Ask HN: How can I learn to design software better? - <AUTHOR> I can write code just fine, but I feel like one of my biggest draw backs is not having a formal understanding of how to design a large piece of software. I can draft a piece of software, but when it comes it implementing it, I feel like my solutions could be much better after they're done. I often find myself having to change more code than I feel I should when I add a new feature in the future.<p>How can I learn to better design software? Any book recommendations or general tips? <comment><USER2> How many years have you worked professionally? Do you have a team (or tech friends) to bounce things around with and learn from? What are you writing, websites or IoT or ??

Just some general comments not knowing those answers, this is usually what a mentor or team lead is there to help you with, they guide you and show you why one solution might be better than another etc. Read architecture blogs, read about failures as much as successes, read postmortems from startups they are great learning. Seriously study well design open source software that most people agree is done well, as well as bad. Studying both will show you patterns you are using and shouldn't be or ones you aren't using and should be etc. That is honestly the best way, open source software makes studying larger systems so much better today then when I was learning.

I do suggest you study some of Fowlers teachings/books [https://martinfowler.com/](https://martinfowler.com/) as he IMO is well balanced and sees value in many different architecture styles based on the problem you are solving. There are others of course, but he is the first that comes to mind for building larger or more complex systems.

The goal of software design/architecture is to use the least complex solution you can to solve the problem, that makes the software the easiest to maintain and usually makes it performant. There are exceptions of course, but that is the general rule I follow. Also, minimize unnecessary external dependencies which will also keep your code easier to change and maintain, the more external dependencies the more chance a simple change turns into touching larger sections of code.

Last point, we all look back and problems we have solved later and are like geez, I was an idiot I could've done XYZ instead of ABC and it would have been a lot better. That's normal and is a sign to me that I am continuing to learn, which is good IMO. There are only a few things I look back on and say damn that was perfect and I wouldn't change a thing about it (very few).

</comment><comment><USER3> It comes with experience. Those times you find yourself changing code more than you think you should? Analyze the decisions you made (or that a co-worker made) that got you there. Figure out what you could have done differently.

Books are great, but nothing beats lessons learned by making mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Two things come to mind. (1) work on large software projects that have been in production for many years. This will show you patterns that have emerged to solve issues that have crept up over its lifetime. (2) except in specific cases a large piece of software grew from a working smaller piece of software. Learn different ways of being prepared for future features and adding features. YAGNI is important too. Practice, lots of practice. Reading without practice is like watching a movie and nodding along, quickly forgotten if not committed through habits.</comment>


Haiku: A Perfect Desktop Operating System? - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/22640/Haiku_A_Perfect_Desktop_Operating_System_

<comment><USER2> This article's got a lot of inaccuracies (Unix based systems all use X and a window manager? Has the guy even used OS X?) and honestly, it doesn't really even say that much about Haiku!

<comment><USER3> OSnews slammed IRIX a little while ago... Because it was too difficult to set your desktop wallpaper. I get the feeling the site is run by people who don't actually use their computers for Real Work(tm).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just so people know, this is not a editor, but just a person who wanted to post an article. Osnews tends to have a lot of articles from people, and their quality does seem to vary a lot.

As you surmized the site focuses on mainly on hobby os's, its not a site based on productivity. a lot of these hobby os's once had their day in the sun (or at least the os they were modeled after, OS2, BEOS, IRIX, AMIGA) its a lot of fun to remember and even play with them, but few if any make their full time livings maintaining or using these os's.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for letting us know. That makes a lot of sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having tried Haiku a few weeks ago, I will say it has a lot of potential. The fact that is has a HIG (human interface guidelines) means it could actually go beyond a hobby OS. I'd like to see some more developers get behind this and see where it goes.</comment>


Jack buys 574,002 more TWTR shares: 1m total in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jack/status/858058486730465280 <comment><USER2> This is a bad sign right? I think this is a bad sign.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who is jack and why do we care?

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dorsey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dorsey) "a co-founder and CEO of Twitter, and as the founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best resources for learning RoR?  - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, I've been building random stuff on the web mostly in PHP and I've decided I want to pick up Ruby soon and I want to get good with it.
Last night, I ordered "Agile Web Development With Rails" and "Programming Ruby" (the pickaxe book). I heard both were solid books and I'm sure they'll keep me busy.
Any other resources online that you guys found super-useful when you were starting off? What are some good open-source Ruby projects that I could contribute to? Interesting github repos to watch?
Any random tips/resources would be much appreciated, thanks. <comment><USER2> For Ruby, check out The Well Grounded Rubyist. David Black's writing style simply delivers. [http://www.amazon.com/Well-Grounded-Rubyist-David- Black/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Well-Grounded-Rubyist-David- Black/dp/1933988657/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296242376&sr=8-1)

While you await delivery of your books, also check out Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book. It's a solid introduction to Ruby. <http://www.humblelittlerubybook.com/book/html/index.html>

Download the Ruby Koans. All you need to do is run "ruby path_to_enlightenment.rb" from the command line. It'll tell you what line number in what file you need to change to complete each step. It's up to you to come up with the solution. There are 287 steps towards enlightenment. This is a great way to get "on hands" experience with and to learn a great deal about the Ruby langauge. <http://rubykoans.com/>

Rails starter material <http://railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book> <http://guides.rubyonrails.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. Thanks a lot!</comment></comment>


Sparc removal - <AUTHOR> https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/07/msg00006.html <comment><USER2> I spent a lot of time in the past few months trying to fix enough of the issues with Debian/SPARC to keep it from having to be removed.

Honestly the port isn't in terrible shape. The specific problems listed as reasons for removing it are exaggerated. GCC is not dropping 32-bit SPARC code generation and the kernel works well overall. There were a few issues causing a lot of breakage, in particular, a register corruption bug in the kernel memcpy routine and a problem with the gold linker that was corrupting string literals in certain cases. Those two bugs blocked everything depending on nettle or qt, 800+ packages.

The real issue is that Debian has high expectations that take maintenance to fulfill. Particularly with the autobuilders, the machines that produce binary packages from source. When a build fails there needs to be somebody that fixes the problem. If an autobuilder crashes it can be restarted but if it's crashing every day there needs to be someone to track down the problem.

If there is nobody responding to issues it's ok for a while. The people responsible for packages and the autobuilder infrastructure work around problems where they can (running old kernels) but eventually it becomes too much to ask.

So I don't like this decision but it's understandable. The specific problems are exaggerated but the fundamental one isn't: nobody was doing the work to keep everything together.

<comment><USER3> _> The real issue is that Debian has high expectations that take maintenance to fulfill._

Without meaning to diminish your insightful post and good point: as a Debian user, I have to say, this does not sound like an issue to me.

<comment><USER2> Sorry if it wasn't clear but I specifically meant the issue for the sparc port. I was not criticizing Debian in any way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What trips me out about this is that SPARC is one of the most open of the legacy ISA's. It doesn't have so much baggage like Intel. It's RISC. It's documented well even for firmware writers, unlike Intel's black boxes. The license to use the name cost $100 rather than ~$1 mil for MIPS or $1-15mil for ARM. The top, proprietary offerings scream with performance and reliability. There are also multiple open-source versions that can run on FPGA's and one which gets fabbed. And, unlike OpenRISC or RISC-V, you get a whole ecosystem of code and toolsbuilt for the architecture.

Now, I understand people not buying it for desktops when they want to run browsers, flash, etc. However, it's strange for a crowd (Linux in general) that's historically about promoting openness and fighting black boxes to have so little uptake of an ISA like SPARC. Then a popular one drops it due to nobody maintaining it. A demand side of the equation like that is why few companies build or open better ISA's. The vendors think most are all talk and no wallet on the issue if it's about hardware.

<comment><USER5> Having learned SPARC assembly in the past, it most certainly does have a pile of backward-compatibility baggage of its own. For instance, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_slot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_slot)

<comment><USER6> It's really not all that bad, there's also the cache coloring and memory ordering stuff, but it's well documented at least. There is a lot more historical baroque stuff about x86, like int 80, syscall, or sysenter? For extra credit how do you find-out and are you sure your approach works on Cyrix and Via too?

<comment><USER5> > It's really not all that bad, there's also the cache coloring and memory > ordering stuff, but it's well documented at least. There is a lot more > historical baroque stuff about x86, like int 80, syscall, or sysenter?

