Why There Are More Consumer Goods Than Ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-there-are-more-consumer-goods-than-ever-1461556860 <comment><USER2> Is anyone else amazed at the absolutely magical era of time in which we live?

I don't know which is more awesome: 1) I can find a product that fits my need more exactly than I could ever have expected ten years ago, 2) that I can get information, recommendations and reviews in order to buy these things with confidence, or 3) that something even more awesome will come out a couple years later.

It gets even better because I can take part in all this: I can make an app that fills a specific need (literally, I made an app to calm a crying baby) and without advertising at all, I can ship it to tens of thousands of people around the world just by reviews and word of mouth.

I get so excited just thinking about this stuff and how much greater the future will get, and at an accelerating pace!

<comment><USER3> Is it? The razor I bought can't cut hair, the laptop I got has a stupidly nosiy fan, the phone I bought has a rapidly diminishing battery life, the headset I bought makes a constant hiss, my OS and TV now spy on me. Do I even own my steam games? I have to rent my music and TV to get it at a reasonable price, but songs and shows disappear without explanation or warning.

It seems to me things are worse than they used to be, it's harder than ever to find quality products, even meticulously researching everything.

And that's before we even get onto forced obselence.

Maybe I'm becoming a grump as I grow older but electronics brands you used to be able to trust are no longer sure bets and everything seems to have a nasty gotcha spyware or horrid EULA.

Edit: although I do admit there's a lot of magical things, I love my Kindle, I love how my phone synchs with my Kindle when I'm in random queue, I love being able to get + give directions from my phone in random places.

I just feel overall quality of goods has gone down as they become (worringly for the environment) disposible and consumers are losing control as their stuff is no longer theirs.

<comment><USER4> Maybe a case of increasing expectation. Owning your own movie or game was never all that cool - what with losing them, or scratching the CD, or the platform changing so they didn't run any more. Steam beats all that, at a cost of course.

The chaotic state of shows and songs is another story. My outlet (e.g. Netflix) has shifting contracts and terms that are opaque to me. So I miss out by procrastinating. Still its better than broadcast TV ever was! That was somebody else deciding every night what I would watch.

I'm an old grump too. But really, I should just have more patience when my phone won't connect. Its going to space after all!

<comment><USER5> >Owning your own movie or game was never all that cool - what with losing them, or scratching the CD, or the platform changing so they didn't run any more. Steam beats all that, at a cost of course.

So we replaced a flawed physical medium with a digital medium which, theoretically, should solve all those problems. But dark patterns, bad licensing terms, and loads of other problems (that are often the results of purposeful decisions) make that digital medium just as flawed.

<comment><USER4> Differently flawed. And actually very useful as it is - I log many more hours now playing (instead of thrashing over problems) because it almost always works. Wherever I am; whatever machine I'm on. There's no denying the benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Then there's Trader Joe's, with a limited selection of reasonably good items at reasonably good prices to make reasonably good profits.

</comment><comment><USER7> With the paradox of choice, this many products often make us less satisfied and more unhappy.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...](https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice?language=en)

<comment><USER8> I have major objections to this talk. The speaker claims that choice itself is the issue. I disagree - choice is _not_ the issue. The issue is an inability to _make decisions_ when presented with hundreds of possibilities & to not be upset over poor outcomes that our choices create, and our ability to make these choices is a recent phenomenon that has finally caused this issue to surface.

Consider his point on salad dressing (paraphrased):

> If you buy one of the 100 available salad dressings & you don't like it,

> it's easy to imagine what things would have been like if you had chosen a

> better one & suddenly you're disappointed.

Well sure, I'll be disappointed. But then I'll just try a different one next time and repeat until I find some dressings that I _do_ like, and now I'm happy. If there wasn't choice here, I would be _perpetually_ unsatisfied.

Regarding paralysis when confronted with too many choices, I _think_ this is just a temporary artifact as we're making the transition to having more options. The first few times I went shopping for shoes at a shoe store, I tried on _tens_ of pairs and debated the pros and cons of various shoes for over an hour under the assumption that of all the shoes in the store, only one would be the _best_ one for me. Now I know that this isn't the case. There are several shoes that I'll be completely satisfied with, and now there are enough of them that the store has specific sections where probably a good 20% of them will meet all the requirements I have. So I find the first one that meets all my goals, and then I buy it. The process takes < 10 minutes.

This is actually _less_ time than it previously would have taken, as the candidate shoes would previously have been spread over different sections and not one of them would match _all_ my requirements, leading me to have to make a conscious decision on what to sacrifice. And now that my decision carries more weight, I would spend more time deliberating and hence the trip to the shoe store would take longer & I'd be disappointed at the time I lost.

No, the author cherry-picks his points & confuses his own limitations as being indicative of a problem with the existence of choice rather than a personal limitation because - guess what? - he doesn't want to blame himself for his own lack of satisfaction.

<comment><USER9> "the author is just cherry picking but my cherry picked anecdotal story related to me proves he's wrong"

ok

<comment><USER8> I intended for my shoe story to be a rebuttal against the speaker's pants story, as the scenarios are essentially identical if you substitute "shoes" for "pants". Perhaps the argument would have been more valid had I skipped that and just directly addressed the long-term results of his pants encounter instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, but there are fewer merchants than over. 50% of e-commerce goes through 12 merchants. Consolidation is insane in digital commerce. So yes, we can buy many more products but through fewer and fewer merchants giving them huge power. Amaozn alone accounts for 30% of e-commerce

<comment><USER11> Keep in mind that well over 50% of amazon merchandise sales are from 3rd party sellers - basically small businesses. A bunch of other big players have significant 3rd party marketplace models - eBay, Newegg, and more.

<comment><USER12> Sadly this means that there is a very big caveat emptor factor involved.

Ebay at least is up front about it, as it is basically an auction house for anyone.

But Amazon and Newegg is in a sense lending credibility to any fly by night reseller from who knows where.

When you buy from a big name store front you expect someone working at their supply end has assessed the product as worth the risk of stocking. But with the likes of Amazon, seemingly anyone can start offering products through them.

Consider for example a recent story here on HN about a USB charger that had a damaged transformer. It was giving out straight 240V (European model) to the USB end.

<comment><USER11> Generally reviews are meant to solve this problem - both internal amazon metrics (which vendors are punished for severely if they are bad) and external customer metrics.

<comment><USER13> Nope those don't work anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At first I think "wow, what a price for those jeans!" Then I watch the documentary 'China blue', and then I think "wow, what a price for those jeans".

</comment><comment><USER13> I feel like quality has plummeted. The last 4 toy boats I've bought have top sized or sunk. How hard is it to test a toy boat in water before you mass produce?

I think we're relearning how to produce and market quality goods now that all manufacturing has moved to China. Lately I've been preferring to buy from target or Walmart over Amazon since I know they have a purchasing team that vets products before allowing them on their shelves. (Not always though). But they should do more of this since it would be a great differentiator for brick and mortar retailers.

<comment><USER15> I agree, and I've observed this on multiple products. The most recent was a hair trimmer that I replaced with the same brand and model.

It's unfortunate how there's an ever quickening velocity of consumption. Not sure who exactly is to blame, but I think both consumers and companies play their part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are there any reasons why we shouldn't expect there to be more consumer goods than ever?

<comment><USER17> Since durable goods[0], by definition, last a multiple of the time it takes to create them, we would have more simply by making more at a set rate over a period of time. As our population grows, if the same percentage of our labor force goes into making durable goods, the quantity of durable goods created would also increase over time. In short, I agree completely.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_goods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_goods)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If the price goes to near-negligible, and people (eventually) reach some saturation level for the amount of easily replaceable stuff they have access to, what will a feeling of infinite supply do to consumer demand? Surely you can only need or use a certain amount of stuff. And what will this do to the value of money if having more money doesn't change your life much. Is money becoming worthless?

</comment><comment><USER9> other fun facts: modern advertising exists because factories were churning out so many products that they needed to figure out how to sell them all. advertising was created to recruit consumers to buy all this shit.

<comment><USER17> Henry Ford doubled his workers' wages so they could afford to buy it all, too. Or at least the ones they made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How do I read this article?

<comment><USER20> Google the title, then right-click WSJ result and open in incognito window.

That's what I do.

<comment><USER21> Also to save you from having to google the title, you can click the "web" link below the headline if you are viewing the comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> TLDR: because of Facebook ad microtargeting.

</comment><comment><USER23> In a related fact, consumer debt normalized to household income has also increased massively[0].

[0] [http://www.money-zine.com/financial-planning/debt- consolidat...](http://www.money-zine.com/financial-planning/debt- consolidation/consumer-debt-statistics/)</comment>


The Modern Cavewoman - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/mostly-serious/8fe2a93afd64

<comment><USER2> Nice story. Whilst there is a growing number of women in IT, there is still a noticeable lack in development roles. Only time and attitudes will change that.

