Kindness is Underrated - <AUTHOR> http://blog.circleci.com/kindness-is-underrated/

<comment><USER2> People always paint this on a "deceptive & kind" vs "honest & mean" axis, but I don't think those attributes have to be tied together. You can be direct without losing kindness. Saying "I don't think this is the right approach, don't go down this path anymore" is direct, but it's not mean. Not to sound like a fanboy, but since most people here are familiar with his writings, I think PG's essays are a good example of this. He'll say direct things that probably piss some people off, but it doesn't ever seem to come from anger.

Saying "are you fucking insane? Only an idiot would come up with this", like Linus would, is also direct.. but, not particularly necessary in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER3> A separate but related issue I've sometimes run into in team interactions like those described (particularly in github issue discussions and other asynchronous text communications) is people mistaking kindness or inquiry for passive aggressive demands or mandate.

Something like "is there a reason you chose to do it that way instead of this other way that we have done things in the past?" might be interpreted as "This is wrong. Why didn't you do it the way I did it the last time I did something similar to this!? Please throw out what you've done and re-implement it my way."

This might have something to do with the assumption that the OP mentions: that everyone is aggressive and blunt by default, and this is just a passive aggressive form of the same. If this wasn't the norm, perhaps this subtlety wouldn't go unnoticed.

</comment><comment><USER4> All I can think about while reading this is that it's so ironic that Bezos was making this speech, given the press on some of its abhorrent working conditions. [1][2]

[1] About working in warehouses. Stories persist from 2012 to just last year and Bezos was always around. Paints a picture of draconian working environments meant to save every last penny for the end customer.

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac- mcclelland-f...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland- free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor?page=1)

[http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/jean-baptiste-malet-amazon- wa...](http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/jean-baptiste-malet-amazon-warehouse)

[http://gizmodo.com/5982811/life-in-an-amazon-warehouse- fear-...](http://gizmodo.com/5982811/life-in-an-amazon-warehouse-fear-and- efficiency-at-35-orders-per-second)

[2] Can't find link, but just last week on HN there was something about working at Amazon corporate. Here is another link. Same sense of austereness and frugality (albeit of course perks shouldn't be expected), but there are also fundamental aspects of employees just not having a voice that really goes against choosing kindness in my mind.

[http://www.minyanville.com/sectors/technology/articles/AMZN-...](http://www.minyanville.com/sectors/technology/articles/AMZN- AAPL-WMT-GOOG-MSFT-Amazon/10/10/2013/id/52177)

<comment><USER5> It's difficult to give any credence to those obvious agenda bent articles rife with unsubstantiated claims.

The first author makes a stink of the fact (and mentions no less than three times) that one is fired if they are late the first week no matter the circumstance. Oh, the travesty. But then she even details the performance point system they use in which one is marked down 1.5 points for not SHOWING UP to work. And it requires 6 to fire you. You can actually just not show up 3 days to work and not get fired. Incredible. I mean really, she paraphrases a conversation she just happen to have with a woman in her late 50s about the tragedy of having to be at work at 5am the first day.

The second author's statements are full of innuendos such as "if someone talks during work hours, the rest are expected to shun them." No claim that this is written policy of course of which he could not back up. No, the only explanation being, "it's a subtle thing because they ask you to "report possible anomalies to your superiors."

The horrors of capitalism. Guess what? Working at a warehouse sucks, but after fully reading both the above articles it actually doesn't seem as bad as I thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the core problems I struggle with in human relations is, effectively, the prisoners dilemma of kindness: we are all better off if we are kind to one another. However, a "better" (and I recognize that is a fraught word) state, for me, would be you being kind to me, but me not being kind to you, especially when the stakes are high.

This leads to a situation where the sociopaths thrive by convincing the clueless that "we all must be kind" while, themselves, adopting Machiavellian ruthlessness, including publicly shaming the people who point out their hypocrisy: "How can you be against kindness! Shun the outsider!"

My working theory is that in small enough groups where, and this is key, the groups are largely self-autonomous/autarchic, the game can remain stable in the "all kind" state. From personal experience, I have seen that simply having small groups, but arranged in a power hierarchy, allows the sociopathic element to win the game by appeals to the remote, functionally indifferent master.

Can a company (or, indeed, a country) be organized this way? Can it prevent the Gervais Principle ([http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- principle-o...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or- the-office-according-to-the-office/)) from winning out?

Dunno. Gonna try to find out.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great company culture post. This is very much something I have long struggled with. I find the challenges of the fast growing company environment analogous to the communication struggles people experience online. People just don't have time to build relationships with everyone and form that trust.

I had a recent situation in which we were in a focus group and I followed the CEOs explanation of our plans for a particular feature with, "To clarify, we are going to be..." Little did I know the words "to clarify" irked and upset him as he felt undermined. I should have used the words, "To build on Jerry's point..." Needless to say, in several meetings after that he displayed aggression toward me, which then upset me and it was weeks before we sat down and cleared the air.

There is much subtlety in communication and interpretation that it can be maddening. One simple word or phrase can trigger extended bouts of unpleasantness and inefficiency. I do believe there is responsibility on both sides: In this world of ever quickening communication, one should choose their words carefully and one should not be so sensitive and take things too personally. It's my personal opinion that we have too much of a problem with the latter than the former, but then again, I'm usually the one on the other side of that situation.

</comment><comment><USER7> You can attack an idea without attacking a person. As long as people realize they are distinct from the code they write, you can be direct and brutal about code, without devolving into ad hominem. The problem is fostering a culture where people don't feel as if they are socially defined solely by the code they write.

</comment><comment><USER8> Humility is often quite difficult to maintain when you're working with something as esoteric as code. It just feels _good_ to know that you understand something complex. And, often with negative results, it's easy to get a rich warm feeling of pride when you see someone else make a mistake that you'd have avoided because of your deeper understanding of a system or language.

And let's face it, we all like to get together and laugh heartily at bad code. It can be pretty fun.

That's why I'm consistently impressed by engineers who provide feedback free of pride. I've been lucky enough to learn from people like this and even luckier to work for them.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tl;dr: On the Internet, if you are subtle (and kind) with your criticism, people don't listen. The dominant style is then to be harsh and aggressive. At Circle CI we hear subtlety, so there's no need to be rude. Being nice is better than rude.

OK. To each his own. Use the style of the community you're in. The fact is that I don't take technical criticism as personal, so I really don't mind getting called out on my faults directly. It's like peeling off a band aid. Better do it fast and painfully than slow and painfully.

<comment><USER10> The problem is when one applies that to other people, it doesn't work. They don't enjoy getting treated like that, get chased off and don't come back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not for nothing but it's easier to be kind to your coworkers when they're not fucking up their work. Or even worse, yours. Of course in those times you have bigger problems than kindness. Or perhaps better put, empathy and kindness have many dimensions. Having a smile on your face while you make a mess for your coworker isn't actually kind.

<comment><USER10> Another thing to consider is the best way to help your coworkers not fuck up. Is being a dick and calling them an idiot going to help more than empathically working with them to fix the problems? If it were me, I'd be looking for the door rather than working with someone who yells at me.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did Elizabeth Holmes hurt peoples view of the startup world? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> As understood it they didn't get any traditional VC money.

And honestly I don't think that many people really know about / care about that story as far as generally impacting "start up world".

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of people know she didn't raise traditional money. I hear a lot of people, who are dishonest, speaking about how they should be able to raise money because "it's so easy look at Holmes?" I hear this at a local coffee shop and it makes me cringe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> She is facing legal issues: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-24/elizabeth...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-24/elizabeth- holmes-phones-in-her-defense-after-civil-lawyers-quit)

I don't know why her company failed or how she raised her money.</comment>


No Housing Bubble Trouble (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-housing-bubble-trouble <comment><USER2> This reminds me of this you tube video, called "Peter Schiff Was Right": <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw>

It's basically a bunch of people screaming at Peter Schiff that he has no idea what he is talking about, when he was basically predicting everything that happened. Apparently Peter Schiff is pretty smart, I watched a bunch of these videos and listened to his radio show. He is now predicting a massive drop in the dollar due to inflation.

<comment><USER3> Is there any way to profit or take advantage of a drop in the dollar besides forex trading?

<comment><USER4> buy a bunch of stuff (eg: gold oil, water, food, cars) now on credit and sell it for more than you borrowed after the dollar's value tanks?

<comment><USER5> A house, perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Compare to The Economist's take, at roughly the same time:

"The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history. Prepare for the economic pain when it pops"

<http://www.economist.com/node/4079027?story_id=4079027>

That article was instrumental in convincing me to quit being an architect in 2007, since it was obvious that a real estate crash would bode ill for that profession.

When it comes to economic advice, I won't be taking any from the Cato Institute.

</comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps the money shot for the article:

      In short, we are asked to worry about something that has
      never happened for reasons still to be coherently
      explained. "Housing bubble" worrywarts have long been
      hopelessly confused. It would have been financially
      foolhardy to listen to them in 2002. It still is.

:D

<comment><USER8> I found that especially hilarious having been through a painful housing bubble-pop in the UK in the early 90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am curious how an advocate of Keysian economics is a fellow at an institution that heralds itself as being "...dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace."

