Proposition C - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/press/prop-c <comment><USER2> Between 2006 and 2008 I spent a lot of time on the streets interviewing homeless people for a documentary film I was making [1]. One of the things they often mentioned was the "homeless-industrial complex" (a phrase coined by one of my subjects, not me). There are a lot of organizations that make a lot of money "helping" homeless people, and their continued existence depends on there _not_ being an effective solution to the problem. Homeless people are literally their bread-and-butter, so they have a perverse incentive to ensure a steady supply of "product". Similar perverse incentives play themselves out in other areas of our society, like privately run prisons.

[1] [http://graceofgodmovie.com](http://graceofgodmovie.com)

<comment><USER3> Providing your own documentary with its editorial biases as a citation to back your own statements is not credible, especially when it makes such strong claims of bad faith among organizations working to alleviate homelessness.

Can you provide independent citations that back your claims about the existence of a "homeless-industrial complex"?

<comment><USER2> User23 very kindly provided a heap of references in a sibling comment, but just for the record: I did not intend to claim that the HIC exists, only that my subjects talked about it, and it seems like a plausible hypothesis to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> IMHO mandatory reading before posting on this issue: [http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Poin...](http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Point-in-Time-Count-General-FINAL-6.21.17.pdf)

The data is incredibly detailed, absolutely fascinating and messy as you'd expect, dispelling a lot of the overly simplistic rumors like other states "shipping" SF homeless people, homeless people all being one type of person or another etc etc etc

<comment><USER5> Glad to see this report being referenced. A friend and I volunteered to gather this data at the beginning of 2017 along with hundreds of other volunteers. It's an interesting process. You show up, they assign you specific streets to walk and you just count up homeless people, noting their sex, rough age, and dwelling type (improvised structure, vehicle, etc.).

I encourage anyone who is interested to volunteer for the next SF homelessness count, likely in January 2019 (They do one every 2 years).

<comment><USER6> _Thank you_ for taking the time to do this. I have found the referenced document quite valuable towards driving more rational debate around the subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is homelessness in SF really about affordable housing? Obviously San Francisco has insane housing prices but there are dozens and dozens of shelters & programs (I volunteer at a couple) for homeless people to take refuge and get their life back together.

As I understand it (and as my friend who is an SF police officer where 90% of his job is dealing with the homeless), the much larger problem is SF's (& perhaps society in general's) failure to provide institutionalized care for people with severe mental disabilities.

No amount of money, support systems, or opportunity for getting off the street is going to help people with severe schizophrenia or dementia who have no family or safety net. A lot of these people the only solution is for them to be institutionalized. Unfortunately, there isn't much of a way for someone to be institutionalized against their will (unless they are causing danger of harm to themselves or others) so they continue to live on the streets.

I think what this city really needs is a place to send people deemed in need of institutionalizing, and the ability for that to be determined. Of course that would never fly in a place like SF, but I think it would be a happier life for those people than life on the streets.

<comment><USER8> Being born in 1991 I didn't realize this until recently but apparently we used to be better about this before these institutions shut down in the 80s-90s. I still don't really understand why this happened or how the resulting issues haven't been addressed.

<comment><USER9> > apparently we used to be better about this before these institutions shut > down in the 80s-90s. I still don't really understand why this happened or > how the resulting issues haven't been addressed.

There are two explanations, idealistic and cynical; I'll let you decide what percentage of accuracy applies to each (neither were 0% or 100%).

The _idealistic_ justification was that the institutional option was pretty grim (think "one flew over the cuckoo's nest") and that many of those patients would do better at home or in halfway houses.

The _cynical_ explanation was that this was at the beginning of the huge anti- tax / anti-government wave that began with Reagan's election and continues today: closing the institutions cut government expenditure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Part of the problem for SF is that a critical part of "solving" homelessness is actually having homes. But a very large group of people (that I cynically suspect overlaps a lot of the pro-prop C people) also fight the addition of apartment buildings. I saw numbers along the lines of 5400 homeless people in SF a long time ago, but even if that number were the same now, that means you need to add enough buildings to support 5400 bed rooms.

Basically there's no way you can "fight homelessness" and "fight apartments/evil gentrifying landlords", and actually expect to do anything about homelessness.

<comment><USER11> I live in SF, have for over a decade. I know several homeless people quite well. All of them keep getting kicked out of housing because of bad behavior that they just cannot help themselves from doing. They do not have the ability to live by themselves. They need supportive housing, and a path to get out of homelessness. None of the options today focuses on post-housing issues.

<comment><USER10> Same here.

A lot are also alcoholics and/or addicts - this is one of those things where saving money is the short term (not managing the homelessness problem before it got to this point) results in a higher cost in the long term - now you not only have to manage homelessness, you also hav to help the existing homeless _recover_ from long term homelessness.

You also have the long term costs of assisting those with mental illness (as a result of "saving money" by closing down all state level support for mental illness in the 80s - I'm not saying that was a panacea, but having the support helped a lot of people that currently get no help).

Politicians love "saving tax payer money" through short term things like this, because they know that by the time someone has to fix their mess they've moved on/retired and they don't have to deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _> If homelessness was just a question of money, this issue would already be solved. While cities report inconsistently, San Francisco currently spends around $430 per city resident per year on services and programs for the homeless, compared to $260 in New York and $110 in Los Angeles. Yet the problem in our city is worse, and despite increases in spending, has continued to worsen._

Can somebody please explain how spending per resident is a fair measure of this? Isn't spending per _homeless_ resident the relevant measure?

(SF has a much higher homeless rate and we actually spend _less_ per homeless resident than NYC!)

<comment><USER13> This: [https://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest- home...](https://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-homeless- population-in-us/1407123/) says NYC has 887 homeless per 100K, while SF has 795. SF seems to spend about 54K per homeless person, while NYC about 29K, or 54% of SF number.

<comment><USER12> First of all this is a common error. SF spends only about $3.8K per homeless person.[1] You can't just divide by the homeless population because a huge portion of the budget goes towards homeless _prevention_. Things like subsidies to keep people housed. So there are many more people supported by that budget.

Moreover, you're misunderstanding my question. That's how much SF spends per _homeless_ resident. Great, in theory that's what we should be comparing with other cities (calculated correctly of course). But that's not what Collison did. He just compared how much cities spend _per resident_.. i.e. he took the homeless budget and divided it by the population of SF, not just the homeless. You see how that misled and confused you?

It makes no sense to me, except as a trick? Please, somebody explain how this makes any kind of sense.

[1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Businesses- must-contribute-more-to-city-s-13178743.php)

<comment><USER13> > First of all this is a common error. SF spends only about $3.8K per homeless > person.

I addressed that in another comment, it seems to be a sort of a trick, like those jokes that calculate that only two people work in the whole country by double-counting a lot of things.

> You see how that misled and confused you?

No, I do not. Combining per resident statistics with homeless/resident ratio - which is available - it is easy to see spending per homeless. Of course it's the total spending - then we need to see what the money is actually spent on and whether it is actually effective for reducing homelessness or just feeding some people who would wish nothing more but continue getting a paycheck for "helping homeless", but would not really like the problem to disappear and the paycheck be gone with it. I am not saying that's a common situation - I don't know - but this is something that needs to be checked, and the article seems to just throw out 78% of spending, showing no interest at all about what happened to it, and then declare "we spend very little on homeless". If that's true, then where's the rest of the money? What happened to it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's honestly insane to try and solve homelessness in San Francisco because practically none of the people that are homeless in San Francisco have any chance of realistically living in San Francisco long term when even young college-educated people who have their lives together struggle to eke out a living here.

The best thing that could be done with all this money is to spend it on providing support in other towns and cities where the cost of living is much better and the homeless people being helped have an actual chance to get back on their own two feet and support themselves.

Trying to support homeless people in the city with the most expensive cost of living in the world is counterproductive and condemns any homeless people supported here to a lifetime of support.

Furthermore, the money would go a lot further in other places since the cost of living would be lower and you could pay to have more social workers per homeless person.

<comment><USER15> I agree - it seems like nobody is really thinking through how to solve homelessness and is instead arguing about how much money should be allocated to the same strategy that cannot work.

For currently homeless people with no "special deal" like winning the affordable housing lottery, it's just going to be implausible for them to find housing in San Francisco, as long as someone earning $30,000 a year can't afford to live in San Francisco. That means any solution must get people into housing that is not located in San Francisco.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I completely agree with Stripe here. The homeless problem will not be solved by increasing taxes. The problem is whether the money is being used correctly. I see huge issues with that. The department of homelessness currently has an annual budget of $250Million[1] for providing shelter to homeless. I wonder if govt. is spending $250 Million every year on providing them shelter why are they still living in streets? Where is all that money going?

[1] - [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million- incre...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-increase-for- San-Francisco-12902707.php)

<comment><USER17> So google tells me there's around 7,000 homeless in SF. Let's up that to 10,000. That's $25,000 per homeless person per year. Am I missing something or is something very seriously wrong here?

<comment><USER18> For what it's worth, that's way less than (less than half) the amortized yearly cost of a California prison inmate: about $70,000.

[https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost](https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost)

<comment><USER19> That is the average cost? How much would that be if we looked only at the min- sec cost?

