GNU complexity 1.5 - <AUTHOR> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2016-02/msg00012.html <comment><USER2> How has this been here for 30+ minutes and no one has posted the complexity of the Linux kernel, gcc compiler, and of course the complexity program itself?

<comment><USER3> Well I had to try this on JOE, the highest score is:

       1613     359     325   regex.c(1260): joe_regexec

The manual has:

        '50-99' Unmaintainable code.
        '100-199' Crazy making difficult code.
        '200+' I only wish I were kidding.

        Score | ln-ct | nc-lns| file-name(line): proc-name
         4707    3815    2838   lib/vasnprintf.c(1747): VASNPRINTF

The golang compiler should include this technology and refuse to compile files which it decides are too complex for you to maintain.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't go compile itself now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Naive question: What the practical usage of this? Detect complex functions in huge code base?

<comment><USER6> When you're estimating the maintainability of a codebase over time and identifing modules that are overly complex (i.e., buggy), these kinds of tools are invaluable.

<comment><USER5> You mean, for example, running this once a month and keep stats to follow how complexity increase over time or when, in time, it suddenly increase to detect badly merged code?

<comment><USER7> It's common practice to run tools to calculate complexity as a CI (continuous integration) task.

For example, at the company I work for, we check code complexity every time someone pushes to certain branches in our repositories, and mark the build as unstable if the score is too high. In that case, the only acceptable solution is refactoring; all builds must be stable before the task associated with the change can be considered complete.

It's not reasonable to run it once a month or longer---by then we've moved on, context and focus have been lost, and refactoring is considerably more expensive (both for development and because it has to go back through QA) than if it were done immediately.

<comment><USER8> Huh, that's pretty cool. Do you have any links to more information? Ideally a write-up/blog post about your environment and how you achieve this?

<comment><USER9> Not OP but we use Jenkins for our CI which has a plugin[1] which fails builds if a threshold is not met.

[1] [https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/Checkstyle+Plugi...](https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/Checkstyle+Plugin)

<comment><USER7> Yes, this is what we use as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> assumed it was going to have something to do with computational complexity

is there similar software that one can pass source code to and get a detailed look at the overall and individual computational complexity?

</comment><comment><USER11> Is there anything like this for Javascript?

<comment><USER12> Perhaps one of the ones in [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/100645/calculate- cyclomat...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/100645/calculate-cyclomatic- complexity-for-javascript) ?</comment></comment>


KDE Plasma 5.15 Beta: Lightweight, Usable and Productive - <AUTHOR> https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.14.90.php <comment><USER2> I can't see that bouncing cursor without getting a stab of nostalgia for burning my first Knoppix cd-r...

</comment><comment><USER3> I like KDE 4 back when it looked like win 7. Now it looks like iOS, the plainness hurts my eyes.</comment>


The mind mapping - <AUTHOR> http://www.themindmapping.com

<comment><USER2> I love the concept but it seems to lack substantiation by students. Could this actually work in a lecture where students don't know what's coming next and how it relates to what was said 20 minutes ago?

And what about the fact that far too much information is presented in a given class to possibly fit on a notebook page?

I suppose the software is meant to address these impracticalities, but again I don't see the proper substantiation by students to lead me to believe that this product could be widely adopted.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I increase my attention span? - <AUTHOR> Looking for exercises and practical advice to increase time spent in deep work, focussed state and techniques to increase attention span.<p>I am already trying daily meditation and pomodoro technique for specific tasks. <comment><USER2> 1.Healthy lifestyle: eat less junkie-food, exercise, and have a good night sleep (sleeping is the most important for me). Avoid stress as much as you can and try to live happy life instead.

2.Less news: stop watching tv and read less news. These make your brain process less information and reduce the cognitive overloads.

3.Single goal: decide what you want to do or what skill you want to achieve. Do not try to have multi-goal or multi-tasking while you are focusing. In general, you want to have zero distraction so no phone, youtube, music, email.

If you feel tired after 3-4 hours, do something else to relax your brain til you feel ready for the next session. Do not take it too serious and enjoy the process instead. It's getting better everytime so let it be and just have a good day!.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the best techniques that I have found to be useful is reading more long-form writings.

Its something I found myself doing less and less over the past 5 years and in 2019 made a conscious effort to change that.

Find a topic you are interested in and start reading more. Avoid short-form writings such as tweets, or stuff like that. If you dont have a lot of free time, start with reading articles of Medium.

Reading books are obviously better. It also helped me improve my focus and memory because you rarely finish a book in a single sitting, so you start getting used to remember what you read yesterday and get back into that context.

I'd recommend setting aside at least 30 minutes each day and forming that habit.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been implementing a "power hour" approach, and it's been quite helpful.

Basically, I write down a task (or a few smaller tasks) to tackle during a dedicated 1 hr. In this hour I can do nothing else.

I've found that I am forced into some kind of flow, and am forced to confront the discomfort that can come from actually focus on things. It's not hard to be uncomfortable for an hour a day.

I don't really know many others that do exactly this, but this has helped me (Also, I have ADHD and focus can be an issue for me).

<comment><USER5> I agree. For those with ADHD, especially on the instant release ritalin, it can help to line a "power hour" up with important tasks, things you know you're going to avoid when the meds wear off, or things that take a lot of planning but make later stuff easier.

Also knocking something out early in the day can create momentum and stop inertia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My work implies long periods of desk-sitting while cutting a large problem into small ones, then focusing on each one. This "Descartes/algorithmics FTW!" way may sound familiar to some...

Practicing a physical and skill-based activity implying many simultaneous urgent inputs tremendously enhances my focus and attention span. Most martial arts are adequate.

</comment><comment><USER7> Books have been mentioned already, maybe listening to lectures can help because you will realize it quickly once you loose your attention. Khan academy's lecture videos are great too.

</comment><comment><USER8> You can try to avoid cellphone before going to bed as it really changes how you will wake up. What I will also try in the future is more Article reading and less Youtube for News

</comment><comment><USER9> Modify your online habits? I just read "The Shallows" and it really brought home to me how the web has altered my attention span.

</comment><comment><USER10> Unplug your internet.</comment>


Why We Can't Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/why-we-cant-figure-out-why-infrastructure-is-so-expensive.html <comment><USER2> A family member in the DOT told me this as but one of many tales of woe.

Several hundred miles of an interstate were going to be rehabbed. There was a proven technique to redo the joints between the concrete slabs, which were in good shape. A contractor was hired to do a small number of miles as a test, but they had a learning curve. The first few joints that they redid were not done well, but they rapidly improved and the approach looked really good.

However, the state selected a different approach which required tearing up the road and redoing it. The excuse was those first few bad joints. There was also the unstated matter that the contractor favored by the state did not know how to do this technique.

The result was billions of wasted money to redo the road with an inferior material. That material failed within a few years, and they now need to redo it again.

And this is not just a cost issue. Its estimated that failure to adhere to known safer pavement designs is resulting in 10,000 - 15,000 unnecessary deaths a year.

<comment><USER3> Almost certainly they switched contractors because of corruption.

Here in Montreal, it's well known that the mob runs the construction industry and quite frankly you're not allowed to even bid on contracts without their say so, otherwise you'll get visited for a very frank chat.

So I can't speak for why infrastructure is expensive elsewhere, but atleast here in Quebec (& likely RoC) it's simply because of corruption. See the recent woes of SNC Lavalin.

<comment><USER4> The thing is, even if this is true, it still doesn't explain the cost difference between us and e.g. Japan. Construction firms and public infrastructure works in Japan have well-known ties to the yakuza, yet they still finish these at way lower costs than us (even though labor is more expensive!) Why?

<comment><USER5> Cultural differences: Japan is pretty homogenous and they seem to see themselves as part of a whole whereas in the US, for example, exploiting your fellow citizens for profit is almost a matter of duty in business.

<comment><USER6> Seems like a cliched and simplistic explanation to just waive away a large difference with 'culture'.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes things really are that simple though. Why can you (most of the time) leave your bike outside a store you stop at in Japan but not in America? Because it isn't part of Japanese culture to take what doesn't belong to you, but is normal for a number of Americans. Why can you get relatively wholesome food at a 7-11 in East Asian countries while you get junk and trash at ones in America? Because Japanese people prefer real food over getting chips and a crappy sandwich for lunch. Why are nice public facilities possible in those kinds of countries and not America? Because those people don't wreck, vandalize, and spray grafiti on them, while Americans do.

<comment><USER8> Would you steal a bicycle in Japan?

I wouldn't and it has nothing to do with hand-wavy culture.

The reason I would not touch the unlocked bicycle is because I know it is registered with the police. If I got stopped on that bicycle and they looked up the frame number then I would have some explaining to do. Even if I claimed it was mine I could still be prosecuted for not registering 'the change of ownership' with the police. You could imagine the lying, language difficulties and the situation spiralling out of control to end up with time spent in the cells and a few million yen in fines. Could happen.

