Surveillance Self-defense Against The Trump Administration - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/11/12/surveillance <comment><USER2> Seems like the correct link is actually - [https://theintercept.com/2016/11/12/surveillance-self- defens...](https://theintercept.com/2016/11/12/surveillance-self-defense- against-the-trump-administration/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for posting that.

Sorry for posting the wrong link to this :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Against the Trump administration, really? The surveillance state was started in the Bush administration and expanded by Obama.

Please stop whining as if this is something new.

<comment><USER4> It's not that it's new but if it expanded under the Obama administration we can be sure it will expand even more with Trump. Possibly at an even higher pace, specially since he has congress on his side.

<comment><USER5> Except Trump is going to repeal all of Obama's Executive Orders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's what I got:

Page not found We couldn't find anything at this address. Please check the URL or go to the homepage.

<comment><USER7> same, must have been a good article

found these snips from the page:

Trump is about to have more tools of surveillance at his disposal ... Kurt Woerpel for The Intercept.

Do you honestly think that now Trump is in, that surveillance is ... The Intercept never wrote ...

similar article: [https://stopmakingsense.org/2016/11/30/obama-is-expanding- tr...](https://stopmakingsense.org/2016/11/30/obama-is-expanding-trumps-war- making-powers-on-his-way-out-the-door/)

anyway, going to march with my sisters! be safe all!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a working link:

[https://static.theintercept.com/amp/surveillance-self- defens...](https://static.theintercept.com/amp/surveillance-self-defense- against-the-trump-administration.html?client=safari)

</comment><comment><USER9> A really good article for NSA to check who has read it.

</comment><comment><USER10> This article is clickbait bullshit. It attacks the (then unconfirmed POETUS, now POTUS) for absolutely no reason at all. The remainder of the article in no way deals with the threats from government surveillance, or how the slew of adjectives they had flung at President Trump, much like a monkey flinging it's feces at its caretakers, had anything to do with being under surveillance past some poorly lubricated liberal impetus to disrupt that with which they disagree.

Let's be serious for a moment, you are not going to get past government surveillance with those tips. They may be mildly annoying, but that's it. If you have full disk encryption enabled, it doesn't stop your phone being remotely attacked and having software implanted to monitor you. Tracking needn't happen with bugs when the cell towers get your GPS location over the signaling channel. Meager attempts at secrecy using closed source applications or those delivered in binary form are useless. It is a shame to see such crap be peddled as a shameless reason to make a weak political statement.

Furthermore, the computer defense tips are largely useless. Full disk encryption? Go ahead and make your computer slower. Unless you keep your computer on you at all times, it is genuinely useless. Nothing stops me from putting a drive twice the size in your computer with a copy of your encrypted data, copying your password prompt, using it to decrypt your actual files, showing "installing updates" on your screen for a little while, copying over your configuration to the new OS, and showing you everything you have as if it's yours. Later, I'll come pick up your computer and have unencrypted data. Full disk encryption only helps if you have the computer on you at all times.

Suggesting that Qubes OS is in any way going to stop nation state surveillance is just as laughable an idea. It's a good start, but it won't stop someone hacking your computer when you aren't around. Doesn't stop the Intel ME. DMA attacks will give you access to the hypervisor and the entire set of VMs. USB 3.1 debugging of Intel processors? No problem.

Want some actual solutions to these problems?

Neo900 phone OsmocomBB baseband OpenRISC and associated processors LibreBOOT firmware/BIOS GPL-GPU video cards OpenFWWF WiFi firmware Linux/*BSD operating systems GPG/PGP encryption and tools Bitcoin cryptocurrency OTR message encryption Pidgin IM client Firefox open source browser Thunderbird mail client OpenVPN secure tunnel software

Contribute to these projects in any way, and you will be fighting surveillance much more effectively. You don't need to be a computer engineer or programmer to do this. Help with documentation, do some graphics design, make tutorials on how to use them, donate money, help them manage resources, make some suggestions, go to meetings, and spread the word about them. And don't use them to get out your political views. The Snowden revelations came out under President Obama's second term, and I don't remember the massive revolt and protests. Do you? Room 641A under Bush. Remember those protests? CARNIVORE and the DMCA under Clinton? The CFAA under Reagan? Yeah, so let's stop making this political and get back to making secure hardware and software.</comment>


Obama's view on schools - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-schools5-2009nov05,0,3477080.story

<comment><USER2> Way to lead by example, Obama. It's kind of pathetic, but this story (assuming the right people hear about it) could actually open some eyes. His kid gets a C, and he doesn't just get angry at the teacher and demand a better grade. What a concept! Too many parents don't believe in education or skills; they think education is a sham, schools just anoint "winners in life," and _public_ schools have no business discriminating when they hand out tickets to the middle class.

<comment><USER3> I don't think I'll ever agree with him on policy, but if he convinces the country that going from a C to a 95 is "acting black", I will happily anoint him my favorite president ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In general I think these changes are better than nothing, except for the exceptions where they work out horribly.

<http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/39809> mentions the interesting example of a teacher who teaches Russian immigrants. No matter how well she teaches, she's got the huge disadvantage that her students start with no proficiency in English and so are guaranteed to do well. Pay for performance rules are a strong disincentive for taking on tough challenges like that.

Still the current system is so horribly broken that I am personally willing to put up with breakage like that.

<comment><USER5> In any sort of sane pay for performance system the teacher would be judged based on improvement from when the student entered their class. ( not that I expect any sort of sane pay-for-performance scheme to be implemented)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sounds great, but for the fact that most of the things students are being reviewed on are meaningless bullshit. How are teachers being measured? By AP scores? Grades overall? Because as a still-fresh departure from grade school, I'm pretty sure 90% of the stuff I was tested on was bullshit. My teachers knew that and let me get away with poor grades so I could learn what I wanted to, and _that's_ where I learned. If every teacher's now being taught that they should be pushing their students to get good grades, I predict we won't see much good come out of this initiative.

<comment><USER7> You learned how to jump through hoops and perform passable work on things which didn't necessarily interest you.

In other words, real world training.

<comment><USER6> If that's how you view the real world you're in the wrong line of work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "For one thing, Obama called for the abolition of 'firewall' rules, which presently prevent many schools from judging teacher performance based on student performance."

I suppose in most cases those rules are consequences of contract provisions insisted upon by teacher union representatives.

