700,000 Android devices activated each day - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/112599748506977857728/posts/PLAaEFy1fNa Andy Rubin: "There are now over 700,000 Android devices activated every day."<p>"...and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don't count re-sold devices), and "activations" means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service." <comment><AUTHOR> Andy Rubin: "...and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don't count re-sold devices), and "activations" means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service."

So it seems like a new device only.

<comment><USER3> I wonder why they don't just use a word that people understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> They don't sell the phones so they don't know how many are sold. The only count they have is all the activations that are coming from every new phone.

I don't think there can be a better measurement for them than this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Android is taking off here in India because it's creeping into the low-end. I'm sure the same thing is happening in most countries.

Last week I got a Samsung Galaxy Y. It's small, sturdy, has swype input and has great battery life. Gmail, reader & facebook over 3G or wifi.

The price: _just $140!!!_

I used to try high-end phones and then go back to low-end Nokias. Now, I'm not going back to my $40 Nokia and I'm definitely not going to pay $700+ for an iPhone that won't even have Swype.

 _edit: extra sentence_

<comment><USER5> A lot of people are buying, just for the hell of it, Androids from Chinese outlets like Aliexpress as well. Those are not brands, but they are _really_ cheap; so cheap you don't care at all if they break/fall (I don't agree with that sentiment, but I know a lot of people do). There are Android 2.3 pads there for $50 (not to mention hackable Linux phone watches). Now if _only_ you could upgrade Android without restrictions.

And, while there still is crisis everywhere, I see people selling them here on markets; they buy them from Alibaba in sets of 20-50 and sell them on a sunday market to 'fortunate but not as fortunate to pay for a $140 phone'.

Edit: added Linux phone watch, disclaimer; never tried one, but a friend did and he says it's great fun for tinkering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's remarkable the legal lengths to which Apple and Microsoft are going to try to stop Android, but it looks like they are having little or no effect.

Lawyers get paid, some silly patents get worked around, but that's about it it seems.

<comment><USER7> It's all about the carriers.

A guy walks into an AT&T store and wants an iPhone. He'll get an iPhone.

A guy walks into an AT&T store and wants a Windows Phone. He'll probably be talked into an Android.

A guy walks into an AT&T store without a clue. He'll walk out with an Android. It's the most profitable for the carrier, because it's perhaps the only smartphone left that grants the carrier full control over how it's configured and what software is bundled.

Patent attacks against individual Android manufacturers and individual models are irrelevant. Your carrier will always have a wall of indistinguishable Android phones for the next customer to choose from.

<comment><USER8> Indded, one of my friends went to buy a windows phone recently, c# dev looking for a phone he could work on.

The clerk literally told him they only have display models and don't hold stock and that he'd been told not to push them. The clerk couldn't even organise for a windows phone to arrive at the store so my friend decided he'd try learning obj-c and walked out with an iphone 3G (as said dev is a jaded ex-java enterprise programmer and hates the language with a vengeance).

<comment><USER9> Seriously? They didn't have the phone he wanted so he let them sell him something else entirely?

<comment><USER8> From what I got told he asked which store had one and he was told none of them do, he asked to order one and they said they wouldn't from the store but he could order online. The guy is a grumpy troll of a man so I would of imagined him loosing his temper and just demanding something else. I know his old phone had stopped working so he did have a little pressure to get a phone ASAP, but yep I raised my eye brows as well considering he is a known to rant about Apple (but I assume the hate is less than what he holds for java).

<comment><USER10> That story is quite hard to believe if I'm honest.

I'm guessing a Windows phone developer would own a windows pc and not a Mac as you say he is known to "rant about apple". Since you need a Mac to develop/publish for iOS would he really buy an iPhone, learn obj-c and buy a Mac just because the store he visited didn't stock Windows phones?

<comment><USER8> The bit I found hard to believe wasn't that he ended up an iPhone, it was that the store was essentially refusing to sell windows phones.

Anyway just dual boot you're desktop its really straight forward these days.

I recently rekitted my workstation to a i5. To install lion was literally as easy as boot off a USB drive, insert the install lion USB drive, let it do its thing, grab the associated drivers and put them onto your desktop, run the MultiBeast tool. Bingo running OSX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Android is the new Nokia: the lowest common demonimator phone; the default. Or, to cross realms, it's the new Windows. While Apple costs carriers a pretty penny, carriers get a share of the advertising revenue from Android based web searches, and they can preinstall whatever carrier apps they want on their Android devices, unlike on the iPhone.

<comment><USER12> Don't get me wrong, but this argument sounds like sour grapes. Another way to look at it is that Android is an open platform that people install on anything they want. And if it's open for users, then it's also open for carriers, which goes without saying.

Also, if low common denominator phones are anything like my Galaxy S, then Apple is screwed ;)

<comment><USER13> "open for users" this is not true, for all intents and purposes, Android is as open for users as iOS, but unlike Android iOS is not full of bloatware from the carriers. If you want to get the most out of your Android phone, you have to install community mods no different from an iPhone. My phone costed $3000 MXN and it was paid in cash, and I feel it was no worth it. I just hope one day (when my warranty expires) my phone gets a mod, because right now my phone is not supported. My next phone is certainly not going to an Android one. If you have the cash go for an iPhone, if you don't maybe Windows Phone is better?

P.S. Android is definitely the Windows of the smartphone world, but unlike on PC you can't replace it with the OS of your choice.

<comment><USER12> With iOS:

* there are no phone models available that allow to root your device without jailbreaking, a process that voids your warranty

* you cannot install software from third-party sources, unless you jailbreak it

* as a developer you cannot distribute software from your website, unless you want to limit yourself to nerds that have jailbroken their device

* you cannot build your own device with iOS on it

* certain classes of software, like phone number blacklists, are banned from the iTunes store, but are allowed on the Android Marketplace

* the source code for iOS is not available. This means no forks are possible (e.g. the Kindle Fire)

PS: don't confuse openness with convenience. Unlike Windows, if Google is doing such a poor job, you can always fork it, which is why Google has to play nice. Also, I love my Galaxy S and I only paid $100 for it. And I also own an iPhone 3GS which is gathering dust.

<comment><USER14> Android is full of possibilities, but the carriers are often the ones doing something with this, making it worse for the majority of users. If every Android user got the next version as quickly as iOS users get their next version, and it was as clean as Google wanted, their phones would be massively improved.

<comment><USER15> Do you really have to depend on your carrier ? Most of the phones are available in the open market, with a higher price tag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone else look at these numbers and instantly think of the shear volume of waste?

With iphones thats a well over million per day. With most people already owning a phone thats a lot of superseded devices to deal with. Thats a lot of chemical waste...

<comment><USER16> I think the vast majority of these users are probably on their first smartphone. For example, Android is huge in African countries where families who've never owned a computer are starting to sign up for cheap 3G plans with cheap Android phones.

I bet there's a lot of waste, but I also bet that it's _nothing_ compared to the waste from old American cars driving around and polluting. Think of what these new cheap smartphones mean for humanity - the ability for entire populations to pop on the internet that never have before, read wikipedia, etc. Surely that is worth the waste it is producing.

<comment><USER8> I wasn't really referring to the 'carbon footprint' if thats why you brought cars into it. I was more referring to things like PCBs and batteries, and the chemical processes used in refining these things. Toxic and harmful chemicals appearing in ecosystems they shouldn't... when things like cell phones don't get reprocessed properly.

<comment><USER17> There are plenty of toxic chemicals in car manufacturing. Hell, cars (particularly old ones) produce these toxic chemicals continuously while you drive them! Smart phones are a hell of a lot less toxic than cars.

As for the comparative benefits, we could argue until the cows come home - both products are insanely useful and life-changing - but if we simply declared them equally useful, that would make phones a better bargain due to the much smaller amounts of toxicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what number of distinct users is. Once you go Android, you tend to stay there. Between my wife and me, for example, we have had 6 Android phones (1 HTC Hero, 2 HTC Evo 4Gs, 3 HTC Amaze 4Gs), and 5th Android tablet (2 Samsung Galaxy Tabs, 1 Asus Transformer, 1 Acer Iconia, and 1 T-Mobile G-Slate). I'm sure each activation was recorded, but there isn't really a way to deactivate a device. Even a factory reset appears to be restricted to the phone, and doesn't register anything with the carrier/Google.

<comment><USER19> Goodness. Why do you own so many phones & tablets?

<comment><USER20> I think the basic idea is "one is good, six are better".

<comment><USER21> getting a screen extender to stitch together all eleven devices (don't forget the five tablets) would be amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I guess these numbers will increase as mobile vendors provide better ROMs with their mobiles. I bought a LG Optimus one to get started on Android (a year ago)and I got sick of its LG ROM in two weeks flat. Then I rooted it and put a custom ROM from XDA forums (with a custom optimised Kernel). I couldn't be more happier with my mobile's performance than this. Also I hear some new models of LG, HTC, Samsung have minimal default apps and lightweight ROMs now. So people don't have to be frustrated with un-removable built in apps and crap default home launchers. This will certainly get usability freaks (like me) interested.

</comment><comment><USER23> That sounded way too high. But then, holy crap: 1 billion people buying a device once every 3 years is ~ 1 million a day.

Wow.

<comment><USER24> 2 years is a better interval.

<comment><USER25> Not over 1 billion people it's not.

There's a lot of families that use hand-me-down phones.

Consider the scenario where Mum gets a new Phone every 2 years and Dad gets her old one when she's done. The phone has a 4 year life.

