Ask HN: What should I do in this situation? - <AUTHOR> So, I currently work for a company at a certain salary. I've worked there for two years now. As a condition of taking the job, I was allowed to work remotely when they moved their office (54 miles away from my house). The move was planned when I was interviewed.
Since then, we've gotten a new boss that wants everyone in the office more, including me. I told him we need to discuss my salary if he's changing the conditions of the job I accepted. He's been blowing me off for a few weeks now.
I haven't received any raises there and I found out that they're expanding the team and my salary is the lowest they're willing to pay for a new person in my position.
What I want to know is, what should I do with this information? I'm afraid that if I ask for more money, they might fire me, since they're hiring for my position anyway (for a different team, they say).
However, I don't think it's fair that I haven't received a single raise and that I make the lowest amount for this position, especially after two years of nothing but great work.
What should I do? Any help would be appreciated.
EDIT: I received word from my boss about a gas card... <comment><USER2> They almost certainly won't fire you for asking for a raise. Like you said yourself, your replacement would certainly be more expensive, and they'll lose at least 3 months of productivity even if the replacement is adequate.

I'd start looking for other jobs and, in parallel, tell the boss that you value the lack of the commute quite highly and that if they want you to commute you'll be happy to consider their offer for what is essentially a new job. If they suggest "Your current salary" you say "Hah, good one. No seriously, what is your offer, knowing how valuable of an employee I am and how difficult I would be to replace?"

More generally: most engineers who feel they are getting screwed are indeed getting screwed. (And many engineers who feel adequately compensated are in fact getting screwed but have psychological issues and asymmetric information which makes this less than obvious.) People will NOT fix this for you. You have to take responsibility for your own career.

P.S. Ducking meetings with you is a negotiating tactic! And it is _working_! You have to summon a modicum of intestinal fortitude and say "Boss, the fact of the upcoming move means my salary is going to get renegotiated. You get to pick whether that renegotiation happens in your office or not."

<comment><USER3> Patrick (the commenter I'm replying to) happens to have written the best article you'll ever read on the topic:

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary- negotiation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/)

It really helps put things into perspective.

<comment><USER4> My brother recently tried Patrick's advice interviewing for a sysadmin position at a small family business in the Chicago suburbs. When he attempted to negotiate after they indicated they were offering him employment, his offer was rescinded and they thanked him for his time.

This part of Patrick's article is still great advice in that regard:

"This means you need what political scientists call a commitment strategy: you always, as a matter of policy, negotiate all offers. (In this wide world I'm sure you can find a company who still makes exploding offers, where you get one yay-or-nay and then the offer is gone. You have a simple recourse to them: refuse them and deal with people who are willing to be professionals. You're not a peasant. Don't act like one.)"

This I find to be a sticking point, and never forget: "You're not a peasant. Don't act like one."

<comment><USER5> Sounds like a win for your brother in my opinion. That company was probably an awful place to work.

<comment><USER4> That was our consensus as well.

<comment><USER6> To be fair from a managers perspective this would act as a good filter, those who are willing to demand negotiation over those who aren't are more likely to want everything they can get in the current market (which is perfectly reasonable). You're more likely to get those who are inexperienced in the job market, or those who are so insecure/timid about their professional lives that they are willing to take what they can get.

Which is great for an employer who doesn't care about his/her workers/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was in somewhat of a similar position earlier in my career. I was afraid to stand up for myself and ended up meekly accepting my employer's BS about how there wasn't money in the budget for raises, but they liked me so much and valued my work and can I please work just a little more unpaid overtime?

I gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of salary for _nothing_ more than a smile and a thank you. And that's not counting the present value of that money had I pooled it with the rest of my investments (nor the opportunity cost of those extra hours worked). In fact the amount I "lost" by being my company's bitch dwarfs my investment returns. And I could have had it without taking on the much larger risks of the stock market. That's maybe the most important lesson.

So don't make the same mistake as me. Get out there and look for a better job. Always be looking for a better job[1]. Give each employer your full effort... And don't hesitate to to jump ship the minute something better comes along. Just like how they would not hesitate to lay you off if it made financial sense to them.

[1] where we define "better" as "job that pays _a least_ the market rate; that you enjoy; learning something that makes you more valuable to your next employer."

You are a business just as much as your employer is. That means you promote your service to potential buyers; understand the value of your service; and charge what the market bear for your service

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally get it. It's a complete mindset change and those are a little hard to get started. Definitely appreciate the advice.

<comment><USER7> You're welcome, I hope you find it useful. And just in case it's not obvious, let me point out that what you're getting here is free advice from strangers on the internet. So please don't blindly follow anything here without taking some time to seriously think through the possible outcomes and consequences.

\--

The first, small, step is to realize that you are the captain of your career. Your boss might care a little bit, but is mostly concerned with his or her own career prospects. Your company is a legal fiction that doesn't care about you at all. If you want your career to be good, you either float along and hope to get lucky, or you take charge of it yourself.

Personally I think you're likely to be ok. Even if you need to make some career choices for long term strategy and taking the short term hit (like accepting a smaller, or 0, increase than you're happy with so you can continue paying your bills while looking for a better job)

If they are already planning to replace you then nothing you do is going to help and you might as well start looking for another job.

If they are NOT planning to replace you, then I believe it's totally reasonable for you to talk to them about level setting your salary to (at least) the high end of what they currently pay plus offsetting your commute costs (gas + wear&tear)...

AND start looking for another job. (Keeping in mind that you are not morally or legally obligated to accept any job offers.)

For negotiating, the most important things to remember are:

\- What happens if you cannot find mutual ground with your boss? What are you going to do? Walk out of your job or start commuting for the same salary? Can you live with that until you find a different source of income?

\- Your own goals (eg, how much money do you want? What other perks are important to you?)

For money, consider what you would reasonably expect to be paid if you were coming into it with your current level of experience from a different company (assuming no significant commute)

Separately consider how much someone would have to pay you to drive your proposed commute, every day, during rush hour. How much would that need to be feel like it's a worthwhile use of your time?

Summing those numbers gives you an idea of the _minimum_ baseline amount you should aim for. If you can get that much, then you'll be reasonably happy. you should, of course, try to get a higher number than that. DO NOT GIVE THAT NUMBER TO YOUR BOSS

\- Your boss's goals. What does he care about? more importantly, what are you in a position to give him that would make him want to make you happy?

The dark side to that, or course, is "what does your boss fear and how can you take advantage of that" though personally I am unwilling to go there.

\- What other alternatives do you have RIGHT NOW in your hands? Do you have significant savings? Do you have other sources of income?

Ok... this is getting too long and I'm enjoying the sound of my mental "preaching" voice a little too much. Time to stop opining :)

Good luck! I hope you end up in a happier situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't ever think of this as "what is fair".

This is a negotiation between you and employer and it comes down to supply & demand, market value and who has the upper hand.

If you don't have another job lined up at same (or higher) salary, then the company has the upper hand and you're too afraid to even ask for a raise because you worry that you'll get fired.

As others said, you need to at least try to get another job. You can always apply and not accept the offer but only by applying and going through the process to the point of getting an offer you'll be able to answer the following questions:

1\. how hard is it for you to get another job ?

2\. if you do get an offer, is it better or worse than the current job ?

If you do get a better offer then you can use it as a leverage to get a better salary at your current company ("Hi boss. I really like working here but I'm paid below my market rate. I have an opportunity to take another job paying $X but I would rather stay here if you can match that salary. Your move.").

But when you do that, you have to be willing to take the other job if your company says no. You can always wipe your tears with the additional dollar bills.

</comment><comment><USER9> You should have left 3+ months ago. Your not valued there.

No one gets a raise out of niceness. You get a raise because they're Damn afraid you are going to leave.

If they don't push to promote you, then get out and promote yourself.

If they promote you, still get out and promote yourself harder.

Mind your own business.

</comment><comment><USER10> Depending on the kind of job, remote working is a perfect way to get the job done. If you feel this can be your case, then maybe your boss is not acting very smart.

