What life is like after police ransack your house, then the charges are dropped - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/30/what-life-is-like-after-police-ransack-your-house-and-take-every-belonging-then-the-charges-are-dropped/?hpid=hp_no-name_wonk-potraid635p_1%3Ahomepage%2Fstory <comment><USER2> Try dealing with any of these "mandatory XYZ" crimes. In Colorado, for instance, when couples fight and the police are called, someone goes to jail, a mandatory order of protection is issued, you lose the ability to collect anything that you own in person (you must go through "mutual friends"), and if you live with your girlfriend/wife/fiance, you've also just lost the right to go to your own house.

So, having a fight that triggers a call to the police (even a verbal one, or slamming a door) will result in the XY going to jail for the night, paying for it, losing their house and most of their belongings, losing their job, being arrested (which is never expunged, even if innocent), and being homeless while you get a new job, house, clothes, etc.

Even if you're acquitted (I was completely acquitted of the lowest charge possible, which is a 3rd degree misdemeanor), it's not like your things magically show up, you still went to jail and lost your job, and the state doesn't care at all. The records should be expunged, the money that I paid to stay in jail ($35) should be refunded, and I should be given a police escort to force her to relinquish my things (thousands of dollars of things, photos, etc).

The system in CO is just a race to call the cops. Whoever goes first, wins. Slamming a door will immediately tag you as a "Domestic Abuser" and any guns (and ammo) must be kept at a friend's for the duration of the trial (which takes 6 months).

I won, and it certainly doesn't feel like "winning". :(

<comment><USER3> In TX, I called the cops on my (insane, belligerent, beating down my front door) ex and all she had to do was lie to get me arrested. The police are dumber than rocks and I had to wage a credible threat to prosecute my lying ex for perjury and false statements to police to get my case dropped.

<comment><USER4> That sounds horrible. But it's not as bad as SF, where the SFPD shoots first and asks questions later.

Edit: why the downvotes? I can provide an innumerable amount of sources.[0][1][2]

[0] [http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/police-shot-and- ki...](http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/police-shot-and-killed-man- san-francisco-week-heres-what-you-should-know)

[1] [https://www.aclunc.org/sites/default/files/A%20Department%20...](https://www.aclunc.org/sites/default/files/A%20Department%20in%20Denial%20-%20The%20San%20Francisco%20Police%20Department%27s%20Failure%20to%20Address%20Racial%20Profiling.pdf)

[2] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/debian-linux-founder-ian- murdoc...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/debian-linux-founder-ian-murdock-dies- at-42-cause-unknown/)

I get that it's easy to bury your head in the sand when it comes to these things, but there is a major league problem with the police here in SF. They are accountable to nobody and continue to harass and intimidate everyone, not just minorities.

<comment><USER5> _I get that it 's easy to bury your head in the sand when it comes to these things, but there is a major league problem with the police here in SF. They are accountable to nobody and continue to harass and intimidate everyone, not just minorities._

A lot of people don't understand this.

It starts off with minorities because, being minorities, they don't have the political clout to do anything about it.

The downtown decision makers don't care if some black or brown kid gets his head split open for not moving fast enough when the police ordered him to leave.

They don't care until it's someone that is important to them. When it's John Q MiddleClassSuburbanWhiteTeen who gets arrested for a made up offense, it's too late to fix the problem. At that point, the machinations are already in place to abuse everyone.

What they do to the minorities, they'll eventually do to you.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash First they came for the Mexicans, and I did not speak up, for I am not Mexican.

Then they came for the tech bros.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Shattuck says her marriage and birth certificates haven't been returned, and > since the Task Force does not itemize seized documents in its paperwork, it > has no record of taking them in the first place.

Maybe this provides a clue for how to curb civil forfeiture in a way that skirts the arguments for it. Make all government agencies that seize property responsible for very clearly logging and indicating where it was found, the condition it was in (photographically and by description), and to store it appropriately so it will not be damaged or deteriorate beyond what would be considered normal.

If there's a cost to seizing property, and it's not a situation of "grab everything and throw it into a box until later when we can have a fire-sale", then that might help this type of egregious abuse.

That's not to say there aren't other abuses of it where this wouldn't help much (cash seizure, for example), or that we don't need comprehensive, well thought out reform in this area, but it might be a simple, uncontroversial measure that could immediately help in some cases.

<comment><USER7> I'd rather a simpler solution. You can't accuse non-living property of a crime, you can only seize assets as part of a normal criminal proceeding. And under no circumstances can the proceeds from a seizure be given to anybody in the decision-making chain.

<comment><USER6> > You can't accuse non-living property of a crime, you can only seize assets > as part of a normal criminal proceeding.

Well, this is the heart of civil forfeiture, and without it there isn't any. Civil forfeiture is also how they confiscate contraband, or anything that is itself illegal to own. I imagine without CF law enforcement would be forced to charge you with a crime to remove illegal property from you. This might be problematic in the case of guns, illegal substances, explosives, etc. I'm not sure about requiring a 16 year old to be charged with a crime for a police officer to take him beer away, so I understand this argument to some degree. It's a case of police discretion being warped into something it wasn't intended to be.

> And under no circumstances can the proceeds from a seizure be given to > anybody in the decision-making chain.

This is common sense, but is wrapped up on the idea of using CF to help fund police departments because the public doesn't want to. Personally, I would like to see the money go towards treatment and counseling for people with problems with drugs, addiction, criminal records and mental illnesses, and community building and outreach programs.

<comment><USER8> > Civil forfeiture is also how they confiscate contraband, or anything that is > itself illegal to own.

If something is illegal to own, then there should be no difficulties charging the owner with a crime.

> I imagine without CF law enforcement would be forced to charge you with a > crime to remove illegal property from you.

Exactly.

> I'm not sure about requiring a 16 year old to be charged with a crime for a > police officer to take him beer away

Just like an officer can choose not to write up a ticket, they can tell a first-time offender "Throw away the beer right now and I'll let your parents deal with this; otherwise I'll have to charge you." That doesn't require civil forfeiture.

<comment><USER6> > If something is illegal to own, then there should be no difficulties > charging the owner with a crime.

Do we want the law to be this inflexible? It sounds good initially, but I would rather the starving man have the bread he stole gently taken by the police and returned to the owner, and sent on his way (hopefully with some help), than to be arrested. Without civil forfeiture, this turn of events would require the police to either arrest the starving man, or break the law themselves to take the bread. CF is a way for the police to use their discretion to right situations, and to prevent additional harm to victims (such as preventing property from being destroyed, used or spent after the criminal is apprehended but before conviction).

What about the case of stolen property, and the misuse of hiding of it prior to conviction but after arrest? It does the victim little good if the property stolen is disposed of or hidden after arrest.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for massive reform for the law in these cases, I just think there are cases where it's useful, and careful consideration should be given as to whether we need to keep some portion of it intact, or remove it altogether, and the consequences of that choice.

 _Edit: Okay, ignore the stolen bread and kid with beer examples. They aren 't well thought out, and are distracting from the other examples and and points, which I think deserve attention. I'm only leaving it here because I'm loathe to remove something people are responding to, even if it reflects poorly on me._ :/

<comment><USER9> > Without civil forfeiture, this turn of events would require the police to > either arrest the starving man, or break the law themselves to take the > bread.

Or tell him he'd be arrested if he didn't hand over the bread...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can tell you whats it like for personal experience.

It beyond sucks, and should be something police truly fear doing due to lawsuit exposure.

I was arrested on a completely bogus felony "destruction of evidence" charge about a decade ago while driving my car though a "bad part" of town (think how discriminatory _that_ is at face value, btw) by a totally crooked cop who eventually was thrown off the force for illegal activities.

I was arrested and would have been held for _months_ in jail if I didn't have the resources to bond out, which cost somewhere around $400 to do.

