Be Careful What You Post on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://shankman.com/be-careful-what-you-post/ <comment><USER2> What a massive inferiority complex!

One person does not like Memphis. A lot of people who live there do. How can this be a problem?

A lot of people dislike the city I live in. I like it a lot. I see no reason to dislike people who don't like my city.

As for the guy who was so offended, I would recommend the FedEx HR to look into possible psychological help, if the employee is worth keeping. Overreactions like this can happen in other more damaging circumstances.

<comment><USER3> These people don't care if you say you don't like Memphis, but they do care if their flacks do; Memphis is part of their identity. You're also allowed not to like their logo, but you can't say that if you want to rep them.

<comment><USER4> That may be true, but he's not representing the City of Memphis. He's representing the company of FedEx, which is _based_ in Memphis. If I made a Twitter comment saying that I hated New York City, while I was head of a PR firm for the New York Stock Exchange, I would not expect to get a similar response.

> _many of my peers and I question the expense of paying Ketchum to produce > the video open for today's event; work that could have been achieved by > internal, award-winning professionals with decades of experience in > television production._

This seems more like the crux of the issue. Someone pissed off that the company didn't use him or his working group and instead outsourced the work.

> _Not knowing exactly what prompted your comments, I will admit the area > around our airport is a bit of an eyesore, not without crime, prostitution, > commercial decay, and a few potholes._

He even admits that it's possible the @keyinfluencer had a bad experience with the town. So @keyinfluencer's comment could have been totally acceptable within the context of the experience that he had had with Memphis at the point.

This whole 'response' comes off as a gross over-reaction. Much in the same light as the guy that writes a 12-page essay in response to an off-hand comment that there are 'many inconsistencies' in the Bible. The guy writes the letter/essay not because it is justified, but because someone has hit a sore spot and he feels a need to 'react' to what he views as some sort of 'transgression.'

In this case, I feel like the 'transgression' is probably not 'insulting my city' so much as 'he took mah jerb!' But he couldn't outright say something like, "this guy's an assclown and I don't like him," so he used this off- handed comment as an excuse. Notice how he CC'd this to _all_ the FexEx upper- ups. He clearly is trying to give them the impression that they need to drop this 'outsourced' company and bring the work back in-house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write._

Succinct and insightful.

<comment><USER6> _A hazard of socializing at all is people will read, listen to, or otherwise consume what you say and do._

FTFY. I fail to see why people are freaking out about social networks all the time. If I walked into my office and said "OMG I GOT DRUNK AND PUKED ON DEBRA'S DESK LAST NIGHT LULLLLZ," people would get just as annoyed and offended (and Debra just as repulsed) as if I'd said it on Twitter. It's not hard: if you're going to say it, expect it to be heard. Period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This should go without saying. You should be careful of everything you put out online. Blogs, Usenet posts, IRC, Twitter, Facebook, etc., etc.

<comment><USER8> This is nothing new, and I wonder why people think writing "online" excuses being a jerk. People should apply the same rules as they would when talking to someone in person.

I am willing to bet the twitter poster wouldn't walk into that conference that morning and say to someone there: "I don't know how you could live here, I sure couldn't!".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Memphis is part of FedEx's identity. Moreso than, say, International Paper's identity. This person works in communications. The fact that Ketchum had staffed FedEx with what appears to be a moron is relevant to FedEx. I don't think this is an overreaction.

</comment><comment><USER9> I had a blog up until a couple years ago. But I eventually decided the risk/reward equation was way out of whack. Especially given how easy it is to offend some people.

That's what it came down to for me. Every blog post became "is this worth losing my job, friends, etc... over if I potentially offend someone?" Once I determined the answer to that question was almost always no I decided to ditch the blog.

(and it's also why I don't Tweet)

Hopefully FedEx has a management team that is understanding enough not to fire this poor guy. Because a lot of companies are willing to cut someone loose at the mere hint of controversy.

<comment><USER10> Fedex Management should fire the asshole who blew a tweet way out of proportion, ignored his own company's leadership structure by directly contacting his executives, and directly contacted a customer's leadership.

<comment><USER9> I'd agree but as the article points out people in memphis are very sensitive about their town. If a decent sized boycott starts I'd bet this guy's job is toast (especially in this economy)

The issue is whether the irrational people can make enough noise to cause him trouble and whether that one tweet was worth the consequences it will bring to him.

(see tptacek's response above where he completely agrees with the guy who made this a big deal)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People get offended way to easy and overreact.

People suck.

<comment><USER12> Hey, I'm people. Sure, I'm a little round in the middle, I'm graying, and I could stand to workout once in a while. I'm starting a program to revitalize myself and fix those problems. Someone in your position as a person should think twice about offending us...people.

<comment><USER11> I see your point, although I include myself when I say "people suck".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a ten month old article and comments that robustly argued both sides of the situation. How is this news, let alone hacker news?

<comment><USER9> Is "Because I'd never seen it and I found it interesting" an answer you'd accept? (I'm not the one who posted it btw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What a jerk (the person with the long overblown complaint letter, of course).

</comment><comment><USER15> It's not difficult to squirm out of this particular case. " _I_ couldn't live here." Such a statement imparts neither a positive nor negative reaction. It's easy to turn around on the offended party: "Why would _you_ assume an insult?". With Twitter's character limit, it's unwise to read to far into something lacking much context.

<comment><USER8> He didn't say "I couldn't live here", he said "I would die if I had to live here!" which I don't think can be considered a neutral statement.

Regarding the squirming, He'd likely be better off by apologizing for making a stupid statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> this illustrates the biggest problem with the culture in the USA today. people are too god damn sensitive. people "get offended" by something as stupid as a twitter post. twitter, good god! what is next???</comment>


International Fellowship applications for Part 2 now open - <AUTHOR> http://www.fast.ai/2018/01/17/international-spring-2018/ <comment><USER2> Very attractive for potential students who can otherwise do nothing about their passion. But, how would anyone substantiate one's hard work/achievements without at least a certificate?</comment>


Are Gmail Adding New Features to Email? - <AUTHOR> http://tracerbullets.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/are-gmail-adding-features-to-email/

<comment><USER2> That button is enabled by the email sender using Schemas: [https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/](https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/)</comment>


Microsoft's new documentary about startups is brutally honest about Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2011/microsoft-film-startups-brutally-honest-microsoft <comment><USER2> That trailer is straight out of the 90's. Cliche stock shots run through cheap filters in between attention grabbing soundbites.

The documentary clearly has some interesting subject matter and interviewees. Why couldn't they have just run some interesting snippets from the people they've interviewed?</comment>


A note to language haters - <AUTHOR> http://vore.cc/post/27622728732/duck-blinds

<comment><USER2> Here's the deal: all languages have downsides. It's called "tradeoffs". Depending on what's important to you, those tradeoffs could be Really Bad.

Take for example my current bread and butter, C++. Because it was designed during a time when people still really cared about speed, a number of design decisions were made for the language (eg, non-virtual by default) that may not make sense today. This is just the tip of the iceberg; I trust I don't need to go on about exceptions or the various things left out of the spec or "left as a decision for the compiler implementers".

Now, I know many of the problems with C++, and I'm willing to admit them. It only seems logical, if you are competent at using a tool, you are familiar with its limitations and will admit to them, and maybe justify them in the context of tradeoffs.

This cannot be said of many who defend PHP. I'm not going to rehash criticisms of PHP, but it seems to me that the shortcomings of the language can't be justified by tradeoffs because _there were no benefits gained_ by the downsides that are in PHP. It really seems like an ad-hoc spaghetti mess. That many defend this by citing irrelevant facts ("it's popular!") or debatable facts ("it's easy!") while not addressing the shortcomings _at all_ , tends to lead me to believe that defenders of PHP are lacking in professionalism and probably have little experience of other programming languages.

That articles like this one keep coming up is a sign that people (mainly PHP defenders) can't just admit their language has downsides like everyone else's (okay, maybe more than everyone else's) and move on.

EDIT: A little less inflammatory.

<comment><USER3> >> but it seems to me that the shortcomings of the language can't be justified by tradeoffs because there were no benefits gained by the downsides that are in PHP

You are wrong. There are a lot of justifications for the tradeoffs, and if you want to know what they are, just ask real developers who wrote the code or maintain it. Somehow this is very rarely done, people just assume because they saw a couple of pages of bad PHP code, they know everything about the language now and can tell if certain tradeoffs were justified or not. PHP is simple, but it's not _that_ simple.

>> debatable facts ("it's easy!")

Calling the fact "debatable" in order to make a proven fact seem dubious may be effective at first, but only if the readers do not have a habit to think about what they read. I think most of the people here do have this habit. So it would be nice to respect the audience and if you mean to dispute known facts - fine, dispute them. By using proof and argument, not just by attaching an epithet to them.