Averaging it out (over the richest 1billion people in the world) and 3 years is possibly a pretty close figure.

<comment><USER16> I highly doubt the richest 1 billion have anything at all to do with the majority of Android phone purchases. Countries like Nigeria (140,000,000 people) and Kenya (40,000,000 people) are starting to see their populations going from no-computers to everybody-has-a-smartphone. Most people there may never own a PC but will move straight to cheap, open source smartphones.

I would bet that Android's growth numbers are a majority of new users and a minority of returning users. The platform's only been popular for a single "update cycle" anyhow. 3G networks are popping up in the poorest parts of the world and people are buying phones there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence And these numbers are the reason why Android development is going to be a royal pain in the butt for a long time to come.

There is just no incentive for Google to change the developer tools to be more developer friendly, to be more powerful when developers are forced to release an Android application simply because it is the platform with the most users on it. Despite the fact that from a development standpoint it is a nightmare due to differing hardware/software to the point that shops that want to develop for Android have to have 30+ devices just for physically testing. The Android emulator is absolute crap because of timing difference a bug can manifest itself in the emulator and not on the phone and vice-versa.

Not only that but the quality of applications on Android devices is simply not up to par with the quality of the same applications on the iPhone. It says a lot when Twitter and Facebook wholesale take their UI designs/decisions and put them on Android devices from their iPhone counterparts.

<comment><USER26> Amen. I wish they also included how many different variants of Android were actually being shipped, and what version each one was. _Those_ numbers would make us developers tremble.

With iOS, it's simple -- if a million iOS devices were activated today, I'd know they all ran the exact same version of iOS 5.x, and none were customized or bastardized by OEMs. At least on that front, I'm thankful to Apple (I can write a whole other rant about iOS' crappiness too, but that's not relevant here)

PS: Here's an example of how Android EMs screw over apps/devs: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5358014/android- httpclien...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5358014/android-httpclient- oom-on-4g-lte-htc-thunderbolt)

<comment> X-Istence I recently read this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3362072> a post by user "calloc" which I find quite interesting. I personally work for Absio Corp (<http://absio.com/>) and we do Android development for the DoD and we too have found many of the issues that I've mentioned above and that calloc has found as well. At the moment we are testing on the Evo 4G, Photon 4G, Samsung Galaxy S II, and the Droid X, with a couple of other devices mixed in. I believe we also got a new Galaxy Nexus that we are testing on.

It's a pain, and we've had issues with bugs only cropping up on one device but not another (even if they have the same Android version).

<comment><USER27> The current strategy for android is to keep pushing the device level up through app developers rather than through carriers. I'm now at a point where I do all my devs targetting Ice Cream Sandwich and including the compatibility packages for older versions. This does not fix all of the fragmentation you're referring to yet, but it's a very definitive step forward. Of course, this essentially means that potentially all my apps are carrying the same patch of the OS with them...

Anyway about 80% of my previous fragmentation issues were solved with ICS. The remaining 20% though, are the truly hard ones!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm sure the number is accurate and kudos to Google but, wow, who the heck is activating all these devices? From the people I run into I would estimate the iOS:Android ratio at 10 or 20 to 1 (San Francisco).

<comment><USER29> Observation biais.

Estimations from China:

\- In my office, a Web company: Android vs iOS is maybe 30 - <USER2>

\- In the subway, Android vs iOS is more like 80 - 20.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> That's roughly 250 million per year.

</comment><comment><USER31> How are they certain it's not 400' doing a factory restore or rom flush?

</comment><comment><USER32> That is only 10,000 years before all of humanity has one...

<comment><USER4> I think you mean 10,000 _DAYS_ (which is still 27.4 years).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If Steve Jobs was still around he would not be happy about this.</comment>


Permutations Mafipulations Pt. 1 | Code Exposure - <AUTHOR> http://sadanjon.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/permutations-mafipulations-pt-1/

<comment><USER2> [spoiler, i think?] i'm a bit confused - perhaps this is going to be the part 2, but it's not really that complicated (i don't mean to be rude - just that the article makes things so clear the rest is obvious). for a permutation you are making a choice from n, then n-1, then... if you number/index all the permutations then you can reconstruct the permutation for any particular index. to get permutation N, for example, you find the first choice by finding N mod (n-1)(n-2)...1, the second by doing the same to the remainder (but with (n-2)(n-3)...), etc. from that you can construct the permutation (selecting the first choice value from the set, then the next, etc).

think of it like numbering the nodes in a decision tree. at the root you have n sub-trees, each with (n-1)! nodes. rinse + repeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reading, and yeah! You got the idea right. Didn't mean to make it sound complicated. It's just something I found myself messing around with a couple of days ago.

<comment><USER2> it was interesting - as i said, the article helped (i don't think i'd have thought of the answer before reading it).

[huh. so i was the only person who voted this up? for what it's worth, hn is going downhill fast. this kind of article would have been more popular in the last...]

ps this would be related to numbers of variable base, i think - that might be an interesting connection to follow (although google isn't turning up much...)

<comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- standard_positional_numeral...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- standard_positional_numeral_systems)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial_number_system> (which makes your indexing as simple as reading the digits from the number, i think)

yes - here it is - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial_number_system#Permuta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial_number_system#Permutations) :o)

<comment><AUTHOR> So great man! I'm so happy for this, although the second part is already written I'm definitely going to mention this. This is almost the same solution as I've come up with there! Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


10 years of speed in Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://blog.chromium.org/2018/09/10-years-of-speed-in-chrome_11.html <comment><USER2> In September 2018, Chrome now looks like Firefox 29-56 and Firefox now looks like Firefox 4-28 as far as tabs are concerned.

I can't wait Firefox looking like Chrome 1-60 and then Firefox and Chrome looking like NetSurf and deciding that tabs under the address bar are better because of matters related to mouse / hand traveling distance, and then removing the address bar altogether, and then adding back the status bar, and then presenting tabs as a lottery wheel, before deciding that one window per page is more user friendly according to a new user A/B testing experiment, after all. And because of some unfortunate extension API breaking change, your preferred tab browsing plugin will not work for the first shiny new versions of these browsers like that.

And then Edge (or whatever the current name of Internet Explorer at this time after a rebranding following a scandal related to some Cortana incident) catching up, and opening a new window each time a link is clicked in Firefox or Chrome to try and steal users (which will lead to some meaningless fine from the EU).

:q!

<comment><USER3> I realize your post has some cynicism about change for the sake of change. However, I miss the tabs-on-top approach of a beta release of Safari in 2008-2009. It looked busy, but it was darn cool.

<comment><USER2> I like tabs on top, and this is even better now that hiding the native window title bar in Firefox works out of the box on GNU+Linux.

Despite the humor in my previous message, I have actually liked most UI changes in Firefox since the beginning, except for a few things that can be reverted in seconds or that I don't really care so much about. The biggest thing being the removal of the search bar in the default configuration. I didn't really like the rounded tabs and now they are gone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I honestly can't believe I'm reading this.

It takes Chrome + Ghostery + ABP + Privacy Badger 700MB and 17x processes just to start on Windows. Open a couple tabs and it instantly consumes 2+ GB of memory. Firefox is 300MB and 5 processes. You are delusional.

You have to tell it specifically NOT to stay running in the background FOR EVERY user on a machine.

It still has no idea what an FQDN is. And Google devs still don't care. They'd much rather search Google for a FQDN with a backslash than actually attempt to resolve the name. And that's a feature, NOT a bug.

I recently switched away from Chrome at work and Chromium at home BECAUSE it's not getting any better.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there any good data on how much larger sites are today compared to 10 years ago? It would be interesting to actually calculate how this has affected the loading times.

<comment><USER6> In 2010 the average size was 626KB [0]. Now it's like 3MB. [1]

[0] [http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2013/06/05/web-page- growt...](http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2013/06/05/web-page- growth-2010-2013/)

[1] [https://speedcurve.com/blog/web-performance-page- bloat/](https://speedcurve.com/blog/web-performance-page-bloat/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 69 is the slowest Chrome I can remember though

</comment><comment><USER8> And 19 years of bug, augmented by Electron</comment>


Show HN: Redis-GIS – Geospatial and Geofencing Commands for Redis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tidwall/redis-gis <comment><USER2> This is great! Incredibly useful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kudos George!</comment>


Automatic Summarization in Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/look-what-i-made/8358da843383

<comment><USER2> Reddit bots seem to be promoting programming to a wide audience in a way that regular software products don't. I guess it makes programming seem accessible. I wonder how many people this trend will coerce into learning to code?</comment>


Shit recruiters say - <AUTHOR> http://brikis98.blogspot.com/2013/05/shit-recruiters-say.html

<comment><USER2> This is funny, until it's not funny.

I was talking with a guy who was a peer of mine at Sun Microsystems in the 90's. He was reaching out to see if I knew of any openings. He's a programmer but he doesn't get 250 recruiter emails a day, he hasn't had a recruiter email him in a few years. He is living an existential crisis. Not fun.

<comment><USER3> What do you think caused it for him? Was it letting his skills become outdating and not staying up with the current trends in the field?

Sincerely, A 20 something programmer

<comment><USER2> A bit of all of that. During your 30's and 40's if you have kids you have a lot of obligations at home and so you don't spend a lot of time on outside projects. There is also a tendency to get curmudgeonly (which is fostered by having co-workers re-inventing the wheel and asking you to help). And lastly being an expert in Solaris internals isn't as useful as being an expert in Linux internals. It sums to smart guy, no longer hitting buzzword bingo on the recruiter's checklist, and somewhat off putting in their opinions of what is 'good' and what 'isn't good' in various designs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if the word "complaintbrag" exists (a la humblebrag) but it should, to describe someone who brags about how cool they are via complaining about something trivial.

