Ron Paul: Airport Scanners: Enough is Enough - <AUTHOR> http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/clip.php?appid=599164944 <comment><AUTHOR> I hated to post this, because it's a political speech, but I think it's important historically because I think it shows the tables starting to turn on this issue. Lord knows I don't want to see a dozen political speeches on HN a day, but I believe this is unique, it's very tech-related, and its a topic the community has shown a great amount of interest in.

I imagine once the rest of the professional political class really understands what a total disaster TSA has created there will be speeches like this everyday. The bandwagon will be full and more will be clamoring to get on- board. (and yes, I know they've already started, but this seems to be the first higher-profile example of a politician just really letting loose on the issue).

I still remain skeptical that the politicians can fix it, but perhaps we'll enter a period where lots of speeches are made and fingers pointed. For those of you who are political junkies, it will be very interesting to see how the national parties respond to this over the next two years.

<comment><USER2> Is this the kind of problem that a politician like ron paul can fix though? Thanks in great part to Reddit, Ron Paul is largely associated with crackpot ultra-libertarian Ayn Rand type movements, so anyone in the know would probably dismiss anything he does out of hand as "just a stunt move". Certainly, that's my first impression for his introduction of a bill with no political support and, as far as I understand the US legal system, zero chance of actually getting anywhere.

Now, if someone with some political credibility introduced a bill with support from other members of the House and Senate, that'd be worth pointing out. But as it is, this is no more "serious" than a good sketch on the Daily Show, is it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know. I'm hugely aware of how Ron Paul got stereotyped in the last election, and I think he's not the guy to fix it.

But we're not at the point of fixing it yet, I don't think (unless TSA comes to their senses. One can always hope). More likely is that you will see politicians who are considered outside the mainstream begin to pound the podium over this. In time, I expect it to become more mainstream. A month maybe? A year? As hot as folks are, it might happen very quickly.

The big problem here is that the answer requires putting people in charge at the local airport who are allowed to make mistakes. I hate what's happened to airport security, but I'd happily do the naked body scan and group grope -- as long as it was done on an ad-hoc basis. Maybe once out of every thousand flights or something. There's a bit of a quagmire about the way politics works, especially involving areas of risk and fear, which I won't go into here. Let's just say that yes, Ron Paul is not the guy, but things could change, and change quickly. But the overall problem of how to solve airport security is just going to stick around. Even if the grownups show up and set TSA straight, the only thing they're going to learn is how to use fear to sell even more equipment that intrudes on every passenger. Just in a different way.

They need to find the terrorist, not the weapon. The plane can be full of weapons, and as long as nobody wishes any harm to be done, it's as safe as a plane without weapons at all. Such a simple concept, yet I think it's going to be a bridge too far for policy-makers. (of course a plane can't be full of nervous people carrying nitro-glycerin and hand grenades, but you get my point)

<comment><USER3> You're not necessarily looking for the terrorist, though. You might also be looking for the guy who might have too much to drink, get into an argument with his seat neighbor, then reach into his bag for his glock. Or the guy that's just mentally unstable.

Granted, these are one-off cases, but I can't think of a _good_ reason for people to have guns, or (large) hunting knives in their carry-on luggage. And truthfully, if people want to pack guns in their checked luggage, from a safety perspective, it's probably better to have them declare it and put it into some sort of 'safe' container. Lord knows there will be people with ammunition that is waiting to misfire inside the luggage storage compartment of the plane.

(Not that I'm defending the TSA's actions for the past 9 years or anything...)

<comment><USER4> _You might also be looking for the guy who might have too much to drink, get into an argument with his seat neighbor, then reach into his bag for his glock._

Has this ever happened?

<comment><USER3> There are plenty of people that get drunk and have done things like assault airline personnel. It's not a leap to think that one of them might reach for a weapon at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's an overview of the bill - called the "American Traveler Dignity Act"

[http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=...](http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1796&Itemid=60)

And re: Ron Paul's credibility, I continue to meet a lot of people who admit (in hushed tones) that they would have voted for him in 2008 if he had made it through the primaries...

I, too, am doubtful our political system is capable of solving the problem unless enough of us as individuals are willing to stand up (and be groped) rather than meekly letting them strip us of our rights.

The duty of the government is to PROTECT our rights, not VIOLATE them!

<comment><USER6> Better than an overview, here is the full text of the bill:

 _A BILL

To ensure that certain Federal employees cannot hide behind immunity.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. NO IMMUNITY FOR CERTAIN AIRPORT SCREENING METHODS.

No law of the United States shall be construed to confer any immunity for a Federal employee or agency or any individual or entity that receives Federal funds, who subjects an individual to any physical contact (including contact with any clothing the individual is wearing), x-rays, or millimeter waves, or aids in the creation of or views a representation of any part of a individual's body covered by clothing as a condition for such individual to be in an airport or to fly in an aircraft. The preceding sentence shall apply even if the individual or the individual's parent, guardian, or any other individual gives consent._

<comment><USER7> Isn't this law redundant with the bill of rights? It seems unnecessarily complicated in its wording. It also seems too good to ever pass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The argument from the executive branch is when you buy a ticket you have sacrificed your rights; that isn't the case;you never have to sacrifice your rights." - Ron Paul

<comment><USER9> Correct for this case, but in the interest of nitpicking "never" is false... If you live in a society with a social contract there are "rights" you sacrifice. Not that sacrifices are a bad thing: the standard usage implies a painful loss for something of much greater value in the end, such as sacrificing a queen to win a game of chess. (Or sacrificing a virgin to gain favor with the gods. The important point is to make sure you're rationally measuring utility.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love Dr. Ron Paul! I'm going to call my representative (Mrs. Pelosi) and encourage her support for this bill!

</comment><comment><USER11> Ok, did you listen to the bill?

Paul is not just trying to revert airport security, he is trying to introduce legislation that removes immunity from the government for anything that a citizen would not have.

The problem with Paul is he is an idealist. We need a pragmatic libertarian.

</comment><comment><USER12> Was anyone else unimpressed with his delivery? From the transcript:

THE PILOT HAS A GUN IN THE COCKPIT AND HE'S MANAGING THIS AIRCRAFT WHICH IS A MISSILE AND WE MAKE HIM GO THROUGH THIS GROPING X-RAY EXERCISE, HAVING PEOPLE FEEL IN THEIR UNDERWEAR.

It just gives the impression that he's more excited than thoughtful. Then again maybe thats more important on the floor of the house.

<comment><USER13> The logic is impeccable: why do we search pilots when they get (access to) a gun once they have been cleared.

<comment><USER14> Actually, I felt this line hurt Paul's case. It's one of those lines that sounds clever on the first hearing but falls apart on examination -- like "Why don't they build the plane out of the same stuff as the black box?".

The reason they search pilots is because the only obvious things distinguishing a pilot from a non-pilot are a fancy uniform and an ID. If pilots are exempt from screening, then your method of determining who is a pilot needs to be at least as effective as the screening itself. Otherwise, an adversary needs only to steal or forge the proper credentials to bypass screening.

Either Paul is aware of this and is being deliberately misleading to make his case, or he hasn't given the issue enough consideration.

<comment><USER15> Respectfully, I don't think you've given the issue enough consideration. You're saying that if they didn't search the pilots, someone would fake as a pilot to get through security? Then what would he do? Stand awkwardly with the rest of the crew thinking up a story to explain why there are two pilots (or three, or whatever) on this particular flight? I would hope that a fake pilot would be fairly easily and quickly detected by the other pilots (who do know each other personally, after all).

<comment><USER14> I assume he would change clothes in a restroom stall after getting through security but before getting to the boarding area. In fact, that might be overkill... All he needs to do is put away his jacket and hat, maybe put on a sweater -- actions innocuous enough that they could be done in the open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who wants to go flying? <http://twitpic.com/37y876>

</comment><comment><USER17> That video link isn't working for me anymore, now all I get is a clip with Rep. Keith Ellison talking about stimulus.

Googled and found the Ron Paul clip on youtube: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwsdq69AHnw>

</comment><comment><USER18> Only thing that could have made this better would have been: "I'm as mad as hell..." <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qgVn-Op7Q>

</comment><comment><USER19> I was with him until he started talking about how the "greatest boon" to airline security had been "a lock on the door and a gun in the cockpit".

Firstly, to my knowledge, nobody has attempted to storm the cockpit since 9/11, so the locks, though a good idea, haven't actually done anything. And the guns -- projectile weapons not being the best idea when travelling in a pressurized metal capsule anyway -- have certainly never been fired.

The actual improvement in airline security has been greater vigilance on the part of passengers, who stopped both the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber, and better intelligence operations in the middle east, which got us the tip- off about the toner cartridge bomb.