[http://www.amazon.com/Teacher-Unions-Sabotage-Educational- Re...](http://www.amazon.com/Teacher-Unions-Sabotage-Educational- Reform/dp/189355421X/)

<comment><USER9> Maybe. If so, then the policy being suggested here would be to disallow these provisions (or at least discourage them). Maybe something like increased pay for loss of "firewall."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The main argument against this is that teachers might be penalized for teaching in rough schools instead of lily-white. middle class, suburban schools. I don't see a reason the system couldn't be set up to normalize the schools based on what the metrics turn out to be.

I guess each school would get a performance index that would act as a coefficient for the teachers there. E.g., the metric is a test score, and one school consistently scores near the national average, while another is 10 points lower. The teachers at the lower school would have their evaluation bumped 10 points because of the index. That way we'd be comparing apples to applies.

It could actually incentivize teachers to move into more difficult schools if the index were a little over done so that they were rewarded slightly more for the same effort. Their effort would theoretically move the school's average into line with the national average, then they'd be evaluated/paid the same -- they could then move on to the next problem school, and improve that.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd be pissed right now if I was Malia. What the hell, Dad?

<comment><USER4> Can you think of a clearer way for him to let his daughters know that bad grades are unacceptable in the Obama household?

In fact it makes me wonder how he motivated her to improve her grade to 95%....

<comment><USER9> But letting his daughters know that isn't the _only_ criteria he should be using. Not embarrassing her in public is useful other criteria.

Agreed though, I would like to know...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's no such thing as public education. Education happens to exactly one person at a time. There are some things that you just have to do by yourself. And there's no such thing as compulsory education. Education is something that each of us gives to ourselves or allows others to give us. [1]

We need a culture of intrinsic ambition and excellence - among students, among teachers, and among professionals. Focusing on fake heuristics - grades, standardized tests, gold stars - only teaches one to cheat, not to personally excel.

1\. <http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0208f.asp>

</comment><comment><USER13> I know people who work in social services who have noticed a change in the last generation. Before, you would think twice before telling a working class parent that the child misbehaved because the parent might discipline too harshly. Today, the parents always assume the kids are right when they come home whining about how mean the teacher was. Don't know which is better or worse....

</comment><comment><USER14> So this is the exact opposite of no child left behind? Sweet!</comment>


Technology has revealed that humans aren't monogamous - <AUTHOR> http://www.compelo.com/digital-age-love-humans-not-monogamous/ <comment><USER2> I suspect monogamy is a cultural evolution that enables human beings to form larger societies without killing each other in the process of mate acquisition. Our hominid ancestors almost certainly existed in small troops with dominant males who controlled sexual access to females by force. That social dynamic isn't conducive to the formation of stable societies, and brute force doesn't work as well when weapons and the ability to devise plots enter the picture.</comment>


PhantomJS is a minimalistic, headless, WebKit-based, JavaScript-driven tool - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/ <comment><USER2> Cool!

But, have security issues been considered?

It looks like a Javascript thread-of-execution that can write to local filesystem paths (to render graphics, at least) may call into network-loaded DOM/code. Is there any assurance that page contents can't discover and use phantom API operations? (Or perhaps read local 'file:' URIs?)

<comment><USER3> Wow, that's a good insight, seems like a possible attack vector. Maybe something like Adobe Air's security model of putting local access and network access in different iframes with a message-passing API between them would work. That's always felt like a bit of a hack to me but at least the separation between different frames in WebKit has been well-tested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wasn't excited about this until I realized it could be used to render a webpage to an image with a headless browser. I'm pretty happy about that.

Edit: The code for that is on <http://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/wiki/QuickStart>

<comment><USER5> Yep, now I can finally write that Webkit-based book layout software I've been wanting!

<comment><USER5> Wow, I've never had to do this before...could the downvoter explain him/herself?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really slick. It's tempting to think of this as a potential route towards headless functional testing — probably no substitute for something as heavy as selenium but for light tasks and DOM-based inspection of returned payloads (and screenshots, baked in!) it seems like a plausible foundation.

<comment><USER7> Also note these other headless javascript testing frameworks:

Zombie.js: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2038663>

HTMLUnit: <http://htmlunit.sourceforge.net/>

Celerity (JRuby wrapper around HTMLUnit): <http://celerity.rubyforge.org/>

<comment><USER8> I think the main differentiating factor between phantomjs and the above mentioned ones is that phantomjs actually uses WebKit and has full support for everything that WebKit supports. Zombie.js uses the DOM API due to jsdom, which might have its own parsing intricacies.

<comment><USER9> HTMLUnit has its own share of parsing gotchas.

I've used Selenium with Firefox and Xvfb to do headless scraping in the past; looks like my toolkit just got simpler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm sorry but I don't consider an application that must be run under a windowing environment to be "headless".

While this cool, its really not that different from projects like <http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/>.

If you really want a headless webkit browser you would need to write a new webkit port to a graphics library that doesn't require a windowing system (maybe cairo).

<comment><USER11> What's the cost of running an Xserver in the background? 20~30mb?

<comment><USER12> What happens when Xserver is not installed and you don't have the permissions or don't want to install it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> the announcement blog post: [http://ariya.blogspot.com/2011/01/phantomjs- minimalistic-hea...](http://ariya.blogspot.com/2011/01/phantomjs-minimalistic- headless-webkit.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Brilliant! "Just 250 lines of Qt and C++" shows how good Qt/WebKit are.

</comment><comment><USER14> What is meant by "headless"?

<comment><USER15> Presumably you don't see the WebKit window or anything like that; it runs invisibly and doesn't require any window server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone know if this could be used for generating heatmaps? I'd basically need to identify the x,y offsets of elements on a page. I realize that these can be effected by the browser's width/height, but I'm hoping I can set those to generate the data.

</comment><comment><USER17> This might be useful for html sanitization. You can allow anything as input (including scripts, styles, etc), render it to a page in phantom, apply your whitelist on the effective DOM, and render it out as output. Of course, this might be resource intensive, and you have to be careful about phantomjs being sandboxed and having cpu/memory/timeout limits. The nice thing about this though is you that 1) you get your serializer/deserializer for free, 2) it's very forgiving on malformed input, 3) the output is WC3 valid since webkit corrects the DOM, and 4) you can support styles and scripts that affect the DOM.

