A History of Singapore in 10 Dishes - <AUTHOR> https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2019/a-history-of-singapore-in-10-dishes/ <comment><USER2> Sambal stingray is one of the best things I've ever put in my mouth. But really, the entire time I spent in Singapore was a foodie's paradise. If you want to experience the entirety of Asian cuisine in only one stop, make that stop Singapore.

<comment><USER3> > If you want to experience the entirety of Asian cuisine in only one stop, > make that stop Singapore

I have to disagree with that. Genuinely good vietnamese, thai or even japanese food is pretty hard to find in singapore, and believe me I tried. Its specialities are dictated by its influences - southern china, malaysia of course, india, to some extent indonesia. The rest is decent of course but I just don't think there's an adequate population of, say, vietnamese in the city to sustain a general standard of quality comparable to what's available back home. Just try and find a good pork Banh Mi in singapore, I dare you.

If I had to name the city with the best general variety and everyday average standard of asian food - believe it or not I'd probably say Sydney.

<comment><USER4> Singaporean in Sydney here -- I've barely found any decent Asian food in my time here, not to mention the exorbitant prices. Could you recommend some options? I'll love to improve my food options here.

<comment><USER5> I find that hard to believe, which area are you in? I have a list I normally give to friends visiting, I'll pare it down to some of the best Asian options though

Dumplings - Chinatown Noodle King (also ridiculously cheap, order the Fried & Spicy Pork & Chive ones), Ramen - Ryo's, Thai - Khao Pla (used to be amazing, not so sure about the quality now), Viet - Hello Auntie, Banh Mi - anywhere in Cabramatta, Izakaya - Yakitori Yurripi

<comment><USER6> I never thought I'd see the day where Chinese Noodle House gets a run on Hacker News (albeit in a comment). But can definitely second this for dumplings - my favourite place to go after uni.

<comment><USER3> Just to add a useless comment to this three day old thread - I have been conducting an ad hoc, opportunistic global calamari survey and I remain convinced, until conflicting evidence emerges, that Golden Century on Sussex St has the best fried squid rings on earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love Singapore. My wife and I go through Singapore when flying to Europe (from Australia) and usually stay 1-2 nights. We'll do the same again on the way back.

It's super clean, well run, the public transport makes every other country look like a joke, the food is amazing, the laws are tied meaning it's a super safe place to live and wonder around, and everyone is lovely. We're considering a year of living there (and bracing ourselves for how expensive it is.)

If you haven't been: go. It's one of humanity's gems.

Edit: also, it has $4 Michelin Star food: [https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/singapore-cheapest- mi...](https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/singapore-cheapest-michelin- star-restaurant/index.html)

<comment><USER8> Aussie but not a fan of Singapore here, I live in China and prefer Bangkok for food. A couple of years I did an alphabet foodie tour there and had no problems starting with Afghanistan, Burmese, Chinese, Danish, Ethiopian ... right through to Yemeni and Zhajiangmian. :) If anyone wants to join the next one, hit me up. I believe the unique feature of Bangkok is intact communities supporting real food from a range of regions, not just show cuisine.

<comment><USER7> > Afghanistan, Burmese, Chinese, Danish, Ethiopian ... right through to Yemeni > and Zhajiangmian

I could get all of these in Wales, UK lmao

<comment><USER8> Don't doubt it! However, in my experience ingredients in the UK are generally not up to snuff versus what you can get in Bangkok, especially tropical produce. If you go the full Waitrose, it's cheaper to fly to the country and eat the cuisine there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just a note that 'laksa' here means the usual version served in Singapore. As the Wikipedia article [1] notes, there are many variations of laksa served in the region.

Personal story: my father came to visit me here in Singapore, when I was studying at the local university here in the early 1990s. He went to a hawker stall to order laksa for lunch and was surprised to be served by what he called 'curry noodles'. The laksa in our hometown in Malaysia was a completely different version [2].

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laksa#Asam_laksa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laksa#Asam_laksa)

</comment><comment><USER10> As a Singaporean, I'm a bit sad that the Peranakans (i.e. "Straits-born Chinese") [1] only got a passing mention in the article, since the Peranakans are quite possibly the best representation of the melting pot that is Singapore's local population. The founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was known to have Peranakan roots too [2].

The Peranakans also have a cuisine that they can call their own [3].

On the other hand, I've never had the "feng" curry mentioned in the article before.

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

[2] [https://www.todayonline.com/entertainment/arts/mr-lee- kuan-y...](https://www.todayonline.com/entertainment/arts/mr-lee-kuan-yew- among-50-influential-peranakans-featured-showcase)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peranakan_cuisine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peranakan_cuisine)

<comment><USER11> Peranakans origin from malacca not singapore (and they cant dont speak chinese/mandarin)

~1500 A.D

<comment><USER12> "Straits" refers to the "Straits Settlements" of the British East India Company East India Company which comprised Penang, and Malacca in present day Malaysia and also present day Singapore. And "Chinese" here refers to ethnic Chinese not necessarily Chinese speakers, nor did the OP imply they were Chinese speakers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Food in Singapore was pretty amazing, but their greatest culinary innovation is those little plastic handles for carrying hot coffee.

[http://viterbivoices.usc.edu/wp- content/uploads/2016/01/IMG_...](http://viterbivoices.usc.edu/wp- content/uploads/2016/01/IMG_7982-e1453286021359.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought Bak kut teh was a Malaysian dish. Also surprised Chicken Rice and Singapore Chili Crab isn't on the list.

<comment><USER10> > _I thought Bak kut teh was a Malaysian dish._

Singaporean here. I think Singapore and Malaysia tend to share ownership of many dishes.

