Being a middle-aged junior - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/being-a-middle-aged-junior-ca7d643d9356 <comment><USER2> I didn't learn programming until I was in my 40s. I taught myself and went through one of the coding bootcamps. It took a while but I did eventually get a job.

Probably the three biggest takeaways I have from my own experience:

If the company is big enough to have an HR department, it is going to be hard to get hired as a non-standard applicant. Too many people would have to agree to take the risk, and HR is NOT about risk taking.

Some type of personal connection is extremely important. Meeting someone at a job fair/meetup/hackathon/whatever is going to get much better results than emailing a resume.

Recruiters are probably not going to be of much help. Companies do not want to pay recruiters commissions for jr devs.

<comment><USER3> The amount of spam I get from recruiters looking for junior devs would lead me to believe otherwise. And as a dev that used to work as a dev at a staffing agency, hiring managers often scrutinize the skills of juniors less than a senior or lead dev.

<comment><USER4> recruiters cast drift nets to rake in resume hauls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With the speed that frameworks and technologies change these days, I feel like we're all technically junior developers. Sure I have over 10 years of experience as a professional software developer, but I've only been coding in the latest flavor of .Net for the 2-4 years it's been around. Does anyone care about the five years of experience with Web Forms back before ASP.MVC was popular? Or my years of experience with 3rd-party tool X that no one uses anymore? What about Bootstrap or JQuery?

We all only have about two years of experience with whatever the hot new language is before it changes to something else.

<comment><USER6> That isn't really how anyone worth impressing judges work experience.

Those kind of resumes where you have like 18 years of work experience in 9 different language, but you were essentially not much more than a junior dev in any one of them, are very unimpressive.

That is the typical career story and that's why a lot of people struggle to find dev jobs when they get older because they weren't managing their career and were just riding the technology churn with all the other 23 year olds.

You should think of your career progression as every couple of years you are making a jump up to either more responsibility, or a more difficult domain, or working on systems with more load etc ...

If you don't make these forward progressions you will be judged harshly as an older person, because it's very difficult for people to NOT think, "well why didn't this person make any progress in their career? They must suck."

The technologies used is a side detail, it's never the "meat" of your work experience.

<comment><USER7> You make it sound trivial but the fact is that you're hired to do a job. Most likely if you don't go find another job every 2 years then you will not be progressing because many companies will not give you more responsibility or more difficult things to do. And then if you jump ship every two years they judge you for not sticking around and you will be docked for that. In the end I have seen plenty of companies hire older workers as just developers. If you want something higher then you have to be an expert in a domain... this again limits the number of jobs available to you.

<comment><USER8> > many companies will not give you more responsibility

You don't _get_ responsibility. You _take_ responsibility.

Of course this is harder in large companies, but it's equally important.

<comment><USER9> >You don't get responsibility. You take responsibility.

Underrated advice, right here. It's not always easy or gratifying, but it's served me well over the past 20 years.

<comment><USER10> I agree with this, I guess. But I've always thought of it as "assuming" more responsibility. Subtle difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I did the same thing. Spent 10 years as a c++ developer with no degree. Then got out for 10+ years as I was burned out and did a variety of non programming things. Eventually wanted to get into web development at 37. I had not even coded anything outside of VBA office macros for 10 years. Started learning and applying. It took 8 months to even land an interview, but I landed the job attached to that interview at 38. Took a job making not much money at all and kept it for 2 years. Traded up to another job with a 50% raise and now I'm a software team lead.

Its hard, but doable. Just make sure you are constantly practicing for when you get the interview. Build things to show off what you can do.

<comment><USER12> Did you start working at 17?

<comment><USER13> He did say he has no degree so it seems plausible.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, you're right. By the numbers he gave it sounded like he could have been even younger than 17. It's always interesting to hear how very young people get into a programming job. I worked with a 15 year old intern who was probably the smartest person I've ever worked with, and we probably would've hired him at 16 if he was looking for a job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had a friend and coworker who was in a similar situation, but not because of a career change. We worked on a piece of legacy software together. He was an incredible programmer, and five times the Java/Web developer as anyone else on the team, but because the legacy software was written primarily in C, and he was the "newest" member of the team, he was still the "Junior" dev. Even after being there for ten years. He was more or less consigned to that job title because Management freaked out at the idea that "they can't _all_ be senior developers!"

<comment><USER3> That guy should have left, but he probably negotiated a salary commensurate with his true experience, with people who just love to code, I can imagine they would not care about the title, the real win is in the bank account. Call me a code janitor if you want as long as I get my 120k 4 weeks of vacation and my co workers are not total wads, I'd be fine.

<comment><USER14> I'd love to tell you that he did, but no: he was a Steve Wozniak type-- incredibly talented but too laid back and passive to know how to fight for himself. He passed away about a year ago from brain cancer and I found out his actual salary from his wife (peanuts, basically). That combination of crappy job title and egregious underpay continued to hamper him when he looked for other work, because the assumption from prospective interviewers was, "You've worked there for 10 years and are still a JUNIOR dev? You must be terrible."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can relate to the article. Since 2003 or so I have been homeschooling my kids, very intentionally developing my spiritual path, taking on occasional web dev and database projects, and being the stay at home dad.

Up to that point, I had been in healthcare analytics doing everything from custom ETL, database design, to ad-hoc reports. Writing code and solving problems related to data was one of my favorite things.

Well the kids grew up and my engineering brain stayed active. Except, between age and the various non-traditional choices I had made in life my self- confidence was shot regarding employment.

Six weeks ago I accepted an offer for a data and business analyst position in healthcare at age 52. The pay is modest, the people are great, and I feel in many ways like I am starting all over. It is easy to regret lost time and opportunity. I sure have at times. Really I traded one opportunity set for another.

Now I see I am well suited for a new kind of role which uses my technical and non-technical strengths. In fact I was told being able to bridge technical and non-technical areas of the organization was a primary reason to offer me the position. I still get to write small bits of software to automate processes my new employer didn't realize could be automated. My favorite type of software to write.

Ironically, I have more fields in and out of tech I want to explore than I did 20 years ago. Yet, my life is over halfway to the finish line!

<comment><USER16> Shit hired at 52 fucking a

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Get an internship while you are in college. They are well paid these days. Just one recent entry on your resume doing dev work will set you free. Don't make a huge deal about your life story. If you get no interest then trim down your resume and remove dates. Someone will take you.

<comment><USER18> > while you are in college

??

<comment><USER17> Do it in the summer or between terms. Or delay your graduation. If you think your degree program won't get you a job (or it will be tremendously harder) because you are older & you don't have recent work experience, then try taking 3 months out to get paid 80k as an intern, then coming back and finish your program.

I really feel that for devs coming from unusual backgrounds, you just need a positive recent work entry on your resume. That's all you need to break through.

<comment><USER19> The parent's confusion stems from the fact that the OP is a nearly-40-year-old man who did programming earlier in his life, quit for 16 years, and is now trying to get back into it. "Do an internship during college" isn't really actionable advice for this guy.

<comment><USER18> Thank you.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, I missed that important point, bad reading comprehension. I thought he said he was getting a degree and was a junior in college but I read it again and he didn't mention college. He's looking at "junior engineer" or beginning programmer jobs.

College internships aren't available, he's not a student. Still, he or she needs one recent dev job on his resume, that will unlock further job opportunities. I think going to recruiting events in person and talking to devs and recruiters in person is one way to make that personal connection that could put you over the hump. Go to an event related to your area of biggest interest, try to make a personal connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've worked for the federal government last 10 years as a Systems Engineer on mostly software projects. My first degree is in aerospace and mechanical engineering. I've grown super tired of the slow bureaucracy and the fact that I never get to actually create or design anything beyond requirements.

I'm halfway through the 2 years it will take me to get a bachelors in CS from my original University. Im still working full time and thus I won't have any industry internships when I finish. I'll be 33 then.

Is this going to severely limit my opportunties for a first development job? Should I play down my previous experience to reduce the middle aged junior problem? Any advice will be appreciated.

<comment><USER21> I was in civil service for the DoD including time as a system engineer for NAVAIR at Pax River from 2012-2017. I had an undergrad degree in MechEng and finished an MSCS in 2016 at age 33. In 2017 I moved to SV and last week I started a new job as an ML engineer at a FAANG company. I don't know if a second BS is better/worse than MS, but it is definitely possible to switch.

So far, I feel conspicuously older than most folks in my group, and I've effectively rebooted my career so I don't have the same seniority and professional network I had in civil service. I worked around the middle-aged junior problem by taking small contract remote work at below my normal pay rate to bank some experience. I'm still comparatively inexperienced (and the offers I get reflect that), but I'm not being paid like a new grad or anything, so I feel like I have time to work up.

<comment><USER20> Wow. Thats a pretty parallel path. Thanks for replying. I thought about doing an MS but didn't feel qualified since I hadn't covered much in undergrad and it was so long ago. I've thought about switching now that I've taken a significant amount of the CS core curriculum, but it would add an additional year at least to this whole process.

How did you go about getting the contract work? A service like upwork or similar?

<comment><USER21> I took a side-gig as a TA in grad school and eventually that led to networking that connected me to some small-scale remote work opportunities. I'd be willing to try something like upwork these days though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The structure of society is brutal for those who need to shift gears in their middle years while supporting a family. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER23> They're missing out, I love working with people with a varied background, it's great when someone has experience in other fields.

