Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=8Pk654J8-5c <comment><USER2> Most people don't get to choose how many hours they work.

Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as possible. Anything less is money on the table.

(I'm not an employer.)

It's good for an employer if you work overtime, all he has to pay is time, or time and a half, or nothing if you're salaried. He doesn't have to pay more benefits, as he would with an additional employee. Of course an employer wants to get as much work out of you as possible for benefits paid.

As an employee, working overtime only gets you more cash (or even none). Working less makes your benefits more valuable.

Even if employment is strictly for money, with no benefits at all, there's an administrative overhead to hiring and managing more employees.

As long as we are employed by employers, and especially if we get health insurance through our employer, there will always be pressure to work more, not less.

<comment><USER3> > Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as > possible. Anything less is money on the table.

That's exactly Marx's point when he discusses his theory of Surplus Value. I know that that theory has been "debunked" and "proven" to be false, but I'm just reading now about it in its "Grundrisse" (I had read its Capital I some years ago) and it's frightening about how right he was about subjects reguarding capitalism way back in the 1850s (in this particular case about capitalists' dependence on their workers', well, surplus work; if you look at the issue under this light it makes perfect sense why capitalists would insist on their workers not decreasing the number of hours they spend working). I'm no socialist nor marxist (even though I think he's one of the best social and political thinkers ever) but if we want to really understand how things reguarding humans work we should not be blind-sided by political allegiances.

<comment><USER4> Marx's writings around the working day are built on the assumption that wages will be set at the level necessary for the worker to survive long enough to turn up to work the following day rather than according to the perceived value of their labour time by the highest bidder, and that because of this near- universal day rate for undifferentiated "labour power", employers' main route to improving profitability would be extending the working day, with no meaningful proportion of the workforce having the ability to change this arrangement, not because they might dislike the status impacts of having to choose a different position, industry, location or smaller house/car/pension but because no capitalist will be willing to pay them enough to eat for a shorter working day. He even devotes a footnote to ridiculing "vulgar economists" for suggesting that labour rates could be set by supply and demand. In this respect, he's far more wrong about future developed economies than Keynes' (later) wrong assumption of a tendency towards a 15 hour week.

Marx's microeconomic theory is even more wobbly than many of his more capitalistic contemporaries at the best of times, but his writings on the lengthening of working days at mills is _particularly_ irrelevant to modern service-based Western societies and even wealthy programmers and lawyers still working more hours a week than they would prefer. There's a kernel of truth in the idea that employers will tend to profit from people working longer than they're contracted to work, but you don't need to read _Kapital_ to understand people like getting more than they originally asked for.

<comment><USER5> > Marx's writings around the working day are built on the assumption that > wages will be set at the level necessary for the worker to survive long > enough to turn up to work the following day rather than according to the > perceived value of their labour time by the highest bidder, and that because > of this near-universal day rate for undifferentiated "labour power", > employers' main route to improving profitability would be extending the > working day, with no meaningful proportion of the workforce having the > ability to change this arrangement

Dude this sounds _incredibly_ close the experience of American retail workers nowadays.

<comment><USER4> American retail workers might have a tough lot but the economics behind it is the precise opposite of the _Kapital_ model: the retail outlets pay people by the hour and the workers need the long hours because they can't afford their family/debt/house/consumerism on 40 hrs per week at minimum wage and sometimes take additional jobs because retailers won't offer them _enough_ shifts, rather than the retailers paying people by the day and their profit margins being driven mostly by lengthening it. The threshold for what is considered subsistence-level real incomes has risen a bit since the Industrial Revolution too.

<comment><USER6> Retailers have taken it to another level by requiring you to commit to availability without a commitment to have work. Nobody gets 40 hours — you target around 28 typically.

Control and keeping high turnover is an objective in retail management. It's usually cheaper and more efficient to have full time staff, but it's easier to skimp 5% of labor hours and force the salaried manager to fill the breach.

<comment><USER7> >Retailers have taken it to another level by requiring you to commit to availability without a commitment to have work. Nobody gets 40 hours — you target around 28 typically.

This is the law of unintended consequences as applied to the ACA. If they give you more hours care their costs go up dramatically unless they're already offering health.

<comment><USER8> The careful tailoring of work hours to avoid healthcare requirements was a thing long, long before the ACA.

<comment><USER7> Not in the US. Prior to the ACA there was no requirement to give FTEs health care.

<comment><USER6> In the dark red states, sure. Not everywhere. Most places added those requirements 30 years ago.

It's not just health care. Intrusive regulation like requiring a nominal amount of paid sick leave is mandated in my state over a certain number of hours. (32 iirc)

<comment><USER7> By "not everywhere" you mean... Massachusetts? Benefits like paid sick leave are rounding errors compared to health care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People's perceived needs grow but that is not the whole story.

Many people now are spending almost 50% of their pre-tax income on housing, and most of that is the price of land and goes to landlords. It seems that landlords inevitably capture a big chunk of people's salary increases.

Additionally in the US your health insurance is generally tied to your job; even after Obamacare you probably have to work to pay for your monthly insurance.

If housing costs went way down and health insurance were universal, I suspect many people would feel much less need to work so many hours.

<comment><USER10> _Many people now are spending almost 50% of their pre-tax income on housing, and most of that is the price of land and goes to landlords._

1) That's really not a countrywide thing

2) It's not specifically the landlords, it's whoever was already there. A landlord who bought in just recently is not rolling in dough. The people who capture the gains are the people who got in fifty years ago and sold & moved, or the landlords who got in fifty years ago and are still renting the property.

3) But, yes, from the worker's perspective his salary increases will tend to go towards housing/land. This is a natural state in a competitive housing market. He must compete in the market for the space to live so that he can live near his job. The power of the market will continually optimize for those who make the most money (i.e. hypothetically produce the most economic value) to live in the most desirable housing (e.g. the closest to work)

<comment><USER11> _The people who capture the gains are the people who got in fifty years ago and sold & moved, or the landlords who got in fifty years ago and are still renting the property._

Yes. Silicon Valley's land baron is John Arrillaga, who bought Silicon Valley farmland in the 1960s. He owns about a square kilometer of office space.

<comment><USER12> It's actually a lot more than just 1 sq km, mate. Waaaay more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Saying that people just like working is ridiculous. It's either author's social bubble or it's straight propaganda. I cannot imagine people in factories or construction saying they like to go to work. The reasons behind the 40-hour week are way more brutal:

\- Contemporary economy has surprising amount of internal inefficiency causing most of the value to be wasted.

\- Value that is not squandered is distributed unevenly, so most people aren't that much better off.

\- Status spending doesn't deliver more value with higher economic output. Status is always scarce. The same goes for several other "resources".

\- Mate competition, gender roles, and divorces create separate earners and spenders. Earners have little control over spending and they are thus unable to cut back on work. They are often legally required to work under threat of imprisonment.

\- Widespread debt means most people cannot stop working without risking default. Credit availability further encourages irrational spending.

\- Most people don't get to choose their working hours. Businesses have the leverage and they choose to max out hours to the legal limit. Governments have little incentive to shorten the work week, because small change won't matter and big change would kill the economy.

\- People can retire early or they can take breaks between jobs, but this doesn't work for two reasons: people dislike large swings in their lifestyle and people grow dependent on their income through irrational spending.

Author is right about one thing: the elderly are the winners here. That's where governments can focus their effort. Earlier retirement can be introduced incrementally and it has the smallest impact on economy, because on average older people are less productive anyway.

<comment><USER14> It's entirely reasonable because the literature shows that it is true. Work is leisure you get paid to do and leisure is work you pay to do.

If your society doesn't allow that state to come about then it is because it has been deliberately designed to have fewer work opportunities than there are people that want them. If you construct society so that there are always more work opportunities than people who want work then competition and automation automatically gets rid of the crap jobs.

And yes there are people in factories that love their jobs. It takes all sorts to make a world.

<comment><USER13> What literature shows that? The linked presentation contains only inference instead of direct evidence.

You seem to be imagining distant future when people just work on things they enjoy. Even if such utopia can be built, it doesn't change anything about the present situation. The vast majority of people would quit their jobs if they didn't need the money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It has.

80 years ago your worked more hours, and you could not slack at work.

Today, you work not only less, but half of the people in the offices I go to don't work their full shift. They go to facebook, send text messages, take long breaks, do their shopping and watch porno (yep), etc.

Also, an hour of work doesn't have the same value.

When your work is moving boxes, an hour is an hour.

But in an office work, there are plenty of opportunities to be busy without being productive. I'd say 30% of the work I see in offices is at best useless, at worst harmful.

So we have more office jobs, which have less hours, during which we work less, said hours being worth less.

And this is very uneven, because a nurse probably works more now than before. But all in all, office jobs are talking over in rich countries.

<comment><USER16> This is just some weird anecdote. I work at an architecture firm where the employees have deliverables and bill to clients, we all work really really hard. I work between 45-50 hours a week of real work. One any given Saturday or Sunday you will find dozens of people in my firm working. They are not just pretending.

I have worked at a job you describe where people do not do much, but I would hardly say that is the norm.

Especially for people on the lower end of the pay scale. In my experience they typically work more than they are paid for (forced to work off the clock) than there are people just sitting around on facebook.