What wasn't mentioned in the article is that the peppery Teochew style is far more common in Singapore. The herbal Hokkien variant is often known as "Klang bak kut teh" here in Singapore, after Port Klang in Malaysia. Malaysians also seem to like that version better.

<comment><USER15> Having being born and raised in Malaysia, and nowadays frequently visiting Singapore (for business, but ostensibly to eat the food of my childhood again), I am still getting used to the subtle differences of names of same or similar dishes.

For instance, I really miss Roti Canai, but it has a different name in Singapore (Roti Pratha IIRC), so even trying to search for a good stall on Google Maps doesn't find the places that make it.

<comment><USER10> > _For instance, I really miss Roti Canai, but it has a different name in > Singapore (Roti Pratha IIRC), so even trying to search for a good stall on > Google Maps doesn 't find the places that make it._

Roti _prata_.

I think you'll be hard-pressed to find _bad_ roti prata in Singapore. I've heard Mr and Mrs Mohgan's is one of the best: [https://goo.gl/maps/bv3b3sFwK1A2](https://goo.gl/maps/bv3b3sFwK1A2)

<comment><USER16> Prata, pratha, and paratha all seem to be accepted transliterations of the word.

<comment><USER10> One's search engine of choice might not know that.

The grandparent comment wanted to look for good stalls. I just tried doing a search for _pratha_ on Google Maps, and it yielded results that were less relevant as compared to if one used the more common spelling of _prata_.

<comment><USER16> However you spell it, it is certainly tasty. :)

I live in Singapore, by the way, and I'm getting pretty hungry reading this. Any suggestions for good Indian food?

[Edit: Tried to make a clever regex to match all the spellings, but HN's editor thwarted me.]

<comment><USER17> Have you been to Saravana Bhavan downtown?

<comment><USER16> Not yet. I'll check it out this weekend. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Singapore is without doubt my favorite place to eat in the world. I say that having lived and worked in the UK, Belgium, France, the USA and Australia.

</comment><comment><USER15> How refreshing NOT to see faux 'Singapore Noodles' on that list. Having been born and raised in Malaysia, it is the street food that I miss the most, now that I live in Australia. Probably why I love going to the night markets in my town.

</comment><comment><USER19> I absolutely love Kaya Toast - I had it every time I stayed in Singapore!

<comment><USER20> Agree! Pairs well with steamed buns in the morning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can find the best Ba Kut Teh, Fish Head Curry, Sambal Stringray, Kaya and Laksa in Malaysia and not singapore.

</comment><comment><USER22> I lived in Singapore for a few years and my god do I miss the food! Rivals the best food cities in the world.</comment>


How Franklin Roosevelt Secretly Ended the Gold Standard - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-21/how-franklin-roosevelt-secretly-ended-the-gold-standard.html

<comment><USER2> Upvoted the OP in order to call attention to what I consider primarily a propaganda piece by the Bloomberg new service. There was nothing secret about the executive order <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102> , except possibly that even the Wikipedia article does not explain in what manner Congress granted the President (actually the Secretary of the Treasury) such extraordinary power to confiscate property. That FDR used the Brer Rabbit strategy to call attention to his ending the gold standard only shows he was a skilled politician.

> _The recovery from the Great Depression began instantly with Roosevelt's > policy shift..._

I think most objective measures do not show recovery from the Great Depression until the ramp-up of arms production prior to American entry in WWII.

<comment><USER3> "extraordinary power to confiscate property"

Confiscate property? Gold coins were to be traded for $20.67 per ounce, not simply taken. No confiscation occurred; the nation simply ended the practice of using gold currency by taking it out of circulation.

<comment><USER4> Forcing someone to sell you something isn't trade, it's theft. If I steal your TV, then give you $5, I still stole your TV.

Confiscating people's property is the act of a despot.

<comment><USER5> Compensated compensation is explicitly sanctioned in the Constitution.

<comment><USER6> It explicitly mentions _just compensation_. A sub-market price isn't just.

<comment><USER5> It was traded in at the fixed conversion rate between gold and U.S. dollars.

<comment><USER7> A rate which was fixed by the buyer, with no protestation allowed by the seller.

<comment><USER6> Hear hear

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article omits an important fact:

The public's gold was exchanged at $20.67 per troy ounce, but months later, the official price of gold was raised to $35.00 per troy ounce. Essentially, the public were not properly compensated for turning in their gold.

 _"In 1934, the government price of gold was increased to $35 per ounce, effectively increasing the gold on the Federal Reserve's balance sheets by 69 percent. This increase in assets allowed the Federal Reserve to further inflate the money supply."_ [1]

[1] [http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-takes- united-...](http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-takes-united- states-off-gold-standard)

EDIT: The article also fails to mention that _"violation of the order was punishable by fine up to $10,000 or up to ten years in prison, or both."_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102>

<comment><USER9> > Essentially, the public were not properly compensated for turning in their > gold.

I known pretty much nothing about economics or the history here, but I don't see how this follows. The value of the _dollar_ (in terms of what it would buy _aside_ from gold) didn't suddenly shift. Are you saying that the shift in the worth of gold would have happened even if the government hadn't moved off the gold standard? If so, how is it that the government "set" it? And if not, then how did folk lose anything?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The recovery from the Great Depression began instantly with Roosevelt's policy shift, in March 1933"

uhm... no.... more like 1946 - if the recovery had happened before WWII then we wouldn't have had to ration and do all the massaging to get the economy up to war production.

