Airbnb in the Himalayas - <AUTHOR> https://veridici.com/how-airbnb-is-silently-changing-himalayan-villages/ <comment><USER2> All: if you're going to post in a thread like this, make sure your comment relates to the specifics of the article. If you just vent some generic feeling or opinion provoked by the shallowest aspect (e.g. a provocative name in the title), that is a poor use of HN which lowers the signal/noise ratio. The more generic a discussion gets, the more predictable it gets, and thus less interesting. That's what the site guidelines call a generic tangent:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

(In case anyone's wondering, yes we say that about plenty of topics, not just this one [1]. Normally I'd hesitate to intervene in a thread about Airbnb [2], but this thread is particularly awful so far, with only one comment responding to the article.)

1\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22generic%20tangent%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

2\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment)

<comment><USER3> I'm glad you're highlighting this. I see this happening all the time, with threads filled with generic comments about X just because X is in the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was a neat article, the part about AirBnB's attempt at creating a trust economy was my favorite part.

On the one hand, the online reputation does work to a degree; we value lots of reviews and a high average score. On the other hand it fails to prevent many of the usual problems with dealing with people. He calls out the opportunists who have no impulse control, but there's plenty of other archetypes of people who will take advantage of a situation when they get a chance and think they might get away with it. Maybe it's the cynic in me, but this article resonates with my general trepidation when trusting anyone or anything too quickly, especially online. No amount of features so far has solved this.

<comment><USER5> Those are my favorite passages too. For short-term stay, a perfect rating with lots of review is almost a guarantee that you'll have a great experience.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious why you're downvoted. Do people disagree?

<comment><USER7> Experiences suggest otherwise?

<comment><USER6> Sorry I mean that I would like to hear more detail rather than just a downvote.

<comment><USER7> Can't speak for the parent comment, or the reason you were downvoted, but relying upon a high number of good ratings isn't necessarily reliable.

From my own experience, here's a few reasons:

A high number of ratings is more likely an indicator that the place has been on the market for a long time rather than being an especially great place to stay.

The nationality/culture of the guest can have a huge influence of how they rate a place. In Europe, for instance, a guest from Southern Italy/Spain may not be particularly bothered by noise from neighbours, barking dogs, etc. Conversely, those coming from Northern Europe are likely to be the exact opposite.

Some hosts are incredibly pro-active in garnering ratings (to the point of constant harassment). Others less so.

Some hosts will not accept groups of people, parties, short stays or stays from people with no reputation. As a consequence, they are going to get far less reviews than a less careful host.

Hope that helps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Western online review systems and algorithmic pricing meets very isolated traditional society. The corporation's understanding of human psychology wins out over the villagers and the villagers are colonised, moving their norms to more closely match Western expectations. Software continues to eat the world.

</comment><comment><USER9> Flights and travels for tourism or business makes me and the environment sad, Airbnb or not

</comment><comment><USER10> airbnb lost me forever at, "Oh, that'll be another 10%" and then again at "Yeah, that $89/night place is actually $264/night after all the fees and ridiculousness."

Fraud all the way down...

I don't care _where_ they are. I will _never_ stay at one of my own free will.

<comment><USER11> That'll be a $300 cleaning fee for 2 nights, oh and here's a snippy message about how you left hair in the drain and used an extra towel. Be a dear and don't use the toilet next time too, that's extra.

<comment><USER5> The cleaning fee isn't supposed to be higher than 10%. You can ask for a refund through Airbnb.

<comment><USER11> If you charge a high cleaning fee it's utter bullshit to expect guests to leave the place spotless. I am paying you to clean it. The hair in the drain thing actually happened. Any human in your house will leave hair, that is part of normal cleaning in an occupied place along with washing sheets and towels. This is why I've switched to hotels and hostels. The hospitality contract is far more explicit, I don't need to deal with asshole hosts on vacation.

<comment><USER12> In the roughly 10 times I've stayed in an Airbnb I've never had an issue with the condition I've left the place. Often times my family (and dog) have made a mess, but always do some clean-up before leaving. Cleaning fees are typically $20-60 for the stay which seems reasonable for cleaning an entire home. Normally the airbnb service fees are larger than the cleaning fee. There are certainly some hosts who are charging high cleaning fees to lower their nightly amount, however.

<comment><USER5> There's a rule it shouldn't be higher than 10%. In India, nobody I know charges a cleaning fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tried Airbnb many times, but exchanging keys, meeting with strangers and that force interaction I don't want in my vacation, rooms that look different in picture...no thanks already had 2 very bad experiences: 1 in Brazil and 1 in Oaxaca. Now just use regular hotel

<comment><USER14> I've stayed in my fair share of Airbnbs, and the forced interaction can be annoying at times.

Another thing I hate. I was in about 5 Airbnbs this month, and almost every time I'm told not to let property management know I'm from Airbnb. I'm paying a few hundred dollars a night, and I'm given strict instructions to tell the concierge I work for their company and I'm staying in their apartment for business. Or, they need to meet me on the street, so they can escort me into the building and introduce me to management as their good friend from out of town that is visiting for the week.

Airbnb needs to get more strict on hosts. I'm paying money for a service. I shouldn't arrive at my accommodation and be given a script filled with lies to follow, otherwise risk being evicted.

<comment><USER15> This happens way too often and ruins my trip by making me feel anxiety over something I have little control over. Unfortunately doing anything about this isn't in Airbnb's interest until it starts costing them customers.

<comment><USER16> Which it sadly won't. It'll just cost the cities and the actual inhabitants of the places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The last experiences I had at an Airbnb was less than ideal. The place I reserved was a co-habit (like a hostel, but in an apartment), but failed accidentally/intentionally to mention this anywhere. There was no photo of the bunk bed I found out I had to sleep in when I arrived.

It's back to hotels for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER5> It's very easy to avoid such experiences. Just pick any property which has more than 50 reviews, and a rating of above 4.95, but higher than better.

<comment><USER7> In my experience, this indicates a place that accepts a lot of short-term stays. It's no guarantee you won't have problems, just that they may not be immediately apparent.

Ironically, the only place I've ever returned to happened to be a new listing with no reviews.</comment></comment></comment>


The Legacy of the Banqiao Dam Collapse (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/the-forgotten-legacy-of-the-banqiao-dam-collapse-7821 <comment><AUTHOR> I'd been unaware of Banqiao until a few years ago. I think I tracked it down after runing across a curious exclusion or qualification regards deaths per TWHe generated among technologies in an IPCC energy alternatives reort.

Its scale overwhelms me. And yet the chain of institutional, engineering, and circumstancial events triggering it offer a huge set of cautionary lessons to advocates of other options, notably nuclear. I recommend reading the Banqiao history closely.

Today, and for another 300 years, Fukushima and Chernobyl have effectively no inhabitants.

Zhumadian city, inundated by the Banqiao disaster, is now home to over 7 million souls.

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

Once dam breaks cease being raging floods, life resumes, for those not fully extinguished, in a matter of weeks or years. Not centuries.

And the factors in assessing, avoiding, mitigating, alerting, and responding to risks are all remarkably similar to those of nuclear installations, save the very long-tail disasters.

The US has seen few major dam failures, though several have ocurred. Johnstown (1889) saw by far the most deaths, 2,200 (it spurred creation of the Red Cross and massive reforms to liability law), but see also the St. Francis (431 souls) and Teton (11) failures, and near misses or ongoing risks at Oroville, Isabella, Glen Canyon, among others.

Elsewhere, there are the cases of Vajont (2000+), Machchu (5500+), and others, or huge risks, as at Mosul.

Again, the failures largely accrued from institutional hubris, engineering insufficience, lack of reevant domain knowledge (often deliberate ignorance or denial, see especially Vajont, also St. Francis), poor overall management, lack of disaster preparation, drilling, or readiness, limited resurces or capabilities (especialy in developing countries), communications breakdown (see Banqiao's comms loss), and inadequate resonse in light of imminent or present threat.

None of these are domain-specific to hydraulic civil engineering or absent from nuclear engineering projects.

Many engineering lessons are learnt in blood and lives. Banqiao is a powerful education.

The Wikipedia article is also excellent:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam)</comment>


Ask HN: Hackernewsers who have been told they have x month/year left to live - <AUTHOR> How has it felt being told that you have x month/year left to live, how did you cope with it and did you eventually beat it.<p>Asking as I am feeling really sick and fear a life threatening diagnostic (although praying and hopeful that it is not the case), when I get around to seeing a doctor, also just wondering in part. <comment><USER2> You might be able to get more answers and advice by asking on r/askreddit. Bigger audience and all that. I wish you the best of luck.</comment>


"How to legally take back the United States without getting killed or arrested"  - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/103984595971776502972/posts/9fUWoNmzbZb

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I hope we see something happen to change course away from the very real internal threats to our country but at the same time I have a hard to seeing it happen. Its as if we are committed to our own downfall, which tends to happen at the end of empires.</comment>


Oracle makes move to kill open source MySQL - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/18/oracle-makes-more-moves-to-kill-open-source-mysql/?grcc=33333Z98ZtrendingZ0Z0Z0Z0Z0&grcc2=a121e3c06bfcc5573019c68937c7183b~1345472977381~fca4fa8af1286d8a77f26033fdeed202~unknown~1345117195375~98~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~9~3~ <comment><USER2> That's the same company that bundles much needed java security updates with the opt-out option of installing a weird browser toolbar and setting the homepage to a crappy service, right?