We men are not that different. Last week our garden wall was damaged in the storms here in the UK - I had to Google for "the rounded stones on top of a brick wall" (coping btw) so I could sound knowledgeable enough to builders I called for repairs.

They knew I didn't know what I was talking about - and polite enough not to mention it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree completely. A simple Google search can teach you just about anything, and almost anyone can change a battery or cook a delicious meal. It's great to see more women stepping into serious roles as lead developers as more women choose to pursue new roles. Self empowerment is good for everyone!

<comment><USER4> Googling for expertise is dangerous. One of my favorite pastimes lately is to watch amateurish "professional" youtube cooking videos and waiting for the inevitable moment when they will chop a finger into the stew. A lot of the highest ranking knife skills videos are ... dangerous if you practice them the way that are shown regularly.

So you need a more complex google search - you need to find a place where there are solid basics and from them to try to filter the bulshit from the real gems (yes there are a lot of them really)</comment></comment>


Is Turkey Still a Democracy? - <AUTHOR> http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/14/is-turkey-still-a-democracy/ <comment><USER2> I still remember, 10 years or so ago, watching a debate between Hitchens, and a preeminent Islamic scholar. Hitchens was arguing that while strict religious beliefs generally made it difficult to have a secular democracy, the special nature of Islam made it more or less outright impossible.

The scholar argued that Hitchens was simply out of touch with reality, and regularly pointed to Turkey as proof that widespread Islamic faith was compatible with democracy.

I don't have any knowledge of world religions, really. And I know countries like Albania are mostly muslim and seem to be doing okay. But that debate comes to mind every time I see a headline about Turkey these days.

<comment><USER3> It's no more incompatible with democracy than any other religion. The problem lies with Islam _ism_ , the illiberal belief by some muslims that Islam should be superior to democracy, liberalism, individual rights and so on.

(See Christian "Dominionism" for the same sub-belief within Christianity)

<comment><USER2> well look, I'm absolutely not an expert. But the argument that Hitchens was making was that Islam, more than any other major religion, very explicitly dictates things of a governmental nature. Christianity has the 10 commandments, and so on, but Islam has much more social governance and legal apparatus woven into its ideology, and taken "as gospel".

Its part of the reason why people get so scared of things like Shiara law and Shiara courts. But regardless, Hitchens' argument was that without resorting to exaggeration and fear mongering, because the ideology leans further in that governmental direction, it makes it harder to square with modern secular democracy than other religions would.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a funny sort of "democracy" that regularly jails journalists, purges its institutions, and runs a one-party state with a singular leader at the top.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Democracy in modern usage, is a system of government in which the citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives from among themselves to form a governing body, such as a parliament" This is from wikipedia.

We can not say there is no democracy in Turkey because Erdogan is leading in the elections.

The majority in Turkey wants Erdogan.

Technically this is democracy.

But Erdogan's behaves may not be modest,his genre is tough.But this is not mean that Erdogan doesnt act in democratic way.

If public cant elect his leader,then we say there is no democracy.

By the way I dont like Erdogan attidues against Turkey's civillians and also his economic management.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but liberal democracy respects the various human rights, including to free speech and freedom of the press. It also doesn't have a state religion. Turkey is an illiberal democracy, and rapidly becoming less so.

<comment><USER5> In Turkey people respects human rights,by the way you can look this link [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina)

this is explain everything I guess.Befero Magna Carta there was Constitution of Medina. We know human rights.All of you should stay away from Turkey. You were talking about free speech and freedom of the press.You can watch turkish press from TV. All of them can speak what they want. All of them can judge their Leader by free style.

But of course we are not perfect like anybody in the world.

I know what are you mentioning but these Journalists spoke wrong and ugly. You can judge anyone but everybody has limits.This is also human rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's soon to be called a Sultanat. And Erdogan the new Atatürk.

<comment><USER8> Atatürk fought all his life for democracy, respect for state institutions and for secularity. He was the exact opposite of Erdogan.

<comment><USER7> Well yes, but Atatürk was also a staunch Nazi supporter. He fought islamism, was a champion for modernism and secularism, and was not really a champion for democracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is democracy an end in itself?

<comment><USER8> No, but it would certainly be a major upgrade to what Turkey has at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Betteridge's Law

</comment><comment> GuB-42 No, it's a bird.

<comment><USER11> I was going to post same thing lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It has never been a democracy. But again the us and europe have no democracies either. Only a lot of freedom.

<comment><USER13> What is your definition of a democracy? Imo it's not a binary term

<comment><USER12> demo => the people, krato => the power.

The problem is not the system here. It's the fact people are not willing to use the power they have. They don't vote with their money, act like citizen, organize their life so that it reflects the way they wants things to be.

Having children is a political statement. Watching TV is a political statement. Getting in shape. Eating at mac Donald. Leaving in the city. Working in a bank. Taking a loan. Having a car. Dressing up. Embracing religion.

Every decision of life has consequences on the system. This is the power people have. They seldom use it for a lot of good and bad reasons. Indeed, if you make a default choice, something you don't think about, or something you refuse to bother with, you give up your power.

Often they will say "there is nothing we can do" or "it's x's fault". But the reality is, it's impossible NOT to change the world. You just change it locally, at your scale, all the time.

A democracy can only work if the majority of the people are trying to make it work. If they just live in it, any system will decay, no matter how fair and benevolent it is. A system is just a canvas. There are better than others, but eventually democracy is how we are using it.

Actually having democracy implies thinking less about freedoms and more about responsibilities, and how to all share them. Few people want to do that. You can't blame us, it's hard, exhausting and scary. It's easier to expect the system to be fair, to have "people that know" being responsible, and to be far away from the consequences of failure.

Voting a few times in X years is not democracy. Delegating power to a minority is not people having power. It's quite the contrary. If people accepted real power, we would have much more numerous, regular and direct access to the management of our society.

Note that I'm not saying I'm unhappy in our current systems. It's been very generous with me, I enjoy a good life with many benefits, more than most on earth, more than even most of my neighbors.

It's just not a democracy. We never had one. Just like we never had a communist society. We tried, but until now we failed. And despite that we labeled wrongly the failed attempts which became canonical examples, twisting the definition.

I'm not sure it's a bad thing : I doubt humanity is ready for democracy. We can't bother reading a "confirm/cancel" prompt, let alone all the political programs on election month. Maybe we need to try something as a transition instead of jumping around and pretending we are already were we need to be.</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin investor who forgot he bought £17 of it - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2479011/Bitcoin-investor-forgot-bought-17-currency-checks-years-later-worth-551-000.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6634663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6634663)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you come up with a good name for a startup? - <AUTHOR> It always takes me forever to come up with a cool name for a project. I have a couple of projects that are already almost complete, but not having a good enough idea for a name is holding me back.<p>Any tips/advice on coming up with a cool names? <comment><USER2> Paul Graham has done a couple of pieces on naming things.

[http://aux.messymatters.com/pgnames.html](http://aux.messymatters.com/pgnames.html) (2006)

And later this from 2015: [http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html)

The gist of it is that anything will do, as the name will be associated with your product, not the other way around. Hopefully this can boost your confidence a bit :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have too many ideas and too many names but no time to implement all of them. Currently Im working at one of them. And sometimes I have too many names for the same idea, and its tragic because I cant have two domains for the same app, or cant write a book and give it two titles.

My head is a fountain, sometimes I get up from bed by 11pm or 1am to write down that name, and I filled two pages of a notebook with such names and ideas. Not to mention that in the last ten years I bought many domain names but at that time I didnt have advanced skills. So I told you how I come up with ideas, they come to me at any time. I think its part of personality, just like some others dont have the skills to program. I can help you if you need with names, I dont steal ideas, and ideas are hard to sell.

And to give you some choices: you can either give it a common name or something unique. I think the latter one is for really creative types. You d like to be a Spotify, not a HackerNewsify.

</comment><comment><USER4> Get help. If you are a programmer, odds are that you are not also a wordsmith or branding genius. Like the CEO who gets stuck on his own idea for a logo, or the store owner who can't give up on the pun she thought of for her product category, the tech entrepreneur should not overestimate his strengths in other areas.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Take a word that encapsulates the project in some way.

2\. Translate it into other languages and find a cooler one. [1]

optional: Use wikitionary to verify the translation and possibly change the tense.

[1] [http://translatr.varunmalhotra.xyz/](http://translatr.varunmalhotra.xyz/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think there's any guaranteed way, and you have to remember that cool is a perception.