<comment><USER11> Uh, the economy was producing for war in many areas by 1938. Those Naval battleships at Pearl Harbor didn't simply build themselves, the Army didn't create millions of rifles out of thin air in 1941, etc.

Rationing was required because the government was directing available resources to war production, _not_ because the economy was shit. People could afford food just fine throughout much of WWII, if only the shops had been allowed to sell it to them.

<comment><USER10> The rationing and price controls wouldn't have been needed if we hadn't been in such a hole at the start of the war. We did produce, but our national production in 1947 was actually 17% higher than in 1941. That is a pretty sad considering the amount of government war spending.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Roosevelt administration also sued farmers who attempted to grow food to feed themselves, in his insane attempts to control market prices.

 _Filburn was ordered to destroy his crops and pay a fine, even though he was producing the excess wheat for his own use and had no intention of selling it._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v_Filburn>

<comment><USER12> The Roosevelt administration sued farmers who attempted to grow food in violation of a law passed by Congress to regulate interstate commerce, in this case to stabilize crop prices.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in _Wickard v. Filburn_ that this was constitutional.

<comment><USER13> The interesting part is how they found "interstate commerce" in chicken feed which wasn't actually sold and didn't actually leave the state (didn't leave the farm even):

 _The Court decided that Filburn's wheat growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for chicken feed on the open market, and because wheat was traded nationally, Filburn's production of more wheat than he was allotted was affecting interstate commerce. Thus, Filburn's production could be regulated by the federal government._

By this reasoning, even free open-source software is interstate commerce, if it has a commercial competitor. Imagine a federal law restricting FOSS, as part of an economic stimulus for the software industry.

(edit: My FOSS analogy is actually too weak! You wouldn't need to distribute anything. It'd be enough to write your own code, for your personal use, if this prevents you from purchasing some commercial product).

<comment><USER12> It's a tricky discussion in this thread because we're mixing together the questions of "Is this allowed (constitutional)?" and "Is this a good idea?" I believe that in both the Filburn case and in your hypothetical FOSS example, that yes, Congress has the power to regulate them.

But that doesn't mean it's a good idea. At some point, the elected representatives in Congress have to make a law to regulate the interstate commerce. In Filburn's case, a majority of the democratically-elected officials in Congress decided that price stabilization of crops was important enough to restrict growing "private stashes" that weren't going to be sold. If supporters of Filburn didn't agree with that, then they would have to elect new representatives to do overturn the law. (Which by the way, will probably finally happen sometime in the next decade.) But there is zero support in Congress for restricting FOSS, even when it competes with commercial software. The benefits of FOSS to all Americans are so obvious that it won't happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is one of the barest forms of propaganda you'll read in a while.

</comment><comment><USER15> _This way, he could bring commodity prices back up and maintain them at a level that would ensure producers a higher standard of living_

A high standard of living is precluded by high commodity prices.

<comment><USER16> Case in point: during the Depression the Agriculture Department estimated that 25% of the population was malnourished, something the military confirmed to their satisfaction during the draft, which later was an input into the Federal school lunch program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article fails to mention that though the US came off the (fixed) gold standard, convertability of the US$ to gold was retained as part of the Bretton-Woods system all the way through WWII, through the post-war "Golden Age of Capitalism" period uptil 15 August 1971 when Nixon unilaterally turned the US dollar into a fiat currency.

</comment><comment><USER18> "The recovery from the Great Depression began instantly with Roosevelt's policy shift, in March 1933. He had changed expectations, and begun an administration that would use money as a tool to bring widespread prosperity -- rather than serve as a tool of moneyed interests."

This is pure economic propaganda. Anyone with a whit of knowledge of the period knows that the depression lasted through the entire 30s, with unemployment remaining very high for the whole decade (it was 19% in 1938)

</comment><comment><USER19> Gold buggery articles are like one of the four horsemen of the web site apocalypse. It's one of those quasi-religious subjects that only creates flames.

</comment><comment><USER20> That was an OK article but I think the best current reference on the gold standard is "Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis" by James Richards. He doesn't so much try to predict the future. Instead he provides a historical perspective and gives the reader the tools to understand events as they happen.</comment>


Provisionals for All: Seattle's Next Light Rail Project Must Plan for the Future - <AUTHOR> http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/05/24/provisionals-for-all-st3-must-plan-for-the-future/ <comment><USER2> A line between Ballard and downtown would have the highest ridership right now, so it should be built first. But ST3 proposes to delay this for nearly two decades!

So I think this proposal to add even more far-flung lines (that I'll never ride) doesn't help anything.</comment>


How did you meet your co-founder? (or "How *could* you meet potential co-founder(s)?") - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The night air was heavy with the scent of summer, and the lights of Venice twinkled in the distance. The party was drawing to a close, when our eyes met, and she motioned for me to join her. Drawing closer, her radiant eyes captivated me ....

eeerrrr... ooops, sorry, co-founder?

<comment><USER3> Yes, co-founder, not _cat_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I met my co-founder in college ten years ago - he was the first roomate I had when I moved off-campus. At the time I was a web designer (remember back when people who made websites were called 'web designers'? Ha!) and he was programming in this new-fangled language named after coffee, I forget what it was called.

We almost immediately started a startup, which failed almost as immediately. So this is actually our second try, and we're probably both dumber now than we were the first time.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't think this question has been asked before (did a quick search ~ <http://tinyurl.com/2p998t> ). It's worthy of discussion in my view, because without one your toast.

