JS "fatigue" is coming back to bite us - <AUTHOR> https://chrismm.com/blog/the-other-kind-of-javascript-fatigue/?1 <comment><USER2> This article isn't very clear in my opinion, but the gist of what it is saying is that while OSS is good and fostering an environment for alternatives, it has gone too far in some cases (like JS) and has given us WAY too many options with everything thinking that they can/should spin up their own option and ship it for all to use. When instead, A PR on an existing project would be 1) better and 2) more inline with the idea of OSS.

And I agree. JS has something like 7 different OMG-must-use-if-relevant frameworks these days. And thousands upon thousands of smaller plugins and libraries that have insane amounts of overlap.

And while I don't think we should switch to monolithic standardized frameworks. We also need to be mindful of the fact that there are already 4 different ways to solve our problem, or that something is 1-2 PRs from being useful.

In summation, I think the CTA should be, "Let's improve the existing OSS rather than creating new OSS". Which the article /kinda/ says, but is not very clear about.</comment>


Show HN: Debugger that generates video visualizations for algorithm learning - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CCExtractor/vardbg <comment><USER2> This could be a simple / cheap way to get a time-travelling debugger. Run your code through vardbg generating a video. If that run results in unexpected behaviour then you can step back and forward through the video and see where things went wrong.

<comment><USER3> Or just use rr.

<comment><USER2> vardbg is for Python, so rr isn't very helpful.

However, you could use RevPDB: [https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2016/07/reverse- debugging-for-...](https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2016/07/reverse-debugging- for-python.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always wanted a tool that can create a flowchart from the flow control of a piece of code. Ideally it would be bidirectional - you could drag and drop things in the flowchart and the text sourcecode would change, and vice versa. There are a million tools that do this with object or class diagrams, but I've never seen one that does it with imperative flow control code (if/then, switch/case, while & for loops, etc.).

<comment><USER5> I'm months away from a soft launch but I'm building language and environment for declarative, functional programs with a graph-reduction computation model -- basically instead of typing code that gets parsed into an AST you just write the AST

Nodes of the graph re-write themselves as soon as their prerequisites are fulfilled (Kind of an event-driven graph reduction)

I've been dreaming up all kinds of things you can do once your program is emitting 'change' events -- I want to do webGL trees (like the kind made of wood) that update themselves with the state of the graph, and let people program their own sounds for each kind of event -- you could listen to how quickly a program is running, hear how many things are coming off the stack.

If you listened to it every time, you would hear when something changed.

Ultimately my goal is to make source-code more curiosity-inducing, to make the computation of user requests kind of always-present, in the background (like the whirring and grunts of the old machines in Engelbart's mother-of-all- demos, cleverly mic'd by Stewart Brand so the audience could hear the machine at work, tho it was miles away), and then when a user actually looks at the code, they're greeted with something they might eventually intuit by hacking around with it. You could pause and back up and edit the state and replay, such that the IDE is always in debug mode -- hopefully with some groovy sounds and visuals.

I have a very rough draft with mock up gifs at [https://lookalive.software](https://lookalive.software) if you'd be inclined to give any first impressions

<comment><USER6> Interesting! This way of structuring & evaluating a program seems analogous to how spreadsheets work, but with a hierarchical instead of a tabular data model. I could see it being helpful to new programmers for building intuition about how code works.

And translating a program's execution into sound and being able to hear changes sounds really fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome! (For some reason, the demo gif doesn't display for me in Safari, but I can see it in Chrome/Firefox.)

I feel like this sort of thing could really be an essential tool in teaching programming. I've been working on a somewhat similar project for visualizing execution of javascript code (but it works by instrumenting the code, rather than interfacing with a debugger, so that it can all be done in the browser), which I'm hoping to release soon.

<comment><USER7> Hey I'm really interested in seeing this (and contributing if it's open source), please do a show HN when you release!

<comment><USER6> Released! [https://github.com/brokensandals/blunt-instrument#blunt- inst...](https://github.com/brokensandals/blunt-instrument#blunt-instrument)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If the demo animation fails to play:

[https://m.imgur.com/atQnWj6](https://m.imgur.com/atQnWj6)

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks awesome. Mentally I always try and create visualizations of concepts to understand them. I can see this being very handy.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like it. Anything that helps programmers to more quickly understand code is a potential move forward. ( I think it'd be best to have a variety of such tools available, to suit different learning styles.)

Kudos to the author.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is awesome! I can't help but think that it will hinder the development of my ability to mentally visualize the code I write though.

<comment><USER12> Well, you could always try it and see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I gave a shot in this project with a tricky algorithm that I'm working on, really handy! On the spot I got some good insights about the code.

Nice job!

</comment><comment><USER14> Neat, curious why did you choose a video output instead of curses or web?

<comment><AUTHOR> Video output was how the original series of Google Code-in tasks was originally described. Web might actually be better though, thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is pretty amazing!

Does anyone know of anything similar for PHP?</comment>


How to support both Python 2 and 3 - <AUTHOR> http://ondrejcertik.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-to-support-both-python-2-and-3.html

<comment><USER2> this article takes awhile to get to the point, but the point is correct which is:

> In other words, this is how it should be, that you write your code once, and > you can use any supported language version to run it/compile it, or develop > in. But for some reason, this obvious solution has been discouraged by Guido > and other Python documents, as seen above. I just looked up the latest > official Python docs, and that one is not upfront negative about a single > code base. But it still does not recommend this approach as the one. So let > me fix that: I do recommend a single code base as the solution.

2to3 is definitely useful to do the initial conversion of a codebase from something totally 2.x into one that is 3.x compatible. But from that point on, you need to put it away and not look at it again. Now that it's socially acceptable to target 2.6 at the lowest, libraries that wish to target 2.6-3.x still need to have a little bit of conversion code present, i.e. a subset of six, but other than that the code can be fairly py3k-ish.

Armin's article here is the most up to date discussion of this: [http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2013/5/21/porting-to- python-3-redux/](http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2013/5/21/porting-to-python-3-redux/) (though lots of us disagree with his decision to dump 3.1/3.2). This article has lots of _great_ advice like "test for py2k not 3k" as well as his metaclass decorator that is a lot nicer than six's. SQLAlchemy's second py3k port (yes, due to the original advice we all have had to port to python 3 _twice_ ) makes heavy use of these techniques.

At this point I have _all_ of my major codebases supporting 2.x-3.x. Particularly, Mako templates supports _python 2.4 all the way through 3.x with no conversion_ \- and Mako deals heavily with unicode and Python AST structures.

So hopefully the Python docs can catch up with the reality soon. The original advice to think very separately about your 2.x and 3.x codebases was very wrong, has wasted a ton of time (since you end up porting to python 3 twice), and overall slowed down the adoption of py3k, a slowdown that fortunately is finally lifting.

<comment><USER3> > I'll start with the conclusion: making backwards incompatible version of a > language is a terrible idea, and it was bad a mistake.

> So let me fix that: I do recommend a single code base as the solution.

> The original advice to think very separately about your 2.x and 3.x > codebases was very wrong, has wasted a ton of time (since you end up porting > to python 3 twice), and overall slowed down the adoption of py3k, a slowdown > that fortunately is finally lifting.

Is this opinion common? Do Guido and the other core developers admit they were wrong?

> Python 3.0 will break backwards compatibility. Totally. We're not even > aiming for a specific common subset.

That a single code base is now possible, albeit "not entirely idiomatic", does support the conclusion that the original aim to break compatibility was misguided at best, and raises questions about the governance of Python overall.

<comment><USER3> Well zed seems to agree

[https://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/364118939233554432](https://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/364118939233554432)

> they've been keeping this "dual mode" option mostly a secret so as to not > have to admit they fucked up

<comment><AUTHOR> If this is not a joke, Zed is paranoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that the ideas and tips of the article are useful, but I don't like the opening phrase.

People make mistakes. Once a mistake is part of a language specification the only way to solve it is to make a backward incompatible change. It's pain in the ass for the users, so you must not change this kind of changes too often if you like to have users.

A possible alternative is to have a huge metaprograming platform like Racket, that can still run the old version "mzscheme" programs almost unchanged [1]. But in the Racket/Scheme/Lisp word everyone is running their own slightly "improved" version of the language. So multiple languages are more natural than in Python with the " There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." philosophy.

(For example, they changed allowed syntax of "if".)

</comment><comment><USER5> The commit is more interesting than the article: [https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/2318](https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/2318)

It does fail to mention that you need to also use special exception handling in all cases, eg.

        try:
          ...
        except TypeError:
          e = exception()
          ...

...but it hits all the other things, except the obvious, make sure your tests are running continuously using py2, py3 and pypy, otherwise you'll just frustrate yourself as you're coding.

<comment><USER6> That exception handling is only necessary if you need to support 2.5 or older. A lot of projects now are just supporting 2.6 and newer, in which case you can use the Python 3 syntax:

        except TypeError as e:

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Call me crazy but I would have renamed Python3 to a new name, i.e. Snake. That would have made it crystal clear that it's not the same language.

Seriously, Python3 made me hate python. A couple examples why:

      - The fact that I was using Archlinux and they decided to make "default python" -> "python3" = Hours of wasted efforts figuring which scripts weren't working.

      - Every time I tried to go with 3.x = Screwed because libraries I needed weren't ported

      - print 'x' not working = Just plain annoying

Let's make a new python4 == python2.7 and forget about all this python3 bullshit.

