Evernote CEO Shares The Numbers that Makes Freemium Work - <AUTHOR> http://toddsattersten.com/2010/02/fixed-to-flexible-interview-with-evernote-ceo-phil-libin.html

<comment><USER2> Some metrics:

From the article:

60 servers

35% active users (defined as being active a given month)

2,335,676 total users

41,598 premium users

38972 users per server

4 sysadmins

$68,641 - Total variable expenses (hardware + software + hosting + network + operations staff + support staff)

$145,000 - Total revenue from active premium users

From this we can deduce some interesting numbers:

free/paying ratio (all users) - 1,7%

free/paying ratio (active users) - 2.2%

revenue per user (all users) - $0,06

revenue per active premium user - $3,5

Variable expense per user - $0,29

38927 users per server

583919 users per sysadmin

I particularly find the $0,06 revenue per user interesting, since it gives a rough number to work with if you're doing a freemium website. Eg. if you need $10.000 in monthly revenue to break even you will need 166.666 users.

<comment><USER3> I'm starting up my own tiny business and have been spending a great deal of time understanding how to optimize every part of the product infrastructure to minimize cost (to a reasonable level).

$68K per month blows my mind if the number represents monthly expenses instead of yearly given the number of active users. I've an iPhone game with over 3MM active unique users and by my math I can host a multiplayer solution for less than $800/month. Granted, my service will not be sending giant PDFs, notes, voice memos, etc. but still... What am I missing? I am not being snarky. I need to learn.

Also, is the 4 ops guys per 60 servers a non-shocking number? When I worked at Yahoo, the ratio of ops staff count to production server count was IMHO ridiculously high and I never understood why it was _required_. Sure, some redundancy and so on. Clearly I'm missing something though - what?

I'm eager to correct my misunderstandings if I'm the one off base here. Can you recommend where I might find similar (perhaps more detailed) descriptions of production environments by other companies?

<comment><USER4> "Also, is the 4 ops guys per 60 servers a non-shocking number?"

4 people is the bare minimum for realistic 24/7 support. Even if you just do "on call" support outside office hours, making sure someone (capable) is available every weekend and at o-dark-thirty every day is difficult with less than 4 people.

(Says a guy who spend too many years as part of a 2 or 3 person sysadmin team...)

<comment><USER3> I suppose it depends on the thing(s) being monitored though. I certainly do not want to have 4 people for my always-on development project. I am designing the system to be as fault tolerant and self-healing as possible so I do not have to have people (read: me) awakened at 3AM with alerts.

Maybe I'm insane or overly optimistic or both. Designing things to bend and not break is really difficult and time consuming. "Thanks Captain Obvious! You are so insightful!" No, I know, but I'm going through the cutting-of-teeth ritual now so these kinds of things are on my mind.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't necessarily depend on the things you are monitoring. If you are running one server, don't sweat it - if you are running anything more than 20+ server (my preference) and the capacity is constantly growing and you still don't have a 24/7 sysadmin. I think you are doing it wrong.

The key point is, if your business model depends on more user usage ie, more uploads more money (on a 60 server scale), you would like to have someone standby all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suspect their retention rates could be a lot better..

I paid for Evernote a year ago. The other day I got a mail saying my account had been reverted to a free one until I renewed. But I haven't bothered. Evernote is great but I rediscovered that the free account works just fine.. oops! If they'd notified me a week or two in advance, I'd probably have paid for year two for fear of "losing" my privileges (whatever they are).. but as it is, it still "just works."

Just pointing this out in case other startups consider dealing with renewals in the same way. If people are reminded of how awesome the free account is, there's less motivation to renew! I suspect I'll end up renewing just as a token of support though..

<comment><USER7> I find Evernote's free model oddly generous and I suspect their conversion rates could be much higher with some tweaking.

I use it every day and I don't come close to reaching my monthly limits. It's actually become one of my most used apps in recent months and I'd happily pay a monthly subscription for it - but the free plan is so generous I've never needed to.

<comment><USER8> Google's freemium services, such as GMail and Google Apps, are plenty generous, and they don't really get conversion until you buy an entire institutional version (and for universities, they even give you an institutional version for free).

Now, Google does also make money on ads, but the point remains that it really doesn't take a high conversion rate to get a freemium service to make money; as long as the cost per user is low enough, it can be beneficial to be very generous to your free users in order to attract a lot of people and get just a few more premium users.

<comment><USER6> In Google's case, though, it probably doesn't pay to waste time setting up systems to properly deal with small fry customers. And since the free users are being advertised to anyway, they don't miss out on much.

You're right though. Someone ran the numbers on Spotify (the music streaming service). They charge $15 a month for ad-free listening or you can just use it free. Based on average listener profiles, it worked out at something as small as 1-2% of the userbase needing to pay to cover all the streaming costs involved (from what I recall).

<comment><USER9> makes me think of <http://sivers.org/1pct> \- there's a number smaller than 1%...

<comment><USER6> Heh, except Spotify is good enough that most people should be paying for it.. _g_ Barely touch iTunes anymore and don't buy any music as it's nearly all on Spotify :-)

<comment><USER10> the problem with spotify is that storage and bandwidth costs are nothing compared what they will have to pay labels for not suing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's really interesting to me that he even considers taking Moore's law into account when doing cost planning, but of course it makes sense. I also like this line:

 _For a really quickly growing startup that's always doing something new, you have to multiply Moore's Law by Murphy's Law; "The number of things that will go wrong will double every year." Sure servers get cheaper, but you probably bought the wrong ones anyway..._

<comment><USER3> I cannot help it.

The number of things that go wrong with their text cum HTML editor _does_ double every year (EN for OS X)!

It's really quite poorly implemented. Plain text suddenly transmogrifies into bold text with a different font, deleting a CRLF causes the current paragraph to randomly have double-spaced lines, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> >> 1\. Make a product that a billion people will fall in love with and use for the rest of their lives.

>> 2\. Make it easy for a single-digit percentage of them to pay you a few bucks a month once in a while.

>> 3\. Make sure your variable costs are low enough that you can make a mountain of profit if you get #1 and #2 right.

This is great advice.

<comment><USER13> The vast majority of products (and web products) do not meet number 1. Appealing to a billion is not a prerequisite to being valuable or/and successful.

<comment><USER12> I think 1. was exaggerated. The model still works if you only appeal to a few thousand people who use your product for a while, if you can get some of them to pay you money.</comment></comment></comment>


Reverse Engineering for Beginners - <AUTHOR> https://beginners.re/ <comment><USER2> comments from a few months ago, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24098783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24098783)</comment>


Show HN: Houston – Zero-config Admin for Meteor - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/gterrono/houston <comment><AUTHOR> We've been working on Houston since originally building it for the Meteor hackathon this summer, and it's starting to be fairly robust and presentable. Would love more Meteor hackers to try it out in their projects and send feedback/requests.

Also, I'll be at the Meteor Devshop this afternoon - come say hi!

<comment><USER2> Looks nice, will try it on the web app I am currently building with Meteor. Does it or will it support migration of MongoDB data from different instances. Say for example, I've deployed onto <some_domain>.meteor.com and next want to deploy to a production instance at modulus.io, then migrate my data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Houston doesn't currently handle that natively, but it just so happens I wrote a script that handles migrating (or at least downloading) for you recently. See [https://github.com/AlexeyMK/meteor- download](https://github.com/AlexeyMK/meteor-download)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Houston" is already the name of a popular open source project by Mattt Thompson - [https://github.com/nomad/houston](https://github.com/nomad/houston)

<comment><USER4> It's the name of many things:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_(disambiguation)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_\(disambiguation\))

[https://github.com/search?q=houston&source=cc](https://github.com/search?q=houston&source=cc)

<comment><USER5> I love the name choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah, it's always tough. FWIW, Drew Houston is pretty cool too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very nice to see the Meteor community really producing stuff, I think the success of such frameworks depends at least 50% to this.

</comment><comment><USER7> My initial thought at the name: We're naming projects after Internet famous founders now?

I call dibs on Projects Altman and Collison.

<comment><USER8> Houston continues the tradition of "Meteor" puns - see Galaxy[0], Atmosphere[1], etc.

[0]: [http://www.meteor.com/blog/2012/07/25/meteors- new-112-millio...](http://www.meteor.com/blog/2012/07/25/meteors- new-112-million-development-budget)

[1]: [https://atmosphere.meteor.com/package/houston](https://atmosphere.meteor.com/package/houston)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't Greg involved with this?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I think so. What a swell guy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very cool! I'll give it a go in my project over the weekend and shoot you some feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking forward to it. My email is on my profile</comment></comment>


Working late at night? f.lux adapts screen color to night = no eye pain - <AUTHOR> http://radnomad.com/flux-the-missing-key-to-great-sleep/

<comment><USER2> Prefer the open source redshift: [http://jonls.dk/redshift/](http://jonls.dk/redshift/)</comment>


Burma releases Aung San Suu Kyi - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11749661 <comment><USER2> I'm thrilled by the news but not optimistic that Burma will free itself from kleptocracy anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> While this is great news, does it really belong on hacker news?