That's not relevant for current processors; it only matters if you need to support older processors, and in any case you always use the most capable interface provided by your processor. The older interface only matters if you support processors that are well over a decade old. Current processors have to support old software; current software need not support old processors. So unless you're hacking on the guts of the Linux syscall layer...

> For extra credit how do you find-out and are you sure your approach works on > Cyrix and Via too?

Cyrix doesn't exist anymore, and VIA doesn't appear to have any current- generation hardware. So, unless you used to work on them and you have to avoid regressions, you can almost certainly safely ignore legacy hardware, just as you shouldn't optimize code for the Pentium 4 anymore. _Especially_ if you're writing 64-bit code.

<comment><USER4> Good points. Important to note that "current generation" hardware means something different to VIA given they focus on low power and embedded. They do plenty with 20-30 watts, though:

[http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/quadcore/index....](http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/quadcore/index.jsp)

<comment><USER5> By "current generation", I was going by the fact that Wikipedia shows no new models since 2011. If there's something new since then, great.

(And everybody is focusing on low power and embedded these days. Not least of which because "high performance" and "low power" are really two sides of the same coin, since if you use less power you generate less heat, and speed depends heavily on heat dissipation.)

<comment><USER4> That makes more sense. Remember that it's an embedded board company (mainly), so they don't iterate as much on SOC's. The last processor, the quad-core VX11/H, was in 2012 and one of a few on 40nm. Does a lot of stuff for a x86 SOC in 5.8W (max). Their last board design was 2014. So, they're still chugging along. Most likely two things: slowly moving their I.P. to costly 40nm and developing new ones; moving slower in general because of terrible, financial situation IIRC. In long run, they'll probably die because they tried to compete in x86 and even mighty AMD with their volume & engineers haven't pulled that off.

Far as low power, not everybody is focusing on _x86-compatible_ , low-power chips these days. I only know three vendors: Intel, AMD, and VIA. So, it's that stuff that's relevant to a VIA comparison if we're talking x86 and legacy software/OS needing it. Students in labs throw together low-power, ARM/MIPS clones as a side effect of their simplicity and process node. x86 is so complicated that it took smart, HW engineers to do that with only a few companies trying and most gone. It's again why I'm anti-x86: entirely too complicated compared to multi-core RISC with hard-wired accelerators. See Cavium's Octeon III for an awesome example of that.

[http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html](http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON- III_CN7XXX.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very likely wrong alignment. This causes hard SIGBUS faults, and SPARC64 is one of the good platforms to catch such misaligned pointers. You cannot repro it in qemu on Intel.

But I don't know what ElfW(Rel) expands to. Maybe only a 4byte word, not 8. The backtrace doesn't display the register content (THANKS gdb maintainers), and the op didn't provide the registers neither.

      0xfffff8010000cda4 in elf_dynamic_do_Rela (skip_ifunc=<optimized out>, lazy=0, nrelative=<optimized out>, relsize=<optimized out>, reladdr=<optimized out>

[https://lists.debian.org/debian- sparc/2015/07/msg00013.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- sparc/2015/07/msg00013.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> OpenBSD still supports it. It's very stable too.

<comment><USER2> It supports cool stuff like acting as an ldom host too.

[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD- current/man8/...](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD- current/man8/sparc64/ldomd.8?query=ldomd)

<comment><USER9> Better documentation link which shows how to set it all up: [http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD- current/man8/...](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD- current/man8/sparc64/ldomctl.8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> NetBSD welcomes all SPARC owners

</comment><comment><USER11> what about openSPARC, one of the only truly open cpu designs one can load into an fpga

<comment><USER4> And the Gaisler Aeroflex cores that are both open-source and fabbed onto boards they sell. People who want open hardware can get a bit closer with a 4-core SPARC board. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The linked message says it could come back as sparc64 - the Debian port was a 32 bit userspace, optionally 64 but kernel, while on new sparc machines you probably would want to use sparc64 userspace. For embedded/fpga sparc it is less clear. Anecdotally though I think there are more NetBSD/OpenBSD users on sparc than Linux.

<comment><USER2> This port only ran on 64-bit machines. Support for 32-bit sparc cpus was dropped years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well darn; I guess now I can't run Debian on my Sun Fire T2000.

Not that I particularly care, since I've found OpenBSD to be _much_ better on non-x86 (particularly SPARC and PowerPC) hardware than pretty much every GNU/Linux distro I've tried (Debian included), but it's still unfortunate; diversity is nice to have in a platform, even if I'm pretty happy in BSD-land.

Oh well. Perhaps if us SPARC users are lucky, more illumos distros will start supporting SPARC. Tribblix looks interesting; if I can ever get my Blade 1500 running again, I'll have to try that one out on it.

</comment><comment><USER14> ><liw> HE, we had sex in Debian for many years, yes, before I put a stop to it

Could someone explain wtf this means?

<comment><USER15> Probably related to the "Simple editor for X".

<comment><USER14> Ah, that makes more sense than OSS devs getting laid ;)

<comment><USER16> Hey, Ian Murdock _did_ name Debian after him and his girlfriend...

<comment><USER17> They _did_ break up though.

<comment><USER4> This whole sub-thread: DAAAAAAMN! Haha. Let it be a warning to OSS developers thinking of mixing business and pleasure. Except for the pleasure of coding. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Note -- this is 32-bit SPARC, not SPARC64. I am surprised to see that Debian does not have an official SPARC64 port (it has an unofficial one).

<comment><USER2> Support for 32-bit sparc was dropped years ago. This was the port for 64-bit machines even though it used a 32-bit userland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What's byhand?

<comment><USER20> BYHAND are uploads that are not normal packages and need manual intervention to be processed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> CRAPS!</comment>


MonkeyContact - <AUTHOR> http://www.monkeycontact.com MonkeyContact allows you to find people by name, company, location, job function or a combination. It does not matter what social network you are contacted to them by. MonkeyContact is your personal people search right within Gmail, Google.com search or the web.<p>Available for Safari, Firefox and Chrome.  For more information visit http://www.monkeycontact.com <comment><USER2> In Chrome, entering text into the middle of the page and hitting enter or the search button results in nothing happening.</comment>


Manufacturing Jobs Aren't Coming Back - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602869/manufacturing-jobs-arent-coming-back/ <comment><USER2> Yup. This is what I was just arguing with my family about-they voted Trump because they want manufacturing jobs back. I pointed out that if the US imposes trade tariff's high enough to make manufacturing things like steel cost effective again in the US the people that build the plants will simply put in these kinds of robots-not people. Robots work Saturday and Sunday for the same cost as a week day and with far less bitching.

<comment><USER3> It is my feeling that at least some of the anger being expressed isn't so much about jobs being displaced by robots today or in the near future, although these are serious concerns as well, but instead the steady hollowing out of these manufacturing jobs through offshoring over a period of 20-30 years were the overwhelming financial benefits have gone to a very small portion of the American population, namely those occupying high positions within multinational corporations.

<comment><USER4> Arguably the overwhelming benefits have gone to a very _large_ portion of the American population, so large that it's hard for individuals to trace and see. Think of the cascade of effects of all these manufacturing outputs being created more efficiently/cheaply, which in turn are inputs to other products, and the opportunity savings of which flow into other endeavors all around us.

However, I do generally agree with your diagnosis that the anger isn't so much about automation per se, as about changes in post-war economic structures finally starting to reach some tipping point, whether perceived rightly or not.

<comment><USER5> Do you have any data for that position?

Wage growth for example has been flat overall:

[https://frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth- tracker/?panel=1](https://frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker/?panel=1)

Half of Americans make under 30k a year:

[http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/goodbye-middle- class-...](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/goodbye-middle- class-51-percent-of-all-american-workers-make-less-than-30000-dollars-a- year.html)

Yet the cost of goods has been increasing steadily:

[http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current- infla...](http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation- rates/)

<comment><USER6> Wage growth has been flat because compensation has shifted from wages to benefits. Real compensation per hour has done nothing but increase.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB)

<comment><USER5> 98 dollars in 2004 to 105 dollars now is a downward trend once you factor inflation.

<comment><USER6> The data I cited already takes inflation into account. You can tell from the word "real" in the title of the series.

<comment><USER5> My mistake. Still how much of this growth is hitting the poor and middle class as opposed to executives? My data excludes salaries above 100k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A family member that works with industrial assembly lines purchased one, and it has been a huge boon for him, especially since he doesn't have to subcontract a welder so much.

He does need a person to watch over the robot for theft and most especially sabotage, but even then, it's much cheaper than a trained welder (and welds more cleanly).

