Ask HN: Advice on my financial situation? - <AUTHOR> I'm a CS grad who's never had a programming job and who's been unemployed since April. Unemployment services told me in June that I hadn't worked enough in the past two years to get anything from them. They told me that if I registered with them, it'd take me 6 months to get any money. At that time I was being taken on a 2nd interview by two companies, so I figured, I'd rather focus on that. I also started doing freelancing for an entrepreneur. He needed somebody urgently and there wasn't much work at the beginning so I told him we'd worry about money later on.
A few months forward, I still don't have a job and I'm getting broke. I've done many more hours of development for this guy, at an absurdly cheap rate. I did these in hope they'd improve me resume. My problem is, he still haven't paid me anything. He always seems nice, but then postpones it. He doesn't have much money himself, and I do am asking him to do a full-fledged contract, so that unemployment services would recognize it and skip the 6 months delay - this has a cost as he has to pay somebody else to do the paperwork. We had a group phone call with that person in August where we agreed on the principle.
I have two possibilities right now. 1. I asked him to send me money without doing a contract, so that I could buy food and pay rent a few more months, hoping I find a job before that dries out as well. This seems to meet less resistance with him, but will he actually pay? 2. The code I've been working on is on my server, he's using it to show it to clients, meaning I could shut everything down until I get what I need.
What do I do? <comment><USER2> you don't need to threaten him with shutting down the codes you wrote. Ask him nicely, make him see reasons with you. After that, you can do as you want and no one can blame you for its outcome. You work for something, you have the right to get paid for it. Don't be shy about asking for your right. I know you are one of the good guys that hardly ask for what they are owed because they want peace and not trouble.

</comment><comment><USER3> Make sure he has no access to copy the code.</comment>


Show HN: Ear training using midi.js - <AUTHOR> http://tonedear.com/ <comment><USER8> I really like this, for the most part (and apropos, since the first day of teaching ear-training for the semester is tomorrow!).

You're probably randomly generating these, but I would strongly suggest incorporating some voice-leading and standard syntax into the examples. When it plays I-IV-V-I to establish the key, for example, it plays 3 root-position triads with parallel voice-leading:

        5 - 1 - 2 - <USER5>
        3 - 6 - 7 - <USER6>
        1 - 4 - 5 - <USER7>

Usually when ear training, the idea is to be able to hear common tonal progressions, where this kind of voice leading almost never shows up. Something like this would be better (and better still with a bass voice playing the roots in a different octave):

        5 - 6 - 5 - <USER5>
        3 - 4 - 2 - <USER6>
        1 - 1 - 7 - <USER7>

I had trouble with the chord progression and melodic dictation exercises, since they're not common tonal progressions. The melodic dictation I tried first went ^6, up to ^5, down to ^1, and down again to ^3. While the minor seventh is a really common tonal interval, it's really _uncommon_ to hear it from scale degree 6 in a major key up to scale degree 5 (you'd only really ever hear it as an applied chord of ii).

Likewise, the first chord progression I tried went I - ii7 - ii - IV7. This is a progression you would not be likely to hear in tonal music (even in rock, jazz, and other modern genres). Once a chord gets a seventh (ii7), it doesn't usually lose it until its resolution (so ii7 to ii isn't a logical progression), and the progression ii to IV7 is a retrogression (at least in tonal classical music: this one you'd be slightly more likely to hear in rock perhaps, but I imagine it's still pretty rare).

All this is to say that I really like the idea, but I'm hesitant to tell my students about it because the random generation might lead them to things which I would never play in an ear-training class (because they never show up in common-practice tonal music). The way around this , and the way I've done it before, is to generate a bunch of scale-degree patterns or chord progression patterns and shuffle them randomly. If you're interested in developing this further I'd be happy to help come up with some of these. For intervals, scales, and individual chords, though, it's really great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's a really good point. I agree that the patterns generated could be improved, but haven't come up with a good automated way to generate an unlimited amount of better ones. Please email me any thoughts you have about the best way to do this, I'm definitely interested in improving these (my email is on my profile page).

<comment><USER9> I've been listening to the Stanford NLP deep learning lectures, and while I know hardly anything about it compared to most, "deep learning" is screaming at me. If you could generate a "corpus" of musical progressions based off of real music, you could very easily sample from a model to generate progressions that are likely to "co-occur."

This was posted three months ago on HN, but one person used it to generate music. [http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn- effectiveness/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/)

The folk music generation is located at [https://soundcloud.com/seaandsailor/sets/char-rnn- composes-i...](https://soundcloud.com/seaandsailor/sets/char-rnn-composes- irish-folk-music). I could imagine you could do something similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This would be SO COOL if it had some kind of baseline, or study guide.

Simply meaning, I should be able to listen to C D E for a while to get to know the difference. I need examples of Major, Minor, Augmented chords, and what I'm even supposed to be listening for.

I can practice seeing if I hear a C all day, but I don't think this will help me because I don't know what how I'm supposed to differentiate a C from a D, etc.

Another way that might make learning easier would be some True/False questions for Pitch especially.

Is this a C? Yes/No

Or something like that. If not, what is it? Then let me play the two a couple times. And after you tell me what the other note is, maybe something I'm supposed to be listening for - if anything?

Anyway, this interests me because I've always wanted to be able to identify chords, notes, etc, but it seems so darn impossible. This is probably the first tool I've seen that I really want to use - so hopefully these thoughts don't come across as degrading but just some friendly feedback because I already love what is available to me through this site as-is.

<comment><USER11> Good points. This sort of program has traditionally been paired with taking a class on the subject, with the program used as a means of practicing the material, rather than as a means of learning it in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Quick suggestion after slight confusion during the Intervals exercise: switch the location of "Hear next" and "Hear again" buttons - it seems to be more intuitive to have "Hear next" on the right side.

<comment><USER13> I came here to say the same thing, kept pressing the wrong button when I did it fast. Yes please swap them so the next button is to the right.

Consider adding a little arrow icon or '>' on the next button just to help remind us. The music button could also have a little music note icon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who wants to do a basic self-study of music, this seems pretty awesome. Unfortnately, I don't know what I don't know. Can anyone link to readings or a course that would teach me the stuff this is quizzing?

<comment><USER15> musictheory.net has some nice interactive tutorials (plus its own exercises).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I played the saxophone for many years. Music has always been an interest of mine, but I have no application for it. Thus, my ear for progressions, pitches, intervals, etc. has waned. In spite of there being no clear end-game other than education (as in you can't "beat" it), this is the type of thing that I could do for hours on end.

I don't know the challenges involved (haven't seen the codebase), but you should package this into a Cordova or some other JS phone app. I'd download it in a heartbeat. I'd also be willing to assist if you needed extra hands.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice work. I tried the chord exercises. As a feature request, it would be nice if everything could be driven by the (computer) keyboard shortcuts because moving the mouse and clicking on various buttons got tiresome.

Something like pressing "N" for next chord, and press "1", "2", "3", "4" to quickly pick one of the four possible answers. You can also add a stopwatch display showing user's "think" time.

Quick keyboard reaction with pressure of beating previous times would really get those Jeopardy quiz muscles working.

Also, if the chord exercise could also reveal the actual _note names_ in addition to the scale degree, that would be very helpful. (e.g. show "G# Major - 1 3 5" instead of just "1 3 5")

Lastly, as an really ambitious feature, it would be very cool if the website could cross-reference the chord with popular songs that happen to use it. For example, the test generates a random chord C Major 1 3 5 and one of the buttons is "hear Example Song" and it plays the first fragment of Bill Withers "Lean on Me" because that songs starts on a C Major. The source of Bill Withers song could come from a "deep link" into youtube. The database of cross-references would have to be "crowdsourced" so that users could submit thousands of examples. It would definitely be a lot of work but I'm just typing a wish list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Those are all good ideas.

One of them is already implemented: Keyboard shortcuts are available in the advanced options for most exercises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've tried the first exercise. What I think would help me is when I get an answer wrong and get, e.g., Nope, "Major 3rd" is not correct, provide a button to play what the Major 3rd would actually sound like so I can compare it with the question and memorize.

