U.S. GDP Shrank in Q1 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/briefly/2015/05/29/why-u-s-gdp-shrank-at-a-glance/ <comment><USER2> I'm not an economist, but here's my view from the ground:

1\. High unemployment, preventing consumption

2\. High debt load (student, home, credit card) for prime age consumers, preventing consumption

3\. Low wages and stagnant wage growth for prime age consumers, preventing consumption

4\. Low job stability, leading to cash-in-mattress, preventing consumption

5\. Low worker actualization and agency, leading to more time and energy spent at work, preventing consumption

6\. Long term poor access to wealth-building financial instruments for most people, reducing accumulated wealth over time, reducing consumption

So as you can see, my opinion is that consumption is weak because people don't have enough money. The WSJ article has a small paragraph about tepid consumer spending, so I guess we agree there.

Aside from these core issues, I'd also speculate that a tremendous quantity of money is trapped in financial instruments. If it's in a financial instrument, it isn't exactly employing people or building goods or creating demand for goods. The same could be said about the billions of dollars held close to the chest by the oligarchy.

There's a huge opportunity here to have a government public works program or some other major initiative to mobilize the underclasses, but it won't be taken.

None of these issues are specific to Q1 2015, and they won't be fixed in Q2, Q3, or Q4.

<comment><USER3> An interesting analysis at [http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2015/05/us- households-u...](http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2015/05/us-households- under-pressure-stagnant.html) echoes these observations, concluding "How do you support a consumer economy with stagnant incomes for the bottom 90%, rising basic expenses and crashing employment for males ages 25-54? Answer: you don't."

<comment><USER4> Why can't hiring people be cheaper?

1\. Get rid of the minimum wage. It makes as much sense as rent control... none.

2\. Help out the needy by introducing a minimum income and/or an aggressive earned income tax credit.

3\. Everyone knows kids are expensive. They shouldn't be. Scale 2 according to household size.

4\. Set the levels of 2 high enough that citizens can pay their own taxes (both halves of the pension tax) and buy their own benefits (disability, health, life, 401k 'matching', etc.).

...watch the number of entry-level jobs explode and the demand for robotic work tank (like McD's filling sodas with robotics).

Side benefits:

A. Small companies will be better able to compete with big companies with employment lawyers and HR departments.

B. Bootstrapping and entrepreneurship becomes more viable.

C. Corporations lose some of their relative power due to A and B.

<comment><USER5> > watch the number of entry-level jobs explode and the demand for robotic work > tank (like McD's filling sodas with robotics).

People have better things to do than repetitive, unfulfilling tasks (unless they enjoy it, of course). We need to get to the Star Trek utopia... what you're talking about sounds like halting progress.

<comment><USER6> Automation is coming. We can't stop it. Together with Globalization and various "free" trade agreements, the US worker is ..effed. We are going to have the well-paying STEM jobs, the lawyers, bankers, doctors, therapists, the super low wage unskilled laborers in a race to the bottom, trying to compete with machines, and a huge, empty nothing in the middle between those groups.

And that's going to happen sadly before we reach Star Trek utopia, and there _will_ be large-scale civil unrest, even in the US, within the next 30 years, I'm betting on it.

And let's not even talk about impoverished countries with exploding populations that are already struggling to provide jobs - an endless cycle of regional warfare, an endless Arab Spring.

<comment><USER7> Doctors, bankers and lawyers are screwed as well. ML will make sure of that. We will still need some people to perform those functions, but not nearly as many as we have now.

<comment><USER8> Show me an AI that can do these jobs, and I'll show you one that can do any job.

<comment><USER9> Show me an AI that can beat the best human at Chess, and I'll show you one that can beat the best human at any game?

Your mistake is assuming that a sizable portion of the work these jobs involve can't be replaced by "dumb AI", which is what ML is all about, and that they require a fully general AGI.

<comment><USER8> I should have said, do these jobs more efficiently. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't see how a machine that does a "sizable portion" of the work would ever be good enough to be worth using. A human expert would always be needed to check the work.

If the proposition is that this would lead to fewer humans being needed for these jobs, I suppose that could be the case. In my own field, my criticism of automating, say, legal research and writing, is that the time it would take for me to check the work would be nearly the same as doing it myself. I don't see much efficiency gain, which is why I think the only thing that would truly be better than a human would be an AGI.

<comment><USER10> There won't be a sudden replacement that can do everything. It will be like gathering food. The majority of the population used to be involved with gathering food. Then people started to farm. Then instead of human powered ploughs they started to use horse powered ploughs. Then came the engine powered ploughs. Then came automatic seeding machines. Machines that can separate corn from the plants. Etc. Nowadays only a tiny fraction of the population is involved with food production. There are still farmers, but just a couple. We are now in the horse powered plough stage. We have full text search that can go through tons of documents that doctors and lawyers would previously have to search by hand. An assistant to do legal research is essentially just a really good full text search engine, it's a continuum from dumb search engine to smart search engine. We have email. We have electronic systems to keep track of patients and clients. Soon we will have systems that can suggest a diagnosis based on symptoms, and systems that can suggest medical tests to narrow down a list of diagnoses. Systems that can assist clients to write their own standard legal documents. It won't be that suddenly all doctors and lawyers are out of a job, it will be like farming. We still have farmers, but only a couple because they are so efficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> US households are refusing to increase their spending. Here's what they're doing with their money:

[http://i.imgur.com/AOKooQg.png](http://i.imgur.com/AOKooQg.png)

Paying down hundreds of billions in debt. Finally a good call by US households on debt. Most major economies are seeing household debt rapidly increase.

It was expected that the gasoline cost savings would bolster the US economy via consumer spending, as an off-set against industry job losses and loss of capital investment. That hasn't happened, instead consumers are saving that money (quarterly net savings jumped significantly). What you get from that combination is an economic contraction.

<comment><USER12> I often read how household spending being down is bad, but why is that? Do we need so much stuff? If my wife and I have a one bedroom apartment, ride a bicycle and a scooter to get around, and generally lead a relatively simple life does that make the world a worse place? We do spend money, but it usually goes towards plane tickets to interesting places and going out for a pint or two - things we both enjoy.

I just don't see what's wrong with not buying more crap. Our parents have giant houses, multiple cars, hot tubs, and all sorts of stuff, and that's great for them, but it gets old hearing that our lifestyle is bad for America.

<comment><USER13> That is not what this is about. More spending doesn't necessarily mean more consumer spending and less saving.

Yes you can increase aggregate spending through consumer goods spending, but you can also increase spending and aggregate demand by having people buy more investments. You can spend and save at the same time. There are many ways to spend and save at the same time. You can buy something you are only going to need later, you can buy stocks in a business that will use the money to buy equipment and employ people, you can lend to a business that will buy equipment and employ people. This is all the economic equivalent of investing, the I in the GDP equation C+I+G+(X-M)

The only thing you need to prevent is people and organisations sitting on idle cash or cash like investments. That's what destroys the economy. Anyways fiat is a fictitious form of saving on the aggregate. It doesn't produce anything and people accumulating it doesn't increase the amount of stuff they will be able to buy in the future on the whole.

The point is to move the economy away from idle fiat and into consumption or investment.

<comment><USER14> >The only thing you need to prevent is people and organisations sitting on idle cash or cash like investments. That's what destroys the economy.

Not true. Cash kept in banks is reinvested in the economy. If companies like Apple keep billions in the bank, it has the effect of lowering interest rates and therefore encouraging investment.

Clarity in economic thought comes when this incorrect bit of Keynesian relic thinking is discarded.

<comment><USER13> Banks are organisations, I include them in this, you need to prevent banks from not lending.

>"it has the effect of lowering interest rates"

Not when we are already at the zero lower bound.

At the ZLB you need higher inflation targets for things to function properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Even after all of this quantitative easing ? Makes me wonder what will happen once it's stopped.

EDIT: I'm also talkin about the extremely low interest rates or basically ZIRP. There's really not much more the FED can do. But if this means that the era of zero interest rates is here to stay for longer then the party in Silicon valley is about to get even wilder.

I'd like the opinion of some people more knowledgeable about economics as to why recovery is taking so long. It's already 7 years since the crash. How long could it potentially take ?

It's not like this state of affairs can last forever can it?

<comment><USER16> Secular stagnation. Basically, what happened to Japan in the previous decades is now going to happen to much of the developed world. A prolonged period of no growth with no monetary policy tools to help solve the problem, and no political will to implement a more active fiscal policy.

<comment><USER17> Pretty much. Its not possible to recover from in the near term because the only reason it hasn't been worse is the fact we've been having the FED use every policy tool it could think of.

