There was no stimulus - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/opinion/11krugman.html

<comment><USER2> I am tired of Krugman's Op-Eds. He keeps telling us that Government should spend more. Spend more on what?

Government can pay one set of people to dig holes and another set of people to fill them up. Surely, it would create jobs but is this what we want?

We all agree that government needs to create 'productive' jobs otherwise there is no point in spending money.

From his article, he notes that state government laid off school teachers (the productive people) when the budget ran tight instead of firing the bureaucrats who shuffle papers. Why does he expect that if Government were to spend more money they would somehow create productive jobs and not more bureaucracies which waste our hard earned money?

Reminds me of this quote:

"The curious case of economics is to demonstrate to men, what little they know, about what they THINK they can design."

<comment><USER3> If you read his columns, he's pretty explicit about what government should spend money on: (1) infrastructure projects, which will both increase employment now (particularly in the construction sector) as well as boost future productivity; (2) the social safety net, so people aren't homeless or starving (the people who receive these payments are also, as a bonus, nearly guaranteed to spend all of the money).

Also, you complain about laying off school teachers while retaining bureaucrats. What exactly do you think the ratio is between the two? Because I'm guessing it's a lot higher than you expect, so given the size of the budget deficits, there wasn't a ton of choice.

<comment><USER2> You want Government to spend on Infrastructure, sure. Get ready to pay through your nose for that infrastructure.

I am from NJ and they are trying to build up rail tunnel to connect to NY and here's the cost comparison:

"Lotschberg Base Tunnel, world's longest land tunnel, dug under a mountain at the peak of the world economic boom and completed in 2007; 21.5 miles long, about $4.5 billion (might be 1998 dollars, though); cost per mile: $209 million

Gotthard Base Tunnel, when completed in 2017 will become the world's longest railway tunnel; at least 35.4 miles plus additional tunnels, shafts and passages totaling 94.3 miles, about $10.2 billion; cost per mile: $288 million

Channel Tunnel or "Chunnel", connecting France and England, world's longest undersea tunnel; 31.4 miles, opened 1994, cost $7.4 billion (might be 1985 dollars and the cost overruns did lead to bankruptcy); cost per mile: $235 million

Wushaoling Tunnel, traveling through four regional fault zones; 13 miles long, opened 2006, cost $845 million; cost per mile: $65 million

New Jersey-New York Mass Transit/ARC Tunnel, scheduled for completion in 2018; 3.5 miles long, cost $11-14 billion; cost per mile: $3.7 billion (I used $13 billion for this calculation)"

From [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/10/08/new-jerseys- ca...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/10/08/new-jerseys-canceled- railroad-tunnel-in-perspective/)

Exactly how many jobs do you think infrastructure jobs will create? And what about all those people who are not in infrastructure sector? What about the school teachers which he keeps talking about?

Also, how does increasing social safety net CREATE new jobs? You are simply handing out money.

<comment><USER4> When poor people get money they spend it. Almost all of it. Very little goes into a bank account. This increase in spending leads to more jobs for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER5> This is popular misconception. It sounds good, but it just isn't true.

<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~shapiro/TaxRebates.pdf>

<comment><USER6> The reliability of that data is somewhat questionable, given that studies since then have taken issue with these findings, both in relation to the 2008 tax rebates (1) and later analysis of rebates paid in 2001 (2).

1\. <http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1541>

2\. <http://www.nber.org/papers/w10784>

Whichever interpretation one places on it, it strikes me that the arguments for against payments are fundamentally identical to those regarding tax cuts.

<comment><USER5> Regarding link 1, it reports spending as a % of household income. That's a silly way to report the data.

A quick google search suggests the average household income of $70k in greater LA. Treating low income households as earning $15k (an overestimate) and treating all other households as earning $70k (an underestimate, since low income households are excluded), we find that high income households spend 2x more as a result of stimulus. (Rough numbers, but it's the best I can do. They don't provide all necessary data to get precise numbers.)

Link 2 is gated, I can't get in.

See also this paper, which shows the same effect happened in the current recession.

<http://papers.nber.org/papers/w16246>

(Ungated: <http://ow.ly/2Fx1i> )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure why the good doctor isn't worried about inflationary spirals. He talks about deflationary spirals, but here's the situation I see:

Economy goes into a depression, so there's stimulus, to give jobs to either government positions or favored private entities. The requisite money printing causes inflation. Inflation causes the cost of living and operating businesses to go up, which either sends jobs overseas (prompting government to inflate more to create a better trade balance) or corporations (esp. small businesses which are more sensitive to price indices and less likely to get stimulus) to close shop. If jobs are lost, government must inflate more to pay for new jobs or create more stimulus.

Rinse, wash, repeat.

All things being equal, I'd rather have a deflationary spiral, which can have a levelling effect - as inflation erodes saving power - hitting the poor far far harder than the rich.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps a stupid question but given the deficits created by two wars, the post 9/11 spending spree, unfunded tax cuts, TARP, and the first stimulus package why aren't we already deep into an inflationary spiral today? Is there anything to suggest another $1-2T of government stimulus brings us to a breaking point for inflation?

<comment><USER9> It's very simple: People are still willing to lend money to the US government at very low rates because the other areas for investment (i.e. the stock market) are viewed as too risky.

Additional government stimulus has little to do with it at this point, that will only come into play when inflation actually hits. When things change and people become more tolerant of risk and less tolerant of low returns, all the government deficits that have been accumulated will become a huge issue. When lenders to the US government start demanding 5%+ on their money, the interest payments on our debt will skyrocket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Then why do a bunch of the road work construction projects around San Francisco have big (an likely expensive) signs saying they were paid for by a federal stimulus program?

</comment><comment><USER11> Let's not mention the bankster bailouts, clearly they did not happen according to the propaganda rag that is the NYT.

<comment><USER12> Clearly. The reason they weren't mentioned is because nobody makes the claim that the bank bailouts served to generally improve the economy; they were primarily an attempt to loosen up the credit market.

They are not a very useful form of "stimulus," and it wouldn't make any sense to judge the efficacy of tax cuts, or that of government spending on jobs, based on the results of TARP.

<comment><USER11> They were promoted by both majority parties not as stimulating the economy, but of saving it from otherwise certain collapse.

They are also government spending which the NYT article claims hasn't happened. The exact statement in the article is:

"Here's what you need to know: The whole story is a myth. There never was a big expansion of government spending."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, now I've seen everything!

</comment><comment><USER14> So this is the new tactic? The reason it hasn't worked is because we haven't actually DONE it? So where the hell did all my tax dollars go?

<comment><USER12> Krugman details exactly where he claims most of the stimulus money went. Go read the link.

<comment><USER14> Actually he never actually DOES from what I can tell. He dances around the issue and makes general claims but never actually says "X% went here. Y% went here". He says things like "spending on safety-net programs, mainly unemployment insurance and Medicaid, has risen" which means squat. Is he implying that the administration misused stimulus funds to instead fund saftey-net programs?

The fact of the matter is that the stimulus money went exactly where it was intended. Government works programs and questionable "initiatives" (Unless those signs I see every 10 miles are made up).

It just didn't work so the new tactic is to claim "It wasn't enough" or "It wasn't actually spent".

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's fair to characterize that as the "new tactic." Liberals were complaining that it wasn't enough while and ever since the Recovery Act was passed. Krugman himself was yelling pretty loudly about it, cite: [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus- arithme...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithmetic- wonkish-but-important/) At the time, liberals were advocating a $1-2 trillion stimulus made up primarily of government spending, which is obviously not remotely what we got.

Funding safety net programs is not really a "misuse of funds;" it was built into the legislation. (Maybe it's a poor use of funds, but that's Congress's fault more than the White House's.)

If you want specifics on how money was distributed, just go to the source: <http://www.recovery.gov/> It looks like a bit more than a third of the money allocated actually went toward "contracts, grants, and loans," which is the category that one would expect to be creating jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was a time when Mr Krugman was worth a read. That time ended a while ago. Now his writing is a constant stream of attacks on those who disagree with him. This latest is a new low when it comes to seriousness.

His current argument is that there has been no recent expansion in federal government spending. His logic is that federal money given to states should not be included in federal spending figures. Too bad the debt holder won't agree.

<comment><USER3> Sadly, no.

His argument (very plainly written in the article): there was no stimulus. The exact quote is, "There never was a big expansion of government spending. In fact, that has been the key problem with economic policy in the Obama years: we never had the kind of fiscal expansion that might have created the millions of jobs we need."

He then provides details: net government employment has fallen. There haven't been any big infrastructure projects. State spending has fallen severely. Much of the stimulus spending was tax cuts, which probably don't affect employment much and we know well to not have the highest employment multipliers of all possible spending choices. He carefully differentiates between federal and government spending.

So, to summarize: you misstate his argument. You misstate the supporting details. Either you can't read or you didn't understand anything he wrote. Who exactly isn't serious?