The construction syndicate here in Uruguay is very big and very radicalized, making construction costs ridiculously expensive compared to average wages, I fear for the first person to bring the bricklaying robot here:

[http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a22082/wat...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a22082/watch- this-bricklaying-robot-build-a-house-in-two-days/)

Edit: the robot I'm talking about is a robotic orbital welder, something like this one:

[https://www.robots.com/articles/viewing/a-round-the-edge- orb...](https://www.robots.com/articles/viewing/a-round-the-edge-orbital- welding)

</comment><comment><USER8> As much as I support higher minimal wages, I can't help but conclude that this will only accelerate capital expendures in human-replacing automation

<comment><USER9> Automation is good. Eventually, it will lead to shorter working day (e.g. 6 or even 4 hours), shorter working week (e.g. 4 days, or even 3.5 days), to longer vacations, to better health care, earlier retirement, and so on.

<comment><USER10> It would be great if that were the result. But it remains to be seen. The requirement is that humans decide to change their economic system.

If we don't do that (and human society is really good at staying on autopilot until problems have gotten truly severe), we'll just end up with a mostly- automated society where the robot owners have everything and everyone else lives in a ghetto.

<comment><USER11> See the Roman Empire economy for references. Massive farms powered by slaves, plebs living on minimum welfare in poverty. Rich aristocrats spending their time on propaganda and schemes.

<comment><USER9> Horror story about society without automation. However, North beat South, so it is gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does the US really have a problem with unemployment? Nationally it is at its lowest since like 2000 - around 5% now. Yes averages are not good to use, there are areas where it might be 0.5% and some where it is 10%.

Bringing back things we used to do is looking in the rear view mirror. There should be investments in technology, education geared towards that and visionary things for us to accomplish for the future.

<comment><USER13> No, we have a problem with wage growth.

That isn't to say that the types of jobs have a huge impact. If McD paid $25/hr with full benefits, nobody would give a shit. Kind of hard to make that sustainable without clawing back real jobs from the 3rd world.

Germany seems to do a fine job with their auto industry, robots and all. I think this article is very flawed as that $8 task is but one of many and also one of the few perfect for a robot. "Spot welding isn't coming back to human manufacturing" is more accurate.

<comment><USER14> And a problem with workers rights, our citizens are not fighting for a better working environment.

<comment><USER13> Examples?

<comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States)

Here's a good start.

<comment><USER13> Nope, that isn't a good start. I'm looking for examples that show the US has a bad working environment. You providing a wiki link to "unions in the USA" does not address the question.

What is bad about our labor environment and why? And compared to whom?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Question for fellow Hackernewsers... my family is from middle America. One of my younger female relatives is going into the welding trade. She's one of the more talented young welders out there blending skill and artistry.

My question is this: what would you suggest as a way to "robot proof" herself from the inevitable automation of the welding trade while staying true to her craft?

<comment><USER17> Suggestion: Learn to do welding of vacuum chambers. Think A&N corp, Kurt J. Lesker, etc. The welds have to be done on the inside of the chamber, then cleaned, and I have yet to see a good robot for this. The market is small enough that it may cost more to develop a good robot than it is worth. It also pays higher than standard welding.

/used to hire a vacuum welder

<comment><USER16> Thanks FlatLuxDave! I'll pass this along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One way is to lower the expense of hiring people in the US. An obvious one would be lowering payroll taxes for certain types of jobs. Another way is to simply lower the corporate tax rate, which would have the additional benefit of repatriating tons of money that is sitting offshore because of American tax rates.

<comment><USER3> I've never run a company so this may be naive or uninformed on my part, but I get the impression that hiring and firing people, at least here in California, can be a costly process with regards to unemployment insurance, litigation for wrongful termination, etc. Again, I may be overestimating this burden on businesses so please correct me if I'm wrong.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that despite how good your interview/hiring process may be, you always end up with some hires that don't work out which lead me to believe that you probably turn away a near equal amount of applicants that would have been great employees. It's just very difficult to evaluate someone over the course of a few interviews. For entry level positions this is even harder since you may not have much professional experience or reputation to go by.

I've always thought it would be interesting if companies would run a kind of tryout phase of employment, say 1-3 months, paid of course, at the end of which the top performers would be given permanent employment. This way a company might be willing to take on more marginal applicants with the knowledge that it will be very easy to terminate them. I'm sure there are negative aspects of such a system that I'm not considering, but as a person working in aerospace doing manufacturing/skilled labor and without any formal education beyond high school to fall back on, I always thought such a system might be a good way for someone like me to get their foot in the door.

<comment><USER18> It is true that lowering the employment "friction" (i.e. cost of hiring and firing) means that employers will be more willing to take risks on new hires.

Some european countries make it difficult to fire people, with the unintended consequence that companies become very reluctant to hire in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like to tinker and build things. I still go to humans for value-added sheet- metal work and welding. However, downstream, mature manufacturing processes are ripe for replacement by automation.

</comment><comment><USER20> The plummeting cost of capital plant!

Which to me raises an important question. Why aren't these huge cost reductions showing up in the prices of products from competitive industries like autos?

<comment><USER7> Cars ARE cheaper. However, as a sibling commenter mentions, consumers demand more features, so they're spending about the same (inflation adjusted).

I took the time to investigate a few months ago and came up with this (UK- centric) example:

 _Let 's take a cheap car from the 1960s, an Austin Mini Cooper.

A 1960s Mini Cooper was about 500 pounds. That's 10.000 pounds in today's money.

Today you can buy a Dacia Sandero for 6.000 pounds. That's almost half of a Mini Cooper._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12551017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12551017)

[http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-2232885/Top-...](http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-2232885/Top-5-cheapest- brand-new-cars-buy-Britain.html)

<comment> nommm-nommm >consumers demand more features

I don't think customers demand more features as much as governments mandate more [safety] features. Well, maybe some features are mostly market driven like power windows replacing crank windows and keyless entry. But I believe car companies would build bargain basement death machines if they were legally allowed to.

Here's some inflation adjusted average car prices for the US - [http://whnt.com/2016/04/25/the-average-car-now- costs-25449-h...](http://whnt.com/2016/04/25/the-average-car-now- costs-25449-how-much-was-a-car-the-year-you-were-born/) Cars were the cheapest in the early 70s.

<comment><USER7> Interesting graph :) .

To be honest, we have some "bargain basement death machines" on the road here in Uruguay... but they sure beat the alternative (unsafe motorbikes).

In particular, the Chery QQ (cost in China about U$ 4000) is huge here.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chery_QQ3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chery_QQ3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Haha, yeah I said as much in a FB post to my Trump supporting friends. Do you really think Trump can stop self-driving cars from taking away your truck driving job? I doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER22> With all being said, can a country without export or import can grow in terms of quality of live indefinitely??

</comment><comment><USER23> The question is what does $8 per Hour look like when factoring in capital costs, maintenance and flexibility and that's not addressed by the article.

It's interesting that Apple and others closed ultra modern robotics factory in the US and now essentially assemble most stuff by hand in China.

It argues that robotics is not always a no brainer choice under many circumstances (which admittedly would be difficult to create in the US)

<comment><USER24> [http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont- be-...](http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-ceramic) (and other blog posts on the same blog) seems to disagree that Apple "essentially assembles most stuff by hand" \- e.g.

> Apple is the world's largest owner of CNC milling machines and swiss style > lathes.

<comment><USER3> You're correct in that Apple is one of, if not the largest owner of CNC machines, and that those machines are responsible for a large portion of their total manufacturing work, but I believe they still use a tremendous amount of human labor for final assembly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Technology should enhance quality of life of people. when it replaces people, chaos ensue !

<comment><USER26> So no more dishwasher machines, forget self driving cars, bring back elevator operators, and have more laws like requiring gas station attendants in New Jersey... What a horrible notion that impeding progress to give people pointless work, which makes things less convenient and efficient, is somehow a fix. The population has gone from 1 to near 7 billion people in just over a hundred years. Economic incentives against just having more unskilled labor is not a flaw that needs fixing, it's or economic and environmental necessities coming into alignment, telling us that having 4+ kids is a bad idea in a world as overpopulated as this, and instead to have smaller families with more resources put into educating the one or two kids we do have

<comment><USER27> I don't see how this addresses the point that millions of people are suffering due to automation. Are you saying only the well off should be able to have kids?