</comment><comment><USER18> Have been trying to find a solution to headless js testing in cucumber that doesn't suck or need java. A driver built on top of this would rock!

</comment><comment><USER19> In case somebody wants an OSX binary but doesn't want to download the development tools and qt: <http://blog.marc- seeger.de/2011/01/26/phantomjs_osx_binary>

(Indirection over my blog in case I need to switch the file away from my webspace)

<comment><USER19> Ignore this, I thought it compiled a statically linked version... it didn't and I really suck when it comes to compiling c :(

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I had a really hard time getting qtwebkit to statically link on a mac as well. I think it may not be possible.

<comment><USER21> Not possible according to the docs: [http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7/developing- on-mac.html#building-...](http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7/developing-on- mac.html#building-qt-statically)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would really like to see a comparison between this and other options. (rhino, envjs, htmlunit).

<comment><USER12> They are completely different things. Rhino is a JS engine. envjs as a script that creates a mock window object and can run in an engine like Rhino. Htmlunit comes close, implemented in Java, tries to SIMULATE some popular browsers. PhantomJS is... Webkit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not headless, many other projects, many other ways to do the same even without programming/compiling. I'm still longing to see a true headless browser that renders to Cairo or something else.

</comment><comment><USER23> The first two applications that come to mind are automated testing and screen scraping, I'm a little surprised they didn't include examples of those. Looks interesting though.

<comment><USER24> Automated Testing: [http://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/wiki/ServiceIntegration#J...](http://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/wiki/ServiceIntegration#Jasmine_Driver)

Screen Scraping: <http://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/wiki/QuickStart#Rendering>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't find the example which generates PDF of the wikipedia page, as described on the front page.

<comment><USER26> It's on <http://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/wiki/QuickStart> about three quarters of the way down the page:-

phantomjs rasterize.js '[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jakarta&printa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jakarta&printable=yes) jakarta.pdf

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How is this different from node.js?

<comment><USER19> This is a headless browser using webkit as a rendering engine.

Node.js is an asynchronous I/O framework

<comment><USER27> This is great indeed! I just tried it out. For people who are running Ubuntu 10.10, and have Qt < v4.7 can change line 34 and comment line 164 (to atleast test out the examples on the website).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So this is a headless browser with a javascript api? Sweet.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm going to try this to do some web page scraping.</comment>


Celebrating 10 years of Kettle coding - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibridge.be/?p=211

<comment><USER2> I love Kettle and I think Matt has done a really good job over this years. Kettle (or PDI) is now a widely used ETL tool with advanced Big Data functionalities and strong community behind it.</comment>


As Silicon Valley Gets 'Crazy,' Midwest Beckons Tech Investors - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/technology/midwest-tech-startups.html <comment><USER2> I realize that the housing market isn't the _only_ thing keeping startups and talented, ambitious people out of the Bay Area, but it's probably the biggest one.

If the Bay Area can't get its act together and start permitting new housing in proportion with its economic and population growth, it will go down in the books as one of the largest and most obviously foreseeable squandered opportunities in modern history.

<comment><USER3> Calfornia and San Francisco economists have made official reports saying exactly this.

The supply elasticity of buildings in San Francisco is 0.1, which is almost nothing. If you built 3,000 units today, rents would only go down 30U$S in average. And the elasticity of demand is 0.7 in comparison. That means that lower rents will attract lots more people.

San Francisco could triple its population in a few years if it could tear down the mission to build huge appt buildings.

<comment><USER4> >San Francisco could triple its population in a few years if it could tear down the mission to build huge appt buildings.

Leave aside that there are lots of people in San Francisco, including the Mission, who might not be keen on that Robert Moses-esque plan. How are all those people going to get to their jobs--the vast bulk of which probably won't be walking/biking distance from these huge apartment blocks?

<comment><USER5> > _How are all those people going to get to their jobs_

If only there were a transit system designed for the masses.

<comment><USER4> If only. But there is only a limited one in place.

My point was that you can't just plop down a bunch of large apartment/condo towers--even if it were otherwise desirable to do so--unless you also add infrastructure to move all those people around. Certainly it _can_ be done but you're probably looking at a decades-long project.

<comment><USER3> Even if you assume that it is not possible to build infrastructure to have a reasonably good service for the people moving it, actively turning people away is harming them (because they would prefer bad infrastructure to whatever option they have today).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Midwest (you know, parts of it) has one big advantage over the West coast: the people.

Holy cow, it's like night and day. Compare how willing people are to...not even talk with, but just _acknowledge_ you in somewhere like SF or Seattle, to somewhere like St. Paul or St. Louis or Detroit.

The juxtaposition is staggering. On an individual level there's like this universal basic assumption that everyone is a person who has merit, which is totally lacking on the West Coast. Kind of ironic, considering the political differences. But hey, you can go somewhere your vote counts, right?

That might be a controversial opinion, but I've experienced both as a liberal techie, and I call a spade a spade.

<comment><USER7> Hm. I grew up in the midwest and I have the exact opposite opinion.

Where did you grow up? I wonder if this is that thing where we see the ugly under-belly of our homes with a clear eye, but see new places with rose-tinted glasses.

<comment><USER8> Same. There's a facade of niceness in the Midwest that doesn't go very deep. In a lot of more-rural areas, newcomers are viewed as outsiders and kept at arms-length for years at a minimum. This is not to say mid-westerners are unusually angry creatures, they're just not as benevolent as the stereotype implies. Southern hospitality is an even more extreme version in my experience.

<comment><USER9> Totally agree. Just because someone acknowledges you, doesn't mean anything.

The phrase that gets to my nerves is "bless his/her heart", which I translate to "I <insert long string of expletives> you, but I'm going to pretend to be nice because I have to keep up this stupid facade that society has created"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _" In Ohio, that $35 million is the equivalent of $70 million in the Valley in terms of being able to hire talent and sustain operating costs"_

Low salaries are an incentive for companies to move to Ohio, but are a disincentive for employees to move there.

<comment><USER3> Not adjusted to salary costs and taxes. There was an article a few months ago talking about how adjusted for living expenses and taxes, omaha had higher paid engineers than san francisco.

<comment><USER11> The thing that usually gets left out there is savings. If you take SF salary + SF costs and cut everything in half then you also end up with half the money left for savings.

The thing about saving for retirement is that you can contribute huge amounts of absolute dollars in a high COL place and then move to a low COL place to spend it when you retire.