Note that in America a bicycle is a toy. It has only survived as a vehicle that can be used on the highway by fate, there have been plenty of efforts to fully ban the bicycle from the road and to denigrate it as a toy.

To extrapolate from the bicycle theft situation in Japan to assume that Japanese people are Not Like Us and therefore don't steal is wishful thinking. Personally I believe that Americans are exceptionally unlikely to steal your stuff. I am actually sure that if I did go on a round the world tour that I would find this matter of being honest to be a near universal human trait.

<comment><USER9> _Personally I believe that Americans are exceptionally unlikely to steal your stuff._

I guess the people who stole my former startup's hardware prototypes and thousands of dollars of equipment didn't get the memo, nor did the professionals who broke into the bike lockers at a previous residence and stole thousands of dollars of bicycles.

<comment><USER6> I don't think your personal anecdote is a good indictment of corruption of a country on a statistical level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author briefly touched on how it's also expensive in countries with similar law-systems like Canada and Australia. It may just be that our laws make it a lot easier for contractors to jack up government contracts.

My personal opinion is that managers and regulators in Europe and South Korea are a lot more efficient because they have a lot more freedom to apply common sense and personal judgement without fear of getting sued over a stupid technicality in a contract dispute.

Whereas in US & Canada it's common for companies to sue the government over a small/irrelevant technicality and win a big settlement.

Thus regulators and contractors interpret rules as literally as possible in order to avoid this legal confrontation and I think it's precisely this that drastically reduces the construction efficiency of public projects.

One thing that surprised me in Germany, both in Munich and Berlin was that while the central train & subway stations were quite grandiose (Hauptbahnhof's interior looks like something out of Halo), the stations in the periphery of the city were surprisingly quite "thin and light", built frugally with thin weather shielding and a minimal amount of materials.

Whereas in Toronto it's the opposite. We built a $6Billion subway extension, with 6 stations at a billion each, all overbuilt in exactly the same standard. Only half of them actually have any population within walking distance and one is a complete ghost-town. The reason why this happened was because treating all 6 equally was safe and no one complained.

It's not hard to see how you can provide the same service for 1/4 of the price.

<comment><USER11> As an European, I'm always surprised when someone says that our governments are efficient. We're always complaining about them.

<comment><USER12> The grass is always greener on the other side. It's funny OP mentions Berlin train stations but fails to mention the Berlin Airport.

<comment><USER13> I always appreciate peoples' willingness to be self-deprecating about their situation, but just because the world is imperfect doesn't mean that that imperfection is evenly distributed. At least here in the US, it seems we have a dearth of _both_ understanding and ability to reason about the degree of that understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A hard-to-capture cost factor is keeping highly used services operational or replaced while doing work on it. A super-fancy new subway with lots of stations in Shenzhen where people weren't already taking trains and expecting to use stations for their daily commute will be much cheaper than disrupting a line service to open a new station in London or New York City. Replacement bus bridge services, network-wide service advisories, staff and enforcement training, are all costs that are not easy to quantify or justify because it doesn't directly manifest in the construction of the infrastructure.

Of course there are other factors that vary a lot across cultures:

* China's heavy-handed governmental decision-making leaves no room for inefficiencies via neighborhood antagonism towards the constructions or zoning;

* Car culture differences create different magnitudes of popular roadblocks to investment in non-automobile infrastructure, which can result in large expenditures on lobbying and campaigning;

* Significantly more arbitrary middlemen making their way into the process because of "let the market figure it out" _does_ , in fact, create some process inefficiencies in supply chains and contract pipelines. Few countries are as aggressively market-based for things meant for public good as the US.

<comment><USER15> > A hard-to-capture cost factor is keeping highly used services operational or > replaced while doing work on it.

Anyone who does any kindof "building" (whether it be software engineers making schema changes, or a general contractor adding to an existing house vs building from scratch) knows this intimately, so really it shouldn't be any kind of surprise at all

<comment><USER16> But to the article's original point, the people conducting the research to prepare these reports are non-experts. So they wouldn't even know where to look for these figures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "why is American infrastructure so bad?" has been a topic I am curious about. The above article does not answer the question.

I'd prefer not to care about American infrastructure costs. Unfortunately, I occasionally have to leave my house, and the consequences of bad infrastructure stare me in the face: people living in their cars, traffic jams.

The best attempt to actually answer the question I've seen has been "Pedestrian Observations" blog. Their take on the same GAO report is:

[New Report on Construction Costs Misses the Mark]([https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report- on-...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report-on- construction-costs-misses-the-mark/))

"The GAO report is out now, and unfortunately it is a total miss, for essentially the same reason the RPA's report was a miss: it did not go outside the American (and to some extent rest-of-Anglosphere) comfort zone"

<comment><USER18> Check out strongtowns.org.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's my simplistic answer to this in three words: incompetence, corruption, self-interest. Having worked on a multiple construction projects and witnessed all 3 abovementioned aspects in various shapes and forms,I'd like to give a real life example. In the second largest city in Lithuania,a retailer got an approval to build a massive shopping center in the very center of the city.An agreement between the city council and the retailer was made and part of the project was to build a small bridge connecting the road outside the shopping center and a small island in the river alongside the road. The contract was won by a company that specialises in road and bridge building..So far so good. The works started. I used to go past the site on daily basis and often observed many people simply standing on the upcoming bridge and not doing much... Eventually a guy I used to know got a job with the company to work on that bridge project.Money was good..He quit after only a month.When I enquired what happened,he said that he is a man of work and can't stand idle. Even thought he tried his best,he couldn't stand the fact that he simply couldn't not work.On his first day,he went to the site manager and asked what he should be doing.He got told to collect a massive spanner and tighten 12 bolts on the metal construction.He returned to the manager in 45min or so and asked what's his next task.The site manager looked at him with anger and disappointment and said: look, it's your first day and you already making mistakes.I have given you a task for the whole day,not just for 45min..So now I now have to come up with something else for you to do.. Don't you ever do this to me again.You need to preserve your work,not rush with it.. Now scale it up to a massive underground project and you'll get the idea where the money is going to..

</comment><comment><USER20> A couple of facts that should at least provide a baseline for costs (like the best case scenario): Shenzhen metro: 198 stations, about 180 miles of track (soon to be more like 250 miles), majority of it built in past 10-12 years. All I can find so far on cost is the phase iii cost which says it will cost about 20 billion. Phase I was quite small. So maybe they have spent about 30 billion to get almost 200 miles of rail and lots of stations? I've used the Shenzhen metro and it's pretty nice. Also used the Shanghai metro as well.

Often in the US, stations are cited as a big cost.

Would be interesting to get a pie chart for costs between US and China like land acquisition costs, labor, raw materials, management, etc.

A bit disappointing that the report essentially ended in a "it depends" type of non-informative report.

<comment><USER21> In China the purpose of infrastructure projects is to get infrastructure.

In the US the purpose of infrastructure projects is to enrich everyone associated with the project.

<comment><USER22> That simply isn't true at all. There are plenty of unused or underused highways and bridges in China that made a few red families lots of money.

It's fascinating to me that some people think corruption in China is lower than the USA. Not even the Chinese would make such a claim.

<comment><USER21> I did not at all claim there is no corruption. But look at your own quote:

> _There are plenty of [...] highways and bridges in China_

I think we agree that the infrastructure _does_ get built!

<comment><USER23> China, especially a few decades ago, was so poor that eminent domain was a complete non-issue. Combined with a fairly authoritarian government system, building a train line faced basically no resistance.

In the US, it's almost the opposite. The places where public transit is most needed are the most highly valuable, densely populated areas, where eminent domain is a nightmare. In the US, all of our highly populated areas are already urban. In the past, that was certainly not the case in China, and to an extent, still so today.

<comment><USER24> One of China's more ambitious solutions to this was newly founded, planned metropolises where no major city had previously stood.

<comment><USER22> Aka the infamous ghost cities?

<comment><USER21> China has no shortage of people. These cities will fill up.

Maybe it's my Bay Area PTSD, but if too much housing is the worst problem in your society, I envy you and want to subscribe to your newsletter!

<comment><USER22> I've been to a few that haven't filled up in 10 years, eg kangbashi is going nowhere unless coal makes a big comeback (unlikely).

I'll match your Bay Area PTSD with my Beijing PTSD. The crazy thing is that even in Beijing there are lots of empty apartments (bought by speculators for flipping only who don't want to renovate them so they can be rented out).

