What I Learned About Life by Becoming a Landlord - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/a25120/landlord/ <comment><USER2> Being a landlord, hiring people, working directly with the general public (retail, food service) are eye opening experiences.

I watched my father be the kind of land lord anyone would hope to have just to watch some people destroy his property and treat him with hostility.

Now I know why your landlord treats you like he expects the worst from you.

I hired people for work they cared about (non profit), treated them well, the earned prestige and leadership experience they couldn't have had in their previous jobs just to watch them turn on me and spread lies and toxicity and try to destroy the organization because I praised someone else's work too.

Now I know why companies treat people like they expect the worst from them.

I worked at a Taco Bell and Starbucks. People yelled at us and treated us like scum for the offense of working for minimum wage.

Apparently people who make more than minimum wage automatically have more intrinsic human value? I'll never know. But I know I'll excuse a lot with retail and food workers because my life is roughly 30x times better than theirs.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about people actually believing they have more intrinsic value because they make more than minimum wage, I just think the problems comes from a few areas:

\- They were/are getting treated like shit and are transferring the energy on

\- People are increasingly 'busy' leading to higher levels of stress and anxiety that just have them snapping easier

\- There's a lot more of us than there used to be, so even if the percentages stayed constant, there's a lot more f%cking twats running around out there

Especially with younger people I professionally interact with (I'm 34), but also with age peers, I've noticed that a shockingly large percentage have never had that job experience of working at a place that was crappy, for minimal pay, bad hours, tough work, etc. Generally they didn't work at all until maybe a couple of internships in college, or some other form of light entry into the workforce. I think it really does something to create a lack of empathy for those people not in a situation exactly like ours.

My personal belief is it doesn't matter what our two situations are, being an asshole is being an asshole. If you're going to be a jerk to someone who's working a random lunch counter, you're probably just generally a jerk the majority of the time. Wealth, status, fame, are no excuses for a lack of human decency.

<comment><USER4> I dated someone who lived in a Section 8 housing complex. It was a major eye opener. Every one was terrible to every one else. I'd never seen anything like it. It validated the observation that the middle class has nothing to worry about from the lower class, they're too busy tearing into each other.

Generally, people behave poorly, are easily controlled/distracted, when they're scared and stressed. Like when they can't pay their bills. This Great Unraveling, where no one feel financially stable or secure, is turning everyone into savages.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't generalize too much based on a single experience.

I live nearby a low income city owned apartment complex. It's not a high rise, but is more dense than the surrounding houses.

There are many elderly people there who go out of their way to be nice to me and my family when we walk by. But there are others who don't have enough respect for the neighborhood not to just throw their garbage on the street. Literally garbage bags in front of their doors on their sidewalk (they have garbage cans less than 20 ft away which they could instead use). I wish I could understand why they don't see this as their own neighborhood and should treat it with more respect.

Generally what I notice is that there are some people with some mental issues who just yell and scream at people randomly. They need more than just housing help, but hey this is America, healthcare for those at the top is great. Then there are the elderly who IMO are the ones most deserving of the housig help.

Generally something feels broken, but I'm not clear what the fix is, it's definitely not one thing. And I don't think it's just money, because anyone living there is getting a substantially lower rent than market rate, and that's really my main point. I don't believe the root cause is money, as much as it's less education; mental or physical issues that make traditional work hard; and some misaligned societal incentives. Those all lead to financial issues that landed them there; basically financial hardship for many that I see is more of a symptom of a greater societal problem. I'm definitely no expert, and have never had to deal with any of that personally.

<comment><USER6> Psychopaths are very much over-represented amongst the richest (didn't get caught) and poorest (did get caught.) There aren't too many who took a middle path and ended up with middling results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a lesson in this piece in community, and how the rich and fortunate should treat those they deal with, just perhaps as in the movie It's a Wonderful Life:

'My dad gave himself over to that place. He kept a shoe-repair place in business for nearly thirty years by breaking policy, by being patient with the billing, by cajoling, by any means necessary, because he respected the man who ran it, a guy I knew only as Clarence. He fought to keep the supermarket open for the urban customer base who had nowhere else to go for groceries without getting on a bus. I believe he provided small loans to start-up businesses. I know he waited out their rent checks. He kept things running as landlord, even at some cost. He did it for the betterment of the city.

In his residential spaces, he was loathe to raise the rent even after many years. Especially after many years. He dropped off cases of beer and huge boxes of Italian cookies to make his tenants feel appreciated. He gave rent abatements when people got cancer. He gave graduation presents, anniversary presents, sent handwritten notes and newspaper clippings to his tenants and their families. While I'm sure some people hated the landlord in him, I believe my dad treated his tenants with honor as long as they did the same for the space he provided (and didn't run up the house account at Wilson Hardware). I know this because people stopped me—on the floor of the mall, in the street, at the reception after my father's death—to testify to it. I came to see that my father was known by many, if not all, as a kind steward of place. This is as much as any landlord can hope to be.'

<comment><USER8> Great section of the article. It reminds me how much my kids watch and learn from me. The author's father shaped so much of how he sees the world and aspires to be.

This was a good reminder that your kids notice every kindness you pay to others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If none of this sounds appealing to you, consider investing in a real estate investment trust (REIT). These are companies that purchase office buildings, hotels, and other properties and distribute their rental income as dividends. For example, Vanguard has a diversified REIT ETF with a minuscule expense ratio and a healthy 4% yield: [https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundIntExt=I...](https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundIntExt=INT&FundId=0986)

<comment><USER10> Real estate looks as if it is way over-priced at this point. If you don't want the tax benefits of owning a rental, why not index fund your money, then you would be almost double the 4% long-term, either way.

<comment><USER11> Which market?

I agree a lot of hot metros are looking expensive (SF, Seattle).

Things are cheaper in places farther from growth and money, e.g. rural Indiana. I'm not sure whether they're better deals on balance, but quite different.

<comment><USER12> Just what those people living in those places need. More investors making money off their condition. The rent is already too damn high.

<comment><USER13> REIT investors aren't the cause of high rents. Actually the opposite. Every dollar they put in lowers the cost of capital for property developers and encourages the construction of new housing units.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've never done it but I've heard stories. One particularly nasty one was from a landlord who entered a recently vacated property a few weeks after the tenants left. He found a dead dog who had obviously been left alive. There were scratches and bites and claw marks and filth everywhere where the dog had tried to get out and then to eat carpets, cabinets, etc. The place was generally trashed and infested with roaches that hadn't been there when it was rented. He found it so disturbing he started selling properties after that and exiting the business. (He also called the cops on that one. Not sure if anything happened as a result.)

He said that was the worst but he had other pretty insane stories: domestic abuse, meth cooking, Fear and Loathing levels of trashing the place, etc.

There's a lot of real nasty and/or disturbed people out there. Anything that gives you a lot of unfiltered contact with the general public shows you that. It's depressing and frightening.

<comment><USER15> I just did a post on here about being a landlord... domestic abuse... it's a real mess. And it just eats your profitability -- not to sound callous.

I had a tenant who hit his girlfriend. They were both on the lease. Anyway she filed charges against him (good for her!) but that meant I had to let her off the lease. Her dipshit boyfriend couldn't pay for the place on his own... so then I was left in a situation where I got paid like 1/2 rent one month, then had to give him 30 days for free to vacate...

The girl called me in tears, "Can I please get my security deposit back I moved out already?" I was like, "No, sorry... I can't give that back until I do the exit walk through, and you're already behind at least half a month on rent..." and then, "I'm sorry but your shithead boyfriend didn't clean up the place after he left..."

I felt for her, but not a lot I could do other than eat the loss she was causing me by having horrible taste in men. I feel like a jerk saying that... but I didn't feel like the burden should fall on me... She got all snarky with me, threatened to hire a lawyer... but nothing ever came of it... I ended up taking their entire security deposit, and still having to pay out of pocket for cleaning services.