<comment><USER7> When I drive on the highways, I see all these ARRA signs all over the place. Driving cross country last summer from San Diego to DC I ran through no less than 8 cone zones. And again this summer from DC back to San Diego, I drove through about as many (and took a shorter route too). At the university of Maryland, they were building a "center for advanced physics research" using ARRA funds - even though there were two whole wings in the chemistry department that were empty, and we have reached 'peak undergrad' as the demographic trend has the echo-boomer undergraduates receding. Have you driven down 16th street? All of columbia heights is a disaster zone as federal stimulus funds attempt to redo 18th century urban planning. DC is building a trolley? (isn't there a reason why trolleys became obsolete in the mid-20th c?) to service southeast (of course the limousine liberals like krugman would never be caught in southeast DC)... Tearing up pennsylvania avenue in anacostia made delivering food to the homebound poor extremely difficult... on a saturday morning.

Oh, I suppose I should disclose that my research job at the University of Maryland was underwritten with ARRA money? I suppose I'm a bit of a hypocrite, then, for taking the job when I was opposed to ARRA, but when I signed on to the job I really did think that the project was funded by the american cancer society, and I felt too obligated to the boss and too much in need of a salary to give it up when I found out the truth.

The problem is that Krugman is counting 'stimulus' by number of jobs. Well, the fact of the matter is that the money was spent, leaving it to do its horrible inflationary magic. Throwing money at a solution can either create jobs, or pad the salary of people who already have money. Now, if I were an employer, and got a fat wad of cash to do X, would I really distribute the money to create jobs? Or circle the wagons and give myself and my current employees a pay hike in anticipation of the inflation that's coming down the pike?

<comment><USER4> " leaving it to do its horrible inflationary magic"? The inflation rate is very low.

"Now, if I were an employer, and got a fat wad of cash to do X, would I really distribute the money to create jobs?" That depends on the situation and climate you are in. You would spend the money to create jobs by expanding your business if it made sense to do so.

<comment><USER7> " The inflation rate is very low."

No doubt. Government spending and debt expansion has up till now largely been counterbalanced by private debt contraction. Also, as a poster below explained, it takes time for money expansion to manifest itself as increased prices. (hence my statement "coming down the pike").

Of course, private debt contraction will become increasingly harder as inflationary pressures raise the cost of living and make borrowing money (apparently) less painful over the short-and-medium runs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


JavaScript Is Not A Language - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2011/12/javascript-is-not-language.html <comment><USER2> In response to astrology criticism, Giles suggested people read up on what astrology experts had to say on the topic before dismissing it.

Apparently this is not something he self-applies when it comes to Lisp or JavaScript criticism.</comment>


About a Month at Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://bensign.com/about-a-month-at-yahoo <comment><USER2> Ahh, the honeymoon period. Look for a post in 11 months (+/\- monetary incentives) called "Moving on..."

<comment><USER3> BenSchaechter, you've been hellbanned for at least 506 days, probably because of your submissions. Normally I don't tell people that they've been hellbanned, but since this is your post that has been linked to I thought you should know that not everyone can see your response to their comments.

Edit: @coolsunglasses, thanks for the follow up. I can see why a YC moderator would think that his posts are linkbait.

<comment><USER4> He's been told this several times before, that he hasn't noticed is amusingly symptomatic of _why_ he got hellbanned to begin with. (Spamming/saying his piece, then never returning)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I wake up, shower, and drive to work early to have breakfast. I spend all > day at work, go to the gym and have dinner, do a little bit more work and > don't get home until 9 or 10 every night. My apartment's sole purpose has > become a place for me to sleep.

I'm glad he's happy (right now), but this is exactly why I will never work for a company like Yahoo. I absolutely love what I do. And I protect it by ensuring I have healthy boundaries. No, Yahoo isn't "taking care" of you Ben. They're taking _advantage_.

<comment><USER6> Living like this is likely by his own choice. Yahoo! is actually very good when it comes to work/life balance.

<comment><USER7> Yup, exactly. I've been at Y! for almost 4 years and when I started I was absolutely a workaholic, but over the last 3 years I've transitioned into having a much healthier (and happier) balance. You can certainly work as much as want at Yahoo, but I don't think too many feel forced to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's comfortable about working until 9 or 10 pm every night? Would you be saying that if you had kids?

<comment><USER8> Just an FYI -- I don't have kids either.

I was pointing that out because it seemed like a massive contradiction to say that working at Yahoo is comfortable, but then to say in the following sentence that home life is non-existent. I often ponder the long term stuff in the tech realm as a current full time grad student, and this particular section was striking to me.

<comment><USER7> I get the sense that the OP's work hours are actually what he likes and is comfortable with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope we are not going to get once again so ecstatic about free food and gym. I know that this looked truly revolutionary during Google's hiring binge.

<comment><USER10> They're nice amenities and not all employers offer them.

<comment><USER11> They can be, but it depends on the company's culture. I personally prefer to go home and cook for myself, and when places offer free dinner, I worry that it comes with social pressure to stay and eat there, which I'd prefer not to do. If you have a family it's a bit less of a worry (you have an "excuse" for leaving to go eat with your family), but if you're single, there seems to be this expectation that _of course_ you'd love to eat dinner at work, and you must be somehow weird if you prefer to cook for yourself at home.

<comment><USER12> Just to chime in, there is zero pressure at Yahoo to stay and eat dinner on campus. In fact, not too many people stay unless there was an event going on before hand or something. Most people just leave. But as you said, it depends on the company's culture.

<comment><USER13> What about the opposite, are you outcasted like a freak if you abuse the free services and eat all your meals there?

<comment><USER12> Nope. I'm an intern there and usually work ~10-6, call my girlfriend back home/hang out for a bit with people, eat, and go home. There's really no judging, everyone seems super chill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The starry-eyed tone leads me to believe the author is a bit naive--ergo, in his early twenties. Other than that there's nothing interesting here.

<comment><USER15> I'm 24 and I've been at Yahoo for 5 years as a full-time Software Engineer. This place is a different company with Marissa leading the way. I share the OP's tone. I may also be naive, but the place is a lot flatter and there's a lot less in my way to make new ideas happen. I no longer stay at work late into the night, however. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "I spend all day at work".

Looks like the plan is working.

</comment><comment><USER17> > My apartment's sole purpose has become a place for me to sleep.

Not for long, hopefully! There is clearly a need for on-campus dormitories so that employees don't have to worry about maintaining their own spaces and finding things to do on their own time.

I can see it now...

Google employee: "I live in the Adwords Apartments. Pretty ritzy. Where do you live?" Yahoo employee: "I'm in Flickr House. It was recently renovated." Facebook employee: "You should apply for a job at Facebook. If you're really lucky, you might be able to get a room at Poke Place. We have the best co-ed hackathons on Saturday nights."

<comment><USER18> lol "Poke Place".

But seriously, I feel like technically you could be homeless if you're single and work at Google or (now) Yahoo, they've got gyms, couches, private rooms to chill, you just put a tie on the doorknob (or whatever) and sleep there for the night. and Boom! you've just saved yourself like $1000+ /month, not to mention paying for internet/cable or furniture and other household items, in fact, I wonder if people aren't doing that right now...

/s

<comment><USER19> Buy RV and park it in front of company... :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Directly reports to a VP and comments about the flatness of the company... Hmm... I see hundreds and hundreds of VPs...

</comment><comment><USER21> Acq-hired people are not going to be having the normal employee experience.

I would honestly rather have a $100k take-home but my employer pay $500k (i.e. 400k goes to charity) and think that's my salary, than a regular $150k. You get treated better if you cost more. Your salary is what it costs your employer to waste your time, so if you're at a high level, management actually fucking listens to you. Taking a long-term career perspective, it's worth a $50k/year drop to be in a situation where management feels like it can't afford not to take your ideas seriously.

In fact, I think that's so many talented engineers quit the employee game and become consultants in their 30s. Even if you're only able to get a few hours of work per week, you at least know that your boss is going to take your suggestions seriously.

Acq-hires are people bought in at a panic price ($1 million+ per engineer) so management actually listens to them because of what they cost. Until the "golden child" aura wears off and they're just regular employees.

<comment><USER15> I've been at Yahoo for 5 years as a Software Engineer.

This really is a new company under Marissa. I wasn't special, aqui-hired, or anything. I now can easily access management when I need them, my suggestions are taken seriously and acted on, and I get everything I need from upper management to excel at what I do. My manager has always been great, but now she is more empowered to get stuff done more than ever before.

I'm also 24, so I have a bit of a way to go before I get jaded and go into consulting. Maybe. But I've also been working for 5 years instead of school, which gives me a less than rosy perspective of life at a big company.

<comment><USER22> Hey congratulations on doing that and thanks for shedding some light on things inside. Sometimes I actually consider applying but the SRE jobs are a but scarce in London.

Can you speak a bit more on your unique situation of before a software engineer there since you were 19? Im quite curious what led to that.</comment></comment></comment>


Anarki – Community-managed fork of the Arc dialect of Lisp - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki <comment><USER2> What are the core features that differentiate Arc from other lisp dialects?

<comment><USER3> To me, one of the most fundamental features of Arc is taking the unification of code and data much further. I don't know of other Lisps that do this! K is another language that does.

      arc> (= l '(1 2 3))
      (1 2 3)
      arc> (= f [+ _ 1])
      #<fn: f>
      arc> (map l '(0 1 2))
      (1 2 3)
      arc> (map f '(0 1 2))
      (1 2 3)

<comment><USER4> Clojure's maps, sets, and vectors are all functions.

