Apple Fitness+ - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/09/apple-fitness-plus-a-personalized-fitness-experience-comes-to-life-with-apple-watch/ <comment><USER2> I like the idea of Apple Fitness+. That it provides an integrated experience with the watch and another device (iPhone/iPad/Apple TV) is exactly what I've been waiting for all these years!

No need to create yet another online account on a service that may share (or sell or probably lose) my workout and health information. The workout recommendations are computed on-device, and the data stays on the devices (health data is encrypted before storing on iCloud or in iTunes/Finder backups on the Mac). This is how private I prefer it to be.

The _casual fitness market_ (for lack of a better term) is really huge. With Apple Watch SE and the standalone yearly price (covering family members) which seems like a great deal, this is just the beginning of another growth area for Apple. If Apple combines fitness with fun, like Wii Fit or Ring Fit Adventure, that'll be the biggest worldwide fitness service ever.

I can't wait to try this out.

<comment><USER3> Do you like the idea of Apple owning the operating system you use, the computer it runs on, all the apps running on that operating system, the entire network stack, all of the network services, the gym you visit, the money you use, the school you attend, the church where you worship, the food that you buy, the place where you work, the hospital where you die?

Can't you see where they're going with this?

<comment><USER4> > Can't you see where they're going with this?

Can you see the slippery slope you're invoking? Apple owns the operating system you use. That is where it stops in your example. They don't force ownership of software, the network stack, the gym you visit (lol), where you work, etc. Where's your head at, other than "ApPlE BaD"?

<comment><USER5> Right, but it is almost impossible for anyone else to compete in the ecosystem.

If another major fitness brand wants to do the same the probably cannot because: \- The tight integration is not possible, only Apple can build these kind of Apple Watch experiences. \- They would need to pay Apple 30%, maybe making this not profitable especially against Apple's own offering that can have internal pricing where the 30% never comes into play.

<comment><USER6> Peloton's doing a great job, they have an Apple Watch app, and I don't believe Apple is getting 30% out of them. Peloton's ecosystem is _awesome_.

<comment><USER5> I have a peloton bike and I love it. I also like to run with peloton outdoors, but I can't do that with just the Apple Watch. It seems likely the Apple will offer something similar for their service that will work with watch only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think Apple Fitness+ will be fine as a standalone product, but I believe this is a stepping off point for more fully fledged fitness products from Apple.

Using their AR technology (iPad/iPhone/etc), they can replicate a lot of the same functionality a multi-thousand dollar product like the Tempo provides. They can automatically correct form, recognize weights, etc.

<comment><USER8> If Apple did this for home workouts I would subscribe to Fitness+ in a heartbeat. I currently practice yoga at home, and the worst part is I don't have an instructor to correct my form.

<comment><USER9> You can try [https://yoganotch.com](https://yoganotch.com) \- uses motion sensors to give feedback on yoga form

<comment><USER10> Actually it takes a minute to put four sensors on and calibrate your posture before class. I've used it since my gym shut down in March, and do not plan to return there any time soon. This sensor kit with the free app with cool classes totally transformed my practice with respect to the depth, focus and effectiveness. Imagine having a private teacher who is paying attention to you, measuring your posture in Asana, gives you immediate feedback and praises you when you do it right... and it costs a fraction of $ you would pay for your private session. None of the big fitness brands come even close to this technologically. It's a future of home yoga practice whether some may resist "invasion" of tech in yoga or not.

<comment><USER11> calibrate

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wouldn't want to be Peleton, Mirror, or one of those similar companies. Is it worth the extra $1000+ up front and $30+ monthly for the Peleton and Mirror trainers to mention your name?

<comment><USER13> I tend to agree, but its always amazing to me how much that seems to matter to viewers on twitch. The entire streamer business model centers around people paying to have someone say their name.

<comment><USER12> I was just having this debate the other day on HN. Just because "saying someones name" is the most visible return someone gets for a Twitch subscription does not mean that is the primary or only motivating factor. People don't donate to NPR solely because they want a tote bag. Supporting and motivating creators is also a huge reason for donating even if it isn't a tangible return.

<comment><USER14> You're right that it's not solely because of that. But I think it's probably the main reason, by far. It's almost impossible to bet on human vanity and lose :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Fitter, happier, more productive. Not drinking too much. Regular exercise at gym, 3 times a week.

Sleeping well. No bad dreams. Less chance of illness.

<comment><USER16> ... A pig

In a cage

On antibiotics

<comment><USER17> Strangely enough, Apple actually ran an ad where someone said "I dutifully oblige when the Apple Watch reminds me to stand up every hour": [https://youtu.be/N-x8Ik9G5Dg?t=62](https://youtu.be/N-x8Ik9G5Dg?t=62).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So this must be why last week's updated "App Store Review Guidelines" explicitly excluded "one-to-many realtime experiences". Third party fitness apps need to fork over 30% to Apple, while they launch their own first party competitor.

3.1.3(d) Person-to-Person Experiences: If your app enables the purchase of realtime person-to-person experiences between two individuals (for example tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training), you may use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments. One-to-few and one-to-many realtime experiences must use in- app purchase.

[https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/](https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/)

<comment><USER19> The 30% cut always applied to one-to-many experiences. They removed it for one-to-one, but did not change it for other models.

<comment><USER20> Sure, but now them adding this product means we have yet another vertical where Apple has given itself an anticompetitive advantage over competitors.

<comment><USER21> The parent comment suggested that the conditions tightened, when in fact they loosened.

<comment><USER20> The parent comment doesn't suggest that the conditions tightened. They are merely calling out that the loosening does not cover this new first party product, and suggests this might not be a coincidence.

As this thread demonstrates, the maneuver was quite successful, if the idea was to give the impression they are becoming less anticompetitive rather than more so!

<comment><USER22> >rather than more so!

This is a very unusual product area for Apple. This end presumes the service will be a success.

There is many a slip between the cup and the sip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> RIP local fitness instructors.

Already battered by the pandemic, a lot of them have been successfully transitioning to an online only business model. This will make it harder.

<comment><USER24> I don't think this would affect personal, live fitness instructors. Although it looks the same on the surface, the value proposition is very different (as is the cost).

You don't make the same kind of human connection when the communication is one-way.

Put it this way: if internet streaming was going to kill off fitness instructors, it would have happened already. Apple isn't doing something new here, they're just putting their own spin on it and vertically integrating it.

Companies doing similar services might have more to worry about, though I think there is a lot of room to grow in this market, and i think it's "niche-y" by nature, so I think there's probably plenty of room for competitors.

<comment><USER25> I wouldn't jump to those conclusions so quickly.

I'm paying my local fitness instructor $25/mo for access to a private facebook group where she streams live classes via Facebook Live every day. The communication is one-way (you can post comments in chat, but the instructor can't see you). Nothing is in person.

This directly competes with my local fitness instructor who has transitioned 100% to live stream. Fitness+ is $5 more expensive than the local instructor, but of course cheaper if they bundle that cost into Apple Music, TV, etc.

Edit: But TBH, I'll always prefer my local fitness instructor's low-quality live streams. Something about professionally made workout videos with movie quality cinematography is not motivating for me personally.

<comment><USER26> What's the point of having a _local_ fitness instructor if it's all streaming online? Doesn't that open the _worldwide_ fitness instructor market (except language), so you can just pick the best _worldwide_?

<comment><USER25> > What's the point of having a local fitness instructor if it's all streaming > online?

Human connection.

The first 5 minutes of the class are personally my favorite - the instructor is a hilariously funny person and a great community builder.

I've taken a lot of fitness classes with many different instructors. From my experience, people rarely stick with an instructor (or workout program) because of the quality of the actual workout... they stick with it only if they enjoy spending an hour of their day with the instructor on a personal / social level. Most people would choose a mediocre workout with an engaging instructor over an amazing workout with a monotone boring instructor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> On it's own this service isn't that compelling. As part of the new Apple One bundle - it's actually not that much of a reach as I already am subscribed to a few of the traditional Apple offerings - adding this wouldn't be much of a stretch at all.

Which will be the real problem for Peloton and the other dedicated fitness offerings out there. Bundles are powerful, even if they sometimes are on the wrong side of the sunk cost fallacy.

</comment><comment><USER28> > For usage with iPad, Fitness+ requires iPad Pro, iPad (5th generation or > later), iPad mini 4 or later, iPad Air 2, or iPad Air (3rd generation). > Fitness+ is supported on Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD.

So if you don't have an Apple TV, you can't watch on a TV? That's a non starter for me (Peloton customer), seems a bit rubbish to be exercising in my living room and not using the TV to display the class.

<comment><USER29> wait... a $2,000 bike that only shows does bike workouts is fine, but a $150 device to stream entertainment and now fitness is too much? You can always just attach a HDMI cable to your phone or tablet (via converter) if you really want to.

