Endless Doom Scroller - <AUTHOR> https://endlessdoomscroller.com/ <comment><USER2> I don't really understand the 'doomer' debate, that is to say complaining about negative news when the world in fact is facing enormous negative events.

It seems to me sort of like the 'three-wise-monkeys', just think happy thoughts and the world gets better or something. It seems infantile. I don't see how you can fix problems if you aren't willing to in the first place look at them, as we've seen in this pandemic the virus doesn't care how optimistic you are.

The prevailing opinion these days seems to be that people are too negative, honestly looking at the world in sober fashion I think most people are probably not scared enough.

<comment><USER3> > I don't see how you can fix problems if you aren't willing to in the first > place look at them, as we've seen in this pandemic the virus doesn't care > how optimistic you are.

How can _you_ fix problems by knowing about them? What I mean is: unless you're an expert on the problem, or willing and able to become one as soon as you've learned about it, what difference does it make whether you specifically know how bad something is?

We have institutions to work on things, do we need each individual citizen to be constantly worried about everything that goes wrong, will go wrong, can go wrong or won't go at all?

Does "knowing" about it do anything? Leave aside that you probably don't _really_ know anything if you've read doomsday news, you're just afraid, but the facts are very light and usually styled for effect: everything is always terrible, it's constantly just one minute away from certain destruction etc.

<comment><USER4> Obviously the news cycle thrives on panic and style over substance. This does not change the fact that "knowing" about the world is valuable. Effective action to address a threat is nearly impossible without an accurate model of it. People don't need to be experts about everything to become relatively well informed about _many_ things, nor do they need to try to solve every problem at once.

The appeal to institutions as trustworthy problem solvers is also disheartening. Institutions are supra-human intelligences. This does not mean they are necessarily _more_ intelligent than any of their members. They're often _less_ so, and in any case they usually have their own incentive structures which are entirely separate from (and often antagonistic to) people's wellbeing.

<comment><USER5> Not all knowledge is equal in value, and time spent learning one thing has an opportunity cost - it's time you can't spend, say, learning something more useful.

Understanding what went wrong, how it could've been caught, how to prevent it from happening in the future, options and tradeoffs for how to resolve things now that the damage has been done, etc. - this can be extremely useful and empowering. Even if you have no ability to impact the specific problem being discussed, you can draw parallels from those problems to the problems you _do_ face in your own domains where you can have an impact. There may be no perfect solutions, but there may be better solutions, a better understanding of the problem, and an example of moving forward as one is best able to. This isn't exactly a message of "doom" though.

On the flip side, one can see yet another retelling of beating yet another dead horse - be they unpredictable black swan events with no real useful takeaways for planning, no useful nonobvious changes to policy to propose, or yet another deadlocked political quagmire of shouting heads that even the experts can't untangle - or something where the lessons are obvious and spelled out hundreds of hours of content ago and being applied - isn't terribly useful, encouraging, or empowering. Quite the opposite - if anything, they're depressing and disempowering.

To put it another way - flooding our information channels with low quality low content unactionable unrelatable useless unresearched unvetted "the sky is falling" shallow summaries of our inevitable doom displaces _useful_ content about the problems of our world and more in-depth discussions about what we're experimenting with to try and fix them, what seems to be working, what was tried and failed, etc. Framed in this light, much of the news cycle has _negative_ value: while it may let you "know" "more" about the world, you would've spent your time much more wisely by trying to learn from what other people are trying to do to fix things, or by attempting to fix things yourself.

<comment><USER4> I agree with everything you said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a brilliant work of interactive digital art that perfectly captures the zeitgeist.

The artist, one Benjamin Grosser, describes it as follows:

 _> "Doomscrolling" refers to the ways in which people find themselves regularly—and in some cases, almost involuntarily—scrolling bad news headlines on their phone, often for hours each night in bed when they had meant to be sleeping. Certainly the realities of the pandemic necessitate a level of vigilance for the purposes of personal safety. But doomscrolling isn't just a natural reaction to the news of the day—it's the result of a perfect yet evil marriage between a populace stuck online, social media interfaces designed to game and hold our attention, and the realities of an existential global crisis. Yes, it may be hard to look away from bad news in any format, but it's nearly impossible to avert our eyes when that news is endlessly presented via designed-to-be-addictive social media interfaces that know just what to show us next in order to keep us "engaged." As an alternative interface, The Endless Doomscroller acts as a lens on our software-enabled collective descent into despair. By distilling the news and social media sites down to their barest most generalized messages and interface conventions, The Endless Doomscroller shows us the mechanism that's behind our scroll-induced anxiety: interfaces—and corporations—that always want more. More doom (bad news headlines) compels more engagement (via continued liking/sharing/posting) which produces more personal data, thus making possible ever more profit. By stripping away the specifics wrapped up in each headline and minimizing the mechanics behind most interface patterns, The Endless Doomscroller offers up an opportunity for mindfulness about how we're spending our time online and about who most benefits from our late night scroll sessions. And, if one scrolls as endlessly as the work makes possible, The Endless Doomscroller might even enable a sort of exposure or substitution therapy, a way to escape or replace what these interfaces want from and do to us. In other words, perhaps the only way out of too much doomscrolling is endless doomscrolling._

Source: [https://bengrosser.com/projects/endless- doomscroller/](https://bengrosser.com/projects/endless-doomscroller/)

<comment><USER7> Yes, the submitted link should have been this instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I want to stay informed about the world but I'm unable to read the highly editorialized doom scrollers. I'm tired of the news cheering for the hurricane and I'm tired of pointless feel good stories to bring "happy news" that isn't really news at all.

I've started to read more long-form essays on current events topics. I find they nicely summarize events in a chronological order with all of the benefit of hindsight to go with it. Opinions are generally more nuanced and the writing style assumes that you read all the way through the article.

TV news and late night talk shows are just the worst.

<comment><USER9> "The News" is mostly gossip and things that are interesting because they almost never happen. As a way of learning how the world works, it's pretty awful.

If you want to be informed, spend the news time reading books/essays about important/interesting topics, and you'll be _way_ more enlightened in a year.

If you go all the way in this, you won't be able to participate in the shared culture of society, so I don't get fanatical with it. I'm human, and some gossip is fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would advise the way to beat the anxiety about doom scrolling is to RTFA

Headline: The world is spiraling out of control

Body: X is happening that will impact Y in these specific ways. Z people are working against X and trying tactics A & B...

The Headline is calibrated to maximize your anxiety. The Body is often calibrated to the right level of anxiety and context. I find instead of trying to mentally suppress Headline that freaks me out, and thus subconsciously imagining the worst possible thing, RTFA helps to soften and calibrate the anxiety more appropriately.

<comment><USER11> The problem with that is we are bombarded with at least 10 times as many headlines as articles can possibly be read. Even within an article, there will be links to other headlines. Look at a news front page and there are enough headlines immediately in view that would take an hour or five to read through. There's no way to "get ahead" by RTFA, and shaming people for only having seen a misleading headline is attacking the victim, not the perpetrator. (You're not doing that here, but I often see it done online.)

We MUST start shaming media organizations that publish bullcrap headlines. This is almost entirely the editors' fault, BTW. The reporters don't have control over the headline.

<comment><USER12> If news media is for profit, news media will naturally use the most engaging headline to beat out competition. There is no solution to this problem unless news is regulated or not for profit. You won't 'shame' an entire industry into changing something they've been doing for centuries.

<comment><USER11> Beats shaming humans for doing something they've been doing since the invention of writing: reading titles before reading books or articlesz

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I, too, came for the procedurally generated Doom levels and left disappointed

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought this was gonna be doom the game

<comment><USER15> I'm wondering if there's anyone who _didn't_ think this!

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this link, and I also thought it was going to be Doom the game from where I originally saw it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tired of doom scrolling? Try out my infinite scroll website that I promise will not fill you with dread.

[https://endlessdonuts.us/](https://endlessdonuts.us/)

<comment><USER17> I spend too much time on HN because my first thought in seeing these was to add more randomness and unique features to the point that the probability of getting an exact donut replica on a page load was near 0

<comment><USER16> Haha, I love it. I tried that at first, but I had to prevent a bunch of combos from being generated because the colors clashed bad or the icing/sprinkles looked too messy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I scrolled to the bottom and it said "no end in sight" but it stopped there

<comment><USER19> > I scrolled to the bottom and it said "no end in sight" but it stopped there

I could not verify your reported result after running this in my web browser console:

      var scrollToBottom = function() {
       window.scrollTo(0,(document.scrollingElement.scrollHeight - window.innerHeight));
       setTimeout(function() {
        if (window.scrollY < (document.scrollingElement.scrollHeight - window.innerHeight)) {
         scrollToBottom();
        }
       } ,500);
       return
      }
      scrollToBottom();

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Elon Musk on avoiding daily news:

" _The daily news I find to be a lot of noise. Generally newspapers seem to try to answer the question, 'What is the worst thing that happened on the Earth today?'_ "

<comment><USER21> Elon 'Covid will be over by April' Musk?

<comment><USER22> Yes that Elon Musk. People can say dumb things, and sometimes they can say interesting things. No one is permanently locked into one or the other.

<comment><USER23> Apparently, instead of avoiding noise, his reading strategy got him into swamp of covid deniers. I guess their opinions felt better.

So it is completely relevant when he is being treated as authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hey, it's the Guardian's front page with less photos!

<comment><USER25> Is that a meme or something? I checked the current front page, and I think it's only half bad.

