Ask HN: Tech Down South? - <AUTHOR>

I'm strongly considering making a lifestyle move by vacating the greater DC metropolitan region and moving back South. That said, I'd like to move to a city with a vibrant / growing tech community with lots of small and growing companies; this is where I'm running into a hiccup. Besides Austin, TX what other cities in the deep south (Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas) possess decent tech communities and where would be a good place to get some info about what's happening there (even for Austin)?<p>Scanning the last couple of Who's Hiring threads, I didn't see much outside of Austin and doing some cursory scans on job boards didn't turn up anything promising outside some megacorp positions here and there so I thought I'd tap the HN hive mind for leads. I'm not looking for a specific position yet, but would like to get a feeler for which metropolitan areas to start taking a closer look at. <comment><USER2> What kind of work are you looking for?

You mentioned that you were looking for a Vibrant / growing tech community. I think you need to check out both Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina.

Both are really great areas to live, work, and play. They offer great communities with lots of small and growing companies. Both places are up and coming as well, so you have the ability to shape it's future in a bigger way than somewhere already established.

Links to take a closer look.

<http://triangletechtalk.com/>

<http://www.exitevent.com/>

<http://www.americanunderground.com>

<http://www.hubraleigh.com/>

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

Feel free to email me at my username @ gmail.com if you'd like to talk further.

<comment><USER2> Actually, here is another good link of when Techcrunch toured Atlanta, Raleigh/Durham, Savannah, and Greenville, SC.

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/16/southeast-meetup-tour- wrap-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/16/southeast-meetup-tour-wrap-up-a- week-in-pictures-and-videos/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Huntsville has one of the highest rates of Phd's per capita in the U.S. Originally, this was due to the space program - and to a lesser extent TVA.

These days, much of the technology sector is defense oriented. That may or may not make it attractive.

What it lacks is a first class university. On the other hand, there's the Rocket City Rednecks.

<comment><USER4> I've done a fair amount of travel to Huntsville for work and it seems like a really pleasant and livable city.

The summer heat is tough, not significantly worse than DC, but constant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't specifically looked into this but I have seen Atlanta pop up several times when discussing tech scenes in the south. As far as Texas is concerned, Austin is going to be your best bet if you are looking for a startup job. For the most part, it looks like the majority of jobs in the bigger cities are for larger businesses running a .net stack or php.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is tons of stuff going on down here in South Florida. Best place to get it all in one shot is The Miami Herald's Starting Gate: <http://miamiherald.typepad.com/the-starting-gate/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I am from the DC area originally and after the past 4 years of college in Illinois I am ready to move south. I have found several opportunities in the Charlotte metro area. It has southern charm but is a growing city.

</comment><comment><USER8> Atlanta, Florida, Triangle.

Tech won't positively _invade_ your life like it does here in the Bay Area but you'll be able to find people in the industry.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is a coworking space in Myrtle Beach you might want to check out.

<http://coworkmyr.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I found some interesting stuff happening in Atlanta last time I had occasion to visit -- Startup Riot, Startup Weekend, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll echo a few others and say definitely look at the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've noticed several startup and consulting companies in Florida, especially Orlando.

</comment><comment><USER12> RTP in the Raleigh/Durham area.

</comment><comment><USER13> Small start up community is here in San Antonio

<comment><USER14> +1. Check out geekdom.com I've heard good things but haven't had a chance to check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> AirWatch</comment>


PyPy JIT for 64-bit ARM - <AUTHOR> https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2019/07/pypy-jit-for-aarch64.html <comment><USER2> I'm surprised and humbled that a project of this importance doesn't have their own physical ARM machine for benchmarking. Compare that to the computer and human time saved across all the places it could be used!

<comment><USER3> The problem is that ARM hardware with enough RAM for their needs is extremely rare.

<comment><USER4> This work was sponsored by ARM itself, though, so it is a bit surprising they didn't supply suitable hardware from one of their licensees (they must have some to do benchmarks themselves).

<comment><USER3> PyPy is a little bit of a pathological case of their benchmark suite requires that much DRAM though

<comment><USER5> Why does the benchmark suite need so much RAM ?

I would expect benchmarks to match typical usage, if PyPy can't run in a couple of GB then choose a better language.

<comment><USER6> Compiling pypy is memory intensive, I don't believe it can be done in 2GB which is where most of the really affordable ARM devices seem to cap out.

<comment><USER7> But why do you have to compile PyPy on the same machine you're testing it on?

<comment><USER3> Well cross-compiling (aka "cross translation) is made complicated because PyPy doesn't use a normal toolchain, but that's not the problem here. The PyPy benchmark suite itself takes that much memory to run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We're going to urgently need these ports for things like PyPy, Graal, etc, when Apple suddenly switches from Intel to ARM.

<comment><USER9> I think apple urgently needs them and should probably fund them.

<comment><USER8> Apple tends to dive head-first into these things and lets the community catch- up after the release in their own time. So it could come a day when MacBooks are suddenly only available with ARM architectures (with dynamic binary translation or something to support the transition, I'm sure, but if you're going for performance you wouldn't want that abstraction) so it's up to us to prepare if we don't want to be left out.

<comment><USER10> Apple isn't going to suddenly only offer ARM Macs and take everyone's Intel Macs away. Look at their past transitions. They transition quickly and firmly, but not _that_ quickly and firmly. Last time it took them about a year (iirc) from the announcement to them even only releasing Intel Macs. They offered a translation layer (which was slower, but enabled all old software to run) and it then took many years for them to stop supporting PowerPC Macs.

<comment><USER8> Right, but the difference is the last time all the major runtimes already supported Intel, due to it being the predominate architecture, so the software was ready and there was no performance cliff. You may _need_ to hang on to your old Intel MacBook for a while if the software you have performance requirements for isn't available for ARM yet.

<comment><USER11> And the Intel performance boost on the first released devices was substantial, as the laptops were still running G4s. So anything that relied on the translation layer was usable.

If the ARM chips don't meet Intel peak performance, and I suspect they won't, you're in for a bad time going through similar system.

<comment><USER10> Good point, the Windows ARM devices on the market today significantly suffer from this.

Apple has a very significant ecosystem advantage, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Awesome. You can now run PyPy on Rpi!

<comment><USER13> Not really officially. Raspbian still doesn't support AArch64.

<comment><USER14> But the 32bit version of PyPy has supported Raspbian since 2.1 [0], so PyPy itself has been around for the Pi for quite a while - since 2013. [1]

[0] [https://pypy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/release-2.1.0.html](https://pypy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/release-2.1.0.html)

[1] [https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2013/08/pypy-21-considered- arm...](https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2013/08/pypy-21-considered-armful.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Specifically, for 64 bit ARM. They already had 32 bit: [https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2018/11/hello-everyone-at- pypy...](https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2018/11/hello-everyone-at-pypy-we-are- trying-to.html)

Why take that out of the headline?

<comment><USER15> Ok, we've put 64 bits up there.</comment></comment>


Can You Build a Startup Ecosystem Outside the Valley? - <AUTHOR> http://www.instigatorblog.com/can-you-build-a-startup-ecosystem-outside-the-valley/2007/08/09/

<comment><USER2> Didn't Paul Graham already cover this in his essay "How to Be Silicon Valley" (<http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html>)?

<comment><USER3> Looks like it. Still, something I had to write from my own perspective working at the center of the Montreal startup scene (or trying to!) and comparing that to the Valley.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> the technology park/corridor concept won't make it happen. building a "funky" building and slapping the incubator tag on it doesn't work. i belive it can only happen organically. you can't force it. it's not like making soup.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. One of the reasons it works here in SF CA is because of the type of people we attract -- and have been attracting for 150+ years. Do-it- yourselfers, iconoclasts, vagabonds, that type of person. Twain, London, those guys. Seriously. It takes an adventurer to want to build a startup, and for whatever reason, CA attracts those types.

Obviously that's not the only reason, but I think it's a factor.

<comment><USER6> So, the secret is a high bohemian ratio?? Man, I've gotta start eating organic. :P

But I totally agree, you've got to be a certain personality type to start a startup, and that kind of eccentricity usually finds a way of conglomerating together. That culture certainly does propagate itself; I know where I live, it's almost a taboo to start something yourself. I've never been to SF yet, but I get the feeling that it espouses a completely different kind of philosophy?</comment></comment></comment>


How Verbal Self-Defense Works - <AUTHOR> http://people.howstuffworks.com/vsd.htm

<comment><USER2> This is horrible advice, really, don't do this. The first option is to ignore anything the person is saying and ramble on about something until they leave you alone. The second option is to act like an emotionless robot. If the person making these "attacks" at you is someone you have a vested interest in getting along with (co-worker, spouse, etc) you really owe it to yourself to not hide from them with these childish tactics and to just address the issue.

<comment><USER3> The article is addressing verbal "attackers". The issues at hand aren't really issues; as the author states, most of the time the attacker is just trying to get attention.

The methods suggested by the article are methods to avoid hostile language. I think most would agree that hostile language is no way to effectively resolve an argument. Of course, if it's about something "which you care profoundly", then of course you should take the issue on directly.

In the end, I think the article is good advice, especially against people you don't know that well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh yeah? Well I had sex with your WIFE!

<comment><USER5> His wife's in a coma.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: As a developer, what are your pains regarding security? - <AUTHOR> As a developer, what are the pain points you face regarding security, say if you are part of a team developing a web application? <comment><USER2> Adding to @megamindbrian2 's answer, seeing so little care in the public sector.

Here, in France, there's basically no security, all governments' websites and university services, including identity storage, registration, medical traces etc. is completely unsecured, e.g. no HTTPS, no real password etc..