<comment><USER4> It is such great news! For some of us that are too busy, our first port of call for news is HN and although I agree with you this is possibly not for HN, this calls for an exception - as I know of no-one in the HN community that has not been looking forward for her release.</comment></comment>


Learning and Upskilling SaaS for Teams - <AUTHOR> http://www.marbleteams.com <comment><AUTHOR> We just launched Marble and gathering feedback. If you have been sharing links or articles with your team, then Marble is a product for you. We are turning ordinary links into learning paths that any team member can go through. Marble makes your learning progress accountable and you can 1\. Set a learning goal 2\. Create customized learning paths from different resources 3\. Exchange it with the team and track progress You don't need any special learning designer skills for that.

Thank you in advance for all enthusiasts and life long learners.</comment>


Futuristic Opener Lets You Drink Wine Without Uncorking the Bottle - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/07/31/coravin-wine/

<comment><USER2> It sounded cool until I got to the price. Probably not great for home use. If I interpret the cartridge pricing, it comes to 50-75 cents a push. If push means pour, then it's $4 per bottle. ok for a restaurant, but a hefty tax for home. I may be missing something though.

<comment><AUTHOR> This product makes it possible for restaurants and wine snobs with large collections to serve high end wines by the glass. Not for the average under $20 bottle wine drinker.

<comment><USER2> That's what I was thinking too. Restaurant use, not home use. If you're charging $15+/glass, the surcharge isn't too bad, and now you can serve 100s of bottles by the glass. It also enables tastings of super-premium wines.</comment></comment></comment>


Leap Motion Air Mouse on MacOSX - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaoKy8bTgT8

<comment><USER2> How do you "click" with your finger...

MS should buy these guys before they go live. This seems like the perfect accessory for Windows 8.

Being able to "touch" the screen without actually touching it would solve a lot of problems with finger prints on monitors and also make Win8 on non-touch machines more intuitive.</comment>


Khan Academy Gets 5 Million to Expand Faculty & Platform & to Build a School - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/11/04/khan-academy-gets-5-million-to-expand-faculty-platform-to-build-a-physical-school/#.TrYurm_MG4Y.hackernews <comment><USER3> Most of good teaching is not about well delivered lectures or clearly explained examples. Cookie cutter youtube lectures are just another resource.

The evidence suggests that its individualized instruction in a structured environment with clear expectations that is best -- of course you cannot scale this, but clever videos are no substitute.

The Khan Academy's audience tend to be good students-those who would thrive in any number of environments. Im not worried about these students.

Its the students who might have been great had they been exposed to a better environment that worry me. For this it takes good teachers and a system that attracts them to the field (which the current system does not).

<comment><USER4> Khan Academy actually works really well for underachieving students, and especially well for students with learning disabilities. If you watch any of Sal Khan talks, you will see that one of the biggest emphasis of KA is to prevent students from getting stuck and losing interest in a subject. The whole goal is to increase the meaningful time students have to interact with teachers. Having lectures delivered online and then having students actually talk to a teacher and have things explained to them instead of sitting and listening to a one size fits all lecture works much better.

<comment><USER3> If KA wants to be a nonprofit and do good, thats great. Charity is a good thing.

But dont do it as a startup. What they are doing is not revolutionary, but another resource (albiet valuable). KA does not solve the fundamental problem that smart people dont want to become teachers. In time the hype around KA will fade as the problem in ed persist despite its efforts.

The problems in education are structural. Technology cannot revolutionize a government monopoly. The major players have no incentive to change.

<comment><USER5> Are you familiar with the school trials that they're doing ? - <USER2> giving the videos as homework and spending the class time with teacher helping the kids with problems they had with understanding. Their performance metrics are also miles ahead of everything else.

(fyi they are a non-profit)

<comment><USER6> Can't find the link at the moment, but this is incorrect. The first results that came out of the initial trial showed no significant improvement in student performance using KA's approach compared to the traditional approach.

Edit: here is the link <http://blendmylearning.com/2011/08/31/the-results/>

<comment><USER7> This is a very promising result - apparently Khan is roughly as good as a traditional teacher provided a teacher is in the room. Now the important question is to figure out how much of the teacher can be done away with.

For example, can 1 teacher + Khan educate 80 students as well as 1 teacher without Khan educate 40? Or can we replace the (well paid) teacher with a lower paid day care worker for at least some of that time?

If Khan can reduce the number of teachers required to educate students, that would go a long way towards reducing our out of control spending on education.

<comment><USER8> I don't think that's the way to approach this. Replacing teachers with videos isn't going to make education better -- in fact, I'd argue it would make it worse.

There's a great deal of research in the effectiveness of different kinds of physics teaching, for example, and it all shows that the most effective method is interactive. Students often form misconceptions about concepts, and the only way to break those misconceptions is to engage them, have them think about problems, and tailor your explanations to address their confusion.

A video can't do this. Instead, a video could provide the groundwork so that a teacher could spend all his time working with students interactively.

So if you decide to cut down on teachers because of the videos, you're giving up the potential advantages in teaching that the videos would bring.

I can link to a few papers if you're interested.

<comment><USER7> _Replacing teachers with videos isn't going to make education better -- in fact, I'd argue it would make it worse._

Why argue? Why not simply test it?

 _There's a great deal of research in the effectiveness of different kinds of physics teaching, for example, and it all shows that the most effective method is interactive._

A video can't do this. But perhaps 2 hours of video + 1 hour of interaction might be just as good as the 2 hours of lecture + 1 hour of interaction provided by the current system. If so we can cut our teaching expenses by 2/3.

Khan provides a virtually free substitute for some pieces of our current educational system. The trick is to figure which pieces.

This is a big problem - the US spent $864B on government-sponsored education in 2009, more than it spent on the military.

 _Students often form misconceptions about concepts, and the only way to break those misconceptions is to engage them, have them think about problems, and tailor your explanations to address their confusion._

Khan is attempting to build automated systems that do exactly this.

<comment><USER8> > A video can't do this. But perhaps 2 hours of video + 1 hour of interaction > might be just as good as the 2 hours of lecture + 1 hour of interaction > provided by the current system. If so we can cut our teaching expenses by > 2/3.

Okay, but that doesn't improve education, it just makes it cheaper. It would certainly be a useful start; one could invest that money in hiring better- qualified teachers, or even a program where college students come in to do interactive tutoring.

> This is a big problem - the US spent $864B on government-sponsored education > in 2009, more than it spent on the military.

How much of this is personnel and salary costs for teachers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Khan Academy is such a beautiful idea. I can't wait to see if they try any new, whacky stuff at the brick & mortar school.

I wonder why people aren't trying to shut this down? Seems like "big education" companies would be making moves to squash the success of KA. Why buy a $300 textbook (like I just had to recently) on Meteorology when you can watch some YouTube videos?

It'll be interesting to see if this starts happening...I hope not, but at some point you have to imagine that bigger, older companies will try to step in.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is anyone from Khan here? Are you guys aware of Sugata Mitra's work?

Mitra has developed and proven a methodology for teaching children in-person using small groups and computers.

Mitra + Khan makes me jump out of my seat.

Here is an incredible introduction to Mitra's work : [http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educa...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html)

<comment><USER11> It seems to me that by cooperating with schools and introducing assessment, Khan risks losing his way. The educational value will not be improved by becoming more schoolish -- schools are the problem.

As hackers know and as Mitra showed, learning is fun. However it ceases to be fun when one is told what to study and pressured to compete for meaningless grades/scores/badges.

(IIRC, Mitra doesn't assess children directly in the sense of giving them grades.)

Also, now that Khan knows that children will be assessed on his video material, I expect that this will skew his future presentations in a bad way.</comment></comment>


Nymph: A slightly different version of C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/roecrew/nymph <comment><USER2> It seems like the compiler allocates memory a lot, and is very optimistic in assuming a) the allocation will succeed and b) strings won't exceed 999 characters plus a null terminator.

[https://github.com/roecrew/nymph/blob/master/nymph/example/n...](https://github.com/roecrew/nymph/blob/master/nymph/example/nymph_compiler.c#L179)

<comment><USER3> Seeing how many variables are declared and used like

      int *myDictLen = malloc(sizeof(int));
      *myDictLen = 0;

I strongly suspect that the author is basically unaware of the & address operator. I would suggest that learning C syntax is a prerequisite to improving it.

<comment><USER4> Why is declaration wrong? I am in process of learning C, and I don't see anything wrong.

<comment><USER5> You shouldn't new or malloc unless you need to. The more you allocate the more you leak.

Just stack/automatically allocate the resource and take the address with & then pass the pointer around. Because the data is automatically cleaned up you know you won't have any leaks (and certain whole other classes of bugs).

EDIT - Consider:

        int myDictLen = 0;
        int* myDictLenPtr = &myDictLen;

        /* now you can pass around the pointer myDictLenPtr
           to functions that can used an int* and it will be
           available in this scope and automatically cleaned
           up for you. */

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It looks like `new` instead of `malloc` and, what, `object`? But `printBox` takes object as an argument instead of binding it to `this` or `self` etc, so yeah, what's the point of this? Go, Rust and D exist, y'know.