<comment><USER10> Keynesian economics is mostly just based on the idea that consumer demand drives the economy ("aggregate demand"). This demand usually is discussed in terms of consumer spending, but this is frequently misrepresented by strawmen such as "Keynesians just thinks reckless spending is the solution to everything" or "Keynesians think the way to get out of debt is more debt."

This is false. For example, it's not contradictory to believe in Keynesian fundamentals and supply-side economics, if you think tax cuts would indeed stimulate private spending to the point of increased tax revenue (which actually did happen when marginal tax rates were cut from 91% to 70% as was done in 1964[0]). You can also be a Keynesian and believe in a balanced budget, if you think deficits are causing inflation that the Fed needs to keep interest rates high to fight, and thus those high interest rates are suppressing private sector economic activity (as was true in the 1990s[1]).

The Great Recession has caused the bizarre circumstance of a liquidity trap[2] -- simply lowering interest rates isn't stimulating economic activity, and inflation is low. The Keynesian prescriptions for this are unconventional monetary policy (the Fed's "quantitative easing," which can be done because there's little risk of inflation) and government fiscal deficits (to make up for the lack of consumer demand). Somehow this gets warped into thinking that people like Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman think you can solve any economic problem by printing dollars and/or getting into more debt.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1964>

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/06/w...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/06/what- we-can-learn-from-clintons-1993-tax-hike/)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap>

<comment><USER11> The notion that inflation is low is a lie. The CPI was substantially altered in the early 1990s to mask the huge increases in prices that have gone on.

Housing is skyrocketing again right now, fueled by a massive inflation binge the likes of which the planet has never seen before. The cheap money is flowing into assets (stocks, real estate), as the Fed said it intentionally wanted to have happen.

Nationally housing values are now climbing at a 10%+ annual clip again (20% in Phoenix, with markets like DC at all time highs), driven by the Fed's inflationary posture of QE + hyper low interest rates. That equates to trillions of dollars worth of asset inflation annually. Housing is one of the most important inflation metrics, and it's going up massively right now.

It's not the economy rebounding causing it. How do I know? Well beyond the obvious QE + low mortgage rates + lack of job creation, we're creating almost zero construction jobs right now (compare that to the last two times housing prices soared).

Stocks have been juiced (inflated) by the easy money policies, leading to an S&P that now has a higher PE ratio than the last bubble. And given that S&P earnings are now eroding backwards, said PE ratio will probably continue to expand beyond that.

College costs? Massive inflation. College costs doubled in ten years against the backdrop of the great recession. Welcome to government inflation.

Healthcare costs? Massive inflation.

Food prices? Near all time highs.

Energy costs? $90 oil, $3.60 gasoline. Both are prices that would have been considered beyond outrageous just 10 or 12 years ago. Now that's the new normal. Meanwhile the US is producing more oil than at any time in the last 30 years, so it's not a supply problem (it's easy to see that by comparing the available supply of oil and gasoline against 2003 numbers). Our gasoline usage is back to 2002x levels, but prices are up 175% or so.

Home prices are up 75% to 150% in most major markets over 15 years. Given incomes aren't soaring, and we have 14.x% real unemployment, that's a dramatic increase.

Even with gold's sizable pullback with the climb of the dollar in the last few months, at $1400+, it's also a price that would have been considered impossible just ten years ago. Ditto silver (up 500% in 10 years) or platinum.

Everything screams: inflation wave.

<comment><USER12> > Nationally housing values are now climbing at a 10%+ annual clip again (20% > in Phoenix, with markets like DC at all time highs), driven by the Fed's > inflationary posture of QE + hyper low interest rates....It's not the > economy rebounding causing it. How do I know? Well beyond the obvious QE + > low mortgage rates + lack of job creation, we're creating almost zero > construction jobs right now (compare that to the last two times housing > prices soared).

Or it's a combination of the following:

* We just had a housing bubble in the mid-2000's that entailed building lots and lots of houses. Since the population hasn't appreciably increased since then, there are actually enough houses to go around.

* The foreclosures and short-sales caused by the housing bubble popping have shook out, and this is just a reversion to the mean.

> College costs? Massive inflation.

Yeah, who guessed that federally incentivized lending would make the cost of something go up?

> Healthcare costs? Massive inflation.

Mostly trackable to US health care policy.

> Food prices? Near all time highs.

> Energy costs? $90 oil, $3.60 gasoline.

Well yeah, that's what's making the food costs go up.

> Meanwhile the US is producing more oil than at any time in the last 30 > years, so it's not a supply problem

The US might be, but oil is a global market. Plus, the world is increasingly forced to use more and more expensive sources of petroleum, like oil sands and shale, which were not cost-effective just 10 or 12 years ago.

Nonetheless, it's not (purely) a supply problem. You _really_ think that _quantitative easing_ has a higher impact on energy prices than literally millions of people in China and India buying petroleum-fueled vehicles and driving them around? If rising oil prices are an inflationary USD phenomenon, why do we see the same pattern for Swiss Francs, Emirati Dirhams, Mexican Pesos, Euros, Iceland Kronas, or Pounds Sterling? [http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=crude-oil&#...
As for precious metals, the simple fact is that the world's mineral resources are harder and harder to get at over the years, and with the rest of the world rapidly developing, demand for natural resources is going to increase. But yes, if you cherry pick parts of the economy where prices are going up and ignore parts where they aren't, you're going to see an inflation wave.

<comment><USER13> >You really think that quantitative easing has a higher impact on energy prices than literally millions of people in China and India buying petroleum- fueled vehicles and driving them around?

Yes. Again, supply of oil has increased, and oil/gold ratios are pretty static. The big leg of the movement is in the USD.

>If rising oil prices are an inflationary USD phenomenon, why do we see the same pattern for Swiss Francs, Emirati Dirhams, Mexican Pesos, Euros, Iceland Kronas, or Pounds Sterling?

Most of those currencies have engaged in competitive devaluation against the USD to prevent exports becoming uncompetitive.

In countries where the currencies have not matched the USD depreciation, energy prices aren't anywhere near as high.

>As for precious metals, the simple fact is that the world's mineral resources are harder and harder to get at over the years, and with the rest of the world rapidly developing, demand for natural resources is going to increase.

Population growth isn't that fast as to force a doubling of commodities in the short timeframe that has happening. What is required is a flooding of the denominator - USD.

Printing _any_ currency leads to inflation across the board. When it is the 'reserve' currency of the world, you get global inflation. There is nothing to argue in this; it is the stated aim of the QE policies.

<comment><USER12> > In countries where the currencies have not matched the USD depreciation, > energy prices aren't anywhere near as high.

Name a currency where oil prices have remained stable over the past ten years. I can't find one. Even oil-rich countries have seen their oil prices skyrocket.

> Population growth

It's not about population growth. It's about economic development. 2 billion Chinese and Indians doing subsistence farming or riding bicycles don't raise the price of oil. 2 billion Chinese and Indians buying cars for the first time does. You honestly think there's no relationship between the rising cost of oil and the smog blanketing Chinese cities in recent years?

You want to talk precious metals? Half of platinum is used for automobiles, and another 30% is used for jewelry. Two sectors where demand goes up when previously poor countries suddenly get richer. Half of gold is jewelry as well. About 40% of gold is bought for investment, which if anything indicates a speculative bubble.

> What is required is a flooding of the denominator - USD.

So name another currency that doesn't show this. I picked Icelandic krona specifically because most critics of how the US responded to the global economic crisis hail Iceland as an example of doing it right. But their petroleum costs have risen as much as ours.

> Printing any currency leads to inflation across the board.

False. Expanding the monetary base _in excess of economic growth_ leads to inflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Would have been more prescient/anti-prescient if it discussed CDCs and the Rating Agencies in some way. At any point in time there are people shouting "bubble" and "no bubble" about anything. How close people got to figuring out the underlying mechanisms of the 2008 economy-blue-screen-of-death is more interesting.

(Yes, the economy blue-screened, we re-booted in safe mode but we're still not sure if we've fixed the drivers yet)

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think the author was wrong (which seems to be the underlying implication of this article popping up seven years later). Sure, the housing bubble burst, but that was over a year after he wrote this article. A lot can change with the economy in a year, and obviously not everyone in 2005 thought that housing prices would fall. Indeed, if the majority of people in 2005 had thought that prices were going to fall then prices would have peaked in 2005 instead of 2006. If you look back after every downturn you will always find people who were bearish and you'll call them smart. You'll also find bulls like this guy and you'll call them dumb. But maybe it's more about being lucky or unlucky.

<comment><USER16> I remember writing about the bubble in my blog back in 2005 ( <http://chir.ag/200510301225> ). Though I wrote that 9 months after this article was published, nothing really had changed - prices were still rising, home sales were strong, everyone had equity. I had been monitoring the housing market since early 2004 and saw tons of articles on both sides of the argument.

I bought a house in June 2005, being fully aware that there is a big chance the bubble could pop. As a result, even though I could've gotten a bigger house or taken out a home equity loan, I bought the smallest house I could be comfortable in for 5+ years and did not take out any loans. Meanwhile my coworkers who were also in my salary range bought houses 25-50% more expensive.

