Ask HN: Where do you store your code notes? - <AUTHOR>

I read a lot of programming books, and I want to store some notes and code snippets all in one place.
I could type them up in my text editor and upload them to github or whatnot, but this is somewhat hacky and can get out of control very quickly (I can only imagine trying to look something could be a pain). Also, github doesn't really seem like  a place for notes perse.
There seem to be a million note applications today, does anyone know of anything that would be particularly handy for code/snippets/notes ? <comment><AUTHOR> OP here, I just found [http://happenapps.com/#quiver](http://happenapps.com/#quiver) BUT it's not available in the US within the app store. I would also prefer something free, but am not opposed to a onetime payment for a very good solution.

</comment><comment><USER2> I store all this sort of thing in a dokuwiki instance. There are also a ton of 'personal' wikis. Dump it in, organize/clean as you go along. Important thing is for whatever tool you use to be searchable.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've wrote my own note-taking tool for things like this.

[https://github.com/Azeirah/brainstorm.git](https://github.com/Azeirah/brainstorm.git)</comment>


Bit Twiddling Hacks (2005) - e-sushi https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html <comment><AUTHOR> Just a fair warning as someone who has made extensive use of this page in the past: many of these hacks often end up slower these days on modern CPUs than naive approaches. Especially the no-branch and no-multiply math ops.

As always, be sure to performance test your code if you're getting into obfuscating your algorithms to boost speeds.

That said, there are still plenty of real gems in there. And on that note, here's one of my favorite bit-twiddling hacks:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.sla...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.slack.net/~ant/info/rgb_clamped_add.html)

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.sla...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.slack.net/~ant/info/rgb_clamped_sub.html)

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.sla...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.slack.net/~ant/info/rgb_mixing.html)

(these functions are for RGB555, but you can easily extend these to RGB888 ops.)

<comment><USER2> One place the branchless techniques can come in handy is with SIMD (or simulated SIMD by packing several small ints into longer ones.) A branchless algorithm that's 50% slower can pay for itself if you can process four elements at a time.

Agreed that performance testing is absolutely necessary, preferrably with something that can tell you not only where exactly the processor is spending its time but also whether it's spending its time computing or waiting on memory etc, whether branches are being predicted well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest Hacker's Delight too; the Chapter 2, Basics, is freely available at the website [1]. Pretty sure that the linked algorithm is also there (don't have a copy right now so can't check).

[1] [http://hackersdelight.org/](http://hackersdelight.org/)

<comment><USER4> These hacks have actually been modeled and generalized into a mathematical construct called Mixed Boolean Arithmetic [1][2]. With a few matrix operations, you can actually generate an arbitrary number of hacky-looking (or obfuscated, as that was the actual intention of the authors of [1]) expressions from any initial, simple expression.

[1] [http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-77535-5_5](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-77535-5_5) (and I deeply apologize I can't find the free PDF version, though sci-hub may help here)

[2] [http://blog.quarkslab.com/what-theoretical-tools-are- needed-...](http://blog.quarkslab.com/what-theoretical-tools-are-needed-to- simplify-mba-expressions.html)

<comment><USER5> >> and I deeply apologize I can't find the free PDF version, though sci-hub may help here)

[https://sci-hub.cc/10.1007/978-3-540-77535-5_5](https://sci- hub.cc/10.1007/978-3-540-77535-5_5)

<comment><USER6> Use [https://sci-hub.ac/10.1007/978-3-540-77535-5_5](https://sci- hub.ac/10.1007/978-3-540-77535-5_5) in order to prevent browsers complaining about certificate mismatch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wrote that algorithm! A year later I found Hacker's delight, a wonderful book that had a much "faster" version of the same algorithm (less ops).

For anyone interested in this kind of things, you should go read that book. It actually is a delight.

<comment><USER8> Which algorithm are you referring to?

<comment><USER9> I'd guess the linked one at the anchor #NextBitPermutation.

<comment><USER10> Anchor has since been removed, so the gp comment will look odd from here on out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >[https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#Integer...](https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#IntegerMinOrMax)

The quick and dirty version is still useful (portable, works for all values) for the case of 1/2 word size unsigned versions of min and max:

        unsigned max(unsigned short a, unsigned short b)
        {
            unsigned q = a - b;
            unsigned r = ((~q) >> 16);
            return r + b;
        }

<comment><USER12> Does the right shift limits this to certain word sizes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Site seems down. Here is the google cache:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:__L7kb...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:__L7kblMgDMJ:https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca)

</comment><comment><USER13> There are some neat tricks there about interleaving bits from two operands. But what about from 3?

<comment><USER14> Maybe this helps: [http://www.forceflow.be/2013/10/07/morton- encodingdecoding-t...](http://www.forceflow.be/2013/10/07/morton- encodingdecoding-through-bit-interleaving-implementations/)

</comment></comment><comment> kamijo-k The author's name seems to be recursive...

</comment><comment><USER15> @dang - Can we remove the fragment from this URL?

Current: [https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#NextBit...](https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#NextBitPermutation)

Proposed: [https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html](https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html)

<comment><USER16> Thanks, we've updated the link.</comment></comment>


YC Rejection Letter: Let's Throw Ourselves a BYOB Pity Party in Dolores Park - <AUTHOR> This Saturday, about 8 startups that received rejection letters for winter 2019 are going to be sipping beers in Dolores. Let's be honest – it's an excuse to chat in meatspace and exchange stories and tips on building our businesses!<p>2pm in Mission Dolores Park, San Francisco, by the playground. Call 917 704 3031 (Niko) when you're there! <comment><USER2> There's historical precedent for this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_des_Refusés](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_des_Refusés) :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Love the idea, have one for me, too (got rejected twice in olden times)!

Here's a thought: would it be interesting to form a group of YC rejects (with an email list, etc.), an aftermarket of sorts? Maybe they can do a Pitch Day on HN and people can vote on ideas with a percentage of their karma points, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Love it, looking forward to meeting all of you.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yay! I'll be there, we deserve this :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'll be there!</comment>


The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/10685/the-iphone-7-and-iphone-7-plus-review <comment><USER2> Hardware feature table mentions WiFi, but not the LTE modem and radio which is far more important as LTE has to deal with skyscrapers and buildings with stone and steel which conveniently block LTE signals, population density, and spectrum consumption has been dramatically increasing year to year. The unit has the Qualcomm X12 modem but that modem doesn't cover AWS-3 (Band 66) which is a very large swath of spectrum, making the phone already obsolete for dense markets (e.g., large cities).

So, it would be very helpful to see 1) signal improvement, 2) download speed improvement, 3) improvement in voice quality when listening, 4) improvement on voice quality when speaking including background cancellation.

For example, something I rarely saw in iPhone 6s(+) reviews was the addition of a 4th microphone for noise cancellation. I also rarely saw any talk of the H.265 compression (2 x H.264) for FaceTime Video over cell networks in the 6s.

Last Sat, I was in a Starbucks speaking with a friend who was in a different Starbucks. I was on the 7+ he on the 5S. I could hear annoying background noise, he could hear no background noise. These things are critically important, but it seems as if the reviewers are not using these units in real world situations.

I think this is because the people doing the reviews don't really have technical backgrounds. Otherwise, they'd be testing this issues.