In terms of job alternatives, if you feel that you would need to commute anyway, look around, I bet there are several open positions for which you would be able to work remotely (in some cases you might trade something like 1 day a week at the office).

At the end, give your boss another chance to understand your situation, go talk with him. It will be the ultimate way to know if that's the place you still want to work at or not.

</comment><comment><USER11> The gas card will pay for gas. It won't pay for wear and tear on your car and the 2 hours (possibly much more, depending on traffic) that you're going to lose every single workday.

Look at it this way: you're trading your time for their money. You're going to increase your job-related time expenditure by 25% or more (if you normally spend 8 hours working), plus incurring car expenses. It's going to take a hefty raise to make up for that.

I agree with several of the others: it's probably time to look for a new job.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am speaking from my own experience.

My boss left as a result of corporate incompetence (not his, the company). I will not go into that, but as a very senior and generally well liked person in a very large company, with the ability to bring a lot of work in (100s of jobs per year, approaching 1000s), these were big shoes to fill. He was the greatest manager I'd ever had. He didn't manage, he led.

His role was filled by someone quite new to the organisation. I hated it for months, but 1.5 years later, I liked him a lot.

He needed to show his boss that he could fill the shoes. That meant exceeding expectations. New, out-larged goals, visible checklists for what should be done, regular follow-ups.

But after a few months I realised his vulnerability in still feeling vulnerable. We didn't chat explicitly, and in retrospect we should have, but on a particularly difficult challenge that all thought impossible, we were achieved a big result, and bonded on that.

This was a management role where it easy to hire 'workers' but painfully hard to find people with requisite domain knowledge and demonstrable management experience, in a location it was very hard to get people to relocate (internally) to. If the salary offers you're seeing are higher, it is likely you are in an equally illiquid market. I also never explicitly asked for a raise, but after some time and trust had developed he bumped me up quite a bit.

It may be the case that the new incumbent in the role feels they do not have control. Let them feel they have control: document your work, stick to deadlines, and see each other face-to-face to discuss. They could well feel more vulnerable than you do now, despite a position of authority. Make it a partnership.

<comment><USER12> P.S.

No harm in circulating your CV around headhunters to learn your general market worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems very likely that you are not highly appreciated by your new boss. He is probably hoping you quit; he's not doing anything to encourage you to stay. I doubt he will offer much in the way of a raise to keep you on.

In a situation like this, the fact that you are infrequently on site has probably contributed to your ending up on the short side of the stick wrt office politics. You have likely missed important social cues related to the new boss' style and expectations. You have not been physically present to make sure you get credit for your work, and to counteract any negative karma that might have been thrown your way.

No it's not exactly fair, but employment is generally 'at will', there is no guarantee of fairness or bulwark against capricious or petty treatment.

</comment><comment><USER14> You have worked there for two years, without a single raise. And you make the lowest amount for this position.

This is a good thing and a bad thing - Good thing: since it is the lowest amount for this position, you have an upper hand. Its difficult (and costly) for them to replace you.

Bad thing - why did you not get a raise and why you are at that lower end - does it have something to do with your performance, or is it just some crappy office politics keeping your pay down?

If you performed well you deserve to get a raise - at least to compensate for the move to office. So definitely ask for it.

Also, do you go to office for 1-2 weeks in a period of about 6 months or so - It is also important to get a feel of your office environment if you all were not a completely remote team.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you can avoid making it an adversarial situation, that may help. Make it obvious to them that you feel like you're a very valuable employee, that you are very productive for them and losing three hours/day on a commute is just wasting either your time or theirs. You'll be most productive when you're happy, not with the drudgery of an big drive twice a day.

Can they make an exception for your being in the office, or make it a day per week or something like that? I agree with someone else who said that three hours/day driving wouldn't be worth whatever they're likely to offer.

</comment><comment><USER16> You should probably start looking for a new job _now_.

</comment><comment><USER17> Before you pitch the new boss with the idea that you deserve more money and the ability to continue working remote office-- read this book > [http://pitchanything.com/book/](http://pitchanything.com/book/)

There's an attitude and posturing element to this, you're The Prize. He's lucky you're on the team. Not arrogant, but self-assured.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe it's time to start looking for a new job. Are there opportunities available closer to your home?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but many involve a commute nearly as rough as the one I'm facing now. But I suppose in that situation, I could negotiate a higher salary from the get- go.

<comment><USER19> If your current employer isn't entertaining the idea of a raise (especially a substantial raise), you should wonder how much they really value you as an employee (the answer: probably not too much).

You should always have your eyes open for a better opportunity, especially if you don't feel all that happy with your current situation (that's one small luxury we currently have in the software development industry—take advantage of it!).

On the flip side, if you're satisfied where you are, and you're on a great team, feel free to stay, but know that any kind of raise would be an uphill battle.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is how I'm starting to feel. I love the team. Part of me thinks I'm blowing this out of proportion and ascribing nefarious motives to the higher- ups when they don't actually have any... but I also think I'm telling myself that so I don't have to face reality.

<comment><USER2> There's nothing particularly nefarious to "We have him at $X and have not been presented with any rational reason to offer $X + $Y." ("I deserve more" is not a rational reason. "You cannot purchase my services for $X and you want those services" is a rational reason.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "wants everyone in the office more, including me"

Well, one day a year is more than none. You could make the trip once and talk face to face.

In that meeting, you could reveal what you've learned about your salary relative to new hires, ask for a raise, and schedule another trip for 6 months down the line.

</comment><comment><USER21> I guess it depends on what kind of company you're working for. I work for an enterprise software company, and if my situation were like yours, I would be looking around for either a new job or a house/apartment closer to the office.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can't remember where I read it, but "studies" have shown that to retain the same level of happiness you need to make $40K more per additional hour of commute.

Maybe that can be a starting point for negotiating a raise.

</comment><comment><USER23> Using the lens of 'what makes the most sense in the long term', could you really handle commuting 54 miles? Personally I couldn't handle that commute for any price.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tell myself I could, but it's rough. A good 3+ hours in the car every day.

<comment><USER24> That's two good hobbies and sixpack abs right there, if you spend that time on self improvement instead of sitting in a car. Commutes over on hour per day are a huge sacrifice from your most precious resource: unallocated time

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, the mornings and the evenings are the time I get to spend with my wife and daughter. I value time with them infinitely more than I value listening to audiobooks/podcasts in rush hour traffic for 15 hours a week.

<comment><USER25> I think he means what you mean, that you could be doing far better things in the 3 hours you waste in the car.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, you're totally right. I completely missed the "instead of sitting in the car" part. Thanks. Sorry nikanj.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Talk to a lawyer and get them to talk to your boss about the remote work situation and the initial contract.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was just an oral agreement. Nothing on paper.

<comment><USER16> In other words, it was a fiction entertained by two people, one of whom no longer works there.

<comment><AUTHOR> He still works there and can probably vouch for the agreement, but he's no longer my direct supervisor.

<comment><USER16> Oh... my mistake then, sorry.

Still probably not binding though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Brief history of the 160 character length of SMS (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-text-messaging.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I came across this, looking for the length limit for tweets (which are 20 for username/handle, 140 for content).

<comment><USER2> this article has many commonalities with wikipedia entry

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Message_Service](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Message_Service)

sms should be considered as 140 bytes (not just 160 chars). it drops to 70 chars if you are to use unicode encoding.</comment></comment>


We found a deleted page that reveals the paparazzi roots of Kodak Coin - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/kodak-apparently-re-branded-a-paparazzi-licensing-platform-as-kodak-coin/ <comment><USER2> How does KodakCoin plan to mitigate the issue of attackers uploading IP that they don't actually own?

