The Allure of Small Towns for Big City Freelancers - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/07/big-city-freelancers-look-to-small-cities-to-lower-cost-of-living.html <comment><USER3> Finally - A positive perspective on small town living.

When I read the stories of big city lifestyles I'm amazed so many people opt- in to it. Traffic, noise, concrete everywhere. Yuck - but to each their own.

I'll take my country life as a remote worker going on 8 years. Trees, forest, wildlife, fresh air, backyards. 5 minutes walk or 1 minute drive to a shop for groceries, hardware, lumber, restaurants, kid parks.

Everyone knows each other. Very tight knit community. Don't even get me started on cost of living differences. I'll never leave.

Remote work really levels the playing field and unlocks a lot of potential for rural and small towns. All happening at a time when the staple of resource extraction is declining but global connectivity is increasing. There may be a bright future for small towns yet.

<comment><USER4> Not trying to start a "town vs city" argument - to each their own, as you said - but I think people who don't live in big cities misunderstand what life is like there. In NYC you hear tourists say "I could never live here". The thing is, as someone who lives in New York, I also could never live here, if _here_ is Times Square or some other tourist hotspot. Cities are just collections of neighborhoods. In your neighborhood you recognize your neighbors and feel the same community spirit you would in any town. The difference is that you can get on a subway or bus and see people or have experiences that would require a trip to the airport somewhere else. But the real thing I love about city life are the opportunities you have every day to come into contact with people who are different than you. Going for a jog in the winter through a Hasidic neighborhood, an elderly man in a wheelchair is stuck in the snow, so I help him get to temple. A woman with a cane who has clearly had a very different life than me needs a seat on the subway, we make eye contact and I get up for her, she says thank you and I say no trouble. These small unavoidable collisions every day really do have an impact on how you see the world.

<comment><USER5> Or, people _do_ understand and yet still don't like it. I've lived in New York City and also had those superficial interactions with people different from me. But like the person you're responding to, I much prefer my current life of remote work from a rural town in the South, for all the reasons in the original comment.

It just felt like your comment, despite reiterating the parent's "to each their own" caveat, was either a total non sequitur or pushing the perspective that if you don't like city life you must just not understand it.

<comment><USER6> >had those superficial interactions with people different from me

sorry why do you presume they're superficial? or i should sat why do you exalt your small town interactions over someone else's big-town interactions? i've lived in both a smalltown (currently) and brooklyn ny (previously) and the depth of the interactions is absolutely about the same.

btw we can all play presumptuous and haughty: in your "tight-knit" community no one will help you/acknowledge you as soon as you diverge from highly constrained cultural norms even a small iota - where as in my diverse working class neighborhood in brooklyn that wouldn't be the case. what do you say? not true? color me just as suspicious as you color yourself if i claim to you that i actually had deep and genuine conversations with my neighbors, grocers, and occasionally fellow subway riders.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I agree with you that the depth of interactions are the same.

It was just an unkind jab at the fact that the examples given of exposure to different people and cultures were helping someone cross the road and giving up a seat on the subway. That jibed with my experience living in NYC - it's not particularly conducive to expanding your horizons; the diversity is there if you really want to go out and meet people, but mostly it will be courteous distance on the street and most of your deep interactions will be within your filter bubble, same as anywhere.

Unlike my current town, NYC has mosques, but I didn't actually learn anything about Islam or Muslims living there, compared to when I actually lived in the Middle East and made friends for life there. I ate at Chinese restaurants and shopped in Chinatown but wouldn't say I gained any cultural insights. But living in Singapore for a year and making friends with Singaporeans, Indonesians, and Chinese people - there I learned a lot.

<comment><USER7> You would have learned the same if you had _lived_ in those neighborhoods instead of simply swinging by. Of course, most people choose to segregate, but you always have the option in NYC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This idea works really well for remote developers.

I live in the tiny, 1,000 person, village of Arbonne-la-Foret, smack dab in the middle of nowhere, France. That is, unless you're a rock climber, in which case it's exactly in the center of the largest concentration of fantastic bouldering on the planet. American companies are happy to pay me the same to work from here as from that little Ohio town in the article, or from the Bay Area.

I think the strategy to follow if you're in tech these days is to:

      1. figure out the thing you like to do most in life,
      2. find the best place in the world to do that thing,
      3. move there and,
      4. contract remotely for a company based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

There is good internet everywhere. I'm finding less and less reason why anybody who could would ever want to work in an office.

<comment><USER9> That is a nice fantasy. I don't see it applying for most people tho. I know exactly zero people who do contract/remote work and don't struggle to make a living, even in a cheaper area. The hardest part is to get any decent paying contracts.

You might have some advantage that is not even clear to you. Maybe you worked in a big company for 10 years and now can gather work through contacts from there. Maybe your father is well known in the industry you work. Something like that.

<comment><USER8> _You might have some advantage_

Keep in mind that the first 10 odd years of your career out of school should be all about _building_ that advantage. You want to hit your 30s in a state of Embarrassing Employability, where another amazing contract gig is just an email or two, or a Twitter status update away.

Spend your entire 20s amassing a collections of artifacts you can point to to demonstrate how good you are at all this stuff, and a horde of ex-bosses and ex-co-workers to whom your name springs first to mind when asked by somebody who needs a guy to do that stuff if they know The Guy.

So yes, absolutely. Get an advantage. But know that the short list of "built in" ones you gave above is not comprehensive. The best advantages are the ones you construct yourself.

<comment><USER10> Sure, but those aren't the people struggling. People with successful careers and property in the Bay Area have probably seen both their salary and property value double in the last ten years. Which is pretty hard to beat anywhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Small towns get worse the further you are from the default. For example, dating here is terrible. All the men are assholes or very deep in the closet.

The women are super religious. Think bible quotes as Tinder profiles. And I don't mean "their bios have a lot about religion in them." I mean that's their whole profile. A bible quote.

And I doubt many gender non-comforming people in my age range are out about it. There is no way I'm taking my queer ass to one of the three dive bars to do it the traditional way.

That's not even getting into the lack of entertainment options. This town is at least close enough to Atlanta and Athens for good internet options and reasonable support for LGBT+ people in government. They had updated marriage licenses ready before the SCOTUS ruling.

If you're a straight, white, cis dude who doesn't mind traveling to the nearest city for anything fun to do, knock yourself out. At least get a hotel paid monthly and spend some real quality time in a prospective small town first. Even if you are super default, I don't see how you could enjoy it if you're remotely intellectually curious.

I'm getting out of here ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER12> Six years ago our remotely working family was choosing between Canada and Chile (these countries have freelancer-friendly immigration[1]). After looking at the costs of life and real estate in Canada, Chile won and we moved to a small southern city[2]. It is walkable, green, full of various stores and services but still small enough to occasionally run into your friends in the downtown. I feel more at home here than in St. Petersburg where I've spent most of my life.

We live very comfortably here for less than $2k/mo for two people and expect to build a house for less than $150k (including half a hectare of land that we have bought already). I think it's quite easy to retire early in these conditions even on a moderate remote income ($50-60k). Also, Chilean personal income taxes are the lowest in the OECD[3].

[1]: [https://qotoqot.com/blog/best-countries/](https://qotoqot.com/blog/best- countries/)

[2]: [https://valdiviaguide.com/](https://valdiviaguide.com/)

[3]: [http://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages- chile.pdf](http://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-chile.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Cool! Chile looks like an interesting country - you can pick a climate that suits your fancy... but in practice, how does that work out? Are there differences (besides the weather) between north and south? Did you speak Spanish when you went? Have you written about your experiences?

<comment><USER12> When we were moving here, I thought we would stay only for 6-7 years to get a better passport but now I just don't want to leave.

The southern Chilean culture suits me perfectly: there's no tension in the air (especially compared to the US or Russia) and most people are a bit reserved but kind to each other. It's somewhat different in the central regions because of the population density and competitiveness but still great in my opinion.

Neither of us spoke Spanish and it was tough in the first year because we had little time to practice. Overall Spanish acquisition goes quite slowly because we work from home and have met a lot of English-speaking friends but I got to the conversational level in the third year. It's not a hard language after all.

I don't have an immigrant's blog but I made the "Valdivia Guide" site from the previous comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's what I did, some years ago, as a consultant. Once I had enough steady clients, I moved to a small town, where living expenses were much lower.

However, I did pick a college town, not very far from interstates, Amtrak and a regional airport. So meeting clients hasn't been a huge hassle. And there are interesting communities, including a maker space.

And damn, the vibe is amazing. As much as I come off online as a privacy extremist, I love the intimacy. Neighbors care about each other. There's no need to lock your doors. Neighbors ask about strange vehicles and people. They know you at the post office. I've received mail addressed to just name, city, state and postal code.

But of course, I never talk about Mirimir etc there ;)

<comment><USER15> _That 's what I did, some years ago, as a consultant. Once I had enough steady clients, I moved to a small town, where living expenses were much lower._

I'm living in NYC and looking into something similar. The rent is absurd and the vast majority of the work I do is conducted electronically. I read this article and was like, "Very close to my reaction." I don't want to move to a really small town, but somewhere like Nashville or Columbus, OH is appealing.

<comment><USER16> I moved from Brooklyn to Baltimore five years ago, without changing my income. It meant an instant boost to my standard of living, as I was able to get a new luxury apartment in a nice neighborhood for the same rent as my infested Brooklyn studio in a "transitioning" neighborhood.

