San Diego Mayor proposes allowing some housing projects with no parking spaces - <AUTHOR> https://fox5sandiego.com/2018/11/09/mayor-proposes-allowing-some-housing-projects-with-no-parking-spaces/ <comment><USER2> Donald Shoup's _The High Cost of Free Parking_ is germane here: [https://www.city-journal.org/html/high-cost-free- parking-146...](https://www.city-journal.org/html/high-cost-free- parking-14665.html). It is surprising that the article doesn't even name-check it.

<comment><USER3> Though I live in San Diego, I generally avoid going downtown because the parking costs about $30. In a pinch, I'll park a mile north of the city center and take a scooter or an Uber for the last mile. It's just hard to justify spending $80 on a night out and nearly 40% of the cost goes to parking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you considered using public transit? A day pass is $5 to $12, depending on how far out you are, assuming you have a $2 Compass Card.

[https://www.sdmts.com/fares-passes](https://www.sdmts.com/fares-passes)

<comment><USER4> Public transit is not always a great option. For example, where I currently live in Washington is a ~1hr bus ride to Seattle, but only a ~20 minute drive. It's awfully hard to justify the loss of ~40 minutes each way just to visit Seattle.

With that said, I do take public transit whenever I can (including basically every day to and from work), but I sure wish some of the "long haul" routes were optimized for city-to-city. Hopefully the light rail system that's being extended to several cities will help.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have lived without a car for more than a decade. I spent part of that time in San Diego. I am specifically talking about transit in San Diego.

It's pretty good for an American system. That doesn't guarantee it will meet the GPs needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> San Diego is tending toward car-free living anyway, so this is in line with that trend. Downtown we have scooters everywhere, as someone else mentioned. We have free public transit in various forms, for individuals and families alike.

Parking is generally not included in rent, that is a separate charge normally, so in essence it's already "no parking space" and you're just getting a better rate than outside, even when you park under/beside where you live. You're really _also_ getting security, not just parking. That's the real issue, if you have a car downtown, which I do.

All this being said, parking is generally very difficult here compared to other places with less concentrated downtown environments; more in Little Italy than in the Gaslamp Quarter, and more difficult in Gaslamp versus East Village. But again, cars are becoming less of a thing, and people are adapting.

What I hear in the comments so far is a misunderstanding of what a metropolitan area is. It's not designed to be the same as a suburban area. In the suburbs, you need "large vehicle" transportion, versus downtown where you need what's called "last mile" ... like scooters. Any other people need to do their research and see we even have FRED which is _free rides_ ... so you could park somewhere that isn't oppressively priced and get a free ride ( not even pay for an Uber/Lyft or scooter or bike, etc ) and be totally fine.

It's the problem of taking a suburban attitude into a downtown environment that's causing people to miss out on the actual purpose of the space and the infrastructure we already have.

<comment><USER6> > Downtown we have scooters everywhere, as someone else mentioned.

How do you plan to take children on a scooter? Or is downtown for singles only?

<comment><USER7> Downtown San Diego is basically for singles only. It's a city mostly full of transients. Once people decide to have a family, they move away or to the suburbs if they are loaded.

<comment><USER5> You are incorrect on 66-100% of your statement. I feel like you're just regurgitating a bias here.

And it's not even about cost of living if you really get down to it, it's about inability to adapt to the pace of having so many options, that you choose to have fewer, or preferring a slower pace and less options, which is fine.

But the homeless situation has been dramatically affected by positive changes, so no. There are plenty of families, many types of household, so no. And people generally move away from San Diego entirely, not just downtown, if they leave. It's an overall lifestyle change usually. San Diego as a whole is speeding up, and the cost comes with benefits of being here.

But like I said, if it isn't bias, it's preference, and preference is fine! The bias though, is flawed.

( Major edits since downvote since apparently I needed to spell out exactly why this is biased thinking, not just question the bias. This is really unfair to San Diego which is not perfect, but extremely progressive. We've dealt with the majority of the charges rapidly. Check your assumptions and refactor your thinking please )

<comment><USER8> It's just that your statements are incorrect about families. The real numbers are: "In the county, children (ages 0 – 17) are 23 percent of the total population, in downtown, they are only 10 percent of the population."

<comment><USER5> The thing is, the statistics have a long-tail, and the truth is that when the paradigm shifts, like it did and is doing, it's important to hear from first- hand accounts and not rely on statistics based on overall trends historically. They track an old dynamic, and the new dynamic is tending toward people living anywhere they want, especially into dense areas more comfortably, and the age- old bias toward moving outward at the point of having kids or retiring is reversing. I've seen it first hand, spoken to numerous people who are early adopters to this trend, and in all brackets of social standing and model of domestic life. It is evidence of an overall shift in how we live as people.

The benefits of being in the denser areas versus the believed drawbacks are changing, so much so it makes me genuinely hopeful about one day having 10 billion people versus 8 on the planet, which for someone who wanted less people not more, is notable at least and hinges on this shift. So I would recheck the numbers often and along new metrics, and favor first-hand information in times of change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a giveaway to developers plain and simple.

<comment><USER10> What is being given away? Someone has land, someone wants to build on it, someone wants to buy the result.

<comment><USER11> I would imagine at least a few users of that land will use nearby parking, which if it's free is a tragedy of commons case. Tenants of the building should not be allowed to register a car w/o a parking contract.

<comment><USER9> Even in the East Village parking is scarce, especially when there is some kind of large event downtown, which is often. Under current regulations landlords are required to provide parking for tenants, which as you correctly imply, means that street parking is relatively more available. Parking is bad now, this will just make it worse. It's bad for tenants and it's bad for local businesses. The only people it's good for are real estate developers who will shave some upfront costs by not building garages in their projects. This doesn't address the housing shortage because the set of developers who say "yeah we'd like to build a 200 unit tower, but nevermind because the law says we need to dig a parking garage" is empty.

Edit: What would be cool though is a legal right for tenants to sublet their parking space if they choose not to own a car.

<comment><USER5> All this sounds accurate but hinges on a few presumptions. I'm leaving the comments I made though I've definitely taken unwarranted down votes for the same reasons I was first resistant to all this myself. I made all your arguments once upon a time. And in Little Italy your case is better, but in Gaslamp it's mostly moot because San Diego is literally the booziest city in the world by some metrics, so people use ridesharing out of different sets of necessity than environment or parking. The police blitz the DUI.

The main presumption is negatively affecting business. Not usually. We're not primarily tourist aimed in East Village. Little Italy is more so and Gaslamp almost exclusively. Yes, Petco Park traffic and Balboa Park traffic is frequent, but that's a vibrant aspect of the neighborhood unless you aren't really part of it and are a commuter. I catch myself taking my own car a few city blocks and trying to get home is intense, but I ought not have been so stupid living near a beautiful stadium as a perk and feature of our home.

Businesses are shifting to catering to the buildings around them, and if those do have parking, we get our guests day passes up to a certain amount per month as part of our parking rent. It's just about forethought again.

If I were a tourist or unintegrated person yes I'd be disgruntled too. But understanding your environment takes work and adaptation. If you live downtown and work elsewhere that's your choice. Live elsewhere and drink or eat out downtown without ridesharing, same. No friends with parking? Bummer. But shops here aren't dying for outside business anymore. We patronize local spots ourselves and Downtown is a short walk from end to end. It's small.

Factoring in all the social changes coming in we're not measured by the old standards and stuffy norms. We drink a lot. We walk around. We ride places. We work around the corner or remotely or cowork. We smoke weed more often easily. We generally get whatever we want delivered. We are here, now, on purpose not as diversion or at an aloof distance. The city is an extension of our home.

I feel like you're in a bracket of time locked expiration and perhaps bitter? People should know their surroundings as a rule and don't blame the place for being itself.

Last, parking doesn't automatically get used if it's there and that's the point of all this. Developers sort benefit but they need to go deep anyway if the building is tall enough. It's a shift away from living Downtown for the look and not actually living here. People actually live here more now, as present and rooted individuals who genuinely love it. I hope you locate that sense.

<comment><USER5> Also the arguments read more coherently in Mission Valley than Downtown, but again, not any more.

I also lived there, before Petco was built when Jack Murphy was Qualcomm. Basically a nightmare and not alive enough to justify the hassle because it's a consumer hub not an actual ecosystem.

But Pokez on 10 & E is a great example. The owner literally parks in metered or risky parking every day and caters to undriving locals. The lot next to him is usually reserved for USPS staff.

Tajima a few doors down, similar. Pet stores? Mattress place. These clearly cater to the thousands living above them. Quartyard, Basic, Tavern+Bowl, Kebab, grocery retailers. All local or Postmates / delivery geared. Atmosphere oriented, made for options beyond your own roof already setup for parties and nightlife very often. It's extremely competitive. Make Pizza is another great example. Totally geared toward the students of New School. Basically no parking. IDEA1 has entrances facing into the building and out, not phased by parking. A lot of pet focused business. Clearly local aimed.