> Coronavirus: UN warns of 'catastrophe' over school closures; France says > second wave likely

Negative

> US Donald Trump flounders in interview over US Covid-19 death toll

Neutral

> Spain Country speculates over whereabouts of scandal-hit ex-king Juan Carlos

Neutral

> A good sign Sailors stranded on Pacific island saved by giant SOS in sand

Positive

> Climate crisis Rising temperatures will cause more deaths than all > infectious diseases – study

Negative

> TikTok China hits out at US 'smash and grab' as tech row deepens China hits > out at US 'smash and grab' as tech row deepens

Probably negative

> Thailand Country orders new investigation into Red Bull heir's alleged hit > and run

Probably positive

> Brexit Number of UK citizens emigrating to EU has risen 30% since vote on > withdrawal

Neutral

> Thailand Protesters openly criticise monarchy in Harry Potter themed rally

Probably positive

> Mexico Giant dam poised to displace indigenous people and flood graves

Negative

So four negatives and three positives.

Maybe people just focus too much on the negatives?

<comment><USER26> > Maybe people just focus too much on the negatives ?

Basically, yes.

Source: Wikipedia [1], and, also, every newspaper since pretty much forever [2]

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

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I half expected this to just redirect to twitter.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another thing to mitigate doom scrolling - read History

What we're experiencing now is part of a broad, generational change. Regardless of your country or the outcome of any one election or news cycle, the far right is emerging as a strong force. It will remain so in most Western countries, maybe for decades.

Understand the broader sweeps and landscape. Understand that you're probably like a drop in the ocean. If you see a part of it that's your duty, do your duty. But do, or do not...

History shows us broad strokes oscillations of political winds, how often things have seemed absolutely terrible, how things swing back often unexpectedly. How even the most influential have little control over affairs...

<comment><USER28> > the far right is emerging as a strong force.

As a response to the far left. Not that I condone either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I admire people who love to create useless unique things! That "luxury" of nonsense! Great!

</comment><comment><USER30> I thought I was on the front page of Reddit for a second. Well done.

<comment><USER31> Would actually be interesting to see a version of this with the Reddit CSS/design, randomized upvotes and all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is basically the news we're reading and theres no end in sight

</comment><comment><USER33> YOU DON'T NEED TO WATCH THAT MUCH NEWS You will never have the political power to do something about all the terrifying problems we wave at you. The human brain just isn't designed to take in a whole world's worth of disturbing news. Most of us have enough trouble with the more mundane problems of finding inner peace and securing happiness for our loved ones. We know this, but keep winding you up anyway. In fact, the tension between the sheer quantity of horrifying news and your real-world impotence to do much about it is part of our consumer strategy.

#We create the illusion that being informed is a kind of action in itself#.

So to wash that guilt out—to eliminate the shame and discomfort you feel over doing nothing as the world goes mad—you'll keep tuning in. The "You don't actually need to be watching this all day" rule would be true even if news stories were sorted logically and according to social importance. They aren't:

Taibbi, Matt. Hate Inc. (p. 137). OR Books. Kindle Edition.

</comment><comment><USER34> I thought it was gonna link to some articles at least

<comment><USER35> Randomly generated by GPT-3

<comment><USER20> I don't see any info on how it is generated. Is it really GPT-3?

It would be interesting to have GPT-3 write a short teaser for each headline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Something similar: [https://badnewsfirst.co/](https://badnewsfirst.co/)

</comment><comment><USER37> I expected more instances of the word "grim". Seems like every headline author cannot not use that word lately.

</comment><comment><USER38> It feels like Doom Scroller at the time, was created to enhance user experience and it is not pushed to drive further increases in profitability to the point where it is a detriment to society.

I am curious to see if society will move towards providing a tick-box setting to give users control over Doom Scrolling. Only time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER39> so, /r/politics

</comment><comment><USER40> In cognitive behavioral therapy this akin to "catastrophizing".

</comment><comment><USER41> Here are all 338 headlines if scrolling isn't your thing.

[https://pastebin.com/1J0N8iLg](https://pastebin.com/1J0N8iLg)

<comment><USER42> Is the list being looped? Considering the site is titled 'Endless'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Nicely done

</comment><comment><USER44> There was also "some good news" briefly, but that was purchased by ViacomCbs.

Maybe this OP is also looking for a media deal.

</comment><comment><USER45> How about adding a circular loader? Why not inserting some void into the user's head before the doom continues?

</comment><comment><USER46> If this were formatted to look a little more like a contemporary news site it would be perfect

</comment><comment><USER47> 338 different doom messages are not endless but depressing non the less...

</comment><comment><USER48> There are two kinds of doomer news in 2020. The first is "the virus is going to kill us all". The second is "the things we're all doing because of the virus will kill us all".

The former is fear-mongering, but the latter is true.

</comment><comment><USER49> Woah, wait til you guys see what the last one was!

</comment><comment><USER50> It's interesting that they chose precisely the same typeface used by the New York Times for their wordmark.

</comment><comment><USER51> Ha! I found a:

"This Is Not the End"

Hope in the endless doom!

</comment><comment><USER52> Repetition detected..

</comment><comment><USER53> Was expecting a procedurally-generated Doom sidescroller conversion.

I was nonetheless quite amused.

<comment><USER54> In case anyone hasn't seen it: Linear Doom [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM50BifVRHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM50BifVRHA)

It's Doom, but if it were just a single, linear hallway.

<comment><USER55> Also 2D Doom: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=puoB- ofLF98](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=puoB-ofLF98)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:How much is too much competition to enter a market? - <AUTHOR>

Competition is good but how much is too much competition to enter a market?
I had an idea for a business with a relatively small number of barriers to entry and knew of a couple competitors. In doing more research, there are 5 national competitor with big contracts already. Sure there's nothing like it locally but why would someone take my product over that nationally available product once they realize it's available?
I've talked to many random people and they love the idea and have no idea about any competitors. is it ok to work on a product and investor pitch making it clear the plan is to be bought out by a competitor?
EDIT: we're having some good comments here, can we get this out to more people? I greatly appreciate the feedback so far. <comment><USER2> What is your target market size in general ? I mean are you are going after a specific niche where you expect to get about 1000 paying customers total OR you are looking at a consumer app where you want millions of users ?

I would not worry about _too much_ competition. I would rather look at how much piece of the pie is potentially available (depending on the answer to the question about market size above). For example, you say that there are 5 national competitors for that particular idea you had but locally, there _might_ be opportunity. So why not start local and talk to your potential customers ? Again, depending on what your target audience is and their market size, it could be very likely that there still is a big piece of the pie left for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> The target customer are mid to large restaurants and bars. So, it could be a local idea but long term would be national. Seeing the same device/software at whatever restaurant you go to might be important and make it harder for me to have a piece of the pie.

My biggest concern is how important is it to differentiate myself? The competitors have had a working and refined product for months or years so chances are they'd have a better product. They charge monthly with no upfront hardware costs and have small trial contracts with Applebees, Chilis, etc.

I realize there's 100 companies that make toilet paper and most survive, I'm just not sure if that is an appropriate analogy.

<comment><USER3> IMO, without differentiating yourself from competitors, you have very less chance of success. Probably you can provide product/service cheaper with same quality. As you are starting local, you could probably differentiate with better support..

toilet paper industry and software industry works differently . They have very different dynamics. You can not conclude anything in general from traditional industry for software industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree and that's the reason for my hesitation. Yes, I have ideas that would make it better than theirs. They just have a lot of time and money in their favor already.

That being said, I know personalized and better support is worth a lot.

Is it OK to flat out say that the plan is to be bought out by competitors because the products are similar?

<comment><USER4> You are focusing too much on what to tell investors.

Focus instead on your messaging to potential CUSTOMERS instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I've talked to many random people and they love the idea and have no idea about any competitors."

I would recommend not talking to random people. Talk to people who are in your target market instead. And don't just ask if it's a good idea. Ask them if they would want to pay $X per month for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose I should clarify - my paying (target) customers would be the restaurants/bars but their patrons would be the ones using it. So, I'd consider anyone who goes out to eat to be the users.

I do recognize there are two perspectives: 1. what the paying customers wants (restaurants/bars) 2. what the users want (patrons of restaurants/bars)

<comment><USER4> the users should then be 10% of your concern, since they aren't the ones buying the product. What the restaurant wants should be the focus. Satisfy their needs and you'll satisfy their customers as well, since they just want to make their customers happy in the end.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, thanks for the insight. I appreciate all the comments so far, helps me feel out what's next.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like most people think I should keep going. I'd appreciate any other comments people have...

<comment><USER5> You should shoot me an e-mail and we should talk :) My information is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> No response?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you really think you can do better than them, go for it. If you have something of value then users will choose what they prefer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do believe in the end I'd have a better product but they have months or possibly years on me when it comes to design and money. How hard is that uphill battle? When is there TOO much competition?

<comment><USER6> Way too much competition is when you want to make another Twitter client or an RSS feed.</comment></comment></comment>


MtGox new password scheme SHA512 still insecure - <AUTHOR>

https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20208066-huge-bitcoin-sell-off-due-to-a-compromised-account-rollback
"SHA-512 multi-iteration salted hashing is in enabled and ready for when we get users reactivating their accounts."
I used to use a SHA-512 multi-iteration salted hashing scheme for my website's account passwords and after the Gawker attack and about 5 other HNers telling me it was not as secure as bcrypt, I decided to test cracking my own hashed password with a GPU brute force.
All I can tell you, is that it is NOT secure. Even with multi-iteration salting. It's just too FAST, that's the problem. BCRYPT allows you to adjust the WORK FACTOR to make it SLOWER and therefore not economical to brute force passwords.
----
After the hacks and now knowing that they are UPGRADING their password hashing scheme to a process I used TWO YEARS ago; I will safely say that I will not use MtGox now or in the future. <comment><USER2> Or SCrypt: <http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html>

The question here is, considering what they are doing(i.e. handling monetary transactions), shouldn't they have implemented a better hashing strategy from the beginning? After this, i'd say they are not the best source for security advices...