There are so many mid-size, low-cost-of-living, vibrant cities to choose from. Baltimore, Pittsburg, Columbus, Cincinnati, Charleston, New Orleans, Nashville, Louisville, ... And these days they all have great co-working spaces.

<comment><USER17> If I did ever move back to the US I think I'd pick one of these second tier cities too. Small town living is just too provincial for me but I think you get a lot of the upsides of living in NYC or LA or SF without a lot of the downsides when you live in a place like Pittsburg.

Not to mention that cities like NYC or LA are so expensive and so gentrified now that artists and other creative people can't afford to live there anymore so they're a lot less interesting than they were 20 years ago anyway. There's a lot of really creative and offbeat electronic music coming out of the American Midwest right now for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A huge upside for small town living is livability for people with disabilities. It's a major reason, for example, that people like to retire to smaller towns. It's also why it is expensive to rear more than a couple small kids in a major urban area, assuming you can consider babies and toddlers (temporarily) less-than-able human beings.

It varies from big city to big city, but older areas of cities are usually grandfathered out of ADA regulations that require wider doors, accessibility ramps, elevators, etc. Parking at all in most cities is atrocious, let alone handicap parking with extra room to unload a wheelchair. Wide aisles are a waste of space in dense urban areas but needed if you need to get a wheelchair to the only open table in the back of the room. Shoving your way on to a crowded train car is distasteful when young and healthy but a deal breaker for many. See also availability of handicap bathroom stalls. The list goes on.

I was recently at a museum in a small city and was struck with how many visitors had significant disabilities of various kinds. For all the diversity we come to expect from large cities, this kind of diversity is probably lacking.

<comment><USER19> I've always been under the impression that small towns aren't accessible from an aging and disabled perspective. Even the smallest tasks require a car and there's little to no public transportation. Whereas in cities, you might only have to go to the corner to grab necessities or get medication from your pharmacy.

I've worked with Meals on Wheels in suburban areas. Often, if the elderly didn't live in a senior community/nursing home or didn't have family nearby, they barely left home because they physically, or legally, couldn't drive. That means they don't see doctors when they need to, and lacked food, medication and basic necessities. Taxis exist, but they're relatively expensive if you're retired and living off of Social Security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I lived in Irvine CA, my studio rent was 1650 one of the cheaper ones in the complex. Wife and I made combined 110k a year and all we had enough for was to pay living expenses when figure in everything else. Then I lost my job and had to pick up freelancing as nobody else was hiring - I didn't have enough experience in the field I wanted to work in. Moved to Vancouver WA and was able to afford more while getting better freelance gigs. Now I live in rural Japan where a 3 br house costs $500 to rent. I still freelance and have grown my career significantly- with ability to pull over 100k if I wanted to, except now I work less since I want to spend more time with family. Even the money I'm making now, while far far less than many people here, goes a long way. Meanwhile this has enabled me to spend 50% of my time to work on side projects. I am hoping some of them pan out for recurring income so I can drop wage slavery forever. Big cities are fun and all when you are younger. Spend all your money on rent - no problem at that age. Then you get to a point when it all sounds too absurd and you want a lawn, a place to watch your kids play somewhere to slow the hell down from life in the fast lane.

<comment><USER21> I feel like we're missing a lot of detail between Vancouver, WA and how you ended up in rural Japan... Can you fill some of that in? How did you end up there?

<comment><USER20> My wife is Japanese. We were expecting our first and made a conscious decision to move. Most of my clients now are still from US, although I have and occasionally still work with agencies in other English speaking countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> adam-a I can see the same thing happening over here in the UK. Me and my partner left London to move to a smaller city Scotland, we now pay 60% of the rent for a place that's twice as big. I still freelance for clients in London and can funnel the extra money into side projects and savings. We actually have a realistic chance of buying a house in the next couple of years too!

One thing I wonder, having seen a few articles recently about people leaving big cities[1], is whether this is a new trend or simply the same thing that happens every generation as people grow older and their priorities change?

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jun/28/london- propert...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jun/28/london-property- prices-blamed-for-record-exodus)

<comment><USER22> > One thing I wonder, having seen a few articles recently about people leaving > big cities[1], is whether this is a new trend or simply the same thing that > happens every generation as people grow older and their priorities change?

I don't think so - not in general. I think it largely depends on the economical situation. My grandparents (and with them many others) have done the exact opposite because it made economical sense back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've always thought that people misunderstood the power of remote working. The power is that it lets you live where you want to live while also letting you do the work that you want to regardless of where either is. We love country life. We live in a village of less than 400 people on 100 acres of land yet I work internationally in marketing and my wife is an engineer with a major aerospace company.

Some of my best friends also have jobs that allow them to live in the city they want to live (Tampa area) while working for companies in locations that they have no desire to live in (SF Bay area).

I've always felt that remote working was all about making the connection between the desired career and desired lifestyle where in the past if you wanted to work for major firm X you had to live THERE.

<comment><USER24> Isn't this exactly what people understand the power of remote work to be? Sadly, most firms still don't think the (real or perceived) loss of productivity is a good deal for them, even if it is for their employees.

<comment><USER23> Based on my experience it isn't. Most people full stop at 'work from home' but never take the next step toward live how I want to live while working how I want to work. They have their job, convince their boss to let them work from home, then never actually do anything other than work in their PJs. ;)

<comment><USER24> Maybe staying where they are but working in their PJs is how they want to live!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Anybody ever though about downshifting to 3rd world countries in line of this?

I myself work for a SZ based company, moved there from Canada. During production run times I'm in Shenzhen, and the rest of the time I'm stationed in a random "developing country" trying to "play a big man," fraternise with local business and political establishments, trying to win bets.

We have few Americans in the company, all of them are from "flyover" states. They all say China is a way better bet in moving up the ladder for them than Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER26> A friend of mine moved to the Philippines with her husband (both Australian) to set up an offshore development shop doing NetSute ERP implementations for Australian NetSuite customers (usually mid-market retailers or manufactures).

She's been there for 4 years now so it must be going well - her house is amazing there too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I moved to CA not for work, but family. There was nothing to do in my home state in the south, and I lived in the capital.

In CA I have endless opportunities, events, family activities, and access to a huge variety of landscapes. Having both the ocean and mountains within easy reach is a big advantage. Food is also so much better out here. And then the people -- it's nice to live around people who think and feel the same way.

I sometimes think through moving back, or somewhere else with low cost of living, but I'm not willing to give everything up.

<comment><USER28> I've lived on the west coast and in the south (where I currently am). The west coast has what you say, but there are spots here in the south that are pretty close, and _way_ less expensive.

I'm a 3 hour drive from the ocean, 30 minutes from decent mountain hikes (not as good as the Cascades, but decent). The food here is not as varied as Seattle. To get the same variety, I have to hop in the car and head up to Ashville, down to Atlanta, or 30 minutes into Greenville (whose food scene is improving). That said, I'm currently in walking distance of a great Thai place, a really good microbrewery, a great farm-to-table place, a great Mexican place, a really good seafood place... So, that's good enough for me. Politically, this is a conservative place, but not as much a you'd think, and Ashville, which is ~1 hour away, is as liberal as Seattle, I'd wager. So, you can definitely find a nice group of folks who think the way you do, if you don't feel like hanging out with a more diverse group.

<comment><USER29> > I'm a 3 hour drive from the ocean

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this would be a dealbreak for anyone for whom ocean access is even moderately important. Even the greater Portland, OR area being 2 hours away (assuming no traffic, which is never a safe assumption for those routes) was a big enough impediment to a friend of mine who is a CA expat there, that he considers casual day trips out of the question.

> not as good as the Cascades, but decent

> food here is not as varied as Seattle

Ultimately, I think this is the big takeaway.. there are places that may be _way_ less expensive, as you say, but many amenities (for lack of a better term) are only kinda-sorta comparable if one squints hard enough.

If those amenities are central to ones lifestyle and perception of quality of life, that approximation isn't going to cut it, no matter how cheap it is. Some people may well overestimate the importance of such amenities, but others may underestimate them because they take them for granted, if they've lived in certain West Coast cities long enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Truckee looks pretty great for this sort of thing. It's only 35 minutes drive from Reno too. So getting out and getting fancier food or whatever is very much doable for an evening.

It's interesting that more people don't move to places like this. Perhaps the difficulty of obtaining well paid work is the hard part.

<comment><USER31> For tech people you almost /have/ to find remote work. We moved to a remote part of Indiana for my wife's job and the only local tech job I've found offered 1 week vacation and less money than I made out of college 15 years ago.

There are perks like having a 4500sq ft home on almost 2 aces of land for a mortgage much smaller than what I see a studio rent for in SF. On the other hand there's only a couple of truly good restaurants in the area, the rest is low end fast food (McDs and the like). The nearest Chipotle, for instance, is 45 minutes away. And the night scene.. it ends around 10pm.

<comment><USER32> The first town mentioned in the article is Yellow Springs, OH. That's very close to Dayton and Springfield, two decently sized cities. On top of that's it's about an hour away from Columbus and Cincinnati, both of which have tons of nightlife, restaurants and competitive tech jobs.

<comment><USER31> But how many people long for "the small town" just to commute 2+ hours a day?