</comment><comment><USER24> Been there. Just a lot of work is what it takes and lucky connections with good people

</comment><comment><USER25> Honestly the best part of working in the tech industry trends change so quickly that everyone is jr unless you "keep up." If you are motivated to "keep up", whether you're 40 or 20, you'll find work.</comment>


Runtime Introspection of Flow Types in JS - joe-stanton https://medium.com/p/runtime-introspection-of-flow-types-ddb7e5b042a5?repost=true <comment><AUTHOR> Cool article. I'm the author of [https://github.com/codemix/babel-plugin- typecheck](https://github.com/codemix/babel-plugin-typecheck) mentioned and the next version of the plugin (WIP) takes this kind of approach, so that you can reference a type at runtime:

        type User = {name: string, isAdmin: boolean};

        // compiles to
        const User = t.object(
          t.property('name', t.string()),
          t.property('isAdmin', t.boolean())
        );

        // which you can then use with
        User.check({name: 'Alice'}); // boolean
        User.assert({nom: false}); // throws

Ultimately it should be possible to use this to implement pattern matching in JS based on flow types, for example:

        type User = {
          name: string;
          roles: Role[];
        };

        type Role = {
          id: number;
          name: string;
          users: User[]
        };

        const url = match(someInput,
          (user: User) => `/users/${user.name}`,
          (role: Role) => `/roles/${role.id}`,
          (_) => `/` // default URL
        );

The really hard thing is to do this whilst maintaining perfect compatibility with flow.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is really neat! You may want to also look at [https://github.com/gcanti/babel-plugin- tcomb](https://github.com/gcanti/babel-plugin-tcomb) for some inspiration- I've used tcomb extensively for runtime ADT and typing, but using just Flow would be an interesting challenge!</comment>


White Dwarfs and Dyson Spheres - <AUTHOR> http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=32788

<comment><USER2> A Dyson sphere seems unlikely. If a civilization were capable of it, they would be capable of far more efficient energy schemes - controlling fusion directly, in the quantities they desired (instead of in whatever units a star offered) and where they desired.</comment>


The Ocean is Broken - <AUTHOR> http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken/ <comment><USER2> I saw some people comment on a thread similar to this yesterday called, "Sailor says pacific is lifeless form Japan onwards for 3k Miles". I am guessing it is the same gentleman in this article and this is the full article. Some comments there were skeptical and suggested they had been at sea and hadn't caught anything or had not "seen any whales or dolphins". Let me say that there are countless counter arguments but try to view it from another angle. Lets say you are a developer and you do that most of your life day in and day out for years and years - just as this man sails the seas. After years you will have certain observations that will be a culmination of your experience and accumulated knowledge for doing that job for many years... And perhaps young developers will not understand it or will question how you came to such a conclusion, although it is evident to you and experienced peers like yourself. You can't put it into a white paper because of several reason's like time, money, and test conducting. This is like that, its experience and years of wisdom that are talking. Maybe a state will fund a study which will cost 10 million bucks and 5 years to do statistical fish and trash sampling to confirm it later on but without doing such things in the immediate term such a keen observation has and should have the weight and impact it deserves, by that I mean not being brushed off as there is not data and " I didn't see fish either", its deeper than that and the approach should be constructing rather than deconstructing.

<comment><USER3> Even an entire human lifetime is an eyeblink in the ebb and flow of the ocean environment. No matter what experience a person has, his own observations mean nothing, or rather, are insufficient to assign any causality other than natural variability. Most of the species that have ever lived in the oceans (or anywhere else on the planet) are now extinct, and this happened long before humans had any influence.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you, but this statement has no ethical weight. We still get to choose whether to do something, and if something, what.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is nonsense. A classic case of mistaking an anecdote for data.

There's lots of year-to-year variation in currents which affect life in the ocean. In turn, the birds which depend on seafood vary tremendously.

For example, two years ago Pelagic Cormorants had tremendous problems with their food source off of Northern California. So the Cormorants moved around seeking food. Santa Clara County, which normally goes years without seeing this species, saw dozens.

If you want to find out if something is actually going on, go talk to the ornithologists who monitor the nesting sites for the seabirds.

<comment><USER6> or it may be the absolute truth - which you are dismissing as anecdotal.

In either case it is worth keeping an open mind, because if it is true, then we are in serious trouble. Sticking your head in the sand and saying "no data, no data" is not useful even if at the end of the day you are correct. When the consequences of being right or wrong (depending on your point of view) are so dire, it is worth investigating further and certainly not dismissing out of hand.

<comment><USER7> I think it more interesting why some people want to believe such nonsense. The price of fish is all the evidence you need. Glass half empty does not begin to describe such a mind set.

<comment><USER8> Fishing techniques have improved rapidly over the past few decades. The price of fish is only a measure of supply in as much as we can continue extracting fish. It's no indication of how close we are to running out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was the most depressing bit for me:

"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."

I think that's a fairly neat example of a weakness of modern environmentalism: an obsession with CO2 over everything else.

</comment><comment><USER10> The US, and other nations, have nuclear powered ships for war. Why not use these ships for peace, and try cleaning the ocean?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre)

[http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/...](http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/pollution/trash- vortex/)

<comment><USER11> because nuclear

 _god_

its like you dont even understand clean energy

<comment><USER10> I actually _do_ understand clean energy, and these nuclear powered vessels to which I refer have already been built and fitted. What better use for them than to clean our oceans?

<comment><USER11> (Sarcasm, my good sir/madam.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's really really sad, and no less ironic, that in the midst of this government shutdown, particularly with the zealotry from the tea party about the evils of government, that a problem which so obviously needs addressing, and should naturally and probably only can be solved by governments, goes unaddressed like this. Surely we must all be able to agree on this. What is government for at all, if not to harness our collective will to solve problems that economics deem impossible to solve by individuals?

<comment><USER13> It's interesting to see the statement that a problem like this can 'probably only be solved by governments' when governments so far have completely failed to solve it, and the proposed non-government solutions (such as removing the limitations on the liability of polluters, and allowing those whose health or livelihood has been injured by pollution to sue, potentially by class action) have never even been attempted. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and inspecting a different result." After a few large polluters went bankrupt after multi-billion dollar payouts to fishermen, beachgoers and such, I imagine industry as a whole would be more wary about pollution. Without limited liability - limited by government, I should add - BP would almost certainly be bankrupt by now. As would whichever company owned the nuclear plant that leaked in Japan.

<comment><USER14> _the proposed non-government solutions (such as removing the limitations on the liability of polluters, and allowing those whose health or livelihood has been injured by pollution to sue, potentially by class action) have never even been attempted._

The mistake you're making here is to think that this is a non-governmental solution. Yes, it is law that is preventing this solution from being enacted, but it is in the context of government that it could happen at all: government runs the courts and forces the loser of a suit to pay the winner.

Your argument is akin to the people who shout "keep your government hands off my medicare," or the politicians who insist that government can't do anything right, and to prove it they get into office and do everything wrong.

Yes, government in America is broken and ineffectual. It will only be fixed when we as a people decide that it's time for a government that responds to the needs of the people rather than only the wealthy; when we decide to stop being afraid and end the police state we're living in, and replace it with a government that works. Yes every government has its problems, but not all of them are as broken and destructive as ours. Saying government can't solve problems is _part of the problem_ \-- it keeps us from focusing our efforts on the kind of collective action that could actually make a difference.

What say you, brothers? Who is with me?

[crickets]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is extremely unsettling and sad. The question is, is there anything we can do both on micro and macro level?

<comment><USER12> I would guess on a micro level the best thing you can do is recycle, reducing the amount of refuse that ends up in landfills and often times out at sea. A lot of it from coastal areas ends up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it's not like storing it on land is awesome either.

The problem really is that even decently sized macro action can be largely negated by economic freeriders. Unless some body like the UN or US sets out to enforce universal cooperation with agreements on pollution, or fishing, whole states that don't follow the regulations will continue to take advantage. Witness the failed Kyoto Protocol, which had 191/192 nations in agreement, but the very worst polluters (read: the US) who refused to be party to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fortunately once we've sucked the earth dry of it's resources and die out ourselves, it should eventually recover.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why oh why do interface designers ever think it's a good idea to hijack the browser's keyboard controls, especially if it's only to make them do _nothing_?

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579760)

<comment><AUTHOR> Noticed right after I posted. Gave it an upvote

<comment><USER18> Cool. Suggest we delete the submission and this discussion, although if you don't, it doesn't matter. I'm just a bit obsessive about tidiness. Born from working on the C2 wiki, I guess.

 _Edit: Although I see now that this submission has a few upvotes, so maybe we 'd better not delete it. <shrug>_

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad I didn't

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would have been great confirmation of all that he writes about to see some photos from his trip -- specially of the infamous garbage patch.

<comment><USER20> You can't photograph the garbage patch in any meaningful way. It isn't visible. There are more fine plastic particles per cubic meter of water and you are more likely than normal to happen a cross a bit of floating plastic, but a picture doesn't tell the story.

If you have seen pictures of solid garbage on the water, you are probably looking at a large bay in a metropolitan area, say Manila.

