How the 2016 Chevy Volt added 18 miles of EV range - <AUTHOR> http://www.autoblog.com/2016/05/18/2016-chevy-volt-more-ev-range-exclusive/?icid=autoblog|trend|how-the-chevy-volt-got-better <comment><USER2> I tend to look at the EV1 as an idea before its time in more ways than one. Was it a failure...it looked like one from the outside, but it taught them a lot. This is the type of behavior (moonshots/trying experiments/taking risks) that we know value in leading edge companies who are willing to develop or try things to learn. Tesla's roadster was largely in the same space in a lot of ways. The difference is the result, GM found that their target demographic wasn't there yet. In 97 and 99, GM had an enormous lead in vehicle sales and the risk they took was actually small, although they were made to pay for it in PR...

If you look at Tesla and GM, the pivot is the difference...GM focused on the traditional consumer market and didn't see an opportunity to make it work. Likely based on the perfectly reasonable assumption that people are unlikely to pay for a luxury GM product at that point in time. Tesla learned from that and went at the markets in the other direction.

I own a volt, I have talked about this before on here. It is my only car. I wouldn't own a Tesla as an only car, not yet. The Volt was probably something that the Tesla S made happen (I'm speaking metaphorically not temporally) but I think the Volt and the leaf and the prius made the Tesla 3 happen

<comment><USER3> Batteries got substantially better.

<comment><USER2> substantially yes...but that was not the only thing that changed. The models of transportation envisioned by the EV1, the Tesla, and the Volt are decidedly different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why don't more folks respect this car? It's quite an engineering accomplishment.

<comment><USER5> It isn't pretty. Even worse: its concept car was _gorgeous_ , so the Volt actually looking like a production car is even more disappointing.

<comment><USER6> I remember thinking the concept was gorgeous at the time; I just looked up some images and found it ugly. Tastes change, I guess.

Regardless, the concept car was _distinctive_. The Prius has shown that distinctiveness helps to sell hybrids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How did they achieve the impressive 40-percent improvement in EV range?

            "Like mass, which comes off by the tenth of a gram," say Tim Grewe,
    	Chevy's general director of electrification, "range goes up with every detail.
    	Our motors are more efficient, our battery discharge is more efficient,
    	our inverter efficiency is higher and our drive-unit spin losses lower.
    	Yet we also improved [the] fun-to-drive [aspect], with 30-percent better
    	launch and low-end acceleration, because that's a very pleasing feel."

In a nutshell, EV range is all about energy efficiency because current battery energy density is a few orders of magnitude less than fossil fuels and efficiency matters a lot with all things considered when energy capacity is given.

And Germans know this much better. It's why BMW custom developed an brand new chassis and majority of the components being used in BMW i3 with super lightweight but much sturdier carbon fiber reenforced plastic body[1] and other designs to achieve that goal whereas GM uses steels and traditional materials for Volt. Similarly by contrast, GM uses existing vehicle platform to cut down cost[2] instead of custom design one for Chevy Volt.

The end results of BMW's effort are very self-explanatory: BMW i3 with 124 MPGe is THE MOST ENERGY EFFICIENT [3] vehicle of all vehicles rated by US EPA in all classes in the United States for 3 years straight. On the other hand, GM Chevy Volt's 98 MPGe is ranked far behind.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3#cite_note- BMW0410-15](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3#cite_note-BMW0410-15)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt#Second_generati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt#Second_generation_.282015.E184.108.40.206)

[3]: [https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/best- worst.shtml](https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/best-worst.shtml)

Full disclosure: I had owned BMW ActiveE (an engineering prototype comparable to Volt in terms retro-fitting EV components into existing ICE car platform (BMW 1-series) with traditional material being used.) and have driven BMW i3 since ActiveE's retirement in their field trial.

<comment><USER8> And one costs about $10,000 more (approximately 25% more than the price of the Volt, a rather large difference to most people). And considering it's a BMW, you pay extra for a steering wheel, brakes, etc. (that's sarcasm, but really, BMW is one of the brands that's great at nickel and diming their customers, and don't forget about long term cost of a vehicle, much more expensive to fix a BMW than a Chevy. I know this because I have one of each, non-electrics)

So yes, it may be better because of the carbon fiber infused paneling, but you're paying for that. To ignore the price of automobiles when comparing them, is simply ridiculous (you're not the only who has done this devy, so this criticism is not pointed specifically at you.)

<comment><USER8> Also, to emphasize, when a cheap aluminum, steel or fiberglass part breaks/is wrecked, it's cheaper to replace than a carbon infused panel. Try to re-bend the frame of a steel car (rather easy) and re-bend the frame of a car with a monocoque body made of carbon fiber (You can't).

How a car is designed is not solely about the efficiency of it's drive train, but rather there are a large number of constraints on the automobile. How large is it? How many passengers and cargo can fit? How comfortable is it? Does it have all the nice features that modern consumers want? Does it have more than one cup holder (BMW is notorious for failing this test, an interesting cultural difference between US and German automakers) How does it do in safety tests? How does it look? Etc. etc. And again, one of the most important: How much does it cost?

<comment><USER9> > Also, to emphasize, when a cheap aluminum, steel or fiberglass part > breaks/is wrecked, it's cheaper to replace than a carbon infused panel. Try > to re-bend the frame of a steel car (rather easy) and re-bend the frame of a > car with a monocoque body made of carbon fiber (You can't).

Can you repair the more exotic steels that are now used on cars? I was in an accident a year ago, and all of the affected ultra-high strength steel members of the car had to be directly replaced: it was explained to me that they cannot be straightened or welded.

As to the CFRP used in the BMWs, it is actually "repair friendly". The insurance costs of a BMW i3 are no more than other comparable luxury cars: in an accident, they cut out the affected portions of the CFRP and epoxy replacement elements in place. The material costs might be slightly higher, but the labor costs are lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In California, plug-in hybrids fall into different categories depending on the relative range of the gas-powered part and the battery-powered part. That's why they had to keep the range low, and why they could put a larger gas tank in the version with a bigger battery. If they increased its range on gas, it would fall under different regulations.

</comment><comment><USER11> TL;DR: by redesigning the whole car.</comment>


Emergency phone and internet data storage law to be brought in - <AUTHOR> http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28237108

<comment><USER2> For me, this is the worst bit:

        4 Extra-territoriality in Part 1 of RIPA

        (1) Part 1 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
            (communications) is amended as follows.

        (2) In section 11 (implementation of interception warrants), after
            subsection (2) insert –
            - (2A) A copy of a warrant may be served under subsection (2) on a person
                   outside the United Kingdom (and may relate to conduct outside the
                   United Kingdom).
        (3) In subsection (4) of that section, after "that person" insert
            "(whether or not the person is in the United Kingdom)".
        (5) In subsection (8) of that section, after "enforceable" insert
            "(including in the case of a person outside the United Kingdom)".
        (6) In section 12 (maintenance of interception capability), after subsection
            (3) insert –
            - (3A) An obligation may be imposed in accordance with an order under
                   this section on, and a notice under subsection (2) given to,
                   persons outside the United Kingdom (and may be so imposed or
                   given in relation to conduct outside the United Kingdom).