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2014/11/secular- st...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2014/11/secular-stagnation)

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/imf-fears- gl...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/imf-fears-global- economy-is-suffering-secular-stagnation-10161154.html)

<comment><USER18> Perhaps its time we admit that growth isn't a requirement to an ever-incrasing quality of life? And investigate the transition to steady state economies?

Who am I kidding, that'll never happen.

<comment><USER3> Well, just saying, but "no growth" hasn't really been working out for Greece lately.

<comment><USER18> Ahh, forgive me. I had thought it was their crushing debt payments that are impossible to service thats causing their economic hardships.

Greece will be in a much better position as soon as it exits the Euro.

<comment><USER19> > crushing debt payments

Growth helps a lot with that problem.

<comment><USER18> What industry would you suggest Greece grow its way out of debt with besides possibly tourism?

<comment><USER19> I'm assuming that Greece has a fair share of intelligent adults capable of being productive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Corporate profits plunged by $125B, how can the WSJ spin that as "U.S. corporate profits rebounded in the first quarter of the year."? From the actual press release:

"Profits from current production (corporate profits with inventory valuation adjustment (IVA) and capital consumption adjustment (CCAdj)) decreased $125.5 billion in the first quarter, compared with a decrease of $30.4 billion in the fourth.

Profits of domestic financial corporations decreased $2.6 billion in the first quarter, compared with a decrease of $12.5 billion in the fourth. Profits of domestic nonfinancial corporations decreased $100.4 billion, in contrast to an increase of $18.1 billion. The rest-of-the-world component of profits decreased $22.4 billion, compared with a decrease of $36.1 billion. This measure is calculated as the difference between receipts from the rest of the world and payments to the rest of the world. In the first quarter, receipts decreased $28.9 billion, and payments decreased $6.5 billion."

Or, in an actual graph:

[http://i.imgur.com/YidRIWh.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YidRIWh.jpg)

<comment><USER20> I agree that the WSJ statement is very misleading, but I believe they meant it in comparison to Q1 2014, not in comparison to Q4 2014.

From the WSJ article: "Profits [...] advanced 3.1% in the first quarter of 2015 from the fourth quarter of 2014, after falling 3% in the prior period. "

<comment><USER3> In Q1 2014 they they were absolutely horrific and we had one of the worst plunges ever if you look at the graph. It's not really a fair comparison.

<comment><USER21> It's quite fair, year over year is a very normal and usual way of measuring growth. (it helps in that it gets rid of seasonal variations for one, but this is a very minor reason to use it.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's funny to see everybody overreacting and coming up with a bunch of theories. As a reminder, it happened much much worse last year (-2.9% [http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2014/06/25/u-s- gdp...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2014/06/25/u-s-gdp- dropped-2-9-in-the-first-quarter-2014-sharply-lower-from-second-estimate/)) and was immediately corrected the quarter after (+4.5%). It's called harsh winters...

<comment><USER23> Nonsense every business knows winter occurs annually and businesses need to stop making excuses

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> While it is a good exercise, much of the commentary on this thread is conjecture. Attempting to explain why the GDP shrank last quarter is similar to explaining why the weather in your city was cooler over the last few weeks.

Still, I would much rather read conjecture here than in a business news article :)

<comment><USER24> Rather than put forth any definitive theories, usually what I try do is understand some of the top drivers of a change, and then, with those in mind, think about what the secondary effects might be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This GDP report also confirms global trade is crashing, as net trade (exports less imports) subtracted -1.9% from the final GDP print, likely due to the strong dollar:

[http://i.imgur.com/hB90v62.png](http://i.imgur.com/hB90v62.png)

And as well noted by this lady, we probably haven't seen the worst yet: [https://twitter.com/auaurelija/status/604271796267937792/pho...](https://twitter.com/auaurelija/status/604271796267937792/photo/1)

All the indicators point to NIRP coming to the US soon, as lately bad economic data (such as global trade) correlates almost perfectly with bond yields.

And as noted on ZH, the lower bond yields drop, the larger the secular decline in aggregate demand ("deflation"), the more businesses focus on investing in short-term capital gains instead of long-term growth projects (i.e. capex), the worse global trade will get, leading to even more debt monetization, even lower yields and even lower trade...

</comment><comment><USER25> No surprise here. @cryoshon has it right in that the debt load is freezing the system. The banks failed in 2008 because we reached the limit of how much debt the world can support (not counting all the fake debt those crooks sold in the form of derivatives). The US gave the banks a ton of money to stay afloat, but it didn't solve the debt problem ie. the debt didn't get forgiven. What's interesting about this year is that criminal proceeding are finally moving against the leaders of the banks that survived the 2008 crash. These things take awhile to work their way along. This will not do anything to help the economy, in fact it will only get worse as the banks circle their wagons and stop lending.

</comment><comment><USER26> Winter: [http://www.greaterfool.ca/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/Winter-...](http://www.greaterfool.ca/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/Winter-modified.png)

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe the trickle down economics does not work, and we should tax the corporations more (like it used to be) and lift the tax on the lower wage workers? Maybe. The problem is that both parties are in the pocket of the big corporations and the average voter has less influence what is going down than ever. Related study:

[http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts- say-...](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no- longer-democracy)

</comment><comment><USER23> Another huge problem that has occured for the past 6+ years is the low interest rates which has led to the lowest saving rates in decades. With talk of negative interests the savings problem becomes even more dire. Whats the point in keeping any cash on you when its losing purchasing power every second it's in your wallet? Consumption is not problem. We need real wages to rise and we need investment in things like infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER28> DJIA is at all times, Nasdaq is like it is 2000 again, a Republican is to be elected (giving how we like franchises it will be Bush 3 winning, unfortunately, over Clinton 2),... lets call it a "correction" that we're just due in for.

</comment><comment><USER23> Another problem, the financial sector is hooked on low interests rates. The Fed was planning to raise interest rates this September but with these terrible numbers there is no way that is going to happen this year.

</comment><comment><USER29> Global deflation - aggregate spending's too low, too much austerity.

<comment><USER3> Well just to clarify, the first part of that statement is fact but the second is actually opinion.

<comment><USER29> You could probably argue the first part is opinion too. Just my take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why is state and local government spending counted as negative for GDP?

<comment><USER31> It's not. They're saying that that spending decreased, contributing to a decline in GDP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> When will we acknowledge that central bank market intervention has failed for everyone besides the richest?</comment>


The world needs better data manipulation tools than Excel and Access - <AUTHOR> http://zakwilson.posterous.com/the-world-needs-better-data-manipulation-tool

<comment><USER4> Besides Dabble (which can kinda cut it for certain non-tech companies, but is primarily used by tech companies) Excel is the only real option and is probably Microsoft's best product.

Sure it may have a few strange date bugs. Its column/row order shortcomings in vlookup() and hlookup() may be annoying. But you can really, really, really DO stuff with excel.

The learn curve for the software is basically Y = x^.7 (0<x<1) so getting started is as easy as you can get for a tool that can do all of the below:

Math functions (I could have individually listed them, but they are many, including correlations for many statistical distributions) Financial functions (Mortgages, Black-Scholes, Variance) Multi-Dimensional Linear Optimization - seriously, this can (with a bit of tweaking) also give you all non-inferior solution sets. VBA - I hate programming Microsoft languages, but VBA was designed to be easy, and with excel it is SO easy. Relative cell references. Stunningly beautiful graphs - Next time you are at excel and you need to show data really dig into how much you can change. You can make these things look extremely pretty if you take some time to learn how.

The nice part about all that stuff above is that the new/uninformed users don't every really have to worry about it. I've met tons of young people who got into programming because they started with macros (and later VBA) for Excel.

<comment><USER5> Dabble is "primarily used by tech companies"? Where did you get that idea?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm don't agree with the article's premise, that "the world needs better data manipulation tools than Excel and Access".

Most of my present colleagues are not programmers, and they manage to create relatively complex applications with Excel and a bit of Access. There's no gap between what they can do with their tools, and what I can do with a real programming toolset. Also, I can't see one tool fitting everyone's needs.

I have also observed that most non-programmers have an allergic reaction to anything that looks like code, even something as basic as VBA. They'll do acrobatics with all sorts of weird macros, but that's OK because it takes place in a GUI; there's very little syntax to get wrong, or structure to create.

I think programmers underestimate the learning/confidence people need to code even a simple program.

<comment><USER7> What the world needs are more non-programmers who can think logically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> See, I was going to agree with the headline until I read the article. I was thinking along the lines of a data warehouse version of Mathematica with distributed processing and web front end and RPC/REST and all of that.

