Request HN: Can We have a Private Messaging Feature in HN? - <AUTHOR> I was wondering why we don't have it already. It's very difficult to contact other HN members directly. We could have a karma limit to avoid spamming. <comment><USER2> I have noticed most people have their email addresses publicly displayed (in some human readable form), or have web pages with ways to contact them. In that note, I have been contacted via HN before and have met some people as well. Considering the ultimate purpose of a Private Messaging feature is to allow communication between two willing parties - the existing infrastructure is already there.

Moreover, more influential people who very strictly value their time and privacy (Matt Cutts for instance) might not be comfortable having an open avenue by which anyone can contact them.

More importantly, if you have someone's full name, there's a reasonably high chance you can find a proper way to contact them - provided you are determined enough to do it.

<comment><USER3> But that's not a private messaging system. I get enough spam as it is and don't feel like playing games with obfuscating my e-mail when there's a better solution.

And if you don't want private msgs, just turn on a flag to disallow it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really hate those private messaging features available on most websites. If I want to be contacted on a given website I include my mail address (or a pointer to my mail address) in my profile. What's the advantage of duplicating the features already available in email?

</comment><comment><USER5> I suspect that in many cases, if it's tough to contact them directly, that's exactly how they want it to be.

</comment><comment><USER6> We're considering a scheme for this now as a matter of fact.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

@Others, If I really want to contact someone on HN, I can definitely find their email ID. But email takes it out of the HN context and makes it much more formal.

And we could always have a PM disabling option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use discovery of my email address as FizzBuzz: totally trivial and if you can't do it, further discussion will not likely result in a positive outcome for either party.

</comment><comment><USER8> Let's not forget that, at least in my opinion, part of what makes HN great is it follows the old Unix tradition: it does _one thing_ well.

I have always liked HN because it is simple, no-frills, totally focused on one thing.

<comment><USER9> Agreed.

I got the hell away from Digg because of its push towards being "social." While messaging isn't that big of a feature I feel that if people here want to find/contact each other they will.

We're all pretty smart individuals if we want to contact/find someone we will be able to if they want to be contacted/found.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is a good time for a reminder:

The email address in your profile is not visible to other HN users. If you want people to see your address, put it in your "about" box.

</comment><comment><USER11> Use Hackernewsers.com. It's what I've been using to contact other HNers (who doesn't list their contact email in the profile) to request for their permission to publish their comments in Hacker Monthly.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it would be very handy. Not everybody realizes that the email you put in your profile isn't publicly visible; so they don't bother putting additional contact info in their "about" section.

Yes, it's true that "if you want to talk to somebody badly enough, you can probably hunt down their email address" but why add friction to the process? Ok, I get the folks who uses it as a filter "if you're too lazy, or not smart enough, and can't find my email, I don't want to talk to you." Fine, but I doubt most people feel that way. And that just argues for making the feature optional (that is, let users set a "receive PMs (Yes/No)" flag in their profile.

Iuguy makes an interesting point though:

 _Besides, you can always reply to someone's comment and ask for a way to get in touch with them._

The problem with that, as I see it, is that such a message is usually going to be (relative to the rest of the conversation) off-topic noise that nobody else cares about.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really don't want people mailing me on HN.

<comment><USER14> Why not? (just curious)

<comment><USER13> I don't think anyone ever will contact me; i don't have anything important to say or to be asked.

Besides, there's email if I wanted it to be so.

<comment><USER15> >i don't have anything important to say or to be asked.

Let other people decide that. I can't think of anything anyone would want to ask me, either - except that once someone wanted me to get in touch to talk about my university. (I think I forgot to contact them. Sorry.) I still can't think of anything else I might be asked, but there might be something.

If you actively don't want to be contacted, fair enough. If you just don't think you will be, it doesn't hurt to be available. (But yes, email is sufficient.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Given that some like it and some don't, it might not be that great an idea. Besides, you can always reply to someone's comment and ask for a way to get in touch with them.

</comment><comment><USER17> In your case, you could start by putting your email address in your profile in the about section, that's why we've been contacting each other so far.

</comment><comment><USER18> Feature set selection is simple: just ask the question "What would Digg do?"

Then do the exact opposite.

Would Digg add direct messages?

</comment><comment><USER19> Totally Agree, The one thing that I really like about HN is that its simple.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just give people the option to publicly display their email in profile, otherwise no contact desired.

I'd like to see tags on stories (restrict to membership of certain timelength and karma) with their own RSS feeds. But I know that's unlikely to happen.

</comment><comment><USER21> agree +1

</comment><comment><USER22> agree</comment>


US drug agency surveillance unit to be investigated by Department of Justice - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/06/justice-department-surveillance-dea

<comment><USER2> Hahahahaha. I am sure they will get the justice they desire.

</comment><comment><USER3> A clean bill of health will be given[1].

All parties involved with be granted immunity, possibly retroactive, even though no wrong doing was found[2].

More payments to data providers will be given[3], not considered bribes. This is after issuing them said (retro)active immunity from attempts at legal recourse.

[1] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia- chief-w...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia-chief-wanted- in-italy-for-rendition-on-his-way-back-to-us-8721235.html)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/10/supreme...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/10/supreme- court-telecoms-win-immunity)

[3] [http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/07/10/us-pays-companies- big...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/07/10/us-pays-companies-big-bucks- snoop-nsa-snowden/)

<comment><USER4> By that logic, there's no need to have an investigation in the first place. Snide comments like this are informative only of your attitude.

<comment><USER5> His comment may be snide, but the expectation that the investigation will be a sham is, I would wager, a common opinion of the general public.

If anything, it goes to show that we've lost faith that the government can keep itself in check.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's an issue of faith. The US Government keeps demonstrating, in an overwhelming fashion, that it can't keep itself in check. Hardly a day is going by at this point where some new scandal or abuse isn't crawling out of DC on just privacy alone.

Short, recent list: TSA abuses; IRS abuses; Benghazi; Iraq & Afghanistan; droning; right to assassinate; NDAA; SOPA; PIPA; fiscal discipline (complete lack thereof); constant military intervention across the middle east, helping to put theocrats in power; supplying Al Qaeda with money and arms; hyper scale NSA abuses spanning all electronic forms of communication; indefinite detention; enhanced interrogation; fast & furious; arresting people for freedom of speech issues (eg recent federal terrorism cases against several young people for what they said online); abuse of the espionage act, using it to attack leaks and whistleblowing. And on, and on and on it goes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Police: Thieves Robbed Homes Based On Facebook Posts - <AUTHOR> http://www.wmur.com/r/24943582/detail.html

<comment><USER2> Is this really news?

So what your trying to tell me is that thieves are opportunistic and dishonest? Imagine that.

<comment><USER3> It also serves as a warning to other people that might give away information on FB that will lead thieves right to their house.

<comment><USER2> So you're telling me that people who have their adress details on facebook need to be reminded that they shouldn't publicly announce when said location is going to be empty?

Should we also warn these people not to run with sharp objects?</comment></comment></comment>


What does a neural network actually do? - <AUTHOR> http://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/what-does-a-neural-network-actually-do/# <comment><USER4> "What does a neural network actually do?"

This is a fundamental Question: Can we really say and predict what a neural network does?

Contrary to an engineered / constructed algorithm a neural network is 'trained'.

Whenever we will present a 'known' input pattern it will reposnd with a 'learned' response.

This however introduces interesting problems: How can we _debug_ a neural network? How can we debug a correlation? Sure we can tune its paramters, we can train it some more to again show the desired response. But reaching this point we just abandoned knowing how the intrinsic algorithm works in favor to just focussing on the result.

Okay - now if we follow this argument - this would lead to: If we simulate the whole brain by simulating the neural network, we won't gain any knowlege about the intrinsic workings of the brain. We won't find any enlightenment about the innermost algorithm _represented_ by the neural network we call our brain.

<comment><USER5> I can't find an example on Google right now, but I've seen demonstrations that it's possible to visualize the intermediate layers of a neural network - <USER2> example you can see how an image recognition network is first breaking down an image into horizontal and vertical lines, then combining those into more complex shapes, etc.

<comment><USER6> But visualizing is quite a ways from debugging.

To debug a program you actually verify that it's logic is correct (at least the good kind of debugging).

Consider a spectrum:

1\. Natural language - we humans combine fragments of natural language easily and on an ad-hoc basis. We can get a fairly amount of use from reusing Shakespeare quotes and neologisms while spending rather little effort.

2\. Trained programmers can reuse and combine general purpose libraries - <USER3> difficulty and often after considerable debugging.

3\. AI algorithms like Neural Networks. These are just plopped in and tweaked, not combining seems possible.

It seem like "intelligent behavior" should be going more towards #1 but the process of Machine Learning seems to move things more towards #3. The "learn once, understand never" approach means that for each significant case, you'll need to do a re-tweaking and re-learning. The potential to get harder rather than easier over time might well be there.

<comment><USER7> Can you debug a human brain? I can't.

Is a human brain intelligent? I believe so.

<comment><USER6> Well,

Admittedly, all this is in manner of speaking but still, I would claim that most if not all the times you debug a program you are also debugging your mental concept of what the program does. By that fact that we can change our concepts, our minds are very "debuggable."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've found that, in practice, traditional neural networks tend to be prone to overfitting and are finicky about their parameters (in particular the topology and number of nodes you choose).

