As China's workforce dwindles, the world scrambles for alternatives - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/as-chinas-workforce-dwindles-the-world-scrambles-for-alternatives-1448293942?tesla=y <comment><USER2> Wow, I find it really bold that WSJ has so openly dug into the demographic issue. I've previously only heard about it so openly discussed in conservative circles (eg [http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/20/the-return-of- patriarchy...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/20/the-return-of- patriarchy/)). They pretty much hit all the major areas with fertility and women and all the other stuff lined up [http://graphics.wsj.com/2050-demographic- destiny/](http://graphics.wsj.com/2050-demographic-destiny/). It'll be an interesting century with this unprecedented implosion.

<comment><USER3> Marxists and other leftists have identified the need for cheap labor as a major long-term weakness in capitalism for over a century. The question has always been how long technological advances and increased globalization can provide the growth necessary for social stability.

Liberals might not think about it in the same way, but they're unlikely to see a reduction in population growth as a bad thing on its own terms. Certainly, they're very unlikely to propose natalist policies as a solution.

<comment><USER4> Isn't it also an even major weakness in socialism? After all, if your society is committed to providing a minimum standard of living for the elderly and disabled, that depends upon labor.

<comment><USER5> How much labor do you think is needed to provide water, food, shelter, clothing, electricity, household machines (even a 3d printer), computation, and entertainment for everyone?

The hours I put into a CRUD app last week are wasted labor as far as I'm concerned, but I need to pay rent to a landlord and the only people with money are people who want me to make them even more money.

<comment><USER4> Well, given that you have just described the vast majority of my household expenses, I would say a lot of labor goes into providing that.

Also, you forgot healthcare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm skeptical that home 3D printing is going to have much impact on manufacturing consumer goods. We've had inexpensive laser printers for a couple of decades now, yet there's not many people printing out books at home.

The printers would have to be very user friendly and very fast to compete with the convenience of buying finished goods.

<comment><USER7> As an owner and user of a 3D printer, I don't expect the scene to get to regular household users within the next 5 years.

Difference in material qualities can totally influence how you prepare the models for printing. For example, after I switched to a less brittle PLA filament, breakaway is totally different. The model may have less opportunities for failure during printing, but the plastic is less convenient to remove after the print is finished. Further sanding is needed for breakaway spots and arbitrary extrusion defects.

I also find that super glue is a bad idea for assembling what is larger than can be printed at once.

On a side note, if there were an automated solution for breaking apart a model, adding peg holes or woodwork inspired nailless/screwless mesh finger pegs would really fulfill a need for users with small economic 3D printers

<comment><USER8> > I don't expect the scene to get to regular household users within the next 5 > years.

I don't expect any 3D modeling software get to regular household. Did anyone really install Google Earth or something?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > replacing dozens of workers who scrub Levi's blue jeans with sandpaper to > give them the worn look that American consumers find stylish

This really made me laugh. Levi paying Chinese workers to quite labor- intensively lower the quality of their jeans because American consumers prefer it that way. I really wonder what they must think of us.

</comment><comment><USER10> Let's hope it's an industrializing force for African nations...

<comment><USER11> It hasn't so far--even prior to the rise of Chinese manufacturing--not sure why it would now. Part of the problem is that although a lot of Chinese manufacturing is obviously driven by low labor costs, there's also a stable and investment-friendly (if hardly democratic) government, a well-developed ecosystem around manufacturing, and capital.

As the article says, I expect more automation and I'll probably bet more on further Pac Rim manufacturing than other areas.

<comment><USER12> Actually, the chinese are comfy bribing their way in african nations. And they are changing the continent quite fast. It's the unreported story of the decade.

Check out this lecture:

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

<comment><USER13> I see Africa now like China in the late 80's or early 90's - the change is there, but the perceptions haven't shifted yet and anyone doing business there faces a situation of chaotic progress. A good place to be if you like extremes of risk/reward.

<comment><USER14> Except that "Africa" is _way_ less coherent than China. There's not a lot in common for doing business in, say, Rwanda (notionally clean & business- friendly), Eritrea (autarchic dictatorship) and DR Congo (basically total chaos).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe the "alternative" is higher wages for unskilled labor.

<comment><USER16> That's one alternative, but it also skews the incentive of the workforce to become non-skilled e.g. why spend X years studying at university to be a lawyer, engineer, programmer, or whatever if you can do unskilled work for a similar/higher wage.

It's not a problem initially, but will become so once you have a generation or two of a largely unskilled workforce, especially if the work then dries up.

<comment><USER17> That's not really how economics works. If you raise the wages of unskilled laborers, then indeed the effect you describe happens. However, the marketplace still demands engineers, and so any drop in the supply will lead to an increase in wages until some equilibrium point is reached.

<comment><USER18> And within 20 years engineers will be building robots to replace most unskilled laborers anyway.

The real issue is, what happens when robots can replace engineers?

<comment><USER19> Freedom for all mankind, hopefully.

Or death and bloodshed as more and more people get excluded from the economy and are left to starve. It's up to us to pick a direction, and the time for it is starting now.

<comment><USER20> Yup, and it looks to be going the death and bloodshed route, but that's no surprise, it's what we do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I found the fact, that a labour shortage is driving advancements in technology, a big positive. The other way around would have been a catastrophe - with millions having left their farms and then to be left without a job in the city.

</comment><comment><USER22> wife studies sweatshops. China already feel way behind India. and most china companies already outsource labour to south east Africa.

</comment><comment><USER23> [http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

<comment><USER24> Ok, on whose behalf do you suspect this story was planted? Industrial robot manufacturers? One of China's manufacturing rivals? Levis?

I have no inside information; I can't say whether it was or it wasn't. But dropping a link like this and running is tantamount to writing "9/11 was an inside job".

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ever since News Corp. bought the WSJ in 2007, the nutjob conservatism of its Op-Ed page has permeated and corrupted its formerly excellent and fairly objective news reporting. A lot of the best journalists have left, and the rest know which drummer they march to.

One aspect of US conservative thought today is nationalist hostility toward China (cf. Trump), and schadenfreude over anything that takes China down a notch. Unfortunately, WSJ reporters facing those incentives will have a harder time being reality-based. They seek instead to flatter their readers' sensibilities and obey their editors' orders. This leads to sloppy arguments. Take this line, for example:

> By 2050, the working-age population will decline by 212 million, estimates > the United Nations—> roughly as many people as live in Brazil, the world's > fifth most-populous nation.

I doubt that the UN report takes into account Beijing's decision, published three weeks ago, to transform its one-child policy into a two-child policy, which is just the latest in a series of moves intended to shift its demographic outlook.

[http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/29/asia/china-one-child- policy/](http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/29/asia/china-one-child-policy/)

China's rising wages are the inevitable, logical result of China getting richer; i.e. they are a sign of China's success in modernizing itself.

<comment><USER26> Could you give some examples of the journalists who have left? I've subscribed on and off to the Journal since the late 80s, and pretty much continuously to the online version since '99, and I have not detected a decline in quality. The paper has certainly changed over the years, and seems less stuffy and stodgy than it once was, reflecting the generational change in the readership and the staff. It's about as conservative as it always was, though.

Regarding the two child announcement, the article pointed out that it was unlikely to affect the population decline because not that many Chinese want more than one child, and in any event it would take at least 16 years for the policy to have an effect. I'm not convinced that people want just one child, however. It seems likely that many couples who already have a girl will want to try for a boy.

<comment><USER25> > Could you give some examples of the journalists who have left?

There have been successive waves of departures, many of whom have left for the WSJ's rivals in financial news: Reuters and Bloomberg. I was a journalist for years, and this exodus is well known in the industry. For example, Laurie Hayes, deputy managing editor at the WSJ, left for Bloomberg in 2008. The mass departures of WSJ staff is credited with transforming Bloomberg internally. Many more names are cited here:

[http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/04/25/exodus-former-wsj- st...](http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/04/25/exodus-former-wsj-staffers- speak-out-against-mu/179020)

[http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/more-wsj- ve...](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/more-wsj-veterans- land-at-bloomberg/)

> in any event it would take at least 16 years for the policy to have an > effect

I agree that it will take time for the policy to take effect, but the article made a lot of predictions beyond that time horizon, which I believe are overly, willfully pessimistic.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for those links; that Media Matters article in particular was quite informative. Sounds like there really has been a big turnover at the Journal; a shame. I wonder, though, how much of the old Journal's approach would work in this one-screen sound bite era that we live in?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Half of US Doctors Routinely Prescribe Placebos - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/health/24placebo.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin <comment><USER2> I see this all the time. (I'm an ER nurse by night, computer nerd by day).

The problem is that patients frequently demand antibiotics for infections that don't require them and patients demand XRays for injuries that are obviously not fractures.

If someone is going to take little Jonny to the ER at 3 in the morning because the child has a fever and a cough, the last thing that the parents want to hear is "give him Tylenol, push fluids, plenty of rest..." Plain and simple, if they're going through the trouble to see the doctor, they want a prescription. So, instead of spending 20 minutes explaining to the parents why little Jonny doesn't need a prescription, they spend 5 minutes with them, prescribe an antibiotic that they _might_ but probably don't need, and run off to see the next patient.