EDIT: The modem specs (for Verizon/Sprint). AT&T, T-mobile use a lesser Intel Modem. [https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/modems/x12](https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/modems/x12)

<comment><USER3> In addition, touch screen latency is something that never gets tested but is a huge factor in how the device feels to use. Some phones have terrible latency and its impossible to find out until you own the device.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely, it's actually incredible how little real-world information there is on latency. The last useful articles I can find are from 2-3 years ago!

Where is Microsoft's 1ms latency touch screen from 2012? [https://www.engadget.com/2012/03/10/microsoft-cuts- touchscre...](https://www.engadget.com/2012/03/10/microsoft-cuts-touchscreen- lag-to-1ms/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On several of the tests, Apple has basically lapped the competition with the 6s and 7 both beating the Snapdragon/Exynos-powered devices. In Jetstream and Kraken, which additionally take the JS engine into account, three generations of Apple devices are beating the latest flagship android devices.

Really a phenomenal showing by Apple's CPU and compiler teams, especially considering that everyone uses the same fabs.

<comment><USER6> Owning the chip design, compilers and OS let you get out lots and lots of extra performance. There is a reason Intel has so many driver and software developers (they are one of the largest employers of software devs out there). Getting a chip working well takes a lot of effort of a lot of people.

Qualcomm is trying to do what apple does here, but they are spread across many more phones, OS versions and the like. They are trying to be more general purpose, which makes them not as great in most cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > At the start of this review I said it was important to consider perspective > because at the end of the day, I use Android devices. Doing the iPhone 7 and > 7 Plus review is important, but also deeply disillusioning. With the iPhone > 6s review I showed a number of clear and present issues in Android devices > relative to the iPhone, and these issues continue to appear time and time > again. More than ever it's obvious to me that most companies in the Android > ecosystem don't really care about the details as an organization.

I would love to hear more about the disillusioning part. As an Android user I want to stay with them but after playing around with the 7 and reading this review I'm actually much more impressed with this phone than when it initially came out. Especially after the release of the Google Pixel which was very underwhelming to me. I can't believe I'd say this but the iPhone 7 seems to provide a better value than the Pixel.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, the Pixel is a horrible value, as it doesn't seem to be as significantly better than what it's replacing relative to the significant increase in price.

<comment><USER9> Is the price difference that significant?

To me, the difference between a $1000 phone and a $400 is less than $1 per day (I keep my phones for 24 months). A buck a day is something I can afford and am willing to pay it for even a modestly better phone. I would guess a lot of HN readers are in a similar position.

I wish Google would have come out with something much better even if it would have been more expensive than an iPhone.

<comment><USER8> Certainly there are plenty of people for whom it is significant. You could just as easily say many have their smartphone fully paid for by their employer so it doesn't matter. When I paid for my own smartphone before, I got a Moto G (80% as good as a phone many times as expensive). Now that my employer pays, I got a more expensive phone that I like only marginally better than my former Moto G (and I miss some things about the G). However, plenty of people are not in that situation, and plenty of people notice the $500+ difference.

<comment><USER9> Yes there are plenty of people that can't afford it, but I was mostly talking to HN readers. $1 per day is something that most of us can afford. Verizon will sell you an iPhone 7 Plus for $32 / month. For sure it's a luxury item, but it's within reach.

If a Moto G is good enough for you, then great! You have sixty five cents per day that you can spend on other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always wondered what it is that Anand Lal Shimpi, Brian Klug (also formerly Anandtech) and (now) Chris Ziegler (formerly The Verge) do at Apple (or _did_ if they've moved on). At first I thought they might be involved in PR and media outreach but that doesn't seem to be the case. Now I'd guess maybe they just painstakingly review devices just like they did before except now they do internal only reviews of Apple's prototypes and maybe the competition.

<comment><USER11> > Chris Ziegler (formerly The Verge)

I do wonder if he is _still_ at Apple after whatever was happening was made public (and possibly known to Apple as well)

<comment><USER12> can you expand, i am out of the loop

<comment><USER13> He took a job at Apple and didn't actually quit at The Verge. Just stopped communicating with them but kept collecting a check.

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13036012/a-note-from- the-e...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13036012/a-note-from-the-editor- in-chief-about-chris-ziegler)

Apparently there was about a month where he actively worked for both, too.

<comment><USER14> [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/09/23/ziegler-verge- ap...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/09/23/ziegler-verge-apple) suggests that he may not even be at Apple anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really don't understand the calls for higher pixel density - there are clear performance costs, and the only use case where it makes a meaningful difference is VR, where I'm more and more skeptical that mobile will be relevant for a while. I've noticed with TV's, tech reviewers have almost unanimously yawned at 4K for normal viewing, and are much more excited about HDR - this just sounds like specs for the sake of specs.

</comment><comment><USER16> A bit offtopic but I am very disappointed only Apple seems to have a clear plan, and makes continuous progress in careful iterations.

I quit Apple precisely when the iPhone 1 was released due to ideological reasons, as I realised the whole ecosystem would become a walled garden. But I concede they have good products.

I was looking forward to the new Pixel and Pixel XL. Google devices are the only ones that have a sane code/update policy within Android, and thus allow me to run Copperhead OS (which is the only free mobile OS I find realistic to run). However, they are insanely expensive, which IMHO risks making Copperhead a really niche option.

Samsung makes decent hardware, Note fiasco aside, but their Android mods are a joke. Same for most Androids. Jolla is stuck. And fringe options like Pyra are cool but inconvenient on a daily basis...

<comment><USER17> I wish there would be more distinction between hardware and software. Just buy an iPhone and install Winedows 10 or buy a S7 and install Sailfish.

Why is this so hard to do? Can't a desktop OS compile the right rom and install it via USB?

Edit: I understand this is a driver issue, but it seems there isn't that much difference in hardware in the mobile world.

<comment><USER18> There is no technical difficulty. The only difficulty here is to find business plan that is not negatively affected by this feature.

<comment><USER19> Maintaining a consistent level of quality is the main technical difficulty, see: Android

<comment><USER18> Arguably the phones with open bootloader have the best Android experience out there (Nexus line), so I'm not sure if Android here is the best counterargument.

<comment><USER19> They have an open boot loader because Google sells them, and they have the best Android experience for the same reason. The open boot loader doesn't enable that experience.

In fact, I think that somewhat proves my point, it's no coincidence the hardware Google has the most influence over has the best experience.

And it's no coincidence they gave up on just influencing the phones and went as far as manufacturing a phone with the Pixel, all in chase of the perfect experience

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is anyone making different decisions based on the headphone jack?

After a steady upgrade cadence since iPhone 1, this is the first time I've postponed my decision, still deciding how to proceed.

Google is making the right moves but I'm not sure how much it can help them. Pixel is an excellent product, but you need a crowbar to pry people out of a well worn and comfortable habits.

<comment><USER21> In my opinion Pixel is a disappointment. iPhone 7 brought two features that I really like (waterproofing and a faster CPU) but screwed it up by removing the headphone jack. So I was really looking forward to the Pixel. But it has no water resistance, no wireless charging, a poor backplate design, and an uncompetitive starting price. So at this point I'm disappointed in both flagship launches of the year. I don't know what to get to replace my Nexus 5. Maybe I'll get an iPhone 6s, despite the ugly antenna bands.

I think if Apple kept the headphone jack and added wireless charging, they'd have a lot of very happy customers.