That's great for you that your life is so comfortable but do not assume it applies universally.

You really think the working poor in this country who have 2 or 3 jobs are just on facebook all day? This has to be one of the most out of touch comments I have ever read on HN.

<comment><USER17> I'm leaving architecture proper (staying in the design field, but working independently) for this reason. My labour is billed to clients at three times my hourly rate, I receive no benefits as a contracted employee (paid as a consultant), and regularly work overtime to execute someone else's concepts. The latter would not be an issue if the industry-wide quality of work were better here in Canada, but the overwhelming majority of medium to large firms (where one would receive benefits) produce cookie-cutter buildings the mercy of cheap developers and clients.

Disregarding the quality of the work, the most obvious solution to the ubiquitous presence of overtime in the industry would be to hire more people, but there doesn't seem to be enough money to go around - especially if you want to do something even slightly outside the norm.

<comment><USER18> That's why I don't understand the poor rates so called contractors get in the USA and Now Canada certain types of employers try this on in the UK but they wont get the best candidates by offering straight time for a 4-6 month contract - instead of 3x

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For some reason most of us are too afraid of just going home at 5:00 much less asking for reduced hours.

My whole working life, I've never used an alarm clock, and I never stayed late unless I was late on a commitment that _I_ made. (This is not the same as some artificial deadline dreamed up by someone else.)

I come in late, go home early, sometimes I don't even show up—whatever.

If you do this consistently, and deliver in your role of course, people will get used to it and they'll stop bothering you about it.

<comment><USER20> That's called a delusional software developer bubble. Try this at a minimum wage job or pretty much anything outside of IT.

<comment><USER19> I've worked plenty of those kinds of jobs. I worked retail, farm labour pumped gas etc. When I worked them I showed up on time.

It depends what you sign up for.

There are 'availability' jobs and 'ability' jobs.

The more you try to find a job tailored to your ability, the less people tend to demand your availability.

They will try to demand it anyway, but if you're good you can get them to overlook it.

For now I'm lucky enough that I can live this way and still make customers happy.

<comment><USER21> I think you nailed it, you are lucky.

Most jobs do not function like this, to think otherwise is delusional. At every single employer I've ever worked for, if you left early or came in late despite accomplishing all your work, you would get in trouble. I have seen it happen over and over again.

Typically, they will claim that you could have accomplished more work if you were only there for the extra time, regardless of the reality of the situation. Your time outside of work is worthless to the company, and they would rather waste your time so that they can (possibly) squeeze another drop from you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anthropologists David Graeber, has addressed this and offered the explanation with the observation that we as a society produce what he calls bullshit jobs. Almost 40% of Brits in a surveyed acknowledged that their job wasn't needed.

People believing in effective markets would of course protest and claim such enormous inefficiency can't possibly exist. Somebody will simply start a company without bullshit jobs.

However I think there is a good explanation why this doesn't happen: [https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/why-do-bullshit-jobs- exist-4f5...](https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/why-do-bullshit-jobs- exist-4f579eaa5964)

In short, in any complex organization bullshit work will start accruing and there is no good mechanism to week out such jobs, because the people doing those jobs will have zero incentive to tell their managers that their job in pointless and not needed.

I've tried researching this on reddit and seen that a lot of work people do could have been automated. The people doing those jobs also frequently see this. However they have no economic incentive to do so.

This has lead me to contemplate that guaranteed minimum income has merits, because it would remove the disincentive to make yourself redundant, to some extent. Of course not in the case where your bullshit jobs is very highly paid, which is frequently the case.

<comment><USER23> You might find this essay by Bob Black of interest on "The Aboltiion of Work": [https://web.archive.org/web/20161031034600/http://whywork.or...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161031034600/http://whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html) "... It is now possible to abolish work and replace it, insofar as it serves useful purposes, with a multitude of new kinds of free activities. To abolish work requires going at it from two directions, quantitative and qualitative. On the one hand, on the quantitative side, we have to cut down massively on the amount of work being done. At present most work is useless or worse and we should simply get rid of it. On the other hand -- and I think this is the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure -- we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products. Surely that wouldn't make them less enticing to do. Then all the artificial barriers of power and property could come down. Creation could become recreation. And we could all stop being afraid of each other. I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes. ..."

We might ask ourselves what "leading economic indicators" might look like when this was happening...

<comment><USER22> Thans for the suggestions. I have contemplated this as well. It always puzzled me at work as a software developer how we had more sales people than developers. It just seems wrong that we have more people hired to sell the software than make it. Then you got all the guys doing marketing in addition and the ones managing all these people. You end up with a lot of stuff surrounding the core value creation.

A lot of this is really just need because we live in a free market economy where we need to sell stuff to people. We can't just give it to them if they need it. OTOH how would be allocated resources effectively if we did not have the market.

The soviet approach seems to have been a big failure. Although I suppose wit the internet, computer, crypto currencies etc, there might be other ways of organizing labour and allocating resources.

At least I wish people would acknowledge something is fundamentally wrong with how we organize society today. Unless we do it is hard to pour resources into finding alternative ways of doing things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Promotions within a company are based on ranking employees. Even if not done explicitly, you still promote your top people.

Working more hours is a way to increase your rank. Thus it becomes an arms race between the employees. You work 40 hours, I increase to 45, then you increase to 50.

So, to some extent, hours worked don't correspond to hours needed to be worked for productivity purposes.

</comment><comment><USER25> Because capitalism optimizes for production and consumption - not welfare. Often welfare and production/consumption are aligned (e.g. producing enough food for everyone). But in the case of labor/life balance, they are not aligned. It's actually kind of odd to me that serious people (e.g. John Maynard Keynes) would ever have thought that work hours would decrease. There is no term in the economic fitness function for 'work-life balance'.

<comment><USER26> well a capitalist society is also a society bombarded by marketing experts who are in every part of a person's daily life working to convince them to spend more which in turn drives them to work more or go into debt pushing retirement further off.

consumption is high because marketing is that good. go read any of the popular brand subs on reddit and you will see people making stupid purchasing decisions daily and many seek justification. Its really scary when people are trying to save fifty or less on a one to two thousand dollar purchase because it then costs too much; the clue that indicates the purchase at the lower amount is too much escapes them

<comment><USER27> Consumer goods are practically free next to housing. I don't buy this argument at all. I could completely slash or double marketing-driven spending tomorrow and be in substantially the same financial position. Maybe that's just a Bay Area distortion.

Consider also that a large portion of consumer goods spending is on cars, which are basically just a substitute for living on more central/expensive land. In the end it all comes down to real estate.

<comment><USER22> The real cost of housing is distorted though when house prices keep going up. In many cases, if you take into account the value increase of housing, it is actually opposite of what you claim. People don't spend anything on housing, because they get back whatever they put pay for the house in terms of value increase of the property.

I think it would be more fair to look at, how much does it cost to build a house, and divide that cost on the time it may be used. We should not really add the price of property to the equation.

If one does this I will bet that consumer goods make up a much bigger part of the economy than you think.

<comment><USER27> You pay the value of your house several times over in interest, and even ignoring that, the value locked up in a primary residence isn't good for much except moving it to a different primary residence (or leaving to your heirs when you die).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Among other good reasons mentioned here lets not forget inequality went up and a lot of the progress is materialized at the top.

<comment> purple-again In the US. Inequality has dropped significantly. A large portion of the gains to America were captured by its elite. The large portion of the gains in other parts of the world have lifted billions out of poverty.

Turns out globalization is good or bad depending on who you are and where you are.

<comment><USER29> > The large portion of the gains in other parts of the world have lifted > billions out of poverty.

You may be correct, but it's hard to trust this sentence without a proper source.

<comment><USER30> Here is an economist article on the subject:

[https://www.economist.com/news/international/21719790-going-...](https://www.economist.com/news/international/21719790-going- will-be-much-harder-now-world-has-made-great-progress)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> That was famous Keynes prediction [1][2] that due to increased productivity people will work 15 hours weeks.

Consumer capitalism however not only created productivity gains and satisfied all demands (for which should be rightly praised) but also created new demands (like better healthcare, education, technology items, vanity items etc.).

It is however characteristic of money economy (urban economy) that there is nothing limiting human need to accumulate capital and consume.

In subsistence economy (non-monetary) whenever there is a surplus people rather stop working then trying to accumulate more and they tend to focus on accumulating social capital.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/inequal...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/inequality- work-hours/422775/)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/01/economics](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/01/economics)

</comment><comment><USER32> Because we are never satisfied with a stable standard of living; people want to live better than their parents did. Automation only decreases the need for labor if you hold standard of living constant.

<comment><USER33> This has generally been the standard argument since Keynes (and others) first turned out to be spectacularly wrong. We just consume more. But, I see this argument differently these days.

In tech stuff, we definitely have more stuff. A phone+plan for every person over 13. Laptops for most people. But, you can't function without these. It's not really a discretionary spending. A student (for example) is at a disadvantage without those things. In fact, the student is also consuming more education then in Keynes' day. That's also a competitive consumption, that you must buy in order to participate in the job market to a greater extent then before. Housing in a lot of urban or semi-urban areas is also competitive. Median house prices in these cities is a multiple of median salary, and prices don't scale well below the median.

