Where and how to find founding hackers for generous equity? - <AUTHOR>

Yesterday I raised a question "How to find hackers for only stock options?" but one of the respondent brought to my attention that I should give equity instead of option ... and he/she is right - so here i'm - let me know the creative way to find a hacker founder for generous equity. <comment><USER2> Be friends with one. If you aren't already, then finding the right person is going to be a serious uphill battle.</comment>


Mobile Game Design: How Evil Monkeys Chased Temple Run To App Store #1 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/15/temple-run/

<comment><USER2> so I know these guys. still possible for small team of people to hit massive success in the app store. 3 people team. #1 grossing app.</comment>


Electric cars are already cheaper to own and run, says study - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/12/electric-cars-already-cheaper-own-run-study <comment><USER2> I've been very disappointed in the lack of aftermarket battery and bms replacements for older electric and hybrid vehicles. It seems like I should be able to jump on Alibaba and get a giant li-ion battery bank + bms and drop it in a 2005 prius and have a cheap, relatively high-range vehicle.

</comment><comment><USER3> I ran the numbers for here in CA. Even just comparing Gasoline pump cost vs Electric charging costs, the electrics are roughly equivalent to a car that gets 45mpg. Maintentance is of course cheaper for electrics because they don't need oil changes or timing belts or spark plugs but that doesn't mean electrics don't have expensive maintenance plans attached if sold as Teslas.

Right now Electrics still cost about 10K more than their gasoline counterparts.

Overrall, I still think a Toyota Prius with 55mpg will be cheaper to run overrall than an Electric, taking into account total cost of ownership.

<comment><USER4> Yeah when the Leaf first came out I was checking against CA power rates. CA electricity is so prohibitively expensive I would have had to get a solar installation just to afford charging my car. Ended up sticking with my old 90' Honda Civic that got 35 mpg

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The key thing to remember is that EV's are going to keep getting cheaper due to decreases in the battery costs, while ICE's are going to stay the same. From what I have read, the experts think that around 2022-25 EV's are going to equal ICE's for purchase price, and at that point the whole market is going to tip. The only thing slowing down EV sales will be how fast the auto manufacturers can switch over what they produce.

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems to assume that everyone is buying new cars.

Are people who buy new cars generally concerned about which option is "cheapest"?

<comment><USER7> Whatever is cheapest today will likely result in the cheapest car in 5 years.

Electric cars are new, there aren't many electrics in the used market. In 2024, these electric vehicles will be 5-years old, and their used prices will start propagating towards the general public (who in my view, doesn't typically buy new cars).

<comment><USER8> >Whatever is cheapest today will likely result in the cheapest car in 5 years.

Maybe but I could also see electric vehicles not being the cheapest option with used cars do to the cost of battery replacement. I am not an expert in cars sales or electric vehicles but my understanding is that currently batteries make up a huge cost of an electric vehicle. We also know how battery performance degrades over time. If your in the used car market and your choice is between an electric car with 1/2 the range it had new so 120 miles or so, and $10,000 to replace the batteries or an ice vehicle with an engine with 150,000 miles on it but still full range and if the engine fails a $2000-$3000 engine rebuild price some day. If I am strapped for cash and trying to feed my family I know what I would do.

<comment><USER9> The difference in cost between a battery replacement and an engine rebuild is partly market dynamics (our good old friends supply and demand). As more used electric cars enter the market, presumably the supply of replacement battery options increases and with it prices should theoretically drop.

Similarly, there's a possible inflection point where ICE engine rebuild demand drops low enough that some of the very specialized ICE engine parts start to jump in price.

> an electric car with 1/2 the range it had new

This seems a particularly pessimistic assumption given current information. (It's generally fair for the small batteries in a laptop or phone, but cars seem to be trending much better than "half".) The used market seems to be seeing 70% as the "low" figure and actively temperature managed batteries (such as GM's, recent Tesla's, very recent Nissan's) as much as 90%+ range entering the used market. Admittedly, sample sizes are still relatively low because overall electric vehicles seem to have longer than ICE average "first owner" lives (which makes comparing the EV and ICE used markets right now a bit more apples and oranges than people realize).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Official Rackspace Blog - Why Technical People Should Blog (But Don't) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rackspace.com/blog/why-technical-people-should-blog-but-dont/ <comment><AUTHOR> so true. especially the part about not having experience in trying to know about the audience. I think it is really important what the audience wants. At times, you may find it tempting not to do certain things coz nobody is watching but i believe people eventually will.</comment>


Huawei reassesses goal to be world's bestselling smartphone vendor - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3012702/huawei-reassesses-goal-be-worlds-bestselling-smartphone-vendor-after <comment><USER2> Business Insider seems to have mangled the SCMP article they quote as the source: [https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3012702/huawei- re...](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3012702/huawei-reassesses- goal-be-worlds-bestselling-smartphone-vendor-after)

 _Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer that assembles handsets products for many phone brands including Apple and Xiaomi, has stopped several production lines for Huawei phones in recent days as the Shenzhen company reduced orders for new phones, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named as the information is private._

I assume each model is made on more than one production line in parallel, so the quote above seems to imply that production didn't stop completely, but capacity was reduced.

<comment><USER3> Ok, we'll change to that from [https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei- smartphone-production...](https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-smartphone- production-us-blacklist-2019-5). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The long term impact of this Huawei dispute will be China building out a complete vertical communications/computing stack from low level chips to operating system to phone design. They won't get any market share in the U.S. but they'll dominate China (obv), India, Africa, and have some decent minority share in Europe.

The ban is great for U.S. companies in the short term that are behind on 5G, but this will harm U.S. tech industry interests in the long term once China has that vertical stack up and running.

I wish the U.S. government had used their power to push for some form of a mandatory and transparent security audit to ensure data privacy.

<comment><USER5> I thought Europe was frowning hard on huawei too

<comment><USER6> Not really hard, there's no united position. Huawei is a significant supplier of 4G infrastructure in Europe so ditching Huawei completely would be very costly, and at the moment it's mostly a matter of the individual nation states.

I don't think there's a country that has issued a complete ban comparable to the US, and most European countries will probably purchase 5G tech from Huawei for parts of their networks.

<comment><USER7> Huawei hasn't updated OpenSSL in their cellular basestation firmware, despite promises to do so in 2012 & 2018: [https://hmgstrategy.com/resource- center/articles/2019/04/04/...](https://hmgstrategy.com/resource- center/articles/2019/04/04/uk-flunks-huawei)

These really basic maintenance tasks aren't happening, leaving cell networks vulnerable to anyone who can be bothered to look up a CVE and run the provided demo exploit code. Hard to maintain a network you can't secure :c

<comment><USER8> I think there's a misplaced assumption here, that you should trust a network to keep your traffic safe.

it's reasonable to think that regardless of their SSL implementation, you should assume that the network owner is going to try and spy on your traffic and sell it to the highest bidder

<comment><USER9> I don't see what part of that means the network operator shouldn't do their best to try to keep it safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I believe the true loser in this is Google. If i am any non us, android- reliant phone manufacturer, i am planning my exit strategy. Sure it won't come today or this year, but it is vital for companies to start to distance themselves from google licensing for their own betterment.

<comment><USER11> The reason Google won is that manufacturers were completely incompetent in coming up with their own phone OSs either because of technical lack of capability or internal politics

MS could have had a chance, but they didn't have the vision and Android was the better choice (until now) to most manufacturers

<comment><USER12> The current issue is that Huawei is blacklisted due to US's economic war.

Microsoft's Windows Phone would have been no better, quite the contrary, at least you can fork Android, at least it supports alternative app stores.

<comment><USER13> >Huawei is blacklisted due to US's economic war

The trade war is not why this company, in particular, is blacklisted.

<comment><USER14> At this point I have to start doubting anything I read so far, then. What is the reason?

<comment><USER15> Ip theft and cirumventing sanctions.

To see no relation to the trade war is, however, a tad naive.

<comment><USER16> Like you say, it's allegedly entirely about the iran sanctions.

In practice, it's clearly a trade war thing and I'd be willing to bet quite a bit that there was a personal thing between Huawei's loudmouth CEO and our vindictive president.

<comment><USER17> I think the trade war is interesting. If this were a street fight where someone hit you (for decades) and you hit back and the perception trumpeted is suddenly you're escalating things. Compare it to the previous administration which had excellent relations and plenty of IP theft and those companies could demand whatever with little recourse. Definitely politics but not as usual.

<comment><USER16> The Chinese were playing by exactly the rules we set and asked them to play by, for decades. American companies were ecstatic to outsource manufacturing someplace cheap.

Only in the last couple years have people gotten upset and started calling them cheaters or whatever, retroactively.

It raises some questions. Are we blaming them for our inability to socialize our gains from trade? Were we expecting them to never learn and move up the value chain?

<comment><USER18> The irony is that all these complaints about IP theft started to flare up once China started to invest heavily in R&D and started pulling ahead in certain high-tech sectors. The real fear isn't that China is stealing IP, but that it might surpass the US economically. Huawei is a perfect example of this. Their heavy investments in the development of 5G and resulting dominance are precisely what caused them to become a target of the US government.

