Mice fed a time-restricted, high-fat diet show reduced metabolic disease (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413112001891 <comment><USER2> I'm getting some mileage from this.

Never been a morning person - assumed blood sugar must be low.

Did the glucose testing strip thing - found that was completely wrong!

Now cut carbohydrate intake until after daily brisk swim around 15:00.

Suddenly I've shed eight pounds and brain fog problem is much improved.

Hypothesis: problem was impaired blood flow to the brain not low blood sugar.

<comment><USER3> Pet peeves of little experiments like this of carb cutting. Cutting carbs causes you to shed a lot of water weight. Also if the exercise is new it is quite possible that is the bigger factor in improving perceived cognitive ability. If you changed multiple things and started paying closer attention to diet it is really hard to pin down what actually helped the most.

Vigorous exercise helps clear waste along with sleep, not much else really clears things out -- brain seems more and more to be a part of, or similar to, the lymph system.

edit: also most people who do 18 hour fasts report feeling energized, better concentration, etc,. especially if they have caffeine on an empty stomach.

<comment><USER4> I've cut carbs and increased my calorie intake (through fat and protein) over the past year and have shed 70 lbs of "water weight". I went from Obese to a healthy weight, from a 42" waist to a 32" waist. And I've actually decreased the amount of exercise I've done, too. Amazing how much "water weight" all those fat cells were holding.

<comment><USER5> How can you be sure that it was being low on carbs, as opposed to consuming less calories overall, that was the cause of your sustained weight loss?

<comment><USER4> I switched from a calorie restricted "balanced" diet (1900 kcal/day, 150g carbs/day) with small portions that was going nowhere to an unrestricted (>2500 kcal/day, <30g carbs/day) diet with larger portions and lost weight.

<comment><USER6> And you're measuring everything with a food log? When I do a low carb diet, even unrestricted, I have to focus (eat on a timed schedule) on getting enough calories to maintain my lean mass. Without carbs I simply do not eat enough naturally to maintain a weight I want to keep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This almost answers a question I've often wondered.

Whenever I see research on calorie restriction, I wonder whether it's directly caused by eating fewer calories, or indirectly caused by eating fewer bad things. For example, methionine, an essential amino acid, is linked to cancer growth. In other words, maybe we don't need to eat less calories, but less of specific nutrients.

Anyways, this study seems focused on metabolic diseases and doesn't touch on cancer or longevity in general. So, if anyone has any thoughts, I'd like to know. It's been bugging me for a while.

<comment><USER8> some math:

1 gram of carbs equals 4 calories.

1 gram of protein equals 4 calories.

When metabolized, however,

carbohydrates yield 5x the ATP proteins do. 1 gram of carbs is 5x as "rich in energy" as 1 gram of proteins. In spite of them being billed as equal.

A tablespoon of sugar yields about as much energy as a pound of chicken breast.

Then we go into fat. People think fat makes them fat. The truth is, ingested fat can not be turned into bodyfat directly. It is way easier for the body to turn carbs into fat than it is to turn fat into fat.

"Diet" products that extract fat from milk products, like yoghurt, and replace them with sugar, which makes the product less calorically dense, nominally, literally makes people more fat - AND is billed as a diet alternative.

Everything. the. media. says. is. wrong.

Everything.

And this isn't arcane knowledge acquired from some hermit. Its literally on wikipedia. One click away. Google ATP, or adenosinetriphosphate, and read the whole page. you will know more about diet than most dieticians.

When I talked to my physician about these things, initially, they didnt know those basic facts either. All the knowledge we've got about how to lose weight is buried and ignored by bullshit.

Simple facts that, if applied, make people lose weight. Caloric restriction is bs. Carb restriction is key. You can literally eat until your stomach hurts all day long and lose weight. Its what Ive done.

<comment><USER9> > Caloric restriction is bs. Carb restriction is key. You can literally eat > until your stomach hurts all day long and lose weight.

While I agree that for many people, restricting carbs is a far easier method of eating healthy while still feeling fully sated, stating that you can "literally eat until your stomach hurts" is false, misleading, and potentially destructive.

5000 calories of cream cheese or other caloric dense foods is, still, at the end of the day, 5000 calories. Caloric restriction isn't the only way to diet or eat healthy, but ignoring overall caloric intake (even rough estimates) while only focusing on "what" you eat is one of the biggest pitfalls I see.

<comment><USER10> The "a calorie is a calorie" approach to diet and health has been thoroughly debunked.

Our bodies metabolize carbs, protein, and fat, _very_ differently. If a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, then we need to be able to explain why two people eating the same amount of calories per day, but one eating a high fat, low carb diet, and the other a low fat high carb diet see starkly different outcomes. All things equal except the composition of their diet, the person on the HF diet will stay lean and feel consistently satiated, while the LF person will put on more fat and feel hungry far more frequently than the HF.

IMO, the claim that all calories are created equally is the most damaging "science" that's been put forth as common knowledge about dieting.

<comment><USER6> > IMO, the claim that all calories are created equally is the most damaging > "science" that's been put forth as common knowledge about dieting.

I completely disagree. At the end of the day losing weight is about changing the amount of calories a person consumes vs. what they use. The most damaging science is trying to say it's not about calories at all when in fact that is almost all it is about in healthy person. Now, if you want to argue about satiation and the ability to keep up with a diet, then the type of food matters, but for strictly weight loss a person has to cut calories (or add activity).

<comment><USER10> > At the end of the day losing weight is about changing the amount of calories > a person consumes vs. what they use.

Over an extended period, yes, this bears out because the law of thermodynamics. But the question is - can people adhere to a calorie- restricted diet long enough to see meaningful results? More importantly, will they simultaneously be able to build muscle and maintain normal bodily functions (thyroids tend to stop functioning normally during extended calorie restriction, especially when fat intake is low)?

You will have a much easier time achieving a healthy body composition and feeling satisfied while eating a high fat low carb diet, than you would eating the same amount of calories on a low fat high carb diet.

I say that the "calories in, calories out" approach to dieting is problematic because it's simply not as effective as switching to a HFLC diet. It makes building muscle tissue difficult, it encourages miserable dieting tactics, and taken to the extreme (which many people do) is a threat to a person's health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I know that mice have been used very successfully to study many diseases and conditions that can also affect people. But are mice a good human analogue when it comes to diet?

I don't have time to find citations at the moment, but I seem to recall that the original studies linking consumption of saturated fat with...bad things (high cholesterol, etc.) were originally done with mice and more recent studies involving actual humans have failed to find a connection between consumption of saturated fat and the aforementioned bad things.

<comment><USER12> It is about compromise. The ideal would be to use real humans for all studies. There are many reasons we cannot do this, about half of them are obvious. (try to come up with the non-obvious ones as an exercise)

Mice are cheap, have a short lifespan, and have less ethical concerns so we use them. They are an okay model of humans, which is good enough to say if something fails on mice don't try it on humans. It is an open question of what treatments would work on humans that fail in mice - but this is impossible to study so we will never know how often this happens. (the fringe "coconut oil" groups put it at 5% from what I can tell)

<comment><USER13> You've defined above why we use model organisms, but the original question wasn't questioning model organisms in general. I think we should work towards the original posters challenge to validate our models are efficacious, not just normal and cheap. After spending a semester seminar reading rodent dietary studies, I am equally sceptical that mice are a good general model for diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know if they specifically apply to this study, but Stephan Guyenet has pointed out some of the potential problems with what are typically called "high-fat" diets for mice.*

For example one research diet that is called high-fat, D12492 \- is extremely high in fat (60%) \- does not contain what are generally considered to be particularly healthy forms of fat \- is extremely processed overall \- is typically used with genetically obesogenic mice \- typically causes obsesity and neuron damage (and often diabetes) at a young age.

I would think there are quite a few studies on Intermittent Fasting (IF) that more easily generalize to humans.

* [http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/01/high-fat-diets...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/01/high-fat-diets-obesity-and-brain-damage.html)

ADDENDUM: Here is the diet used in the actual study. [http://www.labdiet.com/cs/groups/lolweb/@labdiet/documents/w...](http://www.labdiet.com/cs/groups/lolweb/@labdiet/documents/web_content/mdrf/mdi4/~edisp/ducm04_028003.pdf) Some of the top ingredients are soy products (which in high enough doses will render most animal species infertile).

<comment><USER15> _Some of the top ingredients are soy products (which in high enough doses will render most animal species infertile)_

Can you show legitimate repeatable recent research that shows this. I'm starting to think that the Soy raising estrogen (to unhealthy levels) thing may not be as true and is perpetuated in some cases as broscience.

<comment><USER14> I'm sorry, the research I reviewed on animal infertility was a long time ago. The studies that were from the first half of the 20th century in which this result was demonstrated on just about every domestic farmed species. I don't have time at the moment to track those down. But I don't believe this is 'broscience'.

The first place I'd look if you're searching for studies, esp. more modern ones, is actually the Weston A. Price Foundation. While they have an agenda for sure (e.g. they are currently suing the US prison system for malnourishing inmates, just to name one example of activism/ideology) I think they are generally good folks. They have sponsored some top-notch researchers, such as Chris Masterjohn, in the past.

Here is their scary soy page, which starts with a few citations. I think you'd find more in some of the linked articles.

[https://www.westonaprice.org/soy-alert/](https://www.westonaprice.org/soy- alert/)

Price was a fascinating bro, BTW.

Please feel free to post here anything that you may find to be of particular interest.

