How the Dream of America's Nuclear Renaissance Fizzled - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2017/08/06/541582729/how-the-dream-of-americas-nuclear-renaissance-failed-to-materialize <comment><USER2> I've been doing some work for Areva's (large nuclear services company) North American branch this summer and have had a chance to talk frankly with upper management / executives about the current state of the industry.

Areva's parent company in France had a problem similar to Westinghouse with their first gen 3 reactor build. The designs weren't given enough time to mature, the designs were overly complex, and the contract was negotiated for a fixed price. He pointed to S. Korea's recent success in building new plants [1] to show that it can be done. Although the person I was speaking with seemed much more hopeful for gen 4 reactors than gen 3--at least in the NA market.

An argument that I thought was convincing was that making an energy plan is gambling on future breakthroughs and fuel costs. Natural gas is mostly fuel cost (~80%), so it's a much more volatile of an investment than nuclear which is mostly the cost of construction and maintenance. [2] It just turns out that the cost of natural gas is insanely low right now so utilities are not so interested in nuclear. So keeping energy plans diverse by investing in nuclear will help to hedge against risk with alternatives.

Another point that's been brought up to me while working at Areva is how poorly the nuclear industry managed their public image. The actual stake holders (Westinghouse, Areva, B&W, etc), thought that utilities would manage the public image of nuclear. Unfortunately for the nuclear industry, utilities only actually care about generating electricity as cheaply as possible so nuclear's PR was neglected and steamrolled by coal/wind/solar interests.

Personally, I find it unfortunate that wind/solar proponents decided to throw nuclear to the wayside. The most realistic clean energy future that I see is nuclear providing a modest base-load, and solar/wind/misc filling in while their technology matures.

Overall these points didn't seem like pure corporate propaganda to me, but keep their sources in mind.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea#R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea#Reactor_overview)

[2]: [https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a shame. Nuclear is our only realistic option for zero-carbon electricity. The planet can't afford to wait for breakthroughs in renewable energy and grid storage.

</comment><comment><USER4> It fizzled because nuclear doesn't have the PR and lobbying clout of the fossil and renewable energy industries.

People mistakenly think that climate change/renewable energy group took money/power from the fossil fuel industry. They didn't. Fossil fuel is just as strong as ever. The climate change/renewable energy group beat nuclear industry.

You'll see the renewable energy group take credit for the decline of coal. Wind/solar did nothing to hurt coal. It was fracking and the natural gas boom that hurt coal. What renewable has done is lead to the decline of nuclear industry in europe/germany and in the US.

There is only a limited amount of funding and mind-space. The rise of renewable energy industry crowded out nuclear. Of course the fukushima accident didn't help and the media/PR/lobbying war waged by renewable and fossil fuel industries.

</comment><comment><USER5> Even if fission is deemed to have no future, let's see where fusion technologies go (stellarators and tokamak's).

</comment><comment><USER6> Good thing to be honest. Leapfrogging to renewables is far more sustainable in the long run.</comment>


Standing on Distributed Shoulders of Giants - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2953944 <comment><USER2> If you're interested in this, the first relationship between Distributed Systems and Relativity was realized by Leslie Lamport. Read about it on his webpage, which includes his thoughts on the paper, as well as a link to the paper:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/p...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#time-clocks)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727) was a brilliant physicist who defined the foundations for classical mechanics, laws of motion, and universal gravitation. He also built the first refracting telescope, developed a theory of color, and much more."

Newton invented the reflecting telescope, the refracting telescope was invented around 1600.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Latency is not decreasing too much and is limited by the speed of light."

This is not true in any realistic distributed system. Sure latency is not decreasing much, but it is several orders of magnitude higher than the speed of light. There's a lot of fat to trim if we are willing to try.

<comment><USER5> In context, I'm pretty sure it was just saying "Unlike computation, bandwidth, and memory size, we haven't seen much improvement in latency, and even if we focused on it, we have a very clear limit we can't get past".

I.e., latency is -always- going to be an issue, for everyone doing anything distributed; it will never go away, or become so small as to effectively be ignorable. You can trim the fat, which can improve the real-world experience of certain things, but it doesn't actually solve, or even simplify, the hard edge cases. It just may make them rarer.

<comment><USER4> The idea that latency is currently bounded by the speed of light is what stops people from fixing the fact that it is not. This is my objection.

<comment><USER6> What is the upper bound on latency?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another set of masterful distributed system engineers you can look at are the US founding fathers. Like any implementation, it's far from perfect, but I marvel at a system of government with enough fault tolerance, failover, and backups built in to survive as long as it has.

<comment><USER8> IIRC it began as a master-slave architecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given our current computer architecture models, we'll run into Planck's constant or some other universal constant eventually. Already the path forward has more to do with increasing the number of cores rather than the performance of a single core.

</comment><comment><USER9> "In a distributed system, you can know where the work is done or you can know when the work is done but you can't know both."

A simple thought experiment will quickly tell you that's not true. Given a task queue, the compute process that pulled the task and put a result could easily provide where and when and give you both.</comment>


What making a big breakfast taught me about execution intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://krmmalik.posterous.com/what-making-a-big-breakfast-taught-me-about-e

<comment><USER2> I have nothing but the greatest admiration for anybody willing to put up with actually cooking in the freaking morning. I, being the lazy continental European that I am, never went beyond boiling some eggs. Oh, and I think I once even scrambled some eggs. But other than that never anything more complex than baguettes and croissants.

<comment><USER3> If you made those baguettes and croissants yourself, that's a fair amount of work in itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> krmmalik: If you want to see a huge collection of seriously impressive breakfasts, check out this thread on the egullet forum: [http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/53260-breakfast-t...](http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/53260-breakfast- the-most-important-meal-of-the-day/)

Probably best to start from the end and move backwards as many of the earlier posts are missing photos. Maybe this will give you some inspiration for other things to make.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great thread. Thank you for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice post. I just made a big breakfast for my family on Sunday so I can relate. It's hard to make things well and have things not get cold. You definitely need to plan ahead and learn from your mistakes. Breakfast is a tough meal to make without help.

The experience always makes me appreciate my grandmothers' ability to pull it off without complaining or messing anything up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your kind words, like you my respect and admiration has gone way up for the people that have been serving me all these years.

<comment><USER6> Cooking is a skill, just like any other. If you make your breakfast often enough, you'll just get to the point where you _know_ when and how to do everything you want, and when to throw your plans out the window. The people who serve you at restaurants were pretty darned incompetent when they first started. The good ones, especially at a short-order environment, know when and how to mix things.

Try shredding your potatoes instead of slicing them, next time (or use sweet potatoes/yams!). Don't bother boiling them. When shredded, the potatoes cook faster, and you get a nice difference in texture. Later, you can start experimenting with a bit of cheese (cheddar is always good) and even pouring the scrambled eggs in with the shredded potatoes (which, with a bit of cheese, can be very good).

For an alternative approach, try chilaquiles (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilaquiles>), which is super easy to make and I regularly make it for 6 - 8 people (it requires a dozen or so eggs to make it at that point).

<comment><USER7> If you shred the potatoes as halostatue mentions, I suggest sprinkling them with salt and squeezing the liquid out in a colander before frying them (you'll be amazed at how much water is released). Also, I prefer to cook them in a well heated cast iron skillet. You can forget about them and flip them once, keeping things simple.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Academia, Job-Hopping, and Facebook - <AUTHOR>

The lazy* man's guide to hitting the HN front page:<p>1) Pick something topical. 2) Find a post about it on HN. 3) Take the other side of the argument. 4) Be sure to mention the key word in the title. 5) Congratulations!
6) Check your page views.<p>*in my opinion, HN is remarkably good at avoiding this trap. there's more nuanced and substantive discussion here than anywhere else. when bait does get through, there's usually someone in the comments to call it out. good job, guys! <comment><USER2> I actually like that counter-point articles are posted and that new themes occur each week with multiple articles. It can certainly get excessive (as Reddit is prone to do) but a handful of articles from varying view points on a topic is a healthy thing for a social links site.</comment>


The Fallacies of Distributed Computing Reborn: The Cloud Era - <AUTHOR> http://blog.newrelic.com/2011/01/06/the-fallacies-of-distributed-computing-reborn-the-cloud-era/

<comment><USER2> A part of the solution: robust sync.

Let's take the typical example of a photo editing app. Robust sync ameliorates a lot of these issues. You might lose your connection. Not so big a problem if you have your own local copy. One of the administrators is doing something that shuts off access to one copy of your data -- you still have another copy. The network is slow -- with synced data, you just have to send deltas.

Robust sync doesn't completely solve everything, but it takes these problems -- which are often edge cases -- and it reduces their impact.

<comment><USER3> I'd much prefer a unified view instead of sync. No connection? No problem, show me what I have in my local copy. Admittedly, there's no redundancy with unified views.

<comment><USER4> Kind of like the old Newton soup view (instead of a memory card in the slot you have the "cloud").