I lost a really great job a few days later as my small town publishes all arrests in the newspaper and my boss or his boss saw my name in it I'm sure.

The first thing I told my PD was "under no circumstances was I going to take a plea in this case!" and explained that I have always pled when guilty in the past.

I could tell he understood my resolve. In the end, the cop was thrown off the force and one day I showed up to court ready to battle and he told "great news...you've been null-processed and its over."

I didn't know to feel ecstatic or furious over what had happened. I still don't.

<comment><USER11> >explained that I have always pled when guilty in the past.

What were you convicted of before this incident? Were they related in any way?

<comment><USER10> Really? What difference does that make?

Oh it's ok for a totally crooked cop to charge me with a _completely bogus_ felony, cost me 100's if not 1000's of dollars, and destroy my job because I had proir weed and MDMA charges from a decade earlier?

Well ok I guess if that's how you feel about things.

<comment><USER5> There are kinds of corruption and abuse. I believe that he's looking to gauge which kind happened here.

For example, if you have past convictions for drug possession and the corruption in this case was that the officer saw you, knew your history, just assumed you were guilty and refused to back down when he realized that you were clean. Alternately, you were driving along and (From your account name, I'm going to assume that you're brown) he sees a brown guy driving through a "bad area" and decides to make a bust, regardless of your guilt or innocence.

Both are misconduct. Both are wrong but I believe that the other poster was just trying to get a mental image.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash There is so much about this case that is so fucked up I don't even know where to begin, but I believe there is one simple reform we could all agree on:

Police have an obligation to fully return, restore, and compensate citizens who have been inconvenienced, had their assets seized, and their property damaged, by the investigation and cleared of wrongdoing by the PD, had charges dropped, or found not guilty by a jury of their peers.

No more asset forfeiture to line cops' pockets, no more Baghdad raids for families that pose no immediate risk to anyone, no more citizens and families financially ruined to pay for the costs of the PDs mistakes.

When my brother was in middle school someone stole his phone. The right kid was arrested and the cops took the phone into evidence. My brother is 19 now. We could never get the phone back.

</comment><comment><USER8> See also [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/28/the-f...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/28/the- feds-have-resumed-a-controversial-program-that-lets-cops-take-stuff-and-keep- it/) , and in particular the graph: [https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2016/03/...](https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2016/03/Screen- Shot-2016-03-28-at-3.06.30-PM.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> That graph is always shocking to me. Not only in terms of the terrible irony in having the police steal more than the people they are protecting us from but because asset forfeiture has quintupled in just 10 years.

<comment><USER12> It's partly a gimmick, it includes huge fines related to the Madoff case and huge fines paid by Toyota (neither of which are particularly gross examples of law enforcement excess).

[http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/crime-and-justice- news/20...](http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/crime-and-justice- news/2015-11-civil-asset-forfeiture-report)

<comment><USER13> > A Justice Department spokesman pointed out that big cases, like the $1.7 > billion Bernie Madoff judgment and a $1.2 billion case associated with > Toyota, have led to large deposits to forfeiture funds in a single year. The > total figures above show the size of the funds after deposits and > expenditures are accounted for. "In a given year, one or two high-dollar > cases may produce unusually large amounts of money—with a portion going back > to victims—thereby telling a noisy story of year-to-year activity levels," > the report found. The numbers reported today represent a more stable and > accurate account of forfeiture activity, the institute says. "Even without > those major cases, the overall trend is still upward,"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Technically, Shattuck 's dispensary should not have been approved by the town planning commission, because the law does not provide for selling marijuana in dispensaries_

This is a great lesson for everyone. I grew up assuming that people _in charge_ of regulations and laws would know them. They could tell you what's legal and what's not.

After interactions with different gov't agencies and law enforcement, I've come to realize that's not true at all. I would be _shocked_ if even 10% of the people in charge of enforcing laws have even read the laws themselves.

Don't be surprised if a police officer arrests you for something completely legal or if a gov't agency tells you can/can't do something even though the opposite is true.

It's pretty disheartening when the people chosen to enforce a law aren't even informed enough to do it correctly. It's not that hard to get up to speed.

<comment><USER15> It's the theory that if you write enough laws then everybody is a criminal. Then the authorities can just pick and choose who they wish to prosecute. This an example of that, so many laws on the books that the people in charge of them have no idea what the laws on the books are.

There have been stories recently of police arresting someone for a legal act because the officer thought it was illegal. If I remember correctly a lawsuit was started in one of these cases and it determined the officer's ignorance of the law was not a suitable reason for the lawsuit. Or something to that point.

<comment><USER16> _It 's the theory that if you write enough laws then everybody is a criminal_

That's already true, as pointed out in _Three Felonies a Day_ : [http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target- Innocent/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target- Innocent/dp/1594035229). Everyone is already a criminal if someone wants to look carefully enough.

<comment><USER17> >Everyone is already a criminal if someone wants to look carefully enough

This is a pretty good quote. It reminded me of two more:

"Honest men have nothing to fear from the police" (said, presumably, by the prolific Anonymous), and

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him" (said, presumably, by Cardinal Richelieu but possibly by the Roman philosopher Quintilian)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a common way of bypassing the courts. US police departments have gradually ratcheted up the amount of punishment they can inflict on people without court consent, with a combination of civil forfeiture, pre-trial detainment and destruction of property. They get away with it because the courts have neither the will nor the resources to push back effectively. The practical result has been a loss of faith in the US criminal justice system, which is a threat to the innocent, not a defender of it.

</comment><comment><USER19> "They got an anonymous tip"

Why did they even need that, the couple called them up told them they planned to sell mary jane and the hours they planned to do it, "Come on down, check it out", yet the police still needed to contrive an anonymous tip for some reason.

<comment><USER20> The problem is they only talked to the cops. They should have talked to the people with the real power, the prosecutors. Rich people hire a lawyer who knows the prosecutors, and have them get assurances (possibly in writing) before doing anything close to illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As far as I can tell, law enforcement is not penalized for executing a search warrant that doesn't pan out. Same goes for the courts that approve them, often ignoring a lack of true probable cause and/or being misled by the agents who write these warrants. This is a very bad incentive for all involved that creates innocent victims and hoards of wasted time.

<comment><USER22> I wouldn't really call this a warrant that didn't pan out. They were breaking the law and if they hadn't been working with the local government all this time the Shattuck's would probably be in jail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Civil forfeiture is terrifying. I haven't even done anything wrong and I'm terrified that someone might accuse me, and then the police come in and take and/or smash all of my stuff and/or confiscate my bank accounts and investments.

<comment><USER15> What do you mean your terrified that someone might accuse you? It doesn't even take that much. Get pulled over for no real reason on the interstate with a few hundred bucks in the car and it's "drug money".

<comment><USER15> Here's a mature community that didn't needlessly point out my "your" vs "you're" flub.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One way to do something about this: [https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law- reform/reforming-po...](https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law- reform/reforming-police-practices/asset-forfeiture-abuse)

</comment><comment><USER25> For all the reasonable concerns about government overreach & abuse of power, (and without getting into the principles underwriting their power, i.e., that they work for us) government incompetence it just as compelling to me as a reason for strong checks and legal constraints. One agency saddled up for war while another gave its blessing? Eyeroll.

</comment><comment><USER26> Aren't protocols of seized items signed by witnesses? Or US Police is just a bunch of gangsters?

<comment><USER27> You must live in a more civilized locale. Most USA police in fact are fairly decent human beings. The system is set up to encourage them to act as gangsters, which many of them do. It was set up that way by a different group of gangsters. Does this not make much sense? That's intentional; voters don't understand it either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The only thing I can see as a viable target of asset forfeiture is illegal items (e.g. the drugs themselves). Any other asset that the government wants to seize needs to follow a criminal conviction and a separate trial on the asset itself. This funding our police through stealing (see Philadelphia) is beyond wrong.

