Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/business/economy/modular-housing.html <comment><USER2> I find it hilarious that a CA company is leading the charge in new, efficient, high-quality pre-fab design and construction. These units are going to improve construction quality and lower costs in every state _except_ CA, thanks to our asinine zoning laws.

<comment><USER3> What are the state zoning laws? As far as I know, the state constitution leaves zoning as an issue for the cities/counties to handle. Is that your beef or are there laws on the books I'm ignorant of?

<comment><USER4> The issue is that regional concerns (there is not enough housing in the region) do not mesh well with local control. Every locality thinks that everyone _else_ should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult.

If _all_ the localities in a region, or even most of them, act this way, the end result is a housing shortage even when the economy is barely chugging along.

<comment><USER5> Personally I wouldn't mind the Bay Area looking like Shenzhen, but I don't understand why people think that anything is going to change. Housing and education are prime assets in the new information based society and economy. People aren't going to share that anymore than natural resources, stocks, bitcoins or domains. Regardless of the larger consequences.

<comment><USER6> > People aren't going to share ...

It's more complicated than just sharing.

It's not about whether you have to let people come and live on your own property. It's about whether your neighbour may subdivide _her_ own property for a profit. Collectively, owners have an incentive to stop her; but individual incentives are mixed.

We can see how the politics of that tension is working out right now. But how can anyone tell how it will play out in the future?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. All that pouring and sawing and drilling and slathering of raw materials to do one-off designs for houses that are then filled with standardized ikea furniture which fits the custom room shape poorly. Manual labor is too costly for such a bespoke approach. Either we make carpenter and bricklayer robots to do the bespoke work cheaply, or we build homes from standardized parts.

<comment><USER8> It's not super expensive or time-consuming to throw up a standard, American stick-built house. Once you have a foundation poured, you can do all the framing, sheathe it, roof it, and have it ready for finish work in a week with a handful of people. What takes forever and a day is the signoffs, and waiting for all the deliveries and third-parties to show up and do their piece. And then all the fiddly stuff inside...

<comment><USER9> Sure, that's sensible; a _house_ is at this point almost an artisanal good, like a wicker chair. Something people buy to go against the grain of standardization and conformity.

But isn't it weird that there aren't more copy-and-paste condo buildings? Maybe not even in the same city—you don't want a Brasilia[1]. But, once you've gotten an architect to _design_ a large building, why not get N times the materials, and then build the same building in as many cities as are compatible with the building codes it was designed under?

[1] [http://thomaslockehobbs.com/brasilia/index.html](http://thomaslockehobbs.com/brasilia/index.html)

<comment><USER10> China, HK, Singapore have a lot of copy paste buildings lined up next to each other, which I find pretty odd to look at and dehumanizing/alienating to be surrounded by (though probably very efficient to build, and it seems like Chinese people don't mind too much). You'd see them as soon as you left the airport if you visit there sometime.

I found many cities in China in particular look very similar to one another in a not great way because of similar architectural choices including copy paste buildings, which apparently the government has noticed—I can't find the article about it but the central government is making moves to get Chinese cities to stop being built in exactly the same way/destroy and replace too much of their historic buildings with culturally diverse architecture.

Not to say we shouldn't do what you're saying, but if we do it we should probably do it in a way that doesn't make all our cities too generic.

<comment><USER11> Make they come to the west and think all our housing looks the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's very interesting how prefab construction seems to pop up from time to time in the media. I grew up in a prefab house, trucked to the property in two halves and bolted together on a poured concrete foundation -- it's incredibly common.

Apartment blocks however, they seem to be locked in a perpetual demonstrator state. One, maybe two prefab buildings will go up, and then no more, eliminating the point of the effort. All kinds of stats will be provided, "built in 30 days", "providing housing for 100 families" and so on. Decades later they'll lay forgotten, or in disrepair, or make for interesting background scenery in dystopian cinema. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower)

It seems that when populations have to have lots of housing, now and fast, they go more with some kind of semi-prefabbed mobile factory approaches and stamp the buildings out on site. [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/wn20...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/wn20130918n2a-870x580.jpg)

My guess is that it's a logistics thing. You can more efficiently move 10,000 tons of concrete and rebar to a site packed in sacks and bound in sets, on fewer trucks and in less space, than you can move the same in prefabbed boxes full of mostly empty air. Converting that raw material into the same boxes of air isn't particularly complicated or difficult and can be done at high quality on site anyways, and now you also don't have to pay to have a factory and factory workers.

<comment><USER13> Its not just a logistics thing. Prefab components are mostly used for faster RoI by building quicker.

A good example of a real estate holdings company using prefab construction is mcdonalds, wawa, etc. These establishments have the same churn and burn formula. From start to finish, some of these stores can be completed in a little under a month from start of construction to open time. It makes sense for them to spend more money on prefab components. Opening sooner means faster revenue streams. Not only that, if you open in a popular area, rent/land is very high. Where I live the average rent for a store is maybe $3000 a month for a 1500 square foot area but a new chipotle in my town opened up an area with a rent of about $8000.

Your traditional real estate development takes much longer than this though. They pay for cheaper raw materials instead, as its easier to work with for each houses need. They dont have a streamlined sysyem setup for needing prefab components.

<comment><USER14>
      Prefab components are mostly used for faster RoI by building quicker

... or by displacing work to places where labor and materials are cheaper (even if mainly due to poor QC and/or compromised worker safety).

A classic example of this was the imported prefab segments of the New Bay Bridge, which costs tens (hundreds?) of millions in rework costs and who- knows-how-many remaining _unfixed_ defects.

<comment><USER13> I overstated myself here. What I meant is that for residential / small - midsized commercial buildings only, QC/defects are not as large as a concern.

Prefab components I was thinking about was prefab wall / roof / floor trusses like these [http://www.buildwithbmc.com/bmc/Products/Trusses%2C-I- Joists...](http://www.buildwithbmc.com/bmc/Products/Trusses%2C-I- Joists-%26-Engineered-Lumber/Trusses-%26-Prefabricated-Wall-Panels/c/Trusses- Prefabricated-Wall-Panels)

Bridges are a different story all together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of _Sears Catalog Home_ prefabricated homes. [1][2]

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

[2] [http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/1908-1914.htm](http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/1908-1914.htm)

</comment><comment><USER16> Quality prefabricated homes and apartments are a great idea. There's a negative association with prefabricated homes, but I've seen a lot of newer companies that seem to be focusing on quality and efficiency, often targeting the higher end of the market.

And lots of new homes built on-site are of very poor quality these days:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/where-we- live/wp/2017/05...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/where-we- live/wp/2017/05/23/new-home-build-quality-standards-are-slipping-and-how-you- can-protect-yourself)

This approach doesn't seem like a solution to affordable housing, even though many of these companies use that concept in their marketing.

In the least affordable housing markets with worsening trends, including Seattle and San Francisco, construction cost is a tiny fraction of the problem.

Efficient, prefabricated housing isn't going to make housing meaningfully more affordable in places where the majority of the cost of a dwelling is its land.

<comment><USER17> The article claims a per unit cost of almost $800k in SF. Cheaper, prefabricated units could make a significant difference here.

<comment><USER18> That per-unit development cost is almost certainly including the cost of acquiring the land. Labor in SF is expensive, but not _that_ expensive.

<comment><USER19> Labor is hugely under supplied in SF. I hear it's really hard to get on a contractor's docket these days without a really big project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here in Vancouver, we have been building apartments to house homeless using modular construction.

[http://vancouver.ca/people-programs/temporary-modular- housin...](http://vancouver.ca/people-programs/temporary-modular-housing.aspx)

Start-to-finish I believe the timeframe is about six months and one of the benefits of modular is that they can reconfigure or move these buildings in several years as needs and neighbourhoods change.

</comment><comment><USER21> The problem is the price of buildable land, not the buildings on it.

<comment><USER22> Absolutely, land estate prices are totally insane in the more gentrified areas. The building itself is nearly irrelevant, see Vancouver rare land plots for measure... or most of the UK. What is in dire need is a fundamental legislation change, where the entirety of the real estate is no longer a market open to speculation, but a fundamental right of the individual and is well proportioned to _any_ income range within a very reasonable 2:1 ratio and this even if it means depricing the already bought properties and cutting corporations out of the building business and of course limiting the amount of houses in possession to a single individual to maybe 2 and eliminate speculators/investors completely.

<comment><USER23> Hong Kong has been breaking records after records in the most unaffordable places on earth to live, ranked by Median Income and Median Price of Housing.

Agreed. I think the solution is, Property should not be an investment vehicle. At least it should be taxed and regulated. Although another / the major reason to what we have now is QE, pushing asset prices up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What I want is an MVP house (room + bathroom + kitchen), which I can expand ( extra rooms, extra bathrooms, etc ). Normally with construction, when you add stuff, you need to break stuff, but if there could be a modular housing system that would let you expand without destruction, while being competitively priced, I'd do that.

In Elon Musk fashion, it would have to be better than a normal house, right? A modular house ( like a mobile home ), which is expandable, which is simultaneously better than a normal house. Maybe for my next startup idea ( since this is a problem I have and I would use ). The end goal would be a transition from a tiny house to a mansion, with each state being as good as a comparable house, and about as cheap. Maybe some panels they could sell back?

<comment><USER25> Part of the problem is the foundation. You either need to pour a large foundation ahead of time (that you won't use for a while) or pour it as you go. It's not an insurmountable problem, but it does make it more difficult. Although if you decided to build up instead, by just adding more floors you could avoid that problem.