>> That articles like this one keep coming up is a sign that people (mainly PHP defenders) can't just admit their language has downsides like everyone else's

Sorry, this is baloney. Everybody admits that. What PHP defenders would not admit is exactly what you are saying above - that PHP is unique among languages not in having downsides, but in all of these downsides having no justifications at all. What they don't admit is that anybody who sees that is stupid (or, as you prefer to say, "lacking in professionalism") just because they see more than you see. That's just nonsense and there's absolutely no reason to "admit" it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The trick to being a great programmer is to learn as much as you can about as many programming languages and techniques as you can."

I'm not sure I believe this claim. First off how much learning is required to subjectively solve problems in the most elegant way. Syntactically languages are essentially the same. Its the vast API's and language paradigms that need to be consumed and understood at a deep level in order to solve problems in the most elegant way with that "tool."

Now another facet of this argument is what it means to support and maintain everything. A homogeneous system is far easier to support and maintain. Stemming from your argument, a concern would be a mishmash of solutions to support and maintain. If devs were allowed to "use the best tool for the job" for every problem, I would hate to see what their production environment looks like.

The comparison of languages to a hammer is specious. A language is a language like french or italian. A tool for expressing yourself. You can translate word for word which sounds silly, or you can really "know" the language and translate concepts into the paradigms of the other language.

<comment><AUTHOR> In an ideal world, in which any one language can be used for all tasks, I'd agree. In practice, however, practically every complex system I know of uses multiple technologies. I don't think there's a way around that.

Good point on the language vs. platform distinction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not getting this hammer metaphor. OK, so a hammer is good for pounding nails and not good for fixing a watch. If we're having this whole discussion because people have noticed that PHP is the frequent common factor in buggy, poor-security web applications, then what is PHP actually good for?

</comment><comment><USER6> i think the article misses the main point. the articles 'bashing' PHP does not say noone ever wrote good code in PHP or ever will. rather that we should change the situation where PHP is the de facto std for beginners on the web, because in their opinion there are superior alternatives. that's a valid concern imho, i mean it is 'not valid' to question wether there is good PHP code, but it is 'valid' to question whether PHP should be the std beginners language). sry for my english.

<comment><USER3> De facto standards are de facto standards not because somebody decided them to be. It's because people choose it. So discussing what people "should" choose is pointless - they choose what they like, not what somebody thinks they "should".

<comment><USER6> i disagree. first you copy others, discover and then you may alter/fine tune your decision. de facto standards are standards because "we" decide them to be.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why YC doesn't show a cookie consent popup? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Honest question: why are cookie consent popups a thing? They create the worst browsing experience and I find them more annoying than anything else.

<comment><USER3> Because the law was rushed and some other law improvements that were suggested were not published because it would affect ad companies too much.

I think this is the worst thing that happened to web privacy and UX. Now everyone just clicks ACCEPT to any cookie policy and the non-technical users also automatically click accept on location or push notifications requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because as far as I know it doesn't use cookies or similar technologies for advertising/tracking/analytics purposes. The only cookies it uses are functional (the logged in user's session) and those don't require disclosure nor consent.</comment>


How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make? - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/how-much-money-do-parking-lots-actually-make <comment><USER3> At least in California, especially in Los Angeles, it's really important to factor in that parking lots -- even on land worth $10M+ -- often pay property taxes as little as $100-$1000 a year (thanks to Prop 13).

You buy a parking lot, sit on it as the value of land increases (paying effectively 0% in taxes), then you eventually sell, paying only a capital gains tax (much lower than income).

I only bring up California, because I know it. I'm sure there's similar dodgy tax advantages in other states.

Point being -- taxing land the way we do (especially in California) seems to be problematic.

This is also the reason you see single family homes with front and back yards like 1000 meters away from sky scrapers in Los Angeles and San Jose. Those homes are paying property taxes of like $400 a year, and most of them are being rented out. It's not poor old ladies living in them that don't want to leave the neighborhood they lived their whole lives in, but gentrified under their feet into some urban monster. It's business people arbitraging tax laws.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Taxing property encourages speculation and under-development.

Showing an alternative, Pennsylvania has several towns and cities with a split-rate tax, which means that there's a higher tax on the assessed land value than on the assessed value of the property. Taking this to an extreme, you can tax only the land value, not the property, providing a very strong incentive to make the best use of desirable land. A split rate tax just lets you turn the dial between typical property taxes and a land tax.

Many arguments in favor of the land value tax are based in concepts of economic rent and fairness. While I'm sympathetic to these arguments, I think the best argument is that it seems to work, both in theory and practice. Places that implement a split rate or land value tax tend to have fewer empty lots, parking lots, single-family homes in the middle of downtown, etc.

And not just that, but typical property taxes provide a disincentive to even improve your own property, since you'll pay more tax. They encourage blight.

It's not just California, it's everywhere. Tax policy isn't the only thing stopping us from avoiding sprawl by "thickening up" valuable areas of towns and cities, but it's a big one. Parking minimums are another, and of course zoning is yet another. All of them are important in terms of making our cities walkable, amenable to public transit, and sustainable environmentally.

*edit -- I should clarify that Prop-13 makes this effect worse in California than many places, though.

<comment><USER5> > And not just that, but typical property taxes provide a disincentive to even > improve your own property, since you'll pay more tax. They encourage blight.

A good old wealth tax on everything would fix that.

<comment><USER6> Most OECD countries have dropped wealth taxes. They don't work. In 1990, 12 OECD countries had wealth taxes, now, only 4. A wealth tax has a lot of unintended consequences and while it sounds good as a populist sound bite, reality isn't so simplistic.

<comment><USER7> Do you have a history of this - was it just that the ownership was moved offshore? Did they "not work" or was it just lobbied against?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like this billboard from the good old days [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Ev...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Everybody_works_but_the_vacant_lot_%28cropped%29.jpg/1024px- Everybody_works_but_the_vacant_lot_%28cropped%29.jpg).

It says: "Everybody works but the vacant lot. I paid $3,600 for this lot and will hold till I get $6000. The profit is unearned increment made possible by the presence of this community and enterprise of its people. I take the profit without earning it."

These lots produce negative externalities to society and should be taxed accordingly.

<comment><USER9> If it was 100% guaranteed that the lot will be worth $6000 in a couple of years, it wouldn't be sold at $3600, but something much closer to $6000. The gentleman buying the lot is obviously taking on risk - the lot may very well never be worth $6000, or may even never again be worth $3600.

<comment><USER10> This is not necessarily true though. If you could use that 3600 to become 7000 in the same time it would definitely make sense to sell for 3600, and reinvest that money into a even more profitable investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll never understand how articles like this always talk about Uber and never about public transportation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_JFK#Ridership](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_JFK#Ridership)

>The AirTrain's ridership has risen each year since then. In 2017, there were 7,655,901 passengers who paid to travel between JFK Airport and either Howard Beach or Jamaica. This represents a 292% increase over 2004, the first full year of operation, when 2,623,791 riders paid.

>An additional 12.6 million people are estimated to have ridden the AirTrain for free in 2017.

When such an answer already exists, there is no reason to even ruminate on self driving cars.

<comment><USER12> It seems that to Americans, public transport is unthinkable and the mere suggestion that it could be a solution is met with shock and horror since the only public transport they have ever known is the American kind with useless timetables and primarily used as homeless housing.

<comment><USER13> The timetables could be deemphasized if you could see the public transportation moving live on a map. The homeless housing aspect could be reduced if a phone or app was required for the upscale public transport.

<comment><USER12> >reduced if a phone or app was required

No thanks. I don't want government mandated spyware on my phone. Its shocking that your solution is to try and ban poor people from public transport rather than providing them a proper place to stay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know a family that own a parking lot at LAX, as well as a parking lot across from Staples Center in LA. Safe to say it is their crown jewels of assets.

The irony is that the father didn't want these, but they were thrown into a financing deal that he was on the other side of.

</comment><comment><USER15> How much money does a parking lot impose in external costs upon society?

[https://www.streetfilms.org/parking-craters-a-scourge-of- ame...](https://www.streetfilms.org/parking-craters-a-scourge-of-american- downtowns/)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is sadly true: about 10 years ago when self driving cars were on the horizon* I looked into buying some parking lots in Manhattan and SF figuring that I could get a good price now and turn them into something valuable down the road.

Turned out the people who owned them weren't dummies and had the same strategy. The prices I could get (and few were even willing to talk) were enormous multiples of likely revenue: basically the price of a buildable city lot where you didn't have to demolish an existing structure.

* They seemed only a decade away. Now, 10 years later, they are only a couple of decades away. Like fusion power.

<comment><USER17> There's no logic to thinking of parking lots as different to any apartment or office tower. They are an asset that generates rental income. The value of the parking lot will be based on the rental income as well as the development potential of the land.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this article while doing cursory research on the economics of parking lots and booting. My assumption is that when booting companies could charge booted cars to remove the boot on the spot (i.e., on-site credit card reader), then booting became a more serious side-business for businesses that have parking lots (add in CV-monitored parking lot technology - <USER2> delinquent detection).