<comment><USER28> No, I don't use the bike or tread, I just stream their exercise classes. I guess I could convert from my phone to HDMI, but Peloton works in the browser and that's a great deal easier. If I had bought a $2000 bike that only works with Peloton then I doubt I'd even be looking at Fitness+ :)

<comment><USER30> I have to imagine the percentage of people that can, let alone will, use a web browser attached to their TV is <1%. I don't blame Apple for not putting effort into it.

<comment><USER31> I don't know about that; I bought an HDMI cable and showed my 62 year old mother how to connect it to her laptop, drag the browser over to the TV, and then hit the "full screen" button, and she's been doing it ever since. This is the same person who became convinced her laptop no longer had Windows Media Player installed because she accidentally deleted the icon from her desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just wanted to take this as a chance to show what our company is doing: [https://yoganotch.com](https://yoganotch.com) \- a smart yoga assistant, powered by wearable motion capture (which we have been producing for a while).

just launched this year. Happy to chat with anyone who is into quantified yoga.

P.S. I am one of the founders.

P.P.S. Saw someone mention it :)

</comment><comment><USER33> I was just listening to a McKinsey presentation last week where the speaker went through, among other things, their data about which activities that have largely gone digital are likely to revert.

Food-related (both online grocery shopping and home cooking) were one of the main areas their data suggests will stay but online fitness was right up there too.

</comment><comment><USER34> I have maintained my fitness and saved so much money by switching to videos on YouTube. I think this stuff should at most be a category on Netflix etc it's not worth $9.99 separately. The trainers are all good, the only thing missing is being able to superimpose your Watch metrics when you want.

</comment><comment><USER23> How long until these 'fitness instructors' are animated avatars and new fitness programs can be quickly created programmatically?

Following this perhaps programmatically created work outs can eventually be uniquely tailored to the individual workout needs.

<comment><USER35> Ha! I was wondering what the point of Memoji were... it's to copy our facial expressions or get us more used to animated faces to warm up to Memoji instructors!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder how Fitbit plays into this all. Can they even realistically compete against the behemoth that Apple is at this point?

<comment><USER37> Well, Google owns Fitbit now, so it's two behemoths going at each other.

Plus you now have Amazon coming into the market with their Halo Fitness bands.

<comment><USER36> Is that true? I thought the acquisition failed because of the EU.

<comment><USER37> EU has set a July 20 deadline for the deal. Google and Fitbit already have regulatory approval for the deal in the U.S.

<comment><USER38> Is that 2021? We're already past July 20.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Reminds me of all those Jane Fonda fitness videos littering homes in the 80's ... if they can somehow provide tailored experiences via AR/ML then it might work.

</comment><comment><USER35> I tend to pass out easily from strenuous cardio exercise (I'm bad at knowing my limits when it comes to cardio. Just about passed out _ten minutes ago_ because I pushed too hard on a treadmill/rower cycle. This is why I prefer gradual, predictable weightlifting, a challenge during the pandemic but that's it's own story).

Having metrics like heart rate, calories burned, and time remaining would show me clearly where my body is in addition to how I physically feel _on screen_ which could be a huge help for me. Add factors like sleep tracking and I have an even better idea of how much I can push myself before I workout.

Unrelated with this announcement: there's a lot of value to an Apple One bundle now (Apple TV, Music, Arcade, Fitness, News) but I have too much brand loyalty to Spotify to switch to Apple Music and feel like I would hurt publishers by using Apple News instead of keeping my individual news subscriptions.

On the other hand, if they offered free 2-day shipping with Apple Pay for Apple One subscribers at a bunch of premium retailers and bump up the price, you've got the first competitor to Amazon Prime.

<comment><USER40> My buddy too thought it was normal to easily pass out from too much cardio and eventually found out he had a serious mitral valve prolapse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm curious if this is single person only. If my wife and I do a workout together is it only showing one person's metrics?

The plan says "Share with 5 other family members", but can we really share it? All the demos show just a single person's metrics on the display.

I'd also like to know what it's really offering here. Is it just static videos with generic progressions or does it work me through a progression based on my stats? This could be a pretty cool training tool if they worked off my HR and metrics, but if it's generic, I'm not seeing the value.

Having multi-viewer support and watch metric based progressions would make this a killer platform. I'm pretty sure it's not going to hit that mark exactly though.

<comment><USER42> > _The plan says "Share with 5 other family members", but can we really share > it? All the demos show just a single person's metrics on the display._

If we go by how Apple's other family sharing plans work, it just lets you pay once, for every family member (using Apple accounts based in the same country, I should add) to use individually.

<comment><USER41> This is more-or-less what I figured. Hopefully we're wrong about that, or if so, maybe that's a good 2nd release feature. Can't believe I'm the only one interested in doing workouts with my spouse.

<comment><USER43> That was the first thing I wondered about as well. I can see how making the UI for multiple people would be trickier.

Just like in real life, multiple people working out creates accountability, having multiple people in a home able to use it in tandem would make it much much stickier than without.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> For Peloton, I would worry about this becoming a platform like car play for OEM fitness players.

<comment><USER45> Hello, sort of random, but hodder, if you read this, thanks for your tip on metallurgical coal back in this thread - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22069310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22069310). I went long on HCC after the pandemic plunge in March and it is (knock on wood) turning out pretty nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I feel like _community_ is the biggest factor in making these classes work, and that's not the same as tweeting or sharing your progress or a leaderboard. Can you do these workouts _with_ people, or is it all on-demand?

If you're going to nix the entire social / community aspect (having a specific appointment where you've committed to train with someone can make a massive difference).... How long until we get procedurally generated photorealistic "studio workout" routines which dynamically analyze both your historical and real-time capabilities and performance in order to provide an "optimal" workout pace and progression?

<comment><USER40> What would "community" even look like in this sort product?

What's nice about community in IRL group classes is that you see the same people every week which I don't see how you could replicate in this sort of thing.

<comment><USER46> Peloton has a bunch of features to try to accommodate this.

[https://blog.onepeloton.com/peloton-community- features/](https://blog.onepeloton.com/peloton-community-features/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Apple just took a huge swing at Peloton and at home fitness startups.

Why cycle in place at home with a Peloton instructor, when you can cycle outside with a Fitness+ instructor? Why limit yourself to your stationary Peloton bike at home, when you can use a stationary bike anywhere?

Apple can and probability will beat out Lulu Lemon's Mirror on price using motion capture on an AppleTV smartTV or Ipad.

Only startup that stands a chance is Tonal b/c of their hardware providing value.

<comment><USER47> People cycle in place because it's more convenient than going outside. Not everyone lives near bike trails where you can continuously cycle without having to worry about cars and traffic lights. Even on bike trails, speed is limited to 10mph so I don't how you can do hiit workout and keep it below 10mph.

<comment><USER48> Think slush and wind.

<comment><USER49> And wildfires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> So there wasn't a new iPhone announcement today?? I only saw bits and pieces of the announcement but it seems no one is talking about this.

<comment><USER51> [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/27/apples- iphone-12-production-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/27/apples- iphone-12-production-delayed-report-says.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I think this is a wonderful idea and I'm gonna sign up for it. I don't think I'm going to head back to my gym any time soon, so using this in tandem with the exercise bike I just bought will be fantastic for my wife and I.

I'm not talking about the technical or monetary parts of this: I just miss my gym and think this will be a good idea

</comment><comment><USER53> Just like many other industries, Microsoft also had a head start in online fitness way before anyone else even thought about it. But just like many other lost bets, they also lose it. Not sure why they killed it. If you are wondering what is it then search - Xbox fitness

</comment><comment><USER54> Pretty groundbreaking for them as a company. It's not a core competency but they can certainly throw enough money at the problem to get it right. This will be the first major execution test since jobs. It's definitely possible this flames out entirely.

</comment><comment><USER55> Could this feed back into the Watch's automatic calorie and exercise tracking? Fitness+ shows an instruction, watch logs the sensor data that follows it; seems like a good way to expand their data set.

</comment><comment><USER56> The best feature I liked was real time data being shown on TV/Phone that was synced to the watch so you don't have to look at two screens, just one. Music was a nice bonus.

</comment><comment><USER57> This service it is a good start But definitely need to be complemented with ML vision technologies to detect bad postures and correct people movements during the workout for sure.

</comment><comment><USER58> $150 Apple TV HD

$200 Apple Watch Series 3

So it's $350 + $10/mo. Do they plan to compete with Mirror ($1500 + $42/mo) and Peloton ($1900 + $13/mo)?

</comment><comment><USER59> Dunno why this had to be region-locked, it's not like people outside of the US can't speak english.

</comment><comment><USER60> No Mac support is unfortunate for me

<comment><USER61> With the way Apple is porting iOS apps to macOS, it might be in the works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Encroaching on even more territory, using its market position to strangle other businesses.

</comment><comment><USER63> Just like Google, Apple is trying to making money from every possible opporturnity.