Domestic violence creates a no-win situation. I'm out money, and it's not like my mortgage and taxes stopped because she had drama in her life... I really just wanted to tell her, "Be more careful, and have higher standards next time around..." but of course that would have been rude and uncalled for. The whole thing just sucked. I still feel guilty about it... and there's no reason I should, she signed the lease agreement.

<comment><USER16> Can you clarify for me how you're using ellipses? It seems like you're ending many sentences with them. What effect are you trying to achieve?

<comment><USER17> Look just like pauses to me. Not necessary, but legible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "Do you like making me into the landlord?"

Is 'landlord' a dirty word with connotations in the US? Why's it such a big deal for him to say he's the landlord? Obviously he's the landlord.

<comment><USER19> I think it means that the father preferred to view the relationship as one of equals or partners. When the tenant starts playing games with the rent that forces the father's hand and makes the relationship adversarial in nature.

The sentiment reminds me of people who view their boss as the enemy always out to screw them vs an equal they work with to accomplish company goals. It depends a great deal on the general demeanor of the boss for sure but basic professionalism on the part of the employee goes a long way to keeping the boss from having to be the bad guy.

<comment><USER20> I think you're glossing over a very important part of this: the power imbalance. It's easy for bosses (or landlords) to think of their relationships with subordinates/tenants as one of "equals" as long as it benefits them. As soon as they perceive it doesn't, however, that imbalance becomes very much front-and-center. Any notion of equality in the relationship is either an illusion or temporary and it's best for all parties if they behave as though they recognize the imbalance and understand what it means.

<comment><USER21> I consider my manager as an "equal". I respect his "role power", but working for a small IT department we very much have a partnership. His role is to get strategy and priorities from on high, my role is tactical - implement the best architecture and training in the way I see fit within the very broad guidelines that he sets.

He has the power to guide my job but I also have the power to leave and find another job.

<comment><USER20> That works nice, as long as it lasts. Do you think your manager views your relationship as a partnership? What happens when his boss jumps on him for failing to deliver something, delivering something poorly, etc.? Are you sure he's not going to serve you up as a scapegoat?

<comment><USER21> If i am the lead dev/architect and he gave me the latitude to implement it the way I thought was best, why would I be the "scapegoat" and not the person that should shoulder the blame for a poorly implemented project?

On the other hand I don't over promise. I've told everyone that they can either impose a deadline or features but not both. In other words, they can tell me these are the features they need and I can come back with a deadline after talking to the rest of the team, or they can tell me the deadline and we can discuss what features you can have by the deadline.

I'm not naive enough to think that everyone has a job where they can do that. But when I interviewed I was coming in to basically create a modern dev shop from scratch - source control, CI, automated testing, etc. with a group of developers who learned on the job without any formal training. I only accepted the job with the promise I would be given the time to set things up correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One of my tenants was disgusting.

He had a loogey/booger wall.

He also had a dog we didn't know about, and this was a unit that was right behind our house. Which mean he didn't take the dog out to shit, he just let it shit on the carpet. And all the dog shit, had toe prints in them... uck

Other than that it's been pretty good. A lot of people just work hard, and want a roof over their head.

</comment><comment><USER23> " _And you never know how someone lives until you lie beneath their kitchen sink with your head on a bag of Meow Mix._ "

Why is there a bag of Meow Mix when the policy is 'no pets'?

<comment><USER13> Some tenants find a way around "no pets" policies by getting their pets classified as service animals under the ADA for "emotional support" or similar. While some people have a legitimate medical need the system is widely abused.

<comment><USER24> > by getting their pets classified as service animals

No cat has ever provided a service

<comment><USER25> Cats have been approved as service animals for autistic children before.

<comment><USER24> Do you have a link for that? DoJ appears to include only dogs (and maybe miniature horses): [https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm](https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm)

Or do you mean emotional support/comfort/therapy animals?

[https://www.animallaw.info/article/faqs-emotional-support- an...](https://www.animallaw.info/article/faqs-emotional-support-animals)

[https://adata.org/publication/service-animals- booklet](https://adata.org/publication/service-animals-booklet)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's nothing special. Every time you interact with people you have to start from zero.

Don't let idiots make you bitter forever.

</comment><comment><USER27> > Clarity, I found, is a better motivator than the threat of small claims > court.

Clarity prevents problems before they start

</comment><comment><USER28> I've never been a landlord but have known two over the course of their rental property careers. They went from being amicable to noticing and expecting the worst from people, essentially becoming jaded. And the transformation is similar in quality to many police officers, how they wear an expression on their face as if humanity has broken their heart.

Watching this impacted me enough to decide that I'd never want to be a landlord. It's an odd position to be in in the first place. To be responsible, in a sense, for how others live.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a rental property... I used to live there, then I bought a house closer to work and rented out the original house with plans of moving back there some day. Now... I'll never move back. It's in a nice neighborhood, rent requires the people who live there to probably make $150-200k a year... you'd think it'd be OK... But nope. Anyway every part of the article is true.

The rest of this is just be venting for therapeutic reasons. Ha.

First... you really don't make that much money off the property. Once you pay for maintenance upkeep, and taxes, and taxes on the income you get as rent... you just aren't making much... if anything from the renters. I'm probably losing money on my renters... but I make it back (in theory) in property value gains.

Second... holy hell, some people just should never leave apartments. And all the stereotypes are true. You have to assume they are all out to fuck you over... and incompetent... if you don't, you'll be in for a lot of disappointment.

I rented to an Indian family for 12 months, and after I had to have the place scrubbed top to bottom, ducts all cleaned... and it still smelled like curry. New tenant was furious at me for "not cleaning"... I have no idea how to get the curry smell out. I spent over $2k in professional cleaning services... over 2x what it cost to de-cat-pee the place... now I never want to rent to another Indian family. We literally hand-washed the walls, twice... Then eventually repainted everything inside (another $4k)... the house has no carpets or curtains... no clue how the smell stayed. And I had to give a discount to the new tenant for 4 months because of the smell. There is a fan over the stove... but it clearly never got used when they were cooking.

I rented to a Chinese family for 6 months... and I think they moved like 10 people into a 3 bedroom house. I only met the first couple... but every time I went there were 2 cars in the garage, 2 in the driveway, and at least 4 on the street. And every time I would knock on the door a different person answered in broken English.

Families with kids... will trash your property. And they will bitch and bitch that things were broken before they moved in, their precious snowflakes didn't burn parts of the walls, or drill holes, or kick the drywall under their desk so much it cracked all up the wall...

Pets are disgusting. Cats stink. Dogs are destructive. I had to re-do the wood floors after a tenant's dog clawed them all to shit... had to sue the tenant for damages. "It's normal wear and tear!" they insisted... but they had a 120 pound dog whose nails they never bothered to trim. I got smart and just replaced everything with tile after that. For a rental... just pretend you're dealing with malicious jerks who are bent on destroying anything nice you put in the house... and then plan accordingly.

Tenants will lie and lie and lie again to get out of paying for damages. And worse than lie, they do shit that makes it hard to find the true damages... forget toothpaste in the walls to cover up nail holes... I had a tenant put duct tape over drywall and then use spackling paste and paint on top of that. It looked just good enough that if you were in a rush you may have signed off on his move out damages. I had another family try and prop a closet door up, one that took out the inner glass of a window so it wouldn't appear broken (still had the outer glass) -- but then it made it a harder job to replace the glass because they had bent the frame all to shit. Cost them more than if they would have just told me about the break in the first place...

They aren't at all honest about what they fuck up, and they don't have a clue what it costs to fix something correctly. "Man, faucets only cost like $40 at Costco... why you charging me $500?!" Well... because the faucets you destroyed were nice faucets that cost around $350 each, and there's an installation fee... and I'm not even charging you for the other faucet that I have to replace so the two will still match in the master... I'm also covering the damage to the granite counter top where you hit it with a hammer or whatever when you were trying to tighten your vice grips on the faucet handle instead of calling me when you initially broke it a year ago..."