No, the author wants to "integrate a (not yet developed) visual programming language." On the JVM. What will this accomplish? Well, it would allow users to "create fairly sophisticated apps by dragging, dropping and plugging things together." But fear not, programmers: "Programmers wishing to make more sophisticated apps would have at least one real programming language with a DSL or DSL-like library for interacting with the system."

Wonderful, another do-everything GUI app development environment where users can do more and programmers can do even more than that. Ugh.

"Does anyone who understands the needs of the corporate market have some input?"

Sure, make sure you check out the billions that have been spent on this very problem:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4GL>

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://synthmaker.co.uk/> <http://synthmaker.co.uk/about.html> < pictures

This tool is designed for audio DSP, but is not limited to that. If you're interested in this topic, I recommend downloading the trial, putting it in advanced mode, and just futzing about for a few hours.

It's very accessible and fast to work with, and could be adapted to quite a lot of non-DSP tasks. I would love to see it generalized: the modules within are how I feel libraries should present. Draw graphs for data flow or complex functions, open up a code box for tight procedural stuff. Perhaps not what the author had in mind, but audio synthesis of this kind is event-driven, asynchronous and features a high degree of interactivity, so it may be worth further exploration.

Please email if you know about this kind of cool stuff in other contexts.

<comment><USER10> Very impressive software. Unfortunately it is windows only and closed source. If only there was an open system like this that could be generalized and extended.

<comment><USER11> <http://puredata.info/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Data>

I'm sure there's more out there. It's a pretty common paradigm for audio/interactive software. cf. Max/MSP, Reaktor, Audiomulch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> R is now at the top of my programming languages to learn list. So, obviously, I don't know R yet, but is it something that could work well for this? Is there a way to skin it with a GUI/web front end that would make it more powerful than Excel, but still make mathematically astute end users not feel like they are "programming?"

In the theme of "ideas are worthless," I have a vague idea that a "Heroku for R" could be a winner. Collaborate on datasets, pay for extra capacity for long jobs on large amounts of data, good UI for quickly generating graphs from datasets, integrate with existing data stores like Simple DB, Couch DB, etc.

Does this make any sense at all?

</comment><comment><USER13> This idea has a lot of potential, especially if you were to focus on a few situations that I've seen over and over in the corporate world. The most common scenario I've seen is data coming in an extract format like CSV, containing information required for another business process. You've got data coming from an expense reporting web app that needs to processed before entries can be made into an accounting system. A spreadsheet or database is created by a computer-savvy manager, and a clerk uses it on a weekly basis to do their work of posting entries. If the data format changes, the manager tweaks macros and formulas to adjust, and life goes on. Any new clerks coming on board learn how to use "the spreadsheet" and the business process keeps chugging along. Change managers, and 9 times out of 10, a lack of documentation and knowledge transfer will cause things to blow up in a short period of time. If you were to introduce a tool that exposes the funky macros and formulas in a more visual, understandable fashion, I think it becomes more easily maintainable. Providing some data validation, error handling and notifications would be valuable. Finally, provide some version control to prevent accidental deletion or modification of important functions. The key would be a much better user experience than the Excel function editor.

</comment><comment><USER14> There have been a number of competing products. Two that come to my mind quickly are Lotus Notes and DabbleDB.

<comment><USER15> :) If only IBM could work out what they were/are doing with notes/domino... Some aspects of it were well ahead of it's time. (Shame about the interface from 4 - 7)

I think that ship has well and truly sailed though.. (Notes 8.5 even has a pretty nice interface - on a beefy enough box anyway)

<comment><USER16> What gives you the idea that IBM doesn't know what they are doing? Their public statements about the product road map have been pretty clear.

<comment><USER15> it's slowly getting there. But I think it's too late.

Area's where IBM/Lotus dropped the ball:

 __\- It looked too old for too long - pretty much anyone my age will find it (at least < v8) pretty archaic. I think the focus for so long was on keeping the interface the same (so as not to have to re-train any users) - it missed the fact that anyone new to the corporate world is going to be horrified at how old/slow/crap most of Notes 7 looks -- (and don't get me started on the Workspace)

 __\- Desktop Email clients are probably in a slow death circle (note the fact that I've had a web based email account for about half of my life now - <USER2> years). I love the 8.5 Sametime integration - but for an email interface - <USER3> prefer my gmail account.

 __\- The sales pitch was always pretty confused. Email. Groupware. Databases. There is definite value in some of the Notes/Domino offering - but getting a sales rep to explain it to you is a fair bit of a challenge

 __\- Lack of end user marketing / interest. How many organizations in the world today could could announce "We're deploying Lotus Notes" and have people excited? Not many I'm guessing -- at least - most people I've talked to have only ever heard the horror stories For most people -- their opinion of the notes interface equals something like:<http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/lotus.htm> or <http://lotusnotessucks.4t.com/>

I think IBM are basically doing the right things with it now.. but I basically see it slowly dying..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wasn't too interested in the linked blog post, but the title made me think of Resolver.

<http://www.resolverhacks.net/resolver.html>

<http://code.google.com/p/resolver/>

I have no experience with it (I'd be interested in comments from those who do), but the premise is intriguing and it appears to be non-vaporware, if still beta. (N.B. It appears to be going in the opposite direction, in some ways, from what the posterous page is proposing.)

\----

Separately, I'm reminded of a recent page I encountered where someone describes (including how-to steps) using SQLite as a backend for Excel, for handling large datasets that benefit from the Excel interface (without getting into the whole Access thing/disputes).

Googling, it looks like the below is the page. I haven't read through it, yet, but I'd made a mental note to do so sometime. I'll still mention it in case it intrigues anyone else as it did me.

[http://blog.gobansaor.com/2009/03/14/sqlite-as-the-mp3-of- da...](http://blog.gobansaor.com/2009/03/14/sqlite-as-the-mp3-of-data/)

</comment><comment><USER18> The world certainly needs better data manipulation tools for programmers and non-programmers alike BUT ... neither group feels like strongly enough to make the market for spreadsheets and user-level database tool competative again. It's sad.

It shows that individual users drive markets rather than "the world" driving markets - I don't mean this snidely. There are many things that people would benefit from if they thought from the point of view of "the world" But that thinking is not common.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the route in to a market like this might be a killer app of some sort built on top of this platform. Users want their POS box tied in to their accounting program - they may not care about user-level databases directly, but they certainly care about making their businesses run more smoothly and reliably.</comment></comment>


What to say when they ask you: how much do you make - <AUTHOR> http://alexpotato.com/blog/what-to-say-when-they-ask-you-how-much-do-you-make/

<comment><USER2> So here's something that bothers me about this kind of blog ...

I've found several typos and other grammatical issues, and I'd love to be able to provide quick fixes for them. It's of no real value to me, but I've got something from the article, and I'd be happy to give back a small amount of time to help make it a little better.

But I have to register, check my email, use the password sent to me in plain- text, login, re-load, find the comment box, and then start typing. It's almost like they don't want comments.

But without hurdles like this a blog is quickly over-whelmed with spam, and other even less savoury material. I have an idea as to how to solve this, but I don't have the time to acquire the necessary skills to implement it, and don't really care enough to bother. And so the world remains more broken than it need be.

Which I find disappointing.</comment>


Build your own Mario worlds - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.theverge.com/2014/6/10/5797062/now-you-can-build-your-own-super-mario-bros-game-mario-maker?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

<comment><USER2> This, along with the slew of other announcements from Nintendo, has me really excited about the future of the Wii U.

It also scares me. I remember seeing videos of ridiculously challenging Mario stages created by modders (e.g. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C1BSbq5aB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C1BSbq5aB0)) and trembling in fear.

I think Sony announced LittleBigPlanet had something like 2 million user- generated stages? I hope we see something that big with this system, and hopefully a nice system around all the content so awesome content can more easily be fleshed out.</comment>


Show HN: Our stab at PG's No.1 frighteningly ambitious startup idea - <AUTHOR> https://www.localuncle.com We built a "search engine" that lets you query opinion- and experience based information about the physical world. Human-to-human. It's something that Google, who is really good at surfacing factual, commonly held to be true, objective information, will never be able to do. <comment><USER2> I can't test it (have an Android) but it sounds good :) and the landing page is nice.

I see a disconnect between the explanation on the landing page and the blurb on the blog "Think "teleportation-as-a-service". A truly magical service. "... what? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Oh, right. That's our old blurp. Totally forgot about it. Will change it. Thanks a lot for checking us out

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I also didn't test it, but from the landing page it looks well executed.

