There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-15/there-are-plenty-of-jobs-out-there-america <comment><USER2> As someone else has already said, the biggest shortage is skilled labor, not unskilled.

Trouble is, it's unwise to dedicate months/years of training for a single job that may not be there when you graduate, and it's unwise to train someone when they could get poached by the next company not willing to shell out for training.

I also wonder how sticky their wages are. If a business can endure not filling a position until they can find their person willing to work for peanuts, why offer more? It's amazing how little bargaining power workers have even in this extremely tight labor environment.

I'd be shocked if the Republicans that now control most layers of government will be willing to step in and help this situation, and I doubt they'd know what to do to help even if they were willing.

Does anyone here know a good way out of this situation?

<comment><USER3> Case in point: my employer has a vacancy that has been unfilled for the better part of a year now because they want to hire a full-time Database Administrator and not pay more than $65k.

My theory is that they're intentionally low-balling it so that no one will apply and they can hire an H1B.

<comment><USER4> _> a full-time Database Administrator_

Do those even exist anymore, in the US? In the UK I very rarely encounter UK- based DBAs, 99.99% are offshore.

<comment><USER5> I've mostly encountered them in banks where there is regulation or a strong desire not to let developers access production data/systems (Sarbox or something, I forget). However their use seems to be declining in most other industries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can check this kind of stuff out by looking on your local Craigslist postings.

Machinist wanted (with decent level of understanding multiple machines, reading blueprints etc.) - 5 years experience - $25/hour in the Denver/Boulder area. e.g. [http://boulder.craigslist.org/trd/5902683986.html](http://boulder.craigslist.org/trd/5902683986.html) (and you have to supply some of your own tools) ... this is not a cheap area to live in BTW. $50-60K is barely middle class for this area.

We've been praising the guy who hires 10 plumbers and then automates his back office (he is scaling), while looking down on the plumbers who do the actual work. Then we wonder why it's tough to find plumbers...

<comment><USER7> I sometimes see job placements come in for machinists which demand almost every machinist skill one can have. Manual machining on every available type of machine, CNC machining on every type of machine, CNC programming, CAD and CAM Design in all the main software, GD&T, Blueprinting, etc.

And for a list of requirements that takes up a full page, and frankly sometimes even requires skills that you would earn with a bachelors in mechanical engineering. All for $10/hour. And they wonder why no one has taken them up on their offer. And this is also in a major Southern city, with an ever increasing cost of living.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm trying to reconcile these two quotes:

> _a few good auto-glass installers, no experience necessary_

and,

> _commissioned a study of company shortages. Energy, water, and land came up, > but the No. 1 answer around the world was skilled labor_

Perhaps no experience is necessary for the auto-glass gig, but the metal stamping and machining? Are these all trades one can pick up on the job, by walking in from the street? Because if so, potential workers are leaving money on the table.

More likely, they have stopped looking for work altogether. Unemployment is often discussed, but the Labor Participation Rate is less so, which fell greatly [1] after 2008.

[1] [http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000)

<comment><USER9> Draw that graph back further before 2006 and you'll see that labor participation was lower from 1948-1984, almost 40 years. It appears to have peaked between 1990 and 2008, but even today it's not quite as low as it was during a time of pretty solid prosperity (50s and 60s).

Even today's rate is only 3% or so lower than the 2006 rate, so if you add it to the unemployment rate it's still not very bad.

Just another perspective on this as it seems to be something that comes up over and over in these discussions.

<comment><USER10> I assume the low rate from 1948-84 was due to 1 person working in a married household. Then it increased as both persons worked to maintain middle class, followed by recession. So low labor participation with high prosperity back then, and low participation with low prosperity now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The mismatch between available jobs and the skillsets of the workforce has baffled me. Is it just that autoglass installers aren't in sufficient demand for people to train to become autoglass installers? And so would it be economically inefficient for the government to subsidize the education of more autoglass workers?

But maybe it's not a question of insufficient demand for these skills. Maybe it's a question of matching up job opportunities, workers, and the capital necessary to train the workers for the jobs.

Imagine this: a site/app where employers post job openings with certain skill requirements, and where workers apply for jobs. These sites already exist. But add to it an element where workers can say they want to work a certain type of job but need additional training to do so. Then investors can put forward the money to train the worker, in exchange for 10% of the worker's future earnings until the loan is paid back plus interest.

Microfinance not as foreign aid but as grease for the labor market.

<comment><USER12> The problem with this is that its often difficult to tell whether a person is suited for a job or even would like a job until the person starts training in it. You could decide you want to go into HVAC because there's a lot of money in it. But six weeks into the training you hate it or you realize you suck at it. Who foots the bill for that failure?

<comment><USER13> The debtor would. They can choose to stick it out until their loan is repaid or find another way to pay it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let's do this experiment: let's have all businesses double whatever wage they are currently paying. Is there still a shortage of workers? No? Ah, in that case, we have solved the problem.

<comment><USER15> You miss the point. Labor is inelastic. If you double the wage, it might take the market years to respond if the skill in question is not quickly acquired.

Buying high skilled workers is not like buying gumballs, where prices and high demand can quickly stimulate supply, and the two meet in the middle.

Gumballs don't have to sell their house and move. Gumballs don't have to take care of their kids while going back to school.

<comment><USER16> True, but this OP's scenario is very similar to what happened during the ND oil boom in 2010. Guys with certain skills (heavy equipment operation, truck driving, ect) could make two or even three times what where in their current jobs.

What was the result? A flood of workers coming in how left their families, homes, and everything to live in trailers (or even the truck cabs) for the opportunity.

If the this had happened near a real city like Sioux Falls SD with available housing and had been long term (like the OP's scenario), people absolutely would have moved their families and put down roots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can't find workers means: can't find cheap skilled workers.

<comment><USER18> Exactly, there is a shortage of people with 20 years experience and a master's degree willing to work for $14/hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If we're generous and say that the auto-glass installer job pays a bonus of $10,000 a year that leaves $60,000 earned at $12/hour ... which is about 96 hours a week. I can think of plenty of reasons why you'd have trouble finding people to do that job.

<comment><USER20> I doubt the 70k makes $12 an hour. Likely a supervisor making say $20 an hour.. comes to a base of 42k.

Other 28k he would make in 17 hours of overtime per week (Remember you get time and a half for overtime), for a total of 57 hour weeks.

Not out of the question hours in a busy factory. I did some of those in college summer days...

<comment><USER21> But now you are working 57 hours a week in steady state to make that $70K and it does not sound like such a good deal any more.

<comment><USER20> It's not a good deal! Thats why I code.

But that is how some working class people make enough to sound their kids to private school. Working their tails off.

<comment><USER22> I see that they have to do that as a moral failing of capitalism, both that public schooling is insufficiently good for their children and that a worker's base wage is insufficient to provide for that worker's child's education.

<comment><USER20> I mean your child gets an education either way, its do you get top 5% private school or public school? You can't give everyone free access to a top private school, or it is no longer a top by definition ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> America recently redefined what unemployment means.

It used to mean "the amount of people currently capable of working, who are not employed in work."

The new definition is "the amount of people who want a job, but can't find one".

Basically the difference between structural unemployment and transitive unemployment. America used to track transitive unemployment, but through a series of reforms have narrowed in on measuring structural unemployment.

Originally if you were not employed you would be unemployed. Slowly this was altered so that if you were not employed and hadn't found a job in a month you were unemployed (because you were looking and not finding, and therefore there was no job for you). Slowly that got moved out. I don't have the most recent numbers committed to memory, but an not employed person is not considered unemployed unless they've been looking and have not found for a large amount of time.

This article hits on that theme. The argument/opinion it expresses is that the jobs ARE there - that structural unemployment is low - but that workers aren't finding good work ("transitive unemployment is high").

There's been huge moves in the labor market as middle skilled jobs are disappearing. The only move for the labor pool is down to low-skilled labor jobs, work that masses of the labor pool are not only overqualified for, but will be compensated significantly less for and which represent much less socioeconomic mobility.

<comment><USER10> It seems like now binomial, people are making <$20/hr or >$60/hr. The middle has been sucked out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I feel like I've seen a lot of articles about people who can't find jobs or who are worried about their increasingly-outdated jobs going away in the short term. This article says we also have a lot of jobs that can't find people. What's the missing piece? Re-training? What does that actually look like for a 30- or 40-year-old person who has a family to support and doesn't much care for government handouts?

<comment><USER25> It's speculation, but my take would be that there are two missing pieces:

1) Inadequate pay.

2) Unwillingness to train.

If you don't have the exact skills that the company wants, they won't hire you. But they will complain that they can't find anyone even though they are really only offering unskilled level wages.

<comment><USER26> And location.

If you're 30/40, odds are you have a family, roots somewhere, and maybe a mortgage. Your ability/willingness to move - especially after being out of work for a while - is near zero.

* I'm late 30s with all of the above.

<comment><USER27> > If you're 30/40, odds are you have a family, roots somewhere, and maybe a > mortgage. Your ability/willingness to move - especially after being out of > work for a while - is near zero.

