"Information asymmetry" cuts both ways - <AUTHOR> http://yosefk.com/blog/information-asymmetry-cuts-both-ways.html <comment><USER2> The thesis of the article makes two assumptions: 1\. that pay differences are due to merit and 2\. employees do not want a merit based system so if they discuss salaries they will intentionally dismantle that system

Both of these assumptions are in error. It is the job of every business man (and likely the instinct of every human) to buy value as cheaply as possible. Thus an employer will tend offer the lowest amount possible regardless of the employees productivity. We know this happens in practice because salary negotiation is at least as critical as technical skill.

Additional evidence is that changing jobs results in much higher wage increase than staying put, if wages were connected to skill this would not happen. Likewise fiscal desperation of the employee results in accepting lower wages but if salary is merit based, why were those lower wages were offered in the first place. And of course we know that race, gender, marital status, religion and age were or still are factors in salary.

The second assumption is also thoroughly untrue. Typical human behavior is to want compensation proportional to productivity and to live in a system that allows this. The contrary has words like "dishonest", "cheating", "theft" and "unfair" associated with it and is almost universally socially deprecated. It is exactly why grinding in video games are is popular, it taps this very fundamental desire. Which desire is exactly not being met by work so players seek simulated work after hours.

<comment><USER3> While I agree with most of your post, I am not sure this:

> Typical human behavior is to want compensation proportional to productivity > and to live in a system that allows this.

is entirely true. I think humans want "fairness" and in many ways it's different than raw productivity. Two main problems I see:

1\. Other things than people (usually called capital) have productivity on its own (unless you believe in labor theory of value, which leads to logical contradictions). If you are paid for your productivity, you are not paid for the excess, things produced by the capital. For example, a new automation is invented which makes you more productive, but you now do less work. How should the surplus be distributed? In fact, I am of opinion that if I would be paid for my actual productivity (my contribution to it as a human being in contrast to contribution by machines and know-how) in modern society, I would be homeless next month. Yet, here I have an above average salary (maybe even global 1%).

2\. Totally meritocratic system (say efficient free market, if such thing exists), even if we deal with the above problem, lacks one important things that humans have - forgiveness. Sometimes disasters happen or people are just plain stupid. Without forgiveness or outside help, a single disaster like that can affect you for life. So I don't think "meritocracy based on productivity only" is a desirable system and I am sure I am not alone.

<comment><USER2> That is very true. Indeed we know fairness is an innate value for us and all primates [1]

Likewise "meritocracy" is a very imprecise word depending a lot on what you want to maximize and so, if not focusing on net benefit to humanity, could produce horrendous outcomes. Blindly maximizing wealth creation could be such a mistake but given how much good prosperity usually does for people, it looks like a good starting point.

But I believe the article and I are referring to fairness among employees rather than employee vs employer (which is of course also interesting). Specifically, employees comparing wages would create quite appropriate outrage between employees when some individuals receive more for less work. And this regardless of how much or little of the company's produce goes to wages (a separate issue)

[1] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6955/abs/nature01...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6955/abs/nature01963.html) or tldr; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is untrue:

"All very true, except that with a share of Google, they're all the same and you arguably know what you're buying..."

We've had many, many corporate scandals over the years: Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, etc. We know that corporations can lie. The lies are of 2 kinds:

1.) deliberate falsehoods

2.) lies of omission

We also know there are many facts that can not be known about a corporation. What is the real value of the software? What is the real value of a patent? Does the software contain a serious bug? Is the patent open to legal challenge?

Regarding the danger that Citibank got into, and the near extinction it faced during the financial crisis of 2008, Robert Rubin (who had been director and senior counselor of Citi, during the bubble years) said: "It is not easy to know how much risk is building up on the trading floor." Here you have one of the top people of the company claiming he had no idea what condition the corporation was in. Was he lying? If he was lying, then how can you trust any information you have about the corporation? If he wasn't lying, how can you trust that you know anything about a corporation, when the people who run the corporation have no idea?

So how can you ever really know what a share in a corporation is worth? It's at least as much of a mystery as the question of "How much is a computer programmer worth?"

<comment><USER5> > So how can you ever really know what a share in a corporation is worth? It's > at least as much of a mystery as the question of "How much is a computer > programmer worth?"

I think the point is that one share in google is worth exactly the same amount as another, and this fact is easily verifiable by the buyer and the seller.

You won't buy a share and then find out that it's actually only worth half of someone else's share, or for some reason costs you money rather than earning you dividends while everyone else is raking it in.

<comment><USER6> > one share in google is worth exactly the same amount as another

Pedantically, they're not. There are 3 public classes of Google stock, publicly traded GOOG and GOOGL, as well as Class B stock, which doesn't have a public ticker symbol.

[http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/the-many- classe...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/the-many-classes-of- google-stock/?_r=0)

<comment><USER5> That is very true, thanks for the clarification.

If I said "one share of GOOG" would that uniquely identify one class of the stock?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure I follow the author's argument. However this is a definite fallacy:

"Cause goodness knows that the easiest way to raise one's compensation in the knowledge economy is to simply space out more while getting paid the same."

There's an opportunity cost to being stuck in a chair "pretending" to work. And my compensation does not go up if I'm "pretending" to work.

Instead, I choose to work at places that don't value my time by my presence but instead value my results.

<comment><USER8> He meant all workers are concerned to some degree in demonstrating their job as invaluable to managers/employers -- even (or specially) if they don't actually believe it is, or if they don't believe to be on top of the knowledge of skill ladder.

<comment><USER7> Focusing on creating perception of value vs. actual value sounds way too much like job insecurity for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They key point here is that workers are not identical. If you are getting paid less than your colleagues, that could be because you got a raw deal, but it could also be because you aren't as good as them.

Even within a job title, there are good reasons why pay should not be the same. For example, the job ladder represents both authority and technical ability, and these sometimes need to be decoupled. A very talented individual might have technical ability that deserves high pay, but not the industry experience to hold a position of leadership or authority. So they get hired at a lower job title, but with higher pay than their peers.

<comment><USER10> My main point in the article was that employers cannot measure productivity and hence often get a raw deal themselves.

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r Funny, these comments play right into Patrick's latest venture. He's trying to quantify programming ability, or at least get a usable ranking. See [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/03/09/announcing- starfighter/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/03/09/announcing-starfighter/)

</comment><comment><USER11> This article is very insightful. One of the interesting things about jobs, and a source of frustration and the reason I'm much more interested in being a founder than an employee-- is that so many companies are run by people who don't know what they're doing.

I've seen this from 20 year old startup "founders" who don't know their industry, to 50 year old billionaires who have lots of business experience, and thus opinions, but no wisdom about running a software company.

Even with our industry being around for 40 years or so, there are very few companies where programmers are managed by programmers who understand programming. Too much of the time its "Business" people.

So, not only are you going to be incentivized by how well you're paid vs the problems you're given, you're also going to be affected by the quality of the environment ("open plan office? sigh, I can't wait til I have been here long enough to quit.") to the amount of interference and straight up hassle (sometimes even harassment) you are getting from management.

Let me give you an example: Last year I worked in an office run by an ex-navy Seal. He cussed, all the time. His motivational technique was to threaten violence- literally. He was a bundle of barely contained psychotic violence and you were just waiting for something to set him off. I half expected he was going to come in some day and shoot up the office. I don't know what his problem was but he was not right in the head. Needless to say, he knew nothing about programming, software, or even business- his entire career had been in the military. Certainly every 5 minutes he wanted to have a meeting about something.

He thought it was funny to bring in bongo drums and a cowbell... and if we were too quiet, he would bang on them. For awhile he was showing up at 4pm and trying to get us drunk. I guess that's how they bond in the military.

I am not making this up.

That company is now on their third team-- they've had %400 turnover in employees over the past 2 years, with the average employee lasting less than 6 months. And they still haven't figured out what the problem is.

There's no way to know when getting hired that you're going into an office like that-- and while that's an extreme, over the past 30 years, most of the places I've worked have been dysfunctional to one degree or another.

So, you're negotiating your salary, you're also having to figure out how much combat pay premium you need to tack on.

And if you're in the business of hiring people, give them meaningful equity and a real vesting schedule if you want them to stay at your startup-- then show them you have the skills to turn the company into a success. You can start by producing a healthy environment for work. (and I don't mean giving me a year supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon.)

<comment><USER12> As a veteran, I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I've a lot of respect for the people I've met from the Special Operations community, some incredibly talented people, but it sounds like one found himself leading a team he shouldn't have been leading.