<comment><USER22> Am I the only who thinks wireless charging is a terrible idea ?

<comment><USER23> Have you tried it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Apps like WeChat are fairly notorious for holding wakelocks on Android and > never really stopping background resource usage

I thought everyone went mad when they said this as I never encountered this issue, but I see it everywhere... The app that drains my Android is always Skype. That is also the app the drains my laptop and the reason I started using the web version but when that is on, Chrome drains my laptop. Wechat seriously does not come close and I use it a lot more...

</comment><comment><USER25> I am surprised cell phones are still selling for 650 bucks. You can get a Chinese cell phone for 200 dollars which will do 90% of what latest apple or Samsung will do. Maybe it will be a little bit slower, but not 450 dollars slower.

<comment><USER26> When the $200 phone bursts into flames, are you able to sue the Chinese manufacturer for damages? When your $200 phone breaks, do you have to simply buy a new one rather than get it replaced? When there are security holes in your $200 phone, will the cheap skin over Android get patched?

I buy Apple phones for one reason, and that's the fact that my business lives and dies through communication. With my $800 phone, I can walk into any Apple store in the world and get support, a repair, or replacement. When I had a Nexus phone, all I got was runaround and BS from whoever support was contracted out to.

<comment><USER27> In Norway in Apple-certified stores you will have to wait a week or more for reparation. And they do not provide a replacement in the meantime...

<comment><USER11> Huh really? I wonder why it's different in Norway? Apple-cerified service providers offer on-the-spot replacements elsewhere in the world (at least in the UK, US and Aus)

Apple in Norway offers IT departments (which manage over 1000 iOS devices) boxes of replacement iPhones so they can swap devices immediately themselves. I would be extremely surprised if this wasn't also available to AASPs [http://www.apple.com/no/support/programs/ssa/](http://www.apple.com/no/support/programs/ssa/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > The default maps application didn't offer that kind of functionality and > Google Maps was completely absent, as was YouTube

I don't remember ever not using Google maps on an iPhone. When was this impossible? I got the 3GS in 2009 and moved to the 4S in early 2012

<comment><USER29> Between the iOS 6 launch in fall 2012 and December 2012 Google Maps was unavailable on iOS.

"In June 2012, Apple announced that they would replace Google Maps with their own maps service from iOS 6. However, on December 13, 2012, Google announced the availability of Google Maps in the Apple App Store, starting with the iPhone version. Just hours after the Google Maps iOS app was released, it became the top free app in the App Store."

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

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r There's a lot of moaning about the resolution of 326ppi, but does anybody find that to be an actual limitation in practice? Just because other devices get a higher figure doesn't mean you get any practical value from those higher figures.

<comment><USER14> I came here to ask the same question. What's the point of a higher resolution? 326ppi is already good enough that I don't see individual pixels, so it's hard to imagine why I would want something denser. And speaking as a developer, I'm really glad Apple has stuck with their 2x and 3x scales. I really don't want to have to add 4x versions of all my images too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I returned my 7+ as it's barely any different to the 6S+, and at £719 here in the UK for the 32GB model it was hard to stomach. £819 for 128GB model is now almost Macbook territory in my mind. I had barely any free space on the 32GB model, and using an adaptor for my headphones was annoying. The camera was good though.

A 64GB 6S+ is a much better proposition to me and will be my daily driver until I find something better. I've not noticed any difference since swapping.

<comment><USER14> The price points between the 7+ now and the 6S+ last year are virtually identical (I found a reference that suggests the 64GB 6S+ was $849, and the 128GB 7+ is $869 now). Would I be correct in assuming that this price point is now considered too expensive because of Brexit (causing the pound to fall)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> >It's hard to actually think about the user experience of the headphone jack and to design wireless earbuds that don't have all of the friction points that we've come to expect.

What are the 'friction points' of traditional 3.5mm headphones? The fact that they're wired?

</comment><comment><USER32> >[The home button] doesn't actually depress so it isn't quite as accurate as something like the Macbook trackpad in replicating the feel of a real button

You guys know that the MacBook trackpads don't actually depress either, right?

</comment><comment><USER33> I am buying iphone 7 plus for my wife, yet I believe this review is quite biased towards iphone 7 and at times reads more like a PR piece.

Quite a disappointement from anandtech.

</comment><comment><USER34> Let's be honest, it's a 6SS (Plus).

And thank god, since I only got my 6S Plus a few months ago. :)

I hope they are planning some fireworks (you'll recover Samsung ;) for the iPhone's 10th year anniversary next year.

<comment><USER35> The only thing that's the same is design. Yet some think that's the most important part…

<comment><USER36> > Yet some think that's the most important part…

Steve Jobs definitely didn't play down that part, to the point of being as important as any other part.

<comment><USER36> Ok, I usually don't do this, but it would be good to understand why I'm being downvoted here.

Therefore it makes sense to talk about design and not downplay its importance with a comment like "Yet some think that's the most important part..."; because one of those "some" was Steve Jobs and I don't think Apple has changed its policy much in that regard.

I'm not judging if he would have released this iPhone 7 or not, I'm just saying what I've said.

<comment><USER37> I think the reason you were getting eaten alive was because your comment somehow confused the design being similar with that somehow being bad. Steve Jobs was always about refining and, when he found a design he liked, he stuck with it. For nearly the entire iPhone's existence, Jony Ive has been the one that has decided the design of the phone. I would imagine that if he's happy with it, Steve would have been too.

You're totally right with your comment but I think that the context of the other posts made it seem like you were suggesting something you weren't.

<comment><USER36> Got it. I can see where the confusion comes from.

Thank you for your comment :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lyft Seizes on Uber's Struggles as Bookings and Ridership Soar, Losses Shrink - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-27/lyft-bookings-and-ridership-soar-while-losses-shrink <comment><USER2> Absent numbers showing a decline in Uber numbers, there is absolutely nothing here that suggests that Lyft's growth here is anything but organic growth.

Are there any market share figures that show what the title claims?</comment>


Google Keep – Save what's on your mind - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/google-keepsave-whats-on-your-mind.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FMKuf+%28Official+Google+Blog%29 <comment><USER2> I would have jumped on this a year ago.

The elephant in the room with every one of the Google announcements is that they've drained their coffers of trust/goodwill with the early adopter crowd, which is precisely the group you need to kick these things off.

Until Larry Page makes a clear, official public comment about this, I'm left wondering what is considered core product and what isn't. Is this? Is it an experiment? I get that this integrates with Drive, which is core product (it is, right?). Not the point. Using a new tool is me spending time and effort to learn/use/integrate into a workflow.

Until I know that I'm not going to be backtracking on this territory in two years when Google has another epiphany about strategy, I'm left feeling genuinely skeptical.

<comment><USER3> I'm not part of the whole Google Reader hate bandwagon, but this one makes me puzzled too. Isn't Google Keep a shade too similar to Google Notebook ( <http://www.google.ca/googlenotebook/faq.html> ), a product they shut down a couple years ago?

Does this show a lack of foresight in maintaining products, a lack of dedication to making them successful, or what? There's clearly a problem here.

Google has the same duplication problem all over the place -- constantly recreating projects that they've previously shut down, or running several redundant projects simultaneously. Google Chrome and the AOSP Browser, Buzz/Orkut/G+, Sites and Blogger (and whatever they had before). Reader and Currents, What is going on here? Rather than improving a project, they seem to have this epidemic problem of creating a whole new one and letting the old one get lost in the fray.

