My Neighbor, Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://lisenstromberg.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/my-neighbor-steve-jobs/ <comment><USER3> Next up on HN:

Blog post from housekeeper of Mr. Steve about how exacting he is on some occasions and how kind he is on other.

I think Steve Jobs and his contributions to the tech world are extraordinary. I wish him well and hope he lives happily for a long long time. Just as I wish for anyone I know or do not know, that they live happily.

Steve is not a friend of either you or me. I do not need to know how he was as a neighbor, his driving record, his family life or anything that does not concern his work. I am not interested in those details of Steve or Salma Hayek or Steve Ballmer.

Can we stop senselessly idolizing people in areas that are not their expertise?

<comment><USER4> There may be some idolizing, but I think it's more about premature eulogizing of a man who's made huge contributions to technology, whether you buy Apple products or not. Ballmer isn't even in the same realm.

Personally, I'm interested in his life beyond Apple. He was an out-of-the-box thinker who went through many serious failures and successes. How could he NOT be interesting? I feel I could learn a lot from him. I certainly learned a lot from his now-classic Stanford(?) speech.

We all really do hope for the best for his health, but we all have this unspoken belief that his days are very numbered.

I suspect that like me, many others feel the need to thank him for what he's accomplished, and reviewing and celebrating his life is the next best thing to shaking his hand.

<comment><USER5> _premature eulogizing_

I mentioned this to a friend the other day. If I only read all of the stories coming out about SJ I would have assumed he died and not just left his CEO position.

<comment><USER6> You understand that he left his CEO position _because he's dying_ , right?

<comment><USER7> There's still a difference though - he's not a vegetable; he's very much alive today. Pseudo-eulogizing a person who is still alive isn't good taste - <USER2> them for when he is gone. It's not like the story will change, or will be any different then.

<comment><USER8> He may be enjoying it.

Not everybody gets to attend their own eulogy, and in this case, in tone and volume, it verges on deification.

Speaking of which, is there a comedian with balls to publish an Apocolocyntosis?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you've ever wondered what a pure name-drop is like when extended to multiple paragraphs, your wait is over.

<comment><USER10> Yeah -- it was about as textbook as it gets. I respect the guy to no end, but this "article" was pretty absurd. Four-some-odd paragraphs of the author explaining how flabbergasted she was by Job's presence in _her own neighborhood_ and one beyond-cliched moment in which Steve Jobs is -- GASP -- proud of his child.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This audio (6 min long) is worth a listen. Steve Jobs, when he was around 26 or so. <http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/pagegen/brochure/p3.html>

<comment><USER12> Thank you for posting it.

I should say this: When Steve Jobs talks about intersection of Liberal Arts and Technology people think it's some marketing gimmick. But he was saying pretty much the same thing in 1982, when he was at the top, the same thing in 1997 [1] when the chips were down, and the same thing in 2011 when he was back at the top.

I think a breadth of experiences is pretty important. Whether in a specific field- experience with different types/levels of languages, having done both academic research and grunt work. Or in life- hallucinogenics, life- jeopardizing risks, depression, unfulfilled love. Not to say that one should always have to be a wreck as a person, or never settle and focus on a project or set of languages. But a little time spent increasing your breadth goes a long way than incrementally bettering your depth. And more generally, I have met too many people who always did the 'right' thing to do, always got straight As, but are pretty clueless when they step out of their domain or world view. Creativity, empathy, connecting-the-dots may sound as buzz words because you cannot learn them through books. But not all of it is genetic; a lot of it comes through the breadth of your experiences.

[1] "I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger." talking about Bill Gates in 1997.

<comment><USER13> One of the most insightful comments . Great articulation @kubrickslair

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A few months ago I had just taken a meeting in Palo Alto and went down the street to sit at a Starbucks to wait for a ride since I rode the caltrain and had no way to get around. I was doing some work when Steve Jobs walked in. My grandfather passed away from Pancreatic cancer and was by no means walking around having a coffee with friends at this stage. It was really inspiring to see him pushing through the condition and refusing to give up.

Some jerk kid walked up to him and asked if it'd be alright to take a picture with him. Steve dismissed him with such a confidence you wouldn't expect. I think in general a guy like that with such amazing ideas has to have this extremely thick shell to the world, but underneath I'm sure he's an amazing father, husband, and friend. I was really lucky to be there that day, definitely changed my perspective on a few things.

</comment><comment><USER15> What a fantastic, feel-good piece on Steve. It's nice to know he's just like every other parent outside of Apple, and I'm glad someone remembered who he is as a person, not just a CEO.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. it's sometimes hard to remember that these people who communicate with us using the products we buy/use are actually just people like us.

and that's kind of a big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm ashamed to admit that part of the reason for my wife (artithmetic on HN) and I to pick our current apartment in Palo Alto several months ago was because it was a stone's throw away from Jobs' house. He's been a long time hero of mine and when we got a chance to live close by, we jumped at it.

Bonus - we're even closer to several YC startups, I suspect if I shout loudly, the LikeALittle guys can hear it.

<comment><USER18> One of the most amazing things about Palo Alto is that the city-provided services are actually good enough that people like Steve Jobs use them, in preference to private schools, fortified compounds, etc. At least, this is amazing to me after living in a bunch of third world places where even lower middle class people try to avoid any contact with neighbors, government- provided services, etc.

(my girlfriend actually went to a Palo Alto high school with Lisa Jobs, too)

<comment><USER19> In Brazil, the best colleges are public. They are so good it's bad: the rich kids take a semester or two of specific courses to pass the entrance exam, leaving the poor people out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When [EDIT: you think] someone's dying, it's more satisfying to tell him (or her) how much you appreciate him, while he's still around to take some pleasure in it, than to attend the funeral wishing you'd done so.

<comment><USER21> "We're dying, Jim. We're all dying."

He's not dying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Honestly, I think the neighborly thing for the author to do is to allow Steve his privacy.

<comment><USER23> Out of curiosity, how does this violate his privacy?

<comment><USER22> I don't know if it violates his privacy, but it sure doesn't respect it. Retelling personal moments such as Steve watching his son graduate (while essentially putting words in his mouth) basically makes her a paparazzo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know he's going, we all do, but man it feels like a kick in the gut for tech. Yes we know tech is actually bullshit, in the grand scheme of things, to keep us occupied, but somehow no Jobs means something less ... like the suits will kill off all the beauty because they don't understand that.

We need a new big visionary in the higher boardrooms but I don't see any, lately they're all just wall street and more so with time.

</comment><comment><USER25> This reminded me that the people that seem to know the most ABOUT Steve Jobs don't actually know Steve Jobs. Really cool to read.

</comment><comment><USER26> I just checked CNN. I had to because the piece at the end made it sound like he ea dead.

<comment><USER27> I've done the same thing. Even though I knew he wasn't dead, everyone is talking about him as though he is. And now we're supposed to be surprised by the fact that he's a normal person, just like you and me?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> One or two Halloweens ago, I went over to Steve's house. While everybody was waiting in line, it turned out that Steve was standing behind a doorway, where everybody was going through.

He just stood there. Nobody noticed until they started walking back having gotten their treats from the front door.

I was impressed. Impressed because he was not the one handing out the treats, but the one standing behind a doorway, where nobody noticed him.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice article but I am Steve Jobs' neighbor on the other side and he has been nothing but a nightmare for my family, especially all the nude gardening.

</comment><comment><USER30> Marc Zuckerberg goes past my house almost every week in Palo Alto. Seeing on the streets someone you see in the media helps making him normal.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't get this one. I would assume that you'd have to be extremely wealthy to be Steve Jobs's neighbor. As a result you'd think bumping into other extremely wealthy, successful people would be routine.

<comment><USER32> there's a mix of housing in Palo Alto - a fair amount of students and young persons intermingled with home owners of (very) expensive homes. I lived in a $1500/month place on Everett (cheap) and across the street there were million dollar houses, but a block in another direction were a few places that looked like 1920s era sharecroppers houses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The human touch to this one makes it the best article I've read about Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER34> tl;dr

Steve (yes I call him by his first name) live near me. As a neighbour. Just down the street. I have moments where he has acknowledged my existence. He even knows my waspy name.

</comment><comment><USER35> Old palo alto represent!

</comment><comment><USER36> Thank god this is on HN, not sure what I would of done without reading this article. Lets make sure to spread this one around folks.</comment>


Internet blackout against U.S. law fails to enlist big sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/us-internet-protest-idUSTRE80H01U20120118

<comment><USER3> I resisted submitting this story because of its baiting headline, although I won't be surprised if it gets a lot of attention.

Setting aside the fact that the headline is demonstrably false (Wikipedia is certainly a 'big site'), it is curious to me how the language of the headline actually validates the 'internet blackout' even as it appears to disparage it. I don't believe that you typically see reports in major newswires when a petition 'fails' to succeed, as Reuters appears to be defining it here, and yet here we are.

</comment><comment><USER4> This "stunt" has been solely designed to raise awareness and mobilize support. It doesn't take Google or Facebook blacking out their site to accomplish this - simply running a text link or a banner on their sites would go a long way towards helping a huge audience understand the heinous demands of the IP Lobby. By that same stroke, the more dramatic blackouts will also raise a lot of awareness. Despite the differing tactics, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people will be exposed to these important issues tomorrow.