<comment><USER21> I always want to defer my theoretical speculative punditry to people's real experience, so I'll agree you're probably right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > The usual way you produce journalism or policy research on a technical > question like this is that you hire someone with expertise in journalism or > public policy to produce a report. That person calls up relevant experts and > asks them to talk, for free, about their areas of expertise. This is one of > the great perks of my job: I call up lawyers and other professionals who > ordinarily charge hundreds of dollars an hour for their services, and they > talk to me for free, whether because they find it interesting, because they > have a message they want to get out in the world, or simply because they > like seeing their names quoted in print.

This is probably uncouth for Hacker News, but let me just say: Aaaahahahahahahahahha. Is there really an expectation of accuracy if your method is calling up an expert and asking him to pontificate for a little bit? Whatever happened to accounting? Shouldn't the way you go about this is run the numbers, find the differences in isolated segments AND THEN ask the expert why such a difference exists?

I think it a large discredit to this journalist and the organization he/she works for if they think this is how they're going to spread important, useful information to the masses.

<comment><USER26> As other respondents have said, a good journalist does not rely on a single expert. Good reporting cross-checks multiple sources, often seeking out conflicting ones, and trying to form a coherent story out of that.

Unfortunately, that often leads to false dichotomy. It's not sufficient to seek out a contradictory source... especially if that contradictory source is not credible. But it's very exciting journalism to say, "We spoke to X and Y, who bitterly disagree with each other. We'll gloss over the fact that X has a PhD and the support of the entire community, while Y is funded by motivated donors and has been repeatedly debunked. We'll go to Y every single time because they only fund the one."

So yeah, journalism is in trouble. Not for reliance on experts, but for failing to rely on themselves when a story seems fishy... and for relying on the public to care about whether they have or not.

<comment><USER27> Why is it that you assume that a PhD or community support makes someone right? And surely he gets his paycheck from someone just as Y does, right?

<comment><USER26> It doesn't, in itself. But when a PhD with very widespread support disagrees with somebody so lacking in the relevant discipline that they keep making the same elementary mistakes over and over in support of a preconceived notion, it's a really strong sign that they're not really talking on an equal footing.

It's not always easy to rule out outsider with novel ideas, but there are lists of warning signs of crankery and motivated reasoning that a journalist should be able to identify. There will always be a gray area, but that's no excuse for lazy journalists to repeatedly seek out anybody willing to disagree just for the purpose of presenting an equal-and-opposite story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Let alone cost, one thing that boggles my mind is how _slow_ infrastructure building is in the US. In our area, a multi-billion dollar freeway or subway line will often be constructed with 5 days of a single 8-hour shift. I get that certain work needs to be done at night, but surely the work sites shouldn't sit empty for 16 hours a day!

Just think about the cost of equipment being rented, the overhead that is on salary, the amount of work to startup and shutdown the site for the day, and the opportunity cost lost by not having it done 2-3x as fast.

It's seems like it would be a no-brainer to have 3x the workers and get the job done in 1/3 the time.

<comment><USER16> Same principle applies here as with any software development effort. There are some natural bottlenecks that can't be avoided/parallelized (for e.g. waiting for a layer of asphalt to dry). Further, more people doing a thing doesn't mean it will get done faster. You have to contend with overhead of planning, context-switching and handover overhead between workers leaving/starting shifts etc. etc.

<comment><USER29> True but those constraints can result in more creative engineering.

Look at this timelapse of a bridge getting replaced in 43 hours. They had the new bridge built next to the orignal and "just" moved it into place—I'm using quotes because of course that is an impressive operation.

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

<comment><USER30> You may want to check out how the Comm Ave bridge over the Pike was replaced in Boston. It was pretty quicke although not as fast 43 hours. However, we also couldn't afford to close the lower road (I-90) as above for an extended staging effort. I believe rail lines were only impacted on two weekend pushes.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm no expert, but I would wager that costs are so high due to a mix of: state capture, a complex regulatory scheme, and relatively minor process inefficiency throughout the value chain that when taken as a whole slow down large projects.

The Congressional Act cited in the article explicitly states a timeline of 9 months for the GAO report to be delivered and yet it was 7 months late.

Many state budgets have not reached pre-2008 levels and regulatory agencies are ripe to be exploited by labor groups, lobbying, private property owners, etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> The best part of this thread is that the article is about why it's really hard to understand the cost differences, while the top comments all offer unsupported and anecdotal speculation explaining the cost differences in 200 words or less.

"HN: Where dilettantes opine."

<comment><USER33> Mmmm, it's a good part, but I think the best part is all the people who have it figured out because in all of recorded history, nobody thought of checking into things like the costs of corruption.

It's nice that the city planners include it as a line item, why don't we look there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've been reading a lot about transit lately, and the one theme that seems to dominate cost and time overruns is reliance on contractors due to there being supposedly not enough labor.

Contractors bid to deliver an inferior product, because working to deliver a superior product will hurt their profit margins, and they are insulated from the fallout as all blame will go to the transit agency and not whichever dime a dozen contractor failed the project. By relying on the contractor model, these agencies don't need to maintain a bulky labor pool, but in the process for every public dollar given to project labor, a portion gets withheld for that profit margin. Privatization is fundamentally inefficient and has no place in public works projects.

Public engineering should be the most powerful force in this country, and for a time it really was. Some of the brightest engineering minds in the world are trained in our public universities, and many end up contributing to projects that are a net negative to society, blinded by the private sector paycheck and the supposed prestige that brings. LA Metro complains that there is a labor shortage, yet they provide regional transit to Cal Tech, USC (though a private school), and UCLA, serving the labor pool they claim doesn't exist. Public infrastructure agencies need to do a much better job at recruiting from our constant output of talent and preventing these students from being wasted in the private sector, working hard and wasting their years for someone else's dollar.

LA Metro also complains about a labor shortage in a region where 60k live on the street. If this was 1930, those destitute people would be hired and trained to build infrastructure. But this is 2019, and we can't even build homeless shelters lest they tarnish our sweet sweet property values.

<comment><USER35> I think in the cheap places they contract too, but yes as a contractor the incentives are almost always wrong and the balkanization precludes economies of scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't fully buy that we can't work this out. The author gives examples of how it's difficult to compare, but what those examples show is that yes, to compare properly you need to go very deep on some parts to find out why design decisions were made the way they were. This may be more time consuming and cost more but it's doable.

One other thing we might try is to set aside a hundred billion dollars for a half dozen key "trial" or "learning" projects, and see if we can get some of the agencies from say Japan and France and Spain to execute those projects so we can learn how they do it differently. And they can show up all the things (regulations, interference, etc) that they encounter here that would be different to back home.

In the scheme of things it's cheap, we still get infrastructure out of it, and it's one sure way to learn.

<comment><USER37> > I don't fully buy that we can't work this out. The author gives examples of > how it's difficult to compare, but what those examples show is that yes, to > compare properly you need to go very deep on some parts to find out why > design decisions were made the way they were. This may be more time > consuming and cost more but it's doable.

That's exactly what the author is advocating for, so I'm not sure what your point is. Heck, the last line of the article is "It would be worth paying to get the answers even if that would be very expensive."

<comment><USER25> Sounded like the author was advocating another mega-project, which comes off a bit weird considering the article they just wrote.

<comment><USER38> > Sounded like the author was advocating another mega-project

No, they were suggesting that in order to find out why these projects are so expensive, it would be best to hire people experienced with mega-projects and pay them for their time to get answers to these questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Kind of weird to use a picture of the East Side Access project in New York as the lede. New York is a whole different case from the rest of the country. We _do_ know why infrastructure in New York is so absurdly expensive. Outright theft and fraud is a big culprit: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york- subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway- construction-costs.html)

> The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the > platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to > the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 > jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. > Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there.

> "Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything," > said Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the > Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The > workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how > long they had been employed. "All we knew is they were each being paid about > $1,000 every day."

> The discovery... occurred in 2010 and was not disclosed to the public

This sort of behavior is unfortunately commonplace.

<comment><USER40> The California High Speed Rail was also corruption. It's all over everywhere, because nobody is accountable for it, except the people over-charging, while simultaneously pointing out that they are taking all the liability when things go wrong (and someone actually tries to prosecute).

<comment><USER41> From my conversations with people who worked on HSR - a lot of the problem was we outsourced the decisions to expensive consulting agencies, and those agencies saw the project as a place to stash their most useless staff members.

So basically we had a bunch of very expensive idiots running an outsourced project.

If they had kept the whole project in house, we'd have the initial operating segment already.

See also, CEQA is a terrible law that mostly blocks good things and rarely blocks bad things.

<comment><USER42> I think rather than generally blaming "corruption", nowadays I prefer to blame "lack of competence", although there is a lot of overlap.

That's because I see a lot of bad decisions -- stupidity over greed. It only takes a few bad decisions made by people with power to completely sink a project. Now imagine building an airport or a subway. How many of these do we build? They are basically one off projects. Following a manual to repave a road doesn't require much competence, as it's a project that's done over and over again -- but doing a one-off project with unique challenges -- that requires serious competence.