</comment><comment><USER5> Recruiters say a lot of shit. Some of it is borne from ignorance (limited technical knowledge), some from mis-aligned incentives (contingency placement structures, especially when contracts vary between clients, are terrible for aligning interests), and some from systemic failures (what's going on behind the scenes?).

My company, Mighty Spring (<https://www.mightyspring.com>), is working to solve all of these issues. Our platform helps you passively monitor incoming opportunities, see exactly how your background is being represented to employers, and get access to the useful market information that good recruiters provide.

We'd love feedback from anyone who is pestered by recruiters and is looking for a better solution! The more you tell us about how we're doing, the faster we can fix this problem :)

<comment><USER6> _Our platform helps you passively monitor incoming opportunities, see exactly how your background is being represented to employers, and get access to the useful market information that good recruiters provide._

See, this is the shit the OP is talking about. All you have to do to be a good recruiter is simple: talk in plain words, and skip the bullshit. Your landing page, and language are more of the same shit I get on my email every day. Instead, why don't you just come out and explain what and how you are doing to get me a better job. That's all I need to know. Use simple words, common English. Not buzzwords. Instead of _Our platform helps you passively monitor incoming opportunities_ just say _Our platform keeps track of any and all work opportunities that might be available to you._ See the difference? One is pure buzz, the other one simply talks about what you do for me.

 _lumens 2 minutes ago | link | parent | flag

Recruiters say a lot of shit. Some of it is borne from ignorance (limited technical knowledge), some from mis-aligned incentives (contingency placement structures, especially when contracts vary between clients, are terrible for aligning interests), and some from systemic failures (what's going on behind the scenes?).

My company, Mighty Spring (<https://www.mightyspring.com>), is working to solve all of these issues. Our platform helps you passively monitor incoming opportunities, see exactly how your background is being represented to employers, and get access to the useful market information that good recruiters provide.

We'd love feedback from anyone who is pestered by recruiters and is looking for a better solution! The more you tell us about how we're doing, the faster we can fix this problem :)_

<comment><USER5> Hey, thanks for the feedback on our copy! I agree, your edits are more clear. I'll work them into an upcoming release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My contribution to this list (not from a recruiter, but was WAY more fun than most recruiter emails I get): [http://hervalicio.us/post/41945185221/i-just- got-the-most-hi...](http://hervalicio.us/post/41945185221/i-just-got-the-most- hilarious-job-offer-ever)

</comment><comment><USER6> _We are a top-level work hunting agency looking to expand out talent fund for exciting CTO-based opportunities._

That's what I usually get.

</comment><comment><USER8> All I expected was a Twitter account, where is it?

<comment><USER9> There's always this one: <https://twitter.com/Horse_Recruiter>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Recruiter caught red handed "Yes, this email literally said <name>. Umm, no thanks <company>."

\- Nice!</comment>


Today is the last day for Google.com/ig. What alternative are you using? - <AUTHOR>

Looking to find out what other people are doing to replace google.com/ig? It has been my home page for so many years that I imagine it being gone will have a significant effect on the flow of my workday. <comment><USER2> I've never heard of that. What is it?

<comment><USER3> It was their homepage alternative. If you were logged-in to Google and had set that as your default, you could set it up with widgets containing blog feeds, clocks, games, weather, etc. It was a handy way to aggregate just the info you want in a single place, and was very customizable.

It was also called "iGoogle" as the widgets were very similar to those you'd find in a Macintosh desktop, but for various reasons they renamed it Google Personalized Homepage.

Here are a few screenshots:

* [http://www.chrisabraham.com/GooglePersonalizedHomePageT.gif](http://www.chrisabraham.com/GooglePersonalizedHomePageT.gif)

* [http://tgiftutorials.pbworks.com/f/1182451979/iGoogle2.jpg](http://tgiftutorials.pbworks.com/f/1182451979/iGoogle2.jpg)

* [http://alwaysaskwhy.com/jameselee/blog/images/SCREENSHOT-Goo...](http://alwaysaskwhy.com/jameselee/blog/images/SCREENSHOT-Google-Homepage-Reader-Gadget-Birds-Eye-View-2006.12.png)

... as you can see in the last screenshot, they even offered the ability to group widgets into tabs.

More info here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGoogle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGoogle)</comment></comment>


Police Departments Are Using Swatting Registries to Protect Swatting Targets - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191222/14274043623/police-departments-are-using-swatting-registries-to-help-protect-swatting-targets-police-officers.shtml <comment><USER2> So... the big question is does each SWATing registry share across city (city PD), county (sheriff), state (several LEAs) and federally (many LEAs) so there's coordination? And, if a location were gamed to get placed on a registry falsely, wouldn't that be a good place to commit a crime where the police wouldn't respond? Rather than lists of "go/no-go," I think police on the beat need to utilize Good Judgement, and especially heightened caution when they're gearing-up with flash-bangs, body armor and long rifles. Maybe SWATing registries should be used as ephemeral advisories rather than a definite preemptive, decision-maker.

PS: This seems like a good topic for Mike The Cop, Officer401 and/or DonutOperator to cover.

<comment><USER3> "And, if a location were gamed to get placed on a registry falsely"

It would be extremely stupid to put "don't swat" pins on a map just because an unknown told them to do so. I would expect the cops to accept such requests only after ensuring they come from someone with any legit links to that location (owner, leaseholder, etc.) by going there at least once, identify the applier and hear their reasons for the requests, which would also help in case of a bogus swat call to find the authors or get closer to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perfect place to rob or hold hostages! Places on this registry

<comment><USER5> Not so much - as the article notes the police still visit and sweep the place, they just don't arrive with guns drawn, and they even send plain clothes police instead of SWAT teams.

My question, though: what makes someone likely to be swatted? Is it their online expression of an opinion? Membership of a certain online sub-culture? A high real-life profile?

<comment><USER6> It seems to happen often to streamers and people in the computer security community (Krebs, fb exec, mudge).

<comment><USER7> >mudge

Preettty sure that was just a misguided welfare check incorrectly described as a "swatting".

See context: [https://twitter.com/dotMudge/status/1211043309973622784](https://twitter.com/dotMudge/status/1211043309973622784)

Odds are someone was worried about him after his tweet, not that someone called the police and pretended to have hostages at his address.

It's certainly never appropriate in the US to call the cops if you think that someone might be suicidal, but I don't think it'd be entirely inappropriate to be concerned by his initial tweet.

<comment><USER8> I don't know what happened with mudge, but "welfare checks" where the person calling has ulterior motives for involving the cops in a situation are a common thing as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ACLU report on militarized police:

War Comes Home: The Militarization of American Police(1)

1-[https://www.aclu.org/report/war-comes-home-excessive- militar...](https://www.aclu.org/report/war-comes-home-excessive- militarization-american-police)

To whoever downvoted this because they didn't like it: This is just a listing of further reading material on the topic, from America's leading civil rights organization.</comment>


Show HN: QRspot.mobi - <AUTHOR> http://qrspot.mobi/ this is something we built in our spare time. Any suggestions on where we can better it? <comment><AUTHOR> This is something we built in our spare time. Any suggestions on where we can better it?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you track emails you send? - <AUTHOR>

Using email tracking service like Sidekick[1], you can receive notification when someone opens your email. Do you think, it is a great idea to know if someone has read your email (and not replied) or you believe it is unethical?<p>[1]: http://www.getsidekick.com/ <comment><USER2> If someone has a confirmation request or tracker set on their emails I throw them out unread. No need for spammers to verify if my email address works or not and everybody else knows I read my mail but don't always respond right away.</comment>


How to Make Multicore Chips Faster, More Efficient - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/design/how-to-make-multicore-chips-faster-more-efficient <comment><USER2> This just reminds me a bit of how programmers could fiddle with memory in the Cell Processor for the PS3. IIRC memory was managed by the programmer and it only made it harder to program for.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, once they learned to program it, the benefits were apparent.

The PS3 aged more gracefully than the X360, with programmers being able to squeeze more performace over time as they came to terms with the architecture (the same had happened with most consoles historically).

I feel that this won't happen with the current generation, since both PS4 nad XBONE are basically PCs in a box, and improvement in graphics will probably be much more limited over the years (due to programmers having a good grasp of the architecture from day one, and not because the architecture is inherently bad).

<comment><USER4> I wager that the PS4 and XBONE will benefit PCs more than previous consoles benefited PCs, specifically because they are slightly slower 8 core CPUs. Most games these days are optimized for quad cores at best, so to get more performance, additional threading is required. Due to everything being x86 and the prevalence of widely used game engines, everyone's performance goes up. Personally, I would like better AI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like we are unfortunately sitting on the tail end of the integrated circuit S-curve and are now waiting for the emergence of the next processing medium.

<comment><USER6> Actually I think both the processing capability and communication capability are almost reaching their limits regarding the sequential performance, I bet that's why multicore and bandwidth are what producers advocate, and also people are working hard to utilize the parallelism. Missing the good old days when 'faster' truly meant the sequential performance for CPU and latency for networking, and you could always get 'faster' by simply increasing the frequency...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm still waiting for a proper 8 core consumer x86 CPU. AMD's chips don't count because they perform worse than the ones from intel.

<comment><USER8> What is the consumer application for an 8 core CPU?

I can't think of one, as of 2015, that i'd not call a commercial application.