I agree that programmers should be managed by programmers. You need to learn to fly jets to lead a fighter squadron and you need to be an operator to lead a SEAL platoon, it's a mistake to think programming is so different.

The article made a great point that even when you do know how to program it's incredibly difficult to manage other programmers. My current director, who is a programmer, is only concerned with commit counts and bug counts. He doesn't like to interact with other people, maybe have a one-on-one once a year. Unfortunately, this mentality is driving quality into the ground as senior engineers grab easy bugs, don't bother testing their work, and just hit the metrics with many working as little as possible. The irony being we're a hyper growth unicorn.

Creating things and leading people are tough. Doing both is even tougher. Agreed that starting your own thing is the way to go. That's pretty tough too though.

And drinks with coworkers is definitely prevalent in the military, but I think it is also pretty common everywhere. It's good to relax outside the work environment, but that's obviously tough to do with threats of violence. Again, apologies, that is entirely unprofessional behavior and tarnishes the reputation of other former military members so I'm sad to hear it.

<comment><USER11> Sure, I'm not generalizing to all military people, one of the people on the team was also ex military, and I've worked with ex military in the past. This was just a bad hiring decision.

IT's sad that you have to start your own thing-- I would have switched over to people management quite awhile ago if I could. I effectively did it here because nobody respected or listened to the official boss. So I had to lead without authority... I'm totally ready for that role.

The problem is, in my experience, companies are looking for MBAs or business people to lead engineers, not engineers. Too often anyway.

No problem with drinks, we did like to drink outside of work. Just did't like him interrupting us in our work screaming at us to start drinking. (And the "don't be a pussy drink more" attitude was not compatible with the culture.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Much of what keeps programmer salaries from going up as fast as they should is that managers know that, even if you're a genuine "10x" or even 100x engineer, you don't _stay_ a 10x-er unless you get interesting projects, which tend to be rare in most companies. Since they control the allocation of interesting work, there's often an implied either/or: you can get interesting work and a cost-of-living bump _or_ you can get a 20% raise.

For some examples: (1) frequent job hops can improve your salary, but they reduce your ability to stick with a long project and become good at anything; (2) if you're looking to make the case for a move into management, you do better to take on an ugly-but-necessary project where you'll delegate most of the work, than to stick with the technically interesting stuff and get a reputation of someone who only wants to work on the "fun" stuff; (3) Haskell engineers make about 40% less than Java engineers at the same level of engineering ability. (The difference in medians is only a few percent, but the median Haskell engineer is equivalent to ~95th percentile in Java.) That's because Java engineers can set up multilateral bidding wars every 2 years and get huge pay bumps; in Haskell, that's nearly impossible because it's a small community.

Personally, I tend to go for interesting work. That's because I think, in the long term, it'll play out better for me to have spent my 30s well than to have ratcheted up my salary but not really know anything.

If we want to see engineers paid what they're worth, though, we've got to get political enough that we can actually run companies (let's be honest; 98+ percent of VC-funded startups are run by Guys With Connections Who Therefore Call Shots, not engineers) and take control of the work allocation processes as well.

<comment><USER14> _> frequent job hops can improve your salary, but they reduce your ability to stick with a long project and become good at anything_

This is a major reason why I went into platform engineering and devops. Projects are very accelerated (usually because you end up starting too late, relative to the best time to change a dev team, its culture, and its practices) and you really can learn quickly and get better at a rapid pace. It helps, too, that the state of the art is changing quickly enough that effectively nobody is an expert at everything.

 _> Java engineers can set up multilateral bidding wars every 2 years and get huge pay bumps_

...and this is the other reason. Best of both worlds, in my view.

<comment><USER13> _This is a major reason why I went into platform engineering and devops._

I can see the appeal of that. It also makes you less exposed to changes in window dressing and to political changes.

 _..and this is the other reason._

Sure, but it's also bad for the world that "market signals" are encouraging engineers to use bad languages for reasons having nothing to do with productivity. We know the real reason why there's so much Java in the software world: middle managers want headcount (they'd rather manage a team of 50 mediocrities than 5 elite engineers doing just enough work) and Java is such a low-productivity language that it forces teams to be big if anything is to be accomplished.

If an engineer who'd be nothing special in the Haskell community can take home $400k per year slinging Java, then what is a half-decent Haskell engineer (who, most likely, makes a lot less than $400k) _really_ worth? $700k? $3 million?

<comment><USER15> Is Haskell really that much more productive for a team? What are some large- scale projects written in it? It may make recruiting harder and take new joiners longer to get up to speed. You may not have easy access to as many libraries. A lot of "PL enthusiast" types would rather show off how clever they are than solve real problems. There are many valid concerns a manager could have that aren't headcount-related.

<comment><USER16> Actually, it makes recruiting easier. The ratio of good people eager for Haskell to Haskell jobs looks pretty favourable to employers.

You are right about some of the other concerns.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Double Standard at H.P. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/business/09nocera.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> I am surprised that the nytimes would run such an obvious hatchet job of an article. I am not saying that they are always honest and truthful and fair, but at least they used to be smart and skilful enough to make their hatchet jobs not that obvious.

<comment><USER3> I'm a little confused. So on the new CEO's watch while at SAP, SAP stole Oracle's IP, for which Oracle is suing SAP for $2 billion. The same board that fired Hurd for some non-sexual hanky panky is ok with hiring a thief? Or the boss of thieves?

How is this a hatchet job?

Don't get me wrong, I have no love for Oracle, at best I'm neutral on them. I'd never want to work there. But at least it is a fairly well run business.

HP, on the other hand, seems to have one of the worst boards in the history of the valley. I just don't see what they are doing as making any sort of sense at all. Pick a thief over someone like VJ who has long time insider cred, well liked by the rank and file, well respected in and out of the company, nah, let's pass on that, we need a crook. Seriously, how can anyone justify choices like this?

Sorry for another rant on this topic, but HP used to be a hugely admired company, it would be nice if it returned to that, but instead it seems to be determined to do one wrong thing after another. Starts at the top and the top is the board.

<comment><USER2> I am not going to give you a detailed answer, because I do not have time to defend multi-millionaires, they can defend themselves. So I will just give you one sentence of the article:

"Over the long term, though, it hoped that TomorrowNow would act as a kind of stalking horse, allowing SAP to persuade its new customers to abandon Oracle entirely and switch to SAP's expensive suite of software applications."

If you don't think that was written by an Oracle shill, then you really need to improve your reading comprehension or are an Oracle shill yourself.

<comment><USER3> As best I can tell, you are reading that article in such a way so as to believe it was heavily slanted in favor of Oracle and you cherry picked one sentence you believe makes your point.

Shrug. I don't really care if the article was pro Oracle or pro HP or pro you. Wasn't my point, and still isn't.

The point I raised was that hiring a CEO that was involved in that mess shows really poor judgement on the part of the HP board, they had internal candidates that were far better choices IMO, and they do this. Another bad decision.

My point was all about the HP board.

And in rereading the article, I suspect that the author shares my point of view. It's not that it is a pro-Oracle point of view, it's a con-HP board point of view. I don't care about Oracle, I grudgingly respect that they wring every dime of profit they can out of whatever they do but I've had friends work there and from what I can tell it's a pretty crummy place to work. I do care about HP. I still have friends who work there and it used to be a fantastic place to work. I was hoping that getting rid of Hurd would be a step towards returning to the HP way and couldn't be more disappointed in what the HP board did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone explain what TomorrowNow was doing that got them sued?

<comment><USER5> [http://andrewscg.wordpress.com/2007/03/22/oracle-sues-sap- an...](http://andrewscg.wordpress.com/2007/03/22/oracle-sues-sap-and- tomorrownow-for-corporate-theft/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "The board chose Léo because he was the best available athlete."

Athlete? Spell-check gone awry, or does "athlete" have some sort of metaphorical usage in corporate management?

<comment><USER7> I've heard it used by strategy consultants to mean someone who is well rounded and performs well in many roles/disciplines, instead of someone with a narrow focus/expertise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> offtopic: why H.P. instead of HP?</comment>


Prison Gothic: The criminal record written on Hong Kong's road signs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@chrisgaul/prison-gothic-the-criminal-record-written-on-hong-kongs-road-signs-c54d655d55b5 <comment><USER2> Wow. Lived there for years, studied Chinese, and never noticed these little variations of thickness / weight / line height.

What a cool peek into the obscure subculture of sign-crafting!