I find the best way for me is to just write down a whole bunch of words describing what I'm doing, then sit with someone and brainstorm, constantly checking domai.nr to see if the domain is free.

</comment><comment><USER7> I found this Moz blog post to be valuable in coming up with a cool name for project and making sure domain name is available.

How to Hack a Dominating Domain Name for Your Website [https://moz.com/blog/domain-name-hacks](https://moz.com/blog/domain-name- hacks)

I usually check domain names and twitter handle before settling on a name. I prefer hybrid names - combination of two words that encompasses the domain of the project and makes sense for the startup.

</comment><comment><USER8> Take a random word, add rrrrr and buy a io domain.

result: wordrrrr.io

<comment><USER9> No, no, no....you are doing it all wrong. You find the shortest verb describing what you do and add 'ly' after it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's very easy to brainstorm. Literally write down 100 things on paper without thinking about what you're writing. Just write as many words/terms as you can as quickly as you can, and don't review until after.

Some will be absolutely silly, but it will get your mind into that creative mode it needs to be in.

</comment><comment><USER11> I always go with a name that makes it somewhat obvious what the startup is about. i.e. my current side projects bestfoodnearme or nextlesson you can somewhat tell what these are about.

When I have to pitch the idea to someone or get someone to spread the word, this extra bit of obviousness helps.

</comment><comment><USER12> Buy a dictionary, read it. Buy a thesaurus, read it.

Brute force.

</comment><comment><USER13> Add one word with another word.

RocketHat

Panfish

Lookcart

Rightsee

Tookway

Just dont use Rocket. I've seen about 100 Rocket____ based names recently.

</comment><comment><USER14> Pick up a dictionary. Choose a short word. E.g. Slack, Uber, Kindle, Valve, etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> Remove vowels and add R to the end.

<comment><USER14> That's sooo last decade.</comment></comment>


The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/338767/the-man-who-brought-us-the-lithium-ion-battery-at-57-has-an-idea-for-a-new-one-at-92/ <comment><USER2> I remember looking at his work when I was a grad. student. Some of it was amazing. For example, I remember once he set up an apparatus to grow crystals using chemical vapor transport. To know when it was finished, he sealed wires to inside the quartz tube (as an open circuit) and connected them to a battery and a light bulb. When the crystal (which was conducting) grew large enough between the leads, the light bulb would turn on. It was elegant and simple. (Usually this type of synthesis occurs in a furnace where you can't tell the progress and just have to guess and take it out). We still refer to the "Goodenough-Kannamori" rules of thumb when we're trying to use heuristics to guess how an oxide will order magnetically. He's had a truly impressive career...

<comment><USER3> Hopefully his career will continue and he comes up with a new breakthrough battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr _the path he has chosen involves one of the toughest problems in battery science, which is how to make an anode out of pure lithium or sodium metal. If it can be done, the resulting battery would have 60% more energy than current lithium-ion cells. That would instantly catapult electric cars into a new head-to-head race with combustion. Over the years, numerous scientists have tried and failed—it was lithium metal, for instance, that kept setting Stan Whittingham's lab on fire at Exxon in the 1970s._

It's a very interesting profile/historical review of this great scientist and his work, but if you were curious about the actual headline, the lede was buried almost at the end.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the headline was almost an afterthought. I guess he isn't really talking and they needed something to give people a reason to click and read. Gave me enough reason to read about him though, and I definitely don't regret it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I'm worried about is the waste of lithium and other battery/accumulator metals. In theory, people should turn electronic devices and batteries to recycling facilities, but a large part of the population ignores the rules and throws their gadgets into the trash when broken...

I wonder if someday we will find a way to "separate" trash on atomar level (i.e. put arbitrary stuff in on one side, get raw atoms on the other side)...

<comment><USER7> One solution is to collect a payment when you buy a new gadget, then you get it back when you return it for recycling.

At the moment recycling technology can already grind stuff into small particles and float it in salts of different densities to separate it. That doesn't go to atomic level of course...

I think it's a fundamental outcome of the laws of entropy that separating always takes a lot more energy than mixing, so if you've mixed it, you've lost the game already.

<comment><USER8> We do this in Finland for bottles and cans. Giving people the financial incentive to recycle has two effects: \- For those who want to keep their money they take it back \- If they don't care enough, they leave it somewhere and there are many "recyclers" who are happy to pick up your cans and bottles and get the money for them.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, we do that in most US states too. At our dump (disposal area) there is a station to donate your bottles and cans to local charities and schools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _But Goodenough is equally dismissive of such tinkering and its measly 7% or > 8% a year in added efficiency._

7% extra efficiency _per year_ means electric cars will have twice the capacity in 10 years...and then double up again in 10 more years...and so on. That's a _far greater_ rate of improvement than for gasoline-powered cars, even if we're impatient and we want our $10,000 500 mile on a charge EVs _now_.

> _But the path he has chosen involves one of the toughest problems in battery > science, which is how to make an anode out of pure lithium or sodium metal. > If it can be done, the resulting battery would have 60% more energy than > current lithium-ion cells._

I don't know how "real" its technology is, but SolidEnergy promises a 50 percent increase in energy density using an "ultra-thin metal anode". The company promises commercialization for phones in 2016 and for EVs in 2017.

[http://www.solidenergysystems.com/technology.html](http://www.solidenergysystems.com/technology.html)

<comment><USER11> > 7% extra efficiency per year means electric cars will have twice the > capacity in 10 years...and then double up again in 10 more years...and so > on.

An example of the dangers of extrapolating.

CPU speeds kept going up - until they didn't.

Battery tech is not going to keep going up 7% each year. Although perhaps his 60% improvement will show exactly at the right time to effectively be 7% better than the previous year.

<comment><USER12> CPU speeds stopped increasing because the market stopped focusing on CPU speed (coincidentally to this discussion, the change was largely to reduce power demands). Transistor count has kept plugging right along;

[http://i.imgur.com/FvVrnn4.png](http://i.imgur.com/FvVrnn4.png)

<comment><USER13> I think it's the other way? That is, market stopped focusing on CPU speed because they hit the wall and clock speed could no longer be used as a differentiating factor.

<comment><USER14> Yes, market would be more than happy to have 100GHz CPUs by now, it would make scaling everything much easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A note for those who go looking for the technical details: there aren't many here. According to the article, Dr. Goodenough is being tight-lipped about his work.

<comment><USER16> I expect a note in the margin of one of his journals, discovered posthumously, "What a simple and elegant anode, the margin is too small to contain it."

I get that he is angry, but I worry that his anger may rob us of what he could do.

<comment><USER17> At the same time, he knows the power of copious notes proving the origination of the idea, so hopefully it won't be that bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Without it, we would not have smartphones, tablets or laptops, including the > device you are reading at this very moment.

Yes we would. All these things existed without Li-ion. The power/space budget would be more constrained but it was perfectly achievable. What wouldn't work is senselessly burning cycles running managed code in a VM with heaps of battery sucking DRAM. People today have no concept of how much computing power is wasted as excess heat because of modern software development practices.

<comment><USER19> > People today have no concept of how much computing power is wasted as excess > heat because of modern software development practices.

Or of how many new ideas are created because generous power/space ratios give us the luxury to develop quickly using abstractions higher than highly- optimized references and pointers. You can take a hit on optimal energy efficiency if it results in a larger ecosystem with more possibilities.

The real challenge is to get both.

<comment><USER20> But high level languages do not require VMs. Time for a rant.

We were lead down a collective rabbit hole by rabid VM and JIT enthusiasts. Notice the absence of those extolling the benefits of JIT compilation today. People used to claim that at some point Java would consistently outperform C due to the greater number of optimisations available to a JIT compiler. They've all become silent because it's quite obviously a load of baloney.

The irony is that we had the answer all the time, but nobody wanted to believe it.

Back in the day, languages like Haskell, early C++, early Objective-C and Scheme compiled to C. Compiling to C was great! No need to spend man-centuries building an optimising cross-compiler to compete with GCC (and fail), no need to screw around with GIMPLE.

In 2015, compiling to a mid-level language is back in style. Except we don't call it C, we call it LLVM-IR. If you squint it's the _exact same thing we were doing 15+ years ago_.

LLVM-based languages that look like Rust and Swift will eventually dominate, because they are universal. You can use Rust for the lowest level embedded programming. You can use Swift for the highest level architecture astronautics.

What is depressing is that we could have built them 15 years ago but we were too busy fannying around with a dead-end technology.

<comment><USER21> Also code produced by LLVM-based languages can be linked with low-level modules written in pure C/C++, or even assembly, if necessary. So one may quickly prototype and then slowly rewrite the software for performance, module by module. No such thing is possible for JIT-based languages or platforms.