Seriously, I never cared about that company as long as it was just selling expensive (but supposedly feature rich?) software to the enterprise, but it seems the alternatives to Oracle's java and MySQL need some more support, market- and mindshare.

<comment><USER3> MySQL and Java don't affect me much personally, but I think the way they've handled Solaris is a real tragedy for the industry.

Larry is the new Bill. I blame Jonathan.

<comment><USER4> What's happening to Solaris ?

It is still open and available for download at <http://opensolaris.org>. It just isn't being supported by Oracle anymore since they are focused on Oracle Linux.

<comment><USER5> No, the gate has been closed about two years ago. Solaris is not open source anymore. The illumos guys forked the last available version of the code and push it forward independently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This test-case controversy was both discovered and ginned up by Monty and the MariaDB folks, who have much to gain by the rejection of Oracle's brand of MySQL and the promotion of MariaDB. While it may be part of some larger and sinister plan to "kill" open source MySQL as the article suggests, it seems more likely to me that it was simply a mistake, and one they'll walk back at some point.

If it is an anti-competitive move, it reminds me of the recent move by RedHat, who have started shipping their new kernels as one big source tarball, without patches, which undoubtedly pissed off both Oracle and the CentOS folks.

<comment><USER7> "it seems more likely to me that it was simply a mistake, and one they'll walk back at some point."

How do you explain removing access to the source repository then? Or the fact that the documentation is not free to redistribute?

<comment><USER6> _How do you explain removing access to the source repository then?_

I can easily explain it, because it never happened. Access to the MySQL source repository on launchpad is available for anyone to browse. Oracle is occasionally lazy about updating it, but they've never removed access AFAIK.

 _Or the fact that the documentation is not free to redistribute?_

The documentation has never been free to redistribute, it was that way under Monty, it was that way under Sun, and it remains that way under Oracle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As mentioned in the comments see MariaDB (<http://mariadb.org/>), an open source fork of MySQL from before the Oracle acquisition. Like Hudson, MySQL will live on.

<comment><USER9> I've been using Percona for a number of years now. Are there any solid comparisons between Percona and MariaDB?

<comment><USER6> MariaDB ships with XtraDB, Percona's modified InnoDB engine. If you're planning on using InnoDB (which just about everyone is) the differences are pretty minor.

The big difference is that MariaDB comes with the Aria storage engine, which is a crash safe alternative to MyISAM.

<http://kb.askmonty.org/en/about-xtradb/>

<http://kb.askmonty.org/en/aria-faq/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment> james-skemp For those who try to stay away from TC: "it appears that Oracle is making its revision tests and histories closed source" sums up the few paragraph link bait ... :)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for that, it is like you read my mind :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to enjoy working with Oracle databases, but the horrible pricing and high need for dba maintenance was always discomforting. Switch for a while to MSSQL, but then the market for Windows apps disappeared. Have been using mySQL with very little sort of DB satisfaction. Now I don't know why anyone would not choose PostgreSQL for almost any project. Oracle is a bad apple, making money with methods aking to extortion.

<comment><USER12> I still wonder why SQLite isn't used more. Granted for busy large sites/applications SQLite is the wrong tool. But most sites using MySQL are small.

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: It's been a while since I tried to use SQLite for anything.

I've never really felt that it was actually easier to use than a client/server DBMS. I can imagine that it's good for some kinds of embedded applications, but for normal web applications I don't see any improvement in usability. Juggling files is not any easier than setting up a connection.

And there were always annoyances associated with the simplicity. All those "complex features" in a real DBMS turn out to be useful sooner than you think (and I don't mean "once in production" I mean while still in development). Even the simplest applications can usually benefit from good support for dates and times.

I think SQLite just drew the line in the wrong place for most applications (although it may serve a niche quite well). Oversimplification requires the developer to reinvent, which results in a much more complex system overall (or one that at least requires more work to develop and maintain). Key/value stores have similar problems for general-purpose application development.

<comment><USER12> 1\. With the PDO (or any ORM) setting up and "using" SQLite is as easy as any other database.

2\. There are several really nice front-ends to SQlite, along with the phpmyadmin like app for SQlite. Like MySQL you'll never have to use the command line (for most operations).

3\. SQLite is now included with just about every scripting language (except MS' langs - where it's just a matter of downloading the app and an ODBC driver).

4\. "Because it requires no configuration and stores information in ordinary disk files, SQLite is a popular choice as the database to back small to medium-sized websites." - sqlite.com

 _Simple websites_. Would I run this site on SQLite? Of course not. Any shopping site with a million users? No. But a personal blog? Yes. A company website used for marketing and information (and maybe a few Contact US pages)? Yes.

There are millions of sites where using MySQl is over-kill. But everyone uses it because, like PHP, it's always there.

5\. SQlite uses SQL. Very few commands aren't available.. like you can't write to a View. But I think that's true in MySQl too. There's a small list on sqlite.com. It even has transactions.

Simply put, if you don't require writing to the db from multiple sources (and lets face it, 80% of the sites out there don't.); running your app or site on sqlite is fine.

<comment><USER7> "setting up and "using" SQLite is as easy as any other database"

That's exactly the problem. If it's _easier_ , then maybe I'll use it. If it's just as easy, but does less, I have no reason to bother using it, for two reasons:

1\. There is non-zero risk that I will need one of the other features.

2\. Even if I don't, why would I want to spend time learning something if it isn't better (at something) than what I already know how to use?

I haven't seen any compelling reason to use SQLite outside of the mobile or embedded space.

"over-kill"

What do you mean by that, and why is it bad?

<comment><USER12> _""over-kill"

What do you mean by that, and why is it bad?"_

It's not. I'm just pointing out that there are alternatives to MySQL. And for small sites/apps that don't require something like Postgres; that can be SQLite.

Frankly I miss the days when an easy to install and use database was available to the masses. Remember Paradox, dBase and Foxpro? Sure all those database where powerful (xBase, for example) and used to develop complex applications. But they were _also_ used for simple applications.

I would love to see something equivalent to those online. Oh wait, there is; SQLite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems Oracle is on a trend to kill everything open source they've acquired from Sun. Java seems to be the only one left, and it would've happened already if they won the trial with Google, but I'm sure they'll do something equally dumb in the future to kill finally Java, too.

<comment><USER12> There are other open source projects at Oracle that are still "alive". Like Netbeans.

<comment><USER14> Why the quotes around "alive"? What has been happening with the Netbeans project?

<comment><USER12> They've dropped ruby. But other then that, nothing really. I Love (and use) Netbeans. I was just emphasizing that they are still alive.

But really I think the only thing saving Netbeans' butt is Java.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> See previous submissions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4397124>

</comment><comment><USER16> Time to brush up on Postgres or Firebird.

Let Oracle shoot off all their feet.

<comment><USER17> I don't know anything about Firebird. Is it really a good replacement for MySQL?

<comment><USER16> I found it to be pretty solid and fast when I last used it, which was right after Borland Open-Sourced it. It was forked from Interbase.

<comment><USER18> Postgres is developing a lot quicker then Firebird. Also, management and replication solutions for Postgres are far more advanced. But what matters most (for me) is documentation. I can find everything I need to know right here:

[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/interactive/sql- commands....](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/interactive/sql- commands.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Let's hope someone forks it and teaches Oracle a lesson.

<comment><USER20> MariaDB is already a fork of MySQL, and many developers from MySQL now developing MariaDB.

<comment><USER21> Isn't MariaDB the fork by Monty, the original developer of MySQL who sold it to Sun in the first place, setting off multiple rounds of cashing out?

<comment><USER22> MySQL AB also required copyright assignment for all contributions, which made it possible for MySQL AB, Sun and now Oracle to have full copyright over it. MySQL AB wasn't above throwing around GPL FUD to scare people into paying for a non-GPL license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> LibreSQL, where are you? :(

<comment><USER24> Isn't that what MariaDB is for?

<comment><USER25> MariaDB is by Monty, creator of MySQL who previously sold-then-forked it. So there's no guarantee the same thing won't happen to it (quite the opposite really).

<comment><USER26> He does no longer own the exclusive rights to the code (they are Oracle's now) and so can only publish under the GPL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> ...and in the process opens the floodgates of possibilities for Drizzle, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and everyone else. Oracle has already shown fairly conclusively it can do little else but mismanage its acquired Sun assets.