This looks like exactly what I've been looking for, though, I think I'll try getting into learning with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea! There's an advanced option that puts a "listen" button next to each interval on the sidebar in the intervals exercise, but this would be a good more general feature to include for whenever someone answers incorrectly in any exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you are interested in more tools like this, I practiced a lot with this: [https://itunes.apple.com/at/app/better- ears/id284444548?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/at/app/better- ears/id284444548?mt=8) (it was called Karajan back then, years ago).

</comment><comment><USER20> This is great, but would be even better if there was some way of logging in to save your progress! You're probably already working on it given what you write in your 'How to practice' page ;) but I'd love to have it track my progress and show a few basic charts. You could also gamify it a little bit (without doing too much) by adding a few achievements to unlock.

Edit: I like what [http://10fastfingers.com/](http://10fastfingers.com/) does: really easy to get started, and an optional user account where you can see your progress (see [http://10fastfingers.com/user/442112/](http://10fastfingers.com/user/442112/) for mine)

</comment><comment><USER21> I bought the David Lucas Burge Perfect Pitch Ear Training course many years ago. It was a 12 or something CD package where he talks through the process of listening more and more deeply to notes with the ultimate goal of hearing the difference between a B and an F#.

I ultimately didn't make it. Sometimes I would think I heard the difference, others not. Not sure there is huge value to having perfect pitch, although it appears to exist as a real thing. Relative pitch skills, on the other hand, are very practical.

</comment><comment><USER22> A friend of mine had been asking for me to build something like this for a while so I pointed him to it. It looks great, the one additional feature that my friend was interested in (and really is an edge use case) is to do perfect pitch training with multiple arbitrary notes. He does a lot of jazz improvisation and so being able to identify multiple arbitrary notes in unison is pretty important for him.

Great work!

</comment><comment><USER23> If you're looking for something similar you can install via your package manager, check out GNU Solfege.

</comment><comment><USER24> Great! Quick thing – augmented/diminished chords don't have a position (root or otherwise).

</comment><comment><USER25> Great! This is exactly what I needed as someone who is learning piano but wanted to expand my musical skills beyond just playing.

Does anyone have any recommendation on how I should practice these? Like is there a certain order I should do them in or anything like that?

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER26> Impossible to see something like this and not recommend this guy's work: [https://soundcloud.com/thesignatureseries](https://soundcloud.com/thesignatureseries) SIMPLY AMAZING!

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice! Right when I just decided to start ear training :)

Can someone suggest similar tools for the Android ecosystem? I don't always have an internet connection so having an offline app would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is awesome. Good job.

</comment><comment><USER29> love it

feature request: allow me to set the period length, or an on off button

sometimes i wanted to really bathe in the sounds</comment>


Quorum – JP Morgan's permissioned implementation of Ethereum - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum <comment><USER2> Hey neat, this has code that I wrote in it. Hooray open source.

</comment><comment><USER3> well the interest is high already [https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/issues/19](https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/issues/19)

</comment><comment><USER4> The wiki gives a good overview: [https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/wiki](https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/wiki)

</comment><comment><USER5> This may be an unusual question, but why?

<comment><USER6> Because they still don't get that the blockchain only works as a currency.

<comment><USER7> > blockchain only works as a currency.

Except it has _not_ worked... Not as a _currency_.

Instead, you're most likely to see it used as a fungible commodity that appreciates and encourages hoarding.

<comment><USER8> > Except it has not worked... Not as a currency.

Bitcoin is working as a currency. You might not like, or been aware of it, but plenty of drugs users and criminals use bitcoin everyday. It works.

<comment><USER9> I can't imagine the majority of users are criminals.

I've recently tried it out as a means of receiving payment for completely legitimate work. The client was in a different country. The contract was signed in USD. Client sends half at then exchange rate, which arrived very fast. After accepting the delivered work the client sends the other half, which was less BTC because the price went up by that point. But it didn't matter because the first half I was holding appreciated so it's all the same. Turned out one of my vendors likes Bitcoin so I used some of it to settle an outstanding bill with him, then sold the rest at an exchange. Opening that account for the company was a pain in the ass, though less painful that opening a typical brokerage account. I had to pay a fee to the exchange to sell and another fee for them to wire the funds to my bank. It was faster and cost less than a credit card. It was more expensive than a check, but way way way faster. It was cheaper than SWIFT overall, but a few dollars more expensive to me because I bore the costs of selling while the client only bore the tiny costs of the Bitcoin transaction fees. If the contract was for a much larger amount then SWIFT would have been better. For accounting purposes I'm just treating BTC as a foreign currency. I would accept it again, it's great to actually receive payment that fast.

<comment><USER10> > I can't imagine the majority of users are criminals.

The overwhelming majority use of bitcoin is speculation on Chinese exchanges - 95% of blockchain activity. Even drug users and ransomware are sideshows.

[http://www.coindesk.com/state-of-bitcoin- blockchain-2016/](http://www.coindesk.com/state-of-bitcoin-blockchain-2016/)

<comment><USER11> 1\. You have no definitive proof for that. If you do, please present it.

2\. The amount of Futures contract in Okcoin is around $120million (that's not even capital, but the amount of leveraged futures). The total market cap of bitcoin is $12Bn which 100 times higher than that.

3\. GBTC has a market cap of $190m with a 50% premium on bitcoin price. So clearly it's not only the chinese who drives the bitcoin price/economy.

<comment><USER10> I literally linked my reference. I found similar references. Lowest figure I've seen is 90% Chinese speculators.

edit: if you mean the drug usage as the next biggest: in 2014, darknet markets saw more use than all legitimate payment processors put together. [https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity15/technical...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity15/technical- sessions/presentation/soska)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's where they forked [https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/commit/f7cb85824c732...](https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/commit/f7cb85824c732bd659906d2211b5428463087f98)

</comment><comment><USER6> E-coin is here!

</comment><comment><USER13> Yesterday GS quit R3; Today JPMC open sourced Ethereum; Are they abandoning Blockchain?

<comment><USER14> Isn't the JPMC Ethereum instance a private blockchain?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like the Haskell constellation</comment>


The day I accidentally killed a little boy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-42309681 <comment><USER5> Ever since I became a father (2 months ago), I've been seeing the world as a dangerous and an ugly place. This is confounded with the fact that, a month ago, I came to find out that my brother was bullied in HS and was never the same.

My brother has been out of high school for about 9 years now, but It took me 6 whole years to consider the possibility that something was wrong. I was in undergrad and focused on my studies, and then moved to NYC, so my time wasn't really spent at home with my brother, which should __never __be an excuse when it comes to family. But I let it be. Until my child was born.

9 years ago, my brother dropped out of high school and started seeing a therapist with the help and support of my dad. Both of them hid this from me until a month ago. The details of his high school days weren't revealed, but my brother has spent 9 full years dreading human interaction. I scolded him a year ago for not wanting to come to my wedding, and a month ago, begged him to come celebrate Christmas with my in-laws so that he can meet his nephew. He didn't end up coming, and that's when my dad finally revealed the details of the past 9 years.

It doesn't have to come to death to point out our primal fears as fathers. I used to be ambitious for the sake of being ambitious, but the arrival of my son, confounded with the revelation of my brother, has lead to a change in perspective. Everything can change in an instant, and contrary to the popular opinions of HN, the largest changes in our lives are beyond our control. The utter powerlessness of not being able to rewind to 9 years ago to be there for my brother gets at me. As does my fear and uncertainty of the life my son will be subjected to.

<comment><USER6> I think that the lesson of the article is not that weirdos or strangers make the world a dangerous and ugly place, but that we, the regular people who vote for and move to areas with zoning densities that make public transit impractical, who commute long distances in cars, make the world a dangerous and ugly place.

Every time we get into a car, we are choosing to take a risk not only with our own life, but with the lives of everyone else near the road. I mean, we kind of choose that by continuing to live in areas where our density makes public transit less practical, but there's a lot to be said for just taking the responsibility of driving a lot more seriously, and treating driving as something risky, and taking steps to drive less.

