Increasing the Awareness of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3814/increasing-the-awareness-of-the-dunning-kruger-effect <comment><USER2> Why is this post not getting more comments!? It's one of the most important dynamics driving innovation in technology.

On the one hand, the misconceived confidence of an unskilled newbie gives him/her the motivation to dive into the unknown, tackling difficult problems that others have tried and failed. But he/she does not know that. If the person is smart and persistent enough, there might be a chance of a breakthrough. I think there are plenty of examples in science and mathematics where a new perspective from an unknown scholar helps solve a hard problem.

On the other hand, the skilled people, knowing the particular problem is hard, won't bother to try. And the consequence is too much knowledge is a impediment to progress.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _Why is this post not getting more comments!?_

Because it was posted on an _internal forum that discusses community management problem_ (Meta site of Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange), it's not a blog post. Naturally it doesn't have any visibility.

I post it on HN because I believe the post is insightful and deserves public exposure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's not what Dunning and Kruger actually found. See [https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the- dunning-...](https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning- kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/) for a discussion of the actual Dunning-Kruger effect and some possible explanations of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Call me sadist, but I do feel good when I make a fresher (JS expert) realize that plain callback method doesn't make it Async.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would venture a guess that people who know of Dunning Kruger effect won't write articles about it because they don't know the subject well enough and someone else might be the right person.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, most of the writing about D-K directly contradicts their findings.

If there is a particular effect, different from a sort of reversion to the mean, it would be that the least skilled in any topic tend to also be unskilled at others, including estimating what is average.

I.e., they don't overrate their skills because of overinflated egos; rather, they don't understand the question well enough for their answer to mean anything.</comment></comment>


Chrome is moving to mark HTTP sites sending passwords etc as insecure - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/08/chrome-is-helping-kill-http/ <comment><USER2> Blog spam. Original is [https://security.googleblog.com/2016/09/moving- towards-more-...](https://security.googleblog.com/2016/09/moving-towards-more- secure-web.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Every other report I have read stated /all HTTP sites/ are marked insecure.

If this report is accurate, that's wonderfully relieving.

Does anyone know with certainty?

<comment><AUTHOR> It appears to be just sites with forms that require passwords or other secure data, at least for now, though this may change in the future.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Freeze – Amazon Glacier GUI Client for Mac OS X - <AUTHOR> https://freezeapp.net/ <comment><USER2> I've been waiting for something like this for a good, long while. If it works half as well as the description implies, it's worth way more than $10.

Feedback:

* Help me figure out how to get at an access key and secret for my account. That could be as simple as including a button that opens up Safari with the IAM console, or as awesome as working with IAM. Right now, this is probably your product's biggest stumbling block, as Amazon's user experience is atrocious.

* "Do you want to initiate inventory retrieval for all non-empty vaults of region US East (N. Virginia)?" — I dunno, you tell me.

* They're always "OK" buttons, not "Ok"

* Inventory and Transfers visibility shouldn't be mutually exclusive

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's great feedback. I admit that the app is not as user friendly as it should be, I'll work on that for the upcoming releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why would anyone use glacier for consumer needs, when Google Drive provides almost the same price without any additional complexities? Glacier 1TB is $7 (and that's in the cheapest data center), Google Drive's 1TB is $10.

One advantage I can see is more flexible cost, you pay for what you use. Is there other differences?

<comment><USER4> Well...maybe...because your data is far less likely to be indexed and used to push advertising to you when stored on Glacier? ;)

<comment><USER5> Amazon sells ads just the same. it's actually the 4th biggest network.

and they are king of tracking users. nobody does better

<comment><USER4> Better than Google? Really? Source?

<comment><USER5> google only has volume.

if you require source to know that google has the least segmented audience, you are clearly not in advertisement.

why do you think google pushed so hard for g+? or why it keeps trying to keep people logged while searching? even with all that, they are still way behind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be neat if this gave one real time cost visibility too.

<comment><USER7> That was my first thought.

Let me queue up a set of actions and tell me what those actions will cost. Also, track my daily/weekly/monthly cost and tell me what the new rate will be after a given set of actions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I already thought about implementing cost estimate calculation, and that's definitely on the roadmap for an upcoming release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> App costs more than my annual glacier bill :), but like others I've been looking for something like this for a while. I'll definitely support it.

</comment><comment><USER9> How does it stack up to Arq [0]?

[0] [https://www.arqbackup.com/](https://www.arqbackup.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Arq is a full featured backup solution. Freeze on the other hand is not really meant to be a backup solution, it's rather a file transfer client for Glacier where you get a raw view on your vault's inventories with upload/download features.

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anybody used Glacier for home backups? I still don't understand complicated billing of backup downloads, I fear that Amazon will charge me for many thousands of dollars.

<comment><USER11> You'd have to be storing absurd amounts of stuff for it to add up to thousands of dollars. from their docs:

Glacier is designed with the expectation that retrievals are infrequent and unusual, and data will be stored for extended periods of time. You can retrieve up to 5% of your average monthly storage (pro-rated daily) for free each month. If you choose to retrieve more than this amount of data in a month, you are charged a retrieval fee starting at $0.01 per gigabyte. Learn more. In addition, there is a pro-rated charge of $0.021 per gigabyte for items deleted prior to 90 days. Learn more

<comment><USER12> It's not storage that's expensive with glacier, it's retrieval costs. If you pull data down too quickly its conceivable that it could add up to thousands. In addition to the retrieval fee you have to pay for data out which is huge - $0.09 after the first GB in us-east-1.

Let's say you store 1TB and decide to download it all later. The retrieval fee is $9.73 (1024GBx0.95x$0.01) and data transfer is $92.07 (1023x$0.09). That's over $100 for just that one retrieval.

<comment><USER11> If you can afford to recover your data over the period of three weeks, you don't put anything, though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks great. Anyway to push Time Machine backups to Glacier with the app?

<comment><USER14> Arq is the tool you need.

<comment><USER15> Files you backup with Arq are only visible through Arq. This application seems different:

> "No proprietary encoding of archive descriptions. No proprietary encryption > or compression features that would make it complicated or even impossible to > use other clients."

That makes it different and more usable (at least for me), even if its behavior isn't "Time Machine" alike.

A trial or a demo would be nice.

<comment><USER16> Arq's backup format isn't a secret. It's fully documented [1]

[1] [https://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/s3_data_format.txt](https://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/s3_data_format.txt)

<comment><USER15> That matters and helps little to a regular user. If you want to access the data from the AWS web interface, or any other client (Transmit, etc.), you are out of luck if you use Arq.

Not being proprietary is an advantage. Freeze is as simple as it can be.

<comment><USER16> Correct me if I'm wrong, but de-dup and versions can't be done with the standard format. Which means Freeze can't do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Freeze is really meant to be a plain simple file transfer client, although it has some "helper features" like compare mode which shows differences between a vault's inventory and a local folder and the highlighting of duplicates.

But it is not meant to be a replacement for a full featured backup solution like Arq. I think some people like it a bit more "low-level" and simple and that's what Freeze is for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can the backups be locally encrypted before sending them to potentially insecure aws cloud?

<comment><AUTHOR> Freeze has no encryption or compression features built-in, so you are responsible to prepare the data as you want it to be stored on Glacier before you upload it.

I don't like built-in encryption features in file transfer or backup apps too much, because they are often proprietary and that may make it hard to switch to another client.

As a workflow example, I personally encrypt my archives with gnupg and store them on external hard drives and additionally upload them to Glacier for disaster recovery.

<comment><USER18> Another possible thought for the roadmap would be some sort of pluggable architecture for encryption. Let third-parties develop open encryption plugins that this runs inside prior to uploading.

<comment><USER17> Indeed, something like the pgp plugin for Apple Mail would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been looking for something like this for a while, to the point where I started writing it yesterday. Thanks for saving my time! :D

I've been running it for the past few hours to put backups of my photos to Glacier. I have zips of each album which vary from a few megabytes to a few gigabytes - in total it's around 40GB. My internet connection isn't that reliable, so around half the uploads have failed with 'Connection Interrupted'. It would be great if they were automatically requeued (maybe at the end of the list?) and were able to be resumed without starting from scratch (I assume behind the scenes uploads are multipart?).

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome :)

Yes, Freeze uses multipart uploads with 16 MB chunks. Resuming multipart uploads works chunk-wise, for example when you've uploaded 20 MB and then the connection drops, the upload then continues at chunk number 2. When you see that an upload restarts from scratch, then the connection was probably interrupted while trying to upload the first 16 MB.

About automatic retries: Freeze automatically retries 3 times and then you have retry manually.

For unreliable and slow internet connection I recommend setting max. parallel uploads to 1 and disabling the upload speed limit.

I plan make the chunk size configurable for a future update. I makes sense to use a smaller upload chunk size for unreliable internet connections.

<comment><USER20> Yesterday I uploaded 12GB to Glacier and big surprise for me was price per upload request:

$0.055 per 1,000 requests

Command line tool[1] split my 12GB into 1mb chunks and generate around 12k requests:

$0.055 per 1,000 requests 12,694 Requests $0.70

So bigger chunks are cheaper, but probably generate more retries.

