How to Hack an ADT Alarm System - <AUTHOR> http://ipvm.com/report/hack-adt-alarm-system

<comment><USER2> So just like with computer security, I'm a fan of both passive _and_ active security for my home.

Their website is straight out of 1990, but Burglargard is a bullet resistant effectively smash-proof invisible coating that can be applied to all windows in your home: [http://www.burglargard.com](http://www.burglargard.com)

The nice thing about it is that if you have them install it, it comes with a lifetime no yellow, no peel, full replacement warranty. If you opt to install it yourself, it is much cheaper (Approximately $1 per sq foot), but no warranty, so not as useful.

Also, make sure to get 6" or longer screws to put into external door frames. It ensures the frame is anchored to studs and makes ripping it out via a typical kick the door in attack much more difficult. Stuff like the haven lock ([http://www.havenlock.com](http://www.havenlock.com)) also really helps make it more difficult to kick in the door.

Note that these things make a break-in demonstrably more difficult, but they won't prevent it. I see an alarm system as a more passive security device, much like an intrusion detection system. "Hey someone broke in" means someone still broke in. I'm more of a fan of trying to make the act of breaking in in addition to ensuring I have a decent idea if someone does.

Defense in depth doesn't just apply to computers, it is a way of thinking :)

<comment><USER3> Burglargard looks pretty cool. But I'd definitely have to re-evaluate fire exits before I installed, the last thing I'd want is for the entire family to burn to death because I was trying to save a few thousand dollars in property which is insured and replaceable.

Door frames and window frames are a common source of intrusion, but if your frames are made out of wood then I don't know if the 6" screws are going to save you, the wood is often a source of failure rather than coming unscrewed. It just splinters away.

As to Havenlock: many back doors are slide, and can be bounced out of their runs. It might help on the few which are swing doors rather than slide (at least around here). I think the whole app thing is kind of dumb, it is just a wedge, and still requires drilling into the floor.

<comment><USER4> <quote>Burglargard looks pretty cool. But I'd definitely have to re-evaluate fire exits before I installed, the last thing I'd want is for the entire family to burn to death because I was trying to save a few thousand dollars in property which is insured and replaceable.</quote>

If your fire exit strategy currently relies on the ability to break a window, you've already failed at fire safety. You need to be able to OPEN a fire exit in an emergency, not MAKE one...

<comment><USER5> "If your fire exit strategy currently relies on the ability to break a window, you've already failed at fire safety."

This is quite false. The ability to use a bedroom window as an emergency exit is _required_ by typical US building codes (e.g., [http://www.bobvila.com/articles/406-what-makes-a-room-a- bedr...](http://www.bobvila.com/articles/406-what-makes-a-room-a-bedroom/)).

The basic rule is that, besides the entry door, there has to be one other exit _that opens to the outside_ , which can be another door, but is usually a window. There are size rules for the window.

The window is intended not just for entry of firefighters, but also for unassisted exit.

<comment><USER6> _This is quite false._

That's not my reading of the page you linked to. The window has to be _openable_ , not breakable.

<comment><USER5> You have a fair point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What isn't clear from the article is if the wireless channels were encrypted or not. Right now they're just using brute force to flood the channel which is going to cut off the panel from the sensor(s) regardless.

I cannot see an easy way to mitigate this. Even if it has anti-jam it is going to just shift the frequencies which you could also likely jam. I guess the panel could increase its output power to try and compensate, but all that does is increase the equipment cost of an attacker, not really stop it completely.

So I guess the main take-away from this is to go wired, not wireless for security system installs. However it is unclear if security systems really do much of anything anyway (as police often ignore home alarm calls as they're more often than not false alarms).

You're better off just spending the money on higher fencing with trellis skirting, motion flood lighting, and fake signs that say "protected by FakeCo Security." It won't cost you $30/month for the rest of your natural life and offers the same deterrent.

Most smash & grabs are 10 minute affairs. Some robbers will happily continue to rob with an alarm going off, since they know the response time won't be close to 10 minutes.

<comment><USER7> On the first page of the class action, "ADT's wireless signals are unencrypted and unauthenticated, and can easily be intercepted and interfered with by unauthorized third parties"

I think rolling your own ZigBee security system is more safe (and cheaper).

<comment><USER2> I prefer Insteon, which is wireless like Zigbee, but more jam resistant as it also operates over the power lines in your home to form a mesh. Even if the wireless access is blocked, much of the devices can be directly plugged in, and as a result, would still send critical security events to the controller.

<comment><USER8> I've always been curious if powerline protocols like Insteon and X10 were jammable by injecting noise into the neutral leg of the circuit.

In most neighborhoods with above-ground power lines, it's incredibly easy to access the neutral wire.

<comment><USER9> Or just cut the power to the home, arguably just as easy no? I think if your being targeted like that then you probably have bigger issues to deal with though...

<comment><USER10> Is it the case that if the power is out, that such devices can't communicate over the powerlines, even if they have their own backup power?

<comment><USER2> No, because they send modulated signals over the copper power cables. Therefor, if they had their own backup power and were operating over the powerlines, they would work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it worth trying to foil this attack? My understanding from talking to alarm installers is that wired alarms, which are more common, are trivially defeated by burglars, and that really the point of having an alarm is simply to avoid being the only person on your block that doesn't have one.

<comment><USER12> I think if the alarm isn't able to communicate (through wired means or otherwise) with its sensors or its back end for a suitable period of time, it should be functionally equivalent to detecting a break in. That is; the alarm should sound, and the alarm company should call the cops (it'd have to be pretty difficult to accidentally lose contact, however.)

The entire point of an alarm is it goes off if something bad happens; not being able to go off is a bad thing.

<comment><USER12> I was thinking about this, and I realized there is a bigger problem. The sensors detected a break in, failed to report it, and apparently just forgot about it; it successfully engaged in the protocol designed to detect jamming, but didn't use that window of opportunity to report the break in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While I think this sort of research is useful- I dont think this is anything that will affect people in real life. This is more the makings of a plot from the movie "Taken". If someone wants to rob your house, they will break in and probably be in and out before police can respond. A thief isnt going to jam your alarm systems radio and pull some elaborate hack to steal your laptop or flat screen tv.

<comment><USER2> People said the exact same thing about RF car fobs years ago. It is only a matter of time before the technology comes down in price and the software for doing this type of thing becomes more common. Never say never.

<comment><USER3> And they were largely right.

Cars are laughably insecure by computing standards, but yet stolen cars are at a low (when you adjust for total cars). They're also targeting pre-digital cars still on the road, if you look at the DMV's "top stolen cars" list, they're almost all 1990s cars or older.

You read a few stories about the "Russian maffia" having key fobs which can unlock modern cars, but these are few and far between. Even the more common ODB-II port key reset method is fairly rare, but gets heavily reported when it does occur.

So I'm going to use the same example, but use that example as evidence that this won't become common: just like cars, and garage door openers.

<comment><USER14> This is becoming a massive issue in London with the met actively conceding that gangs have the codes for JLR cars such as Range Rovers.

[http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/pull-over-all-range- ro...](http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/pull-over-all-range-rovers-in- kensington-police-are-told-in-crackdown-on-spate-of-thefts-9979074.html)

<comment><USER15> Interesting... a 25% year-over-year spike in thefts is huge and certainly suggests new theft tools are greasing the rails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Or, you know, just cut the landline to the house. Phone lines go down often enough that security monitoring centers cannot respond to every incident. If your system stops sending the keep-alive, they assume it's just that the line's been cut. There are of course cell based backups now, but those can be blocked with a pretty standard cellphone jammer too.

Or, just run in and smash the panel. If you do it quickly enough, it won't send the signal.

Or, get a ladder. Most systems do nothing to protect the upstairs of a two story house.

Residential security systems are for show and to get discounts on homeowner's insurance. I'm pretty sure the sign up front deters more people than the actual system.

<comment><USER17> Almost none of these are true for where I currently live, the only thing lacking, which it pretty much has to given the reality of invoking the police on wild goose chases, is action beyond the building when the phone line goes down. But in that case the local alarm most certainly goes off ... but not very often at all! AT&T at least here is near rock solid.

Do you think insurance companies would give discounts unless the benefits were per their actuaries real?

I'm sure the sign does a lot of good, but it's just part of a system of defense in depth which starts there (or perhaps not living in a bad neighborhood).