<comment><USER26> I'm saying that the solution to this problem won't come from creating fake work to trick people into thinking that they're productive members of society.

And honestly everyone should be having fewer kids, but the well off already are. Turns out that evolutionary and economic forces of selection don't favor people reproducing beyond their means. People can mistake this emergent property for a planned eugenics program and blame the messenger whenever somebody speaks the truth, but better to realize that wanting all human life to have some intrinsic market value does not make it so and plan accordingly.

<comment><USER27> "everyone should be having fewer kids, but the well of already are" seems directly contradictory to "evolutionary and economic forces don't favor people reproducing beyond their means."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _it costs barely $8 an hour to use a robot for spot welding in the auto > industry, compared to $25 for a worker—and the gap is only going to widen._

This is just wrong. Author does not know much about welding or car manufacturing.

\- Car welding is a best case for robots. Single task repeated many times exactly the same way. Try different case and you get $1M/hour.

\- $25/hour human cost is too low. With pauses, errors, delays... $100/hour would be more reasonable.

\- Germany is exactly in this situation, but does not have problem with unemployment.

<comment><USER20> It's quite likely they are quoting the actual costs from 2 different car plants.

(that would make them highly task specific, but it would reflect the difference in welding costs for producing cars on a high volume line)

<comment><USER28> I checked linked study:

> _A human welder today earns around $25 per hour (including benefits), while > the equivalent operating cost per hour for a robot is around $8 when > installation, maintenance, and the operating costs of all hardware, > software, and peripherals are amortized over a five-year depreciation > period._

So human cost does not include total cost, just labour. Comparable cost would be around $100</comment></comment></comment>


Amazing advantages of Go that you don't hear much about - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/here-are-some-amazing-advantages-of-go-that-you-dont-hear-much-about-1af99de3b23a <comment><USER2> I agree with the author's main points that the advantage of Go is that there's usually only one way to do things, and that keeps it simple and lets you focus on the code.

IMHO this is what Python was like as well when it was new. It was simple & delightful to use. However the current state of Python makes it a nightmare for anyone trying to get into it now. It takes a great deal of discipline to produce great Python code, and I've seen plenty of examples of unreadable tangles of annotations and generators which is impossible to debug unless you wrote the code yourself.

Going back further Perl was like this too -- so many people only recognize it as the butt of jokes, but there was a time when it was the perfect tool for the job. Then it was the language that had a library for everything. Then it became burdened by attempts to bolt on every language feature anyone could want until it became nearly unusable for most people.

This has happened to many other languages as well that one could speculate that this is the inevitable lifecycle of a programming language. I hope Go can hold out for a while.

<comment><USER3> This might be an unpopular opinion here, but I have the same problem with rust.

There are often multiple ways to do something remotely complex and out of all perfectly valid solutions I can come up with at most one is accepted by the compiler.

Go on the other hand has a compiler that reads your mind. or maybe its simply a really well designed language...

<comment><USER4> Had not seen anyone say this before but completely agree.</comment></comment></comment>


New York's Underground Wifi and Cell Signal Puts London to Shame - <AUTHOR> http://www.thememo.com/2017/01/09/new-yorks-underground-wifi-calls-put-london-to-shame/ <comment><USER2> In Helsinki that has been true for more than a decade. Didn't bother to dig exact dates. Btw. It's not stations only. Lines are also covered, so you can keep talking / surfing on train too.</comment>


As of 07/01/2011, Google Groups profiles have been disabled - <AUTHOR> http://www.groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46240

<comment><USER2> 2011-07-01 for non-US readers.

"Beginning July 1, 2011, you will not be able to change your Google Groups profiles. You will be able to download the contents of your profile until November 1, 2011, at which time your Google Groups profile will be deleted. "</comment>


Q1 netbook shipments rise sevenfold - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/05/01/netbook-shipments-rise-sevenfold-during-q1

<comment><USER2> I wonder if netbooks open up a business opportunity. To use the fact that the category is new and most software is not designed for the screensize, usage pattern or hardware. It is difficult though, since they are not that extremely different. My vague ideas that haven't materialized to good ideas are:

* Design websites with the screensize in mind (dimensions as well as font sizes). * Overall focus on what _usage_ difference there is between netbooks and desktop computers. With a netbook you either have short 10 minute sessions going online for something at a cafe, or you use them as entertainment while traveling without or with only spotty connectivity.

<comment><USER3> I think thinking of them as a separate segment carries a certain danger. They're just computers; in a small form factor, but computers. Build a nice, simplified interface if you like, but there's little to no reason not to offer that simplified interface on larger computers, too. A person who may not want the full power of a computer may still want a larger screen and better keyboard.

There's also no reason to artificially limit the software load, especially if you start with open source. These machines are perfectly capable of a wide variety of operations, pretty much everything except video editing and heavy- duty graphics editing.

A netbook dropped back in time three or four years ago would be considered an excellent machine, except oddly crippled by the somewhat underpowered CPU (even by 2006 standards). But otherwise well-endowed on IO, decent screen, ample storage (especially the RAM), etc, all at a price that would have caused rioting in front of the stores come Black Friday.

I'll say it again, to be clear: There may be room for specialized interfaces for certain users, but there's little need to bind that to the netbook form factor. Both power-user and low-power-user interfaces can be used almost all the way up and down the product line. (Even the high-powered gaming machines could use a simplified interface just fine, as long as the owner could play WOW.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd say that everyone wants a cheap laptop. It's been that way for years... Now that we have cheap laptops that let people do the majority of what they want to do (browse the web, check email), it makes perfect sense that they would be hugely popular.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is using css grid in production? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I used it in a personal project ([http://loyaltonmuseum.org/](http://loyaltonmuseum.org/)), since it made things a lot simpler. Few browsers support it natively, but there's a polyfill for it ([https://github.com/FremyCompany/css-grid- polyfill](https://github.com/FremyCompany/css-grid-polyfill)) which supposedly supports just about all modern browsers (including IE9+).

<comment><USER3> this kind of looks like a site from the 90s

<comment><USER2> Thanks :)

But yeah, never said I had a good sense of visual design. It does work reasonably well for the target demographic, though (baby boomers and older for the most part), and at least there ain't any <marquee> or <blink> tags.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is missing spacing inside elements. Add some spacing in your content area and it will look better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We don't use CSS Grid, 40% of our users don't support it in their browser. Judging by the five hours this post has been up, I feel like a lot of Hacker News doesn't use it either.

However, when support for it does go up, we're definitely migrating to it. It seems to have a really nice syntax.

<comment><USER5> I don't see why would anybody would need to migrate anything to grids. It would be more, use where appropriate. In my case, flexbox fixes more of my problems with css. CSS grids will be a nice addition but that's all.

<comment><USER6> I've had a couple designs now that essentially started as grid protypes and then converted to flexbox because for the time being flexbox seems a better compromise than the current JS-based grid polyfills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have experimented with it. I plan to start using it going forward, as most of our users have support for it in their browser.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would if browsers supported it. Now we just need babel for CSS.

</comment><comment><USER9> I do, its pretty great</comment>


The man behind Apple's Insanely cool products - <AUTHOR> http://nostaljigs.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=97 <comment><USER2> Dont get how this guy comes up with such innovative designs at such a pace...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> does he have anotyhe roption with steve behind him :P well chk out G5 for one of his best creations..and also the isub woofer..</comment>


CDC's New 'Best Estimate' Implies a Covid-19 Infection Fatality Rate Below 0.3% - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-implies-a-covid-19-infection-fatality-rate-below-0-3/ <comment><USER2> Article focuses on just fatalities. But there is evidence that infection can cause other problems for survivors. For example, rupturing of pulmonary alveoli. How quickly can those regenerate?

Wikipedia says we have 300 million alveoli. If you lose 10% to the virus, is that OK? By itself that's probably not a big deal, but let's say you're a smoker who has lived his whole life in a polluted city.

So you come out of ICU with only 50% of optimal lung capacity. Is that still OK? What if you only have 20% left, are you barely hanging on? Do you have to walk around breathing supplemental oxygen?

<comment><USER3> It is a very good question, as well as how it compares to damage done by flu or a bad cold how and quickly damage is repaired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> By "best estimate" they mean

>Parameter values for disease severity, viral transmissibility, and pre- symptomatic and asymptomatic disease transmission that represent the best estimate, based on the latest surveillance data and scientific knowledge.

Also, the "best estimate" predicts a .4% fatality rate, below .3% comes from the best performing model using the lower bound for disease severity...