I should add that most of these results probably don't apply to traditionally fermented soy (like natto or traditionally made soy sauce -- but not the mass produced stuff nowadays); as I understand it there is no traditional culture which ate soy in an unfermented form.)

<comment><USER15> Thanks. I'm always trying to reduce meat and other animal product consumption but its fairly difficult with out some if not a large portion of soy consumption.

I'll have to check if tempeh (which is what I normally eat) has the same soy dangers (it is supposedly traditional fermented).

<comment><USER14> Another way to reduce meat and animal product consumption, though counter intuitive, may be bone broth / anything with gelatin or glycine. I understand it has a "protein sparing" effect, meaning you can eat less protein total without muscle wasting. Our ancestors got a higher ratio of this stuff by eating more of the whole animal, rather than eating primarily muscle muscle bellies, as we tend to do today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's a theory called the protein leverage hypothesis: as the percentage of food protein decreases, hunger is increased to the point that you eat more calories of food that have a higher fat % + carbohydrates %, to compensate for the need to accumulate the remainder of your daily protein. This tweet explains it w/ a graphic from a study: [https://twitter.com/tednaiman/status/868597859037216768](https://twitter.com/tednaiman/status/868597859037216768)

</comment><comment><USER17> Intermittent fasting has been quite popular in the fitness and lifestyle worlds in the last years. I myself have been practicing it for more than a year now. A good point to start (which I used myself) is this article from James Clear: [http://jamesclear.com/the-beginners-guide-to-intermittent- fa...](http://jamesclear.com/the-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fasting)

</comment><comment><USER18> Read The Obesity Code by Jason Fung. A real doctor using real medical studies but with a different view to explain in common language why diets fail and why old practices work.

<comment><USER19> his youtube lectures and interviews are also good.

i wouldn't advise sharing his findings with most other people though, especially those who are prone to get swept up with the prevailing beliefs on things like low-fat eating and/or fasting.

the great thing about modern society with regards to diet is you can eat whatever you want and get your blood and weight/fat% tested as often as you want without anyone else's input or permission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> From personal experience (IANAD), cutting carbs to below 50g/day has greatly improved my life. This "diet" naturally leads to increased fat and protein intake, and for me resulted in weight loss, better concentration and reduction of inflammation (mild psoriasis improvement).

Also, I recently got a pack of (urine) testing sticks which confirm a high level of ketones, and plan to experiment with increasing the daily carb limit.

<comment><USER21> Just be careful with increased urine acidity that accompanies ketones. It can cause kidney stones, and can be prevented by supplementing with potassium citrate

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's depressing about all of this is that it's not really that interesting.

 _We know_ that exercise and activity improve all metabolic measures, increase happiness, longevity and outputs.

But very few people pursue that strategy. You can barely get post-injury patients to do their rehab exercises.

Similarly, we seem to have very good evidence of the benefits of fasting/restriction/etc. _in addition to_ the very good historical evidence of these behaviors being so well preserved by culture and religion, across the world.

But people aren't going to do it. It's not going to change anything for (almost everyone).

<comment><USER23> Agreed. I've been doing IF (intermittent fasting) for the last 3 months. It's changed completely how I feel, in addition to losing some weight that was bothering me. It's like a weight has been taken off my metabolic system, that was working way too hard to process the amount of food I was throwing at it. And, the monkey on my back which was my sugar addiction is mostly gone--I still occasionally have sweets, but far less often than I used to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Humanity is going to argue over what is the best diet (regular not reducing) until the end of time.

<comment><USER25> And reasonably so. Partly, this is because the "best diet" at any given time depends on practical factors like availability and affordability. Both of those have been rapidly improving, I think, for much of the world. I can buy food today that, to my grandparents or even parents, was unheard-of or only- eaten-by-kings.

e.g. the value of quinoa or blue-green algae in a diet probably makes sense to study now, but it probably didn't 50 years ago

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "In order to adapt to the daily cycles of nutrient availability, energy metabolism in animals has evolved to be cyclical."

That sentence makes claims about history and about causality. I wonder if they really have the evidence needed to back them up.

<comment><USER27> Seems like a very easy case to make given the available observations, and something that can be easily studied.

To me, if they couldn't know this much, it would be like a civil war historian that couldn't really tell who gave the Gettysburg address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> You can probably use mice to validate and invalidate any diet.

</comment><comment><USER29> Jesus, the debate is long over. All that are left are people who can't seem to reset their brains to realize the food pyramid was wrong all along.

This is like some slow moving comedic parade of ignorance or something. Do your research people and move on, the debate is over, fat doesn't make you fat and all the truly controlled scientific studies show the way forward.

It's been painful over the years watching the big brains here snail their way slowly slowly slowly crawling towards what is long proven reality on the subject.

</comment><comment><USER25> I suspect a lot of HN probably listens to Sam Harris' podcast, but just in case ... there was a relevant episode last month where he and Gary Taubes discuss the whole "good calories vs bad calories" idea and popular fat/protein misunderstandings over the last few decades.

[https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-should-we- eat](https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-should-we-eat)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is from 2012

<comment><USER31> Oh right, the great metabolic upgrade of 2014 changed all this.

<comment><USER32> HAHAHA! This comment made my day.

FWIW, I did have a great metabolic upgrade in 2013 and 2014. And it was done by cutting down on carbs and eating delicious foods like fatty chicken and beef, cheeses, etc, and cooking with lard whenever possible.</comment></comment></comment>


How Uber Engineering Put the Squeeze on Trip Data - <AUTHOR> https://eng.uber.com/trip-data-squeeze/ <comment><USER2> DATA FOR DAYS</comment>


College Presidents Making $1M Rise with Tuition and Student Debt - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-11/college-president-salaries-rise-9-and-1-million-paydays-double <comment><USER2> Huge fan of Georgia Tech's online masters program. It's in the top 10 graduate computer science programs in the world, and it's the same curriculum and same degree that you would get on campus. But the total cost of the program is around $7,000 dollars. Their reasoning? You don't pay for the stadium, the student fitness center, career advisers, etc. You only have to pay for the cost of the online program, professors, and TA's.

<comment><USER3> That's how much college used to cost WITH all that stuff. In the 90s. But we had terrible food and no air conditioning.

<comment><USER4> It's mostly because financing by the states has disappeared though.

<comment><USER5> This is right. We used to all agree, as a society, that we would all benefit by people educating themselves, becoming then next generation of civil engineers, doctors managers, and maybe poets. But we no longer believe that, we believe that people should pay for it themselves.

<comment><USER6> I think that your viewpoint focuses on the people paying, but you are ignoring the people taking.

It's not fair to ask people to simply pay, and not allow them to hold the institutions accountable. Universities are packed with dead weight professors, dead weight majors, and dead weight administrators who take advantage of the blind belief that a bachelor's degree in anything is better than nothing.

The University of Florida got rid of its Computer Science program a few years ago, while expanding it's English department. Do you think that was a wise use of Florida taxpayer's dollars?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope everyone's in on the joke that "non-profit" just means that someone other than a class of people called "shareholders" siphons off all the profits. It doesn't mean "low cost".

<comment><USER8> That's a very pejorative and mostly inaccurate way of putting it.

"Non-profit" doesn't mean people can't earn good money -- it means the organization exists for a purpose other than profit and, therefore, gets some tax breaks.

Most people I know who work in non-profits are paid below-market for their skills.

<comment><USER9> > _Most people I know who work in non-profits are paid below-market for their > skills._

This is true, but orthogonal - the complaint is about how much the bosses make, not how much the workers make.

<comment><USER10> And the fact that they are using their non-profit status as an excuse to pay their employees less than market value, while the executive suite cashes huge check,s is deplorable.

<comment><USER8> No, non-profits tend to underpay simply because they often have less money. Well-funded non-profits probably pay at-market rates. Or higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember my tuition rising sharply while the school was building things like a new rec center with a large pool and a lazy river. (Yes, I think there is obvious irony there installing a lazy river on a college campus and making students take 6 figure loans to pay for it). In the meantime the evening college which had people trying their hardest to work and go to school was strapped for funds, couldn't afford printer paper and was printing exams double sided in a tiny font.

<comment><USER12> Students are free to go to less expensive schools. However, as long as people underestimate debt, spending more to attract more students is simply rational behavior.

<comment><USER13> You say that people underestimate debt, but it goes the other way too. My experience as a poor child growing up was that I could see no way to afford university fees, because the numbers looked too big. Loans wouldn't make a difference because I couldn't comprehend the subjective experience of making so much more money later in my career.

Thankfully, college fees were abolished in my country (Ireland) in 1996. It enabled me personally to envision going to college where I couldn't before.

<comment><USER14> I had the same experience.

I knew I was covering my college tuition and even in 2000, I couldn't understand how I could ever afford out of state tuition and room and board. I had near perfect grades and solid test scores, but the financial obligation scared the hell out of me and I had no idea private schools handed out big scholarships for good students.

I ended up staying in town and going to my local state college and had a good experience, but I completely missed out on the prospect of going to a top university where I would meet other ambitious and curious people. I worked part-time to full-time for four years to pay for my tuition, and it was tough. I wish I could've been immersed in college and academia and even college-life, but the cost just felt like a huge barrier when I was 18 years old.

TL;DR: I fear poorer people may be more afraid to attend college because of the costs, causing an even greater gap between the haves and have-nots.