[1] - [https://github.com/uskudnik/amazon-glacier-cmd- interface](https://github.com/uskudnik/amazon-glacier-cmd-interface)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> looks very neat. I did use glacier for backing up my photos and it was a lot more friendly when the feature to upload to s3 and then set an archiving policy so it automatically got sent to glacier was introduced. However when Amazon started offering unlimited storage in their cloud drive for $60 a year my usage of glacier ended. This still looks like a neat implemtation and if I have a use for glacier in the future I'll happy try this out.

</comment><comment><USER22> This looks really good. Does anyone know of any Windows or Win+Linux options like this?

<comment><USER23> There's a cross platform solution built in Java, Simple Amazon Glacier Uploader (SAGU). [simpleglacieruploader.brianmcmichael.com] If on Linux there's a nice CLI option too. [[https://github.com/MoriTanosuke/glacieruploader](https://github.com/MoriTanosuke/glacieruploader)]

They're not half as sleek though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks sleek, but any chance for a trial period?

<comment><USER25> It's $10 and the functionality is obvious. Just buy it.

<comment><USER26> And you can always get a refund as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wish this was a Web app.

</comment><comment><USER28> How does this compare with Tarsnap?</comment>


How to domesticate the fox - <AUTHOR> http://m.nautil.us/issue/50/emergence/how-we-really-tamed-the-dog <comment><USER2> Actual title: "How We Really Tamed the Dog"</comment>


Ask HN: If anyone can code, why does hardly anyone pass interviews? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> I'd argue the premise that anyone can code. Yes anyone can type what they saw in a book or online, but not nearly as many can comprehend what they typed and understand what they are doing and the implications of it long term.

Second to that, technology interviews overall are STILL broken. I really don't give a shit if you know the Big O for a specific algorithm, I care if you know when you would use certain data structures/algorithms and not others. I care if you can work in a team and participate and have a passion to learn.

So I, long ago, dropped doing the whos smarter interviews and went to a method that let's me ask you real world scenarios and see how you think through them. Because in the end that's what we do daily. So I'll ask questions for real problems we have faced and solved and see how you would approach them to see how you think. I don't care if your answer is the same as what we did, I care that you can defend your answer and participate in healthy non-conflict debate because that's how we find the right answer. I also don't sit there and ask you to whiteboard an efficient for loop to reverse a string or take your pick on other stupid questions. That isn't to say I won't ask specific coding type questions, but I don't care about you solving some stupid problem on the spot. I do care if you know the content and can apply techniques to solve the problem, because if you have those two things, you can figure the rest out effectively.

Oh and I will never send you a problem and ask you to code something for me, even paid. That is the ultimate of lazy and disrespectful IMO. To me it is like saying, you are not worth my time, but if you can pass this test I MIGHT bother talking to you, but no guarantees.

An alternative I feel is respectful and fair is during an interview, I might present you with some code and ask you to do a code review on it. I am not asking you to do "work" for free but I am seeing how you will look and think through code, plus I will gain far more from being able to ask you questions and see how you think than sending you home with some problem where I have no insight to your thought process.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone can code - a little. People that can do it well, day after day and year after year, are much rarer than "people who can code", though.

More: You probably don't want to hire "someone who can code". You probably want to hire a software engineer - someone who can understand requirements, write code that works, debug well, run a profiler, find memory leaks, understand other peoples' code, give (at least somewhat) accurate estimates, work well with others, not break working features, test thoroughly... You want a _lot_ more than "someone who can code".

</comment><comment><USER5> * Even though anyone can learn to code, not everyone can code already

* People get nervous in interview settings and there are many reasons why you might fail a coding interview despite being good at coding

* People who tend to not pass interviews end up doing more interviews than people who do pass them, skewing interview stats (everyone thinks they are hiring the best, but that can't be universally true)

</comment><comment><USER6> Because passing the coding interview is its own skill and rarely reflective of the job itself.

</comment><comment><USER7> Companies always interview a handful of candidates for each opening, so it feels like hardly anyone is passing because for each job, 1/7 gets it. On top of that just coding isn't enough, you have to stand out so they can unambiguously say you're the best. So you need soft skills and whiteboard skills as well.

<comment><USER8> So if they only hire the best 1/7, why do so many people say there are not enough coders on the job market and the demand is high? Why don't they just hire good coders too, not only the very best?

<comment><USER4> Coders are not interchangeable. You're a hot web programmer? Congratulations, you're not even considered for my job - I'm in embedded systems. You probably can't get hired to do deep learning, or Android programming. And the reverse is also true! There's all these programmers, and all these jobs, but nobody wants a generic coder. They want someone who can do the specific job that they have, or at least learn it quickly. When you're looking for a programmer, there aren't enough _of the kind you want_ looking for work.

And then there's supply and demand. Good programmers are in limited supply at the moment. (Perhaps we could train more, but it's going to take time. At the moment, the supply we have is limited.) The demand is there, so the price rises until the supply and demand meet. That happens when some of those who want programmers get priced out of the market. _To those firms_ , there's a shortage. That is, there's a shortage _at the price they can afford to pay_. But since they're the firms that would derive less value from those programmers, it's appropriate that they be the ones priced out. And if we had more (but not unlimited) programmers, we'd still have the same problem - <USER2> would be someone priced out who was complaining that there was a shortage of programmers, because they couldn't hire anyone at the price they could afford. When supply is limited, someone always gets priced out. To them, it looks like a shortage. But it's just a shortage at their price, not a shortage in general.

(There's also another problem: Programmers get paid really well. If you can fake it, and there's _one_ company that you can fool, then you can get paid really well. That's a strong motivation to, shall we say, exaggerate your abilities. This leads to a number of "programmers" looking for work who can't program very well at all.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, I think you've got to realise a few things here:

1\. While almost anyone can learn to code, it takes time to learn how to code well, and someone who's just starting out will obviously struggle to pass interviews. I mean, would you hire someone who picked up a book about Python two days ago and just learnt how to write a loop?

2\. There is a huge difference in the level of skill required by different companies. Many people who apply for coding jobs will be above average for some opportunities, below average for others and average for others still. Is your average CMS theme developer likely to get a job at Google?

3\. People's perceptions of their abilities vary wildly. A lot of the time, they'll go for jobs well above their skill level on the off chance they'll get it, and this happens for everyone from complete beginners to actual expert programmers. They may be able to pass an interview and become a programmer at a company, it just won't be for the type of company they're applying to.

4\. Just because anyone can code doesn't mean everyone can code right now. Does that stop them applying for jobs? Not really. But it sure makes it unlikely they'll get said jobs.

In other words, there are quite a few factors here, even assuming being able to learn to code is a universal human trait.

Edit: A few more

5\. Some people get nervous or fall apart in interviews, hurting their chances.

6\. Culture fit is important for quite a few organisations, and there'll be candidates turned down because their priorities differ from those of the people already there.

7\. Interview questions often don't actually judge someone's programming skill. Many companies end up relying on Google esque logic puzzle bullshit that has no real effect on anything.

8\. The skillset required for passing interviews is different from the one required for doing the work.

9\. Sometimes personal issues get in the way of a good interview or opportunity. Perhaps the interviewer was having a bad day, or the interviewee misunderstood the question. Or the boss/other employees were racist/sexist/classist/agist/whatever or had a personal dislike of the candidate based on first impressions.

</comment><comment><USER10> A lot of people pass interviews. Which still doesn't mean anything because the interviews rarely have anything to do with the job.

<comment><USER11> Huh? I've never been through a single coding interview that had nothing to do with the job. Would you mind sharing some of your experiences?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1) Knowing how to code and being good at it are completely different things.

2) Knowing how to code and having the specific coding skills the company is looking for are also different.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1\. I am Serverless adtech coder.

2\. I only do machine learning geared towards adtech

3\. I can't be hired for php wordpress development because i charge way too much for it $500/hr

3\. I won't bill for building Electron app either.

4\. If someone wants to build ad tech platform in C# or Java, i will pass. I only code in Go, JavaScript and Rust. I'll not learn any other language!

In the adtech area, there are only 20-30 guys capable of building whole ad tech platform A to Z from scratch.

They don't have any shortage of jobs.

But some guy doing wordpress thing can't be hired to for adtech. Got it?

Obviously, i always keep complaining that there are just not enough coders in adtech who know adtech well!

<comment><USER14> If you have some extra contracts that you don't have the capacity to complete and could use some extra hands, let me know. I would love to lend a hand and get some hands-on experience with what you do. You could pay me $100 and keep the $400 an hour for training me. If you want to discuss this further, my email is in my profile.</comment></comment>


The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/stockton_ubi_basic_income/543036/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> One of the things about UBI is that these pilot programs aren't UBI, because they aren't universal. Giving a segment of the population free money is going to benefit that segment, no question. Welfare and Quantitative Easing are both examples of that. But when you make it universal, my economics intuition says that the effect will be washed out by a commensurate rise in prices.

Or put another way, you can subsidize the few at the expense of the many, but you can't subsidize the many at their own expense and have it result in a positive effect.