<comment><USER19> I love how you act like Huawei did nothing wrong. We don't just think they stole IPs, we don't just think Huawei are run by and for their government. The American economy is far from perfect but I seriously doubt that anyone at this point sees China's economy or level of self-built technology a threat.

Sure, most people have a bias or a slant, and it often comes out in what we write, but do you honestly think anyone who sees you are a brand new account and sees your comments here will think anything other than 'insert_country_here apologist'? And that it happens on every story critical of china? Seriously it gets old.

<comment><USER16> What IP did Huawei steal, specifically? Can you name it without googling? Scouts honor.

It's not cool to accuse people of being Chinese shills, especially people with semi-obscure Greek names that they're very much in character of.

<comment><USER15> Afaik, without googling, they stole Cisco Ip which is even relevant here.

<comment><USER18> And this is precisely my point. Huawei was accused in the early 2000s of stealing Cisco IP. They settled the issue quietly back then.

Now, almost two decades later, after Huawei has spent billions in R&D and appears to be the market leader in 5G, all these old claims resurface, and the US government is quite openly trying to drive them out of business. Of course, by sheer coincidence, this happens while Trump is waging a trade war against China.

And for the record, Diogenes couldn't be a shill for anyone. Diogenes is happy living in his barrel in the market, do he clearly isn't motivated by money.

<comment><USER16> It's like people don't even know what cosmopolitanism means anymore ;)

I googled that Cisco case as well. One of their big claims was a copypasted impl of... strcmp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My company, roughly 400k employees and contractors, already sent security notices from the DOJ banning Hauwei, ZTE, etc. devices across the entire corporation. It effectively banned their phones from a not insignificant percentage of the population in one fell sweep.

<comment><USER21> What do you expect people to do? Go out and buy new phones at a cost that exceed what most people can afford (400 usd, assuming you are in the US).

<comment><USER22> I believe most corps subsidize employee phones so the individual would not be responsible unless it's BYOD, in which case, you would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'll just hope this Huawei debacle will be the spark that burns the patent and copyright systems to the ground.

<comment><USER24> It will certainly have that effect in China.

They make cellphones, we make self-owns.

<comment><USER25> I get the play on words, but what does "self-own" mean?

<comment><USER24> It's probably best interpreted as an American idiom for what the rest of the world would call an "own goal." As in, you kick the football into your own team's goal, resulting in a score for the other team with no effort needed on their part.

<comment><USER26> This is not an idiom I've ever heard in the US.

But I agree, seems likely parent meant own-goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Remind me again how Huawei smartphones in Europe are a threat to US national security

<comment><USER28> Even if Huawei handsets in Europe are not a threat to national security, most consumers would expect them to be able to run Android, which Google can no longer sell them...

<comment><USER29> It's a great opportunity for the rest of the world to stop leaning on American companies and American technology. It would be wonderful for a European and/or an Asian alternative to Android to emerge.

<comment><USER30> Sailfish OS claims to be mature and available for "corporate customers." I haven't seen any evidence past their own website, though.

<comment><USER31> The Russian government is using Sailfish in a big way. I heard the Russian post-office as well. There were negotiations with the Chinese government, but I assume that might have fallen through.

Jolla is not much B2C anymore, mostly B2B now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if Huawei could sell their mobile business to BBK Electronics and avoid sanctions. BBK is already the second largest smartphone manufacturer after Samsung.

<comment><USER33> Interesting, I never heard of them. Could you back this up with some market data or more context?

<comment><USER32> Usually smartphone sales are brand comparisons. BBK Electronics owns brands like Realme, OPPO, Vivo, OnePlus.

[https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/bbk- second-l...](https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/bbk-second- largest-smarphone-manufacturer-2017-05/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The problem isn't smartphones right? Bc then we should ban almost all phones.

I thought the problem is that basically all the cell networks run on huawei

<comment><USER35> The Chinese government can order Huawei to do basically whatever it wants, and the former has so far shown no qualms about doing as much espionage, corporate or otherwise, as it can get away with. Infrastructure is one threat, smartphones are another.

<comment><USER36> It appears now that the US government can order Google, Qualcomm, Intel, and even non-US companies like ARM to do basically whatever it wants, and has shown no qualms in the past about spying on their European allies. From the a non-American POV the US does not have a clear moral high ground.

<comment><USER37> You're assuming the US government cares if a non-American thinks it has the moral high ground. I would be shocked if any decision maker ever considered that before making a decision.

<comment><USER38> _...non-American..._

You don't need this qualifier. Our leaders don't care about the opinions of us, their subjects, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Shit, I seriously doubt the validity of this article.

But it does go to show that, the majority of manufacturers who make their products in China need to tread lightly even more so now. If anything, this move by the US will make electronic manufacturers take a second thought about where the source their parts and (more importantly) which companies they deal with.

This icludings big companies like Microsoft and Google. I have no doubt that this could potentially hurt Googgl especially.

</comment><comment><USER40> I didn't realize the effect would be so immediate. I thought it may affect next year's model but this current gen was fine.

If it affects current gen smartphones could it also affect current gen 5g equipment?

This would mean hauwei is essentially dead in the water.

<comment><USER33> This actually makes me wonder - what makes them unable to sell outside of Europe/USA? I heard of them being kicked out of SD/WiFi associations, but how does this affect them in China?

<comment><USER41> It's now illegal for all the major players to sell them microprocessors. Can't build a smartphone without one.

"The United States last week blocked Huawei from buying goods made from 25% or more of U.S.-originated technologies or materials"

<comment><USER42> I wonder what the long-term implications will be on American businesses for this. Will non-US major companies be wary of relying on US suppliers?

<comment><USER43> That's exactly it. The US is shooting itself in the foot. Because the message this sends to the bigger world is: don't get too successful or we will kill your business.

The irony is that that is exactly what western companies blame China for.

<comment><USER44> > The US is shooting itself in the foot.

This is one possible outcome. Another is that China learns to be a bit less self-serving and more cooperative with the rest of the world.

> Because the message this sends to the bigger world is: don't get too > successful or we will kill your business.

That seems like a bit of a biased interpretation. Do you believe the US is literally trying to _kill_ Huawei, or might it be possible that this is a negotiating tactic to get them to realize _and acknowledge_ the value they receive from the rest of the world generously trading with them, by demonstrating the consequences of what happens when someone treats them in the way they treat the rest of the world (I am referring to access to their markets)?

> The irony is that that is exactly what western companies blame China for.

In the Alanis Morissette sense maybe.

<comment><USER23> > Another is that China learns to be a bit less self-serving and more > cooperative with the rest of the world.

Because they have such a great example given by USA to follow.

<comment><USER44> Anything I've read suggests Chinese companies have much less restrictions on setting up operations in the US than vice versa, just one example being the mandatory Chinese partner situation, which is less strict than it used to be so they say. This somewhat common notion that they're "both the same" seems about as accurate as the also somewhat common notion that Chinese and American culture is the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Repost: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20073611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20073611)

</comment><comment><USER46> This move by the US to sabotage Huawei will, in the long term, harm American competitiveness. I haven't yet seen or heard any concrete proof that Huawei poses a "threat" to national security. The fact that Trump mentioned their fate could be "negotiated" as part of a larger trade agreement with China points in the other direction. Either way, this is bad for free enterprise and free commerce.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's nice to see the government picking winners and losers in the market.

<comment><USER48> Precisely why it was important to make it illegal to do business which such an entity, Huawei. US business relies of trademark, patent, contract and license enforcement, which is where the government steps in.

The Chinese gov't doesn't abide by any of these rules, nor do they enforce them, and subsequently Chinese companies are run the same way. That's not even getting in the espionage and the links between Huawei and the CPC.

<comment><USER47> Name me one major US company that does not have close links to the US government.

Name one.

As for the IP angle, what evidence do you have that Huawei in particular built their 5G, or phones off IP theft? I postulate that as soon as China passes the US in development of new IP, the US will find no shortage of excuses to politically interfere in the market... Just like it is doing now, actually.

<comment><USER44> What do you mean by "close links"?

<comment><USER47> The same thing that people talking about the Chinese boogieman mean.

A nebulous, ill-defined hand-waved general accusation, with no clear goalposts, that infers that there's an intersection between the company's past or present employees, and past or present employees, executives, or advisers in government, that the company at some point received government seed funding, investments, or government contracts, that secret meetings take place between the company, and the government, that the company is a special contractor for the government, building custom solutions for it, or that the company may be compromised by government meddling.

The beauty of accusing a company of having close ties with its government is that it can mean almost anything you want it to mean.

<comment><USER44> Is this to say that there is _literally no noteworthy difference_ in the relationships Chinese and American companies have with their respective governments?

