Elon Musk: Visionary or Rent-Seeker? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-02-28/elon-musk-visionary-or-rent-seeker <comment><USER2> When I interviewed with Tesla, before the technical phone screen, there was an HR phone screen that consisted, mostly, of an HR person trying to sell me on the company with statements like "we don't pay as well as Google or Facebook, but you'll learn so much more because you'll be part of a small team".

I wasn't convinced that I should take a below market salary so that someone who was (at the time) worth almost $10B could make another billion.

Musk is a visionary, in a number of ways. He has an impressive ability to come up with great ideas, and an impressive ability extract rents from people much poorer than he is, whether that's the average tax payer or the average Tesla employee.

<comment><USER3> Something similar happened to me with SpaceX. I went through all the technical interviews and had a chat with Elon. He convinced me in about three minutes that he and SpaceX were the real deal (this was in 2007). Later, HR said I'd have to take a substantial pay cut (didn't say how much), would I be interested? It became a second behavioral interview where I was being tested on whether I would be a loyal employee for low pay because space is awesome.

<comment><USER4> Or because lots of people want to work on space, so you were facing competition from others who would take a salary cut.

<comment><USER5> Lots of people may want to "work on space", but many (most) can't. This isn't unskilled labor we are talking about here.

<comment><USER6> Honest question: of the folks who have the necessary skills, aren't many of them working in low-paying academic jobs?

From the outside, it seems like moving to SpaceX would give them an opportunity to put ideas into practice while making more money than the average post-doc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> However you may view him, I highly doubt Musk was in the room lobbying for programs that provide government funding to his companies when lawmakers decided to fund these programs. These programs are the product of popular will wanting to move towards green energy and cut funding on space exploration. Musk just happened to be the guy who was in the right place at the right time to take advantage of such programs, and do it better than anyone else (cough...Fisker Automotive). Maybe rent opportunist would be a better word than rent seeker.

Aside from that discussion, it's hard to really argue that Musk's technology isn't disruptive and he's not a brilliant innovator. His super charger network is enabling electric vehicles in a way the major automakers could never imagine, and he did it for pennies compared to the financial resources the major automakers have. SpaceX is doing the same thing.

<comment><USER8> _Musk heeded the advice. On March 8, he appeared at a hearing before Pitts's committee, which oversees spending, at the Capitol in Austin. Oliveira and a SpaceX lobbyist appeared with him.

"Any support Texas can offer would be helpful," Musk said at the hearing. While Texas was the leading candidate, "We are absolutely looking at other locations."_

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-12/states-competing- fo...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-12/states-competing-for-spacex- by-offering-financial-breaks.html)

He was clearly out there playing states against each other when looking at launch sites for SpaceX. Though to be fair, it feels like every big company in America is doing something like this when they want to expand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like a bit of unfair muck-raking. I take his point about federal loans/investment, but as far as I know Musk still thinks tax credits to promote alternative energy are a good idea. When he stops receiving those and then claims they were a bad idea, maybe I'll believe you more. Until then, as far as I can tell he is just ingeniously taking advantage of the numerous government programs to promote good commercial behavior to enable these technologies that might never come about otherwise. that's not rent-seeking, it's smart, and it only lowers the risk of a still very risky enterprise (or three of them).

The bottom line is that what Musk is doing has the potential for massive benefits, and we will all be the beneficiaries of this. as long as how he gets there is within the spirit of the rules, i'll give him a pass.

<comment> lhc- I would tend to agree. I mean, the point of those government programs is to encourage private investment in clean energy technology. I would say that Musk is basically the prime example of what the programs are designed to support. I would be willing to tolerate some amount of rent-seeking behavior if its in the interest of funding exactly the research we want funded anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I tuned out of this article as soon as I saw the name "Craig Pirrong." I've heard about him before in the financial sector - kind of a scummy, academic- for-hire. The kind of guy who gets really mad when you ask him about his paid consulting positions and whether it might affect his objectivity.

[http://blog.themistrading.com/the-best-research-money-can- bu...](http://blog.themistrading.com/the-best-research-money-can-buy/)

[http://blog.themistrading.com/the-profane-professor-who- love...](http://blog.themistrading.com/the-profane-professor-who-loves-the- hft/)

Anyway - reading anything in Bloomberg about "rent-seeking" or monopolies is the definition of irony IMHO. Always the other guys taking advantage, right?

<comment><USER11> Bloomberg's research, news, and opinion columns do not always slavishly toe the mothership's line.

When the parent is that large and diverse I imagine just expressing an opinion has a high chance of hypocrisy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why is it hypocritical to recieve federal investment, only to decide it isn't for you, after which you pay them back? And why is it hypocritical to have the government as your main client for an entirely different company (SpaceX)?

Barry Ritholtz (the author of the piece) is also the author of Bailout Nation, a book about the financial crisis that I really enjoyed reading. To project his feelings about investment bankers on Elon Musk is taking it one step too far, in my opinion. Calling him hypocritical for criticizing the government while receiving tax breaks? If that's the case, the vast majority of people living in any free country are hypocritical, too.

<comment><USER13> _Why is it hypocritical to recieve federal investment, only to decide it isn 't for you_

The article seems to be suggesting Musk decided government loans to promote alternative energy was a bad idea in general, not that it was just a bad idea for Tesla to take such a loan. The article doesn't say whether he's made any actual statement to that effect though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can't it be both? The guy has an impressive depth to him. He worked on a payment system _and_ space exploration. Produced a movie and brought to market electric cars people actually like.

What's a little rent-seeking on the side?

<comment><USER15> I would argue Apple after Steve Jobs's death is more of a rent seeker then Tesla with Elon Musk.

You don't hear anything but lawsuits from Apple these days and no innovation at all.

At least Musk is still pushing the envelope.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure I'd class the first 64bit mobile phone + OS (months ahead of any competition) as "no innovation".

<comment><USER17> It's evolution and not revolution. They aren't bringing new amazing tech, they are improving the tech they have already.

<comment><USER18> So which did not exist before Musk, electric cars of rockets?

<comment><USER15> Are you saying there were no phones with a touch screen before apple?

There's a difference between doing thing and doing things right and going the extra mile and putting in the effort to polish it up making it use friendly and developer friendly by having good documentation.

Electric car existed before Tesla but nowhere as good as the Tesla, rockets existed before SpaceX but they were extremely expensive and mostly funded by taxpayer money touch screen phone existed before Apple but they were awful.

So what's your point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article (or rather the one it references) makes the argument that:

> "...almost all of Musk's companies rely in some form on government subsidies > or tax breaks."

Wouldn't that also be true of many (if not most) US companies, given our rather labyrinthine tax code?

<comment><USER20> You don't even need to look at tax code. Just consider the fact that many people who work for places like Walmart also get Food Stamps and Medicaid. Many US corporations would not be be profitable (or at least structured the same way) were it not for the government footing the bill at some point along the chain.

<comment><USER5> "many people who work for places like Walmart also get Food Stamps and Medicaid."

How does this benefit Walmart? If Walmart did hire those people would they magically not need government assistance? This has to be one of silliest criticisms of Walmart around. Food stamps, Medicaid, and other government assistance program are not subsidies to employers.

<comment><USER21> Sure they are, in an indirect way. This doesn't mean that I want to eliminate food aid and medical care for poorer folks, but it does mean that Wal*Mart doesn't have to pay these folks enough to live on. Perhaps if we can raise the federal minimum wage, we'll be able to cut back some of these programs and get the companies benefiting from these employees' work to compensate them fairly for it.

<comment><USER22> A few serious questions.

What's your theory on why those employees are not being compensated fairly for their labor? What is preventing them from taking other higher paying jobs that better reward their talents? If their labor is being significantly undervalued, it implies they should be able to seek better employment.

What is fair compensation for those jobs? What decides that? Who decides that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure this author even gets to the point of showing, by his own definition, that Musk is a rent-seeker.

