Recognizing the signs of disruption in our urban habitat - <AUTHOR> https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/8/21/whats-wrong-with-this-picture <comment><USER4> This kind of economic dysfunction is often cited as the reason to switch to a Land Value Tax, which is explained pretty well on Wikipedia[1].

It's also why so many people were interested in SB-50[2], which would have overridden local zoning controls to allow higher density development around transit stops.

I think the biggest challenge is the transition. The current system is broken, but we typically look at changes in terms of the desired end-state, and when we look at it that way it's clear that the change will be very disruptive to a lot of people who are benefiting from the status quo. Those are the people who turn out and ensure that the changes cannot go through - even if they might agree that the long-term outcome would be better.

Strong Towns has done a good job emphasizing incrementalism in its approach to urban problems[3], but I'd love to see more of a conversation around this in a legal / regulatory context. Are there ways that we can undo the harm of bad regulations and transition to better ones that aren't so disruptive to the people who have built their lives around the current rules? What would those look like?

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

2: [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB50)

3: [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/5/incrementalism](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/5/incrementalism)

<comment><USER5> One way would be to buy people off: figure out the net economic benefit to the city, county or state of changing the rules, and as part of the rule change grant some fraction of those dollars to those who change in the way we want.

I can see two bug problems with this, one practical and one political. The practical one is that estimating benefit is a black art — we really can't trust anyone, partisan or non-partisan, to make accurate predictions of future economic benefits (there's a secondary practical sub-problem, which is that such an estimate would be ripe for capture). The political problem is that we'd end up rewarding those who have been benefiting all these years (e.g. all the homeowners with unrealistically low property taxes for the last four decades).

<comment><USER6> I'm in Seattle, and my house only a couple of blocks away from a new light- rail transit station that is opening. My neighborhood has been rezoned for MRU (condos and apartments vs the single family homes that are here now). Plus, the city is widening the main road my house is on (overdue anyway, but will definitely be further needed with the traffic to the rail station).

So we're either going to be bought by a developer or bought by the city, whichever comes first.

It's been an exercise in details for me, because I generally am not a NIMBY- ist and support the sorts of changes that will be moving us from our home. My objections are not to the fact that this will happen...but there's been VAST uncertainty.

* Will be forced out? If so, on what terms? (City is currently saying "relocation" rather than "property purchase", but only vague terms so far)

* Will a developer offer us enough money to match the way real estate costs have soared in the area? Would this be a nice payout, a basically flat deal, or a net reduction in convenience/comfort?

* And the real kicker...When? We've been told more info would be available in 6-24 months for...at least 2 years, probably 3. As it stands now, other than more certainty that staying is not an option, we still don't have any answers, certainly not enough to make plans for. I've let house repairs and maintenance lapse (overdue for a new roof and the electrical system is woefully inadequate. Drainage needs to be improved, and our fence has started to sag. A tree came down and we've just left it.)

When reading these sorts of debates I always imagined it was just a matter of "suck it up and accept that you have to have some inconvenience for the greater good". In practice, I didn't realize it would be years of uncertainty. Not knowing where you will live and what your resources will be like has been a real source of stress for my wife and I. Having a house that is creeping into disrepair and not knowing if you will put up with it for a year or 5 years before it is all torn down is a big pain. It puts another light on why someone might push back.

I'm still in favor of the greater good - but the cost has not been "I have to move". It's been much more.

<comment><USER7> Sorry to hear about your situation and impacts! Definitely sounds like a lot of stress!

Is the uncertainty because of eminent domain that the city is planning to use to force the relocation? If that's the case, I don't know that all that many on here are arguing in favor of the government forced sale.

It doesn't sound like you'd be forced to sell because of the potential appreciation in property alone, as that would be somewhat in your control.

<comment><USER6> It's a split. There's the eminent domain question from the city - they need space for the road, which would eat my front yard and put traffic a few feet from the front door. There are various kinds of eminent domain (some other comments have discussed the more speculative kind), but this is the more straightfoward "take your land, give you something of theoretical equal value, and use your land for city improvement". The uncertainty there comes in:

\- If it would happen at all. The city (technically Shoreline, not Seattle, but I'm literally across the street from Seattle) can't afford it, but it got federal funding to make a plan. Following the plan would take another infusion of cash from somewhere, but there are potential sources. Potential. Or maybe the street will just get more congested because they can't afford to fix it.

\- If it does happen, what form will it take? They are now talking "relocation", which I imagine would be easier on the city budget since they could use properties they own that have value on paper without having to find a way to make that value "real". But info is scarce, and until there's a real offer it will continue to be scarce. If it was an outright purchase there would still be questions (how much, when, would there be an interim where we can live/rent while finding a new home) and with the relocation it gets more uncertain (where, when, etc)

Then there's the flip side of the coin: If the city doesn't use eminent domain, or does so in a way that leaves the property usable (perhaps my front yard is halved), there's still the chance where I'm not "forced" to leave, but I may be stupid not do. My neighbors and I are considering selling to a developer as a block. Developers, sure to be able to build a profitable apartment/condo on what was multiple single lots, could pay a decent amount per sq/ft. I have no idea what numbers to trust, but the middle of the range of what I've heard being speculated about could very well put us in the "dumb not to take it". I like my house, and it is convenient and awesomely close to the light rail when it opens, but I'm not so attached I wouldn't sell, particularly if traffic on the street will get worse and louder (and possibly closer). In such a case, the house itself is meaningless, they just want the land. But this is also fully speculative. I don't know if there will be real offers, if there are I don't know what they would be, and I don't know how the _possible_ eminent domain would impact it.

And there's no real way to get answers to those questions without waiting out the clock. Which is what we've been doing. For years, and probably another year or two to go.

<comment><USER7> Thank you! That paints a very clear (and clearly stressful) picture.

Hope it all works out for you and yours in the end!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of a similar land use issue I've seen a hundred times over. In major cities, in the middle of some of the densest, most trafficked, most transit-oriented neighborhoods, you'll find vacant lots and storefronts that sit there for _years_. Places that could, presumably, bring in many thousands of dollars every month in rent instead bring in $0 month after month. And the prime real estate sits unused, despite the thousands of residents and tourists that walk buy every single day. I've seen it in many different cities and towns.

Maybe there is some real-estate-specific knowledge I lack that can explain this phenomenon?

<comment><USER9> The land value appreciates over time regardless of use. Why worry about setting up a business and trying to make money when you could do nothing and make a lot of money 10 years down the line when you sell?

<comment><USER10> The value of commercial real estate is also tied directly to what it can rent for so you're encouraged to wait to maximize rent which may mean leaving it abandoned or vacant.

<comment><USER11> That's the ironic part. The more valuable the local market is, the more incentive there is for some people to sit on their asses.

That tells me that taxes are too low. Not necessarily taxes for used property, but vacant/unused property could be taxed more effectively to promote development.

<comment><USER12> Would love to see a gradually increasing tax on unused/underused property - <USER2> small time landlords who lose a lease aren't screwed over but no one should be leaving storefronts empty for years

It's terrible in Toronto, you'll see complete sections of the street literally empty since there's so many tax benefits for empty commercial-retail space

<comment><USER13> Where in Toronto? I don't really notice this phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm glad the article brought up Prop 13. It is my belief that Prop 13 is the biggest cancer on the state of California, and one that we will almost never be rid of. Prop 13 is why people don't move. Prop 13 is why California occasionally has budget issues. Prop 13 makes my parents home property taxes 1/4th the amount of my own, despite their home being 4x the value of mine.

<comment><USER15> Prop 13 was a reaction against confiscatory taxes that broke an important social contract.

The contract: If you save, invest, and pay off your home mortgage so that you own it free and clear, later in life when you are retired and living on a fixed income no one can come along and confiscate the property that you bought and paid for fair and square.

The contract breech: Property taxes going up so fast that the only possible solution was to sell your home. Now, of course the value of the home was going up, which was what was driving the taxes. But forcing pensioners to sell their homes, disrupting/destroying a life-time of plans and work was never going to be a smooth ride -- who could have thought that it would be?

The government pre-Prop 13 was viewed as kleptocratic by a sizeable portion of the population, with arguably good reason.

So, do you have a better solution that has empathy for pensioners that played by the rules all their lives and have plans to settle into modest enjoyment of their so-called "golden years"? Prop 13 was an attempt to stop perceived thievery, a crude bludgeon, perhaps, but a sufficient number of desperate people saw it as a solution to get it enacted.