I'm open to the idea, what evidence would you propose supports this?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Science activity videos engaging for kids & avoiding long parental prep - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/XGpKH0Sobcs <comment><AUTHOR> What do you think?</comment>


Ask HN: Better HTTP client library for PHP - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a good library fro making HTTP requests in PHP. Ideally, something that comes with support for mocking. A quick google brings up some options, but many of them seem outdated or maintained. <comment><USER2> [http://docs.guzzlephp.org/en/stable/testing.html](http://docs.guzzlephp.org/en/stable/testing.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Is downloading and storing user-supplied url content legal? - <AUTHOR> I am working on a side project which will accept a user-supplied URL, download the content, and store it in a structured form, so that the user can later use it for analysis.
I think PinBoard does something similar, in that it can archive the content of bookmarks.
But is this legal in the US?
Edited for clarification of country <comment><USER2> Ask a lawyer. Likely it's a gray area, but nobody cares and they do it anyway. If you don't provide the country it makes the question impossible to answer as well...</comment>


Bitcoin's energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/17/bitcoin-electricity-usage-huge-climate-cryptocurrency?CMP=share_btn_tw <comment><USER2> More commentary found here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16173345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16173345)

</comment><comment><USER3> In Newport, Washington, electricity is so inexpensive ($0.05/kWh) that almost everyone uses electric baseboard heat - and it gets very cold (10 degrees Fahrenheit) in the winter. Those baseboard heaters could be swapped out with bitcoin miners with NO change in power consumption, and there are plenty of other places around the world with similar conditions.

</comment><comment><USER4> If I remember correctly, some areas already have a fair amount of power infrastructure that is currently dedicated just to mining. I hope that the power providers in those areas have enough guarantees (with insurance, bonds, etc. backing it up) to ensure that the miners don't just walk away when the price gets too low.</comment>


How to say nothing in 500 words - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20101124040620/http://www.apostate.com/how-say-nothing-500-words

<comment><USER2> If I ever go back to language teaching, I think I've just come up with an engaging and rewarding lesson:

      * assign students the task of writing an N-word or -page paper and explicitly instruct them to use as much fluff as possible (creatively, i.e. not using "really" x100)
      * allow them to read each other's papers and vote on the most vapid essays
      * assign a follow-up task to ruthlessly edit a partner's paper to distill the real content
      * never attach a word or page count to any future assignment, preferring complete coverage of assigned topic, and hold students accountable for use of fluff

Hands-on experience is a great learning aid. A frank acknowledgement and analysis of filler content (instead of just discouraging it in the abstract) coupled with an educator's willingness to forgo artificial targets or limits could go a long way in improving this aspect of writing style.

<comment><USER3> It will be neither engaging nor rewarding for the person publicly voted "most vapid."

<comment><USER4> I don't see a problem with it: being vapid is the stated purpose of the exercise. Cyranix did not propose blindsiding the students with this exercise by applying this criteria to essays the students wrote in earnest.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I see that I missed that. That's a pretty good idea, then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This advice, as with much other good advice, should be taken and understood in context. It is an essay about how to write a good essay, and there are times when you want to break some of these rules.

As one example, expressions like "I think that" and "in my opinion" can be useful if used purposefully. When reading an argument, we have a tendency to fixate on the points that we take issue with personally. By saying "I think X is true" instead of just "X is true", you make it easier for someone to disagree with your specific point rather than your entire argument. In some contexts (like HN comments), this can help to reduce animosity and get much more of your point across to people who don't fully agree with you.

<comment><USER4> I use "I think" it to distinguish widely agreed upon facts from my own conclusions.

<comment><USER6> You're giving too much credit to things that people widely agree on.

Going by majority vote, intelligent design is a fact.

<comment><USER7> I believe the concept of majority rules has worked well for America. Some would disagree of course but then they are just the minority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article reminded me of "Thank You For Smoking" where the young kid asks his dad what he should write about on the topic of "Why is the American government the best government in the world". Aaron Eckhart's character ends up explaining that the question is ridiculous because it carries implicit assumptions (America is the best government in the world, 'best' can somehow be measured) without explaining them. He follows that with an explanation that this is basically an invitation to write whatever you want - write about tariffs, write about executing felons, write about our appeal system. It's not about the question, it's about the writing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks. There is currently a flame war going on about using grammar as litmus test for hiring. I thought it's a good time to re-post this.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904584>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008246>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=239147>

Sorry about the archive link. The original post is gone.

<comment><USER9> Original post is here: <http://apostate.com/how-to-say-nothing-in-500-words>

Looks like the URLs changed when they switched from Drupal to Wordpress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess I had really good English teachers, then, because I never worried about using unique arguments. I simply wrote the most obvious thoughts on the subject and called it a day. And I always got good grades.

However, I did follow a lot of advice from the post without knowing it, other than the 'don't be obvious' bit. For instance, I didn't use a lot of filler words. I simply wrote out my ideas, explained them, and then opened and closed it with a summary paragraph, as we were taught repeatedly. 5-3-5 and all that. It never failed to get a good grade.

If I was short of my 500 (or however many) words, I didn't start adding useless words. I added more content. Obviously it wasn't a good argument if I didn't say enough to meet that requirement yet. However, I think this only happened a few times. I was more likely to go over the maximum number instead, if there was one.

College's basic courses were simple if you knew the rules and followed them. I found out later that they were harder for others because they didn't know the rules, like the 5-3-5 pattern. Everyone that I have introduced that to has loved it and it helped them tremendously. Why isn't that taught everywhere? It seems awful obvious in retrospect.

<comment><USER11> I went through hight school and university without using that pattern (not that I wrote many essays, and when I did I made a point of writing against the topic) and was only introduced to it in ESL class I took after immigrating to canada. I'm not a very creative person -- I rather like rigid structures and perfect formatting of my code -- but I hated this immediately. It is probably just me, but somehow the idea of making an "essay" according to the rules of making essays as defined just highlights the utter pointlessness of the process and saps all energy and dispels any delusions about making meaningful arguments I might have had...

<comment><USER12> My wife is going through an intensive one-year college ESL course with an emphasis on writing. This was my first encounter with the rigid structure of American college essays. Initially I found it silly and counterproductive, but I have since softened my stance. My wife, despite having a degree from a top university in her country, had hardly any practice writing essays even in her native language. Because of that, she has had her hands full just worrying about her ideas and how to express them in correct and idiomatic English, so the fixed structure has been invaluable for her--it helps organize her thoughts and removes one whole class of tricky decisions from the writing process.

Think of it as training wheels. Once you don't need the formal structure anymore, you can and probably should stop using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is fine as far as it goes, but -- ironically, given its subject -- I found it a little vapid. Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" is my preferred commentary on English writing style: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4272608>

<comment><USER14> I love his 'all writing is political' idea. On many occasions have I asked myself "Why am I writing this?" and surprised myself with my answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd like all newspaper editors to read Mr. Roberts' article.

I've been working on blogging for a while. Mostly thinking about it, some writing, no publishing to the internet. I would draw a line from undertones in this article to my hesitancy to hit the "post" button.

At the risk of sounding ignorant, arrogant, or both, I'm going to make sweeping generalities. The problem as I see it is that most low hanging blog topic fruit falls under the category of "Obvious Content." If you're writing about hiring, as HN articles are wont, I promise you someone has written the same point argued the same way before. I could head up the same topic from the "Less Usual Side," but I have no personal interest in playing devil's advocate and choosing to argue for something I don't believe to be true. There's a place for that, and I'm not arguing that original thought can come out of debate or rebuttal. Unless you're publishing some kind of original research, what I have to say has probably been said already more eloquently than I could say it myself. I'm afraid I would simply be adding to the noise.

My interesting HN social experiment of the day: I would like to challenge every one to only post truly original thought. I suppose posting a unique argument to an existing topic is OK, but I'd shoot for completely untouched topics to expand the reaches of our collective thinking.

<comment><USER16> I claim there is no original thought. We're too shaped by our experiences.

I think you'll find most "original thoughts" are a) reversals of commonly accepted arguments for the sake of being contrary or b) bad ideas. Hence why most of us tend to held unoriginal thoughts—because the common beliefs are [often] the least-bad. Only occasionally does someone strike gold.

Then again, increasing the attempts at original thoughts should increase the quantity of good original thoughts, if not the proportion. I'm rather intrigued.

<comment><USER15> Cue Inception music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There are some really good gems in there:

"Decide what you want to say and say it as vigorously as possible, without apology and in plain words."

</comment><comment><USER18> _If these are the points that leap to your mind, they will leap to everyone else's too, and whether you get a "C" or a "D" may depend on whether the instructor reads your paper early when he is fresh and tolerant or late_

I don't think this is true. If a teacher asks 100 students for a paper on an assigned topic, they're not looking for originality. They just want to see if you can write or not. I always had felt that I should write something original and was worried constantly that I was re-hashing an idea the teacher had already seen dozens of times. But then I asked several teachers about it and they said they weren't looking for originality. After all you can't expect thousands of students of the same age in the same class at the same school with the same teacher to think very differently from one another.

<comment><USER19> Of course they aren't looking for originality. It can't be expected. When you give students a really difficult test, you don't expect everyone to make an "A". You expect some to fail ("D") and many to be just average ("C"). Some select few, however, will defy the norm and manage an "A".