Explanation: The Newton showed all the entries / files on the Newton plus any entries / files on the card as one view. Pull out the card and those entries disappeared.

<comment><USER3> That's pretty interesting. I wonder why this approach was never re-done with iPhone and MobileMe (Contact sync and Calendaring have big applications here). Perhaps there are important unsolved problems I'm overlooking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One point seems to be missing: web applications that do have a web front are actually distributed not only on the servers, but also on the clients. This makes reasoning on reliability or security even harder.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sadly the most fervent prognosticators of the "cloud" either won't read this or won't understand what it all means.

</comment><comment><USER7> Corollary: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> A longer treatment of these issues that's still relevant today is "A Note on Distributed Computing" by Ann Wollrath, Geoff Wyant, Jim Waldo and Samuel C. Kendall: <http://labs.oracle.com/techrep/1994/abstract-29.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely agree. I love that paper, too. I'll add a link to it in the post later today.</comment></comment>


A programmer automated their data-entry job. Now: tell their employer? - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1019161/a-programmer-automated-their-data-entry-job-now-the-question-is-whether-to-tell-their-employer <comment><USER2> Heavily discussed 2 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656945) (660 points, 506 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is almost entirely direct quotes from a forum thread with little to no commentary or narrative on top of it.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's an aggregation of comments from HN, Reddit and Stack Exchange, and a couple of examples of this happening before. Might be helpful for people who missed it but kinda silly to post it to HN

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I automated the documentation of nightly job processes using Tivoli Maestro configuration files and Visio, my employer didn't know what to do with me so they promoted me. It never crossed my mind not to say something. I wasn't there to produce output. I was there to bring value to the organization.

At another employer, I worked alongside a customer service rep who automated much of the time consuming work he had to do. He wasn't a programmer by trade, but having a hacker mindset, he learned to do so after tiring of the same old work. Despite the annoyance of the security team and other developers who felt threatened by his work, he was promoted to IT and they locked down the workstations so it wouldn't happen again.

<comment><USER6> > Despite the annoyance of the security team and other developers who felt > threatened by his work

Depending on what he did the security team may have rightfully had issues with the work. I've seen it time and time again. Someone automates something, the tool gets released to users and it's full of SQLi, XSS, and RCE vulnerabilities, sometimes opening up a once protected data-set or systems to company or Internet wide exposure. It's shadow IT/Dev work like this which tends to be responsible for the most security incidents.

<comment><USER7> > It's shadow IT/Dev work like this which tends to be responsible for the most > security incidents.

Most security incidents? Sounds unsubstantiated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Your replacement won't understand" I've heard that over and over. So I say "No boss I didn't use VBA or JavaScript to generate these reports" It would get me fired.

<comment><USER9> What do you do?

<comment><USER8> Business analysis for a Fortune 500. I've been asked to write an SOP that any random person can understand if I want use VBA. Instead of writing a text book I just say it's done without it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a story by Feynman where he automates some simple thing on his first job. It was some kind of telephone system, and he attached strings to the lines so he could see where the call was coming from in another room. And he got in trouble for it because his boss didn't understand it or appreciate it. The moral of the story was that people don't generally like innovation or change. Especially if it's just your time being saved and not theirs. If you can get away with it, don't tell your employer.

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember a similar story about a developer that outsourced their work to a low cost offshore worker. Can't find it now...Google fu is off today.

<comment><USER12> [http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/17/business/la-fi-mo- ma...](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/17/business/la-fi-mo-man- outsourced-job-to-china-20130117)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/4nd8q4/pro...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/4nd8q4/programmer_automates_his_job_for_6_years_finally/)

</comment><comment><USER14> A reblog vomit with a garbage bait headline composed of comments on hackernews? What a turd of an "article" and I assume it represents all of "qz.com" quality

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand whole this ethics talk, should ethics be 2 sided ? do companies usually do their part ?</comment>


Tokyo Wants People to Stand on Both Sides of the Escalator - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/12/people-stand-walk-escalator-left-right-save-time-efficient/578479/ <comment><USER2> Again and again when this comes up, people look at the wrong metric: throughput. Walking on the left is not about optimising for throughput: it optimises for _customer happiness_ . It is like a priority queue: in a hurry? Walk. Okay with waiting? Stand. To people who are in a rush, the ability to walk is worth very much. To people who are not, having to wait a few more seconds matters relatively less.

Standing on the right, walking on the left is a form of "rush discrimination".

If you just look at throughput, you're measuring the wrong thing. Try to measure how people feel! The fact Londoners would flip experimenters the bird when asked to stand on the left, should tell you what you need to know.

Of course, my perspective crucially ignores one category: people in a rush, who can't climb an escalator. They are disadvantaged by this. How many of them there are, I don't know, so perhaps I'm being incredibly tone-deaf.

<comment><USER3> From the article:

 _Then there's the added bonus that it may finally stop people from being jerks on the escalator—like the London commuter captured in a viral video this year telling a blind man with a guide dog to let go of the handrail so he can pass him._

Someone with a guide dog -- a clear signal of special need -- can have their need for reasonable accommodation utterly ignored. It can be worse for the many people who are less obviously impaired who lack some clear public signal.

I'm seriously handicapped. Most people cannot tell that by looking at me. I gave up my car more than a decade ago and I mostly get around by walking, so a lot of people see me as unusually able-bodied because I walk everywhere.

But I have serious trouble navigating certain situations, such as stairs. Escalators are hard for me because they are moving and I'm visually impaired and I walk with a permanent limp and I have joint issues and yadda. It's stressful for me to deal with the transition to step onto the escalator and stressful for me to deal with the transition to step off the escalator and I generally cannot cope with walking on the escalator. I stand on it.

<comment><USER4> A person telling off a blind man with a guide dog is not going to stop being a jerk. They are just inconsiderate and do not care.

<comment><USER3> I don't really understand why you are chiming in to make that observation, but I will note that he stated that he didn't think he was being inconsiderate.

There are lots of different types of handicaps in the world. Some people have social impairments. This often gets labeled Autism Spectrum Disorder.

I have two sons who needed a lot of social stuff explained when they were little. They didn't readily get it.

I think there is a larger learning curve for social things than is generally appreciated. I am a big believer that decent adults are made, not born.

Regardless, people like me have the additional issue that people who would never do something like that to a blind person will still do it to me, not realizing that I'm in genuine danger of being seriously hurt because of their behavior because I sometimes really struggle with seemingly small things.

Getting on and off a bus is also kind of a nerve-wracking production for me. Most other people just step on or off. I cannot do that. I routinely cling to whatever handholds are available. Yet I don't use a cane, walker or other device that would signal to other people that I'm seriously impaired. So sometimes people seem to just find me annoying, presumably not realizing this is actually difficult for me and thus puts me in real danger of falling and ending up potentially seriously injured.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On very busy or very long escalators, standing is probably faster for everyone. However, most escalators aren't that long, aren't that busy and are a fair bit slower than walking. In which case everyone should ideally be walking. But because lots of people have luggage or aren't comfortable walking up escalators, the whole walk left/stand right thing feels like a pretty decent compromise.

What the world really needs is more stairs for those who are able, and more lifts for those who have difficulties with stairs. Or maybe multi-lane, variable speed walking escalators, but I guess those are sci-fi...

<comment><USER6> > _" On very busy or very long escalators, standing is probably faster for > everyone. "_

How so? I don't see how an escalator could possibly be slower than everybody standing (discounting the possibility of somebody actually walking backwards.)

> _" Or maybe multi-lane, variable speed walking escalators, but I guess those > are sci-fi... "_

I've badly wanted to try that ever since I read _Caves of Steel_. It sounds terrifying but exhilarating.

<comment><USER7> You can probably safely fit more people on the escalator if everyone stands still, so while individuals would be going slower, overall throughput on the escalator would be higher.

<comment><USER6> Somebody walking on the elevator does not inhibit the person behind him from standing still. The person who stands behind a walker is going to get on and off the elevator at the same times.

<comment><USER8> This thought experiment about 2 people makes sense on a short, unfrequented, escalator. The conversation is on long busy escalators however and someone will almost always be sandwiched between two people in that scenario. If not there wouldn't be any concerns about throughput considering one lane is already used for walkers.

<comment><USER6> The article and studies it's discussing are about the scenario where standers avoid the left side of the escalator because they think it's reserved for walkers. But what I'm saying is that allowing walkers to walk whenever there is opportunity while also telling standers to use both sides gives you identical throughput to everybody standing (while allowing any walker who gets the opportunity to get off the escalator faster.)

<comment><USER9> If walkers are allowed to walk on the left whenever noone is standing in front of them, then I will naturally tend to avoid standing on the left. Unless the left is already blocked by other standers.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure how to break this to you, but walkers can also walk on the right when nobody is standing in front of them. I've been doing it my entire life and not once has anyone stopped me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Walking on escalators may lead to accidents caused by collisions or luggage."