If it is anything like the institutional system, the people who need dedicated watchers 24/7 are so, so much more expensive that person like my family member, who needs only occasional help managing his normal life and doesn't need anybody to guard him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> No amount of money can circumvent the pidgeonhole principle. If the city wants to house all it's residents, then it needs to start by building more housing. Sure, some homeless need extra services, but if there aren't enough units the whole effort is moot.

<comment><USER21> This solution doesn't take into account basic supply & demand though.

There is a significant demand for housing in SF & the bay area. If housing is provided for free or even below market, demand will come from far & wide. Barrier-to-entry is basically a bus ticket.

Any real solution needs to at least attempt to balance supply & demand.

<comment><USER20> The solution isn't too just give away housing for free, it's too remove government obstruction of housing construction and let the market correct itself.

<comment><USER22> Every single time someone says this, I want to ask them which obstructions they would _like_ to see removed, because everyone answers differently.

So let me ask you, which government obstructions would you _like_ to see removed?

<comment><USER20> Height restrictions are a big one, as is reducing the ability for neighborhoods to reject housing construction. Plenty of groups, like Calle 24, use this in an extortionary manner and block housing unless the developer makes donations to the group or its affiliates.

<comment><USER22> You and I would probably agree right off the bat on reducing the ability for neighborhoods to reduce housing construction.

However, I have to ask you about height restrictions. There's height restrictions because not everyone wants to live next to a skyscraper, which is well, debatable. I can debate both sides of that.

There's also height restrictions because the bedrock of San Francisco is not uniform across the city. In many areas of the city, I don't think you even _can_ build skyscrapers and expect them to remain stable, as we are seeing with the Millennium Tower and the incomplete dome on the Salesforce Tower.

I could consider reducing height restrictions, certainly, but I don't think you can eliminate them completely.

<comment><USER20> I think rent control a is a big reason why this attitude exists. A large segment of rents (~70% of them) live in rent controlled units, and thus have no direct incentive to lower rents. In practice, most people probably wouldn't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars extra per month for a better view. But in SF, residents are shielded from that sort of tradeoff by rent control, and the costs of obstructing development are passed off to other people. If residents actually felt the impact of rising rents, the discussion around development would be a very different story.

In cities without rent control, like Seattle, development happens a lot quicker. Over the course of half a decade (2010-2015 IIRC) Seattle added more than twice the number of housing units as SF. Rent control's perverse system of incentives leads cities like SF to shoot themselves in the foot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Gross receipts taxes are poorly structured taxes. Because they tax all business transactions throughout the supply chain, they create a pyramiding effect that penalizes more complex industries, e.g., an aircraft manufacturer probably gets taxed more than a local dairy. I don't know whether the things the SF government wants to spend the money on will help with the homelessness problem or not; but I do think there are better types of taxes to raise that money.

[https://taxfoundation.org/gross-receipts-tax-impact-san- fran...](https://taxfoundation.org/gross-receipts-tax-impact-san-francisco/)

</comment><comment><USER24> > Anyone who claims that Prop C is a matter of being "for the homeless or > against them" is selling a facile falsehood

Swap 'Prop C' for any other cause, and 'the homeless' for any other intended benefactor of it, and you get a good formula for how to strip all the nuance out of a debate and turn it into a battle between opposing sides.

I don't have an opinion on Stripe's position here but that sentence itself is a pretty eloquent summary for how dumb modern discussion has become in many circles.

<comment><USER25> Misleading bill titles are the norm in Congress. See "right-to-work" laws and the Defense of Marriage Act for examples.

<comment><USER26> > Misleading bill titles are the norm in Congress.

That's how they roll.

> See "right-to-work" laws

I'm guessing you've confused right-to-work with at-will employment. Right-to- work laws mean that a union can't _force_ you to join and pay dues. "At-will employment" means you can be fired for any reason or no reason (except if the reason is they're a member of a "protected class")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I read a tweet from Jack Dorsey that said Square would end up paying a significantly more than Salesforce (Link: [https://twitter.com/jack/status/1053312149815091200](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1053312149815091200)). Why is that? Is it because financial services/payment transaction type businesses are taxed more or because this is a tax on "gross receipts" which potentially impacts these payment companies more because it includes income from interest, which they presumably have relatively more of? Or something else?

</comment><comment><USER28> Context for non-SF or non-SV people: Prop C is a proposal to increase the budget dedicated to help homeless people, by taxing gross receipts taxes for companies with more than $50 million in annual revenue.

Patrick's view is essentially that instead of adding taxes for such companies, which could potentially impact middle class workers, we should let the current SF mayor take care of this issue, being in favor of additional taxes to fund whatever initiative is considered valid.

Now, here's my view. I've been living in SF for six years, I know exactly one homeless (Charlie), I'm not an expert on poverty or homelessness, but let's say I've seen my fair share of bad things in the world to at least have an opinion.

We don't have exact data on how and why people become homeless. We know that (mostly) they're not born homeless, they become homeless.

I think we should work on the causes. But "we", who? Patrick Collison, Sam Altman, Marc Benioff, etc, you can pick a trusted, smart serial entrepreneur, give him a big budget ($100M), and ask him to discover the causes and try to solve it by measuring how far these $100M go.

<comment><USER4> [http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF- Poin...](http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Point-in- Time-Count-General-FINAL-6.21.17.pdf)

For example, there's a longstanding rumor that the homeless are being "shipped from out of state" from places like Texas giving free bus tickets. Here's the messier statistics:

"Sixty-nine percent (69%) of respondents reported they were living in San Francisco at the time they most recently became homeless. Of those, over half (55%) had lived in San Francisco for 10 or more years. Eight percent (8%) had lived in San Francisco for less than one year. This is similar to the survey findings in 2015. Ten percent (10%) of respondents reported that they were living out of state at the time they became homeless. Twenty-one percent (21%) reported they were living in another county in California. California counties that respondents reported living in at the time they most recently became homeless include Alameda County (5%), San Mateo (4%), Contra Costa (3%), Marin (3%), Santa Clara County (1%), and some other California county (5%)."

learn more: [https://www.google.com/search?q=sf+homeless+population+repor...](https://www.google.com/search?q=sf+homeless+population+report)

<comment><USER11> > Sixty-nine percent (69%) of respondents reported they were living in San > Francisco at the time they most recently became homeless.

I am _so tired_ of reading this bullshit "statistic". It is a self-reported number. If a homeless person thinks it benefits him to say so, he will. And homeless people will say anything to survive, as they are barely surviving.

If you came where from Podunk, MN and crashed on your buddy's couch last year before he kicked you out? Congratulations, you were "living in SF before you became homeless".

If you came here from somewhere else and stayed in a shelter for a day before you got evicted? Congratulations, you were "living in SF before you became homeless".

If the question was, "were you a rent-paying resident of SF before you became homeless", the answer would be totally different.

There are 76 non-profits that feed from the trough of homelessness[1]. Don't they have admin overhead? How much money is wasted on this overhead?

[1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends- recor...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends- record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php)

<comment><USER29> To be fair, "Of those, over half (55%) had lived in San Francisco for 10 or more years" is much harder to game, though just as easy to lie about.

I'm more worried about this thought in the article:

> While cities report inconsistently, San Francisco currently spends around > $430 per city resident per year on services and programs for the homeless, > compared to $260 in New York and $110 in Los Angeles. Yet the problem in our > city is worse, and despite increases in spending, has continued to worsen.

It's not a _surprise_ that the city with more spending on services for the homeless has more homeless. That's exactly what you'd expect under pretty much any model.

Do you believe that subsidizing the homeless means you'll get more homeless? Then higher spending will directly cause more homelessness.

Do you believe that places with bigger problems will try harder to do something about them? Then higher spending will reflect more homelessness.

<comment><USER30> I wonder what the numbers look like per _homeless_ person in the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What a bunch of double-speak. You have a city with conditions on the streets compared to those of the world's poorest slums. Clearly, a dramatic increase in resources needs to be brought to bear on the problem. Any plan Mayor Breed might have will only be aided by additional funding. Patrick Collision's plea for subtlety is a thin disguise for his apathy.

Tech companies like his--btw Stripe benefited from San Francisco tax breaks and the change from an income tax to a gross receipt tax in the mid-aughts-- need to step up and give back to the cities that enabled them to become what they are today. And they should be more willing to take responsibility for the consequences good and bad of the tech boom.

<comment><USER32> _Clearly, a dramatic increase in resources needs to be brought to bear on the problem._

Something must be done. This is something.

 _Any plan Mayor Breed might have will only be aided by additional funding._

Drug abuse is a serious problem. Giving the DEA more money will only help to solve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The issue of homelessness in SF is absolutely related to affordable housing and a lack of beds, the comparison NYC and LA are absolutely abysmal in that NYC has huge amounts of permanently affordable housing that it can use to house homeless people in that has a relatively low cost to maintain compared to having to acquire new land and build new buildings, and LA, which has an incredibly high street homeless population in the same way SF does.

Additionally, the total cost of homeless services is helping more people than the 7,500 that are let mentioned as it's really closer to 20,000 where many are in permanent supportive housing and aren't considered homeless but would be without the same type of support.