<comment><USER3> Sure, if you simply gave everyone $1 for every dollar they already have, all you do is double prices and change nothing of substance.

But I think the pro-UBI argument would be that you don't need to increase the money supply to do it. About 60% of Federal spending is on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Reducing the spending on these programs, and other inefficient transfers such as welfare and disability will pay for much of UBI, and the rest is paid for by raising taxes. The net outcome is that rich people will pay a bit more to the government than they do now, poor people get a bit more than they do now, but the major effects are 1) inefficient bureaucracy is eliminated, 2) bad incentives are eliminated (such as disability payments forbidding any gainful employment, and 3) the stigma of welfare payments is removed when everyone gets them.

I don't think this will work in the US because 1) there's no political will to reduce existing entitlement programs and 2) there's a lot of resentment in the working class against recipients of entitlements, and 3) racism. However, the argument that UBI will fail because it requires printing money is probably wrong.

<comment><USER4> I disagree with your premise that doubling the number of dollars everyone has would simply double prices. If you take someone that has $1 million in the bank, and magically make that $2 million, they almost certainly won't double all of their expenditures (they probably wouldn't change what they spend at all on a wide variety of categories - food or clothing, for instance). Rising inequality means that lack of demand is actually a big issue, since we're transferring income from people that would readily increase consumption, given more income, to people that will largely sit on that money. Globally speaking, our factories could easily produce more goods without raising prices much, if any. I believe a UBI would effectively be a transfer of wealth from people that have lots of money (but don't spend it) to people that don't have lots of money (but would readily spend more if they had it), but it wouldn't be the zero-sum game that people often assume it would, just by virtue of our productive capacity not being nearly maxed out.

<comment><USER5> While the now $2 millionaire would not be likely to spend that extra million on food and clothing they would be extremely likely to invest that money in a variety of financial instruments, making that capital available in the market so it can be put to good use. Investing does help inject value into the economy and drive growth - "sitting on it" would require literally keeping it in cash in a bank, which no sane person would do due to inflation.

<comment><USER6> > they would be extremely likely to invest that money in a variety of > financial instruments, making that capital available in the market so it can > be put to good use

This improves the supply-side of the economy, but doesn't do anything to stimulate demand for products. Today, lack of demand is a larger problem than increased output. The labor share of GDP has been decreasing since the 70s, and its starting to hit levels where people are having trouble affording as many goods. Although investing is a good use of funds, arguably redistribution (a type of demand-side stimulus) would be more helpful today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish there was less focus on distributing money and more focus on free water, food and shelter for everyone

It's crazy to me in the UK that we have free healthcare, where you can get free water food and shelter if you're ill but if you're healthy you can go back on the street with potentially no food water shelter

<comment><USER8> A network of free services will always have gaps. Food, water, shelter... what about power, internet, clothes? Something equally important that not everyone needs?

Basic income guarantees that the gaps are filled. It even makes markets more likely to try to fill them. But basic income can't get basic services to people who can't control their own money. Getting food to children of alcoholics requires that the system doesn't pass through an intermediate step that can be exchanged for alcohol.

So both a thorough network of social services and basic income are required for a society that aims to raise the standard of living for everyone. Both individually have blind spots.

Basic income can serve as a substitution for other services though, so if you're going to add things one at a time instead of magically willing it all into existence, it makes sense to start there.

<comment><USER9> Socialized healthcare should ideally capture the edge cases and provide psychiatric help to the helpless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Increasingly my thought is that UBI or a minimum living wage (enforced perhaps through an employer of last resort who sets an effective wage floor) _must_ be balanced by a tax on economic rents, else the gains simply flow to rentiers.

This is a "land tax", but writ large and applying across all (or most) rent- seeking goods, including especially productive (as distinguished from strictly financial) asset classes.

In the case of Stockton, and most other West Coast cities, this would mean land taxes to incentivise further development and housing supply, as well as updating zoning and building codes to allow denser and mixed-use development.

The wildfire situation in the _already_ housing-constrained SF North Bay strikes me as a tremendous opportunity to reconsider housing, rents, asset taxes, and zoning.

<comment><USER11> Such a tax would only increase rent - most landlords don't run on huge margins, and those that do aren't going to just give them up.

<comment><USER10> See my response elsewhere in this thread, or read on the economics of land taxes.

That understanding is incorrect.

Most particularly, _landlords themselves_ are paying rent in the form of interest. Property values would tend to fall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem with UBI is that it doesn't promote social behavior. In fact it promotes anti-social behavior, since a UBI recipient need not provide any value to his community as a condition of this benefit.

Charity is not a legitimate role for government.

<comment><USER13> > a UBI recipient need not provide any value to his community as a condition > of this benefit

A person working for a paycheck doesn't provide value to a community, only to their employer. Chronic unemployment, however, _does_ harm a community. The explicit physical need for food, shelter and access to medical care outweighs the implicit value in the dignity of labor.

> Charity is not a legitimate role for government.

Don't consider it charity, then, consider it insurance, or just another public service like the police or fire department.

<comment><USER12> Police, insurance, and fire department are paid services to protect property. UBI is a scheme intended to increase consumption, that is, destroy property.

<comment><USER13> >UBI is a scheme intended to increase consumption, that is, destroy property.

What property does UBI destroy, and why don't increases in consumption through other means also destroy property?

<comment><USER12> A simple example:

10 people make widgets. Annual production is 10 widgets. Mean annual standard of living is 1 widget.

9 people make widgets, 1 person is on UBI. Annual production is 9 widgets. Mean annual standard of living is 0.9 widgets.

In the second example one widget was destroyed, and everyone was affected.

We are all counting on one another to to create value. At my business, in my community, and our country as a whole, I'm counting on you to take a job and work, because if you don't we will both have a lower standard of living.

<comment><USER13> That example seems so contrived that it's difficult for me to see it representing reality in a meaningful way. It may be too simple to be useful.

In reality, that tenth widget still gets produced. They hire someone else to replace the "UBI recipient" or else run the production line slightly faster so nine people make ten widgets, or else automate and fire all ten employees, and make twenty widgets a year. Nothing in a real economy is that zero-sum. Value which only exists in potentia and which may as well be created by other means cannot reasonably be said to be "destroyed." Something which never existed can't be destroyed.

UBI just decouples a person's ability to work with their ability to live at a subsistence level, it doesn't prevent them from working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If everyone is getting $500 why wouldn't the landlords raise rents by $500?

<comment><USER13> Why don't landlords ask you for your salary now and charge that amount for your rent?

<comment><USER14> They charge what they assume people can pay. So at some point they would know you can pay $500 more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands As a city who has been on the verge of bankruptcy, I'd say this is a welcome life line to some of its residents.

</comment><comment><USER15> When residents don't want to move away, they'll call it "Stockton Syndrome" :P

</comment><comment><USER16> >tech boom

Loaded language is loaded!</comment>


An Affordable Streaming Platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.appic.video/ <comment><AUTHOR> Ideal for video creators!</comment>


Why wasn't this page found?  We asked some leading economists - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/errorpage <comment><USER2> No paywall either!</comment>


Knock Knock? – A Survey of iOS Authentication [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://darthnull.org/media/presentations/KnockKnock-iOS-AuthSurvey_ShmooCon_2015.pdf

<comment><USER2> There's a blog post that sort of summarizes the slides here (which'll have to do until I get the white paper written): [http://darthnull.org/2015/01/23/shmoocon-ios- auth](http://darthnull.org/2015/01/23/shmoocon-ios-auth)

</comment><comment><USER3> Useful information, applicable to today's coding task. Many thanks.</comment>


Why parking minimums almost destroyed my town and how we repealed them (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/22/how-parking-minimums-almost-destroyed-my-hometown-and-how-we-repealed-them <comment><USER2> How could a bank possibly require _two hundred_ parking spaces? For a branch in a small town? There's only about 9,000 people in Sandpoint!

Edit: ah, it's a multistorey office building, so that's presumably 1:1 employee parking, not a branch with customer parking?

I was trying to work out how this would play in the UK, and in the first instance it's most likely the bank would shut: [https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/caroline- flint-...](https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/caroline-flint-small- town-britain-suffers-as-bank-branch-closures-continue-1-8914883) (Thorne has a population of 16k and no bank branch).

There is always a back-and-forth about parking availability, charges, and business taxes in relation to the UK high street. But the usual model is either a small amount of on-street parking or a charged-for public or private car park.

<comment><USER3> (According to local news articles) It's a 90,000 sqft building, in a small village with zero alternative transportation. 200 parking spaces is actually a conservative low requirement, all things considered.

The building, if some day fully occupied, would have over 400 employees daily in it. In my city, they'd probably push closer to 450+ employees into there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to live in Sandpoint, and the large city parking is full very often forcing people to park on the street where it's a 3 hour or so limit. I always rode my bike (yes even in the winter) but it's challenging for tourists visiting the beach or shopping in the summer to find parking. Also very few people ride their bike in the winter with all the snow & ice, and that's when there are the fewest parking spots since the snow piled up cuts the size of the city lot in half.

I always thought a park and ride would do well there so tourists could park out of downtown and take a bus to downtown or the beach.