<comment><USER20> Airplanes only represent a unique terror target if they can be used as weapons to inflict greater damage. Putting a bomb on a plane will kill several hundred people, but so will putting a bomb in a mall or train.

Thus, securing the cockpit gets you more bang for the buck by removing a whole avenue of attack, with relatively low cost (the lock and the gun). While I agree that firing a gun in a pressurized cabin isn't the best idea, having it there makes it very likely that the pilots would have an advantage over any potential hijacker, since keeping other guns off the plane is relatively easy, and doesn't require overly invasive searching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's the actual text of the bill, H.R.6416<http://thomas.gov/cgi- bin/query/z?c111%3aH.R.6416%3a>

</comment><comment><USER22> From the TSA to Ron Paul in one easy step.

This is what you get when you start with the politics articles.</comment>


Why Earth's water could be older than Earth itself - sahin-boydas https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032020-400-why-earths-water-could-be-older-than-earth-itself/ <comment><AUTHOR> water is the real alien here... we came from another planet in our water space ship</comment>


Let's start a conversation at a coffee shop - <AUTHOR> http://blog.truffle.io/lets-start-a-conversation-at-a-coffee-shop

<comment><USER2> Interesting blog. The website is also pretty designed too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, you should give it a try :)</comment></comment>


Take the interview process out of the HR department - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40479040/this-nordic-companys-four-secrets-to-hiring-and-keeping-great-talent-anywhere <comment><USER2> > The best people don't want or need to be interviewed. They want to have a > genuine, interesting discussion with people they can respect as equals and > would enjoy working for.

True - Precisely why HR's involvement in recruiting talent should be minimized.</comment>


Inbox by Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/inbox/

<comment><USER2> I tried inbox a while ago and stopped using it shortly after. I really dislike the interface since It seems really cluttered and distracts from the simple form of communication that e-mail should be IMHO. I do like the function to snooze an e-mail for a specific location, but not enough to keep using Inbox.

I really prefer Mailbox by Dropbox, since the interface is much cleaner and it functions pretty much identically.

</comment><comment><USER3> First they killed the chat by bringing up hangouts, now killing the idea of email by "inbox".

Google, killing the net since lately (:

personal mail server for ever! ;)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not even sure this is a new thing but I do have invites ;)

<comment><USER4> Inbox was released in October 2014, so it's old thing and you can get invite just by requesting it on inbox site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bummer, they made me feel really special so my compliments to their copy writers.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please help me price my new app - <AUTHOR>

Hello Friends,
I'm about to release a new application and I think I need some help thinking through the pricing.
The app is an add-on to a very popular application used by independent contractors and small businesses.  I've essentially created new modules for other users of this application.
Anyway, the application I'm extending is a Freemium product, where a lot of people are using the app for free.  The people who need my extensions do pay, and it's anywhere from $14/month to $300/month.  I'm betting the mean is $25.
Any ideas here?  Should I be Freemium?  And if so, how do I price in relation to the mother ship?  Any out of the box ideas besides "just price lower than the main application" (which is the best I've come up with)?
Thanks, Matt <comment><USER2> Paying by the month gives you extreme flexibility. You can always lower the price in the future, although raising it is a bit harder.

One thing to do would be to compare what your app does with the one that costs 300/month, and what yours does compared to the one that costs 14/month. Where does your app fit in?

How much are you looking to make? How much are your costs per customer and costs per month? The basic way to price is to add up your fixed costs (rent, hosting, marketing, etc) and the cost per month for providing the software, and then add in a healthy profit margin. That's how much you should charge.

There are a lot of other pricing mechanisms, including how much money your software will save the customer, how much value they perceive it to have, etc. You could always start high and just keep lowering the price until you reach the ratio of customers to price that you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good thought process here, thanks.

I do think the central question will be how much value my app is providing vs. what the main app is doing. The main app could also start duplicating what I'm doing (and I expect that) so I have to continue adding new things they don't do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Start high and drop it over time if you are not satisfied. Also, maintain a "permanent license" option that is not monthly, that is about 6 times the monthly cost, and don't drop that as fast as the monthly cost if you have to drop it.</comment>


Ask HN: A modern web development workflow? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I'm embarrassed when looking at my web development work flow, that basically hasn't changed ever since I started programming as a hobby ten years ago. I have never moved beyond writing my code, testing it locally with a standard version of WAMP and then dragging my files into an FTP client, uploading them to some unspectacular web hosting service, as if it was just another folder on my computer.
[Web development was never priority for me (I studied design and I work as a designer now), but I both enjoy working on small project on the side and also believe that it is my duty as a good designer to understand what it means to implement the things that I come up with.]
If I ever wanted to develop something that is more than just a little personal experiment on the side, I would miserably fail, because my knowledge of a serious workflow is just non existent.
So this is where I'm asking for your help: It's hard to learn about something that you hardly know anything about. I don't even know where to start. I would greatly appreciate to get your opinions on a good, not too complex (keep in mind that I'm not exactly trying to build the next big thing here), modern and professional workflow that shows me a more serious side of web development than Notepad and Filezilla. What are the keywords I can use to start learning about this? What are the programs and technologies that you use yourself and that you would recommend? What are the absolute nonos, that expose an absolute amateur?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> > What are the keywords I can use to start learning about this?

It's really comes down to personal choices (see the discussions about vi vs emacs), and for this reason, it's hard to track down quality advice -esp. keywords. Instead, try Googling what you'd like to achieve (eg. "use ftp as local drive"), and be amazed by the variety of tools available :)

> What are the programs and technologies that you use yourself and that you > would recommend?

Taking care of the whole webdev site of our web-based startup, here's what my current configuration looks like.

Assuming: Windows as the dev machine, Debian/ubuntu, or shared web hosting on the server side

* Total commander: is my file navigator of choice -shows 2 tabs of filelist side-by-side, can bookmark any number of directories, many awesomeness included.

* Webdrive: mounts a remote FTP / SFTP / SSH account as a local drive. Check the "support for FTP" requirement off of your texteditor of choice.

* Putty: if you've got shell access to the remote machine, running two of these parallel: tail -f ./access.log tail -f ./errors.log will give you a realtime view of what's happening of your web server, and what error messages did you generated -the later isn't always readily available, esp. if you start getting into ajax

* Notepad++ : has a nice syntax highlighting, an awful lot of shortcuts, support for unix-encoding (on windows), amongst many features.

* Git: you will need to do version control.

Here's how this works together:

* Have 2 machines, 1 for dev, 1 for live, both using a dedicated machine, and a database of it's own. (quick intro how to set up a staging server: [1] )

* Webdrive mounts dev machine's web directory via SSH. All changes are securly transmitted to the server.

* REPL[2] cycle: navigate to the target of interest in Total commander, hit F4 (opens it in Notepad++), do some changes, hit CTRL+S (Webdrive automagically uploads the file), ALT+TAB (chrome), F5 (page refresh), observe changes / errors, ALT+TAB (back to notepad++), bang away. Added bonus: you'll see what you'll get while being deployed on a linux server (the differences between a WAMP, and a LAMP server can be quite a pain)

This allows for a REPL-cycles clocking <2sec, which I found hard to beat for remote-based REPLs :)

* Once the features are tested, and pre-deploy checklist is done, git add ./ , and git commit will push this into local git repo. Then, on the live-server's side, do a git pull ssh://[staging-server] ,and it's live. If you're having "a learning experience", you can always git reset to a previous version.

> What are the absolute nonos, that expose an absolute amateur?

Standard FTP-based transfer is malleable to Man-in-the-middle attacks[3]. Notepad usually does \r\n instead of \n, which caused me some headaches with older versions of readline/writelines. Putting together design in notepad is possible, but massively sub-optimal: try sketching it with photoshop, generate some skeletons, and use this as a starting point. Local development (requesting from 127.0.0.1) allows using several javascript capabilities, which aren't available for public deployed sites.

I think this should you a good headstart, comment below if you have any questions :)

[1] [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/12/12/staging-servers- source-c...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/12/12/staging-servers-source- control-deploy-workflows-and-other-stuff-nobody-teaches-you/)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REPL>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack>

</comment><comment><USER3> Version control. You can observe the benefits even working alone on relatively small projects. And it's one of the pillars to experiment with more reliable ways of deploying software

<comment><USER4> whats a good one to use for single devs/small teams?

<comment><USER3> I use git at work and for personal stuff. The learning path is maybe a bit steep if you come from things like Subversion, on the other hand I instructed a developer new to VCSs and so far he didn't complain, shoot his foot, or shoot mine :)

git is only my personal preference, generally speaking I recommend to go for a distributed version control system: it's modern, it's mainstream, and it's more versatile in terms of workflows you can implement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If a lot of your projects end up on shared hosting solutions, it's difficult to streamline effectively. Depending on the provider and the hosting tier (single domain, unlimited, whatever), SSH access may be available or not. For a lot of those hosting arrangements, a process centered around FTP is the safest.