I also believe that no money from fines should go to the police department. It should end up in the state's (not the city, etc.) general fund. That will end the incentive to be a bunch of buccaneers.

<comment><USER29> It would actually be better if it ended up in a segregated budget category that could not be used to fund policing or courts, and which could not be conditionally reduced based on the amount of funding provided via forfeiture.

If you stick it in the general fund, it is just one spending bill away from ending up in police coffers anyway.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, probably, but I figure moving it up to the state general fund from the city / county is a good start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Most of these cases strike me as being quite worrying with regard to 'just following orders'.

A police officer must, must have discretion. The individual, the team, that steps into a home must be able to decide whether taking items is the best course of action and be free to do so without coercion.

Otherwise, you have robots acting on instructions from higher ups. That's not a reasonable model for society.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think there should be limits on the police's ability to take people's stuff. Maybe add something to the constitution that something along the lines of:

> ...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just > compensation.

That way, the police can't just seize your stuff without considering the damages that inflicts on a person.

</comment><comment><USER32> >They worked to ensure every last detail was in full compliance with the law as they understood it

They were lucky. Aereo did the same, specifically falling court rulings and the law and their efforts were successfully held in court to be clear demonstration of an attempt to break the law!

What a world.</comment>


Fuzzing on Edison: field report - <AUTHOR> http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/edison_fuzz/

<comment><USER2> The x86 compatibility is what is amazing here. I almost used the processor that the Edison uses on this year's Defcon badges for that very reason...

<comment><USER3> amazing why? so you can have that sweet sweet compatibility with Windows 3.11? or access to cutting edge BCD opcodes? maybe its the price point of 4x faster ARM SoCs? or 1Wat at idle when connected to a network?

<comment><USER2> Amazing because a bunch of already existing tools could be used immediately, that's why.

Good to see you understand the purpose and design constraints oh so well...

<comment><USER3> what tools do you mean? other than binary only windows applications that you wouldnt run anyway because there is no GPU on this thing(unless you manage to install headless windows).

apt-get whatever works just fine on arm

<comment><USER4> Just because the source is available doesn't mean the tool is portable, or even ported. You won't be able to apt-get install afl-fuzz (the tool used in this article) on Arm.

<comment><USER3> coincidently you wont be able to download afl-fuzz in binary form either, because only the source is available, so your argument is what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone tried the Edison? Is it good? It seems to me that it's a Raspberry Pi with better specs, wifi, etc, plus Arduino compatibility, which sounds amazing, but I haven't figured out how it connects to stuff. How do I power the little die? Do I need breakout boards for everything?

<comment><USER6> The Raspberry Pi is intended for a different use - it's comparing apples to oranges.

The Edison is intended for embedded applications - it has no display support built in (like DVI/HDMI), less USB support, and less "plug-and-play" ports.

SparkFun did a great write-up on unfair comparisons between the two platforms: [https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1603](https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1603)

<comment><USER7> See, that's where I don't get what Edison is about.

If I want a SoC capable of doing low cost user-interface type embedded tasks I need parallel LCD support (or at least LVDS). I'd get an NXP LPC18/40 or an STM32 at the low end or an i.MX5/6 at the high end. Way cheaper with way better application support.

If I wanted to do IoT sensing/reporting, this whole thing is just overkill. Again, a low cost LPC or STM coupled with a GainSpan or TI radio module (that I can bake directly to my PCB). To me, and I could be wrong here, IoT isn't about putting 500 MHz computing resources at the nodes and certainly not for a $75 BOM adder.

At least the LPC and STM are chips I can put directly down on my board and run out of the box. An SOM with a single-sourced connector (and Hirose is notorious for designing unique stuff nobody else wants to duplicate) is just commercial suicide.

<comment><USER5> I want a low-power, Wifi-enabled computer for various projects. Arduino shield compatibility means that I can create things like my license-plate-reading garage door opener, or irrigation system, while combining a fast processor and lots of RAM with all the nice hardware Arduino has.

<comment><USER7> And that's fine for that kind of application. You could also do just as much with a cheaper system (but you'd need a lot more software work so maybe that's Intel key point: you can shovel in all the X86 code you've been slogging around with you for decades).

But, in my opinion, the examples you mentioned are not IoT. Unless you're planning to put one of these at every sprinkler head.

<comment><USER5> They aren't, but you said you don't get what the Edison is about, so I mentioned a few cases it's perfect for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How did I completely miss the Edison? I love the idea of a dual-core x86 for running something like linux with a moderately powered MCU as a RTP. Does anyone know what it means by "<1W of power consumption" which is the power I've seen? I assume it will peak at over 1W with all 3 cores running all out? I'd like to see separate idle/loaded values for that.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if the performance can be improved by adding a heat sink? The CPU might be throttling itself if running at 100% for a while.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe I could use the Edison as a foundation to build something I've been after for a while.

I'd like a 'thing' that would attach to the back of a pair of bookshelf speakers and allow me to stream music through the speakers via Bluetooth. The 'thing' would also need to act as an amp. I had seen 'The Vamp' but this doesn't offer stereo.

<comment><USER3> you mean like this $4 dongle ? [http://www.ebay.com/itm/1PC-A2DP-3-5mm-Stereo- Bluetooth-Musi...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/1PC-A2DP-3-5mm-Stereo-Bluetooth- Music-Receiver-Audio-Dongle-Adapter-Excellent-/321543100579)

<comment><USER10> Not quite no, I would be after something to turn passive speakers into active speakers.

<comment><USER3> you dont have an amplifier? buy one on craiglist/garage sale/whatever

<comment><USER10> I do have an amp, a giant amp, point is I want to make the speakers portable and add bluetooth streaming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> FWIW, there's a patch out for the OpenSSH / systemd / screen issue mentioned in the blog post; KillMode=process was missed out in the service file.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the author is wrong about the CPU supporting HT. Merrifield is based on the Silvermont micro-architecture, which does away with HT and replaces it with OOE.

</comment><comment><USER13> would be nice if it ran Ubuntu</comment>


Point by Point Comparison of Lisp and Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.scheme/msg/b505263f820dba29

<comment><USER2> There's actually a common misconception about Scheme being lexically scoped only. You have to dig very deep into the Scheme literature to find it, but Scheme actually requires both dynamic and lexical scoping of variables depending upon the way they are defined.

Almost all variables in Scheme are lexically scoped, the exceptions are variables created by a "(define ...)" statement. The reason for this (which is spelled out in "The Art of the Interpreter") is to support defining recursive functions.

So, for instance, the following should work in pretty much any Scheme REPL:

        > (define foo 1)
        > (define (bar n) (+ foo n))
        > (bar 2)
        3
        > (define foo 2)
        > (bar 2)
        4

If "(define ...)" statements actually created lexical variables, then both calls to "bar" would return the same result.

<comment><USER3> I don't think I quite understand how the two interact, but wouldn't your example work with either lexical or dynamic bindings?

        > (let ((foo 1)) ; foo is lexical
        >   (define (bar n) (+ foo n))
        >   (bar 2)      ; => 3
        >   (set! foo 2)
        >   (bar 2))     ; => 4

(Naturally, if instead of set! you do (let ((foo 2)) ...), it gives 3 again. But that's creating a new lexical scope, whereas in your example both definitions of foo are in the same scope, as is the definition of bar. I think.)

OTOH,

        > (define (bar n) (+ foo n))
        > (let ()      ; create a new lexical scope
        >   (define foo 1)
        >   (bar 2))   ; error: unbound variable 'foo'

My understanding of dynamic variables is that bar would see the value of foo just defined, and return 3. Am I confused?

(Tested with guile 1.6.7, which I gather is pretty old. Maybe that's the problem?)

edit: tested this in perl as well, with local to create dynamic variables.

        sub bar { print($foo + shift(), "\n"); }
        sub a { my $foo = 1; bar(2); }
        a(); # prints 2, or errors if use strict is on.
        sub b { local  $foo = 1; bar(2); }
        b(); # prints 3.

