England and Wales House Price Analysis - <AUTHOR> https://jasmcole.com/2016/04/17/england-and-wales-house-prices/ <comment><USER2> Fantastic what can be achieved with open data.

I have a feeling this won't be possible in the future though: [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/24/land- registr...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/24/land-registry- faces-privatisation)

<comment><USER3> I have absolutely no clue why they think this is a good idea.

The Land Registry is one of the few governmental departments that actually turns a profit! Average is £80m a year if I remember correctly. Apart from that, I think having this data controlled by a private company will make the waters over housing ownership even murkier in Britain.

<comment><USER4> Well if it already turns a profit, imagine how great it will be for the new owners when they start charging more for public access to public data. And imagine how hard it will be for Private Eye and others to dig into the corruption which is endemic in the UK property market. Some people (if they really qualify as human) see those as positives rather than negatives.

<comment><USER5> The new owners won't be allowed to raise the prices and the whole thing is guaranteed by the government. It seems likely that it'll still be considered a public organisation like National Rail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is just beautiful - lovely visualisations that make patterns in the data pop out at you. High resolution point map is at [https://jasmcole.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/countrymap_nofi...](https://jasmcole.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/countrymap_nofilt.png?w=12000) \- for some reason the image in the article isn't linked.

One interesting one is that London appears to be the _only_ city in England and Wales where the inner city has higher property values than the suburbs - but we already knew that - post-industrial urban rot is taking time to heal. This also illustrates the steady growth of conurbations as the author observes - the rich one in the south-east, and the poor one in the north-west.

Also - what on earth happened in London in January 2010? That's a "market adjustment" if I've ever seen one. Perhaps a single large landlord dumped their portfolio...

At this point, London may as well be a city-state enclave.

<comment><USER7> > may as well be a city-state enclave.

It's had one of those for a very long time. The City of London is historically a corporation run largely by trade guilds. The City (as locals know it - London doesn't have a downtown) has its own rules.

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

<comment><USER8> Several in fact. One of my favourite parts of London is middle Temple, which for a period was a walled city, with its own army, that defend the rights of its lawyers to ... do lawyering. The 13th century was interesting down by the strand.

<comment><USER7> Right, and one of this sweet little cluster of neighbouring cities was Westminster, which ended up running the largest empire in history. And now, a hundred years later, arguably the City of London is more important than Westminster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Author here, please feel free to ask any questions.

<comment><USER10> Have you considered intersecting this with another dataset, perhaps crime rate or suchother?

Personally I noticed that the coastline is more or less green, apart from a couple areas (such as Brighton). Which seems strange to me, as I am biased to think that seafront is usually more expensive than countryside in other countries.

\--EDIT-- Oh and thanks for sharing! Very interesting work.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for your interest. I'd like a map of earnings by postcode, then I can plot as a function of average yearly wage which would reduce the height of the London mountain in this dataset. There are a lot of goodies in the data provided by the gov.uk website, I'll be sure to have more of a poke around in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The Welsh character is an interesting study," said Dr. Fagan. "I have often considered writing a little monograph on the subject, but I was afraid it might make me unpopular in the village. The ignorant speak of them as Celts, which is of course wholly erroneous. They are of pure Iberian stock-- the aboriginal inhabitants of Europe who survive only in Portugal and the Basque district. Celts readily intermarry with their neighbours and absorb them. From the earliest times the Welsh have been looked upon as an unclean people. It is thus that they have preserved their racial integrity. Their sons and daughters rarely mate with human-kind except their own blood relations. In Wales there was no need for legislation to prevent the conquering people intermarrying with the conquered. In Ireland that was necessary, for there intermarriage was a political matter. In Wales it was moral. I hope, by the way, you have no Welsh blood?"

"None whatever," said Paul.

"I was sure you had not, but one cannot be too careful. I once spoke of this subject to the sixth form and learned later that one of them had a Welsh grandmother. I am afraid it hurt his feelings terribly, poor little chap. She came from Pembrokeshire, too, which is of course quite a different matter. I often think," he continued, "that we can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales. Think of Edward of Carnarvon, the first Prince of Wales, a perverse life, Pennyfeather, and an unseemly death, then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church, then Lloyd George, the temperance movement, Nonconformity and lust stalking hand in hand through the country, wasting and ravaging. But perhaps you think I exaggerate? I have a certain rhetorical tendency, I admit."

"No, no," said Paul.

"The Welsh," said the Doctor, "are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing," he said with disgust, "sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver...."

            --Dr. Fagan, a schoolmaster in Decline and Fall (1928), by Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)

<comment><USER12> What does this bring to the discussion, other than your apparent delight in anti-Welsh bigotry?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This showcases the power of open data. Love the graphs and especially the flyover.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately the Land Registry is in the process of being privatized. If that goes through, it seems very unlikely this data will stay open.

<comment><USER15> Really? Where did you hear that?

<comment><USER4> It was announced (cynically) just before the Easter break. I think it's their second attempt to do this. Considering the Panama Papers etc. it's ridiculous that they are making moves to reduce transparency and accountability.

<comment><USER16> _> Considering the Panama Papers etc. it's ridiculous _

On the contrary, it's absolutely coherent. They enact policies to favour their own class, which is the class of people owning accounts in Panama and lots of real-estate.

What is ridiculous is the amount of people who do not belong to such class (and likely never will, regardless of ambitions) and still vote for them over and over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is really great. Even more interesting since I live in one of the very, very red parts in the south east so have a particular interest in how much my house is earning each year - a lot more than me, as it turns out.

<comment><USER17> The rest of us who were not old enough to work & buy a home before it became unattainable are very envious.

<comment><USER18> Spare a thought for those of us who were just about old enough to work and buy a home, but instead decided to invest in starting a business or two. :-(

Even having had some modest success with those businesses, I expect we'd have made considerably more return on the initial capital by now if we'd simply bought almost any cheap property here in Cambridge and traded up over the years since, and we could have done it without all the commitment and hard work that goes into getting a business up and running.

The thing that is most infuriating is that the property market is being artificially propped up again and again, both though schemes that pump more money into the market and through planning restrictions that mean we don't build anything like enough new homes to meet demand. This is great if you have a small portfolio of buy-to-lets or perhaps if you've reached a stage where you want to downsize, but not really for anyone else and certainly not for those who just want to buy (or build) a home for their family to live in instead of as an investment vehicle.

<comment><USER19> Well a deeper problem is the 'home' thing. I'm an immigrant from France, and I'm always /amazed/ at the fact that _everyone want a house_ No wonder there is property shortage, as most of the space is wasted.

Seriously. Take a parcel, make 5 tiny houses with matching tiny garages... In france on that surface you would have a block perhaps 3 story high of 20 luxury flats with underground garage, electric gates etc.

Sure, it wouldn't be be dream 'detached house' thing, but perhaps it's time for the way british people see their 'home' to evolve with the resources they have...

I know quite a lot of people in France who owns a flat. THEIR flat, and it doesn't feel less like 'home' than the random tiny estate 'semi detached' in ASBOland.

<comment><USER18> Maybe you simply make better flats in France. I lived much of my young adult life in rented flats, and they were horrible.

One had such a damp problem that the main bedroom was uninhabitable, but it took months to figure out who was responsible for fixing it and get the required permissions. In reality, I moved out as soon as I could at the end of the initial tenancy period so I never saw that work done.

One was flooded from an upstairs flat where the plumbing failed. We literally had two large police officers trying to break its door down for several minutes to gain access for the emergency plumber before we discovered that the neighbour had been in all along and somehow slept through everything.

In the next one, you couldn't walk around or talk normally late at night for fear of the downstairs neighbours getting irate at the noise. Don't even think about turning up the TV, playing a musical instrument, or running a washing machine after 8pm!

It would take a degree of desperation I have never been unlucky enough to experience for me to ever live in a flat again, or a level of build quality and isolation far beyond anything I have ever experienced in any flat I have lived in or visited.

<comment><USER19> Yes I appreciate that paper-thin walls aren't going to cut it, that's why I mentioned 'luxury' flats....

I lived in quite a few in France, and I remember playing electric guitar, loudly, at 3am in one and the neigbours couldn't hear it!

They did object about the Djembe session tho :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here are some more datasets provided by HM's Government, there are a lot of interesting sets: [https://data.gov.uk/data/search](https://data.gov.uk/data/search)

</comment><comment><USER20> How can this post have 51 points,be second on the front page and have only one comment?

<comment><USER17> People read it, think it's interesting enough to be shared but have nothing valuable to add to the topic.

Like yourself.</comment></comment>


"I'm just like a little kid. I get bored easily and computers excite me..." - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/6/10/mark-e-zuckerberg-06-the-whiz/

<comment><USER2> "I don't really like putting a price-tag on the stuff I do. That's just like not the point,"

Eight years later he is finally putting a price-tag on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> it'll be interesting to see if other big co.'s follow GM's move</comment></comment>


How the Mill CPU does fork() in a single address space - <AUTHOR> http://millcomputing.com/topic/fork-2/ <comment><USER2> (Mill team)

So every turf (aka 'process') has a special value. If this value is XORed with the high bits of a local pointer it turns it into a global pointer, and vice- versa.