<comment><USER4> Writing code is fun. Maintaining code sucks. You expect A programmers to stoop to maintaining old crap?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Changing priorities isn't a problem"

I love the irony.

</comment><comment><USER6> The ceaseless whining over Google Reader is getting tiresome - I don't think there's been a Google-related post in the last week that had discussion actually related to the article.

Google took a zombie out back and double-tapped it. You can download your data. You have plenty of alternatives eager for your business. Move on.

<http://xkcd.com/1172/>

<comment><USER7> A lot of Google's business is based on our trust. We have to trust them as a company, and we have to trust their ecosystem if we're going to invest our time and data into it. If they consistently violate that trust, shouldn't we get at least a _little_ upset?

<comment><USER8> We also have to trust them to shed dead weight or they will turn into a bloated whale that is never able to produce anything of quality. They gave plenty of warning time and have made it very easy to easily export our data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Before you put your data in this, make sure there's a way out because Google has the nasty habit of discontinuing its stuff.

<comment><USER7> I just checked Google Takeout, it's not listed there yet.

<comment><USER10> I think that's because it's dropping it right on your Google Drive. It's taken out by nature, all the time, whenever you sync.

<comment><USER11> I don't find my notes in drive. Except for the URL there seems to be me no connection to drive.

<comment><USER10> You're right, neither do I.

But tfa clearly says, "Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand." - So, I dunno.

EDIT: dammit, down at the bottom - last line - " in the coming weeks you'll be able to do the same[view,edit,etc.] directly from Google Drive."

<comment><USER7> Ah, I guess that settles that, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My initial reaction was that they were doing a read it later service and competing with the likes of Pocket. That would be a disaster as that area doesn't need competition at this time.

But it appears that they are targeting a light weight evernote replacement. A killer feature for me on this would be a command line binary which calls up my $EDITOR and allows me to write a note immediately and have them synced immediately. This, with the power of lighter production of notes on mobile devices could find a place into my workflow.

<comment><USER13> this would be a killer feature for you and about 17 other people - if they don't already use dropbox for that.

if that sounds offensive, just look at the number of reader users - and it got axed. google doesn't aim at tens of thousands, it aims at millions.

<comment><USER14> > google doesn't aim at tens of thousands, it aims at millions.

I think that is a bit simplistic in terms of why they shut Reader down. Reader was in conflict with their G+ strategy, distracting millions of highly influential people out of G+ and into a cannibalising product and technology (RSS) with no clear G+ integration path. Google wants those people using G+. Even if only 10% of them convert to G+ thats better than 100% of them using Reader and living outside the G+ bubble. I suspect Reader was in the awkward situation of being too small for Google to devote a major product / engineering effort to migrate it's features into the G+ world but too big for them ignore and just leave running as a side project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> No integration with Google Tasks? It may be barebones and needing some love, but I like having it to the side of my calendar.

<comment><USER16> Google Tasks might be a candidate for next Spring cleaning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know it's been said a million times already, but no way would I use this service after they shut down Reader.

Maybe they're just fishing to see how much marketshare they can take away from Evernote? If it's enough they'll keep it and improve it. But if it doesn't capture enough marketshare, I expect to see it culled in a few years as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> Remember Google Notebook?

<comment><USER19> I loved the Firefox extension for Notebook. Hope they make one for Keep as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I do need something like this; my Gmail is littered with drafts that I created as notes to myself when I frantically needed to jot something down.

However it would be a thousand times better with time / date / calendar integration. A large percentage of my random notes to myself are reminders to do something by a particular time "pay electricity bill by thursday". Even their example video shows this. Right now I use an app (Voice Calendar) which puts an event in my calendar. However these aren't really events and it pollutes my real calendar with all kinds of junk. I find it weird that despite having awesome email and awesome calendar, Google has really not done a good job of integrating their ecosystem into an exchange-like competitor yet.

</comment><comment><USER20> I keep seeing this listed as an Evernote competitor. I have a sneaking suspicion that people saying that have never consistently used Evernote since it does so much more than Keep apparently does.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah I don't think I'm going to fall for another product that looks like it'll disappear in a few years time when google HQ gets bored of it.

</comment><comment><USER22> "oops! an error occurred" On google chrome on windows 7

Not quite prime time ready? Or am I the only one?

<comment><USER23> You aren't the only one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Boy, I can't wait to have two years worth of notes 'No longer supported'! Sign me up!

</comment><comment><USER25> Is this sort of an announcement that Google failed to buy Evernote, so they decided to create a project that does exactly the same things and that will be discontinued after a while because it's not Google's focus?

</comment><comment><USER26> How does this compare to Evernote?

(I wish there was a way to filter out all the comments referring to Reader. Most people including me don't care that they discontinued it so please stop spamming about it everywhere.)

<comment><USER27> So 80% of the comments here mention the Reader and yet you surmise that most people don't care about it?

Regardless of what your personal relationship to the Reader issue is, you might consider the possibility that THIS product is axed after a few years when you are used to it.

<comment><USER26> 80% on HN, 20% on other tech sites, <1% overall.

I don't think it's very likely. And even if it is I would just export my data and go to another service. "But I'm used to it" is no argument since we're so adaptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> drive.google.com/keep/ keeps giving me errors. I don't see how this is going to be an Evernote-killer for me though. (I am actually new to Evernote, but it's been wonderful so far.) I actually don't like google's unified product integration! If there was a clear way to export or use webhooks to retrieve these notes, I'd reconsider.

<comment><USER28> "Oops! An error occurred. Please click here to reload the page."

I'm getting it, too.

<comment><USER29> Me three, over and over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've got no time to invest in this. I'm too busy finding an alternative for Reader and seriously looking at alternatives for Gmail because I'm just plain torqued at Google right now.

</comment><comment><USER31> Keep your stuff at Google - until their next spring cleaning!

</comment><comment><USER32> So it's Evernote, but with two panes and a white widget?

</comment><comment><USER33> ... until you start relying on it. Then Google will shut it down. No way I'm using any more Google products except the one I pay for (mail).

</comment><comment><USER34> ... until they kill it because nobody used it.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am getting the same reload error on Google Chrome on Win 8 notebook. Not a very good way to launch a new product.

</comment><comment><USER36> Mobile app lacks barcode scanning. I'll play around But Springpad still better from what I can see.

</comment><comment><USER37> Searching in Market/Play sucks. Try to find Google Keep now. Impossible.

<comment><USER38> It was way down the list for some reason. Look for the yellow icon.

<comment><USER39> If they put it at the top of the list, people would just complain about showing favoritism for their own apps. Can't win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> you can't even make a nested list or a proper table right now. i'll wait a couple of weeks during which i'll probably forget about the thing.

</comment><comment><USER40> When this service will be retired?

</comment><comment><USER41> Any bets on when this is going to be discontinued?

<comment><USER10> Yep, right after you get hooked on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is this hosted on Google Drive?

Anyone know if they did a post-mortem post explaining the Google Drive outage from a couple of days ago?

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5394475>

The post quickly disappeared off the HN front page despite having a lot of upvotes, perhaps due to flagging.