I have more research to do; if you any insights/knowledge, my curiosity compels me to ask that you share. ;^)

<comment><USER18> By "booting" do you mean "towing"? I'm from western Canada and have never heard the term "booting" before in relation to parking lots and what I assume must be towing.

<comment><USER19> Booting refers to wheel clamping [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_clamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_clamp)

<comment><USER18> Aaah interesting -- thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How about just making it a private "no-parking" area and then towing the wrongly parked cars into a pound and asking a nice fee to have the car reclaimed at $500 apiece?

Like here

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPLjrMiMW2zSIMNZjjSRjQw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPLjrMiMW2zSIMNZjjSRjQw)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Bear in mind, though, an ideal lot wouldn't be full of only office workers. > They're parked there all day! Ideally you get shoppers, who turn over their > parking spot every hour or two.

I wonder how much this actually matters? Money is money, whether it's coming from one person parked for 8 hours or four people each parked for 2 hours.

Sure, most lots will charge a somewhat lower rate for a longer period of time (i.e. the per-hour is less than three per-20-minutes, the per-four-hours is less than four per-hours, etc.), but if lots really do prefer short-duration parkers over longer-duration parkers, then it'd make sense for them to just not incentivize that behavior and charge a flat rate (or even invert it), no?

<comment><USER22> Guaranteed money is better than maybe-money too. Most operators will take a guaranteed 8 hours compared to maybe filling a spot later. Taking this to the extreme, many places here sell monthly packages for commuters.

The variable hourly-rates is also a form of price anchoring and takes advantage of sunk costs. Look at Westfield's Sydney CBD rates here: [https://www.westfield.com.au/sydney/parking](https://www.westfield.com.au/sydney/parking)

Once you pay that first $35 it's not so bad to stick around and spend a bit more. Westfield has a vested interest in this since they run the shopping centre, but other local operators have to compete with this so can't be too much more expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you in Sydney, Australia (in the CBD, which is downtown) your looking at $65 USD per day. Absolute rip-off.

<comment><USER24> Demand better public transport, then. It's the solution for every other city in Australia.

The CBD shouldn't be for cars.

<comment><USER25> Sydney has pretty decent public transport, at least by Australian standards, and most certainly compared to any US city of comparable size. I never park my car in central Sydney on a weekday, and have never been particularly inconvenienced by that cost.

<comment><USER22> Yes after 5pm weekdays and on the weekend there are plenty of flat rate places for $15 or about $10 more towards the north end of town.

I just wish they'd build more parking near some of the suburban train stations. It's usually OK far from the CBD, but a park and ride strategy would definitely help at places 15-20 minutes out. Mascot and Green Square have both gone through a lot of development, are expecting a lot of new people, and still have tiny roads with no dedicated parking near stations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Some parking spaces in central London are more per hour than minimum wage

</comment><comment><USER27> Self-driving cars will render these obsolete

<comment><USER28> Is your self-driving car going to take up less space or something?

<comment><USER29> The idea is that a self-driving car rarely has to park, it can simply drive around for your entire 8-hour work day after dropping you off. Or, maybe provide some ride-sharing services instead to be more useful and profitable.

<comment><USER28> I would guess that parking in a parking lot is preferable to continuing to waste fuel and make traffic worse for the entire work day. Not to mention the other hours in a day you're not driving it.

<comment><USER29> Yes, that's a pretty common counterargument. Having a large number of autonomous cars roaming the streets during the day like zombies isn't really sustainable. But, with companies like Tesla promoting the idea that you car could be _productive_ via ride sharing during the day, it might prevent the cars from at least wandering aimlessly.

Fortunately, many self-driving car companies are using alternative fuel vehicles (Cruise uses the Bolt, Tesla is obviously electric, Waymo has the i-Pace and Pacifica Hybrids), and things like inductive charging are also helpful for complete autonomy so the future of autonomous zombie cars may involve fewer tailpipe emissions at least :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Study: No Shortage of U.S. Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2009/db20091027_723059.htm <comment><USER2> "Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates testified before the House Committee on Science and Technology and said salaries are not the problem when his company tries to recruit top scientists and engineers. "It's not an issue of raising wages. These jobs are very, very, very high-paying jobs," he said."

It maybe true that they are very high paying jobs but I doubt they are as high paying as say a job on Wall Street.

<comment><USER3> The trouble is that as engineer or researcher you have to actually do some hard, useful things.

As for financial sector, so much money is floating around these guys that they can earn exorbitant wages almost effortlessly without having any skill at all.

I guess people claiming they can predict future always earn disproportional amounts of wealth without doing anything useful. That is as long as everything goes well.

Squeeze this free-riding and casino mixture that is called financial market a bit and you will have plenty of smart people available for hacking physics as they loose incentives for hacking money game instead.

<comment><USER4> _As for financial sector, so much money is floating around these guys that they can earn exorbitant wages almost effortlessly without having any skill at all._

Fail.

I've been through the interview process at a couple of such places, and you don't get in without having some skill.

In fact, I'd say the typical financial job is more technical than the typical engineering job. A large number of engineering jobs consist of little more than the electrical/mechanical/chemical equivalent of CRUD programming, but not very many finance jobs fall into that category [1].

[1] The financial industry requires many CRUD-type jobs to be done just like any other industry, but those are usually outsourced.

<comment><USER3> I overshot myself a bit with "without having any skill at all". I meant "without skill that they must had to get comparable salary from engineering type of job".

Also I didn't mean CRUD jobs because they are probably same as everywhere else. Smart person with a bit of social aptitude can pass them fairly fast.

I don't think that during work you would be using skills that you were tested for during interviews. Any highly profitable branch that does not require skill has to have high barrier on entry. Because if not, soon all people would d it, and that would make it less profitable.

If job actually requires skill then barrier of entry need not to be so high because lack of skill will quickly become apparent anyway. For example barrier of entry to my college was fairly low (it was technical and not many people actually wanted to get in because math is hard so the college set their barriers fairly low to not put people off, this also probably had to do with the way the school was financed). Semester later one third of the students were gone. After first semester only half remained.

<comment><USER4> According to the people I've spoken to working in finance, they routinely use moderately advanced math. By advanced math, I mean PDEs, numerical problems requiring cleverness and more probability than most engineers learn [1].

They also do it at a speed and level of distraction that many _good_ techies can't handle. By this I mean a trader has the absolute right to yell at you at any time and make you drop everything debug the program he is using.

As for "barriers of entry need not be so high", college is different than a job. Your college still collected tuition from the students up until they dropped out. Goldman Sachs has to pay the bad techies they recruit until they fire them (and this may also be legally problematic [2]).

[1] It's usually not as deep as, e.g., a PhD in math or theoretical physics.

[2] If they did as you suggest, and women or minorities disproportionately couldn't handle the job, they are inviting a disparate impact lawsuit.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't dispute this - I'm sure that many finance people are pretty brilliant and have very strong math backgrounds.

That said, I met a lot of folks who work in finance who make a lot of money and absolutely _do not_ have a strong math background.

Of all the folks who make substantial salaries (let's say above $250K/year) on wall street, what percentage do you think could, on the spot (or within a few minutes of consulting a book or web site), solve a simple differential equation, the kind that you encounter in an upper division undergraduate math class?

<comment><USER4> To clarify, my claim isn't that everyone in finance (or even above a certain pay scale) has a strong math background. My claim is that many of the engineer cum quants are doing technical work (not simply paper pushing) in a difficult environment.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you that "engineer cum quants" do hard math work, but you're not really comparing similar groups anymore (your original claim was that a "typical financial job is more technical than the typical engineering job"). My impression was that _quants_ almost always have an academic background in math or physics, but I don't think this level of math is typical for most of the folks in finance, including many who make gobs and gobs of money.

<comment><USER4> Oops, I was unclear. I should have specified that I was comparing engineers cum quants to engineers qua engineers.

(These are the two groups of people we were originally discussing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Stephenson says the number of computer science courses taught at the high school level has dropped for the past six years, especially at advanced levels. In 2005, 40% of U.S. high schools offered Advanced Placement courses in computer science; that number sank to 32% in 2007 and to 27% in 2009. "It's clear that the number of students taking computer science is dropping," she says.

Heads of other professional organizations also criticized the study for its lack of specificity among industries. The argument is that some STEM students and graduates may be worth cultivating more than others. The report's authors said it would have been too difficult and costly to perform a longitudinal data analysis by individual industry._

There's your problem. Anecdotal evidence here: they're all medicine. Everyone under the frickin sun wants to be a doctor.

<comment><USER7> There's a huuuge cultural bias against computer science here, which is killing it. Downstream, this results in very few girls, athletes, etc. having an interest. They pursue medicine, business and traditional engineering instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In another article about the same report.

[http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20091028...](http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20091028_Study_asks__What_scientist_and_engineer_shortage_.html)

"In the last decade, U.S. colleges graduated three times more scientists and engineers than the number of jobs available, the researchers said. The data went through 2005 and did not reflect the recession."