<comment><USER7> I don't think this is the argument the author of the article was trying to send at all. This accident could have just as easily happened in a dense urban core, as it could have in suburbia.

The message was something else - sometimes, bad things just happen to people, and there is little you can do about it other than move on, and learn from the experiences.

<comment><USER8> The likelihood of death is proportional to speed [1], and the speed is lower in the urban cores. The math is super simple, and let's stop trying to justify bad urbanistic (essentially, political) decisions blaming it on the bad fate instead. [1] [http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/11/the-85th-percentile- fol...](http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/11/the-85th-percentile-folly.html)

<comment><USER9> Speed is the most quantifiable factor in a collision.

It is also very controllable.

That is why it gets the focus that it does.

The trouble is, it's easy to get distracted by speed as a coefficient in collision intensity, and not pay attention to what causes that collision in the first place.

People often think that because speed is such an important factor that they shouldn't drive faster to help traffic flow, or even that they should block faster traffic. Those actions are very likely to _cause_ collisions, which is more important than the factor they are trying to minimize.

The likelihood of a collision causing death is just as proportional to mass. A semi hauling a trailer cannot stop in a short enough distance to prevent some collisions, and can be deadly even at very low speed. Even so, we realize the impracticality of reducing mass, so we focus on speed instead.

The real problem we need to focus on is collision prevention, not collision mitigation. Let's stop ignoring the reality of "bad fate", and do _real_ work to minimize it's occurrence instead.

<comment><USER10> Reducing speeds is a form of collision prevention, is it not? A typical car can just about stop on a dime at 15mph, and a pedestrian has more time to react.

There's a whole slew of other pedestrian-friendly street design that we could & should adopt as well, but that doesn't make speed any less of a valid approach.

<comment><USER11> Speed, in of itself, is not dangerous. What is more dangerous on highways is differential speed. i.e. if you're driving 60 mph when the traffic around you is doing 80 mph, you're the problem. Probably exponentially so if you're driving slowly in the "fast" lane. While rarely enforced, most states in the US have laws that require you to pull to the right if you're impeding traffic (usually defined as holding up +2 vehicles behind you) - even if you're doing the speed limit. Yet, these laws are rarely enforced, just like "No Trucks Left 2 Lanes" is never enforced in & around Chicago, despite being posted every mile or so on I 294.

I'd wager, also, that speed itself is rarely the direct cause of an accident. High speed, though, will make an accident more severe. My bet is that distracted driving is the #1 cause of accidents. On my daily 2-hour round trip on Chicagoland highways, I usually see 4-6 accidents each involving >2 cars. The shear amount of people I see on their phones is staggering. Hard to tell if it's social media or texting, but you can always tell because their head is staring at their lap, or they're holding their phones at the top of the steering wheel for all to see. I also see people with their phones mounted on their dashes watching movies or TV shows. Playing with your phone while driving is far more dangerous than paying attention & speeding.

<comment><USER10> _Speed, in of itself, is not dangerous_

Certainly! Falling from great height isn't dangerous either, you know.

<comment><USER12> "It's not the pace of life I mind, it's the sudden stop at the end."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can barely bring myself to read stories like this now. I never really thought about it before my son was born, but there's always this dread you live with in the back of your mind. This little helpless person has your life in it's hands. The world and fate is trying to take them out, and if they succeed you'd never recover. You can learn to live with pain, but I don't believe you ever get over something like that.

<comment><USER14> Haven't read the story yet, don't know if I will. I just wanted to reply to your comment with a personal anecdote. My eldest son died in an accident when he was about 2 ½ years old. The dread wasn't there before. I didn't think anything like that would happen to me. You do learn to live with the pain, even I sometimes cry for what would have been futile reasons. But I still couldn't bring myself to enter the church at an acquaintance's funeral. The pain was too much to handle. It's the guilt that's harder to get rid of. Everything you could have done to prevent it. Eventually (therapy does help) it softens a bit. So I don't think it's ever possible to get over something like that. It's been almost ten years. Maybe in another ten it'll have passed.

Edit: just wanted to add, spend the most quality time you can with your kids. I resigned from my job when my eldest was 1 year old to be able to spend more time with him. Best decision of my life in retrospect.

<comment><USER15> With respect to your comment about time spent with your child, I was in a similar boat a couple of years ago: I was weighing the implications of taking a new job that came with a significant salary increase, but aslo had the massive downside of having to be in the office and away from my family most days / evenings (60hrs per 5-day workweek). I vividly recall a conversation I had with my father who said something to the effect of, "You know, you'll never hear somebody on their deathbed saying, 'I wish I'd spent more time in the office.' You do, however, hear many people lament that they didn't spend enough time with their family." That resonated with me deeply, and I ultimately turned that opportunity away. I'm still not making what I would've made there, but the mornings and evenings I've spent with my children have been priceless.

<comment><USER16> Of course no one says that on their deathbed. Many people on their deathbeds have been retired for more than 20 years.

People in their 20s often care about their career. People in their 80s often do not. Who's right? It's often a trade-off. The goal is not to be happy on your deathbed; it's to be happy throughout life.

<comment><USER17> I think the idea is that if you're happy throughout life, you _will_ be happy, or at least content, on your deathbed. The "deathbed life analysis" is the thought exercise some people use to evaluate the long-term utility of decisions that seem to have obvious short-term benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> All the people talking about being unable to handle/comprehend the death of their child, and especially the one line of conversations about the impact of losing one child when you have many more, made me think about something. For most of human history, losing some children was expected. Child mortality rates for most of our history have been abysmal.

As species, what impact did that have on us? Child abuse has a long history of being accepted, with child sacrifices in some cultures to forced marriages of children (not to say any of these events were super common, but there were cultures in which they were accepted even if not common). Look at 16th to 18th century and what happened to orphans of single mothers and it is horrible by modern standards. In some cases orphans were treated as child slave labor or worse (granted, they would grow out of it if they survived, while with actual slavery it was for life). Even into the 19th and 20th century we had children working in factories where dismemberment was all too common.

But around the start of the 20th century, that started changing, and today harming a child is one of the worse things that a person can do. Many would quicker forgive an ex convict that killed a rival gang member than someone who intentionally seriously injured a child.

I wonder if this is at all tied to drops in child mortality rates.

<comment><USER19> I think the pain of loss was just as severe, and the past was just more miserable than we think.

Someday our children and descendants will look back at our time period in horror at the atrocities we continue to allow happen globally.

300,000 children under 5 die every year of malaria. The extensiveness of the agony that causes is difficult to comprehend.

<comment><USER20> > I think the pain of loss was just as severe, and the past was just more > miserable than we think.

Why would the pain be equivalent, despite the vastly different context: life experiences and expectations, cultural details, worldviews, etc?

To be clear, there are many aspects/phases to the pain of loss. I can imagine that the initial suffering may be very similar, but that the integration/processing of the event in subsequent months and years be significantly different.

That's not to say that, overall, it wasn't worse back then, but I'm guessing the pain from a single loss event might be noticeably different due to the vastly different context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I once worked a summer job at a state park in Western, NY. One of the employees there was a leather-skinned rough type that mostly kept to himself.

One day, I'm not sure how it was brought up, he remarked to me that he once killed a 22 year-old man in a construction accident when he was operating a large crane.

It rocked his world, and he was never the same.

I can't imagine living with that amount of regret and anxiety. Trying to fix it in your head. What could I have done differently? But it never changes, and you can't undo what you did.

At the same time, there is ultimately forgiveness from both parties, though there is a lot of grief. Things will never be the same, but staying in the past is the best way to never move forward.

<comment><USER22> I really enjoyed (maybe not the best word...appreciated) the film "Manchester By the Sea" for reasons that this story reminds me of. My wife and some friends who have seen it said it was 'boring' and that 'nothing happened'. To me, the fact that 'nothing happened' was a very much the point; There was no grand character arc because for most people you just don't ever come back from an event like that. There is no major turnaround and everything is all better moment. You learn to live and maybe find some areas of your life that don't quite suck 24/7 if you can, but that may be all that's possible. I found it to be a very 'real' human story that isn't often told well.