<comment><USER3> Err, excuse me. I've taken my daughter to A&E (the UK equivalent of ER) a couple of time in her life due to high fever and a very nasty hacking cough. On both occassions, they prescribed ibuprofen, liquids and on one occassion put her in a cooling bath to reduce temperature.

On both occassions I was satisfied: I was pretty sure that it was a viral infection, but with a temperature _that_ high, I wanted to be sure. I would be bloody annoyed if the docs prescribed unnecessary antibiotics. Not all patients are dense and doctors shouldn't treat us as if we are - that just spreads ignorance.

Actually, we are lucky over here now. NHS is a really very good phone consulting service. You phone up with a sick child and they take you through a very VERY detailed list of symptoms and questions. This phone service has saved me a couple of night trips to the hospital since it started.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry if I came across as condescending. That was not my intention at all. I went to an Urgent Care 2 years ago, I waited for 2 hours, only to be told that I should take Tylenol, get rest and drink fluids. I was very upset.

I don't think those expectations are the fault of the patient. It's a natural extension of our drive-thru, fast-food.

At very least, I've found those expectations to be common in most of the 20+ hospitals/ER's that I've worked in over the past 15 years.

I field at least 3-4 calls a night asking for advice. I am not allowed to give any advice over the phone because of liability reasons. People's only option in the middle of the night is to go to the ER and wait their turn which creates frustration and high expectations. It's a bad system, not bad patients.

<comment><USER4> _I waited for 2 hours, only to be told that I should take Tylenol, get rest and drink fluids. I was very upset_

Why? There was nothing wrong. Would you have been happier if they diagnosed cancer? I find the (mostly American) obsession with pills very very strange. I hate seeing this getting imported to Canada, but more and more this seems to be the case.

<comment><USER5> Yes, iamelgringo's reaction does seem irrational but I can relate.

I've been dealing w/ a knee injury for a year+ and recently decided to bite the bullet (it's expensive!) and have it checked out. (Being an bootstrapping entrepreneur tends to have the side effect of having less-than-comprehensive health insurance) When the results of the MRI and X-Ray came in I found myself rather disappointed that there were no tears or fractures. I guess I just wanted a definite answer to why my knee was messed up so I could put a rehab plan into place and get back into running and mixed martial arts. Hearing "Don't know what's wrong. Rest it" was rather frustrating.

<comment><USER4> Having seen tons of knee injuries from my army days, I would only say this: Don't get surgery.

<comment><USER5> Not that I'm planning on getting knee surgery (more rehab . . . sigh) but I'm intrigued.

Care you expand on that?

<comment><USER4> Well, fully anecdotal here, but every guy I know (at least 10) that got knee surgery to "correct" a problem continued to have the same problems.

It seems to me that most of them regarded this as simply a stop gap or "treatment" and not a cure. Those that thought they would not have any more issues with their knees were not happy. Many who got it earlier on suggested that they would have chosen to go as long as possible without the post surgery rehab if they could.

I've been fortunate enough not to have any knee or foot issues myself, so I'm certainly not claiming to be an authority here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ...and the ones that don't are doing their patients a disservice. Placebos are safe, and can be surprisingly effective.

<comment><USER7> More people should demand placebos from their doctor...

 _cough_ Anyway. I found this line from the article amusing: _Only 5 percent described the treatment to patients as "a placebo."_

<comment><USER8> Yes so did I. To me it means the title of the article was speculative at best. Inaccurate is another word one could use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Antibiotics and sedatives" don't sound like placebos to me.

<comment><USER10> Tragically, antibiotics are often _used_ as a placebo. For example, prescribing an antibiotic is a good way to get the flu patient to leave your office in a happy mood, secure in the knowledge that Something Is Being Done, even though antibiotics are useless against flu.

That's a big problem, because sugar pills don't breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There's a serious argument to be made for homeopathy here: homeopathic treatments don't have side effects.

<comment><USER11> _homeopathic treatments don't have side effects._

Indeed. Most of us could stand to drink more water anyways.

<comment><USER10> Actually, now that you mention it, I suppose it is possible to overdose on homeopathics.

Moreover, there is a significant side effect: A financial one. That's why I prefer to advocate DIY homeopathics. If yours don't seem to be working, try making them by the light of the full moon. No kidding.

<comment><USER12> It would be pretty hard to overdose on homeopathics. They are basically sugar, and they are tiny. Add in the cost, and it would cost a fortune to overdose. You could probably clean out an entire store's inventory and not overdose.

<comment><USER13> It's the water he's talking about: [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003529990...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003529990_water18.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This idea is related and hilarious <http://inventedbyamother.com/>

<comment><USER15> Does it have FDA approval?

<comment><USER7> Even better. It doesn't have FDA disapproval.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> when I had bronchitis, my doctor told me "I can give you antibiotics and it will go away in three weeks. You can go without antibiotics and it will still go away in three weeks. What do you want to do?"

I declined.

</comment><comment><USER17> Whenever I get a new prescription from a doctor, I jump online and do my research about it.

I know there are several brand names for placebo drugs, but would it be obvious if a doctor prescribed one to me or my family?

<comment><USER18> Afraid it might work?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Beyond internships, what should a CS major focus on? - intern-forever Hi I am a college student. Who's kind of at a loss what to focus on next. By the end of January, I will have finished four internship (2 at big 4's) and a month long externship. In addition, I will have spent a year TAing and also have strong GPA. Okay, finished with humble brag. I am a dick. In short, by most accounts on this sub, I am in a good position. However, between January 2017 and when I graduate in May 2018, I am at a loss for what the most fruitful thing to focus on is.
As a rather risk averse individual, going for gold with my own startup is not in the near horizon, nor is grinding away in academia for pennies.
This leaves me with the options of:
0) Graduating sooner
1) Trying to climb up the prestige ladder and work at a hedge fund
2) Freelancing while in school and also publishing mobile and web apps on the app store
3) Developing a tangential skill set like perhaps design that may be useful later
5) Starting a sustainable business that I can convert into a side business post graduation.
6) Something else?
Option one, I am against because next year will be my last chance at being a college kid. Option two, seems rather crass and well lifeless. The other options, I am unsure.
Definitely, I am thankful to be in this position. However, my biggest fear right now, is that I will look back two years from now, and shudder at how narrow minded I was.
For those who have been in similar positions, do you have any suggestions for how I should proceed next. <comment><AUTHOR> Curious what you _want_ to do?

By which I mean none of the options have much of anything to do with Computer Science...the closest is building apps. It's also the second most concrete after graduating sooner.

<comment> intern-forever Hmm... Interesting observation.

Honestly, a little unsure what I want to do next. Up until now, there has been a clear agenda of 1) get to college -> 2) do well in college -> 3) get experience so you can get good job.

My professional goal after graduation is to operate a side business while I working full time. It seems that college is the best time to foster that. However, somewhat unsure how to broach that.</comment></comment>


The Necessity of Musical Hallucinations (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/77/underworlds/the-necessity-of-musical-hallucinations-rp <comment><USER2> When I got hi as a teenager I'd hallucinate the most intricate music you could imagine but with no way to "record" it. Would be fascinating if we one day had the means to tap into visual and audible hallucinations (perceptions) in the brain.

<comment><USER3> There is a Github somewhere that recorded EEG of people listening to simple piano melodies, I'll see if I can find it.

Edit: I found some things!

1\. A paper: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541010/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541010/)

2\. A list of datasets: [https://github.com/ismir/mir- datasets](https://github.com/ismir/mir-datasets)</comment></comment>


Why 99.997% Of Entrepreneurs May Want To Postpone Or Avoid VC - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/dileeprao/2013/07/29/why-99-997-of-entrepreneurs-may-want-to-postpone-or-avoid-vc-even-if-you-can-get-it/ <comment><USER2> Successfully raising capital is pretty much always seen as a win - a group of professionals have examined you, your team, and your idea and decided that it's worthwhile risking a sum of money backing you. That gives you a runway to build a userbase without needing to worry about being profitable. In some cases it means you can actually build something that you couldn't build without the money. Capital certainly gives you time to focus and build faster.

The problem though, is that capital is also a shield against the reality of building a _business_. It saves you from talking to potential customers for a while. You can kid yourself that you're "working on the product", doing the fun stuff like writing code instead of the hard stuff like selling. Many, many tech entrepreneurs conflate "building a product" and "building a business". Making the most amazing product in the world is pointless if you can't market it. If you bootstrap or borrow then you have no choice but to get out there and find real, paying customers because otherwise you're screwed so much earlier. That changes your focus in a very good way.

It surprises me that investors put money into teams of hugely technical people who can't sell the amazing tech they can build and yet don't insist that they expand the team to bring in people who _can_ sell right at the start. It's often almost an afterthought, something that can happen later once the product is "finished". Raising capital _never_ means you won't need to do sales and marketing. Every successful business has to. The earlier the sales team is in place and having input into the business the better.

<comment><USER3> There's a flip side to this: if you bootstrap an actually working business in a new industry and are "only" doubling each year, you run the risk of that industry getting noticed by VC who may lavish hundreds of millions on creating new competitors to pursue market share in that new industry. Your environment will get very tough very fast if you can't ride that out.

The result is race-to-the-bottom pricing as the "sales" teams "right at the start" that you're talking about are forced to sell unproven or worse non- existant technologies, promising 3 - 6 month take on times that turn out to be 18 months.

