Hidden Epidemic: Tapeworms Living Inside People's Brains - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jun/03-hidden-epidemic-tapeworms-in-the-brain <comment><USER2> I read a very similar article not that long ago, and forwarded it to my dad who is a surgeon. He said that tapeworms are very common in developing nations, specially Asia and South America. In "99.9%" of the cases the eggs are digested or the cyst shows up in an organ causing relatively low damage with "easy" extraction possible. Unfortunately, some of those eggs/worms can find their way into the head.

His advice was to cook all meats (be it pork, steak, etc.) well, and to avoid eating raw/uncooked meat. Apparently it reduces the chances of eating a living egg. No more medium-rare burgers for me since then.

</comment><comment><USER3> This pathology is NOT caught from eating pork. It can come from any food prepared by someone atypically shedding eggs (most likely someone from Latin America.) In fact you are more likely to get it from eating raw salad than cooked pork.

"But sometimes tapeworms take a wrong turn. Instead of going into a pig, the eggs end up in a human. This can occur if someone shedding tapeworm eggs contaminates food that other people then eat."

<comment><USER4> I find it interesting that, while we learn all of this in school here in Brazil people in developing countries have no idea about parasites. (but dont single out latinamerica - tapeworms are endemic in most of the developing world)

Anyway, if you are interested, it is also possible to get other types of tapeworm from other kinds of uncooked meat (like raw beef or sushi), although only the pork tapeworm is known to cause cysticercosis in humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congress spends hundreds of billions bailing out banksters and auto unions, while easily solved issues like this are allowed to linger, destroying countless lives worldwide.

<comment><USER5> _destroying countless lives worldwide._

Sure, it's a tragedy.

Philosophical question - why should I pay my taxes to cure this condition 'worldwide'?

This isn't polio, this isn't the 18th century. We know how people get sick, we know how to prevent this problem. Everyone does.

This isn't something money can fix - this is a cultural problem.

<comment><USER6> Umm... actually... the reappearance of such "Third World problems" as tapeworms, bed-bugs, and other parasites in America has become a major issue. Congress _does_ need to allocate money towards keeping _our_ nation parasite- free.

<comment><USER5> I disagree it's become a major issue. A problem, yes, but exaggerated by better reporting and invasive media.

We don't need to throw money at it, and certainly not at the Federal level. Because this isn't some kind of new thing, it's a people that have gotten lazy about public health and forgotten how awful epidemics can be.

It is - just like tape worm in the brain, a cultural problem, not something that money can fix.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't say people have gotten lazy. Somehow you just can't prefurnish an apartment or buy used furniture anymore if it involves upholstery, because bed-bugs have returned. I don't know whose "laziness" that is.

<comment><USER5> _I don't know whose "laziness" that is._

I don't habitually go around blaming individual problems on 'society' or 'the masses'. But ...

It's 'us' that got weak. Our culture. We got lazy, decided that the poisons that eliminated bedbugs were bad, forgot how awful the things were, how much work it was to keep a household free of pestilence, and let them slip back in.

You can see this attitude everywhere from vaccine deniers to the fools who deride public health measures as intrusive on their liberties.

<comment><USER6> Ah, fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I couldn't find the "epidemic" part of this article. Is there one? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic>

_In epidemiology, an epidemic (επί (epi)- meaning "upon or above" and δήμος (demos)- meaning "people"), occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience._

</comment><comment><USER8> Good god, that is horrifying. Did I miss it, or did the article not say how one contracts this?

I think I'll steer clear of the pork chops today.

<comment><USER9> You missed it, though it wasn't explicit:

>" _The eggs are shed in the infected person's feces. Pigs swallow these eggs accidentally as they rummage for food on the ground. When the parasite eggs reach a pig's stomach, larvae hatch and burrow their way into the animal's bloodstream. Eventually they end up lodged in small blood vessels, typically in the animal's muscles. There they form cysts and wait until their host is eaten by a human. (Pork has to be undercooked for the tapeworms to complete their journey.)_ "

They link Wikipedia which is no more explicit:

>" _They are infected by eating undercooked pork that contains viable cysticerci._ "

<comment><USER10> That's why every pork that is slaughtered will be inspected by a vetarinarian who is looking for these eggs (little white balls).

I remember, when I was a kid, my grandparents had pigs on their farm and when they slaughtered one once a year, some dude with a microscope would come the next day, check it and put a stamp on it.

And I am pretty sure that it is the initial reason why some religions are not allowed to eat pork, a smart move 2k years ago, when there were no microscopes around.

<comment><USER11> _And I am pretty sure that it is the initial reason why some religions are not allowed to eat pork_

In anthropology class, we were told that bone records showed the domestication of pigs, a subsequent explosion in pig population, then a sudden disappearance. The most likely explanation, we were told, was that pigs competed with humans for resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why wouldn't the blood-brain barrier prevent this?

<comment><USER13> The larva has to burrow into the bloodstream to begin with. Maybe it just waits until it gets stuck somewhere, and then burrows into the surrounding tissue?

<comment><USER4> The blood brain barrier is for microscopic stuff.

The tapeworm larvae, on the other hand, is a big multicelular mofo and it can burrow itself into brain tissue just like it can burrow itself into muscle/pork.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a BBC documentary called "Parasites" about the topic. It includes some cases of cysts and other larvae in the brain, and many more interesting cases of animals living inside humans.

</comment><comment><USER14> * puts down sandwich * backs away slowly * forward article to office, so they understand what I must now do * reaches for flamethrower...

<comment><USER15> As the writhing, teeming mass of mindworms swarmed over the outer perimeter, we saw the defenders recoil in horror. "Stay calm! Use your flame guns!" shouted the commander, but to no avail. It is well know that the Mind Worm Boil uses psychic terror to paralyze its prey, and then carefully implants ravenous larvae into the brains of its still-conscious victims. Even with the best weapons, only the most disciplined troops can resist this horrific attack.

<comment><USER16> So I take it that this means we all have to align ourselves with Gaia's Stepdaughters?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, thank goodness I'm already done with lunch.

This article was truly terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER18> I had to pick the Swiss cheese out of my sandwich after seeing the pictures.

</comment><comment><USER19> 1.5k to 2k people in a country the size of the US is hardly an 'epidemic'.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you're on the east coast like I am, the timing of this article is perfect.

 _notes to cook pork a little beyond the recommended temperature in future_

</comment><comment><USER21> euwwww

</comment><comment><USER22> _Oh_ my fucking god. I need an MRI. stat.

</comment><comment><USER23> Check out Carl Zimmer's book: Parasite Rex and his columns for more of the same.

</comment><comment><USER24> The odds of a hacker in the US developing neurocysticercosis is approximately nil. If you would like to promote a slightly more relevant topic for your compadres, please consider upvoting my letter to a patient: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3982796>

<comment><USER4> Did it ever happen to you that there are also hackers outside the US?</comment></comment>


Exmuslim gets death threats on Facebook,shares screenshots,FB blocks his account - <AUTHOR> https://www.twitter.com/ArminNavabi/status/1030694723596443648 <comment><USER2> Hate, conspiracy theories, anything that is rabid clickbait attracts eyeballs and thus ad revenue.

Is it any surprise vanity platforms don't do a good job at moderation? Content moderation is both an expense and revenue limiter.

As a good number of the replies in that tweet thread suggest, the only solution is if people abandon fb en masse, which seems unlikely given the apparent growing need for attention and social validation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would you share screenshots of death threats? That's like taking a screenshot of a picture of animal abuse that was posted on Facebook and reposting it. Of course it will get you blocked.

<comment><USER4> Why would you blame / punish the victim?</comment></comment>


Goats on Acid (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/8/goatsonacid.php <comment><USER2> > ... after administration of 15 micrograms of LSD per kilogram of body > weight.

That's a huge amount. 15ug/kg would equate to 1200 ug for a 80kg human, which is a lot.

That goat was tripping balls, no wonder it was painting the infinity symbol (8) with its movement patterns :).

Also, the 7000 pound elephant who died, was injected with 297mg of LSD, which would amount to 297,000ug/3175,15kg = 93.5ug / kg, which is insane.

Did those "scientists" even know what they were testing ?

But anyway, interesting results. I'm curious if they tried dosing an animal and a human at the same time to see how human-animal interaction and communication is affected.

<comment><USER3> > _Did those "scientists" even know what they were testing ?_

They thought they did. Check out the original paper. They found that many animals needed higher (relative) dosages to get affected, administered up to 1mg/kg to macaques (no death), and found that 6.5mg/kg was necessary to kill a cat.

"Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Its Effects on a Male Asiatic Elephant" [http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~steh/PSB3002/LSDelephant.pdf](http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~steh/PSB3002/LSDelephant.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Interesting read: It's quite surprising that they didn't start with a lower dose for Tusko the elephant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >One LSD-affected baboon or chimpanzee in a group of unaffected animals creates havoc by disregarding the hierarchies of the group.

:)

<comment><USER6> Now you know why it's illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it interesting that this substance is psychoactive in so many animals, from hornets to frogs to humans. Are there any other examples of something like this?

<comment><USER8> Spiders on drugs: [http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm](http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm)

<comment><USER9> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A video would be nice :(

<comment><USER11> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpccpglnNf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpccpglnNf0)</comment></comment>


How a Kalman filter works, in pictures - <AUTHOR> http://www.bzarg.com/p/how-a-kalman-filter-works-in-pictures/# <comment><USER2> The artificial synesthesia is nicely done.

