Entrepreneurs in Prison - <AUTHOR> http://www.kashflow.com/blog/entrepreneurs-in-prison/ <comment><USER2> The piece reminds me of something I saw once about an ex con who went straight and put his drug dealing experience on a resume. He wrote it up in business terms that he moved $100k worth of product per year, arranged shipments, scheduling, etc and _did it all in secret_. I don't recall what kind of work he did after he went straight but my impression is he was pretty successful.

<comment><USER3> Except that being an ex-con means that at some point his standard NDA must have been insufficient/unenforceable... Or he made a bad hire, or trusted the wrong people. Just sayin'.

<comment><USER2> I do not understand why you would assert that. Anyone can make a mistake, ex con or not. So I don't follow your logic in tying the two things together. Do you think people simply cannot change?

Signed: Puzzled and curious.

Thanks.

<comment><USER4> Seems to me that he's saying it's obvious he didn't do a good job at not getting caught considering he got caught. Nothing really about people not being able to change. I may be wrong though, but hopefully that clarifies.

<comment><USER2> Um, I don't see that in the original remark. Hopefully the op will clarify.

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminded me of Sudhir Venkatesh's book "Gang Leader For A Day", parts of which were described in Freakonomics. Some of his findings included an organized corporate structure of a big gang, a gang member with an econ degree who wanted to put his education to use, etc. Pretty interesting read.

[http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist- Streets/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist- Streets/dp/1594201501)

</comment><comment><USER6> The first Apple II word processing software was written by John Draper while in prison: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper#Software_developer>

</comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps worth pointing out is that the author has spent some time in prison, which doesn't appear to be explicitly mentioned there.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if you mean that it's worth pointing out because he has experience with prisons and therefore his opinion should be given more weight, or because he's biased and so his opinion should be given less weight. I'm not sure I think either is true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> But here in America we _punish_ our prisoners, no matter the cost to society!

<comment><USER9> Which part is wrong, the punish part or the cost part? Is it controversial to punish criminals?

<comment><USER10> Yes. At one point in our history the criminal justice discussions were about how best to rehabilitate the offender rather than punishment. Punishment that neither makes the victim whole or rehabilitates the offender is just useless vengeance.

<comment><USER9> Rehabilitation is a secondary purpose of incarceration, its main purpose being to deter others from committing crimes and to isolate dangerous criminals. A lot of criminals don't even have to be rehabilitated (e.g. educated criminals or criminals serving lifetime sentences).

<comment><USER10> Rehabilitation has not always been a secondary purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would love for there to be a way to help prisoners not commit future crimes but this seems like a huge stretch.

First, most prisoners are not drug kingpins, they are people that do drugs to the point of not being able to control their lives, or people who commit violent crimes for nonsensical reasons or people who steal large or small sums of money. Many are people you would literally be scared to see in public.

Second, entrepreneurial prisoners like drug dealers are dealing drugs because they do not view risk the same way normal people do. They are in prison because they decided to take an illegal path toward making money knowing that it was easier than working.

Third, VCs will have a tough time explaining to their LPs about how they finance criminals. Even worse would be a VC's risk if they finance one and the business fails and they have to explain it to their LP.

Forth, a really tough thing about starting a business is getting various people in the industry to work with you. Being a past prisoner is likely to be a burden in those relationships.

Fifth, them getting state/national licenses that may be required to start various businesses will be very challenging.

There are exceptions, like there are with every rule, but this is a tough sell. I could see a very small number of people being helped this way, but I genuinely feel like it would be tough. There are so many great people working toward businesses with no criminal background, it seems strange to try to put the effort in to people that have made no effort for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wrote this in the comments on the article, but also wanted to share my thoughts with everyone here, please reply if you have something to say about what I'm about to say, this is one of the topics in life that I haven't finished making conclusions on, it is terribly complicated and I'd love feedback on my mental process. Thanks.

When someone goes to prison it's generally for a good reason, after the jury and trial and all that, it's safe to say then that these people forfeit their rights. That's what happens when you go against the rules of a society you belong to. I think everyone can agree with that. The trick is balance, sure it's not fair to blanket treat inmates all the same, however they cost us money to not just capitol-punishment the lot of them (a bad idea for moral reasons.) So they need to pay off their debt. But to go as far as to say they should be treated as if being away from everyone is their only punishment and that's already bad enough is a bit naive. Many people in prison did really bad things, like rape and murder, try telling the victims family in those cases that the inmate that killed their kid gets to get an education, a job, some savings for his release, cable TV, food, etc, etc. Tell them that and see what reaction you get.

To be completely fair they did bad things, we need to keep that in mind, also the cheap labor could be used to help society. Cheap furniture/clothing/household items, etc for low income families comes to mind.

I think the real solution is to be transparent about how much things cost, and we need to keep in mind that we can't allow for slave labor of prisoners just for those profits to go into CEO's pockets. If we are to do that then it needs to go to the potential rehabilitation of the inmate, and in dropping the costs so lower income people can save money on essentials that are made by inmates hands.

PS: This is definitely one of the most thought provoking articles relating to inmates I've read in a long time.

<comment><USER12> I don't think I'm disagreeing with the gist of your comment, but a couple of the ideas you put forward as givens freaked me out.

We have to leave aside two unanswered statements in your comment: how many people in prison actually deserve to be there, and how many of their rights prisoners surrender by being convicted of a crime. I'd argue that one's _human_ rights don't ever get revoked, but that's just me.

What is the purpose of prison? I'd argue that it's a dual purpose: punishment and rehabilitation.

Being away from everyone you've ever loved or known is a _terrible_ punishment. Once you walk out of a prison years after you went in the world will have changed out from under you. Your babies are grown and won't know you. Your parents might have died. Your friends' lives have moved on without you. The rhythms of daily life are now foreign to you. The particulars of any specific penitentiary system might make this easier (visitation, parole, etc.), but this is pretty horrible.

Why does someone commit a crime? Unless they are mentally unbalanced (which, in the US, is served by separate processes... e.g. pleading insanity), they have behaviors that are unacceptable outside of a set of social norms. Giving someone the opportunity to learn what society expects of them should be part of being in prison. Isn't education a great way to figure that out? Why should we be against someone trying to turn their life around after making some terrible choice? (Again, leaving aside questions of over-eager judicial systems e.g. the US' war on drugs)

<comment><USER4> Human rights shouldn't get revoked, no doubt, they are still human after all. I'm referring to citizenship rights, like the right to a minimum wage as an example, or the right to have certain foods or religious needs met. At the end of the day most inmates took rights away from another, like in the case of rape, a girls right to say no. Or murder, a persons right to live.

I would say in regards to rehabilitation that we teach them exactly what they need to know about society in order to cope with coming back in, I do agree that if someone spent that long without freedom, and they served their time, then they should be free when they get out, with all rights given back.

I get that it's a terrible punishment to, sometimes worse then death for people that enjoy their freedom, I would argue that we continue to evolve what is the "correct" length of time for people to be in prison for one. And yeah we shouldn't be against someone turning their life around, but not to the extent that we waste resources on people getting a second chance, when there's a plethora of people still waiting for their first chance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> First, it's prison. So, y'know, punishment on some level. In addition to rehabilitation. So my gut reaction is that I'd rather see more educational programs going on. Especially since a lot of "entrepreneurship" is really just either scammy behavior or flat-out fantasy (my start-up's the next Facebook!). Especially when the education isn't in place.

That said, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea. But, as a tax-payer, the idea that someone is getting free room and board on my dime while they make a good income grates a bit. What does it cost to keep someone incarcerated for a year these days? $40k? If the inmate were to repay this -- the sort of rent and bills every other entrepreneur has to pay -- then the idea would be more palatable.

<comment><USER14> I had a friend in prison some years ago. He said the worst thing wan there was nothing to do. Most people slept 12+ hours a day & when they got out they couldn't adjust.

So yeah, I feel any productive activity is a damn good idea.

<comment><USER15> Hmmm... Instant brainstorm mode... What startup ideas involving prisoners can we think of?

Maybe some kind of Mechanical Turk esque web site where their earnings get paid out to them upon release?

Or some kind of Learnable tailored to inmates?

Any ideas, people? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nowhere in the article I see anything about the mental disorders of criminals, psychopaths and sociopaths who can be very entrepreneurial but also very low on ethics.

There are two kinds of criminals: the ones that do it because they were desperate, and the ones that are mentally ill and not only can't see risk but can't see why it's wrong to kill another person for money or turf.

The desperate ones would truly like to have a normal life and a job, but some of then were born SOL into crack houses and abusive fathers. The psychopaths come from every social class, I meet this guy in college who had rich parents and still was trying to push X all over the place.