I'm sensing zero-risk bias, typical for modern western societies. For me, there is absolutely no reason to stand on the escalator, unless handicapped of course.

<comment><USER11> Tiredness, luggage, children, trying to make sense of directions, being in company... so many reasons not to walk. In fact, I bet most people never walk at all on an escalator.

<comment><USER12> Wow. I've always been so baffled by this mentality.

The number of people who are otherwise healthy but refuse to walk up stairs just shocks me. I've never felt like walking up an escalator carried any significant risk for the able bodied...

I don't know how to explain it except that people are shockingly lazy and just overall have really screwed up risk assessment

<comment><USER13> Does this mean you always prefer using stairs over escalators?

<comment><USER14> Not sure about parent poster, but I try to always use the stairs unless they are not convenient (e.g. not right next to the escalators).

I've got long enough legs to comfortably ascend two stairs at once and I prefer the exercise as well as the speed of ascent and descent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What this article misses, and what JR East won't tell you, is that having people walking on escalators reduces their operable life span without maintenance; and thus increases the costs of running a train station. (JR East posts profits every quarter despite their escalator maintenance)

This is napkin math, but: Wikipedia says Japan's train ridership was 7.58 billion in 2014. Compared to 880 injuries, that's roughly a 1 in 1 million chance.

<comment><USER6> It wouldn't surprise me if unbalanced load on the left and right also causes additional wear and tear.

<comment><USER16> This is WMATA's stated reason for not suggesting or enforcing "stand right, walk left" on the Washington Metro. They ostensibly want no one walking on either side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is worth noting that the Holborn London Underground experiment described in the article only took place on one of the systems longest escalators, where it's unlikely that many people were walking up the full length anyways so there was wasted capacity.

I feel like it would hold less true for a 3m or 4m escalator that most people would feel comfortable walking up.

<comment><USER18> It does acknowledge that. "A 2002 theoretical study suggested that when escalators reach more than 60 feet high, fewer people will climb them, leaving ample space to carry standing passengers."

Not quite sure what a 'theoretical study' means in this context though. They link to their previous reporting on the study, but the link provided there to the actual study is dead.

<comment><USER17> I would assume that a 'theoretical study' would involve some type of passenger flow modeling, which TfL often use to measure expected passenger flows in projects like the Bank upgrade, layout of Crossrail stations, future upgrades like Camden Town, etc. The problem with modeling is that it assumes all your inputs are correct, and there are so many confounding factors in the operation of a Tube station that there's no real replacement for a real study.

I only put in the disclaimer about height because while it's mentioned with the theoretical study, it's not mentioned with one of the only actual experiments, and Holborn is a 23m long escalator, which you wouldn't know unless you use Holborn. These findings wouldn't be very helpful in New York, for example, where most stations are so close to the surface that you're only traveling one or two stories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was in Tokyo a couple years ago and was incredibly impressed with how everyone acted on their subway and the escalators there. Incredible amount of people being in sync. No way that's comparable to London which is what half the article talks about.

I really dislike these types of articles that try to use stats for reasoning. They claim that between 2013 and 2014, so over 365 days, there were 1475 total accidents, 880 from being "improper"? What qualifies as an accident? And what's improper? If there are that many issues? Why not only make stairs? (They have those too). Another "study" is listed saying that in London, "reduced congestion by 30 percent" whatever that means. And another reasoning I disagree wit (one that can't be proven let's be honest) is that this will stop people from being jerks on the escalators. I'm pretty sure that this would annoy more people if they're unable to get by.

The only possibly reasoning is that for super long escalators, very few people walk, so half the capacity is being used.

I'll give JR East credit. If they think double side standing should be the way to go, trying it out for a month and seeing how it goes is a great way of handling it, instead of forcing it from now on and having too much confidence in success as is mostly the case in these social change campaigns.

One more thing, why is the url's slug pretty much completely different? What was the article about before? And by the way, in Tokyo, walkers go up the right side, standers are on the left. You can even see that in the picture at the top of the page. Pretty sure if you're writing about escalators in Tokyo you should mention that.

</comment><comment><USER20> The psychological reason it is difficult to get people to stand on both sides of the escalator is that when the station is not busy, it's obvious that it is not saving _anyone_ time to stand on the escalator, so people walk. At some point during the day it makes sense to change the rule so people just stand on the escalator, but people are already walking down one side and it isn't obvious that they are wrong.

> As reported by Japan Times, a study by the Japan Elevator Association in > Tokyo found that of the 1,475 escalator accidents in the city between 2013 > and 2014, more than 880 were a result of people riding improperly (that > includes walking or running on an escalator).

This is written poorly. Just because someone was walking does not mean it caused the accident. At the very least it could be only partially contributory. Also, how many percent of the time are people walking on the escalator there?

You could also flip the logic on its head in circumstances in which someone was not walking and was bumped from behind. Had they been walking, they likely would not have been bumped from behind.

<comment><USER6> > _" At some point during the day it makes sense to change the rule so people > just stand on the escalator, but people are already walking down one side > and it isn't obvious that they are wrong."_

They aren't wrong. The people who intend on standing and therefore avoid the left side are wrong. Standers should use both sides. Walkers should be free to walk on either side when the opportunity permits. This scheme gives you an identical throughput to everybody standing, and a greater mean speed.

<comment><USER21> If people cared about throughout, no one would be standing. People are lazy except when in a hurry, and giving both groups the chance to commute the escalator how they want is what you should care about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fascinating, but wouldn't it be a healthier norm to want everyone (who is physically capable) to _walk_ on the escalator?

It baffles me how many people automatically stop being active just because there's an escalator. Surely a better social norm is to encourage even mild activity and exercise?

Of course if you're exhausted or have luggage or are in tall heels or are holding a baby then by all means stand -- but stand to the side. Most of the time that won't be the case, so everyone walking will be a better overall optimization, and _especially_ the fact that there are usually elevators in modern buildings as well that are better accomodating for luggage and babies and the disabled as well.

<comment><USER23> The overall throughout/bandwidth of people is higher if the people aren't moving and can be closer bunched together.

Each person gets to the top slightly slower individually, but more people get though in total.

Same thing has been happening in London. They've been trying to convince people to stand on both sides in some stations.

<comment><USER24> If people aren't moving, how do they _get_ bunched together? My theory is that if people who are spread apart stand still, even on an escalator, they will remain spread apart.

After RTFA, I still don't see what the explanation is supposed to be for the claimed increase in throughput.

<comment><USER24> Oh, I get it now. In the limit, say 99.9% of people want to stand, so if they are all on one side, then half of the capacity is lost to the few walkers, in theory. But this is an absurd way to define efficiency, because the standers _by definition_ aren't in a hurry. How often is there a backup at the entrance to an escalator anyway?

<comment><USER25> In Tokyo when a train arrives, there is always a fairly long queue at the bottom of the escalator. In fact, the queue is so long that it is often impossible to get to the stairs to avoid the escalator. It usually interferes with the queuing of the trains on the platform as well. I can definitely see why they want to do this and it's probably a good idea. I very highly doubt that it will work. Even _I_ will feel too weird to do it unless everybody else does it. They may have to seed the crowd with fake travelers just to get people to start.

<comment><USER26> As a New Yorker, hearing that people purposely queue and wait just to ride on the _right_ side of the escalator when the left side is unused blows my mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Another similar topic is the "moving walkways" at airports that give you a big speed boost if you actually walk on them, but are slower than walking if you just stand on them. There seems to always be a group of people standing side- by-side on those just chatting away, making it so others can't walk past them. Those are wide enough to stand on one side and let others pass, but they rarely do.

</comment><comment><USER28> "And in some stations, security staff with neon-colored vests stand watch and guide people." if they really want to prevent people walking, just get a staff member to stand still on the escalator. It will cause traffic and normalise standing. They can ride up and down for an hour at rush hour. It prevents the natural segregation into people who are rushing and people who are not, but is probably still worth it at busy times particularly if not many people want to walk up a long escalator.

<comment><USER29> > It prevents the natural segregation into people who are rushing and people > who are not, but is probably still worth it

People who are really rushing can always take the stairs.

<comment><USER13> People who are rushing may need the speed advantage of walking up escalators, which is faster than walking up stairs.

I've caught a long distance train with less than a minute to spare, which had I missed it, would have delayed my journey by an hour before the next train. It shouldn't have been that close, I left with plenty of time to get to the main railway station via the Underground, but sometimes multiple subway lines have issues and you get cascading failures that leave you with no other choice but to run up escalators or miss your transport (especially if it avoids having to buy another train/plane ticket)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> At peak times in Hong Kong's subway, it pains me to see one side of the escalator basically empty. Normally I walk up, so that should make things faster for me, except it's impossible to get to the escalator for the queue of people. If people just used both sides it would be faster - for everyone.

<comment><USER29> In the Shanghai subway system, the normal case is that one half of the escalator walks and the other stands still. But when the crowd is large, population pressure forces both halves to stand still.