I use the word "traditional" to describe the NN architecture discussed in the article. Recent NN research has been promising [1], but this article strictly discusses traditional NN's. I don't really have much experience with the newer NN algorithms, so I'm not sure to what extent they suffer from the same problems as traditional NN's.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network#Recent_improveme...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network#Recent_improvements)

<comment><USER9> Hinton's DropOut [1] and Wan's DropConnect [2] have ameliorated some of the overfitting issues present in traditional NN's. In fact, DropConnect in conjunction with deep learning are responsible for new records being set on classical datasets such as MNIST.

[1] [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.0580.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.0580.pdf) [2] [http://cs.nyu.edu/~wanli/dropc/](http://cs.nyu.edu/~wanli/dropc/)

<comment><USER10> Dropout is actually a knob on any neural network. These are used in image recognition as well as text and other areas.

The fuzzing creates a very similar effect to convolutional nets where it can learn different poses of an image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another limit they don't address is that the training normally used is purely local— just a gradient descent. So even when the network can model your function well, there is no guarantee that it will find the solution.

For me ANN's always seem to get stuck on not very helpful local minima— they're not one of the first tools in my bags of tricks by far.

Often I associate them as being the sort of thing that someone who doesn't really know what they're talking about talks about. (Esp. if its clear that in their minds NN have magical powers. :) maybe they'll also mention something about "genetic algorithms")

<comment><USER12> Well, you could use an EA to take a stab at finding better minima :)

And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the cost function for a feed forward neural networks that uses a sigmoid activation function convex wrt the parameters being trained, i.e. gradient descent is guaranteed to find the global minimum when small enough of a step size is used?

<comment><USER13> Mostly, no. Hidden units introduce non-convexity to the cost. How bout a simple counter-example?

Take a simple classifier network with one input, one hidden unit and one output and no biases. To make things even simpler, tie the two weights, i.e. make the first weight equal to the second. Now, mathematically the output of the network can be written: z=f(w * f(w * x)) where f() is the sigmoid.

Next, consider a dataset with two items: [(x_1, y_1), (x_2, y_2)] where x_i is the input and y_i is the class label, 0 or 1. Take as values: [(0.9, 1), (0.1,0)]. The cost function (loglikelihood in this case) is:

L(w) = sum_i { y_i * log( f(w * f(w * x_i)) ) + (1-y_i) * log( 1-f(w * f(w * x_i)) ) }

or

L(w) = log( f(w * f(w * 0.9)) ) + log( 1-f(w * f(w * 0.1)) )

Plot that last guy replacing f with the sigmoid, and you'll see the result is non-convex - there's a kink near zero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A less mathy explanation with some real examples: [http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap1.html](http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap1.html)

Coding a digit recognizer using a neural network is an extremely rewarding exercise and there's a lot of help on the web to get you started.

<comment><USER10> This is a great example of a hello world application. Keep in mind there are several kinds of neural nets that allow you to do this. This includes convolutional RBMs (recognizes parts of an image) and normal RBMs (learns everything at once)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a pretty good article, but I'm seeing a lot of confusion in this thread because the article is maybe one step ahead of the basic intuition needed to understand why ANNs are not magical and are not artificial intelligence (at least not feed-forward networks).

Perhaps a simpler way to look at it is to understand that a feed-forward ANN is basically just a really fancy transformation matrix.

OK, so unless you know linear algebra, you're probably now asking what's a transformation matrix? Without the full explanation, the important understanding is why they are so important in 3D graphics: they can perform essentially arbitrary operations (translation, rotation, scaling) on points/vectors. Once you have set up your matrix, it will dutifully perform the same transformations on every point/vector you give it. In graphics programming, we use 4x4 matrices to perform these transformations on 3D points (vertices) but the same principle works in any number of dimensions - you just need a matrix that is one bigger than the number of dimensions in your data*.

Edit: For NNs the matrices don't always have to be square. For instance you might want your output space to have far fewer dimensions that your input. If you want a simple yes/no decision then your output space is one-dimensional. The only reason the matrices are square in 3D graphics is because the vertices are always 3-dimensional.

What a neural network does is take a bunch of "points" (the input data) in some arbitrary, high number of dimensions and performs the same transformation on all of them, so as to distort that space. The reason it does this is so that the points go from being some complex intertwining that might appear random or intractable, into something where the points are linearly separable: i.e., we can now draw a series of planes in between the data that segments it into the classifications we care about.

The only difference between a transformation matrix and a neural network is that a neural network has at least two layers. In other words, it is two (or more) transformation matrices bolted together. For reasons that are a bit too complex to get into here, allows an NN to perform more complex transformations than a single matrix can. In fact, it turns out that an arbitrarily large NN can perform any polynomial-based transformation on the data.

The reason this is often seen as somewhat magic is that although you can tell what transformations a neural network is doing in trivial cases, NNs are generally used where the number of dimensions is so large that reasoning about what it is doing is difficult. Different training methods can give wildly different networks that seemingly give much the same results, or fairly similar networks that give wildly different results. How easy it is to understand the various convolutions that are taking place rather depends on what the input data represents. In the case of computer vision it can be quite easy to visualise the features that each neuron in the hidden layer is looking for. In cases where the data is more arbitrary, it can be much harder to reason about, so if your training algorithm isn't performing as you'd like, it can be difficult to understand why it isn't working, even if you already understand that the basic principle of a feed-forward network is just a bunch of simple algebra.

<comment><USER16> > The only difference between a transformation matrix and a neural network is > that a neural network has at least two layers. In other words, it is two (or > more) transformation matrices bolted together. For reasons that are a bit > too complex to get into here, allows an NN to perform more complex > transformations than a single matrix can. In fact, it turns out that an > arbitrarily large NN can perform any polynomial-based transformation on the > data.

Nice explanation. I need one clarification, though. Isn't matrix multiplication associative? Isn't thus any transformation defined by two matrices representable by a single matrix that is the product of the two matrices?

I am probably misunderstanding how NNs bolt matrices together.

<comment><USER17> You apply a non-linear function (usually some sigmoid) on the output vector after each matrix product. Otherwise, you'd be correct and any multi-layer ANN could be expressed as a single layer network.

<comment><USER16> Thanks. It makes sense. The sigmoid is the activation function of the output "neuron". Unfortunately, matrix algebra here is not as useful as in computer graphics.

<comment><USER17> No problem. Actually, I personally found that a pretty intuitive understanding of linear algebra & vector calculus makes quite a lot of ML straight forward to approach geometrically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://www.dkriesel.com/en/science/neural_networks](http://www.dkriesel.com/en/science/neural_networks) about 200 page bilingual ebook about neural networks containing lots of illustrations, in case some guys of you want to read further. There's also a nice java framework to try out for the coders.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks like an interesting text, but to be honest I didn't understand a substantial portion of it.

<comment><USER20> You're 17; get to work understanding it! The more you learn now, the more you'll be able to do for the rest of your life. Plus, diving into random topics and understanding them more deeply than anyone else is a ton of fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Title made me think it would be something for beginners. Either it is not or I am very dim.

</comment><comment><USER22> They write comments on HN.

<comment><USER23> Those are Markov-chain based text generators. (yes, I got the joke).

<comment><USER24> Well recently a lot of work has gone into using NNs for natural language processing. Typically it's trained to do something like predict the next word or character in a sequence. Using that you could possibly create a far better generative model than markov chains, and create more realistic sentences. Perhaps you could even combine them (NN gets the output of the markov chain to help make it's prediction.)</comment></comment></comment>


The Menace of Eco-Fascism (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/10/22/the-menace-of-eco-fascism/ <comment><USER2> > The sheer novelty of Dooley's existence has proven irresistible to > journalists—netting her gawking profiles in The New Yorker, Harper's, and on > National Public Radio—but that coverage has tended to obscure her extremism. > Alongside advocating for sustainable energy, Dooley's other pet issues are > opposing amnesty for undocumented immigrants and increasing border security.

Enforcing current immigration law, which would leave legal immigration into the US at the near-record 1.1 million per year, is now (presumably anti- immigrant) _extremism_? In almost any other country, this would be _pro_ -immigrant extremism!

To give a sense of comparison, 15.1% of the US population is foreign born, compared to 1.7% for Japan, and 0.1% for China.

<comment><USER3> For New Zealand it's 25%, Australia 22%, the UK 14%, France 9%, Germany 12%, Canada 22%, the Netherlands 19%

Frankly 15% is about average for Western Countries

<comment><USER4> I think talking about averages is somewhat misleading. There has been a steep upward trend in the US and Europe. In the 1960s we'd be talking about less than 5% for the US and Europe so that is a big change. It's fair to say that there have been major policy changes over the past 50 years but it's misleading -- I'm not accusing you, just pointing out -- to say it's an average because that implies a steady state.

I don't think USA/EU is at 15% yet. Europe trends just a little less than the USA (at least from 2016). I was just skimming this article today (below). I may have misinterpreted it so feel free to set the record straight. See Fig 1.

Peri, G. 2016. Immigrants, Productivity, and Labor Markets. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(4): 3–30.

Canada and Australia have had very high rates for a long time. Australia's is higher though. I'm not sure why Peri chose to combine the series because they are quite different but higher than the US.

The AU/NZ (and Canada too I suppose) cases are interesting because they all have very overheated housing markets and prices are historically high relative to average wages. The USA went through a market correction and let the housing bubble burst but these markets did not. I've heard it argued that increased immigration to major housing markets is considered to be one way to keep the construction industry and house/rent prices sustainable. I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts or insight into this.