My story is the previous potential co-founder decided that doing a PhD was a fast track to _'better understanding'_ the problems we had started working on. So much for my powers of persuasion ... hmm now I'm toast. I ask the question for those who might be in the same boat. I've now overcome this hurdle. But I'm still interested in finding out how others solved this problem. Maybe a better questions to ask is _"how could (did) you meet your potential co- founder(s)?"_

So how could you meet your co-founder(s)?

</comment><comment><USER5> I was thinking of making a web application, it would be like match.com but for finding co-founders? Do you think that would be viable? Would it work? How would you want it to work?

<comment><USER6> These folks are trying something similar but it doesn't seem to have much traction <http://www.buildv1.com/about>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am curious about that myself. I want to start a company (Coming up to my senior year in college), and haven't met anyone that would be a plausible co- founder yet.

<comment><USER8> Stay in touch with your former classmates. I met my cofounder in my sophomore year of college, but I didn't know he would be my cofounder until Homecoming 2 years after graduation. I don't think he knew either - the business idea grew out of some consulting work he did after graduation. And he didn't know I was into computers, since at the time I knew him, I was a physics major.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found a potential co-founder at a Justin.tv Sunday dinner.

</comment><comment><USER10> Move to San Francisco.</comment>


Prepping for the Transfer of 25,000 Manuals - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4695 <comment><USER2> Context/Background link: [http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683)

tl;dr: A technical manual reseller in Finksburg, MD is throwing out 25,000 high-quality paper manuals from as far back as the 1930s this week and Jason Scott & friends are driving there with "$900 of banker's boxes" to save whatever they can.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know many people may be thinking "just throw it out". But you don't understand - you may be faced with system that is in one of those manuals and some previous genius decided that when they cleaned their office to toss that manual.

Or even come into possession of one of those systems and have no idea how to use it. If google hadn't crawled the manual for certain products I would have thrown away a number of electronic paperweights.

<comment><USER4> Those are manuals for 40-80 year old technology, something second year EE student could explain to you in their sleep. The only value they posses is historical.

<comment><USER5> This is incredibly naive. Many second year EE students today will not even know what a vacuum tube is, much less be able to explain how a device using them works.

Even if you're used to looking at discrete transistor circuits (and even that is getting rare these days), a device with tubes can look like magic of the highest order.

<comment><USER6> Seconded. Another factor is that looking at a device won't tell you why it was designed the way it was. A good technical manual will be invaluable for telling you things like valid ranges, service or environmental limits, etc. which would otherwise need to be reverse-engineered. If you're trying to replace an old system or studying the history, know what does and doesn't matter can save a ton of time.

(This goes double if the manual was annotated by a good operator)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why does he say the Linear Book Scanner ([https://code.google.com/p/linear- book-scanner/](https://code.google.com/p/linear-book-scanner/)) destroys books? I thought the idea of the Linear Book Scanner was to automatically scan books without cutting the binding.

Anyhow, cool project.

<comment><USER8> The FAQ on the linear book scanner site says the following,

"Prototype 1 could scan the majority of books without damage, but may tear one or two pages in some books. Out of 50 books tested, 45% had one or two of their pages either torn or folded. This is a very early prototype and there are many areas for improvement in the design."

<comment><USER9> Look into commercial book scanners that use vacuums. This is a solved problem. Kirtas is one of those manufacturers.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds63ZBXFdLM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds63ZBXFdLM) [http://www.kirtas.com/](http://www.kirtas.com/)

50 pages per hour with no damage to the books.

You're looking at $50k-$90k for the equipment plus $8k/year service contract, though. So you need to figure out whether book scanning is something that the Internet Archive is interested in, beyond this project.

<comment><USER8> I was over there yesterday morning helping sort and it seemed like the vast vast majority of the books were either ring binders or spiral bound and could easily be taken out of the binding to be scanned in a standard scanner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having gone through the gut-wrenching task of choosing which data books to throw out on more than one occasion I fully understand the value and sentiment of this project.

As a young hobbyist and later engineer I learned TONS out of data books, application guides and equipment manuals. I'd spend hours paging through data books, learning about the various chips, going through the application notes, building circuits, testing them and studying schematics when equipment actually came with schematics.

Anyone who was "all in" in electronics did exactly the same.

To this day I've kept my National Linear Applications books and a few others. eBooks have yet to capture the speed and convenience of holding a 500 page book in your hands that you can page through and explore. Worst yet, having five or six such books spread across your workbench as you work on a design.

That said, having the ability to search books or, better yet, your entire library, is useful. I don't buy programming books in paper form any more. And, I still prefer PDF to any other eBook format. For me it tends to be a far better experience across platforms.

This thread has made me think about the idea of digitizing my physical books. I find myself thinking about this every few months. I have both engineering and business books that will never be available in electronic form and I would definitely like to preserve them and make the searchable.

Is there a service or a device one could use for this purpose. The linear book scanner seems interesting yet apparently it is known to damage books. A service could be interesting but it would have to be comparable to buying a book, meaning, $20 per book or thereabouts, not $500 (or whatever). This would mean they'd have to have a slick and low cost means to digitize books or monetize the process in some form beyond charging for digitizing.

Building a scanner could be interesting, of course. I'm thinking about bringing this up as a project for the FIRST FRC robotics team I mentor. You never know what the kids might come up with.

Any resources on this front?

<comment><USER11> When I looked into book scanning a few years ago, the Kirtas (mentioned elsewhere in this thread) was as far as I could tell from Net sources, and remains, the reference method of fast, high-volume, non-destructive, high- quality scanning. Even so, many libraries with Kirtas units still employ someone to stand watch over the page turning and ensure only one page at a time is flipped. Perfect page turning is apparently not a _completely_ solved problem yet.