He establishes a broad definition of "rent-seeking" early in the article as this:

 _...income from government-enforced monopolies, such as patents, copyrights or government projects..._

Then he details how some of Musk's businesses have benefited from the government, but fails to actually establish how any of those benefits translate into a "government-enforced monopoly".

<comment><USER4> Emitting cars don't normally pay anything to emit pollution, but with the zero-emmissions subsidy, they do. But the author treats zev credits as something that just comes out of nowhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why couldn't you be both visionary AND rent-seeker? I mean, isn't that the whole point of capitalism?

<comment><USER25> I don't think rent seeking is the "point in capitalism", but a side effect. You never hear proponents argue that capitalism is good _because_ of rent seeking, though usually the same people actively exploit it in this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Past a certain level of ambition--e.g. when you want to redefine transportation, energy production or interplanetary colonization--you cannot avoid mingling with governments. Doing so on friendly terms, and if possible gathering a bit of cash on your way, is the sane way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm against all sorts of taxes and tax breaks. It works both ways, though.

While some may call me hypocritical for accepting a write-off that I oppose, at the same time I pay the taxes that I disagree with. This makes me (and Musk) law abiding.

The government has loans for certain types of activity. He took the loans because they were the lowest cost for the capital. It is possible to take those loans and be against them at the same time.

The real problem is that the government is giving out loans that are practically unsecured, usually to connected individuals. Musk actually has a car company producing cars. Yes, he could have sought private financing, but the government underbid that financing and he took government loans. It's hardly rent seeking.

</comment><comment><USER28> Public money is not always socialism. Tax payers are customers and investors. Majority rules and the majority in California want to invest in companies that help towards the goal of clean energy and air. The minority can grumble about socialism and the superiority of private capital, but they hurt their case when they also advocate the abolition of the EPA and the clean air and water act. The voters of California have rejected their arguments. Elon Musk is an amazing person and the people of California do well to support his efforts.

</comment><comment><USER7> I should maybe add to this discussion...why is it Musk's fault for taking advantage of money the government offered him?

That's like getting mad at the person your significant other cheated on you with, instead of getting mad at the person who cheated.

The government should be the one at fault here if people are unhappy about the money Musk is making off of them, they are the ones who chose to pay him.

</comment><comment><USER29> If true, the notion that Musk suddenly started whistling an anti-government loan in energy efficiency shortly after paying back his own loans... well, I'd say it's at least a chink in his visionary armor, if nothing else.

Doesn't make him a monster, but, like most men of vast wealth, at least somewhat of a hypocrite.

</comment><comment><USER11> The government wishes to spur innovation in certain directions because it feels investment in those areas is lacking - presumably based on analysis of potential benefit of successful development in that area (eg. alternative energy, electric cars, commercial space travel). The incumbents in those sectors do not act to meet these perceived gaps. An upstart outsider comes in with aim of disrupting those industries.

This feels like incentive programs are doing exactly what they're designed for. Author should spend a couple of minutes investigating economic concepts of externalities as justification for taxation and subsidies.

The comment re. hypocrisy of opposing something a grant program you were a recipient of is a different matter from rent seeking, and yes without context (which I do not have) it sounds pretty bad form.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why does it have to be either/or? Musk is pushing technology to new heights ... has anyone else managed to create a profitable private space company?

If the government is too incompetent to supply the space station that they own (part of) and they can hire someone to do it, why shouldn't they? And I'll bet the taxpayers would pay more if NASA had built the same program!

I'm not saying Tesla and SunCity aren't reliant on subsidies, but why can't you complain about other electric cars and hybrids as well ... the government subsidies are an attempt to help the environment right?

So I finished the article and decided it's a hate-piece. There's not enough logic to let their conclusions hold up even if the facts are true.

</comment><comment><USER31> Half of the argument in the parent article is a shoddy attempt to make it appear Musk's sole intent for business with a city in Texas is to squeeze money from the poor inhabitants. This is ludicrous.

Also where is the source for Musk stating loans are bad?

</comment><comment><USER32> "Rent-seeking" is specifically a scheme to get rich without creating wealth. Mr. Musk is a huge beneficiary of low-interest federal loans and government- support programs, but at least he's actually creating wealth.

</comment><comment><USER33> Surprise, surprise! A successful businessman seizes opportunities and is a tough negotiator. Were some of you expecting Space-X and Tesla to function as a non-profit?

</comment><comment><USER34> > But is TSLA another Google, or just another DoubleClick? DCLK zoomed from $2 > to $200 without ever showing a profit, something Tesla has yet to do with > its cars. It then famously crashed.

From the linked Forbes article. How does this comparison even begin to make sense? Comparing a car manufacturer to two ad companies?

EDIT: Checked the publication date on that Forbes article, May 2013. So trying to support a thesis about via an article now a year out of date.

</comment><comment><USER35> Muck-raking for sure.

Using SpaceX as an example of "rent-seeking" because they won a government contract and are doing things 100x cheaper than NASA?

There's a big difference between taking people's money, and being the chosen one when money is being offered.

His strategy is called "risk mitigation". Every entrepreneur and successful innovator needs it and kudos to Musk for being great at it.

</comment><comment><USER36> this is so absurd. Musk chose the most difficult industries, and both SpaceX and Telsa were 5 minutes away from bankruptcy in 2008. and yet he is "rent- seeker". if that where the case he would have gone for traditional corrupt industries, such as big oil.

</comment><comment><USER37> Or?</comment>


What job/innovations will you involve in at this economy declining season - <AUTHOR> https://news.ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html <comment><USER2> How can you reach to this paper? Do you think the zinc sulphate give a better result a lone or with combination of methotrxate?</comment>


Emacs for developers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pierre-lecocq/emacs4developers

<comment><USER2> This is a pretty good overview of how to extend Emacs for your own individual situation.</comment>


New Mac OS X malware disables Apple's malware protection - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/new-mac-os-x-malware-disables-apples-malware-protection/9665 <comment><USER2> This is HN. Can we skip the blogspam and link directly to F-Secure? There is nothing of value in the blog post.

Actual content:

<http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002256.html>

It's important to note that this is a trojan virus, which means the user must download and run it. It would be far more significant if this were a drive-by attack.

One interesting item I noticed in the information about the trojan itself is this bit:

===QUOTE===

On installation, the installer first checks if the following file is found in the system:

* /Library/Little Snitch/lsd

Little Snitch is a firewall program for Mac OS X. If the program is found, the installer will skip the rest of its routine and proceed to delete itself.

===QUOTE===

So if you're running Little Snitch, this trojan deletes itself. Effective.

<comment><USER3> That's interesting. I love Little Snitch; there's no parallel in the Linux world, sadly, and I miss it when I'm configuring outbound firewall rules on my Arch box.

However, I think the trojan is giving up a little easily. Little Snitch has a checkbox titled "Prevent Rule Editing" which is unchecked by default, which implies that a process with the same privileges as the logged in user can create its own "allow" rule through a little bit of AppleScript (or whatever else).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Original Source:

<http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002256.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> This requires the user to download the malware and install it - the only way this happens is if people are stupid enough to install Flash Player from somewhere other than Adobe.com

<comment><USER6> Something like this would probably never infect any of us but I know quite a few people who will install anything from anywhere.</comment></comment>


IE's big leap forward; CSS3 selectors fully supported - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/06/ies_big_leap_fo.html <comment><USER3> I tried to tell people this was coming. It was clear to me listening to Dean talk about IE9. He was, for the first time, strongly hinting at the fact that users would want to use IE not because of features, but because it ran the web the best.

I think MS made a smart call. They saw that the standards web was taking over. They couldn't stop it. So how do you sell Windows licenses in this new world? Be the best platform for the standards web. So now they're throwing all their eggs in this basket. It's the right move and I look forward to a new world when people actually say, "Use IE... no, seriously, use IE".

<comment><USER4> While I applaud IE team for doing an amazing job in recent time, I can't help but point out the fact that their motivation for making IE more compliant has to do with selling more of their products and perhaps had little to do with making the best product. And they did it only after they realized that they are loosing browser market share by large number in a very short period of time.

