Solar Storm of 1859 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859 <comment><USER2> Please read my 2016 testimony to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the threat of solar storms:

[https://www.resilientsocieties.org/uploads/5/4/0/0/54008795/...](https://www.resilientsocieties.org/uploads/5/4/0/0/54008795/resilient_societies_testimony_rm15-11-00_march_1_2016_tech_conference_final_feb_23_2016.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Market these ideas to defense firms that could act as a supplier. A billion dollar program has to be enticing to someone.

<comment><USER4> I like how you think

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This 19th century miner from rural area is more literate than most of today's people

>> I was gold-digging at Rokewood, about four miles from Rokewood township (Victoria). Myself and two mates looking out of the tent saw a great reflection in the southern heavens at about 7 o'clock p.m., and in about half an hour, a scene of almost unspeakable beauty presented itself, lights of every imaginable color were issuing from the southern heavens, one color fading away only to give place to another if possible more beautiful than the last, the streams mounting to the zenith, but always becoming a rich purple when reaching there, and always curling round, leaving a clear strip of sky, which may be described as four fingers held at arm's length. The northern side from the zenith was also illuminated with beautiful colors, always curling round at the zenith, but were considered to be merely a reproduction of the southern display, as all colors south and north always corresponded. It was a sight never to be forgotten, and was considered at the time to be the greatest aurora recorded... The rationalist and pantheist saw nature in her most exquisite robes, recognising, the divine immanence, immutable law, cause, and effect. The superstitious and the fanatical had dire forebodings, and thought it a foreshadowing of Armageddon and final dissolution

<comment><USER6> > miner from rural area is more literate

 _Or_... The Perth newspaper editor took the liberty of rewriting his story - in an early example of _sensational click-bait_.

<comment><USER7> Or maybe GPT2 strikes again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It should be noted that many modern systems are quite resistant to solar flares. Not by design, but mostly by chance.

Specifically, solar flares induce currents in long untwisted pair cables. If the cables have high impedance loads on the ends, high voltages will result, frying equipment.

The telegraph was an example of a high impedance long wire.

In modern equipment, long length high impedance lines are rare. Telephones are one, at around 900 ohms, although nearly all cables are twisted so barely affected. Power lines have an impedance below 1 ohm. Most Comms goes via fiber. Cable TV networks have a grounded shield so unaffected. Small household devices are small, and therefore don't have long lines to get big currents.

I'm sure a solar flare would break some stuff, but the vast majority of devices are more resistant than people expect.

The most vulnerable thing in today's world is probably actually disused phone lines, which are currently disconnected from anything else, so infinite DC impedance, yet very long, and could cause sparks and fires since they typically have paper insulation which is only good for 1000v or so.

<comment><USER9> That isn't actually true. Induced current will occur in nearly any conductor, and the biggest risk all over the world is in the loss of high voltage transformers.

This is absolutely, 100% a big problem. While these FOIA'd FEMA docs [0] are just one source, searching for "solar flare blackout" will net you all the sources you need. It's the same as a nuclear EMP.

[0] (PDF): [http://www.governmentattic.org/24docs/UnpubFEMAgeomagRpts_20...](http://www.governmentattic.org/24docs/UnpubFEMAgeomagRpts_2010.pdf)

<comment><USER10> The North American Electric Reliability Corporation apparently doesn't agree with that assessment:

"NERC recognizes that other studies have indicated a severe GMD event would result in the failure of a large number of EHV transformers. The work of the GMD Task Force documented in this report does not support this result for reasons detailed in Chapter 5 (Power Transformers), and Chapter 8 (Power System Analysis). Instead, voltage instability is the far more likely result of a severe GMD storm, although older transformers of a certain design and transformers near the end of operation life could experience damage."

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150908075507/https://www.frcc....](https://web.archive.org/web/20150908075507/https://www.frcc.com/Public%20Awareness/Lists/Announcements/Attachments/105/GMD%20Interim%20Report.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Read this transcript [0] of remarks—given to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission—at a 2016 hearing on US power transmission reliability. These remarks directly contradict the relevance and, indeed, the reliability of the NERC study quoted.

[0] (pdf): [https://www.resilientsocieties.org/uploads/5/4/0/0/54008795/...](https://www.resilientsocieties.org/uploads/5/4/0/0/54008795/resilient_societies_testimony_rm15-11-00_march_1_2016_tech_conference_final_feb_23_2016.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The government response to the Royal Academy of Engineering report on space weather shows remarkable complacency.

The RAE:

Since the last peak of the solar cycle, the Great Britain transmission system has developed to become more meshed and more heavily loaded. It now has a greater dependence on reactive compensation equipment such as static variable compensators and mechanically switched capacitors for ensuring robust voltage control. Thus there is increased probability of severe geomagnetic storms affecting transmission equipment critical to robust operation of the system. The greatest effects of GICs are normally experienced at the periphery of the transmission systems, as in Figure 9.

The UK government response: Some UK systems are more resilient and robust to space weather than counterparts abroad:  the GB power grid __network is highly meshed __and has a great deal of built in redundancy. This potentially makes it less susceptible to space weather effects than power grids in some other countries.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just another existential threat to our civilisation that we all know about but assume someone else somewhere else is dealing with.

A toxic combination of normalcy bias, the availability heuristic, and hyperbolic discounting?

<comment><USER13> As seen in Y2K, spend money to fix a problem.

If you are successful, the problem doesn't occur, the population listen to those who say "it wasn't really a problem in the first place", and mainstream populists adopt that position to win votes (regardless of their own thoughts). You don't get to play that card again

If you aren't successful, the problem occurs anyway and you get accused of not caring

Without Democracy those in charge wouldn't be concerned by trying to win the population over

Without the ability for anyone to reach millions of people overnight people wouldn't be swayed en-mass by contrarians

Often you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. We can see the same thing unfolding in the UK and US over covid19.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hope we don't look at this in a few years wondering what should have been done...

Is there any hope of avoiding huge problems due to solar flares happening in the near/medium-term? A silver lining from the Coronavirus pandemic is that people may think about these rare events more.

<comment><USER15> Despite the low cost, the USA is unprepared: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23061684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23061684)

<comment><USER16> Ditto the UK. See my other comment here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> For those of you who want to dig deep into the truth of solar storm (GMD) vulnerability of the North American electric grid, take a few minutes to read the first part of our comment to FERC during the docket process for NERC standard setting. And then say what you think on the thread. [https://www.resilientsocieties.org/uploads/5/4/0/0/54008795/...](https://www.resilientsocieties.org/uploads/5/4/0/0/54008795/docket_rm15-11-000_resilient_societies_nopr_comments_corrected_20150810.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER17> Can you imagine the sort of additional havoc that this would cause if it happened now? We've been somewhat mercifully spared of natural disasters but C19 and something like this would be horrific.

</comment><comment><USER18> Llyod's of London released a report in May 2013 on the potential effects of a significant Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). The projected costs were 0.6 - 2.6 Trillion USD.

[https://www.lloyds.com/news-and-risk-insight/risk- reports/li...](https://www.lloyds.com/news-and-risk-insight/risk- reports/library/natural-environment/solar-storm)

As other comments have said, the biggest pain would be the availability of replacement small transformers.

</comment><comment><USER2> If people are interested, I'll give my opinion on this paper: [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190312103717.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190312103717.htm) Anyone want me to comment?

</comment><comment><USER19> Are there any models that estimate the chance of this re-occuring? What do they look like?

<comment><USER20> 2020 seems like the sort of year that this would make sense happening, at least from a narrative point of view.

<comment><USER21> This is probably why we're talking about it now.

<comment><USER22> Cue for an article about a census of asteroids that cross the Earth's orbit tomorrow.

<comment><USER23> Imagine being able to see the tubes they plow through the polar lights, maybe their plasma contrails would glow like a rainbow, or maybe you could see iridiscent vortices!

What a show!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps the biggest long-term issue of this (once the immediate damage is repaired, which would perhaps take years) is the loss of decades of human knowledge - everything on hard drives, tapes, flash memory, and just about anything that isn't an optical disc - with no real warning.