It's not a big problem, but I couldn't imagine the city having less parking.

<comment><USER5> Just charge for it. That encourages efficient allocation of the resource (land).

If the government mandated free ice cream for everyone there would likely be an ice cream shortage. The solution would be to charge more for ice cream, not just try to increase the supply to meet demand (which is basically infinity when the cost is 0)

<comment><USER6> It also encourages people to go elsewhere.

I needed glasses recently, with my insurance I had a choice of 4 stores. I went to the one with free parking. (Google maps streetview is great for checking that.)

Requiring paid parking in a tourist town encourages people to visit a different town.

<comment><USER7> Choosing a store within a town is different from choosing a different town.

All the old style tourist towns with limited parking seem to be doing _more_ than fine. I live in such a neighbourhood, with no parking minimums and paid parking. People still visit.

<comment><USER6> Think about it like this: Why is there paid parking? It's because demand exceeds supply, so they require a fee in order to encourage people not to come.

But that means you _could_ have more visitors.

Now, if you are maxed out, then good, paid parking makes sense - send those tourists elsewhere.

But if more visitors = more money, and that is something the town wants, then adding more parking, and reducing fees is what the town should do.

Which is what I said: "It also encourages people to go elsewhere."

It boils down to this: When choosing paid parking make sure this is what you want, that you want people not to come.

(And I acknowledge that in certain situations it makes sense to want that.)

And I know what you are thinking: You'd rather they take the bus or whatever. But think about this: Why do they chose to drive anyway, forcing you have to encourage them not to?

Clearly there is something lacking with the bus, to the point that you have to deliberately make driving worse just to induce them to use it.

<comment><USER7> Have you ever been to Europe? People just don't use cars when visiting most cities there. They walk, take a bus, use an Uber.

I live in Montreal, and it's the same when tourists come here. They may drive to the city, but they leave their car parked the whole time. (Side streets out of the center have some free parking. Commercial arteries and downtown core is paid)

Sure, you could have more parking for cars, but you might not have more _people_. And with too much parking you destroy the city you want to visit. Edmonton and Calgary have plentiful parking, and no ones goes to visit them, except as a stopping point to see the wilderness around the city.

<comment><USER7> Oh, when I said "not have more people", I meant it in the sense that cars take a lot of space in the environment, blocking people. They also transport fewer people in a given space than bikes, buses, subways, sidewalks, etc. In a dense urban car that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Meanwhile, in Geneva, some new buildings are forbidden to build an underground parking in order to discourage the use of cars.

It's interesting how cities react to cars differently

<comment><USER9> Yeah, Geneva is already clogged and just doesn't have the space to build more roads. Driving is curable, as they say.

<comment> saiya-jin So they decided to build a completely new subway just to incentivize french daily commuters to drive less into the city. Project costing billions, making ton of mess all over the city for last 10 years, planned either by incredibly stupid people or as outright fraud.

If you look at the map, it won't help in transport practically any Geneva inhabitant, since there are only 4 stops altogether (1 is in so called ugliest town in France just across the border, Annemasse), and moving between those 3 within Geneva will be faster by existing bus system (ie Eaux-Vives -> train station, takes 12 mins). That's not how you build a city subway. What a fail...

Add to that the fact that french commuters would have to drive to centre of border french town (which has its own traffic jams every day and no infrastructure to handle extra commuters) and somehow park (expensively) there - it will take them +-same time to just go to centre of Geneva.

The problem would be solvable very easily without any digging and spending billions and pissing off everybody - just change legislation to make parking to non-swiss (or non-Geneva) cars more restrictive (blue zones) or more expensive (white zones, inner city parkings). And make the border huge parkings really cheap, the prices now are ridiculously high for what they are supposed to do (and waiting times for a slot are 6-12 months). It would also bring more revenue to city without having to build more parking spaces for which there is simply no space.

I suspect huge bribery from companies involved (mainly construction) to push this through, because this really doesn't make any sense. Yet another example of Geneva not really being Swiss in anything but location - more like 50% French with their mess, inefficiency and corruption, and 50% somehow Swiss (but its really smaller half, they just have tons of money from all the companies due to low corporate taxes).

<comment><USER8> > "1 is in so called ugliest town in France"

> "more like 50% French with their mess, inefficiency and corruption"

It's sad to bring an emotional "argument" to a rational one

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure why a bank building a 3 story building can't accomodate some underground/roof parking? Or just make the carpark space the bank would have made multi level.

I don't see why the only solution was to go horizontal, for a bank of all companies!

<comment><USER11> Ballpark construction costs:

      Surface parking $3,000 per space
      Multistory $20,000 per space
      Underground $30,000 per space

<comment><USER12> Don't let them decide on cost.

It's the cities job to put regulations in place to require underground parking when building certain structures. It is also their job to calculate in the additional toll on traffic as well as public transport in order to plan future expansion.

<comment><USER13> We have that kind of regulation where I live, including a requirement for off- street parking per apartments that pushes builders strongly towards underground parking. Now people complain about the rents, because of course the added construction cost ends up increasing the rent, and about a lack of new affordable housing.

You see the same thing in the original story — some popular restaurant decided not to expand because of the cost of parking. Mandating expensive extras sucks, one way or another.

<comment><USER14> That's not extras, that's paying for the externalities you otherwise incur upon others.

<comment><USER13> About half the residents in such apartments have no car.

<comment><USER14> Interesting, because here nearly everyone wealthy enough to buy a central, newly commissioned apartment (ballpark of million dollars) does own a car.

<comment><USER15> Not in Europe. Cars aren't really practical anywhere near city centres.

<comment><USER14> I am in Norway, not even in the capital.

<comment><USER15> Owning a car in city such as Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Prague, Brno... is significant pain, and it costs you a lot to even keep that car on the street (if you can find a place - you can't). As a result, people in many historical cities with compact greater city centres (where there simply is not enough land to even theoretically accommodate 1 car per household) simply don't own a car, because why. Probably more than half of the people living in the building where I do don't have a car, many of my coworkers don't...

<comment><USER14> All of the European cities I've been to are full of parked vehicles. Someone got to own all them.

Anyway we were talking about parking norms for newly commissioned buildings, and "you can't find parking place on the street" isn't really an argument against it.

<comment> shaki-dora To bring some numbers into this otherwise useless exchange of made-up anecdotes: half of all households in Berlin do not own a car.

To get back to useless anecdotes: as far as I can tell, this is not a result of poverty. Indeed car ownership is far more prevalent among the poorer immigrant community than the younger hipster community. I know people owning apartments but not cars. It's simply a shift in the value system.

<comment><USER14> Younger people tend to have both smaller incomes and smaller families, so it's neither anything new nor surprising. Give them 15 years.

<comment> shaki-dora You missed the part where I mentioned people owning apartments yet not cars, and also where I explicitly referred to my (admittedly subjective) impression of a subset of car owners as 'poorer'. To expand: this is a rather well-known cultural effect, with first-gen immigrants valuing wealth and its symbols more than the postmaterialistic boheme.

The families I know generally use attachable bike carriages for their children, and car sharing for exceptional needs.

<comment><USER14> Meh, I owned an apartment and didn't own a car until I was 30, until the kindergarten commute with two bus changes really started to get old. You extrapolate the trend from an early datapoint.

Maybe where you live car ownership is for poor, but not here. A rustbucket in Norway would buy you a great car in Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I live in a small city (Alameda, CA) that has a couple of concentrated "downtown" areas with limited parking. The construction of a 6-story municipal parking garage as part of a large renovation of the old movie theater complex in 2008 was beneficial to all of the surrounding businesses. It seems like this is a pretty good general strategy, it just requires a large up-front investment by the city.

More details:

[http://www.alamedatheatres.com/historic- theatre/](http://www.alamedatheatres.com/historic-theatre/)

[https://www.overaa.com/projects/alameda-historic-theatre- res...](https://www.overaa.com/projects/alameda-historic-theatre-restoration- civic-center-parking-garage)

<comment><USER17> What would have been even better is investment in a BART line that runs to Alameda. Getting on and off the island is horrible due to there being only 3-4 bridges/tunnels (IIRC). Of course, that would have been a larger up-front investment but one that they're now looking at.

[http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/May-2018/BART-in- Alameda/](http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/May-2018/BART-in-Alameda/)

<comment><USER16> The theater/parking renovations totaled around $37 million. Bringing BART to Alameda is, according to your link, a 12 to 15 BILLION dollar project. That's 300 to 400 times more expensive.

<comment><USER18> That is an uncharitable comparison. 12 to 15 billion is the cost to build an _entirely new transbay tube_. The cost to tunnel BART from Oakland to Alameda would be a small fraction of that.

I'd certainly shop in Alameda vastly more frequently if it had a BART station. Heck, my wife would probably insist we move there, the reason we don't live there is I insist that we live near a BART station.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Every business would prefer to have customers swipe parking provided by every other business. That way, the other businesses pay the cost of land for parking. It's a freeloader problem. Parking minimums exist to fix this.

You don't need parking minimums in the middle of nowhere, with businesses too far apart for swiping each other's parking spaces.