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't saying that MySQL and Java doesn't affect you like saying that Linux doesn't affect you because you use Windows?

These open technologies make the world turn.

</comment><comment><USER29> TC;DR.

</comment><comment><USER30> Don't anthropomorphize Larry Ellison

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=39m25s>

</comment><comment><USER31> the line between what Oracle considers open and closed get fuzzier all the time. makes being a developer a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER32> No, it is easy: avoid anything touched by Oracle like the plague.

<comment><USER33> Unfortunately, that includes hardware too... A friend had 3 out of 13 Oracle servers die with random memory errors (persistent). Of course, if they had a 10K+ service contract they'd be happy to help.

<comment><USER34> How much did it cost to replace those 3 servers? >10K I bet...

<comment><USER18> This reeks of extortion. Let's sell the rejects to the customers without a support contract. That'll teach 'em.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Office Perks Are Dumb - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-21/office-perks-are-dumb <comment><USER2> > "The trend can be traced back to Google and Zappos"

Or Apple in the 1980s. [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Make_a_Mess,_Clean_it_Up!.txt) describes it as "In the center of Macintosh work area in Bandley 3 we had a ping pong table, a nice stereo system, and a Defender video game machine. We found that competitive play gave us a jolt of adrenaline, and a refreshed mind-set when we resumed work. We also learned a lot about our coworkers and how they excel during competition."

> "and defined their workplace cultures with the help of beanbag chairs"

Sorry, I meant PARC in the 1970s. Here's a picture of PARC's "famous" beanbag chairs from 1971 - [https://hightechhistory.com/2011/06/02/a-brief-early- history...](https://hightechhistory.com/2011/06/02/a-brief-early-history-of- xerox-parc-and-the-development-of-the-personal-computer/) .

> "Perks have since proliferated at startups"

See, problem is, now that I've shown that these sorts of office perks have been around for at least 45 years, it's hard to really agree with a timeline which starts with Google and grows from there.

The references to millennials is gratuitous. It's not that they are millennials but that they are young. Twenty-something Gen X'ers in the dot-com era had their own set of perks, and turnover rate. Here's an InfoWorld article from 2000 [https://books.google.com/books?id=QD0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA75&dq=si...](https://books.google.com/books?id=QD0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA75&dq=silicon+valley+perk&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false) which talks about extended vacation time, laundry services, and on-site doctors as perks.

Stick in 'Silicon Valley perk' into a Google Book search for books before 1990 and out pops, "The chip war: the battle for the world of tomorrow" (1989) which says "Salaries, stock options, bonuses, and perks grew to astounding proportions, leading demographers to dub Silicon Valley workers "gold collar" workers." There's also "Book of perks" (1984) which talks about sabbatical leaves for Silicon Valley engineers.

</comment><comment><USER3> As the philosopher Barrett Strong said: Money (That's What I Want) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5KU34DrrPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5KU34DrrPI)</comment>


What it feels like to swim in sub-zero waters - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/travel/taste-the-fear/what-it-feels-like-to-swim-in-subzero-waters <comment><USER2> Back in high school when myself and fellow cross-country running buddies were full of piss and vinegar, we decided one morning to jump in a high school friend's pond (with permission of course). The trick was that the water was _just_ cold enough to have really thin veneer of ice on top. Down to our shorts, and in we go. TFA says "your body goes into shock". I guess that's the best, albeit inadequate, way to describe it. It was like my heart stopped, and whatever makes my lungs work didn't work anymore. Gave it a second, and things kicked back in...sort of. I simply cannot imagine expending anymore effort than simple survival, let alone actually swim somewhere. I mean, how you gonna swim when you can't fucking _move_? After a minute, we got out and our friend had towels waiting.

Lessons learned: 1\. That goes on my list of things "no matter how good it sounds, no matter how much peer pressure, do not EVER do that again."

2\. You fall off the Titanic into the North Atlantic, you ain't gonna last long no matter what the movies tell you. Based on my one, brief experience, I wonder if I wouldn't just quickly give up and get it over with. At least death stands a chance of not being indescribably cold.

3\. The guy in TFA is 100% USDA Certified Bad Ass in my book. I've been in water only slightly warmer. I literally cannot imagine attempting such a thing. It's like pulling half your spark plugs, watering down the gas, then saying, "now, go drive across town. If you break down, elephant seals will eat you."

<comment><USER3> Mario Vittone has some great factual information about the realities of drowning in cold water.

[https://gcaptain.com/cold_water/](https://gcaptain.com/cold_water/)

<comment><USER4> "It is impossible to die from hypothermia in cold water unless you are wearing flotation, because without flotation – you won't live long enough to become hypothermic."

Great read.

<comment><USER5> Or it's in shallow water. I once fell through ice over a frozen creek and was close to hypothermia before I found another camp group after I'd been inadverntently left behind by my parents during a winter camping trip (each of my parents thought I was with the other). I was soaked in about 10F temps, but I was able to warm up, but not dry out, next to a fire. I was 9 or 10 at the time.

<comment><USER6> Holy hell, that must have been frightening. What was going through your head at the time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ice swimming is an eventually nice experience if you have a sauna nearby.

If you like that kind of thing, try a cryotherapy chamber too.

The one I tried was a step-in kind of room/chamber and went down to -110 Celsius. Clothing: swimming trunks (with extremities protected by woolen socks, gloves and a skiing cap). One just stands in the chamber, without touching the metal walls for obvious reasons. Blinking often is advisable to avoid freezing the eyeballs (or so they said).

There are three chambers with decreasing temperature, one passes through these somewhat rapidly to acclimatize.

The time in the coldest chamber was 3 minutes. Before the first minute was up, I thought I was going to die there. I calmed down and just stood there blinking as if sending morse code with my eyelids, listening to the eery sounds the walls made.

I felt time dilation. It felt forever between the minutes which were spoken by the operator through the internal speaker.

Later, when taking a short swim, a swimming pool with the usually cold water felt very warm but made me start shivering eventually. I slept very well that night.

The experience felt overall very primal somehow, on many levels. I can't quite put those feelings to words.

<comment><USER8> This is the first time I hear about cryotherapy. Wikipedia says that it has not been well studied. That does sound like a unique experience, I'd like to try.

Why were you recommended this therapy? How long does the feeling of relief last?

<comment><USER7> This was at Haikko Manor in Finland, years ago. I just happened to visit a spa which had such a possibility.

It was not for medical purposes for me, but nevertheless there was a very relaxed feeling (like that from ice swimming), which lasted for many hours afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Finland has thousands of winter swimmers, just normal people, and Russia at least 10x more. The article makes it sound almost superhuman, whereas in real life it's something that thousands of old ladies do daily. No need to travel to the ends of the world and bring a film crew with you.

<comment><USER10> I think the difference is that he swam 1 kilometer in the -3 water. I don't think the old ladies do that.

<comment><USER11> Note for Americans (and some island nations) - that's 26.6° F.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you ever fall into cold water, your instinct will be to swim hard. That instinct will kill you, because cold water shock causes you to involuntarily gasp for breath. The key to survival is to stop, float and wait for the shock to pass. After a minute or two, you'll regain control of your breathing and be able to shout for help or swim to safety.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OBCFEEZe1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OBCFEEZe1U)

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

</comment><comment><USER13> I get so tired of the kind of hyperbole that opens this article. If an untrained person deliberately dives into 28F water mostly they get cold and quickly get out. How do I know this? Am I a physiologist? No. Am I survival expert? No. I took a trip to Antarctica and the tour operator let passengers dive into the water, swim to a nearby platform and get out. The group of braves souls was about a dozen in number and aged from mid-teens to mid-50's. I even have pictures.

Yes, if you unexpectedly fall into freezing water you can involuntarily inhale and drown. Diving in, swimming a few strokes and climbing out is nowhere near invariably fatal.

All the intrepid divers I saw survived unscathed.

<comment><USER14> Another issue is heart attacks. These polar plunges usually have paramedics nearby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I twice jumped into a lake with multiple inches of ice on top for a short swim. It was for a charity event. I learned the following: when your animal brain decides your human brain isn't doing a good job, it will not hesitate to take over and save you.

The experience was:

1\. In the air.

2\. Hit the water.

3\. Several seconds with no memory.

4\. Swimming at the far edge of the water, even though I did not tell my body to swim here.

5\. Getting out of the water, even though I did not tell my body to get out.

Instincts just took over entirely. I'm grateful the human body comes with autopilot in extreme situations. I've been saved from severe burns by the same phenomena: my instincts kicking in and dodging a plume of flaming oil that was headed for my face.

I've also had this work against me. In a former life, before I was a sedentary software developer, I worked as an apprentice lineman. When climbing a telephone pole, swaying in the wind, 45 feet (~13m) in the air, my animal brain desperately wanted me to get down. Eventually, you're able to convince your brain that this is normal, but it takes some doing. We had one person get stuck in the air because they couldn't get past it.