So... I think the statement is true in an almost tautological sense. But, very little is discretionary spending. Most of it is competitive and in a competition the median person is still the median person.

<comment><USER34>
        > you can't function without [a phone
        > + plan once you're 13yo, and laptop].
        > It's not really a discretionary
        > spending.

Even if I give you that a network connected phone is something a teenager absolutely must have, that still leaves the fact that most people vastly overspend on these items.

Yes you might need _a_ smartphone and _a_ laptop for school, but those are going to cost at most $200 used, but people conflate the need for these devices with the fashion statement of owning the latest iPhone or MacBook.

<comment><USER35> The only reason you and I can buy $200 used Thinkpads is because everyone else is clamoring to overspend for shiny new ones. If more people were OK with keeping their computers longer or buying used, then the price of used computers would go up.

This would obviously be good because we would be valuing things closer to the actual benefit that they bring, but its not the case that we can ALL just have dirt-cheap few-year-old laptops.

<comment><USER34> If everyone was satisfied with keeping their computers for longer or buying used then it stands to reason that the price of new computers would go down, e.g. what are now $300-500 Chromebooks would be top of the line.

In any case, I think, with respect, that you're postulating an absurd hypothetical scenario that's never going to happen. There's always going to be some people who buy new and others who buy used, think used cars, clothes etc.

Phones & laptops are now a mature technology, the days when you need a new computer to run spreadsheets or browse the Internet are over. Nowadays a 5 year old computer is just as good for pretty much any application except AAA games.

The GP was mentioning students as needing phones & laptops. I'm pointing out that students in particular think nothing of buying say used clothes because they don't have a lot of money, but for some reason a lot more people have expensive new gadgets they don't need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It has dramatically. I have plenty of friends working full-time desk jobs that actually "work from home" 3-4 days a week and do maybe 1 or 2 hours of work over the whole day.

Everyone else is browsing reddit or instagram all day in the office. Just ask any redditor.

</comment><comment><USER37> The negotiating leverage of capital vs. labour.

You'll find this in Adam Smith:

 _[I]n every part of Europe, twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent; and the wages of labour are everywhere understood to be, what they usually are, when the labourer is one person, and the owner of the stock which employs him another._

 _What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour._

 _It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen...._

[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_8)

Ricardo, rent vs. wages, as well.

</comment><comment><USER38> It has. The low-work-hours future is here... It's just unevenly distributed.

</comment><comment><USER39> Competition—A system designed around competition rewards those who compete. Surprise!

<comment> wu-ikkyu There is such a thing as working _too_ hard, to one's own detriment.

<comment><USER39> "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast." —Paul Graham

<comment><USER40> That kind of ignores how human bodies work when tired and sleep deprived.

<comment><USER39> I am definitely not celebrating it. It seems obvious to me that the human with the most stamina will have an edge in any sort of competition that involves hard work, from marathons to startups.

<comment><USER40> Marathon ends in 6 hours, if you are very slow. And pacing is considered very important. Pacing does not mean "running as fast as possible from the start".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> People want limited goods like houses with nice schools, but there are only so many of them. And the price is only bounded by how much people can pay.

</comment><comment><USER42> Money is similar to the peacock's tail, the main difference being inheritance, social stratification make it so it matters very little to the individual how much money he starts with due to the fact that you'll be immersed in a social circle with people from the same economic strata, thus to differentiate yourself you need to make more money, otherwise you're a loser.

Wealthier males work more because they have access to better paid, more fulfilling and more prestigious kind of work. Poor males work less due to the fact that they have access only to shitty jobs with shitty pays and no prestige, so, for a lot of poor people, working may actually degrade your quality of life, since you won't be able to match or improve upon the lifestyle your parents provided you.

Women work more because they need to, either because they have children to take care off by themselves or because they've grown up watching the suffering of their mothers due to the oppression on females in society, and they sure as hell don't want that for themselves.

People mostly buy stuff to show off, and then lie to themselves that it is because they like the stuff they bought, illusion of power. Being well off doesn't really matter socially if people don't know about it, bragging is seen as offensive so people do it in an indirect way, by purchasing expensive stupid shit, so that they can feel they're not just bragging, they have "good taste".

People don't want to be well, they want to be better than others, and they'll seek to achieve that in the way that is easier and more convenient, which is vulgar display of power, since hitting people in the face usually leads to problems, that is now achieved through the purchase of excessively expensive items just to show you they can.

</comment><comment><USER43> What we _desperately_ need is a way to _reverse-brainwash_ the workaholics that spoil the labor market by willing to work more than 6 hrs a day. If we could figure out a clever way to _penalize_ them for working more we could damn enjoy the _heaven-on-earth_ that current technology should afford us all (now that we seem to have figured out how to stop population growth too)...

<comment><USER44> Not sure if sarcasm, but salaried employees are indeed penalized for working more hours with a lower hourly wage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Guys, what do you think about universal basic income?

<comment><USER46> There's no point trying to explicitly introduce it now. I watch these experiments with befuddlement - it's like watching a small baby try to run before it can walk.

UBI will arrive slowly, incrementally and by the time it or an equivalent is finally here nobody will celebrate because it won't seem like a big deal. It'll just be the result of welfare and other services getting better and better over time, with more and more lightweight "bullshit" jobs that require essentially no exertion or risk and lower and lower hours until one day people find that the benefits system is so generous that having a job has become a lifestyle choice.

But we have a long way to go to get there. It won't happen in our lifetimes. Almost all increases in wealth at the moment seem to be absorbed by healthcare and social care costs. UBI makes no sense whilst people are being bankrupted by health costs. Priorities people!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It turns out that working hours are determined by politics, not economics.

<comment><USER14> It turns out that economics is just politics. The greatest political move was to rebrand political economy as economics and try and pretend it is a science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Because there are fewer jobs than people that want them. For every twenty dogs there are only 19 bones. That's how economic theory is designed to work. If there is a risk of too many jobs, policy is altered to restore 'order'.

Do that and competition inevitably creates what we have - long hours miles from home for a pittance.

</comment><comment><USER48> Given that you hear a lot about engineers (not to say managers) retiring in their fifties or even earlier, I'd say that people, over their lifetimes, do work fewer hours.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think economic would eventually benefit economic itself first. BUT what I want to say about this problem is I don't think such number really means so much. Numbers tell you something of course, but they are just part of aspects after all. And I have always a prejudice that the whole economic system is some kind of lie about trust, which is useful in old days. but today that more likely we just have no courage and power to change it.

However after watching I think is only a way of life vs way people view others.We would soon notice something we want to notice

</comment><comment><USER50> May I suggest that it may be the Hobbsian Trap?

The more resources we have - especially necessities such as food and water - the more children can be born. And eventually the population is large enough that the amount per person goes back to what it was before.

That doesn't necessarily mean everyone has to work. But in the current economy, where you have to work to afford the rent, many people work long hours.

However, once you factor in the growing unemployment, you can see that, in fact, there is less work to go around. But people still need to pay the rent, eat and drink water!

</comment><comment><USER51> We would work less if we didn't spend and produce so much junk.

</comment><comment><USER52> Competition.

</comment><comment><USER53> It started in the 1990s when part-time people were downsized and replaced with full-time people. Then overtime was killing coroprations so they moved people to salary instead of hourly. No more overtime pay, one salary no more sick and vacation days but PTO or paid time off hours instead.

You are expected to work 60 to 80 hours a week, or else you get bad performance reviews and fired.

In most at will employment states the company can fire you for any reason not related to civil rights law. They don't like your tie, fired. They don't like the way you walk or smile, fired. Someone accuses you of something they have no evidence or proof of, like being rude, you are fired.

This is done to avoid civil suits, fired for no reason, or fired for a petty reason not related to civil rights. Say you have 25 years in IT, you are African-American, but in your older age things change. You wear your tie differently because you found a new tie knot style. They can't fire you for your race or age, so they Instead fire you for not tying your tie the same way everyone else does.

I wrote about this problem before and nobody took it seriously.

<comment><USER54> Your comment sounds like speculations and gross generalisation. Do you base your say on things that could be discussed(if yes, please share them)? Or is it a frustrated rant?

</comment></comment><comment> etr-strike The Federal Reaerve actually thinks productivity is too low: [http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-fed-productivity- idUSL1N1...](http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-fed-productivity- idUSL1N1AQ0WV)

Would be a dream to work just 40 hours per week.

<comment> wu-ikkyu It's also worth noting that 2 of the Fed's main goals are

1\. Achieve maximum employment

2\. Maintain stable prices

Both of which are counter productive to the goals of automation.

This seems like the root of the problem to me, as the Fed is a "super admin" of the economy.

<comment><USER18> not from a political point of view

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Or even if people had more leisure time, they'd spend it on working on a bigger project because it's our driver. I've noticed when I made thousands a month, I spent much more time in charities, but I was still just as stressed ;)

Ok that only works for people who are not struggling around the minimum wage.

</comment><comment><USER56> In my case, even if you bump up my salary by 10x suddenly, I probably will work the same hours I do now. Why are lower work hours assumed to arise from increased economic status?