<comment><USER7> I'd even say Vala.

<comment><USER8> Vala is much better with refcounting objects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Let's see what we can achieve by reworking C syntax ..

Without a shred of specification, only code: I predict, absolutely not a damn thing.

If code is your specification, then every time you type "git commit" you're changing the specification.

On the plus side, your code always implements the specification 100%, at all times.

The _public_ and _private_ stuff is irksome. Make one of them default. Have a way to declare that all names in a region of a file are public or private so that programmers don't have to repeat themselves.

       private: // default: can be omitted

       void helper_function_a(foo *f) { ... }

       void helper_function_b(foo *f) { ... }

       public:

       int api_function(...) { ... }

</comment><comment> le-mark Looking at the examples, not sufficiently different from C to be interesting, imo. Also, go?

Edit; Adding a bit more; when I think of a C like language I'd like to have, I'd like exceptions (naive impl with setjmp longjmp for example), and Java like "everything's a pointer, all allocation on the heap". And reference counting gc. I don't think anyone else would like this :)

<comment><USER10> No love for Vala?

<comment> le-mark No, I really admire vala, my understanding it's kind of dead ie won't migrate to future versions of gtk. What's your take on it?

<comment><USER10> I generally like the language, and its compiles-to-C model. It doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is: a GObject-specific language, not really a competitor to C++.

I seem to recall that the bindings weren't totally up-to-date though. The latest GTK outpaced the available Vala bindings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These sort of announcements should include language similar to Linux's:

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) ...

</comment><comment><USER12> What is changed? Mostly added object-orientation? How is this different from an early version of C++?

</comment><comment><USER13> I find the remarks a bit discouraging. It is not a bad exercise. It is quite creative as well. I had a look at nymph_compiler.c. Without using a lexer/parser generator, it is a bit hard to guarantee much about what it will be doing, or even to produce BNF specifications. But then again, I think they also abandoned bison for gcc, and started hand-coding the parser. Maybe the bison approach is also naive in its own way:

[https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2546...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/254694/why- did-gcc-switch-from-bison-to-a-recursive-descent-parser-for-c-and-c)

"A hand-written recursive-descent C++ parser has replaced the YACC-derived C++ parser from previous GCC releases."

"GCC switched to hand-written parsing because error messages are more meaningful when using recursive descent techniques. Also, C++ is becoming such a (syntactically) complex language to parse that using parser generators is not worthwhile for it."

It is strange, because the more complex the language, the more I would expect that they would move to lexer/parser generator tools, while it seems to be exactly the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think what we really need is a more accessible process for proposing features for C. The difficult part will be balancing this with keeping C a small, focused language.

</comment><comment><USER15> If anyone wants to take a look at a solid attempt at a better C, take a look at Clay.

[http://claylabs.com/clay](http://claylabs.com/clay) [https://github.com/jckarter/clay/](https://github.com/jckarter/clay/)

</comment><comment><USER16> This would be more interesting if the goals section of the readme had content...

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks like C+.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why?

<comment><USER3> RTFA, this is clearly addressed:

      Goals

        ...</comment></comment>


GlaxoSmithKline makes $300M investment in 23andMe, forms 50-50 R&D pact - <AUTHOR> https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/glaxosmithkline-makes-300m-investment-23andme-forms-50-50-r-d-pact <comment><USER2> I asked 23andMe if there was any way to delete my genetic data from their site after the Equifax hack news. From their response:

"23andMe and our third party genotyping laboratory will retain Genetic Information, date of birth, and sex as required for compliance with applicable legal obligations, including the U.S. Federal Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA), California Business and Professional Code Section 1265, and College of American Pathologists (CAP) accreditation requirements.

23andMe will also retain limited information related to your account and data deletion request, including but not limited to, your email address, account deletion request identifier, and record of legal agreements for a limited period of time as required by contractual obligations, and/or as necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims and for audit and compliance purposes.

We recommend that you review our full Privacy Statement for more information about deleting your data before submitting your request."

So basically, once your in their system, you can't get out.

And you're paying them money for this.

Any way to do self-DNA testing?

<comment><USER3> I believe there are services that will do whole genome seq for you for under $10k(and I assume won't keep your data). You could then use Promethease for analysis.

I'm unaware of any way you could do self-DNA testing at home unless you wanted to spend $100k+ on equipment, reagents, etc. The Nanopore might be relevant but I haven't looked into it much.

<comment><USER4> Full Genomes Corporation[1] will do WGS at 30x for $1295, WGS at 20x for $900, and Long Read WGS (newer technology) for $2900.

For Prime Day, Dante Labs[2] had a sale on a 30x WGS for $349; it's still on sale for $499.

Once you have a WGS you might consider donating it to the Harvard Personal Genomes Project[3], Open Humans[4], or putting it on GitHub[5].

[1]: [https://www.fullgenomes.com/whole-genome- sequencing/](https://www.fullgenomes.com/whole-genome-sequencing/)

[2]: [https://us.dantelabs.com/products/whole-genome-sequencing- wg...](https://us.dantelabs.com/products/whole-genome-sequencing-wgs-full-dna- analysis)

[3]: [https://pgp.med.harvard.edu/](https://pgp.med.harvard.edu/)

[4]: [https://www.openhumans.org/](https://www.openhumans.org/)

[5]: [https://github.com/beaugunderson/genome](https://github.com/beaugunderson/genome)

<comment><USER5> I've purchased a handful of Dante Labs 30x WGS kits on Amazon over the last couple of days. You didn't hear it from me, but the kits are still on sale on Amazon for $349...

... And an additional secret $100 discount during checkout.

This is $250 WGS at 30x coverage. It should be front-page news.

<comment><USER6> Are the results of WGS + analysis with promethease more insightful than the results of 23andMe?

<comment><USER7> Not for me. You obviously have more data, but like 23andme,I found very little of it to be actionable or useful. YMMV

<comment><USER6> What'd you use to analyze your genome, promethease?

I think that increased risks of x,y,z would be good to be aware of.

<comment><USER7> Yes, promethease. Have you done 23andme? It also gives you increased risks, but usually none that are helpful. For example, if it says that you have some Snaps that increase your risks of prostate cancer from 1 in 100 to 2in 100, what do you do with that? 2 in 100 is still so low (even though double baseline population risk), that it's not going to effect my decisions. That's also assuming it's accurate -- other SNPs may lower your risk.

<comment><USER6> I haven't done it because of privacy concerns, but I am considering WGS through a lab then promethease instead.

I don't think understanding risk would affect my decisions much either, but I'd probably get familiar with the symptoms of things I have a higher chance of to be able to recognize issues earlier. If there are screenings available, maybe I'd start doing them a little earlier or more frequently than prescribed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't want to spread FUD but why would ANYONE in their right mind give their DNA to a company in Silicon Valley that is explicitely using Google as a model for Data privacy ? (The founder of 23AndMe is the ex-wife of Google founder).

Even worse, people are actually PAYING quite a lot to get the privilege of having that company playing with your most private data.

This field needs to be heavily regulated. In 20 years we will be able to extract all type of crazy information from DNA and it might be our biggest liability if it is shared across private companies. This will truly be the dystopian future, in which every business will make a decision based on your public DNA profile.

As everything in Silicon Valley, they are hiding behind the fact that it can be used to make "The world a better place" and cure sone diseases. It should be clear what the end goal is though.

<comment><USER9> > In 20 years we will be able to extract all type of crazy information from > DNA and it might be our biggest liability if it is shared across private > companies. This will truly be the dystopian future, in which every business > will make a decision based on your public DNA profile.

I really doubt this. I've been genotyped by 23andMe and the most interesting information I've seen from their health reports are a handful of disease probabilities and some fairly useless-to-me traits (like, for instance, a probabilistic view of my hair color). Even if you jump into the fray with something like Promethease or look at data on SNPedia, each SNP only has a handful of studies and there's little to no research on hundreds of thousands of SNPs. Only a few sets have been analyzed for specific purposes like Alzheimer's and rare diseases, and those are indeed rare.

Science doesn't advance like the technology industry. It takes slow, methodical research to point to anything super conclusive. If we wanted a dystopia where job aptitude was determined by DNA, for example, we would need hundreds of studies and conclusive evidence that some genetic data indicates a very good match and not just a hunch. That research has to come from somewhere, continually be reproduced, and undergo the scientific process. That's all stuff that has to be paid for, which is something not a lot of people are willing to do.

> why would ANYONE in their right mind give their DNA to a company in Silicon > Valley that is explicitely using Google as a model for Data privacy ?

It's more of a curiosity thing. I get a more complete view of myself, and we potentially help advance research in medicine and diseases. It's symbiotic.

<comment><USER10> For stuff like this to be used by most people (that is to say dystopically and objectively wrong, like in a hiring process) we definitely don't need any sort of rigorous research. They already have those Myers-Briggs tests that have no actual basis in reality, not to mention the kinds of hoops you jump through to get your CV read that make no sense. The trouble is not (as far as I'm concerned) that this information will be used by competent, levelheaded scientists. The trouble is that everyone else might start using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Make no mistake about what is happening here. GSK is buying access to all of the genetic data that 23andMe has. This is why I am wary to use any 23andMe type of service.