<comment><USER8> I seriously hope you're trolling. Yes, the transition is harsh, but it's getting better. On your points

1) that's a problem with Archlinux then, not Python. It was dumb to set 3 as default _that_ sound

2) `3to2` works pretty nice for porting code

3) So you have to put parenthesis because it's now a real function. That's so bad. Also you can do stuff like `map(print, myiterable)` which you could not before, what a pain!

<comment><USER7> "Yes, the transition is harsh, but it's getting better".

Exactly. It's getting better, but it was a hell of an annoying time to be between both. Thus why I've come to hate python. I gave three simple examples of things that annoyed _me_. You can't just dismiss them like they're not worth anything.

The process is supposed to be simple. I.e. pip install <library>. If you have to clone it, 2to3 it, fix remaining bugs, it's a hell of a pain in the ass.. and just a plain waste of productivity and time. It would have definitely been possible to have python3 backward compatible or _slightly_ incompatible. What happened however is more of a "Let's screw up all existing code to fix a couple things".

To take on your example, yes, using print as a function is cool. But how in hell can't you make it possible to use map(print, ..) in python2.x? It's just about being anal about consistency that print should be a function and not a statement, thus screwing all existing code.

My point is not about if python3 is useful or not.. but more about the way it happened. If you want to make something fully incompatible, _fine_ , but don't do it by screwing everyone who's been using your framework/language/library.

It's like someone deciding that red lights on the road should now be green, and green lights be blue. Let's just change it. Who cares how many accidents will happen?

You might think I'm trolling but I'm not. It's just frustration of literally wasting hours and hours of fixing stuff _that was already working (!!!!!!!!!!!!)_ but isn't anymore. Now, take this time, and multiply it for every production servers that I have running slightly different builds or OS. How in hell something that's been working for 2 years isn't anymore because I updated my os to the latest version? Oh yeah, right, there's a new python version that screwed up every existing scripts. Let's make that the default executable.

<comment><USER9> You are running production servers on Arch Linux, and then pulling updates which change the default Python to 3 without review?

Sounds like you were asking for it.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I won't ever, _ever_ , run production servers on ArchLinux. (Even though I still use arch for my own machine). Doing that is asking for unnecessary pain.

I was used with slackware, gentoo, debian and ubuntu to make frequent update to make sure I had the latest security fixes. On archlinux, it's a different story. "Updating" means "Take a gamble to update the system hoping important packages haven't been changed, renamed or deleted.". Ok, it's not really a gamble because you're _supposed_ to read the archlinux news to know if your next update will fuck up everything.

I learned it the hard way... Once, I had to update a server to get a more recent version of a package.. which ended up deleting all rc.d in favor of using systemd. No warning, no nothing. The only answer I could get is "Why are you updating without reading the archlinux news". Fun couple all nighters time.

<comment><USER10> Both problems would be caught if you had some kind of testing server (even a VM) and had updated it first. Frankly, you're wrongly blaming the tool.

<comment><USER7> All problems (or almost all of them) can be caught by using better testing.. That doesn't mean that some tools aren't better than others.

On my production servers, I don't care about not being on the very edge of all technology. I'd prefer something highly secure and stable where all the code can run safely. I also want a very strong community with outstanding documentation. So, all in all, _for my use cases_ , I think going with Ubuntu is a smarter choice. It doesn't mean that I don't use archlinux every day on my own machines where I can have fun screwing it up and hacking it back.

And, just for the notice, that were only small examples, but I'm talking more generally about backward compatibility and expected behavior. A very good example is jquery.. I'm not worried about getting the last update. It's not like ".click" would stop working. Contrast that to others less mature technology (such as express for node.js) where it can be pretty scary to update packages. You better have a gigantic test suites to upgrade without fear of breaking something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really love Python, it is my language of choice, bread and butter, and I've been using it since 2005. However, this backwards compatibility break is probably the worst thing that happened to the language, as I think it's creating more project stalling and work in total than is worth any improvements specifically stemming from backwards incompatible changes. It could be because python3 still has not become my target, but that's kind of the point. When is it ever going to be?

<comment><AUTHOR> When 2.7 stops getting bug/security fixes? Current plan is 2015: [http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373](http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What benefits does upgrading from python 2.x to 3 have? Why would you undertake that task? I don't understand why, unless python 3 offers some extremely compelling feature, or you are one of the small percentage of developers who delivers importable python libraries as your main developmental output.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm unclear how this is better than doing, as is mentioned in the first paragraph, a single code base that runs in both 2.7 and 3.x versions?

Or is this a case where 2.6 needs to be supported?

</comment><comment><USER14> You dont. Just support python 3. If you HAVE to support python 2. Then use a symbolic link.</comment>


Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/07/shuttleworth_ubuntu_leadership/ <comment><USER5> Complete linkbait title, a HN mod should change this. Typical of the Register.

It's worthwhile to read the actual post:

<http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1228>

On the subject, I started to hear a lot of criticism of Canonical's Ubuntu efforts right around when Unity was first released. I just updated to 12.10 on my laptop a couple of weeks ago, and as one of the 31337 d00ds Mark speaks of, I was pretty confused -- everything was different! I didn't quite understand the point of the whole thing.

But I run a tiling window manager on a years-old Thinkpad without even a trackpad (trackpoint!). I'm a freak. And most of us here are.

Then the other day I picked up a new Macbook Air for some Mac-centric development work. And Unity completely clicked for me. If you look at the direction of OS X it's clearly converging with iOS. I right-swipe to get notifications! There's all these awesome gestures! My IM client shows my _phone's_ text messages, for god's sake!

This is the kind computing experience normal people are expecting over the next several years, and in order for Ubuntu to fully realize its mission it needs to adapt. And it looks like they're doing a really good job. I mean, have you seen the Ubuntu phone videos? It looks really slick.

</comment><comment><USER6> I found myself agreeing with a lot of the sentiment expressed in Mark's post but ultimately, I lack faith that Shuttleworth and Canonical have what it takes to pull off the stated goal of creating "an experience that could challenge the existing proprietary leaders." For example, I don't find Unity to be better in any meaningful sense than the "community-driven" GNOME 3. Canonical has come up with some interesting ideas, especially with the HUD menu system, but I just haven't seen real progress towards building the kind of consistent user experience I can find on Android, Windows and OS X.

I'd love for them to succeed, but every passing day I'm looking more to Android as the future of quasi-open Linuxes.

<comment><USER7> >> _I don't find Unity to be better in any meaningful sense than the "community-driven" GNOME 3_

It's not better even in a meaningless sense. I just not that good.

There are times when you stick to your idea long enough because you are passionately convinced about it and there are times when you stick to that idea because others said it was a bad idea, somehow they were true and now you do not want to accept it. Well, Canonical is Mark's and Ubuntu belongs to Canonical. They must have a plan. I hope.

As per whining about it and whims. That was normal reaction and Mark should have accepted it, if not as feedback.

After trying all the Linux distros I settled with Ubuntu, then it was ruined. Moving to OSX was painful. Moving to an (very) expansive and very very closed ecosystem.

<comment><USER8> The HUD makes no sense on a desktop environment and since I have not tried it on a mobile device I cannot make a final judgement. My gut instinct is that the HUD will work on a mobile device and as the platform matures it will become better. Most people prefer Gnome3, let them use it with other distros.

I feel the true battle for Canonical lies in mobile devices and being an entity which can stand up against all the other closed eco-systems and manufacturers in this space. If they can keep it open for everybody so much the better for us all.

I have nothing but respect for shuttleworth, he is an extremely smart bloke who has invested a lot of his money in this, this obviously does not make Canonical exempt from criticism.

<comment><USER9> "My gut instinct is that the HUD will work on a mobile device and as the platform matures it will become better."

I think you're right. Unity works great on a netbook, purely for consuming. Fine for a mobile device.

There used to be a Ubuntu 'netbook remix' which came with Unity (before it was the default), and it fitted there perfectly.

Canonical are hardly alone in betting the farm on mobile-like interfaces. MS are doing it with Windows 8, and some of OS X >= Lion's interface is only usable with a multitouch trackpad.

Whether they're right or not is open to discussion, but it's clearly happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who has been an active contributor to desktop Linux in the past, and particularly very close to Ubuntu (I was sponsored to attend UDS-O), I have to say that I am happy Shuttleworth is finally taking this much needed stand.

I can absolutely understand the blowback to his sentiments, because really, the diversity of use and mindset in the Linux community is one of its defining characteristics. But frankly, he's right -- if Ubuntu isn't the platform you're looking for, either go find the one that is, or start it.

I don't see Shuttleworth's stance, or indeed the negative feedback from a vocally inflamed (though not majority) userbase, as a sign of Ubuntu's decline. I see it as Ubuntu finally having the balls to do what no other desktop Linux platform has done before -- move ahead with their grand vision on bringing free software to the masses, not just the ones that demand it the most.

<comment><USER11> The problem is secrecy and authoritarianism run directly contrary to the spirit of open source software, and if we're going to go down that road then we need to stop calling it a community-driven Linux distribution.

Where will we be when Amazon et al start leaning more heavily on Canonical for more invasive features? What recourse will the existing user-base have other than being callously told to "fuck off if you don't like it, or buy some lube and start grabbing your ankles"?

<comment><USER12> >Where will we be when Amazon et al start leaning more heavily on Canonical for more invasive features?

You'll be on a different Linux distro.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While the community is ready to dismiss anything Canonical does, they also seem to overlook the work Canonical has done. Unity is far from perfect, but it _is_ functional.

Also, the whole issue of inclusion of Amazon links could be solved with a single command, "sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping".