<comment><USER26> Is pouring more foundation next to existing foundation problematic and difficult, or is it just more expense to get the concrete guys back out to do more work?

<comment><USER27> It can actually be very problematic and difficult, depending how how easy the new slab location is to access now that you have a building in the way and presumably landscaping you want to preserve. This can end up adding a considerable amount of expense to a job compared to a bare site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Great idea.. still unlikely to bring down rent prices I assume without zoning changes.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash In some cases, your conclusion is correct while the problem is completely different. I live in a college town, where rent and housing prices obey different laws of economics.

Unlike the Bay Area, a brisk 15 minutes drive in any direction will bring you to dirt cheap rural property, but because a huuuuuuge proportion of renters are college students, they tend to live in the city and put the rent on their student loans instead of moving further out and spending time (and money, on a car) commuting. It's not as if a college student is going to throw in their hands and say "well, I could get an Ivy League degree at the school I was accepted to, or I could get a second-Tier degree somewhere else and pay half the rent."

Case in point, Ithaca's Collegetown neighborhood used to be a sleepy community of large rental houses, but over the last 20 years it's been heavily developed into very large, tall apartment blocks, all while Cornell built massive developments of dorms and grad student housing complexes. And rents just keep climbing higher and higher...

<comment><USER10> I've always been surprised by how expensive Princeton is even though short drives in any direction can be much cheaper. Students seem to be mostly in student housing anyway, and anybody who lives there in any other capacity probably has a car, is it just prestige of being there that pumps up the rent?

<comment><USER29> _I 've always been surprised by how expensive Princeton is even though short drives in any direction can be much cheaper_

AAA estimates the TCO of a car to be $8,500/yr: [https://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving- costs](https://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs).

Even if you're only "a short drive away," you then have to pay for parking on or near campus, which is likely dear: [https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/19/15993936/high-cost- of-f...](https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/19/15993936/high-cost-of-free- parking).

Finally, commuting sucks: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and- back...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-again) from a social and psychological perspective. People love living around other people who can they chat with and befriend; that's why current zoning laws prohibiting such developments are so pernicious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> And have been since the 60's. Here an interesting article about one building, modularly constructed for 1968 World's Fair: [https://www.mysanantonio.com/150years/major- stories/article/...](https://www.mysanantonio.com/150years/major- stories/article/How-a-gamble-changed-the-San-Antonio-skyline-6105562.php)

And a fascinating documentary [https://youtu.be/D7shgCkCfhU?t=573](https://youtu.be/D7shgCkCfhU?t=573). I've skipped to the fun part with people riding their hotel rooms up to the building on a crane... but the whole thing is worth a watch if you've got the time.

<comment><USER31> This is just "plattenbau" but done by californians?

Like, prefab highrise has existed for more then 60 years, it is not a new thing?

<comment><USER32> The Plattenbau were mostly composed of system built concrete panels and frames assembled into rooms onsite, with only the small bathrooms being delivered to site as complete units.

These appear to be structures composed entirely of stacked full-size room unit completed before site delivery and winched into place; but that technique's been around (especially in the hotel industry) for a good while too, although it's only in the last 20 years people have started to build structures of over 10 storeys that way

Nothing's ever truly new. The Romans used prefabricated elements to speed up fort construction in the first century AD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> China has been able to do this for at least 7 yrs now. 30 Story building in 15 days.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdpf- MQM9vY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdpf-MQM9vY)

<comment><USER34> Does anybody know how's the quality of that building ?

<comment><USER35> Here's a closer look at the building:

[https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/close-look- bro...](https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/close-look-broad- sustainable-buildings-prefab-hotels.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The New York City Office of Emergency Management has a "pre-fab brownstone" demo assembled in downtown Brooklyn. They're hoping to be able to relocate entire neighborhoods when another event like Sandy hits.

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-73.9898138,3a,65.6y...](https://email@example.com,-73.9898138,3a,65.6y,88.6h,94.55t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s0VN2kZuJCN_tD-9RIK0_5A!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D0VN2kZuJCN_tD-9RIK0_5A%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D6.3159122%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192)

</comment><comment><USER37> It's also gaining popularity in the hotel industry. Inspiring video: [http://www.guerdonmodularbuildings.com/modular-now- marriotts...](http://www.guerdonmodularbuildings.com/modular-now-marriotts- modular-initiative/)

It has many benefits for the construction teams. They can work in a controlled environment, and focus on technical skills versus getting through urban commutes, live in lower cost of living areas (in this case Idaho), all the tools/materials are there, have quality assurance processes, etc.

I think the key is its for condos/apartments which will look virtually indistinguishable from a conventional apartment building, then you escape the stigma of mobile trailer home.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the Video Link. It answer a lot of the question I had previously.

One problem I thought that was not solved were finishing. It turns out they actually do all the finishing before it is shipped. And because the finishing, construction, are all done indoor and in house, my guess is that with Air Condition they will / could work much faster, higher efficiency, and more importantly, there should be less sloppiness.

But then Another question I had as shown in the video, wouldn't all the room be limited by the 40Ft Container Size that fits in the truck?

How much of those labour, once moved indoor, could be full automated?

Can you built a 50 floor + building / Hotel with these modular tech? How does it work in area where you have special construction requirement like earth quake zone.

Are the factory mobilise? i.e, Assuming this take mainstream, would a manufacture of those unit have to ship 100s of containers across the country to have these fitted? Because all the time saved are now bottlenecked by transportation of these blocks. Are we going to ship them overseas?

Making the hotel from 2 years to 9 months sounds like a big Win. But in places like China or Japan. No one has 9 month to wait for a construction. China has a 30 floor hotel built from Zero to fully working hotel in less then 3 months.

Other then time and quality, are there any actual cost savings?

<comment><USER27> Depending on how you measure a lot of prefab construction you don't save time overall (design to finished) or end up with better quality. You also tend to up with buildings that will fail earlier due to having a lot more of the most risky components of any built form, joints.

I have hope that as designers and tools get better at dealing with the connection detailing and with material/assembly tolerances it will lead to better outcomes in the future.

I would really recommend watching "The Building Science of Prefabricated Construction". It does a good job of going over the realities of this form of construction.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think that maybe the last thing humanity needs is high density- low quality- apartment blocks, built in ill-planned areas that promotes anonymity and does not promote socially sound communities.

Especially when sold at a high margin, because land value is high.

</comment><comment><USER39> personally, I don't consider those USA wooden houses to be a real house.

there is a company in UAE doing this for quite some time from concrete: [http://www.gulfprecast.ae/](http://www.gulfprecast.ae/)

<comment><USER40> A real house provides safe shelter for its occupants. Being made of wood don't matter

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> There already are prefab towers in Brooklyn, some prefabbed in warehouse(s) somewhere in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Here's one of the older stories: [https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20131211/navy- yard/worlds-t...](https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20131211/navy-yard/worlds- tallest-prefab-building-leads-nycs-boom-modular-housing/)

I haven't been closely following the Atlantic Yards project, but to my knowledge it's had quite a few setbacks.

</comment><comment><USER42> Here's a cool video of ToyotaHome (yes, that Toyota) assembling a modular home in Japan: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzpv47o80eg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzpv47o80eg)

Their website: [http://www.toyotahome-aichi.co.jp/](http://www.toyotahome- aichi.co.jp/) (JP only, no English)

</comment><comment><USER43> I lived directly across from the Berkeley one shown in the article while they were building it. I wonder how significant the cost benefits were - the time to build didn't seem substantively different (another apartment complex a couple blocks away went up in fairly comparable time it felt like), but I could definitely imagine it being faster

</comment><comment><USER44> That's very interesting. As an eastern european, my idea of prefabricated apartment buildings is something like this:

[http://s2.ziareromania.ro/?mmid=5d9526e31d488caac](http://s2.ziareromania.ro/?mmid=5d9526e31d488caac)

It's about the worst kind of home you could live in. No one wants it if they can afford better.

<comment><USER45> Pre-fab is a thing in the USA because our building codes and permitting process are ridiculously complex, and also actually building a building is also complex with lots of labor and risk and so on.

I absolutely love pre-fab everything-- long live pre-fab that is customized afterwards.

<comment><USER44> Is it also synonymous with low quality (down to 'shitty') housing?

<comment><USER45> Partially but not for any physical reasons, just "social status" reasons.

Like, the quality of the construction is really good and these days is very modern and stylish. Maybe in 1985, pre-fab houses were crappy mobile homes that fell apart easily. But these days, no, pre-fab is much nicer than a normal home constructed in the 1960s (most homes in NYC metro are very old).

However, if you are at the country club, and you mention that your house is a pre-fab... well... the vieux-riche people will have a very negative opinion of you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Too much particleboard, chipboard, oriented strand board, MDF board and cheap shit that is used as an alternative to real plywood. I've seen what happens to those particleboard nightmares when construction is temporarily paused in a wet climate, for unforeseen reasons, and it gets rained on before the roof and cladding are on.

</comment><comment><USER47> I wonder how hard it would be for mobile home manufactors to support the modular stacking of units. It would look redneck as hell, but could probably go up even faster then wooden prefabs that still needs a building finished around it

<comment><USER48> You could build the external structure and a "floor" (steel plate) for each level, then you could swap out trailers if needed, a vertical trailer park.

Would need some way to get up and down and toilet/water.