I did some snipping to get rid of admin stuff, but those terms extend the authority of the UK home secretary to give him jurisdiction on ordering wiretapping outside of the UK. Section 11 of RIPA is about wiretaps, section 12 is about ensuring the ability to have wiretaps.

If this passes, the following will be law in the UK:

        (4) Where a copy of an interception warrant has been served by or on behalf
            of the person to whom it is addressed on—
            (a) a person who provides a postal service,
            (b) a person who provides a public telecommunications service, or
            (c) a person not falling within paragraph (b) who has control of the
                whole or any part of a telecommunication system located wholly or
                partly in the United Kingdom,it shall (subject to subsection (5))
                be the duty of that person (whether or not the person is in the
                United Kingdom) to take all such steps for giving effect to the
                warrant as are notified to him by or on behalf of the person to
                whom the warrant is addressed.
        (8) A person's duty under subsection (4) to take steps for giving effect to
            a warrant shall be enforceable (including in the case of a person
            outside the United Kingdom) by civil proceedings by the Secretary of
            State for an injunction, or for specific performance of a statutory duty
            under section 45 of the Court of Session Act 1988, or for any other
            appropriate relief.

To put it plainly, this act, if it passes, will allow the UK to seek civil redress against companies that have no link to the United Kingdom if they refuse to spy on their users, so long as they can argue that some part of the communications system is in the UK. To me, that reads like it will be valid if there are users in the UK.

<comment><USER3> > To me, that reads like it will be valid if there are users in the UK.

There's even better: applying it if the company's packets ever transit through the UK (since that means "[some] part of a telecommunication system partly in the United Kingdom").

And IIRC it just happens that most of the backbone capacity between US and EU goes through the UK.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, there's a clever trick hidden in there. You can be liable if you control part of a system that is partially located in the UK. It doesn't actually say you have to control the part located in the UK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're in the UK then you should contact your MP about this to let them know what you think. And you need to do it now - the vote is on Monday. Perhaps if they realise what people think about this they might reconsider.

Contacting your MP is easy using [https://www.writetothem.com/](https://www.writetothem.com/) or the dedicated anti-DRIP page at ORG [https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/no-emergency- stop-...](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/no-emergency-stop-the- data-retention-stitch-up)

<comment><USER5> I never know what tone to take with writing letters to MPs. I don't want to waste a load of time on polite and subtly persuasive when they might be more influenced by the generic "angry voter". Equally, if I received some angry voter letter, I'd be inclined to vote against them just because I don't like angry people.

This time I think I went too angry, because last time I think I was too polite:

Dear MP,

I sincerely hope you will be voting against the ridiculous "Emergency phone and internet data storage law" on Monday. Blanket surveillance of millions of innocent civilians is short sighted, reckless and dangerous. I am well aware that the excuse is to prevent terrorism, but is there any evidence at all that it will be key in terrorism prevention? We seem to be doing a pretty good job of preventing terrorism already, and any extra (possibly non existent) benefit this may bring is certainly not worth the MASSIVE loss of liberty of the people.

I am disgusted and horrified that so many intelligent people in Westminster are so short sighted to think that surveillance, with is horrific brutal history, is going to "work this time".

Yours sincerely,

Me

<comment><USER6> Here's mine:

Dear MP,

I hope you will be voting against the emergency legislation being forced through parliament on Monday to make phone and internet companies log all information.

As a software professional with over a decade's experience in the industry, I can tell you that logging all such data in this manner is not just an obvious abuse of UK citizen's rights, and most likely of citizens of other countries - it is also dangerous in it's own right.

Specific questions need to be answered before any kind of mass storage of information such as this can take place. Things such as:

\- which "named" people will be responsible for collating this data at which companies?

\- where will this data be stored?

\- what are the security arrangements around this?

\- what are the repercussions for breaches of security?

... to name a few.

Do not just assume that these questions have all been answered by the appropriate "techy", it is YOUR responsiblity to ask these questions and vote against any policy that does not provide appropriate answers. I quote the following examples of cases where proper consideration was not taken. These are from my personal experiences:

\- finding my National Insurance number and name in an "anonymised" freely available government dataset. And the NI of a friend.

\- working at a large blue chip company that required me to be escorted in and out of the server room and taken to a specific server, only for the person doing the escorting to get bored and prop the door open with some wood and say, "don't tell anyone".

\- being given elevated priviledges to a network simply to "get something done". (This one happens more than you'd think).

\- being asked for information for a security check by the Police only for the email to include private information such as the requester's ID code.

Yours sincerely,

Phil Barr.

<comment><USER7> ' it is also dangerous in its own right.'

<comment><USER6> Correct. And dammit, I hate making simple punctuation or grammatical mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This bill[1] is of direct interest to non-UK people, because it 'clarifies' that the requests to intercept or for communications metadata are enforceable on companies outside the UK, and on ""internet based services, such as webmail" [2, paras 27,71].

(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer)

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/328939/draft- drip-bill.pdf) [2] [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/328940/draft- drip-notes.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Giving a speech to the House of Commons today, the UK Home Secretary, Theresa May, made it clear that, in her view, the powers in the new legislation are still inadequate — saying they "will not tackle the wider problem of declining communications data capability" – bringing back the specter of a more wide- ranging 'Snoopers' Charter' being introduced by a future Tory government.

In other words: They're just warming up.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Which will only last until 2016.

If there's anything I've learned in life, it's that there's nothing more permanent than temporary laws.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. UK Anti terrorism legislation has almost always been "emergency" that was extended and solidified.

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/jan/22/explainer- terrorism-legislation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Look forward to the argument "this bill just lets the security services keep doing what they're already doing" when this bill has to be renewed after the sunset date.

</comment><comment><USER13> Even during an interview on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday evening a government minister slipped in that the government need to keep an eye on catching paedophiles and serious organised crime. So this clearly isn't just for an immediate terrorist threat, they're just going through all the legislation that's been going a bit stale and rushing it through whilst the opinion polls don't really matter and all under false pretences or half truths.

<comment><USER14> It's not even for paedophiles or serious organised crime either. As with all other new police capabilities, 90% of this will be used for the drug war and the remainder is split between a bunch of lowlevel crimes such as theft or harassment .

There is data from Austrias data retention laws here:

[http://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/VHG/XXV/AB/AB_01179/imfname_...](http://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/VHG/XXV/AB/AB_01179/imfname_353625.pdf)

Summing up, in 2013, data was used for investigations concercing the following offenses:

\- theft (35%) \- drugs (18%) \- robbery (16%) \- stalking (14%) \- fraud (12%) \- threats (5%)

<comment><USER15> So, is your contention that because data was only used to catch regular criminals - drug dealers, robbers, stalkers, fraudsters and the like - that we should find that a bad thing.