</comment><comment><USER17> At the risk of sounding glib, I don't think that's how most drug dealers in prison began dealing drugs.

I could be way off, but the scenario he posits, wherein all hits mates are buying weed and he arbitrages, is probably not how most drug dealers come into operation, and certainly not how I suspect the prison-time crowd got into it.

<comment><USER18> _"How do you think they got in to it then? Trying not to sound snarky - I'm genuinely interested in what other route you see people taking into drug dealing."_ -, asked HN user _djacksonkf_ in his dead comment.

I think he is Duane Jackson, the author. He seems to be banned for some reason.

Duane, you can create a new account in no time.

<comment><USER19> Thanks. I am indeed the author. Didn't realise I was banned!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That's genius. Jet Blue's uses stay-at-home moms as their entire workforce of reservation agents. Productivity increased by 25% and employee turnover was reduced when they moved from call centers to homes.

</comment><comment><USER21> maybe we can get Hans Reiser back working on file systems from prison someday, even when it became clear he had killed his wife there is a part of me that wanted too see him get off to keep working on ReiserFS

<comment><USER22> ReiserFS wasn't that good. It was fast for small files, but crap for everything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Being a good entrepreneur is more than identifying opportunities for arbitrage and executing on it and rolling profits into the system that can fuel more arbitrage. It's also taking into account the sustainability of the system. Evaluating the legality of the arbitrage is more important than the skill to profit from it.

<comment><USER24> Are there really many entrepreneurs who take it upon themselves to consider the sustainability of the system, rather than just their own ability to profit from it? Some probably, but it doesn't seem to be the norm in business culture, apart from some talk of "corporate social responsibility" at large companies that I strongly suspect is mainly for PR reasons.

<comment><USER25> I think their own ability to profit from it (ie. avoiding jail and violent attacks) was the sustainability to which he was referring.</comment></comment></comment>


Investigating whether and how devs understand open-source software licensing - <AUTHOR> https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10664-018-9614-9?author_access_token=2UnutwNg1ErgHKAORtk4uPe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY50XawtljjgcPug1I4idRs00WMeujxLeMa1wXS5ALugATd2Saw5MPX4qzW7xc9pHSVIeN4LnAZyJHebXO9FGiXb5Xh_xCbIoVNl4wcZOzkpEw%3D%3D <comment><USER2> Aside from understanding the license, you have to remember to _look_ for the license.

For example, Stack Overflow content is very nonintuitively licensed CC-BY-SA, so if you copy and paste code from Stack Overflow (who doesn't?) it's essentially the same as including GPL code. Apparently there was a movement to MIT-license the code (as opposed to the textual content) that failed for some reason, so this is now a ticking time bomb. (And if you try to sell your company, the acquirer _will_ find that code in diligence.)

Even worse, ruby-forum.com is CC-BY-NC-SA, so you can't use code from there for commercial purposes in the first place, never mind the copyleft aspect.

<comment><USER3> With the amount of copy-pasting going on it should be required by any company developers at this point to attach SPDX copyright and licensing statements [0] to everything that passes through their text editor. I recently watched a talk at FOSDEM about a neat tool called REUSE [1] that will audit your project for these statements and spit out a bill of materials.

[0]: [https://spdx.org/using-spdx-license-identifier](https://spdx.org/using- spdx-license-identifier)

[1]: [https://reuse.software/tutorial/](https://reuse.software/tutorial/)

<comment><USER4> > their text editor

Good luck getting this to work with every text editor your engineers will use, and not having them revolt because it messes with their workflow…

<comment><USER3> It really doesn't mess with any workflow. It's asking them to write the copyright information at the top of the file when they copy something from Github or whatever. The tool can do it in an automated fashion and ensure you do it right before check-in. It's good practice to do this when contributing something upstream too. You'll usually want the engineer to add your company's name and copyright info if they do it on company time.

I would actually raise an eyebrow if your engineers were resistant to keeping a written log of copyright information based on workflow grounds. That could indicate that there is a lot more copy-pasting going on that they don't want you to know about — when the code is 100% written by the same team without copy-pasting then there is a lot less question on who owns what. And I don't mean that to discourage teams from reusing open source components, but rather to help them understand that there are associated bookkeeping costs that can potentially be reduced with the right workflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting paper. Actually it's not only the developers who are challenged. Even lawyers often have trouble understanding these licenses, because often formulations are used that are not written by lawyers and are not common. Moreover, final clarity on the exact interpretation and effect of these licences will only be achieved once there are judgments from the highest courts. And since every country has its own legal system and there are many different aspects to clarify, many such judgments are needed. So the matter is not so simple. Whether the developers understand the licenses or not is just one of many problems.

</comment><comment><USER6> > The interviews with software developers also may not represent all themes > that arise in license incompatibility scenarios... They came from > organizations that had between 51 and 1000 employees. Licensing > incompatibility issues might be more or less frequent in organizations of > different sizes and the themes that emerged could be different given a > different population.

I wonder how representative this study is for the debian community and all the packages listed in the repository.

Looking at the quotes, it seems the typical developer in the study is one delivering products to customer, which I guess, the customer either own the copyright to in the end or want to integrate into proprietary systems.

</comment><comment><USER7> I grew up in the piracy era, if the code is possible to get and I want it, I get the code and do what I want. What is this license everyone keeps talking about? Never read one of those. Seems like a lot of wasted time and energy to me. I'd rather use that time and energy to building something cool. If I gotta be anon to do that, I'm black as night. This legal shit is for bean counter types. I get shit done for a living.</comment>


Leading Berlin Fintechs - Berlin-Fintches http://www.berlin-fintechs.com/ <comment> Berlin-Fintches Hi guys!

We've collected leading Berlin fintechs in one place, with a focus on providing companies overviews from a candidate perspective. It's a first MVP so I'm more than happy to hear comments regarding what could be improved, especially in terms of what kind of other relevant content could be added.

Thanks for the feedback :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Very nice website and concept. Not being from Germany and looking for a startup job in Berlin, I find it helpful that most information is in English. For me it would be nice to have some additional information from an employee's perspective.</comment>


Are the benefits of moderate drinking a myth? - <AUTHOR> http://davidroodman.com/blog/2015/05/01/are-the-benefits-of-moderate-drinking-a-myth/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: _Among light and moderate drinkers as a group, 27 of the 30 factors were correlated with drinking levels, and in the direction that could create a false appearance of moderate drinking leading to better health. For example, as people enter old age, they drink less and become more likely to die. ... In light of these facts, Occam's Razor argues for a simple theory: the net marginal impact of drinking on health is negative at all levels; and moderate drinking is a marker for relative youth, affluence, and healthy habits rather than a cause of good health._

I guess he's suggesting that the apparent positive correlation between moderate drinking and health is an example of Simpson's paradox [0].

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox)

<comment><USER3> > _In light of these facts, Occam's Razor argues for a simple theory: the net > marginal impact of drinking on health is negative at all levels; and > moderate drinking is a marker for relative youth, affluence, and healthy > habits rather than a cause of good health._

That would be true only if all studies failed to control for such parameters, which sounds BS.

According to Occam's Razor it's more probably that the author is yielding Occam's Razor wrongly, than that all those researchers are wrong and fail at such basic research methodology as controlling for age and those other parameters...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In France, we have a strong belief that one glass of wine per day is something sane and you should actually do it. There is no scientific study behind it and every other tests seem in fact to tend to show that alcohol is harmful for the body. But because it makes everyone happy to believe so (myself included!), we root for it.

<comment><USER5> There was a recent large study, mentioned in the article, that said that drinking up to 6 drinks a day was healthier than being teetotal. It got a lot of publicity. And it's probably not true, so it's good that articles like this one are appearing.

<comment><USER6> Do these studies ever control for the socialization factor that may relate to alcohol consumption? It seems having good social connectedness is good for you psychically, maybe even physically, so if you socialize with your friends, family, colleagues over drinks regularly, that may be helping more than drinking itself.

Conversely, if you are a recluse, perhaps taking up drinking on your own won't be too beneficial, if at all.

<comment><USER7> For me this is the biggest thing I enjoy about alcohol - it is primarily consumed at social occasions. Convincing some old colleagues to grab a beer on a patio is much easier than convincing them to meet up otherwise. Not everyone drinks at the meetups, but most do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's an interesting topic on its own, but I would draw people's attention to the bulletpoint about 'Mendelian randomization': this is an exotic kind of natural experiment which is growing in importance as genetic sequencing becomes more prevalent, and it's worth looking at the papers in more detail just to understand the logic of this design & how it's being applied.