East Village in general is secure in itself and when these new buildings on 11 & F, Park, 11 & G, etc all come in, the momentum is already tending this rooted and share economy direction. So basically, honestly who besides the disconnected types care?

People in East Village are by and large pretty happy with their situation and Downtown caters to our whim, our wishes, not just needs, but in a healthy relationship of not just myopic tourist diversion but real variety and home extension. The millenials are really attentive to feelings and aesthetics so let them be I say. And in thier wake comes a new pride in what we live in and don't need outside traffic to sustain. And the older generations level up accordingly as we realize the virtues of being so self centered that you create beautiful environments purely because you feel like it and not to create a draw... then you go ultra minimalist in every other area not related to at... and here we are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> San Francisco recently held a city council hearing on eliminating parking minimums city-wide. Houston has no parking requirements in its central business district. Mandatory parking is looking pretty dumb at this stage of the climate emergency.</comment>


People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-21/people-start-hating-their-jobs-at-age-35 <comment><USER2> I started to notice this in my late 20s. It felt kind of like a "the emperor has no clothes" moment when I was working at a tech startup that pushed long hours/weekend work in order to fulfill some "mission" and "greater purpose" and that I should feel a part of this for the greater good. It kind of hit me that this was mostly just a fantastic way to extract more work out of young, impressionable 20somethings who didn't know any better without paying them for this extra effort, but that, at the end of the journey it will pay off!

With that in mind, I realized that I much prefer being a hired gun, where I typically can add benefit for about 1-2 years, then it's onto the next thing. I have very little interest in the corporate grind working my way up from new employee to VP or whatever, repeating the corporate mission like some sort of indoctrination, trying to keep myself sane.

I would be interested in a workplace that just kind of accepted this, but I'm afraid optically, no company wants to present its relationship with its workforce as entirely trasnactional. I'd be a huge fan.

<comment><USER3> I recently sat through one of those company/product mission presentations at work. It was one of those "am I the only sane person working here?" moments. I like our product, I want to see it succeed, but I really can't stand the religious fervor marketing departments and managers give off. And the amazing part is that my co-workers seem to completely buy into it. Everyone talks like what we're doing is going to change the world and yadda yadda yadda, like there's some kind of prophesy about our social media app.

How about lets make the thing and see if it's successful before we start singing its praises, okay?

<comment><USER4> Went through this exactly. My guess is because founders select for overconfidence (necessary for pitching investors maybe?) It also ties into founder worship which seems really common (people always dropping reasons founder is some uberhuman).

I just felt like my intelligence was insulted. I also found out a lot of the other people who "bought into" the "mission" were really just playing along.

We also did a lot of "agile" that wasn't agile at all. Make "MVPs" that weren't shippable, do work in 2 week "sprints" but never talk to customers for months etc

Like you said, I'm much happier at a place that takes a critical eye at its own projects, is actually willing to change the plan according to feedback rather than assume we're building the founder's "vision", actually dont' take ourselves too seriously, etc

<comment><USER5> Sounds like your agile process was actually "flacid agile", this is very common. Suffering this at my current workplace too.

<comment><USER6> Agile implies flexibility and strength.

If you don't have "strong" \- i.e. skilled and disciplined - people, or you can't allow things to happen outside "just because ok?"-rules, it's flaccid agile.

Like jelly in a glove, it's _flexible_ but not in a useful way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I believe the tech sector is extremely prone to this: If you cannot climb out of a technical role, over time, you realize just how clueless most people are, especially those who imagine themselves of being "in control". Not just a bit uninformed, no: absolutely positively clueless[1].

If you go the management route, you often give up, what got you started with all this is the first place: curiosity and exploration, creation and progress. It becomes: handling paperwork, keeping the clients' bad ideas in check, motivating those on the payroll, who wait for your instructions to act. It must be nightmare.

Where is the exit?

[1] Update: I believe this is what is called the nerd/nerd-exploiter dilemma.

<comment><USER8> I'm only 31 and found out the hard way that 90% of the way successful people got to where they are is through charisma, lying, and cheating others.

<comment><USER9> I'm 40 and I've found out the hard way that 90% people under 35 adopt _absolute statements_ for everything, as if they think they already know how the life, the world and the universe work. Good luck.

<comment><USER8> You're right. I actually only had one or two people in mind when I wrote that comment, and I didn't even realize it until you pointed it out. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This "news" is an advertisement for a report from Robert Half that was released _last year_ entitled: "It's time we all work happy™: The secrets of the happiest companies and employees.[1]"

It was simply rehashed and presented as "new", by Robert Half[2], and is now hitting the press again.

The full report appears to be available for free on the web[3].

[1] - [https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/its-time-we-all-work- happy/repo...](https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/its-time-we-all-work-happy/report)

[2] - [https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/press/research-finds-age- discon...](https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/press/research-finds-age-discontent- work-starts-just-35)

[3] - [http://heart4happiness.nl/wp- content/upload_folders/heart4ha...](http://heart4happiness.nl/wp- content/upload_folders/heart4happiness.nl/2016/10/rh_1016_iapdf_workhappy_can_eng_final.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> "Refocus on a personal project". How about we stop grinding out 40+ hour mentally and physically strenuous weeks. Programming hours on end is difficult, as is sitting at a desk and staring into a monitor. I could be happy programming for the rest of my life if I'm only doing 15 hours per week but unfortunately there's extremely little work that pays well per hour and is part-time. I'm willing to work at a discounted rate, but the offers I'm finding are either full time, or embarrassingly low hourly rates.

And this is in Canada where we have single payer government healthcare, so employers don't even have an excuse.

</comment><comment><USER12> Probably around the same time they realize they don't have unlimited time and become aware that their life clock is ticking away.

<comment><USER13> I wasted my good years working and studying for the opprotunity to have this job I now just slighly less than hate. -everyone my age

<comment><USER14> Pretty much.

I've been finding myself more and more dissatisfied with my work as I get older and regretting that I didn't do something crazy when I was younger instead. Its not too late for me to do some of those things luckily, but its very difficult to drop everything to do so (and its not clear that, for example, a years travelling will make me any less dissatisfied with my work, although at least it would help me refocus my life).

<comment><USER15> > and its not clear that, for example, a years traveling will make me any less > dissatisfied with my work, although at least it would help me refocus my > life

I think this is the crux of the matter. I know a few people who spent their 20s traveling abroad and having great life experiences, and now that they're in their 30s, they're like "Shit, I have no career, I'm working at Whole Foods / living off my parents / flat broke and I'll never be able to afford the life milestones that I took for granted like getting married, having kids, or owning a house."

I think the root of the problem is that evolutionarily, our happiness emotion didn't evolve to make us happy. Rather, it evolved to force us to take actions which increase our chance of passing on our genes. There's pretty ample evidence for this (Google [hedonic treadmill], for example), and yet we keep wishing we were happier. I guess we're fated to do this, because people who didn't wish they were happier wouldn't be driven to take actions to pass on their genes.

FWIW, I don't regret working hard (at some startups, and also one big corp) during my 20s at all. It was what I wanted to do at the time, and it's given me some cushion to do other things I want to do. Plus I got to work on some really cool projects with some great other people, and had a lot of fun doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I must have been an early bloomer. :)

I've always loved the technical parts of my job (and still do), but since day 1 of my career I've gotten nothing but scheming and toxicity when dealing with my superiors and my various counterparts.

I'm not entirely sure if I've simply been unlucky, or if the majority of workplaces really are this high strung. The existence of Dilbert suggests the latter.

<comment><USER17> FWIW I think it's the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You don't have to be 35 to start hating your job, I did at 25. It begins with the realization that you're a loser in the corporate hierarchy, and do as little work as you can possibly do without getting fired.

Software developers tend to complain that their job is tedious, repetitive, and that they aren't learning anything. Most jobs are like that. I believe that a large portion of repetitive software development can be automated, and this is a largely unexplored area.

<comment><USER19> The 'little work as you can possibly do' is a trap. It's a toxic frame that unconsciously poisons a company culture(others notice and emulate). And it happens, often, as a completely understandable defense mechanism.

This is made worse every time a manager gives an unrealistic deadline. Exemplified by rushing towards ANY deadlines. Moreover, it happens as a result of forcing the worker to sit in a chair for 8 hours staring at a monitor.

A huge amount of work can be done by communicating vision, thinking for N hours, then hacking something together in 1-2 hours. I think companies should rethink the outdated assembly line factory worker schema for thought workers.

<comment><USER18> As long as your employers are not acting in good faith, then I don't think they are worth any extra effort. When most employees are doing just enough work to get by, it says more about the employer than employee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Once a recession hits, people will start feeling how lucky they are to still have a job. Then after a few years of continued growth in the economy, they will go back to hating their job.