Given that limitation, I would definitely echo the importance of version control, and then highlight that a text editor capable of edits over an FTP connection can save a lot of trouble. I like UltraEdit, although it's commercial - it does have a full use trial period though. On Windows, I believe Notepad++ and Crimson Editor will also support edits over FTP. Be careful with an FTP capable text editor though, it's easy to make changes outside of your vcs this way.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're bold enough to switch to server-side JavaScript and move your coding inside the browser, there's a step-by-step tutorial for Erbix at <http://www.erbix.com/documentation/tutorial/> that describes how to get started. (disclaimer: I'm affiliated with the project)

<comment><USER7> If Heroku taught us something, it's developing apps inside the browser is not lucrative. Learn from them and provide git push deploy. Bonus points: better Web DB interface, DB import-export.

PS. It's nice to see such Romanian projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think rails tutorial is great even if you aren't interested in Rails. It covers git, heroku, and testing.

<http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for your suggestions. Looking forward to check all this out over the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER9> You might want to check out Coda by the guys at Panic (Transmit). They're basically putting tools together for hand coders who do html, css, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> would love to see an answer to this as well.</comment>


Salesforce Billionaire Marc Benioff Perplexes and Destroys CNBC Anchors - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhIy0nmrM_A <comment><USER2> I think Mohamed Yunus' book on "Building Social Business" would be a delight for most people to read.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> An interesting view from a CEO of a major American company.</comment>


SAC Capital Is Indicted - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/sac-capital-is-indicted/

<comment><USER2> Too bad Goldman is not going to be next.</comment>


Ask HN: How are recruiters "finding my linkedin" when I dont even have one? - <AUTHOR> Curious if anyone else is experiencing this. I frequently receive emails from recruiters asking if I'm interested in positions. When I ask how they found me, they usually respond with linkedin, which is odd because I deleted my account years ago.
I asked one recruiter to send me the URL of "my profile" and when I had a co-worker view it, it returned a "profile not found" page.
Does linkedin have some feature you can pay for to see deleted accounts? <comment><USER2> They just say that to pretend they aren't (illegally?) spamming you after having obtained your information without consent from someone who (illegally?) obtained it from LinkedIn and is (illegally?) retaining your PII forever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty common - recruiting firms often have application tracking systems and databases of resumes, profiles, that essentially have been scraped from all jobs sites accessible across the web.

Rarely will anything get deleted, so they might have multiple versions of your linkedin profile because maybe it was scraped multiple times as you changed it, or often even your resume if you posted it publicly anywhere that they scraped.

<comment><USER4> +1 to this. ATS (applicant tracking systems) like Bullhorn integrate with LinkedIn allowing a one click import of your profile. If you weren't a first degree connection or didn't have a public email listed they most likely used some software that grabbed your info from a social profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your name and LinkedIn URL and some categorisation are probably on someone's old spreadsheet somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER6> Recruiters? Lying? That's shocking!

(But more seriously I suspect they have done searches/exports in the past, and have scraped a lot of data.)

</comment><comment><USER7> My old company did exactly this. We would remote log into out clients computers and beging scraping all of their linkedIn contacts and 'signing' them up to our service for them to use as recruiters. This still happens post GDPR.

<comment><USER2> Wasn't that already illegal prior to GDPR?

<comment><USER7> You're correct. More punishable is probably more fitting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's the oldest trick in the book. Along with spamming people and saying "I found you through FB" when asked how they got their email.</comment>


R.I.P. Google Video - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383839,00.asp

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I am disappointed because while Youtube was blocked at the bank I work at, I could still access some things relatively easily through google video.

While I don't think Google would ever consider shuttering Youtube and moving the content to google video, the idea of moving some of the longer videos from Youtube and creating a separate type of video library through google video is very interesting. There might be a market for this. It would be a place to view difficult to find films and a place for aspiring artists to post their work in a constructive forum.

I don't know if this is a sign of things to come under Page or not, but I hope that the resources that are being freed up will be put to use on something more exciting. Google's real worth, I believe, remains in the power of their innovation. Google videos wasn't dynamic--it just was. Let's hope we see something more exciting come out of this.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't this already exist with Vimeo?</comment></comment>


UL report claims that 99% of counterfeit iPhone chargers fail safety tests [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://library.ul.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2016/09/10314-CounterfeitiPhone-WP-HighRes_FINAL.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> "An electric strength test determines how well the adapter is isolated from the electrical mains. The unit is stressed by applying high voltage between the input and the output side to see if or how much current will flow as a result. If the amount of current flowing is above a specified threshold, the unit is said to have insufficient isolation and is considered to have failed, and hence is judged unsafe with a significant potential for electric shock."

Does anyone know what is the "high voltage" that is applied, and what is the threshold for the current that is being tested?

<comment><USER2> The UL standard is E32068 which appears next to the UL mark on the adapters and the products are listed here: [http://database.ul.com/cgi- bin/XYV/template/LISEXT/1FRAME/sh...](http://database.ul.com/cgi- bin/XYV/template/LISEXT/1FRAME/showpage.html?&name=QQGQ2.GuideInfo&ccnshorttitle=Power+Supplies,+Information+Technology+Equipment+Including+Electrical+Business+Equipment+-+Component&objid=1073787375&cfgid=1073741824&version=versionless&parent_id=1073787374&sequence=1)

The general requirements are linked from the listing page: [http://database.ul.com/cgi- bin/XYV/template/LISEXT/1FRAME/sh...](http://database.ul.com/cgi- bin/XYV/template/LISEXT/1FRAME/showpage.html?&name=QQGQ2.GuideInfo&ccnshorttitle=Power+Supplies,+Information+Technology+Equipment+Including+Electrical+Business+Equipment+-+Component&objid=1073787375&cfgid=1073741824&version=versionless&parent_id=1073787374&sequence=1)

The loads are described in ANSI/UL standard 60950 which is incorporated by reference [https://standardscatalog.ul.com/standards/en/standard_60950-...](https://standardscatalog.ul.com/standards/en/standard_60950-1)

Which is a round about way of saying that UL knows what it is doing and that the tests for certification are not something that some bureaucrat made up for bureaucratic purpose. Underwriter's Laboratories is a data driven organization that's roughly been data driven since a century before anyone heard of data driven organizations.

It researches safety based on the hazards that actually spark insurance claims. Everything from roofing (think resistance to hail and wind) to ...well iPhone chargers. It's research is the reason people rarely get electrified in their home (e.g. the National Electrical Code requires 'listed devices' and that means UL or a similar testing and certification agency).

Anyway, I hope the links let you geek out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thanks Brudger(s)! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Try PTMono, a beautiful monospace font that looks like serif   - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/PT+Mono <comment><USER2> Just tried in my editor. At a size small enough to fit as many lines of text on screen as I can with Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, PTMono letters look like barely legible squiggles.

Still yet to find a font that competes with Menlo/Vera Sans Mono for coding on a 900px-tall laptop screen. If anyone knows of such a thing, please let me know.

<comment><USER3> My favorite is the Envy Code R: [http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code- r-preview-7-cod...](http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r- preview-7-coding-font-released)

I'm using it with full hinting enabled on Ubuntu/Xubuntu and it looks just as nice as the Windows screenshots on the homepage.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I tried it out, and here's the thing about Envy: it's a horizontally condensed typeface, which is good if your lines of code are very long (great if you're a Java programmer and have to deal with names like myAbstractFactoryClassMethodVerisonFive), but rather terrible if you're someone like me who keeps his lines no longer than 80 characters and has a habit of splitting his code windows into two or three vertical panels.

The idea is to fit as many lines of text _vertically_ , not to condense long lines horizontally. Human vision has some sort of legibility tradeoff where you can have letters that are either horizontally condensed but tall or vertically condensed but short. I am looking for something of the second kind for my main coding font.

<comment><USER4> Try dotsies: <http://dotsies.org/>

<comment><USER2> Lol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Looks like serif"? Did you mean to say it looks like a proportional-width font?

<comment><USER6> Yeah I don't think there is anything which prevents a font from being both monospaced and serif (indeed it must be either san-serif or serif, right?)

<comment><USER7> _> it must be either san-serif or serif, right?_

Not necessarily. This font is a monospaced hybrid of slab serif (fat serifs, regular line width) and sans serif.

See here for details: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif>

<comment><USER8> To be fair, most monospaced typefaces are at least to some degree slab serifs to visually compensate for the extra horizontal space (eg. letters like "l" and "i")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's pretty overall, but the one character for which the illusion of proportionality really breaks is the lower-case L, which consistently appears to have a space after it.