<comment><USER3> I dont have the article at hand, but obviously the goal is highest nominal savings, not highest nominal savings rate.

The other part thats virtually impossible to account for is quality of life. Hard winters and big houses in Omaha vs Great weather and 1 bedroom with other people in SF, etc.

<comment><USER12> It's best to simply look at it relative to expenses. If you want to retire in HCOL, you could do it in the same amount of time as someone in LCOL if you save the same % of your income. If you want to move to LCOL, estimate the expenses there.

I don't know of strict rule of percentage or nominal dollars that works except for using annual expenses as the measuring stick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm deeply involved in the "beckoning" portion this article mentions. I volunteered at a conference in Green Bay, Wisconsin hosting Steve Case on his 'Rise of the Rest' tour. It's truly needed. We're consistently ranked top for small businesses (by %), but lowest for startups. Lots of people have little lawn and snow care businesses, but people move away if they want to start something larger. I think the key is to build a solid community, even if very small. The city should pick a block and try to put as many tech companies there as possible, giving them incentives. The higher density, the more tech culture can catch on. Mostly people need good examples of people who have made it or are making it. It's definitely catching on.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash In my opinion, the problem is less about the founders and early employees as it is about the scaling. It's a lot easier to convince young college graduates (as older folks will want/need much more compensation when working for a risky startup) to join a company in hip, trendy metro areas than it is to convince them to work in, say, Wisconsin. I suspect that is why companies that intend to scale prefer to move to larger metro areas, even if that means going from a more rural part of a state to a bigger city like Madison.

That being said, I have noticed quite a few specialist technical/consulting firms popping up all over my native Upstate New York. Those firms don't need the armies of employees the way a Google or an Uber does, so I think that they can offer a higher pay to cost of living ratio and attract strong talent, kind of like Tom Cruise in The Firm, accepting a lower salary to work in Memphis but taking home more net income than if he had gone to New York.

<comment><USER7> It might help if mid-western companies paid equivalent salaries as on the coasts.

There seems to be this attitude in the Midwest that lower CoL justifies lower salaries, as if there's no need to compensate for lower QoL with money.

Given equal salary, hordes of people will choose Midwestern winters over SF rent. But this attitude of "I don't have to pay you as much because land is dirt cheap, never mind that it's on a flat prairie in -20F weather" needs to be reversed. Especially since most of that land isn't ever appreciating, so I'm just paying rent to the bank instead of to a landlord anyways.

Midwestern companies: don't do CoL adjustments if you aren't also willing to do QoL adjustments.

<comment><USER14> > There seems to be this attitude in the Midwest that lower CoL justifies > lower salaries, as if there's no need to compensate for lower QoL with > money.

As a local Midwesterner, they don't do this because many people here _don 't want to think their QoL is lower_ and some will even feign offense that you implied their QoL is any lower than anywhere else.

Ironically, this bites them in the ass in wages.

Companies don't pay people fairly out here because they don't have to. Most of the locals have convinced themselves that their QoL isn't any lower. Their own employees proudly display their own below-market wages as evidence of why their home is a great place to live, they are essentially _negotiating their own wages downward_. It's a pure win-win for most companies, why would they want to disrupt that process?

<comment><USER15> I explain it to people this way when they ask why I left the Midwest: the Midwest is the Walmart of America. It's large, cheap, and the quality of most aspects of life is relatively low (weather, food, social life, career growth, etc.). But if it's all you can afford, it's a better place to be than somewhere expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm surprised New York doesn't get mentioned that often. It's a wonderful place to work for software developers. Sure, the housing is expensive, but nothing like Silicon Valley. And you're in the middle of one of the most amazing cultural centers in the world.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been working remotely for more than 4 years now. I live in a nice town far from the "tech scene", but I work with interesting (to me) tech, make good money, and paid 1/10 the price for my house that it would go for in San Francisco.

I don't know about companies, but developers who can pick their location might consider "not Silicon Valley or New York".

<comment><USER18> I'm in the same boat, about 5 years in the Midwest. I have absolutely no financial concerns in my life with what would be considered a fairly modest senior software engineer salary. I don't even have the slightest interest to push for raises anymore because I'm already so comfortable and happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Remember that if Silicon Valley is tough for investors, that probably means it's good for entrepreneurs. Conversely, if the midwest is promising for investors, that probably means it's tough for entrepreneurs.

Just saying.

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't forget about Chicago. There are many great universities near the Chicago Metro area with a lot of great tech companies to choose from for a job. Cost of living is less than the coasts and the salaries are on par or above for cost of living in the city if you work in technology.

</comment><comment><USER21> This article has been written many times in the last 30 years. Somehow Silicon Valley survives.

<comment><AUTHOR> The question isn't if Silicon Valley will survive. The question is if there's a chance for new hubs to develop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a native midwesterner, I've heard this for 20 years now. (Remember all the "Silicon Prairies"?) Yeah, I'd love to be able to spend million dollars on a home, and actually have it feel like I spent a million dollars on a home instead, a perfectly normal home. But, there's just not that much there.

It's a chicken and egg thing. There's no reason why you couldn't do something there, but it's harder because there's just not the critical mass of talent and capital. Outside of Chicago[3], there's a paucity of jobs. See Louisville[0], St Louis[1], Columbus[2]. Even the quality of jobs in Chicago feels pretty meh compared to SF / SV, but that's just my opinion.

[0] [https://whoishiring.io/search/38.2527/-85.7585/11?category=p...](https://whoishiring.io/search/38.2527/-85.7585/11?category=programming&location=louisville%2C+ky&type=full- time)

[1] [https://whoishiring.io/search/38.6270/-90.1994/12?category=p...](https://whoishiring.io/search/38.6270/-90.1994/12?category=programming&location=st+louis&type=full- time)

[2] [https://whoishiring.io/search/39.9612/-82.9988/11?category=p...](https://whoishiring.io/search/39.9612/-82.9988/11?category=programming&location=columbus+oh&type=full- time)

[3] [https://whoishiring.io/search/41.8781/-87.6298/11?category=p...](https://whoishiring.io/search/41.8781/-87.6298/11?category=programming&location=chicago&type=full- time)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is great, but I don't see how it solves the "two americas" problem.

It seems to me the places that are depressed rural areas will remain so indefinitely. It's great if we can create more evenly-distributed jobs, but the brain drain to the 'elite' areas will still be in effect, there will just be more of them to go to.