<comment><USER14> I can hate my job and feel lucky to have it at the same time. They're orthogonal concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm like the opposite of this. By my mid-to-late 20s I was disillusioned with my job and career choice. I also felt trapped in my situation because there weren't a lot of choices for developers where I used to live.

It took me a few years and one big (geographic) move, but I did manage to steer my career in a better direction. Through hard work and a big ol' dose of luck, I was in a job I enjoyed when I was 35. And I'm in an even better one now!

<comment><USER22> Can I ask what was the geographic move (or is it <somewhere> to SV/SF/Cali?)? -another trapped dev

<comment><USER21> Upstate NY to greater DC area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Misleading title. Should be percent of people who hate their job increases from 8% to 17% after age 35.

</comment><comment><USER24> What? I just turned 20 and I've hated every job I've had (after a while, of course).

<comment><USER25> Do you know the adage about finding a job doing what you love, and how it means you'll never work a day in your life? It is a lie.

Lest you think self-employed is a better option, you'll never work harder than you work for yourself.

<comment><USER11> It sucks that this can't be freely admitted in today's culture.

It's possibly true for those who love control and find themselves in a position over others, but it's definitely not true for those who like working with their hands and minds.

<comment><USER25> I think we call those people "psychopaths." I suppose they may enjoy it. Duly noted.

Sort of related: Way back when, I did manual labor. Later, I'd get my doctorate and start my own business. I was more exhausted from the mental labor than I was from the manual labor.

<comment><USER11> I completely agree, I used to paint in the summers. As soon as work was done, I was having fun and full of energy. Now, as a developer, I can barely hold a conversation with my girlfriend I have so little energy left after a day of work.

<comment><USER25> I'm a mathematician, and haven't any idea why it is this way. I suppose there's a name for it, a reason for it, and a bunch of people with varied opinions on it.

But, it does seem true. It does seem that I'm much more exhausted after mental labor (for wont of a better term). I'm retired, today. I do all sorts of manual labor, even though I don't really need to. It doesn't really tire me out that much. Yet, the mental work is still relatively exhausting.

I have no idea why.

<comment><USER11> I believe that our bodies weren't designed to handle intense mental processing for such long bouts. It's no wonder mathematicians, developers and other knowledge workers require immense volumes of caffeine to get anything done.

The use of caffeine results in a light activation of the fight or flight response. I'm sure it plays a role in the exhaustion. Especially when the "threats" are ever present unrealistic deadlines.

<comment><USER25> This is, distinctly, not my domain. But, curiosity struck and so I went to the almighty Google and found this:

[https://www.livescience.com/5325-mental-fatigue-perceived- ph...](https://www.livescience.com/5325-mental-fatigue-perceived-physical- exhaustion.html)

You may find it interesting, so I figured I'd share it. I offer no opinions, other than to say it is interesting and that the study was done with a very small sample size. (I'm unqualified to opine beyond that.)

<comment><USER11> A lot of research around Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is pointing toward mitochondria as being a prime culprit. As the most energy consuming organ in our body, I would expect the brain to quickly use up our easy-to-access / quick release energy so it's really not so surprising to me.

I have no biology degree, but I find it interesting and have no problems opining about :p

I've often found a smoothie made with fresh fruit to work well against mental fatigue. Often it's as or more effective than a cup of coffee.

<comment><USER25> LOL I avoid opining on some subjects.

I used to be married to a lady who was quite proud of me. Well, so to speak. She used to take me to these fancy parties where people dress funny and eat crap I can't pronounce - they also use utensils for certain dishes and all sorts of fancy stuff.

Well, she'd introduce me as, "Dr. KGIII."

Now, I don't want to say people are stupid - but this frequently resulted in me being asked medical questions. I, being drunk more often than not, would give absurd medical advice.

I've since learned to not opine on anything medically related, as it seems to result in people coming back to me with very angry moods. So, certain subjects I try just let the links speak for themselves. It works.

Also, my method was to remain in a fairly constant state of inebriation. It was surprisingly effective, though I'm not sure I'd recommend other people try it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if that is roughly the age where it usually becomes apparent that further career advancement is going to be much harder. I'm 29 and I'm pretty sure one more promotion will be fairly easy to get, but after that it looks much harder and will require developing some skills that I haven't needed much in my earlier career.

</comment><comment><USER27> For an alternative take on the job satisfaction - age relationship (as well as inclusion of the moderator variable of job tenure) in the United States, using a large (12k+) sample:

[https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds- business/job...](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/job- satisfaction-tends-to-increase-with-age.html)

Dobrow Riza, S., Ganzach, Y., & Liu, Y. (2016). Time and job satisfaction: a longitudinal study of the differential roles of age and tenure. Journal of Management. doi: 10.1177/0149206315624962

</comment><comment><USER28> I guess I've avoided crippling disillusionment because I never expected a job to be fulfilling or whatever. It's a means of providing for myself and my family, that's it. The idea that it's supposed to be more than that is really strange to me.

When I was in my 20s the only jobs I could get was stuff like waiting tables and working in outbound call centers. Whenever I'm down I remind myself that at least I don't have to do that bullshit anymore. Now I sit in an air conditioned office with a nice view, and can work from home on a regular basis. I know what my availability will be in a month. I can take vacations. That's pretty cool!

I literally can't imagine "loving" a job. No matter what it is, the fact that I _have_ to do it every day, year after year, just to have health insurance and avoid homelessness, ruins it for me. That's not a complaint, that's an assertion that I'm about as happy doing this as I would be doing anything else.

</comment><comment><USER29> Made an account for this: I just wanted to point out this thread has been one of the most thought-provoking I've read in a while. Really grateful to all of the users posting such great reads in these comments (I think I've read most or all of them).

</comment><comment><USER30> I have to assume that they extrapolated the data to account for kids and mortgages?

</comment><comment><USER31> I've always hated my jobs, but I keep doing them because I'm good at what I do, and I get paid well for it (at least I do now anyway). For me, work is just a means to an end - I earn money so I can spend it on the stuff I actually like.

When you do something you love as a job you'll (probably) either quickly stop loving it or you won't make any money doing it. I used to be fairly heavily involved in my local "freelancer" scene and I've seen countless young and enthusiastic creatives turn into stressed, angry, bitter, and cynical baristas.

</comment><comment><USER32> Of course young people love their jobs!

Wow, there is suddenly all this money; don't have to live in the parents' basement, weeee!

</comment><comment><USER33> I agree 100% on the last statement, refocus your efforts on a personal project. I think more people in a corporate job should consider doing this sooner in life. It is a great way to build additional skills, especially in situations where no training is offered.

</comment><comment><USER34> And all the years before they have this subtle unsettling feeling that something is wrong with their job.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is why I have no intention of programming anymore after this point.

Maybe I'll enjoy the next thing. Maybe.

</comment><comment><USER36> So happy I finally found a well managed company to work for!!

</comment><comment><USER37> can confirm

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm wise beyond my years</comment>


Request for product: "Parent bot" for kids - <AUTHOR> Millions of people in China talk with chatbots and some have fallen in love.
I believe that a use for chatbot technology that would be valuable to the world is as "parent figures/mentors" for kids.
How would it work: It would need to be connected with something kids want. Kids have a large appetite for entertainment, especially humor. Start there, and then perhaps have a separate section where kids can ask for advice. The bot could then do things like cognitive behavioral therapy, ask questions that prove insight, and suggest other resources to the kids. <comment><USER2> Maybe not "parent bot" but "buddy bot"?

My kid's school has a buddy system to help prevent bullying, wherein each young child gets buddied with another kid that is four/five years older. If they have any problems (with anything at school, not just bullying), they have a friendly face that they can ask for advice or intervention. This works because the buddy is not a parent or teacher, and does not attempt to replace either adult role.

Could a bot help in a similar manner?

</comment><comment><USER3> My guess is that most people ("normies" if you will) will find this idea creepy. I know that may seem like cognitive dissonance when parents will happily plop their kids in front of the TV or YouTube, but something about "robots" freaks people out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. I don't think it should be called a "parent bot" and I don't think it should be targeted at parents at all. I think it should be distributed/targeted at the end users i.e. kids.

<comment><USER3> How would you go about finding the kids and signing them up?

<comment><AUTHOR> This would be hard. But kids certainly manage to find products, when they love them. e.g. flash games ~10 yrs ago, certain iPhone games that everyone loves now, Snapchat now, etc.

Word of mouth. Making a product that 100 kids are obsessed with, and go from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a terrible idea!

What kids need is actual parents that provide structure, a good home and learning experiences, not constant 24/7 entertainment.

