and a bar-type (like an Abus Bordo). Pain in the arse carrying them about but I've never had a bike stolen in London.

<comment><USER6> Abus now has lightweight versions of their locks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We recently moved to a community where we can bike to school, work, and shop on a path that is separate from the road. It has exceeded my expectations on how easier it is to use my bike for daily transportation.

Having biked in NYC pre and post bike lanes, I will say that, while riding in downtown traffic was a fun unique experience if you're into that sort of thing, riding a bike share bike in the bike lane made me feel the same way, that bike as a primary transportation could be real there as well.

There are lots of cheap used bikes on Craigslist that will last a long time. Maintaining them is way cheaper than maintaining a car. Cheap bikes are not as targeted for theft, a cheap lock will go a long way towards protecting from theft.

<comment><USER8> If you don't mind me asking, what state is this community in? I've been looking for a change and the western states seem appealing. Something like this would factor into my decision.

<comment><USER7> Vermont

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In general I think this is more about cities using the reduced traffic and shutdowns to accelerate their existing infrastructure plans. There are a reasons why cycling & walking ties in to COVID-19 (mostly getting people off of public transportation), but all of the places which are doing this were already heading down this path (for good reasons).

<comment><USER6> NYC has a problem - the debt that MTA has cannot be repaid, unless ridership increases... but ridership has been dropping due to cycling, uber, etc.

(I suspect that this problem is also in other cities with large mass transit investment)

NYC is also horrible at keeping bike lanes unobstructed and street parking is literally the worst thing in NYC for a road user.

<comment><USER10> One wonders how the accrued debt for the roads and streets - which services the MTA and other traffic - will be repaid.

<comment><USER6> Road construction and maintenance can be paid off using taxes on various things(property taxes and gas taxes).

Mass transit relies much more on ridership. (NYC Subway is massively underpriced)

Also - road maintenance is highly dependent on road use. Biggest degrading factors for the westside bike path on Manhattan have been natural(weather and flora). I've been on bike paths that were paved in the 60ies and are still in great condition... without maintenance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds a lot like "This Is The Year Of The Linux Desktop" meme articles from the early 2000's.

</comment><comment><USER12> This feels like trying to shove this into the opportunity available. There is no indication that cycling is better for the virus. If anything it might make things bad. You now have people sweating all over and trying to take showers and so touching everything.

I thought the page will talk about scientific advantages to cycling or something like that but it just rambles hope about cycling benefiting from this.

<comment><USER13> Not defending the article, but if the alternative is for everyone to drive cars, I think you need to think about what that means for a second.

1\. Everyone in the US has to own and maintain a car. (I've saved $85k by not owning a car over the past 10 years.)

2\. We have an increase in the number of 2000 lb steel boxes driving around, polluting, being built and trashed.

3\. More drivers, more deaths. Driving is already a leading cause of death in the US.

4\. Further sprawl, growing infrastructure costs, higher taxes.

5\. Further decline of spontaneous interactions in the US.

There are many many other negative externalities of car dependence. Cycling is an opportunity to reduce our car dependence, and is safer than public transportation for COVID.

Yes, sitting in your personal, 40 thousand dollar, 2 ton steel box anytime you leave the house is the best way to avoid COVID transmission. But it also destroys the earth, social ties, lives, etc.

<comment><USER14> > Yes, sitting in your personal, 40 thousand dollar, 2 ton steel box anytime > you leave the house is the best way to avoid COVID transmission. But it also > destroys the earth, social ties, lives, etc.

I think there's _another_ point you've missed. _You_ sitting in your personal 2 ton steel box is good for _you_ , but it practically takes up the entire street space, and forces pedestrians to stay on the much narrower sidewalks, breaking the 6 foot social distancing rule-of-thumb. Opening up the streets to bicycles and pedestrians allows people to use the street to maintain safe distances.

<comment><USER15> I think this is a cute ideal for a world in which we all live in dense cities and have no business going anywhere but other places in the city. But in reality, I have business in other cities, even states. Work-related travel as well as visiting family. The former could surely be adjusted, but not the latter.

<comment><USER14> How many pedestrians do you typically see on the highways between cities?