</comment><comment><USER9> I didn't really read all the comments, but I think if you really care about the issue its pretty apparent moderate drinking being healthy is totally nonsense.

Baloney manipulation of statistics. There are like 30 different known mechanisms for alcohol being toxic, and as far as I know only a couple for it providing physical benefit. As far as I know, there are no animal studies where moderate alcohol increases lifespan or health. The animal studies all show common sense, alcohol is pretty darn bad for you.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's worth noting that even if there's no health benefit to regular moderate drinking, there's no argument made here that there's necessarily harm from regular moderate drinking.

So maybe the takeaway is simply that if you choose to drink moderately, don't pat yourself on the back.

<comment><USER11> Actually it is making such an argument: "Occam's Razor argues for a simple theory: the net marginal impact of drinking on health is negative at all levels"

They don't provide definitive proof, but that is their argument.

<comment><USER12> That seems an abuse of Occam's Razor. There are many chemicals that are known to be unhealthy in large amounts, but are healthy (even necessary) in smaller amounts. This group of chemicals includes linoleic acid, vitamin A, iron, and water.

It may certainly be true that alcohol is a net negative in any amount, but it would be in lots of good company if it turns out that small amounts of alcohol are indeed healthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is not an area where I have much more than a passing interest, so much of this is over my head, so to speak. I was first introduced to the idea of healthy moderate drinking in Walter Willett's _Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy_.

Here is a link to one of the studies he cites:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12519921](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12519921)

Does this study not constitute a randomized trial on the benefit of moderate drinking?

<comment><USER14> I just read the Methods section of that article. It does not use a RCT design; it's an observational study based on questionnaire data. All standard confound caveats apply (with the exception of the controls accounted for in the paper).

<comment><USER13> Thanks for explaining. After I posted I read the methods and that became clear, but the explanation of confounding is definitely helpful.

Willett says in his book, "When the first reports appeared linking moderate alcohol consumption with lower rates of heart disease, many doctors and scientists thought that some other habit shared by drinkers, not the drinking accounted for the benefit. Today the evidence strongly points to alcohol itself."

Unfortunately I don't have the copy of the book with me to check, and that study was the only one I could find by searching the book through Amazon. I would be interested to see what other evidence he points to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've never heard the idea that "moderate drinking" was good for your health.

I've heard that having 1 or 2 dark beers per week can positively impact your HDL Cholesterol levels.

I've heard that drinking a glass of red wine every now and then can benefit your cardiovascular health.

However, I've never heard of any health benefits from light beer, liquor, white wine, or any other alcoholic beverage. I am curious where the idea of "benefits of moderate drinking" came from.

</comment><comment><USER16> The effects on mental health should also be considered, don't see it addressed/considered. It cuts both ways, but since we're talking about moderation, it could well be there's measurable positive impact for the classic "one glass of wine a day" case under certain conditions. Something the French, Italians and Spaniards are naturally clued in about, à la Mediterranean diet.

</comment><comment><USER17> Personally, I prefer to get wasted every now and then, instead of getting into the habit of consuming a tiny amount of alcohol every day. But to each their own.. I also strongly believe in this: Everything in moderation, even moderation. :) (Bonus points if you know who said it)

</comment><comment><USER18> Another one for Alcademic's "Good Booze, Bad Booze" series: [http://alcademics.com/2015/01/good-booze-bad- booze.html](http://alcademics.com/2015/01/good-booze-bad-booze.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Every time some statistical "studies" come out I think of which industry is going to benefit from it.

<comment><USER20> So... what did you think of? I can't think of any industries that would directly benefit from people drinking less.

<comment><USER21> One way to look at it is that alcoholic beverages compete with other beverages, so maybe Coca-Cola and Pepsico would benefit.

Another way is that alcohol competes with other neurotropes, so maybe pharmaceutical companies and drug dealers would benefit. Or even makers of psychedelic music and images.

A third way to view it is that alcohol competes with other stress-removers, so massage therapy and calming music vendors would benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My purely observational take on this: moderate drinking itself is the myth: most people who drink daily do not drink in anything resembling moderate amounts, especially as the years go by.

<comment><USER23> My observation is that my drinking habits match my food habits. Both require careful attention although alcohol unlike food has a built-in negative feedback mechanism.

I do a dry week without alcohol every once in a while just to make sure I can.

I find doing a dry week without alcohol the same difficulty as dry week without diet Coke. Which is to say I like diet Coke a lot and both require effort. You get things like hey wouldn't a diet Coke be nice, and then have to remember you aren't drinking that now and then the thought will repeat several times in a fairly small time window.

<comment><USER12> > _I find doing a dry week without alcohol the same difficulty as dry week > without diet Coke._

This is similarly true for me. I can abstain from alcohol, but I miss it when I do. The effort is similar to abstaining from, say, ice cream or cookies. I would eat ice cream every night if it didn't feel so unhealthy.

I also find that when abstaining from alcohol, I crave ice cream and other sweets far more. Alcohol and sweets seem to satisfy a common underlying craving in me. It's far easier to give up one than both.

<comment><USER21> Beer has numerous vitamins & minerals and fiber.

[http://www.realbeer.com/edu/health/good- bad.php](http://www.realbeer.com/edu/health/good-bad.php)

And apparently microbrews are healthier than domestic brews.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a state-by-state guide to IP assignment issues that affect startups? - <AUTHOR>

I've been talking with some friends about doing a startup, but there's a concern about the potential IP minefield we might be encounter.  In short, one of us has a contract with a software company that makes an extremely aggressive rights grab.  According to the contract, all work done by this person, even outside of work hours and without using any company resources, becomes the property of the company.  This seems like it might be overly broad, but I'm not a lawyer and I know that the law varies considerably from state to state.
Is there a resource somewhere online that discusses the issues in state IP/employment law for startups?  For example, I've heard that non-compete clauses are unenforceable in California, and a clause like that described above would be unenforceable in Minnesota.  Something like a table showing the differences would be great.
Alternatively, since the usual response is "talk to a lawyer," can anybody recommend a competent yet affordable-enough-for-a-bootstrapped-startup attorney who could answer similar questions?  I'm particularly interested in the law for California, Minnesota, and New York.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> talk to the corporate lawyer for the company that the one person with the tight contract works. or, at least, request to do so.

at my company, we had a terrible contract, and the employees brought it up and got it changed. bring it up, see if you can get an exemption clause drafted and signed.</comment>


Economists: Home ownership leads to unemployment - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/06/04/economists-homeownership-leads-to-unemployment/ <comment><USER2> As a resident of Los Angeles, this seems anecdotally (which has the usual caveats) obvious to me. I saw home ownership lead to issues with employment _within the Los Angeles metropolitan area._

There is a lot of "affordable" ($400K to $600K) single family homes in the San Fernando Valley, or towards Orange County, so I had a lot of coworkers buy homes in those areas. If you work in Venice, a house in Torrance is about a 45 minute commute by car. I know this will sound absurd to a lot of people in HN, but if you told a Los Angelan your commute to work was 45 minutes each way, they would say "that's pretty good."

However, if you bought a home in Torrance and live there and a company in downtown LA wants to hire you, even though you're only driving about another 8 miles or so, your commute will probably explode close to an hour and a half, and at least one day a week there'll be some clsuterfuck of an accident on one of the freeways, and you'll have the lovely experience of leaving your house at 8:00am and somehow still being late to your 10:00am stand-up meeting. Fun times!

So I saw home ownership cause former coworkers limit their economic mobility to within _one section of one city._ For them, it was an option to simply wait until a desirable job opened up in the areas with a bad-but-not-intolerable commute, or they were able to mitigate commutes by negotiating flexible hours with their employers (e.g. working 7am to 3pm, or 11am to 8pm, or only coming in 2-3 days a week, etc).

I recognize Los Angeles' traffic is about as bad as it gets as far as a home ownership "anchoring" someone, but if home ownership causes a reduction in mobility for professionals in a high-earning and high-demand field, I can only imagine the kind of impact it has on the rest of America.

<comment><USER3> This is a striking contrast to recent news of Amazon's expansion of their grocery delivery system to Los Angeles. How do they justify offering grocery delivery services in a city with such poor urban planning?

<comment><USER4> Delivery has "locality of reference" (to borrow a term from computer science): if the density of customers is high enough, a delivery truck can travel to a particular neighborhood and spend the entire day on local streets, where the traffic isn't bad. The truck only has to use the crowded freeways to travel from the warehouse to the neighborhood and back. And it can do that during off-peak traffic hours -- few people need to have their groceries delivered at 8am, when everyone is on their way to work. When I visited LA, I was surprised at how empty the freeways could be outside of rush hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't miss Philip's point, "let's always keep in mind that John Ioannidis would predict that a subsequent paper will find a different answer".