From the article:

> That would be unpleasant news for home sellers, but good news for buyers. > And what sellers lose when selling one house they often save when buying > another. Any risk of loan defaults would be negligible.

When a lot of sellers lose, it brings down the market.

> At the national level, what could possibly kick national home prices > downstairs? There is nothing to suggest massive job loss ahead or a huge > oversupply of new homes.

When there are a lot of sellers and too few buyers, there is a huge oversupply of homes (new and old).

You're right that nobody can tell the truth about future. E.g. who knows if 1 bitcoin is going to be worth $100, $1, or $1,000,000 some day. However, the author was clearly ignoring the signs that worried a lot of people, including myself.

<comment><USER17> Good on you! Your first house is a only a hedge, no point paying more insurance than you need to. There is no advantage to property price rises if you only own one house, therefore, there is no point buying a house bigger than you need, if you plan to live in it for the long term.

<comment><USER18> Two of our friends just bought starter homes in Westchester NY (for around 400k). If I were to buy a house like that for cash, it would take me quite a while to save up that much lucre. That said, I think low interest rates were a big motivator to my friends. When interest rates are so low, keeping liquid savings doesn't seem to make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love these time-capsule style re-posts.

<comment><USER20> Me too. It's one of the only ways of keeping people that make long-term predictions accountable. Usually, no one calls them out if they were wrong, they only get the attention and praise if they were right.

<comment><USER19> True. I think if we analyzed the predictions of so called 'experts' before and after the fact of any event, the result would be extremely embarrassing.

But then, we should already know that.

<comment><USER21> I seem to recall that something along these lines for political punditry was discussed in "The Signal and the Noise" by that chap Nate Silver.

I think (but could well be mis-remembering) one of his conclusions was that since these pundits are for entertainment value rather than serious prediction, nobody in charge of putting them in front of the camera cares much.

<comment><USER19> It's also about half of Nasim Taleb's content. He repeatedly asserts that outside of the hard sciences like physics, there are no experts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well that is embarrassing.</comment>


Show HN: Create Job Postings for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://jobeautifier.com <comment><USER2> I've seen this posted under different titles for Show HN for the past 3 days. Mind not spamming?

<comment><USER3> I don't see other submits for this site or for similar sites by this submitter.</comment></comment>


Ask: Is WordPress really as slow as simple benchmarking suggests? - <AUTHOR>

I've never run my own copy of WordPress. To experiment with it, I installed a simple LAMP bundle (XAMPP) with the default settings and then installed Wordpress (which is very easy if you've ever used databases).
Then I benchmarked it a little with the Apache benchmarking program ab.
I made a test post and then called ab on the page - the URL was http://localhost/wordpress/?p=3, i.e. I was running this locally on my machine. I called ab with various numbers of clients from 5 to 40 and basically WordPress topped out at 27 requests a second.
Retrieving a small static file, on the other hand, ran at about 3000 requests a second.
Now, the way to make WordPress, or just about any web application faster, is to use caching. In the case of Wordpress, there are app-specific caching plugins and you can also use bytecode caches like APC. These greatly increase the speed of WordPress, but probably 99% of all WordPress installations never use them.
I think, out of the box, WordPress should be able to produce many more requests than it does. I'm very much a fan of the "batteries included" philosophy, and I think you shouldn't need to install any plugins to get good performance.
The hardware I'm on is: Core 2 Quad, 2 GB RAM, Windows XP, 300 GB SATA2 hard drive. <comment><USER2> You can't compare a web server serving static content to a serving dynamically generated content that comes from a database this way. All dynamically generated database bound content no matter what language or framework you use will be orders of magnitude slower than static content.

27 requests a second is just fine and _vastly_ more than 99% of blogs will ever need. For those very few than need more, as you say, it only takes a few plugins to install caching to get speeds that match static content serving.

27 requests a second for 24 hours is 2.3 million hits a day, very very few websites out of the millions and millions in existence, get that much traffic. Why exactly are you even worried about this? 27 requests a second is not bad performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> It will indeed work fine for most blogs. It's just that if anything any of your users ever creates is submitted to a popular site like Digg, it won't suffice.

The job of the developer is to solve problems for the user. I think not having adequate scalability built in is slacking off on the job.

<comment><USER2> Not true at all, fact is most submissions to Digg still don't generate enough traffic to matter at all. Only if your post becomes popular will it get enough traffic to matter and that is also pretty rare overall, and again easily solved by the standard caching plugin.</comment></comment></comment>


Paris Review has put all their author interviews online - <AUTHOR> http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews

<comment><USER2> Thank you jamesbritt for finding this link. This has to be one of the greatest things I have ever seen on the internet. Seriously. The sheer amount of information I can gleen from these interviews is worth so much more than almost anything I can think of. I'm busily copying many interviews and pasting them in plain-text format in order to read something when I have no internet or for when the end of the world arrives, whichever comes first. I'm resisting reading them online, though I have succumbed a few times. Congratulations to the Paris Review for making these available and again to jamesbritt for thinking of posting this link on Hacker News.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had read various interviews over the years, and was stuck by how thoughtful they tended to be, on matters of writing and craft in general. Having them now online is real treasure, and just struck me as the sort of thing HN'ers would appreciate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is wonderful. They've been tweeting these interviews for a while now, and I have found them uniformly excellent. If you are a writer you do yourself a terrible disservice if you miss a single one.

</comment><comment><USER4> and it was all done in PHP.

<comment><USER4> Not sure why this was down voted - maybe it sounded snarky? That's not what I meant - my company built the site on a PHP framework and templating system I wrote. I guess I should learn not to comment at night when I'm tired.

<comment><USER3> Congratulations and thank you for building the site. It is beautiful and works well. You probably should have posted this instead of your first comment (that first comment is of a type that tends to get down-voted very quickly around here).

ps. That said, there is a HN rule that states, roughly, "thou shalt not ask why you were down-voted."

<comment><USER4> I did write a different first post but then deleted it because I couldn't get the voice of the post right. I replaced it with an intentionally vague post thinking someone would says "how do you know that?" Now that I write that it sounds infantile. Like I said, I'm finally learning not to post when tired :)

btw, I can't take any credit for the actual site - I just built the framework its built on. It was designed by our amazing designer, Jennifer Over, interviewed here:

[http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2010/09/22/jennifer- over-...](http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2010/09/22/jennifer-over-and-our- new-web-site/)

and it was developed by Gerard Gualberto (gerardg here on HN).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Darpa reveals Avatar program, robot soldiers incoming - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/118773-darpa-reveals-avatar-program-robot-soldiers-incoming <comment><USER2> This is a poorly done link bait article along the lines of the earlier coverage on the Google self driving car legislation. It implies that DARPA is funding an end stage program to develop Avatar like robots. Instead what they are doing is creating program to develop the basic algorithms that would allow a person to remote control a humanoid robot. All the hardware, power systems, control technologies, will take at least decade of advancement before this becomes practical.

This is to be expected, it's how DARPA works. They provide the money to go from a few ideas floating around to solid research and technologies that can be used to create functioning systems. This is what they did with the self driving cars, 7 years ago they sponsored the first competitions, (in addition to other projects they were funding) and just now are we starting to see the first system that could truly be considered self driving cars. Even those system have numerous draw backs that will take lots of engineering and research to overcome.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but the technology to govern/control/run self-driving cars didn't exist at the time. Computer vision wasn't good enough.

Now we have a robot that can walk, and excellent computer vision, and control systems that have been proven with UAVs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't really understand why you'd want the robots to be shaped like a human. Surely small wheeled vehicles with mounted weapons would be cheaper and more cost-effective for most situations.

<comment><USER5> And for the situations where legs are required, such as climbing up stairs of difficult terrain, I'd have thought that a quadruped with a mounted gun would be a better solution. It has a lower profile when moving, and doesn't require as good a sense of balance as a biped.</comment></comment>


Fill 'Er Up With Human Fat - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/12/21/fat-fuel-biodiesel-tech-sciences-cz_pcb_1222fatfuel.html?feed=rss_mostemailed <comment><USER2> > _he allowed ... his girlfriend to perform surgeries without a medical > license._

What, a guy can't be a little romantic anymore?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is human fat somehow more potent than regular bio-diesel? He couldn't have saved that much money...bio-diesel is by definition cheap...and the dude is a plastic surgeon...not like he is hurting for $$$.

<comment><USER4> He must have done it for the laughs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fat of the rich as SUV fuel? How poetic in a Fight Club way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Of all the groups, fat is the most energy-dense.

Carbohydrates = 4 kcal/gram | Protein = 4 | Fat/Lipids = 9 | Alcohol = 7 | Vit/Mins/Water = 0

<comment><USER6> Note that fat is more energy dense than ethanol, but a little less than gasoline (which is 48 KJ/g, compared with fats 37 KJ/g).

<comment><USER7> U-235 has about 6 orders of magnitude on gasoline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This boat circumnavigated the world on renewable fuels which included human fat:

<http://www.earthrace.net>

</comment><comment><USER9> I find this a bit scary (in a cyberpunk way)...