</comment><comment><USER64> So you have to pay for a watch that collects your data? Furthermore the watch is likely full of proprietary chips - which is fine if you could buy those. If "your" watch goes bad, only Apple will be able to repair it and for sure their charge you adequately. And you give your data for free.

<comment><USER65> Why is paying for a watch that collects your data weird to you? Your phone also collects your data and I bet you paid for it too.

Also, the watch collecting your data is kind of the whole point.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> product page: [https://www.apple.com/apple-fitness- plus/](https://www.apple.com/apple-fitness-plus/)

</comment><comment><USER66> Avoid indoor air pollution, just buy a Kayak and Rollerblades and your summer fitness plan is covered. Winter $20/month gym membership and a pair of skates will beat this too.

</comment><comment><USER67> I miss the geek-ish, designer-ish old Apple.

</comment><comment><USER68> I think Apple ran out of ideas guys.

<comment><USER69> i doubt... even if this service is a flop most likely it will still be profitable and again Apple is on the way to smash the competition in their own walled garden.

This goes into straight competition with 80% of the fitness apps has it provides yoga, HIIT, bike etc... etc... fully integrated into Apple devices plus if you buy the new Watch you get 3 months for free. Bingo.

How is Apple running out of ideas to get even more money on services ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> This fitness service is only available on Apple hardware devices.

The vendor lock-in continues...

</comment><comment><USER71> They could have made this service a couple of years ago. Why now?

I don't think it's a coincidence they announced this now in the midst of COVID. Apple has privileged AppStore data which it can use to identify trends. Then it can just throw a pile of money at making an even better product, with premium integration in the Apple ecosystem, and finally destroy the competition.

I guess it can be argued this may be better for the customer.

<comment><USER72> You are incorrect about the time frame on which Apple operates.

The working groups for this offering were forming in late 2018 at the absolute latest.

<comment><USER71> Maybe I'm wrong on the COVID thing, but it can't be denied Apple has access to privileged AppStore information much like Amazon does on its store.

<comment><USER72> This is so commonplace as to have a name: when Apple does this, we say that the app or apps got "Sherlocked".

[https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a- co...](https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-company- sherlocks-an-app/)

<comment><USER71> Yes, I'm aware what "Sherlocked" is. :)

My point is not only about Apple copying products, but about having access to privileged AppStore data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> What I dream of is a health monitor watch that's built from open hardware and gives me complete control over and ownership of my data. I don't trust any profit-driven company, even Apple, with such private information.

EDIT: thanks to obenn, who pointed me towards [1]. Still in development, but looks promising.

[1] [https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/](https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/)

<comment><USER27> Since privacy is a key differentiator for them (huge financial incentives to actually deliver and not just pay lip service), and there are significant penalties waiting for them if they are lying about protecting privacy (as well as plenty of people who would love to call them out on it), Apple is probably the most trustworthy of any organization if you care about privacy. Also you can keep your data local with Apple hardware - it's encrypted and only available to your hardware - obviously a lot of the functionality they profiled today doesn't work if you take that stance, but it is an option.

<comment><USER74> Imagine believing this after seeing Apple's consistent lying about iMessage being "end-to-end encrypted": [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi- icloud-exclusiv...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud- exclusive/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-for-encrypting-backups-after-fbi- complained-sources-idUSKBN1ZK1CT)

<comment><USER75> Oh it's end-to-end encrypted. Whether the received and decrypted message on the iphone is saved end-to-end encrypted in a backup is another topic...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> My personal view: If this is Apple - I cannot recognize my self in their target demographics anymore. Those people presenting "awesome, magical, groundbreaking" things are saying boring corporate memos with a slight difference - they are shot cinematically. In a process of watching, another realization manifested itself in my mind. I use Apple products only because of MacOS. But looking at how things are progressing in Cupertino may be is time for transition to Linux. Fitness service? Whats next? Mind reading for family? Put your animoji on your forehead? I miss Steve Jobs badly. Obviously:)

</comment><comment><USER77> While I'm certainly annoyed that this is a blatant ripoff of so many services out there already - more than anything, it just looks like a real snoozefest of a product. Beyond that, where does the App Store insanity stop? Is Apple going to pull a Fortnite and kick exercise apps off next for "duplicating core Apple products"?

<comment><USER78> >Is Apple going to pull a Fortnite and kick exercise apps off next for "duplicating core Apple products"?

That's not what Fortnite got kicked out for, and I think it is unfair to pretend otherwise.

Also, they didn't kick out Spotify or other music streaming services after introducing Apple Music, so I don't see that happening here either.

<comment><USER77> Yes, I know that's not explicitly what Fortnite was kicked off for. But let's be honest here and look at Apple's long history of anticompetitive behavior - that's the core concern here, and Apple has shown a clear willingness to disadvantage 3rd party competitors.

Sure, Spotify is on the App Store - but when will I be able to download music and play it directly from my Watch with Spotify? Likely never - Apple simply will not allow that, while hypocritically allowing it with Apple Music.

So let's not pretend - Apple cares about Apple first and second, and everyone else third.

<comment><USER79> I'm pretty sure the Spotify limitation is due to Spotify and not Apple. Other apps like overcast can download to audio to the watch and play without a phone.

<comment><USER77> To be clear - I'm talking about playing audio in the background, like Apple Music. That, as far as I know, has never been made available to third party app developers. And even if Apple has finally allowed Spotify the Great Privledge of joining Apple on it's playing field, it would have taken multiple years of complaints and hypocrisy from Apple to get there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Solving an Urban Planning Puzzle with JuMP + Julia - <AUTHOR> http://iaindunning.com/2013/urban-planning.html

<comment><USER2> i guess this is a series of posts on showing different uses for JuMP? because otherwise, wouldn't it make more sense to use a SAT solver, or ASP? are wrappers for any of those available in Julia?

(i'm not complaining; i'm learning about all this stuff - have recently been looking at potassco - and am trying to get clear what tool fits where).

<comment><AUTHOR> It is primarily to showcase JuMP, yes. I also hoped it'd introduce more people to MIP, something not often covered in CS education.

As for using other techniques, I don't think it necessarily makes more sense to use them. The natural statement of the problem is an optimization problem, not a constraint satisfaction problem, so using an optimization method seems reasonable to me. On problems that are highly constrained (few/one feasible solution[s]) it would probably make more sense to try a constraint programming approach, but this particular problem has many (too many?) feasible solutions so I don't think there is any reason to believe they'd be better.

One downside to MIP is the need to model the logical constraints as linear equations, which is perhaps less expressive than the way you can often express constraints in constraint programming languages.

<comment><USER2> actually, i didn't read the problem fully (sorry) - i just saw that your article seemed to be mainly about embedding boolean variables in integer programming. now that i've gone back to read the problem i agree completely - i don't see how to do that (sanely) with boolean logic alone.

ps incidentally, with choco (the only CSP/CP solver i've used) you can use regular expressions that make scoring like this very easy (match 5 residential, score ...). [http://www.emn.fr/z-info/choco- solver/](http://www.emn.fr/z-info/choco-solver/) \- unfortunately (for julia) it's implemented in java. if you're looking for other interesting puzzles, i had a lot of fun with choco and pipes - see items mentioning choco at [http://isti.bitbucket.org/](http://isti.bitbucket.org/) or the original so post [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9689436/backtracking- solu...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9689436/backtracking-solution-for- programming-exercise-fitting-pipes/9692556#9692556)</comment></comment></comment>


Imgur faces user revolt as it starts to cull NSFW comments from site - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/03/imgur-faces-user-revolt-over-tighter-community-controls-nsfw <comment><USER2> Looks like the ritual cleaning up for advertisers, always the ugliest part of a startup with a "community." The ritual middle finger to the people who made them what they are, delivered in the softest of language and protesting that they have the most wholesome of motivations.

From imgur's statement _We value free speech and self-expression incredibly highly [...] But we also won 't allow content that makes other groups of people feel alienated or unwelcome_

It's just depressing that they're always so disingenuous.</comment>


Tool like screen/tmux for Windows/DOS console? - <AUTHOR>

Is there anything like screen or tmux (that exist on Linux), but for Windows, for the DOS console? I work on Windows at times and would like to have such a tool to avoid having to open multiple DOS consoles so I don't have to Alt-Tab between them. Don't want to install Cygwin. Thanks. <comment><USER2> No elegant solutions, but give this a try: [https://github.com/bliker/cmder](https://github.com/bliker/cmder)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I have tried it or one of the derived / related tools earlier, and may have had some issues with it (maybe minor), but will try it again - thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> P.S. I don't remember if it tried its tmux-like feature (multiple virtual consoles without opening separate Windows GUI windows - if it has that feature), but will check for that.</comment></comment></comment>


"Yes its hard. But this is Startup life." - <AUTHOR> http://www.tawheedkader.com/2012/12/740/

<comment><USER2> that sounds like a miserable existence. It's the 21st Century "keeping up with the Joneses"</comment>


Never Drink Enough Water During the Day? - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-smart-bottle-that-gives-you-more-time-for-life#/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I cannot relate because I drink 4 to 6 liters of water per day but do people really need to be electronically prompted to drink enough water? (On the flip side, I also don't need a watch to tell me to get up and walk around — because I drink 4 to 6 liters of water a day...)