And it's ridiculous that Canonical gets flak for trying out a new revenue stream (one that can easily be removed if its bothersome), while ChromeOS is championed (which essentially makes revenue off of your web usage, targeting ads, etc.)

If the community tried to be a little less abrasive and actually held reasonable level-headed discussions instead of being dismissive we could actually get somewhere.

Infact I'd argue that it's Canonical's leadership is helping since it has succeeded in bringing generally non-Linux businesses over to Ubuntu - <USER2> bringing over Steam, Spotify alpha, Rdio, etc.

<comment><USER14> >Unity is far from perfect, but it is functional.

If that's the best you can say about it, then Canonical failed.

<comment><USER15> Unity _is_ functional — you can use it. Its problem is that it's designed to meet the needs of a mostly hypothetical group of people that Canonical _hopes_ will want to use it someday. That's a long-term proposition, and a valid gamble to take — but I don't think it's going to succeed. More importantly for me, I don't care whether it does or not, because I'm neither Unity's nor Ubuntu's target market any more.

<comment><USER16> One of the things I have tried to do the last decade or so is set up Linux for the "non leets" like my mom, girlfriends, friends / family etc. This is Canonical's target audience and not a single one of them likes the Unity interface. While not a scientific study I just don't think it's hitting the mark.

Lately, I've been putting MINT on a few people's machines, and the love the "windows like" feel (necessary for the transition) and it's still based on Debian and very solid.

<comment><USER17> Mint Cinamon or Mate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18>
        "By 2009 I was convinced that none of the existing free software communities could create an experience that could challenge the existing proprietary leaders," Shuttleworth wrote, "and so, if we were serious about the dream of a free software norm, we would have to lead."

If Unity is the outcome of Canonical's lead, then I'm sorry to say that they're doing it wrong. I want you to download Ubuntu 10.04/10.10 and compare it with Ubuntu 12.04/12.10. You will be nothing short of _terrified_ of the experience - They just destroyed every single advantage of Ubuntu - <USER3> example:

Unity creates a terrible confusion on what is where and how you access or close an open window.

Shutdown speed is slower than windows 8 sometimes! (And Windows 8 isn't slow, it's really fast, but Ubuntu 10.x used to be faster)

The OS itself feels sluggish at times.

I sincerely feel someone should take the 10.04 and spin it off into a new better OS, polish it and give it back to the community - If it's good enough, I won't even mind paying for it!!

<comment><USER19> Ubuntu 10.04 is infinitely better than 12.x and Unity. It blows my mind that anyone could think otherwise.

>I sincerely feel someone should take the 10.04 and spin it off into a new better OS, polish it and give it back to the community - If it's good enough, I won't even mind paying for it!!

Yes, 100 times yes. If I could get that OS with the 12.x patches and updates, I would do it in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER18> agreed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This bit annoys me:

      "There are lots of pure community distro's. And wow, they are full of politics, spite,
       frustration, venality and disappointment," he wrote.

They may be full of those things, sure, but at their best they also have quality, usability, flexibility, power, and beauty. I hope Canonical succeeds in making Ubuntu useful to people who would never have used it before, but I'm sad that that success — if it ever comes — requires abandoning and insulting people who helped make Ubuntu as prominent as it has been.

<comment><USER20> And without one of those spite-filled, frustrated, venal, political distributions, Debian, they could never have created Ubuntu.

<comment><USER21> And because of some of those verbs above is why Ubuntu exists in the first place. A distro that isn't paralyzed by too many cooks in the kitchen and that can be nimble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yeah yeah, we get it. Canonical: "You guys hate Unity but we're really stubborn about it".

Keep trumpeting your crap then. Thankfully it's pretty easy for just about anyone to switch window managers (or Distro for that matter)

<comment><USER23> Nice attitude to legitimate criticism (Unity kills productivity for many). I guess thats why all the 'l33ts' and everyone else is running to OSX. Thanks for the motivation.

<comment><USER22> Perhaps I wasn't clear. I'm paraphrasing what they're saying to people. I agree with you completely, Unity is garbage and thankfully we can still switch it if we need to, or switch distros altogether.

My comment is disparaging the arrogant attitude of Canonical on this subject.

<comment><USER23> My apologies, I missed the sarcasm. The scary thing is I think I missed it because its exactly how the Canonical Ubuntu zealots have responded to valid criticism to date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think we should take his advice. He says he doesn't want "leet" Linux users and we should go use something else, and many of us have been taking that advice all along.

Personally, I'm a Gentoo guy and have been for a while. Here are some great hacker distros that I love to use and contribute to:

Gentoo

Arch

Slackware

Debian

And for those who want a "user friendly" distro for their mom to try out:

Linux Mint

Yeah, I said it, I know it's not exactly popular but if you want to convert someone to a Linux user I think Mint is your best bet.

In the end, we still have a choice. Thanks Canonical/Ubuntu for bringing more users and development to the community, we'll just steer them towards something better when they're ready.

<comment><USER24> Linux Mint: it's an Ubuntu derivative, and I suspect that Ubuntu/Canonical will one day either be hostile or at least actively unhelpful to derivatives.

Downloads: <http://www.linuxmint.com/oldreleases.php>

Everything there is an ubuntu derivative, except in the middle there's a debian rolling release edition.

I suppose the mainstream ubuntu derivative will be great for stereotypical "mom's", as long as Ubuntu's eye doesn't turn in that direction.

For more hacker types that want some creature comforts, are the debian versions a good choice? I would expect/hope that some of the multimedia "just works" benefits would be in there. <http://www.linuxmint.com/release.php?id=14>

Or would I be better off on debian/LXDE, and manage the few packages that I most care about on my own?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just in case anybody was still on the fence, Ubuntu has now officially jumped the shark.

<comment><USER22> Said it before, I'll say it again. They jumped it at 10.04. That was their last best, and the version I still often use if I do use Ubuntu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> >Just roll your eyeballs at the 1337 crowd

This is not leadership. If Mr. Shuttleworth truly wants to provide leadership for the FOSS community, then blaming people for disagreeing with him is not a good start and "my way or the highway" is not a sustainable model.

<comment><USER22> That's been the attitude at Canonical since they got into the game. Definitely not sustainable.

<comment><USER21> Why is that? I don't see any evidence of mass users leaving Ubuntu anytime lately. Only minor whining on nerd forums about the default desktop and other quibbles.

<comment><USER22> It's not sustainable because the type of people who are generally attracted to something like Linux are the very people Mark just insulted. The facts are clear: the average computer user doesn't care about an operating system that much. It's a means to an end. Most people are just using their OS as a portal to access media anyway so they really don't care.

Yes Canonical/Ubuntu has brought in a lot of new users but the simple fact is if you want the platform to keep advancing you need geeks. Suzy soccer mom and Bob the casual user are a great audience to attract but they aren't going to writing the next breakthrough software or fixing major bugs. They might bring money to fund the development and that's great, but once you shut us out we'll go to another distro and make that one better.

If he was a true leader he would diplomatically find a way to attract the widest audience possible. By intentionally provoking the same people who built Linux he's just ensuring that someday they'll move to something else that will blow them out of the water.

<comment><USER21> He is searching for the widest audience possible...and that is the soccer moms like you mention, not the nerds that care about the 1% of features 99% of their target audience had no need for. He is basically saying that it doesn't work to have 100k people's input from all backgrounds and opinions on a project like Ubuntu because nothing will ever get accomplished.

Which is a perfectly reasonable assumption in my view if you want to put out a polished product, which Linux has had a very hard time doing since inception. No one complains that Apple didnt have a committee of 10k Apple users vote on how the latest version of OSX should have been implemented. Shuttleworth is trying to do the same.

I'm not sure why everyone is so upset by this. I think people just believe if anything involves Linux they think they should have an opinion in the matter no matter what the project is, which for Ubuntu isn't the most efficient way of moving the project forward.

<comment><USER22> You make a good point, but the OSX comparison doesn't work. Apple practically invented the smooth user experience and they design based on feedback and studies, not being arrogant and forcing change for the sake of change.

When you boil it down, it's pretty simple. Unity sucks, taking away the users ability to configure sucks, but they've made the stand and don't want to back down because it's the only way they can differentiate themselves from other distributions. Why? Because different, not because better.

<comment><USER21> Apple not arrogant and not forcing users to do things the "Apple way"? This is exactly what they do.

Also what is the big deal about the Unity hate? It is simple to install another window manager and replace it. Problem solved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Then I suppose my whims are leading me away from Ubuntu.

<comment><USER16> That's ok, apparently they have all the developers they need. That must be why the bug list is empty now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Mark Shuttleworth is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The square peg being Steve Jobs' style, the round hole being open source/free software.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes, widespread adoption is important, but don't insult the giants whose shoulders you're standing on Mark.

</comment><comment><USER29> >>There are lots of pure community distro's. And wow, they are full of politics, spite, frustration, venality and disappointment.

Soo... It is a community distro? Because Ubuntu sure has plenty of that.

>>To Shuttleworth, Ubuntu isn't about catering to hobbyists, but about building an open source OS that is so compelling that free software becomes the norm, rather than the exception.

There's nothing compelling about implementing advertising directly into the operating system. I was just starting get used to Unity, and then Canonical did something that makes it impossible to trust them about anything.