If you look at the cost per person when using the 20,000 number, the cost is still far lower than what it costs to keep a person in prison each year, where with the passing of Prop C, that number would get closer to said amount. Add on the fact that SF is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the would (where there isn't cheaper housing anywhere nearby), with a related high cost of labor, and the spending makes far more sense.

</comment><comment><USER34> It seems like there was a financial aspect to it after all:

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Dorsey- tweetsto...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Dorsey-tweetstorm- bashes-Prop-C-SF-measure-to-13321053.php)

From SFChronicle article:

Dorsey estimated that Square could pay an additional $20 million in taxes under Prop. C next year, while Benioff has said Salesforce would pay an additional $10 million, despite its larger size.

"Taxes would grow at rates multiple times our (adjusted) revenue, which no company can sustain," Dorsey said in a tweet. "Not an issue for Salesforce/Twitter, but unfair to (Square) and (financial) startups."

</comment><comment><USER35> What about the argument that some places are more expensive than others, and sometimes, for a few years, it makes more sense to live in a cheap place while you set up your finances, and then make decisions about where to live for the long term?

<comment><USER36> Doreen Michele's comment answers this quite well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17915009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17915009)

<comment><USER37> We need to first make sure we're all talking about the same problem. When people complain about the homeless of San Francisco it is not the people Doreen is taking about.

The people in question are severely mentally ill, addicts, likely both. They are the people that shoot heroin at the bus stop you are trying to wait at, they're the guy with no shoes, covered in his own waste screaming at passers- by. These are the people that are causing the frustration, not people who could make it if they could level up their skillset and get a better job.

We really need to agree on the issue at hand because so often I see people talk straight past each other. The man covered in his waste needs help, desperately, he will not be someone who with a little help starts paying rent and holding down a job. He needs the community to pay for housing, medical treatment, and psychiatric care for a long time, likely forever to some degree. But we can't keep talking about different problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Today, the world is pulling us towards polarized discourse and emotionally- charged, soundbite analysis. We're all familiar with the forces at play. We think this is important to resist." \- PC for President!

<comment><USER38> On a serious note there seems to be many sub issues like PC mentioned. On the top of my head: 1 - lack of homes 2 - speed of population migration is higher than planned 3 - increase in price of property is higher than planned 4 - increase in labor cost 5 - fund mismatch between different localities etc 6 - funding changes from Fed and from the Mayor's article there seem to be a lot more. The issue needs a Product like approach of finding all the requirements and fighting it from different directions. Adding funding would certainly help temporarily but not a good long term solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "San Francisco currently spends around $430 per city resident per year on services and programs for the homeless, compared to $260 in New York and $110 in Los Angeles"

Anyone know why this discrepancy exists? I know this includes rental assistance for those "at risk" of becoming homeless (but not necessarily homeless), so the value, when calculated "per homeless" resident, is meaningless.

However, this calculation "per city resident" in general seems to point at some deep infrastructural issues. I'm trying to find an analysis as to why and coming up empty.

<comment><USER40> Prima facie this strikes me as an apples-to-oranges comparison. New York and Los Angeles are large cities with millions of residents and dominate their geographical areas (LA perhaps less than New York, but still). San Francisco has something like 884,000 residents, which makes it the second largest city in the Bay Area (after San Jose, with 1,035,000 or so), which has something like 8.7 million residents if you go by Combined Statistical Area (CSA) definition, which makes intuitive sense to me having lived here. By comparison New York has 8.6 million out of 24 million for its CSA; LA has 4 million out of 18.7 million for its CSA.

So really, a more meaningful comparison (if one is resigned to handwaving about tax bases, without delving into details of city finances) for SF would be Boston, with 865,000 people out of 8.2 million for its CSA.

<comment><USER39> AFAIK, homeless problem scales with population size. So if you divide by population size (which those values do), the value should stay roughly the same.

What are the factors that make this untrue?

<comment><USER21> Cost of housing is a big one. Low housing costs and plenty of space available make the homeless problem both less likely and easier to deal with.

<comment><USER41> Yep, there are plenty of outlying areas in LA that are still not expensive in the same way SF is - LA is just much, much bigger. So you can hang on with significantly less money. Still, it's an interesting question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> BTW most shelters are pretty scary and many people feel safer on the street than in them.

</comment><comment><USER42> > Anyone who claims that Prop C is a matter of being "for the homeless or > against them" is selling a facile falsehood. While well-intentioned, it is > San Francisco's largest-ever tax increase, and comes with no systemic > changes or effective accountability.

In San Francisco, you must be numb to that kind of logical fallacy by now. This sounds like 95% of all entreaties to spend more government money.

</comment><comment><USER43> Solve homelessness in SF by solving the outrageous price of housing.

<comment><USER4> um, many of these people are mentally ill, physically ill and/or addicted to drugs: they need a lot more than just housing.

(I live a few blocks from the worst areas and see people dealing drugs and shooting up _every_ day)

<comment><USER44> Correlation does not imply causation.

Physical illness and drug addiction (and even mental illness in some cases) are more likely a symptom of homelessness than a cause.

From accounts I've heard from homeless people, one of the biggest problems homeless people have is boredom. This leads to both depression and drug use, both of which can lead to both physical and mental illness.

<comment><USER45> In fairness to all in this thread, I think the failure to define "solving homelessness" is causing some miscommunication.

The OP seems to be discussing the problem of solving it in a global sense, so that people do not _become_ homeless. IMO, more housing is the solution to that problem.

The GP seems to be discussing the problem of solving it in terms of the existing homeless population, which, regardless of causation or the directionality of any causation, does require dealing with the mental illness and drug abuse issues.

<comment><USER46> > The OP seems to be discussing the problem of solving it in a global sense, > so that people do not become homeless. IMO, more housing is the solution to > that problem.

IMO, it's not, because people don't become homeless (for the most part) because there are no existing vacant housing units, they become homeless because of joblessness, poor credit, drug addiction, mental illness, and criminal issues (often involving drugs), or a combination thereof, which make them unable (financially or otherwise) to either rent housing in the open market or take advantage of publicly operated or subsidized housing.

<comment><USER45> No, those are largely myths and where they are true are in places without large homeless populations. We are talking about homelessness in San Francisco which is primarily caused by zoning issues, gentrification, and similar issues.

> ... which make them unable (financially or otherwise) to either rent housing > in the open market or take advantage of publicly operated or subsidized > housing.

This is made easier when there is more housing available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My biggest criticism with Stripe and Square's response is that Jack Dorsey admitted over Twitter today that a major reason both companies officially oppose Prop C is because it disproportionately impacts payment companies since they would be effectively "double taxed" since by definition a tax on "gross receipts" would be a tax on the entire transaction amount once and on the ~2.9% transaction fee again.

Jack Dorsey's tweet on this "unfairness" today was the very first time I heard that as part of their argument against this tax. Why not explicitly say that up front long ago instead of hiding behind the singular argument that "we just support the mayor's judgement on the issue?" Seems disingenuous.

<comment><USER12> _> they would be effectively "double taxed" since by definition a tax on "gross receipts" would be a tax on the entire transaction amount once and on the ~2.9% transaction fee again._

Citation please? Dorsey said they'd be taxed more than Salesforce but I assumed that's because of where geographically they book their revenue.

<comment><USER27> [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Dorsey- tweetsto...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Dorsey-tweetstorm- bashes-Prop-C-SF-measure-to-13321053.php)

 _Square has said that a quirk of the proposed tax could harm it and other San Francisco payments companies like Stripe. Gross receipts taxes are applied to a company's total revenue generated from business activities in the city. In Square's case, those include fees it splits with banks and Visa and MasterCard when it processes credit-card transactions.

Square, which is publicly traded, reports both net revenue, which includes those fees, and adjusted revenue, which excludes them. In the second quarter, those figures were $815 million and $385 million respectively. In Square's view, imposing a tax on the higher revenue measure hurts it disproportionately. _

If I'm reading this correctly, basically payment companies like Square and Stripe are disproportionately hurt because they would pay the tax on the ~2.9% + 10 cent fee they collect even though in reality both companies only keep a small fraction of that fee since most of that fee goes to the networks like Visa/MC/Amex.

<comment><USER12> Yes.. earlier you said the entire transaction amount and a double tax. That's probably not accurate.

As for adjusted revenue, do we actually know for certain that gross receipts applies to net revenue and not adjusted? Or is Dorsey just "hypothetically" spreading FUD?

<comment><USER27> They are essentially paying a tax on behalf of Visa/MC/Amex (none of which are HQ'd in SF). It's actual more than a "double tax" since more than 50% of the processing fee is split with them but not a literal "double tax" imposed by SF.

Gross receipts is _all_ revenue not including any cost or expense [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gross- receipts.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gross-receipts.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> In my early teens I was homeless for roughly 6 years and I think this article is largely junk. The mental illness reasoning for homelessness isn't really true, its that being homeless and having no one there and nothing to help you makes mental issues, its a slide that keeps you down with horrible sadness and despair. What needs to happen is having safety nets before people hit the slide. Of course there are many different reasons for homelessness but preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place is the issue that needs to addressed, no one deserves the lifelong scars.

If stripe really wanted to help then it could have created some safety nets with money it used to lobby.