</comment><comment><USER57> Because powerthirsty psychopaths have social needs too. What is it worth to rule a small kingdom, if nobody lives, suffers and does your bidding in this kingdom. Being the CEO in a lightsout factory, is beeing the janitor.

So why do all these shitty jobs and hamster wheels exist? To give all those "great-men" the ilusion of importance.

</comment><comment><USER58> Inflation, taxes, and regulatory burden.

Savings have been systematically eroded for 50+ years. Total taxation is now 40+% of GDP. Private sector workforce participation is dropping. Regulatory burden dramatically increases health care, housing, and transportation costs.

All of these policies have worked to keep you in the office.

<comment><USER59> Total taxation is at 26% of GDP in the U.S., 34% in much of the rest of the developed world.

[http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us- taxes...](http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes- compare-internationally)

<comment><USER60> Are you sure Tax Policy Center can be trusted?

Those numbers seem very low for Ireland. I'm willing to be wrong but something seems very off here.

<comment><USER61> Ireland is a notorious tax haven.

<comment><USER60> That is so, I think probably taxation as a measure of GDP is too dubious a measure for connecting up with a normal person's experience of taxation, in the ideal world they should be related but evidently the devil is in the detail.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


15 charts showing US health care prices are totally insane - alok-g http://www.vox.com/cards/health-prices/america-is-getting-gouged-on-health-care-prices

<comment><AUTHOR> Insurance companies negotiate discounts so they make massive profits.

Hospitals negotiate discounts so they can make massive profits.

The govt makes it illegal for medicare/caid to negotiate prices or buy in bulk.

This is a massive transfer of wealth from the public to these companies.

The average citizen cannot negotiate and pays full price.

The people least able to afford the "retail" price pay the most.

Meanwhile the insurance companies/hospitals are making money hand over fist to pay out to their CEO's.

It's simply a scam of legislation that is unlikely to end because the people that benefit the most also have access to the most profit and can therefore affords the most lobbying.

A bunch of lawyers, CEO's and politicians arn;t going to change the system for a bunch of poor folk.

How do you expect them to send their kids to Harvard or pay for the shell companies needed to hide income?

</comment><comment><USER2> There's ~3 hospitals in the USA that have transparent pricing.

If you're interested in disrupting healthcare the founder of The Surgery Center of Oklahoma has a blog on pricing transparency. [http://surgerycenterofoklahoma.tumblr.com/](http://surgerycenterofoklahoma.tumblr.com/)

Some additional resources:

Free Market Medical Association website. [http://marketmedicine.org/members/](http://marketmedicine.org/members/) It lists all the resources and providers that provide transparent pricing.

The Pricing Healthcare Blog and Pricing Healthcare website is a crowd sourcing project where patients can input their medical bills and get the cash price of procedures in their area. (The CEO of Safeway started a company with Safeway's similar, proprietary, data, however they only sell the pricing data to companies with ~10,000+ employees).

The Self Pay Patient is a blog and resource for those that choose to self insure: [http://selfpaypatient.com/](http://selfpaypatient.com/)

The Health Care Blue Book lists the price insurance companies have negotiated with providers: [https://www.healthcarebluebook.com](https://www.healthcarebluebook.com)

Source: [http://www.quora.com/What-health-care-providers-in-the- USA-o...](http://www.quora.com/What-health-care-providers-in-the-USA-only- accept-cash-for-their-surgeries-and-services/answer/Carlos-Tobin)

</comment><comment><USER3> Which prices are those? When I go to the doctor I get an insurance statement that says something like:

Billed: $800

Paid by insurance: $200

You owe: $0

<comment><AUTHOR> Now you know how your insurance company makes so much money.

They pay $200 for a service you think costs $800 and WILL cost you $800 if you buy it yourself.

You buy insurance based on the FULL cost of the procedure. If you could access $200 yourself you wouldn;t need insurance. You can self insure at these prices.

For the benefit of running the "self insurance" plan they are taking the difference between $200 and $800

Anyone else have a company and know what usual profit margins are? Your local pharmacy is lucky to pull off 35%.

This is 400% markup that a "retail" person pays over the insurance company.

It's not hard to make money when you buy at $200 and sell at $500-600-700 through an insurance policy.

This is how companies like AIG (anybody remember them) buy things like ski hills for their executives.

See www.stowe.com

Americas are building up the next generation of their royalty.

Companies with a mission in "health care" that mae 400% margins and buy ski hills for their executuves to use on "retreats".

Yup, that makes total sense, to a lobbyist, lawyer or other enemy of the public and democracy.

Crony capitalism, not true capitalism and market economy that people think of in the USA.

The insurance companies got a major windfall with Obamacare. That lobbying really worked out.

He could has just as easily allowed Medicare/Caid to negotiate prices and take over mre of the health care.

That wouldn;t give jobs to people that Obama really cares about. North east Liberal lawyers.

<comment><USER4> Under the ACA, when the insurance company pays a hospital (or any other medical provider) $200, it is allowed to spend $50 (less for larger programs) on salaries and profits and other expenses.

If it gets $300 of premiums and only spends $200 on medical care, it has to send the extra $50 back to the customers (larger programs have to send back $65).

More here:

[http://kff.org/health-reform/perspective/beyond-rebates- how-...](http://kff.org/health-reform/perspective/beyond-rebates-how-much-are- consumers-saving-from-the-acas-medical-loss-ratio-provision/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Clearly they have found ways around the rules or it's still way too much money.

The fact health insurance companies invest in ski hills is very telling about lack of focus on their real business.

Either their real biz makes so much money that they can spend it like drunken sailors or they don;t care about the primary mission of the company and are just buying perks they can use themselves.

Either way you split it, it's still a total mess and not what shareholders or customers (patients) are expecting in an healthcare insurance company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone know how Vox created the highlighter effect on text select? It is not just a color change.

</comment><comment><USER6> And how much of these costs are being "invisibly" paid to a national healthcare service via taxes?

<comment><USER7> In Canada's case, 100%. I have seen one hospital bill, and that was $200 for a single room when my wife gave birth to my son. Which my supplementary insurance then paid. It is the only time I've ever even had to use my work insurance plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Breaking news: The healthcare system in the US is broken.</comment>


Noam Chomsky – On the Threat of Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV4KA2Sgd2c <comment><USER2> I was reading the comments of the video and it is obvious that "Deep learning" deserve the award for biggest hype of this decade probably. People even think that it is different from the old fashioned "computer programs". Does you DNN model run on a computer - YES, then it is a computer program, the only difference is that this program was not created by a person rather it was initialized randomly and then another program kept tweaking parameters of this program until the program was satisfied with the result. And yeah this another program was created by a person.

Program creating Program doesn't somehow make them "not program"</comment>


ASIMO robot impresses by navigating changing terrain - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2009/08/10/asimo-robot-impresses-by-navigating-changing-terrain/

<comment><USER2> Meh, seems a little high-level. I'd imagine there are a lot of ways to cheat around moving obstacles such as the spinners, simply by encoding "spinner recognition" into the Asmio's environment models.

What I'm extremely surprised about is the lack of development in robots with evolved morphologies - it seems silly to mimic the human anatomy of tendons and muscles with motors and gears.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is some seriously excellent work on dynamic path finding right there. I'm glad that AI is still chugging along slowly.</comment>


Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1559579/Physicists-have-%27solved%27-mystery-of-levitation.html <comment><USER2> While interesting, the article is almost a year old. Have they made any advances since this was originally written?

</comment><comment><USER3> The article is also pretty misleading and fluffy.

</comment><comment><USER4> no details. Wanted to call the writer a wanker but there's nowhere to put a comment on the page. So I'll do it here: "Wanker"</comment>


Flash is dead? - <AUTHOR> The real reason Adobe will move on from Flash, though, is the other big knock against it: obsolescence. But still on internet things roll on by big players like http://www.miniclip.com, http://www.kongregate.com, https://www.friv.cm or http://www.y8.com and so many others with millions of game players use Flash. Why it's still not dead after-all? Why unity3d or html5 are not as popular as Flash? <comment><USER2> I really worry about the entire era of retrogames that will totally disappear once Flash is totally dead and without security updates. Recently the ReplyAll podcast did a story about a classic flash game they found the source code to and restored:

[http://replyall.limo/bunni](http://replyall.limo/bunni)

All the classic games on Newgrounds will all be lost, like tears in the rain. :-/

<comment><USER3> This is what VMs are for. Mirror them down and put them in a VM with a flash client.</comment></comment>


Amazon Is Banning Customers Who Return Too Many Items - sahin-boydas http://mentalfloss.com/article/545660/amazon-banning-customers-who-return-too-many-items <comment><AUTHOR> This is sensational because it's Amazon. As someone who has worked in a major retail business, returns are a long tail. Some people are just returns people and review/use/abuse return policies very aggressively. Most people are reasonable, and occasionally return things. Very easy to tell the difference in the data and ban abusers. Don't like it? Buy somewhere else. This typically harms the suppliers more so than the retailer, which is why the retailers even let you return so much in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER2> Something doesn't add up here. Banned for returning 5 items in 2 years? I don't think so. I've returned more than 5 items so far this year and it's not even June. (I also buy a lot of stuff, but who knows? Maybe my ban is in the mail.)