I'm talking _strictly_ about streets inside cities. Cars are great tools for traveling great distances. They're a ridiculous tool for traveling inside cities. They should be looked at with a similar level of absurdity as taking a cruise ship out on the lake for a weekend fishing trip.

It's a very American attitude that this is "cute" or "idealistic". In cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, bicycles dominate intra-city transportation. And what's funny about these cities is that they have worse cycling weather than most US cities.

<comment><USER15> But if you remove streets from within the cities, where people also live, how would you propose having a car?

<comment><USER14> A couple things:

1\. Nobody's proposing an elimination of streets. What _is_ being suggested is that streets become more open to cycling and even pedestrian use without an implicit serious threat of death.

2\. Re-thinking cities, where we design not around personal car ownership and convenience is possible. There are countless solutions that still allow for automobile use. For example, a number of parking garages throughout—or on the edges of—the city. Think about amusement parks, for example. You can't drive your car right up to Space Mountain when you go to Disney World. You park your car in a massive lot, and a shuttle (glorified golf-cart) takes you into the park where there are miraculously no cars, and no threat of being killed as you cross the "street" to get a cotton candy.

As I said in my previous post—there are working examples here. There's no need to pretend these are unsolvable problems—or even difficult-to-solve problems. Would we need to re-shuffle some things in most US cities? Absolutely... but that's exactly what we're talking about doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Now is a good time for urban planners and authorities in the country to look > for ways to promote and enable cycling.

Unfortunately, urban planners and authorities is not how you promote cycling. This is how you promote cycling [0]. You rebel.

[0] [https://file.ejatlas.org/img/Conflict/2797/stop_de_kindermoo...](https://file.ejatlas.org/img/Conflict/2797/stop_de_kindermoord_lay_down.png.jpg)

<comment><USER4> As a transportation cyclist for over a decade, I never liked the disruptive activities some cycling activists do. I'm not convinced that they're effective at anything other than angering drivers.

<comment><USER17> Not angering drivers hasn't worked _at all_ , bike infrastructure has become worse over time. On the other hand, angering drivers did work in Netherlands.

<comment><USER4> To be clear, I'm not opposed to angering drivers _period_ , just certain activities which accomplish nothing other than angering drivers. For example, I will often briefly take the lane if it is the safest option for me or legally required (e.g., making a turn). Yes, many drivers _hate_ this but the benefits seem clear to me, and their anger really is misplaced here.

I don't know much about the history of cycling in the Netherlands. Where can I read about how angering drivers helped there?

<comment><USER17> I found this video pretty good: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQk0O09gP4g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQk0O09gP4g)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This page is extremely difficult to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Reader view is your friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So... the poor get punished again?

People who can afford cars are going to continue driving them. Given the option between bicycling and driving, someone who can afford a car or already has one will likely opt to drive if public transport becomes impractical because of reduced capacity, mask wearing, etc. The poor are left to either ride "filthy" buses and trains, ride a bike, or walk.

<comment><USER9> > People who can afford cars are going to continue driving them.

Right now businesses and residential units are required by law in most cities to provide parking, take that away and the cost of owning a car goes up quite fast. If you have to pay $500/ month to park your car, it won't just be the poor who live the car-free lifestyle, lots of people with opt out of that.

In the Netherlands, almost everyone rides a bike (rich/ poor) because it's the best way to get around cities. In the US, nobody rides bikes because the infrastructure is designed for cars. In the UK and Paris (where this article is focused), they are somewhere in-between and trying to get closer to where the Netherlands is.

<comment><USER20> In the Netherlands, most people who don't live in a major city center (and many who do) still own a car. Us riding bikes isn't an either/or thing, people do both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One point people overlook is that cars are an existing item that many people already posess. A fast change to biking can put a high demand on their production, which is also based on steel or, even worse, carbon fiber. And then in 6 months many people are going to trash or forget about the bike, essentially just causing a temporary production spike with lasting effects on the environment.

I think more accent should be put on NMF bikes, Natural Material Frame, like those made of bamboo [0] or wood. These materials absorb CO2 from the air to grow, unlike steel or carbon which produces it.