</comment><comment><USER48> Spending more on something is a good way to get more of it when exporters are ready and willing to meet the demand. Municipalities buying their local homeless bus tickets is just one example. If we want to reduce homelessness, we need a smarter approach than giving people goods and services for being homeless. I don't have all the answers here, but I do know that this requires both positive and negative incentives. A carrot and stick approach if you will. Sad to say, most vagrants are not capable of acting in their own rational self-interest, so simply extolling the virtues of becoming a productive member of society just isn't going to cut it.

</comment><comment><USER49> If I was his PR man I would have advised against writing this at all. No one expects Stripe to solve a major social ill and frankly beyond one blip attention post on HN, no one cares what PC thinks of Prop C... there is nothing to be gained from this no matter what side of the issue you are on. This post will be red meat for critics and damage Stripe's good cred for no gain.

</comment><comment><USER13> Something I am missing here. At the beginning they say spending and the luck of money is not a problem (and with 54K per year per homeless person it sounds plausible) and then at the end they claim the solution would necessarily mean higher taxes. That makes no sense - if money is not the issue, why you'd need higher taxes?

</comment><comment><USER50> If anyone wants some domains for this cause I am more than happy to donate: [http://www.ballotdomains.com](http://www.ballotdomains.com)

</comment><comment><USER12> Hold on... This strikes me as disingenuous and here's why. Stripe is using spend-per-resident to compare SF to other cities, to lead us to the conclusion that we already spend more than anyone and so more wouldn't help.

But SF has one of the highest homeless rates in the nation. It's spend per _homeless_ resident that is the relevant comparison.

So how do we do on that? As others have noted, we actually spend _less_ per homeless resident than NYC. You would never get that from reading this! All you see is NYC: $260, SF: $770. Totally misleading! It comes across as disingenuous to me because, clearly, Stripe must know this.

<comment><USER51> This is a tax bill, using cost-per-resident is not disingenuous.

<comment><USER12> It is is you're trying to compare the effectiveness of spending money ("If homelessness was just a question of money, this issue would already be solved.") The relevant compare is cost-per-homeless-resident. We actually trail cited cities on that. How is Stripe's argument not misleading?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> So it's about the money

<comment><USER53> When a business with a fiduciary duty to its shareholders takes a political stance, it _always_ is.

<comment><USER52> I'm confused. Why aren't Salesforce shareholders making that company oppose Prop C?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> tl;dr;

"Look. We are just trying to exit with a billion dollars like everyone else in SF. We don't want to walk over the homeless either, but, it is super expensive to help them. So we propose just ignoring it until we get paid. Vote no on prop C!"

-Stripe

</comment><comment><USER55> In the future prop C may be viewed as a step towards basic income.

</comment><comment><USER56> Glad to hear something will happen in collaboration with the Mayor's office, at some point in the future. Until that point, pass Prop C and propose a repeal whenever you all come up with the plan that's so much better.

</comment><comment><USER57> My distant observation is that the high risk mindset that allows companies like Stripe and many others in your area to succeed is the same that brings people to the streets. I imagine many successful founders are homeless in many parallel universes.

<comment><USER58> I don't think educated software engineers that decide to take a calculated risk are the ones becoming homeless.

It's a drug and mental health issue, unless you are speaking to a broader philosophical point on what "high risk" means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> More context: Jack Dorsey (on behalf of Square) explicitly called out Stripe this morning over the issue: [https://twitter.com/jack/status/1053312141657178112](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1053312141657178112)

EDIT: I misinterpreted the thread: see comments below. Although Stripe's response was likely correlated to it.

<comment><USER60> To me, it looks like he's doing the exact opposite and is agreeing with Stripe.

"Companies like Square and Stripe would be taxed at a significantly larger total contribution than much larger companies like Salesforce."

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> On a flip side, in developing countries, there aren't that many homelesses because, sadly, we don't think about them as equal.

They wouldn't be allowed to hang out along the streets like what happens in US. They will get picked up and will be forced to move and etc. We usually have a place called Slum for extremely poor people. They will need to make a living themselves. If they don't, I'm not sure where they end up (death, maybe).

Japan also doesn't think much about homeless people ([https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/12/30/yaku...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/12/30/yakuza- gangsters-recruit-homeless-men-for-fukushima-nuclear-clean-up/))</comment>


Is the 5-Second Rule True? [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYXdsOEWBj0 <comment><USER2> Reminds me... [https://goo.gl/YF3zHl](https://goo.gl/YF3zHl)

However, truth be told: We didn't evolve for billions of years to die by a few common germs. There are, of course, more deadly ones that could definitely make you sick. Pick and choose your floor.</comment>


How One Article Increased Sales 22% - From a small e-commerce owner - <AUTHOR> http://leosternlicht.com/articles/howonearticleincreasedsales22percent.html <comment><USER2> Is it just me, or is this article borderline incomprehensible?

Pull quotes dropped right into the text flow, relating to nothing, and unclear in their import. Check.

Graphic design pushing text to the margins? Check.

7 different colors of text on the page? Check.

Sentences that lead in one direction but never deliver ("small e-commerce boutiques have no _perceived_ incentives to share what they make")? Check.

Redundency? Check.

Hard to interpret figures (18.3% for indirect networks? 18.3% of what? Profits? Conversion rate? Traffic?)? Check.

<comment><USER3> I'm gonna have to agree that the format of the article had me jumping around and genuinely trying hard to figure out where to even start reading.

I like the message though, since it does show how so many things can help market a product online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I sort of preferred the last article because it was directly connected to your business selling designer shower curtains. It embraced "We sell artsy $30 shower curtains, and you know what sells artsy $30 shower curtains? Beautiful photography sells artsy $30 shower curtains, that is what." That is both intellectually interesting to me and, hey, they are nice shower curtains.

The new article is sort of wandering into that weird Internet marketing/social media haze where you have a blog to Twitter to send people into your autoresponder so that when they sign up to your RSS feed they can... BAGH! Shower curtains! Stick to the shower curtains!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised by how much attention my last article got, so I want to encourage anyone who might be interested in writing their own to just do it.

The last article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723826>

-Leo

</comment><comment><USER5> did not read, but like the @dcurtis-like format

<comment><AUTHOR> @dcurtis is a professional. I'm an amateur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What does the blue and green in the bar graph signify?</comment>


Rare Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer's - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/health/research/13alzheimer.html?_r=1&hp <comment><USER2> Research / IP is so broken - scientists more worried about prestige than their field, pharma spending on vanity drugs, ad infinitum...

Does anyone have any links to progressive projects in this area?

<comment><USER3> I don't want to repeat myself, but see my comment for links.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1600965>

<comment><USER2> Yea, that's exactly what I was looking for. I'm wondering what barriers are preventing this from getting biggers? Big education? Prestige for tenure / publish or perish? Publisher oligarchy?

I'd really like to talk to guys in this field.

<comment><USER3> I'm afraid that it's mostly just a human tendency to embrace "the way things are/should/will always be".

Tradition over ambition!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This kind of news makes me wonder if maybe we should just give up completely on patient privacy & by default just share _everything_.

<comment><USER3> Michael Nielsen is working on a new book called "Reinventing Discovery" which I very much hope is a step in this direction.

<http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/michael-a-nielsen/>

At any rate, the folks on PatientsLikeMe.com are sharing, and they have results to show for it:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_heywood_the_big_idea_my_broth...](http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_heywood_the_big_idea_my_brother_inspired.html)

Really inspiring stuff, because I assure you that the folks participating in these programs do not consider themselves hackers OR radicals.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the shout out, Pete. A few bits and pieces:

Creative Commons has started an organization called Science Commons that has done some great work on getting scientists to share their data:

<http://sciencecommons.org/>

A promising step in this direction is Sage Bionetworks, which is attempting to use an open source style approach to drug development:

<http://www.sagebase.org/>

There are some very well known people behind Sage, and it's received backing from Merck (and Science Commons), among others. See, e.g., <http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/19646>, which states that Merck has backed them to the tune of 150 million dollars. At the moment they're just getting off the ground.

A much broader overview on open data and related issues can be found in Peter Suber's open access timeline: <http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Timeline>

Another interesting step is the Federal Research Public Access ([http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/articles/FRPAA- introdu...](http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/articles/FRPAA-introduced- US-House-of-Representatives.shtml) ), which would make most US-government sponsored research publicly available. It's not quite the same as open data, but is very consonant with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Gates Foundation writes into their AIDS grant that researchers must share their data:

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115335816005811923.html>

My company helps the labs and researchers share their data using a portal website geared toward researchers and labs. Here is some of the data they've shared (chosen at random):

[https://atlas.scharp.org/cpas/project/VISC/Completed%20CAVD%...](https://atlas.scharp.org/cpas/project/VISC/Completed%20CAVD%20Studies/Weiss- VDC/Weiss_McKnight_plasma/begin.view)?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is the dataset something that anyone can access and download or do we need to be associated with one of the mentioned companies/research groups?