Example: turf A has a local space register of 1010100000 (binary; lets keep the numbers small, but Mill addresses are really 60-bit). Note that the low five bits are 0. All local space masks will have some number of low bits 0.

A local address is 0000011000. Note that the high five bits happen to be zero. XORing in the local-space base would give the global address 1010111000.

Another local pointer might have the bit-pattern 0000100111. Note now that there is a bit set beyond the low zero bits in the mask; this time, the XOR will convert it into the global address 1010000111.

So as the local base mask has low bits all zero, all addresses within that span will be sequential in memory. But local space is disjoint in global space. This affects only the maximum continuous allocation size and not the total number of allocations.

When turf A forks, the child has to have local base mask that preserves the relative position of all allocations. But as the XOR mask will be different, the global addresses will not overlap for these 'local' allocations.

The vast majority of mmaps are actually shared (file buffers etc) and don't need this XORing. The CPU is transparently doing the XOR when needed and its nothing normal programs need to know about; only the kernel, when giving out new mmap regions, needs to know if it should hand out a global or local address.

<comment><USER3> _So as the local base mask has low bits all zero, all addresses within that span will be sequential in memory. But local space is disjoint in global space. This affects only the maximum continuous allocation size and not the total number of allocations._

So I think what you're saying here is that that if turf 10101 has an allocated local address 0000100111, then turf 10100 can't have an allocated local address of 0000000111, because they correspond to the same global address - they'd clash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice. Much cleaner than the memory copying we had to do on ST-Minix. (But the Mill obviously still has an MMU, the MC68000 had nothing so we couldn't implement COW.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I just want to know why I can't buy a Mill yet. Stop teasing me, damnit!

<comment><USER6> i guess it'll drastically lower transistor count?

<comment><USER7> Big Silicon?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This work of Xoring and using shared mmaps is not new and it was published in 2009 and 2010 by two separate teams. See the following papers [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1854288](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1854288) and [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1640096](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1640096)

I am not sure how this can be patented.

</comment><comment><USER9> _> The result of all of this is that fork() on a Mill requires a cache flush of dirty lines from the parent local space that is not required on (some) MAS machines, but has no other added overheads. The gain is that sharing between processes has byte granularity, not page granularity, and is vastly cheaper to use._

What are the implications for server processes? The cache flush seems like a good tradeoff for things like Apache. Extremely fast communication using RAM between processes running on multi-core machines looks like a good capability to have. Language runtimes like Erlang's could benefit from this tremendously.

(How about something like Golang, but with Erlang-like actors and the ability to declare that certain modules cannon contain functions with side effects? Without lazy evaluation, it wouldn't be great for processing large datasets, but it could be awesome for games. (Actors would be distributed amongst processes, each of which would have their own GC.))

</comment><comment><USER10> So, instead of switching page maps (and writing new TLB entries), the new process is allocated new TLB entries, corresponding to its process id in the high part of each pointer. Does this also require that the high bits of every pointer access have the local process ID inserted on use? Or are all pointers somehow tracked and rewritten on fork?

<comment><USER2> The XOR is applied inside the CPU when local pointers (any pointer with a particular high bit set) are actually dereferenced. Its transparent to the normal program. This is how we can COW the used pages without rewriting all the pointers (which is not a solvable problem in the face of memory-unsafe languages such as C).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Now that we have finally gotten the patent filings for this area of the > Mill in_

How much more to go?

<comment><USER2> Really not many. We are going to be getting a whole lot more implementation done now the filing phase is passing :D</comment></comment>


In Praise of Bad Steve - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/10/in-praise-of-bad-steve/246242/

<comment><USER3> I've never worked for Apple and never really aspired to, mostly because my interests didn't overlap with what I thought I would probably be doing there, but partly, I have to admit, because I had heard the stories of Steve the tyrant and was put off by them.

Maybe my ego is sturdier now, because I wonder if I wouldn't have enjoyed the challenges he set people. One thing is for sure, you could know that if you did what he wanted, it wasn't going to be a me-too product.

<comment><USER4> I've worked briefly at Apple, but had only one face-to-face encounter with Steve. It was intensely scary. He was loved -- LOVED -- on the Apple campus. But he was also feared. And I felt that fear when I saw him. He was, and remains, the only person I've been genuinely "star struck" upon encountering. A lot of that was born of admiration, but just as much was born of terror.

In retrospect, I realized that I wasn't really afraid of Steve. I was afraid of myself: my limitations, my shortcomings, my relative talent (or lack thereof), and my performance in life vis-a-vis my self-theorized potential. When I saw Steve Jobs in the flesh, I saw an embodiment of everything I was not, and probably never would be. Frankly, I felt like a fraud. I felt unworthy.

A lot of that seems silly now, and will strike readers of this post as childish, if not fawningly fanboyish. But it was a very intense feeling that he inspired, even if unintentionally.

<comment><USER5> Not childish, on the contrary: quite mature, accurate, articulate and insightful.

Mostly we fear ourselves, what we are, what we aren't, etc. Whether the dialogue is accurate or not, well, that's up to us individually, and so is what we do with it.

Situations and experiences can hold a mirror up to us - so to speak - <USER2> we're forced to confront these fears of ourselves. It's interesting that the Steve persona did that to you. I doubt it was intentional on his part, just part of who he was, a part of the legacy he had created and you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The talk about "Bad Steve" reminds me about Gundotra telling the "Icon Ambulance" story the day that Steve stepped down, in which Steve calls him up on a Sunday because "we have an urgent issue" involving the color gradient on the Google iphone icon.

[https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKx...](https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKxXTw)

For many people, that kind of anal attention to detail (and describing it as an "urgent" matter) would be the key sign of a "bad" boss. I think it's acceptable in Steve because if anyone has shown a good grasp of the cost- benefit analysis of such perfection, it's him.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's really justified. Jobs had a long career, and only two real industry-dominating hits: the Apple II (most of which was Woz's work) and the iPhone. A lot of the hyperbole we're seeing right now is because Jobs had the mis/fortune to die at the very peak of his hit.

Had we all been doing the same analysis in the mid-90's when NeXT was failing and Pixar a mostly academic curiosity, I doubt anyone would be talking about how great a judge of the "cost-benefit analysis of perfection" he was.

<comment><USER8> I think it's more than the just the Apple II and the iPhone. The way I see it, the man's main hobby was disruption. He disrupted the PC industry with the Apple II and later the Mac line. He disrupted the music industry with the iPod and iTunes, and the phone industry with the iPhone. He changed the animation industry with Pixar one of the most successful, both financially, and critically acclaimed movie company. He revived an industry which most considered a dead horse with the iPad and where most companies are still playing catch-up.

I agree if this was to happen back in the 90s, he wouldn't be as praised as he is today, but what does that have to do with anything? If I was to judge anyone before their greatest moments, they wouldn't pass the bar. And yeah, he was kind of an ass in his early days, but by most accounts he became a lot more mellow when returning to Apple.

<comment><USER9> I don't think you know what disruption is.

The PC industry is working just fine, and a Mac and PC are more similar than they are different.

The music industry has hardly changed due to the iPod, you sell one way you sell another - that's not disruption.

And the phone industry most certainly did not change, it's just an incremental improvement on the fancy phones that have been getting steadily better. The iPhone may be great, but fundamentally it's just a better version of what was already there.

His business was taking an idea and perfecting it so people liked and used it. But it was not disruption.

<comment><USER10> Partly what you say is true.

But I'd say iTunes (music store) was disruptive. It changed how the music industry operated.

The iphone changed how we 'use' phones more than it changed the 'phone industry'. In fact, on writing that, I think that captures what Apple does best, it 'disrupts' how people perceive and use a product, that may in-turn distrupt an industry, but that is a consequence, not the goal (for Apple).

<comment><USER11> I see the iPhone as _popularizing_ the smartphone concept, but not fundamentally disrupting the concept of phones and their usage. Palm I think was the real disruptor there, but Apple perfected it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This idea of people as heroes or villains strikes me as being myopic. The very idea that people can be either good or bad shows that we're all just mushrooms growing out of a much larger mycelium.

Ever notice that so many of the most popular American tourist destinations are places like machu picchu, the great wall of china, the pyramids, etc? The fact that these places exist says far less about their creators than it does about the societies that produced them. (Although perhaps the fact that Americans are obsessed with the monuments of slavery and fascism says something about us.)

<comment><USER13> Contrary to popular belief, the pyramids weren't built by slaves. They needed precision and skill.

<http://www.nationalgeographic.com/pyramids/pyramids.html#who>

<comment><USER9> I always thought that was a terrible argument. So they weren't slaves like blacks in the US south, but they could have still been slaves.

Slaves can have skill, families and pride in their work. Historically some slaves were trusted to go out on their own and do business for their owner, and not run away!

Some slaves became so important to their master than they actually inherited the estate when the master died.

So they may have been high level slaves, but slaves nonetheless.

<comment><USER12> "So they weren't slaves like blacks in the US south, but they could have still been slaves."

Relationships are complicated, maybe its best not to put labels on things.

In all seriousness though, regardless of what their specific status was, most societies where people are building things like pyramids tend to be pretty messed up.

<comment><USER9> A slave is someone who does not have permission to chose his own work, and does not have permission to (or is prevented from) quiting. (Note that I said permission, not ability.)