I call that a success.

Reuters story was just another example of the thinly researched, hastily prepared and barely coherent writing that passes as journalism nowadays.

<comment><USER5> Reuters is part of the establishment, and is acting the part, so no surprise there.

The truth is that opposition to this bill is multi-layered: the masses of Wikipedia and Reddit walk the networked streets shouting with their megaphones, while Google and Facebook quietly cut checks to people in suit who know how to talk to congressmen.

This is why Big Media actors, like Murdoch and Reuters, are so angry about it all: they thought they only had to deal with Occupy-style "crazies", and instead they find themselves challenged on their own ground as well. They are trying very hard to frame the protest as a "failure" even though it's being wildly successful. I wonder what will happen if/once PIPA is voted down.

<comment><USER4> Thinking out loud, I wonder how effective the tech counter-lobby can be in a situation like this. Google and Facebook can cut all the checks they want, but if the congress critters have made up their mind about this bill, it would take a huge lobby to make even small differences. I mean it can't hurt - <USER2> little bit helps, but it would be super-interesting to know which tactics were most effective compared to everything that's been done to defeat these proposals.

<comment><USER6> To me this is one of the rare cases where technology really is the answer (or rather: where technology dictates the answer).

SOPA-proponents can pass any bills they want, nothing can push the cat back into the bag.

Filesharing is easy now. People like it. The tech is out there and can't be blocked (see magnet links). Even if the laws pass; for every file-sharing "terrorist" they put in jail there are 10 more. And they're losing mindshare with every action they take. Bills like SOPA are merely delaying the inevitable, they can't turn back time.

Of course that doesn't mean we shouldn't front them, as we are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How much did the MPAA pay for this article?

No, seriously. Re-read the first 3 paragraphs. That is 100% paid for press.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reuters classifies Wikipedia as "the online dictionary Wikipedia"?

<comment><USER9> Yep. Wiktionary is the online encyclopedia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wikipedia now serves a tasteful dark page. The page has a link thats reads "Learn more" [1], but since it links to a page on Wikipedia, it's blacked out as well. I'm not so sure whether that is intentional.

Edit: they fixed it, so apparently it wasn't intentional.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more)

</comment><comment> steve-howard > "This publicity stunt does a disservice to its users by promoting fear > instead of facts," said Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary > Committee and a sponsor of SOPA. "Perhaps during the blackout, Internet > users can look elsewhere for an accurate definition of online piracy."

I'm sure the MPAA's Web site will be online!

<comment><USER10> Or just use Encarta 1996 on CD-ROM, as I'm sure Mr. Smith does. How much could the world have possibly changed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So Wikipedia and Reddit aren't big?

<comment><USER12> Reddit is big, but it's not very well known compared to the likes of Wikipedia or Google.

<comment><USER13> It's probably in the top 100 websites with ~1-2 billion page views a month. Having said that I don't think most journalists look past the top 10 when they are look for "major" players in large part because the leaders are simply so dominate. Facebook clocks in at something like 1 trillion page views a month. (Note: that would take 500 million active users * 30 days * 66 page views a day which seems ridiculously excessive, until you consider how addicted some people are to that site.)

(1b) <http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/02/reddit-billion/> (2b) [http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-05/tech/30592220...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-05/tech/30592220_1_site- blog-post-unique-visitors)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "SOPA protest swells as Google, Scribd, and Wordpress join" [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/google- scrib...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/google-scribd-and- wordpress-to-join-sopa-protest.ars)

Same set of facts and two polar opposite opinions. The conglomerate spin machine (which Reuters is part of) is already in motion

</comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GME5nq_oSR4>

</comment><comment><USER16> As of right now I'm seeing a Google logo which has been entirely blacked out and links to their take action page. I think the Google logo changing for major events is pretty well-established even outside the "tech elite" community, so while they didn't black out the whole site, I'd definitely say Google is "enlisted".

</comment><comment><USER17> Apparently Wikipedia is not a big site.

</comment><comment><USER18> Oh, yeah no big sites. Wikipedia is one of the top ten or so sites and probably bigger than Twitter. And Google, the biggest site _period_ is also pitching in, if not so dramatically. Reddit is smaller but still very big. Really, the headline should be the opposite...

</comment><comment><USER19> Blacking out your own site to protest a law is as silly as cutting off your ear to woo a lover. I like Google's approach.

<comment><USER20> If that law threatens your ability to do business, then it could be seen as worthwhile. As Ohanian has said, if SOPA passes, it will likely be the end of Reddit.

NOT being willing to lose a day's revenue to something along those lines illustrates, to me, a lack of forethought.

<comment><USER19> Google's daily revenue is more money than all congress members combined receive per year in donations.

<comment><USER20> All the more reason I'd think they'd want to protect it, going forward.

<comment><USER19> My point is that they should spend it in ways that create incentives for politicians, not confusion and annoyance for their customers.

If a stop SOPA/PIPA vote was held today, less than 10% of the people raising a stink about it on the internet would show up at the polling place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I thought Mozilla was blacking out?

<comment><USER10> Yes, but only for 12 hours, starting tomorrow at 8am ET:

 _"Reddit will not be offering its regular service between the hours of 8AM ET and 8PM ET, which is also when Mozilla will be redirecting the Mozilla.org and Mozilla.com English webpages to a similar "action page" inviting users of its software to voice their concern."_

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/18/2715300/sopa-blackout- wiki...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/18/2715300/sopa-blackout-wikipedia- reddit-mozilla-google-protest)</comment></comment>


A peer-to-peer escrow - <AUTHOR> http://soundboy.tumblr.com/post/28557985172/a-peer-to-peer-escrow

<comment><USER2>
      ... there are superusers ...

In what sense is this peer-to-peer?

</comment><comment><USER3> What prevents the Intermediary from stealing the money?</comment>


Use of Formal Methods at Amazon Web Services (2014) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/tla/formal-methods-amazon.pdf <comment><USER2> The best part was the section about finding a bug that took 35 steps to show up which got through both code reviews and testing. The ability to catch such obscure stuff is a benefit of formal methods that's been in the literature a long time. Model-checkers like TLA+ and SPIN let it get done with less skill and time than full, formal verification. Further, the properties can be combined with methods like Design-by-Contract and static analysis to knock out problems that show up 80-90% of the time.

Hardly any justification anymore to not be using these tools for most critical software. Even a mainstream company has figured it out. Hopefully, we'll see more adoption. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8096185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8096185) for previous discussion

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this the same article that appeared in the Communications of the ACM? Not behind paywall, that's a plus. ([http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2699417&CFID=612805967&CFT...](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2699417&CFID=612805967&CFTOKEN=69304030))

<comment><USER5> It's paywalled for me.

<comment><USER6> Try using SciHub.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I made a site that helps you find LGBT+ Travel Rankings and Gay Laws - <AUTHOR> https://visalist.io/travel/gay <comment><USER2> Personally I'd like to see more information and transparency about how the ratings are calculated and where the data is coming from for me to put faith in the website and methodology, since that's the whole premise.

For example what does X% discrimination or persecution actually mean? How is that quantified and why is it a percentage?

Edit: another thing that doesn't give me confidence in the website are the frequent spelling errors, this is copy and pasted from the Netherlands description and there is a mistake in almost every sentence.

> Netherlands is part of Europe with main city at Amsterdam. Its Developed > country with a population of 17M people. The main currency is Euro. The > languages spoken are Dutch. the Kingdom of the Netherlands is the formal > name of Netherlands It is adviced to Exercise normal safety precautions

<comment><AUTHOR> I got the actual data from [https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus- gay-travel-...](https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel- index/) I just made it a percent to make it easy to compare and understand.

<comment><USER2> I would argue it doesn't make it easier to understand though, plus I'm sure there is a mistake in your methodology. E.g. several countries you score as 67% in equal age of consent when they have laws specifying this. What is a 100% then? Moreover the guide you posted gives a max rating of 1 in this category, therefore that's why I think you made a mistake mapping their scores to percentages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, another user pointed it out and I fixed. Currently, the ranges are -3 to 3 for each category but for some, it's only 0 to -3 and accordingly I changed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This map is terribly wrong for some parts of the ex-USSR and Asia.

Coming out as a gay person in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan is dangerous. Dangerous as in "there is a high chance you'll be beaten up and a mild chance of being kidnapped and killed".

From the other side, Russia is not that bad. Not bad means "you can see gay people kissing on the streets without repercussions" (in the European part of the country).

Syria? Oman? Just no comments.

<comment><USER4> > you can see gay people kissing on the streets without repercussions

I never say gay people kissing (or even holding hands) even in Moscow.

Maybe Russia is not as bad as Syria, but that statement is not true.

<comment><USER3> YMMV, but check Google Maps to see how many gay bars are there in Moscow.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but none of them is openly gay. For example, they can't practically display a rainbow flag near the entrance. These are "underground" bars and clubs.

<comment><USER5> As underground as one can be on Google maps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was looking for a way to check a website where I can find Gay-friendly countries when one of my friends asked me as I have built the Visa List. Surprisingly I found very few blogs and they had very few countries and didn't tell me how safe every country is. So I decided to build a full functionality where you can find each and every country with their travel ranking with their civil rights, discrimination, and persecution against gay people. You can sort by most and least friendly and visualize it on a map.