[0] [https://diverahub.com/](https://diverahub.com/)

<comment><USER22> And these sorts of articles forget that

1 A lot of us cant or prefer not to live in the heart of the city

2 Most offices are not built with showers and secure bike parking - for longer distance commuters last time I worked in central London I wanted to use a Brompton but boss said no I cat store it in the office so that was that.

<comment><USER23> It's kind of silly to protest the feasibility of cycling because it requires a certain kind of infrastructure given the truly enormous costs we've endured to create -- and _recreate_ in the case of cities that predate the automobile -- cities that accomodate the automobile. That all looks baked-in and natural to you, because it's always been that way, but make no mistake, it's the largest engineering project ever undertaken by mankind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This article doesn't really say much. It makes a vague claim that cycling promotes social distancing, but so do cars. In fact, enclosed cars are much more distant than bikes trailing each other at ten feet lengths. As far as I can tell the author is asking for driving infrastructure to be repurposed under the guise of the pandemic, but it just comes off as an opportunist grab while everyone who might care about driving convenience is distracted by the virus.

<comment><USER25> Most cities with a subway or significant bus infrastructure have very high population densities. "Everybody drive" is not going to work in places where driving isn't already the default mode of transit.

Plus, few people can afford it. Have you looked at the price of a parking spot in e.g., major parts of Boston or NYC? 5-6 figures to buy, or hundreds/mo to rent, and that's with working mass transit. I guess that those prices would at least triple if everyone started driving. Lots of wealthy people take the subway and commuter rail.

I don't think cycling is the solution. But cars are _definitely_ a non- starter.

<comment><USER6> I can attest.

Own a car in NYC. $400 for the lease. $200 for insurance. $400 for parking.... or about $200 every 2 months in parking violation tickets.

But... Even in NYC a car is the difference between going to one of the packed urban parks... vs going to the woods upstate.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I talk to people about death without freaking them out? - <AUTHOR>

My business is centered around death (not a funeral home). I am looking for ideas and suggestions on how to talk to people about death without making them uncomfortable. Death is inevitable and we need to embrace it. Thanks. <comment><USER2> In America you're up against a great wall of silence. Our culture makes death taboo and few overcome it.

So perhaps you should focus on communicating with the few who are comfortable with talking about death and consider them your target market.

By communicating naturally and openly with those who are receptive you'll also participate in an ongoing cultural change. Eventually, maybe even in your business's lifetime, culture will change and the taboo will fade.

Until the taboo fades at the cultural level you're not going to be successful at changing people's minds. As a business you won't have the time and exposure to others to remove the taboo.

Here's why - individuals react to strong taboos without reason. You want to persuade people with reason. But it's too late, they've already turned that off as soon as you say the word "death". (It similar to the saying that no one ever changed their mind by losing an argument. But taboo is even stronger.)

But there are people who are not uncomfortable. Find them, start with them, and just talk about it. Don't worry about others, they are not your market anyway. You can find the "embracers" in spiritual sub-cultures, pop self help bookstores, health care workers, and elsewhere. It's a disorganized group, and not a community.

If you want to be an activist (instead of a business) then you might take a personal one-on-one approach. Talk, listen, repeat. The more an individual considers death and talks about it, the more comfortable they will become. In years, the individual may lose the taboo altogether.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for all the suggestions - all good ones. I have been reaching out to those who are comfortable talking about death (e.g. The Order of the Good Death). It has been empowering to be in the forefront of bringing the topic of death into life and making people embrace it. It is easier to talk about death with like-minded people.

<comment><USER2> I'd suggest Stephen Levine and Ram Dass as well as the Death With Dignity movement.

[Edit: had the wrong author]

<comment><AUTHOR> Just looked up all your references. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hang out with Buddhists. Seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Japan would be perfect for what my company offers.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Failed to meet all my 2019 Goals, how to make sure 2020 is better? - <AUTHOR> I only successfully finished around 35% of the goals I set. Multiple reasons - mainly due to not taking initiatives when I had free time to work on these (procrastinating) and secondly overestimating how much work some of these would take.<p>How have others dealt with setting goals, and how did they achieve all of them? <comment><USER2> Look into goals vs systems.

Here's the thought process, at a high level:

Goal - I need to shed 5 kgs in 3 months.