Edit: Looks like we can't exactly just hack on this in our basement

<http://alois.med.upenn.edu/niagads/how_access1.htm>

<http://bit.ly/dgbmmk>

<comment><USER8> From my understanding of the article, the research they're referring to has to do with biomarkers (which aren't always genetic) and brain scans. If you go to the ADNI site (link: [http://www.adni- info.org/Scientists/LinksForDataCollection.a...](http://www.adni- info.org/Scientists/LinksForDataCollection.aspx)) you'll see that it is indeed possible to download some anonymized data and scans with less stringent approval. So, maybe basement hacks are indeed possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Single page:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/health/research/13alzheime...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/health/research/13alzheimer.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all)</comment>


Using 4LW to reach sites with domains seized by the DHS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rabidgremlin.com.nyud.net/2010/11/28/4-little-words/

<comment><USER2> It'd be a lot easier to just write down the IP. Nobody is going to actually remember those words, and if they're on a shared IP it's not going to get to them anyhow.

And if they change IPs (because their host shut them down because the government forced it) then the 4 words are worthless.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. In fact, DNS was developed basically to address many of the problems with this (admittedly cute) idea :)

Its ancestor was basically a system where'd you download a new hosts file every day -- which was doable when the Internet was small, but didn't scale well.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)#History>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its a cool idea, but ultimately it won't help, because sites like these are only worth something if a lot of people know they are there.

A better solution is to create a de-centralized DNS system.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect we are more likely to see splinter DNS networks get set up and people will just learn how to add these servers to their configs for name resolution...

Can also see a future where the public Internet is deemed completely untrustworthy and everyone just connects with trusted parties over VPNs....

EDIT: I'd forgotten about these: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root>

<comment><USER5> I suspect even more that nothing will actually happen. People know there's risk in running torrent sites, they bet the ad revenue will outweigh it and eventually they lose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neat idea, now someone needs to setup DNS on a short domain to point to the correct IP, e.x.

<http://LICK.GORY.ULAN.MUTT.4lw.com> would point to 188.8.131.52

Of course, this won't work on virtual hosts.

Edit: or you could just setup a parallel DNS under your own namespace, e.x.

rabidgremlin.com.4lw.com would point to 126.96.36.199

Of course that requires manual administration.

<comment><USER7> This would be pretty easy to do with WebDNS: <https://github.com/progrium/webdns>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure why it looks that the URL is through the coral cache, and it's making the site really slow. <http://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/11/28/4-little-words/>

It's a nice idea, though the word list may be refined a bit, and there could be larger word lists and something that takes account of nouns/verbs to create more cohesive sentences.

<comment><AUTHOR> URL is via coral cache so that my tiny weeny webserver doesn't go bang :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly it now looks like some sites are getting blocked by IP address as well...

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ecllk/the_4_litt...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ecllk/the_4_little_word_protocol_4lw_for_remembering/c1734iq)

<comment><AUTHOR> False alarm:)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ecllk/the_4_litt...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ecllk/the_4_little_word_protocol_4lw_for_remembering/c1735g1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It'd be nice if search engines could link to IPs rather than names for domains that have been censored.

<comment><USER10> Isn't it funny how google fights censorship in china, but not a peep when it's in the USA?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I love the fact that someone has turned my idea into a DNS server!

Check out: [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ecllk/the_4_litt...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ecllk/the_4_little_word_protocol_4lw_for_remembering/c173gj3)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a good start, but won't work for HTTP 1.1 multi-site hosting.

The browser needs to send the HOST header with the correct host name, otherwise you'll just get the default site at that IP.

</comment><comment><USER12> Of course it's actually easier to use bgp to hijack and blackhole a route for an IPv4 address than it is to get new nameservers inserted for a specific domain at the roots. If folks moved to rely on a system that didn't involve lookups, it would become even easier to take them down.

<comment><USER4> isn't bgp limited to send messages for at least /24?

<comment><USER12> technically no, but practically yes - most implementations discard routes more specific than a /24 to prevent their routing tables from becoming unmanageable.

Stealing a /24 is an awful amount of leverage in convincing the ISP to disconnect a /32 as long as you have enough pull to ensure large networks will continue to respect your routes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wrote a script to translate IP addresses into 4LW and back again.

<https://gist.github.com/718549>

</comment><comment><USER14> How about just putting those entries in your /etc/hosts file?</comment>


Show HN: InstantSEOReport, a free SEO tool built and launched in 1 night - <AUTHOR> http://instantseoreport.com/

<comment><USER2> "Great. This domain name is as perfect as perfect can be! - 80%"

Why 80% if it's perfect?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently this is only a basic SEO auditing tool, mainly on-site factors. I built this last night using PHP & WordPress as my starting point. Going to make this much more sophisticated over time, and the goal is to keep it free. Think of this version as a bare-bones "On-Site SEO Auditor", it's a great starting point for SEO work.

Right now it provides the following checks: Current Pagerank, Website URL, Blacklist Records, Website Speed, Domain Name Rating, Homepage Title Rating, Description Rating, Keywords Rating, Rich Content Rating, Image ALT Tags, Image Titles, Title Headers, Robots.txt File, Inbound Links, Outbound Links, DoFollow Links, NoFollow Links.

What else should I check for? Any ideas?

<comment><USER3> What separates this from the masses?

Not trying to steal your fire -- it's pretty slick for a one-day project. I'm sure that, others like myself, would like to know the difference. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Antibiotic resistance: The grim prospect - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21699115-evolution-pathogens-making-many-medical-problems-worse-time-take-drug-resistance <comment><USER2> Medical professions risk losing a patient or being sued if hey misdiagnose a condition, so the understandable reaction is to throw antibiotics at the problem rather than waiting for test results to come-back to determine whether a specific course of care is appropriate.

The good news is that some test times are decreasing dramatically ... from days to minutes in many cases:

[http://nanologix.com/test_results.html](http://nanologix.com/test_results.html)

      * tuberculosis from 21+ days to 1.5 hours.

      * e.coli from 18 - 24 hours to 30 minutes

      * salmonella from 24 hours to 30 minutes

      * group b streptococcus from 48 - 72 hours to under an hour

My hope is that faster results leads to fewer unnecessary prescriptions being administered, and better overall care for the patients.

<comment><USER3> > Medical professions risk losing a patient or being sued if hey misdiagnose a > condition, so the understandable reaction is to throw antibiotics at the > problem rather than waiting for test results to come-back to determine > whether a specific course of care is appropriate.

As a pharmacist, my experience says otherwise. I think the following are the main reasons for bacterial resistance:

a) Patient doesn't respect doctor's/pharmacist's guidelines. He feels _much better_ after day 3, so he stops his class X ATB in day 4 instead of day 7. If bacteria survives, might very well be class X ATB-resistant.

b) Patient has a relative who when _was feeling sick_ took ATB XYZ and got better. The main reason for this is poverty: A visit to the doctor might cost 25-120 EUR.

c) Hospitals. MRSA became "MR" in hospitals, where bacteria conjugation takes place.

That said, at some in point, we should expect bacterial organisms to evolve some kind of resistance. That's how evolution works.

<comment><USER4> Regarding (a) - do you know that I've never been told _why_ I need to finish my antibiotics? For some reason (arrogance?) doctors don't _explain_ their reasoning in many cases (I live in Canada FWIW.)

If I was told "hey, you need to finish your antibiotics or you'll risk becoming immune to them, potentially putting yourself or your family, colleagues, or friends at risk" I don't think even the dumbest person would ignore that warning. Then they could even explain WHY that is, if the patient was curious.

Instead, here in Canada, you say you're sick, the doctor will likely immediately perscribe antibiotics, then shuffle you out the door in less than 5 minutes.

<comment><USER5> Not only in Canada, it's like that in every country I've seen a doctor.

As for the 'why'... You'd be surprised on how difficult is to get an answer like that from any doctor. My suspicion[0] is that they simply don't know anymore: It's something they learnt in college, but after a few years of dealing with symptoms and prescribing treatments, they forget about the why.

Don't get me wrong, I kind of understand it. On one hand I've found that most people don't care about the 'what's or 'why's of medicine. They go to the doctor and either take the treatment they prescribe or not. I think the people that want to know the 'why' are a minority and doctor's time is valuable, so they end up processing people as fast as they can.

On the other, medicine is a vast field and they need to keep up to date with the latest developments, so I can see how they can start to forget seemingly superfluous pieces of information when faced with all the new info they have to absorb.

[0] From personal observation, so I can (I hope) to be mistaken.

<comment><USER6> > My suspicion [from personal observation] is that they simply don't know > anymore: It's something they learnt in college, but after a few years of > dealing with symptoms and prescribing treatments, they forget about the why.

If your doctor actually doesn't know why it's necessary to take the full course of antibiotics (antibiotic resistance), please get a new doctor. Seriously. (And report the old one, since he/she should not be practicing).

Of course, if the problem is simply that you can't get a layperson- intelligible answer from them, or get enough time with them for them to explain it to you, or if they're willing to explain it to you, but only if you ask... that's another story, and much more commonplace.

The sad truth is, even for the most compassionate, attentive, dedicated doctor - the one who would always go the extra mile to provide you with the best care imaginable - over the years, it's become increasingly difficult (read: next- to-impossible) to dedicate that extra time to the patient unless they really press for it. Insurance reimbursements have been cut to the point where the only way most physicians can stay afloat is to make their practice a volume game[0]. As the patient, you're not actually the paying customer (the insurer is), and the insurer doesn't care if the doctor takes an extra five minutes to talk about bacterial resistance and evolution. They'll reimburse him/her the same amount either way[1].