<comment><AUTHOR> I known I'm a bit late here, you probably won't see this. I originally _did_ use scrypt, actually, because I'm a fan of Colin's work but I was turned off by the lack of rigorous 3rd party crypto analysis of his reference implementation. Something bcrypt has...

Also, the python scrypt wrapper kept erroring out when I would use it in an app running in mod_wsgi... (which has probably since been fixed)

<comment><USER2> Agreed, the lack of peer reviews seems to be main reason people choose to go with bcrypt, i've seen this pointed out frequently on other sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I spammed Manny at onlyonetv the first day that they spoke with someone at mt.gox. I believe my exact words were:

Manny-Only1Tv, PLEASE scream bcrypt at him

He asked their dev (who asked Mark). Mark replied "bcrypt really isn't that secure. We're using SHA-512. Like 1000 times".

I had a further comment about where he should play "his SHA-512" but we can leave that out.</comment>


How To Become Legendary- What Michael Jordan Taught Me About Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/29878/How-To-Become-Legendary-23-Things-Michael-Jordan-Taught-Me-About-Entrepreneurship.aspx <comment><USER2>
      Starting a company is a roller-coaster ride like none other.
      YCombinator actually has a graph here about this exact
      subject (now updated to include MixPanel analytics FAIL!).

I would very much like to see that graph.

Also, did something happen to mixpanel? I thought they were doing well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the pic. <http://instagr.am/p/eq62/>

I worded that sentence poorly. Mixpanel is killing it from what I've heard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What Michal Jordan did, was the opposite of Entrepreneurship: It's called optimization. If he would have created a new game, he would be an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER4> Being a good athlete is only part of what he did.

He also created a brand around himself becoming far and away the most marketed sports figure in history that generated billions of dollars and boosted sales of many brands he was affiliated with. That doesn't happen by just optimizing your ability to play a game.

<comment><USER3> But he did no innovating - what is the of entrepreneurship. By the way it is dangerous approach to try to get as good as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer at anything. You have to be the best in the WORLD. Very high risk strategy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think there are some good parallels. The analogy of Dharmesh as Jordan is funny :) although he is a great sensei of course.

I especially agree with disregarding the press and short-term events/wins. Working hard every day builds up over time into something worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER6> OnStartups.com always takes forever to load the actual article. The difference between this and sites that generate static HTML for their posts is incredible.

<comment><USER7> You're right. Sorry about that. I need to go through and clean-house a little bit (too much stuff has accumulated over the years).

I'll make it faster.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the response, and to give you an idea of what kind of experience I am getting, I am able to load everything except the article text rather quickly, but I've yet to read the article itself yet because even after leaving the tab open for 10 minutes, I am still "transfering data."

I want to read your article, I really do!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That it can only happen if you are born for this?</comment>


Sex and shopping - it's a guy thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427392.700-sex-and-shopping--its-a-guy-thing.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news <comment><USER2> I think that idea that men use wealth to attract mates is pretty damn obvious, but I never really considered that women use displays of altruism to attract males. But makes sense that women would want to say "look! I'll make a good mommy! I am nice and selfless!"

But to go back to our usual question of women-in-tech, people often remark that women tend to go into fields that are more "helping" i.e. medical professions, non-profits. In general, I think the implication that women go into more "helping" fields and men go into more revenue generating fields is used to paint men in a bad light; but here they've shown that women are being just as selfish when they appear to be more altruistic than men. After all, they're much more likely to do charity when a potential mate is watching.

<comment><USER3> Well "pretty damn obvious" wasn't so clear. As a concept it sounds nice and clean that we're all motivated by sex but when you (I'm assuming you're male) go and buy a new car, new watch or a trip to Europe, are you really thinking "this will impress the ladies"? Because that's what this study has actually proved for once - conspicuous purchasing decisions are motivated by sex (conversely conspicuous charity for women).

<comment><USER2> I guess what is obvious to me is that conspicuous behavior != conscious behavior. No one is really thinking "this will impress the ladies" or "this will impress the guys" when they perform these behaviors, but that's really irrelevant.

Most of human behavior, I would argue, is _not_ conscious. We're conscious _of_ the decisions we make, but not always about the ultimate (evolutionary) causes. And why should we? It's completely unnecessary for the evolutionary reasons for our behavior to be conscious, only that we act in a manner that will produce more copy of our genes.

<comment><USER4> "Man is not a rational animal, man is a rationalizing animal"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article underneath about 'givewell' was more interesting still.

<http://www.givewell.net/charities/top-charities> """ GiveWell was founded in 2006 by former hedge-fund workers Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld. Frustrated by the absence of evidence provided by charities that they are delivering the goods in terms of their charitable ends, the pair decided to use their data-analysis skills to evaluate charities' effectiveness. They were appalled at what they found. Evidence-based charity lags far behind evidence- based medicine: virtually no charities do randomised, controlled trials regarding which interventions work. In fact, almost no charities collect any systematic data on whether or not their well-intentioned activities are actually doing any good. """

</comment><comment><USER6> Spent is a great book. I particularly liked the descriptive part of it, should be required reading for anyone working in marketing or trying to sell products. I'm not so sure about his prescriptive ideas. He proposes different ways to shape policy so that people rely less on consumerism to send status signals to each other. In general they are interesting but sound a bit impractical. Still, it's very well written and enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER7> So what happens when I go out and buy a sports car, but don't tell anybody about it and generally try to draw as little attention to it as possible? Or put another way, what would the explanation be if I buy some high status item, but then actively work to downplay it?

<comment><USER8> Reminds me of a point made in a similar article: why are people so surprised high profile figures like Bill Clinton risk so much to have affairs, when from an evolutionary standpoint they got there in order to have affairs.

As for downplaying a sports car, it's not very likely you'll do that. Possible, of course, but just not very likely.

<comment><USER9> I've had a brand new high-end German car for almost a year and some of my closest friends don't even know I own it (I live in a large city where driving isn't that common).

I like to keep a low profile for the most part. I don't want to attract the wrong kind of attention, look like a "young hot-shot kid" at work, etc. There's nothing wrong with women appreciating your success and ambition, but nobody wants to be a meal ticket.

I think women like confidence more than money, but having both never hurts. I once joked to a friend that my luck hadn't improved significantly despite earning much more; he quipped "you were still a guy who was going to make a lot of money back then, you just didn't have it yet."

The most interesting signaling behavior to me is being a hipster. Not having to work is really showing familial wealth and status. Most people don't come from a background where they can spend all day finding cool music and weird clothes rather than working a 9-5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if the ever increasing average age of marriage (at least in the US) leads to more consumption. Imagine that most people get married right after high school graduation. Men certainly would have consumed within their means to attract women, but they would have been limited to what their parents gave them and what they could earn in after-school jobs. Would they still consume so much? Perhaps the "promiscuous" men would continue spending so they could attract additional mates?

</comment><comment><USER11> _Study 4 showed that women rated a man driving a Porsche Boxster as more attractive for a short-term sexual relationship than a man driving a Honda Civic._

The fact that women are even capable of conceiving of short-term sexual relationships is a sign that our society is impotent and dying.

<comment><USER11> This was voted down why, exactly?

Everyone knows I'm right. A society that fails to impel people to better themselves is next to useless.

<comment><USER12> > This was voted down why, exactly?

It might be from the combination of proof-by-assertion _and_ people disagree with you. Take your first comment:

"The fact that women are even capable of conceiving of short-term sexual relationships is a sign that our society is impotent and dying."

See, I'm not sure that's quite right, but I'm always open to being convinced. If you cited, for instance, the fall of Rome when making your point, or GDP per capita growth in traditional/modern societies, or population growth rates, well you might make a point. Instead you're just asserting that you're right.

> Everyone knows I'm right.

Like that. That doesn't work so well. Data, evidence, argument, counterargument. You've actually got some good arguments on your side - replacement rate in population growth, birthrates of the Islamic world vs. the rest of the world, and so on. I just got a copy of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and I think Gibbons points to changes in Roman family life as one of the big causes. So, you could probably make a really interesting and nuanced argument that challenged our beliefs and made us think more.

Now, it goes against a lot of people here's base views, so it would likely receive mixed feedback, but it would definitely get some positive points and discussion going. Heck, I'd be up for reading and discussing with you if you made those arguments because I'm not sold either way on what's going to happen to modern society 100 years out - it's a fascinating and interesting topic. I think data, citations, research, books, and a more flushed out argument and you could really make some interesting points and get some good discussion going.

<comment><USER11> Cross-cultural study shows us that monogamy is required for a stable, future- oriented, low-violence society. No non-monogamous society has managed to achieve a fraction of what predominantly monogamous ones have, and civilizations become more monogamous (by necessity) as they develop.

The danger of accepting and encouraging casual sexuality is that it inexorably leads to strong-man polygamy and the subjugation of women, which most people would consider a regression.