"The partners plan to use 23andMe's data to jointly discover drug targets."

They will claim all kinds of protections of course, but it is only a matter of time until genetic data starts being resold.

<comment><USER12> I don't understand these concerns. I have published my data from 23andMe ([https://enki.org/2017/10/17/publishing-my- genome/](https://enki.org/2017/10/17/publishing-my-genome/)) ([https://github.com/mcculley/genes-genes](https://github.com/mcculley/genes- genes)). Can you share what you think the bad outcomes would be? What am I missing?

Edit: As people bring up the insurance risk, yes I did consider that and mention it in my post. I am personally not concerned about it and think the advantages outweigh the risk. Besides, I think insurances companies are going to have all the data soon anyway. If every time I get a blood test, they have a chance to capture my DNA, how can I stop them?

<comment><USER13> In the USA the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance and employment. No one in politically powerful positions has seriously advocated for repealing the law. The insurance companies don't even dislike it because it creates a level playing field; since the market is competitive, even if they were allowed to price health insurance based on genetic risk factors it wouldn't necessarily allow them to earn higher profits.

[https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/gina.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/gina.cfm)

<comment><USER14> This is true for health insurance; not so for life insurance.

<comment><USER15> What's wrong with a life insurance company getting a more accurate probability of me dying from some rare disease? Maybe my rates should be raised if there's a higher risk of me kicking the bucket. This works both ways too - my DNA can reveal that I will likely live a long premium-paying life. Insurance companies make money by being accurate, not by under or overestimating the risks. If DNA helps them be more accurate, good, maybe you can receive some of that value from improved efficiency.

<comment><USER14> Well, shucks, why not apply the exact same argument to health insurance as well? Or even auto insurance?

While adverse selection is undeniably a tricky problem, the underlying raison d'etre is pooled risk, to help individuals and families mitigate catastrophic losses. Maybe you're all right with the prospect of future analyses condemning to uninsurability folks with rare combinations of alleles that turn out to be strongly deleterious. To me, this seems like breaking the regulated semi- statis between insurers and insureds, and like breaking the social contract more generally.

<comment><USER12> If you are referring to the situation in the United States, where health care is managed mostly by private health insurance, it is already a terrible social contract.

The whole system is going to have to adapt to more information on individuals being available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I see a lot of people making claims about 23andme that haven't used the product, and I just wanted to inform people that in the contract you sign with them, they only share your data if you opt-in to it. They make this all very clear. You can also have them discard your sample and delete your info if you haven't opt-ed in to the research program.

Now trusting that 23andme is actually abiding by these rules is a different conversation.

<comment><USER17> Have you EVEN read the title??

They are not sharing this information with private entity aka. opt-in/out. They made partnership research & development agreement in with GSK with invest over $300MM. 23and me is not sharing our data outside their fences BUT this agreement will let them bring GSK into their playground and do all sorts of stuff with your DNA.

Worst case they will just buy the whole 23andMe as a company and once they own it, still your data technically haven't been opted-in/out anywhere, but Glaxo will do whatever they pleased with it :)

<comment><USER16> It was made quite clear in the agreement that they cannot use data for research if you opt-out, even inside their own company.

So you're saying any agreement someone has already made with 23andme in regards to their data usage has become null and void because of this investment? And would become if they were bought by another company?

<comment><USER18> It doesnt really matter whether you opted in or out. In the end, all that matters is whether the projected profits from abusing your data exceed the projected legal costs of doing do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 23andme has made a pretty impressive recovery after the FDA issues a few years ago, although i think the jury is still out on how useful their data will be for drug discovery. I think they mostly have genotype data rather than WES, and i think their clinical data is all patient reported? The value of their engaged audience seems clearer, especially if it can help enroll clinical trials faster

<comment><USER20> It may be that GSK isn't really interested in the existing 23&me product line, but wants their name recognition and infrastructure. 23 is as close as anyone to delivering a full GWAIS product to the public, which this partnership only enhances. Combined with large capacity cheap deep sequencing by someone like BGI, this partnership would be ideal for GSK to add in-house infrastructure to do a LOT of GWAIS for all kinds of drug target ID efforts or clinical patient stratification.

Maybe GSK has decided to target patients very precisely as standard practice in all future drug trials. This makes a lot of sense if you want a new drug to maximize efficacy or minimize toxicity by cherry picking your high responders and low intoxicants, thereby easily avoiding all folks who don't benefit from it, even if no-go patients are in the majority. But it also assumes such cherry labels will be available to physicians and insurers soon, presumably as de rigeur medical practice for the general public. Streamlining a product like 23's might make this initiative fly economically.

Done early in a drug trial, like phase II, you might be able to use deep genome data to tune up or rescue a new drug that looks promising but not quite promising enough to continue to phase III. Deep genomic analysis is a very promising way to stratify patients who will benefit from those who won't.

This looks to me like GSK has just bought into GWAIS in a big way for thousands or more patients, esp in clinical trials. This partnership can only help both companies, since I don't see a major pharma ever trying to take over 23's existing boutique geek navel-gazer business.

<comment><USER19> Yeah I agree that 23andme name recognition and brand is valuable and maybe best in class for engagement of patients with genomic data. So for clinical trial recruitment and marketing that would help.

I'm less convinced of the value of 23 and me data in drug discovery. It could be quite useful but is not best in class. The regeneron genetics center is a much better approach imo -- sequencing data vs genotyping, access to robust medical data, partnerships with leading medical institutions to get patients and data, and a targeted biology driven strategy that reduces the cost of getting a signal. As far as cost per good potential target, 23and me is probably an order of magnitude or more behind

Not sure how 23 and me would help GSK analyze genetic subpopulations -- GSK could sequence patients just fine on their own without 23and me and get more robust data than 23 and me genotype data. For biomarker discovery once you have a candidate and are moving into clinical studies there are probably much better targeted solutions than 23 andme

Value of 23 and me is 1) brand and 2) data on large number of pts. 2) helps with finding genetic markers with low effect size which isn't really helpful for drug discovery and also finding rare variants with large effect, which is important, but there are better / cheaper ways of doing that (i.e. regeneron)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find it seriously scary how 23andMe markets itself.

Externally, they're a family company helping you understand your family history and equipping you to anticipate health problems so you can prepare for them.

Internally, in presentations to venture capitalists and in job interviews with engineers like me, the picture is quite different. They're building a genetic database and plotting world domination from a thousand different angles that most people could never have even imagined.

This stuff is straight out of a dystopian sci-fi novel.

23andMe is very similar to Google in this regard. We never imagined Google would have so much access to data, we never thought of the consequences. Now Google wields an absolutely unfathomable level of power over everyone in the world, and all anybody can really do is trust them not to abuse it.

And also trust that all future generations and governments that inherit Google will never abuse it.

23andMe is one of those companies, but we aren't just talking about your searches and communications, we're talking about genetics and humanity and life itself on a very fundamental level.

The ethical and moral dilemmas haven't been brought to light yet in a meaningful way, but it's inevitable, and they're some seriously next-level moral dilemmas. Even for Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER22> Would you elaborate on these nebulous plans for world domination?

<comment><USER23> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> According to the National Institute of Health, Many drugs that are currently available are "one size fits all," but they don't work the same way for everyone. It can be difficult to predict who will benefit from a medication, who will not respond at all, and who will experience negative side effects (called adverse drug reactions). Adverse drug reactions are a significant cause of hospitalizations and deaths in the United States. With the knowledge gained from the Human Genome Project, researchers are learning how inherited differences in genes affect the body's response to medications. These genetic differences will be used to predict whether a medication will be effective for a particular person and to help prevent adverse drug reactions.

</comment><comment><USER25> How can I get a mapping of my genetic data where no one but me gets the results?

<comment><USER6> I would like to know this as well. Does genome sequencing through providers like Dante Labs guarantee that the data is not stores and/or shared? Are some providers better about this than others, and if so which ones?

Also, once you have the data, are there tools to analyze your sequencing without resorting to a web service? I don't mind setting up instances or a cluster for this purpose.

I am thinking that if genome analysis keeps improving in the insights it can provide, we could get to a point where some outcomes are predicted with near certainty. This data would be worth...infinite amounts to insurance companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The state that 23&me is incorporated in needs to pass a law pronto that says your dna belongs to you (despite any ToS).

Something about affiliates (and companies buying their way in) can't use your data without express written permission.

Probably want to call the European Union on how to get the wording right and not watered down by lobbyists.

</comment><comment><USER27> I personally wouldn't use their services for fear insurance companies obtain the data. Not just now but at any point in your life (through bankruptcy, change of ownership , etc.)

<comment><USER28> The genetically 'unhealthy' will flock for insurance which will increase premia and discourage the genetically 'healthy' from doing so. You cannot run a commercially viable life insurance in a situation where there isn't 'ultimate good faith'. One way or another testing will become compulsory for insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is anyone able to assess the quality of information security at GSK? I would expect reasonably protective InfoSec from 23&Me because of their close ties to Google, but GSK feels like a company too large to care, and without enough hackers at the top to be worried.