These self reported stories of banning all reek of half the story bullshit. The stuff they were returning was abused or they're habitually lying about return reasons to get free shipping or something.

Amazon really REALLY wants to sell you stuff and barely BARELY break even. They even introduced Amazon wardrobe on tons of clothing items recently where all returns are free for 30 days. If they're banning people, I'll bet there's a good reason.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of several previous discussions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17131378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17131378) (not the first, but the most active)

This is really a non-story. Look up TheRetailEquation if you want to see how physical stores ban customers.

I would love to see a comparison of % of banned customers between stores.</comment>


React Native's re-architecture in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/react-natives-re-architecture-in-2020-9bb82659792c <comment><USER2> > To keep reading this story, create a free account.

Can anyone post a rundown of this article? Medium is really getting annoying here.

Edit: [https://outline.com/dET6YM](https://outline.com/dET6YM) for anyone else interested.

<comment><USER3> Block all JS on medium and you will have a better, faster experience overall and won't get these limitations.

It won't work with browsing from the medium frontpage, but personally I only read medium when linked to an article and there the experience is much better when JS is blocked.

</comment></comment><comment> aaron-santos Ouch didn't know that JSON was used to shuffle data around in React Native. I've had quite a bit of success using GraalVM's polyglot Values along the React[js]/jvm boundary so I can see why they are moving in this direction.</comment>


California consumer groups allow CenturyLink to end dark fiber leasing - <AUTHOR> http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/california-consumer-groups-allow-centurylink-to-end-dark-fiber-leasing/ <comment><USER2> I have often been asked by people what Dark Fiber is, my answer is usually that it is evil fiber. Just kidding. Seriously, dark fiber is quite simply fiber that does not have the usual network equipment attached to it and hence, no lasers are shooting photons through it, thus the term "dark" meaning not being lit by lasers.

The largest cost of laying fiber is not in the fiber itself, the glass itself is relatively cheap in comparison to the cost of obtaining the right of way, the labor and so on. Often municipalities, counties, states or whatever charge a fee for these rights of way if the fiber is underground (the most expensive). If they are attaching aerial fiber to existing poles, the pole owners, often power companies, have also paid for the rights of way and further charge a poll attachment fee. Regardless, all the other cost typically far over shadow the cost of the individual strands.

Typically a carrier will install a larger fiber count cable since the incremental cost of installing a 144 count fiber rather than a 72 count for example, would probably be relatively minor so why not have a few extras. Most carriers have the choice as to whether or not to sell off (typically using an instrument called an Indefeasible Right to Use, which is sort of like a condo but for fiber, usually long term, 20years). Usually they will sell or trade with other carriers to help offset costs, for example carrier A might trade 4 fibers in San Francisco for 4 fibers in LA for particular routes. In that way they are not so directly aiding a competitor but also gaining routes for themselves.

Usually, carriers do not like to sell off DF to customers such as large enterprises because quite simply, those customers would never have to buy anything from them again because they could continuously gain more capacity by placing DWDM equipment on each end (not endlessly of course but for all practical purposes for most customers, endless).

That is why most carriers like Century Link or others (especially ILEC's, Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, i.e. the phone company) do not like selling DF. Typically these carriers have purchased a Franchise agreement with cities or whichever authority. These franchise agreements are not cheap (usually 5% of gross or something like that, basically it is like a tax) that gives them in theory access to all rights of way from the controlling body (cable co's do the same thing).

Because of that they maintain often a de-facto monopoly or a powerful market position that they do not want jeopardized by the availability of DF which would provide extremely cheap bandwidth.

I have often thought that the smart thing for cities to do, if perhaps one were to be able to start from a green field, would be for the city to place telecom conduit up and down every street from the get go and then rent out inner-duct space to carriers. That would make it easier for competitors to access the rights of way without all of the disruptions.

But perhaps new mmwave 5G technology will eliminate such concerns eventually (but I am skeptical).

</comment><comment><USER3> CPUC is absolutely awful. Every time I see the acronym, my spidey sense tingles like _crazy_ that there's some collusion going on behind the scenes. Those people fold in places that are strategically very convenient for the industries. It very much seems like CPUC is in the business of monopoly- building, and I have never seen any evidence to the contrary. Specifically CPUC makes me wish I ran a watchdog and could dump resources into an investigation.

<comment><USER4> They were the ones that decided that frontier buying Verizon Fios wouldn't cause any harm to consumers, and what do you think happened... Yeah, lots of complaints about billing mistakes, months of no service, etc.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that was one of the most painful acquisitions for me personally. I went from practically no issues with Fios for years, and at least reasonably responsive service if there was an issue, to literally the worst customer service i've ever dealt with in Frontier. The billing issues... oh the billing issues were terrible. They were charging me more than double for three months, each month i'd call and tell them to fix it and fix the prior months, and I wasn't paying until I saw a fixed statement with the correct amount owed. It didn't get fixed until 4 months in I filed a complaint with the BBB.

<comment><USER6> …which themselves are sketchy, so it stands to reason that any scamsters would be extremely aware of 'em.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the first paragraph. Makes the context and outfall more apparent:

 _If CenturyLink is allowed to buy Level 3, then California will lose a major source of dark fiber. That's my reading of a settlement agreement between CenturyLink, Level 3 and three of the organisations that challenged the deal at the California Public Utilities Commission. The fourth challenger, the California Emerging Technology Fund, isn't part of the agreement._

<comment><USER8> For those unaware, dark fiber refers to fiber in the ground that was overbuilt by the owning company, in this case Level3.

What I don't get is _why_ would someone not want to lease this unused capacity? Is it to squash competition and push up consumer costs?

<comment><USER7> Speculuation:

Backbone data prices have continued to sink, year after year. "Last mile" connectivity prices continue to rise and far outpace the underlying data transmission costs (and particularly, the backbone portion of those costs).

If you have spare backbone capacity, but are also in the very lucrative business of providing end-point / last mile connectivity, why would you lease your excess capacity and open yourself up to competition in the lucrative last mile segment?

P.S. Take "last mile" figuratively, in the above. I don't know where the line exactly between "local"/lucrative and "long haul"/ever-cheaper.

<comment><USER9> >"If you have spare backbone capacity, but are also in the very lucrative business of providing end-point / last mile connectivity, why would you lease your excess capacity and open yourself up to competition in the lucrative last mile segment?"

The actual fiber is a sunk cost. It's possibly you might get a better return on that asset by leasing unused capacity even if it introduces some element of competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like a classic case of controlled opposition.</comment>


Who Expected That? Extreme close-ups create a Klein Bottle. - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebigquestions.com/2012/02/23/who-expected-that/ <comment><USER2> The klein bottle is relatively uninteresting. The technique which identified it is the interesting part here. The linked paper explains a method to take a high-dimensional point cloud and compute a 'bar code' which encodes fundamental geometric features of the solid of which the cloud is an approximation. Its a way of visualizing high-dimensional data without using dimensional reduction.

<comment><USER3> Does the point cloud approximate the shape, or does the shape approximate the point cloud? That distinction informed a recent discussion on the origin of the word "regression", which on the surface seems a weird term for curve- fitting, at least from my point of view.

<comment><USER2> I suppose the idea is that there is an underlying shape which the point cloud approximates. The fitted shape is then a statistical guess at the underlying shape. In which case it would be nice to see a proof that as more points are added the fitted shape eventually converges to the underlying shape.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "a Klein bottle, which is a two-dimensional surface that can't be squeezed into three dimensions, but fits perfectly well in nine (or for that matter in four). "

I'm having trouble squeezing this concept into my mind.

<comment><USER5> Well, a Möbius strip is a 2D surface that can't fit in 2 dimensions. Knots are 1D, and won't fit in 2 dimensions.

<comment><USER4> Is it common to refer to the Möbius strip as a 2D surface? You can't uniquely identify each point on its surface using only two dimensions, so I wouldn't call it a 2D surface at all. It lives in 3D, therefore it is a 3D surface, no?

<comment><USER6> _You can't uniquely identify each point on its surface using only two dimensions_

Yes you can. Run a sharpie along the bottom edge of the paper so that it bleeds onto both sides of the paper. Now tape the ends of the strip together with a half twist to make a Möbius strip. Place a point anywhere on the strip. Draw a line through that point such that the line meets both edges of the strip at a right angle. Measure the distance along that line between your point and the darkened edge; call this _x_. Now, hold the Möbius strip in your left hand so that you're pinching it by the tape. With your right hand, run your finger along the strip, starting from the tape and moving to the right. Measure how far you have to move your finger in order to reach the line you drew; this could require up to two loops around the strip. Call this distance _y_. The tuple (x,y) uniquely identifies your point.

<comment><USER4> Wow. It took me a while to figure out what you were saying, but it was well said and I eventually got it. Thanks.

<comment><USER7> For the record, we use a similar trick on sphere-like surfaces, as latitude and longitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have you considered that this pattern may be a result of camera internal structure rather than structure of objects?