The situation with assigned writing is the same. Some will elegantly write many droll, boring statements and back them up with some personal anecdotes or stories they came across while doing research. Those will stand out against the poorly written droll, boring statements. They'll get higher scores.

The few that break the mold and do something completely unexpected will definitely stand out. If they can back up their originality with half decent ability, they'll stand out even more than the "standard excellence". Those people will definitely get an A.

The conclusion is sound. If you beat the expectations people have of you, good things will likely happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just read Strunk and White's _Elements of Style_.

<comment><USER20> Just discovered that this is available free of charge on Kindle [1].

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-of-Style- ebook/dp/B005IT0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-of-Style- ebook/dp/B005IT0V8O/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital- text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342806430&sr=1-1&keywords=elements+of+style)

<comment><USER21> That isn't Strunk and White. That is just Strunk and is an earlier edition of the work long before White came on.

<comment><USER22> And in case anyone is not familiar with just how long "long before" was: [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001604.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001604.html)

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the corrections!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "All subjects, except sex, are dull until somebody makes them interesting."

I respectfully submit Monty Python's _The Meaning of Life_.

</comment><comment><USER24> This strikes me as good advice, but it also matches a lot of the advice I have gleaned over the years, so it may just be my bias talking. Getting rid of mush-mouthed "in my opinion" stuff and cliche phrases, moving from the general to the specific, all good advice.</comment>


Palantir keeps it lean and mean on five-year journey from zero to 150 employees - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/06/05/palantir-keeps-it-lean-and-mean-on-five-year-journey-from-zero-to-150-employees/?&obref=obinsite

<comment><USER2> I had the pleasure of visiting their office last weekend for a couple days. It is the most amazing working environment I've ever seen. As one of the employees aptly describes it, it's a 'work resort'!</comment>


It's better to rent than to buy in today's housing market - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/its-better-to-rent-than-to-buy-in-todays-housing-market.html <comment><USER2> If all you care about is increasing wealth, sure. If you care about a stable home, no.

You can sign up for rent at $2k a month, get the kids into school etc, then a year later the owner decides to sell, or increase the price by 50%, and you're stuck trying to find somewhere else to live near the school, subjecting yourself to the cost and stress of moving.

Moving across town every year when you're in your 20s is easy, rent a u-haul and you're done in a weekend. Owning a house when you are changing jobs every year or two like many people now is a ball-and-chain.

However later in life when you want stability, and want to stay in the same home for a decade plus (average time in a given house in UK is 21 years), owning is very beneficial. You only move when you want to move, the landlord can't kick you out on a month's notice.

<comment><USER3> Although no one enjoys moving, it's not exactly common enough to factor in a decision between renting vs owning. The bigger factor is not having to spend any time doing maintenance or yard work. Those tasks can take up weekends or entire weeks.

<comment><USER4> I think a lot of that depends on whether you have kids. If you're single, or even married, moving is a hassle, but so are yard work and maintenance. But after you have kids, yard work and maintenance don't actually get any harder. Moving does.

Yard work and maintenance can also be fulfilling, either in the sense of "this is my home and I'm putting work into it to benefit my family", or in the sense of, "riding lawnmowers around is a decently fun way to spend a couple hours outdoors". Hell, I volunteered for that chore when I was a kid (and was old enough to safely operate the lawnmower).

I kind of miss yard work now. At least some parts of it. Chainsaws are fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> village-idiot One of the things that I believe is that decent homes in established areas shouldn't change in price substantially, at least compared to inflation, without major external events that adjust the desirability of said city/neighborhood.

Watching home prices skyrocket in CA while the state's population has leveled off has me very concerned.

<comment><USER5> What do you think is causing it?

<comment><USER6> The supply curve is ~0 due to homeowner capture of laws, so the price elasticity is huge. Very basic stuff.

<comment> village-idiot Can you explain more please?

<comment><USER6> Homeowners create laws that benefit them at the expense of non homeowners. The two biggest are refusing to expand supply and Prop 13 (they enhance each other's effects which is why the California situation is the worst).

<comment> village-idiot I'm familiar with both of those, prop 13 in particular has made a landed gentry in my area with million dollar run down bungalows.

What I'm more interested in is this elasticity thing. Are you saying that the effective 0 supply has unmoored the price and it can wander, or is it that 0 supply sends the price up into the stratosphere?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Full disclosure, I am a homeowner and while I agree with the overall message I can also, fully say, it depends. We bought our apartment in a building where 75% of the residents are renters. We live in an Alpha- city [0] in a one of the few affordable buildings you can still purchase in. Everything else is luxury flats starting in the $500s with $1k+ building charges. For the last year renters have paid less than us after PITI + building charges. This changed in the summer and now the renters are paying more than we are in housing.

The city we just moved from I would say is better to rent. Even our city I would say is better to rent. But renting does not prevent buying. While renting, put in the footwork and find something to buy. if you are buying to rent be able to purchase 4 or more units.

I'm worried less about the missed investments than the rising cost of living in major cities.

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

</comment><comment><USER8> That's a very broad statement. Owning vs renting is dependent entirely on the local market. It hasn't been a good time to own in Detroit for a long time. It hasn't been a good time to rent in San Francisco in a long time.

<comment><USER9> It's a good time to own in SF. Spoken like a true 0.1%er.

<comment><USER10> It is a good time to own, assuming you bought like 5 years ago.

2013, average home was around $850k, with monthly PI payments around $3450 (30 years, 20% down, 4.5% rate). [0] Meanwhile, average rent around that time was around $4000 for a two-bedroom. [1] Now, average rent is around $4500 while a house is closer to $1300k or $5270 PI... Certainly does not look like buying _now_ is a good idea at all.

Unless you expect rent to break that $5270 mark. But, considering that gap is larger than the one seen in the past five years, with all the craziness that has involved... Seems like a pretty risky bet to me.

[0] [https://sf.curbed.com/2018/4/5/17201888/san-francisco- median...](https://sf.curbed.com/2018/4/5/17201888/san-francisco-median-home- house-price-average-2018)

[1] [https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco- ren...](https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends)

<comment><USER11> $5270 seems possible. It's 2 techies in a nice two bedroom where a one bedroom is $3-4k. You might get 4 people in there. I've noticed that 1 bedrooms typically price at over half of the equivalent two bedroom rent.

<comment><USER10> But why would you pay $5270 for the priveledge of _owning_ the house, rather than _renting_ it for $4500? Also keeping in mind, that number is only PI (principal + interest). You still have all the nice incidentals of ownership like insurance, property taxes, and maintenance that are _included_ in that $4500 rental.

<comment><USER11> Well, you could possibly rent out part of the house. Same as splitting an apartment with a roommate. You would want a situation where your total cost is less than $4500. You have the option of selling later at a higher price (it is a risk though).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Editing SQL DB via Remote desktop? (minor emergency) - <AUTHOR>

I apologize in advance for the stupidity of this but maybe the task will be interesting for someone.
I'm a web designer who's setting up a Wordpress site for a client.  Our hosting situation is not good and the sysadmin is not helpful.
There are two rows in a specific table of the Wordpress site that I need to edit in order to get it working, however I don't have phpmyadmin or another gui to edit the DB.  I'm able to remote desktop into the server with the DB on it, but I have no idea what to do with the .FRM and .MYD files.  I'm in way over my head on this one and the sysadmin's not interested in helping.
Anyone have 10 minutes to troubleshoot this over gchat? <comment><USER2> How quick this was answered/people helped is remarkable. Kudos to the HN community! Maybe there's a startup idea here - or maybe it already exists. Typically I spend hours searching for answers online to programming/tech questions or I end up chatting to a guru friend of mine - for the answers.

<comment><USER3> StackOverflow?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My advice - leave the .FRM and .MYD files well alone. If you can remote desktop in (is it running on a windows server?) then bring up a command prompt and edit it using that. Have a look at this - <http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20040609/806/>

My second piece of advice would be to get a better host and sysadmin...

<comment><USER4> email@example.com is the gtalk email address

<comment><USER5> Invited you on google talk, but you're listed as not connected.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, forgot I wasn't connected...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The server should have the standard cmdline MYSQL admin installed on it (one imagines).

Try opening a command prompt and running:

      mysqladmin

[obviously with username and password] If it is there us should let you run the SQL commands you want. (ref: <http://www.manpagez.com/man/1/mysqladmin/>)

If you want an SQL prompt then mysql on the commandline (will 100% be there) will work

      mysql -u <user> -p <password>

<http://www.manpagez.com/man/1/mysql/>

<comment><AUTHOR> doesn't appear to have mysqladmin on it.

i've downloaded some mysql guis and am e-mailing them to myself so I can get them onto the server. I found a few portable ones so I don't have to install anything and tick them off.

<comment><USER6> it should have mysql - that is part of the standard install package (I think it's auto installed too).

but eyh - your way sounds like a good methid, esp if your happier with a GUI

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> connect command: mysql -u<username> -p<password> <database_name>

update command: update <table_name> set <column> = '<your_change>' where <some_column> = <some_condition>;

</comment><comment><USER5> user: flooha on google talk.