The worst may be when you actually try to speak up and denounce, or at least signal, such flaws, which only receive two types of response:

\- Ignorance: they just ignore said signals (e.g. attacks that went down, getting silenced)

\- Disdain: either think we are crazy or they think we're some kind of suspicious terrorist warning them of an imminent attack.

As a developer that's concerned by security, seeing such behaviour really pains me and makes me fear for my future

</comment><comment><USER3> Convincing people that it's necessary.</comment>


Electromagnetic Levitation Quadcopter [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCON4zfMzjU <comment><USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI_HFnNTfyU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI_HFnNTfyU)

They could do it with stationary electromagnets. :)

<comment><USER3> I think that's the idea for the boosters that would appear at even intervals in the Hyperloop track. It would be infeasible to build the whole track as one huge linear motor, which is why Musk's paper suggests an air cushion instead.

<comment><USER2> In the video I linked the other part of the system is just a flat disk of aluminum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This works better linearly than as a rotary system. See Inductrack.[1]

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

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm naively surprised at the amount of torque and power required to spin the magnet heads. Those are huge motors.

It would require some serious refinement to have benefits over air cushions, but I can certainly see a practical use for moving heavy loads slowly.

<comment><USER6> One benefit over air cushions is that it also works in evacuated tunnels where you don't have enough air to blast it around.

<comment><USER5> I would be a touch concerned in such an environment due to the need to cool the "floor". Lacking air, you would only be able to dissipate heat via radiation.

But yeah, no air? No problem.

<comment><USER7> You can wrap the tunnel's copper sheath with cooling on the outside; only the inside of the tunnel is evacuated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where Halbach arrays would excel is in levitating fast moving vehicles. Such levitation is passively self regulating, and uses tracks which can be simply manufactured out of bulk materials. (Basically, make a track out of conductive aluminum loops in the cheapest way you can think of.) Contrast this with maglev technologies that require fast reacting active regulation and supercooled magnets.

<comment><USER9> BTW are Halbach arrays more efficient than the magnets built by polymagnet?

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

<comment><USER10> I think the point of polymagnets aren't to maximize the magnetic attraction in one specific direction but to allow for custom magnetic field designs. From what their site says, it appears as if they are just controlling in fine detail which parts of a face of a magnet point north and which point south. Pointing sideways inside the magnet might not be possible for their equipment. Its probably easier and cheaper to just assemble arrays of regular neodymium to create the Halbach array than using something like polymagnets.

<comment><USER9> > I think the point of polymagnets aren't to maximize the magnetic attraction > in one specific direction but to allow for custom magnetic field designs.

Getting strong magnets in one specific direction is one of their applications. See the "attach" example of their /polymagnets page[1]:

"Polymagnets are the world's strongest magnets because their magnetic energy has been concentrated near the surface. Polymagnets are up to 5x stronger than conventional magnets."

1\. [http://www.polymagnet.com/polymagnets/](http://www.polymagnet.com/polymagnets/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pardon ignorance - why doesn't SpaceX and co use electromagnets to stick the landing of a rocket (in either polarity it seems interesting)?

<comment><USER12> Magnetic forces follow the inverse cube law. So, a magnet is 8 times weaker at 2 times the distance.

This means that over long distances (Of more then a few centimeters), magnetism is incredibly weak. So, you can build a maglev train that hovers a few centimeters above the track, but you can't pull a rocket that's a few meters over the landing pad into place.

<comment><USER13> Unless the rocket is moving upwards along a tallish launch tower. There you could impart a large force for a few seconds (linear magnets in vertical strip). Nasa studied it but i think the concept produced too many complications. Strapping on another SRB kerbal-style is much easier.

<comment><USER14> You also have to carry the weight of the corresponding track to at least a couple thousand feet to jettison it safely I bet. It's also at the point where the rocket is at it3 heaviest so the assistance it could give would be really limited.

<comment><USER15> I think you'd have much better luck turning the rocket into some kind of a sabot round and spending a week compressing a bunch of air into huge tanks and launching it that way. That's how subs launch ICBMs.

The reason that's not done is that rockets aren't reliable enough yet and nobody wants to bet their billion dollar cargo on the engines starting the first time, every time. If you lose every 100th ICBM it's a bummer, but it doesn't make MAD not happen.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aPvGGvnAGQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aPvGGvnAGQ)

<comment><USER13> For non-human spaceflight, a 1% loss is an option. Insurance ussually assumes a 5ish percent chance that the payload wont survive and another 5ish that it wont be delivered into the ideal orbit.

<comment><USER16> never mind the actual sums involved, 1% on top of 10% is a 10% increase in coverage. Is coverage inclusive of the time lost in labor as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems like an air compressor might do the same thing but more efficiently... But then I remembered they're trying to do this in a vaccuum

<comment><USER18> Not in a vacuum, difficult in near-vacuum (relevant for Musk's Hyperloop).

Also hovercraft are not known for efficiency. Ground-effect airplanes on the other hand can be nearly as efficient as cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder why this hasn't been "invented" yet. Halbach arrays have been around for a long time. My best guess is that the control circuitry to make sure the rotors are spinning in "just the right amount" is not so simple.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is basically how an EDS maglev train works, though with linear motion instead.

</comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me of the hendo Hoverboard startup, which from looking at some of their prototypes i think used the same principle: [http://hendohover.com/](http://hendohover.com/)

<comment><USER4> Hendo has a great technology. Their first human-rideable version was frictionless in all directions. This was un-steerable, and even Tony Hawk couldn't do much with the thing. By 2015, they had a version that was a little more controllable. But not much.[1] No new news in over a year.

If Hendo ever gets something that works and is available in volume, it's time to get the a real place equipped for it. The plaza in front of the San Mateo County Historical Society building in Redwood City looks like Courthouse Square from Back to the Future. Skateboarders use that plaza now, and it's used for ice skating some winters, so why not?

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCmQnM_iFhQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCmQnM_iFhQ) [2] [http://peninsulapress.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/1_histo...](http://peninsulapress.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/1_historic_center.jpg) [3] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Hill_Val...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Hill_Valley_Court_House.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This technology (Halbach Arrays) has also been used to create passive electromagnetic bearings (a couple of windings of wire sent any field imbalance to the opposite side of the array).

</comment><comment><USER23> Would this work over salt water

<comment><USER24> Time for an experiment!

I think this wouldn't work for the same reason you can't walk on water.</comment></comment>


Resque with Redis To Go - <AUTHOR> http://blog.redistogo.com/2010/07/26/resque-with-redis-to-go/

<comment><USER2> Looks pretty awesome. I'd love to use it on an upcoming project.

2 questions:

1\. Do jobs (in app/jobs/whatever.rb) have full access to your Rails models (so you can pass it an ID and it can do whatever)?

2\. How does the rake task/worker best work in a production environment (other than Heroku)? Use monit to keep the worker(s) up?

Thanks

<comment><USER3> 1\. It's optional.

"rake environment resque:work" will give you access to the whole rails environment, so you can write normal rails code. But it of course uses a bunch of memory.

If you're doing something quick and dirty and don't need the rails model (sending out a password email or whatever), you can just run "rake resque:work" and avoid the overhead of the whole rails environment.

<comment><AUTHOR> The line `task "resque:setup" => :environment` in the rake file does the same thing. That way it will load the env on Heroku.

<comment><USER3> Yes, of course, I guess I was just trying to say that rails is optional, not required, and that resque is a pretty nice general purpose job queue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great idea - I don't believe there was previously a Redis solution for Heroku users.

I'm not seeing an obvious benefit for people self-hosting though.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great stuff!

Also, for the extremely anal, uri-redis is aware of the database number:

        require 'uri-redis'
        conf = URI.parse 'redis://localhost:6379/1'
        conf.host      # => localhost
        conf.port      # => 6379
        conf.db        # => 1

<comment><USER6> Redis also manages URLs directly: Redis.connect('redis://localhost:6379/1') works as expected.

<comment><USER7> Does that work with passwords?

<comment><USER6> Yes, works as expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can make the resque-web app available under /resque simply by:

require 'resque'

MyApp::Application.routes.draw do

      mount Resque::Server.new, :at => "/resque"

end

Requires Rails 3.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're looking for something a little simpler to process jobs using mongodb check out mongo_queue <http://github.com/skiz/mongo_queue>

</comment><comment><USER6> Redis understands URLs, so you can send it directly via connect:

        Resque.redis = Redis.connect(ENV["REDISTOGO_URL"])

</comment><comment><USER10> Use the best tool for the job. For queueing, that's probably 0mq or ActiveMQ or RabbitMQ, depending on your needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are primarily messaging systems. I've considered using them before. Nothing, however, has come close to letting me do introspection like Resque does, and the best part is that I don't need to do any work to get it.

<comment><USER10> They are message queues. What makes introspection a critical requirement?

<comment><AUTHOR> For me it was because I was unable to access the log files if a job failed since I was on Heroku. Also it gives me a general idea of how the system behaves; in one second I can tell if the system is normal. I can tell if I need to bump some workers up for a certain queue. Basically it saves me from creating my own 'dashboard'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo buys IntoNow for $20-30M - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/25/yahoo-intonow/

<comment><USER2> I can't help but be kind of sad when Yahoo buys a company knowing the technology/product they have acquired will most likely die on the vine.

</comment><comment><USER3> This post is missing a possible reason for this acquisition.

Yahoo has their connected TV platform, right now they're just rolling out "broadcast interactivity" where you can have an app on your TV and iPad and mobile device sync'd to the TV broadcast. The way they are doing this is via audio fingerprinting, exactly what intonow has a bunch of IP in.

This isn't just Yahoo all the major CE players doing Connected TV apps and widgets are looking to get into these technologies. Think "popup" ads on your TV because they can recognize the ad that's currently playing on your TV.