</comment><comment><USER30> What I undestand is that he wants people to rise above petty politics and work at making Ubuntu better. Imo he could have just said the latter and let the former lie. Sometimes it is better to do that. A substantial chunk of the community does not like unity and even more hate the amazon integration. Telling them to shut up is not a great idea. You cannot keep everyone happy, not in a project of this scale. Mark is doing this to keep the people at canonical happy and driven. I hope he succeeds, because I would like ubuntu to be better.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ubuntu used to be one thing, and it was exactly what I wanted.

Now they're something else, and that's OK, but it's not what I want, and that's OK too.

At the moment I'm hanging on to the parts I want by my fingernails, running the nicely minimal Lubuntu. But I think the writing's on the wall that eventually Ubuntu/Canonical will have no interest in supporting the various Ubuntu derivatives, and I'll need to fall back to something like LXDE on Debian. And that's OK too.

Ubuntu used to be one thing. Now they're something else. That's OK. So long, and thanks for all the updates.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm not sure what it means for the Linux community that Canonical is doing this, but I do think they are doing the right thing for "Ubuntu" if they want to make it a more mainstream OS, and also an OS that works on mobile hardware, and it's fast and smooth.

If that means they have to break clean from a lot of legacy stuff, then so be it. Ultimately, I want a strong mainstream OS alternative to Windows - <USER4> that is popular enough and gets support from all major software vendors for apps. If Ubuntu got at least as popular as Mac OS, it would be amazing, and I don't really care what they have to do to get there.

I also hope this means they will make it dead-easy for developers, whether paid ones or open source volunteers, to make _beautiful_ apps for Ubuntu/Linux. I _hate_ how ugly and old Linux apps look. Absolutely hate them. And if that's happenig to me, then I can only imagine the reaction of "normal" PC users and how much of a turn off that must be for them, especially now when we're living in a time of iOS, Holo and Metro apps. Most of them would find the majority of Linux apps unacceptable.

If Canonical gives developers easy to use set of design resources and tools, then even open source apps for Linux or cross-platform won't have an excuse to not look beautiful anymore.

If Canonical manages to get chip makers to make unified drivers for Ubuntu/Linux/Android that would be an amazing feat as well, and something I wish Google tried from the beginning or was already working on. But I haven't seen any hints of that happening, unfortunately. So Canonical might be Android's last hope for that.

<comment><USER32> > I want a strong mainstream OS alternative to Windows - one that is popular > enough and gets support from all major software vendors for apps. If Ubuntu > got at least as popular as Mac OS, it would be amazing, and I don't really > care what they have to do to get there.

I can understand that Canonical wants to become a "mainstream alternative to Windows" because this means money for them. But why do _you_ care how many buggy Windows or OSX clones are out there if you can just pay few bucks and get the real thing?

<comment><USER33> It's pretty ridiculous to call Ubuntu a "buggy Windows or OSX clone".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Lol. Ubuntu is obviously doomed to fail. What technical genius would want to follow UNPAID another persons "Grand Vision" if that other person isn't an even greater technical genius?

</comment><comment><USER35> It makes me sad that Canonical is doing so many things to split the community. First they stuck to upstart, after everyone else moved over to systemd. Then, they decided to snub GNOME3 in order to create a new windowing environment called Unity. Now, they're trying to build their own copy of Wayland, codenamed Mir. Ubuntu still uses bzr, when most of the rest of the world uses git.

I guess maybe this was inevitable. They wanted to differentiate themselves from Red Hat and similar distros that were using the "normal" stack. But do we really need so many duplicate projects, so many of which seem to be duds?

Ultimately, Ubuntu wants to be Android. And it never will be, because Canonical doesn't have Google's engineering or financial resources, or a business model that would support such an undertaking. I understand the idealism, but as they say, "hope is a good breakfast, but a poor supper."

I feel like Ubuntu's decision to include adware like the Amazon toolbar is the first of many such decisions. Ultimately, they have to make a profit, and they're going to have to turn to "traditional methods." The traditional method for PC OEMs to make a profit is-- let's be honest here-- crapware. I fear that this is going to blacken the name of Linux for a lot of people. Already a lot of people think that "Linux" can't do suspend or hibernate properly, because Ubuntu often can't. Soon people are going to think that "Linux" is full of adware and spyware, simply because Ubuntu is. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER36> Mark Shuttleworth may have good intentions at the basis, but he may also be overly ambitious. From there he may indeed be misguided in his daring and rather rash decisions. Mark may also be incapable of assessing first-hand what it all means in technical terms. Mark also seems to overestimate the real level of insight of his close technical advisers; who are the guys doing the real thinking for him. Mark also seems to substantially overestimate the true ability and aggregate capacity of his rather small team; which is supposed to make all of it happen. Mediocre results after mediocre results, we can indeed clearly discern in Mark a pattern of over-promising and under-delivering.</comment>


Ruby Version Manager: Easily Use Multiple Ruby Versions At Once - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubyinside.com/rvm-ruby-version-manager-2347.html#comments <comment><USER2> I've been sitting in #rvm all night helping the author with bugs and stuff. There are a few snafus here and there but nothing fatal. Things like making it work with TextMate properly, packages needed on Ubuntu when you install certan versions with RVM, etc. I'm putting any fixes I come across as comments on the Ruby Inside post :)

Basically, it's worth persevering with. Or at least going on #rvm on irc.freenode.net and bugging the creator about ;-)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your effort. When I retire, I envisage spending my time a little like you do - trying to help the communities I love.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is exactly what I was looking for last weekend when we tried to build our rails rumble app with Ruby 1.9!

I'm installing now and excited to start building 1.9 apps at home without interrupting development on the 1.8 apps at work

<comment><USER5> How'd you go with that? I was going to use 1.9 but chickened out at the last minute and went with 1.8

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks like a pretty useful project. If you're using a Debian-based Linux distro, you also already have "alternatives," which is a pretty powerful framework for doing almost this exact thing.

<comment><USER7> Except that Debian's packaging policy shits all over how people actually use and distribute libraries in languages that have native packaging systems -- in my experience both Ruby and Haskell are totally fucked, and Python is done pretty decently considering.

The glacial release cycles and pointless package freezing don't help, nor does their anal-retentive insistence on rearranging everything to fit _just-so_ into their standard filesystem layout. It infuriates them that gems are intended to be self-contained and allow multiple versions to be installed with no symlink assery.

<comment><USER6> As far as glacial release cycles are concerned, use Ubuntu, not Debian. Problem solved.

And about packages getting rearranged, yeah, I like FreeBSD's ports better too, but you really should be using apt-get only to install rubygems and then use gem rather than apt to install the gems.

<comment><USER7> Using Ubuntu doesn't always, as Canonical just reuses Debian's crap for a ton of stuff, and if they're nearing a 'release' even everything in testing freezes for fucking forever.

It's much worse with Haskell than any other language I know of -- last I checked there were two broken+old builds of ghc with different names and mutually-exclusive sets of packages that depended on them. On top of that the version of cabal (Haskell's packaging tool) in the repository was so far out of date that you couldn't use it to build anything remotely recent (including useful versions of itself), nor could you use it with anything in Hackage (the central repo).

<comment><USER3> Amen to that.

And since we're on a Ruby thread, Ubuntu's Ruby 1.9 is 1.9.0 which is (1) buggy (2) broken (3) more than a year old. It is fucking ridiculous, no-one with any sense is using that. This version manager is actually _better_ than apt-get for managing your Ruby installs. Go figure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe this is a stupid question but do people switch between vm's a lot?

<comment><USER9> Anybody that writes Gem's will cry when they can test multiple versions without useing multiple computers or VMWare. Imagine if you could only test your work with one version of Ruby how many bugs you'd miss/hit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> rvm Keeps _everything_ separated from the system in ~/.rvm

version 0.0.25 coming out in a day or so will have support for: * Named releases, named svn tags, svn revisions, svn head for 1.[8-9].X * Rubinius, jRuby, REE * Named Gem Sets (eg, being able to test different sets of gems against a single version of ruby) * And much, much more... Hop on in #rvm for more or visit <http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/> once 0.0.25 is out.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great for comparing performance and testing compatibility!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is freaking awesome.

update: This is really, really great. Thanks to the author, and to Peter for spreading the word. I can't believe how seamless and convenient it is. This kind of shit is why the Ruby community kicks ass over _everyone_ else. Wayne Seguin - you rock.</comment>


Show HN: Spork-CLI – A Quickstart Angular Project Generator - <AUTHOR> http://notanengineer.com/projects/spork/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on this for the last couple of days, trying my hand at writing nodejs scripts for the command line. It's not pretty, but it works, at least on OSX and Windows 10. Basically it clones a repo from Github setting up the project directory, installing Bootstrap, Angular, Animate.css and Flexboxgrid via bower, and includes a grunt script with livereload and a bunch of other tools. The goal was really to make a utility that can set up a n Angular 1.x project for developers so that they can just start hacking. Any feedback and suggestions would be most welcome!!</comment>


What have the STORED PROCEDURES ever done for us? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/vbilopav/what-have-the-stored-procedures-ever-done-for-us-44f6 <comment><USER2> And you have to write your "code" in SQL? Where do you draw the line? Do you put authentication there too? slugify for urls?

Although security is a big deal, tools evolved tremendously and databases just aren't as flexible as other languages to do most task.</comment>


PostgreSQL across clouds and on-premises with Crossplane and Rook - <AUTHOR> https://blog.crossplane.io/postgresql-crossplane-rook/ <comment><USER2> When a developer requests a Postgres database it may substitute CochroachDB without warning? Sketchy. They could at least use Stolon or something.