<comment><USER16> My theory is that the discount is precisely because of the sign. I am convinced that that part does 99% of the work at actually deterring crime. The local alarm won't do anything once you are in the building: just go and turn it off. In fact, get a shirt with the ADT logo, then go rob a house. Nobody will question it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To this article's credit, ADT when counter-advertising people thinking about leaving (source: me everytime they raise their price on my aged featureless system) is that alarms made on a cellular signal instead of a land line can be jammed with 75 dollar cell phone signal jammers.

They stand on the bedrock that their existing systems can't be manipulated like that. While this article makes it clear that this is not a cheap or unsophisticated hack, depending on the value of what you have in your home this kind of hack can very much be worth the price of admission especially when free and explained on the internet.

<comment><USER19> That's why relying on a single link for anything is a bad idea - if a system is known to use a landline, it's trivial, especially as in most parts of the US phone lines are aboveground, to cut the phone line before breaking in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Important detail: that $15 rtlsdr stick cannot transmit.

<comment><USER21> Another important detail, If you're just flooding a certain frequency you do not need an SDR to transmit, you can easily build a cheap $5 transmitter for that frequency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this article trying to say that jamming can be used to temporarily blank sensors without the controller realizing they have dropped off the system? If so, actually using this for practical nefarious purposes would still be fairly complicated, because you would need to have the system in a pristine state for x seconds every y seconds.

<comment><USER23> For houses with lots of windows and bigger pets, one of the more ubiquitous sensors is the acoustic glass break sensor. You only need to jam that one for a few seconds to get in.

<comment><USER22> I have two of those; in fact, my house has all "perimeter" sensors and no motion. What you describe only works if the sensor is non-latching. A latching sensor will trigger the alarm as soon as it reconnects. AFAIK, most glass breaks are capable of latching, though most are not set up to do so. Changing the setting is trivial.

Alarm companies have put quite a bit of thought over the decades into anti- tamper measures. I suspect the reason the "hole" described in the article exists is because someone felt the other AT measures would cover it adequately enough for typical usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why does an alarm system, installed presumably permanently on an immovable house, even need to be wireless? A wired system would basically be immune to this (and if the wires are physically cut by an attacker, it will alarm.)

<comment><USER25> While everyone is saying ease of install, and its true, its not really that hard to hardwire a system in most houses. In fact, my previous house was hardwired by a central security group contractor in about 3 hours for nothing more than a 3 year monitoring contract (@~$20 a month, 6 years ago). Sure I didn't get sensors in all my windows, but I did get them in the doors, along with motion sensors that covered 90% of the square footage of the house, monitored smoke detectors, garage door controllers, and a bunch of other crap.

Probably close to $500 worth of DSC hardware.

Alarm monitoring is like printing money. The fact that ADT charges as much as they do, and installs such a craptasic system has always amazed me.</comment></comment>


Lag Compensation Technique for Quake 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.ra.is/unlagged/ <comment><USER2> Oh, neat! I've been researching this topic quite a bit lately. Here's some more references: [https://github.com/nickdesaulniers/nickdesaulniers.github.co...](https://github.com/nickdesaulniers/nickdesaulniers.github.com/issues/5)

</comment><comment><USER3> Also don't miss Fabien's in-depth Quake 3 code review:

[http://fabiensanglard.net/quake3/network.php](http://fabiensanglard.net/quake3/network.php)

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game- programmers/](http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/) is the definitive go-to in this area.

<comment><USER5> Another one: [http://gabrielgambetta.com/fast_paced_multiplayer.html](http://gabrielgambetta.com/fast_paced_multiplayer.html) (disclaimer: I wrote it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> See also: [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/177508/The_lagfighting_te...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/177508/The_lagfighting_techniques_behind_GGPOs_netcode.php)

<comment><USER7> Just FYI that Gamasutra article is almost empty of any real details beyond the basics of client-side prediction and the actual linked magazine article from 2012 is a broken link. :-(

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the correct link: [http://twvideo01.ubm- us.net/o1/vault/GD_Mag_Archives/GDM_Sep...](http://twvideo01.ubm- us.net/o1/vault/GD_Mag_Archives/GDM_September_2012.pdf). (If this link breaks try to go to [http://www.gdcvault.com/gdmag](http://www.gdcvault.com/gdmag) and find a link the September 2012 issue there.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I loved this talk from David Aldridge of Bungie detailing the networking in Halo: Reach:

[http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014345/I-Shot-You-First- Networ...](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014345/I-Shot-You-First-Networking)

...and a link to bungie.net for the slides:

[http://downloads.bungie.net/presentations/David_Aldridge_Pro...](http://downloads.bungie.net/presentations/David_Aldridge_Programming_Gameplay_Networking_Halo_final_pub.pptx)

Bungie has some awesome publications on art, design, and engineering.

</comment><comment><USER9> my personal compensation technique in UT3 was to program my mind to twitch my hand slightly in the opposite direction of the side-jump or side-strafe I was engaging in. Otherwise, I was waiting for the visual feedback of the character on the screen, which added 100-200ms of delay before I had an accurate shot.

I personally don't like my solution. It feels very programmatic and mechanical. I usually don't bother with it. I'm more interested in the immersion, even if it means losing.

to better dissect this, it's because I'm conscious of it. When calculating ballistic arc or Tribes:Ascend spinfusor trajectory I, like in soccer, am relying on prediction intuition. It's not something I actively manage, like twitching my hand, it's something I just am 'good at' and thus feels more genuine and 'fun' because it makes me feel 'special'

<comment><USER10> _I 'm more interested in the immersion, even if it means losing._

I think most lag compensation techniques have focused on being "technically correct." Instead, I think lag compensation needs to squarely focus on immersion. This may mean modifying game mechanics themselves to compensate for lag. But if it means that there are no rollbacks or teleports to break immersion, I think that's the right choice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How old is this site?

This isn't a disparaging comment. The explanation and detail is awesome, and lord knows I spent days on Q3 rails servers back in the early 2000s. I'm really just wondering whether this is a recent thing (in which case I'm happily astounded at the longevity of a 16-year-old game) or an older write-up that HN just found. Google has references to "Insta-Unlagged 1.0" back to 2001.

<comment><USER12> Looks like it was first crawled by archive.org in July, 2004: [https://web.archive.org/web/20040815000000*/http://www.ra.is...](https://web.archive.org/web/20040815000000*/http://www.ra.is/unlagged/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This doesn't get into the part of anti-lag that I find most interesting - namely preventing lag while preventing cheating via exploiting anti-lag.

</comment><comment><USER14> Honestly these kinds of techniques are some really cool CS in my opinion. I'm happy gaming drives such good engineering all the time

</comment><comment><USER15> When I read "lag compensation" I was so confused; I thought it was about circuits...

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't it basically what Source uses?

</comment><comment><USER17> Similar page for Source Engine: [https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_...](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking)</comment>


How to Tell If a Programmer Is Competent or Not - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@TuckerConnelly/how-to-tell-if-a-programmer-is-competent-or-not-86b6431cab13 <comment><USER2> I don't agree with most of these points, nor do I find the tone of the author to be particularly productive, as they are effectively swinging bladed weapons around while blindfolded.

They propose a number of personal beliefs about what constitutes competency, whereas I will contend that there is no "silver bullet" by which a non- programmer (or XYZ profession) may assess the competency of the potential hire.

I could write a different article on programmers who seek to undermine existing code in order to get a green field project out of it. While I can completely comprehend what may lie behind a total rewrite (and have plowed through some rather thick ones) I would be wary of hiring such a rigidly ideological person who suggested "throwing it all away and doing it over" as this person is likely somewhat obtuse in their own way.

Human factors also matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, appreciate you reading the article and taking time to write this.

Unsure how I am, as you say, "swinging bladed weapons around while blindfolded." Very colorful terminology, but I'm a little confused by what you mean.

The "silver bullet" term you're using I'm guessing is borrowed from Mythical Man Month, where Brooks suggests that no single advance in tech within a decade provides an order of magnitude improvement in productivity. I don't think that necessarily applies to helping non-technical people vet out programmers. I think I'm more giving these people a lamp in complete darkness.

I don't think brownfield projects created by great programmers are a bad thing. In fact, I've learned a lot working in brownfield projects. I do think though, a newbie programmer that, in a microcosm, creates a their own unique masterpiece loosely inspired by MVC, gets crushed by complexity and bugs, and then quits for supposed personal reasons, is a very real potential disaster for tech projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why not just take some code and ask the applicant if he can read it and describe its function? Sure that won't tell you everything... but just saying you read "mechanics and thermodynamics of propulsion" doesn't make you a rocket scientist.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that would only confuse a non-technical person even more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like this author might like professional certifications with training courses and exams...