I was taken aback by 23&Me's anti-deletion contract, but with good security, I only have them to fear. If someone less scrupulous can access it, then I depend on their own security and that cascade tends to end up on haveibeenpwned.

<comment><USER30> They already deal with HIPAA compliance, so that's some reassurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> These are the perfect kind of studies to be performed by universities. Sad to see the role of academia declining, and the corporate world taking over.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's sad that you can no longer get your genetic health info in Europe from 23andMe, but does this mean GSK will only have access to American info?

<comment><USER33> I expect the paperwork you sign explicitly gives them unlimited rights to your data.

<comment><USER34> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17611256](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17611256)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's interesting that the ads target elderly people. It takes a relatively smaller number of elder customers to get at least partial DNA sequences for a larger swath of the population.

My personal conspiracy theory is all these biometric recognition (such as face) and DNA sequencing services are serving to compile a vast human identification database. With all the Intagraming, live streaming, voice listeners, etc. it becomes much easier to have mass surveillance. Someone is wanted by the FBI? Well, maybe he'll show up in a friend's daughter's Instagram selfie, or random tourist snapping pix, or Alexa listening into his friend's home. No more need for painstaking installation of covert surveillance to get the perp. Furthermore, with access and analysis of someone's online posts, this opens up the possibility to detect future crime. I bet there is big government money now for startups that can correlate a person across all these data sources.

Plus, this doesn't have to be in the government's hands. Dark web sellers have access to all this and more with all the data breaches. Such data can be used to compile lucrative targets for blackmailing or kidnapping, along with a pattern of life to make them easy to pick up.

</comment><comment><USER31> Has any medical condition been solved through genotyping (as done by 23andme) yet?

<comment><USER36> 23andMe as done several dozen publication performing GWAS using the genetic data combined with questionnaire data.

This type of study aims to link symptoms with genetic cause. They have actually made a pretty significant impact in genetics research. They list their publciations here [https://www.23andme.com/publications/](https://www.23andme.com/publications/)

<comment><USER37> Oh man that's very cool. I'm kind of a fan of 23andMe now. A bargain for GSK, I'd imagine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is an attempt to catolog every human being on this planet for surveillance.

I'm sure you know how an ex-cop turned out to be the infamous golden state killer.

While it's wonderful that these cold cases are now being solved, it also raises a strong privacy issue and also moral one.

If criminals know they will be caught eventually thanks to genealogy and DNA cataloging, wouldn't this drive them to get rid of the DNA altogether and escalate their crime?

<comment><USER39> In response to your final sentence, making it so criminals have to work harder to get caught is never a bad thing. Consider the alternative.</comment></comment>


How to Change Other People's Behavior - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nickwignall/how-to-change-other-peoples-behavior-without-damaging-the-relationship-bc403e2ac1f6 <comment><USER2> Stopping to engage beyond a minimum of respect and politeness, that is, controlling their (emotional) reactions towards the client, is a standard tool of psychologists. I remember being all in tears during a session, and my therapist appeared unsettling unaffected. Instead of entering my self-pity, she appealed on my self-responsibility. It worked.

But try this to your wife. If she is clever, she will demand reinforcement. So instead of changing herself, she will just accuse you being impassive, unresponsive or insensitive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Notice I didn't give any examples with my wife in the article :)

Thanks for the comment!</comment></comment>


Coronavirus and Credibility - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/cred.html <comment> chupa-chups So true, and in my point of view one of the, if not _the_ , most relevant aspects of the fake news pandemic: journalists not strictly adhering to known and provable facts.

This opens a flank to bullshitters, and in the matter of bullshit they will outperform anyone else, since that's their ground.

In my view of a non-fake-news world, journalists would always (1) provide a link to independent sources where possible.

(1) if possible, i.e. when it doesn't endanger someones life.</comment>


Ask HN: How much did you save out of your salary in 2015? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm able to save about 20% a year at the moment. Once I am out of debt (close!) that figure will thankfully skyrocket

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you counting 401k, or strictly after-tax dollars?

<comment><AUTHOR> Strictly after-everything dollars, cash that you saved and that you could use at the end of 2015.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Appx. 20 percent.</comment>


Milo: interactive way for young children to stay in touch with absent loved ones - <AUTHOR> https://www.vmbvoom.com/pitches/milo-1 <comment><USER2> What if they never come back, and the child is left hoping? :(</comment>


Ask HN: What algorithms do you use to handle time based event? - <AUTHOR>

Lets say you are writing a program that should send notifications at a user defined date. For example, a tasks management application should send notifications at the due date of the task, defined by the user. Any date can be inserted at any time in the list of "notifications" to send.
What algorithms would use? The best answer to that question was for me to use a priority queue.
I am curious to learn about alternative to that problem. <comment><USER2> A priority queue is usually an in-memory data structure. However, if you want to be able to schedule notifications in the distant future (e.g., a week or a year from today), you're going to need a stable and reliable way of storing them that can survive server re-starts, such as a database. Once your notifications are in a database, you can just run an SQL query that will select all the unsent notifications whose due date is between the last query time and the current date/time (after which you mark them as 'sent' or delete them). You'd want to have an index on the date/time field to allow for efficient retrieval.</comment>


The Ninety Dollar Shareware CD-ROM - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2829 <comment><USER2> tl;dr version:

"There are things you can do in one state or online that will get you in the fucking klink for years in another state. That Jury wanted 25 years of a man's life because he sold CD-ROMs they didn't like. They wanted tens of thousands of dollars from him after he got out. Meanwhile a woman stole images from Playboy, Disney and who knows else, sold those same CD-ROMs by the truckload, and made millions."</comment>


Ask HN: Wireframing - How should I wireframe? - <AUTHOR>

I was having a discussion with my designer friend about how to go about wireframing a site.
I was under the impression that if you have the skills to do so, using a framework such as twitter bootstrap and creating code would be a lot more efficient/lean than using a program such as omnigraffle to first wireframe through images, and then again create a prototype/wireframe in html.
What is the benefit of using the Omnigraffle -> Bootstrap Wireframe -> Dev
Vs.
Bootstrap Wireframe -> Dev
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Here is what I think:

1) If it is a fairly large website, then first get the core on paper, then fireup the Omnigraffle, sketch some initial screens in to it, and see if it make sense regarding flow.

OR

2) If it is not that big website, then starting with Twitter Bootstrap Framework will do the job.

See the thing is "what is the only I should do the wireframe", the real question is "What's the demand of the situation and context?"

<comment><AUTHOR> What is considered a big website?

I guess what I am asking is what benefits does OG bring you? If Bootstrap and OG took the same time to do would OG still be a necessary step?</comment></comment>


IPad To Dominate Tablet Downloads For Next Five Years, Owning 56% In 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/ipad-to-dominate-tablet-downloads-for-next-five-years-owning-56-in-2017-analyst/ <comment><USER2> I think their wrong.

Apple has done something wrong with the iPad Mini and that is that their products are can now be resembled through cost comparison.

Eg. Why should you buy a iPad Mini 32 gb. for 429$ when you can buy the Nexus 7" 32 gb. for 200$, Google even upgraded the storage (from 16-32gb) for free in later editions of their tablet.

And the specs on the 7" aren't wrong either. It also has fast upgrades and a cleaner UI because of Android 4.2. Advancements like Google Now and in Google Maps aren't found in the Mini, actually... Everything that can be done with an iPad, can be done with a Nexus. There are almost as much apps on the Play Store (it will surpass Apple's in 2-3 months) and augmented reality games like Ingress (from Google) make it truely awesome to join Google's community...

And it is a community, not a dictatorship :-)</comment>


Rules for Writing Clojure Programs - <AUTHOR> http://twoguysarguing.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/7-rules-for-writing-clojure-programs/ <comment><USER2> My naive 2 minutes solution :

        (reduce #(assoc %1 %2 (inc (get %1 %2 0)))
                {}
                "abcaaabcccaabrrcb")

EDIT: While it's shorter and (in my opinion) a lot clearer than the OP's solution, it's also consistently faster. Functionnal code and composition is cool, but i think the author got trapped into making his code beautifull, or maybe just into the wrong algorithm for the job. It happened to me before in clojure and other functional languages

<comment><USER3> Or as mentioned in the comments

        (frequencies "abcaaabcccaabrrcb")

with some optional sorting if that's required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I and many other experienced people on #clojure@freenode looked at this.

Heard comments such as:

        "Huh."
        "I can't believe -> and ->> are being demonized now."
        "I think if you're calling things rules you should be somewhat careful about how you phrase them..."
        "Someone is wrong on the internet."

<comment><USER5> The real reason why you want ->> can be seen in the code example for rule #7: instead of mapping the result of partitioning, it (wrongly) reuses a (i.e., the original list).

If bugs result in irregularity, then making regularity explicit (by using ->> or other macros/higher-order functions) can be a good thing.

<comment><USER4> Good catch!

That's a very good point, and a very hard bug to see when you "get lazy" and use a, b, c as step names.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was going to complain that parts of the article were disjointed and contradictory (Use -->, don't use -->, JK use it) until I noticed the name of the blog is "Two Guys Arguing."