<comment><USER25> Well, small electronics such as hard drives and mobile phones are not in direct danger from these sorts of events; the damage is caused by induced current on miles-long cables. Our flash memories and tape backups will not be harmed unless they are burned up in power surges from unprotected power outlets.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I wrote a book on idiomatic Python. Here's its insane build/test system - <AUTHOR>

Background: I've been working on a book to help developers learn and write idiomatic Python. It's taken far longer than I imagined, but today I made it available for purchase (http://www.jeffknupp.com/writing-idiomatic-python-ebook).
The automated build and test system I'm using is ridiculous. It uses: virtualenv, tox, pytest, coverage, doctest, pandoc, make, xelatex, makeindex, and a ~200 line Python script to collect and format the output. The details of the build/test system I created are described in detail here: http://www.jeffknupp.com/blog/2013/01/24/the-writing-idiomatic-python-ebook-is-finally-available/
The result is two PDF files...
Does anyone who's done something similar have/know of an easier way to write a technical book (where code samples must be tested) that will eventually need to be translated into multiple formats? I know I'm not the first person to write a technical book, but I'm not aware of any existing tools (commercial or otherwise) to make the process easier. Does everyone who writes a technical book cobble together their own system?
I ask because I plan to eventually write a book where C++ is the language being discussed. The thought of going through this all again makes me shudder. After finishing this book, I'm convinced there must be a better way. <comment> benji-york It won't help you with the translation part, but I have a small project that aims to take the next step in tested documentation after doctest: <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/manuel/>. Full documentation (tested with Manuel of course) at <http://packages.python.org/manuel/>

</comment><comment><USER2> What about something like Sphinx? It uses ReStructured text and a Makefile to control most of the stuff.</comment>


Pay It Forward - <AUTHOR> A month or two ago, I read about about someone (maybe vibhavs?) giving away a lot of old programming books they were done with, and was impressed with their generosity. I've been working hard to live simpler.
I've got 3 extra external hard drives that are unused (but not in box) and I'm just not getting any use out of them. As pretty as they are, I know they never will from me due to my overabundance of space already. I want to give them to someone who needs them (well, probably 3 someones) and can give them a little more use than I. I don't want any money, I'll even cover shipping (in the US please). If you're thankful, or even if you're just reading this, consider doing a random act of kindness for a stranger you meet tomorrow. Pay for a coffee or buy a lunch, it'll change their day.
Details: All HD's are identical.
1TB Western Digital Green Power @ 7200RPM in a Speed Metal copper-colored case (which you can see here: http://i.imgur.com/nzcE8.jpg).
I'm going to attempt to choose randomly provided there's enough interest. I haven't considered the format and I don't want to just do "first one to see it" but I'll do my best to be fair. <comment><AUTHOR> Unless someone has a better idea, I'll give them out in this fashion:

1) Anyone who requests one gets added to the list (I'll do this tomorrow afternoon). If it's not requested, I'll assume not, just because some people are leaving comments about "good idea" etc. 2) I'll put them in a spreadsheet and then use <http://andrew.hedges.name/experiments/random/> to generate 3 random numbers and attempt to contact those people. Someone doesn't work out, new random number.

If someone has a better idea, I'm all ears.

Side note: to those who said they'll be doing a random act of kindness tomorrow, amazing! Every little thing counts. I just wanted to be clear it's not a requirement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, starting to enter all names and do the randomization. If I had 50 hard drives, I'd give you all one. Additionally, some people seem really in need of these hard drives. If you are, I certainly hope that you are one randomly picked. I can't take the time to try and evaluate who needs it most etc, but I hope that whether or not you are someone who receives one, that you still do a random act every once in a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I've gone through and randomly selected the order. I'm not going to list the usernames right now in case someone lives out of country, can't be contacted etc, but with permission I'll list them upon shipment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> My home desktop is a 7 yo dell that just this morning crunked the main hard drive (the one with the OS and grub). It only boots if I open the case and tap the drive with a hammer to get it spinning. Everything is backed up to a server (an 11 yo Dell running OpenSuSE 11.3) so I haven't lost any data. I would just get another computer, but I'm moving to San Diego and our house is under contract and we're thankfully only losing $20,000 on the deal (just cleared appraisal, yay!). As it happens, just this afternoon I put 3 hard drives in my Amazon basket of about this total capacity, along with a PCI SATA controller. It's crazy random coincidence so I will happily send you my crunked drive to inspect if you want to verify my claim (maybe after I try to wipe it though -- I think there are some crypto keys on there).

Anyway, look forward to finding out how this goes. Good on you for the effort. Cheers.

edit: thanks to whomever gave the upvote.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm building up a computer to give to a starving (digital) artist friend but it only has a 40GB drive.

</comment><comment><USER4> Spirit like this just shows how special hacker news is when compared to other forums. (Don't need the drives just wanted to say what you are doing is nice.)

<comment><USER5> Not signing up either, just wanted to leave a tip of the hat to the memory of Robert A. Heinlein, a great propounder of the "Pay It Forward" idea (cf. <http://www.heinleinsociety.org/> ). Philip K. Dick, a much different writer, had personal reasons to appreciate him.

Incidentally, Heinlein wrote up some good hacks in his books - including the waterbed (I seem to remember it could not be patented later when they came around to making them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm actually shopping for some much needed backup, but other comments here present greater needs and/or projects. So, put me down as simply grateful for the gesture; I'll leave mention of my own shopping just as an indication (additional data point) of how generally useful that gesture is.

Cheers!

P.S. I don't know just when my next random act of kindness will come along, but they've been known to happen. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is more generous than what I'm doing. I'm giving away something I don't have much of a use for and other people need. You're choosing to turn down something you need so someone more fortunate can have it. It's good to see people like you existing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to get one... mine broke a few days ago and I lost about 500gb of data :/ I'll give some books away on HN tomorrow :)

</comment><comment><USER8> I love this idea. Free swap meet for HN! A few companies have toy'd around with the idea of earning community tokens to be turned in for other forms of karma.

I have a few network devices and office equipment that i should post on here if i deem that it's not spammy.

BTW, im interested in the drive. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER9> i'm a broke college student whose running out of space on his very old 300GB HD. Will edit random act of kindness tommorrow!

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a great idea, it'd be nice if there was a formal mechanism on HN for putting stuff up for free. I'd only give something away for free to someone who had a decent presence on the site, but I've got lots of hardware laying around, sticks of excellent RAM, hard drives, etc that I'll never do anything with.

</comment><comment><USER11> Put me down for one... I'm kind of isolated at the moment, so RAOK for a stranger is unlikely -- however I do have a bunch of books laying around that I've already read, mix of sci-fi and classics, hardcover and paperback. If I get selected I can mail out one or two to someone in dire need of reading material!

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be a nice idea. The results will be random, but I encourage you to be generous regardless. Or try <http://bookmooch.com/>. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks for doing this.

Random acts of kindness may not make the world go round but it certainly makes people happy =)

</comment><comment><USER13> Amazing, my respect to you. I'd also love to be on the list and would gladly pay for shipping.

</comment><comment><USER14> I could really use one myself. My backups are spread between several 200GB hard drives, with a 1TB I could condense them all into one and pass on my smaller drives.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd like to be added, thanks!

On a side note: this post has inspired me to donate all the stuff I don't need to the local thrift store tomorrow (mostly books/clothes).

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea! Also, make an inventory of what you're taking, and get a receipt. It's a tax deduction. It may not be much depending on what you're donating (T Shirts are $1-2 for example), but it's a little extra bonus for being nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Please add me to the list. I've been running off of one 250GB since my 320GB had a hard disk crash, and I could really use the space.

</comment><comment><USER17> Put me on the list. I need a backup of my backups. :) Plus, those things just look cool.

P.S. - If I win, I won't let you pay shipping.

</comment><comment><USER18> i could always use more space !

It seems that helping a non-profit foundation to make some genetic calculation for college is hitting my budget hard. I have a pathetic 500gb hard disk that is getting hammered and is getting full ! If i could get two of those and raid them then i would be sooooooo happy ! :D Consider me !

</comment><comment><USER19> Please add me to the list. I love the concept! (And seeing it implemented) Thank you!

How would we be notified if we were chosen?

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd appreciate being added to the list. Thanks for the real life illustration of the pay it forward concept.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm down for one. Also, if HN hasn't done this already, a secret santa of used tech stuff would be neat.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be very cool. Or a year-round "secret santa" of tech skills. I've had great experiences trading my design skills for experienced programming etc. There's no shipping involved in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a great idea - add me to the list, I could definitely use the extra storage space!

</comment><comment><USER23> I like the concept. I will edit this comment with my random act of kindness tomorrow.