This is also true for someone like me as a recent grad with an older vehicle, a student loan to pay off, and lack of sufficient savings to move too far away from my hometown. One of the large issues of the education crisis that I don't hear being discussed is that a lot of students, like myself, often spend literally everything we have to get the degree after constantly hearing about success story after success story in the K-12 system. In these cases, it is implied that college is the _only_ way to get ahead in life and we need to get there _by any means necessary_.

I mean, how the hell am I supposed to magically relocate halfway across the country (or even commute >50 miles away from my house on a daily basis) when the infrastructure doesn't exist and/or no benefits are offered besides "you should be glad that we're even paying you"?

But hey, I'm just a whiny millennial brat who should be glad that spanking/belt whipping is illegal.

<comment><USER28> One important thing to add to this, is that in the US, halfway across the country is somewhere around 2,000 miles, which can easily result in $2-3000 in moving costs alone. I just bring this up since I had a conversation about a very similar topic with a friend in the UK - where halfway across the country can mean a leisurely 4 hour drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a bit weird.

US unemployment is at 4.6%

[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000)

US growth is about 2%

[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locati...](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=US)

That's really pretty good. Most developed countries would be happy with that.

<comment><USER30> 2% growth is very low. Jobs =! well paying secure jobs.

<comment><USER29> What developed country has sustained better growth?

<comment><USER30> [http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?year_h...](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?year_high_desc=true)

Ireland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Iceland, Poland, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Spain, the UAE, and Israel (although there are more depending on your definition of a developed country).

<comment><USER29> What definition are you using for sustained? 10 years? 20 years?

I didn't include this either. Just curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The issue is that US workers now compete with the whole world.

Until the 70s, the US really had no competition. To compete, you need a stable (legal) system - No one would invest money in a country where it's not far- fetched that someone will overthrow the government, nationalizes your company and throws you in jail.

Oh, and because of geo-politics, one couldn't invest in USSR friendly countries (both from the US side and the other side)

So no one would invest in the USSR, Africa, the Middle East, China or India, Europe and Japan were in shambles. So who built up industry? The US.

After the 60s, different countries started stabilizing. First Japan, then China, now most of the world is actually quite stable, so now the average US worker has to compete against all of India, China, Bangladesh, etc.

You have more supply and the same demand (the world).

And the problem is nothing can really be done about it.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash US workers are having to deal with reality itself after an entire history of avoiding it.

"Free land" from genocided native Americans. No equivalently armed and organized opposition from Virginia to California.

"Free labor" from slavery.

Poverty wages during the gilded age; easy-to-access industrial fuels like lumber and coal, and later oil. Again, all available on stolen land.

Early 20th century, Europe was beating itself up so often America became a superpower by pure virtue of being the only power not bombed to shit by 1945.

Through mid 20th century, America artificially suppressed the domestic cost of living at home through economic imperialism by, among other things, overthrowing other regimes - including democracies - that threatened America's economic dominance and control of natural resources, like Guatemala for food and Iran for oil (although the U.K. started it).

So this is the first time the US has _ever_ had to compete on anything close to an even footing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm always baffled by the people in these articles. From the anecdote at the beginning: he's having trouble hiring people for $12/hour (up to $70K/year with bonuses, etc).

I am also having trouble hiring people: I need a senior software engineer. Pay is $12/hour. It's taking me a long time to find workers. I guess people are just lazy and don't want to work.

<comment><USER33> So this job pays $12/hr. Which is $1,555.05/month after tax, assuming 40hr work week. And the average 1-bed apartment rents in North Charleston, SC is roughly $1100/month (according to Zillow), leaving the employee $450/month to cover all food + medical + debt + transit + utilities and any other expenses.

I _can 't imagine_ why no one is taking the position. It sounds like a fulfilling opportunity to install auto glass while living on the poverty line.

It's like employers don't even attempt to think about anything from the employee's perspective -- _even after_ they've struggled to fill their own positions. "Cheap business owners" couldn't be a more accurate byline.

<comment><USER34> $12 per hour is somewhat less than the median personal income in the US [1], so I would not expect the auto glass worker to pay median rent. There may also be an option to live in a cheaper area outside North Charleston.

I agree it's not a fulfilling job, but I wouldn't characterise it as "living on the poverty line". The job pays $24,000 per year but for a single person the official poverty line is $11,770 [2].

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_Unite...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)

[2] [https://aspe.hhs.gov/2015-poverty- guidelines](https://aspe.hhs.gov/2015-poverty-guidelines)

<comment><USER28> Personally, I'm not sure I'd like to live in a 1 BR apartment where the cost was around half[0] the going rate. Something would have to justify the lower cost - poor condition, a poor neighborhood, a large commute...

[0] Based on the recommendation your housing cost you around 30% of your gross income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wanted a _career_ , but all they were offering was _jobs_.</comment>


Ask HN: Transfer large files(200~800mb) peer to peer - <AUTHOR> Is there a service where I can transfer files just to 1 person.<p>Currently I use FTP, but I am looking for a simpler solution like drag a file and I get a unique URL. Once I share and get confirmation that the file is received, I can delete the file. The service should have the option to pause and resume the transfer. <comment><USER2> Depending on your needs resilio sync or wetransfer might be good options

</comment><comment><USER3> scp

[https://linux.die.net/man/1/scp](https://linux.die.net/man/1/scp)</comment>


Reddited, lwn-ed and News.YComb-ed, on a 128MB VPS - <AUTHOR> http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/3825/raymii.org-got-reddited-lwn-ed-and-news.ycomb-ed-on-a-128mb-leb-with-stats

<comment><USER2> Pretty impressive, given the specs: "(128MB ram, 128mb burst, 25gb disk, 350GB bw, lighttpd)". I'm curious if that is using PHP, as mentioned in the post- clusterified version: "round-robin DNS, webroot on a GlusterFS replicated filesystem, lighttpd + php5 + SSL, automated git deploy cluster-thingie".

Oh, and that page got 20,000 hits in one day? Wow.</comment>


Omni Group releases open source iPhone/iPad dev Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.omnigroup.com/blog/entry/new_omni_framework_source_release1/

<comment><USER2> Frameworks can be very useful in not reinventing the wheel. However, I think parts of the fairly popular Three20 framework from Joe Hewitt iPhone aren't designed as well as I'd like. I don't use it - I find that we end up using categories for mini-frameworks. Frameworks aren't a magic cure for app development.

</comment><comment><USER3> In addition to developing some truly excellent software over the years, Omni Group has been providing these open source NeXTstep/Cocoa frameworks since the 90s. It's nice to see them keep the tradition alive.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are frameworks allowed? I thought they banned anything third party.

<comment><USER5> Wow, this just goes to show how irrational some of the hate for Apple's policies are. A framework is very similar to a library in C. It can also include data such as strings and documentation.

You can read the formal definition of what a framework is here:

[http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/cocoa/c...](http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/cocoa/conceptual/ObjectiveC/Articles/ocGlossary.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30001163-CH5-SW1)

<comment><USER6> I think more people here have heard "framework" in the context of "the Rails web framework" or "the SDL game development framework" than Apple's particular odd usage. Under most definitions, a "framework" implements an Inversion of Control pattern where the framework's code calls your own, and _you're_ the one acting as the "library"—pretty much what Apple's seeking to stop people from relying on.

<comment><USER7> The term as used by Apple dates back to the late 1980s and NeXTSTEP.

<comment><USER6> I was simply trying to explain that someone_here's original question was more likely inspired by ignorance at the meaning of "framework" than by the extreme belief that any and all library usage is disallowed by 3.3.1, and thus wasn't an example of "irrational ... hate for Apple's policies."

 _I_ know both definitions of "framework", and can differentiate them by context of usage—but a good journalist avoids, in their writing, words with clashing jargon/non-jargon definitions (for example, "begs the question") even when using them correctly under the jargon sense—because people unfamiliar with the jargon will assume the general term, and get all sorts of confused.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla Model 3 Disqualified from First in Class Finish for Being Electric - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2018/11/12/tesla-model-3-disqualified-from-1st-in-class-finish-at-buttonwillow-for-being-electric/ <comment><USER2> > Cameron noted that the Model 3 was the first electric car in a Global Time > Attack event and that the organizers were actually excited about having a > Tesla in the event, but they clearly weren't prepared to let it actually > compete.

> The protesting party was the racer who earned second place, making the > protest a completely biased objection that came after the car was accepted > into the competition, after several rounds of competition, and after the > award was actually made.

Sounds like the organizers got pinned by a salty competitor. Ideally they would have amended the rules well before the competition but I suspect they didn't consider their own fine print.

</comment><comment><USER3> It was disqualified because the rules for the event clearly required the vehicles to be primarily ICE vehicles. Hybrids were accepted only because the electrical motors were only usable at lower speeds.

The staff member that let the Tesla enter the event should not have, and presumably did not realize that the car was fully electric rather than just a hybrid.