<comment><USER33> Some people commute 2+ hours in the Bay Area too

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Simple fact is I think many many people would look for better places to live if they could afford the lifestyle they wanted there. That's why so many of my friends have moved from the Bay Area to Seattle and then to Colorado and sometimes to Portland now.

Main downside of moving to a small town if you're LGBT or queer is that you're always going to be the odd one out - at the very least you won't have much of a dating pool.

</comment><comment><USER35> An unwelcome side effect is that incoming city dwellers can push up prices for people already in these small towns who don't have the option to relocate.

<comment><USER15> That is typically an issue with zoning, not people moving there: [https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing- explained/what-...](https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing- explained/what-is-zoning-euclidian-form-based-and-other-kinds). Even most small towns prevent reasonably-priced housing via height minimums, lot setbacks, and parking minimums.

The cost of housing is set by supply and demand; allow supply to increase and prices will moderate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> My partner and I are making this move soon - we should go from a two bedroom terraced house to a good four bedroom with a nice garden, along with quieter roads, less crime, pollution and all the rest of it. In the absence of a decent regional policy I'd say we are doing our bit as two educated professionals to spread the wealth!

I hate having to be part of this system and resisted as long as I could, but if you don't own property in the UK you are virtually a non-person in some senses.

<comment><USER37> > if you don't own property in the UK you are virtually a non-person in some > senses

I'm a property-owner in the UK. Could you explain a bit about what you mean by this comment? I understand that there is a strong desire to own a property, even if most people can't say exactly why that is, but I don't understand the 'non-person' comment at all.

<comment><USER36> Landlords can hike the rent unfairly at the end of the rental period, kick you out to sell, and the mandatory term is short. Also, there are plenty of circles where lack of property ownership equals social death. Additionally missing out on rising property values can, due to increasingly inadequate pension provision, leave you far poorer in retirement, and even have a knock on effect on your offspring given the importance of the bank of mum and dad for younger buyers.

I'd argue that all in all not owning property can hugely affect your life chances here in the UK. You just have to watch one of the TV shows about high court bailiffs or evictions etc. to see what things are like at the sharp end for renters. Do you think I am exaggerating?

In some ways I see the UK as a semi-feudal state. Monarchy, rigid class system, concentration of land ownership in few hands (even worse in Scotland than England), property law that exploits the renter, etc.

<comment><USER37> > there are plenty of circles where lack of property ownership equals social > death

I'm not sure what you mean; I can't imagine any circle where anyone would care either way.

> You just have to watch one of the TV shows about high court bailiffs or > evictions etc. to see what things are like at the sharp end for renters.

Sorry, I make a point of not watching trash on Channel 5 ;)

> Do you think I am exaggerating?

No, I didn't say or even suggest that - I'm honestly just trying to understand what you mean. Also, you made a good point regarding retirement.

<comment><USER36> So you're not a property snob, but you are a TV snob eh?!

I remember an advert from maybe 15 years ago about a couple selling up to go abroad, cutting from the couple's brilliant new life to their snarky friends at a dinner party, one person saying 'where have they gone' with another responding 'straight to the bottom of the property ladder'. I guess the agency behind it must have thought it would be a familiar concept back then, and the property market has got even worse in the meantime. Middle class Britain can be a competitive place, no? Also I think The Good Life satirised this type of outlook even further back.

<comment><USER37> My Channel 5 comment was meant to be in jest.

I didn't see it, but I'm not sure the point of the scene you mention was 'property snobbery'; it sounds like it was perhaps a dig at those people with a chip on their shoulder who hate when others have something they don't and will grasp at any pathetic attempt to mock them.

<comment><USER36> Back to your original query. Its easy to find sources that mesh with my choice of words.

'Renting carries a stigma. "There is a social expectation to own a house at a certain point. You're made to feel like a second-class citizen if you rent."'

'But in the UK it can feel like a second-class system. There are limited protections'

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22952667](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22952667)

And the ad would have no poignancy unless there were something recognisable about there being status attached to property, would it?

Anyway I think you are being deliberately obtuse or picking up on my choice of words whilst ignoring the main point, which is that property ownership is a critical differentiating element in life chances in the UK, and with that I bid you adieu.

<comment><USER37> > Anyway I think you are being deliberately obtuse

I was absolutely not. I am however, also very much done here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It is perfectly reasonable. But you still have to have sales or other good contact on the ground in big city. Because if in walking distance you have 100 customers you can maintain connection with people working there. If you will move to small town where you don't have customers and you have to rely on your contacts over the internet then you might get burned when your contacts switch jobs or whatever happens.

</comment><comment><USER39> There's a perk for the small towns, too: they get "tech money" without having to court a "tech industry". This brings money into the community that would otherwise be left outside it.

I see remote workers as an equalizer / booster for communities that have a small economy with little outside interaction with the larger economy. I'm thinking of small rural towns, groups of 2,000 ppl or fewer that are geographically isolated.

</comment><comment><USER40> At some point I would like to continue to be a developer but live in some place like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pampa,_Texas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pampa,_Texas)

It has a feel of utter isolation but the town is big enough that it isn't quite like living in Antarctica.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is something that I'm currently debating and have been thinking about a lot lately. NYC is so expensive and makes it insanely hard to save anything. Moving to say Woodstock, NY would be half the price, 2 hours away on a bus, and its beautiful.

I also think that people from small towns can give you a different perceptive on ideas and life that you can't get anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER42> A friens of mine was once working with a developer who charged SF market rates but lived somewhere in Idaho. Part of me wishes for that, how much he must be cash flowing.

Also i find it ironic that despite all our advances in technology most tech companies insist on people working in office.

</comment><comment><USER43> When cost of living is a factor, I recommend Warsaw, Poland. For me it is a sweet spot for a big enough city (collaboration, flights, etc) but neither too overwhelming (as London or New York) nor too expensive (as them or Bay Area).

5x lower rent prices than in SF ([https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Poland&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&city2=Warsaw)).

Thanks to that I an spend _most_ of my time on side projects. It wouldn't be possible in Bay Area.

</comment><comment><USER44> I recently asked this very question on HN and got some fantastic answers:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17522160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17522160)

</comment><comment><USER13> Very interested in this. I'd love to partner up with some people to find a way to be financially involved in this trend. There are tons of cool little towns out there in some amazing places.

</comment><comment><USER45> I remote from a location less than 1h commute from a big city. Means I can have a big lawn with a house on it and swim 5 minutes walk from it. But I can also get all the stuff you only find in bigger cities like a large selection of restaurants, concerts etc. The downside is that it's not small town cheap, but it's definitely half the cost of living just half as far from the city or in the city proper.

</comment><comment><USER46> The idea, "work from anywhere", helped me leave big, dirty, over crowded, complicated city for a small, clean, friendly one about four years ago. From my experience- the upsides are- relaxed lifestyle, friendly environment. The downsides are- very slow people all around makes you significantly slower, significantly less competitive work attitude and very few like minded people around.

</comment><comment><USER47> Great to hear about the happy coexistence of creatives and small town communities.

A few of the takeaways for me:

\- General rule, a city can support 1 creative for every 1,000 people

\- First mover advantage: small towns see creatives as novelty and are willing to assist.

\- Benefits creatives moving to small town, but with an existing "big city" network

\- Lowered cost of living means increased budgets for passion projects and less team dedicated to paid, professional work

</comment><comment><USER48> To people who have or are doing this, does the fact that you're not in the office hamper your career prospects? Do you risk pigeonholing yourself as a "skilled worker" and not "management material" \- should you want to move up the ranks?

<comment><USER49> Probably, but I am completely fine with that. I don't want to work in management and don't see that as harming my career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'd love to live in a small town in Italy (where I'm from), however - <USER2> oversimplify a bit - I am afraid that the type of people that I would normally meet is not exciting or interesting as people in bigger cities (I currently live in SF).

<comment><USER51> How do you define interesting or exciting?

I spent a summer in Sardinia a few years ago. I didn't meet anyone who was a programmer like myself, but I met plenty of people who taught me about food, literature, philosophy, herding sheep, and how to live simply.

I fully understand the appeal of SF and I know that there's more to SF than Silicon Valley, but I'd much rather live somewhere where I'm surrounded by people that I wouldn't normally meet. I feel like those environments give the greatest opportunity for growth and expansion of my personal perspective.

<comment><USER50> I don't disagree with you - what I am trying to say is that perhaps it's difficult to know for sure that you will be happy with the type of people you will meet in a certain place.

That's why it's difficult for me to even think about moving back to Italy eventually: I am not sure I will like it there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Remote work is fantastic if you are willing to make some sacrifices.

The biggest sacrifice is career advancement. I personally don't care because I am considered an older worker...but as a remote employee, it can be more difficult to advance into management etc. I also tend to let others "win" if I have any sort of workplace conflict. Since I am not in the office, I need to make sure no one has cause to talk negatively about me.

Everything else is a positive. I can literally live wherever I want. I have no "commute". I get paid a decent Bay Area wage that is considered very high by local standards. I do not pay CA taxes.

Many companies are still hesitant to embrace remote work but that is changing.

My guess is in twenty years, the remote worker will have higher life satisfaction: much more likely to own a home, much more likely to be able to start a family etc etc.

<comment><USER33> I cringe a little when I hear "advance into management". Management is an entirely different job, not something that is an upgrade over an individual contributor role.