Seems like either:

\- KodakCoin IP rights can be revoked by a master key they control: centralized control makes the fact it's a cryptocurrency irrelevant

\- KodakCoin IP rights can't be revoked: this system is going to be used to facilitate payments for IP fraud.</comment>


How Twitch Uses PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitch.tv/how-twitch-uses-postgresql-c34aa9e56f58#.asn60cx9n <comment><USER2> Given Twitch is owned by Amazon, do they have the same cost considerations as the rest of us? Or do they get steeper discounts on EC2?

It makes sense to autoscale as hard as you like, if your cloud fees go back into your own pocket.

<comment><USER3> There was an interesting developer talk during the recent TwitchCon where they talked briefly about this.

Also remember that even Amazon has running costs, and I suspect as the autoscaling goes up, the profit margins drop.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An interesting article about how Twitch manages their Postgres cluster of around 100 machines.

Also their approach to use Aws autoscaling to scale read replicas is quite new and novel to me.

<comment><USER4> well I wonder how much man power they spend into their whole cluster. I mean look at how much setting tweaking / load balacing / auto scale / haproxy / pgbouncer / upgrade..

For the upgrade part I hope [https://2ndquadrant.com/de/resources/pglogical/pglogical- doc...](https://2ndquadrant.com/de/resources/pglogical/pglogical-docs/) will get better and better.

<comment><USER5> Also the relative smorgasbord of DBMS that they use aside from postgres.

I definitely appreciate their transparency though it's hard to miss the "And we're hiring" plug at the end of it.

<comment><USER4> > it's hard to miss the "And we're hiring" plug at the end of it.

well I missed it. O.O</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Docker Index Released - <AUTHOR> https://index.docker.io

<comment><USER2> This is part of the 0.3 release, which also includes an open-source release of the registry, and support for data volumes: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5664269></comment>


MongoDB 1.6 stable released - <AUTHOR> http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/1.6+Release+Notes <comment><USER2> Many people expect MongoDB to be the standard datastore for high-performance Drupal sites come the Drupal 7 release. See this session at the last drupalcon: [http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/mongodb- humongo...](http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/mongodb-humongous- drupal)

examiner.com is switching to Drupal soonish and has funded most of the work to write the Drupal/MongoDB integration.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mongo looks like its emerging as the preferred NoSQL platform on Rails at least.

As an admittedly rough measure, check out the number of "watchers" on github for each project's leading plugin:

1106 - MongoMapper <http://github.com/jnunemaker/mongomapper>

536 - CouchREST <http://github.com/jchris/couchrest>

312 - Cassandra <http://github.com/fauna/cassandra>

I've only built one rails app with nosql in it, but at first glance at least Mongo seemed the most fully baked of the group.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget:

695 - Mongoid <http://github.com/durran/mongoid>

seems to be the Rails/Mongo project to watch. They got a slick looking homepage too: <http://mongoid.org>

Hoping to try using it on my next project.

<comment><USER5> We've used both MongoMapper and Mongoid, and are very happy with Mongoid. It has nice ActiveModel integration, so it works quite well with Rails 3.

<comment><USER6> Seconded, using Mongoid over MM here too. It rocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As soon as they feature document level locking (maybe MVCC), I'll happily use it. But locking all databases when a write is occurring is a bit of a downer for large apps that require concurrency.

<comment><USER8> <http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Atomic+Operations> says:

"MongoDB supports atomic operations on single documents. MongoDB does not support traditional locking and complex transactions for a number of reasons. . ."

What made you think that it was "locking all databases when a write is occurring"?

<comment><USER7> basically what robotadam said (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1579212>). To clarify: the database lock is actually for the whole process (-> all databases). I had an especially bad experience with it before they introduced the yielding for long running operations. But even with the yielding, write heavy parallel things still suffer. Especially if your indexes ever get too big and the the system decides to swap in/out part of the index. I've seen 5-6 second inserts with hundreds of writes and reads piling up in the mean time (even without the swap part).

If only they had an equivalent of innodb as a storage engine, it would be awesome

<comment><USER9> This is also pertinent:

[http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/How+does+concurrency+wor...](http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/How+does+concurrency+work)

Note that whilst a write blocks all other writes, the time you need to wait is the time it takes for the in-memory data structure to be modified; you don't have to wait for the write to hit disk. (Writes are only persisted to disk every so often.)

<comment><USER7> Unless you actually don't have enough RAM and that data structure has to be paged in... that's a painfully long wait

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nobody seems to like my opinion, but MongoDB kept eating my data regularly and silently. My writeups are here:

<http://www.korokithakis.net/node/116> <http://www.korokithakis.net/node/119>

I would love to answer questions if I could figure out how to easily see my replies on HN :/

<comment><USER11> You can see replies by hitting the "threads" link at the top of the page.

Reasons (from my understanding) that you had a bad experience:

        1. You used a development, unstable version of software in production.
        2. 32 bit Mongo cannot store more than 2GB of data, this is a very public, known admission.

The reason that 'nobody seems to like your opinion' is that your post got real famous, and while mistakes happen, the internet was in a bit of a frenzy at the time over the whole NoSQL thing, and so you became sort of a poster child for various sides that people had chosen. Sucks, but it happens. I had a similar experience with my first blog post ever, so I feel your pain...

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the "threads" tip, it's really handy. About your points:

1\. This is true (there was no warning that I saw when I was downloading it, although one was added later, or maybe I didn't notice it). However, I upgraded to the stable version when it came out to give MongoDB a second chance, because it sounds very good in theory, and I had the same (if not bigger) problems.

2\. I hadn't known about it, and, no matter how pubilc it is, the server could just refuse to store more data. Silently corrupting two documents for every document inserted is inexcusable, even if your database was forged in the pits of hell.

I think your point about the poster child thing is true. While I meant my post as a sort of "MongoDB didn't look too production-ready to me, but I hope it gets there eventually", people became really polarized and took it either as "this guy is right, MongoDB _sucks_ " or "this guy is an idiot, silently corrupting data is perfectly acceptable if there's a notice on the website"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some great improvements and one step closer to full-text search, which is slated for 1.7.x.

<http://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-380>

<comment><USER13> You can do pretty neat things with indexes and regexp queries. The mongo- search project is also pretty cool (does Porter stemming, indexing, etc).

That said, if you need powerful "full-text searching" I would look to something like Lucene or Xapian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Replica sets look awesome. Can't wait to get them set up in production. Replacing a master/slave setup with this means automatic failover.

Looking forward to single server durability in the next one (1.8). Should enable me to convince more clients to add mongo as part of the deployment stack.

<comment><USER15> I got a replica pair. Wonder how easy I can migrate it to a replica set.

<comment><USER16> Upgrading From Replica Pairs or Master/Slave:

[http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Upgrading+to+Replica+Set...](http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Upgrading+to+Replica+Sets)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I installed 1.6 on my laptop today, but I will wait a week before starting to update servers. Anyway, I have never had data collections large enough to need sharding, but replica sets look like a much better alternative to frequent snapshots to S3.

A year ago I was equally enthusiastic about MongoDB, CouchDB, and Cassandra. However, at least for the modest scale work that I do I don't really need Cassandra, and MongoDB is so easy to work with. I still really like CouchDB but I have never had a customer request its use, so my experience is limited to just using it for my own stuff.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yay! Great news, just in time for my startup launch. Kudos to MongoDB.

<comment><USER19> Hi pune :) I was in I2IT some years ago.. nice place !

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Definitely getting huMongous - looks like it's used by justin.tv and foursquare - good enough for me. By the way, there is a MongoDB shell on the homepage for tryruby.org like mini tutorials => <http://www.mongodb.org/> Convinced me enough to get interested and download mongoid as well :-)

Hmm, now all there's left is an online hosting solution like Couch.io

<comment><USER21> There's <https://mongohq.com>

<comment><USER22> And there's a Heroku add-on that supports it as well.

<comment><USER23> You can also use MongoHQ directly if you want, from Heroku.