I would love to get feedback and improve the travel experience for LGBT+ community.

<comment><USER6> I like the design and intent, but I'm not sure mapping the scores to percentages works. I can't see how the UK's equal age of consent [since 2000] works out at '67%' for example.

I'm also pretty sceptical of the underlying data anyway: I'm also perplexed by the idea that the UK has a significant negative religious influence, and I'm pretty sure Pride is banned in Saudi Arabia

<comment><USER7> The Church of England just said that sex is for married hetero-sexual couples only.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-51233003](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-51233003)

<comment><USER6> It also said sorry for offending people very quickly afterwards, and more to the point has tiny and declining attendance and minimal impact on attitudes towards homosexual tourists. The idea that it's more hostile and influential on the subject of homosexuality than, say, the Catholic church in most Catholic majority countries doesn't really stack up.

<comment><USER7> It's the official state religion and is represented in the house of lords. That's real actual power, albeit moderated by the rest of the HoL. And, while they apologised, they stuck by that announcement.

We also have Catholic churches here, who've made similar pronouncements about relationships of gay people.

We've had a long running demonstration outside primary schools by Muslim people complaining about age appropriate lessons about relationships.

A transwoman was ostracized by her orthodox Jewish community to the point where she was unable to see her children. Despite winning the various court cases she's now given up trying to have contact with her children.

Religious intolerance of LGBTQ relationships is widespread in the UK across most religions.

<comment><USER6> Nobody is saying that religious prejudice in the UK is nonexistent. What I am saying is the data source's conclusion that the UK has a high level of religious prejudice not found in the rest of Western Europe is palpably absurd.

'But I have to worry about the power of bishops in the House of Lords', said no tourist ever.

<comment><USER7> Are you ignoring Northern Ireland?

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Unionist_Party#Soci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Unionist_Party#Social_policies)

EDIT: Also, it's weird to discount the fact that about one third of all schools in England are faith schools - most of those are either Church of England or Catholic. Ofsted requires schools to teach about same sex relationships, but Ofsted doesn't prevent schools from teaching that these relationships are sinful. [https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2019/07/faith- schools-...](https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2019/07/faith-schools-must- stop-stigmatising-same-sex-relationships)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a gay man, you're safer and better off in Singapore than you would be in most parts of Europe and the top portion of the list. Yet Singapore is down at 92.

Interpret this however you want, but the list flawed. Laws don't mean shit unless they're enforced and that goes both ways. "Bad" laws not enforced is better than good laws not enforced.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback mate. I got this data from Spartacus website. Do you think it's not accurate? What about all the other countries?

[https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay- travel-...](https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel- index/)

<comment><USER9> Fucking hell, your defense against all the criticism is that "Oh it's data from some 3rd party!", which is more or less saying "not my fault!".

As another has said, this is less than useless, this is dangerous. And if it's the source that's wrong, then the source is also dangerous, but you're spreading dangerously wrong information. I hope no LGBT+ person actually depends on your site, because it might get them fucking killed.

Besides, having the info be country-wide is not granular enough. A gay traveller would probably feel very safe in San Francisco but not feel very safe in some little town deep in Alabama.

<comment><USER10> I'm a straight male and I feel uncomfortable in parts of TN, WV, AL, GA. I go there to see family and I don't like it. I feel like some of these folks don't just dislike LGBT, they dislike everyone. Downtown Seattle at 4am in cracktown is safer, then small town WV as an outsider.

Edited for spelling

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Poland scores much higher than South Korea.

Poland has areas which have declared themselves LGBT-free zones. South Korea is higher on the Human Development Index but is described as "developing".

This is just nonsense, isn't it?

<comment><USER12> LGBT-free zones are places free of LGBT ideology and not LGBT people. Totally different meaning.

<comment><USER13> > Totally different meaning.

If people aren't allowed to express who they are or their beliefs for fear of literally being bricked or kicked in the face [0][1] then you're banning LGBT people (and obviously "LGBT ideology" too).

[0] [https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/07/bigots-attacks-pride- mar...](https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/07/bigots-attacks-pride-march- throwing-bricks-burning-rainbow-flags/)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-l67aCX0vA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-l67aCX0vA)

<comment><USER12> I agree with you that if you ban LGBT people your are also probably banning LGBT ideology. But banning LGBT ideology does not mean banning LGBT people. Being a LGBT person does not mean that you automatically subscribe to an LGBT ideology.

<comment><USER14> This sounds awfully like "as long as you don't do anything visible you can be LGBT", with "LGBT ideology" being things like "you should be allowed to be recognizably LGBT in public", "you should be allowed to talk about being LGBT", ...

At least that's how it usually goes when this argument comes out.

<comment><USER15> I agree. This strikes me as a Motte-and-bailey attitude towards LGBT acceptance in society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So many fake data on this, ok let's take Algeria as example of course it's not place for gay people but i'm questioning the data let's start by Death Sentence Algeria doesn't have death sentence at all and in this it tell you they will execute gay people well bullshit, and being gay is not illegal but not socially accepted big difference, pride is definitely banned but it tell you is not,Religious Influence is 67% well no way it's 100% etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> Love the idea. Terrible execution. Here's some constructive criticism:

The site currently is as useless as listing the average elevation of countries to determine where mountains and valleys exist. Utterly useless.

Texas would be one of the largest and most populous countries in the world if it was a country. Yet it is grouped together with states that couldn't be more different. Even WITHIN Texas LGBT acceptance in Austin TX and El Paso TX couldn't be more different.

 __ _What would actually be useful?_ __

A heat-map style visual of the world; granular to the level of regions with 200k+ people.

P.s. Make data source contribution a moderated community effort. Do not rely on terribly non-granular data sources constructed by people who don't actually live in the regions you're providing information about.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's a bunch of variance of acceptance depending on where exactly you are in the LGBTP+ spectrum, no? For that reason alone it seems like you'd need more granularity on the details.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not sure about the accuracy. France says locals hostile at 33% while Russia only has locals hostile at 17% and locals hostile at 0% in Singapore...Oh and locals hostile at 17% in Saudi Arabia!!!

I'd say those numbers are totally wrong. This is the kind of project where hacking a quick solution together could lead to bad consequences so care should be taken with the numbers you give.

I wonder if this is because of how you convert to percentages? I haven't looked yet at the data in spartacus.

Also it is true that there's a difference between gay tourists who are less likely to be bothered in certain religious countries compared to residents.

<comment><AUTHOR> I got this data from Spartacus. All these numbers are based on data from them [https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay- travel-...](https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel- index/)

<comment><USER20> Do you mention they anywhere on your site?

<comment><USER21> Yes, he does. It is on the RHS on the "LGBT+ Travel Rankings of the world" page (linked in OP).

"This ranking is based on 14 different paramters like civil rights, discrimation and persecution by Spartacus LGBT+ Travel."

<comment><USER20> Oh, yep I guess it is there. Seems like it could be a little more prominent, since this is basically just their dataset, with some filtering and ads (and a more confusing representation of the score).

<comment><USER21> > Oh, yep I guess it is there.

Yes, but it wasn't obvious to me. I only spotted it after careful reading AND knowing the data source was Spartacus. Anyone unfamiliar with that outlet probably wouldn't pick up on the connection. Given the HEAVY reliance on their data I agree that more prominence and a link would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great website, really nice UX. Small bug with some of the data -- spot the "undefined"s:

"United States has a LGBT+ travel rank of 53 with a total gay travel score of 57. United States is part of Americas with main city at Washington, D.C.. Its Developed country with a population of 324M people. The main currency is undefined. The languages spoken are English. the United States of America is the formal name of undefined"

<comment><USER20> I bet you could ask 100 people what the "main city" in the US was and none of them would say D.C.

In general the U.S. seems varied enough that a single score isn't really meaningful... There's a pretty big difference between Seattle and rural Mississippi.

<comment> _-___________-_ Maybe "main city" is a mistranslation of "capital"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The data seems pretty out of date for Taiwan. LGBT couples can be married, and stepchildren can be adopted.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> This is based on 2019 report. I will update it on my site. Thanks mate!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Equal Age of Consent: 67%

What does this mean? Spartacus has a 1 or 0 (true/false?) in this column.

<comment><AUTHOR> No actually, If there are positive developments it will be scored from 1,2 or 3 and if there are negative developments then it will -1,-2 or -3 and if there isn't anything going on regarding that then it will be 0

<comment><USER2> I don't think this is right for every category though, the only thing in the methodology I could find is this

> The categories have different levels. If a category has three levels, a > maximum of three points can be awarded.

Keyword being "if". They don't specify which categories these are. Logically how could you score higher than a 1 in equal age of consent, that's a true or false question right?

<comment><USER21> I checked 2017, 2018 and Canada held a consistent 1 score. I also found this in the 2017 document:

"With regard to anti-discrimination laws up to 3 points can be awarded, making a distinction, for example, whether the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the constitution or only in a law for a specific area is shown."