<comment><AUTHOR> I sit at my desk like a drone and drink very little water, but I do see where you're coming from. The nanny state we live in, people need to be told to do anything - look at fitbit...Its time to walk!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Electronic waste is the fastest growing waste stream. We don't want to be > part of the problem!

...while advertising a water bottle containing electronics.

<comment><AUTHOR> do you drink plastic water bottles?

<comment><USER3> I use a metal bottle when I'm not at home. For me those work best because they usually have much larger openings.

<comment><AUTHOR> you are part of a small minority.

There are more plastic water bottles being sold in the UK for instance than ever – and robust growth is expected for brands using alternative materials despite widespread campaigns to reduce single-use items.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


George W. Bush could be arrested on torture charges by Swiss - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354211/George-W-Bush-cancels-Switzerland-visit-fears-arrest-torture-charges.html

<comment><USER2>
        Updated: 20:57 GMT, 6 February 2011</comment>


Programming in promises requires thinking about type signatures - <AUTHOR> http://blog.denizac.org/2013/04/thinking-in-promises.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment that people who code in dynamic languages don't think about signatures and types. If anything, people who write in dynamic languages think about them more because they are not explicit in the language (or at least they should).

Dynamic properties of languages should only be used from the perspective of saving time - it's less work to make changes to code because you don't need to conform to a type system. I feel like more often than not it's used as an excuse to write sloppy code. You simply cannot write good code without keeping your types and function signatures correctly.</comment>


Using a Tactic Unseen in a Century, Countries Cordon Off Ebola-Racked Areas - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/science/using-a-tactic-unseen-in-a-century-countries-cordon-off-ebola-racked-areas.html
<comment><USER2> Ebola is a Level 4 Biohazard. Try getting into or out of a CDC certified Level 4 facility. All of this is documented and easily understood. It's highly contagious, there is no cure and and there is no telling how long the outbreak will last: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_hazard#Classificatio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_hazard#Classification)

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't call it highly contagious. That should be reserved for things that can spread through the air not things like Ebola which require contact with bodily fluids to transmit.

<comment><USER4> Ebola Reston (which fortunately only affected non-human primates) _did_ spread through the air, or at least that's the only plausible explanation as to how it spread.

While the outbreak strain of Ebola may not be airborne _now_ , it's not inconceivable that it could mutate at some point.

<comment><USER5> That's the plot of the movie Outbreak.

<comment><USER6> And the _much_ (!!) better (and functionally non-fiction) book it was based on.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This discussion of Ebola is simply degenerating into the the usual prejudices about Africa and African people, masquerading as informed speculating and I'm finding it very irritating..

I want to ask a few questions here:

1\. Is there any recorded instance of the particular strain of Ebola in West Africa being transmitted from a bat or another forest animal to a human being?

2\. Has that that strain of Ebola virus been found in any bats or other animals in the infected areas?

3\. Is there some hard knowledge about the migratory patterns of bats or some other forest creatures to indicate that they have been able to carry the virus all the way from Central Africa to the far end of West Africa without infecting any other people of animals in between?

Why don't people check these facts before they start blaming everything on African backwardness, cultural practices and beliefs? Instead all we have is innuendo from so called experts maligning Africans and ignoring the most likely fact.

This Ebola outbreak was most likely transmitted by humans of which there are two kinds.

1\. People who got infected with the disease or harboured a strain of it from Central Africa, travelled to West Africa and infected someone people there. But it doesn't explain how those people did not infect any locals or trigger an outbreak at the source before leaving for West Africa.

2\. Researchers who have access to the virus and through carelessness or otherwise managed to infect West Africans with it, said researchers being mainly Westerners working for state institutions, universities or corporations with access to the virus.

Unless there is hard evidence explaining how some animals infect with Ebola travelled over a 1000 miles without infecting whole areas in between whether animals or humans, the search for its origin must focus on the most likely cause, and that means human beings.

If some angry West Africans are attacking western medical personnel in the belief that they are the source of the Ebola virus, they are quite logical in doing so, as Western medical personnel and researchers are the visible common link between the presence of Ebola in Central Africa and West Africa.

This comment may not be focused on how the outbreak may be contained, but it needs to get out there.

</comment><comment><USER8> > _" When cordons are imposed, "human rights have to be respected," said > Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the World Health Organization,"_

Glib words there, Mr. WHO Spokesman!

How do you restrict people to a cordoned area, while respecting their rights?

"Please don't cross this barricade, because I can't do anything to stop you. This gun is a plastic prop issued by the WHO because of your human rights."

Come on, this is purely about sacrificing the few to protect the many. These is no "human rights" about it. It's about the lottery of life handing some people the short straw, and tough luck.

<comment><USER9> 'any cordon must let food, water and medical care reach those inside.' This should be obvious, even to someone with your boolean approach to these issues. I don't think your snark advances the discussion.

<comment><USER8> I don't agree that those allowances constitute respect for human rights. At least, not full respect.

If that is so, it follows that, for instance, kidnappers respect human rights because they provide food, water and any needed medical care. Kidnappers respect human rights only to the extent to which their actions up to any point in time have not shown them to be complete savages.

Using phrases like "human rights" is obviously not applicable in this situation. We must acknowledge that the rights of people who are forcibly confined in a cordoned are _are_ in fact being trampled on (separately from whether or not we agree with the justification for doing so.)

Pretending that human rights are not trampled on if food, water and medicine are provided into the cordoned doesn't help anything.

The question is: can you agree with it, while properly acknowledging that it involves violation of rights. That's my angle, not "boolean thinking".

<comment><USER10> Is there a net positive utility to a kidnapping, like there is (or, can be) with a cordon sanitaire?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recall reading about how they did this back during the plague days in France. Cordon off an affected town and don't let anyone in our out.

<comment><USER12> There are also cautionary tales that were handed down in Europe from plague affected areas, about how a single person violating quarantine caused the death of large portion of a town.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can see how effective is can be in the app "Plague Inc". Even though it's a game and obviously simplified, the model does give you a reasonable idea on how to deal with outbreaks who options there are. The CDC even suggested it was a great way to educate people about the real world problems.

<comment><USER14> That game kills your battery fyi.

<comment><USER14> Don't know why I got down-modded for giving a little insight. It chews through your battery really quickly, my phone would almost over-heat and wouldn't last until even noon if I played the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Quarantine is one of the BEST ways to stop a disease's spread. These countries don't have the medical infrastructure to risk NOT implementing quarantine.

<comment><USER16> No, it is a horrible way. You are signing the death warrent for anyone being forced to stay inside the area, sacrificing human lives like so many tribes of old.

The best way, the only acceptable way, is to have medicine for the decease. We have some that we just aren't putting into trials because we aren't sure that it won't kill them - when they are going to die anyway in an absolutely horrible way.

<comment><USER17> It is not safe to go into an area in Africa with an ebola outbreak and try to treat it. Medical workers are not properly adhering to safety protocols. The numbers of medical personnel infected during this outbreak demonstrate that. You can't ask medical personnel to take major risks with their lives to help a few people with ebola. If they and their organizations want to continue to render aid, that's their choice, but if there aren't enough foreign aid resources to set up proper treatment centers with proper quarantine, and when the locals for whatever reason are violating quarantines and putting everyone, other locals and medical staff at risk, then it's simply not safe enough. The only remaining option is to quarantine the afflicted areas.

It's also only a death warrant if the people in the quarantine zones don't observe proper safety. If my city (in the U.S.) had an outbreak of ebola, I'd stay home, and barring someone purposely trying to infect me, I'd be safe. Ebola is not an evil spirit that infects everyone in the quarantine area who doesn't flee. Even if it were a more easily transmissible strain of ebola, if you're not in a housing unit sharing air with people who are infected, you're pretty safe.

<comment><USER18> " if you're not in a housing unit sharing air with people who are infected, you're pretty safe."

Certainly true - but, it's important to note that ebola is not airborne. You can safely sit beside someone with ebola, and as long as they don't throw up on you, and you don't touch any body fluids - you are also pretty safe.

<comment><USER6> Not to fear-monger, but there was this article on the BBC linking to laboratory-verified airborne transmission of Ebola. The summary describes it as large fluid droplets being passed through the air (airborne in this sense being a gradient rather than yes/no).

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-20341423](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20341423)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I question "Unseen in a Century". I lived in Gabon in 2001-2002, and I remember that this was pretty much the way Ebola outbreaks were handled then and there.

<comment><USER20> Or Flu in 2009 by Chinese - they kept people in their hotels [1]. I'm guessing the Journo wanted to 'big' the story up.

