Vim 8.0 is coming - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/version8.txt <comment><USER2> I have vim, neovim and emacs (and spacemacs) installed. Right now I'm trying to get into emacs a bit more.

What's interesting to me, and the reason I try to keep up to date with the latest changes for all four editors, is that it's been now, what, 25 years (?) since emacs and vim started "competing" and they still are. I guess we could be saying the same in 10 years about firefox and chrome, but it still is amazing in my opinion. It's amazing that so much work has been done to vim and emacs, and so many changes, so many users using them for different things. And there is still no clear winner. I'm not trying to start a discussion about the strenghts and weaknesses of each. Just expressing my appreciation.

Thank you for your great work, to everyone involved with vim and emacs, and more recently neovim and spacemacs. You are awesome.

<comment><USER3> I became an heavy Emacs user as I could not find the comfort of Borland IDEs in UNIX, as I started to use it.

Since I moved away from C++ into Java and .NET land, never felt the need to use them any longer.

And nowadays, with Qt Creator, Clion, xCode, AppCode and VS, I also don't feel the need of them when I need to go back to C++.

It is very good to know the basics from plain Vi, because there are still commercial UNIX systems without GNU tools installed, just bare bones installations.

So for me the question is why there are still people that enjoy working as if their computers are using a 25 year old developer experience.

<comment><USER4> _So for me the question is why there are still people that enjoy working as if their computers are using a 25 year old developer experience._

The GUI paradigm is over 30 years old. People still stick to the mouse even though we've had ubiquitous touchscreens for almost a decade.

A good paradigm does not easily die.

<comment><USER5> > _The GUI paradigm is over 30 years old. People still stick to the mouse even > though we 've had ubiquitous touchscreens for almost a decade._

Touch screens are not a 100% replacement for mice. They are an alternative, and for desktop/laptop PCs with vertical screens they are a non starter due to human physiology.

<comment><USER6> Mice are not a 100% replacement for keyboards. If you're doing lots of typing, there is something to be said for keeping your hands on the keyboard. Vim and emacs facilitate this much better than GUI-based editors.

<comment><USER5> > _Mice are not a 100% replacement for keyboards._

And they're not used as such. They are used as complimentary to keyboards.

On the other hand, mice-based GUIs ARE a 100% replacement for CLIs.

<comment><USER7> _> On the other hand, mice-based GUIs ARE a 100% replacement for CLIs._

Really? I can automate a pipeline of GUIs? Please show me how I can automatically query a database, take that output, run complex data aggregation over those results combined with past results, send that to a remote server for storage, and email myself the result of the upload, using only a combination of GUIs.

(Points deducted for anything that involves instructing the machine to "move mouse to position (x,y)", since screen sizes may vary and where an individual GUI chooses to pop open a dialog/modal may also vary)

<comment><USER8> AppleScript can do pretty complex GUI automation tasks.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, so can AutoIT or python with pywinauto... you could do it. It just wouldn't be pleasant. Might do it if you had to extract data from some proprietary GUI tool you couldn't tear open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To list few of the new features: Asynchronous I/O support, channels (Vim can now exchange messages with another process in the background asynchronously), Background jobs, timers, packages for plugins!

Wow! This is huge. So many interesting features landing on Vim 8.0.

<comment><USER11> Async I/O, plus JSON is seriously enormous. I'm very excited for how much faster things will be, and I can imagine JSON support will definitely make integration just that much easier. My one minor gripe was plugin speed, as syntax highlighting, linting, etc. can take long enough to be jarring.

<comment><USER12> Async I/O? In a _text editor_ , where the bulk of the time is spent waiting for the user to do something?

I've used (an older version of) Vim on huge 100MB+ files and never thought it to be slow at all. In fact I don't think I've ever experienced any lag with Vim. I suspect you won't find this new version any faster.

<comment><USER13> This is in fact fixing a massive pain point in vim, and one of the main reasons why NeoVIM has so much support. Saving a file in vim takes 1-2 seconds for me. Not because my disk is slow, but because I run some linters on my files, that take that long to all complete.

Async I/O is not about disk I/O, but communication with other programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a mixed feeling as a NeoVim user and long-time Vim user.

On the one hand, great to see such a huge release for Vim that brings so many features people have been begging for. Especially Async IO and JSON.

On the other hand, I hope Vim just become more stable and performant while not introducing new features. At the same time, I hope more development could go into NeoVim, and more people could start using it and writing plugins (not in Vimscript) for it. I want Vim to be my backup editor -- always there and reliable, and Neovim my working gear -- great features, joy to use, could have a few bugs that don't affect my workflow too much and are a natural result of fast-paced development.

I know this sounds really unfair to Vim devs. I'm sorry! I really appreciate the works you've done to make Vim amazing. But I feel for me, I just want to spend 95% of my time on one editor. Now I'm on the NeoVim boat, I feel like having completely switched my workflow to Atom from ST3, and just learned ST3 is going open source.

<comment><USER15> I'm not a NeoVim user, but I've been on the edge of becoming one for a while.

What I'm still holding out for is an _embeddable_ NeoVim. The thing I really don't like about IDEs is that I love my Vim configuration but I never get to actually use the damn thing since I do most of my work in an IDE. Now imagine if the IDE could actually just embed NeoVim, and I could use my Vimrc as-is with all the plugins (now managed natively). I know they already have Electron-based UIs for NeoVim, and Electron-based IDEs, so hopefully it's just a matter of time.

That said, does this actually put NeoVim _behind_ in terms of feature parity?

<comment><USER16> I think neovim is embeddable?

I'm pretty sure SolidOak just embeds neovim: [https://github.com/oakes/SolidOak](https://github.com/oakes/SolidOak)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I alternate between Emacs and Vim every 5 years or so. Emacs gave me superior customizability using a "real" programming language: elisp. Vim, on the other hand, offers a faster, more efficient editing UX. The older I get, the wider the spread becomes between the speed of my thought and the rate at which I can input editing commands into the terminal. Vim allows me achieve higher efficiency and to almost "think ahead" by quantifying my movements and jumping to specific tokens in known locations. That to me has become more important lately than scripting in a nicer language than viml.

All of the new features of Vim are super nice, but I'll still primarily use it for the terseness of its editing UX.

<comment><USER18> You may want to consider looking at Evil mode, which gives you a very close approximation to the vim editing bindings in emacs. I've been using it as part of the spacemacs distribution for a while now and find it to be the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER19> Evil mode is slower than vim. And also you are in evil mode only during the editing phase. All other menus drop you back to default emacs keybindings and that is very painful experience. I used evil mode for a couple of years and still just went back to vim.

<comment><USER20> I have not found this to be the case with Spacemacs. Almost everything you need is bound to keystrokes using space as the leader key in the spirit of vim. As a long-time and fairly advanced vim user I recommend Spacemacs highly.

<comment><USER17> Don't you feel like you're pushing a square peg into a round hole? Or do you actually find yourself taking advantage of elisp in harmonious combination with Vim's editing UX?

<comment><USER21> I thought the same thing as you at first, as I was a vim+pathogen user. My workflow was working properly but to me it's just much simpler to do a SPC-f- e-d, add 'git' to my packages, then SPC-f-e-R and voila, git support is installed.

I'm sure I'll go back some day but for now Spacemacs is perfect for my use (i.e. writing small software, not large projects).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Dropped the support for MS-DOS. It was too big to fit in memory._

This is a little surprising since the latest version of Emacs still supports MS-DOS[1]. If anything, you'd expect Vim to be the smaller and faster choice but it seems this isn't the case anymore...

Then again, I don't really understand the culture of all the customisation/plugins/etc. around text editors; part of the reason why I originally chose Vi(m) over Emacs on Unix-like platforms is that it's small and simple, and perhaps I don't expect or need much from a text editor in the first place since I used MS-DOS Edit[2] as my main text editor for many years and on Windows I'm perfectly content to use Notepad. I use the CLI for more advanced text manipulation.

[1] [https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForDOS](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForDOS)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS- DOS_Editor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_Editor)

<comment><USER22> My head turned around. I read it like Vim loads MS-DOS, and I thought, why would it do that? But then it occured to me dat this means Vim can run under MS-DOS. It's been so long since I've used MS-DOS as OS, I can't imagine it anymore. To me it's just a program that is run by another something.

<comment><USER23> Vim _cannot_ run under MS-DOS. It hasn't worked for years, that's why Neovim removed DOS support 2 years ago. The cries of "losing compatibility" were uninformed fear/uncertainty/doubt.

Vim also doesn't run on OS/2 and other platforms, though the Makefiles have not yet been removed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Been using Neovim for about 6 months now, The only real difference I have felt so far is that I was able to remove a few lines from my .vimrc, like history=10000 as Neovim does this by default. As for Vim, I am done with it forever, not because of vim more because of package managers compiling vim without paste mode or lua/ruby support and making me compile vim from source with my own flags, which was a harrowing experience for me, when I was just trying to set up my development environment.

<comment><USER25> Do you ever have to vim somewhere where there is no nvim? Like on a server, etc? I worry about getting used to nvim features or behaviors that might not be compatible with vim (are there any?) and being super bummed on a server some day!