<comment><USER23> > because for most people you just don't ever come back from an event like > that

Is this even true? I think we tend to assume so but isn't it likely that many people simply move on with their lives? I mean Laura Bush was responsible for a fatal car accident and she seemed to do fine.

<comment><USER24> The article above talks about how many of the author's friends had no idea that the event happened to her, even though it was one of the most important events of her life. I imagine it's similar for many people who've endured a tragedy of some sort. At some point you have to stop talking about it because it doesn't help and you think that no one wants to hear it. It doesn't change how much the event has affected the trajectory of your life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You have to feel terribly sad for everyone involved here. The only place the blame can rest is humanity's desire to mix very fast, solid vehicles with very slow, squishy pedestrians in the same spaces. We're way too far down that rabbit-hole to address it, but hopefully self-driving cars (and less polluting cars, too) will start to reverse the damage done by the automobile, in the not-too distant future.

<comment><USER26> "We're way too far down that rabbit-hole to address it"

That's BS. Sweden has essentially zero pedestrian fatalities annually, and its overall traffic fatality rate is well under a quarter that of the US.

There are two main components: reducing speed limits and spending money on infrastructure. Both of these are anathema in the US, but the refusal to do so is borderline criminal, IMO.

[http://www.visionzeroinitiative.com/](http://www.visionzeroinitiative.com/)

<comment><USER27> +1

This seems to be a common excuse from people in the US "Oh yeah - well - <USER2> course_ you could do <something positive> in such a small place - the US is just too big for <something positive> to happen!"

I looked up some stats for the inevitable "But the US is bigger than that! We simply cannot solve this problem!" replies. The EU is pretty big too, but the fatality rate is _half_ of that in the US despite being of comparable land- area.

US road fatalities per 1m population in 2013: 104 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)) EU road fatalities per 1m population in 2013: 51 ([http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/Road_accident_fatalities_-_statistics_by_type_of_vehicle))

<comment><USER28> The distance driven per year per person in the US is twice that of the figure in the EU.

As an example for the prime driving age bracket, the average driver in the US, 20 to 55 years of age, drives nearly 30,000 KM per year.

In the EU it's half that.

You would expect fatalities to increase meaningfully when you double the distance driven per person.

<comment><USER29> The relevant statistic is fatalities per billion vehicle-kilometers, which attempts to even out that discrepancy, and leads to the same conclusion. Using this metric, the US still has twice the fatality rate than the UK.

> In the EU it's half that.

I'd like to see a source on that. I think the average American drives about 30% more.

<comment><USER28> The link/pdf below says 13,000km per driver in the EU. Other sources indicate 11,000km or 12,000km. Any of those work reasonably for this comparison.

[https://www.adac.de/_mmm/pdf/fi_nutzen_pkw- verkehrs_europa_f...](https://www.adac.de/_mmm/pdf/fi_nutzen_pkw- verkehrs_europa_faltblatt_englisch_1115_238337.pdf)

The US figure is around 22,000km per person for 2017.

In Sweden for example it's closer to 12,000km per person.

There's a dramatic gulf between the distance driven in the US and most everywhere else.

The passenger vehicles per capita are also reasonably over twice that in the US as in the EU (driving is far more distributed and common per capita). Around 263m passenger vehicles in the US, and 250m in the EU, with the EU having ~743 million people.

If you double or nearly double the distance driven per year, and significantly increase the share of the population that drives, it's not far off to expect a doubling of fatalities vs what you see in the whole of the EU. In fact, I might expect worse than that, as if you're pulling so many km driving, you're probably likely to be driving more often under increased stress and inclimate weather circumstances, driving at times when you perhaps should not be etc. (due to no alternatives). The risk of a bad driving outcome likely accelerates with such substantial increases in km per capita. If you take the US figure on up to 50,000km per capita, I would expect to see an even greater acceleration of fatalities per capita.

<comment><USER30> I agree that fatalities can be expected to rise as miles driven rise, however these two data points are not so closely linked. For example, driving ten miles in western Kansas on I-70 at midday is not the same as driving ten miles in a metropolitan area filled with shopping centers, with the sun low on the horizon ahead of you and a dirty windshield.

There are many, many variables which complicate the study of traffic safety and my hat is off to any traffic engineers able to deliver meaningful results. It does happen, but it's far more complicated than tracking per capita miles driven (not that you were making this specific argument, just pointing out the obvious).

<comment><USER31> >but it's far more complicated than tracking per capita miles driven (not that you were making this specific argument, just pointing out the obvious).

x2. A drunk driver going off a cliff is uninteresting since it's a known problem with known solutions (regardless of your personal opinion on how adequate the implementation of those solutions is).

Stuff where no party did much that was unreasonable is what's interesting because those tell you what edge cases cause the system to fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 25ish years ago I was driving my Toyota MR2 along the Cowley Road in Oxford on a Sunday morning, heading for an out of town supermarket, to pick up some groceries. Two teenage girls ran out from behind a bus that was waiting at a stop on the other side of the road, right into my path. Those who've been in a road traffic accident will know that time slows down the instant you know things are out of control. I stood on the brakes, the anti-lock braking kicked in and I slowed rapidly enough for the first girl to evade my bumper. But not the second. She went up and over. There was an almighty thud as she hit the roof, then rolled down the back, over the spoiler and onto the road. I jumped out of the car and ran back. The girl I hit was bloodied and confused. Her unscathed friend helped her to the side of the road, and I accosted passers to find someone with a mobile phone; they were rare in those days. Someone made the 999 call, and I moved my car off the main road and on to a side street, where a bystander congratulated me on not doing a runner (1), and offered a badly needed cigarette. An ambulance and police car turned up sharpish. Fortunately the girl I hit suffered cuts, bruises and shock alone. Not one broken bone. The police breathalysed me, and found me clear. I'd had a couple of pints the night before in the local, but it hadn't been a big sesh, so I was sober as a judge. Nevertheless, I was badly shaken. I drove home instead of going to the supermarket, and headed to my local for a large Scotch and a pint to calm my nerves. Some weeks later I was summonsed: the injured girl's mother was suing me. In British civil law, the driver is always culpable in an accident involving a minor, even if sober and below the speed limit, which I was. There was no need for me to turn up in court, as no facts about the accident was disputed. Compensation was awarded, the insurer paid up, and the matter was closed. Moral of the story: there but for the grace of God, don't drink & drive. Thought: who is culpable when it's a self driving car? Lasting impression: the brief few millisecs when I knew I was going to hit a child, and there was nothing I could do about it, were terrifying.

<comment><USER17> >In British civil law, the driver is always culpable in an accident involving a minor, even if sober and below the speed limit, which I was.

This seems like a weird construct, particularly given that minors do such stupid things. Two of them, together, literally ran into traffic, and the default is "blame traffic"?

<comment><USER33> Blaming traffic is appropriate.

For most of history it was very normal for people to run in to the street. It was a place for horses, carts, donkeys, people, and livestock, and more than that, it was a place for socializing _and_ transport _and_ commerce.

Then, a few wealthy folks showed up in their automobiles and said "GET OUT OF MY WAY OR I WILL KILL YOU" and oddly, we sided with them.

[https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/04/invention- jay...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/04/invention- jaywalking/1837/) has more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> My wife was involved in a similar accident except the victim was an elderly lady. My wife was driving very carefully, not speeding etc.

One of the things that I observed whilst we endured the aftermath is the lack of support for people in this situation and what a taboo there is around it. It felt as if there was no 'right' to sympathy or support due to the asymmetry of experience for those involved. It's even difficult to find the right language without it being pejorative. 'Hit and killed' implies some kind of intent or that there was some kind of choice.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is one of the reasons I started commuting by bike. I was hit by a car as a child and I thought I'd like to reduce the chance of that happening again.

From that perspective I find it weird every time bikes come up here there's someone complaing about bikes going too fast or ignoring the rules or digging out the last time someone got killed by a bike, often a years old story. Kids getting killed by cars isn't even a news story, just a part of life.