I am not suggesting that mozilla/Opera/Chrome developers don't care about money; but making the best browser for them was not a reactionary motivation to their low browser market share. At least for Opera, they have been right up there, or as long as I can remember, as the most standard compatible browser. Yet their browser market share never went above 1% (statcounter). And they are still making it better, recently developed the fastest JS engine.

My point being. I can't trust a company/developer who is reactionary to the market share and their profit line as opposed to doing their job good in the first place. AFAI am concerned, as long as I have the choice, I will never use IE.

<comment><USER3> The motivation for all of these companies is money, except maybe Mozilla Foundation, being non-profit. It's just that many times your interests are aligned with different things.

For example, Opera makes its money from the browser. Plain and simple they need to sell their browser. And really they have no other product.

Google is a very different story. Let me give you an example, do you think Google would ever release a version of Chrome that allowed you to block all advertising? Even if that was the best user experience possible, they want to sell you ads. There plan to do it is to make the rest of the experience so good that you stay on the web and click ads. But they won't do anything, regardless of how beneficial to the user, where there's a reasonable possibility that they'd drastically reduce their profit.

I personally don't buy the whole "good company" "bad company" thing. But I do look for companies whose profit is aligned with my interest. That changes over time (both my interests and the company's), but I simple don't have this belief that some companies are "gooder". That died with my belief in Santa Claus.

<comment><USER5> Footnote

*The Mozilla Foundation is essentially funded by Google. Yes it could be any other tech company but for now it's Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _sigh_ \- why oh why can't they support Windows XP? 80% of the customers using our web application are still on Windows XP (some even on NT4...) and seing how conservative these companies are, I have my doubts that they'll _ever_ upgrade.

Now if we could have a working IE without hardware acceleration that runs under XP, that would be wonderful.

I do have some hopes for Google Chrome Frame's MSI installer though - <USER2> support a barcode scanner, we already have to force our users to install Java, so there's at least some hope with GCF.

As it stands now, 20% of our development time is wasted on making stuff work on IE 5.5 (!) and 6

<comment><USER7> _why oh why can't they support Windows XP?_

Why should they? New features and updates only available to newer operating systems, drive upgrades! Makes perfect sense to me, especially considering XP support won't be around forever.

 _As it stands now, 20% of our development time is wasted on making stuff work on IE 5.5 (!) and 6_

I'm not following... If it's a waste of time, why are you doing it? Drop support for those browsers in that case. Unless, of course, customers using those browsers make up a significant percentage of use, it doesn't sound like much of a waste to me.

<comment><USER8> _XP support won't be around forever._

You're not kidding.

Windows 7 SP1 is currently in beta. Once it ships, you will no longer be able to downgrade Win 7 to XP, which is going to make it extremely difficult to legally buy a new XP license.

<comment><USER9> Why won't you be able to downgrade? Afaik, there's no technical reason (and my day job is working on said SP)

<comment><USER6> He was talking about converting a 7 or Vista license into an XP one which is AFAIK the only way how you can still acquire an xp license if you are not a hardware manufacturer needing it for a netbook

<comment><USER5> I can't imagine the legacy hardware/software hell that would require a downgrade from Windows 7 (soon to be SP1) to XP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good job Microsoft!

MS needs all the moral support and encouragement it can get. Really, we should treat MS like a recovering addict who declines a free hit and goes to bed early. They're doing their best and they're improving.

Well done!

<comment><USER11> Except that in this instance the "substance" craved is money. Microsoft actively neglected to support standards until it started to affect the bottom line. Pretending that they were clueless to how difficult they've made web design and development is foolish. If there were any epiphanies they were had while staring at a balance sheet.

<comment><USER12> better late than never.. It came too late, but it definitely does not look like too little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As an Opera fan boy, this article hurts my soul a little.

But good job for Microsoft (finally), perhaps it will motivate my boys in Norway to step it up.

Now if they would just couple it with an aggressive upgrade program, we'd really be in business. Lack of XP support certainly doesn't help.

</comment><comment><USER14> Working as a web developer in the education sector, this gives me a great deal cautious hope for the future. About 90% of our visitors use IE because they are students in the classroom.

</comment><comment><USER15> First Canvas and now CSS3. In the world created by my dreams, all of this is done to standards, with good performance.

In reality, experience has taught me that they could easily destroy these standards by doing it their own way. Only if there is finally a reconciliation to full standards (or little deviance like other browsers), would these press releases even be worth it.

If they "implement" canvas and CSS3, and basically the new web, and we still have to go "that's a great idea, but does it work in IE?" they have still failed.

 _Crosses fingers_ Here's to hope!

</comment><comment><USER16> "Another golden oldie that got dropped is cursor: hand, the MS proprietary alternative to cursor: pointer"

I hate that no matter what it's called. For God's sake, don't use the hyperlink cursor for buttons!

<comment><USER17> Why? From a UI perspective I find it more natural to use "cursor: pointer" on anything that is clickable.

<comment><USER11> The difference is that "cursor: pointer" means (by default) that the target will initiate navigation away from the current page. All other elements follow OS conventions as a matter of presenting a common UI grammar to the user.

<comment><USER16> In my (unresearched) opinion, cursor:pointer was created to indicate that a hyperlink can be clicked on. Buttons were obvious, but underlined words in the middle of a paragraph, not so much.

It irritates me when people learn a concept and then illogically apply it to other domains. That's why I'm making a fuss, it seems like everybody is not using their brains and saying "EVERYTHING you click must use the hand because links do!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone knows if it supports flexible-box model?</comment>


Open Sourcing Mantis - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/open-sourcing-mantis-a-platform-for-building-cost-effective-realtime-operations-focused-5b8ff387813a <comment><USER2> Not cool to use the name of an existing open source project: [https://www.mantisbt.org/](https://www.mantisbt.org/)</comment>


What does a kilowatt hour look like? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kubakuzma.com/2016/09/22/how-does-a-kilowatt-hour-look-like.html <comment><USER2> Given how popular (and damn near impossible to discern) unsafe and unprotected lithium-ion batteries are, the idea of making a homegrown power wall terrifies me in ways I can't even begin to contemplate.

An 18650 battery, if combusted, can produce hydrofluoric acid with just water vapor in the air (or the water in your lungs) if they use lithium hexafluorophosphate as the electrolyte. Hydrofluoric acid can and will cause permanent damage to lung tissue if inhaled, and nasty, nasty chemical burns to exposed skin. 18650 batteries are supposed to have several failsafes to prevent thermal runaway, but counterfeit batteries can lack those failsafes. Not to mention, in some laptop battery packs, the protection was pack-wide, and not in individual cells. Not knowing the chemistry of the cells or the state of the protection circuitry of the battery would make me very nervous. Maybe someone else can provide more detail on how to test them safely.

<comment><USER3> You have to realize that 1kWh is a lot of energy. Imagine being hit (in a world without an atmosphere) by a 60 pound suitcase falling out of an airliner flying at 45,000 feet. Same amount of energy as that battery pack. (Alternatively: the most powerful air conditioner you can buy running full blast for 30 minutes. Incidentally, that battery pack has as much energy as 100mL of gasoline, which is why gasoline-powered cars are so popular.)

When you put a lot of energy in a small space and release at all at once, it's called a bomb. Li ion batteries are small bombs that can be used to power electrical devices.

Some chemistries are safer than others, like A123 cells. The market did not care about safety and they went bankrupt. Energy density is king.

<comment><USER4> Wow, 100 ml of gasoline could propel a suitcase into the stratosphere? That seems so counterintuitive.

<comment><USER5> Only if there is no atmosphere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1 Wh is about 0.9 kilocalories. So 1kWh is about 100g of butter. The energy expenditure of a human in one day is about 2kWh. 1kWh is about the energy needed to heat 10L of water from 0 deg celsius to 100 deg celsius.