<comment><USER24> Others have provided good answers but I'll add my 2 cents. Neovim was made to be fully(Mostly?) backwards compatible with all Vim specific features, and most Vi features. You may be wondering what is missing, some ed features and support for some more obscure Operating Systems. You shouldn't have to worry about the missing features as they are mostly legacy features that mostly all new/newish users of vim never will use. As for additional features they are mostly all under the hood, better embedablility, extensibility, and sensible defaults things you don't need when editing your Appache routes on the server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Plugins keep growing and more of them are available then ever before. To > keep the collection of plugins manageable package support has been added. > This is a convenient way to get one or more plugins, drop them in a > directory and possibly keep them updated. Vim will load them automatically, > or only when desired. See |packages|.

Is this going to replace pathogen?

<comment><USER27> Pathogen: Most likely. Vundle: Probably not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> And... there goes a lot of energy to neovim.

The only other feature request I have is expanded features for window drawing for plugin makers. I want to be able to draw over a buffer without editing the text.

If you've ever used jedi-vim, you'll see the function's signature appear above the line you're editing. What a lot of people don't realize is that is actually modifying the file and saving the prior contents of that line in another process. If you kill vim and recover from the swapfile, that line is gone... It's a dirty hack for a feature that people want-- scratch buffers suck for this purpose.

I'd be happy with either having function signatures formally tacked onto omnicompletion, letting omnicompletion providers do function signatures cleanly, or having arbitrary text-display over a buffer as a standalone feature, phasing out omnicompletion pumenu.c for this generic interface-- and omnicomplete would have to be rewritten to use this interface.

<comment><USER29> From what this initial view of Vim 8.0 looks, it actually went in the direction of Neovim, the asynchronous inner works were what made me try Neovim in the 1st place.

Now, from what I can understand, Neovim only has two advantages, a cleaner code trough re-writing (it's debatable if that's really an advantage) and the ability of using other languages for plugins (which seems clearly and advantage due to the lacking features of VimScript).

All in all, it's a nice step forward for Vim.

<comment><USER30> Don't forget true color support for those sweet colorschemes!

<comment><USER29> True, forgot that one and it's really cool to be able to use Neovim in the console without breaking my head over the colorscheme.

It's a very overlooked feature that has a great positive impact in usability. Been talking in a bug thread spacemacs about this same problem for months and there is still no solution to be seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This release is a poster boy example why competition is good.

Before neovim: Asyncronous operations? "Absolutely impossible"

After neovim: Asynchronous operations? "Why, of course, here, with a cherry on top"

</comment><comment><USER32> Can somebody tell whether the API for those features also in neovim is compatible to vim8? Anyway, it's great to see that neovim provoced new developments in vim.

<comment><USER33> Not really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> By the way, I have a question: what is the best learning material for intermediate/advanced Vim users? I know quite a lot of Vim features but apart from vimtutorial, I never learned them in any organized way - it was more of a bunch of tricks I found via googling. It would be nice if there was a book (preferably free) on this editor.

<comment><USER35> I make a list for things I know would be faster if I knew them and go on.

example of my vimimprove.md:

\- 5 deleting word while curser is in the middle of that word

\- 2 insert parantesis around the word im on

....

when something reaches 10, I google it and write it on a note. Then the first thing I do in the morning is doing that thing 10 times. Before I leave work, I do it again. And of coarse if you use it while working you might just have it in your muscles or you look at your little note. Then after a while your finger get that ninja stile of doing stuff you brain just things about.

Like ying and yang

<comment><USER36> Since I happen to have the answer to both of those:

`daw` and `diw` deletes a whole word (unlike `dw` which only deletes forward). They differ in what they do with whitespace; `aw` also trims trailing whitespace (or leading whitespace if there's no trailing) while `iw` leaves the whitespace alone. These two are text objects that can be combined with other commands and quantifiers, so that `yaw` copies a word without deleting it, or `d2aw` deletes _two_ words.

Wrapping in parens requires the vim-surround plugin, but with that installed you can do `ysaw(` and `ysaw)` to wrap in parens (also works with brackets and curlies and such), either with spaces inside the parens (the former) or snugly around the word (the latter).

<comment><USER37> If I want to put parens around a word I do, ciw()<ESC>P (change word pulls it into the default register, insert the parens and then paste from the register back between the parens).

You can use the same pattern for any selection you have visually highlighted, such is the wonderful power of vim.

<comment><USER38> Nice use of the buffer. Is there a nice hack to remove the parentheses around a word as well?

<comment><USER37> I guess you could do a similar thing: ci(<backspace><delete><esc>p

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does vim have a roadmap/milestones or anything like that (i.e., anything that allows me to track the development process)?

<comment><USER33> A document? Nope. You'd have to lurk on the mailing list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why is there just 1 contributor listed at [https://github.com/vim/vim](https://github.com/vim/vim)?

<comment><USER41> It looks like the author takes patch submissions and applies them, rather than pull requests being merged. Detailed in: [https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)

<comment><USER42> Wow, that's pretty lame. No one gets attribution for their work.

<comment><USER43> He does put the name of the contributor in the commit message.

<comment><USER42> Ah, you're right. I only looked at a few patches in the log:

[https://github.com/vim/vim/commits/master](https://github.com/vim/vim/commits/master)

And most of them don't have a name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Async is massive. I have been using this feature heavily in NeoVim for the last 6 months.

I am surprised that nobody mentioned this: Bram (Vim's author) was in the beginning very much against async in Vim and this was one of the main reasons that the NeoVim fork started.

6 Months later Bram comes up with tons of features and one which he heavily opposed.

Anyone know why this change of mind? The fear of Neovim or did I miss anything?

</comment><comment><USER45> With the age of their respective codebases, I'd love to know what lurks beneath? Immaculate, well factored code? A hornets nest of hacks - what do you expect from such old codebases - or have they been re-written so many times you'd never guess their ages from the codebase.

<comment><USER46> Pfft on immaculate, well factored code. All glory to battle hardened code that does the business everyday.

Of course it would be better to have both. But don't dismiss code that survived the withering infernos of real world use. All those edge hacks are there because they probably need to be.

<comment><USER45> I completely appreciate that. 'Tis always a case of striking a balance. Even battle hardened code with countless edge-cases can be well factored. A system programmer whose opinion I trust greatly recently advised me to look at the postgress code for well factored, battle hardened code. I've heard others suggest that libgit2 is similar. I don't feel confident / qualified enough to comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm quite a noob at 'nix, so I tend to use nano whenever I need to edit something. Not sure if this is the right place, but could somebody explain the added benefit of spending the time to learn to use vim/emacs? I've tried vim, but it seems very complicated.

<comment><USER48> The added benefit for me are, staying in the terminal where I do more than just edit, normal mode makes file navigation and text manipulation an extension of thinking, fast file switching, cross platform consistency, and a low maintenance burden (though the initial learning curve/setup is steep).

I work on Python apps all day and am constantly running she'll commands, interacting with git, starting / stopping services. Along with tmux, I can switch projects incredibly fast without having to wait for an IDE to load.

If you don't interact with text most of the day, I am not sure Vim is worth the curve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> What does it mean to NeoVim? Does it affect it's development, split developers or anything? Is it good?

<comment><USER50> I have to think it's a direct response to neovim, and that competition between them is likely to be very good

<comment><USER51> The reason neovim was started was to add these exact features. Now that vim has them, I think neovim's work is done. Mission accomplished.

<comment><USER52> Replace Neovim with Chrome, Vim with Firefox. Does your argument still stand?

Starting up a competing project has a _huge_ cost. Once started, it's overwhelmingly better for the world for the competitors to continue[1], so that they can continue to make each other accountable.

[1] Unless one of the competitors is able to subsume the other. Like EGCS subsumed GCC back in the early 2000s. Total victory is a valid emergent outcome of competition, not somebody deciding what 'should' happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I've been trying to evaluate the different editors.

[https://github.com/melling/EditorNotes/blob/master/vim.org](https://github.com/melling/EditorNotes/blob/master/vim.org)

To me it feels like the vim key bindings are more efficient for programmers. No one has ever done a scientific comparison, and it always seems to end in a religious war, but we should do a better job of evaluating our tools. Then hopefully, we can improve them.

<comment><USER27> The problem with evaluating editor efficiency is that you are more likely to measure the user's proficiency. The vim editing style is only as efficient as the number of motions that you know. (I use about half of them actively, but I have a lot of vim users sitting around me that barely know "w".)

So to really compare efficiency of, say, Emacs vs. vim, you will first need to find two users. One who is as proficient in Emacs as the other is in vim. Good luck with that. :)

<comment><USER54> Yes, but there are a number of people that have gone though periods of using one and then the other. I have, at least anecdotal, experience with both.

I worked on the first release of AIX for IBM. Their lawyers took a couple of years to get comfortable with the Emacs license so I switched to using vi for two or three years. (At one point I had to demo a Lisp system running on AIX at at AAAI conference and I could barely work the built in emacs-based editor.) Eventually, I was able to switch back to Emacs on AIX.

My own preference is Emacs for it's breadth of features and its customizations, but I still miss the feeling of speed that I had while navigating source code with Vi or Vim. I still toy with Vim every so often, but I've forgotten so much that I just plod along. Spacemacs is currently on my system, but I usually prefer my own set of customizations and just stick with Emacs and its ordinary bindings. Nevertheless, Spacemacs is an work of genius.