Perhaps this is why i see so many parents delegate their responsibilities to their ipads and let their kids drool while watching entertainment instead of interacting with them and parenting them.

Disclaimer: father of two who don't need tech crap or constant entertainment to be happy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, kids do need actual parents that are great. That would be ideal, if every kid had excellent parents.

Unfortunately, many parents are not great.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Originally posted on Medium [1]. HN is probably better. I'm sure some things I've left unclear so I'll watch the comments and looking forward to going back-forth with anyone interested.

1: [https://medium.com/@betterpeople/request-for-product- parent-...](https://medium.com/@betterpeople/request-for-product-parent-bot- for-kids-7443e0e4360b#.psbl7xx0i)</comment>


Art vs. Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://blog.steveklabnik.com/art-vs-science <comment><USER2> In college, I was an English major. I took CS 101 because it was the ONLY course open and I needed 3 more credits. In the first or second class Bob Geitz (the professor) demonstrated that you can directly transform a FOR loop into a DO...WHILE--they were completely interchangeable, but had different nuances.

This was a transformative moment for me--I realized that computer code _is_ poetry, with all the beauty and elegance and difficulty that implies. Further, it is poetry that can alter the physical world. In legends and mythology, what is the one-word name for "poetry that alters the physical world"? _Magic._

I've been a computer professional ever since.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is art reduced to craft in this modern age? Really, for any programmer to assume they are being artistic just because their code is 'nice' is absolutely absurd, and it's horrifying to think it happens. To be an Artist now is to be a social/cultural/literary critic. There cannot be art in programming, no matter how creative one thinks they code. Please stop it!

<comment><USER4> What about commercial art and design? Would you consider those as having been "reduced to a craft" as well? One could look at this from the same perspective.

It all depends on your definition of art. For me, that's taking raw materials and making them into something beautiful, whether it's to solve a problem or elicit some sort of emotional/social/intellectual response, or make a statement is entirely irrelevant. Commercial art is every bit as much of an art. It's just art with a different purpose.

There is no reason code cannot be beautiful. Of course I don't mean that in a visual sense. It's letters and numbers and symbols that need to be structured in specific ways in order to function. But in an intellectual/functional sense, code can certainly be beautiful and creative and elegant.

I don't think the author's comparing a bit of C code to a Rembrandt painting in the visual sense, but saying that programmers should embrace those same ideals of creativity, innovation, and fluidity of thought that many artists do.

It's more about opening your mind to new ideas and learning to find and appreciate the beauty in the function of the code.

<comment><USER5> You've summed it up very well.

<comment><USER4> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _I won't dispute that computer science is indeed a science. CS is very testable, we can easily show evidence that a pop operation takes O(1) time._

Science is about discovering models to describe the world. Proving from axioms that pop can be done in constant time on a Turing machine is math.

 _The fundamental theories of computation are mathematically rigorous._

Exactly. Math. Not science. Nothing in science is mathematically true, only not-yet-shown-untrue. See: <http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_8.html#kay>

<comment><USER7> You can't _prove_ that list.pop in Python is always O(1) (imagine there is a bug in a reference implementation). But you can _test_ that assumption for any given implementation.

<comment><USER6> Given an implementation of Python, yes, you can prove list.pop will run in some (constant, one would hope) number of clock cycles on an abstract architecture. Building reliable machines to simulate such architectures is part of CS, but not a science.

Science is the construction of abstract models which match observed phenomena.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIW, which probably isn't much, I have a degree in fine art. Most of my work these days is UI design for web apps, but I also end up coding those UIs. With the exception of one long-standing project, any backend development I do (which does come up from time to time), I do in Ruby, which I switched to almost exclusively after using PHP for years, because it felt cleaner and more natural to me. Not that I have anything against PHP (I don't want to make this into a language war), it just felt like a better fit for me, personally.

I love beautiful code, whether it's javascript, ruby, or just html/css markup. My goal, at the end of the day, is to do as much as I can with as little code as possible. For me, I find that when I'm pleased with how my code looks, it also runs better, more efficienly, and more smoothly-not to mention it becomes much more maintainable.

I would say that there are certain artistic principles that influence the way I code and I try to extend the clean elegance of the UI to more than simply its appearance. I want the code that powers it to match that aesthetic in terms of its form, readability, and efficiency of function.

</comment><comment><USER8> _I don't have a paper to show you, some great insight into how von Neumann architecture is totally lame._

If it weren't for the von Neumann architecture the author wouldn't have pretty code to look at. I suppose he could write a post about the arty setting of switches and attachment of patch leads on his personal ENIAC.

It seems to me that the requirements for the existence of code meant to program a computer (and look pretty) are a memory to store the code and an automatic method of retrieving, and carrying out, the instructions in the code. That sounds a lot like the von Neumann architecture.

Also, I don't follow the analogy to pre- and post- relativistic physics. There was a shift in the intuition and the models used, but the object of study didn't change. Physics stayed the same. Electrons didn't change their behavior because we came up with new models for them. Similarly, in computer science, a shift in intuition and models doesn't change the nature of computation. The travelling salesman problem is still NP-complete.

</comment><comment><USER9> As you might guess, I think this completely misses the point.

See: [http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2006/07/science- and-...](http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2006/07/science-and-art-of- computation.html)

<comment><USER5> I don't think that CS in a strict sense should go away. On the contrary, I don't think more formal methods are thought about enough. However, I do think that outside of the box thinking is important, and things that are not strictly scientific can be pursued from other perspectives, such as api design or interface design.

Offtopic: wow, this droid is hard to type on compared to my iPod touch. Sorry this response was so mangled the first few times.

<comment><USER9> The point is that the art of computing should be much more interesting than anything to do with coding style. See the link above.

<comment><USER5> I don't think anything should be more interesting than anything else. Different things appeal to different people. As I get older, I find myself becoming more interested in things that are more in the realm of engineering than strictly theoretical science. Doesn't mean theory is good or bad, and I do like some theory topics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had to vote this one up. Thanks for submitting it.

I have a few posts related to this half written, but I haven't gotten around to finishing them yet. I think this is a really interesting topic that doesn't get enough discussion in the community at large. We already have "IT vs IS vs CS" distinctions that are tenuous at best, yet I think most people tend to approach CS more of an art or craft than as a science.

"Computer Science" as a term has really gotten muddled by the universities. I try to stick to its original definition, but I'm unsure how long it'll stay that way, considering languages change over time...

</comment><comment><USER10> Computer science is the formal study of problem solving. Hence, algorithms - deterministic, mathematically tractable, general solutions to problems. Hence programming language theory - ways to efficiently express solutions to problems. Hence the study of data structures: building blocks that solve small problems, which crop up in many, many larger spaces, very effectively. Hence the study of the formal theory of computation: tractable models of mechanisms for general computations that happily map onto physically reliable machines. Hence computing machines: devices that allow us to compute solutions to problems at high speed. Hence machine learning, computer graphics and natural language processing: studies of specific classes of problems that happily submit to some general (but domain specific) approaches.

Computer science shares some of the creative sensibilities of mathematics: the building blocks (theorems) may be well understood, but there is a creativity and insight required to arrange them in such a way as to produce an [efficient/elegant/small/general] method to solve a given problem (proof). At the same time, this is why coding on its own is such a pale shadow of the entire field of computer science. Implementations at their worst are merely transcriptions of someone else's work.

Don't aspire to be an artist with your code; it's not the medium for art. There's a different aesthetics at work here. You will not habitually provide commentary on society or the human condition. Don't begrudge others the fact that they might. They don't begrudge you the beauty that you produce.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised nobody has referenced Donald Knuth's 1974 Turing Award speech, Computer Programming as an Art.

<http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=361612>

Paul Graham even posted it in its entirety here: <http://www.paulgraham.com/knuth.html>

This question hinges on how you define the terms science and art. I like Knuth's definitions.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think that if you believe coding is an art form, you are deluding yourself. You probably wish that your chosen field of expertise would get more respect from society rather than being considered a boring occupation of geeks. I can understand that, but wishes don't make beggars ride, and neither will they make coding fashionable and cool.

Code is not art, and never will be. Art is something created purely for its aesthetic appeal and to evoke emotions. Code written to be executed by a computer. It may have some aesthetic aspects but these are secondary to its executability. It also requires far too much prior knowledge to be appreciated by most people.

At best, code can incorporate aspects of industrial design: an aesthetically pleasing symbiosis of elegance and functionality, but with the latter always being the dominant goal.

The article also assumes a false contradiction between art and science that makes me suspect the author understands neither.

<comment><USER5> > Art is something created purely for its aesthetic appeal and to evoke > emotions.

What do you think of things like obfuscated Perl, Perl poetry, the Underhanded C Contest, obscure langauges like Brainfuck, 'joke' languages like Intercal or Malbolge, or even, say, Ruby on Rails? Sometimes code is created for a reasons other than functionality, or is functional while making commentary on the world or the way things should be.

