The Movable Feast Machine - <AUTHOR> http://movablefeastmachine.org/ <comment><USER2> My bedtime reading recently has been Propagator Networks[1][2][3] ... and I keep daydreaming of a resource management system just like Dave describes in this video... I do believe "mostly correct" computing is going to play a big role in the future.

[1] [http://web.mit.edu/~axch/www/phd- thesis.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/~axch/www/phd-thesis.pdf) [2] [http://web.mit.edu/~axch/www/art.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/~axch/www/art.pdf) [3] [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/propagators/](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/propagators/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe I've been living under a rock, but this is the first time I've seen robust-first computing and this is pretty fascinating. I'm imagining that the application of this to a physical scenario would involve, say, a grid of very low-power CPUs that could each be "taken over" by an atom.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can see how this affords some nice properties for robustness. I'm less convinced about security.

I can imagine essentially a grid with a moat of computationally very difficult structures to send commands through without help from inside the moat. I can see how you'd, like, send a password hash through and something would come out and "get you" for lack of a better explanation.

But that seems like it would be about as secure as a real moat.... Which is to say, it's still only as safe as your expectations about your opponent's capabilities are accurate. So, you might have some ideas about how malware _must_ do computation, and you can have your little computation immune system working to make that stochastically impossible. But then the malware writers will figure out weirder ways to do computation. Like maybe they give up on penetrating the moat and have the immune system do the nefarious computation. Or whatever. My point is that you still end up in an arms race, except it's an arms race within a complex system so it's even more difficult to have an understanding of your opponent's capabilities than it is inside a von neumann machine.

</comment><comment><USER5> It'd love to see the same example with a regulator generating incorrectly programmed sorters. How does the system handle a programmer bug that inverted the sort direction?

<comment><USER6> This brings up a really interesting point. If the right mutations happen, we could get a machine that eats other machines and reproduces indefinitely. In other words, X-Rays can give this machine cancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how the Demon Horde Sort would work if the bounds were not in a nice grid like that? Is it possible to put inputs on the right and outputs on the left? What happens if the grid changes size?

<comment><USER8> the 'grid' changing bounds is the intended mode of existence

in regard to demon horde the paper(o) states 'channel size increases performance'

but this should be uncontroversial

more resources give better results

it will be an optimisation problem to determine necessary resource alocation for desired results

the shape of the simulation was stated(i) to be a simplified representation of the functionality

the paper discusses 'a movable membrane whose contents cannot diffuse out', the figure is an almost organic shape, much more adaptable than the rectangular simulation demonstration

(o) comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/56/12/1450.full.pdf+htmlb

(i) [https://youtu.be/helScS3coAE?t=1504](https://youtu.be/helScS3coAE?t=1504)

<comment><USER9> There's also a more recent 'router' demo(1) that -- though still rigid and rectangular -- does build its own boundary rather than relying on the grid boundary.

(1) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4flQ8XdvJM#t=685](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4flQ8XdvJM#t=685)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How well does this scale up? The example in the video seems toy-scale. I can see a few dimensions of potential scaling:

      * larger numbers -- for example large numbers of tiny processor / memory cells on a single chip (thousands to millions?)
      * more dimensions, either symmetric (lattice) or asymmetric (hyper-pyramid that gets more sparse as you go up)
      * more complex cells -- more memory, processor power, bandwidth
      * specialization -- heterogeneous cells</comment>


Discover Inspiring Workplaces - <AUTHOR> http://wovox.com/

<comment><USER2> The idea of the site is interesting and the pictures are great, but I strongly object to any website that hijacks the standard method of navigating websites in order to move the user through images. When I press Command-left arrow, I should move backwards through my browser's history. I should be shown the previous photo in a series.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the comment! Just tried it and yep, it doesn't really work huh ;) We will take it into one of our future releases. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love architecture and interior space design.

Along similar lines is: <http://www.thisaintnodisco.com/> which is one of my favourite sites to have a browse through when I'm pretending to have a real lunch. For some reason that escaped me though, a decent percentage of the users of thisaintnodisco think that making your office look like a strip club is their ideal solution (check #1 in best looking/most popular).

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea of this... it would be great if you were checking out a new job and you could get a "feel" of how the workspaces are setup before you even went to an interview.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like the concept of this site, although I wish it could somehow portray other factors that are important to what makes a good work environment: a short (hopefully carless) commute, great people to work with, good lunch food either nearby or at the cafeteria.

</comment><comment><USER7> Any companies you'd like to see on wovox? Perhaps your own? Send me a mail on firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


The case for getting rid of tenure. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2263348/pagenum/all/

<comment><USER2> >Critics say that tenure hurts students by making professors lazy. Course loads vary widely from school to school: At some public universities, professors teach nine or 10 courses. At smaller schools, they teach as few as one or two, totaling as few as 140 classroom hours a year. If you can't be fired, what's to stop you from refusing to teach an extra course? "I honestly don't know what a lot of academics do a lot of the time," says Taylor.

As a child of two senior academics who are fairly well known in their fields at one of the best Universities in the USA, I do know what a lot of academics do a lot of the time. Just because they are not teaching 10 courses does not mean they are wasting their time or spending it at leisure: my parents often work 10-12 hour days all year long, mainly working on their research (a course that has already been developed and taught several times is not much extra work for a professor, assuming they have TA help or the like; see note at the bottom). Although it is certainly a flexible schedule, it is not an easy one: if you intend to continue doing good work and are not slacking off after tenure, there is no obvious point where you are 'done'. There are always new problems to address, writing to polish, or another conference to attend.

Note on teaching: Although teaching a class for the first time is a huge amount of work, as you need to come up with lectures/etc., teaching it -again- with no changes requires much less time; maybe an hour or two of prep for an hour of classroom time compared to 4+ hours:1 in class. Either way, teaching 9 or 10 -different- courses seems ludicrous if you care about undergraduate teaching quality; even if you are actually teaching two courses 5 times, that leaves no time for research.

>By the time you come up for tenure, you're 40. For men, the timeline is inconvenient. But for women who want to have children, it's just about unworkable.

This is certainly the case. I was born when my parents were in their late 30s, and my younger sister in their mid 40s. Not only are you looking at challenges in terms of stability, but also in terms of just physical location: academic jobs are few and far between, so when one of you can get a job at Ivy League A and the other at Flagship State School B, you take what you get, even if it means that you will be three states away from your spouse. I was born as soon as my parents were able to live in the same place.

Tenure has its disadvantages: in the case of schools which are simply emulating the much better institutions that world class research does flow out of, tenure seems (to me, at least) less important. It does have an impact on undergraduate teaching quality; this is why I believe that teaching staff as well as research staff are so important to the success of a university. Teaching comes as a second responsibility after research to most professors, particularly undergraduate teaching.

The system proposed by nagrom, with divisions between teaching, administration, and research, makes some sense, and from what I've seen it's already partly in place. Any professor who ends up doing administrative work (chairing a department, running a graduate program, etc.) often receives a teaching cut in order to facilitate that. However, the only way that I see to balance the teaching and research is to have dedicated teaching staff who are evaluated primarily on the merits of their teaching.

<comment><USER3> In my experience, at a small liberal arts college, there is little motivation for research, so even if the professor is teaching four or five courses a year, it is possible that they aren't doing much outside of the classroom work. Thus, tenure is a ticket to an easy life of teaching the same material year after year, with little value or motivation to publish.

I don't disagree with your point, however, and I had professors that did work hard outside of the classroom on their research, and certainly, in the case of larger universities, many do work long hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I almost couldn't make it through without going crazy:

>Imagine you ran a restaurant. A very prestigious, exclusive restaurant. To attract top talent, you guarantee all cooks and waiters job security for life. Not only that, because you value honesty and candor, you allow them to say anything they want about you and your cuisine, publicly and without fear of retribution. The only catch is that all cooks or waiters would have to start out as dishwashers or busboys, for at least 10 years, when none of these protections would apply. It sounds absurd in the context of the food-service industry—for both you and your staff.

Except that the reason this is crazy is that dishwashing and bussing tables have little to do with cooking, and that the goal of a restaurant is to make money. A much better example would be one in which the goal of a restaurant is to produce new and exciting foods, and where all head chefs have to start out as a station chef and prove themselves there, first. This system would actually make a lot of sense then.

The article then goes on to blame tenured faculty salaries for increasing costs of tuition; never mind that academic faculty salaries have either just kept up with inflation or fallen behind it for the past 30 years, that in fact administrative salaries have ballooned during that same period, and that the fraction of tenured faculty has dropped substantially. Some of the numbers they give are at first glance highly suspect (35 years of professorship costing $12 million means, not adjusting for inflation or the opportunity cost of money, that a professor costs a little more than 340 thousand dollars a year over her lifespan - a number that seems hard to justify).

The argument about affecting teaching and interdisciplinary study is a red herring - if we put too much weight on (e.g.) publishing as opposed to teaching in deciding whom to give tenure, there's no reason we won't do so when we're hiring for our renewable 7-year contracts or whatever alternative system is implemented. The problem is academic priorities, not tenure. (Though I'm not taking a stand on whether or not teaching is valued too much or too little as it is, and likewise with interdisciplinary studies).