Anecdotally, my father has a pretty specialized job and got burned repeatedly in the housing market as he moved around for work. In his case it probably would have been a lot better for him if he'd rented almost every home he ever owned. In my case, I'm settling down with my family, friends, and extended family. I do not intend to move for another 20-30 years regardless of work. I think people should take this view seriously... if you want to stay where you are for 30 years and are willing do that despite potentially limited career (and financial) opportunities then owning a home makes sense (and managing your finances to enable this kind of lifestyle makes even more sense). If you want to pursue "the best" work or are concerned about financial security from employment you should consider not buying a home so you can remain flexible.

I obviously haven't read the paper, but the idea of home ownership negatively affecting employment is interesting.

<comment><USER6> This calculator helps you decide if it is better to buy or rent.

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent- calcula...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent- calculator.html?_r=0)

As you pointed it out, a key factor is how long you are going to remain in the house.

<comment><USER7> That calculator is good, but simplifies a lot of things. For example, there's no easy way to include rent you charge to someone renting a room in your home. After using the NYTimes one a bunch of times, I found this one, which is much more full-featured:

<http://michaelbluejay.com/house/rentvsbuy.html>

<comment><USER6> shiny! Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find our community desire towards home ownership to be really strange. For example, we all need to eat food everyday for the rest of our lives, but you almost never hear society bemoaning how few people own their own means to produce food! We seem perfectly happy to pay for what we use (i.e. rent) instead of investing in production (i.e. own).

If you know you're going to live somewhere for 20 years it usually makes a lot of sense to own, but I don't know why we ascribe that aspiration to all our real estate needs.

<comment><USER9> It makes a lot of sense in retrospect.

People want to own homes because #1 they believe it is a status symbol and #2 they believe the value will go up. Remove either and it wouldn't be so hot. Fractional reserve lending and economic policies toward price inflation have punished renters for a long time.

Try convincing someone who thinks home ownership is a good deal that it isn't. I've never succeeded.

<comment><USER4> There are many other reasons why people might want to own homes:

\- Even if the value doesn't go up, eventually you'll pay off your mortgage and be able to live more cheaply. If you rent, you'll be paying rent (which will probably be steadily increasing) forever. If there's inflation, your fixed mortgage payment becomes smaller and smaller in real dollars over time. And while you're paying your mortgage, you get to deduct the interest from your taxes.

\- If you own your home, you can't be suddenly thrown out because the landlord wants to demolish the building, or raises the rent to more than you can afford (e.g., due to the gentrification of the neighborhood).

\- In some areas, owning a home can give you access to better school districts.

\- Detached houses have more space and privacy than apartments. You're less likely to be disturbed by your neighbors, etc.

\- A home that you own is yours to do with as you please. Want to put a pool in the backyard? Sure. Want to remodel the kitchen? Just call a contractor. Want to convert your garage to an office? That's OK. Want to rent out your house while you go on vacation? There's nobody you need to ask for approval.

<comment><USER10> > \- Even if the value doesn't go up, eventually you'll pay off your mortgage > and be able to live more cheaply. If you rent, you'll be paying rent (which > will probably be steadily increasing) forever. If there's inflation, your > fixed mortgage payment becomes smaller and smaller in real dollars over > time. And while you're paying your mortgage, you get to deduct the interest > from your taxes.

That's a bit misleading. The money you save by not paying off a mortgage should of course go to other investments. You can even put it into housing (just not into the house you live in, for the sake of argument).

> \- In some areas, owning a home can give you access to better school > districts.

American laws are strange.

> \- Detached houses have more space and privacy than apartments. You're less > likely to be disturbed by your neighbors, etc.

You can rent houses, too. And you can buy apartments, too.

> \- A home that you own is yours to do with as you please. Want to put a pool > in the backyard? Sure. Want to remodel the kitchen? Just call a contractor. > Want to convert your garage to an office? That's OK. Want to rent out your > house while you go on vacation? There's nobody you need to ask for approval.

Yes, that's an important benefit. On the other hand, if anything's broken or there's legal trouble, it's yours to fix, too. It's a bit like owning a business vs just working in one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The paper actually is available for free online [1]. Someone better let Phil know about Google Scholar.

[1] - <http://www.feifeishi.iie.com/publications/wp/wp13-3.pdf>

<comment><USER12> Look at Figure 2 on pg 17. Does anyone really want to draw conclusions on homeownership and unemployment based on that data?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> By this argument shouldn't marriage also lead to unemployment since you have to live near your spouses job as well and often can't relocate.

<comment><USER14> Yes, human relationships are a real drag on the economy.

<comment><USER15> And, more importantly: the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have to wonder though if in aggregate if a predominantly rent based society will lead to even more wealth disparity. While the housing bubble was not exactly the epitome of economic health, we've seen what has happened in the bay area recently. For most bay area tech workers there has been a substantial rise in employability and wages but on the other hand a significant portion on average of the individual economic gains typically have been funneled to increased rent that seems to go up 10-15% every year out here. Heck we even see this in North Dakota with the new oil jobs - the rent for a place in the middle of nowhere has skyrocketed. I guess the point being that Im unsure that low unemployment and mobility strongly correspond to more accumulated wealth for employees.

<comment><USER17> I spend quite a bit of time analyzing lending data and personal finances.

I've also observed that when comparing a group of loans, those with homes were almost as likely to default on a loan as those without homes and it had minimal impact despite most people assuming that having a home makes a person "more stable." I have definitely seen many situations where a home becomes the priority over life, family and personal finances as well.

On the flip side, this argument also assumes that if consumers get better jobs, make more money, etc. that they'll actually save and/or invest more and the unfortunate reality is that most people just tend to increase their rate of consumption proportionately to their income/bonus increase.

So the nature of having a forced savings plan through a mortgage payment requires them to put money away yet still limiting their ability to move or take better positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we please get rid of the mortgage tax deduction now?

<comment><USER19> Why? I know many Canadians would kill for mortgage interest tax deduction.

<comment><USER20> From my perspective, it's a huge giveaway to people who are already doing fine, which offends me, morally; and it distorts the housing market in dangerous and destructive ways. Aside from employer sponsored health insurance, it's the most pernicious bit of Federal social engineering.

<comment><USER21> >From my perspective, it's a huge giveaway to people who are already doing fine, which offends me, morally

If it makes you feel any better, the home owner in reality gets practically none of the money. Since everybody gets the deduction it just causes everyone to have to bid that much more in order to be the highest offer. And the higher prices don't really spur new home construction to compensate as you might expect, because the areas with high demand are largely urban areas with minimal available undeveloped land and zoning regulations that often prohibit the construction of higher density housing that would relieve pricing pressure. The result is that the big winners are banks, which end up making larger loans and collecting that much more government-subsidized interest.

<comment> X-Istence I didn't even take this into account when purchasing my home ... I made sure to buy within my means regardless of possible tax deductions I get to maybe make in the future...

<comment><USER22> Whether you did or didn't individually, the price of housing overall reflects the fact that people generally do. It's outside of your hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hear, hear. How dare the serfs even think about owning their own home. They should be grateful to the merciful overlords for the opportunity to rent crappy overpriced and cramped housing where they can't nail things to the wall or have a dog. Not to mention the ever present threat of eviction by sale.

That's what popped into my head when I read that post. But I lived in Cambridge, MA long enough to have a chip or two on my shoulder. :-)

</comment><comment><USER24> The NYT article linked to in the comments section has much more detail:

Challenge to Dogma on Owning a Home [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/business/homeownership- may...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/business/homeownership-may-actually- cause-unemployment.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

</comment><comment><USER15> I haven't read the paper, but I'm from Spain and I've seen several things that support the hypothesis.

1) Home ownership ties you to a geographical location. If you're renting you have more freedom to move, and increased mobility leads to less unemployment. This is the most obvious reason, but not the only one.

2) If mortgages take away a big enough portion of the paycheck, consumers have on average less money to spend in another things, and lack of demand can cripple the economy, while banks leech all the money ("extractive elites"). If rent was more prevalent, it would be easier to move to a more affordable house from time to time, driving down home prices (it would be kind of a "less captive" market; I'm not sure if that makes as much sense as I think).

3) The prevalence of mortgages gives employers a lot of leverage. If you're in serious debt, you're more likely to accept worse condition on your current job, because you can't afford to miss a payment (miss enough payments and you _lose your house but keep your debt_ ). Maybe it's a cultural thing, but this is a very real thing here in Spain. The effect is that employers can force worse conditions (especially lower salaries) on employees, which, again, creates a lack of demand because people don't have money to spend. Even worse, once you hit certain level of unemployment (which nevertheless was very high in Spain to begin with), it affects you even if you don't have a mortgage, because there is a huge amount of people willing to work for peanuts, driving salaries down for everyone and creating a feedback that reinforces the whole process.