<http://hnrankings.info/5394475/></comment>


Primatologist Frans de Waal takes exception with human exceptionalism - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/70/variables/empathy-morality-community-cultureapes-have-it-all <comment><USER2> When I was about 17 I read a Peter singer book on his ethical philosophy. It was all about grounding ethics rationally in principles. It made me enroll in a philosophy degree.

He flirted with all sorts of wierd conclusions. Babies are less conscious/intelligent/etc than ravens or apes. Does that mean they have the same moral standing as apes and birds?

However you try to rationalize human exceptionalism (or ethics in general), you can usually find examples where they don't apply to all people, or some other rational conclusion that doesn't feel right.

Anyway... I don't think our morals are or can be grounded in morality. Ultimately, "Man is the measure of all things." Morality applies where we decide it applies. There is no higher truth, no underlying rules we can unvover. There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to rationalize it.

<comment><USER3> > There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to rationalize it.

I feel that the very realization of that fact is the first step in becoming a more moral person. Now that the previous model of morality has been shown to be fundamentally flawed, one can begin building the next.

<comment><USER4> Quite. Recognising that animals have many of the same experiences as us should inform but not necessarily dictate our moral position concerning them. I believe humans evolved form a common ancestor with apes, so for me it is completely unsurprising and to be expected that we share many of the same behaviours, sensations, experiences and feelings because I believe we inherited those from our pre-human ancestors. So when I see a human exhibit emotional responses and an ape displaying similar responses, that seems natural to me and I believe they have a common root in our evolutionary biology.

That doesn't mean I have to assign apes moral equivalence to humans. Rights also imply responsibilities and apes are not capable of fulfilling the responsibilities of a human being. But then you hit the argument that some human beings aren't capable of fulfilling those responsibilities either. Well, we are communal and social beings. We have a tendency to treat members of our community differently from outsiders, and generally better. For example we treat citizens differently from non-citizens. Family differently from non- family. I think it's reasonable to treat humans differently from non-humans and grant them enhanced rights.

However I do still accept our common biology and experiential and emotional lives with some animals. I can accept that when an ape or a human sit watching a sunset, relaxing and not actively thinking about anything, that they have fundamentally the same kind of experience. I think that reasonably extends to a bias against causing unnecessary suffering for example. How we treat others and how we treat animals says something about our character.

<comment><USER5> Our experiences may differ most from other animals in the degree to which we are aware of having them, and we assume that other people are similarly aware of having their own experiences and similarly assume that they are thinking the same of us -- we have a theory of mind (and in addition, we can discuss it, with both ourselves and other people, using language.)

a surprisingly wide range of species display something similar in some cases, though it is hard to say how aware they are of it, or how important it is to their lives.

<comment><USER4> If animals behave as though they have a theory of mind (empathy, love, self- sacrifice, etc) without actually having a theory of mind, that raises very prickly problems concerning human evolution. After all if you don't have to have a theory of mind to exhibit the behaviours of having one, did our common ancestors exhibit this behaviour before they developed a theory of mind? Presumably the answer would have to be yes, because all of our close evolutionary relatives exhibit this behaviour. It would be extraordinary to suppose that this behaviour evolved completely independently in all these animals and that our common ancestor didn't have this behaviour.

So if our non-human ancestors exhibited this behaviour, but did not actually have a theory of mind, how come we can say that our equivalent behaviour does flow from having a theory of mind? That makes no sense. So we develop the behaviour first, then we develop a theory of mind, and it's a pure co- incidence that the behaviour flowing from having a theory of mind just so happens to be completely indistinguishable, even though the cause is completely different? I just don't see how that can be credible.

The only coherent account, to me, is that the behaviour we have which we believe flows from having a theory of mind, if exhibited by other animals, must be evidence that they posses a theory of mind as well.

<comment><USER5> Firstly, let me make it clear that I am not saying that only humans have a theory of mind, and I am also not saying that it is a binary property, either you have it in full or not at all.

Having said that, one can still consider when, where, how and how often it evolved. For example, there are many species that cache food. Some (some squirrels and also scrub jays, for example) will either only pretend to cache the food they are carrying, or move it later, if they notice they are being observed. Is that an application of a general theory of mind at work, or an instinct that evolved for one particular circumstance? As far as the ethical treatment of animals is concerned, I have no objection to assuming the former, but if we want a scientific understanding of what is really going on, that assumption cannot be made without further evidence.

What you are overlooking, I think, is that there are several possible explanations for the externally-observable behavior, and once you recognize that, there should be no paradox. In our case, we, as privileged observers of our own minds, can see our theory of mind at work, and, through language, we can talk to other people and ask how it seems to them. Neither of these lines of inquiry are an option when it comes to studying other species.

There is an interesting parallel in ethics: some people are well-behaved because they are fearful of punishment or ostracism, while some do so out of respect for other people. You can't always tell motive from actions alone.

<comment><USER4> I'm aware of the idea of parallel evolution. You're quite right, it's entirely plausible and not something we can dismiss out of hand.

With species like squirrels that are more remotely related to us, there is more scope for an argument of parallel evolution, sure. Maybe their similar behaviour developed independently and has a different cause especially when other mammals do not exhibit this behaviour.

With our much closer relatives such as apes though that exhibit so many more behaviours that are very close to ours it's much less plausible. If all of them exhibit a common pattern of social behaviour with ourselves, arguing all of them could have independently developed this behaviour separately from us and each other, to appear indistinguishable, that seems highly implausible.

Even with squirrels though, as mammals they exhibit many behaviours common to all mammals. Behaviours we exhibit as well. So if all mammals have these behaviours and we do too, if our behaviour has a different cause, at some point our ancestors must have switched from exhibiting the behaviour due to the common mamalian cause to exhibiting it due to this new cause unique to us. I don't find that account very plausible either.

Did our ancestors stop exhibiting this behaviour first, then develop new neurological mechanisms that happened to replace the lost behaviours? When did that happen, before or after we diverged from other apes? Maybe they have these behaviour for the same reason as us but other mammals don't? Did we develop a parallel mechanism and the behaviour transitioned to the new causal mechanism? I'd expect to see some residual evidence in our neurology or behavioural patterns of that having happened.

<comment><USER5> Parallel or convergent evolution is coincidental to the point I was making, which is that you cannot assume a theory of mind from observations that might be consistent with it; you also have to give due consideration to the other possibilities, such as it being an instinctive behavior evolved for a particular situation.

>Even with squirrels though, as mammals they exhibit many behaviours common to all mammals. Behaviours we exhibit as well. So if all mammals have these behaviours and we do too...

Here you are combining speculation with an argument from the general to the specific. There are some behaviors common to all mammals, but are there any theory-of-mind-like behaviors in that category? No, so the rest of that paragraph and the one following are built on a false premise.

I am no expert, but FWIW, I happen to think that apes, or at least chimpanzees and orangutans, do have a nascent theory of mind, and that it was more developed in the various hominins that are now extinct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think most people care about what parts of the human brain are present in monkeys. Even if the difference is just quantitative, it still remains a fact that humans talk, make music, feel remorse and have civilisations. So clearly we are fuyndamentally different from all other animals, even if we have the same components.

The thing is really that when it comes to the mind, physical components are not really the interesting thing, holisitic, virtual components are what matter. Mice probably can't feel remorse, but that is probably not because they lack a remorse center, it\s because their brains are too small or have too few connections to provide that functionality.

<comment><USER7> We had no civilisations for most of our time on earth.

<comment><USER6> We do now. Ants never will.