There's some useful whining in the comments, mostly idiots posting the rules and misinterpreting them. ("May" in a legal context generally means "allowed", and when used with "not" or "only" places significant limitations on what is allowed.)

All in all, much ado about nothing.

<comment><USER4> > presumably did not realize that the car was fully electric rather than just > a hybrid

I don't buy that anyone working at a car racing event doesn't know Tesla's full electric.

<comment><USER5> The usual way of dealing with a result you dislike is to allow the win and then change the rules so it doesn't happen again.

<comment><USER3> Why would they need to change the rules? The rules already provided that an EV could not win, and should not even have been allowed to enter.

<comment><USER5> Yes but they were allowed to enter.

Then rules were then reinterpreted when they won.

That isn't very classy now is it.

<comment><USER3> That's not what happened at all.

A person manning the front desk, not one of the judges, accepted the entry fee and let them compete.

At some point, the judges were made aware that the car was an EV, and disqualified from the rules, which clearly stated that only ICE vehicles were permitted. No reinterpretation required. Just simple, straightforward application of the existing rules. They should have refunded the entry fee after disqualifying the Tesla; it's not clear if that happened or not (the original article didn't say).

Hybrids are ICE vehicles, and at any rate there was a specific exception in the rules allowing hybrids to compete. Per the website, hybrids compete as their own class, but it's possible it was changed after the event. Presumably, next year the event will allow EVs to compete as their own class.

What happened is about as classy as Tesla die-hards complaining when Teslas don't get special treatment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ha, I remember when electrics were laughed at, and claimed to be boring, slow, impractical. Now they are mopping the flaw and the internal combustion engine classes are yelling "not fair!"

What's really interesting is why are all the super cars not electric? The owner's rarely drive them long distance, drive them only on the weekend, they cost a ton to maintain. Tesla really should corner that market.

<comment><USER7> It's just because it takes time to build the new supercars. Tesla Roadster is out in 2-3 years, it sets the standard for other manufacturers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What are the boundaries of a "class"? There has to be some rational basis, like weight, or cost of power.</comment>


Ask HN: is there room for a new blogging service? - <AUTHOR>

This may be a little bit ridiculous, after all, there are wordpress.com, blogger and tumblr. But the sad fact is, I have so far been unable to provide my non-technical friends and family with blogs. Tumblr (maybe the best bet) turned out to be too slow and erratic when I evaluated their interface, blogger is ugly and has mandatory Blogger-Branding (I think), and Wordpress.com has intransparent pricing (I can't figure out how much they cost from their homepage). Furthermore, Wordpress is based on PHP - I could never figure out how to properly host multiple WP blogs on my debian server, and in general I don't trust PHP so hosting it myself makes me feel very uneasy.<p>For those reasons I plan to migrate my blogs to Octopress/Jekyll, which is of course not an option for non-techie people. But it made me think, maybe a similarly clean interface could be presented to non-techies anyway (kind of like Jekyll without the command line). The problem with existing blog engines seems to be that they are overloaded with Ajax and features. <comment><USER2> If you make it such as ALL i have to do is to watch my blog-front page (and have the option to write my own CSS) i will use it.

I don't want a huge interface for stuff i will never use. I want to be able to (when logged in) double click or something on my blog post and then it will turn into a <textarea> for editing and saving. I really hate going into a huge suit for writing a little text and upload images into galleries for later insertion into posts.

It should be like this.

\- Go to name.easyblog.com

\- See the white, minimalistic blog (posterous is good <https://jontelang.posterous.com/>)

\- Normal user will just read

\- Admin may login

\-- He will then see the blog as normal but have the option to press a "admin mode" button which will show buttons for the posts "delete" and such.

\-- Adding posts: He will see a "+" at the top of the blog where he gets a WYSIWYG + textarea -- then he press Save and the new post is added. He will then press the "admin mode" again to see the blog as normal users see it to make sure nothing looks odd.

\-- Editing: Same as above except you press "edit" on a post.

\-- Alternative: All posts become <textarea>s + WYSIWYG editors so that you do not even have to press edit.

All in all, simple and fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! What would be a good interface for inserting images?

Edit: thanks, I like that idea!

<comment><USER2> Actually i don't know. Some kind of drag and drop into the WYSIWYG-editor would be optimal IMO. When you save the image could be automatically uploaded to a /img folder.

I just want to remove as many distracting factors as possible, clicking, and managing image uploading is one of them.

I am glad you like the idea. If you decide to give it a try and fail/need help/lack motivation hit me an e-mail at jontelang [at] gmail. I really want to see this implemented but I have little to none time right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> saiko-chriskun tumblr is slow and erratic? first I've heard that one.

secondly your 'distrust' of PHP makes no sense. Trust me, I hate php and would _never_ program in it myself, but that doesn't make wordpress any less of a good product. Hell facebook is based on php :P.

third- there's always room for a new service if it genuinely solves a problem and is executed well, so go for it ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well TheOatmeal designed "Tumbeasts" for the Tumblr error pages, so I guess I am not the only one who experienced problems. I might reevaluate, but when I tried it last time (a couple of months ago) there were too many issues to make it usable for non-techies in my opinion. Maybe they rely on Flash? I have a flash blocker...

PHP - sure, it is just that I can not administrate it myself, and Wordpress.com has weird pricing. To fix hosting multiple blogs on debian, I would have to dig into the PHP code, which I would like to avoid.

Maybe these are not serious issues for the mainstream population, but I'll consider it :-/</comment></comment>


Germany plans to ban single-use plastic shopping bags next year - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-09-germany-single-use-plastic-bags-year.html <comment><USER2> [https://www.greenbiz.com/article/plastic-bag-bans-can- backfi...](https://www.greenbiz.com/article/plastic-bag-bans-can-backfire-if- consumers-just-use-other-plastics-instead)

Plastic bag bans can backfire if consumers just use other plastics instead Rebecca Taylor Friday, April 12, 2019 - 12:30am

...

My research has evaluated carryout bag regulations from many angles. In a recent study, I examined how plastic carryout bag bans in California have changed the types of bags people use at checkout, as well as these bans' unintended impacts on consumer purchasing habits.

My results showed that bag bans may not reduce total plastic usage if people begin purchasing trash bags to replace the carryout bags they were previously reusing for their garbage. As this finding shows, well-intended product bans can have unintended consequences.

...

</comment><comment><USER3> These days I prefer canvas/hemp bags anyway.

It has appeal to me in the same way as the old Mercs do...overengineered for the task at hand. That bag can probably do 30kg..realistically I only need 10. But that extra 20kg translates to solid feel.</comment>


I paid this company 30$ to break up with my girlfriend - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-paid-this-company-30-to-break-up-with-my-girlfriend <comment><USER2> I have to say, I believe this could actually work (and to be clear I don't endorse the ethic/morality of the idea).

It seems to me that most services in the dating space are designed to avoid all awkward moments. Dating websites are there to avoid having to cold-talk to a stranger, apps like Tinder are there to avoid going on a date; I don't see why we wouldn't have an app to avoid having to breakup with someone.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does everything have to be a service? With how insulting breaking up with your significant other by text can be, now the text doesn't even have to come from you?

Thanks for sharing though, it's an intriguing article.

</comment><comment><USER4> Misleading title. He didn't actually break up with his girlfiend, he just wanted to test the service.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it was misleading. He followed the process just as he would if it were a real breakup. It was an accurate test of what to expect.

...and it was certainly a demonstration of the fact that technology does NOT always improve the quality of life. I don't blame the company for existing because I'm fully aware that there are people who'd want to use such a service. But it's still sad that anyone would actually do so.</comment></comment>


Perpetual Ocean by NASA [video] - <AUTHOR> http://youtu.be/WEe1bVjORN4

<comment><USER2> This has a remarkable similarity to Starry Night.

</comment><comment><USER3> anyone knows if the data is available in a format that could be used to make a WebGL viewer out of it? would be nice to be able to spin the globe around.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great video! Here's a nooby question though, why don't the oceans settle down? Is it to do with the moon? And does this mean oceans on planets without moons are perfectly calm?

<comment><USER5> The moon does have a effect on Earth's oceans, but the biggest reason why oceans are active, is the variation of temperature both in the atmosphere and in the water(This also creates a variation on pressure). The difference on air pressures, will create wind, which in turn create waves.

Ocean currents exist because different places on Earth are at a different temperature, and therefore the water will feel a pressure force to go elsewhere.

This is quite a generalization, but meteorology is a complex science, and there is much to dig in.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but you didn't completely answer his question: the reason the oceans don't settle down is because the sun continuously drives these temperature gradients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It'd be neat to see a version of this similar to the Windmap posted earlier.

<http://hint.fm/wind/>

</comment><comment><USER8> This is very detailed, how do they make these measurements? I assume it is based on measurement but interpolated using simulation of some kind.