<comment><USER21> You're correct about the garbage patch that's typically talked about in the news, but this article mentions:

> "In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the > propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of > situation, out in the ocean.

> "On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the > depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the > way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of > a big car or truck.

> "We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of > boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type > thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.

> "We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through > a garbage tip.

<comment><USER22> I believe the article is talking about ephemeral debris that was sent into the ocean from the 2011 tsunami. What will happen to it in the next 10-20 years is anyone's guess, but factory chimneys aren't something that get thrown overboard or stuffed into municipal landfills.

What this does demonstrate is how one natural disaster can spread signs of human influence and decay for thousands of miles, and it will likely take decades for this stuff to degrade or disperse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The good news is that apparently the Japanese aren't having sex anymore, so maybe the ocean around Japan will soon get a bit of a break:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579294)

</comment><comment><USER24> _It was like sailing through a garbage tip_

:(

As an individual, what are the things we could do (other than using less plastic), so we don't contribute to this mess?

</comment><comment><USER25> The ocean is broken? Sounds like aliens to me...

</comment><comment><USER26> This comment is going to get downvoted for meta-ness and probably because everyone disagrees with me but I just have to speak my mind: I'd like a version of hacker news sans the constant hysteria all the time.</comment>


Building a Company Based on Core Values - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@edla/building-a-company-based-on-core-values-ca254d33cf90#.b2vujuxgy <comment><USER2> I love these company values - it's basically a game of "what generic, positive words can we use to create an acronym that the CEO + HR will mindlessly repeat?"</comment>


The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/12/the-dea-is-reversing-its-insane-decision-to-ban-the-opiate-like-plant-kratom-for-now/?0p19G=c <comment><USER3> > Schedule I substances are those that have the following findings:

> 1\. The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.

> 2\. The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in > treatment in the United States.

> 3\. There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other > substance under medical supervision

Kratom doesn't meet any of those requirements, let alone all three. The scheduling process requires reform, and this impacts a large part of the world since drug scheduling (and patent protection on pharma) are part of American trade agreements.

Almost every action the DEA has taken has worsened the opioid epidemic and benefited the Mexican cartels. They didn't require doctor licensing or tracking for lower-level pain medication, they were then slow to crack down on the pill mills - once a large part of the population was addicted, they were then very slow to license more methadone programs and suboxone doctors for the fresh wave of addicts, and now they want to shut down one of the only free and working treatment options (Kratom)

The only result you can expect from the DEA's actions are more and more opioid deaths. It is up to 18,000 a year now - over 3x as many Americans who were killed in Iraq in total - so 3 Iraq wars _per year_.

The NYTimes has an excellent series of stories on the opioid epidemic - <USER2> video of the woman overdosing in a supermarket while her child attempts to wake her up are shattering:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/us/addicted-parents-get- th...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/us/addicted-parents-get-their-fix- even-with-children-watching.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/opinion/sunday/how- doctors...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/opinion/sunday/how-doctors- helped-drive-the-addiction-crisis.html?_r=0)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/well/family/opioids-may- in...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/well/family/opioids-may-interfere- with-parenting-instincts-study-finds.html)

<comment><USER4> >>over 3x as many Americans who were killed in Iraq in total - so 3 Iraq wars per year.

I know what you mean, but it really bothers me that you are only counting American deaths. The total number of Iraqi deaths arising from the Iraq war is highly disputed, but it seems to be somewhere between 150,000 and a bit over 1,000,000, depending on the survey and whether it only counts direct deaths of combatants vs. surveys that count civilian deaths and indirect effects. In any case, deaths arising from opioids are nowhere near any amount of "Iraq wars per year".

<comment><USER5> Because this is a matter of U.S. government policy, the responsibility is to the people of the United States.

Seems pretty simple to me.

<comment><USER6> All humans have the responsibility to not kill each other.

<comment><USER5> Who said that? Some times humans think other humans have a responsibility to kill eachother; I'm guessing you sometimes agree.

<comment><USER4> Even if you believe humans should sometimes kill each other (which is not a universally held opinion, but also not insane) you should see all loss of human life as, at best, a necessary cost. To not consider enemy casualties as a cost goes against this. To not consider civilian casualties on the other side as a cost is even worse. If killing foreign people is not considered something costly, then war becomes too easy a choice for the countries with the most powerful armies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The DEA reversing course due to public outcry (and common sense)?! What alternate reality have we slipped into?!

Previously:

DEA will ban chemicals contained in kratom, a popular herbal supplement [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12410083](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12410083)

Call to Action to save Kratom plant from DEA's uninformed Schedule I decision [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12438605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12438605)

<comment><USER8> It really isn't a course reversal, the people holding the purse strings seemed to have forced the DEA's hand into extending the period of public comment.

IIRC something similar happened with MDMA.

Hopefully folks like myself who have used Kratom to alleviate opiate withdrawal to great success will come forward and comment.

Anecdotally speaking, there are folks who have used kratom to ween themselves off of maintenance drugs like methadone and suboxone.

The withdrawals from long-acting maintenance opiates like these can last _months_ making it nearly impossible to get off of them cold-turkey.

Switching to kratom, which has a shorter, more forgiving withdrawal, can be of great benefit to an addict looking to get off of these maintenance drugs.

For an addict, kratom stops withdrawals in their tracks. It doesn't get you high, and taking more to get high would be pointless.

To an opiate-naive individual kratom will at most give a mild buzz. It's not like taking heroin, hydrocodone, or even codeine. just a mild buzz.

Kratom is usually sold as a powdered leaf. You can't overdose on kratom, because if you take too much of the powdered leaf you just throw up, well before you're able to ingest a dangerous amount. It's very self-regulating in that way.

You can't smoke or snort the powdered leaf. It is usually swallowed as a powdered leaf with a thick juice or simply brewed into a tea.

<comment><USER9> For those that may have read this comment and found it strangely familiar, I'll save you the trouble googling. It appears oxide regularly comments on opiate related threads, so his above anecdote isn't a copy of someone else's comment - it is just him re-stating his experiences he has posted before.

I mean no criticism of your story oxide; merely commenting for those who thought something might be awry.

<comment><USER8> I suppose I did start parroting what I said last time I commented here on kratom thread, yeesh.

I ought to have qualified it with a disclaimer if I was just going to repeat myself. I feel it's decent basic information on kratom for the uninitiated, but I didn't mean to parrot myself like that. It's been a long week.

My apologies, and thank you for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't agree with the ban, but it seems like the risks of kratom are not discussed, and in fact even downplayed by saying hey, it's just a plant.

To help me be an informed reader I would like WaPo to mention:

1) If you search kratom withdrawal there are a ton of anecdotal reports that sound pretty unpleasant if not debilitating.

2) What is the frequency of severe side effects, as best as can be known?

3) That "natural" substances or "plants" are not always safe. This misconception is so common and dangerous it shouldn't be used to mock the ban (real logic will suffice). [https://web.stanford.edu/~jpc/overture.htm](https://web.stanford.edu/~jpc/overture.htm)

There are plenty of valid reasons to argue against a ban. For example the chill on research, the low rate of fatalities, the likelihood it will make use more dangerous, and the probability a ban would have no net benefits.

<comment><USER11> In medicine, you have to show a drug is more effective (or as effective) and is as safe as existing drugs for a purpose in order to get FDA approval. Why not take a similar stance on drugs for recreational purposes? If it is as safe or safer than alcohol or tobacco, approve it.

<comment><USER12> Au contraire, a substance should only be banned from consumption if it is shown to be highly addictive, and life-threatening if overconsumed. Or something like that. I don't believe something should be banned until presumed completely safe.

<comment><USER13> >>highly addictive, and life-threatening if overconsumed

You mean like caffeine or nicotine?

<comment><USER12> No.

1) Addictive as in, one "normal" dose causes high physical addiction.

2) Lethal, more specifically that it is easy to overdose, or that the difference between "normal" and LD50 is low.

You don't get hooked on caffeine after one coke, and it's hard to kill yourself drinking too much coffee.

<comment><USER14> It is pretty rare for anyone to get addicted to a drug after one dose. Even for things like heroin. I think I've read that at most, there is a 25% chance of addiction. Still high, but still below the thresh hold. But admittedly, it is rather hard to sort out fact from propaganda here. (and heroin does have that second one, I'm guessing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _A group of 51 U.S. representatives wrote to the DEA saying that the DEA 's > move "threatens the transparency of the scheduling process..."_

There's transparency in the scheduling process?

</comment><comment><USER16> > Unfortunately, in the United States I don't think we have a good regulatory > framework for handling this situation

Why do we even _need_ a regulatory framework? It's a plant: let people grow it if they want; let them ingest it if they want. Heck, let them crush the eaves and smear them all over their bodies while singing, 'Happy days are here again!' if that's what they want. That's what freedom is about: letting folks do their thing.

<comment><USER17> The hard drugs have ugly consequences for their users, and for their society as a whole. Look at how the Japanese in WWII legalized all drugs in China, and made heroin, in particular, cheap and easily available; they wanted to corrode the substance of Chinese civil society, and they did.

<comment><USER18> Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and they seem to be doing very well with it and have very few drug overdose related deaths. They have [3 deaths per million citizens]([https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/05/why-h...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/05/why- hardly-anyone-dies-from-a-drug-overdose-in-portugal/)). I wouldn't be surprised if we had more drug enforcement related deaths in the US.