<comment><USER23> Oh I guess I can't edit after too long. :) Here are mind kindnesses for today: \- Told an older lady I passed walking my dog in the morning she looked nice today. She seemed to appreciate the compliment (but I ended up feeling a little creepy). \- Alerted everyone in my office about Starbucks giving free coffee to people who bring in travel mugs today. Good for moral, bad for productivity.. :) \- Helped a friend get motivated to start a project he has been thinking of doing for a long time. This probably will have the longest lasting effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hello from Cebu, Philippines! Hoping you'll pick me!

(This is my first post btw if that will matter)

</comment><comment><USER25> I would like one, but i never win any contests - especially the lottery ones :(

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow this is a cool idea. Add me to the list please! I will pay it forward.

</comment><comment><USER27> Count me in. I need a new hard drive to fix my sister's computer.

</comment><comment><USER28> Could definitely use one. We'd finally have onsite backups!

</comment><comment><USER29> Random acts of kindness always put a smile on my face

</comment><comment><USER30> Please put me on the list too. Thanks proexploit!

<comment><AUTHOR> Please contact me: Proexploit [at] gmail.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I, like most everyone else here, would love one.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd love to have one too, if you still have any.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'd love to be on the list. Thanks, proexploit!

</comment><comment><USER34> I'd love one if you still have any left.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'll throw my hat in the ring as well.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm always down for free stuff.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'd sure like one. Cool Idea.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'd like to be on the list :)

</comment><comment><USER39> Please add me to the list.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm interested! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER41> I'll take one.

</comment><comment><USER42> thanks a lot!

</comment><comment><USER43> count me in.

</comment><comment><USER44> count me in</comment>


Bringing Nixie tubes back to life - <AUTHOR> http://www.daliborfarny.com/ <comment><USER2> Super persistence and what a nice result. Nixies are really quite neat, I love the shapes of the digits (compared to LED digits).

Last year I cleared out an old warehouse that I owned (and have now sold) and I came across a box with a whole pile of nixies. Tossed them into the trash, if I had realized what they were worth... The inner pack-rat in me weeps.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra My good friend makes awesome Glonass clocks out of Nixies:

[https://aivelectronics.ru/aivnixie_eng/](https://aivelectronics.ru/aivnixie_eng/)

I did not know that you can get time from GPS/Glonass before that.

<comment><USER3> The link at the bottom goes to the Russian order page.

<comment> guard-of-terra Told him that, maybe he'll fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a link there to a his Shanghai Time nixie clock [1],"a two-tube nixie clock". I wonder how you read a two-tube nixie clock. From the pictures it looks like it just displays the minutes, but that wouldn't be enough info for me. I'd be like "OK, I see it's 10 past, but 10 past what? Judging from the position of the sun, it may be 10 past 2 or 10 past 3. Not sure though."

[1] [http://www.daliborfarny.com/shanghai-time-nixie- clock/](http://www.daliborfarny.com/shanghai-time-nixie-clock/)

<comment><USER5> I'd display the hour for three seconds then the minute for one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fun stuff, at $145/tube its a bit more than they were originally but its nice to know there is a source if you need one.

I really enjoyed his journey of discovery though, I think if he put it into book form he could self publish on Amazon or some similar publisher and people would be able to support his effort without such a big buy in cost :-).

<comment><USER7> But cheaper than the available stock of the tube it replaces, and more attractive with that nice aluminum base.

Old Z5680M / Z568M tubes of dubious quality are selling on EBay for $200+.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love nixies. I have a Fluke 8100 with a nixie display; it's pretty much just my battery tester but the most beautiful (and largest) one in the world.

Also built a kit clock that wasn't much more expensive than just one of this guy's tubes (uses Russian surplus pc-mount tubes), but apparently no longer available.

I think I got it here, but the site just shows some lame SQL error now:

[http://www.store.tubeclock.com/](http://www.store.tubeclock.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> As someone who assembled, ran, and maintained high vacuum hardware and furnaces in undergraduate and graduate school, my hats off to the scope of this guy's undertaking.

</comment><comment><USER10> Love to see the all the steps they made! Those nixie tube clocks have always intrigued me

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow, impressive quality in details and finishing. And all made in a small shop in rural Czechia. I wonder how the guy financed all the equipment and time in the first place, he looks pretty young.

<comment><USER12> He says that in the article. He states that he had started two small businesses, one of which was successful enough to let him finance this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very nice nixie tubes, now if only he made DHT tubes for my amps with bases like that...

</comment><comment><USER14> Very cool.</comment>


Marketing beats quality - <AUTHOR> http://blog.marksteve.com/marketing-beats-quality <comment><USER2> Sorry to hear about this, but don't let it dishearten you from making games and open sourcing them.

Someone stealing your code doesn't take away from the fact that you accomplished your goal of making a complete game. And from what you just wrote - that was your intention.

Regarding your blog title, I'd add 'timing' as well as 'marketing'. Titles of both submissions were remarkably similar ("Flappy Bird in HTML5" vs "Flappy Birdy html5 clone created using the Phaser framework"). Maybe the timing of your submission was off.

Also you can now state that you're the original creator of all the HTML5 Flappy Bird clones that have been popping up recently.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was ecstatic to see the other forks but my smile does a 360 everytime I see him getting the credit for it. But I'm happy to report that it didn't discourage me to open source the things I create: [https://github.com/marksteve/val](https://github.com/marksteve/val) :)

Yeah. My timing was off. But I think I now have a better idea on when and how to post things here :P

I can't claim that :P There are some good clones that were genuinely created from scratch like mine.

<comment><USER3> I wondered about that as well - I guess US evening time is a sweet spot? I'm european, so I have no clue really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Marketing is definitely important here ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023467) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7201353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7201353) good timing + HN-specific introduction on this one: 300+ upvotes, made #1). But I think there's at least another factor here: his version is more fun, because it's faster-paced and has better graphics (obviously). So I'd say it's also about more _quality_. Being more fun is more important than not being a rip-off in relation to quality too.

I totally understand why you're pissed off, but I recommend trying (it's not always trivial) to see further than "it's all marketing". Most of the time there are other factors at play, and nothing but good things come when you get to know some of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be less annoyed if his version was indeed better but he just replaced the graphics and bumped the physics values. So I can't accept that his version was "more fun".

But I agree that there are things I didn't consider. And I learned a lot because of this event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure this has much to do with either quality or marketing. It's about stealing credit and whims of the internet in making things popular.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seemed to me that aside from poor timing, people upvoted it because it used flappy bird assets. I guess quality isn't the best word but I picked the phrase from a presentation I recently read and it sounded appropriate :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another example of this is the popularity of Linux (marketing) over OpenBSD (quality).

<comment><USER7> and what exactly was the marketing trick that allowed Linux to beat OpenBSD, in your opinion?

<comment><USER8> Linux had a much more friendly and welcoming community attitude. OpenBSD/NetBSD developers had a bit of an anal-retentive BOFH streak to them. Linus used strong language, but he was very easy-going. He invited folks in, and allowed code from immature developers in, so long as the interfaces were right. Turned out that build a much bigger developer community. It also turned out that ability to code today is not indicative of ability to code five years from now; many of the relatively immature folks who contributed to Linux early got really good over time.

Ultimately, the larger developer base allowed Linux quality to beat OpenBSD quality as well.

Good marketing is usually not a trick.

<comment><USER9> > _Linux had a much more friendly and welcoming community attitude. OpenBSD > /NetBSD developers had a bit of an anal-retentive BOFH streak to them_

That may have played a role in this, but not a major one. What probably contributed most to the success of Linux was the commercial redistribution and accompanying marketing efforts by companies like SuSE (they even sent free CD sets to unimportant Open Source developers, including me) and Red Hat.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Node and CSV in 2 Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/teamzerolabs/node-csv-in-under-2-minutes-fc8c8b6d17b7 <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry in case anyone got paywalled, here's the repo containing the same information:

[https://github.com/teamzerolabs/node-csv- example](https://github.com/teamzerolabs/node-csv-example)</comment>


First Round Holiday Parody Video 2016: Just Be a Founder - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCTINLTztYQ <comment><USER2> really?</comment>


TouchOne Keyboard Officially Released on the Play Store - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.infiniti.touchone.touchone <comment><USER2> I have a Moto 360, which is quite well known for the "Flat Tire" display driver issue that means you don't get a fully circular display. Has anyone installed this onto a Moto 360, and if so does the flat tire hide the bottom section of the keyboard?