<comment><USER3> The intent is that the app dev only cares about getting a database that speaks postgres on the wire (which CockroachDB does). The administrator, via a ResourceClass, gets to specify the actual infrastructure that gets deployed to fulfill that need for postgres. That could be Cloud SQL, or RDS, or even CockroachDB. To the app dev that just needs postgres, those are all the same. Crossplane is already doing similar "dynamic provisioning" for MySQL, Kubernetes clusters, object storage buckets and with more to come like key value stores, message queues, caches, etc.

This is very similar to how a StorageClass is used when a pod asks for a volume. The admin specifies if that's a Google PersistentDisk or Amazon EBS or Ceph RBD, etc. The pod doesn't have to care, it just gets its request for a volume fulfilled.

I'll have to look more into Stolon, that could be interesting here, thanks for that pointer.

(source: i'm a maintainer on both crossplane and rook)

<comment><USER2> AFAIK "speaks postgres on the wire" is far from the same as being fully compatible.

<comment><USER3> This article on their blog gets into the compatibility that cockroachdb offers and why they even decided to do that in the first place: [https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/why- postgres/](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/why-postgres/)

It's also very useful to be portable across many cloud providers (in addition to on-premises), which is what crossplane is providing for your apps. In terms of databases, Amazon RDS, Google Cloud SQL, and Azure PostgreSQL are all abstracted away from the developer so that their application should work across those without changes as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is the Hum, a mysterious noise heard around the world, science or mass delusion? - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/132128/maddening-sound <comment><USER2> From reading through the article, it certainly sounds like mass delusion / tinnitus.

<comment><USER3> I hear it. I think it is some perceptual artifact - when everything is really quiet, I hear it, but even the slightest noise drowns it out. I wonder if it is the sound you get when you strain too hard to hear?

<comment><USER2> Could be. You might be hearing the blood in your ears or something similar. Is it high pitched or low? Does it go away if you relax, or if you ignore it?

I occasionally hear high pitched tinnitus, but usually only very briefly. Generally for me it is associated with worry/stress, and if I relax it immediately disappears (after a second or two). This kind of tinnitus that I occasionally hear just sounds like a high pitched whine, so I don't think it is related to blood flow or other body function. My guess is that it is just an overactivation of the limbic system.

Also, I just noticed that if I concentrate on listening, I can hear a fairly quiet high-piched tone. I assume this is just some background neural white noise signal. Normally it is not noticeable unless I consciously listen for it. I imagine it could get annoying or louder if I paid too much attention to it.

Another possibility it that it is just a kind of auditory hallucination that your brain generates when there is no other input, similar to closed-eye hallucinations:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed- eye_hallucination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination)</comment></comment></comment>


Mild Memory Loss Is Not a Part of Normal Aging, New Research Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemagnews.com/mild-memory-loss-is-not-a-part-of-normal-aging-new-research-finds.html <comment><USER2> My grandparents are old (mid to late 90s) and still have an incredible memory. I find their descriptions of the world they grew up in to be fascinating. Some examples:

* his amazement when he learned that somebody had received a radio signal that was bounced off of the moon

* he worked on a trans atlantic ship in his teenage years during prohibition, and had his first beer in Germany at the age of 16

* depression era job prospects

* walking home from a "picture" after his car was stolen, he and a few friends heard his horn (which was somehow identifiable). They were track runners, so they ran down the car and it turns out it was a young guy who had just borrowed it to go visit his girlfriend, and was on his way to return it.

* his godfather was a civil war vet

<comment><USER3> Those all seem like things that left a lasting impression on your grandparents (i.e. stronger memory). I wouldn't associate remembering those things with a lack of mild memory loss.

My grandfather could tell us all kinds of interesting tales in his old age, but then not remember what he ate for breakfast.

<comment><USER4> Can you remember what you ate for breakfast 5 months, 3 weeks and 2 days ago? Unless you have a small set of habitual foods for a good chunk of time, I bet you'd forget too.

<comment><USER3> When I was talking about forgetting breakfast, I was talking about the same day (e.g. being able to recant a story from 30 years ago with surprising accuracy, but forgetting what you had for breakfast this morning).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get what they mean by "not a part of normal aging" here. What definition of "normal" are they using? What _is_ part of normal aging?

If it's something that happens almost universally to brain structure as a function of age, in what sense is it not normal? That doesn't mean we shouldn't still improve it / stave it off / etc., but I'd classify that more as, "we've found a way to stop the process by which elderly normally suffer reduction in memory function".

Sort of how you might say: rubber normally gets brittle as it ages, but with this new coating, that process is stalled. But that's different from saying: "hey, new discovery, rubber actually _doesn't_ normally get brittle as it ages!" I was expecting something like that from the headline, so was expecting a study that found that e.g. memory loss among the elderly was much less common than popularly assumed.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.cfm?news_id...](http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.cfm?news_id=4902)

"The process of declaring parts of aging as a disease is driven by regulation: the FDA does not permit treatments for aging, only for named diseases. Since there is little funding for research that cannot be legally commercialized, the incentive is to carve off chunks of the process of aging and go through the process of having government employees add it to the list of diseases - which can take years and millions of dollars. Sarcopenia, for example, is still not recognized by the FDA, meaning that no potential treatment can be commercially developed in the US. Here is an example of this process at work for memory loss."

<comment><USER7> Freaking ridiculous. In a rational world, the question would be how many billions of dollars to allocate to anti-aging research. Instead, the government makes it actively illegal to try to mitigate the major cause of medical expenses and a huge contributor to decreased quality of life.

<comment><USER8> A corollary to that longevitymeme quote is the politicization of research. For example, AIDS research gets funded at a disproportionate rate to the number of sufferers, presumably because they form an active voting constituency.

So I claim that the question is not "how many billions of dollars to allocate to anti-aging research".

The real question is how to get government and politics out of the system. They're the ones that are getting everything discombobulated.

Let people speak with their own actions (and wallets) about how much resource should be allocated to various areas of medical research.

<comment><USER9> AIDS and the fear of it affects the lifestyles of most sexually active people, not just people who actually have the disease (or know someone who does).

<comment><USER10> Not for rational reasons. In the US, HIV is mostly confined to tiny slices of the population (gays, blacks, IV drug users).

[http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm#inciden...](http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm#incidence)

<comment><USER5> You've just described groups making up about 15-20% of the U.S. population; that's not really "tiny".

If you follow the links, one of the large slices you don't account for is "high-risk heterosexual contact", which makes up about 1/3 of new HIV infections. That's people who are not part of one of the high-risk groups, but have had at least one partner who was (which may or may not have been known to them). So the proportion of people who have some rational reason to worry is relatively high, unless you are _absolutely sure_ that none of your sexual partners have themselves ever belonged to one of the high-risk groups. That's a particularly common route of HIV infection among women, since not all bisexual men self-identify as bisexual or disclose that part of their sexual history to female partners.

<comment><USER11> With 50K people infected, it's tiny slice of even the gay population.

But _the threat that AIDS represents_ is much larger. Why spend a lot of resources fixing a tiny hole on a large boat? The hole isn't leaking much? Well, it's the scary _potential_ that mandates treatment and prevention.

<comment><USER12> That's the number of new infections in 2006. As HIV/AIDS takes a long time to run its course, and it stays around for life with a very few exceptions involving bone marrow transplants from naturally immune people it, I'm certain that the total number of people infected is at least an order of magnitude higher. 500,000 people in the US is about one in 600, making it an uncommon but not especially rare disease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks, I'm now going to cringe every time I hear someone use "sorry I'm getting old" as an excuse for forgetting something.

<comment><USER14> This article is the first thing I want to forget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Probably the important part:

> _almost no gradual decline was seen in the absence of lesions._

Where lesions are specific damages to the brain, not _aging_.

</comment><comment><USER16> The next research should be surprising: Increase of memory when ageing is only a question of finding a place to grow.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is inability to focus on text due to 3 glaring Google Ad blocks a sign of aging?</comment>


What's missing from this list of Y Combinator-like accelerators/incubators? - <AUTHOR> http://launch.is/blog/2010/12/16/complete-list-of-incubators-and-accelerators-like-y-combinat.html We're going to have one of our researches maintain this list daily. Anything missing? <comment><USER2> So Jason Calacanis is compiling a list of Y-Combinator-type companies. Like discovering that North Korea is stockpiling the world's reserves of Beryllium ... who knows why, but one must fear the worst.

<comment><USER3> Probably building up page-rank for the Launch.is domain. This is a pretty useful compilation so as far as SEO tactics go it could be a lot worse.

<comment><AUTHOR> LAUNCH doesn't need any SEO, it's an email driven brand that I'm running at a slight loss/breakeven because:

a) I love startups and writing about them and

b) I think there should be a more mature and focused publication covering startups then the gossip tech blogs covering who lost their luggage and manufactured angelgate-like stories.

The LAUNCH conference is being run at a loss in order to get startups into an A-List conference at a less than SXSW price. I'm personally putting up the half million dollars it will cost to run this event, so that great startups can launch on stage for free.

Just like I started the open angel forum in eight cities so that startups could reach angel investors for free.

My work/legacy is in helping grow startups.

... but thanks for the cynicism. It is reasonable considering we live in the age of $18,500 demo slots at the DEMO conference and Keiretsu Forum charging $6,000 to pitch supposed angel investors.

<comment><USER3> Jason, you might want to read my comment again. I am not dismissing the usefulness of your compilation. There's also nothing wrong with building up page rank for a new domain as long as you're adding value doing it.

Anyways, best of luck to you in your venture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rock on.