<comment><USER19> Portugal is also a _much_ smaller country, with less wealth inequality and systematic racial/socioeconomic divisions related to crime, poverty, drug use, etc. I'm not saying we shouldn't relax the drug laws in the US, but I don't think it's fair to assume that just because it works in Portugal it would work just as well here.

<comment><USER20> Yes, but now you have to show why it won't work in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The DEA should be abolished entirely. The War on Drugs has failed and was a naive idea to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not American so forgive me if this is a silly question but isn't/shouldn't the responsibility for evaluating the safety and approval of foods and drugs belong to the FDA?

Isn't the DEA being in charge of this like the FBI passing laws?

Why does the DEA have this power?

<comment><USER23> > Why does the DEA have this power?

Because Richard Nixon hated hippies and wanted to set up a nearly unaccountable police agency to persecute them. I'm not kidding and only exaggerating a little bit.

<comment><USER24> Is there anything in favor of the war on drugs ? I heard portugal made every drug legal and the amount of addicts has plumeted.

<comment><USER25> Decriminalized them. They're not _legal_. Still illegal to produce, buy, sell them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Really the problem is that scheduling a drug makes it illegal (or at least, _incredibly difficult_ ) to do research on. I'm not a fan of drug regulation either, but even considering the standpoint of those that are, letting these things be responsibly handled by professional medical development scientists sounds like a win-win situation.

</comment><comment><USER27> As with all things in Washington, I'd follow the money. I'd wager someone with a lot of milk to spill lobbied hard to get the scheduling move reversed. I wouldn't buy for a second that the needs of recovering addicts had anything to do with it. The DEA has made it abundantly clear that it gives exactly zero fucks about the facts regarding the narcotics it regulates or the consequences for lay people of their regulation.

</comment><comment><USER28> The DEA needs to go away. It's not a useful agency, and does little which other agencies couldn't do to the extent that society actually requires it.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if we could get weed legalized if we just started calling the DEA about it all the time.

<comment><USER30> I'd settle for seeing it off the Schedule 1 list, which would at least allow for more information/research to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Paranoid speculation: The DEA was given a secret brief to ban a substance that would help addicts withdraw from an addiction. Consider who actually benefits from this ban: Various policing powers, and drug cartels, who _depend_ on addicts staying that way.

Having written that, I don't believe it. But on the other hand . . .

<comment><USER30> More likely the 12-steppers and religious zealots who feel that all recreational drug/alcohol induced highs are wrong, and should be stopped/illegal. There's been a lot of fighting against anything that works to end addiction through medical research/means. In addition to those who think all recreational drugs should be outlawed.

<comment><USER32> It's entirely possible for it to be both.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "The DEA is not one to second-guess itself, no matter what the facts are."

That's such a sad reflection on American culture. People here value firm, decisive leaders that stick to their principles, even if they're wrong, over people more apt to listen to all sides of the story and re-evaluate their positions over time (because the latter people somehow look "weak" \-- even the wording of "second-guess" corroborates this).

It's such a detriment to social progress.

</comment><comment><USER34> The whole concept of banning plants is absurd statism. What are they gonna do? Ban evolution and photosynthesis? Send earth to prison?

</comment><comment><USER35> The fact that any federal agency, let alone the DEA, walked back a proposal in the face of public outcry is a real sign that positive change is happening, albeit slowly and subtly. If Obama were white, he would go down in history as one of the great presidents, despite his flaws, which are probably still better than those of other greats like FDR.

<comment><USER36> Is there any indication that the White House had any influence on this? The last I checked the only places the DEA has stopped their programs is in countries they've been kicked out of for causing more harm than good. Otherwise outside of reducing handpicked domestic crack sentences there hasn't been much revision of drug policy in the last 8 yrs.

Look at Colorado or other states which the populace decided to legalize marijuana industry - which were actually big deals. Where has the executive branch stepped in to stop the federal governments intervention in state policy?

It's sad when the most minor amount of positive development is rewarded as an drastic evolution in behaviour. Is that the standards that we hold the government up to these days?

Kratom is harmless to the average person. Comparable or likely less than marijuana. This was the easiest of choices, especially when considering the complete lack of evidence that it's comparable to the other schedule I drugs.

<comment><USER37> > Look at Colorado or other states which the populace decided to legalize > marijuana industry - which were actually big deals. Where has the executive > branch stepped in to stop the federal governments intervention in state > policy?

Obama made the decision that the DEA/DOJ would let state legalizations continue[1], at least unless it became clearly problematic. I and many others assume that he's not opposed to legalization and is letting the states be the laboratories for democracy that they should be. I also think this would never have happened in the previous administrations, and Obama is behind more of it than you seem to be giving him credit for. He's just not coming forward as an explicit supporter because it would detract from his support outside of his base supporters.

[1] [http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/14/obama- enforc...](http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/14/obama-enforcing- pot-laws-in-states-that-have-legalized-it-not-a-top-priority/)

<comment><USER36> Despite Obama's words it sounds like business as usual in Colorado if you've been following the news since then. Raids continue all the time in Colorado (including last month) and the banks keep getting pressured to not support the industry due to federal policy which has practically crippled growth.

Just this month the DEA openly blamed the legal companies following state laws as the source of criminality and baselessly dismiss the medical science behind it:

[http://www.denverpost.com/2016/08/10/dea-reduce-medical- mari...](http://www.denverpost.com/2016/08/10/dea-reduce-medical-marijuana- research-restrictions/)

The DOJ is still prosecuting these cases too. So again I wouldn't hand out any prizes over just talk.

They've also made a number of tough statements against Wall st excess, mass surveillance, mass incarceration, etc. Should we reward that as well? Unless you look at the data and continued actions/policies of federal agencies you'll just be rewarding talk and the bare minimum of action to appease voter bases. Which doesn't get us anywhere. Low standards = bad results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If you didn't know it before, this should make it clear these decisions are political, not scientific.

</comment><comment><USER39> It feels good to still be in business at [http://www.getkratom.com](http://www.getkratom.com) after all these years. There has definitely been a Streisand Effect from all of the DEA's attention but I don't think it was worth the stress.

I think I liked this article the most from the wave of press today. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/14/kratom- dea-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/14/kratom-dea-ban- reversal-culture-shift)

I'm one of the moderators of [https://www.reddit.com/r/kratom/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kratom/) , check it out if you want to keep up with news and community sentiment on this topic.

</comment><comment><USER40> Bad edit of the headline; very bad. Makes it appear to mean the opposite of what is intended.

Original headline was: "The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant after the Internet got really mad"

See the problem?

<comment><USER41> It's not even grammatically correct. The original headline was fine.

<comment><USER42> The article's original title needed editing to fix within the length limits, so the edited title from the submitter was likely just an accident or minor mistake. We've just updated it to clarify.

<comment><USER43> The title as given is awful, lacks context towards the plant being banned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I read the title as, "The DEA is withdrawing to another planet after the Internet got really mad"

<comment><USER45> Clearly, we need to get madder than we are already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Can we put the subject of the ban (WHICH PLANT) in the title please? HN is a bit more useless than the DEA with these obscure and clickbaity titles.</comment>


Show HN: WISP – mobile-first intranet solution for small and medium businesses - <AUTHOR> http://www.wispapp.com <comment><USER2> Awesome MVP, I think it'll do well!</comment>


Offer rescind after gpa drop - <AUTHOR> I accepted an internship offer for summer from a tech company when my gpa was above 3.0 (3.0 was the minimum required gpa for job). But after this semester my overall gpa will go down to 2.9. In the offer letter it states the offer is valid only if I maintain 3.0 gpa and I need to submit a transcript at the beginning of work. Will they rescind my offer if they find out my gpa went down below 3.0 this semester? <comment><USER2> Wouldn't just be easier to talk to your hiring manager/recruiter? usually if you are a really good candidate, they tend to overlook formalities like a 3.0 gpa. Those are not set in stone.

Talk to your recruiter!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the reply. It dropped .02 points and is 2.98 now but it says in the offer letter that the offer is valid only if I maintain a 3.0. Do you know how flexible HR is with that? I was hoping to submit last semester's transcript when my GPA was higher than 3.0 before talking to the hiring manager.

<comment><USER2> Well, tell you what and I hope this helps: my first internship required 3.0 gpa. Mine that semester was 2.98 (exactly like yours). Not only did I interview and get the internship, I have been with that company ever since 2013 and haven't had any performance review below "exceeded expectations" ever since I started.

Moral of the story is: the gpa will only be a big deal if you make it so. Your perception will be your reality and you will lose out on a fantastic opportunity to start your career on the right foot. Call your recruiter, make your case, have a great internship.

Side Note: I graduated with a 3.4. Had to work my butt off to raise it up and get the offer and I did.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Go Library for scanning data from a database into structs and more - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/georgysavva/scany <comment><AUTHOR> Hi. I created this library: [https://github.com/georgysavva/scany](https://github.com/georgysavva/scany). It allows developers to scan complex data from a database into Go structs and other composite types with just one function call and don't bother with rows iteration.

scany isn't limited to any specific database. It integrates with `database/sql`, so any database with database/sql driver is supported. It also works with [https://github.com/jackc/pgx](https://github.com/jackc/pgx) \- specific library for PostgreSQL. Apart from the out of the box support, scany can be easily extended to work with almost any database library.