<comment><USER9> It's a visualization of the data produced by the ECCO2 project (<http://ecco2.org/>), which feeds all available measurements of temperature, current, etc. into an MITgcm fluid-circulation simulation model (<http://mitgcm.org/>), which then estimates the most likely circulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could this be used to plot more fuel efficient shipping routes?

I know nothing about shipping routes by the way, I'm just speculating.

<comment><USER11> Ocean currents have been well known and used for shipping for hundreds, if not thousands of years.</comment></comment>


What The Fuck Should I Name My Startup? - <AUTHOR> http://whatthefuckshouldinamemystartup.com/ <comment><USER2> This is great! It's like a box of chocolates. Cool idea Travis.

Want to collaborate on the "Battle of Startup Domains" idea?

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2455116>

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you sure that namecheap.com doesnt automagically register the domain and then try to charge you a higher rate?

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that Network Solutions does that, but I don't think namecheap.com does that. I hit one domain a few times while testing and it was always available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently people are buying them. Within the last 10 minutes 2 that I was looking at were snagged. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome! I'm going to work on a script that will scrub the array of domains that are already registered. That way, you should always be able to generate an available domain.</comment></comment>


Blippr Is Twitter For Micro-Reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/28/blippr-is-twitter-for-micro-reviews/ <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1137766258&chan...](http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1137766258&channel=979539543&lineup=-1)

Damn.

Blippr is executed much better, though. Interesting to see where I was last year.

</comment><comment><USER2> Twitter is twitter for Micro-anything

<comment><USER3> It's a decent TechCrunch headline. The idea isn't to be realistic or accurate. It's to portray a startup. And if you take a review site and mix it with Twitter, this is what you would get.

<comment><USER2> My point is that you can make a twitter bot to take microreviews for a given topic very easily, and people are already on twitter. e.g.

@blippr i find using the hooks in twitter to be the easiest way to produce a 140 character review. Already sufficient network effects FTL

<comment><USER4> I knocked something up along those iines a few months ago: <http://tweviews.com>

<comment><USER2> Perfect! Though to be fair, a categorized review site wouldn't need to spend characters on @username and specifying the topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seriously, how can someone possibly review Children of Men in less than 160 chars???

<comment><USER6> <http://www.blippr.com/movies/861-Children-of-Men> \- 59 reviews give pretty good summury of what to expect.</comment></comment>


Jeremy Zawodny: There is no Web Operating System (or WebOS) - <AUTHOR> http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/009417.html

<comment><USER2> I agree that a 'WebOS' is slightly silly, but I believe it to be a marketing name for a much stronger concept - the 'InternetOS'. Today's OSes were largely built for a disconnected world - the 'my machine is an island' scenario - which isn't necessarily the case today.

The pertinent question is: where do today's systems fail us in an always or often-connected world? Maybe you'd work on the networking stack, providing services that made transferring between connections as seamless as possible (hopping from public wi-fi to 3G to WiMax, and prioritizing traffic based on network bandwidth and costs). Maybe we change filesystems to better support synchronization - for example, build in better change tracking so that we can synchronize using the minimum amount of bandwidth. Maybe you'd look for ways to be able to transfer the state of your applications, so you can work on one machine, and then continue working on your phone, then on your hotel TV, then back to the original machine. What about collaboration and communication? How can we build applications that seamlessly combine web information with local information (maybe even blurring the difference)? Not everything belongs in the OS, but the supporting functionality certainly does.

None of these ideas are particularly new, but today's software stack is in need of some pretty serious evolution to get the most out of the promise of a connected world. Javascript based desktops are an interesting prototype - maybe Javascript & HTML would be a good technology for portable applications. I'm not going to dismiss the bigger need because today's 'WebOS' systems are little more than toys...

<comment><USER3> Why can't we just have an internet _FS_? Compile all the apps down to a few common byte code formats and allow for namespace control via chrooting and similar mechanisms. No more web browser! We'd need to make symlinks more powerful, to enable opening a connection -- but there'd be little in the way of special UI required.

<comment><USER4> The technology for that is already there with S3 if you take full advantage of ACLs. It would just be a matter of agreeing on a standard for shared access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think as there are no examples of a unique type of application on these platforms, it's hard to see what the point of them is.

More over developing apps is still left to programmers (and a select group of them who are always interested in learning any new platform/language), it doesn't make it easier for Joe Average to do any sort of involved tasks.

Specifically with YouOS (the only one I tried), why do I need to understand applications and installation?

People want to ability to control their computers, not just use them. As Hamming said the purpose of computing is insight. If all you can do is install a new calculator, I don't think I can be bothered. I've got one which works just fine.

Just moving the desktop to the browser isn't enough of a differentiator.

Maybe this model might work for mobile phones, which is unlikely to have the full range of apps that a desktop has.

</comment><comment><USER6> "But nobody ever talks about a "Wall Street Operating System" or a "Small Business Operating System" do they?"

Microsoft Small Business Server? - <http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs> (I know, I'm missing the point...)

I do agree that it's a web desktop, not a complete OS, but his reasoning seems a little off...

</comment><comment><USER7> I disagree with this. An OS is whatever apps run on, and you could write things that most of the next generation of web apps would run on. I believe Parakey was (and perhaps still is) intended to be such a platform.

<comment><USER8> I think the author is referring to the OS role of controlling applications centrally, the way the f8 platform controls facebook apps. Something that a lot of decentralized web apps run on is not the kind of OS the author is talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe we should start calling these services as "Web Desktop" instead of WebOS. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_desktop>

<comment><USER10> Does anyone use any of these services? I've always thought it was best to let the underlying real operating system take care of windowing and let each URL be one application.

<comment><USER11> I have same feeling. Youos is wonderful but I always feel it waste too much screen space. On the other hand current browser is not very suitable for running multiple web apps also. Maybe we need a better container...

<comment><USER12> What we need is the desktop as the container...

But really, what we are talking about is just a resurgence of thin clients. And why not? They make sense. No updating software, all your files are there for you whereever you go and today we have the bandwidth to handle it (we do vid downloads without batting an eyelid!).

Especially with Google's gears coming along, it will mean we can do everything offline. It's getting close to CMS your home dir and apps.

When I was in high school (15 years ago or so) I said the perfect computer app would be one where you didn't know it was there and just used it to do what ever you wanted, like in TNG. This is getting close!

<comment><USER13> 1\. Privacy (and don't tell me it is overrated, it's not) 2\. Reliability (yes, I do understand my hard drive can fail, but my OS doesn't delete my e-mail just as GMail did) 3\. And the fact that I have to go online to fetch my file

<comment><USER12> 1\. Encryption

2\. Local storage

3\. Local storage

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> <http://www.irintech.com/x1/blogarchive.php?id=1439>

<comment><USER15> context? reason for linking? random keyboard error? please be constructive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An operating system is a lot of things -- it would be more precise to talk about a "web userland".</comment>


Php.net - Likely Compromised Or Hacked  - <AUTHOR> http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http%3A%2F%2Fphp.net%2F&client=googlechrome&hl=en-US

<comment><AUTHOR> Is php.net hacked or compromised ... Both Chrome & Firefox is blocking it .. IE does not seem to care :) Screen Shorts : [http://imgur.com/a/ZgWW0](http://imgur.com/a/ZgWW0)

<comment><USER2> [http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/puL...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/puLmvjtK0m8)</comment></comment>


Seven Web Server HTTP Headers that Improve Web Application Security - <AUTHOR> http://recxltd.blogspot.ch/2012/03/seven-web-server-http-headers-that.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> Of which four start `X-`, suggesting they are unstandardised and not supported by all browsers... but browser support is not mentioned for these four (and barely mentioned for the other three).</comment>


"Intelligent Machinery" by A.M.Turing - <AUTHOR> http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/archive/l/l32/L32-001.html <comment><USER2> I think the realization that humans are merely computational systems is one of the more important parts of my life.

<comment><USER3> I don't think 'realization' is really the right word unless you have proof.

<comment><USER2> I don't have evidence to suggest anything else.

My previous theory on human intelligence involved a supernatural belief. Any other alternative that I can conceive of, besides the computation theory, similarly rely on supernatural beliefs.

I reject the assumed suggestion that I must have evidence to reject the supernatural. Or, in simpler terms, dualism requires evidence while monism does not (although it of course has it, in great quantity).

<comment><USER3> All I'm saying is that in biological sciences, exactly how we "work" (and in particular, how our brains work) is still very much an open question, just as whether a machine can have intelligence is an open question in computer science. Unfortunately not having evidence for other theories does not even come close to proof of the theory in question.

<comment><USER4> As long as all of reality runs on mathematics then AI is possible. I think many commonly assume that reality is inherently mathematical, but don't realize their assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've often been stumped why the notion of "strong AI" cannot be successfully refuted. On the one hand any analog system can be modeled to arbitrary precision by a digital one; and on the other hand it is also a fallacy to mistake a model for the thing itself (at least from the perspective of Aristotelian logic). The notion consciousness just arises at some level of complexity is a deus ex machina expectation, and not scientific, but this is not the argument the best proponents of strong AI put forward. Instead, I think the clincher argument itself points out the limitations of science. Science is based on observation. If intelligence is an observed phenomena (and I'm still not satisfied we have an adequate definition; it seems more of an I know it when I see it definition) then clearly, machines can be intelligent (but conscious !!??).