The exception to this is high-end, self-paying practices (think 'concierge medicine'). Unsurprisingly, those tend to have the best service (of course, you pay heavily for this).

[0] Or to go bankrupt, and sell to a hospital/practice group. Which is subject to the same pressure to generate volume, except the hospital cares a _lot_ less about you, the patient, on an emotional level than a private practitioner does.

[1] In fact, in the _worst_ case, the provider is getting reimbursed exactly $0 for providing you this care, because you're on a capitated plan. Under captitation, the provider (usually a hospital) gets a fixed, annual amount per patient that they are responsible for, and that's all the payment they ever get. The idea there is that it discourages unnecessary care - which is true, but it also disincentivizes _necessary_ care as well. And spending an extra 5 minutes to educate the patient in a way that _may_ have an impact on broader public health, but is unlikely to affect their own actual care in any measurable way? They don't have time for that, and they're certainly not getting paid for it.

<comment><USER5> As I said in other comment, the antibiotics one is a very simple case, but I've had plenty of other examples.

As to report the doctor... To whom? Do you know how difficult it is to prove almost any kind of malpractice? I've had a doctor insist that I had a sprained wrist when it was a broken radius (as another doctor and a simple x-ray proved). Another said that the cramps I was having were from an unborn brother (ahem). My wife was told in the hospital that she wasn't having an allergic reaction to antibiotics because she had had them before (surprise, antihistamines helped and further tests detected she's allergic to penicilin).

Of course, nothing gets written and doctors are very quick to cover each other. So how do you report these?

As for the doctors not being able to dedicate extra time to patients, I totally agree and indeed mention it in my first message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Chemical antibiotics are currently the best and most developed tool we have for bacterial infection, but other options are being explored, including defensins[1,2,3] (antimicrobial peptides) and—as mentioned in the article—phage therapy[4,5,6,7] (viruses that infect and replicate within a bacterium). Like many of our current antibiotics, they have their origins in nature. As therapeutics, they're far off, and would have to be characterized and go through the usual clinical trial process to be evaluated for efficacy and safety. Specificity is an issue for phages, and delivery is a challenges for both. One novel application is a defensin-based chewing gum being developed by the US military to combat the bacteria responsible for dental plaque[8,9].

1\. [http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v3/n9/full/nri1180.html](http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v3/n9/full/nri1180.html)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensin)

3\. [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/biot.200700148/ab...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/biot.200700148/abstract;jsessionid=502B8ABC8A1924B726025B62168619BE.f03t01)

4\. [http://www.nature.com/news/phage-therapy-gets- revitalized-1....](http://www.nature.com/news/phage-therapy-gets- revitalized-1.15348)

5\. [https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Cure-Future-Phage- Therapy/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Cure-Future-Phage- Therapy/dp/1461402506)

7\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy)

8\. [http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/zero-dark- cavity](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/zero-dark-cavity)

9\. [http://www.usaisr.amedd.army.mil/news/news_stories/2014_FEB/...](http://www.usaisr.amedd.army.mil/news/news_stories/2014_FEB/DTRD_developing_anti_plaque_chewing_gum.html)

<comment><USER8> I just want to say thank you for a hugely informative, referenced, and brief comment.

You've pointed me at more information on a concept I'm familiar with (bacteriophages), and taught me two new terms -- defensins and antimicrobial peptides.

Clipped & saved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also the May article in Nature in how we can now create endless supplies of slight variations on antibiotics through semisynthesis to circumvent resistance: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v533/n7603/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v533/n7603/full/nature17967.html)

Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11740340](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11740340)

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the article above was written off the back of, or at the same time as, some fairly shoddy reporting about antibiotic resistant strains back around March to May this year, because who doesn't want to get in on a decent untreatable rampant killer bug story. It's worthwhile having a read of this:

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/everybody-be-cool- a-n...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/everybody-be-cool-a-nightmare- superbug-has-not-heralded-the-apocalypse-yet/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Disaster stories sell papers, but the situation is not a disaster story. Rather it is the standard plot for development of new things. People see possible scarcity and react accordingly, far in advance of the non-specialists of the press figuring it out. The scientific community is and has been responding well to the threat of running out of antibiotics. In particular, new advances in mining the bacterial world - a 100-fold enhancement in that mining - mean that we'll be flooded with many new antibiotic drug candidates in the years ahead. For example, see:

[https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26701](https://www.edge.org/response- detail/26701)

[http://www.popsci.com/ichip-new-way-find-antibiotics-and- oth...](http://www.popsci.com/ichip-new-way-find-antibiotics-and-other-key- drugs)

Antibiotics Malthusianism has the same problem as all other forms of Malthusianism, which is that people work to fix the problems they see arising in the future, and resources are far from static as a result.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for adding this comment. I do think the facts you presented temper the "doom and gloom" sentiment of the article, though the new advancement in bacterial growth has not yet yielded new antibiotic candidates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Hospital hygiene is another focus; there is some evidence that staff are > more careless about cleanliness than they were in pre-antibiotic days, when > they saw deaths like Albert Alexander's on a more regular basis._

<comment><USER14> I spent a month at one of the top US hospitals and I witnessed crazy unhygienic practices. The most common one is when the nurse assistant puts on gloves to clean the toilet and other items touched by bodily fluids and then proceeds to clean the food tray with the same gloves and often even adjust the IV lines. I got a lot of nurses angry by pointing this out (it must suck to hear someone else tell you that you're doing your job badly, but still). My mother caught a C diff infection. After that, I carried a clorhexidine bottle with me to the hospital and cleaned all surfaces that contacted food with it.

<comment><USER15> Hospital-acquired infections have become incredibly common. My grandmother caught a C diff infection after what had already been a very arduous treatment and recovery, and she received basically no support from the hospital that had effectively given her the infection.

<comment><USER16> While she likely got it in the hospital, it should be noted that a fair portion of the population carried C. difficile in their guts, and could develop a symptomatic infection purely as the result of a disruption of the less hardy elements of their gut flora.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if there's any correlation between anti-vaxxers and those folks who insist on getting antibiotics that they don't need.

</comment><comment><USER18> At what point do they just move the outdoor water events to the ocean? I understand it's a hit to national pride to move them, but won't the publicity be far worse if a bunch of athletes get sick?

<comment><USER19> There are lots of other beaches in Rio that could've been chosen to host the water events.

However, Rio wanted to have some sort of legacy after the olympic games, something to be proud of after spending so much money while people are suffering without health and security. So the governors chose Baía de Guanabara! It's poluted as fuck, but the intent was to cleanse it before the games and have it as the Olympic legacy.

As always, Brazil screwed it and the bay still is a shit hole. Hell, 2 days ago they found in the bay the body of a college student that was murdered nearby.

Source: Live in Brazil. Send help

<comment><USER20> Finding a body seems unrelated. Even a clean river can get a body now and then...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is such a clickbait title. It's like saying "Dogs that can learn tricks discovered in NYC".

<comment><USER22> Thanks, we've updated the title to that of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Link points to a piece from The Economist, from a month and a half ago, not to current news. Please change the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll do. Thank you...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can you say clickbait?

We've been on the cusp of an antibiotic resistance epidemic (according to the media and select physicians) for decades.

1979 - [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/45521](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/45521)

1992 - [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/257/5073/1064](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/257/5073/1064)

But, as @reasonattlm said far more eloquently than I: humans seem need these stories to provide the motivation to use existing antibiotics less and to get moving on creating new antibiotics.

<comment><USER25> Sure, but it is a real problem. Many antibiotics that were useful in the past are much less useful now, and more antibiotics with undesirable side effects are being used as treatments of last resort. If nothing had been done to mitigate the issue since 1979 or 1992 we'd be in a pretty dire situation by now.

<comment><USER21> Not really, new resistant strains and new antibiotics to fight those strains is a constant inevitable march of evolution, and for the most part, driven by money from large pharma companies. An equivalent might be murphy's law and silicon chips.

It's hardly dire, and arguably the disaster headlines of each new MRSA strain is more damaging to public awareness about how antibiotics actually work.

<comment><USER26> Not may researchers agree with this view. Note the decrease in discovery of new antibiotic over time. Cite: [http://smellslikescience.com/a-need-for-new- antibiotics/](http://smellslikescience.com/a-need-for-new-antibiotics/) Also if you need more info, more people are estimated to die from AMR then cancer in 2050. Cite: [http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30416844](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30416844)

<comment><USER21> That's given the techniques used so far. See the recent work by the Lewis group [1] which uses a new method to culture soil bacteria to identify new antibiotics and opens up an entirely new pipeline. Previously, we've never been able to keep these strains of bacteria alive, but now we're able to allowing for sequencing and isolation of tons of new antibiotics. It's estimated that we'll be using this new technique for a long time.

New antibiotic finds are black swan events, they tend to come from new areas that unless you specifically are looking there, you're not going to find. It's like an oil well, and the usage of the the few "last-resort" antibiotics, which ones get produced and sold, is highly controlled by a handful of pharma companies so they eke out whatever monetary value is left.