The arguments that tenure hurts intellectual freedom for those without it is ok, but it also misses the point of tenure. Tenure makes it difficult for political decisions to dictate research directions. Tenured medical ethicists can write honestly about abortion without worrying that in 10 years the social tides may have shifted and they suddenly have to defend their jobs because of something a TV news pundit dug up on them. The article is somewhat correct in that young researchers might be afraid of saying inflammatory things because it could hurt their chances of getting tenure later, but there's no reason any alternative system is necessarily better in this regard.

>Critics say that tenure hurts students by making professors lazy. Course loads vary widely from school to school: At some public universities, professors teach nine or 10 courses. At smaller schools, they teach as few as one or two, totaling as few as 140 classroom hours a year. If you can't be fired, what's to stop you from refusing to teach an extra course? "I honestly don't know what a lot of academics do a lot of the time," says Taylor.

This is particularly infuriating. The article makes it seem as though Taylor is an academic faculty member, so it baffles me that he doesn't know any better. Teaching even one course is a pretty substantial amount of work. Doing it while trying to get grants and do research requires a tremendous amount of effort. The professor's I've known are, to a person, among the most dedicated and hardworking people I've ever met.

>But the clincher for the anti-tenure argument may come from the very people it is supposed to benefit: academics. Specifically, young academics. Consider the career path of an aspiring full-time tenured professor: Four years of college, six years getting a doctorate, four to six years as a post-doc, and then six years on the tenure track. By the time you come up for tenure, you're 40. For men, the timeline is inconvenient. But for women who want to have children, it's just about unworkable.

This is perhaps my favorite paragraph in the article, and it by itself might be enough to justify some of the proposed fixes. The alternatives to the current system, the "modifications to tenure", are all interesting ideas that I'd like to see explored more fully. I wish that there were more to them than a few throwaway sentences in the second-to-last paragraph of the article.

</comment><comment><USER5> On the other hand, you get a lot of people doing crazy amounts of work for little pay in order to get tenure. If you abolished the tenure system, there is no chance at all that the majority of current scientists would stay in the field - the freedom that comes with tenure to pursue whatever interests you is the only reason to stay and work the ridiculous hours required of post doc researchers.

It's a beautiful idea that people would work for 1/3 the market rate because the work is so interesting, but it doesn't hold water. If you work as a researcher at Google, Microsoft or IBM, do you get paid 1/3 of a senior developer position? Abolishing the tenure system would see _even more_ of the current brain drain from academia to industry.

Changing the tenure system _is_ feasible. What really needs to be done is to split professorship into three paths: project management and administration, technical work and teaching. A professor should pick one main area, and one minor area and stick with them. It won't happen because all the prestige is in technical work and all the power is in administration. There would be few professors choosing to teach, and few professors willing to admit that they don't do any technical work. Everyone would claim to do technical work but actually politic and scheme, and to change things you would need the enthusiastic consent of exactly the guys that play the system the best.

By the way, in the point alluded to in the article that universities pay a lot of money to professors: professorial salaries have not inflated all that much in the past 30 years. Vice principals' salaries have, consultancy services have and centralised administration has. To the best of my knowledge, the inflated money has gone to purchase huge IT systems and employ a lot more student support services and student monitoring, at least in my experience. To point a finger at professorial salaries is misleading at best.

<comment><USER6> I don't think IT systems make up much of a university's budget. A quick google search turned up the following:

<http://naturalscience.msu.edu/administration/budget.html>

[http://www.bgtplan.lsu.edu/TREND/finances/actual/genexpend.p...](http://www.bgtplan.lsu.edu/TREND/finances/actual/genexpend.pdf)

[http://budget.psu.edu/openbudget/AllFundView2001.asp?type=A&...](http://budget.psu.edu/openbudget/AllFundView2001.asp?type=A&FY=20082009&fundtype=99&admin=%27TUN%27&sortcode=A)

<comment><USER5> The _inflation_ in spending is what I was addressing. That second link shows that professorial salaries are one of the slower-increasing expenditures in a university's budget very nicely :-)

<comment><USER6> Inflation in spending is very misleading. I'm reminded of certain statistics that begin with "<x> minority is the fastest growing <demographic, religion, political affiliation, etc> in the country" ...well of course. When you're the minority, it's easy to be the fastest growing.

I relooked at that second link and the total instruction and research budget are only growing slightly slower than the total budget over the entire time period ie. a multiple of 2.17 vs 2.3

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a stupid article. For one, tenure is on a huge decline among most universities (and even more so in professional schools). The most laughable thing though is believing that removing tenure will encourage teaching. _What?_ My dad has a saying -- you're only as good as your last grant. My school charges $50k per student per academic year, a decent portion of which goes to fixed costs. You know what keeps the lights on? Not student tuition. We recently sold IP rights for Lyrica to drug companies for $700 million. We have ~8,000 students. You do the math.

I have said it before and I will say it again: _major research universities are not about teaching students._ Harvard isn't making the big bucks for its endowment through simple education.

Getting rid of tenure doesn't help any of that. If anything, it removes the option the tenured professors have of focusing on teaching. That said, if tenure disappears I don't really care. I would hope that it would cause universities to decide to pay people other than the tenure track professors decent wages but I really don't see any chance of that no matter what way this goes.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of my professors in college encouraged me to do a PhD, get on a tenure track position in some college, and then wait for it ... slack for the rest of my life.

Her words were something like: "then you could go to the gym, travel, take it easy, do whatever you want -- they can't fire you."

As she was saying it, I realized she was also talking about herself and her own career.

Good colleges have well known, hard working professors. Other colleges have some good professors too, but also attract a lot of those who game the system to get a tenure then just sit on their ass until the day they die while getting payed (often the state's public funds).

Yes, sure there is pressure from the department head. There is positive re- enforcement for those who seek grants and funding from the industry. Some can get into administrative duties if they don't feel like research and they can boss others around while getting a slightly higher salary. But many just get holed up in their offices, doing shit. Some pretend to "research" crap so outlandish and useless that they might as well not do anything as it is just a waste of resources.

<comment><USER9> I have tenure. Part of the reason for the slack off after getting tenure is fatigue from the process of getting it. I spent 7 years as a grad student teaching classes for low wages and no benefits. Then many years as an adjunct for low wages and no benefits. I was lucky enough to get a tenure track job. Spent several more years doing a lot of extra work to prove how valuable I was. I didn't get paid extra for this extra work.

Now I have tenure. I haven't had a pay raise in 2 years. It looks like we won't get a raise for another 2 years. I make $56,600 a year. And now I take it easy.

I don't see the system changing because without the possibility of tenure there is no way in hell I would have gone this route. Unless pay was increased to industry standards but that's not going to happen either. Society does not want to pay for quality teachers.

EDIT: Take it easy for me means that I'm not going to serve on the curriculum committee. I try hard to teach well. I don't do the committee work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If tenure was removed, that would probably result in Universities having to pay more for professors no? I mean, part of the pay discrepancies between industry and academia is usually attributed to job security and benefits. Remove the job security and you need to compensate for that.

What I'm getting at is, 15 tenure professors left does not put those universities in the black. Those low payed non-tenured professors will be asking for more or leaving.

This article fails in my view. The quote about some guy not knowing what academics does with there time is hilarious. I work for a University as a programmer in a lab. I can tell you that they work pretty hard to obtain grants and new deals for advancing their research.

I'm sure some slack off but that's like anything else. Theres a ton of dead weights in corporations today. The corporate world is not the panacea the media makes it out to be. Small companies are another story, they can't live with dead weight.

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems to me to be just another attack on professional careers in this country.

If I were to pick the most significant staffing trend impacting the quality of college education it would not be the granting of tenure. Rather it is the use of adjuncts to teach classes, the sole purpose of which is to reduce cost for the university.

Why so many people are trying to stratify the society into a wealthy few and near indigent masses I don't understand but the ideas given in the article serve only that purpose.

<comment><USER6> A recession is the perfect time to take a hard look at budgets and trim what is not needed. People _will_ question professional careers that are inflated and that is just a natural economic process. The university system is already heavily stratified with tenured professors in the upper class and grad students and staff in the lower class.

I agree with your point about the use of adjuncts being a significant staffing trend. It's also a necessary trend especially at non-research (or sub-par research) universities. The combined roles of researcher and teacher at these universities lead to mediocrity in both in my opinion with professors using research as an excuse for slack teaching. Most students learn outside the class anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My father-in-law would have supported this whole-heartedly.

He got disillusioned with math after he got tenure. So he stopped doing research. He went to the department head and said, "Since I'm not doing research, why don't you just schedule me to teach more courses?" He was turned down because the department head didn't want him to make the other professors look bad. He made the offer repeatedly until he got tired of hearing the nos.