<comment><USER2> Well, dynamic scoping does allow a form of destructive update, but define statements are not just an assignment; they also allocate a new memory location. So in my example the two foo's could represent completely different memory locations and it would still work.

Now for your second example; nested define statements do not allocate a top- level memory location. Instead they allocate a local memory location. Consider the following example:

        > (define foo 1)
        > (let ((bar (lambda (n) (+ foo n))))
            (define foo 2)
            (bar 1))
        2
        > foo
        1
        > (let ((bar (lambda (n) (+ foo n))))
            (set! foo 2)
            (bar 1))
        3
        > foo
        2

Here we see that the define and set! methods operated on two different memory locations. When a reference has no matching local declaration, it defaults to looking for a top-level declaration. These top-level declarations are resolved at run time, which is what makes them dynamically scoped.

<comment><USER3> Hmm. According to cltl (I didn't have time to look this up earlier), 'dynamic scope' is a misnomer/helpful abbreviation. It refers to two things: indefinite (as opposed to lexical) scope, and dynamic (as opposed to indefinite) extent.

Scope refers to where a binding can be accessed. Indefinitely scoped variables can be seen from anywhere in the program. My understanding of that is that in effect, there's only one dynamic scope. It may or may not override the current lexical scope, and there may be a mechanism to shadow and unshadow variables as they come in and out of extent. But it shouldn't make a difference where in the source code a binding is made. So I would expect your first example in that post to give 3, if define creates indefinite scope.

Extent refers to when it can be referenced. Dynamic extent means that once the binding has been unmade, the variable is no longer available.

        > (define bar nil)
        > (let ()
        >   (define foo 1)
        >   (set! bar (lambda (n) (+ foo n))))
        > (bar 2) ; => 3
        > foo     ; error: unbound variable 'foo'

That doesn't seem to hold up either. The binding is lost, but the object remains.

(Incidentally, if you (set! bar) before you (define foo), you get an error: bad define placement. I'm not sure what, if anything, that signifies, but it seemed interesting.)

ref: <http://www.supelec.fr/docs/cltl/clm/node43.html>

"in my example the two foo's could represent completely different memory locations and it would still work."

My understanding of closing is that once you create a lambda, it holds a reference to the lexical scope it was created in. You can modify that lexical scope and the lambda will still 'see' the changes, even if you were adding a new binding rather than just modifying an old one. So I don't see a conflict with define being lexical here.

<comment><USER2> The problem (which you are right to point out) is that only top-level defines are dynamically scoped. That's why my first example doesn't return a 3 and why the binding from a nested define statement disappears.

The top-level defines do fit the description of "indefinite scope", since they can be accessed anywhere in the program (even before they are defined). I don't know of anyway to remove a top-level define without shadowing it with another top-level define, so it would seem that they also fit the definition of "dynamic extent".

Nested defines are very strange, so I think it is understandable that they don't quite fit in with either CLTL's definitions or with the classical definition of static scoping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> could'nt have said it better:

Schemer: "Buddha is small, clean, and serious."

Lispnik: "Buddha is big, has hairy armpits, and laughs." —Nikodemus Siivola

</comment><comment><USER5> Just curious: will there ever be something like a Common Scheme? (Hardened by common _practice_?)

<comment><USER6> R6RS is a first attempt at doing something like that. It's an attempt to standardize things that are continually recreated (differently) by each implementation (hash-tables, modules, structures, IO).</comment></comment>


New Gmail App for iPhone is Unusable, Shows Errors Upon Launch - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/02/new-gmail-app-for-iphone-is-unusable-shows-errors-on-launch/

<comment><USER2> Aaaaaand they just pulled it, confirmed on Twitter 20 minutes ago:

<https://twitter.com/#!/gmail/status/131794997308690434>

Apparently they code-signed it with an improper distribution profile that doesn't allow for push notifications. How does someone mess up something so important, especially when it's the official Gmail app?

<comment><USER3> people fuck up. I am more surprised that something that shows an error on login would pass Apple's appstore inspection

<comment><USER4> I suspect that when it comes to Google, Apple's review process may be to approve anything broken and ugly and to find a reason to reject anything that works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://plus.google.com/100940716892313727285/posts/4aPVQTj9...](https://plus.google.com/100940716892313727285/posts/4aPVQTj9jyL)</comment>


A Game of Life on Penrose Tilings - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.09301 <comment><USER2> Here's a video of the Game of Life on a Penrose Tiling:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DFi4FgzEeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DFi4FgzEeQ)

<comment><USER3> I love that oscillator down in the bottom right!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once I seriously wanted to have Penrose Tiling tiles in my bathroom but after soon found out nobody manufactures such tiles and would have to produce them manually with a tile cutter.

<comment><USER5> Not Penrose tilings, but my math professor's bathroom floors are pretty cool [https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~greg/floors.html](https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~greg/floors.html)

<comment><USER6> Don Knuth has a dragon curve in the entrance hall to his house: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v678Em6qyzk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v678Em6qyzk)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anybody got a link to a working example?

I mean, this seems straightforward enough

This is sorta my field. My goal is pretty pictures. Would this make pretty pictures? I dunno.

ok, here's a link : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DFi4FgzEeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DFi4FgzEeQ)

<comment><USER8> The paper describes a way of choosing a subset of tiles in penrose tiling that form a rectangularish grid and play the usual game of life there. Cells no not belonging to grid have little meaning in the cellular automaton. The paper suggest leaving them off or setting the same color as cells forming grid. It would probably look like game of life in slightly deformed grid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Game of life always amazes me when I google about it... I also found these videos:

Game of life on triangle tiles: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGNOP8aJlM8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGNOP8aJlM8)

generating Sierpinski's triangle: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OSW6kfAnPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OSW6kfAnPI)

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe someone is interested in this package I created. It can implement any kind of Game of Life: [https://github.com/fibo/games-of- life](https://github.com/fibo/games-of-life)

<comment><USER11> Ooh that's nifty! Is there any way to read a bit more about rigorous treatments of "Game of Life"? (Books on combinatorics I suspect?)

<comment><USER10> Thank you very much, I guess Conway wrote many articles about GoL. I am sorry I have no reference about them, maybe you can find some in the GoL wiki here [http://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page](http://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Now combine this with the 4-color theorem to set up a competition of 4 species on the grid...

</comment><comment><USER10> In the paper there is also a way to build a Penrose tiling using functions, really interesting. Thank you again for sharing it!

</comment><comment><USER13> The challenging part is deciding what constitutes the 2d map in a non periodic tiling.

<comment><USER14> Isn't it just a graph?</comment></comment>


Gave up a day job Now what? - Income report #1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.kreci.net/reports/gave-up-a-day-job-now-what-income-report-1/

<comment><USER3> I gave up my job as software "architect" (really I was tech lead and in charge of production) for an education company and decided to spend some time "not working". The goal was to see how I could get by in life while just doing a bit of work building sites here and there for contacts but generally falling out of the job market.

My goal was just to be able to cool off for a few months having worked too hard imo for 8 years or so, and spending the time researching and building my own prospects. I left my job with £5k in the bank and a few people who respected my dev skills.

In the end I went with it for 3 years. Each year, all in, I probably worked (don't have my old time records to hand) 4 months out of the year total never working more than 4 days in a week and never working for more than 2 weeks in a row.

Only once did I need help covering my rent (even then that was only to stop me dropping into my overdraft and not actually to stop me being completely broke).

The structure of how I lived killed my motivation to work on anything to benefit myself, and any project I started always ended up being canned 50% through when I lost the starting up movitation. Lack of other people to bounce off and perpetuate the interest and excitement with really showed after the first few months.