<comment><USER13> This assertion is relevant to my interests. Do you have references to these studies?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Political Showdown: Peter Thiel vs. Google's Eric Schmidt - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@trentlapinski/political-showdown-peter-thiel-vs-googles-eric-schmidt-1d1484636aa4# <comment><USER2> > There's been a lot of talk in Silicon Valley about Peter Thiel's public > contributions, and support for Donald Trump, yet no one seems to be talking > about Eric Schmidt's private contributions to the Clinton campaign that were > just exposed via Wikileaks.

Because he picked the "right" side, you only got bullied if you support the "wrong" one.

<comment><USER3> Well think about it this way, if a corporate executive like Thiel were caught saying much of Trump's campaign rhetoric, he would likely face consequences.

Just a few that come to mind

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." [0]

"26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?" [1]

"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on" [2]

Considering that this last one would be considered hate speech and banned on Facebook if it were not made by a major US politician [3], I think openly supporting the candidate and going out of your way to help his campaign is fair game for criticism

[0] [http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/donald-trump-speech- debat...](http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/donald-trump-speech-debates-and- campaign-quotes-1.11206532)

[1] [https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/33190738377114828...](https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/331907383771148288)

[2] [http://www.amny.com/news/elections/donald-trump-s- memorable-...](http://www.amny.com/news/elections/donald-trump-s-memorable- controversial-quotes-1.11177219)

[3] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-employees-pushed-to- rem...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-employees-pushed-to-remove-trump- posts-as-hate-speech-1477075392)

<comment><USER4> The fact that people would face "consequeces" for making these political statements is exactly why Trump has been so popular.

People are afraid to say even innocent or true things because those will result them being branded as "racist". For example even good liberals who believe that black communities are caught in a cycle of crime, have to self- censor because the only acceptable position is that black crime is _entirely_ caused by a biased criminal justice system.

I don't think Trump phased it very well but I do think that illegal immigration is a net negative for the US, and it wouldn't' surprise me if illegal immigrants were disproportionately criminal. What's undeniable is that illegal immigration is connected with new patterns of organized crime, even if the overall crime rate is similar.

<comment><USER5> Free speech does not mean consequence free speech. It's not some gross injustice that saying racist things or supporting racist candidates makes people think you're racist.

<comment><USER2> Creating consequences for speech just pushes the speech underground where it can't be challenged. Then when someone like Trump pops up people wonder where all the support is coming from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > How is it acceptable that the Chairman of one of the largest corporations in > American can fund a secret startup that works directly for the [candidate's] > campaign? Meanwhile, potentially contributing hundreds of thousands of > dollars personally to the [candidate's] foundation?

Not only that, but the company's main revenue is from its ability to influence people's actions, e.g. voting, via advertising.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder why these guys don't just agree to jointly donate their money to charity.

[https://sideways-view.com/2016/10/31/repledge/](https://sideways- view.com/2016/10/31/repledge/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Thiel and Schmidt have two very different worldviews, they had a debate on capital 'P' progress a few years ago.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4)

Many people find Thiel's argument hard to believe, especially if they are aspirational middle class types. This is because normal people have a chronocentric bias. Of all our biases, this one is probably the strongest of all.

If you find Thiel's position hard to believe, it is worth examining what our grandparents thought about the future.

"The Home of the Future in 1999" (from the 1960s)

[https://youtu.be/0RRxqg4G-G4](https://youtu.be/0RRxqg4G-G4)

I am at the point where I consider the optimistic narrative (ex-computation) utterly without supporting evidence. It is all PR and marketing.

Here is one example. Consider the discovery of DNA. Important scientifically. And all the resultant research into genetics since.

But tell me what relevance any of it has had to the average person? Have we new drugs? More effective treatments? Cheaper medicine?

This is a minor heresy among the 'educated' but to me the answer is clearly no.

Think about that for a minute or two. Either I am mad, or in half a century there has been no measurable effects. If the second is true then why do we believe CRISPR is going to revolutionize everything outside? The discovery of DNA itself, the Human Genome Project. The cheaper shotgun sequencing. These should have had enormous material effects on society. It does nothing!

Food prices should be much lower. They are static or increasing. Timber should be of higher quality. It is actually much lower than before. Any non-niche new building materials out of biotech. I am unable to identify any. New breeds of animals for livestock, pets, where are they? The farmers I know use a process mostly identical to their ancestors from several thousand years ago, only a little more streamlined thanks to more specific egg/sperm selection.

Yes you can give me niche applications and cool stuff in a lab somewhere, but I'm asking about people's offices, homes, on the streets.

The fact is that we've been talking about vat-grown meat and lab-grown replacement organs for 50 years, and they aren't here yet. Do we have to wait for another 50?

<comment><USER9> There are therapies coming from genetics though. For instance:

[https://www.cff.org/Our-Research/Drug-Development- Pipeline/](https://www.cff.org/Our-Research/Drug-Development-Pipeline/)

And lots of cancer treatments. Genetically engineered microorganisms produce many drugs (and chemical feedstocks for others).

We wouldn't have recombinant insulin without genetic engineering, so there's a pretty good high footprint drug for you, the modern combination insulin products that are fast acting and sustaining.

It's also the case that breeders are using identical methods to their ancestors, except for the part where they do things like clone champion bulls to use for breeding.

[http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/06/29/us-company-in-iowa- churn...](http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/06/29/us-company-in-iowa-churns- out-100-cloned-cows-a-year)

<comment><USER8> Honestly this is not impressive. I don't say that to be abrasive, it just isn't. I'd expect to get _something_ for spending billions of dollars and having legions of intelligent people working away, if only by freak accident.

To put it another way, we had serious medical breakthroughs before cheap genetic examination and alteration was possible. Our benchmark should not be _nothing_ , it should be the past periods of change in the field surely.

How does the 'modern' genetic engineering stack up against antibiotics, peptide synthesis? How many lives saved, how much higher a quality of life do we have as a result?

Eroom's Law is still in force despite xray crystallography and dna sequencing being orders of magnitudes cheaper. Suppose drug discovery isn't the the bottleneck and we blame the FDA, then where are the breakthroughs in Russia and China?

> We wouldn't have recombinant insulin without genetic engineering, so there's > a pretty good high footprint drug for you, the modern combination insulin > products that are fast acting and sustaining.

That is notable, yes. Partly because it is a good high footprint drug as you say, but also because of the reason for its demand... It is interesting because if you watch the Ford Foundation video from the 1960s I linked to, there is a household personalized preventative healthcare system. I believe we _could_ build such a device in theory, but I don't see that we're breaking much ground. The last thing I saw that impressed me was the Toto intelligence II toilet but it didn't take off. I'd like to buy one, esp. if it was linked to my fridge and food cupboard to perform input/output analysis. I don't think there's a company even pretending to offer such a system today but it was readily imagined half a century ago.

> It's also the case that breeders are using identical methods to their > ancestors, except for the part where they do things like clone champion > bulls to use for breeding.

Breeders were doing pretty okay before artificial cloning.

I have some relatives in farming, I think they send off sperm cells to be hazed by freezing or some other hazing process that eliminates the weaker candidates.

I also know some old school breeders from a cattle mart who are basically wizards. They carefully examine their subjects to determine characteristics, like Darwin's pigeon fanciers in Origin. They are extremely gifted at selecting, like the Met's super recognizers.

"He said that of the millions of cows produced every year, the number that are cloned is "overall pretty insignificant."

"But the bottom line is you do not want large numbers of these animals for a number of reasons, number one being that cloned animals are generally unhealthy.""

That in a nutshell is my general outsider know-nothing view of biotech. It has no serious visible impact and I begin to suspect we don't actually know what we're doing. DNA is less the library of Alexandria and more like Borge's Library of Babel. Where are the cows with adverts emblazoned on their fur for passing cars to see? Weird exotic GM pets? We should see stupid things like that if we had any power. Freeman Dyson's vision of GM, laudable though it is, seems very far away.

I was looking for bioluminescent outdoor lighting/cool science project a while back. Found nothing useful. That's a low bar! That kind of thing should be _standard_ by now and I believe we should all in shock that it isn't cheap and readily available.

<comment><USER9> How about ZMapp? An artificial antibody produced in a plant that is the first meaningful advancement in treating Ebola?

You could also go through the 160 other monoclonal antibodies that are in clinical trials to see if any of them are exciting.

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

Making them and understanding how to prevent adverse reactions to them both involve genetics.

<comment><USER8> No, not enough. I credit you that serious work is being done, but I think it is pretty clear that unless the Phase 1, 2 and most of 3 trials can be automated somehow then the idea of personalized medicine is a fiction. The approval of 16 new drugs per year isn't going to cut it. The FDA has only approved around 1500 drugs in its entire lifetime.

At that rate cures for diseases would have to be complete panaceas in order to have a measurable effect on lifespan or healthspan.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google hot trends - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends/visualize?nrow=5&ncol=5

<comment><USER2> What do the different colors represent

<comment><AUTHOR> No significance of colors as far as I understand , they just represent google logo colors</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you choose technical books? - <AUTHOR> My boss just called me into his office to let me know that, due to financial reasons, they were going to have to lay me off. He was very apologetic, saying that he was very happy with my work, and offered to provide a reference for me.
Since I'll obviously be able to collect unemployment benefits, and since I've managed to save a fair chunk of my wages during my time here, I'm not really concerned about my finances yet.
To that end, I've decided to invest in a subscription to Safari Books to try to add some new skills and improve my existing ones, to help fill the time while I'm job searching.
My problem is I'm not really sure how to choose technical books. It used to be that you could just grab any O'Reilly book and run with it, but I've heard that that's not really the case anymore. Amazon reviews don't seem overly reliable either, due to a lot of "noobs" tainting the results (not to mention people who review a book poorly because it didn't ship fast enough, or for other invalid reasons).
I'd rather not list specific topics I'm looking into, since my goal is to build a heuristic I can use to pick books in any topic. If you have any tips on picking books, publishers (or series, authors, etc.) to avoid, or anything else, please share below.
Thank you all in advance for any guidance you can provide. <comment><USER2> Browse the table of contents. You can often do this on Amazon, or the book's publisher's website. Does the book appear to start at a level that you can understand, and does it cover the material that you wish to learn? (It the starting level is a little low or a little high for you, that may be okay, but watch out for a table of contents that suggests the book is way beneath you or way above you.)