Customers really do go elsewhere if there are no spaces, but a business can't affordably provide the spaces if they will mostly be swiped by customers of other businesses.

<comment><USER20> Every business will prefer someone else to handle parking. No business will survive if parking is not handled. Eventually, someone will pay for it, else no business will survive. And since we know businesses survive without parking minimums, we must therefore also know that a solution to your freeloading problem can be found without the requirement.

Also, parking minimums can omly make sense in the middle of nowhere. In a dense location, each business cannot be reasonably expected to build parking.. because the location is dense. Unless you spread out the buildings, to make it sparse enough to support each building owning x spaced... but I don't think anyone wants to take a city and pretend its the middle of nowhere.

Parking minimums are neither a good solution, nor the only solution. I don't know what the best solution is, but as above, alternative solutions obviously exist. My opinion: city-owned street parking + private lots offer a good setup; businesses shouldn't be directly involved in parking lots, except as a worst case scenario (ikea/walmart 40 minutes out of the city proper)

<comment><USER21> A lot of people on here are big on just eliminating or drastically reducing parking in cities. That works fine if you live and work downtown and don't need a car otherwise. But I pretty much guarantee you that the vibrancy of your downtown is sustained to a large degree by people who don't live there coming in. I was just in the local city for dinner and a play last night. I can guarantee you that, to the degree traffic and parking make that too much of a chore (and, believe me, it's getting there) I'll just fire up a movie at home instead.

ADDED: Some cities (e.g. New York, London, various other European cores don't really lend themselves to driving in--though many people still do in the evenings--but that presupposes public transit that can comfortably substitute for driving in terms of convenience and cost).

<comment><USER22> Driving and transit are not the only two ways of getting around. There is also walking, which is both the cheapest form of transit to provide and also completely dependent on density in order to work. Places like Boston, London, and New York are not dense because they have great transit, they're dense because they predate things like parking minimums which would have prevented them from becoming dense in the first place. Their high density, in turn, drastically increases the efficiency of public transit, meaning a lot more people can be served by a given amount of transit spending. Parking minimums undermine all of this by forcing buildings to either be very far apart (to accommodate the parking lots) or very expensive (to pay for parking structures). Both of these things tend to make cities less vibrant and walkable, while also increasing economic inequality and carbon emissions.

<comment><USER23> This.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Parking facilities are like hash tables. They get less efficient (time) as they get more full. But they are also less efficient (space) when nearly empty.

Unfortunately for city planners, doubling the size of a lot when it becomes 80% full is not a cheap operation.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's an area with a bunch of businesses all served only by street parking in the town by me. I never go there because I hate street parking. If they had parking lots I'd go there. I wonder how many other potential customers feel this way.

<comment><USER26> A town nearby where my parents live recently experimented with zoning some of their parking lots for development and expanding street parking in the (small) downtown core, an area full of small shops and restaurants, mostly. The street parking had meters, which were very cheap (I think the maximum you could spend was something like $3 a day). The local residents revolted, business owners claimed their income was taking a hit, etc. At the time, I wondered how in the world this seemingly thriving, walkable little downtown was so dependent on giant free parking lots behind the main strip... it seemed crazy to me that someone would stop going to a restaurant they enjoyed because their $50 bill for dinner turned into a $51.50 night out with parking fees.

I'm not saying you're wrong to dislike street parking, its just such a foreign concept to me that someone would avoid an entire otherwise-nice area because there is plentiful parking that doesn't suit their tastes. Kind of weird to see it written out like that.

<comment><USER27> Same concept with free shipping. People really like it, even if the total cost is higher.

<comment><USER25> Are meter fees the primary complaint about street parking? They don't really factor into it for me.

<comment><USER26> [https://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/Dunedin- shuts-...](https://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/Dunedin-shuts-down- paid-parking-discussion_171353318)

This is an article from the town in my example above - comments from business owners make it seem like, yes, the primary issue really was that people don't want to pay anything at all to park.

(A couple of years after the controversial paid street parking experiment started, a new mixed-use development with a public parking garage on the ground level opened up. The garage is still free to park in to this day. Somebody paid a lot of money for those garage spaces, and is seemingly very afraid of charging anything to use them)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> An interesting city to look at parking is Madison, WI. Because the heart of downtown is physically restricted by an isthmus, there are many public parking ramps.

[https://www.cityofmadison.com/parking-utility/garages- lots](https://www.cityofmadison.com/parking-utility/garages-lots)

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems like a reasonable requirement to have a certain number of parking spots for new construction. If anything it needed to be modified to apply pain for making the choice to build parking at street level (vs underground or multi level parking) by applying a penalty against the sq foot footprint of parking installations that feeds back into the cost equation for the buildings. IE, if the requirement is to have 200 spots for a specific building adding those spots by buying blocks of land for flat parking increase the requirement count by a ratio of the land used to supply the spots. Given a properly sized ratio the builders will have a choice of a cheaper underground/multilevel parking system or a much more "expensive" flat parking lot.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have noticed a weird left-right political reversal around parking in the US. Or maybe it's not entirely left-right but wonk-populist.

The voices that most loudly condemn socialism and regulation suddenly become advocates for government-run parking and against deregulation of private- sector parking. (For example: [https://twitter.com/KCGOP/status/1067502185099841536](https://twitter.com/KCGOP/status/1067502185099841536))

<comment><USER31> I feel like I have misunderstood your post. I'm assuming by "voices that most loudly condemn socialism and regulation", you mean the GOP? But the article linked doesn't seem to complain about deregulation of private-sector parking, but rather to complain about giving over parking to bike lanes and government run buses.

Where is the part where they want government run parking and regulations on private sector parking?

<comment><USER30> Maybe it really is more about shifting priorities away from cars and towards more green uses like bike lanes and buses.

That specific example doesn't touch on parking minimums, and maybe deregulating those are less of a political hot button, but the fact that they remain pretty much ubiquitous in the US suggests that there is still some opposition.

But there also seems to be a lack of faith that the private sector will step in a replace the public sector spots that have been converted to other uses, as well as opposition to charging a market-clearing price for the remaining government-run spots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> beautiful writing and a beautiful approach to building consensus

</comment><comment><USER33> From an European standpoint, this text reads like a nightmarish dystopia. I find solace in the trend towards banning cars altogether inside the cities.

<comment><USER34> Agreed, although for small communities, public transport doesn't always work.

Coincidentally, the author's bio says he now lives in Seattle, which has truly awful traffic. They could have banned traffic in e.g. South Lake Union when it was being developed and didn't.

<comment><USER33> > for small communities, public transport doesn't always work

For very small towns, you can walk. For mid-size villages, you take the bike. For cities, there is a public transportation network. In exceptional circumstances you can take a cab or an uber. If you want a week-end in a remote site, you can easily rent a car. I see _zero_ need of owning a car for the general population, and I have never had or needed one.

<comment><USER34> If you're lucky enough to be able to walk or cycle, great - I love living in places like that, and currently don't own a car.

But I grew up in a small, isolated village (in Europe, as the other comment notes). When your bus ride to school (on public transport, not a school bus) takes 40mins+, walking or cycling just isn't practical. So please, rural communities have it hard enough already without presumption or condescension. A bit of empathy goes a long way, although I guess it's easier to just assume everyone lives a certain way.

<comment><USER35> Unless automated cars really become good enough the need for self owned cars will always be there. I live in Singapore which has a very good public transport system and it's extremely expensive to own and keep a car so most people use public transport and 30-40min or more Transit time to work and school is common. So your 40 min time school commute doesn't sound that bad to me.

<comment><USER34> Fair enough, I'm happy to turn this into a Monty Python sketch. Frequency also matters. For my particular route this was roughly once an hour during business hours, and nothing after 8pm. This is not so rare [0].

[0] not where I grew up, privacy, but comparable: [https://www.cumbria.gov.uk/elibrary/Content/Internet/544/931...](https://www.cumbria.gov.uk/elibrary/Content/Internet/544/931/6586/6592/6635/42766165941.pdf?timestamp=4343992810)

<comment><USER36> For those who didn't catch your (brilliant and well-placed) Monty Python reference:

 _Four Yorkshiremen_ , [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26ZDB9h7BLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26ZDB9h7BLY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The articles seems to setup a false choice between having minimums and not having them. In fact from reading the article, the problem wasn't the minimums per se, it was the fact that they were excessive and didn't account for parking factors that varied across different parts of the town. It's a classic bit of over regulation with backlash shown by the author that "regulation bad", when in reality it's just that regulation was still needed, it just needed to be more nuanced.

</comment><comment><USER38> I do not know how parking/constructions are ruled in the USA however here (France) and in my origin country (Italy) it was common to have minimum park space for any new building in cities simply because we are out of parking space, going from A to B in a city often take far less than orbiting around B looking for a parking lot...

IMO the problem reside in city concept itself: in the past we need cities because we need to be together around water, together to have services, to being able to defend ourselves etc now those needs are substantially disappear or marginal but space need it start to be a super-serious problem. Basically we can't evolve a city simply because we are so dense that we can't reach agreements to destroy something old to build something new or even if we can reach such agreements costs are so high that no one face them looking for other options.