Woot!

</comment><comment><USER4> "12-week old company" ?

From their press release the core of their product is "SoundPrint, a patented technology platform"

Patented means wading through years of patent office shenanigans, and if it was patent-pending (2 weeks) they would have said as much.

Hard to find any history on the company beyond press release - anybody have further insight?

<comment><USER5> Intonow was spun out of Auditude which developed the audio fingerprinting technology, and Auditude has been around since 2006.

<comment><USER6> It looks like at least the following patents assigned at least at some point to Autitude are floating around:

7,325,013 Database with efficient fuzzy matching

7,421,376 Comparison of data signals using characteristic electronic thumbprints

7,516,074 Extraction and matching of characteristic fingerprints from audio signals

These seem at first glance to date back at earliest to a provisional patent application filed April 24, 2001, so making some reasonable dot-connecting (e.g. if intonow has rights to these patents etc.), it looks like even this "amazing twelve weeks to liquidity event" was actually at least ten years in the making.

(Obligatory disclaimer, this post doesn't constitute legal advice, talk to your own attorney if you'd like legal advice on these matters.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The folks at IntoNow are amazingly awesome product folks, congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER8> I used Shazam to find a tune I had a loop from for years, and didn't know what song it was from. Very useful!

[Edit]Shazam was mentioned in this article in relation to IntoNow.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure what the (profit-generating) use case is, but the IntoNow iPhone app passed my tests surprisingly well. Consider me impressed.</comment>


Tsfresh – Automatic extraction of relevant features from time series - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blue-yonder/tsfresh <comment><USER2> I've implemented a peaks/troughs feature extraction in Javascript a few years ago as a basis for some larger analysis project. It works at O(n) of the number of data points. You can play with a demo here:

[http://nocurve.com/2014/01/12/finding-peaks-and-troughs- in-a...](http://nocurve.com/2014/01/12/finding-peaks-and-troughs-in-a-noisy- curve/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Would be nice in an oscilloscope, though many have a good set of waveform measurements.

</comment><comment><USER4> sure but would they be relevant, good features?

<comment><USER5> > To avoid extracting irrelevant features, the TSFRESH package has a built-in > filtering procedure. This filtering procedure evaluates the explaining power > and importance of each characteristic for the regression or classification > tasks at hand.

> It is based on the well developed theory of hypothesis testing and uses a > multiple test procedure. As a result the filtering process mathematically > controls the percentage of irrelevant extracted features.

Here's the paper on this: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07717](https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07717)

It seems that the relevance of the features is somewhat tunable based on the p-value you choose for the statistical tests. (Every feature selection algorithm I can think of has some tunable parameter, although the information theoretic ones just depend on the length of features you're willing to consider.)

<comment><USER6> The individual feature significance tests do not have any parameter, they just generate the p-values.

The only parameter that one can tune is the overall percentage of irrelevant extracted features. That is the expected FDR of the Benjamini yakutieli procedure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not use an RNN?

<comment><USER6> what for? for the feature extraction part?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Would You Do If You Were Suddenly Wealthy? - <AUTHOR>

There are a few articles floating around today about comments from Markus Persson, aka "Notch," the creator of Minecraft. He sold his game studio to Microsoft last year for $2.5 billion, but he seems to be having a hard time adjusting to his newfound fame and wealth[0]. He wrote, "The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance. ... Found a great girl, but she's afraid of me and my life style and went with a normal person instead. I would Musk and try to save the world, but that just exposes me to the same type of a$#@%&*s that made me sell minecraft again." While he later suggests he was just having a bad day, he does seem to be dealing with some isolation issues. Granted, it can be hard to feel sorry for a billionaire, but I've wondered at times how I'd handle sudden wealth like that, and I long ago decided it would make the human relationships I'm accustomed to rather difficult. So, how would you deal with Notch's problem? It seems like one the tech industry should at least be aware of, given the focus on startup culture.<p>[0] http://bgr.com/2015/08/30/minecraft-creator-markus-persson-microsoft-lonely/ <comment><USER4> 1: clear all debts across the board - mine, family, maybe even close friends and employees (if it was that much) - credit cards, mortgages, car loans / leases, etc...

2: invest a portion in stocks, funds, etc... - although I would work on something, I would never want to have to work again.

3: as a backup to the investments, save a portion (cash in some sort of savings account) incase the investments fail - be it the fault of mine or my investor

4: now pick something(s) that could use an influx of research to help it move along, be it battery technology, water desalination, medical, etc... and either donate to it if there are well established groups or setup my own.

5: found a new development firm and start all over. I couldn't sit on a beach for to long or in a hotel - i'll get bored. gatta get back to work and work on something.

I read a few of the articles on what he posted to twitter and I have a hard time understanding his problem. You've been given an amazing gift. To never (assuming you dont blow it all) have to worry about money again. EVER.

You can do whatever you want. Work towards curing cancer. Invest in research. Build something (anything). Sit on your ass and do absolutely nothing for decades (or EOL). You are absolutely, 100% in control of your future now - your not restricted to someone else's vision of what they want to build; your not limited in what you can do financially.

For sure, finding a wife that understands all that; friends that understand all that, might be difficult or frustrating - but like someone told him - <USER2> will pass - people will accept the new you and if they dont... f'em - <USER3> all kinds of people out there. Go get bottle service at a Las Vegas club - make some new friends and move on.

</comment><comment><USER5> _> Found a great girl, but she's afraid of me and my life style_

Remembering the Mojang documentary, it makes me a bit sad that his relationship at the time apparently didn't work out - she seemed to really get him. :(

But to address your more general question, I guess it's a bit like solitude in general: some people are better (or even thrive) at it, and some struggle.

 _> So, how would you deal with Notch's problem?_

If I was to become suddenly rich, I would finally have time to do all my goofy projects that are commercially unviable and take up a lot of time. I would probably found some open source projects and take a somewhat active role in them. With the main chunk of my time I would be making indie games without caring if they sold a single copy. I would fund some friends who were less fortunate in life, too, giving them a basic income and the opportunity to pursue whatever they want.

Some people go crazy, buy a lot of things, and party hard. I can understand that, especially if you never got to do these things before - so why not indulge a little. But although those activities can feel good and can be liberating, they should not be confused for having any meaning beyond momentary enjoyment. They are not a source of meaning in the larger sense.

The most dangerous aspect of getting rich might be analogous to the most dangerous aspect of retirement in general: the idea that you're "done". You're not done, you're getting started on a new chapter. You're now more free than ever, and it's a _huge_ opportunity that almost nobody else gets.

To Notch specifically, I would say this: continue to do things for enjoyment, but be mindful (and realistic) of what you are expecting to get out of them. Slowly but surely, work on getting back into a mindset where you want to create things. It doesn't have to be for an audience, just for yourself. Creating things can heal you. Take care of friends and families, morally and financially. Support causes and people you like. Stop obsessing about pairing up with someone, it's unproductive and makes you unhappy. Changing your overall lifestyle is optional. You have a choice to live in a normal apartment with normal possessions. Whenever you buy something extraordinary, make a conscious decision to do so instead of doing it by default. Strive for minimalism and simplicity in all things, it's one of the many freedoms you now have.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd spend it on other people.

this guy helped 20,000 people with about $4 million [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvtLC7L2YLo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvtLC7L2YLo)

</comment><comment> T-A People seem to forget, but Notch was miserable well before he sold Mojang. In 2012, it was a breakup [0] followed by the sad story of a father with a history of substance abuse and depression killing himself [1]. Given the ~50% genetic component of depression [2] and the well known fact that large monetary windfalls do not affect baseline mood [3] I think it's fair to say that the only surprise here is that anyone is surprised.

What I would do? I would stash the money away in low risk vehicles while I take all the time I need to study things I find interesting and/or potentially important, and assemble a prioritized list of topics and relevant people. Then, probably many years later, I would finalize a long-range plan to pursue the 1-3 top priorities I've identified, and maybe support a few more further down the list.

Yes, this is "to Musk [4]" (behold, Notch gave us a new verb!) and yes, it brings the risk of exposure to assholes. That's inevitable if you don't want to feel isolated [5], but having a few billion $ at your disposal does bring advantages like the ability to hire a personal assistant or ten to manage those assholes for you.

It would also help to stop trolling the interwebs with asshole-bait depicting you as a miserable, hence exploitable, walking wallet.

[0] [https://twitter.com/notch/status/235746965823033345](https://twitter.com/notch/status/235746965823033345)

[1] [http://notch.tumblr.com/post/37823268132/i-love-you- dad](http://notch.tumblr.com/post/37823268132/i-love-you-dad)

[2] [http://depressiongenetics.stanford.edu/mddandgenes.html](http://depressiongenetics.stanford.edu/mddandgenes.html)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill#Major_empiri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill#Major_empirical_findings)

[4] [https://twitter.com/notch/status/637565210266570752](https://twitter.com/notch/status/637565210266570752)

[5] [https://twitter.com/notch/status/637563038258868224](https://twitter.com/notch/status/637563038258868224)

</comment><comment><USER7> Do not tell friends how much wealth you have and use a nickname if you are famous.

</comment><comment><USER8> Convert everything to precious metals and gems and emigrate with it to somewhere warm and free from US bs.