A slave can still be paid.

Based on my definition of slave I believe the pyramids were built by slaves.

<comment><USER13> What evidence do you have that the pyramid builders did not have permission to quit? Its just as likely that they saw it as a huge honour to work on a pharoah's tomb. c.f. French cathedral builders

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Bernard Shaw

<comment><USER15> I have always thought that quote was ridiculous. What is unreasonable about noticing an improvement can be made in your surroundings, and endeavouring to make it?

There is a grain of truth I suppose, vis-a-vis humanity's general restlessness, fixing what ain't broke, etc, but I think that this generalisation that anyone who isn't perfectly happy and satisfied with the exact present state of things is "unreasonable" is not true at all.

<comment><USER14> > What is unreasonable about noticing an improvement can be made in your > surroundings, and endeavouring to make it?

I guess if the Steve Jobs aquarium urban legend didn't sound unreasonable, you probably have the silicon valley mindset. It's really easy to think of the current state of things and to feel that everything done up to now is 'reasonable'; especially if you live in a really progressive, techno-friendly place like Silicon Valley. You need to know the historical context from the perspective of an average non-technical person in places that aren't as open minded and progressive. One example would be an average person wondering why people wasted their time making unreliable experimental horseless carriages when clearly horses were superior. I also can't help but think of the author of Gulliver's Travels making fun of people experimenting with electricity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is no doubt he left his mark on the world.

However, I'd bet that > 90% of people who are praising him now would never have enjoyed working for him in any capacity.

<comment><USER17> I'll bet some of the people who willingly did so for years didn't really like "working for Steve". If you get enough satisfaction out of the results, though, that doesn't really matter as much.

People sometimes stay in otherwise intolerably boring jobs for years because they really like their bosses and/or coworkers, and sometimes they stay in incredibly exciting and fulfilling jobs for years despite loathing same.

<comment><USER18> I've worked with dictators (kitchen chefs in very high end restaurants) since I was 13.. First I hated it then it got to me.. If you're truly passionate about something, and its your life mission, not much else matters.

<http://www.sagmeister.com/work/all#/node/207>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> History shows many luminaries to be like Jobs was or even worse; ruthless and totally unethical.

Thomas Edison (<http://www.reformation.org/thomas-edison.html>) comes to mind.

<comment><USER11> True, though there are plenty of very humble, friendly luminaries as well. Woz and Bob Moog come to mind.

<comment><USER20> Who is Bob Moog?

The class that includes Edison and Jobs is the class that wins the recognition and respect of the general public, including my 80 year old aunt who has never used an Apple product. I guess of doesn't really matter though, if the luminaries and some of their fans choose not to care what the public thinks. The nice thing about choosing your own definition of success is that we can congratulate both Jobs and Woz for their success even though they reached incredibly divergent outcomes and there is no way they could have ever both reached the same point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find myself hoping the iPod/aquarium story is true.

<comment><USER22> It could be, but I've heard this same story told about a Sony exec. instead of Steve, and that was before iPod's time. It was a camera that he dropped into a body of water though. The rest is same.

<comment><USER23> Doing as exhaustive of a search as I could, I found a couple of interesting things. The Sony version of the parable seems to center on the Walkman (as opposed to a camera), which was built in the late 1970s, and either Akio Morita or Masaru Ibuka (co-founders of Sony). However, the earliest reference on the Internet to it I can find is from September 2002 [^1], about a year after the iPod was released, making its origins inconclusive. The fact that it is linked to multiple founders of powerful technology companies suggests to me that it is apocryphal.

[^1]: [http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&me...](http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&message=3324664)

<comment><USER22> Well, the story might well be completely made up, but the chances are higher that it was made up about Sony not Apple. Probably around the time of when the first Walkman was released.

Let's not forget that early Apple was modelled after Sony of the time. Also, under the context of Japanese culture the kind of attitude displayed by the 'boss' in the story is less striking or unusual.

<comment><USER20> It is certainly plausible that Jobs could have heard the Sony story and then marched over to the iPod lab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> He was a visionary. He foresaw his own death, and started wrapping things up back in August.

</comment><comment><USER25> This article along with the New Yorker's piece rank as the best I've read since he died. He was an amazing man, and changed my life and many others', but not perfect.

</comment><comment><USER26> Apparently he died of an extremely rare variant of pancreatic cancer called node.js</comment>


Ingres: Can You Ever Go Back? (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://kellblog.com/2006/04/08/ingres-can-you-ever-go-back/ <comment><USER2> To read about the technical failures, which lasted for many years, increases my respect for MongoDB, which was a bit more aggressive tackling the technical problems that haunted its early years. MongoDB had a partially deserved bad reputation for thinks like locks, but they worked hard to improve that. It had a bad reputation for consistency errors but they worked with Kyle Kingsbury to find the flaws and eventually overcome them. In contrast, it sounds like Ingres was not able to create row level locking, even after many years of it being a crucial factor that was allowing Oracle to win.

I wonder if Ingres was too careful with investment? Sounds like Oracle nearly destroyed itself during the hypergrowth phase. This phase of growth seems to be something investors now understand better. Indeed, rather than considering it a weakness, hockey stick growth curves have become a requirement.

<comment><USER3> Interesting perspective you have there. I'm of the opposite beliefs. If you're going to undertake a project, it is a sign of respect to your users and the problem you're solving that you nail the foundational problems in that space. Shipping a database that loses data is like shipping a bank that loses money and is not something I'm willing to respect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very enlightening bit of history here. Also interesting the bit about the CA graveyard. I know of at least one really useful utility that was bought by CA and disappeared off the face of the earth. I implemented a clone and make a nice monthly supplement with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I worked on Oracle software for several years while my close friend worked on Ingres software 4 offices over. We both touted the advantages of what we worked with, and lamented the advantages of the other's software. I was sorry to see Ingres fall out of the market. Cool they are coming back, in whatever shape.

</comment><comment><USER6> It appears that Ingres Corporation is still around, under the name Actian. [0]

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

</comment><comment><USER7> well written piece, nice read</comment>


Signed integer division by a power of two can be expensive - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/2017/05/09/signed-integer-division-by-a-power-of-two-can-be-expensive/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Unsigned integer division by 2 can be optimized by the compiler only if there are unsigned integer types in the language. Java doesn't have unsigned primitive types (besides char), so x >>> 1 will be faster than x / 2 if you know that x >= 0.

Please correct me if this is wrong.

<comment><USER3> Correct. Java's >>> is _unsigned_ , since it's a logical shift, but there's no corresponding unsigned division.

Here's a clearer example of how GCC handles the different cases of signed vs unsigned division and shifting: [https://godbolt.org/g/glC97v](https://godbolt.org/g/glC97v)

Note that the signed division is the most expensive, but it still doesn't resort to a full divide instruction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was surprised that this made a difference in doing a binary search. I figured that the cost of memory fetches would swamp the cost of index calculation. But then I saw that his benchmarks were done on an array of length 2048, so that the entire array easily fits in the L1 cache.</comment>


Cider: Native Execution of iOS Apps on Android (ASPLOS 2014) - <AUTHOR> http://systems.cs.columbia.edu/files/wpid-asplos2014-cider.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Page 9, Figure 4 has some great screenshots.</comment>


Ask HN: Which HN android apps are the official unofficial ones? - <AUTHOR>

Type "hacker news" into Android Market's search, and it lists a bunch of apps. I have a tablet, which one should I be using? <comment><USER2> This is one of those quintessential moments where someone can act like Eliza and force the questioner to question themselves:

      * Which apps claim to work on tablets?

      * Which app has the highest score, or the most inviting review?

      * Which app do you think is cheap enough?

      * Or, which app do you think is expensive enough to guarantee quality?

      * Which app do you prefer the look of?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, but thats the fun part. They ALL seem to be inferior to the website itself. I wonder if I should just do that instead.</comment></comment>


India goes digital - <AUTHOR> http://digilocker.gov.in/ <comment><USER2> Ok, lot of negative impressions here. Only 10MB space, bad ssl cert etc. These things are easily fixable in future updates.

The reason this is nice to have is this quote from the site:

"How is DigiLocker going to help me?

It will minimize the use of physical documents and will provide authenticity of the e-documents It will provide secure access to Govt. issued documents. It will also reduce administrative overhead of Govt. departments and agencies and make it easy for the residents to receive services."

</comment><comment><USER3> For people having issues with CA - It is not the CA that is the problem (it is not a famous CA, but is known, at least by Chrome), the problem is that they probably shortened the domain too late and are still using the old configuration. Use the URL below, the certificate works fine. It's just for the wrong domain:

[https://digitallocker.gov.in/](https://digitallocker.gov.in/)

Edit: I'm unable to login though. I get the OTP from Aadhaar just fine, but the website doesn't seem to be able to verify it.

Edit 2: It worked after a couple of tries. Looking at the trail, it is probably some issue with Aadhaar and not this website. It does look really neat. You basically upload copies of your IDs and then agencies can request it. You get to approve. They are pulling UID data so it's quick to set up. I think the point of this is that you can link all other IDs with UID so people just have to ask for you Aadhaar number, no paper ID copies or forms. I wish they just integrated this into UID system like they link bank accounts, that way developers would have a single UIDAI API for identity, bank accounts and other IDs.