<comment><USER7> It actually takes some extra energy to move from ice to water, and also some extra energy from water to steam, so your numbers only work out if you are strictly inside the 0-100C range.

It's interesting to realize thought that we programmers are code producing machines that run on roughly 2kWh per day. If we produce 100 lines of code in a day, that's 20Wh per LOC. Not bad, actually.

<comment><USER8> Water can be 0-100 C, both temperatures included. No need for melting/turning to steam. You could start with 10 L of 0 C ice, but he said water.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > David McCay - Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air

A fantastic book. A Caltech trained physicist at Cambridge does the calculations to see if the UK could get all its energy needs sustainably.

Simple, easy to understand, and enlightening. It deserves the praise they talk about.

And it's free to download.

<comment><USER10> Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air Free from the author's website: [http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html](http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1kWh as gasoline is about 1/10 liter. Though one will not get anywhere near that much high-quality electric energy with consumer/small-scale methods.

<comment><USER12> 1kWh as aluminium is about 66g (assuming 15kWh per kilo manufacturing input) or about 4 drink cans.

<comment><USER13> Wow so I could gather up a bunch of cans and heat my house.

<comment><USER3> The key to batteries is being able to use the stored energy. Bonus points if you can add energy and get it back later.

<comment><USER12> Thermite :p

<comment><USER14> I know it's frowned upon saying this, but damn if I didn't choke on my coffee haha.

Yeah let's not use thermite to heat our houses people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "So, what a kilowatt hour of high-grade electric energy can do for you? Many useful things, i.e.:

deliver 4-5 kWh of low-grade heat (or cold) into your home (depending on COP of a heat pump)"

Huh? I assume he means 0.4 - 0.5 kWh?

<comment> semi-extrinsic Nope. Heat pumps have a COP > 1\. It's quite literally a pump moving heat from a cold place to a warm place. If it takes 1 kWh to pump 3 kWh of heat from outside your house to inside (in winter), you've heated your house by 4 kWh. Note that the electric energy used to drive the pump is transformed into low grade heat, which in this case is useful.

<comment><USER16> Good point! It kinda threw me off too, since heat energy isn't usually measured in kWh. But yeah, heat is a kind of higher-entropy form of energy than electricity, so you can, in fact, turn one unit of the latter to more than one unit of the former.

The "exchange rate" depends on the temperature; the maximum ("Carnot") heat pump efficiency is T_high/(T_high - T_low), where T_high is the temperature of the room being heated and T_low is the surrounding environment the heat is being pumped from (all on the absolute scale).

When T_high = T_low, the max COP is infinity, which has the physical meaning that "You don't need to spend any energy to keep a room the same temperature as its environment; that happens automatically."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance#Der...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance#Derivation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The book recommended here, David MacKay's _Without the Hot Air_ really is remarkable, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in energy, renewables, or nuclear (which MacKay somewhat grudgingly endorses), and the energy-intensity of modern industrial life.

[http://www.withouthotair.com](http://www.withouthotair.com)

MacKay himself, a CalTech-trained physicist, worked at Cambridge. He died about five months ago, noted only modestly at HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11500614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11500614)

[http://itila.blogspot.com/2016/04/index-for- first-23-cancer-...](http://itila.blogspot.com/2016/04/index-for- first-23-cancer-chapters.html)

Of the book, I find a few things particularly illuminating. For starters, it is rather UK-centric, though the concepts are of course generally applicable. Beyond that:

1\. It goes through the major uses of energy in modern life. Getting a feel for the comparative magnitudes is quite useful.

2\. It compares the various options for renewable energy. It turns out that there's a lot less energy in renewables than would be convenient. Wind and Solar are much of the easy stuff.

3\. It mapps out both energy consumption and use _by area_. Realising how many watts per square meter are used and are available is useful.

4\. He really presses the point that solving the energy conundrum requires _large_ changes. Unplugging charging devices won't cut it. Hitting major consumption, especially transport, heating, lighting, and refrigeration, help a lot.

If you're interested in pursuing the issues further, I strongly recommend Vaclav Smil, whose books I've been going through. For a historical view, Smil's _Energy in History_ , and the more recent two-volume book, _Sources of Power_ , by Manfred Weissenbacher, explore how human history has been shaped by access to energy, from gatherer-hunter days, agriculture, coal, oil, and whatever comes next.

Fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER18> > So, what a kilowatt hour of high-grade electric energy can do for you?

According to my car, it lets me drive 4.2 miles at highway speeds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, is it Tesla? Which model is it?

<comment><USER19> As a reference point, a Tesla 85D uses 290 watt-hours to go one EPA rated mile. So 1 kWh takes you 3.448 miles.

<comment><USER20> > one EPA rated mile

Are EPA miles not the same as normal miles?

<comment><USER21> What's a "normal mile" regarding energy consumption?

There is a series of standardized driving profiles that is averaged to get a comparable, somewhat realistic value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What does a Newton-meter of torque feel like?

Reopening a plastic soda bottle.

From a web interactive I wrote: [http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torq...](http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torque) (2014)

<comment><USER23> > _Newton-meter_

I do not know why (and I do not have a strong opinion on this), but somehow this (relatively recent) tradition of naming units after people feels weird to me. I know we are already used to these units, but imagine the unit of mass was called Einstein instead of kilogram.

<comment><USER24> How recent is the trend? Most of the units I know are named for people: Joule, Watt, Volt, Ampere, Newton, Angstrom, Ohm, ...

<comment><USER23> I am sure Newton didn't name the unit of force after himself, so I would roughly place the invention of such possibility around early/mid nineteenth century, that is, about 200 years ago, which is when the research in such areas as electricity and magnetism, thermodynamics etc. was in full swing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not related, but I hate this unit. Can't we just talk about Joules?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not pretty,but it's practical. Especially when it comes to electricity - watts and hours are quite easy to work with.

<comment><USER26> It doesn't make much difference whether you use Watts or Joules, since 1 Watt = 1 Joule per second, so both are just as convenient for electricity: 1 Watt = 1 Volt Amp, so 1 Joule = 1 Volt Amp Second = 1 Volt Coulomb (although amps seems to be more "normal" than coulombs).

It's a bit redundant to multiply power by time, when that's just an energy, but going between Watts and Joules is trivial (by design), so it's not too bad.

However, I can't think of a reason why hours would be easier to work with than seconds (as kiloseconds, if you want the same order of magnitude), especially regarding electricity?

<comment><USER27> It's because power needs are reported as watts, and impactful devices are typically utilized for several hours. It's much easier to do your monthly utilization napkin math in multiples of kilowatt-hours than of 3.6 megajoules.

I'm personally not a fan of the kWh, because it keeps being mistaken for kW, but I recognize that lack of need for a conversion factor help a lot of people make sense of energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Then you compare with the amount of energy in a liter of petrol (~10kW/h). And you realise how we're living literally awash in crazy amounts of energy, equivalent to having all hundreds of slaves working for us 24h a day.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's even more terrifying considering the fact that it took millions of years of to accumulate such amounts of energy in fossil fuels (it's literally sun energy laying underground). Sooner or later, we'll run out of it…

BTW, it's not 10 kW/h, but 10 _kWh_ in a litre of petrol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would have been nice if the article's author had provided a short technical explanation of kilowatt-hour. A kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy, and energy is the time integral of power. It follows that energy in kilowatt-hours is the time integral of power expressed in kilowatts, i.e. one watt for a thousand hours, a thousand watts for one hour, and so forth.

I think that's pretty accessible and could only add to the article's value by answering the question, "What does 'kilowatt-hour' mean?"

</comment><comment><USER30> Less acronyms please. (COP, PV, and even EV)

<comment><USER31> COP: Coefficient of Performance.

PV: Photovoltaic.

EV: Electric Vehicle.

TMDA: Too Many Damn Acronyms (It's a joke I heard at a company that had acronyms for everything).

<comment><USER32> Well, a TLA is a TLA, but an FLA is not an FLA (it is also a TLA)...