<comment><AUTHOR> just invited you</comment></comment>


Web Design is 95% Typography - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/the-web-is-all-about-typography-period/ <comment><USER2> What's up with these typophiles? They walk around thinking they're the most important member of the club.

The truth is, design is complicated because it is not (yet) a science. Typography is important, but it is not king. What we really need to do is get inside the user's head and model their thought process. This is probably impossible, so we should do the next best thing: learn empathy. Be the user. Not some one-trick pony.

<comment><USER3> Typography is precise, but slow in terms of comprehension.

That's actually one of the things that worries me about Windows Phone 7's UI - it's very heavily text-based, which facilitates first-time usage (no getting things wrong there, unless your text really sucks), but punishes expert/frequent users.

Text takes up a disproportionate amount of screen real estate compared to, say, iconography. They are also harder to scan, their location harder to keep consistent (due to document flow), and given that most people's memories are visual first and linguistic second, harder to remember and make an impression upon.

On small devices, loading your page up with text is generally a bad idea. Obviously unavoidable in certain circumstances (say: reading an article), but there are a _lot_ of things out there in the design world that isn't typography.

<comment><USER4> I actually think that text has a fairly high information density rate compared to iconography. The perfect example of this is the command line. Power users tend to prefer a terminal because it is more concise than clicking around in a gui. I think that the problem lies in the fact that we have very few universal icons, especially for something like a phone interface. This means that while an icon for 'unread mail' would be smaller than the text describing it, no one would know what it meant without a description. Since there is no real limit to the actions we want our phones or computers to perform, text seems to be the way to go. Of course, some actions (e.g. save, cut, paste) have icons that have been in use for so long that it might be fair to call them universal. You can see an example of what I mean in most mac os x applications, where the buttons generally have icons with labels.

Disclaimer: I work for microsoft, but nowhere related to the phone team.

Edit: My point is more about interfaces than design. I know nothing about typography.

<comment><USER5> I suspect that _writing_ text to convey information to the computer (command line) has very different trade-offs than programs _presenting_ information textually to users, and lumping them together probably misses important details.

Also, textual interfaces usually make it easy to say, "now group that set of operations and give it a convenient name" (scripting), while graphically interfaces usually don't, and users are stuck with whatever individual actions the UI designers added to menus.

Neither tendency is _inherent_ in using text or graphics, but it usually works out that way. I've wondered about this for a while, but text vs. graphic interface discussions ("keyboard vs. mouse", which often overlap) usually miss that distinction, much like they do "approachable to new users" vs. "efficient for committed long-term users".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm tired of people citing Khoi Vinh's Web Site as _the best web design in the world_ just because it's simple, typohraphical, monochromatic, and grid-based.

Face it people! if all the internet looked like this it will be _boooring_ , not beautiful. It's part of subtraction's aesthetic and hardly works anywhere else.

I love Khoi's site, but I simply can't stand any other that uses his theme (<http://basicmaths.subtraction.com/>) because they look so dull, impersonal and pretentious.

Where's the David Carson of this generation?

<comment><USER7> I would rather be bored by the design and amazed by the content than vice versa.

<comment><USER6> I'd prefer to be amazed by both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Web design is 95% Typography to typophiles, 95% graphic design to graphic designers, 95% usability to UX experts. In short, people look at and notice what they are interested in, but to the average punter each of these things makes a much smaller contribution.

<comment><USER9> Don't forget 95% functionality to programmers :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> An exaggerated headline is 95% of getting traffic.

<comment><USER11> A witty retort is 95% of a comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The context of this statement is important, I think. Back in 2006 web sites were all about Flash, widgets, fancy graphics etc. All Oliver was saying is that these things are unimportant if your text is unreadable.

And by typography he means a lot more than whether it's georgia or helvetica.

<comment><USER13> The context is important. A lot of popular websites are still unreadable messes (thank you Instapaper & Readability) but it was more prevalent when this article came out, when many web designers thought "typography" on the web was just choosing a typeface—any typeface that wasn't Times New Roman—and changing the default leading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Web design (and I'm saying that as the owner of one of the worst designed sites in the world) is compromise.

Design, form and function compete for limited space and try to advance towards that goal by picking the perfect mix between conflicting goals. It should look good, it should work and what text you've got should be readable.

But not all websites center around the written word, and user experience is not just reading text on a website.

Hint: Less text is better. So good Web Design is to avoid having the problem that 95% of your web design centers around typography or any other single metric.

It's the total package that matters and typography is but one (minor) element in there. If it isn't _just_ the right font but it is readable you're already 90% there, the remaining 5% may or may not be important to you.

I know great sites that use 'courier' or some other minimalist approach and I know sites that suck that have been designed by the best in the industry, they look great but they're like super nice wrapping on a shitty present.

Strike the right balance, don't worry too much about any one factor, especially not typography. After all, the screens we have are direct descendants from the 8x6 dot matrix fonts of not that long ago, the availability of information is what drove this industry, not the availability of high resolution display for typographical purposes.

We don't call them graphics displays for nothing, pictures _still_ paint a thousand words.

<comment><USER15> It's not that "less text is better", actually, depending on your page and what you're trying to sell more text is often better. If you can write a long, engaging sales pitch it's much more likely to convert users than a short one, because those that read it all have will have already invested time and effort in your site or product and want to get something out of that investment. The key is in finding the right balance - don't overwhelm the user with a giant wall of text, give the already "pre-sold", impatient users an easy way to convert and let the more cautious users keep reading and scrolling down. Typography plays it's part in establishing the content hierarchy, but to say it's the most important part of the design is pretty silly - it's one of many important parts. The actual physical arrangement of page elements is far more critical. (Of course, awful typography can ruin a site, but so can many many other factors)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The followup (Part 2) is here: [http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/webdesign- is-95-typog...](http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/webdesign- is-95-typography-partii)

</comment><comment><USER17> I think one should extend the scope of classic typography slightly to understand where the author is coming from. To me it makes perfect sense. If you can't structure your text right to get the message across, then fancy designs and widgets won't help you either.

</comment><comment><USER18> This article's weird off-center placement on the right side with empty space on the left made me feel uneasy. That's 64% a layout issue.

<comment><USER19> That didn't bother me as much as the quirky use of red for links which seemed to go against the theme of the article (having typography support the content).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have to admit that this page looks very good, unlike many other articles that claim to know the secret to web design. It would be even better if it weren't right centered.

</comment><comment><USER21> This shocked a lot of flash boys and neck beards back in 2006.

But nowadays...

Luckily, I had a chance to prove it many times.

</comment><comment><USER22> Or in the case of this article, 100%.

</comment><comment><USER23> People can bang on about typography all they like, but any browser that won't let me override the designer's choice of fonts with ones that actually render nicely on my display won't get used.

(I'm looking at you Chrome)

Over here, font fanaticism is (sensibly) restricted to images.

How can a web designer have any idea what will look nice on a display with completely different visual characteristics to his own? Especially if the OS has a completely different font rendering library to boot.

<comment><USER24> This article is not about fonts.

<comment><USER23> Let me explain this slowly.

From the article: "Optimizing typography is optimizing readability, accessibility, usability(!), overall graphic balance."

If you lay out your text in a way that only works right when viewed in the typeface and font size that your own browser is using, then you'll fail in terms of readability, accessibility and usability.

The Vinh pages that the article holds up as a shining beacon of good typography are particularly bad in this regard.

On my display at work, they are mangled in various amateurish ways, presumably because my browser is using sufficiently different fonts from the designer's. Words overlap where they shouldn't, or run past the edges of the elements they are supposed to be contained in.

It's not a browser standards problem, this is an up-to-date Firefox, but with font overrides in place in order to make sure that I don't have to suffer because of fonts that render poor on my monitor and OS.

I contrast this with HN itself, which is a great example of typography that works pretty well no matter what fonts you're using.

Is that clearer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article, back in the day, got me started exploring minimal design.

</comment><comment><USER25> Web design to meet the users' needs might be as much as 50 percent information architecture. When I go to most websites, I'm looking for information, not eye candy.

</comment><comment><USER26> No it's not.

</comment><comment><USER27> He's correct. 95% of the time it's Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana.

</comment><comment><USER28> People who say X is 95% of Y are 95% wrong.

</comment><comment><USER29> 60% of statistics are false.</comment>


China Isn't the Soviet Union. Confusing the Two Is Dangerous - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/cold-war-china-purely-optional/601969/ <comment><USER2> Right. The CCP is far more dangerous and deadly. They killed 70 million people and are still in power. They took over Tibet and no one batted an eye. They have imprisoned whole cultures, forcibly sterilized millions of women, are in the process of taking over the South China Sea.