<comment><USER3> Maybe "average" was the wrong word, perhaps "unremarkable" is a better one.

Before Trump the US was proud to describe itself as a nation of immigrants (I was one for 20 years) but Americans have this myth that they take in far more immigrants than anywhere else, it's just not true

<comment><USER4> Well it does a pretty remarkable job. Recall too that the stats are foreign born as a percentage of the population (Peri, 2016 that I mentioned above).

The USA is larger than all Canada, Australia, UK and NZ combined. So, let's not pretend that the US is not taking new comers at all. We're still in the ballpark of close to 50 million people. This compares to about 7 million in Canada.

<comment><USER3> I think that percentage gives a reasonable job of looking at the impact that immigrants have on the existing system - NZ takes in far fewer immigrants than the US, but compared with their population they're taking more and would be expected to have a larger impact on society (NZ has lower taxes that the US)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the end our business leaders and state leaders are too busy exploiting science to empower and enrich themselves to have any actual concern about science, i.e. ask environmental scientists what they should do in their business and political decisions... And similarly the alt-right is weary of science because it gets in the way of its dreams of domination, control, supremacy and tribalism. They have more in common, the supposed would be Eco- fascists and the business interests than the casual observer is led to believe.

Science is better paired with idealists who can imagine a better world using science than with rationalists who are simply exploited by business interest and the state for more power and profit... solving trivial issues like how to get more eyeballs for ad dollars.

</comment><comment><USER6> "These fascist love the planet, and here is why that's a bad thing"

Give me a break.

<comment><USER7> The primary caution of the article is of fascist or nativist tendencies infiltrating environmental organizations and movements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess the time has come to point you all to the archdruid: [https://www.ecosophia.net/the-next-twilight-of- environmental...](https://www.ecosophia.net/the-next-twilight-of- environmentalism/)

</comment><comment><USER9> What was that? Hitler was a vegetarian?

FWIW, the environment really is the ultimate non-partisan issue and I think we are about one or two heat waves or water shortages away from finding that out.

This made me think we'll see unilateral geoengineering by e.g Bangladesh before it gets too hot: [https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne- dyer-geo...](https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer- geopolitics-in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/)

I don't think there's anything intrinsically authoritarian in ecology, if anything evolution is anarchy, but I can entertain (and be dismayed by) the thought that e.g. Chinese Communism may turn out to be the successful system in a hundred years. Recall "How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409) that describes regenerative ecological farm systems.

<comment><USER10> At a local level environmental decisions are highly political. Try building a road, a wind farm, a cycle lane, or a pedestrian precinct and you will get a lot of anger and passion. And a lot of interventions have a number of unintended consequences that affect people.

A lot of these environmental decisions have winners and losers. That makes them political and partisan. But politicians often don't want to deal with that. They want to delegate authority to a bunch of experts and independent organisations who can make objective decisions. Except there are still loosers who will be angry. And they just see a faceless beurocracy that doesn't care what they think.

We should accept that the environment is political and try and win the argument. Stop relying on science and actually pursuade people on an emotional and moral level.

<comment><USER9> Personally, I think the problem is Spiritual, and no amount of politics will fix it. We are divorced from Nature, we treat life as a thing to exploit rather than neighbors to live with. I don't think we can save ourselves _without_ a deep shift in our world view, a renewal of our relationship with life.

I think we will either reach a crisis and transform (in a biologically-rooted variant of the Singularity, IRL not cyberspace) or we will crash and burn.

Of course, there's a third possibility: we scrape by without crashing and without spiritual renaissance, e.g. some combination of geo-engineering and ecological agriculture lets us off the climate-apocalypse hook. In the first two scenarios we don't need politics anymore, but in the third it still exists and is caught up in the strange loops of modern space-age-a-go-go life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They were missing another prominent case: Jörg Urban, now the AFD leader in Sachsen, who was a former Green League party leader. I guess you can call that an eco-fascist party, but I'm not an expert. You may call him a Neonazi officially though. [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6rg_Urban](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6rg_Urban)

</comment><comment><USER12> The KISS solution would be to shoot all 1.4B cows on earth. That would slow climate change significantly and give us enough time to transition the world into using renewable resources. Also before I get downvoted for suggesting such an appalling idea as going on a cow murdering genocide, stop and reflect about the origin of that big piece of meat you ate for dinner tonight. Let's kill these cows once and for all.

<comment><USER13> Methane accounts for less than 20% of all GHG emissions (in CO2 equivalent units), and cows are only responsible for a part of that. Reducing the number of cattle is important, but killing all cattle would only buy us a few years before we have to completely decarbonize the global economy. In industrialized economies, agriculture's relative impact is even lower, since we emit so many GHGs from other sources.

<comment><USER12> It's still a significant contributor of methane. This change wont happen overnight of course but more alt meat companies such as beyond meat and impossible burger will be able to engineer superior food products that will eventually price real meat out of the market. The cow populations will suffer slowly as will their corporate slave masters.

<comment><USER14> Cows are happier being farmed than not being.

<comment><USER12> As a human maximalist, I could care less about what those cows think. The problem we face as a society is that too many of us are cow maximalist to the point we're prioritizing these cows lives over our own. Buying that cheese burger at McDonalds is a vote for more cows which has far more negative externalities than eating veggies.

<comment><USER14> Cow meat makes me strong. Veggies makes me poop.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Uber says it's leaving Quebec if province insists on stricter rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/montreal/uber-quebec-leave-1.4307065 <comment><USER2> Last time I was in Montreal my Uber driver wouldn't drop me at the airport, instead he dropped me at a hotel attached to the airport - he told me reason being in Montreal undercover police officers have been known to wait in the departures drop-off area and impound cars if they suspect you to be an Uber driver.

Interesting side note the driver actually was an airport employee - he would drive for Uber twice a day, once to work (he would hang out by the area of the city with lots of Hotels to try and catch and airport trip) and once on the way home. I thought that was kind of awesome.

<comment><USER3> there should be an Uber mode where the driver enters their destination and they get a notification when someone else is going to the same place

<comment><USER4> I always thought this idea had greater potential for extremely long car rides. If I'm taking a business trip from NYC to Boston, I'd be okay with a tagalong as long as they provide some gas money. It would have to be something scheduled in advance, but the ride would probably be more pleasant than taking a bus, and I'd be willing to drop the tagalong off somewhere besides the city square.

<comment><USER5> This sounds like BlaBlaCar which is (I hear) popular in Europe.

<comment><USER6> it's relatively popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good for Quebec. This could quite feasibly lead to the development of a local competitor, providing job opportunities for local developers and tax dollars for the region / country.

Ride sharing services are here to stay, but there's no particular reason that service has to be named 'Uber'.

<comment><USER8> But Uber operates without significant issue in countless other markets all over the world without the training Quebec requires.

Is it possible the training is not as necessary as presumed?

Aren't we opening up a can of worms by praising the idea of creating needless regulations to keep the status quo simply because it's perceived to be more local?

<comment><USER9> We can definitely count the markets in which Uber operate, so that statement is a bit silly (hint look here [https://www.uber.com/en- GB/cities/](https://www.uber.com/en-GB/cities/) and count them).

They also definitely do _not_ operate without significant issue in a many of them.

Regulation for taxi services is important. The adverts in some countries telling you not to take unlicensed taxis are not there for fun. The training's there to _help_ drivers. Anyone who can't be bothered is probably not serious about being a good driver or playing by the rules and shouldn't be welcomed into the industry.

<comment><USER8> > We can definitely count the markets in which Uber operate, so that statement > is a bit silly (hint look here [https://www.uber.com/en- > GB/cities/](https://www.uber.com/en-GB/cities/) and count them).

In this context, "countless" was hyperbole. Obviously the Earth has limited places in which they can operate.

> They also definitely do not operate without significant issue in a many of > them.

And in many of those, the "issues" are based on municipalities applying unreasonable or taxi-specialized regulations onto them. That in no way implies the service doesn't work, isn't safe, or isn't extremely popular and a great improvement over taxis.

It simply means the right people in the right places would rather protect the status quo than rationally assess the situation and revise policy where necessary.

> Regulation for taxi services is important. The adverts in some countries > telling you not to take unlicensed taxis are not there for fun. The > training's there to help drivers. Anyone who can't be bothered is probably > not serious about being a good driver or playing by the rules and shouldn't > be welcomed into the industry.

Nobody's arguing against regulation of taxi services.

The question is whether or not 35 hours of training is reasonable for Quebec only when somehow the rest of the world seems to get by without it. It is also not the case that nobody ever gets hurt, kidnapped, or stolen from by even "trained" taxi drivers.

Lawmakers and regulators need to start using common sense and acting in the best interests of consumers instead of the taxi lobby.

<comment><USER10> 35 hrs is less than half of a class during a semester. The MSF can give you 10 hours of motorcycle training in a single weekend.

By comparison, to become a licensed barber (or electrician, etc) typically requires thousands of hours as an apprentice.

Hardly seems like a huge burden by comparison.

<comment><USER8> It certainly isn't if you're planning to make it your career, but Uber markets driving for them as flexible and easy with little/no up-front costs.

Clearly this would affect ride-sharing companies more than taxi companies, and it's likely no coincidence.