<comment><USER16> > The contract breech: Property taxes going up so fast that the only possible > solution was to sell your home. Now, of course the value of the home was > going up, which was what was driving the taxes.

The State of California offers another solution. It's called Property Tax Postponement: [https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html](https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html)

"The State Controller's Property Tax Postponement Program allows homeowners who are seniors, are blind, or have a disability to defer current-year property taxes on their principal residence if they meet certain criteria including 40 percent equity in the home and an annual household income of $35,500 or less."

The taxes are deferred until a change of control, like due to a sale or transfer to next of kin. Many or most high-cost-of-living jurisdictions have similar programs.

<comment><USER5> That's a _really_ low annual household income, particularly for California. But perhaps it's tweakable.

<comment><USER17> This is aimed at elderly people making a living from a pension, social security, etc. Not for people currently earning a full-time salary.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but $35,000 from one's pension/401(k)/Social Security is still peanuts for California. That's got to be well below effective poverty level for someone living in San Francisco, LA or San Diego, even without rent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In texas we only have property taxes. Commercial property tends to be undertaxed because the appraisal districts are not allowed to see actual sales prices. Property taxes tend to be around 2-2.5% and for non homestead properties there is no limit to the increase.

We regularly hear about older people getting taxed out of their homes (though there are programs to somewhat hold their taxes constant).

In austin we are starting to have an affordability crisis, whereas cities like houston are doing much better.

The taxation is the same, what is different is the restrictive zoning in austin. In austin permitting can take 6-9 months and single family zoning restricts what can be built. The city council tried to revise zoning and failed due to NIMBYs, but they are trying again this year.

This is a reminder that the more competing systems of laws we have the better. Every program implemented at the federal level only gives us one chance to get it right. The state level gives us 50 chances and the local level gives us thousands of chances.

<comment><USER19> No opinion on the specific issue at hand, but wouldn't you eventually want to take the winning system of laws and implement it on federal level? Or would you expect better performing systems to naturally spread over? Are there any examples of that actually happening?

<comment><USER20> I think it is not state spread vs. federal, but more like state spread -> federal. Disclaimer: talking about the US.

For something simple that can stand on its own, that was what we saw with gay marriage and, I personally believe, what we will see with cannabis legalization.

For something as complex and interconnected as property taxes, I don't think it will be that easy to convert it to federal, so state spread is what we can hope for in the near future. An example of a similar issue is income taxing, where we ended up with a two-tiered solution: one federal (same for every state) + one state (differs for each state, with some having none at all).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Around Seattle, people bought up land in anticipation of light rail coming in a decade+ later. The gambling ones bought up the land before the propositions to fund light rail to those areas had even passed.

One of my friends took that gamble, in another decade it is going to pay of handsomely.

<comment><USER22> Is there no way that the government can buy large plots of land around planned stations, build the railroad and then sell back the land?

<comment><USER23> Sure the government _could_ do it. But any city council that tried to do this would likely find themselves voted out.

Case in point: it was a tough push to get AB 2923 through the CA legislature. It allowed BART to build dense housing on their own parking lots. Thankfully common sense prevailed. The bill was approved and BART is now using their power to plan for more transit oriented development.

<comment><USER22> > Sure the government could do it. But any city council that tried to do this > would likely find themselves voted out.

Who votes them out and with what arguments?

<comment><USER24> Mostly people who moved into what was a sleepy suburb 30 years ago wanting it to remain a sleepy suburb.

<comment><USER25> Sleepy suburb with Sun headquarters.

<comment><USER26> This makes it not just unnatural but an injustice.

The sleepy suburb gets the commercial revenue from having a major tech firm, and then most of the workers leave and the residentialists get to keep the revenue for their city services.

The service workers who had to drive until they qualified, they go home to more far-flung suburbs with financial problems and poor services. This is segregation by deliberate policy.

But it's starting to fall apart. When there were still nearby orchards to pave to put up parking lots, the new homes were cheaper than they are today, and the rich suburb could still hire workers to provide the services. Now that there's not enough room for both new single-family homes and parking lots, and they are refusing to allow sufficient multi-family housing, the housing supply is not keeping up with demand and the service workers are increasingly refusing to take the jobs. This is manifesting as chronic short-handedness in the schools, in the police and fire departments, in the transit agencies. By greedily holding onto commercial revenues, these suburbs are destroying their own ability to provide services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I like the concept of living near strong connectivity; however there are other downsides that NEED to be addressed.

1) The building code isn't good enough. I should not be able to hear my neighbors, let alone the train, at all when things are closed. I should also have fresh air that doesn't smell like laundry, perfumes, the garbage chute, or whatever cooking experiments are happening in other apartments.

2) Outside of cities cars are still needed; more so in America. That rail network needs to connect to multiple potential 'apartments for my car'. Those are also the places that would be a dropoff / interface for external to the city users to drive to and then take transit infrastructure the rest of the way in.

<comment><USER28> There's an argument that outside of actual safety issues, maybe it's best to leave this up to the market.

My wife and I looked at a house once in Padova, where we lived, that was _right next_ to the train tracks. You couldn't help but feel the trains go by, let alone hearing them. It was not for us, but it _was_ super cheap, and might have been an option for someone without a lot of other good options - or a great option for someone hearing impaired who didn't care too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I can speak to the NJTransit example briefly buzzed past. In NJ, train stations are not destinations. Most people I see get off the train and into either an Uber or some other NJTransit vehicle.

Edited because of a misclick.

<comment><USER30> _In NJ, train stations are not destinations._

Isn't that the point the writer is making? That they should be bustling hives of residential, retail and commercial activity.

<comment><USER29> Yes, and the issue is that the trains were put in places that never were destinations. You would have to change the long-standing habits of businesses and commuters to alter that. Even they light rail doesn't change that. Mass transit fits in the edges and cracks here, and is something of a "necessary annoyance" to the state. For proof, look no further than the aggressive privatization of bus lines to companies who can't or won't run the buses on the schedule set by NJTransit. And they aren't being penalized in any meaningful way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There might be a stigma associated with being close to a railway.

It's a meme in some movies - someone is staying in a run-down apartment or hotel near railway tracks and train will go by at night causing dust to shake loose from the ceiling.

Caltrain stations are subject to these kinds of noise and vibration - <USER3> the day the baby bullets bypass stations at 60 mph, and at night endlessly long freight trains barrel past.

<comment><USER32> I just wanted to say that you should have used the word trope instead of meme.

<comment><USER31> Yes, you're right (I would change my comment but missed the edit deadline)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is only a problem for a very few areas of the United States. Remember, US population is leveling off. The current growth rate is 0.8% per year. Without illegal immigration, that number will go negative, as it already has for Japan and most of Europe. The current US fertility rate is 1.8. 2.1 is breakeven.

New York City had about the same population in 1950 and 2000. Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland have all shrunk. New York was once the largest city in the world; now it's in 9th place. Nationwide, there's no great need to build.

Remember the 2008 recession in the Bay Area? FOR SALE signs everywhere? No traffic jams? It's coming again, probably within the next year.

<comment><USER34> Japan is also having a concentration effect. Japan might be shrinking, but tokyo is growing as everyone moves there. There is no signs of this general trend abaiting. Recessions are also only a few years long, the growth trend is the status quo for the majority of the time.

<comment><USER33> Yes, Tokyo and Osaka are up. The rest of Japan is emptying out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is definitely not true for older cities like NYC and Chicago. The land around train stops is valuable there. Chicago area grew outward from the train lines before cars showed up. Each stop has a town with its own higher density downtown.

</comment><comment><USER36> North Sydney around Ryde used to be like this. Low density with lots of shuttered shopfronts. But Sydney has undergone a massive apartment development boom and the areas around these train stations often have high rise apartments now. The shops are all occupied. Eastwood even has a minimum height requirement for new buildings.

</comment><comment><USER37> Low density notwithstanding, the Menlo Park example does seem like a nice, walkable downtown area near the train station.

(And apparently the Menlo Park station was built in 1867, making it one of the oldest passenger rail stations in California!)

</comment><comment><USER38> Keep in mind, Redwood City will be literally underwater along with the rest of the Bay Area in a few decades.

<comment><USER39> If the Bay is still relevant at that time, then all it would take is a few hundred million to contain the rising water levels, in the form of barriers, flood walls, etc.

<comment><USER40> Who's paying?