<comment><USER9> You're only saying that because most programs are incapable of taking advantage of multiple cores, but if 8 core CPUs were the norm, I guarantee programs (where performance matters) would change.

<comment><USER3> If 4 cores are the norm now, and most programs cannot take advantage of them, what it the rationale for which things would change in the case of 8 cores ?

<comment><USER9> 4 cores aren't quite the norm. The computer I'm currently at is a Dell XPS 13, the CPU is an i7-4510U, which is dual core. Regardless, in most circumstances, 4 cores are only just above break even point for parallel code, so the pay off isn't big enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've thought for a while that the hardware should manage threads and scheduling, not the operating system.</comment>


Ruby 1.9.2 Plans Announced - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/06/ruby192-plans <comment><USER2> The big thing for most people I've talked to about Ruby 1.9 is not so much when the next 1.9.x release will be, but when will most of the frequently used gems be compatible with 1.9?

<comment><USER3> I've switched to 1.9 and it's hard to find a gem that isn't compatible by now

<comment><USER2> Awesome, very good news.

It took awhile before Hpricot, a widely used gem, was updated for 1.9, but it seems even that now works. Of course, with Nokogiri, people now have another choice.

Good to hear that most gems are working now.

I still haven't tried any of my Rails apps with Ruby 1.9, just standalone programs.</comment></comment></comment>


Study links brain anatomy, academic achievement, and family income - <AUTHOR> http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/link-brain-to-anatomy-academic-achievement-family-income-0417 <comment><USER2> I didn't see any reason why these differences might not be genetic: genes cause changes in the brain which cause changes in academic achievement which cause socio-economic status.

It would be interesting to see studies that isolated the effects of genes and environment.

<comment><USER3> There are a number of natural experiments that researchers have used to examine this question:

[1]A study looking at the performance of Korean-American adopted children relative to their siblings: [http://www.nber.org/papers/w10894](http://www.nber.org/papers/w10894)

[2]The impact of various welfare programs on student achievement: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3208322/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3208322/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not immediately clear to me why those carrying out the study seem to interpret their results as justification for policy making and intervention. Serious question, is it not possible that we observe a cause and effect here? Ie. higher mental capacity leads to doing better in life?

<comment><USER5> because in the brainwashed world of academia (and especially psychology) this is the more politically correct explanation, which is more likely to get published, get funding grants, get admiration from departmental peers, get media attention, avoid embarrassment for your self/your family/your department/your institution.

James Watson won a nobel prize for elucidating the structure of DNA and was still only 2 non-PC comments away from becoming a pariah.

<comment><USER3> Or maybe it is because there are many researchers who have actually studied the data and found that environmental factors play a large role. A summary of some of the research in this area:

[http://futureofchildren.org/publications/journals/article/in...](http://futureofchildren.org/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=35&articleid=89&sectionid=541)

<comment><USER5> I'm not disputing the role of environmental factors, I'm just questioning how the potential role of genetics has been diminished in this study without justification.

Also, from your link the only study with ability to isolate causation (the adopted korean study) found "23 percent of educational attainment is determined by environment, implying that up to 77 percent is determined by nature.".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related: Your DNA may carry a 'memory' of your living conditions in childhood.

[http://scienceblog.com/48584/your-dna-may- carry-a-'memory'-o...](http://scienceblog.com/48584/your-dna-may- carry-a-'memory'-of-your-living-conditions-in-childhood)

<comment><USER7> from another related article[1], "A working hypothesis is that socio-economic circumstances leave their mark on the epigenome leading to stable changes in expression of genes critical for human health, such as those involved in cardiovascular, immune, stress response and behavioural pathologies"

[1] Associations with early-life socio-economic position in adult DNA methylation. Int J Epidemiol. 2012 Feb; 41(1): 62–74.</comment></comment>


Clifford Stoll calls BS on the internet in 1995 - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/925-clifford-stoll-calls-bs-on-the-internet-in-1995

<comment><USER2> I agree with the quoted guy in many ways. Perhaps we should congratulate him on how well he foresaw the difficulty in adapting these services to the web.

And the internet has made physical shopping obsolete? Not April 1st yet... I'm sure this idea would cause my girlfriend to burst into laughter.</comment>


The art of π, φ and e - <AUTHOR> http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/pi/art/

<comment><USER2> I am convinced they could just feed random numbers into those visualization packages and they'd look just as pretty, but they do look ..err... pretty.

<comment><USER3> I would agree, and say more.

What looks pretty in data visualization is not the same as what is informative. Even though "pretty" is what gets you noticed in geeky social media websites.

The pictures do not tell us anything interesting about e, pi or phi. Possibly they tell us something interesting about random sequences of decimal digits.

One thing even sillier than graphics generated from the digits of e and pi is "music" generated from the digits of e and pi.</comment></comment>


10 Startup Commandments - <AUTHOR> http://andyswan.com/blog/2008/12/01/10-startup-commandments/

<comment><AUTHOR> Background for other HN'ers: The author Andy Swan is a successful multiple exit entrepreneur and seed investor. From the site: "I've started and sold two companies. I have investments in 7-8 others. I love helping passionate people create wealth. Win."

Andy's one of the regulars on AVC, has an extraordinarily sharp business sense, and he's also a connoisseur of Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon: <http://andyswan.com/blog/?s=pappy>

<comment><USER2> That's me in a nutshell....no wait, this is me in a nutshell: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ3UHYLTcmM>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> #4 is straight out of Sun Tzu's Art of War

EDIT: Specifically, from XI: The Nine Situations

        23. Throw your soldiers into positions whence there
        is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight.
        If they will face death, there is nothing they may
        not achieve.  Officers and men alike will put forth
        their uttermost strength.

<comment><USER4> yeah it's important to note that we're talking about sun tzu's rules for soldiers, not himself. You better believe he had a way out of every room he walked into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The pants transform is effective here as well ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1580410> ) except you apply it to the words in all caps.

6\. PANTS in the face of temporary defeats

is particularly trenchant and evocative.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great article. Just downloaded the Audible version of "The Dip" (btw, only $5.96 at Amazon right now, about half the cost of the Kindle edition).

It seems there are a few points along the continuum of perseverance or personal outs (commandment #4):

At one end, burn the boats Cortez-style (worked ok for Cortez in the long run, not so well for all his crew). Is this for the leader's resolve or for the team's? This is probably the hardest for a founder that currently supports a family with a day job. Quit and make the jump on a founder's salary?

At the other end, the notion that entrepreneurs are more risk averse than most would guess and don't usually bet the farm on a decision with insufficient data. I don't like this end, sounds like paralysis.

Somewhere in the middle is probably where I fit, which is why the lean startup notion of "The Pivot" is so appealing to me. I support a family with a day job, so I like the idea of testing hypotheses rather than betting on a conclusion before the experiment. Plus, I think you can still execute because learning is progress.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the same boat, although my wife works I pay the bills on the house/gas/electricity/etc.

If I'm going to burn the boats, I don't want to do so while I'm still 10 miles off the coast (some debt from the wedding/honeymoon).

I'm confident I could raise from angels but pre traction it's a tough sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I disagree with #6: "COLLABORATE with relationship group, don't present to strangers".

I love presenting to strangers as a way to get feedback free of relationship- related noise. I rather have strangers poke holes at my business than have relationships ignoring them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Different stages maybe kote. At a really early stage when you don't have too much to show, not many strangers will want to listen. You'll need friends at that point.

<comment><USER8> Agree with messel. Beside stranger wanting to listen or not your new product I believe its about "shut up and do it" finish your 1.0 version then show around different kinds of people (tech and non-tech, biz and non-biz related people)and try to get a rich feedback from them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think 4 is unwise.

In 3 the "hours? all of them" part is hyperbole and also both unwise and unnecessary. High hours leads to burnout. Plus it should be about results not hours.

Most of his points are good.

<comment><USER10> Why do you think #4 is unwise?

<comment><USER9> I think it is unwise to reduce your options, especially in financial matters, especially regarding income, especially if you do not already have FU money. BATNA principle.

<comment><USER11> <http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/batna/?nid=1278>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I agree with his points except for #9:

"When I see an entrepreneur in a suit, the first thing I think is "I wonder what else he is dressing up"."

It doesn't hurt to look professional in a business situation. The vast majority of the business world doesn't wear black turtlenecks and jeans and work in Silicon Valley.

For outsiders not in the computer industry there can be a huge difference seeing someone come and present in a suit or even a dress shirt and tie versus sneakers, jeans and t-shirt.</comment>


True Confessions of an iPhone Developer - Bullshit Review Sites - <AUTHOR> http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/iphone-news/true-confessions-of-an-iphone-developer-bullshit-review-sites <comment><USER2> It's tough these days being a developer. I know from experience. If you are lucky you can get clients to pay the development costs and you are most likely going to give them something they like. Trying to break into the shareware or apps for purchase is a whole new ballgame. Customers demand perfection and there's a middleman around every corner trying to sap your profits. That's the risk of the entrepreneur. Fortunately, the web rewards innovation, but it requires hard work. At least the iPhone developer license is nothing compared to a Nintendo or XBox license.