Amazon reviews can still be helpful, but you have to look for more in-depth reviews. A review that just says "This book is awesome", while possibly true, is insufficient. If the review goes in-depth about the contents of the book, or how exactly it helped the reviewer, then that should be a good indicator. (And likewise, when you find books you like or don't like, contribute to Amazon reviews by writing reviews that you think could help others.)

I like books from the MIT Press, though their catalog is very different from O'Reilly's, covering more conceptual topics than specific technologies. They seem, though, to really put a lot of care into generating beautiful books. I've been generally happy with the O'Reilly books I've bought, though I don't have a lot of them. My even more limited exposure to the Pragmatic Programmer catalog has also been positive, though I do not care for their typesetting style. Addison-Wesley books have often appealed to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Edit: To highlight an important part: _It may be quicker to get references elsewhere and then check whether they are on Safari, than to try to find the best choices directly through the Safari interface._

E.g. For one, off the top of my head, the reading list cited/linked by tptacek on his HN profile:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek>

\--

At certain times, you can get the first year of unlimited-level Safari for $30/month instead of $43/month. I've only seen this for a month period around January or February, but some Googling might turn up an alternate means to get this deal.

Safari has a subset of publisher Addison Wesley's books. Many of these are quite good. E.g. some on networking, some on "Effective X" (Ruby, Perl, etc.)

More recent O'Reilly texts I have found to be hit and miss. Go back 5 or 10 years, and the overall level of quality seems to me to have been significantly higher.

Safari also has some (but by no means all) books published by Manning, No Starch, MS Publishing (e.g. Code Complete (2), IIRC), etc. It may be quicker to get references elsewhere and then check whether they are on Safari, than to try to find the best choices directly through the Safari interface.

Safari will carry multiple editions. Make sure you're looking at the latest.

After a couple of years of Safari, I personally feel I would have been better off just purchasing eBooks (e.g. O'Reilly eBooks are DRM free and often available at discount through promotions) that I would continue to have access to indefinitely and without a network connection.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are in learning mode, read several books on the same subject/language/whatever. Skim the similar points and look for the differences. Test. Don't just assume a singular point of reference is going to help you learn. More importantly, like with any information, take everything with a grain of salt, INCLUDING everything you find online, google results, searches, and answers here.

<comment><USER5> excellent advice +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Amazon reviews from people you know are better than you (many HN regulars, Peter Norvig etc) has worked for me.

For any given topic there are usually a few 'classics' amongst umpteen flim flam frothy books. At least for technical topics, you can just ask on HN (or email any HNer say tptacek for security related books, patio11 for SEO etc) and get some good recommendations.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've actually had good luck with searching for specific technical books through GoodReads. I've found reviews there to be in-depth and fairly accurate.

</comment><comment><USER8> Jolt award winners, and Martin Fowler's signature series

</comment><comment><USER9> I start, like tjr, with the ToC. Then I check the index (if it's in my hands). Then skim a few chapters - see if the content under interesting chapter headings is written well and\or usable by me. Lastly, what is the price? Regardless of cost, if it's not one I'll read over and over \ refer-to constantly, I'll go to the library and check it out for a couple weeks, picking-up what I want/need from it</comment>


Western manners: The latest Chinese status symbol (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150219-the-latest-chinese-status-symbol <comment><USER2> "If learning how to peel an orange with a knife and fork may seem slightly superfluous in Europe"

Who in the hell peels an orange with a fork?

<comment><USER3> How do you peel it ... with your _hands_ ? ;)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_57N1EI1Uw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_57N1EI1Uw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "With 190 billionaires..."</comment>


Kindle 3: e-book readers come of age - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2010/11/kindle-3-e-book-readers-go-mainstream.ars <comment><USER2> "When people ditched their CDs, they lost album art and liner notes, but those were never a part of the actual listening experience. The music bursting from headphone and speakers was still music, was the same whether it came from a disc or a download. When the liner notes vanished, the songs remained the same."

and all the people who are hardcore about audio cringe at the notion that music sounds the same regardless of origin or equipment used to reproduce it... these also happen to be the same people who cherished the album, who saw insights into the music from the artwork on the cover, and read the lyrics over and over.

I'm a geek. I owned a Kindle and read books regularly on my iPad and iPhone. I love the technology.

However, it drives me crazy when people make say that the details in the "antiquated" and analog versions aren't/weren't important. There is truly much being lost.

<comment><USER3> I'd say you lose a lot more from trying to play real music on crappy iPod earphones rather than real speakers, than is lost in the transition from analog to digital. (This coming from someone who only buys CDs and never digital downloads.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you guys have it? Is it usable for other formats than just PDF? I have a large collection of ebooks from "various" sources and they are in all kinds of formats (djvu, chm, pdb) and I was wondering if it is actually better to get a Kindle or one of the other ones which support those formats natively (like Bebook One 2010 which is almost twice the price). It would be probably quite inconvenient having to email all those books (I have like 50GB of them)

<comment><USER5> Not really great for PDFs, they are shown with a border bigger than the one of regular ebooks and the zoom options are only 100% 150% 200%... Even 150% is too big to fit on the screen. It doesn't support many formats natively, only mobi,pdf and not much else, conversion is offered by amazon via mail _but_ there is Calibre (win,lnx,osx?) that can easily convert from nearly every format (e.g. epub). You could simply convert what you want to read and transfer via usb.

<comment><USER6> The fix for the margins is to open the PDF in something like Preview.app and crop it so there are no fat margins.

The kindle will honor the crop box. So the margins can go away, and the text can be rendered larger.

That helps on the DX. But the small kindle is just too small. The kindle 3 offers contrast adjustment on PDFs, which also helps with the small fonts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not saying that the DRM isn't horrible... I'm just saying that you don't have to buy DRM'd books.

Don't buy from Amazon! Buy from other sellers who provide DRM-free ebooks instead. One of my favorites is Baen. They have a massive free library, and I've bought quite a few books from them as well.

Project Gutenberg is another great source, of course.

</comment><comment><USER8> Got one of these a few weeks ago. It's very much a single-purpose device, but it's excellent at what it does. I have about 3000ish books in my small apartment, so I'm a fan of the paper book. But I'm certain that the majority of my future book purchases will be kindle books.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Yes, there's DRM on Kindle books, and yes, it's annoying."

Like all these things, I suppose it depends on how you use it. I buy books on the Amazon store, I read them on my Kindle. I don't find the DRM annoying, or even visible.

It's pretty much the same as the old iTunes DRM. Yes, it was there, but if you bought on the iTunes store and played on your iPod, you didn't even notice it. The fact that download are now DRM-free is not even noticeable, except that you get better quality and pay 30% more.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love books for more than just reading. However I have no problem reading on my Kindle, if anything I find it more convenient as I don't have to hassle with bookmarks (although I have to get into the habit of exiting my ebook when done as the kindle has a habit of restarting on power up and losing the last read).

<comment><USER6> One thing I really don't like about printed books is when the paper is glossy, making it tricky to get lighting that doesn't glare off the page.

Also, bookstands. Has a truly good one ever been made?

Finally, trying to work with a hardcover book, a laptop, and a paper notebook takes up a lot of space on a desk.

<comment><USER10> > Also, bookstands. Has a truly good one ever been made?

The best I've ever used was actually mini-drafting table. It was the perfect size for a hardcover book and, depending on the type of binding, it either sat on the lower wooden ledge or the hardback could actually be forced behind the rule (with the lie-flat books).

It's ironic that a thing made to hold books completely sucks at the task, but a thing made to hold only a few pieces of paper (at most) is ideal.

I also have to agree, that a good 95% of non-fiction books are on the horrible glossy paper. I remember detesting them in college as florescent lights were the worst as instead of a glare you'd see an aura from the entire tube.

<comment><USER6> I have a Levenger "editor's desk", which is close to a mini-drafting table that sits on top of your desk. It gets a little iffy, though, at the start or end of a book, where the "thin side" of the open book doesn't have enough mass to hold itself down.

What I found that helped with that were the giant rubber bands you can get at art supply stores, that are typically used to hold things to a drawing board. Two of them around the editor's desk do a fine job of holding a book open, bands stretched across the top and bottom margins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those who prefer all on one page: <http://jottit.com/txq4v/></comment>


Career Advice for an Engineer (MBA or no MBA) - <AUTHOR> I'm 28 years old and I'm finishing my bachelor's degree in computer science next month. I have several years of professional experience before and during my studies. My biggest goal is to build tech companies (entrepreneurship).  Now imagine you have the chance to go to one of the best business universities in Europe to get your second Bachelor in Business (BBA) in 2 years.  The total tuition fee is $5000 (excluding living and opportunity costs).<p>I've talked to people who have completed this business bachelor's degree and then earned an Insead MBA (Top MBA in Europe). They were of the opinion that they had learnt the same content but much more practice-oriented (case studies). Since I am not interested in investment banking, consulting or a career switch but only in hard skills.<p>- Would you prefer the BBA or the MBA (100'000$+ Tuition)? - Or would you take a job as a software engineer and learning business by doing (Sideprojects)? <comment><USER2> I do not know about the BBA.