<comment><USER41> How about the property owners whose property this build will protect.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Case for Stanislaw Lem - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/the-case-for-stanislaw-lem-one-of-science-fictions-unsung-giants-94aee43db04f <comment><USER2> I grew up with Lem's works as a kid, teenager and young adult in West Germany in the 80's. Lem spoke German so he was involved with the translations and there wasn't anything he wrote that didn't get translated to German. Not least because East Germany, together with Poland, was part of the Soviet block.

I read 'Eden' when I was in 3rd grade -- my dad left it laying on the table in our living room. It had the world 'alien' as part of the subtitle so I was hooked.

When my dad found out, about a year later, that I read and grokked the book he read my three years younger brother and me the 'The Invincible' as a bedtime story over many nights. My poor little brother. :)

I think it was 'Eden' that thus set the standard for my expectations of sci-fi (aka: hard sci-fi).

It was probably also the reason that I am forever disappointed by the pale vision of blockbuster and series sci-fi. Or most sci-fi in general, written or filmed.

And I often have deja-vus when I read contemporary sci-fi because of my exposure to Lem. When I e.g. read Watt's 'Blindsight' I couldn't help comparing it to Lem's 'Fiasko'.

I never understood the public's focus on 'Solaris' and even less how both movies missed the core theme of the book so badly.

And lastly: there is unfortunately a substantial body of shorter works from Lem that has still not been translated to English.

<comment><USER3> It was 'Invincible' for me.

And Pilot Pirx stories - the atmosphere that flying spaceships is just dirty, demanding, lonely job like driving a lorry. 1978 Polish-Soviet film based on 'Pilot Pirx Test' was very good ...

[https://youtu.be/JSft0QLoVpQ](https://youtu.be/JSft0QLoVpQ)

And Futurological Congress.

EDIT: Also Perfect Void (Doskonała Próżnia) and Imaginary Value (Wielkość Urojona) - introductions to non-existing books and Inquiry (Śledztwo) - one of two Lem's quirky crime novels about mysterily disapearing corpses from mortuaries...

[https://pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_pierwszych_wyda%C5%84_...](https://pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_pierwszych_wyda%C5%84_dzie%C5%82_Stanis%C5%82awa_Lema_drukiem_zwartym)

<comment><USER4> There was a German TV show adapted from that: [https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0978537/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0978537/) (Ijon Tichy, Space Pilot)

It's pretty quirky. A mix of Lem and maybe old school Doctor Who. It operated on zero budget and thus had a few charming props.

If you understand German I highly recommend it. Sadly it's almost impossible to translate to other languages because of the made up dialect used in it, which is the basis for much of its comedy. But looking at clips on YouTube should give you some idea.

<comment><USER5> > There was a German TV show adapted from that: > [https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0978537/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0978537/) > (Ijon Tichy, Space Pilot)

I just want to point out that Ijon Tichy is a different character than Pirx and a hero of its own series of tales. The confusion is understandable, because at at a glance they appear to be very similar characters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stanislaw Lem is one of my favorite authors. "His Masters Voice" is one of my favorite books.

"Cyberiad" and "Mortal Engines" are also great books but much more playful and probably geared towards a younger audience, even if some of the subject matter is philosophically deep.

I think Stanislaw Lem kind of suffered from the same fate as Gibson's work in that there have been a few attempts at making them into movies but they haven't ever really took off or translated well.

I do wish his books were in the public domain, though.

<comment><USER7> Tarkovskis Solaris is really good.

<comment><USER8> Lem hated it. He said Tarkovski turned his book into a Dostoyevsky novel.

The problem is that it focused almost exclusively on the relationship drama and jettisoned the science fiction.

<comment><USER9> I found the movie to be _incredibly_ boring, so I read the book to find out if it was just a bad adaption. In my opinion the book was even more boring.

<comment><USER10> Well, you can't watch a Tarkovski movie and expect gripping or drama. The same goes for Lem's books. They just require a different mindset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I got a 404, so I did a quick Google search. This seems to be the article in question —> [https://onezero.medium.com/the-case-for-stanislaw-lem-one- of...](https://onezero.medium.com/the-case-for-stanislaw-lem-one-of-science- fictions-unsung-giants-94aee43db04f)

I am excited to read it. I just finished reading Solaris for the first time, and it was mind-changing. I highly recommend it to any of you who haven't read it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_\(novel\))

<comment><USER12> > I just finished reading Solaris for the first time, and it was mind- > changing.

I have heard Solaris refered to as being mind-changing before. What was it about Solaris that impacted you so much?

After first hearing about Solaris decades ago, I finally got around to reading it upon learning of his passing. I must have missed something because it didn't strike me as living up to its reputation.

<comment><USER13> Solaris is different from most scifi in which aliens are presented in largely anthropomorphic terms. They're either humanoids, monsters from our nightmares, or they take on the form of humans or human communication. What they lack is the quality of being truly alien.

The Solaris ocean is utterly alien to the point that the humans are unable to understand and communicate with it, despite it clearly possessing some form of intelligence. The alien isn't a mirror for the human reader. It also presents issues for science, since Solaris can't be understood, implying that science is limited by our being human. And that kind of mind-blowing.

<comment><USER14> > The Solaris ocean is utterly alien to the point that the humans are unable > to understand and communicate with it

This is the theme of all Lem's novels involving aliens: Planet Eden, Fiasco, Solaris, The Invincible and His Master's Voice. It's the opposite of our Western optimistic idea that we can face any challenge and solve any riddle, either thanks to a universality of scientific reasoning (such as in Greg Egan's novels) or because the aliens are nothing other than Americans or Nazis in rubber costumes (as in most SF blockbusters).

<comment><USER13> There are even people who think we can solve the "problem" of entropy and find a way to keep civilization going beyond the heat death of the universe, and this is a challenge we should start working on. It sounds absurdly optimistic.

Then again, I have no idea what life might do trillions of years in the future, if there is any life around then. But if there is, I highly doubt it will be remotely human, so what difference would it make to us now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lem was a brilliant writer and I'd recommend his books to anyone, not just science fiction fans.

The author of this article seems to have an ideological axe to grind though. Lem himself was never so humorless and hamfisted. In fact his books are often very funny.

<comment><USER16> The Star Diaries are a great example of his funnier (yet still remarkably thoughtful) writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish Janusz Zajdel had more recognition abroad. I believe only a few of his works were ever translated to English and you can draw interesting parallels between them and Lem's books.

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

</comment><comment><USER18> Stanislaw Lem is a brilliant writer. It is unfortunate that the article tells about him through the lens of the Golden Age and modern progressive views, which hardly relate to him.

As many other authors behind the Iron Curtain, he was largely isolated from the contemporary Western cultural influence. His biography and the vibrant Polish surrealism scene would give a much better background.

</comment><comment><USER19> One of Lem's translators, Michael Kandel, wrote a few good books of his own. I really liked _Strange Invasion_ and _Panda Ray_.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Summa Technologiae" is also quite excellent and incredibly prophetic.

</comment><comment><USER21> Lem's Ijon Tichy stories are surprisingly funny. He has a reputation for seriousness (because of "Solaris", I assume), but they're among the funniest sci-fi stories I've ever read.

<comment><USER22> Ijon Tichy is there with HHGTG.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am a huge fan of Lem and it is good to see these books are getting new translations and editions. I also like the cool 50s sci fi covers.

But something is really annoying me -- why did they spell the name of the author in Polish? You have to decide whether the book is in English or Polish and if you have an English book you should have an English cover, otherwise you are just going to confuse your customers. If you print the largest writing on the cover in Polish a lot of people looking at the cover will quite understandably think the entire book is in Polish.

I know the Polish has a cool looking L and all but that is not sufficient to cause confusion.

Also the guy deserves to have his name correctly pronounced by people who read him, as much as practical for people with a foreign language, and the Polish W is pronounced as a V. Thus, for an English speaker it is better to just write Stanislav.

</comment><comment><USER24> I love Stanislaw Lem's work. I particularly enjoyed Futurological Congress. It was so absurd but I loved how it explored how it is never possible to be 100% sure that what you are experience is "real". The trippiness of all of the drugs and absurd situations was hilarious. Highly recommend.

<comment><USER25> Yes! I also really enjoyed the Futurological Congress. The film rendition, while straying from the short story significantly, is still worth watching I think. [https://imdb.com/title/tt1821641](https://imdb.com/title/tt1821641)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good selection. 'Return from the Stars' is more relevant today than it was when it was written. Its a story about sociocultural evolution and Lem clearly has a deep insight.