And lack of competence is a much harder problem to solve than corruption. The incompetent person doesn't admit or know they are incompetent. The incompetent person can't be scared with lawsuits or investigations to become competent. No amount of sunshine will help. The only solution is to get rid of the incompetent person and put someone competent in charge. But that doesn't work at the national level -- if there is a shortage of incompetent people, or if our hiring systems aren't able to hire the competent person. So the solutions are very long term and painful:

* change how governments hire and promote staff to focus more on competence and less on passive traits like seniority/diversity/etc.

* reduce the need for competence by focusing on standardized projects built in a steady cadence. For subways, make every subway the same, or pick just 2 variants, and develop a team of people with experience working on these all across the country, with standardized best practices and a pool of skilled workers who have experience working on these projects.

All of that requires some pretty radical reforms of how our projects are funded and what role cities have to play in building them, as well as upsetting a lot of government unions.

Then there is the issue of Federalism. The Swiss have a highly efficient infrastructure system and have strong federalism, as does Germany, but you're not in a situation where each state has completely different zoning/eminent domain laws, or separate licensing so an engineer in one state may not be able to even work in another. This makes it harder for us to adopt more standardized practices across states for big infrastructure projects as well as a national pool of experts that can go state to state and build standardized projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I am fascinated to see that 3 hours, 109 upvotes and 107 comments into this story, the word "regulation" occurs only once in the comment thread.

I own, jointly with others, a 3 mile long road.

If there could be only two things that I impressed upon someone, in relation to this road, they would be the following:

1) You have _no idea how costly_ maintaining a road (any road) is. I didn't. I had _no idea_. Whatever libertarian fantasies you may harbor about private people coming together to create and maintain anything like first world infrastructure, I am sorry to dash them: we have a group of 20 or so rich, well-educated, smart and hard-working people and it's right at the edge of our capabilities to keep this 3 mile long road in semi-acceptable condition.

2) The difference between doing a safe, reasonable, environmentally responsible and long term fix and _doing that very same fix but 100% by the book_ is a cost difference of 3x to 4x. There are minor drainage fixes we've looked into that required, no shit, the _army corps of engineers_ to be consulted along with several other county and state regulatory and environmental agencies. After paying a third party firm to create an environmental impact report. _Do you understand that I am talking about fixing a ditch ?_ The army corps of engineers.

I did not, above, refer to "excessive regulation" because I am not ready nor willing to define that and I don't want to take a political stand on it - I am merely pointing out that the first thought you should be having on this issue is: regulations.

<comment><USER44> > You have no idea how costly maintaining a road (any road) is.

And after your comment, I still do not. Telling us might help.

<comment><USER30> MassDOT recently published their capital budget with a little more fanfare than usual, to soothe Red Line passengers hurting from the recent derailment perhaps. It included $3 billion in major repaving efforts but that seems to have gone without challenge. However the Green Line Extension is barely alive politically on their $2.4B capital budget.

Likewise, a nearby overpass on Rt 128 was repaired for $30M.

Highways eat money but when Massachusetts looks to obvious transit improvements, suddenly cost is a major concern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Really? Are we sure we can't figure this out? Who believes that?

Private contractors seem to be very expensive. No-bid contracts are obviously not competitive. And when the tax payer is picking up the bill, is there really any incentive for a contractor to keep costs low? Who advocates for the taxpayer?

And how much corruption, kick-backs, lobbying, political favoring, porking, and other questionable activity goes on behind the scenes that increase costs?

This isn't rocket science, it's mostly about accounting and accountability.

<comment><USER46> But wouldn't all those same problems you outline be the case in other countries?

I think the question isn't "Why are infra costs so high?" which I think your list answers, but instead "Why are infra costs so high _in the united states_?"

<comment><USER47> Bribery is legalized in the US in the form of campaign contributions. In fact, the Supreme Court determined it was _speech_ , something whose freedom is enshrined in the constitution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This article linked from another Josh Barro piece tells you exactly why it's so expensive

[https://www.city-journal.org/html/fifteen-stories- under-1410...](https://www.city-journal.org/html/fifteen-stories- under-14105.html)

In Britain and France, only the "miners"—or tunnelers—work in unions similar to America's. Contractors hire other workers largely as they wish. The jobs pay well but not American-construction-union well. In New York, everyone works by the same union rules, which include hourly wages and staffing requirements that can mean 25 workers per tunnel-boring machine, compared with a dozen or so in a nonunion state and as few as five in countries such as Norway.

<comment><USER49> If it that were simple, the GAO report mentioned in the article would surely have found it. It's not just labor cost.

<comment><USER50> [https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report- on-...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report-on- construction-costs-misses-the-mark/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Honestly I think there is a lot of incompetence involved with local transportation agencies as well. Often they are extremely underfunded so it's not always their fault. But living in a metropolitan area where the population is very much for innovative and forward thinking infrastructure, the agency responsible has time and time again made very costly mistakes and decisions.

As well as try and deceive the public by doing things such as claiming they are providing BRT but really it's just new buses with an HOV lane. So at this point the public has very little faith in them being able to provide what we so desperately want.

</comment><comment><USER47> May be this is just too much cynicism but isn't it possible the GAO just failed to do what it was supposed to do and is offering that paragraph as a poor way to explain away their failure?

The trend of it being more expensive in the US is a real, statistically determinable fact. That hints there are structural reasons for it. They should at least give a stab at it rather than throwing up their hands and claiming there's nothing they can do.

<comment><USER50> yes, the report is shit.

[https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report- on-...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report-on- construction-costs-misses-the-mark/) \+ see the design-build vs design then build comment(s) too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> It's surprising infrastructure in the US is as cheap as it is. It is built with no meaningful cost controls. Environmental impact studies are uniquely slow and hard to navigate. Only a few well-connected firms are able to bid, and they get picked for mostly political reasons. "Buy America" restrictions make a lot of obvious projects actually impossible. Those responsible for cost overruns are never held to account.

</comment><comment><USER53> There is a saying: it's good to work on your weaknesses, but don't dwell on them because otherwise you'll spend all your time doing things you're bad at.

If we're bad at centrally planned public infrastructure, we should just do less of it, and focus more on the things we're good at doing.

<comment><USER54> Except that just because you're bad at taking care of your health, it does not follow you should spend less time on it. You'll still die early.

What you're saying only makes sense if you're talking about things that are optional, not if they're required.

<comment><USER53> Centralized public infrastructure is not required. Decentralized infrastructure works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> My gut instinct is that the mob might be a (potentially significant) factor here. I could be wrong, but this is their bread an butter after all: bribe politician to get large-scale infrastructure project and then artificially inflate costs (false purchase orders, buying materials from companies they operate in amounts that are far in excess or what's required and not actually shipping them, etc.) so that they can siphon away tax dollars.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think the answer is in the first few lines actually.

>Here are the instructions Congress gave last March: Not later than 9 months after the enactment of this act, the GAO shall report to the House and Senate

>Sixteen months later, the GAO has produced its report and it doesn't actually perform the cost comparisons as instructed.

Bureaucracy at its finest. Over promise, under deliver, and make sure its late too, just in case anyone thought there might be a competent system in play.

<comment><USER38> > I think the answer is in the first few lines actually.

Not really, given that the main focus of the rest of the article was about how what was asked of them is difficult to determine, and not even well defined.

<comment><USER50> That's just a long excuse, an appeal for incompetence, to hide the intent of face saving: [https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report- on-...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report-on- construction-costs-misses-the-mark/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I love how the word "corruption" doesn't appear once in the text. If this was an article about Eastern Europe for example it would be in every paragraph.

So, I'm wondering if corruption overemphasized in my region and Project Management is just very hard, or there is corruption in the US and rest of the English speaking countries as well, but people are not talking about it much.

</comment><comment><USER58> I wonder if someone has found a strong correlation between infrastructure costs and legal or land costs?

<comment><USER59> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY- mlcgFCc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY-mlcgFCc4) Legal costs is definitely an issue sometimes

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm surprised by the cynicism here. Working in software we know that high complexity projects are _really_ hard to estimate.

Hofstadter's Law says it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Too many unknown unknowns. If the projects were broken down into smaller chunks, the incremental costs would be better understood as the project progressed.

<comment><USER61> Construction generally is not doing a brand new greenfield project. Experienced web developers can put together another website for pretty close to budget. As soon as you deviate from the framework and tools that the experienced web developer knows well though estimates go out the window.

Big construction projects have a lot of well understood parts. Sometimes you get unexpected rocks or something, but for the most some countries have done much better than others at controlling costs in projects of similar complexity which suggests that the difference isn't because it is hard to estimate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Before we make a report on how our costs differ from other G20 countries, how about a report on how our costs differ from ourselves 100 years ago.