Maybe I got tilted by the parent comment, which was very bitter/trollish. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Joystick Labs in Durham, NC <http://www.joysticklabs.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Momentum, in Grand Rapids, MI: <http://momentum-mi.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> What about some formatting like headers/subheaders and clickable links?

<comment><AUTHOR> in progress...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's missing? Some decent formatting to make it scannable?

</comment><comment><USER8> Think Big partners in Kansas City, MO: <http://thinkbigpartners.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> HackFwd, based in Hamburg, Germany, active in Europe <http://hackfwd.com/>

<comment><USER10> they are more like equity rapists rather than a YC-style incubator

<comment><AUTHOR> How much do they ask for and what do they provide for said ask?

<comment><USER10> 30 pct equity for matching a year's salary with a cap, paid in four tranches from which HackFwd can opt out without returning shares, plus legal form sheet services.

the term sheet is not negotiable and includes restrictions and vesting provisions more typical for VC-scale rounds, which ensures control over the company by HackFwd.

in contrast to the hands-off approach YC takes they are essentially a geek babysitting service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Spark Charleston, in Charleston, SC: <http://www.sparkchs.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Tech Wildcatters in Dallas <http://techwildcatters.com>

</comment><comment><USER13> Syncubator Chicago <http://www.syncubator.com>

</comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for this. Any chance to expand the list overseas?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are adding non-US as we speak. please submit any you find!

<comment><USER14> In Cambridge, UK: <http://springboard.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Formatting and readability!

</comment><comment><USER16> [https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF90b1l...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF90b1l1Vnl5NmZjaTBNQWlJYVozMEE&hl=en#gid=0)</comment>


The Colors of Chemistry - <AUTHOR> http://jiahao.github.io/julia-blog/2014/06/09/the-colors-of-chemistry.html

<comment><USER2> Even if you don't follow the first half, it's worth skimming to get to the bottom where the computations predict the colors of chemical compounds with remarkable accuracy. The "Copper (II) aqua ion" one is the most impressive to me – the entire color spectrum is spot on.

<comment><USER3> It's not really "predicting" the colors, per se. The UV spectra being downloaded contain that information already. The code being demoed here is just a transformation of that data to "perceived" color. It's just a transformation between two equivalent representations, not "prediction" really.

Still, Julia is neat though.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, not really a prediction, but rather a projection. Still, it surprises me that few people take the trouble to make the connection between the spectra and the perceived colors. Seems like photochemistry and colorimetry don't intersect as often as they ought to...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's going on with Rhodamine B? Its color doesn't change as a function of concentration? Why does its transmittance data seem to bounce back and forth between 0 and 1?

<comment><USER4> There's something odd about how my normalization heuristic behaves with this particular spectrum. I haven't yet looked into it.

<comment><USER4> Ah here we go. The spectrum for Rhodamine B is noisy and it's throwing the normalization heuristic off. I've added a moving average filter and zeroed out some small noise in the >600 nm range and the colors make more sense now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dang, I want those interactive plots with IPython notebooks

<comment><USER7> [http://bokeh.pydata.org/](http://bokeh.pydata.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> C.R.E.A.M. - CIE Rules Everything Around Me

So many factors go into color matching and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Pigments vs dyes, solutions vs solid substrates, angles, light sources, observers...etc. Color is subjective, so creating an objective color- output that matches an average person's perceptual color vision is one hell of a fascinating, and expensive puzzle.

</comment><comment><USER9> Are Google analytics usually in Julia notebooks?

<comment><USER4> No, I put that in the first cell. You can take it out of the notebook if you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10>
        λ->planck(λ*nm,T=T)*m^3/Watt*cie_color_match(λ)

This syntax made me cringe hard. Kids these days…

<comment><USER4> Is this so unreasonable? I needed to curry the function to sweep over the temperature T. And if you take out the units, it's simply pointwise multiplication of two functions.

<comment><USER10> Yes and no. The syntax x -> f(x) is borrowed from functional programming, which borrows it from λ-calculus. In λ-calculus, λx. f(x) is the function which maps x to f(x). So, λ -> f(λ) makes me cringe hard, because λ is a keyword! It's like trying to write in Python:

        def def(x):
            pass

Weird, uh?</comment></comment></comment>


Stay Put, Young Man - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november_december_2013/features/stay_put_young_man047332.php?page=all <comment><USER2> A nitpick on San Jose:

 _The city's tallest building, Yglesias notes, is a mere twenty-two stories high._

Anyone who lives in San Jose can tell you why this is the case. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose,_California#Arts_and_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose,_California#Arts_and_architecture)

 _Because the downtown area is in the flight path to nearby Mineta San Jose International Airport, there is a height limit for buildings in the downtown area, which is under the final approach corridor to the airport. The height limit is dictated by local ordinances, driven by the distance from the runway and a slope defined by Federal Aviation Administration regulations. Core downtown buildings are limited to approximately 300 feet (91 m) but can get taller farther from the airport.[80]_

The rest of the article did a good job of arguing that housing prices harm migration and contribute to income inequality. But twisting a fact like that makes me suspicious. Hopefully fault lies with Matt Yglesias, not the author.

<comment><USER3> Lazy research - they probably googled "tallest building in San Jose", went to the first result, then forgot to sort by floors.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Sa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_San_Jose,_California)

<comment><USER4> Yglesias' style is generally this kind of slapdash big-claim making sensationalism. He's basically an opinion writer who cherry picks a few facts to try to support his hypotheses. For example, see the reviews of the book mentioned in the article on amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Rent-Too-Damn- High-ebook/dp/B0078X...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Rent-Too-Damn-High- ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO)

To be fair to him though, its a hard line to walk when you are discussing the kind of complex open-ended issues which he does. I think his writing has done good to stir up thinking and provoke responses on some of the issues he discusses.

<comment><USER5> > For example, see the reviews of the book mentioned in the article on amazon

He got lots of bad reviews because he pissed off some right-wing folks who showed up in droves to write bad reviews about the book out of spite, not because they'd actually read it or thought about it:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/06/andrew-breitbart- fa...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/06/andrew-breitbart-fans-matthew- yglesias-amazon_n_1324362.html)

Discussions of the propriety of his comments are probably best left to other web sites, and kept off of this one.

<comment><USER4> The subject of his competence came up (not by me) and as someone familiar with his writings I attempt to contribute both my own view (based on a good understanding of his work and not one sided) and a link to others views. I'm not sure what in this is wrong.... I can see you like the guy - perhaps you'd like to explain why?

<comment><USER5> I just pointed out that the bad reviews were not there because a lot of people disliked his book after reading it and considering what he had to say, but because a lot of people were angry at him and found that writing nasty reviews was a good way of venting their rage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So when do we embrace remote working?

I've worked remotely for big American companies like Motorola (I live in Sweden) and continue to work from home for local Swedish companies. Almost all the people I interface with are in various offices in various timezones around the world anyway.

I also do game programming jams e.g. Ludum Dare over a weekend occasionally, and these are also distributed remote efforts. Yet we manage to work at a furious pace with the same immediacy and accessibility as if we were sitting in the same room.

It works well. It works well for me, and I believe it can be made to work well in general.

This is not just about IT type jobs; most office-work can be done remotely. Only people actually manipulating machinery directly need to be in physical contact with their machine.

But there is a definite distrust and dislike of it, especially among management types.

<comment><USER2> The biggest problem is that there's no gradual migration process. The first remote worker on a team forces everyone to change how they work and communicate. Even with the whole team accommodating the remote person, they'll still miss out on a lot. It can be frustrating for both sides.

Also, the software for real-time collaboration sucks. Even if you constantly screen-share and video chat, it's not as good as working in the same room. Simple things like pointing at a section of code are difficult to do, and synchronizing files can be a pain.

I'm working on solving this (Floobits YC S13 yadda yadda), but there's still much to be done.

<comment><USER7> The answer is not screen-sharing, it's making everything an API. The remote worker is responsible for her API, and no one needs to know or care how it works as long as it does.

<comment><USER8> While I generally do favor service oriented architectures (and remote work), this is woefully short sighted.

Say the remote worker builds you a shaky RoR+MongoDB app, no scalability, no error handling, no tests, no comments. At least in the short run, it works - there are occasional outages, but the worker (remote or otherwise) does a great job keeping it going. Then the remote worker quits. What do you do?

Just because something is behind an API doesn't mean you don't have to worry about knowledge transfer, code quality, etc.

<comment><USER7> Okay, good points ;-) I may have overstated my case for emphasis; but I maintain that in general, an API is better than a library (there was an article saying just that some time ago on HN; can't seem to find it right now).

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't even go that far. "API" and "Library" are not distinct concepts. A library has an API - it's the set of public functions (ideally rarely changing) that you are supposed to call from external programs. It is beneficial if one developer can hide their work behind a simple interface with only a few access points (the API), but there is no compelling reason this should be json over http.

The real distinction between a _network API_ and a library is that the network API allows users to avoid thinking about the hardware. The API provider is responsible for allocating hardware, the user need only send messages over the network to use it. I.e., buying hard drives is Amazon's problem, I just GET/PUT my files onto S3.

If the API isn't hardware intensive, this is pointless - you are adding network overhead (i.e., latency, network errors) for nothing.

<comment><USER7> > _If the API isn 't hardware intensive, this is pointless_

A network API lets you mix and match languages, share the functionality among different/distant teams, etc.

<comment><USER9> That just opens another can of worms. Now every single application you either provide or use come with an integration issue attached.

I have read somewhere that was the Amazon way of doing thing but it was a costly investment. A costly technological investment. And even Amazon did it only at team level, not individual level.