(the book has tablet computers and e-paper too).

<comment><USER27> Return from the stars is my favorite. In a some sense it is still about how to deal aliens that we cannot understand, it is just the aliens is future society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Among film adaptations of Lem's works I like "Inquest of Pilot Pirx" from 1979 the best. It is rather off from the story, but at least it portrayed Pirx close to how I imagined him.

</comment><comment><USER28> Off topic:

>>he was was in peak form during the '60s and '70s

Is this usage correct? Or is the second "was" a typo?

I am not a native English speaker so forgive if this is something very basic.

<comment><USER29> error/typo

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Another interesting read: Memoirs Found in a Bathtub.

It's a bit dark, but a fun jump down the post apocalyptic bureaucratic wormhole where everyone is spying on everyone and nothing is safe.

</comment><comment><USER31> For fans of crime/detective novels, I would not hesitate to recommend 'The Chain of Chance'.

Utterly gripping, fascinating, and a gateway to Lem's sci-fi works.

</comment><comment><USER29> Lem was a great author of real imaginative fiction. His novels shaped my world view more than any other SF author. I hope more of his stuff gets republished.

</comment><comment><USER32> As long as they don't make a machine that can make anything, provided it starts with the letter "N", I'm all for it.

</comment><comment><USER33> I absolutely love Lem. He is a giant in my eyes. Very nice to know that MIT has decided to reprint some of his work.

</comment><comment><USER34> Lem explains "the human problem"</comment>


JSON to HTML - <AUTHOR> http://json2html.tk/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, This tool converts json to html and renders the output to a div. This way it becomes easier for the eyes to navigate through the json

<comment><USER2> Nice. Is there a reverse tool that can convert a similar text layout to json where the child/sibling/parent relationship can be indicated for any item with some sort of code marking its genealogy?</comment></comment>


Ask PG: Can you explain the new features? - <AUTHOR>

I notice that karma on comments is now hidden, and that some comments have an orange dot.  I've also noticed that some user names on submissions are green.  There may be other changes I haven't noticed.<p>Could you (or somebody) give a brief rundown of the changes, and the intent? <comment><USER2> speculation is rife over here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333>

n00bs have green names, probably you can only see points on comments if you have enough karma, and so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen the speculation; I was hoping that PG might weigh in with some actual facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Probably best to just wait until the experiment is over and then explain what was tried, what [seemed to] work and what [seemed not to] work. Especially since some of the changes are having short lives (orange dot).

</comment><comment><USER4> Just a test to see how my name looks. I've been green names and orange dots. Anything else?</comment>


Ask HN: Is it just me or is every normal Wordpress blog slowish? - <AUTHOR> Asking myself if I should go the hugo route or Wordpress route for a new blog and multi authors. I've compared several amateur (with amateur I mean many semi pro blogs which are not hosted by a big company) Wordpress blogs and I have the feeling they all feel slowish. I don't know the real reason but it seems like a mixture of bad image management, too big HTML and maybe also Wordpress itself (I thought it is fast with PHP 7 nowadays). <comment><USER2> It's not just you - I have always avoided WordPress because of this. I don't have any technical data to back it up, but that's how it feels!

Hugo/Jekyll is my default. Jekyll especially with the Github pages integration.

<comment><AUTHOR> thx, it's strange but there are really many Wordpress blogs which feel like this and they are not really complicated. Many of them are beautiful from content perspective but sluggish when seeing how slow they feel while scrolling and navigating through the blog (reloading times seem really bad). Seems it is easy to make your Wordpress blog feel slow.</comment></comment>


Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbr.com/drive-in-show-42-disney-prevents-black-panther/ <comment><USER2> Disney didn't "stop" theaters from screening Black Panther this past/upcoming weekend. Like most Disney films, it's not available for second-run showings.

It's long-standing Disney policy, and has effected films from the Fox film archives as well. ([https://www.latimes.com/entertainment- arts/business/story/20...](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment- arts/business/story/2019-08-09/will-disney-let-theaters-screen-old-fox- movies))

<comment><USER3> Well, that is stopping theaters from screening the movie.

Ok, they do do that by policy, not by exception. But the title is correct.

<comment><USER4> OP's point was that while the title is technically correct, it's a bit clickbaity

<comment><USER3> A bit, but not much.

A lot of people want to give Disney some money; Disney refuses. The title is an apt description of that, and not misleading. It's a bit hyperbolic, but only if you are interested on the Disney's side, for any other point of view it looks reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would assume it's because the Mulan live action remake is also releasing that weekend. Black panther was extremely popular and they don't wanna compete with themselves on the critical opening weekend.

<comment><USER6> It's not a first run theater. They don't typically block that segment based on the first run segment.

<comment><USER7> Mulan is straight to streaming though, so it does compete in terms of eyeballs. If folks are preoccupied with a BP screening they may not have time or want to also watch Mulan in the same weekend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Read the room, Disney.

<comment><USER9> When you own everything and everyone, like Disney, you don't _have_ to read the room.

<comment><USER10> This reminds me of the protests in Reedy Creek in Florida I've heard about. My wife was driving near Downtown Disney (now called Disney Springs) and saw the signs of the protests. They basically held signs saying 'Reedy Creek IS DISNEY' which is basically true as far as anybody is concerned. They're not allowed to have their own police department, but they employ police officers from Orange County. So yeah, if you live in Florida, you'd definitely see how Disney owns more than they probably should.

[https://www.wesh.com/article/reedy-creek-firefighters- protes...](https://www.wesh.com/article/reedy-creek-firefighters-protest- benefits/3856409)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hadn't actually realized that Chadwick Boseman had passed away until yesterday.

Rest in peace.</comment>


Stem cell treatment corrects vision in mice - <AUTHOR> http://www.gyp4.com/blindmice.htm <comment><USER2> Please don't use phony redirection links.

Direct link:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20061213082251/http://news.bbc.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20061213082251/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6120664.stm)</comment>


Epic Games releases $12M worth of Paragon assets for free - <AUTHOR> https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-games-releases-12-million-worth-of-paragon-assets-for-free <comment><USER2> The Paragon closure has come with a surprising number of upsides compared to the usual collapse of a game. I really wish more companies opened up their assets (or even the game code) upon the closure of a game they've written off.

The other highlight note is that when Epic decided to shutdown Paragon, they opened up the refund offer for _all_ purchases, not just really recent ones. They've taken essentially a complete loss on this entire project, that I believe had upwards of 100 developers working on it at one point.

But given Fortnite's success, plus the general solid padding of cash Epic always gets from having one of the most popular game engines that everyone else uses, means they can afford it.

<comment><USER3> > They've taken essentially a complete loss on this entire project

It's a genius financial and strategical move, predicated by having a lucky monster success elsewhere in the company that required a quick influx of resources (Fortnite). They can effectively write off a failed game over the next 5 years, and reduce their tax burden as a result. They then act as a "benevolent" actor to the gaming development community by giving away assets that have no financial incentive to them. So they get a nice influx of resources and get to advertise to a new pool in the same breadth. That's a win-win.

EDIT: I should also note - I was a benefactor of shifting my payment from Paragon to Fortnite. Given that it had no variable cost to give me $20 worth of skins in Fortnite, that's a pretty solid user acquisition strategy.

<comment><USER4> I don't see why benevolent needs to be in quotes in your comment.

Regardless of whatever financial or tax upside they get from doing this, the upside the game development community gets is the same.

They are doing something they really didn't need to do, and as GP pointed out, most companies don't do.

<comment><USER5> "As with all of Epic's internally developed assets, the Paragon assets are only licensed for use in Unreal Engine 4."

This is marketing for their game engine. They don't have to do it, sure. But SaaS companies don't have to provide free blogs, webinars and e-books either but we don't pretend they are benevolent for doing so.

Don't get me wrong. I think more art assets available in the game dev community is a good thing. I think more free stuff from one company (Epic in this case) will beget more free stuff from their competitors (Unity mainly). I'm just pointing out that this isn't free for the sake of being benevolent. It's free for the sake of capturing market share.

<comment><USER6> > I'm just pointing out that this isn't free for the sake of being benevolent. > It's free for the sake of capturing market share.

this seems like it could be a false dichotomy. it's not obvious why it can't be both.

<comment><USER5> Benevolent: "(of an organization) serving a charitable rather than a profit- making purpose."