Tbh by the time you've done all that you might as well just build a normal modular high rise (that's how the local budget hotel did it, nearly whole thing turned up as a series of containers each prefitted with plumbing and power, then stacked together, hooked up and done, it went up insanely fast).

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I thought the title was some metaphor for explaining what modern JavaScript developers do when making applications

</comment><comment><USER50> Did this article just presented prefabricated housing as an innovative and novel way of building, and a solution to the housing crisis? Am I really reading NYtimes?

</comment><comment><USER51> That reminds me of the Portal 2 intro scene.</comment>


Traefik vs. Envoy – Who's winning the reverse proxy war and why? - <AUTHOR> https://arador.com/traefik-vs-envoy-whos-winning-the-reverse-proxy-war-and-why/ <comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone used both? Which did you go with and why?</comment>


Viral: We Used Watermarks to Grow Our Startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.kapwing.com/blog/viral-how-we-used-watermarks-to-grow-a-startup/ <comment><USER2> Stop upvoting your own thread</comment>


Life after Steve - <AUTHOR> http://agilewarrior.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/life-after-steve/

<comment><USER2> I think Apple will do extremely well without Steve. He has instilled the company with his DNA and the product pipeline is filled for a while.

The company will execute well but will anyone have the guts to make the tough calls that push the envelope? Does Jonathan Ive have enough power to make that happen?</comment>


California Proposed Bill AB-1681 – Smartphones - <AUTHOR> http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB1681 <comment><AUTHOR> Here are some excerpts from the new bill authored by assembly members Jim Cooper & James Gallagher [1] and state senators Patricia Bates & Isadore Hall III [2].

Findings:

> (t) Technology-facilitated sex trafficking networks rely upon anonymity of > victims and traffickers in order to operate. Fully encrypted smartphones, > immune to search warrants, make this possible.

Additions to the law:

> (b) A smartphone that is manufactured on or after January 1, 2017, and sold > or leased in California, shall be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by > its manufacturer or its operating system provider.

> (c) A smartphone manufactured on or after January 1, 2017, that is not > capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating > system provider shall be subject the manufacturer or operating system > provider to a civil penalty of two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500) > for each smartphone sold or leased in California if the manufacturer or > operating system provider of the smartphone knew at the time of the sale or > lease that the smartphone was not capable of being decrypted and unlocked by > the manufacturer or its operating system provider. A manufacturer or > operating system provider who pays a civil penalty imposed pursuant to this > subdivision shall not pass on any portion of that penalty to purchasers of > smartphones.

[1] [http://assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers](http://assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers)

[2] [http://senate.ca.gov/senators](http://senate.ca.gov/senators)

<comment><USER2> <A smartphone that is manufactured on or after January 1, 2017, and sold or leased in California,>

So, any already-owned (or purchased outside the state) phone is exempt. No terrorist would ever think of _that_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Aarrggh. Will this never end? Hopefully the recent backing off by the FBI will quell the problem for a while.</comment>


Let's Play Ancient Greek Geometry - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sciencevsmagic.net/science/lets-play-ancient-greek-geometry/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome!

Thoughts: after clicking, sometimes I decide I want to cancel drawing from that point. I can click on the original point to cancel, it would be nice to be able to press ESC or SPACE to cancel drawing (just noticed that Z for undo cancels).

For the "game" side, it is very important to have simple tasks that almost all players can complete to get started. I would add an even simpler first challenge, such as make two overlapping circles.

I would love to be able to share constructions. I'm thinking a button I press that pops up a URL that I can share. When visited it shows an animation drawing the construction, then when done lets you do more drawing. That would be cool.

<comment><USER3> Another vote for ESC cancelling the current construction.

It's just a new condition in onkeydown:

      else if (e.keyCode === 27) {
        deselect();
      }

While we're at it, make Shift+z redo.

      else if (e.keyCode === 90) {
          //"z"
          if (e.shiftKey) {
              changes.redo();
          }
          else {
              changes.undo();
              changes.record(1);
          }
      }

And let's not clutter up the user's history. Swapping

      window.location.hash=currenthash;
      ...
      window.location.hash=hash;

with

      window.location.replace(currenthash);
      ...
      window.location.replace(hash);

fixes that one.

It's the little things in life, man…

<comment><USER4> I've added the esc and space to deselect, and shift+redo. Thanks, once you get used to your own hotkeys it gets hard to imagine what other people might want.

As for the hash, the original reason why I went with hash= was to preserve back and forward, but I guess that might not be so necessary considering I have undo and redo.

I know that my clutter can be a bit obnoxious, but just changing it to window.replace(hash) breaks a few other things, so it's left the way it is for now.

There is probably some HTML5 history API way to do it that lets me have back and forward without saving every history entry, I'll look into it.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps map key codes to object properties with, you know, real names so comparisons to e.keyCode mean something in the future.

      var appKeys = { "Esc": 27 };

      else if (e.keyCode === appKeys.Esc) {

Some JS libs do this for you and there are some nice libs that make key handling convenient and powerful as well.

<comment><USER4> Great tip. But I generally only use each reference once, so I'm not sure it would have been worth it in my case.

There are lots of libraries that could have made things more convenient. But a big part of this project was to learn as much as I could about coding, and the browser as an environment, so early on I committed to writing everything myself.

I'd be interested in hearing whether or not other people think this is a good strategy for self teaching.

<comment><USER6> +1 on doing everything yourself the first time for self-teaching. But I'm sure people are on the far end of both sides -- do it all yourself, or use libraries for everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This guy's got lots of neat toys. [http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/fractal/#0090,0180,2,2,1,0,5](http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/fractal/#0090,0180,2,2,1,0,5)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you want to go farther: a powerful, open, and fully-featured tool for doing this on the desktop (and soon tablet), along with a CAS and other facilities is GeoGebra: [http://www.geogebra.org/cms/en/](http://www.geogebra.org/cms/en/)

If you want to go deeper: [http://www.woodenbooks.com/](http://www.woodenbooks.com/) which are, for want of a better term, 'rigorous mysticism.'

</comment><comment><USER9> This is damned cool. Having something like this makes it easy and convenient to explore geometry without the inconveniences imposed by physical media. Having specific goals to work towards and target move counts is icing on the cake.

Thank you for making this. Find a way to get this out there to geometry teachers. They (and their students) will love it.

\--

Suggested improvements:

\+ Option to switch between a couple colors or line types, to make it easier to track what one's doing. (E.g., laying down foundational lines in black, then experimental lines in blue or dashed lines.

\+ One minor thing I'd like to see fixed: the proximity of the numerical goals to the shapes they're associated with doesn't make it clear whether (e.g.) the 8 move goal is an easy version of the "build a triangle in X moves," or whether 8 moves is the least amount of moves for building a triangle inside an origin circle.

Suggested fix: make that more apparent by tweaking the order of the symbols (e.g. Triangle, 5, 8, OriginTriangle) and/or adding a divider of some manner to make them stand apart more.

</comment><comment><USER10> Love it! But I am having a hard time figuring out when exactly I can/can't "pick up" a point from somewhere else: sometimes tick marks appear at the distance I'm looking for, sometimes not. Also, it seems odd that I can't just draw a _line_ (as opposed to line segment), since iirc the straightedge is theoretically infinite. (There are definitely a few times I've wanted to lay down the full line traversing two points, for later use in the construction....)

EDIT: it looks like the tick marks _are_ the straight line extensions; if so, it's exceedingly strange that I can use them "for free" (without drawing the line) as, say, guides for the radius of a circle (I can't put the centre there, but I can "end" the circle there), but I can't just have the line itself.

<comment><USER7> that one threw me too. Keep an eye on the move counter, extending a line doesn't count as a move.

<comment><USER10> Oh! That makes so much more sense now. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Me:

       A Hexagon in 10 moves or less? How does that even...

       oh... OH... neat.

Fun game.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#0A1.1A0.2A0.0L1.2L1.2L0.1...](http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#0A1.1A0.2A0.0L1.2L1.2L0.1L4.N.0A12.2A12.1A20.0L27.37A35)

Arg I think it might be too big for the in original circle challenge. Darn it, how do you do this one?!

<comment><USER11> [http://sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#0A1.1A0.2A0.N.2A0.4A0.5A1.3A0...](http://sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#0A1.1A0.2A0.N.2A0.4A0.5A1.3A0.0L5.1L4.16A15)

Here's how I did it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great app and a super achievement for someone who's only been working in JS for 8 months.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey, this is neat! One note: Hitting "reset" doesn't immediately reset the move counter; I have to hit "undo" afterward to get it to actually go back to 0.

<comment><USER4> Good spot! I think I've fixed it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Inspiring!

(1) Geometric stained glass windows. Anyone know how to cheaply source/cut coloured glass? Best mechanism for rounded portions of potential framing? I don't mind if it takes awhile to build, just that it sustains the weight and enough wind. Preferably thicker rather than thinner glass.

(2) Might be useful for some 3D printing based crafting projects.

An option to export SVG would be useful (and feasible, given the vector nature of construction).

</comment><comment><USER15> I got a triangle made inside a circle. Can someone tell me why the triangle in origin circle thing doesn't complete?

[http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#0A1.1A0.0L2.0L1.1L2.1L6.2...](http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#0A1.1A0.0L2.0L1.1L2.1L6.2A0.6L8.0L5.5L9.2L3.1L8.26A0)

<comment><USER16> It has to be in a circle of "origin" size, that is the radius of the circle must be the distance between the two starting dots.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, the phrase "origin circle" did not suggest that meaning to me at all. I thought maybe it meant that it had to be at the origin, but i couldn't figure out where that was.