<comment><USER5> The 0.4% fatality rate is for symptomatic patients. At least a third of infections are asymptomatic, so the actual infection fatality rate is lower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is all great, but what is also important here is, how many of those 99.7% of people need hospital care to survive?

As far as I understood all the "flatten-the-curve" motions, the plan was to keep hospitals in a state, where they're able to process the patients with complications, so they don't become the 0.3%++.

My country (Slovenia) has pretty-much zero new cases per day currently, with 2-4% of people (there was a study) with antibodies.... in a potential second wave with exponential growth, our hospitals are basically fucked.

<comment><USER7> Flattening the curve to preserve hospital beds, ,at least in the US, only really applied to NYC and northern New Jersey. Nowhere else in the country ever even came close to overwhelming the hospitals. If NJ and NYC had shut down public transportation the curve wouldn't have been so bad - hotspots map 1:1 with subway and train stops.

40% of US counties haven't had a single COVID death. Most hospitals are so under utilized they are losing money.

<comment><USER8> Birmingham Alabama's hospitals are _currently_ overwhelmed[0].

This thing is going to get even uglier quickly as it tears through rural areas that have little to no nearby healthcare options.

And as the people who are out mingling this weekend start to get ill in the next week and start to feel bad enough to need hospitalization in the next two to three weeks we're going to see some scenes just like in NYC with overwhelmed hospitals and morgues being replaced by air conditioned semi trucks (or worse, bodies piling up in the summer heat). It's already happening in some rural areas[1].

The only counties that have no deaths are those with very few people and/or no testing [2].

[0] [https://www.businessinsider.com/dire-coronavirus-alabama- icu...](https://www.businessinsider.com/dire-coronavirus-alabama-icu-no- beds-2020-5) [1] [https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-deadly-checkerboard- Co...](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-deadly-checkerboard- Covid-19-s-new-surge-15292024.php) [2] [https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/coronavirus-spread- rural-c...](https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/coronavirus-spread-rural- counties-university-texas-researchers/)

<comment><USER7> According to the Alabama department of public health as of 5 hours ago there are only 571 people in ICU.

[https://www.alabamapublichealth.gov/covid19/assets/cov-al- ca...](https://www.alabamapublichealth.gov/covid19/assets/cov-al- cases-052420.pdf)

According to CDC data, 81% of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States are people over 65 years old, most with preexisting conditions. If you add in 55-64-year-olds that number jumps to 93%. For those below age 55, preexisting conditions play a significant role, but the death rate is currently around 0.0022%, or one death per 45,000 people in this age range. Below 25 years old the fatality rate of COVID-19 is 0.00008%, or roughly one in 1.25 million.

I am sure some hospitals will come close to capacity in some areas due to some case clusters, but Florida, Texas, and Georgia have been largely fine after opening up even in rural areas.

I expect over the next two to three weeks we will continue to see drops in deaths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure the CDC is just wrong about this, and the true IFR is about 1.0%. The CDC page in question doesn't have much of any information about their methodology, and the claimed 0.3% is not consistent with what other research has found. Given the CDC's extremely poor track record, I don't think it's right to assign this estimate much weight.

<comment><USER10> Agree. New York fatalities are already at .3% of the population (estimating population at 8.39 million and deaths at 23k). Antibody estimates are that only ~20% were infected.

<comment><USER11> NY really appears to be an outlier for the US. An IFR of roughly 1.4% does appear more inline with that for older sicker populations. There may also be other factors such as a more deadly viral strain, older population vs the rest of the US, genetic makeup of the population being more prone to covid-19, or differences in healthcare access and or application.

It really seems the fatality rate for covid-19 is bi-modal. Recognizing that seems critical to putting resources into finding the underlying reasons to respond with correct solutions for any given area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting, but the question is what it implies for public policy. In particular, a lot of people on the right argue this ifr is not much worse than the flu, so there should be no government dictated restrictions.

Well to address that we need to calculate the numbers. And to start, the flu death numbers are as low as they are because we have a vaccine, and every year there is an aggressive campaign aimed at the people most likely to die for the disease.

We don't yet have a covid vaccine, and it is highly transmissible, so if we did nothing to prevent its spread it would likely reach a majority of people. In the US that means at least 200 million.

Now multiply that by 0.2% and you get at least 400,000 deaths, 8 times the number for a bad flu season.

I say that is high enough to merit aggressive governmental action to halt transmission until we get a vaccine. For those who say no, I would ask what, if anything, would be a high enough number?

<comment><USER13> It's not a binary decision. Every reasonable person agrees the government should take action; the questions are how much is needed and how severe it can be.

<comment><USER12> I agree, it's not a binary solution. But there is a significant portion of the American public, including Trump for a good while, and off and on today, that thinks the government should be doing little or nothing.</comment></comment></comment>


AWS Amplify CLI or Serverless Framework for My Situation? - <AUTHOR> I used [Serverless](https://serverless.com) before, when I built my last three tier mobile app backend using API Gateway + Lambda + DynamoDB (plus Cognito as AuthN, by the way). And I had a good experience on that route. Back then, I researched both AWS SAM and Serverless, and decided to go to Serverless route (because slightly modifying a tutorial example gives me what I wanted right there).
Now, I am doing my next project, and Amplify CLI is announced.
I think I am going to use AWS Amplify client library regardless for my React App (that is almost decided); but now I am doing the technical decisions between Serverless framework and Amplify CLI [1]. Any experience to share regarding: bug/maturity/pros and cons for either route?
   - In particular, Serverless gives users the "in total control of your backend architecture" situation, (I have not used Amplify CLI) does Amplify CLI make me lose that level of control (i.e., providing too much abstraction)?
  - how mature Amplify CLI is from bug hiccup perspective and major capability plugins availability perspective?
  - What's the learning curve for Amplify CLI?
Thanks for providing your thoughts.
[1] https://hackernoon.com/aws-amplify-7-new-things-for-serverless-63ecad310d9f <comment><USER2> Take a look at [https://serverless-stack.com](https://serverless-stack.com).

I'm doing exactly what you are; my answer was to fork what they've done and proceed from there.

* Serverless framework for the backend

* React / Amplify / Bootstrap for the front-end

</comment><comment><USER3> Amplify CLI is much more than just automation, it's also got an entire toolchain for GraphQL transformation plus a code generation layer for Swift, Java, and TypeScript. It's geared towards mobile and web developers as it can integrate with their local projects and scaffold out the configuration for using different services and plug into Amplify JS library or the AWS mobile SDKs. There are also escape hatches to manage everything yourself. Give it a try for a day before finalizing your decision.

<comment><USER2> That sounds less like Amplify and more like AppSync?</comment></comment>


Letting It Ride: Las Vegas Puts U.S.'s First Self-Driving Shuttle into Service - <AUTHOR> https://blog.caranddriver.com/letting-it-ride-las-vegas-puts-u-s-s-first-fully-self-driving-shuttle-into-service/ <comment><AUTHOR> Self-driving cars may be a sham "solution" to American's transportation woes....however self-driving busses should be considered as a very practical mass transit alternative to rail since the road infrastructure is already built.</comment>


The next recession - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/10/11/the-next-recession <comment><USER2> A recession is inevitable if one looks at the state of average people and certain economic facts. Eventually a domino will fall.

1\. Consumer debt is at an all time high. 2\. Consumer savings rates are lower than the mid 2000's and ~35% of adults could not handle a $400 emergency. 3\. Inflation is eating already low wage growth. 4\. Soaring rental prices for homes 5\. High home prices 6\. business consolidation and Ch. 11's are up 63%

Sources: [https://www.americanbanker.com/news/consumer-debt-is-at- an-a...](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/consumer-debt-is-at-an-all-time- high-should-banks-be-worried)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/rental-prices-are-soaring- ar...](https://www.businessinsider.com/rental-prices-are-soaring-around-the- us-2018-7)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/chapter-11-bankruptcies- are-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/chapter-11-bankruptcies-are- up-63-from-a-year-ago-2018-4)

<comment><USER3> A number of your indicators are signs of a booming economy.

Rents go up when people can afford higher rents. Consumers take out loans and save less when unemployment is low and they feel safe in their job prospects. Inflation was below healthy rates for a number of years, and is now where the Fed likes it. Wages aren't booming, but they're up, and up more than inflation.

Chapter 11s were at the same level in 2011 -- were you predicting a recession then too?

There are also reasons to be optimistic, for example, US corporate earnings are way up -- 2018 is up 20% over 2016 alone -- that's huge.