<comment><USER10> could you provide a sample sentence that shows this? I don't get the same impression.

<comment><USER11> If you look at the paragraph sample on the webfonts[1] page. you will see it. Also, you could type words like 'flow' or 'follow' into the sample box to see it next to other fonts. This really highlights the extra space on the 'l' glyph.

[1]<http://www.google.com/webfonts>

<comment><USER10> ah. I only really notice it in multiple L's. It uses the openfont license though. Which means you can legally crack it open using fontforge and adjust the kerning, and redistribute it as pt mono improved if youd like

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 'J' is kind of gross. Not a big fan of 'L' and 't', either. And... seriously, WTF is up with 'l'? Only a little goatse emoticon could be more vile. Sure, tastes differ. And reasonable men may disagree. But not in this case ;)

For Mac OS X, I suggest Luxi Mono. It does a much better job of looking like a reasonably-kerned proportional font.

For Windows, Lucida Sans Typewriter, with all antialiasing switched off. It has a nice clean look to it, and it manages to avoid being too squat.

<comment><USER13> I quite like the 'l' here. It solves the conundrum of how to differentiate the 'l' and '1' quite nicely.

I've so far stuck with Courier for monospace work (coding, console, etc), as I find sans-serif fonts hard to read (this is also why I don't use web fonts). I'll give this one a go for while and see how I get on.

<comment><USER12> The '1' vs 'l' point is a good one...

For many years, I used non-antialiased 9 point Courier New in Windows. This is an ugly font at most other point sizes, but at 9 points it is strangely attractive, and perfectly functional - except for '1' and 'l' being pixel-for- pixel identical. Oh, and '0' and 'O' too...

The experience appears to have left me unconcerned about such minor quibbles as being able to tell one glyph from another ;) (OK, so perhaps if '+' and '-' looked the same, I'd have an issue with that.)

Nevertheless, I stand by my "vile" comment. I mean... c'mon. Just look at it. What is this, Comic Sans? It's practically an offence against nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is coding so associated with monospace type? Has anyone tried using a proportional-width typeface?

The vast majority of use-cases I can think of are simply allowing you to line up the first letter of a line, or possibly an equals sign or something like that. This seems like something a tab-stop or somesuch in the editor could handle with ease, and shouldn't require sacrificing nice-looking text the rest of the time.

<comment><USER15> Back in the day, a lot of programming revolved around reporting. One reason I can think of would be laying out columns on reports, on terminals that didn't support proportional fonts.

A lot of people rail against tabs; most of the time, these are people who don't understand them or have never tried to use them.

You see this debate about tabs vs. spaces in code all the time, and I've yet to hear any valid argument about why spaces are better (at least in any modern context). But there is an obvious reason that tabs are better: It's much easier to line things up, keep them aligned across different users' fonts, and realign them if you change the text to cross a tab.

<comment><USER16> How quaint, another person who insists that people who don't use their preferred formatting just doesn't _understand_ it! Never mind that maybe they just _disagree_ \--there has to be something wrong with them, right?

I don't use tabs because of an _equally obvious_ reason that spaces are better: because I end up padding with spaces because the tabs are too big. For example, I like having horizontally consistent parameter argument lists, like below:

       class Thing {
           def beep(bar: String, baz: Int, quux: Seq[String],
                    quuux: Map[String, String], quuuux: Int) = false
       }

If I tried to use tabs there, I'd be off by a space and have to add another space. Someone with a different hard-tab width would then get mad because there's an "extraneous" space in their view. And then we all have a nice big slapfight and sound like your post in the process.

(Plus, my editor treats four spaces in a row as a soft tab anyway, so I don't even notice it except when I want to. Life is peachy.)

<comment><USER15> I pointed out that they never give a specific reason for preferring spaces. At least you did that.

You can still achieve what you want, and even faster, by using tabs to get your subsequent parameter lines most of the way there and then padding with a couple of spaces.

<comment><USER16> I covered that exact "solution" in my post--the exact one! It blows up when somebody else is using a different tab width than I am. And given that I use soft tabs, it is no faster at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I kind of wish there were explicit bold,italic, and bold/italic versions.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was thrilled when Ubuntu released a font. The Ubuntu Mono font is my new programming font everywhere. Make it the default in Sublime Text and you'll be a very, very happy camper.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think this is what I've been waiting for.

Ubuntu Mono is nice but my eyes are not really good at detecting soft curves, I wanted something like Terminus[0] but with larger font sizes. (For some reason, I was unable to go beyond 10px with Terminus on Vim.)

[0]: <http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/shots.html>

<comment><USER19> I highly recommend Inconsolata:

<http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html>

<http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Inconsolata>

<comment><USER20> Inconsolata is the poor mans version of the fantastic Consolas... alas, on non-windows platform Consolas looks like shit.

Consolas comes for free with Visual Studio (probably pre-installed on Windows 7/Vista too)

Funny, inconsolata as well doesn't look that great on Windows...

<comment><USER21> Consolas looks just fine on OS X. A licensed version of it comes with BBEdit. The only curious thing about it I've noticed is that it requires good font smoothing--unaliased, it looks absolutely horrible.

It's also one of the very few monospaced fonts I've seen that has a true italic.

<comment><USER22> I think Ubuntu's monospace font has true italic? (I'm not a font expert, though.)

<http://font.ubuntu.com/#charset-mono-regular-italic>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Technically this is slab, not serif.

<comment><USER8> Slab serifs are still serifs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks very much like courier imho. Courier has bit more serifs, but the letterforms seem similar. Not ugly, but distinctly monospaced

</comment><comment><USER25> Did anyone else notice how low @ was placed. It is especially annoying when at the beginning of a word like @word.

</comment><comment><USER26> cool, this might be good for slideshows, especially on IT topics. I used Ubuntu font in my latest slideshow, and it looked quite well

</comment><comment><USER15> Yay, CROSSBARS ON THE "I"!

Really, really tired of capital I's that look like lower-case L's. These should be banished.

And the above is the only time an apostrophe makes a plural.</comment>


The Legacy of Firefox OS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bfrancis/the-legacy-of-firefox-os-c58ec32d94f0 <comment><USER2> This is a great article. I'm of the opinion that if Firefox OS can be released on a <$50 smartphone with wimpy specs, that will be some short term barebones profits, but help the ecosystem long term in a big way.

Cheap for new developers or developing countries (or those of us that just can't stomach a >USD350 phone, much less >1k!) to obtain, which can spur app building, app build tooling, the whole ball of wax.

~30 apps in the KaiOS store? That could be a next gold rush to get the low- hanging fruits for apps, flashlights, XMPP clients, book library databases, freemium Pokemon Pikachu clones, and more.

I would purchase a KaiOS smartphone today if they actually existed and start working my way into the platform. Based on this article, the closest I could get is the JioPhone 2 which has a full QWERTY keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER3> I implore anyone interested in The Web, Operating Systems, project design/management etc, the mobile space...just about anyone really to read the original Story of Firefox OS and this follow up.</comment>


Amazon Targets Grocery Sector With Free Delivery - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb320f30-2715-11e0-80d7-00144feab49a.html

<comment><USER2> "FT.com articles are only available to registered users and subscribers."

What?

Edit: oh, it works if your referrer is Google instead of HN.</comment>


Publishers stop Facebook ads over policy treating them as political advertisers - <AUTHOR> https://digiday.com/media/financial-times-stops-facebook-ad-spending-policy-treats-publishers-political-advertisers/ <comment><USER2> News articles should be treated as political. They always have a built in narrative and bias. Including this article.

<comment><USER3> By that logic shouldn't any post anyone makes on Facebook be treated as political?

<comment><USER4> "Buy more Coca-cola" or "10 reasons why Coca-cola is actually good for you" are examples of advertisement posts and articles that aren't political.

<comment><USER3> Of course they are. Don't you know that Coca Cola created Fanta for Nazi Germany because trade embargos meant they couldn't make Coke? Why, they're practically Nazi collaborators!

...my point is that politics is everywhere, whether you like it or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> The Financial Times and New York Media — have suspended their paid media spending on Facebook in response to the policy_

I only read the FT in printed form, so I'm not aware if its online stories lean one way or the other.

But New York Media's imprints absolutely harbor an agenda. Even if that agenda is intended to mirror its audience, I can understand Facebook flagging its stories. Or at least NYMedia's fear of Facebook flagging its stories.

I saw one of those Facebook political flags this morning for the first time, and it was worthless. When I clicked the little link that was supposed to tell me who was paying for the ad, all it did was show me the name of the PAC, which was already displayed on the ad. No link to the PAC's website, or a list of people who are financially responsible or anything.

So Facebook's new political flagging system is all heat, no light.