I described the steps here:

[http://blog.logeek.fr/2010/6/29/sinatra-heroku-mongodb- mongo...](http://blog.logeek.fr/2010/6/29/sinatra-heroku-mongodb-mongohq- notes)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was excited to see a new movement in database schemes that provide a different way of storing data outside a relational database model however a couple things bother me. Firstly calling it nosql, its just complete disrespect of sql and relational databases, could there not have been a more mature response and have it termed as something relevant?

Secondly what scares me and I find hilarious is people who so quickly jump onto this movement, moving the entirety of their critical data without understanding the potential downfalls, such as data loss with no warning. As a key value store for non critical data, this kind of thing is brilliant, and data loss can be managed, maybe not tolerated in a high throughput environment where "cache misses" are a concern but otherwise yea its great. Still look at facebook, twitter, friendfeed, who are all still using mysql and scaling out in their own way.

</comment><comment><USER25> Already commented about Debian here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1581231>

</comment><comment><USER26> i dont get why do they still stick with agpl. there are a lot more _companies_ built on products with licenses other than agpl, such as, wildly popular apache projects. even microsoft releasing code with apache license but not mongodb guys!

<comment><USER27> There are successful companies built around all sorts of licensing schemes, but that doesn't mean that you are in a position to say what's best for 10gen's specific situation.

Also, all of the official client libraries for mongo are Apache licensed, it's only the core server that is AGPL (which means that you can use mongo in closed source applications - only if you make changes to the actual core database do you have to give those changes back to the community, and even then you still don't have to open source the rest of your application).

<comment><USER26> you're in no position to tell me what i say! it's simply awkard to use a license like that. also you, yourself, admitted the conflict of client vs server licensing. why this is so? because they want widest usage. they release open source software not because they love developers but because they have to. returning to the point apache or gpl projects have strong commercial backing from big companies to start-ups and knowing this i'm asking there must be a real reason why they did choose agpl over gpl or apache. btw, it's their choice i respect that as well.</comment></comment></comment>


The F-35 Is a $1.4T National Disaster (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-f-35-14-trillion-dollar-national-disaster-19985 <comment><USER3> It depends on what you consider the goal of the F-35 to be.

If you believe it's to build a next generation fighter plane then yes it's a disaster.

If you believe it's a way to funnel trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to private defense companies then it's a rousing success.

<comment><USER4> 1500 domestic suppliers in 46 states.

[https://www.f35.com/about/economic- impact](https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact)

<comment><USER5> I recall a post-mortem for the Superconducting Super Collider that pointed out a painful dichotomy: to build political support the contracts and suppliers had to be spread across many districts and states, but because it was a high tech project it was _much, much, much_ more sensitive to component delays and quality issues.

The big takeaway: with non-challenging, small fry, projects you can play all the politics you want and still land them; _challenging_ projects have a much stronger need to be guided by actual practical project concerns & engineering or you substantially increase the risk of failure.

The Manhattan project, and the incredible post-WW2 military engineering, worked because the brains got money and control so they build to the challenge at hand. When Porky Pig has first dibs the merely 'insanely hard' becomes impossible... Alan Kay said something to the same effect about the golden age of innovation at Xerox Parc: (brains + money) - BS = profitableSurprises.

<comment><USER6> The Manhattan project was distributed all around the country. From the pile under bleachers in Chicago, to the Hanford site in WA, the testing in the New Mexico desert, and Oak Ridge in Tennessee.

<comment><USER5> That's orthogonal to my point :)

If engineering concerns dictate project planning, structure, and execution you're at least playing the game. Compromise is the nature of the beast, and practical realities dictate decisions.

If political financing, back scratching, and pocket filling dictate the projects planning, structure, and execution: you've increased complexity and risk substantially, and the likelihood that you've made the project nigh impossible to complete rises accordingly.

Fermi et al were not working in Chicago to balance the distribution of pork, IoW... Hard projects do not have the margins to allow those kinds of inefficiencies. And not to dis the military industrial complex, but that distinction is fundamental to all R&D projects. Everyone involved should have known better when this boondoggle started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How do the issues with the F-35 platform stack up against those of earlier models? I've read anecdotes that early on the F-16 and F-15 also had significant flaws, yet those were eventually sorted out and both have become mainstays of air forces around the world.

I've no doubt there have been massive costs overruns (what government program doesn't), but would be willing to bet that the F-35 turns out to be a really good plane and does nothing to threaten the US's position as the premier air power.

Some good discussion:

[https://www.quora.com/Is-the-F-35-as-bad-as-many-people- clai...](https://www.quora.com/Is-the-F-35-as-bad-as-many-people-claim-Will- it-be-a-good-fighter-when-its-needed)

<comment><USER8> It's questionable if manned high performance fighter aircraft have a vital aka non symbolic role in a modern army. That's not to say the F-35 will not be used or even preform well, but consider unmanned satellites made manned high altitude surveillance obsolete even if they where not as directly useful.

<comment><USER9> It is tempting to dismiss the possibility of a serious war. We did that after the Great War, the War to End all Wars, now known as World War I. It's been a while, over 70 years now, but you can be sure that there will be another serious war.

When that happens, there will be no satellites. There will be no way to remotely operate any equipment. Mere navigation and communication will be difficult again.

Any sort of unmanned equipment will have to operate autonomously, making deadly decisions in an unfamiliar and hostile environment. That's a tall order for modern AI.

<comment><USER8> Back in the 90's missiles where already able to navigate by landmarks and stars. GPS is nice, but it's in no way needed for Drones.

The kind of war you are talking about is exactly the kind of war where small numbers of expensive F-35's will very quickly be destroyed and how quickly new weapons can enter the battlefield will be a major issue. The vast distributed supply chain is probably the number 1 issue with F-35's for that kind of a fight.

While not great as spy satellites, using flocks of cube satellites for communications would be very hard to shut down. A single launch could put hundreds of separate targets up which would need to be individually targeted. Similarly unmanned drones can fill in for spy aircraft in tactical situations and are very cost effective.

I can't say what the modern version of total war between modern supper powers would look like, but I very much doubt it would look much like WWII.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The F-35 program is an amazing thing in 2018 when every war in the last two decades has been mostly about ground insurgents. This, taken with the fact that we've had massive technological advances when it comes to drone warfare and the F-35 very much looks like a plane from the past, not the future. It would seem to be much wiser to scrap the program and re-focus on drone based solutions but that's going to hurt someone's ego so it's likely the F-35 will continue.

<comment><USER11> Our current adversaries are mostly insurgents - however, if you look forward at dwindling resources and nations doing the unthinkable and waging wars over them, then the F-35 makes more sense. With a complex and lengthy development process you're planning for the war after the next, not the current.

That being said, with all the problems the F-35 has, much like the Eurofighter before it, it might be no match for what another advanced economy could produce.

<comment><USER12> The chances of developed nations going to war with each other over dwindling resources is extremely close to zero.

<comment><USER13> Surely given a long enough time window it approaches one?

<comment><USER14> Only if you assume the concept of "nation" will outlast the concept of "war".

There are a number of reasons to believe that the future of warfare will look much more like Syria, i.e. states implode from within and then break apart into a number of warring factions, each fighting over territory & resources within the carcass of the state. Actually, most of the bloodiest 20th century conflicts were of this type (eg. Russian & Chinese civil wars, Rwandan genocide & Congo Wars, civil wars in Nigeria/Sudan/Ethiopia), and historically the highest death tolls have usually occurred in civil wars where an empire breaks up or in conquests when a much more developed power invades a less- developed power (eg. Mongol conquests or European conquest of America).

WW2 was a historical anomaly in that it was fought between developed nations. It's an anomaly we pay a lot of attention to, though, because it led to the current international system of American hegemony and history tends to get written by the victors.

<comment><USER15> > WW2 was a historical anomaly in that it was fought between developed > nations. It's an anomaly we pay a lot of attention to, though, because it > led to the current international system of American hegemony and history > tends to get written by the victors.

Because major historical powers like Rome, China, Mayans, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, Britain never fought any wars against other powers that were at their same level of development. Oh, wait, _all_ of them did.