Oh, and are the 2nd largest economy.</comment>


EU Teens Under 16 Will Need Parental Consent to Use Facebook and Email - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/12049927/Teenagers-under-16-face-being-banned-from-Facebook-and-email-under-EU-laws.html <comment><USER2> From what I can gather, it doesn't seem entirely unlike COPPA aside from covering kids up to 16 as opposed to 13.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act)

</comment><comment><USER3> So in other words, really bad news for anyone in Europe running a gaming website, since a large portion of your audience are under 16. How are the likes of Eurogamer, Nintendo Life, etc supposed to cope with this sort of regulation? It puts them at a clear disadvantage compared to American based sites...

Myself, I'm not sure what I'll do for my own sites. Probably just a 'don't require accurate information' then never check. Like a tick box saying 'I have permission to share any personal data under whatever laws'.</comment>


Redesigning Chrome Desktop: the value of a pixel - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@KounterB/redesigning-chrome-desktop-769aeb5ab987 <comment><USER2> For an article this detailed it is incredibly difficult to compare the before and after.</comment>


Baltimore Residents Begin Clearing Debris After Night of Riots - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/us/baltimore-riots.html <comment><USER2> My wife and I live in Baltimore, in Mt. Vernon. We were having dinner the other night in Bolton Hill (a quiet residential area), and four guys ran by the restaurant and tried to throw a chair through the window (chairs turned out to be heavier than they thought). People vandalized the Rite-Aid a few blocks from our apartment, and set fire to a building we could see out our window.

Being from Bangladesh I'm not worried (what's happening in Baltimore happens in Dhaka every other month). But it's a reminder of how fragile the social order is and how close we always are to its collapse.

<comment><USER3> Why do many countries with cold climate didn't have these issues while many countries with hot climate tend to do?

Why do countries which didn't have unsafe streets now do after immigration?

<comment><USER4> Probably because there aren't enough people in Greenland to get a good riot going. Shakespeare wrote about riots in England--some of them, to be sure, targeted against Germans. Scotland has had its riots, Berlin has had some. I could mention the Boston Tea Party, but let's face it, those Yankees were immigrants.

<comment><USER5> The Yankees were colonizers more than immigrants --England had dominion over the territory and people came over to colonize as English subjects. In other words they were 'domestic' immigrants as opposed to alien (Swiss, Spanish, etc.) immigrants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, David Simon's response: [http://davidsimon.com/baltimore/](http://davidsimon.com/baltimore/)

> Yes, there is a lot to be argued, debated, addressed. And this moment, as > inevitable as it has sometimes seemed, can still, in the end, prove > transformational, if not redemptive for our city. Changes are necessary and > voices need to be heard. All of that is true and all of that is still > possible, despite what is now loose in the streets.

> But now — in this moment — the anger and the selfishness and the brutality > of those claiming the right to violence in Freddie Gray's name needs to > cease. There was real power and potential in the peaceful protests that > spoke in Mr. Gray's name initially, and there was real unity at his > homegoing today. But this, now, in the streets, is an affront to that man's > memory and a dimunition of the absolute moral lesson that underlies his > unnecessary death.

> If you can't seek redress and demand reform without a brick in your hand, > you risk losing this moment for all of us in Baltimore. Turn around. Go > home. Please.

<comment><USER7> His various replies to comments are also worth reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is what happens when you have an above the law police force that preys on entire neighborhoods that feel like they have been cast aside.

<comment><USER9> This is what happens when you have populations that think they are above the law, and that prey on other citizens that aren't like them (FTFY)

<comment><USER8> you can't even stand behind your own comments.

<comment><USER5> He or she may not feel like exposing their identity but what they say is not that far off. Most of the violence is not by the local people who will be directly impacted by the violence in the neighborhoods. It's by people who found a nice excuse to vent whatever frustration they have violently and anonymously. These acts don't further justice -the same way mistreating arrestees does not further justice. They coopt the frustration of the community and corrupt it and moreover set the community back in terms of forward development.

I think the problem is more your interpretation with what they are saying than what the words they said. Also, who are the people above the law, the rioters, the bad police, its not clear, but we know both contribute to destruction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "the police said some firefighters were reportedly having cinder blocks heaved at them as they responded to emergencies."

That's pathetic.

<comment><USER11> Sometimes vandalism is faked, created in order to generate propaganda images: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/why-were- police-...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/why-were-police- cruisers-left-to-burn-at-g20-summit/article572789/)

<comment><USER12> And sometimes it's deemed "sports fans taking to the streets".

[http://mic.com/articles/116680/11-stunning-images- highlight-...](http://mic.com/articles/116680/11-stunning-images-highlight- the-double-standard-of-reactions-to-riots-like-baltimore)

<comment><USER13> That list is misleading. One of the items is the Vancouver hockey riot in 2011. It was definitely called a riot at the time, and two years later they were still prosecuting the offenders. [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/vpd- rec...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/vpd- recommends-25-new-charges-over-vancouver-stanley-cup-riots/article13368218/)

<comment><USER12> The list itself states ESPN called that one a riot.

Part of the double standard is that even when it gets called a riot, we don't get the same hand-wringing about "where were the fathers", dog-whistle terms like "urban thugs", etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's unfortunate that it had to come to this, but I believe the rioters were justified in their actions. If the police departments in the United States do not account for their actions, or worse, defend officers that have committed acts that show an indiscriminate disregard for the well being of those they're sworn to protect, they should be prepared to face violent resistance from the people.

<comment><USER15> Justified burning down a brand new senior community center and knocking out a cop with a brick to the head. Really?

<comment><USER14> Were the police justified when they beat an unarmed suspect and denied him medical attention that would have saved his life? Were they justified when they refused to bring those responsible to justice?

<comment><USER16> Ah, I see you are advocating a new system where injustices are answered with further injustices.

<comment><USER14> There is no system in place where this can end with justice. Every time that justice has been called for in cases of police brutality against minorities over the past year, only once was that justice served. Murderers are at large, and richer for, injustices that were defended by the system. Those that are supposed to deliver justice consider themselves all-powerful and above the laws they should be upholding. Justice failed Michael Brown and all the others that died at the hands of police officers on a power trip. When justice doesn't work, what is there to turn to?

<comment><USER17> > Justice failed Michael Brown and all the others that died at the hands of > police officers on a power trip.

How do you conclude that justice failed Michael Brown? The physical evidence pretty overwhelmingly backs the officer's account of their encounter. See the DoJ's report for a discussion of this.

If you want a face for people unjustifiably killed by police, why not someone like Eric Garner, who was doing nothing wrong before or during his encounter with the police and so whose killing was clearly unjustified?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another great opportunity for effective protest lost.

<comment><USER8> People have been protesting peacefully in Baltimore all last week with 0 answers from the police or elected officials. No media was talking about it, there was no Freddie Gray thread on hackernews, but now the whole world is talking about it.

<comment><USER19> Hm except for HN, which has 3 comments about Valve's decision to change their mod rates, for every one about Baltimore.

<comment> k-mcgrady Several reasons:

1\. This is a community primarily for technology posts. Occasionally news makes it here but it has to be a pretty big story.

2\. Although this is a relatively big story it's a US centric story when HN is a global community. Personally I've seen so many of these horrible police brutality stories from the US in the last year that they've lost my attention. I saw the Twitter hash tag a few days ago, saw it was a police brutality thing, and didn't even bother looking further. It's almost become accepted fact that police in the US are militarised, heavy handed, and criminal, and no matter what the reaction there or around the world is nobody seems to have the ability to (or want to) change things.

<comment><USER19> I see. Please note that characterization of the police is an exaggeration of the media. Similarly, the USA consists of cowboys and Indians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did I see the Mayor of Baltimore at a press conference saying they "gave room for people that wanted to destroy"?

<comment><USER21> I think the context was in order to give space for nonviolent protest, they created a space where some people would act in unproductive/violent ways.

My take was it was meant in a similar spirit as our free speech protections; allowing wide berths for free speech leads to a lot of destructive speech. Preventing nonviolent protests requires militarization a la Ferguson.

<comment><USER20> While I agree in sprit, I don't think that a quote like that should be spoken at a press conference, chopped, twisted and hashed by the media and then interpreted by already irrational protestors. It's encouraging violence and destruction of others property.

<comment><USER21> That's what we do in America. Look at how we chop, twist, and hash the Constitution in public debate.

It really doesn't matter how well-crafted the statement; we'll misinterpret because we're Americans and that's what we do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So this just got dropped from the front page, any idea why? It was #4 then on refresh it was gone.

<comment><USER23> My understanding is that comments outnumbering votes reuslts in a heavy penalty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Northen America cities are really not geometrically in favour of law enforcement. L1 geometry + size of blocks gives an unfair advantage to the rioters. Which means law enforcement have to resort to excessive violence to squash demonstration, and the government to use excessive measures to protect social peace (such as spying their own citizens).

Designing cities for cars and not the "humans beings" may have been a cost.

<comment> k-mcgrady Aren't North American cities generally grid based? wouldn't this make it easy for police to for lines, block off several streets, and contain rioters within a block or two?

<comment><USER14> See New York where protesters could easily avoid cops by creating multiple incidents at once and dispersing in different directions when police resistance arrives. It takes too long for an organized group to move through the city and that can be used to spread police thin.