The library is feature-rich, well documented and tested.</comment>


Literate Programming  Knuth(1984) - <AUTHOR> http://www.literateprogramming.com/knuthweb.pdf <comment><USER2> I still go back and forth on this idea--not that I have ever implemented completely any of my programs in a literate style. It is hard to argue with the quality of results that Knuth obtains (a small handful of bugs in TEX during its first 10 years of life).</comment>


Tox Chat: An Insecure Instant Messenger - <AUTHOR> http://www.tox-chat.com/

<comment><USER2> nitpick : please use a more contrasting color combo.

edit : You know what--keep the poor contrast, that way no one can read it.

"He previously posted on 4chan, a popular internet forum often used for trading child pornography,"

I'm all for condemning racist and paedophiles, but what a load of garbage that the author chose to explain 4chan that way.</comment>


Looking Back at Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.01973 <comment><USER2> As someone who bet his startup in 2000 on Postgres (with little experience at the time) and registered on HN just to praise Tom Lane for being exceptionally helpful and forthcoming on the mailing lists, I enjoyed this but don't think it's very relevant to Postgres' success in the past 20-odd years - that was entirely due to a few good people who had the right priorities and made good decisions without drama and without being overly opinionated. A very notable exception in the world of open source...

<comment><USER3> > without being overly opinionated

My take is Postgres is extremely opinionated, but in such a way that it is beneficial for the long run.

PG adheres to the SQL standard far stricter than MySQL (i.e. select w/o order, ACID). From 2000-2010, it severely slowed the progress of features compared to MySQL (clustering was big topic for a while).

But the problems of hacks, speed and probably a significant one, management/owners, caught up with MySQL.

Feels like tortoise & the hare.

<comment><USER4> "Postgres is extremely opinionated"

When I think of the term "opinionated" as it applies to software platforms, I think of things that have intended purposes in mind and optimize for the ease of those use cases, potentially to the detriment of people doing other things. It also suggests a "one way to do it" approach.

If that is the definition, I don't think Postgres fits. Postgres tries pretty hard to meet users where they are, and tackle uncommon or emerging use cases. Examples include JSON support, support for writing functions in various languages (javascript, python, perl, R, etc.), and C extensions that can hack the engine in innumerable ways.

<comment><USER5> I don't think "opinionated" in the context of a database system means refusing to implement useful features. When I think of unopinionated software, I think of software like Jenkins; it feels like a plugin glue framework that does barely anything useful out-of-the-box and leaves it up to the user to create a working configuration out of the tons of plugins available.

Aside from being immediately useful just as a basic relational data store, my impression of PostgreSQL is that the "opinion" is apparent in the way that new things get done. There seems to be a culture of either implementing things _well_ or not at all, and to avoid rushing things just because people want the new feature right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The highest-order lesson I draw comes from the fact that that Postgres > defied Fred Brooks' "Second System Effect" [Bro75]. Brooks argued that > designers often follow up on a successful first system with a second system > that fails due to being overburdened with features and ideas. Postgres was > Stonebraker's second system...

I really hope we pull off some of these software adages.

<comment><USER7> >Postgres was Stonebraker's second system.

What was his first system?

<comment><USER8> Ingres. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingres_(database)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingres_\(database\))

However, if you look at the projects he's worked on, he has a track record of writing database engines that end up in delivered database systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the first C programs I wrote pulled data from an Ingres Database, all running on a PDP 11/34\. I now use PostgreSQL heavily on AWS. Thanks Michael Stonebraker!

<comment><USER10> I'm still developing web services connected to an Ingres instance running on a rickety ~22 year old Sun server with lots of bits and pieces cannibalized from its long dead siblings.

We have the replacement system almost ready but won't really be able to swap the thing until the project owner retires (yay politics!).

It's important but not time-critical, so if it dies before he goes we can just eat the downtime and take a couple of weeks to migrate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> See also: "The Postgres and Illustra Codelines" by Wei Hong:

[https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3226595.3226623](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3226595.3226623)

<comment><USER12> I have done some work on parallelism in PostgreSQL, and I was fascinated to discover Wei Hong's work in this area from more than a quarter century ago:

[https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1992/ERL-92-3.p...](https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1992/ERL-92-3.pdf)

The POSTGRES 4.2 tarball includes a bunch of his parallel query work, which you can find wrapped in #ifdef sequent. I _assume_ that this was a precursor to XPRS, and it was ripped out of regular POSTGRES after that. I wonder if anyone knows what happened to the XPRS sources...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love PostgreSQL history, so this was tons of fun to read me for me.

While reading, I also ended up highlighting and sharing some of my favorite parts on twitter: [https://twitter.com/felixge/status/1272613965219139585](https://twitter.com/felixge/status/1272613965219139585)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish he described more the problems of their insular approach to avoid SQL. It used something like postquel, nobody used. It only shined under a C/C++ API, but was not usable for users. Just for developers to map their objects to. An opinionated OO database, which didn't follow the standards. And there were much better OO - DB persistency mappings these days, like for Lisp. There you had to write no glue code. Postgres was a turkey.

But everything changed when someone added SQL. Soon it became the very best SQL standards implementation. That's when I picked it up again, and stayed with it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this the same Postgres as the PostgreSQL database we all know and love here on HN?

<comment><USER16> Yes, although originally it did not support SQL but QUEL.

see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL#History) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUEL_query_languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUEL_query_languages)

<comment><USER17> I wish how things would be if it was QUEL that would became the standard. The language looks closer to the access pattern that ORMs using.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Totally off-topic, but anybody who is into databases should at least have heard the name dBase, which was the most successful database in the 80s. However, they totally fucked up the release of version IV, which had serious reliability issues (not something you want in a database, in case you did not know). This lead to a dramatic decline and eventually the death of dBase. Who knows how the database and software landscape would look like had they released a version without major bugs.

<comment><USER19> > at least have heard the name dBase

Oh man, you just wet my eyes! What a trip into the past!

I wrote my first paid project in dBase in 1982 when noone knew what "computer mouse" was. I answered the ad in newspaper and initially they wanted me to help them organize text files. I told them about dBase and that was my first project - a simple database to manage their parking lots. It was such early days of programming, we had basically zero agreement! Just half piece of paper that they pay me 10% in advance and short list of features to get remaining 90%. And funny thing is - no copyright agreement! So while I made few months of rent for their project, I ended up paying off my first mortgage by just offering the same piece of software to many other parking corps! It was incredible feeling! Like creating money out of thin air - they sponsor my plane/hotel and I just told them what PC (with DOS) I need to be ready. Then in just few hours of installation and training, I was on my way home with nice check. I frankly don't even remember how much it was back then...

Good times!

<comment><USER20> Amazing story. How did you get known to the other parking companies? Did you ring them up or something?

I suppose the secret is quickly delivering software that does what someone wants.

<comment><USER19> Yes. Back then cold calling was welcomed. Everyone picked up the phone with excitement of who's calling. All I had to tell them is the name of the company and how they can benefit for the software. Honestly conversion rate was close to 100%, its just some locations had headquarters across the country and I didn't feel like flying in winter time lol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find Postgres a really good database but with really poor tools.

I don't want to stir up a religious battle here, but the tooling around MSSQL is just that much better.

And the sql dialect is imo more to my taste.

<comment><USER22> I also found this when I switched from MySQL. After a while you discover the right tool for the job, and often some tolls that don't exist for other databases (things like PostgREST come to mind). Sometime I wish it was a bit more idiomatic though.

We're working on a lot of tooling at [https://supabase.io](https://supabase.io). We're open source too. If there is anything in particular you're missing, let me know

<comment><USER23> Since you guys are doing something I highly agree with and I replied to your announcement post as well...

How about a UML/ERD diagram tool which can spit out schemas and, given a schema to start with, migrations?

There are a couple dozen of these being offered as SAAS with varying levels of usability and complexity. If you built one of those you'd soon have the attention of everyone who is bitching about paying 20 dollars a month to see their own database in a way that management can visualize for their charts and graphs.

ERD diagrams have existed for decades. Even Oracle gives such a tool away. But for Postgres, the easiest way to create a schema with migrations without a credit card is still to write a Django model by hand, afaik.

<comment><USER22> That's a great idea for the diagrams. I'm slowly working towards dumping schemas/types for the database in various formats over here: [https://supabase.github.io/pg-api/](https://supabase.github.io/pg-api/)

Once we've stabalized this we will start on git integrations - link up your repo for to keep everything in code - your types, schema, tables, functions, etc. We are also brainstorming ways that we can offer branching - since we give a full database server, we can possibly "branch" the default "postgres" database into various schemas which you can test with.

> ERD diagrams have existed for decades

If you know of a good open source tool which we should be supporting for this, let me know. Otherwise we don't mind building from scratch!

<comment><USER23> Here are a couple of examples in React:

[https://github.com/projectstorm/react- diagrams](https://github.com/projectstorm/react-diagrams) (diagram library)

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-database- diagram](https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-database-diagram) (an example using the above library)

There is a Node migration library that seems well received but as I hinted above I have always trusted Django's migration system and still use it to bang out schemas if I know the schema will change, so I can't vouch for this lib personally...

