Senate passes financial bailout bill full of sweeteners - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/01/news/economy/senate_rescuebill2/index.htm?cnn=yes <comment><USER2> As much as people seem to think otherwise, we're not giving a free $700B to the financial industry. We're loaning money that needs to be re-payed. Why do we need to loan money? Because credit has shored up and many a company's credit rating has dropped, which makes it very difficult to get credit.

This is all caused by a set of bad bets placed on mortgages. The large majority of these businesses are very sound, and there is still a huge amount of underlying value there. You can be quick to point fingers at the wall st trader types for placing bad bets, but everybody was complicit in this, even (surprise surprise) the government, by lowering mortgage requirements.

Certain companies just can't go out of business. AIG, for example. AIG is connected to almost every company in the US -- they provide all forms of insurance. If AIG went out of business, all of that insurance would be worthless, and almost every company in the US's credit rating would plummet, thereby rendering their corporate paper (bonds) worthless. There are a lot of reasons for depending on operational debt through bonds, even in the most financially sound companies.

We could let other companies fail, but as they do, the market conditions significantly worsen. As that happens, \- Retirement accounts will be worthless, making retirement difficult or impossible for many Americans \- You won't be able to get a mortgage to buy a new house \- Student loans won't be available, making it much more difficult to attend college \- A very significant amount of jobs will be lost as big corporations go out of business, and small businesses are unable to meet their operational expenses (payroll)

Ultimately, that means a very, very rough ride for the average American (on main street, although I hate that term). If you're not going to be affected by this (you're working at a funded startup, or you're a tenured professor, for example), it's very easy to take the "let the market sort itself out approach". But the average American will be hit hard, if no action is taken.

In that sense, nobody wants to give money to the people who caused the problem. And we're not -- there are provisions (however imperfect) in the bills that restrict executive compensation for participating companies. Ultimately, it's also helpful to remember that this is a loan, and that it's not a net $700B expense. In fact, when the economy stabilizes and credit ratings return to normal, the equity position that the government has received in AIG (80%) and participating companies should be very valuable -- these are sound business, with one black spot (mortgage backed securities).

EDIT: A couple other points of clarification:

\- As a matter of fact, the rich pay the majority of taxes (top 1% earners constitute 40% of total income tax, while top 10% earners constitute 70% of total income tax) -- if anything, it's the rich paying for the bailout.

\- Check out <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=318690> for explanation on the title of the house bill

<comment><USER3> > Certain companies just can't go out of business. AIG, for example. AIG is > connected to almost every company in the US -- they provide all forms of > insurance. If AIG went out of business, all of that insurance would be > worthless,

And they'd stop paying AIG for this now worthless insurance. They'd take this money and buy insurance from a different insurer.

These other insurers even will end up hiring many of the AIG folks.

> and almost every company in the US's credit rating would plummet

Wrong. Their credit rating doesn't depend on who they get their insurance from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Differences between Senate bill and House bill, the cliffsnotes:

      - FDIC covered deposit insurance from $100,000 to $250,000 temporarily

      - To cover the loss resulting, FDIC will borrow from treasury

      - Renewable energy tax breaks to individuals among other breaks, like R&D credit for business,
        deducting state and local taxes on federal tax returns

      - Alternative Minimum Tax suspension increased for 1 more year, AMT prevented
        the wealthy from not paying taxes, the one where form 6251 should
        be filled out if income is >$75,000

<comment><USER5> You left out the wooden arrows for children! ;-)

<comment><USER6> In all seriousness how does items like that enter a bill such as this one?

I don't completely understand the process - but it just seems shocking that somehow those line items were on there.

<comment><USER5> I made fun, but someone I work with wants to see the entire excise tax on wooden arrows repealed (he participates in the SCA). From an article on bloomberg:

"The arrows provision seeks to reverse an anomaly in a 2004 law that created the 39 cent excise tax on the weapons. Intended the levy more expensive arrows, the tax also applies to arrows used by Boy Scouts and other youth organizations that cost about 30 cents a piece. Ten manufacturers in nine U.S. states stand to benefit from the change, according to a description of the legislation from Wyden's office. "

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aKd0...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aKd0vyGN8L2k&refer=us)

<comment><USER7> I'm sure the Boy Scouts and their wooden arrows are an important issue, but what in the seven-and-a-half-names-for-God does this have to do with bailing out the mortgage industry?

They should just have a reverse Christmas: build a giant Christmas tree and have each of the lawmakers come up and write down what they would like to see under it. Wooden arrows, AMT, raising the FDIC limit (which is actually relevant)

Issues like fixing AMT are huge and have broad support. The only differences are whether to raise taxes or not. Guess what? No need to make that choice now, we'll just stick in a few billion to cover the difference for a while and still NOT fix the AMT, thereby managing to look like we've solved something while borrowing still more money than we can easily pay back.

<comment><USER8> > they should just have a reverse Christmas: build a giant Christmas tree and > have each of the lawmakers come up and write down what they would like to > see under it.

Welcome to the omnibus spending bill! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_spending_bill>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I sent in a message to my Senator asking for a provision to fund my startup <http://shellshadow.com>.

I have scanned the final bill, but don't see ShellShadow mentioned anywhere!!! Don't they understand that people will lose their jobs if my startup becomes illiquid?

Edit: I rescanned the bill looking for language like "funds in support of collaborative server support technologies", still nothing!!! Does anyone have the phone number for the lobbyist that works for the Boy Scouts? I could use some advice.

<comment><USER10> Great piece of software, Jon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seriously, I realize I'm being another "not Hacker News" commenter, but it's getting to the point where I really don't want to come here anymore. Around the new year, I was excited about Ron Paul and frequented the politics subreddit in order to get every snippet of news I could. It wasn't long, though, before all of the "world is going to hell" topics just got to be depressing, no matter how true some of them might have been.

It's now getting to the point where coming here is depressing as well, what with all the topics about this financial crisis. I realize that it's an important event that affects all of us, but there are very few things we have control of in this matter. Like it or not, Congress is going to do whatever they want regardless of how much we debate the issue.

So can we please move on and focus on the things we have some control over, like our startups and other programming projects? Is anyone doing any fun and interesting these days? :-)

<comment><USER12> I don't mean this as a personal criticism (and I agree with the sentiment), but I think the best way to help with this is probably to submit interesting things and crowd out the political news.

(Of course, nobody else seemed very interested in the links I submitted yesterday about the implementation of the Lua VM or JIT compiler, but it was worth a try.)

<comment><USER11> Don't worry, I sympathize with you. About a week ago, I submitted what I thought were a few interesting topics (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=314673> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=311571>), but they didn't get much interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting phrasing by CNN: "The measure was passed by a vote of 74 to 25 _after more than three hours of floor debate_ in the Senate."

I wonder if they considered _"after less than four hours of floor debate..."_

</comment><comment><USER14> You can add as many sweeteners as you want to a bunch of crap; it's still going to taste like a bunch of crap.

<comment><USER15> You sir, have obviously never had a chocolate glazed donut.

They taste great!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, I was gloriously uncertain about whether the last bill was a good idea or not, and I'm happy to say that I have no clue whether this one is better or worse.

Sometimes it's really nice to not have strong opinions on difficult subjects.

<comment><USER17> "Gloriously uncertain" describes how I feel about economics in general, never mind the crazy finance economics around this whole mess, but what I do know is that the specific provisions against oversight in the first bill screamed rank corruption to me. I usually take rank corruption to be a clue pointing in the "bad" direction... does any body know if the new one has provisions like that in it?

Course, I do suspect I would be happier if I were neutral about it all like you though! Terrible shame I get worked up over things... me though? I'd like the chance to vote for this guy: <http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2948>

<comment><USER18> The 'provisions' are too weak and weasel-wordy for their execution to ever be confirmed or denied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hold on to your hats, folks...