<comment><USER8> However, they managed to master animal husbandry, agriculture, and slavery before homo-sapiens.

[https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/slave-ants- and...](https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/slave-ants-and-their- masters-are-locked-deadly-relationship/)

[https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest- farmers-...](https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-farmers- ants/)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/science/ant-fungus- farmer...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/science/ant-fungus-farmers- evolution.html)

<comment><USER6> All work and no play

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe the expression he's looking for is that humans are part of a continuum. So we're not off the animal chart entirely, to be described by a whole other set of ideas, but we are at least somewhat special in where we've gone with things.

About religion, I don't think his argument holds. Sure it's human nature to believe in it, but it's also human nature to be quite violent. And we've come a long way in reducing violence, so why not also remove a way of thinking that no longer serves a purpose?

</comment><comment><USER10> I recently discovered that de Waal is a rather controversial figure in primatology circles. I'm probably getting this wrong since IANA(P|Z|B)[0] but I believe the gist was that he'd studied Bonobos in captivity and made all kinds of sweeping generalizations and questionable extrapolations based on his observations, and it turned out that the same animals studied in the wild behaved quite differently and a lot of people think his conclusions are not only wrong but dangerous, in that a lot of lay people use his work to give scientific legitimacy to popular but distinctly unscientific ideas.

FWIW I too dislike human exceptionalism, I just happen to have run across the "de Waal controversy" recently and thought I'd mention it.

[0]: Primatologist? Zoologist? Biologist? But at least I'm a primate!

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems a silly article, where the primatologist says 'we're not different' then proceeds to list all the ways we are different.

<comment><USER6> It's clickbait for reductionists</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to find non-tech news? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Pick as broad a range of news outlets as you can. That includes Western outlets (BBC, Guardian,ABC, NewsCorp), Russian outlets (RT), Middle Eastern outlets(Al Jazeera, Press TV), Asian outlets (Asia Times, Global Times).

With such a broad coverage, the biases tend to cancel out and you get a better perspective on the real news.

Nothing is perfect however, but eventually you get a 'feel' for which outlets are generally more truthful, more often, than others.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reuters. They do high quality journalism, and as a result about 10% of their articles are useful, which is about 10x more than most others. You can also select different regions to get news tailored to that area.

Foreign Policy used to be good, but I've found their quality to be slipping and their views becoming more partisan in recent times.

Al Jazeera is good for monitoring the pulse of the Middle East. Generally good reporting, as long as you are mindful of their agenda.

RT is good for keeping tabs on what Russia wants the world to think of them, which is useful insight into such an isolated country.

For Asia, it's tricky. Asahi shinbun is widely read, but it's heavily slanted in favor of Japan. I've found that Asian publications tend to have stronger nationalist and pro-government slants than Western publications, making them somewhat obtuse reads. Still, it's a view into Asia you wouldn't get from the Western press, so it's useful.</comment>


Microsoft says new processors will only work with Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/16/10780876/microsoft-windows-support-policy-new-processors-skylake <comment><USER2> Does anyone else find the trend of accelerating forced obolescence very unpleasant? With recent hardware only getting more locked-down and user- hostile (often in the name of "security"), and hardware from the last few years being more than sufficient for most uses, I can see the impetus to upgrade has decreased significantly. Windows XP was supported by MS for a _long_ time, and even after that, is still in quite widespread use today. I suspect 7 will last even longer, as it's effectively the last version of Windows that is still relatively featureful and not a "service".

A lot of users don't care about "latest and greatest" \--- they just want to keep doing what they were, with what they have. Lack of support from MS doesn't matter, as the community will form its own to provide unofficial fixes for various things that don't work (and a lot of other things will keep working.) Windows _9x_ , many years unsupported by MS, still has quite a lively community:

[http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/8-windows-9x-me/](http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/8-windows-9x-me/)

[http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/](http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/)

(There are also surprisingly many videos on YouTube of new hardware running old software.)

XP too:

[http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/34-windows- xp/](http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/34-windows-xp/)

<comment><USER3> Offering 5 years of support seems to be the new standard and has been largely the trend outside of Microsoft for the last 10-15 years with the Linux Kernel being one of the few exceptions. Distros like Ubuntu have LTS versions that are supported for 5 years or less. Apple updates OSX annually and only supports back 5 versions or less. Windows XP is almost 15 years old and it was a burden for Microsoft to support it.

Support for legacy software doesn't include back porting of new features or taking advantage of new hardware. So having a large % of users on legacy systems will effectively hold back the industry.

Microsoft is trying to avoid this by putting more realistic support terms in place. They aren't saying legacy software won't run on new systems, just that they won't support it.

<comment><USER4> Current OS X runs on Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros from 2007. For a five year old 2011 model, the only likely disadvantages are a lack of Retina display, and probably the lack of an SSD unless upgraded.

I'm pretty sure Apple hasn't make any computers obsolete since the release of 10.8 in 2013, when they stopped support for many earlier GPUs. If you were using Ubuntu or Mint on a Core 2 Duo you would have careful choice between Gnome, Cinnamon, MATE, too because of the graphics. I'm also pretty sure that 10.7 is still getting security updates, which would make it like 2012 LTS.

<comment><USER3> I've spoken about Apple's support model before, it's pretty straight forward. They only support something as long as it suits their interests.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10074484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10074484)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is click bait. Old versions of Windows will work just fine, they simply just won't be optimized for the new architecture features.

Enterprise customers are the ones who will be affected the most. It sounds like Microsoft is saying that they won't provide support for issues if you're running an old architecture. Regular users really won't be affected by this at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm no expert if CPU internals (only the general architecture) and I'm puzzled. Maybe somebody can help to understand this issue.

Assuming that the instruction set is backward compatible as always has been, how's possible that an older Windows doesn't work with those new CPUs? Timing issues, assumptions on behaviors of the CPU that won't be true anymore, other?

Other popular OSes running on those CPUs (OSX, Linux) will stop running properly and need a special build or CPU detection and per CPU paths?

<comment><USER7> I believe the problem isn't the CPU itself, but drivers for the rest of the platform. Windows 7 doesn't have support for USB 3, I2C, secure boot, I2S audio, and lots of other new technologies. Keeping drivers and BIOS maintained (for what is likely a small number of users) is the problem.

<comment><USER2> The OS doesn't come with drivers for everything but that doesn't mean others won't write drivers either.

<comment><USER3> That's correct however in the past Microsoft has taken upon themselves to write Bluetooth, USB, and other drivers because what was out there was crap. They're not going to do this for new hardware, they're just going to say "that's unsupported please upgrade or contact your OEM for the necessary drivers."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nothing will make me go to windows 10. I wholeheartedly disagree with the business model behind it, and the only reason I'm on windows is for games; but linux has a lot on it now, so the reasoning is going away. I paid for a windows 7 license, i'm going to ride it for as long as I can, which will be at least a few years. After that, I'll jump to linux for gaming, and by then the state of gaming on Linux will have gotten even better.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hopefully it will drive more people to use Linux which doesn't have such ridiculous problems.

<comment><USER7> I think of this like sticking with RHEL 5 (still supported/updated but barely) and expecting to have full support for modern hardware--don't count on it, and don't expect it to work forever.

<comment><USER9> Not forever, but long enough. RHEL in general has quite a long period until they EOL it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The title is misleading, they aren't saying new processors won't work. They're saying that they'll only support them in Windows 10.