<comment><USER15> Many top schools (e.g., Harvard) are essentially free (both in terms of tuition and from loans) for children of families making under roughly $100,000.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To me this issue is basically the same as most other pay discrepancy issues in other fields. It all boils down to directly attributable results. If a college endowment increases by 800 million under a presidents stewardship he can point to that as directly attributable to him. It doesn't mean others didn't assist but it's a very public win for him. It's hard to argue that he doesn't deserve 1% of that. With professors it's hard for them to argue that they are the reason why the college has X number of dollars with any clarity. Unless some alum donates a lot of money and says specifically this is because of this or that teacher it's impossible for them to quantify their worth to the school. Thus admin staff who can do that see their salaries increase commiserate with what they can argue they bring to the school, while the professors who should be more important are left behind. Schools are a business today and that's reflected in their priorities of money > education.

<comment><USER17> How do you reconcile that with external effects? Surely a college endowment increases for reasons outside of the college presidents' actions and it is not directly attributable to him/her.

If all college endowments grow in lockstep with demographic/economic growth then surely it stands to reason that college endowment growth can be attributed to this. While is foolish to assert that demographic/economic growth is 100% responsible, it is equally foolish to assert that college presidents are 100% responsible for endowment growth.

<comment><USER16> Absolutely, but it's up to the board or whatever functions similarly at a university to make that decision. I'm not laying out an algorithm for president's inflated salary just explaining what i see to be the reasoning behind it. Like most things, compensation isn't a reflection of absolute truth but of what one can argue to be reasonable. I'd imagine you could take the increase in endowment and compare to the average schools increase across the same time period or some other such metrics, if one were so inclined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tuition has skyrocketed yet class-size keeps going up and many tenured professorships are in fact being abolished across the country. Where is the money going?

To an explosive growth in administrative (ie non-academic) staff. With the government giving out loans to anyone who wishes to attend, colleges have no reason to keep their costs in check.

Dartmouth, my alma mater, has about one employee per student. Most of these people do nothing, at best. Many are engaged in running one of the dozen or so administrative departments, one for every kind of minority imaginable, dedicated to indoctrinating students in how much they are oppressed by the white-male patriarchy. Most are just bureaucratic paper pushers who are totally unnecessary. Another chunk is overpaid low-skill laborers who are making several times the market rate in the area, but are unionized and protested (with the support of naive students) when there was an attempt to bring their compensation down slightly. And to be clear, I don't blame any of these groups for protecting their own interests, I blame the college leadership for not doing what must be done.

The college overpays for building projects by whole-number multiples and is generally getting ripped off by contractors.

The solution is to limit the amount of federal government student loans per year to a much smaller number. The colleges will kick and scream and complain of "evil [political party]" stealing education from babies' mouths, or something like that. But then they'll quietly start making the tough decisions to cut their ridiculous expenses and bring tuition down.

</comment><comment><USER19> College president is essentially a sales job, where fundraising is the primary objective. These salaries, while optically horrible, should reflect the success of the president at bulking up the endowment.

Like in many industries, a great sales person can often become one of the highest compensated employees, because it's still only a portion of what they generated.

I think an important conversation to be having is what are the universities doing with the massive endowments they've built up?

<comment><USER20> This might seem crazy, but I actually think the point of a college president is to ensure that his college is teaching students effectively and for as little expenditure as possible...

<comment><USER21> The parent comment makes a fair point in my opinion. The job you're describing is done by the #2 at a university (provost or executive vice chancellor or whatever title they want to use). The president's job is to court 7 and 8 figure donations and to be a symbolic figurehead. Not all of this money is wasted; often the donations go toward supporting research or paying grad student stipends. Administrative bloat is a huge problem at universities but I actually no longer see the presidential salaries as being very objectionable relative to other forms of waste I've seen, like the money spent on stadiums or unnecessary luxury amenities.

<comment><USER22> Of course it varies by university, but in Iowa the state universities (possibly with the exception of UNI) pay for their athletic programs using no tax dollars. Of course there are still millions donated to athletics which doesn't help the greater student body.

If schools didn't have athletic programs, would the donations have been made to the university at large?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Forget about the presidents. At least they have a real job. What about the football coaches, who make really obscene amounts? This article lists a ton of state school coaches making way the hell more than any president. [http://www.espn.com/college- football/story/_/id/17892134/mic...](http://www.espn.com/college- football/story/_/id/17892134/michigan-wolverines-coach-jim-harbaugh-salary- tops-list-college-football-coaches)

<comment><USER24> What about football coaches? Div I football programs are big business, bringing in tens of millions of dollars a year:

[http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/](http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/)

Most of the these football programs finance all sports for these large universities.

College coaches are paid well because the programs they lead tend to be profit centers for the school.

<comment><USER25> They profit off the labor of unpaid student athletes.

<comment><USER9> You make a very good point, but these students also generally get scholarships to college, which is not an insignificant form of compensation at all - especially given how much having a college degree matters for future lifetime earnings.

<comment><USER26> The graduation rate for those athletes tends to be quite low overall though, so not all of them get that benefit.

<comment><USER27> That's their own fault. If you're given a free/mostly free ride you should take advantage of it.

<comment><USER28> It's not free if they're working for it. And that work may impede said studies: [http://uk.businessinsider.com/college-student-athletes- spend...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/college-student-athletes- spend-40-hours-a-week-practicing-2015-1)

<comment><USER23> plus the concussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I can understand why president's make a lot of money. From the article:

 _The chart-busting payday for Hatch, who has headed up Wake Forest since 2005, was partly from compensation of more than $3 million that came due in 2015_

 _" President Hatch's compensation over the course of his tenure reflects his exceptional leadership," trustee chair Donna Boswell said. The school has raised nearly $800 million under Hatch, she said._

So they paid the guy $3 million and got over $800 million back in return while he's the university? As a student or faculty, that would be good news for me. More endowments, better facilities, more scholarships.

The one thing I _do not_ understand is how technology has made everything more efficient. How is it education seems to be one of those areas where despite the advances in technology, tuition seems to still go up, certain courses and majors demand more and more course materials, and the debt students have to incur is greater and greater.

When I was in college in the mid aughts, they made a huge deal about giving all the students laptops as opposed to having huge computer centers and the millions they were saving by doing so. And yet, every year since then, tuition went up. It's totally baffling to me.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is unsurprising, as those of you who have read "Dictators Handbook" will remember, college campuses are organizations governed by leaders with small constituencies and sort of mathematically lead to crony-ism and big payouts for supporters. The system is set up to incentivize this behavior, and the universities need to be reorganized to achieve any other outcome.

</comment><comment><USER5> I see people writing who comment about excessive expenses, for instance for fancy facilities. I'm a prof (not in any kind of administrations, though), and when I went to state school in 76 there were non of these things, for sure.

But I have been in meetings where the admissions folks say "Prospective students read in US News that they should ask about athletic facilities and ours is significantly worse than our competitors" and the next thing you know we are building a knockout gym. I perfectly understand the decision.

(It reminds me of the kind of stuff you read in Jared Diamond's _Collapse_ , where the system globally has problems that everyone can see but locally they are forced to act in the same way as everyone else.)

<comment><USER30> An insane amount of spending is just a dick measuring and box checking competition between schools. They're worried that when some entry level journalist needs to write another top-ten article to meet their quota they won't be on the list and that when some other publication read by college counselors aggregates all those BS lists they won't make the cut.

In dining services we'd spread ourselves super thin in order to check boxes and QoS would slide. Then we'd get a bunch of complaints about QoS and cut back. Wash rinse repeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> As mentioned in a reddit thread(1) of the same article:

"Let's see, average amount of student loan debt per graduate is $30k. Student loans are usually a life-altering debt, designed to take decades to pay off. That means for every year this chode gets paid $1M, 33.3 students are stuck with paying off his yearly salary for the next 20 years. "

And that's just 1 person. And it's pretty easy to connect the dots to the real problem, being that of administration is the one making the rules now for education, not the faculty and academics. (2) (3)

Now, there is an argument that because more regulations and laws are passed, that is why administration is being.. bloated. I'm not so sure how true this is, but is is another factor that does seem to take a part of the whole situation. (4)

(1) [https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/7j755s/number_of_coll...](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/7j755s/number_of_college_presidents_making_1_million/dr4vzqg/)

(2) [https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2017/06/administrative- bloat...](https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2017/06/administrative-bloat-campus- academia-shrinks-students-suffer/)

(3) [http://volokh.com/2010/08/24/administrative-bloat-at- univers...](http://volokh.com/2010/08/24/administrative-bloat-at- universities/)

(4) [https://www.chronicle.com/article/Think-College-Costs-Too- Mu...](https://www.chronicle.com/article/Think-College-Costs-Too-Much-/146641)

<comment><USER32> Under his tenure the endowment raised an additional $800,000,000. Assuming a conservative 2% spend-down, that's an additional $16,000,000 per year, forever. If he gets paid $3,00,000 per year, forever that's still $13,000,000 in new money, or using your math - 433 students' tuition.

<comment><USER31> We can show by rising tuition prices the money's going "somewhere". And given administrations stratospheric rise, I'd say it's a safe claim to start looking at the university presidents, the long list of VP's of $stuff, assistant VP's of $more_stuff, the piles of directors... And the list goes on.