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/db-migrate](https://www.npmjs.com/package/db- migrate)

<comment><USER22> > projectstorm/react-diagrams

woah. This looks powerful.

Thanks for the libraries - i'll research more and loop back here if we end up using them.

<comment><USER23> If this is worth pitching in a meeting, I'd point out that the creator of GraphQL is also the creator of Airtable, which seems to be a thriving startup. The whole business model there is to give people visual tools to get into a database and out of a spreadsheet.

The story in all of this is that the only thing keeping Joe Q. Public from using a database instead of a spreadsheet is the very first step: designing a schema. Database design isn't really an impossible task for a non-developer to learn, if it can be visualized. If you start out at a command line and try to explain many-to-many relationships to them in code, you just lost them. People are visual creatures.

Since we're talking about giving people an API that takes care of CRUD and basic view logic at the database itself, and returns the data and the success/fail/delay messaging in a way that is standardized on the UI via javascript objects and async browser functions, the only hurdle that's left is that first one...

...designing a schema.

edit: on your topic of branching into test environments, I am in the process of evaluating low-code platforms for non-profits with limited development money but complex data needs at the moment, so I think we're thinking about the same things.

Everyone and their brother is working on a low-code platform at the moment. A big part of whether those platforms succeed or not is how they handle "last mile" complex logic. By last mile I mean, you can feasibly deliver basic CRUD and data analysis visualizations with drag and drop and query binding in generic javascript UI components. But there's still going to be the 10% complex business logic cases that don't fall within the 90% of an application that the generic components and boilerplate don't cover.

Off the top of my head, you could guide a user through some form logic that picks the first hundred or fifty or whatever rows from their existing tables that match a certain subset of shared keys, and tells them to flag columns which have sensitive data. Once the columns are flagged the tool could jumble the data in those columns and spit out a sandbox without any identifiable sensitive data that they could then safely hand to a contractor or freelancer to work on for custom development.

<comment><USER24> > I'd point out that the creator of GraphQL is also the creator of Airtable, > which seems to be a thriving startup.

This is news to me. Any sources for this?

<comment><USER23> I saw it in a conference talk, looking...

edit: [https://medium.com/@calebmer](https://medium.com/@calebmer), [https://github.com/calebmer](https://github.com/calebmer), [https://calebmer.com/](https://calebmer.com/)

I misspoke, not a founder of the company but an engineering hire there after he left Facebook, and the creator of PostGraphile. The gist of what I was getting at is there is a lot of activity swirling around putting business logic back on databases, it seems.

We might look back at these days as the high water mark of "peak javascript."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A good read but man these PDF's are terrible to read on mobile.

<comment><USER26> Do submitters write academic papers in "native" LaTex these days? Or do they write in some intermediary format like markdown?

If it's the latter, it'd be pretty trivial to generate a more mobile-friendly html format. I wonder if arxiv supports something like this.

<comment><USER27> As others said, yes, academic papers are still written in LaTex. However, arXiv does not actually accept a pdf for submissions, but require the actual LaTex sources and they generate their own pdf. As LaTex-to-HTML improves, they could always generate it for all of the submissions for which they have the source.

<comment><USER26> That would be fantastic! I hope it's on their long term roadmap :). They probably have the biggest corpus of LaTex source in the world, that'd be pretty useful to the project maintainers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Giles Bowkett summons monsters - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.posterous.com/giles-bowkett-summons-monsters

<comment><USER2> I like this post very much. HN discussions often end up being about minor details rather than the overarching point, and I think that's unfortunate.

Those details are often things that are a matter of preference. There are good and bad arguments for both sides, and most of those arguments have been made many, many times already. Different people will hear the same exact arguments, draw on their own experiences and values, and come to different conclusions. And that's okay.

Which isn't to say that details are always irrelevant: just that you're missing a lot when you focus on the details to the exclusion of the larger point. Like in this post: it doesn't really matter whether or not Giles is baiting people intentionally. It may be true, it may be false, but _it's not the point_. The point is that people are responding as if he's doing it anyway.

<comment><USER3> This is a common failing of... our kind, I suppose. Too often we tend to get stuck on details and miss the bigger picture.

My favorite example are analogies. Every single time one is made, it results in a string of other comments attempting to correct it or improve it. "It's like driving a car down the freeway without any wheels"... "No, it's really more like driving a tractor trailer on a country road without wheels and a windshield". Every. Single. Time. And I'm as guilty of this as anyone.

It often makes for frustrating reading, especially when you're already familiar with the argument and aware of the most common mental traps, but have to read them over and over again trying to get to the good stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article contains a good observation: _he wraps his key idea in layers of link-bait and nerd-traps, shallow but emotionally charged ideas that side- track all but the strongest minds_.

Hey, this idea is my Intellectual Property! I invented it to keep the morons at bay during Usenet's Eternal September, beginning with AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe's addition to Usenet in 1993. I always tried to put "lightning rod" prose into any Usenet article to divert the idiots into responding with idiocy. Only people with some knowledge can pass up a "lightning rod" and deal with the real issues.

<comment><USER5> In many of his usenet articles Eric Naggum admits to putting traps for 'stupid people' in his posts. Anyone who's read any amount of Naggum rants knows this had interesting results. For instance, people would 'suggest' he use more polite language, and in response would get flamed.

<comment><USER6> It's as old as Plato's Republic; it's hilarious how people (starting with Socrates's fictional debate partners) get sidetracked into "no, if the city were like that you would need [...] for it to work" while forgetting the fact that it's just a metaphor for exploring justice.

<comment><USER7> Fun facts! I first read Plato before I was 16, and first read Plato in the original Greek before I was 20. Those are the monkey see, monkey do years.

However, although I think Raganwald is basically onto something, it's not entirely deliberate. It never occurred to me that after complaining how Bundler breaks convention over configuration, people would tell me that configuration options are the solution to "bundle exec foo."

This is the kind of thing Reg might refer to as a trap, but there's a simple general principle that generates traps. Trace your idea from a specific to a principle and watch how few people can follow you there.

Also, I've actually blogged that Alan Kay quote many times, and I try to hammer the point whenever I have a chance, because I think it's one of those overlooked bits of genius that really helps anyone who gives it the thought it deserves. For instance: anything which is driven by fashion is going to go in cycles. What does that mean?

Clothing of course is driven by fashion. Lots of fashion designers raid thrift shops to get new ideas from old clothes. Fashion drives music. Bands re-record new versions of old songs all the time, dance music constantly samples and recycles itself, rappers sample old grooves and bring them back to new life and put them in front of new audiences. So maybe if you work in an industry driven by fashion, a pop culture, you'll want to dig into the past and find "new" ideas to steal. Like the revolutionary idea that GUIs should use MVC, for example. The big "new" idea in client-side JavaScript is literally the oldest idea there is when it comes to UI.

I mentioned this in another thread, connected to my actual rant, but I'll say it here again: I predicted JS MVC (eg Backbone) in 2005 or 2006, and built my own crappy version in 2007 or 2008. It's not magic future genius powers. When you know it's fashion, and you know fashion is cyclical, you can just watch the wheel turning.

But I don't think the Alan Kay thing is the only thing in there worth thinking about. I basically put in stuff for arguers to argue about and stuff for thinkers to think about. Some people love arguing and hate thinking! That's not my style, but I don't mind if they have fun too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's always nice to see people keeping the fine art of old school usenet-style trolling alive in these confused times.

</comment><comment><USER9> Note to raganwald: Harlan is still alive, not suffering fools kindly, if at all.

<comment><USER10> "I used to smoke drugs. I still do, but I used to, also."—Mitch Hedberg.

Yeah, I see how saying he "used to" makes it sound like he's dead or had total personality replacement surgery. I've changed that, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From my perspective Rails popularized (perhaps even normalized) tdd, which I think is probably a significant contribution to programming culture.

Or were high-ceremony Java enterprise folk doing tdd all along and rails just adopted it? I don't know but I suspect they were at best pretending to

<comment><USER4> _high-ceremony Java enterprise folk_ \- is that a way of not including a "lightning rod" or layers of linkbait and trolling? Because I think of the work of "Java enterprise folk" in different terms. "Bloatware", "boilerplate", "marching morons" and a number of other more derogatory terms come to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great, now every HN commenter is going to try to put a trap in all of their comments. I wonder where the line between traps and trolling lies.

<comment><USER10> There is no line, trapping _is_ trolling. The result as far as HN is concerned is the same: High noise-to-signal ratio in the discussions.

<comment><USER13> Ah. This clears things for me. I can now go back to some of the blogs I used to read but stopped because I thought they were switching sides wantonly, when they were actually forcing me to choose one...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know and respect Reg. I've emailed and tweeted quite a lot with him over the years, long been a fan of his writing, and hung out in person in Toronto a few times. He's a great guy. But this rambling theory of his highlights a problem I've noted before, his tragic addiction to smoking banana peels. Although I appreciate the time taken to think about my writing, Reg's "conspiracy theory" amounts to nothing more than the fever dreams and hallucinations that smoking banana peels so often induces. Parents, warn your children about banana peels. I would go so far as to say don't even let them have a banana sunday or a strawberry-banana smoothie. It's just not worth the heartbreak.