What strategy do you have for empty dance floor? Since it's so hyper local I wouldn't expect many people in my area also have it, unless they've read this article.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's already our second version, so we do have a userbase already. Also, we don't only take your current location into consideration, but also your past location(s). Like that, you're able to engage with people who are and also have been at places. Which makes the empty room problem less bad.</comment></comment>


Blowout: The Deepwater Horizon Disaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/60minutes/main6490197.shtml

<comment><USER2> Good find, best postmortem I've seen so far. Nice to see the MSM is still capable of doing real reporting.</comment>


The Mother of All Demos - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos <comment><USER2> How big of a deal was demonstrating file-linking, graphics, and all of the mentioned stuff was at the time that we tak for granted today.</comment>


DIY 'Meta Clock' with 24 Analog Clocks - <AUTHOR> https://mcuoneclipse.com/2019/12/29/diy-meta-clock-with-24-analog-clocks/ <comment><USER2> Dang. I want one of these on my wall!

But, I don't have the $$$ for the real ones [0], nor the knowhow to build one using the info in this post.

Maybe I'll try to get some time together to learn more about PCB design/hardware... or even try and turn this into a side project to try an open-source collab to make it a more complete kit/tutorial.

0 - [https://clockclock.com/](https://clockclock.com/)

<comment><USER3> The post is as close to an instructable as you can get without being tedious, and the author seems quite approachable. Give it a try, worst case you will learn a lot!

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but you need a 3d printer and an ultrasonic washing machine. And you'll need to buy a lot of other tools if you're not into electronics already.

<comment><USER3> No, you need access to those tools. Or access to somebody who has them or a makerspace near you.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that could be an option for some people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was an iOS version of this from a Swedish company called Chapel. It appears to be officially licensed from Humans Since 1982.

Unfortunately, the app company seems to be gone, so the app is no longer on the App Store (I still have it installed on my devices, though.)

But the originators are still around: [https://www.humanssince1982.com/](https://www.humanssince1982.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I have read that, if you do the computation correctly, averaging 3 mechanical watches can give the accuracy of a quartz based watch.

<comment><USER7> I've always heard it as basic quorum before Raft was a thing. One clock and you never know if it's right or wrong. Two clocks and you're worse off than one in case they disagree. Three and at least you can (probabilistically, anyway) reach a rough consensus good to the deviation of the clocks not exceeding some threshold in comparison to the other two.

<comment><USER8> Why does it matter to reach strict consensus with a quorum of half plus one in the case of a continuous variable such as time of day? Wouldn't averaging work (regardless of the parity of the members)?

<comment><USER9> I think it's assuming you have no idea of the time and one of the clocks may be very wrong, like several hours off. So you'd have two clocks close to each other and one far off.

<comment><USER7> Yessir.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Curious how much power this clock uses, as stepper motors are known to be very power-hungry even in low-current mode.

<comment><USER10> The 48 stepper motors plus all the microcontroller circuit needs between 1.0 and 1.2 A (5V), or around 25 mA per motor, so not that much. I agree that stepper motors are usually power hungry, but these are small torque/low power motors designed for automotive dash boars. The power needed is more of a problem with powering on the whole system, as the condensators and circuit needs more current compared running the motors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't you mask out the "unused" position by placing some material over the arms at a certain angle?

<comment><USER10> Yes, you can. Dieter Zech (mentioned in the article, check out his image gallery) did this for one of his earlier clocks. The downside is that with this the intermezzo animations don't look that cool and nice. If you just want to show the time: go for it. If you want to show nice animations, don't have a hide position. A third option would be to have a third hand to blank out the others, but mechanically this would mean a completely different stepper motor behind it.</comment></comment>


Why the Internet of Things Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://raed.it/blog/why-the-internet-of-things-sucks-and-how-you-can-help-make-it-better/ <comment><USER2> Sure, but I personally don't like my devices and appliances making decisions for me, so I suppose by definition I don't like "smart" technology. No one said devices with IP addresses have to make decisions and thus be smart, so a lamp with an SSH server is still a device in the Internet of Things. It's sitting idle until I design software on my own to control it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's an absolutely viable option as "connected device" but that is not how "Smart" works.

I believe that the next big thing in computing is the removal of unnecessary screens and interactions. The next paradigm is a device that is able to seamlessly do for you the routine/predictable tasks you usually do. Replacing a wall switch with an iPhone app doesn't fall under that paradigm.</comment></comment>


New VR Game – Go Guess – Now on Steam for Rift - <AUTHOR> https://store.steampowered.com/app/799300/Go_Guess/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey All!

I work for Oblix, the team behind Go Guess. Go Guess is a geographic guessing game for VR, and you can download and play now via the link! It would be great to get input and feedback from this community. You can learn more about us at the links below:

[https://oblixvr.com](https://oblixvr.com) [https://www.roadtovr.com/vr-quiz- game-go-guess-uses-google-3...](https://www.roadtovr.com/vr-quiz-game-go- guess-uses-google-360-captures-make-guess/)</comment>


Kotlin: How to Make Your Java Code Base Cleaner and More Readable - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kford55/kotlin-why-i-feel-its-useful-in-a-java-only-code-base-206bdb37c79#.gy3ian8ga <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, I hope this post doesn't come off as a, "Let's all stop using Java for everything because Kotlin is amazing." Just wanted to write it because I had found Kotlin pretty interesting and I was able to find some places in the code bases I work with that would make it a lot more readable and easier to understand.</comment>


Ask HN: Paypal sucks! Should I start a LLC in the US to be able to use Stripe? - <AUTHOR> Hello there,
I have a predicament and would like to hear what you think about it.
I'm a freelance frontend developer based in a third world country and the only ways I have to get paid by my clients are Paypal, Transferwise or Wire Transfer.
Here are my issues with those 3:
- Paypal withdrawals take 4-5 days to arrive in my bank account and they charge $10/witdhrawal. Their fees are also 5.4% for my country and, as you most know, their support sucks.
- Transferwise is awesome but I have gotten some pushback from my clients with this method since a lot of them want to use their credit card/PayPal to pay me.
- Wire transfers are too expensive for me and my customers.
After some research, the only solution I see is to open an LLC in the US and travel there to open a bank account (which I can do) and use the new company info to open the Stripe account.
I tried Stripe Atlas but they rejected me because it looks like I posed a financial risk to their banking partners (that's what they said).
What do you guys think about it? Would it be worth it to go through all this hassle just to use Stripe? I keep fearing the day when PayPal freezes my account for no apparent reason (I have heard stories...) and I lose my only way of getting paid. <comment><USER2> (I work on Stripe Atlas.)

Would you mind sending us an email? We'll see what we can do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just filled your support contact form. Thank you for taking a note of this!</comment></comment>


Foucault's lecture notes from 1970–71 demolish caricatures of his thought (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/foucaults-addendum/ <comment><USER2> Foucault is - _really_ - one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. This is not an audience for "critical theory" or "continental philosophy" or what- have-you, but everyone owes it to themselves to learn about Foucault's work, just as much as they owe it to themselves to learn about the work of say Ludwig Wittgenstein or Claude Shannon. There are continental philosophers who are not very impressive in my opinion (Louis Althusser comes to mind), but Foucault is not one of them.

Foucault's work is usually focused on trying to discern what things we take as natural, known, and unquestionable are actually constructed claims which can be questioned. I think Discipline & Punish is his most accessible writing; it is a history of judicial systems from the 17th century to the 20th century.

This article is not a great introduction to Foucault, and assumes a familiarity. I do not know why it is on Hacker News except that the author has recently passed.

<comment><USER3> There are some interesting ideas buried in his writing (panopticon) but Foucault's ideas aren't consistent and it isn't even clear that he takes them seriously himself. Discipline & Punish is also pretty elevated nonsense.

The book makes sense as a history of penal reform, and Foucault is right to point out that changes often served to better punish prisoners rather than reform them as the rhetoric of the day demanded. But pointing out public hypocrisy is hardly a sophisticated observation for a historian to make. And it is a weak base from which to launch the sweeping attack Foucault attempts on the idea that morality matters, or to insist that man's "soul" is nothing more than his position in power networks or that "power" itself is "knowledge" (not vice versa).

In order to support these points, Foucault is dishonest on so many basic historical points that it calls the honesty of his actual historical research into question. I have a ton of underlined passages in my copy of D&P which I made with increasing frequency as his claims started to contradict each other. In the interest of just picking one, look at Foucault's insistence that democratization had absolutely nothing to do with efforts to remove the death penalty. Really? And Foucault "proves" his opinion not by citing a single document but rather by simply stating his opinion that "executions did not, in fact, frighten the people."