<comment><USER5> First public release of Arc came not long after Clojure.

Clojure is definitely better thought out as a language, and while Arc has some interesting ideas around web development, it also doesn't have a module system, so everything is just loaded into the same global namespace, which is pretty insane.

<comment><AUTHOR> Keep in mind that Arc is the start of something with long-term goals; further, it's part of a lifecycle that didn't necessarily start with Arc but with the first Lisp. PG points to an early essay titled "The Hundred-Year Language" [1] as an indicator of where Arc is intended to go and some future outlooks that might inspire more evolution.

I don't know that any programming language can be everything it needs to be from the outset, but it certainly needs inherent featured supporting longevity, a framework that supports change and evolution, while still having a pleasing and useful function that can be taken advantage of immediately.

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The curse of Common Lisp is that every good programmer who tries it wants to improve it. Which always results in a weird product with less, rather than more, appeal.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not nearly versed enough in either lisps or Arc to comment on it as a language, but as far as the architecture of the forum is concerned, what is the rationale for functions that appear to just print CSS and javascript[0]?

Wouldn't it be better to separate CSS and JS into separate, static files and only have the forum deal with, at best, IDs and classes in HTML?

I'm asking because I'm tempted to actually try to fork it and make a PR for it but it seems like such a simple and obvious bit of housekeeping that I have to assume there's a reason no one else has bothered yet.

[0][https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/master/lib/news.a...](https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/master/lib/news.arc#L482)

</comment><comment><USER8> > The intention is to be _extremely permissive_ in accepting patches.

Interesting to see what this will lead to.

</comment><comment><USER9> Am I understanding right that Arc is a Lisp-1, like Clojure?

<comment><USER3> Yes, or like Scheme.

<comment><USER9> I don't really get why you'd ever want a Lisp-2. Is there an argument/explanation somewhere that I could read up on?

(I've used Clojure and JS, which also seems like a "Lisp"-1 in that you can just put fns into variables and call them like 1st class fns, I just don't get why the distinction is in any way positive rather than confusing, and in Lisp-2s you now need to dereference everything all the time, like in Ruby).

<comment><USER3> If I understand it correctly, Lisp-2 is a way (not the only way!) of maintaining more intuitive semantics in the face of macros. If I write the following:

      (your-macro
        (let ((x (foo y))
          (bar x))))

I probably don't want the meaning of FOO or BAR to be up for grabs based on the expansion of YOUR-MACRO, and certainly not LET. Lisp-1s often have hygienic macros to deal with this concern, but not always.

<comment><USER10> Completing your thought (please let me know if I misunderstood you) Y _is_ up for grabs because what you wrote might macroexpand to for example (let ((y 5)) (let ((x (foo y))) (bar x))).

Where your comments falls down is that all the Lisp-2s I know allow the "function definition" of a symbol to be overriden in a similar way, e.g., in Common Lisp the macro might expand to (flet ((bar (arg) (* 5 arg))) (let ((x (foo y))) (bar x))) where FLET is a macro similar to LET but for function definitions.

<comment><USER11> Where your comment falls down is that in a Lisp-1, every _let_ is also a _flet_.

Also, of course, you must use gensyms for any locally bound identifier, whether it is a _let_ or _flet_. Nobody said that Lisp-2 allows for _labels_ and _flets_ without having to use gensyms; nobody in their right mind is going to lexically bind identifiers in macro-generated code that don't use gensymed names (other than in cases when there is no possible capture).

Lisp-2 addresses (in a good-enough-beats-perfect way) the following problem: the programmer's code wrongly capturing references that the macro would like to use.

The macro wants to generate some (foo ...) call to a function in the global environment. But, oops, in a Lisp-1, a user's local _variable_ foo takes this. In a Lisp-1, the user would have to have a local function by that name.

If global functions have reasonably descriptive names, and local functions are used sparingly, the potential for a clash is low.

We can have a warning when a local function shadows a global one; it won't be too much of a nuisance since global functiions tend to use descriptive names, and local functions are relatively rare compared to local variables.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Musoq – Use SQL on various data sources - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Puchaczov/Musoq <comment><USER2> Tangentially related: check out the (awesome) Postgres foreign data wrappers (FDWs) and the multicorn scripting library to write them. There's 100s of connectors listed on the wiki.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=postgres+fdw](https://www.google.com/search?q=postgres+fdw)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't aware of that, thank you!

I was targeting to be succesor of LogParser more :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Similar, but as a library, I did ExoSQL, for elixir [1], and heavily inspired by FDW from poatgres. I think there is great potencial on mixing data from many sources!

I think exosql has more features (lateral joins, subqueries, JSON support...), but I'm super happy to see more players in this field.

[1] [https://GitHub.com/Serverboards/exosql](https://GitHub.com/Serverboards/exosql)

</comment><comment><USER4> If csv is your main use case, also have a look at qtextasdata[0].

[0] [http://harelba.github.io/q/](http://harelba.github.io/q/)

<comment><USER5> i use this regularly, though importing to a local postges instance is a better way. That one extra step activates my laziness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you looked at Apache Calcite?

Quite similar in very high level concept.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't looked at that, Looks very promising! I was creating Musoq to get rid of scripting such things. Can't find is it possible to parametrize easily the table you are connect into

</comment></comment><comment> duncan-donuts What about including data from an actual database? Having a union of data from, say, a rest api and data I have in my database would be really neat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Easily accessible thing you can do is to write a plugin that takes data from database or databases and combine them with the second plugin that gets data from your rest api

<comment> duncan-donuts Is that plugin system documented? I thought I read that it was on the roadmap but not an existing feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> look here: [https://github.com/Puchaczov/Musoq/wiki/Plugins](https://github.com/Puchaczov/Musoq/wiki/Plugins)

You can also look how implemented are default plugins, especially flat file one, it's pretty easy

[https://github.com/Puchaczov/Musoq/tree/master/Musoq.Schema....](https://github.com/Puchaczov/Musoq/tree/master/Musoq.Schema.FlatFile)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty cool project. If you're someone dealing with disparate data types, this may be useful. That is a rare need, but interesting none the less.

Typically you create a connector once then walk away from it. Maybe this tool solves the problem of having to create that connector.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is so cool. What would be some real world use cases where this would come in handy?

<comment><AUTHOR> This post will be a bit long, sorry for that :)

Mostly, I'm using it for ad-hoc querying as it allows for semi-automatic columns detection. For example, my bank account file I am querying shows how I'm spending my moneys. It looks like below and I have few more advanced queries doing some different calculations on my CSV file.

select ExtractFromDate(DataOperacji, 'month') as 'Month', ExtractFromDate(DataOperacji, 'year') as 'Year', SumIncome(ToDecimal(Kwota, 'pl-PL')) as 'Income', SumOutcome(ToDecimal(Kwota, 'pl-PL')) as 'Outcome', SumIncome(ToDecimal(Kwota, 'pl-PL')) - Abs(SumOutcome(ToDecimal(Kwota, 'pl- PL'))) as 'Total' from #csv.file('C:\some\path\my_account.csv', ';', true, 37) group by ExtractFromDate(DataOperacji, 'month'), ExtractFromDate(DataOperacji, 'year')

from another point of usage, I'm sometimes using it to find files in folders as I can both query file properties and their content. Also, I was testing it with querying git repository (I was using [https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2sharp](https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2sharp)), If you are curious about some statistics, then probably it would be usable for you.

Another thing I would imagine is that when you have such a huge compressed file that you can't unpack, then you could query such a file and unpack only what you needs. It doesn't have to be a packed file only. It can be such a big log file that most of editors wouldn't be able to open.

Another thing, If you are an administrator and have to move buch of files or create yourself a view how the files looks in more aggregated way, then it will be probably good for you (I'm not an administrator and never was so please take into consideration that my point of view may be clearly wrong)

Different thing, If you've got a bunch of IOT devices, you would end up writing plugin that gets data from such devices and provides you rich statistics about various things.

Another possibility, you need event (for scheduling purposes) that fits some sophisticated time pattern, you can't use CRON becouse it's syntax has some serious limitations, probably it will be better to query time for such a pattern and store it somewhere. Otherwise you would need writing a lot of single CRON expressions that all fits your requirements.

I will go right now into some crazy imaginations like:

You would end up writing a plugin that extract some statistics from photos (like is the image contains people, how many of them are, what are the color of sky, does it has sun?) and then query some huge photo sets about how many of images contains people and also have a sky as a background). It should be really fast as your plugin can use some C++ library to fastly process images. Because you are fully controlling with what and how you feeds evaluator, you can use parallelism to process multiple files at once :)</comment></comment>


Installing and testing Ubuntu's Mir server - <AUTHOR> http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/installing-and-testing-ubuntus-mir-server/4456 <comment><USER2> How's 720p and 1080p video at full-screen? That, to me, is the important question.</comment>


Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-18/growing-midsize-cities-like-boise-could-replace-urban-future?cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-view&utm_content=view&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_medium=social <comment><USER2> Not the crux of the article, but:

> This doesn't mean that they, or the even higher-cost, more congested coastal > metros, will adopt Manhattan or Tokyo-style density and transit patterns. > Instead, Austin and San Antonio might be the new Houston and Dallas.