<comment><USER6> In this case isn't the PAC the group financially responsible? I'm confused here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why are publishers buying ads anyway? They should have their own distribution

Or at the very least not have to pay Facebook, or Facebook should make it clear that's not the kind of content they want if it's so off mission that they're charging money to boost it. Facebook is trying to play all sides here, getting between publishers and readers and then charging for the privilege</comment>


Scientists sequence Black Death bacteria DNA, admit they were wrong - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/08/scientists-sequence-black-death-bacteria-dna-admit-they-were-wrong.ars <comment><USER2> This article of a few weeks back adds more about the "not spread by rats" aspect (as well some really typical British humour in the commentary of the article).

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2027347/Black- Deat...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2027347/Black-Death- backtrack-Dont-blame-rats-plague-spread-PEOPLE.html)</comment>


What's it like getting your DNA results back from 23andMe - <AUTHOR> http://philosophistry.com/archives/2011/02/dna-test-23andme-review.html

<comment><USER2> Well, my 23andMe results told me I was a Tay-Sachs carrier, and my parents already knew they both weren't, which brought up some interesting questions on both my past and future. Fortunately I'm more likely to assume tests are wrong than my parent's cheated, but it was the future thing I was more concerned with.

I later found out I was part of the 23andMe data mixup[1], so the results I had for a week actually weren't mine. Kind of killed my faith in the system, and when I got my actual results they were quite boring. At the very least it makes a good story, worth the $99 in my book.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/Sample-swaps- at-23...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/Sample-swaps- at-23andMe:-a-cautionary-tale)

</comment><comment><USER3> I managed to get one of those $100 23andMe deals, so I bought Christmas presents for my mother, brother, sister in law, niece and nephew (Actually, I bought them wayyyy in advance on DNA Day - couldn't resist a great deal). About 7 weeks later, everybody's profile came online, and the relative finder instantly identified all of us and our probable relationship to each other (it was correct, in all cases). It's interesting that I share more genetic similarity with my brother, than I do with my mother, even excluding the Y chromosome. It took a bit of thinking before my brother came up with the example of identical twins, who would share almost 100% DNA.

As far as cousins - I have about 100 relatives discovered through the relative finder - lots, and lots, and lots of 5th and 4th cousins, and a few 3rd cousins. No second or first cousins yet.

I originally purchased my kit about 4 or 5 years ago for $1000, so the $99 cost is a huge jump in such a short period of time. It's important to note that 23andMe doesn't do a full DNA Scan, but just samples it in important locations known as SNPs. Watching the trends on singularityhub.com, I'm guessing that a full DNA scan will be available to the individual consumer for $1000 in about five or six years.

<comment><USER4> >I'm guessing that a full DNA scan will be available to the individual consumer for $1000 in about five or six years.

Should be faster than that. I'd put even money down at it being available in three years, probably even 2.5 or 2 years. Genomic sequencing has been one of the fastest Moore's Law analogues in history.

<comment><USER5> the shotgun sequencing (specifically the assembly stage) directly relies on the advances of the original Moore's Law

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've done 23andMe as well. If anyone's curious I'm happy to answer questions. Without prompting, I don't have much to add other than that the relative finder doesn't seem to work quite as well as I'd hoped. I do have one distant cousin on 23andMe, and it did find her, but assigned higher confidence/probability/whatever to a few tens of people who mostly seem not to be cousins. This might not be their fault - I imagine a very small fraction of the population is even on 23andMe - but I still haven't found any long-lost cousins yet.

Edit: On reflection, this is probably because I'm an Ashkenazi Jew, and we have a relatively small gene pool and relatively cyclic ancestor graphs (at least when considered undirected). If your ethnic background is broader/less insular then the relative finder will probably work better for you.

<comment><USER7> I've had better luck with relative finder as well. My very first contact was able to trace his great-great-grandparents roots to a village that is only 30 minutes away or so from my Dad's ancestor's town. This person is marked as a 5th cousin, so I'd consider that pretty compelling.

Regarding your "mostly seem not to be cousins" comment, I think people have an overly narrow definition of cousins where 23andme has a much more strict genetic definition. If you look at their FAQ, they claim that it's fairly accurate that if someone is marked as a relative, that's a relative. The degree of relation may be off by a generation or two, but it's there.

I find it interesting how many people, even those who sign up for the service and enable visibility on relative finder, heck, even those who fill out their profiles with surnames and extra information, either don't respond to contact requests or entirely dismiss relations dubbed by the system "likely 3rd cousin" as "impossible".

At the 6th, 5th, and even 4th cousin levels, especially going into the past with typically large families, we are talking about fairly large networks of people. I see a lot of folks say things like "I can trace my roots back 10 generations", when they really just mean one single paternal line, for example. How can you be sure that someone didn't jump in the hay with someone else in secret that one summer in 1807, or that some forgotten sister of a great-great-grandparent went off to America for 5 years before returning to her homeland, etc? With such large numbers of people, the likeliness of having huge numbers of cousins goes way up.

For example, look how many hops it takes to get to your 4th cousin:

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4th+cousin>

Can we all vouch for all the surnames, brothers and sisters, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc in a relation even as "close" as this?

<comment><USER6> Well, I can trace back 3-4 generations, at least in terms of surnames and maiden names, and none of the people I've talked to are even from the same parts of Europe or know of any relatives with the same last names (with one exception for Miller, which is a very common name). I've talked to several Ukrainians, one Portuguese, and one Argentinian - whereas my family is English, Dutch, German, Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian. As far as I know I didn't have any Ukrainian ancestors, at least not in the last few generations.

>I think people have an overly narrow definition of cousins where 23andme has a much more strict genetic definition.

Well, I consider someone to be a cousin based solely on our most recent common ancestor. If someone happens to have similar genes to me but we haven't shared an ancestor for 5,000 years then that person's not a cousin for any useful definition of the word.

It also might be that Asheknazi Jews, as a historically small/insular community with, therefore, a smaller gene pool, have a different experience with the relative finder than people with less, uh, incestuous (broadly speaking) family trees. Edit: Just logged into 23andMe and saw this relevant thread: <https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/6449/>. So I guess my speculation was right, and my concerns should be disregarded if you aren't part of a similarly small population.

<comment><USER3> Each Cousin will go back typically (there area always exception) go back no more than 50 years. In my family, the separation in age between youngest and oldest cousin is 35 years. So, A fifth cousin speaks to a common ancestor no more than 250 years ago.

I have 472 Predicted Relatives on 23andMe, 382 of which are 5th cousin or closer. It's pretty awesome seeing all these "Percent DNA Shared" at 0.09% to 0.86% (My previous High) and then seeing my mother/brother/niece/nephew pop out at 49.98%, 43.77%, 21.92%, 21.11%

I do wish that my "3rd" cousin would respond to me - they are the only ones I think I have a chance of tracking down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Combining two recent HN discussions here - this one, and one yesterday on the difficulty in getting insurance in the US (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2247560>)

What are the consequences (immediate, or further down the track), not so much of using a service like 23andMe (I imagine it will be a fairly standard part of medical testing in X generations) but of posting on your blog that you're (to paraphrase) 1.90x as likely to contract Parkinson's?

<comment><USER7> One simple immediate consequence may be that you cannot answer a question like "do you have any reason to believe that you may be at risk for XYZ" anymore without potentially having to rely on a result that may or may not have statistical significance -- or which you may have misunderstood. A lot of 23andme reports are in the form of "if you are east asian and have the following genotype for SNP rsXXXXXX, you have a 3% chance of developing condition XYZ". Personal genomics services like 23andme are going out there and saying that SNPs are pretty reliable, but the reality for some conditions and traits may still be fuzzy as more data comes in. There may be as-yet undiscovered SNPs that have a bigger effect on your cancer risk than the ones their v3 chip happens to cover, for example, and just having a 1 or even a dozen SNPs may not be enough for a clear picture. On the other hand, an insurance company might find it risky enough to deny you coverage. Nobody knows how that will shake out.

In the future, if a given insurance provider knows you have purchased a service like this, they also can then figure out which SNPs you _know_ your genotypes for (it would be fairly trivial for any insurance company to find out which 950,000 or so SNPs 23andme tests for), and can then craft a survey form asking about these specific traits.

Many people will likely still try the service anyway because they'd rather know, pro-actively address certain issues, and risk the insurance game, than not know at all.

[EDIT: Apologies for not having read your question all that clearly. Just assume the above applies to "admitting you've used the service in public"]

<comment><USER9> > potentially having to rely on a result that may or may not have statistical > significance

I can't stress this enough. I've had a bunch of friends buy the 23andme kit while it was on sale recently because they were interested in my results from a while ago, and their buildup to getting their own results was "what if it tells me I'm never going to have x?!" and things like that. Kind of frustrating to explain how it works.