It's just _prima facie_ it sounds quite good to me that criminals who might not have otherwise been convicted or discovered in their actions can now be so. All at the cost of the police knowing what my ISP [and GCHQ] knows about me already.

<comment><USER14> I really don't care to have this conversation right now. It's been discussed over and over, and the feigned ignorance is insulting.

The point here is that if you are going to use this to catch petty criminals, you have to market it as such to the public. Instead, we have politicians conjuring up the image of imminent terrorist attacks and national security. It is a simple lie.

<comment><USER15> Don't start a conversation and then say you don't want to talk about it, just don't join in.

I'm not now expecting an answer but your second para sounds like you only have a problem with the fact that the use of the data isn't explicitly laid out in advance. Even if it's set up to combat terrorism and other crimes being noticed are a side-effect; you'd be happy as long as it's mentioned that other crimes discovered will also be prosecuted?

Your comment sold such police powers well, I'd imagine most of the electorate reading that using this technology has and will continue to catch the perpetrators of the crimes you list would find it positive. Other than expanding the people that know inane trivia about me I find it hard to see what liberties are really given up.

<comment><USER13> Problem is, the law is being rushed in without checking or debate because of the stated purpose, however it would benefit from a debate if it being used for other purposes. That's the lie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As I understand it this law (passed or not) makes no difference to GCHQ who are probably collecting as much of this data as they can; and have exemptions written into existing laws; and etc etc.

<comment><USER4> Yes, this is separate from whatever GCHQ are doing.

GCHQ are (I assume) intercepting data out in the wild wherever they can then storing and analysing that themselves. This is apparently covered under other laws, but certainly isn't affected by this.

This law, and the one it's replacing, is about obligations on phone companies and ISPs to retain traffic data themselves. This data can then be used by the police and other agencies when they need it. I wouldn't be surprised if GCHQ had access to this but I doubt that it makes a big difference to their capabilities. I'd expect that they can do far more than this regardless.

<comment><USER17> Parallel construction, I suppose: use the GCHQ records to select a target, then pull the ISP's copy of the data into court.

<comment><USER18> Mmm... no, I don't actually think GCHQ trust the Plods anywhere _near_ that much (i.e. they are not cleared for relevant SCI; usually not even TS, just C or S!). If they do (and they might, these are just my impressions) I'd be quite surprised.

The NSA definitely work closely, frequently and directly with the FBI, DEA, CIA, and many other US Government agencies, especially since 9/11 and all that "fusion center" business. We know that. They're quite proud about it.

But the old boys from Cheltenham are _very conservative indeed_ , and though they work frequently with The Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), I think they rely on the intelligence agencies to do liaison with any law enforcement (notably MI5 with certain branches of the Metropolitan Police) and that only happens in _pretty rare_ cases, nearly all of which are espionage-related or terrorism cases that I'm aware of (drugs are considered a Police problem, not an MI5 problem - we have no DEA analogue).

It's nowhere near as _connected_ as you have over there, and that's for cultural/service-rivalry reasons as well as operational (budgetary? They're not as flush with cash as NSA are) and trust ones.

The Police and their powers under RIPA are more often on their own with that kind of thing. That's why the Government is pushing the whole emergency data retention thing - those powers are more frequently used by law enforcement (but RIPA doesn't really affect GCHQ at all).

I don't think the new "National Crime Agency" has actually changed that setup much, if at all; GCHQ seem to hold them in low regard. Old boys versus new pups, and all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm always a fan of "emergency powers" that infringe on the public's rights because they are "necessary" for "public safety". I'm sure the expiration time and a powerless oversight board will make all the difference, especially if you put a bunch of people on it that totally agree that the government have access to all things. No way this could ever lead to abuse. This is how the star power game is played[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarPower_(game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarPower_\(game\))

</comment><comment><USER20> > Prime Minister David Cameron and his Lib Dem Deputy Prime Minister Nick > Clegg will tell a special cabinet meeting on Thursday that emergency > legislation is necessary to keep the country safe.

Safe from what, exactly?

<comment><USER16> "paedophile MPs?"

(From Franke Boyle, but I can't find the tweet at the moment.)

> Frankie Boyle @frankieboyle Jul 10

> Oddly, a government that lost 114 files on child abuse thinks it's important > to keep a note of every time you post a funny cat video online

> Frankie Boyle @frankieboyle Jul 10

> About time we had a new electronic surveillance law to uncover exactly no > terrorists and 158 million texts about fucking

<comment><USER21> How do these people not understand that when they say "we lost the files" the public hears "we definitely did it, and we're probably still doing it."

The tory party is now surely the baby-raping party in the minds of everyone who read about that investigation and the "lost" files.

TBF not much change there.

<comment><USER22> The truth of course it that lots of MPs _do_ understand how people interpret this kind of thing. Truth is, most MPs are intelligent, reasonable people. Sadly they are often judged for the actions of the few reprehensible MPs that more often than not make it to the front benches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I read that the EU ruled a similar EU wide law unlawful recently. Can they not do the same here? I always thought that although the UK can make it's own laws it couldn't override EU rulings.

<comment><USER2> That's why this law is being brought in. It's not an overnight thing to invalidate a law, if they change it slightly they get another period of doing evil until they're ordered to stop again.

<comment><USER4> It may be slightly more clever than that. David Allen Green suggests[1] that this moves the legislation so that it is directly implemented by UK law rather than as a result of an EU law.

This means that the current court ruling wouldn't apply and that it would be almost impossible to mount a similar court challenge in future.

[1] Non-reg link: [http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&url=http://blogs...](http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&url=http://blogs.ft.com/david- allen-green/2014/07/11/drip-drip-drip-the-emergency-surveillance-law-erodes- our-civil-liberties/)

<comment><USER18> He's not to my reading saying it would be 'almost impossible' to mount a similar challenge in the future.

The "DRIP Bill" (thanks, that's a great term) is fairly obviously taking the piss with the ECJ ruling, considering it contains a big slice of the "Snoopers' Charter" and is going in _exactly_ the wrong direction.

It would, however, require a _new_ legal challenge to the Supreme Court or the ECJ/ECHR to fight this, and they probably think that will take somewhat longer than 2 years, 2 years during which they get more retention, after which they'll probably either renew it or change it a bit again, probably for the worse because some of the Tories like Theresa May and Cameron don't even think _this_ went far enough (wtf?!), and reset the clock _again_... maybe I'm being cynical, but I think my cynicism is well-earned here.

Gah.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _" [E]mergency legislation is necessary to keep the country safe"_

After the number of times US and UK spy agencies have been caught red-handed, do people really still buy this? Because that'd be the saddest part of all.