FWIW, I spent a week in Columbus (at a BigCorp datacenter) and absolutely loved the town. That said, brand new condos right in the heart of downtown are far from cheap. Desirable areas are desirable areas no matter where they are. I was shocked that a condo (the nicest of the nice, mind you) would be over $1M.

I can't do the humidity, but loved the city.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's part of the impetus from YC, if I read the tea leaves right, but if there is a UBI, I could easily see 'hacker communes' emerge where the combined monthly stipend of the developers funds living expenses of a communal space. They could work on their startups indefinitely, and try new ideas for years without having to worry about food and shelter.

Depending on the stipend amount, such communes may only be affordable in lower cost areas, including the Midwest. In large enough numbers, I could see this become a kind of movement that brings a different kind of resurgence to the deflated economies of the Midwestern States.

</comment><comment><USER25> What other cities not mentioned in this article should I consider moving to? I've heard Kansas City and Nashville. I want a city smaller and cheaper than Seattle.

<comment><USER26> I moved from Seattle to the Raleigh-Durham (North Carolina) area this summer, and I'm very happy with it.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about it.

<comment><USER25> I might take you up on that, my wife was just looking at houses in Raleigh. IF we want to be close to downtown, is NE, NW, or SW of downtown the best? My wife liked the houses around Lenior St best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This seems to suggest that these investors are doing some form of value investing in VC.

VC doesn't work like that. In order to survive (and prosper) as a VC it takes picking and investing in Apples, Googles, Facebooks, Amazons, Airbnbs, etc.

I could be wrong, but this feels like there's too much money chasing too few good companies.

That seems to be true even in Silicon Valley itself.

</comment><comment><USER28> Seattle, Boston, New York, LA (Snapchat) — sure. I've never had anyone try to recruit me to join a company in Columbus, or any of the other places mentioned here.

I'll believe these regions are really building a tech center when the companies there seem to actually be looking for senior tech talent.

</comment><comment><USER29> I made the decision a few years ago to never work in silicon valley or california.

it costs WAY to much to live there and the social/political landscape gives off the impression of being some kind of authoritarian dystopia falsely touting itself as some kind of social utopia.

not really interested in all that noise.

<comment><USER30> That's too bad. Do you love to program?

I don't think people quite get how engineering centric SF/The Valley is. There is a meetup for _everything_ and every third person you run into is an engineer. It's truly a programmers paradise.

And no where else do you have the salary leverage that you do in SV. If you have an amazing background with a couple of niche languages, and the right startup comes along that needs engineers with your skillset yesterday, you can manage a homerun salary deal.

The engineer is king in SF. I lived there for five years. And will never regret that time.

P.S. You can still manage good deals on housing in less trendy areas.

Hire a professional relocation assistant. Monica McGee does freelance and corporate relocation. Money well spent and she helped my wife and I land a great deals on a couple of locations.

<comment><USER31> I love to program and I go to lots of meetups here in Chicago, but I also have a lot of friends who are not techies and I have conversations with people all the time that don't revolve around apps or frameworks.</comment></comment></comment>


Hard work and specialising early is not always a recipe for success - <AUTHOR> https://thecorrespondent.com/337/why-hard-work-and-specialising-early-is-not-a-recipe-for-success/44615161074-4a7c370a <comment><USER2> A supporting example from another field:

Back in the days of 20th century ambitious, well-funded journalism, it was common to see specialized writers do their boldest, most imaginative work in their first year on the beat.

They also made some newbie mistakes, but on their good days, they saw stuff that the old pros didn't. They asked the "obvious" questions that everyone else had stopped asking. They ventured into areas that according to conventional wisdom were "unimportant" or "not yet significant."

People who had been on the same beat for 10 years or more could reliably generate solid and perhaps even admired work in their specialties. But they worked within shrinking boundaries.

The senior editors who really earned their keep made sure that the rest of us kept rotating into new fields every few years, so that the "wow!" factor never left our work.

<comment><USER3> I've seen so many examples,where people,who spent decades in their fields become so cynical and 'know it all' type. This is almost universal across all fields.Fresh minds are always a good idea.

<comment><USER4> It depends on your field. Engineering is a good counterexample.

I have seen the reverse where so many junior engineers make _soooooo_ many mistakes that are absolutely obvious to experienced engineers. That's why we review things.

I would also argue that programming advances so slowly for _exactly_ this reason--we really don't respect the senior ones who know what they are doing.

In spite of what people think, programming isn't "new" anymore. A "know it all" programmer may be someone who has seen the wheel turn 3 or 4 times at this point. I would argue that programming hasn't really had a significant change since modern (read: assumes infinite memory and CPU) managed runtimes (Java, Python and Javascript).

Part of this is that the fastest way to a VC lottery winner is "social fad"\--you want youngsters primarily because they are "plugged into the scene" and the programming is secondary. The number of times I have seen junior programmers try to solve the halting problem would make you weep.

<comment><USER5> I don't disagree with this, but I do feel like there is some benefit to movement within different niches of engineering. I've been on teams where someone who, while being an experienced engineer, was new to the stack or hadn't worked on a project like ours, and they brought new ideas/technologies to the table simply because they were so excited to look for them—i.e. the "Wow!" factor of stepping into a new space. To agree with you, however, I've only ever seen this among engineers who had a strong general base. I've personally been the junior who tried to solve the halting problem :)

<comment><USER4> > I've personally been the junior who tried to solve the halting problem :)

I think we _all_ have at some point. :)

Those of us who had some experienced people around simply found out sooner rather than later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To me the real tension seems to be between individual interests and societal pressure. I suspect most people, if left completely free, would end up undertaking quite a wide range of endeavors and might not even end up specializing at all. There is however great societal pressure to find a niche (ideally as narrow as possible) and occupy it exclusively. That's what's "best for the economy", however stifling for individual human development.

This is not to say that there aren't people out there more than happy to have a deep specialization. That's perfectly fine as long as it's done as a free individual choice and not as some parental/scholastic imposition.

<comment><USER7> I've observed more of the opposite pressure - people without commercial pressures want to focus on their particular interests, but instead are constantly pressured to generalize and monetize.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. Could you give a bit more details?

<comment><USER8> As a software developer I would love to focus on understanding technology thoroughly. Actually, just a small subset of "technology", because there are so many tools that will be gone in five years anyway. I would rather focus on the, uhm, less ephemeral aspects of technology.