I know people who have been through the MBA route and I'd agree with the conventional wisdom on that topic.

That is, people who work in business management, take a break to do an MBA, then get back in to management are on the right track to get a C-level job in an existing large business. It also is a good path for people who are likely to take a role in a moderate-sized family business.

Another path is school to MBA to being a junior at McKinsey which is an education in itself that will leave you settled somewhere in industry. People with engineering backgrounds often do great that way.

B-schools recognize there is a market for learning about entrepreneurship (and are developing products to serve that market) but MBA programs are focused on what you need to know to run large and established firms (which is a lot). The attitudes you'll get acculturated in as an MBA won't serve you well in a startup; in fact, once you have an MBA, you'd probably look at any particular startup as being poorly paying, poorly run, etc.

If you are serious about business, I would say look for a job as startup cofounder or as one of the first few employees of a startup (someone who is in line for VP of Engineering.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Having been involved in a couple of startups (with exits) and having done an MBA at one of the top schools in North America, here's my two cents:

STARTUP Adv's \- learn quickly \- get exposure to many different problems that need solving \- get exposure to many areas of business \- experience scale and rapid growth, if startup has good growth trajectory \- can be provide good upside, if equity is granted and an exit / IPO takes place \- can get exposure to insanely smart people if team members are really solid, which helps to grow network for follow-on opportunities and startups

DisAdv's \- many startups fail \- some startups have better founders / leaders to guide teams through tough times \- plan on working non-stop in early days \- even when startups raise initial rounds, many fail to raise follow-on rounds \- work environment can be volatile with high attrition, due to demands of working in a startup (startups aren't for everyone) \- startups are really, really hard to get traction with (early-on), which can be stressful for many people \- there are many unknown factors in the long-term success of a startup

MBA Adv's \- learn lots and get exposure to topics that you might not be interested in exploring on your own \- opportunity to meet many new people who are talented, driven, and want to succeed \- opportunity to grow professional network with businesses and professors \- social proof of credibility in having worked hard to learn knowledge from a top school \- opportunity to change career paths, which sometimes isn't as easy when moving from one job to another (without school being a catalyst for it)

DisAdv's \- very expensive \- what you put in, is what you get out (as far as work goes) \- most MBA programs are 2 years in length, which is a long time to be out of the workforce (and learning on the front lines) \- much of the material is theoretical, as opposed to practically applicable \- focusing on grades is not always indicative of people's actual work performance \- less importance is being put on an MBA, given the current state of the startup world

OUTLOOK \- My education has served me well, but it was really expensive to pursue \- I have gained an immense amount of knowledge through being involved in high-growth startups

RECOMMENDATION \- Get involved in an early-stage startup and be a sponge \- Become a voracious consumer of business content (books, podcasts, videos, etc) \- Learn as much as you can about topics that you wouldn't normally, and hold yourself accountable to achieving certain goals with the content you're consuming</comment>


Programming in Java? You must be joking! - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/02/program-in-java-you-must-be-joking.html <comment><USER2> I confess: I could never really quite "get" Java. I always felt like it was pushed down everybody's throat by Sun on a wave of everybody's obsession with hating Microsoft. _Write once, run everywhere!_ actually always meant _run NOT on Windows_. At my school they switched from Pascal to Java in less than 2 years after it came out.

But putting all this religious crap aside, and ignoring libraries for a second, I could never quite see the appeal of coding in a language of expressive power just little higher than C++ yet so severely crippled comparing to the latter. Java and Visual Basic invited ex-taxi drivers into the industry, making interviewing process very exhausting and time consuming activity. And, most importantly, Java programmers have always seemed... well... unhappy with their jobs to me. Perhaps due to Java's dominance in "boring" sector of "Enterprise wonders". ("Office Space" comes to mind)

And, by the way, when was the last time you saw "Loading C++" message on your cell phone? :-)

I guess I shouldn't have said this. I successfully managed to dodge Java ever since I graduated and that makes me a non-insider :)

<comment><USER3> _expressive power_

What is that anyway? Can you measure it in something other than line counts? I'm wary of line-counts-as-metric. It seems to be a disease of PHBs and functional programmers oddly enough.

_severely crippled_

No pointers. What else?

There was nothing innovative about Java, but the advantages had nothing to do with "expressiveness" or "power" as I understand them. The advantages were:

1\. No malloc(), no free(). If you've ever done large-scale C programming, you'll spend half your time bugging around with memory.

2\. Platform independence. Well, you said it. I test on Windows and deploy to linux, and the only real problem has to do with the stupid C: and slash direction on Windows.

3\. Don't discount Sun's advocacy. C++ is a pain in the ass, and where you're not optimizing for CPU cycles and real-time performance (where the garbage collector is a problem) it just isn't needed. But to break its inertia something a little more real-world than Lisp macros is needed. So...corporate advocacy has its advantages.

4\. Massive libraries. They blow here and there, but put stdlib.h et al to shame.

5\. All-in-one. It doesn't do anything perfectly, but a large system can be done all in Java. This is convenient because you don't need fifty different tool sets, can move serialized objects around between subsystems, etc.

_making interviewing process very exhausting_

Since you've avoided Java in your career, I suspect you made that up.

Edit: Btw, since I'm bitching about downmods, I'll just add that I'm not downmodding anyone here.

<comment><USER2> I _really_ do not want to start a war here, especially because I am not a big fan of C++. Quite the opposite. But I can answer some of your questions in case you genuinely want to hear what I have to say :-)

On expressiveness: I meant things like foreach loops, ruby blocks, python's list comprehensions, in-place on-demand functions, switch statements with strings, pattern matching, list goes on. Java is not much ahead of C++ in that regard. Not a real upgrade.

BTW garbage collection is not really a "feature" of the language. And no, these days people (quality C++ folks) _do not_ spend any time debugging memory leaks. World has changed since early Unix days: smart containers, smart pointers and automatic unit tests largely eliminated memory leaks issues. I honestly do not remember when was the last time I used new() or alloc().

About being crippled compared to C++: do not even get me started. Lack of templates (until relatively recently and they're still not a _real thing_ ), lack of multiple inheritance nor mix-ins to replace them, no true functions of any kind, no choice of memory allocation: heap vs stack, this silly "everything is an object" idiom...

Again, quality libraries is something I asked to ignore, because it is really not a part of the language. And you are absolutely right here: Java folks have been enjoying the available pool of tools: an order of magnitude bigger than C/C++ guys ever had.

And, finally, on platform independence. Java does not run on Windows or Linux. It runs on one platform: JVM, which is conceptually is no different from C++ plus some kind of OS abstration layer, similar to what Mozilla/Apache teams have. Basic idea is always the same: language + runtime. Call it JVM or Library or VMWare host. Yes, I can always develop for Linux and run it under a virtual machine on any host OS, This solution arguably even better than "language VM", since you're taking _everything_ you need to run from one host OS to another.

<comment><USER4> I feel the "platform independence" makes a huge difference, though. I develop on a windows machine, and I can just deploy the binaries on the Linux-Server. I don't have any version headaches for deploying on various platforms. Maybe that is just a small thing and no big deal for make-wizards, but for me it is enough to avoid other settings like the plague. I ran into problems like that when I tried Ruby, btw. It seems there are different versions for Windows which are not compatible with each other (ie Cygwin version or Visual C++ version).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For what it's worth, IDE's make java far less painful in a way an IDE could never help a dynamically typed language.

I used mostly python or other scripting languages before taking a primarily java-based job. At first I was fearful, but then I got a taste of what an IDE can do to Java.

Sure you have lots of libraries to call, and lots of mundane code to write, but the IDE is able to a) give you your options and b) autowrite the mundane code c) catch most errors before you compile thanks to tight syntax and (almost) strong typing

It can also save a lot of time over python which is prone to introduce program halting errors without any compile time notification. This is especially annoying if you have programs with a long runtime.

In the end, its just another tool in the bag.

<comment><USER6> Same experience here. The power of Java is more apparent in larger projects where the rigid policies (ex: no multiple inheritance) and strong typing maintain a high quality standard for code and minimize those nasty deeply seated bugs.

For hackers writing short programs quickly it seems like a pain but this rigidity pays off as things scale. Great IDE implementations (eclipse) really shine when they can utilize strong typing to warn of syntax, compile-time (and some logical) code faults while coding. In my experience catching these problems in the IDE yields a greater time savings in the long run (vs interpreted languages)..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _You know, this kind of joke seems to rile Java apologists to no end_

I've really never known a Java programmer to be riled by any joke. I've never known any Java "apologists" at all, though they probably exist. Oh, well. That just highlights one of the good things about using Java or Windows: You are generally _not_ an unreasoning fanatic. Try criticizing ANY OBSCURE LANGUAGE...THEN you will rile people:

<http://programming.reddit.com/info/1vo0v/comments/c1volq>

Look at those downmods. I point out something perfectly true (ie, that unpopular language fans typically overrepresent the importance of minutiae) and get downmodded into oblivion.

</comment><comment><USER7> Java has harmed Unix but helped Windows win

<http://juwo.blogspot.com/2006/11/flatface-musings-java-has-harmed-unix.html></comment>


German Cities Are Solving the Age-Old Public Toilet Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcoexist.com/3065278/german-cities-are-solving-the-age-old-public-toilet-problem?utm_content=buffer06058&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> I've heard a lot of people complain about all the shit on the streets of San Francisco. For such a clearly visible and obviously unwanted problem, I'm shocked and puzzled by the lack of action to provide more public toilets.