</comment><comment><USER25> It sounds like a straightforward premise: if you're glued to one spot you're eligible for fewer jobs. I wouldn't discount that, except there will be an upside as well: an area with lots of homes might be a good place for more businesses. The question would be which factor has a greater effect?

And unfortunately we don't know what the rest of the article says. That's a pity, because we can't see how they account for the giant freaking housing bubble the US had that immediately preceded an epic crash in the economy.

<comment><USER26> > _an area with lots of homes might be a good place for more businesses_

That will be true even if the people who live in those homes are only renting. People need stuff, therefore stuff sells well where there are lots of people. Homeowners need just as much toilet paper as renters do.

Of course, if your business caters to people who extensively modify their homes, you might do better in a neighborhood of homeowners than in a neighborhood of renters. But the DIY home improvement industry only accounts for a small fraction of the total business opportunities that a neighborhood offers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't own a home, and don't advocate owning one for anyone who is younger and needs to move to find great employment, but a HUGE potential error jumped out at me right away.

Home ownership accelerates in markets which are more leveraged to housing. Take Florida for example. Many people who live there work in various real estate jobs, when prices start to rise, they rise much more rapidly by percentage, and they fall much more rapidly. If the majority of a state's high paying jobs are in real estate, more people will be jobless following boom and bust cycles. Additionally, more people will be getting raises, high commission checks etc. which leads to greater home ownership in those states.

Without knowing if the author of the paper took this in to account, the research is completely worthless. Cyclicality in finance is a constant major issue and should be examined not only systematically, but also by asset class, area etc.

Cyclicality usually explains a very great degree of issues with research.

[added] A second potential explanation is that the 3 best markets for jobs have the highest prices on houses which prevents people from buying. New York, San Fran, Boston. Obviously California would go against my previous explanation.

<comment><USER28> Are you criticizing a paper you have never read because of its ignoring of a facet of a possible dataset that you are not certain they have used and admittedly have no idea that if they used it, that facet was ignored?

<comment><USER29> To be fair, most of the comments here are merely conjectures about what the paper might say

<comment><USER27> I can't read it due to the pay wall so I must comment only on what is available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Very interesting. I'd like to see how this applies in other countries, particularly smaller ones. For example, where I'm from most people wouldn't commute more than 60 mins for a job. However it is possible to commute from one side of the country to a job at the other side in under 3 hours. I would presume therefore that the loss of mobility caused by home ownership wouldn't affect the labour market as much in smaller countries.

<comment><USER30> By that logic, every US state could close its borders (if such a thing were possible) and cut down unemployment. Maybe the effect on unemployment _from home ownership_ is smaller in small countries, but the fact that it's a small country has other, worse, effects on its economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's a number of other factors that usually coincide with home ownership that would produce the same effects, chiefly domestic partnership and children. The problem seems to be more that the increase in necessity of labor mobility has far outpaced the progression of transportation. Public transit in most of the US is a bad joke. And high speed transit is all but non-existent. I don't really have any idea how we reduce the car-culture, but that seems to be the root of the problem, not home ownership.

</comment><comment><USER32> The paper: [http://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/finalmayHomeOwnershipUnemBl...](http://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/finalmayHomeOwnershipUnemBlanchflowerOswald2013.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER33> Though I'm not a singularitarian, I do think we are probably going to live an order of magnitude longer than our parents.

Given that, buying a house seems too... parochial.

<comment><USER34> You think we're going to be living into our 800s?

<comment><USER6> No, he thinks our parents only lived 8 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I was told this and I tell others: If you have to move to take a new job, don't buy. If, however, you can reasonably map a career (or, say, 10 years of it) without moving, the system is set up to reward home ownership (particularly for US-ians I think). It's not an investment, although it has aspects of one. It's not a boat anchor either, but can serve as a good approximation in down times. Just be #!*&% careful when committing serious coin to the man.

</comment><comment><USER36> The solution is very simple: Remote Work. I hope research like this one help make remote work be seen as a positive force in overall well being of the country. It saves Time, Energy and Gives More Opportunities and so Reduces Unemployment. It think its a great deal. I hope government can give some incentives to businesses for hiring remote workers by lowering employment tax.

</comment><comment><USER37> What about construction jobs that aren't permanent?

</comment><comment><USER38> Hmm... It seems the major factor is simply overbuilding.

"Overbuilding in one year leads to lack of building in subsequent years".

As building homes is a big cause of temporary job growth.

Also, I doubt long commutes lead to higher unemployment rates, as the economic pressures would step in. Companies hire to meet consumer demand. If they need workers, they'll raise wages, or open satellite offices where the workers are. They don't just stop hiring & let their production go down when they have orders.

</comment><comment><USER39> Buying a house ruined my life. I bought a house with my savings after the collapse. Got it really cheap (no mortgage). Only problem is now I want to sell it but can't. There are no jobs around here.

I do have a crappy job. I could probably do better if I could afford to move away. I've considered just abandoning the property or selling it for basically nothing.

Buying sucks. As does renting. I've seriously considered van life.

<http://cheaprvlivingblog.com/>

<comment><USER40> Why not rent it? If you got it really cheap just rent it for the cost of the property taxes.

<comment><USER39> Renting includes a number of financial and legal responsibilities.

Bad tenants can be a nightmare. I don't really want to risk having to deal with that drama.

Right now I'm thinking I'll just have to sell the house at a loss. Not really so bad. It won't be a tremendous loss and I have lived in 3 years. I guess in the end it would have been the same had I just rented.

Previous to this I did rent for a long time and hated that.

I really am serious about the van thing.

<comment><USER41> Have you looked into working with a property manager? They do all the screening and tenant management stuff for you. You give them a fixed percentage of the rent and I guess you're the wallet for repairs, etc.

Unless their take of the expected rent would result in a negative cash flow for you, it seems like a better option than selling at a loss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Which state was cherry-picked for this study?

Did they control for other influences on labour mobility such as working couples, children, pets, race/colour and car ownership?

<comment><USER43> (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5823345>)

A web search for some sentences in the abstract returns some useful hits for the paper online. Someone else posted (after you had posted) a link to the full paper.

Here's a nice PDF. (<http://www.piie.com/publications/wp/wp13-3.pdf>)</comment></comment>


Hypersonic aircraft shatters aviation records - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hypersonic-20100527,0,764506.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

<comment><USER2> Speed is not really the issue here: the X-15 was a hell of a lot faster 40 years ago. As usual the media misses the point due to their own ignorance.

There are two news-worthy items here:

1\. The ramjet/scramjet engine. (No moving parts)

2\. The lack of a test pilot.

This is what makes this test significant.

<comment><USER3> That and the fact that the speed was sustained for a longer period with this test vehicle than with previous vehicles.

<comment><USER2> meh. Build a bigger gas-tank. :-)

<comment> Tuna-Fish Not an issue. What makes it fail is the insane erosion it suffers when it rams into air at 2km/s.

<comment><USER2> Given that we've been launching rockets and missiles into the atmosphere at speeds much faster than Mach 4 for the better part of a century now, I think we've solved that issue as far as practically required. :-)

<comment><USER4> It all depends on the altitude. If you are using a rocket, you can avoid the friction problem by going out of most of the atmosphere. Do that with an air- breathing engine and it will not function.

<comment><USER2> As I said, solved as far as practically required, as your comment illustrates.

The viability of the scramjet being actually useful for anything is up for debate. Either you can fly slower with a jet, or leave the atmosphere altogether with a rocket.

Flying at orbital speeds within the atmosphere is of very, very marginal utility, given the number of complexities involved.

<comment><USER4> Maybe scramjets could be used as auxiliary propulsion for launchers. A pound of oxidizer saved is a pound gained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More impressive to me is the X-15, which flew faster than the aircraft in this video, had a pilot, and flew in the 1960s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15#Fastest_fli...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15#Fastest_flights)

<comment><USER6> that was a rocket engine though. this is air-breathing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "With the technology, the military could strike anywhere on planet within an hour or less"

Even at 4000 miles at out it wouldn't it still take up to 3 hours to get anywhere on the planet (24900 mile circumference)?

<comment><USER8> But we have bases all over the world.

<comment><USER7> So nowhere on the planet is less than 4000 miles from a US base?

Somehow I expect the answer to that question to be "yes".

<comment><USER8> And ships are capable of launching missiles and aircraft as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the engine that powers this aircraft: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet>

Right now, it can only operate at high speeds, hence the bomber-based launch.