The anomaly is the past two centuries or so, which have been the most peaceful times on record, particularly between major powers. (Since the Napoleonic Wars, the sum total is Crimean War, Mexican-American War, Austro-Prussian War, Franco-Prussian War, Spanish-American War, Russo-Japanese War, World War I, Russian Civil War, World War II [noting that there's a lot of related conflicts getting summed up here], Korean War, maybe War of the Pacific and the Russo-Turkish Wars). Compare that to the Early Modern, which is replete with constant conflict on Europe: 18th century alone has Great Northern War, War of Spanish Succession, War of Austrian Succession, Seven Years' War, American Revolution, and the French Revolutionary Wars, all of which were far nastier than the brief wars in the 19th century (save the American Civil War and the Napoleonic Wars).

<comment><USER14> Take a look at the list of wars by death toll:

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

Categorized into great power wars (between well-defined states of roughly equal power levels), civil wars (where a single state breaks up into multiple factions that then fight each other), rebellions (where a state breaks up, but into an asymmetric power balance between one province and the rest of the state), and conquests (where a much more developed power - at least in terms of military technology - invades and destroys a less-developed one) and ordered by death toll, you have:

      WW2 (great power)
      Mongol conquests (conquest)
      Three Kingdoms war (civil)
      Qing conquest of Ming (rebellion, against backdrop of civil)
      Spanish conquest of Aztecs (conquest)
      Taiping rebellion (rebellion)
      Second Sino-Japanese war (great power, but against the backdrop of the Chinese Civil War)
      An-Lushan rebellion (rebellion)
      Germanic wars vs. Rome (effectively a civil war in that Roman territory was breaking up and many of the adversaries were trained in the Roman army, but you can quibble about this)
      WW1 (great power)
      Conquests of Timur (?)
      Dungan Revolt (rebellion)
      Chinese Civil War (civil)
      Spanish conquest of Incas (conquest)
      Reconquista (great power?)
      Russian Civil War (civil)
      Thirty Years War (civil - breakup of Holy Roman Empire)
      Ottoman Wars (great power)
      Moorish Wars (great power)
      Napoleonic Wars (great power)
      Mughal-Maratha Wars (?)
      Yellow-Turban Rebellion (rebellion)
      Second Congo War (civil)
      French Wars of Religion (civil)
      Indian Rebellion of 1857 (rebellion)
      Hundred Years War (great power)
      Vietnam War (civil, but with great power involvement)
      Crusades (great power)

Readers can draw the conclusion they like from that data, but to my eyes - <USER2> you exclude WW2, civil wars and conquests end up killing far more people and remaking the map more than great power conflicts.

<comment><USER15> There are several reasons that your data isn't correct, and I'm not going to sit down and poke at every one of them, but let me point out some major things.

You have a strong need to separate out civil wars from great power conflicts, but many of them, particularly the ones that lead to lots of deaths, have very strong international involvement, and the destruction is driven in large part by foreign involvement. The Congo Wars and the Russian Civil War are good examples of this. Beyond that, you basically jump at the opportunity to classify wars as civil wars: the Germanic incursions into the Roman Empire and the Thirty Years' War [1] are in no way civil wars.

Placing importance of wars on the raw numbers of people killed is a bad way to go about things. First off, we have trouble establishing these counts even in modern contexts where sophisticated bureaucracies exist to keep track of everything (these bureaucracies have a way of breaking down in war); historical counts involve a fair amount of guesswork, and especially in list mode, you're not seeing similar methodologies being applied to ensure that the estimates are comparable. Even keeping track of wars with similar methodologies is difficult: why do we roll up all of the 14th century Anglo- French conflicts into the Hundred Years' War, yet insist on keeping World War I, World War II, the Russian Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Spanish Civil War all separate instead of a Forty Years' War?

Most importantly, however, is that raw death totals don't reflect the impact of destruction. The deadliest war in US history is not the American Civil War, but King Philip's War, which killed 10% of the population. The Thirty Years' War was hardest in Northern Germany, where it killed about 50% of the people, while World War II only managed to kill 17% of the Poles (and most of that due to the Holocaust). Raw death counts inflate the relative importance of Chinese wars, since the Chinese river plains were historically able to support far larger population densities than in, say, Europe, so conflicts in China necessarily involve more people even at a comparable level of technological sophistication.

[1] For most of its existence, the Holy Roman Empire was not properly a country as we would understand it in our modern terminology. Admittedly, the Habsburgs were trying to reestablish it as a strong centralized state at the time, but the Thirty Years' War was effectively the point at which they gave up. It's more proper to think of the HRE at this point as closer to a 17th century organization akin to the current European Union than the modern United States.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the key expectations of the F-35 program early on was that "stealth" technology would proliferate further, and the market for exporting the F-35 would be much larger than it ended up. That made it easier for everyone to keep throwing money at the problem, although I'm sure the lobbyist did more than their fair share.

This isn't exactly the first time we've seen attempts at "universal" solutions to discrete military problems. The F-111 program was another disaster in the making, only mitigated by massively changing the requirements and dropping the Navy aspect entirely. The F-35 S/VTOL Marine variant is the largest anchor around the programs neck, but its essentially the same set of problems the F-111 project ran into.

The easiest fix would have been to just tell the Marines and Navy to go find their own aircraft solutions, and let the F-35 turn into a semi-stealthy F-16 replacement. I think we might be a little past that point now, unfortunately.

<comment><USER17> The F-111 Aardvark:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111_Aardv...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111_Aardvark)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > DoD has estimated that all training and operational operations over the > 50-year life of the program (assuming a 30-year life for each aircraft) will > be $1 trillion, making the cost to buy and operate the F-35 at least $1.4 > trillion.

A little bit of clickbait there. $1.4 trillion projected over 50 years. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a great fighter. But we haven't spent $1.4 trillion on it (yet).

</comment><comment><USER19> Just in case nobody has seen the documentary about the initial design of this fighter craft: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_WPLeDmU6o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_WPLeDmU6o)

<comment><USER20> Thanks! I watched that when it was show on PBS (Nova?) back in 2003 and I've been meaning to see if it was online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Single page link: [http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the- buzz/the-f-35-14-trilli...](http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the- buzz/the-f-35-14-trillion-dollar-national-disaster-19985?page=show)

</comment><comment><USER22> The F-35 promised a major a leap in technological capability. However, technology is not at the point where it deliver on that promise. As a software engineer, I can relate to the difficulty of joining multiple sources of data. This is something that AI can potentially do very well. I foresee the next generation of F-series aircrafts having something more akin to an AI co-pilot. This would prevent information overload. Instead of a pilot ingesting hundreds of data points, they could have a simple interface and all the cohesion handled by the AI.

</comment><comment><USER23> It seems that F-35 still has problems but they are slightly different than described in the article. There is also neat solution, cut F-35 orders by third to pay for increased maintenance and operating costs. [http://fortune.com/2018/03/28/air-force-f-35-cost- cuts/](http://fortune.com/2018/03/28/air-force-f-35-cost-cuts/)

The beauty of all this is that this works out fine as long as there is no large high intensity war against near peer opponent in next 20-30 years.

<comment><USER24> A lot of things would conceivably not work out fine in the scenario "high intensity warfare against near peer opponent", in any conceivable future. Just for the record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> People always seem to forget that money doesn't evaporate.

Public expenditure _usually_ gets ploughed directly into national and local economies. A quarter of it comes flying right back in direct tax revenue. The rest gets spent too.

I'm not saying it couldn't have done that in a better way, educational bursaries, healthcare, etc but if you're looking at this from a purely economic standpoint, the US exports this stuff. Not something you can lump on some other causes.

</comment><comment><USER26> International, Canada is trying to come along for the ride.

<comment> m-p-3 Isn't Canada opting for the Rafale instead?

<comment><USER27> Rafale will cost more...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A friend of mine mentioned how the F-35 runs so hot that it has to cool its fuel to stop it from boiling. If that is true, how does it retain stealth in the face of thermal radiation? Like, I get radar absorbing paint, but how does one stop heat loss?