Tenants always sneak in dogs, cats, extra roommates... My first lease agreement was 10 pages... the last one I used was about 45. It spells out everything that I know to include... plus penalties... "Don't sit on the damn roof, asphalt composite shingles are not meant to be walked on when it's 100 degrees outside... you're getting charged for replacing 1/3rd of the roof because you put lawn chairs up on the roof and literally were up there so often you wore a path in the shingles..." "Don't smoke in the house, but if you are going to smoke in the house... don't just cut the wires to the smoke alarms and just tuck them back up in the drywall."

Despite hiding all the shit they do, and bitching about things they notice... most of them are incompetent at owning a house... won't report water on the windowsill leaking in right away until there's rot in the wood and the whole frame has to be replaced... won't report a wasp nest growing out of the rafters in the roof until it's a $1,200 job to remove it... will let their kids hang off of the ceiling fans and fuck those all up... Some people should never live in a house... put them in an all brick apartment building with cement floors and reinforced windows. There's a reason public schools are built the way they are.

You lose so much faith in people when you rent property. If you don't assume they're all out to fuck you over... you'll get fucked over. It'll cost you a fortune in repairs, and so much hassle and stress because the dipshit who rented from you will fight you tooth and nail... and cry about every little cost... when in fact they aren't even paying 50% of what it really cost to get it repaired... let alone the time you lose because you can't rent it in the shitty condition they left it in.

<comment><USER29> You've just convinced me that I never want to be a landlord. I don't need to read any more. All of that stuff sounds like stuff out of my worst nightmare.

In fact, I don't even want to own a home any time soon. Sounds like way too much work.

<comment><USER30> To counter the op.

My family has been in the rental business for more than 30 years. I have 2 of my own. We never had any issues like the op mentions. A couple late payments and 2 evictions from lack of payment and that is it since I remember (I only started helping around 15 years ago, can't say what happened before).

Just really choose your tenants carefully. Better to have someone you know will take care of the house and get 400 a month then someone that can pay 500 but shows a lot of warning signs they will trash it. And if you are even remotely handy, a lot of the small fixes can be done by yourself in a matter of hours.

<comment><USER15> Sort of depends on the quality, right? I mean, I know your 400-500 range was an example... but the house I'm leasing out rents for like $3500 / month in Austin -- that's on the upper-side of things here. I can fix some things, provided I have time, but a lot of stuff I end up calling a handyman for if it needs to get fixed during the week, or if it's something "nice" that I don't want to mess up trying applying my amateur-level talents towards.

I said this in another post, but my worst tenant by far came from because they were a friend of a neighbor I trusted... it's easier said than done screening folks. You never really know what they are going to be like.

Glad you've had luck with it! Care to share any screening pointers? I'm happy with my current tenant... I did a criminal check, credit check, and asked for some references... but I've gotten those all come up aces in the past too and still had people trash the place. All I've found that works is a verbose contract spelling out penalties if they do things I don't want them to do.

<comment><USER30> (not in the USA, so things are a bit different, we can't do credit checks or criminal records for example) The tenants I have in my properties were relatives of people I knew. What we do here is we have a concept (fiador) where while you sign the lease yourself, another person/couple (usually parents) are financially responsible for any non payed rent/damages. This has the 2 benefits, a) the fiador knows he will be liable for any crap the renters do, so if they know they will trash the place they will refuse to sign (big warning sign) and b) you have 2 separate entities to go after for damages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This was a great read. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER32> The writing on this _Popular Mechanics_ article/memoir is superb, filled with rich detail and expository flourish.

For example, this passage succinctly and adroitly presents the landlord's peculiar fate.

      > For a landlord, all stories end on a broken aquarium. Or
      > maggots in the unplugged refrigerator. That double-pane
      > window that "fell out" during some Halloween party. The
      > climax of a story belongs to the tenant. The denouement is
      > the landlord's burden alone. And it generally involves a mop.

A pleasure to read such good writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As someone who had pondered becoming a part time landlord as an investment, this is a really interesting read.

<comment><USER34> Some random advice to you or anyone else: it's not as easy as you think.

The housing boom over the past 20 years makes everyone belive that real estate is the path to easy wealth. But being a landlord takes work and offers a market return. There is no magic. Those people who tell you "I just collect the rent" haven't been doing it long enough.

<comment><USER35> Or they turn over a good portion of that rent to a third party to do the actual maintenance and management of the properties (a big business in and of itself).

<comment><USER36> If you are thinking of using a management company, know that they have it pretty well figured out. Their fees will take almost all of your rental income after mortgage and taxes and insurance. So you'll end up with property that the tenants paid for (no small thing) but no real cash flow.

<comment><USER13> Besides that there is a high level of fraud in small-time property management. Crooked managers have kickback arrangements with their preferred vendors for landscaping, appliance repair, painting, etc. The property owner pays full retail price for the work and then the manager gets cash back under the table. Many managers are 100% honest but it's difficult to know whom to trust and there's no way to really be sure.

<comment><USER37> Hah, know what's even better than that, when the PM company outright owns (or their owner owns) a whole arm of companies like that, AND has "exclusivity arrangements" with those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This article is from February. Some process possibly involving random inputs, led to OP posting this article today. Yet, I've observed a lifetime of such randomness as anything but random in my little perception of the universe.

</comment><comment><USER39> >Then sit with the tenant at a bar or coffee shop and read through the whole of it before the signing.

Hm.

</comment><comment><USER40> The tenant works, dad landlord ring up for a cut. Poor landlords having to do some work!</comment>


Scientists Explain Why Computers Crash But We Don't - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news192128818.html <comment><USER3> I'm underwhelmed. The reason we build our programs that way is that actually makes them _less_ likely to crash. We actually have access to programs structured more like the E. Coli graph. They crash a lot. Because the fact that one error takes down the whole system has less to do with the organizational structure of the code, and more to do with the fact that we've deliberately built the system such that one error will crash the entire system... because the alternative is worse. There's no recovering from a segfault not because there aren't enough different implementations of core functionality, but because there is no sensible way to recover from a segfault.

Cells have a type of redundancy programs do not have, and may never have, and it actually hasn't got anything to do with the source code at all. They have numerous independent copies of things that mostly work, most of the time. They perform tasks that transform lots of things into lots of other things, most of the time. The whole system is built so that everything mostly works, most of the time, usually recovers, and it doesn't matter much whether this cell dies or that mitochondria malfunctions. It's an entirely different set of primitives brought on by massive parallelism. (And not the usual biological parallelism you hear about in the brain, but physically, everywhere.)

It's the difference in primitives that brings about the difference in result. Difference in optimal layout is an _effect_ , not a _cause_. Cells don't have the option to work like programs, and programs really don't have the option to work like cells. (At least not without a lot more computational resources.)

<comment><USER4> >The whole system is built so that everything mostly works, most of the time, usually recovers, and it doesn't matter much whether this cell dies or that mitochondria malfunctions.

What makes you think we can't design reliable software systems that way? In fact, I think it has already proven to be a remarkably good idea: <http://erlang.org/>

<comment><USER3> Heh, I actually cut out a segment where I started describing a system I could build that would work like that, starting with Erlang. (I actually program professionally in Erlang, though not exclusively.) It got too long and parenthetical.

It's still not the same. There's just no biological equivalent to a bit of code that is dividing by zero or referencing a file that doesn't exist, or any of several other errors I've made that have brought enormous swathes of the supervision tree down because they're restarting crappy code. Erlang adds this sort of biology-style robustness at the top of the stack, biology itself works with it at the bottom of the stack. That changes everything. Programming with massive unreliable parallelism may indeed someday happen, but it's a long road between here and there.

<comment> j-g-faustus Well, we can find or create equivalences.