Well which is it? Are we truly to believe that the horrific demonstrations of torture which Foucault spends entire chapters chronicling (salaciously, like pornography) did not frighten anyone? Why if so does he describe them in such detailed fashion? And doesn't his own claim about the ineffectiveness of the punishment now contradict his earlier statements about the nature of knowledge, to say nothing of his earlier chapters which actually documented how people were, in practice, quite terrorized.

A lot of the dishonesty slides by in the sheer minutiae of death. And it all gives the impression that Foucault must be right, if only because he is able to a picture of humanity that would repulse most honest people and do so unflinchingly (the virtue of facing unpleasant truths!). But at a certain point, the discerning reader recognizes his sophistry for what it is and stops trying to make sense of it all. I'd encourage anyone on HN to go directly to Plato if they want real philosophy, or at least jump back to Nietzsche (Schopenhauer as Educator) if they want an entertaining and tongue-in-cheek iconoclast whose ideas merit real thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm an early modern historian of science so I'm sympathetic to arguments about Foucault's ahistorical tendencies. My biggest gripe with him is that he tends to conflate "the world" or "the West" with what often seems to be Paris and its environs, when you look at what he's actually citing. But then again, that's a complaint you can lob against many 20th century French historians.

On the other hand, he really is an excellent historian of ideas and of early modern science; maybe a little less empirically grounded than historians from the "Anglo-Saxon" world like me might prefer, but you can't deny the usefulness of his ideas. He's also quite a good prose stylist in many passages, much more lively and original than the other names (like Derrida, who I find opaque and boring) with whom he's often lumped together. His opening description of Las Meninas by Velazquez in The Order of Things is one of the passages that made me want to study what I do.

To get a little pedantic though (because I'm enjoying this discussion), more recent historians of violence and executions basically support the specific claim you call into question (that executions typically didn't frighten early modern audiences). People like Edward Muir at Northwestern have done great original work in Italian archives to show just how different attitudes toward public violence were in the premodern world. [1] An execution was literally something you'd take your kids to and buy refreshments at, like a play. I don't see the conflict between that claim, which is quite robust on an empirical level, and Foucault describing gory details that shock his modern audience - just because we find it frightening doesn't mean our great-great- great-great-grandparents did.

[1] [https://books.google.com/books?id=zlULqJ70bDUC&q=executions#...](https://books.google.com/books?id=zlULqJ70bDUC&q=executions#v=snippet&q=executions&f=false)

<comment><USER4> And just because people took their kids doesn't mean they didn't find it frightening. The two claims have literally nothing to do with each other. It's like saying people pay good money to see horror movies so they aren't scared of being hacked to bits by psychopaths.

Native peoples in the Great Lakes region mostly enjoyed torturing prisoners of war to death in variously fairly horrible ways, often over days. The whole tribe participated and it had something of the carnivalesque atmosphere the link you provide mentions. Yet there is also evidence that fear of capture loomed very large in the minds of warriors because of the fate that awaited them.

One of the things the post-structuralists (especially Derida, who is really nothing but a troll) are good at is distraction and indirection. Foucault's bloodthirsty descriptions of torture in D&P have no scholarly value and could easily be replaced by a one-or-two-line sketch of the reality without loss of utility... _except_ that people would then read the rest of the book in a less aroused state of mind, and would be more calmly critical of his unsupported and frequently implausible claims.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems to me that you're conflating too different manifestations of fear - the fear of the crowd that watched executions and a larger societal fear of governmental or judicial violence. No one who has read primary sources from the period we're talking about would argue that the latter didn't exist; as for the former, like Muir points out, it could manifest many different ways, from howls of fear to laughter and jokes. In the end we can never say definitively what was running through the heads of everyone in a crowd 400 years ago, but it's not just Foucault making stuff up or trying to trick his audience when he writes about attitudes toward early modern executions. It really is there in the original sources. Here's just one case in point, from the dairy of Samuel Pepys:

Saturday 13 October 1660 To my Lord's in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major- general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy.

[http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/10/13/](http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/10/13/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As much as I am sure the availability of this translation is interesting for english speaking Foucault scholars, I am not sure I buy the 'demolish the caricatures' angle. There was enough material to demolish those caricatures before this was available and, even if there was no published transcript of those lectures, there was no mystery about them and their content was known at least to those who attended those lectures.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do people here generally have context on this? I've never heard of anything the article is talking about.

<comment><USER7> Anyone with formal or informal studies in critical theory will be well aware of Focault.

Everyone else should get up to speed.

<comment><USER8> > Everyone else should get up to speed.

Why? Admittedly, everything I know (not much!) about critical theory comes from hearing people talk _about critical theory_ , and not from first sources, but I don't see why it's more compelling than philosophy in general?

So, really, I'm posing that question completely seriously. Why should I study critical theory in general, or Focault in particular? Keep in mind it's not "Why should I spend time studying critical theory rather than spend time doing nothing", it's "Why should I spend time studying critical theory rather than _some other philosophy /science/technology/art_?"

<comment><USER9> One example of where Foucault would be useful to technologists in particular is in understanding the role of discourses in perpetuating gender inequalities in technology.

Foucault talked about how we reinforce power relations through the internalization and mobilization of discourse. For Foucault, power is best understood by studying our everyday interactions, instead of examining decrees from those in authority. Power affects us so deeply that we often don't realize how our speech and actions reinforce systems of inequality. Working in software, I see exclusionary comments at least on a weekly basis that almost slip under the radar as being innocuous until you realize that this is exactly the form of power that Foucault analyzes in his studies.

So to answer your question, assuming since you're posting in HN that you're in the software field, you may be interested in reading Foucault if you're interested in obtaining additional analytical tools to understand and improve the currently horrible, exclusionary system that permeates the software world.

As a disclaimer, I'm not saying that Foucault is the only way to understand this phenomenon, nor even necessarily the best. Just trying to point out some concrete ways in which his concepts may be useful in certain scenarios.

<comment><USER10> If one is still able to use the framing of "inequality" and "exclusion" then it seems as if Foucault hasn't helped much.

"Gender" is a system of resource extraction. Women are not "excluded" in tech and elsewhere, they are literally defined as resources, as objects that have and produce value. Women are not "unequal" \-- this implies that within the system of gender, both women and men are people who simply don't have the exact same capital. But men do not view women as people under gender. See Beatrix Campbell's "End of Equality". [0]

It is ultimately impossible to understand any microcosm of oppression through individualism. Women and men are social _classes_ , with "gender" being the name referring to the process of securing class:Men's interests as a whole. Individual anti-woman comments do not "reinforce" "inequality", they are symptoms of gender itself. Noel Ignatiev's essay "The Point Is Not To Interpret Whiteness But To To Abolish It" responds to attempts to understand oppression with individualist ideologies [1]:

> Just as the capitalist system is not a capitalist plot, so racial oppression > is not the work of "racists." It is maintained by the principal institutions > of society, including the schools (which define "excellence"), the labor > market (which defines "employment"), the legal system (which defines > "crime"), the welfare system (which defines "poverty"), the medical industry > (which defines "health"), and the family (which defines "kinship"). Many of > these institutions are administered by people who would be offended if > accused of complicity with racial oppression. It is reinforced by reform > programs that address problems traditionally of concern to the "left" \- for > example, federal housing loan guarantees. The simple fact is that the public > schools and the welfare departments are doing more harm to black children > than all the "racist" groups combined.

[0] [http://www.troubleandstrife.org/2014/04/the-end-of- equality/](http://www.troubleandstrife.org/2014/04/the-end-of-equality/)

[1] [http://racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.html](http://racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.html)

<comment><USER4> The difficulty with these claims is that nowhere is there a counter-example to any of the supposed systems of oppression that keep us in thrall. It is a purely utopian analysis that rest on the false belief that humans can be free of the structure that various discourses impose on our relations.

By focusing the analysis on the supposed binary oppositions within and between discursive identities, a great deal of practical, compassionate, utility is lost for the sake of smashing global industrial capitalism with the unrealizable dream of replacing it with some kind of utopian society.

<comment><USER10> "utility is lost for the sake of smashing global industrial capitalism with the unrealizable dream of replacing it with some kind of utopian society."

I wasn't really saying anything about capitalism. Analysis of gender, at least, as a system of resource extraction is possible without an axiom of the necessity of the abolition of global capitalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Scruton: The man who tells you truth does not exist is asking you not to believe him. So don't.

</comment><comment><USER12> My favourite work of Foucault is Il faut défendre la société where he discusses the history of historical intelligibility.