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of languages and libraries simply don't have certifications. Maybe there's a business there.</comment></comment>


Hackers shouldn't build software - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cosaas/hackers-shouldnt-build-software-22305a572f85#.e5tgf94ez <comment><USER2> That's one of those posts that should have a better, non-controversial, non- confrontational title. The title does not reflect the (great) content at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, author here. I agree the title might be a bit controversial but in my opinion, it should reflect the fact that hackers should be doing something beyond building software. An impact a hacker has when doing the other things discussed in the article is way-way bigger.

<comment><USER2> So maybe, "Hackers don't just write software - they solve problems".</comment></comment></comment>


Tumblr or Wordpress? - <AUTHOR> http://andrewdumont.me/post/12272835957/tumblr-or-wordpress

<comment><USER2> There's self-install WordPress.org and hosted WordPress.com. I am not aware of self-install Tumblr blog.

The post is comparing Tumblr with self-install WordPress.org.

About hosting: Replace Tumblr with WordPress.com

When you use WordPress.com, you don't have to worry about hosting. They take care of it.

Edit: OS X Lion sometimes auto-corrects Tumblr with Tumbler.

<comment><USER3> True, but (and correct me if I'm wrong) if you're using a Wordpress.com blog you have to have a URL of the format yourblog.wordpress.com, right? Whereas if you want to go to your own domain you need to self-host. But you could set up a domain you own to resolve to a Tumblr blog that's hosted by Tumblr.

There's definitely room for both platforms in different scenarios. I run a self-hosted Wordpress blog that's fairly complicated and high-traffic, and that's the right choice for that platform. But I'm probably going to start a more stripped-down personal blog soon and Tumblr seems like the way to go for that.

<comment><USER4> You can have a custom domain with Wordpress.com hosted blogs, but you have to pay something for it. Maybe $10/year...

<comment><USER2> easp got that right.

You can have free (insertsomethinghere).WordPress.com blog. Then you can upgrade for custom domain, increased storage, VideoPress, custom theme/design, etc. for a fee-per-service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One advantage of Tumblr that intrigues me, and is discussed in the article, is the community/social/sharing aspects. The nice thing is that so long as you don't want/need a ton of customization, you can set up a Tumblr blog and for anyone who doesn't participate in Tumblr it just looks like an ordinary blog and can be read and subscribed to as such (with RSS or the like). But then you also get the potential boost of reblogs and likes from Tumblr users. Seems like the best of both worlds.</comment>


Was computing dumbed down by the arrival of computer science in academia? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Was-computing-dumbed-down-by-the-arrival-of-computer-science-in-academia/answer/Alan-Kay-11?share=1 <comment><USER2> Alan Kay's answer</comment>


XDP: 1.5 years in production [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://vger.kernel.org/lpc_net2018_talks/LPC_XDP_Shirokov_v2.pdf <comment><USER2> Here's a slide deck that explains what XDP is: [https://people.netfilter.org/hawk/presentations/driving- IT20...](https://people.netfilter.org/hawk/presentations/driving- IT2017/driving-IT-2017_XDP_eBPF_technology_Jesper_Brouer.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone has any questions about XDP or eBBF in production, I'd be happy to answer. I've been working on an XDP deployment with Rust as the control plane language, and have found it to be an incredibly technology that makes high performance networking extremely accessible.

Also, Katran is very cool. Facebook is doing really cutting edge work in the networking space.

<comment><USER4> Have you thought of adding an eBPF backend for Rust?

I'm curious where you work. I've been doing eBPF in production for a while as well, but our control plane is Go / C.

<comment><USER5> [https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/02/05/rust- bcc/](https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/02/05/rust-bcc/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you Like XDP you may check AF_XDP! It's like PCAP but EXTREMELY fast!

It require kernel 4.18+ and you can use my guide to build test application very fast: [https://github.com/pavel-odintsov/fastnetmon/wiki/af_xdp- tes...](https://github.com/pavel-odintsov/fastnetmon/wiki/af_xdp-tests-for- Linux-4.19)

</comment><comment><USER7> These slides seem to be rather incomprehensible without the accompanying talk.

Edit: Oh boy. That's so _obviously_ not a criticism of the talk.

<comment><AUTHOR> No video yet, but here you have the paper.

[http://vger.kernel.org/lpc- networking2018.html#session-10](http://vger.kernel.org/lpc- networking2018.html#session-10)

On the other hand, Cilium.io made a good summary of that. [https://cilium.io/blog/2018/11/20/fb-bpf- firewall](https://cilium.io/blog/2018/11/20/fb-bpf-firewall)</comment></comment>


A new grad SDE makes 2x more in SF than Toronto after tax and COL - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/canada-new-grad-offers-2017-2018-bo-peng/ <comment><USER2> The author says in the middle of the post:

" I believe this is the key in retaining young Canadian tech talent in Canada. If an intern has a great experience at a Canadian tech company, they are more likely to sacrifice the additional compensation in US to remain in Canada. Sell them on the culture, not the money."

And then says:

" Tech CEOs in Canada often complain about the brain drain issue, but only a few companies like Shopify and Wealthsimple are actually putting money where their mouth is."

Really, if you wanna "Sell" them on something, it should be the money, sure I'd go for culture if we are talking 10-15% salary difference, but if it's 50%, I'll find something that pays 50% more with a decent culture.

<comment><USER3> Vancouver tech CEO here. We Canadian CEOs would love to pay our staff more, but our companies frankly suck compared to the powerhouse companies in the US. We just aren't profitable enough.

I think if you dig around, you will find that US tech companies are far better funded and thus working on things that generate more upside - for everyone.

Another thing to consider is that there is a massive bull market going on. And tech is at the frothy end of it. Those RSUs are great when stock is valuable and companies are flush. When the market tanks, they won't be so hot anymore.

<comment><USER4> How is the investors' risk mentality over there in Canada? I don't think the problem is profitability but simply money: US startups/companies have easier access to money as investors are willing to take more risks.

I see the same effect here in Europe, companies have to run more "tightly" and carefully because money is not easy to come, not many will have a deep line of credit if their companies' life depend on money, getting new rounds of investment is expensive so you have to do with the money you have now and the little revenue you are getting.

<comment><USER3> There is way less risk tolerance in Canada. But more crucially, government policy does not reward risk taking so favorably, and a heavy presence of government in the funding of tech through a generous tax credit crowds out private investment.

All this being said, I think it's even more significant that tech investment and talent is concentrated on the Bay Area, and to a more corporate extent on Seattle with Amazon and Microsoft.

Also, Canadian companies and employees whine too much. My attitude is: if you think you'd be better off in the US, it's easy to just move there. You will earn more, and your company will be exposed to more funding AND much hotter competition for talent. So you'd better have a really amazing idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have mixed feelings when I see these posts. There are a lot of places that pay a lot less than SV, even comparable cities in the US. I don;t have an advanced degree, heck, I don't even have a STEM degree, but when I left my last Toronto job nearly 4 years ago my compensation was around ~200k.

Does that mean that if I was willing to a) work for someone and b) move to SV that I would be making 300-400k per year? Maybe (I'm a US citizen and Canadian permanent resident so I have that option).

I guess my issue is less of one comparing west coat development compensation to Ontario compensation and say that all over North America there is an issue of stagnant wages for everyone except the top financial/business minds and the above average tech workers. Canada lags a little behind SV in employee equity and feels like it still has a bit of a British class thing going where there is the elite (capital) and the commoners (labour). Except that it's purely financial (mostly) these days. Nowhere near as bad as, say, the Bahamas.

I see a lot of comments here that I agree with (moderate talent commanding wages that maybe they aren't really worth) but at the senior end, yea, it feels a little different in Canada - if you don't go in to management (I did, and hated it) you're likely to be capped (in most industries) at about $120k. That seems a little ridiculous in a time of record breaking corporate profits and startup valuations.

All that said, I spent a lot of time early in my career in Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc.. and while I appreciate a lot of things about Nor Cal there is no way I would move there. Heck, it's unlikely I would ever move back to the US. Canada is simply more in line with my values.

<comment><USER5> > British class thing going where there is the elite (capital) and the > commoners (labour). Except that it's purely financial (mostly) these days. > Nowhere near as bad as, say, the Bahamas.

I meant to type "Bermuda" not "Bahamas"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Assuming employees have the same productivity in two different locations, shouldn't a company even pay more to the employees in the location that has lower operational cost, because the company will end up having a higher margin anyway? Instead, what I often see is that companies use "lower living cost"(which I assume is correlated with lower operational cost) as a justification of paying an employee less.

Yeah yeah, I understand that it eventually boils down to supply and demand of talent, but just saying...