Wish this doc was around when I built a balancing robot.</comment>


Ask HN: Best command line XMPP client? - <AUTHOR>

I recently asked about the best command line Usenet client (and the best command line mail client has been discussed plenty in the past); now I wanted to ask about peoples favorite CLI XMPP clients?
Right now I'm using Finch (CLI version of Pidgin), but I hate the interface (fake floating windows just waste a ton of space). I use IRSSI for IRC, and always wish there were something similar for XMPP (that wasn't just a hack ontop of IRSSI). Any suggestions?
I prefer Vim-like to Emacs-like if it's relavant, but all suggestions are welcome. OTR support a big plus. <comment><USER2> [http://cybione.org/~irssi-xmpp/](http://cybione.org/~irssi-xmpp/) << XMPP- Plugin for Irssi [http://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html](http://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html) << bitlbee "An IRC to Other Chat Networks gateway. Needs a setup and can be used with irssi IIRC

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply, but as I mentioned in the post I'm more curious about actual XMPP clients than plugins ontop of IRSSI (or IRC gateways). Hopefully someone else will find these useful though (I've used both of these in the past, and they're not bad; just not what I'm looking for currently).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Right after posting this I discovered Profanity ([http://www.profanity.im](http://www.profanity.im)) which looks just about perfect; except that it doesn't allow multiple accounts in a single process or support OTR chat.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty fond of MCabber ([http://mcabber.com/](http://mcabber.com/)), a full featured XMPP client with proper Multi-User Chat (MUC) support. I use it inside a screen(1) session, next to irssi.

<comment><AUTHOR> MCabber looks pretty nice at first glance; thanks for the tip. I'll have to go find a sample config for it before I can actually use it and see if it's any good though.

<comment><USER3> It should ship with one, but otherwise see here [http://mcabber.com/hg/index.cgi/file/dd8ae0abfc68/mcabber/mc...](http://mcabber.com/hg/index.cgi/file/dd8ae0abfc68/mcabber/mcabberrc.example)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've used centericq/centerim extensively in the past, but switched to finch which works decently and seems more maintained.

You could try the beta of Centerim 5, relies on Pidgin's libpurple.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use Poezio, it's great: [http://poez.io/en/](http://poez.io/en/)

The main downside are that it is not yet packaged in Debian/Ubuntu.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks; Poezio is one I haven't stumbled across yet and it looks pretty great as well at first glance. Hopefully it supports multiple accounts (unlike Profanity).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do you consider Bitlbee with IRSSI a hack? I use that and it works fine for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've used that in the past actually, but the purpose of this post is to get a feel for what actual XMPP clients are out there. Thanks though.</comment></comment>


Why Elm Is Going to Change the World - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dailydrip/why-elm-is-going-to-change-the-world-f5a6c693b2ca#.ewg0aso87 <comment><USER2> Is it possible to create progressive web apps[0] with Elm? It looks awesome but JavaScript everywhere all the time isn't great for everyone.

[0]: [https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/getting- start...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/getting-started/your- first-progressive-web-app/?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like Elm, but the language has some limitations at the moment.

Right now imo, Elm shines as a path for developers to discover the nice aspects of ML without the a lot of upfront investment. As projects get larger, the verbosity and repetition may drive people to check out more expressive languages like Haskell or PureScript.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope never find an article like this, talking about my favorite tech</comment>


Joseph R. Biden III, Vice President's Son, Dies at 46 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/us/politics/joseph-r-biden-iii-vice-presidents-son-dies-at-46.html

<comment><USER2> Hard loss, my uncle has/had a brain tumor and even though he's gone through chemo and surgery he's definitely a different person. I can't even imagine even thinking of running for governor after something like that. For example, after my uncle's most recent surgery he was asked to push on the doctor's hand but started pulling it, the signals were crossed. Even at a most basic level things become significantly more complicated after something like that.</comment>


Google releases Neatx NX server - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/343280/

<comment><USER2> Wow, that's fantastic news. I've been using No Machine's NX for a while and it's a really great way to do remote desktoping.

</comment><comment><USER3> For anyone who hasn't used NX it's very comparable in terms of features and performance to Microsoft/Citrix's remote desktop protocol. Good enough that you can easily forget you're using a network display. So in other words the opposite of VNC.

</comment><comment><USER4> I tried using NX to do desktop sharing among multiple users (2 in this case) like a common use case for VNC, but with no success. Doest NX work only as a way to control a desktop remotely from just one computer, with no sharing? Or am I missing something?

edit: when I say no success, I mean it got really slow, just like vnc, rather than really fast, like nx with a single user.

</comment><comment><USER5> nice, I remember using NX a couple years ago and found it way more responsive than VNC

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great, a few years back I was working with a local highschool to setup remote terminals using the NX protocol, the project ended up going nowhere though due to a lack of hardware.</comment>


React Developer Tools, a Chrome Extension for debugging React JS Components - <AUTHOR> http://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2014/01/02/react-chrome-developer-tools.html

<comment><USER2> I've used React quite a bit and find React apps pretty easy to debug so I haven't felt the need for something like this, but I'm looking forward to having another tool in my belt for the next time I find myself in a confusing situation. Big thanks to Sebastian for building this.</comment>


Show HN: ChroniclerJ, efficient record-replay for Java programs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Programming-Systems-Lab/chroniclerj ChroniclerJ is a record-replay tool designed to reproduce crashes in your code that occur in the field. <comment><USER2> How does this compare to the commercial system Chronon[1]?

[1] <http://chrononsystems.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> For one thing, our solution is open source and has been described in an academic paper. Also, Chronon cannot record Scala or Groovy programs. ChroniclerJ has no such issues as it operates through byte code rewriting. Moreover, the technique we have implemented can be easily ported to other VMs such as the .Net CLR. Chronon does not execute code during replay so I am not sure how they are guaranteeing that the state of the program when it crashed can be reproduced. Chronicler records sources of nondeterminism while allowing execution of the deterministic parts of the program and thus guarantees that you will get to the exact state at which the program crashed.</comment></comment>


Neuropsychosocial profiles of current and future adolescent alcohol misusers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13402.html

<comment><USER2> We don't need two of these posts on the front page. Perhaps you could post a link to the paper as a comment in the other one? (That's what we tend to do when there's a current popular article and it's not too fluffy.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do from now on, thanks dang!

<comment><USER3> Hey Sizzle! Unrelated to this post, but you asked for a link to a paper a while ago, and I never got around to sending it to you. I can't reply to that comment any longer and I don't have enough karma to see your email address in your profile. could you shoot me an email at josephpmay [at] gmail.com so I can send the paper to you?

Here's the comment thread where you asked to see the research: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379505)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What one app can I use to manage all the IoT devices in my home? - <AUTHOR> I have a Ring doorbell, Ring alarm, smart blinds from Tilt, Nest thermostat, Alexa, August lock and etc.
All of them use separate apps and don't work with each other. Not all of them have integration with Alexa either and I find Alexa app super difficult to use.
Is there any app I can use to manage all of these devices? And write my own integrations when needed? <comment><USER2> I write python scripts to control my devices, and made a web page to trigger these scripts: [https://github.com/printfinn/smart-garage- rails](https://github.com/printfinn/smart-garage-rails). I run this website on a Raspberry Pi in my home, it's been working fine for half a year. It's written with Ruby on Rails, and one good thing it provides is that you don't need to worry about privacy, because it doesn't need to be connected to the Internet, only inside you home net.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like Home Assistant may fit your usecase well if you are willing to do some small initial configuration. [https://www.home- assistant.io/](https://www.home-assistant.io/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I am using node-red to control some lamps e.g. when it is getting dark and my phone is around (check bluetooth connection) then turn on the living room lamp.

You can do so many automations by using nodejs in the nodes.You can check it out here [https://nodered.org/](https://nodered.org/)</comment>


Ask HN: webtools for new website design/flow - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to help a friend fully design a new webapp prior to getting bids on programming.  By "fully" design, I expect programmer(s) to be able to use this design to identify 90% of the visual assets and easily infer the functional specs based on the UI layout and flow.
I expect to employ a good web designer to do this first phase but do not expect the web designer to be in the same part of the world as the customer.  There must be some great web-based solution for the customer to iterate over the design and flow of this new app with the designer.  I can't seem to find such tool(s).
The app is mostly data-backed forms and lists with common page structure throughout, no streaming media, flash, etc...just standards based HTML/CSS/maybe JS.  Documenting the design, flow, and correct elements on each form is the highly iterative part we want to do with a designer prior to inviting coders to the mix.
Any advice?  If there are some good designers that are comfortable with such an undertaking, feel free to contact me. <comment><USER2> try pencil -its a firefox plugin.

<http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Is Balsamiq too low-end? <http://www.balsamiq.com/></comment>


(Rumor) Steve Jobs Has "6 Weeks to Live," Says the National Enquirer - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/#!5762521/steve-jobs-has-weeks-to-live-says-the-national-enquirer

<comment><USER2> Related:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2228842>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2228854>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2230042>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2230361>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2230497>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2230702>

I seriously hope I never become famous.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.fakesteve.net/2011/01/im-totally-fine-but- goodbye...](http://www.fakesteve.net/2011/01/im-totally-fine-but-goodbye-for- now.html)

"I hope that when you see stories like that - because you will - you use their comment strings to express your outrage for being the kind of scumbags who would put their own hunger for unique visitors and pageviews ahead of a man's right to privacy."