In the meantime, an established bootstrapped business trying to charge a working price for real delivery has trouble educating new early adopters in the industry why the promises of these well funded sales teams are unrealistic and why the pricing from these well funded startups is unsustainable. It's even harder once the industry matures a little and the well funded newcos actually can deliver at least some of what the customer needs. At that point it's frankly in customers' interests to be subsidized by the seller's VC money as long as the customer can handle the transition costs when their providers implode or are acquired out from under them.

Put another way, even if your goal is to build a solid working business, if your industry is new enough and big enough, you too need to pursue funding as a _defensive strategy_ so you too can subsidize new client market share just to keep up when new money piles into your vertical. Ideally you need to get that funding _before_ you have enough merely organic growth track record under your belt that VC won't believe you'd know how to execute a hockey stick growth curve with their money.

That said, taking VC money doesn't mean you have to climb on the "go big till you exit or die" train. You can operate a profitable business based on fundamentals, as long as you keep brutally honest track of what your business would look like if you have to turn off the pursuit of market share spigot. Make sure the resources you're using for growth are flexible commitments you can unwind if you have to shift back to self-funded operations, and make sure you have a base of solid loyal customers sufficiently profitable to cover any financing carry costs while still growing organically.

<comment><USER4> So.. take VC money so that it doesn't go to potential weak competitors, who will just add noise and uncertainty to the market?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From reading the article I don't imagine that the author has started or has the desire to start a company.

> If you have a guarantee that you will become a home run...

That right there sums it up.

On a side note, I think there's a huge gap between a VC company and a bootstrapped company. I believe most entrepreneurs, including those who get VC money, aren't looking to hit eBay sized home runs. I think many just want to build a successful business.

Their options? Bootstrap or raise VC. Raising VC sounds like an easier road and has all the glitz and glamour. As a result, many entrepreneurs go that route, few get it and most abandon their idea altogether.

Now the entrepreneur is stuck in an odd position of having to pitch and behave as if they're "changing the world".

There's no solution to the problem as far as I know but it's really a lose lose situation. It's too bad because there's a lot of value that disappears in the process because no financing model exists/works for the moderately successful startup.

<comment><USER6> > It's too bad because there's a lot of value that > disappears in the process > because no financing model > exists/works for the moderately successful > startup.

I disagree: I think Angel funding, coupled with a "bootstrap-hustle-your-arse- off" plan can mean that moderate success makes everyone involved a decent chunk of change.

While some people use "Lifestyle business" derogatorily, personally it's exactly what I'm aiming for with my new business. A few mil in revenue each year, costs and personnel low, and I'll be a happy camper, working on what I want to work on :)

<comment><USER5> I agree with you but it's difficult to sell that type of business to angels from my experience. No exit. No money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Right then. I'll just go and build a business without any capital. Maybe my fairy godmother will just handle salaries and expenses.

What's the alternative? Funding solves the problem of "entrepreneur needs money to build business". You can't just dump on VC without offering some alternative way to solve that problem.

It's possible that bootstrapping is best, but he doesn't even bother to make that argument.

<comment><USER8> After seed capital and before 1st round of VC you will already make some sales. Maybe there is a way to increase sales and cover the salaries and expenses from the sales... If you can do this, this may be better than taking the VC...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is an interesting dynamic going on with YC/Angelpad/other incubators or startups 'in the know' that makes some of these things not apply. The kind of founders that are building tech companies are technically capable and they do not need to hire anyone nor need much capital other than initial living expenses. So there isn't as much pressure to raise money as others might expect -- there aren't salaries to pay, and your mindset is different with regard to expenses and things you're willing to try to do to get users.

When we'd started Sensor Tower, we moved to the San Mateo and worked day and night to build out the product, living for cheap on Barilla spaghetti. My co- founder promised to do 20 pushups per each paying customer, our first trial sign up was followed by a hectic phone call "omg!" and literal hopping in the air in excitement. A couple of months later, our attitude slowly changed, and after raising we didn't even bask at Safeway delivery or buying a couch. We still sleep on mattresses without frames, though.

Another thing about raising money is in most cases, when you do it right, you're not giving away your company to the VCs -- you're giving something like 10% away. That, at least, is the advantage of going through YC/Angelpad/etc, you aren't a typical startup when raising, you have the option to draw on the alumni and connections, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> Where does this "you only get one great idea" meme come from? Generating "great ideas" is a skill, and one that can be trained just like any other.

<comment><USER11> Yes, this is what bothered me most about the article. I see ideas just like jokes that a comedian or writer comes up with. Writers will all tell you they keep a notebook of ideas, meaning they're constantly capturing every moment they think they can fit in a standup routine or movie or whatever. I do the same as a computer programmer. Every time I think of an idea for an app or business, I note it, and in doing so I've developed essentially a background process in my brain that's always seeing if my sensory inputs have any good business ideas. I have a long list now and when I want to make something I literally just sort the list. And much like a comedian, I have no problem telling people my ideas, because I have so many of them I'm at the point it's depressing to think that I'll never live long enough to build them all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> TLDR: Lots of businesses don't succeed in venture and if you are of the 1-2% of businesses that receives funding and doesn't succeed than you should have postponed/avoided VC.

Bad logic and even worse advice.

<comment><USER13> Only 1-2% of businesses that receive VC are failures? Are you sure that's what you mean?

<comment><USER14> I think he means if you are in the 1-2% of businesses that receive VC funding and after receiving funding you go on to fail...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> VC == venture capitals</comment>


The Demography of Napping - <AUTHOR> http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/737/americans-napping-habits#pewresearch-jump

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting to see the backwards bending supply curve of labor in effect. The poor nap, the middle class do not, and the rich do.</comment>


Ideas that Have Harmed Mankind (1946) - <AUTHOR> http://www.panarchy.org/russell/ideas.1946.html <comment><USER2> > In public, as in private life, the important thing is tolerance and > kindliness, without the presumption of a superhuman ability to read the > future.

Wise advice in any age, and perhaps of particular value in ours.

<comment><USER3> It is not always wise advice. ("Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb." \- Dark Helmet)

In an iterated prisoner's dilemma [1] where both players know the number of rounds that will be played, the optimal strategy is to always defect. When the number of rounds is unknown to both players, a good strategy was empirically shown to be "tit for tat" [2] - if your opponent is cooperating, then you cooperate too, otherwise you continue to defect as long as they do, and only resume cooperation after they resume playing nice.

Obviously game theoretic models are just models, but they can be useful and illuminating.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner.27s_dilemma)

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

<comment><USER2> Perhaps Russell might have been wise to toss in something about not being overly literal, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a little depressing to read how many harmful ideas he considered "almost died out" or even "officially died out" that still plague our society to this day, 70 years later.

<comment><USER5> Hey, look at the bright side. If you think in millenia, it wasn't too long ago that people had to fear that they were killed for outrageous ideas like that the planetary system could be heliocentric or that there are irrational numbers.

<comment><USER6> Giordano Bruno was the person supposedly burned to death for heliocentrist views, in reality, that was more to do with his religious beliefs (pantheism, rejection of the Christian trinity, etc) than his views on how the stars are lined up.

That one was easy to find on Google, but I'm unable to find an identity of any person who was burned at the stake for their views on mathematics. It's a common theme, but not one of the links on the first few pages were able to point to anything in specific (just lots of posts like this one that repeat the claim)

Not that this absolves the early church of ideologically based murder or makes their actions less heinous, but in the interests of accuracy...

<comment><USER5> I applaud your intellectual rigour. You are right, it is not confirmed if someone really got murdered over irrational numbers (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus) ). That is why I changed my comment right after I wrote it, to "fear that they were killed" instead of "have been killed". Let us not turn legends into facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was expecting a discussion of harmful technologies. Instead, he essentially says "rationalization considered harmful". Which is not too controversial.

But his model of humanity is interesting. He seems to think of humans as harboring dark passions that are just itching to be rationalized. Despite Russell's atheism, I can't help but wonder if the doctrine of total depravity [1] hasn't rubbed off on him. Or if we are seeing evidence of the typical mind fallacy [2].

But I also can't help but wonder that maybe he's just better at introspecting than I am. And that maybe my model of humanity should be a little more depraved.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_depravity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_depravity) [2] [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Typical_mind_fallacy](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Typical_mind_fallacy)

</comment><comment><USER8> While this was just an anecdote, it caught me off guard:

> if you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely > to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to begin > again as a 'new boy' in another.

The tone suggests that old people have "had enough" of this disappointing world, but I'll suggest a different view.

Assuming this candid survey was conducted amongst R.Bertrand's philosophical and possibly atheistic cohorts, they would give that answer because a philosophical person makes it their duty to learn how to live well and internalize their goals.

Contrast this to someone who never bothered to learn how to live well, or believes God will decide whether or not they lived well. This may create a desire for another chance or more time to figure it out and get it right.

Coincidentally I once asked this exact question to someone who had experienced profound hardship (e.g., civil war, mutilation, death of child, total loss, abuse, political persecution, etc). That elderly person made it clear that they would very much want to be young again.

It is regretful that Bertrand would make such a broad and questionable generalization in such a depressing context.

<comment><USER9> >> if you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to begin again as a 'new boy' in another.