<comment><USER18> I'm still stumped. Isn't this an 'origin circle' then? Radius == the pt-pt distance.

[http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#0A1.1A0.2A0.0L2.2L7.4L1.1...](http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#0A1.1A0.2A0.0L2.2L7.4L1.1L7.7L4)

Scratch that - the same thing works if rotated:

[http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#1A0.0A1.2A0.1L5.2L0.0L9.9...](http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#1A0.0A1.2A0.1L5.2L0.0L9.9L1.5L9)

<comment><USER4> It actually has to be one of the first circles you can draw (a point on the edge and a point on the radius). Not just the same radius.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's great. I wish I had something like this back in higschool when learning geometry; doing it on paper with the accumulating inaccuracies and no undo option made it all much less fun than this.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love this! Only complaint is that after playing for a few minutes, my browser's back button is completely worthless. Web is such a hacky place to develop.

</comment><comment><USER21> Takes me back to high school geometry class. For a while I was carrying a compass and a straight edge /everywhere/. First math class I really enjoyed.

</comment><comment><USER22> I second the vote for select-able colors. Even though I'm color blind, I think having multiple colors would help keep myself organized while creating.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is very neat. Because some of the more complicated constructions get very busy, it would be helpful to be able to erase unwanted arcs/lines.

<comment><USER24> I used the new layer button to accomplish this. It greys out the complications, but the guides from what you've constructed still function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is amazingly fun. I'm a little stuck on the pentagon, but I'll keep thinking.

Side note: You should add "Square the Circle" as a super bonus ;)

<comment><USER26> That's cruel. Use something that can be constructed such as the regular 65537-gon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's it, I'm abandoning my lesson plans for today and I'm going to let the kids have a go at these challanges instead. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER28> Reminds me of kig [ [http://edu.kde.org/kig/](http://edu.kde.org/kig/) ].

</comment><comment><USER29> So much for getting anything done this morning . . .</comment>


Blah, blah, blah, blah... - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/blah-blah-blah.html <comment><USER2> I'm afraid more and more of Seth's posts are turning into blah-blahs. In the past he had lots of very insightful posts, but now it's usually commonsense advice written using too many words.

</comment><comment><USER3> I learnt this lesson the hard way the very first time I gave a presentation (with a potential cofounder) to the board of this big company... I was still at university, and we'd built a system to save them money by helping them (chemical companies) to optimise their spot sales process with an auction mechanism.

We had an hour slot with some of their senior brass through a personal contact, and we blew 40 minutes of it talking about how b2b was going to be the next big thing (with one or two slides about the actual product we were trying to sell them).

Lesson learnt: the presentation should have been two minutes long, with 2 slides:

1) The problem you have that we're trying to solve

2) The solution we propose

Any questions?

(then of course have more material ready, e.g. a demo and such, to show them when they ask).

</comment><comment><USER4> Not sure if I like the idea of deleting content and replacing it with soundbites.</comment>


System V Semaphores: How not to design an API - <AUTHOR> http://www.thejaywalker.net/2010/12/system-v-semaphores-how-not-to-design.html

<comment><USER2> My OS course was my first real exposure to the depths of UNIX and C. Being used to Python, I quickly got fed up with how archaic and arcane most of the UNIX/C APIs are. I have a feeling that, if it were judged by even somewhat modern software engineering standards, it would be panned.

<comment><USER3> Care to enlighten us the exact APIs you consider archaic? "Unix/C APIs" isn't exactly precise --- there are the POSIX APIs which are fairly standard that Linux and the BSDs mostly support; in addition, there are the platform- specific APIs that are constantly updated for modern use-cases. I find most of these APIs intuitive and stable.

In contrast, I don't like some of Python's abstractions, the "subprocess" being (IMO) a particularly weird way to abstract a pipe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is probably a logical reason to the design and nomenclature of the system. Unfortunately, these things seem to get lost over time. I imagine that in another twenty to thirty years a portion of our current technology will be considered unnecessarily complicated and obfuscated.

</comment><comment><USER5>
       Is it too much to ask to create separate sem_wait()
       and sem_post() methods.

What happens when you want to do a sequence of waits and posts, and you want to do it atomically? You'd have to introduce an extra semaphore to control access to all doing your sequence.

With the semop() function, you put all your desired operations in one array of ops, and make one semop call, which does all the operations atomically.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's exactly why I think the "operations" concept was added. But isn't it good to provide extra sem_wait() and sem_post() for most of the rest of us who want a single increment or a decrement? I have yet to find a good use of an array of operations in a single atomic fashion. Neither dining philosophers nor reader-writers need multiple increments/ decrements in one go.</comment></comment>


New Service Blocks EU Users So Companies Can Save on GDPR Compliance - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-service-blocks-eu-users-so-companies-can-save-thousands-on-gdpr-compliance/ <comment><USER2> earlier discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16991185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16991185)</comment>


There's Just No Getting around It: You're Building a Distributed System  - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2482856

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing</comment>


Review my startup - ScoopStream.com, a transient social network - <AUTHOR> http://scoopstream.com

<comment><AUTHOR> My startup is called ScoopStream. It's a transient social network that brings together communities based on shared interests.

It's very focused - users may only be checked-in to one community at a time. For example: when the Bruins were making their run through the NHL playoffs, so many of my friends would post on Facebook after a goal, a win, a loss, whatever.

The thing is, not everyone on Facebook is a Bruins fan. On ScoopStream, people watching the game could check-in to the "Bruins" community, communicate with other fans (and see specifically what their friends are saying) and then check-in somewhere else.

This is V1 - have a bunch of ideas where to go with it, but we got a bunch of feedback on different concept and went through a few iterations before settling on this.</comment>


Frequently Monitoring Progress Toward Goals Increases Chance of Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/10/progress-goals.aspx <comment><USER2> You don't need be meeting daily to succeed -- just keep yourself a "public" log (well, public to the team at least) and write down everything in that log: TODOs, questions, ideas, etc.

Monitor your own progress and success and make it available to anyone to read.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like gamification to me. Including the fact that what they measure (and effectively gamify) is what the person focuses on changing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link to study abstract and pdf download: [http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/87431/](http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/87431/)

</comment><comment><USER4> That was key in Raymond Hulls' classic (and European bestseller) 'How to get what you want'. Repeated hand-written refocusing exercises on your key goals.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sweet, I'm building an app that sorta does this as a side effect. The idea for that app wasn't so scientifically based, but this is some pretty cool supporting information.

I think there's still a lot of opportunity left around making personal progress monitoring more effective.

</comment><comment><USER6> $p$ values -- it must be true. Oh, wait a second [[http://www.nature.com/news/psychology-journal-bans-p- values-...](http://www.nature.com/news/psychology-journal-bans-p- values-1.17001)]

</comment><comment><USER7> So...micromanagement and frequent status meetings work. Ugh.

<comment><USER8> No, frequently _monitoring_ of progress is not micromanagement, and isn't status meetings either. The former is direction on _how_ to make progress, the latter is, at best, _sharing_ information about progress, not monitoring progress (if its used for top-down monitoring by a lead and not sharing among a team for coordination, it means most of the people are idle most of the meeting, and it probably should just be passive updates to the lead or, if meeting is necessary, one-on-ones with each staff to minimize the time people are unproductively idle.)

What this article is about is something else; individuals monitoring their own progress. Generalizing to groups, and addressing specific _methods_ of monitoring progress in groups, is outside the scope of this research (though I suppose your comment is a perfect illustration of the way that incompetent managers are likely to misapply this kind of research to support counterproductive practices.)</comment></comment>


Multi platform/OS/browser password manager - <AUTHOR> https://www.enpass.io <comment><AUTHOR> the webextension contains an `encrypt.js` file with 2 hardcoded strings ("iqHBpS3qbu6u7qui" and "2TjfWW2jbey5ppmi"), I wonder what they are. It also truncates something to 16 chars, it seems odd (I'm not an expert though)</comment>


Metrics for social startups - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/1/4/metrics-for-social-startups

<comment><USER3> As a product manager in a social gaming company, I definitely kept an eye on those metrics.

However, I'd like to caution that these metrics are relevant in all phases of the product lifecycle, but the focus on feature development follows the order you mentioned.

For example, keeping an eye on Rev/DAU and conversion rates at the beginning of the product tells you about user engagement, while paying attention to reach metrics (virality and new customer acquisition) in the mid to end will give you an idea of longevity or potency of your user base. Specifically, pay attention to social/user metrics as they will tell you how active a user is in interacting socially as well as inviting new users to use your product/game.

</comment><comment><USER4> BTW, this is also an excellent post on actionable metrics by Eric Ries : [http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/19/vanity- metri...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/19/vanity-metrics-vs- actionable-metrics/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Great tips -- but I wish it had more depth.

My Dumb question #1: , how do you measure "session length" for a user. I am assuming the session referred to here is not the same as HTTP Session on the web server.

My Dumb question #2: Is there a programmers' guide to measuring these metrics ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Measuring session length will depend on your app. For a typical web app, what you would do is have some sort of process that updates the current session timestamp when a new user action happens. Then, another process will go through currently active sessions and automatically close those that have been inactive for longer than a certain time period. The actual time period depends on your app, of course.

I haven't spotted a programmer's guide to measuring these metrics. There are a number of people on this site who would be very qualified to write one, though (patio11 comes to mind).