<comment><USER7> Well, companies also prefer higher margins to lower margin i.e. if they can get away with paying lesser compensation, then that's exactly what they will do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Its quite frustrating as a Canadian web-developer. There are plenty of remote jobs that I would qualify skill and experience wise in the US that are for 120K USD. But they won't hire remote Canadians because its a hassle for some reason.

There are few Canadian companies that are remoting and generally they cap out at 70K. There are higher paying remoting jobs in Canada but to get them you have to do in-person networking to secure them.

I'm from Thunder Bay originally and honestly would prefer to live someone cheap but I'm forced back into the GTA because people want to have their head over your shoulder.

The only way to get about the 70K cap was to run my own firm, which brought in lots of money but was quite the chore to keep stable.

<comment><USER9> The flip side of this is an experience I had a while ago interviewing with a Canadian company for a remote position. Since I expected it to be an issue, I was up front with the interviewer that I needed a minimum of $X to pay my bills in the Bay Area and that I wasn't interested in moving. They were not willing to proceed, and told me that was the reason. I appreciated their candor, but it really turned me (as an American) off of Canadian companies.

<comment><USER10> Isn't that kind of expected? I assume very few companies can provide the salary that is needed to support living in the bay area and I guess most of them are probably located in the very same region, the bay area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you can work as an incorporated contractor, Canadian taxes can be quite low when you sprinkle the income across your family.

* The government is starting to catch on and might put an end to paying out dividends to non-working family members.

<comment><USER12> Only if the dividends are above 400K or something?

<comment><USER11> I haven't been following the day-to-day news, but if that's what it is... the income splitting benefit is still massive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Comparing salaries across borders based on that day's exchange rate is dumb. It's swung between 70 cents and parity in the last decade

<comment><USER14> Unless your plan is to save most of your income and move back to Canada after working in the US the amount you make in CAD isn't really relevant at all, the purchasing power of your income net taxes and rent is most relevant.

Also, my experience is that the expenses don't line up either. I could be wrong but having moved from Toronto to Chicago and now the SF Bay area, other than rent in SF area, living in Canada is often more expensive, specifically: gas, food, travel (partly due to weak CAD and expensive flights), not adjusting for the currency since you are paid in CAD and also paid less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had a Canadian colleague of mine describe it as the "1812 tax", basically the "tax" Canada pays for losing the 1812 war and failing to become a proper US state. Everything is more expensive, and the second grade currency doesn't shield them from price variations since the country is too small not to import most goods from the US. Not only that, but a single tariff can wipe out a whole industry, as we saw earlier with the bailout from Airbus.

The situation is made worse with a out of control immigration, with 10x the number of migrants as compared to the United States, that all pretty much target urban areas in BC and Toronto. From what he told me, for IT folks it's mostly guys that wouldn't be good enough for a work visa here in the US.

This, with all the best university grads getting poached by tech companies here in the valley creates a big surplus of average/low skilled tech workers. I mean, it's fine. It's just that these guys aren't playing in the 120-200k range for top dev talent, more like in the 50k range for average workers.

<comment><USER16> I think your friend isn't the biggest brain to have drained out of Canada considering the inaccuracies in your post. Hint if Canada "lost the war of 1812", why isn't it a"proper US state"? Did Canada fight a war to join the US in your mind?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > This data set is not big enough to draw broad conclusions.

This, very much. You have around 100-120 responses, and for many groups (gender, company) you had <20 people responding. You really can't draw any conclusions from this, especially because a lot of the "results" differed by very little.

</comment><comment><USER18> Well this is case with every country which is not US. Software salaries are much higher in US even after considering all different parameters e.g. PPP, currency exchange, housing cost, health insurance and so on.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, most of Europe is barely on par with Canada if not worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm sure it is the same with any city in Germany compared to Zurich.

<comment><USER21> Yep

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Aside from the weather, Toronto is a much nicer city than SF. Also, the COL analysis fails to account for the value of public services, which is presumably greater in Canada. Probably not nearly enough to make up the difference, but it's something to consider.

</comment><comment><USER23> I find it an odd choice to single out SF for the title (currently "A new grad SDE makes 2x more in SF than Toronto after tax and COL"), given that the data show that Seattle pay after tax and COL is almost 2.4x Toronto.

<comment><USER24> That's not true, total compensation in the article is ~1.7 more in SF than Toronto, but that includes stock options which are not actually the same as cash. The 2x figure comes from an analysis that factors in living expenses and refers to the amount of money you get left over for savings and similar things. Also, that comparison oddly compares living in a frat-like house in SF to having your own one bedroom apartment in Toronto.

<comment><USER25> Not to mention the salary difference will get soaked up by real estate differences the moment you decide to buy a house.

Not that Toronto real estate is cheap either. I think Google Waterloo is a great value: high CAD salary but low real estate prices (around half of Toronto).

The optimal play (if you don't want to permanently live in the US) is to go to SF, continue living like a student and sock away your cash while building your reputation, then move back to Canada and work remote with a grandfathered USD salary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow. Anyone who lives in Canada must get out quick. Time to go where the salaries are higher and not a backwater.</comment>


Sitting straight 'bad for backs' - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6187080.stm

<comment><USER2> Interesting.

I've recently switched (at least for now) to a standing desk, as I found no matter how hard I try, I end up slouching while sitting at a computer desk.

I wish the article had more info about standing, and (say) sitting cross- legged or other 'yoga' type postures.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some more details would be awesome :) I sit 85% of the time cross-legged. (maybe even more)</comment></comment>


The preachers getting rich from poor Americans - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-47675301 <comment><USER2> Whether you are religious or not, this should sicken you. The difference between a religious scam and a non-religious scam is that religious organizations don't pay taxes and have close to zero accountability financially (at least in the US). They can peddle snake oil with no repercussions.

On top of that, there is a special kind of betrayal when a spiritual leader abuses his follower's trust. Others may feel differently, but to me these scams are more sinister than QVS promising 'science-proven results' or a 'Nigerian prince' email spam.

<comment><USER3> It is indeed sickening. But it's difficult to just address these abuses of the system when people are so quick to grab their pitchforks against all religion.

I assume you were referring to my comment. To be frank, I always feel a little threatened by these types of stories because so many people end up using it as leverage to question the value of freedom of religion (a freedom I hold dear).

Perhaps you may have felt the same defensive instinct when a popular response to the sickening display of racism or hate is to call into question the value of freedom of speech.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it is difficult. Just require full public report on the expenses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What I don't like is when people point to this as a reason why all religion is bad. These are con artists, plain and simple.

It would be like if someone on QVC conned tons of people into buying magnets because "science proves this will increase your energy levels" and then I used that as a reason to write off all of science.

Target vulnerable people, get them to pay you money, profit. So many dishonest people exploit this formula from televangelists to email spammers.

<comment><USER5> This is normal. Everything has its dark sides: religion, science and even software engineering.

My personal problem is the lack of convincing arguments that religion is good.

<comment><USER6> Spoken as a non-religious person, religion gives a lot of people something to rely on and a base foundation of ethics and morals from an early age. It also opens many people to reading and philosophy, and can create a great sense of community in healthy environments.

<comment><USER7> If what you are saying is true, then predominantly atheist countries (or societies) are mainly unethical and immoral (exaggeration). Children of atheist parents will grow to be rapists psychos (also exaggeration).

<comment><USER8> Saying "A can provide X" doesn't mean "without A there cannot exist X"

<comment><USER7> That's maybe not what has been said here, but it's said pretty much in every discussion I've been. They argue that religion is necessary to "give" us a good moral compass, that without it we would be lost, etc.

<comment><USER6> Depends on what you consider religion, and morals, and I'd still argue it's not necessary. There are many philosophical sects that preach morality or reject the traditional compass that one can believe and internalize. Not all of these are traditionally recognized religions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember when I was a teen, the church we went to had an elderly couple that taught "Awana", a children's group.

A few months the after they started teaching, their daughters, upon turning 18, accused their parents of sexual abuse.

The church tried to keep it quiet and said "we cannot judge. God will judge weather it is truth or falsehood." And they allowed the elderly couple to continue teaching children.

I don't know what happened after that since I decided to stop going to church after that.

Bullshit like this happens more often than people think.

<comment><USER10> Our daughter's (very liberal and secular) school recently launched an investigation into sexual abuse of students by teachers over a period of many years back in the 1970s. It was well known at the time, of course, people just were discouraged from making waves or doing anything about it. Sexual abuse was widespread back then, and it was uniformly suppressed, regardless of the sort of community. (Frankly, it still is.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you travel through rural America, it's quite telling to see all the township money spent on churches and government buildings, while the residences and public infrastructure sit in dilapidation. Frequently the people from these areas claim to be fiscally conservative, so one would think there would be more demand for the collective spending they do to be more beneficial to the community, rather than those perpetuating the exploitation.