That's not how this word works. We can use another one.

I hasten to add, again, that I'm attributing nothing pejorative. I'm glad Epic have done this. It's great marketing that may be helpful to lots of people.

<comment><USER6> "benevolent" wasn't being used to describe the organization, it was being used to describe a particular action.

<comment><USER7> The issue is this action isn't benevolent. It's nice, but as said previously it's to promote their engine. So they will profit from it indirectly.

If on the other hand they would release the assets without strings attached (for use with any game engine / in any way) then I'd say this word would apply.

<comment><USER6> and my point was that this seemed like a false dichotomy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Epic is absolutely SWIMMING in money thanks to what was essentially a weekend project by two of their engineers.

Fornite BR is exploding in popularity, with Ninja recently streaming with Drake, Kim Dotcom and another popular rapper. They broken the all-time record with 620k+ viewers at 2am!

I'm sure their success facilitated the decision to release this for free and also give out refunds for Paragon. Win/win for them!

<comment><USER9> Wasn't Fortnite just a quick clone of PUBG once they saw it taking off?

<comment><USER10> Sort of, but Epic Games seem to actually know how to program. PUBG, not unlike it's former competitor H1Z1, has languished with a terrible code base whose technical debt seems to have kept PUBG from ever really fixing things. The netcode is bad, the game runs AWFUL on all setups (Twitch streamers with state of the art computers were forced to play on low settings while streaming on the same computer), and there seem to be some particular performance issues with AMD CPUs.

Cheating is also a major issue.

So it was a clone, but basically a better one than the original.

Fortnite is the first survivor game that _just works_.

I felt bad for PUBG first, but PUBG is still such a huge mess, I do have to give it to Epic for building an extremely solid game that runs well and isn't rife with cheaters.

Shame about the business model, though.

<comment><USER11> Helps when you have inside knowledge of how the every part of the engine works though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >> "As with all of Epic's internally developed assets, the Paragon assets are only licensed for use in Unreal Engine 4."

'You've raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, sir - bravo!'

</comment><comment><USER13> > Epic Games releases $12M worth of Paragon assets for free

> The assets, built at a cost of over $12 million...

It's a common mistake to assume that something is worth what it cost to create it.

<comment><USER14> Value is relative, right? It depends on who looks at it. To Epic, they're definitely worth $12M whilst to you and me it's probably not more than a couple hundred bucks (unless you're a game dev in need of assets, that is),

<comment><USER13> > To Epic, they're definitely worth $12M

No, that's the fallacy. The assets are only worth $12 million to Epic if Epic has a viable way to reap $12 million in benefit from them. The fact that it cost Epic $12 million to create the assets has nothing to do with it. That's just sunk cost.

<comment><USER15> There's now a business loss of $12M on their books, so they're getting benefits on their next tax filing. That's where the real monetary value comes from.

<comment><USER16> > loss of $12M on their books

this is really hard to quantify independently, and they can use this figure to inflate their losses to claim more taxation benefit than otherwise deserved.

Why can't i say that I "lost" 12million developing my indie game, and therefore, claim some taxes off my casual contract work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One question before I cement Epic Games as a game company (or just tech company in general) that does things differently in an an interesting way: How easy is it to import/export models/ UnrealEngine assets to other platforms? If I want to use an asset from UnrealEngine in like godot, how easy would it be?

This is pretty massive if it's really a no-strings-attached release of assets to the community but the skeptic in me says there's no way it's _just_ that

<comment><USER18> Looks like the assets are licensed for only to be used in UE4 based products [https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/paragon- dekker](https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/paragon-dekker)

<comment><USER17> Aaaaand there it is. The've basically converted their writeoff to a lossleading/marketing spend. Nothing wrong with shrewd business moves, and I guess they're not trying to mislead people intentionally.

Well nice of them to release the assets at least, I'm sure devs who are already committed to UE4 are pretty stoked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What's the EULA on those assets? Are they UE4-only?

<comment><USER20> [https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal- engine/announcements-...](https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal- engine/announcements-and-releases/1445832-12-million-worth-of-paragon-assets- released)

Q: How much do I have pay for the Paragon assets?

A: Nothing! They're completely free. You can use them in both commercial and non-commercial Unreal Engine 4 projects.

Q: Are there any restrictions on the use of the Paragon assets?

A: As with all of Epic's internally developed assets, the Paragon assets are only licensed for use in Unreal Engine 4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice. I bet this is going to encourage more asset flips though.

<comment><USER22> What do you mean by asset flip? (And how would this encourage this)

<comment><USER23> I've generally heard the term used to refer to low-effort games that are basically just third-party assets packaged up and sold as a full experience, while having little to no "playable content". The availability of these assets could encourage this since they are freely available.

<comment><USER24> It's especially common to throw these together as "early access" games, pretending that they're still in development and will get deeper content at a later date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This reminds me of the Golgotha drop from 2000: unfinished code and assets from a scrapped game, released as open source/PD. I don't know what, if anything, ever became of those...

<comment><USER6> wow, thanks for reminding me of that. i remember this happening...brings back some memories. i was trying to learn to program my own games, and this event (despite the unfortunate circumstances) seemed like some gift from the gods in terms of being able to see the guts of a real game.

looks like some stuff is on github:

[https://github.com/videogamepreservation/golgotha](https://github.com/videogamepreservation/golgotha)

[https://github.com/saniv/golgotha](https://github.com/saniv/golgotha)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can someone with more knowledge comment on how strictly tied to the unreal ecosystem these assets are?

<comment><USER27> As per their license, you cannot use them outside of UE4. This means that while you may be able to pull out the assets from your UE project and import them in Unity, it's not legal to do so.

<comment><USER28> Maybe you could use them in another engine if you show the Unreal engine logo on startup and pay for the licensing of the Unreal engine. (Though I assume other proprietary engines like Unity have rules against portraying their engine as another with the other's logo shown first.)

<comment><USER27> If you have money to get Epic to make an exception for you, you likely don't need freebies like these assets ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I know nothing about game development or the likes. But I just browsed the site. Wouldn't it make sense to maybe create a torrent or huge iso file of this info instead of downloading each asset manually?

</comment><comment><USER30> Brilliant, you can make a proof of concept VR game for example and make it look good.

<comment><USER31> Making 3d models look good on the screen and making them look good in VR usually optimize for different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've had and have my disagreements and issues with Epic lately, but kudos where kudos are due. Nice job Epic, especially on the listening part. (now can we get more gnu/linux love please?)

</comment><comment><USER33> Won't the people of the internet just use this for Source Factory type porn?

</comment><comment><USER34> This is how you redeem yourself, when you screw over a gaming community.

</comment><comment><USER35> .

<comment><USER36> Wrong discussion?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917)

<comment><USER35> oops

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "Free" = For use in Unreal Engine only.

</comment><comment><USER38> Deleted

<comment><USER39> The game had been out for a few years, but as a MOBA-style game (like DotA, or League of Legends; thus competing with two of the largest video games in the market period) it didn't attract a critical mass of players to keep the ongoing dev effort worthwhile.

<comment><USER24> Being tilted more toward the 3D shooter style, also competing against Overwatch. Different gameplay objectives, but "class based team shooter" could describe either of them.

<comment><USER40> to be fair moba is pretty universal/vague too.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I honestly hate that name. Just by the meaning of words, Unreal Tournament is an "online multiplayer battle arena" but somehow it came to mean specifically "top-down Warcraft 3 custom map with fighting in 3 lanes" now.

But the lane fighting genre has been all downhill since Monday Night Combat anyway, so I'm happy to ignore it :P

<comment><USER41> A number of genre names are only meaningful because people already know what they refer to. Probably the best example is RPG, which ostensibly applies to effectively every game where the player controls a character with a persona.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wonder which engine it works best with...

<comment><USER43> I wonder which engine is the only one you're allowed to use it in.</comment></comment>


Ice That Took 1,600 Years to Form in Peru's Andes Melted in Only 25 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/world/americas/1600-years-of-ice-in-perus-andes-melted-in-25-years-scientists-say.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Yup, the NYT is at one of their favorite, continuing 'stories' again. And, again, it's 'global warming'. Again, it's measure temperature not with thermometers in degrees F, C, or K but with pictures of glaciers.

Yes, it's a morality play, human sin, this time via CO2.

And it's a trilogy -- transgression, retribution, and redemption. The transgression is the CO2 from human sin. The retribution is over heating the planet, as in glaciers melting. And the redemption? Sure, sacrifice, this time, a carbon tax to reverse much of the industrial revolution.