Also, languages themselves ooze philosophy. We talk about not 'writing Java in any language,' or how Rails is 'opinionated software,' or how Python is 'batteries included.' Every language expresses its authors viewpoints about the world.

> It also requires far too much prior knowledge to be appreciated by most > people.

I didn't think that accessibility was a requirement for art. In fact, it would seem that among certain crowds, work that's too accessible isn't seen as art. My art history is admittedly really poor, but wasn't pop art looked down upon for a while? Besides, you can't possibly tell me that, say, modern art is accessible, yet it's still art.

> The article also assumes a false contradiction between art and science that > makes me suspect the author understands neither.

I'm not saying that they're contradictory. As someone else summarized earlier,

> I don't think the author's comparing a bit of C code to a Rembrandt painting > in the visual sense, but saying that programmers should embrace those same > ideals of creativity, innovation, and fluidity of thought that many artists > do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think a project like OpenFrameworks embody some of the thoughts in the post: <http://www.openframeworks.cc/> (don't get put off by the fact that it's C++)

<comment><USER14> If you are put off by C++ but not by Java, there's the Processing framework which is similar: <http://processing.org/>

<comment><USER5> ... I'm personally put off by both, but I agree with both you and the parent. These are both libraries that try to show code from a different perspective. Good links, both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _But you can't get a 'liberal arts' CS degree._

Georgia Tech's Computational Media degree is one of these. The major is shared by their CS and Literature departments, thinking about programmatic artifacts as if they were traditional cultural media like poetry or music.

I was one of the first graduates from the program and it hit on something I'd really felt missing elsewhere, so take this as a recommendation if you happen to be looking for a university in the SE US... <http://lcc.gatech.edu/compumedia/>

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the link. I already went to school, but I'm really interested in the different ways that programming and CS are taught, so I'll check that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Actually it is possible to have an arts degree in comp sci (i have one). Second - it doesn't matter what language you use; you can be a code "artist" and program in any language. I don't get why people obsess over obscure languages instead of developing marketable skills. Nobody uses Haskell! Finally, please not another computer science vs engineering vs art vs science debate. It gets old. Who really cares anyway?

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://www.computer-nach-wunsch.de/>

</comment><comment><USER18> I think of the non-hardware parts of computer science as applied philosophy.

Art seems wrong to me as a descriptor because it would imply that I'm writing code for a sort of aesthetic beauty. The aesthetic beauty should be in the end result.

Which also means it probably isn't science, because really what I worry about when I'm programming is that the end result will be correct. To some extent I am concerned about scientific process, having a program that is repeatably verifiable as doing what I expect, but in terms of actually using scientific methods to write software, I can't really say I do that very much. As with the beauty, the science is in the end result and not really the process.

Which brings me to why I think it is applied philosophy:

What am I doing when I write code? I am taking a problem and deconstructing it into different pieces, finding ways to represent the different pieces, and reasoning about how everything should interact. I think this basically holds true for functional, object oriented, and imperative programming.

I think that from this perspective, writing code is closest to some sort of philosophical inquery. You are using a computer to build abstractions, and through enough abstractions (or abstractions written by someone else, imported in libraries), you are able to create something.

<comment><USER5> > Art seems wrong to me as a descriptor because it would imply that I'm > writing code for a sort of aesthetic beauty.

I think code can hold the same kind of beauty that math has when someone says that a proof is elegant, or a theory is beautiful. It's not a visual aesthetic, but appealing nonetheless.

Anyway, I think that the idea of programming as philosophy is interesting. I'll have to think about that more.</comment></comment>


97 Things Every Programmer Should Know - <AUTHOR> http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/97_Things_Every_Programmer_Should_Know

<comment><USER2> I love this one, Improve Code by Removing It: [http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Improv...](http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Improve_Code_by_Removing_It)

Looking at my git stats, I've deleted about 20% more code than I've ever written (in fact I've deleted more lines than all but one of our devs has contributed), and the site is certainly a lot faster now than when I started.</comment>


Powershell Payload Delivery via DNS Using Invoke-PowerCloud - <AUTHOR> https://how.ired.team/offensive-security-experiments/payload-delivery-via-dns-using-invoke-powercloud <comment><USER2> Cool implementation of a covert channel [0]. I always love seeing these.

In the past I used IRC channel topics to encode cryptographically signed messages which are readable by clients without them ever having to join the channels (they used an IRC channel topic query cmd). This had the nice property that I never had to know or care who read the messages.

The tail end of each channel topic pointed to the next channel to query. It worked nicely for securely sharing info without a SPOF.

Thanks for sharing this. The level of novelty remains high for me!

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_channel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_channel)</comment>


Seth Godin: Big ideas - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/09/big-ideas.html <comment><USER2> "I responded that ideas are easy, doing stuff is hard."

Ideas per se are easy; _good_ ideas, not so easy.

"History is littered with inventors who had 'great' ideas but kept them quiet and then poorly executed them. And history is lit up with do-ers who took ideas that were floating around in the ether and actually made something happen."

This suggests that, if you share your ideas with people, but are a bit slow in executing, someone else may beat you to it. It's perhaps a waste to have a good idea and not bother to execute it, but once you decide to act on it, giving others the chance to act faster doesn't seem like good plan.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen I see his point.</comment>


Ask HN: Do any colleges live stream their lectures? - <AUTHOR> I am just curious to see if any colleges live stream their classes? Or any students who tweet what they learnt today.<p>Would be a fun experiment. I do understand that it cuts into their revenue streams, but still want to explore. <comment><USER2> UC Berkeley used to for a lot of computer science classes. But a lawsuit necessitated that they close caption all of their publicly available streams. Rather than pay money to get professional closed captions, they made streams private.

<comment><USER3> That's a real shame, a (presumably) well intentioned attempt to increase access to educational resources winds up restricting access instead. I wonder what the motivations and intended outcome of the lawsuit was.

<comment><USER4> It was a group of deaf people trying to get UCB to spend the money to better serve them.

<comment><USER5> For free...so instead dicked everyone else who otherwise would have received for free.

<comment><USER6> Because that constitutes discrimination against the deaf...

<comment><USER7> Does that apply to free services?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I do. At least sometimes. I use Zoom to do so. I sometimes record them as well. We have had a lot of weather cancellations this winter, so I have been doing this quite a bit. But, I am not required to, nor do I do it 100% of the time. FWIW, I teach Software Development at a community college.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes. Harvard's CS50 course livestreams lectures, both in 2D and sometimes in 360 degree format (!)

</comment><comment><USER10> The university I attended (University of Athens, Greece, department of Informatics) live streamed pretty much every major class, starting from 2005 or so, and for as long as I was there. I'm pretty sure it's not that rare, especially nowadays. But it's much less useful now relatively, since there are so many courses and video resources on most STEM related subjects.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yeah well, many colleges offer the live streams. I recently met on eof my student told me tht their college officials offer the free online video lectures. Thanks for sharing this also do visit [http://tellthebelltacos.com](http://tellthebelltacos.com) for more hacking news.

</comment><comment><USER12> Have you come across any good ones since?

I'd be curious to check them out!

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not equivalent, but most courses at least post lectur slides, section notes, etc. online.</comment>


Appellate Court Enforces Permanent Injunction against Microsoft Word - <AUTHOR> http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/12/appellate-court-enforces-permanent-injunction-against-microsoft-word.html <comment><USER2> Would it be possible (and IANAL so I've got no idea) to simply _not_ make your products available in this whacked out district of east Texas?

Just refuse to ship by mail or retail to any address in the district in order to make sure the trolls can't force you into this venue?

It would be no small measure of poetic justice if in return for making themselves an enormous public nuisance and doing irreparable harm to the patent system, all of their residents had to drive a hundred miles every time they wanted an ipod.</comment>


HN Show & Tell: the WordPress Console - <AUTHOR>

Awhile back, raganwald created a thread with the sole purpose of discussing what the community is hacking on. Not start-ups and/or business, but just hacking on for fun in our spare time. I really enjoyed that conversation and would like to have more like it.
With that goal in mind, I suggest we use Saturdays to highlight our open-source and/or side projects that we're working on. Saturday seems like a logical fit since it is generally a slow news day, and what better time to talk about our "weekend projects" than the weekend?
So, to get the proverbial ball rolling, I submit to you my most recent side project which I released earlier this week, the WordPress Console.
http://blog.jerodsanto.net/2009/06/introducing-the-wordpress-console/
If you've developed in Rails then you know the joy of script/console. I have been writing a lot of WordPress plugins for clients lately, and wanted a way to interact with the development environment similar to how I can when writing a Rails app. This desire resulted in the WordPress Console, which is a plugin that creates an in-browser shell where you can execute arbitrary PHP code with the full WordPress env loaded.
It isn't a huge technical achievement or even all that challenging to create, but it is kinda cool, imo. The project is also still wet behind the ears, but usable.
What do you think? Worth developing further? Have ideas to make it more awesome? Anybody want to join in and hack on it with me? <comment><AUTHOR> This thread, now with clickable links!

official plugin page: <http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-console/>

announcement blog post (w/ screencast): [http://blog.jerodsanto.net/2009/06/introducing-the- wordpress...](http://blog.jerodsanto.net/2009/06/introducing-the-wordpress- console/)

source code on GitHub: <http://github.com/sant0sk1/wordpress-console/>

<comment><USER2> I love this. You're so right that every development environment should have a great console.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I want to make a site called: ratemysyllabi.com where users can submit, into a categorized database, course syllabuses for any topic. Other users will comment and rank them. The purpose would be to provide learning guidelines for everyone in one central place, rather then their current scattering across various university wensites, and to take a step toward an open-source university.

