Circle – A C++ compiler with compile-time imperative metaprogramming - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seanbaxter/circle <comment><USER3> Metaprogramming is very alluring on the surface, we've all been frustrated by the limitations of our languages of choice at some point or another.

But, I think this trend might lead to extremely hard to read code, and there is a good chance that this hard-to-read code will be treated as some black box/voodoo.

It might not be a better idea than self-modifying machine code or some of the wildest C macros...

<comment><USER4> Metaprogramming via reflection is used heavily in the JVM ecosystem, and I can say with confidence that a majority of the bugs I encounter in third party code is somehow related to reflection. I think the overuse of reflection in Java is a symptom of the language not having adequate support for expression the abstractions that developers need in an affordable way, and hence they turn to reflection to work around these limitations. This leads developers down a path where they can't seem to stop applying reflection until they reach a point where the type system gives you almost no meaningful guarantees and compositionality of your components is ruined.

At least compile time reflection and code generation will catch a large chunk of bugs that would otherwise be deferred to runtime. I will take a puzzling compile time error message over having to debug runtime reflection errors any day.

<comment><USER5> > _I think the overuse of reflection in Java is a symptom of the language not > having adequate support for expression the abstractions that developers need > in an affordable way, and hence they turn to reflection to work around > these_

Another explanation is that playing around with annotations and AST decorations/rewriters is an excellent excuse for procrastinating through your day without having to deal with mundane business code :). I also think there's a psychological effect at work here where you're dellusioning yourself into being a "tool developer" and part of an academic discourse when you throw around annotation libs, to deflect from the harsh reality that you're working in cost-center IT. Or maybe a kind of inner migration from an enterprise code base which you can't identify with, and wish to put a fence against, as in "they" (your lib users) vs "us" (elite metaprogrogrammers). As someone else said, today's Spring-heavy Java code bases express behaviour through "anything and everything except actual Java code". C++ developers should take a look at Spring MVC in particular to see if that really is what they want, where the relative sequence of method parameters has significance, and when presented slightly different will result in service request routing 404ing, which you find out only by examining 600-items stack traces with multiple reflection pits.

<comment><USER6> > C++ developers should take a look at Spring MVC in particular to see if that > really is what they want,

I don't understand why it would be bad to make it impossible to have Spring- like frameworks in C++. A metric ton of useful things have been written in it, and are only written much more painstakingly in C++.

<comment><USER5> The obvious answer would be: why don't use Java/Spring then? Does C++ have to be everything to everybody (though that ship has probably sailed some 30 years ago)?

<comment><USER6> > The obvious answer would be: why don't use Java/Spring then? Does C++ have > to be everything to everybody (though that ship has probably sailed some 30 > years ago)?

I really prefer writing C++ code where :

\- I have the choice of the programming style for every subproblem of my software than Java code where most of the time the only choice is new-riddled, OOPish BS. Writing a Java visitor or observer pattern once again makes me shiver from dread when I'm used to std::variant and Qt's signal / slots. I'll admit that Scala mostly solves that though, if I really had to develop on the JVM that's likely the only language that I'd happily use. No type-level programming -> not relevant for me, given how many metric tons of bugs this has saved me so far.

And integrating JVM code with C++ (or any kind of native) code is an exercice in pain - I've had the displeasure to wrap one of the libraries I've developed through JNA to make it accessible to Processing, wouldn't wish that on my enemies.

\- Things can be made to happen deterministically and automatically with RAII, I still have nightmares of trying to get finalizers to work in C# for instance to release resources other than memory at deterministic times and not "some time away in the future".

<comment><USER5> Ok I can get that, though it's not that much of a problem with "finally" code blocks and modern idiomatic Java/try-with-resources. But (and I'm not pretending to be an expert here) I think attempting to write generic multithreaded service-oriented backends in a non-GCd language is going to give you a hard time with memory fragmentation (even more so with async/evented code), plus the performance, for all I know, isn't really all that great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is where C++ is headed anyway. There's just a little bit more work that's needed in c++23, but it's planned, and that will make it possible to use a lot more of the STL in consteval/constexpr contexts.

I think this is a killer feature. Between execution policies and constexpr- all-the-things, I really think C++ is set to pull away in a way that other languages will have difficulty competing with.

<comment><USER8> How does this differ from code generation?

<comment><USER9> It doesn't generate artifacts that you can examine and debug.