<comment><USER36> > This is one of the reasons I started commuting by bike. I was hit by a car > as a child and I thought I'd like to reduce the chance of that happening > again.

I commute by bicycle in the Netherlands (good infrastructure). I've been hit (all different occasions) by two cars, one scooter, one moped as well as another bicycle. In every single case I had right of way and didn't notice the other one doing something strange and unexpected. Unexpected as in: car making a right turn while I'm going straight (=right of way) without the car using their indicators or slowing down to make the turn.

It's been quite a while since the last accident, hope it stays that way. It also sometimes happens I make a mistake without this resulting in an accident. It's good that a mistake doesn't always result in an accident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Such a sad story.

> "The voice said in this very biblical, Old Testament, angry way"

Is this what people consider "biblical"? An angry person? I've spent years reading the Pentateuch, writings, and new testament and I don't see this voice (I assume she means "God") as angry at all.

Quite the opposite actually, as the narrative is [to the Jews] about God restoring them despite their rebellion and sin and [to the Christians] about God giving us his son despite our hatred and sin.

> "Then about 10 years ago I went to Israel on a trip. I'm Jewish and I went > with my rabbi and other people from the temple that I belonged to. While I > was there I took a Hebrew name, Bracha, which means blessing."

I assume this "voice" was the guilt that plagued her creeping into anything that mattered. It's sad the torment that we can inflict onto our own minds. It sounds like she was able to overcome it.

<comment><USER38> >> Is this what people consider "biblical"? An angry person? I've spent years reading the Pentateuch, writings, and new testament...

No, it's the old testament god. The one who punished Adam and Eve, the one who decided humanity was such a disgrace he flooded the world to purge them - <USER3> angry god.

<comment><USER37> Is God not able to try and judge people just as we do? If someone murders another, humanity has long believed it ok to imprison or execute them for their crimes. I fail to see how an all-knowing God is not qualified to make the same judgement.

> "Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and > that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. > The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in > His heart.. ...and the earth was filled with violence. - Genesis 6:5-11

That aside, there are more as many acts of mercy in these stories than judgement. The idea of an "Old Testament God" and "New Testament God" is rejected by all the Jews and Christians I know.

The New Testament is rejected by most Jews. Yet, even without this "merciful God" of the NT, we can see from the Old Testament writings that they regard God as one whos' "Loving kindness and mercy endures forever".

<comment><USER39> > The idea of an "Old Testament God" and "New Testament God" is rejected by > all the Jews and Christians I know.

How many Jews and Christians do you know? How many theologians do you know?

I could just as easily state that it is abundantly clear that the Old Testament and the New Testament are written by completely different people at completely different points in time.

Are you saying that all acts of cruelty by God in the OT are acts of judgement? And what kind of judgement is that? The story about Sodom and Gomorrah basically tells us that:

A) Any kind of sin can be punishable by death. B) Collective punishment is OK, including innocent men, women and children.

<comment><USER37> > Any kind of sin can be punishable by death

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. - Romans 6:23

You don't see sin as a big deal, but God does.

> including innocent men, women and children

That's the problem. What innocent people? All of Sodom and Gomorrah were doing some really, really bad things like burning children alive and torturing people.

> And the LORD said, "The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and > their sin is exceedingly grave. "I will go down now, and see if they have > done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I > will know." Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, while > Abraham was still standing before the LORD. Abraham came near and said, > "Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? "Suppose there > are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not > spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? "Far be > it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so > that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! > Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?" So the LORD said, "If I > find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole > place on their account."... ...Then he said, "Oh may the Lord not be angry, > and I shall speak only this once; suppose ten are found there?" And He said, > "I will not destroy it on account of the ten." - Genesis 18:20-32

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I heard a neighbor kid get hit by a car. A bunch of us were outside playing tag, heard the tires screech and the thump. The kid was an impulsive type, and the lady who hit him was our lunch room monitor, a very very sweet and kind woman. The kid was shooting across the road to check the mailbox, even though his mother had just told him she already picked up the mail. Other than the screech and thump, the only other sound I remember was our lunch room lady wailing when the paramedics stopped trying to revive him. We were half a block away observing, but is was like she was right next to me.

The kid was a grade or two below me, so I wasn't really friends with him. 40 years after the fact, that event still sticks with me.

<comment><USER30> When I was about seven I remember a boy named Simon who I used to play with, who told me how he liked to hide in the bushes beside the road near our houses and jump out in front of cars as they approached. I was too young to comprehend how messed up he was (he was one of those 'bad' kids who kept getting in trouble in school) and I went along with him to watch. He urged me to try it first but I knew better, and hid in the bushes while he did it.

I didn't yet understand how completely insane the situation was. The first couple cars just swerved or honked and went past without stopping, but a lady driving a VW Beetle was slower to react and slammed on her brakes, skidding and swerving and barely missing him. I can remember seeing him run out in the road, facing her with his arms out and an excited look on his face.

The lady driving was completely beside herself, screaming and crying as she ran over to him, demanding to know what was going on. Simon confessed and also told her about me hiding nearby, and I remember being terrified as she grabbed his arm and ran over to me, still shouting and sobbing all at once. She was (understandably) just completely out of control and she marched us up the road to our houses to tell our parents.

I wasn't allowed to play with Simon again and I think that was the day I realized that cars and driving were deadly serious, and nothing to joke around with. For me it was mostly seeing the reaction of the lady driver and trying to comprehend why she was so upset. Looking back on it, I feel sorry for her and for Simon's parents, because they must have had a hell of a time raising him. Strange the things you remember from childhood, but fortunately most people turn out OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Cars are the 2nd greatest engineering blunder only second to nuclear weapons. Cars are inherently dangerous. Every time you drive you risk killing someone or yourself. We must work to eliminate cars from the world, at the very least cars driven by humans. I am completely serious. There are the pollution issues too.

<comment><USER42> You don't think the benefits that automobiles brought to the world are worth more than "2nd greatest engineering blunder"?

<comment><USER43> I imagine ambulances save more lives than automobiles take.

<comment><USER44> Seems pretty easy to quantify - it looks like there are ~37K motor vehicle deaths in a given year [0] and "Approximately 6.2 million patient transport ambulance trips occur annually." [1]

Ambulances would need to save their passengers' lives <1% of the time for them to "break even" so to speak.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)

[1] [https://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/nti/pdf/811677.pdf](https://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/nti/pdf/811677.pdf)

<comment><USER45> Many many ambulance trips are non-emergency.

Even the emergency trips, it's difficult to say whether the person would have died if they didn't have an ambulance.

Overall this would be pretty hard to quantify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I was hit by a car when I was 7 years old. It was a hit and run. I was thrown into the air. Luckily, I only bruised my shoulder blade.

It was certainly my fault I was in the road, chasing a frisbee.

I can understand why the person would have run away from the scene.

I wish there was more forgiveness in society.

<comment><USER47> "Chasing a frisbee" should never put one at risk of death. The fault isn't with you; it's with the driver (going too fast to stop for a running child) and the traffic engineer (built an unsafe street next to housing / parks / etc.).

<comment><USER48> I respectfully disagree. There is a reasonable requirement that as you're passing someone on the street if they aren't in front of you it's not your fault. You as a human have a blind spot at which point you can't be reasonable expected to stop.

They should have definitely stopped after hitting someone.

Fault could be the drivers if they were speeding, the person was standing in the road (not entering at a perpendicular), drinking, etc.

This is why you should have a dashcam for your vehicle. I always ALWAYS watch side yards and such for children (my mom called them snipers). I drive down the middle of the road when people aren't around (more distance between parked cars and my bumper) but no one is perfect and the Fault isn't always the drivers.

<comment><USER47> The driver is always the one operating the heavy, dangerous vehicle around vulnerable people. That puts the standard of care directly on the driver, as the one choosing to put everyone around them in danger for their convenience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> >"In 2003 there was an accident at Santa Monica Farmers Market. An elderly man had ploughed into a group of people with his car and lots of people had been killed and injured. It was just carnage, it was a terrible scene. People were on the TV screaming that this 86-year-old man was a murderer"

86-year-old driver crashing into people IS murder, and not an accident. Lack of vision, pretty much no reflexes, cramps, aching limbs/joints, sclerosis. We (my family) took my great-uncles car keys away before he turned 80 because it was becoming apparent he has trouble with basic tasks, like backing up/parking/or even remembering to signal. Letting person this old drive is a gross negligence.