Why is it so hard? If you don't want shit on the streets, the obvious solution is public toilets, no?

Instead, most of the people complaining about the shit on the streets blame it on homeless people, as if it's their fault that there's nowhere for them to shit except on the streets. What are they supposed to do? Hold it in?

One group of people has the wherewithal to solve this problem, and it's not the mentally ill homeless people who can barely take care of themselves.

You'd think one of the wealthiest countries on the planet would have gotten basic sanitation right by now.

<comment><USER3> Because when you provide public toilets, they end up being monopolized by junkies as a place to shoot up.

<comment><USER4> No they don't. when you supply hardly any public toilets, then yeah, that's going to be a problem. When you make plenty of them available and create jobs to keep them clean, it tends not to be that big of a problem.

I used to work as a cook, and before I could cook I had to learn every other job in the restaurant. Believe me I've cleaned my share of junkie-occupied toilets. It's a problem, but not the insurmountable problem you claim.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Junkies-Shooting-Up- In-S-...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Junkies-Shooting-Up-In-S-F- Public-Toilets-2933185.php)

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1027021079747556520](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1027021079747556520)

[http://sfist.com/2015/09/02/sf_hiring_potty- sitters_to_keep_...](http://sfist.com/2015/09/02/sf_hiring_potty- sitters_to_keep_pub.php)

<comment><USER5> ...or you can treat it like the public health issue it is and provide sharps bins in toilets.

[http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/community/health-and- safe...](http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/community/health-and- safety/alcohol-and-drugs/drug-safety/community-sharps)

> Community sharps are needles, syringes and lancets that are used to > administer medications and drugs outside a clinical setting.

> We need to dispose of sharps safely to prevent needlestick injury in our > public places, at home and for workers who remove waste or clean facilities.

> Whether or not a community sharp is used for medication or drug use, sharps > are to be treated as clinical waste, like they would be in a hospital.

> Local councils have a number of community sharps bins installed in community > centres, libraries and public toilets to encourage sharps waste to be > managed separately from general waste.

<comment><USER6> I've also seen public toilets lighted up in ghastly blue light that makes it hard to see your veins.

While annoying, it's better than no public toilets; and presumably easier for the people maintaining the toilets than dealing with junkies.

(I think they still had sharp bins.)

<comment><USER7> They don't have to see their vein. Sometimes they feel it or they already know what spot to go for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Japan public toilets are ubiquitous, free, and fairly clean. I wonder how they do it? Is it because Japanese people generally take better care of public spaces and keeping the toilets clean and operational is thus cheaper?

<comment><USER9> Japan keeps its unemployment low in a very forceful way. There are a huge number of people employed for low pay doing low efficiency work, just to keep everyone working a job. For example, you might see someone telling pedestrians to watch their step near a construction site, and the voice announcing trains at the station might be a real person holding a microphone.

<comment><USER10> > and the voice announcing trains at the station might be a real person > holding a microphone.

Before the privatization attempts, the Deutsche Bahn used real announcers on the major train stations.

Now, after decades of cost-cutting, it's pre-recorded audio pieces played by a computer. They sound broken and mismatching (because it's no TTS engine), they fail to be played half the time (and frequent rail users would claim the failure rate at 90%+) and of course the stuff breaks down when something unexpected happens (like emergency rail closures, due to people on the rails, med emergencies, police action, ...).

<comment><USER11> In Britain, all the station names are pre-recorded by a professional voice actor, as well as common problems, and many not-so-common ones.

"The nineteen fifty two ... Southern service to ... Brighton ... is delayed by approximately ... twelve ... minutes due to ... trespassers-on-the-railway. Please listen for further announcements. We apologize for the inconvenience."

(Replace with "a passenger taken ill on a train" or "action by the police".)

"The train approaching platform ... two ... is the ... delayed ... nineteen fifty-two ... Southern ... service to ... Brighton ... calling at ... Clapham Junction, East Croydon, Gatwick Airport, Haywards Heath and Brighton. This train has ... twelve ... coaches. Platform ... two ... for the nineteen fifty- two service to ... Brighton."

I much prefer it to a live announcement. The slightly ... odd pauses are distinctive, but mean derivations from the usual announcement stand out, whilst the whole thing is soporific for commuters. For others, there's the much-needed repetition of the most important bits; the destination of the train is spoken three times.

Examples: [https://youtu.be/0cg-n-GF38E?t=139](https://youtu.be/0cg-n- GF38E?t=139) (At 3:20 there's a Welsh one!)

(I don't like the repeated keep-your-luggage announcements, but maybe they're justified since people are still trying to bomb railways with abandoned luggage.)

<comment><USER12> Absolutely love these mad libs style announcements. I can't say why but they give me a rather pleasant feeling, and the clear tone of voice change seems to signal to me "important stuff here" while the rest is "filler here". Lewisham, especially, is so out of character. Highly amusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One aspect not mentioned is that in Germany when you sell liquid drinks AND provide seats to sit down you also have to provide a toilet for customers.

I'm not sure this initiative is actually improving matters. I more believe it is trying to stem the tide of key codes at toilet doors. See this article from last year mentioning "nice toilet" initiative: [http://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/wc-nur-fuer-gaeste- fra...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/wc-nur-fuer-gaeste-frankfurter- cafebetreiber-schliessen-toiletten-ab-13402228.html) Google translate: [https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=h...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.faz.net%2Faktuell%2Frhein- main%2Fwc-nur-fuer-gaeste-frankfurter-cafebetreiber-schliessen-toiletten- ab-13402228.html)

<comment><USER14> Many coffee shops in downtown NYC have the code/key situation.

There are similar regulations in NYC (and I think most of the US, although it is at a local level) that mandate customer bathrooms although they do not sound as strict. For example, small coffee shops (less than ~15 seats) frequently have no customer bathrooms.

<comment><USER15> Wow, that would be one of the first places I'd expect a restroom. Here in Vegas I continually find myself asking for a public restroom at convenience stores. It's usually hit or miss. Most do have seats for gamblers, so it's not the seats, most have hot prepared foods, so it's not that either. I've always thought that places that provide public facilities on their own initiative should maybe get some kind of subsidy for upkeep from the county or city government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Berlin licenses all its advertising space to private companies and lets them build and maintain public toilets as part of the deal. The toilets are usually barrier free and fully automated, i.e. they do a full cleaning after every use. They are in fairly good conditions and I thought this was a great idea, but the senate has issued a request for tender in 2018 so the future is a bit unclear at the moment.

[http://img.morgenpost.de/img/berlin/crop207814885/0722602716...](http://img.morgenpost.de/img/berlin/crop207814885/0722602716-w820-cv16_9-q85/42418011-621b782d-d10e-4ebe- adc6-58422ca66696.jpg)

<comment><USER17> Same in Paris (JCDecaux). But I wonder the cost for just 400 toilets in a city center with 2 million inhabitants and lots of tourists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The cities pay 50-150€/mo to the owners [1]. I wouldn't participate if I would own a bar/restaurant.

Slightly OT: A shopping mall in germany, where paying for the use of the toilet is voluntary (50Ct / use) makes on avg. ~300€/day, during christmas season up to 8000€/day [2]. If I would own a venue at a highly frequented place I'd rather request 50Ct from the user. ;)

[1] [https://www.welt.de/regionales/koeln/article13794805/Nette-T...](https://www.welt.de/regionales/koeln/article13794805/Nette- Toilette-steht-vor-einem-Comeback.html) (german)

[2] [http://waz.m.derwesten.de/dw/staedte/oberhausen/gladbecker-f...](http://waz.m.derwesten.de/dw/staedte/oberhausen/gladbecker- firma-kassierte-trinkgeld-von-klofrau-id8899268.html?service=mobile) (german)

<comment><USER19> This assumes that

1\. Participating in the program will cause you additional costs

2\. Participating will decrease the voluntary payments

I have no data to back this up but my gut feeling is that neither is true. People will prefer toilets in restaurants anyway and at least the locals are used to favour them over public toilets. My thesis is that putting up the "Nette Toilette" sticker will not draw more "customers".

When it comes to the voluntary payment: It's considered tipping money for the cleaning staff, so people will probably tip the same. And even if they did not it shouldn't make a difference for you as a restaurant owner, because it's not your money anyway. At least in theory...

<comment><USER20> Newbie question: is it really voluntary? When I was in Germany last year I used the toilets at a bar where I was a customer, and not understanding the etiquette/signs, I walked out without paying. But the "creepy guy sitting alone at a table right outside the toilets" started yelling at me loudly about Geld... at which point I understood he was the cleaner and tipped 2 Euro.

(I'm approaching this as an Australian, where public toilets and toilets in shopping malls / department stores are always free. But I don't mind a user- pays system.)

<comment><USER21> Most places where you have to pay, you usually have to pay up front. The yelling guy might just have called you names for being cheap, I certainly wouldn't expect toilets at a bar to have a mandatory fee.

Another scheme is usually found at Autobahn rest stops, where you actually have to pay for toilets, but get a voucher over the full amount that you can then use in their shops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In Boston, a big problem is at 2:30 AM after the bars close and people are wandering the streets to get home because public transit is also (inexplicably) closed. When everything is closed, how do you prevent people from pooping and pissing in alleys (or in broad streetlight)?