The end result? He puttered around for 15 years after that. His classes were always well attended. Students who attended his section of the course always did better on tests. But he never again got a promotion, and he was never allowed to teach any more courses than anyone else.

I think that a system without tenure would have forced him to make choices that made him happier. A system that actually rewarded teaching would have both made him happier, and have served the students well.

</comment><comment><USER13> > "I honestly don't know what a lot of academics do a lot of the time," says > Taylor.

Perhaps he should talk to few. From my experience, it involves writing grants.

</comment><comment><USER14> The main thing broken about the US academic system is not tenure, I think. It's grants, and the perpetual chasing of them, the effective cause of the good teachers having no time to teach and hardly any time do to research (if they restrain themselves to a healty working week).

</comment><comment><USER15> Tenure is not unlike the jury system: an excellent political safeguard that has grave administrative drawbacks.</comment>


The Smartphone Explosion - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/12/the-smartphone-explosion.html <comment><USER2> I think one of the things that even brilliant guys like Fred underestimate is that Apple offers an end-to-end ecosystem that people aspire to join while Android is the default choice for smart phone carriers that don't offer the iPhone. Android will likely have greater market share, but will it be the portion of the market you want to build for?

My view might be clouded because I work in an industry where 45% of revenue comes from 5% of customers. Will the bulk of dollars available from smartphone/tablet customers come from the market share leader or the profit share leader? My guess is the latter.

Even if Android wins in smartphones, I'd bet iOS will continue to own music, tablets, and TV and TV could be bigger than the rest combined.

<comment><USER3> Apple's products are expensive. Since Android is open, you can have android on a cheap $10 toaster or a high-end $50,000 car. Apple's closed ecosystem provides a nice environment for those people who are in it, but the vast majority of mankind cannot afford Apple products. Many, many more people can afford Android products purely because the variation in price is so huge.

So, while Apple may be happy owning the majority (all?) of the high-end device market, you will start to see Android running on nearly _everything_ out there. I wouldn't make any bets that iOS will be "better" for developers as the future rolls in.

<comment><USER4> Apple's _other_ products are expensive. iPhones tend to sell for 1-2 hundred with a contract, exactly the same as Android phones.

<comment><USER5> A very limited, US-centric view. Yes, in the US (and Canada) people buy subsidized phones and even here that hasn't stopped Android.

In much of the rest of the world, people would be expected to pay 2-3 monthly salaries for an unsubsidized iPhone. Or they could pay 1/2 or 1/3rd for a decent Android phone and do the same things. Now do you understand the point of the article?

<comment><USER4> Which countries are you referring to, exactly? In Australia for instance, an iPhone is about $630 AU, a Droid 2, $650. I think it makes sense to compare phones of similar capabilities.

<comment><USER5> India, China, Eastern Europe, Latin America... take your pick.

When I go shopping for a phone this year, I'll be comparing the iPhone5 with the latest dual-core 4+" 1280x760 Android monstrosity, then drop 600+ on either. When the newly minted middle class in those countries goes shopping for a phone this year, they'll look at a reasonable 3.5" 480x320 Android for $150-200, compare it with some aging Nokia dinosaur and make their pick. The iPhone is not going to be figuring into their thoughts very much.

<comment><USER4> Anyway, you asked me 'now do you understand the point of the article'.

I think I already did, thanks, and as far as I can tell, Android being at a particularly advantage overseas vs. iOS is neither the point of FW's post or the article he linked to. In fact, all he said is '. And many of these devices will be running Android, not iOS'. As far as I can tell, HN has seemed to turn this into "Android will be devastating iOS because people in Kiribati can't afford an iPhone!!". Okay, but that isn't what either article was asserting.

<comment><USER5> Well, if you follow the link in Fred Wilson's blog post, the title is "2011 will be the year Android explodes". FW is merely agreeing with that original point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not many people have caught onto the fact, but Android has already exploded massively. It's a moving target, but during the same time that RIM, Apple and MS shipped their flagship products (iPhone4, BB Torch, WP7), Android outsold them all combined. With Nokia mired in Symbian-MeeGo nowhereland, there doesn't seem to be anything on the horizon to slow down that momentum.

Despite all the hand wringing over "fragmentation", the fact is that Android scales and adapts wonderfully and this will be the basis for its dominance. Consider the new wave of cheap Android smartphones coming - with what other OS could a middle-aged Indian man upgrading from an old crummy nokia be just as satisfied as me - a geeky dev who loves the latest and greatest and has gone through a dozen smartphones?

<comment><USER6> When talking the dominance, please, specify what kind of dominance you have in mind. Nokia has dominance in market share, but what's the point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with FW that 2011 will see a huge explosion in smartphones. 2010 was already a huge boom. But the interesting potential lies in the billions of people in the developing world, can they be enticed to join the smartphone world with cheap smartphones priced under $100? I think they can. Virgin Mobile has an Android device for under $200, no contract and only $25/month for unlimited data and 300 minutes. That's enticing, and it's probably just going to get cheaper. Android has the price point where it can lure people in to a smartphone from a regular phone, and it has the platform where it can keep most of the people. The big question to me is what is Apple's response going to be? Is Apple just going to sit there and let Android take the low-end market, or is Apple going to proactively respond and release a lower end phone, ie., iPhone Nano, that can compete with the low-end Android phones? The same thing in tablets, will Apple release a 7" tablet to compete with the low- end Android tablets?

<comment><USER5> To be honest, I am a little baffled that they haven't already. Around this time last year I wrote about why Apple would use a 960x640 screen in it's 4th iPhone* and I naturally expected a product line split. It would have made perfect sense to have a top-end 4" 960x640 phone and a low-end phone using the old screen, less RAM and other money-saving components.

Perhaps they wanted to hold off another year protecting their high margins, knowing that even in the developed world, a lot of people would have brought the low-end iPhone instead of the high-end one? In any case, it would be interesting to see if this summer they'll introduce a lower-end iPhone or if they'll continue to be an exclusively top-end provider.

*[http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/12/iphone-4g-predictions.htm...](http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/12/iphone-4g-predictions.html)

<comment><USER8> _I naturally expected a product line split. It would have made perfect sense to have a top-end 4" 960x640 phone and a low-end phone using the old screen, less RAM and other money-saving components._

Since the 2009 introduction of the iPhone 3GS, when the iPhone 3G went on sale for $99, they've done exactly that. A year later, the 3GS followed it at that price.

The downside is that when the 3GS was finally discontinued, it was two years old and had 1/4 the RAM of the then-current iPhone 4, leading to maintenance trouble for the OS and app developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> good points. yet apple has options. the iPad was priced very aggressively out of the gate, to the point of having no real competitor even now.

the iPhone pricing is muddled by the carrier subscription costs. which incidentally are the best/most profitable large business in the world right now.

the iPod touch has no competition even after years in the market.

my money for 2011 is that apple continues to be the money/profit leader. not android

</comment><comment><USER10> Even on a geeky site like swombat.com, mobile traffic is still only 12% of the total. Android has a long way to go. I doubt it will achieve all that in 2011.

Just because everyone _can_ access the web on their mobile doesn't mean it will become their main channel to it. I have mobile devices too, but 99% of my web browsing is still on my laptop, and until/unless I need to be super-mobile all the time, that will remain the case.

<comment><USER3> > I have mobile devices too, but 99% of my web browsing is still on my laptop

Right. That's because you _can_. In much of the world, there is no such thing as a high-speed wired infrastructure that lets you purchase $1000 computers, plug them in and go. Most of the world _does_ have a wireless network though, and there are already nearly 1 billion 3G phones connected to those networks.

You and I are not good examples of the new market that will exclusively access the Internet through mobile, so it may be hard to see that it's going to happen that way. But it will.

<comment><USER11> laptops can run on wireless infrastructure just as well as smartphones can.

I'm typing this on a lenovo ThinkPad x60s. Value was $400 a year or so back when I got it. Less now, obviously. There are serviceable netbooks for similar prices new these days. I'm using the verizon brand cellular modem, which works fairly well (but is also pretty expensive, because I'm an American.)

If I was some guy in africa or china or what have you, this netbook/cellular setup would not be any more expensive than a iphone, and really the only downside vs. the iphone is that you've gotta plug the netbook in more often than the smartphone; on the upside, it's much easier to get the sort of work I do done with a real keyboard and monitor. Of course, this varies. for communication that doesn't need to be instant and traditional computer work, the netbook is unquestionably better, save for the battery life issue. If you need instant on or work while you walk capability, then the smartphone is your best choice. It's a tradeoff... I'm just saying that right now, the high end smartphones don't have a price edge over the low end netbooks.

Smartphones are getting better; fast, but they are still a long ways from being as functional as a good netbook. As of yet, a good smartphone and a good netbook are about at price parity. (if this article is right, that might be changing; I can see situations where saving a couple hundred up front would make dealing with a smartphone vs. a laptop worth it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fred Wilson does very well stating and investing in the obvious.

<comment><USER12> Fred Wilson also has the $$ to show for stating and investing in the obvious...