The data structure would be rigid, not just document uploads, but field-by- field entry in order to maintain consistent structure, searchability, and to quickly move miscategorized data.

I am becoming a skeptic of the utility and value of a four year degree. In particular the way the tax-exempt "public" money is spent and allocated. I think Wick Sloane makes a pretty strong case for the antiquity and corruption in the modern university system in this Thomas Paine style essay:

[http://www.insidehighered.com/content/download/229351/290798...](http://www.insidehighered.com/content/download/229351/2907983/file/CommonSense.pdf)

<comment><USER2> I think this is a great idea and has much bigger potential. One of the themes in publishing right now is that the money has gone out of content, since there aren't enough people willing to pay but that there's still good opportunities in curating (for example what hacker news does).

What if these syllabi were made up of free blogs and articles, like Spolsky's Best Software Writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I launched a side project the other day to let you post longer messages to Twitter. You write whatever you want and then it updates your twitter with a summary and short url to the entire message.

I have it up as lngtwt, but I think I'm going to launch it officially as big.ly.

<http://lngtwt.com>

My particular use case is that I often want to respond to someone on twitter with a longer message and I don't have convenient access to their email or want my response to be public. This comes up all the time in support. There will be a bug that is being discussed publicly on twitter and I want to send those people a solution in a way that anyone following the discussion can see.

Here are two examples:

<http://twitter.com/tonystubblebine/statuses/2349633865>

<http://twitter.com/tonystubblebine/statuses/2244340758>

One thing I like about small side projects is that it lets you start with fresh code, which is helpful for testing out plugins. This one uses the Rails twitter-auth module, which was really easy to setup.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just got really interested in making a Domino's Boxee ordering/status app, but I need to teach myself Python and figure out how to work it into their API.

<comment><USER5> <http://diveintopython.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Writing a language spec and prototype compiler for a new language, Ultilang (the name is by no means final). A few friends and myself came together and developed a list of features we would have to have for a one-size-fits-all language, and it's been designed from there.

Brace-based syntax parsed into an s-exp; real macros operating on this expression tree; multiple backends (CLR, JVM, Python at the very least); strongly typed and type inferred, with optional dynamic typing; no difference between statement and expression context (so nested structures a la Nemerle are supported); Nemerle-style pattern matching.

The goal is to build a fairly small language on top of existing frameworks, and let users fill in the gaps with strong metaprogramming. We'll see how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a sports fan in general, and a cricket fan in particular. I've been working on a structured data repository for cricket matches to facilitate sabermetric-type analyses.

Repository: <http://data.againstthespin.com>

<comment><USER8> wasn't aware of sabermetrics before you mentioned it!

<comment><USER7> It's a very cool field, and it's been around for longer than most people would think. Follow @againstthespin on twitter if you want to get my (infrequent) thoughts on the subject. And read _Moneyball_ by Michael Lewis if you want a brilliant writer's thoughts on the subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Writing a shell on a java application platform with the principle that "everything is a filesystem". Shell is really mininal - just enough to browse the application, launch an editor and trigger simple programs in jvm languages like js, objective-j, jython, ioke and whatever else they like.

Achievements so far? I now have the beginnings of a shell, filesystem API (that was pretty simple), and a jython implementation of ed with basic functionality but some bugs. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> I was making a tinyurl clone in appengine that opens multiple urls. Silly really, but i hadn't seen that done before and i thought it would be useful. But i just saw this (<http://fur.ly/>) today :-(

</comment><comment><USER10> A 24"x18" poster for Black Hat, my BH talk (vulnerabilities in stock exchange order handling systems and trading protocols in general), and helped Chris and Mike with their BH paper (Ruby for penetration testers).

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm working on getting re-motivated and attempting to avoid burnout at work. I'm also trying to get a side project up and running in Django with a coworker of mine. Just installed gitosis and created the first repo, so its time to write spec and check some code in. Hopefully we can put one of my old domains to good use. :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I launched a side project to help out UW students: <http://uwrobot.com>

And a ruby interface to the U of W student portal: <http://github.com/mitchellh/RubyUW/tree/master>

Fun fun fun.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm spending my free hours trying to write a Steampunk themed vertical shooter game using PyGame. The code is at

<http://github.com/nibrahim/Xenon-Retroblast/tree/master>

</comment><comment><USER14> "Not start-ups and/or business, but just hacking on for fun in our spare time."

Hacking for fun means, we code on things we like. If we try to find an idea on how to make them useful, this will be much more better. What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm 90% done with a Rails app for social book summaries. It allows people to search for books, add a short summary (less than 500 words), and choose their favorite summaries for each book. Over time, each book will have the highest rated summary attached to it.

I'm not trying to pull a Fahrenheit 451 and diminish the value of books, I just got really annoyed during finals last semester when I was trying to look up book summaries for books I had already read to refresh my memory and everything I found was longer than necessary. I just want something quick and simple.</comment>


NMobile: The extra secure, trusted and server-less chat app - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nkn.org/nmobile-the-trusted-chat/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The decisions we make about communication security today will determine the kind of society we live in tomorrow." by Whitfield Diffie. \- nMobile is an extra secure and trusted chat app, available on iOS and Android today. \- Why nMobile? To eradicate the roots of security hacks and privacy issues of popular chat apps such as whatsapp and signal, by removing all centralized servers. \- Targeted audience: people who put highest priority on security and privacy, such as crypto community, minority groups, and financial/legal/health professionals. \- Why is it better? nMobile runs on dataRide, a blockchain powered distributed communication system by over 20,000 independent, open source and community run relay servers.</comment>


Number of Third-Party Cookies on EU News Sites Dropped by 22% Post-GDPR - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/number-of-third-party-cookies-on-eu-news-sites-dropped-by-22-percent-post-gdpr/ <comment><USER2> And my browsing of sites with malicious compliance has dropped 100%. I __don 't __agree the tracking, and if there isn 't an easy way to dismiss these popups, then I'm going to pass.

The worst are the sites that include a _3rd party script_ to handle tracking opt-in for them. They haven't learned anything.

<comment><USER3> > And my browsing of sites with malicious compliance has dropped 100%

Wouldn't you want to boycott sites that are also non-compliant? How do you know which sites are truly maliciously complying or are non-compliant? Meaning, if you only know the ones that tell you so, you may even be disincentivizing transparency or at the least sites that have ignored the GDPR altogether probably still have your support? Or if they don't and you are somehow able to tell whether a site is violating the GDPR, why could you not have put your boycott into practice without government assistance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And the buttons and popups required to browse those websites has doubled.

With the euro websites - it's gotten to the point where you could put anything in those terms, and folks would accept them - they are so used to just clicking through to read things.

<comment><USER5> If the popups were actually following GDPR then people wouldn't accept. But 90% of these popups are not. It is clearly stated in GDPR that it should be as easy to opt-out as opt-in, and it is my firm belief that if this was implemented a lot more people would probably opt out. Oh well, the fines will hopefully start rolling out and maybe we get less asshole design.

<comment><USER6> > It is clearly stated in GDPR that it should be as easy to opt-out as opt-in

Can you point to which article of the 99 [0] that you are referring to because I have heard this claim multiple times and yet I cannot seem to find it on my own.

[0]: [https://gdpr-info.eu/](https://gdpr-info.eu/)

<comment><USER7> The most "clearly stated" is I think the following:

> Art. 7, paragraph 3: "It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent."

Although it sounds like this is about withdrawing previously given consent, not rejecting the request for consent at all.

> Recital 32: "If the data subject's consent is to be given following a > request by electronic means, the request must be clear, concise and not > unnecessarily disruptive to the use of the service for which it is > provided."

Perhaps it could be argued that having to click through multiple menus to reject the request is not concise and is disruptive to the use of the service?