<comment><USER22> As an embedded engineer, you and parent have put into words something that I've known but haven't been able to articulate.

I think I encountered the sentiment (on HN) before that because CPU and memory speeds have become so far out of whack and that increasing CPU speeds have power limits that engineers will start having to worry about optimization more and more. I suppose the difference is that before, we didn't have the boat- loads of memory that we have now (in a system).

In other words, yay for LLVM IR!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Kind of off-topic, and I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this, but is it common to have clarity of mind at age 92? Is it mostly genetic or is it more like "keep challenging your mind and get enough sleep"? Anyone have good links?

At 29, I'm (probably prematurely) worried about cognitive decline. I only started challenging really myself last year.

<comment><USER24> I think one thing you can do is try to avoid a typical fallacy. My brother gave me a great example:

\- When people get older (say around 30-40), they realize that they can no longer memorize stuff quite as good as in their twenties

\- They start to write notes a lot more in order to make sure they don't forget stuff

\- Now they get even worse at memorizing stuff, because they challenge their memory a lot less

<comment><USER25> There is some brain plasticity research that seems to indicate that the more you challenge your brain with new activities and problem sets, the more resilient it is against decline in old age.

Do you do a lot with your mind during the day? Take up wood working, knitting, or sewing as a hobby. Work with your hands.

Do a lot with your hands during the day? Do something that engages your mind more. Take up art, writing, etc.

Take dance lessons. If you are not a dancer already, learning to dance and then doing it has a lot of health benefits, social benefits (see below) and makes your mind work in different ways.

I highly recommend trying square dancing (as corny as it may sound). Square dancing is very intricate and requires careful attention to called queues in order to maintain a steady stream of dance transitions. It is the fastest way to get into "flow" that I have ever experienced and have heard of number of other writers and technical types that rely on flow express the same sentiment.

Learn, teach, and play more board games. Modern board games have a vast array of different mechanics and strategies in them offering lots of different problem spaces for your brain to tackle. There is also a good social aspect to them that is inter-generational (we have board game nights with ten year old kids regularly playing with retirees) and some decline in cognitive ability is linked to the lack of social engagement people experience as they age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > "Goodenough in his lab at the University of Austin."

There is no University of Austin, it's the University of Texas at Austin, or "UT Austin" \- same as there is no "University of Berkeley", but instead, "Cal". ;)

<comment><USER27> University of Austin sounds like a Portlandia-like parody of hippies and alt- culture types putting up classes in old abandoned buildings and alleyways and living in fear of being found out by UT security.

<comment><USER26> You could always throw back to "Road Trip" with Tom Greene:

      "Austin, not Boston"

;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The QZ article gets much of its information from this March, 2001 oral history interview:

[http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/m...](http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/materials/public/Goodenough/Goodenough_interview.htm)

His recollections are very detailed, and you can clearly see what a genius John Goodenough is. Many early computing and defense industry interviews have a similar feel as this one -- so wonderful to read and be inspired by material like this.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wish society would incentivize more smart people to tackle these important problems rather than go into finance, management consulting, working at the next hot tech startup, etc.

<comment><USER30> How would this work in practice?

Maybe some form of corporate patronage, like Facebook and Stripe did in this story, and giving the inventor a generous slice of the returns from the invention (I can imagine several downsides to this too, of course):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9003791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9003791)

<comment><USER29> The problem is that investments in the future and public goods will always be unfunded in a free market capitalist economy due mainly to the free-rider problem. Fixing it would have to involve the government (or a government-like entity) subsidizing these projects. Of course care would have to be taken to make sure this money is properly allocated, the incentives are properly aligned, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I cannot decide if that Soundcloud laugh was completely distracting, or whether it improved the storytelling.

<comment><USER32> Completely improved. That's what we want our Mad Scientists to sound like, dammit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> But.. the one we had was Goodenough.. yeahhhhh

</comment><comment><USER34> tl;dr version:

> Although Goodenough will not spell out his precise new idea, he thinks he is > on to something</comment>


Fasting, Longevity and Metabolism - <AUTHOR> https://mehdiyacoubi.substack.com/p/the-long-game-8-fasting-and-metabolism <comment><USER2> I'm gonna drop this here because it's tangential and I think very important.

I have a history of asd, migraine and rashes. As well as getting sick a lot and having weird health problems.

About a year ago I went though one of those once or twice in a lifetime stress events. On the same night as the event, I experienced disturbed sleep. My sleep never went back to normal. Shortly after, I started to experience psychotic symptoms, usually around night. I had happened to read a doctors testimonial earlier about keto and psychosis so I tried it. It fixed both my sleep and my psychotic symptoms. Within one week of starting keto I was completely back to normal. Due to side effects of keto, namely "keto rash," I was forced to stop. I ended up starting and stopping a lot. The correlation between starting and stoping keto and my symptoms was exact. I have a background in biology and I actively looked for any other correlation. There is zero ambiguity that keto was responsible for my astonishing remissions. I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist With psychotic depression and prescribed anti- psychotics, so the symptoms were real. Obviously I never took the medication. He brushed off my observation about keto.

As time went forward the psychotic symptoms became small enough to just ignore even when off keto, only bothering me occasionally at night. My sleep never went back to normal while off keto.

I started to return to a normal life when a few months later I encountered another health problem. I moved into a new house and because I'm cheap I bought a fixer. The fixer had mold. I stayed inside with a noticeable musty smell. I made sure to air it out and had plans to remediate it eventually. I googled mold health problems and nothing really came up so I assumed it was fine. But I started waking up with strange headaches and shaky hands. Then I started waking up with brain fog and headache. Then finally I started having bouts of ridiculous depression Along with the rest of what I've mentioned. I would have a 2 hour bout of those symptoms every other day roughly. The depression was so intense and so painful that it made me want to kill myself immediately. I have never experienced anything like that in my entire life and it was so bad that I think depression is not even the right word for it. The second time it happened I went to the ER. They scanned my brain and did tests and found nothing. My doctor said that nothing was wrong and that I just had depression and recommended antidepressants. But that didn't explain all the strange symptoms that came with the depression which included extremely dry throat (oddly), weak limbs, and other smaller things. At this point I was emotionally exhausted because I felt very deeply that my brain was horribly broken in some way and there wasn't a single lead to follow. Based on the circumstances of my life, I decided to throw in the towel. I have never committed to suicide with so little hesitation. I was completely tired of and done with life. No family anyway. But after thinking for a while, I decided I should just travel away from where I live and completely remove myself from any kind of environmental contaminants just on the off chance that it was something in the environment and that removing it would reverse the symptoms. I really didn't think it would work, but it did. It took about three weeks, although there were still shadows of the symptoms sometimes.

I had already looked into mold and there was nothing reported in mainstream sources. Oddly, some very sus homeopathic websites had articles that described my symptoms exactly. But they were littered with BS pseudo science and didn't have any treatment options besides eating clay and other nonsense.

I have been interested in ASD ever since I realized I had it. I have a case that is not obvious so I was not formally diagnosed until my mid twenties. So I was googling ASD research and I happened upon this new study that attributes ASD to something called cell danger response. Hypothetically, atp can be used as a signal molecule and cells can get stuck using atp for signaling rather than carrying out business as usual. I wasn't too sure until I saw that they had done a trial with an old drug that blocks atp receptors on the surface of cells and showed marked improvement in autistic children. Small n but qualitatively meaningful and certainly warranting a larger study. It also lines up with one very peculiar quality of autism which is that it can be temporarily put into remission with TMS in some people, which indicates dormant brain networks rather than destroyed brain networks. Phase 2 trials are about to begin.

Cell danger response is hypothesized to be a branch of the inflammatory system. And in reading about cell danger response I was made aware of another guy who was researching mast cells and micro glia, which are cells that are central to inflammation. This guy mainly studied mast cells. I listened to a podcast that interviewed him, I think it had less than a thousand views. He talked about all these papers he had published about basic mast cell biology. And it blew my mind. I'll try to summarize all the important points. Mast cells are present in the deep regions of the brain that are responsible for emotions, sleep and other things. Mast cells Distribute inflammatory molecules like histamine, but critically they distribute way more molecules than just histamine. The molecules dispensed by mast cells can do all kinds of things, including dilate or constrict blood vessels. Mast cells are so general that when deactivated, wounds do not heal, as has been demonstrated experimentally. Mast cells can be agitated by many different kinds of chemicals and also stress. But critically, exposure to one specific thing can lower the threshold of the mast cells to be excited by other things. So at the end of the day what you have is a system where inputs can interact and create very complex emergent behaviors. When you combine this with the fact that only a fraction of the population has problems with inflammation, you have something that could have eluded medical science until now.