However, the pressure at workplace is exactly in the opposite direction. First, one should become a "full stack developer", because why hire two or three experts when we can have one person do everything. Then one needs to become a "dev ops", so that we don't have to hire a system administrator either. Afterwards, one is pushed to also do some management, customer support, etc.

I suppose the ultimate dream is a company consisting of only two kinds of people: the boss, and the infinitely replaceable all-knowing employees. Generalists are popular, because you can always fire one and distribute his former workload among the remaining ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a former IT industry analyst who tended towards being a generalist--and has a somewhat similar role today--there's a tension that I've often discussed with people.

On the one hand, my personal preferences just tend to being more generalist. And I think that can inform opinions and understanding whereas extreme specialists can often have such blinders that they really miss broader context.

On the other hand, go too broad and you know a little bit about a lot of different things. And you really have very little background in any individual area to, for example, push back against BS claims.

<comment><USER10> On the other hand, a generalist is in the best position to understand where it is most beneficial to go deep. Even just the exercise of thinking through your domain, and trying to identify where you should best allocate your resources is useful.

I'm in a profession now where full 100% of the founders of successful start- ups in this domain started off in a different industry. It's kind of astonishing that none of the experts in the field have been able to leverage their knowledge to start a successful company, they just act as consultants.

<comment><USER9> I don't really disagree. Tech types tend to dismiss outsiders who don't have specialized knowledge in a particular area.

That said, in many contexts, no one can have a useful perspective on everything. Yes, a Lou Gerstner can come into IBM and be successful. But, if we're talking beyond high level management, you probably need some domain- specific expertise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Mixed feelings on this one.On one side, if you want to become really good at something,I think those 10k hours are quite accurate.The problem is, our society runs on the basis that there's 0.1-1% of people that are extremely good at something and the rest are just average. I'm 34 and I did some crazy variety of jobs: construction, plumbing, advertising, translation, project management, operations management, development.Did I become really good at any of it? No,but I was good enough to be able to do those jobs. I'm getting better at programming, however it'd take another 5 years or so before I could say I'm really great at it. Such a variety of jobs and industries gave me a very interesting perspective to business which I would have never had if I only had one job,no matter which one.

<comment><USER11> I'm in a very similar boat. I've served in the military, been a tiler, been a developer, worked in customer service, been in finance for a large bank been a student many times over. There have been many times though where a general practice/skill/thought process from one industry has solved a problem in another.

I'm a similar age to you and at one point I had considered myself a "jack of all trades, master of none" and that really bugged me. But now I'm glad for it. I find my thinking doesn't get too tunnel visioned because of it. It also took a while to shake the stigma of not "specializing" enough.

I ran across a quite a while back though that really struck a cord with me:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

<comment><USER3> I quite like that phrase tbh! The thing is that I've met some people in my life who only did office jobs and they know nothing if it's not on a computer. People don't know how to put a nail in a wall or how to assemble a simple IKEA shelve. They get so surprised when you tell them some basic stuff that you'd think anyone should know at their age. Sometimes it gets so bad that you can't find words to describe it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > In hostile learning environments without repetitive patterns, mastery is > much harder to achieve. The feedback loop is insidious. Unlike chess, > experience does not necessarily make you better. You may stick with the > wrong approach because you're convinced it's the right one.

If you find the idea of "friendly learning environment" vs "hostile learning environment" interesting, consider reading Leslie Valiant's book "Probably Approximately Correct" \-- a discussion of what is learnable in the natural world

</comment><comment><USER13> Does everyone do this, or is it a particularly American conceit to look for simple solutions to complex problems?

'Recipe' is a misleading metaphor that invites trouble. Preparation and perseverance are great _ingredients_.

You can't make an instruction book for success. Heck, we have all succeeded in spite of ourselves at some point, so there isn't even a sure-fire instruction set for failure either.

You do things to improve your odds, or mitigate possible disasters, and you hope. But if you didn't even try, then what are you complaining about?

<comment><USER14> Well right here I see a simplistic reduction of a complex country and people.

Perhaps it's just a human tendency :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My impression is that specialist is just used as a label for imperative knowledge (process knowledge of how to do something), and generalist a label for process selection and management, declarative knowledge essentially.

What's ignored are cascades of knowledge, where specializing in the right thing can make you an expert in an adjacent task with very little effort, where the barrier might be just different labels or terminology. So you can become both a potential specialist and generalist by chosing the right thing to specialize in.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex Agreed.

The best leaders have to be experts at everything. It requires a specialization in generalization, to understand not just your own role but every role in an organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not only that. Hard work and early specialising is a recipe for depression. I have seen this pattern repeat itself over and over again.

<comment><USER17> Care to share any anecdotes?

<comment><USER18> Talk to 10 doctors. You'll likely find that the majority are depressed, abusing alcohol, abusing drugs, or all of the above.

<comment><USER19> Doctors don't specialize early. In fact, they specialize late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm reading the book right now.

I see people here are having the same misconception about his message that I did before starting it. It's not "don't specialize in your career." It's more like "don't specialize in your life." Good generalists will still specialize, they just do it later after they've explored other things.

The "generalists" he's talking about are people who can think creatively and apply their learnings to different subjects. They can adapt to changes quickly, or even come up with innovations themselves.

"Specialists" are perhaps those that just memorize the formula or are able to identify the same patterns. When outside of the contexts they're familiar with, they're not able to do very well. Thus, innovation and changes, even in their field, can be very difficult to cope with.

Essentially what I think he's advocating for is a liberal arts education instead of a highly focused and specialized. The current state of liberal arts education could still use some updating too, but a highly specialized education that may pay off well in the short term doesn't seem to help people thrive throughout life.

</comment><comment><USER21> I feel like specialization is a loaded term, as a way to label a category of work. I've changed stacks numerous times, so I can't say I'm an expert in any one language, stack or business. However, I have skills that feel like are specialization: I'm good at working with multiple stakeholders across the business, debugging unfamiliar systems, and modelling business domains and turning that into maintainable software that multiple people and teams can work on. To me that feels like specialization - I'd be a fish out of water building mobile apps or machine learning models for example - but I suspect most people would call me a generalist.

<comment><USER22> I think the tendency of generalists is to specialize into a kind of faith in abstract principles, processes and structures that cross domains.