<comment><USER11> Given that, right now, taxi companies do have to do this, and Uber doesn't, I would say no, this is going to affect Uber the same. As it should.

<comment><USER8> Yep. And a policy that limited maximum driver hours to 20 per week would "apply equally to taxis and Uber," but would clearly hit taxis a lot harder than Uber.

This is protectionism under the guise of "fairness." Nothing more.

<comment><USER11> I completely disagree. There is nothing unfair about this move. It affects both parties equally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a terribly stupid bluff. Nobody is going to march on city hall because they won't relax regulations for the whims of a single, multi-national company.

It seems at least once a week we get another story showing how utterly incompetent the executives in charge of Uber's public image are.

<comment><USER13> Well at this time their "Save Your Uber in London" petition[1] collected nearly 800k signatures. I find it quite baffling because I'm not sure why on earth would I ever petition for a big multinational company known for its shady tactics but here you go. Clearly Uber's executives, or at least their PR department, must be doing something right.

[1] [https://www.change.org/p/save-your-uber-in-london- saveyourub...](https://www.change.org/p/save-your-uber-in-london-saveyouruber)

<comment><USER14> > _I find it quite baffling because I 'm not sure why on earth would I ever > petition for a big multinational company known for its shady tactics but > here you go_

Because you want to use their service, and you want their competitors to be able to play by the same rules. For example, I don't have to have something controversial to say before I defend free speech; I don't have to want to cross any particular private lot before I'd vouch for freedom of movement.

<comment><USER11> But this whole things started specifically because Uber wasn't playing by the same rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm really tired of this multi-national corporations thinking they can come in and destroy the local market while leaving pennies for the employees; let alone not comply with local regulations. Good riddance!

</comment><comment><USER16> They destroyed evidence while they were under investigation in Quebec and they won't pay any taxes... good riddance!

<comment><USER17> Exactly. Someone please invent a particle sized violin so we can play them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good riddance.

In Montreal we have [Téo Taxi]([http://teomtl.com/](http://teomtl.com/)), which is far better, IMO (although more expensive) and more fair with its employees (They get enough by working only 8h/day, compared to previously with Uber or other old-school companies).

All electric cars with free wifi in them. The app is on par with Uber's, and the drivers are always nice.

<comment><USER14> Isn't being more expensive part of the problem? I think one of the main things that is "better" about Uber is how comparatively cheap it is. I know a couple of people who make enough money not to really care what they spend day-to-day, but I suspect that for most people that few dollars per fare is the difference between viable and unacceptable.

<comment><USER19> >Isn't being more expensive part of the problem?

It is a big part of the problem when Uber is using VC money to subsidize part of the trip and when Uber isn't following safety/training/insurance regulations.

People are funny about that. They will bitch and moan about how expensive something is, but the second something goes wrong they want more safety features and regulation, in spite of the cost increase it will bring.

<comment><USER15> This ^^^^ Uber operates at a loss which is based on a grandiose vision of the future. It's their only way to undercut competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So if you're an entrepreneur, and circumventing employment regulation is your benchmark for 'innovation', it's really time to get a new playbook.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure what Uber thinks is so different about what they provide at this point. There's a lot of work in Montreal already on alternatives for Uber -- I'm sure that will continue.

</comment><comment><USER21> They pretty much said the same thing about Calgary, and yet after review they still followed the regulations and are to this day operating in the city.

I find it hard to believe Quebec will act terribly different.

</comment><comment><USER22> Excuse me while I open my app that uses VC cash to double the payment I send to the nearest amateur violin player in order to play a really, really sad tune.

</comment><comment><USER23> 35 hours of training is too much?

I'd say as job training comes that's rather on the low side.

And I'm sure Quebec is quaking in its boots by Uber's threat to leave.

</comment><comment><USER24> "You are not throwing me out! I chose to quit you first!"

</comment><comment><USER25> The article doesn't go into details on what this training entails. Anyone from MTL know what they would be doing for those 35 hours?

<comment><USER26> This is what I'm curious about too. It doesn't say what the 20 hours of training entails or what additional material will be learned in 35 hours. Focusing on hours in general sounds really dumb. Why not focus on content? Define what drivers need to know regardless of how long the training takes. That allows Uber to produce better and better training materials that shortens the number of hours while still satisfying the reason the requirement for training exists in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Up next the Austin method. Local competition fills the void providing better service than before proving that it's the technology not the company that's making the difference. Being Canada it would be funny to see a government corporation as the replacement ala liquor.

<comment><USER28> Non-austenite here. If I arrive in Austin by plane and Uber or Lyft isn't working, knowing nothing about the local alternatives, I guess I have to take a cab.

<comment><USER29> You could just spend a few minutes researching that before you arrive or something… it's hardly the biggest imposition.

<comment><USER30> Or even just... take a cab? Other than the lack of VC subsidies, even in cities that don't have great taxi services generally, taxis usually work reasonably well getting to and from the airport.

<comment><USER31> while ripping you off ($)

<comment><USER32> Where do you think the money that you pay for a taxi fare goes? Who exactly do you think is getting rich off this rip-off?

Have you considered that perhaps, the cost of a taxi fare is close to the cost of operating a car + having a 60 hour-week driver make a living wage (Without VC subsidies)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Uber doesn't want to comply with regulations because it takes away their advantage? Gee, what a surprise.

<comment><USER34> These regulations arguably put Uber at a significant _disadvantage_. 35 hours of training is annoying if you're going to be driving a taxi for 60 hours a week; it's prohibitive if you're considering driving an Uber for 6 hours a week.

<comment><USER35> Training requirements should be based on safety requirements, which are the same whether you're on the road for 6 hours a week or 60.

<comment><USER36> > Training requirements should be based on safety requirements, which are the > same whether you're on the road for 6 hours a week or 60.

While I agree with you in principle, there's no indication that this is anything but regulatory capture. There's no municipality in the western world that requires this much training for Uber drivers; would you say there's a problem there that needs solving, and that Quebec's legislated response is a reasonable solution? I'm personally skeptical.

<comment><USER9> If you want to drive a black cab in London (green badge holders), you're going to have to do a hell of a lot more than a paltry 35 hours of training: [https://www.theknowledgetaxi.co.uk/](https://www.theknowledgetaxi.co.uk/)

On average, drivers take 2-4 years to learn London well enough to pass!

<comment><USER37> London streets are um... a _legacy_ system, so it's not surprising that it takes more time. I'm not sure if Black Cabs hold a monopoly on London taxis, but if they are competing in a market, then it's just that they are providing a higher level of service, and are training at that level. Waze + a human will probably do a "good enough" job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Doesn't that sort of attitude play into TfL's hand in London? Another example of Uber not willing to play by the rules, especially ones arguably safety- related?

</comment><comment><USER39> Like a kid taking his toys home because you won't play his game. I would love to see some sort of framework that facilitates ride sharing without it being attached to a single company.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sounds like a potential entrant for Lyft's first market outside of the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yes, please leave.</comment>


You're Tracked Everywhere You Go Online. Use This Guide to Fight Back - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/smarter-living/privacy-online-how-to-stop-advertiser-tracking-opt-out.html <comment><USER2> Ghostery shows 14 trackers on that link.

Before we get to "but the journo doesn't make the website policies", If they wanted to not be a hypocrite about it, they could write a blog post on a tracker-free site. They chose to write on nytimes.com instead, and therefore implicitly are supporting what the site does.

<comment><USER3> They, uh, well, did mention it in the article, sorta:

> links to the opt-out pages for some of the most popular destinations online > — places that are definitely tracking you as you read this.

I guess that counts for something, eh? :-)</comment></comment>


Wily + Python > Emacs + Lisp? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/pythonpaper.html

<comment><USER2> The image in the linked article is not found.

The linked article in turn links to: <http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/index.html>

which has an image: <http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/example.gif>

tl;dr:

        aptitude show wily
        Package: wily
        State: not installed
        Version: 0.13.41-7.2
        Priority: optional
        Section: universe/editors
        Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <firstname.lastname@example.com>
        Uncompressed Size: 561 k
        Depends: libc6 (>= 2.11), libx11-6 (>= 0), libxt6
        Suggests: 9fonts, rc
        Description: A work-alike of the Acme programming environment for Plan 9
         Wily's basic functions are to edit and search for text and to run commands. It
         is intended to eventually be an integrated working environment for all tasks
         involving text. It uses the mouse heavily.

         It emphasises speed for experienced users, but is probably simple to learn as
         it has very few concepts.</comment>


Snaptalent Launches (YC Winter 08) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/12/snaptalent-targets-job-candidates-where-they-work-and-spend-time-online/

<comment><USER2> Really impressed by how quickly you've launched and the approach is brilliant. Makes perfect sense!

Particularly happy to see two YC start-ups this week launching products so useable that they're being used on Hacker News... and with British origins too! :D

</comment><comment><USER3> You can see a Snaptalent widget on the jobs page: <http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs>

<comment><USER4> Couldn't see it at first, then enabled via NoScript. Might be something to consider if targeting technical markets!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Loving it so far. I tried Google a few years back and discarded it within weeks. I would write an article critical of some programming language X and especially critical of trying to program in X without experience, and the ads would be for "Learn X in 21 days."

I dropped it quickly. Even though Google ads produced clicks and revenue, they clashed with my weblog's basic philosophies. But in the trial so far, the Snaptalent ads are for the kinds of companies that seem to fit with my weblog's direction.