<comment><USER17> People still buy the Daily Mail, that's what matters.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html) : at time of writing this comment, I can't find any mention of this story on the front page at all.

Also, to be fair, if you're an average white guy who doesn't get involved in politics, you're not likely to have surveillance used against you. It's a police state _in potential_ , a "fleet in being" that has not put to sea.

<comment><USER24> [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2687112/Emergency- sp...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2687112/Emergency-spy-laws- monitor-calls-web-use-needed-safe-Cameron-claims.html) EDIT: ah, no, not on the front page..

The comments are better than I expected, to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like status quo as this is the response I got from Sky regarding data retention a couple of week ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7970165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7970165)

<comment><USER17> It's not, really. The question as to whether something is legal if the EU says it isn't but the UK says it is is not entirely clear even given _Factortame_.

The law itself contains a signifigant expansion of the powers, in particular imposing legal obligations on non-UK persons and also allowing the Secretary of State to write new regulations and statutory instruments.

[http://blogs.ft.com/david-allen-green/2014/07/11/drip- drip-d...](http://blogs.ft.com/david-allen-green/2014/07/11/drip-drip-drip- the-emergency-surveillance-law-erodes-our-civil-liberties/)

<comment><USER25> Many thanks for the explanation. Now I understand the concern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The country where 1984 was written seems determined to make it factual history. Once a government decides it's fine and dandy to spy on its own (and others) it's unlikely to ever go backwards.

</comment><comment><USER27> Which Billis this? Is this the Communications Data Bill that has been around for a while? I can't see anything in hansard remotely related to this.

<comment><USER28> There's a draft uploaded at [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/328939/draft- drip-bill.pdf)

<comment><USER27> Thanks, got it.</comment></comment></comment>


2 Choices For Rates And Cheap Isn't One Of Them - <AUTHOR> http://www.drawar.com/articles/two-choices-for-rates-and-cheap-isnt-one-of-them/242/

<comment><USER2> It's hard when family members ask you to do work for them and you don't have time, they still offer to pay you. They expect that you'll somehow find the time because there's now a financial incentive at play. My mom is starting a company and she really needs updates to a crappy website. "This only takes you a couple of evenings" she'll say. I'm inclined to do it for free but that means we wait for me to have time off. All of a sudden my holiday breaks and evenings are website jobs while I'd rather be chilling out with my family.

Anyone share the same experience?

Really enjoyed the wisdom in this article btw. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> I've helped out my mother in her business for years, on evenings and weekends. Overall, I haven't found it a good experience, mainly because of two issues.

Firstly, I really don't have the time to put her affairs in order (and keep them that way), only enough to put out fires. I do get paid, but it's really not a matter about money. As you say, it then begins to pollute the relationship with that person, since you can no longer spend time with them normally.

Secondly, it's quite painful to see bad decisions being made against your advice when it's someone you know and care about. It also makes the motivation to put out fires much lower, since you know there'll always be more on the way...

Having chatted to friends, I understand that the situation becomes much easier where both parties have some kind of help they can trade with each other, instead of most of the help going one way.

<comment><USER4> Seriously?

Who wiped your butt when you crapped your pants? Who taught you to ride a bike and held you when you skinned your knees? Who bought you your first computer and fed you and drove you to school and held you when you were scared and comforted you when you were sad and cheered for you when you won?

Help your mom out with her website.

It's the least you could do.

\- - - (Sorry. First time posting - my wife is 9 months pregnant and this got me fired up...)

<comment><USER5> Mixing family and business is never a good thing to do. I love all those memories and I want that to be the time we spend together not that ____ is wrong with your website/business because you may start out with a website but it never seems to end with just that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Commentit: comments on GitHub pages - <AUTHOR> http://blog.guilro.com/2015/10/01/commentit.io.html <comment><USER2> Is it open source?</comment>


200,000,000 keys in Redis 2.0.0-rc3 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zawodny.com/2010/07/24/200000000-keys-in-redis-2-0-0-rc3/

<comment><USER2> Try out Tokyo Tyrant. It'll use at least half the space.

</comment><comment><USER3> The key is a long cast to a string, and the value is an int. So 2.23GB of data became 24GB. Quite a large loss factor there.

Calculation the load capacity seems like it should be a trivial exercise and shouldn't require a test it approach.

<comment><USER4> If you turn a txt file with a list of "common surnames -> percentage of population" into a binary tree it will get more or less an order of magnitude bigger in memory compared to the raw txt file.

This is a common pattern: when you add a lot of metadata, for fast access, memory management, "zero-copy" transmission of this information, expires, ..., the size is not going to be the one of concatenating all this data like in a unique string.

If we want we can save more memory per key, with some tradeoff. Example: instead of having an hash table where every hash slot is a pointer (holding the key) -> pointer (holding the value) map, we can take the hash and use it as a unique string with: <len>key<ptr><len>key<ptr>.... for all the colliding strings. Than tune the hash table in order to have on average 5 or 10 collisions per hash slot.

That is: prefixed length as string and pointer (that is of fixed size).

Maybe we'll do this in future, and in Redis master we are doing a lot of this in the "value" side of the business. So if you store a list of 10 elements it will use an amount of memory very similar to storing the same bytes as a comma separated value.

But for now our reasoning is: it's not bad to be able to store 1 million of keys with less than 200 MB of memory (100 MB on 32bit systems) if an entry level box is able to serve this data at the rate of 100k requests/second, including the networking overhead. And with hashes we have a much better memory performance compared to top level keys. So... with a few GB our users can store ten or hundred of millions of stuff in a Redis server.

Better to focus on stability and clustering for now... and when we'll have a system that can scale transparently we'll focus on memory overhead to check if it's still important to reduce it, or since we want to be a very high performance DB , if it's just better to accept the tradeoff.

<comment><USER3> Interesting post. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment>


Geometry, Algebra, and Intuition (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.shapeoperator.com/2017/02/28/geometry-algebra-intuition/ <comment><USER2> If you enjoyed this post, you'll probably love "The Elements of Euclid"[1] by Byrne which provides entirely visual proof for ALL the basic proofs of euclidean geometry.

I actually first came across the book when I saw it mentioned in Beautiful Explanations by Tufte. The beauty of the images is just on another level, the book will just make you feel good when you stare at it and after staring at it you'll absorb a proof accidentally with barely any effort on your part.

There is a mistaken belief that visual proofs are less serious than algebraic ones but I believe this is mostly due to a lack of imagination when it comes coming up with good visual proofs. Byrne's book will help you see just how powerful pictures can be. There's lots of good work happening in the Category Theory community to turn diagrams into first class objects in constructing proofs so I'm very optimistic about a boom in visual proof construction.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Byrne-Six-Books-Euclid- Multilingual/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Byrne-Six-Books-Euclid- Multilingual/dp/3836559382/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=euclid+elements&qid=1571798232&sr=8-3)

<comment><USER3> diagrams invariably show only 2 dimensions, so you can't reasonably show anything that has complexity in more than three dimensions, which means any problem with three independent variables is out. Animation can add the missing dimension; well color can, too.