Then this guy said something that really surprised me. He mentioned that mold can be a big problem with agitating mast cells and that he always recommends his patients to get away from mold if they are having weird problems and that it usually works.

And the pieces start to come together. I have ASD. The only comorbidities of ASD are asthma (which I have a family history of) and skin rashes (I think) which are both problems of inflammation. Psychosis has been shown to be closely linked with inflammation in many cases. Depression has also been linked to inflammation. There is a disease called mast cell activation syndrome where people get rashes and other symptoms, _usually triggered later in life by a stressful event_. Bingo.

And then it made sense why keto had helped me so much. Keto has been proven to have anti-inflammatory effects in at least one paper that studied one ketone body in particular. And there are also the myriad reports of people's asthma and RA improving dramatically on keto. And it fits neatly into the broader theory that when the body thinks physical resources are scarce, like during excessive exercise or when running off body fat, it shuts down unnecessary things, including some parts of the inflammation system. Meanwhile, carbs have been shown to promote inflammation.

The only study to properly investigate the link between keto and psychosis is currently underway in Finland and is expected to be finished by December.

The final puzzle piece: after discovering this I had a hunch that my migraines were also caused by inflammation. And i remembered that after taking lsd for the first time, my headaches went away for years. So I googled "lsd inflammation." lo and behold, all popular psychedelics have been shown to be extremely potent anti-inflamatories. There is one guy in particular who studies this and he has published papers and is currently in the process of commercializing the most potent anti-inflammatory that he has identified which is actually not lsd but an obscure cousin called DOI. Fascinatingly, the dose required to get the anti-inflammatory effect is much smaller than the dose at which the drug makes you trip. And I believe that was the case for all the big names.

So at the end of the day, I stumbled upon a medical revolution that is still in the pipes. And it will be a revolution because inflammation is the cause of many things. Heart disease (yes, really), RA, and many other huge names.

I wrote this marathon post on my phone so please excuse lack of sources and spelling mistakes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your story is truly amazing. The level of energy and thinking you put into investigating what was wrong is mind-blowing.

It shows that non-specialists have a crucial role in connecting the dots and helping researchers test and try hypotheses.

Are you still on Keto now? How did your symptoms evolve?

You should write a blog post on your story!

<comment><USER2> Thanks so much for the positivity. If you google keto rash you'll understand why I am prevented from being on Keto for long periods of time. The problem with keto rash is that nobody has actually figured out what causes it.

luckily my symptoms don't make keto necessary. But I do plan on winning back my sleep at some point. And that battle consists of performing some experiments to figure out what causes keto rash. I've already informally shown that it can't happen without the presence of sweat by restarting keto after applying prescription strength antiperspirant to one half of all rash-prone areas. Without exception, the treated half did not develop irritation. It's not a cure since covering yourself in prescription strength AP would probably be very dangerous and very expensive.

In between now and the time when treatment of inflammation becomes a part of mainstream medical science, I see myself on keto all the time and taking sub- psychoactive doses of shrooms and DOI once a month. I'm excited to see what that combination feels like.

<comment><AUTHOR> For personal health and wellness, self-experimenting is the way to go. It should be easier to try and see what works for us.

In the end of the day, there's no one-size-fits-all for health and wellbeing, people should have the tools to experiment and find the optimal diet and lifestyle.

All the best for your journey!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazing how focal length affect shape of the face - <AUTHOR> http://www.danvojtech.cz/blog/2016/07/amazing-how-focal-length-affect-shape-of-the-face/ <comment><USER2> Film Noir has used progressive changes in focal length to subtly increase the apparent distress of the character as the film proceeds.</comment>


Show HN: CandyJS – transparent bridge between Go and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mcuadros/go-candyjs

<comment><USER2> Nice project! One little remark: I see you're being slightly lazy and using JSON to save some value conversion work. One problem is that this is not very good from a performance standpoint. The other, more serious issue is that your code will not work if someone tries to pass around a data structure containing NaN value, like []float64{math.NaN()} Got bitten by this problem, had to fix it: [https://github.com/contactless/wb- rules/commit/067ff7564f16a...](https://github.com/contactless/wb- rules/commit/067ff7564f16aba0d21ff7c2761839dd15f97ac9)

<comment><AUTHOR> True in some cases I fold back to JSON: [https://github.com/mcuadros/go- candyjs/blob/master/base.go#L...](https://github.com/mcuadros/go- candyjs/blob/master/base.go#L272)

But the main goal of the project is be fully transparent more than the performance. At the very beginning I was making every case by hand but this is a endless work: [https://github.com/mcuadros/go- candyjs/blob/54c8beb723aa8b1b...](https://github.com/mcuadros/go- candyjs/blob/54c8beb723aa8b1b21f2d5864b0809f326d9a85d/engine/duktape/register.go#L142-L167)

I will take a closer look to the NaN issue and also a closer look to your code.

BTW I made a PR to go-duktape based on you fork: [https://github.com/olebedev/go- duktape/commit/65f0be48ece4f6...](https://github.com/olebedev/go- duktape/commit/65f0be48ece4f6405c93c3b5312fab074320bfef)

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately NaN behavior seems to be hard-wired in encoding/json code. The proper way to fix it is perhaps taking encoding/json sources and converting marshalling/unmarshalling code to use go-duktape Push/To/etc. functions instead of JSON writing/parsing. That's indeed a sizable amount of work, though.

As of integrating (some of) changes from my fork to the go-duktape mainline, thanks a lot! Didn't get around to do it myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I built a package to bridge spidermonkey/Go last year[0]. I ended up doing most of the communication via JSON (after several less stable versions using reflect) which was fine for the use-case I had. Unfortunately since it builds spidermonkey and some wrapper code it ruined any chance of "go get" working cleanly which doesn't make it a very attractive package.

CandyJS looks much simpler. Good work.

[0] [https://github.com/chrisfarms/jsapi](https://github.com/chrisfarms/jsapi)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Chris, thanks for your support. Your packages looks like very interesting, I couldn't find it before.

About the pool of workers, they share the stack? Or how you keep the same status on each.

<comment><USER3> No the contexts in pools do not share any state. Once you call an Eval from Go-land you'll be tied to context until that Eval returns, but Go-land will yield during that time so other goroutines(/contexts) are free to execute. It's just a convenience for setting up and working with multiple contexts to take advantage of multiple cores. Probably better to think of it like a process-pool.

The use case I had was along the lines of:

        * Bind/Expose a bunch of Go functions to N JS worker contexts.
        * Execute a large queue of JS-functions using the workers.

Spidermonkey did actually have a way to do a kind of shallow copy of a context and save/restore stack, which shared state, however this actually ended up making things much slower for my use as it required locking the threads and constantly copying stacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty interesting, although I don't know if it's... necessary.

What do you think are some of the pros/cons between Go and JavaScript? When would you prefer to use JavaScript instead of Go, or vice versa?

I think Go can be more performant than Node.js, but I remember seeing some conflicting benchmarks where V8 can actually manage more RPS.

The other thing that comes to mind is how React Native uses JavaScript to manipulate UI Components on iOS. If Google ever supports Go on Android, then this kind of thing could be pretty interesting.

<comment><USER2> Duktape is good for scripting. My particular app is a simple rule engine for smart home applications which runs on relatively low-powered ARM board. It would hardly be practical to have Go compiler there, and duktape is resource- efficient ECMAScript engine which serves this purpose just fine.

<comment><USER4> Oh I see, that's pretty cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great work! But is there any reason that you didn't build on top of the really nice V8 binding [https://github.com/ry/v8worker](https://github.com/ry/v8worker) instead of Duktape?

<comment><AUTHOR> v8worker, was one of the evaluated projects, but V8 is not very fast compiling... takes several mins.

With go-duktape, you can compile CandyJS just lake a normal Go package without any other tool or library.

Other reason is that many of the features are based on ECMA6 Proxy, something that is not supported on v8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> cool! why and how are the Go methods called with camelcase names?

      var engine = gin.default();
      engine.get("/back", CandyJS.proxy(function(ctx) {
        var future = time.date(2015, 10, 21, 4, 29 ,0, 0, time.UTC);
        var now = time.now();

        ctx.json(200, {
          future: future.string(),
          now: now.string(),
          nsecs: future.sub(now)
        });
      }));

<comment><AUTHOR> the method and field names are converted to lowerCamelCase to be compliant with the JS coding style. Let's see if this transformation becomes a headache.

BTW this behaviour is undocumented, I will fix that.

<comment><USER6> got it!</comment></comment></comment>


Cassandra Internals – Reading - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikeperham.com/2010/03/17/cassandra-internals-reading/ <comment><USER2> Those interested in the topic may also want to read this:

"Why we're using HBase (at Adobe)": <http://hstack.org/why-were-using-hbase- part-1/>

It is a fine "war-story" of picking new technology and making it work without losing data.