<comment><USER12> Buildings like firehouses or town offices with police departments attract Federal/State funds for construction and upkeep. People who support their church don't generally share your view that the church is exploiting them.

<comment><USER13> > People who support their church don't generally share your view that the > church is exploiting them

True, but it also doesn't mean they're not being exploited.

I choose to believe my employer cares about me, but it doesn't mean they do, and it's likely they might know I think that and use it to their advantage.

I hold nothing against personal faith, but I find it unsettling the balance of wealth across organised religions - seeing the gold opulence centralised at the (likely) expense of largely the poor across a lot of faiths is horrifying.

It might be more of a societal good for a local church to extract money from their congregation than for it to be spent on, say, padding Amazon's pockets, but it doesn't mean it's not taking advantage of said peoples.

Each to their own, but the notion that tithes might be linked to eternal glory or damnation for the giver can hardly make them entirely freely given.

<comment><USER12> I have served on the board of a church-related institution. It doesn't push tithing. The clergy aren't getting rich. Personally, I wouldn't associate with a place pushing tithing, politics, or where the clergy is living an opulent lifestyle. That's just my pov.

It's been a few years, but about 30-35% of the budget was for direct charitable works. They partner with another church to run a soup kitchen, help to house displaced families, and do other stuff like provide flowers to hospice, youth sports, subsidized vacation camps, subsidy for poorer parishes, etc. Another 30-35% was for the parish itself... salaries for the priest, capital spending on the property. The remainder is scholarship money for the school.

YMMV, and there are certainly good and bad places, but IMO, that parish is a net benefit to the community around it. Some of the examples here of rural communities the are over-churched is a symptom of the effects of decline. The rural town I grew up in is 10% smaller than it was 25 years ago, and it is increasingly a bedroom community for a bigger city. Folks who live there try to keep community institutions like churches going, but obviously there comes a point where that isn't sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These stories are hard to process because there appears to be such blatant abuse, exploitation, and stupidity.

> A couple of years later, the Federal Communications Commission reportedly > came close to introducing a "truth-in-advertising" clause for religious > solicitations. This would have meant that any claims of boosting finances or > curing disease would have to be verifiable, and Ole took various trips to > Washington to lobby for it.

The thing that's easily forgotten is that any sufficiently-advanced con is indistinguishable from religion.

</comment><comment><USER15> In a way, I feel people that fall for such stuff deserve it. OTOH, whenever reading stuff like that, I cant help but think that religious freedom is one of the bigger errors of our modern society.

<comment><USER16> Do _you_ deserve the things you fall for?

> I cant help but think that religious freedom is one of the bigger errors of > our modern society.

So, you think people should be told what religion to follow?

<comment><USER17> Religious freedom as USA practices it lets parents indoctrinate their kids. In my eyes that is not religious freedom at all, where I come from doing that is illegal. Some people still end up religious but most don't.

<comment><USER16> If these people are claiming to be Christian, then they're doing it wrong and I'd argue they're not Christian.

I can't speak for other religions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Using "poor" as synonym for "stupid" seems kind of insulting to poor people who don't happen to be stupid.

</comment><comment><USER19> Problem: mega church pastors are getting rich off the mist vulnerable and government doesnt care

This seems ripe for a tech based solution like an independent chruch rating group like the charity ratings people to encourage transparency about how these ministries use their funds and how well their doctrines line up with basic christian beliefs like tge nicene creed. These TV minitries usually fail on both counts.

The trinity group in the article seems to be doing great work but they seem to fail in being overly reliant on legislatures

</comment><comment><USER20> Something that should be pointed out and that is specific to the US: the legal status of religion there invites that type of behaviour. As John Oliver noted in the segment mentioned, the law is extremely vague in its definition of what a religious activity is, and gives pretty clear advantages in terms of tax exemption. That high rewards to low obligation ratio naturally invites parasites. If, say, NGO had a similar status instead, said parasites would move there.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is the John Oliver segment the article is referencing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is NOT Christianity. This is not Jesus Christ's will.

I hate the fact that all these mega-church millionaire preachers claim to be followers of Christ in any way, shape or form.

</comment><comment><USER23> tl;dr religion is spiritually optional. god is truly within. you are your own church.

What people really need to acknowledge is that humans are naturally spiritual animals. I like to theorize that we evolved spirituality as a mechanism to cope with being lonely intelligent beings. Imagine being a feral yet intelligent, self aware, social being with few others like yourself wandering the land, surviving as wild animals. We knew nothing of how anything worked. What made the lightning and thunder, what fire is, what volcanoes are, disease, predators, earthquakes, drought, floods, etc, and the most scary of all, death. Then throw in more layers of emotional complexity thanks to that big complex brain. What a lonely and terrifying existence. Who do you talk to in a time of great need? Who do you cry out to? For a near infinite number of reasons, we can't always express our feelings to others so we created internal people to listen to us. Those people are gods.

So remember, religion fulfills the humans natural need for spirituality. Religious leaders are nothing more than personifications of our inner gods we can both speak and relate to. So think of religion as a form of spiritual food. And I can see the benefits of religion in the social sense where a common inner voice brings people together based on common spiritual grounds. It also introduces another very important concept which helps reinforce diciplice and even learning: ritual. This was incredibly important in the early days of human evolution, it's probably one of the first forms of casual social bonding we developed. Of course there are those who seek power over others. And what better way to socially hack groups of people via exploiting highly vulnerable built in behaviour? This is where religion and spirituality diverge, when it's used for control. Religion has been corrupted.

I grew up catholic but don't like religion because I don't find its dogma spiritually nourishing. However I do pray, not to a god but to the ether or friends and family who have passed. My church is whatever brings me inner peace, though stereotypically I'm naming nature, the wilderness away from society. I'm not sure on an afterlife, and I've half come to peace with accepting that there may be nothing beyond this life. So I mix in ritual, spirituality, philosophy and disciplines into a sort of mini religion for myself. Life is a complex maze and having something to listen to your woes is incredibly comforting, and that's what god(s) really are, comfort. Admittedly I'm still hungry. But that's part of the spiritual journey: finding good spiritual comfort food.

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, this thread turned into a dumpster fire real quick.</comment>


The Grand Unified Model - <AUTHOR> http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=The_Grand_Unified_Model.txt

<comment><AUTHOR> Best quote from the article: "Alan Kay always said that any problem in Computer Science could be solved by adding another level of indirection."</comment>


The Science Is Extremely Clear: You Need to Prioritize Sleep - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/the-science-is-extremely-clear-you-need-to-prioritize-sleep/ <comment><USER2> Sleep helps so much. "Munchy crunchy chocolately cocoa sleep" \- Tom Servo.</comment>


1,284 Newly Validated Kepler Planets - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/briefingmaterials160510 <comment><USER2> Remember, just two years and the James Webb telescope will launch if everything goes according to plans.

[http://jwst.nasa.gov/origins.html](http://jwst.nasa.gov/origins.html)

"One of the main uses of the James Webb Space Telescope will be to study the atmospheres of exoplanets, to search for the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe"

<comment><USER3> I'm very excited about this. Cannot even imagine how I would feel if we observed an atmosphere with oxygen in it.

<comment><USER4> ...and even more exciting would be an atmosphere with oxygen and pollutants indicating industrialization [1]

[1] [https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-21](https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-21)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating - the first exoplanet was discovered in 1988, and now there are more than 2.000 known ones [1]. Plus, for all we know, there may be billions more to discover [2]. Even though we're never going to reach one in our lifetimes, these are still interesting times to live in...

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet) [2] [http://phys.org/news/2016-04-limits- uniqueness.html](http://phys.org/news/2016-04-limits-uniqueness.html)

<comment><USER6> I don't think there is any doubt whatsoever there are billions more to discover, in this galaxy alone. And then of course there are billions of galaxies.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Press Release: "NASA's Kepler mission announces largest batch of planet discoveries ever"

[https://exoplanets.jpl.nasa.gov/news/1346/](https://exoplanets.jpl.nasa.gov/news/1346/)

Related: "Mission Manager Q&A: Recovering The Kepler Spacecraft To Hunt For Exoplanets Again"

[http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/mission-manager- qa-r...](http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/mission-manager-qa- recovering-the-kepler-spacecraft-to-hunt-for-exoplanets-again)

<comment><USER7> Regarding the recovery:

If they are able to properly orient the spacecraft using solar pressure alone, couldn't this approach be purposely engineered for discharging momentum from reaction wheels in other craft, instead of expending propellant?