</comment><comment><USER10> Makes great soap too - <http://i44.tinypic.com/sm62c1.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER11> Lipo Baby, Lipo -S. Palin

</comment><comment><USER12> Yep, Micheal Moore can save the planet single-handed!</comment>


Joke HN: It takes a lifetime to understand lifetimes - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> are you calling HN a joke? lol.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I'm calling lifetimes a joke, and HN to be a platform to tell jokes to others who might have the same lack of humour as yourself.

<comment><USER2> you must of missed my lol. I just didn't understand your joke so I made my own.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which startups are you most envious of? - <AUTHOR>

This could be a good exercise on what motivates us and how founders view other founders... <comment><USER2> Square

1) They solved a really hard problem. Basically they opened channels for merchants that used to only be able to take cash to credit cards. I have already used this twice on the consumer end. Once at a concert to buy a tshirt, once a cupcake food truck downtown.

2) They did an exceptional job of design in both hardware and software.

3) They had a real vision on their own, 'Apple Style' where they saw the problem and had a vision to a real solution. They didn't have to make a MVP and keep iterating (not that doing that is a bad idea) but have a vision that turns out to be true is always very impressive to me.

4) They executed in a exceptional time period. They had everything in place from from engineer to design and operation in the amount of time other startups take to make a webapp that is much less as sensitive (read: involves larges of amounts of money in a traditionally slow industry).

</comment><comment><USER3> Of companies that are still in "startup mode" it's hard to say. Of recent (or semi-recent) startups that have achieved success, or some degree of success:

1\. Tesla Motors - because they build sweet products and have a CEO who I admire.

2\. Facebook - because they've made their founders a metric buttload of money, and have impacted millions (if not billions) of people around the world.

3\. Scaled Composites - Because they're on the forefront of doing something amazing... making space-travel dramatically more practical and accessible.

<comment><USER4> I'm envious of any space startup that actually has working hardware. Scaled Composites, SpaceX, Armadillo, and Blue Origin are all super exciting.

<comment><USER3> _I'm envious of any space startup that actually has working hardware. Scaled Composites, SpaceX, Armadillo, and Blue Origin are all super exciting._

Can't argue with that! I named Scaled Composites mostly because I'm more familiar with what they've done than I am with the others. But that's not to take anything away from the other space startups, for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Square, before anything else. I literally had a startup-gasm after the website was fully loaded.

After that, I'd say SpaceX, for making private-owned space travel a reality, and then Dropbox, for revolutionizing (in a way) the way we synchronize our files between devices.

The last two will (hopefully) be a basis for my future startup(s).

<comment><AUTHOR> 'The last two will (hopefully) be a basis for my future startup(s).'

So is that SpaceboX - synchronize files between spaceships and Earth?

<comment><USER5> You just gave me a better idea. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Tesla Motors - going after the throat of (harmful) giants

2\. Kiva.org - very effective and very practical

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess it depends on what stage of startup you talk about.

Early-stage: Pinterest and Instagram Growth stage: Tumblr Late Stage: Zynga

</comment><comment><USER7> I would have been envious of Groupon if they sold to Google for $6 billion. Now? Not so much.

</comment><comment><USER8> Khan Academy and Groupon.

</comment><comment><USER9> AirBnB</comment>


Everything You Need to Know about President Obama's New Fitbit - <AUTHOR> http://www.onthedash.com/docs/obama/obama-fitbit/ <comment><USER2> Date: 2015</comment>


Show HN: Simply Wall St – Pinterest for Stocks in the US, UK and Aus - <AUTHOR> http://simplywall.st/

<comment> enjoy-your-stay Definitely an interesting visualization for the companies.

However I suppose the Health and Future segments are a bit more analysis based, in which case they could change the whole look of the chart quite quickly if some new piece of information comes to light.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is really interesting concept - where are you getting all the data? Yahoo Finance API?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man, all the data comes from S&P Capital IQ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great job on the design Al - I'm engaged immediately, and look forward to exploring this when I have more time after work tonight.

</comment><comment><USER4> Doing interesting things here.</comment>


Autonomous Cars Can't Recognise Pedestrians with Darker Skin Tones - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/autonomous-cars-cant-recognise-pedestrians-with-darker-skin-tones <comment><USER2> The headline here is not a good description of the actual paper ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.11097.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.11097.pdf)).

The difference in average precision in bounding boxes between the LS (light skin) and DS (dark skin) observed by the researchers was around 1-10%. Not "can't recognize". Notably, people with dark skin were underrepresented in the dataset that the researchers used.

When they compensated for the dataset imbalance by reweighting examples, the issue was resolved.

Notably, the research itself is on publicly-available object detection systems, not any actual autonomous vehicles. Any company seriously building an AV 1) has their own diverse datasets collected from real-world driving and 2) has almost certainly already handled this issue (skin color is a blessedly minor source of variation in pedestrian detection, compared to the tremendous headaches caused by clothing, costumes, carrying other objects, all of which need to be accounted for...).

The paper is good a reminder of the importance of fine-tuning any pedestrian detection system to fix imbalances in your dataset, and avoid false negatives. But it's not what the title claims.

</comment><comment><USER3> OK.

Can we suspend identity politics and admit that systemic homogeneity bias in software development is as much a technical as social and political problem?

I mean, why is it _ok_ to release facial recognition software that has only been trained on white faces? Why is that considered a minimum viable product?

When we get to the point that facial-recognition systems don't recognize black people, autonomous cars won't even stop for them and law enforcement risk assessment AIs automatically tag them with a x2 modifier for criminality, this stuff stops looking like naive techie ignorance and starts looking like malice.

And, all else aside, it's _bad design._

<comment><USER4> Agreed, although I'd add to: _When we get to the point that facial-recognition systems don 't recognize black people, autonomous cars won't even stop for them and law enforcement risk assessment AIs automatically tag them with a x2 modifier for criminality, this stuff stops looking like naive techie ignorance and starts looking like malice._

I strongly suspect that it looked like malice long before this point if you were for example, black yourself. In the same way that people familiar with the history of TLA's and tech were concerned about the behavior of the NSA long before Snowden confirmed our worst fears, I'm sure that black people saw this coming based on warning signs typically dismissed by people who can afford to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lighting matters, and thus Daylight Saving Time matters. Could it be racist to make one choice or another for Daylight Saving Time?

Background matters. Should be use concrete roads or asphalt roads? Could that choice be racist?

Maybe we shouldn't go looking for racism _everywhere_ and always assuming it exists.</comment>


Tihs is my weeeknd proejct -- I hpoe you can tkae a look :) - <AUTHOR> http://geektalk.info/

<comment><AUTHOR> a simple project I did over the weekend. Nothing fancy.

Thanks to Anton Brand for a cool nerd caricature :)

Oh! One amazing thing I learnt during this project is that .info domains cost only like 2 bucks! :) -- thats incredible cheap for a regular web exposure :)

ps. if you like the idea, please submit it to your favorite social website.

</comment><comment><USER2> lol man, I like. 1 suggestion, do the 'geekification' in JavaScript so they don't have to wait for your server. Or else, add some more options such as Klingon translation, Pig Latin, etc to make the server-side app more worthwhile.

<comment><USER2> btw pls check my project <http://sam.ai.ki/rescue.html> if you have Linux (any self-respecting geek should have Linux or some even more hacktastic OS thing)</comment></comment>


Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html <comment><USER3> > _Different policies could produce a different outcome. My list would start > with a tax code that does less to favor the affluent, a better-functioning > education system, more bargaining power for workers and less tolerance for > corporate consolidation._

It floors me how anyone, especially anyone with even a _basic_ STEM background, could look at a growth curve that approaches infinity _that_ rapidly, then turn around and say 'gee, I wonder if tinkering around the periphery of the system would solve the problem'.

No! Clearly some central mechanism has gone horribly awry.

The only explanation I've ever seen that adequately accounts for those curves is inflation. Inflation drives up prices, both of goods and of assets. A higher cost of goods narrows the margins for wage-earners (i.e. the poor and middle class), and higher asset prices inflate the net worth of people who earn income from assets (i.e. rich people) — this effect compounds over time.

If I'm wrong, please, convince me. Article & book recommendations gladly accepted.

<comment><USER4> I think you're partially right. The other half of the puzzle is negotiating leverage.

One of Warren Buffett's annual reports (I forget which year, but I think it was the late 1990s) had an interesting observation: inflation doesn't affect all firms equally. Instead, it pools where there is a competition bottleneck. If you are the monopoly provider in a market, you have complete and total ability to raise prices in response to your customers having more money available to pay. If you are in a very competitive market, then every time you try to raise prices, some other entrant undercuts you and your customers and suppliers capture the surplus instead.

The Fed, however, measures inflation based on a basket of goods bought by the "average" consumer. Most of these goods are in competitive markets: groceries and gas and consumer electronics. And so the measured inflation rate that the Fed uses to control the money supply significantly undercounts the true inflation rate, with much of the money injected into the economy pooling in differentiated industries like high finance, elite universities, health care, Google & Facebook, etc. From there, it doesn't circulate the way it should, because people in those industries need few goods that the average American produces. Instead, it goes into asset prices, as they try to buy up more future earning potential.