Being wealthy doesn't mean you need to live ostentatiously or even need share any of your financial information with your neighbourhood.</comment>


Introduction CSS Modules - <AUTHOR> https://css-tricks.com/introducing-sass-modules/ <comment><USER2> Not sure why this submission is dead, seems like web developers and hackers would be interested in seeing how Sass now works more like modern JavaScript frameworks with proper module imports and what not.</comment>


Radio Bursts Traced to Faraway Galaxy, but Caller Is Probably 'Ordinary Physics' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/science/fast-radio-burst-galaxy.html <comment><USER2> Much better article: [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2117098-cosmic- radio-bu...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2117098-cosmic-radio-bursts- tracked-to-home-galaxy-for-first-time/)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Ordinary" in the sense bursts strong enough to vaporize every living being within a good couple dozen light years from the source can be called "ordinary"

<comment><USER4> Everyone secretly wants to discover life or at least interdimensional gateways. Natural phenomena are awesome but they just can't deliver that existential thrill given the number we have catalogued already. The size of your audience is inversely correlated with the complexity of the explanation required for people to grasp the significance of your discovery.

Make a discovery like this, and if you're very lucky you might be the subject of a biography or biopic dramatizing your valuable discovery. If you found actual aliens or gateways to other dimensions then you'd be a legend, have whole countries or planets named after you (if it all works out great) or be the worst villain in history if everything goes pear-shaped. Either way, your legacy is assured.

<comment><USER5> I hate to be the guy who discovered the aliens that conquered and enslaved our planet. And you know if there are aliens and they are out there looking for stuff, then they are likely not benevolent and even if they are benevolent there is no telling how their interests align with ours, for instance A Small Talent for War:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbT1fCHOjfI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbT1fCHOjfI)

<comment><USER3> What use would aliens who can conquer planets have for slaves?

The good thing is that, if you become history's worst villain, it's most likely history will not last much longer.

<comment><USER5> Well one reason could be that it's cheaper than producing 7 billion robots. You know economic reasons. Not because they can't do it, it's just not cost effective. It's much cheaper going to a planet and taking all of its population to work your asteroid mines in that solar system. Often we do things not because we are not capable of alternatives, but it's cheaper. So would the aliens.

Or it could be as trivial as they enjoy eating meat, and this is a a good meat planet. It's cheaper than farming. You just go from planet to planet for meat. Replenish your world ship's freezers by harvesting the planet. Possibilities are infinite, or at least similar to the size of the universe itself.

<comment><USER4> Dude, i said the person who discovered alien life, not invited it over to have us for pizza. I'm fine with peeking at them from behind that planet until they've made their intention clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      > a freak bit of random radio noise

Exactly what an encrypted signal would look like. It's all too likely that it is just noise, but the only time you'd expect non-noise from a signal is when aliens are broadcasting a public message to the universe.

<comment><USER7> If it's a public message why would it be encrypted?

<comment><USER6> I think you missed the part where random radio noise is indistinguishable from encrypted communication, so you should expect non-noise (aka unencrypted) only in the case of a public message.

<comment><USER8> A message which perfectly uses the radio channel capacity (ie. is very close to the shannon limit) is also indistinguishable from noise to those who don't know how to decode it.

Such a signal, we would never "guess" how to decode it, since if one could guess and check, then that in itself is wasted capacity, and therefore not at the shannon limit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> May be of interest: [http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2998](http://www.scp- wiki.net/scp-2998)

<comment><USER10> What the heck did I just read? Lovecraft would be proud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How old would the radio signal be by the time it reaches us?

Edit: the answer was more obvious than I assumed :p, looks like our earliest AM/FM radio broadcast 110yrs on it's way leaving the milky way [http://www.lightyear.fm/](http://www.lightyear.fm/)

<comment><USER12> Surprisingly this is an ambiguous question to answer due to the nature of the expanding universe, but if the statement is that "the origin is 2.5 billion light years away" it was _probably_ transmitted 2.5 billion years ago.

[http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/104-the- universe/c...](http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/104-the- universe/cosmology-and-the-big-bang/expansion-of-the-universe/619-how-do-we- define-distance-in-an-expanding-universe-intermediate)

<comment><USER11> Interesting. Looks like it was around the time the earth's atmosphere was just beginning to populate with Oxygen. But not before there was life n earth [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event)</comment></comment></comment>


Pure CSS Pokedex - <AUTHOR> http://pokede.xyz/

<comment><AUTHOR> Volume button plays different sounds depending on the page: Ex - <USER2> SpeakJS for TTS of Pokemon's descriptions on individual Pokemon pages

Let me know what you think! I'm a full-stack dev but not as interested in front-end, really just wanted to use Meteor for something new :P

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool. How about keeping theme music throughout (toggleable) and overlay spoken stats when visiting each page?

<comment><AUTHOR> great idea!</comment></comment>


Disrupters are agents for change -- what makes technology disruptive? - <AUTHOR> http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/business/story.html?id=3e235634-d62f-450c-8057-02c10a972434&p=2

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/business/story.html...](http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/business/story.html?id=3e235634-d62f-450c-8057-02c10a972434&p=1)

</comment><comment><USER2> You should fix the link - it's going to the second page.

<comment><AUTHOR> how does one edit the original?</comment></comment>


Introducing Nexus S with Gingerbread - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/introducing-nexus-s-with-gingerbread.html <comment><USER2> I don't want to sound too critical of it, but it doesn't seem as compelling as the Nexus One was. When the Nexus One came out, it had an 800x480 display which was higher than most devices at the time, it had a 1GHz processor which was considerably faster than competitors, a 5 megapixel camera, 512MB RAM, etc. This new Nexus S doesn't seem to improve on that formula much: same processor speed, RAM, megapixel camera, screen resolution.

Plus, I think there are more compelling options for T-Mobile right now. Both the myTouch 4G and HTC G2 have HSPA+ allowing for much faster speeds than the HSPA that the Nexus S will come with. Plus, I feel that the 2-color-per-pixel model that Samsung is following with its AMOLED displays makes the devices a lot less useful for my primary purpose: text. AMOLED displays don't have the smooth text that is available on all non-AMOLED 800x480 class devices.

The Nexus One was a big leap forward. It doubled the specs we were used to seeing on processor and RAM, was higher-res than anything except the Motorola Droid, and it included a top-notch camera for the time. The new Nexus S seems like it's playing catchup and is, in fact, not as nice as competing devices.

Now, not having to deal with (Samsung|Motorola|HTC|LG) for OS updates and not having their or (Verizon|AT&T|Sprint|T-Mobile)'s crapware installed on it would be really nice. I guess (for me) I'd just rather get a device that supported HSPA+, had a 3-color-per-pixel display, more RAM (the myTouch 4G has 768MB), etc. The hardware isn't severely lacking in any way, it's just the type of hardware that was average for a phone coming out in July of this year.

<comment><USER3> Can't find the numbers right now, but I'm pretty sure clock for clock, hummingbird is significantly better than snapdragon.

The GPU also matters a lot. One reason why the iPhone feels so awesome despite the somewhat slower CPU is that it's GPU blows 80% of android GPUs out of the water. Once again, I'm pretty sure the GPU performance (if its anything like the Galaxy S) utterly destroys the Nexus One.

<comment><USER4> The Galaxy S (which uses the 1GHz Hummingbird processor) benchmarks faster on the Quadrant test (which does test 3D performance) than the Nexus One with Android 2.1, but slower than devices like the Droid X. It's likely that the new Nexus S would be faster than the Nexus One, but not as fast as many other devices that have been out for a while.

So, it is an upgrade, but it's below what has already come out from other manufacturers - in contrast with the Nexus One which was an enviable top of the line device when it came out.

EDIT: In fact, the Nexus S looks pretty identical to the Galaxy S sans the Samsung software.

<comment><USER5> Supposedly there is some sort of issue with the Quadrant test in particular on the Galaxy S. With the fix (the "lag fix") the Galaxy S tops the field.

The Galaxy S is a fantastic device. It is essentially a higher clocked version of the iPhone 4.

<comment><USER6> Sure, just minus the software. ;-)

<comment><USER5> We're talking about hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 16Gig, no expansion slot? Awwww... +1 for the large internal memory but -1 for no expansion slot. I run a 32Gig SD in my Nexus One and load it up with video when I travel. I also load it via a card reader and not USB. That is the _ONE_ thing I find highly disappointing about this new model. Rest looks good.

</comment><comment><USER8> Side-by-side feature comparison with the Nexus One: [http://www.google.com/phone/compare/?phone=nexus-s&phone...](http://www.google.com/phone/compare/?phone=nexus-s&phone=nexus- one)

</comment><comment><USER9> Tangential question, does anybody know the song used in the commercial in the bottom video?

<comment><USER10> le sans culotte - 'Allo 'Allo <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fb5uxIWPfg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder why they used the Cortex A8? It seems like the A9 has been around long enough to use, but maybe Samsung's Orion is not really ready or it is a cost / power issue?

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know if Google intends/expects to sell more of these than the N1? Or is it primarily a developer-focused device?

<comment><USER13> Looks to be more of a consumer-focused device, but I can't help but feel that it's more so an effort to bolster Android branding/perception than it is to sell devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nobody is talking about the new NFC (near field communication) features?

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks good, though I wish they were a bit more original than nicking Apple's "S" suffix. The 3G _S_ , while being a soft consonant, was dissimilar enough that it worked. Nex-us -ess. Blegh.

Anybody know the RAM spec?

<comment> mike-cardwell <http://www.google.com/phone/detail/nexus-s>

512MB ram, 16GB internal storage

<comment><USER15> Ah, thanks. I was on the phone's homepage and it wasn't listed.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook and OkCupid Broke the Law When They Experimented on Users - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@JamesGrimmelmann/illegal-unethical-and-mood-altering-8b93af772688 <comment><USER2> Basically, they're claiming that the law says that any experiment on people, by anyone, requires informed consent. Every business with customers breaks this law. "Let's see if substituting medium roast espresso beans raises sales!" Sorry.