<comment><USER2> The linked paper shows how the klein bottle maps onto the space. Basically, grids which have an orientation (horizontal or vertical stripes) are more common and join together to form a klein bottle. That tendency towards orientation might be an artefact of the camera or might be because cameras are usually held horizontal or vertical relative to the sky.

<comment><USER3> The paper notes that the vertical lines are gravity aligned, not camera aligned.

The paper desperately needs a accompanying translation from extreme mathematician to mortal PhD level.

<comment><USER2> The second (expository) paper is pretty readable. I have only the barest grasp of algebraic topology but I believe I have a rough high-level understanding of what it is doing. It would be interesting to implement their barcode program independently to test whether or not I really understand.

<comment><USER9> The comment is interesting. He? argues that any 2 manifold with no edges would be likely to end up as a Klein bottle. The question is then why a 2 manifold. Well, the thing we're asking about is a 2d picture, right? Maybe that has something to do with it. Let's suppose we tried the same trick using 3x3x3 pixel representations of STL models — might that turn out to be form a simple edge less 3 manifold embedded in 27 dimensional space? (perhaps for simplicity we could use 2x2x2 cubes and look at 8 dimensional space... In essence we're talking about a population of 2d data arbitrarily but consistently mapped into higher dimensional space and we discover it maps to a 2 manifold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Shouldn't zoomed photographs of smooth objects have mostly identical pixels, with the 9-dimension coordinates clustering around the all-pixels-at-the-same- intensity axis?

Edit: Oh, the papers mention this is about feature extraction and they filter for high-contrast patches.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, not mentioning the filtering for high contrast makes this more confusing than it need be. Actually, the main link is worse than just not mentioning it... it says "randomly choose 3-by-3 pixel patches" and leaves it at that. Saying "random" rather than "random then filtered" is worse then just saying nothing and letting the reader guess that maybe there is something going on in the choosing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does this allow for better compression, for example?

<comment><USER13> I don't know about compression (though there's allegedly some research using fractals in video compression, but I have no idea if and how that works), but there is image pattern recognition method that is very similar. It's called Local Binary Patterns and it cuts image into square blocks and uses a clever way to turn that blocks into binary string, for example 3x3 pixels block into 8 bits. You run this process across a texture, and get a histogram of features the texture has, like corners, black spots, white spots, gradients and similar. LBP is also inherently invariant to lightning (it uses "lighter than/darker than" instead of absolute values) and there are modifications that make it rotation invariant too (rotating the strings to biggest sequence of ones, for example).

It's pretty smart, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This strongly reminds me of the Bible Code[1], or rather of the Moby Dick Code[2]

Take any large body of work, manipulate it in some way, then patterns will emerge that make it resemble something else.

I mean seriously: they take a photo and reduce it down to a 3x3 square, arbitrarily convert the numerical values of those pixels to numbers, then take those nine numbers as 9-dimensional coordinates. The result is a surface that looks a little bit like a Klien bottle, but isn't really, since the surface is 4-dimensional instead of 2.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code>

[2] <http://cs.anu.edu.au/people/bdm/dilugim/moby.html>

<comment><USER15> This is a terribly incorrect trivialization of the work they did. The idea is not to observe some meaningless pattern emerge. Instead, they're trying to describe the statistics of random 3x3 pixels taken from photographs of nature (in fact, only of the luminosity of each pixel, hence the black-and-white photos). At a first thought, you'd expect this to be completely random, but it looks like there is a certain statistical structure to it. You only find this structure far-fetched because you're reading a blogger's vulgarization of the scientific paper whose concepts you're not familiar with.

Unlike the unreasonable bible and Moby Dick codes, this has practical applications in image manipulation and compression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Error establishing database connection</comment>


"Anonymous" Facebook Dataset Is Identified as Harvard Students - <AUTHOR> http://fstutzman.com/2008/10/07/facebook-dataset-identified/ <comment><USER2> It is getting easy to break anonymous datasets with mining:

Netflix: <http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0610105> AOL: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/07/aol-this-was-a-screw- up...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/07/aol-this-was-a-screw-up/)

<comment><USER3> thanks.. the netflix thing was me and my advisor.

i've started a blog around our anonymity breaking research: <http://33bits.org/>

we've been working on breaking anonymity in social networks for a year or two now. we'll have more to say soon.

<comment><USER4> Yet another reason to really re-think being "anonymous" online or the supposed safety in numbers of "aggregate data". Smart folks like you understand that we have digital fingerprints that extend beyond any one platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds of zero knowledge proofs...

</comment><comment><USER6> When will people learn that any anonymous datasets don't stay that way for long on the internet?</comment>


Cat Face Avatar Generator - <AUTHOR> http://neutralx0.net/tool/bnmk.html <comment><AUTHOR> Note the site is in Japanese, but you should be able to figure it out. It's basically a paper doll thing to make a square image with a cat, suitable for a profile picture.

I see a lot of avatars like this on Github and wondered where they came from.</comment>


Italian town bans pizza-making over soaring pollution - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-35161213 <comment><USER2> I would have thought that they would restrict automobile circulation before banning pizza making, especially in Italy !</comment>


The Problem for Facebook is that it's an app, not a platform - <AUTHOR> http://stratechery.com/2013/facebook-phones-and-the-future-of-mobile-communication/

<comment><USER2> apparently the author hasn't heard of a little thing called the Facebook API?</comment>


Wikipedia: The Text Adventure - <AUTHOR> http://kevan.org/wikitext/ <comment><USER2> [http://kevan.org/wikitext/United_States](http://kevan.org/wikitext/United_States)

"You can go nowhere from here."

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure how you implemented it but seems like you could take the coordinates and translate them into directions, convert the images using, then pull the first paragraph all on the fly.

look up the next closest coordiantes: [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Freebase/...](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Freebase/Coordinates)

convert images: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/236692/how-do-i- convert-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/236692/how-do-i-convert-any- image-to-a-4-color-paletted-image-using-the-python-imaging)

</comment><comment><USER4> You may want to disable taking the letter "a" (and some other ones like "is" etc).

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting idea! I had created a vaguely related experiment a while ago, breeding gamebook content with interactive fiction:

[https://github.com/cjauvin/gamebook.js](https://github.com/cjauvin/gamebook.js)

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for putting a smile on my face!</comment>


Show HN: Rate My App - The Best Way for Developers to Stay in Shape - <AUTHOR> http://ratemyapp.com

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what this is. I'm mostly confused by the mismatch between the domain name and the concept of rating interview skills...

<comment><USER2> Oh, wait a sec, is app short for 'interview application' ie cover letter and cv?

<comment><USER3> This is something I have used non-technical or non-smartphone owning people start to use, it is a bit confusing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> On Wednesday, I had the idea that developers should be able to schedule programming interviews whenever they want and track their progress over time. This idea is now a real product called Rate My App, now available!

Launch pricing for the first few users is $9.99 for a 30 minute interview. Please provide any feedback you have! You can also follow the project on twitter, tumblr, facebook, and youtube (/ratemyapp.)

Thank you! - Vlad (@vla)

<comment><USER4> I couldn't find any details on the qualifications of the person giving feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent question, smokestack! My goal is to test the viability of such a product with real customers. I am applying my experience to help out fellow developers with most of the possible combinations of interview requests, and I offer a money back guarantee if somebody is not 100% satisfied.

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/yazhbin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yazhbin)

Thank you!

<comment><USER5> I think you'd be better off getting folks who are actual interviewers (or ex- interviewers) from Google, etc, to conduct interviews; your site focuses on that as one of its selling points but your resume doesn't match up (in fact your LinkedIn gives no indication of how experienced an interviewer you are).

I think this is one of those products that's best served by finding people one-on-one who need help, and providing it for free so you get a bunch of testimonials, pictures, videos, etc -- rather than throwing up a landing page and survey. It's definitely a useful service; I mentor folks in interview practice occasionally these days, and there's certainly an appetite for it, though a lot of people I talk to tend to go about it by applying for jobs they don't really want and using those interviews as practice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thank you, Jennie!

I think you're absolutely right that the product needs to display profiles of specific interviewers (starting with me) as the next step.

Thank you for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few thoughts

* I hear "app" I think "app" as in iOS or Android or Mac app, I have never heard anyone say "app" for "application".

* The whole thing smells of "charge people before you even have a product" to me: you came up with the idea on Wednesday, there is no way you have a system in place to justify asking people for $10.

* You need to establish trust on your front page: why should I do this through your system? A blurry, hand-wavy graph is not enough.

</comment><comment><USER7> Alas, I suppose us systems programmers are a dying breed (and I'm not really that old..).

At some point "developer" started meaning "web developer". I know this is the reality of 2013 but I found it a bit depressing that the closest thing I saw was "Backend" with Ruby-on-Rails being the first thing mentioned. Someone had to write the database, web server, proxy, kernel, hypervisor, ... :)

<comment><USER8> Someone had to write the web browser. Is that the "front end" or "back end" I wonder?

<comment><USER9> I would say both. Browsers are a mix of a client facing UI and business logic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So this is an idea you came up with on Wednesday.... and by today you've thrown up a really basic site and want to charge people? Haha... that's superb.

How about you pay me to interview you first. Then I'll let you know if you're qualified to interview me.