I've suspected that maybe a simple way to fix this would be with "helicopter" Bernanke's crazy idea: drop money out of helicopters. Maybe not literally (imagine the fights on the ground!), but perhaps the Fed could inject money into the economy at the bottom, through direct deposit into consumer's bank accounts or tax refunds, and then collect it from the top, through fees on banks. That way, the money is immediately spent, and so the true effect of the money injected is more easily measurable in the CPI.

<comment><USER5> Our top marginal tax rate starts around $418k(single) to $470k (joint). It seems ridiculous to me that every dollar beyond that amount is taxed at the same rate, whether it's dollar 500k or dollar 500m. IMHO, we should have several more brackets, like for the top 0.25%, 0.1%, 0.01% and 0.001% of incomes, with the rates rising sharply. Tax the shit out of the ultra-rich and spread it around.

<comment><USER6> I agree with that (you're talking about Piketty's direct redistribution), but there is a tinge of "tax the other guy more because he's making more than me and it's not fair and I'll never be in his bracket anyway so I won't have to deal with it" to your argument.

<comment><USER5> It's more like "tax the guy whose work is being disproportionately rewarded in comparison to everyone else". I wouldn't argue with the idea of a doctor making more than a dishwasher, or possibly even a good hedge fund manager making more than a doctor. But 1,000 times more? No way!

<comment><USER7> Fortunately, this isn't communism and you're not a dictator.

People aren't awarded money arbitrarily... Nobody will pay you more than you're worth. If a good hedge fund manager is able to make 1000x as much as a good doctor, he _is_ worth 1000x as much as a good doctor, by definition, no matter how distasteful that might seem.

<comment><USER6> You and @utexaspunk may be talking about different things.

I believe @utexaspunk is saying that salary should be tied to the amount of social good you do.

You are saying that the market sets salaries based on how much value you create, as measured in dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Actually I think the hyper growth of the top 1% is attributed to development of Automation and globalization. Here is a brief explanation of how each move money to the top.

Technology - Here is a simple thought experiment. You have 10 cashiers each are paid $100 a day. The total expense for these workers are $1000. The store in total makes $10000 a day. The owner nets $9000 a day. New technology comes out that replaces workers, you now only need one machine that costs $100 to maintain a day. The store owner nets $9900. Now just imagine this kind of replacement happening at every level of society.

Globalization - With technology comes better ways to communicate with foreign countries with cheap labor. Take the same experiment but instead of replacing workers that cost $100 a day with machines, we replace them with foreign workers or undocumented immigrants which cost $1 a day. Your total expense is now $10 a day. The store owner now nets $9990 a day. This also happens at every level of society.

This is the cost of efficiency and technology.

<comment> yoz-y Ben Thompson was talking about this on his podcast. His idea was that over time capital earns more money than labor - due to automation, as you say.

If the end game is 100% automatised then basically 100% of income will be produced by machines/robots/algorithms owned by a tiny proportion of human population.

<comment><USER9> The counter to that argument is that if the owners of robots make 100% of the income while customers make 0%, then the owners of the robots will have a very small market to sell their goods and services.

If you are capable of making 10 billion fidget spinners, you're going to lower your prices until as many people can afford fidget spinners as possible.

<comment> yoz-y Indeed. But what are the solutions. One proposal is "raise taxes on capital by a lot, and then provide basic income". Another option would be "nationalize all production and distribute the profits". There is the luddite option of course but I do not believe that the progress can be stopped. And I do not think that there are nearly enough "new" jobs created in services, entertainment and arts.

<comment><USER9> My point was actually that there is no way automation could possibly leave more people worse off, since it brings more goods into circulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The chart says "Note: Inflation-adjusted annual average growth using income after taxes, transfers and non-cash benefits." Does that include employer-paid health insurance? I assume that is part of what is meant by "non-cash benefits". If so, the reality is even more desperate than the already shocking graph. Because that health insurance is a big chunk of money, especially as a percentage of income, and the employee never sees a dime of of it. It's not available to pay rent because it's going straight into medical care. Not that it's not valuable, health insurance is extremely important. But the take-home paychecks of workers in the lower-income range are actually going down.

<comment><USER11> Good point.

The other thing I often hear from people that don't view this as a problem (not suggesting this is you OP)is that, yes, its true that, the income of the top 1 percent has grown but so has the income of everyone else (save for the bottom 5%) just not at the same rate. Your standard of living has increased slightly over just maintaining (matching inflation).

Personally I think its still a problem because like it or not humans tend to get upset when there is perceived (and in this case real) injustice in the distributions of productivity gains despite not strictly being worse off.

I notice a lot of this in the hierarchy working at F100 company. The higher up you go the more managers pat themselves on the back for the productivity gains seen at the company. For them increasing productivity is a mater of the size of the bonus. For those on the production floor working harder/smarter becomes a mater of having a job or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really like the two charts further down, comparing the growth _distribution_ with the growth _average_.

I keep seeing a lot of statements/articles/op-eds/etc saying things are fine because if you look at the data, you see that the average (insert measure here) actually hasn't changed much. Those charts show why such a statement is a fallacy.

<comment><USER13> However median is correct in showing that in general things are not so hot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Different policies could produce a different outcome. My list would start > with a tax code that does less to favor the affluent, a better-functioning > education system, more bargaining power for workers and less tolerance for > corporate consolidation.

> less to favor the affluent

We already have progressive tax brackets. For crying out loud, the top 20% of earners shoulder 84% of the tax burden of the federal government[1]. Where does that number need to be in order to silence the socialist rabble-rousers? 90%? 95%?

1\. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of- inc...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-income- tax-1428674384)

Edit: I've only received 1 answer to my question, and it involved allusions to bloody revolution, so I'll ask again:

Where does that number need to be?

<comment><USER15> I dunno. Does 95% beat getting shot?

BTW, your comment is yet another indication that Hacker News is infiltrated by people likely to be paid to post pro-hyper-rich propaganda. I mean, what's in it for you to oppose a more progressive tax rate except to prove your deep misunderstanding of the power of capitalism to push all the money to one corner?

So what if the rich pay for everything. Look, man. The poor have nothing. There's nothing left. They're not going to retire. They'll work until they drop dead. They don't get decent health care. They'll die from avoidable, treatable illness. And if conservative Congress had its way, there'd be less Medicaid. Oh, and now they want to take away the right to sue elderly nursing homes. At what point do you decide that torturing your fellow American is enough?

<comment><USER14> > I dunno. Does 95% beat getting shot?

I'm not thin-skinned enough to consider this a threat, but I do think its inflammatory enough to be in violation of HN's guidelines.

As for the accusations of astroturfing, I don't know what to say, but I hope this paranoia that is increasingly common on the internet goes away. It's downright unhealthy.

<comment><USER16> I didn't read this as a threat at all. It was quite bluntly put, but came across clearly to me as saying that the consequences of a small minority doing very well and the vast majority being worse off, is some sort of uprising. Such as the Russian or French revolutions. I'm pretty sure we all wouldn't like something like them to happen again.

I do agree with your point on the astro turfing, your comment didn't come across as one to me, but I have been noticing myself thinking "oh, this must be a paid for comment" more and more. I'm not sure if this is healthy skepticism or not.

On topic. I largely agree with both comments. The top 20% shouldn't be asked to even pay as much tax as they currently are. I like the idea of a progressive tax system, those with the strongest shoulders carry the heaviest burden. But this is clearly, to me, too much.

Additionally this shouldn't be fixed by lowering taxes. The top 20% shouldn't be in a position that they make so much more than the remaining 80%. We need to fix a system of work not paying enough, large companies exploiting workers and poor healthcare and education systems.

<comment><USER14> > We need to fix a system of work not paying enough, large companies > exploiting workers and poor healthcare and education systems.

I think we're awfully close to agreement here. I'm hesitant to advocate attempting to engineer this by forcing higher pay. I just don't believe we can snap our fingers and collectively decide that the output of our workers is worth more than it is.

I don't know the exact problem or solution, but I believe that our technology has failed us. Our modern technological advancements have been laser-focused on displacing human labor, rather than enhancing it. We're making automated systems where the few human operators left at all are more replaceable and therefore less valuable. We need to find technological solutions where the combined output of automation and expertise of humans are leveraged together. That was what built the middle class in the first place. Not shaking down the wealthy.

<comment><USER17> It feels like the underlying sentiment here is that wage should be a function of the value of labor. The issue I take with that is that capitalism is necessarily exploitative and culturally we have deep seated beliefs about the value of different classes of labor. Currently, those classes of labor that require the least "expertise" tend to be those that are the least compensated. I fail so see how technology can be leveraged to increase the quality of life of unskilled labor. That is, how can technology help put food on the table and clean water in the pipes of those that can't currently afford those things? Why does labor need to be enhanced? Is the current output of human and machine labor not more than enough to give everyone 2500 calories and healthcare and a home? Perhaps if technology could be of use it would be in the distribution of those goods that we already have but arnt finding their way to those that need them.