<comment><USER4> I'm cautiously optimistic about VR as a tool for teaching and understanding math up to three dimensions. You may have seen the "Non-euclidian virtual reality" video floating around YouTube ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztsi0CLxmjw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztsi0CLxmjw)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm suspicious of vector algebraic proof of the the Pythagorean Theorem.

Don't vector operation properties themselves follow from the Pythagorean Theorem (at least in their application to space and geometric objects)? If so, using them to prove the theorem doesn't make sense.

I'm not sure right now whether such circularity exists, but one should be careful.

<comment><USER6> It seems circular to me. It relies on ||x||² = x·x, but the fact that ||x||² = x₁² + x₂² = x·x comes from the Pythagorean theorem.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's quite circular, but in a sense you're right.

if c = -a + b, then for _any_ inner product you have

<c,c> = <a,a> \+ <b,b> \- 2<a,b> as a result of bi-linearity of the inner product.

By definition if <a,b> = 0 then a and b are orthogonal and a version of pythagoras' theorem holds.

But you're right in saying the choice of inner product

<x,y> = x_1y_1 + ... + x_ny_n

is motivated by pythagoras' theorem in Euclidean space.

<comment><USER5> By definition?

In the abstract world of algebra we are free to choose any definition (different rules will give different algebras).

But if we want our algebraic manipulations to prove the theorem about geometric objects we need to prove isomorphism between our algebra and the geometric objects and operations on them.

I doubt distributivity and other properties of operations on _geometric_ vectors can be proven without the the Pythagorean theorem.

<comment><USER7> > By definition?

Yes, in a Hilbert space (i.e. an abstract vector space with an inner product), the definition of orthogonality is that the inner product of two nonzero vectors is zero.

I'm not sure I really know what you mean by _geometric_ vectors.

<comment><USER5> Well... think harder, what can I say :)

<comment><USER7> From that comment I'm not sure you do either.

<comment><USER5> I suspected trolling in your question about geometric vectors.

Sides of a triangle and elements of your algebra are different domains. In order to translate results between them one needs to prove this makes sense.

In the article the author only shows that inner product of c by itself equals to sum of inner product squires of a and b, if a and b are orthogonal.

Who told you this has anything to do with lengths of triangle sides?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Excellent post.

In my experience, algebraic thinkers absorb information _much_ faster than visual thinkers, but they more often make silly conceptual errors that visual thinkers don't make. For example, an algebraic thinker might accidentally add a vector to a scalar, since their symbols look identical on paper. But a visual thinker would be much less likely to do this, since their visual representations for scalars and vectors would likely be so distinct.

A rule of thumb: when short-term speed is crucial, think algebraically. When long-term understanding is crucial, think visually.

One problem with algebraic intuition is that it leave ideas "unhooked" in your mind. I mean this in the following sense:

> While you are leaning things you need to think about them and examine them > from many sides. By connecting them in many ways with what you already > know.... you can later retrieve them in unusual situations. It took me a > long time to realize that each time I learned something I should put "hooks" > on it. This is another face of the extra effort, the studying more deeply, > the going the extra mile, that seems to be characteristic of great > scientists. -- Richard Hamming

Algebraic proofs are stored as symbolic/syntactic movies in your head. But syntactic movies resemble other syntactic movies, causing algebraic proofs to blend together with all of the other symbolic/syntactic theorems. Visualizing proofs, on the other hand, makes each theorem significantly more distinguished from each other. You are much more likely to recall and understand important facts this way, in my opinion. You are therefore more likely to apply them in novel ways to solve new problems.

Here Einstein famously describes visual vs. syntactic thinking in a letter to Jacques S. Hadamard:

> (A) The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to > play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem > to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear > images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined.

> There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and > relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive > finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this > rather vague play with the above-mentioned elements. But taken from a > psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential > feature in productive thought — before there is any connection with logical > construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to > others.

> (B) The above-mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of > muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for > laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play > is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will.

> (C) According to what has been said, the play with the mentioned elements is > aimed to be analogous to certain logical connections one is searching for.

> (D) Visual and motor. In a stage when words intervene at all, they are, in > my case, purely auditive, but they interfere only in a secondary stage, as > already mentioned.

A good friend of mine has a PhD in physics, and is a classic algebraic thinker. He is so, so much faster than me. But he once remarked that he forgets the proofs of almost everything he learned in grad school, and has to get back into the concrete exercises to regain his algebraic intuition. Visual thinkers may be slow, but they never forget.

<comment><USER9> IMO the post is a little circular. If we rely upon the projection product of Euclidean vectors, we've already _granted_ Pythagorean theorem in our assumptions.

There's a lot of ways to arrange things visually, but knowing we want c^2 really cuts the options down; knowing that we also will have a and b be degree two in the relation pretty much constrains us to that shape. We need a and b in some form on the sides, and we need a square with sides c.

If we prefer, once we have the "4 triangles" model, it's easy for us to proceed to elementary algebra if we want, rather than relying on a geometrical transformation:

      (a+b)(a+b)       area of the big square
      1/2 (ab)         area of each of the triangles
      (a+b)(a+b) - 4 * 1/2 (ab) = c^2
                       take the area of the big square, take the
                       little triangles out, only the c^2 square remains
      a^2 + 2ab + b^2 - 4 * 1/2 ab = c^2
                       distribute
      a^2 + b^2 = c^2
                       simplify

If you hate 4 triangles, you can easily do it with 2 of the a by b triangles, and a c by c right triangle forming a trapezoid. There's myriad geometrical constructions to start with before we get to the algebra. But we need to have _some_ kind of geometric construction that leads to the algebra to conclude geometrical relations from algebraic relations.

<comment><USER10> > _If we rely upon the projection product of Euclidean vectors, we 've already > granted Pythagorean theorem in our assumptions._

The Pythagorean theorem in particular (and any theorem in general) is always a little bit "circular"; the relation is inherent in any definition of perpendicular in a model of Euclidean space.

In geometric algebra (where multiplication of vectors distributes over addition), the two statements _a_ ² + _b_ ² = ( _a_ \+ _b_ )² ⇔ _ab_ \+ _ba_ = 0 are obviously equivalent, so taking either of them as a definition for "perpendicular" immediately proves the other.

<comment><USER11> You need more than the definition of perpendicular, you need the definition of "angle" in such a way as to ensure flatness of your space, otherwise a triangle might not correspond to three vectors that sum to zero. In this case, you cannot obtain the pythagorean identity from the algebraic identities.