<comment><USER31> It depends. Facing each other, when one says "to the right", does he mean to his right or to the interlocutor's right?

Furthermore, Are RFCs TLA? It appears that IANA, an FLA itself, standardized the use of TLAs in an RFC.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5513](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5513)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Riding an electric bike has made me very aware of how much work can be performed with a given amount of power. Watt-hours aren't abstract anymore. 1kWh can get me and my stuff 120km easily if I pedal, probably closer to 80km if I used battery power only. Also instantaneous power, 200W is enough to move my bicycle, me and my stuff at a low cycling speed (15-20km/h) on the flat.

It really puts things in perspective when I look at a 1KW space heater. That's a lot of power!

</comment><comment><USER34> I like his battery haha, colorful. Also nuts to test all those cells. Make sure they're all roughly the same performance. wonder how hard it would be to find a bad cell.

<comment> TD-Linux Probably the most obvious indication would be temperature. Assuming they are in parallel, it'd be quite wise to measure their discharge curves to only select similar cells - that would also highlight any bad ones.

<comment><USER34> Hmm. It did appear that the cells were all oriented in the same direction.

What a great idea I think although I wonder if it's a pain, cutting through that hard, protective plastic that these cells are in for laptop batteries. Unless you buy just the cells themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "deliver 4-5 kWh of low-grade heat (or cold) into your home (depending on COP of a heat pump)"

If you don't use a reverse cycle system you can more like 8 kwh of heat or cold

</comment><comment><USER36> I was just commenting today how approachable this book makes understanding the requirements to transition to renewable energy. I would warn though that the little bit of economics and the discussions about battery storage and solar PV at the end are very dated. The exponential drop in pv prices wasn't anticipated by the author. I think if modern prices were used the 5 models at the end would look very different.

</comment><comment><USER37> If you like this, watch the videos from this guy:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/jehugarcia](https://www.youtube.com/user/jehugarcia)

he methodically tests old 18650 laptop cells, sorts them, builds battery packs and so on. He's converted a classic VW bus to electric power using his home- made battery packs and packs salvaged from wrecked teslas.

<comment><USER38> > wrecked teslas

Wait what? where is this supply at

<comment><USER39> Copart is a good site for buying wrecked cars in various conditions. Otherwise try calling your local junk yards.

[http://www.copart.com/us/search?q=tesla](http://www.copart.com/us/search?q=tesla)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Lithium-ion batteries require an expensive materials and overly complex manufacturing (Gigafactory). They are also dangerous as evidenced by the Samsung Note 7 debacle. Hopefully, there will be advances in making lead-acid and hydrogen fuel cells cheaper and safer. That would allow viable energy storage for solar PVs.

<comment><USER41> Dangerous depending on the chemistry. There are plenty of very low volatility lithium ion cells out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> A single 12V 100Ah VRLA Deep-Cycle battery might be a better idea that's more familiar to a much larger chunk of the population, and you have the added bonus of having enough capacity to make up for the typical conversion/transmission losses in most scenarios, thus delivering a true kilowatt-hour!

</comment><comment><USER43> Batteries have different discharge curves, influenced by many factors such as chemistry, age, etc. Often "packs" of cells are balanced in an attempt to minimize variance. Something tells me your 10kW "wall" may not perform as you expect it to (providing you are actually loading it for real use).

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it's not as simple as "connecting 10k batteries together". It's an interesting topic anyways, there are a few guys already doing it with promising results (check HBPowerwall on youtube for instance).

BTW: I haven't even connected these cells together yet - even that is not as simple as it may look like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> If we don't have to move the battery around, why not use cheaper but less compact techs for storage?

</comment><comment><USER45> I've been very curious for a very long time about people doing indoor bike workouts while storing the pedaling energy in batteries. Any of you do such things ?

<comment><USER46> One the one hand, this would be good for people who overeat (more calories than they usually expend). On the other hand, in absolute terms, it is just turning agriculture into a source of power very inefficiently (a methane digester would be much better).

<comment><USER45> Efficiency is not the goal, it's more symbiosis. Humans benefit from "wasting" energy through exercise. Instead of lifting weight and riding bikes, why not try to leverage it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> 1 kWh = 3600 kJ = 95g of lard (or body fat!) = 85g (115 mL) of petrol/gasoline = 1.5 Big Macs = 40% of an average male's daily energy intake = ...

</comment><comment> ninja-wannabe-7 1/33.7 of an exceptionally privileged imperial gallon of petrol, according to US regulators.

</comment><comment><USER48> What.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I fixed the title. I'm not an English native, so I make a lot of errors like this :-).

<comment><USER48> No problem.</comment></comment></comment>


Leaked Files: German Spy Company Helped Bahrain Hack Arab Spring Protesters - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/07/leaked-files-german-spy-company-helped-bahrain-track-arab-spring-protesters/

<comment><USER2> Wow, that was flagged off the frontpage quickly...</comment>


Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://minimaxir.com/2017/06/r-notebooks/ <comment><USER2> The article claims that

> _R Notebooks can only be created and edited in RStudio_

Luckily, this is _wrong_. Since R Notebooks are simply R Markdown, they can be edited with _any_ editor (although the integration is obviously lost). This is, in fact, one of its decisive advantages over Jupyter Notebooks: most of the other issues mentioned in the article are solvable, whereas this issue fundamentally isn't.

<comment><USER3> But the nice interactivity of it is only in RStudio iirc, which is a major selling point.

<comment><USER2> Yep, the RStudio integration is _very_ nice. However, there are other ways of authoring R Notebooks that also allow interactivity, and the only thing that's missing then is having output _inline_ inside the editable document. Apart from that, if you for example use Nvim-R or ESS, you can write R Markdown, execute chunks selectively, and get a visual, interactive representation of the results in real time that way. And once the document is done, a single press of a button will render the resulting Markdown/HTML/PDF document.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's just that RStudio's vim support is so extremely bad, compared to VSCode or even the Jupyter Notebook vim plug-in. I guess this won't bother you if you don't have a developer background, but I find that editing code in RStudio is a real pain.

I wish I could use RStudio with the exact same keybindings and vim behavior as Jupyter in the browser. That alone would make things bearable. Like the exact same keys for cell execution, adding new cells, etc. Call it "Jupyter mode".

<comment><USER5> Hi, Which plugin do you use for Vim binding in Jupyter?

<comment><USER4> [https://github.com/lambdalisue/jupyter-vim- binding](https://github.com/lambdalisue/jupyter-vim-binding)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> RE python in Rmarkdown being limited...

> The Python session ends after the cell executes, making it unhelpful for > tasks other than ad hoc scripts.

This isn't the case anymore thanks to the reticulate library.

[https://blog.rstudio.com/2018/03/26/reticulate-r- interface-t...](https://blog.rstudio.com/2018/03/26/reticulate-r-interface-to- python/)

<comment><USER7> Reticulate was a major improvement in the data science workflow. We now have full interoperability between R, Python, and Julia (or Scala if you're on Spark). The ability to mix languages is really valuable.

<comment><USER8> What would be the equivalent package for Julia?

<comment><USER7> PyCall.jl can call Python from Julia. On the downside, it has a lot of problems and there doesn't seem to be enough dev effort to match.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> R notebooks behave similarly to org-mode, albeit with fewer supported languages and a few less options for controlling execution and value passing between code blocks. Org-mode is the oldest and most powerful environment of this sort that I know of.

That said, for new users, I think R Notebooks are less daunting than Emacs + org-mode.

Like most things associated with RStudio and the Tidyverse, I feel that they've really done their homework. Even if org-mode does more, I feel it's pretty evident that R Notebooks at least made an effort to understand org- mode's prior art.

<comment><USER10> I think it's likely R was inspired more by Mathematica's venerable notebook interface.

<comment><USER2> It was obviously inspired by many different things but the most direct genealogy is WEB [1] → noweb → Sweave → Knitr → R Markdown → R Notebooks.