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately most of those comments will end up moved to #devnull

<http://gizmodo.com/#!devnull/forum>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It pains me to see Gizmodo running an article with the National Enquirer as its primary source. They do make the necessary disclaimers, "The Enquirer is also wrong a lot especially when it comes to proclaiming that celebrities have mere weeks to live." but perhaps they'll run anything to get the attention away from their redesign.

<comment><USER5> Then again, maybe it was the _purpose_ of the redesign.</comment></comment>


Chatbot Game widget:  Amusing bot widget whose responses come from people playing the Chatbot Game. - <AUTHOR> http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/chatbotgame

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that you can customize the content of the chat for your site/blog using the chat_focus and/or targeted_rules parameters:

<http://chatbotgame.com/?cmd=chat_ecw></comment>


Hundreds march in Singapore against website licensing regime - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/news/singapore-website-protest-bloggers-419/ <comment><USER2> This isn't an attack on free speach. This has the hallmarks of regulatory capture. If you're a news organisation whose readership is being undermined by no moat blots (anyone can set one up and they cost nothing to run) then your profits are in grave danger. Structurally your business is suspect unless you can find a way to arbitrarily limit competition.

This license is both arbitrary and expensive. Media sites no longer need to fear competition from small time blotters or new news upstarted.

<comment><USER3> The resulting law is nevertheless an attack on free speech, regardless of alternative underlying motivations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" It is an international embarrassment when governments around the world are working to deregulate the Internet, and Singapore, one of the wealthiest nations per capita, is going in the opposite direction," the activist told AFP._

I am not sure which governments he speaks about. America? China? Russia? Middle-Eastern countries with their blasphemy laws?

<comment><USER5> Iceland? Lovely little country. I've been seriously considering learning Icelandic lately...

<comment><USER6> Does Iceland want immigrants?

Japan, another quite homogenous country (demographically speaking), makes it quite difficult to immigrate there.

Contrast with the USA, where one of Americas greatest strengths is in welcoming immigrants. E.g. people like Andy Grove and Sergey Brin and countless others.

<comment><USER7> You mean, how it used to welcome inmigrants.

It doesn't anymore. Brin entered in 1979, and Grove in 1957.

Some extremely talented people (for example, one worked with Anders Hejlsberg developing C#) are still stuck in the extremely long green card process. And, other than H1B, I don't know of a decent way to get a work visa in the U.S. (forget about actually inmigrating).

Compare to Canada, where I know there's a sane system for entering, it's still bureaucratic, but at least it's clear.

Australia is even more open. And while Europe is heterogeneous in its inmigration policies, it's far better than the U.S.

<comment><USER6> Good point. Even by the time Brin entered in 1979, the rules of immigration had changed. Brin got in easily because we had special rules for Jewish families trying to get out of the Soviet Union. More recently (in the 2000's) we did the same thing for certain persecuted people from Africa (a colleague helped sponsor a family of these; sadly I don't remember the exact nationality).

But what happened to the "traditional" method of high tech immigration? I.e. come here for grad school, then stay. Is that all H1B stuff? I know quite a few people who came here for grad school and then stayed to work in high tech. They are now citizens. Their children are native born Americans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reading the article slowly, it's a lot less than it is suggested. To qualify one must be covering Singapore news and have 50000 unique visitors from Singapore per month.

I think it is a pretty catastrophic law, but it is not the same as saying all blogs must be licensed.

<comment><USER9> The definition of news according to this regulation is _" any news, intelligence, report or occurrence or any matter of public interest about any social, economic, political, cultural, artistic, sporting scientific or any other aspect of Singapore in any language"_. That covers a lot of ground.

50,000 unique IP addresses (not visitors, as in the article) isn't too hard to hit either.

Here's the original press release by the regulatory authority: [http://www.mda.gov.sg/NewsAndEvents/PressRelease/2013/Pages/...](http://www.mda.gov.sg/NewsAndEvents/PressRelease/2013/Pages/28052013.aspx)

<comment><USER8> My reading is that they would have to be 50000 unique Singaporian IP addresses and that weekly coverage of Singaporian news was required as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wouldn't it be _incredibly_ easy for a government or major news organization to spam a news blog, causing them to rise over the 50,000-visitor threshold, thus forcing them to apply for the license?

<comment><USER11> I think the genius here is twofold. If a blog under that threshold seems threatening, they can do as you say. But the likelihood of that is kept low by the fact that people won't advertise their blog. Once a blog hits Twitter, Reddit or maybe even here and reaches a viral mass, that information spreads way too fast for a government to control - but who wants that to happen if they'll have to buy a license?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Singapore is good for business but bad free speech. Fortunately, anonymous speech is much more easily done than anonymous business :)

<comment><USER13> By doing business in Singapore you're funding this very evil regime.

<comment><USER14> You might not like Singapore's govrnment, but calling it "evil" is a bit of a stretch. I don't think Singapore has ever had legal slavery, massacred its indigenous population, or used weapons of mass destruction on foreign cities. But hey, we can talk about it, right?

<comment><USER13> Did North Korea ever had legal slavery, massacred it's indigenous population or used weapons of mass destruction on foreign cities?

<comment><USER15> Yes. Kim Jong-il had personal slaves. Plus thousands of North Koreans work to death in concentration camps.

And comparing Singapore to North Korea is just absurd. You might as well just reference the Nazi's and be done with Godwin's law ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law))

<comment><USER16> straight_talk isn't comparing Singapore to North Korea; they're arguing that Tloewald's definition of evil is too strict because it wouldn't include North Korea.

<comment><USER14> I'm not providing a definition of evil, i'm pointing out that Singapore's achievements on the Evil Checklist don't measure up to the United States'. I don't think the US is evil either, it sets a high bar for other contenders though.

Take a look at the Roman Empire which, despite everything, made the lot of ordinary people better.

North Korea probably meets my definition of evil, but I really don't know enough. Nazi Germany, Stalin and his apparatus. Pol Pot.

Edit: among millions worldwide, I marched in protest against the massacre at Tien an men square. My mother, who has far better cred in this area than I do (having been imprisoned and tortured as a political prisoner) argued in favor of the Chinese government — she said China wasn't ready for democracy and far more people would suffer in a chaotic transition than if the government were allowed to reform at its own pace. It's imponderabe — we can only try to do what we think is right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really, an article on censorship from "RT" aka Russia Today? According to Wikipedia "funded by the federal budget of Russia".

I want to see an article from them critical of Putin, their dear leader. I suspect that whoever wrote it would be lucky to escape alive to London. That's a bit harsher than spending $39,500 for a license.

Reminds me of the old joke of many years ago. An American journalist and a Soviet journalist are talking about press freedom. The American says something like "America is great. We have freedom of the press. I can freely criticize Richard Nixon and explain how bad and corrupt he is". The Soviet journalist says something like "We have the same freedom. I can freely criticize Richard Nixon and explain how bad and corrupt he is".

<comment><USER17> > Really, an article on censorship from "RT" aka Russia Today? According to > Wikipedia "funded by the federal budget of Russia".

What does that have to do with the story of the article? Either the story is true or not, this has nothing to do with the source.

> I want to see an article from them critical of Putin, their dear leader. I > suspect that whoever wrote it would be lucky to escape alive to London. > That's a bit harsher than spending $39,500 for a license.

False dichotomy. Spending $40k to blog is pretty awful and is not rebutted by something that's even more awful.

<comment><USER18> That's not a false dichotomy. That's an appeal to worse problems.

<comment><USER19> He didn't rebut it or claim to. He merely said "it's a bit harsher".

<comment><USER18> That's precisely why I said that this is no false dichotomy here. False dichotomy is something completely different. False dichotomies are things like "if you're not with us, you're against us", or "The new research shows that one part of the theory of evolution is wrong, therefore creationism is right". There's nothing like this here; his was a simple statement of the form "X is not bad, because Y is even worse". See the difference? False dichotomy means (falsely) asserting that when you disprove the _factuality_ of one alternative, only one other alternative remains and therefore it's automatically true. (Whereas apeeal to worse problems is not about factual truths but about the weights of problems to be solved.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is anybody surprised? This is Singapore where the authoritarian PAP has been in power for decades.

</comment><comment><USER21> As an Indian citizen, the scariest thing about this is my government copying from its Singaporean counterpart.

</comment><comment><USER22> How on earth are they going to enforce this.

<comment><USER23> One blog at a time. It's not difficult to imagine there are a few government people looking for unauthorized blogs, or the ability to report an unauthorized blogger.

<comment><USER24> Singapore was one of the earliest adopters of a national firewall (back in the late 90s). I am sure this will be the primary tool in monitoring any 'misuse' of the Internet by the powers that be. Bo

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Singapore make Russia's Putin regime look good ;)

</comment><comment><USER26> Singapore has only recently relaxed (read: suspended) the imposition of mandatory capital punishment for drug trafficking charges.

While Western governments and media have long criticized Singapore's draconian laws and its low tolerance for all crime, it has to be said that the prosperous city-state has been highly effective at warding off the ill effects of lax criminal jurisprudence and enforcement that typify, with the exception of an absurdly oil-rich Norway or two, almost all developed Western societies.