<comment><USER3> It's also ridiculous because it presupposes an objectively correct way to rank results. The way Facebook places items on the page isn't the result of some natural law, it's the result of code they wrote. Nobody can seriously say that That Way of ranking results is superior to This Way, and certainly not that This Way is somehow illegal.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if a retailer hiking or cutting prices would fall afoul of the legal idea being pushed here. After all, it amounts to an experiment on people to discover the ideal price of a good.

<comment><USER5> This blog post's interpretation of "illegal" would include any change to any product with the intent to stimulate user behavior. It's a very slippery slope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't the law; it's a set of guidelines for federal agencies to follow. It'd be illegal if the department of health and human services or the FDA pulled this type of stunt, because they've voluntarily agreed not to do that by amending their rules and regulations to comply with the common rule that this blog post refers to ([http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/commonrule/](http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/commonrule/))

Facebook and OKCupid are, at least not at the moment, part of the federal government.

<comment><USER7> I recommend reading the rest of the article; the author describes multiple state laws that apply in this case.

<comment><USER8> This is actually not so clear to me. The law in question [1] specifically states that it defers to the federal law [2], which clearly states in section §46.102(e):

> "Research subject to regulation," and similar terms are intended to > encompass those research activities for which a federal department or agency > has specific responsibility for regulating as a research activity.

Furthermore, the definition of "minimal risk" is given in part (i) of the same section,

> the probability and magnitude of harm or discomfort anticipated in the > research are not greater in and of themselves than those ordinarily > encountered in daily life or during the performance of > routine...psychological examinations or tests.

The argument against Facebook and OKCupid are pretty slim here... How could you experience significantly more discomfort in daily life if OKCupid slightly changed their rating system? Any reasonable interpretation of this risk is negligible.

[1] [http://mlis.state.md.us/2002rs/bills/hb/hb0917t.pdf](http://mlis.state.md.us/2002rs/bills/hb/hb0917t.pdf) [2] [http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/policy/ohrpregulations.pdf](http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/policy/ohrpregulations.pdf)

<comment><USER9> It's a bit tricky to understand the details, but I think I've got some of it figured out.

There's "research" and there's "research subject to regulation." The federal law says that all research by or directed by federal departments is subject to this law. It also says that everyone, including you and I, who are doing research subject to regulation (which includes drug development) are also subject to the law.

That is, even without MD 917, all research in MD which is subject to regulation would have been subject to the law.

However, this leads to a gap. Anyone doing research, but not research that is subject to regulation, and not research which is funded or directed by a federal department or agency, is not subject to these ethical requirements.

The MD law (see [http://www.oag.state.md.us/Healthpol/hb917letter.pdf](http://www.oag.state.md.us/Healthpol/hb917letter.pdf)) is meant to close the gap, and include research which is not subject to regulation by a federal department.

The "minimal risk" section you pointed out is for expedited review. That is, the research still needs an IRB, but the IRB can use the expedited review process instead.

OkCupid didn't have an IRB, so the minimal risk section doesn't apply.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. It's really hard to understand what MD917 is saying with all the strikethrough.

<comment><USER9> I agree. The problem is that MD917 is the bill, but not the actual law. Bills are often structured as a delta to the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "from the horrors of Nazi medicine to the deliberate withholding of care from syphilis victims in the Tuskegee experiment"

This is a deeply offensive comparison. Reading the complaint letter makes me wretch.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it was horrible to read. It is a rare mix when someone is -- self- important, offensive, long-winded, ill-informed, and manages to invoke Godwin's Law.

For awfulness: 5/5

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The letter that the authors submitted to Maryland's attorney general ([http://james.grimmelmann.net/files/legal/facebook/MDAG.pdf](http://james.grimmelmann.net/files/legal/facebook/MDAG.pdf)) point out that Maryland's HB 917 -- which essentially applies the federal Common Rule to private companies who do business in Maryland -- defines "research" as "a systematic investigation ... designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge."

That definition is so vague that practically any sort of interaction with a person in which any information about the interaction is recorded and analyzed can be construed as research. If a Girl Scout troop makes a graph of which neighborhoods buy the most cookies ... boom, that's research on human subjects.

I'd be interested to know whether any entity has been prosecuted for violating HB 917. I can't imagine that the extreme vagueness of the definition would hold up against a determined challenge.

What puzzles me is why James Grimmelman, J.D., and Leslie Meltzer Henry, J.D., think that the ultra-vague definition of "research" is legally tenable. Like, can't they anticipate the objections to the definition -- that it effectively bans all sorts of everyday actions that no reasonable person wants to subject to these sort of legal hurdles?

<comment><USER8> More likely they want exposure and a high profile win rather than that they really think this is as immoral as they claim (via their comparisons to Nazi experiments). If they can get away with it and boost their career, why should they care about the impact?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "This is why we cannot have nice things."

OKCupid's blog is super interesting but they might have to discontinue it if it is going to generate legal challenges like this one. The only reason we know about their A/B testing is because they openly told us about it, which if they get prosecuted for it might be a mistake.

I kind of liken it to the "never apologise" rule many companies now have. It is when common sense/public interest run into cold legal restrictions.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like this "law" as interpreted the authors to ban A/B testing would violate the 1st Amendment rights of companies to uncensored speech with their customers. I hope that they challenge FB in court so it can be overturned.

</comment><comment><USER14> A/B testing is also illegal by this standard.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not, because it is not "designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge" in the sense that it seeks to communicate to wider scholarly publics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This makes no sense to me. The algorithms employed by Facebook, OkCupid et al. are not published and presumably changed regularly both to better serve their users and to advance commercial imperatives - apparently this is OK but if you measure the outcomes and call it an experiment it's not?

I don't buy this, as long as all representations made to customers about the service are met, it seems perfectly reasonable to tweak the already unknown algorithms behind the scenes for whatever reason.

<comment><USER16> > as long as all representations made to customers about the service are met

Exactly this. The thing that some people seem to be missing is that there is a (very) good chance nothing is banned. It's just that you have to actually _ask_ the customer. And IRB could waive a lot of the usual requirements (that are primarily intended for experiments with a LOT more risk).

The Common Rule, in these cases, is primarily about enforcing that stuff like a boilerplate EULA does _not_ count as properly informing the customer and getting their approval. When humans are involved you have to get explicit approval each time as a precaution, which isn't actually that hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Maryland House Bill 917 is at [http://mlis.state.md.us/2002rs/billfile/hb0917.htm](http://mlis.state.md.us/2002rs/billfile/hb0917.htm) . The gist of it is:

(a) Compliance with federal regulations. -- A person may not conduct research using a human subject unless the person conducts the research in accordance with the federal regulations on the protection of human subjects.

(b) Scope to include all research. -- Notwithstanding any provision in the federal regulations on the protection of human subjects that limits the applicability of the federal regulations to certain research, subsection (a) of this section applies to all research using a human subject.

My problem is, I'm not sure what MD 917 (b) means. I'll start with §46.102 (a) (1) at [http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html#...](http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html#46.101) :

> (a) (1) Research that is conducted or supported by a federal department or > agency, whether or not it is regulated as defined in §46.102, must comply > with all sections of this policy.

Is MD 917 (b) supposed to mean that §46.102 (a) (1) applies to all human research in Maryland? I believe that's the case, because §46.102 (a) (2) only applies to those organizations which are regulated by a federal department, so would already be covered under the law.

Section §46.102 (b) has a list of human research which is exempt. The most relevant for Facebook and OkCupid appears to be:

> (2) Research involving the use of educational tests (cognitive, diagnostic, > aptitude, achievement), survey procedures, interview procedures or > observation of public behavior, unless: (i) information obtained is recorded > in such a manner that human subjects can be identified, directly or through > identifiers linked to the subjects; and (ii) any disclosure of the human > subjects' responses outside the research could reasonably place the subjects > at risk of criminal or civil liability or be damaging to the subjects' > financial standing, employability, or reputation. [Note: does not apply to > children.]

If A/B testing falls under 'educational tests' or 'survey procedures' then it's exempt.

Otherwise - and this is another tricky part - §46.102 (c) says "Department or agency heads retain final judgment as to whether a particular activity is covered by this policy."

Who is the department head for Facebook and OkCupid? §46.102 (a) defines it as:

> (a) Department or agency head means the head of any federal department or > agency and any other officer or employee of any department or agency to whom > authority has been delegated.

MD 917 doesn't have the information for how to interpret §46.102 outside of the federal context for which it was written.

An alternative interpretation of MD 917 (b) is that _no_ human testing is exempt, including §46.102 (b) (2) which allows surveys. Instead, _all_ testing must go through an IRB.

However, if that's the case then the other exceptions of §46.102 (b) are also no longer allowed, including

> (4) Research involving the collection or study of existing data, documents, > records, pathological specimens, or diagnostic specimens, if these sources > are publicly available or if the information is recorded by the investigator > in such a manner that subjects cannot be identified, directly or through > identifiers linked to the subjects.

which would require IRB review for every historian working out of previously published materials.

Therefore, I don't think this alternative interpretation is correct.

Which means I don't know if MD 917 really applies to OkCupid or Facebook. (The Facebook research was published in a journal which follows the Common Rule compliance; I presume the journals have a way to resolve the question of what "department head" means when there is no department head - it must have come up before. I only investigated MD 917 compliance here.)

_EDIT_ : The MD attorney general clarified this at [http://www.oag.state.md.us/Healthpol/hb917letter.pdf](http://www.oag.state.md.us/Healthpol/hb917letter.pdf) .

> Implicit in the federal regulations, and therefore in House Bill 917's > mandate for compliance with these regulations, is the requirement that a > person have in place a reasonable process for determining whether research > falls within one of the exempt categories.

So determining if A/B testing is exempt comes down to if there's a reasonable process for determining if it's exempt. It's not clearly illegal.

<comment><USER17> > My problem is, I'm not sure what MD 917 (b) means.