[https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/gaytravelindex_2017.pdf](https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/gaytravelindex_2017.pdf)

Also in 2019 Kenya managed a -1 score. Presumably they had equality and repealed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Like so many others, these rankings seem to be far more focused on the LGB than the T.

Also, the site tells me that I'll get murdered or sentenced to death if I visit a given country, and then immediately below that displays an ad for flights to that country's capital city. I really don't think your CTR is going to be high on that particular ad placement.

</comment><comment> ainar-g [https://visalist.io/russia/gay-travel](https://visalist.io/russia/gay-travel)

> The main currency is undefined.

It's the Russian Rouble (RUB).

> the Russian Federation is the formal name of undefined

I'm not sure what this is supposed to say, but according to the Russian constitution, the names "Russia" and "the Russian Federation" are synonymous.

At first I was surprised at how low the Russian Federation is on the list, but then I remembered that Chechnya exists. I guess a lot of these pages should have a note that YMMV, depending on the region and the city. Moscow shouldn't be that much different from Kiyiv or, say, Warsaw, while the North Caucasus regions are clearly closer to fundamentalist societies when it comes to LGBT+ rights.

<comment><USER25> Africa is a very large continent with countries that range from "have legalized same sex marriage" to "have death penalty for homosexuality", so saying a region is "clearly closer to Africa when it comes to LGBT+ rights" doesn't make a ton of sense..

<comment> ainar-g You're right, that part was badly worded. I've changed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The 'Green Book' is back? Useful if accurate, but a sad commentary as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> Israel is probably one of the few countries other than the USA were LGBTQ+ people were attacked and killed in public or in private spaces.

An ashkenazi religious Jew stabbed and killed a girl in a gay pride event in Jerusalem, and the government coalition is made up of some of the most externally homophobic (also Ashkenazi) MPs.

Israel has an image of tolerance because of TLV, which was mostly a tourism driven policy or gimmick. The rest of the country is really not gay friendly at all and personal safety is something to consider if you travel outside of TLV.

Mind you the murder of youth in a gay community club took place in TLV.

<comment><USER28> A simple Google Search proves this comment completely wrong...

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

<comment><USER27> The stubbing happened in public during a pride event in Jerusalem. Daylight.

The shooting in the youth club was of a guy who burst in and gunned them down.

Israel does not allow same sex marriage and having your right recognized l, if you got married outside is constantly challenged, as well as adoption by LGBTQ+ parents.

Openly homophobic MPs are almost as common as islamophobic or xenophobic (asylum seekers) ones, and no one was fired for any of the vile public statements made.

Israel's image as a tolerant country is not reflected in its reality, as much as its claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East. It's neither.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Singapore is part of Asia with main city at Singapore. Its Developing > country with a population of 6M people.

Singapore is a first world country.

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed it

<comment><USER30> Singapore claims Developing Country status in the WTO [1], so it's not entirely inaccurate.

[1] [https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore- sup...](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-supports- update-of-wto-rules-developing-country-status-11918958)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It misidentifies Macau as a "developing" region, despite having one of the highest HDI in the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing it out, I have updated it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It looks like you have a typo: "civit rights" instead of "civil rights".

Where do the numbers come from?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! fixed it. I got the data from [https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay- travel-...](https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel- index/) which is also present in wikipedia

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Interesting project

Does this account for how regional variation within each country? Because even in the UK, peoples attitudes can vary wildly from one town and city to another.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is now based on country laws only. I haven't looked into how it's perceived in different regions in each country

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Where does the data come from?

<comment><AUTHOR> I collected the data from [https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus- gay-travel-...](https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel- index/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > Italy

>Italy has a LGBT+ travel rank of 40 with a total gay travel score of 60. Italy is part of Europe with main city at Rome. Its Developed country with a population of 61M people. The main currency is undefined. The languages spoken are Italian. the Republic of Italy is the formal name of undefined

The currency is _Euro_ , pretty much defined.

Republic of Italy is the formal name of _Italy_.

And the overall rating at first sight seem way off.

Most probably it is brought down by the 0% in "adoption allowed" which I cannot see the relevance of in the case of a travel.

</comment><comment><USER36> Nothing happens when I press on the filter selection.

Latest Chrome mobile on Android 10.

</comment><comment><USER21> > This ranking is based on 14 different paramters

*parameters

</comment><comment><USER27> Also, according to International Monetary Fund, Russia is a developing, not developed, country.

</comment><comment><USER37> civit rights -> civil rights?

</comment><comment><USER38> The website deliberately breaks if no javascript.</comment>


Drawbacks of Freelance Web Development - <AUTHOR> http://foorious.com/articles/drawbacks-of-freelance-web-development/ <comment> old-gregg Another disadvantage of freelancing is generally lower bar of requirements and less interesting work. There are always exceptions, of course, but it's usually mind-destroying disposable CRUD work or building iOS clones of existing web apps, don't expect to eat "rich programmer food" [1] as a freelancer.

Besides, you will rarely have an opportunity to learn from other/smarter people, so growing professionally will be a challenge. I may even go as far as to say it's very easy to see your programming skills deteriorate unless you apply a conscious effort to mentally stay in shape.

There are always exceptions of course (especially for a specialist vs generalist) but this has been my experience being on both sides of the table.

[1] [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com.tr/2007/06/rich- programmer-f...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com.tr/2007/06/rich-programmer- food.html)

<comment><USER2> On the other hand, I would point out that sometimes the opposite is true. Working alone (or perhaps in a place where you might be one of the best in the room) means you learn more about programming and how to solve problems than you would otherwise. Why? Because if you're the only one working on something, you have to be the one to solve all the difficult problems.

On the other hand, if you work with other/smarter people, it's also possible to end up not really doing as much challenging work, as they'll take over anything you see as too 'difficult' or too much effort to learn. It's definitely recommended to learn from others, but you have to make sure you're not just letting them do all the work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Switzerland is very close to Italy. I don't know if you are willing to move but if you are, you could easily work here 3-4 days a week (60%-80% emploment), make more than enough to live, have no clients who call you at night and build your own product/company in your spare time.

At least this is what I am doing right now.

If you look for a tech-job in Zurich, check out my story "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT" on [https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i- moved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to- switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90) or send me a mail to the address in my HN-profile.

<comment><USER4> What if I only know English? Do you have an idea how is the landscape looking for "data science"/marketing analyst folks?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another angle is to progressively fire your smallest clients and get referrals from your larger ones.

You can scale to 880$ per hour or whatever it was using this strategy.

It could be hard emotionally to fire nice clients, so keep a good list of devs handy who you can send your undesirable work.

Last thing is to read patio11's guide about freelancing -- its a very relevant read.

<comment><USER6> > patio11's guide about freelancing

link?

<comment><USER7> [http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest- hits/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the context of HN: a huge upside of freelancing is that it puts you into direct contact with the types of problems that would make great B2B and bootstrapped startups.

I know a number of developers that were able to shift themselves from freelancing to running a SAAS via productizing their consulting work.

</comment><comment><USER9> In my freelancing experience it's possible to scale the job by creating teams of developers per project and coordinating them. The problem (if it's a problem) is that your not a real freelancer anymore: you have obligations to those developers and you have to care about them, so you're more like a company boss. You might also have to become a real company, if your country's fiscal legislation favors that. Still, you can't have more than a few projects at the same time. I didn't make so much extra money when I had a couple of loose teams over the Internet: the profit is linear with the number of the developers. I think one must go all in and become a real company with as many devs as possible, but that's a different life.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have been doing freelancing for last 3 years and i agree with you but i think you can avail opportunity to scale your business if you are lucky to get big clients because you become a business for others and as every business man wants to scale his business so i think its solely you who can show a big picture to a client. If his business grows following your picture so as you.Its my point of view though i am not that much experienced as you are but i think that should work in this way (mutual benefits). Above all i am happy to see a post in English by an Italian :p . Its my 2nd month here in Italy and its hard to find an english speaker here. :-(

<comment><USER9> In this kind of job is not so difficult to find people that speak English here in Italy, but most devs read and write (especially read) much better than they speak or understand.

<comment><USER10> You are quite right about this :) but i am sure developers somehow can understand each other no matter the language .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been freelancing for 5 years and agree with most of this. Thinking about it all the time is absolutely true, and my clients call me at weird times also.

I think you can make more money free-lancing than you can working for someone else if you are good at business development, and although it is difficult to scale, if you have talented friends, building a consulting business in a major metropolitan area (NYC,SF, Chicago) is probably easier than building a startup.

It would be mucher harder to do from Italy because of the time difference and a lot of high-paying clients expect you to be on site at least some of the time.

</comment><comment><USER12> The main drawback to freelancing is defining yourself as a "$$ by the hour" worker. It's very common to do so, but it invariably leads to burnout. It's not terribly hard to shift your mindset to do something different, but it's not necessarily obvious how to do so.

The main things to do are:

\- understand that recurring revenue is unsurpassed in terms of LTV of your customers.

\- realize that it's easy to become a world expert in an extremely narrow field

..then combine the two: what niche thing (much narrower than you're thinking) can you become a world expert in and charge a recurring fee for?

<comment><USER13> Yup, bill by value not the hour. Look at a Project and say that'll be $10,000 and knock it out in two weeks.