My goodness, can we /please/ stop this false dichotomy that a city either has to be a Tokyo megalopolis or a suburban sprawlfest?

I don't think any reasonable person is advocating to turn San Francisco into Manhattan, even though that seems to be what everyone is scared of. Clearly the OP has never left the US.

Average density in Paris: ~6 stories. Barcelona: ~4 stories. Most cities in Germany: 3-5 stories. Moscow: maybe 6-7 stories.

Maybe those aren't perfect by a story or two, but point being, there IS a sustainable growth model, and it's a lot more than SF and LA's paltry 2 story average height, and certainly less than the skyscrapers of Midtown Manhattan that everyone is so scared of. You only have to look across the ocean to see it, and until the US realizes this, Boise et al. will just become another congested, sprawling, expensive suburb with an increasingly poor quality of life. If you want to live in the not-countryside, then density is the only sustainable model.

EDIT: And to respond to what I think the crux of the article actually is, that we'll never invest in sustainable urban planning because there will always be another inexpensive 100k population town that we can ruin instead, well that sure is a losing attitude. There probably is some truth there, and it makes me sad. Sure, it'll take a while for the coasts to get their act together, but let's continue to promote a vision of what a viable and sustainable solution looks like for America's cities. Any comparisons with Tokyo or the next Manhattan is just furthering a destructive narrative which, for the record, is what got San Francisco in this mess in the 1980s in the first place.

<comment><USER3> Is Manhattan considered a mistake? I ask because, despite being one of the most desirable residences and tourist destinations in the world, everyone is deathly allergic to even the slightest hint that someone might want to replicate it elsewhere. Am I missing an unspoken "never again" moment? Is everyone who travels to New York doing it to revel in their hatred of the place?

There's not nearly enough Manhattan to meet the demand to live in such a place, and I fail to see why we shouldn't make more of it. San Francisco's economic power and landlocked geometry seem ideal for doing so.

<comment><USER4> > Is Manhattan considered a mistake

It's not so much a 'mistake' as it is an instant feeling of "no living thing could ever afford Manhattan". It's like a physical manifestation of the saying, "no one ever goes there anymore, it's too crowded".

> (Manhattan is) one of the most desirable residences and tourist destinations > in the world, everyone is deathly allergic to even the slightest hint that > someone might want to replicate it elsewhere.

Sure, absolutely. And Lamborghinis are some of the most desirable cars in the world. But if you told everyone in Milwaukee that all other cars were being destroyed ('upzoned' into Lambos) and all Milwaukee citizens would be forced to buy a Lambo or never drive in Milwaukee again -- residents would be freaking out in a similar way.

Personally, I actually _like_ high-rises. I like the look, I like the use of space, and I like the lifestyle. But even as a person with a decent tech income, I could never afford to live in one (in any city, anywhere in the US). And I would be terrified if my city became even 10% more similar to Manhattan, because people already struggle to afford living here as it is.

Try telling families that can't afford $200k-$300k houses that their city should "be like Manhattan" and they hear "you should be paying 1 million to 4 million dollars for a 3 bed apartment, just like Manhattan".

<comment><USER5> > no living thing could ever afford Manhattan

I stayed for a week at a hotel in Midtown, in February for about $80/night. Not a great hotel, but there were no bed bugs, rodents, or roaches. That's well below what most folks consider the median rent to be in San Francisco. Plus someone cleaned the place every day.

<comment><USER6> Hotel Penn is damn near the only place you'll find a rate like that, and if that's where you stayed, it sounds like you got one of the nicer rooms.

<comment><USER5> It was the Watson near Columbus Circle. The room probably hadn't been redecorated in the better part of thirty years, but I'd happily stay there again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fundamental problem with American cities is that Americans failed to recognize them the core engine of growth and prosperity as they are. Instead cities are viewed through a political lens. This NYC's problems are to be solved by the city/county and San Francisco's are to be solved by their local city/county politicians. The Federal government, which takes in 30% of income, chips in a very limited manner. Investing in cities such as these are often viewed as "helping a blue city" and this Fed infrastructure money is spent on building Army bases in rural areas that doesn't provide any return for that investment. Similarly many city dwellers do not recognize the economic importance of the city they live in and the role of the cities in driving growth, reducing poverty etc. Thus they hang on to things like "neighborhood character" and height limits to reduce growth. This is very different in many other countries, and especially Asian countries. There Central governments realize the value cities bring to the national economy and thus investments are prioritized. Look at China and how much investment the Chinese government puts in their big cities. Same with Japan, Korea, Taiwan, UAE, India etc. Indian government prioritized building expressway link between it's megacities. They also funded the Delhi Metro project.

<comment><USER8> This is not just an oversimplification, it is also incorrect. Military installations are put in rural areas because nobody wants artillery practice to happen near their houses. That money comes from the DoD, not generally classed as 'infrastructure spending.'

Futhermore, all interstate freeways are built with federal investment, and HUD is heavily involved in funding development of low-income housing nationwide -- this is also subject to staggering amounts of NIMBYism. Mass transit is even worse -- there are major American cities who want to build, and have lined up federal funding, only to be blocked by state government intervention on behalf of more NIMBY. Baltimore's Red Line is the most recent example of this that springs to mind.

So yes, this _is_ very much a problem for city and state politics to solve -- the federal government can't invest without their cooperation.

As for comparisons to Asian cities, I can only thank God that we don't handle our development that way here. Our rural residents have enough problems without repeating the mistakes of India here.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure you can bundle India with the likes of Japan. Two totally different levels of development.

<comment><USER10> For what it's worth, Japan is hardly a model. Huge suicide rates and elderly so lonely they turn to petty crime just so the can go to prison, along with a rapidly aging and shrinking population. A lesson, yes; a model, no.

<comment><USER11> I wish people would stop spreading these half truths about Japan.

Japan's suicide rate is not significantly higher than that of Finland, Argentina, and the USA. South Korea is the one developed Asian country that has a notably high suicide rate.[1]

And yes Japan's population is shrinking and aging, but that is mostly a rural/inaka phenomenon. Tokyo is actually growing in population and manages to have lower rents than SF, NYC, London, and HK. Not to mention a meticulously run rail system that puts the NYC MTA to shame.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article's point is that the churn of spillover-boomtowns will continue: once the current crop of towns starts getting built out and accumulating problems like unaffordable housing, nightmarish traffic, lack of easy greenfield land to develop with cookie-cutter houses on tiny lots and giant office parks, the developers will find the next wave of towns to exploit, probably long before most of the human misery materializes in the one they just left behind.

Boise/Meridian/Nampa may be the flavor of the day now, but by the time you're commuting from Fruitland because you couldn't afford a home in Boise, the region will have become just another dusty built-out suburban disaster buoyed by but a handful of overinfluential employers -- like Tucson -- and you'll be reading articles about whatever buzzword is being used for the new generation moving to Hermiston and Hickory and fortunately-placed small towns no one has never heard of. This is not at all different from the cycle of suburbs that plays out within every metro [1][2][3].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11880084#11880734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11880084#11880734) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13665669#13666473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13665669#13666473) [3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16744401#16746390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16744401#16746390)

<comment><USER13> It's interesting how much blame you attribute to the developers. I would lay this squarely at the feet of city planners and voters; they hold all the keys.

<comment><USER12> It's both. City planners are constrained to their own jurisdiction, so they're trying to come out ahead by ensuring that the next wave of growth doesn't leave them behind. They're trying to solve a local optimization problem, where their competition is often the neighboring localities with whom they will share the wider trend of whatever the future may bring, but the resulting wealth will be allocated depending on exact settlement and zoning patterns. It's a prisoner's dilemma.

Meanwhile, developers -- as a loose cohort -- are absolutely the executors for the nationwide phenomenon. Their loyalty is to not to the land or their products, but to the cycle of plan, build, and profit. Wherever they are, they're deeply entangled in local politics, and lobby the local officials to let them build homes on farmland to be upzoned. They leave behind subdivisions that don't actually generate enough revenue to the town to make up for their hookups to utilities and services, but the population growth looks good for the town in reports that businesses look at to expand or relocate.

Just like a B-roll of the cities now scrambling to attract Amazon, these suburbs are hoping they'd be picked instead of the town one over when some company with national pockets wants to build a 200-job call center, data center, or distribution warehouse. In mainstream America, these tiny battles between neighboring towns are fought and lost thirty, fifty jobs at a time.

<comment><USER3> The availability of housing probably does encourage household formation and childbirth, so you're right, developers share in the blame. But if you take population growth as a given, some kind of housing development is necessary, and there's an ironclad bipartisan consensus that it had better not be the urban kind ( _especially_ not near existing urban centers). I hate cookie- cutter greenfield subdivisions as much as anyone, but we get them because they are what we allow at scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The sad thing is that trying to increase density in places like SV isn't just about taming housing inflation, denser places are also better places to live. I think there are lot of people out there who would like living in a place like Brooklyn Heights, where you have 3-5 story row houses (small enough for a single family) that are connected together along a tree lined block, with shops, restaurants, and bars within walking distance. Governments won't even allow you to build a neighborhood like that anymore.