Someone I knew did a master thesis on the male reproductive system, he told me that males have 10-15 largely independent biological pathways to produce sperm. From nature's perspective the point is presumably that if you can still breathe, you should be able to reproduce :)

If we were to put the same level of effort into a file reading module, we would have the files replicated over 10-15 different systems with file reading code written by a dozen different people in a dozen different languages, all using different heuristics to locate a similar file (or a backup) if the original wasn't found. Add some sort of selection mechanism to pick the best result from the 10-15 return values, and you would have a very resilient file reader :)

I can't imagine we will ever want to write code like that by hand - <USER2> include development cost and maintenance hassle, and the system becomes very hard to understand and debug.

But it's still an interesting approach. In computer systems I suppose we could bring it about by some variant of evolutionary programming. ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_programming> )

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's pretty much how I was thinking of it. Enormous effort, even if you do get to use evolution. And consider the whole cycle of building a web page; organically retrieve a file, organically open a connection to a database (with an organic protocol, of course) to organically retrieve some organic data, organically convert it to some sort of organic representation (HTML is too rigid, we'd need some sort of probabilistic representation or something) and organically render it in a browser; the complication is simply enormous and the payoff? For enormously more computational power, you have a net decrease in the reliability of the whole process.

I could see how AI could use such a thing, especially since the best intelligence we know works that way. But in general? It seems less than awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note that the original paper doesn't say anything about crashing. Their point is that E.Coli regulatory network has a different topology than Linux call graph, in particular, a much lower overlap between modules and little reuse of low-level workhorses. They postulate that higher level eukaryotic networks would have more reuse and be more similar to Linux call-graph. [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/04/28/0914771107.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/04/28/0914771107.full.pdf+html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm trying to understand the lesson behind this result.

I don't think it's the obvious, well-understood fact that biological systems have massive, redundant parallelism, whereas our software systems do not.

I believe it in fact says something very specific and fairly non-intuitive: that biological systems have many slightly different copies of key routines, whereas our software systems as they are designed today do not.

"That's why E. coli cannot afford generic components and has preserved an organization with highly specialized modules, said Gerstein, adding that over billions of years of evolution, such an organization has proven robust, protecting the organism from random damaging mutations."

For example, imagine instead of having one 'sort' function, you had different sort functions dispersed throughout every area of your code that performs sorting, and each one was very slightly optimized (through design or some unspecified evolutionary process) for the particular characteristics of the data being sorted at that program location.

Thus, 'sort' is no longer a single point of failure. If one of your sort routines has an exploitable buffer overflow, then it's probably the only one that does, which limits the potential damage to the system as a whole -- especially if you've designed your entire system this way.

Could it be better in some cases to copy and slightly modify a software component, than to simply reuse it?

<comment><USER6> It absolutely makes sense to make your fallbacks independent from one another, but implementing fallbacks at all is expensive.

In evolution, you're pretty much guaranteed a breakage at some point that can't be fixed. That's not quite as true with software - you're still guaranteed breakages, but you get to fix them, and fixing dependent systems is a whole lot more economical.

I think the best analogy is interfaces. You code to an interface with multiple implementations, and if a problem occurs, you switch implementations. Next, if you have vulnerable and complex components, you make sure they each have a custom implementation, so the inevitable bugs can't be widely exploited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Couldn't getting sick be considered crashing? We obviously have a lot of redundancy (10^12 cells) so we don't "crash" unless a lot of those cells get sick. In E-coli, on the other hand, there are plenty of genes in which a single mutation kills the whole organism. (302 of them according to Japan's National Institute of Genetics: <http://www.shigen.nig.ac.jp/ecoli/pec/index.jsp>)

</comment><comment><USER8> Counterexamples include SIDS, stroke, epilepsy, psychosis, and suicidal depression.

<comment><USER9> Ever since I learned about it, I've always thought epilepsy was a astounding example of the brain's ability to recover from cascading system failures. After an episode of epilepsy, not only can the brain resume its ordinary functioning, but it hasn't even rebooted — non-volatile storage (memories and learned skills) is not corrupted, and even higher-level state like personality is unscathed.

It's unfair to criticise a system for having a failure-state, because all systems have failure states. Different systems have different ways of handling failure-states, though, and the brain's ability to cope with failures is nigh amazing.

<comment><USER8> Just to be pedantic, non-volatile storage is what survives a reboot on a computer. For the brain to have "not even rebooted" you'd have to come out of the seizure with your short-term working memory intact. I'm not an expert, but I strongly suspect it's not possible to start dialing a phone number, enter a petit mal seizure for five seconds, and then finish dialing without having lost your place.

<comment><USER10> I can't weigh in on your statement with any factual additions but...

If you start dialing a number, and somebody calls your name and you turn around and talk to them for 10 seconds, you probably can't resume where you left off, either. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Uhh? Computers are houses of cards... _everything_ in them is interdependent. Bodies, on the other hand, are like cities...a few major parts that, if they fail, kill the entire system, but lots of redundancy, and lots of things that aren't completely necessary.

</comment><comment><USER12> It reminds me of the way that aircraft avionics are sometimes made more reliable - they build N complete controllers from scratch, to the same requirements, then use a voting system to discard the output from a controller that is malfunctioning (and therefore producing different output from the N-1 others).

It seems to me though that there is a big difference in the problem domains. Biological systems can produce a range of outputs that are on a sliding scale of more or less desirable - but software systems are generally specified to produce a single correct output, and any deviation from that is regarded as a complete failure.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Gerstein said that this organization arises because software engineers tend to save money and time by building upon existing routines rather than starting systems from scratch."

Bull. There are two reasons why the shapes are different.

1\. The bottom of the Linux graph is smaller because there are not very many primitive operations on a computer. Data is homogenous. There are 256 interchangeable values for a byte. By comparison, a bacterium has to use separate pieces of machinery to handle chemicals made up of the dozens of non- interchangeable elements that it works with. On a computer, you might use one single function for searching binary search trees all over the place in different systems, regardless of the data. In a bacterium, when code gets copied, the copy is modified. Every new application is a fork of some other application, welcome to a developer's nightmare (a good argument against ID... a designer would never duplicate so much code). Developers reuse code because they can, bacteria doesn't reuse code because it can't.

2\. The top of the Linux graph is larger because computers have to do more. Computers get selected for features. Bacteria get selected for survival. The bacteria have to "just work", whereas people expect to be able to configure computers. I can plug 100 different network cards into my computer, but don't expect to plug a different flagellum into a bacterium. Maybe it's just a matter of level, if you picked a higher point in the call graph eventually you'd get to "main", no?

</comment><comment><USER14> That headline is terrible.

My take away: If there is an intelligent designer, they'd be an awful programmer.

<comment><USER15> agree with your first statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Normally in Software there is two approaches a single software solution , or a best of breed. I.e. Office vs Lotus 123, word perfect, etc.. Or in the world of ERP having HR, Accounting, Planning software from different vendors. The interesting bit from this article is that is implying that cobbling bits together is a more reliable approach.

I have always been amazed in how the unix approach of cobbling bits together is often more reliable., than trying to write one large program.

</comment><comment><USER17> TL;DR Redundancy increases stability.

True, but it also makes it neigh impossible to make any changes to the system, which is generally a desirable trait in software.

<comment><USER18> That reminds me of what my lecturer said... "Do not start writing functions before knowing what they're going to do, hoping you can massage them into doing something useful." It was a `duh!` advice but now the converse seems appropriate if you're going to design a living organism.</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley builds spy tools, is horrified when they're used for spying - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/06/14/silicon-valley-builds-amazing-spy-tools-is-horrified-when-theyre-used-for-spying/ <comment><USER2> This whole news story has taught me a lesson about the downside of tracking users. I now understand why some people opt out of, say, behavioral targeted ads: it has nothing to do with annoying ads, and everything to do with data eventually getting into the wrong hands. The only way to prevent the misuse of data is to not collect it in the first place.