<comment><USER9> I usually do fixed cost projects unless projects are so ill defined to require by the hour billing. Your advice is my advice but unfortunately customers are not so out of touch with reality. If they expect the project to be done in 2 weeks they'll start negotiating from 2,000 and If I can do it in two weeks they won't expect more than one month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why not re-use software you made or others made. Use open source platforms like Wordpress. At our company, we didn't find any good platform for building modern social apps out of reusable components and have the whole thing be maintainable (Drupal came the closest) so we built our own. It has been open sourced so everyone is free to use it. Get a project, assemble it from pages and tools, collect the overhead :)

[http://qbix.com/platform](http://qbix.com/platform)

</comment><comment><USER2> I agree with much of the article, but I also sort of question the idea you'll automatically make money being a freelancer. Because you see, a lot of small companies and individuals don't really respect freelancers and single developers as much as they do companies, and often see them as a cheap way to get things done. An awful lot of them think you can pay someone a couple of hundred quid for a clone of Facebook or the likes.

Agencies may pay their employees less individually, but they tend to be able to negotiate prices better, since there's a certain perception of 'leigitimacy' that individuals don't have. The same company that pays them ten or so grand for a site might think they can pay the random freelancer a couple of hundred quid with a few extra beers thrown in.

This gets even worse if it's someone you know (like say, a friend of a friend) asking for a site done, since the price usually ends up dropping even further (from a couple of hundred quid to less than a hundred quid or free). Working freelance is an easy way to make people think you'll help them with their 'world changing million app' for nothing.

<comment><USER15> Agreed; never market yourself as a freelancer. Become a design house - even if its only you. That image flies much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been a freelancer since 1996. I've made $5,000 a year and $200,000 a year. You scale by charging more, using retainers writing books etc.

To fight boredom I'm selling my home in Seattle in 2016 and moving to Ireland for 3 months, then Sweden then New Zealand etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> Awesome read, thanks so much for posting.

Have you ever hired developers to work for you? How did that go if you did?</comment>


Show HN: Send mass dynamic text messages from Google Sheets - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sheet-gurus-sms-send-text/caifjmaanhnclfninjjfhbmigekmkeeh?src=hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a demo video showing the dynamic variable replacement per message: [https://youtu.be/r8eOM1FPOLE?t=331](https://youtu.be/r8eOM1FPOLE?t=331)

Happy to answer questions :)

</comment><comment><USER2> How does it deal with SPAM?</comment>


The Clean Coder: The Craftsman 62, The Dark Path. - <AUTHOR> http://thecleancoder.blogspot.com/2010/10/craftsman-62-dark-path.html <comment><USER2> This article sort of makes me wonder about the value of test-driven development.

Just glancing at the problem, I came up in my head with what I thought was a simple algorithm to solve it— which turned out to be pretty much the same as the final implementation in the article. It made it a bit torturous to have to keep reading the author beating his head against his tests instead of just asking himself, what's the simplest way to solve this?

Maybe I'm missing the purpose of the exercise? I do see the value of behavioral testing in general. I just have to wonder if we're taking it too far in saying that even if you can see the answer to the problem, you're not allowed to write it down yet.

<comment><USER3> I'm a raving TDD/BDD fanatic, and this kata still makes me cringe a little. At least they finally converge on a plausible-looking solution. Sadly, some TDD katas on the web turn into train wrecks. See Ron Jeffries' Sudoku solver, for example:

[http://ravimohan.blogspot.com/2007/04/learning-from- sudoku-s...](http://ravimohan.blogspot.com/2007/04/learning-from-sudoku- solvers.html)

If I were implementing this algorithm using TDD, I'd first write down a bunch of test cases, and then try the obvious algorithm. If that worked, I'd test a few more corner cases. There's really no reason why you have to blindly stagger through the design space when the algorithm is obvious.

<comment><USER4> > (...) and then try the obvious algorithm. If that worked (...)

Personally, I would not bother to implement an algorithm if I was not sure it works correctly -- if it turns out to be wrong, I had wasted my time.

<comment><USER3> Interesting! How do you know your algorithm handles the tricky corner cases? I'd imagine you need to write down all the corner cases, write a formal proof for each, and hope that (1) your proof is correct, and (2) your code actually matches your proof. Could you elaborate on how you do this?

Here are a few corner cases I can think of for word-wrapping:

1) The line is empty.

2) The line is 1 character shorter/1 character longer/exactly the same length as the wrap limit.

3) The first break point for the line falls before/after/on the wrap limit.

4) The first character(s) of the newly-wrapped line are spaces.

I don't think that I could just eyeball a word-wrap algorithm and know that it handles all these cases correctly. I would, at a minimum, need to check each case. But at that point, I'm just as well off writing test cases, and allowing the computer to verify that my algorithm does the right thing for each. Of course, that's not as good as a proof by induction for each desired property, but it's a _lot_ less work, and it's almost always adequate. And I don't need to worry about mistakes in my proof.

Am I misunderstanding something about your approach? How would you handle this?

<comment><USER4> I do not say I do not test my code. I just see no purpose in implementing code that I _hope_ will work. I need to _believe_ it will work, and if it does not, I am sure that it is an implementation, not an algorithm issue. The first attempt in the article was just silly, and the second was just wrong. I would not waste time writing these, instead I would use this time to figure out the real solution and then I would implement it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny how that which is right in front of your face can be so elusive. Are we so busy amongst the trees that we can't see the forest?

One of my mentors once gave me a list a obvious things to check when stuff doesn't work. Funny, years later I still need this list:

1\. It worked. No one touched it but you. It doesn't work. It's probably something _you_ did.

2\. It worked. You made one change. It doesn't work. It's probably the change you made.

3\. It worked. You promoted it. It doesn't work. Your testing environment probably isn't the same as your production environment.

4\. It worked for these 10 cases. It didn't work for the 11th case. It was probably never right in the first place.

5\. It worked perfectly for 10 years. Today it didn't work. Something probably changed.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Hi Alphonse. What's up?" The gruff voice of Bob, Jerry's manager (or "master", as he called him), came from behind them. "Oh, I see Jerry is showing you how to generate unnecessary String garbage and stack overflow exceptions. Wow, and in a simple word wrap function, too. Nice job, Jerry."

Alphonse was confused. "Bob, how do you know that? We didn't write tests for those things. I don't even know if you _can_ write tests for them."

Bob looked at Alphonse with a sad expression. "Jerry, could I see you in my office--sorry, my 'dojo'--for a minute?"

<comment><USER7> I'd have a great deal of difficulty in taking anyone seriously who called their office their "dojo". Or liked their direct reports to call them "master".

<comment><USER8> I have no problem calling Sensei a particular great coder/architect. I even used to do it for the fun of it. But when it comes down to management asymmetric relationships, I do my best to avoid biasing it more ("master").

Could be a great way to practice office theater, though.

<comment><USER7> It's not healthy to consider oneself subordinate to ones manager. You're peers with different roles, that's all. He's more about the what, you're more about the how.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never used TDD, and this definitely hasn't convinced me I should do so. I knew the solution as soon as I sat down and thought for 1 minute to myself - it's a pretty obvious algorithm. I just don't see how coding test-first helps in this case. It certainly didn't help in the story told, but I don't know how it _can_ help in the real world.

<comment><USER10> What struck me is the guy was coding to pass his tests only, not thinking about the right way to code the algorithm.

It's like coding by taking stabs in the dark until every degenerate case you thought of is handled correctly. There's still no understanding of the problem or even a hope of a "proof" that what you did was correct.

Is this the future of software development? No wonder software is crap.

<comment><USER11> Yup. That's why I prefer only writing a test for the most nominal case at first, and then code that solution. I don't write any more tests until I have a bug in the system, and I feel the need to convince myself that the subsytem is behvaing the way I think it does. Basically test-writing becomes a debugging tool like putting in trace, breakpoints or watchpoints. You have doubts about a part of your system, so write a test to confirm that it does what you think it does. I find that by the time a module is reasonably mature, I have enough tests to make a fairly solid test rig. I also don't waste time writing tests for trivial degenerate cases that I can handle correctly in my code without even having to think about it.

<comment><USER12> I'm not a TDD person at all, nor even a "unit test everything" person, but the idea is that by testing even the trivial degenerate cases, you can refactor everything with confidence that you didn't accidentally slip and typo one of them or otherwise fuck up.

<comment><USER13> > the idea is that by testing even the trivial degenerate cases, you can > refactor everything with confidence

The trouble is that on the one hand, you get diminishing returns for each more extreme edge case you include as a test, while on the other hand, unless you have coded up every possible scenario, you can't really refactor with impunity. Something has to give, and in most cases it can only be the confidence in refactoring, because most interesting problem spaces are infinite and it's tough to write a comprehensive test suite for an infinite number of scenarios!

I've found that for many types of project, some degree of automated testing is well worth the trouble. However, the "test everything" mentality seems to breed a dangerous false sense of security. Perhaps worse, in some contexts the "test everything" approach also forces developers to warp otherwise clean and natural designs into a shape where automated test tools can work with them more easily, at the expense of making it harder for _people_ to work with them. I am far from convinced that that particular trade-off is ever worthwhile, and I've always found it a rather odd contradiction that many Agile methodologies supposedly advocate people over process and the like, yet stick to their guns on this one.