Congratulations, everyone!

<http://weblog.raganwald.com> (ads appear for individual articles, such as [http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/11/i-think-it-funny-that- as...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/11/i-think-it-funny-that-aspects- were.html))

</comment><comment><USER6> Great job guys. I've been working with Sumon, Jamie and Tim and getting snaptalent setup on my site over the last 2 weeks. I like advertising jobs over the crap adsense shows.

example of snaptalent on the top of my site: <http://paulstamatiou.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> Great idea and everything and a job well done. But considering the fact that approx 50% of the web still use IE your website loads funky under IE but works good under firefox. Here how it looks under IE: [http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2272/2330400291_26417f384f_o....](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2272/2330400291_26417f384f_o.png)

I am a freelance website developer and have this obsession with checking new updtarts for browser compatibility. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks pavs, we're going to be sure to fix that up over the next few days.

~Jamie (Co-Founder, Snaptalent)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You guys should also create a centralized listing of all jobs on SnapTalent on your destination site so that people can browse through more than those that appear on a given blog.

</comment><comment><USER9> as the co-founding cto of hotjobs, i have to say, this is an excellent solution. well done folks.

<comment><USER10> earle - would love to speak to you. shoot me a line: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER9> email sent.

<comment><USER11> firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER11> earle we d love to talk to u

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats! +1 also goes out to everybody on Hacker.News for being positive about new startups mentioned on this site.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm really impressed by their customer service.

I got a 404 from the site when applying to a company (they were probably overloaded). A day later the cofounder contacted me apologizing and offering to send my resume directly. Awesome site.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey Guys - Please Digg

[http://digg.com/tech_news/Snaptalent_Targets_Job_Candidates_...](http://digg.com/tech_news/Snaptalent_Targets_Job_Candidates_Where_They_Work_and_Spen)

<comment><USER9> done :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any thoughts on when you'll be available for non-US jobs? I'm currently working at a start-up in Germany and would love to be able to use the service to find people here.

</comment><comment><USER15> Fantastic, I've been watching these guys execute for awhile and I have no doubt Snaptalent will be big!

</comment><comment><USER16> This is the single best YC idea I've seen in quite a while. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER17> Brilliant! I love the idea. Congratulations and good luck.

</comment><comment><USER18> Congrats! These guys are going to be huge!

</comment><comment><USER19> Congrats guys!

</comment><comment><USER20> Brilliant. And revenue-producing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, well done; good judgment YC.

</comment><comment><USER22> Congrats! Product looks great!

<comment><USER23> But I hate your commercial!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Congrats, guys. I digg.

</comment><comment><USER25> Awesome!

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


Joost To Kill Desktop Client   - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/09/05/joost-to-kill-desktop-client/

<comment><USER2> Every time it looked like there might be something cool on Joost, it seemed to be forbidden for me to view in the USA.

In the end, I'm just not going to run a dedicated client for something that delivers so little.</comment>


Show HN: A job board for developers considering part-time remote contract jobs - <AUTHOR> https://remotefreelancers.com/jobs <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I'm Derick the creator of Remotefreelancers.

There are a lot of good part-time and contract positions posted in various locations. My biggest dilemma as a remote front-end freelance developer was finding them in one location.

I built this job board to hopefully make it easier for remote developers interested in these types of positions without wasting hours every day searching for them.

Why:

1\. There's too many job boards to keep track of. 2\. Remote jobs and projects are also posted on job boards that are not specifically remote. 3\. Many developers are looking for specific type of work (only part-time for example), and sorting to find exactly what you want as a developer is a mission.

Let me know if it helps you and how I can make it better.</comment>


The world is sitting on a $400T financial time bomb (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/994596/the-world-faces-a-400-trillion-disaster <comment><USER2> World savings is a misnomer. You redeem savings by drawing on the resources of the rest of society. The world can't be a net saver.

Imagine a desert island of two people. They have a system of savings. You can bank away a voucher that makes the other person gather coconuts for you, and do other necessary work.

 _One_ of the two people could conceivably work harder in their youth and then work less later using the vouchers. But:

1\. They can't both do it 2\. If the other person loses capacity to work hard in their later years, your savings voucher loses value.

How can they both save? To a limited extent, they can store resources like extra coconuts, build infrastructure and tools while young, etc. But this only goes so far: food rots, infrastructure depreciates.

On a global scale the world is no different. A savings shortfall means that global youth productivity won't be high enough to support global elderly retirement. We will need to either:

1\. Get youth more productive 2\. Make more youth 3\. Take a greater percent of youth's income 4\. Have old people live on less or not retire so early

Notice that none of these are about saving now? That's because moving 1's and 0's in a ledger isn't a provisioning of future goods. You need actual future goods production.

<comment><USER3> Your logic seems to require labour to be the primary creator of value. Returning to your desert island analogy, both castaways could spend their youth planting coconut trees close to their shelter, thereby reducing the amount of work needed to gather coconuts as their mobility decreases. It seems to me that any economic system which invests in productivity and automation could similarly replace the labour required to subsidize the 'retired' population by investing in labour replacement technologies.

<comment><USER4> Right, but money sitting in a bank account isn't necessarily being invested in a meaningful way. A lot of "investment" these days is in financial instruments, which don't generate value in the way that would be realise these benefits.

<comment><USER5> Wrong. Money sitting in a bank account is loaned out by the bank to people who will use that money profitably. The only place that money can sit without contributing to the economy is in a piggy bank or under a mattress.

<comment><USER6> False. Trillions of dollars are simply re-invested in financial activities (many of which are risky and borderline illegal as well as insured by your taxes) that serve only to generate more numbers with 0 physical contribution to the world. At least you can lift your mattress up with money underneath it or use your piggy bank as a paper weight.

<comment><USER5> Do explain where they get the interest they pay the depositor of the cash.

<comment><USER7> Interest rate has nothing to do with profitability - it's just a price that balances the supply and demand of funds and on the short end, it's heavily influenced by monetary policy and on the long end, it's heavily influenced by the inflation and growth expectations. Lots of consumers borrow at very high rates and it's not because they expect to be profitable with the money they borrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The risk with this kind of story is that we end up focusing on the financial at the expense of the real.

Ultimately, the goods and services consumed by retirees are provided by the real economy, not by financial instruments (which is just a fancy way of saying that you can't eat savings).

The way to ensure their availability is to make _real_ investments, not financial ones: build infrastructure, factories, accessible retirement homes; train nurses, doctors, etc...

Unfortunately, focus on the financial can trigger (and arguably has already triggered) some extremely counterproductive reflexes. For example, we've been told for decades now that private savings are essential for retirement. This may be true at an individual level, but in the aggregate it causes a savings glut - those low interest rates aren't _just_ the making of central banks - and it withdraws effective demand from the real economy, which disincentives many of the investments in the real economy we need to provide for an aging society.

So yeah, good to see some focus on the aging society, but please try to look beyond the financial smokescreen.

<comment><USER9> Fair point. In that case, the real issue then is that more people are retiring and living longer, needing more healthcare and labor, and the workforce is dwindling in comparison? Maybe the amount of resources that can be used as medical supplies is decreasing (and if you think single-use plastic like plastic bags and straws are a problem, wait until you see how much single-use plastic and other materials are used everyday day in healthcare).

What's the solution in non-financial terms? Make more young people care for the elderly? Automate as much of the healthcare as possible? Let some elderly people go without healthcare?

<comment><USER8> I suppose as other people have pointed out in the thread, the first step is figuring out how much of the shortfall is actually real.

But yeah, ultimately the solution would have to be something along the lines of the things you mention. Of course, you don't necessarily have to automate healthcare: if you automate something else, it could also free people to then move to healthcare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An even bigger financial time bomb IMO is that society and our financial system was built on risk-free investment returns, and those have disappeared.

Some have said that financial reserve banking enabled the industrial revolution. The party is over, we now have negative nominal interest rates, and very negative real interest rates.

Society has adjusting by chasing risk. Comments like "as long as you hold for at least 10 years, investing in the stock market is risk free" become common. They make these statements by cherry picking American returns. Meanwhile an investment in 1914 German stocks would not return your investment until 2014. I don't believe that we're comparable to 1914 Germany, but potential isn't comparable to the last century of American growth either...

A society does not become rich by moving pieces of paper around. A society becomes rich by increasing its capacity to provide goods and services.

</comment><comment><USER11> That bar chart is terrible. It puts the US at a 137T shortfall and the Netherlands at 6T, making NL look much better than the US.

But there's about 20x more people in the US as in NL. The shortfalls are about the same.

<comment><USER12> Shortfalls are about the same, but I do wonder if the problem is as big as well.

I'm not sure about the US, but in the Netherlands the pensions are a hot topic in politics.

The pension funds have to maintain a minimum amount of money, and need to take action if they risk getting below the minimum.

Some/most funds are no longer indexing yearly based on inflation, and some funds are talking about reducing payouts to the retired. They are actively protecting their wealth to ensure the younger generation still has access to a pension when they retire.

On a grander scale there are talks about a completely new pension system; the big funds where the current generation of workers pay the pensions of the retired is fragile with the general aging of the population. The amount of working persons per retired person is shifting, so they are talking about restructuring in a way where every working person saves money for their own pension.