</comment><comment><USER3> There has definitely always been an in-your-face air to signs in Hong Kong, that you just don't find in Shanghai or Tokyo.

This explains a lot. The book must make for a great coffee table book!

</comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of Shuetsutai, a Japanese font that originated from ad-hoc duct tape guidance signs created to guide visitors of Shinjuku station, which is constantly under construction. The signs were made by a security company personnel who was assigned to the area, who got creative with tape and utility knives to improvise these distinctive letter shapes. He eventually got discovered by the graphic design community and ended up doing logos for films, album covers, etc. [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%E4%BF%AE%E6%82%A6%E4%BD%93&t=ffab...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%E4%BF%AE%E6%82%A6%E4%BD%93&t=ffab&iax=images&ia=images)

</comment><comment><USER5> Being hker also do not know

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess Medium has finally started requiring an account: "Keep the story going. Sign up for an extra free read." I can't figure out why people use this site for publishing things.

<comment><USER7> It's simplified: people need the SEO leverage of Medium instead of running your own website and SEO optimization (it takes time). Otherwise I don't see any else advantage of Medium. For the reader, there's an advice is to use reader mode on browsers, but Medium is limiting a few _free_ articles you can read.

<comment><USER8> On iOS the reader view shows pixelated low resolution versions of the images.

<comment><USER9> Those are the thumbnails and you may end up seeing them with a subpar connection. The site lazy-loads the images.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I create for the web - <AUTHOR> http://blog.neave.com/post/64669185529/why-i-create-for-the-web <comment><USER2> A quote from Elon Musk: "The amount of information equality that exists in the world is unbelievable, as a result of the Internet. It's really phenomenal because - if you go back, say, 30 years ago, and say well, the President of the United States probably had the most access to information of any person on Earth but today, if you have access to the Internet, you've got access to more information than the President of the United States had 30 years ago. You have access to all the world's information. You can go on Google and search for any book, any scholarly work. Ya know, Wikipedia's actually pretty damn good. It's like 90% accurate. It's just not clear what 90%. But, it's really incredible what you can learn, and how connected you can be to people all around the world."

<comment><USER3> Other than leaks via Wikileaks etc. i don't have access to a lot of information that the president of the USA had 30 years ago. Most public information on the internet today was also available pre-internet. The main difference is the time needed to access information. Instead of searching for hours or even days it's now minutes. Time effiency increased a lot with the internet.

Because it is now so much faster to get information the question has become: is the info that i want really relevant to me? Otherwise it is still a time waster even though it only takes a minute to look up. Like many people here i tend to be intellectually curious and knowing things gives satisfaction. But increasingly i have come to realize that much is not truely relevant to me. I think that's where the focus should be for future technologies, helping people get small amounts of highly relevant information while respecting their privacy.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if more than you think is actually relevant to you? The old adage is you get data, give it structure and it becomes information. I am thinking that maybe nowadays we need the next level: get information, give it 'structure' and it becomes... What?

I've been thinking about this a lot recently due to an article here on HN about the fact that we are getting lots of 'data' recently in the form of scandalous articles in the media, which shock and dismay us, but are we tying these all together into a larger picture? I don't think so, therefore we end up with the modern day equivalent of shamans - conspiracy theorists. They see the 'data' (or nowadays in its current higher level form _information_ ) and give us 'information' about what it means (sorry, I'm still struggling with what the higher form of information is).

Shamans saw dark clouds on the horizon and said the gods were angry, conspiracy theorists see the NSA spying and say 'illuminati'

Now I've done a fair bit of work on KMSs (knowledge management systems) and that could be one view, structured information becomes knowledge. But I think that that is somehow missing the point. Information+structure+experience+remembrance = knowledge (one way of looking at it IMHO) So I'm searching for an other, different way to think about this issue, because that doesn't quite seem to fit the bill here.

Is the path data>information>knowledge>wisdom ? Or are we missing steps, or even missing completely different paths?

Or is it not even a path, but more of a n-dimensional network that is recursive in time and size?

Maybe this should be the future focus of technologies.

<comment><USER5> Very interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing! Let's try to map it to a somewhat simplified system:

data = many news-websites out there

|

v

information = RSS/Atom News Items of the sites above (basic data structure, highly available today)

|

v

knowledge = ??

|

v

wisdom = ??

... Do you have some ideas floating around how this concrete example could be expanded further?

<comment><USER4> I think you have to shift the graph: what you have under info- rss atom etc, should move up to the data position.

Then what? You could do something simple like keyword grouping - '500 news events including the word "drone"' but I feel that is not enough. Take it further and use semantics to do sentiment analysis maybe? '50 data point talking positively about airbnb today'

But I still think there is something missing. I'm interested in any other thoughts you may have, especially after shifting info-now down to data, what would be 'new' knowledge or wisdom?

<comment><USER5> Okay, my thoughts now are something like this:

data: RSS/Atom stuff

information: do a basic keyword-analysis of the news snippets, maybe with some natural language processing, push it all into a graph database, using meaningful nouns as nodes and verbs as edges. Think of something like DBpedia, but with tiny information pieces and high interconnectedness between. This would be good structured "information", right?

knowledge: define some sophisticated query language / data endpoint, ideally again with some natural language processing, to discover the informations in the graph. the result of such a sophisticated query i'd call 'knowledge'.

wisdom: ?? <\-- no idea yet, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I relate to this. I remember when I first had internet access as a kid, I'd go to GameFAQs and websites about SimCity and Red Alert- and I was so blown away at this amazing access I had to hundreds of internet strangers who were interested in the same things I was interested in.

I immediately felt that I had to own a little piece of that, that I had to create a space for myself and be useful to others the way they were useful to me.

Alway great to be reminded of the incredible opportunity we have, that nobody quite had prior to this. A child with an internet connection having access to more information than the US President did 20-30 years ago. That's really something. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER7> "The web is incredible. I love the web. In so many ways it has improved the lives of millions by transforming society, education, culture, community, and commerce. "

We need to extinguish this kind of enthusiasm. Sure, computers are great, and they have changed the world, but not always for the better. And all this unending praise we give technology can keep us from thinking about technology critically.

I love the web. And I hate the web. I hate surveillance. I hate data mining. I hate advertising. I hate linkbait headlines. I hate youtube comments. Hate hate hate.

<comment><USER8> There are negatives, no doubt, not the least of which is the TPP and its potential ramifications for an open web. But that doesn't deter my enthusiasm in the least for other two-thirds of the world to get online.

I'm sure there's a lot more untapped talent out there, and I'd like to believe the net sum of their innovations will see the positives outweigh the negatives.

<comment><USER7> There is untapped talent out there, but I'm not sure the web can unlock all of it. You don't have a chance to develop your talents when you're going hungry each night. Nor is it easy to be talented under an authoritarian dictatorship. These are problems a website or smartphone app can't fix (though maybe they can help a little). I don't even buy that the web can raise people out of poverty. Seems like it produces more inequality if anything, though that remains to be seen.

What the web can do is educate people (though it's also capable of misinforming them). And it can make life a little more efficient (Shopping online reduces travel time. Google maps reduces time driving around asking for directions). These are modest improvements, and they could unlock some talent. Just not much.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. To clarify, by talent and innovation I didn't just mean the websites that the rest of the world can build. I meant it wrt the empowerment that free MOOC's can provide when it comes to basic education (especially in remote areas where schools are not always existent/affordable) and the possible innovations it could lead to in different sectors outside the realm of software development.

<comment><USER7> Getting an education isn't just a matter of cost. You need free time to take the classes, a quiet place to study, a family that supports you, and often, a teacher that motivates you to be your best. That's why I don't think MOOCs will change anything. They're great for people who are already educated, and have the resources to teach themselves. The rural poor in developing nations have bigger things to worry about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Didn't like the article. I believe using ambiguity of words "web", "create" and "content" he completely mixed up things. Maybe he's right in some or all aspects, but it's too messy to read. At least I feel something's wrong when I read something about hyperlinks, then suddenly seeing a comparison of web to native code (huh?)

<comment><USER10> That made complete sense to me. There's a trend recently of people focusing on native mobile apps instead of websites (see Keith Rabois on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/rabois/status/406519032624320512](https://twitter.com/rabois/status/406519032624320512) "nobody is going to be using the web soon"). I read this article as a reaction to that trend.

<comment><USER9> Thanks. Now, with a context, it made sense.