</comment><comment><USER13> Whenever I've read a particularly dense section of Foucault (or anything originally written in a language other than English) I am always struck by the fact that translating things from one language to another is incredibly hard. I remember taking German during the summer to get my language requirement out of the way for my phd and my translations of German newspaper or magazine articles would be so disjointed and far away from the meaning that other people in the class had gotten from them. Translating something written for a much higher reading level must be very difficult.

<comment><USER14> Hey, sorry for this offtopic comment but I saw an older comment of yours that I would love to talk about. Could you mail me? I added an mail address in rot13 to my profile. Should be obvious once you see the domain. ;) Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think his work went downhill after inventing the pendulum :-P

Did anyone see the Focault-Chomsky debate?

<comment><USER16> Did you mean to say he's been on a downswing?</comment></comment>


Dear Microsoft: Absolutely Not - <AUTHOR> http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/dear-microsoft-absolutely-not/ <comment><USER2> Frankly, I don't know if Microsoft actually cares about this stuff. One would think that they should've learned to think one step ahead when the were forced to apologize for removing a black man from an ad they ran in Poland 2009, but no.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1209112/Microsoft- fo...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1209112/Microsoft-forced- apologise-changing-advert-replace-black-man-Polish-version.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I hadn't seen this campaign as I avoid advertising whenever possible, but it's pretty amazing, and IMO rather telling, that nobody at Microsoft realized what message this campaign is actually sending.

Not that I expected better from MS...</comment>


It's okay to say "Stop creeping" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Atlanta_Lants/its-okay-to-say-stop-creeping-452486808647 <comment><USER2> The term "creep" is thrown around way too casually. You don't like that guy? Why? No reason, he's just a creep.

Sure, some guys need to be called names because they are not nice people. But calling a guy a creep is just "Social skill shaming". As in you are punishing a guy because his social skills aren't up to whatever level. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because social situations cause anxiety. Eventually you have lonely guys who call BS and you get things like gamergate.

I'd like to see a study done on how often autistic males get called a "creep" compared to males not on the spectrum.</comment>


What a Programmer Sees When He Watches Inception - <AUTHOR> http://latestatic.com/what-a-programmer-sees-when-he-watches-incept <comment><USER2> Inception also understands "Big Oh" ideas -- when you are looping inside the third level down, you have 10 seconds on the outside giving you 10^3 seconds on the inside. (EDIT: a single "tick" in one level allows for 20 or so "ticks" at the next level of dreaming, because of extra brain capacity during sleep.)

Hehe -- I loved the movie...

<comment><USER3> Except the human brain doesn't have the capacity to process so fast that seconds turns into years.

None the less, the movie was entertaining and I'm just gonna leave it there. I know movie logic shouldn't be a comparison to real world logic, but the geek in me can't help but point out illogical happenings in the film.

<comment><USER4> in real life dreams are very short. Minutes 1-5. And they feel a lot longer. We can dream a lot 1-5 spinets withing one hour, and they feel like hours.

Hence you see your dream to shift from one place, to the other. Here is a very good NOVA documentary on netflix about it: [http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/What_Are_Dreams_Nova/70129639...](http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/What_Are_Dreams_Nova/70129639?strackid=4624b6968f9b85fa_0_srl&strkid=337777698_0_0&trkid=438381)

<comment><USER3> I'm referring to turning minutes into decades. I doubt the brain has the capacity to process that fast.

<comment><USER5> As long as it has the capacity to make you _think_ decades are passing, it doesn't matter that they aren't.

<comment><USER3> Well Cobb stated that when he and his wife woke up from their limbo, he stated that they woke up young again, like they lived an entire life. That's what I'm referring to because that's not thinking you did something but an experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found the movie didn't make a whole lot of sense at times. It felt like the writer cut a lot of corners when it came to the whole logical coherency of the plot. Maybe if we blow something up they won't notice!

The plot was entertaining and a good idea, but it left a lot to be desired. It's not destined to become a classic like: Fight Club, 12 Monkeys, Requiem for a Dream, Primer. If you enjoyed Inception, do yourself a favor and check those out if you haven't seen them.

<comment><USER7> I felt exactly them same way when I left the theater, but then I thought "isn't that the way dreams are?"

In dreams (at least mine anyways) there are solutions/objects/processess that suddenly, without explanation, just materialize out of thin air (but makes perfect sense while in the dream) to problems/events that occur in the dream and only realize how absurd the whole thing was when you wake up.

<comment><USER3> Heh, I felt the same way when I woke up this morning, but it was about the movie. I always wake up in a pissy mood and this time I was lashing out on inception, which, boiled down, is an absurd story of boys playing make believe in a dream and having delusions of grandure.

However, I'm in a better mood now and the movie is still wonderfully entertaining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Furthermore, ... I thought it was interesting the movie only went down 4 levels. I have a rule of thumb when working on hierarchical structures (like a directory tree holding lots of data) that three levels of hierarchy is all a person can hold in their head at a time. This is sort of the like the 7 items +/- 2, except I think that the seven items rule only applies "across" a structure. To understand more than three levels deep requires supplementary structures like indexing, sorting, or nesting ...

(of nesting (of nesting (...)))

<comment><USER8> When they added the 4th level, I explicitly thought to myself "Oh, this is an effort by the filmmaker to pull us out of logical thought by making it too much to organize in our heads in real time."

<comment><USER9> SPOILERS:

It wasn't too much though, the top two were just sleeping in a plane and a falling van, which isn't too much to remember. The elevator scene was just him setting up charges, much more action was happening at the hospital and the limbo level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Entering Limbo = Memory Leak. The reference to an object is nullified (the subject's projection/reference is killed in the dream), so the object is leaked and there is no way to access it, until either a garbage collection happens, or when the parent process is stopped. (i.e. the subject is awaken up).

<comment><USER10> Garbage collection offers a nice explanation for why limbo is only a problem under the influence of the "strong sedative". If garbage collection is a feature of normal dreaming, the "strong sedative" disables it. If you can stretch the metaphor further be my guest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I thought:

* These dreams are far too cohesive and realistic. Dreams aren't like The Matrix where physics is normal and you do something to it. They're more like weird shit happens _and you accept it as normal_.

* Dreaming nested 3 levels of recursion deep? Done it, didn't need a sedative.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anybody else think of the book Godel Escher Bach when they were watching this movie? Beautiful how the movie wraps in on itself like a mobius strip.

<comment><USER2> Is this wrapping around because of the first "act", when washes up on shore? I still don't quite understand how that fits in, if someone cares to elucidate.

<comment><USER13> Spoilers

Don't read if you haven't seen it yet!

Saito dies at some level (if I remember right at the top dream level) and he enters limbo. Cobb goes there from the snow compound dream level but Saito has already been there 20-40 years (maybe they said in the movie, I forgot that too). Cobb then helps him remember Saito is in a dream so they can wake up together from the limbo state.

<comment><USER14> _STILL SPOILERS_

Except they don't, you never see them kill themselves (to exit the dream) or pass through the other levels of dreams, it just cuts straight to the plane. Then at the end he sees his kids, but they're _exactly_ as they appear in his dreams. The top continuing to spin just makes it more explicit.

So he never made it out of limbo, when you see him awaking in the plane that's just him creating his own reality inside limbo, one where he gets to go back to his kids.

<comment><USER15> "Then at the end he sees his kids, but they're exactly as they appear in his dreams. The top continuing to spin just makes it more explicit."

Nolan was just doing that to mess with the audience. Yes, the kids were wearing the same clothes, but the top started wobbling right before it cut away. So the audience is left not knowing if he is stuck in limbo or not. It could be interpreted either way.

Anyways, an easy way to tell if you are in a dream without relying on a totem (in the movie's universe) is to look at an analog clock. The numbers appear upside down in the dream world. For some reason this was only illustrated once in the movie.

<comment><USER16> I seem to remember some Batman cartoon where Batman realizes he's in a dream because letters shift around oddly while he's trying to read something.

Indeed, I remember from my own dreams that text and numbers behaves oddly (disappears/changes when you look around).

I've also heard this technique is used by lucid dreamers (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream>) to figure out that they're dreaming so they can begin to take control of the dream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone explain why the zero g scenes didn't cascade down through each dream level? They were feeling forces in the first dream in the van and those would go to the hotel but those sleeping there would not feel the same forces (eg lack of gravity) the next level down.

I did really love the idea behind the totem though, very clever.

<comment><USER17> They didn't talk about it explicitly, but in my mind it was connected to how the guy who got injured felt progressively better each time he went down a dream level. Dreams are affected by what happens above them, but it's sort of passed through a filter.