> The tone suggests that old people have "had enough" of this disappointing > world, but I'll suggest a different view.

I read it differently - not that the older person has had enough, but rather that they count their experience so valuable that they don't want to start again without it. At the age of 27, I definitely don't want to relive the trauma I went through in my teens and early twenties as I learned to navigate relationships and look after my wellbeing. I'd love to have a young body forever, but that experience is worth a lot.

<comment><USER10> I have a similar position re: youth traumas, plus another angle. I love being a sysadmin, but at 43 it took a long time to get here - I started out doing neuroscience, worked as a neuroscientist for a while, went to work support at a related equipment supplier, moved into testing, and eventually ended up as sysadmin a few jobs down the road.

If I had started out my career in the tech world, I would have had a more enjoyable career path and a much bigger bank balance, but I also wouldn't have my well-rounded experiences. I like that I started out in biology, and I see a pragmatism about life in biologists that I don't see anywhere else (and particularly not in tech). In short, I don't know who I'd be if I started over afresh, and I genuinely don't know whether I'd be better or worse off (or even value the same things)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Russell comes across, here as in most places, as ignorant about what religious people believe. Anyone looking for a more balanced take should read Chesterton's Orthodoxy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Many of the ideas here, especially the ideas of moving past nationalism and that prosperity for all is better than prosperity for the few, are still controversial today. The tribe mentality, in regards to what the media portrays especially, has grown. Conservatives vs liberals, minorities vs the white patriarchy, Silicon Valley vs the rest of the world. We have just evolved and shifted the divisions, but the core mentality has not changed.

</comment><comment><USER13> there are no bad ideas. even this one.

</comment><comment><USER14> Bertrand Russell is a particularly vicious specimen.

<comment><USER15> Really? How so? And of what?

<comment><USER14> Malignant 'rationalism', the kind that murdered millions of people, starting with the French revolution and continuing with the Soviet one.

<comment><USER16> People (particularly religious zealots) like to _claim_ that the French and Soviet revolutions were "rational" but they ignore:

1) The villain of the French Revolution, Robespierre, wasn't a rational atheist but in fact founded his own pseudo-Christian religion "The Cult of of the Supreme Being" and actually had actual French atheists executed.

2) Stalin, who was responsible for most of the Soviet deaths actually went to seminary and trained to be a priest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please, we aren't rational. The ideas just provide a narrative wrapper for our stew of inclinations. Fine philosophies will not improve things.

My bet is on drugs, art and meditation.

<comment><USER18> How about the idea that one should be kind and treat all people with dignity?

<comment><USER19> Sounds great, but in practice people will take advantage of you; e.g., if you walk alone in the street at night in a big city and a stranger asks to use your mobile phone, you'd have to be particularly naive to say yes.

<comment><USER18> Saying yes in that case wouldn't be required. I'd say, sorry, I can't help you, then walk on. In my case, with those sorts of requests, I often say, sorry, I have to follow a rule about that, which is true. I have a personal code of conduct that forbids my satisfying requests like that.

<comment><USER19> Sure but that illustrates my point: applying as much kindness as possible is not what people actually strive for nor would it be a solution. Preventing being taken advantage of takes priority.

<comment><USER18> _Sure but that illustrates my point: applying as much kindness as possible is not what people actually strive for nor would it be a solution. Preventing being taken advantage of takes priority._

Look at my post: I only say you should treat people with kindness. _You_ are saying some nonsense about _" applying as much kindness as possible."_ Is it a habit you have of putting words into another's mouth. This is a Strawman, either intentional or unintentional. It's generally possible to be kind while also protecting yourself. It's only in very extreme circumstances where it's not. Calm, speaking interactions generally do not fall into this category.

<comment><USER19> I don't see such a large difference between your wording and mine; "should" implies making some kind of best effort at doing something where possible. But regardless, where we differ is that I think that people are generally neutral or indifferent instead of kind. I don't believe this can be radically changed in a way that works out, that would be Utopian thinking. I gave you a very common example where being kind is not advisable, yet you claim this happens only in very extreme circumstances. I'm curious how you arrived at such a conviction.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Time Travel Debugging Is Now Available in WinDbg Preview - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windbg/2017/09/25/time-travel-debugging-in-windbg-preview/ <comment><AUTHOR> Was with Microsoft for 6 years and ever since I left Microsoft,this is something I felt missed.This tool was available inside Microsoft was for long time ,used for very hard to track bugs or issues in almost any technology Microsoft produces.I have used time travel debugging to debug asp.Net issues a lot.Having it publicly available is simply awesome. Some things you can do 1\. Record trace from any machine where the issue is happening. 2\. Now take this trace to your machine where symbols and source code is aligned and start debugging 3\. While debugging you can debug back and forth easily and get stacktrace,get local variables,parameters etc. 4.You can put break point if a particular variable is read/write. 5.Use all the windbg extension commands like sos,psscor etc.

It does produce large trace files while recording so running it for long time was not advisable. However it had a circular trace feature where you can keep it running with a buffer size if the issue is intermittent. Also debugging requires bit of Assembly level knowledge</comment>


Ron Paul's Surprisingly Lucid Solution to the Debt Ceiling Impasse - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/91224/ron-paul-debt-ceiling-federal-reserve

<comment><USER2> I would agree with the commenter linjoco on the site:

 _> This can't work for the simple reason that most of the Fed's holdings of Treasury securities are pledged to secure its note issues. If you look at one of the bills in your wallet, you'll notice it says "Federal Reserve Note." The face value of each of these notes is a liability of the issuing Reserve Bank, which by law must be fully collateralized by Bank assets. According tho the Fed's annual report, at the end of 2010 the 12 Federal Reserve Banks together held $1.066 trillion in Treasury securities, of which $925 billion was pledged to secure their note issues. So for the Fed to return these securities to the Treasury for cancellation would require the Fed to recall 98% of the U.S. currency in circulation.

Of course, Congress could amend the Federal Reserve Act to remove the collatel requirement, turning Federal Reserve notes into unsecured liabilities, but then you run into a different problem. Taking a trillion dollars off the asset side of the Reserve Banks' collective balance sheet would require a corresponding debit to the other side. Their biggest liability is deposits (i.e., reserves held at the Fed by the nation's banks, $968 billion), followed closely by Federal Reserve notes in circulation ($941 billion), then funds held for the U.S. Treasury ($239 billion); you couldn't reduce any of these liabilities. That means the Fed would have to take a charge against capital, but the Reserve Banks collectively have only $53 billion in capital, so writing off their Treasury holdings would put them over a trillion dollars in the hole.

What do you think of an insolvent central bank? Me neither. Paul, of course, is a crackpot and may actually want to have to Fed declared insolvent as a way of getting rid of it, but that doesn't mean that we should buy his schemes._

</comment><comment><USER3> Can we stop posting anything by Ron Paul? The guy is a known lunatic, Ayn Rand objectionist, and as libertarian as they come... who wants to be the president of the country.

He would make GWB's presidency look like heaven. Anything Ron says is not news, and should not be taken seriously.</comment>


Why Kim Jong-Un would not be irrational to use a nuclear bomb first - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-kim-jong-un-wouldnt-be-irrational-to-use-a-nuclear-bomb-first/2017/09/08/a9d36ca4-934f-11e7-aace-04b862b2b3f3_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory <comment><USER2> I'm not totally convinced that mutual deference is sensible but this doesn't make _any_ sense, unless I'm missing something:

 _Pyongyang's conventional inferiority requires it to degrade the United States' ability to sustain the attack against it. This means it essentially has no option but to use nuclear weapons first against targets such as Andersen Air Force Base in Guam…_

Pyongyang can't affect the US' ability to respond in any meaningful way. Even if Guam sinks into the sea, there's still South Korea, Japan, ICBs & the US Navy. On top of that, there's no guarantee that North Korea could even hit Guam without getting intercepted, and trying but failing would certainly means a massive counterattack.

I think the big new issues with a Nuclear North Korea is probably proliferation related. North Korea has a tiny economy with exports of just 4-5bn, less than a small US city. Selling an occasional bomb could triple their exports bring in foreign currency, which they are starving for. Even if they got caught, would the US respond to a nuclear armed country?

<comment><USER3> The article explicitly stated how North Korea might feel free to hit or try to hit places like Guam, S.K. and Japan without fear of retaliation because the author guesses the average American would be OK with losing Tokyo and Seoul but not S.F.

<comment><USER4> I... I live in Tokyo.

<comment><USER5> You are not an "average American". But really, it doesn't matter what the average American thinks; it's about the strategic calculus of showing that Japan and South Korea are under US protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In January 1992[1], long after the Cuba Crisis, Robert S. McNamara attended a meeting with Castro. He asked Castro: 1) Did you know the warheads were there? 2) Would you have recommended to Chruschtschow to use the in the face of an US American attack? 3) If he had used them, what would have happened to Cuba?

His response: 1) I knew they were there. 2) I would not have recommended to Cruschtschow, I _did_ recommend to use them. 3) What would have happened to Cuba? We would have been totally destroyed!

I think this story should be kept in mind when trying to predict behavior, esp. when the stakes are this high.