[Added a bit later] Although, I don't see how "mobile" is much conceptually different from the "web". The only missing part is linking and transferring of mobile app code over the network, on demand, instead of barcode/hyperlink- market-install manual process. But that's because of security model deficiencies on modern mobiles, and I won't be surprised things'll change. Then mobile'll be part of the web - no conflict here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a so called hacker that has grown up with the Web I awe at how software vendors released their software in the past. I mean when you got stuck with xyzy there was no quick Google search that gave you 10 different fixes or workarounds. When the CD-ROM/disc/s was shipped it was shipped. It must have taken ages before the user got the bug fix

</comment><comment><USER12> Except that it's not just 'a link' is it? It's billions of miles of copper, fibre optics, routers, switches, media converters, legal agreements, large buildings, nuclear power stations...

<comment><USER13> Yup.

      > You're able to access this content without the need to
      > log in, enter a password or download an app.

This is only because that app is already on your device. And I am pretty sure the majority of Chrome, Opera of Firefox users _did_ download an app.

<comment><USER14> The point is that you don't need an app specific for that data repository.

There was a time when you needed a different application to connect to each publisher, or each content type. You may be too young to remember that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can relate to this. Very well put.

</comment><comment><USER16> I create for the web, because I have never been good enough to create for the desktop. Thankfully, that's been changing lately -- it's a nice change of pace, and I think desktop programming can learn some things from web programming (and, has been, if you look at elementary OS).

<comment><USER17> > I create for the web, because I have never been good enough to create for > the desktop

Why would being good enough have anything to do with whether you can create for the desktop? If anything, creating for the desktop is _easier_. There are far less languages, technologies, quirks, etc. you need to deal with as a dektop app developer.

<comment> k-mcgrady I agree. I programmed for desktop and mobile before the web. Every time I tried to get started developing for the web I was held back by how many different things I needed to learn just to get started (html, css, js, ruby, rails, how servers work and how I get my site onto one, how to setup a local server for development). I use these things to build a web app which could be built on the desktop/mobile using one language.</comment></comment></comment>


Portable Ubuntu 8.10 - An Ubuntuist's perfect stocking filler - <AUTHOR> http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=292 <comment><AUTHOR> Well I'm not a huge Ubuntu fan but I run Linux on a pen drive as my (main) personal OS now and couldn't recommend it more.

Anyone else (programmers?) use a portable USB OS? How long before this is the norm?

<comment><USER2> Isn't that rather slow?

<comment><AUTHOR> Umm kinda depends.

If you have 1001 apps open (especially ones that hammer the filesystem) then yes.

Mine I use for programming & email so I have maybe 10 apps open maximum and it runs perfectly fine.

Saving is a little slow but not hugely noticeable :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is talking about "portable" as in "carry it around with you", i.e. thumb drives.

Not running Ubuntu on PowerPC.

:(

</comment><comment><USER4> Can't you easily make this yourself? Does anyone know of a good tutorial for doing this?</comment>


Tutorial: Theorem Proving in Lean - <AUTHOR> https://leanprover.github.io/tutorial/index.html

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I am one of the maintainers of the web tutorial.

Thanks for posting this!

This tutorial is being used as a textbook for the 'Interactive Theorem Proving' course at Carnegie Mellon University ([http://leanprover.github.io/cmu-15815-s15](http://leanprover.github.io/cmu-15815-s15)). It's mainly written by Prof. Jeremy Avigad (CMU) and Leonardo de Moura (MSR), with help of many contributors. While the course is listed as a graduate-level course, I think the tutorial is kindly written and readable for one who has basic understanding in logic and wants to learn more about interactive theorem proving. In fact, we do have undergraduate students in the class taking this course for credits as well.

The tutorial is (and will be) including the following topics:

       - dependent data types
       - type theory as a proof language
       - inductive data types
       - declarative vs. tactic-based proof style
       - classical vs. constructive logic
       - encodings of structures and type classes
       - elaboration and unification algorithms
       - homotopy type theory
       - ...

The course is based on a new open-source theorem prover, Lean ([http://leanprover.github.io](http://leanprover.github.io)), developed at Microsoft Research.

We've tried hard to make the tutorial on 'Interactive Theorem Proving' really _interactive_. It contains many examples and exercises, and we provide an environment where you can load, modify, and execute code blocks. Technically, we use emscripten to compile C++ code into JavaScript. As a result, everything is running on a web-browser without a server-side help.

PDF version of the tutorial is also available: [https://leanprover.github.io/tutorial/tutorial.pdf](https://leanprover.github.io/tutorial/tutorial.pdf)

The tutorial is still in-progress and your contributions are welcome. We host the repository at [https://github.com/leanprover/tutorial](https://github.com/leanprover/tutorial) . Please feel free to open an issue or make a pull request if you find typos or have suggestions.

<comment><USER3> I've only read a couple of pages of the tutorial over my lunch break but it reads well, looking forward to finding some time to dig through the rest of it.</comment></comment>


Best programming language(s) for blockchain software technologies? - <AUTHOR> Given that technologies based on C/C++ are vulnerable to security exploits, should future blockchain software be written primarily in JVM-based languages? <comment><USER2> JVM is pretty memory-hungry, which isn't ideal for a lot of blockchain application that require significant in-memory state.

The two most popular languages for blockchain applications these days seem to be Go and Rust.</comment>


Firm which developed Iowa caucas app received payment from Buttigieg campaign - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1224561674679488513 <comment><USER2> The amusement never stops. If this is true, then what wild accusations will follow this?</comment>


Why Sweden has so few road deaths - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/economist-explains-16 <comment><USER2> "That's interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either" \--Milton Friedman

<comment><USER3> Wow, that just goes to show how ignorant Milton Friedman is...

<comment><USER4> The data mostly backs up Friedman's quip. So where's the ignorance exactly?

[http://www.cato.org/blog/swedens-big-welfare-state- superior-...](http://www.cato.org/blog/swedens-big-welfare-state-superior- americas-medium-welfare-state-then-why-do-swedes-america)

"The 4.4 million or so Americans with Swedish origins are considerably richer than average Americans, as are other immigrant groups from Scandinavia. If Americans with Swedish ancestry were to form their own country, their per capita GDP would be $56,900, more than $10,000 above the income of the average American. This is also far above Swedish GDP per capita, at $36,600. Swedes living in the USA are thus approximately 53 per cent more wealthy than Swedes (excluding immigrants) in their native country (OECD, 2009; US Census database). It should be noted that those Swedes who migrated to the USA, predominately in the nineteenth century, were anything but the elite. Rather, it was often those escaping poverty and famine. …A Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman, 'In Scandinavia, we have no poverty'. Milton Friedman replied, 'That's interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either'. Indeed, the poverty rate for Americans with Swedish ancestry is only 6.7 per cent: half the US average (US Census)."

<comment><USER5> 6.7% of people in poverty is not "no poverty".

<comment><USER6> Especially considering the conditions that qualify as "no poverty" by the U.S.'s rather low standard. If you make $20k and live in a trailer park in Idaho with no medical coverage, you're not in poverty according to the US, but your quality of life is lower than that of a rural Swede.

Sweden also has considerable inequality, but the lower bound on basic infrastructure is better. If you live in a rural area in the far north and make barely any money, you still generally have solid permanent housing and access to high-quality medical care (this wasn't always the case, but has mostly been achieved as a result of concerted effort). You may have nearly no light in the winter, but there's not much the state can do about the latitude.

<comment><USER7> > You may have nearly no light in the winter, but there's not much the state > can do about the latitude

Electricity? This is one of the first places I'd look for technology to improve things.

<comment><USER8> Parent meant no sunlight, not no electricity!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> tl;dr

Sweden has 3 road deaths per 100,000 capita while Eurozone has 5.5 and USA 11. This is because Sweden build their roads with safety first (Lower speed limits, better physical seperation of pedestrians and care).

But ... Deaths per capita is a broad statistic. What about broken down by urban and non urban areas? Pedestrian v cycle v motorised deaths. In the end what is the null value for deaths per capita comparisons? Is 3/100,000 and 5.5 actually statistically significant?

As for the comments on thread that say "yet another swedes do it all better than us article" \- well In my view scandanavian and Dutch politics all have a much less emotional more "strict mother" approach to many political debates - road safety is just one such. And we know better decisions about hard subjects are made with emotion safely caged.

<comment><USER10> Deaths per road mile would be a more interesting statistic.

<comment><USER11> From: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic- re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic- related_death_rate)

Deaths per terameter driven.