<comment><USER16> I am always impressed by my animals brain to identify anything that is heading straight for my eye, perception seems to focus in on the object, time seems to slow and you have that fraction of a second to dodge whatever was heading for your eye(most of the time). I imagine it as some kind of pre-processor for safety that evolved to protect the eye, it gets the data before the higher conscious functions do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lynne Cox did a one mile swim (25 minutes) in Antartic waters (32°F) in 2003:

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/swimming-to- antarctica-12-02-20...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/swimming-to- antarctica-12-02-2003/)

She swam in even colder Arctic waters (26.6°F) for 5m26s in 2007:

[http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/Lynne- Cox/lynn...](http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/Lynne-Cox/lynne- cox-story)

Her book is a fun read:

[https://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Antarctica-Long-Distance- Swi...](https://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Antarctica-Long-Distance-Swimmer- Awards/dp/0375415076)

</comment><comment><USER18> You might be interested to read about Wim Hof, aka 'The Iceman' who can withstand extreme cold for long periods of time (e.g. Guiness record, 2hrs standing packed in ice cubes).

He teaches his techniques, though he may exaggerate the beneficial health effects a tad.

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

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

<comment><USER19> I went to a short training and a 90 ice bath but a trainer from his org. It was a great experience and taught me a lot about breathing. The whole battle for me was getting control of breath back and I could stay in the cold longer than I thought. One practice I took away from this is the ability to comfortably take a cold shower - which helps a lot with certain types of pain after exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> We make ice cream the old way with a ton of ice, some water, and rock salt. Plunging your hand into that ice bath is something everybody should do at least once. You'll get a new appreciation for the survivors of the Titanic at the very least. It's shocking just how stiff it gets, and how fast. The pain is quite severe after only a few seconds as well. It's hard to imagine anybody surviving when their entire body is submerged in something like that.

<comment><USER21> If you take a parenting class, this exercise is often used with both partners to learn how to deal with pain/discomfort naturally.

My wife could keep her hand in there for a few minutes. I was done after 30 seconds, if that.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. Can you explain a bit more what the excersie is done? i.e., each person puts their hand in ice qater... then what?

What's the explanation/link to dealing with pain? I mean, in terms of parenting.

<comment><USER23> I presume it's about preparing for the pain of the actual birthing process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember when I was maybe 10 years old my family went to Florida for Christmas. There was a cold snap and daytime highs were maybe 60F? Kind of rare.

Anyways, I wanted to swim in the unheated outdoor pool. The thermometer said it was 50F (10C).

It felt like I had been punched in the nuts after 5 seconds in the pool.

Can't imagine what 1C feels like.

<comment><USER25> Welcome to swimming in Lake Michigan!

<comment><USER5> Several years ago, went sailing on a friend's dad's boat during the air and water show in mid-August. That's about when the water temp is going to hit its peak, and about 1/2 mile out from shore, it was cold enough that we could only stay in the water for 5-10 minutes at a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Have to mention Apetor

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

There are a bunch more videos more or less just like that.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sometimes I go into water around 2°C in a 7mm wetsuit, and when water seeps in it sends a jolt through my body. In summer I can stay in the water pretty much indefinitely (It's anywhere from 10 to 15°C, but in late winter it's usually limited to 45-60 minutes tops. 30 minutes is roughly when my hands and feet stop working.

I don't know how people in norther climates swim in even colder water with no suit.

I remember reading as a child about a man from China who bathed himself daily, even through winter, in cold water from a nearby stream. He'd carry a few buckets to his washing area indoors, sit in it, and clean himself. He thought it was wasteful to heat the water in winter, but it was well below 0°C.

I'm a soft, weak, comfortable person.

</comment><comment><USER28> "Fat is a good insulator but so is muscle"

I never thought of that

</comment><comment><USER29> I've tried Cryotherapy a couple of times. The first minute was cold, in a numbing sort of way, the 2nd minute you can feel the cold seeping in your bones, and the third minute I was plain shaking like a leaf. But once I was out, I felt like I was on cloud 9.

<comment><USER14> It's probably adrenaline and natural opioids in your brain.

<comment><USER29> That's probably true, but unlike an intense workout session,where the affects are temporary, in this case were more longer, for a couple days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >burns. It feels like you're on fire.

>Within the first five seconds your body goes into shock; it's very difficult to breathe.

Both of those things. It's a horrifying feeling. Your arms and legs go numb almost immediately. Every time you move your arms and legs it feels like they weigh a ton. I was only in the water about 5 minutes then around 0-1°C. I couldn't imagine swimming a kilometer like that.

I've also done swift water rescue training in freezing rivers. We wore dry suits for that. But you feel it even in the dry suit.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've gone cliff jumping at Saint Mary's Glacier several times, and the cold shock is real. Even with all the adrenaline, hitting the water punches the breath right out. Once the spasms pass, it's really not too bad, and honestly quite fun.

That being said, if you were a weak swimmer or prone to panic, it could go very badly very quickly. Lots of respect to a guy doing it in essentially open ocean, with the added difficulty staying on course and extreme variability in conditions.

</comment><comment><USER32> Have swam in ice cold water in middle of the winter, one thing I realized is to relax my body despise the pain in core of my body.

</comment><comment><USER33> Dang. And I thought outdoor high school swim meets in Fort Lauderdale Florida in November were cold ;-)

<comment><USER5> Pffft. Outdoor swimming in Florida? Try baseball or running track in Montana. Snow is the norm, not the exception. In high school, I ran in track meets where you couldn't see from one end of the track to the other, the snow was that heavy.

<comment><USER34> Sure, but immersion in pretty cold water is different than immersion in very cold air, since air has way lower heat capacity than water does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Pain, panic, shock, bring it on. Re-ascension of the testis, pass.

</comment><comment><USER36> Interesting story... I always wonder how people fund these things.

</comment><comment><USER37> A breath taking experience no doubt.

</comment><comment><USER38> Cold?

</comment><comment><USER39> Clicked hoping it was 0F.

<comment><USER40> Was hoping for 0K myself.

<comment><USER41> Eh, I thought it was OK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> In the Midwest there are polar bear clubs where swimmers enter a lake or river in the winter. Granted they don't swim, just plunge and hurriedly exit.

The guy in this story was swimming in 21 degree fahrenheit water. There are polar bear events when some years they're entering water thirty degrees colder than that! Nothing that I've ever been tempted to try.

[https://www.jsonline.com/picture-gallery/life/green- sheet/20...](https://www.jsonline.com/picture-gallery/life/green- sheet/2018/12/31/photos-century-polar-bear-plunges-into-lake-michigan-new- years-day-bradford-beach/2424048002/)

<comment><USER43> If fresh water were -9 degrees F, I suspect it would be solid ice (it could be super-cooled if it were absolutely still, but lakes and rivers are not that, and splashing in super-cooled water would turn you into a popsicle). The _air_ temperature isn't even that cold in any of these pictures.

<comment><USER42> Actually if you read the link you'd see one of the polar bear events the temperature was -8 degrees fahrenheit. I've watched similar events on TV where they actually cut a hole in the ice to begin the event.

<comment><USER44> Those are air temperatures, not water. Being fresh water, the liquid water is not below 32F/0C.

<comment><USER45> Nit: flowing water does go below 0°C without freezing, as does water with impurities (sea water).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Tiny Chips from Chinese Hackers: When Falsifiability Meets Public Perception - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@socrateslee/the-tiny-chips-from-chinese-hackers-4961d81d7229 <comment><AUTHOR> As in the modern world, it seems the science and the technology are so developed, that the hi-tech products like microchips are so broadly used as there are many of them inside everyone's cell phone. But the scientific thinking is yet a very unpopular idea, and theories like falsification are heard by very little people. The science things have already arrived in our life, except we haven't thought deeply about them, we only know that words "the science things" have come.</comment>


Ask HN: Learn in weekend, what resources you suggest? - <AUTHOR> I am full time developer so it is hard for me to keep learning everyday except weekend days. But, that does not mean I do not want to learn other things.<p>So, what are the topics that you suggest to learn in weekend ( Saturday and Sunday - Full day )? It would be also good if you suggest resources as well. <comment><USER2> If you're interested in Python and Web Development, the Django tutorial is one of the best written tutorials I've ever seen: [https://www.djangoproject.com/start/](https://www.djangoproject.com/start/)

If you're interested in systems programming and want to try something new, I can recommend learning Nim: [https://nim-lang.org/learn.html](https://nim- lang.org/learn.html)

If you're into PL implementation, you can't go wrong with: [http://buildyourownlisp.com/](http://buildyourownlisp.com/) or [http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/](http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/) or [http://aosabook.org/en/500L/a-python-interpreter-written- in-...](http://aosabook.org/en/500L/a-python-interpreter-written-in- python.html)

If you want to try your hand at front-end web development, VueJs is pretty great: [https://vuejs.org/](https://vuejs.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd suggest learning more about how to learn better, so that you can learn more on the job. Then you can spend your weekend doing something other than coding. Some useful books:

"How Learning Works" (I review it here: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/03/19/how-learning- works/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/03/19/how-learning-works/))

"Peak" [https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science- Expertise/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science- Expertise/dp/1531864880)

Gar Klein's books, in particular "The Power of Intuition" [https://www.amazon.com/Power-Intuition-Feelings-Better- Decis...](https://www.amazon.com/Power-Intuition-Feelings-Better- Decisions/dp/0385502893/)

<comment><USER4> You should read a book or two on not be condescending, some people enjoy learning outside the workplace, or want to learn things that aren't related to their work.