I don't particularly want to drop money on the off chance that this is actually incompatible with my device.</comment>


Autonomous sailboat to sail across the Atlantic on a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/blog_posts/february-s-topdrop-ubc-sailbot <comment><USER2> Sailbot-scale boats are way too small to do the Microtransat. I love to see the effort, as I know first-hand the challenges of making a boat sail autonomously. But my prediction is that the only way anyone will complete the Microtransat is with a large hull and a tried-and-proven rig, like an Optimist dinghy. But like I said, I love seeing people excited about robotic sailing, so congratulations on your work so far!

Source: I'm part of the autonomous sailing team that won the 2012 World Robotic Sailing Championship (WRSC) and made Best Student Team last year. Our boat is 2,5 m long with around five years of work poured into it and I guarantee it can't cross the Atlantic unless it catches a lucky break.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our team is switching up the way we design the boat greatly this year! The boat will be 5.5m long, as opposed to our 2m competition boat, and the rig will be a windsurf sail. You can read more about this at [http://ubcsailbot.org](http://ubcsailbot.org).

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I must've missed that on your page. 5,5 m sounds like a good length. I'll be following your updates. Best of luck!</comment></comment></comment>


Is it better to Code during the day or at night? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Computer-Programming/Is-it-better-to-code-during-the-day-or-at-night

<comment><USER2> It's better to code when you are ready to code. For me that is from about 8AM to 12AM. After that my brain goes a bit mush - so I instead turn to administrative stuff. For you it could be totally different. This is why I don't chain my coders to their desks. They code when they code (baring ZOMGWTF all-hands-on-deck situations (which we actually haven't encountered yet)) and they produce better code for it.

As long as tasks get checked off I don't care when it happens.</comment>


Bitcoin reaches $200 - <AUTHOR> http://realtimebitcoin.info

<comment><USER2> Do we really need this posted every single day? People who care know where to find this info. If the link doesn't provide anything new or interesting (which this obviously doesn't), please.. don't upvote it. Especially when it gets outdated few seconds after submission.

</comment><comment><USER3> At this rate, the crash is a single-digit number of days away...

<comment><USER4> Or it's not, and Bitcoins reach a rate of thousands of dollars eventually. I guess it's 50/50 for the buyers now.

<comment><USER5> > I guess it's 50/50 for the buyers now.

You need to retake basic probability.

<comment><USER4> Are you suggesting it's substantially more likely that it will crash?

<comment><USER6> the crash will come, the question is at what price and what will be the floor after the crash. Is it a bubble if it goes to 100000 and crashes to 5000? yes, but still good for bitcoin I suppose

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe bitcoin should split (like a stock).

<comment><USER8> It is already possible to select mBTC (1/1,000) and μBTC (1/1,000,000) units in the client. That should be sufficient, at least for now. For nBTC (1/1,000,000,000) the 8 digits in the protocol are no longer enough, thus some more work will be necessary. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, didn't know that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't wait to trade in all my tulips for bit coins ...

<comment><USER10> or lupins, long live Dennis Moore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Web devs , you are stupid sorry. JS is disabled on my browser and i get "Your browser sucks!" . Do you really think that makes me want to turn on javascript on your website ? no. My browser(chrome with js disabled) may suck , but if you cant provide at least a message like , 'please turn on javascript' instead of insulting me , then F. you . I'm not going to turn JS on on your website.

<comment><USER4> Honest question: why do you turn off js? it's usually very unlikely for js to be able do anything remotely malicious, specially with the sandboxed model of Chrome.

I used to use NoScript with Firefox, but at some point I realized it was completely pointless and more of an annoyance than anything else and ditched it. I've never seen js compromise my machine since then.

(Flash and Java are a different story though, I wouldn't be comfortable with those always enabled)</comment></comment>


Replacing WWDC - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/04/26/replacing-wwdc

<comment><USER2> Easy fix: Apple should stop announcing new products at WWDC. I doubt they will; WWDC is as much about a stock price bump as a conference for developers. Still, if they could make it unappealing to fanboys, John Gruber, and (insert- gadget-blog-name-here), it could serve the community.

<comment><USER3> They've already done this. Two years ago they announced WWDC would become software focused and that it would be unlikely to have major hardware announcements.</comment></comment>


Lenovo Starts Offering Up Fedora Linux Pre-Loaded Systems from Their Web Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Lenovo-Fedora-Starts-Sale <comment><USER2> Kudos to Lenovo for offering it, and really kudos to Lenovo for apparently using stock equipment that allows it:

>[...] Lenovo is making use of a stock Fedora Workstation installation without any vendor customizations but will be relying upon the existing Fedora/FESCo processes should any changes be needed moving forward.

In particular as I recall Dell Linux laptops require at minimum a wifi board swap to something Linux supported.

Nothing against other unix distributions but as someone who uses RedHat systems all day long, it's appealing to have an upstream workstation on Fedora to see what features may be coming next in your distribution and also what issues you may run into at work. RHEL 8 is arguably closer to Fedora than say MacOS or Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every time a company does this, they discontinue the product after some months. Let's see if that changes this time, but I doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I'd want to buy anything from Lenovo, due to their labor practices:

> "Shipping records show that since the start of the pandemic, Lenovo has > imported an estimated 258,000 laptops from a Chinese manufacturer that has > participated in a troubling labor scheme and been singled out by the U.S. > government for violating human rights. The revelations serve as a reminder > of how much of the supply chain is tied to forced labor and how many > products that will aid us through the Covid-19 pandemic may be manufactured > under duress. The Lenovo computers were made by the manufacturer Hefei > Bitland, which participates in a Chinese government program to provide > factories with cheap labor from persecuted Uyghurs."

Source: [https://theintercept.com/2020/08/21/school-laptops-lenovo- ch...](https://theintercept.com/2020/08/21/school-laptops-lenovo-chromebooks- china-uyghur)

<comment><USER5> So what do you suggest? I've been eyeing a Thinkpad, my first pc in 20 years. Do we know that other manufacturers don't have the same practices? I also don't want to jump to a small manufacturer just yet, I want to get used to having a pc after being mac-only.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What companies are hiring remote Rails developers? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the job hunt myself and curious what is out there for someone with a lot of experience with Rails and working remotely. <comment><USER2> Checkout: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3913997></comment>


A Study of Assassination – CIA (1953) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/ciaguat2.html <comment><USER2> "Automobile accidents are a less satisfactory means of assassination. If the subject is deliberately run down, very exact timing is necessary and investigation is likely to be thorough. If the subject's car is tampered with, reliability is very low. The subject may be stunned or drugged and then placed in the car, but this is only reliable when the car can be run off a high cliff or into deep water without observation."

<comment><USER3> Sounds like Hitchcock knew what he was doing after all!

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_by_Northwest#Plot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_by_Northwest#Plot)

<comment><USER3> For those who have not seen the movie, by the way-

1) Go watch it

2) Someone tries to do exactly what was just described as "reliable" to the protagonist

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That was probably true back in '53.

Since; the science of accident reconstruction and cause determination have improved vastly.

Back then the mafia (or whomever) might have thought, eh, cyanide, who's going to trace that? Nowadays tests would prove something untoward likely happened. It's how nowadays nurses are caught for 'easing terminally ill patients', back then, it would have seemed like, oh, that was the disease, "natural causes".

In other words, this option would be a desperate option, one where discovery of tampering would be revealed. Only someone really desperate and without other alternatives would be reduced to opting. Someone stupid.

<comment><USER5> If this document contained modern TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, Procedures) it wouldn't be declassified. This is a historical document. This is also probably a repost. This document has been around for 2-3 decades.

<comment><USER6> If it's dated 1953, it's been around for six decades. Unless you mean it's been publicly available for 2-3 decades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The changes in technology since then have been dramatic. I can't imagine anyone suggesting a falling-block rifle as a suitable assassin's tool today, and poisoning an alcoholic with morphine seems like it would alert any coroner immediately.

<comment><USER8> Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in 2006. I'm not sure why you are focused on "alerting the coroner." The dead body is also a easy way to alert the coroner that somebody's life was taken. The same can be said for a slit throat, giant hole in skull, ligature marks, etc. I imagine that in most situations the goal is a covert assassination not a clandestine assassination.

<comment><USER7> Litvinenko's assassin used Polonium, which is an obvious and disfiguring poison. The article mentions using morphine to poison a drunkard in order that his death might be mistaken for the effects of habitual alcohol abuse. Aside from causing the death of the target, those two methods have almost entirely opposite goals.