In the end the total killer to the scheme was the isolation from people every day. Starting with £5k in the bank I came out with £10k in the bank. I would say the only real casualty of all of it was my career path, I've basically been forced back down to developer, but perhaps that in itself isn't such a bad thing for now.

The lessons I took out of it were that I'm the kind of person that needs people to bounce ideas and enthusiasm off, so next time I go out to start something up I know I need to find a suitable partner to team with. I also found that I felt a lot less inclined to spend money when I knew how it was earned. In realised that I was spending my salary money basically to prove to myself that it was worth sitting in an office every day; when it was my money I earned it felt good just to know it was there and not turned into an LCD TV or PS3.

<comment><USER4> _he lessons I took out of it were that I'm the kind of person that needs people to bounce ideas and enthusiasm off,_

Try customers. Seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Amazon affiliate program – $12.00 – just a few dollars to buy a two good coffees – but I need coffee everyday :(_

You seriously need to find a cheaper source of coffee, at least until your income ramps up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok... it was just a little joke :) I have been drinking such expensive coffee once or maybe twice. Usually I get a big jar for around $10. So two jars from amazon earnings is enough for a month of drinking a lot of coffee... =D

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another possible source of passive income is selling website templates on ThemeForest.net. Similar to iStockPhoto, you can build something once, like an HTML or Wordpress template and sell it forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will check it - thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am a big believer in cross pollination of ideas. Are you applying any of your tech skills to your stock photography revenue stream? Data analysis, A/B testing etc...

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that my English is to weak to answer your question :) I use technical knowledge on web development - and of course I am learning a lot of things about professional photography. Moreover I invest in studio equipment - <USER2> my older posts I link to in this one.

<comment><USER7> Sorry for using slang. What I mean is have you tried using your knowledge from one field (say web-dev) and try to see if you can use it for your other field (photos)? For example, you could maybe use the information from your photo sales, take the numbers and put them into some tracking software and use the information to help you decide the next pictures you should take. (Just like you probably look at your web analytics to see what type of site to build and how best to promote and sell it)

<comment><AUTHOR> I do something kinda like that. Just looking what kind of photos really sales and make more in this niche :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congratulations on the first month! I was interested at one time in selling stock photos. I used to be quite involved in photography in general, devving and printing my own pics. I looked at the istock site and pretty much concluded that the best way to make money there is to take pics of people. I live in Prague, Czech Republic and I was hoping to take pictures of architecture, as they have great examples of all the major movements. How much time to you devote to taking pics?

Good luck in your endeavors!

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not about a time for making photos - as you build your base and it is getting bigger and bigger each month. As a stock photographer you must think what may sell for ads and popular articles. Then you might be successful. Architecture photos are not too popular on stock photography sites.

<comment><USER7> I've noticed about the architecture pics. How long has it taken you to build the photo base you now have? And is most of the base still providing income, or do you see it tailing off? Your $500 for the month would more than cover all my expenses out here, so I wonder how long it would take to get to the size base you have now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been making photos for a few months. But it depends how much time you will give to it. I am not doing it all days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a specific business you're trying to build, or are you just seeing how well you can do online?

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to build steady online income. Mostly with stock photography - as I really like it. And with web development. I build website - make some money on it and then usually sell (until I will hit a real money killer).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congrats to you. The sweetness of each self-earned dollar can outweigh the multiple dollars earned working for someone else. And in many ways, those first few dollars that validate one's ideas can be the sweetest of all.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm sure this will be sort of frowned upon but what about selling stuff on eBay? I know people who buy stuff at yard sales or suchlike and resell it on eBay...

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe it may be profitable but I am not able to do all of this stuff at once :) And I would like to stay rather with online and virtual goods only (it is to much to go and buy things, then pack it and go to postoffice...). I want to build steady 100% online income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do you have a good link for your work on iStockPhoto? The "View Portfolio" link the iStockPhoto page you link to returns nothing.

<comment><USER12> I found this via DDG, should be the right one <http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=503237>

<comment><AUTHOR> the right is <http://www.istockphoto.com/kreci> (without the backslash at the end - end then view portfolio). Just fixed it in my post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any comments welcome and very desired ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> what was the day job and why did you give it up?

I think it would be good to clarify.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been working as a computer helpdesk assistant and web developer when had no requests from users.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What buzzwords are on your blacklist? - <AUTHOR> Coworkers and I have been cataloging annoying tech jargon (and their less-obnoxious alternatives) in this spreadsheet for a few months. What buzzwords are we missing?<p>https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18C1HQPJ8bk-Uah0uEVlw4o7SLkTtL2uuyDjbYVS01_A/edit?usp=sharing <comment><USER2> (Consider adding "Ask HN:" to the submission title.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oi vey. Thanks :)</comment></comment>


Peek and poke in the age of Linux - <AUTHOR> http://blog.viraptor.info/post/44424140237/peek-and-poke-in-the-age-of-linux <comment><USER2> You can get a literal eqivalent to PEEK and POKE by mmap()ing /dev/mem. You can map the MMIO regions of a PCI device to write a userspace driver for it, for example. This is how I prodded the tl880 chip before I had a kernel module ready back when I was working on that driver.

<comment><USER3> That's pretty interesting. What are some of the limitations of an approach like that?

<comment><USER2> You don't get interrupt handlers, for one thing (though I think there are projects that do allow complete userspace drivers), and as binarycrusader mentioned, it's incredibly dangerous to give any process full access to the entire physical memory space. A single vulnerability in that process gives the attacker the ability to write to all of system memory. This can be mitigated somewhat by mmap()ing only the smallest possible region of interest, then dropping root privileges.

<comment><USER4> Yep, although most linux dists now have "/dev/mem protection" meaning that on stock distro kernels (Ubuntu, CentOS, etc), access to actual "physical memory" is disabled.

Ref: <http://lwn.net/Articles/267427/>

OK for driver development. If you need access to physical memory you have to compile a kernel with unrestricted /dev/mem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For additional context: PEEK and POKE were commands used in the BASIC programming language for directly reading and writing to memory respectively.

<comment><USER6> There's even a Wikipedia article about them:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEEK_and_POKE>

<comment><USER7> And I even created a t-shirt from it!

<http://swain.webframe.org/tshirts/> (look at the 3rd from the bottom)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author doesn't say how upstart became deadlocked in the first place. Was this an upstart bug?

<comment><USER9> Still unknown. Could be a bug, could be a race condition in one of the pre/post/start/stop blocks. I haven't seen it since and couldn't get a reliable reproducer. I really didn't want to make this about upstart itself so that people don't get to wrong conclusions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Were there ever really common peek and pokes that would change programs?

Yes, "poke 53280,0" would directly write address 0xd020 to 0x00 which then e.g. would turn the border black on the C-64. But those were addresses in the mapped custom chips. More like setting a pixel on a modern GFX card by poke and less changing a program.

The later development of expansion cartridges to give you more lives in games or enable a cheat-mode there would a kind of peeking and poking, but hardware based etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's really cool. Another option with a stuck Upstart job is to rename the job file.

$ sudo mv /etc/init/myjob.conf /etc/init/myjob2.conf

$ sudo start myjob2</comment>


TechCrunch Now Has An Office - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/09/techcrunch-now-has-an-office-that-isnt-my-house/

<comment><USER2> There's a nice lesson in there - you don't need an office until not having an office is a problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congratulations for TechCrunch for their new office.

I am sad I won't be able to pass by and "simply break in", anyway. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> sure you can, I believe the whois info for techcrunch still has his house listed

<comment><USER3> I did not really mean the house, I meant the office. Sorry for making you confused.

Why do you assume that I can visit TechCrunch? I see no reason for your assumption?

And I can't, simply because I can't go to America.</comment></comment></comment>


Invest in wine - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/wine/8176451/Wine-outperforming-oil-and-gold.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not so certain.