It pays to give our approach to crime and sentencing another look before we blissfully laud ourselves for 'upholding' some imaginary ethos governing human dignity at the cost of rampant societal maladies that continue to plague us, while in reality, doing a sloppy job at both.

Case in point:

Number of deaths in Iraq over the period of 2003-11 : 4,422

Number of murders in Chicago,Ill. over the same period : 4,265

Source(s):

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNIT9Dn_Rjk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNIT9Dn_Rjk)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaDR2kLI0m0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaDR2kLI0m0)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_99LydvXqDk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_99LydvXqDk)

[https://www.osac.gov/Pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=138...](https://www.osac.gov/Pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=13850)

[http://hbo.vice.com/episode-nine/ep-9-seg-1](http://hbo.vice.com/episode- nine/ep-9-seg-1)

<comment><USER27> There is absolutely no way that the total death count in Iraq from 2003, at the start of the US invasion, to 2011 is only 4,422. Bush's own estimate, which was heavily sandbagged, was 30,000.

<comment><USER26> The graphic clearly refers to Americans killed in Iraq.

Source:

[http://hbo.vice.com/episode- nine/ep-9-seg-1/infographic](http://hbo.vice.com/episode- nine/ep-9-seg-1/infographic)

<comment><USER28> The graphic does, but your reference to it makes no such mention.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FBI investigating vandalism of fiberoptic cables at Livermore - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/FBI-investigating-vandalism-of-fiber-optic-cables-6360469.php <comment><USER2> Something really interesting I noticed, according to: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/270207251/Severed-Fiber-Optic- Cabl...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/270207251/Severed-Fiber-Optic-Cables)

There were cuts in Alamo @ 11pm, and then in Fremont at 11:40pm.

It takes almost exactly that long to drive between these locations.

Either there are multiple parties at work here, or these cuts are planned very well and executed flawlessly.

Indeed, this dual-pronged approach seems to happen three times total.

On 7/6 Berkeley to Fremont, 7/7 Walnut Creek to Fremont then San Jose (though I think it would be hard to get from WC to Fremont in 25 minutes... basically impossible), and 6/8 Alamo to Fremont.

Actually, it seems almost certain that multiple people are either doing this independently or working together.

Since the disparate cuts happen on the same day, it seems very much like multiple people are working together.

<comment><USER3> It would be interesting to learn what high profile clients are getting their connectivity and how it affects their business either by a) severed or no connectivity or b) that a splitter device is running somewhere near the cut and doing MITM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're wondering whether this is related to the sniper attacks on electrical transformers in 2013, don't worry - despite having apparently no idea who did either, the FBI is pretty sure there's no connection.

"On April 16, 2013, suspects clipped fiber-optic cables outside San Jose before snipers opened fire on electrical transformers at PG&E's Metcalf Transmission Substation, causing more than $15 million in damage.

According to the FBI, the recent spate of fiber cuts are unconnected to the sniper attack on the Metcalf substation. No one has been arrested in connection with that attack."

[http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sacramento- cable...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sacramento-cables- vandalized-20150630-story.html)

<comment><USER5> One has to question how they can be so certain they are totally unrelated given they have no clues about either incidents. Seems more like wishful thinking than sound facts at this point.

<comment><USER6> No public information about a crime doesn't mean no clues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how long it will be until the authorities start getting cell site records showing everyone who was near each of these locations and then analyzing them to find people who just happened to be in/around several of these locations when each of the cuts occurred.

<comment><USER8> Or who's cell phone shut off 1 or 2 cells over then turned back on 1 or 2 cells over in the time frame of the crime. This is the kind of FBI sleuthing I'd support, assuming they got a warrant.

<comment><USER9> A warrant to query everyone's geotagged cell phone records? That's a long way from traditional warrants to obtain a suspect's call log or to tap a suspect's phone...

<comment><USER7> I don't have a link handy or even recall what the situation was, but I recall reading of at least instance where law enforcement acquired cell site "dumps" of every connected phone. What I mentioned isn't too far off from that.

<comment><USER10> You might be referring to this story from Lebanon.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/the-hezbollah- con...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/the-hezbollah- connection.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I acknowledge my own paranoia, but is there any chance this wasn't vandalism, but is a cover story for the NSA installing equipment on the fiber?

<comment><USER6> Why wouldn't they just drop their equipment and leave? Cutting cables causes a noticeable outage and requires people to physically visit the point of modification, which ruins the covert potential for such equipment.

<comment><USER2> Possibly there's no way to install the equipment in a way that won't interrupt service.

Also, such an approach would give the fiber company plausible deniability if they were ever called out for supporting NSA data collection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this vandalism or a terrorist attack? Interfering with communication structures..

<comment><USER12> Probably just failed cable theft. Petty criminals who steal metals for scrap aren't particularly bright.

[http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/workspace/thousands-sky- cust...](http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/workspace/thousands-sky-customers- offline-copper-thieves-steal-bt-fibre-134037)

<comment><USER13> How much scrap metal is there in a fiber optic cable?

<comment><USER14> This cable might actually have quite a bit of metal armour on it to protect the cable from damage. Here's a picture that came up earlier today, showing rigid metal "caterpillar" armour that goes on the outside of the cable to protect it near shorelines: [https://plus.google.com/+UrsH%C3%B6lzle/posts/Gwz3TFyvCAf?pi...](https://plus.google.com/+UrsH%C3%B6lzle/posts/Gwz3TFyvCAf?pid=6162904257712620130&oid=100873628951632372330)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Johnson and Johnson Ordered to Pay $572M in Landmark Opioid Trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/health/oklahoma-opioids-johnson-and-johnson.html <comment><USER2> Interestingly enough, their shares jumped something like ~5% on the news given it was lower than the market expected them to have to pay</comment>


Green iron - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science/tm/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12587219

<comment><USER2> I wonder what the chemistry here is. He writes that the iron gets oxidized in the process, so some sort of reducing reaction with the pollutant, where the iron grabs the oxygen?

Doesn't make sense though, because the water is full of much easier to react free oxygen. Doesn't make sense in many other ways as well.

Maybe when he says the iron gets oxidized he means it reacts with the pollutant? But that doesn't make sense either because I don't think iron really reacts much with phosphorous or nitrogen.

So, is this fake or am I missing something large?

Edit: This seems relevant for some reason: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduction_of_nitro_compounds>

Anyone have more info?</comment>


Ask PG: Why aren't URLs in the HN submission text clickable links? - <AUTHOR>

Especially given that URLs in comments are clickable. <comment><USER2> From what I've heard, if URLs were clickable in posts, users would be tempted to do more "Ask HN"-style questions, whereas the preference would be for users to make long posts on their blogs instead and link to here.

</comment><comment><USER3> pg has answered this many times. if urls in submission text were real links, people would be tempted to submit urls in the text box, rather than the url box, and then editorialize about them.</comment>


Zappos hires Mechanical Turk to proofread product reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2011/04/27/zappos-hires-mechani.html

<comment><USER2> As a consumer this is slightly annoying. When I see a "user-posted" review on a website, I like to know that it's _actually_ what the user posted. Things like typos and grammatical information are useful bits of information to help me decide how reliable the reviewer is.

<comment><USER3> Yes, perhaps a better policy would be "All comments with spelling or grammar errors will be deleted".

Imagine if the entire internet had such a policy. What a wonderful world we would have!

<comment><USER4> DaVinci wrote without using capitals or punctuation.

Drew Houston wrote his Dropbox apology without using capitals.

And grammar... Well, grammar sometimes be subjective, y'dig?

It took me a long time to set aside my prejudice for people who had trouble writing perfectly. But once I did, and once I actually _listened_ to what they were saying, I was often surprised to discover that those people turned out to be smarter than I was. Or more experienced. Or had some unique insight that I hadn't considered before.

Of course, Occam's Razor suggests that the simple explanation is I'm "just another dummy".

Or could it be that _form_ without _substance_ is _rubbish_?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note that the article quotes the retail price of mechanical turk; Amazon bought Zappos last year, so they probably get a better deal.

<comment><USER6> Amazon charges ten percent of a HIT, so they probably dropped that charge. The rest goes to the worker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's some more information (another write-up) here: [http://behind-the- enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2011/04/want-to-i...](http://behind-the-enemy- lines.blogspot.com/2011/04/want-to-improve-sales-fix-grammar-and.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> >Find, Fix, Verify

I'd be interested in seeing how they partitioned up these hits. I would assume that one Turker is performing the fixes, while another varies?

To me these n-stage Mechanical Turk tasks are much more interesting than any classical survey tasks that you typical see on MTurk. You can achieve some amazingly creative results if you have one Turker make a change and then allow other workers to make subsequent changes, iterating over the previous versions.

Effective crowdsourced, micro-iterative design may be a great way to bootstrap a startup with user generated content.

<http://www.github.com/aantix/turkee>

</comment><comment><USER3> How much are they paying? I love nitpicking the errors of others' errors, so why not do it for some pittance?

edit: Oh. Ten cents per review. Probably a bit too pittance-y even for my tastes. Still, back when I was an undergrad...</comment>


What programming languages were used by the Soviet Union's space program? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-software-programming-languages-were-used-by-the-soviet-unions-space-progra <comment><USER2> I'm sorry I don't know but I recently came across this device which is I guess a complex mechnical trajectory tracker and I believe was the only device used to determine any corrections needed to steer the spacecraft: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_Spacecraft_%22Globus%22...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_Spacecraft_%22Globus%22_IMP_navigation_instrument) .. It's definitely an interesting read.... and sorry again for not answering your question.