And I can damn near guarantee that the "433 students tuition" will instead be spent on "Philanthropy" via constructing more buildings. I'm seeing it right now in my town, with skyrocketing rents everywhere, gentrification, and school pricing run amok (wife is trying to get in grad school).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> These organizations try to have it both ways. On the one hand they go to the government and ask for all kinds of tax benefits on the basis that they are doing good for society, but on the other hand when you ask why their employees make so much money they say that's just how capitalism works. If their own employees aren't willing to sacrifice for their mission, why should the rest of us in the form of tax concessions?

</comment><comment><USER34> Reminder: big banks were giving out 1M+ bonuses to traders / c-suite executives in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, while being bailed out by the taxpayers to the tune of trillions. We're now re-tooling the entire tax code to give them more money, but we're gonna crack the whip because of 58 -- thats fifty-eight -- college heads making over 1M in salary.

<comment><USER35> You want top talent, you have to pay for it. Otherwise they will just go work somewhere else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is just offensive. I know so many kids with degrees just struggling under debt and poor job prospects.

We need a reformation for universities and their contract with society.

<comment><USER37> Why does one take on debt they cannot afford, especially when they lack a good career to help pay for it, in the first place?

From the stories I've taken in from people attending college over the years, I suspect it is because they see people like these administrative staff, who will tell you they got there by going to college, making serious amounts of money and are willing to take a chance that they too will become that person in the future. Which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. The schools are incentivized to ensure that a small group of college graduates are paid handsomely to make their product look more attractive, and more students taking notice of that attractiveness allows them to pay those people even more.

Despite substantial growth in college attainment over the last number of decades, incomes for the general population have remained stagnant and job quality is in decline. That fact is reported in the news almost daily, it feels like. It is no secret that the average person is going to see no workplace gains by going to college, otherwise incomes would be going up and/or job quality would be rising with increasing attainment. It appears to me, however, that some are willing to gamble on the small chance they are the exceptional case that gets the exceptional job (like College President).

Ultimately, the colleges are providing what the students want: A perceived chance, albeit small, of significant upward mobility. Until their desires change, it is going to be difficult to change that outward contract.

<comment><USER38> > It is no secret that the average person is going to see no workplace gains > by going to college, otherwise incomes would be going up and/or job quality > would be rising with increasing attainment.

Incomes do go up and job quality does rise with increasing educational attainment, and empirically the average person is going to see workplace gains by going to college.

People are not going to college solely to gamble on a chance to make million dollar salaries. That's a bizarre outlook that excludes every middle class job that increasingly tends to require a college degree.

Hell, most college administrators don't make more than middle class salaries.

<comment><USER37> _> Incomes do go up and job quality does rise with increasing educational attainment_

I really don't think this is found in the data. Among the general population, incomes are quite stagnant, and job quality is considered to be falling. At best, it is no better than in the past. With the rising rates of educational attainment, if what you say is true, incomes should be rising along with job quality. That does not appear to be happening.

What we do see that those with higher educational attainment are the ones who are more likely to have the higher paying and better jobs, but that is not the same thing as incomes increasing and job quality improving with increased levels of schooling. All that really tells us is that those who have the most difficulty in the workplace (those with mental disabilities, for instance) are also most likely to have less formal education. Which comes as no surprise to, well, anyone.

 _> That's a bizarre outlook that excludes every middle class job that increasingly tends to require a college degree._

That is a bizarre outlook. Employers are not a charity to help out those with college debt. Unless the law requires it, employers couldn't care less about where you went to school. And the jobs that do require it by law are vanishingly small. We covered why those with post-secondary educations are more likely to get those better jobs (high achievers tend to be high achievers in everything they do), but that does not mean it is a requirement or is increasing as a requirement.

The only thing increasing is the rate of post-secondary attainment, which understandably will result in more and more jobs filled with college graduates. Of course. That's just basic math.

 _> Hell, most college administrators don't make more than middle class salaries._

Along with everyone else. Why would you take on that massive debt if you knew you were guaranteed to end up in the same place as you otherwise would? Especially when education is a life-long endeavour. You can always go to college once you have saved up the necessary cash. There is no rush.

The only reasonable explanation I see here is that people see the small chance of significantly improving their situation beyond the average middle class person. Which, given the costs of post-secondary education, is a pretty big gamble. There has to be some kind of substantial reward potential given the high stakes. Not just another middle class lifestyle like almost everyone else in the country. That would never justify the costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If those presidents aren't paid that level of salary how will students learn? Students need a great university leader in order to guide them on how to learn. Also how will researchers produce science without a powerful leader pointing the way? Its like my boss, if my boss wasn't paid to sit in a chair all day to tell me to program an entire operating system, how would i be able to do it? I'd be lost without a great leader. We need to pay these leaders 5 million dollars because of the great talent they have in telling other people what to do.

</comment><comment><USER40> As others have mentioned, the problem is that people don't know what presidents do.

Academic decisions are made by provost, the second in command.

A president's job is basically only fundraising from mega donors and being at events mega donors are. If they are excellent at that, any president is worth more than $1 million a year. All the rest is peripheral.

</comment><comment><USER41> Wrong/weak metrics.

A better metric than the max, one that is less susceptible to noise, and more indicative of the trend, is the sum of an upper quantile. A common one is the "top 1%".

I would have loved to see a graph of the total remuneration to the top 1% of college leaders (pres and others) by year.

</comment><comment><USER42> Make college more accessible by providing low-interest financing > college prices rise due to supply and demand > students end up in more and more debt > college presidents (and profs, and the colleges themselves) profit massively.

All of these things are direct consequences of each other.

</comment><comment><USER43> time for colleges and universities to issue IPOs. I want to buy shares in Harvard or Stanford. Certainly the presidents of the schools will be baited with the prospect of EVEN MORE money as their shares hit the stock exchange. Options could be used to attract post graduate students?! By monetizing the sport of education maybe we'll get Americans interested in higher education again?

And then the rascals in the bureaucracy will learn to fear the SEC. Schools will become politicized. Campaign contributions will flow to politicians from major universities to foster favorable legislation.

I cant wait to see how complicated we can make the lives of our children. Eventually people will choose to stop reproducing, just like in Japan, because of the complexification.

</comment><comment><USER44> Isn't this just that colleges are paying the market rate for good executives because they want to get talented and experienced people to run them well? Colleges are very complex and are definitely no easier to run than similarly sized companies.

<comment><USER45> I still suspect they could get 90% of the performance at half the price by recruiting differently.

And of course, if the return on that extra 10% dwarfs half the salary, of course it makes sense to pay for the extra 10%, too, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The thing that everyone hates the most about schools is the administration. The most expensive part of schools is the administration.

Seems pretty obvious to me which part of schools needs slimming down.

</comment><comment><USER47> Trickle down from the administrate & sports facilites. Also, what do universities do with $1B ?

<comment><USER15> Schools don't generally spend their endowments; what they do is use the profits (if any) from investing the endowment to fund the school's budget (academic and otherwise), because tuition alone doesn't nearly cover the cost of operating a college let alone a university.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> the ongoing hypocrisy of luxury resorts draining the wealth of a generation so professors can espouse socialism is an important, if not essential facet of our Hunger Games world

at Stanford, a blade of grass cannot deviate by a millimeter, yet the professors decry capitalism

<comment><USER49> I think you're being downvoted because the ideology espoused by professors at Stanford has very little to do with spending on administration and facilities which drive costs.

<comment><USER50> > ideology espoused by professors at Stanford

Would it be appropriate if the comment said "ideology espoused by college presidents" . Here is OSU presidents who make around 3 mil giving a speech about how little people at lower levels get paid.

[http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/dr-michael-v- drak...](http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/dr-michael-v-drake- delivers-wusm-homer-g-phillips- lecture/article_ad079520-3c47-11e3-a32a-001a4bcf887a.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius - <AUTHOR> http://www.zonemessenger.com/ <comment><USER2> If it is exactly 1 km you could triangulate to find someone's location.

A program to do that would do a bisection search along a line (faking coordinates for the location of the device) to find the point on the line where you transition to seeing the person's messages. Then, repeat along other two lines in different directions. Each transition point gives a circle of 1 km radius on which the person is present, and the one point shared by all three circles is their location.

This could be mitigated by rounding off coordinates to be coarse enough that it doesn't give their precise location before calculating the distance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Due to the fact that distance matching is done server side the application doesn't have any knowledge with regard to distance. The only knowledge one has is whether or not one receives messages from an other user.

Using triangulation to pinpoint an other users location would therefore require to move in and out of range (while the targeted user is continuously sending messages). Thus significantly more difficult than if the actual distance measure was depicted in the UI or leaked elsewhere.

Finally closing the API to outside requests limits the ease with which the above could be automated. Any idea's for further improving these security measures are most welcome!

<comment><USER3> I can't tell how it works from the site, but a good approach is to randomize the distance threshold a bit each time. For example: if users are within 1km, always connect; if more than 2km apart, never connect; 1.xkm apart, connect with probability x.

That kind of thing combined with some rate limits (how often one can attempt to connect to a user) should be effective.

(edit) Actually, I think I like mseebach's suggestion even more: For each user, pick a random location about 100m away from them, then pretend they're there until they've moved far enough away, then repeat.

<comment><USER4> Heh, it's like salting their location.

<comment><USER5> Believe it or not, but this is exactly what the Chinese government mandates. It's known as China shifting[0], and can cause quite a lot of headaches.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_d...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China#The_China_GPS_shift_problem)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I founded an anonymous social media platform in the past. It can be a real pain because once identity/accountability is removed, people tend to act very poorly. On paper, I like your idea of helping people to form risk-free connections, but it is very possible for your platform to spin out of your control. The small radius location nature of your app will likely mean a lot of negative press and/or police inquiries about stalking, harassment, threats, bulling, maybe even rape or murder in the extreme.