<comment><USER6> a scramjet will only _ever_ be able to operate at high speeds. The compression of intake air for combustion is achieved by the forward velocity of the engine itself (the engine has no moving parts) unlike a normal jet engine which uses a fan to compress the intake.

Any scramjet, current or future, will require some combination of other engines in order to accelerate the aircraft to a velocity at which the scramjet becomes self-sustaining (typically 3000+ mph I think).

Edit: needless to say, a stable self-sustaining scramjet is an INSANELY hard fluid dynamics problem.

<comment><USER4> You could use a conventional jet engine to pump its exhaust into the scramjet intake. It would have less oxygen, but a turbofan engine could compress enough air through the scramjet fast enough. The trick in this is to transition from subsonic flow in the turbofan to full supersonic engine operation.

Looks like an interesting concept.

<comment><USER2> Putting a conventional jet engine in front of a scramjet defeats any real benefit you derive from having the scramjet there in the first place.

The scramjet's main advantages are cost and efficiency; to accomplish these gains it comes with a myriad of technical problems and hurdles.

The viability of the technology is actually still very much up for debate.

<comment><USER4> You don't keep the turbofans in front of the scramjet all the time - you use them to give the scramjet enough air to start. As the speed increases, the turbofan engines would eventually cease to operate and could be shut off completely, leaving the scramjet to operate freely.

The turbofans are dead weight when you are cruising at Mach 7 in the upper atmosphere, but are useful for take off and landing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At what point are these things no longer airplanes and just rockets?

<comment><USER11> When they carry 100% of their own fuel. This one gets oxygen from the atmosphere.

<comment><USER10> Aha! I was mostly commenting on the wings being useless though (until it slows down)...

Well...not useless, but not really being used to generate any lift.

<comment><USER12> This plane is a Waverider. It uses its own supersonic shockwave to generate lift.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waverider>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Make sure to watch the video, it's pretty awesome.</comment>


Cancelable Reads in Go - <AUTHOR> https://benjamincongdon.me/blog/2020/04/23/Cancelable-Reads-in-Go/ <comment><USER2> Trying to cancel a Read() is particularly troublesome with many USB serial devices, I suspect because of poor driver implementations. In these cases, Close()'ing the device with a Read() pending just hangs.</comment>


30 PHP Best Practices for Beginners - <AUTHOR> http://itechtalks.blogspot.com/2010/12/30-php-best-practices-for-beginners.html

<comment><USER2> _17\. Store Passwords with Encryption_

 _Many PHP beginners often plunk sensitive data like passwords into the database without applying any encryption. Consider using MD5 to encrypt passwords before you put them into the database._

:(

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree

<comment><USER3> Do you agree with how terrible it is to straight out copy and paste other peoples' work?

[http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/30-php-best- practices-...](http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/30-php-best-practices- for-beginners/)</comment></comment></comment>


The Expendable Translator - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/28/the-expendable-translator/ <comment><USER2> I can tell you I have worked as a translator and it used to be that the hourly rates were respectable. Nowadays you make the same as an admin assistant.

Translation is one job that has already been disrupted by technology. I ended up learning how to code and I am working on something now that uses language and programming (NLTK)and oddly, I found programming to be much easier than learning languages (I speak 6 human languages ) because it is a lot more predictable, stable and less dependent on context.

Translators should learn how to code. There is a lot of demand now for people who can do NLP.

<comment><USER3> "Translation is one job that has already been disrupted by technology."

For some language pairs that is true. And that's one reason people aren't willing to pay decent rates for human translation. But for other language pairs machine translation produces nonsense. I've run a small translation agency addressing one of the latter language pairs and have stopped focusing effort on building it since there aren't enough customers willing to pay for decent translations. I even get people who send me text that came from automatic translation and ask me to proofread it, saying it should be quick and low cost to do so because it is "already translated". In fact it is worse than starting with the original and doing the translation because it is mostly nonsense.

<comment><USER2> I agree, I translated a fiction book and of course in that case that does not work. And it usually sounds bad and there are errors, but most people don't need super exact translations. What I meant by my comment was that it used to be that knowing many languages was a valuable skillset, i.e. "you can get a job easily". That is no longer true. One reason for that is the rise of "translation agencies" which have taken a big chunk off of the pay rate.

I am learning Chinese and a bit of Russian but it will take about three years to become fluent in these two since the alphabets are different.

Translation gave me the ability to see abstract patterns in text which is something I only realized when I was randomly attacked by what appeared to be bots on Quora. I could tell the language patterns buried underneath the non- sense and I could see through their code. This was useful but unexpected.

That is when I realized that language is related to form (syntax) as much as it's related to meaning and that's how it is connected to programming (or how I experienced this connection, I am not sure if there is an "official" explanation somewhere).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The "replaceable" nature of the translator is the key.

As long as publishers can easily get a different person to do the work with little effect on the success of the piece, translation compensation will be low.

Yes, it is a creative effort. Yes, an excellent translation (especially of poetry!) is difficult, and is a much better final product.

But if the translator's name doesn't drive sales, translators won't be compensated as if it did.

</comment><comment><USER5> Old books have been translated many times, new books compete with millions of other books and are easily overlooked, and have to compete with FB feeds and online articles. That's why it's hard to get good pay in translation. There's an overabundance of content in all domains: text, image and video. We have reached an age of post-scarcity with digital content.

</comment><comment><USER6> Turns out knowing more than one language isn't a rare or sought after skill. In Europe maybe 40% of the population knows multiple languages fluently. Perhaps a third of these write well enough to translate.

You're not going to get paid well for a job that close to 15% of the population can do with no training

<comment><USER7> First, this is the sort of shallow dismissal we need less of on HN.

Second, please don't routinely create throwaway accounts to post with here. It's fine if there's some specific purpose, e.g. something personally sensitive, but we ban users who do it routinely. Hacker News is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, community can and does develop without usernames at all, it's just that people aren't on a personal basis with one another. To be honest, I recognise or even look at most usernames and I doubt many others do. It's similar to reddit, in which someone's username will only be noticed if they are extremely popular (very rare) or have a novelty username.

The effect is lessened here because the prominence of one's posts is not tied to how many points they have (like on old forums) because a person's points are not immediately visible. But anonymous messaging with optional usernames works just fine as seen on 2channel, 4chan, 8chan and the 'old chans' (now defunct).

I don't think community is at all dependent on usernames being used or not.

<comment><USER7> No, I have to insist on this. Some people want the kind of forum where there are no usernames, and that's just fine. But HN is not that kind of forum. Users who want that are welcome to find (or create) such a place, just not to turn HN into it.

It's important to draw clear lines around what HN is and isn't, and this is one of those lines.

<comment><USER8> I agree totally that HN is not that kind of forum, I was more picking up on the point that community does not require names to exist. Sorry if you weren't trying to make that point!

<comment><USER7> Ah I get it now. Yes, that's a valid distinction.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: An HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Beautifier - <AUTHOR> https://www.surrealcms.com/beautify/ <comment><AUTHOR> I built this beautifier because I'm tired of all the ugly, hard-to-use tools out there. It's not unique, but I think the experience is a lot better than most of seen (and there aren't any IN YOUR FACE advertisements).

Features include HTML, CSS, and JS beautifying, light/dark mode, one-click clean+copy, drag and drop, and basic + advanced settings. The tool uses Vue.js, Element UI, CodeMirror, and JS Beautify. I started it yesterday and finished it up today.

Any tips on improving, making more accessible, etc. are welcome!</comment>


Ask HN: Is the online advertising really this small of a market? - <AUTHOR>

I've been trying to build my understanding of the internet economy so I've been researching various economic angles. Online retailing, SaaS apps, content sites, etc. Then I came to online advertising. I just cannot believe how small of a market this is: $22B for the US market last year. This seems astronomically small. Warren Buffet is worth twice that much.
I'm starting to think that I'm too online. That I incorrectly assume there are way more people like me online and doing more than just YouTube watching, Facebook browsing and email.
It's also possible that I'm not truly visualizing just how much money 22 billion is, but I remember that the around ten years ago the Pentagon announced they had trouble tracking 2 trillion dollars, so I can't be too diluted.
Am I missing something? <comment><USER2> I think part of it is that internet companies are like celebrities...they're sexy, so they get a lot a lot of attention. Just like that shy girl from Texas who took a chance and made it big in movies, companies like Google who made a fortune out of bits and bytes capture our hearts more than conglomerates, shipping companies, oil companies, or banks. These are the companies that actually make money when ads get clicked.