        Sweden 3.2
        Norway 3.5
        UK 3.6
        ....
        USA 8.5
        ....
        UAE 310

<comment><USER10> The data for deaths by US state is non-uniform:

 _State Traffic Deaths (Per 100,000 Population)

________________

Wyoming 27.48

Mississippi 21.58

Arkansas 19.27

Montana 19.07

Alabama 18.01

Oklahoma 17.76

Kentucky 17.49

South Carolina 17.47_

Wheras as in highly urbanized states:

___________________________

 _California 7.27

Illinois 7.22

Washington 6.79

New Jersey 6.32

Rhode Island 6.27

New York 6.19

Massachusetts 4.79_

[http://vehicle-fatalities.findthedata.org/](http://vehicle- fatalities.findthedata.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There was a Planet Money podcast episode[1] which mentions that Americans are far less likely to wear a seatbelt, at least compared to Germans but also probably Scandinavian countries as well.

According to Wikipedia[2], the US is definitely worse than Sweden, Germany, and Norway in terms of seat belt usage. But at least it's better than Italy, Greece, and the Czech Republic.

I suspect this is a big factor in road deaths.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-435-why- buying-a-car-is-so-awful)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_use_rates_by_country](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_use_rates_by_country)

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting that the comments on the article make some good points, including that the UK has about the same / a better deaths per capita than Sweden, despite it being the exact opposite type of road environment

[edit: clarified wording some]

<comment><USER14> I don't think you want to see per capita, you want to see per driver-mile.

<comment><USER15> > I don't think you want to see per capita, you want to see per driver-mile.

Not necessarily. Having e.g. a functional mass transit system that allows people to drive less is a perfectly valid way to reduce traffic fatalities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain how the 2+1 lanes work and how they would reduce road deaths?

<comment><AUTHOR> You may (and physically can) only overtake when there are two lanes going in your direction. The road alternates every couple of km between 1 and 2 lanes in each direction.

<comment> jack-r-abbit I had the same question as the parent comment. Perhaps I still don't understand. Doesn't that just create a bottleneck every couple of km? It seems to me that around here one of the biggest causes of traffic appears to be when ever there is a lane reduction.

<comment><USER17> I think the theory is that the middle lane is _only_ used for overtaking slower-moving cars. Perhaps the Swedes, like the Germans, practice good lane discipline and stick to the right until they need to overtake.

I think this 2+1 wouldn't work in the US because (in my experience) very few people use the lanes correctly and they just distribute themselves evenly across all lanes, regardless of speed. That strategy does, indeed, lead to bottlenecks when the number of lanes reduces.

<comment><USER5> Here in Australia, 2+1 roads aren't very long - they're usually just long enough for a few cars to overtake a slowpoke, then a few kilometers further on you'll get another chance. You can't really cruise double-abreast on these roads, as they're not long enough for that.

Similarly you can't really bottleneck because the only input is a single-lane road - they're not long enough to add anything more than trivial traffic in rural areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> minor thing about their speed-bumps..apparently they're trying out things like [http://www.edeva.se/index.php/actibump/](http://www.edeva.se/index.php/actibump/)

</comment><comment><USER19> They make no mention of much better driver training; higher-quality and routinely inspected automobiles; less traffic; and cultural values that probably play a huge role.

*Edited Typo

<comment><USER20> Wikipedia says Swedish drivers can't get a fully-privileged license until they're 20 or 21. Compare that to the U.S. where in many states a 16 year old who took a single practical driving test is considered fully qualified. I wonder how much of a difference that makes.

<comment><USER21> I think back to myself at 16 and cringe at the thought of me being allowed to drive a car...

<comment><USER22> The very first time I drove alone after getting my license, I was backing out of my parents' driveway and managed to put huge scrapes in _three_ cars because I didn't have a strong enough understanding of how the world worked in reverse.

Because all three cars were ours, and it occurred on our property, there were no tickets, no police activity, no DMV penalties, nothing -- if my parents hadn't been strict (and thank GOD they were), I could've just kept driving.

I also cringe at the thought of that happening, because I, like a lot of 16 year olds, was really stupid.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Programmers education and journey  - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN:
I'm just wondering and want to ask about your education wheres you have a CS degree or a self tough, tell us about what makes you at the level you are now, what books you have read (books inside programming and outside).
I'm talking about the best developers that work at Facebook, Google, ..... what is the common thing between those people.
Do you know Math/ Algorithms very well, what kind of Math and books you recommend from the ground up.
And what are advices you recommend form a self-tough and passionate developer.
I want to hear your journey <comment><USER2> [http://www.sunnsandvacation.com/seychelles-holiday- packages....](http://www.sunnsandvacation.com/seychelles-holiday-packages.php)</comment>


IOS 6 requires user permission before accessing contacts and photos - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/14/apple-requires-user-permission-before-apps-can-access-personal-data-in-ios-6/

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, there's no way to differentiate between an app using the address book locally and an app uploading the address book to its servers. Both actions require the same permission.

It would be really cool if Apple provided some new "sandboxed" UI elements for displaying contact names and photos locally without allowing general programmatic access to that data, and thereby not requiring a permission. E.g. "Show sandboxed contact image for local contact with email address firstname.lastname@example.com, or default image if none."</comment>


Does Free Software Restore Dignity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/228987/does_free_software_restore_dignity.html

<comment><USER2> I was pleasantly surprised to see PcWorld not treat Linux like dirt. The Pcworld I know (may not be connected) is a UK crappy computer shop, now merged with Currys. At one point I said I had a Mac, they told me how to get the mac address of a Windows computer (in a way a non-technical person wouldn't be able to do).

</comment><comment><USER3> I want to be this guy when I grow up.</comment>


In which the author's faith in humanity is restored by Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://goodside.posterous.com/post-the-first-in-which-the-authors-faith-in

<comment><USER2> You could look at it another way and derive an opposite conclusion. A lot of people have a feeling that what they do on Hacker News "matters" in that other people are watching their behavior, and might choose to hire them or co-found with them on the basis of their participation. So a self-interested individual would check their behavior here, instead of indulging.

<comment><USER3> Hacker News "works" because it's all a big job interview. The job in question is being someone PG thinks is cool. That's the glue that holds this community together and keeps people in line.

<comment><USER4> "Hacker News "works" because it's all a big job interview. The job in question is being someone PG thinks is cool. "

I have to confess I find this a very strange way of thinking. I respect PG immensely, but I don't care if he thinks I am not "cool" and I am fairly sure he doesn't anyway. And that's perfectly fine -- _I_ don't think I am cool why should he?

Do you really believe that most people here are trying to get PG's stamp of approval somehow? I suspect not.

<comment><USER5> What brandnewlow describes was definitely and obviously true in the very-early days of HN (then Startup News), like from its public opening in Feb '07 until the next couple funding cycle deadlines. At that time the readership consisted very heavily of YC-hopefuls, and the site was low-volume enough that any given comment had a very good chance of being read by PG. But HN has grown a lot since then, I get much less impression that this dynamic still holds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> /circlejerk (it begins....)

<comment><AUTHOR> Alternative headline: "Hacker News on Hacker News: Hacker News is great!"

Yes, it occurred to me that this might get voted up for the wrong reasons. And, yes, that's probably what's happening now, and I dutifully feel like a karma whore. I thought about it overnight, and that didn't feel like a good reason to censor myself in general. If you disagree, perhaps downvote here as a counterbalance.

<comment><USER7> Many anthropologists believe great cultures begin to fail when they forget what made them great in the first place. It might be a little far-fetched to call hacker news a culture in and of itself but there is no doubt the site has its own specific personality. By the same rule I don't see the harm in you pointing out what makes the site's personality appealing. In fact I think it does a service and that it reminds us all what makes the site great in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This doesn't happen as often as it used to. So good to see it now and again :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> What I like about that mentioned Times article is nothing about religion, atheism or another child abuse related news item, but as an example of the way rich and famous people have the power to do things that ordinary people cannot, but currently rarely do so outside certain 'approved' ways.

It's much more interesting to me to see two people consider doing something unusual like that, than do something more ordinary like fund a school library or join a museum board, or do something like buy a sportscar.

Whether they can or cannot do it, or if it's right or wrong to do so, that they thought "we have a problem with this ex-head of state and world spanning organisation and we don't need to wait for another head of state to act, we might be able to do something about it ourselves" stands out to me.

Does that sort of thing happen a lot, or is it a fairly modern development? I can't think of many other examples.