<comment><USER3> Learning how to learn better will help with all of those! I read all three books in last 3 years and I found them quite useful personally (learning on the job and off the job).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Depending on your experience in C, the text editor in C tutorial [0] that was posted here recently may be good for you. There is good discussion in that post of other similarly sized projects as well.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046446)

<comment><USER2> I went through this tutorial the day it was posted. I can't recommend it highly enough. It is extremely well written and hits a lot of lower level concepts like bit-shifting ASCII characters and terminal configuration commands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are interested in graphics programming, learning ray tracing in a weekend series is a great resource. [1][2][3]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Ray-Tracing-Weekend-Minibooks-Book- eb...](https://www.amazon.com/Ray-Tracing-Weekend-Minibooks-Book- ebook/dp/B01B5AODD8) [2][https://www.amazon.com/Ray-Tracing-Next-Week- Minibooks-ebook...](https://www.amazon.com/Ray-Tracing-Next-Week-Minibooks- ebook/dp/B01CO7PQ8C) [3][https://www.amazon.com/Ray-Tracing-Rest-Your- Minibooks-ebook...](https://www.amazon.com/Ray-Tracing-Rest-Your-Minibooks- ebook/dp/B01DN58P8C)

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know your experience level or career goals, but I find that focusing on skills you may need to know later, that may not be a part of your job/skill set now well worth the effort.

With that in mind, focusing on all the soft skills, topics like public Speaking, interacting with coworkers and clients, leadership, and time estimating. [https://www.mindtools.com](https://www.mindtools.com) has a lot of info on everything but time estimates, and I can't honestly give you any credible sources on improving that.

That and design patterns.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a designer, but one of the most useful things I learned, after Python, is RegEx. I use it all the time in Sublime Text for "Find and Replace". Saves me a lot of time.

I also think it can be learned in a weekend. At least up to a certain degree.

Here are some resources [http://stackoverflow.com/a/2759417](http://stackoverflow.com/a/2759417)

<comment><USER8> Maybe you can help me with a question I've had for a while. Is RegEx good to use in code itself? If I recall correctly, when I was learning PHP I kept hearing people say don't use RegEx. It left me confused on what good uses for RegEx are.

<comment><AUTHOR> RegEx is a part of language so it is totally okay to use it. But, it might happen that you are using it in wrong way so other developers said that. Such as parsing HTML using RegEx is bad practice.

<comment><USER8> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whatever you want to learn, you might also want to buy a paper book on the subject, e.g., one of the O'Reilly books. Interacting with paper is a qualitatively different experience from interacting with a screen, and you may find (as I do) that it is effective to switch from one to the other as your mood and location varies.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://coursefriend.com/](https://coursefriend.com/) is my side project that helps people find courses for stuff they want to learn. Let me know what you think

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want to learn Python: [https://pythonspot.com](https://pythonspot.com)

Just tutorials: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tutorial&sort=byPopularity&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tutorial&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

Online courses databases: Edx, Coursera, Udemy, Skillshare and Youtube.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes i already search on EdX, and found David's Introduction to Computing using Python interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are a ton of great conference videos available, depending on your interest -

[http://findlectures.com/?p=1&class1=Technology](http://findlectures.com/?p=1&class1=Technology)

These work well for weekend learning, because they tend to stand on their own.

</comment><comment><USER13> Learning to use tools such a editors(Vim), IDEs can always come in handy. You can get through the basics and learn along as you use.

EDIT: If you're looking for something along the lines of technologies or framework or something else, refer other comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice suggestion, any resources on Vim? Resources i mean which can be cover within a week. Its okay if it contains only basis things.

<comment><USER13> Here's one I followed myself. [https://www.linux.com/learn/vim-101-beginners- guide-vim](https://www.linux.com/learn/vim-101-beginners-guide-vim)

There are also the sequels: 201,301 and 401 versions. You can cover them in a Day or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd advise you to checkout codescho ol. They have tracks that cover a topic in about a weekend, often in an entertaining way.

I don't belong to them now but I really enjoyed them in the past

</comment><comment><USER15> You can learn a lot about compilers and C while learning Nim - [https://nim- lang.org](https://nim-lang.org)

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, I'm also a full time developer but I learn new things on my job almost every day.

Your question is way too broad. If you mean tech topics, it's perhaps time to find another job; if any topics at all, just follow your interests.

<comment><USER17> I love learning tech topics that I have not no hope of using in my job though. I ain't learning about akka or EJB in my spare time for example!

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have list of topics ?</comment></comment></comment>


Observability: the new wave or another buzzword? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2017/12/30/observability-the-new-wave-or-another-buzzword <comment><USER2> Another buzzword. All of these things already happen - I feel like this post would have been relevant in 2010.</comment>


Science fair gold medalist, 17, invents better way to search Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science-fair-gold-medalist-17-invents-better-way-to-search-internet/article2118962/

<comment><USER2> More details:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oeh9pdHZco>

[http://apps.ysf- fsj.ca/virtualcwsf/projectdetails.php?id=274...](http://apps.ysf- fsj.ca/virtualcwsf/projectdetails.php?id=2740&switchlanguage=en)</comment>


A proposal for the freelancer community - <AUTHOR>

I have been working as a freelancer for some time now and I have a proposal for the freelancer community. Paid vacation days are one of the things that I miss as a freelancer. While there are no Federal laws in the United States that require an employer to offer paid vacation days as a benefit, employers of choice offer employees paid vacation days. Vacation days are quite common in Europe with Switzerland having a minimum of 20 such days per year, U.K. 28 days and Germany 24.
The proposal that I want to make to the freelancer community is to include a percentage of the working hours as vacation days for every freelancing project. This might be chosen depending on your experience and the country that you belong to. For example, about 10 hours for every 160 hours of work sounds reasonable as vacation hours. This would make for about 16 working days in a year that we can take off for vacations.
What do you think about this? Does this sound reasonable or you would still prefer charging for what you work and then take unpaid vacations? <comment><USER2> The typical way we handle this is to a) charge much, much more than a full- time employee does over a similar increment of time and b) when we want to take a vacation, we simply don't schedule engagements.

As a freelancer/consultant doing programming, your rate should be comfortably high enough that your cash flow situation is rock-solid without working on a week to week basis. (If you disagree that your cash-flow situation is rock solid, HN reader, _you are not charging enough_. Raise your rates. If your cash flow situation is rock solid _raise your rates anyway_ , you're still undercharging.)

The typical target utilization rate for a consulting firm is 70~80% ish, which means you get 10+ weeks of vacation a year. My business is a little quirky, but I would probably get 30+ weeks. It flows naturally from charging appropriately and, critically, _never, ever, ever depends on a client saying Yes to your vacation_.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you rate does not account for unpaid time you are charging too little. My rate supports my ability to take unpaid time as well as between contract time. It is a reality of freelancing and if the market demands freelancers then the market has to bare the rate of those non-productive hours if not freelancing ceases to be economically viable. Too many people that get into freelancing look at an hourly rate and compare that to the salaried rate they where making, they think oh wow that is more money, but they never factor in down- time. A few hard lessons later and they generally double their rate or leave freelancing all together.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would feel comfortable in keeping something like this explicitly mentioned rather than charging more without any explanation.

<comment><USER4> It's not your client's job to care about your vacation - it's yours. The reality of freelancing is that _you_ are responsible for your vacation, taxes and healthcare. That's one of the reasons people hire you - They don't want to have to think about it! Raise your rates accordingly.

Also, don't be a 'freelancer.' A 'freelancer' is a mindless drone who is told to do something and does it. Be a consultant. A consultant is an expert who provides value to the business, either in terms of time / money saved, or increased revenue. How you market yourself is important.

Here's a gem from tptacek: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4245960>

Also, go to hnsearch.com and do a search for 'patio11'. Read _everything_ he has written - it covers marketing yourself and charging appropriately. Do it now. That proposal you're working on can wait :)

Good luck, and welcome to the crew!

Edit: Freelancers vs Contractors vs Consultants: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420396>

<comment><USER5> Comments like the ones you link to are the reason I blow so much time on HN.

I _have_ read everything patio11 has written about consulting , twice. As I've said on HN before his writing has changed my life in a few dramatic and interesting ways. Specifically this guy: <http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/07/08/business-psychology/>

I somehow missed that link you posted by tptacek but it truly is a gem. I'm at about stage 2 of that now and it's exactly what I needed to hear.