<comment><USER4> Just because something is an observed phenomena doesn't mean it is the result of mathematical laws and therefore replicable by a computer. While that may be the most acceptable position in today's intellectual climate, it isn't a logical necessity.

<comment><USER2> Unless the universe contains mechanisms to allow more powerful computation models than we are aware of, then I cannot see how it could possibly not be possible.

Intelligence is observed in nature in little pieces of meat that arose through natural selection. The notion that it is doing anything that possibly _couldn't_ fall under the umbrella of computation is one that does not logically make sense. The only _logical_ position to assume is that until brains can be _demonstrated_ to be solving problems that Turing machines cannot, they must be assumed to be computationally equivalent.

<comment><USER4> No, in the realm of logical necessity, there is nothing necessitating observed phenomena be the product of computations. I could state this in terms of Kolmogorov complexity: there could be specific events with higher KC than the origin of the universe. I don't see anything inherently incoherent about that statement.

It doesn't fit within modern deterministic/stochastic metaphysics, but that's besides the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anyone have a more readable version of this?

<comment><USER3> Also a classic -- [http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2251299.pdf?acceptTC=tru...](http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2251299.pdf?acceptTC=true)

<comment><USER6> And that same classic, not behind a paywall -- <http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Home for the holidays with a baby and a toddler - what to do? - <AUTHOR>

I am off work for the next week. I have two kids - a 19 month old and a 1 month old.  It's cold and snowy where we live so limiting time outdoors with the 1 month old seems wise.<p>Any tips on how to keep the kids and wife happy during this time off and fight the urge to work on side projects? <comment><USER2> Keep the 1 month old baby warm. Not much to do other than feeding, diapers etc for them.

With the 19 month old, you have a few options. Show them funny TV/youtube clips, peek-a-boo (my 2 year old nephew loves it), hide and seek, just running around like a train etc etc. rinse and repeat.

</comment><comment><USER3> Get Flying Saucer Sled, tie a rope to it. Dress your 19 month old really warm, put him/her into the sled. walk around your backyard/park pulling on the rope, your 19 month old should have fun. You can have 1 month old in a baby carrier, they will have fun just being close to you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hide and seek is always fun with toddlers. As is Hide an Object and seek it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sit on the floor and play with their toys.

Then take a nap.

Repeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good advice. That's close to what I've done all day. Lots of books too. It's been a good day.

<comment><USER5> My favorite: One Fish, Two Fish. At one time I could recite most of it and irritated friends and family by doing so from time to time.

My son's favorite was "The wolf book" aka, _The Three Little Pigs_. That I could recite...with the voices. I remember doing so as last ditch entertainment as we neared home after a ten hour drive. He was sick, hungry and tired.

They are only so little for a brief time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Show them youtube clips! My 2 years old son is crazy about winnie the pooh for example.</comment>


100 Percent Renewable Pledges Do Not Equal Carbon-Free Power - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/100-percent-renewable-pledges-do-not-equal-carbon-free-power/ <comment><USER2> > A 100% renewable energy commitment does not mean firms' electricity is > completely carbon-free.

It doesn't have to be. There is nothing wrong with buying renewable energy credits as long as somebody (anybody) uses that energy at the end of the day.</comment>


Why Math Matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.collegeboard.com/student/plan/boost-your-skills/10268.html

<comment><USER2> All the relevant content seems to be at the bottom, no? Most of it seems to be fluff that says "You need to learn math so you can learn more math."

The only meat seemed to be:

"Math trains and disciplines your mind."

"Math helps you learn to:

        * Identify and analyze patterns.

        * Develop logic and critical thinking.

        * See relationships.

        * Solve real world problems."

1, 2, and 3 seem questionable to me. 4 is just a gimme - everything you learn in school can be used to solve real world problems if you stretch your rationalization sufficiently.

What sort of logic is it that learning math supposedly trains? I'm up to linear algebra, and I'm using a fair amount of sticking to rules of systems, but not so much "a implies b" sort of logic.

The above is intended to inquire, not assert.

</comment><comment><USER3> A collegeboard article? Really? Come on. Don't upvote articles written by the marketing team of a scamming corporation.

<comment><USER2> Could you substantiate your assertion? I don't necessarily disagree, but I've not heard this assertion before.</comment></comment>


Makerbot announces new filaments that mimic limestone, metal, and wood - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7500945/makerbot-announces-new-filaments-limestone-metal-and-wood-ces-2015

<comment><USER2> Magnetizable? Awesome!</comment>


Functional SARS-CoV-2-specific immune memory persists after mild Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.11.20171843v2 <comment><USER2> That's some great news!

<comment><USER3> There's more great news. Most of the HCQ studies show it has positive benefits,

[https://c19study.com/](https://c19study.com/)

The only studies where results are mixed are where HCQ is administered too late to do any good. PrEP, PEP, and Early treatment studies are all positive or inconclusive at worst.

<comment><USER4> That page is very poor. It uses every trick in the book to try to make poor science look scientific:

1\. Cherry picking: It says HCQ-using countries always have lower death rates than non-HCQ countries, but omits countries like Brazil where HCQ is widely used but the results are poor.

2\. Junk sources: To explain why countries are or aren't included in the HCQ using or non-HCQ using groups, they say it is based on how widespread HCQ usage is in that country. For example, it says Brazil isn't included because HCQ usage is mixed. To prove this, it cities sources - which if you are refer to the references - are "high quality sources" such as literally a guy's Medium posted entitled "Hydroxychloroquine: the narrative that it doesn't work is the biggest hoax in recent human history" (since removed by Medium) and "@CovidCrusher on Twitter". It's just junk built on top of junk. This is not science.

3\. Totally ignoring relative study quality: Every scientist knows that gold- standard randomized control trials provide more evidence than any number of weak observational studies. However, this site lists tons weak retrospective studies with tiny sample sizes and minimal effect on outcomes as "Positive" in cheerful bold green while dismissing high-quality randomized control studies with large sample sizes as testing the wrong thing or testing at the wrong time ("Late") or whatever.

4\. Ignoring or changing results: If a study disagrees with their preordained conclusions, they either mark it as "inconclusive" or literally just mark it as positive when the authors said it was negative and then add an explanation about how the study authors "were wrong" in their conclusions. Can't disrupt the 100% green "Positive" rating!

Science doesn't progress by summing up bad evidence and calling it good evidence. If you want to show that HCQ works, show a single randomized control study with a large sample size that shows it does anything.

<comment><USER3> You refute a page with scientific studies and their outcomes with talking points. That's all I really need to know about your argument.

<comment><USER4> Talking points? I pointed to specific reasons why their analysis is flawed and doesn't say what they claim it says.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >"Thus, we performed a longitudinal assessment of individuals recovered from mildly symptomatic COVID-19 to determine if they develop and sustain immunological memory against the virus.

We found that recovered individuals developed SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG _antibody and neutralizing plasma_ , as well as virus-specific memory B and T cells that _not only persisted, but in some cases increased numerically over three months following symptom onset_.

Furthermore, the SARS-CoV-2-specific memory lymphocytes exhibited _characteristics associated with potent antiviral immunity_ : memory T cells secreted IFN-γ and expanded upon antigen re-encounter, while memory B cells expressed receptors capable of neutralizing virus when expressed as antibodies.

These findings demonstrate that mild COVID-19 elicits memory lymphocytes that persist and display functional hallmarks associated with _antiviral protective immunity_."

PDS: In other words, having, or having once had, a mild case of Covid-19 / CoronaVirus -- means that there's a very good chance that the individual or individuals so affected will have antibodies protecting them (and by default, others) from it in the future!

AKA "Herd Immunity".

Or phrased another way, once you get it or have had it and get through it, once you're over it, the chances of you getting it again are much lower than the first time.

But, wait, _where have I seen this pattern before?_

Oh, that's right -- this pattern is common to most diseases!

That is the generalized pattern of disease (for most diseases) is this:

Once you have a disease, and get over it, usually (but not always, but usually), _you 've got much lower odds of getting it a second time, and if and when you do, the odds are such that the second time will be milder or less severe._

That's a basic rule, a basic _principle_ of disease _that every self- respecting medical practitioner should be taught on day one in class one of medical college_!

(Phrased another way: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." (with my apologies to Nietzsche! <g>))

Also, the above _principle_ is the underlying principle which gives the idea of vaccination its efficiacy, that is, it's the underlying idea of _what makes vaccines work_.

That is because vaccines are typically based on injecting weakened strains of a disease into the body, such that the body's own defense systems "learn" how to fight this weakened strain!

That is, if you say you believe in vaccines and you say you don't believe in the above principle (of disease in the body at an earlier point in time causing immunity to that same disease later) -- then you are in self- contradiction!