Any design I can think of amounts to carrying some really cold stuff with you and dumping the excess heat there when you need thermal stealth, but surely that can't be it.

<comment><USER29> It is still releasing the same amount of heat, but diffused a bit more. The designers were trying to avoid really "bright" hot spots, to make it harder for IR-guided missiles to lock-on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "There is an app for that" (another view on F-35 program):

[https://theaviationist.com/2018/04/18/why-does-the-public- ha...](https://theaviationist.com/2018/04/18/why-does-the-public-have-trouble- understanding-the-f-35-air-force-reserve-pilots-tell-us-the-f-35a-is-a- powerful-force-multiplier/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Quote from page 13:

`After extensive troubleshooting, IT personnel figured out they had to change several settings on Internet Explorer so ALIS users could log into the system. This included lowering security settings, which DOT&E noted with commendable understatement was "an action that may not be compatible with required cybersecurity and network protection standards."`

They use Internet Explorer?

</comment><comment><USER32> Whenever I'm feeling bad being behind on something, I think of the F-35. Doesn't exactly make me feel better, but at least reminds me it could be worse.

Israel took delivery of five of these 2016-2017. I wonder how they're faring.

</comment><comment><USER33> For some opposite perspective: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GfqB7P6uAE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GfqB7P6uAE)

</comment><comment><USER34> we should just be building more warthogs

</comment><comment><USER35> This is from April 1 2017 and much of what was written in this article does not apply any longer. The reason the US does not go 100% into drones is because drone jamming technology is not something that can easily be countered (the Russians are jamming US drones today in Syria).

The most interesting use of the F35 is not as a weapons platform but a sensor platform for sneaking behind enemy lines and picking targets for ship based weapons platforms to attack at distance.

The F-35 is definitely not a perfect program but as far as the military and US national security is concerned, not having the first 5th generation fighter would have been a much more significant failure than cost overruns.

Beyond actual use in war the purpose of this fighter is to tell other nations that if you want to go war you need to to spend $1.4 trillion dollars and countless years of research to even reach parity.

<comment><USER36> > much of what was written in this article does not apply any longer

Care to elaborate? E.g. did the US govt find $1.7 trillion in the couch cushions, suddenly making the cost a moot point?

<comment><USER37> The infamous cost estimate is spread over 60 years, start to finish. That's conveniently, intentionally left out of most articles that highlight the cost.

So first of all, the US will never buy 3,000 of the planes. You can easily cut that in half or more. I'd wager on 1,000 or less. They'll end the program and move on to the next thing/s, like they always do.

Second, they'll of course never fly for 50 or 60 years. 35-40 from today would be more plausible as an end.

Now you're down to more like $800 billion total including the next 40 years. The cost will move higher per plane, the US will buy less planes than projected, and the total outlay will drop substantially as they shift funding to new weapons programs. $20 billion per year for its life, out of what will probably be a $900b to $1t averaged military budget over the F35's life, or ~2%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I realize that the F-35 is a stealth fighter, but I can't help but think of this quote whenever the F-35 is mentioned.

 _The results were crushing. In not a single dogfight was the F-35 able to either defend itself against an attack from the F-16 or to convert its attack into a kill_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8xzLxFIjno](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8xzLxFIjno)

</comment><comment><USER39> Russian jets can take off from an airstrip full of debris. American jets need a shiny aircraft carrier and a coin can mess them up.

<comment><USER40> > American jets need a shiny aircraft carrier and a coin can mess them up.

Marine variants are VTOL, USAF operates no carriers. As for the coin story, I'm sure you're confusing A) carrier FOD sweeps, which are because small debris traveling at high-speed will cause serious damage or B) one of those stories about some old Chinese woman throwing coins into a jet engine and causing a major delay and extrapolating from there.

<comment><USER41> there's a documentary I forget where that shows a russia jet closing their front of intakes and opening the top of them at take off, preventing debris on the runway from being sucked in.

<comment><USER42> That was on the early versions of the MiG-29.

The latest 29M and K models eliminated the intake plates and over-wing louvres in favour of simpler swing-down intake grilles. That saved a lot of weight and drag and gave extra volume for fuel.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Private Meeting with a Business Mogel: Lessons for the Sometimes Intimidated - <AUTHOR> http://thefirstyearentrepreneur.com/forthesometimesintimidated/

<comment><USER2> I was very dismissive of this at first, but kept skim/reading. I wanted to know what he (oh its a she!) did. I still don't know. Some sort of business coach I guess. I wanted to know who this god-like mogul is - I still don't know and I think I am past caring.

But that became the point of the post - she did not handle the meeting well - she did not have a clear proposition, she did not articulate it in terms of what the customer pain was and she found herself out of her depth.

But she kept swimming, and I started to fall for her by the end. And something interesting happened, I started to realise that his post, hardly HN standard material, is really what we _should_ be looking at. Patio11 just emailed me about some pester-by-email course, and I am dismissive of that too. But I suspect that just like a young therapist coach with some chutzpah putting herself in unfamiliar situations, there will be something to learn from patio11 course - something about being willing to sell, willing to ask for the money, that geeks have beaten out of them young.

And it's something I need to relearn. And this article and patio11 teach me more than any discussion on go v rust on turning a competant developer into a profitable competant developer

<comment><AUTHOR> I am a she indeed, and I'm glad that it ended up feeling beneficial. Thanks for your thoughts :)

You're right about what I "do": I have a private mental health practice and I do small business consulting. I'll try to make that clear earlier on next time.

In regards to the mogul, I can give you a huge hint: he sold a very large health and beauty line that is headquartered in Minneapolis. There are salons and training schools all over the Midwest, and the product line is nationally loved. I left his name out to avoid drawing attention from those much more powerful than I. After all, I am just some young, chutzpah-possessing entrepreneur ;)

Enjoy patio11.</comment></comment>


Before Silicon Valley got nasty the Pirates of Analog Alley fought it out (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/before-silicon-valley-got-nasty-the-pirates-of-analog-alley-fought-it-out/ <comment><USER2> This was a fascinating read overall but I found the effort to translate everything into modern big-tech terminology very distracting. Furthermore the Gates/Jobs or Microsoft/Apple analogies seem tenuous at best and gives the impression that the author is misrepresenting a story that is already interesting enough on its own.

<comment><USER3> I liked how he wove it together (or attempted to).

Agreed that he made points which appeared to stop you and think up the story to draw a parallel but I believe there is a cyclical nature to this.

I like seeing the story behind great rivalries, Tesla and Edison, Marconi and Maskelyne, Einstein and Hilbert. Arguably you could say it parallels across the mere premise of rivalry.

In any case, that was a new one for me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kelvin bandwidth model only accounted for the RC dispersion of the undersea cable, hence it had horrible dispersion and a sub-Hz bandwidth.

It was Heaviside that introduced the loading coil via his solution of telegrapher equation and coaxial cable that made the undersea cable practical. Of course he died a pauper.

He is the father of RF EE, if you ask me. [https://ethw.org/Oliver_Heaviside](https://ethw.org/Oliver_Heaviside)

<comment><USER5> Oddly enough, Heaviside's name has been heard in song by tens of millions of people in recent years.

In the musical _Cats_ , every Jellicle Cat hopes to be the one chosen to ascend to the Heaviside Layer.

This may be a metaphorical place in the play, but it is also an actual layer of the ionosphere. Oliver Heaviside and Arthur Kennelly (working independently) predicted its existence in 1902, and it was confirmed in 1924 by Edward Appleton.

 _Cats_ is based on the 1939 book _Old Possum 's Book of Practical Cats_ by T. S. Eliot. Shortwave radio was a big deal at the time, and anything to do with radio signals and propagation caught the public's attention.