If procuring (and paying nearly $10K USD per year in maintenance fees) through a hacker collective or maker space is infeasible in your area, then the community at www.diybookscanner.org have a workable solution for a much smaller subset of what the Kirtas units address, so you could look into that as a modest workaround for the time being (though I wonder what results they got for dewarping by simply taking pictures on all the sides of the scanning target to synthetically construct a 3D volume, as perfect dewarping continues to be an open and unsolved problem).

<comment><USER12> _Even so, many libraries with Kirtas units still employ someone to stand watch over the page turning and ensure only one page at a time is flipped_

Most books have page numbers; couldn't they use that along with OCR to detect and retry skipped pages? Maybe even a state that shakes the pages more than usual in an attempt to separate ones stuck together. It doesn't sound too difficult to do (perhaps you'd have to tell it where the page number is), given what the Kirtas machine costs.

<comment><USER11> The challenge seems to be the OCR takes place in a post-processing phase instead of real-time, and the desire is to catch the improper page flip before putting away the book. Perhaps with one or more gigabit pipes, the image processing can take place in the cloud in near real-time.

The Kirtas units seem highly-regarded by conservators; they might have lots of objections to even gentle shaking of their sometimes fragile charges. The impression I get is that the slight vacuum employed by the Kirtas on pages is the most handling that is accepted. There might be recent developments in computer vision and robotic fingers which could see an improved robotic analog to a human page flipper in the future.

My personal hunch is the popularization and (relative) mass adoption of the slower, lower-tech open source book scanners will eventually outstrip the dedicated scanning throughput of the high-end units, and put more digitized content onto the Net, along with a legal fight over content "abandoned" by publishers. When I digitize my content, it goes into my private collection, but I sure wish publishers were more aggressive with digitization of the older material, or lenient with letting that older material go into the public domain if they aren't even chasing the long-long-long tail of that material anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If the sole limiting factor is manual labor, can he hire a bunch of people off of Craigslist? Though I can't be there, I'd gladly donate for another person with a truck to help.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Why are these even worth anything or worth keeping, tidy your life, lighten > up, etc. Either you really understand why 80 years of manuals, instructions > and engineering notes related to 20th century electronics are of value both > historically, aesthetically and culturally, or you don't. To try to make the > case would be a waste of time for both of us.

I'm not sure I do understand the motivation, but I don't think that I'm _beyond understanding it._ Is it that some of these systems are still in service? Is it just the history/archeology aspect?

<comment><USER15> You would be surprised how often old technical manuals are useful. Examples from my own work:

1) I was tasked with instrumenting the T58-GE-16 engines in a CH-46 [0]. So what did I need to inform my sensor placement and selection? Some schematics and technical manuals, all from the late 1960s, all undigitized.

2) I needed to reverse engineer an old test set. The documentation had been lost to time. When I cracked it open, I saw lots of 5400 & 7400 series chips. Now, this is kind of a trite example, because lots of working EEs still have copies of the TTL Data Book at hand. But still, I needed to refer to that old tome when working on this project.

3) When I worked at a NASA contractor, a primary piece of equipment failed. We needed a replacement in a hurry. Fortunately, someone had kept the older version of this system around. It dated from 1959 (!) but the manual was still around, too. A quick read through that manual got us back in business.

Technology never dies [1]. But without the manuals to understand that technology, things become much harder when you need to use that technology again.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Vertol_CH-46_Sea_Knight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Vertol_CH-46_Sea_Knight)

[1]: [http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/02/04/133188723/to...](http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/02/04/133188723/tools- never-die-waddaya-mean-never)

<comment><USER16> Thank you for 0), you may be able to guess why from my user name.

<comment><USER15> I was working on instrumentation for testing an IR suppression system for the Phrog's exhaust. Here [0] is the exact aircraft (BuNo 152578) sitting at the Pax River NAS museum, with the IR suppression attached (and a nice big bundle of our thermocouple wiring, too). From what I could find in the records, this was either the 4th or 5th time the Navy had tried something like this, and the results were less than promising.

[0]: [http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation- photos/photos/3/0/8/16...](http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation- photos/photos/3/0/8/1691803.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's great that someone is doing this. The person involved is affiliated with the Internet Archive, so they will know about their book scanning capabilities.[1]

Once they have the books in storage, the next step is to take a picture of each cover, and put those on line. With an inventory, people will be able to ask for (and perhaps pay for) digitization.

[1] [https://archive.org/details/partnerdocs](https://archive.org/details/partnerdocs)

</comment><comment><USER18> Beyond the immediate rescue (which is by no means secured), perhaps someone at the Society of American Archivist or the student membership thereof would be interested? I'm seeing discussion here on HN regarding the worth of the collection and how to handle it. SAA have mailing lists[1] and there appear to be a couple of plausible Twitter handles[2].

[http://www2.archivists.org/initiatives/askanarchivist-day- oc...](http://www2.archivists.org/initiatives/askanarchivist-day-october-1) [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ssa+twitter+archivist](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ssa+twitter+archivist)

</comment><comment><USER8> Photos and updates on the progress available on Twitter...

[https://twitter.com/textfiles](https://twitter.com/textfiles)

</comment><comment><USER12> 25k sounds like a lot, but from the pictures it looks like most of them are not very thick and it'd be relatively easy to grab a whole stack of them at once. From my estimation that is around the size of a small library.

If they can be removed from the shelves and boxed at an average rate of 5 per second, that's 5,000 seconds or <1.5h at the most. Even after adding in trips to the new storage location, packaging, unloading, etc., and considering it's a trivially parallelisable task, it definitely seems doable to move the whole collection of 25k within a few hours.