(It was submitted yesterday by the author here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1196382>, but got killed with 5 points, which baffles me. I found it when puzzling out why my submission today was instantly killed, with a different item id ...)

[P.S. minor bug report: my 'dead' item has a working link to the article, which it perhaps shouldn't. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1200833>]

</comment><comment><USER3> The reason uncached reads are slower in Cassandra is not because the sstable is inherently io-intensive (it's actually better than b-tree based storage on a 1:1 basis) but because in the average case you'll have to merge row fragments from 2-4 sstables to complete the request, since sstables are not update-in-place.

</comment><comment><USER4> Little misinformative imo. While Cassandra has eventual consistency, reads are not slow necessarily. With the right Cache settings tuned correctly (KeysCached/RowsCached) and available memory, Cassandra actually performs quite well. Cassandra is virtually worthless without those cache features kind of like MySQL is without indexes. They are slower than writes but I think it would've been more proper to talk about how the cache works and more interesting.

Like any database, MySQL/Postgres/etc, it's a dark art in terms of understanding how to make it work.

<comment><USER3> Right. Digg dropped memcached entirely from their architecture when we added RowsCached to Cassandra.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cached (by Google) text only version: [http://22.214.171.124/search?q=cache:http://www.mikeperham.c...](http://184.108.40.206/search?q=cache:http://www.mikeperham.com/2010/03/17/cassandra- internals-reading/&hl=en&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER6> Cassandra isn't easy to learn like, say, couchdb. But Couch uses JSON (An awesome choice, BTW), and Cassandra uses Thrift.

Cassandra is kinda difficult to pick up because there is no SQL equivalent, there are no relationships, joins or "where"s.

So, basically, it's an engine without user friendly controls. But - it's probably the most awesomely powerful storage engine yet available in the public domain.

Imagine if Google released a server image of one of their storage nodes... ostensibly, that's what Facebook did with Cassandra.</comment>


Why the World Is Too Optimistic About China's Economic Future - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/281609/larry-summers-explains-why-the-world-is-too-optimistic-about-chinas-economic-future/ <comment><USER2> As far as I'm concerned, the world isn't optimistic enough about China. Yeah, growth has slowed (eventually it must, simply because of the law of big numbers).

But data just came out today, 7.3% GDP growth for this quarter versus the same quarter last year. Slower than hoped for, but still very good.

People may not have noticed, but China is already a consumer juggernaut. Lenovo is #1 in computer sales. Lenovo is the 3rd largest cell phone maker in the world (!!). And they've barely even closed the Motorola deal.

Alibaba was the biggest IPO ever, and the Agricultural Bank of China was the second largest ever. When the Hong Kong-Shanghai stock connect goes live, they'll have the second largest stock exchange in the world.

They're the largest market in the world for luxury goods. They have 1.3 billion people, the middle class is growing exponentially, and they're highly educated.

People talk about innovation and talk about iPhones. China owns the solar business (so much that the US puts tariffs on Chinese solar companies), and invests more in clean technology than anyone. They've got some incredible technology companies and innovative industrials, even if none of it reaches our shores.

The future belongs to China. You can say what you want about too much debt, overpriced real estate, manufacturing, etc..., but they'll figure that out. All one needs to do is visit China, see their markets, see the consumer goods and what's happening over there to know that they own the future.

<comment><USER3> Agreed: yet another China bashing article. What these innumerable western China observers touting economic jargon in their articles miss is the fact that China is self-sufficient in most meaningful ways.

Yes, they do import luxury goods, no, a shortage won't cause national issues. Yes, they have an energy challenge, no, that's not ignored ... in fact it's reasonably easy to argue that China is further on top of world energy challenges than any other nation.

What's it really like here? Most people live where they were born, or in the nearest large city. They might go to study in a larger city when young. They make ends meet, have a roof over their head, have cell phones, electric scooters or motorbikes (in the countryside), and the affluent and middle classes have cars and can travel.

As a foreigner, it's surprisingly comfortable once you get over the visa hump. A few days ago I came back from a major city with bottles of wine and cheese, about the only hat-tip to imported stuff except perhaps Steam games and the occasional Amazon book in my lifestyle.

Yesterday I rode my electric scooter to the morning market and ate a sort of bean soup with fresh coriander, chilli and garlic and lovely spring onion breads. I think a breakfast for two came to about $1. Then my wife and I went shopping for fresh vegetables for the family, in a massive market featuring produce picked the same day piled in much greater variety than any western supermarket. We spent perhaps $8 which is enough for perhaps 10 people for a day, otherwise for multiple days.

I worked during the day via VPN, then in the evening sat in front of the widescreen TV to enjoy some flat-rate video on demand from the extensive - despite our semi-rural location - international selection available through the local cable company. Afterwards, we got on Taobao and ordered a couple of wetsuits, some gloves and sailing shoes. Equally, we could have ordered arbitrary quantities of almost any chemical or object you can imagine.

This morning I woke up to a lovely salad with ample cashews and blue cheese, checked in to my email, then rode the electric scooter to go sail a catamaran on our local 210 square kilometre alpine lake for three hours. The weather was perfect, and it's practically November here in the northern hemisphere at an altitude of 2000m (6500ft). I'm getting ready to participate in the first national sailing competition to be held here next month.

After sailing, my wife, aunt and I sat down to a lovely meal in a restaurant featuring a sizzling beef hotplate, a plate of shitake mushrooms and greens, and a tofu and tomato dish with spring onions. Meanwhile, my mother in law looked after our child for free - no need for paid childcare here! Total cost of the meal? Perhaps $8. We discussed some plans to help our aunt open a new restaurant, since her last business partner was rather a nasty character. Decades ago, she was a star English student... perhaps she will open something western?

There are almost zero homeless people here, people have a family support network to fall back on, and tangible freedoms are in many instances more numerous than in much of the west. Yes, there are limitations in every society - it's just a matter of knowing where they area. Legal weed? It grows here wild, naturally, and you can buy sacks full of seeds in the market. Mushrooms? We're the world capital. Paragliding, sailing, off-road mountain biking, climbing, etc... it's all here.

Oh, poor China - how I loathe thee! 13 years and counting ;) Of course, I wouldn't want to live in the east coast cities...

<comment><USER4> China's biggest problem, besides the mountains of debt, the record inequality, the broken farming (in which ~600 million people are being kept busy with intentionally inefficient farming practices so they have something to do), the lack of individual freedom, the lack of property rights for farmers, the pollution, and the heated conflicts with most of their neighbors - is probably water. 20% of the world's population, 5% to 6% of the world's fresh water, and falling:

[http://qz.com/166235/chinas-water-shortage-is-so-bad-it- coul...](http://qz.com/166235/chinas-water-shortage-is-so-bad-it-could-turn- out-the-lights/)

<comment><USER5> Speaking of inequality, what about the gender ratio caused by the One Child policy? How stable can a country be when 10s of millions of men have no hope of getting married?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> China is a special case. For most of human history, it was a major power. In a sense, their recent growth is just catching up to the long-term historical norm.

It is also different in that the US basically shipped them manufacturing capability (in some cases literally shipping the machines from Ohio). I don't think that has happened before at anything close to this scale. This is the first industrialization period without a major destructive war at the end (so far...)

What happens if China shifts from a nation of producers to a nation of consumers like the US did in the 1950s? What happens if nuclear weapons or the example of the US keep their rulers from getting into costly wars? What happens if they control energy production in 25 years because they force all their producers to convert to solar early and dominate the industry.

Overall, I am skeptical that a historical study really generates much insight -- we are in uncharted territory.

Finally, I can't read anything by Larry Summers without thinking about this article from Naked Capitalism. [http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/why- larry-summers-sho...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/why-larry- summers-should-not-be-permitted-to-run-anything-more-important-than-a-dog- pound.html)

<comment><USER7> China's historic grandeur is overstated. Consider this eye opening quite from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations 1776:

 _The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations in Europe. In the neighbourhood of Canton many hundred, it is commonly said, many thousand families have no habitation on the land, but live constantly in little fishing boats upon the rivers and canals. The subsistence which they find there is so scanty that they are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any European ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stinking, is as welcome to them as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries. Marriage is encouraged in China, not by the profitableness of children, but by the liberty of destroying them. In all great towns several are every night exposed in the street, or drowned like puppies in the water. The performance of this horrid office is even said to be the avowed business by which some people earn their subsistence._

<comment><USER8> When Smith wrote, China had already fallen behind. Unlike the United States, they have been there for 3000 years, though. I recommend "Why the West rules - for now" by Ian Morris if you want to get an idea of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've always been bearish on China's long term because of a few realities people interested tend to gloss over. Ten years ago, China was a nation of 900 million rural peasants who were essentially subsistence farmers, with no money at all. Then there was a cohort of about 100 million agricultural farm workers. These were people who _occasionally_ had money. The remaining 300 million consisted of a largely poor underclass, a tiny "middle class" consisting of people with the buying power of less than the American minimum wage worker. Finally an "elite" class of workers who made more than an American burger flipper. Of those who had money, they saved 40% of their income in fear of hard times.