<comment><USER4> I am getting the certificate error even at the link you provided ( using Google Chrome on Ubunut 14.04 ).

<comment><USER3> I investigated further. It works fine on Mac and Windows 8.1. Apparently your operating system doesn't support the CA yet. I don't have Ubuntu, but I do have a linux based system, and it fails there too.

They are using a relatively new sub-CA of e-Mudhra, so it will appear everywhere soon, I believe.

If you're really willing to use it now, SHA1 of verified certificate is 56 7F 2D B5 7E 31 BC E5 6C 5C 8C 3B 80 44 AA 2F 7C 13 D3 6D. Not ideal way at all, but might help paranoia. You shouldn't trust me though.

<comment><USER5> The Certificate seems to be verified by a "Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers Company Ltd."

Speaking as an Indian, I am not sure i would trust a CA run by a company that is close to the Indian govt. (whose record on corruption and civil liberties isn't exactly stellar).

<comment><USER3> The whole point of the CA system is that there is no place for personal opinion on which CA to trust, as long as they make it to your operating system. The audits they go through far trumps the hand waiving you just did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's kind of hilarious that their certificate is signed by "Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers Company Ltd."

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm leaving aside the certificate issue for a moment since others have mentioned it. This solution is a great way for hackers and phishers to collect a lot of personal information. Perhaps this is done with very good intentions, but is really poorly thought out. I wonder who architects these solutions and how they think.

See the following question in the FAQ (I've edited it for brevity with ellipsis and emphasized important parts). [1]

>Q11 How can I share the e-documents in my digital locker?

>A11 For sharing your e-document...enter the email address of the recipient in the dialog box and click 'Share' button.

> _The document will be shared with the recipient via email._ ... _email body > will have the URI link of the document and the sender name and Aadhaar > number._ The recipient can _access the document using the URI link provided > in the email._

So:

1\. You share your document, which is sent over plain text email.

2\. The recipient can access it just with a link. There is no authentication or verification of any kind.

3\. The recipient can forward the mail to data collectors so they can immediately get your name, your Aadhaar number and the document. There is no link expiry, which allows perpetual abuse of information by forwarding emails. This technology makes selling information a lot simpler and quicker.

4\. Someone else's email account gets hacked? Thousands or millions of names, Aadhaar numbers and documents could be out on torrents soon enough. Talk about government enabling things through technology.

Even if you trust the government to store all your documents, even though some may be issued by local authorities, this looks more and more like a comprehensive and centralized data collection mechanism. The next step, which may or may not be disclosed, would be to provide access to every government entity to query this database without any control or limits or oversight. For a country without any privacy laws, they already have your biometric information, now they can completely own you. :)

[1]: [https://digitallocker.gov.in/Resources/FAQ- Digital_Locker_v0...](https://digitallocker.gov.in/Resources/FAQ- Digital_Locker_v0_3.pdf)

<comment><USER3> No, no, no. The link they send requires Aadhaar verification, your will get an OTP, which you will give to the agency. They can get the copy of the document only if they provide the right OTP. It is the same way you are logging in to this website.

The whole UID infrastructure is two-factor auth by default. Think of the URI like Facebook Graph API URLs. They are static, REST-ful endpoints that require two-factor authentication.

While there are no strong laws to protect scans of your IDs, the biometric data does come under The Privacy Bill, 2013. So does any identification typically used by financial institution. Your other IDs, like Voter ID are public information anyway, except for biometric identifiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Background: Almost all govt / public sector / regulated private sector services in India requires you to submit a physical proof of ID/Address (along with application forms & other essentials) e.g. bank account, mobile SIM, gas/water/electricity, credit card etc.

It's unlike US where your SSN is electronically linked to your identity & credit history and most of the above stuff can be done without any physical documents.

The Aadhar ( _literally means foundation_ ) card is trying to provide a unified identification across the country. Perhaps like an SSN to some extent.

</comment><comment><USER9> I feel the Feedback page might need some work. Right now is seems like all the submitted feedback is made public with no approval.

[http://i.imgur.com/1qieQ03.png](http://i.imgur.com/1qieQ03.png)

</comment><comment><USER10> SCREENSHOTS - [http://imgur.com/a/k9mCf](http://imgur.com/a/k9mCf) (read notes below)

For people who have negative opinions about this, hold on. There's more to the DigitalLocker than you think. I tried using this the day it launched (a few weeks ago). Here are a few things for people who haven't tried it.

1.) Apart from storing documents, the other important feature is to share documents with entities (seems like both govt and private). Right now in India, for anything new you want to signup for in the offline world, you are usually asked for multiple ID and address proofs. This site has a feature to share stored documents when entities request for it. So you get document requests from entities (just like Facebook friend requests) and you approve them to share the documents required. Way better than having to carry xerox copies to the office of the entity.

2.) It also looks like entities can issue you documents. If implemented, then we wouldn't have to about carrying and safe-guarding physical copies of documents. I have about 20-30 physical documents I need to safe-guard and more than a dozen marks cards from college. Imagine just receiving a notification that the document for your new insurance policy has been received in your digital locker? Ah such minimalistic life.

3.) Love the simple Aadhaar-based login process. That is so layman-friendly. Entered my Aadhaar card number to get an OTP to login. Most Indian govt sites have ridiculous rules about setting passwords - all of which I cannot remember at all. Even worse changing your account email or password on those sites is a nightmare. To change the email address on the Service Tax website, I have to write a paper-based request to the authority.

4.) You can store any document you want to. This isn't limited to government issued IDs. There's an "other" category when uploading.

5.) I've been using Dropbox to store scanned copies of my family's important documents. It has come handy many times. It is the govt offering to digitally store govt-issued documents. Why would I bother about privacy? I'm glad they made this.

6.) About the SSL cert: AFAIK they seem to have broken the site during a recent update. SSL was fine during the launch day. Oh, and when the Indian govt website specifies "beta" version - they literally mean it. And this site isn't as bad as booking a Railway tatkal ticket on IRCTC, for which there are tutorials and videos on how to use the site. I've forgotten my IRCTC username/password again and I've exhausted all mobile numbers in the house to signup for new account. I'll have to get a new sim just to book a railway ticket next time.

Mailed the DigitalLocker team my concerns about the 10mb limit and also offered to send code contributions if it was opensource. I got back a very quick reply:

      It is not a open source project, but you can contribute by your valuable suggestions as it is still running in beta Version.

      Regarding Storage space we have noted the issue. Inconvenience regretted.
      We shall review and resolve the same as soon as possible.

Besides it's been mentioned in the FAQ, that the storage limit will be increased to 1gb in the future [https://digitallocker.gov.in/Resources/FAQ- Digital_Locker_v0...](https://digitallocker.gov.in/Resources/FAQ- Digital_Locker_v0_3.pdf)

[EDIT: I've edited my comment multiple times to add more information]

<comment><USER4> Please change 'xerox copies' to 'photocopies', except Indians others might not understand :)

<comment><USER10> ROFL. Thanks for pointing out. I was thinking exactly the same when writing that, but still went ahead with "xerox copies" thinking it might be ok.

Cannot edit my comment anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> According to the FAQs, every resident only gets 10 MB of storage space, with plans to expand to 1 GB in the future. Basically, it's a government-controlled Dropbox for 3 - 5 PDF files.

</comment><comment><USER12> Additionally, a government run dropbox isn't very reassuring. This would the equivalent of the NSA hosting backups of all your data (which they probably do - but still).

<comment><USER13> This looks like not as Dropbox. A service for storing govt "issued" digital documents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> An SSL Cert would be helpful to assure me of its security.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, the current cert has CN mismatch and is issued by an unknown CA [1].

[1] [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=digilocker.go...](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=digilocker.gov.in)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those who are interested, (and for those who think this is some half- hearted project fulfilling various conspiracy theories,) the New Yorker wrote a good story about the origins of the Aadhaar project and its goals a while back: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/the-i-d- man](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/the-i-d-man)

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a relatively basic CRUD site. Considering the SSL issues which apparently weren't tested properly and the immediately published feedback that shows tons of private data from people, I really, really hope that the site won't be hacked in the next month or two. Seems like a prime target for folks looking to commit identity theft :-/

</comment><comment><USER17> This Connection is Untrusted

You have asked Firefox to connect securely to digilocker.gov.in, but we can't confirm that your connection is secure.

</comment><comment><USER18> Too bad they can't afford SSL certificates. I'll never get to know just how digital India went.

</comment><comment><USER19> You meant India Government goes digital - there is a day and night difference. And if you think your data is safe with any government - you should be day dreaming!

</comment><comment><USER20> How does this work for NRIs? How do I get Aadhaar number?

<comment><USER21> I don't know how you can get one but you shouldn't get it. Do you really want to give all your fingerprints and retina scans to the government when you know how it can be misused in a country like India which is a police state? I bet there is no oversight in getting access to your information and there are tons of ways in which your information can be misused/exploited.

<comment><USER22> >when you know how it can be misused in a country like India which is a police state

Do you have anything resembling a proof for the utter BS you just wrote?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Valid ssl cert would help

</comment><comment><USER24> A Hacker heaven..