> Recital 42: "In accordance with Council Directive 93/13/EEC a declaration of > consent pre-formulated by the controller should be provided in an > intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language and > it should not contain unfair terms."

Again, I'd argue that having to click through multiple menus isn't exactly "easily accessible form".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > In April all of the top ten companies tracked at least 50% of pages, whereas > in July only five companies do so.

Looks like the people who predicted this would lead to consolidation among the biggest players were correct.

<comment><USER9> How does that imply that? It seems to imply that less companies are tracking not that they combined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> ... at the cost of an additional button you have to press every time you have to visit any website.

I get it... it takes few iterations to get it right... hopefully they get it right sometime in the future, right?

<comment><USER11> If by "they" you mean the webmasters, I agree. Maybe by web 5.0 we have started to respect the user.

<comment><USER12> Respect should flow both ways. Websites are user hostile, but users are also website hostile. Users want to have their cake and eat it too. Users want everything to be both free and ad free. I can't tell you how many friends I have that use ad blockers in order to watch things like Crunchyroll ad-free...

<comment><USER13> When I was a kid, I was offended that my family members would go to the bathroom while the TV was showing ads. Totally unfair to the TV network... they should have watched all of the ads!

<comment><USER12> I get what you are saying, but I kind of disagree.

When an advertiser purchases a slot in some broadcast, they are doing so with the guarantee that their advertisement will play during that slot; they do not have the guarantee that the end user's eyeballs will actually be watching the ad.

However, ad skipping and ad blocking technology is making it so advertisers aren't even guaranteed their ad will even play during the slot they purchased - it may be programmatically skipped. If the ad is skipped, _someone_ loses out, and it's (usually) not the end user.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you are watching Crunchyroll episodes with an ad blocker enabled, you are (basically) stealing from either Crunchyroll or the ad network (whoever is swallowing the stolen bandwidth costs). The honest thing to do would be to subscribe to Crunchyroll premium if you don't want to watch the ads.

I know not every site has this option, and I know there's an argument to be made against double dipping (i.e. paying once for cable, and a second time by watching ads on said cable), but for things like YouTube and Crunchyroll which have official ad-free variants, it would be dishonest in my opinion to use the ad supported version with an ad blocker.

Just my opinion, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


$.remember (a new fork of the popular $.cookie plugin) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ndreckshage/jquery-remember

<comment><USER2> Was searching for something like this, wanted to start playing around with local storage

Thanks</comment>


Google's Area 120 project "Orion Wifi" - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/technology/area-120/orion-wifi <comment><USER2> Are there any Technical Details of how this work?

<comment><USER3> Not yet, but stay tuned.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Starsling, a social goal-tracking site. Applying for YCS12 - <AUTHOR> http://starsling.com/ Just wanted to tell everyone about our idea that we submitted.
We want to remain transparent in our process.
We have noticed a lot of people becoming interested in the quantified self with the release of such devices as the Jawbone UP, Nike Fuel Band, and the FitBit. We think there can be a better network for all of the people that currently use those devices and also people who want to manually track their progress.
Starsling will be a social goal tracking site where you can see how your friends are doing on their goals, give them motivation, and challenge or join your friends in their goals. Create goals such as Meditate 7 times a week, or read 48 books in a year. Starsling will also allow you to track your goals with or without the aid of such monitoring devices like the Jawbone UP and display your data in a helpful way.
If you have any feedback or thoughts please let us know!
jeffreykam & gregsqueeb
http://starsling.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to tell everyone about our idea that we submitted.

We want to remain transparent in our process.

We have noticed a lot of people becoming interested in the quantified self with the release of such devices as the Jawbone UP, Nike Fuel Band, and the FitBit. We think there can be a better network for all of the people that currently use those devices and also people who want to manually track their progress.

Starsling will be a social goal tracking site where you can see how your friends are doing on their goals, give them motivation, and challenge or join your friends in their goals. Create goals such as Meditate 7 times a week, or read 48 books in a year. Starsling will also allow you to track your goals with or without the aid of such monitoring devices like the Jawbone UP and display your data in a helpful way.

If you have any feedback or thoughts please let us know!

jeffreykam & gregsqueeb

<http://starsling.com/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Asking strangers to spam endorsements about a site that doesn't exist sounds like a foolproof plan.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback!

I guess our thought was that if you like the idea/would like to use something like it you could tell Paul about it.</comment></comment>


Browse JavaScript posts from HackerNews - <AUTHOR> http://hackerjs.com <comment><USER2> Getting the really interesting javascript posts is going to be hard, e.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11526368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11526368)</comment>


Toto - Heroku blogging in 10 seconds & 230 LOC - <AUTHOR> http://cloudhead.io/toto

<comment><USER2> I really like the idea.

I've casually been working on a similar project except with PHP.

-<http://github.com/breck7/brecksblog>

-<http://brecksblog.com>

It's 1 file, under 250 lines of code, and powers a fair number of blogs now. Also uses a file for storage (no database needed).

</comment><comment><USER3> Any example blogs out there? Obviously it's configurable, but just having an example or demo blog out there might be nice.

<comment><USER4> Yep any example blogs you can point us to? Very cool idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems to borrow a lot from Jekyll (<http://wiki.github.com/mojombo/jekyll/usage>), or maybe both are borrowing from some common ancestor?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I evaluated jekyll, scanty, webby, aerial and a couple of other similar engines before making this, but none of them really worked the way I wanted.

<comment><USER6> what about how jekyll works made you want to do something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> Two reasons mainly:

\- I wanted it to play well with Heroku, Jekyll generates files, which is incompatible with the read-only filesystem of heroku.

\- I wanted something really simple, Jekyll's become a little too heavy for what should be a simple task.

<comment><USER5> I agree that jekyll's getting a bit heavy, although I'm definitely not even taking full advantage of all it's features. I still don't know much about Heroku though, and this might be a good way to try it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for this, I'm enjoying it!

You probably want to add something like

      set :url,       "http://example.com"                      # site root URL

to your config.ru documentation.</comment>


Falling in Love with the Dark (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/27/dark-matter/falling-in-love-with-the-dark <comment><USER2> Attempting to play the video never worked for me as it hit _hundreds_ of adware and metrics sites before playing.

<comment><USER3> Hundreds? That's obscene...

The video worked fine for me using Firefox with uBlock Origin operating in 'hard mode'.</comment></comment>


How computers were finally able to best poker pros - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/how-computers-were-finally-able-to-best-poker-pros/2017/02/03/3d1fd8c8-e7fa-11e6-b82f-687d6e6a3e7c_story.html?utm_term=.4f7eae8b7c97 <comment><USER2> Poker isn't checkers. It's a game of hustling for money. The computer doesn't even need to be better than the pros, it only needs to be good enough to erase the margin of profit for these players. You don't make money off the good players, you make money off the fish. For the game to sustain pros, there has to be a lot of incoming fish. Like with many of the big games of life, it's a bit of a ponzi scheme. Incoming suckers drive the profits for those at the top. Throwing a computer at this game is sort of missing the point.</comment>


Encrypted DNS Outside of the US - <AUTHOR> https://eloydegen.com/blog/posts/2019-10-23-dns.html <comment><USER2> There are many encrypted DNS servers outside the US: [https://dnscrypt.info/map](https://dnscrypt.info/map)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but they aren't used as a default by browsers. Currently, Firefox is only relying on Cloudflare by default for US users.

<comment><USER2> Which is good. I don't want a browser to bypass DNS settings to use something else instead.

Especially since DNS encryption and anonymization is already done on the router for the whole network.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I don't want a browser to bypass DNS settings to use something else instead.

In an ideal situation, me neither. But there are a lot of users who use for example Windows 7, which will never get encrypted DNS on system level. Browsers get updates and can provide more DNS security for the average user. Not a single average user is going to configure a DNSCrypt client on their computer.

> Especially since DNS encryption and anonymization is already done on the > router for the whole network.

So you would prefer using a DHCP provided DNS server on untrusted Wi-Fi networks and let it snoop on DNS queries?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rogue trader costs french bank $7 billion - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7206270.stm

<comment><USER2> "Executives said the trader may not have sought personal gain from the fraudulent deals ... His managers were to leave the bank as well."

maybe, he was the scapegoat, or he was doing something really stupid

</comment><comment><USER3> Would he still be a "rogue" if he made the bank $7 billion?

<comment><AUTHOR> From my (limited) knowledge of the financial sector, he would most probably be CEO...

:-)</comment></comment>


Will Carbon Capture Be Ready on Time? - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428355/will-carbon-capture-be-ready-on-time/ <comment><USER2> All I've read about CCS over the years make it sound more like a marketing/stalling tactic. There are huge problems to be overcome, most of the worst kinds of coal plants aren't compatible with it anyway, and there are big risks from leaks, etc..

All the effort put into making it happen should probably be used on long-term solutions rather than a band-aid.