Mathematica's notebook interface in turn was almost certainly also inspired (directly or indirectly) by WEB, given that this was the first literate programming tool ever created.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A really good article on notebooks is the blog post by Yihui Xie - [https://yihui.name/en/2018/09/notebook- war/](https://yihui.name/en/2018/09/notebook-war/).

</comment><comment><USER12> I've moved to Orgmode Babel for all my notebook needs. Work straight out of emacs, exports to many formats, literate programming, supports dozens of languages.

Previously used R notebooks exclusively for all the benefits author mentioned.

<comment><USER13> [https://github.com/gregsexton/ob-ipython](https://github.com/gregsexton/ob- ipython) is good

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Primary disadvantage of using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks: Writing R instead of numpy / pandas python.

<comment><USER15> R's tidyverse, along with the numerous R packages/documentation developed and tested over a long period of time, are efficient too. Thankful to see both Python and R thrive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Previous discussion from a year ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14522795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14522795) (70 comments)

</comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know why the ipython developers rejected solutions in which version control diffs were readable?

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://atom.io/packages/hydrogen](https://atom.io/packages/hydrogen) \+ git is a decent way to get jupyter interactivity and an easy to apply version control on a plain python file

</comment><comment><USER19> Working in RMarkdown it is super-easy to generate a publishable document from your research. Whereas there is still no good Jupyter—>PDF solution.

<comment><USER20> What's wrong with nbconvert?

<comment><USER19> It's fine if you just want to show something to someone who for whatever reason can't run the notebook themselves, but it's not up to producing a "formal" document. Maybe in a few years it might be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bit of a typo in the title. Original: _Advantages of Using R Notebooks For_ Data Analysis _Instead of Jupyter Notebooks_

</comment><comment><USER22> * You get enjoy a language with incompatible interfaces for every single data structure.

* Write-only language ensures your ideas are difficult to steal

<comment><USER23> Please don't take HN into programming language flamewars. Those are shallow, predictable, and usually nasty.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER22> Then you should delete the submitted article.</comment></comment></comment>


Fitwix – Global Fitness Society - <AUTHOR> https://www.fitwix.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The World's Largest Online Fitness Society

FITWIX is an open fitness platform where fitness professionals around the world can promote their business and offer discounts. Dedicated exclusively to the "Fitness World", Fitwix works as a search engine for gyms, fitness centres, personal trainers, dance schools, fitness models, athletes and any other sports centres, located globally. Fitwix's mission is to help you differentiate in the chaos of Internet information overload.

By providing access to thousands of fitness services, Fitwix creates an amazing opportunity to market your business to an engaged and active consumer base.

Are you a Fitness Professional?

• Personal account in the largest Online Fitness Society • Totally self- customized page • Digital platform to promote your services and offerings • No commission on discount coupons

PROMOTIONAL PERIOD

Are you an Athlete, Fitness Model, Fitness Business Owner or simply trying to get access to Fitness Services & Hotspots near you that suit you best?

Register with FITWIX until October 10th and get a free 6-month subscription!</comment>


Show HN: HereBy = photos nearby - <AUTHOR>

Made an iOS app which lets you share and see photos taken nearby, with radius from a block to 500 miles. It's visual place discovery for beaches, trails, food, events (comedy shows, weddings, games) and news (downed trees, accidents). Hosts, doesn't scrape, and it's not Color: https://herebyapp.co<p>Made in Swift/Obj C and Python back end on a retina iMac. Looking for feedback and bug reports. Thanks! <comment><USER2> where is the link to download ....?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://herebyapp.co](http://herebyapp.co). Apparently HTTPS URLs aren't auto linked on HN?</comment></comment>


Make Life Easier for European Startups: Simpler/Cheaper LLC's - <AUTHOR> http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/04/16/make-life-easier-for-european-startups-simpler-cheaper-limited-liability-companies <comment><USER2> In Italy the situation is _very_ bad (as usually):

\- Just to open an srl company (the name for our limited) 5000 Euros are needed in taxes, notary stuff, and so forth.

\- You need a minimal capital of 10,000 Euros just to start. But with a trick you can just put 25% of it as real money.

\- The process is as complex as you can imagine if you try hard, requires a lot of time, and in no way you can be able to do it without the help of an expert (that you need to pay as well).

That said in Italy is also very hard to get money if you build a company. Banks require a number of absurd guarantees even to give you little money (and if you have this guarantees you don't need the money, usually).

There are a very limited number of VCs, but that's not what people need to start, also if you think VCs are evil in US you should check ours: as you can guess in an environment where funding is so rare they gain a lot of rights on your company.

To add this to the already sad mix, the average italian, regardless of how smart it can be writing code, has the insane feeling that's not possible to just build companies that will succeed without any kind of external help, but just your customers or other companies enjoying your products.

That's why I think my country is full of talented people but it is absolutely unable to develop an IT industry.

<comment><USER3> In Finland, the minimum capital required for a limited company ("osakeyhtiö", Oy for short) is 2500 euros. The registration costs something less than 100 euros, IIRC.

The paperwork is simple enough that it can be filled out with common sense. I've done it myself. The only slightly mysterious bit of protocol was the need to open a bank account in the company's name _before_ the company is actually registered, in order to hold the capital. Luckily the banks and the registration office are well familiar with how this works and can explain the process, so it turned out be quite simple in the end.

Simplifying the process of creating limited companies is probably the easiest way that governments can stimulate startup activity -- there's really no reason to keep it complicated.

<comment><USER2> This sounds a lot better than Italy. Btw in Italy to open the bank account is also needed, but very complex:

\- Create a temp account (/tmp/my-bank.account)

\- Put the capital

\- Open the company (N complex steps)

\- When you are done, go to the bank and rename your temp account into the real one (mv /tmp/my-bank.account /var/company/bank.account)

This sounds like an algorithm, but you can't write shell scripts to do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've observed that a number of Austrian and some German Startups have actually incorporated as UK Limited Companies, which just happen to be headquartered in Austria/Germany. German courts have confirmed that this is fine. FWIW, forming an Austrian GmbH requires €35,000 in starting capital, half of which must be an initial cash deposit, in addition to all the legal/bureaucratic hoops you need to jump through. (It's not clear to me where the other €17,500 come from.)

I'd be interested in people's experience with incorporating in Europe, especially regarding whether it affects international investment, and how much of a problem it is for day-to-day operation if you're a UK Limited Company but not located in the UK.

<comment><USER5> I am italian and I opened a UK Ltd to go around these problems in Italy. But it has been a pain nonetheless.

Opening an Ltd in the UK is cheap as long as you have a location there and you can do it all by yourself. This was not my case.

If you have to rely on another company, like me, costs grow a lot. You have to pay people to do these things, to advise you and to give you a legal location for your company. This cost me a lot to setup and is always a pain to communicate.

So the problem persists, if you are not able of making money to cover your expenses. Now I have relocated to the Netherlands. I don't know what the situation is here, but I know that my Ltd is costing me too much to mantain (paying people that opened my Ltd and then did almost nothing more), so I'm closing it and I will try to convert it in something cheaper here.

I did never seek investments, so I'm not able to relate on that part.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, thank you. Is the presence you need to maintain in the UK essentially a glorified P.O. box, or is there more? What order of magnitude in fees are we talking about (if you don't mind)?

<comment><USER5> I think you need a real location, but I'm not really sure. That is what they are providing to me. You also need two distinct people, one director and one secretary. They are providing me the secretary.

The rates were: 4000 euros for the setup (one year ago), including the place, the secretary and accounting for one year. They took me an appointment with a bank to open a bank account, but I was the one who opened it. For subsequent years they told me it would be around 800 pounds, but now the bill is 3300 pounds (that is nearly the same price I paid the first year). That's why I decided to close it. Their service really sucks.

But if you look on the internet prices really vary and you can find cheaper ones. They try to scare you telling you that if you don't do everything right there might be consequences.