<comment><USER9> Litvinenko had supposedly gone to work for the UK. The fact that he "got got" in London was intended to be a big middle finger from the FSB to the UK, from what I've read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reading about the "conference table technique" was a bit too specific and caused me to promptly close the tab.

<comment><USER11> CTRL+F didn't find it. Which one is it?

<comment><USER12> At the very bottom of the document (complete with diagrams, no less).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _" Poison was used unsuccessfully in the assassination of Rasputin and Kolohan"_

Rasputin, most everybody knows about, but the second name is unfamiliar. I suppose it is this WW2 episode: _" When an attempt to poison Holohan's soup failed, a toss of a coin selected LoDolce to go to Holohan's room where LoDolce shot him twice in the head."_, in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holohan_Murder_Case](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holohan_Murder_Case)

</comment><comment><USER14> Proof, if it were needed, that the past was not the golden age that people sometimes make it out to be.

<comment><USER15> You're right. I'd take living in the US now over living in the US during the cold war, for any number of reasons.

In fact I'd guess any 20th decade was far worse than now on any number of measures, with the possible exception of the 1900s and 1910s, which I don't know much about, and the 1990s, which was great.

<comment><USER16> the 10's was world war 1, so i think it's pretty easy to say that was worse. the 20's were pretty good until the crash right at the end.

<comment><USER17> Iff you were rich and white protestant.

My grandma remembered the Great Depression as a time when life improved.

<comment><USER15> That's interesting. How did it improve for her?

<comment><USER18> Oftentimes the reason someone loses their shirt is cuz someone now got two two shirts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hasan-Dan-Sabah's assassins were crazy: there was instances of them lying undercover for literally decades before their kill.

Interesting the '53 date too for the CIA as they intervened in Persia against Mossaddegh (but preferred to let angry local mobs do the assassinations rather than this James Bond shit...)

<comment><USER20> This is a pamphlet they would likely hand out to said angry mobs beforehand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The illustrated "Conference Room Technique" at the bottom is almost straight out of a movie! Two assassins kill 12 targets in less than 30 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great. I assume I'm on some sort of watch list now.

<comment><USER23> Along with the rest of HN. The signal to noise ratio for this page just dropped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there another source that confirms that this document is legitimate?

<comment><USER25> Yes. These are part of the collection of the National Security Archive at GWU. The summaries in the first link give some better context on what this actually is (especially the one on Document 5, at the end)

[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/](http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/)

[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html](http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is dark.

<comment><USER27> It's 60yrs later. Reality is darker, I'm sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm interested to see reference to a failed assassination attempt on Churchill, using a pistol - I've not heard of this before, and can't immediately find it referenced anywhere else. Anyone?

</comment><comment><USER29> Should have read this thru a proxy...</comment>


A Virtual Beaker for Chemistry (Apple's Pick for Best of 2015) - <AUTHOR> http://thix.co/beaker <comment><USER2> Woah, this is a fun app! My chemistry would've been way better if I had this back in high school.</comment>


Under the Trump Tax Plan, We Might All Want to Become Corporations - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/upshot/under-the-trump-tax-plan-we-might-all-want-to-become-corporations.html?action=click&contentCollection=Asia%20Pacific&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article <comment><USER2> So I incorporate a C corp to provide my services with, so I only pay 15% taxes on what my employer pays me. But in order to spend the other 85% I have to dividend it to myself. There I owe 15-20% more in taxes (Edit: unless I'm in the very lowest bracket) for a total of 28-32% (edit: recalculated realizing dividend rates are 20% at high brackets).

The author should double check that he's deep in the 35%/39% brackets or this makes no sense. The 15% corporate rate would be on every dollar of profit, just as the 15% dividend rate would be on every dollar of distribution, so effectively he's be paying 30% on nearly 100% of his income instead of 10% on first $9k, 15% on next $20K, 25% on next $50k, 28% on the next $100k, etc.

If you make $191k, you owe $46,500k in taxes (obviously ignoring deductions). That's total of 24%. If you make $416k, you owe $121k in taxes, or 29%.

And this ignores the fact that the IRS doesn't let you run a profitable corporation without paying a reasonable salary. Even if I can only pay myself half what my employer pays the corp, all of that paycheck is at normal income tax rates plus payroll taxes.

Lastly, note that this "scam" exists today. The federal C corp tax rate on first $50k in income is 15%. But obviously it's not worth it.

<comment><USER3> They are talking about applying the rate to pass through entities.

The assumption people are making is that after the change only the corporate rate would apply to that income, it wouldn't be taxed again as personal income.

It doesn't matter, the bullet list they put out is a press release to start the policy conversation, not anything that is going to get through Congress intact.

<comment><USER2> Pass through entities means the entity doesn't pay taxes, it's owners do. And they always pay at personal income tax rates, so 39% for the high earners. This "loophole" exists today, again you have to pay yourself a reasonable salary but most sole proprietorships and tightly held (like family owned) businesses are structured this way.

Either the author is confused about pass through entities, or I am confused about Trump's proposal, because I'm thought it only affects C corps, not pass through entities.

Edit: OK, I've re-read it and it was my confusion. The author is claiming that S corp owners want lower taxes if C corp owners get them, and the author is entirely correct that would be a huge loophole.

What he doesn't say clearly enough is it's ridiculous on it's face, pass through entities don't get double taxed already, and because C corps are double taxed they and their shareholders will still pay as much if not more taxes than the shareholders of passthrough entities with similar levels of income. C corps will still pay on average 20% given state taxes, combined with state and federal taxes on dividends their high income shareholders will certainly pay over 40% combined.

In CA a highest bracket taxpayer receiving dividends from a C corp would pay 10% State Corporate, 15% Federal, 13% State income, 20% federal dividend, or 47% total taxes on every dollar of profit. If their business is an S corp, they'd pay 13% state taxes, and 39% federal, which works out to a nearly identical 47% rate. But for the S Corp, no one pays 39% on all their income, as I wrote above they only pay around 28% on their first $400k, so again the pass through entity is going to be lower tax than a C corp even with Trumps proposed tax cut.

For example, if you made $1M after deductions, you would pay $350k in federal income tax, or 35% even though you were deep in the 39% bracket, even at the top CA tax rate your total income taxes would be around 44% with a pass- through. Significantly less than a C corp with Trump's 15% rate.

<comment><USER3> There have definitely been remarks about applying the proposal to pass throughs.

I don't think it is really all that interesting of a discussion because the plan isn't fleshed out enough.

In any case, they do have the goal of substantially altering the tax system, I guess what we have now isn't necessarily instructive about the shape it will take.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my country they solve this, by requiring your sub-contracting meets certain criteria before it will be taxed as a corporation, rather than as an individual simply using this as a way to disguise salaried income. Did you receive income from more than 1 client, was more than 80 percent of the income from 1 customer. Do you employ less than 3 people? Does thr nature of the work require fixed hours or do you set your own. I'm simplifying because I am not a tax accountant, but it is basically a combination od these criteria that determine whether your one person service "business" is taxed like a business.

</comment><comment><USER5> So the sovereign citizens had a point after all!</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best applications of GPT-3? - <AUTHOR> There's quite a buzz ongoing with the GPT-3 and it's various applications to solving real world problems. What do you think would be the best use case of GPT-3 that will significantly transform the way we consume tech products today. <comment><USER2> Twitter is filled up with great experiments using GPT-3</comment>


Earthquake detection pipeline via efficient time series similarity search - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stanford-futuredata/FAST <comment><USER2> I think this is quite similar to how music fingerprinting (Shazam, etc.) works, except it deals with multiple channels.

EDIT: Their paper confirms it: "FAST adapts a data mining algorithm, originally designed to identify similar audio clips within large databases"

</comment><comment> chroem- It's surprising that people don't rely more on automatic arrival time picking + simple outlier rejection. It's so much more efficient than these waveform correlation approaches while being much simpler.

<comment><USER3> Can you please elaborate or provide some pointers?

<comment> chroem- The FAST article mentions how using the ratio of short term seismic activity to long term activity to detect seismic events is prone to false positives. With this approach, you "pick" a discrete time when the seismic wave first reaches a given station, and then using knowledge of the speed of sound in the subsurface you perform nonlinear regression to locate the the point in time and space that minimizes the travel time error. However, this gets tricky when your algorithm picks the wrong arrival time, and picks a truck driving by instead of the actual seismic wave. Now your estimate of when and where the earthquake occurred has a substantial amount of error.