Source: [http://www.nasa.gov/kepler/keplers-second-light- how-k2-will-...](http://www.nasa.gov/kepler/keplers-second-light-how-k2-will- work)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any reasoning why the distribution of planet sizes aren't following a bell curve or similar pattern? Maybe due to what materials the planets are composed of puts them into separated size categories?

[https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/fi...](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/fig8-new-20use20this20one.jpg)

<comment><USER9> No idea how valid this is, but it might be because this data set is populated only by planets that one very particular piece of hardware can spot.

<comment> Tuna-Fish The main reason Kepler can only see specific kinds of planets is that you need to see three transits before you confirm it, and that the further out a planet is from it's star, the less likely it is that it will ever transit.

These two combine to make planets closer to the sun much more likely to be seen. If there was another Sol in a perfect place and at perfect alignment and Kepler had been looking straight at it, by now we would have detected Mercury, Earth, Venus and Mars but nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This would be very interesting to analyze. Any way to get some data about all these planets in the same place? planet Mass, planet orbit radius, star category, etc?

<comment><USER11> I created this visualization that shows all exoplanets superimposed on our solar system with size, orbit, and temperature data:

[http://www.asterank.com/galaxies/](http://www.asterank.com/galaxies/)

Here's the code that I use to suck down exoplanet data, which may be useful to you:

[https://github.com/typpo/asterank/blob/master/data/pipeline/...](https://github.com/typpo/asterank/blob/master/data/pipeline/run/30_exoplanets/exoread.py)

<comment><USER12> I think you meant to link to [http://www.asterank.com/exoplanets](http://www.asterank.com/exoplanets)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> so are there any em spikes coincident with the transit of each planet? I mean if there was a civilization broadcasting into space with analog, we might hear them. And since they are using radio, we can be pretty sure they would be technologically inferior to us and unlikely to come over and eat us if we said hello.

<comment><USER14> > come over and eat us if we said hello

It's so expensive in energy to do this that it's unlikely.

Even the moon, if it was made of gold bars stacked at the ready to be picked up and brought back to Earth, it wouldn't be worth it.

Even if you had technology to transport a significant force across the span of light years, why endanger that with the risk of resistance? Just go to one of the billions of habitable planets that don't have complex, radio transmitting intelligences on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> At least one (Kepler 1229b) earth-sized planet in the habitable zone! That's very exciting.

<comment><USER16> "Well, son, there is a reason the planet you live on and all the ones your friends do are named Kepler or Webb..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, when can I move?

<comment><USER18> Let's see. Using current tech to get to our closest neighbour, Alpha Centauri, if you leave this afternoon, you should be arriving sometime in the year 102,016.

How about we skip this dream, along with world peace, and make baby steps, like everybody using their indicators while driving?

<comment><USER19> AC is only 4.5 years away. If we really wanted to go there we could most definitely build something that can travel at 0.5c and get there at, say, 6 to 7 years. It's not hard to keep accelerating and decelerating for 1m/s for 15 years with current tech.

<comment><USER20> _> It's not hard to keep accelerating and decelerating for 1m/s for 15 years with current tech._

Just to put some numbers to this, I went to my go-to quick reference for these types of problems is the Usenet Physics FAQ article on the equations for relativistic rockets:

[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/Rocket/r...](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/Rocket/rocket.html)

The key numbers are the trip time T according to the ship's clocks, the trip time t according to clocks on Earth or Alpha Centauri, the maximum velocity v achieved by the ship, and the mass ratio M, or kg of fuel needed per kg of payload. Assuming that we accelerate for half the distance and then turn around and decelerate for the other half, and that we use an ideal rocket that converts fuel to energy at 100% efficiency and exhausts all that energy out the back with perfect collimation (so it all goes into changing the rocket's momentum and not into heat or some other waste product), the formulas for these are:

T = 2 (c/a) arccosh (ad/2c^2 + 1),

t = sqrt((d/c)^2 + 2d/a),

v = at/2 sqrt(1 + (at/2c)^2)

MR = exp(aT/c) - 1,

where a is the acceleration, d is the total distance traveled, and c is the speed of light. The equation for T, assuming that we accelerate halfway, then turn around and decelerate to arrive at the destination at rest, is

Plugging in a = 1m/s^2, d = the distance to Alpha Centauri, or about 4 x 10^16 meters, and c = 3 x 10^8 m/s, we get

T = 3.9 x 10^8 s, or about 12.7 years,

t = 4.2 x 10^8 s, or about 13.6 years,

v = 1.7 x 10^8 m/s, or about 0.57 c,

MR = 2.7

This is a pretty small mass ratio, but of course it was derived using highly idealized assumptions. More realistic assumptions would result in a much larger mass ratio. Also, a maximum speed of more than half the speed of light would create huge radiation issues requiring heavy shielding, so the payload mass would be very large.

<comment><USER20> Oops, one typo here, the formula for t should be:

t = 2 sqrt((d/2c)^2 + d/a)

The numerical result I gave for t is correct.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla Model X Launch, Tonight 8pm PST - <AUTHOR> http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx <comment><USER2> Is this the model that's supposed to be $30,000 and ship in 2015? I love Tesla's strategy of releasing a new model every 3 years for half the price of the previous model. Does this mean they will have a $15,000 model in 2018? That would be great.

Starting with 2020 electric cars should start going mainstream, which is not too bad. I think many people wouldn't have expected this until 2050 (when we'd be really running out of oil) about 5-10 years ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember reading that they were working on an SUV body with essentially the same mechanics as the Model S. However, the back-lit profile in my email looks like another sedan.

<comment><USER3> The Model X is supposed to be a crossover (aka hatchback), not a full SUV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reading this headline before my first cup of coffee this morning and having a dim awareness that Elon Musk is involved in spaceflight (no doubt conflating Model X with SpaceX) I was disappointed to find discussion of cars instead of rockets.

<comment><USER5> In 2 months SpaceX will send a Dragon capsule to do a near docking with the ISS. That will be an exciting milestone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Electric cars will go mainstream when:

1\. They become priced like regular cars 2\. They have the range of regular cars 3\. They come in form factors similar to regular cars 4\. They are cheaper to own and operate than regular cars 5\. They stop being about "the environment". San Francisco is not the entire US.

It looks like we're getting a bit closer to all of these milestones, which is good.

<comment><USER7> All of your points are valid, but I think you miss the main one, which Clarkson nailed: electric cars will go mainstream when they don't take three hours for a "quick" charge. They already have the range of gas-powered cars (~300 miles for the S), but once you hit that, you're stuck. It makes long- distance trips onerous, if not impossible.

Anyway, they're getting cheaper all the time, batteries are getting better, and when you can convincingly pitch the TCO as being less than a gas car, you'll start to see people jump on it. Infrastructure will follow from there.

<comment><USER8> Clarkson is professionally paid to be an elitist fool.

Most Europeans already believe 300 miles range and room for eight passengers is a luxury. Why? Their gasoline costs about twice as much per liter/gallon. Their automakers build mostly hatchbacks to match demand. It's rare to even see a large van on the roads. When you see an SUV/crossover in Europe, it's the sign of a wealthy person who lives to excess.

As I pointed out in my article, ten minute chargers are only five to ten years from commercial release. You can charge your Nissan Leaf from 0 to 80% in 25 minutes using today's Level 3 charger without waiting for any new technology. That'd be ~45 minutes for a Tesla Model S.

If gasoline prices predictably rise and it only takes as much time to top up at the local mall as it takes to stop there for a latte and a sandwich, you'd be a fool to not own an electric vehicle.

<comment><USER6> That charger is $10,000. About the cost of 208 fill-ups in my Mazda in the Chicagoland area. I fill up once every other week.

The Leaf already costs double what my car does. We're not quite at the point where this makes sense.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. I won't pay $10k for one of those chargers. Car dealers, shopping malls, and Starbucks will. I'm getting a Level 2 charger because I don't need thirty minute charges at home when the car spends all night in a garage anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was thinking first "what an ass, makes us curious now when it is almost a year away".

Then i remembered how you write dates.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is supposed to be a crossover vehicle that Elon Musk claims will be "faster then a Porsche 911 and roomier than an Audi Q7". Also he claims the most interesting view of it is with its doors open (a reference to something rumored to be called Falcon doors, some sort of folding doors).

The next model after this is the one he wants to make for like $15000-$20000

They seem to think Model X will be very well received.