It sounds like this research was "Hey department of education how many science or engineering graduates are there in the US every year?" and "Hey bls.gov how many openings are there that match engineer or scientist for entry level positions each year?" Now divide and we are done. Conclusion, there are way to many people with science and engineering degrees.

This is drawing conclusions about the labor market with a data set that includes a wide range of degrees many of which are only prerequisites for graduate degrees in other fields.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's all about the money. Why would someone intelligent want to work as an engineer when they can make way more in finance or law?

<comment><USER10> Money is only a symptom. What it's really about is the vestiges of the old British class system. Doctors, lawyers, bankers, managers, and so on are upper-middle-class professionals. Engineers of any sort, no matter how skilled, no matter how many degrees, PE or CEng status, have the taint of blue-collar about them (from the POV of the upper-middles). A manager will never be happy to see a worker paid more than him, even if by the laws of supply and demand they ought to be.

This is much much less of a problem in say Germany where Engineer is a respected, prestigious title in its own right.

<comment><USER11> Speaking as a Brit Manager who pays his engineers more than himself and is perfectly happy about this, I call Bollocks.

<comment><USER10> Are you asserting that Britain is now a Blairite classless utopia? I don't think even he himself would agree with that... And neither would his buddies Lords Falconer and Mandelson.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Breaking news from the office of fallacies: People are fungible!

Seriously speaking, however, money is a pretty major problem. It is hard not to feel unfairly treated when the lawyers working on translating your product into patentese make 5-6x per hour that you do. Of course, I have equity. I don't know how I'd feel were I an engineer, paid market rate, without it.

Why is the market rate for engineers so low, compared with other professionals? Do they need a union? Negotiations class? What is it?

</comment><comment><USER13> We live in a time when average person will have multiple careers for shorter durations, so this is not a surprise to me. I personally feel that its hard to make life decisions about careers at the age 18 or 19, so a shift in professions after graduation considering science and engineering students have strong backgrounds in math, algorithms & models for better paying jobs is quiet understandable.

</comment><comment><USER14> Seems like engineers are under-valued then.

</comment><comment><USER15> see: <http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/UrbanInst2.txt>

<http://www.urban.org/publications/411562.html>

I've not verified or looked into the issue beyond requesting the ucdavis document.

<comment><USER3> > At Microsoft, a new PhD in computer science makes about $90K, while > Microsoft pays newly-minted lawyers $140K. And the gap grows after that.

That really shows who brings beacon to MS. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There will always be a 'labor shortage' if your definition of a shortage is being unable to find staff at the price you like. It's refreshing to see at least one attempt to swim against the tide of propaganda produced by industry.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's about Dilbert. If I have the skills to go into a profession where I'll be respected or into a profession where I'll be treated, well, shall we say not so well, which will I pick?

<comment><USER17> Well, obviously Dilbert is an extreme caricature of what happens in most offices, but the comic in and of itself is not a good emissary for the software engineering profession. It unfortunately may have unconsciously biased many people away from jobs in industry.</comment></comment>


Political polarization may emerge because of conflicting desires, not beliefs - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/opinion/sunday/youre-not-going-to-change-your-mind.html <comment><USER2> It seems to me that part of the solution might be working to develop solutions that don't prevent the other side from achieving their desires. My ideal vision of how America works (e.g. the American dream as I see it) is that everyone is free to live according to their own way of life and society works for win-win solutions. However, it seems to me that both sides are afraid that if the other side wins they will try to force their lifestyle on them; and I think they are probably right.

<comment><USER3> I want to live in such a way where I get to be a feudal lord, presiding over a large group of tenant farmers/sharecroppers/indentured servants. I want the freedom to employ the state's prisoners for my own gain, without paying them. I want the freedom to pollute, without being subjected to the tyranny of the EPA. In short, I want to be able to exercise power against those weaker, poorer, or less politically connected then me.

My desires are almost certainly incompatible with yours.

Politics is a process for distributing scarce resources. Brokering how, and when people can exert power to the detriment of others is an inescapable part of it. There are many bad actors who seek to do so - not as many as one might lead to believe, but they consistently find themselves at the top of the social food chain.

<comment><USER2> I agree that there are going to be situations where conflict between desires is unavoidable or where it is not possible to accommodate extreme desires; however that doesn't mean that finding compatible solutions is not the best approach in the vast majority of situations.

I'd also point out that those are strategies to achieve desires, not desires themselves. The associated desires might be something like financial security, a sense of importance, freedom etc.

<comment><USER3> Compatible solutions that are palatable to both parties - compromise - is very important.

Sometimes, though, compromise is impossible. If you say that 3+3=6, and I say that 3+3=10, you'd be a fool to compromise on 8. This is made all the more obvious when we consider which of us gets to frame the debate. If I really wanted 3+3 to be 10, I'd just demand that we make 3+3=14, and I'll get exactly what I want, once we split the difference.

Everyone wants freedom, and everyone wants agency, and everyone wants health and happiness. There's plenty of all of those things to go around. Many of us also want power, though, which is more likely to be a zero-sum game.

<comment><USER4> > I'd just demand that we make 3+3=14, and I'll get exactly what I want, once > we split the difference.

There's a lot of that happening...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Madison discusses factionalism in Federalist No. 10, and as I read it, basically concludes that all these competing desires/interests and/or beliefs would be best served by a federal republic where locals would be able to solve their problems in the appropriate way for their constituents. So, decentralizing power away from Washington D.C. and putting it in the hands people more directly. Some people cannot accept this and would like to exert control over people living +1000 miles away. There is just too much diversity to manage 300M people from a central authority without sacrificing liberty. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and authoritarian ideas of governance must be vigilantly opposed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._10#Madison.27s_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._10#Madison.27s_arguments)

<comment><USER6> I feel like this made sense for the 1700s United States because everyone there was a recent immigrant—which is to say, people with both the desire and the proven ability to pick up and move to find a place that better suits them.

When you have communities of mostly that type of person, you can just make each community into its own little experiment, and tell everyone to go on a Gulliver's Travels-esque journey to find the right community for them, _then_ settle down.

When your communities, on the other hand, are full of "entrenched" families/clans—groups of people who, for reasons of proximity or tradition, just _won 't move_ no matter _how_ bad things get where they're currently living—then the Great Republic Experiment breaks down a little.

Specifically, it breaks because you'll get people who just really don't _fit_ in a place, and would be better suited to some other system of laws available in some other state or municipality... but want to stay where they are anyway, despite suffering strong disutilities. You'll get _large numbers_ of such people, in fact. (See: Detroit.)

A large part of the reason for federalization comes down to helping those people by guaranteeing certain minimum quality-of-life benefits in _all_ those communities, whether the majority there support them or not. Which results in communities that need to share more laws than not, and rapidly lose much of the benefits of separation.

If everyone had kept the "immigrant mentality"—of being willing to drop your existing life to find personal liberty somewhere else—then the US wouldn't much need a federal government (beyond a sort of inverted border-police, working to ensure that people aren't being _inhibited_ by local laws from crossing state lines—a "non-underground" railroad.)

But Americans haven't kept that mentality, and I'm not sure there's a way to re-instill it. It's just, as far as I know, a personality trait—one that happened to have 100% representation in the 18th century US, but then reverted to the mean in their descendants.

<comment><USER7> Not just want to say, but have no other real choice but to stay.

<comment><USER8> What do you mean? What could prevent someone from moving even though they really want to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like a weird and hardly surprising piece.

The idea that one of two political ideas is 'right' or that that even matters is utterly absurd.

The whole point of politics is to find solutions that resolve conflicting desires.

Polarization happens when the solutions simply don't do that.

The problem should not be framed as 'how to get people to change their desires and beliefs' to match a political ideology. The challenge is to come up with some new ways of looking at things that resolve the differences.

<comment><USER10> What exactly do you mean by 'resolve'? If you mean to harmonize or reconcile the desires, that's not how politics usually works. Often resolution happens by means of one side marginalising the other.

<comment><USER9> Politics used to work by kings beheading nobles deemed traitorous.

More recently, as you say, it often works by having 'sides' that marginalize each other.

I'm assuming that it's not going to be like that for the rest of human history, and suggesting that the polarization might not be a necessary outcome of people's desires, but rather an artifact of a politicians who don't know how to resolve them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Two thousand years ago people were at each other's throats over "homoousion". One thousand years ago over "filioque". Four hundred years ago it was predestination. The idea that large-scale conflict over ideology is some kind of aberration to be explained by "biases" is just a figment of the modern ideology of "rationality". In five hundred years they will study this time period and ask, how could they have been so worked up over these minor and obscure points, hardly even comprehensible any more, that they tore their society apart? And the answer will be the same as always - human nature: superstitious, tribal, dogmatic, and violent.

</comment><comment><USER12> So what is the solution? I feel like the US is currently on a very unsustainable path right now with the political polarization.

<comment><USER13> One idea is to do everything we can to support minor political parties, because they bring diversity to political discourse that doesn't necessarily fit into a two-party system.