<comment><USER14> The people who believe with test-everything is probably the same people who believe with 100% code-coverage.

I think most people, by now, have learned that 100% code-coverage and test- everything are superfluous so there's no point of discussing these two or making a big deal of these two as a problem of subscribing to TDD.

The idea of TDD is to test the very minimum such that the code is proven to work as per requirement. When there is a bug found, write the test first before you fix the bug. This way, at one point of the life of the software, you'll eventually have enough tests to cover. I think most people put too much focus on the development story rather than the maintenance story thus most people only explain how to do TDD on new code, not how to do TDD on existing code (or rather, the next phase).

I've been in projects where because the people behind them were not putting too much effort for testing, they start automation effort from behind. Eventually you'll hit a chicken-n-egg situation: we'd like to refactor this buggy part but the architecture makes it hard to write automation test.

All professional projects will have automation tests at some point of their life. People by now should already know that software grows and hiring more QAs, re-test everything (regression, smoke, full-blown, etc), or even telling devs to test the code they just wrote manually don't scale.

Keep in mind that sometime, quality is defined by the client (or by the requirements). The client might not ask superb quality (as long as there is no data corruption) thus one probably does not have to write extensive automation-tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> OK, someone just give me the answer: is this designed as an example of what one should do, or is it a parable of what not to do?

I started reading it earlier today, and gave up once I hit the sexist tone. Then seeing the comments here, I realized that it was just parodying Heinlein. Cuz it's not really sexist if you're quoting, right? Anyway, given all the upvotes I thought there must be something to the article.

In the same way, at the start I thought that ridiculously verbose ad-hoc testing functions were also a parody. Surely his point was going to be that your time is better spent writing a testing framework that reads from a text file rather than writing a 95% duplicate function for each test?

But then I got to the end, and I lost my faith. Is he mocking Heinlein or just channeling some unrepentant 60's SciFi sexism? And is he really suggesting that this is really a good way to write software?

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's a parody, because I can see what he's getting at. If the programmer had written the "simpler" test first, he might have stumbled upon the algorithm as illustrated without the false starts at the beginning, and then it would seem like more of a successful approach.

Then again, I'm not sure how you're supposed to know which tests are the magic ones which will guide you to a solution, and the author conveniently trails off without telling us.

(I'm also not sure what happened to first sitting down with a pen and paper and figuring out the algorithm, instead of praying to the TDD gods that you might magically stub your toe on it.)

<comment><USER13> > Then again, I'm not sure how you're supposed to know which tests are the > magic ones which will guide you to a solution, and the author conveniently > trails off without telling us.

Oh ye of little faith: you just do it the same way you know which magic refactorings to apply once your code is working, to turn your test-passing ad- hoc spaghetti into a clean, maintainable design. :-)

> (I'm also not sure what happened to first sitting down with a pen and paper > and figuring out the algorithm, instead of praying to the TDD gods that you > might magically stub your toe on it.)

Indeed. My current project for one client is building a user interface. I just spent nearly a week writing a design spec -- though some might call it a math paper -- to prove that all those transformations I'm planning to do to get from a user-friendly description of the situation to a hardware-friendly one are actually going to work. The TDD gods would no doubt consider me a heretic, but I suspect that I'll somehow avoid eternal damnation (as long as I write some tests later, of course).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A far more entertaining (it's funny because it's true!) variant is

[http://ravimohan.blogspot.com/2007/04/learning-from- sudoku-s...](http://ravimohan.blogspot.com/2007/04/learning-from-sudoku- solvers.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this idea of a "Kata" commonplace? I rather like it...

<comment><USER18> It comes from martial arts. I don't know which martial art specifically, but the word seems Japanese.

<comment><USER19> A kata is a series of movements in a number of martial arts (also called 'forms' and a million other names depending on the style and origin). You practice the same movements over and over focusing on technique, balance and your state of mind.

As referenced in in the story there are often a number of different types to choose from depending on what you are trying to achieve (relaxation, a specific move/technique, different fight situations). They also generally get harder and more refined as you go up belts/levels.

Never heard of it before in the coding world though, might take it up, definitely looks useful!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "A kata is just a simple program that you write over and over again as a way to practice."

Sounds like a waste of time. I can see how it would be good for a physical activity where you need to train your muscle memory, but I can just as easily train my programming reflexes by doing my job or working on open source. There are so many things you could program, why make up things to program that don't need to be programmed?

Does anyone actually do this? If so, can you describe the ways in which it actually helps you get better.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great article. I especially love the Heinlein quotation from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, for hopefully obvious reasons. There is another similar quote from Heinlein's "Have Space Suit Will Travel" (written several years earlier) that is also good programming advice:

"Daddy says that, in a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem."

</comment><comment><USER22> Somehow that way of coding makes my head hurt.

</comment><comment><USER23> While the final recursive solution is nice, it is trivial to split the string on spaces and recombine inserting newlines when the current line overflows. This is not as elegant of a solution, but it took far less time to build that than it did to read the article.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm a bit surprised to find that Uncle Bob is still writing installments of "Software Craftsman"-- I can't even remember how many different defunct software development magazines I used to follow the series in...

</comment><comment><USER8> My martial-arts self died a little at the Kata word used for such things.

<comment><USER25> Let's see. A short, pointless, repetitive exercise, done for its own sake and with very little practical application or relevance. Sounds like a kata to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In re word wrap, see: <http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2010002_lobjects.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER27> I feel pain when I see the word "recurse."

</comment><comment><USER28> Sure uses a lot of stack.</comment>


China has built the world's largest bullet-train network - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/china/21714383-and-theres-lot-more-come-it-waste-money-china-has-built-worlds-largest <comment><USER2> (Being a Chinese grew up in Canada, and now working/living in the Bay)

In my opinion, most people in the valley or in North America still refuse to give up their lifestyle. They look for something like self-driving cars, all electric-powered "personal" vehicle to invest. And those still drive on the same road/interstates/highway infrastructure and don't give you the benefits compare with high-speed rails.

They don't recognize the real priorities - how to transport millions people everyday efficiently, cost-effectively, and most environmentally friendlies.

They also don't recognize local economy, local businesses thrive with these connected network. It is proven to be the case in China and Japan.

High-speed rail network is what people want - to get from point A to point B quickly. It's not something even the most efficient self-driving car with the best MPG electric-powered vehicle can scale for millions of people everyday.

Instead of investing into some new technologies, they seem like they refuse to take decades of proven technology and just use it in US (high-speed trains were first invented in Japan in the 60s)

But as I understand very well in the culture here, the politics, the corruption, and the oil/automative conglomerate will never make this happen for the actual good for the people.

I would without a doubt to say the US is in its downfall as it didn't pick the priorities to fix the root of the problem.

<comment><USER3> The US is in fact ascendant, not in decline.

You're using the rail example to imply downfall, and yet the US economy has embarrassed the Japanese economy the last 25 years. In the mid 1980s, the US and Japan nearly had the same GDP per capita; very soon the US will have twice the GDP per capita of Japan.

You're implying rail is so beneficial to economic growth, and let's say I agree with that: and yet the US has been embarrassing most of Europe on economic growth for the last 20 years (Germany's economy hasn't expanded in ten years for example).

If you were right, US GDP per capita should be far lower than the EU or Eurozone, when the exact opposite is the case. Germany has a GDP per capita of the poorest US states (it's nearly on par with West Virginia currently). France nearly has the GDP per capita of Puerto Rico.

I don't believe your premise has any legs to stand on based on the facts. The real implication here is that the US would be staggeringly far ahead if it corrected some of its obvious flaws.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure GDP per capita makes sense for this comparison when ownership is distributed so unequally in the US. Taking the mean is basically dividing up wealth equally and that's not what happens.

What is there about the German standard of living for typical citizens that compares unfavorably to the US? How can this be measured? No single number works, but I would suggest looking at medians ahead of means.

<comment><USER5> There are some Median Wealth figures on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult)

The US apparently has about half the median wealth of many European countries, although notably not Germany, which is comparable to the US on this metric.

But I'm not sure how meaningful this is or what factors might be affecting the numbers. (And I'm not even exactly sure what's being measured.)

<comment><USER6> Not sure how seriously that can be taken either. Australia is so high but most of that wealth is in over inflated property values.

<comment><USER7> That's a symptom of broken governmental policy, not so much imaginary value. People still need to buy houses for them to sell, so it's not like the property bubble isn't backed by real money. It's just that people are placing disproportionate value on property over other investments.

For example, say your house went from 400k-500k in a year. For it to be 500k you still have to find a seller. Yes, there's a degree of paper value there however it's paper value only because other properties are selling for that. If you were to somehow remove property from being bought and sold, the money would just go into other investments. There is no way that 'most' of that wealth is wealth on paper in the form of property.

The reality is that Australian wages are very high comparitively. Australia is a wealthy nation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who grew in China, I just want to point out that besides the engineering, it is a political wonder as well.

Before the bullet train network was built, China already has an extensive railway network. The first step is to run the bullet train on traditional railways, with a peak speed of 180km/h. People think it's great. No objections.