In 1900 it took four years to lay nine miles of subway in NYC. The second ave tunnel was just a couple miles and under construction for 12 years.

That's just an example. It also took longer to build the new Eastern span of the Bay Bridge than it took to build the whole bridge.

I think we should start by figuring out why these things happen.

<comment><USER63> As I understand it, most of the NYC subway was built by basically just closing of major chunks of streets and excavating them, sticking the subway in and then covering it back up.

Compared to boring underground tunnels, you can imagine how much less involved it is to simply dig a hole from above.

I'm not sure why they don't do that anymore, though I can imagine it's some combination of where the new routes are (maybe they aren't following the street grid?) and higher impact of year-long closures of streets.

The NYP has a good article comparing the methods of construction then and now: [https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/05/04/subway-construction- the...](https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/05/04/subway-construction-then-now)

<comment><USER64> I think what you are describing it's called cut and cover.

Presumably, the idea of inconveniencing motorists for that long "just" for transit is no longer acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I'd wager there is plenty of 'dark money' that never gets reported i.e mob, and politicians being bribed.</comment>


European carriers could block Internet ads for their own benefit - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/15/eu-carriers-plan-block-google-ads/#continued

<comment><USER2> Google will probably force the use of secure and encrypted https, add-blockers will not work on encrypted pages.</comment>


Ask HN: Flagged Submissions Added to Favorites - <AUTHOR> I just noticed that something I added to my favorites was later flagged.   I cannot see it in my favorites now.<p>This did not seem to the case before.  Has something changed with flagged items? <comment><USER2> Check if you have showdead=yes enabled in your profile.

<comment><USER3> I think this is the right answer. I have "showdead" enabled, and I can see two dead stories at the top of their favorites list:

 _1\. [flagged] [dead] How I made $210,822 selling a pdf and a video on the internet (indiehackers.com)

7 points by DVassallo 1 hour ago | flag | vouch

2\. [flagged] [dead] Lessons of Persuasion from Scott Adams, Creator of Dilbert (knowledgeartist.org)

7 points by laybak 6 hours ago | flag | vouch | 2 comments_

Note, however, that HN seems to eventually remove the hyperlinks from dead stories, so if you're interested in those links, they should probably be bookmarked somewhere else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The second entry on your favourites page is flagged/dead and shows up for me, are you sure the page reloaded?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, I double checked it. I see an indie hackers link as my most recent and an Ask HN as my second.</comment></comment>


Windows Azure Is Not Cheap - <AUTHOR> http://simonmunro.com/2009/09/30/windows-azure-is-not-cheap/

<comment><USER2> I think the biggest problem with going the Microsoft route is locking your options to Microsoft solutions forever.

Compared to the lifetime costs of an application, the marginal savings you get from using Visual Studio (assuming there are any, which is quite a bold assumption) are vanishingly small.

I seriously doubt the viability of any startup that brags about their .NET technology.</comment>


Activist Publishes 11,000 Private DMs Between Wikileaks and Its Supporters - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kyv9n/activist-publishes-11000-wikileaks-twitter-direct-messages-dms <comment> mike-cardwell There's a Glenn Greenwald article on the Intercept from just over a week ago saying Assange is about to be kicked out of the embassy and handed over to the UK:

[https://theintercept.com/2018/07/21/ecuador-will- imminently-...](https://theintercept.com/2018/07/21/ecuador-will-imminently- withdraw-asylum-for-julian-assange-and-hand-him-over-to-the-uk-what-comes- next/)

Also, there's been a bunch of stuff about anti-semitism in the UK media recently.

Interesting timing and content for this story.

<comment><USER2> See also: [https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/07/28/in-refusing-to- defen...](https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/07/28/in-refusing-to-defend- assange-mainstream-media-exposes-its-true-nature/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of the is issues here is Wikileaks taking sides and encouraging things to happen politically, which is beyond just leaking things.

<comment><USER4> That's the entire intent of the organization. To leak things to cause political repercussions. They aren't leaking it just for the lulz. But the original idea was that this was supposed to be politically unbiased. It seems, though, that the history of their releases has had a bias. They also seem to have a lengthy controversy section on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Controversy)

It seems weird that Wikileaks exists in the form it does. I mean, couldn't they just host a giant Pastebin-style site on Tor and let people leak whatever they wanted?

<comment><USER5> No. The point of wikileaks is that they verify the authenticity of things they publish, and the veracity of past leaks gives credibility to future ones.

Regarding accusations of bias, I have yet to see an example of authentic non- public information wikileaks refused to publish. Do you have one?

<comment><USER6> The accusation they are biased in what they published does not require them to have refused to release anything, merely that the original sources of information only made biased information available to Wikileaks to publish, or that they only solicited or acted to confirm information from biased sources.

<comment><USER5> I don't think the original sources choosing what to leak counts as bias on the part of Wikileaks. As for them only acting to confirm leaks in a biased way, do you have any examples of leaks that were published elsewhere because wikileaks refused due to bias?

<comment><USER7> Yes:

"Wikileaks withheld a batch of emails showing a $2.2 billion transaction between the Syrian regime and a Russian government-owned bank, according to a Daily Dot report." [https://gizmodo.com/wikileaks-may-have-withheld-key- russian-...](https://gizmodo.com/wikileaks-may-have-withheld-key-russian- documents-from-1786445992)

"In the summer of 2016, as WikiLeaks was publishing documents from Democratic operatives allegedly obtained by Kremlin-directed hackers, Julian Assange turned down a large cache of documents related to the Russian government, according to chat messages and a source who provided the records." [https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned- down-l...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks- on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/)

Don't forget the time they came out against anti-Trump leaks: [https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/817322050297745408](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/817322050297745408)

<comment><USER5> From the article in your comment: >"As far as we recall these are already public," WikiLeaks wrote at the time.

>In 2014, the BBC and other news outlets reported on the cache, which revealed details about Russian military and intelligence involvement in Ukraine. However, the information from that hack was less than half the data that later became available in 2016, when Assange turned it down.

So the source was trying to piggyback on the well earned publicity Wikileaks publications get to bring attention to an old leak by adding some uninteresting documents to it. I suspect if his addition had contained revelations, we would have heard about it, especially given the anti-Russia bias of the corporate media lately.

On the Syrian payment, why is Russia giving money to an ally something I should find questionable? How much money did the US give Israel that year alone?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would be appropriate to publish these on a site named wikileaksleaks.org

<comment><USER9> It's available! Go for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who runs the Wikileaks twitter account these days? I don't imagine it could be Assange as I understand that his access to the 'net is tenuous at best.

<comment><USER11> IIRC within the past year or two it seemed like the account was being managed by someone else. The tone of the tweets changed, and spelling errors started to arise where there had previously been very few. This could be a result of pressure on Assange, or another party controlling the account all together

<comment><USER12> _> The tone of the tweets changed, and spelling errors started to arise_

Must be a native English speaker because they can't spell for shit.

<comment><USER13> > Must be a native English speaker because they can't spell for shit.

I'm not sure I understand your comment. Are you saying native English speakers are more prone to misspelling than those that speak it as a second or third language?

<comment><USER14> Yes, that is what they are saying. I believe it is meant somewhat tongue in cheek. Although there is also some truth to this.

For example, it is not uncommon in the US for native english speakers to confuse the spellings of "loose" and "lose", whereas this kind of confusion is uncommon among say native German speakers who know English as a second language.

There are of course also native speakers with excellent spelling.

<comment><USER12> yes it was tongue in cheek :) I don't have hard data on it and therefore can only speak for my own surrounding (colleagues, friends etc). Maybe I'm utterly wrong even and my sample size to make such a claim is shit :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This just confirms what was obvious from behavior -- namely that Wikileaks is not neutral and has a clear political agenda.

<comment><USER16> > This just confirms

Is the leaked material real? Until that's asserted I don't believe it confirms anything. It's no secret that there are plenty of persons interested in undermining wikileaks who are very capable of fabricating smear campaigns.

<comment><USER13> It's no less legitimate than all the recent publications out of Wikileaks themselves, at any rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The tendentiousness of Wikileaks "reporting" was apparent to me from the start. Unfortunately "USA suxx" is always a popular sentiment to rally people around so people would overlook the (obvious in retrospect) fact that it was all a Kremlin-funded operation.

<comment><USER18> Looking at previous HN threads on the subject, there seemed to be a strong pro-wikileaks coalition on HN (comments similar to yours have been grayed out in the past)

<comment><USER19> Can confirm. It's just not worthwhile trying to convince those who are against it, as their minds are already made up & closed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems wrong to assume that this dump hasn't been tampered with or has implicit biases...

<comment><USER21> It's right there in the article.