Paul St. Amant Softomic LLC

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been trying to get the word out about my game. The biggest problem is no hype leads to no reviews leads to no sales. Getting noticed is a total crapshoot. After a couple of days on Twitter, it appears most sites just want a free copy of the popular apps. They'll bend over backwards for codes from @EAMobile but flatout ignore you unless your name ends with Inc. or LLC.</comment>


For ALL Migrator from Parse.com! Testing Tool for Parse.com REST API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Lewuathe/parse-spec <comment><USER2> Join Parse Open Source Community on Slack bit.ly/1SxTVIi</comment>


Stream Updates with Server-Sent Events, an alternative to websockets - <AUTHOR> http://www.html5rocks.com/tutorials/eventsource/basics/

<comment><USER2> Anyone have idea which browsers support this? And if it's worth even knowing about, for instance if it's any more performant than other techniques why doesn't Socket.IO support it as a transport fallback.

<comment><USER3> Acoording to Wikipedia ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server-sent_events> ) only Opera.</comment></comment>


Wirelessly charging electric cars as they drive - <AUTHOR> https://news.stanford.edu/2020/05/04/wirelessly-charging-electric-cars-drive/ <comment><USER2> It's really interesting, but I wonder if as a society we're willing to complicate our roads to the level of adding any sort of functionality to them. Asphalt is wonderfully easy to work with, just pour, grind up, remelt, you can keep reusing it. Even then maintaining our roads is a challenge. Adding electrical infrastructure to the roads themselves to further complicate how you would re-pave, resurface, etcetera? Even if technically feasible, I don't know if we have the economic/political feasibility that's also required to make that work

<comment><USER3> Unclear what the benefit is, given the cost.

EVs already provide enough range for commuting. The vast majority of the population commutes tens of miles, and EVs can regularly do hundreds of miles. So there's really no need to modify roads for the sake of commuters.

For longer distance travel we really should be talking less roads and more high speed rail. They're faster, safer, and more efficient than cars. It's also a less uncertain technology; there are several countries with highly successful high speed rail systems that we could copy.

For freight we should use regular rail for similar reasons, plus the fact that using semi trucks, diesel or EV, creates a large financial burden on the public to undo the damage that heavy trucks do to our roads.

<comment><USER4> > EVs already provide enough range for commuting. The vast majority of the > population commutes tens of miles, and EVs can regularly do hundreds of > miles. So there's really no need to modify roads for the sake of commuters.

The 50mins I takes me to charge my Kona every ~210 miles is roughly when I should be taking a break of roughly an hour anyway. "Technology Connections" on YouTube has a really fantastic (and old) video on this subject: assuming level 1 (110V) at home and at work, you'd basically never need anything more than level 1 charging for commuting. EVs require a surprisingly small amount of energy.

> high speed rail

I have understood the efficiencies in rail since I was maybe 12. It blows my mind that it is such a niche mode of transport (especially for goods, transporting humans isn't where the real savings are) in so many places around the world. From a purely economic standpoint (forgetting environmental issues entirely), it makes complete sense to aim to have zero semis on roads between cities. Trains should be long-haul, semis should be last-mile.

<comment><USER5> > Trains should be long-haul, semis should be last-mile

There is a reason semi's are long-haul. A fleet of semi's is tremendously flexible, with single loading and single unloading.

The fleet can be driven in a myriad of ways and constantly re-routed for suit the present requirement.

Trains are good for a specific types of cargo, ex. to and from ports.

<comment><USER6> Also, the trains would charge monopoly prices if no long-haul trucks. You can read about that in any US history book.

And if I'm shipping something in the form-factor of a parade float, I'd want to load it once on a truck, not on a truck and then a train.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A few pieces of context - this builds on the insight that underlies WiTricity - [https://witricity.com](https://witricity.com) \- near-field coupling of designed resonators for non-radiative power transfer. Specifically, this can enable very high efficiency wireless transfer in the near-field of resonators, which at these wavelengths is on the order of 1-5 meters. This is qualitatively different from other approaches to wireless power transfer and does have some real scientific insight which originates from the electromagnetics/ photonic community.

More specifically, this specific results builds on an insight from the same research group which led to a Nature paper in 2017: [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22404/](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22404/) \- that using an non-linear saturable gain element in a parity-time symmetric configuration enables robust power transfer in a range of conditions such as moving and the presences of obstacles. There's interesting underlying science here that shouldn't be missed for the focus on the application.

<comment><USER8> Interesting development in this space this week for WiTricity (the company) is that China is standardizing nationally on magnetic resonance technology for wireless vehicle charging based on WiTricity's designs and standards work. I'm sure this was an exciting week for my former colleagues there, and congratulations are certainly in order for them.

[https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/05/20200508-witricity....](https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/05/20200508-witricity.html)

There are academic connections between the group at Stanford publishing this work and the group at MIT that founded WiTricity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I highly doubt cars are the actual killer app for wireless charging. At the end of the day, they're usually parked a good amount of time, and are comparably tolerant of extra weight, which makes some form of battery much simpler.

I'd look for applications where a system cannot stop moving, otherwise isn't in physical contact with infrastructure / cannot be accessed, or absolutely can't tolerate additional weight.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Biomedical devices, electric planes/freight drones, agricultural sensors etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's a shame that the somewhat breathless headline is dominating the discussion.

This is a good idea, which hasn't even been demonstrated to work with electric cars and roads.

What it _has_ been demonstrated to work for, is robots in warehouses, and in that context it's great: this would allow ~99% utilization and obviate laying out warehouse space for charging docks.

</comment><comment><USER12> > The wireless transmission takes only a few milliseconds – a tiny fraction of > the time it would take a car moving at 70 miles an hour to cross a four-foot > charging zone. The only limiting factor, Fan said, will be how fast the > car's batteries can absorb all the power.

Well, yes, moving tens of kilowatt-hours of energy in milliseconds wirelessly to a moving target with a lithium based rechargeable battery _is an unsolved problem_.

Who woulda thunk.

<comment><USER13> I think you would have more than one charging strip. I mean charging your batteries to full in four feet at highway speeds would be cool, but just supplying four feet worth of energy every four feet would be fine.

<comment><USER14> The problem is cost and complexity. These things need a load of copper wire to make a loop, so if you are laying something like this down every 4 feet, it translates into a boatload of material (think 400ft of copper per 4ft charge) (That is being driven on... so definitely a possibility that they require regular maintenance).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> IDK why there is so much focus on charging in motion.

This has a much better application for parking lots. Dedicate some percentage of spaces as charging spaces and power vehicles at rest. It doesn't need to deliver a high power charge to be useful.

Heck, this even makes sense for loading docks/semi. Put these induction chargers at every loading bay and let the electric semis charge while they load and unload.

<comment><USER15> For fixed vehicles, using one of the two to seven standardish plugs makes a lot more sense. Giving up 8% efficiency to save 30 seconds over usually 20-30/minutes of dwell time isn't worth it.

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, charging forklifts or something in a warehouse in motion, or while briefly stopped drives up how long you can use an electric powered device, and the added utility pays for efficency loss.

Of course, it's easier to add this to cover enough of a warehouse than to cover enough of a highway system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> And your mechanical watch stops working every time you pass over one of the recharging grid squares :-)

I love the idea of using magnetic inductance to charge at a distance but with all that flux even small loops of conductors might be in danger of generating a serious voltage potential across them.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article presents the functionality as new, but wirelessly charged electric vehicles have been in use at small scale for many years: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_electric_vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_electric_vehicle)

<comment><USER18> Or smaller - bumper cars.

Or smaller yet - slot cars.

(Not technically wireless or battery powered, but still)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One step closer to F-Zero. On a more serious note, This is really exciting. I would be interested to see how they would bill for this type of charging.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Zero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Zero)

<comment><USER20> Many countries would have to replace the money lost to fuel duty with something fuel duties are a huge portion of the tax revenue in most of Europe and many other countries.

So adding a road tax for EVs eventually would have to happen to offset the loss of revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _" Wireless chargers transmit electricity by creating a magnetic field that oscillates at a frequency that creates a resonating vibration in magnetic coils on the receiving device. The problem is that the resonant frequency changes if the distance between the source and receiver changes by even a small amount.

In their first breakthrough three years ago, the researchers developed a wireless charger that could transmit electricity even as the distance to the receiver changes. They did this by incorporating an amplifier and feedback resistor that allowed the system to automatically adjusts its operating frequency as the distance between the charger and the moving object changed. But that initial system wasn't efficient enough to be practical. The amplifier uses so much electricity internally to produce the required amplification effect that the system only transmitted 10% of the power flowing through the system.

In their new paper, the researchers show how to boosts the system's wireless- transmission efficiency to 92%. The key, Assawaworrarit explained, was to replace the original amplifier with a far more efficient "switch mode" amplifier. Such amplifiers aren't new but they are finicky and will only produce high-efficiency amplification under very precise conditions. It took years of tinkering, and additional theoretical work, to design a circuit configuration that worked."_

A resonant structure (AKA "antenna") can be thought of as Star Trek's Transporter, version 0.0000001...

A resonant coil, 0.0000002...

A resonant coil to transport electricity, 0.0000003...

Then of course there's this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB_hF_K_7cc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB_hF_K_7cc)

2:28:

Montgomery Scott: "What's that?"

Alternate Universe Mr. Spock: "Your equation for achieving transwarp beaming..."

[He shows Mr. Scott the equation on screen...]

Montgomery Scott: "Imagine that! _It never occurred to me to think of space as the thing that was moving!_ "

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's the author's web page at Stanford.[1] Not much there. He published a very similar paper in 2017.[2] The actual papers are paywalled. So we don't get to see how big a coil, or whatever, is needed to get 10W at 1 meter.