But to raise the speed further, a new network has to be built, almost side-by- side to traditional railways. This idea horrored almost everybody: new railways for 10s of thousands kms, new train stations (yes for most of the place it needs a separate station), just to be a bit faster? Of course it got a constant concensual blaze from both the citizens and all the official and unofficial media. This state maintains from the beginning of the project all the way a couple years into it operates (which spans many years).

The head of the project, Liu Zhijun had to be in jail of course. Then everything changes, 180 degree. People took the trains and realize it's great. What I (and probably many people too) didn't know before was with the speed increase, the perception of distance changes. The trains run like buses: between major cities, the train runs across in every several minutes. You can just get a ticket, go to the station, an hour later you are on the subway of another city. Many times when we were holding a meeting, people from other cities actually took less time to arrive than someone driving from suburbs.

Then the new railway network gets praise from both national and overseas. The official media shut up about Liu. People start to think Liu as a fanatically great engineer.

I cannot imagine how this project can even get started, and what Liu had to do to get this to work. There must have been a great story, but we may never know.

<comment><USER9> I have ridden those trains (spent 2011-2016 in China), and they're pretty great, but they're hard to justify economically:

> The overall bill is already high. China Railway Corporation, the state-owned > operator of the train system, has debts of more than 4trn yuan, equal to > about 6% of GDP. Strains were evident last year when China Railway > Materials, an equipment-maker, was forced to restructure part of its debts. > Six lines have started to make operating profits (ie, not counting > construction costs), with the Beijing-Shanghai link the world's most > profitable bullet train, pulling in 6.6bn yuan last year. But in less > populated areas, they are making big losses. A state-run magazine said the > line between Guangzhou and the province of Guizhou owes 3bn yuan per year in > interest payments—three times more than it makes from ticket sales.

I wish it weren't so, but they look like Iridium, as mentioned by a very- downvoted comment. The builder makes enormous losses.

But they're _built_ now, and that isn't going to be undone. I hope.

<comment><USER8> It's a very fine line to walk though: too much profit, people hate it (it's taking money from them), run at a loss, people hate it (it's a waste of tax money).

But since it is built and owned by the government, the economical benefit is also in the equation other than operation profit. A province would welcome the bullet train network even if it has to pay, if it attracts a capital influx to the province. This is usually true: given the convenience of taking the train, a city get connected means you are almost merged into a mega city, economically.

Right now the bullet train is for passenger, but cargo trains are on the timeline now. Think of goods shipped by train but arrive almost as fast as by air: this alone would make the investment a bit worthier than it looks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Less than a decade ago China had yet to connect any of its cities by bullet train. Today, it has 20,000km (12,500 miles) of high-speed rail lines, more than the rest of the world combined. It is planning to lay another 15,000km by 2025"

The contrast to the UK, where we might someday build the HS2 line London- Birmingham-Manchester, is massive. I am left with a feeling of awe at China's development, and frustration at the UK's stagnancy.

<comment><USER11> > I am left with a feeling of awe at China's development, and frustration at > the UK's stagnancy.

While the UK does feel particularly stagnated on several fronts, I'm not sure abandoning the rule of law, protection of private property, labour protections, at least an attempt at the appearance of corruption-free tenders, high safety standards and the principle that people who are affected should be consulted is worthy of much awe.

<comment><USER12> > I'm not sure abandoning the rule of law, protection of private property, > labour protections, at least an attempt at the appearance of corruption-free > tenders, high safety standards and the principle that people who are > affected should be consulted is worthy of much awe.

Two points:

1\. The income tax that pays for the UK's lavish welfare system violates private property (and privacy) rights on a massive scale. It just doesn't seem that way to you because it's been normalized in the society you've lived your entire life in. Conversely, the type of property that was not made by man, and thus, should be under greater government purview: land, is treated as nearly absolutely private, with the state having very little power to expropriate it for the public good.

2\. Laws prohibiting particular labour arrangements are not "labour protections". As Peter Schiff put it, "mandatory vacations, sick days, and bonuses do not expand worker's right, they restrict them. They do not raise compensation, but rather force workers to accept compensation based on government requirements rather than personal preference." It is only demagoguery and ideological group-think that makes people believe otherwise. The same applies to mandatory "high safety standards", which violate the right of consenting adults to engage in voluntary actions and interactions, and ultimately result in top-down cookie cutter standards created by a small body of bureaucrats replacing a wide assortment of personal standards, that would be based on the localized knowledge diffused throughout the economy.

<comment><USER13> All property and privacy rights are societal norms in the first place. Society isn't violating any natural rights by taxing you. On the contrary, modern society actively protects you from having all your stuff taken by anyone strong enough to take it.

<comment><USER12> Both private property and privacy rights are human rights that no society has a right to violate.

<comment><USER13> Says your societal norm.

<comment><USER12> Says my conscience. That's all a perception of human rights amounts to. I think most would agree with my perception if the euphemisms and ideological labels were pealed away.

<comment><USER13> Your conscience being immune to and independent of the strong prevailing cultural norms of course.

And yet somehow a handful of generations ago a large number of consciences were pretty definite about the rights of black Africans. Seems impossible to today's conscience.

Consciences change over time. Every generation thinks theirs is the One True Correct belief system. Bah.

<comment><USER12> Whether my conscience is affected by prevailing cultural norms won't stop me from opposing slavery, or the imprisonment of those who refuse to hand over a share of all currency they receive in private trade.

We must ultimately live by a set of values that make the most sense to us. I see no reason why I should not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Saw this amazing photo of Chinese high-speed trains just the other day: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese- he...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-head-home-in- worlds-biggest-annual-human- migration/2017/01/13/fbbaaf24-d968-11e6-a0e6-d502d6751bc8_story.html)

Now that's some serious infrastructure investment!

<comment> tuna-piano The picture ([https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/Wire...](https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/Wires/Online/2017-01-13/AP/Images/APTOPIX_China_New_Year_Travel_95231.jpg- ebec7.jpg?uuid=Zant8tl2Eeag5tUC1nUbyA))

was taken in Wuhan, China of more than 20 high speed trains.

How many people have even heard of Wuhan before? It has a population of over 10M.

<comment><USER15> I've heard of Wuhan before, mostly because of the Chinese tennis player Li Na [1], who was born there. She did quite well at the Australian Open for several years (including winning it once) and became quite popular with the local crowd.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meanwhile, San Francisco spent 13 years on an Environmental Impact Report for one bus line:

[http://www.sfexaminer.com/transit-officials-approve-final- ei...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/transit-officials-approve-final-eir-geary- bus-project/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Currently in China and frequently using the train system here.

I really wish something like this could happen in a country as big as the US. What's stopping them? Politicians? Land rights? Lack of resources?

<comment><USER18> The United States would rather let an oil company build a pipeline on your land, then a rail company build a high speed train track on it.

Oil is prioritized over rail because it immediately creates jobs, tax dollars, and the government doesn't have to pay up front for it. If you're a politician, which one would you want to support?

<comment><USER19> > oil company build a pipeline

This happens.

> rail company build a high speed train track

This doesn't.

There are actually companies that want to build oil pipelines. How many privately funded companies are there that want to (and have the means to) build a high-speed rail line?

<comment><USER18> How many privately funded companies would even consider doing so in the current regulatory climate? There's a bit of survivourship bias at play, here!

Likewise, if the oil were extracted by the state, rather then a private firm, it would also not have any problems with piping it over private property.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps, but it's not as though the popularity of oil pipelines is especially high. They still get built! If anything, much of the bureaucracy and public would far prefer to build high speed rail in place of a pipeline. Certainly neither face a particularly positive regulatory environment.

I'm not sure what your second point is getting at. Rail lines face pretty huge eminent domain burdens along with everything else.

My point was mostly that the hurdles of building rail and pipelines are both quite high. The economic benefit of oil pipelines are enough to make them worth the trouble to a private firm. Rail, not so much.

<comment><USER18> They don't have to be popular, but the regulators are happy to disregard that problem, and fast-track approval.

On the other hand, none of the regulators would even consider doing that to lay a train track.

My point is that nobody tries to build a rail line, because they know it's a hopeless affair - they will never get approval.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What a pathetic Debbie Downer article -- quintessential modern America. Most of the article just keeps beating the cost drum -- trains don't generate enough ticket revenue to cover their cost. Meanwhile the U.S. taxpayer givers $41.0 billion a year to the Federal Highway Administration, and most roads don't generate a single dime of revenue.

<comment><USER21> Roads, originally an Eisenhower idea [1] as car culture was 'railroaded' in so to speak to win over trains, generate tons of indirect revenue.

People and businesses on either side and up and down every road generate revenue because of it. Same with the internet, trains etc.

You don't have to generate revenue directly from the thing for it to be a great idea. Bean counting away from indirect benefits seems to be overly- existent in our short-term planning modern US culture (not focusing on true investments enough like infrastructure, i.e. broadband etc).

Our interstate systems have been huge benefits even though trains would be nice as well, Amtrak is not competitive.

The interstate system is probably the best thing Ike ever did, good infrastructure projects leave a great legacy and are overlooked. It fueled economic growth across the nation as well as served as helping with defense.