<comment> k-mcgrady That's more a problem with the size of the cities that the layout though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that seemingly half the comments here look like they could have been posted on Stormfront, but it's still disappointing.</comment>


How not to prove your election outcome [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/vjteague/HowNotToProveElectionOutcome.pdf <comment><USER2> Key:

> "Although it would be informally apparent that something had gone wrong..."

ie, there's a spectrum of voting attacks. Ballot stuffing is more powerful than ballot burning. If you can target specific districts or voters, then ballot burning can have the same effect on the overall outcome, so it is still incredibly serious, but just takes extra work. This is ballot burning.

> "it seems that our exploit would put the system in an "impossible state", > which would make it difficult to define a meaningful investigation process."

If I'm reading this right, ballot burning itself might have two subtypes -- invisible and leaving big messy scorch marks. This is the latter type. Still serious, but different. You could DoS an election's integrity, forcing emergency runoffs or stalling out democratic processes, or forcing a failover to legacy systems that might be easier to launch higher level attacks against.

This will probably add to the antipathy against electronic voting systems, but I don't blame Scytl-SwissPost for trying. Our current system features disappearing ballot boxes, local level ballot design flaws, and relies on the postal system for absentee ballots. Whatever the mix of media, part paper or electronic, we need to be working towards something more cryptographically sound.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to- end_auditable_voting_sy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to- end_auditable_voting_systems)

<comment><USER3> > _I don 't blame Scytl-SwissPost for trying._

I do.

> _Our current system features disappearing ballot boxes, local level ballot > design flaws, and relies on the postal system for absentee ballots._

None of these are fixed by electronic voting.

They are fixed by fixing them.

<comment><USER2> Based on the dismissive tone, you might not really be interested in any discussion here, so apologies if I'm throwing gas on a fire.

But we have different takes on how to solve those problems, so I want a shot at clarifying my position, and I'm genuinely interested in what your (nonelectronic) solutions might be.

The problems I pointed out are the sort of problems that stem from requiring that we trust untrustworthy third parties. Now, it's not like USPS is nefarious, just that they sometimes lose or misdeliver letters without informing the sender. Local officials who manipulate vote counts by losing boxes or prefilling absentee ballots... well, less innocent.

If you're talking about ensuring the integrity and availability of information, or controlling who can see or alter it, you're really talking about a problem in cryptography.

"Fix this by fixing them"

We certainly wouldn't have these problems if we could just demand that everyone engage in trustworthy behavior. That's always true for problems in information theory, or cryptography more generally. And we should back any framework with a strong legal framework to punish manipulation of elections. Vote tampering is illegal, but we should make sure those laws are effective.

More generally though, if we could just rely on "demand all parties are trustworthy" as a cryptographic primitive, then all protocols would be trivial.

Imagine if the typical take on electronic voting was applied to any other area of cryptography.

"I don't trust encryption schemes unless they are done on paper and administered by my local government!"

It would sound odd, right? Why this one?

I think we got here as a community as a reaction to governments and equipment makers like Diebold making claims about electronic voting that sounded like they believed in or were lying to the public about perfect security. Obviously anyone claiming their system is unhackable is trying to con someone.

On the other hand, distributed paper voting as a protocol has a ton of failure points too. And (electronic) cryptography could help with some of those issues. (You don't have to go all electronic. You can keep paper for some parts of the process where paper works best.)

So I've come around to a third way. We need to get past "paper is the answer" or "electrons are the answer" and get to a place where we are honest about the flaws in all systems, we lay out the properties of elections we want to safeguard, and figure out the best protocols and mediums and even UX to get us there.

Seriously though, if you have good incremental ideas for fixing how we do absentee ballots, I'm definitely open to hear more good ideas. And we'll definitely want small steps, rather than diving into any radical changes that suddenly break the system.

<comment><USER3> > _We certainly wouldn 't have these problems if we could just demand that > everyone engage in trustworthy behavior._

Do you think this is how paper ballots work?

> _It would sound odd, right? Why this one?_

Because ballots require both ballot secrecy and democratic legitimacy. You can't have both in an electronic voting system. Cryptographic schemes either claim perfect mixing and anonymisation, in which case it's impossible to detect shenanigans. Or they don't have perfect mixing and anonymisation, in which case it's possible to pierce ballot secrecy.

Paper is unwieldy and you can insert many mutually-distrustful humans into many steps. This makes it exponentially more difficult to subvert at scale without detection.

These are features. Please can we just take a moment to accept that sometimes, _atoms are better than electrons_.

<comment><USER2> Some interesting points, thanks for the reply.

> Do you think this is how paper ballots work?

It was definitely a hyperbole. But I think there is a lot of assumption of trust in the status quo, and I think we are frequently let down by that assumption. Not all the time. It's not an apocalypse. But we could do better.

> more difficult to subvert at scale

That's a great point. If you have a single point of failure through E2E, then individual attacks are much more significant.

Nationwide elections are often decided by a handful of key districts though. And the different systems in all these districts can make it hard to detect whether things are broken by design or coincidence. Tools from distributed consensus could make tampering more obvious in one large system.

But you're right, in general E2E makes this harder, not easier.

> ballots require both ballot secrecy and democratic legitimacy

100% agree. But this is an issue for paper too. If we allow paper receipts, you can later verify your vote, but you can also sell the receipt, destroying the secret ballot.

Secrecy and verifiability seem impossible to reconcile at first glance. But there are actually ways to do this through repudiation that might work for either paper or electronic voting.

Estonia's model has other flaws, but had an interesting solution here. They went as far as internet voting. So, worst case, imagine the local boss is at your apartment with a gun to your head, you vote online. But the trick was, any time after that you could walk into a polling place and cast an overriding vote that cancels the earlier vote. That's just one example of this technique, and weeks long elections probably wouldn't work for our system. But the general idea of repudiation or false votes is a useful tool.

With paper receipts, you could allow citizens to print false receipts at the polls as well, then that would preserve the secret ballot. Unfortunately it could also make it impossible for them to prove miscounting.

If the FEC and the voter had two shared secrets, one that unlocks the true vote and one that unlocks a false vote, you could accomplish both goals. You could have a deniable vote, but where the voter and the FEC could only prove to each other which one was correct.

I'm not sure you get the same guarantees with paper at scale. But maybe receipts with dummy receipts would get close enough.

I think another argument you could make is based on federalism. We currently have a system that guarantees every local polity can make whatever decisions they want about how to run their elections, out of a respect for distributed powers. E2E is not a good solution if we just have a hard requirement for distributed management of elections.

Appreciate the response. I am still grappling with a lot of these issues, and place enormous value on getting the conversation away from "paper good, electrons bad" to an open discussion of why we all have those really strong assumptions.

<comment><USER4> We are as a species electronics noobs. Applying our new shiny toys to everything is natural.

Electronic voting lowers the bar because it moves away from physical representation of people and ballots. Mail-in makes it easier to game for the same reason.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures - <AUTHOR> http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/pythonds/index.html <comment><USER2> I read this book cover to cover.

For someone self taught, who has a beginner understanding of Python (control structures, data types, classes, functions, loops, etc) this is undoubtedly the easiest way to introduce them to Algorithms and Abstract Data structures. This really takes a beginner to an intermediate level in small easily digestible chunks.

My question to you now, HN: are there any books on the market that can guide a beginner/itermediate (who knows Python and perhaps a framework like Django) to better understand the ins and outs of programming for the web? I am not talking about getting an app up and running, I am talking about understanding the flow of data, maybe things like WSGI, security, APIs, etc. Something that can really take an intermediate to an "Expert" level.

Any Suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER3> I still can't understand why, once they have a free version available in form of a html page, they don't give also a free pdf version far more readable and portable.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I'm interested in this book, but the format is unbearable!

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't mind hearing your criticisms of the interface. I use a fork of this book largely for the UI (not intentionally, that's just how things worked out). I am not a GUI-person, I just use Bootstrap as defensively as possible. So far, I haven't had any complaints about the affordances, but then most students don't complain unless things have gone terribly wrong. If you have specific things you can point to, it'd be helpful for my own purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We've had a couple of virtual study group Google Hangout meetings about this book at CodeBuddies -- [http://hangouts.codebuddies.org/category/data- structures-and...](http://hangouts.codebuddies.org/category/data-structures- and-algorithms)

IMO this is one of those books where it helps to talk about the material out loud/screenshare. The material can sometimes be dense.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks good. Quick note - tried to view the module index; [http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/pythonds/py- mo...](http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/pythonds/py- modindex.html)

But it is returning an error at the moment!

</comment><comment><USER8> The "Simple Balanced Parentheses" problem solution does not have to use a stack one index for opening(+1) and closing(-1) parentheses should be enough. Or am I wrong?!

<comment><USER9> If you're working with multiple symbols, such as (), {}, and [], you'd want to use a stack. Closing a child ( before its parent { would be an error.