<comment><USER4> Sure, as I said, it works well for him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> slight prediction here: apple may introduce a 3g plan for a next generation of iPod Touch, strongarm AT&T or Verizon in to offering a decent unlimited data plan, and start pushing facetime (and possibly skype) over traditional 'phone' functionality altogether. Yeah, why would a carrier cannibalize their own voice network? Perhaps they won't, but they might for the right amount of cash (isn't it _always_ about cash?)

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't wait for Dell to get into the smartphone business.

<comment><USER15> Hmm I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic. I've known just about as many people who would say this seriously as would sarcastically...

[My experience with Dell has been quite mixed...I have the impression they used to make fairly reliable machines, but recently not so much.]

<comment><USER14> Sarcastic. They made the exploding laptops right? They'd be perfect to create a smartphone explosion :)</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft says Iranian hacking group targeted a 2020 US presidential candidate - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/4/20898943/microsoft-iran-2020-presidential-candidate-hacker-phosphorous-hack <comment><USER2> Why not just link the Microsoft article?

[https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the- issues/2019/10/04/recent-...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the- issues/2019/10/04/recent-cyberattacks-require-us-all-to-be-vigilant/)</comment>


Ultimate CDN Price calculator - Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdncalc.com/

<comment><USER2> Here is a newbie question.

If I had a 1GB image for people to download, and say there are 1000 download, does it mean I will consume 1GB x 1000?

Nice tool by the way.

<comment><USER3> If you're okay with it being served as a torrent, Amazon's S3 supports serving objects as torrents to offload origin bandwidth usage:

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/S3Torrent.htm...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/S3Torrent.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startups, what email marketing software do you use? - <AUTHOR> We're using Mailchimp at the moment but we're curious about what others are using it and how much they like it?<p>Our experience has been that Mailchimp hasn't been that easy to use and integrate for our purposes. Curious what others think. <comment><USER2> My company uses Mailchimp as well, since it's good for integrating with web forms like AppSumo and SquareSpace's. But what I don't like is how the e-mails look like impersonal e-mail blasts. For that reason I've been using Streak for mail merge and saved e-mail templates (plus the bonus of open tracking), so that I can send e-mails that look like they are 1:1. One thing I'm beginning to get into is also pairing Zapier with Mandrill (Mandrill is actually owned by Mailchimp). Zapier is a neat tool that's basically IFTTT, but more business than consumer focused. So, I can get Zapier to automatically look for new data in a Google Doc and send that to Mandrill, which will send an automated and personalized e-mail. Still playing around with it, though. Hope that's helpful...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, yes it's great insight. I thought Mailchimp already provides open tracking?

Interesting. So essentially, you're using your Google Docs as a makeshift CRM, monitor it using Zapier and then fire off an email with Mandrill?

<comment><USER2> Pretty much that, except Zapier works in the background, basically a script and no monitoring. I'm sure there are other, easier solutions, but somebody told me about this, so testing it out. But it depends on what you want to use the CRM/e-mail solution for I guess. I for the most part like Mailchimp as a CRM for managing different lists that we have...it's just the e-mail format that I find impersonal. Generally I've just been doing the e-mails manually, but automation is always ideal :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. I find that it doesn't give me the preciseness that it wants so we're thinking of building our own.

Manual works - no point automating something that's going to save you 10 seconds :)

Thanks. I'm going to have a look at Zapier.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A Node and Postgres app to see what you look like (given an email) - <AUTHOR> http://selfie-search.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> Application Error</comment>


Hilbert's list - <AUTHOR> https://seths.blog/2018/12/hilberts-list/ <comment><USER2> The purely technical achievements I think have a much better chance than the ones that have a social component.

Issues where you have a human adversary are much harder. Each advance may be met by the adversary advancing to maintain their advantage. Human Trafficking is an obvious example where there is an active adversary, but recent times have particularly shown the vulnerability of Democracy to malicious actors.

</comment><comment><USER3> We need a microprocessor revolution of energy storage and dissipation (getting smaller but storing twice more every two years kind) to actually fulfill most of the other things in the list.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great idea for a post, but the list is awfully undecidable

<comment><USER5> It seems like that was indeed one of his points -- that perhaps the future now depends on solving problems that do not have objective measures of success:

> Our next steps might be far more effective than simple resolutions, which > are easily ignored or pushed aside.

<comment><USER6> That seems naive at best. How can you even judge what is effective with out some sort of metric? Seems like it would lead to alot of wasted effort.

As an aside,usually the tools and techniques used to solve a well defined problem become pretty important. They lead to other well defined questions and then further objective progress.

I also think the major problems we face are reasonably well defined, for example climate change and emission targets. Even then we struggle to actually solve some of them. Being nebulous will just make progress harder.

Really is a bit rich to compare yourself in some way to Hilbert while being so hand wavy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Beneficial man/machine interface (post Xerox Parc)

Amen

<comment><USER8> That one hit for me too. We mostly stopped at 1995 with a small leap in 2007 (ZUIs coming from iPhone OS).

Current experiments are more or less a remix of those two — interface less (assistants) are incredibly far away in the future to be able to replace current UIs completely.

<comment><USER9> I think that AR has a strong possibility of becoming more commonplace within 5 years. VRs future, Im not so sure of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I expected a better list from Seth. Seems poorly thought out and quickly put together.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a shitty replacement for Hilbert's list. Hilbert had 25 problems in mathematics: when you solved them, you knew you had, or at worst you would wait for peer review to confirm you got it.

No one will ever solve, to pick one, "Alternatives to paid labor for most humans". It's already happened for some people, will never happen for some people, and won't necessarily be a good thing if it happens for many people. The items on this list are overwhelmingly people and political problems and - even if they are laudable goals in general - don't belong in the same breath as Hilbert's.

<comment><USER11> Let alone that some are just dubiously ambiguous. What does "transmutation of matter to different elements and structures" mean? We've already done this via hydrogen bombs and particle accelerators, it's just very (very) expensive or very (very) destructive. Or does the author mean something different -- maybe more like the alchemy of the Dark Ages? What does the author even mean by "structures"?

<comment><USER12> I don't think he necessarily means elements in the chemistry sense of the word. By elements he probably just means new physical materials (e.g. graphene), and by structures he's probably talking about things like nanobots or 3D chips. (I could be completely wrong, but just a guess.)</comment></comment></comment>


Shall the West Pass Too? Whispers from Fallen Civilisations - <AUTHOR> https://www.themetasophist.com/chapter/whispers-from-fallen-civilisations <comment><USER2> Should we be worried? From the very first paragraph:

> the Medieval Era was the spring of the West, the Renaissance its summer, and > the Baroque era its autumn. He predicted that the West would enter its > Winter around the year 2000, which would be characterised by a decline of > democracy due to excessive influence from moneyed interests, and a resultant > rise of authoritarianism.

I can't help notice how decline of democracy is painted as the 'end of the West', meanwhile Medieval Era was the 'spring of the West'. There is no democracy in Medieval West, there were kings, theocracies, crusades, burning of heretics and women. I immediately starts smelling hypocrisy, the only thing about Medieval West is that it is almost entirely white.

So here comes the real question: What is the west? Culturally, the west now is way more different then the west in 1500 as versus the East today. Why is it that people start feeling that the west will pass - and that it somehow coincide with demographic changes. Is it a coincidence or subconscious bias?

US have been through much worse, from the America First nazi sympathizer of the 30s to McCarthyism of the 50s, that's not even mentioning the civil war of the century before that. We as humans tend to characterize what we're currently moving through as more significant than they are - put it into historical perspective and it could just be a 'nah'.

<comment><USER3> Democracy didn't really become a thing until after the Baroque era. Maybe democracy failing will bring us back to the "golden age" of the West, like the medieval/renaissance era.

<comment> blaser-waffle Democracy was certainly a thing before the Baroque era. A lot of old school "kings" were chosen by groups, with varying degrees of how large that group is, e.g. Ancient Athenian democracy.

What you're talking about is European/Western Liberal Democracy, which may involve voting, but has a different set of assumptions and serves different rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's fun to think about the decline of civilisation and ponder where we might be in the history of the West, but the truth is we have no idea. Being a student of decline does lend you an air of gravitas that optimism or even indifference just doesn't I suppose.

These studies often involve panning the rubble of previous civilisations for clues about decline, but without much in the way of generally applicable theories those clues aren't really much use to us. Yeah, civilisations that are collapsing have agricultural, economic, military, ecological, and demographic problems. So do the thriving ones.

 _Is it the destiny of the West to die?_ Well, sure – it requires a huge wobbly stack of things to keep it alive (from physics to poetry), so one day it will almost certainly end. It's not prophecy unless you can tell me when these things will happen. It could conceivably be ten years or ten thousand years away.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the first chapter from a book I am writing about the decline of the West, and how to reverse it. This chapter summarises a number of indicators of decline and implications for the future, while also touching on the potential causes by applying the thoughts of Spengler and Toynbee.

Enjoy and feedback welcome!

<comment><USER5> So far you're on point as far as I'm concerned. I'm eager to see what you have to say about reversing course.