Solution from the comments: (apply merge-with + (map (fn [c] {c 1}) "abcdaabccc"))

<comment><USER7> The problem with the latter solution is that apply isn't lazy. The more correct solution would be a simple reduce:

      (reduce #(update-in %1 [%2] (fnil inc 0)) {} "abcdaabccc")

<comment><USER8> I wonder if update-in or merge-with would be more efficient.

Another thing to consider is if you want to get fancy (persistent! (reduce #(update-in %1 [%2] (fnil inc 0)) (transient {}) "abcdaabccc"))

Still no REPL but this should work and take advantage of transients if you're doing it against a bigger dataset (which I assume you care about since you also worried about laziness)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A tradeoff to be aware of: the introduction of sort raises the complexity of the solution from O(n) to O(nlogn).

<comment><USER10> I saw that and flipped out. It also requires an extra two scans through the list, in addition to the memory overhead for the temporary structures. Happily, the merge-with suggestion is much more efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't take it harsh, but if it takes all _this_ for this simple theoretical problem, imagine for a real world problem. In my opinion, a pure iterative approach is really simpler:

(pseudo-code) :

<code> myset = {}

foreach c in mystring: if myset[c]: myset[c] += 1 else: myset[c] = 1

myset.sort(fn x,y: myset[x] < myset[y])

</code>

As I said, it's all about opinion (and I know there are million ways to simplify that or make it different, i.e. myset.get() or whatever), but I find the imperative approach way easier to gasp at first glance.

Compare that to:

(let [a (sort str) b (partition-by identity a) c (map (juxt first count) a)] (sort-by second > c))

First, I don't really like a,b,c as name variable (to be fair, myset and mystring are terrible too). Second, I find there are so many extra step to resolve this simple problem.. we need: partition-by, we need identity, we need juxt (wtf is juxt?). Third, wtf are first, count and second..?

I know high-level function are kewl, and working with lists are even cooler and using all of this in a 4 lines in a pretty clean way is again even cool- cooler. However, when I read this, even if there are less lines than the imperative way, it still takes more time to understand what the code is doing.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, but I think we'll have to agree that this just depends on background. I can figure out what the second is doing significantly quicker than the first.

When I think about this problem, my mind immediately thinks "well, I want to take all the characters, group them into buckets, one per letter, and then count how many are in each bucket." I don't think "I want to make an empty map, starting with each character mapping to zero, iterate over every character and increment an associated counter in the map, and then read out the counters at the end." If I have to write the second -- because my language has bad list libraries or no higher-order-functions -- I have to "translate" the first into the second in my head.

The Clojure code expresses the computation in exactly the same way it lives in my head. The imperative code expresses that like a computer does it, and to even understand it I have to "step through" it in my head a little bit to make sure the computer is doing the right thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A friend and I are working through Project Euler as part of our effort to learn Clojure. My code is littered with the pattern of (map #(list % (f %)) coll) all over the place... Very glad that I read this article (and the comments), and I think it's time for me to start exploring the clojure and clojure-contrib API's in earnest.

</comment><comment><USER14> (frequencies "abcaaabcccaabrrcb")

<comment><USER15> as a note, the source is:

      (defn frequencies
      "Returns a map from distinct items in coll to the number of times they appear."
      {:added "1.2"}
      [coll]
      (persistent!
       (reduce (fn [counts x]
                 (assoc! counts x (inc (get counts x 0))))
               (transient {}) coll)))

which I think is pretty much just Raphael's solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone convince me what is gained by stressing out over making an easy solution to a trivial problem concise and elegant like this? You have a perfectly good imperative solution which is the way almost any child would do it (go through things one by one and keep counts of every bucket), so what is gained by messing with that? Is it not time to move on to the rest of the program?

<comment><USER17> You're thinking like someone who most often _writes_ code. Think like someone who most often _reads_ code—a maintenance programmer, say—and the benefits become obvious. We get away in this industry with writing things that, upon being encountered again, immediately provoke "throw it away and start again" comments. This sort of code will not provoke those sentiments.

(That's not to say that it's actually good code—the article itself points out the problems—but those problems can actually be fixed by _modification_ , not _replacement_ , of the code, which is what we should all be striving for.)

<comment><USER16> Are you really going to defend that this isn't trivial to read:

        str = "abcaaabcccaabrrcb"

        dict = {}
        for ch in str:
            if ch not in dict.keys():
                dict[ch] = 0
            dict[ch] = dict[ch] + 1

        sortedItems = sorted(dict.items(), key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True)

<comment><USER18> No need to pick on poor python here :). With the pysistence library, you can write code that mirrors other solutions presented in this thread:

reduce(lambda d, c: d.using( __{c:d.get(c, 0)+1}), "abcaaabcccaabrrcb", make_dict())

I don't know enough about HN to know why it doesn't display the two *'s that need to be be right after d.using(. I also couldn't figure out how to do keyword arguments in python where the key is a variable, not a constant, so if any python expert knows how, you could remove 4 characters from the above solution! :)

<comment><USER16> Yes, very cute and concise, and you know Python and I don't:) My point is to ask why to devote yourself to "rules" and optimizing conciseness of a trivial problem here. I don't think "readability" is a defense, because I believe my program (not being a Python programmer) is nearly completely free of guile, still fairly concise in terms of symbols, and instantly readable even to a new programmer.

So where's the payoff?

<comment><USER19> It's interesting and revealing that you're not getting a good answer to your question. In these types of conversations, most of the back-and-forth is really just name-calling -- where the names are things like "readability" instead of "poopoohead" -- on top of statements of personal preference. It's easy for us to debate _reduce_ vs. _merge-with_ vs. _foreach_ , but difficult to have a meaningful conversation about _why_ we prefer what we prefer. I happen to have a few minutes between finishing my coffee and getting on with things, so here are some reflections.

A lot of people who are into FP simply find the concise style more satisfying. That's not regarded as a legitimate reason for preferring one choice over another, so this kind of discussion often hits a what-you-can't-say dead end. We've all seen too-clever code that was just awful, and we all keep saying that cleverness for its own sake is bad, and that position dominates the discussion in a heavyhanded way right now. Perhaps that's because it's necessary to keep the pseudo-clever crowd in check. I doubt it, though, because nothing keeps them in check.

Like it or not, the truth is that one factor driving what programmers do _is_ intellectual satisfaction. This has always been and will always be the case, no matter how many schoolmistresses (most of them, of course, programmers trying to master their own temptations) beat us with the cane of "business value is the only thing that matters" and "no one cares about your stupid clever code".

(I'm by no means arguing that the impulse to make things "cute and concise" ought to take precedence or have free rein, but rather that this factor needs to have a seat at the table before we have a chance of working out a balanced approach.)

The mathematicians have one over on us here. In their world too, the most important thing is getting the job done, but elegance is a close runner-up: it's esteemed for its own sake, and more importantly it's well understood that there's an intimate dialectic _between_ elegance and getting the job done. If we started thinking that way, we might finally make some progress out of these language game dead ends.

Switching gears to the technical matter of what the concise functional approach buys you (apart from elegance, for those who find it elegant), the trouble is that there's no way to answer this question at the level of a code snippet because _all_ approaches yield reasonable snippets in intelligent hands. The real question is: what are the impacts of these varying approaches on building whole systems? That question, as far as I can tell, remains completely unaddressed! Except for the inevitable platitudes about side-effect free code being good for concurrency and so on. Yet that is the question that matters, and our code snippet debates are just the drunk looking for his car keys under the street lamp, even though he didn't drop them there, because the light's better.

Unless you believe that the choice of programming language is irrelevant (which is a little like saying an artist's medium is irrelevant), it's clear that different languages have different classes of programs that are easy to write in that language, and thus different classes of programs that will tend to evolve in it. Each version of an evolving program conditions the next version, so this influence gets compounded over time. (Code snippets are at the rudimentary extreme of that process, which is why they have so little comparative value; what we really need to see is how those snippets evolve into much larger systems.) The language itself and the current version of the program written in it condition the very stream of ideas about what you might do next. So there's a profound influence here, but we don't know how to study it. Failing that, the best approach is to let a thousand flowers bloom and see what systems emerge, but even there historical accident plays a huge role in where the development energy goes and thus what systems ever have a chance to emerge.

Personally I find that the imperative style is easiest in the small and the functional style is easiest in the large, and the trick is to find a design that allows the two to be fused with some regularity. But then I work in Common Lisp so I _would_ say that.

Excuse the length, no time to make shorter.

<comment><USER16> Thank you for the post, it was interesting and made me think. I especially liked this point: "but rather that this factor needs to have a seat at the table before we have a chance of working out a balanced approach."

I agree that I would like to see how functional approaches can benefit large systems, in concrete terms, since almost all of the examples I've ever seen involve micro-code like this article. I'm especially skeptical that it can make a dramatic difference for the kind of messy business code that today is usually solved by large object-oriented systems and modular libraries.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ion Propulsion – A Plane with No Moving Parts [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IorDYGI1uqc <comment><USER2> If you want source material, it's a paper that was published in Nature in November (abstract at [0]) including video [1] and full system parameters [2].