</comment><comment><USER3> I honestly think internet advertising has reached its peak and is going to wane slowly downwards from here on out. There is no way someone can tell me, what with Twitter, Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, and the whole gang, that Joe Shmoe can't advertise himself and his company or products, and has to spend a fortune for it. It might have been like that 10 years ago, but nowadays, you can be famous for absolutely nothing.

Example: Some fellow films his cat lying with his paws up and snoring, and narrating in the background that he's not as lazy when it comes to his business. It's so funny that everyone starts looking at it - and thereby the business being advertised. Viola. Free online advertising, and he reached hundreds of thousands in an hour. :-)

<comment><USER2> Does that get people to pay him money for that service? I think there is a growing market for _relevant_ online advertising that is largely untapped. For example, mobile, location-based advertising (you just checked in near LAX airport on Foursquare, here are rental cars and hotels in your area).

<comment><USER3> You misunderstand. Internet advertising isn't about getting people to pay for your services.

It's about getting people to your front door. :-)

THEN you get them to pay for your services. If you've got a good website, and you offer exceptional services/products, you're bound to get some customers out of those visits.

<comment><USER2> _It's about getting people to your front door_

It's more about getting _quality_ people in your front door. That is, people who are interested in whatever service you are offering, not people who like cute cat videos.

<comment><USER3> I'm not so sure about that.

It's impossible to "monitor" who sees your online advertising if you scatter it to the four winds of the web. :-) I was using the cute cats as an example anyway. You can control a little bit of your marketing by targeting websites that deal with your services, but if you rely on social networking places like Twitter, Facebook, etc., it's just going to be a real mess.

Besides, isn't it more cost-effective right now to reach a lot of different people for absolutely free - then to rely on expensive SEO hunts, and targeting advertising to get the niche? :-)

<comment><USER2> _isn't it more cost-effective right now to reach a lot of different people for absolutely free_

Not really free, since you have to spend time doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stop for a minute and think about the ads you see online. I I pretty much only ever see ads for companies that sell stuff online or companies that are tech companies. Mom and pop shops may have a website or a facebook page, but they aren't running ad campaigns. A quick google of Hamburger shows zero ads. Where is the ad for McDonald's Burger King or that local hamburger joint I like so much? A quick google for Soda shows a Dr. Pepper ad. Basically the only people who advertise online are those who do business online or are somehow related. It just isn't that big an industry because not that many people are online enough to justify the expense.

<comment><USER2> * A quick google of Hamburger shows zero ads*

For you...remember that online ads are targeted, so you'll see different ads. I'm in Los Angeles, and I googled "hamburger" and got ads for Chili's, Albertson's, Pavillions, and a few recipe sites. You'll see more local ads in certain places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York.</comment></comment>


A foodie repents - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/shut-eat

<comment><USER2> I think, like many movements, the "foodie" movement is a reaction to the kind of mass-consumer food that became prevalent over the last few decades. The kind of ho-hum average and entirely consistent food that you could get any season, with different stores staffed by different people thousands of miles away from each other. You can get practically the exact same meal in Winter in Boston as you can in Summer in Nevada. Want sushi from your local Mr. Tuna in Colorado? No problem!

It's interesting to revisit the chains that were popular when I was growing up, the ones that haven't really changed their decor or menus. The food tastes exactly like I remember it, and it's honestly terrible. But growing up I didn't know it was bad, all food everywhere basically tasted like this. It was either this or local mom & pop homestyle stuff...nothing special.

Looking back, I think I grew up at an intersection of two events: people were becoming affluent enough to eat something other than food cooked at home, and we had become so enamored with our ability to provide any season, hyper- consistent food that we never stopped to ask if it was a good idea.

Think about how many Chotchkie's-style casual dining restaurants there are, all virtually interchangeable from each other. Once you start to hit a number of locations in the hundreds, it's just inevitable.

I think foodie-ism is looking at this ossifying industry and finding it relatively easy to disrupt. It can get pretentious at times, with lists of all the locally sourced ingredients in the homemade ketchup, but it also means you can get good food for a change. It means that if you have 20 restaurants, you have 20 actual choices of places to eat and not groups of interchangeable taste-alikes.

Even in traditionally _very_ manufactured food places, the burger joint, newer franchises like In-n-Out or Shake Shack, which actually artificially limit their expansion to ensure the kinds of ultra-high quality ingredients they use are available.

Honestly, if you like food at all, it's an awesome time to be alive, I have no idea how we made it through the 70's, 80's and 90's.

<comment><USER3> I find Chipotle really interesting as a company, because they are sort of the most mass market expression of these foodie ideas. Watching them struggle with ingredient quality as they've gone to massive scale is really interesting. They still retain their most important characteristics and their ability to train thousands of people to properly cook food the way they do is amazing. As an entrepreneur I'm just consistently impressed.

As a "foodie" (god I hate that word tho), I very often make it my lunch.

<comment><USER4> I honestly don't get Chipotle. The food there is bland and tasteless to me -- not even Taco Bell quality, much less what you'd get in a good Mexican or Tex- Mex restaurant.

Maybe it's a local artifact. Quite a few other chains in this area seem to be afraid of using any actual spices in their food.

<comment><USER5> > _not even Taco Bell quality_

Seriously now, come on...

<comment><USER4> Taco Bell is edible if you use their "Fire" sauce (which is still pretty bland). Chipotle's sauce, at least in this area, might as well be Gerber's baby food.

But then I'm an El Yucateco green kind of guy. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I liked this part:

 _Food is now politics and ethics as much as it is sustenance ... it's a form of surrogate politics. To some, it's not even surrogate politics; it's the real deal, politics at its most urgent and consequential. [...]_

 _I'm thrilled by this notion, and yet I find that I can't submit to it. [...] If shopping and cooking really are the most consequential, most political acts in my life, perhaps what that means is that our sense of the political has shrunk too far [...] Imagine that you die and go to Heaven and stand in front of a jury made up of Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Your task would be to compose yourself, look them in the eye, and say, "I was all about fresh, local, and seasonal."_

 __*

Food choices matter, but it's important to understand that a politics limited to consumer choices (like food, or boycotts) is very limited and unlikely to make much difference. There are exceptions (like South Africa), but the record is not very strong.

<comment><USER7> The author doesn't care about animal ethics or sustainable agriculture, and mocks those who do to cover his guilt. Good for him.

Thomas Jefferson _bred human slaves for profit_. I am OK taking his spot in heaven.

*Neither TJ nor I believe heaven exists.

<comment><USER5> > _The author doesn 't care about animal ethics or sustainable agriculture, > and mocks those who do to cover his guilt._

What guilt? One should only care about those things without guilt if he has already cared and done something about the more important issues.

And, no, "I let global warming and racism for others to take care of, my call was to care for animal ethics" is not something I'd take seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's all about me, me, me!

This is the dark side of the second tier of what's left of the literary movement - articles which begin with a long section of blithering about the author's background, family, or cats. At least on blogs, one has the option of skipping the "About" page.

The New Yorker would not have published this in its heyday.

By the same author: "How to Spend Money".

<comment><USER9> "I was a foodie before it was cool."

<comment><USER10> Basically. "I was a foodie before it was cool, and I'm going to keep on being one just to show all of these dorks like Guy Fieri that they can't ruin my love of pasta bolognese." ;)

This was sort of a "say nothing" article in sum to me, because he explored some different subjects and how he felt like foodies couldn't really survive in the long term with population expansion without compromising their reasons for being foodies in the first place, but then concludes by saying he's going to continue to be a foodie anyways.

<comment><USER11> No, "I was a foodie before it was cool, and now everyone else is, so it's not cool anymore and I'm out."

Useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, in a nutshell the author thinks that the 'foodie' movement can't feed the world.

Perhaps, but I'm not so sure. At its heart, the foodie movement is the complex jumble of things the author mentions. Politics, art, identity, history, etc. But it's also highly supported by people with excess income. So some of this critique seems to warrant further investigation. On the other hand, many of these movements actually are dipping into techniques from a previous era and different social strata. For instance pickling, home preserves, raising your own chickens, etc. Many of these things are actually able to co-exist with urban density, and many more can be if urban planning was adjusted in certain respects.

Additionally, I think many who focus on the quality of food would argue the world can't afford to feed the future 11 billion-peopled world using current agricultural practices. Economically, cheap transportation costs prop up various agricultural bread baskets, and will likely see future disruption as oil availability fluctuates. Other places, like California, require more water than is actually locally available. Some would also question the environmental cost of modern ag processes. From pesticide use to deforestation, agricultural use is often at the core of human's environmental impact in an area.

The foodie/locavore/in-season movement all have various things to offer to this debate. Throwing such a focus out seems silly, possibly at least as silly as those who think GMO products have no part of the future equation to feeding the world.