Remember a triangle is a set of 3 curves living in your space that meet back up. But angles between curves are measured as angles between the tangent vector to the curves and do not live in your space, they live in the tangent space.

A triangle on the sphere, for example, has angles that don't sum to 180 degrees and the three tangent vectors do not sum to zero even though the three curves meet back at the same point.

So what's crucial here is an assumption of flatness, which allows you to associate a tangent space to the underlying space in a way consistent with the underlying metric. This allows you to make the association between geodesics (distance minimizing curves in your geometry) and vectors in your tangent space so that you can pretend that the straight lines actually live in your space and are also distance minimizing. This is what you need for the pythagorean theorem.

This is not something that you can get just from the distributive law, you need the distributive plus the property that a triangle has angles that sum to 180, or equivalently that the tangent vectors to your triangle can be embedded in your space and sum to zero.

<comment><USER10> Notice I mentioned "Euclidean space". That inherently involves flatness. Obviously there are several premises/axioms needed to set it up, and a variety of ways to do so.

In Euclid, we have the famous parallel postulate which helps us establish flatness.

> _angles that don 't sum to 180 degrees_

Note that Euclid's _Elements_ nowhere mentions angle measures. It only describes the concept of a right angle (and angles more or less than right). The Pythagorean theorem does not depend on angle measures. If you ask me angle measures are a quite poor/confusing tool to introduce in introductory Euclidean geometry courses, since they are a type of logarithm, and much more inherently complicated than the rest of a typical geometry course.

> _triangle is a set of 3 curves_

This is one possible definition of "triangle". For Euclid a "trilateral figure" is contained by three straight lines, and "A straight line is a line which lies evenly with the points on itself." (Which has been rather hard for readers to interpret throughout time.)

* * *

Tangentially, I've been working a lot with spherical triangles in my ongoing project. :-) [https://observablehq.com/d/5e75dd8e56fe255f](https://observablehq.com/d/5e75dd8e56fe255f)

<comment><USER11> How you are going to define euclidean space without the pythagorean theorem? That's basically the definition of euclidean. But the advantage of the pythagorean theorem is it allows you to measure how you deviate from flatness by comparing the difference of c^2 with a^2 + b^2.

<comment><USER10> That was my point upthread (any proof of the Pythagorean identity is somewhat circular, since it is inherent in the structure).

The way Euclid does it is to set up various axioms which imply flat space without explicitly declaring the Pythagorean identity to be an axiom. But you could easily do it the other way around. Euclid's axioms (and other alternatives proposed over the years) were chosen specifically to make the Pythagorean identity true.

Cf. Feynman [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxKw4xEEFHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxKw4xEEFHQ) (proximately relevant bit starts at about 22 minutes)

Also Lakatos: [https://math.berkeley.edu/~kpmann/Lakatos.pdf](https://math.berkeley.edu/~kpmann/Lakatos.pdf)

<comment><USER11> I see, yes, Euclid's axioms are not the most intuitive approach to different geometries.

What is nice is to have the tools to examine what the properties of a given geometry are, and given that geometry is a matter of curvature, it's not going to be decided by the tangent plane, it's going to be decided by the second derivative. You can get at that explicitly by embedding your space in a flat space like R^N and looking at the second derivative, or you can do intrinsic operations like parallel transport. E.g. look at small variations in the tangent plane from point to point. But the second derivative is key. Geometric algebra lives in the cotangent plane so it alone is not going to detect issues of curvature in your underlying space. This is true even though a lot of important calculations about differentials and volume elements are happening in that cotangent plane, so it's an important thing to get right, but it can't detect issues of curvature and thus it can't 'prove' the pythagorean theorem, which is a flatness statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great. Makes me want to do a similar post for chess. Whenever I try to explain to people what chess thinking involves I compare it geometry. Finding visual patterns on the board. But there's also calculation and tactics which is very similar to algebraic thinking in terms of how you can derive a solution by following rules.

<comment><USER13> I tried reading chess strategy books but it was always the mobile puzzle apps that really trained me to be a better player.

Like programming books which demand you actually type out examples (which IMO is really useful) the same is true for almost all learning. Especially for something like math.

Khan Academy mixed short instructional videos with quick tests which I found quite useful. but nothing beats thinking it out from scratch and building your own stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://abstrusegoose.com/376](https://abstrusegoose.com/376)

</comment><comment><USER15> Good thing Geometric Algebra exists, where the difference between the two is really blurred.

Check out bivector.net, a new community for GA enthusiasts.

Join us on discord [https://discord.gg/vGY6pPk](https://discord.gg/vGY6pPk)

The revolution is nigh.

Check out this demo of ganja.js, a GA JS framework affiliated with bivector

[https://observablehq.com/@enkimute/animated- orbits](https://observablehq.com/@enkimute/animated-orbits)

<comment><USER16> You might like some of the other posts on the blog! I've written several other posts showing how Geometric Algebra can be used in plane geometry problems that would typically be treated with lengths and angles.

Most recent post, which links to other parts of the series: [https://www.shapeoperator.com/2019/02/10/proving-theorems- ab...](https://www.shapeoperator.com/2019/02/10/proving-theorems-about-angles- without-angles/)

An older post applying GA to the geometry of sunsets: [https://www.shapeoperator.com/2016/12/12/sunset- geometry/](https://www.shapeoperator.com/2016/12/12/sunset-geometry/)

<comment><USER17> Your sunset post was my first introduction to GA. What a rabbit hole! It has been one of the most fascinating subjects I have got into in the last years, and very useful for my work. Thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Blacks with no criminal record have same sucess geting jobs as whites out prison - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opinion/sunday/when-whites-just-dont-get-it-part-6.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> He links to a study on unjust school funding:

[http://viz.edbuild.org/maps/2016/cola/resource- inequality/#s...](http://viz.edbuild.org/maps/2016/cola/resource- inequality/#stateAvg)

The analysis here is flawed. An example that doesn't make sense is NYC. If you use the dropdown to go to New York and checkout NYC, your conclusion would be that all NYC students are unjustly funded and have much less than everyone else. But.... that makes no sense. New York City has some of the best public schools in the country.

Yes, the funding is imbalanced and unjust. But it doesn't support his claim that it's biased towards whites _and_ asian-americans. Asian-Americans are in many poorer neighborhoods in NYC but perform well in test scores despite the lack of funding.

I should clarify - I'm not saying that school funding shouldn't be more balanced, or that imbalanced funding doesn't have a strong impact in other municipalities. But suggesting a one-to-one mapping of school funding to education quality by race is ridiculous. And yet, people make that lazy argument all the time. No one wants to dig into root causes.

<comment><USER3> Segregation has always been bad in North but that was and has been continuously swept under the rug for decades. Even Malcolm X called them out on it when everyone was going after the South.