I cannot imagine a 500 developers company being able to afford that without some serious competitive advantages down the line. If what I can see around here is any indication (medium size IT company in London), if you can afford not having people on site, there are better opportunities to take in Poland or even India than a small discount on a UK worker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If your healthcare is tied to your job in the USA, wouldn't that impede social mobility? If you can't change jobs because you would lose cover, how are you meant to move around?

<comment><USER11> Your new job usually offers healthcare to replace your old. True, the coverage can be different - sometimes greatly so. It's one of the factors you take into account when deciding to change jobs.

<comment><USER12> But you still can't move without having a new job lined up in the new place then. As someone who has recently moved to a new place by getting a remote job offer first, I'll tell you that it's a heck of a lot harder than getting a job in person.

Not saying it's not possible to move somewhere sight unseen and without health insurance (since that's presumably what older generations did) but it's still much higher risk than staying put.

<comment><USER11> I've done the same and completely agree that it's a lot harder than already being there.

There are things like COBRA ([http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq-consumer- cobra.html](http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq-consumer-cobra.html)) that help to bridge the gap in coverage.

<comment><USER12> That's true, but isn't COBRA extremely expensive though? Of course there are ways to lower relocation risks, but many involve having a fair amount of money saved up. The people the article is talking about don't have money whatsoever (which is the point of moving to places with higher paying jobs and opportunities).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've really struggled to understand why people will stay living in a certain area, unemployed, for years and years. Whether it's in a rustbelt city where the factories have shut down 20 years ago or a rural city where the only jobs are at Walmart or McDonalds, if you give people unemployment pay, they won't move.

I hear all the excuses for them not moving. It's too expensive, they'll uproot their families, etc. Do you think our grandparents didn't have those problems when they moved from the south to the rust belt to take those long-gone factory jobs?

It used to be people moved to where the jobs were. Now they are content to stay where the checks come.

<comment><USER14> Maybe now that the early phases of globalisation have settled down and all the frontiers have dried up, the global culture of movement has died down. It's a lot harder to think of moving as a possibility, let alone a good possibility, when it isn't part of the zeitgeist. People used to do it a lot in the 1800s especially, and it was something you could get swept along in - and there was an excitement of going to a fresh place where most people were new as well, economic opportunities and social relations were still up in the air.

Now you can trade a grind in one settled area for a slightly more profitable grind in another. With the tradeoff of losing contact with your whole social milieu and having to start a lot of things from scratch in the new place, while you're surrounded by people who have a lot more than you because they've been grinding in that place for years.

Not appealing, so it's no surprise that it's mainly the highly-educated who can a) seek high value economic opportunities and b) are guaranteed a welcoming social reception from university or work colleagues :)

People like us should be more generous about the incentives governing the lives of the new post-mobility local cultures.

<comment><USER15> If you're right, that makes the prospects of space colonization a little less optimistic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My parents and I came to the US in 1981 and landed in Philadelphia. Over the next 32 years, my parents moved roughly every 9 years across state lines.

The mobility which my parents enjoyed was really tied to a reasonable cost of housing across the places they lived and a stable job market. My Dad generally could stay in one company for 9 years without moving. And he's never experienced a layoff. The one time he came close was due to an acquisition where the acquiring company offered every engineer a full relocation package to move to the midwest OR a 1 year severance to find a new job.

I look at the situation today, and I find the picture to be very different. Many housing markets are largely out of reach, many hiring companies are extremely volatile, and the salary differences across state lines are modest when compared to cost of living differences.

When things are like that, it's hard to justify moving and losing a social circle, uprooting kids, and being farther away from family members.

<comment><USER17> lol, a one year severance package. That sounds like fantasy land to me.

<comment><USER16> I know, right? BTW this was in 1999.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _A construction worker can generally make more money in San Francisco than in suburban Fresno. But it won't likely be enough more to make up the difference in the relative cost of living. Indeed, few working-class people earn enough money to live anywhere near San Francisco anymore, to the point that there is now a severe shortage of construction workers in the Bay Area._

The wages for construction workers will go up and the situation should correct itself automatically. Unfortunately, it will take some time for people to adjust their cultures so that construction workers are valued more socially - like people who write term sheets.

<comment><USER6> Isn't a lot of construction work done by poor migrant workers who live in dirty dorms provided by their contracting company? I've seen this in much of the rest of the world, even in places like Sweden where the workers are often from the other side of the Baltic. I'd be surprised if the US was very different in this regard.

<comment><USER19> No... Not around here at least... (Eastern US)

Construction workers don't make a lot of money, but they aren't the poor migrant workers living in dirty dorms. They are the working class.

My uncle was doing construction, then just decided to start his own construction business rather than work for someone else, and makes very very good money doing that.

Every year the US Dept of Labor produces the Occupational Outlook Handbook which contains information about occupations in the US. Salaries, number employees, job outlook, etc. These are median salaries.

Construction Laborers and Helpers $28,410 per year [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and- extraction/construct...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and- extraction/construction-laborers-and-helpers.htm)

Now, if you get more specialized, you earn more:

Roofers: $34,220 per year [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and- extraction/roofers.h...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and- extraction/roofers.htm)

Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers, and Taper: $38,290 per year [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and- extraction/drywall-a...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and- extraction/drywall-and-ceiling-tile-installers-and-tapers.htm)

Construction Equipment Operators: $39,460 per year [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and- extraction/construct...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and- extraction/construction-equipment-operators.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I always wonder how its feasible for people in service industry roles to work in the bay area. (Something I think about a lot when I go to work at a cafe).

That being said, it would be interesting to see a graphic of commute time and wage/salary to see the tradeoffs people make.

<comment><USER21> Good question. The answer I think comes from the fact that "cost of living" is a blunt measure, however it's measured. Price differences vary between by good. Rent might be more expensive, but ipods and levis cost the same.

If you don't pay rent (eg you live with parents), its probably a net win. If you don't consume much housing (eg, 4 person house share), it might still be a net win. Also, some people are more flexible than other in their consumption which is influenced by relative price. So, they might consume less housing by house sharing but more iphones and clothes.

Try figure out if a 22 year old barista living in a trendy city centre with 3 housemates, but a nice nice budget for gadgets and clothes is better off then one in a small town with a completely different lifestyle. Its extremely subjective.

<comment><USER22> > If you don't pay rent (eg you live with parents), its probably a net win. If > you don't consume much housing (eg, 4 person house share), it might still be > a net win.

The typical person in the job market has a spouse or children. Having to have multiple roommates on top of that is generally considered a nonstarter.

When you say, "If you don't consume much housing...," you're saying, "If you're single and unattached..." And it's only a net win as long as you stay that way, which isn't usually the case.

To connect the dots the rest of the way, when housing prices shoot through the roof, people with families and special needs get pushed out. What is left are people with fixed housing costs and single people who don't see having many roommates as being a quality of life issue.

<comment><USER21> I don't think we disagree on much. A family of four that can't comfortably cut back on housing. _Their_ cost of living is even higher in an expensive housing town than the measure suggests because the average also takes into account the single house share people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Paul Krugman has commented about this phenomenon as well. Based on the literature he says it is due to lack of regional specialization. Interstate goods shipping has also declined. This is mentioned in the article but dismissed.

Personally, having recently conducted an interstate move, I think it is a combination of the lack of specialization (My career as a programmer was going fine elsewhere) and cost of living as mentioned in the article. Moving is expensive, especially when you have an underwater house, and it's hard to leave your social network behind. If you're moving for a raise from $18/hour in Ohio to $25/hour in San Francisco, that's not worth it.

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/america-is- flat/](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/america-is-flat/)

"[W]ithin the United States, at least, people are moving less — a lot less. Greg Kaplan and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl (pdf) say that interstate mobility has been cut in half over the past 20 years. And interestingly, they suggest that this is in part because regions have become more similar: increasingly, different parts of the country are producing the same kinds of things and employing the same kind of people, so that there's less reason to move.

This story actually matches up with what the new economic geography literature says, which is that regional specialization peaked around a century ago and has been declining since."

</comment><comment><USER24> > _We might similarly observe, "Nobody moves to that state anymore. It offers > too much economic opportunity."_

This article rests on the premise that all you need for a higher salary is to live somewhere where salaries are higher. But that is highly questionable -- just because they're higher in general, doesn't mean they'll be higher for you. At no point does the author convincingly explain that American unemployment is a problem of geographical mismatch, instead of the far more likely case of skills mismatch.

> _If labor markets were operating efficiently, construction workers, along > with electricians, plumbers... would receive enough compensation to live > near the places where their work is most needed. But our labor markets are > not efficient; rather, they are rigged and skewed, offering too much > compensation to people with some skill sets (merging companies and writing > derivatives, for example) and not enough to others whose skills are often > just as hard to learn (e.g., brick laying and teaching children to read) and > often more vital to society._

What? How exactly does the author magically come to the conclusion? As far as I can tell, construction work and plumbing and electrical wiring is all getting done. (Never listen to businessmen complaining about a lack of workers, it's just a masked complaint that they're having to pay higher wages.) What evidence is there that our labor markets are "rigged and skewed"? By whom? It's like the author doesn't understand the basic concepts of supply and demand in a labor market.

It's extremely interesting that Americans are moving less. I'd love to know more of why. But tying it into arguments about career mobility seems highly dubious, at best. It's ridiculous, and almost patronizing, to suppose that people's careers nationwide are being held back by not being able to live in downtown metro areas. It's a big country out there.