[1] Retold by Robert S. McNamara in "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara": [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/)

<comment><USER7> We've been a few moments away from world destruction a few times. This was of course one of the biggest but so was that one malfunction when the Soviets believed we had launched a nuclear strike and ordered the same but the soldier declined to do so. Turned out it was an error. Many don't realize just how precarious a world is with ICBM technology. If they did I don't think they would hesitate for 1 minute to destroy NK years ago before they were first able to create mid range missles

<comment><USER8> It was after the fall of the USSR; AKA How did a Canadian rocket paid for by NASA, launched by Norwegian scientists almost doomed the world: [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/how-boris-saved- the-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/how-boris-saved-the- kremlin-1571317.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know.. maybe.

Russia is said to be currently supplying arms to the taliban. Their goal there (to disrupt american efforts) would be the same as in NK. And China is NKs ally today, and has said they would assist if the US restarted the war (except if NK uses nuclear weapons). Both helped them during the Korean war. Both share a border with NK, making it easy for them to do so again. And both have been clear they don't want a pro-american state at their border (in Russia's case, on their western border).

If war breaks out, it's very likely it'll be NK+China+Russia again (unless there's a very clear wrong by NK). In other words, NK will likely have more military options than the article admits once a war breaks out.

But if NK uses nuclear weapons, that may change. Would China and Russia continue to back someone who used them? That's the question, and it's not a given that they would.

<comment><USER10> > Russia is said to be currently supplying arms to the taliban. Their goal > there (to disrupt american efforts) would be the same as in NK.

And of course, the original supplier of arms to the people who formed the Taliban was the United States. The goal for the US was to arm and empower the Islamic extremists who had launched a jihad against the secular Afghan government, and to disrupt Russian efforts to support it.

<comment><USER11> The US did not arm the Taliban; the people who formed it were too young to fight in the Afghan war against the Soviets.

<comment><USER12> Some of the Mujahideen armed by the US eventually joined the Taliban, but only after the Taliban became the main power in Afghanistan.

But large parts of the Mujahideen were actually part of the Northern Alliance that fought against the Taliban until liberation in 2002.

The CIA reactivated many of the same contacts from the Soviet war in 2001 to help them against the Taliban.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Click bait title, article is not actually suggesting Kim Jong-Un will instigate nuclear warfare (or would be rational if he chose to do so), even though the title comes across that way.

The article specifically talks about retaliation against military attacks by the US i.e. the article never suggests it would be rational to fire a nuke off as a "first" move, but rather simply fire them before the US does. The title is quite unclear in that regard.

<comment><USER14> _Click bait title, article is not actually suggesting Kim Jong-Un will instigate nuclear warfare_

Actually it does:

 _This scenario to stave off an invasion with a limited nuclear attack on a U.S. military target is not irrational, although it is clearly risky and terrifyingly tragic. One wrinkle is that North Korea's arsenal is currently small and vulnerable, and U.S. military strategy, reiterated by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, is to try to find and destroy all of Kim's nuclear systems in the event of a war. That gives Kim an incentive to go first, go early and go massively if he is not confident about surviving a U.S. attempt at disarming him. If Kim thinks we are coming after him or his forces, he cannot afford to be wrong and he cannot afford to launch second._

That last sentence is key, so if you're skimming this comment, go back and read it.

To summarize: The basic thesis is that, if Kim believes an attack is coming (not that it has started, that it is simply _coming_ ), his rational choice is to use nuclear arms on bases in the region and thus force the US to the negotiating table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The missile NK recently fired over Japan recently was launched at 5:58 AM. At 6:02 AM the Japanese government sent a text alert. At 6:12 it landed in the ocean. We know about NK missiles launches very quickly after they are fired. I wouldn't be surprised if we know about them before they're fired. This suggests to me that these missiles can be intercepted.

I don't know what kinds of interception technology is deployed in the area, but I would guess there is some and I would also guess that a (hypothetical) NK ICBM would not have significant countermeasures.

I think the real question here is what NK/Kim's aims are. When Iran was actively developing a nuclear capability, it seemed clear that their goal was to get as close to a weapon as possible without actually finishing a weapon. The closer they were, the more bargaining power they had in terms of getting the US/UN to lift sanctions.

With NK, I'm less clear about strategy. In the past, it seemed like NK actions had the aim of extorting aid money from the US/allies. That may still be the case. Here's a chart showing US humanitarian aid to NK since 2001: [https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/PRK](https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/PRK)

<comment><USER9> It takes 30-40 minutes for an NK icbm to reach the US. About 20 minutes to guam.

But the US missile defense has never seen combat.. only tests. They had 10 successful tests (the last 10) out of 18. But those are planned ahead of time (with trajectories already mapped out), and the missiles don't have countermeasures (which they would in a real conflict). So there's a big question about whether the system will work at all. I don't think anyone is eager to find out.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles- usa-d...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-usa- defense/lack-of-real-world-testing-raises-doubts-on-u-s-missile-defenses- idUSKBN1AP2R3)

<comment><USER16> Of course, there are also questions about how well NK missiles can do countermeasures...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> After thinking about the situation I always fall back on the realization that China continues to support them. Imagine if they used nukes to attack the US bases in the region. China steps in to stop them and takes the islands that were formerly US held. It's all a major incident that can be blamed on N.Korea, but China gain territory and less US military presence in the region. Plausible?

<comment><USER18> Not plausible at all. If China took Guam, the United States Military would kick the crap out of China from one end of the Pacific to the other. Within 60 days, China would completely defeated on the oceans and in the air.

Any resulting peace treaty would be of China accepting Taiwan independence, dropping all support for North Korea and giving all ambitions to the South China sea. China has a lot to lose if it went to war against the United States.

<comment><USER19> I the US military actually _that_ much more powerful than China's? I'm asking honestly, I don't know much about this stuff.

<comment><USER5> Yes. China has more manpower, but that's about their only advantage. Navy, Air Force, the US dominates. And as everyone knows, you never get involved in a land war in Asia...

<comment><USER18> This.

I will add, the US military may not be the largest in the world by manpower, but it is the best equipped, best trained and has a world wide network of allies and military bases. Certain parts of the US military are the largest, for example, the US Air Force is the largest and best equipped air force in the world. The second largest is the US Navy.

The only thing China has going for it is that it is not only geographically large, but also has a huge population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tangent, but I've always wondered what the cost of dropping rice (or similar) into country to disrupt it is.

I'd guess that you can drop enough rice to feed the population of NK for around $1-2bil/mo. The cost of the Iraq war was around $8-10bil/mo. So you're talking about 10-25% of the cost of a war effort. (I'd guess towards the higher side.)

But! There's a lot of goodwill to be earned by dropping a steady supply of food across the country during the conflict. At the end of the day, starving people usually care more about food than kings. (Also, for marginally more you can include other kinds of supplies.)

<comment><USER21> The regime will simply say the rice is a tribute that the enemy is paying. Or that is is poisoned, etc.

<comment><USER20> I don't know if anyone is still watching this, but:

It's kind of hard to hide that there's also bombs being dropped, so it doesn't seem like claiming it's tribute would be effective. Claiming that it's poisoned might be viable -- but with enough starving people, someone is going to try it, and some number are going to decide (when it doesn't kill that person, because it isn't poison) that a slow poison is better than fast starvation.

It just seems that NK (and a number of other places) keep large segments of the population in near starvation and/or slavery, and suddenly throwing surplus food across the _whole_ country does a lot to disrupt the economics of that. How many people are putting up with NK bullshit because it's the only way to survive?

I'm not saying "rice not bombs", I'm saying "25% less bombs, 100% more rice" is probably an effective trade-off in warfare, even in wealthy areas, because many citizens aren't prepared for serious, sustained armed conflicts and you save yourself a lot of trouble if the populace doesn't hate you for generations when the bombing stops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is complete and utter media hype. The most that will happen is we will continue sanctions, and NK will develop a nuclear deterrent. They will not actually use it to bomb anyone, but just so they can be safe in the knowledge they will not get invaded because of said deterrent. Like any other country with nukes (there is a lot of us).

I do not support their regime, but I also do not support everyone ganging up on them and deciding that military invasion and mass slaughter is somehow the solution. Like with any country, change is slow and has to come from within.

<comment><USER23> It could come quickly and from without if the rest of the world (eg, China) cut off oil supplies. Regime would be gone in a matter of years.

<comment><USER24> If you were leading NK, and your options were either 1) step down and probably get put on trial and die in prison for warcrimes, or 2) have an insufficient army and be hanged or die in a sewerpipe like Hussein or Gaddafi, or 3) have a really good army that will allow you to conquer enough farmland and natural resources to stave off 1 and 2, and possibly make any attempt to put you back in your box a phyric victory, which would you choose?

<comment><USER25> Gaddafi prolly wished he died in a sewer pipe when he was dying. Do not look it up.

<comment><USER24> "Sewer pipe" was the story that got in the news I saw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In the 1980s I took some classes at MIT on strategic nuclear doctrine and related subjects. Even then it seemed a bit irrelevant, and the more I learned, the more so. It is disturbing to be paging back all that game theory bullshit 35 years later.

(At that point MIT was still heavily into public policy rather than entrepreneurship. Though I am far, far from libertarian, that orientation also seemed outdated at the time).

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm perplexed by the logic here. If NK initiated a preemptive strike on local bases, there wouldn't be an opportunity for a second wave of attacks against the US mainland. The United States would retaliate so savagely that there wouldn't be any infrastructure for people to initiate a second strike with.