<comment><USER53> I agree but sadly the salary often is an upgrade and there are few alternative routes for advancement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > It's harder for creative professionals to make a living in big cities.

Still more desirable to be the creative in the giant loft in the city doing really interesting or weird stuff that has no discernible market value except that the opaque market valued it for millions anyway.

You aren't going to have any of that in Small town, Anywheres. Just a few graphic designers that suddenly have a manageable cost of living, I can admit there is utility in that. I guess.</comment>


Foodapi.org – a small seed in the broken world of food - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/toxsick/foodapi.org

<comment><USER2> What is the goal of the project?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just saw a frustration documentation on German television about how much food is wasted every day. We put a lot of eatable food in the trash, while people in the producing countries are starving. This is just sad. Sometimes I think to myself, what's all this technical advance worth if we seem get worse when it comes to these basic ethical questions.

For a good portion of the day my head is filled with python development. I play may role in this in many ways. By not caring and doing enough. By not knowing enough about the topic. By working for companies who don't care. By buying stuff that supports the wrong people. You know the list ...

What I do today is thinking loud about this issue and try to combine it with something I do for a living. I really have the abstract feeling that we need some kind of api to make the information about food production, demand, offers, price, consumption and waste accessible, so we can build things on top of it that help us act better. The goal is to make the food eating people understand their food again and be more responsible.

How this exactly looks I can't really tell you. This idea is only 3 hours old. This is my shot on fast collective thinking. Perhaps it works. If you think this isn't enough you are properly right. I want to hear from smart people if we can imagine something that would help.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> hey girls and boys. let's talk!</comment>


Scrolling on the web: A primer - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/03/08/scrolling-on-the-web/ <comment><USER2> I wish people who made webpages trusted browsers to scroll. The number of sites that play with the scroll speed and consistency by hijacking scroll events makes me doubt whether the designers spare a passing thought for usability.

Scrolling is one of those things that (in my opinion) get calibrated in the brain for hand-eye co-ordination. Which is why (again IMHO) there are religious wars fought over, for example, Apple's trackpads. This stuff is important. It can be a jarring experience when scrolling suddenly doesn't work. Flip side is, I'm sure some people don't care.

There's nothing more annoying than a web designer saying "I know better than you" and re-implementing features. Because they're usually wrong.

EDIT: Would people accept it if each webpage re-adjusted your mouse pointer speed and acceleration? Is there any difference between one mouse function and another? Why do web designers think they have the right?

<comment><USER3> my only issue with scrolling is how the the bar looks >

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

it comes in only one color variant, it's inconsistently looking across browser, takes a lot of space, especially for scrolling narrow elements, it has low contrast so it doesn't even do a good job accessibility wise etc.

go to a site like Bulgari's and bam, custom scroller, precisely for this reason

[https://i.imgur.com/T3Yasht.png](https://i.imgur.com/T3Yasht.png)

you'll notice the page scroller is untouched, because it doesn't contrast with the page style, being a browser element, but the inside page scroller would sucks.

you gonna argue with them they have to design their website style to accomodate the gray slate slab of vintage scrollers?

<comment><USER2> Accommodate? They chose to make something that runs in a web browser so they should make something that works in a web browser. If I choose to use one with big scroll bars, that's up to me.

I don't know what browser you're using, but if it's Windows or some GNU/Linux distro, from memory both of these allow you to customise scrollbars. What if I have accessibility requirements and want to customise how software that I run on my own computer works?

<comment><USER4> > What if I have accessibility requirements and want to customise how software > that I run on my own computer works?

The modern web cares very little about such requirements, since they are unlikely to be correlated with making money.

I don't like where things are going :-(.

<comment><USER5> Don't worry, it will all implode eventually.

<comment><USER2> I think it's sadly like that comment about Uber a few days ago -- it's a question of staying insane longer than competitors can remain solvent. The web will eat everything sooner or later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Back in the day browsers competed over user friendly features like popup blockers, even though that technically breaks a web API. Today browsers are so terrified of breaking a web API that they have allowed the mobile web to become a cesspool. Browsing most sites has become intolerable, the more modern the worse. Scrolling freezes for seconds at a time, whole pages jump up and down constantly while you read, scroll-hijacking ads interrupt you, fixed position headers obscure half the page and appear/disappear at random, "mobile-friendly" sites are more often than not worse than desktop sites even on mobile (plus they break deep links), and I can't be the only one who's noticed that even the old popup blockers have stopped working!

<comment><USER7> Browsers outside the mainstream are still trying. I'm typing this on the Brave browser[0] and it's fantastic at dealing with those obnoxious sites. It has a built in ad blocker and total JavaScript blocking for a site is just 2 taps away. It's amazing how much smoother sites become when you've blocked all their anti-user shenanigans.

[0] [https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

<comment><USER5> Because more and more of them display nothing without js.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a fantastic piece of technical writing. There's plenty of detail and pretty much no fluff. More of the same please Microsoft.

<comment><USER9> > _There 's plenty of detail and pretty much no fluff. More of the same please > Microsoft._

It's par for the course with MS tech docs IMHO, well at least the bulk of their dev documentation. I even marvelled at the MSDN docs for the same reasons some 15 years ago as a freshman. I was relieved to see the same spirit in the "extensibility" articles at [http://code.visualstudio.com/docs/](http://code.visualstudio.com/docs/) (compared to the huge furball of distributed-across-blogs-and-forums, incomplete, or dated equivalent for say Sublime..).

Now. OS-wise and userland-wise I'm certainly no MS fan (and tend to stay as clear as is feasible), but as far as the entire _developer_ ecosystem goes (except maybe SharePoint-related, that was quite the mess a few years back, dunno about today tho), it has been for ages and continues to be: _near-on utopia_!

<comment><USER10> >except maybe SharePoint-related, that was quite the mess a few years back, dunno about today tho

Ah, glad you mentioned that. I was about to say that Sharepoint (especially 2005-2010) felt woefully under documented when I worked with it.

I think Sharepoint dev has gotten better since 2013 (the introduction of their app model), but I left that role before the company upgraded so I can't say for certain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And yet there is still no way in CSS to, say, freeze a table header and make the body scrollable. Or freeze one column and make the rest scrollable.

For all its advances, the web platform is still incredibly primitive in some areas.

<comment><USER12> You mean _position: sticky_? [1] Yeah, that took way too long, leading to horrible JS implementations, but it's there now.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/position#St...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/position#Sticky_positioning)

<comment><USER13> I can't wait for that to be supported but MS Edge currently doesn't support it (though it's under consideration).

<comment><USER12> With an ever-declining IE/Edge market share, I usually rely on the principle of progressive enhancement and accept that certain non-essential features will only be available to users of modern web browsers (unless, of course, a specific project has an unusually high number of IE/Edge users, e.g. intranet applications).

<comment><USER14> Declining, but still non-trivial.

We dropped IE10 support when we stopped doing IE9 a year or so ago because they both had similarly insignificant numbers, and the opportunity cost of supporting them was too high.

IE11/Edge are also showing fairly similar numbers, which suggests edge uptake _is_ slow, but even factoring in the extra hours, the bugs they generate (usually weird flex issues in both cases) we still effectively make more money by supporting them than not.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, relying on progressive enhancement is obviously only viable when we talk about nice-to-have features. Sticky headers will often fall into this category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm happy, if I'm able to scroll at all. Hate the trend of dynamically loading content when scrolling down.

<comment><USER16> > Hate the trend of dynamically loading content when scrolling down.

Yep, this sucks. Typical use case: I load a few articles in background tabs to read later offline. Too late, I realize they either load dynamically, or have a useless periodic refresh (I'm looking at you, NY Times), so they're useless when I go to read them. I've mostly learned to quickly scroll all the way through tabs to make sure they're loaded, but this is a poor solution to a self-imposed problem (too-heavy pages).

<comment><USER17> Open to archive.is or Internet Archive.

Pocket or similar apps are another option, though most have their own fatal limitations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I really want for spacebar scrolling is this in working: [https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/20937-red-read- line](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/20937-red-read-line)

An indicator on where the bottom of the screen scrolled to, so I don't need slow animations or incremental scrolls to find where I left off reading.

(The linked script is not working on all pages and sometimes blocking klicks, I just threw it together to try if the Idea works. I think the principle works really really well.)

<comment><USER19> IMHO this is only needed if the scrolling is not smooth like on mobile or macOS.

<comment><USER18> Even for scrolling page-wise? Or you mean the keyboard is not needed when scrolling is smooth? (Die hard keyboard fans will tell you otherwise :) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The only thing worse than having a broken scrolling experience on mobile is imagining just how much extra data was wasted to download that useless script _so that_ a crappy mobile experience could be had, and how much battery was wasted running the unnecessary script _so that_ a crappy mobile experience could be had. There is complete priority inversion on the web and I am so sick of it; my device should have ample controls to obey ME and not the whims of some random site.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is the kind of "accessible take on fundamentals that you might not have even realised were fundamentals" documentation that I'd like to see more of. It took me a few years of web development to even start thinking about just how, exactly, the concurrency model of the web functions.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure why anyone is using scrolling events for any standard websites at all. It's much easier to have a function on timer that detects the current viewport position and acts accordingly. The code is simpler, the performance is better, and it's way more future-proof.