<comment><USER14> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bananadine> ;)</comment></comment>


No hard evidence champagne can prevent dementia - <AUTHOR> http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/11November/Pages/No-hard-evidence-champagne-can-prevent-dementia.aspx <comment> what-no-tests Requires further study ;)</comment>


Commits everyday for 667 days at a stretch and counting - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jdalton

<comment><USER2> That what i call COMMITment</comment>


Nokia's Strange, But Likely Suitor - <AUTHOR> http://www.streetinsider.com/Rumors/Nokias+(NOK)+Strange,+But+Likely+Suitor/7554601.html <comment><USER2> Nokia should sell a phone (NOT smart) with no browser nor any power hungry features except one feature:

TETHERING.

This cheap phone combined with a cheap wifi tablet would sell like cakes. Nokia is the best phone company for feature less phones. There is a real need to split the functionality of a smartphone into a simple phone and a tablet. For example, do you really want to carry your expensive smart phone when you train sport ?

Nokia, stop copying others trends and do you what you do best !

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting, but assuming that getting 9 billion over 5 years is a given, and with Nokia finally releasing quality phones that are solid competition.. why sell?</comment>


Things a web designer would never tell you  - <AUTHOR> http://boagworld.com/design/10_things_a_web_designer_would/

<comment><USER2> Very funny. In case you're sarcasm impared, the page is meant to be a joke.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm relatively ignorant about these matters. Anyone out there willing to chime in with a qualified opinion?

dcurtis, i know you're here somewhere...</comment>


North Korea Agrees to Curb Nuclear Work; U.S. Offers Aid - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/world/asia/us-says-north-korea-agrees-to-curb-nuclear-work.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me again and again and again...

</comment><comment><USER3> I laughed when the CNN headline was "Food for Nukes."</comment>


Don't Kill Your Digital Transformation with Technology Obsession - <AUTHOR> https://compuware.com/digital-transformation-technology-obsession/ <comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, the motivation to survive can morph into a motivation to conform. Enterprises can be lured into adopting en-vogue technology to modernize the management of mission-critical assets instead of adopting new processes and tools to improve those assets where they already run—often on the mainframe.</comment>


The AngelList 2011 Yearbook - <AUTHOR> http://angel.co/2011 <comment><USER2> Anyone else surprised by how low the numbers are? Only 500 startups and 2,500 investors joined last year?

2011 was the breakout growth year for AngelList according to their Alexa graph[1]. And Angel.co has 740K pages indexed by Google, of which about 356K of which appear to be investor profiles, 159K appear to be company profiles, and the remaining 225K could be assumed to be entrepreneur profiles. Perhaps there's another large subset of indexed pages I'm missing?

I'd love to know the actual total counts of startups, angels, and entrepreneurs if anyone is privy.

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/lsMCY.png>

<comment><USER3> It looks like that's 500 Startups WITH 10+ intros. # of intros is probably a good indicator of whether or not they got funded.

I would read that as 500 startups that got funded. I imagine there are WAY more startups that signed up.

<comment><USER4> Startup data trends (which gets its data via AngelList's API) shows 18799 startups in total when you search on location "Earth" <http://startupdatatrends.com/?tags=1643>

It's reasonable to think that most of these startups created AngelList accounts in 2011 (given hornbaker's Alexa graph).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hint: click the "Shuffle" icon in the upper-right. It's addictive.</comment>


McKinsey: Data Centers Are Cheaper Than The Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/04/15/mckinsey-data-centers-cheaper-than-cloud/

<comment><USER2> The McKinsey report doesn't exactly come to that headline conclusion. It says that there is a point where if you have enough servers it becomes more cost effective to run your own data center, simply because can spread the cost of people and enterprise OS licenses across enough CPUs that the cost drops below the similar cost Amazon charges you, minus Amazon's profit. For small and medium sized enterprises, they claim cloud services are cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER3> Simply put, if you require vast amounts of processing power, it's probably cheaper to just run your own data center because otherwise you end up paying for a cloud-based data center with all the third-party service overhead.

If, on the other hand, you simply require the equivalent of a few machines on the net, it's cheaper to buy a piece of cloud, because the extra per-CPU cost is small compared to the costs in maintenance, personnel, etc that you would have to keep in-house.

</comment><comment><USER4> You see Nick Carr's response? [http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/04/the_big_company.ph...](http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/04/the_big_company.php)

</comment><comment><USER5> Does it even worth researching? To simplify - provider (let's say Amazon) spends A dollars to build and support data center and makes B dollars profit. It charges you A+B.

DIY cost is very close to A (if you're talking datacenter scale).

A+B > A

</comment><comment><USER6> This report is kind of obvious. Those of us using AWS and others knew about this a long time ago. Its pretty simple math to be able to see when your cloud will cost more than DIY.

<comment><USER7> It can be hard to cost out sysadmin costs in advance, especially for small companies, and it's nearly impossible to assess sysadmin risks in advance (for small companies).</comment></comment>


The Future of Startups (Jason Calacanis) - <AUTHOR> http://tinypaste.com/pre.php?id=1b4b3

<comment><USER2> > _As many of you know, I spent the better part of August preparing for, and > co-hosting, the TechCrunch50.com event, which has become known as "Sundance > for the technology industry."_

uh, what?

The email as a whole, however, was a lot better than expected. I recommend reading it.</comment>


Assembly Routine for Realtime Decoding of Floppy Data - <AUTHOR> http://linusakesson.net/programming/gcr-decoding/index.php

<comment><AUTHOR> LFT has come up with a clever routine for decoding Commondore floppy data in realtime. This is quite an achievement that mixes bit twiddling hacks, self- modifying code, cycle counting, and undocumented opcodes.

While the Commodore serial transfer routines are well-known for being terribly slow (300 bytes/sec), various fastloaders have been used since the mid 80's. The 1541 drive has its own 6502 CPU, so the computer could download code into the drive's RAM and then talk to it via an optimized protocol. These routines have been reasonably fast and Krill's loader is one of the more modern variants.

However, there's another aspect that hadn't been optimized before. Data is stored on magnetic media in an expanded form (5 bits for every 4 bits of data for Commodore's GCR coding) so that the clock signal can be regenerated from the data. Similar encodings are used for CDs and DVDs these days as well.

The data needs to be decoded from its media format into the original data. Normally, the 1541 drive does this decoding since it has plenty of time. It reads a sector, decodes it, and leisurely transmits the results back. Then it repeats the process for the next sector. Meanwhile, the disk is still spinning underneath, rotating several times per sector read.

Some fastloaders speed this up by avoiding decoding on the drive. They transfer the raw data to the C64 and decode it there, letting the drive just read sectors and transmit the data. But decoding in realtime has been the holy grail.

LFT's routine is very clever and has lessons for data packing/unpacking for other platforms as well. It's a classic time/memory tradeoff where some expansion during the unpacking process saves CPU cycles. In short, the standard approach of masking and shifting is not the only way to deal with non-byte-aligned fields. Without a more clever approach, realtime decoding is not possible.

The result is code that can decode from raw GCR to data bytes on the fly, transmitting data to the C64 at almost the rate of the floppy spinning (roughly 25 microseconds/byte).

I say "almost" since checksums still need to be validated. This means that an interleave of 2 (every other sector) can be introduced when writing the data in order to have the next sequential sector available to be read after the previous one has been decoded.

Congrats to LFT on a great accomplishment 30 years in the making.

</comment><comment><USER2> In my assembly and computer architecture class (CSC 236 at NC State University), the instructor grades us on efficiency - sometimes it's the number of instructions written, sometimes instructions executed. Additionally, he posts the all-time efficiency records for each program.

The end result is that I am now addicted to assembly programming. There's so many clever tricks you can use, like:

* Manipulating the addresses your code assembles at so that the addresses in a jump table can overlap.

* Using `lea` on data values to convert ASCII numbers to their normal equivalent while in motion.

* Making a 128KB lookup table.

* Unrolling all the loops in the program.

* Reusing as many registers as possible (including using bx as a frame pointer) just so you don't have to pop them.

And when you're studying your code, and you suddenly have the flash of inspiration about how to make it faster, there's this feeling of, "Oh, that's so brilliant, but so evil..."

(Of course, then you have to debug it all. :-P)

<comment><USER3> Although I love this stuff, encountering code like this is a nightmare.

I hope you never have to revisit your programs ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lovely. There are lots of peripherals from around the same time that I wish were as programmable as the 1541, or even just a little bit. For example, if you'd been able to send, say, 50 bytes of 8085 code to the VT-100, and use a 30-character buffer, you could have handled backspace locally in the terminal, both improving responsiveness and dramatically lowering load on your VAX back in the days when handling an I/O interrupt to echo a character was a substantial load. If the VT-100 or H19 had had 20 bytes of SRAM mapped into its font ROM space, you could have had four programmable glyphs — enough to display a pixel-positioned mouse pointer on top of the text, or really dramatically spice up a lot of video games of the time. (You'd probably want to download code into the terminal to make the animation smooth, although 9600 baud could have gone past 30fps.)

And of course today we have junk heaps full of TVs, calculators, and feature phones that people are throwing out basically because they don't have any way to reprogram them into something useful.

<comment><USER5> The keyboards on some of the Amiga's had a SoC version of the 6502 (it's a model with a tiny PROM an some RAM and a few IO lines). Unfortunately not reprogrammable like the 1541.