It weighs 2.45 kg and has a wingspan of 5m. It flew multiple times and the distance flown / total time time in the air was limited by the size of the hangar that was used for the flight trials, not the ion drive.

[0] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0707-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0707-9)

[1] [https://static- content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs415...](https://static- content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-018-0707-9/MediaObjects/41586_2018_707_MOESM1_ESM.mp4)

[2] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0707-9/tables/1](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0707-9/tables/1)

<comment><USER3> At 6.25 N/kW it's not going to be flying for very long in terms of duration. It's a toy concept that's neat. The real accomplishment here is the design of the very low mass high voltage inverter. That's some serious engineering.

<comment><USER4> So there's nothing in the design that can be done at scale that's useful here? I'm not trying to nit-pick, but are you saying none of the design (except for the power supply) is novel or useful?

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Electrostatic lifters have been around forever. I even made one with a neon sign transformer back in the late 90s. But my power supply was literally heavy iron and with wall current connected to the balsa/foil craft with very light magnet wire. Making the electrical energy storage and high power HV generation light enough is no small feat. That's what should be celebrated here.

<comment><USER5> Could the energy be beamed from the surface, like a trolleybus powered by power lines?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another flying engine without moving parts is the ramjet [1]. It's a compression engine that doesn't use turbine blades to compress the incoming air, but simply the speed of the flying object itself. Since it can't function at speed zero by definition it needs assistance to get to a minimum speed where it function (which is usually Mach 3). For this reason it's usually found in missiles; more recently it showed up in artillery shells [2].

An engine not having moving parts does not mean no noise though. I never heard a ramjet powered missile myself, but I doubt it's very quiet.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet) [2][http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21531/yes-this-is-a- ram...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21531/yes-this-is-a-ramjet- powered-artillery-shell-and-it-could-be-a-game-changer)

<comment><USER7> Pulse jet is another simple jet engine design, was used by Germany in WW2 on their V1 flying bombs. Not particularly efficient, but cheap. And noisy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion with more details on how the ion wind is generated:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18503772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18503772)

</comment><comment> village-idiot Turns out the madmen over at KSP we're right, you _can_ make a plan run by ion engines

</comment><comment><USER9> The Real Engineering channel has deteriorated into drivel. He spent half the video discussing ion engines for spacecraft, presumably in a bid to drive up enthusiasm around efficiency and top speed, before embarrassing himself with his discussion of the ion plane experiment. This technology is stillborn for the reasons he himself gives, though he dances around that, hoping against hope that few enough users will understand that the video is a flimsy excuse for a SkillShare ad, so that he can continue wringing sponsorship dollars from his increasingly pathetic offerings.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure most people would rather see a critique of the science behind Ion Propulsion than a rant about the content of this youtube channel.

<comment><USER9> The critique of the propulsion scheme was laid out in the video. It was just framed in a way that tried to dodge the reality that this system cannot scale. For example, rather than presenting the thrust densities in a table for easy comparison, they were presented serially, so that the viewer might miss their relative scales. Quickly: What is the ratio of the thrust density of a jet engine to the thrust density of this ion propulsion scheme?[1]

Near the end, during the segue to the sponsorship at the end, he says, "This technology is in its infancy," alluding to his opening comparison to the Wright brothers. This is ridiculous. Not all weak or underpowered novel things are "in their infancy," awaiting further development into enabling technologies for our Glorious Future. This one, for example, has all the problems of battery energy density plus the problems of dragging, for example, tens of kilometers of wires through the atmosphere at passenger-jet speeds.

But, as I said at the beginning, that critique is contained in the video, just framed positively and obscured by weasel tactics. [2]

[1] Roughly 3300 to 1. An airliner using this scheme would need engines with a frontal area equal to 6600 high-bypass turbofan engines.

[2] Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

<comment><USER11> I just watched this, and it was abundantly clear that the presenter believes there is a scaling issue ("scaling these propulsion methods is not easy" at 6:37). They literally say this, and then present the 10,000N/m^2 vs 3N/m^2 numbers for the jet engine versus this engine. There is then a minute or so explaining why this is a problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-tech/chinese-capital-dangles-carrots-to-lure-foreign-talent-to-its-silicon-valley-idUSKCN1GB0UF?utm_campaign=Newsletter%20-%20Mi5M%20-%20Q3%202017&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=60968683&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9b3puY2RUNq_9NrSirNfW0yD0nl0n9e8sLY6Zv03GUVQ52KSZTr3MVF9f0JwoMdrpx4qKli8LPyzYWuUvV9pitrOX8vA&_hsmi=60968683 <comment><USER2> Unless they make exceptions for the Great Firewall, this carrot won't be so enticing.

</comment><comment><USER3> _The Beijing municipality has said it will even consider allowing foreign professionals to bring in their own foreign maids, currently illegal in Beijing._

Well shit, sign me up.

<comment><USER4> This was actually a big issue for one of my friends. They wanted a Filipino maid for communication reasons and were even able to manage it for a few years (before 2010 or so). But then China cracked down on the practice and they had to go with a chinese one eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No.1 SMOG SMOG SMOG

No.2 No google available

Bring ten foreign maids won't fix that. I'll just pass.

<comment><USER6> About the smog, i'm in shanghai right now, and i can tell you that the air is far less polluted than Paris, France. It's actually quite weird, because i thought the exact same thing as you regarding smog, i thought i would have to wear a mask for the duration of my trip. I was amazed at the number of electrical vehicle here (not a single motorcycle running on gas).

Note that it may be due to the chinese new year holidays (although it's been over for two weeks now), or to the price of real estate that rose to such a level that nobody can live downtown anymore... I'm not sure the reason, but i was really really surprised.

<comment><USER4> The city should be almost deserted during CNY. But right now at the moment of this post, Shanghai is worse than Paris:

[https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/](https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/) (95)

[http://aqicn.org/city/paris/](http://aqicn.org/city/paris/) (66)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the link, i was wondering if maybe shanghai had a different kind of pollution that i wouldn't notice (i can't really tell from the graph, but i think maybe pm10 is something that you'd feel more). Although they're both globally in the "yellow" range..

CNY is really over now. Some shops were closed last week, but everything's been back to normal for the last three days.. Also, Paris is experiencing a unusual freezing temperature, so maybe there's less activity.

Do you know if there are some historical data on the site ? i'd be really interested to compare the days i left Paris with the day i arrived in Shanghai, because the difference was really amazing.

EDIT : looking more closely at the shanghai map.. If the location is really precise, then it seems that the indicators are all set close to the huge circle roads surrounding the central city. If you want to compare that with the paris equivalent (and not the indicators next to the river), you'll find the same kind of values.

<comment><USER4> CNY isn't really over for another week or even two. The lull in traffic usually lasts for around three weeks. Even if the shops are open, many haven't returned from vacation yet.

Pm2.5 is the big killer that everyone is worried about these days. PM10 is larger particles like dust which should be less of a problem in SH. Historical data is included on site, but no easy way to compare them.

There isn't a place in shanghai that isn't next to a major road, it's a city of 10 million. They used to try and game the system by putting AQI stations out in the suburbs but these days those places actually have worse pollution.

<comment><USER6> The big circles around shanghai are a completely different beast than just "major road". Just like Paris "périphérique" is in a league of its own.

I've had a 6h foot walk just 2 days ago in shanghai (inside the first circle, travelling all around the city), and i can tell you the amount of dust i inhaled was nothing compare to what i'm feeling when i walk inside Paris. Now maybe CNY is a huge factor indeed, unfortunately i won't be there anymore to see for myself... All i can say then is that it's a great time to visit the city ! :)

<comment><USER4> I've been to SH plenty of time and I know about the ring road topology (same as Beijing actually). But if you look at the map, it just gets worse, not better, as you get farther from the center.

CNY is a great time to visit Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, since people there either (a) go home (they aren't locals) or (b) go on vacation somewhere else far away. CNY practically lasts longer than the official golden week, so traffic is light as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it'll work if the carrots are big enough. People from the west have no issue working in Dubai if the check is big enough.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are 37M college students in China and around the world. Why do they need foreigners to come over?

[http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/08/content_243650...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/08/content_24365038.htm)

<comment><USER9> Likely because they are still in college, and China would rather want the leaders in their fields to work for them instead, and also teach the newly graduated to take it from there?

<comment><USER10> Also, literally every student I've met in China wants to go to the US. Undergraduates want to do their Master's there, Master's students want to do their PhD, I guess PhD students want to become professors at a US university.

<comment><USER9> Yea that's also true, in Asia, the western education is perceived as far superior to theirs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> IMHO they need to offer an officially sanctioned legal VPN for those with such Visas. It is too annoying as a technical worker doing research to reside in an environment where access to information is unpredictable.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anybody want a mini-AMA? Worked with Chinese for bigger part of my career and did two long term on-site consulting contracts. I lived in both Shanghai and Shenzhen.

<comment><USER13> How hard would it be to find a position in China if I don't speak Chinese? Are there certain places I should look for information on this? Job websites?