Don't blink, you'll miss the $700B getting sucked into the deflation tornado.

<comment><USER19> But, but, but, that $700bil is at the end of a blackhole. You can't see it getting sucked in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How come there is no money for health care or getting renewable energy done, but there is a ton of money for this all the sudden?

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say it's almost like they are setting the stage so that once Obama won, he can't have any money to do universal health care and renewable power. They should pay for this by repelling all of George Bushes tax cuts to the wealthiest 10,000 people in america.

Privatize the wealth but make the public pay the bill when the bets don't pay off? Fuck this shit. The rich that benefited from the deregulation that led to the mess should pay. There should be riots in the streets.

And idiot americans are going to be glued to their TV's, with their brains working the same way they work watching the Brady bunch, while Joe Biden tries not to look smarter then Sarah Palin and thus appear an asshole to the Voting on American Idol part of Americans Brains, while John McCains people play the game of trying to get enough idiots to vote against their economic interests on the basis of identity politics.

<comment><USER21> _sigh_ how i wish what I'm about to say was common knowledge. the rich didn't benefit from deregulation, they benefit from _regulation_ as the current bail out plan is just the latest in a long series of capitulations to the established pecking order at the expense of a truly free market (free competition). The established players don't like capitalism, because capitalism allows for large shifts in wealth.

<comment><USER22> Wrong. No regulation OR good regulation is bad for them. They benefit from PARTIAL regulation.

And regulation, much like circumcision, is as Robin Williams said. "You go all the way, or just forget it!"

<comment><USER23> Regulation isn't inherently good or evil. There are good and bad regulations. Hopefully we could get less BAD regulation and more GOOD regulation. Not holding my breath.

Also, what is good for one group may be bad for another, and vice versa. Good luck figuring that one out.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Cost of Being an Entrepreneur: Now My Stomach Hurts Forever - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/05/my-stomach-hurts/

<comment><USER2> It's not H. pylori?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori></comment>


How Your Airbnb Host Is Feeling the Pain of the Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/technology/airbnb-hosts-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> This may be unpopular but I have zero empathy for Airbnb hosts losing out on money. They were happy to make a profit while socialising the costs of their guests to their neighbourhoods. Now society wants some of that cost back, and they complain.

I have never and will not use Airbnb.</comment>


HN Crunch: Greasemonkey script for Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://syskall.com/hn-crunch-greasemonkey-script-for-hacker-news

<comment><USER2> I've found this bookmarklet, which threads comments, to be extremely useful:

[http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads- for-...](http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker- news/)</comment>


Boeing Dreamliner Gets $3M Cheaper Thanks to Rapid Plasma Deposition - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/news/352989/boeing-dreamliner-gets-3m-cheaper-thanks-to-3d-printing <comment><USER2> That's a very clever trick. Titanium is a really difficult material to machine and by doing it this way they only have to do the final couple of passes rather than to start from a blank. And for a part that would turn most of the blank to chips the reduced cost in tooling (and material, contaminated Titanium scrap is worth a lot less than Titanium stock) must be enormous.

</comment><comment><USER3> The press release linked by the article has an image of the production facility ...

Norsk Titanium to Deliver the World's First FAA-Approved, 3D-Printed, Structural Titanium Components to Boeing

[http://www.norsktitanium.com/norsk-titanium-to-deliver- the-w...](http://www.norsktitanium.com/norsk-titanium-to-deliver-the-worlds- first-faa-approved-3d-printed-structural-titanium-components-to-boeing/)

When can I afford one for my home office?

<comment><USER4> Hmmm... do you have any first-order relatives who's names begin with "Count" or "Duke", or something along those lines?

Kidding aside though, what an amazing machine; wouldn't it be great if they were in the price-range where a group of hobbyists could pitch in to rent one together?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's great to see 3D printing winning on cost, because this is normally a great reason to adopt a new technology. Norsk's RPD process looks to be built for high speed and low cost (plasma torch, argon gas, titanium wire).

I think processes like RPD, Sciaky's EBAM, and Arcam's EBM are generally going to win on price compared to traditional laser sintering like EOS DMLS in the long term, especially for big parts. They replace expensive metal powder with cheaper powder (EBM) or wire (EBAM, RPD), and expensive fiber lasers with more powerful and cheaper electron beams or plasma torches.

It's hard to get fast large-scale metal deposition with a laser: the EOS M400-4 seems one of the highest power laser based solution with 4x 400W fiber lasers (Concept Laser has a 2x 1 kW model). Sounds fancy until you realize that's about as much power as a nice microwave. For comparison, Hypertherm sells 80 kW plasma torches, and Skiaky sells 42 kW electron beam welding systems.

Cooling the parts being printed is a big problem since printing a big glowing puddle isn't very useful, but increasing build volume / part size helps drop the power density.

<comment><USER2> Is there some kind of equivalent power rating for the purpose of comparing plasma cutters and lasers?

<comment><USER5> Wherever it comes from, the power is used to melt metal, so the power puts an upper limit on how fast material can be printed.

I don't know what percentage of the plasma energy in RPD is transferred to the metal, but fiber or CO2 lasers are significantly less efficient than electron beams (~40% vs ~70% absorption based on a very brief search).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's worth noting that in the picture from the article of the printed piece, what they're actually doing is building up a near-net part and then sending it off to be machined down to it's final spec. It appears similar to the process of using a TIG welder to rebuild a severely damaged engine block or other metal part and then machining it back to spec.

<comment><USER7> Yes that's correct. You could call it Laser Cladding, Directed Energy Deposition, or Laser Metal Deposition

If I'm not mistaken, it's cheaper to build titanium in a hybrid process like this, compared to milling a large block of titanium. 3D printing has found it's cost efficiency with titanium and it's not even because of complex geometry. The industrial potential is massive.

<comment><USER6> Yep. Machining large volumes of Ti is a PITA. You'll burn through (expensive) tooling super fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How strong is the new material compared to the old approach?

<comment><USER9> Since they're using it for wiring harnesses, sounds like these parts are extremely numerous and can add a lot of weight if a cheaper material like aluminium was used. No doubt they have some pretty strict strength requirements, but they're not holding the plane together per-se.

A plastic part would probably work but for issues of fire safety, wear from friction, and other factors like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember reading that getting good 3D printed/sintered titanium was a big thing for spacex rapid assembly - I wonder if they use the same techniques...

e.g. [http://hackaday.com/2016/05/19/its-time-for-direct- metal-3d-...](http://hackaday.com/2016/05/19/its-time-for-direct- metal-3d-printing/)

<comment><USER11> SpaceX 3d prints the entire SuperDraco engine, which is used for orbital aborts of their crewed Dragon, and eventually for landings of crewed Dragon and cargo Dragon 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh neat! I live not too far from Plattsburgh, where Norsk Titanium has its US facilities. They're doing very good things for an otherwise pretty depressed economy up here.

</comment><comment><USER13> Titanium is very corrosion resistant, AFAIK it can be directly bonded to carbon fiber.

<comment><USER6> On the boats I used to work on, it was common to bond Mg or Ti ribs to a carbon shell for increased durability. I bet they're using a similar process with the wing roots/spars in the airliners.

<comment><USER14> Thoughts on reinforcing the bow of a sailboat with titanium to prevent vessel loss due to collisions with floating cargo containers while blue water cruising?

<comment><USER15> What is the probability of that happening? I know it occurred in a really poor movie[1][2], but I cannot believe this is common enough to warrant the effort. Also, wouldn't early detection be a better / cheaper alternative?