Why can't we snap our fingers and decide the output of workers is worth more than it is? We have many many dillusions of value. Value works by people collectively agreeing something is valuable, that's the history of value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how much having to be globally competitive affects the income growth? Non-skilled factory labor is the easiest thing to move to a different country. The 1990s-now were huge for pulling the lowest of the low out of poverty around the world. It seems that unskilled laborers in developed countries took a hit at the same time. Until the world is playing on a level playing field wage-wise, I'm not sure the situation will improve.

<comment><USER19> This is my hypothesis as well. It will be great if someone can juxtapose this graph with growth in China and India's GDP, growth in middle class income in these two countries, and growth in manufacturing and services output in China and India (India more so starting late nineties).

<comment><USER20> It's probably related in that markets beforehand were more national than international. Nowadays, the national barriers are pretty porous, so lower- skilled workers have to compete with labor at a fraction of a cost of theirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > My list would start with a tax code that does less to favor the affluent,

The problem doesn't seem to be taxes, but division of profits. Almost none of the gains seen by the 1% would have happened at all if the bottom 50% hadn't produced them.

No one person "earns" 10M or 100M per year. No one's 24/365 is that productive. It's done by keeping a larger share of the pie than the people who do the actual production.

Start with the (IMO) problem, not the side-show. I really don't care how much my CEO is taxed. I just want a fair share of gains.

</comment><comment><USER21> Apparently, construction work has seen a 30% rise in wages in Texas in the last few months --some attribute it to a tighter market precipitated by fewer undocumented workers. It'd be interesting to see if those results pan out and if tightening labor markets lead to significant rises in wages in other sectors of the economy where imported labor resulted in downward wage pressures.

<comment><USER22> Wouldn't increasing wages increase the cost of those goods?

For instance, the reason the US can have cheap produce is cheap, illegal labor

[https://cis.org/Report/Retail-Produce-Prices-Without- Illegal...](https://cis.org/Report/Retail-Produce-Prices-Without-Illegal- Farmworkers)

<comment><USER21> They would raise prices, not different from Europe or Japan or Korea. Organics and the trend toward bespoke/crafts items seems to indicate people may not be as price sensitive as we might suppose.

<comment><USER23> Again no sources....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> With the 1980 chart: if we should be ensuring high income growth to people according to their income percentile alone then gradually you'd assume they'd move up along the curve (since its income, and not wealth, and income*growth over time would move to the right then).

In this world, everyone would slowly move up the curve according to their tenure/age.

However, if we believe that people should have income growth more dependent on their willingness to work (rather than just income percentile) then over time, with high income growth on the low end, those most willing to work would move up.

In this world, then the income growth is a dependent variable of 'willingness to work' and logically would move up the income percentile over time as labor re-sorts itself into higher income growth percentiles based on that willingness to work.

One simple chart doesn't tell you much. It'd be best to see cohort effects across this time period to see if the bottom percentile is a bunch of 18 year old kids now (millennials), versus a bunch of prime age baby boomers itching to work hard.

Having said that, the cohort effects I've seen are reassuring, but there are still big issues. The main point is that this chart isn't that great at saying anything conclusive.

</comment><comment><USER25> One of the authors, Thomas Piketty, wrote Capital in the 21st Century, a fascinating book about the mechanics that drive wealth concentration. He explores the limits of wealth concentration, as a positive feedback loop that inevitably destabilizes, often violently. I don't want to spoil it, but it isn't all just analysis and observation, he does also make recommendations.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18736925-capital-in- the-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18736925-capital-in-the-twenty- first-century)

</comment><comment><USER26> Result of quantitative easing. When you pump liquidity into the market asset prices rise. Wealthy people have assets. Super wealthy people have more assets.

</comment><comment><USER27> I really liked the "income growth" animated graph. Does someone know if the nytimes used a specific library ?

<comment><USER28> Its d3.js - just follow the debug logging they didn't disable for production in the console ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It seems that after inflation, nearly everyone earns more over time. Isn't that good?

<comment><USER30> There has been almost no increase in median household income since 1970s.

\- [http://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Median...](http://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Median%20Household%20Income.pdf)

\- [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N)

\- [http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

<comment><USER31> This depends on very closely with how precisely you account for inflation.

Accounting for inflation is not scientific. Its a social science. A median household can afford more of and better quality things today than the past, but some measures of inflation will not account for this correctly.

<comment><USER30> Thanks, I didn't realize this aspect of inflation. Although I'd imagine the straight forward measure is good enough when it is used for relative comparisons between top x% to bottom y%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think that the problem is that the middle class is experiencing the "real" growth rate of the economy, and the top classes are just getting the benefits of all of the QE and other tricks on the monetary system.

</comment><comment><USER33> Some speculation - this trend would make sense if wage growth had stagnated, and the upper class earners are making more of their income from capital gains and other similar sources.

</comment><comment><USER34> Let's not forget that both inflation and unemployment were in double digits, Iran was holding Americans hostage, and gasoline rationing was barely in the rear view mirror

</comment><comment><USER35> Piketty, Saez, and Zucman think US economy is broken and needs to be more socialist. I think I've read this before.

</comment><comment><USER36> Income growth isn't the biggest "wow" factor in this economy. Check out the wealth/asset/capital growth of the wealthy.

Ever since the FED bailout, the wealth of has grown by leaps and bounds.

Usually, in economic booms, the wealthy took the lion share of the wealth and threw the crumbs to the middle/lower class in the form of income growth. But not this time.

It's also reflected by the decline of unions.

</comment><comment><USER31> A few points:

1\. the fixed pie fallacy[0]. You actually need separate evidence to suggest that the 1% are taking away income growth from the rest of the percentiles.

2\. The 1% generally makes the most in good times, and loses the most in bad times. The chart did not seem to include asset devaluation loses - e.g. the housing crises, stock market loses, investment losses etc. This is a huge omission. The past 34 years may also not be a very representative prediction of the future.

3\. There is nothing morally wrong with income diversity, particularly if the poor still live long lives, are not hungry, have access to modern technology, transportation, and modern entertainment. I personally think income diversity is a good thing. As my right bias, I believe generally that "Disparities are natural and just" , and not "Disparities are due to injustices" \- Fired Google Engineer.

[0] [http://www.aei.org/publication/the-fixed-pie- fallacy/print/](http://www.aei.org/publication/the-fixed-pie-fallacy/print/)

<comment><USER37> 1 'Fixed Pie' is only a fallacy if you define the gains to some fixed external standard. When the values are defined relative to the other values in the comparison, the Fixed Pie fallacy falls apart. In this case, gains made by one group are compared to gains made in another -- we all understand that gains are had by both parties but are comparing them relative to each other. Unless you are arguing that increased relative income makes no difference in terms of increased economic power which is, of course, nonsense.

2 We're talking about income, not profit and loss from capital. Different things.

3 You seem to be arguing that the poor are living long lives, are not hungry, and have access to transportation and adequate health care. They are not living as long as their wealthier contemporaries, many are hungry, and many are in circumstances where their desperation is readily taken advantage of by those that are not in desperate circumstances. Inequality is not, in and of itself, bad but inequality in which some groups are desperate and taken advantage of by those better off because their alternative to a negotiated agreement is total loss is bad (if you care about things like moving toward market efficiency, anyway).

4 The fired Google engineer spent 10 pages setting up ridiculous straw people and knocking them down. He attributed a rigidity and absolutism to those he disagrees with that doesn't exist and allowed himself extreme (and sometimes contradictory) flexibility in side stepping imagined counters. And he still managed to make himself out as a bigot. I'm not sure quoting him is a great way to make any kind of point.

<comment><USER31> 1\. sure. Im saying that readers should be aware of the fixed pie fallacy. People like to think that there is a fixed amount of growth given to us, and then we divide it up between the percentiles. It does not work like that. People can create growth, it does not come from the gods.

2\. Income can be negative, yet the NYTs did not even touch losses. Change in wealth is what people care about, it makes more sense to compare, and it what people naturally assume when we compare income over time. NYT were comparing revenue only and calling it income purposely to hide the full picture.

3\. yes, but the gap in lifestyle is small is my point. Smaller than any point in history. Whether you think diversity is natural and just, or injust, is more opinion however. Not worth going into that further.

Keep in mind, despite any income changes, a larger fraction of todays wealthy income goes to investments than any time in history. Because of this, while they may be incredibly rich, their QoL is not as vastly improved by income changes as the past. Most investments will be in things that have very little impact on their QoL, foreign homes, stocks, bonds, etc. I think this is because today it is easier to reach a level where you are satisfied with your QoL, and don't see the reason to consume your income in QoL changes than in the past. Profit from these investments will generally be reinvested, not consumed on QoL.

4\. That single point was well stated. I'm not quoting the whole thing - <USER2> giving attribution.

<comment><USER38> > yes, but the gap in lifestyle is small is my point. Smaller than any point > in history.

What point in history are you benchmarking against? If you are comparing the current moment to pre and early-Industrial periods, then yes the gap is smaller. That's hardly a standard by which to judge the moment though.