</comment><comment><USER10> "New processors will only work with Windows 10"

WTF?! They're using some sort of hardware DRM lockdown to kill Linux, FreeBSD, etc? The nerve!

Oh wait, that's not what it said. It said windows 7/8 wouldn't be supported. Stupid link bait title.

<comment><USER11> How is link bait when it never mentions Linux? It seems like hardware lockdown of windows versions.

<comment><USER12> It's actually just the reverse of what the title makes you think.

1) Windows 7&8 will work on new processors, just like windows XP and 1.0 will. They just won't be updated to use, say, a new instruction set.

2) Windows 10 will in fact get these updates.

3) This won't apply to enterprise customers for 18 months

The article does NOT say:

That future intel processors will only run windows, or only windows 10, or anything remotely of that nature. This is microsoft doing something, not intel and/or AMD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the blog article: "After July 2017, the most critical Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 security updates will be addressed for these [Skylake] configurations, and will be released if the update does not risk the reliability or compatibility of the Windows 7/8.1 platform on other devices." I think this only refers to driver updates and the like, right?

</comment><comment><USER14> I doubt the headline literally means what it implies, but if it were true, it would be Microsoft's perfect answer to Linux and Android.

<comment><USER15> Except Microsoft don't make processors, or have the clout to tell Intel what to do, so how the heck would they swing that? Might as well speculate on "if Microsoft made Linux illegal".

They've already made installing Linux as inconvenient as they can arrange without attracting another anti-trust suit, through the use of "Secure Boot".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> more reason to switch to lubuntu, ubuntu, et al. Oh, good thing I already have :)</comment>


We're Getting Close to Full Employment - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/upshot/were-getting-awfully-close-to-full-employment.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER3> I wonder if the author has ever taken a stroll around downtown Baltimore on a weekday afternoon and seen all the people milling about who are "fully employed."

You need to carry that "employment to population ratio" graph out earlier than 1998: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300001](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300001).

The employment ratio for men is down from 80%+ in the 1950s to ~65% today. Many of those men are of course in school, etc., but that merely reflects the weakness of the economy. You wouldn't expect a larger fraction of people to voluntarily go to school than in 1950 unless economic pressures compelled them to. Indeed, given that school is far more expensive today, you'd expect exactly the opposite.

<comment><USER4> When you go back before 1998 the biggest two reasons for the reduction you see have nothing to do with the economy. They are, in fact:

1) Women entering the workforce

2) An aging population

I think it makes more sense to look at this graph:

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060)

Which shoes that the % of prime age people in the work force is up significantly since the 50s/60s/70s.

<comment><USER3> I'm not talking about the economy so much as the idea that everyone who wants a job has one (vis-a-vis full employment). Presumably men want jobs at a similar rate as they did in the 1960s (modulo the aging aspect which I had forgotten to account for).

<comment><USER5> That's not what full employment means.

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

<comment><USER5> Why did you downvote this? Care to explain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also should consider the number of people who are going on permanent disability:

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/03/22/175076784/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/03/22/175076784/episode-446-the- invisible-14-million)

      The number of Americans receiving federal disability
      payments has nearly doubled over the last 15 years.

[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/490/...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits)

<comment><USER7> This is the hidden secret of "unemployment". A lot of people have just given up looking for employment, and are on SSDI or some other such program. The number of Americans on SSDI went from about 4M to 9M between 1998 and 2014: [https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibGraphs.html#3](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibGraphs.html#3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apparently if you break things down by gender the story is not as positive:

'But purportedly "near full employment" conditions notwithstanding, the work rate for the twenty-plus male was more than a fifth lower in 2015 than in 1948.'

[http://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/men- withou...](http://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/men-without-work)

<comment><USER9> I'd be interested in how many stay-at-home dads are in that drop.

<comment><USER10> Approximately 0%. Outside the upper-middle class people don't have the luxury of not working. Real income has stagnated for middle and lower income people.

<comment><USER11> As child care costs have risen, at least some families in the middle have concluded that it makes little sense for the parent with worse career prospects to work solely for the purposes of paying day care costs. When stagnated incomes can no longer pay for the expenses required to work, working makes less sense financially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> man I know people working as bank tellers, who rent just a room and still cant make ends meet. I dont think the 'employment' is good enough anymore. The tech who services my car at the premium car dealership said he has another job in addition to this full time job and still cant afford stake at home. I think in last 10 years a lot of new living expenses have been added to our daily life. cellphone bill, internet bill, all kind of bullshit mandatory donations to kids school, new 100 dollars per year for each point above 3 points on driver license, school books cost like 10 times more than they used to, have to have alarm system costing 30 dollars per month to get a property insurance discount, all that shit. wages did not keep up with raising costs. i see too many employed hard working honest people whose average checking account balance is usually a 2-3 digit number

<comment><USER13> > _man I know people working as bank tellers, who rent just a room and still > cant make ends meet_

It's always been like this for people. There's this myth these days that all the employed people of yesteryear had comfortable lives. There's always been a large portion of society struggling to make ends meet - until recently, it was basically the definition of 'working class'.

As an example, ask your bank teller friend if they've ever had to darn a sock. Struggling to make ends meet looks a little different these days, but it's far from a new phenomenon.

<comment><USER14> Honestly, I think the biggest difference is in expectations. Look at this graph [0] from an NPR article.

The amount of disposable income spent on food has almost been cut in half since 1960. The example of darning socks is a good one. When people darned socks it was not really because they were poor, per se. It was because socks were expensive. Now socks are considered to be disposable items.

When I grew up, my mother had a carbon steel kitchen knife. Singular. I wander into people's homes and it's rare that I see less than 5 or 6 crappy knives that are, again, basically disposable. How many people have a sharpening stone in their house (and I'm not talking about the next-to-useless honing instrument that people buy and also don't know how to use)?

You've got people spending over $100 per month on cable TV, internet and cell phone. Not just one cell phone either. Every single person in the family needs one, so that they can play Candy Crush and take pictures of their breakfast (pancakes made from a mix because people have lost the ability to add baking powder to flour). Darning socks? Who has time for that???? Socks are free anyway.

Look at this graph for real disposable income since 1929 [1]. Money is like computer memory. The more you have, the more inventive ways you will find to use it. There is never enough. I wonder how many people would actually be better off spending an evening darning socks instead of stressing about how many "likes" they have on Facebook.

[0] [http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2015/02/27/thr-income- spent-...](http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2015/02/27/thr-income-spent-on- food_custom-ed63b133b0b3914191e299c179a61271caa0db71-s800-c85.png)

[1] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The official unemployment rate includes only those who are "actively seeking" employment, by specific measures.

It does not include those who have given up looking for work or don't consider the available work sufficiently rewarding. A sufficiently strong recovery brings more of those to find work.

Labor force participation may be a better measure. [https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet](https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet)

<comment><USER16> Did you read the article?

> Broader measures of unemployment tell the same story. The so-called U-6 > rate, which captures people who are working part-time but want a full-time > job, and those who would like a job but have given up looking out of > frustration, is also back down to its level before the last recession. It > fell to 8.6 percent in April from 8.9 percent, and the last time it was > lower was November 2007.