A lot of the value in wine is tied up in branding/marketing, both of which seem rather ephemeral in comparison to other more historically stable measures of value.</comment>


Tell HN: AWS upload bandwidth free until the end of October - <AUTHOR>

Amazon announced back in December that they were going to provide free upload bandwidth until the end of June (i.e., today) -- looks like they've decided to extend this, because the pricing tables on the AWS website are showing upload bandwidth as being free until the end of October now. <comment><USER2> It wasn't announced on the blog, but the S3 pricing table says so: <http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#pricing>

<comment><AUTHOR> All the pricing tables say so -- this is what I meant by "the pricing tables on the AWS website are showing..." :-)

<comment><USER2> Yes, good catch :) I wanted to see if the official blog said anything (usually does) but it didn't, so I just linked to the pricing table as a reference to your post.</comment></comment></comment>


The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders - lil-scamp https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/upshot/mystery-of-missing-bus-riders.html <comment><AUTHOR> In New York, specifically, it's not much of a mystery - the incredibly close stop spacing and inefficient boarding procedures make it so the bus is barely faster than walking.

Most buses stop almost every block, they board through a single door, and they use the two slowest payment methods available in almost any system (cash and magnetic strip cards).

However, I don't expect this to change anytime soon, because many existing riders are very invested in keeping buses the way they are. To be clear, their concerns are valid - for a variety of reasons, it may be difficult for many people to walk an additional block to their local bus stop, vs. having a stop in front of their building. Many of the current riders are also long-time residents who are more likely to go to community board meetings, contact their city council members, and protest changes in other ways. If you're a policymaker, it's hard to weight the costs that would be imposed on this vocal set of people vs. the benefits that would accrue to a much less vocal group of people who would benefit from a faster and more consistent bus.

<comment><USER2> I vaguely remember reading about buses that board ~like subways, through multiple doors, from ~stations. Maybe in Brazil?

<comment><USER3> Toronto now has open boarding (i.e. you can enter at any door) through all its streetcar lines and many bus lines. The new streetcars have totally separated the drivers from the passengers, so payment is more of an honour system + fare cops* proposition, compared to the old "show the pass/pay the driver" paradigm. Boarding speed and fare evasion have both increased.

*: "Revenue Protection Officers", a totally non-Orwellian job title.

<comment><USER4> A little known fact: bus ticket systems are designed to keep the drivers, not the passengers, honest.

<comment><USER5> Can you explain?

<comment><USER2> Not op, but maybe drivers steal more than riders escape paying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fun fact for folks in Seattle, San Diego, Tampa, Washington, D.C., Spokane, etc: Professor Kari Watkins, mentioned in the article, is the co-creator of OneBusAway.

OneBusAway, or OBA, in case you aren't familiar with it, is an open source real time transit information system, and includes a full backend, plus iOS and Android client apps. OBA had belonged to the University of Washington until recently, when it was spun out into a new 501(c)(3) non-profit, called the Open Transit Software Foundation: [https://opentransitsoftwarefoundation.org](https://opentransitsoftwarefoundation.org)

(n.b. I'm the maintainer of OneBusAway for iOS, and a member of the OTSF board.)

<comment><USER7> I think transit apps is a really interesting problem. Transit App was a favorite until a redesign they did a few years ago. And they have never tackled the user interaction challenge of making transfers make any sense.

This space has very tangible information/ux problems.

<comment><USER6> There's a ton that could be done to improve this problem. If you ever want to pitch in, come join the mailing list or the Slack group.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/onebusaway- developer...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/onebusaway-developers)

[https://onebusaway.herokuapp.com](https://onebusaway.herokuapp.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just too inconvenient. I was tired of driving my teenager 15 minutes to her job, so I looked up the bus route. From our house it is basically straight down a single major road to her job. But to get there on the bus meant transferring two times and would take her an hour and a half. Insane.

<comment><USER9> I live in one of the cities in the article about a mile away from the city center and this is 100% the problem. It's 3-4 times as slow as driving and comparable to a brisk walk. And that's assuming that a bus isn't behind or I just miss one and the next one isn't for 30 minutes. For example, there's a popular restaurant/bar area 2.5 miles away from my house. Driving is 10 minutes, bus is 50 with a transfer, and walking is 50.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nearly every comment on the NYT site makes the same point: buses are unreliable, and filled with homeless, mentally unstable or drugged people who make them a terrifying experience. What is the response of cities? Kneecap the alternatives like Uber/Lyft, or spend taxpayers' money not on fixing those two problems but on ridiculous ideas like paying people to take the bus. Almost as if the people are here to serve the bus and not the other way around.

<comment><USER11> Are uber and lyft really bus alternatives?

<comment><USER12> For some people for some purposes at some times. A good transport infrastructure should be multimodal (i.e. lots of competing options). Thoughtful regulators can balance these interests to provide diverse options. However - as pointed out above - regulation can also be used to stifle competition to connected interests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In our area it has been a cycle for the last 10 years. Lower funding means route contraction. Route contraction means lower ridership leading to lower funding. Lower funding leads to route contraction. Wash. Rinse Repeat.

It is a metro area where most of the jobs are spread out among distinct suburb areas. The remaining routes do not travel among the suburbs with regularity; the focus is on suburbs to downtown and within the city proper.

<comment><USER14> We did the opposite in Seattle and have seen impressive results. In 2014, we voted--in the city, after a countywide measure failed--to tax ourselves to buy a whole lot more service hours from the county transit agency. Originally this was because slumping sales tax income was going to force the county to cut service but, instead, sales tax income came roaring back and the city was able to buy so much extra service from the county that we hit the limit for number of buses, places to put them, and drivers to drive them.

Routes that had been 15-minute some of the day and dropping to 30-minute or an hour on weekends (or did not run at all) were upgraded. Major trunk routes, not just ones to downtown but crosstown routes and routes through underserved areas, got upgraded to sub-10-minute frequency during peak commute and many now run all day at no less often than every 15 minutes. Add in two new light rail stations opening in the densest part of the city and ridership has been up.

But, of course, no good thing goes untouched. Last year, statewide voters approved an initiative that guts Seattle's ability to tax ourselves for transit ("$30" car tabs, which are nothing of the sort since even that initiative doesn't reduce vehicle registration costs to $30). If the initiative is upheld--still in doubt because the sponsor of the initiative is not known for writing initiatives that are legally sound, because if they stayed in effect he wouldn't get paid to keep running them--it's going to not only blow a hole in our light rail construction but also cut local bus service by 20-30%.

In any rate, we've proven that if you invest in good service that runs a lot of the time, people will use it.

<comment><USER15> > But, of course, no good thing goes untouched. Last year, statewide voters > approved an initiative that guts Seattle's ability to tax ourselves for > transit ("$30" car tabs, which are nothing of the sort since even that > initiative doesn't reduce vehicle registration costs to $30).

This was utterly maddening. A bunch of... Politically-opinionated persons in rural Washington voted for legislature that bans Seattle from taxing its residents.

<comment><USER16> According to 2018 population figures on Wikipedia, metro Seattle has just over half of the state's population. Sounds like it wasn't just rural people voting for that initiative.

<comment><USER15> Seattle voted against it, outside of Seattle voted for it by a larger margin.

Given that the measure does nothing absolutely nothing to the counties who voted for it, I think I'm pretty justified in believing that their opinion on Seattle's tax system shouldn't matter one whit. If they don't want to pay more than $30 for car tabs, they should vote for it in their county, not across the state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Busses are very very slow. Unless you're in a very dense urban area, the extra time to take the bus is unpalatable. The segment of the population that doesn't have a car but can afford Uber Pool will take it because it's about 3x faster and more reliable.