It's straightforward to do that with a split transformer. Berkeley used to have an electric bus which recharged at bus stops that way. More trouble that it was worth, but it worked. There's an old patent from, I think, GE, for a scheme for long transformers below highway lanes to do the same thing. The practical question is whether this new thing is substantially better.

Parity–time symmetry is a concept from quantum optics. The author, from his papers, used to do optical work. There's been work on this in the magnetic domain, but at very small scales, like nanometers.[3] Doing this on a scale of meters is new.

No idea whether this makes any sense. None of the non-paywalled papers have anything useful to read. Anybody enough into quantum magnetics to make sense of this?

[1] [https://web.stanford.edu/~sca/](https://web.stanford.edu/~sca/)

[2] [https://www.livescience.com/59487-wireless-power-systems- cha...](https://www.livescience.com/59487-wireless-power-systems-charge- electric-cars.html)

[3] [https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1356846](https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1356846)

</comment><comment><USER23> An interesting thought would be if EVs carried capacitors that had about a quarter mile of range that could be charged instantly then slowly dumped into a battery as the car travels. Then every quarter mile have a fast charge strip that the car pulls from like a light rail into the super capacitor.

</comment><comment><USER24> I visited Monterey and noticed some odd markings on the roads. Monterey has induction charging built into the roads along some bus routes. I'm not sure if they're charging along the way, or just at the bus stops?

Either way, it's an interesting application. I'm not sure how wild you could go with this right now, given all the roads that exist already, and the cost that would come along with it. Or maybe the traffic implications of people climbing to get on those free charging roads?

But public transit seems like a smart use for this kind of thing. Takes a predictable path, for a (somewhat) predictable about of time, on a loop all day. If you designed it right, perhaps you could drive that bus along that route until it breaks down?

<comment><USER25> _wireless power transfer (WPT) technology_

[https://mst.org/news_items/media-invitation-cord-cutting- for...](https://mst.org/news_items/media-invitation-cord-cutting-for-msts- wirelessly-charged-electric-trolley-june-8/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So they need to transmit enough enegy to power a moving car, through the road surface, using a reciever small enough to fit on/under a moving car. Ok. That's a huge amount of energy. I hope nobody is trying to use a compass anywhere near these roads. And I would seriously think twice about getting out of your car if you have a pacemaker, hip or other impanted metal device.

There is aleady a decades-old system in widespread use for delivering electrical energy to moving vehicles. It isn't rocket science. It's called a "wire".

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

</comment><comment><USER27> This will be used for some niche use, like a closed road for dump trucks to run full time, or on train tracks for electric trains. This is too complex even compared to putting a cable in every parking space that currently exists.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does the below quote really mean that there's only 8% power drop from the charger to the battery? That too good to be true with a wireless system, even with directional antennae.

"In their new paper, the researchers show how to boosts the system's wireless- transmission efficiency to 92%. The key, Assawaworrarit explained, was to replace the original amplifier with a far more efficient "switch mode" amplifier."

<comment> kube-system Yeah, 8% at what distance? The inverse square law is a bitch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hmm, I wonder if there could be an interesting incentive alignment with the transaction of charging cars as they drive along a highway and collecting a tax for improving it.

There are other comments about political feasibility, but what if the same system became a way to re-produce the tax for use we originally built into gasoline.

Obviously theres a bunch of tax evasion / self charge cases that would need to be considered.

</comment><comment><USER30> This sounds like a waste of energy to me. My favourite highway concept is autonomous electric vehicles connecting to each other physically and forming "trains", where the large factor of air resistance is reduced greatly and cars would negotiate with each other who's expending and who's recouperating energy depending on each car's distance to its target.

</comment><comment><USER31> Rentable portable removable gas generators that attach to you tow hitch are also a decent solution for charging on the go.

<comment><USER32> Small point - why not just but an ICE car then?

<comment><USER33> Because the electric car is better than an ICE car for the 98% of the time that you don't need the extra range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any tech that aims to improve something by re-designing roads is bound to fail. It's simply not cost effective.

How about truck by-lanes across the country are equipped with electric cables on poles, and trucks have those train type extenders to get charged. Or even charging stations in truck stops.

And wireless charging is in-efficient.

<comment><USER34> This is currently in an extended trial in a few places in Germany. Several kilometers of highway have those overhead lines for electric trucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> [Large] wind tubines by the side of the road can produce a lot of unreliable power efficiently. Transporting it to urban areas adds inefficiency to the unreliable. You need a fair bit of wind to get anything out at the other end.

Solar voltaic has its own weird reliability issues but the panel does produce unusable amounts of power most of the day. (if your plan is to transport it)

Good weight/kwh ratio batteries are expensive.

If you can have the batteries roll along the power source for free the wind and sun could be offered very cheaply.

Wireless I dunno, overhead cables or contact rails in the road seem fine. Still costly but reasonable.

Pondering this it struck me how wonderful this ancient tech is.

[https://www.rac-info.nl/lv/images/lvtrekschuitenpaard.jpg](https://www.rac- info.nl/lv/images/lvtrekschuitenpaard.jpg)

Its A horse pulling a boat!

We could put rails by the side of the road with drones on them (mechanical horses) hook up any old clunker by its towing ring, cut dramatically into fuel consumption, reduce tire wear and get rid of much of the driving idiocy.

It gets more spectacular where you can dump mechanical energy into vehicles while it is available.

I have no idea at what speed conventional cars are still usable but I see far less need for a speed limit if everyone drives in formation. If someone hits the breaks the drone can detect it and slow down the car behind it. Perhaps 2 cables, one at the front and one at the back.

Charging the battery over cables gets pretty obvious at this point. (there is regenerative breaking too!)

To add a final bit of hilarity: If we stop gluing batteries into appliances (ffs?) fit them to the bottom and make them easy to swap by driving over a swapping station... then the fully charged battery is more valuable than the empty one.

This can drive the cost per km down below zero.

<comment><USER35> Thanks for the unexplained downvote. Reminds me, we could chain people to rails too! That way we can prevent them from going where they have no business. People like me, or like you! It will revolutionize training schedules. You will be on time for work every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why not Scalextrics on a real life size scale?

</comment><comment><USER37> Isn't this just a miles-long induction stove top? What keeps the rest of the metal from heating?

</comment><comment><USER38> "Indeed, the magnetic fields can transmit electricity through people without them feeling a thing."

Pretty glib considering the current 5g controversy

<comment><USER32> Pretty glib considering the non-factual current 5g conspiracy theory

<comment><USER39> Whether it is factual or not is irrelevant for the public outcry over the next conspiracy theory. I'm not defending it, but we currently have a crisis of science authority. I'm not sure what to do about it though.

I wonder if putting the system before lights at intersections would help to buy, so to say, people. If it would be cheaper and more convenient for them directly. I think the problem with 5g is that it is not entirely clear how better is it. Also there are probably more people driving, then using mobile Internet. Or at least more people that would protest such undertaking.

<comment><USER40> > but we currently have a crisis of science authority

Did science ever carry any authority on it's own? In the last few decades I've been living in the United States, I honestly don't think it has.

> I'm not sure what to do about it though.

I think what we're seeing now is really organized emotional manipulation on a massive scale. I seriously doubt that any of these conspiracies are truly organic, or if they are, that their current scale is organic.

Worse still is it's impossible to determine who is doing the pumping. Is it "activist" groups looking for funding? Is it "corporate" groups looking for legal leeway? Is it bored kids on the internet looking for entertainment?

As to what to do about it, I think the answer basically starts with a lot more investigative journalism. We don't do that anymore. It creates a vacuum that allows these groups to thrive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking to get a business credit card.  What offers the most cash back and best deals/points?  What should I look for in a business credit card? <comment><USER2> AMEX is one of the best cards for floating monthly expenses. Customer service is top notch, and you often get an extra year warranty on anything you buy. If you're irresponsible, prepared to get slaughtered by high interest rates that pay for these services... That said, I would not use an AMEX to bootstrap a company. You can find a better interest rate through VISA/Mastercard.

I currently use an AMEX Blue (cash back) for my personal stuff, balance is paid IN FULL every month. And we have a business checking account for the iPhone company. $5/month through Wells Fargo.

While I keep a few accounts at Wells Fargo, I bank through ING Direct. Love everything about ING, and they have great leadership. One complaint: for an online bank their web interface is freaking terrible.

<comment><USER3> Careful with ING. In November they closed my account with no advanced notice and no chance for me to make any arrangements for my money. I couldn't access my savings for 2 weeks while I waited for a paper check. I also had to wait for a paper paycheck since it was too late to change my direct deposit. When I called they said that I had taken advantage of too many of their "free" services and my account had become unprofitable. No one there, including the ombudsman, cared that they had cut me off from my money for 2 weeks or that my bills would be late.

<comment><USER4> Wow thats scary. I have almost all my savings in ING. What "free" services are you taking about?

<comment><USER3> Well, what happened to me was that I was having a tough month, and a couple of automated ETF's came in unexpectedly. They all got returned NSF on the same day and the next day without any warning they just shut down my account without notice. The only way I knew something was wrong was that I could no longer log in to my account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Right now I'm using American Express. I was using Visa/Mastercard for quite some time, but lately and after reviewing what it offers, American Express has been too good to pass up. What I found to be of maximum value, was its deals for shopping at selected vendors and you get three times the point for every dollar.

On a side note, like most of us, if I use a number a lot, I tend to remember it, and that goes for credit card numbers... comes in real handy when you don't have the card on your person. But switching to AE was ironic because it's not a typical 16-digit number, in fact, it's not even sixteen digits, but fifteen - but in an odd sequence(4-6-5), which I found to be interesting since every credit card I've ever used(even debit cards) have been 16 digits in groups of four numbers. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> How much do you pay for it a year?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Main Cards:

* LOC linked to a visa cc through a local credit union (highly recommend going this route.)