Today, the Heaviside Layer is known as the E layer, and is much beloved by amateur radio operators for its unpredictable propagation known as "sporadic E skip".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennelly%E2%80%93Heaviside_lay...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennelly%E2%80%93Heaviside_layer)

[https://catsmusical.fandom.com/wiki/Heaviside_Layer](https://catsmusical.fandom.com/wiki/Heaviside_Layer)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Possum%27s_Book_of_Practic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Possum%27s_Book_of_Practical_Cats)

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

</comment></comment><comment> mr-ron For people interested in this part of Computer history I highly recommend the book "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution" [https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Hackers-Geniuses- Created-R...](https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Hackers-Geniuses-Created- Revolution/dp/1476708703)

Gets deep into this part of history, and goes deep into what was shared between companies and research as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> An excellent book on this subject (without any of the heavyhanded Big Tech comparisons) is "Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics", by David Mindell who also wrote the great "Digital Apollo".

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd also like to see a historical tech article about magnetic amplifiers. These were used for gunnery also.

</comment><comment><USER8> I never realised Kelvin took over from Babbage</comment>


Gaudí's Sagrada Familia gets building permit after 137 years - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/ff973c5c769c4d1d872255f04c6c1f11 <comment><USER2> The article misses an important bit of info: when the construction started, the Sagrada Familia was not in Barcelona, but in an independent municipality, Sant Martí de Provençals. It was to this municipality that the building permit was requested, not to Barcelona, which would annex the municipality and with it, the Sagrada Familia, 15 years later. Plus, most of the documentation regarding the building, including plans, scale models etc. were destroyed in a fire caused by anarchists when the Civil War started. The story is more complex than just incompetent bureaucracy.

<comment><USER3> I would listen to a podcast episode or read a book about this. It sounds like an interesting story!

<comment><USER4> 99% Invisible recently did an episode about its history: [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/la-sagrada- familia-2/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/la-sagrada-familia-2/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The engineering work for Sagrada Familia was insanely clever. Gaudi build a scale model including accurate weights for the building materials, upside- down, out of strings and weights. That way he could design non-vertical pillars that branch like trees and where all the stresses were carried by compression through the stonework. It is really a marvel of pre-computer technical design!

[1] [https://memetician.livejournal.com/201202.html](https://memetician.livejournal.com/201202.html)

[2] [https://criticalista.com/2012/08/16/gaudis-hanging-chain- mod...](https://criticalista.com/2012/08/16/gaudis-hanging-chain-models- parametric-design-avant-la-lettre/)

<comment><USER6> Why are upside down strings an accurate model for compressed stone?

<comment><USER7> To an excellent approximation, a structure made entirely of string and weights has tension on the strings but no shear stress on the string. (This is because string is floppy — if you pull gently on a string, you'll pull the other end toward you but not sideways.). If the whole structure dangles without moving, that means that all the forces (tension and gravity) balance everywhere. If you flip the sign of all forces, tension turns into compression, gravity pulls the other way, there is still no shear, and the whole thing still stays put. Now you have an upside down cathedral with upside down gravity, which is more or less the same thing as a right side up cathedral with right side up gravity.

There are plenty of ways this can go wrong. The little weights Gaudí used might not correctly model the weight of the stone. The whole thing might be unstable under inevitable sideways forces from wind and such, although one could blow on the string model to make sure it doesn't start swinging to approximate this. And the string model probably doesn't say much about the distribution of compression loads in the stone, especially if the overall structure is not statically determinate.

<comment><USER8> why is this approximate and not exact?

<comment><USER7> Strings really do have some stiffness. In a piano, this causes harmonics to be slightly more than an octave apart, leading to stretched tuning. Cotton strings won't be as still as metal strings, but the effect still exists.

Another issue is that Gaudí used a bunch of little weights instead of weighted strings. This means that he's modeling stone columns with all the weight concentrated in a few places, which isn't quite right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My favourite part of the tour was when they mention that Gaudi died in a tram accident, without any further details.

So I had to research that part on my own.

Trams at the time ran at around 10kph.

Supposedly he saw a tram coming, took a step back and got hit by another tram.

As his main concerns were architecture and the church, he looked homeless.

Some time after the accident, someone did call for a doctor who declared him dead.

Some time later, he was brought to a hospital, provided the care that a beggar would receive and died 3 days later. Only being identified some time after being admitted.

Given that it was 1926 and he was almost 74, it's hard to say how much immediate care would have helped anyway.

<comment><USER10> > As his main concerns were architecture and the church, he looked homeless.

Career goals. I feel like I'm already halfway there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The company I work for has actually been doing the engineering design work to finish the building. Pretty amazing how much was accomplished back in the day without computer aid.

[https://www.arup.com/projects/sagrada- familia](https://www.arup.com/projects/sagrada-familia)

<comment><USER12> I visited a week ago, and it was one of the most awe-inspiring buildings I've ever been in. It gave me hope for humanity that we still have the ambition to complete multi-generational projects like this. Thank you for your contribution!

<comment><USER11> Wish I could say I've worked on it personally! Have to agree that it's an amazing project

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I found this old rendering of what still needs to be built - the scale is just fantastic!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69COc7UhvbY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69COc7UhvbY)

<comment><USER14> Wow. Just when I think it's done, another structure emerges, bigger than the last. It's pretty impressive that we can sustain projects like these when they offer only cultural value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Many locals (and at any rate this local) see the Sagrada Família as it currently is as a rather unhappy travesty. There are no construction plans by Gaudí, just a few sketches, and what architects are doing is mostly theme-park architecture: making concrete look like stone, for example. It would have been much preferable to leave it as it was in 1926.

<comment><USER16> Most cathedrals took generations to build and diverged from the initial plans during their construction. It is not uncommon that even architectonic styles changed, and the final result was a mixture of romanic and gothic, for example.

Sagrada Familia may be an unhappy travesty, but every cathedral is, and few have such a consistent style. Even our cities are unhappy travesties, and I do not think that leaving the unfinished works of deceased architects unfinished would change that.

You have all the right to dislike how it is being done, and it may be not exactly what Gaudí thought, but trying to finish it was, in my opinion, the right decision. When you are in the middle of a task that will take generations, it makes sense trying to continue even if some accident happens, like your main architect getting killed by a tram or documents getting lost.

<comment><USER15> I'd say our conception of art, and architecture in particular, has changed substantially since the heyday of the Gothic cathedral. We now don't think of buildings as a communal, multigenerational effort.

> every cathedral is

Actually, contemporary cathedrals (of which more than a few have been built in the XXth and XXIst centuries) are typically completed in a reasonable timeframe. 5 years for Moneo's Our Lady of the Angels; 3 years for Hartman's Cathedral of Christ the Light, and so on.

By the way, the Sagrada Família is not a cathedral, but a basilica, but that is neither here nor there :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Had the privilege of going after this past KubeCon EU (which was in Barcelona a few weeks ago). It was the most awe inspiring building I've ever seen. A true modern wonder. Wound up just sitting in the pews for a while taking it all.

I took some photos but they definitely don't do it anywhere close to justice.

[https://photos.app.goo.gl/Hx2qwsc5yaXGPBfm8](https://photos.app.goo.gl/Hx2qwsc5yaXGPBfm8)

<comment><USER18> In order to really capture the beauty of the interior, you have to pick the right angle and then force your camera to accentuate color. The interior is magical in a way that can be hard for a point-and-shoot to capture without fiddling. Of course, the internet being what it is, a google image search for "sagrada familia interior" brings up a few great examples like [https://cdn.barcelonalowdown.com/barcelona- lowdown/uploads/2...](https://cdn.barcelonalowdown.com/barcelona- lowdown/uploads/2017/09/sagrada-familia-interior-lights.jpg)

<comment><USER19> Absolutely. Add to that the fact that the inside looks different at different times of the day due to which windows accentuate the inside.

<comment><USER20> Hm, really, you are right. Now I need to visit Sagrada Familia again, multiple times - at different hours. And it's a good thing :) Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yeah, the whole affair was about Barcelona getting a cut of the money from Sagrada Familia.

> Barcelona officials said the city will be paid 4.6 million euros ($5.2 > million) in fees under an agreement negotiated with a foundation devoted to > completing and preserving La Sagrada Familia.