Either you say that the above principle does work (in which case you must also believe in Herd Immunity, because Herd Immunity is _based on the same principle_!), or you're saying that you DO NOT believe in vaccines (because you do not believe in this underlying _principle_!)

All I know is that many in the media, social, news and otherwise -- will be shown to be _inconsistent_ in their beliefs via this.

You cannot have the concept of vaccination working -- without the equal-and- opposite concept of Herd Immunity also being valid.

And if Herd Immunity works -- then what's the necessity for those so immunized to be vaccinated?

There isn't!

Logic 101...

<comment><USER6> This is why I tell people I'm practicing my herd immunity when I don't wear a mask.

<comment><USER7> It works the other way. The mask mostly blocks particles leaving you if you already have COVID.

You're not "practising herd immunity," you're forcing it on others without their consent.

<comment><USER6> This well-stated argument shows how you're forcing other's social responsibility to protect themselves on me:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290681)

<comment><USER7> Correct. This is SOP during a pandemic. It's something that happens sometimes when we live in a society and are faced with a disease with chance of permanent injury or death and no cure.

In some cultures, a person who was sick had to live outside of town and yell "UNCLEAN!" to warn the uninfected if they had a transmissible disease. And hell, this country exiled Typhoid Mary to a relatively small island for the protection of everybody else. This disease isn't quite infectious enough to necessitate that, but a piece of cloth is a pretty simple and effective compromise until we have widely distributed efficient enough testing to know with some certainty in a short timeframe whether a person is infected or not.

If it's too much a burden to bear, you can always remove yourself from the presence of mainstream society until such testing is available.

<comment><USER6> Or, those vulnerable (and we cannot now pretend we don't know who they are) can remove themselves and not place the risk of their infection in the hands of others.

Quarantine is where you lock up sick people.

Tyranny is where you lock down healthy ones.

And, as far as SOP during a pandemic, I disagree. This is the first time in the last 50 years (that I've been alive) that I've seen this happen in the US.

<comment><USER7> > Quarantine is where you lock up sick people

Due to the long asymptomatic infectious period for this disease, lacking a quick and accurate testing solution, we don't know who the sick people are. That's one of the major challenges of this particular outbreak.

History's memory is longer than 50 years. The word _quarantine_ derives from the practice of requiring that ships entering harbor from infected ports stay at anchor off the coast for 40 days. Unfortunately, in the era of modern air travel, and given the long incubation period for this illness, it passed the ports and got into cities and countrysides before it could be contained.

You also continue to conflate quarantine with the simple public health practice of wearing a cloth to catch droplets in case you are sick. The two are not the same thing. nobody in the United States, at least, is going around welding people's doors shut to keep them at home (though it is, perhaps, worth noting that the countries that did that have already gotten back to life as normal ;) ).

<comment><USER6> Additionally, it occurred to me that the sick people on the ships were locked down, not the cities with the ports.

<comment><USER7> The sick and the healthy were quarantined together on the ships. In the days of ship quarantine, germ theory of medicine and understanding of communicable disease wasn't where it was now; they understood disease communication but not the mechanism. The best solution they had was to have the inbound stay separated from the general populace, because whatever the mechanism, no disease had ever taken as long as 40 days to show up.

Once a disease got into a city, entire cities were, indeed, cut off---the sick and the healthy together---because nobody could be sure how the disease would spread if free commerce were allowed into the surrounding cities and towns.

(There's an interesting parallel to COVID-19, in that while we do understand germ theory of medicine, we don't have accurate enough testing to determine if the average healthy-looking person is a carrier. So the practical solutions lean towards the conservative side of safety. More accurate, higher-speed testing could decrease the need for general behavioral constraints in the population... If, for example, there was a 'forehead scanner' to tell us if someone had COVID-19 to 99.999% accuracy, instead of merely had a fever, we could install it at every store entrance and forego masks).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


US Army grants HP $249 million contract to deploy private cloud services - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/03/us-army-grants-hp-249-million-contract/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using the HP Cloud private beta for a while, and it's definitely interesting. It's basically Open Stack, and might make some sense vs. Amazon EC2 for clients with on premises (managed by HP consulting/professional services) and cloud hybrid.

It will be interesting to see HP Cloud vs. VMware (Terremark, etc.) vs. Amazon GovCloud in the enterprise/government space. EC2 vs. Rackspace is probably the bigger competition for most b2c webapps.</comment>


A Lesson Learned as a Technical Founder: Sell First, Build Later - <AUTHOR> http://blog.framebase.io/post/50355416770/sell-first-build-later

<comment><USER2> I think as a Startup you should spend 90% of your time on refining and validating the Problem Definition. Do as much as you can of that activity without even creating a single line of code. Since most probably you are solving a human problem, you should interact with as many humans as possible.

Lets be honest, unless you are creating a rocket or some really cool new technology, most Web Services/Apps can be implemented by anyone. YOUR job as Startup is not to reinvent the wheel for the solutions but live and breath the problem definition. After all it will be much cheaper and faster to fail if you have not built the product yet.

<comment><USER3> This is great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This _sounds_ like great advice, and "I want to believe" too, but this article is not convincing. The way it's written, I just see some principles flatly stated and not even backed up with anecdote--it's not even a data point. The HN title "A Learned Learned..." contains the most indication that the OP is speaking from experience and not off the top of his head.

Forgive me for not knowing the OP, his experience/reputation, or his company and its product. I expected a bit more explanation for his position. Also, I'm a bit skeptical of the "refundable credit" for a non-existing service or product. I'd like to hear more about how that's possible.

</comment><comment><USER5> While I agree that you should validate your ideas before spending copious amounts of time programming, I don't think that you should sell people on an imaginary product. Unless you already have an established reputation, it's highly doubtful that people will pre-order something on mere talk alone.

I think that it's a better idea to stick with the MVP (minimum viable product) model and iterate rather than try to figure out revenue and customers right off the bat.

<comment><USER6> A minimum _viable_ product is one users will pay for. Otherwise it's not viable.

<comment><USER7> There's a difference between a minimum viable _product_ and a minimum viable _idea_. It sounds like the OP wants to sell the latter before building the former. Or, as the saying goes, put the cart before the horse.

<comment><USER3> You can do a cheap prototype, mockup or wireframe.

If you can code, just code something simple you can test with minimal features.

Most failed sites and apps have way too many features that no one except technical founders and their 37 friends want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great advice, does anyone have some resources on how to pre-sell or pre-validate a product without much to show? I mean, I've always tried but if you describe something to someone and say "do you want this? Will you pay $20 for this?" they always say, "cool! sure!" and then don't answer when you come collecting product in hand.

<comment><USER9> patio11 has a good description on his site kalzumeus.com of how he market tested Appointment Reminder before he sold it to his customers. Sorry, don't have the link on me, but his whole site is pretty chock-full of good advice on selling software. Going through his lifecycle email course now, learning a lot.

<comment><USER10> Here's the meat of it, reposted from an HN comment since it is my most succinct account of the story:

 _A spiritually similar example: Appointment Reminder didn't actually exist in summer 2010, but I had a two-page demo of it set up. I got $400 out of an ATM when I went home to Chicago to visit, and just wandered around the Gold Coast/Magnificent Mile region of the city looking for every hair salon and massage therapy practice I could find. I asked them all if I they took walk- ins and, if so, could I have 30 minutes of the owner's time for whatever the rate was ($30 or so). In lieu of the shoulder massage/etc, I said "I'm interested in the massage therapy industry. Would you mind if we just chatted for half an hour about it?" And I asked about how they handled scheduling, appointments, no-shows, etc etc. I also did a demo of my two-page AR mini-app on the iPad and asked if they would be interested in buying it when it was ready. I think only one person actually accepted my money for the interviews. I got five-ish "Please tell me when that is ready" out of a dozen or so conversations. No Bay Area or signup form required. (I put their emails in a paper notebook. And lost it prior to launch. Whoopsie.) This was mostly successful for me: it confirmed that there was a market willing to pay for AR without me needing to actually build it to demonstrate that. (My sampling technique, which found only massage therapists/hair salons, did sort of lead me off the rails as to who I'd eventually end up targeting for most of the business. D'oh.)_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A corollary for today's frothy times:

      1. Put together team
      2. Sell: get acquihired
      3. No need to build anything later

</comment><comment><USER12> we definitely experienced this at matchist, and it has made us waste valuable months. now, we don't build ANYTHING unless at least 3 customers request it and unless it will affect the bottom line (no fancy feature upgrades)

</comment><comment><USER13> If you, like a lot of the startups outthere , are going ot make another better shopping, better video sharing, or better... whatever service/product then by all means, do that. But I bet you nobody who ever did anything original did that first. Because by definition if you want to come up with something new and different, people will invariably say No until they can actually touch it and feel it. After that they may or may not say yes, but definitely not before.

</comment><comment><USER14> Does advice like this apply in some way to personal/career development?