I'd encourage everyone to learn basic vi (say what's taught in the tutorial), it's everywhere. After that, IMHO, either of these ancient editors is wonderful and worth adopting.

Someday I'm hoping that a new Emacs will be developed built along the lines of Neovim. Digging into the internals of a big Emacs package is pretty painful for me when all I am doing is trying to fix some aspect of my editing experience (see [https://xkcd.com/1205/](https://xkcd.com/1205/)). I'd like a more modern extension language than elisp. While I'm dreaming, someone please rewrite LaTeX to use a real programming language instead of its Turing complete macro language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Has anyone ever run :help iccf?

Remember to donate to uganda guys it's the only thing Bram asks for in return for this software.

</comment><comment><USER56> Best thing to come out of this is async support.

[https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/version8....](https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/version8.txt#L53-61)

</comment><comment><USER57> There doesn't seem to be documentation for the new packages feature yet. I'm curious if this is actually intended to obsolete the current ecosystem of vim plugin managers.

</comment><comment><USER58> I really like those improvements and features. Specially the Async/IO stuff, jobs, timers, and a stab at plugin packages.

This will be quite a long journey I think - an exciting one.

The other thing is that I think Vim and NeoVim will diverge at a faster rate now. They'll soon be way too different to be related. So NeoVim won't be a "nicer"/asynchronous/opinionated Vim anymore. But it's own alternative.

</comment><comment><USER59> For Xcode users out there, XVim has been a game changer for me [https://github.com/XVimProject/XVim](https://github.com/XVimProject/XVim)

</comment><comment><USER60> Soo, are these changes already in the git repository? Because the readme is still pointing out that the repository is for 7.4 and the tags/branches are not very helpful. Did I miss something?

</comment><comment><USER61> The new breakindent options sounds very useful. I've run into the same issue from time to time. This hasn't been possible to fix before, has it?

</comment><comment><USER61> Does anybody know what native feature is missing in Vim that makes Ctrl-P (with all optimizations) slower than Emacs ido-mode?

<comment><USER62> Not a real answer to your question, but for the last number of years I've been using Command-t ([https://github.com/wincent/command-t](https://github.com/wincent/command-t)) and after the initial index operation, it's super quick.

<comment><USER61> Command-t requires Ruby support in Vim.

It's interesting that ido-mode doesn't first create a cache, and the built-in functionality available via elisp seems to be sufficient for speedy performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Have the various plugins started to make use of the new async/jobs/messages functionality already?

</comment><comment><USER63> The asychronous IO, Channels, JSON, and Jobs are HUGE. This will be a game changer in so many ways.

</comment><comment><USER64> So, if I had waited nine more hours, I would have gotten a lot of upvotes, I guess.

See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11484697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11484697)

</comment><comment><USER65> Is there a way how I can copy blocks of code outside the vim window to another application without also copying the line numbers?

Also is there one simple key combination to [un]comment a line or a selected block?

I found out how to do many simple operations with this ancient tool, what can be really fun if you have nothing else funny in life (too many people have no other sources of fun, really) - but I am still not convinced. Many operations that are a no-brainer in e.g. geany take serious planning and studying in vim - this is absurd.

I fear that we are wasting many potentially good programmers because they accept the primitivism and stupid limitations of vim as something "cool" and will never again in their lives be able to program a user-friendly GUI because their brain is "vimed out". Maybe that is one of the reasons why we still have so much really bad software.

Once I was totally impressed by programmers, they were the wizards of today, superbrains, uber-humans. Then I learned programming and understood how many uncreative and cognitively limited people are just repeating stuff that somebody else has told them, without ever asking. Basically the typical obey- guy, the perfect follower who never questions any order will be that kind of a good programmer, reading manuals and getting happy that he is able to reproduce - there is no creative moment here. Only very few of them are part of a creative elite that actually brings new ideas to life - most of them are totally dumb rat soldiers just following the orders. This is the reason why such ultra-primitive tools like vim still exist.

<comment><USER66> There are plugins for that. Check out vim-easyclip, and for comments theres vim-commentary(barebones) or nerdcommenter(loads of advanced features).

<comment><USER65> too many keystrokes, checked that.

<comment><USER27> :help :map</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Meet Joe Hewitt, iPhone Web App Interface Guru - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/07/meet-joe-hewitt.html

<comment><USER2> That's great. He should work up a hack on the gravity sensors so you can scroll web pages with inertia -- you give your iPhone a single quick shake and Safari goes down a page or so. Perfect for reading web pages while holding a subway strap, umbrella, dog leash, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: What tech/programming languages will continue to dominate in 2013? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I think everything will remain the same. Tech will not be a source of innovation in 2013. I see 2013 as a bad year for tech.

For the first time I have doubts about going to Rubyconf or Railsconf in 2013. I still remember how excited everybody was on Baltimore 2011 and then, in austin 2012, I felt a lot of contentment.

Same for Javascript, all of the sudden, everything seems to have slowed down. You go to conferences and people (and speakers) are still a bit stuck on end of 2011. There is nothing really moving fast. Even shiny new things like meteor and ember seems to be moving at a very slow pace.

Also, the economic crisis is hitting the real economy hard and it influences open source projects directly.

That said, 2013 will be a tech hiatus.

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as technology is concerned, I am really looking forward to 3D printing. I am interested in seeing how 3D printing will be commercialized and what difference it can make (if any).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would love to see quantum computing and the programming model it brings.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ruby and it's community.

</comment><comment><USER6> python of course

</comment><comment><USER7> artificial intelligence

</comment><comment><USER8> Go.</comment>


Richard Stallman is still head of the GNU Project - <AUTHOR> https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/29/054211/richard-stallman-is-still-head-of-the-gnu-project <comment><USER2> > _" Stallman.org was defaced by an FSF employee," I have just been told, "the > deface has been reverted, and the domain appears to now be operating on non- > FSF infrastructure…"_

Huh</comment>


Crisis Management 101 - <AUTHOR> http://burakkanber.com/blog/crisis-management-101/ <comment><USER2> I'd say that you should also remove distractions as part of the process. Silence alerts from monitoring systems because you already know its down. Close your email because you don't need to get distracted by angry customers.

I always thought "duress" meant someone holding a gun to your head, but I guess it kinda makes sense here too.</comment>


Reduced capacity on Sandisk MicroSD cards - <AUTHOR> https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/reduced-capacity-on-sandisk-microsd-cards/ <comment><AUTHOR> The tl;dr of this being that Sandisk is apparently selling 32GB microSD cards which have less than 32 * 10^9 bytes of usable storage. I just ran into a similar problem with a 64GB card, expecting it to hold at least 64000000000 bytes but got 63864569856 instead.</comment>


Your best passive income? (2015) - <AUTHOR>

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661536
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255 <comment><USER2> I'll answer this, even though I think it's just karma-bait.

My best passive income is a piece of software I made in one week that processed payments for school events (field trips, clubs, etc). I've made over $120,000 in two years with it.

<comment><USER3> Great job! What made you make it in the first place? Did you know there was a need for it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is also "Your best passive income? (2015 Edition)" from 30 days ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822151](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822151)

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.rippedrecipes.com](http://www.rippedrecipes.com) My cousin and I started this site a couple years ago, revenue is steady around $250/month, we get on average 4,600 unique hits/day ... reading other people's revenues I feel like we could do better with the traffic we get, so if anyone has any comments or thoughts, they're more then welcome!

<comment><USER6> Check out this interview on Mixergy: [http://mixergy.com/interviews/lindsay- ostrom-pinch-of-yum-in...](http://mixergy.com/interviews/lindsay-ostrom-pinch- of-yum-interview/)

You can pretty much follow what she did step by step (she lays it out pretty much). Her blog does about $20k/month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For God's sake, these sort of threads pop up every week. No one has a magical formula that you can just copy. There are thousands of ideas in the other 200 threads about passive income. Please just stop... really.. stop.

<comment><USER8> actually I'm always very inspired by what people are working on, and these type of threads are one of the few reasons i still come to hn regularly.

so please, by all means keep sharing. if others don't find it useful they can just ignore these threads

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps you can share yours so that we can emulate your success if any.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a cellphone site I bought from flippa for 4k that generates from $400-$1000 every month.

Tried buying other sites but they were all duds. This one has made over 25k since I bought it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I build a website ([http://www.iprank.tv](http://www.iprank.tv)), a hub for fresh and funny pranks, which makes me about $1k per month.

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.interviewbits.com](http://www.interviewbits.com) \- a blog dedicated to job interview questions and solutions

</comment><comment><USER13> Another one of these posts. Seriously!</comment>


Nordic authors whose works enter public domain in 2018 - <AUTHOR> http://runeberg.org/search.pl?dead=1947 <comment><USER2> 70 years after the author's death is a very long time. That's maybe 100 years after the works were published.

Not only has language changed a bit. Many of the issues that authors dealt with 100 years ago are also different today. I didn't see a single Danish author among them whose works are still well known or widely read. I don't think you can enter a typical Danish bookstore and buy the works of any of these authors.