<comment><USER19> I doubt you'll get anywhere near 5 per second, even with a large number of people working on it. A single person will likely need 5-10 seconds to grab a manual from a shelf, place it in a banker's box, and move on to the next one. You'd need 25-50 people to get that.

Still, even if it's 100 person-hours, it's an achievable goal; A dozen volunteers over the course of a day can do so.

<comment><USER12> _A single person will likely need 5-10 seconds to grab a manual from a shelf, place it in a banker 's box, and move on to the next one._

If you look at the pictures like this one:

[http://ascii.textfiles.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/08/IMG_69...](http://ascii.textfiles.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/08/IMG_6993.jpg)

I could probably grab 25 or more of those at a time and set them in a box in 5 seconds, hence 5 per second. Getting the first ones out (because there is little "gap" to stuff hands into on the shelf) will be slower, but once the gap is made the whole pile easily comes out. This isn't about pulling one out at a time, spending another few seconds inspecting it, and then putting it in a box; it's about getting them off the shelves and out of the building ASAP.

<comment><USER20> Keep in mind, you also have to remove just one unique copy of each set, and throw the rest away, being very careful not to accidentally throw out a "duplicate" that is actually a similar-looking, but unique, manual.

<comment><USER6> Given the really hard time limit, wouldn't it make more sense to grab everything as quickly as possible and the sort them over a couple months? That requires more storage space but has the advantage of a bounded, easily- calculated maximum time.

<comment><USER21> Depends how many duplicates there are. If there are eight of each manual, then you are talking about eight times as many boxes. One truckload is now eight truckload, one storage unit is now eight storage units. And now you have to pay for discarding 7/8 of the manuals, which is not free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like the place is in Finksburg Maryland. about 30 minutes from Baltimore and an hour from DC.</comment>


Federal Reserve secretly bailed out large companies, including foreign ones - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120106870_pf.html <comment><USER2> If most of these private sector bailouts took the form of purchasing commercial paper, doesn't that imply that the Fed got paid back? None of those companies have defaulted.

<comment><USER3> The article states that "none of the special lending programs has lost money," implying that they were all loans, and are all being paid back.

Bernanke and co deserve huge credit for sticking to their guns throughout the crisis, despite criticism from all sides and the inauguration of a new president.

<comment><USER4> Actually, one of the things that bothers me most about all of the bailouts is that many of them are not being repaid. At least not in the way that some people are intimating.

HD, for instance is actually able to "repay" via the mechanism of a somewhat hastily arranged private sector bailout by Buffet's Berkshire and Davis. The reason everyone is obliged to try to prop HD up is because, through financial instruments of truly byzantine design, HD's customers were given loans for their motorcycles which were used as backing for certain securities. I won't get into the details, but the short story is HD customers won't repay their loans. Worst part...even if they had, it is not clear that the math would have worked out, and there may have been problems in any case.

This is why Buffet cautions us to "Beware geeks bearing formulas".

I'm not saying that what the Fed did was wrong...Rome was burning...I won't second guess them.

I do think people should realize that the problems are still with us however. What has happened is simply some creative juggling of the debts. This stuff takes time to unwind carefully, and even then some party will need to lose. It's just that there is a need to find more creative, and less obvious, methods of making that loser the Government, ie... tax payer. Because, that is the only party with the requisite resources.

And that is where the interesting stuff happens, engineering the repayment of the bailout funds. Sometimes it is repaid with securities of questionable value. Sometimes with hard assets, of dubious utility. They have even done some really brilliant things, like funneling stimulus funds to some of these companies...which were then used to pay back their bailouts. Of course, it looks like these companies paid the money back with revenues from new business.

This whole thing has been fascinating to watch. Again, I think the interesting parts were not the bailouts, but HOW the bailouts were being repaid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure that this is really new news. The Washington Post is using a somewhat exaggerated title here.

Personally, I recall, in early September (2008), thinking that it would be great if the Fed let a large financial operator fail. I am fairly stupid, and sometimes I think in terms of simple cause and effect, and this was a clear case of that - I was thinking it would send a clear message that financial firms needed to get their act together. Then Paulson and the Fed allowed Lehman to fail. My first thought was, "This is great, now the other firms will get the message." I was totally innocent about the extent of the leverage in the system and the degree of peril the other firms faced. As the disaster played out in late September, I realized how naive I'd been. I suppose most people, like me, learned only then how weak the system was. The Fed's unusual decisions were well known by the early of October (2008). If you read blogs like CalculatedRisk, one could follow the unorthodox extensions of the Feds programs. They were unusual, but I recall, there was the sense that orthodoxy had been discredited with the collapse of Lehman.

There was a good post on Calculated Risk at one point (early 2009, I think) about the benefits of paying out the full dollar on defaulted financial instruments, even to foreign firms - foreign banks had lent huge sums to finance mortgages in the US, if the foreign banks were to dump those loans, then the prices of US homes would have been driven down even lower and faster than what was already happening.

<comment><AUTHOR> _prices of US homes would have been driven down even lower and faster than what was already happening._

Then we would have affordable housing. Why is that a bad thing?

I think we exchanged the short term pain of some bankruptcies for the long term pain of years of deflation. Outstanding credit will continue contracting for many years, probably for more than a decade. This is deflationary.

Iceland let its banks go bankrupt and now it has a growing economy again.