<comment><USER25> > At no point does the author convincingly explain that American unemployment > is a problem of geographical mismatch, instead of the far more likely case > of skills mismatch.

If it were a case of either of those, it would be visible in the data. Which it isn't. American unemployment - and European unemployment, for that matter - is a result of the class warfare practiced by the rich against the poor in recent years. Paul Krugman suggests Republican policies are responsible for 2% extra unemployment, nationwide:

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/the-gop- tax/](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/the-gop-tax/)

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/what-a- drag-2/](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/what-a-drag-2/)

High unemployment is a result of policies that have artificially suppressed demand for goods and services by taking money out of the hands of people who will actually spend it, resulting in an overall excess supply of labor and low demand for labor and therefore, low wages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > "Average earnings in the valley grew by nearly 40 percent between 1997 and > 2000"

Taking wage data from the massive tech bubble is some serious cherry picking.

Earlier in the same paragraph:

> "in 2005 the [San Jose] metro area approved permits for only 5,700 new > units"

Again, this also cherry picking, as the area was just coming out of one of its biggest busts-- the aftermath of the tech bubble (the number of tech jobs is still not as high as it was in 2000). Although one would never know it from reading the piece.

<comment><USER27> Ah, yes. Back around 1980, a piece in WM gave an number of hours flown for the USAF during the previous year or so, compared it with hours for some period about 10 years previous, and suggested that the decline was due to the Air Force's appetite for ever more complex and high maintenance airplanes. That the earlier period had been in the middle of the Vietnam War they did not mention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think major reason is housing price. If you want to leave local safety net of relatives and friends, you must be able to survive on your own. You must also have savings for first couple of months. Not possible if housing is too expensive compared to salary.

</comment><comment><USER29> This article seemed strange to me. It started out talking about how mobile people in the U.S. were for moving to where jobs are and then moved to making a case that people don't move to places with high housing costs.

The U.S. is a big place and locations with crazy housing costs are not the norm. I would think that most people moving for a job would already have a job available. I suppose there are plenty of cases where people might move without a job offer in advance because anything would be an improvement.

Maybe today people don't move as often simply because EVERYTHING is getting more expensive while the jobs people could land are staying the same or getting worse. Moving is quite expensive, especially when you don't have a job and especially when you don't have a job lined up at the place you are moving to. Gas is expensive for moving long distances. Getting into a house or an apartment is expensive. How many jobless people have the savings to withstand all this?

It would also be interesting to see more statistics. For example, where were people moving to and from when the rates were the highest? What industries were supporting the places these people moved to? Maybe the decline of jobs that could take just about anyone, in large numbers and paid well (manufacturing) contributed to the decline in mobility. There really isn't anything which could take the place of engineering.

Though people may be less mobile today, the options for that mobility will always be great. The U.S. is a huge nation with a lot of diversity. You can't really compare mobility in a nation like the U.S. with 50 states to a small country like that of Denmark or Sweden.

<comment><USER30> But in a small country like Denmark or Sweden, citizens there are also citizens of the EU and so can freely live and work in 27 countries with minimal bureaucratic hassle. Language barriers notwithstanding, it makes the EU a lot more like the wide-open market of the USA.

<comment><USER31> Many, many people are moving from Greece, Italy and Spain to Germany for this very reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I had an opportunity recently to move to the Bay for a contract position from a fulltime one in LA. Risk/benefit considerations aside, the cost of living, much of it rent, in the Bay stayed my hand from signing off and changing jobs, and I am someone who could afford to live there, I can easily see why anyone who made as much or less would never move from here to there either.

</comment><comment><USER33> The article asserts - "So where have people been moving to...Generally to southern Sun Belt states"

If you compute absolute population growth from 1969 to 2011 on a per-county basis, using publicly available demographic stats, the top-20 winners are

         ----
         Arizona        Mohave        7.38100563286945
         Georgia        Paulding        7.4570788900017675
         Virginia        Loudoun        7.954704312171496
         Georgia        Henry        8.023498694516972
         Texas        Hood        8.128975265017667
         Florida        Collier        8.313786154239164
         Texas        Denton        8.504770344932634
         Georgia        Fayette        8.909350004596856
         Texas        Montgomery        9.526487258446021
         Utah        Washington        10.029741513547181
         Florida        Hernando        10.384018414995067
         Georgia        Forsyth        10.637015231025215
         Florida        Osceola        10.880533448053345
         Texas        Rockwall        10.907133440749963
         Georgia        Gwinnett        11.063892016788289
         Texas        Fort Bend        11.168507788849015
         Texas        Williamson        11.323119312014695
         Colorado        Summit        11.39344262295082
         Texas        Collin        11.507137247655564
         Florida        Flagler        21.135939986360537
         Colorado        Douglas        36.49576488706366
         </comment><comment>

So Douglas county in Colorado grew the fastest, 3600% growth! Indeed, it had a population of about 8000 folks in 1969 & now averages about 300000 => thats your 3600%

Generally speaking, the South is a big winner - GA, TX, FL, AZ...

3139 counties ranked by population growth in my github repo here - [http://bit.ly/16RsjWa](http://bit.ly/16RsjWa)

Here's some Scala code for crunching this data yourself : [http://bit.ly/1hZDQny](http://bit.ly/1hZDQny)

<comment><USER34> So what's the reason? Air-conditioning having become widespread since the 60s + low taxes & vast amounts empty(therefor cheap) land in those areas?

<comment><USER35> Cheap cost of living? I live in Chicago, but the rest of my extended family lives in Tampa, FL. I make $120K/year in Chicago, but due to lower costs of living, only need to make $90K/year in Tampa for the same lifestyle.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, that's what I meant by low taxes + cheap land.

<comment><USER35> I was simply confirming your hypothesis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I moved from the Bay Area back to Portland to work remotely, so I fit in these statistics. I did it because Portland has a more laid-back focus on quality of life and I'm able to live without a car here.

</comment><comment><USER37> I know a decent number of people (often with college degrees) who've moved to Arizona because they could afford to get by working at Best Buy or Target or similar, but couldn't at their previous locations in New York, California, and similar.

I think for the average person (who, let's remind, is probably part of a household making $50k or less per year) cost of living (and particularly housing) is what matters more than taxes or wages.

<comment><USER26> Perhaps you may have some anecdotes; however, there has been study of this.

Income in areas of high housing costs more than offsets those costs, so that the net result is ($income - $housing) is higher

[http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2011/12/us- cities-w...](http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2011/12/us-cities-with- most-spend-after-paying-housing/778/)

<comment><USER37> I'm sure that's true for people who for whom that's true, however, that 'study' is very anecdotal itself, and quite ridiculous. It doesn't address where people with low wages live, income distribution, and other complexities. The group I'm referring to is a group who will not have $35k+ left over for house no matter where they live, and is pretty much invisible in that study. If anything the article you linked is showing that higher incomes live in places with higher housing costs and make more after paying for housing also, which is a different conclusion than is claimed by the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This was really interesting as an economic look at migration. I moved from LA to Austin because I couldn't stand the city and have loved it here, but one of the things I've loved most is starting from scratch and being forced into meeting new people and doing new things. I've loved it so much that I can't see myself staying in one place for too long until I am ready to have a family.

</comment><comment><USER39> I love a simple Gladwell-style opinion piece that actually makes me think with a few carefully revealed key facts.

My big takeaway here is that America is not and never has been one country. In Europe we are wringing our hands that the Southern states are too poor and being carried by the richer North, that migration must be controlled lest we depopulate a country and why can't we be more like America who just seems to go from strength to strength

yet, it's not true - all we fear in Europe apparently happens in the US anyway - different areas have different economic cycles, mass migration, vastly different state laws and yet it seems to balance out ...

Oddly I guess Anerica is a small working example of Keynes' International Monetary Fund - perhaps call the Fed a Continental Monetary Reserve.

It also suggests that acting more like a proper country might not be very good for you.

edit: The IMF was originally conceive as a way to balance out economic cycles - countries would pay in in good times, draw down in bad times. It seems however that politicans like the spend in bad times, but happily forget the pay in in good times part.

</comment><comment><USER40> Hopefully some of this can be solved by better/faster public transportation.

</comment><comment><USER41> This article had potential, but its facts are questionable. For example, it claims that "California has been losing native-born residents for two decades."

See here: [http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-shows- increase...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-shows-increase-in- native-population-3163810.php)

<comment><USER42> I read that statement as almost guaranteed for every location on earth. The only way it is not true if no one born there leaves. For a location of any size that would be unexpected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> That's right. You shouldn't leave California just because there's no way to make a living anymore! Verily, if you just stay put, a way to pay taxes again shall be revealed!

</comment><comment><USER44> "The percentage of married households with two earners has hardly changed over the last thirty years"

I wonder if the split across gender lines is still the same.

<comment><USER45> Across the HC a couple days or maybe even a week ago. I saw a map posted here that predicted the odds over a colorful map across north america of exactly what you are looking for. just so you know.

<comment><USER45> I mean HN _

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> living in france, 28 years old, I so want to go to the US

</comment><comment><USER47> I work remotely from Cambodia for companies mostly based in the UK (but also in the US and elsewhere). Lots of startups do not want to hire remotely. I have heard "no" more than once from companies in the Bay Area. However, it has become less of a problem over the last few years, because with every year that goes by, it gets easier to just do your own startup without ever setting foot in the Bay Area. For example, there are amazing opportunities in the Chinese market at the moment, while it does not give any advantage whatsoever to be located in the Bay Area for those.</comment>