Perhaps 70 years after the death of the author is too long. Maybe 20 years after publishing the work would be better. After all that should give the publisher and the author plenty of time to make money, if possible. Then there could be 5 or 10 year extensions if the publisher could show a certain amount of marketing cost.

<comment><USER3> I somewhat agree, but I think the author/creator should have ownership of their works as long as they live to allow them to support themselves.

However, if the ownership is transfered to another person/organization/company, definitely a 25-50 years limit before entering public domain is better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Delighted to see we'll be getting ready access to AN Whitehead's publications but why is he down as a Nordic author?

<comment><USER5> Or Henry Ford, of Ford Motor fame.</comment></comment>


Escaping Poverty Requires Almost 20 Years with Nearly Nothing Going Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/524610/?single_page=true <comment> temp-dude-87844 The article is a book teaser for _The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy_ , by Peter Temin at MIT. The central point, he argues, is that the top 20% professional-and-up top crust of American society has enacted structural gatekeeping processes like many years of education, and low minimum wages to systematically repress groups by race.

From an economist, this is a surprisingly racial thesis, where a simple economic one would do: close the door on others after they're already in the castle. You can see this play out everywhere, from how 'disruption' pivots to regulatory capture, from how homeowners fiercely guard their property values, and society self-sorts into cohorts of similar income and circumstance.

We've seen in recent years with working-class people's backlash against neoliberal ideas of governance and trade, in Europe and the US, that the economics notion that growth creates wealth at all levels, and wealth isn't a zero-sum game, is a perception not widely shared among everyday people. The fact is, most people perceive wealth solely in relative terms: are they better off than their neighbors, or people with similar life circumstances? Or are they plagued by the same anxiety and insecurity as people they always thought of as poorer than them?

Race plays into this, sure, but more in terms of shared history or the lack thereof, and of being a convenient visually-obvious indicator for a dimension of difference. The people fighting for the scraps below try to band together along dimensions they find relatable -- similar upbringing, comparable treatment by the same sorts of people, similar biases, similar goals and struggles, and race often correlates with enough difference in these life circumstances to interfere with relatability. Conversely, outside of the upper crust of society, different groups all quest for the same opportunities, where victory of one group is quite often to the economic detriment of another. Simply, every group is trying to keep another out. Those whose families have recently ascended to economic security have a vested interest in keeping large waves of additional risers out, while those competing for opportunities to be upwardly mobile are fighting over limited capacity in education, employment, and housing.

<comment><USER2> While it is the norm (certainly taught as the norm) to profit by coming together in a transaction where both parties leave with more value it is also possible to profit by taking value. This can be done through outright robbery but it can also be done in more subtle (and legal) ways by making a transaction look more voluntary than it is. When one party is negotiating from a position of strength (employers) and the other party is negotiating with their life and physical well being on the line (employees, especially those on the lower end of the pay scale) then the first party can take more value and profit from the transaction than if they were both negotiating for a net gain in value.

So, somewhere along the way, largely by historical accident and inertia, we've decided as a society that it is ok to keep a huge portion of the population on the edge of desperation and that if they fall it is their own concern. Any moves to change this is seen as an attack on business owners and their profits. This is short-sighted since if people are motivated rather than forced to produce value there will be more people contributing to the improvement of the castle and fewer looking at the walls with jealousy and chip away at it whenever they get the opportunity.

<comment><USER3> Nah, no single decision was made about keeping a huge portion of the population on the edge of desperation. And companies are not generally to blame for people's desperation, unless they somehow cheat or commit fraud (usually in collusion with the state). Furthermore, always assuming that the employer is always in the position of strength is wrong. Even though Chinese factory workers are paid very little by Western standards, they are seeing their wages rise, which is exactly because they are increasingly able to negotiate from a position of strength.

Lastly, a transaction is either voluntary or it is not. There are no degrees of 'voluntary' if you use the word in the conventional sense.

<comment><USER4> > Lastly, a transaction is either voluntary or it is not. There are no degrees > of 'voluntary' if you use the word in the conventional sense.

So if I point a gun at your head and threaten to shoot you if you don't hand over your wallet, you would say that you voluntarily handed over your wallet because that was a fair price for keeping your head intact?

Most people mean something different when they use the word "voluntary".

<comment><USER5> In the conventional sense of the word, no, that transaction is clearly not voluntary. And I don't think your example is making the point that you're trying to use it to make.

<comment><USER4> See my response above to Patricius.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I call this the Michael Caine, Sean Connery and Tom Jones effect. In the 1910s Britain was a viciously divided society - with poverty gaps greater than the US sees now. The Great Depression was somewhat levelling but children born in the East End of London, Glasgow's Gorbals, or the rural poverty of Welsh valleys had desperately worse outcomes than those in the middle classes. (Can you guess where each of the celebrities was born and raised ? :-)

Then came a war that threatened to cut off our food supplies (Nazi UBoats sank horrifying tonnage of shipping), and to combat it a simple solution was found cutting through generations of political baggage - rationing. Every citizen got given a minimum set of healthy food (like two eggs a week, a pound of meat etc etc).

For some this was government over-reach - for others it was the first time in their lives they had eaten properly. After the war, a Labour government introduced a welfare state that prescribed a minimum amount of food, education, healthcare in an on going fashion.

And what did we get 20 years later? We got tall strong good looking actors and singers who came to dominate their niches and did so without the rickkets, malnourishment and disadvantages that had been their older brothers lot. We got similar results in medicine, science and business, with each area finding their own James Bond, drawn from a much wider pool of talent.

In short we fed our underclass and turbo charged our growth in the post war period.

In my view there is a bottle labelled "nitro" attached to the American Economy that has yet to be turned on. The knob does have razor blades attached to cut whichever politician tries to turn it, but folks, it will be worth it, 20'years from now

<comment><USER7> When it comes to the traditional problems of poverty such as malnourishment, freezing in the winter, lack of cloths or shoes, and so on, many countries have done quite well. Even fairly poor countries have had success there.

The complaints coming out of the US are more about inequality than poverty, although people confuse the two issues (sometimes intentionally).

<comment><USER8> > The complaints coming out of the US are more about inequality than poverty, > although people confuse the two issues (sometimes intentionally).

They aren't distinct; poverty is always in relation to a set of standards, and there are very good reasons to looking to the contemporary context for the most applicable standards.

<comment><USER7> If you set an income standard, sure, it's relative, but you aren't "relatively" starving, or "relatively" infected with parasites because you have no shoes. Those are real problems that have nothing to do with how society choses to view innequality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (anecdotal data point) I grew up in a very poor family. (Like electricity-or- food, owned no car my entire childhood poor) Always had a love for technology, however, and bought my first used computer (old 286) at 18. (1995) Bought my first Windows machine 2 years later. Was always learning and writing code - school machines, graphing calculator, my computer etc. In 1998 got first "tech job" doing phone support for ISP/computer store in little rural town in Oklahoma. Starting doing web sites for them, then learned server-side (ColdFusion), and by early 2000 was doing contract work in Houston at typical rates. Definitely broke out of poverty, and along the way, made some very dumb mistakes (as well as significant medical costs). Still not in poverty.

Counterpoints: my aunt's family was middle class and all educators, so I had a great example within arm's reach. I'm also a white male, so don't have some of the social issues that would hindered me otherwise.

<comment><USER10> People who leave high school at 9th grade statistically don't have very good prospects. My last year of school was the 9th grade. I got my GED at 20 (like I walked in off the street and took the tests with no prep or anything), went to college and earned a bachelors in computer science fairly easily.

There's always going to be outliers to any case. People who pull off crazy things that only 1 out of 10, 1 out of 100, maybe 1 out of 1,000 could possible do if things went just so for them.

Also good for you to recognize some of your advantages and maybe learning better habits from successful people. Not everyone is able to break the cycle and circumstances they're born into. And in either of our cases it's probably wise to be mindful how one event, major enough, could leave us in ruins.

<comment><USER9> When I was in high school some circumstances led to a recommendation that I could drop out and start making money. I never for a nanosecond considered that as an option. Obviously that's not a perspective shared by all, and even those who wouldn't choose that may be facing a different reality than I did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally what I find the most frustrating is finally escaping poverty and getting pushed firmly against an artificial, middle-class, ceiling where it isn't possible to become more financially free because of constant inflation and the choice I made to contribute to society by having a family. Meanwhile productivity and profitability continue to increase

<comment><USER12> Sorry but I have to pick a bone with you about one of your contentions: having children is a choice. Are you contributing to society? At a basic level of course if no one had children we'd cease to exist but at the same time it's also arguable that there are simply too many of us on the planet to support, which shifts having children into a more selfish choice.

On a more personal level, I suspect you chose to had kids because you wanted kids. This is fine. But you're not doing this for the good of society.

Lastly, in the developed world we WAY overspend on child-rearing. Like... it's ridiculous. It may well be that in the US each child will cost nigh on $1m to raise. That's... ludicrous. But it also comes about from making a bunch of unessential choices (eg private school). Again, if that's what you want to do, fine. But it's another choice.

<comment><USER13> > there are simply too many of us on the planet to support

No, we could easily support 10 times this many people. The problem is that people are "selfish" and will starve, steal, and kill others for power or property. Starvation isn't because of the lack of food or resources - its the governments, rebels, gangs, and guerrilla fighters.