This experience made me surprised that Tokyo would need to implement such a system top-down; I figured their crowds would be large enough that it was happening anyway.

Looks like "better" queueing behavior may be responsible for the failure.

<comment><USER31> You often need that first person to stand still.

I now take it upon myself to be the first person" sometimes. If I see a long line forming to stand, and no one is walking at all, I will stand in the "walking" lane.

After that I see a lot of people with relief on their faces when they stand behind me.

I guess it also helps that I'm bald, Asian guy with a long beard. so maybe they think I'm a bum. Otherwise there were times I've seen people admonish the standers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I get to the subway via one of the long and steep escalators mentioned in the article. I'd say about 30-35% of people walk down and 10-15% walk up. I walk up and down.

Few general remarks:

1\. If people have lots of luggage or aren't comfortable using the escalator, they can take the elevator (and they do).

2\. Saying that standing would prevent accidents is like saying banning cars would prevent accidents - not a particularly helpful observation. Humans are only willing to minimize risk up to a point.

3\. The more complicated argument in the article is that standing would increase capacity. I don't know - I avoid rush hour, but the escalators seem empty enough so that I can walk up/down unobstructed. It's hard for me to see how I'm negatively affecting capacity. In cases where the escalator is packed, I'll stand rather than being pushy, but that never happens during the week.

</comment><comment><USER33> To be honest, I do the same all the time, and it only saves 30 s but if that's the difference between catching a connection in SF or not then that's a 20 minute savings it could be.

In London this is less true, but I admit to still walking up.

<comment><USER34> > _if that's the difference between catching a connection in SF or not then > that's a 20 minute savings it could be_

Here's a heuristic you should try applying: under some reasonable assumptions, getting to the platform X seconds earlier should shave X seconds off your commute in expectation and not affect the variance. (Those assumptions are basically "you're not trying to catch a particular train.")

Of course, you may have a nonlinear objective function in terms of time/delay, or you may be optimising for regret instead of arrival time, and in those cases the analysis may turn out differently.

<comment><USER35> A related puzzle: Should you recharge your transport card before or after riding? [https://trefethen.net/2018/03/25/metro-mean-and- variance/](https://trefethen.net/2018/03/25/metro-mean-and-variance/)

<comment><USER33> The right answer (in practice, though I admit the question is fun) is to "use your debit/credit card" (on the Tube, for instance) for the train or "set up auto-load if your transit system doesn't accept credit/debit cards" (on BART, for instance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I prefer walking up not because I'm in a hurry, but because it's uncomfortable and boring to be standing still.

</comment><comment><USER13> One other thought: In times of congestion, it's not uncommon for tube stations to limit access to prevent overcrowding. I always hate entering a very busy station (or shopping mall) where both sides of the escalator are completely full, as there's a big risk of injury when there's no space at the escalator exit, and you have a pile of people being rammed into one spot.

It's not an issue specific to stand-only escalators, just exacerbated by it. With half the escalator reserved for walking, this issue should happen less.

Incidentally in these same overcrowded stations it's not uncommon for the escalator to be turned off intentionally to prevent such problems. So both sides have to walk!

</comment><comment><USER37> > When one side isn't reserved for walkers, it saves time for everyone. But > transit users around the world just can't be convinced.

Just spend some time in Belgium. We are unable to form orderly queues. Elevators are like moving grapes of humans, lines in fast food are flocks of people going back and forth between the end of the line, the cash register and the spot for food delivery and people are piling on top of each other at bus stops.

It drives me mad.

</comment><comment><USER38> Non-GDPR-walled: [https://web.archive.org/web/20181223193027/https://www.cityl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181223193027/https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/12/people- stand-walk-escalator-left-right-save-time-efficient/578479/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Mh, I comprehend if they say "escalators dislike asymmetrical charges" but not the argument of going all at same speed. Sometimes we can be in hurry while others can be absolutely calm.

We are HUMANS, we are all similar and all different, we can't be considered as "packet on a network". These kind of homogenization it typical of modern society, mostly derived from Ford model and it's harmful and dangerous for our freedom and our social evolution.

BTW not anybody walk to going from A to B in a certain amount of time, we do not exists as a work-machine, we exists as human being that work to live, not the contrary.

</comment><comment><USER40> The most dangerous situations I've experienced on an escalator are when it's densely populated and someone has some difficultly getting off and takes just long enough for the next rows to push them over causing a domino effect like a slow motion trampelling. I always ensure that I have some personal space on escalators, especially very long ones.

</comment><comment><USER41> The "it's only a few seconds of waiting" argument fails when the person is trying to get to a scheduled departure of a bus or train.

If the next train is in 20 minutes and the train is leaving in the next minute, walking down the escalator to make this train just saved me 20 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER42> the reasoning in the article and the exhortation to stand are both a bit dubious. injuries are more likely due to differential attentiveness between walkers and standers, rather than the walking itself. standers tend to be less attentive to others because standing allows you to let your collision detection guard down.

you could also have fewer injuries hy getting everyone (except those who can't) to walk, which would also result in a lower overall difference in attentiveness.

<comment><USER8> I think it's even less likely to get everyone to walk than to stand though and I think everyone could agree all standing as proposed is likely safer than all walking anyways.

<comment><USER42> my point was that the safety argument is specious, not to argue about what was more likely to be implemented. getting hurt on an escalator is just not a real problem, and the safety bugaboo is used as a way to regulate other people's behavior needlessly.

we don't need more silly regulations like this when things like distracted driving and air pollution are real problems that _kill_ thousands of people.

<comment><USER8> Your original comment actually said nothing about over-regulation or escalator safety not being a real problem. It did however claim to have a better solution to safety concerns that were contradictory to the claims of the article(s).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Yada yada. I walk because I hate standing.

</comment><comment><USER44> I just run the stairs as fast as I can.

</comment><comment><USER45> Links gehen, rechts stehen! Stakenblochenckeit ja ja!

<comment><USER10> Not exactly my observations, to put it politely, here in East Germany, Leipzig.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is a problem that's solvable with computer vision and face recognition. Just fine everybody. Somebody's face can't be recognized or linked to an account? Pay them a visit. With time it should be rare enough.

</comment><comment><USER47> People who aren't willing to walk deserve to lose that time.</comment>


Unicode URL - ☃.net - <AUTHOR> http://☃.net

<comment><USER2> Gruber made one in 2010 (<http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/starstruck>). I made one to mimic ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ as the url (url: ˉ⧹ˍ❨ツ❩ˍ⧸ˉ.ws -or- <http://xn-- zqaala8697bga007bda767m.ws/> ).

Unfortunately, it doesn't work well on all browsers/DNS servers, so it's not very practical.

<comment><USER3> Pretty sure a gaming "brand" company owns the rights to that emoticon. It was the subject of much criticism a couple months ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The timing of this is interesting to me. I was having a conversation with a friend who isn't a geek at all who mentioned that he met the most geeky person he'd ever come across. Someone so geeky they had a domain name which was just a black box. I'd never heard of unicode URLs before, but quickly realised what he was on about.

I raced home to find out if ♥.com was taken. I 1st tried checking it by just typing alt+3 .com in chrome's address bar, only to find out that you can't. Chrome just won't accept it. So I tried in IE and noticed that while it "resolved" out to xn--g6h.com but there was no site. Excellent I thought and quickly tried to register it only to find that I'd been beaten by about 9 years. As I checked for other available single unicode domains I found that most of them had been snapped up around 2003.

i♥you.com is for sale.

No real point to this story except that I was once again reminded that as geeky and "internet hip" as I like to think I am, I find I'm continuously 5-10 years behind the real smart people.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think this is very bad, security wise. Take this URL for example: www.paypaᥣ.com Ofcourse it depends on the font used and the characters chosen, but you can trick people into opening a site they trust.

(for those who don't get it: the L of paypal is not an L)

<comment><USER6> This is a well-known issue, and Firefox deals with it by showing (in this example) <http://xn--n3h.net/> in the address bar.

<comment><USER7> chrome is doing the same here (chrome 18/linux)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Speaking of IDNs, a few months back I had an idea for a geo service and registered <http://⌖.ws> — figured U+2316 Position Indicator[1] was a good fit for something related to geolocation.

I never came around to using it, so if a fellow HNer is interested in the domain, drop me a line (email in my profile).

[1] Larger image: [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/font/stixgeneral- reg...](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/font/stixgeneral- regular/u2316.png)

</comment><comment><USER9> Clever but how would mom and pop type this into the address bar? I guess this is meant solely for clickable links.

<comment><USER10> I don't see much value for most of these Unicode domain names except for novelty.

However, CJK domains are a potential goldmine if you factor in:

1\. Most internet ready devices in Asia have Unicode input (language-wise). For example, they can easily type 日本.com (Japan).

2\. China's internet users count has surpassed 500M.

A brief lookup revealed that the most common 1-2 character domain names have already been picked up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://💩.la> is a better example, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ha! Care to share how you accomplished this?