Probably Annotated Code of Maryland Section 13-1601(b), added by House Bill 917, means exactly what it says. " _Notwithstanding any provision in the federal regulations_ on the protection of human subjects _that limits the applicability of the federal regulations to certain research_ , subsection (a) of this section applies to all research using a human subject." (emphasis added)

> §46.102 (b) has a list of human research which is exempt.

But those exemptions are a provision of the federal regulations which limits the applicability of the federal regulation to certain research, and so are _expressly excluded_ from the part of the regulation incorporated into Maryland law by Section 13-1601(b).

> Otherwise - and this is another tricky part - §46.102 (c) says "Department > or agency heads retain final judgment as to whether a particular activity is > covered by this policy."

This, again, is a provision of the federal regulations which limits the applicability of the federal regulation to certain research (to those things not excluded by the relevant funding department/agency head), and so are _expressly excluded_ from the part of the regulation incorporated into Maryland law by 917(b). So there's no need to figure out how it applies -- it doesn't.

> However, if that's the case then the other exceptions of §46.102 (b) are > also no longer allowed

Note that, if you go through the link you posted and click on the final passed (Third Reading) version of the bill and note the edits from the prior version, that _prior_ version of the bill had express language incorporating the exceptions in 45 CFR § 46.102(b) as exceptions to the Maryland law, and this was stricken in favor of the language now present expressly disregarding any exceptions in the federal regulations. This makes it pretty clear that, _whether or not this is desirable_ , the legislative intent was very expressly _not_ to incorporate the exceptions in 45 CFR § 46.102(b).

<comment><USER9> I suspect my edit was too late for you to read. I added a link to [http://www.oag.state.md.us/Healthpol/hb917letter.pdf](http://www.oag.state.md.us/Healthpol/hb917letter.pdf) , where the attorney general describes exemptions:

> Therefore, under the applicable federal regulations, a person may conduct > research in an exempt category without, for example, obtaining review by an > institutional review board. A Maryland researcher likewise may do so under > House Bill 917, because such a person is conducting the research "in > accordance with the federal regulations on the protection of human subjects" > and, consequently, does not violate the prohibition in § 13-1602(a) of the > Health-General Article.

This is dated May 2, which is after the bill passed both houses and before it was signed by the governor.

This seems like the exemptions in §46.102 (b) are all allowed under MD law.

<comment><USER17> There seems to me, on the surface, to be some very odd statutory construction underlying that analysis (which is presented in a much less full form than a typical opinion letter, because that's not really what this is, so its really hard to form much of an opinion of its conclusion) -- but certainly it at least indicates how the legal authorities of the State may be likely to _apply_ the law, presuming that their construction of the statute hasn't changed in the intervening decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So.... are A/B testings now banned?

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe they were illegal. The point is they are companies and can do whatever they want, largely without scrutiny. I mean this in the sense that it is difficult to bring charges against them, as evidenced by basically the entire financial sector.

When things like this are published it just serves to dissuade them from PUBLISHING the results of the experiments but not from actually CONDUCTING THEM.

I would much rather know when they do things like this than have them continue to conduct them in secret.

</comment><comment><USER8> I encourage people to read Section 46.102 [1] (page 4) of the federal regulations that Maryland is enforcing. It lays out the definitions of all these terms (as a mathematician, I put the highest weight on definitions), and in particular section (i) on "minimal risk" is clearly in Facebook/OKC's favor.

[1]: [http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/policy/ohrpregulations.pdf](http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/policy/ohrpregulations.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> The Common Rule AFAIK only applies to places that get government funding, so I don't see how this applies to research FB does on its own.

<comment><USER4> Two Cornell researchers were collaborators in the experiment. So it's possible that its IRB screwed up somehow. Hard to see how Facebook or OkC is at fault for that, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here

[https://medium.com/@JamesGrimmelmann/illegal-unethical- and-m...](https://medium.com/@JamesGrimmelmann/illegal-unethical-and-mood- altering-8b93af772688)

the author explains more clearly his position:

"Federal law — primarily the so-called "Common Rule"— ( [http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/commonrule/](http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/commonrule/) ) regulates research on people in the United States. The details are complicated, the gist simple. If you engage in "research involving human subjects," you must have two pieces of paper before you start. You need a signed informed consent form from the person you're experimenting on, and you need approval from an IRB (short for "institutional review board")."

<comment><USER12> The Common Rule linked doesn't apply to private businesses at all. So therefore I don't understand the author's point here?

<comment><USER21> That's what I also wanted to point to, you were faster.

The "Common Rule" appears to be a rule for the Federal agencies, and it is a rule, not a law.

Long jump from that to the illegality? But I'm certainly not a lawyer, whereas the article author seems to be "James Grimmelmann, Professor of Law, University of Maryland."

Strange.

<comment><USER22> According to TFA, Maryland law codifies the common rule.

<comment><USER21> Thanks. So the author could have stated from the start that it's (I'd say "just") "illegal in Maryland." Why then "primarily" mentioning the "rule" and "federal?"

And is the Maryland law relevant? By the author (from the article I've linked previously):

"But wait, you may be saying, Facebook isn't in Maryland, and neither is OkCupid. True. But they have users in Maryland, and given the size of the experimental groups, it's overwhelmingly likely that they experimented on residents of the state. Facebook manipulated with hundreds of thousands of News Feeds; that's thousands of Marylanders. OkCupid gave bad recommendations to about five hundred users."

Well... "likely."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The phrase "generalizable knowledge" seems crucial. I am not a lawyer, and have not done human subjects research, so hope someone else can comment.

However, looking around, it sure sounds like this would not normally cover A/B testing, a business changing its prices and tracking results, or similarly "local" investigations.

Here is one IRB's interpretation of that term: [http://www.irb.wsu.edu/definitions.asp](http://www.irb.wsu.edu/definitions.asp). Others seemed similar.

</comment><comment><USER24> The typical TOS these days turns users into corporate serfs ... I'll bet they respond to these complaints by alleging the users had granted consent.

</comment><comment><USER25> Would it be correct then that any change in layout or diversity in Maryland newspapers, periodicals, and publications would also be illegal? For instance, asking people they prefer a Sports section prior to Entertainment, or having Politics or Local Interest above the fold? Would it be ok to make the changes given that the effects were never measured?

</comment><comment><USER26> OP's position is extreme, and I feel like any negative publicity to Facebook or OkCupid over this is going to ultimately have the effect of punishing them for _saying_ that they ran these experiments.

Changing the way content is ranked by your private service is not in the same ethical territory as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. It's just not.

That said, there is an interesting discussion here, which is: _where is the line?_ Netflix runs an experiment (and whether it chooses to collect data) every time it changes its ranking algorithm, but I think we'd agree that it's ethically OK in that case. What about those sleazy mobile game companies that use data science and heavy experimentation to find and target "whales" who have an in-app-purchase addiction problem? Not ethically OK. I don't know where the line is, but it's clear to me that some tech companies are on one side and some are on the other.

</comment><comment><USER27> We changed the url from [http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/09/23/facebook_and_okcu...](http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/09/23/facebook_and_okcupids_experiments_were_illegal), which points to this longer piece.</comment>


Coldplay Won't Tour for Environmental Reasons - <AUTHOR> https://pitchfork.com/news/chris-martin-says-coldplay-wont-tour-for-environmental-reasons/ <comment><USER2> it must be even worse if their fans go to see them.</comment>


"fs" unpublished and restored - <AUTHOR> http://status.npmjs.org/incidents/dw8cr1lwxkcr <comment><USER2> > _something like 1000 packages do mistakenly depend on "fs", probably because > they were trying to use a built-in node module called "fs"_

These are some of the effects of a non-namespaced module/packaging ecosystem, due to the contribution of Node.js and NPM in equal amounts.

This style of module naming has been exploited by the post 'Typosquatting programming language package managers' [1][2], where they seeded python's _pip_ with modules named after popular packages' misspelled names, but also with some modules that are included in the standard library by default. Since in many cases the commands were run with elevated permissions, 'arbitrary' (in the creative definition of 'unwanted') code could have been executed -- in fact it was, but only a "benign" HTTP postback.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11862217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11862217)

[2] original seems to be down, archived at: [http://archive.is/CZlNG](http://archive.is/CZlNG), or [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://incolumitas.com/2016/06/08/typosquatting- package-managers/)

</comment><comment><USER3> First leftpad, now this: _More detail: the "fs" package is a non-functional package. It simply logs the word "I am fs" and exits._

People sure like to spam npm with toy / useless / misleading packages that end up breaking thousands of projects. What a mess.

</comment><comment><USER4> Points for communicating and being honest. But it still scares me a little that a process like that can be so easily skipped.

</comment><comment><USER5> Or replace it with something less odious and deprecate that.</comment>


Ask HN: Suggestions for my master's degree dissertation - <AUTHOR> Hi guys, I am attending the last year of my master's degree in Management, Finance and International Business (curriculum: Management, Leadership and Marketing) at the University of Bergamo (Italy). I'm looking for the argument of my dissertation; I'd like it to be something concerning IT from a business point of view. Any suggestions? Thank you! <comment><USER2> I think this would be something you should ponder and think about on your own. Think of a question that you would like to answer (eventually) and more importantly your dissertation reviewers would like to know about. It doesn't necessarily have to be a tough topic but has to hold interest. Something that fancies me right now is impact of behavioral economics on business policies

</comment><comment><USER3> Not really sure if this falls within your master's area of interest, but "the sharing economy" and how it transforms business relations between particulars using IT.

(Are people making less money because there is a middle-man, or are they making more because the number of contacts.. etc)

This could be an interesting thing to look into.