More wind, more solar, more geothermal, more hydro, more investments in efficiency, and grid-scale liquid-metal batteries (see this TED talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy.html) ) seem to be a better bet.

<comment><USER3> I did the math on those liquid-metal batteries a while back, and figured out that getting an adequate amount of grid storage would take about a thousand years of antimony production.

Tom Murphy's Do the Math blog is pretty good for this sort of thing. Most renewables can't scale up to run civilization (nor can their combination), and storage is an unsolved problem at the scale we'd need.

The two non-fossil energy sources that could do the job are solar (not counting the storage problem) and advanced nuclear.

<comment><USER2> > I did the math on those liquid-metal batteries a while back, and figured out > that getting an adequate amount of grid storage would take about a thousand > years of antimony production.

Could you elaborate on that? Do you mean at current rates of production? You do realize that supply has no incentive to exceed demand, correct? If demand increases rapidly, there will be a huge incentive to increase production. As far as I know, antimony isn't rare and there's no reason why we could produce significantly more and match demand for these types of batteries.

<comment><USER3> Haven't been able to find it...I think it may have actually been 1000 years magnesium, 10,000 antimony, but I'd have to figure it again to be sure. I calculated by assuming each metal was about a third of full-load weight of a shipping container, taking the storage capacity they claimed per container- size battery, and using Tom Murphy's estimates of how much storage we'd need.

I did assume current production rates. However, increasing the mining output by a factor of hundreds wouldn't necessarily be trivial. For example, wikipedia reports that China has annual antimony production of 120K tonnes, which is 89% of the world's total. The largest deposit is only 2.1 million tonnes.

Wiki also mentions that "antimony was identified as one of 12 critical raw materials for the EU in a report published in 2011, primarily due to the lack of supply outside China."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimony#Top_producers_and_prod...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimony#Top_producers_and_production_volumes)

<comment><USER2> I don't have answers, but I know that unless an element is very rare in the Earth's crust, price signals are usually pretty good at making supply rise very rapidly. I was reading about the beginning of the nuclear age and how everybody thought that uranium would be in very short supply, but it turned out that once it becomes a valuable commodity, lots of cash goes into exploration and many new significant deposits are found. If there's no incentive, of course there's no point in even looking for the stuff.

I know that's fuzzy, but I would guess that professor Sadoway did what he said that he did, which is to pick an element that is common and that should be cheap.

I'm also not sure quite how many of these types of batteries we'd need. There are other methods of storage (ie. hydro power in places like Quebec, Norway, etc, which can act as giant regional batteries) and we can make the grid much smarter about demand-response and things like that. The solution won't be a single silver bullet, but a combination of things, including efficiency (lots of low-hanging fruits there, despite all the progress we've made -- the Rocky Mountain Institute has a lot of good stuff about this).

<comment><USER3> That's a good point, but those "price signals" could still result in the element being very expensive for quite a while, if we have to scale up production by two or three orders of magnitude.

Hydro power is good as far as it goes, but there's only so much you can build: [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the- stor...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/)

But that's a good point on uranium. In fact, in Japan right now they're extracting uranium from seawater at about double the current cost of mined uranium. There's enough uranium in seawater to last us millions of years, especially if we went with fast reactors (which can burn U238, a hundred times more common than U235).

That seems like a pretty good silver bullet to me.

<comment><USER2> > That's a good point, but those "price signals" could still result in the > element being very expensive for quite a while, if we have to scale up > production by two or three orders of magnitude.

I'm not saying new supply will come online instantaneously, but it could be faster than most of us expect if price spikes enough. But in any case, grid- scale liquid-metal batteries would no doubt roll out like most other technologies, which is progressively enough to let supply mostly catch up. In the same way that cell phones or computers didn't go from zero to millions in a day, this will probably be done over many years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course not. By the time we see enough effect from carbon, it will be too late to reduce the emissions. Before that time, no one will invest in the commons as they don't derive any individual benefit.

Humans are imperfect sensors and even more imperfect judges of issues at this large scale. We see it even at such small sizes as our economy, much less the global ecosystem.

We operate on such small scales of time and space that we first need an extension of our collective ability to perceive before we will solve this problem that is so much larger than us. Perhaps there is room for technology there.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a lot of ways to sequester CO2 besides just injecting it underground somewhere. Biochar, for example.

<comment><USER5> Also with a link the other day to something about graphene I got to thinking, "Graphene is just carbon, why not convert CO2 to graphene?". Turns out someone already did: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110620161308.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110620161308.htm)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Scalability and .NET stack - <AUTHOR>

Python rocks, but I know at least a few of you out there are using the Microsoft stack... :)<p>Most startups founders I've talked to use Python and Amazon Web Services for scalability. Until Microsoft reveals their cloud computing solution, it seems there aren't too many choices for the Microsoft stack hosted scaling solutions, besides Mosso. I've heard Amazon can be used with a .NET app, as long as you are not running SQL Server on the back-end. Is anyone using MS SQL Server Express as the database engine for their startup?  How do people here using the Microsoft stack approach scalability issues? <comment><USER2> MSFT scalability = multiple app servers load balanced.

Here's the typical example: <http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish- architecture>

In my experience, virtuals/slices do not scale well for app servers in the MSFT stack.

<comment><AUTHOR> What about running the .NET app on Amazon EC2 with a mysql backend?

I am thinking of using SQL Server Express as my database for now - to take advantage of its visual tools, and later I could port the db over to MySQL.. If I keep all the business logic in the app and limit my database code to CRUD, trying not to use anything Transact-SQL specific, it shouldn't be too difficult to port the db to MySQL, what do you think?

<comment><USER2> My experience with MySql and .NET (and this has been a while - years) has been poor simply because the ADO.NET stuff for MySql was poor (and I have no idea if it's changed).

I was under the impression that Amazon's cloud required the client image to be linux?

Frankly, for smaller sites, you can get shared hosting for $10 a month that might be sufficient (and you can grow to a $50/month slice and then a $300 a month dedicated then to $$k for many dedicated). All prices are from Webhost4Life.

Since running a single EC2 instance = $70 a month if left up full time, I think there are vastly cheaper options out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe MSFT improved upon this since - you can call stored procs through an ObjectDataSource. So, as long as you have your tiers set up right, you could just rely on CRUD in the db back-end.

You know, maybe they are using mono for .NET on Amazon..which is not the road I want to take - too much setup, maintenance, and uncertainty.

The shared hosting comes with a drawback - most of these shared hosts are black or white - either all linux or all windows. If I want to run php scripts, or a C++ process, I am stuck - unless I go with a VPS or dedicated, which brings up the cost to $50+, at which point one might as well go with Mosso or EC2..

Btw, if anyone wants to split Mosso with me, please PM me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Watch out! when you are using the MS SQL Server Express edition you are limited by its "subscriber only" replication mode.

MS SQL Server express cannot be used as a replication master, if you are interested in that type of architecture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would it be easy to upgrade and scale the Express database later to a full- blown version of SQL Server using replication if I see that my app makes money and is worth the investment paying for a commercial SQL Server version? I think I could probably even find a hosted SQL Server, so I wouldn't have to pay full license fee. But I guess that prevents me from running on a dedicated server...Thats why I am hoping I can move it over later to some scalable solution like Mosso, and not worry about paying for the full license, only for as much as I need depending on the traffic.

<comment><USER2> If you go to a hosted solution (virtuals/rackspace/shared/whatever), the license cost of SQL is _usually_ included.

Honestly, MSFTs licensing schemes give me a huge headache.

<comment><AUTHOR> They aren't very straight-forward.. vs LAMP: free = free :) but... I like the tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _I've heard Amazon can be used with a .NET app, as long as you are not running SQL Server on the back-end._

You need to be more specific since Amazon offers many web services. There may be .NET client applications which use Amazon S3 for storage but as far as I know there is no good solution for running a .NET application on Amazon EC2.

If you do find any examples, please post them here.</comment>


LastPass Enterprise, Now Without the Master Password - <AUTHOR> https://blog.lastpass.com/2018/07/lastpass-enterprise-now-without-the-master-password.html/ <comment><USER2> Do people still hand over their vault password to access the site?</comment>


Ask HN: Who are the four guys in Y Combinator home page?  - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7431835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7431835)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a rotating slideshow, which picture are you talking about?</comment>


Done with Facebook and Twitter? Try building your own private social network - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90373954/done-with-facebook-and-twitter-heres-how-to-start-your-own-private-social-network <comment><USER2> Private social networks already exist, have widespread use, and increasingly eat into Facebook use. They're just group chats in WhatsApp, iMessage, SMS/MMS, and whatever other services are popular.

The barriers to entry are lower than Mastodon and the service described in the article, and everyone already has what they need to join.

I just don't see a market for a new product right now.</comment>