So, it's the old methods of fiction, e.g., morality plays, going back at least 1000 years. The NYT is good at writing morality plays.

Of course, one of the NYT people on this bandwagon is their Tom Friedman. On a talk show, he explained his view of the problem of CO2: He said that it absorbs light from the sun and, thus, heats the atmosphere.

Okay, let's check: Let's exhale, look at the little cloud of air with the extra CO2, and see if we can see any sunlight absorbed? Or, let's get some CO2 from some other sources and see if it looks darker because of the light it absorbs instead of transmits. Nope, we don't see anything. So, right, CO2 doesn't absorb sunlight.

So, what does CO2 absorb? It absorbs in three narrow frequency bands out in the infrared, one band for each of bending, twisting, and stretching of the molecule.

So, how, then, is CO2 a 'green house' gas? Because light from the sun is absorbed by the surface of the earth which, then, radiates roughly as a Planck 'black body' and, thus, radiates mostly in the infrared, and CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs some of the infrared, in those three narrow bands, instead of just letting it continue to radiate outward and be absorbed by water vapor, methane, or something else or just escape into space.

But there is CO2 in the atmosphere even without the human 'sin' of the industrial revolution, and it's not clear that more CO2 in the atmosphere will absorb more in those three narrow bands than now -- that is, it may be that all the infrared that CO2 can absorb is being absorbed now.

Someday, maybe, we will have news sources better informed than the NYT and, then, using expository techniques 1000 years closer to the present, from the 20th century and maybe even the 21st century.

From an article like this, I would cancel my subscription to the NYT but I can't: I've never subscribed to the NYT, rarely read it on-line, and have never read it on-line since their 'pay-wall'. They used to call me and ask me to subscribe, but I told them that my kitty cats prefer kitty litter or the bushes in the back yard and that I don't have any dead fish to wrap.

The NYT may be on the way out of business. I don't really want to see that and would hope that, instead, they would move forward 1000 years or so into at least the 20th century, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that.

<comment><USER3> I'm afraid of what might happen, because in the scenario of a rapid climate change, the consequences are unpredictable. For example, today there are many people living with the meltwater, and they would return to the stone age.

Currently I see this as a problem of garbage. Polluting industries, such as batteries and tires, are already required to collect their waste. I think the rich oil industry should also be required to collect the garbage of co2 that is generated by their product.

I do not want to create a flamewar, just want to express my opinion and sorry my bad english.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lately, I feel that our species has come to an end....</comment></comment></comment>


Gogs – Go Git Service Ansible/Vagrant VM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-vagrant-examples/tree/master/gogs

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using GitLab for local GitHub-like hosting for a year or so, and while it's pretty nice, and decently fast, it's always felt a little slow for my _personal_ use (I don't use too many features besides some visualization tools), and until recently, installation was a major pain (now there's an omnibus package that makes this process much simpler).

I found out about Gogs ("Go Git Service") a few months ago, and put it on my list of projects to check out when I had a chance. I finally had some time, and liked it enough to put up a basic role on Ansible Galaxy[1], and an example/demo VM[2] in my ansible-vagrant-examples repo.

While it's still under pretty active development (think major features added every 0.x release, and some elements refactored pretty heavily), it seems to run fast and smooth even on modest hardware, and already offers pretty much every feature I've needed for personal use. Other features that will make it more acceptable for places like my workplace (LDAP, better user management, webhooks, etc.) are soon-to-be-added.

Definitely worth a look—and I hope I've saved you a few hours' time getting it set up on a VM!

[1] [https://galaxy.ansible.com/list#/roles/780](https://galaxy.ansible.com/list#/roles/780)

[2] [https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-vagrant- examples/tree...](https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-vagrant- examples/tree/master/gogs)</comment>


Show HN: Rova - Discover a city and its people. (android) - <AUTHOR> Hi Everyone, I've just launched my new android app Rova http://bit.ly/1kZOkwm which allows you to view streamed video stories about different places based on your location.
There's also a pokemon go style element that pays you for visiting popular locations based on the community.
I've been working on this singlehanded for a few months solid so I wanted to show you guys where I am.
I'd love your feedback on everything from design to usability.
Cheers and best regards, Robbi. <comment><USER2> Well done!</comment>


Ask HN: Please give your experience/opinions to help me with my future path - <AUTHOR>

Okay. This is my situation:
- Live in Melbourne, Australia
- Very interested in tech startups or tech businesses
- Also, as of recently, interested in the 4HWW lifestyle
- Currently in final year of highschool
- Debating between (major: CompSci):

   - a decent uni (Monash - top 250 in the world) 10 minutes drive from me

     - pro: easy, cheap ($8k per year)

   - an awesome uni in the SF/Valley area (UCB/Stanford)

     - pro (for all sf options): live with people like me, who are more open to my crazy ideas, and who are the desired customer for many of my ideas

     - con: extremely expensive, away from family friends, might not like living there

   - a reasonable uni in the SF/Valley area (or community college?)

   - going to Monash in Australia, and then applying to transfer to UCB

     - con: no guarantee on being able to transfer

   - ditto the above, though from a community college in SF

   - not going to uni at all, and travelling 4HWW style

     - con: miss out on the 'uni experience'

     - pro: much free time

 What I would love, and what would help me:
- Please tell me anything you can to help my decision, including:

   - Your experiences

   - Your opinions

   - Contacts for people you know who went through something similar (international admission to Stanford/UCB, moving to the USA for a startup, etc) - or at least the decision (eg considered moving to SF for a startup but didn't)

   - Good places (forums, organizations, etc) or people to give questions like this post to

   - Would taking a holiday to check out the USA help me? If we did - what should I do if the trip was solely for the purpose of making this decision?
 <comment><USER2> This part of life is pretty difficult. You have so much promise. You can do anything. It's just a matter of picking a direction. That direction will shape you into a great ______. Or so we all thought...

To a certain degree, it doesn't matter what you choose: I certainly didn't choose to be an entrepreneur until a couple years after college, and I certainly didn't imagine -- when I was in your position -- that I would come to love building businesses and technology. And there was no way I could comprehend what it means to make money or not make money or choose ramen and equity over money or work for 80 hours or not work at all.

I thought I would be an author. I was going to write my generation's Great Gatsby or the Neuromancer of Neuromancer's time. That didn't quite happen. As it turns out, very few things happen as you expect them to -- but that doesn't mean you can't choose your course or plan for the future.

To give yourself the best shot at achieving what you want -- even if that changes... whatever you decide on doing -- you should make sure to surround yourself by people who will challenge you, stretch you, call you on your bullshit and help you up, brush you off and push you back into the fray when you fail. A good University will force you into this situation. University was a shock for me -- I was no longer a big fish in a small pond. I was mundane. Or at least, I felt insignificant. But being around people who I esteemed highly forced me to aim high and helped me to not give up.

So, yeah, I don't know what to tell you. Just aim high and don't give up, I guess.</comment>


Common regrets of the dying - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/life/common-regrets-of-the-dying-20120716-224y2.html

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570865>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1643239> <\- This has the most coments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2603369>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2604180>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2615886>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2617705>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2624341>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2743768>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3290059>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3306688>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3331535>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3398988>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3542280>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3629787>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3646379>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3816422>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4174746>

There are more, but in doing the due diligence to make sure my references were correct I got this message:

        We've temporarily limited requests for old items.

Never seen that one before. I've made a submission about it and my concerns here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4250303>

<comment><USER3> Good point, well made.</comment></comment>


Boris Johnson admitted to hospital with coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/apr/05/boris-johnson-admitted-to-hospital-with-coronavirus <comment><USER2> Boris Johnson is someone who can get tested at his residence, implying this is quite a bit worse than stated.

I hope I'm wrong, I'm on day 12 myself and only now beginning to feel better. Struggling to breathe is terrifying. Regardless of political leanings I hope he makes a speedy recovery.

<comment><USER3> >implying this is quite a bit worse than stated.

Well he isn't exactly 25 y/o

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He looked pretty rough two days ago: [https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-hIuKPgKcd/?igshid=3dy9zubvqgs...](https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-hIuKPgKcd/?igshid=3dy9zubvqgs2)

</comment><comment><USER5> As a European I am not a great fan of him, but I sincerely wish him to get through this and a good recovery.