If you have enough stations for the seismic detection to be over defined (n > 4), one way around this is to consider _all_ spikes in seismic activity as event picks, and then iteratively discard outlier picks until you're either left with an earthquake detection that has a residual travel time error within some acceptance threshold, or you run out of picks to make an over defined solution. This approach ends up being very, very fast.</comment></comment></comment>


The Complete Guide to Web Development in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://levelup.gitconnected.com/the-non-developers-guide-to-development-in-2018-7f023a2ff5e1 <comment><USER2> > The Complete Guide to Web Development in 2018

> A overview of the languages and tools to become a great web developer

> In recent years, JavaScript has become the de-facto language of choice when > building websites

> The most popular NoSQL database currently is MongoDB.

The top 5 frameworks are all also Javascript. Java is panned. PHP, Python and Ruby get honorable mention. HTML and CSS itself are both afterthoughts.

I don't understand who the target audience for this is. There is no clear path to helping a novice pick anything close to the appropriate tools for a simple CRUD application, only indications as to what's popular.</comment>


Jens Johansson's Phase Vocoder Page (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.panix.com/~jens/pvoc.par <comment><AUTHOR> Jens Johansson is the keyboard player from _Stratovarius_. In the 1980s he was in Yngwie Malmsteen's _Rising Force_ together with his brother Anders on drums.

I found his home page some 18-19 years ago, including this sub-page on phase vocoders. I actually played with the software and used it to slow down the tempo of some music while retaining its pitch and timbre, plus read the referenced materials.

I thought it was cool that he was into computing, and tinkering with getting some C code to work, and understanding the underlying signal processing.

Worth looking at is Jens' 14 page scan of the 1986 article/tutorial by Mark Dolson on the phase vocoder technique.

The solo electric guitar sample that is demonstrated slowed down with various numbers of phase vocoder bins is the opening riff of Yngwie Malmsteen's "Trilogy Suite, Op. 5" from the Trilogy album.

I kind of just remembered all this suddenly.

<comment><USER2> Jens' page was one of those "ain't the internet great" moments I had in the late 90s (or early oughts). There you just browse the web and suddenly you find out that the keyboard player of this silly metal band you like doesn't just have his own web presence, but actually wrote it in a templating system of his own devise (written in Perl, as was tradition[1]). Including a diatribe about the sad state of HTML ("HTML 2.0 was pretty OK — couldn't they just have left well enough alone?").

After I found this, I altavistad quite a lot of musicians, but I don't think I ever got to repeat this epiphany. These days it's all instagram pages and twitter accounts anyway, and the biggest nerd jolt I get is when you find out that musician XYZ played D&D in the past.

[1]: [http://www.panix.com/~jens/parse-cgi- about.par](http://www.panix.com/~jens/parse-cgi-about.par)</comment></comment>


Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/12/04/amazon-buys-thousands-of-its-own-trucks-as-its-transportation-ambitions-grow/ <comment><USER2> From people I know in the trucking business, the problem with delivering to Amazon's warehouses is inefficiencies in getting the trucks into and out of the yard. They're just not being run well. Stories of 50-truck-long queues being run off by the local police for blocking entrances to other nearby businesses..

Hopefully this will help, as the trucks can deadhead[0] to their warehouse and do a drop/hook[1], with the trailers being positioned to the warehouse doors by Amazon's own employees acting as yard dogs[2] for loading/unloading the contents. This lets Amazon manage the activity in their yard themselves and hopefully be more organized.

[0] Drive just the truck portion, without a trailer.

[1] The cab (only) portion of the truck drives to where the trailer is, hooks up and drives away with it. Upon delivery, they park the trailer in the yard, lower the landing legs and unhook.

[2] A yard dog is a specialized truck that is shorter and more maneuverable, able to make tighter turns in the confined spaces of a yard.

<comment><USER3> I have driven by Amazon warehouses before and never seen this happen once. Do you have examples?

<comment><USER2> Here's one mention:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Trucking/comments/3uzlzs/16_hours_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Trucking/comments/3uzlzs/16_hours_and_still_waiting_on_a_drop_and_hook/)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's been mentioned before (I think I saw it here) but trailers like these would be such a great launch platform for drones. They'd no longer be limited to X miles from the Distribution Center, but could just send relatively few trucks out to strategic locations optimized for that day's deliveries, and let the drones launch from there and automatically deliver.

Have battery-swapping robots on the truck too so that your drones can keep delivering packages without a long wait to charge.

30-minute deliveries seems only to be the tip of the iceberg for what drone- powered deliveries could facilitate.

<comment><USER5> But... how does the truck have the inventory to fulfill whatever is ordered, within 30 minutes? You don't know in advance what "the day's deliveries" are going to be, or where they will be, because the drone deliveries are on- demand.

<comment><USER6> I think on amazons scale, the number of people buying a good within a large area would have some near term predictability I would imagine. In fact I would be surprised if Amazon does not speculatively dispatch goods ahead of time to local warehouses based on projected demand for orders that have not been placed yet.

<comment><USER7> They even have a patent for shipping orders to customers before they are anticipated to purchase it (pre-order delivery!).

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/18/amazon-pre- ships/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/18/amazon-pre-ships/)

<comment><USER8> Whoever dreamed that up was watching minority report.

<comment><USER7> It made more sense a few years ago when there weren't distro centers near most major population centers and 1hr delivery options. Pre-shipping isn't going to be 1hr by much!

<comment><USER9> Maybe that's how they've implemented 1hr shipping?

<comment><USER7> No, they just have urban area distro centers with commonly ordered products that would be desired quickly. Here in Seattle it's an old car dealership that's right near downtown--tons of space for delivery cars and enough for popular SKUs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amazon is following Walmart playbook. This is what Walmart did to make sure timely (Just-in-Time) Delivery between their warehouse and retail locations.

There are business case study on how Walmart used their own freight truck network to beat their retail rivals by dedicating more space in a retail store to retail shelves instead of storing inventory.

<comment><USER11> Precisely. Later, they simply leased the space out to corporations like P&G (or their subs ) and offered logistics/freight service.

WalMart was the first retail network to roll up the whole day every day into a single ( green-bar) report on Mr. Sam's desk.

<comment><USER12> This points to what I don't understand about the Amazon financial story.

Walmart built up their massive infrastructure business while being simultaneously immensely profitable. However, at Amazon, building out infrastructure comes at the expense of profits.

What am I missing that a lot of smart people are seeing in Amazon?

<comment><USER13> Walmart isn't very profitable by tech standards... 3.5%.

That's why imo Amazon is a big hype machine. All of these warehouses speed delivery but add overheads.

Their stock pricing assumes they are a tech play that they'll magically achieve walmart style scope with high margins.

I wonder what happens when rates spike.

<comment><USER11> But Amazon Prime is terrifyingly great. It would now be officially hard to give up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My initial interpretation of the title was that someone at Amazon had managed to purchase truck trailers for Amazon on Amazon.

<comment><USER15> Not yet, but soon. First they need to buy the truck trailers to keep in stock, then they need to buy the larger truck trailers to transport the truck trailers during shipping.

<comment><USER16> Reminds me of ship shipping ships

[http://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship- that...](http://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-that-ships- other-ships/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How soon will Amazon go into the freight business? After all they ran their own servers and then with excess capacity started AWS. So if a particular trailer is 75% full on a given run why not rent out the space?

If you're running dead head why not rent it out for a retail price rather than letting a freight broker fill it? A startup running on AWS could hand over its logistics to Amazon as well.

<comment><USER18> There is Fulfillment by Amazon:

[http://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by- amazon/benefits.ht...](http://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by- amazon/benefits.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My bet: Amazon has an incentive to get the trailers but not the trucks _yet_ because they will get into trucks once they can invest in autonomous trucks.

Having their own trailers allows them to explore the roboticization of loading and unloading them now. i.e. Kiva Robotics meets truck trailer loading and unloading.

Moving their inventory into trucks but still tracked and managed by their Kiva Robotics systems also lets them reduce land costs and possibly even eliminate nexus in certain states for tax reasons since they could have these mini warehouses drive from a low tax state to a high tax state for deployment.

</comment><comment><USER20> Meh, no Manac underride guards [1], [2].

[1]: [http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-unwraps-new-truck- trailers-j...](http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-unwraps-new-truck-trailers- just-in-time-for-the-holidays/) [2]: [http://www.trucknews.com/health- safety/trailer-underride-gua...](http://www.trucknews.com/health- safety/trailer-underride-guards-put-to-the-test/1002207924/)

<comment><USER21> Yeah, good eye. These pictures are terrifying. I wasn't aware their were different types of underride guards.