</comment><comment><USER23> It looks like a poor design desicion made 20 years ago (that wheel event is synchronous and must be run before scrolling) leads to all major browsers code becoming unnecessary complicated. I think it would be better to discard that design and make a new event system that would be used with new pages (and don't waste developers' resources to optimize old pages).

Maintaining compatibility is good, but at some point we need to stop and make a new design.

By the way here are the things I'd like to get fixed too:

\- make a distinction between same-domain and cross-domain requests (use another HTTP method for cross-domain POST request) so all sites get XSRF vulnerability fixed

\- make cross-domain requests anonymous by default

\- make cookies unaccessible to Javascript by default

\- stop JS loading from blocking the page so we can put script tags in the header where it makes more sense

\- make as much events asynchronous as possible

\- fix keyboard events, key codes and mouse buttons numbers

\- make it impossible to change window.opener.location and windows.parent.location

\- add CSS rules to set width for a column in a table, not for cells

\- add error reporting so if some resource (like a script) fails to load the user gets a message that the page is broken

<comment><USER24> The situation here is IMO similar to Mozilla vs XUL, except when they actually decided to drop it a ton of people decided to drop firefox. I'm talking about compatibility in general here, not js scrolling specifically.

<comment><USER25> >Mozilla vs XUL

What is this referring to (I know what Mozilla and XUL are, didn't know there was a tiff about it)?

<comment><USER24> XUL will be dropped soon in favour of WebExtentions, and it doesn't offer as much flexibility as XUL. This means it won't be possible to create addons like tree-style tabs for example.

<comment><USER26> It is being worked on: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/sidebarAction](https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/sidebarAction)

<comment><USER24> Tree-style tabs requires not only sidebar, but also access to browser interface to hide actual tabs, which AFAIK it won't get with WebExtensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Bold claim (not a professional webdesigner): Many problems with performance and usability would go away if people made more websites where the document is 100% width and height and contained boxes are individually scrolled. ("Like frames").

Basically, the way it's typically done when using desktop widget toolkits.

But most websites are still made so that there is only one document-wide scrollbar.

<comment><USER28> You must have forgotten the iframe hell that was the early aughts. There are some sites that could benefit from individually scrolling elements. If you have a navigation pane that doesn't hide, it would be hell to have all of the navigation links above the fold while all of the relevant content exists multiple scrolls/folds/pages below.

I think that many sites wouldn't use individual scrollable elements correctly. Much like sticky headers, you end up with an upside-down L-shaped (like this: |‾) area of static, individually scrollable content. Your viewport shrinks to 75%. That's annoying on desktops at best and pretty much unusable on mobile at worst. It's reminiscent of Toolbar Explorer[0].

If you can use individual elements nicely, go ahead! I believe that if the trend caught on, it would be worse for everyone.

[0]: [https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2040/1924189728_668c4bc4e2.jpg](https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2040/1924189728_668c4bc4e2.jpg)

<comment><USER29> The worst thing about sticky headers is that they dominate the page when you zoom, making the site completely unusable.

<comment><USER27> I don't know that problem. Browsers should try to zoom everything proportionally, and I think they have gotten quite good at that (using Firefox almost exclusively).

Another thing that often annoys me is how sticky headers break text search. When you search and the browser scrolls just enough to get the hit "on the page", but still covered by the sticky header. The problem is: not using proper frames. Sticky covers part of the other frame. Bad.

<comment><USER30> Try looking at [http://invisible- island.net/xterm/manpage/xterm.html](http://invisible- island.net/xterm/manpage/xterm.html) on a phone. (Or maybe Firefox, too.) the side bar zooms too, covering page content, and if it's too big, it doesn't scroll.

<comment><USER27> Can't reproduce a problem with Firefox and don't have a phone handy. Maybe you can post a screenshot? The sidebar zooming too is what I would expect. At some insane zoom level the sidebar goes away, which is probably due to CSS and could be intended.

I don't see a sidebar covering content. Of course the sidebar takes some space, but as long as it's not _over_ the content that's a different issue IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The constant finger-pointing to the shortcomings of other browsers was getting particularly annoying — especially when IE and Edge are historically the lowest performing, late-to-the-game browsers.

Nice article, but comically ironic.

<comment><USER32> IE/Edge has prioritized scrolling performance more than other browsers on Windows for a long time now (mainly because Microsoft cares more about touch on Windows than other browser vendors do).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I feel that the mechanics of scrolling need to be reworked. I have to do a number of tweaks to get free scrolling to work as I'd like, as opposed to the default line-by-line type scrolling. Even line-by-line scrolling has issues, such as not being aligned with the lines of text or block elements on a web page. Scrolling ought to have different control options as well, say ^Scroll scrolls through paragraphs or headings.

<comment><USER23> This can be implemented in a browser extension. And I don't think everybody needs scrolling through paragraphs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> _There's a curious anomaly, though: if you try to scroll using touch screen scrolling, the page happily moves up and down, even while JavaScript is blocking nearly everything else on the page. This also works for touch pad scrolling, mouse wheel scrolling, and click-and-drag scrolling (depending on your browser)._

Mouse wheel scrolling still works on Chrome but not on Firefox.

<comment><USER35> (Author of the post here.) It may depend on your OS or your Firefox version! :) I spoke with some Firefox folks after publishing this piece, and it turns out they've fixed some things in Firefox 52, notably for touch-enabled Windows laptops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The first rule of fucking with scrollbars is _you don 't fuck with scrollbars._

You don't set your scrollbar to fade out when not in use. O hai Pocket. Ficks that shite plz.

You don't have an "untouchable" scrollbar. It's not merely a graphical decoration, _it 's a motherfucking control element._ O hai Pocket.... Esp. your non-incremental-searchable tags list that takes me _a full fucking minute_ to scroll up or down.

You don't turn a vertical scroll action _into a motherfucking horizontal scroll._ I forget which academic article site that is, but I'm blackholing your ass on DNS next time I land there.

You don't nuke the right-hand-side scrollbar, and replace it with a horizontal-across-the-top motherfucking stripe to indicate how far down the fucking page I've read. O hai Bloomsburgs.

You don't have fixed headers and footers. Fuck that shit. Firefox Reader Mode fixes that, usually. Pocket is an alternative.

You don't change the width, colour, buttons, or any other elements of stock scrollbars.

I am too old to be too old for this shit.

</comment><comment><USER36> I would think that "NOP" code like that example would be optimized out:

setInterval(() => { var start = Date.now(); while (Date.now() - start < 500) {/* wheeeee! */} }, 1000);

<comment><USER37> Only it it can prove that Date.now() has no side-effects or that the loop actually ends. (And Date or Date.now() might not be the same things that are usually expected, since anything in JS can change.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "User scrolls with two fingers on a touch pad" This was so weird for me at the beginning haha Always mixing up and down :D Anybody else had this problem?

<comment><USER39> I really didn't have this issue when it became commonplace. It felt natural. Like a piece of paper sitting on a table. If i want to "scroll down" the paper by moving it up, i would touch the paper and move it up.

Scroll down to move down feels completely wrong. In my head I understand that you're moving the 'viewport' down, but my brain is focused on the viewport's content, not the viewport itself. So my interactions should be with the content not the contents viewport. Not sure if that makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I prefer to scroll with the spacebar. Therefore fixed headers are the enemy (like in this story!).

</comment><comment><USER41> My favorite is dedicated mobile sites that do animations on scrolling.

</comment><comment><USER42> page is not readable in Opera mini. Lolz.

</comment><comment><USER43> Offtopic, but how come, when I see this website is on windows.com, that I expect it to load slowly?</comment>


Google Cloud Platform HTTP(S) Load Balancers Returning 502 Errors - <AUTHOR> https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/compute/16020 <comment><USER2> Looks like you need to request an SLA credit manually: [https://support.google.com/cloud/contact/cloud_platform_sla](https://support.google.com/cloud/contact/cloud_platform_sla)

Details: [https://cloud.google.com/compute/sla](https://cloud.google.com/compute/sla)

</comment><comment><USER3> As an AWS user, it's amazing to see a status page show an actual status. Curious how many of these posts there would be if their status pages were accurate.

<comment><USER4> I don't follow - Can you elaborate please?

<comment><USER5> AWS doesnt show status changes unless the world is ending.

<comment><USER4> I haven't had that experience to be honest. But I use a fairly narrow subset of their services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Load balancers often being a single point of failure in even fairly large org's, this is especially painful.

<comment><USER7> There was a great talk at SRECon Europe 2015 about how Facebook scales out their load balancers: [https://patrickshuff.com/building-a-billion-user-load- balanc...](https://patrickshuff.com/building-a-billion-user-load-balancer- srecon-europe-2015.html)

Shows how many levels of scaling are required to serve traffic at large scale.</comment></comment>


Index, Stripe back bookkeeping service Pilot.com with $40M - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/index-ventures-stripe-back-bookkeeping-service-pilot-with-40m/ <comment><USER2> This is great news! I've been super happy using Pilot as our bookkeeper and I'm glad they're going to stick around for awhile :)</comment>


Immigrants lacking papers work legally — as their own bosses  - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-immigration-business-20130915,0,3534539,full.story

<comment><USER2> I feel it's completely bogus to deny a drivers license based on immigration status. A drivers license asserts driving privileges and identity. It should not be expected to assert legal status - that's what other documents are for (passport, green card, birth certificate).