Not trying to be negative; I know your intentions are good, but be please be prepared. When the police call you in the middle of the night, and they will, make sure you can provide whatever information you can to identify the users. I am actually surprised you would be able to get into the Apple store without being able to do so.

<comment><USER7> Authorities of all sorts love the bully narrative because it legitimizes their demands for compliance. Social media is undermining to them because people don't want to be supervised.

The real reason social media sites die without moderation is not because it alienates people who take bullying, it is that when there is no way to become a moderator, people seek status and power elsewhere. Reddit survives because it is a status pyramid scheme. HN survives because of similar aspiration to be seen as that smart person in front of a VC audience, a kind of Enders Game fantasy.

Facebook and Twitter are waning not because of trolls, but because they have signaled a nannying supervisory role that reduces overall user optionality, and takes away the thing that drew people in in the first place: Hope.

<comment><USER8> If any of what you claim is true, I am an idiot and you are a genius.

>when there is no way to become a moderator, people seek status and power elsewhere

This is such an odd way to look at the world, I would need quite a bit more explanation. Not everyone is ambitious and competitive.

>HN survives because of similar aspiration to be seen as that smart person in front of a VC audience

Many of us (you included) participate here without any connection to our 'real' identities.

>Facebook and Twitter are waning not because of trolls, but because they have signaled a nannying supervisory role

I haven't seen this study, and my own anecdotal evidence says the novelty is wearing off.

<comment><USER7> I regret to say I might have some bad news for you.

However, not everyone is ambitious and competitive, but not everyone uses social media. They do seek a sense of approval (or attention), even if it is defracted via a pseudonym. Most social studies are irreproducible bunk anyway.

Our 'real' identities are but a hash away, where you give me a place to contact you and tell you the contents of this sha1 sum: b967696ff8376ccd0feb6170b469e23588d702bd . If you wanted to get fancy, we could start by agreeing on a modulus and a base....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great work! Congrats on finishing a side project, that's the hardest part. :) I look forward to seeing it on the Play Store.

<comment><USER10> I agree. That is the hardest part

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Let me know what you guys think. The app was made to get people talking again to the people around them. I threw in automatically generated anonymous nicknames to lower the initial barrier a bit.

Any advise on how to market/keep people engaged are most welcome.

<comment> irq-1 Nice project. I'd suggest adding a like/ignore option to anonymous users.

Also, don't miss this comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12804222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12804222)

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a small cross in the corner of messages. The underlying menu allows for both reporting/blocking of a particular user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How does this work if a person that is 500m away from me is currently chatting with someone 1.2km away… will it seem to me like that person is talking to himself (because his chat partner is out of my reach)?

<comment><USER12> I played a game that had communication like this, and the conversations were often quite odd because of it, hearing half-conversations a fair bit of the time.

And relaying messages to people further away... Though it wasn't anonymous, and people knew where to tell people to send the messages towards.

<comment><USER13> Looks like it is from a rpg book, not a computer game. My first guess was GURPS by Steve Jackson Games (General Universal Roleplaying System) - but I'm leaning towards one of the oldest roleplaying games (which AFAIK has been "computerized" several times): Traveller.

The "tech level" indicates which level of technology is needed for a particular piece of equipment to be available and/or normal (won't get you burned at the stake for using "magic") - in Traveller it is used to label different worlds in the universe AFAIK - with GURPS it also extends to cross- dimensinal travel, alternate realities, time travel etc. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_%28role- playing_game...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_%28role- playing_game%29) [http://unblockedallgames.com/unblocked-games/happy- wheels](http://unblockedallgames.com/unblocked-games/happy-wheels)

<comment><USER12> The game I was talking about was DragonRealms. It's definitely a computer game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I put a decent amount of work into something similar and had a fairly polished mobile app with a good number users in a few concentrated communities using it. And it was a disaster.

Anonymity plus a shared reference point of being near each other (mine was 400ft) produced either random attempts at discussion that never matured into a conversation, or focused vitriol at real people.

We ended up discontinuing the app as it was hard to overcome the double network effect (needing people you actually want to chat with, and needing them to be nearby), and the only times where it did was because of a pretty reprehensible use case.

</comment><comment><USER15> How anonymous can a service be that sends messages through a central server and uses your phone's GPS to know where you are at all times? You're only anonymous to each other, but the server in the middle knows all.

When I saw the headline, I thought this used some sort of ad-hoc Wifi network with MAC spoofing and couldn't figure out how they got 1km of range.

<comment><USER16> GPS + Tower location + SRC/DEST IP + MEID, etc.

The metadata is the problem for _true_ anonymity, not the amount of information that individual users can see, or that the server stores in its database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The about, privacy, and terms links are all dead. Is this an open protocol/api or a closed environment?

It looks like a commercially backed app. What is the business model here? Paid access or advertising?

<comment><AUTHOR> The "privacy" ([http://www.zonemessenger.com/privacy](http://www.zonemessenger.com/privacy)) and "terms" ([http://www.zonemessenger.com/terms](http://www.zonemessenger.com/terms)) should give you two static pdf's. On my side it's only the "about" link that is dead (will be my personal website). If "privacy"/"terms" really don't work on your side let me know!

As of now there is no commercial backing what so ever. It's mealy a side- project that finally got finished. And for now there is also monetizing scheme implemented.

<comment><USER18> Privacy:

        Over Quota

        This application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.

<comment><USER19> Ah, the old Hacker News death hug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You could fork it and theme it with Pokémon Go ;)

Fyi, i ran a facebook group with 15 k. people for Belgium. The #2. A little bit late to the party of location based messaging concering Pokémon though ;)

</comment><comment><USER21> Can you make the zone adaptive so there are always at least a few people there?

<comment><USER22> Funny that you mention this, as I've literally just submitted this exact app to Apple and should hopefully be launching in the next few days.

The app is called hoody ([https://hoody.im](https://hoody.im)) and I can't wait to post it to HN. I was actually a bit bummed to see this as I figured they had _just_ beaten me to the post, but in fact our apps are slightly different.

It's anonymous, with auto-generated nicknames as well, but the chat areas are dynamic based on activity in your area. So if no one is using it, it goes worldwide, and shrinks down as people around you are active (country level, city level, suburb), down to a minimum of around 700 metres.

Look for it on HN in the next couple days! ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks sweet! I've used today's traffic to play around a little with the range on zone messenger. And do believe a dynamic range is the way to go, at least while it's gaining traction.

All the best! and looking forward to your launch on HN

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anonymous messaging has proven in practise to be full of cruel gossip, hate speech, and bullying. I can't see a positive use for it, really.

<comment><USER24> From the screenshot: "I'm at X, who wants to get coffee?"

Are people this social, and this lonely? "Let me spend this 30 minutes of free time to talk to some random potential weirdo!"

<comment><USER25> What's so weird about wanting to share your coffee with someone? The screenshot shows someone riding a train -- presumably they are in a distant city where they don't know anyone.

<comment><USER26> It seems like it would be less problematic to approach a person and ask if they could show you around or, offer to buy someone in a coffee shop another drink rather than using a technical means that allows the other party to select themselves?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So like YikYak, but not based on campus and before they ruined it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe YikYak is based on threads/comments right? The main difference is that my app is more like one big local chatbox.

The initial idea was to achieve the atmosphere we used to have in (Dutch) public transport. Everyone could participate/listen to a couple of public conversations being held.

<comment><USER28> You say public transport, but I have my doubts it'll work particularly well on the subway.

<comment><USER29> I think that was the inspiration rather than the goal. That's how I interpreted that comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how this compares to an app like YikYak. I checked out YikYak for a few days (really a weird feeling with a bunch of random anonymous people posting messages). This seems similar except maybe only one-to-one rather than message thread based? Also YikYak seems to have about 5 mile radius zones (8km) rather than 1km.

<comment><USER31> I haven't used Zone but I know YikYak caught on pretty hard with college aged folk and college campuses, so the discussions and posts tend to be a bit different. I worked at a University in tech and due to the harassment issues with YikYak was told to keep an eye on it and determine if we need to request a Geo-Block from the YikYak team.

I would imagine Zone can probably break free of the age association and maybe grab people with the same sort of "town bulletin board" feel, but it's going to have a lot of conflicting user bases, and probably lots of trouble with harassment in local areas. YikYak had tons of issues with the harassment [0] problem until the user base took on a much more serious approach to moderating. The few times I was told by a student that there was something bad on YikYak, it had already been moderated out of visibility.

I don't know how Zone's posting works or if it has moderation or not, but hopefully the user base takes a similar approach.

[0] To expand on the harassment, it wasn't just nasty messages being written, it was stalker-ish comments tracking individual's activities, threats against persons, calls for vandalism, and so on. On a smaller University campus, it's taken a lot more seriously. We also had issues with student workers abusing access privileges and leaking private information to YikYak, which was dealt with appropriately by the administration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How does this compare to YikYak (or the German equivalent 'Jodel')? Seem technically very similar.

</comment><comment><USER33> I figure you're just rounding latlons to 2 decimal places and putting people in buckets?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is indeed very similar to how initial sorting of the database is done. To improve accuracy (over performance) further sorting is done.