Probably the most important change along these lines would be to replace first-past-the-post voting with a system that allows people to express more complex preferences, such as approval voting, ranked choice voting, or range voting.

Other ideas include publicly funded elections, mixed-member proportional representation, redistricting via the shortest splitline algorithm, and compulsory voting.

<comment><USER14> Far be it from me to suggest we should not support small parties (I lean heavily libertarian) but be very careful what you wish for: Donald Trump was likely as close to a political outside the US will see as a leader for many years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember seeing an animated graphic of survey results over time (Past ~20 years) that showed the left has been getting lefter at ~5x the rate that the right is getting righter.

I'm curious what would explain this.

<comment><USER16> Do you remember where this was? I'm interested because it feels like the exact opposite to me. We've got weakened labor unions and strengthened centralized control over resources, we've got stronger centralized government power over individuals (PATRIOT act et al), basically no world powers with an even nominally leftist government, yadda yadda.

In the wake of the financial crisis, a lot of Golden Dawn-esque nationalist parties have crept up and are finding more success than I'd initially expected.

It feels like we're moving more authoritarian right to me.

<comment><USER17> I think this is actually totalitarian left - the right is more about personal liberties etc.

Not trolling – I might be wrong –people more knowledgeable about the left/right dichotomy are welcome to shed some light onto this.

<comment><USER18> >I think this is actually totalitarian left

You're absolutely right. There is only one side organizing at grassroots level (indicating that these are not isolated occurrences, but rather are coming from the groups shared ideals) across the country to shut down the political speech of the other, violently in many cases, and that is the left.

<comment><USER16> Sure thing buddy.

[http://atlantablackstar.com/2017/05/15/white-supremacist- ric...](http://atlantablackstar.com/2017/05/15/white-supremacist-richard- spencer-leads-march-charlottesville-va-reminiscent-kkk-gathering/)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for posting, as this one event by the far, far right with a couple dozen people stands in sharp contrast to dozens and dozens of examples involving as many as hundreds of people from the left, and really shows how unequatable they are.

<comment><USER19> This is just the most high profile example in recent memory.

<comment><USER18> Which doesn't change the reality of what I've said.

I even linked to an left-wing incident that happened over the weekend, with an order of magnitude more people.

[http://college.usatoday.com/2017/05/30/protests-erupt- over-r...](http://college.usatoday.com/2017/05/30/protests-erupt-over-racism- at-evergreen-state-college/)

<comment><USER19> Sorry, I was wrong. The stabbing on the bus in Oregon is probably the most high profile example of a xenophobia-motivated killing:

[http://ktla.com/2017/05/30/portland-man-accused-of- stabbing-...](http://ktla.com/2017/05/30/portland-man-accused-of-stabbing- killing-2-men-yells-in-court-you-call-it-terrorism-i-call-it-patriotism/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That's depressing. No matter how right I am I'll never be able to convince others.

</comment><comment><USER21> > Participants indicated who they desired to win, and who they believed would > win, the election.

Would be more interesting if conducted around desires and beliefs about deeper outcomes than who wins an election.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wait so you're saying political polarization isn't because all southerners are racist idiots? You mean they might actually have reasonable desires of their own? Mind blown. /s

</comment><comment><USER23> Don't forget that this extreme polarization is an American thing. At least Germany doesn't have it to that degree. The parties have differences but they don't demonize each other.

<comment><USER22> No they were only attempting eugenics and genocide a few decades ago.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the insightful comment.</comment></comment></comment>


Opera: State of the Mobile Web report - <AUTHOR> http://www.opera.com/smw/ <comment><USER2> > Opera first developed a mobile browser in 1998. Since then, we've been at > the forefront of enabling a full Web experience on mobile phones.

I assume this was written in early 2007?

</comment><comment><USER3> @danudey why would you say that? the report is from Dec 09.</comment>


Ask HN: Can anyone help a starving programmer? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
I'm a programmer from London who's working on a Startup with my cofounder. We have been covered by a few big tech blogs and you've probably heard of us. We're in the process of getting funding but, I am about to become homeless and need somewhere to stay.
I am willing to give you 5% of the company as well as £100 per month for you to let me crash on your couch/spare room whilst I write code for our web app. Don't worry, we are not another photo sharing app. We are building a real business that deals with a real world need, will be profitable from day one and we've landed a big brand you've heard of to our list of clients. We've have a large waiting list of emails and all that is left to do is for us to launch publicly and I'm almost finished on the backend.
Anyone who wants to know more email me at: email@example.com
This company will be a success; my life depends on it. I don't see this as charity as I honestly believe that the 5% will be worthwhile in the near future.
Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> > This company will be a success; my life depends on it.

Don't put so much pressure on yourself. Statements like this are _not_ healthy.

Failing at a startup -- or any other business venture -- doesn't mean you're personally a failure. The number of startups that fail is huge -- especially if count ambiguous success cases like radical pivots or acquihires.

The fact that you're doing a startup at all means you've already differentiated yourself from a lot of programmers out there.

</comment><comment><USER3> "We have been covered by a few big tech blogs and you've probably heard of us. "

...so why the cloak-and-dagger routine?

<comment><USER4> 1) It would damage their image if public. Bad PR

2) Becoming homeless + beeing dependant on others is already embarrassing enough, don't you think?

3) Privacy.

<comment><USER4> 4) If you were in Germany I'd probably give you a stay

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Good to know there are kind people out there

<comment><USER5> Just moved to Amsterdam from East London, sorry fella otherwise I'd have gladly offered you some accom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TBH that sounds like a bad idea for any number of reasons.

Presumably you have some kind of credit history, why not just get a loan for a couple of grand to cover you for a few months until you get funding (or borrow it off a friend) ?

</comment><comment><USER7> I like this <http://couchsurfing.org>

</comment><comment><USER8> Try Couchsurfing. Might also get a few hits there..

<comment><USER9> yes I was going to say that also! Anyways I once (like 2yrs) ago stayed in a hostel in london cant remeber the name but anyways it was filled with young people 20-30 and some of them worked a few days per week for free accomodation and food. Mabye you can try that? Also dont let your pride get in the way I was once stranded in nyc. To make a long story short your friends and family really will help you or at least some of them will. Hope that helps. Ill try to look up the name of the hostel

<comment><USER9> Palmer lodge swiss cottage. I dont know if they still do this but I would give it a shot. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your help. I know my struggle won't be permanent, I just need a place to sleep whilst me & my cofounder get this thing off the ground

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd try couchsurfing first! :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Whereabouts in London ideally?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ideally near the silicon roundabout. But, I am flexible

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you find yourself in the Maryland area (by accident or on purpose), you're welcome to stay with me gratis. No equity needed.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much</comment></comment>


Show HN: Scheme todomvc inspired from reactjs/redux using snabbdom - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amirouche/scheme-todomvc <comment><USER2> Pretty nice. I would have used Chibi or SPOCK (probably Chibi) myself, as opposed to Biwa, but that's all up to personal preference. The point is, this is pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some weird behavior in the demo:

If I check an item at the top of my todo list, then the first item in the "Active" tab is checked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx! I forgot to use the `key` paramters which is not bound in scheme yet...</comment></comment>


Google still has Street View WiFi data from UK, several other countries - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/google-still-has-street-view-wifi-data-from-uk-several-other-countries/

<comment><USER2> EPIC has more background info at <http://epic.org/privacy/streetview/>

I just cannot understand why Google allowed wifi data to be collected in the first place.

With their recent launch of Fiber, I hope they become more forthcoming and transparent (even in cases where they are not being investigated).</comment>


RethinkDB internals: handling stack overflow on custom stacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.rethinkdb.com/blog/2010/12/handling-stack-overflow-on-custom-stacks/

<comment><USER2> I usually enjoy reading RethinkDB blog posts -- it's unusual for a company with such smart people to write about _technical_ issues they come across -- but I got as far as the first sentence before being disappointed this time.

      On my computer, the callstack of a new process is around 10MB.

I can't imagine what sort of thinking produced this sentence.

First, this limit isn't set by his _computer_. His computer might affect the limit; but the value is also likely to be affected by his choice of operating systems, his login.conf settings, whether he is root, and possibly environment variables.

Second, processes don't have stacks. _Threads_ have stacks. And often the first thread gets more room than later threads.

Third, the stack starts out small -- like, a few hundred bytes or so, depending on the amount of bloat in his platform's crt1.o (or equivalent). It can grow, of course; but the size of something is not equivalent to its _maximum permitted_ size -- you would never say "a newly created file is 2^64 bytes" just because that's the maximum possible size.

I'd suggest replacing the first sentence with

      On my computer / OS / login environment, the default maximum permitted size of
      the primary thread's stack in a new process is around 10 MB.

(Random side note: You guys have heard of userland threads, right? You seem to be doing an awful lot of wheel-reinventing here -- not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but I didn't find your "threads are too expensive" line particularly convincing.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Colin! I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I feel like your arguments address semantics/linguistics and not the actual issue.