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the response. Your answer on #1 is spot-on -- I could implement that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing. I actually got more out of your post than the presentation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind comment. That's what I try to do with swombat.com - <USER2> the best actionable startup advice percolating through the social media filters, pick them out, and either add some extra insight, or at least make them more digestible (or both). Do subscribe if you like it ;-)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why Does the World Exist? - <AUTHOR> So, most modern people fall into the 2 below categories:
1. The religious framework: an eternal god exists  and he/she creates the reality we see around us. 2. We are an accident created by the wave function of the universe (Stephen Hawking and other scientific viewpoints).
Who here believes in something else, and if so, what do you believe in? <comment><USER2> This is an issue upon which thousands of philosophers and religious figures have written about over the past 3,000+ years. To answer your questions, I'd first start by realizing the possible answers are vastly more complicated than your two options. I suggest a deep study plan of the history of religion and philosophy, including all world traditions (Chinese, Japanese, Indian subcontinent, Islamic, Christian, Western, and so on.)

Personally, I am drawn, in unequal parts, to Wittgenstein/the inherent limits of language, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer's concept of the will, mysticism, and Indian (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain) concepts of the universe. If I tried to answer your question briefly (but again, I don't think it's nearly that simple), I'd say something like: concepts like "exist", "created" and "god" are all wrapped up in language and a human perspective. Logic and mathematics are patterns viewed through human observation, not things-in-themselves. The idea that the universe is explainable via the extremely limited tool of empirical science seems hopelessly naive to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect. Love your answer and this is exactly what I was looking for :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It seems quite likely that we live within a hierarchy of simulations. That means the physics we observe don't need to be ultimate; they might be whatever the simulators wished them to be.

Maybe some outer layer of simulation involves no technological civilization with intentionality but is just some massive computational process in a dynamic substrate that we can't imagine.

If time is a feature specific to our simulation then maybe causality itself is kind of like a Kantian category and not a property of the real base universe. So maybe "why" questions only apply locally.

It does seem sensible to assume metaphysically that our observed world of causality somehow supervenes on some structure or energy that transcends causality, some kind of God or higher reality, even if it is a "god of the gaps." We would be a part of this God's "creative exploration" or something.

<comment><USER4> My belief is more that God is omnipotent and most benevolent.

In his benevolence, he has the power to create near infinite multiverses, with a universe branching whenever each of us makes a moral decisoon. God gives us consciousness in the one where we are at our best behavior. Maybe in an alternate universe, I become an asshole billionaire, or marry someone who drives me astray. Maybe in a parallel universe, a close relative commits suicide and inspires me to join them. This world that I'm in is the best world for me, but could be a bad world for someone who has recently committed suicide in my conscious world.

It's not too far fetched. I got the idea while building some procedural plot generators. The characters have their free will and diverging paths, but it only picks the paths that were predestined for a reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if God were part of the system itself though? Wouldn't that be a case worth considering? From my perspective: if you were to ask God what created him/her/it, I would think that there would be some sort of answer. Or sorry, when I say 'create' \- I really mean having a casual mechanism without having to invoke an ever lasting presence.

Your take on having parallel universes is also interesting: I believe that there definitely are parallel worlds (this is where we extend into the 5th dimension) - so we may have a very deep call stack!

'I got the idea while building some procedural plot generators. The characters have their free will and diverging paths, but it only picks the paths that were predestined for a reason.'

Wow - interesting! Now we're diving into 'free will.' So, the characters which you programmed - would you say that they have a will? Or did you program them to pick those paths? You can almost say that it's self emergent system?

<comment><USER4> I don't think it matters whether or not God is part of the system. It's a layer of abstraction that we can't act on and doesn't affect anything.

"So, the characters which you programmed - would you say that they have a will? Or did you program them to pick those paths? You can almost say that it's self emergent system?"

I worked on a little system that generates plots. Plots follow a certain flow - a beginning, an ending, an intro phase, 'centerpiece spectacular', and climax.

There are patterns - some are solo, some are groups of two or three or up to five. Characters are generated with backstories that fit these patterns, e.g. someone solo might grow up in an environment where everyone else is incompetent.

There are patterns for plots. A comedy might have a giant misunderstanding between two parties. A monster story has a person built up to be a near undefeatable monster. Monsters are common plot themes in religion, from Pharaoh to Goliath.

The characters can develop personalities based on what they have, e.g. a character may go through a traumatic event, which could make them cynical, wiser, or more determined. While these odds are weighted, it's still sort of their "free will".

The system then searches for a path that matches. If it doesn't match, it rolls different characters or different character decisions. The first path that matches these conditions is chosen.

I can't really say whether I programmed them to pick these paths, but in a way, they pick paths that fit the story as it would be told.

I imagine there are a mix of good souls, evil souls, and everything in between. These souls have all been assigned to their respective roles. Things that are wholly nature not nurture are a part of our souls - willfulness, arrogance, ambition, pride, and so on. The rest are a part of our paths (nurture), even things like self-restraint and lust.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting! Thanks for the info and indeed - I can sort of see why you have the viewpoints that you do, so thank you for sharing :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way: this wasn't meant to be offensive or a discussion on other beliefs. I'm trying to get a sense of how many people here think 'deeper.' In the god framework, you eliminate causality, since you put attribution to a God who simply avoids all sense of creation and you avoid the sense of causality since you transfer it to being created by this ever lasting presence and he/she simply exists and creates all that is. The other side: In our current scientific framework, we say that we have the mathematical laws, and since they're really complicated, we say that we exist within a universe which embodies all probability lines leading to us - including ones which coincide with an accidental existence. I don't believe that either one of those are true, so I'm trying to write a piece which shows what I think - but prior to doing that, I'd like to get a sense from the HN crowd: what do you think?

<comment><USER5> Those viewpoints aren't mutually exclusive. Look at this for a recent example [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614325/open-ai- algorithms...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614325/open-ai-algorithms- learned-tool-use-and-cooperation-after-hide-and-seek-games/) AI showed emergent behaviour.

The universe could be the same, 'God' set it all up and he/she has no idea what's going to happen either.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK - but you're still not getting the point: what created the program / AI?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These questions are wonderful to ponder.

I view the will of God as the "why" and the physical laws of nature as the "how". When people say "everything is connected" I interpret that to mean while it's true that physical causes and effects behave according to natural law, the will for a desired outcome is provided by a higher intelligence.

To answer your question, the universe exists because God wills it to exist.

While we're on the subject, many believe in a hierarchy of supernatural intelligences (e.g. angels and demons). A scientific explanation for this hierarchy may be living beings that occupy dimensions other than our own (e.g. "higher" dimensions that operate on "lower" dimensions).

See, e.g., [https://m.phys.org/news/2014-12-universe- dimensions.html](https://m.phys.org/news/2014-12-universe-dimensions.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but your answer still assumes the existence of a super-natural being (aka God) who doesn't have a causal mechanism. So - if you were to ask God, what is the reason for his existence, or the mechanism for it, what would you ponder the answer would be? Also: Einstein didn't 'ponder' the existence of the 4th dimension - he proved that it exists in a manner in which it was counter intuitive to what we thought it was. There is no 'static' concept of time - it's a relative concept, so the computational mechanics that's being used to create the universe doesn't have a 'highly parallel' processor that Newton thought it had. And from experience: the universe we live in definitely has more than 5 dimensions (there are parallel branches which don't mimic ours). My big questions to you is: what mechanism created God? How do you explain Him?

<comment><USER6> I do not know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect! Neither do I. Now, let's sit down and try to program the laws ourselves :)

<comment><USER6> I like your probing. I think it is going to take a variety of viewpoints for you to begin to arrive where you want to be. Which is great - it's a path as good as any. Some are born and are told and are happy with that. Others question, and may end up somewhere entirely different from where they thought they were going...nonetheless becoming who and where they need to be. I fall into the second camp.

My view is only one viewpoint, and it is like a little painting I'm working on as I progress through life. I've shown a part of it to you, and it has some elements that may be imperfect. I think no matter what I do, there will always be those axioms and initial conditions which you (or I, or anyone) can question. When will the painting be finished? When it is perfect, or when it is beautiful? It may never be finished by me or anyone in this life. But we're working on it. I think that's saying something for us and life in general.

You're ambitious, which is great. You're respectful, even greater. I do, however, believe it is beyond my individual right and ability to attempt to provide an explanation for God, such as the causality of God's existence. I do not know if such a thing can even be known, at least in the sense you seem to seek.

I feel God in my life, as real as the sun, grass, and breeze, but this feeling is always just beyond my complete and total understanding.

Honestly, I think love is the answer. I also think more will be revealed, my friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind and insightful words my friend - and yes, I think that your viewpoint is great. You've got to enjoy life - either way or whichever truth comes forward I think will always have an incredible element of beauty in it, so the only thing that really matters is enjoying the process and doing the things we love to do. Thanks again for the feedback and all the best to you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From my experiences with psychedelics and ketamine I have come to the conclusion that the answer to this question is probably too profound and weird for the current human brain to grasp (if there even is an answer). So I try not to think about this too much and just focus on struggling through my life.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry to see that you're struggling my friend. I'd love to help you, so if you ever need anything, feel free to give me more info on how I can reach you and I'd love to get a chance to give you my take on life and try to help you out...the fact that anything exists is amazing. Whenever I look at the world, I think: wow. Why does anything exist at all? Why is matter, time, or even a creator necessary? If you ask yourself this question, you'll find that you're worries will melt away. Some other tips which I think will definitely help you from my perspective: 1. Eat healthy (mostly plants and less meat) 2. Exercise 3. Keep in touch and meet great people who you love and 4. Have a meaning in your life: strive to accomplish something which gives you meaning. I'm hoping this helps? If anything, I'd love to have more of a chat with you and get to know much more about you, so let's stay in touch :) Also, I love your feedback!!!