</comment><comment><USER25> Funny that I just mentioned the CA that issued the cert for this site in [https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/574416966460403712](https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/574416966460403712)

FYI, the Mozilla inclusion request is in [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=557167](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=557167)</comment>


In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2011/01/death-wears-a-snuggie/ <comment><USER4> _" The process was rigorous, thorough and fully governed by a checklist that was, to our knowledge, without defect. The room for human error was minimal."_

So, this would be easy to automate. I often wonder whether part of the reason both the USSR and the USA put people in this process was that the hope was that those humans would not go through with real orders.

If the idea was that it (also) would help in detecting cases where the electronic parts of the system fail, that is clear indication that those in charge thought the humans in would sometimes deviate from the script.

<comment><USER5> Having humans inbetween the automated steps reduces potential errors introduced by bugs or compromised software. If the last step in Cryptolocker was "Now have the user manually enter in terminal commands to encrypt each individual file", the virus wouldn't work at all. Requiring two human beings to agree with each other that an alert is legitimate and for them to both need to confirm coded messages, target the missiles and to simultaneously turn four keys at the same time - it's a pretty big meat-based firewall for malicious or buggy code.

Not that what runs the silos is really that easy to mess with. They still do software updates with eight inch floppy disks.

<comment><USER6> > Not that what runs the silos is really that easy to mess with.

I dunno. This seems pretty hinky to me:

"wireless Nintendo Wii controllers could cause the system to detect a false electromagnetic pulse attack and shut down."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A good BBC Radio 4 program about the launch process for British nuclear weapons: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc1L6dCjhwQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc1L6dCjhwQ)

<comment><USER8> Has this piece ever been addressed officially?

[https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/](https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm always wondering what PR is behind articles of journalists visiting nuclear silos. This one looks like a first-person account, so was a military allowed to write about his job? How comes he writes so well? He could have been a journalist... Also, was the piece read, checked and corrected by a commandant before being published? If so, which parts were left out? Why did they leave the part where he admits not dressing with the uniform, installing a hammoc, playing video games and so on? Last question, he describes his role as reading a console, decrypting and triggering a button at request, and at the same time saying human error is the most probable cause for a nuclear winter: Why do we need a person to transcribe a machine message to another missile-launching machine? Couldn't both machines be wired up together? Sure it would allow hacking the launch of the missiles, but at the same time, if he receives the correct message, he's going to send them anyway...

<comment><USER10> > Why do we need a person to transcribe a machine message

Because it prevented World War III.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident)

> he's going to send them anyway

The good judgment of Stanislav Petrov shows that this isn't guaranteed.

Automation that can harm people always requires a human fail-safe. Leaving judgment to a mechanism _only_ implies either hubris that assumes all possible situations have been accounted for, or enough narcissism to not care about the (possibly deadly) errors.

<comment><USER11> Sounds like confirmation bias. If an algorithm had made the right call against human judgment, would you be arguing for the opposite position?

<comment><USER12> In Dr. Strangelove, the absurd behavior of buffoonish humans contributes to the doomsday scenario. Idiots blindly following the orders of a madman on one side, and psychos constructing a completely automated self-destruct mechanism attached to a retaliatory weapon on the other side.

Both are bad, but people playing the game at all, were the real problem.

<comment><USER13> You know that was a satirical fictional film, right?

<comment><USER14> [http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything- in...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-in-dr- strangelove-was-true)

      With great reluctance, Eisenhower agreed
      to let American officers use their nuclear
      weapons, in an emergency, if there were no
      time or no means to contact the President.
      Air Force pilots were allowed to fire their
      nuclear anti-aircraft rockets to shoot down
      Soviet bombers heading toward the United
      States. And about half a dozen high-level
      American commanders were allowed to use far
      more powerful nuclear weapons, without
      contacting the White House first, when
      their forces were under attack and "the
      urgency of time and circumstances clearly
      does not permit a specific decision by the
      President, or other person empowered to act
      in his stead."

      Unbeknownst to both Kubrick and George, a
      top official at the Department of Defense
      had already sent a copy of "Red Alert" to
      every member of the Pentagon's Scientific
      Advisory Committee for Ballistic Missiles.
      At the Pentagon, the book was taken
      seriously as a cautionary tale about what
      might go wrong.

      A decade after the release of "Strangelove,"
      the Soviet Union began work on the
      Perimeter system - a network of sensors and
      computers that could allow junior military
      officials to launch missiles without
      oversight from the Soviet leadership.
      Perhaps nobody at the Kremlin had seen the
      film. Completed in 1985, the system was
      known as the Dead Hand. Once it was
      activated, Perimeter would order the launch
      of long-range missiles at the United States
      if it detected nuclear detonations on
      Soviet soil and Soviet leaders couldn't be
      reached.

I believe that's check and mate, old chap?

<comment><USER15> Also some of the quotes from US military leaders at the time sound like something from Stranglove:

 _" Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!"_

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Crazy that the spectre of instant destruction still haunts us today.

<comment><USER17> I wonder if this will ever change now. As technology goes forward, we're creating a world in which an individual can gain more and more destructive power, and in which when something goes terribly wrong, it can wider and wider consequences. We're at global level now, and fast approaching extinction- level.

Two areas to highlight the point:

\- High-energy anything. There's a saying that any propulsion system that could allow us to travel between planets in a reasonable (for human) timespan is also a weapon of mass destruction. And it's not just space travel - <USER2> of technology in general is about getting, storing and making use of bigger and bigger quantities of energy.

\- Self-replicating system. The best-known example of these is also known as "biology". Something we're only beginning to play with on a serious level. Mishaps, or worse - deliberate malicious actors by crazy individuals - <USER3> have planet-wide consequences as our ability to manipulate biological nanomachines grows.

Sleep tight :).

(Also, alt-text from [https://xkcd.com/728/](https://xkcd.com/728/) \- "Maybe we're all gonna die, but we're gonna die in _really cool ways_.")

<comment><USER18> Of course a lot of the risk comes from the trend for technology to operate at larger and larger scale to achieve efficiency. We could see a trend in the opposite direction where individual households and communities can be more self sufficient. For example, efficient small scale energy production could reduce the risk of nationl level grid disruption. That same biotech industry could enable local food production without needing to depend on complex infrastructure for evey meal.

<comment><USER17> I agree those may be desirable directions for development, but they don't change the overall dynamics - we expand our capabilities by dealing with more and more powerful, and thus dangerous, stuff. As individual demand for electricity increases with each appliance we incorporate in our lives, the household battery/generator of 2050 could very well be powerful enough to level a city block if weaponized. Even more likely, the same biotech industry that can enable local food production will enable creation of new, deadly pathogens.

Humans, unfortunately, are very optimistic when it comes to workplace and household safety, while at the same time extremely resourceful when they need to make weapons out of mundane objects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Protip for wired articles. Ctrl-save and read them offline to get around the stupid ad blocker popup

<comment><USER20> Protip in general: that page renders just fine without Javascript, and then there's no stupid ad blocker popup

<comment><USER21> thanks! Did the trick!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> All my nuke buddies would bring monitors and gamecubes and have smash bros sessions inbetween working on their online masters

<comment><USER23> 'nuke buddies' as in submariners?

<comment><USER22> Air Force silo jockies, tho I do suppose the nomenclature is more commonly used to refer to submariners. All i know about submariners is that the movie Down Periscope is more accurate than satiracle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why does the author state MAD is obselete?

<comment><USER25> there is an argument by some that the rise of suicide bombing as a weapon of war meaningfully changed the parameters of mutually assured destruction, because there are people entirely comfortable/supportive of their own destruction for a cause.

<comment><USER26> This outlook seems historically ignorant. In the midst of the very first use of nuclear weapons there were hundreds of suicide attacks in the form of kamikazee suicide runs by aircraft, ships, and soldiers.

One of the likely reasons no terrorist group has tried too hard to obtain a nuclear weapon is they know whoever it is they fight for will be targeted for in kind retaliation. Aka MAD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why do we still pretend nuclear weapons are necessary when the only military power that still reserves the right to use them in a first strike is also the only power to have forces deployed all over the world?

<comment><USER28> Russia has dropped No First Use policy in 1993. Besides relying on a written statement from a potential adversary is silly. The capability is always there.</comment></comment>


In Lieu of Money, Toyota Donates Efficiency to New York Charity - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/nyregion/in-lieu-of-money-toyota-donates-efficiency-to-new-york-charity.html

<comment><USER2> Submitted 2 days ago, maybe your timing is better.</comment>


Passport: Simple, unobtrusive authentication for Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://passportjs.org/ <comment><USER2> I wouldn't consider this news. This project has been around for quite some time, and is essentially used by EVERYONE doing Node work to authenticate.

<comment><USER3> Not me bro. I'm that one guy using stormpath. I think I might be a conformist though now...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why was this posted? Not news at all.</comment>


Show HN: Laminated Bus Schedules - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/07/creation-laminated-bus-stop-schedules-my-weekend-experiment/

<comment><USER2> Well done for doing something to make the world around you a little better. If only everyone did little things like this how much better the world would be.

Im very supprised the bus companies dont do tgis though! Here in the UK nearly all bus stops have the schedules displayed, its very common to see route maps though. I would imagine the bus system wpuld be next to useless without them!