<comment><USER22> Yeah I was waiting for the article to explain why the building permit mattered until they mentioned the fee millions of tourists pay to go see it every day and it became obvious the city just wanted a piece of that.

Why else would they demand $5.2M for a building permit.

<comment><USER23> Why should a church get a free ride?

<comment><USER24> " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nice. I went to la sagrada familia today and this becomes hacker news top post.

</comment><comment><USER26> [https://youtu.be/IAiB_T2kqbc](https://youtu.be/IAiB_T2kqbc)

There are various live performances worth a listen.

I am linking just because this project is awesome and some moving music just makes sense.

</comment><comment> matt-attack "Bureaucrats file paperwork! On other news..."

</comment><comment><USER27> That's still faster than getting a permit in San Francisco.

<comment><USER28> And look at that height... This would never be approved in SF, ruins the local character.</comment></comment>


North Korea: Men required to get Kim Jong-un haircuts - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26747649 <comment><USER2> Honest question - let's say at some point in the future North Korea sees their current regime fall and a more democratic or at least benevolent dictatorship takes over.

What sort of mass psychological issues are we looking at here? I can only imagine how the minds of the current citizenship work, would it be nearly impossible for those raised only knowing what they know to recover from the previous trauma?

<comment><USER3> I believe people everywhere in the world are used to supressing the difference between the stated ideals of their land (equality, liberty, free elections) and the reality (prejudices, xenophobia, racism, assassinations ordered by the government, voter sway via public ads).

If our minds can supress the differences between ideals and reality in USA, Russia, India, Pakistan, Japan or any other country of residence, I believe North Koreans can do the same -- focus on their daily life and ignore the atrocities.

All of that is just my opinion, obviously. My family adapted fine after the fall of the Soviet Union, but that's just anecdotal.

<comment><USER4> Bribery is still a major problem in Russia. It takes a long time for a population to adjust to things they are used to being part of every day life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Look at the women in the center clapping, her face says it all. "Must clap harder or leader will do away with me."

Someday these people are going to be free of oppression.

<comment><USER6> _> Someday these people are going to be free of oppression._

If only they had some natural resources, then the state of their government would be a massive moral issue for the world. Unfortunately until they strike oil they're just gonna have to rot.

<comment><USER5> Yea its like nations say Russia cant take Crimea. Yet NK can slaughter and oppress an entire nation and no one flinches.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, russia can take crimea because nobody can stop them. NK can oppress because nobody gives a shit.

(Also IIRC china protects them in order to irritate the west and to use as a bargaining chip.)

<comment><USER7> China also props them up to avoid the NK government collapsing thus sending millions of North Korean refugees across the border.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know people hate on StratFor (for no good reason IMO) but the below article from them is an interesting summary:

[http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/ferocious-weak-and-crazy- nort...](http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/ferocious-weak-and-crazy-north-korean- strategy)

"When the Soviet Union collapsed, North Korea was left in dire economic straits. There were reasonable expectations that its government would soon collapse, leading to the unification of the Korean Peninsula. Naturally, the goal of the North Korean government was regime survival, so it was terrified that outside powers would invade or support an uprising against it. It needed a strategy that would dissuade anyone from trying that. Being weak in every sense, this wasn't going to be easy, but the North Koreans developed a strategy that we described more than 10 years ago as ferocious, weak and crazy. North Korea has pursued this course since the 1990s, and the latest manifestation of this strategy was on display last week. The strategy has worked marvelously and is still working."

I guess the haircuts would be the "crazy" part of the strategy.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was really expecting this to be an Onion article or something...

<comment><USER10> I was too until I read the "North Korea" part. Then it all made sense.

<comment><USER11> Isn't North Korean media just one big onion bureau? With the unfortunate truth that what they report happens to be at the expense of a whole nation of people minus .01%?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Excuse me but I find this haircut rather unattractive..

ONE MILLION YEARS DUNGEON!

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't follow the reasoning. It's a country that's stuck in a variety of awkward situations with its neighbours, isolated, famine stricken, and threatening to wage war on the South- yet they're worrying about the people having too much freedom with their 10 allowed haircuts? I can't begin to imagine what's going on in their minds. I suppose it could be a distraction from other issues, but restricting to 10 in itself seems almost unreal.

<comment><USER14> I think the point is that it doesn't matter what is going on in 'their' minds. All that matters is what is going on in the mind of one particular person.

<comment><USER15> Do you honestly believe a single person can produce that much insanity?

<comment><USER14> In a round about way, I think so. Did he suggest this? Perhaps not. Is he responsible for the environment that created this decision? I think so.

<comment><USER15> I think that he is as much of a hostage as he is a perpetrator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In multi-cultural countries people have significantly different hair. In North Korea hair is somewhat harmonised, i.e. black and straight. Length is the only variable available to play with when it comes to style of cut. From their perspective this edict may be no more of a big deal than having to have your fingernails trimmed.

<comment><USER17> You lack imagination about all the different things that can be done with uniformly black, straight, fine hair. Length is not the only variable, and there is still a huge range of hairstyles that people could choose from if they were free to do so.

Also, if I was subject to an edict requiring me to trim my fingernails, that would be a pretty big deal to me. A big, intolerable deal. You imply that from their perspective it wouldn't be, but are you so much of a cultural relativist that you think such a perspective isn't seriously unhealthy?

<comment><USER16> I am a troll with short, black hair! And cynical too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, in 2005 they produced a hidden-camera series that outed "long-haired" men, revealing their names and addresses on national TV.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia- pacific/4157121.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4157121.stm)

</comment><comment><USER19> Kinda seems like the queue order during the Qing dynasty in China.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_%28hairstyle%29#Queue_Or...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_%28hairstyle%29#Queue_Order)

</comment><comment><USER20> What about bald men? Will they be punished for not being physically able to replicate the hairstyle? It's just mental. Thank god they're not doing the same thing with David Cameron...

<comment><USER21> Bald adults and infants will be issued wigs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Related: _Hair, beards and power - Taking it on the chin_ [1]

[1] [http://www.economist.com/node/16743613](http://www.economist.com/node/16743613)

</comment><comment><USER23> To be honest, I think he's got a pretty good fade.

</comment><comment><USER24> What is the authentic source for this? BBC says "it is reported". Who reported it and where?

</comment><comment><USER25> somebody blow up his little shitty head already

</comment><comment><USER26> as long as it's free (no pun intended)

<comment><USER27> Everything is free in The Democratic Republic of Korea. Glorious Eternal Leader pays for everything. This is why everyone votes for socialism every time. Free healthcare, food, education, transportation.

<comment><USER26> even email is free over there

<comment><USER27> They even went and made it illegal to talk ill about the Eternal Glorious Leader, I mean how could speak ill of the creator of such a glorious socialist paradise?!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Guava's missing pieces for Java 8 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/diffplug/durian

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the most useful / interesting part is the generic exceptions and one- liner error handling stuff: [https://github.com/diffplug/durian/blob/develop/test/com/dif...](https://github.com/diffplug/durian/blob/develop/test/com/diffplug/common/base/ErrorsExample.java?ts=4)</comment>


Hackers dropped a secret backdoor in Asus' update software - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/25/asus-update-backdoor/ <comment><USER2> some conversation also over on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19482191](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19482191)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! We've merged these threads.</comment></comment>


Prisoner got 37 years in solitary for Facebook posts - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/prisoner-got-37-years-in-solitary-for-facebook-posts-w-1686076480

<comment><USER2> A travesty of a justice system...</comment>


A bug with a surprisingly cool side effect - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/us1IqknNYmw <comment><USER2> Very cool bug! Do you know how can I run this code?

<comment><USER3> There is a link to the repository in the video details.</comment></comment>


World Airports Voronoi - <AUTHOR> https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/voronoi/airports/

<comment><USER2> Where is the airport data from? seems wrong, except if you are only counting intl airports</comment>