If, however, you are comparing it to the lifestyle gap of a generation ago, there has been a clear increase in the gap. Key goods that are the bedrock of a high quality of life: healthcare, education, decent housing - have become far less accessible to the working class and poor than they were in the recent past. No quantity or variety of cheap electronics and entertainment can make up for the loss of a huge number of people's ability to purchase those goods.

<comment><USER31> All points in history. Even a generation ago.

The life expectancy gap has continued to close since we started measuring it, nationally and globally.

The education gap is closing too, more people are college educated today than at any time in the past. In the recent past, only the elite could afford college. This gap has only been closing, with or without government intervention.

As for 'decent housing', the housing quality gap between the rich and the poor has never been smaller either. Today poor homes are just as good at rich homes at things homes should do. Both poor and rich homes are similarly good at keeping out weather conditions, at heating, cooling, having bathrooms, kitchens. Even in the recent past this was not true. Yes, rich homes are bigger and made of more luxury materials - those both have a tiny impact on quality of life compared to the measures I've given. The housing quality of life gap has closed tremendously, and has only continued to close. The gap is small as-is. I see little reason to close it further.

<comment><USER38> > The life expectancy gap has continued to close since we started measuring > it, nationally and globally.

This article is referring to the US, not the whole world. In the US, the life expectancy gap is _increasing_ between the rich and the poor:

[http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article...](http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article- abstract/2626194)

Life-expectancy is also not the end-all of health care, just one indicator. Prior to the CHIP program, many poor children had no access to preventative health care at all.

> more people are college educated today than at any time in the past. In the > recent past, only the elite could afford college. This gap has only been > closing

More people have degrees, but the goal-posts have also moved considerably and a college degree (depending on the type) doesn't have nearly the value in terms of job prospects that it used to have. Just citing the degree rate doesn't provide any of that very important context.

When it comes to primary and secondary education, the gap between rich and poor is considerable and persistent: [http://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/29/local-education- inequiti...](http://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/29/local-education-inequities- across-u-s-revealed-new-stanford-data-set/)

> Both poor and rich homes are similarly good at keeping out weather > conditions, at heating, cooling, having bathrooms, kitchens.

Take a drive through a very poor section of a city or rural area, say in the rust belt or in a rural area, and you will find that this is often not the case. Beyond the home itself, these locations often have worse infrastructure: buckled roads and in recent cases contaminated water.

> The gap is small as-is. I see little reason to close it further.

No doubt, for people who think as you do, all of the above disparities are totally acceptable, a natural state of affairs, and we as a society should just stop any efforts to further mitigate them.

<comment><USER31> >No doubt, for people who think as you do, all of the above disparities are totally acceptable, a natural state of affairs, and we as a society should just stop any efforts to further mitigate them.

Correct. But I have no issue with people that want to help. I just wish they'd stop literally forcing others into their cause.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> 1\. Thank you Obama.

2\. I don't think UBI is the solution. Have you met any trust fund babies who don't have to work? Do you think it's wise to create more of them?

<comment><USER40> > Thank you Obama.

Take a look at the animated graph in the middle of the article. There was a lot of movement under Clinton and Bush Jr. as well. Obama didn't fix it, of course (or even stop it), but it's not fair to single out Obama for your scorn.

<comment><USER41> Yes.

The biggest % change was during the years 2003-2008 and as far as I can tell the chart peaked in 2011 and receded slightly after that.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I am looking for a server monitoring tool featured on HN - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
I am looking for a tool I saw on HN about a or two month ago. I believe it was a Ruby app that you installed on a server. Then you were supposed to tunnel via ssh and visit a localhost website. From there you could look at the server's performance including CPU and RAM. It was kinda like New Relic, but self hosted.
If this is the wrong place to post this, let me know. Sorry in advance for disrupting your Monday.
Marshall <comment><USER2> I think you can find it here (HN search tool, pretyy good): [http://hn.algolia.com/](http://hn.algolia.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Trust me, I have tried. All I can find is this post (must be real-time).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Scout: [https://scoutapp.com/](https://scoutapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Mist? [https://mist.io/](https://mist.io/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the ideas, but unfortunately they are not what I am looking for.</comment>


JQuery Address, Ruby on Rails and Will Paginate - <AUTHOR> http://keithpitt.com/post/2826790132/jquery-address-ruby-on-rails-and-will-paginate

<comment><USER2> This is great. I might just use this. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool. I was looking for something like this.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you monetise a group meetup - <AUTHOR>

I've got a group that regularly meets in bars, restaurants, theatres, cafes which is organised through meetup.com They're pretty switched on and I can easily get 60+ folk along to a meetup at any one time.
I'd love to turn this in to a business but have no idea how to monetize? From the user side or business side? Offering businesses the same benefit as a daily deal site could work, or ask for kickbacks, but it seems like a lot of business convincing (read sales) Membership dues doesn't sit right with me as the appeal is that many events are free to attend.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Ask the local ad agencies to display ad banners at your place of meetup or get the food sponsored by them or so.</comment>


Google, you win - <AUTHOR> http://yovia.com/2014/08/29/google-you-win/ <comment><USER2> Google's lawyers are right.

You seem to be claiming that you only have a problem with this common phrase being used in a certain context, but unfortunately for your trademark, it is exactly that context in which the usage is especially common.

Far from not acknowledging that point, Cooley, the Google legal firm, deals with it head on. As they say in their letter: "The phrase is particularly common in the online marketing and advertising context..." They then go on to provide references to some of the countless examples.

The lesson here is be careful what you ask your lawyers to do for you. Some lawyers will do anything legal you want, even if it's a bad idea. A bad lawyer might file a trademark on the word "the" used in a certain context... if the client is willing to pay. That doesn't mean the trademark is defendable, even if it does manage to get past the hurdle of being granted.

</comment><comment><USER3> Being able to trademark common phrases and then sue people for using them seems to me like a ridiculous thing to try and do, so the system seems to be working here. I certainly can't see this as a problem of small businesses not being able to protect their IP. It looks more like someone trying to adapt the patent troll business model to trademarks.

</comment><comment><USER4> No offense, but your case sounds somewhat similar to patent trolls. "Spread the word" is your trade mark, huh?! What's next you guys gonna trade mark the word "Dear" and sue anyone who starts their email with that word?

</comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, I don't think this trademark should ever have been granted in the first place. It's definitely way too common.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Patents and trademarks are what drives the world's economies.

Let me just stop you right there.

</comment><comment><USER7> You should be sued for wasting Google time!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We have the rights for social media services. We don't care about people using it as descriptive text, we care when they use it to market advertising services.

<comment><USER8> You should never have been granted a trademark on a phrase this common. In the court of public opinion, trying to own a phrase that is already common parlance, not something you made up, is asinine. You're wasting your investors money on trying to own this phrase, and you're likely going to get shouted down here. GLWT.</comment></comment>


Metaballs and WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://jamie-wong.com/2016/07/06/metaballs-and-webgl/ <comment><USER2> Just as an aside, there's a much better way of doing metaballs in 2D but that can't be expanded to 3D: [http://nullcandy.com/2d-metaballs-in- xna/](http://nullcandy.com/2d-metaballs-in-xna/)

The basic idea is you draw a gaussian falloff sprite for each blob into a render target with additive blending, such that you get a density field from the sum of the falloffs. After that you do a simple threshold operation in the pixel shader and bam, very cheap unlimited metaballs. This is also the principle behind Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics.

</comment><comment><USER3> Metaballs are great! Here's demo I wrote a while back that does them, but in a slightly hacky way for performance reasons (and it performs pretty well!) [http://codepen.io/thomcc/pen/vLzyPY](http://codepen.io/thomcc/pen/vLzyPY)

Basically, each "ball" is a 2d gradient texture, i render them all to a framebuffer, and then do a postprocessing pass which applies a threshold (not strictly binary so as to get some antialiasing) to the gradient, rendering the isosurface.

(And I also have a 3D pen, which does the more legit marching-cubes approach: [http://codepen.io/thomcc/pen/NGmmPB](http://codepen.io/thomcc/pen/NGmmPB) )

<comment><USER4> The 2D one doesn't work in Firefox for me, because instead of the balls I just see blue rectangles.

<comment><USER3> Very strange (and somewhat embarrassing! I work on Firefox). It works fine in Firefox for me. Can you give any more information about your platform?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Always great to see an introduction to WebGL that isn't just a tutorial on three.js. This is exactly the kind of guide I wish I had back when I was first learning about GL programming.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love it. I have been going through the same thing, as I'm new to 3D. Learning the pipeline, and trying to figure out all the options we have out there for WebGL. I ended up going with option #3, but due to the massive amount of data in my array i ran into performance issues when generating the initial array. I was able to split the original arrays ArrayBuffer into smaller ones, and send them to web workers (transferable objects :D) then concatenate the buffers at the end. I'll try to write an article as well, its amazing how much performance you can squeeze out of WebGL by doing your animation inside of your shader.

Please do a write up on the RTT/Render to texture approach you mentioned ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Yay, make sure you check out the marching squares tutorial too, that's the real deal.