[http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/48/2/1](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/48/2/1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if they will load the trucks using kiva robots.

I've loaded and unloaded trucks for about a year. Being able to load and unload autonomously would save plenty of time and money.

<comment><USER2> Maybe a new model Kiva that has larger wheels that can make it across the door-trailer gap. If there's a ramp and a height difference, the goods (presumably on a pallet of some kind) can't tip over.

<comment><USER22> I would change how the trailer docks.

Right now the weight is still on the wheels and each additional load strains the suspension. Most trailers have pneumatic load balancing, so the bed drops with the load and then slowly pumps back up. Because of this a free-floating hydraulic ramp is needed. These interfaces are finicky and an unnecessary bottleneck. I've managed to get a 5 ton lift stuck on the ramp before.

I would put anchor points akin to trailer hitches on the back corners of the bed. The driver backs up to the bay, aligns the posts over the hitch, and hydraulics lift the hitches until they mate with the posts. Next they would lift up the truck bed, pull the truck back towards the bay, and set it down in a grove so the bed and warehouse floor are perfectly aligned. It would be similar to how a u-haul ramp mates with the truck bed ([https://youtu.be/Ch7ukPPtZOI?t=46s](https://youtu.be/Ch7ukPPtZOI?t=46s)), except you would be mating the truck bed with a building.

You could also have a giant drawbridge style ramp that lowers down and anchors to the back of the truck bed. It could double as the bay door. You could also add in outriggers that hold the bed at one height during loading. Alignment would be tough. Possibly the outriggers could sink into divots in the ground and shift the bed into position.

Both of these would also add a full width mating, which would allow for multiple bots to load at the same time.

Heck, I like the idea of having 4 hydraulic lifts, one for each corner of the bed, and have them lift the trailer up until it is flush with the warehouse. This would allow for the added perk of making taller, 2 story trailer beds and loading in two sets of shelves.

There are infinite possibilities, but I would be many of them are cheap enough to be worth the investment. One this is for sure, operating a lift is boring and I have way to much time to think on the job.

<comment><USER2> At that point, why not switch to a 40' container? It already has the lift points on the corners. Not sure if the doors swing 180 degrees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Vertical integration. What percentage of Fedex, UPS, and USPS business is Amazon deliveries? I might be worried if I was in their shoes.

<comment><USER24> I wouldn't be too worried, yet. There is a lot more to shipping a package from KY to CA than a few trucks.

<comment><USER7> Well they also have planes and delivery people... It's not that far off. They also have distro centers all over the place so orders frequently come from within a few hours away (or less!) and not a few states away.

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-secretive-air-cargo- opera...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-secretive-air-cargo-operation-is- running-in-ohio-and-signs-point-to-amazon)

<comment><USER25> Yes. I was going to point out the same thing:

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9790916/amazon-air- cargo-...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9790916/amazon-air-cargo- shipping-aerosmith-ohio)

<comment><USER7> Which is just blogspam sourcing the Motherboard article I gave...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe they want to standardize trailers so loading will work better. This may be a step towards robotic loading and unloading.

<comment><USER7> What's not standard about them already? Like most things with Amazon they want to do faster/cheaper and not relying on third parties is a great way to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Excess space in the truck trailers will be used as employee housing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Amazon is trying to build its own logistics with drones and is probably well aware of self driven trucks (which many automotive companies are testing ). To build on that, all it will need for now are those Truck Trailer. As the self driving automotive industry gets more mature in near future, their trucking partners will be replaced eventually. And who knows it might already be working on its own Self Driven automotive project.

<comment><USER28> Amazon will have to build efficient container or trailer management system if it has to use self driven trailers. May be this will give a little better idea on what I am talking about. [http://fleetowner.com/blog/aiming-self-driving- freight](http://fleetowner.com/blog/aiming-self-driving-freight)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> People who do not understand WalMart are doomed to reinvent it.

<comment><USER23> Probably I have been watching too much South Park, but this instantly made me think of the final scene of "Something Wall Mart This Way Comes"

<comment><USER11> That episode is a work of genius. With poop jokes.</comment></comment></comment>


What Women Want at Work [Infographic] - <AUTHOR> http://www.wamda.com/2013/03/what-women-want-at-work-infographic

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's just me, but I found it difficult to draw any actual conclusions from this particularly relating to what women actual want.

The 'challenges' to careers could apply equally to men, likewise the incredibly vague and leading "Would you like more flexibility at work" question.

The main facts appear to be: women in developing nations (Brazil and India) seem to be optimistic about their careers. And nearly 1/3 of women could attribute a good career to their appearance.</comment>


Canada to bar entry to non-residents (except US) - munk-a https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbsa-border-airports-screening-trudeau-covid19-coronavirus-1.5498866 <comment><AUTHOR> Additionally, it didn't take a lot of reading-between-the-lines to infer that they're planning to close the border to Americans in the next few days as well. NAFTA must be an impediment here.

<comment><USER2> There is also the issue of NEXUS card holders. Many of them work in one country and live in the other, or have other reasons to cross the border daily.

Or it could be the fact that it is a huge mostly unprotected border.

Sure you can stop people at the main highways, but there are a ton of lakes where you can just row across to Canada.

<comment><USER3> The issue is not sealing off the border entirely, but trying to reduce non- essential travel while keeping supply chains and essential commuter workers flowing. A person who's no longer able to make their weekly milk run to Bellingham, WA from Surrey, BC isn't going to try hiking across the border, but it'd be best if they could be persuaded to stop travel voluntarily without incurring the costs to essential traffic that come from closing border crossings.

<comment> blaser-waffle +1

This isn't a police action to prevent dirty immigrants from getting across the border, it's a quarantine measure.

99% of those travelers aren't going to row across a lake to get into Canada; if they are chances are they're doing something sketchy and would have been rowing across lakes anyway regardless of the enforcement regime.

More importantly disease transmission is one of herds and numbers -- a tiny handful getting across isn't a huge deal, it's the influx coming through ports and via plane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem with closing the US border is that it can't be a simple blanket ban - a very large amount of our food and other supplies comes from there. Closing that border must be a much more complex situation and needs more resources and planning.

<comment><USER5> I think you hit the mark. The government will need to allow American truckers, air freight and rail crews to cross no matter what.

<comment><USER6> Why not change rail/truck crews/drivers at the border or stations closest to the border?

<comment><USER7> Imagine the complexity of that. Mind boggling.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the risk-to-reward ratio for that would be ... high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading between the lines I get the feeling we can't close the border and we're all in it together. There are towns where the border runs through the middle of town. Indian tribes that run through both. It would be extremely difficult to close the entire border.

<comment><USER10> There's a school district in Washington where the children have to take a bus through Canada to get to school.

That is, if Washington State schools are still open.

Still, there are a number of U.S. towns that can only be accessed through Canada.

Also, my relatives in Minnesota say that most of the retail sales in their town is Canadians who don't have anywhere else to shop.

<comment><USER11> > There's a school district in Washington where the children have to take a > bus through Canada to get to school.

In case anyone is curious, they're referring to Point Roberts, a town whose primary economic drivers are, as far as I've been able to tell, Canadians coming down to pick up packages to avoid cross-border shipping, and providing gas and restaurant meals to those same Canadians.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It should be noted that anybody coming into Canada now from a foreign country, no matter their citizenship, is being told to self-quarantine for 14 days.

This isn't mandatory or enforced (yet) but it's not exactly a red carpet for folks to come visit for tourism or business meetings.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is heart breaking for me! I am a Brit planning to come to Canada on an IEC visa which expires at the end of June. I'm writing to the IRCC begging for an extension to my entry date.

<comment><USER14> I can't imagine Canada not being lenient in this situation, we tend to have quite good relations with all commonwealth countries

<comment><USER15> As a British citizen and now also a Canadian citizen I can confirm that we don't get any special treatment and rightly so.

<comment><USER16> We do with driving licences, at least in Quebec. We don't have to pass a test to get a licence here _smh_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a crazy decision on a day when most of our cases came from the US.

<comment><USER18> Most of them seem to be Canadians returning to Canada, not American tourists.

<comment><USER17> Yeah I guess that is prob true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Stressful times for temporary skilled foreign workers in Canada & international students on study permits.