<comment><USER3> But how do you prove your identity?

<comment><USER4> Proving your identity and proving your right of residence are two entirely different things. Anyway, the question is now moot in CA, where the legislature just last week voted to approve issuance of driving licenses.

<comment><USER3> I understand, but, if a driver's license is proof of identity, surely you need some supporting proof to obtain a driver's license, e.g. a birth certificate. How do you do that if you don't have one?

<comment><USER4> You probably do have such a thing, why are you assuming the contrary? 'Undocumented' doesn't mean lacking any identification documents whatsoever, it means lacking the documents that allow residency and employment in the US.

<comment><USER3> Okay, what such documents would an illegal immigrant have that are suitable to obtain a driver's license, i.e. a proof of identity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In 2003, a friend of mine started a Spanish Real Estate magazine, in Southern California. Was paying himself ~25,000 per month. He hired Americans to design, distribute, and print his magazines.

Not bad for an uneducated, undocumented worker, who at 10 years old was homeless, and selling oranges at the rodeo in Mexico City.

Immigrants start businesses, and create jobs.

Immigrants are more likely to become a millionaire in the USA than 2nd or 3rd......generation Americans.

[https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley- millionaire.ht...](https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley- millionaire.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> The headline is in error. This article was submitted earlier,

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6390605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6390605)

and is being discussed on the front page.</comment>


Airbnb Bans Host Who Dumped Guest Because She's Asian - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/airbnb-asian-guest-racist-host-big-bear_us_58e665dfe4b07da81324755e <comment><USER2> I don't endorse racism by any means, but there's an overarching concept that a persons home is their castle, and you have broad discretion to control who and what goes on in your home. In most jurisdictions, you have a broad legal right as a person renting out your downstairs or a room to turn down tenants for any reason.

Airbnb wants to have it both ways. They demonstrate their contempt for the law by pushing accountability for illegal renting to their "hosts", but where they have a messy situation where there is bad PR for them, all of the sudden they care about how "hosts" follow rules about discrimination that may or may not even apply to them.

This is yet another example of why AirBnb is a ridiculous business that shouldn't operate as it does. Dealing with the issue in a way that would be compliant with the law would require that they acknowledge that many "hosts" are really running as hoc hotels, so they roll over the individual homeowners or tenants subletting their homes.

<comment><USER3> It seems like the because of the broker aspect the law might apply to them, however I'm not a lawyer. It's certainly I would think, a bad idea to say I'm not renting to this person because of their race. You're basically inviting a racial discrimination lawsuit.

"The Fair Housing Act covers most housing. In some circumstances, the Act exempts owner-occupied buildings with no more than four units, single-family housing sold or rented without the use of a broker, and housing operated by organizations and private clubs that limit occupancy to members."

<comment><USER2> Is it housing or a short term rental? Is it a room in your home or your home, or a second house?

I agree with you that behaving like this is a generally bad idea -- and in the specific case of this poor woman it is reprehensible. But the broader context is important too. Why is AirBnb making itself the arbiter of what laws need to be followed and what do not? Why is discrimination a bright line that cannot be crossed, while fire code violations in multi-unit AirBnb quasi-hotels are not?

We end up in these troubling scenarios where we allow companies and individuals to pick and choose what rules are ok.

<comment><USER3> As I understand it and I'm not a lawyer but I do work in housing finance, housing, rentals, and short term rental all fall under the fair housing act. This is purposefully broad and done so because of how discrimination is such an affront to human rights. That being said Airbnb is merely hoping to avoid any class action litigation, which will likely come as a result of tenants viewing the broker as not putting a good faith effort to preventing discrimination. The broker, after all, cannot intentionally facilitate illegal behavior to make a profit, that would just create puppet mafias. They probably have figured they are less likely to be found guilty of facilitating the illegal behavior of fire code violations because fires are just a lot less likely and a lot less externally obvious to the broker.

TLDR: The laws are laws whether Airbnb says they care about them or not, but should Airbnb put forth a good faith effort to prevent flagrant lawbreaking on their website they'll likely avoid being seen as legally culpable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The piece seems rather "tailored" to deliver a message, and I suspect there is much more to the story than is being reported.

Perhaps the guest actually didn't pre-arrange the extra friends, and then got pushy when the host wanted to charge for them.

I'm guessing the "One word says it all. Asian" comment was being used to stereotype the guest's actions/attitudes, rather than as a statement of "You're not welcome, because you're Asian". Which in itself is of course deplorable, but not quite what is being reported.

The host posssibly deserve a ban just for the racist comment, and if things _are_ as reported, they most certainly deserve the ban, but the reporting seems very "framed".

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is this not a crime under fair housing act? At best this is a loophole which will be closed via precedent. A quick google shows that it looks like some Airbnb hosts are already being taken to court over violating the fair housing act so it sounds like the loophole is already being closed.

</comment><comment><USER5> But really, $50 a night on Big Bear, in mid February? That's a steal!

</comment><comment><USER6> Why is this post flagged ?

<comment><USER7> The short answer is that enough users have flagged it for it to display the [flagged] tag. Why they have could be they don't think the post is appropriate for HN, or that the resulting discussion hasn't been or is no longer constructive for the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good. Racists shouldn't be given a platform to further their hate.

<comment><USER9> Inb4 the top minds of hacker news play devil's advocate

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_v._Kraemer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_v._Kraemer)

<comment><USER11> racists will just deny people they don't like for other reasons, like smoking weed or type of job or background check or

<comment><USER12> Which is discriminatory, what's your point? That racists are going to discriminate regardless?

Well, as in other areas, there will always be abusers. Drug testing welfare reicpients, for example, is a slap in the face to small government ideals and does absolutely nothing to deter abuse.

The truth is the abusers are the exception, not the norm.

Regulations and legalisation are not unlike a doorlock. It might keep out those who would steal given a free pass to do so, but anyone more determined will make short work of it.

You can't legislate against that kind of abuse, the abuse of a black and white law prohibiting this type of discrimination for example.

It's clear to me that you can't regulate someone out of being a racist prick, an addict, etc. They just keep coming up with a new way to do whatever the fuck they please.

<comment><USER13> Well, This is AirBNB's own moment of "Gig Economy goes against established law" like Uber and HomeJoy have done.

Hoteliers and traditional rental agencies are not to discriminate on a list of things (now including sexual orientation and status). They have, including Trump. And they've also been sued to the gills for knowingly violating it and lost. Simply put, it's against the law to discriminate on basis of race or color; religion; national origin; familial status or age—includes families with children under the age of 18 and pregnant women; disability or handicap, or sex. (Source: [http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/renters- ri...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/renters-rights- book/chapter5-2.html) )

Does that mean I'm required to let people in my home? Well, no. Just because someone shows up on my property means nothing. If they try to come in without permission, that's trespassing. If they have a weapon, in many states I'm legally able to blow them away. Castle Doctrine is the general description, with unique laws per state ( Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine) )

But what happens when both are true, with AirBNB and someone I don't like (Muslim/Christian/Atheist/Black/Brown/Asian/gay/handicapped/dirty/poor/smelly/angry/arrogant/...)? There's the crux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Mk-0 Huffington Post.

</comment><comment><USER14> This situation is the biggest problem with Airbnb. Furthermore, these types of service should be double blind, and effectively anonymous for everyone but Airbnb (arguably them too, but that's not really possible given payment information).

People are inherently racist [1], are forced to behave in ways to may (or may not) promote sexism(not necessarily in that they hate men/women, but are forced to follow the norms) [2] etc. to varying extents. Anonymity is the solution. Why do you need to even know the name of the person who's staying? You don't.

[1] There's plenty of research on this highlighted in this article: [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/opinion/nicholas- kristof-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/opinion/nicholas-kristof-is- everyone-a-little-bit-racist.html)

[2] [http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/cou- cou0000176.pdf](http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/cou-cou0000176.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Disagree. My girlfriend and I have have turned down a few potential AirBnB people because they looked like street kids in their profile pictures. One had a gun (?????) prominently displayed in his profile pic. No thanks.

As long as I'm letting people into my home, I'd like to get a quick look at them first.

<comment><USER14> Why exactly does it matter?

<comment><USER15> The gun, or the street kids?

I don't want people in my home who are proud of their guns and brandish them in profile pictures on a travel site.

I don't want people in my home who look filthy. I know street kids well enough to never let one in my home.

<comment><USER14> I still fail to see the relevance. Their appearance is irrelevant. If they keep your house clean then it doesn't matter. If you're implying street kids won't do that, not only would you have to provide evidence that you won't be able to find, but it's also a pointless value judgement. I won't even get into the fact that Airbnb can often be cheaper, and so poor, savy people may use it and your behavior is putting them at a disadvantage basically because you don't like how they look like. Sound familiar?

People who don't "look filthy" could just as easily tear your house apart. Pointless discrimination is well, pointless.

<comment><USER15> It's not a "pointless value judgement" to observe that someone looks filthy, and to extend that observation to "I don't want them in my clean house".

Have you ever hung out with street kids? I have, for years. Do you know Manitou Springs in Colorado? I hosted lots of down-on-their-luck street kids at my apartment for a while until I realized the majority of them absolutely suck as roommates/tenants/whatever you want to call them. Many of them will steal from you because they have nothing else. Many of them have markedly different cultural values - and not in a way that I find endearing or enlightening.