[https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/corporate- profits](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/corporate-profits)

I think that the article is right: while the US seems very healthy, there are lots of international issues that could form the next recession (China specifically).

<comment><USER4> > Rents go up when people can afford higher rents.

Only if supply is capped artificially, e.g. in major cities where it's almost impossible to build.

> Consumers take out loans and save less when unemployment is low and they > feel safe in their job prospects.

Other reasons to take out loans: The wealth effect (currently fully in force), cheap loans (record low interest), easy loans (no risk assessment), outright stupid loans (US student loans) or loans that are necessary to make ends meet. All signs of a market overheating.

> Chapter 11s were at the same level in 2011 -- were you predicting a > recession then too?

There was no reason to predict it when it had already just happened.

<comment><USER5> It goes up regardless of building restrictions in a booming economy, but restrictions can make it worse.

This is called the Law of Rent. Land prices function like monopoly prices, and rise whenever the value obtainable from the location rises compared to the best available rent-free alternative. Seeing how there's usually no rent-free alternatives, prices tend towards the entire value obtainable from the location for an average consumer.

For instance, the value of the location may be money and time saved on commuting. You'll generally find that the money and time you save on commuting about equals the higher land rents, netting out to no monetary benefit between the two options.

<comment><USER4> The Law of Rent is about the cost of leasing the land from the owner of the land. This is not the relationship between tenant and the owner of the real estate.

It's not the tenant who is looking for maximum productivity from the land, it's the real estate owner renting out places to live. A tall tower housing more people paying individually lower rent is more productive than a small house housing a single affluent person. Unless building is restricted artificially, supply increases until demand is met fully, which leads to price competition and ultimately rents that are as low as they can be.

<comment><USER6> > _supply increases until demand is met fully_

That is a very optimistic view.

What I've seen in Finland and UK is pretty much the opposite of what you claim. In both countries the housing supply _in growth centers_ is essentially controlled by a handful of huge developers. In an attempt to make the planning permission system more comprehensive, it has only turned out more complex and expensive to navigate. That means that only the largest operators can afford to work within it.

In both countries we see developers deliberately restricting the speed with which new housing stock enters the market. In UK, the common pattern seems to be to sell a floor or two at a time, while the others are still supposedly under construction. In Finland, the developers literally shut down their sales and rather took a hit in maintenance costs than sell their available stock while the market was too slow.

Your assumption therefore makes a crucial mistake - it stems from an assumption of perfect markets and unrestricted housing supply. In reality neither of those two hold true.

<comment><USER4> > In an attempt to make the planning permission system more comprehensive, it > has only turned out more complex and expensive to navigate. That means that > only the largest operators can afford to work within it.

That's exactly what I'm talking about when I say "artificial restrictions". Don't assume that the market players don't want these restrictions, it's easier to sit on past success than fighting for sustained success. Big players always profit (relatively) from regulation, it keeps down competition from below.

> Your assumption therefore makes a crucial mistake - it stems from an > assumption of perfect markets and unrestricted housing supply. In reality > neither of those two hold true.

Of course it's an idealization, I'm talking about what would happen to prices if these restrictions _didn 't exist_. Housing supply doesn't have to be unlimited, demand could easily be met, we're far away from any physical limits. You really have to ask yourself, why does San Francisco not look a little bit more like Hong Kong? What would happen to minimum rents if a dozen of residential highrises could be built near the center?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The efficacy of QE is debated, but if that does not work, they could try > more radical, untested approaches, such as giving money directly to > individuals

I'm not an economist but I feel like when a country is in a situation where they have to give money to citizens to stave off a market collapse, said country's economy is fucked.

<comment><USER8> > The efficacy of QE is debated, but if that does not work, they could try > more radical, untested approaches, such as giving money directly to > individuals

For one thing, QE was a massive handout to debt holders (banks, asset managers, hedge funds) which took (essentially public funds c/o inflation) and indirectly gave it to the wealthy by purchasing assets at prices way higher than "market" at the time.

Perhaps it worked, but it also created a lot of resentment. In some ways, giving money directly to individuals would have been more fair, perhaps we wouldn't have the current radical shift right in the US, resulting from people fed up with the elite coastal beneficiaries of the past system.

Unfortunately, giving money directly to individuals would not have solved the past crisis because a lot was about the downward spiral of asset prices and how that forced more collateralization and reduced bank equity. However, a more balanced approach that solved the mortgage issues for the common person would have been better.

As for the country's economy being screwed. In some ways, we are now. Just that there are winners and losers. Holders of real assets won (massive home inflation continues.) And paycheck-to-paycheck individuals / renters / youngsters lost. Speak to a young person now [who doesnt work at a FAANG] and you'll find someone coming to terms they may _never_ own a home or put down roots. Its a massive turn away from the classic American dream and social contract. Thats pretty screwed up.

<comment><USER9> I want to tack on this comment by adding that everyone seems to ignore the fact that QE is essentially just printing money.

Historically this is usually coupled with run-away inflation, however since it was isolated to the wealthy sectors of the economy (rather than the typical economy as a whole) there is only inflation among goods in that sector (housing etc). The big red flag is that stocks and VC are in that pool as well.

So while there was 20 trillion dollars of growth over the last 10 years, there was also 21 trillion dollars of debt generated.

The way I see it, QE successfully generated economic growth, however none of that economic growth was "real" growth. There were new innovations, particularly in the tech space, but a huge swath of them have no method to generate real sustainable profit.

All this means we should see a MASSIVE correction in markets. Due to financial rules, banks likely won't exit the market like 2008, but the massive number of companies that took out cheap debt will be at risk.

Basically we have a potential repeat of 2008, but swap out sub-prime homeowners with corporations.

<comment><USER10> The US QE consisted of printing money in a moment of deflation (reducing of the money supply), so the country would experience something close to a monetary stability.

It did create inflation, and basically offset the natural tendency of the market. The fact that the money was inserted directly into the capital markets, instead of the consumer market probably caused a huge loss of efficiency on the deflation containing goal, a bubble at the capital markets and the requirement of collecting the money back once it starts flowing in a non-controlled fashion into the goods. All that probably caused some instability down the line, but the US seems to be dealing with it just fine.

<comment><USER9> > but the US seems to be dealing with it just fine

I don't think we have seen the full consequences as of yet.

<comment><USER8> This comment is spot on. We never actually "solved" the consumer crisis of 2008. We only solved the acute corporate crisis (money market funds breaking the buck, under-capitalized/insolvent investment banks, bond liquidity leading to a markdown death spiral.)

The problem we didn't solve IMHO is the massive housing bubble. To be fair, solving the housing bubble involves lots of winners and losers, so the government would rather kick this can down the road. Obama was able to keep kicking this can for 8yrs.

While there were pops in many places, the steady state price has become whatever a two-earner household can afford with massive debt living paycheck- to-paycheck on a 4% mortgage. That isnt sustainable and causes numerous problems:

\- Everyone not already in "the game" loses (youngsters)

\- Moving is difficult due to transaction costs (poor job mobility)

\- Selling will be impossible (underwater) once rates go up

\- Disposable income for spending is reduced, causing people to borrow further.

On top of that, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to stay in an uncertain state: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae_and_Freddie_Mac)

On the other side of the fence, low rates are horrible for pension funds, pensioners relying on fixed incomes, etc. Pension funds and asset managers with return expectations struggle and reach for riskier assets yielding more. (Tech, to some extent has been a winner here as one result of this has been diversification of pension assets into VC.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not related to the article, but I was overwhelmed by popups on first visit. The amount of screen real estate they took up [0] was obnoxious.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/GwkHKT1.png](https://i.imgur.com/GwkHKT1.png)

</comment><comment><USER12> the economist didn't even see the 2008 crash coming.

their prognostications are useless

<comment><USER13> I remember reading articles about the subprime problem in the Economist way before the crash. I think they're pretty good on the whole at being informative and not sensationalist.

Here's one from 2006 [1] that I found relatively easily. But there's one in my head that I remember about an HSBC owned bank that was flailing and could potentially start a crisis, but I can't find it right now - I just remember reading it at the time, it was the reason I decided to wait for a downturn in the housing market. I wish I'd ignored it and bought at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight ...

[1] [https://www.economist.com/finance-and- economics/2006/12/13/s...](https://www.economist.com/finance-and- economics/2006/12/13/subprime-subsidence)

<comment><USER14> Yup. I'm always amazed when people say nobody saw the recession coming, because I distinctly remember multiple news stories about the subprime mortgage brouhaha for a year or two before the bubble burst.