<comment><USER11> Here's an outline shot Elon Musk just posted with the doors open: [https://twitter.com/#!/elonmusk/status/167648387313840128/ph...](https://twitter.com/#!/elonmusk/status/167648387313840128/photo/1)

His next tweet said they are not gull-wing. They definitely do something interesting though.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if I can turn my Model S deposit into a Model X deposit after tonight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seeing the design elements that went into making the Model S from the ground- up, I am excited to see what a "family" all-electric car built from the ground-up will look like. I wonder if there's going to be another HUGE touchscreen panel.

And how many seats? I'm pretty stoked. And maybe my Tesla stock will have a nice bump after the unveiling. [weak disclosure] :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I saw the early prototypes... it's awesome. I'll be there tonight and will post some photos to @jason

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't follow the car business; Is it normal or unusual to have a car launch event like this?

<comment><USER16> Auto show season is starting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Does this mean they will have a $15,000 model in 2018? That would be great.

I wouldn't want Tesla to release a car even at $30,000. It takes away the from the rarity and coolness. Electric cars certainly do need to evolve and Tesla has done an incredible job, but there are dozens of other manufacturers out there that are just as capable. If you could buy a Bugatti or Koenigsegg for $75,000 they would certainly be less attractive to auto enthusiasts. It's human nature to want what we can't have. If Prada (not knock-offs) started selling their bags at $50 a pop do you think girls would still worship them?

<comment><USER18> If caring about the environment and going electric becomes a high-priced elite-tribal-consumerist trend just take me off this planet; I'm not interested in it anymore.

<comment><USER17> You must have missed when I said "Electric cars certainly do need to evolve and Tesla has done an incredible job, but there are dozens of other manufacturers out there that are just as capable."

Are you trying to argue that you're not paying for a brand? If so, by your logic then stores like Saks Fifth Avenue's "green" brands or high end auto manufacturers with hybrid vehicles have no place in America.

<comment><USER18> I get what you were saying, but this is (one of?) the first commercially available full-electric car manufacturers and it would be really depressing if it turned into a Ferrari-like club where only millionaires can afford to own it. It's a specific type of market where either you're all in, or you're out. Bugatti doesn't make a point-A to point-B winter-beater and never will. The FIRST EVER electric-car company becoming one of those luxury brands would push the democratization of electric-car ownership that much further into the future.

The Tesla S is great because it seems that upper-middle class folk will be able to own it, and I hope they continue down that path bringing electric cars to everyone.

EDIT: Also the other large manufacturers weren't interested in investing in electric because their analysis showed them they wouldn't see enough return. Tesla is there to prove them wrong. (Some large car-companies are only now building electric cars but it feels rather like a green-washing campaign - it's usually only one model, cars are dinky and impractical...etc)

<comment><USER17> I'll try to translate this to another industry for you.

Think about premium brands such as Sony, Apple, and Samsung. They make high end electronics that cost a pretty penny. Not everyone can afford a $2,500 laptop or $3,000 TV. When these giants come out with new technology it's terribly expensive at first(think plasma TV's 7+ years ago). Well, after a few years of production and a limited market, the lower-rung guys are able to catch up and get their share too(Vizio, Olevia, Sanyo) granted their products generally aren't as polished. The technology has evolved enough that others are able to produce it so everyone can afford it, while the big name guys still reign king because not only did they offer it at first, but their product is still superior. This same thing is happening right now. Tesla is the premium brand leader, and the other guys (Chevy, Ford, Nissan) are finally starting to get their act together.

The majority of people would rather have a Sony TV than a Vizio(assuming the picture quality is very similar) all because of that little Sony logo. Brands rule America. It's sad but true. Otherwise there would be no reason to spend $100 on a t-shirt.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure why your post is down-voted. It's just an opinion and I don't believe well articulated opinions should be down-voted.

I don't think Sony, Apple Samsung are the "premium/luxury" brands (Apple maybe was considered one when it first came out but it certainly wasn't in the same class of exclusivity as a Bugatti is in the car world). I see all of those electronics manufacturers as the GMs or Toyota's of the hardware industry. They make a wide variety of electronics at different price points for different buyers. There's nothing exclusive or elitist about owning a Samsung or an Apple product.

I'd like to see Tesla as the disruptive force among the well-entrenched car brands like GM or Toyota, but I'd rather it not become the super-rare and expensive alternative to them. I realize we pay some premium based on what brand we choose but I was just expressing what I hope the Tesla brand would come to represent (and also what I had heard its mission was initially).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


VoiceBase – Deep Learning Speech Recognition and Speech Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://www.voicebase.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I used this service today - it was the 2nd google result for 'auto transcribe mp3'. The result was sent to my inbox in under 10 minutes. The audio I needed transcribed: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouyCabSt8Xg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouyCabSt8Xg) The output: Would you love to dramatically increase your sales through the use of Facebook ads Hi I'm Jerry of us and I run a Facebook ads agency specializing specifically in chiropractors and in the following video I'm going to show you the exact campaign I would run to make you a bunch of money so let me know what you think OK So using these cool tools given to us by Facebook [...] I do not know these guys, but this was exactly what I needed. Kudos, and has anyone used this at scale and/or for business purposes as well?</comment>


Secret History of Women in Coding - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html <comment><USER2> One thing to note about this downward trend of women in CS: its unique. If you look at the trends for women in law school, med school, physical sciences, and computer science, they all gradually increased to ~30% until the time highlighted in the article. After that, all of the fields kept growing to 40-50% ... except computer science, which sits at ~20% nowadays.

One thought I have: of those 4 fields, computer science has changed the most in our culture. Nintendo happened, the internet happened, the personal computer happened. Majoring in CS can mean money and status now.

A lot of these pictures ... women moving cords, operating keypunch machines ... it doesn't seem great. It looks like men relegated women to tedium. In the same way that women were typists back in the day. Now I realize those photos are much older, but maybe these sexist attitudes persisted back in the late 70's and early 80's and CAUSED more women to be in CS? Women did the "busy work" for the fancy new "computer machine business", while the men ran the business.

Is this a bad take? I just have a hard time believing the 70's/80's were a better time for women in CS. Granted, they didn't have YouTube videos like "Mr. Conservative DESTROYS SJW academic in CS debate", but still...

<comment><USER3> >One thing to note about this downward trend of women in CS: its unique...

I wonder _why_ , though? If we're to follow the social trends, these same women - who worked in computing _before_ the 80's - were the mothers and grandmothers of the children of the 80's, yeah? Did their attitude towards computing and women in computing _suddenly_ change overnight - even though they were in the very same field, themselves? What would cause them to, in not even the span of a generation, decide that home computers should be relegated to boys, alone? Sure, Hollywood didn't help, but I feel like there must be something missing from this equation that would explain the _why_ behind it.

>A lot of these pictures ... women moving cords, operating keypunch machines ... it doesn't seem great. It looks like men relegated women to tedium. In the same way that women were typists back in the day. Now I realize those photos are much older, but maybe these sexist attitudes persisted back in the late 70's and early 80's and CAUSED more women to be in CS? Women did the "busy work" for the fancy new "computer machine business", while the men ran the business.

I don't see how that's "busy work", when the computing infrastructures back then were _way_ different. Your punch card were your modern-day versions of instructions sets and you had to know what you were doing with them to get the machine to do what you wanted to do (especially, if you had to punch the cards, yourself). Changing cables on an old switch panel is like connecting RJ-45 to your laptop, today. None of this is "busy work" and I'm not even sure _how_ one would get the idea that it _is_ busy work...?

>Is this a bad take?

Possibly. Having not been alive before the early 80's, myself, I won't try to lie and answer in the negative _nor_ the affirmative. What I can tell you, though, is that women helped the industry thrive and grow (especially, during periods of war); so, it - more than likely - wasn't the cesspool of sexism that you're implying.

<comment><USER2> >I wonder why, though?

One reply to my comment suggested that women in CS kept increasing, just not as exponentially as for boys. IF that's true (I don't know the data AT ALL), then the precise question is what kept them from coming in at higher rates like boys did. The best reason I can come up with is Nintendo->PlayStation/Xbox->Steam, but I have no proof.

>I don't see how that's "busy work"

Maybe it wasn't. But here's my idea: CS was respectable before it was respected. And my thought is maybe women "snuck in" during that interim period. And then all the men looking for status came in and drowned them out.

<comment><USER3> >The best reason I can come up with is Nintendo->PlayStation/Xbox->Steam, but I have no proof.