<comment><USER14> That's quite a claim. It's not at all clear that the world can support 70 bn people.

<comment><USER13> As people are now I would agree. I meant simply producing enough food for 73 billion people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Temin argues that, following decades of growing inequality, America is now left with what is more or less a two-class system: One small, predominantly white upper class that wields a disproportionate share of money, power, and political influence"

Temin avoids mentioning Asians, who have a higher average income than whites, despite many being relative newcomers to the country. That would undermine the narrative of a static class structure.

<comment><USER10> However when you factor in their level of education, they're still making less than their white (male) peers.

>One small, predominantly white upper class that wields a disproportionate share of money, power, and political influence"

predominantly...

Stop to consider the number of Asians in the U.S., now take the number of Asians that have a higher than average income than Whites. Now take the number of Whites who earn the same average income or greater than our Asian subgroup. You're not convinced that the group of relatively above average income earners is going to be predominantly white?

You can look at the demographics in anything that you think qualifies people as upper class. Government, at the state or national level? Upper management at Fortune 500 companies? I mean pick anything and if you find any results that don't reflect predominantly white, and almost certainly predominantly white male I'll be shocked and pleasantly surprised that we've made that much progress.

Your point only undermines Temin's narrative if you blithely ignore all the other information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The MIT economist Peter Temin argues that economic inequality results in two > distinct classes. And only one of them has any power.

Nobody studies history anymore. This has always been the case, and the ratio of haves to have-nots has only improved with time, as has the quality of life of the have-nots. That ratio may have been a little better in the golden years after WW2 in the USA, but it's still way better now than it ever was before WW2.

Modernity truly is the tide that lifted all boats.

</comment><comment><USER17> >upper class of FTE workers ... has strategically pushed for policies ...to bolster the economic success of some groups and not others, largely along racial lines

> His final recommendation is to address systemic racism

Not a good start from Temin. Its not like the entire upper class is outwardly racist like the first quote implies. If you want to reduce racial/class divides, maybe making the upper class appear to be a purposefully racist enemy isn't the best way to go.

<comment><USER18> Sorry you got so offended.

Learn what systemic racism is and how it's not what you got offended by.

<comment><USER17> I'm not offended - my point is that if you want to break down a barrier between two groups of people, why would you demonize one side?

<comment><USER19> Systemic racism means a system produces racist outcomes, not necessarily that its participants are racist individuals.

<comment><USER17> The author never mentions this. The wording (purposefully or not) makes it seem like the upper 20% is purposefully racist and knowingly holding down the lower class.

<comment><USER18> So the author has to explain every concept even if it can be assumed most reading understand certain terms?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't think there is a mass conspiracy going on. I do think there are disvirtuous circles going on. Ex one school is located in a bad area over time gets less funding, becomes less attractive, fewer people with means want to send their children there, school gets less funding etc.

It's not just rich people who oppose poor people. It's also poor people. Think of the guy who is scraping to get ahead and sees someone he knows totally taking advantage of the system and not working, or is involved in criminal activity. This was a good article on it: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.cracked.com/blog/why- we-cant-stop-hating- poor/&ved=2ahUKEwjd08D42q3aAhUIvlMKHV31CeoQFjABegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw39P5_o6d_CBFjSzR2xfhSM)

<comment><USER21> Where I grew up in Baltimore the problem wasn't the funding of the schools. Indeed, when I was in school Baltimore City spent just a bit less per pupil than Montgomery county which was one of the 10 wealthiest counties in the nation. However the money was spent very differently. So while I would agree that there are real systemic problems I don't think there is any amount of money that could be thrown at Baltimore City that would really change the outcomes in a meaningful way. And that is what makes me the most sad about it.

<comment><USER6> how can you spend money so differently in one district to another ? Teacher salaries, buildings, books seem to be the likely highest costs wherever you are.

<comment><USER22> Spending per pupil alone doesn't tell the whole story.

In the US, it's common for school districts in high poverty areas to end up providing services that in other countries would be provided via state welfare or privately.

So free school lunches and breakfasts, physical and occupational therapy, counseling and nursing for students, transportation for handicapped, social workers etc all get wrapped up in a district budget, with the largest chunk of spending going towards the highest need students. Add up the higher rates of childhood poverty and special needs in urban areas and the per pupil spending becomes a poor measure of what is actually spent on education for the average student.

I'll note that in my state, the balakanized school district situation in many metros leaves suburban districts too small to provide these services themselves, and they'll often send their highest need students into the bigger urban district.

Here's an article describing some of this disparity among districts in the Cleveland, Ohio area. [http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/01/poverty_and...](http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/01/poverty_and_special_needs_eat.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ok the linked article seems to be a short synopsis of a book, one which I did not read nor have intention to.

But dear Lord the article was so full of government fluff, obvious and trite blather of what has been tried and failed, over, and over, and over again.

It is nothing but why we need government to fix the very problems it created, and makes even worse with its choking regulations, legislation, and self- serving laws.

My very own grandfather broke into the roofing business around age 11, growing up in abject poverty. He didn't much care for sitting in a school house. He made a good living eventually, becoming one of the largest employers in town, a respected local businessman who would hire anyone willing to work, and give them a fair shot.

Today, though, his life would be completely unable to be lived, legally, anyway. Between the government's silly attempts at paperwork for immigration tracking, taxes, labor laws, minimum wage laws, the list goes on and on and on, it would be impossible. The barriers to entry for the poor but motivated ensure nothing more than the permanent existence of the poor.

The article is frankly disgusting in its puerile and obviously wrong insistence that what we need is more of the above.

<comment><USER24> It blows my mind that "low minimum wage" is listed as a reason why minorities don't earn more money. It is well known that increases in minimum wage result in higher unemployment. It is very basic supply/demand. In fact minimum wage laws were originally implemented in the south specifically to price minorities out of the market. [0]

It seems utterly nonsensical now to act as if they are some great boon to minorities and will help them rise out of their current collective predicament. The best thing for people with low skills is to allow them to enter the market to gain skills. Pricing them out of the market and legitimate employment pushes them to black markets as there is no legal way to participate in gainful employment. Which will thereby increase incarceration rates and contributes to the problem of fatherless homes, something we all know is a very undesirable outcome.

[0] [https://nypost.com/2013/09/17/why-racists-love-the- minimum-w...](https://nypost.com/2013/09/17/why-racists-love-the-minimum-wage- laws/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The hardest part is changing people's patterns when they get money (I have this same issue to a lesser degree than my friends that had poorer childhood experiences).

That spend it before you lose it thing is really difficult to overcome.

<comment><USER11> This is pretty true. I'm always watching my sister-in-law, who can barely make ends meet, buy stupid shit. Big TV, new furniture that she can barely get credit approval for, clothes that have brands and logos on them that are twice as expensive as plain clothes that are usually better quality.

A lot of it looks like compensation for being on the poverty line. Like her self-esteem can't take the hit of buying the sensible items that she needs so she can get ahead. Doesn't realize she's getting in her own way.

I think culturally we're taught to have nice things and that becomes the goal instead of acting sensibly and doing the right things. Would probably need a couple of generations of kids who value a healthy savings account and an on- track budget more than whatever shiny things they encounter in the media they consume. That's a tall order

<comment><USER26> IME growing up on the poverty line and now working as a dev and living comfortably, I get serious guilt trips whenever I spend money I don't need to spend.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps this could help explain why you grew up poor and are now living comfortably, while other people grew up poor and are still poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't see the word 'IQ' mentioned anywhere in that article. And yet, it's the single biggest determinant of lifetime success. Unfortunately, it's also highly heritable, so environmental interventions have a fairly marginal effect on it.

<comment><USER29> _Unfortunately, it 's also highly heritable, so environmental interventions have a fairly marginal effect on it._

(a) The Flynn Effect demonstrates that IQ is quite responsive to environment.

(b) The heritability of a trait is not a measure of the degree to which that trait is genetically determined: Highly heritable traits can be environmently malleable. (The heritability of height is 0.8, but nutrition, childhood sickness, etc. have a huge effect on height.) Conversely, traits with low heritability can be strongly determined, genetically. ("Number of eyes" is a trait with low heritability, for example.)

(c) The measured heritability of IQ isn't especially high. It's usually found to be in the vicinity of 0.3.

<comment><USER30> Regarding C, isn't that just for children? As I recall it's something like 0.5 or higher for adults.

<comment><USER28> You're right. Some studies have found it as high as 85%.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> From the article: > The first are skilled, tech-savvy workers and managers with college degrees and high salaries who are concentrated heavily in fields such as finance, technology, and electronics—hence his labeling it the "FTE sector."

Am I the only one who's wondering why "electronics" is its own category, instead of being lumped under "technology"?

<comment><USER32> Nowadays, in some circles, the word technology has been redefined to mean "websites". And maaaaybe other software, but that's borderline.

So electronics, rockets, robots, lasers, medicine, skyscrapers etc. etc. are no longer considered technology.

I hate this so much, but language evolves. What can you do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > That's a 16-year (or longer) plan that, as Temin compellingly observes, can > be easily upended.