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/05/02/idUSHKG2279](http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/05/02/idUSHKG2279)

<comment><USER21> The article is describing a form of quarantine much more severe than keeping people in their hotels. They're talking about cordoning off the _entire affected area_ \- basically, the area around all infection sites becomes one big border with armed guards that only allow food, water, and medical supplies in, and nobody out.

The reason this is controversial is because there are close to 2 million people in the affected districts, and only about 500 of them currently have Ebola. At best, you're severely inconveniencing 99.975% of the population, and at worst, you're leaving them to die. It'd be like cutting San Francisco off from the outside world, with armed guards on the bridges and San Bruno Mountain, because measles was found on BART.

I don't know what the situation in Gabon was like, but as I understand it they depended upon local quarantines of villages, and didn't close the border of the whole country, right?

<comment><USER22> Part of the problem is that health officials really have no idea how many people could be exposed inside the regions as many do not trust health care providers. Quarantining entire areas is probably the safest thing that can be done right now.

"Its size is due in part to weaknesses in the affected countries' health systems and a lack of trust in the health workers who are struggling to combat the virus" [0]

Not sure the reliability of this source, but "The health security situation is worsened by an apparent lack of trust by the local population in their own governments and medical staff. Warnings against the consumption and selling of bush meat for instance have largely fallen on deaf ears with an inherent belief of the local populations that Ebola either must be a myth or a scam on behalf of corrupt politicians to deprive them of their most basic needs and livelihoods." [1]

[0] - [http://www.intrahealth.org/page/ebola-outbreak- underscores-n...](http://www.intrahealth.org/page/ebola-outbreak-underscores- need-for-stronger-frontline-health-workforce-in-west-africa)

[1] - [http://www.securitynewsdesk.com/2014/08/12/ebola-west- africa...](http://www.securitynewsdesk.com/2014/08/12/ebola-west-africa-a- global-biosecurity-risk/)

<comment><USER20> There was a BBC video, a female reporter, went around looking at what was going on/wrong - they population didn't trust the government as they had been lied to about everything else - why should they trust the Government now?

It is difficult to educate a population in this situation about hygiene. Let alone asking them to not eat bush meat.

Searching for 'BBC Ebola' is now a thankless task - so I can't find the reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> From the article "Health workers protected themselves with gloves, coveralls, masks, bleach spray and the burning of used gear."

From the WHO website: "Health-care staff fear for their lives. To date, more than 170 health-care workers have been infected"

[http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/overview- august-2014/en...](http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/overview- august-2014/en/)

From the wikipedia article:

"The virus may be acquired upon contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected animal (commonly monkeys or fruit bats).[1] Spread through the air has not been documented in the natural environment."

Something about this story isn't adding up if you combine multiple legitimate sources. So you can only catch it via bodily fluid (like AIDS). But if you wear the health care worker space suit and bleach and burn everything, then you're probably gonna die.

My theory is its converting into an air-transmission disease. In that case, a military quarantine sounds quite wise. (edited to add, my point being that if its known not to be caused by a civil engineering fixable problem like mosquitos or infected sewage or whatever, then human guards closing the borders to humans is the wisest possible solution, and if we're not being given the whole story which is probably true, this would indicate that what is known, to folks other than us, is that it is definitely not civil-engineering- fixable like if it was spread by contaminated water or vampire bats or wtf. Which is a mildly interesting analysis.)

In submitting too fast punishment mode:

cwal37 is quite possibly correct. I am attempting to find death stats from the numerous historical outbreaks. Presumably "20% of the dead being medical workers" should apply in past outbreaks.

cwal37 - Update: from CDC MMWR wrt the Uganda '00 outbreak, with lower tech and less experience the Gulu district of Uganda had 393 total cases of which 22 were health care workers. So the infection percentage of healthcare workers under slightly worse conditions was documented at about 5.6%. The stat for this time around is 170 medical workers some time ago vs a CDC reported 1848 confirmed cases or about 9%.

There are several ways to interpret these stats. One is that the rate is increasing despite experience and technology getting better. Maybe. Another is the reported number of infected might be half or less of total infected. Maybe. If you assume "about 1 in 20 infected will be health care workers" from historical experience, then 170 infected workers would imply the total number actually infected as of some time ago is closer to 3500 or so rather than the official count of 1800 or so.

So that's the numbers. I continue to research to figure out which of many possible interpretations is most likely.

"That is straight up fear-mongering." LOL if I wanted to do that, I could do a better job. "Its all obama's fault" "Buy overpriced ammo from me" "I'm getting a commission on these MREs" etc.

disputin - I see I have been scooped by zerohedge. Embarrassing because I often scan zerohedge headlines. On the other hand a bunch of stock traders are not going to have much of anything intelligent to say about non-economic issues, beyond being pretty good at making "isn't that odd" connections, like this post.

<comment><USER24> There is no evidence that it is air-transmissible. That is straight up fear- mongering. It is spread through bodily fluids. As the sickness progresses you are losing bodily fluids in a number of different ways in conditions that are not always sanitary.

Health workers get infected because they are physically dealing with patients in areas with some of the lowest healthcare standards in the world. Throw in some local wariness of foreign workers, and resistance to treatment until it's too late and it is totally understandable why 170 health-care workers have been infected.

<comment><USER25> Hey, dat you?</comment></comment></comment>


Being average at more than 1 thing is more valuable than being great in 1 only - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/karan/being-average-in--1-things-is-easier-and-more-valuable-than-being-excellent-at-1-thing <comment><USER2> I consider my self to be a person that's good at a lot of things, especially in tech stuff. But Man do I wish I was great at one thing because I am struggling to find a place for myself and getting started in work. No business seems to like that I'm not an absolute expert in what I know or that I don't specialize in X thing.

If I was a superstar in one thing, I feel like I would have succeed already. If being good at a lot of things makes you a great business manager/boss, that's pretty cool. But how will I get to that if no one wants a peon that's not amazing at something that they want?

Obviously this is a generalization, but I have had this problem for several years now. And this could be applied to multiple aspects (Tech, Skillsets, Experiences, Fitness, etc). I don't know, I just feel like I'm the loser in the end while my friends, who only know one thing well, have past me years ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://dev.to/karan/being-average-in--1-things-is-easier- an...](https://dev.to/karan/being-average-in--1-things-is-easier-and-more- valuable-than-being-excellent-at-1-thing-1epm)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://dev.to/karan/being-average-in--1-things-is-easier- an...](https://dev.to/karan/being-average-in--1-things-is-easier-and-more- valuable-than-being-excellent-at-1-thing-1epm)

</comment><comment><USER5> Correct Link

[https://dev.to/karan/being-average-in--1-things-is-easier- an...](https://dev.to/karan/being-average-in--1-things-is-easier-and-more- valuable-than-being-excellent-at-1-thing-1epm)

</comment><comment><USER6> T-shaped > good + good

<comment><USER7> Jack of all trades and a master of one or two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Broken link</comment>


OpenBSD – unveil(2) usage in base - <AUTHOR> https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=153262228632102&w=2 <comment><AUTHOR> OpenBSD's filesystem restriction utility is starting to be implemented in the base system. This first large commit from Theo de Raadt is intended to give an example of the intended usage of unveil(2).

<comment><USER2> for the noob like me, how does this compare to setting a permissions or ownership bit on a folder?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unveil is programmatic so the developer can restrict the software to only perform expected behaviors. Like the earlier pledge(2) call OpenBSD introduced a few versions ago. A piece of software may have far more access to the filesystem than is needed. So it can be restricted to the handful of directories or files that it actually needs during execution. And it can progressively relinquish access as it runs and end up in a state where it can't access the filesystem at all.</comment></comment></comment>


Dangers of Cloud Computing Being Ignored? - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed quite a bit of hype regarding cloud computing over the past few years or so. However, what I find slightly unsettling is how, well, the vast majority of intelligent people (in addition to corporations) seem to support the idea even though it seems to signal the end of privacy.
So let's just suppose hypothetically that accessing applications and services from the cloud becomes far more feasible, nicer, and overall an order of magnitude better than running traditional applications. Would people choose to compute over the cloud then?
If it were me having to make the choice, I think in the end I'd choose to completely avoid the entire scenario, even if it meant risking being labeled a technophobe for life.
I just find it interesting, and I'm starting this discussion in hopes of perhaps wondering whether the majority of people consider whether power or freedom is more valuable in the end. <comment><USER3> Cloud computing is still a very confusing topic for many. If you think, like techies do, that cloud computing is a technology that enables rapid scalability of information systems, then it doesn't mean you have to leave your privacy in the hands of the big three. You can run cloud computing within your firewall and still reap the rewards.

Unfortunately, the marketing bandwagon has morphed cloud computing into a technology that _must_ be outsourced. This isn't always true. I work for a hybrid cloud company that enables systems that span the corporate data center and the outsourced data centers.