1) [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2017038/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2017038/)

2) [https://youtu.be/YwmVpHJeqgY?t=7m27s](https://youtu.be/YwmVpHJeqgY?t=7m27s)

<comment><USER6> It's basically not going to happen but hitting flotsam in general is a concern in some situations. I used to boat on the Cuyahoga for instance and floating microwaves will fuck you up.

Also, detection of floating objects is actually really hard. Waves create a ton of noise and if you google "floating shipping container" you'll see they typically float with a corner sticking up, making them a somewhat inefficient radar reflector (there's a reason the F117 is shaped the way it is).

<comment><USER15> I was more thinking sonar. There seems to be quite a few companies selling obstacle avoidance sonar that have some pretty cool displays.

<comment><USER6> Sonar doesn't typically work very well looking forward near the surface. For larger craft the transducer could be mounted low enough to look up slightly but even then you have surface interference issues. A container might be a big and deep enough target to pick up on something mounted to the bottom of a sailboat keel perhaps but definitely not the bow.

From a signals perspective, things that live right on the edge of the water/air boundary are kind of a pain to detect. Unless the water is perfectly still, there's so much noise that you need a lot of spatial resolution to actually see anything useful

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Might this technique also be applicable for bicycle frames?

</comment><comment><USER17> Boeing will be overjoyed at that news being publicised. All its customers will be asking for a $3m discount on their orders now.

<comment><USER18> If it's anything like the automotive industry, their customers already have a contract that specifies the price going down for the next decade. Customers know that you'll improve your process, get more efficient, develop a supply chain, learn to spot problems before they surface, automate repetitive actions, and train your technicians as the years go by.

The contracts specify prices and quantities years in advance - with later years at lower cost than the first years. I suspect that someone guessed years ago that while these titanium parts might need to be made with expensive machining initially, they could eventually be built using EDM, casting, or 3D-printing, and factored that into their budget at Boeing or their contract as a customer.</comment></comment>


Cisco copied Slack called it Spark - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/06/cisco-doesnt-want-spark-to-be-like-slack-heres-why/ <comment><USER2> I like this article but I think your version of the headline on HN "Cisco copied Slack called it Spark" is too clickbaity and VB's original "Cisco doesn't want Spark to be like Slack. Here's why" is more appropriate.

<comment><USER3> I agree. The original is much less clickbaity.

Disclosure: I work on Cisco Spark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let's all pretend that Slack is unique and innovative for a moment.

I question the motives of OP in regards to the title change, sounds like someone has a bias.</comment>


Open-sourced Covid-19 testing site search tool and assessment - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oscarhealth/covid19-testing <comment><USER2> Oscar employee, here. I haven't been involved in the company's COVID response (having joined only a few weeks ago), but the efforts of those I know on these tiger teams have been tremendous—spinning up risk assessments, testing locators, and more for both our site (see below) and wider usage (of which this open sourced work is one instance).

Many such teams are still in the thick of it, so juicy hackernewsy engineering write-ups (around the joys of high-pressure requirements definition, slicing code out from a private repo for public distribution, and so on) will have to wait—but hopefully, there will be some public form of them made available when things settle down.

covid resources @ the main oscar site: [https://www.hioscar.com/covid19](https://www.hioscar.com/covid19)

</comment><comment><USER3> Great work! Easy to run.

Setup took me about 10 mins. Most of that time was spent getting a Google Maps API key. You can get it with a free trial here: [https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/get-a...](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/get- api-key) (but it does require credit card info)

The frontend is nice, but complex (probably due to time constraints, working with what was available). If I forked this for a project, I would just reuse the test site data and credit Oscar (generated to covid19-testing/javascript/test-site-finder/static/data/sites.json)

disclaimer: I work for Oscar (but not on this project)</comment>


Is a Nest worth the money? - <AUTHOR> http://developdaly.com/general/is-a-nest-worth-the-money/ <comment><USER2> Oy. The unit of heating/cooling temperature comparison is the degree-day, not the average temperature of the month.

For each time period, take the difference from your desired temperature. If you have an acceptable range, take the difference from the near edge of that range.

e.g. with a desired range 65-75, a 40 degree day counts as negative 25 and a 90 degree day counts as positive 15.

Keep track separately of positive and negative.

Now you have a record of how much you needed to cool or heat. Local newspapers -- remember those? -- will usually keep track for you on their weather page.

That's a suitable basis for comparison. Not monthly average temperature, not average high, not average low.

<comment><USER3> >Now you have a record of how much you needed to cool or heat. Local newspapers -- remember those? -- will usually keep track for you on their weather page

Yahoo! has a great free weather API with historical data, as does NOAA.

<comment><USER4> And Weather Underground

<comment><USER5> Yeah WU is def not free!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In Texas, companies give away Nests [0][1] to lure customers, thanks to the deregulated market. Competition is so healthy, they are even trying to capture 'green' customers who use less.

[0] [http://www.greenmountain.com/nest](http://www.greenmountain.com/nest)

[1] [http://www.reliant.com/nest](http://www.reliant.com/nest)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for pointing this out. Many people think we're a "yeehaw" state, but we have more wind farms than California to the tune of 2x more [1] thanks to oil money. I guess you can say cowboys like their texas tea, lower taxes, and greener pastures.

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

<comment><USER8> Californian cities are making it awfully difficult to resist the appeal of places like Austin.

The dysfunction in government and the general unfriendliness to the upwardly mobile is appalling.

California neither benefits from the good Puritan economic sense seen in New England states nor the thrift of good-governance states like Montana.

Yes, Montana ! :

 _For six years it has been one of the only states in America with a budget surplus: this year it is a record $433 million, proportionally equivalent to a federal surplus of $858 billion. Thus we've been able to cut taxes, invest in education and infrastructure and keep essential services intact. We recently got our first bond rating upgrade in 26 years.

And we're not simply riding the Western energy boom. The recession has driven unemployment to 7.5 percent, and while we've had a great run with oil, coal and gas, royalties from these commodities account for only 9 percent of our budget surplus.

How do we accomplish what most states and the federal government cannot? I like to say we run government like a ranch. In ranching — my old job — you either pinch pennies or go belly-up. We do the same in government. Perhaps Washington can try it.

For one thing, we challenge every expense. If it isn't absolutely necessary, we eliminate it. When the recession came we found $80 million in savings, which helped us avert a budget crisis. Little things added up: we renegotiated state contracts, cut our energy consumption by 20 percent, auctioned off state vehicles and canceled building projects and computer upgrades._

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/opinion/cutting-costs- the-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/opinion/cutting-costs-the-montana- way.html?pagewanted=print)

California is not just a weird cesspool of the quixotic and the inept.

It is quixotic and inept for solely the sake of being so.

(If you didn't notice, someone already down-voted your entry. I expect the same of mine.)

<comment> at-fates-hands >>>For six years it has been one of the only states in America with a budget surplus.

Another state with a hefty surplus? Why Texas of course. It went from budget shortfall to a surplus in a few years:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/texas-budget-surplus- pr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/texas-budget-surplus-proves-as- contentious-as-a-previous-shortfall.html?_r=0)

"A boom in revenues from sales taxes as well as taxes from oil and natural gas production have given Texas a budget surplus that the state comptroller has estimated at $8.8 billion."

And of course California is bleeding companies and jobs. No wonder its on the verge of bankruptcy:

[http://www.kcra.com/news/Two-dozen-companies-commit-to- leavi...](http://www.kcra.com/news/Two-dozen-companies-commit-to-leaving- California/-/11797728/18533954/-/item/0/-/n079fx/-/index.html)

"I tracked for 2011, that 254 companies of all sizes and shapes and kinds left the state for primarily other states," said Vranich, the president of Spectrum Location Services in Irvine."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Depends on the property.

In a oil burning boiler property with 8 baseboard zones and 8 Nest units, it saved me a thousand dollars a month all winter. Paid for itself the first winter.