* Also a citibusiness cc. (pretty good for a multinational)

* 3 other credit union cc's.

Also have 2 other business loc's and many other credit cards not worth mentioning.

I used to be a very Amex heavy business. Luckily I had my other options available so when I got Amex f/r'ed last year, I was able to cancel all Amex and switch without any major cash flow issues.

I was very lucky in this respect, as Amex has jeopardized many businesses with their f/r, cdl, and verification practices. There is alot to say here, but to keep it short: If you rely on Amex for operating your business, go ahead and setup alternatives that can be switched to "just in case".

Amex is the greatest when everything is peachy, but if they decide otherwise (and this does not require late payments, breaking your cl, or any other negs) they can and will shut you off until you work with them through it. I decided this type of unreliability was not an acceptable type of relationship I needed for my business financially. Their points & cash back programs are still the best I have encountered, however.

Best of Luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> Amex business. As an anecdote, I heard Jeff Barr say that Smugmug was charging all of their monthly Amazon S3 expenses on Amex Business Platinum (generating multiple first-class air tickets)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've had an Amex Gold Business Card since starting up in 2001. Their customer service is the best and their web site keeps getting better each year for tracking my transactions, etc.

I've also had them go to bat for me a few times over disputed charges and I've always been very happy with the outcome. I'd highly recommend them.

</comment><comment><USER9> American Express Plum Card. <http://www.plumcard.com/> With early pay I get 2% cash back. If you need to push payments off you can pay 10% by the due date and pay the balance 2 months later without interest charges.

I try to use this card for every expense I can, it can really help you manage your cash flow.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've seen this and I think you might get ideas: [http://www.btgains.com/credit/card/Regular/Promo_Balance_Tra...](http://www.btgains.com/credit/card/Regular/Promo_Balance_Transfer_APR/sorted_by_12_month_balance_transfer_profit/index.php)

</comment><comment><USER11> We have <http://www.plumcard.com/> and love it.

2% cash back if you pay within 7 days of your statement. (But there is a minimum monthly spend of $1000 or something like that.)

</comment><comment><USER12> american express platinum.

no monthly/yearly fees, doesn't have to be paid off every month, and it does the whole reward point thing (i've used them to buy flight tickets).

</comment><comment><USER13> Amex Gold.

<comment><AUTHOR> are the monthly fees worth it for AMEX?

<comment><USER13> Amex has simply the best customer service of any credit card company in the universe. You have a problem with any random transaction, you call them up, they apologize, and they go fix it.

I haven't noticed the fees being an issue, but I'm not paying attention; we have a finance@ for that.

<comment><USER14> > _You have a problem with any random transaction, you call them up, they > apologize, and they go fix it._

I have absolutely the same experience with my bank's Visa.

<comment><USER13> What's the biggest conflict you've had over a Visa transaction? My biggest Amex conflict: I was forced to buy a walk-up fare one way ticket from Prague because CSA screwed up my booking; Amex fixed that in 4 minutes over the phone when I got home.

I'm not arguing with you; it's just my perception that Amex has been better than the various Visas and MCs I've held.

<comment><USER15> I've had my card copied and used to purchase thousands in gas and electronics. I called up Visa after seeing the charges when I logged in - and within minutes it was sorted with all charges waived.

Also, all purchases made with the card have their warranty doubled. So when my dell died right out of 2 yr warranty, I contacted them and was told to send it in. I then received a comparable unit from Dell the week after.

<comment><USER13> Just to be devil's advocate, any credit card is going to do the same thing if your card is stolen; they're legally required to, but they also do a good job on this just as a customer retention measure.

My Amex story is about getting fucked over in a legitimate transaction, and Amex making it right even though the problem had nothing to do with my credit card. I was told to expect this of Amex customer service, and they were right.

<comment><USER14> > _What's the biggest conflict you've had over a Visa transaction?_

We had to buy full-price tickets (~ $1k) to get back home from a vacation due to a hurricane warning. We had no applicable insurance on original return tickets, but we got a full refund after a call to a bank's credit card department. Perhaps it wasn't 4 minutes as in your case, more like 15, but considering the circuimstances I think it's still pretty awesome :-)

<comment><USER13> That is pretty awesome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been in business for 23 years. I look for the best interest rate on a card, no matter what it is. I don't care about cash back because it's never enough to balance the interest rate charged. If ToysRUs had a better deal, that's what I would use.

Now my wife is my accountant and we have a Amazon Visa card. I don't know anything more than that but, knowing how she investigates all that, I know it's the best deal. The only other card we have is a Discover card because that's the only one used by Sams Club.</comment>


Hong Kong police use teargas and pepper spray on students - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/28/hong-kong-protests_n_5895746.html

<comment><USER2> The time has come where Hong Kong is united to fight for a better future. The police has been using unnecessary force (tear gas, pepper spray) to ATTACK the protesters who did nothing but sitting down or shouting out their concerns!

News is circulating around the world. The world is watching.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a rather excessive force being used on a population whom, unlike other large scale protests, didn't overturn any car, didn't burn anything, didn't cause any damage whatsoever.

The outrage is remarkably reasonable in this case, and unfortunately it's looking and feeling eerily familiar, to the Tiananmen Square June 4, 1989.

More international media coverage would absolutely and definitely help.

</comment><comment><USER4> And Coders, don't forget another way to contribute. A group of people is constantly working on better IT backups, e.g. wifi, facts consolidation, map view for resources, etc. [https://www.facebook.com/groups/code4hk/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/code4hk/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153682274502588....](https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153682274502588.1073742117.59145437587&type=1)

</comment><comment><USER5> Would Edward Snowden still pick Hong Kong to fee if he saw this?

<comment><USER6> I don't see why not, the enemy of an enemy is a friend, isn't it?</comment></comment>


Ruby 1.9 Released - <AUTHOR> http://svn.ruby-lang.org/repos/ruby/trunk/ChangeLog

<comment><USER2> Woah, it was released tomorrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Timezones... look into that one ;)

<comment><USER3> Sneaky timezones... always up to no good... don't trust them!</comment></comment></comment>


Are Information Technology's Glory Days Over? - <AUTHOR> http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/08/09/0442225/Are-Information-Technologys-Glory-Days-Over

<comment><USER2> Measuring "glory days" by total spending is a red herring. I can think of a lot of places where spending is going down, but opportunities are going up, as value is taken away from the big dogs by entrepreneurs. Imagine all of Microsoft Office installations were replaced by software-as-a-service startups at 1/3d the cost. Microsoft would lose $15 billion a year, but a bunch of startups would make $5 billion/yr between them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not really. Whole economy is moving into computers and internet. That means that Information Technology would be in a huge demand. Still that doesn't mean that being in IT guarantees pay off. It's just that there are plenty of amazing opportunities related to software development.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the face of IT is changing in a way that most established companies just can't grasp. Hardware has gotten incredibly cheap, as has software. Current and future generations of workers and managers grew up being comfortable with computers.

IT departments don't need to worry anywhere near as much about building and setting up workstations and servers anymore, because it's all easily automated, freeing up the talent pool to focus on more strategic business needs -- security, performance, monitoring, and so on.

Plenty of opportunity.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get into game development - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm really interested in the game development, I myself is a front-end developer and have some basic c++ skill. I wonder where to start if I want to get into the game development. Should I start with some course or books? <comment><USER2> I've worked at gaming companies, and although I never worked on the games themselves (more the backend, console, etc), I would suggest just writing some games yourself!

There's a lot of aspects to game development, including gameplay, art, storyline, and many of those aren't technical. If you do get into a technical problem that can't be easily solved, cheat! Many games have an addictive mechanic that comes from a hard technical problem you want the player to solve.

There are some frameworks for writing games, and you can get familiar with whatever you think will solve the problem.

Also, just apply to a game company! They need web people too, and it's easier to use your skills to get your foot in the door, then you can learn from the inside.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah maybe I can apply to a game company directly

<comment><USER2> At the very least, there's nothing to lose! Just getting an onsite interview at some of these places is pretty amazing - you get to see all the concept art and meet so many gamers. Everyone is always looking for good tech skill, so if you've got it, they'll eat it up!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would check out [http://phaser.io/](http://phaser.io/)

You should be able to find a lot of tutorials on the phaser site itself as well as [https://www.reddit.com/r/phaser/](https://www.reddit.com/r/phaser/) or [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/)

It's a HTML5 game engine and I've used it to create some really simple games, game development is a lot of work/time however so see if you can get into it as a hobby and you will know if the enjoyment to work ratio is worth it for you.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can start building casual games in any 2D platform. Both [https://love2d.org/](https://love2d.org/) and [https://coronalabs.com/](https://coronalabs.com/) are free (Corona SDK has a enterprise version as well) and both use Lua. There are decent tutorials on the web and you can build a small casual game in a couple of days. There are tons of HTML5 game libraries as well but with Love2d and Corona SDK, you can build native games.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will definitely check it out

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're interested in modern game development in 3D, you might want to look at Unreal Engine 4.

[https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal- engine-4](https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4)

It is free to download, you can play with it all you want. You must agree to pay royalties (5%) if you start making money with a game you develop.</comment>


Discord raised ~$50m at $725m valuation - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/07/discord/ <comment><USER2> > One source says "quite a bit" of the new round was used to acquire the > secondary shares of Discord staffers, with this person expressing concern > that liquidity has come too soon for those employees, considering that > Discord was founded in 2012.