<comment><USER8> You can still use an index for each symbol and track diff of child vs. parent and make sure it's never negative.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't the worst case space complexity be the same then? for eg: ( { [ ] } ) as you will be keeping index for each the symbols. Technically it can be implemented, but isn't stack a better approach?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Price Elasticity and the iPhone's Impact on Air Freight Markets - <AUTHOR> http://learn.flexport.com/price-elasticity-and-the-iphones-impact-on-air-freight-prices/

<comment><USER2> The article mentions that for their purposes 1/6 of 6 planes is the same as 1 full plane. However that is not the case. The remaining 5/6 of each of those planes is restricted to cargo with a high volume to weight ratio. So in reality, needing 6 planes does effectively restrict the cargo of six planes not just one. This in turn causes a much greater disruption than what the articles calculations suggest. For example those needing to ship similar freight to the phone (other electronic companies) would not be able to use the remaining space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good points. I think there are enough other estimates that the volumetric weight calculation isn't a huge impact. We could easily be off by 25% on the number of phones Apple ships to the United States, for example, since they don't disclose this number. But yeah, you're right.</comment></comment>


Top 20 Programming Languages According to Wikipedia Page Views - <AUTHOR>

1. Java (176482 Page Views in March 2011)
2. C (162303)
3. PHP (161177)
4. JavaScript (144278)
5. C++ (132777)
6. Python (97948)
7. C# (92544)
8. Visual Basic (90833)
9. Assembly language (76788)
10. Objective-C (66220)
11. Perl (58196)
12. Ruby (49573)
13. Fortran (47934)
14. VBA (43529)
15. Visual Basic .NET (42738)
16. BASIC (42576)
17. Lisp (37402)
18. COBOL (36246)
19. ActionScript (36209)
20. Pascal (35708)
I took the list of programming languages from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages and downloaded page view stats from http://stats.grok.se/.
The following entries were removed from the top list:
- XML, HTML, LaTeX, PostScript, Batch (Windows/Dos): I wouldn't classify these as programming languages.
- MUMPS, COMPASS, ChucK, MATLAB, KRYPTON, Inform, Arduino, Oracle, R: I assume people were actually searching for something different.
If you are interested, you can find the full list (including page count data for the last 24 months) on Google Docs: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvObTduyoRZ-dHVzbzgxeC1ZZnE4ZXJDN0FyUTZCNmc&hl=en&authkey=CKLB1ccE <comment><USER2> Why wouldn't you classify PostScript as a programming language?

From its page on Wikipedia:

"PostScript (PS) is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language"

Just because it's mainly been used as a page description language for printers doesn't mean that people haven't written applications in it - Arthur van Hoff even wrote a C to PostScript compiler in PostScript (pdb - allegedly standing for "Pure Dead Brilliant" - it was written in Glasgow).

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a snap decision. It just didn't feel right to include PostScript in the list.

However, you are definitely right: PostScript is Turing-complete, and hence a programming language (as well as LaTeX and Batch, AFAIK).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting -- I am much more likely to read the Wikipedia page for a language I don't know than one I do. Not sure how to interpret the stats in that case.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to the spreadsheet: [https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvObTduyoRZ- dHVzbzg...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvObTduyoRZ- dHVzbzgxeC1ZZnE4ZXJDN0FyUTZCNmc&hl=en&authkey=CKLB1ccE#gid=0)

</comment><comment><USER4> What else would matlab qualify for?

Matlab is huge in engineering and specialized fields.

<comment><AUTHOR> MATLAB is both a computing environment AND a programming language. I assumed that people searching for "MATLAB" are rather looking for the environment. I may be wrong with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You may want to include page views of wiki page in other (human) languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the top 20 list for the German Wikipedia:

1\. PHP (32519)

2\. Java (31965)

3\. C (27128)

4\. C++ (24163)

5\. JavaScript (22146)

6\. Visual Basic (16598)

7\. Python (15463)

8\. C# (13792)

9\. Visual Basic for Applications (9302)

10\. Perl (9204)

11\. Assembler (9084)

12\. Brainfuck (8254)

13\. Objective-C (8202)

14\. BASIC (7209)

15\. Ruby (7115)

16\. PostScript (6633)

17\. ABAP (6192)

18\. FORTRAN (5984)

19\. Visual Basic Script (5887)

20\. Pascal (5803)</comment></comment>


Apple's Culture of Secrecy  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/business/26nocera.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> If I had stock in Apple, I'd be selling it now. I've worked as an ER nurse for 15 years, and I know what sick looks like. Steve Jobs is ill: [http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/07/26/business/26noce...](http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/07/26/business/26nocera_.inline1.ready.html). If it's not cacer, it's something else, and it's bad. You don't loose that much weight by doing pilates. His zygomatic arch and clavicles are very pronounced. And, if you look at where his pectorals were 5 years ago as opposed to where they are now, he's lost a lot of muscle mass. Men shouldn't have droopy boobs.

I hate to say it, but in my experience people who try to beat cancers with special diets usually die. Granted, chemo, radiation and surgery are terrible, and if someone doesn't want to pursue that, I can certainly respect that decision. But, to try and beat cancer with a diet as opposed to the best medical science is madness in my opinion. If you want to beat cancer, go to the experts.

I certainly respect Steve's decision to not talk about his health publicly. But, I have a sneaky suspicion that if he was honest about his health, Apple's stock would tank hard.

<comment><USER3> From what I gathered (my dad died from it a couple years back) generally with pancreatic cancer, you're pretty much screwed anyway, special diet or otherwise. And yeah, Steve's physique does look eerily familiar; based on the usual fast development of pancreatic cancer and comparing what he looks like to my dad's degeneration, I'd guess we're not talking about years, but months or even weeks.

<comment><USER4> Though pancreatic cancer is usually rapidly fatal, he had an unusual form that's treatable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Mr. Jobs called me. "This is Steve Jobs," he began. "You think I'm an > arrogant [expletive] who thinks he's above the law, and I think you're a > slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong."

I never get tired of personal accounts of dealing with Steve Jobs. Every story I know has a few expletives and some awkward parts that only someone like SJ could pull off.

</comment><comment><USER6> There are a few people I will be sad to see leave this planet, folks like Hugh Hefner and Richard Branson, visionaries. Jobs is one of those people.

I'm not a fanboy, but I respect his ruthless passion.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't be unhappy at all if Branson left the planet. As long as he comes back again, on his spaceship:-)

(See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_SpaceShipTwo> )

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title might be more aptly written, "It's official -- Steve Jobs calls a Times reporter and says that he does not have cancer."

</comment><comment><USER8> Steve Jobs might have cancer again, and all people care about is Apple's stock price?

I know its logical. I know its rational. I know its the hackeresque response to consider privacy vs. corporate governance. But please, try to have some respect, try to have some compassion.

</comment><comment><USER9> an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor is _not_ the kind of pancreatic cancer that kills you in six months. The fast killers are _exocrine_ : the cells that produce enzymes that digest protein. As you can imagine, since soft tissues contain a lot of proteins, having too much of those enzymes is not so good.

This could have been any of a number of functional or nonfunctional neuroendocrine tumors, but the prognosis really would be quite a bit better.

As I said in another comment, you can still have some pretty unpleasant digestive issues, simply because it's a rather delicate digestive organ. There's a common saying in surgery: eat when you can, sleep when you can, and don't touch the pancreas. He could have a ductal obstruction, the pancreas could have necrosed. All his beta cells may have failed, causing him to become a rather old new-onset Type I diabetic (no, it's not the normal presentation of DM I, but PETs aren't common.) He could have had a completely unrelated pneumonia. I've heard some say he's still very actively managing his diet. If a doctor or nutritionist or dietitian isn't cut in on that diet, then it's probably riskier. Last I checked, this guy isn't risk averse.

He could have had any number of viral illnesses that would have taken a toll on anyone, it could have been a nasty case of mononucleosis, and, given his potentially partially compromised digestive system, the toll would be especially heavy on him.

On the nasty end, maybe on a recent foreign trip he got cholera or tuberculosis. Who knows. The differential is to wide to narrow it down, but the pancreatic cancer thing is getting old. A PET =! pancreatic cancer.

Based on the report, I'd go with a pneumonia, or some other infectious process that would have a substantial exogenous metabolic component, or a nasty GI bug, which would affect absorption of nutrients. Neither of which is lethal if treated, and the treatments are IV antibiotics, usually a fairly certain cure.

</comment><comment><USER10> Good read all the way through.

A little philosophy, a little business, and a little personal.

</comment><comment><USER11> The article is "Registration required". Ironic.

<comment><USER12> actually, the NY Times site generally hits you with the registration required page once you have exceeded a certain number of page views within a certain timeframe. I don't know what the exact figures are, but I have been caught out reading a page, switching to another page which put me over the lmit, and then not being able to reload the page that I had already viewed...

<comment><USER13> The Financial Times does that as well. This illness is easily treated by deleting cookies though. Maybe it works for the NY variety as well.

<comment><USER12> Maybe. Although, I have to say I don't find the nytimes interesting enough to bother doing the experiment :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>