<comment><USER15> Yes and no.

I can recognize the advantages of such a neighborhood, but about 25 years ago, I decided I can't handle listening to my neighbor's stereo at 2:30 in the morning.

<comment><USER16> Then live in a modern building with real sound proofing, not something built 60 years ago, when it was t even on people's minds.

<comment><USER17> Maybe it's reversed in US, but I find the exact opposite here in UK - a house from 1930s will offer much better sound insulation that any new build with its cardboard-thin walls separating properties.

<comment><USER18> Definitely my experience in the U.S. also. Buildings are built to meet minimum code, including the amount of sound allowed to pass through walls between units. Minimum code is nowhere near good enough to block any amplified music/sound, much less if you're unfortunate enough to share a wall/floor/ceiling with a neighbor with a powerful subwoofer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if this trend will result in further stratification of American society. I mean, we've always had enclaves where rich people lived and poorer people lived, but they generally used to be at least nearby each other in large metros.

Now, though, this city stratification feels like a multi-layer sieve. E.g. San Francisco is still a super-desirable city to live, if you can afford it, so the people who can't get pushed to mid-tier cities, and then in those mid-tier cities poorer people get pushed out as the city gets less affordable. The whole SF Bay Area -> Austin -> (now still less expensive cities like Chattanooga, Pittsburgh, etc.) fits this pattern.

<comment><USER20> By the time the "GENT-rification" reaches Chattanooga and Pittsburgh though, it's become something more akin to "SQUIRE-ification". The people moving in are not nearly as wealthy, so people are not really being pushed out in the numbers that they are pushed out in places like Manhattan or San Fran.

It's the difference between a few thousand hundred-thousandaires moving in, as opposed to a few thousand millionaires and billionaires moving in. There really is a material and nontrivial difference in the housing market ripples resultant from these two hypothetical immigrant waves. Far fewer people, if any, wind up displaced in the third and fourth tier cities that the hundred- thousandaires move into. Developers operating in these cities simply can't afford to remake the markets the way you can in the larger cities. The numbers typically don't allow for it. Whereas in the first tier cities, the market in entire swaths of these cities can be remade and become astronomically unaffordable in a matter or 5 or 10 years. And the numbers in that large market make it very profitable for a developer to do so.

<comment><USER3> >"The people moving in are not nearly as wealthy, so people are not really being pushed out in the numbers that they are pushed out in places like Manhattan or San Fran."

Backwards! Third-tier cities have contracted from their 20th-century peaks, so easily commutable lots and even homes are simply vacant. They're affordable to mere hundred-thousandaires because they're drowning in supply (though it might need some work). Displacement doesn't happen as much because abundance means you can get your own spot without taking someone else's.

The crappiest apartments in the San Francisco neighborhoods that time forgot are still insanely expensive next to national norms. No development is necessary for sufficiently high migration (against sufficiently low housing stock) to create a capacity crunch, and you're just as evicted when you're outbid by $500 vs. $5000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article misses an option I've seen used by the city which I live in: Austin, TX.

Instead of building a serious mass transit system, the city encouraged the greenfield development of high density urban clusters outside the downtown region. So the companies moving in now have option to be located in the Downtown or the "New Downtown" (called the Domain).

I think this has been a very successful strategy. But it depends on whether you can convince enough people/companies to move to the alternate high density development.

<comment><USER22> i think you're being generous calling austin's city development and urban design even a "strategy". austin for a long time didn't want to grow at all, so they did everything to basically discourage it. then growth was forced on the city, and they've had to scramble to try, unsuccessfully, to catch up. that's why there's a double decker highway that doesn't really help the traffic, an expensive highway that goes around the city that no one uses, a highway with practically no exits that goes through people's backyards, an expensive train that no one uses and is almost pointless, no way to get across the city quickly, hardly any bike lanes in a city where bicyclists are plentiful, and more and more. austin is a poster child for how to not design and develop city infrastructure.

<comment><USER23> The train is expensive cause no one bothered to land bank for it, ditto for the freeways running through people's backyards. The lack of planning I saw when I visited Austin was astounding, but it is cultural at this point.

Just look at transit in Austin, its nearly a mile to get to a damn bus stop from the Apple campus, and even at peak service is spotty and extremely slow. Busses need to have priority, and be set up to feed your rail system (which is extremely small and needs serious expansion). The current system in Austin will never approach 70% ridership like Seattle or anywhere near it without major changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a result of the recent growth Boise now has the 7th largest income gap in the nation[0]. And the median home price recently shot up $11k in one month[1].

[0]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-19/migration...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-19/migration- from-pacific-coast-drives-boise-wealth-gains)

[1]: [http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article208855154...](http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article208855154.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> What I don't get about this is: why Boise? Are people just moving there for the scenery? There are major US metros with affordable housing and much better job markets.

There's a sort of implied dichotomy in this article: major metros are too expensive, so people will move into a succession of mid-sized towns. But, no: a couple major metros are too expensive. Others, like Miami, Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, DFW, and Houston are comparably affordable --- several of them are cheaper than Boise!

<comment><USER26> Weather is a big factor. Personally, if I'm going to live somewhere cold, there better be some nice skiing options, and there are none in the eastern or middle states. Also looking to minimize humidity.

Government finances are also a concern, many of the east and middle cities are also loaded up with tons of debt from years ago.

I also think being outdoors-y is in vogue with tech and other high earners, which is also better on the west coast. It all comes down to quality of life and the type of people you want to be around, which I guess the other cities you mentioned can't compete in.

<comment><USER27> ==Government finances are also a concern, many of the east and middle cities are also loaded up with tons of debt from years ago.==

Can you explain this line of thinking? Is the assumption that taxes will have to increase to pay these liabilities? If so, I would argue that faster growing suburbs and cities out west and in the sun belt are also going to need more tax dollars to build infrastructure (roads, schools, utilities, etc.).

<comment><USER26> Taxes will have to increase, and already have been quite a bit, to pay for underfunded pensions. If you have the ability to move, then it would behoove you to go somewhere your tax dollars are improving your quality of life rather than paying for promises from the past.

Even though California is deep in the red, it can get away with more than IL/NJ/CT/KY/PA/etc since it's weather and geography make it a highly desirable place to live.

<comment><USER27> Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut all have pretty good schools. They are all in the top 15 for Pre-K through 12th grade. I'm not sure I would argue that your property tax dollars are going farther in Texas (ranked #33 in public schools) versus New Jersey (ranked #3).[1]

Oddly, almost all of the bottom 10 ranked states for public schools are "low tax" havens. It's almost like the two things are connected. Funny enough, the outlier is California, which has the 44th ranked Pre-K through 12th grade public education, but has nice weather.

[1][https://www.usnews.com/news/best- states/rankings/education](https://www.usnews.com/news/best- states/rankings/education)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As someone who's currently looking to purchase a first home in Boise after living here for the last 9 years, all I can say is "meep". There's nothing like the crazy stupid money that Californians are brining in to the housing market to make we wish articles like this would stop shining the spotlight on Boise. The housing market has been nuts this season and I can't help but think that it's all the Californians coming in and buying houses off of the market in cash.

I don't mind more people coming in to our city. I don't care where you're from. Boise is a lovely place and I would love to have more culture and different perspectives help contribute to the current lifestyle of Boiseans. I just wish it wasn't to the detriment of the current lifestyle of the people who already live here.

<comment><USER19> Your response sounds like an _exact_ echo of Austin's gripes from 5-10 years ago, and thus I think highlight the point of the article.

Sorry, but it's a losing battle. While some of us still like to say we are trying to "Keep Austin Weird", the fact is it's not really possible to keep it that weird when bare lot values for anything remotely central in Austin now go for over $500k.

<comment><USER29> > Austin's gripes from 5-10 years ago

Started in the mid-90s here, but yeah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just to highlight the cost difference: I was just in a small city (Boise, actually!) for a work event. We rented a very nice house from airbnb for the stay.

It was >4000 square feet. The master bedroom was probably 4-500 square feet itself. It bad high ceilings, a private, gated, massive yard, mature trees etc.

Recently _listed_ for $600k and couldn't find a buyer at that price. Just absolutely insane compared even to Phoenix, where I live, and which was the last "Californians flee hiding prices" city.

<comment><USER31> >Just absolutely insane compared even to Phoenix, where I live, and which was the last "Californians flee hiding prices" city

I'm not sure what you are suggesting. Here is a house for less money in Phoenix at that square footage range: [https://www.redfin.com/AZ/Phoenix/1908-E-Vista- Dr-85022/home...](https://www.redfin.com/AZ/Phoenix/1908-E-Vista- Dr-85022/home/27893023)

<comment><USER30> A homes value is a lot more than the square footage. The house in Boise was modern, had a very large yard, was a private, gated lot etc.

Very different than the house you linked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Idaho's entire population fits comfortably in a small segment of any of the nation's larger cities.

When three people walk into the state, it leads in percentage growth. It's extremely silly to draw some conclusion from the fact that a tiny state managed 2.2% population growth while dozens of larger states managed 2.1%.

</comment><comment><USER33> Where does Chicago fit into this? Interesting it was left out.

</comment><comment><USER34> From a logistical standpoint, does Boise have a glut of available jobs for these migrants, or are they taking their jobs with them?