Or, for the opposite type of person, runners at 5 in the morning have the same problem. Miles away from home, sudden need to go to the bathroom, everything is closed.

<comment><USER23> It's closed because between 8 and 2:30 they make no money, so why would they keep it open for 6 hours.

In the UK the councils subsidise the local transport to stay open till 1/2am.

<comment><USER24> Boston has blue laws around the sale of alcohol.

See also: no alcohol sales before noon on Sunday, no discounted liquor at restaurants, and every bar/pub that sells liquor must also sell food.

<comment><USER23> I don't understand why I'm being downvoted, can you explain?

Public transport loses money in the evenings, across the world they get shut down unless subsidised.

<comment><USER25> I downvoted you because you talked about your downvotes.

Don't interrupt the discussion to meta-discuss the scoring system.

<comment><USER23> I might have phrased it wrong but I was literally asking what was wrong with what I said.

I'm getting confused by HN these days, it's like you get random d/vs for absolutely nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Newcastle Upon Tyne is also doing something similar.

[0] [https://www.newcastle.gov.uk/environment-and-waste/street- ca...](https://www.newcastle.gov.uk/environment-and-waste/street-care-and- cleaning/public-toilets)

[1] [https://www.getintonewcastle.co.uk/city-info/use-our- loos](https://www.getintonewcastle.co.uk/city-info/use-our-loos)

<comment><USER27> In the cynical British context I see the stickers on windows regarding the scheme and assume that it just means there are no public toilets any more. I would not go in to the cafe etc. for a quick visit to the lavatory, I would still feel odd about not buying anything.

It is a cultural thing and I expect most British people would expect their council to maintain public toilets rather than not bother and have some community business scheme. It reeks of privatisation and down sizing the local council.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like the idea, but...

> _If a venue took the cash and didn 't display its sticker, for example, the > public would soon report it to the city._

How exactly would "the public" know the venue takes part in the program if they don't display the sticker?

<comment><USER29> There's a website (and an app) with a list of all participating venues: [http://www.die-nette-toilette.de/wer-macht-bereits-mit.html](http://www.die- nette-toilette.de/wer-macht-bereits-mit.html) (in German)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Common sense appears to prevail. Cheap for the council, easy to understand, no bottlenecks, companies can opt in or out. More cities should try this.

</comment><comment><USER31> To mention the Spanish and Italian way: there are public toilets, some on the street (not that many, mostly near playgrounds), most in public buildings, rail and bus stations and the like. They are always free to use. Condition can be from very good to very poor, depends on the area and who looks after the toilets, mostly.

Aside from that, every place serving drinks or foods with the possibility to eat in the premises must have fully equipped toilets, and those are usually in good condition, so what most people do is walk into a bar or restaurant and use those. Some people just ask if it's OK to use the toilet, others will buy an espresso or bottle of water. Personally I ask and then pay for someone else's coffee or tip the barman, but I'm neither Spanish or Italian. Paid toilets are unknown there and would be seen with hostility. Toilets at shopping centres and motorway stops can always be used freely. Petrol stations and underground car parks also tend to have toilets that one can use, sometimes you have to ask for the key.

In France, it is mostly the same except that bar/restaurant toilets tend to be, let us say, a character building experience and being a different culture, the "let me use the toilet and I'll buy a bottle of water from you" thing does not quite work (apart from the water being at least €2.-) There are, however, a lot more public toilets, often the self-cleaning type (the French are big on automation, due to their awkward labour laws), and best of all, the "pissoirs" (from "pisser": to piss). There aren't many left, but you can still see them in some villages and small towns.

Some pics and history here: [http://untappedcities.com/2010/07/08/i-need-to- pee-public-to...](http://untappedcities.com/2010/07/08/i-need-to-pee-public- toilets-in-paris/) (also shows the newer automatic toilets), and a bit of an extreme and not completely serious example here: [http://www.pwfg.de/wp- content/uploads/2011/10/open-air-pisso...](http://www.pwfg.de/wp- content/uploads/2011/10/open-air-pissoir-640x426.jpg)

<comment><USER31> > [http://www.pwfg.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/open-air- > pisso...](http://www.pwfg.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/open-air- > pissoir-640x426.jpg)

In case anyone wonders about the hose, that's for people of North African or Middle Eastern origin who in addition to or instead of toilet paper, prefer to use water and their (conventionally, left) hand to clean up after full relief --a method which in fact does a far better job than smearing it all over one's arse cheeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The public toilet 'problem' (in that public toilets must be bad) isn't really a thing as any mall can seem to handle this issue.

When I went to Germany I was amazed at how bad their toilets were and I often had to pay to use them.

<comment><USER18> A toilet in a mall is not considered public (= state-owned) in context of this article. The latter are usually really dirty and not nice to use.

<comment><USER33> I think the point is that many malls have toilets completely open to the public (no payment to keep out "undesirables") and manages to keep them nice and clean.

<comment><USER34> I would guess that it's because the confined space of a mall makes this this efficient to staff.

Firstly, there are multiple toilets within a relatively small area, so one cleaning team can service multiple toilets. Secondly, the small area of a mall minimises travel time (wastage) between toilets. Thirdly, in places where keeping the toilets clean doesn't take enough time to keep the cleaners occupied full-time, there are other general cleaning tasks to occupy them.

It's also worth considering the deterrent effect of footfall and supervision: if the toilets are used frequently, and checked/cleaned frequently, people are less likely to carry out wanton acts of vandalism, for fear of getting caught.

If you take the example of a city with public toilets on the streets, either each toilet has to be staffed, which would generally be expensive/inefficient, as each toilet wouldn't require a full-time cleaner, or you would need a cleaning team to travel from toilet to toilet, spending time stuck in traffic, looking for a parking space, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Santa Cruz, California has been doing this for a few years. It mostly works well but those bathrooms get trashed.

<comment><USER36> Yes I was wondering how this would work in San Francisco. There is a large mental illness and drug abuse problem, many who suffer from these issues find it very difficult to leave a bathroom in at least a semi-decent state. Does the city maybe wind up paying enough to the businesses so they hire someone to keep the restroom clean?

<comment><USER37> I think you'll find that mentally ill people are treated differently in Europe, that would be a necessary first step of your want to do something similar in sf.

<comment><USER36> Yes I spend a couple of months every year in Europe so I'm aware. The thing is health care is better, drug abuse (not use, but abuse) seems lower and also society has less tolerance for acting out. I've got a lot of mental illness issues in my family, so I hopefully can say this without sounding rude. But a lot of people dealing with mental episodes can to some extent moderate their behaviour. Not that it's easy, but the ability is there. However particularly in SF we are very tolerant, maybe to the point of causing more harm than good. So then some people just indulge in their every impulse including engaging in poor sanitary habits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The city of Santa Cruz, California has a similar program: [http://cityofsantacruz.com/departments/economic- development/...](http://cityofsantacruz.com/departments/economic- development/business-support/visitor-restroom-program)

The main downside is that the bathrooms are only open when the businesses are open. That means folks living on the streets still don't have access to toilets for a big chunk of the day.

</comment><comment><USER39> Last time I was in Germany (2015) I had to pay 50pf to the little emperor who ran the toilet in the Paderborn train station; I didn't see the sign about paying (it was blocked by the open door) and he basically attacked me as I walked out. Not sure how this is a wonderful solution. I also remember a European airline wanting to charge people to use the toilet on their planes.

</comment><comment><USER40> Should be mentioned Paris' automatically cleaning toilets. They are definitely slow and not great when there is a lot of people needing them, but for an otherwise rather dirty city, damned if they are not cleaner and more convenient than what I've seen most other places.

<comment><USER41> These are supremely confusing if you have never encountered one before... Thankfully, a helpful French man was able to explain the situation to me before I tried to enter one as it was starting it's wash cycle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> German here. I have never heard of this programm, nor does it seem that big cities like Hamburg, Frankfurt or Munich are part of it.

It looks like a nice thing, but the headline is a little misleading, its not in "all German cities", just some.

<comment><USER43> Munich is actually joining the program from 2017 on. Bremen already is in it.

So, it's actually not that misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> As a German, every time I travel to any other country I am impressed how many public toilets there are and the good state they are in.

</comment><comment><USER45> Or you could just mandate all toilets to be open to the public. Like, for example, in Israel.

</comment><comment><USER46> "Diversity society will fail" \--Putnam; [http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/t...](http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/)

<comment><USER47> This account has been posting a lot of unsubstantive comments, but this one is right out of nowhere. Please stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> "The Germans have figured out a cheap way to provide the public with bathrooms."

Aren't the bathrooms the places where somebody can bathe?

<comment><USER49> It's a euphemism.

<comment><USER34> English seems to have an extraordinary number of euphemisms for "that room":

Bathroom. Restroom. Water Closet. Loo. Bog. Khazi. John. Privy.

I wonder if other languages have such an array of words for a toilet, and how much confusion they cause for foreigners.

<comment><USER11> "Bathroom" and "restroom" are only used in American English. In other English- speaking countries, a bathroom contains a bath, and a restroom sounds like somewhere to go if you're tired.

"Toilet" is also a euphemism, it's Middle French for a type of cloth.

So is "lavatory", it means wash room.

I can't think of a word that isn't vulgar or a euphemism.

<comment><USER50> "Toilet" is not a euphemism:

"Toilet" was by etymology a euphemism, but is no longer understood as such. As old euphemisms have become the standard term, they have been progressively replaced by newer ones, an example of the euphemism treadmill at work.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet#Contemporary_Use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet#Contemporary_Use)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>