<comment><USER13> Registered a punycode domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're asking about how I entered the link into HN, I had to copy-paste.</comment></comment></comment>


How Duolingo got 110M users - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/how-duolingo-got-110-million-users <comment><USER2> I want to like Duolingo more but I don't understand how you can work your way through the course if your keyboard doesn't have foreign characters on it. I tried to get into learning Russian briefly but gave up on the first 20 minutes as I kept failing the tasks that requires me to type Russian characters.

Was I doing it wrong?

<comment><USER3> a) You don't have to type Russian characters. There's a little switch that lets you input everything in English transliteration. b) There's an explanation right at the beginning on how to install a Russian keyboard layout: [https://www.duolingo.com/comment/11449014](https://www.duolingo.com/comment/11449014)</comment></comment>


Introducing OAuth 3.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.oauth.io/oauth-3-0

<comment><USER2> > we have discovered that by making public both the private and the public > keys, we would remove the need for digital signatures or TLS. Several > government agencies support our work in the domain.

Ha ha

Nice April 1st post.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find people's immense gullibility more humorous than any of these April Fool's jokes. That said, good post! Had a bit of a chuckle at the NSA rib.

</comment><comment><USER4> See, now I don't know if this is a joke or not.

<comment><USER5> Many uncertainty that's true but It won't be a bad I think to shake this OAuth stuff a bit

<comment><USER6> Care to explain? What are your problems with OAuth 2.0?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> such amaze</comment>


Father of net neutrality Tim Wu talks about tech policy's worst year - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/4/5964745/tim-wu-lieutenant-governor-interview-crowdfund-tilt

<comment><USER2> here's the link to his fundraising page: [https://teachoutwu.tilt.com/save- teachout-wu-from-governor-c...](https://teachoutwu.tilt.com/save-teachout-wu- from-governor-cuomo-s-bullying)

</comment><comment><USER3> The related "network keeps hands off the net traffic" idea has traditionally been called the end-to-end principle, is and is the governing mindset of IP and architecture of the internet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to- end_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_principle)

</comment><comment><USER4> Also: his book "he Master Switch" is a good read with lots of good background material about how very large businesses try to control technology and markets.</comment>


How many different songs can there be? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/03/many-different-songs-can/

<comment><USER2> The preemptive comments really made my day. Listening to your song, I am fully awake now.</comment>


Thank PG: For reclaiming the word 'hacker' - <AUTHOR>

It's great to see that the web at large is mostly past that 1990s phase of being obsessed with green text on black backgrounds and lists of copypasted and sometimes just made up 'information' on 'hacking'.
I know you didn't start the movement to reclaim the word (that credit probably goes to ESR[1]), but I think between HN and your essays, you've done a huge amount to reinvigorate the hacker scene.
It's now acceptable to ask what someone's hacking on without having to worry about strange looks or tirades about script kiddies. This is really good.
So thanks.
[1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html <comment><USER2> Hacking is the exploitation of the unexpected side-effects. Hacking absolutely and positively started with exploiting security "holes" in telecommunications and shared computing environments. That's exactly what Steve Wozniak was doing when Steve Jobs met him.

Hacking then and hacking now has an air of subversion to it. Coming up with an exploit like Firesheep is hacking. Figuring out how to use PS3s as a supercomputer--and simultaneously subverting the entire business of building and selling supercomputers for ginormous amounts of money AND the business of selling gaming consoles--is hacking. Super-logging out of Facebook is hacking. Renting a botnet and using it to extort money from a business is not hacking, fine, that's just criminal.

But yeah, calling yourself a "hacker" ought to mean frowns from establishment types. "Hacker" is almost the antonym of "professional." If you want to be a super-genius who works within the system, the word you're looking for is "nerd."

I categorically reject the idea that the word needs to be "reclaimed" from script kiddies. If anything, I want the word reclaimed from money-grubbing bourgeois poseurs who happen to be interested in technology businesses.

I respect and admire people who want to start businesses. I respect and admire people who love to create great software. But if someone is ashamed of being associated with Steve Wozniak or John Draper, maybe they need to ask if they are really a hacker rather than asking if the word "hacker" is being improperly used.

p.s. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1914498>

<comment><AUTHOR> I suggest that figuring out how to use PS3s as a supercomputer would be a great hack whether it subverted sony's business or not.

There's nothing shameful in being associated with Wozniak or Draper or any of the great technological innovators.

There is something shameful in being associated with the "l33t h4x0r kr3w" (or Iranian Cyber Army) and those who participate in mass defacements etc.

edit:

Also, I really don't like the idea that you're pushing, that you _have_ to work 'outside the system' in order to be a hacker. I completely agree that important attributes of being a hacker are the ability to see problems from non-traditional viewpoints, to come up with unusual solutions, to challenge the _de rigeur_ way of doing things, to disrupt. And those attributes are shared by many subversives.

But the important difference to me is that a hacker is _constructively_ subversive.

<comment><USER2> Compare to Sales. There are slimy people who sell products that don't work. There are great salespeople who transform businesses and people's lives for the better.

I'm sure lots of salespeople cringe at the thought of being associated with the slimeballs. But yet... It's all Sales and they are all salespeople.

EDIT: By all means call yourself "constructive." But it is not a requirement of hacking. How was stealing telecommunications services constructive for the telecommunications companies?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is worrying then. That's a good argument, that phreaking wasn't constructive. I once started making a Lego robot that could play my gameboy. That's not constructive at all either.

But I'd like both of those to be great examples of hacking.

Is the important distinction motivation then? That phreaks weren't motivated by an urge to crash the system but by an undying curiosity about how things work?

<comment><USER2> In the 1970s there were these hackers and they did certain things we admire today. I only fear that we will put them on a pedestal and say that _that_ was hacking but what kids do today is not hacking.

That's a little like saying that Jazz died with Miles Davis and that we should call it "African-American Classical Music" and when kids do something offensive today like slapping a saxophone reed or a tuba mouthpiece with their tongues (James Carter and John Sass, respectively), it's not Jazz, it's noise.

I just don't trust myself to know how to say that subverting the telephone system by emulating tones is hacking but routing 15% of the world's IP traffic through your computers for military purposes is not hacking. I can only say that I admire the first and deplore the second.

p.s. And yeah, Go Go Lego! I suggest there's an "air" of subversion involved with hacking, but just a whiff. If it makes you happy, Hack On!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I disagree that the word has been reclaimed. In the media and in non-computing circles the word hacker clearly means someone who breaks into computer systems. Within the computer world I don't think the meaning of hacker ever really went away.

Sure, here on Hacker News we all use hacker to mean something, but I think outside of this little group little has changed.

Equally, I think stressing about this is a total waste of time. The average joe thinks of a hacker as someone who breaks stuff. Oh well. I've got better things to do then have a silly argument about the meaning of a word.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm starting to see it breaking into more common usage[1]. I agree that we've a way to go yet, and I agree that it's not hugely important. But I still think there needs to be a word for 'innovative tinkerer', and that 'hacker' is that word, and I don't want that word to be associated with criminality or unethical behaviour.

[1] - hackaday, lifehacker, hackathon, etc etc. Still a specialist audience, but I can't see lifehacker being born while hacker still meant 'the manifesto'.

edit:

> Within the computer world I don't think the meaning of hacker ever really > went away.

I'm not so sure about that at all. I've only been a developer for ten years (which isn't that long really), so perhaps it's just that I've moved into more aware circles, but when I started web dev work, 'hack' meant 'break into a computer'. The word hack in terms of 'a hacky solution' or 'put a little hack in there' wasn't so popular, but I concede that it was around back then.

But today I can talk to almost any developer and talk about hacking on such- and-such a project and they know exactly what I'm talking about. So I think progress has been made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I still think hackernews is inappropriately named. It should be called startup news, but that doesn't have the same ring to it. Hacking is now a security word. It hasn't been reclaimed at all, it's just confusing to everyone that doesn't read this site (and still many that do).

<comment><USER5> The misnaming works well though. The hacker part covers all the technical posts, and the fact that it's on the YC domain covers all the startup posts.

If it was called startupnews, everyone would complain about the technical posts.

<comment><USER6> It used to be called Startup News, not much has changed w/ regard to submissions.

<comment><USER7> If accuracy was the highest priority when choosing the site's name, it would be called "Web Pages Voted on by a Reasonably Polite Community with a Curious Taste for Speculation About What Might Eventually Become News, Rather Than News Itself".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This revisionist hacker/cracker thing is an ESR fabrication, and seemingly, it's never going to go away.

To paraphrase raganwald, "Hacking is the exploitation of unexpected side effects".

There are good hackers and bad hackers.I have been on both sides of the fences since the beginning of the 80s. We were always known as hackers. Crackers were always a subclass of hackers that "cracked" software protection schemes, but _they were hackers, too_.