As kids, we mostly learn "do what we're told" because it becomes clear early on that the adults know a lot more than we do. And so by the late teens we are in some degree specialised into the ideals of the previous generation. And then we go out into the world and have to adapt. And that's a space where the specific advices we were given start failing spectacularly, but not for everyone all the time.

In this light, generalists have the quality of survivors: Facing some adversity to any particular pursuit, they aimed to lower their overall risk.

<comment><USER23> Hi, I am a generalist. I think you're right, but for me, it's not a strategy, it's how I think. My brain is really bad at remembering facts, and really good at seeing patterns and modeling systems.

There's a big divide between people who think "facts" are knowledge and people who think understanding models and systems are knowledge. Our culture fetishizes facts as "knowledge" when most often, what's important is knowing how and why something works. Probably the most effective people who are great at doing both.

Neal Stephenson perhaps said it best:

"Nell," the Constable continued, indicating through his tone of voice that the lesson was concluding, "the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people—and this is true whether or not they are well-educated—is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward." ― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Today, it is very risky unless you pivot out of the engineering part of your job. Companies are investing in output, not people today. Old school companies invested more in the people side back in the olden times.

A friend of mine from high school is a brilliant person and a very successful manufacturing/process engineer in a specific semiconductor manufacturing process. Whatever it was, industry moved away from it, and he found himself completely unemployable, and at an age where he couldn't get hired as a junior, even at a 50-75% compensation reduction.

He's doing great now, selling real estate and insurance.

<comment><USER9> Specializing yourself out of a job is certainly something you need to be aware of. There wasn't a lot of demand for Y2K experts in 2002.

I also remember hanging out in a tradeshow booth in the 90s with a consultant who may have been the world expert in performance of a specific, by then legacy, computer architecture. Or someone else who had the inside track and wrote about a company that got acquired and dismantled.

A narrow uber-expertise is fine. But it can become yesterday's news. To be sure, it can also be a legacy in-demand skill but there's no guarantee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Both of my parents I really consider _generally_ smart in that they knew a little about everything.

They didn't have fantastic memories but they could talk really about anything with some basic knowledge.

Having inherited that skill it's felt like a superpower compared to peers.

Not once have I been top of my class in anything but I'm running a lot of classes.

Lessons learned one one domain very often apply in other domains, that becomes exponential as more and more knowledge is obtained.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm not sure if the great article backs up the thesis necessarily.

Trying to be 'Tiger Woods' by specializing on Golf is probably a recipe for disaster, but focusing on say, 'being a Doctor' from late high school can be a good winner. As the article hints 'the rules are clear' for being a doctor.

Given the clarity of the rules, the 0% unemployment rate etc. 'Doctor' might still be the best profession out there. Surely you can make more at an investment bank, but many (most) do not, whereas if you're an MD you really have to screw up not to do well if you're trying to.

<comment><USER26> It's not really a 1:1 comparison though. The tightly controlled supply of Medical Residencies leaves you with a higher performing pool of 'Doctors.' You might not become wildly rich at an investment bank, but if you under-perform while specializing as a Doctor, you just don't become a Doctor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > But winning is not the same as getting better.

A famous video game coach has a concept he calls _the percentage play_.

Imagine him reviewing video game footage along with the player after the game. The player would make a successful play. The coach pauses the video and marks a mistake.

"But it worked!"

"It worked in this case. However, it only has a 20% chance of working (due to unreliable teammates, or the opponent making a mistake when they shouldn't). Have you considered this alternative line, which has a 60% chance of success? That's the percentage play."

\---

It's also a lesson about not applying NBA advice (where you can expect reliable teammates) to your casual basketball games.

</comment><comment><USER28> I see myself as a generalist (a guy called me "wideband" once, found it very descriptive). I have heard so many times that I am on the wrong, and so many times I am the right, that I stopped worrying.

It is like the old question whether eggs are part of a healthy diet or not.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's harder to specialise, takes more effort. Being a generalist is easier specially if you are charismatic. When we try to measure a correlation between success and specialisation, how good one is at it and its value to the economy is an important factor.

Take software for example. There are highly specialised software that costs a lot for a licence while general software like an office suite goes for 5 bucks a month...

</comment><comment><USER30> Speaking of Software, 90% of the time expert level knowledge is not necessary. On the other hand, broad generalist knowledge is essential for many non- trivial projects to get off the ground. I guess this observation is basically why we have the DevOps movement. A team of people highly specialized in different topics is cool in theory. But in practice a team doesn't work like a brain :-)

</comment><comment><USER31> I think a lot of people wince at the word "generalist" because, at its worst, it's synonymous with "somebody with no actual skillset or specialty whatsoever."

But I've written extensively about the generalist vs. specialist distinction using this definition:

"A generalist is a person with a wider-than-average range of skills and a developed sense of how to apply them to new problems."

One hard part of being a generalist is not knowing how to "train." How do you know what to learn next and how do you measure your progress?

I've been answering that question for myself the past few months and compiled a short handbook of the most practical mental models that I think all self- proclaimed generalists can benefit from knowing, regardless of which domain they work in.

If you'd like to check it out, the first 3 mental models are live here (scroll down towards the bottom): [https://stewfortier.com/mental-models-that- generalists-can-u...](https://stewfortier.com/mental-models-that-generalists- can-use-to-win/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I found the pictures in this article so interesting I struggled to read it. It's just too bad they didn't really tie into the topic well. One would have been enough, but they stole the show.

<comment><USER33> I got the same impression. Those photographs are attention-grabbing but call for a separate article, perhaps on photography, or sports or movement. Besides, the shadows don't align in the same perspective since the photographer took pictures at different times of the day to compose single images, which is even more distracting.

You can find a link to the whole series at the end of the article if interested in photography: [http://pellecass.com/crowded- fields-2017-/1](http://pellecass.com/crowded-fields-2017-/1)</comment></comment>


There are more trees in the U.S. than there were 100 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.mnn.com//earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/more-trees-than-there-were-100-years-ago-its-true <comment><USER2> > The average age of forests in the United States is younger than it was > before European settlement. The greatest diversity is found in the oldest > forests, so there may be more forest now, but because it is so young, it is > home for fewer animals, plants, insects and other organisms than a fully > developed, mature forest ecosystem. It also means that protecting old growth > forests is imperative.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oregon,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-1...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oregon,+email@example.com,-122.4869927,1579m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x54936e7c9b9f6a55:0x7d4c65db7a0bb876) \- you can see that there are more trees in the more recently clear cut sections, and fewer in the older growth. Also, replanted sections tend to be a monoculture of whatever commercially viable species is favored in an area.