Still I want to see job prospects numbers across fields and education levels. Are we comparing apples to apples here? If you just say "all whites" and "all blacks" that discounts people with good education versus poor ones. So does this trend hold true at all income levels? All education levels? All areas of the country?

Obama blew such an opportunity to change the culture of destruction many black Americans face in cities. He had eight years to lead that change through being inspirational, through challenging the young men and women, even the adults into, working towards a better day for their own children. When your focus is your party and not the people you have made the wrong choice.

<comment><USER4> Obama gave plenty of respectability politics[0] speeches. This argument is as old as U.S. Reconstruction. The problem isn't inspiration, working hard, or wanting a better day for their children.

Actual laws set up these neighborhoods, schools, prisons, and employment consequences.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Article talks a lot about blame on white people, yet it doesn't even contain the information that black employers hire differently than white employers.

Also, project implicit, the unconscious bias test referenced in the article, has been debunked: [http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/psychologys-racism- meas...](http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring- tool-isnt-up-to-the-job.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hard numbers are ugly numbers. This is important stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> Could the headline be a little clearer? The typos in particular threw me off...

</comment><comment><USER8> That's because racism is just the extreme version of difference intolerence. Doesn't matter what the original group has in common, they will gang up on who is different, whatever the difference. The conversation shouldn't be limited to racial matters, the problem is lack of awareness that difference in and of itself causes the unaware to oppress.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Why do we discriminate? The big factor isn't overt racism. Rather, it seems to be unconscious bias among whites who believe in equality but act in ways that perpetuate inequality."

\</comment><comment>--

Aliefs[1] are a useful concept here. i.e. You may believe in equality but, thanks to the culture you live in, act against that belief unconsciously. There are a lot of reasons for people to alieve that blacks are less employable. Take, for example, Gangsta rap and it's continuing popularity. Here you have an art-form that glorifies materialism, violence, and lawlessness and is dominated by black artists. Few employers are likely to explicitly believe it is logical to fear or mistrust black job applicants because of gangsta rap, but its popularity nevertheless plants aliefs that contribute to the difficulties faced by black job-seekers.

\</comment><comment>--

"Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, an eminent sociologist, calls this unconscious bias "racism without racists," and we whites should be less defensive about it. This bias affects blacks as well as whites, and we also have unconscious biases about gender, disability, body size and age. You can explore your own unconscious biases in a free online test, called the implicit association test."

\</comment><comment>--

It's important to draw a distinction between acting on racist _beliefs_ and racist _aliefs_. Some would say the latter is being racist without knowing it, which is offensive to most and probably counterproductive to say. At present, racists are popularly viewed as demons to be mocked and punished. Even if there is a basis for calling someone acting on their aliefs racist, doing so is going to offend and hurt them and likely turn them against you. Subtler language is required here.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alief_(mental_state)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alief_\(mental_state\))

<comment><USER10> "Aliefs" are what I think of as the "privilege" in "white privilege." It's very real. We have distinct, systemic advantages that influence how we interact with others who aren't white, and one way this manifests is through this sort of "racism without racists" concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there techniques for neutralizing the effects of things like race during the hiring process that could help make these sorts of decisions more objective?

I'm reading _The Undoing Project_ by Michael Lewis and it digs into things like this with great enthusiasm. Making people aware of their own inherent biases and devising criteria that help make objective decisions is not easy, but often necessary. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undoing_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undoing_Project))

<comment><USER12> Blinding.

An example is orchestras. They use a screen so that the people deciding between musicians can't see the person auditioning.

<comment><USER11> You can only get so far with this, that's the problem. Eventually the candidate will show up and people will make snap judgements.

"He's wearing gang clothes" or "I thought he was a rapper" and you're going to have massively skewed data.

A coding interview conducted via online chat only, no voice, could be educational, but it might also over-select those used to texting and online chatting.

<comment><USER4> > You can only get so far with this

Is improving a problem not worthwhile without completely eliminating it?

> "He's wearing gang clothes" or "I thought he was a rapper"

Are gang clothes business attire now? That's what I see people of color wearing to interviews and work.

<comment><USER11> I'm speaking about impressions, not the actuality of it. One person's casual attire, which is the norm for a lot of interviews now, might be interpreted as "gang clothes" even when they're clearly not.

Like is a simple Kangol t-shirt "gang clothes"? By the same token a Lulu Lemon or Izod shirt is, they're just different "gangs". People have a way of reading into things. A well-dressed black person might look "like a drug dealer" while a scruffy white dude might look "like a real programmer". It's a matter of perception. Our pattern matching is often badly distorted by the media.

Improving is always a good idea, but if it completely handicaps entire groups of people it's not necessarily an improvement, it's just shifting the artificial rejection criteria.

<comment><USER4> Please don't use clothing as a straw man for a real issue.

Blind interviewing does not handicap anyone. The way to improve the perception of an applicant as a gangster or a rapper is for them to prove it on the job. You want the most qualified right? Hire based on actual qualifications. Implement a dress code for your conscience and get back to business.

<comment><USER11> It's a real issue. Many people have found that clothing is often the biggest impediment to being treated seriously on the job.

It affects women and minorities in different but equally profound ways. Meanwhile white males can wear _whatever_ and nobody cares. Bath robe to work? "He's a 10x coder, we just let him do his own thing..."

This isn't about a "dress code", this is about _perception_. You could have a company mandated uniform where everyone wears exactly the same thing and they'd still find reason to be suspicious of people.

I use the clothing problem as an example because it's the biggest one. There are too many stories of people not being taken seriously because of what they wear when what they're wearing isn't the least bit unprofessional or inappropriate. It's just how people project things onto appearances.

> Blind interviewing does not handicap anyone.

Can you name one company that uses an actual blind interview _for a technical positions_ successfully? How about a company that can apply the same rigour to technical and performance reviews?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hate to go on my regular rant on this, but anonymous interviewing is the only answer. I could post literally thousands of studies, but everyone is already familiar with one of the more infamous.

Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873](http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873)

</comment><comment><USER14> There are studies that show that given names associated with black culture are less successful in the job market.

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873](http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873)

Not only in the job market but, also receive a worse treatment at schools and libraries.

</comment><comment><USER15> The headline makes it sound like "blacks who get out of prison with no criminal record have same success getting jobs as whites". That's how I read it, anyway, and I was wondering how you get out of prison without a criminal record. :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I take it this is in America and not an international study?