</comment><comment><USER11> I want that domain !

on a serious note, I first thought its an app for software developers to keep a tab on their health ?( may be workout app) after I checked the domain I thought its a service to collect feedback and rating for apps. and when I clicked on the wufoo form I got some idea on what actually it does .</comment>


Why programming competition contestants use C++ and Java? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3380993

<comment><USER2> The answer really comes down to what I think is a very under-discussed issue in development: Proficiency with the tools you know can in many cases be better than switching to the "right tool".

You see all this talk about choosing the right tool for the job, which then gets twisted to mean everyone needs to have exposure to 20 different languages such that you can make the "best" decision. When in many cases, whatever tools you're the most proficient with is the "right tool" (for you).</comment>


Adversarial Patch [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.09665 <comment><AUTHOR> Key idea: it's possible to design a "patch" (a small portion of an image) that is extremely salient to a neural network, which can fool the network into misclassifying the overall larger image. This "patch" can be printed out as a real-life sticker. See Figure 1 on page 2.

<comment><USER2> [https://i.imgur.com/wF1THeV.png](https://i.imgur.com/wF1THeV.png)

Video demonstration: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1sp4X57TL4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1sp4X57TL4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Something similar is this truck with a video screen of cars on the back: [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4b/b7/78/4bb778ec36038e6f88ae...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4b/b7/78/4bb778ec36038e6f88ae5d92318c34ca.jpg)

This is going to be a more and more serious problem. It's not just image recognition either, but also ML data sets. Algorithms can be poisoned.</comment>


The Rete Matching Algorithm (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/the-rete-matching-algorithm/184405218 <comment><USER2> Unmentioned in the article is the fact that the Rete algorithm, due to how it breaks down and deduplicates predicates, has O(1) scaling behavior respective to the number of rules in the system, with the trade off of needing sufficient memory for the objects to be matched and the predicate network. It is completely fascinating to me that a rule system with one million rules could execute in the same time as one with a single rule.

I've become mildly obsessed with the potential applications of that behavior, and one of my favorite ideas (of which I'm mostly unqualified to implement) is a compiler super-optimizer, storing the rewriting rules as individual rules in the rule engine. This would also allow for adding interesting optimizations that might be purposefully omitted from existing optimizing compilers due to their infrequent or expensive matching. It would also allow for optimizations _anywhere_ in the compiler pipeline without having to worry much about modularity, which could open up the possibility of macro-level optimizations at the AST level (for example, rewriting an array of objects as an object of arrays to speed up folds and maps over the array), or the machine code level (taking advantage of small differences in instruction sets and other on-die resources).

That being said, I'm pretty sure the existing Rete implementations are poorly suited to matching on subtrees as would probably be required for this type of optimization, and the memory requirements would mean compilation would likely need to be done on servers. Tradeoffs aplenty, but I would still love to see it happen.

<comment><USER3> RETE is often used as the inference engine for RDF/OWL/SPARQL servers. (I believe Sesame/SAIL was one of the first in early 2000s using Jena [1]) Since there are many graph databases now, some have added RDF/OWL and inference support.

[1] - [https://jena.apache.org/documentation/inference/](https://jena.apache.org/documentation/inference/)

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

Some more background [http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~tukw/waim05.pdf](http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~tukw/waim05.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I ported OPS5 to both Xerox 1108 Lisp Machines and the Macintosh in 1984. I did this for internal use but my company also sold theses ports.

OPS5 was very hackable. For one project I modified the Rete algorithm to support multiple data worlds. Fun times!

<comment><USER5> Heh. I also ported Forgy's VPS5 to David Betz's XLISP around that same time, posting it to BiX (anyone remember BiX?). Ran a handful of guess-the-animal toys on it then turned my attention elsewhere.

As you say: fun times!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember playing with this and other techniques in the past. Gensym's G2 was one of most successful commercial implementations back then. I did a knockoff cuz I wasn't going to pay them. I ran into the same problem others did: maintaining and especially debugging rules. It got really difficult as the rulebase increased. It was like programming with just if-then rules.

I think our modern languages with fast interpreters or compilers are a better route. The O(1) point saosebastiao brought up was a nice benefit. It does bring clarity as another commenter said. So, if we use it, probably best to use it selectively as a DSL in a LISP or ML language.

Note: The author's name was a surprise, too. I didn't realize Bruce wrote on that topic.

</comment><comment><USER7> CLIPS is a useful implementation written in C, that is explicitly distributed as public domain software:

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

</comment><comment><USER8> those early 2000's must have been the very brief golden age of rules engines/expert systems... but coincidentally, i was just recently thinking about doing some research on the current state of rules engines to see if there might be a viable option today for matching candidates to jobs.

my very first consulting project (yes, i had absolutely no experience), around that time, was implementing blaze advisor (now owned by fico: [http://www.fico.com/en/products/fico-blaze-advisor- decision-...](http://www.fico.com/en/products/fico-blaze-advisor-decision- rules-management-system)) to migrate a mainframe-based automated life underwriting system to a j2ee client/server system.

performance was a major concern, so i read Forgy's 1982 paper about RETE (that i didn't quite understand frankly), but the key takeaway (for me at least) was that all the hard work happened during compilation so running performance shouldn't be an issue. from what i dimly remember, the algorithm iterates through the rules set building something akin to a decision tree until the tree reaches a stable state. if it never reaches stability, it will throw a compile error. once the tree is built, matching is very fast.

the holy grail was that "business analysts" (remember when that title was in vogue? =) could write the rules, saving you months of precious time and thousands of dollars by not paying programmers (it did not turn out that way of course).

<comment><USER9> > for matching candidates to jobs.

A lot is known about matching. A lot of the work boils down to min cost network flows on a network with arcs with costs per unit flow and a maximum flow that is an integer. The problem, then, is integer linear programming but in this case the old linear programming simplex algorithm returns integer results for no extra effort. A nice modification is due to W. Cunningham, one of my profs, later Chair at Waterloo's Department of Combinatorics and Optimization.

What matching problem do you have in mind?

<comment><USER8> are you talking about codifying the matching rules as cost functions and then optimizing that as a linear system of equations? that's something i remember doing in college, but it's been a while. =) are there any existing software tools out there that helps in that regard? i'm not sure it fits my use case, but it's good to explore.

i'm working on a platform that helps hourly workers find jobs. today that matching is fairly straightforward, but it will get more complicated over time as we get develop better heuristics for matching candidates. it would be nice to be declarative about the matching rules and let the system figure out how to do the matching.

<comment><USER9> I used to work in a project that was trying to program using rules. I gave up on rules.

Sorry about that: I just couldn't see rules as an effective way to specify a problem or get a solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been using products that have a RETE implementation for a while. While learning scala/akka, I decided to give it a try and build a production rules system myself. For a basic implementation, see [https://github.com/bridgeworks-nl/scala-rete](https://github.com/bridgeworks- nl/scala-rete)

</comment><comment><USER11> For those interested - there's a Clojure RETE implementation:

[https://github.com/rururu/rete4frames](https://github.com/rururu/rete4frames)

</comment><comment><USER12> If interested, there's a js/node rete called "nools"

</comment><comment><USER9> At IBM's Watson lab, our team did some work in OPS5 with the RETE algorithm. The resulting program was called an _expert system_.

The team then continued with a new programming language, YES/L1. Using DeRemer's LALR work in parsing, YES/L1 was a preprocessor to IBM's language PL/I. The language had extensions for expert system _rules_ , and that was based on the RETE algorithm.

We IBM made YES/L1 an IBM Program Product, their highest quality software product category, with name KnowledgeTool.

Our team worked with GM to make a deployment. We wrote several papers and gave one at an AAAI IAAI conference at Stanford.

The work continued with Resource Object Data Manager (RODM). The role of RODM was automation for system and network monitoring and management.

So, RODM was some _active_ storage that sat between (A) some _target_ systems in a network or server farm and (B) some _managing_ systems for the target systems.

For this work, RODM permitted building software _objects_. The objects were in an inheritance hierarchy. Each object had fields for data and methods with code. The intention was that the code would be rules written in KnowledgeTool.

The objects in RODM were _dynamic_ in that they could be changed, say, roughly like files and directories in a traditional hierarchical file system, during execution. There was use of

Ronald Fagin, Jurg Nievergelt, Nicholas Pippenger, H. Raymond Strong, 'Extendible hashing—a fast access method for dynamic files', "ACM Transactions on Database Systems", ISSN 0362-5915, Volume 4, Issue 3, September 1979, Pages: 315 - 344.

for keeping track of the names and Cartesian trees for dynamic storage management.

RODM had _transactional integrity_ with automatic deadlock detection and resolution.

The role of RODM was (A) have a place to write software for system and network automation, (B) have tools, infrastructure, etc. such code needed readily available, (C) be able to write code using expert system rules, e.g., in KnowledgeTool, (D) present to the writer of rules and code an automatically up to date object _model_ of the target systems, (D) via the transactional integrity, etc., have _coordination_ among several rules and several systems much as in relational database.

The most common approach to monitoring was use of _thresholds_ on variables one at a time.