 _First, this limit isn't set by his computer._

Obviously the size of the stack depends on a number of variables (including the hardware architecture, the kernel, how the kernel was compiled, various settings, etc.), but on Dan's configuration it's roughly 10MB, as verified by the program at the end of the blog post. Here is a program that confirms it by computing the number in a different way:

      #include <pthread.h>
      #include <stdio.h>

      int main(int argc, char *argv[])
      {
         size_t stacksize;
         pthread_attr_t attr;
         pthread_attr_init(&attr);
         pthread_attr_getstacksize (&attr, &stacksize);
         printf("Default stack size = %lu\n", stacksize);
      }

On our configuration (which is roughly what most customers are expected to run) the output is 8388608, or 8MB. According to the manual, _pthread_attr_getstacksize_ returns _the minimum size (in bytes) that will be allocated for threads created using the thread attributes object attr_. Naturally the size can be changed manually (in the code or with ulimit), but it is the default minimum for newly created threads according to the manual. The point wasn't that you couldn't change this value, it's that for our purposes (lots of green threads, shallow stacks) a much smaller default stack size is more sensible.

 _Second, processes don't have stacks. Threads have stacks._

Certainly, but this is a question of terminology. On Linux threads are special-case processes (with address-space sharing and a few other changes). For example, when calling _strace_ you have to pass -f to see syscalls from all the threads instead of just the main one.

 _Third, the stack starts out small -- like, a few hundred bytes or so._

Again, not according to the manual (see above).

 _You guys have heard of userland threads, right?_

When we get the chance we'll post benchmarks between GNU Pth, NPTL, and our coroutine implementation. I can assure you that NPTL is much slower than what we're doing. GNU Pth is a real contender, but there are some issues associated with using it (mainly the fact that we need to be able to move coroutines between native kernel threads, and it's not clear how well GNU Pth can handle that). The coroutines implementation won't be making it into the first release - ultimately we'll test all three alternatives and pick the best one, but it will take some time before that happens.

<comment><USER2> _I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I feel like your arguments address semantics/linguistics and not the actual issue._

It might be that, yes. But as a philosophy professor of my acquaintance likes to remark, "clear thinking requires clear language" (the irony of this phrase coming from a philosopher's mouth seems to be lost on him). Using unclear language both misleads the audience and makes it unclear whether the speaker understands what he's talking about.

(I find the same is true of code -- the clarity of some code seems very highly correlated with how well its author understands the problem space in question.)

Between us we're using three different definitions of "stack size" -- the size of the actual stack, the amount of RAM allocated, and the amount of VM space allocated; needless to say, I think the first definition makes the most sense. ;-)

 _When we get the chance we'll post benchmarks between GNU Pth, NPTL, and our coroutine implementation._

I recommend trying other operating systems too. Linux is famously bad at threading, and only survives in benchmarks because most applications which run on Linux are equally bad in how they use threads. What you really want (and seem to be implementing) is an M:N threading system, which is considerably more performant than either 1:1 or M:1.

<comment><AUTHOR> _But as a philosophy professor of my acquaintance likes to remark, "clear thinking requires clear language"_

I think you need to balance that with taking some shortcuts, or you'll never get to the essence (or at least your readers won't).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Use 64-bit and all problems with 10 MB stacks go away. 64 KB is surprisingly small when you call a library function or if the OS uses the userspace stack for OS calls.

<comment><USER4> This is something which will be good to look into in the future. It may be that, in certain system configurations, that's fine. But if there are 10,000 coroutines each with 10 MB stacks, and memory overcommitting is turned off or configured to be relatively conservative (as some system administrators like to do), you'll need to reserve 100GB of physical memory + swap just for coroutine stacks. This may be problematic, but it may not. In the system I've implemented, the stack size is a parameter which can be varied when the database is launched, so this is something which we can easily benchmark in the future.</comment></comment>


Roxy Is Building Amazon Alexa for Businesses - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2017/ex-amazon-microsoft-employees-launching-business-focused-digital-assistant-roxy/ <comment><USER2> Interesting to see this; wonder whether they can beat Amazon in the b2b race. I heard they're giving out Echos to Boutique hotels for free.</comment>


IPad mini deemed 'pointless' by nearly half of American iPhone fans - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/09/ipad-mini-criticism-iphone-study-survey/

<comment><USER2> Blogspam, here's the article [http://www.cultofmac.com/183623/nearly-80-of- americans-would...](http://www.cultofmac.com/183623/nearly-80-of-americans- would-shun-ipad-mini-in-favor-of-iphone-5/) edit: never mind, even that's not the source and the link from there is an affiliate link disguised as a direct link...

</comment><comment><USER3> The 1,873 surveyed on CouponCodes4u is hardly an accurate representation of American iPhone fans.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone here deadlifts daily? What changes have you observed? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I do deadlift sometimes, but definitely not daily. If I tried that I'm pretty sure I'd be laid up somewhere sucking down pain-killers and writhing in pain.

It's long been the case for me, going back for several years now, that if I let my deadlift volume get too large, I start experiencing low-back pain. And the older I get, the less volume it seems to take to trigger it. Strangely though, doing jefferson squats (aka straddle deadlifts) doesn't seem to bother me, not does doing various kinds of squats.

Anyway, these days I usually deadlift once a week and do jefferson deadlifts once a week (on a different day). I've been able to get stronger doing that, while mostly avoiding any pain.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're deadlifting _daily_ , you're doing it wrong, whether you goal is general health or hypertrophy.

</comment><comment><USER4> daily? seems excessive, I deadlift one day per week and do back squats two (different) days per week.

Better posture, less back pain, more flexibility.</comment>


Facebook says it may sue employers who demand job applicants' passwords - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/facebook-says-it-may-sue-employers-who-demand-job-applicants-passwords.ars

<comment><USER2> If Facebook is serious about setting an example with prodding employers, they should take it a step further and expose which employers have asked for this information and make it public. I am sure Glassdoor.com would love to add this information to their database of reviews and having this viewable by those looking at prospective employers could be good metric to see how the company or management actually values their employees. It would be a deciding factor to me to work somewhere if a company I was interviewing for was trying to gain access to employee accounts and they were flagged publicly.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Official Facebook press statement is here: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and- privacy/protecti...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and- privacy/protecting-your-passwords-and-your-privacy/326598317390057)

HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3745484>

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't wait until Facebook issues a press release instructing people to not log in as their parents when said parents are unable to change their profile picture or other basic tasks. That is such a bother.

</comment><comment><USER4> Facebook's statement doesn't actually say they'll sue employers _as employers_. It says they'll initiate legal action "where appropriate", "including by shutting down applications that abuse their privileges." That sounds more like shutting down an app publisher that was collecting employee logins in order to gain access to social graph data, for instance. Grounds to sue an employer who wasn't a Facebook API user would be pretty tenuous at best.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's certainly great that Facebook is taking a stand for privacy. But this is clearly more of a PR move than anything else. I mean, will Facebook _really_ sue someone for demanding an applicant's password during an interview?

<comment><USER6> What standing to sue does Facebook have?

<comment><USER7> Facebook may sue under 18 USC § 1030(g) for unauthorized access to its computer systems if the employer obtains another person's password and then accesses that person's account using said password.

It may also sue under state law for tortious interference for inducing users to breach their contract with Facebook. (It is against Facebook's TOS to share one's password.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if Facebook might partially be doing this so people don't hesitate to use their service.

On the other hand, it's nice to see happening if a result actually comes from it. Too often announcements are like activity -- confused with lasting results.

<comment><USER9> > I wonder if Facebook might partially be doing this so people don't hesitate > to use their service.

Of course that's part of the reason, don't act like Facebook wanting to have happy users who aren't afraid about their information being misused is bad because it is essential for them to make money.

<comment><USER8> Who was acting :)</comment></comment></comment>


Set Up a Secure Node.js Web Application - <AUTHOR> https://nodeswat.com/blog/setting-up-a-secure-node-js-web-application/ <comment><USER2> Confused: Not specific to node at all. It's more common to run node applications using forever instead of a system service--easier to configure and maintain. Also no reason to use separate software for https--node does this just fine.</comment>


Xbox and Windows NT 3.5 source code leaks online - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/21/21265995/xbox-source-code-leak-original-console-windows-3-5 <comment><USER2> Trash article.

The Xbox code leaked in 2004 and was passed around extensively. You can find public download links from even ~2010. This was discussed in the popular 2005 CCC talk: [https://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/fahrplan/attachments/591...](https://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/fahrplan/attachments/591-paper_xbox.pdf)

The Xbox OS isn't "a custom version of Windows 2000". They took the networking stack and a couple other bits from NT, but otherwise it was built from scratch.

XQEMU hasn't "struggled to emulate the original Xbox OS and kernel" \- it's a low level emulator and thus just emulates the Xbox hardware with no knowledge of the OS.