</comment><comment><USER4> How IT sector have been a boost for Internationale Business since 15 years? How IT sector have involved lots of change in the business world? How IT field have change some kind of industry since 15 years?</comment>


Why I left SF for LA - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mrcs/why-i-left-sf-for-la-c629e72dff33#.cn1dhlmf0 <comment><USER2> Out-of-touch recruitment fluff with a clickbait title, he was worried about people being self-absorbed in LA, and then lists seeing Kate Hudson as a perk... go back to SF, you'll fit in better there

<comment><USER2> You're better than this jgh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Article comes of incredibly condescending and douchey to me.</comment>


[India]: Top Places to Work/Intern at in India? - <AUTHOR>

I have been looking at various academic/industrial research institutes to intern and eventually work at in India, would love to have a nice compilation sorted by votes! <comment><USER2> Thinking out of the box, I say work in the U.S. Odds are it your living conditions will be better. That's not an uninformed slight against India, but I think unless you have money in India, it is fairly factual. You can work harder than U.S. citizens in the U.S. and as long as your U.S. English is fairly good, you should go far, if you can find jobs that support your visa or better yet can find someone to sponsor your green card. If you don't have the opportunity to come to the states though, I apologize.

</comment><comment><USER3> startups from india that can work out of two pizza's & are intern friendly include:

hover.in paisa.com wooqer.com tringme callgraph voicetap wingify muziboo tenmiles orangescape blu inagist wisdomtap touchmagix

also see [http://www.quora.com/Startups-in-India/What-are-the- fastest-...](http://www.quora.com/Startups-in-India/What-are-the-fastest- growing-web-startups-in-India) , hellointern , sutrajobs

~B</comment>


Toronto student creates RPG video game in Excel - <AUTHOR> http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/630334/toronto-student-creates-rpg-video-game-in-excel/

<comment><USER2> Microsoft used to include easter eggs in their programs, but stopped in 2002 as part of the "trusted computer initiative". [1] Excel 97 had a hidden flight simulator, Word 97 had a hidden pinball game, Access 97 and 00 had a magic 8 ball simulator. Office 4.3/95/97 had a hidden Doom-like gamed called "The Hall of Tortured Souls". There is also a car driving game in Excel 2000.

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

<comment><USER3> > Office 4.3/95/97 had a hidden Doom-like gamed called "The Hall of Tortured > Souls".

Wouldn't that be Access?

<comment><USER4> MS Access is actually a very very useful piece of kit; it's a surprisingly good database considering its limitations, and it's infinitely better than keeping your data with your business logic in an excel spreadsheet.

... Why people hate on it I'll never know.

<comment><USER3> Revision control aside, MS Access is not that bad for what it does.

However... I've seen management people write a couple of VB functions, think they magically turned into "Developers" (with a Capital D), and start barking random orders to people doing totally unrelated things with totally unrelated tools.

The actual danger is psychological, much like when the new iPhone user on the block magically turns into a "Design Expert" (Caps!) and starts hunting innocent bystanders...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Back when I was first starting to work in IT around 2000 I was working in an IT call centre that was part of a big consultancy. It wasn't the most exciting work and our PCs were locked down pretty tight but myself and another employee who also enjoyed programming would make little games(nothing to this scale) in Excel to then trade to the other workers. Reimplemented most of the kde games at the time and a simple pacman clone. Was working on a battleship clone but the networking from excel vba was a pain at the time and I got transfered shortly after to a real programming role within the company.

It's fun seeing other people doing this(and taking is very much further).

</comment><comment><USER6> This is so trivial that I wonder how this got any comment at all ;-)

The real challenge is to build arcade games such as Pacman or Space Invaders: <http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/>

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the successful 7drl entrants this year was made in excel. If I remember correctly, one of the devs was an accountant: <http://7drl.org/2013/03/16/7drl-completed-excelent-rogue/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, that's devotion. It's a huge platform, and the understanding that "even I can make that" is super-easy. I'm scared that it's Excel: it's such a crappy program, and wish it had a better language than VB.

Unrelated: Metronews aims at a very low grade-level.

</comment><comment><USER9> All I can say is that this guy is slightly insane for dealing with Excel VB, but kudos to this guy's perseverance! I know I wouldn't have even bothered if I knew I had to implement it in Excel :), it's almost as bad as writing obfuscated C!

<comment><USER10> It says in the article that the author is an accountant working on her MBA. The relationship that accountants and MBAs develop with Excel spreadsheets is now legendary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author of the game did an AMA on Reddit yesterday: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1c7lka/im_cary_walkin_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1c7lka/im_cary_walkin_the_accountant_and_creator_of/)

</comment><comment><USER12> The horror. And the bravery :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why not Powerpoint? Same access to VBA, but lets you use graphic assets. Powerpoint is basically equivalent to Flash, given VBA as the "ActionScript". I'm surprised there isn't more (satirically) done with it.

<comment><USER5> Easier to use cells as pixels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php?print=1)</comment>


ETL Tools for R Language – Comparison - <AUTHOR> https://blog.panoply.io/the-13-best-etls-for-r-programming <comment><USER2> >If Apache is your web server, you can use Spark as an ETL tool for R.

Oh dear, no. The Apache Software Foundation oversees the development of both the Apache web server, and Spark — which you can use to query Hadoop clusters. Confusing, I know.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, off to a bad start, and made me stop reading.

<comment><USER4> I thought about stopping but decided to keep reading. I'm not sure these guys know what ETL Tooling means, some of the entries were just bespoke R script only packages that just extract data into R.

<comment><USER3> BWaaS (blog writing as a service)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see Pentaho Kettle on the list and as a user I wouldn't recommend it for large jobs unless you have plenty of time. In my experience row processing speeds of hundreds per second are typical and thousands of rows per second are rare. Loading tens of millions of rows is an exercise in patience.</comment>


Cassandra on ContainerShip - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/containership-articles/cassandra-on-containership-84ca90b8e1b9 <comment><AUTHOR> ContainerShip co-founder here. Happy to answer any questions. We're working on producing Docker images for every major database that provide the same simple scaling and management.

<comment><USER2> This looks like a neat product but until/unless its multi-DC and capable of mixing cloud/bare metal deploys I'm not sure if I see the appeal. Automation tools for simplistic scenarios are [frankly] widely available.

Single DC or AWS is honestly a very, very simple use case that I'd honestly question a decision to use an ops tool when you don't understand the underlying technology well enough to deploy a LAN cluster.

<comment><AUTHOR> So today it is single data center in the case of everything but AWS. We allow you to automatically launch a ContainerShip cluster in AWS using [https://cloud.containership.io](https://cloud.containership.io). During setup you select a VPC ID, Subnet IDs, Security Groups, and AZs to launch into. In the near future we are going to fulfill your desires as we are working on features that let you easily span multiple providers or migrate between them.</comment></comment></comment>


Identifying Generational Gaps in Music - I-M-S https://pudding.cool/2020/04/music-challenge/ <comment><AUTHOR> lol these songs made me feel like the stores are open again :)</comment>


Show HN: Multiplayer Tetris in Mootools, HTML5 and NodeJS (Nearly finished) - <AUTHOR>

It's been about 3 weeks since I dusted off the Multiplayer Tetris game that me and a buddy wrote A year ago and that's been collecting dust since then.
A lot of after work and weekend hours have been pooring into the project since then, and I think it's about time to show the progress
What's been done:

  - <USER2>
  - Completely rewrote layout for desktop / tablet browsers using css3 :target.
  - Usage instructions added
    (one of the comments I got: "Yeah, it works, but how do I play?" )
  - Sending all powerups to other users now works
     (click on another user's playfield to send powerup)
  - Game over implemented serverside so a mulitplayer game can end.
  - Now works on tablets with touch input.
     swipe left/right/down for controls, tap another user's playfield for sending powerup.
     Tap the powerups bar to apply to self.
 What's todo:

  - Fix some last bugs in the tetris engine
    ( Blocks can still move up in rare cases,
      T-Spins don't always work in all directions )
  - Global online highscores
  - 2 player mode with an direct invite url
  - Finishing touches, Package the app, and deploy!
  - Phone UI in the works
 Please come and play and try to overload my little gameserver. If no users are online don't forget to try a game against yourself by opening 2 browser tabs!
Link: http://goo.gl/RJa1f <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://goo.gl/RJa1f>

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool! Well done, played the single player version and it ran well.</comment>


General Motors starts taking orders for its electric bicycle - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/general-motors-starts-taking-orders-for-its-electric-bicycle.html <comment><USER2> I can't help but feel as though they ignored the huge range of existing examples of electric bicycles and instead assumed they were entering a greenfields market.

They are positioned very poorly. It's an unattractive folding bike that doesn't fold and costs too much. People who buy that style of bike do it because it folds, which is also the reason why it compromises on tire size and aesthetics. Anyone wanting an e-bike in that price range has a lot of much more interesting and practical bikes to choose from.

<comment><USER3> The Uni Moke is a bike that GM should pay close attention to:

[https://urbandrivestyle.com/products/unimoke-urban-utlity- el...](https://urbandrivestyle.com/products/unimoke-urban-utlity-electric- bike)

<comment><USER4> I'm all for putting function before form but man is that bike ugly! It looks like something a bunch of first year mechanical engineering students slapped together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Chinese managed to achieve parity with 50cc mopeds in mass market mopeds, the plank now has to go to 150cc. Once 150cc is taken, the whole of South East Asia will fall for it.

China for example managed to switch to electric motorcycles long before gasoline motorcycles were banned in big cities. People chose electric moped over gas powered ones for their maintenance free nature, even when switch meant a downgrade.

More importantly, Chinese mopeds with smaller engines were borderline undrivable, and in that category, going electric was an actual upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER6> There are very few electric bikes or pedelecs that don't look awful.