<comment><USER10> Circle seems to have compile-time printf, which would make it easier to debug than normal C++ compile-time code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks like a more mature/different approach to the same thing I tried to do in a side project a while ago ([https://github.com/blackhole89/macros](https://github.com/blackhole89/macros)), down to similar aesthetic choices. However, I pitch my project as a macro system rather than compile-time execution.

While here the metalanguage is itself a C++-lookalike, in my project I wound up with something that is perhaps better described as a weird TeX (which seems to be what happens naturally when your machine model is based on binding and substitution).

On one hand, C++ is surely more powerful/expressive and there is elegance to having the language and metalanguage use the same idiom. On the other, I feel like this might actually making Circle a bit more confusing to use at times, as it becomes less clear exactly when what parts of the code are executed, and you could even imagine a typo accidentally lifting a part of the code from runtime to compile time, resulting in mystifying bugs. (I am myself puzzled by the "serialize structs generically" example: does it imply that the template is specialised before the @meta for is executed?)

</comment><comment><USER12> Now add 'operator ;', 'operator if(...)', 'operator .', et al and we've got ourselves a Lisp!

<comment><USER13> Personally I'll just use ECL until CLASP gets its optimizations sorted out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems similar to Zig ([https://ziglang.org/#Compile-time-reflection-and- compile-tim...](https://ziglang.org/#Compile-time-reflection-and-compile-time- code-execution))

<comment><USER15> Zig seems to have arbitrary compile-time code evaluation, but not the kind of AST generation you see here[1]. Nim macros seem to be a closer analogue[2].

[1]: [https://github.com/seanbaxter/circle/blob/master/gems/rpn.md...](https://github.com/seanbaxter/circle/blob/master/gems/rpn.md#lower- the-rpn-ast)

[2]: [https://nim-lang.org/docs/macros.html](https://nim- lang.org/docs/macros.html)

<comment><USER10> There's ongoing work to add support for generating arbitary types at compile time: [https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/383](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/383).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Love the level and amount of documentation/tutorials provided by the author!

Also, wondering when and if the source code of Circle itself will be available.

<comment><USER17> Sean is a very good engineer. Another of his work is moderngpu, a GPU primitive library. It has the same level of doc/tutorials. I really like one thing he wrote: Software is an asset, code a liability. On good days I'd add 200 or 300 lines to this repository. On great days I'd subtract 500.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the reasons to look into Nim.

Nim has generics, templates and macors. Macros are procedural, and they make things like generating a dsl for your software or library a simple matter.

All with a reasonably simple pythonic syntax.

</comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of Manifold[1] for Java. But Manifold integrates seamlessly with the Java compiler as a plugin as opposed to being a separate compiler, which makes Circle less approachable imo. Still, I like the F# type provider-ish aspect of this.

[1]: [https://github.com/manifold- systems/manifold](https://github.com/manifold-systems/manifold)

<comment><USER20> Thanks for pointing out Manifold, looks delicious.

As a historical note, PL/I had a preprocessor that itself was a subset of PL/I. I don't recall any type safety features, but was quite useful for creating DSLs within a program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The syntax choices are for one much better than the C++ committee ideas. Much less eyebleed.

<comment><USER22> Really? I think fold statements are really nice. So often you get what you want by just writing `...`

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Regardless of how great the stuff in the repo is (I'll check it out)... this is amazing:

"it's like c++ that went away to train with the league of shadows and came back 15 years later and became batman"

<comment><USER24> I'm going to disagree here. It reminds me of the "Python Ninja"-type job titles that became popular ~2012. It's so preoccupied with standing out and breaking the formality of its medium that it actually says nothing.

The repo description literally says two things: Circle is a C++ automation language, and Circle trained with the League of Shadows. The rest requires clicks.

That's a terrible way to drive adoption for something that obviously was difficult to build. Sometimes being earnest and straightforward is the best way to break down skepticism, not by using meaningless hipster taglines.

<comment><USER25> there's about a zillion pages of detailed documentation on top of that

<comment><USER24> The intro text is not detailed enough to tell me whether I want to click on any of those.

How hard is it to write a one-sentence explanation of what a project is that doesn't involve ninjas?

<comment><USER26> From the abstract,

"Circle is a compiler that extends C++17 for new introspection, reflection and compile-time execution. An integrated interpreter allows the developer to execute any function during source translation. Compile-time flavors of control flow statements assist in generating software programmatically. The configuration-oriented programming paradigm captures some of the conveniences of dynamic languages in a statically-typed environment, helping separate a programmer's high-level goals from the low-level code and allowing teams to more effectively reason about their software."