<comment><USER5> First of all, Iceland has seen a significant decline in its economy:

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/the-icelandic- po...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/the-icelandic-post-crisis- miracle/)

Second of all, it is easy for a small country to bounce back by devaluing its currency, but it is harder for a big country to do that. To devalue is to gain via exports (or import substitution), but to grow Iceland by 1% requires less of the world than getting the USA to grow by 1%. This is a simple matter of ratios. The USA represents a greater total of the world economy than Iceland does, therefore its requires more of the world economy to get the USA to grow 1% via exports (or import substitution).

Thirdly, a lot of banks have been allowed to fail:

[http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/11/bank- failure-147-g...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/11/bank- failure-147-gulf-state-community.html)

Fourthly, no doubt some of the bigger banks should also have been allowed to fail. Nationalization and rehabilitation would have been more fair to the public than simply bailing out the existing management.

Fifthly, please think about what you are writing: "the short term pain of some bankruptcies for the long term pain of years of deflation". There is no trade off there. Bankrupt banks lead to decline in the monetary base which will lead to deflation unless offset by some other factor, such as massive devaluation, as in the case of Iceland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This title is unnecessarily provocative.

We operate in an integrated, global financial system now. For the last decade, our entire country has been funded by Chinese funds for crying out loud!

Foreign banks such as UBS, CS, some of the reinsurers, as well as the ECB (and by extension the mammoth French banks) all cast such a wide net over the entire world that one of them failing would be enough to jeopardize the U.S. system.

This article forgets that Lehman was (after Bear) the smallest of the global players. If say a bank like Deutsche, or BNP Paribas failed, the effects would be even bigger than Lehman.

To get the benefits of globalization the world must accept the cost of globalization. These types of articles are typically written towards audiences who don't understand this concept.

How many times have the history books flamed the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government for not doing enough to save the nation from the Great Depression? Would they be saying the same if the Fed had not helped the banks?

</comment><comment><USER7> The HN title needs changing.

The Washington Post title is _Fed aid in financial crisis went beyond U.S. banks to industry, foreign firms_. Reading the story, it's apparent the Fed lent money to a variety of companies from various countries - presumably to keep markets liquid.

That's very different to a _bail out_ , which implies giving money away.</comment>


Rise of the Brogrammer - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/07/tech/web/brogrammers/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

<comment><USER2> The right title should be: The rise of the brogrammer in media.

The thing is there's a huge difference between the perception that people have of a field and what happens in the field. It reminds me of how CSI (the show) shows police work: super high tech. solving of cases. Sorry to break it, it's not the case, it's long interviews with people and little lab work with overused equipment. In the same spirit slowly since the Social Network this notion of "cool programmer" has emerged in the media. The reality is that we're still very far from it, and it's mostly guys sitting in front of desks typing on keyboards (not so sexy, uh ?).

Anyway, this article is ridiculous, but I don't trust CNN anymore to provide accurate news. Let them read tweets live, that's their line of work now.

<comment><USER3> I always thought the whole brogrammer thing was kind of a nod to everything that the community is not.

It seems akin to the "D&D enthusiasts are devil worshipers." hysteria back in the day. More than a few people when asked what they did when they played by those that had no idea what it was like would say something like "Oh. You know; we don our blackest robes and light candles at midnight etc. etc." Of course, this would get around and then you'd end up with 'that guy' trying to join your gaming group.

No one seriously considers themselves a brogrammer and if they do, they just mark themselves as someone not to be taken seriously...

Oh well, I guess we have to declare the joke over because now there is a weird feedback loop creating a self fulfilling brogrammer subculture.

<comment><USER4> _I always thought the whole brogrammer thing was kind of a nod to everything that the community is not._

That's what I thought at first, but there are actually programmers who do that. There's been a lot of discussion here about it, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3168038> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3663244>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm getting kind of sick of this media brogrammer fest. Some guys are sexist. Some aren't. Some program. Some don't. Can we please just focus on the main issue? Sexism in the workplace. Really, what does this have to do with programming _at all_?

There's no "rise" of anything, except idiots who get big heads because they got 2M in funding...and that's nothing new. The more attention we give them, the bigger their heads get. As many get embarrassed by being called out, there are just as many who would wear it as a badge of honor.

All the programmers I know are great guys who treat women with respect and just want to focus on their work instead of having subservient big breasted bimbos prancing around their office.

There's no epidemic here except bored journalists.

<comment><USER6> Ever since people started yapping about this "brogrammer"-crap I've been paying more attention to my fellow programmer's behaviour. Most of them are male, some of them are female, and one of them is a bit of both. One of them is black. One of them is in a wheelchair. And another one is deaf. The one thing they all have in common, is that they're geeks. I haven't noticed any of this alleged sexism, racism or frat boy nonsense.

Sure, some of us like to drink. Some of us even drink what some might consider "a lot", but then we live in a part of the world where beer is a socially accepted lubricant legal for purchase at age 16.

I don't particularly like the tone of the these articles, associating beer consumption with immature fratty/bratty behaviour. Nor do I like it when people interpret the relative scarcity of programming females to sexism. Or -- in my area -- the scarcity of black programmers to racism.

I would really love to see some hard backed evidence/statistics about this, instead of some contextless anecdotal bullshit.

Until someone can prove otherwise, programmers are no more sexist/racist/bratty than anyone else from a similar social/educational background.

To all you bored reporters, you might want to investigate cooks, bakers & chocolatiers next, I hear they're an over-sexed bunch who engage on orgies on a frequent basis.

Sigh.

<comment><USER7> I don't care if my industry is more or less sexist or racist than average. I care if it's sexist or racist _at all_.

Also, whether or not _you_ notice mistreatment of others is not the best metric. Try asking people in those groups.