Foreign worker visa extension delays and loss of work visa status will happen. Also those who applied for permanent residency while working in Canada are going to see long wait times.

Chrystia Freeland diplomatically dodged questions concerning the work permit holders & international students in Canada when asked by a reporter.

</comment><comment><USER10> So... Meghan Markle can go back to Vancouver Island to be with her child, but Prince Harry is trapped in the UK?

<comment><USER20> It seems unlikely that a member of the Canadian royal family [0] and Canadian military is going to be blocked from returning to Canada if he isn't showing symptoms.

[0] Technically a distinct entity from the British royal family, it "just happens" to currently contain the same members and have similar (but not the same) succession rules.

<comment><USER10> I never thought of the notion of "Canadian royal family" before. I guess that makes more sense.

It also gives me this silly vision of Harry at the YVR immigration counter holding up a $20 note and saying, "Because my grandma says so."

<comment><USER21> He doesn't have to, he can just point to the official Government of Canada webpage describing Canadian Royal Family:

Canadian Royal Family:

[https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/royal- fa...](https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/royal-family.html)

His Royal Highness The Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry:

[https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/royal- fa...](https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/royal- family/members-royal-family/prince-harry.html)

Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex, Rachel Meghan Markle:

[https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/royal- fa...](https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/royal- family/members-royal-family/duchess-sussex.html)

But in all seriousness, immigration is a separate issue. Being a member of the royal family, unless your are the Queen herself, does not guarantee you any rights in Canada, including right of entry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Closing the border to the U.S. and leaving it open to all other countries would probably have a larger impact on controlling the spread of coronavirus, simply because of the relative volume of traffic between Canada and the U.S. vs the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER23> The US is our biggest trading partner. If they are also barred from entering the country, it would effectively grind the economy to a crawl.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tourism, certainly, but that's already in the toilet regardless of who our border is open to. Even for overseas countries, we imposed no restrictions on trade or commerce, only visitors. I doubt this accounts for a non-trivial fraction of our economy, especially with public spaces already shutting down.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't look like it is just visitors. People with Study and Work Permits seem to be affected as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, and perhaps a solution for America would include work and study permits alongside permanent residence in the category of exceptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Too little too late. It's what will happen internally that will matter most.

<comment><USER25> > _Too little too late._

I agree. Our government didn't take any apparent action up to this point, except express platitudes of "business as usual".

Why not overreact early and buy some time to get sorted? How do people whose jobs it is to deal with these things go from, "we're fine" to "close everything down" in a matter of days? We've had months to get ready for this.

<comment><USER26> It depends on the province. Quebec is almost completely on lock down at this point. I think the decentralized approach is better in this case since it allows for much more agility and a localized approach. The provincial government here is communicating extremely well with the population and answers really well to most concerns from the population. To give an example they opened today daycares for the children of healthcare workers to avoid any disruption due to all schools shutting down. Which is an excellent comprise that I don't the federal government being able to set in place so quickly and so widely across the whole country

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There goes my plan to flee to Canada once things go south.

<comment><USER28> What makes you think that things are so much better in Canada? There are so many problems here.. the grass is always greener.

<comment><USER20> Because we have functional universal healthcare, safety nets that let people stop working when ill, etc.

I've lived in both, I am very happy I am in Canada instead of the US right now.

<comment><USER10> _Because we have functional universal healthcare_

You'll have to define "functional" for me, as someone who frequently hears advertisements on Palm Springs radio stations for hospitals offering to perform medical services on snowbird Canadians that they can't get done at home.

<comment><USER20> Uh, does "I can get whatever care I need, whenever I need it, for free" work for you?

Apart from purely elective plastic surgery (which isn't free, or needed) I really can't think of any services that could be being advertised. Maybe your hearing advertisements for medical care that doesn't involve returning to Canada instead of medical care not available in Canada?

<comment><USER10> You may want to stop waving that "Whatever care I need, whenever I need it" flag.

The average wait time from a GP's referral to seeing a specialist in Canada was 8.7 weeks in 2018. Meanwhile, this USA-an doesn't need a referral to see a specialist. I can just pick up the phone and make an appointment.

"Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 19.8 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment"

That goes up to almost a year (45.1 weeks) to wait in New Brunswick for treatment.

Source: [https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn- wa...](https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wait-times- for-health-care-in-canada-2018)

<comment><USER20> I don't know where they are getting their numbers, but the one I can easily fact check for you are flat out wrong, and the other ones all strike me as very suspicious.

> Canadians could expect to wait 4.3 weeks for a computed tomography (CT) > scan, 10.6 weeks for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and 3.9 weeks > for an ultrasound.

I've had multiple ultrasounds (outside of a hospital, no urgency) the waiting time is literally 0. I walk in to the imaging clinic and hand them the piece of paper the GP gave me 10 minutes ago and get one.

I've had a CT scan (in a hospital, medium urgency), the waiting time was "a few hours".

I've never needed a MRI, the only person I know who did need one (very urgently) got it within hours.

The waiting time for specialists does not strike me as believable, but given that there is variation across the different fields I can't authoritatively say they are wrong. For context, I just needed to see both a dermatologist and a urologist (nothing serious, no medical related urgency), the waiting time was roughly 2 weeks and 3 weeks respectively.

<comment><USER29> US wait times aren't ideal either. I scheduled a dermatology appointment (suspicious mole, so this is a necessary treatment, not getting my acne treated) and my wait time is three months for the appointment. My dad was telling me his derma usually schedules a year out, they set up next year's appointment while he's in the office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Surely the US is the last place you want to accept people from (from a health point of view)

<comment><USER31> Not even in the top 5

[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)

<comment><USER30> They have the worst and least accessible healthcare system in the western world.

The only reason those numbers aren't higher is because they're testing less people per population then Vietnam.

<comment><USER31> You can complain about the insurance system, but the quality of care is among the best in the world.

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

Nobody is denied care if their life is in danger, and those below the poverty line qualify for free healthcare through Medicaid.

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

<comment><USER32> Surely people then resist going to the hospital when they need to because its going to financially cripple them?

Like if you are rich enough to not qualify for medicaid, but not rich enough to have good insurance?

"So I have a deep cough and a bad fever but I will just ride this out. I'll be fine".. And that's exactly how the Corona virus manifests, like a bad cold that just keeps getting worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Interesting question: Do you think the Canadian government has the power to deny entry of US citizens into Canada? I don't think they'd be able to do it.

[edit] I think any Candian government who actually did it would see an economic shock and loss of legitimacy so large that none of them would risk it.

<comment><USER34> Why do you think that? The Canadian government absolutely could and already does on a selective basis daily.

<comment><USER33> I mean, they definitely could in a legal sense, but then the reaction from the US would likely be extreme and putative, it would likely cause a huge shock to the Canadian economy, and it would risk a sharp decline in the legitimacy of the canadian government.

<comment><USER35> Speaking as a Canadian: the current US government being angry at us would only increase the legitimacy of our government in my eyes.

<comment><USER36> The decline in legitimacy would come from the devastating effects of shutting down trade with Canada.

<comment> munk-a To clarify - shutting down trade isn't on the table right now - all trade lines will be kept open for the immediate future.

This announcement was solely about persons moving for non-logistical reasons.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Job ads on Facebook discriminated against women and older workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/25/20883446/facebook-job-ads-discrimination <comment><AUTHOR> It seems like there are two key issues here. One is whether and to what extent Facebook is liable for the use of its advertising platform:

> Facebook has argued that the company is not legally responsible when other > companies buy ads that violate the law. Its lawyers cited the Communications > Decency Act, a federal law that protects internet companies from liability > for content created by third parties. But user groups argue that Facebook > ads are not third-party content because the company developed the micro- > targeting ad technology.

The second is whether, assuming they do have liability for the targeting of job posts on their platform, whether it is legal for them to allow targeting based on certain protected classes/status:

> While it's generally not against the law for businesses to advertise > services to people of a certain race or age, it can be illegal in certain > contexts. For example, ad campaigns related to housing, real estate, > financial services, and job opportunities cannot exclude black and Latino > people.

> The recent EEOC decision suggests that targeting digital job ads based on > gender and age is also illegal. Under federal law, workers and job seekers > must first file discrimination complaints with the EEOC before they can sue > in federal court.

Given Facebook's reach and the ability to micro-target users in discriminatory ways, I am glad this is getting more oversight and scrutiny. I worry, though, that companies will instead start targeting highly correlated proxies for whatever protected class they're trying to filter for.</comment>