<comment><USER17> Yes, but does a U-6 level of 8.6% constitute "full employment"? According to the technical definition they're unrelated. Less formally, 8.6% unemployed, underemployed, or discouraged seems quite a bit short of full anything. Pointing out flaws in the original definition or terminology in no way implies that the GP hadn't read the article, and the suggestion to prefer labor force participation is a good one.

<comment><USER18> "Full employment" is a technical term that means no cyclical unemployment; it can involve arbitrarily large quantities of non-cyclical, e.g., frictional and, more to the point, structural (mismatch between skills and demand) unemployment.

It seems intuitively likely to me that _structural_ unemployment is becoming a bigger problem (and that structural rather than cyclical factors are an increasing factor in discouraged workers.)

"Full employment" doesn't mean no employment problems, it just means that the problems are non-cyclical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You know how else you get to "full employment"? By eating all the unemployed. It's scarcely less ethical than what the government and NYT are doing here.

(1) Define "full employment" as 95.3% of the "workforce".

(2) Define "workforce" to exclude arbitrarily many groups.

(3) Ignore all the people who've been forced into one of the excluded groups.

This is not full employment in any reasonable sense of the word. Not unless "full health care coverage" is 95.3% of people who are above the poverty line and have no preexisting conditions.

<comment><USER19> A modest proposal, indeed. Let's not leave out the underemployed, degree holding burger flippers and Wally World clerks. The Circle K by my house had an architectural engineer for awhile, but he got away.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The official unemployment rate (U3 numbers) should be ignored. This number serves little purpose other than being a political tool today.

[https://www.facebook.com/ellis.winningham/posts/142209383784...](https://www.facebook.com/ellis.winningham/posts/1422093837849460)

<comment><USER21> To further this, U6 is around 8.6% - 1.

1 - [http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment- rate](http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate)

<comment><USER22> U-6 is close to prior Great Recession too, according to the chart.

<comment><USER23> Once salaries start rising I'll believe you.

<comment><USER22> U don't have to believe anyone.

But if u believe in math, then even with this U-6 metric, it is back to 2007 level. Meaning this U-6 metric is not really an indicator diverging from the official claim either.

<comment><USER21> It's positive in that it's tracking with U3. My point is that it unemployment on a daily basis, what mainstream America feels, is still twice as high as the "Full Employment" target set by the Feds.

As to purchasing power, I'm not able to readily find numbers not that. Last I heard, people are working longer hours for the same pay they received in 2007/8\. If that's true, they are functionally making less money. I've seen it first hand. People working 45-50 hours to make up for short staffing. However, I only have a few localized, anecdotal data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What does being employeed matter? Having a liveable salary and average lifestyle for all is more important.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm just going to leave this here: [http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment- chart...](http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts)

But I fully expect to be down-voted out of reality

<comment><USER26> I downvoted the comment because you were lazy and just barfed up a link to $DEITY only knows where with no further commentary. The fact that your source is, how to put this politely, frequently demonstrable bullshit is secondary.

<comment><USER25> Sorry I clearly misunderstood. I thought the OP was demonstrable bullshit.

<comment><USER27> Can you provide arguments for this claim so we can debate each other's claims like intelligent people, instead of just linking data without context and linking curt replies?

See this article from the founder of this forum: [http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Report: [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf)

My comment was going to be about how unemployment doesn't count multiple very large and important groups, including those looking for work for 12 months or more. But actually it looks like those numbers have pretty much all improved as well, and some even more significantly than the base unemployment rate.

Discouraged workers dropped by about ~20% from last year, marginally attached workers dropped by about ~10%. Long-term unemployed dropped by ~20% from last year. At first glance that seems pretty crazy.

I'd love to see some analysis on this.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'll worry about too much employment when labor's share of national income returns recovers.

</comment><comment><USER30> So if we are saying this isn't that great of news, what should I make of some European countries?

</comment><comment><USER21> I had this conversion with a feminist. I claimed that a large reason for wage stagnation is that women hit the workforce en masse in the 1970s. That's when the stagnate wages started. I made no judgement on women working. I just tried to explain why everyone's wages have barely moved: more labor supply. Compounding this is global labor. Sadly, the individual became quiet combative about these two facts.

<comment><USER31> Increased labour supply doesn't naturally lead to lower wage growth, so she was right.

<comment><USER32> Huh? As a general matter, increased labour supply _does_ naturally lead to lower wage growth. That's simple supply and demand, which is about as "natural" of a phenomenon as you can get.

It doesn't necessarily lead to lower wage growth, of course, particularly when you take into account other factors that might change contemporaneously. For example there might be union or political pressure to redistribute more profits to workers.

But the point is that with an increase in the labor supply, ceteris paribus, we should expect lower wages, and thus lower wage growth averaged over the period before and after the change in labor supply. The persuasive burden should be on someone trying to prove otherwise. That burden might be easy or difficult to overcome, but we shouldn't mistake where the burden should lie. Otherwise we're rejecting basic, sound economic theory.

<comment><USER31> But of course it's not "ceteris paribus" since those new labourers are are wage earners, their consumption results in more economic activity, and so the wheel of prouction and consumption spins faster.

Take a thought experiment in the opposite direction, if 50% of the labour force decided to drop out, and so there would be about a 50% drop in GDP - <USER2> you think there would be big real wage increases for those who remained employed?

<comment><USER32> If 50% of the labor force dropped out, I would absolutely expect wage increases. I'm ignoring the claim of a 50% drop in GDP because that muddies the waters, and is conclusory; precisely the thing I think we avoid if we stick to my original point.

Yes, we know that "ceteris paribus" is a lie--other elements of the equation will always be different. Moreover, there are complex feedback mechanisms at play. But _how_ they're different is what matters, not simply that they're different.

Precisely because those second-order effects are so complex is precisely why people relying on them for their argument should hold the burden of persuasion. I don't think that should be controversial.

Yes, it's a PITA. I'm tired as much as anyone else of conservative economists and conservative politicians applying economic laws too simplistically, arriving at conclusions completely at odds with _reality_. When our conclusions differ from reality, that's a strong hint we should look for the flaw or missing element in our model.

But none of that justifies shifting the burden. Once you shift that burden you've effectively discarded the laws of supply & demand, and have put earnest, learned critics on the same pedestal as charlatans and radicals. Once you prime people to accept the more complex, non-intuitive answer over the simpler answer, you've poisoned public discourse.

That's how you end up in a situation like Venezuela. Venezuela isn't broken because it's corrupt; all those working poor knew the government was corrupt while voting for them. But people there believed the destructive and poisonous criticisms of liberal economics, and so are simply no longer able to accept even the most basic precepts of supply & demand.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What do you like to see on Internet? - <AUTHOR>

Well, I want to create a directory of sites, something like Wimp.com, without a pretty design, but with a lot of content and a good organization.<p>Any idea? <comment><USER2> Umm... learn (or find a good library to) parse the metadata of submitted sites to create 'profiles' similar to embed.ly. Then let people sign up and tag them or create feeds or whatever. Make sure to respect robots.txt and all that, and include any copyright information, author tags, etc.

I've been working on something vaguely similar for a few months now. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, that's a good idea, let me see more about embed.ly, thanks, and good luck too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> cats

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a lot of Cat lover sites [http://voices.yahoo.com/top-ten-cat-lover- websites-2026893.h...](http://voices.yahoo.com/top-ten-cat-lover- websites-2026893.html), but it will be funny too</comment></comment>