</comment><comment><USER6> So much for generating herd immunity</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use Quora? - <AUTHOR>

Recently I'm hearing alot about Quora so thought of giving it a try. But I looked very confusing to me. I don't really get the purpose of it.<p>Does any one of you use Quora and like it? <comment><USER2> I use it a lot and prefer it to "Ask HN:"

HN is better for discussing third-party content. Quora is better for Questions since that is what is was designed for.

The quality of both communities are comparable and I'm sure that many people on Quora use HN and vice versa.

<comment><AUTHOR> May be its only me but may be because of the UI, it looks very confusing, HN is very straight forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes. The quality of answers is very high and it has strong adoption among the startup community. You frequently get people who are the experts in their field answering questions.

</comment><comment><USER4> Almost daily. I love it.</comment>


The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cake.co/conversations/VXHSjBG/the-untold-origin-story-of-ebay-that-i-lived-and-the-times-that-could-have-killed-it <comment><USER2> It's funny how Amazon feared eBay, and then failed to beat them — in 1999.

But when I worked at eBay in 2003, they had the mailroom put a sticker on every amazon box that said "Next time get it on eBay!"

And now the tide is swinging back a bit as people get fed up with fakes and commingling at Amazon. At least with eBay you know the product you're getting is actually from the seller you bought it from.

<comment><USER3> _At least with eBay you know the product you're getting is actually from the seller you bought it from._

The likelihood is generally higher, but I've received drop-shipped items from eBay that come directly from Amazon & Walmart warehouses. Took me by surprise at first, but it was still the lowest available price. Unsure if they are still cracking down on that.

eBay has always been fantastic for used/refurbished electronics compared to anything else.

<comment><USER4> > At least with eBay you know the product you're getting is actually from the > seller you bought it from.

> The likelihood is generally higher, but I've received drop-shipped items > from eBay that come directly from Amazon & Walmart warehouses. Took me by > surprise at first, but it was still the lowest available price. Unsure if > they are still cracking down on that.

> eBay has always been fantastic for used/refurbished electronics compared to > anything else.

This is a method used to cash out stolen credit cards as well. Buy the item with a stolen card and ship to the unwitting purchaser. This is why they can afford to sell at a perceived loss.

<comment><USER5> >This is a method used to cash out stolen credit cards as well. Buy the item with a stolen card and ship to the unwitting purchaser. This is why they can afford to sell at a perceived loss.

Also a method used to make a few % margin on a discount code. Amazon and Walmart don't give out re-usable flat X% discount codes (AFAIK) though so that isn't the case for when something is drop shipped from those sellers.

But yes, this is a common method used to liquidate stolen CCs info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "In 1995 the ebola virus had its second major outbreak, 19 years from its first, and I discovered a fascinating website about it called eBay. It turns out Pierre owned it and wrote the ebola information. The traffic it drew would help his new auction site get off the ground."

wow. Seems relevant today.

<comment><USER6> I thought that was a typo and that he meant "20 years before the second major outbreak..."

But no, there was an Ebola outbreak in the mid 70s. Kind of scary to see a disease that can keep popping up.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing to see the picture of the BEST Internet server facility .. that was certainly a pivotal and interesting company in the history of the Valley.

I worked there on contract a couple of times, got to know some of the folks - and it sure seems like it was a breeding ground of interesting Internet ideas. Matt Dillon, who has clearly proven his mettle in the time since, was developing his keen sense of social stewardship by keeping BEST's internet services up and running - I'll never forget the shock of discovering that they ran the entire thing on a database system Matt had developed himself...

I wonder what other things came from that incubator. It was a wild scene, indeed.

<comment><USER8> Smugmug was also there around that time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought the guy built it for his wife to sell pez dispensers? I seem to remember hearing that 20 years ago.

<comment><USER10> I was a tiny tiny competitor to eBay some 20 years ago and the pez story was pure BS.

The reality is that eBay (that is AuctionWeb) got its initial traction from spamming Usenet as the story correctly states.

Very quickly they moved from spamming themselves to letting their users spam Usenet.

This is the "growth hacking" model still followed today by many. The question is there any moral middle ground?

If you can search Usenet archives you can find remnants of that AuctionWeb spam and people complaining. Soon others tried to copy them but it was too late.

This was in mid 90s after the first mass spam from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel) .

<comment><USER11> Being "born from spam" really explains a lot about how most eBay sellers communicate to this day.

<comment><USER12> Never seen that over the past 20 years (I have 3,000 feedback, so I would know.)

However:

\- You can sign up for a store newsletter

\- in the past few months, ebay is sending auction time notifications, and pinging sellers to offer discounts to viewers. That's the only thing that has the spam smell, but the discount offers do help distinguish who wants to make a deal :)

<comment><USER11> To be clear, I didn't really mean "spam proper", moreso the flea market / carnival barker language, eg "REAL 100% HD VIDEO BRAND-NEW CANON REBEL 5T QUICK SHIP WITH ORIGINAL LENS KIT", that often obstruct the info I'm actually searching for.

I'm sure folks who use the platform consistently either know how to avoid that content or are much more efficient at sifting through it (or my anecdata of its frequency is way off!). I agree in my limited experience there isn't much in the way of "true spam" itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> eBay is a fascinating story for their early impact to the commercial internet. It is also fascinating to see how they've fared: it is still around but now it is being eaten up by competitors like Facebook Marketplace in the US, MercadoLibre in Latin America and others.

PayPal is on a somewhat similar trajectory.

The lesson here is to keep your customers happy or someone else will.

Also found it interesting to read about the people and companies who thought eBay wouldn't work for various - good - reasons. You can always make something work!

<comment><USER14> _keep your customers happy or someone else will_

That seems trite. Why couldn't ebay/paypal keep their customers happy?

It looks to me like these companies epitomize the management philosophy of "software doesn't matter". Having established a lucrative niche with strong network effects, they offshored their software development. The CEOs are pure managers without software backgrounds; they could just as easily be running Proctor & Gamble. And so they run it like Proctor & Gamble.

Stripe, Amazon are run by people with software backgrounds.

<comment><USER13> eBay has not added many new features in years. There are problems with the platform, like auction sniping, that they have not addressed.

PayPal as well to a similar extent. There are a litany of problems that its users have been complaining about for years that have not been addressed. I see PayPal rolling out certain new services but ignoring existing services. If PayPal was ahead of the curve, there would be no need for services like Venmo (now owned by PayPal!) Or even Stripe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish ebay wasn't so buggy. Mysterious failures, absent error messages-- both as a buyer and seller.

Aliexpress has much better software in my experience. :(

<comment><USER16> Yeah, the shopping cart performance has gotten so slow lately, I've gone _days_ without being able to complete checkout. Or some items would complete and others would still be sitting there, lather rinse repeat, and some simply vanish without actually being purchased. Some get purchased twice...

If I were buying anything expensive, I'd care, but it's still better than Amazon for many things.

<comment><USER12> ebay doesn't have those problems in California, aside from adding items to the watchlist sometimes.

You might want to try:

\- using 220.127.116.11 for DNS

\- a different browser in case there's a plugin problem

\- traceroute

\- a different location in your city, like an Internet cafe

<comment><USER15> I've experienced some those issues in California, though not quite as severely as it sounds the prior poster has experienced them. I've never had a doubled order, that I've noticed, but things silently disappearing the carts without being purchased at purchase time seems pretty common to me (and not due to items being sold out).

It's been compounded by the sales that force use of the shopping cart when I otherwise might not use it (because the discount is one time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> But at this stage, I feel Shopify has better chance than eBay on branding... The long term value and potential scaling effect is still the mainstream before we live under universal basic income era.

</comment><comment><USER18> I still don't understand why eBay hasn't leveraged eBay, Skype and Paypal into something like WeChat.

<comment><USER12> Microsoft bought Skype, and Paypal is independent now.

<comment><USER18> Indeed. Yet they had everything in their hands to create something big. With their accounts and profiles, they could even have become something like Facebook.

I am fascinated by how many key technologies they had without those parts being integrated into something bigger than their sum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> eBay has its chance. It should help build the tool for the community to provide customized service easier and cheaper.

Marketplace is also based on the abundance and quality of contents (merchandise). Scale effect is good at the globalization period but not sure for the next era.

</comment><comment><USER15> <3 portmasters

</comment><comment><USER19> I liked the original title of the story for what it is worth.