<comment><USER7> Thanks for your reply, but I meant struggle in a positive sense :) Life is certainly not easy, and I think contending with its difficulty is what gives its meaning.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see!! Sorry, I might have read your comment as you saying that you're struggling: In which case, I see that you definitely have the right attitude, so I hope everything is OK :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Because your brain likes questions and your brain thinks it exists. The world neither exists or non-exists, it just is , and has allowed the evolution of brains that ask invalid questions such as what is its origin and purpose. Origin and purpose are useful concepts to avoid dying when an arrow comes from an origin and aims to kill you. Our organic neural networks have a tendency to apply these concepts to everything, that's sometimes vaguely useful, other times it's just brain farts.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does exist though. Our brains are information processing mechanisms which have figured out some of the laws of the universe - and they continue to question it. They do exist and reality does 'exist.' I suppose you're questioning the validity of nature> If so - then yes, I would say it doesn't really 'exist.' Mathematical fields are really what exists...but hey, who's here to argue certainties! So what by your definition - or whom meets the criteria of 'existing' then?

<comment><USER8> it could be that only our brain exists, maybe only mine , not even yours. or not even that. mathematics and information and exustence are figments of the brain too. Existence is only defined as opposed to non-existence. But yeah, even though existence is indirect and subjective, it s OK to accept that it's true, since its not consequential

I suppose that s not a fruitful way to think about it but neither is asking questions about reason and purpose. Even if the universe has both of them, they are just 2 arbitrary points with a trajectory across spacetime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Makes me think of this talk by Richard Feynman talking about magnets how do they work.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA)

The take away is to answer a why question you need a framework to provide an acceptable answer. Why the universe exists? We don't have possibility can't contain such a framework.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice - I love Feynman! Actually, QED was the big reason why I got interested in the question in the first place! I think that what he poses there is more of: 'there's no way for me to explain to you what this field is - since I can't formulate an analogy that you're familiar with, so I won't even try.' I love Feynman's sense of curiosity: it was absolutely divine and he's a personal hero of mine. One thing that I never understood about him though was the fact that whenever someone would pose the question of existence or why the laws exist, he would always shrug it off and say that he didn't understand and that there was no point in trying to understand it. It is what it is - we do the mathematics and take it as is. My take: I think that explaining it is possible, and I think it's a question that's definitely worthy of trying to answer. Even if we can't get there, the pursuit itself I would think would be a worthy cause!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What if the question itself is ill-posed? That's what Late Prof. Adolf Grunbaum argued for: [http://www.stafforini.com/existence/Grunbaum%20-%20Why%20is%...](http://www.stafforini.com/existence/Grunbaum%20-%20Why%20is%20there%20a%20world%20at%20all,%20rather%20than%20just%20nothing.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> "Two widely read atheistic authors, Richard Dawkins (2006, p. 155) and Sam Harris (2006, p. 73-74) have succumbed to the guiles of Leibniz's PEQ by countenancing it misguidedly as a searching question that rightly calls for an explanatory answer. Thus, Dawkins allowed a "first cause, the great unknown which is responsible for something existing rather than nothing" (ibid.). And Harris capitulates to PEQ, declaring with very misplaced intellectual humility: "Any intellectually honest person will admit that he does not know why the universe exists. Scientists, of course, readily admit their ignorance on this point" [italics in original] (ibid. p. 74]. But surely the failure to answer a pseudo-question does not bespeak ignorance on the part of scientists, philosophers or even the man in the street. Thus, Dawkins and Harris very misguidedly took PEQ as legitimate grounds for watering down their atheism."

I understand the sentiment of the paper, but it doesn't answer my question. Is there a causal mechanism? If there is an intellectual being - what is its cause? And if not - is there a cause for the cause?

Let me give you a bit more info on what I believe in: the universe has a self- causal mechanism. We are all God, and intelligent life isn't an accident created by the universe. It's an emergent and 'programmed' mechanism which causes it to spring into existence. I'm hoping to see some other viewpoints from the crowd here - so I do appreciate you're input, but it still doesn't answer my question: what belief do you have which might be different from the mainstream view? You seem to be leaning more towards what's already there...what makes your viewpoint different?

<comment><USER11> I was thinking one day, that if you assume that in the beginning was a consciousness, but nothing else, which for the sake of argument, we can call God, then it could not create anything like our world (or the world of the Bible) without inspiration. It couldn't even conceive of light or matter. It would essentially be trapped in a void without time or space. So creating infinite universes according to arbitrary and random rules and seeing what would develop would be the best it could do to escape nothingness. And then once something interesting developed, it would have to inhabit things (like us) located in time and space to avoid it all being like a dead crystal or painting.

I would speculate that the original state of things was hell, and the universe exists as a mechanism to invent heaven and forget hell, but it's inordinately difficult.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahhh - very interesting take!! But I see that your viewpoint essentially states: consciousness is ever-lasting and it is the 'base.' There is no consistency nor wonder in it: it just existed and created an infinite branch - one in which we exist. Very interesting idea, and one which I see is a mixture of having a creator and both having a 'wave function' trying out all paths - but nonetheless, how do you get rid of the inconsistency of having something there that doesn't have a logical base? Or maybe - we don't need a logical base - some things just are I suppose?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> im mostly party to the 2nd option i believe, but i also see a lot of logic and sense in the simulation argument (which i consider pretty different from the religious one)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. What do you ponder created the laws then? Or is it self-emergent? I'm not sure how to process your answer...

<comment><USER12> A lot have explained it better than I possibly could, but I will try to give a brief description as to why I don't perceive it as an entirely outlandish idea.

Two possibilities exist:

1\. We are in the "true reality", the Real.

2\. We are not, and we are simply part of a simulation of reality.

Consider the following:

1\. We as humans have been creating simulations for some time now, with increasing levels of sophistication overtime.

2\. As technical ability increases, our ability to create more sophisticated simulations also increases.

3\. As our ability to create more sophisticated simulations increases, we get closer and closer to being able to produce a simulation that can mirror how physics itself works in what we understand as our "reality".

4\. All things are a result of physics- from fire, to life itself as we know it.

5\. Therefore, from the ability to simulate physics, we should eventually be able to have those physics interact in such a way that they would produce a simulated version of what we understand as "life".

6\. As the sophistication of our technology increases, and the resources we are able to utilize increases, we can create larger and larger forms of these simulations, eventually reaching to a scale that we might consider "universe- sized".

Assume the following:

0\. As time increases, technological ability and resource utilization of a civilization increases.

1\. As a civilization acquires the technological ability to create a simulation, they inevitably will, as it offers a powerful way of acquiring new knowledge, and evaluating/exercising existing knowledge.

2\. So long as this civilization survives, they will continue creating and using these simulations, to the extent of their technological ability at any point in time.

3\. This civilization will eventually reach a point where they can simulate the physics of their reality at scale.

4\. It will be in this civilization's interests to create as many of these sophisticated simulations as is feasible.

5\. Suppose a question this civilization wishes to answer is possibly something along the lines of: "What would things look like if the Big Bang were to happen in a certain way?".

6\. Suppose the civilization attempts to answer questions like this one via creating one or more simulations of a reality that they model to be as close as possible -if not identical- to their very own.

Other relevant propositions:

1\. In the "true reality", existence must be infinite, as there should be nothing that would create arbitrary limitations (we should have the assurance that if we travel 10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^... trillion km in one direction that we won't run into any "boundaries", no "invisible walls"). Therefore, if we were to discover some phenomena that might be described as an arbitrary limitation, it could be considered evidence that we are _not_ in the "true reality".

2\. The Law of Infinite Probability _could_ be interpreted in such a way that would imply that, in the "true reality", where existence is infinite, there will inevitably be an infinite amount of civilizations that will advance to the point where they can develop these sophisticated simulations. Therefore, we can also then derive that there will be an infinite amount of these simulations, and therefore there should also exist an inevitably infinite amount of simulations that match identically to what we know of as our "reality". (This is a whole other rabbit hole of stuff that I think is wildly cool but requires a significant time investment itself to talk about in any capacity.)

I think that if you buy into the above in any amount, the apparent chances of us being a simulation vs not are impressive, and we just have to hope no one trips over a power cord.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahhh very nice. Me and you have a very similar viewpoint! One note though: you're still sort of creating the need for there to be a 'base' world creating the simulation and trying out all possibilities to contain it ... My take is very similar to yours, but my take on the 'simulation' idea is that the concept of there being a 'real' or 'simulated' world doesn't matter. Even if we're not in the 'base' simulation, we may be part of a universe which is being simulated from another simulation, and which is also being invoked by another simulation itself. In any case: all of these worlds are just as 'real' as the base worlds - it would have to have a self-encompassing structure I would think. Also - the concept of 'creation' is a tricky bit as well: the universe in my viewpoint is never 'created.' All of space-time simply exists: we perceive time as having a flow, but time itself doesn't have flow and this is something that Einstein proved. The perceived 'flow' or perception of time is a necessary part of the design though: you need it in order to 'create' the beings which eventually go on to 'create' the creation or to have the system reach self-consistency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Because it has not been fully destroyed yet.