An issue that bothers me no end is the fact that we very well could get out of this mess _if we collectively wanted to_.

<comment><USER6> Everyone collectively wants to, we just can't decide how.

Half the population wants the post-capitalist, ecologically sound, anti-racist path forward.

The other half wants to lean hard into capitalism and traditional civil liberties ("freedom to" not "freedom from") with an emphasis on innovating our way to the future and out of our current problems.

The post-capitalists look too much like communists to be trusted by the freedom folks, and the freedom folks look too much like history's economic oppressors and robber barons to be trusted.

Historically these divides take a long time dissolve (unless there is a bloody conflict and clear winner).

<comment><USER7> > traditional civil liberties ("freedom to" not "freedom from")

There's no such thing as "freedom from", which is probably one of the main sticking points between these two groups. "Freedom from" is just a nice way to say "loss of agency due to oppressive external control".

I realize this may seem like a pointless semantic quibble, but I think at it's root it points out a philosophical divide, where-in I personally believe one side is divorced from reality.

There are reasonable discussions to be had about where on the sliding scale from totalitarian to libertarian that society should fall for the best results for everyone, but in no case is there ever a situation in which "freedom from" is a real thing. You are trading off "freedom" for "safety".

<comment><USER8> > _" Freedom from" is just a nice way to say "loss of agency due to oppressive > external control"._

That is not always the case. Counterexample: "freedom from tyranny", as in "citizens are free from tyranny by the government" – that can hardly be reframed as "the government loses agency due to oppressive external control by the law".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This website appears to be a (not very subtle) collection of dogwhistles masquerading as historiography.

From the "Introduction to Metasophism"[1]:

> The above proposals may seem sweeping, but we are only getting started. > Particularly concerning is European demographics arising from low fertility > and deepening social divisions. A society is beginning to divide along > ethnic lines is one where any debate will be tribal; higher ideals such as > discovering the meaning of life will be ignored. Ethnic issues must > therefore be de-dramatised. The Fellowship programme described earlier would > help unify society by engaging diverse groups in common tasks.

> But we must go further: to dispel ethnic tensions within Europe, asylum- > related migration needs to be limited. Chapter Nine therefore discusses a > way of doing this that would prevent further asylum immigration while > ensuring that migrants would have prosperity and security. The central idea > is to rent a small amount of land on the coast of Africa for one century, > give it a basic constitution and access to EU markets, and ensure legal and > physical security. Such an area would become an attractive place for > investment, thus providing jobs for migrants.

[1]: [https://www.themetasophist.com/chapter/introduction](https://www.themetasophist.com/chapter/introduction)

<comment><USER10> Honestly not trying to be snarky.

If what you quoted is the dog whistle, what is the decoded message that the in crowd would be hearing?

<comment><USER9> > Honestly not trying to be snarky.

I'll take that at face value.

> If what you quoted is the dog whistle, what is the decoded message that the > in crowd would be hearing?

Both tie closely into bog-standard reactionary and white nationalist rhetoric. The first is a dogwhistle for "the great replacement," or the conspiracy theory that Europeans (meaning, to them, whites) are being intentionally replaced by migrants as a method of control. The latter ties closely to a crowd that calls themselves "white nationalist" but not "white supremacist" \-- they insist that they don't believe in the superiority of whites, and only want isolation for "fundamentally different cultures" (by which they mean races). It should be apparent that this is really just white supremacy with more steps, especially if (as this introduction proposes) the European continent functionally becomes the landlord and benevolent overseer of a migrant nation.

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry for the question, but I'm reading this sort of opinion more and more frequently here:

Do you think the whole world has a _right_ to enter Europe? Isn't this an amazing form of entitlement?

<comment><USER9> > Do you think the whole world has a right to enter Europe? Isn't this an > amazing form of entitlement?

As every European country agrees[1], _refugees_ certainly do have the right to request asylum in Europe. There's nothing "entitled" about fleeing death, violence, and privation.

That's the base case, and the one this blog post seems to be opposed to. More elaborate cases require more discussion, but you'll have to forgive me if I'm not inclined to spend time on that with a throwaway account.

[1]: [https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/1951-refugee- convention.html](https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/1951-refugee-convention.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> After watching "Pumped Dry: The global crisis of vanishing groundwater", I think future conflicts will be over water.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsThobgq7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsThobgq7Q)

I think the West will eventually we faced with a decision: either learn to live sustainably or get used to living in an irreversibly ruined environment.

Reduce and reuse come before recycling.

<comment><USER13> We're already living in an irreversibly ruined environment. You don't notice because you didn't live to see it in its prior state. You never saw half a billion ducks take flight over North America. You never saw, and you will never see, a seasonal salmon migration on the San Joaquin river that can support a fishery catching 11 million pounds per year. My kids have never seen a Sierra Nevada conifer forest that wasn't sterile and dead, and they think forests just look that way. Our society does not have the facility to remember the ecosystems of the past. We just forget and adapt to the new one.

<comment><USER12> That happens when you replace a population that lives sustainably (Native Americans) with a population that does not care about sustainability (Modern Americans).

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Bison_sk...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Bison_skull_pile_edit.jpg)

Converting material wealth with an intrinsic value (a healthy environment, biodiversity) into abstract wealth without an intrinsic value (a number in a bank account) is really the dumbest thing to do.

Once we are done converting every resource into a money, the resulting balance will surely be very useful to satisfy our needs.

"When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can't eat money."

<comment><USER14> Honestly, you need to level up your argumentation. No material is (except in form of waste) converted to anything abstract without an intrinsic value. Capitalism generally reduces waste. What happens though, is that material is turned into products which a lot of people find useful/desirable. This problem is a problem, but it is a much harder problem to 'solve' than the one you are claiming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's not at all clear to me why we should be concerned with the decline of a proposed "west." Many of the traits folks laud the "West" for were in fact the products of a series of influences from many other cultures at the time.

Desirable traits for a society inviting growth, prosperity and egalitarianism can exist in nearly any industrialized society today, and _many_ of them currently fall short of their stated ideals when difficulty is encountered. Further, society as a whole seems to make lots of progress when small and large overturnings (or revolutions?) happen. Poorly formulated ideas are refined or discarded, and values are reaffirmed. Counter-revolutionary elements seek to roll them back, but even in success they're irrevocably changed for the experience and cannot help but define their mission in terms of their challengers.

Let's worry more about creating a sustainable, distributed, and well- understood technology base. Unlike culture, that actually takes time and infrastructure to build.

<comment><USER16> No, society does not necessarily make large technical progress during overturnings or revolution. Rome is a case in point. Western society slid into nearly 1000 years of stagnation.

At any rate, culture is far more foundational than you suppose and it's very difficult to get right. And when a culture has become corrupt or toxic it is very difficult to get anything of value done at all.

<comment><USER15> This seems like a very, very sketchy definition of "progress." The later 1/3rd of Rome was not exactly full of memorable technological and intellectual progress, _especially_ compared to its neighbors.

Roman's are sorta famous in history for their lack of interest in anything but making war. There's a reason we don't refer to many roman math treaties; they were often very dogmatic texts referring to greek works and heavily influenced by the lens of military problems; and often fantastically wrong.

<comment><USER16> Well maybe for intellectual works, you're right, but their civil engineering prowess was unmatched for 1000 years. But again, you're just underscoring my point... this "war making" culture prevented other types of intellectualism from flourishing. Culture matters. And cultural revolutions can just as easily wind up in hell as in heaven.

<comment><USER15> Isn't that my point? That we shouldn't be afraid of cultural change if it brings about more of the values we want and less of the values we don't?

"Cancel Culture" is much feared by many, as an example, but in practice it actually intensifies public debate among questionable issues while not wasting time allowing folks with classically racist views to muddy the more pressing issues, so while it can feel painful sometimes, it seems like a net good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love reading stuff like this, but wow does it put my mental state in a bad place, maybe this is part of the problem...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for commenting, and sorry for that side-effect. I don't experience it myself anymore, and that may be due to exposure.

I guess to solve the issues you need to tolerate staring them in the face for quite a while!

To repeat what I said below: I'm personally optimistic -- I think the ideas are there to avoid protracted decline and there's also a historical awareness which most previous civilisations didn't have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd really like to think that the "West" will survive. Yet, part of me has a hard time shaking the feeling that we're all living in a period of decline.

I think about the world my parents and grandparents grew up in, and then I think about what life is going to be like in the next 50 years (I'm in my mid 20s) and it makes me anxious.

The only bright spot about Covid is that it rapidly accelerated social changes (work form home) and gave people time to think about the kind of society they want to have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this comment.

I'm personally optimistic -- I think the ideas are there to avoid protracted decline and there's also an awareness which most previous civilisations didn't have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't see any need to invoke grand themes. We are perfectly capable of collapsing via our own unique failings.

Global climate disruption followed by mass migration, triggering fascist government, and then global thermonuclear war, could be our generation's unique mode of collapse.