Like mentioned the non-linearity with regard to latitude makes standard trigonometry useless. In my case I opted for the haversine formula ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haversine_formula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haversine_formula)) this is pretty accurate on the small range of 1km

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> That the app is both geofenced and anonymous reminds me of Yik Yak, which was a huge success on my college campus before the company decided to move away from anonymity.

Did you develop this as a side project, or is this something you want to turn into a business?

<comment><USER35> Yik Yak dropped anonymity because they had a problem with harassment on the platform. I'm not sure how Zone is going to be any different.

<comment><USER36> Does it need to? Did YikYak need to? The death of anonymity was pretty much the death of YikYak.

Letting people talk, harassment and all seems to be the way to go. It's an opt in thing, so if you don't like it just uninstall or ignore a few users. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a good cesspool sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Interesting. I built a website a few years back called LampNote, which was based around the idea of "virtual noticeboards" approx every 100m apart from each other. In an earlier incarnation of that project I had considered solving the same problems using anonymous geo targeted messages, either using an app or email. I quickly discounted that approach, as it seemed like it could become a magnet for all sorts of dodgy characters, and a potential headache legally. The end product I arrived at was something quite different, so I'll be interested to see how you get on with zonemessenger. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER38> Similar to Herenow [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/herenow/id882349760](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/herenow/id882349760)

<comment><USER39> And Jodel ([https://jodel-app.com/](https://jodel-app.com/)), which is pretty big among German students and surprisingly entertaining as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think it would be more interesting if the radius was variable and dependent upon the population density of your area. This way, your neighborhood in the city (SF) is roughly a kilometer out, but in Wyoming, you're going to talk to a relatively similar number of people. I think anyways it would be more useful for the kinds of tasks I would see myself using this app for.

</comment><comment><USER41> I would be careful about this. Could definitely be used for bullying by kids - would suggest you come up with a strong mechanism/policy for banning users!

<comment><USER42> You could say the same for a lamppost (that I can attach a photo with a message to) and just about every other means of communication where the sender is not known (regular mail, for instance).

Technology can be used for good and for bad, this tech is no different in that respect.

<comment><USER43> The lamp post is part of a wider local 'ecosystem' that includes ways of dealing with abusive messages attached to publicly-visible objects.

Communication apps like this, not so much.

This is why service and software makers are considered to have more of a responsibility to be concerned with misuse of their platforms. (ETA:I mean platforms, as in publicly-accessible stuff on the net, that's under their control.)

<comment><USER44> Maybe block the user or don't use the app if someone's bullying you?

<comment><USER43> "Block the user"\--that requires the app to have a block feature. Would you say that's something to be taken for granted? Something we can rightfully expect in communication software? Something the service-provider has an obligation to provide?

If 'bullying' in a social app/service continues, then yes, there is option to stop using it.

But if that service has value, users are going to want to keep using it, but they're going to ask for a better service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> For anyone interested I built something similar (anonymous chat within a radius) as part of a pokemon go app A few months ago. It's an iOS app built, written in swift with a firebase backend

[https://github.com/kingreza/Social-Go](https://github.com/kingreza/Social-Go)

</comment><comment><USER46> Not much different than YikYak and Jodel. Let companies advertise flash deals and you've got a winner!

</comment><comment><USER47> It seems pointless to me to limit the functionality to an application that requires installation. A webapp would be a better choice.

Count me out as an (interested) user because I'm on Ubuntu Phone now.

</comment><comment><USER48> How does this work? Broadcast a really strong WiFi signal?

<comment><USER49> Usually on similar apps the messages go to their servers (over 3/4G) along with your location info, and then they re-route it back to all the users whose reported location is close to yours.

An exception was FireChat, which built a mesh network using the Bluetooh & Wifi-based connectivity API provided by iOS called "Multipeer Connectivity Framework", so you could talk to someone far away as long as there were other users between you, which served as routers.

<comment><USER50> Was?

<comment><USER49> At the time their were an exception, nowadays I'm not sure if there aren't others doing the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Did you make this with Ionic? Pretty smooth UX

<comment><AUTHOR> Jup. It's build using the Ionic framework. What gave it away?

<comment><USER51> When you click on the logo the "slide down" animation feels very web-y. The rest of app is really nice though. Everything feels really slick for a HTML/JS app. The keyboard show animation could a little work, but I know that's not easy to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is there anything similar but browser based ?

</comment><comment><USER53> Random, but the name "Zone Messenger" makes me think of zones from Everquest and other oldschool MMORPGs.

/shout DING!

<comment><USER54> congrats

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Following some of the comments from HN I've just started a small test by temporarily increasing the range.

</comment><comment><USER55> This isn't anonymous messaging, but pseudonymous messaging.

</comment><comment><USER56> How do they get wifi or bluetooth to extend to (1k/3,200ft) when standard wifi or bluetooth is less than 400ft?

Are they taking control of the wifi chip and making it so the packets are allowed to take much longer to arrive to cover the greater distances?

<comment><USER57> Simply by using the phone's GPS and sending all messages to a centralized server which then broadcasts it to the "in the area" participants.

<comment><USER56> So they use paid cellar data then and it's not really limited to location other than the app enforces this.

Much less interesting now compared to actual proximity apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> You know your product doing great if it blocked in China.

</comment><comment><USER59> Looks interesting; hoping its fun! Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER60> Doesn't seem to be out for android yet.

</comment><comment><USER61> Cool idea, not anonymous even a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER62> Really nice idea :-)

I remember a friend used whatsapp for the first time because it helped to get laid... until everybody had it.

This could be better: no need to drive.

</comment><comment><USER63> So... Jodel?

</comment><comment><USER64> Please update that 2015 Copyright

<comment><USER65> Why everyone is still adding such copyright notice if it's optional after 1989 and gives no additional protection?

<comment><USER66> Because not everybody knows even if they should. Because it makes things easier for others. Because it facilitates contacting you for licensing deals and you want this money. Because it makes infringements easier to prove since you haven't officially registered your copyright. Because you want to sign your work.</comment></comment></comment>


Talking Startups and Picplum on BBC News - <AUTHOR> http://paulstamatiou.com/picplum-bbc-news

<comment><USER2> This is actually a good article/video. It highlights the pros of NY and SF.

That being said, coming from the midwest and now living in the valley --- if you're going to put it all on the line then you want every advantage you can get. Being in Silicon Valley is one advantage you should really consider not passing up.

Unless, of course you're doing something with record labels (LA) or financial companies (NY)....the valley wins as far as location goes.</comment>


What is the actual x86 instruction decode overhead? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39781273/how-much-overhead-do-actual-intel-x86-processors-had-in-order-to-pipeline <comment><USER2> Legacy instructions and compatibility overhead is always mentioned when talking about AMD/Intel yet its completely irrelivant as that's their selling point rather than a flaw for other companies to take advantage of. If ARM/mips/VLIW arches or companies manage to gain marketshare in the server industry then that means the server guys have less dependency over these very same legacy ISA's and it would be trivial to get rid of them.

To me it seems irrelivant wether we pay 10% overhead for x86 ISA's or 0% for an ISA that can't replace x86.</comment>


Rotating CSS Image Slider - <AUTHOR> http://cssdeck.com/item/preview/308/awesome-rotating-css-image-slider <comment><USER2> The CSS3 development is at a point where we should be careful not to repeat the eye-huring things we did to Flash.

All these "amazing" examples of what CSS3 can do are... well, amazing, considerings the limitations of CSS2. But also dangerous, considering "flash based web sites".

Remember that a user may want to see the same page several times. Copy-paste parts of it. Have a closer look at a specific item on the page. Cares for the content, not the weird movements it is doing.

<comment><USER3> I agree with what you are saying but this was a contrived example. The effect is "too the max" and not completely thought out from a UX perspective.

The downsides with flash were the accessibility issues and the fact that it was a browser plugin. This is baked directly into the browser and if coded correctly I think can be used sparingly for a good effect. As much as we browse the web for content, as long as it is displayed effectively (in a static or dynamic) manner is what counts.

<comment><USER4> You will always find bad design and poorly thought UX. I don't like attributing fault to Flash, CSS3 or whatever next. It should be linked to who codes it in and not the platform. There is no accessibility issue with the platform you reference if it is done correctly, unfortunately you probably have been exposed to the worst it can do, still; effective content display and proper dev are separate issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's very glitchy in Chrome 18.0.1025.162 . Parts of the image get clipped off during and after the transitions, and there's some random pausing.

<comment><USER6> Try it now, I commented out the hover part as it might be causing the problems. Should work fine now.

<comment><USER5> Yep, much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hurts my eyes a bit.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hmm, doesn't seem to work in Opera 11.62

<comment><USER6> Opera and IE are not supported

</comment></comment><comment> jan-hocevar It's a bit buggy in Chrome 18

<comment><USER6> Try it again. I improved the code a bit

<comment> jan-hocevar Nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of these days I'm going to pull a metric out of my tuccus explaining to anyone who'll listen that the use of slides for anything other than a presentation [slide deck] is very annoying to the user.</comment>


Playing the Bullshit Game: How Empty and Misleading Communication Takes Over - <AUTHOR> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2631787720929704 <comment><USER2> Very well written, with some excellent tongue-in-cheek humour.