<comment><USER3> You really never realized that? It's been the stated reason for people opting out for a while now. It takes PRISM for it to sink in?

Yeesh.

<comment><USER4> Apparently up until this point people figured that _everyone but the government_ would have access to their data, but they were OK with that... it's free to signup, after all!

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that's all kinds of weird. For starters, what rational person would expect that in a world where everyone but the government has access to their data- that the government would not have access to their data?

The statement is of course a strange construct when examined literally, but have you ever tried keeping a secret from just one person?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So this is a whole piece built out of guilt-by-association. Decru, for instance, the In-Q-Tel data storage investment, was a box that transparently encrypted iSCSI storage networks; in other words, it was the kind of technology that made surveillance harder, not easier.

Why would anyone believe Pando Daily's take on such a complex topic?

<comment><USER7> The original source of this thing seems to be NSFWCorp, which if anything is nuttier than Pando (although never as lame). Indeed, the explicit preoccupation with "libertarians" (as if they could be anything but a tiny slice of SV) reads more like something Mark Ames wrote.

<comment><USER8> Gary Brecher/the war nerd (John Dolan's pseudonym) is occasionally worth the nuttery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Privacy is about choice of who is privy to what information. Facebook can be used for xyz non-pervasive feature, or it can be used for spying. If I build a chainsaw and it's used in texas for some massacres, it is acceptable for me to be outraged without having to defend my position on the usefulness of chainsaws and benefits it provides to society.

I suppose by the article's line of thinking, we shouldn't have any big data analysis and just stay in the dumb world of anecdote, after all, a tool can't be abused if it doesn't exist right?

EDIT: I've been drinking and the original wasn't as coherent as I thought upon third read through.

<comment><USER10> The purpose of chainsaws is to cut down trees, not kill people. The purpose of Facebook is to stalk you, know matter who is using the tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > If we've learned anything in the past few days it's that the NSA does > precious little of its own spying, relying instead on companies like > Palantir and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Do we actually know, or is the writer just assuming that because they use some outside contractors, outside contractors do most of the work?

<comment><USER12> It is common for government agencies to farm out much of the work. At NASA, for example, the government employees do almost no engineering work. It's all private contractors. I never worked at NSA, but I would imagine it is similar.

<comment><USER4> The ideal is for things that are clearly a "common business function" to be outsourced to contractors where possible. E.g. things like janitorial services, there's nothing inherently governmental about wiping the commodes down.

Then you have "inherently governmental functions" such as setting and determining policy, obligating expenditure of funds from the Treasury, supervising other civil servants, etc. That has to be done by a Federal employee.

Then you have stuff in-between, which typically was also done by a government employee, except perhaps for highly specialized skills where it made sense simply to pay someone smart to do it for you and then make decisions based on that. E.g. how the Pentagon paid think tanks to do geopolitical analyses, and then evaluated and used those inputs in the decision-making process.

Personally I was surprised to hear that contractors were as embedded as they were in the NSA. Sysadmin is a common-enough function, but has to be considered inherently governmental in the context of the _NSA_ for crying out loud. But then we've been on a long slide toward more and more contractor entrenchment within the halls of government for awhile now, unfortunately.

I'm hoping that if nothing else happens, at least these leaks will arrest or even reverse that trend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe Crockford was onto something when he added the "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" clause to JSMin's license.

<comment><USER14> Except this clause is completely and utterly meaningless, legally.

I have trouble seeing anyone, anywhere, ever, enforcing it.

<comment><USER15> It actually has a great use:

Do the Debian legal people annoy you? Then why not release your software unlicensed; they won't be 'able' to use it and other users who care less will. Ah, but that isn't much fun... why not rile them up as well? Enter the "do no evil" clause! By being 'open source' in such a way that they cannot use their software, you can apparently cause a decent amount of grief.

They also seem to be good for getting amusing quips like _" IBM requested an exception so that they can do evil with my software"_.

Do no evil clauses are great for trolling. An anti-corporate and anti-'takes- themselves-seriously' license.

<comment><USER14> Sure, trolling. There is a great use of the legal system. Oh wait ....

<comment><USER15> Hardly even a use of the legal system, the clause would not stand up for one second. What is _really_ being used is the victims attitudes toward the legal system.

It sort of seems like this license may bother you. It really is good at this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's not just Silicon Valley. Basically all work on big data, NLP, computer vision, etc. is making spy tools.

If you think that's not true, consider that major funders of academic research into these areas are orgs like DARPA, IARPA, the NSA, and others. Consider, too, that even if this research isn't funded or done by groups like these, the fruits of that labor will be exploited by said organizations.

<comment><USER17> _Basically all work on big data, NLP, computer vision, etc. is making spy tools._

I think it would be more accurate to say that such work can be used for spy tools. It can be used for plenty of other purposes besides, just as satellite imaging can be used for spying but also for weather prediction, environmental assessment, and so on.

<comment><USER16> > I think it would be more accurate to say that such work can be used for spy > tools.

I think that's a distinction which lacks a practical difference. Of course they have applications that don't involve enabling surveillance by three letter agencies. But you're kidding yourself if you don't think that every major advance in any remotely useful discipline isn't reviewed and employed by these agencies.

These groups don't just hire sys admins and suits and engineers to monitor signals, etc. They hire PhDs and researchers, both to help assess technologies and to develop them internally.

I guess the point is, the advance of technology must inevitably advance tha capabilities of the surveillance state.

<comment><USER17> _But you 're kidding yourself if you don't think_

Oh, but I do. Further, I think it's natural and inevitable. It's ridiculous to expect governments to artificially hobble themselves in terms of potential just because they're governments. It's what they do with that potential that concerns me. As an analogy, the fact that the government controls vast arsenals of weaponry does not necessarily mean it's planning to kill everyone else.

There's a popular meme on HN that government inevitably tends towards tyranny. I think this is total bullshit; tyrranical government is far from unusual, but it isn't the norm either, and the assumption that it is, is a false premise. Or put another way, there's no good priding yourself on your skills at Bayesian analysis if you have a habit of selecting inaccurate priors.

Edit: while I was making dinner it popped into my head that while nowadays there's a high probability that any given terrorist is Islamic, the probability that any given Muslim is a terrorist is, of course, quite low. Likewise, while tyrannies are often perpetuated by governments (that is, bureaucratic organizations as opposed to warlords or roving tribes), the probability of a given government turning tyrannical is far lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I'm confused. I thought Palantir's product Prism is not the same thing that NSA calls PRISM. Has this been confirmed either way?

<comment><USER18> My advice, is wait at least 2 weeks, then start reading the news on this saga. That is what i am doing, all i hear is snippets on tv, now i hear that the Guardian is walking back many of their statements, Mark Andreessen just said that he was holding judgement as well until everything becomes clearer. Everybody else on HN are having emotional and knee jerk reactions, when we get a solid longform peace of journalism in a few weeks, then we will get a clearer picture. Until then i just ignore all the links here on the topic and focus on tech.

<comment><USER19> The Guardian is not "walking back their claims:" the NSA slide claimed "direct" access. Now, does it really matter if the NSA has root on the server or if it's just some sort of mirroring/splitting scheme?

You seem all too happy to adopt the loaded language of the naysayers for someone claiming rational forbearance.

<comment><USER20> That obviously matters a tremendous amount, both in terms of how much we should continue to trust the companies involved and also what countermeasures we can take.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a general trend you can see at work in lots of venture-connected industries, and it's not just about surveillance.

Lots of people take gigs working on 'cool', 'interesting', terrifyingly profitable projects at well-funded, fast-growing startups that the press and investors both love. It looks great on their resume, they get to tell their friends about the cool work they're doing, and they learn lots of new stuff. Great, right?