While I appreciate your qualm, respectfully I think that no matter how it were introduced, someone would've quibbled. "You should be straightforward", "you should be more detailed", "you should have more ninjas". There's no win. The solution is to hope the readers you care about will be adventurous enough to make two clicks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm all for doing things at compile time rather than run-time but both the syntax and debugability of CPP template metaprogramming suck.

I wonder if C++ should pull a Python 3 and clean up the syntax. Given that the transition for Py3 took more than a decade maybe they should do it in small but frequent language upgrades instead.

<comment><USER28> C and C++ live on backwards compatibility. There are many decades old codebases that are still being worked on. You can't clean up the syntax if that breaks backwards compatibility, you'd just end up creating a new language instead.

<comment><USER27> IMO too much backwards compatibility hinders progress. It's obviously not sustainable to be forever backwards compatible all the way to the 70s. I'd say old code bases can simply stick with the older compiler.

As for whether it'd be considered a new language or not, it depends. I wouldn't consider Py3 a new language even though it's not backwards compatible.

<comment><USER22> General software tip: don't make a new version if you'll have to maintain the old and the new. It gets annoying real quick. much easier to tell your users to update and be reasonable with the changes

I actually don't see a problem keeping the old syntax alive. I do see a problem with new programmers using obsolete constructs

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've just started storing metadata in JSON format. Then, I have a cmake target that invokes a python program that reads in the JSON and generates .h/.cpp files which can then be consumed by other targets.

The advantage of this is that I can then use the same metadata JSON to generate documentation, or whatever I want.

<comment><USER30> Have you learned about Lisp macros yet? If you're intrigued by this idea, Lisp macros are a few steps above in terms of functionality, integration, etc.

<comment><USER29> Are you talking about using Lisp macros to generate C/C++/documentation? I'm not sure how Lisp macros would be better than static metadata files being operated on by some high level scripting language.

<comment><USER30> The author created a DSL which generates code. Macros are another way to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is so wonderfully excellent. I can't wait to use it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Reminds me of the Jai language, in development now: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ&list=PLmV5I2fxai...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ&list=PLmV5I2fxaiCKfxMBrNsU1kgKJXD3PkyxO)

</comment><comment><USER33> I would keep using D ...

</comment><comment><USER34> What I miss in C++ isn't more ability to _run_ things at compile-time, but rather more ability to _compile_ things at run-time!

I want to finalize my optimizations with run-time-available information - <USER2> to make run-time-definable compositions of pieces of code.

Something like this: [https://blog.quarkslab.com/easyjit-just-in-time- compilation-...](https://blog.quarkslab.com/easyjit-just-in-time-compilation- for-c.html)

but better still.

</comment><comment><USER35> Verilog and VHDL have something akin to this form of imperative meta- programming. (See Verilog's "generate" and "genvar" keywords for example).

But there is no iterating over or building members of an interface (the closest thing SystemVerilog has to a user defined type).

</comment><comment><USER36> Is it named Circle because you'll be running in a circle trying to figure out the error messages?

<comment><USER37> Jokes like this are common now, but, as an outsider, I think it's crazy that the C++ community says stuff like this as if they weren't dealing with template errors and slowly making everything work under constexpr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I am not sure if it's possible to implement this as pluggable pass to llvm, but it would widen adoption.

<comment><USER39> The backend is LLVM. Sean wrote his own C++17 compatible frontend to provide this functionality (thus, Circle is effectively a replacement for clang).

</comment></comment><comment> torb-xyz There's a pretty interesting podcast interview with the author here: [https://cppcast.com/circle-language/](https://cppcast.com/circle-language/)

I find the idea of using this as a rapid testing and exploration of potential new C++ features quite interesting.

</comment><comment><USER40> The @include thing makes me wonder if a circle library could compete with modules.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the author mentioned that he plans to support C++-modules as is. He already supports concepts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This looks amazing, but the fact that it is implemented in an entirely new compiler (atop LLVM, sure) is a major turn-off. Would be more useful if it were implemented as a meta compiler instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is basically no way to modify clang or GCC to support executing arbitrary C++ code at compile time. Something like that would be a fork that wouldn't get accepted upstream. According to the author the compiler front end is ~100kLoc which is an order of magnitude less than what clang is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

<comment><USER43> Circle is honestly a breath of fresh air and much more palatable in terms of usability/speed than the existing constexpr facilities or proposed reflection IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It makes my eyes bleed, but so does C++ by itself to a slight degree. I imagine those that like C++ (or are forced to use it) might find it very interesting.

I wonder how this compares to hygienic macros that some languages support?