> "When Emma contacted me saying the source sent her the same docs too, I took > a hash of my original HTML file and it checked out, so she has a copy of the > same file as me," Lee told Motherboard in a Twitter direct message. A hash > is a cryptographic fingerprint of a file; if someone has tampered the file > at all, those hashes won't match.

> Lee said his source provided an HTML file of the DMs, and then Lee logged > into the Twitter account himself and downloaded the direct messages with an > automated tool.

> "I confirmed that they were authentic (Twitter itself would have had to > doctor them) and that the source didn't modify the content in the copy he > gave me," Lee told Motherboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how long until Wikileaks denounce this leak as "irresponsible", or whatever?

</comment><comment><USER23> Does saying "he is jewish" make you a rascist ?

<comment><USER24> The use of the ((()))) brackets kinda does.

<comment><USER25> More than kinda - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses)

<comment><USER26> Activist and former white supremacist Christian Picciolini claims that "globalist" was an intentional renaming of "Jewish" in order to make their message more palatable to mainstream conservatives.

<comment><USER15> "Globalist" is a very old antisemitic slur -- see "The International Jew" by Henry Ford.

<comment><USER27> sooo..

If one is anti-globalist, one is inherently anti-semitic?

What then does it mean to be a globalist?

And further, if defending being a 'globalist' automatically implies 'defending jews' what does this implicitly imply 'all jews' actually believe geopolitically?

the faulty logic runs deep in this line of thinking; the allegedly racist term then becomes 'the reality', which should then be protected..

<comment><USER15> You can be against neoliberalism, unfair trade, or international political entities overriding national sovereignty without being antisemitic.

Picking a dog whistle term that happens to sound like a reasonable position is a standard political tactic. Another example: "family values" which is a euphemism for theocracy. Who would actually oppose "the family"?

<comment><USER5> How do you describe "international political entities overriding national sovereignty" without using the word "globalist" or "internationalist"? (Both of which are antisemitic apparently)

<comment><USER15> That's exactly why white supremacists picked those terms.

<comment><USER5> Im asking you what term you think is appropriate. It seems like you dont think ANY word is appropriate, and that is 1984 newspeak. If your opponent isnt allowed to have a word to describe your position, they cant effectively argue against it.

edit: Lol. Thank you for validating my theory.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Implicit Social Graph - Whats its value? - <AUTHOR> http://cheolhominale.posterous.com/the-implicit-social-graph-whats-its-value

<comment><USER2> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2366172></comment>


The CIA and a secret vacuum cleaner - <AUTHOR> http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=yGifdkEQ

<comment><USER2> It's pretty striking that a media organization which has almost no restriction on the words it publishes would characterize a torture program that included 183 waterboardings and 180 hours of sleep deprivation as "harsh interrogation"

<comment><USER3> I've found media organizations will sensationalize the little stuff (to make it news) and de-sensationalize the wording on big stuff. My hypothesis is they want to sound less crackpot. If they call it a "torture regime deserving of the Middle Ages", they are going to lose readers, because it can be hard to take that sort of stuff seriously.

You might be inclined to say, so what, lose readers. But if people don't read it, how do you spread a message?

<comment><USER4> One can write plain English without sensationalism. Waterboarding someone 183 times is obviously torture. People only use roundabout phrases to describe torture when it's their side that did it.

Conversely, it's easy to see the nature of these bureaucratic euphemisms when others use them:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/daily- dish/archive/2007/05/-versc...](http://www.theatlantic.com/daily- dish/archive/2007/05/-versch-auml-rfte-vernehmung/228158/)

Tangential edit: every time I hear "enhanced interrogation techniques" I remember Orwell's classic essay:

 _If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one 's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase [...] into the dustbin, where it belongs._

[https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)

<comment><USER5> Worth saying: "waterboarding" is itself a euphemism. A more accurate term would be "drowning", or, to capture the intent of the exercise, "mock execution via drowning".

<comment><USER6> Just want to say that I love this clarification and I hope you don't mind if I use it in the future

<comment><USER5> It bothers me that you feel like you'd have to ask; it's the simple truth. The word "waterboarding" is designed to abstract what people are actually doing.

<comment><USER6> Was just trying to be nice, buddy

<comment><USER5> Sorry, I wasn't being critical, just emphatic.

<comment><USER6> It seems brief text-based communication presents fertile ground for misunderstanding ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The thing that will really drive them nuts... What if its a really good design?

Edit: I'm not sure what the downvotes are about: I was just thinking that after years of trying to dehumanize the guy into some sort of illegible monster, what if it turns out he's a generally bright, practical, and well adjusted guy who just happend to reach the conclusion that "death to america" was a rational course of action as opposed to an insane whack-job that "hates our freedom"? That might have the tendency to upset their thinking.

<comment><USER8> Up voting/Down voting here on HN tend to be pretty ridiculous, I wouldn't take it personally. Just engage with the community and try not to give a damn about the votes.

<comment><USER9> Over time it tends to even out - the early up/down voters tend to be superficial and react quickly, but over the next day or so the system seems to work pretty well. It's like early votes on IMDb - you shouldn't really pay much attention for a week or two, there.

<comment><USER8> I get what you are saying, but my comment here got up voted, and it isn't really useful. Whereas some more thoughtful but critical comments in my comment history got down voted.

It makes no sense... oh, and criticize Apple and prepare to whatch your karma disappear.

<comment><USER10> Make an innocent joke, downvote. Make an innocent joke about Apple, upvote.

Disclaimer: My comment history ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm really curious about what will eventually happen to Mohammed. Does he rot in Guantanamo forever? I thought we were closing it? He's definitely not going to get a trial, I don't believe that for a second. Does anyone have any insight here?

<comment><USER12> I believe the current situation is that Congress blocked the closure, and Obama has not pushed it as a major issue since then.

He did sign an executive order laying out a high-level plan for transferring the detainees and closing Guantanamo ([http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/closure-guantanam...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/closure-guantanamo-detention-facilities)). But it was not implemented particularly quickly, and Congress eventually prohibited further progress on the plan ([http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/8/congress- deal...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/8/congress-deals-death- blow-gitmo-closure/?page=all)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone else find it concerning the US have had this guy in custody for about a decade, including torture, and he's never had a trial?

Innocent until proven guilty seems like a farce these days.

<comment><USER14> I'm fascinated by the lack of any skepticism about their guilt. The public has been shown literally no proof whatsoever that they have committed any offense that warrants their imprisonment, and yet they're imprisoned essentially for life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reads like satire especially toward the end

<comment><USER16> "confirming or denying the very existence of a vacuum cleaner design, a Swiffer design, or even a design for a better hand towel would apparently expose the U.S. government and its citizens to exceptionally grave danger"

Is he being serious?

<comment><USER17> The source for that quote is Mohammed's attorney, I feel like he has a bit of latitude to criticize the government. He's also the source for the very sympathetic descriptions of Mohammed in the article.

Not that he doesn't have a point. Its just worth noting the article is a little opaque about the sources.</comment></comment></comment>


The NoArchive Initiative - <AUTHOR> http://noarchive.net/

<comment><USER2> Just as information wants to be free[1], I think information wants to be stored. Forever. I have disk images to old computers that themselves have tarballs from servers and disk images from yet older computers. And I've rarely been very good at backing stuff up…

Part of wisdom is knowing what you can't change, and I'm starting to believe that more and more, we're going to be living in a post-privacy world. I also suspect, however, that this very-mixed blessing is tempered by the reality that we're all going to be Waldos lost in a sea of people.

In my own life, there's more material that I've lost that I wish that had been saved than there is material that's been saved that I wish had disappeared.

Instead of trying to stop what seems inevitable—the collection and archiving of information about us—I think we should focus on regulating how all the material that's available about all of us can be _used_ e.g. what's permissible to consider when credit scoring, making insurance coverage decisions, doing background checks, and during the job application process.

The reality is that we'll never be free of this. I've been asked if I was married and had kids during job interviews. (I answered—and then volunteered that I'm straight and an atheist, which made the point to the guy that he was way out of bounds asking those questions.) But in any event, the key is to get the issue of information usage (iPhone UDIDs, anyone?) out there so companies need to define policies which we can then, using the same panopticon they have access to, hold companies to those policies.

[1] FYI: Just before saying this to Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, the originator of this phrase also said, "Information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable."

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr: site seems to be mostly about <meta name="robots" content="noarchive">, its alternatives and background. (I guess it may not be obvious from submission's title.)</comment>


Kinto: a lightweight JSON storage service with sync and sharing - <AUTHOR> http://kinto.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html <comment><USER2> Please see the thread at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10994736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10994736)</comment>


Warren Buffett: Pretty Good for Government Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/opinion/17buffett.html?_r=1

<comment><USER5> In the interest of full disclosure, Warren Buffett should have mentioned that he will probably make about $3.5 billion off a $5 billion investment (70% return) in Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs in turn received $13 billion via the AIG bailout.