>liquidity has come too soon for those employees

How is this a _bad_ thing? Didn't we all agree that golden handcuffs are a terrible way to lock in employees?

</comment><comment><USER3> The number of employees they have working on what looks like a simple app is staggering.</comment>


Swirl: some sugar for Tornado (a web server that powers FriendFeed) - <AUTHOR> http://code.naeseth.com/swirl/

<comment><USER2> After being a long-time python guy, even with this syntactic sugar, I still find the node.js asynchronous callback paradigm to be more elegant.

But Swirl is a lot cleaner than Tornado's original async_callback. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER3> So... it turns Tornado into Diesel[1]+an-extra-layer-of-abstraction?

[1]: <http://dieselweb.org/></comment>


The racist double standards of international development - <AUTHOR> https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/racist-double-standards-international-development-200707082924882.html <comment><USER2> Counterpoint: while on a human level it is right and moral to care and empathize for those in poor conditions, in no way do the "barons" of the global north or their countries owe the "global south" improvement of living conditions. I don't say that in ignorance of history or out of apathy but solely because countries are sovreign and the right for self determination of people in a soveign country means those people decide and take upon the responsibility of their fate. You can throw money,education or people at 3rd world countries but ultimately, political change and security is what they need to make their country friendly to global commerce which will enable them to escape poverty. This means they have to get past internal divisions and get rid of corruption no matter the cost. Democracy does not work for every country, especially for poorly educated and majority illiterate countries, so they need to resist western pressure until they mature a bit more. But no matter what, those people must decide their fate. Yes, the north/west should help them with humanitarian needs and where it makes sense invest in them. No, the west/north should not interfere in their politics or accept responsibiltiy for their fate.

If Bill Gates and friends owe anyone,it is the people of their own country. Plenty of poverty in the US even if it doesn't compare to Africa.

It isn't right to criticize a well intended act of generosity and call the person racist. Colonialism was racist, bill gates is not. If Bill Gates saved even one African child's life,how many people can say the same, even in Africa or the "global south"? Even if the rich "global north" is being racist, I think I prefer having that in the world than cynical onlookers that are of no help other than to critique those helping.

<comment><USER3> > If Bill Gates saved even one African child's life,how many people can say > the same, even in Africa or the "global south"?

While Bill Gates saved numerous people in poor countries (not only Africa) he doesn't do nearly enough to start important conversations on racial issues /s

Really, fuck the guy who wrote this article. Bill Gates is untouchable. But not many are and they can be scared into not getting involved with sensitive issues for the fear of being attacked in this matter. This kind of shit journalism is actively scaring people from making a difference, as small as they can.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is to focus on solving the _cause_ not the symptoms.

Should a philanthropic King that still supports and perpetuates absolute monarchy be honored for his gifts (which themselves ultimately are created by his subjects labour)?

<comment><USER2> Yes,yes he should be so long has his gifts feed a starving person and save them from dying. What would you have him do? Fund a rebel movement and start a civil war to overthrow the monarch? Well CIA did plenty of that type of "philantrophy" and I think the result speaks for itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't see how superficial that is?

<comment><USER2> No, i cannot see how being glad there is less suffering and death is superficial

<comment><AUTHOR> The King is the _cause_ of the suffering. To partly alleviate it is not a noble act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> AIUI, that $1.90 (wasn't it $2? no matter) wasn't intended to be a particularly good number, but was picked because having something was necessary, a lot of desperately poor people had less so it was in the right range, and no other number seemed better at describing desperate poverty. It continues to be used because it permits comparison with older data. I haven't noticed anything that says it's _bad_ — for example, I haven't read that there's a lot of people whose income increases past $1.90 but the upward movement stops shortly above it, so that using $2.50 or $3 would lead to very different graphs.

The article seems to imply that using a much higher number would be substantively different, but I can't really tell why. Is it really just saying that counting desperately poor people is bad, and instead the number of poor people should be counted? Or is it saying that helping most of the desperately poor become merely poor is racist, we rich people would do more for them and faster if they had the Right skin colour?

<comment><AUTHOR> What's unclear to you? How I read it is that the established way to measure poverty is largely just a way to justify and paint a rosy picture of the status quo, not based on actual on-the-ground facts of what number that actually lifts someone out of poverty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It does seem like the poverty line is arbitrary, and it does seem low. Is racism the explanation for every small and large thing?

Where does the article mention the constant money printing which is continuously devaluing currencies all around the world? Does a poverty line even make sense in a world where the currency depreciates quickly? How about measuring the poverty line in terms of currencies which do not depreciate in this way, such as precious metals? Why not mention that all governments all over the world are incentivized to overpromise and underdeliver because they own the money printing press? If a person who is supposed to have a background in economics, such as the author of this post, doesn't even mention this, then what hope is there for the lay person?

<comment><USER6> > constant money printing which is continuously devaluing currencies all > around the world

Printing money does not mean currency devaluation. Keep in mind most of the so called "money" in the world is debt (and by most I mean almost all of it). It's created out of thin air.

I think a lot of people have just generally skewed ideas about how expensive things are because they live in expensive places. I live in Boston where everything is expensive and gentrifying, but it turns out the vast majority of the country is dealing with urban decay and their homes are too cheap to maintain their infrastructure, ect. All of the simple good are still ridiculously cheap. It's like $1.50 for a liter of milk still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One place this is abundantly clear is in the humanitarian sector, which I peeked into for a couple of years for a project.

For all the talk about participatory processes, the entire system is donor- focused. Its an army of well meaning folks from the Global North that are executing on an view set by donors.

There is grumbling about lack of "local capacity" but somehow disregard that expat staff move countries every few years and yet somehow have a strong grasp of local conditions.

Of course the situation isn't as binary and things are a bit more complex in real life - but makes you wonder why/how these structures persist.

</comment><comment><USER8> That article is dripping with intersectionalism.

The author misses the point entirely. It's not that wages are good in these countries it's that they are improving and improving rapidly.

It's not racist, unless you take the modern definition that any racial disparity is racist. Racism requires discrimination. Disparities do not always mean there is discrimination.

History has dealt these countries a bad hand. But things are getting better and they are getting better fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by "dripping with intersectionalism"?

> these countries it's that they are improving and improving rapidly.

The entire argument is that this is actually not happening. The figures are just doctored instead. Not sure how you can just state the exact opposite to the articles argument without presenting any evidence that the author misses.

<comment><USER8> The argument the the poverty line is too low is fair. However most poorer economies are growing fast. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GD...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_growth_rate)

Yes GDP is not the best metric but it does show a trend. That wealthier countries are developing slower that poorer countries.

It's not happening everywhere but most countries that don't have political problems are doing well.

There can be an argument that the rich west is guilty of causing some of those problems. For example Iraq is due to American interface. You could argue most of Africa is still suffering from the power structure left by the British.

But these are the results of past so s not the current system.

By dripping with intersectionalism I mean the author is dropping intersectional buzz words everywhere without making the case for why they apply. This is normally a sign that someone is simply applying an ideology to view a problem rather than any genuine analysis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not the current system? I recommend reading the author's book "The Divide" if you want information to nuance that.

The act of calling someone intersectional doesn't exactly make you look ideologically unbiased either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Our history seems to celebrate all past conquests as great feats by super- human hero-like figures, when in reality they were sackers, enslavers, and robbers...

heck from the Egyptian Pyramids to Europe's castle's to Abu dhabi's big buildings.

It seems all of them are tainted with being built with a slave workforce...

Same goes for any multinational corporation exerting resources from their low- wage employees and the countries where they operate.

Sad thing is we, as a society, will probably celebrate/admire those who extract more.

Capitalism is a fucked up mindset, it has brought us to here, and that can be said to have some merits by itself, but I'm not sure it will get us much far ahead as it is...

<comment><USER8> What's the better alternative to capitalism?

<comment><AUTHOR> Something that is better at solving inequality. Something that aims towards egalitarianism, not property ownership.

Capitalism have had a couple of hundreds of years or so now, and it still haven't succeeded in this, even with all the technological progress since.

<comment><USER8> Is egalitarianism and inequality the most desirable outcome of an economic system?

I'd argue it's not. I'd argue prosperity is. That is to say if the poor get far richer than they were and that keeps happening I don't care if the rich get richer faster. Especially if true class mobility is present in the system. That way the poor are trading places with the rich.

<comment><AUTHOR> You rarely see people on the bottom of the ladder argue that inequality isn't that important. Prosperity doesn't say anything about how the resources are shared, so yes, 1890ths England was surely one of the most prosperous countries of the time, but at the same time children lived in Oliver Twist like misery.

The problem is that it's becoming increasingly clear that Capitalism fails miserably at redistributing resources fairly.

<comment><USER8> Capitalism doesn't aim to redistribute resources fairly. It aims to allocate them effectively. Those that find efficient means of production acquire more resources. This cause more effective use of resources available and thus more resources become available for everyone.

Yes pure capitalism fails some people and a mix of small amounts of socialism help those in need. But prosperity does far more to help the poor than equality. Extreme inequality is bad

<comment><AUTHOR> You're just parroting free market propaganda and still have the stomach to dismiss the author as an ideolog.

<comment><USER8> Ok so do you have a better system than capitalism?

I'm saying that absolute wealth is more important than equality. Do you have a counter to that or a system that can promote prosperity and more even wealth distribution?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, to extend democracy to the economic sphere.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>