Edit: May not quite apply - update: [http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/you_cant_trust_a_...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/you_cant_trust_a_murdoch_paper.php)

</comment><comment><USER10> I see gleams of humanity every so often. Cases like this also show decency and civility even in the face of semi-anonymity.

However, just go ahead and go to walmart for an hour to see what the average person is. We're the outliers and exemplars of thought... And there is plenty of ways to go down.

I just hope easy access to knowledge makes everyone smarter.

<comment><USER11> > We're the outliers and exemplars of thought

I don't really think so; one of the reasons I often speak out against articles like that appearing here is that most of us are perfectly capable of getting into nasty arguments on the internet. Perhaps more so than average people who might just walk away rather than getting upset that "someone is wrong on the internet!".

<comment><USER12> >most of us are perfectly capable of getting into nasty arguments on the internet. Perhaps more so than average people

I agree, and I think that's what TheAmazingIdiot means by outliers. The intelligent thinkers that frequent HN have such a command and understanding of some topics that they would feel compelled to provide, er, 'helpful input', but not when the consequences of doing so might be more destructive than constructive. I may be wrong, but I think such people are outliers.</comment></comment></comment>


GCC vs. LLVM Clang Compiler Performance on AMD Threadripper 2990WX Benchmarks - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=2990wx-clang-gcc&num=1 <comment><USER2> The article is about the performance of the code generated by Clang/GCC, not the compile time one gets using them. For those interested in compile time scaling with number of cores, below are results from testing I did on Windows 10 with latest Chrome sources: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/99ckjv/threadripper_29...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/99ckjv/threadripper_2990wx_compilation_performance_with/)</comment>


Deadlines keep you ALIVE - a blog post - <AUTHOR> http://kanebennett.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/deadlines-keep-you-alive/

<comment><USER2> I wish it was as easy as that. Real deadlines work because there is some external factor taking place. For example, you get fired by your boss if you don't put that important report on his desk by tomorrow. Or you'll be embarrassed if you don't keep the delivery deadline you've promised to a client.

When you're setting deadlines that only you know of, there is no possibility of getting "punished" so it's much easier to procrastinate. If it works for you, cool, but I know it doesn't work for me and most likely it doesn't work for the majority of people.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's actually a name for what you're trying to describe in this post. It's called Parkinson's Law (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinsons_Law>), and it states that "work expands to fill the time available."

I'm not sure if you're trying to be self deprecating with that "overly simplified graph" line. Either way, I wouldn't panic about it too much. Kathy Sierra wrote some of the best user experience writing on the internet using diagrams that were just as simplistic.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to hear any thoughts or opinions on this post, and on my blog in general!

</comment><comment><USER4> Without deadlines, I don't think, I would get anything done.</comment>


Not the post (Josh Susser) wanted to write - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/2009/4/29/not-the-post

<comment><USER2> tptacek: Warning! Do not read this! Bad for your blood pressure. ;)

To everyone who still wants to read about that whole Ruby conference brouhaha: This is a nicely written apology for something that is almost certainly not this guy's fault. He apologizes anyway. Elegant and gracious.

<comment><USER3> You know, I never would have, except that I wanted to find out what the lowest-ranked pg comment here was (it's -11, BTW) and then I decided to find my lowest-ranked comment, but accidentally got the searchyc query of everybody besides me who had ever used "tptacek" in a post, and found this comment, and now my blood pressure is spiking and it's all your fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I still don't understand how this is being interpreted as a reflection on the community itself and not just seen as bush-league presentation skills by the company in question. (Not a Ruby developer. I thought the presentation was lame, but I've seen a lot of lame Powerpoints.)

<comment><USER5> Because the bush-league presentation was done by a member of the "Rails Activist" team, which I can only presume is their outreach and evangelism arm.

Guilt by association, but then that's this whole issue in a nutshell.</comment></comment>


Medical guidelines don't include a diet low in carbohydrates - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/opinion/sunday/before-you-spend-26000-on-weight-loss-surgery-do-this.html <comment><USER2> Whether or not you believe in low/no carbs for everyday health, it is uniquely horrifying that the Diabetes association is promoting a high carb diet.

Having recently made changes to my own eating, which still includes carbs but at a much less extreme amount, I'm amazed at the differences. I don't have diabetes and the doctors say my blood sugar control is very good, but the energy differences I feel before and after eating high carb food is insane.

Diet soda, although technically not containing carbs, prompts a similar insulin response to drinking sugared soda- the result is a blood sugar drop and a loss of energy that makes me want to eat and do nothing; not the best for weight loss.

I would like to see more attention given to what insulin really does: prompt your body to store blood sugar as fat. No wonder filling our bodies with sugar and then using insulin to 'remove' it is a bad idea.

<comment><USER3> > Diet soda, although technically not containing carbs, prompts a similar > insulin response to drinking sugared soda

Is there any scientific basis for this claim?

<comment><USER4> I get annoyed when people stop a discussion dead in its tracks by asking for references like this, especially when they can easily look it up themselves if they actually cared about the answer rather than winning.

If you think about it, any molecule that isn't sugar but tastes like sugar will have a similar molecular shape to sugar. Hmmmm I wonder if this will fit into receptors in other places in the body, not just on the tongue. Maybe it will affect gut bacteria. Maybe even trigger other events within our bodies.

If we would stop and think with an open mind, many of these arguments would become discussions, and we wouldn't need to play the baby card by asking for proof.

Remember how long it took to finally get enough proof in order to show others how wrong our mainstream religions are? And even with all the evidence we have accumulated, still people say, "show me the proof. I'm a reasonable man." Bullshit.

Let's not fall into this trap again. Many of these questions can be answered without slow, hard science. We don't need to hit everything with the biggest hammer in our toolbox before we can move forward.

<comment><USER5> > If you think about it, any molecule that isn't sugar but tastes like sugar > will have a similar molecular shape to sugar.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and propose that you may not be a professional medicinal chemist.

Many theories conveniently support your position. Of course, many theories conveniently support the other side. How can we objectively determine who is right?

Well, let's look at (among many, many other experimental studies) [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25786106](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25786106) which is a recent study of metabolic differences between self-reported aspartame sensitive and non-sensitive individuals. Double-blind, randomised crossover study -- the gold standard. Any differences in metabolic profile between either control/aspartame or sensitive/not? None seen.

However, perhaps all non-nutritive sweeteners are not alike. The same senior author as above ran a separate study in a small sample of athletic males where aspartame in addition to carbohydrates resulted in lower insulin response during exercise: [https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-9...](https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-9-36)

Meanwhile, and in a different (grossly obese, NNS-naive) population, sucralose (Stevia) appeared to do the opposite: [http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/30/dc...](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/30/dc12-2221)

> Many of these questions can be answered without slow, hard science

Sure, if we don't care whether the answers are credible.

Proof by analogy is fraud. If we didn't need evidence to make decisions we wouldn't bother accumulating it.

<comment><USER6> > sucralose (Stevia)

s/Stevia/Splenda/ (stevia is entirely different from sucralose).

<comment><USER5> Oh wow I fucked that one up. Thank you for correcting it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Low carb is like magic for my health, fitness, and mental acuity. Reasons it's hard for me to stay on the bandwagon (1) it's more expensive to eat only meat, vegetables, eggs and fats v.s. eating stuff together with bread, rice etc. (2) Eating lots of vegetables means more fussy cooking of them (3) Carbs are nice 'comfort food' for when you're stressed.

<comment><USER8> It really doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition though. Have you tried sticking mainly to low GI carbs, e.g., sweet potatoes, whole grain breads, etc? It takes a lot longer to digest these foods and, as a result, you get a smooth energy release instead of a huge insulin spike.

I've been into fitness, mostly around powerlifting and contact sports, for most of my life. Your body needs carbs; the problem is typically the form in which we consume them.

<comment><USER9> This paper [1] shows that the glycemic index is not necessarily a reliable indicator for an individual's insulin response

[1]: [http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2016/09/06/ajcn.116....](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2016/09/06/ajcn.116.137208.abstract)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thank the "low-fat/fat-free" craze for that.

Associating dietary fat with body fat has been one of the worse mistakes in "nutrition" in the past decades.

Now most "low-fat" food has added carbs to deal with the loss of consistency. And even regular foods (especially in the US) have added sugar.

<comment><USER11> The sugar free/carb free Atkins diet of the 90s and its modern versions isn't any better.

Pretty much any diet which is free of anything should be avoided.

<comment><USER12> I strongly disagree with this:

> Pretty much any diet which is free of anything should be avoided.