<comment><USER45> I use C++ by choice for some projects. Still I think C++ is enough beast on its own. No need to add another preprocessor

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> template<typename... types_t>

struct ??? {

      @meta for(int i = 0; i < sizeof...(types_t); ++i)

        types_t...[i] @(i);

};

Oh no.

</comment><comment><USER47> One can only imagine the error messages from the c++ layer after a semi- botched circle compile!

<comment><USER48> Actually the error messages are much nicer than you've thought. Here's an example:

        $ circle taco4.cxx -I /home/sean/projects/opensource/taco/include -M /home/sean/projects/opensource/taco/Debug/lib/libtaco.so  -filetype=ll
        Creating compute_1 function
        macro expansion: taco4.cxx:428:3
        error in expansion of macro auto call_taco(const char*, const options_t&)
          code injection: taco4.cxx:420:6
          error thrown in @expression("c")
            error: @expression:1:1
            undeclared identifier 'c'

A well-defined meta language would probably have way better error messages than an accidentally-discovered language based on insane template hacks.</comment></comment>


The terrifying surveillance case of Brandon Mayfield - <AUTHOR> http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/the-terrifying-surveillancecaseofbrandonmayfield.html <comment><USER3> There isn't a name for the political system we find ourselves in at the moment. It works like this: you free to act as you wish as long as you respect a series of red lines that are never clearly formulated. All these red lines pertain to making changes of substance in the dominant political and economic system.

If you do cross over them, then you find yourself inside the prison system, in a psychiatric ward, or simply disappeared altogether. If large numbers of people cross these lines at once, I suspect we will find ourselves overnight in a totalitarian system, since all the tools for mass control of the population are already in place.

<comment><USER4> I propose we call it a Techno-Militarized Surveillance-and-Incarceration Pseudo-Democratic State. Here are the basics on how to create one:

1) Education: provide a relatively weak public education system that teaches patriotism and not a lot about the rest of the world, so the masses are easier to fool. At the same time, have the best graduate schools in the world so you can have the best scientists and engineers (and technology).

2) Media: have a few corporations control 90% of your media. Make them work for you by providing news and shows that distract the masses from political topics, and at the same time instil fear in their hearts. Fear is very important for mass control. If possible, promote capitalist ideals such as meritocracy, free market, working hard, consumption, etc. through your media and school system.

3) Industries: your most important industries are armaments and defence technology, though your prison industry also plays a strategic role. Focus on having a steady flow of wars, preferably in unfamiliar faraway countries. But throw in a few domestic wars too, especially on "drugs"\---to promote fear, help you with your prison industry and keep the masses away from the dangerous "psychedelics" that could make people question things. Use fear to gain power and reduce civil rights, then use your more rigorous laws and militarized police to keep the people in line and the prisons full.

4) Intelligence: your intelligence agencies work behind curtains to keep the system working in harmony and further the "national interests", using surveillance and their access to power---and the tools of fear, ignorance and propaganda---to make the masses work for the system while believing they are free and living in a true democracy. Beautiful.

Of course, these are not an US exclusive, many other countries are trying the same tricks, but it seems the US is far in the lead...

<comment><USER5> The US public education system really isn't doing a grand job teaching "patriotism" per se. Public school teachers, taken as a group nationwide, are notorious for being left-wing (and pro-union, and such.) The left wing has kind of been been down on Patriotism since around Vietnam or so, with only a brief interlude around Sep. 2001 through 2003 or so.

Oh, sure, there are regional variations and exceptions, but Texas is probably the only one with a population behind it worth counting.

<comment><USER6> I know someone who was suspended from school in Virginia 5-10 years ago for refusing to sing the national anthem. He was Scottish, yet was expected to howl along with the rest. Just standing up, hand on heart wasn't enough. Just an anecdata point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The only reason Mayfield is a free man today is that the Spanish police repeatedly told the FBI that the print recovered from the bag of detonators didn't match Mayfield's fingerprints. The FBI, however, continued to stand by its lab's findings until Spanish authorities conclusively matched the print to the real culprit"

Even if you are hardline nut and totally support the surveillance state it has to be frightening alarming that they were so dead set on harassing this one guy that they would have let the real culprit go free had the Spanish police not called them on their BS.

<comment><USER8> I would wager money that there are many FBI agents to this day who lament that they let Mayfield get away with his crimes.

<comment><USER9> I would wager money that there are just as many FBI agents who to this day are disgusted by what the idiots at the Portland Field Office of the FBI did to this guy.

<comment><USER10> Those agents need to speak up. They especially need to speak up when they observe their colleagues conducting themselves as the article describes.