I'm sure you'll draw some parallels to racism here, because that seems to be the argument you want to occur. This isn't about a genetic condition like skin color. This is about willingly descending to the lower rungs of society. If a street kid wants to drop out of society, tattoo their face, and wear tattered army rags, that's fine. Accept the consequences of your facial tattoos though - that's part of being an adult :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Cloud Platform cuts the price of GPUs by up to 36 percent - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/20/google-cloud-platform-cuts-the-price-of-gpus-by-up-to-36-percent/ <comment><USER2> A few months ago I did an analysis of the cost various Google Cloud Platform system configurations for deep learning, and found that due to the price savings offered by premptable VMs, it may actually be more cost-effective to use CPUs instead of GPUs. (HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14727673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14727673))

A 36% price cut, however, might be enough to tip the scales back in favor of GPUs. I'll rerun the experiment with updated VMs soon and see what happens.

<comment><USER3> really curious to see your updated analysis :)

<comment><USER4> Here too, please.

In some batch use cases, time is not an issue (i.e, I could spend 10x as long without anyone noticing) as much as cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > using the somewhat older K80 GPUs will now cost $0.45 per hour while using > the newer and more powerful P100 machines will cost $1.46 per minute

This is hopefully supposed to say $1.46 per hour.

<comment><USER6> Yep, beat me to it. I was shocked when I read that at first.

Here's Google's official pricing.

[https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing)

$1.46 USD per hour per GPU

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We recently started to build out GPU infrastructure onsite. Our GPU needs are low bandwidth and we keep a few in the cloud in case we lose our onsite. So far so good. We have predictable consistent load, so our use case is different than many DNN users.

<comment><USER8> Onsite == onoffice ?</comment></comment>


Android Is Now the Most Popular Smartphone Platform - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/01/31/android-most-popular-platform/

<comment><USER2> The title should be "Android is now the most common operating system for heavily subsidized/free phones". I know the debate is tired, but it you measured popularity by brand recognition, NPS, # of apps on the platform, developer enthusiasm, or any meaningful metric iOS would win hands down. Not to say Android isn't important or a force to think about, but its kind of a silly thing to measure.

The other hackneyed point is that iOS crushes Android when you factor in iPod touch and iPad sales. Old news, but never seems to register with reporters.

EDIT: Why did this comment warrant negative votes? Not inflammatory, not inaccurate, just a critique of the way info is presented.

<comment><USER3> _"Android is now the most common operating system for heavily subsidized/free phones"_

What distinction are you trying to make? Isn't the iPhone heavily subsidized/free? According to Apple's website the iPhone 'costs' $200. That sounds like heavily subsidized to me. Also I don't know if there are better deals than that in the US, but certainly here in Sweden I can get an iPhone 4 for 'free' from all the major mobile operators.

<comment><USER2> Of course the iPhone is subsidized, but you can't get an iOS phone for free or a "2 for 1" deal which you can many places with Android. Android has some awesome things going for it, but the reason it is growing so fast is that it's given away for free and carrier friendly, not because it's intrinsically popular with customers.

<comment><USER4> Says who?

Revoo[1] claims that top-end android phones are now as-or-more popular than the iPhone 4.

[1] [http://blog.reevoo.com/2011/01/android-overtakes-iphone- in-u...](http://blog.reevoo.com/2011/01/android-overtakes-iphone-in-user- reviews/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't help but notice reading the same headline every month. Very tired of this debate now.

<comment><USER6> It's been the best selling smartphone OS in the US for a while, this news is that it's now the best selling globally (unseating Symbian AFAIK)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hey guys Anybody to use my application? - <AUTHOR> That is like a newspaper to post a news. You can post an article with explanation or opinion, summarizing, or just a news.<p>https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.newsppool <comment><USER2> Can you add some contact info in your bio? Hard to give private feedback otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> I added an email.</comment></comment>


My First Solid Thought about working @Google - <AUTHOR> http://meta2.tumblr.com/post/834493763/first-solid-thought-re-working-at-google

<comment><USER2> _Google reminded me what being around smart people is like. The kind where you walk away from lunch with two papers [..] or a discussion more informative than any lecture_

Ah! I ache for this. I love the people at the user groups I attend but there's a lot to be said for more academic CS banter..</comment>


Google Glass Doesn't Erode Privacy. Human Behavior Does.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/103510/google-glass-privacy-foregrounding/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Guns don't kill people. I hate men.</comment>


Dead for 32,000 Years, an Arctic Plant Is Revived - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/new-life-from-an-arctic-flower-that-died-32000-years-ago.html

<comment><USER2> Only half-joking, isn't this how disaster movies start?

<comment><USER3> This is a common reaction to stories about resurrecting ancient species, but I wonder if it really just means that disaster movies are silly, rather than that these activities are risky.

After all, when we consider ancient, extinct species, the organisms in question are likely ill-adapted to survive in the present day. By virtue of having gone extinct, it is a truism that they were ill-adapted to survive the past era in which they disappeared as well.

In this case, the plant is nearly identical to its modern relative, but even if we brought back to life a plant or animal that disappeared thousands of years ago, it would be incredibly difficult for it to survive. For one thing, it would typically need other members of the opposite sex with which to breed. It would also be adapted to thrive in a much different environment than today's. These are substantial challenges.

Of course, it's possible that reintroducing an ancient species to the present day would be similar to introducing a non-native species to, say, Australia. I'm also not keen on the prospect of reviving ancient microbes and viruses. But I'm not worried about this plant, or about dinosaurs, for that matter.

<comment><USER4> You seem to be claiming that the ancient specimen would likely not thrive; I think we all agree. The sci-fi disaster movie angle would probably be that the ancient specimen is carrying a disease that isn't particularly special except for the fact that no current species (or at least humans) have any immunity whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This stood out for me: "If the claim is true, then scientists should be able to study evolution in real time by comparing the ancient and living campions."

<comment><USER6> Yes, this allows them to directly sequence the genome of an "internal" node of the tree of life, whereas normally we only get to sequence the leaf nodes (extant species).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a benefit to bringing long-lost plants back to life? I assume there's potential for this technology to be applied elsewhere, and it's a truly awesome achievement, but could the plants themselves be used for something?

<comment><USER8> Often, blue sky research has the best ROI. You get smart people working really hard on it. There's a lot less crap to deal with, so they are totally focused on solving the problem. And the problems are actually quite clear cut (is the plant back from the dead yet?), so a lot of management issues disappear. A well defined (yet useless) goal is easier to manage than a wishy-washy "improve it, but don't change anything".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They broke an Israeli record to do this. This could end up with a who made the biggest dinosaur very quick: [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34767635/ns/world_news- mideast_n...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34767635/ns/world_news- mideast_n_africa/t/latest-hummus-war-israel-doubles-record/)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is cool but :

>with improved methods has produced spectacular results like the reconstitution of the Neanderthal genome.

Now that cloning a Neanderthal would be really interesting.

</comment><comment><USER11> How is it that this got up to #3? I'd down vote this if I could, only because I hate logging into a news site to read articles that shouldn't be hidden.

<comment><USER12> Instead of just complaining about the problem, let's help ourselves to read it and support non-paywalling sources.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-20/32-000-year-old- pla...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-20/32-000-year-old-plant-reborn- from-ancient-fruit-found-in-siberian-ice.html)

<comment><USER11> bravo!</comment></comment></comment>


Inside report from Fukushima nuclear reactor evacuation zone - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp9iJ3pPuL8

<comment><USER2> The bulldog at 9:23 was friendly, healthy and collared, but seemingly they left it there for dead. First there was Summit Fever, now there's Reactor Fever. He could've at least taken the phone number and called the owners to go get it. I doubt it. Maybe they'll see the vid on YT.</comment>


Carlos Slim: biography of Mexico's richest man penetrates 'cloak of silence' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/06/carlos-slim-biography-diego-enrique-osorno-interviews <comment><USER2> I liked this article, except for this part:

"...his home country, where the middle class is burgeoning but almost half the population still lives in poverty."

This is a naive claim, it may appear so because people here in Mexico (specially in urban areas) spend a lot on bars, restaurants, vacations, gadgets and even cars.

What the author oversees is that this same people have not enough savings in the bank to survive even a couple of months without a job, owe lots of money to the bank and are unable to acquire more relevant goods like a home.

What the author calls middle class are in fact poor people with lots of toys and lots of credit cards.

<comment><USER3> It depends on how you want to define the middle class.

Some people define it via income characteristics. So a college graduate, with no house or car, can be middle class if they land a good job.

Some people define it via wealth, so a retiree with no income can be middle class if they own their own home, and have a decent amount of savings.

Some people use the 'classical' (ala Marx) definition, in which the middle class are the socio-economic group that can buy the labour of working class, but typically work along-side them. For example, a mom-and-pop shop would have middle class owners, and working class employees.

<comment><USER2> Good point. Actually I think the strict definition of "middle class" should be simply the average in a certain country.

However, for a lot of people including myself, "middle class" means people who own at least a little bit of wealth in the form of savings, enough to be able to survive for six months or a year without a job while not needing to cut costs on anything.

This of course is not the reality for maybe 95% of Mexican Citizens who live in perpetual debt with the banks and would go completely bankrupt if they ever stop working for as little as one month or maybe two.