Virtually everyone inside and outside of the OSS community uses it correctly, but still this small element of ESR followers try to ram it down our brain stems. And then a new, young crowd discovers ESR's essay and attempts to repeat the same with false authority.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice of you to say so but I don't think I've had much effect on usage. The greatest change has come from sites like lifehacker, or popular journalists starting to use the word hack.

<comment><AUTHOR> True to a degree, but also you've made it more 'ok' for people to describe themselves as hackers, which has rubbed off into the popular consciousness.

Reading Hackers and Painters (the essay not the book) was the first time I'd realised that what I did had a _name_. I now take it for granted that other developers consider themselves hackers. I'd argue that the term filtering down to lifehacker and popular journalists is a consequence of that kind of mindset change. Which you have helped with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's wrong with green text on black backgrounds? That is how I have always had my terminal configured. I think that may be because that is what I became comfortable with on my VIC-20.

<comment><USER11> I set up the xterm on my netbook with a green/black scheme because it was so charmingly retro, but have come to really enjoy the look; it's also a great way to confuse (or amuse) people when I'm writing code at a bar. Some people get the reference; others just wonder what the hell I'm doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> While PG & ESR have each played a role in re-claiming the word hacker from the stereotypes of old, there is a lot of lingering damage.

Once upon a time, a hacker was more like what the Maker/MAKE Magazine/MakerFaire scene is now. It was people with a passion for creating and tinkering and creating and tinkering some more. While much of that spirit still remains, it also seems to have gained an air of entitlement about it, and a fixation with legal issues like licensing. I think that, impressively enough, RMS is the main driver behind this, but I think a lot of poorly behaved businesses helped drive his point home.

Don't believe me? Think that the hacker ethos is inextricably or necessarily tied to the free-as-in-speech and open software movement? Counterexamples: Apple and Intel. Both these companies are very closed, but you'd find few people willing to revoke the title of hacker from the hardworking software/hardware engineers and designers at Apple or Intel. These companies are successful, and they are that way in no small part because they manage to tap their employee's passion for doing the the best work they possibly can and effectively channeling that into a product.

</comment><comment><USER13> The word hacker never meant "good programmer", it meant "good programmer from the culture around MIT". I doubt Brian Kernighan or Dennis Ritchie or Doug McIlroy ever refer to themselves or their peers as "hackers".

But even the MIT meaning of the word is diluted now to the point that it just means "someone who possibly knows how to write programs".

</comment><comment><USER14> While my terminal color is not exactly green, I still use the terminal and vim for pretty much all my hacking endeavors. What do you have against the terminal?

PS the people who can't use the terminal probably can never create a facebook (imho).

</comment><comment><USER15> This is also hacking (or rather, the result of hacking): [http://metaboston.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452322d69e200e553965...](http://metaboston.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452322d69e200e5539654908833-500wi)

<comment><AUTHOR> context: [http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/hacks_traditions/ha...](http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/hacks_traditions/hacking.shtml)

(thanks tineye)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While it has one meaning for hacker news, at my company a 'hacker' is someone who hacks around a problem. They do absolutely no design before hand and bash away at something until it "works".</comment>


Flight Attendants and Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://confessionsfromaflightattendant.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/flight-attendants-and-covid-19/ <comment><USER2> The days of carefree travel will return. It'll be a while, but it will be back.

In early March, looking for a park to sit quietly with my thoughts in the sunshine but away from others, I found myself in a local cemetery. Alone, but not far from a great many people.

Seattle's a pretty young place on the scale of things. I was surprised to find that our local graveyard had a substantial contingent that had lived through the 1918 flu. After noting, to my surprise, that there wasn't an obvious peak in the deaths in 1918, I sat there and silently asked a number of them what they'd tell us, if they could. I wasn't sure of the answers, but my perspective was changed.

Everything all of us know as "normal" came after a number of devastating pandemics. It'll be back, it'll be slightly different, but it will be the same.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I think it will have permanent effects on airport operations.

Some of the steps like social distancing, wearing masks, temperature checks, sanitizers, etc will remain even after the vaccine is found.

<comment><USER4> And scary side thing to consider.. how many corona-virus vaccines have been developed and deployed to date?

Even after SARS (another corona virus), there were a bunch of candidates and some preliminary successes but none actually made it to market because interest (aka funding) subsided. The same over and over again.

As of Jan 1, there were zero. People predicting "we'll have one in a year!" is based on hope and other models, not corona-oriented vaccines. :(

<comment><USER5> There are over 100 vaccines in development, several have completed phase 1 trials, and one is actually in production already so it will be available when it completes phase 3.

We didn't need vaccines for SARS or MERS because they were both gone pretty quickly and the number of affected individuals was never high enough to warrant completing the expensive testing required to get approval for a vaccine.

<comment><USER4> Yes, exactly. I hope a) those vaccines yield useful results b) quickly enough before people lose interest and funding.

<comment><USER6> They don't lose interest like it's some unstoppable force of nature on a timer. They lose interest if the harm caused by the disease is either low or contained. As long as the world continues to experience significant death, impact on the health care system, and economic damage... there will be interest in a vaccine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Humans continuously invent their "normals". There was no "old normal" and there won't be a "new normal". Already, different countries and regions have different cultures, histories, responses and outcomes. If anything, their future societies are diverging as a result of conscious choices and actions by humans exercising creative will.

<comment><USER8> Out of all the buzzwords to come out of COVID, "new normal" is maybe my least favorite. What the hell does it even mean?

<comment><USER9> Like all great buzzwords, its vague enough to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean.

<comment><USER10> I suspect it may have been inspired by Virginia Satir's change model, specifically the "new status quo" at its end

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Similar stories from a family member who is a major airline pilot. Light load of trips on their (line) schedule, of those trips several get cancelled and of the trips that don't get cancelled, certain legs of them will be day of such that they will have to deadhead somewhere to pick up another flight or layover in an unexpected city.

It's a mess and I don't think the (domestic) airline industry will look the same a year from now.

</comment><comment><USER12> > ... the gate agent is not going to be your personal valet because you didn't > have enough god-given common sense to plan your travels accordingly.

You can call ahead and arrange for a sky cap to assist you with luggage, or if you ambulatory help, such as a wheel chair. This is well worth it if walking through an airport will be challenging for you. The sky cap will get you past the lines and through the airport in record time.

Make sure to tip them, as they work for tips.

<comment><USER2> The mobility assistance services (in this case, American Airlines) are a godsend. My father has a terminal illness (well, we all do, but his is more advanced) -- they made it possible for him to travel everywhere on a complicated itinerary to see family. I traveled with him on much of the journey; their assistance was incredible.

Tip high. They exceeded expectations in every airport.

<comment><USER13> As a kid I used to do that job. Paid minimum wage plus the occasional tip. The flight attendants and gate staff sometimes offer minimal assistance moving a traveler into a stair chair when the person cannot even get out of their seats, but usually they left even that to us. At least at US airports, those guys work for the airport, not the airline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From the same industry, a very good take from Mentour Pilot on how the crisis will turn out in terms of the economic future of airlines (with 3 different scenarios): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UJR9JFdMYI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UJR9JFdMYI)

</comment><comment><USER15> _" That woman by the way was traveling by herself with a dog kennel, a baby, a car seat and two carry-on bags, and yet the airport was in the wrong for not having anything or anyone ready to assist her as she deplaned"_

I actually think it's reasonable that the woman expects more from the airport. They levy very high margin charges for landing, departure, parking, rent for vendors, and so on. Reasonable service seems expected. Perhaps not a pre- staged cart, but at least nearby phone (or number to text) to ask for one.

<comment><USER16> I think that it is reasonable to expect the woman to check in the car seat and at least one of the carry-ons as baggage. I also think it is reasonable for the flight attendant and other passengers to expect the airline to enforce their rules on this, although maybe with more leniency now, but do not then expect extra service for breaking common curtesy.

<comment><USER17> Lots of people have stopped flying infant in arms because it's far safer for babies to be properly secured. The FAA is rather clear on that.

That means the car seat wouldn't be checked: it would be strapped down to a seat and the baby strapped in that.

In this case, it's very possible - even likely, because airlines like selling seats - that baby _was a revenue passenger_ entitled to a carry-on bag of its own.

<comment><USER18> Entirely this. As someone who has flown with multiple children and/or infants (I apologize to everyone who hates screaming children on planes), most of the time now you buy a separate ticket for your baby and have them in a carseat that is strapped into the plane seat. It's a logistical nightmare.

<comment><USER19> I've never seen a car seat on a plane. We flew multiple times with ours on our laps.

<comment><USER18> Sure, you can also not wear seatbelts or bike helmets. It's a free country.

<comment><USER19> Actually seat belts are a legal requirement here.

A child seat on a plane is an illusion of safety. If the plane crashes it won't help. The only reason to bring one into the cabin (and it is a good reason) is if you need one where you are going.