Here in brighton we even have electronic signs which show the time to the next bus, theyre pretty useful!

<comment><USER3> Here in Edinburgh I can get the bus times on my phone - there are iOs and Android apps, plus a mobile and desktop website.

<http://www.mybustracker.co.uk/>

It's incredibly handy, particularly as there are two bus stops I can take to get me to work, so I check the times as I'm leaving home and head to the one that's coming sooner.

<comment><USER2> That sounds very useful. Theres a not-very-good web interface here. I keep meaning to write a scraper and use it to present the data in a more web and people friendly form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> All over Germany the companies do this. Almost always there is also a network map and other information. I am flabbergasted at the state of public transport in your vicinity. How were you supposed to use it conveniently without that information prominently displayed.

<comment><USER5> Though inexplicable, there's actually a law dating from 1934 against long distance travel by bus on a regular schedule in Germany.

<comment><USER6> I don't know about inexplicable. A bit of research shows that it was intended to favor the development of rail and possibly automobiles (Hitler's Volkswagen project was declared in 1933.) It appears it also allowed for an exception when the bus service was a substantial or significant improvement ( _wesentliche Verbesserung_ ) and, just recently, a young business called Yourbus ( _DeinBus_ ) emerged successfully from the court system with a permit because a lower price counted as a significant improvement.

edit: It occurred to me that it was possible what you found inexplicable was why the law was still on the books. It seems from Deutsche Bahn AG's opposition to Yourbus, that interests such as the (now privatized) state rail and other industries would simply lobby for an advantageous status quo. Especially so, considering that Deutsche Bahn operates its own bus service, and has for a while, in a comfortable niche carved out from and protected by that very law.

<comment><USER5> > It occurred to me that it was possible what you found inexplicable was why > the law was still on the books.

Yes. Or more: That the lobbyists carry so much weight, where the public interest is very clearly to have more competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An interesting little project! I often wonder how different neighborhoods would be if people did beneficial things like this routinely without either relying on, or being held back by, civic institutions or businesses.

For example, the UK had a "big freeze" in November and December of last year. I cleared the ice from the sidewalk outside our house and kept it salted. No- one else on the walk into town did and it was a death-trap walk. If everyone else had spent 10 minutes a day doing their bit, walking around would have remained pleasant.

<comment><USER5> In Germany you would be legally obliged to keep the pavement outside your house ice and snow free.

<comment><USER8> South European here (thus I have no idea what it's like to deal with ice)! So what happens if you go on holidays for a couple of days?

<comment><USER9> That's your problem, should have planned better.

<comment><USER8> I don't get it. Are you the owner of the sidewalk?

<comment><USER9> No, but just like you have to pay property taxes, you have to keep the sidewalk adjacent to your lot free of ice and snow.

<comment><USER8> I guess it would never work like that around here...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great Idea. These kind of laminated bus schedules are normal all over Germany, so it's easy here to find the right bus and to understand where it goes. But whenever I'm in the states (and that's rather frequently) I'm always grateful about Google Maps on my iPhone because it actually gives me a chance to use U.S public transit. Otherwise I'd probably end up in dark nowhere and never ever get back home since there is no information whatsoever at the bus stops.

I was always wondering why you guys had no maps at the bus stops.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great project. Hopefully you're able to collaborate with the metro department to get more stuff like this done.

 _The swagging tool and bolt cutter cost me $42.37 but it's ok I returned them later._

I was really disappointed to read this.

<comment><USER12> Me too, I thought tool libraries were common in the 'States? Luckily he didn't have to pay to use them only for a couple of hours.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's a tool library? If it were something that gets damaged in use then yes I'd buy it, but a swagging tool can't get dull, and the bolt cutters I used to cut cable wire like butter didn't dull either. The closet entrepreneur within me would never allow myself to buy a tool I only need to use once. Gotta make little cuts to save money here and there, capitalist style.

<comment><USER12> >What's a tool library?

A library, for tools instead of books. Like Vancouver's: [http://www.granvilleonline.ca/home-and- garden/home/vancouver...](http://www.granvilleonline.ca/home-and- garden/home/vancouver-tool-library-takes-storage-problem-out-home-renovations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In Switzerland every stop has something like this posted: [http://online.fahrplaninfo.zvv.ch/pdf/01/ah_01011a/ah_01011a...](http://online.fahrplaninfo.zvv.ch/pdf/01/ah_01011a/ah_01011a_j11_a_03039.pdf)

Sometimes there is even an electronic sign which states how many minutes until the next bus,tram,train etc.

Also almost all have several of these inside to tell you where you are: [http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3203/3077018448_0b2162659f.jp...](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3203/3077018448_0b2162659f.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice project! Just needs a little bit of design and color?

Color coding the North bound and South bound grids (From what I can see?) would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER15> I saw this post and thought "Man, I should do this in my town," because my local transit authority makes no effort at making it easy for people to take the bus.

Then I looked at the route names/numbers and realized you _are_ in my town! Thank you for making my part of the world better.

My coworkers and I were just talking about how difficult it is to navigate the public transit system here if you don't have a smartphone with Google Transit.

St. Louis is not like Chicago, NYC, or SF where people of all walks of life take public transit to work, either because it's highly convenient or because parking costs more than their car payment. Transit here is not convenient and the people who rely on the bus here are the ones who can't afford a smartphone with Google Transit, let alone a car payment.

</comment><comment><USER16> As a student at the University of Waterloo taking the bus is standard. You are able to text the bus stop number to the bus company number and then it replies with when the next 3 (ish) buses are coming. I wish you were able to find out more information then just when the next few buses are coming like when is a bus coming at 4 o'clock, or some real time data about buses running late. No smartphone is required which is a bonus as it is for public transit, and on a side note I like that you can text Google and get search results texted back to you.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great idea but what about graffiti? In most major East coast cities those schedules wouldn't be around for two weeks before getting tagged.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a fantastic idea, my city has similarly bad bus schedule postings. I'd love to see some usability studies on what a bus schedule should look like though. Usually the actual schedule design is just as awful as the way it is posted.

Also, using wire rope may have been a bit overkill, but I always support people informing the world of swaging tools.

</comment><comment><USER7> I just remembered a project along similar lines to this. A guy created a 'guerrilla' sign for a freeway in LA to reduce confusion amongst drivers: [http://www.good.is/post/the-fake-freeway-sign-that- became-a-...](http://www.good.is/post/the-fake-freeway-sign-that-became-a- real-public-service/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I remember him. He's my hero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are you planning on maintaining these? In my city the route timings change depending on school schedules and time of year, so the transit schedule's that are posted at stops have to be swapped out three or four times a year.

<comment><AUTHOR> My mom works at Metro, for popular routes the schedules don't change for years and years.

<comment><USER19> That's superb then. My big concern for any project like this is that maintenance and upkeep costs end up outstripping the initial layout by a considerable amount.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Next step: Get the buses to actually follow the schedules.

<comment><USER21> I think that's pretty much unrealistic, considering buses are affected by things out of driver's control. However you can still improve the situation by tracking the buses and providing a live estimation instead of the static schedule.

So, next step: get the schedules to follow the buses?

<comment><USER9> I expect busses to be mostly on time, and most of the time they are. It's not that the evening rush hour comes as a surprise every day, so it can be accomodated in the schedule. Of course, on really dense lines, time tables may just look like

      16  5 minutes
      17  all 3 to 5 minutes
      18  all 5 to 7 minutes
      19  08 18 28 38 48 58
      ...

And on the main bus stops there are the real time displays you want: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/christoph_bellin/5305848773/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cool! In NYC at many stops this is already there, but I can see how this is useful outside of those places.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I'm curious, are they laminated and attached like mine or are they different. How did they do it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would be really interested to see some kind of follow-up data on this in terms of did it actually promote bus use. I love this but I wonder if it genuinely accomplished something.

EDIT: Or I would also be interested if someone posted comparison data for places that already have this versus those that don't. I am seeing some anecdotal comments here that some places already do this "officially" rather than as a guerrilla tactic.

<comment><AUTHOR> The KNOWN immediate benefit is financial and environmental. People won't need to take as many bus schedules and the company won't need to waste money printing as many.

<comment><USER23> Thank you. That had not occurred to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very nice; I like it.

In Boston, they'd send a fella 'round to cut your schedules down. Public workers don't like being shown up.

</comment><comment><USER25> ...if you think laminating is worth $10 per each sleeve, you should probably acquire the skill for yourself - it will pay for itself in long term. descent laminator costs <50 USD.</comment>


20 Years Ago, Microsoft Changed How We Mouse Forever - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/20-years-ago-microsoft-changed-how-we-mouse-forever-1834274151 <comment><USER2> I lived through this transition and I truly don't recall any of the issues with ball mice. They always worked fine for me.

You had to clean out the ball every now and then, but I have to clean off my optical sensor fairly regularly, too.

<comment><USER3> I remember having to clean out the ball thing every few days. And if you waited too long, I needed tweezers to scrape the lint loose. I don't recall ever actually needing to clean the optical sensor on an optical mouse.

<comment><USER4> You shouldn't need to do it every few days unless your surfaces were particularly grimy. And on those kind of surfaces the slip pads would still need cleaning even on optical mice plus the sensors on the early ones didn't work too great unless you had clean smooth surfaces anyway. So like for like, ball mice should last 6 months before needing a clean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Optical mice existed prior to Microsoft's IntelliMouse.