Previous thermostats were programmable "eco" models that I kept programmed and used away/vacation modes on.

Savings was from being able to see on/off cycles for all 8 zones to better balance them, so boiler was on less overall.

I've recommended them to others and use one in a loft as well. Every installation is saving at least 10%.

</comment><comment><USER10> He's confusing kilowatts with kilowatt hours? They mean very different things. kW is a rate (kilojoules/sec) of usage (power). kWh a stackable amount (in the sense that you can stack money) of energy and is what the electric company charges you for. A basic mistake like this makes me question the validity of the results.

I'm in the market for 3 new thermostats and was hoping this article would help me with my decision. Presently, I'm leaning toward an Ecobees ([https://www.ecobee.com/](https://www.ecobee.com/)) thermostat which has a lot more features than the Nest and even has an API. It seems to be the Android of the thermostat world where Nest is the iPhone. Features vs polish.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, he probably doesn't understand the difference between kW vs. kWh, but it's not necessary to figure out how much money you've saved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nope, it's not worth it. And this data does not prove it is.

I need to know everything about the conditions prior to installing a Nest. In particular, I need to know about the thermostat and, if programmable, how it was programmed. I also need to know about living patterns. Did anything change? Was the programmed temperature higher in the summer and lower in the winter with Nest or was it set to about the same conditions?

In terms of energy efficiency. How is the house insulated? Can you add insulation to the walls or attic? Are the windows double-insulated? Do you use a whole house fan in the summer to cool the house at night? Do you have a multiple zone system so you don't have to heat or cool the entire house when you spend all day in, let's say, an office or the kitchen? Is it a two story home? Do you push hot air down in the winter in order to equalize the temperature? Do you have attic ventilators?

I see Nest as more of a neat gizmo with lots of marketing behind it than a real solution to a real problem. To be sure, the real solution requires a lot more work than bolting a piece of slick looking electronics to a wall. The payoff from a real solution would almost certainly be far greater and it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. For example, I use a $200 fan to cool my home at night (taking advantage of my local conditions). We have probably used the air conditioner a grand total of four weeks in the last three years. The savings in three years are already in the thousands and the investment was $200.

<comment><USER13> If you're comparing against an ideal savings regime, I imagine it's not worth it. However, in my case, I was always putting off figuring out how to program my thermostats, deciding it was too much trouble to adjust them, etc. Against that, I expect the Nest to pay off fairly quickly.

<comment><USER14> Programming a $15 thermostat from Lowes/HD is not hard, even remotely. Definitely not hard for HN readership.

<comment><USER15> Sure if your time is worthless.

But given that the average contract developer is charging themselves out at $100/hour investing the time to "program a thermostat" will rarely result in a ROI.

<comment><USER14> So do you hire someone from your cable company to program your DVR as well?

<comment><USER13> Someone from my what to program my what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If it prevented me from punching the wall next to the godawful current Carrier thermostat, it would be cheap at twice the price.

<comment><USER17> Meanwhile, my father had mastered the old VCR-style programmable thermostats, but he doesn't really 'get' the Nest I gave him. Too high-tech and automatic for him. But, Mom likes changing the temperature from her iPad.

<comment><USER3> I see a vision of all our futures. Cranky old tech guy and hot-flashing old woman spend retirement in hacking war to set the indoor temperature with their phones/tablets/whatever we're using in a decade or two.

<comment> at-fates-hands Thank you for the wonderful visual. This is the funniest thing I've read today and made me laugh pretty hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For me, it made a larger difference in my awareness of how much energy I actually use. Before nest I simply programmed my thermostat once and never touched it again because of the pain. Now I consciously adjust the temperature throughout the day from my desktop or phone. Just being able to walk out the door and turn the temp down from my phone if I'm suddenly not going to be home for a while is savings enough for me. I'm sure there are other thermostats that do the same thing but nest has done their advertising right and their interface/product design is top notch.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think it would be worth looking at this using "degree days". (Degree day stats from Wunderground, I eyeballed his KW since no firm numbers are provided).

* August 2011 vs. August 2012: 809 cooling degree days vs. 594 (1.36x). 2100 KW vs. 1500 (1.4x)

* January 2012 vs. January 2013: 544 heating degree days vs. 595 (0.91). 3000 KW vs. 2000 (1.5x)

So accounting for the weather with "degree days", with A/C it looks like there was no savings, but with heat it made a massive difference.

</comment><comment><USER20> There is also the "poor man's nest" \- the Filtrete 3M 50 which is $89 on Ebay and fully wifi supported with a well-documented API and fantastic Android app:

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R1.TR11.TRC1.A0.Xfiltret&_nkw=filtrete+3m50&_sacat=0&_from=R40)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure looking at the pure money saving in terms of lower energy is the way to go, since a lot of the benefits are more intangible than that. The ability to detect when you're away, automatic scheduling and easy control from a smartphone are pretty big benefits for me but they'd be hard to quantify in terms of being "worth it".

As others have pointed out, you can achieve a lot of that with other (cheaper) products. But to be honest, I think Nest's main strength is making the features easy and fun to use rather than having totally revolutionary new features. But that's the Android and Iphone claim to fame in the smartphone world, and they did OK ;)

</comment><comment><USER22> This needs to be correlated to the weather/temperature pattern of the two years since the nest is on your HVAC. Much of the US has had a milder summer and winter than the previous year; it may be the same for you.

</comment><comment> matthew-wegner I live alone in a house, in Phoenix. I use pynest to set my Nest to "Away" when my iPhone leaves the network (I just ping it constantly from a script).

My power bill is a _lot_ less than it was pre-Nest, and it requires no effort. Accessing the Nest when I'm about to head home is a nice benefit, too, to get the house cool before my iPhone is detected again.

(I have a sporadic schedule so the auto-away feature wouldn't work for me).

</comment><comment><USER23> I had a Nest early since I preordered it. Unfortunately it just died so I'm not the happiest person.

But, over the 1.5 years I had it I saved about 3% from previous years with a dumb thermostat. This doesn't recoup the cost at all.

One reason the savings was so low was that the firmware on the Nest was very inadequate during the 1st year. It didn't even do automatic heating/cooling on a schedule. All that was resolved last year.

The other reason is that the Home/Away detection is worthless for me (and I suspect many folks) because the thermostat location isn't in the traffic pattern of the house. I've pleaded with them to do a remote sensor but so far they don't care. Most of the new modern wireless system have the ability to add remote sensors so they're being left behind quickly.

Even so I'm not disappointed in the Nest. It's cool and I am very pleased to have wireless access via my smartphone to the temperature settings.

But they need to do a lot a work to get back to the level of companies like Honeywell and their distributed system.

</comment><comment><USER24> The failure stories I have heard convince me these are not fail-safe devices. If the thing shuts down in the winter and doesn't restart correctly, and you are away, you could come back to frozen/burst pipes. (Probably hasn't happened yet, but the failures have happened, so it's likely just a matter of time.)

So I would only use one of these paired with a conventional thermostat serving as a safety net, in case the Nest fails. But then I resent having to compensate for a manufacturer that cannot be bothered to build the failsafe into their own product in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER25> I live in an area where you rarely need air conditioning. Many homes around me do not even have them. However we do need heating from about November to about April, but it rarely does get below freezing. With that said my power bill is about 50/month for gas and electricity. I really didn't need a Nest, but it is certainly a fun tech toy to have. Being able to remotely turn on my heat or AC remotely is pretty nice when you want you're on your way home. So even if I don't make back the $249 that I spent, I still feel that it is worth the money.

</comment><comment><USER26> I believe the "auto away" detection feature on our Nest has made the biggest impact on our energy bill. Nowhere close to what the OP is saving, but I'd bet it's in the $50/year range.