Of course, on the other hand, lots of these startups are directly preying on the uninformed, the mentally ill, and groups that simply can't make good decisions, like the young. Over time eventually controls and safeguards get added to reduce the damage done, stop those 'top customers' from paying TOO MUCH, and staunch the blood loss from horrible churn and counteract the consequences of short-term focused designs. Ideally, by the time these fixes start happening and consequences start destroying revenue, these startups have IPOd or exited and the founders and investors all exit happy and wealthy to move onto the next gig.

Here's the thing - that whole last paragraph was describing games startups, not the obvious evil of surveillance companies. It's almost like we gleefully allow ourselves to be blinded to the consequences, both short-term and long- term, of our actions, and pretend that whatever we're working on is innocent and harmless, just because it isn't directly selling rifles to terrorists. It's easier not to think through the consequences; to think about where our money is coming from, to think about who's buying our products, to think about what _using_ our products does to people's lives, and to their relationships. To think about what those viral acquisition pathways do in the long term, to think about what those retention and churn metrics really mean, to think about WHY those metrics are going up or down. Most people don't think about what the unanticipated consequences could be from storing users' address books, or their call histories, or leaving a camera/microphone on all time, or automatically logging conversations. It's easy not to do those things.

Because at the end of the day, the person with the clean conscience doesn't have 50 million dollars, and if you somehow come face-to-face with the consequences of your actions, well... lawyers don't cost that much, do they?

It's easy to look at the whole venture-funded startup industry and find the big picture kind of exhausting when viewed with this perspective. Most of the people starting these companies, and working at these companies - they're not objectively bad people! Their actions, in a short-term context, are wholly defensible - there's no reason to question them. But somehow we keep ending up in this situation, and we're looking back, and saying, jeez, that sure hurt a lot of people, didn't it? Or wow, how did they do something that stupid? Why did anyone invest in them? Why was anyone stupid enough to go work at that company that did those awful things?

<comment><USER22> Aaron Swartz looked back at reddit. He realized the company that made him rich was now nothing but a mechanism to create addictions to meme-bytes, waste time, destroy relationships, normalize sexism and racism, and literally rekindle the Neo-Nazi movement (reddit now has the biggest concentration of Neo-Nazis on the internet--the fanatical kind that even Stormfront won't tolerate on their website).

If this is even the fate for something as benign as reddit, how much worse will it turn out for people working in Big Data or directly on technologies like facial recognition?

How many Silicon Valley technologists will look back at their work in 50 years and have the same kind of feeling that Nazi scientists had, that Manhatten Project physicists had, that the inventors of mustard gas had?

Whether technology will be used as a weapon in the hands of a selfish elite, or as a tool for liberation for the impoverished and underprivileged, is being decided now by how these technologists use their time.

<comment><USER23> Yes, when you create a venue for free speech, it will -- _gasp_ \-- be used to express various opinions and ideas you will not agree with. So?

The Nazis had no trouble doing their dirty work the last time without Facebook, Reddit, or Twitter. These days, they have more to lose from exposure than they would ever have to gain. The antidote to bad speech is more speech, and that's precisely what Reddit is good for.

<comment><USER22> In sane countries hate speech is criminalized.

History does not support your naive view that allowing criminals to freely congregate, organize, and recruit stops their ideology.

The Neo-Nazis on reddit have publicized the tactics they're using to normalize racism across the internet. According to watchdog groups the Neo-Nazi movement has grown tremendously since it was able to start recruiting and spreading that hate ideology online.

<comment><USER23> (Shrug) Who cares? Talk is cheap, even for Nazis.

Take your Orwellian worldview and peddle it somewhere else. Our history books evidently say very different things.

<comment><USER23> (FYI, lesedilino, it looks like you were hellbanned for your comment below. This wasn't done at my request, or with my approval.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article rubs me the wrong way. I agree on principle: I wouldn't want to willingly build technologically that I know will be used solely or principally to circumvent the constitution and reduce individual liberty in a non- transparent manner. Problem is, I don't see any evidence that this is what's happening en-masse in Silicon Valley.

There is a big difference between unconstitutional spying and surveillance per recent new stories (which is abhorrent) and the principle of intelligence work (which is a legitimate government role of even the most minimal libertarian government).

Accepting In-Q-Tel/CIA funding does not imply knowledge and approval of everything that agency does. In-Q-Tel publicly and openly funding a mobile cryptography startup has three potential implications:

1) They want to make money: they have people on staff who are capable of doing the technical due diligence and they think they have a fairly good chance of a return on their investment.

2) They want good cryptography software to be available to their own spies, foreign dissidents (including foreign whistleblowers), and US citizens/corporations that are being targeted by criminals or foreign governments.

3) They hold a master key to this software and want to be able to backdoor all of its users.

Problem is that if claim #3 is true and is uncovered, they risk a great deal: loss of their investment, huge news story, and mistrust of any other software projects that NSA has invested in (including SELinux -- which ships with many popular Linux distributions)[1]. Note that this is security software: extensive third-party testing is required by law for certain applications (and is implicitly invited in most any case); even if source code is closed, the binary is readily available and can be disassembled (revealing which open source libraries and algorithms are used for actual encryption). "Security by obscurity" is not a claim anyone is willing to trust, so pretty much with any kind of security software, intense scrutiny is expected.

So given three of these potential reasons, #1 and #2 seem to be a lot more plausible than #3.

To sum it up, this "guilt by association" article reads much like the hyper- partisan hit-pieces I've read recently in defense of the NSA surveillance programes ("Greenwald once wrote something for Cato Institute, Snowden donated money to Ron Paul, both of which imply that this is clearly part of Koch Brothers/Tea Party/Michelle Bachman/whatever conspiracy.").

[1] For a demonstration, see the scandal around Checkpoint firewall software, which didn't even involve three letter agencies, but merely corporate espionage...

</comment><comment><USER25> Palantir's PR firm must be working overtime figuring out how to deal with this. I don't think their prism is the same as NSA's PRISM, that's too much of a clever coinkidink, but they do make a big deal about selling their software to, working with, and being sponsored by the Intelligence Community and all the good and bad that comes with it.

No amount of cool looking track suit jackets or young upstart moxy can take away from the fundamental nature of who their customers are. This is the moment when they're going to have to grow up as a company and come to terms with what exactly it is that they're doing, and it's not just selling nifty software to good guy spies on our side.

If they got their panties in a bunch over a little dirty work from the US Chamber of Commerce, then to be consistent, they'd pretty much just have to give up their work for this.

</comment><comment><USER26> Say a company builds a drone. US government buys it and then uses it to kill the employees of that company. Can we shift the blame to the company ?

There is nothing wrong in building surveillance software. We would all love to see the boundaries of that technology pushed.

Government's use of this software is questionable.

<comment><USER27> _There is nothing wrong in building surveillance software. We would all love to see the boundaries of that technology pushed._

We would?

<comment><USER28> (Not the person you're replying to.)

"We" is highly presumptive, but I'm sure a lot of people would. I think legal, constitutional surveillance does have its uses and is a vital component of law enforcement and security in many occasions. Improving that technology means that when it is used, it'll be more effective at what it's actually trying to do: find violent criminals and prevent violent crimes.

Of course, when you look at how China uses surveillance or how the NSA purportedly uses surveillance, things get much more murky.

<comment><USER27> My point, and I don't think I'm alone in this, is that powerful tools/weapons will always be used for "evil" as well as good.

It is naive to say "well, let's build the perfect surveillance tool and then trust that some government will never abuse it (against its own citizens, political opponents, other countries, or whoever)." Such a pure government has never existed, and will never exist, not while humans are running the show.

More succinctly: "absolute power corrupts absolutely."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There is more to this headline. The way the internet unfortunately evolved is the devil's bargain of gathering intel on people in exchange for the targeted, corporate ads. It's only natural to use the giant spy tools like Facebook or Google beyond the pinpoint product placement.

<comment><USER30> The data that Facebook and Google have... have nothing to do with them trying to get me to install gay dating apps in their sidebars. It's my pictures, my texts, my messages, my friendships.