Here's a great counter-example, though: [https://www.coboc.biz/en/products/one- soho/](https://www.coboc.biz/en/products/one-soho/)

<comment><USER7> Wow they're beautiful !

I also like (and own a) [https://www.vanmoof.com/en_us/](https://www.vanmoof.com/en_us/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> $3200 - $3800 for an electric bicycle?

That seems crazy expensive to me. Can someone in EMEA explain if it seems worth the cost?

<comment><USER9> First, I think this bike is likely a little overpriced. Right now, you can get a good mid-drive e-bike with a reasonable battery for low $2k. However, I'm guessing that $2k also seems expensive to you (frankly, it does to me as well, but more on that later). Yamaha has a new ebike (the CrossCore) which I think is probably a better value at $2,399.

I think a lot of people have that reaction to ebike (and regular bicycle) pricing at first. It's important to remember that decent entry-level bikes really start around $500. Many people have a conception in their head of something from Target or Walmart that's very low quality and doesn't hold up well. You might also want to get some better components given that you're adding a motor and battery to it so the bike might really start at $700 or $800. The Yamaha has Shimano Sora components which you probably don't tend to find on regular bikes below $800. So, there's a regular bike starting point right there. Often times you want better tires because you'll be riding faster than regular bikes tend to get ridden, a better chain because you'll be putting more stress on it, etc. Often these bikes come with lights that add to the cost. It's also important to remember that weight plays a big role in bikes while cars can pile on weight without as much concern.

Most importantly, they come with a motor and battery pack. The battery pack can be a very expensive part of the bike, often costing $700+. Add the motor into the mix and it's easy to see how one can break $2k.

However, there are certainly ebikes that can be had for cheaper. Rad Power offers options for $1,500 that are quite good. They don't have quite as much range and they're rear-drive rather than mid-drive bikes, but they're quite good.

It's also important to remember that we're kinda in the infancy of ebikes. Bosch just introduced new motors aimed at lowering the entry-level price point of mid-drive bikes. Yamaha is just entering the market now. GM is just entering the market now. Prices will likely come down a bit as they become more popular and as companies put more investment into them.

Also, ebikes are often subject to import taxes and, in Europe, VAT included in the quoted price. Trump's trade spat with China raised the price of ebikes in the US by hundreds of dollars in many cases. In fact, the tariff was going to be 25% which really shook the ebike industry ([https://www.radpowerbikes.com/pages/rad-pricing- returns](https://www.radpowerbikes.com/pages/rad-pricing-returns)). The prices in the article might be including VAT which is a bit unfair to compare to American prices. As they noted, the bike will be cheaper in Germany which indicates that VAT is likely in play. It's easy to see how VAT and tariffs might have a large impact of 20-40%.

To close, even at $3k, an ebike can be an awesome purchase. I live in a city where parking is expensive and a car won't get you to your destination at more than 20MPH. Heck, the speed limit in the city is 25MPH. So, an ebike becomes a car and even public transit replacement. With more range, flexibility (on your schedule, to exactly where you want to go), and speed than public transit, an ebike can be amazing. Parking at my work costs $250/mo for cars or $3,000 per year. Insurance on that car would probably be another $1,000+. Let's assume a $20,000 car that needs replacing every decade. Another $2,000/year.

If you live 10 miles from work and your option is to drive and sit in miserable traffic and pay $6,000/year for that, an ebike starts to look pretty awesome. You get exercise and stimulation while the assist is there to handle any fatigue - and these bikes can really provide assist to the point that you don't have to worry about fatigue.

Heck, even if you're replacing public transit, an ebike can be reasonable. A transit pass might cost $100/mo which becomes $1,200/year. After two years, you've spent the cost of a Yamaha CrossCore. After 15 months, you've spent the cost of a Rad Power Rad City. You get to go where you want, when you want, with more speed than a car or public transit can offer. Again, that's going to depend on your city and its traffic.

Yes, the bike "seems expensive". Bikes seem expensive to me too (ebike or even regular). C'mon, it's just a bike? Wheels, pedals, chain. $500-800 for that? Heck, I have enthusiast friends that spend several thousand on a regular bike. However, cars can have some huge costs and I think a lot of people are pretty miserable in traffic - especially as traffic continues to get worse in our cities.

Plus, they're amazing for the environment. 1kWh of electricity can get you 100 miles of range - and more if you're putting in decent effort. 1kWh of electricity in an electric car can get you 4 miles. Plus, parking has a huge environmental cost. Parking garages use a lot of steel and concrete which are terrible for climate change. Surface parking means mowing down trees and turning open space into an asphalt wasteland. Bike parking takes up space, but not nearly as much space and it's often space that can be less impactful on the environment around it because bikes can be lifted and maneuvered in ways a car can't be.

It certainly depends on where you live, but if you find yourself driving 2-8 miles around the city a lot, a bike lets you avoid traffic and parking hassles and an ebike lets you do that faster and with less physical effort - they open up biking to more and more people.

<comment><USER5> > It's also important to remember that we're kinda in the infancy of ebikes. > Bosch just introduced new motors aimed at lowering the entry-level price > point of mid-drive bikes. Yamaha is just entering the market now. GM is just > entering the market now. Prices will likely come down a bit as they become > more popular and as companies put more investment into them.

Yamaha been in electric bikes, and mopeds for an eternity. When it comes to electric 50cc analogues, Chinese makers steamroll all competition.

Imho, nobody can take on Yamaha in electric 150cc analogue market (Yamaha is the king in 150cc). Yamaha will simply take its existing mopeds and put electric engines into them. A very good 150cc will make you around 10 horsepowers. That's something you can easily achieve with a very light hub motor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > With ride-hailing companies and similar businesses spreading, some industry > watchers wonder whether broad swaths of future generations will even > consider car ownership at all.

So, a future where most of the people with extractable value only use robot taxis and e-scooters.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious why there aren't more "nontraditional" transportation options somewhere between a full-size car and a bicycle. I'd love a small/efficient single-seat vehicle with temp-controlled cabin for under $5000.

<comment><USER12> The Renault Twizy fits your description more or less: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy).

<comment><USER11> Ah, very cool. Sadly, it's Europe only and I live in the US. Looking at related links, it seems all the best options are Europe only.

<comment><USER7> Except for the temp controlled cabin

> The Twizy may be winterized with winter tires and adding flexi side windows > to enclose the cabin. Heating would be provided by plugging in electric > blankets to keep the driver warm

The twizy is horrible for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is GM actually building these bikes or are they just slapping a label on an OEM product?

<comment><USER5> I will be super surprised if it's not the later. GM can't make toasters themselves these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks like a horrible bike if you have to actually pedal it, the wheels are tiny! You might as well get a moped or something instead of that, which would stick out like a sore thumb and be a good target for thieves. Also where do you lock it up if you have to? Or do you just fold it up and take it inside? For some reason it doesn't seem like it was made by a person who's ever ridden a bike.

<comment><USER15> Foldable ebikes have to have small wheels, so they can be carried easily when folded up. For a non-folding bike, I think they're just being dumb.

<comment><USER16> Smaller wheels are stronger and less likely to go out of true with abuse. That translates into fewer support issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This GM bike is hilariously over priced.

My city is swapped with these things, at half the price, with cheap and plentiful corner repair shops.

I was once shown a Chinese B2B site, with a dashboard mix-n-match for various e-bike configurations. $500-$1500/bike wholesale price range.

If someone knows of anything like this, please post the URL.

</comment><comment><USER18> Are there any specs on this? Seems expensive, unless the specs are amazing.</comment>


VMware Buys CloudHealth, Pushes Stupid Multi-Cloud Narrative - <AUTHOR> https://lastweekinaws.com/blog/vmware-buys-cloudhealth-pushes-stupid-multi-cloud-narrative.html <comment><AUTHOR> There were a few ways I could have gone with this post; I opted to go after multi-cloud being a largely terrible idea.</comment>


The golden asteroid that could make everyone on Earth a billionaire - <AUTHOR> https://www.rt.com/business/462703-golden-asteroid-everyone-billionaire/ <comment><USER2> ... assuming the price of gold does not fall to almost $0. Anyway, gold has a lot of industrial applications, so it would be nice.

The annual mining of gold is about 3000 tons. In a very optimistic scenario, let's assume a weekly rocket with 20 tons of gold, that increase the annual production in 1000 tons. Probably enough to reduce the prize, but not to $0.

<comment><USER3> If the gold is mixed or chemically bonded, you are delivering rock, and there's plenty of gold in the rock beneath your feet, it is just not worth the cost to extract. Surely requiring a high-risk rocket delivery system makes it less feasible... perhaps so much that mining even a pure-gold asteroid would not pay dividends.

<comment><USER2> Gold mostly appear on Earth as a pure metal or an alloy with Silver (that is also valuable), so I expect that in the asteroid it is in one of those forms. (But I'm not an astrogeologist.)

Anyway, the article is probably too optimistic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the real potential game changer here is platinum group metals. The total world supply (of platinum alone) is a mere 8 million ounces [https://www.statista.com/statistics/418212/global- platinum-s...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/418212/global-platinum- supply/) Investors long on platinum would not like it, but a significant increase in supply would open economic activity using platinum group metals in catalysts and other industrial uses. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/platinum- ca...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/platinum-catalyst)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's not how scarcity works.

</comment><comment><USER6> No, it couldn't. What it could do is drop the value of gold so everyone on Earth could afford as much gold (but not anything else) as present billionaires.

It's not like modern currency is pegged to gold.

And exploiting the asteroid might make people billionaires, but would also generate hyperinflation, if currency was pegged to gold.

</comment><comment><USER7> 'could' is the key word here...

Much more likely to make a handful of people quadrillionaires and the rest of us slightly more bitter.</comment>