EDIT: So from what I understand this is how it worked: they would record their initial trajectory observations from the ground as the rocket was fired into space. They would then enter that data into the mechanical Globus or IMP which would track the rocket while it was circling around Earth. Russians could only visually track it while it was over their own space as they did not have bases all over the world. The Globus would make sure they weren't flying totally blind. It wasn't perfect, however, and as the spacecraft came back into their observable space they would have to make minor corrections on the Globus and then instructed the astronauts in the spacecraft which firing sequence to perform in order to stay on course.

<comment><USER3> Just a minor note: "astronauts" in Soviet Bloc are called "cosmonauts" (Космонавт).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do people care about "visual programming"?

The idea seems nice at first, but you always end up back at traditional programming ([http://drakon- editor.sourceforge.net/python/python.html#clas...](http://drakon- editor.sourceforge.net/python/python.html#classes)). To think that this is for non-programmers is silly.

I guess also, if it aids readability, why not just generate the charts from code, rather than the other way around?

<comment> DanI-S Perhaps the idea that code can only be read and manipulated by an educated intellectual minority seemed a revoltingly bourgeoisie concept to those in charge at the time.

<comment><USER4> yours is the answer to "why do people care about non-programmers controlling machines" not "why do people care about visual programming".

how do you solve the issue you point out? isn't using symbols to represent something machine-readable what a programming language already is?

<comment> DanI-S Since the dawn of computing, we've seen great increases in programming productivity as we've ramped up our level of abstraction. I'd assume that visual programming is attractive as it appears to be the next rung on this ladder. It may turn out to be a dead end, but people still try.

I'd argue that our next big jump in productivity is likely to come when we are able to have a conversation with an AI about the desired function of a program and have the AI write it for us. Whether visual programming will be a part of this conversation remains to be seen.

<comment><USER5> No we haven't. What do we really have now that we didn't 30 years ago? A web browser is just an IBM 3270 at the end of the day. The boost in productivity is an illusion hidden behind ever more elaborate bells and whistles.

The boost in productivity will come when we stop reinventing the wheel every few years.

<comment><USER5> This is why computing has stagnated for 30 years <http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/58186/6219>

Each new batch of programmers is so ignorant of the past that they spend all their time reinventing it (usually, badly) instead of making any real progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most soviet equipment I have seen (1980-1991) was programmed using plain Assembly or C. The Soviet Union manufactured its own version of the 8086 processor that worked with all popular compilers of that time. However I don't know about the 1970s era.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why, Lisp of course: <http://twitpic.com/60plzm/full>

(I don't have anything but that Soviet era mosaic to back it up with.)

</comment><comment><USER8> While this may be off topic, i am actually a lot more interested how they executed the project management part of the whole program.

The project management techniques in use today seem like they have been largely developed in the US aeronautics industry.

The soviet space program was inteed a complex task requiring coordination with large teams in different areas of development. Is anybody aware how they organize that? is the methodology documented somewhere?

</comment><comment><USER9> In late 80es and early 90es (and probably still) they used Modula 2 for programming satellites and such.

</comment><comment><USER10> CCCP, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's not soviet but if you're interested in this you should also see all of the programs used in the Apollo and Gemeni missions:

<http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/links.html>

</comment><comment><USER12> >> _"This language is also intended for using by non-programmers."_

Hardly surprising the Russians created their own programming language (doubt this is available via open source). However positive to see they aimed it towards non programmers.

Are there any Drakon programmers on HN?

<comment><USER13> Maybe not yet, but I'm sure there soon will be: <http://drakon- editor.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER14> Really curious to see the Erlang code generation...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In Mother Russia language programs you.

</comment><comment><USER16> I believe the primary language used was BORAT. Sorry, couldn't resist.</comment>


Building a Raspberry Pi GPS Speedometer - <AUTHOR> https://gleslie.com/rpi/raspberry/pi/dashboard/2020/03/28/building-a-rpi-vehicle-dashboard.html <comment><USER2> If you're a fan of these kind of vehicle hacks you may enjoy the infamous "Zero f*cks given RX-7" build by a 4-chaner: [https://youtu.be/ZcjpXbMiCtg](https://youtu.be/ZcjpXbMiCtg)

<comment><USER3> Are cars like that street legal in the US? I'm fairly sure you wouldn't be allowed to drive that in Germany.

<comment><USER4> If the speedo doesn't work then yes it's illegal. Is that an intercooler? Some places may have an issue with it sticking out.

If the car is considered an antique you can get away with a lot. People are importing rare 90s Japanese cars because you can get away with having left hand drive. Over 25 years old is considered antique.

No one inspects your car like in Germany they just test emissions. The cops will have to see you and pull you over.

<comment><USER5> It's an oil cooler :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a cool hack but is it really legal?

In the EU speedometers have to be carefully calibrated, have strict regulations to pass and your car is not allowed to drive with a broken one. Just replacing it with a, sometimes spotty, GPS signal sounds impossible here. Like, what do you do when driving through a tunnel?

<comment><USER7> In Utah an old car used to pass safety inspection without a speedo. My Dad's old Prism had the speedo die at just over 100k and him and my brother put another 200k (estated) miles on it. Registration renewed every year. Utah dropped the safety inspection requirements last year because no reduction in deaths has happened with it in place. Anything goes now, as long as it can pass emissions.

<comment><USER8> > Utah dropped the safety inspection requirements last year because no > reduction in deaths has happened with it in place.

I wish this was possible in the EU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really cool hack and fun idea! Some ideas if your only goal is to get a speedometer. Firstly, ditch the pi and use something with much less power usage, such as an ESP32 or Arduino or STM32 whatever. The Pi uses a lot of power. Then use a GPS IC such as the Neo 6M[1], which is cheaper and less power usage than a USB GPS dongle.

The point of having a low-power SoC is that it can stay on while the car is powered off, taking a GPS sample every 10 minutes or so, so that when the car powers on it can very quickly get a lock. The Neo 6M also keeps a memory of the last location which helps it get a lock quickly.

[https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/ruchir1674/how-to- inter...](https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/ruchir1674/how-to-interface- gps-module-neo-6m-with-arduino-8f90ad)

<comment><USER10> Even relying on GPS is overdoing it. Paint a white stripe on a tire using a permanent marker, and then mount an IR emitter and phototransistor in the wheel well. Knowing the diameter of the tire and the time between revolutions lets you easily figure out speed.

<comment><USER9> Great idea! But I think this is harder than GPS because the chip simply spits out speed and direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to build a HUD for my Subaru BRZ like this, but using some kind of HUD. Even just as a speedometer. But I'm not really able to solder/do much wiring since I have hand tremors. It'd be sweet, though.

<comment><USER12> I imagine soldering with tremors is doable with some sort of flexible arm set up to hold the soldering iron. Something like this: [https://www.fullcompass.com/prod/541073-aladdin-eye-lite- cla...](https://www.fullcompass.com/prod/541073-aladdin-eye-lite- clamp-20-flexible-arm-with-clamp-for-eye-lite-led-fixture)

I did a lot of soldering as a microwave tech, and used a setup like that just for convenience. I have to have a magnifying glass on a similar flex arm because my eyes are so bad. I suppose there are still some hard parts, like trying to use braid to remove solder, but I bet you can do it.

I have a 1991 Mitsubishi Galant VR4 that has a place in my heart that your Subaru seems to have. Cool family compact with 4WD and 500 oversized, at the wheels, turbo HP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've seen electronic speedometers that plug into vehicle OBD2 ports, and I know you can read the vehicle speed and other data using a wireless OBD2 adapter.

Would that not be preferable to this as it'd be a lot more reliable, granted I don't know which cars support them or not but I've seen them working in modern vehicles.

<comment><USER14> No OBD2 on that model that year [https://itstillruns.com/retrieve-flash- codes-1994-ford-75016...](https://itstillruns.com/retrieve-flash- codes-1994-ford-7501628.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have been playing with my (spare) Android phone and its GPS to record my location and speed when driving. My guess is when using an app on Android, there are too many variables (from the actual GPS hardware, device ROM settings, app settings, etc.) which are not very easily accessible and likely optimized for different goals.

In my use case (as in the article) only care about GPS readouts when the car is in motion so I don't really care about energy efficiency (within reason, the cigarette lighter thing should be able to safely power the device).

The GPS module manual says it takes about forty seconds for the GPS module to position.

[https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/81+jY5X2YrL...](https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/81+jY5X2YrL.pdf)

> Once the GPS module is powered on, there is data output > It usually takes > about 40 seconds to be successfully positioned. > After the positioning is > successful, the correct time, latitude and longitude position data will be > available.

But the article says:

> GPS is usually acquired within 15-30 seconds of starting (much faster than > the cheap electronic speedometers I tested first).

Maybe this does not include the time it takes for the raspberry pi to boot? Maybe the raspberry pi takes an additional thirty seconds to boot and the GPS unit powers on almost simultaneously with the raspberry pi but we don't blame the GPS module for any delay until the raspberry pi boots, logs in, and the Navit application starts?

Or maybe the GPS positions way before forty seconds and the manual is written that way to not be overly optimistic (could never get decent GPS signal when walking in areas with tall skyscrapers on my Android phone a few years back).