<comment><USER14> _I 'm perplexed by the logic here_

I'm perplexed that you're perplexed. The article does a good job of laying out their argument. In short: The claim is that Kim believes the US _wouldn 't_ "retaliate so savagely" because the US wouldn't be willing to risk losing a major populated area to a successful ICBM strike.

So preemptive nuclear strikes on local bases make sense to degrade the US's ability to stage a conventional invasion, while acting as a deterrent by threatening a strike on the domestic US.

You can choose to believe or not believe that argument (it depends on your measure of risk in that scenario), but the logic is clear and reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reading this makes me relieved that Nazi Germany did not obtain nuclear weapons - else a regime change ousting Hitler might not have happened at all, and it would've been free to carry on its agenda with less fear of Allied intervention.

<comment><USER13> I'm not so sure about that. Nazi Germany invaded many neighbouring countries. You can bet that if North Korea invades South Korea the presence of nuclear arsenal won't cause the UN to simply ignore their actions.

<comment><USER3> Every nuclear power since WWII has had the ability to invade many countries with minimal fear of retaliation.. Of course, lots of fingers point to the U.S., but China and Russia have invaded places as well.

The article basically postulates that any state with nuclear weapons guarantees its basic territorial integrity. That means sure, we might have landed in Normandy and secured France and the USSR might've secured Poland, but the German heartland would've been a no-go for the Allies for fear of a nuke to Paris or London, and a safe-zone for Hitler and his agenda for Jews, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If the US didn't act massively and immediately to any strikes to our close allies, our alliances would be rendered meaningless.

There would not be time for public debate. The US would respond within minutes of a move like that.

</comment><comment><USER29> archive to bypass adblock wall [http://web.archive.org/web/20170908173242/https://www.washin...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170908173242/https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why- kim-jong-un-wouldnt-be-irrational-to-use-a-nuclear-bomb- first/2017/09/08/a9d36ca4-934f-11e7-aace-04b862b2b3f3_story.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> So, his trading partners and the UN wouldn't tighten sanctions after that? Seems like even humanitarian aid would be questioned.

<comment><USER31> Of course it would. But their argument is that he might end up in a position where it may seem to him that there is no alternative if he wants to secure his own survival.

Consider Iraq. Hussein apparently believed the West would eventually believe him when he said he had no weapons of mass destruction. Instead he was killed.

Why would any future dictator facing escalation from the west play along? Playing along now has a proven risk of getting you killed.

The argument then is that to someone like Kim Jong-Un it may feel like the only alternative is to be so unhinged and so willing to escalate that the price of taking him out is too great for anyone to want to take it.

Of course it's a tricky line - overplay your hand and you seem so unhinged that nobody can afford to let you live.

<comment><USER11> Minor correction: Saddam Hussein did not "play along", he pursued a policy of nuclear ambiguity. The resulting ambiguity is what caused his regime to get kicked over.

Libya's Gaddafi did play along though, and still got killed by the US anyway, so the analysis is still correct even though the example illustrating it is wrong.

<comment><USER32> This thread seems a bit naive to me. The UK & US knew Iraq didn't have WMDs, but wanted to invade anyway. The intelligence that the invasion was based on was risible.

If you look at Bush's approval ratings, you can see the incentive he had to fight his reelection campaign in the context of a military response to 9/11\. That was the reason for the invasion.

The West didn't care about the facts of his having WMD or not.

Now, we're paying the price of a capricious attitude to regime change in other countries: nothing that can be said will persuade NK that it isn't in existential danger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Every year, the IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by 1.5 points.

</comment><comment><USER34> The problem with this assumptions is that you have only one shot.

Edit: when I said one shot I was referring to being right or wrong about if you would be attacked or not. I was not referring to nuclear missile shots.

<comment><USER11> No, actually the article clearly assumes that North Korea would have multiple shots, but not enough to eliminate the US. The strategy for them would be to hit Guam first to degrade American conventional war capability and then explicity force a choice of "we can stop now, or you can lose San Francisco."

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?

</comment><comment><USER36> IMHO: On North Korea (NK), Trump is building rings and layers of responses and forces, at first to defend the US, South Korea (SK), and Japan and then to get rid of Kim and his military equipment, missile program, and nuke program. So, Trump's rings and layers are first defensive and then offensive.

The urgent purpose of the defensive parts are to deter Kim from shooting at the US, SK, Japan, Guam, Australia, England, .... Here the message is clear: If Kim explodes a nuke, the US will respond so that Kim's first nuke will he his last one.

For the defensive parts, he has been pursuing UN sanctions and lining up other countries against NK. He has positioned off the coasts of NK a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, several smaller ships, an attack submarine (in case Kim does something hostile with a submarine), and an Ohio-class missile firing submarine (SSBN) (in case Kim explodes a nuke). Apparently the British are sending a ship with some Mach 3 missiles maybe able to destroy an ICBM during launch or boost phase. Trump has positioned USAF planes at least in Guam and maybe in other west Pacific bases and held joint exercises with SK. He has authorized SK and Japan to buy some more advanced US weapons and has authorized SK to have more throw weight on their missiles (somehow the US retains some legal rights, soon to end, over SK from the Korean War). SK has been deploying US THAAD anti-missile systems. The US has been testing its anti-ballistic (ABM) systems, the ones designed to intercept a warhead during reentry.

Trump had a White House meeting on NK with Mattis and Dunford and likely also Kelly, McMaster, and others and then had Mattis, with Dunford, make a strong statement that, to translate, if NK exploded a nuke then the US would make that first nuke the last one, and for this the US has several options, some nuclear, some non-nuclear.

So, maybe for such largely defensive steps Trump's goal is to keep Kim from exploding a nuke right away.

So, there are geographical _rings_ from SK to Japan, Guam, and the US, e.g., short range defenses and long range defenses. And there are diplomatic _layers_ from SK, China, Russia, the UN, the US, other countries, etc.

For offense, Trump claims he talked with Xi and got him to say that he agreed that NK should not have nukes.

It looks like Trump has decided that NK will not have missiles or nukes. If Kim wants to give up missiles and nukes peacefully, then maybe that will be enough. Otherwise Trump will work to have the missiles and nukes destroyed, to have Kim removed from office, say, moved out of the country and/or killed, and to have the NK military equipment, e.g., rockets, artillery, guns, trucks, submarines, other ships, etc. destroyed.

The US Navy Seals have been training with some SK soldiers on how to take out someone, likely Kim, like the Seals took out UBL. Broadly it begins to look like the US and SK have decided that SK will do most of the fighting.

So, maybe a fight would go: (A) The Seal trained SK soldiers cross into NK and kill and/or capture Kim. (B) Enough of the NK leadership and military command and control will be captured or destroyed to stop NK from shooting missiles, artillery. (C) SK will launch some hyper accurate missiles at the NK missiles ready to be launched. (D) The SK army, backed from the air by the USAF and Navy, will invade NK, take over the government and missile and nuke infrastructure and destroy that infrastructure. (E) China has troops on the NK border to keep NK civilians from entering China. Russia may do something similar. (F) The SK army will destroy essentially all the NK military equipment, e.g., artillery. (G) SK will turn NK over to the UN and leave.

All the important steps will be over in just a few minutes or hours. Step (G) will take no more than some weeks.

Then Kim and his military, missiles, and nukes will be gone. The NK leadership in missiles and nukes will be gone. The US will never set foot in NK. There will be very few civilian deaths. Little or no radiation will be released.

All that is just a guess.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to wrap C++ for Python in 2019 - <AUTHOR> There seem to be MANY ways to to this: cython, swig, using Python.h directly, etc.<p>What is the easiest way to get a nice C++/Python development workflow going? <comment><USER2> I asked this question a few weeks ago to someone at a conference who uses both C++ and Python and if I remember correctly his recommendation was Pybind11

[https://pybind11.readthedocs.io/](https://pybind11.readthedocs.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat, hadn't heard about this. I'll check it out!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to manage expectations when inexperienced? - <AUTHOR> I am a math grad with reasonable coding skills and a nontrivial amount of CS education, but no real-world development experience. I've completed a few personal projects of various degrees of complexity, but that's it.
I might soon be getting a part-time/contract position as a full-stack developer. I would be working alone to build a small prototype of a moderately complex web app. I'm about 70% sure I can do it, but I'm not completely confident: it would be my very first paid programming job, after all.
My concern is that my prospective employer, who is an entrepreneur with no background in tech, may have unrealistic expectations of my abilities. I've been completely honest with her about my background, but with no experience, I feel like an impostor or a fraud.
What if the project turns out to be more complicated than either of us expect it to be, or I have overestimated my abilities, and I can't make any progress? Is it unethical to take on a contract job you're not 100% sure you can finish? Are these just completely normal anxieties that everybody has at some point?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! <comment><USER3> I think if you set expectations that you both will be learning together (about the tech) as you go and that there 100% will be some unknown roadblock you come across it might help.

Everyone feels like an imposter and that is a good thing compared to being over-confident and unaware that you are implementing things in a poor manner.