People hear what they want to hear, and remember what they want to remember, I suppose.

<comment><USER15> Many people saw that housing was probably overvalued and that there was a wave of unaffordable payment hikes in the pipeline on the loans secured against that housing coming. A falling housing market is hardly a once in 100 year phenomenon, and many other housing markets had operated with similar products (teaser rates etc) for many years, and continue to operate on that basis.

Many people also saw a recession coming, because recessions always come eventually - it's a normal part of the economic cycle.

Relatively few people saw that these two things would result in many of the largest financial institutions on the planet coming near to collapse.

Even fewer people got the timing right. And not many of those had the courage of their convictions to actually place bets on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> one bubble in the making is fracking, it's built on debt and has no chance of making profits anytime soon [https://www.truthdig.com/articles/death-by- fracking/](https://www.truthdig.com/articles/death-by-fracking/)

</comment><comment><USER17> we never left the recession. ignore that twaddle about the "jobless recovery".

point is, they had a depression II slated. so they did what any cunt would; they punted.

could have been 8-9 years of pain; ex-rich people throwing themselves out of windows.

instead, they screwd the next four generations.

it only looked like a recovery, because it stopped collapsing for a brief period. reality they've screwed the entire country for decades.

all this nonsense about growth? is what happens when you reinflate the bubble with QE. classic keynesian garbage.</comment>


Syria conflict: US air strikes 'kill dozens of government troops - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37398721 <comment><USER2> Knowing how badly we want to get rid of Assad, that's not an accident. But do citizens care that their government is waging a war against another country that does not pose a threat to it?</comment>


Windows 10 S to remove passwords by default - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-password-microsoft-20180211-story.html?outputType=amp <comment><USER2> This article talks mainly about the flaws in passwords. But I see no such flaws in an approach such as the following:

* Remember two passwords, both a series of words, preferrably esoteric ones not necessarily found in the dictionary, but _this is not actually necessary!_

* One is to log into the computer

* The other is to unlock the password db in an opensource password manager of your choice (such as pass or keepass)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty much how I do things. Using unique diceware passwords for logins, and have another diceware password for accessing a password DB.</comment></comment>


How to Design a Good API & Why it Matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design <comment><AUTHOR> Joshua Bloch's presenting is as good as his writing. This is a really well articulated, practical presentation.</comment>


Who designed the ui for these hackers ... - <AUTHOR>

PS: i've been very curious how hackers at YC have been able to get awsemazing ui out there. and hence this exercise.
<insert site>
reply to this thread as a comment for a new site request.
reply to a comment if you know whose behind the design. <comment><USER2> This is basically what Quora is for, try asking there.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://lmatteis.github.com/apejs/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> cappuccino.org ?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> heroku.com ?

<comment><USER4> <http://seaofclouds.com/> worked on that.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> dydra.com ?</comment>


Google bans Kongregate from Android Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/53629-google-bans-kongregate-from-android-market

<comment><AUTHOR> Some more info: [http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/19/kongregate-ceo-jim- greer-o...](http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/19/kongregate-ceo-jim-greer-on- getting-pulled-from-the-android-mark/)</comment>


Evan Spiegel 2014 LA Hacks Keynote - <AUTHOR> http://blog.snapchat.com/post/82635264882/2014-la-hacks-keynote

<comment><USER2> Oh my god this is excellent. For all the talk about how Evan got lucky, how Snapchat is trash, etc. - this dude understands human behavior. Understands it like Zuck understood what people really want to see on the internet, like Biz/Ev/Jack understood how people want to publish, if not better.

There's a reason I treasure snaps from my friends more than anything else I get - even though they're almost always "worthless" and "stupid". It's because those moments are why I love my friends.</comment>


How will you read your files in a hundred years? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/63421538562/how-will-you-read-your-files-in-a-hundred-years

<comment><USER2> As discussed by Clifford Stoll about 20 years ago, and he probably wasn't the first to popularize this. [http://darkenchanter.net/deaddata.htm](http://darkenchanter.net/deaddata.htm) (with Web 1.0 layout)

</comment><comment><USER3> In 100 years I will be dead.</comment>


Launch Your Site Too Soon - <AUTHOR> http://housefed.tumblr.com/post/6460403580/launch-your-site-too-soon

<comment><USER2> I guess the counterargument is that if you had launched a really polished site, you may have gotten positive press from the get-go and a much larger userbase.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is definitely a fair argument. The part I left out was in the last 11 months, I taught myself how to code and this was my biggest launch to date- so it was a bit of trial by fire. Had I known what I know now, many of these bugs would have definitely been corrected prior to the HN post. Riffing off an old Rumsfeld quote, "You launch with the skills you have..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should look into buying "housefeed.com" and perhaps renaming your site to that.

That's what I thought I saw as your name upon first glance. My brain unconsciously filled in the details: "Oh, feeding people at a house, 'housefeed.com', makes sense".

Also, you get the benefit of the "feed" connotation: a feed of pictures of people's meals at their houses.

<comment><USER4> As a second opinion, I had never thought of housefeed when thinking about housefed. Housefed is like grassfed, and I would never think of grassfeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good on you for being gutsy enough to launch to the HN crowd so early! Great openness in your post.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would love for this to succeed. However, for now, one can't book or host a meal yet -- correct?

<comment><USER6> Btw, noticed you can like your own pictures. Not a biggy, but probably not what you were looking for.

Also, why shouldn't I be able to upload multiple pictures for one meal?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you can like your own photos. It may be something I stop now but early on it wasn't a big deal.

And so far no one has requested that feature. It is a good idea though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's like throwing a dinner party and inviting the guests to come see how you've neatly arranged the pots and pans on the floor, in the fashion of a stove. "It's fantastic," they'll say, "Perhaps you should include some carrots." "This is wonderful feedback!", you'll think, as you as begin to slice carrots for your floor-bound pots.

<comment><USER8> A witty quip, but probably wrong. The author's conclusion was important:

> Launch your [site] before you core functionality is done. You'll fix the > bugs you don't know you have.

Some places can't afford to do that - things where lives are at stake (medical, engineering, etc) or companies who don't get a chance at do-overs at all.

But for most small ventures, you're in for a much bigger risk of abandoning the project by delaying endlessly than you are of having a huge rush of potential users, not being able to serve them, being unable to fix that, and having a reputation for that stick.

And most people building medical devices, engineering, or rolling something out for a huge corporation with a lot of buzz know who they are. The post is good advice for the rest of everyone else.

<comment><USER7> There's an enormous difference between launching before a site is polished, and launching before the site is actually functional. You launch with a minimum viable product. If your car doesn't have wheels or an engine, it's not a viable product.

Show it to people early and often, get as much feedback as possible. Launch when it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Changing the background color to FFFFFF instantly gives the site a cleaner look. I want to see this succeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Question on the #fff- would you keep the border around the photos white too? It seems like too much white to me. What does everyone else think?

<comment><USER10> You can always make the photo border a subtle off-white like #FAFAFA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've heard a few different pitches for this idea...booking meals in other people's homes...the one thing I rarely hear being brought up though is the legality of this. Aren't there pretty strict laws about cooking prepared food for others? I thought restaurants and even those street vendors are supposed to be checked out...

Just wondering if you have checked this potential issue out...or maybe I'm misunderstanding the idea.

<comment><USER12> It's serving the food that's illegal, not making a website saying someone is willing to serve you food that's illegal. It's similar to AirBNB. Probably illegal to rent out your apartment for a few days. Your landlord doesn't want you to do it, your local hotel lobby doesn't want you to do it... and people do it anyway. Making a list of people willing to break the law isn't illegal. Same goes for Ubercab. Highly illegal or whatever, but still a great (and disruptive) business idea.

The Internet is allowing people to break the law in harmless ways more than we've ever been able to. And that's a good thing, because it means protectionism is going away. Businesses will have to compete based on the quality of their product, not based on how many lawmakers are in their pocket. The Internet is finally returning the power to the people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would work only if you're a regular in HN. For anyone else, this would fire (no one will return).</comment>


AuthorRank could be bigger than all Panda updates combined - <AUTHOR> http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/author-rank <comment><USER2> I'd be interested to hear if others agree with my assessment or not.

<comment><USER3> ajkohn,

I agree completely. What's more, AuthorRank could be Google's best defense and the best cure for faults in their existing search algos.