I love this quote: "One informant told Jackall that his job involved 'characterizing the reality of a situation with any description that is necessary to make that situation more palatable to some group that matters . . . Everyone knows that it's bullshit, but it's accepted. This is the game' (Jackall, 1986, p. 145). A crucial aspect was not using too much or too little bullshit, and also being able to judge the appropriate moment to bullshit. Competent bullshitters also needed to become competent audience members for performances of bullshit. They had to learn that bullshit should not be taken too seriously and it should be engaged with in just the right way. If you took bullshit too seriously, you ran the risk of being seen as a chump. Likewise, if you challenged bullshit too frequently, you risked being seen as an asshole."

<comment><USER3> This describes the Mindfullness meditation movement accurately. They are frauds with a mental toy that latches onto people with anxiety, for profit.

<comment><USER4> I dont understand this comment, please elaborate. I've found meditation and the like helpful, haven't paid a dime to anyone for it and so am confused.

<comment><USER3> Meditation itself is great and I'm a practitioner myself. But my experience watching the growth of Mindfullness has been observing a series of over reaching claims, each being addressed by some book, seminar, or class "solving" the issue for a price. Some higher anxiety, over worked friends have been sucked into these social circles and milked for all kinds of expensive books, seminars, lectures, sessions, and what ever other made up term for that specialized form of theater that costs far more than a movie ticket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sufficiently advanced talk about bullshit is indistinguishable from bullshit.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. As one's bullshit meta-knowledge increases, the precise jargon required to distinguish between higher and lower level's of bullshit, and the relative meaning topology between bullshit in overlapping social contexts, will eventually sound like actual bullshit to the pre-initiate bullshit novice.

I think I stated all that with proper precision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bullshit Jobs: A Conversation with David Graeber

[https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/07/04/bullshit-jobs-a- co...](https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/07/04/bullshit-jobs-a-conversation- with-david-graeber/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Conceptual entrepreneurs almost sounds like a good thing. Bullshit is a lie with an ideological bent.

<comment><USER9> Hypothetical billionaires and conceptual entrepreneurs are potentially good candidates for the president seat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> At first glance this looks like a joke

However it holds certain degrees of reality behind the humors

It is one good way to bring up an unquantifiable yet risky problem to people's awareness

<comment><USER2> Did you follow the references to other papers? It seems to be well researched, and much of the information seems to resonate with my own experience.

I wish I could learn the technique through a course or something because I have seen how valuable the skill is.

I mostly skimmed the article, but in my experience I have seen some excellent bullshitters have high social status. I can recall two CEOs (one guy, one woman) with glib tongues: he is smart and successful, and I never understood the woman (but she cycled through multiple companies so she had external validation).

Another female friend bullshits successfully at work and within her peer group. My friend doesn't use bullshit words but instead there's a kind of Teflon irrelevancy to a lot of what she says (she is also well smart, with an intuition that works).</comment></comment>


Netflix tests a bypass of iTunes billing in 33 markets - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/21/netflix-itunes-2/ <comment><USER2> I thought Apple/Android block and ban apps whcih re-direct to other payment methods ?

What are the rules on this ?</comment>


Yahoo breach could threaten Verizon deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-09-23/does-yahoo-data-breach-put-verizon-deal-in-jeopardy <comment><AUTHOR> The value of avoiding a security breach is soooo often overlooked. Classic case of upper-middle management willing to just limp along with legacy security issues because nothing has gone wrong yet...</comment>


Rebuild YouTube's mobile-like progress bar in jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ynh.io/2013/05/24/rebuild-youtubes-progress-bar.html <comment><USER2> I really dislike the new loading bar in the YouTube site as videos continue to play while the next page is loaded.

I'm on a fast connection so normally youtube loads instantly anyway, but this new method takes 4-10 seconds.

<comment><USER3> even worse is that there is no cached video while seeking. Even seeking to a "loaded" part of the youtube video results in the reloading the video from that point. Rewinding 10 seconds results in having to reload the video, wtf?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yep, I've also seen that. But your markup is wrong. You should use <progress> instead

I am using a kde widget called adjustable-clock which uses html5/css3/javascript and qml to render my system clock.

Here's the source for the current clock I use, it uses a progressbar for the seconds: [http://htmlpaste.com/7e957bb5523fa58f98b6657073c4a544942a13c...](http://htmlpaste.com/7e957bb5523fa58f98b6657073c4a544942a13c3)

QML:

      Clock.setRule('#hour', Clock.Hour);
      Clock.setRule('#minute', Clock.Minute);
      Clock.setRule('#second', 'value', Clock.Second, {'short': true});

<comment><AUTHOR> Use progress as html tag?

<comment><USER5> It's a HTML5 form element: [http://developers.whatwg.org/the-button- element.html#the-pro...](http://developers.whatwg.org/the-button- element.html#the-progress-element). It might be somewhat difficult to style, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did the same on <https://www.mila.com>

It's fairly simple but it took some time to figure out the right sequence and timing for it to run smoothly across all devices / browsers.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like it. Just remember if you use this in production, save $("#progress") in a variable in the ajaxStart function to improve performance (this will call Sizzle one less time usually).

</comment><comment><USER8> That's very nifty, thanks! Subtle, yet gets the point across.

Plenty of interesting ways that kind of bar could be included in a site.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been looking for this for a few weeks. Noticed on the Google Search iOS app. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER10> Nicely done and handful. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER11> very cool, thanks for sharing</comment>


BOOM Open Source RISC-V Core Runs on Amazon EC2 F1 Instances - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/12/13/boom-risc-v-core-amazon-ec2-f1/ <comment><USER2> Presentation slides (pdf) from Hot Chips 2018 (tape out): [http://www.hotchips.org/hc30/1conf/1.03_Berkeley_BROOM_HC30....](http://www.hotchips.org/hc30/1conf/1.03_Berkeley_BROOM_HC30.Berkeley.Celio.v02.pdf)

<comment><USER3> And in video form, if that's your thing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZORF2vHAA&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZORF2vHAA&feature=youtu.be&t=4346).

<comment><USER4> And this video with even more information, including future directions.

[https://youtu.be/sI6Z21ljXsw](https://youtu.be/sI6Z21ljXsw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a more visual demo about what this article is talking about, here's a (real-speed) GIF of posting a tweet from BOOM running on EC2 F1:

[https://twitter.com/firesimproject/status/103126763730350899...](https://twitter.com/firesimproject/status/1031267637303508993)

</comment><comment><USER6> What FPGA do you need to use for this cpu otherwise? I would think that it would be a lot cheaper to have one locally if you were still developing or testing out your application or code.

<comment><USER3> Unless you cut out floating point and superscalar, it requires a fairly large FPGA, on the order of >$1000. So you'd have to put it to serious use to break even with using AWS.

The other advantage of AWS is scale-out once you want to get benchmark data and not wait forever (or to simulate warehouse scale computers). In the past, maintaining our own FPGA cluster was a nightmare.

<comment><USER7> I haven't tried BOOM specifically, but if you're interested in a large FPGA that can be acquired very cheaply, you should look into the Pano Logic G2 thin client. They used to be available in bulk for $3 a piece, but those have now all been snapped up by hobbyists.

But you can still get them for $20 or so on eBay.

They have a Spartan-6 LX150 (DVI version, revB) or Spartan-6 LX100 (DVI version, revC), which are really huge FPGAs. It's by far the best deal in town if you're interested in that kind of stuff.

Google for "github panologic-g2" to find up-to-date proceedings about the reverse engineering effort.

Right now, the FPGA is up and running and outputting an image over DVI.

Do you have any idea about how many FFs are needed for a BOOM CPU?

<comment><USER8> I don't know anything about FPGAs, are all FPGAs compatible? Assuming this fits on an FPGA, does it work on every FPGA?

<comment><USER3> No, the IO plumbing and infrastructure are different. FPGAs are a total pain because each platform is different. :'(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there any good visual examples of how an out-of-order pipeline processes instructions compared to traditional ones? What's the main advantage?

<comment><USER10> Most (all?) modern processors utilize out-of-order execution. The main advantage is that it increases IPC (instructions per cycle) in the long run.

The high-level idea is that you queue up your instructions in a table of sorts and execute them as they're ready (i.e., based on dependencies). You then re- order the instructions at the end of the pipeline.

The main challenges with this technique are: (1) handling exceptions and (2) speculative execution. For (1), you can use a re-order buffer. For (2), you would typically flush the instruction table noted above.

<comment><USER11> The ARM Cortex-A55 is modern and in-order. Out-of-order CPUs tend to be large so if you want a small CPU you'll still go with in-order.

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Is lower power OOE an area of active research?

<comment><USER13> The Mill processor architecture deserves mention here, as it basically aims to bridge VLIW-like low power usage with OOO-like performance. The way it attempts to do this is too complex to explain in a short comment, you can find detailed info on their website - but broadly-speaking it involves all sorts of 'tweaks' to ordinary VLIW, that ultimately result in something a bit different. (It should also be noted though that the initial, instruction decoding stages of a Mill-like 'belt' architecture are a lot closer to OOO than an ordinary VLIW. So the projected power savings would seemingly have to come from elsewhere - but they can be quite significant nonetheless, so the effort is projected to be worthwhile.)

<comment><USER12> Interesting I remember hearing about this processor architecture. Is is still being actively developed? I didn't see much in the way of news on the Mill site.

<comment><USER14> There are a few recent forum posts indicating that they're still working on it at least, but it seems to be going extremely slowly.