<comment><USER9> Exactly, the dreamers in the van are feeling 0g, so they're dreaming in 0g as well. However, it's still a dream so when you reach the dream-within-a-dream level, the brain probably defaults to what it's more used to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What a computer scientist sees is an infinite tower of reflective interpreters.

</comment><comment><USER19> 'Inception' was a classic example of recursion.

<comment><USER20> Not really, just a callstack four* calls deep.

 _...just four?_

Hmm, actually there was multi-threading, using sort of kick-based synchronisation primitive.

<comment><USER21> _actually there was multi-threading, using sort of kick-based synchronisation primitive_

I think they actually used an actor-based threading model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> if(depth > 3) return false; else {

      try {
      // ... do what the OP wrote
      } catch (DeathException D) {
        enterLimboState() ...
      }
    }

</comment><comment><USER23> What if _she_ watches it?

<comment><USER24> _What a Programmer Sees When He or She Watches Inception_ does not have the same panache.

<comment><USER25> I've never understood the animosity towards overloading `they` as a neuter singular pronoun. It doesn't seem to introduce any sort of ambiguity in the language and replaces a whole slurry of fumbling and hackish attempts with a single widely understood syllable. It's damned convenient.

Of course, I also hold a disdain for "proper quoting".

<comment><USER26> The problem is, when a person uses 'they' as a single pronoun, he seems uneducated.

<comment><USER27> That's interesting, I don't think it makes one seem anymore uneducated than any other piece of correctly used grammar (correct use of the word "one", "none of them is" etc). I wouldn't regard my self as uneducated, having had the privelege to go to a good (if not public/private) school.

By any chance is this one of those quirks of American grammar usage that I've not come across before. The only times where I've seen disapproval of the use of 'they' in that fashion was on the Internet... By any chance is this another Ame

<comment><USER16> "They is so smart!" --> the apparent subject-verb disagreement is just too unfamiliar to most ears.

<comment><USER27> You are still supposed to use plural declensions despite talking about a single person.

For instance: "if such a person existed, they were very quiet about their existence". Note that it's not "they was", which is grammatically incorrect.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/05/im-terrified-tell-people-much-make/

<comment><USER2> So you wrote an article about it but you were too shy to actually reveal what you earn, and so anyone else trying to get their first job at Wired is none the wiser about what they might we working towards.</comment>


Tesla Cybertruck may be unsafe for other road users: Australian safety chief - <AUTHOR> https://thedriven.io/2019/11/27/tesla-cybertruck-may-be-unsafe-for-other-road-users-says-australian-safety-chief/ <comment><USER2> "unsafe for other road users" might be one of the best truck advertising slogans for US market one could imagine.

<comment><USER3> I was in Maroochydore, Australia this morning (I don't normally go near the shops there) and the number of big American trucks in the carpark surprised me. In just the section of parking I as in there was a Dodge Ram and two F250s, all hanging a couple of feet into the road being too long for your standard car park. A 4x4 Pajaro next to one of the Fords looked small.

I'm surprised a similar point hasn't been made about those models.

<comment><USER4> Ford Rangers are really popular too. This is a recent thing with Toyota, Ford, Mitsubishi and Holden (GM) all shutting down locally in the last 10 or so years, therefore all current trucks are US/foreign designed.

<comment><USER3> Very popular. Even they look small next to a F250 - like you shrunk one down to 3/4 size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who commutes by bike and has been hit twice by cars, the first thought that crossed my mind when seeing the CyberTruck was 'ouch'.

<comment><USER6> I think this car will seriously hurt the car insurance industry. Just imagine a car that cannot get scratches and/or mailbox dents which cost thousands of dollars in repair by simply... not colouring the car and making the surface more scratch-resistant. Awesome!

As a fellow bike-communter myself I had exactly the same thoughts regarding pedestrian safety though.

<comment><USER7> _Just imagine a car that cannot get scratches and /or mailbox dents which cost thousands of dollars in repair by simply... _

Consider that the reason that the windows shattered in the demo was that the dent proof doors transmitted sufficient force to the base of the window to weaken it. I'm sure the insurance industry will price coverage appropriately.

<comment><USER8> > Consider that the reason that the windows shattered in the demo was that the > dent proof doors transmitted sufficient force to the base of the window to > weaken it.

I don't believe that for a second, considering the rear window shattered as well and was not hit by the sledge hammer.

<comment><USER7> Take it up with Musk.

[https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Elon-Musk-Tesla-s- Cy...](https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Elon-Musk-Tesla-s-Cybertruck- windows-would-have-14860872.php)

<comment><USER8> I'm aware of what he said to save face. However, if you believe the window broke because a completely different door was hit than I have a bridge to sell you.

<comment><USER9> If you hit something, the momentum has to get dispersed somewhere. If the hammer didn't suffer, the car did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fact that the body is undentable and glass is unbreakable makes it sound worse for occupants, too. If it doesn't crumple, you're going to be in for a bad time in a car accident.

<comment><USER11> The other car is the crumple zone

<comment><USER12> Works great until the first cyber truck on cyber truck accident...

<comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irresistible_force_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irresistible_force_paradox)

aka "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> All trucks are unsafe for pedestrians, period.

<comment><USER15> Don't forget the lifted trucks. If one of those runs into the side of my car, it's bumper directly hitting my face.

<comment><USER16> Unpopular opinion: Lifted trucks should be illegal.

<comment><USER17> They are in Australia! (Where the ANCAP is from).

Or rather, lifts beyond a few inches require special certification. Same goes for larger tires and after market bullbars.

<comment><USER18> Heck in Australia I don't think it's even legal to have tyres that come outside the width of the mud guards.

<comment><USER19> Of course it isn't, that's seriously dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder... some people claim the "negative press" of the glass shattering was by design because it creates a larger narrative, that if they handle properly, keeps the truck in the public's ears and eyes everyday (which is has) and if they "fix it" makes them look like they care about their customer bases voice.

If I agreed/believed that, this could be a part 2 to that plan. I bet a discussion will come up how government regulations don't allow the public to have bullet-RESISTANT vehicles (no such thing as "bulletproof", especially if you don't get 3rd party standardized testing to back up your claim). Along with trying to rewrite vehicle laws/standards to benefit Tesla.

Personally, don't care either way. But I always get this uneasy feeling whenever Musk does anything.

<comment><USER21> Here is a piece of bulletproof glass used on bullet proof cars that takes 18 rounds and isn't pierced. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_FN5xzeVluc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_FN5xzeVluc)

I have a water resistant watch and I understand I can't go diving with it, but I feel like maybe this glass is more than resistant enough to qualify as "proof"?

<comment><USER22> Bulletproof is a reason that we will see black pr about this truck because many places like Australia/Canada have tried to outlaw these mods due to well known gangsters using them the police are too incompetent to arrest. For example it's illegal to sell bulletproof vests here. Everytime I read some critic of this truck it's from a place that has these laws in place, Musk needs to counter this onslaught of blackPR from 'unfree' countries such as my own who can't arrest known felons so resort to punishing everybody else trying to ban or make illegal these features.

<comment><USER23> Are you saying that cops would prefer to shoot gangsters through normal glass than just arrest them at home?

I don't think Australia has any issue banning things, it did guns and cracked open encryption. You're reaching for a conspiracy.

<comment><USER22> Criminals shooting at each other, the politicians here and their PR firms routinely try to reduce the culture of impunity these criminals have flaunting in public their status from the safety of modded bulletproof vehicles and seize them as illegal because they can't ever for some reason just jail the criminal. It's a reached for conspiracy but they have done blackPR like this in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> News flash: _all_ trucks and large SUVs are unsafe for other road users.

<comment><USER25> News flash: The world isn't black or white.

You can have trucks that are safer than others.

<comment><USER24> What's your point? Do you think the Cybertruck is more dangerous than every truck and large SUV out there on the road right now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In an idealized economy, the owner of a dangerous-to-others truck would be paying enough for liability insurance to cover their negative safety externalities.

Does that play out in reality?

<comment><USER27> In most of America, the minimum liability insurance is far too low. For example, California only requires $15k per person in liability insurance. If someone is killed or seriously injured, there's easily millions in damages.

This effectively is a subsidy to car driving (and bad drivers). But politically, it seems impossible to fix this. Red states want less government intervention, and blue states don't want to "penalize" poor people.

<comment><USER28> You know most "Red States" have higher minimums that CA right?