<comment><USER3> > The Xbox OS isn't "a custom version of Windows 2000". They took the > networking stack and a couple other bits from NT, but otherwise it was built > from scratch.

From the whole Win2k obviously not, and it is common for journalists to not be very precise, but at least the kernel seems to have tons of architectural similarities with the NT kernel, and I would not be surprised if it was a derivative?

[https://xboxdevwiki.net/Kernel](https://xboxdevwiki.net/Kernel)

I also found [https://books.google.fr/books?id=-8YlaRclj2gC&lpg=PA603&pg=P...](https://books.google.fr/books?id=-8YlaRclj2gC&lpg=PA603&pg=PA603#v=onepage) and that's pretty much what I expected. But nobody who knows the difference about kernel vs. whole windows OS think that they would take explorer.exe and random obscure IT stuff and so over, and 150k is not crazy big, but for a core OS kernel this is completely expected.

The high level API seems to be based on a subset of DirectX and even a few pieces of Win32, so that's not completely unrelated either. It's obvious that the GUI was not taken from Windows, that you won't be able to maybe install a printer and so over, and it is probable that tons of custom code was also written, but that does not make the relationship disappear completely.

<comment><USER4> The scheduler is radically different and that has knock-on effects on the rest of the OS. The OS gets a fixed time slice every frame before control is handed back to the game. The security model is engineered to distrust the _user of the device_ as an anti-piracy measure.

It might be a derivative, but calling at a "custom version of Windows 2000" is absolutely wrong.

<comment><USER3> There are also custom scheduling policies in the XBox One IIUC. I agree that a "custom version of Windows 2000" for the original XBox is wrong, but it is not extremely consequential in this article, I can see where it comes from, and I don't think its erroneous enough for it to be a big deal to be presented like that to the public; only experts will find the distinction interesting.

Saying it is a custom version of Mac OS, I would call it _absolutely_ wrong. Here, just wrong is enough :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm starting to think leaking the code for an old console could be a pretty cost-effective way to get an emulator.

I'm pretty sure I've heard of companies using open source emulators for backwards compatibility with old consoles/selling 'classic games' before.

<comment><USER6> You may be thinking of Nintendo. They packaged up a Super Mario ROM from the internet and sold it on their classic games store.

[https://youtu.be/zR1uEwjx7VI](https://youtu.be/zR1uEwjx7VI)

<comment><USER7> That proof is utter nonsense.

Sure Nintendo might have just downloaded the rom, but they may have:

1) just concatenated the prg and chr roms and added an iNES header so they could validate in third party emulators. (Likely extra helpful for games where they were developing anti-epilepsy patches, since third party emulators have some really nice debugging tools.)

or

2) Used a third party cart dumper that adds the iNES header, because it was faster and easier than setting up a 3.5 inch floppy drive to try read the original rom from the archive. (And much faster than retyping in hex dump printout from the archive).

<comment><USER8> or

3) hired one of the iNES developers to develop their emulator, who kept using the file-format they were familiar with.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756156)

<comment><USER9> great detective work there!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm trying to think of a good use case for exploring the NT 3.5 source code but I can't really think of one. It had the Windows 3 user interface and a number of enterprisey things like telephony (TAPI) and UPS control, but was overall pretty bare-bones.

I remember a few quirks. I lacked a CD drive and borrowed one to install NT 3.51. When I gave the CD drive back, NT wouldn't boot. It turns out that it installs ATAPI.SYS if you have a CD, which won't boot without it. It installs ATDISK.SYS if you don't have a CD.

System administration was pretty clumsy. I really began to appreciate the text file based UNIX philosphy over the point-and-click Microsoft approach. I had been dual booting NetBSD and OS/2 2.1 before that.

Nonetheless it was solid compared to Windows 3.1 and 95. Perhaps being limited to what it was, it'd be easier to study the native api and how it was being accessed by the several subsystems (Win32, OS/2, POSIX). A much lighter version of NTFS was running on it. I remember at the time you needed a windows source license to write a filesystem driver. I was using Visual C++ 4.0. 100Mbit ethernet was fast for the time and I was a little jealous of people using 155Mbit ATM.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to try and have a go at compiling the NT3.5 source. What tools would I need? There are Makefiles and things in the archive, but having installed MS Visual C++ 6.0 in a Windows 2000 virtual machine, it still seems to be lacking commands like "build" and "nmake" which are referenced in these files... Does anyone have pointers?

</comment><comment><USER12> Where is the xbox code?

</comment><comment><USER13> Didn't the NT code leak more than 10 years ago already?

<comment><USER14> That would be the partial W2k and NT 4 leak mentioned in the article?

This dump seems to be full code + full build environment, which seems pretty extraordinary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What if a Microsoft developer gets her/his hands on the leaked NT 3.5 code and secretly starts working on setting Windows 10 straight...

<comment><USER16> Little chance of that. They still haven't even fixed the start menu search.

I open up the start menu, type 'vlc', and get no matches. I close the menu, reopen it, and try again. This time, it finds VLC no problem.

They've had almost 5 years to fix this.

<comment><USER17> What mystifies me is that the core of the OS is actually pretty good. I've never had any issue like a blue screen since a decade ago. The kernel and driver subsystems are rock solid. Had a few occasional GPU driver crashes but those are mostly the fault of the driver devs and they don't cause a system reboot since Vista.

Why is the userland so bad in comparison? are they employing much worse developers to take care of the windows explorer/search/browser side of things? it is true that if you really try to pay attention you will notice many quirks and bugs here and there in the user interface interactions, with the start menu search being such a horribly visible offender (also bugs in the explorer search box).

Microsoft managed to make a uniform looking user interface for both win9x and XP/Vista/7, why are they having so much trouble with Windows 10 control panels?

<comment><USER16> Agree that Windows 10 seems to get the difficult stuff right. Stability, security, advanced graphics infrastructure, and very impressive backward compatibility with old binaries. Also agreed that the new control panels are a trainwreck, offering no advantages whatsoever over the old control panels they're trying to (very gradually) replace.

It's also incredibly bloated. Gone are the days when a few gigabytes would be enough for your Windows partition.

<comment><USER18> Minesweeper from the Microsoft store is bigger than a standard Win98 install. :)

<comment><USER16> The original Xbox had 64MB of RAM, with no dedicated graphics memory.

The Microsoft Teams chat application uses 200MB to 550MB of RAM when idle.

My all-time favourite example of high-density software is Super Mario 64, which weighs in at 8MB.

<comment><USER19> .kkrieger is a full 3D shooter in just 96K (needs slightly more than 96K of memory to run)

<comment><USER16> That's a good example from the demoscene, but that was done as a tech demo, rather than as a serious commercial product. To illustrate the bloat of modern software, I think it's better to point to examples of highly compact 'real' software.

Of course, a great deal of effort must have gone into squeezing it down to 8MB, and it wouldn't be reasonable to ask modern developers to go to those lengths, but still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> skookum-skuad Who cares? I had the full NT 5/W2k codebase and have seen the NT 4 codebase. 3.5x is such a Windows Vista between 3.1 and 4.0.</comment>


Startup School 2013 Videos Now Online - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/10/26/y-combinators-startup-school-2013-videos-now-online-including-ones-mark-zuckerberg-jack-dorsey/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&awesm=tnw.to_r8x7 <comment><USER2> One of the speakers here. I found the online reaction to my talk pretty interesting as a case study in internet telephone. Here's the talk itself:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A)

First party viewers mostly seemed to like it:

[http://seen.co/event/startup-school-2013-cupertino- ca-2013-6...](http://seen.co/event/startup-school-2013-cupertino- ca-2013-6739/highlight/45740)

CNET gave a second party writeup:

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57608320-93/a-radical- dream...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57608320-93/a-radical-dream-for- making-techno-utopias-a-reality/)

Then third party people started mischaracterizing it:

[http://valleywag.gawker.com/silicon-valleys-ultimate-exit- is...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/silicon-valleys-ultimate-exit-is-a-fantasy- of-seceding-1449199349)

Finally, the Hill wrote a fourth party account, quoting these third party accounts, and that's what Washington DC saw:

[http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/state-a-local- politics...](http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/state-a-local- politics/330607-will-silicon-valley-secede-balaji-srinivasans-ultimate-exit)

Not everyone got it wrong; I think this account is closer:

[http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/blog/virtual- expatriates-a...](http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/blog/virtual-expatriates- and-urbanites-silicon-valley)

But I encourage you to open up those tabs and go through them one by one to see a kind of pinball reflection of the tone of the talk. In microcosm it's an example of the emerging gap between Silicon Valley and DC, and gives a sense of how policy makers can inadvertently form their opinions from echoes of echoes. Doubly ironic and somewhat sad as we can use the internet to make direct connections between people these days. The good thing is that interested parties can see the primary source directly.

<comment><USER3> I think this chain of articles is particularly interesting to follow because it neatly illustrates how different the audiences are: the articles neatly show both what the audience _wants_ to hear and what it _actually_ hears. This is a property of blogs in general: they can measure the impact of any given article far more than newspapers, so less popular views can't ride the coattails of more popular ones. This creates a pretty direct feedback loop: blogs write more of what people want and, to an extent, people want more of what blogs write.