My advice would be to start small and follow agile principles as you go. You don't need formal SCRUM or other methodologies if you are the solo dev but you should build things in vertical stacks. By that I mean as an example: a feature is logging into the system, build that out so it is ready to ship. Sure you don't have other features at this point (its just an example) but you should have the UI, server-side handling of data and database parts all figured out to the point that you could ship it if you want.

It's like breaking a large math problem down into more manageable parts - <USER2> thing with developing the software. Small, shippable, testable parts.

Figure out your deployment process, this often isn't taught in CS and is more of an "ops" thing. This will help make it easy to ship new things into your environments AND to roll it back if things are messed up. It is liberating to know you can just type a couple commands and restore things - you feel more free to make mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Even if I don't like it much myself it could be good to estimate the tasks -- just to see where you fall with the results. If you're both learning you'll get a good grasp on how long things might take, and why. And while you're finishing single tasks you can re-evaluate the ones waiting in line -- accounting for what you have learned.</comment>


Ask HN: How and where do you find remote consulting jobs? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I am looking for extra income. My daytime job pays okay to survive for one person.  I have nearly 6 to 7 hours of free time on daily basis.  I tried doing a project and getting traction but I don't think entrepreneurship is for me for at least a year or two.
I have about a decade worth of experience in data analysis with sound knowledge of all recent technologies based on Hadoop ecosystem, SQL, Business Intelligence and Business Dev domain.
I am in US at the moment and looking for remote consulting/contract type of jobs from anywhere outside US.
Where do you find such jobs ? I am looking for more contract / consulting type which I can leave after a while and also work from home.
Thank you for your help. <comment><USER2> I recently became active on the following sites:

\- [https://weworkremotely.com](https://weworkremotely.com)

\- [https://www.upwork.com](https://www.upwork.com)

\- [https://remoteok.io](https://remoteok.io)

\- [https://angel.co](https://angel.co)

\- [https://www.ziptask.com](https://www.ziptask.com)

\- [http://www.toptal.com](http://www.toptal.com)

\- [https://gun.io](https://gun.io)

I've gained jobs through Upwork and another of these sites. Of course Upwork pays badly when you have no credits yet with the community. But I believe pay can be decent after completing several taks successfully.

Toptal is the hardest to get into, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have the best pay.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote- job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job) has a ton of useful links. job boards and companies that hire remotely included

</comment><comment><USER4> IMHO HN is more effective, watch out for the Whoishiring thread and be sure to apply like hell. I'm currently on a remote contract Gig which I got via HN a few months ago. Have also gotten one time jobs via HN's who is freelancing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Area301.com</comment>


What's happening with Secret? - <AUTHOR> https://gigaom.com/2014/12/05/whats-happening-with-secret/ <comment><USER2> Also, I think the perceived value of the application finally fell to the deserved zero. Who will "anonymously" share secrets through an application which doesn't uses Tor, asks for phone numbers and requires a Facebook login?

That's just a stupid tool for stupid kids do stupid things. They also got a lot of problems in Brazil due to schoolchildren using it for harassment -- Google and Apple received court orders to remove the application from their stores.

<comment><USER3> Most of the stuff I saw on the app hardly qualified as "secret" anyways. Maybe potentially embarrassing ("I really don't want to fly to see my family this Christmas") but other than that kerfuffle about the Google acquisition, few secrets.

Or maybe I just only had lame people on my feed. Either way I deleted the app a week after I installed it.

<comment><USER4> It failed to gain much traction here in Japan, apart from Brazilians posting pictures of butts and (visiting? expat?) gay guys endlessly posting about saunas in Shinjuku...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There just isn't a compelling enough reason to use ANOTHER social network. There is facebook, twitter, google+, instagram, snapchat, and to some extent reddit. There is only so much time people can attribute to this kind of social engagement.

While I personally have imagined the golden potential behind an anonymous social network (particularly when it comes to data mining; I mean imagine a world where Taylor Swift can't get a million likes because everybody attributes what she says to a hot girl). There is just too many social networks trying to compete for our time. This market is so over populated that at this point starting a new pizza franchise would probably make more economic sense.

While I find this ultimately depressing, this is just how things are. I only hope the engineers at secret don't make a bad mistake and waste that 35 million on a startup that won't overcome this bump in the road. I hope they decide to pivot and pursue an idea that leads their team and their investors to financial success.

That's just my two cents anyways.

<comment><USER6> >I personally have imagined the golden potential behind an anonymous social network (particularly when it comes to data mining [...])

See, that right there. That is why your anonymous social network isn't going to work or catch on. You're already openly declaring you're tracking your users and then planning on using their data in some fashion that they have no control over. You'll never get the early core adopters you'd need to verify the claims of anonymity, security/cryptography, and so on. Trying to involve money taints long-term roadmap direction and intentions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can understand why journalists love this app, but I can't understand anyone using it. I was stunned when it asked for a Facebook login.

Back at Apple there was an internal app called "RumorMonger" which was hilarious. The developer just wanted to experiment with gossip protocols. Of course, HR thought he deliberately intended to undermine company morale. It was my first exposure to bureaucracy.

[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RumorMonger](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RumorMonger)

</comment><comment><USER8> \- they split it into "friends" and "everything else" because as the service grew there was suddenly tons more boring and also hardcore gay content, and the app was so slow that it really wasn't convenient to scroll past it or skip it. I don't mind the gay content but as a non-gay person there was just a lot of it to sort through.

\- to this day it is still it or miss when I open the app on my iPhone. Takes a while to load and often shows old content

\- when you get notifications it's not clear whether someone hearted your comment or made a comment, the UX around this is poor

\- old secrets don't just die, so there is a constant reflux of stuff that should be forgotten just because someone discovers it and posts a lame comment

\- some people started spamming/trolling by posting obviously fake secrets

\- someone found a security hole that makes the app not actually anonymous. who's going to post anything really juicy when this exists...

</comment><comment><USER9> Honestly I stopped using Secret when I realized that I could probably be outed as the person telling the secret pretty easy. You only need like 7 friends on the app for it to tell you your friend posted something, so at that point finding who posted something is trivial.

<comment><USER10> Theoretically, you'd still have some plausible deniability, since it could be one of those people pretending to be you.

<comment><USER9> Maybe, but if it's something that sounds like you, or is a situation related to you, or even if a friend knows that out of all their friends you use secret the most, all these things can harm your privacy. Imma stick with 4chan for this one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Initial traction seemed to be punctuated by relatively high-value leaks from silicon valley, which earned it attention from SV media. More broadly, "leaks" trends towards cyberbullying. A perfect example of bubble economics, with the value of startups being largely based on how they feed the startup industry, not the economy as a whole.

I thought it was a bad sign that the founders pocketed $6M 6 months post- launch. [1]

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-founders- pocket-6-mill...](http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-founders- pocket-6-million-in-25-million-fundraise-2014-7)

</comment><comment><USER12> What they should have done was charge to reveal the author of the secret. That way they acknowledge that true anonymity is just an illusion and also curbs harassment, while at the same time generating revenue.

<comment><USER13> Ooh, social experiment as business model. I like it.

Although I'm pretty sure LinkedIn already stole that one.

<comment><USER14> Interesting experiment, but I can't think of an incentive for anyone to post interesting secrets when they know others can pay to reveal their identity.

<comment><USER15> Have some of the money paid to reveal them also paid to the person who is revealed perhaps?

<comment><USER14> Perhaps if the poster can choose the price, that could work, but I think it's more likely that that would just make no one interested in the secrets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Secret is one of those things that is fun in the first few weeks, and then it just becomes another app on your phone that you don't click on anymore. Bad press might have contributed to its decline, but fundamentally the idea isn't one that would have taken off. It needs to somehow provide more value to the end-user to justify spending one's time on the app.

</comment><comment><USER17> They named it for something it isn't. Kind of like "Vitamin Water."

<comment><USER18> ? Are there no vitamins in Vitamin Water?

<comment><USER19> > Wait—are there consumers who really think Vitaminwater contains actual > vitamins?

> Coca-Cola's legal team would say no. In court briefings, attorneys > representing the company claimed "no consumer could reasonably be misled > into thinking Vitaminwater was a healthy beverage."

[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-26/drink- decept...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-26/drink-deception- and-the-legal-war-on-vitaminwater)

<comment><USER20> There _are_ vitamins in vitaminwater.

The problem is, that doesn't make it a health drink. Stuff's loaded with sugar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Secret basically seems like a hackathon project, no wonder users are finding no value in it after a short stint.

<comment><USER22> Most startups these days are hackathon projects trying to gain funding. It's laughable half of them manage to become actual companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really disliked the negativity and I know many others who agreed and also deleted the app. It just wasn't worth it. I'm not at all surprised they are struggling.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't believe cracking down cyberbullying or harassment was the cause.

I think was a wrong formula packed by hype.

Yik Yak (which I adore) is still doing strong.

IMO, the main issue (as others reported) is that you start with your friends then friends of friends then popular then basically has not anymore sense to me because I don't know anymore anyone.

Remember Yik yak pretty much on the same market is doing really well and IIRC got recently another big amount of investments.

</comment><comment><USER25> Secret has an image problem. Pando Daily's article on Secret is titled "With bullying app Secret on life support, investors learn the risk of investing in assholes".