Further the insurance minimums does not limit a person liability just the amount the insurance company will pay, if you are stupid and dont have enough insurance then your other assets (like your home) can be seized and your wages garnished to recover the liability

This is also why one should have good Uninsured and Under insured coverage

However saying all of that, one of the reasons for the Low Minimums on Liability in some states as they have gone to a "No Fault" system so your insurance would pay your costs so it is up to you to buy the amount you want to be covered for, it does not matter what the "other guy" has

<comment><USER29> What's really worrying is that the cost of uninsured motorist coverage is fairly close to the cost of liability insurance. This would indicate that most everyone in this corner of the state does not carry sufficient insurance to cover the damage that he causes, so people pay extra to shield themselves from that kind of externality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I ordered one last week. I wonder how many of the specifications advertised will actually be met by the production version. 500 mile range, faster than a vette, 100cu feet of storage, seats 6, sledgehammer proof body, bullet proof glass, etc. It all sounds too good to be true for only $70k.

<comment><USER19> When it comes to the key specifications of their vehicles, Tesla have never, ever under delivered on their key promises.

I have no doubt it will do all the things you listed, likely exceeding some of them. I won't be at all surprised if it looks a little different - you can google the original Model S prototype compared to the actual, and the Model 3.

They tweak some things, but overall I strongly believe you'll get what you ordered.

<comment><USER31> Elon is notorious for broken promises lol. But I guess it depends on what you mean by key promises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is just silly. There were not many pictures of it, but the truck has a massive frunk. This frunk will just be designed to crumple and adsorb the impact from a front collision.

The structural frame will not extend all the way to the front but end earlier (about above the front wheel well).

Tesla will want a five star safety rating for this thing, and you can not get that without also taking pedestrian safety into account.

Edit: About the raised front: the front is not any more raised that my current main car, a Volkswagen T5 Bus, which is a very common car in europe. So I don't see why it should have a worse pedestrian safety rating.

<comment><USER33> To crumble for pedestrians it can't be made completely out of unbreakable stainless steel. It's one of the other.

<comment><USER32> Stainless steel is not some magic adamantium that is completely unbreakable. You can choose thinner steel for the part that is designed to crumple, and it will crumple or fold as intended, just like any other material.

I would guess that the bonnet will move backwards and slide over the windshield, and the other part of the front (up to the front wheel wells) will be designed to crumple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So happy to see everyone not jumping to conclusions over what is just a concept car and will no doubt - like all concept cars - be considerably different to the retail version /s

</comment><comment><USER35> Is it me or this feels like the automobile mafia at play? They obviously feel threatened by the introduction of this véhicule.

<comment><USER36> No, just standards and regulations that are enacted to ensure the general safety of the population. They're relatively common in the developed world outside of US.

<comment><USER35> If they were really doing their job we wouldn't have cars driving all around us. There is obviously more at play here.

<comment><USER25> The only thing at play here is your pathetic attempt to slur a safety organisation just because they dared to be critical of the Cybertruck.

Their job is to look after the interests of the general public not any one company.

<comment><USER35> Pathetic until you realize what is really going on? That's just a theory in the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think instead of a focus on mpg (which electrics make murky anyway), we should restrict weight. Eventually the goal is lightweight cars with reasonable safety features. People who want to drive 5000lb cars should have their danger to others health baked into their insurance premiums.

<comment><USER38> Unfortunately trees, concrete pillars, and brick walls are unlikely to comply with safety restrictions on weight. Georgia was ridiculed a few years back for prohibiting trees between the road and the sidewalk under the theory that a car that wanders off the road can recover its intended path of there aren't trees in the way. Lightweight cars would still be lethal to pedestrians but also would make the elimination of trees and street furniture between the road and the sidewalk more desirable.

<comment><USER37> Wouldn't hitting a concrete wall, in a lighter car, be safer than a heavier car, assuming no drastic difference in safety systems in the car, since the overall force is still less? The frame of the car has to absorb less force.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> lol what? This is like complaining for the sake of complaining. It's obviously a prototype and i have no doubt that there will be some redesigns.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've definitely been thinking the same thing. It's super heavy and has a massive battery..

</comment><comment><USER41> I was thinking about this the other day. Will they let a armored tank on the road?

<comment><USER42> they let armored cars, dump trucks, snow plow trucks, cement trucks, etc... on the road..

<comment><USER43> Those things typically require special drivers licenses though.

<comment><USER13> Back to the original post, will they have a dedicated "Tank" license?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Will Australia also be banning semi trucks?

Collision detection is far more important than body construction in terms of risk to pedestrians and other vehicles.

This reads like regulatory overreach to me, and cherry picking.

<comment><USER45> That's Australia for you. We're the prototypical "big government nanny state" that conservative Americans fear. This could also be motivated by the Australian government's radical opposition to clean tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Ever since the reveal, all I can think about is the instance where a Tesla ran into the broad side of a tractor-trailer.

Since the panels of the cybertruck are "scored on the inside and bent", and the body is the "exoskeleton" in place of a frame, the physics of this oragami-like interaction seem predictable...

And in my head, I see a grotesque rendition of the ketschup-packet-under-the- chair prank from middle school.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's just plain ass-ugly, to my eyes. I grew up around pickups and owned one until it became a pita in a parking garage.

The VW Tarok concept truck is a far better looking pickup than the Tesla monstrosity. The Neuron T/One looks more futuristic and usable. The Lordstown Endurance looks more standard (and has a bloody expensive sounding name). The Atlis XT looks as conventional as it gets (but still way better than the Tesla).

I think the Tesla is going to be another Humvee, if it goes to market: more about wasted money and contrarian looks than being actually useful. A toy for the uselessly rich.

<comment><USER38> When I lived in a midrise in the middle of town we had a Hummer driver move into the building. He started parking in the handicap space on the ground level because the Hummer's turning radius was too large to be able to make the corners in the parking deck to his leased parking spot. So much for being able to go anywhere in the Hummer. It never was a very practical vehicle. Other than the low polygon looks, the Cybertruck seems inline with the functionality of trucks in the F150 to F250 range. Probably won't be a problem performing tasks that those trucks already perform.

<comment><USER48> I expect the autopilot parking will be widely used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This was my immediate reaction when I first saw it: how is anything remotely like that design ever going to be road-legal here in the UK, unless it has some innovative ways to do better than standard, possibly even legally- required safety features that don't seem to have been mentioned?

There are certainly reasonable alternatives to things like wing mirrors. For example, it's not hard to imagine a camera-and-screen arrangement in a vehicle from Tesla.

However, giving the vehicle a solid shell pretty much implies that the full force of any impact is transmitted to the occupants on one side and the impactee on the other because physics, which is going to be a concern given the great emphasis on the materials used.

Then there's the angular styling, which appears to have edges practically designed to cause serious injury to anyone vulnerable that might be hit by the vehicle, not to mention the potential to act as a ramp sending the victim of a frontal collision up the front or even over the top of the vehicle.

It definitely looks like a case of form-over-function so far, but it's hard to believe no-one at Tesla has considered these kinds of issues, so surely they must have something up their sleeves to deal with them (unless <conspiracy theory>it's all been a very successful publicity stunt and they never really intended to bring a vehicle like this to market</conspiracy-theory>).

<comment><USER50> The Ford F-150 is the most popular vehicle in the USA. Despite this, new car sales of the F-150 outside of North America appears to be negligible. This disparity is instructive.

Cybertruck is a product designed squarely for this North American market and isn't going to have mass appeal in any other global markets beyond novelty factor for a small number of people with excessive disposable wealth.

Yes, the Cybertruck looks like a safety nightmare in many respects—especially for pedestrians—but I would dare guess that it'd still be safer across the board compared to its established competitors like the F-150.

<comment><USER51> The United States has a traffic related mortality of 12.4 per 100,000 pop compared to the UKs 3.1 and well behind the rest of western Europe [1] Its almost as if there's something wrong with America's road regulations.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic- related_death_rate)

<comment><USER52> While I don't doubt there are shortcomings in the US's road safety regulatory regime, That's probably not a fair comparison.

I strongly suspect that on both a trip-miles and passenger-miles basis, the US far outstrips any european country.

*edit

If you sort that table on 'road fatalities per billion vehicle KM' you'll see the US at 7.3, same as Belgium. The UK is doing better at 3.4

<comment><USER50> I'd argue it's entirely fair. The fact that people in the US spend a lot more time in the car is part of the problem.

Fatalities per distance is fine for a technical comparison of road safety regulations.

Fatalities per population is more useful when comparing the safety of roads as they are used.

<comment><USER53> US spends more time in the car because of lower population density than Europe. UK is the size of Colorado yet has 10x the population, so of course they will drive less.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>