[1] [https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/finalmap.cfm](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/finalmap.cfm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whenever I hear talk of bullet trains coming to the US, I hear people say things like "Americans could easily build better trains than the Chinese."

Then I remind people that they have 20,000km of track, 150 trains and how much operating experience? That's a huge head start.

<comment><USER23> Even for US high speed rail, I don't think any of those trains will be designed by an American company.

From Wikipedia: In February 2015 nine companies formally expressed interest in producing trainsets for the system: Alstom, AnsaldoBreda (now known as Hitachi Rail Italy), Bombardier Transportation, CSR [China South Rail], Hyundai Rotem, Kawasaki Rail Car, Siemens, Sun Group U.S.A. partnered with CNR Tangshan, and Talgo.[24]

All Canadian, European, or Asian.

<comment><USER22> China was going to build the Los Angeles to Las Vegas but the deal fell apart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is the article a bit strange? They say Liu Zhijun was "removed for corruption", which, of course, in China, does not mean anything. They mention the crash in 2011 but not that the government wrapped up rescue efforts the next day and buried the trains.

</comment><comment><USER25> I love how the Economist map misses a 50M people municipality (Chongqing). Shows how little the world knows about China...

<comment><USER26> Having been there I think it's hugely inflated. Chongqing isn't really a giant city but a large city with a huge rural area around it that has been declared to be part of the city now. Not sure why that even happened. Maybe so that it can become a special trade zone without much political work?

<comment><USER25> 30M of the 50M people of the municipality are urban, but yes it's more a large conurbation than a city proper.

<comment><USER26> Oh wow, according to wiki you are right and it's larger than Shanghai which I would have never thought. I guess the city feels smaller because of the central peninsula.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> as someone who lived better half of decade in China I don't find it that amazing

1\. growth of HSR meant less and less slower trains = higher prices of tickets, less available to poorer people

2\. prices of these train tickets are actually higher than LCC airways in Europe which will transport me much faster anywhere than HSR

3\. buying ticket during peak periods is very difficult

4\. train station procedures take probably more time than airport procedures (even within China, much longer compared to Schengen)

5\. many of not most of the HSR stations are outside of the cities, so there is no benefit between reaching HSR station and airport

<comment><USER28> Wait, so you have full security screenings for the high speed rail? (Most of Europe's high speed rail goes through the same train stations and standard commuter rail, so there's no additional screening .. although if you're crossing from Belgium to Germany they do often search trains for marijuana) at border stations.

<comment><USER27> yes, there is first check to get even inside train station, you must have ticket, then right after that is security check, then in some stations there is another check to enter boarding room, then to leave boarding room to platform there is another check and then in the train they check your ticket again, also when leaving station in destination they will again check your ticket to let you go

it's HSR with communist characteristics

no thanks, i will rather use show train in Europe where i can walk straight from my room to train with ticket in my mobile instead of Chinese harassment with thousands of people pushing you all around, it's just one disgusting experience, even Chinese airports are faster and more pleasant

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This looks great but I honestly wonder - if China is under heavy communism oppression and noone can make enough fuzz about their lifestyle before eventually disappearing... why would Chinese government care about spending money and time building such vast (and beautiful!) network? Serious question...

<comment><USER30> > This looks great but I honestly wonder - if China is under heavy communism > oppression and noone can make enough fuzz about their lifestyle before > eventually disappearing... why would Chinese government care about spending > money and time building such vast (and beautiful!) network? Serious > question...

China isn't under heavy communist oppression, not the kind that you're thinking. Their style of oppression is different. The Social Contract that the Party offers the People is this - you will not get political choice, you will always be ruled by us; in return you will not have to worry about money because this economy will grow at 7.5%pa. That rising tide will lift all boats, including yours. When all your material needs are taken care of, do you really care who is in charge?

Projects such as high speed rail help the Party deliver on its promise. The Economist points out the ways in which this boosts economic growth, as well as other bonus effects, like allowing people to buy affordable housing in smaller cities that are short commutes away from Beijing/Shaghai and other major cities. If the Party doesn't hold its end of the Contract up, it risks mass unrest, similar to the Tiananmen Square protests. That ought to answer your question.

The interesting question is whether their Social Contract will survive. So far, the people are generally satisfied with the Party's performance but in the years to come growth will inevitably slow, if only because their economy is so massive that compounded growth is difficult. I think the strategy is that by then the Party will have a much more efficient way of enforcing control over individuals than they did in 1989 when the Tiananmen protests took place Rather than crude measures like locking people up or beating them, the Party will use the social score [1] to subtly control the People. If you know that your house payments will rise, or your medical care will be deprioritized, or your friends will ostracize you, or you'll face harassment from strangers or you won't be able to apply to good schools for your children, or all of the above... will you still have the courage to show up to protest, much less stand in front of a column of tanks? [2]

[1] - [http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21711904-worrying- expe...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21711904-worrying-experiments- new-form-social-control-chinas-digital-dictatorship)

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

<comment><USER29> +1 - but:

> The Social Contract that the Party offers the People is this - you will not > get political choice

then

> Projects such as high speed rail help the Party deliver on its promise.

Ain't that contradiction? Why do they need to deliver on that promise? In other words -- if they don't, what will happen, if as you say "you will not get political choice, you will always be ruled by us".

Further you describe China like some sort of wonderland. In such case, why is it so that the reality is far different?

Or is it just american propaganda I'm being fed, and I should immediately abandon my always "bills gotta get paid" worries and migrate to PRC?

<comment><USER30> > if they don't [deliver on their promise], what will happen

Revolution, Tiananmen Square style.

> you describe China like some sort of wonderland

Do I? China is rich, will continue to grow richer but it is hardly a wonderland. In fact, my last paragraph about subtle and overt social control should have made it clear that it is far from a wonderland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd love it if we could do something like this on the east coast of Australia. I doubt it will ever happen. I fly between Sydney and Melbourne fairly regularly and it can be a real pain. Sydney -> Melbourne route is one of the busiest air corridors in the world so demand would probably be there.

</comment><comment><USER32> "High-speed rail (HSR) is best suited for journeys of 1 to 4½ hours (about 150–900 km or 93–559 mi)" [https://www.travelstatsman.com/08082016/high-speed- rail-trai...](https://www.travelstatsman.com/08082016/high-speed-rail-train- plane/)

... perfectly suited to link China's smaller cities, but not direct connections to it's major cities.

Maybe driven more by environmental reasons (arguably fewer emissions than plane travel) rather than economic reasons (besides job creation, etc).

<comment><USER33> For even half full inter-city trains I don't think there's any doubt about which is more energy efficient. Trains will tend to win by about an order of magnitude. Planes aren't any worse than cars containing a single person, though.

[https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_128.shtml](https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_128.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Not sure all countries have to follow this, china must have done this to compensate the growth hence the infra projects with in countries help. I think other countries rather than spending money on this can develop meaning full telecom infrastructure to villages (connecting all of them) and ensure population is spread out and people continue to there where they are than flocking to cities.

</comment><comment><USER35> These days when I travel on a train I can work efficiently, play computer games, Skype my family or watch a movie - the personal cost of a slow train compared to a fast train isn't as high as it used to be. So maybe technology has reduced the economic benefit of a bullet-train network.

</comment><comment><USER36> The article merely touches the economic benefits. There is also another elephant in the room which wasn't mentioned - fast way to transport army. All the bullet-train rail are capable of transporting tanks. This will allow overnight transfer of army to any city in China.

</comment><comment><USER37> Sounds like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation) fiasco

</comment><comment><USER38> Reminds me of the board game Ticket To Ride haha

</comment><comment><USER39> chabuduo is the tradition of cutting corners long formed as the basis for china's fast economic growth. you can build the largest and the biggest infrastructures in the world as fast as possible but it won't be the longest lasting structure which NOT what current day china is about.

<comment><USER40> "good enough", if you don't want to google

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> While I applaud the effort. It's almost obsolete now. When they have a Hyperloop Network then I will be impressed, but given how things look, they will have it before the US..</comment>


JEP 362: Deprecate the Solaris and Sparc Ports - <AUTHOR> https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/362 <comment><USER2> Wow, the future for SPARC (and for Solaris) is _not_ looking bright at the moment, huh? Which is a shame really. I mean, yeah, OpenIndiana or whatever it's called now will still be around in OSS form, and even the SPARC ISA is open, but Solaris was - at one time - a vibrant source of cool OS innovations... and competition is generally a Good Thing.</comment>


Is Python a beginner language or is it robust? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2076489/is-python-a-beginner-language-or-is-it-robust/2076660#2076660

<comment><USER2> I don't get why a dynamically typed language would be for beginners. We're usually picky about typing because it's so easy to lose track of what you're doing and make subtle errors. Dynamic typing is very powerful but requires a new programmer to mentally juggle more information about the program. It's not easy keeping track of values and control flow. Adding types is like tightening the belt after lunch.

Ada seems difficult at first until you realize that the crazy typing saved you subtle logic errors. Python seems easy at first because you can use dynamic typing. Then you have to debug.

Why does a beginner language have to be robust? Doesn't bit torrent run in python? If I wanna run test scripts on my programs Python is a great tool. Beginners don't run test scripts.</comment>