IMO the sole thing we can and should and must do is start to limit population like "only one child per capita" incentives to child-less peoples etc and start to create distributed place to live make easier work from remote as much as possible, make ease to travel around the country but without "concentrated place" except for factories, official buildings etc that need a _small_ scale concentration.

<comment><USER39> I disagree. High density cities are more energy efficient and ecological than sprawling ones. The solution to this is public transport, not density restrictions. No one living in a city should have to own a car in the first place.

<comment><USER38> Try to compute how much energy you need to build and maintain a dense city than a sprawling suburb. Try to compute evolution possibilities of a dense area than a sparse one. Try to compute the magnitude of any disaster from natural phenomenon to human-made ones on a dense area than the countryside.

I have lived in a dense and modern big European city, now I'm living on mountains: cost, quality of life, energy efficiency etc are _far superior_ here than in a city. No matter how developed is public transportation that's it's regularly inefficient because to handle peak time it work at a very bad efficiency for the rest of the year and you can't reduce it without hurting people freedom.

<comment><USER9> You can't beat the energy efficiency of dense urban housing with modern insulation. What are you comparing?

<comment> village-idiot Right? My parents home consumes an order of magnitude more electricity per month, despite only being 3x bigger. Turns out reducing exterior walls helps.

<comment><USER38> Try looking around your country: how many modern, well isolated, airtight, tall buildings there are in percentage than modern, isolated etc single houses?

In Sweden for instance most of the buildings are "ancient" enough to be far less efficient than newer one, most of individual houses (that are build generally with a very poor quality and little price) are newer and as a result far better isolated. Also they are easy to be recycled since have far less concrete and far more wood than tall buildings.

In France situation is less different since houses tend to be kept for longer time and they are not build until few years with much energy efficiency attention, however they are still a bit more efficient than buildings since they tend to be a bit "newer" in medium.

<comment> village-idiot My parents home was new too. So this wasn't a "new apartment vs. half century old home" situation. I also lived in a more extreme climate too.

<comment><USER38> Well my personal case is a mid-size apartment (130m², ~1399ft²) in a building built in the end of the sixties to a newly build home around 210m²/2260ft².

Old apartment was heated by a central methane based burner, new house by a VMC with a heat pump and a two solar thermal vacuum panel + 800l heat cumulus (~28ft³/ 211 US gal / 176 UK gal), whole cost dropped around 80%, whole energy consumption drop from around 300-350w×m²/years to around 25w×m²/years...

But in medium in the whole country individual homes are newer than tall buildings mostly because they tend to be poor quality to a point that's cheap demolish and rebuild than maintain and also tall buildings are normally property of many different subjects so reach agreements on any upgrade / maintenance is far complex than individual houses and physical space and usable ground for construction around the home is normally far more present than around a tall building...

Keep attention that I always talk about mean values, not single buildings.

Another thing, I do not know in the USA but in Italy and France construction norms are less tight for airtightness in collective buildings than individual houses, airtightness often play a more prominent role than insulation thickness in term of energy cost. I do not know in big buildings how for instance a VMC (mechanically controlled ventilation with heat exchanger) can possibly work...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon to Acquire The Book Depository  - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Amazon-to-Acquire-The-Book-prnews-4104318836.html?x=0&.v=1

<comment><USER2> The Book Depository are great (free worldwide delivery!), often cheaper than Amazon. A shame to see them go.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm torn myself about the perspective. TBD deliveries are quite slow anyway, maybe they'll improve on that front.</comment>


In 1850, America was like China today - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/26/a_nation_of_outlaws/?page=full <comment><USER2> I learned this in my History of Technology course a few years back... Ever since I've been very amused by the outrage over China's disrespect for "intellectual property" on sites like Slashdot.

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill really? They had forced abortions and internal passports that dictated where in the country you could live? And the US government ran tanks over people who protested?

<comment><USER3> Nope. They gave you smallpox-infested blankets, made you walk thousands of miles to the reservation, and massacred you if you resisted.

<comment><USER4> These things _did_ occur, but they are not the cause of the demise of the Native American.

The mere _arrival_ of Europeans, who carried diseases to which Native Americans were not immune, doomed them. These diseases were rapidly spread to any who traded with Europeans and thence to the innermost regions of North (and South) America. Most Native Americans died of transmitted European diseases long before they had any any opportunity to glimpse a "white man".

The Native Americans were so decimated by the time of the massacres and reservations that entire tribes had to migrate and merge, losing their unique identities, in order to merely survive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> America was communist in the 19th century?

I learn something new every day.

<comment><USER3> China is communist today?

I learn something new every day.

<comment><USER5> According to the CIA factbook, China is a communist state.

[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/ch.html#Govt)

<comment><USER3> That entry is under "Government Type", not under "Economy". The relevant passage from the Economy section is "China's economy during the last quarter century has changed from a centrally planned system that was largely closed to international trade to a more market-oriented economy that has a rapidly growing private sector and is a major player in the global economy."

This may be confusing, because communism is both a political and an economic system. China could best be described as a one-party communist _state_ with a free-market capitalist _economy_. However, the article is the economy, not the government. These complaints wouldn't be an issue if China was really Communist - the recent uproar has been about a _lack_ of government regulation in product manufacturer, while a truly communist government would manufacturer all the goods itself.

<comment><USER6> Don't forget that the Chinese government has a minority stake in many major Chinese companies. This is a kind of partial communism, at least.

<comment><USER3> So does Warren Buffett, but you wouldn't claim that the Chinese economy is partial Buffettism, eh? ;-)

<comment><USER6> I think it would only be Buffettism if Warren Buffett was one of the Chinese oligarchs...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: To what extent does succinctness = power in a programming language? - <AUTHOR> I was reading PG's essay succinctness is power, and he left an open question. Is succinctness the same thing as power? What is the end-goal of abstraction if not to be more succinct? <comment><USER2> "I got sick and tired of programming in blub and then I realized blub only had 23 keywords so I abbreviated them to a single lowercase letter and have people write identifiers starting with either an uppercase letter or one of the three remaining lowercase letters. Ever since I started programming in 'b' I started wearing out keyboards so often -- those blub programmers will never understand the value of 'b' being a succint language since they have never used one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say succinctness = productivity but not necessarily power. It could be argued that succinct code is easier to digest and less prone to bugs, but on the flipside brevity in the description of what the code is doing is the bane of all maintainers existence. There is certainly a threshold where succinctness starts to be detrimental in the ability to express and convey logic to next person who looks at your code.</comment>


Tell HN: Four Steps to the Epiphany cheaper in the UK now - <AUTHOR>

I know some of you from the UK here might be interested in Steve Blank's book Four Steps to the Epiphany. Unfortunately, the book has been very expensive  here (£50 on Amazon UK). So, I wrote to someone at Steve's ranch and ordered a bunch of them to sell at a more affordable price.
You can buy it at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0976470705/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&seller=A1XM871DNBIZYK&condition=used.
Note that I couldn't list the book as New, because only the publisher can. I've been told they are going to list the book themselves soon, but it's not there yet. They are also not planning to make an e-book because Steve wants people to use the paperbook as a workbook to make notes.
I hope this post doesn't come across as self-serving. I just wanted to make the book available to more people. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable - [http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer- listing/0976470705/ref=dp_o...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer- listing/0976470705/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&seller=A1XM871DNBIZYK&condition=used)</comment>


ACL2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/ <comment><USER2> [http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~marijn/publications/ACL2-ARCADE.pd...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~marijn/publications/ACL2-ARCADE.pdf)

Uses in industry:

• verification of all elementary floating-point arithmetic on the AMD Athlon, after running 100M test vectors successfully comparing the ACL2 model with the AMD RTL simulator;

• verification of all elementary floating-point arithmetic on the AMD Opteron;

• verification of a silicon implementation of a JVM chip by Rockwell-Collins;

• verification of the Rockwell Collins AAMP7 crypto chip (the basis for obtaining NSA MILS certification);

• verification of the Greenhills operating system;

• verification of important invariants in the Sun JVM class loader and properties assured by the Sun byte-code verifier;

• verification of the Centaur Technology, Inc., Verilog design for the VIA Nano floating point adder which handles 32-bit, 64-bit, and 80-bit additions, is pipelined to deliver 4 results per cycle, has 1074 input signals including 26 clock signals and 374 output signals, consists of 33,700 lines of Verilog in 680 modules requiring 432,322 transistors;

• checking of a computationally surveyable proof of important properties of an Intel implementation of the elliptic curve key agreement including that 2^255 − 19 is prime and that the elliptic curve known as Curve25519 is an abelian group;

• verification of floating point designs at Oracle and ARM.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's good to know that Boyer and Moore are still at it.

I used their previous system, Nqthm, many years ago. I recently got it running from the 1992 sources and put it on Github.[1] It's nice seeing it run a thousand times faster. I still like their logic system. Constructive mathematics has a basic soundness you don't get from systems with too many axioms.

[1] [https://github.com/John-Nagle/nqthm](https://github.com/John-Nagle/nqthm)

<comment><USER4> pasv looks interesting, too.