In particular, you don't need to blame the Woke movement or the US's failed pandemic response. Exxon suffices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks for this remark. That scenario is unfortunately within the realm of possibility -- indeed in a later chapter I will address the topic of climate.

But there are other ways of failing which I think also need to be insured against -- hence my engagement with the cyclical models of history, to see what insight they have to offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My great-grandparents lived in an era before the car. They lived through seeing cars, planes, and finally moon landings. The internet is the crowning achievement of this age, but that also means that in a way physical achievements have lost their focus and luster - that doesn't mean they haven't existed.

</comment><comment> throwaway-8c93 Given the content of the linked article, I heartily recommend taking a peek at Peter Turchin's work on Secular Cycles (1). He also keeps a blog, where he expands on some of the ideas. Not a light reading, though. The best introduction to his work was a book review at now deleted slatestarcodex - maybe it can be retrieved by internet archive.

Based on the dataset he and his colleagues compiled, civilizations big enough for internal dynamics tend to exhibit these characteristics during their stagnation phase:

* stagnating or declining real wages

* increasing rents

* decrease in social cohesion

* increasing inequality

* increasing urbanization (mostly due to no rural opportunities)

* more people pursuing education, arts and crafts in hopes of joining the elite. This sounds as a plus, until you realize it's caused by inability to keep a decent standard of living in traditional occupations

* sharpening intra-elite competition, leading to a gradual abandonment of previous norms. Dirty tricks become more and more commonplace

* crisis amplification - non-issues turn into crises, challenges turn into disasters

* 'overproduction of elites' leads to increasing corruption and rent seeking

* stagnating wages and increasing corruption leads to strain on public finances

Turchin's contribution lies mainly in providing historical statistics to back these claims, the novel mechanics of 'elite overproduction' and 'elite aspirants', and overlaying a secondary generational cycle, when a clique of elites keep power for too long (30-50 year cycle, think of Boomers in US or WW2 veterans in USSR).

(1) [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8778747-secular- cycles](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8778747-secular-cycles)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much for this detailed and rigorous comment.

I have already read part of that book (along with the book review), but haven't finished it yet. I find that model highly plausible, and think it offers useful insights into what is happening today (even though there is a major difference between the agricultural societies which provide all of his cases, and the modern situation).

I will address the overproduction of elites theme in the chapter on selecting and training a new elite. My central innovation is to try to create an alternative to top-down elite selection and training. Essentially, requiring an aspiring elite member to work with others in small groups at a young age, after which their performance would be peer assessed -- which determines whether they could enter the elite. I hope that this could dissolve the tendency of hierarchies to select people who look/think/talk just like themselves, and thus create an elite more reflective of the diversity in society. This component of the elite would be numerically limited (1 per 100, or 1 per 200).

I address the issue of inequality in other chapters. One idea follows from the above: if the groups above choose to spend their time together to form companies, then some of the shares should go into a Public Equity Fund, in which each citizen would have an account (a fair exchange in return for facilitating the activities of the group). This would mean that everyone would benefit from the formation of new companies. More details on all this in the coming weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The reason the rest of the world is rapidly catching up with the developed world (are Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore part of 'The West'?) is because they are copying as much of it as possible as fast as they can. The cultural and economic template of the developed world is taking over everywhere, it's spectacularly successful.

Spengler would have hated this because he was afraid the non-white races would adopt our technology and use it's against us. However since I'm not a racist, with a zero sum fear of the foreign, I think that's fine. They're part of our civilisation, or at least are rapidly becoming part of it just like Japan, Korea, Taiwan etc.

The one outlier is China, which against the odds has managed to ditch Communism, adopted radically laissez faire Capitalism, yet retain one party authoritarianism. They seriously worry me, but not for anything to do with Spengler and the inherent instability of civilisations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this comment.

To repeat what I said below, I would shy away from discussing rise and decline in purely geopolitical terms. I'm more referring to internal aspects of decline -- social cohesion, creativity, quality of governance, and so on. It's possible to be in relative geopolitical decline but culturally and economically quite vibrant e.g. Austria-Hungary between 1866 and 1914, and I wouldn't say they were in decline then.

Some countries (or at least their governments) are also starting to reject the Western secular cultural template -- Turkey, Pakistan, Hungary, and Poland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> All things pass

<comment><AUTHOR> This is mostly true -- but knowledge, perhaps that can persist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is no west decline, it's just individual across the globe reclaimed their rightly productivity. That by itself is a victory of western value: the democracy and freedom of economic power.

Now it's the time for west to advance to the next stage and herald the new chapter of human civilization, instead of wrongly reminiscent of its past glory that was not really meaningful nowadays.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. I'm agree with your second sentence.

For the first, I would shy away from discussing rise and decline in purely geopolitical terms. I'm more referring to internal aspects of decline -- social cohesion, creativity, quality of governance, and so on. It's possible to be in relative geopolitical decline but culturally and economically quite vibrant e.g. with Austria-Hungary between 1866 and 1914, and I wouldn't say they were in decline then.</comment></comment>


Browsers Take a Stand Against Kazakhstan's Invasive Internet Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/browsers-take-stand-against-kazakhstans-invasive-internet-surveillance <comment><USER2> So man in the middle in the developing world is bad, but pervasive tracking in the developed world is absolutely fine. Got it.

Edit for replies to this message: I accept the distinction being made, but that doesn't mean I'm more happy about one thing than the other. Both suck.

<comment><USER3> MitM is a fundamental breach of trust between you and the websites you visit.

The websites themselves tracking you… well, whatever, visit better websites, block third-party trackers (Firefox actually does that out of the box), use Tor Browser.

(Also, the tracking is not exclusive to the "developed world" lol)

<comment><USER4> A thing affects a tiny percentage of the world population. An ethical stance is made.

A thing affects enormous percentage of world population. A shrug is performed.

<comment><USER5> There is a big difference between MiTM and tracking.

When google tracks me when I'm in India it is not for finding out if I am against my PM and a threat to the party and if they want to silence me

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why no one does same against all other countries? Why not make browser, which can by pass all blocks and etc? And why it's not default already?

All these news about Kazakhstan just feels like a farce. Go ahead and do same against China.

<comment><USER7> Because no other country yet required their citizens to install root certificate, which the browsers can block.

(Speaking of China, Google did remove Chinese CA after it was used for MiTM [https://security.googleblog.com/2015/03/maintaining- digital-...](https://security.googleblog.com/2015/03/maintaining-digital- certificate-security.html))

<comment><USER8> In the interests of precision: nothing there says it was the doing of the Chinese state. A private company, MCS Holdings, was at fault there.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't matter who ordered to issue a certificate, a CA must not issue fake certificates anyway and discovery of such a certificate is a proof of violation of rules.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Garry's SF Guide to Where Your Startup Should Be - <AUTHOR> http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=111291639665197066699.00048b3c0d910bf1a232a

<comment><USER2> Downtown Oakland was sadly ignored. The nice side of Lake Merritt, as well as downtown and Jack London Square are generally overlooked. Maybe that's a good thing for my rent. I pay $1900 for an 1100 ft^2 2br/2bath right next to jack london square, with a pool, a hot tub, and soon with a 100mbps synchronous connection that will cost $45/month. BART is 4 blocks away and door to door I'm downtown in 30 minutes. I'm looking at downtown office space now and it's incredibly cheap, plus the business taxes are a lot cheaper.

The food scene isn't as great as Berkeley, but rent is 30% cheaper, and there are far fewer yuppy moms walking around with kids in strollers, which makes me happy. There has been a pretty solid core of hackers moving here in the past two years, generally people like me in our early '30s who have been in SF for a decade+ and have finally stopped drinking the "San Francisco is worth $4k for a 750 ft^2 apartment" koolaid.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting that he didn't include the Financial District. I know of a number of startups there, including some YC startups. He did make this a couple years ago though, and it may be that that's a more recent expansion as it's gotten harder to find reasonable options in SOMA.

I worked at Cloudera's office in FiDi over the summer and liked the area a lot. Super-convenient via BART (less convenient than SOMA via Caltrain, but one could always transfer to BART at Millbrae). Right in the middle of everything. Good food options. Felt pretty safe walking to BART after dark because there's enough people around.

<comment><USER4> It seems like startups tend to move north once they get to the stage where they're not quite really startups anymore. Dropbox is a classic example. I don't know how easy it is to find space up there if you're not using a whole floor of an office building, though.

<comment><USER5> north? That doesn't sound like a general trend (I'd expect south), and doesn't match my understanding of Dropbox's moving pattern (153 Kerney to Market St. to near AT&T park.)

<comment><USER4> I was thinking of their move to 153 Kearny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Santa Cruz can be a good option for some kinds of things.

Pros: Lower housing/office rental costs than most of SF/SV, nice ocean, less crowded coffee shops, lots of UCSC students willing to work as cheap summer interns in return for not having to commute across the hill, lower salaries for senior engineers for the same reason if you find one[1], substantial local indie-gaming startup scene (Team Meat, Chronic Logic, Gaijin Games, Graeme Devine), laid-back lifestyle.