System - Everyday I eat healthy and do some exercise with no specific focus on what to accomplish. I work toward a healthy living and at some point further, I may shed X amount of weight. Important thing is that I do this activity daily (or whatever frequency I decide upon).

Read the scott adams article on this.

[https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs- systems/](https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't pay too much attention to the goal. The purpose of the goal is to get you to plan. Plans are worthless; the act of planning is invaluable.

Once you have the goal and the plan, design a process for it. It should excite you. If it doesn't, you simply don't have faith in the plan and need to fix the plan until it's something you're excited to do.

Sometimes plans are hard, and so get a mentor. A mentor can be as simple as a book. Or sometimes pay to have an hour long chat with someone. But you need to trust the process.

Then ditch the goal. Don't look at it. A runner doesn't look at their stopwatch. Just have faith in the process and keep at it.

If you didn't do well that year, then you rip apart your process like a machine and analyze what you did wrong or could do better. You're doing that now. Just keep at it.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's a "theory" about moving residences: If there's a box that you haven't opened a year after moving, you might not need the stuff in the box.

</comment><comment><USER5> Overestimating? As in you didn't take on a project because you thought it was too big? If so plan to start things--starting isn't proportional to total effort. Or do you mean underestimated as in things took more time than expected? In which case you put too much on your list. Prioritize and remember Warren Buffet's 'two lists' top priorities and other priorities (aka. avoid at all cost) if you really mean to achieve your top priorities.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cannot recommend Atomic Habits enough.

Basic theory is: Don't focus on goals. Aim for processes which are easy, repeatable and rewarding. Before you know it you've blown the goal out of the park.

I had a job where an aspect was handling internal tickets for our team, a shared responsibility. I paired my habit of making a coffee with reading an open ticket. I also added a bookmark to make getting to the ticket list easy. Team's open tickets quickly reduced and I didn't even make _closing_ them part of my process... it just tended to happen.

Get the book though, it's a quick read and packed with solid advice.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like to brainstorm and throw a lot of goals on paper and prioritize them.

For work I have "must do", "should do", "would be nice" goals. For personal goes I do the same, but I tend to set fewer musts and more "would be nice".

I do it that way to capture stuff on paper without incurring guilt.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pick one.</comment>


Western US coal plant closings could free up more than 76B gallons of water/year - <AUTHOR> https://coloradosun.com/2020/07/16/water-saved-closing-coal-power-plants-colorado/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the link:

> By 2031 water use for coal-fired power plants in Colorado will drop to 3.7 > billion gallons – a 68% reduction, according to the Energy and Policy > Institute.

> The closing of 30 coal-fired generating units across the West – including 10 > in Colorado – could free-up more than 76 billion gallons of river and > groundwater a year in the increasingly parched region, although utilities > appear cautious about giving up their water rights.</comment>


I am a roboticist in a cheese factory - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/i-am-a-roboticist-in-a-cheese-factory/ <comment><USER2> I come from an Industrial Engineering background and I really liked this quick overview of the job. The cost of robotic arms has dropped considerably in the last ~10 years. Glancing through Ebay quick, you can get tons of robotic arm models for less than $20,000. I anticipate many more processes getting automated in the next couple years especially with the rapid pace of computer vision improvements we're seeing. Like a lot of things, running a factory can look and sound easy until you get to actually doing it. Some things that can really trip up a factory:

* Improper product from upstream processes (wrong dimensions, doesn't assemble, wrong physical properties, etc).

* Unplanned downtime.

* Being behind on production goals (meaning they won't stop the machine for you to install and test your new widget that might fix everything).

* Management turning down many very useful OEM upgrades on a cost basis.

* Imbalanced production rates. The bottleneck of the factory should be the primary focus for improvements.

And for a fun fact: lubricant used in food production equipment must be safe for humans. For this reason, vegetable oil and similar products are often used.

<comment><USER3> Yep! I work in the steel construction industry. Damn near every day, typically mid to late afternoon, an order comes from on high: "this has to be on the truck at 6am tomorrow", but you also have to continue to meet the existing deadlines. Then you lose an hour of production because a machine needs maintenance or breaks down.

This is why we work 54hr weeks. All the time.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry you work in a third world country. Advanced societies have working limits of 35 to 40 hours per week.