If you'd like to see an interesting analysis of the relative scarcity of female computer scientists, this is a classic: <http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/why.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most of the hype about this is that it plays against type - "you thought programmers were shy neckbearded nerds? Ha! In reality they are hard drinking, hard caffeinating, woman disrespecting fratboys!"

Both are stereotypes (with some basis in reality here and there). But of course it makes a good story for the mainstream media. <sigh>

<comment><USER9> coming soon stereotypes; programmers leading in american high school prom movies, becoming the prom king and getting the prom queen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The whole "They used to be nerds and social misfits, but not anymore!" is really old. It seems memories are short in the media.

"Geek is the new Chic" - USA Today, October 2003 <http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-10-22-geek-chic_x.htm>

"The new Worker Elite" - Ad Age, November 1997 <http://www.qualitydigest.com/nov97/html/qualtech.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh, for the day when the brogrammers will follow the metrosexuals and soccer moms into the memory hole...

</comment><comment><USER12> I find this to be one of the silliest quotes in the article:

"Forget what you think you know about the benignly geeky computer programmer who lives for the thrill of finding a single misplaced semicolon in thousands of lines of code."

For as long as I've been programming, the art has been about more than syntax. Although, while teaching new programmers, I find one of the biggest barriers learning to program is getting stuck on syntax, and trying to memorize every little syntactical detail. Better to focus on how to create an algorithm.

Perhaps that's why the writer of this article went into journalism rather than programming.

</comment><comment><USER13> This article seems to just be a lazy rehashing of the Mother Jones story www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brogrammer-culture-sexist- sxsw They mention the exact same examples ('bro down and crush' & bikini shots) even. I'll admit, I didn't read the whole thing. I'm waiting for the NPR Morning Edition rehashing, complete with a chuckling Steve Inskeep. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Should we stay in the background forever, and let the marketing people dictate the future of tech, or make some serious attempt to drive tech into another direction?

At some point you have to get people's attention - once that happens, maybe we can see improvement. Until then, brogramming just makes assclowns easier to spot.

</comment><comment><USER15> _"Now, I'm hearing people talk about being concerned about the number of quote-unquote 'idea people' flooding the field."_

I'm not concerned at all. Ideas are just that: vapor. Show me a concrete implementation. Someone has to actually build that.

<comment><USER16> There's more open jobs for good programmers than there are good programmers. The salary is also very competitive with most other industries. I'm surprised we haven't seen more of a flood of people wanting to try their hands at programming and startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always thought the "brogrammer" stereotype stemmed from a rise of people within the tech industry that broke the classical notion of a software geek. Individuals whom were excellent software engineers, yet whose life did not revolve around a glowing computer screen; and had other hobbies like surfing, biking, etc.

Anyway, the article on CNN is quite funny, but I'm slightly saddened in that there are people who will read this and honestly believe that this is a real problem.

<comment><USER18> I suppose that if all it takes to be a brogrammer is to have hobbies that don't revolve around a computer, then I'm pegged. Which is weird since I spent almost my entire weekend playing video games. So maybe I'm a nerd after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> While this is (from my experience) incredibly inaccurate of the programming community at large. My fear is that it will encourage a perception of people looking for a career to embrace this stereotype. People who read this article may think "This is awesome, I definitely want to do this!" and a new wave of people who think that "brogramming" is the norm will begin to seep into the industry. Maybe the numbers will not be that much and it will allow a more diverse culture.

</comment><comment><USER20> > _Rise of the Brogrammer (cnn.com)_

"Rise of another idiotic idea that applies to less of 0.1% of the population of programmers, but makes for a nice headlines (or the idiots at media outlets thing so".

Here, I fixed it for CNN.

</comment><comment><USER21> I just read this article. It's awesome. Yeah there are definitely problems with the industry. I wonder, though, if some of the things mentioned (like the frathouse like atmosphere) is a sort of response to the 'geekiness' associated with programming. [Not that that in any way justifies sexism or boozing at work, etc]

<comment><USER22> It's a consideration, what with the terms 'geek' and 'nerd' having negative connotations (geek much less so).

'Brogramming' feels like a knee-jerk reaction to boot out the socially awkward, reclusive stereotypes ignorantly associated with being technically proficient.

Interesting to note that in its attempt to do this, it's merely exchanging one set of stereotypes for another. It doesn't really solve the perception problem these people seem to have.

<comment><USER23> It doesn't solve anything _for the industry_ , but for the individual it lets him demonstrate high social status.</comment></comment></comment>


Take guidance from VCs, not orders - <AUTHOR> http://venturehacks.com/articles/guidance-not-orders?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+venturehacks+%28Venture+Hacks%29 <comment><USER2> Good post but bad title. When I read "orders", I assumed "orders (from customers)" but that is not what it is about. Bad assumption on my end perhaps?</comment>


U-turn as teacher estimates to be used for exam results - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53810655 <comment><USER2> The only surprise here is that the education secretary Gavin Williamson is still in post. Months to get it right, then flailing around before and after results were announced. Inexcusable.

Edit: also a very good example of plausible-sounding models leading to gross disadvantage. The polar opposite of the "levelling up" they love to talk about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately in the UK, it is well known that this government (The Conservatives) is extremely incompetent and have failed on everything.

I am confident that Labour (or any other party) would have handled this better.

What a shambles.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there some reason that exam results aren't based on just, yknow, exam results? Why does location or estimation need to factor into it?

<comment><USER5> There is a very good reason: Exams did not take place this year because of the lockdown...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Headline is bit misleading: _Teachers ' estimates will be awarded to students unless the computer algorithm gave a higher grade._</comment>