I personally think the entire college level education system needs a do-over. Stop requiring people to get expensive degrees, when a decently accredited micro degree system would work. Who gives a fuck if you're more well rounded coming out of college when you're in massive student loan debt. You just created a giant glass ceiling that keeps the poor who are trying to break through even poorer. A handful of Ivy League Universities should be for the elites and the rest of us should have the option to bypass this system altogether. I'm one of these FTE's, and I look back at my college degree as 30% worth the time, and 70% a waste of time, and all of that time cost me a lot.

</comment><comment><USER34> According to the non-profit Brookings Institute, there are 3 keys to avoiding poverty. (Of those that follow these rules, only 2% are in poverty.)

\- At least finish high school \- Get a full-time job \- Wait until age 21 to get married and have children

We should all be committed to spreading this message.

[https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules- poor-t...](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-teens- should-follow-to-join-the-middle-class/)

</comment><comment><USER34> According to the non-profit Brookings Institute, there are 3 simple rules to avoid poverty:

\- At least finish high school \- Get a full-time job \- Wait until age 21 to get married and have children

Of those that follow these 3 rules, only 2% are still in poverty.

[https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules- poor-t...](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-teens- should-follow-to-join-the-middle-class/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm sure white people do control a lot of jobs or whatever, but I'm still always confused about people talking about white males in tech or techbros etc. when probably 50-75% of my coworkers (F50 tech company) were Asian (note that whites make up 75% of the population and Asians 5% by the 2010-2015 census data i found on wikipedia)

<comment><USER36> 71% of programmers in the USA are white. However asians are over represented in the field:

[https://datausa.io/profile/soc/151131/](https://datausa.io/profile/soc/151131/)

<comment><USER37> so whites are underrepresented, and the data supports the idea that racism isn't a great explanation. interesting

<comment><USER38> When there are more than two groups, Group X can be overrepresented without Group Y being underrepresented.

<comment><USER27> That is certainly true, but the numbers this subthread provides are that whites hold a 75% share of the population and a 71% share of programmers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The first sentence already contains a lie. _" A lot of factors have contributed to American inequality: slavery, economic policy, technological change, the power of lobbying, globalization, and so on."_ Slavery ended more than 150 years ago. To claim that it is a contributing factor to _current_ economic inequality is absurd. Racism and discrimination, sure. But not slavery.

<comment><USER40> Slavery did not go quietly. Alternate structures were constructed to continue exploiting the former slaves. Jim Crow was dismantled within living memory, and even that did not stop all of it.

<comment><USER39> This sounds like racism and discrimination (which I mentioned as separate issues). And they are indeed separate. A country need not have had slavery as an institution to have racism and discrimination.

EDIT - I would also like to point out that a fundamental point of this article was that the economist discovered it was basically more fair and easier to escape poverty prior to 1970.

<comment><USER41> The United States is kind of special in that we enshrined slavery in our founding document in 1787 and this insinuated itself into the fabric of society in a multitude of ways. Apartheid era South Africa may be the only equivalent for the past 150 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> As Ben Shapiro likes to say, to move out of poverty you have to do 3 things. 1\. graduate high school. 2\. get a job. 3\. don't have kinds until you are married. If you do those 3 things you will not stay in poverty 99.8% of the time.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdEMw_lDUx0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdEMw_lDUx0)

Also, the headline does not ever appear in the article itself. huh?

<comment><USER43> > If you do those 3 things you will not stay in poverty 99.8% of the time.

I know a _lot_ of people in poverty, having come from it myself. I refuse to believe this without a direct citation.

<comment><USER24> I believe [https://www.brookings.edu/research/work-and-marriage-the- way...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/work-and-marriage-the-way-to-end- poverty-and-welfare/) is the research that is being referred to.</comment></comment></comment>


Naming characters with Google AdWords - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robinsloan/robin-writes-a-book-and-you-get-a-copy/posts/1210

<comment><USER2> This would be an interesting way to choose a startup name. E-mail gathering splash-page targeted to keywords within your industry.

[Name 1] - The service that helps you [solution to problem].

[Name 2] - The service that helps you [solution to problem].

[Name 3] - The service that helps you [solution to problem].

</comment><comment><USER3> He's doing it wrong, if you look at the impressions he's got adwords set so that if a keyword is doing well it gets more impressions. That's the wrong way to do this set, you have to configure it to give each keyword equal coverage.

Otherwise what happens is that by pure randomness some of your keywords are going to get less clicks than others, and as soon as that happens to one of your keywords they get "frozen" (i.e. they get no more ad impressions so they get stuck at their "random" low value).

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm no detective, but here are some of the names:

      Annabel Strange
      Annabel Spring
      Annabel Sketch
      Annabel Scrape
      Annabel Start

<comment><USER5> Did you de-obfuscate the text, run the searches, or use some other mechanism? I didn't find anything when running the searches and don't really have the time to mess with de-obfuscation

<comment><USER4> I Googled "She's the Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century", and that gave me 3 pages of sites that were displaying the ad when they were indexed.

<comment><USER6> LOL who would have thought Google would have indexed ask.com pages showing their own Adwords ads!

<comment><USER7> It's the ultimate form of "eating your own dogfood".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That is actually a pretty clever way to do quick and cheap marketing research. However, not a good way to write a novel. To all aspiring writers: please do not base your novel on marketing research, if I wanted that I would be watching TV.

</comment><comment><USER9> If the author had A/B tested the headline, it probably would have gotten more clicks as "Naming characters _in a novel_ ". The way it reads now, it sounds like something about using non-ASCII symbols in Adwords.

<comment><USER2> People who are familiar with that definition for "characters" probably aren't the audience he was thinking of. =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tim Ferriss gives a good example of this in the book Four Hour Work Week, when he discusses how he used Adwords to pick the book name.

</comment><comment><USER10> You have to be careful when doing this not to violate Google's TOS. I don't think they like people using AdSense just for "market research" because the users who actually click on the link get taken to a useless landing page. Unless he had a pre-order form for the book as the landing page, that's not generally accepted. I know Tim Ferris kind of popularized that technique, but if all of Google's Ads lead people to worthless landing pages, their CTR across the network would go down. Just an FYI for those who can't afford to get a Google Ban because they also rely on AdSense.

<comment><USER11> > Unless he had a pre-order form for the book as the landing page, that's not > generally accepted.

This sounds like an assertion with no real knowledge to back it up.

What does "generally" mean?

Either it's acceptable or it's not.

Here are the adwords TOS:

[http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?page=guid...](http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?page=guidelines.cs)

This may be what you're thinking of:

[http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?page=guid...](http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?page=guidelines.cs&topic=16862&subtopic=16864)

 _Your ads and keywords must directly relate to the content on the landing page for your ad. When users see your ad, they should be able to understand what kind of product, service, or other content they will find on your site. Products or services promoted in your ad must be reflected on your landing page; ads can be disapproved if a promoted product is not offered or available for sale as promised._

The ad doesn't promise that anything is for sale - it seems like a general branding campaign.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, that must have been what I read and extrapolated a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why do some of the ads get run more often than others? Seems like google would run the one with the highest click through rate more often. I'm not convinced all of these are statistically significant anyway, but I don't have R at the moment.

<comment><USER4> There is a setting in Adwords for "rotate my ads evenly over time" that is necessary for accurate A/B testing. By default, Google shows the ads with the highest click rate more often, so you'll get a bias.</comment></comment>


How the 2020 Census Is Being Rigged - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/06/census-2020-undercount-black-hispanic-citizenship-question/591115/ <comment><USER2> Citylab again gives the false impression that the "citizenship question" is something new and out of the blue.

In fact, the citizenship question was present in some form in _every census from 1890 on_ (except in 1960 only, "country of birth" was asked instead). From 1970, citizenship continued to be asked in the long-form questionnaires.

In 2010, when Democrats controlled both Congress and the Presidency, the Census _omitted_ the long form altogether, instead doing only the ACS (American Community Survey).

So, the plan to return to the long form survey and the inclusion of the citizenship question in it is absolutely consistent with the past 130 years of precedent; 2010 was the exception.</comment>


Review: Asus ZenWatch 2 robust hardware at a bargain price - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/3000341/mobile-wireless/review-asus-zenwatch-2-android-wear-smartwatch.html <comment><AUTHOR> The ZenWatch 2 is accessible to everyone, at half the cost of the most popular round watches. It resembles the Apple Watch in design, especially the smaller version. Wearables aren't done evolving yet. Apps, OSes, and hardware have made much progress since Android Wear was introduced about 18 months ago, but many devices still reach early retirement in a drawer after just a few months, creating buyer resistance. This remarkable price and Asus's solid reputation as a hardware manufacturer make the ZenWatch 2 a good choice.</comment>


Show HN: Develop your Python applications easily in clean Docker environments - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/macostea/cage <comment><USER2> Pretty simple to set up and use, but I'm not sure if it's better than learning `docker` and `docker-compose`. Also, the default `python <file>.py` doesn't remove the container after the file is done running and the image is tagged as `cage/<name of project>` instead of allowing the user to tag it with their own name. Both of these are easy to fix with `docker` commands, but if this is meant to be a library that helps you avoid `docker` then it's not doing its job.

<comment><USER3> I was going to say something similar. With venv moved into the stdlib in Python3 and ongoing development and improvements to the `docker-compose` workflow I am not sure where a tool like this fits.