<comment><USER50> manslaughter ≠ murder

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> That article is actually the transcript of a BBC World Service Podcast. If you want to, you can listen to the lady tell her story in her own words [1]. Just a terribly sad story for all involved.

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05t5z1b](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05t5z1b)

</comment><comment><USER52> Well written - it shares a glimpse of the grief of an accidental death and the impact on two families.

This is but a small glimpse of what many soldiers suffer ('shellshock') after being required to deliberately kill.

A good reminder to have compassion for those around us. Everyone carries burdens. Some much greater than ours.

<comment><USER53> 'shell-shock' is literally the aftereffects of a concussive blast rattling your brain around in your skull; itself is usually diagnosed under the broader umbrella of PTSD, which one might also end up with after having to kill another person.

<comment><USER54> Think you'd struggle to find many people who've suffered a concussion from an accident then going on to develop PTSD.

<comment><USER53> No struggle at all: [https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/09/26/4950747...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/09/26/495074707/war-studies-suggest-a-concussion-leaves-the-brain- vulnerable-to-ptsd)

<comment><USER54> This seems to only be relevant to people already at risk of PSTD (troops). I think it says, having a concussion makes these troops more likely to develop PTSD. But troops are already likely to develop PTSD! This biases the control group.

You're confusing 'increases the likelihood of' with 'causes'. If you could demonstrate that peple who suffer a concussion then develop PTSD when non- concussed members of their group do not develop PTSD, then I'd accept the claim that concussion causes PTSD.

<comment><USER53> Does it seem unlikely to you that a concussive brain injury would cause lasting effects on a persons well being?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This story reminded me of how this morning, while commuting via bike to work in the rain, I was tailgated by an SUV. If I had slipped and crashed on some wet leaves, I probably would have been crushed to death, and (in a just world) the driver would be guilty of 4th degree murder. Yet we both carried on with our day as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. This is insanity. Why does US society tolerate such casually reckless behavior on the roads?

</comment><comment><USER56> Wow that was a strong read. Granted that they are quite at the opposite ends of 'accidental kill' spectrum, it immediately reminded me one of my favorite movies, In Bruges {SPOILER AHEAD!} where we see a _hitman_ who accidentally kills a little boy struggling with his life to overcome his "mistake". I get teary eyed every time I watch it..

<comment><USER57> Such a great movie. You might want to put a spoiler warning on that though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I have 4 boys under the age of 12. I would say I think about one of them dying (accident, sickness, murder...so many ways it can happen...) multiple times a day. I know that sounds morbid, and it probably is, but my brain does it on its own...not a lot of control over it.

Nothing on earth scares me more than the idea of having to go on living without one of them. Having 4 increases my odds that I might have to. It terrifies me on a daily basis! Yay, Parenthood!

I can't watch movies that involve kids being sick, hurt, etc. which is fine,,,,not the reason I watch movies, but I literally cannot. I will turn off the tv or leave the room. I'm a giant baby, basically!

<comment><USER59> On the other hand, having more of them decreases your odds that you will face losing all of them. Imagine how parents live who had just one child, who died.

<comment><USER60> There have been studies on this. Your life (well, chance at ever being happy again) is effectively ruined by the death of one child, regardless of how many you have.

You never stop loving or missing the one that died.

<comment><USER58> It's terrifying. The other day my youngest started crying and screaming cuz his stomach hurt (ended up being gas or upset stomach that lasted for 4-5 hours). My brain instantly went to "well that's it..."...it almost always goes through worst case first.

I literally can't imagine how hard it is on parent's whose kids are actually sick, suffering so badly, and then may end up dying. I don't know...I'm not sure I'm made of stuff strong enough to deal with that.

<comment><USER61> You take it one day at a time and try not to overthink it. You are also a lot stronger than you think you are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> "People thought they knew me but I didn't talk about probably the most significant event in my life." really speaks to me and my experience and isolation as a combat vet. I highly suggest two things for others with ptsd, which is what is most likely; cannabis as medicine, (self)cognitive behavorhal therapy exercises. For those who aren't away, advances in immersion c(e)bt with VR have been showing major promise for the desensitation and coping process, and is one of the reasons why I'm ready for VR to advance a generation or two.

"The way of the warrior is the resolute acceptance of death" ~ Miyamoto Musashi

</comment><comment><USER63> There is a truly sickening amount of victim blaming going on in this thread. People need to take a step back from your selfish perspectives and realize that there are real consequences when we try to make ourselves feel better by saying "it can't be helped" or "there's nothing you could have done". It's not the little boy's fault that he got hit, nor is it nobody's fault. The fault belongs with the driver who hit him, with the road engineer whose design encourages negligent driving, and the society that prioritizes convince for motorists over basic safety.

There is not such thing as an accident.

<comment><USER64> This discussion boils down to should the kid(or all kids) have been monitored a bit more? If so would it have affected him negatively in his later years? Blame game or not this discussion has a lot of merit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> My parental nightmare story - Many years ago when my youngest son was about 2 (he is 14 now), we were on family holiday and had just checked in to our hotel room which was on the 6th floor of the complex.

Exhausted from the travelling, we all decided to take a nap on the huge king sized bed. To this day I don't know what it is, but something snapped me awake mid-nap, and I looked across to see that my younger son had woken up, got out of bed, ambled across to the window, climbed on the ledge, and had cranked the lever, and was pushing the window open.

I leapt out of bed, and crossed the distance to the window faster than Usain Bolt, and grabbed him a split second before he plummeted out. I discovered that the window was (a) unlocked, contrary to hotel policy, and (b) the little safety bracket that would have prevented the window opening more than about 6 inches, was missing.

I reported to the manager, and the moved us to another room immediately, with better window security & safety.

To this day, I sometimes snap awake in my sleep with my brain screaming "OMG - I have to get [younger son's name] away from the window". In a kind of reverse blame, I keep thinking what if I had just slept through?

<comment><USER65> On another anecdote, similar to the OP story here - A good fried whom I used to play cricket with, had a sister, whose boyfriend was driving home one afternoon when a 3 year old boy chased a ball onto the road in front of his car, and was killed by the impact. He wasn't speeding or doing anything wrong. It was a pure accident. He was distraught about it and I believe, like the lady in the story, stopped driving for many years. I look back on the episode now and realise that I had no social cues as to how to approach him about it or offer him comfort in any way. I wonder how he is doing now - we lost touch and I have no idea where he is these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> When we say things like "I wish people read more widely" this is the kind of thing I imagine people should be reading.

Hopefully I'll never accidentally kill someone, but I like to think that a lifetime of reading about other people's experiences good and bad has made me less quick to judge someone as a 'bad person' and take a charitable view to trying to understand why people do things.

</comment><comment><USER67> I was dating this girl with a very young daughter. We were gonna go out on a date, so the daughter went with my ex's brother and sister. The sister knew how to drive, the brother was 16 years old and didn't know how to drive. So he ended up driving somehow, hoping to get some practice. He lost control driving on a straight highway with no traffic in either direction, hit a light pole, and the daughter (not wearing a seatbelt) went head-first into the back of the seat. Traumatic brain injury+coma, eventually she was let go off of life support and passed away.

I've always felt that, if I were capable of really hurting someone, it would be that brother. I still feel really angry about it, x years later.

Anyway, I can't imagine what that brother and sister are feeling about all this, even x years later. I don't understand why it would make me happier if I knew they were suffering from it. But at least this story helps me feel guilty about feeling that way.

</comment><comment><USER68> I spent about 10 days in the hospital when I was in 1st grade. A couple of other kids about my age shared the room for some part of that time. Both had been hit by cars when darting out into the street, one I think on a sled. Each, I think, escaped with a broken limb.