</comment><comment><USER27> The real selling point is the aesthetics. That's why I bought it anyways.

The self-learning scheduler is nice, but I could easily program a manual one in a few minutes.

</comment><comment><USER28> If, worth = "love the convenience of a wi-fi enabled device that can be controlled by my phone and looks hella cool" then, yes...yes it is.

</comment><comment><USER29> Feels like a tipping point for Nest. Someone like this could be the next Apple.

I feel strongly a few of these Internet enabled devices will pave the way for a new industry. Imagine Nest being purchased by every household (like the iPod) and then moving on to other products.

At some point it feels like they could charge a subscription. Would you take a free device and pay them 10$ of your 30$/month savings?

<comment><USER30> You should take a look and see who the founder of Nest is. You may have hit the nail on the head without knowing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> i'm sorry, am i missing something here...? what exactly is wrong with paying $250 for a very nice piece of technology with a great user interface?

is this just a symptom of their chosen marketing strategy (saves you money!)?

</comment><comment><USER32> No, it's not. It's fun, and a great experience, and it's a joy, but it's not saved me any money.

</comment><comment><USER33> It is very unlikely that this is accurate, or there are substantial externals that are not being accounted for (e.g. stopping using a desktop as much as a tablet gets heavy usage) -- the difference between 2012-01-01 and 2013-01-01 is just _way_ beyond what even the biggest Nest hyper claims.

Outside of savings that grossly exceed even the best expectations, when questioned whether they used a programmable thermostat already (the absolute bog standard $20 variety automatically dropping the temperature in a manner that is close to optimal for about 95% of people), the author gave a very wishy-washy answer that didn't actually answer the question.

<comment><USER34> I've been a Nest user since nearly Day 1, and about 19 months now overall. At this point I've probably recouped about 80% of the price of the thermostat, with my electric bill reduced by about $10-11/month ($55-65/mo to $45-55/mo) for a 725 sqft luxury apartment.

I should probably write a blog post with all the details, but here's my take:

* I have a south-facing apartment with about 110-square feet of window glass. It heats up like a sonofa in the morning. I was able to counter this by setting a warmer limit for cooling in the summer. The blinds were always correctly set every evening to minimize summer cooling and winter heating.

* The leaf stuck out at me. I always wondered "why can't I get the leaf with my setting -- what do I have to adjust it to to get the leaf to appear?" This resulted in behavioral changes such as wearing different clothes, and taking better advantage of the windows to make getting the leaf to appear achievable.

* Once I hit the leaf, I then looked into other ways to maintain comfort, particularly in the summer. I've since invested in a fan to eliminate the envelope of heat that surrounds my body. Running the fan 20 hours a day is equivalent to running the A/C for 20-25 minutes, which is a big savings if I can eliminate 2.5 to 3 hours of A/C usage a day (at 18.5 cents/kWh).

With the addition of the fan, and finally finding some LED light bulbs with the right lens type and color temp (to replace some halogens in the track lighting), my electric bill was $42 for July, despite the ridiculous northeast heat wave. Despite constant 90+ degree temperatures and high humidity, I was able to get by with about 1 hour and 15 minutes of A/C a day, and didn't feel bad about it.

<comment><USER35> Of course, you don't need a Nest to learn to change your habits. Just stop using the HVAC, and you'll come up with alternatives. In my case, a mixture of fan usage and blinds/window usage.

<comment><USER36> If the nest is what makes it fun and simple enough to change the habits, it's entirely reasonable to say the nest caused them. Maybe most of the value of the nest comes from behavior modification rather than more precise temperature control. But even so, that's still value.

<comment><USER37> Exactly. It's like how the LCD with the real-time and historical fuel economy info in the Prius has been teaching people to drive more efficiently via the instant feedback you might not get in most other vehicles.

It's easy to say you could achieve the same thing without it, but facts show most people don't.

<comment><USER33> Many, many vehicles have real-time fuel-usage meters. Most people completely ignore them. The people who care about fuel-usage -- the sort of person who buys a Prius -- of course pay attention to it because it justifies the reason to buy the car.

Yet I suspect that very few of the people who bought the Nest actually care about energy usage, or reducing it. It is a lifestyle product and is a talking point, and while there are some who really desire it for that, many more set it to a static temperature and forget it. I hugely doubt that the total set of Nest users have seen any measurable decline in usage.

<comment><USER38> Isn't there a huge difference between the meter that the Prius has and the typical "real time" fuel meter. In particular, it is difficult to see how instant readings contribute to long term averages.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Drone Startup (kind of like Uber) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dronify.us <comment><USER2> The correct terminology isn't "kind of like Uber", you should be saying "Uber for X", in your case, we are "Uber for drones".

</comment><comment><USER3> This should be called 'Drone Depot'</comment>


5G Is Coming This Year. Here's What You Need to Know - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/technology/personaltech/5g-what-you-need-to-know.html <comment><USER2> Wasn't the point of LTE (Long-Term Evolution) to prevent the need for articles like this? Based on 7 years on 4G/LTE with T-Mobile I rarely got good speeds fast enough to reliably steam HD video.

Comparing cost and speed to developing nations like Indonesia I clocked 50Mbps down using a $7 prepaid SIM card on a 4G network in a densely populated area near am international airport.

Why should the average consumer care about upgrades when it seems they're already not getting their money's worth for the service they already pay for?</comment>


San Francisco rents increased by 13.5% in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zumper.com/2014/12/san-francisco-apartment-rents-rose-by-13-5-in-2014/ <comment><USER2> Austin isn't much better.

We have a 9% jump in the last 6 months.

[http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-austin-rent- trends...](http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-austin-rent-trends/)

[http://kxan.com/2014/08/01/austin-hottest-real-estate- market...](http://kxan.com/2014/08/01/austin-hottest-real-estate-market-in- the-us/)

While these seem like peanuts for Coaster's, its having a pretty huge effect on long time residents. We're undergoing a building boom that feels insane.

<comment><USER3> An actual building boom offers better hope that at some nearer point, the rent increases will pause and reverse.

<comment><USER2> You'd think so, but the last 3 years have not brought relief...I'm not complaining about housing prices - I've owned for a while, but I feel for my renting friends.

Traffic on the other hand...that's something to complain about

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In Arlington, TX where I live I could buy a high quality 3500+ SF house with pool and an acre for $3000 a month or so.

However downtown Dallas apartments are approaching $2500 because the traffic is so bad people want to live in town.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.miniwebtool.com/doubling-time- calculator/?r=13.5](http://www.miniwebtool.com/doubling-time- calculator/?r=13.5)

At this rate, rent will double every 5-6 years.

<comment><USER6> > At this rate

Be wary of any trend extrapolation. Better to figure out the dynamics underlying changes.

In this case, the rate will change way before rents have the chance to double. Rental markets are cyclical. In simple terms: They go up; they become unattractive to renters; they go back down.

<comment><USER7> There's no doubt that in many areas, including the San Francisco Bay Area, the current trend is not sustainable. But I think you're underestimating some fundamental shifts that have taken place that will put a floor under rents.

First, in the wake of the Great Recession, many folks are simply not able to buy homes. They can't meet more stringent lending standards and while there are efforts to make mortgages more accessible, a repeat of what you saw in the last housing bubble isn't likely any time soon. Making matters worse for folks still getting their financial footing is that home prices have appreciated considerably over the past several years.

Second, you need to consider demographics. Most young people can't afford to buy homes (more and more of them are living with their parents into their late 20s and 30s), and surveys indicate that home ownership is generally less important to younger people.

Finally, in some areas, including some of the most desirable parts of the Bay Area, there is realistically not going to be a significant increase in supply any time soon, so demand is likely to exceed supply for the foreseeable future.