As Chris MacAskill wrote:

In 1995 the ebola virus had its second major outbreak, 19 years from its first, and I discovered a fascinating website about it called eBay. It turns out Pierre owned it and wrote the ebola information. The traffic it drew would help his new auction site get off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER20> Actual (and better, IMHO,) title:

> The untold origin story of eBay that I lived...

<comment><USER21> We've reverted the title. Submitters: " _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"

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

(Submitted title was "The untold origin story of eBay and Ebola that I lived...")</comment></comment>


National Theater in London Offers Glasses with Live Subtitles - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/theater/uk-national-theatre-smart-glasses.html <comment><USER2> I am deaf. Been waiting for something like this for a long time, that I can use day to day hooked up to google/bing speech rec api's.

Right now getting people to speak into a phone and getting the text creates a pretty unnatural (and usually short) interaction.

<comment><USER3> That presents an interesting privacy conundrum. It would undeniably be an incredible capability for you to have, but pretty much all of your day-to-day interactions would be sent off to Google or Microsoft for processing.

<comment><USER2> Privacy issues aren't my number one priority. I have lost count of the number of times people misunderstand me thanks to not knowing I am deaf or believing it, or me misunderstanding them.

And as a techie I am not too bothered by Google and MS using my data to sell me stuff.

What bothers me much more about is the dark architectural decisions that misguide/divides people or get them addicted to their streams and devices screwing their lives up.

<comment><USER4> > Privacy issues aren't my number one priority.

It's not your privacy that's the issue (Well, it is, as a user of the device) - it's also the privacy of the persons speaking with you. Single-party consent for digital recording of audio is a controversial topic.

<comment><USER5> I'm all for single party consent.

But it's also the privacy of everyone close enough to the microphone that single processing can extract what they are saying. That's 0 party consent that I'm not ok with for always on devices.

<comment><USER6> I don't know. Single party consent is great if you want proof that someone is threatening you (or something similar) or even just to have a personal record of a conversation, but I don't know about single party consent to give a copy of the recording to a non-law third party. (There are still ethical issues with providing a copy to authorities when the incriminating information doesn't affect you, but that's beside the point.) For one, it's a huge breach of trust, but it could be very damaging for the non-consenting party. For instance, secretly recording a partners voice during sex and distributing that online would be pretty similar to revenge porn but in audio form. I don't think anybody would be "all for" that

Now this piqued my interest, so I took a look at Wikipedia[1]. Interestingly enough, England seems to allow recording phone calls without notifying the other party as long as it is only for personal use and not made available to a third party, but US Federal law does not seem to have such a stipulation, thus presumably allowing people in one-party consent states to post recordings of phone calls on social media without the other party's consent (unless the state forbids that. It's a bit hard to find concrete information on this), which is pretty troublesome I think. However that is only for telephone recordings and not for private conversations, so maybe the laws are a bit more sensible in that case.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All the way through the article it's called The National Theater instead of The National Theatre.

<comment><USER8> Americans.

<comment><USER9> what a weird thing to notice

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These types of glasses seem like they've been around for a while. Here's an article where they were introduced 6 years ago, they've been available in US movie theatres for a while. Also, not sure if this article is behind the times, but here's another article from a year ago where they talk about The National Theatre unveiling these glasses.

[https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/sony-subtitle- glasse...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/sony-subtitle-glasses/)

[https://www.121captions.com/2017/10/20/closed-captions- movie...](https://www.121captions.com/2017/10/20/closed-captions-movie- theatres/)

<comment><USER11> These glasses react to live speech and stage cues. The ones developed for movie theaters can be much simpler technology since the pacing of a movie never changes. You just have to sync to the subtitles once and then they are synced for the entirety of the movie. Theater performances can vary from show to show and therefore these glasses have to be able to continuously react and adjust in order to keep in sync.

<comment><AUTHOR> The software that this article talks about is the big deal in this context. Having set up and run open caption systems for live theatre before I can say it can be really hard to do manually, so having software be able to do this effectively really is a feat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a big believer in the idea that accessibility will be the driving force behind technological change into the future.

The market for these type of cybernetic devices is driven primarily by people with accessibility needs; which is ironic, because only then the general population wants access to the same technology.

The economics behind this is pretty straightforward. Firstly, in my states, accessibility is subsidized by the government and health insurance. Secondly, because demand is low, the costs are incredibly high which allows the accessibility solution, whatever it is, to contain high-priced components.

Boston Dynamic's SpotMini is a recent example of a high-priced device designed for people with accessibility needs.

<comment><USER13> I wish this was how things worked. Snuggies are a good example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article touches on a lot of the software and UX issues, but I don't really see much about the hardware.

> The theater has bought 50 pairs, at a cost of around $1,050 per pair

So pricey, yes, but who is currently selling anything like this? Things like the privacy of the contents of the display and the bulkiness of the unit are interesting aspects of this technology as applied to other use cases.

Searching for "heads-up display glasses" yields a bunch of actual products of varying appearence. I know AR is all the rage, and that's what most of these products seem to advertise, but even having some limited real-time data seems like it has enormous applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking into this more its using the Epson Smart Glasses,(1) and custom developed speech following software.(2) This is one of the first real practical applications of AR that I have seen available for the general public to use in public that would have a real impact on the users experience. To me this seems like something that the public could understand and widely accept as into in the the world of AR.

1\. [https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/blogs/blogs-enhancing- experi...](https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/blogs/blogs-enhancing-experiences- hard-hearing-patrons) 2\. [https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/your- visit/access/caption...](https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/your- visit/access/captioned-glasses) 3\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzFAO9r7eAo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzFAO9r7eAo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the last Off-Broadway show I saw here in NYC (I Was Most Alive With You), they had sign-language interpreters signing for their respective actors on an elevated platform. It was a cool effect that suited the subject matter (it was a play about deafness whose main character is deaf), but obviously not practical for every play.

In another (Light Shining in Buckinghamshire) there were subtitles projected at the front of the room. You could get used to it, but it was somewhat distracting and not ideal. This approach seems much better!

Both plays were incredible, btw. Light Shining in Buckinghamshire blew my mind and I highly recommend picking up a copy if you haven't read/seen it.

<comment><USER4> My local theatre has ASL interpreters, available for select (?) shows, for patrons that are deaf or hard of hearing. They aren't up on a stage, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone know more about the underlying software? QLab[1] is the standard theatre light/sound/video/etc tool, and I can think of a couple of ways you could (in theory) build this in there. Is that what they did, or something else?

[1] [https://figure53.com/qlab/](https://figure53.com/qlab/)

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I can find and I believe it pretty much all custom right now. I would guess it has ether MSC or OSC to receive key cues from QLab or other show control, but actually being run by custom software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thats an expensive and dirty solution to a solved problem.

Many opera houses have subtitles in the backs of seats. While not as ideal as in your glasses, it is certainly more comfortable, cheaper to buy and maintain, and clean.

I get that you have to glance down now and then, as compared to the glasses, but I really think that's a cost worth living with.

<comment><USER16> Maybe.... Wiring up all the seats wouldn't be trivial, especially in a concrete building, like the National.

Also, and I'm speaking from sad experience here, it'd be waaaay easier to persuade a sponsor to underwrite branded glasses than it is to solicit donations for an infrastructure project.

Though they may be less robust, if the glasses break you can hand the patron another pair; when the seat-back LCD goes on the fritz you'll have to move them to another seat, which is always disruptive, and not always possible.

Overall, I suspect the glasses end up being much cheaper.

<comment><USER18> I assumed the parent was referring to an asynchronous, staticly rendered offline protocol running over paper. The cellulose displays are hosted in marsupial pouches stitched into the seat in front of you.

Perhaps I am mistaken and some theaters have gone full xzibit on all the seats.</comment></comment></comment>


Libraries and dependencies I'm willing to take - <AUTHOR> https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/08/23/lib/ <comment><USER2> It's funny that Rachel lists these libraries as the dependencies she's willing to use after demeaning developers that use a lot of dependencies in their work. It just feels like she's completely out of touch with what the job responsibilities are at a startup. Or what it's like to code every day in an interpreted high level language like Javascript or Ruby or Python. Of course you're going to use dependencies in Javascript because you're not going to make a syscall to libcurl to make a web request. If you seriously expect libcurl to be the level of dependency that is acceptable in your code of course you are doing a different job than I am. But please do not demean my work as "VendorOps" [0] because I have to focus on the business logic of the domain problem my company works on.

0\. [https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/08/14/jobs/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/08/14/jobs/)</comment>