<comment><USER18> it's more nuanced than that. shared/pool rides being faster is a function of distance (which is correlated to delays).

from my experience (in LA), they're often no faster than buses for short trips (up to ~4 miles). between 4-6, it's typically breakeven. for trips over ~6 miles, shared/pool rides are usually faster (and gets more so with longer distances).

but note that the bulk of bus trips are under 10 miles, so it takes some thought to get the best bang for buck.

<comment><USER19> They're wildly faster than buses on routes where buses don't run or where a transfer is needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If they took the 2% least savory bus riders and kicked them off, even calling them an Uber Black, I think they'd triple their ridership.

<comment><USER21> I stopped riding the bus mainly due to social reasons: there was always somebody on every trip watching TV on their phone without headphones.

And people stopped waiting for others to disembark before boarding. That's the weirdest thing: the bus stops, the doors open, and the people waiting to board just start piling in before the people coming off have left. Maybe that's only in SF.

And then there's this:

> In Gavin Newsom's book Citizenville he talked about how, after becoming SF > mayor, he discovered that fare collection cost as much as the revenue > generated from fares. He started the process of making the bus free but was > told by so many advisors that the busses would become "dumpsters on wheels," > from a combination of homeless people using them for shelter and people not > respecting services that are free, that the plan was scrapped.

~ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21808851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21808851)

It blows my mind, and it makes me resent paying the fares at all.

<comment><USER22> It is the stacking social ills problem. If SF had an effective set of homeless policies/programs then they wouldn't misuse the bus.

While it is true that people respect "free" services less than paid ones, I have yet to read any reports from places that have implemented free bus service that suggested general damage/misuse due to a lack of respect. The bus service in Logan UT for example is pretty awesome.

<comment><USER23> Any effective homeless/mentally ill/drug addiction policy would have to come from the Feds.

<comment><USER24> What is ineffective about addressing the issue locally? Why "the feds"?

<comment><USER25> Unless the solution being proposed is to brutalise the homeless to make them move elsewhere, then it needs to be enacted at the level with control over freedom of movement of people. If SF creates policies to help the homeless, more will move there than already do so.

<comment><USER21> First, the feds should not limit the freedom of movement of a human person _even_ if said human person does not own or rent a house. One of the messed up things about being homeless (I was for several years) is people thinking of you and treating you like some other kind of creature, less than fully human. SF is doing it right now by making a special "homeless card" complete with computer-aided bureaucracy to manage the permanent underclass more efficiently. There's a tech company implementing it for them. <Snark omitted> To me it's so weird that a city that really is kind and caring will mess up on implementation.

Second, let's say that SF's $250B homeless policies _work_ , meaning people get their lives together, get off the drugs or into a place where they can cope w/ their mental|emotional|physical problems or whatever it is that messed them up in the first place (and a lot of people _just need a home_ , as they are perfectly normal and capable but e.g. some debt or a death in the family or something threw them for a loop and now they're stuck living in their car or the park or something and it's hard to get back on your feet w/o a support network, etc.)

Let's say it works, and more homeless people do move here to take advantage of it. _That is a good thing._ God forbid ol' San Francisco should become a continent-wide renovation center for human lives, eh?

<comment><USER25> Not interested in your moral prescriptivism.

Whether the US federal government enforces its borders or not is entirely separate from the question of of it does. It can and does. San Francisco can't and doesn't. If it does a lot to help the homeless nation wide then the levels get impacted nationwide. If SF does a lot to help the homeless in SF then rates start the same or rise as move homeless move there from elsewhere in the US.

That being a good thing in general is entirely out of the scope of getting the homeless off of public transport.

<comment><USER21> > moral prescriptivism.

What "moral prescriptivism"? What does that mean in plain English please?

I'm not sure what you're saying.

In any event, there's no legal way to stop homeless people from riding the bus. How would you even know? Brand each homeless person with a big "H" on their foreheads? Require proof-of-residence each time people board a bus?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I stopped taking the bus regularly, then permanently during this time period.

At first it was because my personal schedule, and my bus schedule changed just enough to make it annoying to make it to work on time, and almost impossible to avoid routes that spent most of their time in an extremely high crime area. So most of the time I drove to the train.

Then I got a new job working from home, and I stopped taking the bus and the train. I must say that I miss the bus quite a bit. It was the most books I've ever read recreationally. I even taught myself python on the bus, which lead to the new job.

I also used to take the bus when I thought I would be drinking, and uber/lyft have completely replaced that.

</comment><comment><USER27> Can't we just "check in" to a bus stop on an app, then have the bus create a route based on that?

How about a button at each stop, with a live estimate when the bus will arrive?

Currently, the bus system is like a newspaper. Inconvenient, messy and smells bad.

<comment><USER28> Chicago buses have an estimated arrival at most stops along the major routes. Every single but stop also has a unique number on the sign that you can text to a service and get estimates back by text. It makes using buses so much easier and less of a hassle because there's less guessing involved. I had my usual stop numbers memorized so I could text ahead of time and see when to leave, or maybe decide to just walk the route instead of waiting if it was going to be a while. They have that info on a website but texting was faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The bus system in Taiwan is amazing. You see all ages represented from school kids to the elderly. They don't smell and have dedicated lanes in places. There are so many of them that you rarely have to wait more than 10 minutes at any stop. It's a great alternative to the subway for shorter rides.

It seems like cities like NY and San Francisco have the density to support similar systems.

</comment><comment><USER30> Busses are great in NYC. I take them regularly. They are nice and clean and fairly quick. They're not always as fast as Uber but they're much cheaper, so you have a tradeoff. And, sometimes they are faster than Uber, since they have their own lane in some places!

</comment><comment><USER31> Interesting - I thought that mapping apps on smartphones would change the trend of decline at least a little. One of the challenges of buses is knowing which routes are which, which is often far more difficult to figure out than subway if you are not a regular user. But mapping apps say, "catch the XYZ bus at this stop and get off here" and real-time bus prediction apps that tell you when the bus coming solve those problems. I guess that hypothesis was wrong (though it has been true for me personally that I take the bus a lot more often).

</comment><comment><USER32> As a bus rider in San Francisco for the last 30 years, there a a few things that made the experience way worse.

The design of munis modern fleet has reduced the seat and isle space. Standing is hard because your always in the way, and the redesign to accommodate more handicap seating has really reduced regular seating that could be perpendicular to the length of the bus.

Reliability is the other issue. Main lines are very reliable, but meandering cross town routes make a two bus commute undesirable.

</comment><comment><USER33> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moebius_(1996_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moebius_\(1996_film\))

</comment><comment><USER34> A very thorough analysis. I'd assume that the newer generation, the ecologically-conscious one, will be taking public transportation more, for sure. And even though many of these people also fall into the category of those 'working from home', they're also the more outgoing ones. So there's not really a reason to say buses will keep suffering, it's likely to be a cyclical thing.

</comment><comment><USER35> The bus is pretty usable in LA. Most major roads have a bus line going up and down them every 10 minutes. High capacity routes are given articulating busses.

Despite the proportions of ridership being low, functionally it is pretty high, and the entire transit network does hit capacity during rush hours.

</comment><comment><USER36> Maybe because the serfs realized Nytimes writers take Uber and Gov officials ride around in GMC Suburbans

</comment><comment><USER37> It's kind of incredible the article doesn't mention it, but the typical city bus makes sounds at a decibel level that is harmful to the human body (anything above 85 dB is harmful).

There's a scene in Mad Men that I always like to bring up when it comes to things like this, where the Drapers are having a picnic in a bucolic park, and then they just get up and walk away, leaving their trash behind. It looks crazy and stupid to us now, because we all collectively woke up and realized that damaging the world around us makes life worse.

People are using buses less partly for the same reason that they stopped littering, and normal cars have gotten steadily quieter over the years: they're waking up to how painfully awful city buses are.

The day will come when someone will make a show about our times, and it will feature a city bus pulling up and drowning out a conversation, and all the characters in the scene, who ignore it or just start shouting over it without thinking, will look as ridiculous to future viewers, as the Drapers did to us in that scene.