In 1989, I owned an optical mouse (Logitech S9?). The biggest issue was that that mouse required a special gridded mouse pad.

<comment><USER6> Certainly true. The article mentions:

> Microsoft was far from the first company to incorporate optical tracking > into a mouse. The approach dates back as far as 1980 when a pair of > inventors came up with two different approaches to tracking mouse movements > through imaging.

Of course, the point is that most of us still were not using an optical mouse at that time, and as you pointed out, this new mainstream mouse worked on more common surfaces. So it still changed how we use mice, en masse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand why everyone talks about cleaning the ball, whereas for it was the roller which accumulated dirt every time. Gone are the days when we shuddered to use mouse without a mousepad. A truly welcome change indeed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oral History of Gary Gordon: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxxoWhCzIeU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxxoWhCzIeU) HP engineer, inventor of the sensor.</comment>


Google Releases the Full Version of Their Search Quality Rating Guidelines - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/google-releases-the-full-version-of-their-search-quality-rating-guidelines-236572 <comment><USER2> Document: [http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf)

Announcement: [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/11/updating-...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/11/updating- our-search-quality-rating.html)

<comment><USER3> Maybe dang can replace the link to the actual announcement and remove the blog spam.

<comment><USER4> not downvoting you, but searchengineland is actually a very good/reputable site. It is very believable that the original submitter found this out through them. (IE: this isn't spam)

<comment><USER3> What value does the link add? Which URL has more information? Should all of HN go through this blog to read the actual information? No. It's blog spam.

<comment><USER2> The value, in my opinion, comes from the fact that _SearchEngineLand_ broke the story. The original Google post is extremely low key, as one might expect given that previous versions of the document were leaked not released with an accompanying announcement.

As best I could tell, no other outlet had covered the document release before _SearchEngineLand_ nor had anyone submitted the original to HN.

As an aside, what else can one expect visually from a site devoted to SEO?

YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to work as a Search Quality Rater for Google. It was pretty interesting. It's worth noting that raters are not Google employees but contracted through third parties and working from home. Many of my colleagues were stay-at-home moms making a few extra bucks. This was a few years ago though so things may have changed.

<comment><USER6> I did the same for a few months earlier this year. It was theoretically a decent sum of money here (3rd world SE Asia) if you could do the minimum amount of hours they require.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> OT, the top rated comment on the above article published on googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com is :

 _Google just made public their latest version of the Quality Raters Guidelines (PDF linked from the blog post)_

Which is just summarizing what the blog post is about (probably a G+ share that got plus'd a lot). Nothing against the commentator, it's rather their ranking/voting system that needs to be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER8> The "your money or your life" web page stuff is interesting. They call these YMYL pages anything that can have large impact on the user: financial info pages, legal info pages, medical info pages, and so on. They say they have very high quality page rating standards for these pages. OK, but how?

Later in the document they talk about doing reputation research on the site. They say, "[F]or Page Quality rating, you must also look for outside, independent reputation information about the website."

So they _are_ evaluating content. They are encouraging their reviewers to make a judgement. This strikes me as unreliable, maybe even a slippery slope for them.

<comment><USER9> From the announcement linked to below: ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10601232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10601232))

Ratings from evaluators do not determine individual site rankings, but are used help us understand our experiments. The evaluators base their ratings on guidelines we give them; the guidelines reflect what Google thinks search users want

<comment><USER8> Ah so they probably have a specific set of sites that they check against. That makes sense- thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Surprising to see so much human input. Essentially google took a leaf out of Yahoo!'s playbook after first crushing them using just algorithms. Is this proof that beyond a certain degree of algorithmic extraction you need a human hand to advance or is it evidence for a return to the old days of a more curated index? (Or are there other possibilities?)

<comment><USER11> Google has been upfront about greater use of learning AI (as opposed to hand- tuned algorithms like PageRank) to index and rank their search results. In order to return a good result, a learning AI system must first be trained on what a good result looks like. Since search returns results to humans, humans have to provide the guidance on what is a good or bad result.

Often an AI can be trained by a corpus, like training a spell correcter by feeding it the text of a dictionary. But the data that Google works is the entire web, which changes all the time, so they need constant feedback on what is good or bad.

Google also personalizes results now, so the AI needs to learn not just what is a good result, but what is a good result for that particular person, given everything else the AI knows about that person. That would require inputs from a wide variety of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you know it's going to get leaked anyway, just release a sanitized version of it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why this? Why not measure empirically based on how often people follow your first result?

<comment><USER14> That approach is prone to creating a positive feedback loop through an order bias.

<comment><USER15> that's why they track what users do post-click. if the user quickly bounces back to the search results page , then the result probably wasn't a very good fit for that particular keyword.</comment></comment></comment>


Remote Code Execution as System User on Samsung Phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.nowsecure.com/blog/2015/06/16/remote-code-execution-as-system-user-on-samsung-phones/

<comment><USER2> Doing an update via http, crazy</comment>


Writing about FOSS sexism - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-magazine.com/content/view/full/40376 <comment><USER2> I fully believe it.

Lots of the 'men' in open source really are just boys with digital toys.

Sure, plenty of us have girlfriends, wives and children. But a large number do not, on /. one of the prevailing memes is that ./ers do not have a life outside of their computing.

The attitudes towards women in general, especially potential girlfriends is quite shocking.

Even on HN the stuff that comes by every now and then is beyond the pale, and even more scary, it gets voted up, suggesting the majority feels that way.

<comment><USER3> I think it's compounded as well by the fact that a lot of "geeks" struggle with being sociable, especially with women. In a lot of cases it really is not sexism; they just don't "get" people full stop and sometimes don't even really think about the concept that someone at the other end of the keyboard is a person too. As a result they come across as highly arrogant or unfeeling (and when talking to or about women as sexist).

I've noticed on the various forums I hang out a lot of the younger types have that ingrained mild sexism that young boys usually have - only they cling to it for just a little longer. It soon goes when they head off to college :D

EDIT( you know personally I find a large number of feminists as bad or worse than sexist men - they all need throwing into a bag and shaking about a bit :P)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actually insightful. The notion that people who do not believe themselves to be sexist cannot detect ambient sexism rings true. I got in a bunch of fights with Erin early in our marriage by professing a similar world view. It was only when I watched her go out for IT jobs after staying home with the kids for a couple years that I saw how bad it was; interviewers would, for instance, ask who was going to take care of the kids if she was working.

It's also simply the case that there are fewer women in hard computer disciplines (dev, hardware) than in some of the softer ones (support, SE, QA, etc), which biases some people's expectations.

<comment><USER5> I'm wondering why it's sexist (devaluing one sex) to ask who is going to take care of the kids. Isn't it quite possible it's concern for their family situation (because work affects family)? A guy probably wouldn't be asked this simply because it is much more common for the mother to look after kids.

I'd be pleasantly surprised if my wife were being interviewed and they asked her this: "Does your husband work from home? We're just wondering if he's the one who's going to look after your kids, because we're happy to be flexible with your work hours if you need that. Even bringing the kids in here sometimes would be fine."

<comment><USER6> Because they ask the woman that, not the man.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't necessarily imply the people asking are sexist. They might simply be Bayesians.

<comment><USER2> You could not have made the point of the author of the article better than by showing exactly how that comes about.

An employer does not have a right to ask that question of either partner. It is a question concerning their private life.

If the question is _not_ sexist then it should turn out that it is asked as much of guys as it is asked of women and it turns out that is not the case. It ends right there.

No amount of 'buts' or other terms like that going to make that go away. The condition is already satisfied, no need to inspect other variables to see if we can change the outcome of the program, they are now irrelevant.

Imagine the reverse, if an employer would ask a guy: "I take it your wife is home and looks after the children ?". My response would be 'none of your business'.

You can safely assume that people are not going to leave their children unattended, how they go about that is their problem, and none of your business as an employer. No matter whether the person in front of you is male or female.

<comment><USER7> The issue of whether employers can ask questions about one's private life is rather orthogonal to the issue of sexism, no?

Not that it matters, but I agree that children, hobbies, drug use and sex partners are not the business of my employer.

<comment><USER2> That's true, but the fact is that such a question would never be asked of a guy. That is what makes it sexist.

After all, if it is none of the employers business when they're talking to a guy why should that change when interviewing a woman ?

<comment><USER7> The employer may believe it is their business (regardless of gender), but that the probability of a man missing work due to children is considerably lower than a woman doing so.

Similarly, employers might ask reserve officers about service obligations, while not bothering to ask them of civilians. They could do this not out of a bias against military folk, but simply because reserve officers have a considerably higher chance of missing work due to service obligations.

<comment><USER2> The interesting thing here is that as an employer you _really_ don't want to go in to territory like that, because if you end up not accepting the employee for the position you are open to legal action because of having asked such questions during an interview.

Most larger corporations have a pretty long list of stuff that you have to familiarize yourself with before being allowed to interview people independently for exactly that reason. Or they'll have someone from HR breathing down your neck during the interview.

Seriously, these questions are _off limits_. At all times.