Things have changed somewhat, but this heavily uneven and stratified society (of which we Americans increasingly resemble, sadly) continues unabated. I just don't see good economic outcomes from that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Over the years I've read a lot of arguments from both sides: China's growth will continue for a quite long time vs. it'll end soon. Both have some valid and interesting points and I'm still not convinced either way.

But there's a more general theme I find interesting. If you are to predict how long something is going to last, given it already lasted longer than its peers, there are always two kinds of thinking: a) it's already stretching itself so it'll end soon, or b) the fact it already lasted this long means our references are not correct, and this could last a lot longer than we thought possible.

</comment><comment><USER11> Piketty in his well-known "Capital in the 21st century", points out that rapid growth isn't unusual as countries catch up to the state of the art. Countries that are leading technologically grow more slowly, but from a higher level. Beijing and Shentzen may have caught up, but the interior provinces of China are still in catch-up mode.

China is still building out its inter-provincial highway system and its high speed rail system. There's about another ten years of building those out. The government of China has been building new cities far from the coast, recognizing that the coastal areas are way over-urbanized and growth has to be moved elsewhere. It's still not clear how those will work out.

</comment><comment><USER12> A system's growth rate and its long term interest rate are identical. [That doesn't necessarily mean getting a long from a bank, or from relying on a currency.] The return on capital is the cost of capital when accounted for system-wide. A very simple lens that is rarely understood.

</comment><comment><USER13> Reporting that relates this directly to economics reads like a musing on some esoteric philosophy. It's economists' own fault, presenting their profession as a collection of mathematical models, the science of politics and history. Saying things like _' boost efficiency and competitiveness'_ sounds like a conversational reference to variables in an equation.

The driving force behind economic growth over a measurable period of time (not quarters, or even years) is technology, in a wider sense of the word. Companies are an invention. Political structures and the stability or instability they cause is invention. Money itself was invented.

China was economically suppressed for a long time. When they found their formula for industrialization they had a lot of catching up to do. Planting techniques that increased yield. Manufacturing techniques producing more. They spent 2 generations catching up. Catching up is a matter of applying existing technologies. When they created the weaving room of the world, industrial strength looms had existed for a long time.

The reality is the growth at that end of the spectrum is fast. Growth nearer the recent invention end is slower, because invention and proliferation of technologies are intertwined. That's the main story here. China is approaching the point where they economic growth depends on technological advancement. Things need inventing. That's slower.

Looking at this at the resolution of months, it seems that central bank policies are the engine of advancement. Financing, consumer appetites.. This is nonsense. Imagine the output of a country like Germany doubling or tripling of more over generations. That's what x% annual growth means. They will need to learn to make more with the same number of people. That can only happen because of technology.

So, that's the default prediction. China's long term economic growth rate will slow to the rate of technological advancement, mitigated in the short term by politicized maneuvering. They are increasingly contributing to technology though so maybe they can move the world's output by a couple of ticks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a link to an ungated copy of the paper mentioned in the article: [http://www.frbsf.org/economic- research/events/2013/november/...](http://www.frbsf.org/economic- research/events/2013/november/asia-economic-policy- conference/program/files/Asiaphoria-Meet-Regression-to-the-Mean.pdf)

(The story itself should still point to the qz.com link, however, since that is more relevant for most readers).

</comment><comment><USER14> TFA is correct that corruption and inequality are major hazards. But the greatest and most immediate threat is the real estate bubble, in my observation. There have been plenty of articles pointing out that the prices are unsustainably high and fueled by speculation and artificially cheap loans, and that the construction quality is terrible largely due to embezzlement. It's not a matter of if it all comes crashing down, but when.

<comment><USER15> Corruption and inequality caused much of the real estate bubble, however.

<comment><USER14> Arguably so, by way of crooked government officials making cheap capital and permits available to their friends in exchange for gifts and insider investment opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Because...everyone else sucks badly. If China's 7.3% gdp growth is defined as slow and worrisome, what words would you pick for the situation in other places, such as Europe?

However, it definitely has its own big problem, and if without proper handling, it will become a global scale crisis. Yes, we are talking about the housing bubble and a quickly aging population. At last, IMO, it is likely China is going to be yet another Japan, just bigger.

</comment><comment><USER17> Summers is most likely correct in his conclusions, but he is predictably wrong is his explanation of the cause. The end of crony system, he contends, will shift control to untested free market players, removing certainty of high performance that the corrupt system produced. Although we might object to central planning on cultural grounds, it has worked, and it's end will cause a fall.

He's just as clueless the operation of boom-and-bust cycles in China as he is here in America. He thinks that GDP growth indicates performance instead simply activity, so no surprise he reads a downturn as caused by factors that damage performance.

In China, as here, some GDP is good, and some destroys value and is thus unsustainable. The coming downturn in China will be the cure for malinvestment on an epic scale [1][2][3][4], not the disease. The crony system has generated massive amount of activity, most of it economically virtuous, but a great deal of it is economically evil, utter waste, and must be stopped and unwound. The longer the crony system persists, the bigger will be the reckoning.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-ghost-cities- in-2014-2...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-ghost-cities- in-2014-2014-6) [2] [http://www.thebubblebubble.com/china- bubble/](http://www.thebubblebubble.com/china-bubble/) [3] [http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/surprise-china-built-the- wor...](http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/surprise-china-built-the-worlds- biggest-building-and-its-a-boondoggle) [4] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-politics-of- china...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-politics-of-chinas-high- speed-train-wreck/2011/07/27/gIQAGedXdI_story.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Good article and observations. One thing to think about though from the scale of China is that it still a pretty locked down market still. It has opened up immensely and Hong Kong is always mentioned here. But they still oversee and control many areas of their economy.

Strict control of a market can lead to one of two things: 1) falsifying growth that isn't true market value demand or 2) growth being repressed by policy.

China could be possibly extending into their 36th year of high growth with either of those. If the former it will end badly, if the latter, once they really open up, they could exponentially still grow intensely. They are still owed lots of money in debt and that it what helped spike the US after WWII, other countries battered and in debt. Lots of riches will flow to China for some time.

Another small point is China isn't as innovative yet as places like Japan or South Korea. If they did innovate like that it could also get wild, but mostly it is a copy economy as of now.

</comment><comment><USER19> Shouldn't he be looking at empire level data e.g. the growth of the US economy over the past 100 years, the British Empire in the 1800s, or the Roman Empire at its height.

No-one is saying Singapore or Cambodia is going to be the next world super power so how relevant is it to compare their 5 year growth spurts to what China is undergoing?

</comment><comment><USER20> A related blog post that also mentions the Summers and Pritchett paper: [http://blog.mpettis.com/2014/10/how-to-link-australian- iron-...](http://blog.mpettis.com/2014/10/how-to-link-australian-iron-with- marine-le-pen/) .</comment>


Microsoft now puts ads in Windows 10 File Explorer - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/computing/245553-microsoft-now-puts-ads-windows-file-explorer <comment><USER2> I think Microsoft may be wildly underestimating the amount of goodwill this sort of thing costs them. Windows has been steadily losing ground to OS X, Linux, iOS and Android, and a big part of that is its reputation for being the platform stuffed with ads in places they don't belong. (Because of malware and OEM crapware, mostly). What happens if you're an OS X user considering switching back, and you look over someone's shoulder and see these ads? You conclude that Windows hasn't escaped its terrible past.

<comment><USER3> You forgot ChromeOS taking from MS. Grew over 35% last year while Windows and OS X bith declined.

<comment><USER4> It's easy to grow 35% when it just means selling a few more units...

<comment><USER5> While that's true, Chromebooks are indeed outselling Macs...

<comment><USER4> Why wouldn't they? They go for as low as $199 or lower.

It's not really the part of the PC market Apple was interested in ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing that amazes me about decisions like this is how, well, _chintzy_ they are. It's brand sabotage on a really deeply profound level.

I mean, on one hand you have Microsoft pushing really, really hard to be taken seriously as a vendor of premium, Apple-level products. Their Surface machines are slick and innovative. Windows 10 is more attractive to developers than any Windows in maybe 20 years. Azure has gone from a punchline to a solid, well- regarded competitor to AWS.