I would like to break in to a particular technical field. I believe that to work in that field, I'll need to demonstrate some measure of experience in that field. To that end, I'll need to build. This feels like a 'build first, sell later' kind of approach.

Or should I tip the scale toward 'selling' myself on the basis of my other useful experience, and build my expertise on the job?

<comment><USER15> IMO - you have to always sell first in everything you do... yes we want to build first to prove first... but convincing someone else you are capable is the first thing to be done... assuming you can really do it - if you don't sell first no one will give you the chance...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Before even delving into development beyond the internal spikes, put together your business model! You should have a pretty good idea who (and how numerous) your customers are, how much they're willing to pay, and how to reach them. Once you have those, you have some revenue numbers. From there, you can extrapolate at least a rough outline of a business plan.

If you can't figure out who the customers are or what they'll pay or how to get them to pay, then maybe you're sitting on a nice open source project instead. Lack of a business objective doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but maybe it means you shouldn't try to make a living from it.

<comment><USER17> After our first failed startup due to a lack of costumer interest we didn't even touch a text editor until 120 customer interviews. We wanted to be damn sure the problem we were attempting to solve was an actual problem.

During this search process we built out our business model canvas making the necessary changes along the way. Each week we focused on a certain section of the canvas and challenged those assumptions against what our customers were saying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is at its core tremendous advice... But let me temper it: don't sell, validate. In many applications sale risk is cheap enough (customers forgiving enough) that sales-as-validation is ok. Sometimes it sets up really bad expectations, though.

It's easy enough to validate without selling: just don't take people's money. It's less valuable than sales since you can't be sure people are making accurate financial decisions until you have their money, but it's both dramatically better than sitting in isolation coding and carries very low social risk.

</comment><comment><USER19> I really think its worth re-reading Venkatesh Rao's "Entrepreneurs are the new Labour" and his dissing of the Lean Startup movement (tldr - it's a great way for in estors to have control / viaibility over many more compliant startups than if entreprenuers really had peer power.)

Yes, go validate your assptions, get out of the building. But decide where your exit is, where your talents lie and how much is the opportunity cost.

</comment><comment><USER20> Excellent advice. Quite often when technical founders aren't quite sure how to go about the validation process, we tend to double-down on development. Instead the exact opposite is what seems to work best; get out there and talk to people you think need your painkillers.

</comment><comment><USER21> So true, we had to read Steve Blank to figure out this one. Our previous mindset was: let's build an 'MVP'(more like alpha/beta) and see how it goes.

Don't code an half-baked product to test the market when you can build demos and talk to real people.

</comment><comment><USER22> It also helps to be your own customer (or in that demographic). I'd suggest that you should have some kind of validation metric for knowing when to continue with the project as well, otherwise a project can drag on for much longer than it should.

</comment><comment><USER23> Fantastic advice. I first learned about this fantastic advice from a blog post by Dan Martell that I read a year or two ago.

Unfortunately, I can't find it on his blog or searching Google or I'd post it. :\

</comment><comment><USER24> Do folks have experiences to share on validating the idea without giving it away? Isn't there a risk that the if you tell people one of them will take your idea and run with it?

<comment><USER25> "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." -- Howard H. Aiken

I think it's a legitimate worry, but a small one. Novice entrepreneurs overvalue ideas. The majority of startups make major changes along the way. E.g., PayPal was, what, Levchin and Thiel's fifth product?

And the real magic to PayPal wasn't money transfer; it was the loss prevention that kept the business viable. The thing that distinguishes successful entrepreneurs isn't that they all had one good idea 5 years ago. It's that they kept having new ideas, and had the drive to push their ideas out into the world so that they could learn enough to spark the new ideas.

Practically, there may be a very small number of people who a) are smart and experienced enough to appreciate your idea, b) have more resources to execute, and c) aren't busy doing something they like better. Try not to let those people understand the secret sauce. But those people are hopefully not your customers, who are the main ones you should be validating your idea with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Replace all: "technical founder" to "founder".

Otherwise perfect. A+.

</comment><comment><USER26> tl;dr: market research + presales.</comment>


Great Barrier Reef underwater panoramas in Google Maps  - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/dive-into-great-barrier-reef-with-first_25.html

<comment><USER2> haha, I can imagine the discussion in the google maps office.

"Well, we've finished with all the planet's landmasses...can you make this thing waterproof?"

<comment><USER3> I'd personally vote for a tour of the trails in national parks.

<comment><USER4> Street View goes on a road trip through California's national parks

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/street-view-goes- on-r...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/street-view-goes-on-road-trip- through.html)

<comment><USER2> What's sad, though, is that are there roads (and parking lots) in those places... The streetviews just sort of rub it in. :(

A backpack-cam, on the other hand would be great, and give a much truer sense of what it's like to be out there in the middle of nowhere.

<comment><USER5> Well, here you are: [http://www.togtech.com/trekker-google-streetview-camera- in-a...](http://www.togtech.com/trekker-google-streetview-camera-in-a- backpack/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just tried this on my android phone and it works beautifully.

</comment><comment><USER7> All that coral bleaching makes me pretty sad. The reef was much more colourful but it has been declining for a long time now. I wonder how much will be left in another 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER8> I might be missing something, but why is everyone so excited about this? If you want a great experience of the oceans and reefs out there, you could load up an HD video on YouTube of the Great Barrier Reef, and view something much more immersive.

I'm a huge fan of street view, and I love being able to virtually drive to where I'm going, and find landmarks to help along the way, like for example, a large orange building next to the shop I'm planning to visit. How is ocean street view practical in anyway though? If it's for the user experiencing the ocean or planning their trip, they could upload a quick video of common snorkelling and diving points around coastlines and islands. It would give the user much more information. As of now, it's like flicking through a slideshow, and the navigation is brutal. I'm scratching my head here trying to come up with one thing this does well. As someone else said, I'd like to see more trails added to street view, or even more streets.

Google, since you have free time, here are a couple of ideas...

1\. Street view for different seasons. In certain countries, towns and streets look completely different depending on the month. I frequently use street view to browse areas I'm looking to live, or travelling. It would be useful if I could switch the images to summer, winter, etc.

2\. Video street view. Much more time consuming to create, since the camera would need to stay in a single spot for a minute at a time, and blurring sensitive information would be more challenging. However, imagine choosing a location on the map, and feeling like you're in that area of the city, or on that quiet road in the middle of the forest where you rotate the camera and follow a bird flying by.

<comment><USER9> _you could load up an HD video on YouTube of the Great Barrier Reef_

You can't control a video to see what you want to. You have some control with this underwater Street View. It's the same reason why I find Street View much more valuable than watching videos on YouTube of people driving.

<comment><USER8> Sure you can, here's an example.

[http://www.nimmobay.com/media/360-video/360-video-nimmo- bay-...](http://www.nimmobay.com/media/360-video/360-video-nimmo-bay- helicopter-resort)

Attach one of those to a diver at popular destinations. On Google maps, show a little video icon. Click the icon, watch, and look around as they swim the location. It's now easier to navigate, and gives you a better representation of snorkelling or diving in that area.

<comment><USER9> I was expecting a response like this, since I'm aware of these Immersive Media videos. But YouTube doesn't handle these type of videos (yet). They also don't let you control which direction you'd like to travel in.

Street View is more convenient as it offers the same 360 degree view as the Immersive Media videos yet more control like zoom and navigation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They didn't blur the face of the turtle.

</comment><comment><USER11> Most beautiful thing I have ever seen. We went diving there for our honeymoon. Spectacular.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does apple expect to beat this now?

<comment><USER12> Low Earth orbit panoramas.

<comment><USER13> Apple's 2011 net income significantly exceeded NASA's budget (About $25 billion to $18 billion). Orbital panoramas shouldn't be out of their reach.

<comment><USER14> The difference is that Apple is a for-profit company so they have to reinvest a portion of that back into the company, while NASA can - in fact, should - spend the entire budget :)

<comment><USER13> For sure - I wasn't advocating that Apple devote most resources to space travel, science and exploration. Just that they could afford to buy a launch or two from SpaceX like NASA does. It may even be in their financial interest to put up their own satellites with high-res cameras and telescopes. Mac desktop background images are celestial objects already. "Our latest innovation. Our best work. From Space."

Plus we know that Apple Maps could use a little help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Finally, they added it. Well I can tick that off of my list of dream holiday destinations!

<comment><USER16> Living life through Google.

<comment><USER15> I am hoping they add the forest behind my house so I don't have to take walks any more

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can't move around under the sea. It just seems like a geolocation-specific panorama integrated into Google Maps. I want to move around like a submarine!

<comment><USER18> Zoom out, there are white arrows that appear in the middle-bottom of the screen. Click those to travel in that direction. It's kind of like a choose your own adventure.

<comment><USER19> Indeed. Wow. <http://goo.gl/maps/uCnD2>

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the link, the original link results in a graphic of gears turning forever and not loading anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I can't wait til these are available via the API :)

</comment><comment><USER22> Google added street view to the Great Barrier Reef. This is easily the coolest thing they've done since earth.