<comment><USER6> Link: [http://jamie-wong.com/2014/08/19/metaballs-and-marching- squa...](http://jamie-wong.com/2014/08/19/metaballs-and-marching-squares/)

<comment><USER8> Author here -- I also just published a new post on ray marching, which you might find interesting if you find this post interesting: [http://jamie- wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-marching-signed-distanc...](http://jamie- wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-marching-signed-distance-functions/)

My luck on HN has been not so great. All in all, I think my posts have reached the front page ~5 times, only 1 of which I submitted. But oh well! Glad they get there somehow and people like them!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Before realizing what I clicked, I really wished this was Meatballs and WebGL.

<comment><USER10> I also misread, and am hungry. But metaballs seems cool enough. I spent a while staring at it wondering how this was a visualization of meatballs until I noticed my mistake.</comment></comment>


Object-Oriented Database Management Systems Succeeded - <AUTHOR> http://danweinreb.org/blog/object-oriented-database-management-systems-succeeded

<comment><USER2> Can somebody explain to me the difference between using an OODB to back your web app and using a web framework like Rails or Django?I know the actual implementation is different, but the abstraction presented seems to be the same...

<comment><USER3> There isn't much difference if you only work with single elements and sets of single elements. (Imagine, a user with a username and password; and the set of all users.)

Things become more complex when you want to store arbitrary data structures. A simple example is a doubly-linked list. This is easy to represent in memory, and it's easy to represent in a relational database, but it's not particularly easy to translate between the two representations. With an object database, the in-memory structure _is_ the persistent structure, so there is no translation. Anything you have in memory can be put in the database. (Most implementations let you index and query this data, as well, and provide you with opportunities to create indexes that would be difficult or impossible to represent with a relational database management system.)

Also, a key feature of OOP is polymorphism, which the relational model does not handle elegantly. Object databases handle it fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We use object store for exactly the kind of thing he argues it should be used for (slightly analogous to CAD). I think it sucks. A normalized relational schema would be much better. Instead we suffer endless invalid pointer crashes and inconsistent data all over the place. Changing the schema is also a nightmare.

OODBs are a seductive hack. They can look like a great idea because initial development is simple. You get to skip the laborious step of developing a proper relational schema and setting up mechanisms to ensure integrity. Two years later your data is an inflexible mess with subtle integrity errors here and there.

<comment><USER3> _Two years later your data is an inflexible mess with subtle integrity errors here and there._

Well yeah, if you do it wrong, it doesn't work.

 _You get to skip the laborious step of developing a proper relational schema and setting up mechanisms to ensure integrity._

Basically, every program needs to ensure consistency of its in-memory structures. If you have invalid data in memory, you can't trust your program to return correct results. With an OODB, you reuse these integrity checks for your data model. With a relational database, you have to specify your constraints a second time.

Twice as much code == twice as many bugs.

<comment><USER4> Tons of first hand experience and expert research says that relational normalization is the best way to avoid mistakes.

> If your in-memory data doesn't make sense, then who cares what's stored?

You are going to screw up your in memory data structures in a complex application. It WILL happen. A normalized relational schema will catch the mistake.

You can go 3NF, with decades of experience and theory. Or you can wave your hands and say "don't make mistakes" in your hierarchical/oodb system.

If you need simple persistence for an app that will be dead inside a few years, go knock yourself out with an OODB. It will work fine. If you're doing something complex, like say the equivalent relational DB would have a few dozen tables, I think it's foolish. You really probably aren't smarter than the collective experience that has successfully settled on the relational model.

<comment><USER5> In my experience, keeping objects consistent is easier than keeping the database consistent. The database can only do trivial consistency checks. With objects you can write arbitrary predicates that check things about your objects. In the applications I write that means that even though I use a relational database, I end up doing all important checks on the objects, and none in the DB.

<comment><AUTHOR> _The database can only do trivial consistency checks._

Between foreign keys, triggers, and CHECK constraints, databases can actually do pretty sophisticated consistency checks. There's also a SQL standard feature for database-wide assertions that would be very useful, but AFAIK no one implements it (probably for performance reasons).

<comment><USER6> Actually, no, it can't, unless you code all your business rules into the db as well. The advantage the objects have is that they're also the application and all the rules are there and checkable.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Actually, no, it can't, unless you code all your business rules into the db as well._

Well, you _can_ code all your business rules into the DB, in the form of stored procedures. But even if you choose not to, I don't see why that fact prevents you from enforcing a wide range of consistency constraints in the database.

<comment><USER6> I didn't say you can't do any checks, rather, the db does mostly simple checks. The complex checks often depend heavily upon the object model and use of features like polymorphism which relational databases suck at modeling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Complex business logic constraints depend on "the object model and polymorphism"? Can you give an example?

<comment><USER6> Objects can validate themselves and object databases store the class as well as the instances. This allows a database to contain a mix of different versions of a particular class of objects. The invoice from yesterday might have 5 fields and validate under one set of rules while todays invoice has 7 fields and validates itself under a completely different set of rules.

Such polymorphism is trivial to implement with objects and very painful to implement withing a relational database. It's not a matter of whether a RDBMS _can_ model something, it's a matter of how much effort is required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Objects should be an abstraction layer between atomic data and the user, but data should always be stored atomically in a relational model.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that, in practice, these often work against each other. OO- style abstractions and relational schema design can pull developers in very different directions. See, for instance: <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ObjectRelationalImpedanceMismatch>

Also, I suspect the set of programmers that understand how to do OO design well AND have a solid understanding of relational databases is relatively small.

(edited to flesh out a bit)

<comment><USER7> I see your point. OO programmers who don't understand the relational model want to 'force' the database to deal with objects and there the impedance mismatch.

In that case Relational Objects Database might be a better model.

Let the database store the whole object as an entity, an as the system evolves it can be 'normalized' to more atomic sub-objects giving the programmer time to grasp the relational model.

For simple systems like a contact list, a contact object would suffice, even if it has many phones or many addresses. Get one contact, put one contact. The more complex it evolves the need to change the schema to make it easier to maintain and to avoid redundancy while keeping data integrity.

In the end, a complex system would deconstruct complex objects into simple atomic objects (data) related to each other with simple rules.</comment></comment></comment>


TODO Group Abandons Open Code of Conduct - <AUTHOR> http://todogroup.org/blog/followup-open-code-of-conduct/ <comment><USER2> Where does it say they re abandoning it? It just says that "We will not be continuing work on writing a code of conduct".

<comment><USER3> The ToDo Group has stopped working on the Open Code of Conduct and suggests to use an existing code of conduct.</comment></comment>


How Service Workers Saved Our Web App - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/we-build-vend/how-service-workers-saved-our-web-app-5229c545d9c1 <comment><USER2> Fascinating. This looks like a useful resource for learning about making progressive web apps with service workers. I bookmarked it.</comment>


Tell HN: New MacBook Pro keyboard  maybe - <AUTHOR> So like many here, I'm hoping Apple fixes the keyboard situation.
Looks like a few months ago they released a new Magic Keyboard, "now in Space Gray", but if you look close enough the keyboard is improved compared to the plain white magic keyboard released prior (it's as if they simply pulled out the faulty MacBook one).
The "new" one on the space gray has an appreciable amount more travel and feels a little softer on the joints.
It's close enough that Apple can save face and just call it better not revamped/"fixed".
Excited. <comment><USER2> I didn't realize you can buy them separately now ([https://www.apple.com/us/shop/mac/mac-accessories/mice- keybo...](https://www.apple.com/us/shop/mac/mac-accessories/mice-keyboards)). I remembered only the iMac Pro had the space gray one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't think the original magic keyboard had the problems of the MacBook.

Anyway they are already on the third revision of the butterfly keys, I can't see them stopping until the problem is resolved one way or another.</comment>


Rust team is going to replace whitelist with allowlist - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/74127 <comment><USER2> I agree with the sentiment, but worry that lots of people are doing this and each group is using different names. I wish we would come to a consensus.

For me, I'd prefer stoplight colors. Redlist for stopped, Greenlist for those who can go through, and maybe even Yellow list who can go through but maybe have limited permissions or increased security.

<comment><USER3> Red and Yellow have their own problems when associated with skin color. It's unfortunate that this is now seen as problematic because the origins of the term blacklist have absolutely nothing to do with skin color or racism: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting)

There are plenty of words that _do_ have their roots in racism, but this isn't one of those, but 'black=bad' and 'white=good' is definitely something that you don't want to reinforce.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Ossia score, a visual programming language for time - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/OSSIA/score <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, so this is the project I've been working on for my phd - it's basically a multimedia sequencer, but with the ability to express conditions (of the kind "if... then" as well as "when... then"), loops, and hierarchy, in order to write interactive scores. A special visual syntax has been devised to be able to express these elements graphically. The doc gives more details : [https://ossia.github.io/score/](https://ossia.github.io/score/)

It's still in alpha but has already been used by multiple artists : [https://ossia.io/gallery](https://ossia.io/gallery) and has a great interoperability story with many creative coding environments (Max/MSP, OpenFrameworks, Processing, etc) due to native OSC (Open Sound Control) support.

The code itself is C++14/17 and Qt. feel free to ask me anything about it :)</comment>