<comment><USER12> This will limit you to 1 in 3 jobs open to foreigners. Which is still very good. See, the main value of a foreign specialist is that he is foreign and supposedly have rare expertise. Second to that, you will most likely to be hired with an idea in mind that you can liaise with overseas customers/specialists/authorities and etc even if your job does not implicitly require that.

Best option is to actively solicit contacts and network a lot. Foreign professionals are a closely knit club here. Industry events are the best if you know nobody here.

Look for job offers in English, job boards of companies with a record hiring foreigners, foreign companies that are new in China, super senior level positions, jobs with PhD. level expertise level, jobs requiring people skills in English "product managers/ field application engineers/ sales or solution engineers"

Websites: 51job, zhaopin, ChinaHR. Look for English language keywords. A post in English almost certainly assumes the company keeps hiring a foreigner an option.

<comment><USER13> Thank you for the helpful reply!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe, once Wikipedia and Gmail are available full scale.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, the blocking doesn't make any kind of sense. You can literally create a vpn from within china itself on any cloud provider and surf on anything you want, in less than 10 minutes using softwares like algovpn.

It's now a moment of truth for internet in china : either they start blocking vpns for real (although good luck doing that without collateral damage to the economy, because that would mean shutting down a ton of services), or they just open it.

My bet is that they'll open it. They have services on the same quality as US ones, some even more advanced like wechat , they're already 1 billion user strong, i'm pretty sure they'll benefit tremendously from opening the gates.

<comment><USER15> The overwhelming number 1 priority of the Chinese Communist party is to remain in power and remain in control. Everything comes second place to that. Economically it would make sense to do what you say, but to do so would be an unacceptable loss of control over the ability to monitor and curtail communication in China, so they won't do it.

Additionally, they do certainly have the ability to detect and shutdown VPN's based on traffic analysis, for the most part they don't do this most of the time but during specific sensitive political events they can and will.

<comment><USER6> "remain in control" is also what i thought, but then i changed my mind and now think the reason is now (almost) purely economical. The reason is that :

\- google maps is blocked, but apple maps isn't

\- google is blocked, but yahoo and bing aren't

\- youtube is blocked, but other video sites such as rutube.ru are accessible, and just searching sensitive keywords led me to things like that [https://rutube.ru/video/49d364dd24dc25c5855aa9113c107567/?re...](https://rutube.ru/video/49d364dd24dc25c5855aa9113c107567/?ref=search)

and the list goes on and on. Once again, it doesn't make any sense.

<comment><USER15> Google very publically and explicitly said they would not abide by China's rules regarding their services about a decade ago. I wouldn't be surprised if those other services have local chinese servers which are serving the requests from China and are effectively subject to chinese laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oh yes, carrots, with a side of dictatorship. Sounds quite tempting.

</comment><comment><USER17> US-biased headline. This is what US-tech firms have been doing for years, dangling carrots on foreign talent. The same reason why the US VC-lobby has been up in arms on anything and everything work visas related. China is the new USA.

<comment><USER18> The difference is that US lures people to move and eventually become citizens. China want's people to work there, transfer the technology and go away.

It's basically impossible to naturalize as Chinese citizen even if you marry a local and live there for decades. Japanese are strict in immigration but they take ten times more immigrants than China. Only about 1000 people get Chinese passport per year.

<comment><USER19> If a 10 year wait time for greencards and restricting the H4 spouses of those skilled visa workers to work legally is not a carrot, then yes US is doing a great job attracting and retaining talents.

I went behind the carrot for 3 years and then immigrated to Canada. My spouse has dignity now and she is a full time employee just like me earning a very good salary. In US, she lost all her confidence,dignity and was depressed because she was "not allowed" to work though she was a post graduate degree holder.

Any skilled workers who care about their H4 spouses should do the same.

[https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa- law0/v...](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa- bulletin/2018/visa-bulletin-for-february-2018.html)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/01/28/green...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/01/28/green- card-applicants-waiting-forever-told-keep-waiting/#2cb60e411656)

[http://h4-visa-a-curse.blogspot.ca/p/home.html](http://h4-visa-a- curse.blogspot.ca/p/home.html)

[https://qz.com/797831/the-h4-visa-and-the-desperation-of- ind...](https://qz.com/797831/the-h4-visa-and-the-desperation-of-indian- housewives-in-america/)

<comment><USER20> One million people get green cards each year in the US.

Immigrants and their children are now 27% of the US population.

Show me the numbers on China.

And if you want to talk about Canada and dignity. Why is Canada only 1% hispanic? Because they restrict immigration overwhelmingly by skill. If you can't meet their skill-based requirements, you're very unlikely to get in. How's that for treating people with dignity? The US has ~46 million immigrants currently, ten million more people than the entire population of Canada.

<comment><USER19> > One million people get green cards each year in the US.

Is a blanket statement. The topic is about skilled immigration. Majority of US green cards are family based.

Source here: [https://www.us-immigration.com/how-many-immigration- applicat...](https://www.us-immigration.com/how-many-immigration-applications- filed-each-year/)

> Immigrants and their children are now 27% of the US population.

Immigrants from 1800s maybe ?

> Show me the numbers on China.

China has just started. I dont think there is any data yet. Even if there is, wont be easy to find.

> Why is Canada only 1% hispanic? Because they restrict immigration > overwhelmingly by skill.

No they don't. They encourage both. Express Entry is for the skilled ones, family based quotas parents and siblings in addition to asylum and refugees. Isn't that how immigration is supposed to work ?

> How's that for treating people with dignity?

Canada have temporary worker visas similar to H1B. They issue the spouses of those temporary skilled workers with open work permit. Dignity & freedom from the day one they land in Canada. There are no carrots in Canada for temporary skilled workers. If you satisfy Express Entry points which you almost will, you can apply for permanent residence. Your permanent residence is not under the control of your employer master. Canadian employers cant threaten your Express Entry application. You wont have to wait 10 years or get kicked out of the queue if you change jobs or gets fired while being on H1B.

Those who come to Canada as students get a post graduate work permit. No lotteries, no quotas and can apply to express entry and become residents unlike those unfortunate master degree holders who are at the mercy of their employer masters and waiting 10 years for their GreenCards.

The fact that open work permits are issued for spouses of temporary skilled workers in Canada proves that temporary workers are treated with dignity in Canada than H1B workers in the US.

Are the points above dignifying enough ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is an interesting one. Is this related in any way to the "token white guy" types of jobs which are apparently available in China?

<comment><USER4> No. White monkey jobs are mostly over. Maybe you can find one in some remote tier 88 city, but not in Shenzhen.

<comment><USER22> this is crazy, I had no idea these even were a thing. It sounds like a Coen Brothers plot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not for me, I like being able to say "I disagree" on social media.

</comment><comment><USER24> Other than the visa-related benefits, what type of monetary benefits do foreigners get for moving to China?

<comment><USER4> Pay is pretty good (about 70% of Seattle) while living costs are low. I was able to save about 30-40% of my take home over almost 10 years.

<comment><USER25> So China pays much better than Western Europe? Is this actually true?

<comment><USER26> If you're in HongKong probably.

<comment><USER4> Hong Kong doesn't pay programmers as well as Shenzhen outside of a few banking related jobs. Not a good comparison. HK is more of a business/banking center, so programmers don't have as much status as they do across the border in Shenzhen.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linux beats OS X in performance test with good margin - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=macbook_yosemite_4way&num=1

<comment><USER2> Not surprising given the focus of OS X is on usability first, performance next. While the focus of Linux is on performance and features alone. Usability is in the hands of distributions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hope next release will be more like Snow Leopard, that was a release with good focus on performance.</comment></comment>


Bottled Wind Could Be as Constant as Coal Power - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/compressed-air-plants/

<comment><USER2> When you compress air, it heats up and expands -- thus making the pressure go up faster than one might expect. So, when storing it you lose a lot of energy as heat.

When you let it uncompress, it cools -- losing a lot of energy again.

Point is, you lose quite a bit of energy going both ways.

A good solution might be to combine wind and pumped hydro: have the wind turbine pump water to a higher elevation when extra wind is available.

<comment><USER3> That is definitely an interesting point, although I assume it was taken into account when companies and the government did their comparison with hydroelectric storage. Larger caverns should reduce the amount of energy lost due to heat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, I know this is going to sound really juvenile, but I clicked on this link thinking it was a joke about farts.

<comment><USER5> HN isn't the type of place where you should share every thought that crosses your mind. If someone does submit a fart joke you should just flag it.</comment></comment>


America Goes to War With Itself Over Data Security - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-02/when-it-comes-to-security-the-u-dot-s-dot-is-now-at-war-with-itself

<comment><AUTHOR> A quote right from the Daily Show

"Is Snowden a foreign spy? Did some clever intelligence agent plan this turn of events all along? Does a one-handed alien clapping on Mars make a sound if no one is around to hear it? I don't know."

It seems impossible for some in the media to believe a) that indiscriminate spying is bad and b) that someone may feel strongly enough about the situation to risk everything and go public.

Is the author of this article a paid shill for the NSA? I don't know.</comment>