Obviously, another recession would put a damper on things and double digit decreases in average rents are even possible in the hottest markets under such a scenario, but people waiting for $1,500 studio apartments in San Francisco shouldn't hold their breath.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The rent prices in SF (and around) have baffled me ever since I moved here in 2011. Can anyone explain who is supposed to be able to afford $3k+ for a studio?

Me and my gf both work in tech (making well north over 100k each) and between the two of us we barely can afford a 2bedroom apartment for about 3k/mo. I can't imagine living by myself and paying such insane amounts on rent alone. After adding in things like student loan payment, car payment and groceries/living expenses there isn't much left to save or do anything extra? (Don't even get me started on trying to "buy" a place and coming up with a downpayment, which is very different dynamic on by itself)

So, I can only assume that everyone who is able to drop 3-5k on rent alone must be making 200k at least? There can only be that many "Directors of engineering", "Heads of dev"? Clearly I am doing something very wrong here.

<comment><USER9> I live in SF and I work in tech. I make north of 100k and my rent is 2k. Your situation seems bizarre to me.

If you and your girlfriend make north of 100k, then you're pulling in cumulatively 13k-15k/mo after taxes. At $3k/mo your rent is below the commonly cited <33% of take-home income for housing. With at least $10k left over between you, why is it so difficult to save? I could very easily save 20% of my take-home or I could "upgrade" to a $3k/mo apartment. The only major payment I don't have in common with you is a car payment (and auto insurance). I'm also not particularly frugal, but I don't go eat at Saison every night either.

You really are doing something wrong. I don't know if you're griping in vain, but you and your girlfriend should review your lifestyle and make some changes.

<comment><USER8> We are definitely not living in financial hardship and I didn't mean to come off as someone who did. I definitely consider myself as one of the privileged ones and it helps that I have someone else contributing to the household. It's hard for me to imagine however, how I would be able to survive on my own or try and raise a family in current conditions, let alone being one of the less privileged, meaning not working in tech and having to live off (way) less than 100k in and around SF.

Now that I think of it, no-one I work with (with families) live in SF, even my boss and her boss (undoubtedly making north of 200k) all live outside the city (and even outside the peninsula) in places like Castro Valley, Fremont, etc. and most of those places have caught up pretty well with SF prices so I have no idea where to go next. (We bought a house in Tracy, CA that we are renting out, which was the closest place we could afford to buy).

I can't even begin to think where the next generation of workers will be living and in what conditions. Seems to me that if the 'middle class' is already being priced out of the city (and most of the bay area in general), in another 20 years or so, the city will either consists of VCs/dotcom/execs or prices will have to fall significantly.

<comment><USER10> My pet theory (with some anecdotal evidence) is that a lot of external investors are buying up most of the inventory. And a lot of young people making > 100k will spend large amounts of their income to live in the bay area even if they have to have roommates, etc. Cities like SF and NYC do have the advantage that you don't strictly NEED a car at least in some areas (and of course the gas, maintenance and insurance that goes with it) so that frees up a decent chunk of cash too.

What generally happens is once people start getting married and having kids they move to other states. I have seen this with several friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's believable, but they don't cite a source…

</comment><comment><USER12> The last time I visited SF, I saw an awful lot of new construction. Even though I'm aware that it's unquestionably a landlord's market over there these days, there has always been a sizable spread between what modern/new stuff rents for and what the older stock rents for. I'd really have to see a distribution of years since construction/last major remodel, to really believe any data like this. To lump it all together seems naive to me.

</comment><comment><USER13> Are these numbers so low because of rent control? I lived in a 300 square foot studio last year that cost me $1400 a month. That exact same studio now costs $2800. I've seen similar increases from craigslist posts throughout the city, compared to what I was looking at last year. What I wouldn't give for it to only have increased 15%.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's the same across the pond here in London - 9.5% increase between October 2013 and October 2014

Average rent is now £1411 (~$2200)

[http://homelet.co.uk/index.php/homelet-rental- index/greater-...](http://homelet.co.uk/index.php/homelet-rental- index/greater-london)

<comment><USER15> The benefit of living in London is that there is a super smooth gradient of rent decrease as you move further out in all directions, and there is reasonable commuter rail all the way. The downside of course is tiny rat- infested 150-year-old boxes remodeled 30 times since then, each time with a poorer job than the last. San Francisco has the upper hand here having burned to the ground more recently.

<comment><USER16> It's burned to the ground 108 years ago. Not THAT recent either...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It continues to strike me as odd that there isn't more focus on building high- density highrise housing in SF. Is this related to earthquake danger, historical preservation, idiocy on the part of local politicians, or some combination of these?

<comment><USER18> And, to add to what everyone else said: there are out-of-towners who are buying up this newly-built property; either as a place to stash some cash (people from China, Russia), or as a crashpad for when they come in to town (from other parts of Bay Area) for an event or something.

<comment><USER19> Not sure why parent is being downvoted. I personally know several rich (corrupt?) people from China who have bought or are actively shopping for homes here in the SF bay area. They still work & live in China, but from what they've told me, their goal is to

1) Buy a house for their kids studying in the US; 2) Launder their money; 3) Own a property outside of China as an investment; 4) Have a safe house in case they need to flee the country.

The bay area is a popular choice for such people due to the high concentration of Chinese immigrants / Chinese Americans already living here.

I'm not passing judgement, just presenting facts from personal experience.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I don't know why I was downvoted too... I was speaking from personal experience also. I happened to be friends with a realtor, and he would tell me about the crazy bids he was getting from China. A property in Pacific Heights got 2 Chinese bidders in a bidding war, both buying it sight-unseen, all cash, from China. Crazy times.

And I have friends in the Peninsula who have such crashpads in the City (unfortunately, I didn't win the IPO lottery like they did).

So I'm not blaming "furriners" or "1%", just stating what my limited experience has been.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would love to say this is shocking, but it has become routine to see double digit percentage increases in San Francisco rents. I am curious to see if the increases were as extreme outside on the city.

</comment><comment><USER21> That's why most countries put regulation on rent increases indexed on the inflation.

</comment><comment><USER22> My rent increased by 9% last year. This year it is increased by another 9%.

<comment><USER21> Your rent will double every 7-8 years if it keeps increasing that fast.

<comment><USER6> > if it keeps increasing that fast

Any reason you can give that it would?

<comment><USER21> If the tech bubble doesn't pop ?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


When people tell you that your idea sucks you should ignore them - <AUTHOR> http://www.hopelesscom.de/2012/3/31/when_people_tell_you_your_idea_sucks_ignore_them.html

<comment><USER2> Agree & Disagree.

Simply saying it sucks. Yeah. Ignore it. What the ??? What kind of value is that?

You should ask for more valued added feedback/comments.

There are lots of people, in my opinion, who don't really think through their ideas (or just not trained to think through their ideas) so if you are one of those people, it would help to get another person's perspective in why/why not your idea may or may not work.

It may work because X, Y, Z. But it sucks because A,B,C. I think issues that you will face because of 1,2,3 will be significant and impossible to overcome unless you have a strategy in place and you don't seem to have one. That's why it sucks. How could I ignore this?

I'd say my one advice from having thought of some really great ideas and being a chicken to ever execute on them which later on turned out to be massively successful businesses is DON'T EVER LISTEN TO ANYONE WHO SAYS, "Oh it's already been done before. You mean like this or that." There are very few industries/type of businesses where a)multiple market players can't co-exist and b)why making a better more valued-added site can't do well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that "it sucks" is the most stupid thing you can tell someone asking your opinion - "it sucks" was just a placeholder for every reason why you should not do something.</comment></comment>


How to read a JSP form data using Servlet Class and insert the data to MySQL - <AUTHOR> http://mrbool.com/how-to-read-a-jsp-form-data-using-servlet-class-and-insert-the-data-to-mysql-database/27947

<comment><USER2> Writing a blog post about how to do something is an excellent way of learning it yourself. I'm hoping that that is what the author is doing here... Though if so, it would be good if it was flagged as such.