This is also exciting because it is modular. When GPS III[1] (hopefully) becomes operational by the end of the decade (The tenth and final GPS Block III launch is projected in Q2 2023 so it should be fully operational/adopted by 2030), you could simply use a new module (in theory at least).

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

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right; I didn't factor in RPi boot time to that figure. I'd guess maybe 60-90 seconds total? By the time I've turned the ignition, backed out of the driveway, and put it in drive I have a GPS lock.

<comment><USER16> Not sure if this is unusual, but it takes me ~10 seconds to turn on my car and pull out of the driveway. What are you doing for 60-90 seconds?

<comment><AUTHOR> I live on a busy city street.

<comment><USER16> Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Problem is you can't tell your speed in a tunnel. I propose training a ML model to be able to estimate the distance a camera moved between two input images. You could probably use google street view as training data. Then, instead of relying on fancy satellites, its just a few billion numerical calculations.

<comment><USER17> There are chips for that (dead reckoning).

<comment><USER18> Withoug a speed sensor, dead reckoning is really hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This would be interesting to have in my old MG Midget. The center radio console is essentially wasted space, with a 4"x7" speaker grill that could be replaced with a nice monitor. Not sure if I need navigation in it but I'd love to instrument the heck out of the old car.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is Navit necessary for attaining speed?? Or can one get speed with a geometric formula and GPS data?? Albeit having navit running is nice but would be nice to make a simple LED display of speed instead ;)

<comment><USER21> You don't need to do any geometry. Your GPS module will simply output the speed.

While you can calculate based on position fixes, it is more accurate for the GPS to do it. It does not do a simple distance/time calculation but can instead look at the phase / doppler shift of the GPS signals. This ends up being much more accurate.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the reply; did not think about that and after all that is the crucial characteristic of what allows GPS to work: now does it depend on the GPS module? Or can phase and Doppler shift be accesses regardless of the device?

<comment><USER22> Every consumer GPS receiver I have seen and even some aerospace-grade receivers that I have (limited) experience with report data over a serial connection as "NMEA sentences". You can read about them here: [https://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/nmea.htm#nmea](https://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/nmea.htm#nmea) if it's a USB GPS receiver, it's likely internally a USB->serial chip with a GPS receiver communicating over serial. The data that I have seen is always been high-level focused on navigation such as speed in MPH and heading in degrees and of course, long and lag. Not to say that you can't find a device that reports phase and Doppler shift, this is just how everything I have seen worked. When GPS receivers started getting cheap when I was a kid, I was very excited to experiment with them using Arduinos, etc so hope this helps!

<comment><USER20> Thank you for the information! I will be giving this a read! Can't wait!

<comment><USER23> If you want to do anything with GPS modules, some fine and talented people have done the hard work of interfacing with, and parsing the output of a lot of different receivers, and called it `gpsd`.

[https://gpsd.gitlab.io/gpsd/index.html](https://gpsd.gitlab.io/gpsd/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I want a HUD speedometer for my Model 3. This may be the cheapest solution.

<comment><USER7> I think a $30 pay as you go phone might be cheaper. Ditch the service and the GPS should still work fine. Throw on whatever apps and you're good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Doesn't the raspi eventually shit the SD card if you just drop power?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hasn't yet but yeah, I've had that issue before with the arcade I built. I just take an image of the card every significant change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow that would be so illegal her in NZ. Nice to know some countries give you the freedom to do stuff like that. Here a spot of rust will take your car off the road. A broken spedo would never be allowed. Even if replaced with GPS.

<comment><USER27> Same in the UK - a broken speedo would be an instant illegal get off of the road thing. afterall how do you know you are not breaking the speed limits?

I am not sure what you can get away with for DIY replacements - perhaps a police officer might give you the benefit of the doubt if you were polite and explained it was temporary while you are waiting for the real part, but I really suspect this would force your car off of the road at the next annual safety check/inspection (MOT test in the UK)

<comment><USER28> > how do you know you are not breaking the speed limits

Drive a safe speed for the given road conditions. Match speed of other drivers. Not hard to do.

<comment><USER27> Often the limit is way lower than the "safe" speed - e.g. the variable speed limits on motorways restricting you to 40mph on an empty road in perfect daytime conditions, or the 15mph limit for London - both only exist to manage traffic flow and/or dissuade people from driving.

You're welcome to match other drivers - enjoy the speeding tickets you'll both get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You could just used a cheap cell phone and the speedometer app. It would have been a cheaper option.

<comment><USER30> Esp32 based project would be more interesting

<comment><USER31> They make esp32 based obd loggers. I have one but I haven't bothered getting it to work since the obdlink mx+ works well enough for my data logging desires.

[https://freematics.com/pages/products/freematics-esprit- obd-...](https://freematics.com/pages/products/freematics-esprit-obd-kit/)</comment></comment></comment>


What are these 100.x.x.x addresses? - <AUTHOR> https://tailscale.com/kb/1015/100.x-addresses <comment><USER2> It is surprising to see this here, but I see how it could be interesting. When we were experimenting very early on with Tailscale I went Googling around for IP ranges just to understand the space better and that was when I first discovered CGNAT.

It took a bit of digging through RFC6598 to realize that, if it's only being used properly (and I had never seen it used directly), then it would be generally available for an overlay network.

Since then we've run into a couple of other edge cases where people are using CGNAT. More reason for us to get our IPv6 support sorted out.

<comment><USER3> I don't think Tailscale's use of 100.x.x.x address space conforms with the RFC, but I don't think that there are any better alternatives out there. Do note though, once people start abusing the 100.x.x.x space, it will become "just another private IP space" and lost its significance:

RFC6598 requires that, when used as a routable address, the device must be able to do address translation across router interfaces when the addresses are identical on two different interfaces.

[1]: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6598#section-4](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6598#section-4)

<comment><USER4> CGNAT block is popular in private k8s as overlay network address space because often the enterprise network already claims rfc1918 blocks. I'm not sure how close to the line that kind of usage is but I suspect it is SHOULD NOT. Speaking of, I probably should not even post this comment as it will now be indexed and served in search results, further contributing to the corruption. Alas, it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > We are considering using other unused address ranges, including the > otherwise wasted 0.x.x.x

0.x.x.x is currently incompatible with WordPress: [https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/641c632b0c9fde4e...](https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/641c632b0c9fde4e094b217f50749984ca43a2fa/wp- includes/http.php#L558)

To put it another way, 0.x.x.x and 100.x.x.x don't have equivalent properties in WordPress. 0.x.x.x is blocked in some cases to prevent SSRF attacks. 100.x.x.x is considered a "normal" IP address.

<comment><USER6> But this would be trivial to fix, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> IPv4 address space is too small, exhibit #34138408340314.</comment>


Supersize My Wage - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/magazine/supersize-my-wage.html?&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> In my opinion is all these studies are myopic. The reality is probably more complicated and can be broken down into a few steps

Short term: Employees get paid more and the number of employees stays close to the same. The businesses must operate as they did before

Medium Term: The quality of employee goes up. The people who are willing to trade their time for more $ is a different demographic as you climb the $/hour slope.

Long Term: Businesses find a way to remove high costs out of their operating costs and will automate the jobs were possible. This will improve productivity of each paid employee but the total employee count will go down (all other things held constant). The productivity and manual labor has been shifted from person to machine.

<comment><USER3> In economics, we consider "capital (machinery, automation, software, etc) input" to be fixed. Only labor input can change. But in the long term capital investments can be made to reduce labor in the input mix. That's probably what you're referring to here.

<comment><USER4> And in economics you are wrong. In the real world everything is variable.

Many eons ago --before surface mount was commonplace-- I was employing engineering students to stuff circuit boards for a low volume product (a few thousand units per year).

Part of the job entailed bending component leads based on how they had to be mounted to the board. I didn't have the money or the volume for fancy automated tools. We used prototyping-level hand tools to bend the components. After wave soldering we'd clip the leads by hand and test.

Back then minimum wage was $6 or $7. I was paying the kids $10.

I bought an old Bridgeport CNC milling machine for $1,800. I devoted a week to making better lead-forming tools and a mass lead cutting machine using a cheap router motor.

Within a week the same worker could do nearly ten times more work. I eventually let go of half the crew.

Costs are everything in business. If government unilaterally and unnaturally forces an increase in costs businesses will naturally respond with cost-saving measures and technology. This can also include taking the work to lower labor cost markets...forever.

That's how it works in the real world. At one point an artificially high minimum wage will result in less jobs, not more.

<comment><USER5> > artificially high minimum wage

Artificially high? If you're making a profit but your employees need public assistance, you're literaly profiting at the expense of the taxpayers. You are in effect benefiting from an artificially low prevailing wage. If you can't afford to pay them a living wage, society would be better off if resources were allocated elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> >If you can't afford to pay them a living wage, society would be better off if resources were allocated elsewhere.

Since hiring a person can only increase that person's income, and decrease the amount of welfare they can claim, this is wrong. If there were a better allocation of that person's labor (e.g. a higher paying job) that person would surely take it.

<comment><USER5> When you pay less than a living wage you are not reducing the cost to produce whatever you are producing, you are using taxes as an input. If you literally cannot afford to pay your employees a living wage, that means it's real cost (including the taxpayer's assistance) is greater than what people are willing to pay for it and we'd all be better off if our taxes just supported that person instead of supported that person and lined your pockets.