[1] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7535/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7535/full/nature14098.html) [https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2015/01/13/digging-up-new- anti...](https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2015/01/13/digging-up-new-antibiotics/) [http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41850/...](http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41850/title/New-Antibiotic-from-Soil- Bacteria/) [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/01/07/37561616...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/01/07/375616162/compound-from-soil-bacteria-may-help-fight- dangerous-germs) [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new- antibiotic-...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-antibiotic- dirt-soil-can-kill-drug-resistant-bacteria-180953828/?no-ist)

<comment><USER26> "That's given the techniques used so far." By definition, looking at history does precisely that.

I am familiar with Lewis group and and wish more people were also. Thanks for the links, as its nice to see the background for those not familiar. Definitely worth an upvote IMHO.

My concern with this the belief that this is is a steady march where "New resistant strains and new antibiotics to fight those strains is a constant inevitable march of evolution" implies there is no need to be concerned. New technology may save lives, just as unproven carbon neutralizing tech may stop green house issues, but today, at this moment, there is no proven tech that obviates this dangers. While, we hope and believe, that new tech will solve many problem, the widely held scientific view point on AMR is that it is an unsolved problem that is going to kill a lot of people. Which IMHO is pretty dire.

<comment><USER21> My point is, the inevitable march is driven by the market pipeline created by the Glaxosmithkline, Merck, and Amgen's of the world more than anything else. A good black swan event disrupts this to some extent, but not really. As long as there is a new MRSA, there is a host of new antibiotics being developed. This means there is always an arm race that requires lots of investment, but this pipeline we have set up today is far from optimal. Changing IP rules is a good place to start.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rendered Prose Diffs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1784-rendered-prose-diffs <comment><USER2> This is wonderful. I'm writing a book[1] and it's in markdown and on github. The diffs look great for it:

[https://github.com/munificent/game-programming- patterns/comm...](https://github.com/munificent/game-programming- patterns/commit/2a02d1f8c5093a73e5258c55aac3b0f531d01435#rdiff-5e512bb6ba6e40cffa2a6bdab2cfb5a0)

[1]: [http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Word-diffs are great for prose; line-based diffs are completely opaque for editing. If you've ever looked at a lot of copyediting in a line-based diff, you have no idea what actually happened. Look at some edits on Wikipedia and imagine trying to view them in a default git log... Fortunately, you can use `diff --color-words` or a tool like `wdiff` to get better diffs. (An example: [http://www.gwern.net/docs/2002-radiance#diff](http://www.gwern.net/docs/2002-radiance#diff) )

</comment><comment><USER4> This is fantastic!

Version control is a killer feature for writers, particularly those working collaboratively.

There are actually already a few projects out there that offer version control for writers. Draft and Penflip come to mind.

Draft: [https://draftin.com/](https://draftin.com/)

Penflip: [https://www.penflip.com/](https://www.penflip.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Ties in perfectly with the Git + file-based CMS approach as used by (one of many examples) Asana: [http://eng.asana.com/2014/02/scaling-asana- com/](http://eng.asana.com/2014/02/scaling-asana-com/) .

Cool feature!

</comment><comment><USER6> some previous notes of mine on the display of prose diffs:

1\. the general idea:

> [http://zenmagiclove.com/phrase-change- > display.html](http://zenmagiclove.com/phrase-change-display.html)

> > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5639728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5639728)

 __*

2\. an example:

> [http://zenmagiclove.com/phrase-change- > sample.html](http://zenmagiclove.com/phrase-change-sample.html)

> > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5648071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5648071)

 __*

3\. a demo with the gettysburg address:

> > [http://zenmagiclove.com/misc/gabal/gabal.html](http://zenmagiclove.com/misc/gabal/gabal.html)

> > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6765685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6765685)

 __*

i have working code, if github (or anyone else) is interested.

-bowerbird

</comment><comment><USER7> Very cool, but only for markdown. :(

I guess I'll still have to run `scm-latexdiff` manually between commits. Still it's nice to see tools evolving beyound line diffs.

<comment><USER8> Well, sort of. It works for AsciiDoc, Textile, and all other formats supported by [https://github.com/github/markup](https://github.com/github/markup)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Definitely cool, and it looks really pretty. I'm glad that github is going in the direction of "put all of your stuff here, not just code".

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd love to see this for Fountain documents ([http://fountain.io/](http://fountain.io/)).

</comment><comment><USER11> Neat, I'll definitely use this with LaTeX.

<comment><USER12> Would it work with Latex? Doesn't Github have to supply the renderer itself?

<comment><USER13> I do not speak for GitHub, but anonymous sources inform me that the feature only works with prose formats that have a built-in renderer. So basically, if you can preview the file, you can get a rendered diff for it.

This seems to confirm your suggestion :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any idea how they're doing this?</comment>


Every programmer has a variable naming philosophy - <AUTHOR> http://research.swtch.com/2010/02/names.html

<comment><USER2> I like to be somewhat verbose with my naming. I don't like to abbreviate unless its a very common and well understood abbreviation. If nothing else because I can have a terrible memory and find myself struggling to remember exactly what a variable is storing otherwise. I can't imagine what it would be like for a different programmer entirely.

Perhaps I've just had to work with too much code that has poorly (in my opinion) named variables.

Then again I also have intellisense and autocomplete so I don't really fear a slightly longish variable name if it makes sense.

<comment><USER3> I do not like long variable names and believe it is a combination of good commenting and inference through the code, that one should understand the role of the variable.

I was taught camel case for everything, which I don't agree with. Camel case for class names, everything else lower case, short and separated with underscores if needed. Collections are plural, e.g addresses, so that one can be generic in iteration and talk of an 'address'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminded me of a previous comment (and discussion) on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=840331>

"Another way to look at this: The first time you meet someone, you learn their full name. When discussing them with someone else who knows them, you use just a single name. If they're standing right there, you don't bother using their name, but just make eye contact, and maybe a "Hey". Should be the same way with variables."

<comment><USER5> That is a beautiful analogy!

Like all analogies, it is not perfect, but it fits very well with a good naming philosophy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's mine, just for fun. I haven't seen anyone else using anything like it.

kVariable: A constant value, even in languages that don't support constants. Usually either a semantic shortcut for some value, or for some knob that can be turned at the top of the code.

xVariable: A local variable.

gVariable: Global. (I care much more about variable scope than I do about variable type.)

x, y, z, i, j, k: Counters. I try not to nest or overuse these too much. If it starts to get hard to follow, then I rename them.

There are a couple of other hints that I leave myself too. For example, I tend to pluralize the names of variables that contain arrays or lists of things: xWindowElements for example.

I never cared for Hungarian notation or its brethren. To me, it just had too steep of a learning curve for too little payoff, and didn't even convey the information that I usually needed.

<comment><USER7> That looks to me like a variant of Apps Hungarian, encoding variable use. When you say you don't like Hungarian, do you mean more specifically that silly Systems Hungarian that encodes concrete data type?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of Systems Hungarian.

After thinking about it more, I think I've decided over the years that problems like variable type should be handled in the architecture, not the variable names. If encoding your variable types in your variable names is doing you any good, then either your functions are getting a lot longer than they really ought to be, or you've got more globals than you should, or you aren't correctly handling objects.

I think this is true even for Apps Hungarian. It looks like Joel's article [1] is one of the most-cited resources on Apps Hungarian, and the specific example he uses is for signaling safe versus unsafe strings in a web application. He comes up with a somewhat convoluted example of why you might want to keep an "unsafe" string around, but I don't buy it. Every single input in a web application (for one example) should be vetted before any processing on the input takes place. You might not want to HTML-encode a string going to your credit card interface, but you certainly do want to validate it.

This is actually even more the case in things like traditional C/C++ applications, because the code bases get so much larger than the average web application. By the time you get to inner functions, they shouldn't need to care whether the input is correct or not; it should have already been handled elsewhere.

The one exception to this -- in my case anyway -- is in resolving variable scope. If I'm starting to use too many globals, it's hard to ignore lots of "gSomething" all over the place. That's a signal to me that it's time to re- think what I'm doing. Likewise with the loop counters. Prepending "x" to local variables just reduces name collisions with other functions and objects and whatnot.

[1]: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does it matter if a variable name is longer than it should be? As long as the code is legible, who cares?

I assume the author isn't saying that all variables should be named like "i" and "j" (and those examples are bad ones since they are well-known conventions), but that a variable shouldn't be named any longer than is needed to convey meaning.

Ok. Why even make this point? Programmers should err on the side of too long rather than too short. And, whenever possible, use the conventions of the language in favor of their personal philosophy.</comment>


Learning Bluetooth Hackery with BLE CTF - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackgnar.com/2018/06/learning-bluetooth-hackery-with-ble-ctf.html <comment><USER2> [https://archive.fo/02dUk](https://archive.fo/02dUk) just in case

</comment><comment><USER3> That looks awesome! Reminds me of the Riscure challenges that requires you to flash a chip every time or the chip whisperer that teaches you power analysis attacks via an all-in-one chip</comment>


Twitter Polls Are an Awful Idea - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/25/twitter-polls-are-an-awful-idea/ <comment><USER2> > Brands will love it, media outlets will love it (BuzzFeed is gonna embed the > shit out them, and oh…the presidential election!@#!@#), and sports teams > asking questions of fans this Sunday will love it.