[http://pando.com/2014/12/06/with-bullying-app-secret-on- life...](http://pando.com/2014/12/06/with-bullying-app-secret-on-life-support- investors-learn-the-risk-of-investing-in-assholes/)

</comment><comment><USER26> So basically the only value of secret was as a tool to harass and intimidate.

<comment><USER27> It's one possibility but another is that it was ready to crater just like so many other apps that have a flash of popularity and then just as quickly fade.

Also did anyone note that the piece seemed to be written by a 12-year-old? "It looks like Secret will be majorly overhauling its product soon."

<comment><USER28> Yes. The use of the dovetail joint metaphor stood out particularly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> At the end of the article:

        In this market, a conscience may be bad for business.

If a conscience might be a liability in the market you are in you might want to reconsider the market you are in.

</comment><comment><USER30> The app is unbearably slow. I still use it, but it's unnecessarily frustrating. I'd attribute the decline in usage to it taking half a minute to refresh.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think the answer is "competition."

Secret is losing in the marketplace and its competitors—namely Whisper and Yik Yak—are winning.

</comment><comment><USER32> If Secret just rebranded with the name Trololo I'm sure downloads and usage would take off again.

<comment><USER33> The Mr. Trololo Song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oavMtUWDBTM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oavMtUWDBTM)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best hosted blog for coders? - <AUTHOR>

I really like stackoverflow post editing - it has live preview, it supports code snippets and such really well, and it has wiki-like versioning.<p>Are there any blogging services that have such a simple posting system?<p>(And I'm seriously not happy with posterous.  They are so not it for coders.) <comment><USER2> While it's not entirely hosted, I've been really happy with toto lately. I'm using it to run infovegan.com. It takes all of 10 seconds to set up, and posting is done through markdown and git. Optimized to host on heroku, which can handle you for free up to a point.

Here's a great link to get you started with toto:

<http://fadeyev.net/2010/05/10/getting-started-with-toto/>

<comment><USER3> I'm looking into getting a toto-based blog going, and yes, it is easy to get started with. However, I'm finding a bit of a lack of info on middle-level stuff: are there CSS themes out there that work with it? How do I handle things like permalinks, tags, a table of contents, trackbacks, etc.?

Probably there's some "easy to find" file that I ought to be reading. Great. Where is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like you're looking for something like Gist rather than a blog. <http://gist.github.com/></comment>


Ask HN: Could I have your thoughts on my Cheat Sheet Generator and Resource? - <AUTHOR>

One of my side projects has actually made it to the internet. Woohoo! My ability to scupper my own projects by overthinking them apparently does know some bounds. Anyway, I'd love to hear what HN thinks of the idea, execution, etc.
http://www.cheatography.com/
It's a simple cheat sheet builder and resource - you assemble a cheat sheet with lots of useful info, and the site generates a PDF and shares it with everyone.
At the moment it's all ad-supported, and I'm considering adding adverts to the PDFs as well. I'm trying to come up with better revenue ideas than the current (AdSense) advertising.
Things I'm already working on ... I'm not particularly happy with how the cheat sheets are exposed - if you visit a cheat sheet page, there's no above-the-fold route to other cheat sheets. The homepage links to new cheat sheets but not in a particularly enticing way. And I'm going to add a "cheat screen" - a live, full-page, JS-controlled cheat sheet you can bookmark. <comment><USER2> This is wonderful. I'm totally gonna use it and contribute to it on a long flight tomorrow.

You can always tell a good idea when it gets your gears turning. With the sort of database that you'll be building, you could experiment with different visualization strategies and hyperlinking between cheat sheets!

A simpler task for version 1.0.1: Make sure that formatting is cleaner on the generated PDFs. For example, on this cheat sheet there is one hanging row on an otherwise empty pp2

[http://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat- sheets/javascrip...](http://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat- sheets/javascript/pdf/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it! Since launching it I've become almost obsessed with ideas for cheat sheets, and one thing I want to add in is a "cheat sheet zeitgeist" - a page which lists requests, ordered by their recent popularity.

I'm working on a few formatting issues at the moment. Unfortunately, the pdf generator I'm using doesn't have much of a concept of pagination, so I'm trying to work that part out in PHP, generate multiple PDFs, then glue them together. It's not working too well so far :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice idea, I like it. It kinda "democratizes" the cheat-sheet generation industry (as much as such an industry exists).

One thing that you should fix is the PDF download. When downloading a cheatsheet the filename looks like someGibberish.pdf.part and Windows doesn't know what to do with it. Should be: HumanReadableCheatsheetTitle.pdf instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi ishi. Glad to hear you like the idea :)

Thanks for letting me know about the filename issue. I'd not spotted that. I've changed the filename to something more useful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great site and app. I made a cheatsheet builder for videos (vidinotes) - thereby taking video stills, adding notes, and exporting as PDF. But I had too many projects so I sold it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, here's a link: <http://www.cheatography.com/></comment>


CloudI – A Cloud at the lowest level - <AUTHOR> http://cloudi.org/faq.html <comment><AUTHOR> I came across this project while working on our own Erlang codebase. Part of me thinks the entire thing sounds like madness, but the more I read through the documentation, it seems like there's a lot of merit to be had here.

Does anyone have experience using CloudI in production? I'm having trouble finding case studies by anyone who isn't involved in the project.</comment>


What are the most common open ports for private internet - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I am configuring OpenVPN and I am going to be using it under restricted internet (most of the ports closed) also I can't use 80 and 443 ports, what are the most common open ports except 80 and 443? <comment><USER2> [https://isc.sans.edu/top10.html](https://isc.sans.edu/top10.html)</comment>


Prune: A Code Editor That Is Not a Text Editor - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/1012061842160013 <comment><USER2> Prior discussion (3 days ago): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10099611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10099611)

</comment><comment><USER3> Another technology for those who have not yet realised that what they really need in their lives is some Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER4> When the article said their approach might work best on a tablet, it reminded me of Microsoft Research's "TouchDevelop"

[https://www.touchdevelop.com](https://www.touchdevelop.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Okay, okay; more source code releases and demos, and less talking now, please.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would hazard a guess that had that not been a mobile URL that the dupe- catcher would have worked as expected.

So is this something that should be flagged, or we just wait for it to fall off the front page on its own?

<comment><USER7> I had seen occasions where a trailing slash treats URL differently, who is very trivial to handle. While as mentioned in sister thread, mobile because of the dom might be little difficult to handle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Non-mobile link: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/1012061842160013/](https://www.facebook.com/notes/1012061842160013/)

</comment><comment><USER9> lisp : paredit :: golf : tee</comment>


The Flying Train, Germany, 1902 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/EQs5VxNPhzk <comment><AUTHOR> Notably it's still serving 80k travelers each day.

Some contemporary footage as a contrast: [https://youtu.be/9IFh6wFTJiQ](https://youtu.be/9IFh6wFTJiQ)

The video is quite interesting, shedding some light on the reasoning and requirements of this undertaking.</comment>


Ajax survey 2009: jQuery and MS Ajax are almost tied - <AUTHOR> http://codeclimber.net.nz/archive/2009/06/22/ajax-survey-2009-jquery-and-ms-ajax-are-almost-tied.aspx <comment><USER2> Notable information omitted from the title: the survey was of .NET developers.

<comment><USER3> thank you... added the "among .NET developers" to the title of the post</comment></comment>


April fool's day 2020 is canceled, you monsters - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/31/21201179/april-fools-day-2020-is-canceled <comment><USER2> First you had to have a stupid April fools prank to show how cool you were.

This year you have to cancel it to show how cool you are.

</comment><comment><USER3> What next, cancel all of comedy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course no, watch LSSC tonight![0]

[0] [https://twitter.com/colbertlateshow/status/12451765583751290...](https://twitter.com/colbertlateshow/status/1245176558375129088)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: FreeBSD, a realistic choice as OS X replacement? If not, which Linux? - <AUTHOR> So I've seen the posts about alternative laptops to the MBP (for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12846516 ). I am now looking at OS alternatives. Given that OS X is based on FreeBSD, wouldn't it make sense to use FreeBSD as a replacement? Or is it just a dumb idea? <comment><USER2> If you're fed up with Macs, chances are you want a beautiful "modern" device with a hidpi touch screen. I haven't used Linux as a primary dev machine for a few years now, but last time I looked, support for all of these things were half baked (KDE/GTK, X11/Wayland etc). Whether the kernel is this or that probably matters a lot less. People used to speak fondly about Lenovos, but less so lately. Now the high end Dell XPS gets high praise, but Dell typically fuck up their systems from time to time (I still remember when they changed out Synaptics touchpads for something cheaper with significant movement "lag"). "Modern" hardware typically also come with very proprietary drivers only supporting one or the other platform, or best case only Windows+Mac. Even web browsers barely support touch events yet. But hey, now is a good time for a vendor - any vendor - with anything that can compete with iMacs/Macbooks or Surface Studio/Surface Book (essentially anything not based on Windows or macOS) to speak up and get some attention!

<comment><AUTHOR> I was more interested in the OS than the hardware, but thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you are coming from OSX use Ubuntu.

<comment><USER4> I would recommend Elementary OS (Based on an Ubuntu).It is closer to an OsX experience imho. However, make no mistake, it won't replace OsX and its rich ecosystem… [https://elementary.io](https://elementary.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks interesting, thanks</comment></comment></comment>