For the couple of years, I've been trying various elimination diets so that I can see what effects particular foods and food groups have on me. Even if I had ended up with exactly the same diet, it would have been worth doing, as I learned a lot about my body and my relationship with food.

As it happens, though, I want to keep some pretty big changes. After doing my 3rd Whole30 [1], a paleo-esque 30-day elimination diet, I'm just finishing a week where I returned to eating refined carbohydrates. My conclusion: as much as I enjoy those foods, they make me feel terrible. My mood and energy were much less even. They put big demands on my self control, and make me prone to binging. I sleep less well. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to spend a few months without refined carbohydrates again (sugar, flour, juices). I'll probably drop dairy again too.

I don't know that I'd recommend my particular choices for anybody else, but I strongly encourage curious people to experiment with elimination diets. If nothing else you get the sort of exercise in self-control that religious people get from Lent, which I think is valuable on its own. But I learned a ton along the way, and wish I had done this years ago.

[1] [http://whole30.com/](http://whole30.com/)

<comment><USER11> Good for you, want to try it without a link to a commercial diet?

<comment><USER12> It started out non-commercial, and all their recommendations are available on their site. I've never given them any money, and you are welcome to do the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been on a low carb diet since June. I've lost 30 pounds and my high blood pressure is now gone (I read 97/63 last week).

My glucose went from 134 mg/do to 96 in 2 months. A1C from 6.5% to 5.5%. Now normal again.

If you've been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes you should try a very low carb diet before anything else. It really seems to work.

<comment><USER14> > If you've been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes you should try a very low carb > diet before anything else.

What do you mean by "very low"?

One year ago I lowered carbs, with a target of a maximum of 40% of daily calories from carbs. Results: 120 pounds lost, A1C from 8.1% (on Metformin and Actos) to 5.2% (no Actos, Metformin dose cut in half, and would not be surprised if my doctor suggests cutting it further when I see him next week).

Averages for this year so far: 2050 calories/day, 174g carbs/day (45g of which is added sugars), 112g protein/day. So that's an average of about 34% of calories from carbs (9% from added sugars), 22% from protein, and so 44% from fat.

Does this count as low carb?

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't say that 174g is low carb.

On Keto, for example, low carb is < 40g, but ideally < 20g per day. The macros, while different for everyone, are more like 75% fat, 20% protein, 5% carbs.

Your personal macros will be dependent on your exercise levels, BMI, and calorie intake though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a good image to describe high low carb high fat diet works. For the critics, it shows that it does indeed work (also) because of pshycological effects and it doesn't go against the idea that less calories is important to weight loss. But it represents how LCHF diet achieves it better than any diet.

For the supporters, this list all the headlines of the science involved if you want to dig it further.

[http://bjjcaveman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/How-Low- Car...](http://bjjcaveman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/How-Low-Carb-Diets- Actually-Work.png)

</comment><comment><USER17> I have been doing Keto for 3 months and lost 20kg without any exercise at all.

<comment><USER18> That's good, but don't make it sound like 3 months of Ketosis is "easier" than a full and strict exercise routine. That's an extraordinarily hard diet to follow.

<comment><USER19> Says who? I did very strict Paleo and didn't find it that difficult.

Remember the saying "abs are made in the kitchen". Working out is fine and good, but if you don't control your diet first you won't get anywhere.

<comment><USER18> If by "keto" we're talking about "ketogenic diet" that's means the body has fundamentally changed its metabolism away from using glucose and instead uses ketones for energy. That's what ketosis actually is. Getting to this state and maintaining it is far harder than, say, paleo or mere "low carb".

I don't have anything against any diet, just saying that ketosis isn't necessarily an easy alternative, it is an extreme practice. Most folks can do just fine with a bit of moderation in eating and regular exercise over the long-term (by long-term, I mean forever).

<comment><USER20>
      instead uses ketones for energy

Mostly free fatty acids, actually; also ketone bodies.

Some organs _require_ glucose, which can be made from protein via gluconeogenesis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I decided to start lifting heavy shit... everyday. When I say heavy shit, I mean getting close to the max I can lift in one lift, each day I dedicate to that lift.

I've tired no-carb days, lifting on fasts, lifting on protein heavy mornings, etc... and it comes down to carbs being mental energy for me wanting to lift heavy. If I don't have carbs, I feel less energetic, and less willing to continue my lifting regimen for that day.

Eat a lot of carbs when you want to accomplish a lot of shit... physically.

<comment><USER22> Carbs are very popular in the lifting community. And for good reason. Ultimately, one needs ATP in order to exert movements and the ATP generated from carb sources is the most efficient for anything physically intensive. Protein has to go through gluconeogensis to get converted to carbs and lipids require double the oxygen to be converted to ATP.

I think the religion of food would be much better understood if food was approached as workloads. CPU bound, memory bound, IO bound, etc. But in general, carbs for physical activity and fats for mental activity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been at or near ketosis levels of low carb since around 2013; I used it to get over a fourteen-year eating disorder (anorexia->bulimia->BED->freedom). If I had infinite money/time, I'd love to run trials on its effects on impulse suppression completely separate from weight loss. There are some interesting parallels between it and the off-label uses of anti-epileptics.

It's been fun watching the sea change towards acceptance of it. When I first started, most people I encountered were weirdly confrontational about it, but now it's pretty pedestrian. Granted, I had a now-embarrassing proselytizing phase at the beginning and quickly learned to keep my mouth shut unless asked.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been on a low carb diet for a couple of months now. Went a tad stricter 3 weeks ago and am currently 11kg down.

My bodyfat drastically reduced, my belly disappeared and I am feeling a lot healthier. Problem are the more expensive meat-heavy meals that go so far that I just don't enjoy or want to eat anymore - and of course very easy degeneration of muscle mass if you're not careful.

Nevertheless, I'm loving it. I wish I tried this earlier instead of a half- assed diet. I won't be doing it forever but to fast chop down on some body fat, it's amazing.

<comment><USER25> Many cheess make good alternatives to meat - cheddar, feta, mozzarella, paneer to name a few

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> While the article is about diabetes, it's been my understanding that the low fat diet thing was a response to an epidemic of heart disease.

I recently eliminated a number of things from my diet: Butter, my daily cheese sandwiches with mayo, processed meats, and pretty much all restaurant and vending machine food. I went from 175 to 150 pounds in six months, and have felt no urge to put it back on. I eat more lean meat, and have found alternatives for my lunches that are good enough.

The change in fat intake doesn't explain my weight loss. I simply eat less food overall because those ingredients were what made it tasty. I won't pretend that I enjoy eating as much as I did. On the other hand, I'm a good cook, and I like vegetables, so I'm far from miserable.

All these things support the fact that diet is not just a biochemical problem, but a psychological and social one. Doctors know that sending someone home with a diet is going to kill them, because the diet won't happen. The people whose conditions improve on a diet are only the people who manage to follow the diet. So instead they load us up with statins, or prescribe surgery.

<comment><USER27> Cutting out most or all processed foods is a great start.

There are plenty of nourishing high-fat foods that you can eat, and that are good for you. This includes eggs, avocados, salmon and mackerel, macadamia nuts etc [1]

 _> All these things support the fact that diet is not just a biochemical problem, but a psychological and social one._

Yes. Decades of experience has shown that "dieting" doesn't work, and it often results in people gaining weight (after losing weight temporarily). [2]

It's better to make permanent lifestyle changes that result in long-term weight loss and increased fitness, even if it takes a few years. I assume this is what you've actually done.

If you change what you eat, and the way you eat it, then you don't have to "cut down" on food -- which is how most people understand dieting. It's really easy to over-eat doughnuts but quite hard to over-eat on salad and veggies....

[1] [https://authoritynutrition.com/10-super-healthy-high-fat- foo...](https://authoritynutrition.com/10-super-healthy-high-fat-foods/)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser- weigh...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight- loss.html)

<comment><USER26> Thanks. That's pretty much what I've done. When I was younger, I ate better, in no small part thanks to my mom getting into healthy cooking when I was a kid, and teaching me to cook. Then I gradually got into some bad habits over the years. When I had a wake up call regarding my cardio condition, it wasn't particularly painful to mend my ways. It helped a lot that I had neither an education problem nor a culture problem to overcome.

<comment><USER27> Being able to cook -- or being willing to learn -- is a big advantage. People who eat fast food all the time are usually going to end up in a bad way.

Dieting is usually bad because people have a goal (they want to weigh X pounds).