Sometimes corporate, or even personal data, is private, and sometimes it is public. You have to decide for yourself which info must be kept on your own systems and which can be outsourced. Does it really matter if your product catalog is running in the Rackspace Cloud or on a machine in at your office? It's probably better to be at Rackspace. Customers are still accessing the data from the internet. Why worry about your corporate network going down or the server crashing? Leave it to the experts.

But maybe your R&D or your employee benefit database could be retained locally. It's not a rip & replace sort of scenario. Sometimes it may be, perhaps for the smaller IT shops, or SMBs that don't have infrastructure of their own. For them, cloud computing is freedom _and_ power. SMBs want to focus on running their business, not running a rack of servers.

There is still a lot of FUD to overcome. If you're a technology person and you've implemented scalable systems the old way, with your own servers, or colocation, or whatever and then done the same kinds of systems using cloud computing, it's really unbelievable the difference between the two. Technology people are so much more productive when they don't have to worry about maintaining the physical guts and they can concentrate on the software.

Of course, this means that those people who maintain the guts at big companies are really going to push back on Cloud Computing, because it threatens their jobs. If IT shops don't have their own infrastructure, then they don't have any job for infrastructure people. Work forces are going to shrink and those individuals who feel powerful because they do little work with a lot of people under them are going to be afraid.

Cloud computing is going to shift that equation where those who do more with fewer people by more effectively leveraging scalable technologies are going to thrive in this market. It's very difficult to fight faster, cheaper, and better and cloud computing is all three.

The risk to privacy is overblown. If companies are afraid of losing control of their data, they'll implement cloud computing like systems, "Fogs" or "Private Clouds" or something of that sort and manage it themselves.

Really though, for the consumer, nothing is changing. If they use software as a service or online email or something like that, it doesn't matter to them if they are using "cloud computing" or their software is running on a single machine out there at a colocation facility. They don't know the difference. Most consumers will never know the diffference and they don't care, why should they?

This is actually one of the risks to cloud computing. The marketing push to call it "anything on the internet." To them, it's the same thing we've been selling that for decades and now there really is something different going on and we are losing the essence of that difference to the sales and marketers who are trying to capitalize on the gold rush.

But this transition to cloud computing is inevitable. It might not be called cloud computing after a couple years. Some even argue that Amazon EC2 actually isn't cloud computing at all because it doesn't scale automatically, well, they've added that functionality recently, but before that it was debatable.

Still lots of confusion. Everyone is trying to control the meme and adapt it to their particular business model. It's a war going on right in front of our eyes.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree. There is also a bigger issue that concerns me. Clouding is not any different than having a single server from the user perspective. The data still is centralized, as one central entity owns your data, even though they organized the back-end as a cloud.

Regarding the privacy issues- as long as one such entity hold/maintains your data, they dictate you what you can and can't do, what you can say or not, share or see, thus what is legal or illegal.

China and Iran - cut services, while the US (and Europe in somewhat) try to protect conservative methods so that their backers (read companies) can earn more money. Copyrights are coming to their dead end, while new business models are emerging. What you do with your data is your own business, and laws need to be rethought as gravity laws do not apply to electrical current - <USER2> forces that pull are different.

We need democratization, decentralization and de-copyright of the Internet, where we own a slice of the global cloud and data can be shared over it no matter what its contents are.

I'll soon post an open source project I am working on to tackle these issues. Hope to hear more comments.

</comment><comment><USER5> There have been proposed alternatives, at least on the whiteboard level..

<http://arxiv.org/abs/arxiv:0903.0694>

Disclaimer: I am an author

<comment><USER4> Has there been any form of prototype implementation?

<comment><USER5> Just bits and pieces as parts of a current EU project, nothing coherent. We are still working out the pieces in theory, particularly 'community currency' and the programming paradigm. While it is our desire to focus our energy on finding out how much 'cloud computing' can be had without compromising local autonomy, the speed depends on how much support we can get, as we can only do so much in our free time.

<comment><USER4> What kind of support have you applied for? FP7? I am a little bit disappointed how little support is given for research by the EU.

<comment><USER5> The project you mentioned in this thread sounds interesting. Maybe we can take this offline? You can email me at a dot marinos at surrey dot ac dot uk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is an interesting topic. But before we can even get started, we need to get a sense of what we are talking about when we're referring to cloud computing. I have my own prediction for what cloud computing will look like in the future at my blog <http://lchou1.blogspot.com/2008/12/future-of- computing.html>

If you agree with that vision of computing on the cloud, you'll see that software and the way we interact with it on a daily basis will be completely different. Just like how television changed media, cloud computing will change technology. For instance, moving things to the cloud means you can access the information anywhere, so "your computer" won't be a physical entity, but an account, and soon, you probably won't need a full computer to access these services. So I don't think it's right to just say that cloud computing will "just" be better, it's going to change the game.

As for privacy, I think it's a good trend that this is being brought out into the open. If someone had the desire, people can find out a great deal about you with what's available now. Knowing about it and actively trying to protect privacy is the only way to prevent the big-brother scenario from happening. There was an article on something related to this not too long ago on hn: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=685095>

</comment><comment><USER7> People still don't encrypt their email (at least the overwhelming majority of them). The convenience of ubiquitous mail access across multiple devices has made encryption even less likely (i.e. do you carry your private key with you everywhere?).

I doubt consumers will care much about the privacy of their data in "the cloud".

I can only assume that companies with data that needs to be private will take appropriate steps to protect it, but as we've seen with lost laptops, usb drives, etc., they don't always take the best of precautions.

</comment><comment><USER8> "However, what I find slightly unsettling is how, well, the vast majority of intelligent people (in addition to corporations) seem to support the idea even though it seems to signal the end of privacy."

In what way does this signal the end of privacy? Just because a company could access and use your data does not mean they will. Once a company starts doing that, it will be the end of that company.</comment>


IPad Mags Need A New Blueprint - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/30/ipad-mags-new-blueprint/ <comment><USER2> Having to download PDFs to read a magazine or newspaper online is real nasty. Just goes to show how much techincal expertise the media publication houses have with them currently.

A lighter format[in terms of size] which also supports social media sharing would be the right thing to bring the magazine experience to the iPad.

I wonder if anyone out there is actually making a publishing platform for the iPad.[or did I miss it here?]</comment>


Problems in artificial intelligence research?  - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3596850/problems-in-artificial-intelligence-research

<comment><USER2> That's sort of like "problems in space elevator design" or "problems in cryogenic preservation of near-death human beings." It's a field so advanced and hard that it's a barrel of fish when it comes to open problems.</comment>


Ask HN: Any startups using oracle? - <AUTHOR> My professor for the database class says that oracle is the king of databases. It's loved by big companies, but I can't believe any startups out there are using it. <comment><USER2> In the enterprise space DB2 and Oracle are the two big players. DB2 on IBM hardware. Oracle made its mark on enterprise *nix hardware, e.g. Sun, HP and even IBM - AIX systems. Recently MS SQL Server (which is derived from Sybase) on Windows servers.

In big corporations you don't get fired for buying Oracle. BTW Oracle bought Sun Microsystems because it was the most widely used hardware platform for Oracle. On that basis Oracle could be considered the king of RDBMS. But it is nothing special technically and it is very expensive to purchase and the support contracts are eye watering. Larry Ellison can afford to lavishly play at Admirals Cup on the licence income.

Several years ago a package was released that allows you to run apps that expect Oracle on Postgres.

Of course startups do not use Oracle. In fact few even use Windows. Why spend huge amounts of money when you can get better solutions for free? And there are so many good choices, including noSQL solutions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most enterprise software companies in the financial sector traditionally built solutions on Oracle. This was because in the 80s and even early 90s, the holy grail of financial systems (MVCC - multiversion concurrency control with guaranteed transactions) was offered relatively cheaper by Oracle during that period compared to IBM's big iron solutions. This was a winning strategy for Oracle. They dominated new projects during the 90s client-server revolution.

Over time this didn't matter as many RDBMS offered advanced MVCC features and transactional guarantees "on the cheap". (MS SQL and pgsql being late bloomers to this club - there are many other good databases that do similar).

Your professor is probably a veteran from the heydays of Oracle's dominance. The meme of Oracle (i.e. if the system is developed using Oracle being default good) still carries in the minds of many financial execs and CTOs. But it is fading fast.

I personally wouldn't touch Oracle for my enterprise startup which provides BI solutions for asset managers. We use SQL Server and pgsql.

</comment><comment><USER4> Among small or early stage startups? No. Oracle charges kingly rates to go along with their kingly title, rates which pretty much only big companies can pay. Oracle DB setups often tie into other Oracle products as well, which can be more useful to established and larger companies.

Your professor is correct in that it's widely used amongst such companies, though other competitors are very often in place as well such as Sybase or Microsoft SQL Server.