So when the article states that it is an invisible problem... not entirely true for the Netherlands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The WEF defines a shortfall as anything less than what's required to provide > 70% of a person's pre-retirement income via public pensions and private > savings.

Oh come on... why 70%? Presumably retirees don't have childcare costs, can downsize on housing, no more daily commute so savings on transport and lunch costs, ... Also, does "private savings" account for accumulated housing equity?

Also, I think that "retirement _savings_ " are a fundamentally misguided economic policy... There's a fixed amount of wealth created at any moment (and a lot of it isn't transferable over time - in particular, labor, energy and food), so by "saving for retirement" we're actually causing a deflation (less money spent to buy same amount of wealth) and will cause an inflation when we start "spending retirement savings" (more money spent to buy same amount of wealth, so prices go up). This is a rat race, you only get ahead as long as you save _more_ than others (similar to the housing bubble). The only sustainable solution is the working population to subsidize the non-working population (kids, students, retirees) _in real time_ , year by year. If that math doesn't work out, we need to change it (make more kids who become new workers or make less retirees by having people work longer). Or post-scarcity economy of course.

<comment><USER14> > Oh come on... why 70%? Presumably retirees don't have childcare costs, can > downsize on housing, no more daily commute so savings on transport and lunch > costs, ... Also, does "private savings" account for accumulated housing > equity?

I came here to say the same thing; was even typing it up. Then I paused. Healthcare (in the U.S. at least) is going to be at a crisis point in a decade. Prices keep going up and it isn't sustainable. Retirees will spend a large portion of their retirement income on healthcare.

<comment><USER15> You've already gotta be _pretty damn rich_ for the most likely outcome, even as a quite comfortably retired person who's careful not to overspend, not to be "hospitals and hospice care take all my money in the last few years, and I die nearly penniless".

We're rapidly approaching a time when leaving inheritance will no longer happen _at all_ for nearly all people who've worked their whole lives (i.e. have never been owners, "capitalists", as their primary source of income). I mean I know there's not much there already, but soon that'll just _not be a thing anymore_. Healthcare expenses plus the death of pensions are going to cause some _serious_ unrest in the next decade or two, unless we course correct hard and _very_ soon.

<comment><USER13> I really don't know what to think about healthcare expenses... Like, dying pennyless _makes sense_! Why _wouldn 't_ you spend _all_ your money just to prolong your life a bit longer? Obviously, our (civilization's) resources are limited, and we need to make decisions how to allocate them... EU countries decide by fiat (government says, we'll spend this much taxes on healing kids vs that much on healing old people), whereas US decide by market (rich people, young or old, can spend more on their own health). Personally, as technology improves, I really don't see us spending _less_ on healthcare... after all, it's literally _life_ , the most (individually) valuable thing there _is_!

<comment><USER16> > Why wouldn't you spend all your money just to prolong your life a bit > longer?

Money doesn't work that way. Fixing the problems that can be fixed usually isn't a crippling amount of money.

And when hospice is expensive, it's not because any notable treatment is happening, it's just to give you a place to live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The WEF (World Economic Forum) defines a shortfall as anything less than > what's required to provide 70% of a person's pre-retirement income via > public pensions and private savings.

So people aren't saving enough to retire with 70% of their pre-retirement income.

From the paper:

> We have assumed that current global conventions of retiring between 60 and > 70 are maintained, and that individuals do not simply remain in the > workplace longer.

I don't see how this is a financial bomb. 70% of pre-retirement income is pretty arbitrary. The paper discusses this in the context of increasing life expectancy, but doesn't take into account people working longer which seems the natural thing to happen.

> Still, an overwhelming majority of the short-fall comes from government > programs. In order to address this problem, governments must adequately and > proactively fund their entitlements too, either by increasing taxes or by > cutting benefits. Individuals alone cannot save enough to compensate for the > unrealistic promises their governments have made.

A better solution would be to stop providing public defined benefit pensions. Instead switch over to defined contribution. Defined benefit encourages government agencies to make promises in the future that they won't be around to carry out. As a worker, I wouldn't want to trust my retirement to the political process over 50 years. Defined contribution prevents you from kicking the can down the road and not properly fund the person's retirement

<comment><USER10> There's a floor, though. Social Security and Medicare ensure that pensioners don't starve and have health care. That's defined benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How much of this is addressed by elderly parents selling their homes (which helps the housing crisis...) and moving in with their adult children? It's uncomfortable but frees up enormous amount of capital, and radically reduces costs of maintenance, food and even cable/internet/entertainment.

Back of the envelope: 50M people doing this at $300k average home value and $20k annual maintenance/taxes/insurance over 20 years of lifespan, and costs drop to food and healthcare. Seems like a no brainer.

(yes obviously this depends on people having had kids and not borrowed heavily against their house...)

What am I missing?

<comment><USER19> What's missing is a practical way to encourage that to happen and make it a default expectation in society.

My wife's parents both live with us, they're Chinese and that's a common cultural norm in China, which which I am absolutely fine. It's not a common thing generally here in the UK though.

I can't imagine doing this with my mother because she is used to living in her own house, with her rules and her way of doing things. There's nothing wrong with that, I get on with my mother fine, but living with us would drive her, or us, or all of us insane very quickly. It's not just about doing it, it's also about the social norms and expectations of behaviour that make it possible.

<comment><USER20> >What's missing is a practical way to encourage that to happen and make it a default expectation in society.

Lack of options will be the encouragement. It's luxury to be able to live alone with your own rules and way of doing things. I will bet that most people who currently "live by their own rules" will acquiesce once they no longer have the power to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Now I'm not an economist, but percentage of my current income seems like a braindead metric to work with that doesn't factor in that I spend less than half of my income and the rest is invested for later and that when I retire I will stop doing that. Shouldn't they be looking for "sufficient assets to meet expenses"?

<comment><USER22> People who are living on less than 50% of their income (particularly less than half of after-tax income) are a pretty much vanishingly small subset of the population.

It's a smart policy, but it's quite uncommon. When economists think of simplifying assumptions that also help to communicate the essence of a situation, this one doesn't seem that bad to me.

[https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly- si...](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math- behind-early-retirement/)

<comment><USER23> I'm sorry but this comment comes from a very privileged position. Let's talk reality here: a large portion of the US can't afford a 400$ expense without going into debt ([https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many- americans-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans- cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html)). The vast number of people live paycheck to paycheck; to be so surprised that the number of people living on less than 50% of their income is vanishingly small betrays a lack of knowledge of a vast majority of people.

<comment><USER24> > Let's talk reality here: a large portion of the US can't afford a 400$ > expense without going into debt ([https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why- > so-many-americans-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many- > americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html))

That is not true

From TFA they would have to sell something(assets), and probably adjust their spending in the next paycheck

The myth that abled bodied human beings in 2019 America are unable to come up with $400 is ridiculous

<comment><USER6> Selling assets is actually worse than going into debt. I know plenty of people who would not be able to afford paying their bills without going into debt if they had an unexpected 400 dollar charge. The delusion that wealth inequality and massive economic impoverishment is a myth in America is insane. Get out of your bubble.

[https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2018-repor...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2018-report- economic-well-being-us-households-201905.pdf)

<comment><USER24> Assets are a resource you hold instead of holding cash

It's things you bought that you can sell to access those $400

not selling those assets and going into debt is a choice

<comment><USER6> False. Assets are a resource with economic value that are expected to provide a benefit. If that benefit is worth more than the current cash value, you actually lose more by selling it. You're free to make stupid choices though, like wrongly defining what assets are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > The WEF assumes many people born recently will live beyond 100, which may be > a bit much (the Social Security Administration expects most Americans born > today to live into their mid-80s).

The title of the WEF paper is "We'll Live to 100 – How Can We Afford It?" The entire paper is an extrapolation of that one assumption.

There is no country in the world with life expectancy over 84. There is also no US congressional district with LE over 84. The idea that any collection of humans can exceed even 90 years in average life expectancy is unproven, much moreso for the entire human population. In fact, the LE for the USA has been decreasing for the last 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER26> Imagine you're an alien visiting Earth on 2050 and it's the worst-case scenario as predicted. You see all the suffering, people starving, not a lot going on and then you look at all the arable land, the mineral resources, the factories, etc and nothing is happening. People refuse to help each other at a large scale. It's like the hungry ghosts story in planetary scale. You'd be very puzzled, wouldn't you?

Food for thought...

<comment><USER27> Well it all happens for a reason. And I don't mean as part of some master plan, but cause and effect. Since we're talking about an alien civilization capable of traveling to earth, vastly technologically and intellectually superior to us, they'd probably be able to assess the problem pretty quickly based on human nature. It confuses us because we can't understand collective human behavior. This made me think of the line from MIB: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> is this what greta thunberg means by "fantasy of eternal economic growth"?

<comment><USER29> exactly.

but it's not the only mistake made: pensions are easily affordable as a society, but not for individuals.

the idea to link pensions to financial markets was the first and huge mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What's missing from this article is the current amount of the shortfall and what the historical value has been. Without knowing where we are coming from, there's no way to know how concerning this is.