Maybe posting it was for school credit?

</comment><comment><USER3> My eyes bleed...

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this a joke?</comment>


Convert Fireworks Layered PNG into iOS Objective-C Xcode Project - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> You've submitted a self-post with no text. I assume you meant to link to this:

'Convert Fireworks Layered PNG into iOS Objective-C Xcode Project'

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Czo-EPNdY></comment>


All you need to know about calling conventions in programming - <AUTHOR> http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2011/04/call-me-crazy-calling-conventions.html

<comment><USER2> In his summary of tail call optimization, he doesn't make it clear that TCO is especially useful with _mutually_ recursive functions. If you have eight different functions that tail call to each other (in a state machine, say), you can still do so in constant space. Doing that without TCO usually leads to inlining every state's code, and then a big switch statement or lots of GOTOs.

Tail-call optimization makes function calls more expressive. _THAT_ 's why they matter.

Any complaining that they lose debugging info strikes me as a bit weird. So do for / while loops, and leaf calls in procedures. So what? If you need logging, add logging.

</comment><comment><USER3> Or, if you want Guy Steele's opinion, every call is essentially a goto and should be treated as such. Thinking about function calls as graph traversal instead of a call stack allows you to do any call without any unnecessary variables.

[http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-lab- pubs/AIM-...](http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-lab- pubs/AIM-443.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> One might need to know considerably more, especially for low-level coding and/or efficiently SSE use. Recently we've had occasion to figure out quite a bit about stack usage and this yielded some surprises; I suspect that gcc could still use some work in conserving stack space.

As a grad student, in the dark days of the mid-90s we found a obscure and nasty hole in the MIPS calling conventions as they existed then, where IIRC you could actually lose a floating point parameter when making a variadic call.

It required a particular combination of not having ANSI headers and using a float vs. double in just the wrong place, and was more of a theoretical curiosity (again, if I remember correctly, you needed to be the float or double as the first arg to a variadic function, which is unlikely, as typically variadic functions take structs or pointers telling them what they'll be doing as their first arg).

Shortly after Bailey and Davidson published a paper that found the one we found, and a bunch of others, although these also included a lot of implementation flaws that weren't inherently holes in the convention per se:

<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~mwb5y/pubs/pldi96.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER5> The first comment is right though that he missed much of the nuances of C calling conventions, which I first thought this article was about. Still, it's much more interesting the way it turned out, a very good introduction to many interesting techniques that I wasn't aware of (and of which I'm not convinced of their usefulness, but still...)

<comment><USER6> Missed things like overloading in C++ (calling different functions by matching of their type signature, not just their name), template functions, generics, and exception handling (try/catch/throw).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> nice story. paragraphs would've helped, though.</comment>


The Expansion of the Clean Network to Safeguard America's Assets - <AUTHOR> https://www.state.gov/announcing-the-expansion-of-the-clean-network-to-safeguard-americas-assets/ <comment><USER2> Restricting communication with China isn't just a restriction on China, but on Americans. These laws prevent Americans from freely associating.

You see the same spin with immigration and trade restrictions. They are in fact a restriction of Americans' freedom to trade and associate, but are always presented from the other angle (as a restriction on foreigners).

<comment><USER3> When I (EU citizen) was on holliday in Cuba, I met a woman from US who had to do some special things to be able to visit that country as a tourist. She tried to make sure the US didn't know about it. "Freedom" is very relative indeed.

</comment></comment><comment> _-___________-_ From a position external to both China and the US, it's really hard to see a meaningful difference between the vague propaganda and doublespeak in this announcement and the same kind of announcements from the CCP.

<comment><USER4> A funny coincidence: The "Clean Network" was literally the exact same as "净网" campaigns in China which CCP unleash fierce crackdown on media and Internet to purge unwelcome content.

Or is it a name to troll CCP?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is incredibly vague. Is this a proposal for some kind of standard or protocol? It says that "many of the world's biggest telecommunications companies are Clean Telcos", so whatever it is it can't be that difficult to achieve.

Is someone familiar enough with this to provide a source that discusses what "Clean Carrier/Telco/Store/etc" entails technically?

<comment><USER6> This isn't about technology, it's about organizations and vendors. It's saying that PRC carriers may not connect directly to US telecommunications networks; that PRC apps cannot be available in app stores selling to US customers; that PRC smartphone manufacturers may not bypass the restriction on stores by selling phones to Americans with PRC apps pre-installed; that US cloud properties must be accessible to PRC companies; and that undersea cables aren't tapped by PRC intelligence agencies.

It's not about technology, it's about a business qualification for US telecoms and technology companies like Apple and Amazon. If they meet these standards, they're part of the "clean network" (which is just ugly obvious racism).

As a practical matter, this is dubious because there's hundreds of ways around these requirements bureaucratically. The value of this is the threat to China, that specific examples like TikTok can be chosen and banned; or that third parties like European businesses might move away from China to avoid jeopardizing U.S. business. This is just another front in the trade war.

<comment><USER7> Your first paragraph seems accurate. I think this move represents a failure of the spiritual goals of the Internet to provide standardized interconnection between networks globally, so I don't approve of the move. That said, I think you are far too casually throwing out the term "racist" in your comments here and elsewhere in the thread.

There are blatant, obvious actions that the CCP has taken or sponsored which have negatively impacted the security and privacy of people who are not citizens of China and data sovereignty is not a foreign concept. That's not even counting the more subtle things that we don't hear about in the news. So I think assigning "racism" as a motivation is naive and looking for an easy criticism rather than trying to intellectually wrestle with the very real complication of having standardized globally interconnected communication networks while at the same time having geopolitical conflicts (and all of the things which stem from that).

<comment><USER8> Well, another goal of the internet was to have a network without central coordinators that can continue to function even if parts of it went offline, say in a nuclear attack. This has no problem facilitating the global internet splintering into many smaller networks. Just goes to show how amazing the design of the IP protocol really is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> soon there will no longer be the one internet. There will internet one for the USA and the "west", internet two for China and the "east" internet.

and maybe a third type of internet for some countries which connects two both Internets (but maybe only one at a time?)

so we'll have first internet countries (USA), second internet countries (China), and third internet countries (both)

<comment><USER10> That's already the case. You have at least China's Internet, Russia's Internet, France is discussing ways to do the same, Australia seems to want to do it too, Thailand did some experiments a few years ago, etc.

<comment><USER11> Yet, no one seems to care what is unloaded from the ship docks, literally a "Port" where 98% of the goods are manufactured in one country including the entire supply chain that spans behind those goods.

<comment><USER8> And all the tools that make those goods and the IP behind them is owned by the US. Stuff like semiconductor equipment, CPU designs, and electronic design automation software, and China has to pay license fees every time it uses them to manufacture a product. China is desperately trying to achieve technology independence because it knows that it has few comparable replacements if the US decided to completely close access to its technology tomorrow. It's not impossible to move manufacturing out of China. After all, it's already been done once before when it moved out of the US. However, it's not proven that China can reach technological independence. Japan and South Korea were able to make the jump to high tech industries but they're still very tied to US technologies.

However, a better indicator of who has the technology lead than commercial applications in my opinion is if China can replicate US military technology, for example build an equivalent or better to the F35.

<comment><USER12> The US can't build the F35 either, considering all the cost overruns, delays, basic issues found late in the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a US Citizen on the West Coast, my unadvertised research servers have been harassed by PRC IPs and others, without fail, for a decade+. I am not at all associated with the US Federal Government, and do not practice partisan politics.