<comment><USER6> But that is wrong. Suppose I invented a machine that let any person churn out $3 in gold per hour. Now suppose everyone who was currently unemployed started doing this, and collecting slightly less benefits.

Would society be better of banning this machine, because it couldn't produce a "living wage"? Because this is what you are proposing.

<comment><USER7> Don't bury the lede. You've rediscovered Bitcoin!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fast-food employees are pretty much the canonical beneficiaries of a minimum wage law.

Fast-food outlets can afford to spend more on salary (in that, they will still be profitable and it doesn't affect their viability as a business) but have no inclination to, and therefore must be forced by law. As an additional bonus, they can't outsource their work to another, cheaper state. Great - the minimum wage law works exactly as intended, in this particular case.

It's less obvious that this applies to other industries. Will average households employ a domestic cleaner at minimum wage? Small, near-viable businesses where salary is the largest expense: what happens to them when the minimum wage increases? What happens to people who are thinking about starting businesses with that as a risk?

<comment><USER9> > they can't outsource their work to another, cheaper state

They have done some of it for almost a decade [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/11fast.html?pag...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/11fast.html?pagewanted=all)

They can also use more automation - "outsourcing" to machines.

There are far more subtleties that the article didn't cover as you partially point out. There is a good article on cafehayek about it. (eg the nature of work done can change). [http://cafehayek.com/2013/12/again-more-on-the- minimum-wage....](http://cafehayek.com/2013/12/again-more-on-the-minimum- wage.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rather than worrying about raising prices or cutting the number of employees, what about if the burger joint just made less profit?

McDonald's could double wages and it's operating profit would still be $5.5Billion. What's wrong with $5.5billion in profit?

[http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-could-double- wages-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-could-double-wages-for- employees-and-make-less-money-2013-7#ixzz2aZHNwoL5)

<comment><USER6> This cuts to the core of the ethics of the free market.

It is more ethical for McDonalds to make a higher profit, and pay lower wages, if they can.

This is because they have an agreement (and I don't care about the precise legal nature of this agreement) with the shareholders to maximize the profit of the company.

The employees on the other hand, they never made any promises to. Employees have a relationship with the company as long as they are willing to take the wages/conditions on offer.

You might think that it is ethical for McDonalds to redistribute money from their shareholders to their workers (and their workers are surely poorer on average). But this is solely the role of the government, and private charity. I can't prove this properly in a single post, but it is closely related to the First and Second Welfare Theorems.

<comment><USER10> > This cuts to the core of the ethics of the free market.

I know, that's why I left it as an open question.

> They have an agreement with the shareholders to maximize the profit of the > company.

It's fascinating we let that agreement trump the implicit agreement they have with all humans on earth.

> You might think that it is ethical for McDonalds to redistribute money from > their shareholders to their workers (and their workers are surely poorer on > average). But this is solely the role of the government, and private charity

This is how the system currently functions, but I strongly believe the system needs to (and must) change. For a business to purely be concerned with profit can only lead to destruction for all of us. They'll bleed workers dry, kill the planet and be happy doing it.

<comment><USER6> >This is how the system currently functions

It's also the system that makes the most theoretical sense given the First and Second Welfare Theorems, which state (or more accurately strongly imply) that any desired outcome can be achieved by the free market, and government redistribution.

"killing the planet" is an externality that can be addressed by environmental legislation (e.g. a carbon tax).

<comment><USER10> And how would you say it's working out for America vs. all the other Developed countries?

One has to wonder what the end-game will be,

<comment><USER6> There is a distinction between free-market principles, and the way people on the right use free-market rhetoric to justify redistributing less money from the wealthy to the poor.

There is nothing that I have said that would rule out a highly progressive tax system, and a generous welfare system. In fact that is exactly what I would recommend.

I don't think the US is particularly free economically. It is true that most developed countries have higher minimum wages and, for example, more powerful unions, but this is not, in my opinion, why they have less inequality. They have less inequality because they have more progressive tax systems, and more generous welfare systems.

Also the US has more cultural diversity, and many people (e.g. living in poor rural areas) could earn more money if they were willing to choose a very different lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think implied point was, that while raising minimum wage also forced fast food joint to raise prices, demand stayed same.

Things to be wary about - this is limited experiment with two fast food joints.

1\. This might be a fluke, with only two fast food places compared data sample is very small - at best it is case study. Apparently this is incorrect, see comment below.

2\. Their monitoring period was only 11 months. Who knows what will happen in 5 years?

All that said, I applaud their effort. Too many things are taken for granted in Economics because they "make" sense. Real world is so complex that things are often counter intuitive.

<comment><USER12> To me, it seems common sense that the fast-food will simply increase wage and keep the same amount of people. The fast-food is profitable up to a wage of X, but it prefers to pay the lowest it can to attract workers instead, which happens to be (by law) the minimum wage.

And I'm convinced fast-foods can afford to pay employees more.

<comment><USER13> What's your theory for why competition doesn't solve this problem?

That is, if I am opening a new Wendy's in this area you're postulating, and the deal is that I can have generous profits despite a substantial increase in my employee's wages, why don't I offer $1 more than the other fast food joints in the area and steal all of their best employees?

I see a few possible explanations:

1\. Fast food employees do not substantially differ in quality. The best fast food employee in the world is not really better than the median, in terms of their ability to drive additional business to a location.

2\. The owners of the fast food restaurants in the area have formed a cartel, and are (flagrantly illegally) engaged in anti-competitive practices.

3\. There is simply no competition among fast food restaurants -- the field is so sparse that when I open a new restaurant, there are no competitors to steal from.

4\. The labor market is incredibly overpopulated such that every fast food restaurant can fill its ranks with employees who are first-tier, without raising their wages.

What's your theory?

<comment><USER14> The competition at the other side of the coin is also important. If there is $1 extra that the fast food owner is caching, why does no other fast food restaurant open in the area, offering $1 cheaper prices, and steall all the clients?

Also, as your question can be answered as the combined effect of a series of dimensions, for this one there are basically non-price competition, oligopolies, and low price sensitivity of customers as likely culpits.

<comment><USER15> >> If there is $1 extra that the fast food owner is caching, why does no other fast food restaurant open in the area, offering $1 cheaper prices, and steall all the clients?

This is exactly the point of the dollar menu/value menu/whatever promo is going on at the time. They do exactly this. Also, fast food economics are basically "Get the customer in the door. Take their order. Do all you can to sell them sodas and fries. Break even everywhere else."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People often assume that the role of economists is to answer the question "will raising the minimum wage increase unemployment" or even "will raising the minimum wage increase inflation".

In fact most economists would rather answer the questions "why should we increase the minimum wage" or "should we increase the minimum wage".

Most economists would say that interfering with the market is bad in general. If we wanted to help people with low incomes, it would make more sense to decrease taxes for people on low incomes.

<comment><USER16> If you wanted to help people with low incomes, you'd do two things:

1) More skill based education, enabling them to upgrade out of their low paying, low skill jobs

2) Make it dramatically less expensive and easier to employ people, lower regulations (rather than adding thousands of new regulations per year), simplify compliance, simplify healthcare dramatically, and overall stop providing huge disincentives to hiring

The only tax that poor pay is sales tax. The bottom 40% pay a negative income tax rate. We could attempt to kick the sales tax back to them, but it wouldn't make even remotely as big a dent as improving the macro economic environment.

We should also become fiscally responsible and stop destroying the poor's standard of living through inflation. Inflation harms the poorest the most, by far.

And I don't mean the bogus CPI, which was substantially adjusted to mask inflation under Clinton's presidency. I'm talking about the massive inflation in: energy, housing & rent, food, education, health care. The cost of a new car has gone up by 50% in 20 years, while we're selling less of them (relative slack demand). The cost of milk & eggs has doubled in 15 years. The cost of a house has doubled in 15 years. Meanwhile, we have 14% real unemployment, with no justification for the massive increases in prices on the demand side (ie it's primarily driven by the Fed's massive devaluation of the dollar, with QE being used to avoid bankruptcy at the federal level; aka the poor are being papered to death in the process of masking our nation's fiscal irresponsibility).

<comment><USER5> >Inflation harms the poorest the most, by far.

I don't think that word means what you think it means. When prices go up, so does income. It has to because there are two sides to every economic transaction. Inflation often seems to coincide with declines in the real median wage because it's easier for your employer to not give you a raise instead than it is to reduce your salary. But over time it doesn't matter because even with no inflation if there's real wage decline you still have the same problem.

<comment><USER16> Why yes, that word does mean what I think it does.

If we're talking about what inflation is, well, prices going up is not inflation to begin with. The expansion of the money supply is inflation. Prices going up is merely a potential symptom of inflation.

Inflation does in fact harm the poor dramatically more so than anybody else. They're the most susceptible to rising prices, their incomes rise the slowest, and they have no capital or assets to leverage to keep pace with inflation through hedges (such as stocks, gold, commodities in general, housing, etc).

Incomes do not inherently go up hand in hand with prices. In fact it's the exact opposite, the greater the inflation the less able incomes are to keep pace. America is dramatic proof of that over the last 40 years, as the cost of major goods such as housing, education and healthcare have vastly outstripped gains in income.