[http://www.bnet.com/blog/financial-business/how-warren- buffe...](http://www.bnet.com/blog/financial-business/how-warren- buffett-8217s-gamble-on-goldman-sachs-paid-off-big/8326)

[http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/21/business/fi-aig- gold...](http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/21/business/fi-aig-goldman21)

<comment><USER6> It's probably more accurate to say charities will make it.

 _Buffett has pledged to gradually give 85% of his Berkshire stock to five foundations. A dominant five-sixths of the shares will go to the world's largest philanthropic organization, the $30 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose principals are close friends of Buffett's (a connection that began in 1991, when a mutual friend introduced Buffett and Bill Gates)._

[http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/25/magazines/fortune/charity1.f...](http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/25/magazines/fortune/charity1.fortune/)

<comment><USER7> that's after his death, and even then it's just a way to avoid inheritance tax.

<comment><USER8> The estate tax is a disgrace, but this is overly cynical. Buffett is giving away far more than he'd pay in taxes, even at the 55% estate tax rate.

<comment><USER9> The estate tax isn't a disgrace, it only even kicks in on estates greater than a few million. I'll repeat that -- if your estate is less than a few million, the estate tax doesn't affect you. If your estate is more than a few million, the first few are still exempt.

Used to be people respected earning your own living, now all people seem to respect is compound interest.

<comment><USER10> Here's something I only recently became aware of that may change your opinion on the estate tax.

I have three children, ages 3, 2 and six months. If I were to die tomorrow, the cost of raising those kids and sending them to college would be something like $3.5M. So, I have a life insurance policy, as any responsible parent does.

But under the current law, _the proceeds of my life insurance policy are subject to the estate tax_.

Sure, if you're paining a hypothetical about a 24-year-old Ivy League graduate who just received news that his parents have passed and that he has inherited a $3M estate, it doesn't sound _too_ bad if part of that inheritance is taxed.

But now imagine a toddler who just lost two parents and needs to be fed, clothed, sheltered and educated for the next 20 years... it's different.

<comment><USER9> Ok, so there's a case that's pretty important and probably deserves an exemption under the law. Or, maybe not, if you think 3.5 million is enough, you already have all the exemption you need. I could see something pushing it a little higher in cases of early death and a life insurance payout.

That makes sense.

You know what doesn't make sense, though? Complaining about a "death tax" on the one hand while complaining about the budget deficit at the same time, yet maintaining that you're the political party of hard work, bootstrapping, blah blah. If you care about the latter two, don't spend your time going to the mat for Paris Hilton. If you consult some charts about income distribution in this country, you can conclude that the _vaaaaaaaaast_ majority of the revenue collected under this tax comes from very large estates where the children would be set for life with 10% of it, and they're doing very very well with 3.5Mil + 45% of the rest.

Exceptional cases may be worthy of exceptions under the law, but that doesn't change whether the law makes sense in the general case.

<comment><USER11> Simultaneously complaining about taxes and the deficit does does make sense if you consider cutting spending.

<comment><USER9> Not given the size of the budget deficit, and especially not if you're only concerned about taxes that exclusively affect the very very wealthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Warren Buffett's corrupt Moody's credit rating business is at the heart of the financial crisis. Funny he didn't mention that.

[http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy- watch/2010/05/credi...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy- watch/2010/05/credit_rating_agencies_the_rea.html)

<comment><USER13> Nice straw man attack. How does that have anything to do with his argument that Uncle Sam helped calm one of the biggest economic crises in history?

Also implying that Moody is corrupt is asinine. Yes, they made mistakes (what credit agency didn't during the housing bubble?), but they didn't break any laws.

<comment><USER14> Would hardly call it asinine. There is a difference between illegality and corruption, and many would argue that us lawmakers have legalized bribery in the financial sector. You may disagree, but that doesn't make the viewpoint ignorant.

<comment><USER15> The implication, however, is that they were doing something shady that the rest of the credit rating agencies were not -- which is incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Perhaps the government did avert a short-term disaster. But it's unremarkable that they distributed billions to companies who effectively held taxpayers hostage, threatening "if we go down, you go down with us." There was no way to not give out money without incurring intolerable short-term pain.

I'll write a thank you letter to the government when the future of our nation isn't tied to the bad judgement of a few irresponsible companies.

<comment><USER17> > There was no way to not give out money without incurring intolerable short- > term pain.

Sure there was:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23k...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23krona.html)

The Swedes actually solved this by nationalizing all the failing banks, wiping out the equity holders, restructuring and privatizing again. It ended up not costing much. In the US a bunch of bankers got huge bailout funded bonuses and the banks are far from solvent even now.

<comment><USER18> `Sweden spent 4 percent of its gross domestic product, or 65 billion kronor, the equivalent of $11.7 billion at the time, or $18.3 billion in today's dollars, to rescue ailing banks. `

Hrmm...so let's see...4% of $14.14T = $565B.

TARP alone was 700B - i.e. approximately 5% and that seems to not have been enough - because the Fed spent an additional $1.4T.

How much more money did you want the US to spend? Obviously if it was as simple as nationalizing every single bank, they would have done that. But the US banking industry is much more complicated than any other country - <USER3> less Sweden's (with all due respect).

To whit, so far this year the FDIC has 'nationalized' more banks than they did 2009.

<https://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html>

So they are kinda doing what you suggest, but just to show you how difficult such a task really is, they are still winding them down almost 2 years later.

<comment><USER17> >How much more money did you want the US to spend? Obviously if it was as simple as nationalizing every single bank, they would have done that. But the US banking industry is much more complicated than any other country - <USER3> less Sweden's (with all due respect).

If the banks had not been bailed out by TARP they could have been nationalized cheaply, restructured and relaunched. The equity holders would have been wiped out, as they should have been since their banks were broke, and the employees at these banks would not have extracted even more obscene amounts of money. By now you'd have functional banks driving the economy again. The amount of money isn't the issue here, it's the fact that it was used to prop up a failed system instead of used to restructure it.

>To whit, so far this year the FDIC has 'nationalized' more banks than they did 2009.

All of these banks are the small insignificant ones. None of the big ones have been restructured and most are still technically insolvent.

<comment><USER18> TARP was a form of nationalization. It wasn't complete nationalization in EVERY case, but the government did buy bank common & preferred stocks. In AIG's case, they bought 80% of all outstanding stock - <USER4> nationalizing them.

Everybody else, it was pittances - a few % here and there.

So that goes to show the amount of money needed. If they spent so much money and only got a few % of each bank, how much more money would be needed to purchase the entire banks altogether.

Not all of the banks the FDIC has nationalized are insignificant ones. It started with IndyMac which is no small bank.

The notion that the banks are still technically insolvent - says who? I think the markets are the best indicator as to the health of the banks. As far as I can see, their bond spreads over Treasuries have fallen significantly in the last few months and their stocks have been rallying.

So are you telling me that the markets (who are extremely sophisticated and thoroughly understand the banking industry) are being fooled by these banks?

I hardly think so.

BOA is up from it's low of $3, to $11.70. Citigroup (the most damaged of them all) is up to $4.17 from a low of $1.xx - the gov't owns the biggest stake in Citi than most other banks.

Yes, their prices aren't as high as it used to be, but these things take time.

<comment><USER17> >So that goes to show the amount of money needed. If they spent so much money and only got a few % of each bank, how much more money would be needed to purchase the entire banks altogether.

The banks were propped up by TARP and so their market value remained high. Without it they were probably all insolvent and so the cost of owning them would be basically zero. Otherwise the market would have been able to finance the banks.

TARP was designed to feed money into banks in a very cheap way, the size of the wealth transfer from the taxpayer to Wall Street is staggering. Buffet himself got much better conditions than the Federal Government.

>The notion that the banks are still technically insolvent - says who? I think the markets are the best indicator as to the health of the banks. As far as I can see, their bond spreads over Treasuries have fallen significantly in the last few months and their stocks have been rallying.

There is now a quite explicit assumption that the federal government won't let the banks fail. With that and the Fed helping there's plenty of reason to think banks will continue to make money. That doesn't mean the crap on (and off) their balance sheets has stopped being crap.

>So are you telling me that the markets (who are extremely sophisticated and thoroughly understand the banking industry) are being fooled by these banks?

I'm saying the markets are now useless to value the banks because the value being judged includes the federal government as a crutch. There is no market pricing for the value of the banks on their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When the next round of problems start up this is going to look pretty funny. There is another wave of credit problems coming and the banks are vulnerable to all of the same downside risk they were before all this started.

In 1931 the establishment thought they solved the problem and that things would get better soon. The collapse of the Austrian bank Creditanstalt proved them wrong and started a new series of problems.