<comment><USER6> I had somehow missed that post until now. Thank you so much Ali!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You should definitely be pricing that into your rate already, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER8> If I were to start asking for explicit time off, I would have to start explaining all the time off I take now without telling anyone.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have thought about this too living in Sweden where I as an employee had 25 days of vacation a year and how to bring that in to my freelancing.

As I see it; impossible. You can charge an extra in time or money to make up for it, but when you go on vacation as a freelancer you do not have anyone running the office.</comment>


Man Who Set Stage for a Nobel Now Lives a Life Outside Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/science/16prasher.html

<comment><USER2> Thank you for posting this article! As an academic, this really touched me. I'm impressed by this guy's humility. For me personally, the years of misery caused by the way our society does tenure and funding is not worth enduring .. especially when the odds of success are pretty low.

I can't help but wonder if he'd be happier if he became an entrepreneur instead of taking that non-research job. I guess being an entrepreneur (in your own field) is much more feasible for a CS PhD than it is for a Biology PhD.

The bright side of the story is that there were other people to carry on the baton, and humanity took one more step.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also the article The Fall and Rise of Douglas Prasher in Discover Magazine from April 2011 (This how I found the link)</comment>


The pressure distribution inside the proton – Nature - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0060-z <comment><USER2> Physicists make first 3D measurements of proton's internal structure

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05186-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05186-x)

In short, this is a new type of "electron microscopy" for 3D imaging of sub- atomic particles. Very exciting!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> SciHub says: подходящих прокси не найдено

no proxies found</comment>


40% of US college students are reluctant to discuss race and sex in classrooms - <AUTHOR> https://heterodoxacademy.org/the-campus-expression-survey-summary-of-new-data/ <comment><AUTHOR> Source [https://twitter.com/primalpoly/status/972626671672045568](https://twitter.com/primalpoly/status/972626671672045568)</comment>


Venezuela President Maduro survives 'drone assassination attempt' - <AUTHOR> https://www.sbs.com.au/news/venezuela-president-maduro-survives-drone-assassination-attempt <comment><USER2> I have to imagine it's keeping quite a few secret service agents awake at night thinking about how on Earth they're going to safely and effectively jam DC-6GHz in a large open outdoor area --- because it's absolutely inevitable that they will eventually have to as this technology becomes cheaper and better. Ultimately, I think we'll just see these types of political events go away as the security risks are unable to be mitigated.

When you can see racing drones going 150+ mph on YouTube, and you can also see videos of handguns attached to drones, it's really amazing that this isn't occuring all the time.

Edit: maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty here. They really only need to jam the ISM and cellular bands, everything else is hard to import due to FCC regs, and thus doesn't get made in the first place. I don't think terrorists will be able to make their own custom spread spectrum transmitters and receivers for their drones. Then again, GNURadio and cheap devices makes this pretty easy nowadays.

<comment><USER3> Easy, use the smae counter measure they used in Iraq against phone acitivated road side bombs. They make man portable versions. Keep an eye out for backpacks with big antennas

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that some locals seem to disagree [1]:

      Firefighters at the scene of an explosion that Venezuelan
      officials call an attack on President Nicolas Maduro are
      disputing the government's version of events.

      Three officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because
      they were not authorized to discuss the case say th
      incident was actually a gas tank explosion inside an
      apartment.

      Smoke could be seen coming out of a building window
      at the site of the incident.

[1] [https://apnews.com/db760dac560840309cd320648ba12c9a](https://apnews.com/db760dac560840309cd320648ba12c9a)

</comment><comment><USER5> Crazy. Sort of related, this sort of thing doesn't seem to be terribly uncommon in the middle east. There's plenty of footage on the internet of ISIS attaching mortars and grenades to drones and using them to bomb vehicles and buildings.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone in robotics/drones speak as to how far away we are from Slaughterbots? [1]

[1] [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw&vl=en](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw&vl=en)

<comment><USER7> depends on how you define "Slaughterbots" any micro drone with a small demo charge can kill a person if it detonates on the skull. Intel has a drone kit which can be pretty autonomous you should be able to train it to explode on heads, you might have a pretty big collateral damage as far as soccer balls and water melons go but it will definitely will detonate enough heads if released into the wild (within it's flight range ofc ;)).

A practical completely autonomous weapon as in one that makes actual decision is pretty far off, however with modern drones pretty much everything is already automated even the weapon release and guidance is machine assisted these days but that is just to help increase the accuracy of the strike as it can compensate for the delay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps instead of using one drone in these kind of attacks, they will use multiple in quick succession, each carrying an explosive payload.

<comment><USER9> No, quick succession makes them easier to shoot down. Better to send them in simultaneously, as many as possible in a single volley.

Maybe then, Venezuela will be free.</comment></comment>


Order theory for computer scientists - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/partial-orders/? <comment><USER2> Summaries like this would gain tremendously if they were augmented with some useful examples of where taking the partial order / lattice perspective of the world actually helps you in understanding what is going on. Let me play devil's advocate a bit.

I've always felt that order theory, like category theory, lacks reasonably strong theorems. Perhaps that's because the corresponding objects simply don't have enough structure to be interesting of themselves. However, I've known several people who were raving on about how great especially categories are.

Now there _are_ strong results that are formulated in the language of category theory, for example the theorems of homological algebra. Then again, those results cannot really be attributed to category theory: they only hold for categories that have a pretty strong additional structure to begin with; what's more, this structure (abelian categories) is something that comes from mathematics, but does not really seem applicable to computer science.

There is an argument that one should know the language of order theory, the basic definitions of preorders and lattices and so on, simply because they are useful for communication. But the same can be said about set theory, and nobody is raving about how great set theory is (well, except some of those really "out there" people who are studying axioms on crazily large cardinals, but they are typically self-aware of the fact that what they're doing tends to be uninteresting to the rest of the world).

What this boils down to, I guess, is that looking at order theory as an end to itself is not useful for a majority of the population. But if you want to use order theory as a language, you'd better introduce it together with some examples of how it can be used.

<comment><USER3> > I've always felt that order theory, like category theory, lacks reasonably > strong theorems. Perhaps that's because the corresponding objects simply > don't have enough structure to be interesting of themselves. However, I've > known several people who were raving on about how great especially > categories are.

I think that, from the point of view of computer science, these ideas are not primarily useful as _theories_ , but as _languages_ : ways to think and talk about things.

For example, any decent programmer has some kind of concept in his head that corresponds to the mathematical idea of a _function_ , another for the special case of a function with a finite domain, and yet another for the special- special case of a finite sequence. They know implementations for these, time- space trade-offs & whatnot. That doesn't mean they need to study any subject with a name like "Theory of Functions". It does mean that familiarity with mathematical concepts like "function" and "domain" is going to be useful in the programming field.

Similarly, it would be good to be able to toss around concepts like "lattice" and "Cartesian product" and "monoid". But I'm not sure how much of the theory a programmer really needs to know.

By the way, I don't agree with your assessment of order theory and its lack of theorems. Check out -- for example -- Dilworth's Theorem and the generalizations by Greene and Kleitman, for some terribly strong statements about partial orders. OTOH I have no idea what connection these might have to computing. (And as far as I know, you are quite correct about category theory.)

> Summaries like this would gain tremendously if they were augmented with some > useful examples of where taking the partial order / lattice perspective of > the world actually helps you in understanding what is going on.

Definitely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a toy example showing that knowing even just basic ideas and techniques from this area can be useful, play around with designing a purely functional algorithm for the Stable Marriage Problem. Please report back if you come up with something efficient :) Of course, we would have to agree on the target audience to make sense of what useful means.</comment>


Ask HN: Your startup needs money: WHY? - <AUTHOR>

I never quite understood why there's so much money being "given" to so many startups that do pretty much nothing... why do they need so much money? I don't get it.. <comment><USER2> We got to where we are with 250K, and are pretty close to product/market fit. We have paying customers, a great product and a repeatable sales model. However, for us to really step on the accelerator and grow, we need to hire A+ salespeople. We can pay them from cashflow, but that will slow things down. We'd rather raise a small amount of capital (i.e. < 1M) so we can hire a couple of great sales guys and really speed up the growth of our business.

Just a tangible example of why our startup needs money!

</comment><comment><USER3> Your start-up doesn't NEED money, but it is definitely helpful. Most of the start-ups that do receive funding of $1million+ aim to go big, so having that latent capital is certainly a great security for when the time comes to expand. They can use this money to hire the necessary people, purchase the necessary assets (servers, workstations, etc) or secure annual rent.

On the other hand, start-ups that have a more modest outlook or vision don't need as much and actually shouldn't accept that much. Having $1million VC money pumped into a start-up that only expects to make $50,000 a month with steady growth will more than likely buckle. The investors will keep pressuring the founders and terms like ROI will be thrown around meetings like crazy.