Sometimes it's good not to be modern.</comment>


What nobody told me about small farming: I can't make a living - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2016/01/01/what_nobody_told_me_about_small_farming_i_cant_make_a_living_2/ <comment><USER2> Duh. Do these people just forget about the principle of economies of scale? How do they think they can possibly compete against huge factory farms? I can understand if you're doing a small farm 'for fun', but don't understand how an otherwise intelligent person can think they can (or should be able to) make good money from it.

> As the average age of the American farmer neared 65, I knew young farmers > were badly needed in this country.

If they're truly in demand, one would expect wages or profits to signal that.

> none of these things address the policies that dictate how our country's > food system works, policies that have created a society in which the small > farmer can't even earn a living.

Some of the policies might not help, but the fundamental reason small farms can't compete is that farming has large economies of scale. Some people may be able to find a niche charging high prices for uncommon goods, but that's never going to be the bulk of the industry. Expecting small farms to be profitable in that way is like expecting cobblers to make a comeback.

<comment><USER3> > How do they think they can possibly compete against huge factory farms?

As with so many of these things, there's this idea floating around that the factory farms must be "bad" because they are big and wealthy, and that smaller, less efficient farms must be "good" because they are small and poor. Much like with all the other cases, this idea is somewhere between confused and blatant denial of reality.

Money is the unit of caring. The amount of money that you're willing to spend on something is how much you care about having it, as precisely defined by the point at which it's too expensive and you don't care enough to pay that much. The factory farms are big and wealthy because they provide what people care about: an efficiently produced, consistent solution to the problem of what to have for dinner.

If people really cared about their food coming from small, inefficient, "organic" farms then they would pay for what it really costs to produce food in that manner. The fact that people aren't willing to pay for it tells us that they don't actually care as much as they claimed. This is normal: most people will tell you they care deeply about something up until the point when you ask them to open their wallet, and then they remember that they don't care all that much.

It seems to me that what's really wanted here is better factory farms with modest adjustments to reduce pollution, antibiotics use, and improve animal welfare. That's entirely achievable. It won't be achieved by things like this article; it'll be achieved by somebody who sets out to make a better factory farm and builds a business around that.

This is already happening. [http://spread.co.jp/en/](http://spread.co.jp/en/) plan to have what could be a game-changing approach to vegetable farming up and running in 2017. Whoever gets that system to work well enough at scale seems likely to sweep the 1990s-style farms off the map. It's the exact opposite direction from what the "organic" farmers have been doing: no low- wage labour, no battles over land, no getting caught up in politics.

The next couple of years will be an interesting time for the food markets.

<comment><USER4> > _The fact that people aren 't willing to pay for it tells us that they don't > actually care as much as they claimed._

Or that they don't know. Supermarkets don't usually label their vegetables "BigCo" and "littleco". The problem with the 'market solves everything' approach is that it requires perfect knowledge on behalf of all parties.

<comment><USER5> This is something I've often thought about with regard to organic farming.

A claim is often made that modern agriculture and growing methods can decouple food's nutrition from traditional signals of nutrition like size and colour and blemishes. I don't know how true that is, but it seems like there's a branding failure here - that we somehow need to be able to select fruit and vegetables based on which specific producers made them rather than vague and inherently porous regulations governing what can be called 'organic' or 'natural'.

Supermarkets might not like that - they'd have to better manage sales space to accommodate multiple known 'brands' of apples or oranges, but consumers would have a lot more reason to 'trust' self-interested brands of farms than they would an 'organic' commodity label. Any kind of a label that doesn't involve individual self-interested reputation but instead involves regulatory compliance is going to be gamed and ultimately ignored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _...we gained no equity because we didn't own the land..._

Farming on rented land seems like the original Uber. You're workers, with no guarantee of even minimum wage.

A couple of friends in the restaurant business have told me: Never open a restaurant if you don't own the building.

<comment><USER7> Feudal serfdom is the original Uber.

<comment><USER8> Everything seems to run in circles, some apparently greater than others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "That quirky lifestyle business I got into without really knowing much about? For some reason it didn't wind up being a gold mine."

</comment><comment><USER10> 10 acres is not enough. A friend of mine owns 200 acres in Iowa and he has to work off-season to ensure a steady income. But the 200 generated enough $ for him to retire. Wasn't easy though.

<comment><USER11> Do you mean by selling the land? The last few years until this year there was boom in farmland prices.

<comment><USER10> No still owns it. Rents it out now. But the ups and downs of income from farming made him work two jobs. Some years the crops brought in good money. Some years nothing. He managed to saved enough so he can retire.

But he told me he thinks 200 acres is the bare minimum to see some money if you are smart about it. The more acres the better obviously. And the farmer in the article only has 10???

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, farmers will always find a way to complain. I was reading a farming rag from a nearby town, and the canola crop was a bumper one, the best year ever. Response from the farmers? "Yeah, well with so much canola on the market, the unit price will be down"

Don't get me wrong, farming is hard work, but the farmers I've encountered rarely have much positive to say about their work particulars. A bit like sysadmins, really.

<comment><USER10> ha I guess a complaining farmer is a happy farmer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ten acres? Has anyone _ever_ made a living off ten acres? Where I come from (Midwestern U. S.), that's a hobby farm.

And that assumes the person running the place is even a decent business person. Some won't succeed whether they own ten acres or a nail salon.

<comment><USER13> Ten acres is just a big garden, not a farm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My great grandparents had a small farm in Massachusetts between the 30's-50's. They had 8 kids (free labor for ~20 years). They did well enough to send all their kids to college, but not much beyond that.

Something tells me you can do okay with a small farm if you're a poor German immigrant who fought in WWI because you're not expecting much anyway. Happy to not be starving. The woman in the article should've expected less from the beginning. They can chalk it up as a learning experience, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER15> To quote Jerry Seinfeld, "I didn't know it was possible to not know that."

<comment><USER8> Yeah. She actually references the national statistics in her article; I'm surprised that apparently neither she nor her partner checked them out _before_ starting the farm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I live in Colorado. Lots of profitable small farms here. You just need the right crop :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect that is temporary. The bureaucracy is already very large in the pot industry, and will grow with time...the big players will guarantee regulators stack the deck in their favor. As legalization spreads across the country, growing will be concentrated in a few areas where it grows most easily and with the cheapest labor and most favorable legal climate (just as tobacco is concentrated in a few places). The big players may be new ones, but agricultural history in the US indicates the small players will get pushed out as the market matures.

<comment><USER16> I think the marijuana industry will more resemble the wine industry. Large bulk producers will cover the cheap end of the market but there will still be many highly respected small players.

<comment><USER8> I don't have much experience with marijuana. Does it actually have the kind of brand dynamics wines have? Can we expect people to prefer indulging in the pot equivalent of 10 or 50 years old wine if they can afford it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My grandfather ran a farm. Small farming isn't profitable. Full stop. Farming scales up really well but not down.

<comment><USER18> And if you can make back the costs of the equipment, own the land, and create enough food for your family, what value does money have?

<comment><USER19> It's good while it lasts, but being a subsistence farmer has its downsides. Once you get a few bad years in a row, or the government decides that farmers don't really matter so eff them, you will appreciate the profits you've put away during the fat years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just got bitten by not having an ad blocker installed on the current browser.

You know what _this_ [0] looks like? That nice "You may also like" box? Like a _fucking end of the article_. Except it isn't. It's only a half of it. Seriously, fuck you Salon. I guess you don't care if people actually read the stuff you post.

EDIT Oh, I know why it tricked me. Because the rest of the article only loads when you scroll past that ad. What the fuck.

[0] - [http://imgur.com/SMBtRkO](http://imgur.com/SMBtRkO)

<comment><USER20> WTF. I wondered why the article ended so suddenly...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't think you talked to too many people.

</comment><comment><USER22> If these people are looking to make money, then they need to either lower their expenses or up their prices.

On the former side, there are very well documented examples of commercial success from organic farming using naturally focused practices instead of the fertilizer and weeding processes common to traditional western-style farms. A good point to start reading there is the Japanese microbiologist that popularized the approach - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka)

On the output side, direct supply deals with restaurants or consumers in higher income areas (ie. possibly not local, but a large city nearby ... SF comes to mind) could be an excellent way to get higher return on individual crops by volume. Yes, this would necessitate a drive. But they probably do it now and then anyway, and it might just pay for itself. As a bonus, the article mentioned that the author's husband was a woodworker: knocking together some rustic wooden crates for deliveries to look the part is not something difficult at scale.

As a bonus, these type of delivery deals can be worded "by the crate" and "in- season", allowing more reliable distribution of crops and releasing pressure to grow things on the edge of or out of their natural season, which can necessitate higher investment, time inputs and risk on a per-crop basis.

I firmly believe that being relatively close to SF, it must be possible to distribute organic crops and make money. The author simply hasn't figured out a working model yet.

</comment><comment><USER23> Small farmers are always just on the edge of poverty. I know this first hand since my parents own a farm (~3 acres and not in the US) and don't generate enough revenue to even get to a point of breaking even. The equipment, water, fertilizers, pesticides always have to be paid for regardless of whether you get a good crop or not. Add nature's whim on top of that too and you will see why small farmers are disappearing from the map.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's probably good to remind people yearning for the simple life that you can't make a living on most small farms, but it's not really surprising. The Green Revolution made it easy for a few people to feed a lot of people, fundamentally altering the ratio of farmers to consumers.