Shortly before we moved to the street where we now live, a kid rode his bike down a driveway and out into the street. The car that struck him was unlikely to have been going more than 30 mph, but the kid was in a coma for a week or two. A little later, a girl came down her driveway on a skateboard, and bounced off the side of a passing sports ute. I don't drive much these days, but I've had a sense of these neighborhood streets as dangerous places.

</comment><comment><USER69> Having been living in LA for the last few years, and as such becoming much more car dependent, stories like these make me dearly miss the days of having reliable trains and buses available at all hours to take me everywhere I needed to go.

</comment><comment><USER70> As someone who is not a parent, and reading these comments from fathers on how unbearable must be to lose a child (even the thought of it), brought me back to a story which taught me to feel, years ago, to try understand what losing a child does to a person. It was the game Heavy Rain. It is a big part of the narrative to put you on the father's shoes, to lose a child and dive down to a limbo, how your life basically just ends, emotionally. Of course, just a videogame, but that's what good fiction does, it puts you at a characther's shoes and makes you feel and think really hard about a situation unfamiliar to you.

<comment><USER48> As a gamer who became a father. I played this game and felt pain, but on the flip side I couldn't even play this game now. All I'd do is picture loosing my son. I could see a lot of the repercussions playing out in my house though, aka relationship with my other son, wife, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> This reminds me so much of Genesis' "Dreaming While You Sleep."

      All my life, you lie silently there
      All my life in a world so unfair
      All my life and only I'll know why
      And it will live inside of me
      I will never be free all my life
      Trapped in her memory all my life
      Till the day that you open your eyes
      Please open your eyes

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMEhTI- jko8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMEhTI-jko8)

</comment><comment><USER72> Damn...reading this was difficult. Her shame - rather than her guilt, which was absolved the minute she confessed to her being a cause for the boy's death - went on for too long. Glad she didn't take her own life. Heaven's forbid, if this ever happened to me, I'm not sure I could live with myself. It is such a punishing, harrowing ordeal for anyone to go through.... whew.

</comment><comment><USER73> This woman's story, and a number like it, was featured in the New Yorker recently [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-sorrow- and...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-sorrow-and-the- shame-of-the-accidental-killer)

</comment><comment><USER74> [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/science/its-no- accident-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/science/its-no-accident- advocates-want-to-speak-of-car-crashes-instead.html)

</comment><comment><USER75> I feel like reading articles like this makes me a more careful driver for a few days or weeks.

</comment><comment><USER76> That was a tough, but totally worthwhile read... _deeo breaths, puts the phone down_

</comment><comment> GuB-42 I expected some metaphor about becoming an adult. Turned out I was wrong, it is exactly as the title says, no second meaning.

Maybe I see so many "interesting" titles that I tend to forget that sometimes, they really mean what they are saying.

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm a mother with a young child. I don't think the childless and males can ever really understand the process of being pregnant for 9 months and then giving birth.

I empathize with her, but if she killed my child. I could never forgive her.

<comment><USER48> I don't think the childless females can ever really understand the process either...

I am a dad, and I saw a change in my wife the DAY my first son was born. It's easy to forget but we were all on the other side of having children at some point (regardless of gender). It's something that changes you, your relationships, your priorities.

If someone accidentally killed my child I don't know that I'd forgive them either. I know that it would tear my family apart and would ruin the rest of my life. I hope it doesn't happen to anyone.

<comment><USER77> Sure people who aren't pregnant can never understand what it's like to carry their child inside them for 9 months.

You feel their movements inside you. You just know when they aren't feeling well.They respond differently when you eat certain foods. It's an almost spiritual connection.

Then to finally meet them after 9 months, I just can't describe it.

<comment><USER48> It's interesting seeing the affect that feeding my kids had on my wife and their relationship. I was kind of jealous for a while. I didn't get to have that.

Don't get me wrong I still remember the first time I held them both, but I had to grow to know them from that day forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Mailboxes on the opposite side of a street with a 45-50mph speed limit? STUPID. I feel terrible for both the victim and the author, in part because tragedies like this are _avoidable_. This particular scenario seems pretty egregious, but even the typical line of cars parked along the side of the road - obscuring view of the sidewalk and giving pedestrians a false sense of security - is provably bad for safety. If you want safety you need to maximize all-direction visibility. You can also add traffic-calming elements like bumps or chokepoints, but those are strictly secondary.

FWIW, I live on a pretty busy street - feeder for the neighborhood, popular short cut between two state roads, 35mph speed limit. Technically parking is allowed, but nobody does so visibility is pretty good. In nearly 20 years living here, I've only seen or heard of one accident, and it was a neighbor's _dog_ (who came out of it fine). On runs I've seen evidence of maybe two or three other collisions. We're lucky. I can't imagine the carnage if we did something as stupid as putting mailboxes on only one side of the street.

<comment><USER79> Indeed the civil engineer who allowed such an egregious speed limit is at fault here.

<comment><USER80> Speed limits are not speed targets.

In the UK most b-roads are 'national' speed limit (i.e. 60mph or 70mph). It is expected that the driver selects the appropriate speed for the conditions, visibility, road etc etc.

Of course, we're humans, which means errors are made, people are impatient, we don't balance risk very well etc etc.

<comment><USER31> Speed limits are a function of road conditions, both static (e.g design) and dynamic (e.g. weather).

Posted speed limits are a function of the 90th percentile speed (usually based on typical conditions).

If you set low speed limits because "think of the children" you get other (safety) problems.

<comment><USER79> Just add speed cameras and eventually people will stop speeding.

<comment><USER66> They'll also spend more time looking at their speedometer and less time actually paying attention to the driving conditions.

[uncited opinion]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> The article reads like a case study on OCD from _Brain Lock_.

</comment><comment><USER82> Tragic. But how is this hacker news?

<comment><USER83> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER82> I'm not trying to be snarky, but I still don't see it.

<comment><USER84> It is, because enough people upvoted it. If you don't agree, flag it. If enough people do that, it will be removed, if not, it means it belongs here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> "The lead officer came and told me that they were not arresting me - there was no indication that I was negligent or distracted or impaired in any way - <USER4> he gave me a little lecture saying, "This child died, that's a terrible thing, you need to make sure that you never do this again.""

Was I the only one shocked by this? I mean, a little kid died and she's not arrested at least to conduct an investigation? How did they know she wasn't going to fast?

"never do this again"? What kind of BS closure is that?

I'm not saying she deserved to be convicted or something based on her side of the story, but taking the time for a basic investigation would have been nice.

<comment><USER26> IMO, the only person to blame in this incident is the person that thought a 50mph speed limit was appropriate for a road that kids live on.

<comment><USER86> Perhaps you've never been on rural roads that also have houses? There are many places where a 50+ mph speed limit is appropriate even though there are little clusters of houses dotted along the route. It's not practical to lower the speed limit for every house that has children.

<comment><USER54> > _It 's not practical to lower the speed limit for every house that has > children._

Yes it is. Do you mean, it would make driving more inconvenient, since drivers would have to slow down when they passed?

<comment><USER86> It's not just inconvenience, although that is part of it. The transportation department would have a huge added burden by needing a way to determine which houses have children, a lot more signage to mark the designated slowdown areas, extra workers to make the adjustments as families move around, a way to update various mapping/GPS systems, etc. The number of passing zones would be drastically reduced. Jake braking would be a nuisance for those houses with children. And there are probably more side effects that I can't think of immediately.

I don't disagree with any intention of improving safety, but there are pragmatic reasons we shouldn't unconditionally implement reduced speed limits around children.

<comment><USER54> I think you're overcomplicating your proposed solution; if it's a hassle to track each family's residence, assume all residences may have families present. Compression braking is a nuisance, so post speed limit & compression breaking restriction signs well in advance of the houses so normal braking can be used.

In the UK, all this is done by putting up street lights. The Highway Code then dictates that the road has a speed limit of 30mph and is residential (no compression braking).

I don't understand your comment about overtaking. Are you thinking of long, straight roads with mostly-evenly distributed houses over a large distance?

<comment><USER86> I don't think we're talking about the same kinds of roads.