</comment><comment><USER20> What is the great disaster that was supposed to have befallen us had Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson and former CEO of Goldman Sachs not gotten his $700 million slush fund?

Certainly many of those placing their bets on the collapse of housing bubble would not have gotten paid by AIG, but how does that cause the rest of the economy to collapse exactly?

Yes, your investments would certainly have experienced losses as the companies doing all the stupid things dropped in value once their folly was fully revealed. But isn't dumb behavior and blind faith in casinos supposed to be punished?

Instead of that righteous outcome, the costs are no being dumped upon millions who had nothing to do with all of the stupidity. And the reckoning has merely been postponed and perhaps will grow even larger now that they have been encouraged to continue taking foolish risks.

Personally, I think Warren Buffett knows better.

<comment><USER21> _"What is the great disaster that was supposed to have befallen us..."_

Simply put, the thesis is that the entire world economy would have collapsed. It would have started with most of the investment banks being unable to do business and shutting their doors. This would have caused a chain reaction other parts of the financial system since the big money-center banks provide much of the overnight lending liquidity for smaller banks (and each other). Banks would start failing at an incredible rate.

As the banks started to fail, the equities, bond and commodities markets would have collapsed. All these markets rely on short term lending, not just for leverage, but to underwrite transactions. Even if this were not the case, much trading volume would have dried up. This combined would have led to a crash in those markets.

Finally, and most importantly, most businesses rely on lines of credit and other short term debt facilities to finance day to day operations. They use this to smooth out the cash flow when buying raw materials/inventory, purchasing assets and meeting payroll. These would have all been effectively frozen. You would have either seen paychecks becoming worthless or massive layoffs within a few weeks to a few months of the initial bank collapses. By massive, I mean a spike of an _additional_ 10% to 20% unemployment within a few weeks or months.

I won't go into the effect all this would have on currencies and international trade.

All told, it would probably have plunged the entire world into a depression that would have rivaled or exceeded the Great Depression of the 1930's. It likely would have been worse because of the interconnectedness of the world's financial and commercial systems today.

<comment><USER22> It's very easy to make up unfalsifiable scary stories to justify policies you like.

<comment><USER21> That I _like_?!?!? I hated the TARP bailout. The problems were caused by insanely lax government oversight, poor institutional risk assessment and a healthy dose of outright fraud. IMO people need to go to jail.

That said, the government had no real choice. I'm no financial system expert, but used to work in finance and even I can see that something was needed or else the system would collapse. Is it possible that you're letting your distaste of the financial system and players involved color your judgment?

The choice we faced was either cut off the leg or the patient dies when the gangrene spreads. No one _likes_ cutting off the leg, but if the alternative is that you die, I think the choice is obvious.

<comment><USER22> _Is it possible that you're letting your distaste of the financial system and players involved color your judgment?_

It's unlikely, since I don't have any distaste for finance. In most threads I'm the solitary defender of the financial sector.

As I said, it's easy to make up a scary story of doom. The scary story assumes that everyone will try to continue doing everything they previously did before the banks collapsed, and then give up rather than do things differently. Or perhaps the assumption is that the way things are now is the only way things could be. Either way, I'm unconvinced.

<comment><USER23> I wouldn't say he's scaremongering. There is historical precedent for what happens when liquidity in the marketplace dries up or how people behave when banks tighten their lending or go out of business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd rather hear from Uncle Sam's grand children than his nephew.

Dear Sammy Children have to trust that their elders carry the wisdom of thier age and thoughtfully apply it when faced with trying circumstances. We trust that you will do the right thing and protect and safeguard our future. For each generation to leave a legacy that enables the next generation to continue to have a chance prosper and pursue its dreams. During the financial turmoil culminating in the financial crisis of 2008 you broke that trust. You sold out future generations to save a priviliedged few. You lied to the people to hide your failures and to protect your own fortunes. In order to avoid facing difficult problems and dealing up front with the people of that time, you chose to steal from future generations so you could continue with the graft, greed and lies upon which you and the favored select few built your empires. All the while just shifting the burden of your selfishness to us, your children. Well thank you for bankrupting our future! Now we are now saddled with debt that can not possibly be repaid. We have have limited hope of growing and developing ourselves and providing for our families. There is little opportunity for building our own dreams because we are overwhelmed with tax burdens, failed governement services, scarce and expensive resources, as well as world turmoil and general social unrest. Our currency, tattered and beaten, has been left a former shell of what it once was worth. People have largely given up because there's little incentive to build something of your own when most of the fruits of one's labor must go back to you Sammy to pay for past excesses or to help the masses of less fortunate that now exist b/c jobs and oppotunites are few and far between. So I hope you, your nephew Warren and the other priviledged few got to party it up while it was good because if there is a god you'll all rot in hell for your shamelessness.

Signed your destitute and dejected grand child

</comment><comment><USER25> I think you can't expect unbiased information regarding to money from one of the 3 richest men in world.

<comment><USER26> Do you know much about Warren Buffett? He is one of the three richest men in the world. He has created an immense amount of value for himself, but also for other people, due to his value based investment strategies. He's not a Carl Icahn corporate raider -- he's a businessman who looks for value and ways to increase value. That's a tremendously valuable individual to society. As a fellow entrepreneur, I have read and found inspiration in his philosophies and accomplishments. And that was before he went and promised 85% of his net worth to charities (Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, I believe) upon his death. Near as I can tell, that's over $30 billion dollars of wealth that he has created that he is now giving away.

I agree that you cannot expect unbiased information from _anybody_ these days. But it's not fair to single out Mr. Buffett, as he certainly isn't the type of rich man you want to paint with that brush.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I agree with Warren. The government handled the crisis very well, with the possible exception of allowing Lehman Brothers to fail. It's pretty remarkable, really, and it's unfortunate populist cynicism opposed the saving of the economy.

</comment><comment><USER28> The real story here is that government was holding up billions in payments to Warren Buffett from Goldman Sachs as blackmail until he caved in to write an article favoring the governments action. Warren Buffett is the modern day Hank Rearden, where in Atlas Shrugged Hank Rearden assets were stolen by the government and eventually used to blackmail him to work with the government.

</comment><comment><USER29> Actually, the root cause of the financial crisis was the Federal Reserve's interest rate manipulation. This distortion creates moral hazard, encourages malinvestment, and causes companies to make bad decisions.

<http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=650>

</comment><comment><USER30> Long live the Austrian School. Nothing else makes sense.

<comment><USER7> Right! Everything else uses math, and math is HARD! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School#Criticism_of_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School#Criticism_of_the_Austrian_School)

 _Critics have concluded that modern Austrian economics generally lacks scientific rigor,[10][12] which forms the basis of the most prominent criticism of the school. Austrian theories are not formulated in formal mathematical form,[108] but by using mainly verbal logic and what proponents claim are self-evident axioms.

[10] Caplan, Bryan. "Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist". George Mason University. Retrieved 2008-07-04. "More than anything else, what prevents Austrian economists from getting more publications in mainstream journals is that their papers rarely use mathematics or econometrics, research tools that Austrians reject on principle...Mises and Rothbard however err when they say that economic history can only illustrate economic theory. In particular, empirical evidence is often necessary to determine whether a theoretical factor is quantitatively significant...Austrians reject econometrics on principle because economic theory is true a priori, so statistics or historical study cannot "test" theory."

[12] White, Lawrence H. (2008). "The research program of Austrian economics". Advances in Austrian Economics (Emerald Group Publishing Limited): 20

[108] Walker, Deborah L.. "Austrian Economics". Library of Economics and Liberty. Retrieved 2010-01-23._

<comment><USER31> Psychology isn't mathematically formulated either. Is it science? Perhaps an Austrian economist would argue that economics is more closely related to psychology than physics.

I have seen several mathematical "proofs" that not only god exists but that he is catholic. Is that science?

What does the artifact of being mathematically formulated have to do with something being science?

<comment><USER32> Psychology (at least contemporary research psychology) is based on empirical research and judicious use of statistical techniques; Austrian economics is based on philosophical handwaving. Psychology involves observation and allows for an element of surprise; Austrian economics, at least since the days of Rothbard, involves coming up with moralistic arguments for libertarianism. (The early Austrians were important in the history of economics, but being an Austrian economist today is like being a Freudian psychologist today; people do it, but one has to look askance at such a person.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stray es and politicos - <AUTHOR> http://davidsimon.com/stray-penises-and-politicos/

<comment><USER2> I find it funny that HN apparently removes the word "penis" from titles.</comment>


Advanced Linux backdoor found in the wild escaped AV detection - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/advanced-linux-backdoor-found-in-the-wild-escaped-av-detection/ <comment><USER2> Related discussion from today

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20057612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20057612)</comment>