* venv is lighter and more or less fairly standardized

* `docker-compose` is more general and language agnostic

So something like `cage` is somewhere between...it's neat, no doubt, but not sure where I would use it personally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slightly off-topic, but does anyone develop Django/Python on a windows machine, and may want to offer any general advice or tips?

I am using virtualenv, but wondering what else I should be doing to make it easier. Previously I used cloud9 (cloud IDE) for rails development. In both cases, I am pretty much a hobbiest, but don't mind spending some money to make things easier since I'd rather spend my time doing the fun part, rather than developer ops.

<comment><USER5> I just switched from Mac to Windows 10, and I work on a lot of Django projects.

I use PyCharm (love jetbrains) + Vagrant and it's working great so far. I'd highly recommend spending the time learning Vagrant - it can be incredibly frustrating at times (on both mac and windows), but once you get it working right it's really rewarding. Being able to re-instantiate a VM when something gets really botched is a great feeling. I don't have to worry about my host machine getting messed up, so I'm free to tinker around in the VM and that speeds up my learning.

The one downside I've encountered so far is how many different "terminal" style apps I need to run to get everything working. Currently I need powershell (as admin) for spinning up the VM, putty to SSH into it, and git bash for source control. I can probably simplify them all into powershell but for now it works.

<comment><USER6> You can use ssh from git bash so there's no need for putty. And might want to look into Console2 or ConEmu both of which allow you to open multiple tabs for multiple shells.

<comment><USER5> Yep, you're right. I just added git to my path so that I can now do it all from powershell, so that's cool!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although I'm not sure I would use this, this is the kind of stuff I've been waiting for. Where nice clean containers are used as part of an active dev cycle rather than just the production push.

The ultimate dream of the end user using a desktop comprising only of containers seems to be still a bit far off yet...

<comment><USER8> About a year ago I switched our dev environments from Vagrant to docker- compose environments with a "helper" shell script to run the most common docker-compose operations you'd do in a day. It starts up so much faster than Vagrant, it's easy to add new services, and it's easy to add and remove test data. Here's an example of the kind of setup I have:

[https://github.com/bschwind/api-starter- kit/blob/master/help...](https://github.com/bschwind/api-starter- kit/blob/master/helper.sh)

What's funny is I don't currently use docker in production, but I love it for dev environments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Docker sounds heavyweight for this purpose, given that it essentially spawns a complete userland separate from the host.

I work on Guix; it provides a 'guix environment' command, which is sort of a generic 'virtualenv', and IMO is a simple lightweight alternative: [https://gnu.org/s/guix/manual/html_node/Invoking-guix- enviro...](https://gnu.org/s/guix/manual/html_node/Invoking-guix- environment.html) .

</comment><comment><USER10> Why would you want to take a cross-platform interpreted language and run it under a pseudo-VM like Docker?

<comment><USER11> Docker is less of an pseudo-VM and more like a linker. No matter what the environment is like on the host you can be sure that it's identical to yours within the container.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion! I'll try it out

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So apart from having separate disk+network namespace, how is this different from a virtualenv? I feel like configurable sockets and paths should provide everything this can, but with less overhead.

<comment><USER14> Less system resource overhead, more human overhead. VirtualEnvs can bleed over if they're not configured properly or if you forget to deactivate. They're harder to fully encapsulate and carry around (have to initiate with a special flag or there's a bunch of manual find+replace when changing paths). They sometimes end up with system dependencies (though `--no-site-packages` has been the default for a long time now).

This would be a shortcut that bypasses the need for venvs entirely. I'm not sure I would use it, but that's the difference I see.

<comment><USER15> There are a couple of tools to automatically manage virtualenv activation/deactivation, like autoenv[0] & detect_virtualenv[1];

[0]: [https://github.com/kennethreitz/autoenv](https://github.com/kennethreitz/autoenv) [1]: [https://github.com/dgholz/detect_virtualenv](https://github.com/dgholz/detect_virtualenv)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The current version of Cage only supports dependencies written in a > requirements file

It might be worth looking at pipfile.

Great project though!

</comment><comment><USER17> Docker runs pretty slow on macOS so you'll be paying a pretty high price for cleanliness.

</comment><comment><USER18> Mac-first development strikes again: pycage requires Python 3.5, which hasn't landed in Debian stable yet. Bummer.

<comment><USER19> I don't see the connection between the 2. I'm pretty sure MacOS only ships with Python 2...

<comment><USER18> It's par-for-the-course to "brew install" random stuff on a dev box. You lose a lot when you ditch distro-packaged Python and start relying on varying third-party schemes to drop something that may-or-may not be getting security updates and may-or-may-not have been compiled against the same libraries as the ones on your production system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Could someone please explain why this might be useful? It seems like something that a crypto developer might like but if I'm developing something innocuous why would it matter if it runs inside a container?

<comment><USER21> Why would a crypto developer be especially interested in this?

<comment><USER22> I have feeling the OP is thinking of air-gapping or clean room builds, but I could be wrong.

<comment><USER20> yeah that's exactly the kind of use case I was thinking of.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does App Store support non-store based paid users - <AUTHOR>

Dear fellow HNers, we are getting into Enterprise App soon. It could have different subscription channel for payments - web, actual offline sales (bank cheques), another app store like Google play.
Can there be a model where users pay via 'web only' and are served through ios and android apps.
- is this possible - are there any examples of such apps - have/can store take any objections to this model.
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> It does.

AFAIK, for IOS, if you want your users to pay via 'web only', you cannot mention anything related to external payment within the app, you cannot have a payment flow within the app.

What you can do is, ask users to sign in and/or visit your web page from where you can convert users. You can run email campaigns etc. Or if your users already have a premium login by making payment elsewhere, that should be fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> @datacog do you know any examples of such apps. would be really great. thanks.

<comment><USER3> Pandora (for Pandora One) is one. You can pay monthly through the app, but the (cheaper) yearly option is only available on the website. They can't mention the website option or link directly to it from either the iOS or the Android app due to each market's rules.

<comment><USER2> > They can't mention the website option or link directly to it from either the > iOS or the Android app due to each market's rules.

For the Android part, I am not sure if they have updated their rules. Mathway offers in-app custom payment flow. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bagatrix.m...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bagatrix.mathway.android)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are many many examples of this. Beats Music was one of the more recent high-profile ones that comes to mind (for shifting from an offline-only pay model to in-app payments for subscriptions). Most of the team productivity apps, as another example category here, that have a premium tier don't offer them in app (Asana, Trello, etc).

There are particular rules to how you do it. You can't promote it in the app. The app has to have some functionality for non-subscribers. You can't use the itunes subscription SKU functionality to delivery your subscription content (obviously, I hope).

You should also consider joining the Enterprise app developer program that Apple offers if you want to by pass some of the above issues.

Not to be overly pointed, but it doesn't seem like you have done much homework here. I recommend you get more familiar with the market you're about to enter.

<comment><USER5> The Enterprise app developer program is for apps delivered for your own enterprise, not an app in the App Store that is meant to be used by other enterprises.

In an Apple Enterprise Developer app, you can basically do whatever you want, but you deploy it to devices yourself, and there is a limit to the number of devices. Apple doesn't even look at these apps.

I suspect they reserve the right to police some things (for example VOIP over unlimited data) -- but I don't know that that actually happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am pretty sure amazon prime movies use this functionality. I can view movies on my iPad, but there is no way to purchase a movie through the app. You just have to know to go through amazon.com if you want to see something that is not prime eligible.

<comment><AUTHOR> @gregcohn @chrisBob thanks. yes something like Amazon Prime and more background to the question. Sorry, I didn't make it clear. Due to enterprise nature and our use case, this app basically runs a dashboard and many tasks in the paid 'web version' and the mobile apps are basically 'clients'. And it does require a setup from Admin's perspective. One cannot just download the app and start using unless admin of the enterprise has subscribed and opted that user for the setup. Hope it add in explaining the question further.

<comment><USER6> I expect that would get approved without a problem. Advertise it as a viewer for a paid web service. One problem with the app store though is that you can't get an idea approved. You have to just submit the app.</comment></comment></comment>


Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-04-wormholes.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if this is the researchers' issue or is an issue with the scientific press, but it would help if the "discoveries" theorists made with their hitherto unestablished and untested theories like various string and QG based theories were not touted as discoveries about the real world.

<comment><USER3> "Discoveries" about the mathematical structure of these theories are actually incredibly important even if no current day experiment can conceivably test them. Special and general relativity were discoveries made in this way (at least to an extent), and now general relativity is important for the proper functioning of technology as "trivial and boring" as GPS. Even earlier in our history, much of thermodynamics was developed in a similar fashion.

See the sibling comment for another version of this argument, but finding the weird mathematical coincidences between the competing mathematical theories of nature is very useful. In other words, there are mathematical and logical tests that can be as important as experimental tests for the progress of our understanding of nature.

<comment><USER4> They're incredibly important, but they shouldn't be touted as facts until there's some consensus that they are facts

<comment><USER3> Mathematical theorems (especially no-go theorems, one of the most powerful tools in physics) are at least as much of a fact as an experimental measurement. I can concede that a pop-sci outlet should be clear about what is an experiment and what is a mathematical theorem, but was it really not clear in this case?