23andme put me at average to low risk of a few things they test for that I have in real life. One of the more frustrating things to read was that 23andme declared from preliminary asthma research that I was at lower than average to average odds, when in my past I've had severe asthma I've even been hospitalized for.

On the flip side of things, 23andme determined my risk of melanoma from genetics is 0.1% (as compared to 1.7% average). But I live in Los Angeles and I get sunburnt/suntanned multiple times a year, not to mention the sheer number of hours I spend outdoors in general. I regularly track skin changes and visit a dermatologist once in a while because new spots and changes on my skin stress the hell out of me. I know my risk likely skyrockets past the 1.7% easily if you take my environment into account.

Insurance companies already play this risk/percentage game anyway with lots of other information, and I don't think I see a big of a risk as people being denied insurance from testing like this. If anything, it means everyone can be more proactive and save money and lives in the end. (Of course, I am being pretty naively optimistic here...) I mean, I imagine that's what they're trying to do on some level when they send me pamphlets about STD testing and prenatal care in the mail every other week just because they know I'm a 20something female on birth control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm glad I did it, and the results didn't freak me out/scare me or lead to any massive revelations. For the $100 I paid, it was worth it. For the $500 that they normally charge, I felt it was too much.

The stuff about family origin/history was pretty boring for me and just confirmed that I'm as white/boring as they come. Both lines from Europe? You don't say... But for someone who doesn't know that they are 100% European, it could be interesting to see what else is in your background.

<comment><USER11> _just confirmed that I'm as white/boring as they come_

What's boring about being white? Sorry, but this attitude strikes me as being nonsense political correctness. I'm quite sure that whatever race or culture your ancestors come from, there's plenty to be interested in on a personal level at the very least.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps that they feel white/boring and that their lineage traces to more of the same. An Asian person might not be particularly excited to learn that their ancestors trace back through China. Candidate one, however, might be more intrigued to find ancestry tracing through Northern Africa, or candidate through India - just guessing.

<comment><USER13> correct, I believe that was the obvious point he was trying to make.

The political correctness that is a problem is that you can't say 'white/boring' without offending someone like the person you responded to.

<comment><USER10> Right on. When I got those results it just confirmed, "hmm, looks like my 5th grade genealogy project was right. I am from Germany and England afterall!"

It isn't to say that us white people are boring, but just that there was nothing novel in that part of the results. It was about as exciting as the genetic test in there that confirmed I have brown eyes. If it said I had blue eyes, it would have been interesting news to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is posted on the very same day I heard from 23andMe received my and my wife's samples. Spooky.

(I actually bought the kits on DNA day last year, and just haven't gotten around to sending them in until now, so this really is weird for me)

<comment><USER15> Considering how many people on HN are 23andMe customers, it's statistically quite likely that at least one HN reader would get an e-mail from 23andMe on the same day a related HN article is posted :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Didn't get mine done, but both of my parents had theirs done. My dad's was pretty much as expected, as far as ancestry (my grandmother is an avid genealogist). On my mom's side there is a lost of uncertainty about our ancestry. Of course, because you only see the mitochondrial DNA result for a female, its not as informative for someone who is probably a mix (like my mom). I think an admixture test will be the one that's really useful.

My dad downloaded his raw data and is enlisting me to use some of the 3rd party tools out there to do some other comparisons, but I haven't really dug into it yet. Home bioinformatics...

</comment><comment><USER17> I got on the deal for $100 on DNA day and found that most of the results I got back were interesting and cool to show my friends but it didn't change my life/habits in anyway. Most of the 23andMe's data is currently targeted for people of European descent and there isn't a whole lot of data on people of African and Asian descent in their database but even many of the European traits have varying confidence markers based on genetic data we have available today. I am hoping that much more data will be coming in the future but at the moment I wouldn't accept the results as gospel.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks like one of their competitors (pathway) has posted about an open position for a developer <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2255109>

</comment><comment><USER19> Has 23andMe done any targeted work w/ adoption sites and such? I know from talking to adopted friends, they often don't have info on family medical history. This would be really useful for them.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you want to get more use out of the raw data 23andMe produces from your DNA sequencing I encourage everyone to check out this free / GPL'd Firefox plugin my company created.

<http://www.snptips.com/>

</comment><comment><USER21> My big question is: does 23andMe get to keep the DNA data, what does the User Agreement say?

<comment><USER22> They give you the choice of either having them keep it - or throw it away. I had them keep it because they can then run further tests without needing my spit again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Never understood why people pay money for this. It seems crazy to me.

<comment><USER24> It seems crazy to be curious about your genes? Could you elaborate on why?

<comment><USER23> Few reasons...

      * I don't think the tech is mature enough to be 100% reliable
      * It'll probably just worry people more than anything.
      * Doctors are trained. Some guy getting this thing isn't.

I think it's a hypercondriacs dream.

<comment><USER25> Well, for example:

      * It's fun. It really is. Even the part about the Parkinson, after you get over it.
      * You're pretty much subsidizing a new industry.
      * There is a chance you can actually use this. Either if you actually
        have a rare disease gene, or if you're a carrier.

In any case, I intend to take a printout to my next medical visit.

<comment><USER23> > In any case, I intend to take a printout to my next medical visit.

I'm sure doctors _hate_ this. I'm of the opinion we should leave trained professionals to do their job.

<comment><USER25> Hate?! Trust me, I have no intention of pestering him/her with every minute detail of the chart. But I do know I have a (somewhat) higher risk for prostate cancer in advanced age, and I sure want to have a talk with him about ways to mitigate it. I was under the impression that is pretty much his job...

But I think I understand a bit of what you mean. For example, my results lists obesity at "normal", with a whopping 60% chance. Same way, one slightly raised chance of a certain disease may not mean much when compared to a host of other illnesses with much higher baseline chances. As it happens though, prostate cancer is already high on the list, so I do intent to fully make use of the information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting service. Anyone know something similar in Europe?

<comment><USER27> Last I checked, 23andMe shipped to Europe (with additional shipping fees).

<comment><USER28> I had mine done last year. You'll also need to factor in the DHL shipping fees for returning your sample (30 Pounds from the UK, over and above whatever they charged for shipping it to you)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Full time contractor vs. employee, how much more expensive? - <AUTHOR> Anyone here have experience working as a full time contractor? In your experience, how much more expensive is it for you to be a contractor vs employee? Considering things like Insurance, self-employment taxes, etc etc.<p>I'm trying to figure out how much salary to ask for beyond what I normally would, do I can cover those extra expenses. <comment><USER2> This is hard to have a generic statement about. But in general you should start around 1.5x-2x a standard salary.

The reality is people with minimal experience will have a harder time with this than someone with 10 years. That's because employers will consider the two very different. Someone with 3 years of experience will not command the higher multiple, so 1.2x isn't uncommon. But people with 10 years can work on a 2-5x multiple pretty easily (much more in some cases), especially if they have a specialty skill.

Just don't underestimate the costs and plan that you will need to pay people to get advice. IMO I would say never accept less than 1.2x what the position would pay in salary.

And don't fall for people saying you get all these deductions now etc when they are trying to negotiate you down. That's generally someone trying to take advantage of you.

I founded, ran and sold more then one consulting group and it can be super lucrative but don't underestimate the costs either. You have to market, travel to find work at times etc. That all has to come out of your fees.

</comment><comment><USER3> Employee overhead is usually an additional 15%-20% of their salary (benefits, perks, etc). So if you are looking at doing the work as a contractor just add 25% onto what you would ask for as an employee: $100K turns into $125K

<comment><USER4> 25% is a very low-ball number.

Self employment tax: 7.5%

Health insurance premium = 15%

PTO + other benefits (life insurance, 401k, equipment, etc.) = 15% or more

And there should be a premium on top of that for non-perm. The cost of contract renewal negotiations every year is non-zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> a quick-and-dirty rule of thumb is you should add 50% to a W-2 wage to find its comparable 1099 wage.> [https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/contractor- vs-full-tim...](https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/contractor-vs-full-time- employee-salary/)</comment>


Computer Science Courses That Don't Exist, but Should - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/210.html <comment><USER2> It is [2015], but still makes very good points.</comment>


Problems concerning the GNU operating system - vezzy-fnord https://iotek.github.io/GNU/

<comment><AUTHOR> "All [/usr/bin/true] is supposed to do is to return an exit value of 0"

As [http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html](http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html) points out, there are several reasons for the GNU true to do what it does:

1) it's faster to run an executable than to start a script that does an exit 0.

You'll notice that FreeBSD also uses a compiled C program, at [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/9.3.0/usr.bin/true/t...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/9.3.0/usr.bin/true/true.c?view=markup) . And it has two embedded SCCS identifiers, even though that isn't required by POSIX.