That's the first thing I think about when considering a move; can I work there?

<comment><USER28> If you're in tech, yes. There are a lot of tech related jobs that Boise has a huge deficit for. You won't be compensated at the same rates that you would be in California, but the cost of living would make up for it.

<comment><USER35> > _You won 't be compensated at the same rates that you would be in > California, but the cost of living would make up for it._

No, it generally doesn't. It depends on the specific numbers of course (how much of a salary cut, how much cheaper is the housing costs), but a lot of people make that blanket statement because of a mathematical fallacy: The fallacy is if I make half as much, but my expenses are half as much, then I'm just as well off. That statement is mathematically false.

Here's a made up example: San Francisco salary is $140K (or $84K after 40% taxes deducted) and rent or mortgage is $3000/month ($36K/year). Boise salary is half as much at $70K (or $42K after 40% taxes deducted) and rent or mortgage are also half as much at $1500/month ($18K/year). Now calculate disposable income after taxes and housing costs: In San Francisco it's $48K (i.e., $84K - $36K) and in Boise it would be $24K (i.e., $42K - $18K). Clearly, in this example, you'd still be $24K better off in San Francisco.

I know that I made many assumptions above. I'm just illustrating the fallacy that people often make. Halving your income and halving your expenses is not neutral -- it is worse.

<comment><USER36> Plus, cost of living doesn't account for everything. Most consumer products, e.g. cars, computers, shoes, and clothing, cost about the same everywhere. Living in San Francisco with a higher salary and paying a high rent, your spending on such products will be a smaller percentage of your income than if you lived somewhere with cheaper housing and made less money.

<comment><USER37> Lmfao, nothing cost about the same living in San Francisco.

Not to mention taxes are significantly higher as you earn more (progressive) and there are tons of things that nickel and dime you every day.

For example, a bottle of 200 ibuprofen in SF runs about $12-14. I buy it for $3-4. It was so surprising I started filling a bag full of non perishable items every time I'd visit family in the midwest. You add this across hundreds of things you use and it adds up quickly.

And that's nothing compared to the rent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why is this a bad thing?

I live in a midsize city. High quality housing is $110/sqft. I can walk to my kids school, shopping, library and dining. My kid can take a bus to malls and parks, and my commute is approximately 7-10m, and few commutes around here would exceed 20-30. I can be in NYC or Boston in <3 hours. NYC by train is an option.

Why would you want to move from such a place to NYC or SFO?

<comment><USER39> World-class theatre/opera, bands make a stop here on their tours, wide variety of restaurants, communities for some of my more specialised hobbies and interests. There are certainly costs, but big cities can offer a depth and variety of experiences that smaller ones can't.

<comment><USER38> In the Bay Area?

I don't live there but have visited. It's pretty vanilla suburbia. You'll definitely miss communities of interest, but it's not too different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's easy to say "just move somewhere cheaper" but how do you put together a list of places? How many people who can't afford rent can afford flying around the country trying out new cities? How do you find a new job if you don't know anybody?

What companies are working on economic relocation? It sounds like something difficult and valuable.

</comment><comment><USER41> I mean, may be eventually? Just because Boise is the fastest growing city doesn't mean San Fran and LA have negative growth.

The answer of whether Boise will stifle city planners' dreams will come down to the actual numbers over time which in general is hard to predict. People saying "SF is over" or "Seattle is over" seem to only look at the second derivative and ignore the fact that these cities are still growing today.

</comment><comment><USER42> The sad part is that, after so many California exodus arrived, they will turn Boise to yet another CA city that they just left, as seen in other cities, by then they will move elsewhere I guess.

</comment><comment><USER43> What is happening in Boise? The article doesn't really say.

<comment><USER44> Boise is absorbing a lot of people who either can't afford to live in California any more, or don't like California's political environment. Boise is currently the fastest growing metro area in the US.

This is happening in a lot of mid-sized cities in the western US. California's economic / housing policies result in very high cost of living, which causes a significant migration of poor people out of the state and into places like Boise, Denver, Las Vegas, Beaverton, Fort Worth, and so on.

You can frequently find articles like [http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20180203/packing-up-and- mov...](http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20180203/packing-up-and-moving-out- people-are-leaving-california-in-droves-including-some-high-desert-residents) from those places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Cali is 30x bigger than Idaho... if 100,000 people move to Idaho, 3,000,000 people need to move to Cali to keep pace in terms of percent growth.

Obviously it's not sustainable for California to be a top growing state forever.

As someone who lives in a city with about the same pop as Boise, cities that size can be quite nice.

<comment><USER46> The difference is whether you're talking about numeric growth or percentage growth. Idaho is #1 in percentage growth but not in the top 10 in numeric growth. California is #3 in numeric growth, but not in the top 10 in percentage growth.

[https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press- releases/2017/estimate...](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press- releases/2017/estimates-idaho.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> live rural and be happy. small farm,commute to work if you can't work remote,go to local town once a week for supplies. sorted.

</comment><comment><USER47> live on a farm and content yourselves

</comment><comment><USER48> My general view after travelling to Denver is that one of America's biggest issues is underpopulation. There is so much land in these areas and actually lots of infrastructure relative to population.

It all stood out to me how white these areas remain. I saw a handful of non whites and no Asians the entire time. Shocking how the whitest areas are the most anti immigrant. What are they so angry about?!

Bringing in migrants and capital to these areas could really set the US economy on fire. But since the country turned away from openness in the 1920s economically it's been declining on the growth side (carried by the productivity economy which is tech).

<comment><USER49> Denver is 30% Latino, 11% Black, 5% Asian. Not sure how you only saw a handful of non-whites.

<comment><USER44> Overall Denver is less white than the US as a whole, but has some neighborhoods that are almost entirely white (take a look on [https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/index.html](https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/index.html) ). You can hang out in, say, Cherry Creek or Wash Park and see almost entirely white people. Go to Park Hill or south Feds and you see very few white people.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Did I just break HN? - <AUTHOR> Howdy. I just tried to post the latest chapter of Crafting Interpreters by Bob Nystrom because I didn't see it posted yet. Unfortunately, the first time I tried I thought I did it wrong, and deleted it (Thinking it should go on 'Show HN', but in my ignorance I didn't realize that that was just a convention put in the submission title.) I tried to re-post the article link [1], but HN says its already been submitted and shot it down. I feel like this is an error, because I can't find the link posted anywhere after looking manually and using this search tool [2]. Help?!<p>[1]  http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/evaluating-expressions.html<p>[2]  https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story <comment><USER2> My guess is that the dupe detector still has it in cache to prevent abuse, by deleting and resubmitting the same link multiple times.

Try sending an email to the mods: email@example.com

Perhaps they can fix this by removing the link from the dupe detector, or perhaps they will suggest to wait 24hs or something.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have hit this behavior as well.

This is likely intentional to mitigate the delete-and-resubmit tactic for submissions which don't receive upvotes. I am not a fan of it due to false positives as demonstrated.

</comment><comment><USER4> You did not break HN. This has happened to me.

I suggest you email the mods HN @ ycombinator etc and explain the situation. If it is fixable, they are your best source of info.</comment>


Hackers Can Steal Gmail Credentials from Samsung Smart Fridges - <AUTHOR> http://www.pentestpartners.com/blog/hacking-defcon-23s-iot-village-samsung-fridge/

<comment><USER2> Something I've always thought about with IoT is the fact that everything is hackable. There are very few things that the best hackers can't get to. With more and more things being automated (often times with more important info), there are more vulnerabilities that appear. I think a self-driving car is an example. The security on things like cars and anything in the home need to be extremely high to ensure the safety of the users. As the home becomes more and more smart, need to make sure it's not just a buffet for hackers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please enable and use application specific passwords. Then this mess would turn into "hackers can grab your gmail credential used only by your fridge, which you revoked quickly and without needing to change anything else".

</comment><comment><USER4> The new definition of IoT: Insecurity of Things.</comment>


I've become what I wasn't supposed to be - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/b3cbf9a3a452

<comment><USER2> I started as a painter working for my father at 16. Sometimes I would take a second job as a line cook as well. I loved computers since my first one (Atari 400) but I never thought anyone would ever pay me to work with them. At 27 I couldn't take sandblasting fuel tanks and flipping burgers anymore.

I took a job as a data entry clerk for $6.50 an hour, worked my way up from there while teaching myself to program (after ten years I only now feel comfortable in my ability). I just finally finished a CS degree at 40. I see so many people here accomplishing so much at so young an age. Please don't take your skills and passion for granted.

</comment><comment><USER3> Career plan by age:

* <8: Astro|Cosmonaut (then I realised I wouldn't get in coz of health issues)

* 8-14: Physicist/Engineer (Science! It rocks! But the family got a computer when I was 12 and - shit - this programming crap is fun..)

* 14-19: Programmer (Wrote code that other people used. Wrote code that other people bought. This stuff is _still_ fun, but went to university at 18 - first one in my family to be able to so...)