This is a sincere question, and I care to hear your opinion: do you believe that a reader of phys.org would need more than a glance at the article to know this is a discovery about the mathematics of general relativity, not an engineering breakthrough in the creation of a scifi-like hyperdrive?

<comment><USER5> > Mathematical theorems (especially no-go theorems, one of the most powerful > tools in physics) are at least as much of a fact as an experimental > measurement

That's an overstatement. Measurements are more important than theory. We cannot form theories without measurements, and yes theories inform our measurements, but science always begins and moves forward with measurements.

<comment><USER3> General relativity, quantum computing, some parts of thermodynamics/information theory/statistical physics, some parts of quantum field theory, some parts of condensed matter physics are all things that started as purely mathematical statements. I am not trying to diminish the monumental importance of empirical measurements, but please do not diminish the importance of logical consistency and mathematical constraints. We can say a lot about our universe with great certainty even though in same cases making direct measurements is orders of magnitude beyond our technology.

<comment><USER6> GR was amazing, but it wasn't well known and accepted until the first measurements confirmed it. Quantum Computing is still very much up in the air, but it's also weird to bring it up in this context, because QM is one of the most tested theories of all time. QED In particular is tested to the most decimal places of any prediction, ever. It's also weird to act as though GR and QM started out in a vacuum, instead of what they really were, which was based on centuries of math, theory, and experiment.

Edit: Unrelated, but I see you're a fellow Greg Egan fan, good to meet you! Planck Dive has to be one of my all time favorites.

<comment><USER3> We are talking past each other: It is a bit contradictory to say "quantum computing is up in the air" and "QM is one of the most tested theories" as an argument against what I am saying. Yes, both are statements are true, but they are in no ways counterpoints to what I am saying, if anything they support it. QM is a well established and empirically tested theory. Quantum Computing is a purely mathematical construct that emerged from that well established theory without any experimental evidence for it, and only now, 30 years later, we are starting to have a chance to employ this purely mathematical construct in practice.

Same with GR: it was a purely mathematical construct for a while until we could test it, but there were too many theory clues that it must be right.

And this is not selection/survival bias: it is extremely rare for humanity to find a robust mathematical construct for which we can have a high degree of certainty that it describes the universe well. In the few cases where we have had that certainty, due to mathematical proofs in seemingly disjoint fields, we ended up being right.

To push it to stuff like super strings and quantum gravity: few respected scientists would claim that their pet mathematical construct is correct, but many of them will say "the vague commonalities between all these diverse and seemingly unrelated mathematical constructs definitely point to an underlying fundamental construct".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone point out where the article says why it's slower? I'm having difficulty unpacking:

"The new theory was inspired when Jafferis began thinking about two black holes that were entangled on a quantum level, as formulated in the ER=EPR correspondence by Juan Maldacena from the Institute for Advanced Study and Lenny Susskind from Stanford. Although this means the direct connection between the black holes is shorter than the wormhole connection—and therefore the wormhole travel is not a shortcut—the theory gives new insights into quantum mechanics."

Why is the wormhole not a shortcut?

<comment><USER8> Based on the colloquia I watched by Lenny Susskind, the problem is that you can put something into a wormhole, but to get it out the other end, you have to carry the encoding you get to the other end of the wormhole to decode the output. Because the distance to the singularity grows at the speed of light, the length of the wormhole is essentially infinite. It is only the operator you get from putting the object into the wormhole that lets it tunnel through that infinity, so no shortcut.

EDIT: Here is the lecture I'm referring to: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEDFh8ma9zM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEDFh8ma9zM)

<comment><USER9> So...

Two entangled wormhole apertures function as Star Trek style transporter pads. Feed mass into one hole, scanning it as it goes in. Transmit the pattern to another aperture of the hole, using electromagnetic energy at the speed of light, and when that end ejects a mass, apply the pattern to it, so it resolves into an exact copy of what you put in.

The distance the mass travels may be shorter than the distance the energy travels, but it can't resolve exiting mass as that object until the information--that had to travel at the speed of light--arrives.

So you could potentially use a wormhole as a suicide machine that transports a copy of you, that thinks it actually is you, to a distant location no faster than the speed of light, in zero subjective time for the thing that will then think it's you.

Is that a reasonable interpretation?

<comment><USER10> I don't think the suicide booth model of a teleporter fits a quantum teleporter model, only the 3D printer teleporter model. From a quantum point of view, all (e.g.) electrons are indistinguishable excitations in the same field, and it's the pattern that makes you "you". If you'll forgive a bit of poetic licence, quantum teleportation seems more like Discworld magic, where you have to exchange two identical sized lumps of matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >To date, a major stumbling block in formulating traversable wormholes has been the need for negative energy, which seemed to be inconsistent with quantum gravity. However, Jafferis has overcome this using quantum field theory tools, calculating quantum effects similar to the Casimir effect.

Prof. Stephen Hawking has explained the Casimir effect in hist last book 'Brief Answers to the Big Questions' in the chapter talking about Time Travel with Wormholes.

"Imaging that you have two parallel metal plates a short distance apart. The plates act like mirrors for the virtual particles and anti-particles. This means that the region between the plates is a bit like an organ pipe and will only admit light waves of certain resonant frequencies. The result is that there are a slightly different number of vacuum fluctuations or virtual particles between the plates than there are outside them, where vacuum fluctuations can have any wavelength. The difference in number of virtual particles between the plates compared with outside the plates means that they don't exert much pressure on one side of the plates when compared with the other. There is thus a slight force pushing the pates together. This force has been measured experimentally. So, virtual particles actually exist and produce real effects.

Because there are fewer virtual particles or vacuum fluctuations between plates, they have a lower energy density than in the region outside. But the energy density of empty space far away from the plates must be zero. Otherwise it would warp space-time and the universe wouldn't be nearly flat. So the energy density in the region between the plates must be negative"

</comment><comment><USER12> When ever I think of traveling through a wormhole/blackhole, I imagine you would be squished and crushed and come out the other end as pure vaporized energy.

This makes me wonder, if there is the potential for our beings (or things) be able to be vaporized and then recreated to original form.

If we are just mass and particles, this should be possible?

<comment><USER13> Uncertainty principle says...probably not. It's impossible to make a complete copy of the pattern.

Even aside from that -- it's unlikely to be practical to scan something down to the smallest level level of matter, because the tools we use to manipulate things can't manipulate things smaller than their own finest details. So there's a "glass wall" in that you can only replicate things less finely detailed than the replicator. That works fine for macroscopic things (that's why you can buy a 3D printer today), but is implausible for things that we believe to be as finely detailed as our machines.

<comment><USER14> That's what the "Heisinberg compensators" in star trek fix. I heard this phrase in an episode once, and decided to figure out how that could even work...

What I came up with was the idea that the scanning stage doesn't need to gather exact data because it really doesn't matter. You just need to get averages, and then build up a model that matches the statistics... (you don't need to discover the exact energy and momentum of every particle, just measure the temperature)

Basically you get teleporter jpeg compression... good enough to fool you, just don't use it too many times without keeping the raw data:)

<comment><USER15> "Heisinberg compensators" it's a clever lie that La Forge uses to fool Moriarty on a chapter.

<comment><USER14> They are mentioned several times, but no description is given for how they might work.

[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Heisenberg_compensator](https://memory- alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Heisenberg_compensator)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> George R. R. Martin called it in 1974! :) [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/84453/scientist- di...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/84453/scientist-discovers- hyperspace-with-a-twist/84454#84454)

</comment><comment><USER17> "To date, a major stumbling block in formulating traversable wormholes has been the need for negative energy, which seemed to be inconsistent with quantum gravity. "

it appears thus, most humans are inconsistent with quantum gravity :D:D

</comment><comment><USER3> I would urge people interested in this topic to read the hard scifi work of Greg Egan. In particularly, Diaspora. It is fascinating how much overlap is between this mathematical work and his work of "mathematical fiction".

</comment><comment><USER18> It seems to me that the speed of light, like conservation of energy, is just one of those fundamental "no free lunch" rules of physics that we just plain can't cheat.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why doesn't this violate the topological censorship result?

</comment><comment><USER20> It's possible.</comment>


Ask HN: Using an iOS app to raise money for charity? - <AUTHOR>

Was talking to a couple friends who do humanitarian work (full-time) and one of them came up with the idea of building an iPhone/iPad app primarily for the purpose of raising money for a charity. So, basically:
- The app would have some, but limited, utility (a very basic game, simple info on a disease or cause, maybe a directory, etc.)
- The app would be over-priced relative to its value (say, $4.99 or $9.99)
- After Apple takes their cut, all proceeds would be given to charity
- People are made aware via the app's store description, website, FB, etc.
Anyway, I thought I'd run the idea by the HN crowd for some feedback. Would Apple approve such an app? Could it work as a way to raise $5 to $10k for a cause? Is there any chance it could really take off?
Any feedback, ideas or criticism is welcome. <comment><USER2> Apple does not allow these kinds of apps. Even if you use their payment options.

I think they simply do not wish the be associated with any specific charity.

The common workaround is to have a Donate button that opens a link in Safari. To an external page where people can make the actual donation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this explicit somewhere in their terms? Seems like a hard thing to define since people are free to do what they wish with their app revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 30% of your donation goes to Apple, that's rich.</comment>