I live here and believe me, there is not such a thing as a "burgeoning middle class" in Mexico; in fact, such claims sound like the typical BS politicians try to sell to the people.

<comment><USER3> > Good point. Actually I think the strict definition of "middle class" should > be simply the average in a certain country.

That assumes a normal distribution of wealth. In an authoritarian aristocracy or another similar government structure, you'd see pareto distribution wherein the leadership has 99% of the wealth and the average person is sharing 1%.

Therein by the 'average', there is no middle class.

I think... economically, this is quite true: there is no middle class. Yet we still call people who look like the classical middle class of yesteryear, middle class: professionals, white-collar workers, freelancers, small business owners. It's more of a social class now, than an economic one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is of brutal quality. I am all for uncloaking the superrich and their agendas but this is about spurious links to wife's uncle's and whatnots for at least 50% of the article. Then I stopped reading because I have better things to do.

Please lead with better material.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is just a blog post. I hope someone will pick up the threads and see whether there is anything of interest there.

If you want to read highbrow material, do not click on hacker news submissions with such impish titles :)

(what lead me to post it was this HN submission: [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/business/media/reporter...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/business/media/reporters- in-las-vegas-try-to-crack-case-of-who-owns-their-newspaper.html?referer=))

<comment><USER5> By the way, the title you originally submitted ("Reporters at NYT Try Not to Crack Case of Who Owns Their Newspaper") breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you not to rewrite titles unless they are misleading or linkbait.

Using HN titles to editorialize is something we specifically ask people not to do, so please don't do that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry for both not being aware of and breaking the rules. There is no excuse for either.

<comment><USER5> No worries! The rules remain rather obscure no matter how often we post things like this.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A new render loop for web animation - <AUTHOR> http://popmotion.io/blog/4.0.0-released-explaining-the-new-render-loop <comment><USER2> This looks really well made. I also enjoyed looking through your other (very clean) repos!

One question: does this work with React? I found this Github [https://github.com/kwnccc/react-popmotion](https://github.com/kwnccc/react- popmotion) but it isn't part of the main Popmotion organization. I would be willing to pay a license fee for something well maintained with React support.

FYI, The pay structure I agree with most for web libraries is a non-recurring fee, 1 year upgrades and support, the versions I purchased are useable indefinitely but I can buy a new 1 year license for the newer versions and more support. Up to you how you do it though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Fundamentally, it works with every API you can stuff a number into. "Number" includes stuff like hex/rgb values and complex strings, too.

So yeah, it does work with React, _however_ :

1) It will only do CSS value detection (stuff like prefixed values and transform value mapping) if you either give Popmotion a direct reference to the underlying DOM element as if you were using it normally, or manually set a CSS role on Actor init. This only becomes a problem when you're working with completely stateless components, but then it could be argued that stateless components shouldn't be responsible for their own transitions. This is because:

2) No JSX support. I've seen the Velocity React implementation and I'm not convinced this is the best API (if you haven't seen it, check it out: [https://github.com/twitter-fabric/velocity-react](https://github.com/twitter- fabric/velocity-react)) I wonder if the drive towards JSX-everything isn't a misstep and that in some situations things that should be `params` are being made into JSX tags.

I don't have a wild amount of experience with React so I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

And thanks for your opinion on the pay structure, I think we're largely in agreement there. Good food for thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://popmotion.io/guides/feature- comparison](http://popmotion.io/guides/feature-comparison) implies that popmotion is a free library, but [http://popmotion.io/subscribe](http://popmotion.io/subscribe) says it's $9/month. It also fails to mention the difference between Popmotion and PopmotionPro. Any insight on this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, thanks for spotting that - that should be a link to the Get Started tutorial.

Basically I was experimenting with funding models and Popmotion Pro was a commercial licence that I tried a subscription model for, and a flat rate for. Neither was picking up any traction so I'm still tinkering. It'll always be free for at least personal and non-profit use but I do need to figure out some kind of funding model.</comment></comment>


Just say NO to Paxos overhead: replacing consensus with network ordering [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi16/osdi16-li.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Sourced via 'The Morning Paper':

[https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/12/08/just-say-no-to-paxos- ove...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/12/08/just-say-no-to-paxos-overhead- replacing-consensus-with-network-ordering/)</comment>


AOL Security Update - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aol.com/2014/04/28/aol-security-update/

<comment><USER2> Awesome. I reported this to them about a month ago when it happened to me. I was up late last one night with insomnia and the password to my nearly 20 year old account popped into my head (It was a child account off my parents from back in the 90s). The three people I emailed all the sudden started getting spam from me even after I had changed the password to something other than what it had been for so long.

</comment><comment><USER3> The term "encrypted password" and talk of "breaking" that encryption appears a few times in the post - I guess AOL is another company storing user passwords using reversible encryption rather than hashing them. That is concerning.

</comment><comment><USER4> 2% of all accounts? That's a LOT of email addresses. Also sounds like they don't know how this is happening. I'm impressed that they put this up without having found a solution or stopped the problem, that must be a pretty hard move to make PR-wise.

<comment><USER5> Yep, it's been reported that around half a million users may be affected: [http://www.tomsguide.com/us/aol-spam-data- breach,news-18703....](http://www.tomsguide.com/us/aol-spam-data- breach,news-18703.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Several years ago my parents' AOL account (with a very poor password) was compromised. This was a legacy account, now free, but which had previously been a paid dialup account.

Attempts at recovery failed. Memory's a bit hazy, but whatever security questions were in place, if any, didn't work. The credit card number that had been used to pay the account was long-since forgotten.

Contacting AOL directly got nowhere.

The upshot was that we had to simply switch to a different account (and service), change contact information, and hope that nothing critical might be sent there inadvertently.

It does raise the issue that identity on the Internet is a difficult thing to establish and prove, or even retain.

</comment><comment><USER7> My mom was complaining that her friend had received spam that appeared to originate from her AOL account about two weeks ago. I was worried my mom had some malware, but this is a bit worse, hopefully they follow up with some more information about what account holders should do, if anything.

</comment><comment><USER8> I got an AOL account when I was around 5 or 6. Now I'm finishing my masters degree (this week..yay). It is interesting to wonder what these hackers could get access to with password resets on user's legacy accounts.

</comment><comment><USER9> Haven't they been breached before? Sad.

</comment><comment><USER10> > _AOL 's investigation is still underway, however, we have determined that > there was unauthorized access to information regarding a significant number > of user accounts. This information included AOL users' email addresses, > postal addresses, address book contact information, encrypted passwords and > encrypted answers ..., as well as certain employee information. _

Here we go again.</comment>


Yahoo Mail for iPhone  - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yahoo!-mail/id577586159?ls=1&mt=8 <comment><USER2> but why? maybe it's for folk who enjoy reading spam?

<comment><USER3> >maybe it's for folk who enjoy reading spam?

middle-brow dismissal much?</comment></comment>


Yudkowsky And De Grey Discussion on Aging - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtware.tv/videos/watch/3233-Bloggingheads-Yudkowsky-And-De-Grey <comment><USER2> This is an inferior linkjacked version of original material:

<http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/16508>

...which was also already posted to News.YC...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=396869>

</comment><comment><USER3> Seeing as it's past my bedtime, can you give a synopsis?</comment>


Minimum Number of Settlers for Survival on Another Planet – Scientific Reports - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66740-0 <comment><USER2> From my point of view, the main threat to colonize other planet and survive are other humans.

The paper focus on resource extraction and management. I have always give that for granted.

There have been different experiences of human cohabitation. With mixed results.

Mars500 [2] has been successful with a long story of experiment. Hi-SEAS has been successful [3].

But the Biosphere2 [1] was a revealing project.

There was miscalculations in the project, and the team was not able to surpass the inconveniences. They split in two groups. In Biosphere2 people who had been intimate friends had become implacable enemies, barely on speaking terms.

The factions inside the bubble formed from a rift and power struggle between the joint venture partners on how the science should proceed. Finally due to resource scarcity and not able to self sufficiency, the project was cancelled.

In another planet, the colony can't be cancelled, they will dye.

The irony of the situations is explained in game theory. Even when the best strategy is colaboration, some humans prefer far from optimal decisions.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HI-SEAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HI- SEAS)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, but pretty basic. The more interesting question than "How many people does it take to work all the survival systems" is, "How many people does it take to be biologically/genetically healthy?" Could be a much larger number.

And that adds the child-raising weight to the equation. Long-term survival must consider supportable growth rate, genetic health in the presence of setbacks (e.g. death of a random 20% of the colony) etc.

<comment><USER4> Also worth bearing in mind the genetic diversity of plants used for food, animals for live stock, gut bacteria, soil bacteria.

To a large extent humans are part of the greater ecosystem of Earth.

Perhaps with genetic engineering the Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms could be inserted a while afterwards to "inflate" diversity, I've not heard much about that but if one has a few examples of a species they could be used as a template to provide additional biodiversity.</comment></comment>


A Wearable Drone That Flies Off Your Wrist, Snaps a Photo and Flies Back - <AUTHOR> http://www.visualnews.com/2014/09/26/wearable-drone-flies-wrist-snaps-photo-flies-back

<comment><USER2> Same story, five times, three days:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=wearable+drone#!/story/forever/0/w...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=wearable+drone#!/story/forever/0/wearable%20drone)</comment>