* 19--25: Academia (Shit - universities are _fun_. Full of smart, driven folk. Graduated at 21 and hung around as an employee while I figured out what I'd do my PhD in...Started digging into cog psych & HCI stuff as well as development. Then I figured out that I wasn't actually driven enough to focus on one subject for 3 years... and that the UK academic arena was falling into a mess of short term contract driven work... and my contract came to an end.. so... off to industry)

* 25--29; CTO (Not that anybody called it CTO in those days. Joined one startup which crashed and burned. Second one didn't. Went from first "techie" employee to technical director in about four years. Then I was actually bright enough to realise I didn't really like / was-any-good-at managing people and that I didn't enjoy my job. So without waiting for shares to vest (still not sure whether this was a smart or a dumb move...) left to...)

* 29-34: Consultant (Started own company. Had some great clients. Did some good work. Got better at managing people. Had some bad clients. Made some dumb decisions. Crashed and burned with a stack of personal debt. [hire accountants folk - they're worth their money].. which in one of those joyful acts of fate butted up against...)

* 34-36 Carer (Family member became terminally ill and needed 24/7 care, so we kept him at home and out of hospice as long as possible)

* 36-40 Senior Dev/UX person (Back to being an employee again. One agency. Two startups. Debt killing time. Started deliberately raising my profile with speaking, community involvement, writing, etc. coz I knew I wanted to get back to...)

* 40--now Co-founder (Started company again. Making fewer and more interesting mistakes sprinkled among the odd smart decision. Bootstrapping some product ideas that we're funding with consulting work. Generally enjoying stuff...)

Next - who knows ;-)

(NOTE; If anybody still wants to let a fat 43 year old with no binocular depth perception and subject to migraines & misc. other nonsense be an astro|cosmonaut - please let me know ;-)

</comment><comment><USER4> I was on a path to becoming a professional golfer. I was a highly recruited player coming out of high school, and had full-ride scholarship offers from several schools.

Went to college, majored in accounting & finance. And played golf -- lots of it. Played in national championships, competed abroad, surrounded by coaches who fine-tuned my swing and improved my game. Played with many guys who have been on the PGA tour at different points. I was on a path to the tour, as well.

But it was unfulfilling, and I fell out of love with the sport. I took a job in finance and investing at a small bank in 1991. Working my way up from the bottom, I discovered a knack for technology by automating processes that had been done by hand for years.

Never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER5> I started out at University studying astronautical engineering.

4 universities and 3 career changes later, I'm a relatively happy code monkey. (are code monkies every totally happy?)

Things change. I'd say it's the very rare individual who gets through life on Plan A (or Plan B for that matter)

<comment><USER6> I'm a _relatively_ happy codemonkey. I would have been happier as a carpenter, but we gotta play with the hand we've been dealt until opportunity knocks (and that may be plan E or F). I'm in the process of weaning myself away from the codemonkey and back to carpenter (soon cabin builder, hopefully).

Life is funny sometimes.

<comment><USER7> I started in construction as a steel worker. One life altering injury later I retrained as a code monkey. Much happier, wish I did it first, I always was interested in computers.

<comment><USER6> What can I say... grass is always greener eh?

It sucks that you were injured, but maybe -- and hopefully -- it's added to your life experience in a positive way. For better or for worse, you are who you are because of your experiences. Good and bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a PhD in Physics. 8 university years to eventually discover that I am not that interested in research for a living (and not that good at it), even though my speciality was great (Astrophysics). Ten years later, I'm a senior programmer with very interesting things to build, and passion doesn't fade.

I don't regret having done all that Physics (it was freaking Astrophysics, dude!), but I know I would have been miserable after a while, not doing what I was really good at.

<comment><USER9> How did that happen? (similar situation, earlier in the game)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I want to make video games so bad that I eventually learned programming. Programming is fun, but it's nothing like the passion that motivate people to stay up all night and day and code until they drop.

However, my ability to program is the only thing that I am good at and had earned me money so far. Plus, I like it, even if I can't do 16 hours coding marathon.

<comment><AUTHOR> wanting to make my own video games was probably a big motivator for me as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I still remember how much did I ask for a computer until I finally get one at the age of 12, a 8086 IBM PS2!

</comment><comment><USER12> I started coding in grade 9, but I went to university for medical science, got good grades, did some research, and intended to go to medical school. But, the closer I got to graduation, more and more I started to realize there was no way I was ever going back to school--I just wanted to code and make things. No regrets.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like the picture. Anyone know what town that is? I wonder if all those trees are private land or state forest. I think everyone should have a picture of themselves looking at the town they grew up in, especially if the town has a picturesque view!

</comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for that. I'm still working in a "dotcom". Soon, I hope to be working with the likes of you. Could you go a little more into your transition from match.com to yc-startup, the sacrifices and challenges along your way?

<comment><AUTHOR> that might make another blog post. Or if you have any specific questions, you can email me any time.</comment></comment>


Mars Opportunity rover is in danger of dying from a dust storm - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/11/mars-opportunity-rover-minimal-power-mode-dust-storm/ <comment><USER2> This thing is nothing short of marvellous. It survived the harsh Martian environment for 15 years with an expected mission span of 90 days (!).

Whenever Opportunity takes its last Ampere, it will do so after accomplishing several magnitudes more than it was designed for.

Would not wonder one bit if this tank of a rover keeps going another couple of years.

<comment><USER3> Certainly an engineering marvel. However I feel like the 90 day initial "goal" was to ensure to set the bar low so the mission could be declared a success.

<comment><USER4> It's an over-engineering marvel. The 90 day goal was probably to keep congress from losing their shit and shutting down NASA if it only lasted 91 days due to a freak accident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The rover has proved hardier than expected by lasting nearly 15 years, > despite being designed for a 90-day mission.

It'll be fine :D

<comment><USER6> Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1504/](https://xkcd.com/1504/)

<comment><USER7> V'ger ain't got nothin' on O'tunity

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the rotary abrasion tool could be used to do double duty by putting the arm in the right position and spinning the tool at the right speed for harmonics to shake the panels enough to clear them off (provided the rover is on an incline).

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if a satellite that would collect and beam down solar energy using microwaves would help future rovers eventually. Maybe NASA wouldn't do that in fear of the beam damaging something they want to study.

<comment><USER10> There's not much atmosphere on Mars (approx. 0.6% of Earth's) to get in the way of the sun, so there's not much advantage to beaming down solar energy. You might as well just have solar panels on the rovers themselves, which unsurprisingly is exactly what NASA did.

<comment><USER11> But solar panels in space can be much larger and dust free.

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't they have to beam that energy down to a dust-free sensor?

<comment><USER11> I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that a microwave receiver is less sensitive to dust than solar panels. Also, if you've got a large solar array in space sending a focused beam of energy to a rover, the receiver can be hit with much more power than a same sized solar panel, which can more than offset any losses from dust on the receiver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always wondered, if these rovers' biggest problem is the dust, why do they not try to add a fan to blow it away. I know that the martian atmosphere is sparse, but it could still work.

<comment><USER14> A shaker was also proposed, but for a 90-day spec they just left the panels as they were. Both would have added mass, and non-mission mass is the Devil.

For human installations, "astronaut with a broom" ticks all the necessary boxes.

<comment><USER15> > For human installations, "astronaut with a broom" ticks all the necessary > boxes.

First chore of the day for the future children of Martian farmers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Could it last long enough to be picked up by Martian astronauts?

<comment><USER17> Not if Congress decides on Mars astronauts.

<comment><USER18> Hopefully a more capable nation beats us (US) to Mars, while me continue to figure out how to get back to the moon to relive the glorious 1960s.

<comment><USER16> Mars is for exploration, the moon is for commercialization and heavy industries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No armor ... no chocolate ;-)

Afaik lot of people told the NASA and ESA to build Armored robot ... Do you go in slip at works ?

<comment><USER20> what</comment></comment>


Required Reading for Product Designers - <AUTHOR> http://robertlenne.com/requiredreading/

<comment><USER2> The Design of Everyday Things: Donald A. Norman

The Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst

Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte

Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward R. Tufte

Beautiful Evidence by Edward R. Tufte

Small Is Beautiful by E. F. Schumache

The Art of Color by Johannes Itten

Were I to teach a course, that would be the list of text books required (so you would own them after). First and only assignment---read them. Final and only exam---what did you learn and understand. Supply proof.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome resource!</comment>


Fomu – An FPGA board that fits inside your USB port - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/fomu <comment><USER2> A bit pricy, but cool idea. The actual FPGA chip at the core of this is only $4, so paying $40 for a plastic holder and a small circuit board seems a lot!

<comment><USER3> Just means it's realistically priced. Typical bill of materials for consumer electronics is 1/9 to 1/12 the msrp. This allows for ~3x markup for manufacturer and ~3x markup for store front. Not sure why 3x is such a magic number, but it seems to be a good target for the last 40 years.

<comment><USER2> True, but in this case, the design work is much lower than most products - just an FPGA hooked up with the recommended schematic and a couple of weeks work integrating a free CPU core with free tools and a free software stack.