<comment><USER38> You think people don't ride buses because they are loud to the people around them? A bus is still going to be there if they ride it or not.

<comment><USER39> Most of the loudness discomfort I've experienced while riding the bus comes from waiting the bus on the roadside. Traffic in general is ridiculously noisy for pedestrians. Especially at ~50mph the road noise starts to be unbearable. Inside a car it's all so quiet. Reducing traffic speeds would help with this a lot.</comment></comment></comment>


Web App Ideas You'll Want to Steal (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.budibase.com/blog/web-app-ideas/ <comment><USER2> Some cool ideas. I'm intrigued to find out more about Budibase. Is it released yet? What is it written in? Can I host my own apps</comment>


Is Everything Wrestling? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/magazine/is-everything-wrestling.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news <comment><USER2> Obligatory "Wrestling Isn't Wrestling" plug - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYvMOf3hsGA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYvMOf3hsGA)

You should really watch the video because it's amazing, but the tl;dw is that WWE is a live-filmed TV show with stunts about an over-the-top wrestling league. The world in the league has magic and wizards and all sorts of outlandish fictional elements, but the show we're watching is a sort of meta- show about that world.

With that in mind, politics is taking on a lot of the characteristics of wrestling in that it's this meta show about itself that doesn't really resemble the underlying truth. The big difference though is that the underlying truth in politics is the real-life workings of government, not a magical world of wizards, undead, and feats of strength.

With regards to papering over reality in favor of a preferable narrative–an activity as old as recorded history–I think wrestling actually has a much more honest relationship with fiction and truth than most things.

<comment><USER3> So... everything is Wrestling. Except for Wrestling.

"Everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Parsing both those layers — the behavior and the meta-behavior, the story told and the story of why it's being told that way

This is a fairly major way of partitioning literary analysis. I've seen it called "Watsonian" vs "Doyleist" \- you can either take a look at the narrative elements in the story, or at the circumstances facing the author.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone else yearn for life with what man has long called "wrestling"?

Our ancestors used to cultivate their might, overcome deep physical challenge, and express useful skills in sanctified circles.

Wrestling used to mean something profoundly real to human-kind, as it still does for many cultures who haven't taken a plunge into a commercial modernity.

I remember when I was young reading of loud gasps when `Okonkwo threw the Cat` in _Things Fall Apart_ [0], one story's scene that resonates across distant lands, around familiar campfires, and within men's bones.

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

<comment><USER6> Not wrestling specifically, but you certainly wouldn't be the first to feel a sort of alienation from... I don't know: call it physicality. There's a general sort of malaise you can see present in the US at least, it's why (or possibly because of) we see so much shit marketed to us via faux authenticity. Maybe it's just a perspective thing but I really think theirs a growing number of people developing a kind of knee jerk agrarian-utiopianist streak. I don't know what to recommend as far as further reading but it's certainly a concept that has been explored.

<comment><USER7> "Not wrestling specifically"

Why not ? It's arguably the most basic of human athletic endeavors (besides walking and running), it's extremely beneficial to your health (nothing exercises every single little muscle in your body - but wrestling does) and depending on where you set your output dial, it's as high output of a sport as is possible.

Further, the popularity of BJJ opens up a lot of venues and increased interest - male and female - all over the country.

Recommended.

<comment><USER8> > nothing exercises every single little muscle in your body - but wrestling > does

Citation needed.

<comment><USER9> ...or you could just, like, engage in some physical activity. Wrestling is fun, but if you're not still in school and your group of friends doesn't include some adventurous people roughly your size it might be hard to get started. Alternatively, you could just go to a party at which everybody gets really hammered, and suggest wrestling at the right time. Don't be a dick and get pissed off, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At the very least, we can expect every future presidential candidate to have appeared on a reality show at some point. "News" organizations seek ratings. Nothing delivers ratings like the _frisson_ of seeing that same person who did that silly thing on that show, now doing some other silly thing to piss off the nerds on CNN!

<comment><USER10> Waaaay back in 1992, when Jay Leno was taking over for Johnny Carson, I saw an interview with him in which they asked him about having politicians on the Tonight Show. He said he didn't want to have them on unless they did something unusual "like play a saxophone or something silly like that."

Literally just a few months later then-candidate Bill Clinton appeared on Arsenio Hall and played the saxophone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> With recent events indicate strong links between the lords of professional wrestling and those of Silicon Valley, I have to give more credence to the idea than I would like.

</comment><comment><USER12> No mention of Idiocracy _?!_ This movie predicted our fate: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/)

Edit: I read the IMDb blurb – "… five centuries in the future …". I guess we're 500 years ahead of schedule.

<comment><USER13> The movie used the projections from the 1951 "The Marching Morons" story: [http://tonova.typepad.com/thesuddencurve/2007/07/the- marchin...](http://tonova.typepad.com/thesuddencurve/2007/07/the-marching- mo.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Next thing you know, the NYT will be reprinting the late Gore Vidal essays where he talks about the "two wings of the owners' party".

Whew, real nutcase there. Ah ah. Ahem.</comment>


Blame Fox News for Fake News, Not Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://kottke.org/18/11/blame-fox-news-for-fake-news-not-facebook <comment><USER2> If you think Fox News spews nonsense in exchange for profits now just wait and see what happens if Comcast manages to acquire them. Democracy depends on Disney here. No pressure, Mr. Iger.</comment>


A call to boycott U.S. tech platforms over the NSA's PRISM surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/07/a_call_to_boycott_us_tech_plat.html

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't call this a call to boycott. On my part, I have quit dropbox for Norwegian company Jottacloud, Google Search for DuckDuckGo and I will pretty soon quit Chrome (for Opera, I think) and Android (for Firefox OS or Ubuntu Mobile)...

<comment><USER3> Opera is now based on Chromium. I know it's open source, but to be on the safe side, I would avoid opera too.

<comment><USER2> You really think Opera could be risky, too? So... only Firefox?

<comment><USER4> Eh, any non-FOSS is risky by default.

www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What is the Non-U.S. alternative to Rackspace?

</comment><comment><USER5> > The latest developments around PRISM and the NSA dragnet operations > uncovered by Edward Snowden, in my view, severely damage the fragile fabric > of the new global ecosystem, which we so sorely rely on in order to > collectively tackle truly urgent global issues such as energy, pollution, > food, climate change, (cyber-)terrorism and inequality.

This seems really central to me.

A system that's corrupted by the use of mass surveillance will ultimately lead to bad/wrong policy decisions (decisions which favor a few ultra-rich people). And everybody knows the weight of the impact of US policy decisions on the rest of the world (= humanity).

</comment><comment><USER5> There is a conflict of interest between this post and HN:

HN's goal is also to promote YC start-ups (directly and indirectly), and they happen to be US-based.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it seems this post was de-listed?

<comment><USER6> The post was flagged by a lot of users.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is interesting and singular because it came from Harvard and the title was not edited by me. Also the post was flagged but upvoted at the same time. I don't know many articles that fit in this pattern.

Probably people thought it came from a radical author since similar articles attract discussions instead of flagging.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Electricity collected from the air could become alternative energy source (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100825185121.htm <comment><USER2> quote: "We are calling this 'hygroelectricity,' meaning 'humidity electricity'." ... "Galembeck said that a similar approach might help prevent lightning from forming and striking. He envisioned placing hygroelectrical panels on top of buildings in regions that experience frequent thunderstorms. The panels would drain electricity out of the air, and prevent the building of electrical charge that is released in lightning."

Harvesting lightning. This sounds like a pretty cool idea if it can be done. I'm not a meteorologist but I wonder what role the electric buildup in a storm plays in the process of normal precipitation? Would draining the charge from a storm have unintended environmental effects?</comment>