The important part of "the way the internet unfortunately evolved" has more to do with the fact that we didn't have the forethought to use encryption by default, or design the network in a truly "Free" way like other networks have been designed since then (but of course without any fraction of the size of the Internet)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It reminds me of "Michel and Webb - Dr. Death"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skl71urqKu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skl71urqKu0)

"The Giant Death Ray was meant to help mankind not to destroy it!"

</comment><comment><USER32> Nobody understands the potential of this technology except the community that builds/markets/etc. it, plus some highly secretive government types. I.e., the tech community needs to take a leadership role in reining in the risks.</comment>


Longer nighttime fasting interval could reduce breast cancer risk - <AUTHOR> http://journals.lww.com/oncology-times/_layouts/15/oaks.journals.mobile/post.aspx?blogId=9&postId=399 <comment><USER2> Considering longer fasting interval's effects on cancer overall, not much of a surprise.</comment>


Javascript Performance Articles - daily compilaiton - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastjavascirpt.com

<comment><USER2> got a typo in your link :-) ("scirpt")</comment>


Coal mines emit more methane than oil-and-gas sector, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.carbonbrief.org/coal-mines-emit-more-methane-than-oil-and-gas-sector-study-finds <comment><USER2> It is also well-known coal power plants emit way more radiation than nuclear ones. And air pollution caused by coal burning (e.g. in Ulan Bator) is beyond any reason. The very fact people still burn coal in cities in the 21st century is mind-boggling.

<comment><USER3> One thing to mention is that nuclear power plants _do not_ emit radiation. So, sure, coal power plants emit more radiation, and bananas too.

<comment><USER4> There's enough radiation released as a result of the activity of operating nuclear plants for your emphasis to be a bit off.

"usually do not directly emit radiation" is pretty defensible.

<comment><USER3> > There's enough radiation released as a result of the activity of operating > nuclear plants

"An operating nuclear power plant produces very small amounts of radioactive gases and liquids, as well as small amounts of direct radiation. If you lived within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, you would receive an average radiation dose of about 0.01 millirem per year. To put this in perspective, the average person in the United States receives an exposure of 300 millirem per year from natural background sources of radiation."

[1] [https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/related- info/faq.htm...](https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/related- info/faq.html#9)

<comment><USER5> That 0.01 millirem is roughly 1 Banana Equivalent Dose, the radiation you get from eating a banana.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The whole idea that switching from coal to gas is bad for the environment because of methane emissions always smelt a bit dubious for exactly this reason: coal mining emits lots of methane.

<comment><USER7> This certainly gives a new twist to the story, but it doesn't change the fact that natural gas is no real solution and that the greenhouse gas emissions of natural gas have been underestimated in the past.

It's not that switching from coal to gas is bad for the environment. It's simply that both are bad and we need something else.

<comment><USER8> solar/wind is cheaper than coal. In fact it is cheaper to build a new solar/wind farm than keep an EXISTING coal factory running.

When solar/wind pass natural gas, which hopefully happens in the next few years, a glimmer of hope to stabilize global warming sparks.

<comment><USER9> Solar and wind cant give us the power we need and its not cheaper because it will need backup from coal, oil, gas or nuclear. In fact the more wind and solar the more expensive it becomes exactly for this reason. Wind and solar provides less than 1% of our energy needs.

<comment><USER10> In many areas of the world, wind and solar have complementary power profiles.

Energy storage mechanisms are also being developed and scaled in a major way. Not just batteries. Geothermal energy stores, heated and pressurized water chambers, and moving water to a higher elevation to store potential energy are all viable options.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but if you want a good price comparison you have to include the cost of the necessary storage.

<comment><USER8> Ok walk a couple more years down the cost curve they are following, especially since battery tech is being heavily invested in for EVs and grid storage.

And if (or I should say when) grid storage becomes cheaper than peak power generators, then you still can save money shutting down the extra power plants.

<comment><USER11> Oh I agree we're getting there. I just think excluding storage from the cost equation gives the wrong impression of where we are right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 23.5% of US electricity production is from coal

'In 2019, about 4,118 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or about 4.12 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale electricity generation facilities in the United States.

1 About 63% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases. About 20% was from nuclear energy, and about 18% was from renewable energy sources'.

[https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3)

<comment><USER13> That's much lower than it was even 20 years ago, and the renewable number is far higher.

California is a bit unique but its not rare for the state to be getting up to 40% of its power from solar at midday.

We are moving in the right direction, but probably not fast enough.

<comment><USER6> The almost complete shutdown of the global economy due to Covid-19 is massively disrupting the roll-out of renewables. Factories have been shuttered, installations delayed, and who knows where the funding is going to come from now anyway. It's probably going to cost at least a year, maybe more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this based on reported emissions from oil/gas sites or actual emissions? Because there was a big report recently that showed that many gas and oil processing operations are routinely emitting far more methane than they claim, due to leaks and other faulty equipment.

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/12/climate/texas...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/12/climate/texas- methane-super-emitters.html)

<comment><USER15> Yes, the numbers for methane pollution in both coal and oil extraction are entirely untrustworthy, and a headline comparing them is just clickbait.

That said, methane emission associated with coal extraction is very large, and is another good reason (piled on the rest) to put an earlier stop to it.

<comment><USER16> Did either you or the parent read the article? It's explicitly based on a new scientific study attempting to use the areas where there _is_ good data to get better estimates on the incidental methane releases than we've had before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The climate problem isn't entirely a coal problem, but coal is by far the single largest contributor. It's also quite replaceable. Phasing out coal remains the simplest, most straightforward mitigation. Once we do that we can tackle the other stuff.

<comment><USER17> > Once we do that we can tackle the other stuff.

We kind of have to do it all at the same time. It's pretty easy at this point to stop generating power from coal, but that doesn't do anything about ICE vehicles, or oil and gas used for heating.

And a lot of this stuff has long lead-times. If you manufacture an ICE car instead of an electric car, it's on the road for another 20 years. If you install a new oil furnace in a building, it too has a lifetime measured in decades.

Getting people to crush a three year old ICE car is not realistically going to happen, but why are we still making new ones?

<comment><USER18> >We kind of have to do it all at the same time.

I totally disagree. The all or nothing concept means nothing will be done. There will always be a single reason someone can come up with to not do something. Why let that one thing stop other advances?

I much prefer the accomplish a goal, move to the next goal concept. In the 70s, it would literally rain acid. Luckily, we realized that making a few small changes would have a drastic affect. The ozone layer was getting destroyed, and again we make a few small changes with great affect. The proof is there that incremental changes are worthwhile.

<comment><USER17> > Why let that one thing stop other advances?

Is somebody suggesting that we stop replacing coal fired power plants because we could replace ICE cars with electric cars _instead_? The entire point is that we have to do both.

They don't both have to be in the same bill (though a carbon tax would _do_ both), but they have to be done in parallel rather than sequentially because we don't have time to entirely solve one of them before starting any work on the others.

<comment><USER13> We shouldn't _not_ do other things if we can. I was just arguing that coal is more than 50% of the problem and that getting rid of it is do-able. If we can phase out coal we're halfway there.

Electrification of transport is happening for multiple reasons: climate, high oil prices (they've fallen for now but they'll go back up), the maturing of modern EV tech, and the fact that IVs actually drive better and are lower maintenance.

The drive better part is no joke. It's just physics. I have an older 2013 Leaf, which is a wimpy EV, and it can out accelerate a lot of higher end cars if I want it to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Coal _mining_? Wouldn't have thought of that. Luckily the coal industry seems to be on a steep downslope already (much more so than the rest of fossil fuels).

<comment><USER20> Coal is basically extremely heavy oil, so it should offgas an enormous amount of volatile hydrocarbons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > The fossil-fuel industry is understood to be one of the biggest sources of > atmospheric methane, primarily due to leaks from the production of oil and > gas.