All I know is, I have done nothing myself to PRC China, yet my basic linux and BSD setups are daily refusing all kinds of stupid and smart hack attacks via the Internet from that address range.

<comment><USER14> Just curious, why do you assume it's the "PRC China" that's attacking your boxes instead of just some random Chinese high schooler?

<comment><USER4> Just curious, why do you assume it's the "PRC China" that's attacking your boxes instead of just some botnets happened to have tons of Chinese IPs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Time to get a VPN if you want to communicate across the Great Firewall of America.

<comment><USER15> Curious about the downvotes. Do people believe that this curtailment of freedom can't happen in America? I know people already rushing to prepare for it.

Or perhaps they believe that it will happen, but that it's a good thing?

Or perhaps, as is increasingly common, they believe both simultaneously: "China's firewall restricts freedom; our copy of it promotes freedom."

<comment> _-___________-_ > "China's firewall restricts freedom; our copy of it promotes freedom."

Sadly, I think there are a lot of people who would believe that.

<comment><USER16> Sort of the difference between a wall that keeps you in versus a wall that keeps unwelcome people out. But then again, some people believe that the us- mexico border wall is morally equivalent to the Berlin Wall, so who knows how that argument will go.

<comment><USER15> > Sort of the difference between a wall that keeps you in versus a wall that > keeps unwelcome people out.

And how do you think the Chinese state describes the Chinese firewall?

<comment><USER16> I don't know, but it is clear that the Chinese firewall is about preventing Chinese people from accessing the wider internet, not about preventing non- chinese people from accessing the Chinese internet.

<comment> _-___________-_ > the Chinese firewall is about preventing Chinese people from accessing the > wider internet

It's not, really. Most of the "wider Internet" is accessible, only specific (mostly US or politically-oriented) properties are inaccessible. Very much like what is being planned in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hate the name, even the colonial imperialist associations with Cyber Monroe Doctrine sound more diplomatic than Clean Network. This literally sounds like an intellectual purge. Maybe because it is. This is a very purge-y purge name for a purge.

I guess we've officially thrown our hat into the ring for digital sovereignty and cyberpopulism. I wanted some decentralization but not like this.

I'm just upset that China gets Great Firewall and Russia gets Digital Iron Curtain and we get... Clean Network.

Is it too much to ask that we at least have better marketing for our authoritarianism?

Also, seems like a dated understanding. What happens when the Internet reaches comparable availability via satellite? No wonder they want to test shooting missiles in orbit.

With EARN-IT, the H1-B ban, Clean Network, etc., I fear we're setting back our scientific and intellectual advantage several generations. The lessons of the Crypto Wars feel distinctly appropriate.

I'm certainly starting to feel the wind blow a certain direction. Only the paranoid survive.

<comment><USER18> The name is very likely a play on China's "净网行动" (literally translate to: a campaign to cleanse the Internet).

Unfortunately there's no much English reference for it, but [https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh- hans/%E6%89%AB%E9%BB%84%E6%89%93...](https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh- hans/%E6%89%AB%E9%BB%84%E6%89%93%E9%9D%9E%C2%B7%E5%87%80%E7%BD%912014?wprov=sfla1) is a Wiki page in Chinese.

<comment><USER19> "clean net 2014" mainly cleans up pornographic content.

<comment><USER18> No, it's a way to censor a lot of websites or push them to self-censor their content.

There are multiple waves of "Campaign to cleanse the Internet". The linked wiki page is for 2014 and the latest one is in 2020: [http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2020-04/11/content_5501287.htm](http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2020-04/11/content_5501287.htm)

<comment><USER19> I don't deny that "clean net" is pushing self-censorship.

I just want to point out that Pompeo's goal of cleaning up a country can easily extend to ethnic groups, which seems to be a sign of fascism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jas- Why aren't there lines of effort for hardware manufacturing processes, firmware and logistical supply chains?

<comment><USER11> This is where the focus should be. The _entire_ world has put all eggs in one nest. That's just asking for trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Clean Carrier: To ensure untrusted People's Republic of China (PRC) carriers > are not connected with U.S. telecommunications networks. Such companies pose > a danger to U.S. national security and should not provide international > telecommunications services to and from the United States.

I hope this doesn't affect international roaming while in the PRC, which tunnels all your traffic through your home country. That's how I get around the firewall when I'm there.

</comment><comment><USER21> China blocks and keeps out US companies like Google, so not really that surprised. If they can't use Google, why should we use TikTok? But on the other hand this does seem a bit concerning, the cool thing about the internet is it connects the world, someone in the US could be friends with someone in the Netherlands and even collaborate on projects and stuff using Github, etc. So if blocking off China is ok instead of building more secure systems, wonder if this is a step down the wrong path? First China, who's next?

But I've already found this stuff is strange, like a Android Phone manufactured in China can't even go to Google's website unless you ship the phone out of China or VPN etc yet Google makes Android...

I think it'd be cool to have fully automated factories, just pour in raw materials and new phones pop out. Could even have mini factories closer to where you are selling them too. I do think all the processors or other component being made overseas for critical systems could also be a weakness.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to see some evidence of 5G being actually cleanable. See for example [https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/24/new-4g-5g-security- flaws/](https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/24/new-4g-5g-security-flaws/)

<comment><USER23> As long as it did not contain equipment from specific foreign firm or countries, that's the standard. Brought to you from the proponent to outlaw encryption, what other evidence do you expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am caught in a difficult position. On one hand, I think this is BS and its political, not about security. On the other hand, fuck the CCP (democracy, treatment of minorities, HK, Coronavirus, war with India, South China Seas BS, what's not to hate?).

</comment><comment><USER25> "To remove untrusted applications from U.S. mobile app stores." What is trusted?

<comment><USER24> Anyone part of the republican party donor association.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> For a moment I can't tell whether this is a state department's press release or a comment below Bill Gates' instagram post.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is this another way to attract the public's attention? I mean, I am very curious about why there is nobody even cares about the coronavirus any more. All of them are focusing on some "ethereal" problems. And just let the city down, let the people die.

Why there is no further national-wide action? Trump is always asking for re- opening, asking the school to re-open, asking the community to re-open. Well, I understand that is good/essential for the economy. But the question is, how? Maybe you don't believe, there are around 5M infected people in the US, which means for every 100 people, there is one who is/was infected.

And the even more ridiculous thing is, this number is still rocketing, no sign to stop. Every day, I can see many homeless, they don't have to be homeless, but the country is still sick, they have no choice.

I really hope there could be one day that we can back to normal days. The sun, the flowers, the people.

</comment><comment><USER28> Are Trump and Pompeo building a great firewall of censorship the same as China's "great" firewall?

Keep the internet open. Don't be like China.

</comment><comment><USER29> Spyware from CHINA will not be tolerated. However if the apps are spyware from Russia (who have already attacked our electoral systems _directly_ and _successfully_ ), hey take what you want!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Trump's building a Firewall

</comment><comment><USER30> Here goes Fiber Curtain

</comment><comment><USER31> I am puzzled. Was the Prism project clean or dirty?

</comment><comment><USER32> If they called it "Dim Some Networks", do you think the US could make a billion people laugh at the same time?

The Internet has been the best version of Dim Sum for a hungry mind, so its a shame possesive cultures ruined it for themselves...

<comment><USER32> Appreciate the DV`s :)

Some jokes never get old [0].

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_finger_trap](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_finger_trap)</comment></comment>


Uber, seeking a female CEO, has narrowed the list to three men - <AUTHOR> https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-washington-post/20170805/281741269508206 <comment><USER2> I cannot stand how the scrolling works on the pressreader website.</comment>