</comment><comment><USER23> i demand a narrative about the turtle by David Attenborough in the background.

</comment><comment><USER24> the world is becoming so small, its great I guess but takes away from the mystery

<comment><USER25> And adds to it so much. At first glance, yes there is less of the world to explore, but there is suddenly so much more of the world to understand, and we've hardly touched the surface of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Game over, apple maps.</comment>


We Built on Ethereum Blockchain to Create New AR Real Estate and Ad Marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/b9vn45/we_built_on_ethereum_blockchain_to_create_a_new/ <comment><USER2> This is why alt coins fail. (Bitcoin might be digital gold)

There is seemingly No use-case.

Who cares if my video game data is trustless? Ubisoft's store bricked my copy of Farcry 3, and I will never buy a Ubisoft product again.

What is important enough to justify the large expense of blockchain.</comment>


The JavaScript Supply Chain Paradox: SRI, CSP and Trust in Third Party Libraries - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/the-javascript-supply-chain-paradox-sri-csp-and-trust-in-third-party-libraries/ <comment><USER2> It looks like this is being exploited in the wild [0].

[0] [https://twitter.com/mszustak/status/963322531729018880](https://twitter.com/mszustak/status/963322531729018880)</comment>


Marie Kondo, Fast Fashion, and the Thrift-Store Boom - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/01/tidying-up-with-marie-kondo-netflix-where-to-donate/580396/ <comment><USER2> Marie Kondo's marketing has been quite viral, I have not heard of this person 2 weeks before whereas now everyday I see a reference to Marie Kondo and tidying up.

<comment><USER3> It started with a New York Times best-selling book a handful of years back, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The most surprising thing in this article was a line about a shop in San Francisco:

> he shuttered in 2015 after rent rose from $4,000 to $12,000 per month.

Rent tripling instantly seems like it should be illegal -- that's absolutely ridiculous.</comment>


Mozilla Tests Premium VPN Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.ghacks.net/2018/10/21/mozilla-tests-premium-vpn-service/ <comment><USER2> Misleading title. They are just advertising an existing affiliate VPN service

</comment><comment><USER3> ProtonVPN's signup is disabled now.

[https://account.protonvpn.com/login](https://account.protonvpn.com/login)

<comment><USER4> Seems to have just been temporary. I'm presented with a signup link on that page.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu's bash and Linux command line coming to Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/ubuntus-bash-and-linux-command-line-coming-to-windows-10/ <comment><USER2> Cygwin has been around for at least a decade or more.....</comment>


Ask HN: What happened to the hackerne.ws domain - <AUTHOR>

It looks like it is a redirect to news.ycombinator.com. Any reason to change it from the way it was before? <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4756675>

Just pointing out this has already been asked.

</comment><comment><USER3> The hackerne.ws domain has never been under the control of PG or YC, so it was always a security breach waiting to happen (password sniffing).</comment>


Keypad Layout - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/janten/keypad-layout/releases <comment><AUTHOR> No affiliation, just a happy user.

Control window layout using Ctrl + Numeric Keypad on macOS.

Very simple but stable alternative to kvm or Amethyst.

I realise this was submitted previously, but since this was last submitted:

\- Support added for half and quadrant layouts

\- Support for OSX 10.10 all the way to macOS High Sierra</comment>


Unison – A statically-typed purely functional language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/unisonweb/unison <comment><USER2> I think the coolest aspect about Unison, is that they're trying to reify the concept of a codebase ([http://unisonweb.org/2016-09-17/editing.html](http://unisonweb.org/2016-09-17/editing.html)) into something more than just a collection of lines of source code. You can think of it more like a well-defined object that can be transformed in coherent, strongly-typed ways. Unison identifies everything by a hash, so if you "change" a function definition, you're not actually mutating any state in the codebase, you're introducing a new function with a new hash.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Unison is a new programming language, [...] similar to Haskell, but with a > unique ability to describe entire distributed systems with a single program.

Is this not something that could be done in Haskell by defining a new monad type? Perhaps also a tool to deploy such programs to the cluster would be useful. It seems to me that this paradigm doesn't require a whole new programming language, or that it wouldn't be as ergonomic in Haskell.

<comment><USER4> It seems like that is part of the plan, e.g.:

 _The nodes being provisioned are all local nodes, running in the same node container. Obviously we'd like to provision nodes running on other computers, or provision from a managed cloud service (like unison.cloud, coming soon) and /or a P2P mesh of nodes._

(From: [http://unisonweb.org/2016-10-12/search.html](http://unisonweb.org/2016-10-12/search.html))

And further down on the original linked page there's some more info on something it's using for the distributed system description that I don't believe would be possible in Haskell:

 _This dynamic transfer / deployment of arbitrary computations is possible because definitions in Unison are identified by a cryptographic hash of their content, including the hashes of all dependencies (the hash is also "nameless" as it isn't affected by naming of variables). ..._

I've been watching the project a bit here and there and it has a number if interesting aspects to it For another example, check out the 'semantic editor': [http://unisonweb.org/2016-03-16/semantic-vs- text.html](http://unisonweb.org/2016-03-16/semantic-vs-text.html)

<comment><USER5> When I read this:

        > If you look at what programmers spend their time doing when programming (other than thinking of course), it's actually stuff like:
        >
        > - Adding imports to the code to be able to resolve names
        >

It makes me wonder whether the authors have used a modern IDE in the past ten years.

The video in this page is also showing nothing that hasn't existed for years in pretty much all IDE's under the sun.

<comment><USER4> If you skim it, it will look that way.

What the editor is tackling has some overlap with common IDE features, but it's taking a deeper approach to addressing them.

You listed one item from a big list of tasks, but the more interesting thing is what's written after the list about how unison addresses the items.

And before demeaning the creators it may be worth it to look into their background a bit and see if it's more likely to you that they are unaware of modern IDEs or if it's possible you haven't fully grasped some of their ideas yet.

<comment><USER5> I am well aware of their background (I own their book) and this is precisely why I think they haven't used a lot of IDE's. Actually, these past years, I've heard a few times from one of them claiming that with a good language, one doesn't need an IDE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi folks, I'm one of the authors of Unison (Programming Language). Didn't expect to see this on HN, but happy to try to answer questions about our pre- alpha-release language :)

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks very promising. I'm curious though, is there any authentication mechanism here? If I have Unison installed does it start a listener and execute whatever code is sent to it?

<comment><USER6> There will be an authorization mechanism for distributed computation; we don't like arbitrary remote code execution!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm reminded of Ur/Web, [http://www.impredicative.com/ur/](http://www.impredicative.com/ur/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Love this idea:

> This dynamic transfer / deployment of arbitrary computations is possible > because definitions in Unison are identified by a cryptographic hash of > their content, including the hashes of all dependencies (the hash is also > "nameless" as it isn't affected by naming of variables).

> To transfer a computation, we send it to the recipient, and the recipient > checks to see if the computation references any unknown hashes. Any unknown > hashes are synced to the recipient before the transfer completes and the > computation proceeds.

Previous discussion (2015):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9512955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9512955)

</comment><comment><USER10> Also a file syncing tool by the same name, written in the ... functional language Ocaml.

</comment><comment><USER11> The name is already taken:

[https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/](https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/)

<comment><USER12> That's not a programming language. Different namespace.

<comment><USER13> No, but it's also in the space of functional programming language research.

<comment><USER14> I don't think a file sync tool that happens to be written in OCaml qualifies as FP research.

<comment><USER13> That's fair, but it was written by Ben Pierce of the FP research community. It's nice not to have two projects named the same thing within the same community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related: [http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/5569](http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/5569)

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of Swarm: [http://swarmframework.org/](http://swarmframework.org/)

<comment><USER17> Indeed! (Hi Ian!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Question: where is it used today?

<comment><USER14> It's not; it's incredibly alpha quality. Like, I'm working on a parser combinators library and step 1 was "add characters to the compiler."</comment></comment>


FCC approves 100% foreign ownership of U.S. broadcast properties [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-20-568A1.pdf <comment><USER2> "...the ruling is subject to the requirement that Cumulus obtain specific approval for any foreign individual, entity, or group of such individuals or entities that holds, or would hold, directly and/or indirectly, more than five percent (or more than 10 percent for certain institutional investors) of the equity and/or voting interests, or a controlling interest, in the company."

<comment><USER3> Which would be trivial when those individuals are lobbying the decision makers and bankrolling fcc-supporting entities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> for anyone else mislead by the title, this is not a blanket change but looks to be an exception being granted to an entity that owns 450 radio broadcast station licenses

<comment><USER5> That... isn't misleading...?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ya, this is going to end well for us.

From wikipedia... Cumulus Media, Inc. is an American broadcasting company and is the third largest owner and operator of AM and FM radio stations in the United States behind Entercom and iHeartMedia, Inc. As of June 2019, Cumulus lists ownership of 428 stations in 87 media markets.

</comment><comment><USER7> Queue China...

<comment><USER8> Cue</comment></comment>