<comment><USER5> Im not sure which advanced society you are refering to. But i think you mean 40hrs of mandatory work. I worked at a chainsaw factory ~15yrs ago and in Canada & the managers would put huge amounts of pressure on the workers to do constant overtime. When you are desperate for job security being seen as the worker who won't go the extra mile does not feel optional.

<comment><USER6> > Im not sure which advanced society you are refering to. But i think you mean > 40hrs of mandatory work

Germany or any other civilized country with such things as laborer protection laws. But in a society with at-will employment like the US I wouldn't expect any kind of protection, so...

<comment><USER7> Yeah.. No.

Having worked for a German company where 7-midnight shifts were a regular thing for month (project team of five): Sure. That's illegal. I know that, knew that then. But maybe you just want to do your job and get over with it. Then there's the fucked up problem between coworkers. Five people. If one says "Enough! I go home now after 12 hours!" then four are "Erm... why do you leave us to finish the tasks?".

Germany (can't comment on other so-called civilized countries) is no help here if the employees feel that they're in a bind.

<comment><USER6> > Germany (can't comment on other so-called civilized countries) is no help > here if the employees feel that they're in a bind.

Yes, but these examples are _rare_ and when you document your working time carefully you can get quite a load of money by going via the court system. In the US, they're widespread and no way for recourse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This may be a dumb question, but at what point does a "machine" become a "robot"?

<comment><USER9> My definition: there is no clear limit, but there is a spectrum of 'roboticity' that corresponds to the spectrum of 'versatility'. The more versatile a machine is, the more a robot it is.

For instance, a blender is not versatile. But a cooking robot can do more things (it blends, but also cooks, mixes, etc.). This is why the cooking robot is more a robot than a blender.

This is similar in industry. You have specialized machines, which can do a single thing. Industrial robots are more versatile because we can program them to achieve different task (e.g. when there is a new model of car). The ultimate robot would be as versatile as a human. This kind of humanoid would have the highest level of 'roboticity'.

<comment><USER10> Why would human versatility define the upper limit?

<comment><USER11> Great question. I think it stems from the origin of robotics itself. The desire to build a machine that is "alive" and get it to obey at all our commands. Sometimes I think that robots are slaves 2.0, and as such, they will have human traits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I worked in a cheese factory and I am familiar with all the tasks here, except we also churned the whey to get very salty butter which went into other products.

We used pallets and when you would have a small tower built on these things you would have to do the clingfilm wrap to hold it all together. This was not a big process, it would take a couple of minutes to do and a forklift would need to access the pallet to take it away as soon as this was done.

In this factory we made cheese on a truly industrial scale, however, the thought of getting a robot to do the clingfilm wrap would be anything but the first thing on the mind of the boss. So this cheese factory must be gigantic, up there with the gigafactory...

So is this any good, this string cheese in packs from this vast industrial operation? Is there some conclusion to this where America ends up with just one mega-dairy factory somewhere in the Mid-West with nobody else able to compete against the robots? For things like clingfilm wrapping to be too hard for humans to do?

I would like to see a different approach, a highly robotised but small scale cheese factory, on the back of a lorry. Something that can be taken to the farm so that we can have 'single farm' cheeses.

<comment><USER13> On this last point, I think the trend of small(er) scale fabrication at lower cost will eventually enable such micro-factories.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had a tour of an incandescent light bulb factory in the 90's. It was interesting seeing machines that were possibly 100 years old retrofitted with the latest programmable controllers.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a very accessible intro. And I was fascinated by the progression of her interests and education.

One note: the link to her Instagram page at the bottom of the article is broken (there's an unneeded = at the end). The correct URL is:

[https://www.instagram.com/theladymachinist/](https://www.instagram.com/theladymachinist/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Anyone have recommendations for an online mechatronics course/certification?

<comment><USER17> Not online, but I think a lot of community colleges will have programs in automation and PLCs.</comment></comment>


Europe restricts export of drug used in US lethal injections - <AUTHOR> http://www.worldcrunch.com/death-penalty-europe-restricts-export-drug-used-american-lethal-injections/4279

<comment><USER2> Good for them. But you should feel free to not copy the article title verbatim though if it's obnoxious with CAPS or whatnot.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this really a HN story?</comment>