The best thing to do is determine how much you _really_ need (Or create a range for variables), and work from there. There's a bunch of decent (free) spreadsheets you can get from here: <http://www.exinfm.com/free_spreadsheets.html>

That's my 2c.

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess some projects need more money than can be feasibly obtained from other projects organic profits, and are too risky for banks to touch, and co- founders credit cards are already maxed out, so they need investors to 'give' money.

Maybe they do nothing today, but are in a closed beta with a small circle of users, and will be more public beta tomorrow...?

</comment><comment><USER5> What is there not to get? Running a business costs money for very obvious reasons: salaries, office space, computers, servers, marketing. Even for a very frugal early stage company that is usually hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Those costs tend to exist regardless of whether the idea is simple or not.

</comment><comment><USER6> Did you have a particular example you want to discuss?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not. I'm generalizing, I'm not pointing any names but I'm sure everyone already had this feeling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To pay the salary of the people working on the site?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep up with new interviews/podcasts by a popular X? - <AUTHOR> X= your favorite author, innovator, founder or a VC<p>A lot of interesting people like Naval, Sam Altman, James Clear etc go on multiple podcasts and shows but may not have their own podcast. How do you track their latest interviews? <comment><USER2> IMHO most of the interviews with the same person cover the same material so I wouldn't even bother listening to another podcast with people I've heard before.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could create a Google Alert with their names. You'd have to sort through crappy mentions, but you'll also be on top of most of their activities.</comment>


Ask HN: Anybody who wants to start a project in the crypto space? - <AUTHOR> Hey!
I do have a lot of time in the next two weeks and want to build something in the cryptospace. I am open for everything: Niche site, affiliate site, SaaS, app,...
Only condition: It should be profitable from the first week.
Ping me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you are interested :)
Regards, Jakob <comment><USER2> profitable in the first week? I almost lol'ed until I saw "in the cryptospace". You'll probably make 8+figs

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you interested in starting something together?</comment></comment>


NixOps – Declarative cloud provisioning and deployment with NixOS - <AUTHOR> https://nixos.org/nixops/ <comment><AUTHOR> In view of some replies downthread: yes, application-level management is entirely possible with Nix(OS).

Currently, this works best for Haskell, for which there is a sizeable amount (relatively speaking) of Nix tooling available. This is largely because a lot of Nix(OS) users also use Haskell, perhaps because lend themselves to very similar modes of "declarative" thinking.

This is a thorough, excellent guide on how to develop Haskell projects with Nix, including managing non-Haskell dependencies (zlib, SDL, ncurses, and so on):

[https://github.com/Gabriel439/haskell- nix/](https://github.com/Gabriel439/haskell-nix/)

I only started using NixOS about a month ago, and it's fantastic. The best part is that binary caches are available for almost everything, so the hitherto-painful step where one compiles Haskell dependencies locally has been completely eliminated. The best way I can describe how I work now is "Python virtualenvs, but for everything at once and just so much better".

PS. Gabriel Gonzalez is, in general, someone who makes great documenation. Check out the tutorial for his stream-processing library Pipes: the ASCII art alone is awesome :)

[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pipes-4.3.4/docs/Pipes-T...](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pipes-4.3.4/docs/Pipes- Tutorial.html)

<comment><USER2> We use NixOS in production in our product, for our cloud services, and for some development environments.

We build everything with nix from sbt projects, go projects, haskell projects, purescript projects, docker images, and npm projects.

It's an incredible tool.

NixOps is also a good tool but there are a lot of issues with it we haven't had time to contribute fixes for. We also wanted it to be lighter weight and to decouple system specification from system deployment. So I wrote a tool that handles performing the same system deployment operations that NixOps does for you and you can simply pipe the nix path result from nix-build to it. We use terraform to specify and manage the cloud resources.

<comment><USER3> Are you able to share your tool?

<comment><USER2> We will definitely be publishing it. Time is very short and the backlog of projects to publish is growing though so it might take time to polish and write a blogpost and tutorial.

I work for Awake Security so keep an eye out on the company's GitHub org as we've been publicly releasing a lot of projects even though they aren't completely polished or announced yet. I'll see if I can do this for our deploy tool soon.

<comment><USER4> Nice, I'd love to see it released.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Other than integration with the rest of the Nix/NixOS ecosystem, how is NixOps different from Puppet?

Reading briefly through the examples, it seems very oriented towards provisioning machine instances rather than provisioning behavior across networks or multi-machine services, which is something that Puppet really excels at. What features does this offer in addition to ones that Puppet provides?

That said, I've been getting tired of Puppet recently for some unrelated reasons, so I'll definitely give this a try.

<comment><USER6> Linux wasn't designed to be an immutably-configured operating system. When systems like Puppet try to apply configuration to a target server, they're operating on top of a layer which is inherently stateful, which has a propensity to cause all sorts of problems. What if somebody manually entered this server and screwed with the configuration, outside of Puppet? What if poorly packaged applications don't cleanly uninstall or upgrade properly? Systems like Puppet tend to just throw an error at the sysadmin and walk away.

NixOS treats immutable configuration as a first-class citizen at the OS level. Dependenices are not installed into /usr or /etc, rather specific versions of packages (identified by their hashes) are installed into /nix/store and then symlinked back to /usr or /etc. Different applications that require different versions of the same dependency, when packaged according to standard, harmoniously co-exist on the same server because the Nix packaging system symlinks the dependencies between each other in /nix/store.

You don't realize the full power of this setup until you make a mistake, make your system unbootable, and calmly tell GRUB to just use the last valid configuration - a few minutes later and you're back at a desktop. Conventional configuration management tool like Puppet tend to be worthless in those kinds of failure modes, and most sysadmins would be implementing backup restoration procedures.

<comment><USER7> Here's another example that is simple, but one I still appreciate: I wanted a slightly newer kernel. How do I get it, and ensure all the "downstream" dependencies are rebuilt (e.g. kernel modules)?[1]

I write this into my configuration.nix:

        boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_latest;

I run `nixos-rebuild switch && reboot` and I'm done. I can switch back to the last one if I wanted, but this new one takes place immediately. I just did this on a server 20 minutes ago.

There are other small things I can do with this. What if I didn't want to boot this kernel to boot, just test it?

        $ nixos-rebuild build-vm
        $ ./result/bin/run-*-vm

This will instantly drop you into a QEMU-KVM instance that is using NixOS with your `configuration.nix`, but if you rebooted nothing would change. (You can also specify a different configuration.nix to test _other_ machines![2]) Or I _could_ boot it, but just once and switch back pretty easily if something was wrong.

\---

Another: What if I wanted Tarsnap backups of something? (This may be out of date, but it's my old config, and I wrote the Tarsnap module)

          services.tarsnap.enable = true;
          services.tarsnap.archives =
            { nixos =
              { checkpointBytes = "5GB";
                directories =
                [ "/root" "/etc/nixos"
                ];
              };

              home =
              { excludes = [ "*.o" "*.hi" ];
                checkpointBytes = "5GB";
                directories =
                [ "/home/a"
                ];
              };
            };

Now I can do things like this:

        $ systemctl start tarsnap@home
        $ systemctl start tarsnap@nixos

To start on demand. Or I can configure timers/cron to do this manually.

Lots of other small things. Binary caches, your own Hydra, remote/multi- architecture builds, etc. One time I "configured" my NixOS laptop install before getting my laptop: on a remote testing server, over remote KVM. Pushed it to git. I cloned my configuration.nix during NixOS installation on my laptop a few days later, and I replicated my laptop in 10 minutes. :) Combine this with Hydra (CI) server: You can even write tests and have _your laptop configuration continuously integrated_ all the time?!?!?!?

That said NixOS isn't always the easiest thing to use, but it _does_ come with some big advantages!

[1] I'm aware of DKMS (and have even worked on modules using it where it was fine) but I've still had it break once or twice. Maybe that was VMWare's fault :)

[2] If you share code between all your configuration.nix files, this becomes a lot easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there good explanation anywhere of the syntax of those files? I tried getting into nix multiple times and was always put off by the lack of understandability of this.

<comment><USER9> Nix is a bit like JSON + functions.

An object (called attrset in nix):

        { a = 3; b = 4; }

A list:

        [ 1 2 3 4 ];

A string:

         "hello"

A multi-line string:

        ''
          multine
          string
        ''

This defines a lambda with two arguments:

        a: b: a + b;

It's possible to pattern-match arguments. This accepts an attrset with keys a and b, and maps them to local variables:

        { a, b }: a + b;

There are some variations around that like `{ a ? 3 }:` `{ a }@attrs:` and `{ a, ... }`

One special type is the path, which has it's own literal that starts with `./`

To load a file, the `import` keyword is being used. In most cases the whole file is a big lambda function, which gets returned by the import.

Once you know that you can start reading nixpkgs and learn about the building blocks to constructs packages.