In my opinion the best solution is to go there for some time and do some researches in the city, or at least have someone there. Because if you don't need all these "services" it really a lot cheaper, in the range of the 300-400 euros.

Also, we are speaking about London, not the entire UK. London has special laws regarding this and it's much easier than in the rest of the country.

<comment><USER6> You don't need a real location. There are tons of services on the web where you can use a "virtual" location or the address of the service with the Companies House.

I think lost in all this is regardless how easy it is to create a company in the UK, you still have to deal with European taxes and completely moronic banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a fantastic spreadsheet you can get from the World Bank website DoingBusiness.org:

<http://doingbusiness.org/documents/Simulator_2010.xls>

You can select which countries you want to compare in the first column.

For example, I selected the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy just to compare them.

The US: 4th easiest in the world for ease of doing business. Setting up a business takes 6 procedures, 6 days and 0.7% of per capita income.

UK: 5th easiest in world, 6 procedures, 13 days and 0.7% of per capita income.

Ireland: 7th easiest in world, 7 procedures, 13 days and 0.3% of per capita income.

Germany: 25th easiest in world, 9 procedures, 18 days and 4.7% of per capita income.

France: 31st easiest in world, 5 procedures, 7 days and 0.9% of per capita income.

Spain: 62nd easiest in world, 10 procedures, 47 days and 15.0% of per capita income.

Italy: 78th easiest in world, 6 procedures, 10 days and 17.9% of per capita income.

All these countries except Spain and Italy require no minimum capital.

Btw, I came across this great website in a footnote from a pg essay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting - do they specify anywhere what _kind_ of business? Italy, for instance, has several kinds of companies that are "companies of persons" instead of "companies of capital", which are cheaper and easier to set up... but not very good from various legal points of view.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't specify what type of business in Italy in the spreadsheet, but two more interesting facts from the spreadsheet:

Cost to export a container (US$ per container):

UK(island nation disconnected from mainland Europe, has rail tunnel to France): 1030

Ireland(island nation disconnected from mainland Europe): 1109

Italy(connected to mainland Europe by rail and road): 1231

Bureaucracy in Italy adds more cost to exporting a container than a sea/air voyage does from the UK or Ireland.

If this kind of thing interests you, then perhaps check out Eurostat, the EU body for statistics, or the OECD website etc. I know that here in Ireland a body called the Central Statistics Office maintains that kind of data on Irish business, maybe there is an Italian body that does the same in Italy?

<comment><USER8> Sea transportation is cheaper than by truck.

(But of course, Italy has the option for sea transportation as well, so it's not that)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This isn't so much a "Europe" problem as a country-by-country problem since there's still not a lot of harmony between the European incorporation forms. I'm familiar with incorporation in the US, UK and Germany, and the UK is the easiest of the batch.

This is a good explanation of the German reform for the UG (mini-GmbH):

<http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/mini-gmbh.html>

It's a little more onerous than a US / UK incorporation, but not much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I noted that "Europe" is a bit imprecise, but it is a problem common to many European countries, so rather than list them all, I went with "Europe" plus an asterisk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, in the UK you just send off a few forms and 20GPB to Companies House. [http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/infoAndGuide/companyRegistr...](http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/infoAndGuide/companyRegistration.shtml) In Spain there are more setup costs, and a minimum capital of ~6000EUR IIRC.

<comment><USER11> When we set up in the UK I'm pretty sure we had £100 of authorized share capital, but that we only had £2 of issued shares. So each of the two founders had one £1 share!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sole proprietorship is pretty easy to do in some EU countries. Then again, in might have a different juridic status so an LLC is preferable.

But I wouldn't focus only on how simple/cheap doing an LLC is, we should look at the total cost of it all. For example, what good a cheap initial tax if operating or closing an LLC involves tons of bureaucracy, heavy taxes and a ton of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well; you have to start somewhere, and it's pretty easy to point out, even to people who are not really concerned much with the world of business, that it's absurd to charge so much before a company has even made a cent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here in Portugal you can register a company for 350euro and it only takes 1hour to do it, the downside is that you have to chose your name from a pre- selected list. If you want your own name it will take some more euros to register the name and the process can take a few more days. You then have 5 days to get 5000euros in your bank account, that's the minimum capital required...

<comment><USER14> Do you know what the minimum social security contributions are in Portugal? This has been the biggest issue for me in continental Europe.

<comment><USER13> It's 11%.

<comment><USER14> So if you're a startup and you earn nothing for some time, that would be zero euros then. That would be great because in most countries there is a nominal minimum contribution regardless of how much you actually earn.

<comment><USER13> You can say to Social Security that you wont be earning a salary so that you don't have to pay taxes for some period of time. You really need to say to them that you will not earn a salary because even if your startup doesn't have any revenue, they will still require you to pay the tax...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yes the minimum capital requirements for a limited company are onerous in some European countries, but at least that money is not lost. In my experience the greatest burden on startup finances are minimum social security contributions, which can be as high as 300 euros per month without earning a cent.

The UK and Ireland are without a doubt the best places to incorporate in Europe.</comment>


A Star In a Bottle - <AUTHOR> http://newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/03/140303fa_fact_khatchadourian

<comment><AUTHOR> An audacious plan to create a new energy source could save the planet from catastrophe. But time is running out.</comment>


Demystifying MLsub – The Simple Essence of Algebraic Subtyping - <AUTHOR> https://lptk.github.io/programming/2020/03/26/demystifying-mlsub.html <comment><USER2> While some of the formal notions of type theory can seem daunting, I personally have found it extraordinarily useful in being able to understand the different expressiveness of type systems in programming languages. There are languages that clearly implement say, parametric polymorphism well (ML- style languages) and safely compared to far more ad-hoc approaches, such as C++.

At the same time it's very cool to be able to grasp more advanced type systems (e.g. dependent types) that haven't been popularized yet and imagine how they could lead to radically different methods to software engineering.

I like Benjamin Pierce's Types and Programming Languages book, it's mathematically rigorous but well motivated and structured for CS-oriented readers. It covers everything from pure lambda calculus to mutable objects, Featherweight Java, and type systems with subtyping.

<comment><USER3> _Types and Programming Languages_ is one of the best textbooks I've ever read, even as a non-CS-oriented reader. I was able to start at the very beginning of the book with no solid grasp of the lambda calculus or type theory (or formal CS education), and I worked through the whole thing, implementing many of the different types systems in Rust[0]. TAPL does an excellent job of building on each proceeding chapter and explaining things in a very accessible manner. TAPL actually inspired me to start working on a Standard ML compiler and language server as well. [1]

[0] [https://github.com/lazear/types-and-programming- languages](https://github.com/lazear/types-and-programming-languages) [1] [https://github.com/SomewhatML/sml- analyzer](https://github.com/SomewhatML/sml-analyzer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is quite the gauntlet throw! And to be clear, this corresponds to a published paper by the same author.

I'm still reading this, in MLSub thesis Stephen Dolan argued that all the traditional attempts were mathematically illerate syntax mashing, and one has to get at the core of the semantics first. This paper seems to be saying all the math Stephen Dolan did was self-important overkill, at least in hindsight.

Very odd that the new algorithm has been studied empirically but doesn't have a proof. Whether or not it is actually correct, the theory implications are fascinating and need further study.

<comment><USER5> "This paper seems to be saying all the math Stephen Dolan did was self- important overkill, at least in hindsight."

It shows that you can implement algorithms that give the same results as MLsub without following the algebra so closely, but those algorithms were still designed with MLsub as a reference. It would be difficult to just stumble on a system like Simple-sub without that guidance.

And Dolan's emphasis on the algebra of types still provides a guiding perspective for future work. If you want to add subtyping to a language with a more sophisticated type system, or add new features to a language that already has subtyping -- even if the existing subtyping system was written using MLsub or Simple-sub as a starting point -- you should probably take a long hard look at it from an algebraic point of view to make sure they interact the way you want, rather than call it a day after finding the simplest way to add the feature while still yielding a type lattice.