Cons: Further from the VC and most of the tech/meetup action, SF/SV people consider it infinitely far away, harder to find senior engineers, few local peers if you _aren't_ in the indie-game space, laid-back lifestyle.

[1] There are a _lot_ of engineers who live in SC, either because they prefer it to living in the Valley, or because they already established families there back when there were more tech jobs (SCO, etc.). Most now commute to Mountain View, San Jose, or Cupertino, but many would take a substantial paycut to not have to make that commute every day, which seems like a potential arbitraging opportunity for the right startup.

</comment><comment><USER4> Re: Dogpatch / Potrero Hill

The area around 3rd and 20th is actually pretty well connected transit-wise (near 22nd st caltrain, the T line, and three or four bus lines), is a 30 minute walk from soma, and is still pretty cheap. And although the real estate prices are going up (along with the rest of the city) there's still a lot of underutilized land to expand into that should act as a buffer on rent prices. If I were looking for a place to start an office I would look there first.

google maps: <http://g.co/maps/dqmrn>

walkscore: [http://www.walkscore.com/score/3rd-and-20th-st-san- francisco...](http://www.walkscore.com/score/3rd-and-20th-st-san-francisco-ca)

<comment><USER7> I lived a block from 3rd and 20th. It's a reasonable place to live, I liked it, and it is indeed next to Caltrain, the T, and the 22 and 48 buses.

But there isn't a lot _right_ there, it always takes at least fifteen minutes go get where the action is (i.e. the Mission). I recommend it for anyone who commutes to Stanford, Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc. but wants to live in the city... but if I didn't have my commute I probably would have lived in the Mission/Castro/Hayes Valley/etc.

<comment><USER4> There's a lot more there now than there was a year or two ago. Most of the places in the immediate vicinity were started in the past year and a half.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> +1 for Berkeley, my rent is less than half of what I would be paying on the other side of the bay, not to mention it's just great out here.

<comment><USER9> I've been looking around the Bay for way-cheap alternatives to the city, and nothing I've seen in Berkeley is that cheap. It seems anything close to transit is comparable to SF (at most a 10% discount).

It would seem that "far from SF" is countered by "population of monied students".

<comment><USER10> I pay $4700/month for an architecturally magnificent 5BR 2200 square foot house on the block east of the Berkeley Bowl. I suppose it's not cheap on an absolute scale, but a comparable house in SF would be $8000/month at the very minimum and in Pacific Heights or the Marina or a neighborhood I don't want to live in. I think you're underestimating the cost of San Francisco right now.

Berkeley is more expensive than Silicon Valley, but it has all of the amenities of a major metropolis (except late night anything) while being quite small in the scheme of things. It's still absolutely not a place to go for a way cheap alternative to a city, as it's still one of the most expensive areas in the USA.

<comment><USER9> Ah, there's the difference then - I've been looking at 0/1/2BR apartments in both SF and Berkeley. It seems like a decent 1BR near BART will run in the $1600-2000 range, which is in the same ballpark as most of SF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> this is very cool! I came to the area recently and settled in Berkeley based on a PG essay, and I think it deserves the good review that it gets on the map. I thought being in the Gourmet Ghetto area would be too far away from the bustling student-y area with cheap food, but it's nice to see it got mentioned.

Travel to SV via public transit is a 2-2.5 hr trip door-to-door (maybe a little more, depending where, and if you need to walk). If commuting is only a once in a while thing, it's not too painful with a Clipper Card but maybe expensive.

<comment><USER12> Totally agree with the vibe of Berkeley that PG talks about in "Cities and Ambition"; it's all about quality of life. I lived there for a couple years and loved it (though I wasn't in tech at the time), and now I'm considering relocating there again.

For me the greatest advantage of Berkeley is the opportunity for amazing outdoor recreation, which is a boon if you enjoy nature and want to keep in shape while avoiding the gym. You can live literally minutes away from trail heads into the hills for hiking or biking. Lunchtime trail running? Not a problem. Also at Berkeley Marina you have one of the best locations for sailing in the Bay Area.

Access to healthy food is also a huge plus. I've never seen a wider selection of reasonably priced vegetables than at the produce section of the Berkeley Bowl.

And, there's far more sunshine than anywhere else on the Peninsula north of Millbrae.

Lastly, I agree with your comments and disagree with the author's regarding the commute to SV. An occasional commute to SV is very doable by BART and Caltrain, but a ridiculously stressful waste by car. Just bring your earplugs for those acoustically torturous minutes in the Transbay Tunnel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not much of a businessperson, but I wonder why startups cluster in expensive places like South Park. You could move to a loft in the East Bay, not too far from BART, and save enough to pay a whole other salary, maybe two.

pg's thesis about Silicon Valley is that it's mostly the about the investors. I assume that the talent pool is willing to do a BART ride to the East Bay for the right startup. So is being smack dab in the middle of the cluster that vital to success? How does the math work out?

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd look at downtown Sunnyvale as well. Nokia moved in a while ago, and Apple will be moving in later this year. Murphy street has a little bit of life, although not as much as University in PA or Castro in MV. But the rents are lower than PA/MV and Sunnyvale is a Caltrain bullet stop. Lots of startups in Sunnyvale too, although many of them are over in the Plug and Play Techcenter place which is far from everything except the skate park.

</comment><comment><USER15> This was written in 2010. How do these locations fare today?

<comment><USER9> I'm surprised he called out the Mission (east of Valencia, which is to say, 95% of the Mission) as being dangerous at night... and didn't do it for "Affordable SOMA". That part of town is infinitely more dangerous at night than even 16/Mission, which is about as bad as that neighborhood gets.

I'd consider anything west of 6th in SOMA to be considerably sketchier than any part of the Mission.

Not sure if this list is supposed to be a guide on where to put your office in SF, or where to live. He calls out west SOMA as "most soulless area to live in SF" - well yeah, it's the financial district, you put your office there, you don't live there.

Besides, that title more rightfully belongs to the Marina district.

<comment><USER16> I live west of 6th in SOMA. It gets sketchy around 7th and 8th, and near the hall of justice, but otherwise it's fine.

Meanwhile, in the last year there have been multiple assaults, robberies and a few rapes in the part of Mission that you've called safe. YMMV.

<comment><USER9> I didn't call the Mission safe - please don't be putting words in my mouth. Neither the Mission nor SOMA are good neighborhoods crime-wise, but I'd much rather walk the streets of the Mission if given only one of two choices.

The map bears itself out: <http://www.trulia.com/crime/San_Francisco,CA,SoMa/>

Somewhat crime-related but non-violent - besides the BART stops general hygiene in the Mission is not bad, whereas most of the main thoroughfares of west SOMA consistent reek of shit and piss.

> _"Meanwhile, in the last year there have been multiple assaults, robberies > and a few rapes in the part of Mission"_

... and there haven't been in SOMA?

In any case, this is all pedantics. San Francisco is overall a crime-ridden city where its monied residents waffle between pretending crime doesn't exist, and mocking people who are concerned about it.

<comment><USER16> That map has everything from assault to noise complaints. Open up a few of the SOMA listings, and you'll see that (again, other than around the places I mentioned), that the "events" are mostly petty stuff.

Of _course_ no neighborhood is crime-free, but you're blowing the danger of SOMA entirely out of proportion based on your perceptions of aesthetics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just stay away from milpitas ;)

<comment><USER18> May I ask why? Just curious, my totally-non-startup employer is based out there and I've thought about pitching to work remotely / office there. I'm tired of texas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The area to watch right now if you want central location, access to Bart, and an up coming startup scene is around Civic Center, between 6th and 10th and market / mission. It's still VERY sketchy there, but not for long - Twitter is coming soon, and this should start to gentrify / startupify things. Lots of classic, old SF office buildings there too.

<comment><USER9> How do you think it will gentrify?

There is already plenty of "legitimate" foot traffic there in the daytime from all the government and government-affiliated offices. That doesn't seem to have helped.

The homeless and addicts congregate there because of a combination of housing policy and placement of social services. As long as those remain, I'm not sure if all the startups of the Bay could displace them.

Note: I'm not advocating removing housing/services for the homeless, but rather that forcibly moving a bunch of startups there will just mean you'll add a lot of startups into the mix of sketchiness. It won't get _rid_ of the sketchiness.

<comment><USER19> You might be right. But dropping one giant startup in there will almost certainly mean new coffee shops, restaurants, and more courage for other startups to move in.

<comment><USER20> I hope you're right, but I think that'd be more likely to happen if Twitter didn't already provide all the coffee and food that their people might want. There really isn't a reason to leave the office during the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "The Mission: Recommended for awesome people."

Guess I'm not awesome. I'll just continue to live in the south bay under a rock.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is an excellent guide, especially since me and my co-founder are moving to SF soon.

Any price range info by chance?