2) the original AT&T code said that shell was covered under copyright. The BSD code went through the lawsuit which established that there was no copyright infringement, but the C code is obviously not derivative of the original script. (It's unlikely that this is a real issue now.)

3) The GNU coding standard says that all executables should support a --version and --help. See [https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Command_002dLin...](https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Command_002dLine- Interfaces.html#Command_002dLine-Interfaces) .

Of course, once you expose English output to the user you should support internationalization.

Yes, that's mission creep. Then again, complaints about mission creep in GNU code is ancient. Here's a joke about the options in GNU echo, from 1985(!) - [https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/echo.msg.html](https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/echo.msg.html) .</comment>


The Power of 'And' (Azure IaaS Now Cheaper, Generally Available) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2013/04/16/the-power-of-and.aspx <comment><USER2> This is the most interesting piece:

That's why today we are also announcing a commitment to match Amazon Web Services prices for commodity services such as compute, storage and bandwidth. This starts with reducing our GA prices on Virtual Machines and Cloud Services by 21-33%. Regardless of how you choose to buy Windows Azure, you'll get the benefit of this price reduction. As our operations GM Steven Martin said, "If you had concerns that Windows Azure was more expensive, we're putting those concerns to rest today."</comment>


We've Been Measuring Inequality Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/weve-been-measuring-inequality-wrong-heres-the-real-story-56179 <comment><USER3> I highly disagree about the conclusion that spending inequality is more important to look at than wealth inequality. Wealth indicates security and lack of economic precariousness, spending does not. If you're middle income and in chronic debt because you have a disabled child and care for your aging parents, you might look just fine if you look at spending. However, your hardship will likely be clearly reflected in your lack of wealth.

The fact that they chose spending rather than wealth makes me wonder _why_ it was chosen. The authors claim that spending inequality is the correct measure, but then provide zero research-based justification for this decision.

Reading the paper, they claim in regards to wealth and related forms of inequality, "none measures inequality in living standards, which should be the ultimate concern when assessing economic fairness". Well, that's a fine presumption, but perhaps we're more concerned by the increasingly capability of the top 0.1% of the wealth of this country (ie, the vast majority of it, as much as 80-90%) to buy our political process and start us down a feedback loop of no return.

Point being, these economists seem to bring in an awful lot of political and moral prejudgments into this study (as is their profession's frequent wont).

<comment><USER4> >Point being, these economists seem to bring in an awful lot of political and moral prejudgments into this study (as is their profession's frequent wont).

I was reading this recently.

[https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/...](https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general- theory/ch23.htm)

Protip: Want to read any historical stuff on economics? You'll be slumming with commies.

Anyway what is amusing reading that it's apparent that the policies promoted by orthodox economists have not changed in 200-300 years. And actually predate economics as a field. It would be like going to the doctor circa 2016 and being told the results of your MRI indicate a vital need to apply leaches to your nether regions. So yeah does seem that for economics political and moral prejudgments trump theory 99% of the time.

<comment><USER5> John Maynard Keynes is a "commie" now? Here's what he had to say about the USSR:

"How can I accept a doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the Red bookshops. It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values."

<comment><USER6> Protip: anything that follows the word Protip is at least 50% tongue in cheek.

<comment><USER4> It's that the stuff is usually on marxists.org

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are lots of problems with this article.

The basic assumption--that "spending power" is more important than "wealth" or "income"\--is questionable, but the authors don't really spend any time defending it. The reason the richest 1 percent spent a lower percentage of their income is because they don't have to, and because they are able to re- invest their money (not counted as spending) in making themselves more money. The poorest 20% do not have that luxury.

The arguments about how high taxes disincentivize work assume that income == work. But that's not correct. Productivity growth has been tremendous over the last two decades, and workers have been producing more and more, but that _hasn 't_ been translating into income gains, except for those in the top 2 or 3 percent, which is precisely what the income inequality gap reveals, which is apparently why the authors of this study chose to use a different standard.

"Facts and figures are hard things. They upset prior views and demand attention." Say the people who came up with an alternative model of measuring inequality because the simpler model upsets their preferred policy, and would rather ignore the problematic numbers by creating new ones.

<comment><USER8> _Productivity growth has been tremendous over the last two decades, and workers have been producing more and more, but that hasn 't been translating into income gains_

People are (more or less) paid for their time and not their productivity. That they are not getting paid more suggests that the supply of worker hours has been more or less keeping up with the demand.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but for what reason? If productivity is going up, that means fewer hours are needed to produce the same amount of products/services, so demand for worker hours has remained roughly fixed (if you factor in population increases) while production has been increasing. Who's been getting the benefit of that increased production? Not your median household, which is the whole crux of the problem.

<comment><USER8> I think we all have. Many consumer products are far cheaper than they used to be for one thing. A computer workstation in 1990 was $10,000. Today one with far more computing power is under $1,000.

A "family" color television in 1975 was similar to what they cost today ($500 - $1,000) but that's not adjusted for inflation, and the same money today will get one that's over twice the screen size, is far more reliable and has a far better picture. In constant dollars today's far better product costs over 75% less.

<comment><USER9> Fair enough, but every time I see examples like that, I have to ask - <USER2> those really standard of living increases, or just technology advances? Yes, electronics have gotten cheaper, but healthcare and education have gotten massively more expensive. More importantly, can the average worker today work less hours than his or her father did in order to live a middle class life? I would argue it's actually the opposite in many cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Remarkably, this debate has taken place based on partial and inappropriate > indicators of U.S. inequality. . . . First, spending inequality – what we > should really care about – is far smaller than wealth inequality.

No one really care about the exact level of inequality. They care about the trend (that inequality is much higher then it used to be). If they showed that that trend was different then what everyone thought that would be interesting, but just showing that this measure reports a different level is not so interesting.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Another key finding is that U.S. fiscal policy acts as a serious > disincentive to work longer hours or harder for more pay.

And yet they work longer hours than most of civilised countries an sometimes work two jobs. Either they are really stubborn or the research or the conclusions from it have some flaws.

</comment><comment><USER12> The emphasis on lifetime spending power in this paper is odd, since most people wouldn't choose to starve through their 20s and 30s in return for the ability to spend more on luxuries towards the end of their lives. I suspect they are also assuming that young people today will end up with the same spending power as today's seniors, which is a pretty questionable scenario.

Overall the article leaves the impression of authors with a conclusion in mind and a determination to find data which matches

<comment><USER8> And yet if people did save and invest aggressively in their 20s and 30s we would not be talking about wealth inequality to nearly the degree we are now.

<comment><USER13> Invest? Invest what???

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Each parameter (declared or hidden) that they inject in their calculation is carefully designed to decrease the inequality. No wonder they obtain a measurement with less inequality. Anyway, they did not really need all to go to such great lengths to get this result, since they do really care about it and their conclusion is mostly unrelated to it.

Economists... Economic science... It would be more honest not to disguise oneself under scientific methods, and that should be renamed "economic politics" (and while we are at it, let's rename sociology to "politics" and philosophy to "religion", everything will be clearer).

<comment><USER14> The statement about economics rings true. When I think of science, I think of models that accurately and precisely reflect reality. That is, a tested and validated model should be predictive and consistent.

I have no trust for 'sciences' that cannot tell me precisely and accurately what the effect of an action will be. If the author's of the paper could tell me that an implementation of policy X would yield an effect of Y within an error of Z, within a certain timeframe then I'd have at least a small degree of trust. But, even then, they'd have to also specify metrics to track so that an observer could validate that the effect is 'on course'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lots of hate here so far. I agree more explanation of their premise would go a long way towards convincing skeptics. However, I think this is an interesting perspective and deserves better conversation. Fiscal policy is progressive and has a dramatic impact on individual finances. Contrary to popular belief not everyone in the 1% pays the capital gains rate.

<comment><USER3> I read a lot of criticism, but no "hate". Can you show me a comment here that you consider hateful?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I never understood why cutting taxes creates more jobs. Before the full force of globalization "trickle down economy" made some sense as the investments would go locally (factories etc.) but at the current point in time it does not.

We have a distribution of wealth in the world that looks like a hockey stick and we actually need something like a bell curve.

</comment><comment><USER17> The reason the wealthy spend less of their income is they have more than they need, and they put the rest into investment, which increases their own wealth.

In fact, that is the basic conservative argument as to why the government should let the rich keep their income. The idea is that investment by the wealthy increases total size of the national economy, which in turn leads to everyone's income going up.

The problem is that this process hasn't been working for about three or four decades. The rich keep investing their money and getting richer, but income for most other people is stagnant or going down.

</comment><comment><USER17> The authors claim that the progressive tax system provides a disincentive to work. So what they are saying is, on the one hand, things are just great, and on the other hand, things are just terrible because people are voluntarily not working.