I used to freak out PC users by explaining how my Amiga 2000 had a M68000, but with a M68020 accelerator board, a PC bridge board, with a 286 accelerator (the A2000 with bridge board could run the PC board "in a window"). On top of those CPU's, it also had a SCSI controller with a Z80, and aforementioned 6502 compatible CPU on the keyboard. Now that's multi-processing :D (Of course the M68000 and x86 were disabled).

<comment><USER4> That's cool! I had no idea about the keyboard!

If you had a reprogrammable 6502 in your keyboard with a few hundred bytes of RAM, what would you use it for? Keyboard macros are one possibility. Or you could encrypt the keyboard-computer connection. Maybe some games would benefit from a "rapid repeat" key that let you send a single key or keyboard macro at 100Hz?

<comment><USER6> I think keyboard macros - completely isolated from the system they're dispatching to - are an interesting "what if" in our history.

There's plenty of room for innovation, but I don't know of any attempts at it.

Thinking about this, I realise - could play around with these ideas in tmux.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New York's Rent Regulation Fight - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32891544

<comment><USER2> This is the problem with housing subsidies: they very often go to those who don't need them. In New York, your choice of apartment is primarily based on location -- anything that's not in the >$1 million range is pretty similar. So if you're looking at two apartments near your work and the rent stabilized one is $1200/mo and the other is $3000/mo, you try to get the $1200/mo one even if you could afford the $3000/mo one. I guarantee you it's not $1800/mo nicer.

You see this effect anywhere that supply of rental housing is a problem. If you implement price controls, people with high incomes will seek out lower rents. They'll still often end up driving out the lower-income folks, because if you're a landlord with two applications for a vacant apartment, you're going to favor the one with better credit. Rent controls also deter landlords from investing, both in existing properties and in new ones.

IMO the right answer (and this is not a popular sentiment) is to let rents float and have certain desirable areas of certain cities end up effectively "off limits" to lower income renters. Is it fair? Not particularly, but the side effects of this situation are that the people who can afford to shoulder the costs associated with their way of life are the ones actually doing so. They are going to crowd low-income renters out of the neighborhood eventually anyway, and hopefully a housing / worker shortage would prompt the city to actually develop a low income housing solution rather than forcing landlords to just deal with rents too low for even basic maintenance.

<comment><USER3> Not necessarily disagreeing with you. But the practical meaning of that is that, in the case of New York, this means the entire island of Manhattan becomes a playground for the wealthy and the people who keep that playground humming are relegated to the outer boroughs.

<comment><USER4> Entire Manhattan, including 200th streets?

I can imagine that areas like this already exist, e.g. in most lower Manhattan and upper west side. Did it result in anything particularly bad, or at least measurably bad?

(Disclaimer: I live in Brooklyn and work on Manhattan; my commute is still better than in most other places I lived.)

<comment><USER2> Eventually, yeah. There is a finite supply of land on Manhattan, and demand from foreign buyers is growing. Downtown and midtown are already saturated, so the billion dollar condo buildings of 2040 will need to be built somewhere.

<comment><USER5> I hear this often, but it doesn't jive with my impressions of Manhattan (lived there years ago, visit periodically). In particular, significant parts of the island top out at walk-up heights (5-6 stories). The economics of rent in Manhattan would change dramatically if the island were rebuilt using modern technologies (chiefly: elevators and the taller buildings they enable).

Without knowing the local politics, it seems obvious that there is some force that is preventing the low-productivity uses of land (broadly: "short buildings") from being converted into higher-productivity uses (chiefly "taller buildings"). There's only a finite supply of ground -- this does not mean there has to be a finite supply of usable indoor space. The latter is a choice that can presumably be changed when the will arises.

<comment><USER6> You can't just tear down some 4-story building and put up sky scrappers. There is a maximum density capacity that a lot of Manhattan already exceeds. The trains, sewers and electrical requirements need to be thought of too. Especially the trains which are already way over capacity.

Look at what has happened in Williamsburg and the L-train. As more and more warehouses have been converted into apartments and new condo's have gone up, the L-train has become awful for large parts of the day. And the train runs as often as possible during those times.

I'm not saying you can't do these things but I do think other things need to be considered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Subsidies and regulation doesn't work.

If you subside families, the subsidies will simply go into rents and then those who don't get subsidies still have to pay that same rate. Basically, the lowest rent turns into exactly the same level where you're entitled for full subsidies. In effect, you'll just give tax payer's money to landlords.

If you regulate rents (or subsidize apartments), the apartments aren't taken cared of. The landlord is squeezed between the regulated rent and rising costs, and this doesn't lend to a very good and successful renting business.

If the city builds public housing (council housing) and rents directly to poorer families, you'll get two things. First, a lot of poor people get flocked into the same building or neighbourhood, including problematic people (most poor people aren't problematic but most problematic people are poor), and this lowers the reputation of the area. Second, those who were poor but are now in the middle class still want to hold on to their cheap apartment because they would face a direct hit in their standard of living if they moved out to an apartment rented at market price. This is a huge disincentive to move because of a better job or to move because more (or less) space is needed.

So far I've only seen one scheme that does work: public housing, initially at at-cost prices (no profit for the city) but with rents discounted based on the tenant's annual income. The subsidy isn't money that could go to anyone else but the tenant as the city "pays" for the subsidy by simply getting less money from that tenant. If the tenant begins to earn more money, the rent will go up in proportion to the extra income so that there's no big jump or disincentive to not get a better job. The rent always goes up less than the income, so that it's always worth taking a better job, until at some point the rent will equal market prices. This allows people to stay (if they like the place) or move away (because they already pay the market rent). The city could also sell individual apartments to long-term tenants if they wish to buy: this is to gradually balance the demography of the area and keep the houses from being populated by poor people forever.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow - a regulated rental market that makes San Francisco look comparatively sane.

<comment><USER9> Lmao, not really. They're both fucked up. At least in NYC you can build up, in SF you've only got SoMa you can build in.

<comment><USER8> I mean less about the building and more about the rental regulation. In SF, you are either regulated or you aren't, and the rules are pretty simple (if your unit is older than 1996 and is not the only unit your landlord owns, you have rent control).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The correct solution to this problem is to tax the rental income and hand that money to low income households. It would create a balance of correct market prices and allowing low income people to stay.

Just letting the price float and pushing low income people out creates an unbalanced society where a class divide builds up over time. Modern housing policy in the UK is to mix social housing with regular housing developments, having social housing all grouped into one location was a catastrophically bad idea from the post war era.

</comment><comment><USER11> "For renters like Soni Fink, 91, the rules have meant she can keep living in the apartment she moved into in 1961. A move to market rate would easily eat up her retirement income, she tells the BBC outside her two-bedroom home towards the south of Manhattan."

Why Soni Fink, 91, is entitled to live in a two-bedroom home?

<comment><USER10> You need to learn about old age and how it effects the brain.

You take an alzheimer's patient out of their home and place them in a hospital or new home and you are effectively transporting them to another planet, it freaks them out.

Your home is your kingdom, she's been there too long to feel comfortable anywhere else. Its not idea, its not economically the best utilisation of a resource, but it is human.</comment></comment>


Show HN: TweetStart.me – Bloggers helping Bloggers - <AUTHOR> http://tweetstart.me

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

Just a simple little tool based on the old banner sharing the web used to be run off of.

TweetStart.me is a place where bloggers can share their latest work & then pass on other good blogs to their own followers. The idea is to fight through spam by removing all the automation and gamification you find in sites these days, and instead rely on real people to read your blog and decide it is good enough to pass on.

No ranking system because I want to keep a level playing field for everyone - not just let well-known bloggers float to the top of the pile.

You are given 5 free slots to post your own blog, then for each retweet you get one additional slot. So you don't need to visit every day (although you are welcome to) - idea is that long-term, enough people will be there to keep a constant churn.

The code is a bit rough till I see the interest level, but please check it out & leave me feedback.

TIA!</comment>


A real FPS game engine, made in flash - <AUTHOR> http://alternativaplatform.com/en/alternativa3d/

<comment><USER2> Pretty impressive. What quality would you say, Quake I?

<comment><USER3> Better than that in a sense. Seems to use a mixture of modern texture design, simulated bump-mapping, etc. So it's closer to modern games in terms of tricks, so the overall quality is hard to compare with older games. I think I'd have to say Quake II.

I have to say I'm very impressed. I recognize a lot of graphics tricks used by major corporations to optimize visuals in low-resource situations. There's some good tech behind this and it makes me a lot more hopeful for substantial cross-platform gaming growth.</comment></comment>


A man died in a burning Tesla because its doors wouldn't open, lawsuit alleges - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/23/man-died-burning-tesla-because-its-futuristic-doors-wouldnt-open-lawsuit-alleges/ <comment><USER2> Most cars automatically lock the door while driving, so I don't see how this is any different than that? The first responders should have just broken the glass...

<comment> matt-attack The article seems to say the "first responder" was just a cop. I would have guessed a fireman would have broken the glass to extricate the man. Can't really see a cop doing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It this happened with a toyota, mazda, chrysler, ford, honda, daihatsu, audi, hyundai it wouldn't be mentioned by the news media. But as a tesla is involved somehow this becomes front page news. No agendas or bias being pushed here at all <sarcasm>.</comment>