</comment><comment><USER23> So whatever happened to "not in San Francisco"?</comment>


Ask HN: Average Salary for PHP Dev in London? - <AUTHOR> I'm a PHP Developer with above average ( I think ? ) experience ( 3 years commercial experience in Manchester )
I've quite comfortable with OOP, Design Patterns, Symfony, Laravel , Custom build solutions etc ...
In the past few months i was busy building search solutions using Elastic Search, Caching solutions using Redis and Geo coding.
Also i manage bunch of ec2 instances , a few google cloud servers and quite confident in managing and maintaining our production servers.
Git / Average javascript knowledge / Ansible / HTML & CSS as usual.
I have 40k job offer in Manchester but i want to relocate to London, Now i see the average salary in London is about 45k ? is that right ? Please could you give me an idea how much should i be looking for in London ? <comment><USER2> The UK is all about the contracting market. PHP isn't the best paid gig in the world but you'll do £350 to £450 a day if you're resonably good and if you can do a bit of AWS you're a lot more hireable. So that's about £88k a year.

Word of warning though, the contracting market doesn't suffer fools gladly, and at 3 years commerical experience you're a baby. Thus, unless you're actually really quite good, you're doing well at £40k.

Edit: I can recommend you a company in a town 40 minutes outside London. PM me if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER3> PHP Dev here with similar experience as yours. I used to work/live in London and stayed there for a bit less than ~2yrs. My salary was 50k in a well respected big US-based corp. Mine was the highest salary in the team, other members were between 35 and 45k.

Honestly, be well-aware that the value of your salary is going to remarkably decrease if you relocate to London. Mainly because of rent. I used to pay 1.5k to live in Bethnal green (which is ~20/25 min by feet from the silicon roundabout - very likely where you'll end up working). You can save some money commuting but you'll end up paying for transports, so, expect end of the month to spend about the same. If you are alone and will be happy with a single room, it will be 600-800 in a decent shared flat.

I'm 100% confident saying that those 5/10k of salary increase are not enough to justify you to move. 40k in manchester are a lot more than 50k in London.

In terms of salary increase, as a lead PHP dev you can expect to go around 65-70k but that will require time.

Completely different story if you decide to start contracting as in London you can easily ask for 400/500GBP a day.

I hope it helps :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your experience, Well my main issue is life got boring for me in Manchester, I moved to UK 3 years ago and honestly its only the vibe of London that makes me to relocate there.

With 40k life is so easy in Manchester but then I'm not sure i'm happy to live here still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Angellist has an awesome tool for this sort of research[0]. You can set geographic filters and skill filters, etc. It's usually got tiny sample size when you have multiple specified filters, but might give you a good idea.

[0][https://angel.co/salaries](https://angel.co/salaries)

</comment><comment><USER5> I hired many developers including PHP developers in London.

I would call 3 years commercial experience below average to average. Depending on ability it would be high-level junior developer to low-level mid developer. £40-45k would definitely be the high end of what you could expect, and it would rely on you interviewing very well to get it.

PHP is not a technology stack that's hard to find people in, and therefore salaries tend to be lower. Other tech stacks that are more specialised tend to attract higher salaries, but there are less positions available.

<comment><USER2> Whilst I largely agree with you, I hope you don't simply judge candidates on years of experience.

I used to PHP contract and the amount of 20 years experience devs in senior positions who were crap was extremely frustrating.

Occasionally the kid with a couple of years experience actually knows more than them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't speak to London particularly but my experience has been that the secret to better salaries is to be a dev that knows <Language/Tool> not a <Language/Tool> dev. It helps alot to have solid fundamentals that you can work with in several different languages/platforms and be able to demonstrate that you understand "systems" more than isolated applications. (i.e. the world of enterprise development ;)

<comment> UK-AL I'd say you'd probably need to understand a lot more about distributed systems, SOA, micro-services in enterprise development than normal development.

<comment><USER6> It depends on where you're working. There are alot of companies that have "enterprisy" size systems that haven't moved into that style of development yet. Of course, that usually means working with alot of legacy code as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These salaries are terrible, how is it possible to get away paying such low salaries in London? In the US (not even San Francisco) I'd expect nothing less than 125k USD (105GDP)

<comment><USER8> It's a different world. It is important to known if this is before or after taxes and healthcare is free (or rather: paid for by taxation) in the UK.

<comment><USER9> Fun bit of trivia: the UK government spends less tax money on _everyone 's_ health per capita than the US government does (before you even add on health insurance)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm doing Python but PHP friends I have in London at a senior level hit around £50-60k+. To be honest with the commute times, train prices, rent (£1400 a month for a 2bed in zone 3) - I am increasingly looking to get out of here and head towards Manchester and would take a £25k cut for it and probably be better off overall!

Hope it works out, I'd bump your 45k target up to around 50 as a baseline - you might get a few k more or few k less but £50k seems average enough to me (outside of contracting - contract rates are a lot higher, friends regularly getting £400/pd contracts for "just" front end).

</comment><comment><USER11> If you're getting offered 40k in Manchester the same price range in London is 50-55k. 40k is the high end for Manchester so you should be looking at the high end for London. Unless you're doing Magento.

</comment><comment><USER12> London is a really expensive place to live. I bet your rent would be double compared to Manchester, so even though your salary is less you will have probably have more money in the long run.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's ture, But on the other side you get to enjoy the vibe of London i suppose.

I'm already decided to move to London , But i don't know if the recruiter i'm working with is not good, Or the average PHP dev salary is low.

<comment><USER13> _But on the other side you get to enjoy the vibe of London i suppose_

There isn't much of a vibe if you can't afford to go out.

<comment><USER5> If you are getting paid £45k in London, this would not be something you have to worry about. Sure you'd have less disposable income than Manchester, but the idea that you couldn't afford to go out is ludicrous.

<comment> UK-AL Depends what part of london you live i guess.

<comment><USER5> No, not really. I seriously doubt there is any part of London where you couldn't rent acceptable accommodation and have plenty of money left over on £45k.

In zones 1-2 (or 3) that'll probably have to be a houseshare - but you'd still easily get a nice private room for that. The takehome of £45k is £2,797.27 /month after tax[0]. Even if you spend 50% of that on rent (inadvisable but common in London), that's still £1400 a month to play with. Which is still more than the total takehome of someone earning the London living wage[1].

I mean, you'll have to have a commute if you want a private, 1 bed flat or larger and you're working in Zone 1, but that's not exactly much of a hardship. My point is that with even the most basic level of sane budgeting, £45k is easily enough to live/work pretty much anywhere in London.

[0] [http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php](http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php) [1] [http://www.livingwage.org.uk/what-living- wage](http://www.livingwage.org.uk/what-living-wage)

<comment><USER14> Yep, houseshare in Zone 1, en suite, ~£900pcm here. It's not somewhere to live if you want to settle/make substantial saves for deposits or cars, but you'd still have enough to enjoy yourself.

That being said, whilst London has a nice vibe, if you don't know people here it can be isolating. Been here a few months and not really found "my people" yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Even as a European this sounds strangely low to me. I make 60k EUR (~48k gpb) in Berlin, which is MUCH cheaper than London in every way. I do mostly PHP, have more experience but still know a lot of people that earn around the same mark with 5-10 years experience.

</comment><comment><USER16> That sounds about right - I used to (don't hate me) work in recruitment and £40-50k was about the top end of the range for PHP devs in London before people started moving into contracting. YMMV and I'm sure there's exceptions but it doesn't sound like you're too far off the mark

</comment><comment><USER17> £40-45k with that experience sounds about right in my experience (startups, not sure about large companies).

<comment><USER18> Is that all? In London? Nevermind, below poster stated supply/demand lowers the cost of PHP developers.

<comment><USER17> Pretty much - I've recently been through the hiring circus - the best I saw advertised was £60k (for a team lead + full stack dev (literally full-stack - devops requirements and more)). Even for positions where I was relatively overqualified, the offers were in that range.

As others have said - the big bucks here are in contracting, but personally I'm not up for that level of risk yet. In career terms I see the later-game positions as those in management or those in consulting.

<comment><USER19> It seems intuitive to think of contracting as being at some level risky (particularly the "leap into the unknown" aspect of it), but I can't really say I know anyone who's tried their hand at in London and actually failed in any meaningful way. Most of the contractors I've worked with would scoff at the idea of struggling to land a new contract - though, as with anything, you do need to keep your skills relatively up-to-date, make sure you have a decent CV or equivalent, and I guess reasonable interpersonal skills do help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 40k in Manchester is good, people are moving from London to Manchester as the rents is so high.

BUT

I love London, I am so glad to live here, it's so much fun, Manchester got boring quite quickly for me and the dev community is great.

I'd say 55k for London is average amongst my dev friends.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah my main reason to move to London is because London is live city, I'm bored with Manchester now too.

I would aim for 50k then ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Compared to the expenses, salaries in London seem to be pretty low. I was wondering, isn't London kind of a hotspot for high salaries in Europe?

<comment><USER22> For banking and fintech maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I can't believe how low these salaries are. Its not like it is a cheap place to live either.

I guess if you want to live in Europe, just telecommute to the US :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Sounds about right for 3 years commercial experience w/ PHP</comment>