Such monitoring is necessarily essentially a continually applied statistical _hypothesis test_ with _null hypothesis_ that the system is healthy and a _detection_ of a problem is essentially the same as _rejection_ of that null hypothesis.

Well, to have a more _powerful_ test, that is, better combinations of rates of false alarms and missed detections, it would be good to have the tests be _multi-dimensional_ , that is, consider several variables _jointly_ instead of separately and independently. So, wanted some statistical hypothesis tests that were multi-dimensional.

Next, commonly in statistical hypothesis testing, know the probability distribution of the data under the null hypothesis, but there have been tests that were _distribution-free_ , that is, that made no assumptions about probability distributions. For the work in system monitoring and management, with multi-dimensional data, _distribution-free_ tests were essential since in practice finding the distributions of multi-dimensional data was hopeless.

So, needed some statistical hypothesis tests that were both multi-dimensional and distribution-free. So, invented some.

The intention was that such hypothesis tests would commonly be better means of problem detection than the usual rule _left hand sides_ , i.e.,

         When CPU_busy > 90% AND
         paging_rate > 100 AND

later shipped by IBM as part of NetView system monitoring and management automation.

An intention was that rules written in KnowledgeTool would run in RODM.

<comment><USER9> This post was due to a system error of some kind and before the post was completed. The completed post is now also in this thread at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11366724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11366724)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I still believe it might be a good idea for instruction selection, if some compiler researcher needs an idea. ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember the RETE algorithm and some of its applications.

The RETE algorithm was used in a project for some work in artificial intelligence expert systems for server farm and network monitoring and management at the IBM Watson lab in Yorktown Heights.

The work started with the programming language OPS5.

Then the project invented a new programming -- language Yorktown Expert System Language 1, YES/L1. This language was a pre-processor to IBM's programming language PL/I. The pre-processing made use of the DeRemer LALR parsing tools. So, YES/LI was compiled.

And YES/LI had extensions for artificial intelligence expert systems based on the C. Forgy RETE algorithm and its _working memory_.

IBM shipped YES/L1 as the IBM Program Product KnowledgeTool.

Applying KnowledgeTool, we did joint work with GM.

We published several papers and gave one at a Stanford conference of the AAAI IAAI on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence.

The work of the project continued with Resource Object Data Manager (RODM). RODM was more _infrastructure_ for monitoring and management of server farms and networks.

The _architectural_ idea of RODM was:

managing systems <\--> RODM <\--> managed systems

where the <\--> is for two-way communications.

So, the role of RODM _in the middle_ was something like the role of relational database _between_ an applications program and a computer operating system file system, that is, to provide infrastructure, functionality, and tools to make the work easier, better organized, more reliable, etc.

Or, the managing systems didn't communicate directly with the managed systems but only through RODM.

So, in particular, RODM had, similar to relational database, _transactional integrity_. Also RODM had monotone locking protocol with automatic deadlock detection and resolution with roll-back and restart, etc.

RODM was _object-oriented_ with an inheritance hierarchy. Each RODM object had data fields and also methods. Some of the methods were _change methods_ and would _fire_ (execute) when an associated field changed.

The object hierarchy was not _static_ but was _dynamic_ , that is, could change during execution, that is, during real-time monitoring and management. Or, the hierarchy was _dynamic_ something like an operating system hierarchical file system that could change during execution of the operating system.

So, to keep track of the names in the object hierarchy, there was use of

Ronald Fagin, Jurg Nievergelt, Nicholas Pippenger, H. Raymond Strong, 'Extendible hashing—a fast access method for dynamic files', "ACM Transactions on Database Systems", ISSN 0362-5915, Volume 4, Issue 3, September 1979, Pages: 315 - 344.

The associated dynamic storage management was based on Cartesian trees.

The intention was that the methods could be written in rules in KnowledgeTool.

So, broadly, at the architectural level, RODM presented to the managing systems a _model_ of, _abstractions_ of, the managed systems with infrastructure, tools, handling the real-time aspects, coordination, e.g., via transactional integrity, etc.

Later RODM was shipped as part of IBM's NetView systems management product.

The most common approach to system monitoring was _thresholds_ on variables with values from the managed systems, say, CPU busy, page faults per second, disk storage used, database transactions per second, network data rate.

Then essentially necessarily, monitoring with such variables is a case of statistical hypothesis tests with rates of false positives (false alarms, Type I error) and false negatives (missed detections, Type II error).

Here what statistical hypothesis testing calls the _null hypothesis_ is an assumption that the target system being monitored is _healthy_ , and when the hypothesis test _rejects the null hypothesis_ is a _detection_ of something wrong with the target system.

Such a statistical hypothesis test has higher _power_ , such system monitoring has higher _quality_ , when, for a given rate of false alarms, the rate of missed detections is lower, that is, the detection rate of real problems is higher.

In principle the quality can be improved by processing the variables _jointly_ instead of separately. For this, we need a statistical hypothesis test that is _multi-dimensional_. Commonly a statistical hypothesis test knows and exploits the probability distribution of the input data assuming that the system is healthy (the _conditional distribution_ given that the system is healthy). Alas, in the context of system monitoring and management, with multi- dimensional data, in practice, knowing this probability distribution is asking too much. So, we need statistical hypothesis tests that are _distribution- free_ , that is, that make no assumptions about probability distributions.

So, for improving the methods in the objects in RODM for system monitoring, I invented a large collection of such statistical hypothesis tests that were both multi-dimensional and distribution-free.

So, in the sense of _rules_ , expert systems, and the RETE algorithm, might change a rule from

         When CPU_busy > 95% AND paging_rate >
         100 AND transaction_rate < 10 Then
         system_thrashing = TRUE;

to just a three dimensional statistical hypothesis test on the three variables CPU_busy, paging_rate, transaction_rate.

So, in this way are doing what has been called _behavioral monitoring_ where we look for what is unusual.

At

[http://www.sans.org/resources/idfaq/behavior_based.php](http://www.sans.org/resources/idfaq/behavior_based.php)

is

"IDFAQ: What is behavior based Intrusion Detection?"

by Herve Debar, IBM Zurich Research Laboratory with

"Therefore, the intrusion detection system might be complete (i.e. all attacks should be caught), but its accuracy is a difficult issue (i.e. you get a lot of false alarms)."

Well, commonly with a statistical hypothesis test and with the tests I invented, we get to select the false alarm rate in advance, in small steps over a wide range, and get that rate essentially exactly in practice. So, such tests solve the problem of

"you get a lot of false alarms".

That is, can set the false alarm rate as low as one pleases and get that rate in practice.

</comment><comment><USER14> Holy 1980s era AI, batman!</comment>


Mathematical beauty - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_beauty <comment><USER2> Thank you for this very interesting link. Someone knows books that deal with the concept of beauty in mathematics?</comment>


So you still don´t know AngularJS? - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=angularJS%2C+backboneJS%2C+coffee+script%2C+nodeJS

<comment><AUTHOR> And just before anyone points it out, I know that Node JS, Backbone, Coffee Script and Angular have little to do with each another.

I did the comparison with them just to put in perspective what is the popularity and growth of Angular, in comparison to other Javascript related things you might know better.</comment>


Simple Node.js prompt with retry and without dependencies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stojanovic/souffleur <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN". Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Wave Forms in Javascript and Css - <AUTHOR> http://garrettdreyfus.github.io/waveformer/index.html

<comment><USER2> Maybe add an "About" page that explains what this is and how/why it was created? I hit "Sample Song" and it took me a minute to figure out what was going on -- that you're supposed to select a sampling frequency and then it displays the waveform. Speaking of which, maybe put the "Frequency of Sample" selector above the buttons rather than off in the corner?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Will Do!</comment></comment>


Greatest Web Apps – a curated blog about functioning on the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.greatestwebapps.com/ <comment><USER2> The first thing on the page is a php warning, but please tell me how to operate in a browser based world.

<comment><USER3> LOL -- "Why Do Software & Apps Suck?"</comment></comment>


Analyzing Hunger (ends today): perception and empathy - <AUTHOR> http://monkspie.com/hungersurvey?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hackernewspost <comment><AUTHOR> Hunger is the world's greatest problem even today. Help us in our analysis by answering a few questions and we will FEED ONE PERSON for every completed response. Survey closes today, 03/26</comment>


Show HN: C++/Oat++. Object Mapping. Serialization and Deserialization - <AUTHOR> https://oatpp.io/docs/components/dto/ <comment><AUTHOR> About object mapping used in oatpp web framework, to serialize/deserialize DTOs, map endpoint params, and generate endpoints docs.</comment>


The rise of the citizen developer: assessing security impact of online app gen - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/07/02/the-rise-of-the-citizen-developer-assessing-the-security-impact-of-online-app-generators/ <comment><AUTHOR> Makes me wonder, which is the best selling citizen app in the market?</comment>


Guy who hacked Zuckerberg gets a well-deserved career change - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/news/khalil-shreateh-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-wall-hack/

<comment><USER2> Well-deserved is a bit of an overstatement. All we know is that he was able to do an HTTP parameter switcheroo. Does that mean he can build things? No, it just means he as the ability to tinker. A start, yes, but well-deserved does not belong in the title.</comment>