Granted, they might not sell enough of these to pay for even a small amount of design work.</comment></comment></comment>


Google+ invites friends without asking - <AUTHOR> Google+ just let me know I can open an account now with my Gmail/domain e-mail, and I did. It started recommending people, which I thought was interesting, since I didn't give permission to use my address book. I added them to circles anyway, only to learn (and again, Google+ doesn't tell you this upfront) that most friends actually weren't on Google+ but rather were in my e-mail address book and everytime I added them to a circle, they were invited through e-mail, to join Google+. This shocks me, wouldn't fly in Germany, at all. Why Google? Why all the evil?<p>Here is proof: http://imgur.com/Hck8O <comment><USER2> You were actively asking Google to add those people, it was the polar opposite of "without asking".

<comment><USER3> This is true, he asked google to add those people. Anyway, I sometimes wish it would be easier to see who already is a Google+ user and who is not. Also, I don't think this feature would be a problem in Germany (or here in Austria for that matter). I don't think google needs your permission to use _their_ address book in one of _their_ services that is tightly coupled with gmail.

<comment><AUTHOR> well, unfortunately, legally they need that permission. they probably informed me throughout the process somewhere in the terms, which, i of course skipped. I am just trying to make the point that this is less about legal implications but merely a call for better user guidance and being nice to your customers. i consider myself an advanced user (i make websites, i run a company, i've worked for it corporations) and yet even I 'accidentally' spam a lot of my friends because they showed up in a nicely prepared circle on Google+ that says here are your friends, add them to your circles.

<comment><USER4> how can u share something with someone if they are not on google plus?

The fact that adding them would result in an invite seemed like basic logical deduction to me. They could _always_ be clearer, but where does it end...

<comment><AUTHOR> well, as i said, further down, there is a clear "invite friends" section, right underneath the friend suggestions. this pretty much indicates that one thing will suggest friends who are on the network and the other allows me to invite them by e-mail. this is where my confusion came from... and that's where google decided it's cool to show me full names and no (not on the network) indications so i get the impression i can easily move them to a circle and friend them, when in fact, this just helps to spam more people who didn't want to be on the network (and I obviously can't know about this). think business contacts.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, if you look at your circles, the friends that aren't on G+ show up with an email icon in their bubble indicating that you are sharing with them via email only. I've suggested multiple times that the same icon be shown in the suggestions list. It really sucks that it is not on by default.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's what I meant. exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like a dark pattern (deliberately misleading design).

P.S. Every time I think about joining Plus, another issue like this one makes me put on the brakes.

At this point, I can say simply that "something doesn't smell right".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> EDIT: I've added two screenshots of what I'm pissed about. <http://imgur.com/Hck8O></comment>


Show HN: Flipmeme – Reddit and Imgur image viewer - <AUTHOR> http://flipmeme.com <comment><AUTHOR> I built Flipmeme a while back. Finally got around to a re-design. It's been a really great side project. Been hovering around 250k uniques for while.

List view is also cool! [http://flipmeme.com/listview/frontpage](http://flipmeme.com/listview/frontpage)

My stack: Django, Python, Jquery mobile

</comment><comment><USER2> I am somewhat impressed at the speed.</comment>


Why Node and Scala will dry up: Go will drink their milkshake - <AUTHOR> http://devslovebacon.com/conferences/bacon-2013/talks/why-node-and-scala-will-dry-up-go-will-drink-their-milkshake <comment><USER2> Intriguing talk, but not very convincing. Running the JVM is a big advantage. But Go will give Scala a run for its money.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scala definitely. I don't see why it's "better enough" to persist.

Node? Not until or unless you can build a nice fast browser-side GUI in Go. A Go version of GWT that integrated very well with the DOM and supported React- style UI elements would be interesting but nothing like that exists.</comment>


MRIs can better detect cancer in women with dense breasts, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/health/dense-breasts-MRI-cancer.html <comment><USER2> Breast cancer screening is one of those things where there is a serious risk of overdiagnosis and iatrogenic injury and one has to seriously think about how many such injuries are acceptable per life saved.

I personally think that the targeted use of MR -- which, with contrast, has its own (minute, marginal) risks (broadly comparable to mammography) is appropriate, as the image quality really is an order of magnitude better than plain film alone.

Nevertheless, this rate of iatrogenic harm has to be considered -- heck, just from basic Bayesian probability, you'll know that any imperfect test for a rare disease results in a lot of false positives.

Here in the UK, it's generally accepted that the ultimate rate of 'harm', that is, over-treatment, is about 3:1; "that is one breast cancer death prevented for about every three overdiagnosed cases identified and treated". Both the NHS and most women feel that, knowing this, "accepting the offer of breast screening is worthwhile" \-- and I personally agree with them. [both 1]

\---

[1] [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(12\)61611-0/fulltext)

<comment><USER3> The argument for increased iatrogenic injury is always brought up with new technologies (and sometimes used to dismiss their use). In this case, presumably, you mean increased amounts of invasive biopsies w/ potential complications, bleeding, pain, etc. Esp with false positives.

The converse thought is, with the increased resolution, image quality and addition of a 3rd dimension over plain film mammographies, how much reduction in false positives iatrogenic can one reasonably expect?

<comment><USER4> The situation is a bit more nuanced than you suggest. MRI gives you 3D information and better tissue contrast, but much worse resolution. This makes things difficult with micro-calcifications, but really helps with some lesions in dense breasts.

The best specific information comes with a contrast agent, but that's not appropriate for screening for the iatrogenic reasons you mention, but is suited to diagnostic followup.

Worth noting on a big enough screening population, biopsy complications include death by infection, etc. You also have to consider the opportunity cost of the machinery and tech time, etc. So while sometimes approaches are dismissed for this (e.g. contrast agents for screening) it is not done without though.

As an overall health system, too, you really have to evaluate the systemic costs and opportunity costs, particularly with a screening program. Two big variables here are the infrastructure & workflow costs for introducing MRI mammo into a screening program (those machine and tech hours come from some other worthy use) and radiologist attention. Breast screening already struggles with allowing enough time for careful review of 2D data sets, adding more information of a 3D set (potentially additionally!) means you may have to trade off increased cost/time (or reduced coverage) against FN count.

So that's the tip of that particular iceberg. It's not easy, and a lot of smart people have been thinking about this since the 90s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 1e-9 An interval cancer is one that is diagnosed outside of the regularly-scheduled screening exams.

Example: A woman feels a lump, goes to see her doctor immediately rather than wait until her next scheduled screening, and this results in a cancer diagnosis.

One of the main reasons this happens is because the previous regular screening exam failed to detect the cancer.

Mammography misses cancers more often in dense breasts than in typical breasts. MRI has long been known to be much more sensitive than mammography at finding cancer in dense breasts.

This study looked at whether adding an MRI to a screening mammogram for extremely dense breasts would result in fewer interval cancers. It did, which is not surprising, but this was a relatively small study that resulted in only 4 cancers diagnosed in women who actually underwent the supplemental MRI.

Link to the paper: [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1903986](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1903986)

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't want false positives? Organ-specific positron emission tomography for mammography. Malignancies light right up.

<comment><USER6> PET isn't really suited for a screening population due to relatively low availability and high cost (esp. compared to a mammography). Resolution is also bad and it tends to also light up inflammations. So it probably wouldn't help too much for reducing false positives.

<comment><USER5> In the case of patients with dense breasts, which in the article undergo MRI, an argument can be made for PET in both availability and cost now that these patients are in MRI territory. Also, organ-specific PET is working on the resolution problem but I'd agree that if you were to put a patient into a run of the mill PET scanner there wouldn't be much clinical usefulness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's unclear to me how screening reduces cancer. That said, this additional screening with MRI seems like it may reliably detect cancers earlier in the population of women with dense breast tissue, who are more likely to develop cancer in the first place. Earlier detection generally results in better outcomes.

<comment><USER8> Based on a quick look around the web, "interval cancer" means specifically a cancer that develops after having previously received a cancer screen where no cancer or pre-cancer was found.

So basically it reduces "interval cancer", not "cancer", by more effectively finding warning signs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm heartened to see more aggressive screening protocols be studied. Fear of iatrogenic harms seem to cloud our progress towards early treatment.

<comment><USER10> Fear of iatrogenic harms is well founded and important. It doesn't look like you even tried to argue otherwise - you just implied that aggressive screening is worth the risk. This is silly and harmful, especially considering cancer screening has never been shown to save lives: [https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6080](https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6080)</comment></comment>


Facebook outs hacker with 1 million+ accounts - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/05/facebook-ups-login-security-outs-hacker-with-15m-accounts.ars

<comment><USER2> Of course the real trick is for Facebook to automagically _know_ the answer to your secret question rather than having you pre-populate it like you do for banks. That wouldn't be creepy at all!</comment>


A new way to search - <AUTHOR> http://signup.zillabyte.com/

<comment><USER2> At least tell what people does it actually does if you're going to ask for an email address.

<comment><USER3> soooo not signing up !

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check homepage, it is at least descriptive: [http://zillabyte.com/](http://zillabyte.com/)

Whose idea was it to submit signup page with no info?

Edit: While homepage at least tells something, links and buttons don't work!

<comment><USER5> Thank you for posting this. I think they may have launched a bit too early.

On a side note: Did you notice that as you scroll down, the dinosaur starts to lose more and more articles of clothing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You do realize that you are doing exactly what you are accusing people of. YOU are the black box.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, I watched, and nothing happened.

</comment><comment><USER7> So you mean to say you are blackbox?</comment>