Your theory that wages inherently keep up with inflation assumes that there are no spin-off consequences to inflation, that's blatantly not correct. It generates a downward spiral, cascade effect; just ask Argentina how that works, their economy has been getting hammered by it the last few years. As you expand the money supply, devalue your currency and generate inflation, all sorts of costs from external sources begin to climb, such as the cost of imports (raw goods like plastic or steel, completed goods like toasters, commodities etc). This one effect alone guarantees domestic wages can never keep pace with inflation.

Inflation also destroys savings, and the poor always have the smallest base of savings to begin with, and are least able to shift their savings into higher yielding investments.

There are numerous recent examples from around the world where inflation outstrips wage gains.

Brazil is an obvious recent example of it, the cost of goods in Brazil is outrageous, and was one of the reasons for their recent riots. The high inflation there, requiring incredible interest rates to fight, has far outstripped their wage gains. Venezuela and Argentina are two other recent examples of it. And there are extreme examples of it, in which the people of a country have been wiped out by inflated prices while their incomes did not keep up (Zimbabwe is an easy example of that).

<comment><USER5> > Prices going up is merely a potential symptom of inflation.

No, seriously, increases in the price level is literally the definition of inflation.

> Incomes do not inherently go up hand in hand with prices.

If you hold purchases stable, incomes have to go up with prices because every price someone pays is also a price someone gets paid. And in fact, this actually understates the income effects of inflation because it results in an increase in demand because the value of holding money decreases.

I don't contend that there are no consequences of inflation, just that they are either only short term or that they happen anyway with more hysteresis in the absence of inflation.

> Inflation also destroys savings, and the poor always have the smallest base > of savings to begin with, and are least able to shift their savings into > higher yielding investments.

It does indeed reduce the value of savings. If you've got more savings than debt, inflation hurts you. That's not a position most of the poor are in. They're in the opposite position, statistically, where the losses to purchasing power from savings is outweighed by the gains from the reduction of debt.

My core point is not that the problems that you cite are not problems, but that inflation is not their cause. Argentina's problems have to do with instability. There are costs imposed by any movement in the value of money and they tend to have feedback effects. Too much inflation is a bad thing because it has large cost effects and causes more inflation. The same is true for large amounts of deflation.

The difference between prices and median income is the problem in your examples, but those problems would largely surface without the inflation because they are inequality problems. Inflation shortens the time scale on which the effects of income inequality is felt but it is not the source of the problem.

<comment><USER17> I don't have any data either way, but these statements felt wrong.

> If you hold purchases stable, incomes have to go up with prices because > every price someone pays is also a price someone gets paid.

Assuming that is true, that doesn't mean that poor people's income grows. Maybe it just further consolidates income and wealth on the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

> They're in the opposite position, statistically, where the losses to > purchasing power from savings is outweighed by the gains from the reduction > of debt.

Poor people likely do not have meaningful savings so it's their very fixed incomes that is losing purchasing power, and their debts are often short term instruments that will compound the problem.

Speaking of inflation and savings and the poor, there is an episode of the late 1970's tv show "Good Times" where the family encounters a windfall, and one of the kids asks the dad what they should do with it, and the dad replied, and I'm paraphrasing, "We better spend it right away [perhaps on durable goods], becuase tomorrow it won't be worth anything." Having lived all of my life with relatively low inflation rates, as I child, I just assumed, as a comedy, it was just highlighting the foolish short-sighted decision making of the poor. Later in life I now appreciate what a powerfully poignant economic anecdote that scene represents.

Does anyone happen to know which one that was? Now that I'm thinking about it, I can't think of any modern TV shows that come close to depicting the lifestyles of poor people as "Good Times" did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you don't get enough value from your employees to pay a living wage such that they need government assistance, then your business is a misallocation of resources. You are literally profiting at the expense of tax payers.

</comment><comment><USER18> >It helps low-wage workers to raise their family above the poverty line.

Wouldn't someone earning minimum wage define the poverty line?

<comment><USER19> What if there was no minimum wage -- would someone pulling in $10 a month be above the poverty line in that case? The poverty line is the minimum income you need to get by, not the minimum you can pull in with a full-time job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Y'know, a bump from $4.25 to $5.05 per hour is hardly "supersizing."</comment>


Apple falling behind in smartphones, says Steve Wozniak - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/7/3963962/steve-wozniak-apple-falling-behind-in-phones-samsung-great-competitor

<comment><USER2> But we knew that already when the 4S came out instead of a revolutionary new phone. It's just sad that Apple has continued this course.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like Woz, he is always very sincere.

When he came to Campus Party 2011, someone asked him about the closed ecosystem, he said he was against it, but sadly he did not had sufficient power at apple to change that, and that in his opinion, if you own a device, you should be able to do whatever you want with it.

Now, for Apple and falling behind... Yeah.

They could try to improve it though, one of the coolest features Android have, and iPhone don't, is the "intent" system, and I am sure people would like iPhone much more if Apple copied that (among other things).

Now, where Windows is way better than Android????</comment>


Fred Wilson: "Don't be a Google/Facebook/Twitter bitch. Be your own bitch." - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own-bitch/

<comment><USER2> I wrote an article titled "Platforms are for Suckers" back in June, 2010. Fred jumped in the comments and wrote:

<http://spencerfry.com/platforms-are-for-suckers#c-2172711>

"spencer

i don't totally agree with you

clearly the web is the platform you want to be building on long term

but building on platforms can get you to scale more quickly and less expensively than building on the open web

if you asked mark pincus if he'd have built zynga on facebook if he could start all over, he'd say yes without even thinking about it

if you asked betaworks if they'd have built bit.ly on twitter if they could start all over, they'd say yes without even thinking about it

if you asked howard lindzon if he'd have built stocktwits on twitter before moving to the open web, he's say yes without even thinking about it

the trick is to understand that platforms are a means to an end not an end in themselves"

I think his comments above may flesh out the point he made on stage (although I didn't see the live video so I can't say for sure).

<comment><USER3> yup, that's my point

<comment><USER4> So, platforms are for bootstrapping?!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He doesn't leave us much of a choice, since several Fred Wilson backed companies have (purposely, I think) soured relationships with developers - Twitter, Etsy, probably others.

I don't really think he cares about _you_ , the external developer, as he naturally sees it from the side of the companies who don't wish to have 3rd party developers involved with and depending upon them. Actually, he outlined this in a blog post: <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/04/the-twitter- platform.html> which basically told us what was coming from Twitter et al. The attitude could also be seen as "Don't be Twitter's bitch, because Twitter doesn't even want you".

I think it's good advice, and pretty much what one _has_ to do these days. It would have been nice if those companies really saw their API developers as partners, though. Things _could_ be different and there could be a really positive symbiotic relationship going on. Instead, they're like sharecroppers, seen as third rate clingers-on. That is how Fred sees developers I'm afraid, and his companies' actions reflect this perspective. Really, in light of how much API developers have contributed to many of these companies, I feel offended.

<comment><USER3> remember that every company we invest in is a developer. to say that i don't care about developers is to say i don't care about the companies we invest in. that's clearly not true.

<comment><USER5> I'm thinking third party, API consuming developers specifically. Not that you don't care or dislike these people, only that there that does not appear to be a role for API consumers in the business plans of these companies any longer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was pretty disappointed by this statement. But I guess the truth is sometimes painful.

Even if one tries to ignore the hype, there is some grain to the truth that Facebook and Twitter are the "operating systems" of the social web. It is hard working on an OS that keeps taking away system calls based on monetization efforts.

</comment><comment><USER7> What about Android and iOS, then?

<comment><USER3> i addressed iOS, android, facebook and twitter at the end of this talk, during the Q&A session

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own- bit...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own-bitch/)</comment></comment>


Russia passes law to jail people for 15 days for 'disrespecting' government - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/06/russian-parliament-outlaws-online-disrespect <comment><USER2> Wow, the jails would be full in America if they made it a law here.

<comment><USER3> They're already operating at 103% of official capacity.

[http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/occupancy- lev...](http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/occupancy- level?field_region_taxonomy_tid=22)</comment></comment>


Bootstrap 3 Grid Introduction - <AUTHOR> http://www.helloerik.com/bootstrap-3-grid-introduction

<comment><USER2> This just feels wrong, it's the unsemantic approach of bootstrap 2 but going even further in the wrong direction. Semantic classes with media queries easily allow for any variations in layout. Multiple grid classes on a single element just smells bad. I much prefer the approach that frameless[1] takes. Use column widths as a unit of measurement (e.g. .sidebar{ @import width(6) } // 6 columns wide ) and then modifying the size of the grid container to get the various layouts. Specifying the width of elements in the CSS (ok, I admit we're talking SCSS/less but who isn't using one of those?) seems far closer to the spirit of CSS.

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

<comment><USER3> You can use the approach outlined further down in the article in the section "Mixin" where it's explained how you can use the included Bootstrap mixins to create semantic classes.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I'll have to have a play and see how the two approaches compare then.

<comment><USER4> I would like to hear it. Post in my comments thread on the page and tell me what you think and find out, I could add a revision and expand on the mixin and semantic naming part to help address some of the pros/cons.

(im the author if that wasn't clear)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People might flip out at first about putting all those classes in there, but it works great for tricky layouts. Extra Strength Responsive Grids uses basically the same approach. [http://dfcb.github.io/extra-strength-responsive- grids/](http://dfcb.github.io/extra-strength-responsive-grids/)

Once you get used to it, the grid classes makes it easy to look at the markup, see whats going on and move things around any way you choose.</comment>