Also, if the wealthy are not working, how come they keep getting wealthier? And furthermore, why is it that studies show that Americans work more hours than people in other industrialized countries?

The nice thing is that these sorts of propaganda attempts are failing because people know from their own experience that income is stagnating.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh, and here is another thing. The authors say we need to take into account future income.

So on the one hand conservatives say Social Security is going to collapse in 15 or 20 years and no one will get anything, and on the other hand they say everyone is going to retire to a life of wealth and luxury.

Speaking of which, I wonder how many young or middle age conservative voters would consider it a good deal to sign away their future SSA income for one cent on the dollar.

</comment><comment><USER18> Did they really introduce a new bogus metric without even defining it, much less justify its use? Never heard of "spending inequality" until this article came along.

</comment><comment><USER19> Url changed from [https://newrepublic.com/article/131517/weve-measuring- inequa...](https://newrepublic.com/article/131517/weve-measuring-inequality- wrong), which points to this.</comment>


Martin Shkreli steers his company from prison with contraband cellphone - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/martin-shkreli-steers-his-company-from-prisonwith-contraband-cellphone-11551973574 <comment><USER2> I'm left wondering: is this actually _illegal_?

If Shkreli _wasn 't_ in prison, then he would be a normal "activist investor" who has the ownership (power) to dictate corporate strategy at the highest levels. Whether he's the chief executive or not is kind of a moot point—that's just a title.

If I recall correctly, a securities-related conviction would prevent him from being a director of a publicly-traded company. But Phoenixus AG (née Turing) isn't _public_ , so I don't think there's SEC limitations here.

That other shareholders want him removed from power is a preference and disagreement, nothing more.

Was there anything else in his sentencing that would preclude him from these kinds of activities? Or is this more a, _huh, that 's interesting_ message?

Reading the article, it seems like the rules he's breaking are:

1\. Having a cell phone in prison.

2\. "Running a business", in potential violation of the prison inmate handbook. I'm unclear if there are any legal teeth behind said handbook, or what.

The article also says that the FBI "has interviewed associates about his role" at Phoenixus, but not _why_ they're doing that.

<comment><USER3> If it's known that he has a cell phone, and it's against the rules to have one in prison, I'm left wondering how hard it could possibly be for the prison authorities to take it away from him. Or is there simply no effort to enforce the rules?

<comment><USER4> If he has it, most likely he paid off an authority figure there, which would be the only thing preventing a supposed confiscation.

Any time I read a story on prison, I seem to almost always end up hearing about contraband. Even guys in solitary confinement with long-term heroin addiction. In _solitary_ confinement. Authorities never are held responsible for this. Prison needs major reform.(1)

1- [https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/special- reports/artic...](https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/special- reports/article152336587.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He's got an entourage that looks out for him, runs his company from a contraband phone that he also posts on twitter from, lifts weights to keep from getting too scrawny, pays off inmate's poker debts, takes care of cats, helps inmates out with their grammar... This really sounds like something out of a movie.

<comment><USER6> movies come out of life

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always really liked Martin Shkreli. He kind of reminds me of myself (maybe that says more about me than Martin Shkreli). Maybe he ran a fraud, but he did good by his investors, they got huge return off of his "scam." Of people who are in jail for scams, almost all of them stole/lost money from their investors, instead of actually making a shit-load of money for them.

People don't like him not because of his "scam", but because he raised drug prices. Maybe people on HN and elsewhere think big pharma should be run as a charity, but in my book, making as much money as you can is a good thing, a noble and morally righteous thing in fact.

Companies should try and make as much money as humanly possible (without breaking the law), because this is the only framework in which competition can exist. Everyone, everywhere, should be as greedy as possible and try as make a big of return on their investments as possible. This is the origin of "competition."

If individuals and companies weren't doing that, our market wouldn't function and it wouldn't delivery nearly as value as it does to society.

I happily look forward to the downvotes.

<comment><USER8> When Shkreli got vilified, he missed out on one of the biggest opportunities to push for meaningful change. Media and Congress were "not kind" to his price increases. Well, who passed the laws that allowed for those price increases and stifled competition? At the time, I was hoping Shkreli would double down, go all in, and blame Congress for passing the laws that were allowing for such price increases and preventing competition (which big pharma had lobbied for and gotten passed earlier). Demand that if Congress was serious about getting him to reduce prices, all they had to do was repeal those laws. I.e., pass the buck back and say "well if you don't like this behavior, then why did you pass these laws?" and "oh, by the way, how many campaign contributions and PAC donations did you get for passing these laws?" He could then pivot to say "hey, I'm not raising prices to make money [at least not anymore], I'm raising prices to increase awareness and bring accountability to Congress and hold their feet to the fire."

<comment><USER9> > blame Congress for passing the laws that were allowing for such price > increases and preventing competition

That would be weird, since Daraprim (the drug he hiked) was out of patent, anyone could make and sell it, and in fact a competitor did jut a couple of months later[1]. How was Congress preventing competition?

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/30/express-scripts-imprimis- to-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/30/express-scripts-imprimis-to-offer- daraprim-alternative.html)

<comment><USER8> Patents weren't the issue. As I recall, Shkreli's company had the exclusive right to market the drug in the US, regardless of patent protection. For example, the FDA provides regulatory exclusivity that prevents generics from entering the market even after the patent expires. [1]

Patents were a collateral issue. On that collateral issue, one of the issues with patents is that drug companies have a tendency to stop producing drugs towards the end of life of a patent to force patients onto a newly patented drug. This practice could be stopped by allowing generics to produce, market, and sell when the patent holder will not.

[1] [https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/journal- articl...](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/journal- article/2017/sep/determinants-market-exclusivity-prescription-drugs-united)

<comment><USER9> Fair enough, there are other protections besides patents. Still, that doesn't seem to be the case here at all; like I wrote, competitors were selling alternatives within a couple of months.

What seems to me is that the market was crowded out while the primary producer kept the prices low; when they were raised, the market responded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> without the paywall [https://outline.com/9jcNDW](https://outline.com/9jcNDW)

</comment><comment><USER11> I did really like his lectures on youtube on investing. One can learn a lot about dissecting a company's fundamentals from them. I wish he had not done all that stupid shit. I am not sure if he thinks he ever needed to anyways..

</comment><comment><USER12> He still updates his blog multiple times a week.

[http://martinshkreli.com/](http://martinshkreli.com/)

<comment><USER13> Free Shkreli

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not new. Most drug lords from around here do the same.

</comment><comment><USER15> > [..] when Turing raised the cost of an HIV drug to $750 per pill from > $13.50.

It wasn't an HIV drug. Pyrimethamine is mainly used to treat toxoplasmosis. Granted a huge target group would be HIV patients but right here that's just spinning a narrative. Shkreli might be a questionable character but that doesn't warrant publishing fake news.

</comment><comment><USER16> Shkreli's real crime: small fish with a big mouth. If Shkreli was a CEO of a $50 Billion company he'd be holding fundraisers for Trump or his opponents. And the Feds would not dare arrest him for his defense would overwhelm the feds.

 _(No doubt he did illegal stuff, but bigger fish do more than he did in his lifetime, before 8 am)_

</comment><comment><USER17> Snitching on any inmate like this is a terrible thing to do.

Nobody deserves the kind of attention this will attract from BOP.

</comment><comment><USER18> In any discussion about adblockers the consensus among HN readers seems to be "I'd pay if I had the option" \- yet the first thing to appear on any paywalled story is a link to Outline.

<comment><USER19> I'd pay given the right structure. Eg I'd pay fifty cents to a buck for a given article. But monthly recurring payments to several different publishers? Hard pass.

<comment><USER20> 50 cents is far too much. I just read that article and it was pretty much just filler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's no difference between a CEO and a gangster apparently. They both ruin lives, kill people, and use contraband cellphones from jail to continue doing so. It's sad that our culture glorifies one but despises another when they are equally evil and antisocial.

<comment><USER22> CEOs don't go to jail for any of those things. The funniest thing about the Shkreli case to me is that despite the bad press about who he was, what actually put him jail was that he gambled (and won) with a some rich people's investments and then the SEC threw the book at him.

<comment><USER21> Al Capone went to jail for tax fraud. It doesn't mean he didn't kill people or that the comparison is not apt. It's right on point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> People who don't even believe in karma are pretty dense. If you don't provide value, you won't have anything. He took value from people, all was taken from him. You can't escape it. It's the law of sewing and reaping.

<comment><USER9> Actually, the people he defrauded (and for which he's in prison) all say he doubled or even tripled their money.

<comment><USER24> Pyramid schemes also double and triple the money of people. Until they don't.

That's why we have securities laws.</comment></comment></comment>