The key thing is to change the system, not to have a goal.

Scott Adams has written a whole book (which I haven't read) and some blog posts about this, but there's a potted summary:

Why you should focus on habits and systems, not goals

[https://crew.co/backstage/blog/habits-and-systems-not- goals](https://crew.co/backstage/blog/habits-and-systems-not-goals)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I found Lyle McDonald's "The Ketogenic Diet" really helpful in explaining why low-carb diets work. It's also a great starting point for your own research into these diets (with lots of great references).

</comment><comment><USER29> "This" being a low-carb diet. Even NYT stoops to click-baity headlines these days; what is the world coming to.

<comment><USER30> if the content of the article is valid then getting the most people to read it seems like a good objective.

If Clickbait helps, why not?

<comment><USER31> Because a headline is meant to let the reader decide if it's worth reading. The newspaper doesn't get to make that call via. trickery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Or if you really need surgery get it done for about a third of that price at a hospital that's probably done more than any other.[1]

[1] [http://medicaltravelsite.com/blog/gastric-banding-at- yanhee-...](http://medicaltravelsite.com/blog/gastric-banding-at-yanhee- hospital/)

</comment><comment><USER33> I laugh to myself whenever I see weight loss articles like this.

Just Eat Less! Worked for me*

Shameless plug

My Weight Loss Story 40kg in 40 Weeks (90lb in 9 months) Without Exercise

[http://40in40book.com](http://40in40book.com)

The book is more for motivational reading of my story.

*DISCLAIMER: The information and opinions set out in this publication are provided only to convey the author's personal experiences and opinions for information purposes only and are not intended to constitute medical advice, guidance or recommendations as to the reader's actions or omissions. Disclaimer truncated for brevity of comment. The rest of the disclaimer is available here: [http://40in40book.com/disclaimer](http://40in40book.com/disclaimer)

</comment><comment><USER34> Enough with this dumb Paleo stupidity. Sure you lose weight temporarily. But its not sustainable and greatly reduces your chances of... being alive. Whole- foods plant-based - I know its boring, but there are decades of science behind it. Eat your greens.

<comment><USER35> The biggest dietary change involved for Paleo is eliminating heavily-processed high-carb foods: bread, pasta, donuts, pizza, candy. This is a major nutritional improvement for everybody.

The high-fat aspect just helps people stick with it by making them feel full and also allowing them to indulge.

<comment><USER36> Paleo is macro-nutrient agnostic. Eliminating heavily processed foods, yes, but no need to sneak in the "high-carb" part. That heavily processed foods are commonly high carb (the examples you give) is not central to the principle. Yams would be a completely natural, non-processed high-carb whole food. As are potatoes. The high-fat aspect is not to help with satiation (protein does that better), it's just the reality of many un-processed or minimally processed whole foods, especially of animal origin but also nuts for example.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: EMP – Open Source Encrypted Messaging - <AUTHOR> http://emp.jar.st/

<comment><USER2> Seems to be requiring a password to enter.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry up now...</comment></comment>


Please publicly disavow Tom Perkins at your earliest convenience - <AUTHOR> http://istommydrunk.svbtle.com/please-publicly-disavow-tom-perkins-at-your-earliest-convenience

<comment><USER2> I'd love to disavow Perkins, but I'm a filthy proletarian.</comment>


Foxconn Will Replace Workers With 1 Million Robots in 3 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/foxconn-will-replace-workers-with-1-million-robots-in-3-years/242810/

<comment><USER2> Previous submissions of this story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2827861>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2827882> <\- This one has the comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2830614>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831344>

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is riddled with typos and grammar errors. What is wrong with the Atlantic?</comment>


Collection of beautiful free HTML templates - <AUTHOR> http://mashup-template.com/ <comment><USER2> Actually, it's pretty good</comment>


How to Disprove Quantum Immortality (Without Risking Your Life) - <AUTHOR> https://vankessel.io/disproving-quantum-immortality <comment><USER2> The link to [http://qrng.anu.edu.au/index.php](http://qrng.anu.edu.au/index.php) is interesting</comment>


Movable walls - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/04/13.html <comment><USER2> I designed an office for Crabel Capital in Milwaukee - a whole floor mainly for the programmers. We started with prefabricated modular movable walls, but they ended up costing 4x + more than framed walls with gyp board. We ended up using framed walls. (The tax advantage couldn't come close to closing that big of a gap.)

<comment><AUTHOR> _'... I designed an office for Crabel Capital in Milwaukee - a whole floor mainly for the programmers ... We ended up using framed walls ...'_

Glad someone takes these things into account. Not enough thought goes into developer workspaces apart from the fact that Demarco [0], Spolsky [1] and Graham [2] talk about relationship between superior workspaces and improved product.

The evidence is there but as soon as it comes to forking out the dollars there are excuses everywhere why it costs so much.

Reference

[0] Demarco, Lister, 'Peopleware, Part 2, The Office Environment, 0-932633-43-9'

<http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom- DeMarco/dp/0932633439>

[1] Joel Spolsky, "google search on 'the office'"

<http://www.google.com/search?q=joel+spolsky+the+office>

[2] Paul Graham, "Great Hackers, The Final Frontier"

<http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>

<comment><USER2> (The office was finished early this year)

Here are some of the ideas I was working with specifically for making developer work spaces (This space is for a very fast growing but financially mature business - not a cash-strapped startup. My primary advice for a startup office space: buy DOORS for desks!. You can get doors at home depot for desks - hollow core nice wood without the door handles drilled out for just over $10 apiece. Put the doors on top of file cabinets, and voila, you have a nice looking desk at very low cost that can last for years if you like.):

From the hackers perspective:

+Each space had to have natural light and views, but be closable for privacy. The point here is to allow for staring into the distance when the subconscious is cranking on an idea, allow the space to be closed during moments of extreme focus, and to have the doors be a sign to others which mode the person is in at the time.

+Each space had to allow for a small conference of 2-3 people for easy and impromptu discussions.

+Each space had to have a lot of attention to detail and materials to make the spaces feel personal.

+There had to be a space for larger meeting outside of the formal business conference room. I turned the lunch-room into one of the key design spaces and put whiteboards all along one wall with data ports for easy discussions and to make having lunch more fun. (The company provides free lunch every day)

+The developer area had to be acoustically protected from the back office area, the customer relations area and the accounting area to avoid concentration disruptions.

+The space was in a classic old building with exposed wood beams and ceilings, so we used a raised floor system (with no sign to the user that it's raised) to have all the heating/cooling provided from the floor and allow for easy addition and movement of data and power ports.

+The server room was treated as a "jewel" with wall to wall glass for people (especially hackers) to appreciate the racks of technology at their fingertips. (Also, the servers had multiple power back up systems including generators, a fire suppression system that would not damage the equipment in case it was used, and its own cooling system to run at ideal temperatures with a lot of extra rack space to allow for easy growth.)

From Management's Perspective:

+The space had to be flexible to allow for reconfiguration and potentially moving out to another space in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> very cool ideas here ~ must take some time to think about them.

' _buy DOORS for desks_ '

the old cheapscate amazon office ~ <http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/01/early- amazon-door-desks.html>

<comment><USER2> Nice link :) I guess my "door desk" is one step above Amazon as the filing cabinets look better (I use black ones that just happen to be exactly desk height) and don't cause injury on leg impact. They do cost more depending on how nice your file cabinets are. The alternative to filing cabinets are bolt on adjustable metal legs designed to hold doors - they cost about $15 apiece and look pretty good. <http://www.closet- masters.com/Table_legs/Camar/slim_legs.asp>

Another great door holder (maybe the best) is a bookshelf from office depot: [http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id;=718201&Nr;=200000&N;=201641&An;=browse](http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=718201&Nr=200000&N=201641&An=browse)

A good option: filing cabinet or shelves one side, legs the other.

I actually got the idea in 1989 when I was working for Paul Rudolph Architect in NYC. He was doing major high-rises all over SE Asia at the time and billing at $360+ per hour (staff of 7) but still worked on his door. He had designed a simple steel support structure that tilted the door for better drafting - analog drafting believe it or not. That was 1 year before I went from pencil drafting to Cad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> this is why I like popping over to JOS every once in a while. Inane detail on things related to startups that you never think you need to read. Of course until you are faced with the problem.</comment>


Write in serial, not parallel.  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seliger.com/2009/08/23/one-person-one-proposal-dont-split-grant-writing-tasks

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that this post is in part a response to this HN thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=779812></comment>