The FOLDOC entry for Pascal-F[1] says the Pascal-F paper was published in 1968, but Wikipedia says at that time Wirth had only just started working on Pascal. Do you know anyone who might have a copy of the Nelson paper?

1\. [http://foldoc.org/pascal-f](http://foldoc.org/pascal-f)

<comment><USER3> That was Ed Nelson, at Ford Scientific Research Labs. He did that work in the late 1970s and early 1980s, not the 1960s.

Pascal-F extended Pascal with fixed-point arithmetic, monitors, and interrupt handling. The "pasv" repository contains the front end of the compiler, which generates byte code. The back end generated code for the Intel 8061, the Ford EEC IV engine control processor. The back end was proprietary to Ford. There was a summer hire trying to write an interpreter for the byte code for test purposes, but he didn't finish it.

I've been trying to revive "pasv", but I'm stuck on a bug in the rule handling in the Oppen-Nelson (Greg Nelson, not Ed Nelson) theorem prover. It's in Franz Lisp, and I'm trying to make it work in GNU Common LISP, which has slightly different semantics for some of the same constructs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few links follow to show the power of the tool.

Centaur, an x86 vendor, used it for formal verification of CPU's without paying huge money for typical tools:

[http://fm.csl.sri.com/LAW/2010/law2010-slides- Hunt.pdf](http://fm.csl.sri.com/LAW/2010/law2010-slides-Hunt.pdf)

Rockwell-Collins verifies a secure CPU, its microcode, and assembly on top of it:

[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/pete/acl206/papers/hardin.pdf](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/pete/acl206/papers/hardin.pdf)

Original work on a verified stack that led to ACL2:

ftp://ftp.cs.utexas.edu/pub/boyer/fm9001/index.html

</comment><comment><USER6> AMD was a major user of ACL2 and verified AMD Athlon FPU using ACL2. Their case study is IMO an approachable presentation of what realistic verification of FPU looks like in practice.

[http://www.russinoff.com/papers/fadd.html](http://www.russinoff.com/papers/fadd.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little- prover](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-prover)

The Little Prover Written by Daniel P. Friedman and Carl Eastlund

[https://the-little-prover.github.io](https://the-little-prover.github.io)

J-Bob

J-Bob is our little proof assistant, available on Github. For an introduction to J-Bob, see Appendix A of The Little Prover.

J-Bob is available for _ACL2_ , Scheme, and Racket

</comment><comment><USER8> We used this in my Logic and Computation college class. I've been thinking recently about if people could take this and use it to make a safer language for things like contracts in crypto (looking to you Ethereum) so people don't end up writing million dollar bugs so easily.

<comment><USER6> ACL2 was adopted by AMD, basically after $475 million bug. (I am, of course, talking about Pentium FDIV bug.) Expensive bugs do motivate adoption of formal verification technologies.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Name for Hackernews iPhone app? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
a friend of mine and myself are working on an iPhone app for Hackernews. There's a little more work to be done before we release; for example we need a name. Could you help us out with that?
I'll give you some preview shots - so you don't think we didn't even start.
http://dispatched.ch/pic/main_menu.png
http://dispatched.ch/pic/submissions_view.png
http://dispatched.ch/pic/feed_view.png
Thanks for your input. As thanks we will release this app for free soon. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

<http://dispatched.ch/pic/main_menu.png>

<http://dispatched.ch/pic/submissions_view.png>

<http://dispatched.ch/pic/feed_view.png>

</comment><comment><USER2> A quick comment: Apple HIG calls for removal of redundant information, especially in table views. "User" is redundant imho, just live the username. Getting rid of "#x" is also worth consideration. Why not just use the HN format: "X points by user y hours ago"? Clicking on the table cell itself could lead to the article, and clicking on the disclosure button (badge type, with comments count)—to the comments. The move main menu to the toolbar tabs, so "Articles" loads when you launch the app without the need to click anywhere. At this point looks like I have a different design for the HN app. Should I try to make one too? :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yana - Yet another news app. Yet/Yep/Yes may work equally. I wanted to create a recursive name, but nothing pops up right now.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would suggest HNews.

You get the HN that as maguay says is how we all shorten "Hacker News" but at the same name you will avoid being too cryptic by using a two letters name. At the same time having the keyword "news" in your application it can only help.

</comment><comment><USER5> iCombinator? ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> I would suggest iHack, but it might make it harder for you to get it on the app store ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> iHN sounds good to me ... after all, we all shorten "Hacker News" to HN anyhow.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hackwire?

</comment><comment><USER9> iphonehn</comment>


FCC Insists It Can't Stop Impostors from Lying About My Views on Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20170710/10071737756/fcc-insists-it-cant-stop-impostors-lying-about-my-views-net-neutrality.shtml <comment><USER2> This is real fucked up, a government agency unwilling to remove fraudulent comments upon request by those who had their identity stolen. Perhaps Karl should sue the FCC?</comment>


An EPYC trip to Rome: AMD is Cloudflare's 10th-generation Edge server CPU - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/an-epyc-trip-to-rome-amd-is-cloudflares-10th-generation-edge-server-cpu/ <comment><USER2> Intel 6162 @ $3115.00 x 2 = $6230

AMD EPYC 7642 [1] @$5,312.13

A recent model from 2019 would be Intel® Xeon® Gold 6262V Processor [2]. Which is the same 24 Core but Cascade Lake, lower TDP ( On Paper ) , and cost $2900, or $5800 for 48 Core.

So for roughly the same price you get 30% Request Per Watt Increase. Which is like the article suggest, lower than what I expected. May be one reason why AMD hasn't gained more market shares in Server.

Hopefully the next EPYC trip to Milan will be better than the trip to Icelake.

Edit: There is actually another article from CF on the EPYC performance. [3]

[1] [https://www.avadirect.com/EPYC-7642-48-Core-2-3-3-3GHz- Turbo...](https://www.avadirect.com/EPYC-7642-48-Core-2-3-3-3GHz-Turbo- SP3-225W-OEM-Processor/Product/12942536)

[2] [https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/193972/...](https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/193972/intel- xeon-gold-6262v-processor-33m-cache-1-90-ghz.html)

[3] [https://blog.cloudflare.com/impact-of-cache- locality/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/impact-of-cache-locality/)

<comment><USER3> At the beginning of the month, I bought a single watercooling block for a Supermicro board that cools dual SP3 CPUs and the VRM. It's going into a virtualized workstation/server with half a TiB of RAM and dual entryish-level Romes (I'll buy new/used 7742's later).

If the Rome NDA roadmap compared to actual time is any guide, Milan will be out within the next few weeks. (I'm hoping for a price drop on Rome.)

I'm working on learning propane+oxy borosilicate glass bending & tempering and figuring out how to make a custom 14-port distro plate with dual D5's. Fusion 360, McMaster's and somewhere that has a 3-axis milling machine for rent maybe in my future.

EDIT: here's the rough specs, plus another ~$1400 for watercooling gear

[https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ypnTFG](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ypnTFG)</comment></comment>


NavSpark: Arduino Compatible with GPS GNSS Receiver - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/navspark-arduino-compatible-with-gps-gnss-receiver <comment><USER2> Title is misleading - as far as I know centimeter accuracy is only possible with an RTK base station in the area where you're using the GPS, e.g. in a survey. I'm guessing the chipset allows capturing of raw data that can be post-processed.

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

<comment><USER3> Yep, even WAAS is only considered to be accurate to 3m, IIRC.

<comment><USER4> According to the wikipedia page on WAAS[0], regular GPS is accurate (95% of measurements) < 2.5m horizontal and with WAAS is is .9m horizontal.

There is also an FAA graph of GPS measurement accuracy[1] which I'm guessing is the source of various "accurate to 2.2m" claims I have seen.

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System#C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System#Comparison_of_accuracy)

[1][http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/histogra...](http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/histogram.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Arduino compatible is misleading in a lot of these cases. It usually means it works with the standard library included with the Arduino IDE, but most of the 3rd party external libraries (note...interesting and useful, and almost always necessary when connecting devices/screens, etc) don't end up working without changes to the libraries themselves.

Take a look at the amount of work that the Teensy3 community has done to make Arduino (atmel) specific libraries compatible with the ARM chip on the Teensy3. They're one of the few communities that have wide-ranging support with an ARM chip, but have put in a lot of time and effort to get it there.

<comment><USER6> "Arduino compatible" is often also used to refer to the structure of the pins. This one claims to be "Breadboard compatible."

<comment><USER7> is it? the attiny85 is still marketed as being arduino compatible, but with only 6 i/o pins, it is nothing like any other arduino product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> is centimeter accuracy even _possible_ with GPS? [http://www.gps.gov/systems/augmentations/](http://www.gps.gov/systems/augmentations/) cites 10-15 centimeter accuracy under their NDGPS modernization efforts, but don't even say they've gotten there yet.

<comment><USER9> It's not possible, even with pretty ideal conditions.

Edit: I excluded RTK stuff in that comment :)

<comment><USER10> It is, using RTK (real time kinematic) and 2 different receivers: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/swiftnav/piksi-the- rtk-g...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/swiftnav/piksi-the-rtk-gps- receiver)

<comment><USER9> Yes but that somewhat limits the practicality because you need two receivers, a clear signal path between them and one has to be relatively static.