</comment><comment><USER31> A book I would highly recommend looking at the future of financial systems related to this retirement bomb is:

"Sleeping on a Volcano: The Worldwide Demographic Decline and the Economic and Geopolitical Implications"

Non-affiliated, just though it was a very good read: [https://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Volcano-Demographic- Geopolit...](https://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Volcano-Demographic-Geopolitical- Implications/dp/1793927758)

</comment><comment><USER32> Retirement and pensions did not exist until 1-2 centuries ago. It seems the idea itself is about to be retired

</comment><comment><USER33> USA can sell debt to finance social security and medicare. This is possible as long as (a) US Dollar is global reserve currency (b) every other country want to export to USA (c) every non-American wants to immigrate to the states.

</comment><comment><USER34> There's a book that describes it "2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America"

</comment><comment><USER35> I would really like to see a system where people pay on their ultimate currency of time - it's something I have occasionally pondered where young fit and healthy people donate their time to help the elderly in order to gain 'credits' for when they are older to receive benefits or benefit in some way for when they are sick or require elderly assistance.

<comment><USER36> Swap the word "credits" for money and you have our current system.

No need to create a tyrannical government to force people to do deeds of arbitrary value for elderly people.

<comment><USER35> I just don't understand why people see this as the same thing - the value of money is always vulnerable to a myriad of factors however our moral interest towards each other seems (maybe I'm optimistic ) to be more consistent

<comment><USER36> How does one measure value and then store it? That's kind of the definition of money.

A money market account is insured and the real return is 0%, so it's not as vulnerable as you seem to think.

You can call money a credit. Then you can assign credits to actions and create a moral police to assign credits to people who do these actions and enter those credits into a leger. And now you've recreated communist China. Congrats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Bitcoin fixes this

</comment><comment><USER38> Your US Social security retirement "invests" their money in US Tresury bonds. The US will default by 2030. Those treasury bonds turn into "IOUs" that can't be paid back, ever (aka default). By 2030, people won't buy new treasuries as the last generation mature, so they will have to be paid back by money printing.

2030 is when US Social security retirement hits a big wall.</comment>


Ask HN: Tool to quickly make animated gifs for product features? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a tool that can quickly generate animated gifs of product features on OS X, it should be able to record full-screen or a specific region of the screen. Ideally it would be activated by a hotkey and a simple drag on the screen to start recording (like ⌘-shift-4) and same hotkey to stop and save to folder. <comment><USER2> you will love [http://recordit.co/](http://recordit.co/)

edit: oh but its missing fullscreen - as far as I can see

<comment><AUTHOR> This functions very well! Thanks for the suggestion, looking for something like this that can save locally

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check ProductHunt, on the search bar just type in GIF. You'll get the entire list of GIF products. Hope you find one suitable for your needs.</comment>


Roguelike on a Hyperbolic Plane (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://zenorogue.blogspot.com/2012/03/hyperbolic-geometry-in-hyperbolic-rogue.html <comment><USER2> "Hyperbolic geometry seems to be underused in art."

I concur, very cool!</comment>


For Edward Snowden: How to live in an airport - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Much more interesting than [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_lived_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_lived_at_airports)

But not at all a how to guide.</comment>


The Right Kind of Ambition - <AUTHOR> http://bhorowitz.com/2010/08/29/the-right-kind-of-ambition-2/ <comment><USER2> I'm still a little skeptical, simply because what people _say_ and what they _do_ often aren't in complete agreement. There are some people out there that will cynically talk in terms of personal advancement all the time, but when it comes to actions, they tend to do the right thing even though they grumble about how it's not to their advantage. And then there are people who say all the right things, give all the credit to their team, and yet when it comes to actions, they'll do what advances their career over what advances the team.

<comment><USER3> I think you're right- I'm in the first group you mentioned.

I think to myself that I'm willing to do anything to get ahead...but when it comes time to act, I can't bring myself to screw others over.

As I've learned, the best way to succeed is actually to enable other to reach their goals- who will in turn help you reach yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A more cynical view is here:

[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- principle-o...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or- the-office-according-to-the-office/)

The "psychopath" executives need "clueless" middle managers who believe in the team in order to manage the "losers" (regular employees).

(I'm not advocating this... just pointing out that the "right kind of (team- oriented) ambition" could also be viewed in this way...)

<comment><USER5> IMHO whole title is kind of psychopatic - Right Kind of Ambition. Why in the hell anybody would tell me which ambition is right or wrong?

<comment><USER6> I didn't take it as _ethically_ right or wrong, but right or wrong for the company. Right or wrong in the context of hiring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "For a complete explanation of the dangers of managers with the wrong kind of ambition, I strongly recommend Dr. Suess's management masterpiece _Yertle the Turtle_."

For those who like me want to fill in this hole in their education: <http://www.archive.org/details/jessyertletheturtlepodcast>

</comment><comment><USER8> This is essentially the main idea described in Jim Collins' _Good to Great_ [1]. It's pretty boring (to my taste, anyway), but it's also short.

The idea makes sense if you think about it. You're liable to get less accomplished if you spend most of your time covering yourself and positioning for your own advancement. The same applies to everyone else. The hard part, then, is identifying and removing people who waste a lot of time covering themselves and positioning to the detriment of what they're nominally being compensated to do.

[1][http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap- Others/dp/00...](http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap- Others/dp/0066620996)

</comment><comment><USER9> This "team" ambition depends equally on the environment as the candidate. I agreed strongly with this article until I realized that I was assuming an equity-for-all startup, rather than the much maligned office job.

There is definitely a personal component too. I've seen people co-found a company only to wreck it for personal convenience, and others who will work well beyond their contract with seemingly no incentive.

</comment><comment><USER10> _"On the other hand, people who view the world purely through the team prism will very seldom use the words "I" or "me" even when answering questions about their accomplishments"_

In various interview training sessions I've been told to use statements with "I" rather than "We". The purpose being to clearly articulate your direct contribution to the team or goal.

In fact, I've been rejected from a few roles in the past with the feedback that I was not specific enough about my own accomplishments [1].

Therefore, I'm not convinced about this specific aspect of Ben's screening process. People who use _I/me_ rather then _we_ may simply have been conditioned by other interview processes or might really not have contributed much to their teams.

Since this is only one aspect of the screening, I'd probably give it less weight than other factors.

[1] There may also have been other reasons but I never heard about them. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> The post boils more fundamentally down to hiring managers who have well developed skills of empathy. When people can put themselves in the shoes of others and feel as they feel, its a lot easier for them to act in the collective good. Most average managers I've worked with have competence; the exceptional ones combine it with empathy.

</comment><comment><USER12> As a hired-gun, this article is truly outside my depth. When I'm onsite with a client, I give everything for their success. But heck, I'm a rental. I'm conflicted on how such a strategy would work long-term.

I think the key question here, based on the anecdote provided, is: how was the sales lead treated? Ten times sales volume? 20 times market cap? In such a critical role was the guy well-rewarded for the difference he made? I assume so, but this should be spelled out. Because the whole thing reads differently if the guy got a much worse deal than he earned.

Oddly, this focus on what people can do for my organization is exactly the same kind of ambition that is derided in the article -- just the shoe is on the other foot. Of course, you can make the case that the organization is somehow a much greater and more worthy thing of devotion than some guy's family, but I'm skeptical. After all, you can bet the CEO or CFO is watching the numbers. One would think that any employee would be doing the same for his family finances. Respect is a two-way street.

I think the article is right on the money, don't get me wrong. I just think it could have been written better. There are lots of little holes in the reasoning. Perhaps this idea of understanding that you do better yourself when you help others succeed is difficult to pin down in the context provided. After all, there are lots of companies. And there are lots of people looking for "team players" who will not look after you. While the slogan is easy, the actual implications and implementation of this belief system is not easy at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> What a disgusting propaganda of corporate communism. A person, that is completely lacking sense of his/her own achievements is either liar or stupid or some kind of manipulator. It does not mean that narcissists are the best people, but the other extreme is not good either.

<comment><USER13> Could you define this "corporate communism" term you're using, and how this post is linked to it?

<comment><USER5> I think little imagination can help you.</comment></comment></comment>


A cynical take on productivity hacks - <AUTHOR> http://oldmatejacko.com/2018/02/27/productivity/ <comment><USER2> Probably worth pointing out that this is satire. Please don't actually burn your yoga mat. That would be terrible for the environment.</comment>


Media Uptick Rule? - <AUTHOR> http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/10/media-uptick-rule.html

<comment><USER2> I prefer my first amendment rights just as they are, thank you very much.</comment>


FBI worried that Ring doorbells are spying on police - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53985418 <comment><AUTHOR> > The 2017 incident [found in hacked police documents] describes how someone > under investigation was able to "covertly monitor law enforcement activity > while law enforcement was on the premises" and alert his neighbour and > landlord. It does not name the brand of video doorbell used.

> In the UK, Wiltshire police have set up a database of private smart > doorbells and security cameras, and residents are being asked to register > theirs.

Privacy is a double-edged sword, and that's a good thing. When those in power exempt themselves from a system, that's where transparency and oversight are most necessary.</comment>


Towards Practical Gradual Typing [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ccs.neu.edu/racket/pubs/ecoop2015-takikawa-et-al.pdf

<comment><USER2> Here's some more context info for the paper: [http://2015.ecoop.org/event/research-track-towards- practical...](http://2015.ecoop.org/event/research-track-towards-practical- gradual-typing)</comment>


How to Check if Your Yahoo, Gmail or AOL Passwords Were Leaked - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/07/12/yahoo-voices-hacked/

<comment><USER2> Nice contrast of "because the passwords were stored unencrypted, the long list of usernames and passwords were posted in text for all to see" and "at Yahoo! we take security very seriously and invest heavily in protective measures to ensure the security of our users and their data across all our products".