<comment><USER10> Also, for convenience, nested objects/attrsets can be shortened. For instance:

        {
            a = {
                b = {
                    c = 3;
                };
            };
        }

can be shortened to:

        {
            a.b.c = 3;
        }

This is used quite often in NixOS system configuration files. There you'll find lines like:

        services.openssh.enable = true;

For a list of all system configuration options that NixOS supports by default see (NixOS options)[[https://nixos.org/nixos/options.html](https://nixos.org/nixos/options.html)].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> NixOS makes a great OS for personal/workstation use, too.

With NixOS, my system is _always_ 100% clean, and _never_ broken.

I can install packages in my home directory without root.

Best of all, whenever I want to write any code, I can use nix-shell to make the toolchain and dependencies _temporarily_ available to a self-contained shell. No more cluttering my system with libfoobar-dev for a quick build, and forgetting why.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would love if someone could compare NixOps with BOSH.

<comment><USER13> I haven't done much Nix, but I do peek over the fence now and then because I (and others) wonder about applying it to buildpacks and/or OCI layer construction. I do a lot more BOSH, since I work at Pivotal. So these remarks are probably wrong.

However, from my ignorant viewpoint:

The deep agreement is that machine-level statefulness is evil. Trying to repair it in-situ is pointless when you can simply reset to known-good states.

BOSH does this at the whole-machine level. You get a stemcell (fixed target), you get releases (fixed configuration of software) and you get deployments (fixed mappings from releases into running systems).

When you make a change, you redeploy. BOSH recompiles any changed release packages and then rolls them out across the fleet, starting with canaries.

BOSH lets you define the number of VMs, networks and whatnot; I'm not sure if NixOps does.

Treating components as replaceable is the main point of departure from previous generations of configuration management, which largely evolved out of a world in which the mission was "make this single machine look right, starting from an unknown state".

NixOps appears to do something similar. I'm unclear as to whether it operates at the whole-machine level (à la BOSH) or whether it can perform transformations within an existing machine. The latter would, obviously, be a _lot_ faster than replacing VMs wholesale.

That said, whole-machine replacement does have one accidental benefit: it's ruthless. You very quickly encounter the one-in-a-million edge cases for running services because BOSH will quite unmercifully steamroll VMs during a deploy. Any stateful distributed services that aren't ready to have running machines yanked from under them at short notice will quickly reveal themselves.

You'd be surprised how many systems that advertise themselves as tolerant to random machine loss ... er ... aren't. Not sure much how I can go into this, but some distributed systems do much more poorly than the stuff on the tin suggests, even after substantial engineering on our part to try and prop them up.

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal, so I use BOSH sometimes in my dayjob. But I'm by no means a capable operator or BOSH expert.

<comment><USER14> * NixOps lets you define the complete layout of your deployment (in Nix, obviously): how many VMs, what they should be running, where they should be running.

* NixOps works on whole machine + transformation of machine level: NixOps builds all system configurations of the whole network, then makes sure the required target hosts are available, then copies the builds to the hosts, and then atomically switches all hosts to the new configuration at once. NixOS is stateless, and a new config only means that the new service configurations are applied.

Rollback is a matter of switching all VMs back to their previous configurations, takes less than a minute in all.

<comment><USER13> Thankyou for the additional detail. I'd say that the two arrived at similar outcomes, which isn't surprising given NixOps's roots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems neat, better than Terraform, although limited to just nix and a few providers. Hopefully that will grow. I've been working on a provisioning tool myself. Provisioning is hard, and supporting multiple APIs can be really difficult.

<comment><USER16> I don't really see Nix as a limitation. It has a good claim to being a universal system configuration tool. Or how do you mean it's limited?

<comment><USER17> Can I use it to deploy either client or server applications on windows? All configuration and deployment tools I've looked at seem like they assume the only deployment target is linux servers running web applications. I don't care about the web. I need a deployment tool that works for local research on my clients' analysts' desktops, not just devops on remote somewhere.

<comment><USER18> Have you looked into the Windows features of Ansible or SaltStack? Would be interested to hear about experiences with them.

<comment><USER19> I would like to adopt something for configuration of my personal machines. Desktop and tablet running Windows 10, laptop running macOS.

If possible I'd prefer to use one tool for both OSes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can anyone comment on whether or not Nix is 100% reproducible? To the best of my limited understanding, it is not.

<comment><USER21> Nix doesn't guarantee bit-for-bit reproducibility: That is, two different builds of a Nix package may not produce bit-identical output. (They probably will, because of all the sandboxing, but nothing prevents an arbitrary package from generating random numbers at build time.)

Certainly Nix makes it a lot easier to get reproducibility in practice, though.</comment></comment>


32C3 CTF: Docker writeup - <AUTHOR> https://kitctf.de/writeups/32c3ctf/docker/ <comment><USER2> A more accurate title would be "misconfigured Docker pwned" since '\--net=host' removes the container's network isolation.

Still a pretty cool excuse for playing with unix socket fd passing!

<comment><USER3> Why were the constraints of the game so loose? It even gave unprivileged SSH access to the real machine, outside docker!

Is docker considered as strong as a chroot nowadays? Are uid0 programs unable to escape? Is it safe to run the `try ruby`s of this world on docker?

The website[0] mentions that "even if an intruder manages to escalate to root within a container, it will be much harder to do serious damage, or to escalate to the host." Has anyone succeeded in doing so with a recent version of docker?

[0]: [https://docs.docker.com/engine/articles/security/](https://docs.docker.com/engine/articles/security/)

<comment><USER4> The docs about Docker security could really need more honesty.

<comment><USER2> If you think there's an inaccuracy, please consider filing an issue on [https://github.com/docker/docs.docker.com](https://github.com/docker/docs.docker.com) , or even better sending a pull request to fix it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Minnaedu, a blog engine for Google AppEngine - <AUTHOR> http://minnaedu.appspot.com/ <comment><USER2> Interested to see how it is but I get "Internal error, Ticket issued: unknown".

<comment><USER3> am running on free option of GAE and with the HN effect, I crossed the limits of free option. Code base is the same for <http://www.jjude.biz>

<comment><USER4> Please consider uploading it as a public project on CoderBuddy, so folks can try out your code easily and publish to GAE seamlessly also.

Thanks!

<https://www.coderbuddy.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like a web2py project - more about it here: <https://bitbucket.org/id804097/minnaedu/src> [http://www.jjude.com/2011/12/here-is-a-blog-engine-for- googl...](http://www.jjude.com/2011/12/here-is-a-blog-engine-for-google- appengine-and-just-about-everywhere-else/)

seems to be running here (on webfaction) - <http://www.jjude.biz>

</comment><comment><USER6> Internal error

Ticket issued: unknown

<comment><AUTHOR> Strange, worked when I posted it. Maybe somebody is making changes on a live system - bad practice.</comment></comment>


Someone Stole My Idea - <AUTHOR> http://jakesolo.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/someone-stole-my-idea/

<comment><USER2> so what's the idea? oh, you won't tell us...

<comment><AUTHOR> Forgive me for being paranoid...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a reason there isn't just one bank? - <AUTHOR> Step back and think about how there are 100+ banks, how 3rd party gets to profit whenever you buy something using debit card/ credit card. How so much is wasted in advertising gimmicks by banks to get people to open account  with them... and then think about what is primary purpose of bank.
A place where you can safely store money and retrieve it later.
Have you played any mmorpg game. You store currency in bank, you get it later, you give it to others, you trade. There is no 3rd person in middle.
IMHO, it seems having ability to trade currency digitally and keep currency safe is just as important as providing water to each home, at least for any remotely functioning country in this century. As such shouldn't governments provide this functionality, I don't understand rationale behind O(n) banks. There can be separate private loaning system.
So WHY can't there be one bank, whose sole purpose is to store money and transfer money?
Maybe govt ran independently controlled non-profit entity??
I feel any country that can pull this will have instantly more productive economy.
There should be zero fees if I buy something.
There should be zero delay if I transfer any amount.
There shouldn't be banks!
Whole reason Stripe is successful because of stupidness that is electronic payment system. Yet you still pay ~$4 per $100 to no face organizations for no good reason at all. Seems like severe bottleneck to economy, and failed system. Clearly free market has failed here.
Again just imagine: 1 bank that nothing to sell to you, no fees, instant actions.
I feel whole loan money industry is riding on top of neutral and crucial service of being able to store and transfer money.
Institutional problems shouldn't be solved with complicated technologies until last resort, so no blockchains. <comment><USER2> Banks were created to serve then-underserved communities.

Bank of America, for example, was originally the Bank of Italy, focusing on the Italian immigrant community of San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the past when we tried things like one phone company or one oil company we got high prices and zero innovation.

<comment><AUTHOR> this won't be a company this would be service ran by community think feds who print money? they print just fine right. All of us have a physical bills, they are used everywhere,...</comment></comment>