<comment><USER17> [https://www.faa.gov/travelers/fly_children/](https://www.faa.gov/travelers/fly_children/)

> Did you know that the safest place for your child on an airplane is in a > government-approved child safety restraint system (CRS) or device, not on > your lap? Your arms aren't capable of holding your child securely, > especially during unexpected turbulence.

> The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) strongly urges you to secure your > child in a CRS or device for the duration of your flight

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The days of carefree travel are long gone.

I've been digging up videos of people from the early 1920s and I see very little impact of the Spanish Flu on people's mannerisms even just within a year or two after (like no masks in the streets even though mask wearing was apparently a big thing during the pandemic). Just the other day, I was reading up on Charlie Chaplin. Looking at his filmography, I noticed a a gap of just 1 year (between "A Day's Pleasure" released Dec 1919 and "The Kid" released Feb 2021) which is when the pandemic would've been raging across the land. (See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin_filmography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin_filmography))

So, while I certainly watch in horror at what is happening with COVID-19 and how the whole world has come to a standstill, if history is to be believed, we'll bounce back faster than we suspect. Not tomorrow, maybe not even within the next six months, but very likely within a year I think we'll be back in full force.

<comment><USER14> > Within a year after a vaccine becomes available,

We have never successfully developed a vaccine for a coronavirus before. And even if it's proven to be feasible, it will be unlikely to be very practical (are we going to manufacture billions of doses? How long will it take? Won't there be some kind of herd immunity by then?) and there are also indicators that such vaccines would not be effective beyond 6 months or so.

The more I hear about a vaccine for this coronavirus, the less it seems like the true solution for this crisis.

<comment><USER21> Where did you get the 6 month figure from? It's true we really don't know how things will pan out long term, but we know that there are lot's of possibilities that all work out to something that's not awful in the long term.

For example, we already produce and distribute an annual vaccine on the scale of billions (the flu). The flu also has tampering effectiveness on a pretty short time scale. The flu vaccine is also not 100% effective. And despite all of those short comings, we're able to mitigate flu into something that people literally use as the low bar for infectious diseases in terms of spread and severity.

I think you're right that the vaccine is unlikely to let us eradicate coronavirus, but it'll let us get back to a new normal - one that isn't fundamentally different from our old normal (at least from a health perspective - who knows what happens at a societal or policy level).

<comment><USER22> The flu vaccine efficiency is rather low, between 19% and 60% depending on the year, [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness- studies....](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies.htm)

But what is interesting is that the current lockdown in Norway killed the flu with season ending abruptly.

<comment><USER23> That's not surprising! The lockdown is a general-purpose counter to droplet/airborne-communicable diseases, it's not done for seasonal flu because the cost is seen as disproportionate to the known benefit. Stopping other communicable diseases is an expected side effect of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The days of carefree travel are long gone.

I feel like that exited back in 2011.

<comment><USER25> What happened in 2011?

<comment><USER26> Pretty sure they meant 2001, as in 9/11.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > No one could have ever predicted

...

<comment><USER8> "No one could have ever predicted that this very common thing that's happened all throughout human history would happen again"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Hotel check-ins now consist of wiping down all the surfaces and light > switches in the room with antibacterial wipes.

I assume they mean something else. We are dealing with a virus. Alcohol and bleach wipes ftw.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you could find a working flight attendant who is _still_ susceptible to COVID-19, I'd be astounded. Crazy times.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why was I expecting something...interesting and unique from this sub/story...underwhelming :/

</comment><comment><USER30> I think flight attendants is probably a job that should be for people that have had CV and have recovered already. I can't imagine anyone doing that job without becoming infected.

<comment><USER15> At least for now, it's believable they could work safely. There's very few people on the aircraft, and snacks/beverages are mostly stopped. Also, contrary to popular belief, the air in the aircraft is refreshed fairly often from the outside (via the engines).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I often get sick during travel. It's really annoying. But the last two trips I got sick and I'm pretty sure it happened at the airport. So there is a positive from this in terms of travel.

</comment><comment><USER32> Since hospitals are practically empty right now, have we thought of allowing people to voluntarily get infected/quarantined (using a tiny viral load)? Obviously no old, immuno-compromised, or other vulnerable people. But for healthy "essential" workers it would mean not living in fear that they might get it... because they already got over it.

<comment><USER33> Genuine question: why are hospitals empty? Aren't people affected by covid taken there?

<comment><USER24> Hospitals in my area have laid off and/or furloughed nurses. Also in my state, less than 500 people have tested positive (lack of testing for sure) and less than 20 people have died. There are not enough sick people from COVID or anything else to fill our hospitals. However, people are unable to do normal treatments and elective procedures due to lockdowns or are unwilling to go due to fear of COVID. Thus no money coming in to the hospitals thus layoffs and furloughs.</comment></comment></comment>


Algae bioreactor can remove as much carbon dioxide as an acre of trees - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/59334-this-algae-bioreactor-can-sequester-carbon-dioxide <comment><USER2> The article says that the algae would be used as fuel, wouldn't that just release the CO2 that had stored in the algae back into the atmosphere?

<comment><USER3> But that would replace fuel from sources that release already-sequestered carbon, like crude.</comment></comment>


Games For Lovers: myintimtoys.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.myintimtoys.com/catalog/for-couples-games-for-lovers.html <comment><AUTHOR> Our adult sex toys store offers only high quality and best sex toys for men and women. Big variety of dildos, vibrators, lubricants, anal toys and other sex accessories. Diversify your sex life with passion that will bring sex toys from our adult store!"/> <meta name="keywords" content="sex toys, cheap sex toys, buy sex toys, dildos, vibrators, adult sex toys, sex toy party, sex toy for men, homemade sex toy, adult toy, sex toy party, sex toys shop, adult toys, adult store, sex toy</comment>


S&P 500 Sets First Record Since February, Erasing Its Coronavirus Plunge - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-s-p-500-sets-first-record-since-february-erasing-its-coronavirus-plunge-11597781130 <comment><USER2> This has been a time to rethink how we understand the markets. Macro economic conditions are in no way back to normal. How can we be approaching all time highs? I would predict a market correction but what do I know? I am simply in shock with the state of the market. Maybe I underestimate the growth of retail investing?

<comment><USER3> The price of securities is also an interface between the perceived value of the company and the value of US dollars exchanged for shares thereof. So while the market may be "bullish," it could also be that the value of dollars has dropped and it takes more of them to convince another trader to let go of their shares.

Obviously the forces at play are quite complicated, but it's my belief that this is driving a good part of the rise. Who wants cash when the Fed is printing $trillions? Companies can raise their prices to keep their costs at the same fraction of revenue, so in the current environment of loose money it seems a sounder investment to many, especially if the government eventually continues the direct-to-citizen stimulus.

This is not financial advice etc.

<comment><USER2> I wonder what the long term ramifications will look like of this debt. Even a democratic president won't be able to raise taxes enough to get debt levels back to a healthy level and the interest the US is going to owe is an alarming % of the federal budget. The US can say goodbye to the dollar being the world's reserve currency and goodbye to funding the programs that might spur renewed growth.

They do say crisis is an accelerator of the rise and fall of super powers!</comment></comment></comment>


Middle-earth according to Mordor - The Lord of the Rings retold - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/the_lord_of_the_rings/index.html?story=/books/laura_miller/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer <comment><USER2> This is an example of creative, derived work that should be enriching the public commons, when the original is quite old, by a long dead author, yet is still troubled by potential copyright claims.

<comment><USER3> And it could have been written straightforwardly as a roman-a-clef without incurring copyright hazards. The reason it wasn't is probably the reason it's at risk: marketing.

It might even make for a better book that way.

<comment><USER4> Yes, like Coral Island vs Lord of the Flies.

Although I'm not against the idea of people writing in other peoples' universes, ie. fan fiction. In fact I _hate_ the snotty attitude (seemingly) almost everyone takes towards fan-fiction: it's a win for everyone, like the literary equivalent of forking open-source software, but it's never encouraged.

<comment><USER5> Slight tangent: Here's a secret about forking. When you fork a project, you anger the loyalists. A lot of large open source projects fork because of deep disagreements / polarization within the team. For minor stuff, it usually just gets settled internally. If the project does get forked, it usually ends with either the original project dying or the fork dying. I can't recall any projects off the top of my head that were forked and both the fork and original remained successful.

<comment><USER3> Emacs / xemacs.

NetBSD / OpenBSD.

Debian / Ubuntu.

XMBC / Plex.

KHTML / Webkit.

sbcl / cmucl.

<comment><USER5> I guess I might be wrong. However, consider:

Regarding XBMC / Plex and Emacs / xemacs, instead of a fork it looks like it's more of adding feature X that the original devs didn't want (not being derogatory here, it's substantial work). I'm sure that they merge in new code continuously and the codebases haven't diverged so much as to be independent. It doesn't look much like a fork in that sense.