It's fine for surveying but for dynamic applications which are far more common, it's a pain.

<comment><USER11> You can receive RTK corrections over IP (via a cellular connection). Government bodies across the US push the data over IP to you if you register for a free account.

[http://igs.bkg.bund.de/ntrip/index](http://igs.bkg.bund.de/ntrip/index)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Networked_Transport_of_RTCM_via...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Networked_Transport_of_RTCM_via_I) nternet_Protocol

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't see any reference to "centimeter accurate" in this description.

<comment><USER13> The datasheet for the Venus838FLPx used on it actually specifies 2.5m accuracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cheap GPS, cheap pocket tri-copters, fun fun fun!

I really don't care about taco service but it would be nice if I could call someone at home and say "I forgot my under 8 oz item at home" they could attach it to the copter and send it to my 15 miles away at work.

Soon, if not already, that will be an off the shelf capability.

<comment><USER15> I know I have a twisted mind, but I envisioned a quad copter delivering a grenade, a bomb or a shot to the head. Creepy me, I know.

<comment><USER16> The ability to do the same with a RC car has existed for a couple decades.

<comment><USER14> True, just not as flexibly. Most targets that might be threatened in this way have various barriers between them and a would be RC car assasin. Although the sequence in the move "The Dead Pool" tried to envision this threat with respect to an actual vehicle target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The CPU component of this is a synthesis of LEON3, which is a GPL implementation of the SPARC V8 ISA. Seems pretty neat, especially with the presence of a hard FPU.

[http://www.gaisler.com/index.php/products/processors/leon3](http://www.gaisler.com/index.php/products/processors/leon3)

</comment><comment><USER18> Positioning is a really huge concern in robotics; how do you know where your robot is? Just because you told it to move doesn't mean it did, or that it got there. So that's why this is really cool. Millimeter accuracy would be better, I don't even know if that's possible with GPS at all.

<comment><USER19> It isn't possible in real-time, but surveying grade GPS receivers can approach that level of accuracy with long collection times and post-processing.

<comment><USER20> See my above post.

There are self-contained systems that do this in real-time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can already get a $20 GPS module, Arduino compatible. Just take any random GPS mouse, they will be talking NMEA over some serial line.

Of course you don't get "centimeter accurate", but that's a lie anyway, so nothing lost.

<comment><USER22> GPS mouse? Unless you mean module (DYAC), can you please give a pointer?

<comment><USER23> [http://gpstracklog.com/2007/08/whats-a-gps- mou.html](http://gpstracklog.com/2007/08/whats-a-gps-mou.html)

 _The term "GPS mouse" refers to the shape and size of the device, and has come to mean any wired or wireless GPS receiver that doesn't come with any sort of interface. It merely outputs position data to a laptop, cell phone, etc._

<comment><USER24> Huh, I have always referred to them as "pucks".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I funded hoping for a couple. I imagine the centimetre accuracy will be hard yo achieve,but what sort of accuracy is required to calculate average speed over 200 m to within 2 km/h?

Suppose you smooth the input will it be sufficient or does 2 m accuracy mean that it oscillates so wildly within that circle that it's only worth it for positioning alone?

<comment><USER26> In general, assuming a perfect clock, t seconds over 200m with an independent measuring error of x/2 at both ends will measure as t seconds over (200 +/\- x) m [1], for a speed of

      200/t +/- x/t   m/s

So, for a given x, the error grows as 1/t. The longer t (= the slower your movement), the lower the _absolute_ error.

For a snail, you don't even need a GPS; just say "2 km/h" and you will be within 2 km/h.

However, things are better, as measuring errors for GPS for nearby (in time and place) positions aren't independent. If your position is of by x meters in direction D now, chances are it will still be more or less of by x meters in direction D in a few seconds.

Back to your question: I wouldn't know, but I think you want to rephrase it in terms of relative error or specify at what speed you want to know the answer.

[1] the math is the other way around, but that doesn't matter much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> >Source code of the customized Arduino IDE will also be made available; the GPS / Beidou / GLONASS navigation kernel library integrated will remain in library file format.

Sounds like the guts are in a binary blob.

</comment><comment><USER28> So, the most interesting thing is that this is a Sparc V8 32-bit arch, with floating-point support.

It can run a real operating system, I think.

Jolly good show!</comment>


Donald Trump sent the worst tweet of his presidency this morning - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/trump-tweet-putin/index.html <comment><USER2> I wonder why US still insist on using proven insecure technology to carry out elections. If "the system is blinking" why not return to simple paper ballots? It almost seems that the US wants to be hurt...

As an European, the style of the article feels strange for a serious news outlet. Its not only the tone but also being bluntly partisan, which feels awkward.

<comment><USER3> Since the beginning certain people had hoped to find a smoking gun with a vote counting machine that would show unequivocally that the Russians were pulling the lever for Trump. As far as I can tell that hasn't happened. Russia has found that it is more effective to spend a million dollars for bloggers than it is with ridiculous excercises like dropping leaflets from planes. Russia is influential in our national affairs I used to be into conspiracy minded sites and the Russians never do wrong but america is evil attitude is very strong and it feels planted. Back in the 80s a kgb defector named Bezmenov explained his job then and it seems like little has actually changed.

The problem I see is the usa also uses the same simple tactics of subversive and destabilizing political manipulation of other nations like Russia does. It isn't good that we don't actually result with good. So there is no ends that could justify the means here. We have to consider we aren't the good guys. I am sorry to offend anyone with this..

As for cnn, washington post, or even the nyt: they will never see a ray of hope with trump. The real news is if Fox News turns their back on President Chaos. Reuters, NPR, Bloomberg, and Financial Times carry more weight for me any more.</comment></comment>


Why isn't identity handled by the browser? - <AUTHOR> Every login page is different---or at least used to be until sites started standardizing on Facebook/Google/whatever login. This seems like an obvious place for browsers to provide a standardized user experience, but this never took off, in spite of Mozilla's efforts: https://www.wired.com/2010/04/mozilla-gets-it-right-moves-identity-management-into-firefox/<p>Why hasn't such standardization happened? <comment><USER2> Just one person's opinion, but the average customer doesn't make decisions based-on security or privacy. Nor do they care about participation in a walled garden. So, what's left? Brand affinity.

Browsers may just be a relatively transparent means to an end, especially in the app world. The differences between them are small, to the average consumer, and I'm guessing whatever is solved by moving them to the browser is trumped by the existing state, syndicating the credentials you already have with the companies you trust, saving credentials to the browser and easy to remember (insecure) passwords.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona) was great. But, what customer problem are you trying to solve?

</comment><comment><USER3> > Why hasn't such standardization happened?

Because everyone has their own vision of what should be a "standard".

\- That's why you still have browsers that don't render the same way.

\- That's why you have 100 JS frameworks that try to push their way of doing things.

\- That's why you have 50 CSS pre-processors.

\- ...

</comment><comment><USER4> I think because the 'state', isn't.

Think of the number of times your computer has crashed, had memory wiped, new OS installs, been stolen, replaced. Did your bookmarks from 15 years ago survive?

With mobile phones identity works a little better and likely because of SIM cards.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not sure who flagged your question, but it's not even top 300 despite the upvotes. I really hate this site sometimes.</comment>


"I doubled my sales and made the cover of Time magazine" - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-02-28/

<comment><USER2> Get out of my head, Scott Adams

</comment><comment><USER3> here's the hacker link to it: <http://dilbert.com/fast/2010-02-28/>

I see there's still a Linux/Unix link at the bottom pointing to this layout.

<comment><USER4> Thank you! The original link brought down my tab in Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previous discussion on one of Scott Adams's related blog entries: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1161770>

</comment><comment><USER6> At the moment, I can totally relate to this. I submitted a proposal to try to improve something specific at work but basically my motivation is to try to get management out of my hair. I don't know if anything will come of it, but I am having ugly visions of how that conversation could go. <rolls eyes>

</comment><comment><USER7> What kind of a blowhard would make bombastic claims of achievement against the odds?

<comment><USER6> Actually, I would. A lot of my "bombastic claims of achievement against the odds" are completely true. The problem is getting anyone to believe me. :-/

<comment><USER8> I don't believe that.

<comment><USER6> Do you need examples? ;-P</comment></comment></comment></comment>


There is a significant ongoing decline in sperm counts of Western men - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-07-significant-ongoing-decline-sperm-western.html <comment><USER2> That guy has a big smile for delivering that news.

Unnerving as the first thing you see when the story comes up.

The video is more unnerving: greater than 50% drop measured, apparently still continuing, little interest in stopping the causes, significant health implications.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've seen many theories about this. The most recent suggests ibuprofen might be a culprit.

[https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/08/health/ibuprofen-male- fertili...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/08/health/ibuprofen-male-fertility- study/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> This story is several months old and has been on the frontpage before [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sperm%20count&sort=byPopularit...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sperm%20count&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not about incapacity to fertilize - it's evolution of reproductive effectiveness.

Less is more.

</comment><comment><USER6> If anything, I'm more fertile than ever.</comment>