The right tool for the right job (or in the startup world, the tool you can afford.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Previously commented on some issues regarding oracle products in general:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13726012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13726012)

Oracle DB has some of the best tech. For e.g Partitioning of tables works great. DB can be seriously tuned and is a workhorse for many different use cases. They have easy access to use tools that make management super simple.

Though you pay a hefty price for all of this, often you can get similar things done with open source with a bit more hacking and deep diving though you would need to have much more technical skills than your typical oracle DBA.

Then you have what I call the 'propriety DB' tax. Which usually means your open source tools typically support oracle DB as an afterthought. I often come across an open source solution to solve some problem only to realize we need to get data in or out of oracle with support either non existent or patchy at best. PGSql/MySQL are mostly supported first.

For e.g

\- I recall getting cx_oracle(python DB API) was a serious pain in the ass.

\- Want to use a heroku build pack for your app to deploy to an open source paas solution? Need to roll your own custom build pack

\- Need continuous integration, auto builds? Need to hack around their stupid license agreement

\- Need a local dev db? You get a seriously limited version (XE) without feature parity to what is most likely running in production. You have to write specific code for local vs production in some cases - like accessing partitions etc

Really I would be surprised if there were Serious SAAS startups that were using it.

That $ could be invested elsewhere and open source is good enough.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've worked with Oracle versions 4,5,7,8,9,10,11, and 12. Worked as DBA, developer, architect, and consultant. Also worked with most other major DB players. Oracle has the besttech - period. Sure you'll find this or that player who tries and maybe outdoes Oracle for some period in some niche. Oracle isn't used by startups because they rarely have the funds or the expertise to make it feasible. I've spent months building and fixing what Oracle has out of the box. Referential Integrity for starters. People who don't understand it, or its value, or have a need for it today will skip it. 3 years later they need it bad but can't afford to fix it, don't know how to fix it, or have made so many bad decisions they need a redesign. If you can afford it - use it. Data is typically the most valuable asset for a company.

</comment><comment><USER7> It depends on what using Oracle means. As a backed? I seriously doubt it. Oracle fees are huge for startup-style growth and non-oracle equivalents are 1) cheap and 2) have plenty of talent available.

If you're a start-up going after B2B market, and you want to offer on-prem service, I suggest you get into the Oracle developer network and try as hard as you can to make sure your product works with Oracle as a backend.

Just having it as an option for big corporations is worth the effort... But not as a first time option (unless ORA funds you, which is another story).</comment>


Why Publishers Don't Like Apps - Web Based Apps vs. Native Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/business/40319/?nlid=nldly&nld=2012-05-07

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, TR only describes the situation for paid apps. I wonder if free content apps result in a different experience. Do more people download free magazine apps? If so, do they actually use them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question! I don't know big magazines have whether paid app or free app. I guess mostly they publish paid app and that's why he focused on it. Since magazines want to make money, the cost for app is close to profit and he complains this situation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tornado Touchdown Tracking - <AUTHOR>

I live in central Missouri and know lots of people who have been affected the by recent severe storms and tornadoes in the surrounding area.
One observation I have made it that none of the major weather applications or services report locations of Tornado touchdowns. I feel like this is critically important to make important middle-term (not short, not long) safety decisions.
Is anyone aware of a service which tracks tornado signatures on radar or compiles real time updates regarding them (ie, twitter/facebook)? <comment><USER2> Not aware of any existing services but during the recent tornadoes in AL, I was wondering why someone has built a google map/twitter mashup that would allow tweeting a sighting and either allow the person to specify the location or use the device's GPS readings. An account could be setup (@tornado_bot) and a service could pull the coordinates from its tweet-stream. If you follow it and are nearby, it could notify you of the danger(via direct message). Also, a way to specify possible direction and speed would be really beneficial.</comment>


Ask HN: Share one thing that profoundly increased your productivity - <AUTHOR> This could be a change in approach, a new skill, a new habit, a new plugin, mentality, food, anything.<p>For me it's rest from thinking about projects. Working remotely has a way of making time and boundaries get muddled. Creating a rigorous schedule with predefined rest periods helps me greatly. <comment><USER2> Don't code on an empty stomach ;)

But don't go for the junk food or fast food, either.

I keep some almond butter or peanut butter handy. Something to snack on just keeps me focused. Every few hours, I take another tablespoon with a drink of water and I find myself being able to get right back into what I was doing, even with less procrastination.</comment>


Please Come to Palo Alto City Hall Tonight to Ask for More Housing - <AUTHOR>

Palo Alto City Hall will have hearings tonight at 7pm about the future of development in Palo Alto. This hearing began on Monday and you can read more about it here: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2014/08/05/new-voices-join-palo-altos-growth-debate
So far, the overwhelming majority of opinions that the Council has heard have urged for no new residential or commercial development.
I reside and work in Palo Alto and I know I'm not the only one disheartened that it's almost impossible for people to live and work in the same place, much less the elderly and those in need of housing assistance. I'm also disappointed that there has been a failure to recognize that the housing shortage and increased rents have been caused by protectionist development policies and not by "evil tech workers." Please read more about this at: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/
I encourage everyone to come out and have their voice heard. It seems that the we have been quiet for far too long. <comment><USER2> Some advice as I've spoken before for downtown parks in Ann Arbor: write down what you will say. Standing up there you tend to forget!

When planning out what to say, the key is to understand the concerns and especially the misconceptions/fallacies of the opposition.

In this case, ack the traffic concern, emphasize that you want housing to be above shops, next to mass transit, offsetting that concern (conceptually). Another one: reduce crime and saving police resources -- make downtown a place where more people live and walk to work.

It is a boost to your cause if you own a home or local shop, and make sure to mention it as well. Ridiculous but true.

Lastly, think about speaking to creating a good community for future generations, nimbys often speak to the near-term and it sounds shallow.

</comment><comment><USER3> This same story is playing out across the country. Governments mandate low supply in high demand areas, which creates a bidding war that the wealthiest win every time. This is our generation's version of redlining. It is an injustice and it must stop, but you have to actually show up and say something so it's clear that there are votes at stake.

It's going to take more than showing up at one meeting, though. You have to organize and build a constituency for policies that will let more people live where they want to. That's what we're doing in Austin: [http://aura- atx.org/](http://aura-atx.org/)</comment>


How to Design Programs - <AUTHOR> http://www.htdp.org/2003-09-26/Book/ <comment><USER2> This is the first edition of the book, from 2001. The second edition is here: [http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/)</comment>


Hiring programmers with a take-home test - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/hiring-programmers-with-a-take-home-test/ <comment><USER2> I got my first coding job from a take home test. I found talking about my code and thought process was far easier than the typical trivia, and I covered miles more technical ground with them talking about my own choices than some rando incomplete hypothetical someone might ask me.

A year later I realized the questions they asked about my work were about topics that had they asked me point blank....I wouldn't have known what to say (regarding a given pattern or such), but in my own way I had shown I was thinking about them / understood them with my own code. It was something we could sync up on only through me coding it out in longer form than a whiteboard.</comment>


Who's Afraid of Michael Arrington? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/04/whos-afraid-michael-arrington/63933/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm surprised this hasn't turned up on HN yet. If there's truth to the allegations AND it's been widespread knowledge among the Powers that Be for awhile, it's a truly disturbing statement on how the Silicon Valley tech community, in particular, is rife with misogyny.

<comment><USER2> There was a post (now also dead) about this story not making HN: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5501075>

I don't think there's any actual censorship going on; rather, the story's sources are dubious and the community is flagging it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose this submission will be dead shortly, then. Alas: it's interesting and relevant to me and I suspect many others, even perceiving the weaknesses in the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> On the other hand, you can shut up anyone by accusing them of sexual assault /rape. Almost nothing else matters, an allegation is enough to make that person radioactive.

I do not know Michael, nor do I care for his personality. Just saying that sometimes there is another side of the story. If woman x accused you of raping her 4 years ago at a hotel, how are you going to defend yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> I want more information, obviously.

But even a single rape allegation is serious: this case appears, at least to me, to be a history of sexual assault on multiple different people.

If you had a friend and every single woman who knew him told you "stay away from him, he's tried to rape me before," I think you would, appropriately, stay away from that friend.

<comment><USER3> _and every single woman who knew him_

Not even one can say nice words about him?

Personal recommendations are fine, what I don't like is asking for every newspaper and blog to carry the accusations, without any proof, as gospel. They may be no way of proving them false, which is essentially required of the accused in such cases, so any damage would be permanent.

read this <https://gist.github.com/nikcub/5323021></comment></comment></comment>


The Farmer's Dilemma - <AUTHOR> http://reasonableapproximation.net/2015/05/05/farmers-dilemma.html <comment><USER2> This seems to make the same assumption as analysis of the prisoner's dilemma. That is that it's an isolated decision. If you take the decision into any kind of realistic context, you'd never say something as cold as "I'm sure you'd do it anyway" (similar to defecting in the case of the Prisoner's Dilemma) as any reasonable analysis will show it to be suboptimal.