It's easy to see land ownership from the satellite images:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oregon,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-1...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oregon,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.8719264,50616m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x54936e7c9b9f6a55:0x7d4c65db7a0bb876)

Forest service land to the east has been logged, but not quite as extensively as the mixed private and BLM land to the west. The checkerboard pattern is created by that mix of BLM and private land: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboarding_%28land%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboarding_%28land%29)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wood was mostly used for fuel back then. The turn of the 20th century also marked the end of the sailship era and the end of wood as a major element in ship construction. Other uses for wood were sleepers for railways and whole logs for utility poles. Incidentally, US aircraft carriers had wooden decks in WW2 and wood was still an element in airplane construction.

In the last few decades chipboard furniture and managed tree farms further reduced deforestation.

Keep in mind that the conditions US colonists found in the US: a massive, dense, virgin forest were not natural. The massive depopulation of native peoples allowed forests to grow thick and create the illusion of an uninhabited land. Normally people manage the land, usually unintentionally from just living on it.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is suprising but now compare this to rainforest devastation in the Amazon and the rest of the world and I doubt we're in the positive overall which is what logically counts.

</comment><comment><USER5> > "The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes > of wood per acre almost doubling since the '50s) which was the area most > heavily logged by European settlers beginning in the 1600s, soon after their > arrival."

I believe another reason is that the introduction of the railway shifted food production to the plains and California. New England used to be farmland for much of the US.

See [http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/08/31/new-england- sees...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/08/31/new-england-sees-return- forests-and-wildlife/lJRxacvGcHeQDmtZt09WvN/story.html) :

> Today, 80 percent of New England is covered by forest or thick woods. That > is a far cry from the mere 30 to 40 percent that remained forested in most > parts of the region in the mid-1800s, after early waves of settlers got done > with their vast logging, farming, and leveling operations.

> Some of the revival can be credited to aggressive environmental efforts ... > But the return of forests has mostly been a matter of economics: As New > England became more citified and industrial, and food from western states > became cheaper, there was less reason to maintain open land — much less > blast every wild critter that might nibble a crop or gobble a goose.

</comment><comment><USER6> The number of trees increased, but the volume of wood decreased. Also of note, older trees take up more space so land area is a better measure than tree count.

<comment><USER7> At the same time, turning young trees into old trees isn't a very difficult problem. Once the decision is made either by economics--farming is no longer viable--or aesthetics to let the trees grow back, it's only a matter of time.

<comment><USER8> "farming is no longer viable"

In the plain states, large rows of tree were planted for farming (e.g. shelter belts). Many places trees exist today did not have trees pre-farming. This was the great plains, not a forest region.

If farming is no longer viable then humans are no longer viable.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't saying that farming is no longer viable anywhere as a business. I was saying that there are places, like my home state, that have seen a resurgence of forest as farms have disappeared due to competition from elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A vastly larger proportion of land was utilized a hundred years ago for agriculture. I've seen photographs from the 1910s of my hometown which are unrecognizable, except for the buildings, because most of the portions of the hillsides and river intervale pieces were cleared and used for growing either corn or grazing sheep and cattle. Now all of that area has grown up into forest.

</comment><comment><USER7> North Carolina--East Coast state in USA--is basically contiguous forest once you leave the downtown area of our few big cities. Farms and neighborhoods still punctuate the landscape, but any land that isn't routinely maintained by farming and mowing begins to revert back to woods very quickly.

<comment><USER10> My guess also, looking at the number of farms-turned-to-subdivisions, parks and green areas along the East Coast, is that better logistics and transport has further improved the efficiency of distributing goods from megafarms in the midwest, making the need for smaller and less efficient traditional colonial-era farms obsolete.

At the same time, the midwest, especially the great plains area, were always tree sparse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is also true in Germany and probably most other European countries, use of timber for energy production and for mining and building purposes led to devastated areas in Central Europe during the 16th to 18th centuries, this was only reversed during the 19th century when coal and steel took over, and the introduction of sustainable foresting. Since then forests are growing again, with a few dips like after WW2.

Details (Selected Results of the 3rd National Forest Inventory): [http://www.bmel.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/Publications/Fore...](http://www.bmel.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/Publications/ForestsInGermany- BWI.pdf?__blob=publicationFile)

</comment><comment><USER12> There are 2.8* times more people in U.S. than 100 years ago.

* [http://www.mnforsustain.org/united_states_population_growth_...](http://www.mnforsustain.org/united_states_population_growth_graph.htm)

<comment><USER13> Which makes the vast tree recovery even more impressive.</comment></comment>


Why TCP/IP is on the way out - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2459286/why-tcp/why-tcp/ip-is-on-the-way-out.html <comment><USER2> > What is a little difficult to grasp is what patented, arithmetical equations > are being used and why they work.

Which is why TCP/IP is going to be around for a long time yet, and very unlikely to be replace by a closed, proprietary alternative. The TCP/IP spec is open to all - if you want to build a network or device that talks TCP/IP there's the specification, have at it. The open nature of internet and web protocols helped make the modern internet possible. We should not be so quick to shut the door on such a rich and productive legacy. (Or, at least, refrain from writing hyperbolic headlines).

That being said - a company selling an alternate, high-performance networking protocol could have a strong market. ISP routing over the last mile, educational/research or any other institution that operates a WAN may be a good customer.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. This article smells like a PR Hit from the startup that the "MIT, CalTech and Danish researchers" have put together.

2\. A powerful push to substitute something with very distinct (and patented!) client-role and server-role would be just the thing to push the Internet Genie back in its bottle. Needing a license for a server would make good business sense (for Comcast, AT&T and the various national telecomms) and good "national security" sense for various governments and rogue agencies. Making that license pricey could put gatekeepers back in business, so mainstream media will definitely be in favor of network protocols that are proprietary and have a server role and a client role.

</comment><comment><USER4> How would a switchover actually be implemented? Wouldn't this require being built into every consumer OS device?

I'm not a network engineer, so if you are, please fill me in. I don't get the sense that this could be just swapped out at the data center level.</comment>