Google works great - mostly. AuthorRank is an improvement to their algos that will be much harder to scam, break and abuse.

AuthorRank is an elegant, desireable, long-awaited bug fix. I can't wait to see it happen.

<comment><USER2> I too am eager to see Google experiment with AuthorRank. Not only should it be much harder to scam, break and abuse, I believe Google is thinking about those things in the creation phase, something I'm not sure occurred with PageRank.</comment></comment></comment>


3 Things That Hold You Back When You Use Trello - <AUTHOR> http://dapulse.com/better_than_trello

<comment><USER2> Right on the spot! I stopped using trello exactly because I tried so hard to make it work for planning because their UI is so simple - but it just didn't work.</comment>


Ask HN: How did you architect your web application that uses machine learning? - <AUTHOR> I have recently begun incorporating machine learning to tune some parameters which are used in a web application. I am quite new to working with machine learning but it looks like the ML portion of this project will grow substantially. Currently I write small ML scripts using python and just manually update the Ruby on Rails application with the results.<p>How have you architected your application that incorporates machine learning? <comment><USER2> I've only built relatively small, POC applications, but I've been using flask to host an API that gets called by whatever application.

It depends on how often you want to update your model, how complex it is, how much data it requires to infer, etc. I think splitting up the services/code will be helpful if we get to the point where there are multiple teams working on this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> Before ML we used [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming) to find better parameters to match millions of objects (about 30 attributes) against a list of 1000s of human verified (positive and negative) matches. It ran every night and would email us every couple of days a list of parameter better than the previous. We added those to a configuration file.

</comment><comment><USER4> We use big data and ML for our project. The training happens on a separate machine running Scala, spark and deeplearning4j. This app reads from our database creates the model and then saves it to a network drive. This happens every Sunday night.

The web application reloads the ml model and then makes predictions based on real time data.

There are also plenty of predictions that do not require real time prediction for example inventory levels, sales for next few days etc. In this case we train on the training machine and write the results back to the DB using spark jdbc. The web just displays this data.

We have scaled up pretty well however in the future we will move to Apache Kafka to real time data transfer and prediction

</comment><comment><USER5> We have a number of batch jobs that updates the models every night then a separate api to serve the main app that draws de ui.

Sometimes your ml model doesn't need a cronjob and you can update your results near real-time, but the principle still holds, an API separate from the main app.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be what I'm hearing over and over and luckily it is pretty close to how I assumed it would work.

I think I am going to build an API inside my rails app which the python then uses to access data and update parameters. I have a lot of work as far as designing the models themselves but the overall software architecture now makes some sense to me.

Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was also this great ask hn some months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13821217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13821217)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's perfect.</comment></comment>


Yes, They Could. So They Did. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/opinion/15friedman.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> With a title like this it's impossible to know whether the article is interesting to me...

<comment><USER3> So Thomas Friedman participates in a cross-India solar-car rally/protest/demo?

Not particularly Hacker-Newsworthy. But that's where the value of comes in... if someone posts an abstract (even if not voting the article up).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Warning: Thomas L. Friedman.

<comment><USER5> Is he/his opinions that bad to issue a warning ? Just wondering, as I did read his book "The World Is Flat" and found it interesting

Edit: not trying to put you down, just wondering, that's all :)

<comment><USER4> I don't like his pieces, and I found that the title of the article didn't give an indication that that was what I was getting.

OTOH, 'friedman' was in the URL, so I should have looked at that.</comment></comment></comment>


Sketch/Illustrator Alternative for Linux, Akira, Has a Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alecaddd/akira-the-linux-design-tool <comment><AUTHOR> In my opinion, the current choices for UI/UX design on Linux are lacking.

Linux could certainly do with more designers using its platform, but they haven't had a good choice in tools.

Note: Akira isn't a Desktop UI builder, like Glade or QML Designer. This tool is for wireframes and visual designs.</comment>


A Non-Techie Tries to Build a Tech Company - <AUTHOR> http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/a-non-techie-tries-to-build-a-tech-company/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Thanks for the great read. It's good to hear others experiences.</comment>


Superplexus by Michael McGinnis - <AUTHOR> http://superplexus.com/history/ <comment><AUTHOR> Most people only know Michael McGinnis's work from the Perplexus line of toys, but he's spent years honing his prototypes and creating grand "Superplexus" sculptures on commission. I think this is a really interesting case study of iterating on a base idea for a very long time, as well as the perfect synergy of mathematics, art, and gameplay.

(Incidentally, I got a chance to play with one of the big ones at the Solano Stroll in Berkeley a few years back, and it was simply incredible!)</comment>


Inside the mind of the anonymous online poster - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2010/06/20/inside_the_mind_of_the_anonymous_online_poster/

<comment><USER2> > " _The comments sections on many general-interest news sites lack both the > carrot and the stick for encouraging responsible behavior. The carrot is the > cohesion of a group you don't want to disappoint, like Yoshimi25's Front > Burner community. The stick is the shame associated with having your real > name publicly attached to embarrassing behavior. Without these two levers, > the social contract breaks down._ "

They need to expand their definition to include other types of carrots and sticks. HN has a simple but effective system of upvotes, downvotes, display by ranking, and flagging/deleting. Other sites have similarly effective systems of varying types. I hope eventually "Old Media" will catch on.

<comment><USER3> > _HN has a simple but effective system_

You must be new here :)

HN has an obvious problem with favouritism. Posts by some users are getting more upvotes regardless of what they post. The same goes for submissions. Blogs not really worthy of any attention are constantly floating on the front page simply because they are darlings of a part of the HN crowd.

Though HN manages the maintain reasonably good comment quality with few simple measures. That's indeed an impressive achievement.

<comment><USER2> effective =/= perfect

> _"HN manages the maintain reasonably good comment quality with few simple > measures."_

That's really the point -- the system works to maintain good comment quality. Different sites will require different measures; the key is figuring out which ones you need. The original article's comment on carrots and sticks displayed a surprising lack of understanding of this principle; it seemed to suggest that the lack of one particular type of carrot/stick makes creating a quality online comment system an intractable problem.

<comment><USER4> The key phrase here is "general-interest" cohesion of the group is harder to achieve when the range of topics is very wide.

Most of the sites that maintain a good discourse revolve around specific subjects, often to a specialized degree.

HN is a group that discusses technology and its implications, this framework gives the group a cohesive context. The scale is different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This part at the end -- particularly the last graf -- caught my eye: "With all of our identifying information getting sliced, diced, and sold, by everyone from credit card companies to Facebook, is there really such a thing as the anonymous Web anymore? Consider this demonstration from the late '90s by Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Latanya Sweeney. She took three commonly available data points: sex (male), ZIP code (02138), and date of birth (July 31, 1945). Those seemingly anonymous attributes could have described lots of people, right? Actually, no. She proved they could belong to just one person: former governor William Weld. She tells me that 87 percent of Americans can now be identified with just these three data points."

<comment><USER5> I don't see what that has to do with an "anonymous Web" at all. Nobody on Facebook thinks they're an anonymous forum poster, and I doubt anyone goes around mentioning their zip code and date of birth on forums anyway. (Although many profile pages do have city and year of birth, which might be enough…)

Besides, if it was an anonymous forum (<http://wakaba.c3.cx/shii/>), nobody could tie your separate posts together even if you put some identifying information in them.

On the other hand, people on Facebook are happy to put their real names on angry political statements. So maybe this article shouldn't have bothered confusing "anonymous" and "uses pseudonyms" to make its point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how effective a text classifier could be in assisting moderators in these situations.

I've written a rather good text classifier and I'm in search of commercially useful non-evil applications for it. Assisted moderation for high-volume discussions has come to mind. If anybody's interested in arranging a test of such a system, let me know.

<comment><USER7> Isn't that what <http://adaptivesemantics.com/> does? I remember reading about them on HN a couple of days ago.

<comment><USER6> It looks like they are. I'm not sure if I want to compete with them, or go after a different market. My classifier is good at author identification, and it seems like there might be a market for catching students paying other people to write their papers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Single page (printer format) link: [http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2010/06/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2010/06/20/inside_the_mind_of_the_anonymous_online_poster?mode=PF)

<comment><USER8> It appears the print page can't be linked to. I've seen this in a few other places as well.

Link to the "single page" instead: [http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2010/06/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2010/06/20/inside_the_mind_of_the_anonymous_online_poster/?page=full)</comment></comment>