So, given that twitter's core customers will love it, I'm not sure why it's an "awful idea".

All we have is some vague assertion that "But when you poll someone, you deter them from making their true voice heard." Because what twitter needs is _more_ people shouting their opinions on every random subject?</comment>


Why most programmers hate code that they don't write? - <AUTHOR> Hi!
I work as a Front End developer in Dublin and I was wondering the following:
- All companies that I worked, I never saw a programmer saying good things about someone else's code.
Since I realised this thing, I always look at someone else's code in a different way. I try not to thing of how bad the code actually is but I try to criticise architecture problems and things that might be optimised. Not the code itself.
What I say about not the code itself would be something like:
Trying to avoid to criticise micro optimisations and/or things that I know it is bad but I do it anyway for reasons that might be due to time constraints.
The thing is, It is very easy to criticise someone's code but it is very hard to at the same time have a great code quality AND meet all constraints to deliver that.
And the point is, at the end, someone will look and still think it is bad.
I would like to know your thoughts about this problem and how to address them in a better way. <comment><USER2> _" All companies that I worked, I never saw a programmer saying good things about someone else's code."_

I think that this may have to do with the fact that reading code (even code that you yourself wrote a while ago) is harder than writing code. When you're writing code, you have an image fresh in your mind of what you want to create, but when you're reading code, you're struggling to build up a mental model of what that code does. And if, because of this, you perceive the other person's code as being harder to understand, it might bias you into thinking that it's bad code.

People who have a lot of programming experience become better at reading other peoples' code - it's a learnable skill, like sight-reading music.

I read a lot of other peoples' code, and I find code that's all over the spectrum: worse than mine, about the same as mine and better than mine (sometimes a lot better). I have co-workers who write sloppy code and other co-workers who write very clean code.

A programmer who has never seen code that they can say good things about is probably fairly inexperienced (hasn't read very much code in their life).

<comment><AUTHOR> I really liked what you said and I agree in every level. But what do you do and/or what do you think when you start reading someone else's code to avoid this precocious judgment?

Because what I usually see is very quick reactions like in less than 5min of reading, people start complaining.

<comment><USER3> I think you hold off negative thoughts and make a list of what's good about the code first, and then write down your negative thoughts. The key question is, is there a good interface to it, if not, can one be built to wall around the bad code? Remember, often an overwhelming advantage in having bad code is, it's already written and it works.

See it as an opportunity, rather than a burden. Each line of existing code is a potential line of code you don't need to write, rather than a potential line of code you need to re-write.

On a broader scope, try to work to become an unnecessary employee in the company, rather than to become indispensable. The former attitude helps me try to see what's good about my colleagues because I'll need every strength the team has if I were to leave the company in good hands. I want the company's engineering team to stand on its own feet without my help so I can quit and feel good about the organisation I've contributed to.

On the other hand, being underpaid and wanting to become more indispensable so you get paid more will lead you to keep seeing your colleague's weaknesses.

(And the justification to be so "altruistic" and "loyal" is to have negotiated hard in the beginning in the first place so you're so well paid you want to do right by the company.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Levels of experience vary all over the map. Orders of magnitude differences. When experienced people get called in to deal with problem code, it's most likely been written by someone with less experience. There is very often room for critical comments. Just statistics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree with you. But I don't know If I was clear enough but I'm not talking about capabilities. I'm talking about the outcome code of time and other constraints.

Like: \- Lack of staff \- Short time to do tasks \- Priority change \- Unexpected problems

We can always blame that manager for most of these problemas but Is not simple as that in the real life. We cannot just say "I'll spend 3 days more on this task and make it perfect. It is not my fault that someone quit and we have a shortage on staff"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are multiple different psychological theories that might explain why we dislike code that we don't write. I do agree it is an interesting thing to think about.

Two that I can immediately think of are

1\. Ikea Effect(1) - We place a higher value on things we create vs. things we didn't create

How it applies: We place more value on code we wrote compared to what others wrote.

2\. Fundamental Attribution Error (2) - We tend to look at our own accomplishments as evidence of our own ability, and our failures as events caused by external influence. When it comes to others it's the reverse, we look at others accomplishments as the result of external events, and their failures as evidence of their internal lacking of ability

How this applies: Let's face it, if you're working as a software developer, you don't always have the time to write 100% perfect code (which is not an excuse to write bad code) but a reason why we often settle for "good enough" code. We probably accept this rationalization when reading our own code but are less lenient when reading others code. This then frames their judgment of the code in a negative light. "I hate this code because the developer took shortcuts/didn't do things the right way... " Even though we do the same.

3\. Mere Exposure Effect (3) - We like things we're familiar with.

How it applies: Since we wrote our code, know how it works (most of the time right...) and what we were thinking when we wrote it, that familiarity is pleasurable vs code that we don't know how it works (yet), and have less of an idea of the mindset that the developer had when writing it.

Those are just a few... there are probably more theories you can apply to this problem but I do agree it's a real thing.

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

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

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere- exposure_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect)</comment>


Inter-corporate Starcraft 2 League cast by Day9 - <AUTHOR> http://afterhoursgaming.tv/

<comment><AUTHOR> The site is under heavy load now, so it might be slow. For now you can just go directly to bliptv to see the games: [http://blip.tv/day9tv/ahgl-microsoft-vs- google-game-1-week-1...](http://blip.tv/day9tv/ahgl-microsoft-vs-google- game-1-week-1-starcraft-2-5344106)</comment>


Ask HN: Taking a week off to decompress in and around SF, any tips? - <AUTHOR> I'm taking next week off after finally rolling out a fairly major code change at $WORK. I've been hovering on the edge of burnout recently, and so I'd like to break up my existing routines as much as possible, spend some time away from my computer, have some fun. For me that probably means some hiking, a little climbing, hitting any tourist sites I haven't seen yet, maybe renting a car and getting outside of the city for a bit. I have a few ideas, but I'd like to see if the HN community comes up with anything.<p>After all, I'm sure I'm not the only person here working in or around SF who could do with a week away from work to decompress. <comment><USER2> I'd strongly suggest getting away from the city. If you've only got patience for a short drive, Costanoa in Pescadero (halfway to Santa Cruz) is a great getaway for a couple of days.

Further away, I'd suggest Trinidad, Pinnacles National Park, Lassen National Park, Placerville, Shasta - almost any direction you go outside the bay area counties will be great. Even the San Joaquin valley is a great getaway for Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.

If you really want to get away from it all, Crescent City/Redwoods National Park is the middle of nowhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> It might be cliche, but... wine tasting? We drove up to a winery overlooking a valley just outside of the city. The drive through the redwoods was really beautiful. I wish I had the name of the place, but I don't. We went in the middle of the day during the week so we had the place almost all to ourselves and had a good bit of conversation with the person pouring the drinks.

Half Moon Bay was another place we went to that paid of well. The beach is a really good long walk and is really beautiful on a sunny day.

</comment><comment><USER4> I visited SF from Sydney last week and it's an incredible city.

Spent a lot of my time in The Mission area which is full of pokey shops, cafes, bars, restaurants and generally cool buildings.

I also really enjoyed the Palace of Fine Arts and its gardens, such an awesome building

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

If you haven't been then the SF Giants baseball park is worth a visit, just for the views of the bay alone.

<comment><USER3> I stumbled upon the Palace of Fine Arts during my visit to SF and was incredibly impressed. The surrounding neighborhood is really nice to see was well. The beach is right across the street with a good view of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate. Overall, it is a good use of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Go to Point Reyes and hike the trail to Tamales Point, the northernmost tip of the peninsula. You will not be disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you decide to stay in and around the city I highly recommend finding every good "dive" that there is and trying them out.

A decent list is here, [https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-dive-restaurant- in-San-...](https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-dive-restaurant-in-San- Francisco) but your going to have to do your own research. Shalimar is recommended here, and the one near union square is a HOLE in the wall you wouldn't eat there on your own from the looks of the place but just do it. I also have a soft spot for Reds Java House.

</comment><comment><USER7> Go to Yosemite or Lake Tahoe for a week. Just be a tourist or camp in a tent.

</comment><comment><USER8> Gray Whale Cove beach in Pacifica is my happy place. There are nude men there, but it keeps the crowds away and they don't harm anyone. Gorgeous beach, peaceful and "secret." Stop and grab sandos from Colombos on your way!

Also Chit Chat Cafe in Pacifica is a great place to while away an afternoon drinking coffee with an ocean view.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do you enjoy board games? If you are free Thursday night, I know some people.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm sorry, we don't do that in this city. What is "decompress" anyway? /s

<comment><USER11> It means to unzip the source code tar ball and get back to work slave!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would suggest hiking, maybe taking some nature photos. Its one of the ways I decompress, but I do it on the East Coast.

</comment><comment><USER13> Go camp in Big Sur.</comment>


United States v. Aaron Swarz Indictment [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/DataTheft/Indictment.pdf

<comment><USER2> If I were on that jury, I wouldn't convict.</comment>