I've often encountered thought experiments like this with a moral along the lines of "Some times it pays to be bad, it's upsetting, but it's the truth and here's the maths that proves it" but it's always been equally interpretable as "look how bad a job naive game theory does at explaining real life".

<comment><USER3> Iterated prisoners dilemma.

The interesting developments start appearing toward the end of a finite set of iterations. How long do you _keep_ cooperating? Who defects first?

<comment><USER4> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainstore_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainstore_paradox)

<comment><USER3> I'm not following that at all. But thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about this resolution: "Ah. Okay, so it's like that. Tell you what, why don't you mull it over and I'll come ask you about it again next year." You were getting by just fine without it before, you'll get by fine without it even after you know about it. No need to burn any crops, just make your case a little better next year, be a little less cooperative come harvest time, and he'll get the picture eventually.

Game theorists always seem to assume that there's no such thing as nuanced communication.

<comment><USER6> Repeated games are definitely a fixture of game theory. And given repeated games, the notion of signalling comes heavily into play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Farmer's Dilemma is very clearly the same as the Public Goods Problem: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good)

Specifically, public goods are goods where there is a temptation to free ride. As illustrated in the article, this doesn't always mean 0 public goods get made even by perfectly rational actors -- sometimes it's worth it for someone to do it anyway (Imagine putting up a street light in front of your shop if your local government didn't do it for you.)

The Wikipedia page has dozens of possible solutions, both economic and social -- everything from government provision to buying out possible free riders to subsidies to social sanctions.

<comment><USER8> It's actually a special case of the public good problem. Most public goods aren't worth more to one individual than it would cost that individual to produce. A strong military defense for my country is a classic example of a public good, but it probably costs way more than it is worth to me. Yet it's still a public good because it is worth more to the entire country than it costs to produce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My personal favorite: Throw in a little extra to bring them over the top in their utility calculation.

"Tell you what. Go halfsies on this ditch thing with me and I'll bring over a half a pig to throw in your freezer in October."

You reduce your workload by half and you only give up 1.1 utilon. You get 1.9 utilons for 1 (1.9x efficiency) vs getting 3 for 2, which is only 1.5x efficiency.

If you have plenty of good work lined up, that's the better way to go. You'd only dig it yourself if you had a lot of free time.

Plus if you offer them something you produce yourself, you can get half of it back as profits. I.e. the foreign aid approach.

</comment><comment><USER10> There is an interesting metaphor here of how B2B integrations are similar to a farmer's dilemma. Two B2B companies talk about doing an integration. Both will benefit if it is done, but one generally does more of the work.

<comment><USER11> Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer once played a variant of this game.

Both lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hmm... your "Farmer's Dilemma" description makes me want to call this a Free- Rider Problem, but that doesn't quite seem to be equivalent

Maybe it's that you're about contemplating incentive structures underlying the _creation_ of a public good rather than the traditional Tragedy of the Commons _maintenance_ of a public good?

<comment><USER3> No, that's correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In the specific construct of this example, another option would be for the farmer who digs the ditch to alter its placement such that it doesn't provide a benefit to his neighbor.

Rather than run the ditch between the properties, he could run it down the far side of his own, or the center, for that matter.

</comment><comment><USER13> > But in the real world, two people crashing their cars into each other is a > worse outcome than two people failing to dig a ditch.

Wrong. By failing to dig the ditch, rainwater will now flood your properties, ruining both cars.

:)

</comment><comment><USER14> > Maybe I have a bad back, and digging is more costly for me than for you. > This may or may not change the Nash equilibria, and it may or may not change > the amount of sympathy we each get in the various continuations.

And this is why money is nice. Because it enables the outcome with greatest total utility in this case: that the healthy guy digs the ditch by himself and gets a promise of future reward.

<comment><USER3> You don't need money for that to happen though. Just a system of credit (or other enforced obligations), and a generally agreed on exchange rate.

Curiously enough, the subject of a great many of the earliest legal codices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this the stag hunt / assurance game? I'm too lazy too lazy to do the math right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, that has quite a different structure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought they were going to extend the analogy to contributing to open source software...

</comment><comment><USER17> When did the "Prisoners Dilemma" get renamed to the "Farmers Dilemma"?

<comment><USER18> The article references the Prisoner's Dilemma and notes that they are different and have different Nash equilibria. The structure is different.

Giving the strategy of the actor whose payoff is considered first and the other actors second, the order of payoffs for FD is:

D/C => C/C => C/D => D/D

The payoffs for PD are:

D/C => C/C => D/D => C/D

PD has a dominant strategy of defection because _independent_ of the other player's strategy, you always get a better result by defecting.

FD lacks a dominant strategy because whether a particular strategy improves your expected payoff depends on the other player's strategy.</comment></comment>


What believing in God does to your brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/what-believing-in-god-does-to-your-brain-a6950956.html <comment><USER2> The analytical process is short circuited. Every question has a correct(by definition) answer. Like any such research - it goes nowhere. Religion is the greatest con job ever thought up, from all religions from the past, like wikken to scientology - all 100% methods for the few to live of the rest of society. Tax all religions, remove their tax deductability, make them die by inches as their support will only come from their believers after tax money</comment>


Avant UI Kit - <AUTHOR> Hi.
I'd like to show the "Avant UI kit" to the community.
- https://www.avantui.com/
Please let your suggestion for a future implementation.
Thanks is advance. <comment><USER2> If you want to show something, usually you preface it with "Show HN:" and add a link. Is this something you made?</comment>


Doomsday Terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vasso123/DoomsdayTerminal <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys,

just wanted to present my open source project. The name is just random, so don't ask why :)

On my daily job, I had many situations where I needed such a tool, but couldn't find one (for Linux). I've found a nice utility app for Windows, but for example when connected to a Linux server through ssh, and you want quickly to test some tcp communication with some other server or device, you're stuck with telnet and netcat basically, which just don't offer more advanced options.

So when I saw the Lanterna Java library I knew that was the right tool for the job :) For all Java haters out there, the plan is to package the application as a "native" one, using the new Java 9 jlink tool, so that you don't have to depend on the JRE installed on the machine.

I would like to get some feedback on the project, do you see it useful, and which additional features would you like to see in it?

<comment><USER2> I'm thinking this would be more appropriate on ShowHN or even AskHN.</comment></comment>


Autonomous Peer Learning at Booking.com (2016) - grey-area https://blog.booking.com/autonomous_peer_learning.html <comment><AUTHOR> From the title I thought this was a machine learning paper... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯</comment>


WebAssembly: Bringing Go to the Browser (and Beyond) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzeEgdee3fc <comment><USER2> On this topic, I found the following wiki to be a great learning resource:

[https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/WebAssembly](https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/WebAssembly)</comment>


Ask HN: What is the essential ability gap between the elite and the public in US? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This is a leading question because it pre-supposes that there is an ability gap; this gap has not been demonstrated, but a different gulf notes that people who get undergraduate degrees from prestigious institutions consistently earn more than others [1], even if some of those people get advanced degrees from prestigious schools later.

Elites have access to social connections that most ordinary people don't -- both in quality and quantity. This is the most defining advantage that they possess over the public, albeit money and name recognition don't hurt either.

[1] [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473238](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473238)

</comment><comment><USER3> As nifitich said, contacts.

And this is why elite schools are worth it for the elite. You may or may not get a better education there, but you meet better contacts there. (You make contacts at a state school too, but the contacts you make are people who went to a state school, not people who went to an elite university.)

Also, knowledge about how to run organizations.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's no "ability gap" between the "elite" and the "public". The reason the "elite" have had such a bad year in Britain, the USA, and elsewhere is that they have proven themselves manifestly incompetent.

The real skills gap is between the, I don't know, maybe ninety percent of us who work in office jobs and could be easily replaced, compared to the maybe ten percent who have really invested in learning their trades (whether it be rocket science or plumbing) and cannot be easily replaced. My generation (GenX) was taught when we were kids that we should be "knowledge workers" and get paid a lot for doing very little. The end result is, most of us are in jobs where if we quit tomorrow, the boss could have a replacement hired in a month. We were pushed to be "generalists" with the idea that we could have a whole bunch of different careers, rather than spending our lives doing one thing. But the joke's on us: those people who spend their lives doing just one thing are the ones most valuable to the world.

</comment><comment><USER5> Upper-class acquaintances typically haven't had to worry about making bank straight out of school, so they can take time to study the liberal arts things that give people a broader perspective. They may not know how to execute, but they have plenty of ideas on what to do, and enough cash and connections to pay others for the "know-how."

Middle-class acquaintances all went directly into something that pays the bills: trades, engineering, law, etc. They know how to do things, but not what to do. They all work for the man.

</comment><comment><USER6> Access to capital. Pay to play is very real in a number of sectors.

</comment><comment><USER7> Lineage?

</comment><comment><USER8> Money.</comment>