Also, reading some of these articles really illustrated your point about blame --it seems the writers are more than ready to play an "us vs game" them with "privileged technocrats" or a "techno-utopian clique" against the implicit common man in the audience. Instead of comparing ideals and ideas, it focuses on _people_ behind the ideas and their perceived arrogance. This is particularly annoying because arrogance seems disproportionately harshly judged by society.

<comment><USER4> I read it as a game of Operator in service of other'ing[1] by the status quo.

1\. [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Other](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Other)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oops, I'm not even done submitting them all yet. Office hours are uploading now, and Chase's talk will follow right after.

Sadly, consumer internet upload speeds haven't kept up with video quality. And these are only 720p, down-sampled from the 1080p source material.

<comment><USER5> Ok, everything is live now:

[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ- uHSnFig5PZH_UEL0Jal...](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ- uHSnFig5PZH_UEL0JalZ2edVGsO2R8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Blog spam. Here are the videos: [http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcefcZRL2oaA_uBNeo5UOWg/vide...](http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcefcZRL2oaA_uBNeo5UOWg/videos)

<comment><USER7> seriously? Blog spam because we decided to share the videos with our readers in one post? We didn't post it here either btw.

<comment><USER8> Don't take it personally. The comment was towards the original poster, not the original author.

HN'ers typically prefer the original source, never the aggregated-blog version.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's a blog spam, as long as it serves its purpose well, which is to let people know the videos are online. For me - it does

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Damn where is Chase Adam? His was the best talk!

<comment><USER10> I rushed to watch his talk... but nope.. wonder why he is not there.

<comment><USER11> His talk and the office hours should be up shortly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've made a YouTube playlist of all of the videos. They're in chronological order following the agenda.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp2YsIKlDZm3wBt5ijB7X...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp2YsIKlDZm3wBt5ijB7X5-Qt6ZWs2LSy)

</comment><comment><USER13> Added to the list that we're curating on theneeds [1]. As always, feel free to reach me for missing material.

[1] [http://www.theneeds.com/learn/top- content/startupschool](http://www.theneeds.com/learn/top- content/startupschool)

</comment><comment><USER14> Chase Adam at Startup School 2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6621215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6621215)

</comment><comment><USER15> Still no video of the Office Hours

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I would definitely like to see that uploaded.

<comment><USER17> It is now: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syoqjYLDs48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syoqjYLDs48)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Woohoo been looking forward to this for those of us who couldn't make it or watch the live stream. (Was busy filling out a YC app if I recall correctly ...)

</comment><comment><USER19> Thank you. I've been waiting for this since I missed a few episodes during the day.

</comment><comment><USER20> video links added to the note [https://github.com/charlesfeng/startup- school-2013/pull/4](https://github.com/charlesfeng/startup-school-2013/pull/4)

</comment><comment><USER21> I think the videos are all private</comment>


Show HN: Realtime, Intent Based Keyword Research Combined with Audience Insights - <AUTHOR> https://www.getkeywords.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Saurabh here - Co-Founder at GetKeywords.io

Keyword Research is no more linked to Search Volume or CPC only. It's now more focused on understanding your audience about their search pattern, location, device, click ratio, competitors and a lot lot more. Also the industry is changing every second - so if you're showing even 1 hour old data, it's useless.

That's why we decided to launch GetKeywords.io - Keyword Research product focused on Realtime Metrics using multiple data providers & intent based suggestions to make the search easy, fast & accurate with city level targeting possibility.

Happy to learn from your feedbacks.</comment>


HiSilicon said to extend capacity guarantee pacts with Taiwanese through 2Q20 - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20190520PD200.html <comment><USER2> Huawei is going to work hard to move to HiSilicon only.

Once this works other Chinese phone manufacturers will follow suit unless the US lifts sanctions.

That's close to half the world's supply of Android phones.</comment>


Your auto-responder won't bind you to a contract - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2011/04/acknowledging_r.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm always amazed at how people try to work the laws. This guy tried something I have always wondered about, he sends an email that says "if you respond to this you agree to be bound by the following contract..." Which he has actually litigated! Which is what makes it interesting from an HN perspective. Not to mention the clear way Eric explains what it takes to engage someone in a contract.

<comment><USER2> I predict that this will be an expanding area of law in future.

To form a contract you need a number of elements, one of which is a signal of assent. Traditionally for written contracts you can use signatures and seals. For verbal it can be something like "OK", "done" or "agreed".

The question is: can one party unilaterally impose the form of that signal? The answer here is apparently "no". And this is the sensible decision IMO because it would make it too easy to trap people into "giving" assent when they did not intend to. Assent should be in a form acceptable to both parties _or_ in a known form widely recognised (such as signatures).

Of course, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.</comment></comment>


The developed village - a village that puts metros to shame - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/A-village-that-puts-metros-to-shame/articleshow/13309567.cms

<comment><USER2> _CCTV cameras in classrooms help us keep watch on teachers in classrooms_

This is quite odd, but then I found the same is happening in the UK: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/aug/04/schools- cctv...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/aug/04/schools-cctv- surveillance)

<comment><AUTHOR> Corruption and accountability are big problems in developing countries; I don't know why UK would be doing this.

Cameras ensure teachers are not taking lunch breaks when they should be teaching a class.

<comment><USER3> Are you being facetious? Where is your information coming from?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. What makes you think that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay, I bit and went looking for it.

Here is a better article that doesn't load your screen with advertising:

[http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_gujarat-s-punsari- panch...](http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_gujarat-s-punsari-panchayat- villagers-pride-neighbours-envy_1608954)

I couldn't find Punsari village but the article said it was near Talod, which is northeast of Ahmedabad off highway 68. Google maps shows a lot of villages near town but no names. I assume Punsari is one of these.

What's not to like? The area is fertile with adequate water, electrified, and decent roads. Nearby, Ahmedabad is developed, has good access to international trade (via the Gulf of Khambhat) and is developing.

For reference, Bopal is just west of Ahmedabad. But so is a new TATA Motors Nano Plant. The entire area has a good mix of industry, agriculture and access.

Very similiar to southern Indiana, USA.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, this article is awfully short. I would like more details.

<comment><AUTHOR> Punsari - thats the name of the place

<http://www.google.com/search?q=Punsari>

<comment><USER6> Why should we search the village when the article submitted by you should provide more information?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I should've posted the Google link instead; but would that have gotten the message across?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I quit my job for an Oculus Rift.  Here's our start. - <AUTHOR>

Hey, HN!
I quit my job in cybersecurity to start making games.  After my learning-experience-game SPACIOUS (http://www.desura.com/games/publish/spacious) was released in January, I got my hands on a Rift preview kit (the pre-Kickstarter kind) and started building a first-person platformer.
It's called Rift Rush, and you can check it out on Kickstarter here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lumina/rift-rush-first-person-platformer-for-oculus-rift
Feel free to use this thread if you have questions about the Rift or about the game.  Thanks for reading. <comment><USER2> Rift Rush looks amazing. The Oculus Rift has been my favorite project since it started, and I even hope to work with their team someday. Anyway, this game looks amazing, and I cannot wait to try it out!

A few questions:

What is your favorite part about the Oculus Rift so far?

Where do you see the OR in 5 years?

Do you have any plans for another game after Rift Rush?

</comment><comment><USER3> cool, I think the Oculus Rift has the potential to be huge. You could be in the right place at the right time.

I don't know how to develop, but i was thinking a great use-case for the Oculus would be "virtual tourist". Basically, experience real-world locations without leaving your room.</comment>


Google's Michael Shields Responds to Arrington over Cell Phone Driving - <AUTHOR> http://www.msrl.com/blog/2010/02/07#arrington

<comment><USER2> His justification is somewhat questionable. Is stopping people talking on cell phones by _standing in traffic when the light is green_ actually making the world a better place, i.e. reducing traffic accidents? It seems at the very least to be an open question whether any decrease in accidents from reducing cell-phone usage would be matched by an increase in accidents from cars unexpectedly stopped in the middle of a road.

<comment><USER3> he had right of way, supposedly when entering the cross walk, so it should be the driver's obligation to wait for him to pass before continuing.

<comment><USER2> I'm not arguing it was illegal, merely that it wasn't utility-maximizing. I'm not sure it's even legal though; surely having right of way when entering a cross-walk doesn't give you justification to spend unlimited time in the crosswalk, even deliberately stalling there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lol. That is some funny stuff.</comment>


Reasons Why You Should Use Druts Web Hosting - <AUTHOR> https://otownloaded.net/reasons-use-druts-web-hosting/ <comment><USER2> Page is full of affiliate links. GTFO, spammer.</comment>


Toward lasers powerful enough to investigate a new kind of physics - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-07-lasers-powerful-kind-physics.html <comment><AUTHOR> [https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0008544](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0008544)</comment>