5 years ago it had already been in development for 10 years and there was supposed to be silicon shipping in 2-3 years. 2 years ago they were talking about an FPGA prototype that has yet to show up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish it, or a cut down version, would run on a cheaper FPGA (like the Zynq or Zedboard, ~250$). Running on the EC2 F1 instance is not really an option for students given that it costs about ~10$ per day.

<comment><USER16> It's a comparatively big, application-class CPU. You're asking too much. Those cheaper FPGAs are cheaper because they're smaller, and BOOM won't fit.

<comment><USER15> Not entirely unrealistic. Removing the FPU and reducing the width should get it to fit.

<comment><USER17> But then it would not be an application class processor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Little thing, this OUT OF ORDER cpu was created IN ORDER to...

<comment><USER3> My parents thought it was quite odd that I named it the Berkeley Out of Order Machine. "Why would you advertise to the world that it doesn't work?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> BOOM really needs to get compressed instruction support. Until that's in I would assume development has stalled since it's required to run precompiled Debian and Fedora packages.

<comment><USER4> What? Because the feature you want is not there, development has stalled?

There is lots of useful things you can do without C. Also, it has not stalled:

[https://youtu.be/sI6Z21ljXsw](https://youtu.be/sI6Z21ljXsw)

<comment><USER19> My wording was a bit harsh. The git repository hasn't been very active, but not dead.

The C extension is mentioned in that video as a priority but it sounds like some of the other priorities are being worked on (maybe there's funding for spectre mitigation work). Anyone who wants to use BOOM outside of research is going to need the C option because that's the standard for OSes. They said it's nice not to have to maintain a fork of Rocket Chip, the same will be true of not needing to recompile everything without C.

It is more active than I thought.</comment></comment></comment>


No, You Can't Feel Sorry for Everyone - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/no-you-cant-feel-sorry-for-everyone-rp <comment><USER2> There are lots of interesting things here, but I'm going to quarrel with this policy-oriented claim:

> We could be more systematic. We could use a standardized score to examine > how violations of personal security and national security affect happiness. > This could allow us to state that certain values are more universal than > others, and are therefore more central to human well-being. Such an effort > could tell us, perhaps, that on average the anxiety people feel regarding > the possibility of the government reading their text messages is greater > than the distress caused by experiencing or anticipating a terrorist attack.

In order to do this, you also need some kind of estimates of how a particular policy affects your risk of (or the risk of other people you care about) experiencing each event. For example, the government might say that your text messages are unlikely to be read because people's messages will only be read when the government can convince a court that there's probable cause to believe that those people are involved in terrorist activity, which is unlikely to happen for the typical person, who is not involved in such activity and doesn't appear to be, and that the most intrusive surveillance powers are used quite rarely. Someone opposing the government might say that terrorist attacks are incredibly rare and usually ineffective, that there's no reason to believe that giving the government more access to private communications will significantly reduce their frequency, especially since the government already has incredible powers, massive amounts of personal data, and lots of avenues for investigation (and many of the remaining would-be terrorists are lone wolves who don't rely on communication with other suspects to plan their attacks).

You might also need some way of measuring second-order effects about risk of government abuse, risk of totalitarianism, risk of self-censorship based on the sense of not being able to hide one's thoughts and associations from the government, risk of new terrorist groups forming, risk of greater criminal activity from the perception that the government is ineffectively deterring crimes.

The other closely related challenge is that you might say that you can find a good scientific way to make trade-offs at the margin, but it's still tricky to say what you've learned from that unless you also find ways to measure things in practically comparable units. Like maybe you can get a strong scientific result that says that generally Americans do want to trade off privacy to get more security, but still, does that mean that they wanted to trade off 1 privacy for 5 security, or 12 privacy for 4 security, or 30 privacy for 5 security, or 96 privacy for 8 security? And if there are 7 proposed policy tradeoffs that all point in the same direction in some conceptual sense, which of those can you say were sanctioned by the scientific research on people's preferences?</comment>


Beef Bowl Economics - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/business/global/30deflation.html

<comment><USER2> This is just a normal effect of their macroeconomic woes. Their money supply is contracting because despite building every bridge to nowhere they could no one wants to take out loans. They have a crushing burden of debt now having followed all the advice of those who argue for massive stimulus (though even though their stimulus programs have been massive the economists insist it isn't enough).

The only upside to a depression is that prices fall for those who still have jobs and this is just that coming home for people. If that means that prices everywhere have to fall then all the better. The market is trying to heal itself and correct the imbalances and the government really needs to start letting it.

It's not like anything they've done has done much good for anyone-outside the bridge to nowhere supported industries that is. I'm pretty sure we're going to see falling prices here for years to come too as the money supply continues to shrink.

<comment><USER3> Is there any reasons why the Japanese government stubbornly stick to supporting the "Bridge to Nowhere" project instead of trying other solutions for fixing the economy, including doing nothing?

<comment><USER4> Doing nothing seems so counterintuitive a solution that people almost never seem to consider it. Lately, I've been seeing this in college. "What, the students are making mistakes and asking questions? I'd better lecture more and write longer explanations in the assignments."

I imagine that a politician who ran on a platform of, "I'm going to do nothing: these kinds of pains are how an economy gets back into adjustment," would have a hard time getting votes. But, I've never been to Japan, and indeed, in the U.S., such a platform would not make you an instant laughingstock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know the average meal price in Japan?

"set off the price war by cutting the price of its standard beef bowl to 320 yen, or $3.55"

In the US fast food restaurants all include a "99c" menu. You can get burger, fries and soda for $3. Seems like $3.55 isn't a shocking amount for a leading fast food chain.

Certainly the margins on a beef bowl are different than a burger and fries, but it struck me that these amounts aren't as low as I expected give that it's becoming national news in Japan.

<comment><USER6> I live in Tokyo right now. Tried to setup a HN Tokyo GT, but that didn't work out :/

You can eat at McD's for 100 yen, maybe 350 yen for a happy meal. I used to get by on McDs during my ultra poor initial few months in Tokyo.

As for eating properly; I usually eat for about 1000 yen when I go out, as I know a lot of the decent / cheap places. However, step into any reasonable restaurant and you're likely to be hit with sticker shock. I don't think it is really possible to eat healthy for less than 2000 yen per person without having extensive local knowledge.

As for the deflation story..

Commodities and groceries cost more than they did 2 or 3 years ago. Cheese, for example, costs almost twice what it did when I first arrived in this country (2.5 years back). Living space is at a premium in Tokyo. The apartment renting scene is as shark-infested as ever. The monthly price was more or less the same as it was last few years, and they basically wanted 6 months pre- payment for anything built since 1980.

The Japanese media has been hyping deflation, but the only deflation I see is in salaries. Whether it is anime artists getting by on as little as 100,000 yen a month in Tokyo (!) or my girlfriend working 15 hours a day without overtime (for Proto corporation, the media conglomerate that did Goonet), it seems everyone "normal" is making less. (This might be quite different outside Tokyo, as most other prefectures have been losing population this entire time.)

As for myself? Oddly the economy is picking up for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl;dr

Restaurants that sell cheap meals, like bowls of beef and rice, are lowering prices. The expectation of cheap food is causing other restaurants to seem too expensive, which may cause them to lower prices as well. The lower prices leads to lower revenue which leads to less money to cycle back into the economy. A recession occurs.

<comment><USER8> "The lower prices leads to lower revenue which leads to less money to cycle back into the economy." How so? The customer still has that money, and will likely spend it on something else. Either by going out to eat more often, buying that new HDTV, or taking the kids to a sports game. I fail to see how that money doesn't end up cycling back into the economy. Unless we are to presume the money saved is hidden under a mattress...

<comment><USER9> Let's say you operate a business in a deflationary economy, such as Japan. Deflation --> Prices go down.

Yes, consumers will be paying less for goods, this is true, and on the surface seems good, but dig a little deeper. When deflation strikes an economy, almost all businesses are affected. That is why economists worry so much about it and are willing to use inflation to combat deflation.

Think about it: The beef bowl restaurant has lower prices, so they make less money. They will be unable to keep on as many employees, they won't have the excess capital to use for expansion, they will have less money to give suppliers, might not be able to pay rent... employees who are fired will be without incomes so they wont be able to take advantage of lowered prices. These are the ripple effects you need to look at.

The reason people fear deflation is because it is able to rapidly spread throughout the economy and infect almost any business.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Deflation_in_Japan>

^ you can read more about the deflation problem in Japan.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: VimBox – Modern MacVim Configuration - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jordwalke/vimbox <comment><USER2> I really think vim and emacs need this kind of package deal to reach new users.

I don't understands advocates obsession with making things hard for newbies. I gave up on emacs before I started just looking at plugins to see what I needed to install get the stuff I miss in sublime.

</comment><comment><USER3> Jordan, do you use vim for all of your React development?</comment>


When Does Hospital Capacity Get Overwhelmed in USA? Germany? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@trentmc0/when-does-hospital-capacity-get-overwhelmed-in-usa-germany-a06cf2835f89 <comment><USER2> In Germany, with privatization of hospitals, they more or less work under 100% load in normal circumstances. And that would mean regular overtime for doctors and nurses. You probably can imagine how quickly this would deteriorate if more capacity would be needed.

On the bright side, companies tend to extract far less money from the unhealthy. From outside it seems the US has reached a level of perversion regarding medical costs that I cannot even begin to understand. But I guess that the gig economy doesn't allow people to take off while ill, so that might help hospitals again. Congratulations, I guess.</comment>