[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Green_Revolution](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Green_Revolution)

And despite concerns about food security, the US has consistently used agriculture as a bargaining chip in its trade agreements and foreign policy, opening our markets to countries that can produce food more cheaply than US operations can. Reagan, Hollywood's rhinestone cowboy, did a lot to destroy cattle ranching in the US by opening the market up to Canadian beef. Same dynamic.

Small farmers will only make money by focusing on cash crops that are organic, local, and other adjectives that Whole Foods customers are willing to pay for...

</comment><comment><USER25> 10 acres is microscopic. The average small family farm is over 220 acres.

<comment><USER25> Further into the article:

 _According to USDA data from 2012, intermediate-size farms like mine, which gross more than $10,000 but less than $250,000, obtain only 10 percent of their household income from the farm, and 90 percent from an off-farm source._

The words "like mine" here are misleading, because this farm is nothing at all like the farms the author is referring to. For one thing, virtually all the farms the author is comparing itself to are an order of magnitude bigger. But then:

 _One day late into my second season owning the farm, a customer walked in while I stood behind the counter spraying down bins of muddy carrots. The man asked how things were going. Financially, I mean. He held a head of lettuce in the crook of his arm, a bundle of pink radishes dangled from his hand._

Most small family farms are not walk-up retail operations; they work through distributors and co-ops.

Modern farming is also intensely technical. There was a time in American history where you could make a living as a wheelwright, too. It's not an outrage that you need to be a major corporation to build vehicles today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My parents were small farmers. It is hard, hard work. They succeeded by focusing carefully on areas that weren't being served by the Agri-biz corporates. They chose several different specialties and worked them each hard to make a modest living. What I learned from it was to stay away from farming as anything more than a hobby.

</comment><comment><USER27> Six thousand pounds of food on a tenth of an acre bringing in $20,000/yr. How's that for scaling down?

[http://urbanhomestead.org/urban-homestead](http://urbanhomestead.org/urban- homestead)

<comment><USER28> Ate you saying that $20k/year is a good living? For how many people? You can't even get family health insurance for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In addition to not doing their research, this is a great example of how destructive the west coast "fake it 'til you make it" attitude can be. Not only are they missing out on numerous opportunities by not being more honest with their neighbors (local farmers giving advice, neighbors patronizing them more if they know they aren't doing well and really do need their business, someone who knows a guy who runs a restaurant getting them a supplier deal, etc), I'm sure the stress and senseless alienation they suffer from "living a lie" isn't healthy either.

</comment><comment><USER30> The typical family farmer in the U.S. is a millionaire because of _assets_. They have poor earnings and they whine a lot, but they are sitting on top of land, tractors, and buildings worth millions.

The average U.S. farmer could cash out, buy a house in Miami, and never work a day again in their lives. But they don't do so. They apparently like the country lifestyle and continue their struggle even though they don't have to.

Obviously the couple in the Salon article can't cash out and retire because they don't own their own land, and it's just a sliver of land at that.

<comment><USER28> Is that true? They don't have mortgages?

<comment><USER30> The average farm family has owned it for generations. The Salon couple is atypical in that they got into the business rather than inheriting it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Has the American small farmer _ever_ been able to make a living?

<comment><USER32> Small time farmers in NL have cash crops growing in their attics. It is quite amazing how many people will consider doing something illegal if it makes enough money.

Even people you'd never expect it of suddenly become experts in photosynthesis and hydroponics. Who'd have known that so many people discovered that they had green fingers after all when they can't distinguish a weed from a crop plant under other conditions.

<comment><USER33> Only because it's still illegal to grow it legitimately. How many of those small time farmers will keep doing it (for the money) when the government finally gives out some licenses to farm it commercially and the bulk marihuana price becomes a hundred to a thousand times lower?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hobby farming can make sense if you want to own a lot of land as an investment. If you don't farm it, in most states it gets assessed at a _much_ higher residential rate for tax purposes. So it pays to farm, even if the business is break-even.

</comment><comment><USER35> Is this the USA problem or do small farmer have same problem in other country too? If all world has same problem it is very sad.</comment>


ChessBoardJS - <AUTHOR> http://chessboardjs.com/?utm_source=javascriptweekly&utm_medium=email <comment><USER2> A while back, I attempted to write a chess site that let you paste in chess games in PGN text format, and then step through them. What I found was pretty shocking: the PGN format looks simple, but is remarkably difficult for a computer to parse.

The reason is that the PGN format only specifies the piece type and destination square of each move. Ne4: a knight moves to e4, and it's up to the parser to figure out which knight. So to parse PGN, you have to teach your parser how the pieces move.

That by itself is not too bad, but it gets worse. What if both knights can move to e4? Then the format disambiguates. Nge4: the knight on the g file moves to square e4. But "can move" is a tricky notion in chess. This knight cannot move because it is pinned to the king. That pawn can capture _en passant_ this turn, but not next turn. So to write a PGN parser, you must build a chess engine capable of analyzing a board sufficiently to determine legal moves.

One might hope that reasonable PGN text would be nice and disambiguate whenever two pieces attack the same square, and not require legal move analysis. Alas, it is not so. The "two knights attack a square but one is pinned" case is specifically called out as NOT requiring disambiguation in the spec at [http://www.saremba.de/chessgml/standards/pgn/pgn- complete.ht...](http://www.saremba.de/chessgml/standards/pgn/pgn- complete.htm#AEN242) .

A further consequence is that it is not possible to make a "generic PGN" parser that can handle chess variants, like suicide chess. The rules of chess are baked into the format itself, and the parser must have knowledge of the rules used to play the game that it is presenting.

<comment><USER3> This is a great write-up and is exactly the reason that ChessBoard is "just a board".

Proper PGN parsing and legal move validation is a complex and independent problem that nicely fits into it's own library and should be separate from any display logic.

For example: [https://github.com/jhlywa/chess.js](https://github.com/jhlywa/chess.js)

<comment><USER4> I created this board a while ago that is connected to that chess.js

[http://thingsilearned.com/projects/chess/](http://thingsilearned.com/projects/chess/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> reminds me of the js1k/2010 #2 winner: [http://js1k.com/2010-first/demo/750](http://js1k.com/2010-first/demo/750)

This one is playable.

<comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burn_centers_in_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burn_centers_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER7> I don't understand.

<comment><USER8> In American English, slang for an insult is a "burn".

e.g.

"You got burned" = "You were insulted"

The poster was making a joke that the OP had been insulted because this other JavaScript board is superior or something, hence, he directed him to treatment centers for a "burn".

This is very common on reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This project needs a better example on the homepage, I think.

This one is interesting: [http://chessboardjs.com/examples#3004](http://chessboardjs.com/examples#3004)

<comment><USER10> Agreed, it demonstrates that you could theoretically animate an entire chess game with a setInterval.

<comment><USER3> Funny; I actually built a demo that did this for the homepage, but decided it was too complex and scrapped it for later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nothing related but see: [http://lichess.org/](http://lichess.org/) (source code [https://github.com/ornicar/lila](https://github.com/ornicar/lila))

<comment><USER12> Also has the _best_ CAPTCHA ever. [http://en.lichess.org/signup](http://en.lichess.org/signup)

<comment><USER13> Worst CAPTCHA ever. Trivial for a computer to work out, hard for a human.

<comment><USER14> Worst as in least effective, but best as in most amusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This doesn't seem to actually play chess.

<comment><USER16> Not much to see here. Why is this JS? Usually JS requires some interaction. Even lightbox flew around and did something. This would be even easier as a chessboard PNG rendering REST service.

<comment><USER3> ChessBoard supports drag-and-drop pieces: [http://chessboardjs.com/examples#2006](http://chessboardjs.com/examples#2006)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Mine from a decade ago is suitable for play-by-email [http://wedusc.com/web- chess/?7567](http://wedusc.com/web-chess/?7567)

</comment><comment><USER18> Awesome, I have something similar for the game of Go: [https://github.com/mapleoin/goboard.js](https://github.com/mapleoin/goboard.js)

Unfortunately I didn't spend that much time writing beautiful docs for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi; this is a pleasant surprise :)

I wrote this component. Happy to answer questions, feedback, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pure HTML Chess Board with FEN support; [http://azer.github.io/chessboard/initial.xml](http://azer.github.io/chessboard/initial.xml)

</comment><comment><USER20> There is also this game: [http://multiplayerchess.com/](http://multiplayerchess.com/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Should be fairly easy to make this understand the basic movements. Add some node-js multiplayer and off you go.

<comment><USER22> I actually built almost exactly this on top of dotcloud a while back:

[http://chessjs-anirishduck.dotcloud.com/new](http://chessjs- anirishduck.dotcloud.com/new)

I initially based it off a wild idea my coworker and I had about a chess variant where any piece that captures another piece has the option of becoming that piece. I then expanded it with several other chess rule variants, including vanilla chess.

One thing worth mentioning is that the rules for chess are deceptively complex. Especially when it comes to valid moves avoiding check and moving out of check. See:

[https://github.com/AnIrishDuck/chess.js/blob/master/chessjs/...](https://github.com/AnIrishDuck/chess.js/blob/master/chessjs/static/js/rules/base.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> When's the Chinese checkers edition coming out?

</comment><comment><USER24> anyone looked at [http://bookmarkchess.com/](http://bookmarkchess.com/)</comment>