> However, a new paper published in the Journal of Cleaner Production suggests > that coal mining may actually be a bigger contributor to levels of the > greenhouse gas, with emissions set to grow considerably in the coming years.

Isn't coal and coal mining part of the fossil fuel industry?

<comment><USER22> Wording may not be ideal -- I read it as the TFA suggesting 'bigger contributor than previously estimated' rather than 'bigger contributor than fossil-fuel'.

I don't think TFA is trying to separate coal from fossil fuel industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Coal makes Chernobyl look downright mild.

</comment><comment><USER24> "it is clear that methane from closed mines will be a problem for years to come."

And only 1% comes through the ventilation systems.

</comment><comment><USER25> How does this compare to uranium mining?

<comment><USER26> Granite doesn't have a lot of reactive carbon to turn into methane.

<comment><USER27> You mine orders of magnitude less uranium ore. It probably doesn't compare at all.

Also coal itself biogenic source of gas and probably surrounded/connected to other gas generating lithology. So when you expose a coal seam to the atmosphere it will naturally release some amount of gas depending on exact composition and cook time. I'm just guessing here, my experience is in oil and IIRC coal is typically way past the "oil window" but probably comfortably within the very generous gas window.

Uranium is inorganic.

<comment><USER28> "You mine orders of magnitude less uranium ore."

I suspect this is true, but the amount of material you need to turn over to get this uranium ore is tremendous. I wouldn't be surprised to learn it is roughly equal to coal mining.

There is a fairly detailed chapter in the excellent William T. Vollmann book _No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies_ where he describes in fine detail the process of mining and refining uranium - it is much more energy intensive than I imagined ...

<comment><USER15> Huge, but still orders of magnitude behind coal. It is impossible for normal people to comprehend the scale of everything associated with coal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Including fracking?

</comment><comment><USER30> Keep.it.in.the.ground. All of it!

</comment><comment><USER31> Walls coming down on coal. Good riddance.

<comment><USER32> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

<comment><USER33> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

<comment><USER32> You're right, of course, but the system doesn't regulate itself without moderation comments and unfortunately my job involves posting them. They're a necessary evil, in the same way that some medicines are toxic: one uses them when the alternative is worse.

If it helps at all, such comments are even more tedious to write than to read.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20tedious%20write%20read&sort=byDate&type=comment)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I worry about Android any more? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently working on a mobile app, and, naturally, I want to reach out to as big crowd as possible. However, this is a one person effort for now, and I do not have capacity (nor much desire) to maintain 2 completely different platforms all by my self (IOS swift, and Android Java), it's simply is not practical (although I have created a prototype for both).
I was seriously considering investing into becoming proficient in React Native to be able to create really cool UX for both platforms. And recently I found out that AirBNB just ditched their React Native in favor of Native (good that they can afford it).
I also have a millennial son, who is an IOS coder, and he tells me that all kids in college have iPhone these days. My other son in high school says the same, every kid in his class has an Apple device. So, my son who is an IOS developer says not to worry about Android and to become proficient in IOS only, because that's the only one which is going to matter on the long run, and do not even bother with React Native.
I'm not looking to start another religious war "Emacs vs vi" -- I'm looking for an evidence based advice. I'd appreciate any comments, thoughts, suggestions. <comment><USER2> You haven't said what app you are building and who the target market is, so that is the place to start.

Forget about what your sons tell you, unless they are representative of your target market.

From there, you can then make an informed decision of what platform your target market is using, and what is the correct platform to build for.

You can also use this information to inform you if React Native would be acceptable for your target market and use case.

You are not airbnb, you can't afford to build and maintain two different platforms. You mention creating "really cool UX", but is that something you want? Or something your target market needs? I've been bitten by the bug of creating really cool UX that nobody cared about, so consider that as part of your market need.

I'm not saying don't ever create cool UX or don't ever build native, but from an MVP or lean perspective, you want to penetrate as deep into the market as quickly as you can. If React Native can get you more breadth and more discovery early, you can always decide later if you need to invest in doing native, or can continue improving on what you have.

<comment><AUTHOR> well said, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > also have a millennial son, who is an IOS coder, and he tells me that all > kids in college have iPhone these days. My other son in high school says the > same, every kid in his class has an Apple device. So, my son who is an IOS > developer says not to worry about Android and to become proficient in IOS > only, because that's the only one which is going to matter on the long run

I'd be highly skeptical of claims that Apple's platform is going to be the only one that matters in the future, especially based on the subjective opinions of two people who may travel in unrepresentative social circles. It's sort of like that quote "How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him."

</comment><comment><USER4> Within my family and circle of friends, many of us are abandoning Apple iPhones due to their forced obsolescence and upgrading to Android phones. In most cases we end up saving quite a lot of money as well. So if your target demographic isn't the cool kids and people who will pay over $1000 for the latest iPhone, then you might want to consider Android first business model.

Being a one person software team having a good share of only one market is going to be more profitable than a tiny share of two markets with the attendant costs and effort of supporting two environments.

@jerrac's comments are worth taking heed of.

<comment><USER5> > forced obsolescence

What do you mean by this? My 5S device from 2013 will support iOS 12. The battery might be dying but it is replaceable.

<comment><USER4> I have an original iPad (v1?) and a iPhone 3GS, neither of which can be upgraded and yet in both cases the battery is fine and they work Ok but with very out of date software which in turn means that I can't access even relatively benign web sites effectively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the UK I'd say the people who have money to spend on their phones and are actively making a choice are buying about their device are buying 50/50 Android/Apple. If you are short on cash it's likely you're going to go for Android as it's at least 25% cheaper. For people who are easily influenced by peer pressure (kids!) but low on technical knowledge it's clear that Apple will be the winner.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united- stat...](http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of- america)

Half of the market in USA. In my country Spain is 80% Android VS. 20% iOS.

If your are going to focus on the milenials on your high school kids, may be you could Ignore Android but have a look to the stats.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you are truly trying to reach as big a crowd as possible then yes you still have to worry about Android.

That being said, you don't have to develop for Android to reach a potentially huge audience. That really comes down to your product at the end of the day. If you decide to develop for iOS and the app gets popular, you'll probably end up with the money to build an Android version.

</comment><comment><USER9> Your son is wrong. Android is currently way more popular than iphone according to a quick google search: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global- market-sha...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-share- held-by-smartphone-operating-systems/)

The numbers are even better for android in the third world (because its cheaper), important as its an emerging market.

Trying to call android or iphone now, is like calling the landline the future of communications in the 1980's. In the long run it wont be android or iphone, it will be some yet to be invented tech. This is the tech your high school son needs to learn, not iphone apps.

Base your predictions on statistics not speculation.

</comment><comment><USER10> My opinion would be if you're going to focus on one, focus on android.

Outside of the bubble its everything.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, I knew it ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have you found any researched reports on Android vs. iOS market share? That's where I'd start if I were you.

I, personally, would never choose to only focus on iOS. Apple's walled garden seems extremely hostile to me. If you ever got banned for some reason, what would you do?

At least with Android you can distribute .apk files via a website, even if you wouldn't get the visibility being in an app store might give you.

You also might want to consider which platform is easiest for you to develop on. Since you're just a one person show, that might be the most important aspect.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually do not like either platform's layout system and programming model, nor languages. React Native is actually quite nice IMO comparing to the other two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the long run, Android and iOS aren't important. We don't know yet if Google will keep Java for Fushia. My theory is they will remove it because despite all their efforts Java is still the overhead that makes Android less performant as iPhones.

If you wanna bet on something cross-platform, bet on the web and Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1) Find your target audience and see which phone dominates among them.

2) Is your app itself your money maker, or is it an alternative client for a web app or other service? Apparently, iOS users spend a lot more on apps and in-app purchases than Android users.

</comment><comment><USER14> Airbnb ditched an effort to gradually migrate their codebase to React Native.

They (and others) have said using React Native works much better if you start out using it from the beginning.

Also, use Kotlin for Android, not Java.</comment>