In an area zoned for residential, e.g. a small town or village, the speed limit will drop and there are noise restrictions. That's quite common, although also quite sparse within the land area.

I've been speaking to unincorporated areas that have no zoning. Many of them are as you described: long, straight roads with mostly-evenly distributed houses over a large distance. These are the types of rural roads that make up the vast majority of land area in the midwest area of the US.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Open Sources Collaborative IDE  - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/109697072684132989725/posts/WwRaBNhJAch

<comment><USER2> Direct URL: <http://code.google.com/p/collide/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Bigger news?

 _After nearly 7 years, Google decided to shut down its Atlanta engineering efforts._

That's a relatively old shop to shut down. Anybody know how big it was?

<comment><USER4> I can't speak to the details of the decision. But what I can say is that aside from canning our site, Google treated us pretty darn well. We were all offered relocation options to other Google offices, which would come with cost of living pay bumps, paid moving expenses, etc...

And they let us open source pieces of the thing we were working on. Pretty sweet.

Some stayed with the company. But unfortunately, many of us could not make the move to another eng site.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the reply. Externally, watching Google kill of products is hard, but it's easy to forget that they might be killing off engineers with these moves too. It's great to hear that they're trying to keep the talent and just shed the real estate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _/me reads features..._

Awesome!

 _/me reads Java 7 requirement..._

Sadness.

<comment><USER6> You can always share emacs (or vim) under screen, tmux or that other thing Ubuntu uses on a throwaway EC2 instance.

I've been doing pair programming sessions on a Google Hangout sharing screens and I'm considering giving this setup another try.

<comment><USER7> Can you explain this in a little more detail, or have a blog post about it? I've been thinking about doing something similar (`screen` for shared coding environment, with some other thing -- skype, say-- for video chat). I'd be very interested to know details about such a set up someone else has used, and any caveats or issues (for instance, screen didn't seem to export the environment faithfully, in my limited experience).

<comment><USER8> I have done remote pair programming with screen for a long time. Tmux might be more modern, but I have never tried it.

Caveat with using screen: You must suid root the screen binary, which is not very cool.

Put the following in .screenrc:

      multiuser on
      acladd <other username>

Then, start a screen, and the other user can join it using:

      screen -x <your username>/

The slash at the end is important.

I like to add some stuff to the screenrc setting up a status bar at the bottom showing all the windows and which users are viewing which window, but I'd have to dig out my old screenrc to remember how.

Skype for audio chat, or some other audio chat (even just a phone call which is what we did a lot back in the day) is essential. Video is less important and hogs a lot of bandwidth.

Good luck, I really hope collaborative remote programming becomes more popular!

<comment><USER9> I have used GNU Screen + Skype in the past as well and it worked out quite well.

"I like to add some stuff to the screenrc setting up a status bar at the bottom showing all the windows and which users are viewing which window, but I'd have to dig out my old screenrc to remember how." Or you could use Byobu(<https://launchpad.net/byobu>) which is an enhancement of GNU Screen and comes with a lot of good features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any demo sites, videos, or screen shots?

<comment><USER11> I've just recorded a short 3 minute screencast showing an install and demo of Collide: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gq12bLbm54> \- to just see what it looks like in action, jump to 1:45.

(Please note, I have no special connection to the project.. just saw it here this evening, installed it, and poked around slightly ;-))

<comment><USER12> Hey, screencast looks good.

what tool do you use for recording screencasts & for onscreen text?

<comment><USER11> The full screen text is done with Grandview: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/grandview/id432436025?mt=12> .. lets me do full screen text "on the go" rather than have to create it all later.

The recording and (minor) editing is done with Screenflow. I do uploading to YouTube direct from that app too. Mic is a Rode Podcaster.

<comment><USER12> thanks for detailed reply :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How does it compare to Cloud9 IDE or Beanstalk in terms of the collaboration functionality?

<http://c9.io>

<http://beanstalkapp.com>

</comment><comment><USER14> I was really excited to look at the new collaborative IDE, unfortunately the requested link returned a 404 error. Bummer...

<comment><USER15> The link was pasted twice - the correct link is [https://plus.google.com/109697072684132989725/posts/WwRaBNhJ...](https://plus.google.com/109697072684132989725/posts/WwRaBNhJAch)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I can't edit it, hopefully an admin can fix it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It uses Google Wave. Well I guess it's not totally dead.

<comment><USER17> Apache Wave is alive and well. BTW, I think we can stop calling it Google Wave :-)

I run Apache Wave on my laptop just to kick the tires and I had it on a server for a while so I could ask a few people to try it with me. It is an instant install and run from either the svn or mirrored git repo, if you use the default file store. Configuring it with MongoDB as a data store takes some more effort.

<comment><USER18> How good is the UI? Is it the same it had when it was Google wave? Thanks

<comment><USER17> It is very similar, but slightly simplified. Written using GWT. The UI really looks great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Oh, they use vert.x, cool!

<comment><USER4> Yup! Vert.x is pretty cool :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Temporary example, showing OpenStack Nova tree. <http://collide.daviey.com/>

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm pretty excited about the new wave of IDE's in the browser: Cloud9, Eclipse Orion, and Collide. Just having them available, with my last setup, from any computer with an internet connection and a browser makes my life easier. Collide looks like it's using one of the internet's big plusses: collaboration. Kudos and keep going. EDIT: grammar

</comment><comment><USER22> Does this have the same mechanisms for dealing with multiple concurrent edits that Google Wave? ([http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational- transfor...](http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-transform))

OT: SLOCCount reported 61k lines of Java and 1k XML. That's quite a lot of code IMO.

</comment><comment><USER23> Jaime Yap (donjaime_hn) wrote a Google+ post explaining more about the project: [https://plus.google.com/u/0/107037260910017774154/posts/f2Rv...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/107037260910017774154/posts/f2RvyNbk8uM)

</comment><comment><USER24> At least it should allow one person selecting a block of text and make it also highlighted in the other one's window?

<comment><USER4> Collaborative cursors and selection highlighting broke during the open sourcing. What we released contains a ton of brand new code since we essentially had to build from scratch a one-off local server to drive the parts of the client that it made sense to release.

Code churned a bit :).

I have it on my list to get that working again soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Seems cool, but isn't sharing a VNC with a real editor like emacs/vi better?

</comment><comment><USER26> How is this IDE vs the other (few?) IDEs that can be used "in the cloud?"

<comment><USER27> As it stated by Jaime Yap, one of the Collide creator here [https://plus.google.com/107037260910017774154/posts/f2RvyNbk...](https://plus.google.com/107037260910017774154/posts/f2RvyNbk8uM)

"The Collide .. is a technology/library release, with a basic reference implementation provided out of the box. It is not a hosted service, or any kind of product competing with existing web IDEs like Exo or Cloud9. ... These existing web-IDE services could leverage technology in the Collide stack."

So we will definitely try to integrate Collide's collaborative coding abilities into eXo's <http://cloud-ide.com> ASAP Hopefully it should not be as complex as cloud-ide uses pretty the same stack of things (GWT, CodeMirror etc), so stay tuned :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Doesn't Google only open source projects when they don't want to spend any more time working on them?

<comment><USER29> No. A recent example is <http://code.google.com/p/vitess>

The largest example is Chromium.

<comment><USER30> I suspect the largest example is Android.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Easy Address Updater  - <AUTHOR>

Being in my "after college" years, I've moved pretty consistently once per year. That time is coming up again and I wonder: Is there one portal I can go to where I input my new information once, and then select my banks, state dmv, web host registrations, etc, and not have to do each one manually? <comment><USER2> I've looked for something like this before too.. I dont think it exists. Sometimes companies will get notified by USPS that your mail was forwarded and automatically change your address in their records or at least remind you to do so. That's my experience.

At the same time, being a security-conscious nerd, I'm not sure I would want to give even revocable OAuth access to a third-party portal to go in and change addresses to many of my most sensitive accounts... not to mention the fact that most banks etc dont have public APIs even if someone were to want to build something like this.

Just my two cents.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, my info with the USPS is always the first thing I update. Sounds like it may be more trouble than it's worth.</comment></comment>