<comment><USER4> Yes I am a huge believer in the algebraic view.

That's true even for implementations; I want to see the general ideas implemented as libraries so the implementation isn't an monolith mashing up ideas from various of many papers, but a composition of libraries.

Yes, there is a lot of rich stuff in the MLSub thesis which is hard to follow, but the functional perl approach here I also find confusing so there is no attempt to distill the essence of what's going on.

Towards the bottom of the accompanying paper (my PDF viewer lags less than my browser!) there is a little bit of theory discussion, but I would like to see more. It would be very good if someone could take some of the tricks here and present them more abstractly.

<comment><USER6> > the functional perl approach here I also find confusing so there is no > attempt to distill the essence of what's going on

Sorry to hear that! I guess it depends on your preferences. Personally, I have a pretty "operational" mindset, so I'll find an algorithm easier to understand than its specification in terms of abstract algebra.

The whole thing started when I tried reimplementing MLsub at an MSR hackathon, and found it unnecessarily difficult — all the operational insights had to be painstakingly extracted from the thesis and barely-documented OCaml implementation (like others, I found the paper insufficient to reimplement the approach satisfyingly, for instance see [http://gallium.inria.fr/blog/safely- typing-algebraic-effects...](http://gallium.inria.fr/blog/safely-typing- algebraic-effects/)). I wrote this paper so other type system implementers wouldn't have to go through it again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi, author here. Just wanted to say that you should read the paper rather than the blog post, as the paper is more recent. It's in open access (and CC-BY license) here: [https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/278576](https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/278576)</comment>


I switched from VIM after 6 years – Part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@azbshiri/why-i-switched-from-vim-after-6-years-part-1-682870b54ebc <comment><USER2> To be honest, your writing could be improved. For example using punctuation, and alternating longer and shorter sentences.</comment>


Twitter2plus: Find your Twitter friends on Google+ - <AUTHOR> http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/twitter2plus

<comment><USER2> Tried this earlier and didn't work -- today it did (yeah :-)</comment>


YouTuber breaks down Ed Sheeran's formula for hits - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/video/make-your-own-ed-sheeran-song/ <comment><USER2> The video is funny and all but I love the high level pattern recognition aspect of it. This is a silly example of I would call the work of a "deliberate expert", where he used his knowledge of the songwriter's songs to identify key features that made them recognizeable. Enough to use his findings to extrapolate to a new song. Sometimes experts are more akin to savants, they know a lot about a subject but are not able to process all that information into new knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER3> The resulting song is hilarious. I can see listening to that again. It's definitely earwormy. "My lips haven't healed yet"

</comment><comment><USER4> According to several recent lawsuits, his biggest strategy may simply be stealing other people's songs!</comment>


Apple announces WWDC: June 6-10, preview of OS X & iOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/03/28wwdc.html <comment><USER2> Good to see we got more notice than the 40 days last year, which made it a royal pain for anyone coming from the Worldwide part of this developer conference.

Whilst an expensive trip if it is anywhere near as useful as it was in 2009, its well worth it.

If it sells out, you have to wonder whether the developer part of the conference should be ticketed separately from the keynote, as I would happily miss the keynote for access to the information.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm learning the iOS SDK and I think I'd truly benefit from attending, but the $1600 price is WAY out of what I can reasonably afford. So does Apple ever offer reduced rates for people just starting out? Seems to me that'd be a wise investment on their part. After all, if they offer seats for 75% off, and just one person makes a blockbuster app, they'll more than make the difference up in app store and or iAds fees.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're a registered developer, the session videos and materials will be on iTunes, after some delay.

<comment><USER4> In recent years the delay has gone from months, to a month, to weeks, to a week, to mere days. This year, I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't online the day after they were given.

<comment><USER5> And the price for the videos went from $500 for 2009 to $0 for 2010.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The question is, will iOS become more like OS X, or will OS X become still more like iOS? Or is it finally time to look forward to OS Xi?

<comment><USER7> The developer preview of Lion makes it pretty clear which way things are heading. I wouldn't expect much deviation from that on the Mac side. I'll be interested to see what they're planning for iOS 5 though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's funny that tickets are $1599. That will definitely attract more people than when it would be $1600.

<comment><USER9> actually, it will. A good read: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing>

<comment><USER8> I know the concept of price ending, but my point is that 1. WWDC sells out anyway, and 2. It's mainly companies paying their developers to go here.

<comment><USER7> Your second point might be technically accurate, but there's a very large contingent of indie developers, like myself, with 1-5 employees that shoulder all the cost ourselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm greatful the announcement has enough lead time to book a flight and a hotel.

</comment><comment><USER11> Will be my first time at the conference. Don't know anybody, but really looking forward to meet some nice people and get some first-hand knowledge! :-D

<comment><USER12> I highly recommend you read Jeff LaMarche's WWDC survival guide. [http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2011/03/wwdc-first- tim...](http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2011/03/wwdc-first-timer- survival-guide-2011.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Incredibly, it's already sold out!

<https://twitter.com/jury/status/52503970022817792>

</comment><comment><USER14> Argh, If only I could afford it. All of my money is tied up by sending it home to support my parents. :(

</comment><comment><USER15> This will be my first WWDC. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll be there. My first developer conference since NeXTWorld Expo 1994.

</comment><comment><USER16> My 'The question is' is: Will Lion demand 1GB, 1.5GB or 2GB or RAM?! I mean absolute minimal install requrements, not ideal ones.

<comment><USER17> You can answer that question by looking at what the oldest 64-bit machine was and seeing how little ram you could buy one with.</comment></comment>


40th anniversary of video games: From Computer Space to Skyrim - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/109205-40th-anniversary-of-video-games-from-computer-space-to-skyrim <comment><USER2> Interesting that the current example is Skyrim. Which is really just the classical D+D game with great graphics.

Personally I found the more impressive growth of games to be the widespread acceptance of gaming with Wii/Kinect and mobile gaming.

<comment><USER3> I assume Skyrim is the example because of how huge it is. Not counting some procedurally-generated games, I can't think of any bigger single-player games.</comment></comment>


Forget IQ, Collective Intelligence is the New Measure of Smart - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/21/forget-iq-collective-intelligence-is-the-new-measure-of-smart-video/ <comment><USER2> Before we can start measuring it, we have to define it. What is intelligence (Collective or otherwise)?</comment>


Why IT Managers are Hiring Based on Experience - <AUTHOR> http://itscommonsensestupid.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-it-managers-are-hiring-based-on.html

<comment><USER2> No one ever got fired for hiring based on experience.

It's a low-risk proposition from a culpability-for-failure standpoint.

<comment><AUTHOR> So true.

And yet everyone complains that good developers are so hard to find...hmm, something must be wrong here.</comment></comment>


From hiking enthusiast to on death's door within days. Doctors blamed vaping - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/one-mans-near-death-experience-with-vaping-related-lung-failure/2019/08/24/ca8ce42c-c5b4-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html <comment><USER2> [https://outline.com/jF4w9X](https://outline.com/jF4w9X)</comment>


Why salaries shouldn't be secret - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/5/15/5719916/why-salaries-shouldnt-be-secret

<comment><AUTHOR> _Indeed, secrecy surrounding pay is generally a bad idea for any organization. Ben Horowitz[1] has the best explanation of why that is: it can't help but foment poisonous internal politics. But there are other reasons, too._

I'm pretty sure Ben Horowitz doesn't suggest making employee compensation public, but promoting / giving raises on a regular cycle.

[1] [http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_co...](http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_company)

I chuckled when I read this statement. Having worked for the government, I can say with certainty that transparent salaries don't reduce poisonous politics. If anything, they make it worse. Knowing that certain incompetent co-workers were making vastly more money that me for more or less the same job motivated me to leave for the private sector where I at least had a chance of being paid what I was worth. Of course, such discrepancies can exist there too, but at least the exact numbers aren't right in my face.</comment>