</comment><comment><USER13> There is also "Brunch Is for Jerks" [1], and "I am not a coffee drinker" [2] from the Times. What's up with the petty food articles these days from award- winning print media? Aren't there real issues to talk about? These seem less like interesting cultural takes and more like whining.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/opinion/sunday/brunch- is-f...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/opinion/sunday/brunch-is-for- jerks.html)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/opinion/sunday/i-am- not-a-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/opinion/sunday/i-am-not-a-coffee- drinker.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> This article gets it hugely wrong. Food is one of the highest forms of art; one that's vital and human and social all at once.

You don't have to like it, but you do have to eat, and it's such a large part of life and culture that yes, it does matter.

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

\-- John Adams

The seemingly trivial becomes the pinnacle of importance when it stands on a solid foundation.

<comment><USER14> While food is important, I am highly allergic to the whole bullshit and pretentiousness that surrounds it in the higher ends (same for wine, brandy and scotch).

We have taken some things too far.

<comment><USER11> Balance, as with all things. We should see things for what they really are.

Bullshit and pretentiousness are just quality reflected by an unbalanced ego. It is not the quality that needs to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >after her ordination

Nuns aren't ordained. They take vows but ordination is only for priests (or deacons).

</comment><comment><USER16> "from an environmental point of view, density is good." The author is confident enough to gloss over this which makes me skeptical of his conclusions about any large scale impact of the 'foodie' movement.</comment>


SemVer Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> https://jolynch.github.io/posts/semver_considered_harmful/ <comment><USER2> Doesn't really seem like SemVer's fault that package managers can't deal with more than one version at a time.

Our code should probably start being more explicit about what it requires, and we should probably stop having this weird, complicated indirection layer where code asks for some vague thing called "lodash" and receives lodash 4.7.19 today and lodash 5.9.1 tomorrow. This is not saving us time or making our lives simpler.</comment>


Why does Google list North Korea as an option when you sign up? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Why shouldn't it?

<comment><USER3> Sanctions.

<comment><USER4> That would prohibit trade within North Korea, but wouldn't make it illegal to do business with North Korean private citizens when they are outside of North Korea.

Otherwise, folks that defect couldn't do much of anything until they earned citizenship to their host country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because some folks _are_ from North Korea yet aren't currently living there now. Searching from a North Korean start will affect the results you get as well as the language.

For example, I'm American living in Norway: I use the Norwegian google for things that are local or if I happen to be searching in Norwegian. The US (english) version produces better matching results for many other things.

</comment><comment><USER5> @maybetoocurious If you post a question to HN, it's customary to add the prefix "Ask HN: " to the title.</comment>


Medieval Origins of Easter - <AUTHOR> http://www.tor.com/2017/04/17/the-medieval-origins-of-easter/#comment-660286 <comment><AUTHOR> There is an interesting discussion on the origin of the word Easter in the comments.</comment>


DeepRobust- Pytorch Library for adversarial attack and defense in deep learning - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DSE-MSU/DeepRobust/# <comment><USER2> I never understood the whole notion of attacks on deep-learning systems and all the research effort spent on defending against such attacks. After all, we're talking about systems that are brittle in the face of non-adversarial non-attacks, e.g. [http://news.mit.edu/2019/object-recognition-dataset- stumped-...](http://news.mit.edu/2019/object-recognition-dataset-stumped- worlds-best-computer-vision-models-1210).

The language of attacks and defenses implies that we are approaching the kind of robustness that we expect from say a bank app, when in fact we are lightyears away from that.

<comment><USER3> I'm the lead author of the paper you cited. Glad you enjoyed our work :)

Sure, you can break systems. That doesn't mean that they aren't useful! In many cases a system will see the same boring input many times over. People are often willing to be a bit flexible and help out when it happens to misread something. The fact that you can intentionally break systems like that, and that you can break them in a particular direction, like making them always think there's no danger in an image, is really worrisome.

Our work shows that your autonomous car won't always work well; that its vision system has some systematic error which we can characterize now. Adversarial attacks show that someone can intentionally make your car see a lane, whenever and wherever they feel like it, and drive you off the road. It's a whole different ballgame, and the language of attack and defense really fits well.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> DeepRobust is a pytorch library for adversarial attack and defense methods on images and graphs. It is demonstrated that some imperceptible perturbation on the input data can fool the systems based on deep learning.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been working on GCN for a while and I recently read something about the robustness of GCN then I found this. Probably it is useful to get a quick start:)

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the robustness might be a big issue for safe AI. I'm still trying to learn something related. Do you have any advice where I should start?</comment>


Energetics of vertical kilometer foot races; is steeper cheaper? - <AUTHOR> http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2015/11/23/japplphysiol.00546.2015 <comment><AUTHOR> Full paper is unfortunately behind a paywall. Reporting on the paper here:

[http://gizmodo.com/this-45-degree-treadmill-just-revealed- so...](http://gizmodo.com/this-45-degree-treadmill-just-revealed-something- fascin-1749332372)

</comment><comment><USER2> > At all angles and speeds tested, both walking and running involved having at > least one foot on the ground at all times.

That doesn't sound like running to me?</comment>


Ask HN: Review our brand spanking new web designer mockup tool, Clickdummy.com - <AUTHOR>

https://clickdummy.com
We'd love any and all feedback on our newly launched (not quite yet SaaS) application to help web design firms, freelancers, and UI designers alike speed up the process of prototyping with client feedback. There's a number of tools in the market, but we would like to thing we have a unique take on the problem at hand and some elegant and useful solutions. Here's the gist of the app:
"A 'clickdummy' is a mockup, evolved. Dummies let users navigate your mockups as if they were live websites or applications. Simply upload mockups you've created offline and draw clickable areas to let users navigate between them. The result is a very convincing simulation that does a much better job of communicating user experience than mockups alone."
Here's a blog post a fellow employee created regarding the difficulties of building the app in node.js:
http://skookum.com/blog/building-a-non-trivial-app-in-node-js/
There's been a ton of man hours spread across five buddies to get this thing out the door in 4 months. The whole project was bootstrapped and our team resides in Charlotte, NC.
We'd love any and all feedback you can give us.  Feel free to either reply here or if you find a glaring issue, please please don't hesitate to add it to our Zendesk account at http://help.skookum.com/ <comment><USER2> I think that the application itself has a lot of potential; however, there are two things that distract me from the actual content. Although I find the design agreeable, I feel as though the color scheme is reminiscent of security, perhaps Norton AntiVirus even. Although this could be seen as a positive, I think it is too much business/professional given the concept and would benefit from a more design/art feel. Additionally, I agree with mryan that the name does not do the application justice and quite possibly gives the wrong impression to potential users. Below are some available domain names I just brainstormed if you are interested. I am not suggesting that these are necessarily any better, just offering some suggestions. I hope that this does not come off as too negative, as I am honestly impressed by the application thus far. Nice work.

clickrelease.com

clicklayers.com

clickskinned.com

</comment><comment><USER3> My first impression is that the name is bad. If I was working with a web designer and they asked me to use "clickdummy" to collaborate, I would wonder who the "dummy" is supposed to be. Although you go on to explain what dummies are in the FAQ, the damage would have already been done by then. The first time I read the phrase, I assumed it was an instruction - "click [on this], dummy!".

Perhaps I am being overly-sensitive on the naming issue, but it seems that using what can be a pejorative term as part of your company name could backfire.

The home page took 25+ seconds to load - hopefully this is because lots of other HNers are currently checking it out.

I do like the idea overall, and the site design is nice and understated.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds pretty cool. Are there any examples that you can share? I'm sure a lot of people would like to see a working demo/example before signing up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a publicly shared url for you of a Hacker News mockup. Hover over the HN navigation on any of the pages and click through for testing.

[https://clickdummy.com/shared/E883012B-5B89-4AA3-AB7B-1FB1A9...](https://clickdummy.com/shared/E883012B-5B89-4AA3-AB7B-1FB1A901FC03)

<comment><USER4> I like it. Will definitely be using it for my next project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it really necessary for me to create an account before trying it?

This is really a more general point, but why do more sites not use StackOverflow's system, wherein you can use the site provisionally, with your identity being tracked by a cookie, and the user can choose to convert to something with a bit more persistence later.

<comment><AUTHOR> This problem will be addressed in an upcoming release with live demo functionality so you can get accustomed to the application and determine if it suits your needs. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My advice would be to further explain the 'add pages' concept. It confused me.

Another little gripe is the lack of an instruction video. It'd help.

(Just spend about 6 minutes on the site)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. We're definitely looking to improve the user experience wherever possible. A video is something we've been looking into post-launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> clickable: <https://clickdummy.com></comment>