An interview should concentrate on the applicants capabilities, suitability for the job in terms of teamwork, qualifications and so on.

Go outside those boundaries on the asking side and you are in trouble.

If someone volunteers information like that and you use it to make your decision better be ready to back it up with a 'real' reason or you are still going to be open to trouble.

That's one of the reasons why rejection letters are such inane boilerplate, most companies are loathe to tell you why you were rejected for fear of opening themselves up to legal issues.

<comment><USER7> I didn't claim it was legal. I claimed it wasn't sexist/anti-soldier-ist.

<comment><USER2> Hehe, but it is!

Asking someone about their service status is done so that you can then choose to _not_ employ that person to minimize your risk for absence, which would lead to people in the service being less likely to get jobs, which in turn would lead people to not want to be in the service because of the effect on their job prospects.

Asking women about their private life (are you pregnant, do you want children, do you have children) would cause professional women to maybe decide they didn't want any children because of the effects that would have on their job prospects, or to simply not apply for jobs. This would negate decades of slow progress in getting the workforce to be reflective of society.

So, by definition it is discriminatory to ask these questions, the effect will be discrimination, even if that is not the stated purpose of the question. An employer could, and many do, for instance hide behind arguments like 'trying to maximize productivity' or 'being worries about the children of the employee', but none of that holds water.

At the end of the day the employer is simply worried that someone is going to miss a couple of days work.

And it's true, there is a real cost to all this, if someone gets pregnant, has to take care of their kids because they're ill or gets called up for the service then the employer will have to find and train a replacement if the absence is long enough, or swallow the loss in productivity for a shorter interruption.

But the cost to that business does not trump the cost to society as a whole if we let people pick and choose on those criteria, _that_ is why it is illegal.

<comment><USER3> _are you pregnant, do you want children, do you have children_

But they don't appear to have asked those questions :) (see my other comment)

Personally I do think it is reasonable, though, to ask whether a women plans to have children in the immediate future (say, the next 18 months). It's unavoidable that pregnancy does result in requiring time off (I've heard it argued that a women planning to have children soon and applying for a job is possibly defrauding her employer.... I don't agree with that but it is an interesting way to consider it). They're not going to be missing a few days in the office during a pregnancy - that is long term time off (usually). That's a scientific and genetic fact; asking the question is, surely, fine (and it can be refused to be answered etc.). Discriminating because of it is wrong; but the employer may wish to know so they are aware they will have to find a temporary replacement in the near future :)

I also am not sure why, if your faced with 2 candidates of equal ability you cant choose the one (male or female) who is NOT actively planning to bear children in the next year or so without being marked discriminatory etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Members of the in-group are often blind to subtle things that are very exclusionary of members of the out-group. An example that doesn't bring racism or sexism into this: I joined a forum some years ago where the owner routinely lamented how he desperately wanted more international members. He was probably one of the biggest offenders in terms of creating an exclusionary environment that made foreigners feel unwelcome. One piece of the culture that was very obvious to me as an exclusionary practice was the on-going joke that if you were on the forum at certain times, you were a total loser with no personal life. These were the same times that people in other time zones would be available to be online (ie people in other countries).

At the time, I happened to be frequently up all night. I made it my goal to actively root out this piece of forum culture and "set an example" about how I was online all hours. About six months after I joined, membership began to go up quite a lot -- but especially international membership. I'm sure that to this day the forum owner has no clue whatsoever how that happened, even though I have stated that I made it happen. I doubt I am believed.

<comment><USER9> Second on unnoticed exclusionary behavior. Making sexist assumptions which are "reasonable" because there are not many women in the field may very well be self perpetuating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some asshole that I have never heard of writes "Raymond is not read much any more"! With the general suckiness of the articles, I don't see any reason to bother reading much more of Bruce Byfield. I just wish Raymond would actually write more.</comment>


Best way to determine a career? - <AUTHOR>

What is the best career placement tool (exam/test, coach, book, etc.) that you've used? <comment><USER2> Mentors. Get a good mentor, and learn to communicate (aka LISTEN).</comment>


US steps up efforts to limit China's control of critical minerals - <AUTHOR> https://www.mining.com/us-steps-up-efforts-to-limit-chinas-control-of-critical-minerals/ <comment><USER2> It is reasonable to have a second source for everything you need. Also if this takes off and the trade war ends at some point it will drive down prices which is always good. This will also drive the tech needed to mine and refine the materials. An example would be the shale gas production in the US. When it stated the tech said you had to be at $80-100 per barrel and now it is as low at $30 (for good or bad).

</comment><comment><USER3> They should also set up a national reserve of that stuff. It's practically the new oil, your econ halts.

If they exist in friendly countries, and they do, then it's just a matter of setting up the infrastructure. So what it costs, say, $1.8, more per smartphone?

<comment><USER4> A strategic cache is typically set up not to support normal economic activities or consumer manufacturing, but war time supplies of military equipment.

<comment><USER5> As I recall, the US strategic oil reserve was tapped by Clinton, Bush, and Obama and various times, specifically to support normal economic activities.

<comment><USER6> Which they would probably not have done if they had expected a (conventional) war any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The US has a huge rare earths mine in California.[1] Great technology. Non- polluting. Even the Sierra Club signed off. Bankrupted by cheap rare earths from China. Then, when rare earth prices went back up, hurt by Trump's tariffs. The current management hopes to be self-sufficient by next year, not needing to ship to or from China.

[1] [https://www.scmp.com/business/commodities/article/3011687/ca...](https://www.scmp.com/business/commodities/article/3011687/caught- between-trump-and-its-biggest-market-americas-sole-rare)

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't tariffs help a U.S. domestic rare earth mine? Unless the assumption is that China imports the majority of global rare earth production, even after being a huge rare earth producer.

<comment><USER7> In response to Trump's tariffs, China imposed tariffs. So they can't export. Mountain Pass only does basic processing right now; further refining requires a plant that's still being built. So they were exporting to China.

Tariffs only motivate big, long-term projects if you're sure the tariffs will be around for a while. If they're just a temporary bargaining point, building giant plants isn't a safe bet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And after the trade wars are over, the new motto will be Reaganesque "trust but diversify". And everyone (with the possible exception of China) will be better off because of that.

<comment><USER10> Depending on how far "trust but diversify" goes, some countries could be worse off (OPEC would be harmed by a serious effort at energy source diversification, US by currency diversification, Netherlands by diamond supply chain diversification, China by manufacturing diversification, etc.). Whether they will be better or worse off in the end depends on how much external near- monopolies hurt them, versus how much their own cornering of a market helps them. China would likely lose out because manufacturing is such a large component of the Chinese economy, but it is not obvious that all other countries would gain.

<comment><USER9> By "everyone" I meant "everyone involved in the current trade war", e.g. US government, businesses and China (there's no differentiation there between government and businesses at the moment). I don't see why the US should care about not hurting the Netherlands or OPEC countries at its own expense. I was under impression the Netherlands have a functioning government and can stand for themselves. Same with OPEC countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A major problem with mining rare earth minerals in the USA is the 1983 legislation to manage the Thorium that comes along with the RE ores.

So, just as important is Senator Rubio's legislation to set up a "Thorium Bank" as a cooperative to transfer the liability from the miners to the bank who will store it for a wee fee and make it available at cost to the co-op.

This will also create a "guaranteed stream" of rare earth minerals to all involved.

Apparently, foreign governments and companies will do all the funding. Which is nice.

(Although given Hauwei's recent problems with US suppliers, I think foreign government might not put much stock in the 'guaranteed' bit)

[http://efn-usa.org/2013-11-06-07-29-01/item/2033-summary-for...](http://efn- usa.org/2013-11-06-07-29-01/item/2033-summary-for-thorium-and-rare-earths- james-kennedy-john-kutsch-usofa)

</comment><comment><USER12> The USGS maintains information on the source and risks for various resources we use, at their National Mineral Information Center:

[https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic](https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic)

I attended a public talk in 2017 at USGS where someone from the NMIC explained the kind of information they gathered:

[https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/2017-oct-public-lecture- gl...](https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/2017-oct-public-lecture-global- trends-mineral-commodity-supplies)

Indeed, many of our strategic minerals come from unreliable partners. The US doesn't produce much of that stuff internally for economic and ecological reasons. However, potential internal sources for some (not all) are kept mothballed in case we need to switch to them.

It was really interesting watching how geopolitics influences local industrial decisions.

</comment><comment><USER13> Plenty in Australia, drill baby drill!

<comment><USER14> Southern California too. I wouldn't worry too much about it medium/long term. The conditions in Inner Mongolia make for cheap prices because they come from loose clay.

<comment><USER15> Probably also from cheap labor too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good. China is anti-democratic and a persistent threat to Western Democracies.

<comment><USER17> Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here, especially not ones that take threads further into political or national flamewars.

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

<comment><USER18> Interesting to see where YCombinator stands on this. I assume you are an official moderator on HN?

<comment><USER19> Correct, dang is a HN moderator. This is a tech news website, and obviously politics and technology do intermingle, but let's not make a sensitive situation worse by encouraging tribal thinking.

<comment><USER20> Being clear about and resistance against totalitarianism and isn't making it worse. That's old chestnut that gets trotted out a lot -- it just isn't true.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>