I'd argue that KHTML is fairly dead. No one really uses Konqueror (I worked for a shop that developed a KDE based distro and even there everyone used Firefox / Chrome), which is probably KHTML's largest user apart from some internal KDE stuff. Hell, even Konqueror has had webkit mode since about a year ago. Qt supports webkit. Tons of other browsers, mobile and otherwise, use webkit.

I see the same downward trend for Debian, from being all over the place to being reduced to mostly a server distro. Meanwhile, Ubuntu is coming up with its own server version with pre-made virtualization images and stuff.

So, maybe the "weaker" forks just didn't die fast? Of course, this whole idea isn't a law or anything and I can't expect it to apply to everything, but that's the general trend I see anyway.

Also, I guess another thing I could claim is selection bias: You've probably never even heard of most of the forks that died. Of course, I don't have the data to prove it either.

<comment><USER6> You know you're on Hacker News when a discussion about Tolkien turns into a discussion of Emacs forks =)

<comment><USER4> There are two activities that can change a nerdy fourteen-year old's life: reading The Lord of the Rings and learning emacs. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable inaccessibility, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

;)

<comment><USER7> That's why John Galt uses Vim :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really need to get around to reading this. The original LOTR did have a rather "western" bent to it. Looking at things in another way would be pretty fun.

Also related: <http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.html>, if Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn watched The Fellowship of the Ring.

<comment><USER9> Being non-white myself, I like to jokingly explain to anyone who will listen about how LOTR is all about racial purity and the perils of rampant immigration of brown folk. I certainly can't think of anyone good in it who is 'non-white'. I grew up on the books and I still have a soft spot for them, but I do like to make fun of this aspect of them.

My other hobby is outlining the racial stereotypes in sci-fi shows/movies...

<comment><USER10> So blacks and Indians (from India) are orcs? Who's the racist again?

<comment><USER11> There's a deaded comment by nostromo here that I thought was good and don't see why it was killed. The interpretation of LotR as a book about the domination of non-white peoples is really not that much of a stretch.

\--

No, not Orcs. There are men who are allied with Mordor in the books. Specifically "Haradrim", men who are described as black-skinned (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim>), and Easterlings, men who are described as swarthy, dark-haired, and dark-eyed (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings>).

I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description.

<comment><USER12> > _I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of > these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description._

It's a stretch because Indians and other people live on this Earth and not in some fantasy reality created by an author.

Sure if you want to imagine that one species/race in the book is visually akin to a race/group/country of real humans that's fine, why would it matter.

This sort of argument to me is like saying that the books stereotype elephants because the great war beast Mamulik (sp?) are elephantine.

In short I think you're over analysing it, it's just a yarn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has been mentioned many times on HN but is worth mentioning again.

[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_M...](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality)

<comment><USER14> And again, and again, and again. You don't have to be a Harry Potter nor science and philosophy geek; it's accessible and thrilling to everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a really interesting idea but the text itself really needs to be adapted by a native English speaker. I really wanted to plunge into the book, but it's barely readable. Here are the first two sentences of the second paragraph, a typical example of the book's style:

> It was at such a midnight hour that two men moved like gray shadows along > the gravelly inner edge of a sickle-shaped gap between two low dunes, and > the distance between them was exactly that prescribed by the Field Manual > for such occasions. However, contrary to the rules, the one bearing the > largest load was not the rear 'main force' private, but rather the 'forward > recon' one, but there were good reasons for that.

It's probably brilliant in Russian, but an English speaker has to unravel and reconstruct each sentence. It makes for heavy going.

I say this not to negatively criticise, but simply to warn readers hoping to discover a fantastic interpretation of an epic tale. A future translation, I am sure, will make for brilliant reading.

<comment><USER16> That reads a lot like a NaNoWriMo novel. Many many word padding and abuse of the 'the'.

However, one should not that the original LOTR was written by a linguist. As such it tended to be pretty wordy and often full of horribly complex sentence structures.

For example: > That night they heard no noises. But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain- curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to silver and glass, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.

<comment><USER17> > However, one should not that the original LOTR was written by a linguist. As > such it tended to be pretty wordy and often full of horribly complex > sentence structures.

This is exactly what delighted me in Tolkien (LOTR; Silmarillion was over the top for me) or Maria Semyonova (<http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/880518.Maria_Semyonova_> , translator, Russian fantasy writer, bad film, no English translations that I know of) I was disappointed to discover that many other fantasy and fiction writers don't share the love or skill for such flowery language. It never occured to me that some readers might not enjoy it.

When I was reading some of the acclaimed fiction writers e.g. Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep" not once did I think "Heck, I bet I could write better than this!" I have no illusions of my chances of being a writer in English, when I haven't been one in my native Russian yet, but still. I would not think that thought when I was reading Tolkien or Semenova.

<comment><USER18> Mervyn Peake writes very nice English prose that I think you might enjoy. See his Gormenghast series (Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone). It's sort-of- fantasy but not really (no magic, no non-humans).

<comment><USER4> Omg, yes. I think that Titus Groan has got the most beautiful prose I've ever encountered. Well, that's what I thought when I read it years ago. I must revisit it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> David Brin wrote an interesting piece on this a few years back. I think Salon picked it up then, too. [http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/ind...](http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> It's unlikely they'd infringe on Tolkien's copyrights, at least in the US:

      Tolkien was re-editing because in that year, Ace Books in the
      United States published an unauthorised edition. The Fellowship
      came out in May 1965, the other two volumes in July. 150,000 copies
      were printed of each volume! The main text was reset, and introduced
      new errors, but the appendices were reproduced photographically, and
      thus contained only the errors already there. Ace Books were exploiting
      a copyright loophole which meant they did not have to pay Tolkien or his
      publishers any royalties. Houghton Mifflin appears to have imported too
      many copies, and the notice they contain, 'Printed in Great Britain'
      meant that the texts were deemed to be in the public domain in the
      United States.

<http://www.tolkiensociety.com/tolkien/tale.html>

</comment><comment><USER21> So, instead of a bourgeois tale of an epic fight against evil forces threatening a dubiously idealized analogue of a society that no longer exists, it's a socialist tale of an epic fight against evil forces threatening a dubiously idealized analogue of a society that no longer exists?

</comment><comment><USER22> For whatever reason, Tolkien had a huge following in Russia. At least one fantasy writer [1] made a career writing LOTR sequels. Eskov himself is actively blogging on Livejournal [2].

      [1] http://www.perumov.com/books/
      [2] http://afranius.livejournal.com/132382.html

<comment><USER23> One of the most important factors in popularity of a foreign work in Russia is a good translation which does not try to be too literal. Muraviev and Kistyakovsky did a great job with LOTR.

Another reason is that this translation was published in late 80s, when the Russian public was particularly receptive to anything spiritual and/or capable of carrying them away from the grim reality of a collapsing country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This kind of opportunity doesn't come around often on HN, so for the sake of karma, I have two big Tolkien related sites <http://planet-tolkien.com> and <http://the-hobbit-movie.com/> for anyone interested :)

</comment><comment><USER25> Link to download the book:

<http://www.sendspace.com/file/a75r7u>

</comment><comment><USER26> This sort of thing is fun, but it sounds more simplistic than Tolkien's universe and philosophies. I will read it with interest. Can someone comment as to the quality of the Russian version?

<comment><USER27> It's absolutely brilliant. I especially like that it doesn't try to simply re- tell the LOTR from a different point of view, but changes aesthetics of the story as well. While LOTR is 'an epic saga', 'The Last Ringbearer' reads more like an historical account.

BTW, the russian text is freely available as well: <http://lib.ru/PROZA/ESKOV_K/last.txt>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just like hearing the story of World War [1-2] from different sides.

<comment><USER29> just like hearing the story of the Cold War from different sides

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you can forget the silly musical, _Wicked_ was a pretty awesome book along these same lines.

</comment><comment><USER31> Anyone read Bored of the Rings?

<comment><USER19> Yeah - it's full of really dated cultural references - I'm not exactly a spring chicken and Serutan meant nothing to me until I looked it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sounds like what _Grendel_ is to _Beowulf_ , which is a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER33> You may also enjoy: The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

<http://cheeseburgerbrown.com/Darth_Vader/>

</comment><comment><USER34> cool. This is like the Middle Earth's Der Untergang (The Downfall)

</comment><comment><USER35> The problem with this book, of course, is that it ignores the lore Tolkien shares in the Silmarillion, his letters, and other books regarding the origin of Sauron and Orcs.

<comment><USER36> Maybe the idea of the new book was to point out that you can read LotR and Silmarillion as myths and histories written in-universe, instead of an objective and reliable narrative. Suddenly all sorts of things might be slanted to make the winners of the war look good and noble and paint those who opposed them as beastly savages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If you enjoy the retelling of popular stories from a different perspective, one of the best I've read is Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar. Superman lands in the USSR, is raised as a communist, becomes the villain, Lex Luthor is the hero in America trying to outwit the communist supervillian, Batman is a freedom fighter... I shall say no more, but check it out if you're a nerd like me.</comment>