These companies, with huge resources, are always telling us how seriously they take our security and privacy after they fail to take the most basic measures. I call that criminal negligence and lies.</comment>


A recruiter sent me a message in code. I fixed it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/riebschlager/linkedin-recruiter-email <comment><USER2> This feels to me like when you're a teenager and your parents try to be cool around your friends but it only makes you more embarrassed and want nothing to do with them.

<comment><USER3> There's a great German word for this exact feeling: fremdschämen.

<comment><USER4> Is that pronounced "friend shaming"?

<comment><USER5> _ˈfʀɛmtˌʃɛːmən_ , or if you will: "FREMT-shay-men". (You need to gurgle a bit, or at least hint at gurgling, when doing the 'R', now).

However you pronounce it -- I find it hard to have any kind of empathy at all for recruiters (internal or external), and hence, can't quite imagine myself "feeling a sense of shame for them in their place" (per the generic translation).

<comment><USER6> I don't see an 'R' in there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I was a recruiter learning to code, I posted a personal's ad written in SQL on Craigslist. Ended up going out on a date with a DBA :) She was a falconer, and we took her hawk out to hunt crows.

<comment><USER8> Wow. It is hard to do that in a way that doesn't come off like... this thing.

<comment><USER7> In grad school I took a class on creativity from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi[1]. He described a creative idea as something that stands apart from other ideas in the same basket.

Think of a large pile of plain ol' red bricks. Now show that pile ask 100 people who know nothing about bricks the question "what can yo do with this pile of bricks?" If 99 people say "build a worker computer by <brick-to- computer-process>", and 1 person says "build a house", then "build a house" is the most creative answer in that sample.

Writing a SQL ad that was basically just a simple query using SELECT, FROM, WHERE. If 100 SQL writers wrote an ad, I don't think mine would have been all that creative, using the definition mentioned above. But as the only SQL- flavored ad in the personals section, it stood out as creative :)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Flow-Psychology- Discovery-...](https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Flow-Psychology-Discovery- Invention/dp/0062283251)

<comment><USER8> Yes. However, there is a difference between creative and good: Most recruiter emails don't look like what OP got. But that doesn't make that one good.

Yours seems to have been good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> jokes on the coder, that's actually written in recscript, a little known scripting language with a sort of C like syntax targeting Microsoft's old ActiveScripting framework.

The Document object is one of the 7 special objects available in the language (others: Resource [every other special object is an instance of Resource], Sheet, Calendar, Sound, Presentation, Database, Browser). Since there isn't any use of the Create Document statement before usage I'm guessing this is after version 2.14 of the language in which Create was dropped as unnecessary (a bit of syntactical sugar).

Anyway Document instantiates a Microsoft Word object and saves it to recscript Documents folder automatically, all text inside of it is indexed, so you can also do stuff like Resources.find("you'fe killing me! Contact me because I desire this");

By the way the recscript code editor which provided an advanced code execution environment to develop in (something like JsFiddle only years prior) also supported open and close parenthesis.

IIRC the open and close parenthesis had special semantic meaning in the language.

<comment><USER10> Wow, really? I wasn't able to find any reference to this online.

<comment><USER8> ...Poe's Law strikes again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Spelling mistake on line 43 of the revised code: 'and' should be 'an'. That's just sloppy.

I am working with a french developer right now (English second language) who is really good, but peppers his code with minor grammatical or spelling errors. He is slowly driving me insane and doesn't know it :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed!

Man. Having my code looked at by HN (even if it's a joke) feels like one of those dreams where you show up to school in your underwear.

<comment><USER8> I'm barely a developer, and I'm in highschool.

I'm so used to getting told I'm an idiot that I don't even react anymore.

<comment><USER12> The secret is that we are all idiots. Some just refuse to recognize it and act like jerks because of it. None of us actually "know" most of what we know.

It's unprofessional to start calling names. It's generally uncouth to even start the argument unless you have really strong evidence and can back off when that proves insufficient. Don't be bothered when they don't have the evidence to back it up, but when they do have the evidence fix whatever caused them say it and keep some evidence.

<comment><USER8> Exactly.

My rule is that if someone calls me out on being wrong, I'll argue, and do my best to support my point. If they provide a better argument, than I'll concede.

Because if you can't admit you're wrong, you'll never learn anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the nested while loops are trying to capture the logic that they won't leave you alone without trying at least twice.

Sadly the do-while loop structure is largely lost on modern developers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Tried fixing it so it would run, and the hardest bit was recognizing that the double-quotes weren't actually double-quotes, but rather these two characters: " "

<comment><USER15> I may have asked this here before, or perhaps elsewhere... but why do these characters exist? "Smart" quotes end up breaking things for me so frequently, I've never actually wanted them in any case I can think of. Same goes for en/em dashes. I literally spent a day and a half trying to track down an issue less than a month ago, only to realize as I got to the point of inspecting bytes that I wasn't looking at a regular dash (and incidentally that the SDK I was interacting with doesn't support extended characters).

<comment><USER16> Non-'smart' quotes (aka typewriter quotes) exist only because space on typewriter keyboards was limited. If we should get rid of any double-quotes then it would be " which has no semantic meaning (unlike " and " which open and close a quotation, and ″ which among other things is the unit mark for inches).

<comment><USER17> " has semantic meaning _in code_ , whereas " and " have semantic meaning _in text_. If you're a coder, you want " and only ". You especially don't want "helpful" software that thinks you should want text quotes, and tries to fix them for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> More accurate title would be "I code reviewed it"... I don't see a working fixed script anywhere.

Edit: I stand corrected. For some reason I thought that was the only file in the repo. It's been a long week but I have no excuse.

<comment><USER19> There's more than just a readme in the repo:

[https://github.com/riebschlager/linkedin-recruiter- email/blo...](https://github.com/riebschlager/linkedin-recruiter- email/blob/master/recruiter-email.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Clever" messages in code were clever back in... actually they never were.

<comment><USER21> That might be part of the use case, though: removes non-techy people from the use of code, and removes techy-people-who-dont-need-me because it's a lame attempt to be clever, helping to narrow the recruiter's net to people more willing to work with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sheesh. If you've got it, don't be afraid to show it. But do so cleanly. Not with something like this

And if you don't have it, than don't bother trying: you're trying to hire those who do: doing this doesn't make you look smart.

Also, use \<newline> to keep your code at 80 columns. I actually don't care if it's exactly 80, but excessively long lines are a pain to read.

</comment><comment><USER22> You would think someone that works at LinkedIn, a company that likely employees hundreds (thousand(s)?), of engineers would have this proof read before sending it off to potential applicants. This is a real turn off.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, this was a recruiter ON LinkedIn, not a recruiter FROM LinkedIn.

<comment><USER22> OH! Haha my mistake, that wording is naturally ambiguous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It could be the code was sloppy on purpose to illicit a response from you.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. Maybe this was a test. Maybe he'll write me another message saying, "Well done, you passed. You may now have this entry-level developer position that is completely wrong for you and matches none of your skills or interests."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> When does someone make RecruiterEmail EnterpriseEdition?

</comment><comment><USER25> Google docs will capitalize keywords in your code if you don't disable it. I haven't tried it, but I imagine they ruin your indentation too.

</comment><comment><USER26> If any one wants a bunch of emails from curious HNers the domain the script addresses the email to is unclaimed.

supertechcoderhirepeople.com

</comment><comment><USER27> Didn't he miss a closing brace with the While-While-If structure and only ending with two closing braces?

<comment><USER28> Yes, I noticed that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just curious, but why does capital "If" make you think of Python?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. I said the snake case made me think of Python. The capital "If" just made me think "Microsoft Outlook really insists that you capitalize things."

Edit: Oh! I just re-read that sentence. Yeah, I can see why you thought that. I'll fix it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> They better recruit him

</comment><comment><USER31> What a shit piece of code. Recruiters should stop trying to be cool

</comment><comment><USER32> "How do you do my fellow developer"</comment>


Ask HN: How do you make sure your employees are staying healthy? - <AUTHOR>

Keeping my employees healthy is a constant worry of mine and now we finally got enough resources to pay them a gym membership. That's not cheap on the company, but my main concern is that they won't use it. I know a lot of companies offer that benefit, so: a- if you are an employer: how do you make sure your team is using it? b- if you are an employee: what does you company do to keep people active? <comment><USER2> I like thinking about this question.

I have no experience in this but I'll give it a shot.

The keys to staying healthy are diet and exercise absolutely since they probably with through lunch it would be good to provide your employees a good and healthy, yet affordable lunch. It would be best to ask around to see what your employees would like and maybe set up a catering service for them or order to go from a reputable healthy restaurant, or just have your employees cook if you have the facilities available. Basically just have them eat healthier, gift cards to places like sweet tomatoes might help too.

Next is exercise. I can't help but think of that one 'The Office' episode where they are separated into groups and whichever team loses the most weight win something. If you already have groups at your company, either keep it, or switch it up, but don't put the overweight people together, and groups of 3-4 would be optimal.I like to think that people who don't exercise alone, would function better if they have a goal and have a group to encourage/punish them. But some might oppose as some just refuse to work out. Then there are those who already work out or those who just refuse to, and they can just opt out.

Just my 2 cents as I sit here in my lawn chair.</comment>