</comment><comment><USER17> Why was this flagged?</comment>


Is Jordan Peterson the stupid man's smart person? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/is-jordan-peterson-the-stupid-mans-smart-person/ <comment><USER2> I'm sure there's some sort of malevolence and grifting involved as well.</comment>


Apple readying new external 5K Display that may feature an integrated GPU - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2016/06/01/apple-readying-new-external-5k-display-as-current-model-goes-out-of-stock-may-feature-integrated-gpu/ <comment><AUTHOR> This makes a lot of sense. I only need a big GPU if I'm using a big display, so put it in the display that can be heavy and is always connected to power. I wonder if they'll use Thunderbolt over USB-C or something else over USB-C.</comment>


What is the hardware revolution?  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.upverter.com/what-is-the-hardware-revolution

<comment><USER2> Looks like Zak's put a lot of effort into this one. Check out the "Hardware Ecosystem Overview" infographic in particular :-)

[http://blog.upverter.com/static/images/hardware_ecosystem.jp...](http://blog.upverter.com/static/images/hardware_ecosystem.jpg)

[ disclosure: I'm an Upvertor ]

<comment><AUTHOR> I really enjoyed the infographics in this post. Do you guys do those in house?

<comment><USER3> Yup, we have an amazing graphic designer!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is brilliant, and a good thing.

Unfortunately, we in the EU are going to be left behind on this one, due to the more arduous product approval required before you can sell any electronic product :(

<comment><USER3> Where are you in Europe?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hosting in China - <AUTHOR>

A startup I'm founding with a few friends will be offering a web service in China. Although we have people that are based there and very familiar with the business side of things they have no clue about the technological side and therefore also no idea about the hosting solutions available.<p>Does anyone here know or have experience with a Chinese hoster that provides reliable (priority) and affordable hosting? <comment><USER2> My company actually uses hosting in Hong Kong. But to note, in HK you can still get blocked by the firewall, but they respond quickly and change IP's. Dedicated/VPS solutions not so easy.

You will also need an ICP number for hosting inside mainland China. This is linked to the IP number. You need this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bur for Hosting in Hong Kong that provides the service to mainland China I guess no ICP number is needed, right?

Also, since you seem to have quite a bit of experience, what is your take on Hosting on EC2 (Singapore) or other similar solutions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you speak Chinese? I'm an American working in China, and I can point you to a number of sites that offer hosting here, though the sites are almost exclusively in Chinese. Feel free to shoot me an email: firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will shoot you an email. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This topic has been discussed a number of times on chinese-forums.com ([http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner- pub-5008220562729147%3A...](http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner- pub-5008220562729147%3A7zul9k-rsau&ie=UTF-8&q=hosting&siteurl=www.chinese- forums.com%2Findex.php%3Fapp%3Dcore%26module%3Dsearch%26do%3Dsearch%26fromMainBar%3D1%3Fs%3D43baef949395cd4543355743acfaa0e4))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the hint, will take a look.

Update: Not really a lot of Information and quite old. The most relevant thread I found was from 2007.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a student studying abroad in Shanghai right now, I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised by the speed at which the sites I host at slicehost.com load. Granted, when I ssh in to manage the stack it lags quite a bit, but it seems you'll probably be developing from the US side.

In summary, I think that any good US hosting service probably has reliable speeds in China too.

On a different tangent, I'm currently writing a research paper on differences between US and Chinese business practices. If you could answer some questions, or me to someone that'd be great! firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER6> Why does the hosting have to be chinese? The advantage of internet based startups is that everything is global. I'm sure there are great hostings in South Korea, for instance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know about a good Host in the region then.

There are quite a few reasons why hosting in Chine would make sense, the number one being latency.

<comment><USER7> You can host on Amazon EC2, selecting the Asia Pacific (Singapore) region (the same goes for S3, SimpleDB, etc). I'm not sure if the plan is to go global, but if you do, you can easily expand into US (East and West) as well as EU (Ireland).

<comment><AUTHOR> The plan is to stay local as the service is tailored to the Chinese market.

I've been thinking of Amazon in Singapore as well, especially in combination with Scalr which would allow for a certain degree of automatic scaling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> i'm a chinese,it's too complicate to offering a web service in china,because you have to get a bunch of licences from the government,and the censorship,you know. so,it's better hosting your web at like ec2,linode or something. or you can check this out <http://www.net.cn>

</comment><comment><USER2> candis.com.cn is the only one to use!

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate why? What was your experience with them?

My Chinese is a bit rusty (actually non existent) so I will have to trust Google Translate and my Partners for a translation of the site, the English language version doesn't work for me.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you stream? Why and what? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> In order to get over camera shyness and also to build up career capital, I started a YouTube channel four months. It's now reached 1.4k subscribers.

Topics:

— behind the scenes code and marketing tours of my 1-man web-app biz (it's been running for 10 years and while it doesn't earn big bucks, it provides for all my financial needs)

— "timeless" programming concepts (e.g. unix, vim, testing, checklists for reducing errors, data constraints)

Not quite live-streaming yet, but I think I'll be ready to go real-time soon.

I would say that three months of YouTubing has been incredibly rewarding. More so than a decade of blogging. The main reason is because you generate a much stronger bond with your audience when they see your face and hear your voice. I've received lots of thank-you emails and video call invites from really interesting people around the world.

Here's the channel: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC17mJJnvzAa_e9qQqLIfIeQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC17mJJnvzAa_e9qQqLIfIeQ)

</comment><comment><USER3> I do not, but I want to try streaming a hobby of mine and some projects around it. There is a great post[1] from about a month ago which goes over the gear and setup for a coding stream. I think with a lot of undertakings like this it's best to not get intimidated by gear and setups and just jump into it, no one's watching, yet(!)

[1]: [https://jordanlewis.org/posts/twitch-live- coding/](https://jordanlewis.org/posts/twitch-live-coding/)

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Yes, over at [https://twitch.tv/pyatl](https://twitch.tv/pyatl) 2\. Because its a great way to pay it forward by sharing my knowledge/experiences 3\. Python related stuff for the time being

<comment><AUTHOR> Followed you!</comment></comment>


VengeCycle: GPS-activated explosive in the bike's handlebars, handled by an app - <AUTHOR> http://vengecycle.com/

<comment><USER2> Has to be fake as this very likely falls under booby trapping laws which are illegal in most if not all states.

Not to mention a dozen perfectly legal or exigent reasons which might require a civil servant(LEO, fire fighter, etc...) to move your bike who could be harmed, maimed or killed.

</comment><comment><USER3> If this is not a joke then it's a massive failure of morals. How will they feel when the thief steals a bike for their 5 year old daughter?

"And (as for) the male thief and the female thief, cut off (from the wrist joint) their (right) hands as a recompense for that which they committed, a punishment by way of example from Allaah. And Allaah is All Powerful, All Wise" [al-Maa'idah 5:38]

Enough said.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's to stop a thief buying a VengeCycle kit, that includes the 7-star key, and then using that to dispose of the explosives on other people's bikes?

<comment><USER5> Not to mention just 3D printing the key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I haven't read a story in quite some time that had me checking if it was the beginning of April so much as this one.

</comment><comment><USER7> So basically pipe-bombs strapped to handlebars? Should go over well with Homeland Security.

</comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a massive liability. I hope this is a joke.</comment>