And then they sabotage all that with cheap, cheap, _cheap_ decisions like forcing ads into the file browser. _Ads!_ Right in the middle of a product they've been strenuously trying to position as high-end and premium and luxurious, they slap something straight out of the playbook of NetZero, the 1990s free ISP that was pitched at people too broke to afford AOL.

There was nothing _premium_ about the NetZero experience, nothing _high-end_. It felt cheap because it _was_ cheap. It was cheap crap aimed at people who couldn't afford anything better. And that's fine! But it's a long way from what Microsoft desperately wants people to think Windows 10 is. They're willing to pull the rug out from under all those years of engineering effort and marketing wizardry, just to squeeze a few more pennies into another product's quarterly revenue numbers. Talk about penny wise and pound foolish.

I guess there's still some truth in Steve Jobs' famous 1995 statement that "the only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste." ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJWWtV1w5fw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJWWtV1w5fw))

</comment><comment><USER7> I saw this exact ad for the first time this morning. I'm not one to be offended by ads but this one did irk me a little - I'm running 10 Pro which I paid $100 for, I shouldn't see ads in a paid product.

<comment><USER8> Just wondering. Did you buy windows 10 pro disk and install from that, or did you upgrade from Windows store from a free upgrade of 10?

<comment><USER5> Just because it was free upgrade, it does not mean, that it was OS for free.

You needed a licensed Windows 7 or 8 in order to upgrade; that one costs money too. You weren't able to get entirely free upgrade. It was more of exchange.

<comment><USER8> not justifying it. Just was wondering if it was an upgrade to pro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >It's odd that Microsoft has suddenly become so enamored with ads in Windows 10.

I told a colleague 18 months ago that I didn't want to move to Windows 10 because I didn't want advertising in my operating system. He insisted Microsoft would never do that, and I snorted at him.

Microsoft has been very clear and transparent about their goals with windows 10. It exists to push their other products. The app store is one of them, but of course onedrive and office365 are others. This isn't microsoft being suddenly enamored with ads, it's them closing the jaws of the trap.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I wish there was another operating system. Mac is tied to expensive hardware and I just can't get myself to like the overall UX of Linux

<comment><USER9> >I just can't get myself to like the overall UX of Linux

There's at least four mainstream UX's to choose from and a few dozen small ones if you feel adventuresome. What desktops have you tried?

<comment><USER10> It's not as much the look of the desktop as it is a bunch of little things about the OS. The command line stuff is nice but not useful unless I'm programming, I've found lots of stuff concerning configuration to be a little obtuse (knowing what's what in a configuration file takes some time), worrying about drivers isn't fun, and many common programs aren't on Linux and if they have an alternative it often isn't as good. Those are just a few reasons off the top of my head so don't take them as exhaustive or as authoritative but just a random opinion. I use Linux for programming and it's nice but for day to day use it suffers some problems for me (largely because of low adoption of the general desktop market I think).

<comment><USER11> > many common programs aren't on Linux and if they have an alternative it > often isn't as good.

What programs is that? In my experience, unless you are using a bunch of specialized proprietary apps on Windows almost everything open source is on Linux and is better implemented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is not new, search /r/windows10 for "ads".

[https://imgur.com/a/gNiqC](https://imgur.com/a/gNiqC)

<comment><USER13> I wonder if the person writing the article is using the Fast Insider Build of 10.

I've have cases where due to a bug a setting that showed "tips" I disabled was accidentally ignored (it was fixed in the next build) and had the tooltip "why not try Edge?" pop after a year or so of using 10. I first I was raging with people in discord about Microsoft and Ads. But after a coffee I clamed down and I checked on line to see which option might of got flipped, found the flag and remembered I had set it long ago (and that's why I had never seen that tooltip before), checked the feedback tool and saw reports from others that the flag was being ignored for some reason and MS promptly fixed it.

Personally I enabled Fast Builds when Bash/WSL went live but I disabled them when an update conflicted with Overwatch so I'm no longer getting the Fast build. Just wondering if this person is having something similar where they disabled all the "suggestions" only to have one creep back in due to a bug?

Edit: Reading the comments seems like the person writing the article was the person who got the notice.

It's not a get out for MS. All these suggestions make it hard to suggest W10 to people as I have to give it with the caveat "as along as you turn off all the bullshit". It's a shame because with a little fine tuning W10 is a decent OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great. So now to join the Diagnostic Service in waste of precious battery life and memory, as well as polluting the view.

For crying out loud, make an ad-free, spy-free expensive edition if you're that strapped for money! Just do not make it $1000 Enterprise version.

<comment><USER15> Apparently these ads appear in the enterprise edition as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Even more reason to use an Explorer replacement like Directory Opus. I stopped using Explorer when they ruined it beyond all hope in Windows Vista.

Not affiliated with GPSoftware at all, just a happy long-time user.

The irony of me advertising it isn't lost on me, however.

<comment><USER15> Even more justification for my recent switch to linux. My only regret is using Windows for the last ~5 years.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good Mobile/Online Diet Planner or Calorie Counter? - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting Day 1 of the Gold's Gym challenge today, and I need to get diligent about tracking my food intake and exercise plans.  I've used "Calorie Counter" on my Droid in the past.  I really like the fact that I can scan a bar code directly, and that its got some basic food diary features, but it doesn't allow me to enter the odd-ball portions that I have to use for the various Challenge food plans.<p>Do any of you use anything like this for diet planning or calorie counting?  Ideally, it would work both on my mobile phone (for the great convenience of bar code scanning and on the road usage), but also have a web option as well (way more convenient to adjust things this way). <comment><USER2> dailyburn.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like what they've got there, unfortunately it seems to be iPhone only :(</comment></comment>


Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales Has Launched an Alternative to Facebook and Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.techspot.com/news/82780-wikipedia-jimmy-wales-has-launched-alternative-facebook-twitter.html <comment><AUTHOR> When I sign up, the site shows me:

\-- Members: 89060.

\-- You are number 57786 on the waiting list.

\-- Subscription is $12.99USD/month or $100USD/year.

The site is organized by "SubWikis" which are topics, akin to subreddits, such as:

\-- JavaScript: 218 members, 2 posts.

\-- Rust: 15 members, 1 posts.

<comment><USER2> This alone will deter most people. Want to be a competitor, but the experiance just singing up is not very fluid. Wait for my account to be created? HAHAHA no thanks...

>We dont need another centralized social network.. the future must be distributed.

I agree!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We dont need another centralized social network.. the future must be distributed.</comment>


What Delta Chat offers - <AUTHOR> https://delta.chat/en/features <comment><USER2> Does anybody use it ? Is it that easy to use ? I'm very interested in encrypted mails, but "raw" pgp is too complex.</comment>


I'm looking for Android and iOS's developer - <AUTHOR>

I am an entrepreneur and I'm looking for an iOS and Android's developer. We have an idea already but we don't have the knowledge. Send me a message and we talk about this ... firstname.lastname@example.com ....I live in Mexico City but if you live in another country that isn't a problem <comment><USER2> whats your idea, and why dont you have a passionate and local iOS and android developer. those are insanely broad terms. you will be more sucessful in your search if you list what you are looking for. Do you have a company? or an idea? Do you need MySQL JavaScript, CSS, Ruby (cough-throwup sound)... or striclty iOS and Android? like for what?</comment>


Why Facebook Is a Waste of Time–and Money–for Nonprofits - <AUTHOR> https://news.artnet.com/opinion/social-media-steve-lambert-facebook-nonprofits-1230593 <comment><USER2> actually it is terrible also for many for-profit businesses. For many industries it's just the wrong platform. Especially for tech or anything not recreational or hobby related. People just don't want to think about work when they are on facebook.

As a user you're always at their mercy regarding any changes in their algorithm. This in itself is not always bad but considering how many times in the past facebook left their customers hanging I wouldn't spend any money there (not anymore). Unless you are a multinational with a 5 figure monthly marketing budget it's no point.</comment>


Computers in everything you wear?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_smart_clothes_youll_soon_be_wearing.php Research and learn as much as you can about what you're most interested in... <comment><USER2> Yet nothing that has sustainable power and USB. Wouldn't mind having Bu.mp on there :-)</comment>


Web Push Notifications for Chrome/Firefox Users with a Simple Realtime Message - <AUTHOR> https://framework.realtime.co/demo/web-push/ <comment><USER2> Push is a crutch for mobile platforms with gimped network access. It's a shame that browsers are bending over backwards to support these disabled platforms and making the experience worse for real computers because of it.</comment>


Show HN: Stream live video inside of iMessage with Looksy - <AUTHOR> http://beta.looksy.video <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, just looking for some beta users (the link is to d/l via TestFlight) before this is ready for prime time, thanks!!</comment>