Eh, the ability (or favour) of playing games doesn't equate to skill in the computing field, which is also what the article inferred. I think that the idea was to have entrants into university who already had exposure to early- level technology (e.g.: phreaking or hacking or debugging, as the old definitions apply). Universities could, in theory, save money by expending less on entry-level classes, which didn't proffer the same opportunity to those whom weren't previously exposed to the field.

From a capitalist perspective, that idea makes sense: Increase profit margins by the supply/demands of the market; if you have more candidates with exposure, of course it's more encumbant for anyone _not_ exposed to the field to even try - you tailor for those already exposed and save tons of cash.

Where the delineation occurs is between the previous workforce (pre-80's) and the up and coming workforce (80's and later). The finger-pointing seems to infer that it all boils-down to boys having the better opportunity because they were more-so exposed to computers/technology than girls; however, the same families that were buying computers and putting them in boys' rooms would've had women that previously worked in the computing field, yeah? So, then, the inference comes of "who made these specific decisons?" and that's where we start losing insight. To say that fathers had sole power in the family dynamics during the 80's is to discredit the entire reality that divorces saw an exponential increase in the 70's[1]. So, it would be a falsehood to presume that men are solely responsible for shouldering the blame during this time.

Even worse, because we lose sight of the _why_ , I fear that we're far more susceptible to repeating the same pattern[s] because we don't know what to look-out for - if that makes sense?

>And my thought is maybe women "snuck in" during that interim period.

Eh, I think it isn't as nefarious as we're inclined to believe that it is. Given the time period[s], the saturation of women in all fields was bore out of want (and possibly some necessity): Conscription during war-times means a vaccuum in the work-force and, without steady income from the "bread-winners", women not only chose to enter the workforce, it was considered a civic duty to contribute to the war-effort[s] (see: Rosy the Riveter[0] as an example).

During the solid-state era, I'll call it, women bore the shoulder of the brain and physical work in the computing field. When it became more wet-ware (plug- n-play), that's when we started to see the decrease. If that's correlatable to other reasons, we might find the culprit there? I'm not sure.

However, we also need to include other considerations: Women who were working in the 50's, if they worked the predominance of their time in one company, likely saw retirement in the 70's and 80's, yeah? So, during that time, there should've been a noticable lack of available women in the workforce - if women entering the chosen education fields decreased before then. Yet, from the study perspectives, the predominance of those _seems_ to be purely related to women entering the chosen fields in education, yeah?

So, if the available market has more demand than supply, then entry via experience (which is how - I believe - we got to the "experience in lieu of education" aspect) make sense as to the rationale of _why_ the became dominated by boys/men; yet, we come full-circle back to asking, "Why did they have those opportunites _more_ , in the first place, if the previous workforce _saw_ more women than men in that field? Was there some underlying reason why daughters and granddaughters _didn 't_ want to be like their mothers or grandmothers? Was there some foreshadowed type of warning about _not_ working in that field?"

We're addressing the effect, which is great, but we still don't understand the _cause_. The article seems to boil-it down to sexism in the workplace but the question it doesn't answer is: "Did that sexism exist _before_?" If so, then it would make sense that older generations would warn and ward-off younger generations from entering the field. If not, then there's something amiss.

If the sexism did _not_ exist, before, then we should also investigate the _why_ it came about after the decline, in the first place. Was it akin to the Irish disliking the American-Irish for their abandonment during the Great Famine? If so, then did that morph - much the same way as the hate for the American-Irish, when they call themselves Irish today - because it became the modus operandi for the general work-force over time? These are painfully complicated social questions, I'm aware, but I think that they need to be asked, so that we can understand the picture - fully - to prevent it from happening ever again.

If the failure was entirely due to multiple aspects of society, all at once, then addressing one or two isn't going to prevent it from recurring and that should be our ultimate goal - for everyone, yeah?

(Sorry for the diatribe.)

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter) [1] - [https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/jan/28/divorc...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/jan/28/divorce- rates-marriage-ons)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mary Ellen Wilkes [1], one of the women featured in the NYT article, wrote several reports and papers about her work on the LINC laboratory minicomputer, including [2] and [3].

From [2]: "LAP6 is an online system running on a 2048 word LINC which provides full facilities for text editing, automatic filing and file maintenance, and program preparation and assembly. ... The small memory has had surprisingly little effect on the functional specification of the system ... and perhaps operated with a positive effect on the criterion of simplicity. Compromises were, of course, necessary, but we also found that operating features which may seem highly desirable, for example, to a professional in the computer field, can be so much excess baggage in an on-line applications environment. ..."

[3] describes the ingenious virtual memory scheme: "An algorithm that runs on a 2048-word LINC provides efficient on-line editing of character strings virtually unlimited in length. Fixed-address LINC tape holds the character sequence in the manner of a scroll. Edited characters are spliced directly in or out of the scroll as it moves across a display scope under the viewer's control. A 512-character "playground" created at the splice point provides sufficient ease to permit changing the scroll contents dynamically..."

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

2\. "Conversational Access to a 2048-word Machine," Comm. of the Association for Computing Machinery 13, 7, pp. 407–14, July 1970. [http://www.digibarn.com/stories/linc/documents/LINC-Mary- All...](http://www.digibarn.com/stories/linc/documents/LINC-Mary-Allen- Wilkes/Conversational-Access-CACM-1970.pdf)

3\. "Scroll Editing: an on-line algorithm for manipulating long character strings," IEEE Trans. on Computers 19, 11, pp. 1009–15, November 1970. [http://www.digibarn.com/stories/linc/documents/LINC-Mary- All...](http://www.digibarn.com/stories/linc/documents/LINC-Mary-Allen- Wilkes/Scroll-Editing-Proc.-IEEE.pdf)</comment>


Incentives and Carried Interest - <AUTHOR> http://bhargreaves.com/2010/06/incentives-carried-interest/

<comment><USER2> " _I don't want to see venture capitalists without significant carried interest – timid, risk-averse and totally misaligned with the interests of entrepreneurs and LPs. This will inevitably lead to lower returns – and an eventual decrease in money flowing into venture capital, and by association, startups._ "</comment>


Why I don't regret quitting my job - unexpected perks of startup life - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lawnstarter.com/post/71468044298/why-i-dont-regret-quitting-my-job-unexpected-perks

<comment><USER2> Why does the perception exist that working longer hours equates to good forward progress? That unless you aren't willing to devote your every waking moment to an idea, you aren't a "doer?" This is such a ridiculous idea...

<comment><USER3> Where does he say anything about working long hours?

The most successful entrepreneurs I know work a lot, not because they think more hours=more output. It's just that they are so passionate about their product that they live and breathe it. If you aren't a founder, you simply don't understand.

<comment><USER2> You are correct, he never explicitly said anything about working long hours, but implied that only those that work "after 5" and don't indulge in entertainment such as netflix are motivated and "doers." I don't know how else to interpret that paragraph.

And I was a founder and worked for seven years for the still-successful company. we made it a point to set good examples of working only while productive, allowing remote work, and not making any hourly demands on employees. knowing when to NOT work is more important than working hard constantly, especially when you are in a leadership position and don't want to set implied expectations on employees.

<comment><USER4> Hey Hox, I'm one of the lawnstarter guys(although I didn't write the post) Just wanted to say I definitely agree with the work only while productive, and I do sometimes catch myself doing useless work. I personally get off on trying to build something bigger than myself though and really enjoy the work. I'm curious about what you said regarding implied expectations. Do you see it as an issue if I choose to work that much but don't by any means reprimand an employee for not following suit?

<comment><USER2> it really depends on the situation. of course I'm being g a bit dramatic; working long hours is really hard to not do as a founder, because it really is your life. but it's not 100% your employees' lives, and implied culture is just as important as that defined by company mission and policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> ah he's 22 years old, at 22 I hardly cared or really needed to work either as I had my parents as a fall back, now involve a baby and wife and lets see how easily this exact decision can be rendered.</comment>


Chromecast in India-Review - <AUTHOR> http://gxpe.blogspot.in/2013/08/adventures-with-chromecast-in-india.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The possibilities with this little device(Chromecast) are endless.

Some nice apps which would be cool if they are built:

1\. Play local audio and video. I think someone has already built an app for this.

2\. Skype app for Chromecast

3\. I am now building an app which integrates with your phone. While you are watching the TV, you will now get an alert in the TV when someone calls you along with information about who is calling you. I hope to finish this in a couple of months if I get some time.

4\. Alarm app which starts casting some predefined content to the TV at the specified time.

5\. Fitness app with your own personal trainer on the TV.

Please share any cool apps which you think can be built on the Chromecast</comment>