<comment><USER11> I don't think there will be much love for whistleblowers at any federal agency in the post-Snowden era.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Horrifying story that will change absolutely nothing. The government isn't willing to back away from the power (even after it became known) and people aren't upset enough in mass to actually do things about it - things that would probably be done in vain for some time. And changing the minds of many people in the 'innocent people have nothing to hide' I find to have a general delusion, believing the government (or at least the law) is mostly infallible.

It is not a new pattern, either. Look back to what we (americans) did to each other in the 50's (are You a communist? Do you act like one?). Had we had the tech then to spy like now, we'd have done so. Which means that despite the sensational news stories, I find almost apathy from normal people I meet - <USER2> paranoid has known for years (don't talk on that cell phone, they can listen in on those easily... does anyone remember this attitude?). Privacy intrusions simply exist. They are. You aren't escaping them. It might make one angry, but there is nothing people feel they can do about it. I personally disagree, but also feel the path to balance in this area is an uncomfortable one.

<comment><USER13> I disagree. Every such story has the potential to make people re-think their false belief that "I've got nothing to hide".

I for one have added it to my list of bookmarks, and hope I remember to pass it on when somebody downplays the dangers of surveillance the next time.

Ultimately, scaling back the mass surveillance state can only be done using popular support. Stories like this one are the best way to get that support, because they are concrete evidence of its danger (rather than the abstract worries that are usually repeated).

There's a difference between reading 1984 and seeing articles of how things play out in real life in your own country.

<comment><USER14> > I disagree. Every such story has the potential to make people re-think their > false belief that "I've got nothing to hide".

Most people will easily rationalize this away and just think that he was a Muslim after all. Good Christians don't have to worry about a thing (except Muslim terrorists of course).

<comment><USER15> Where are you getting these 'facts' about how people are going to behave from?

Truly, if it changes one person's mind then it's done some good. This alone won't change anything but spreading this to allow people to see there are kinks in the armour will allow people to perhaps vote in the future for difference.

When the majority is against something, sometimes some good can be done. Not always. The government is all powerful, but there is a chance.

<comment><USER14> Why don't you ask nhaehnle where he/she gets her facts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is an excellent example of what I was talking about earlier. We have FBI field agents, men and women who are so overly patriotic that it clouds their rational judgement, men and women who are not trained to think rationally about data and who probably have only a high school understanding of statistics (if that), who are given access to massive amounts of data. They take this data and they match it against a theory that they've already developed, and they assume they have "cracked the case." They act in a constant state of paranoia, fueled by fear and powered by tools that act on data in ways that they can't possibly understand. And so they fill in some (likely poorly designed) form in some FBI web app, and some names get spit out. Then they look at whoever matches their "profile" which was likely developed using, again, a high school level of psychology. It's ridiculous and frightening.

<comment><USER17> > We have FBI field agents, men and women who are so overly patriotic that it > clouds their rational judgement, men and women who are not trained to think > rationally about data and who probably have only a high school understanding > of statistics (if that), who are given access to massive amounts of data.

Really though?

> The FBI's Portland field office, however, used that fingerprint match to > begin digging into Mayfield's background. Certain details of the attorney's > life convinced the agents that they had their man. Mayfield had converted to > Islam after meeting his wife, an Egyptian. He had represented one of the > Portland Seven, a group of men who tried to travel to Afghanistan to fight > for al Qaeda and the Taliban against U.S. and coalition forces in a child > custody case. He also worshipped at the same mosque as the militants.

I can't help but think I would have fallen for the same conclusion.

<comment><USER18> > I can't help but think I would have fallen for the same conclusion.

That's because confirmation bias is a human and common thing. Scientists have various tools to avoid fooling themselves like FBI did and like you and many of us would do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Possibly the worst part: the courts ruled that what they did to him was unconstitutional (duh), but that it's perfectly OK to keep doing it to other people because he already got his payout:

[http://blogs.findlaw.com/ninth_circuit/2009/12/mayfield-v- us...](http://blogs.findlaw.com/ninth_circuit/2009/12/mayfield-v-us- no-07-35865.html)

<comment><USER20> If the individual agents and prosecutors were bonded for the purpose of funding liability like this, we would know the cost of liability up front, and it would make it difficult for the same individuals to be involved in many such cases. Making the government as a whole pay is too diffuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _One of the examiners candidly admitted that if the person identified had been someone without these characteristics, like the Maytag repairman, the laboratory might have revisited the identification with more skepticism and caught the error._

I know We're All Bayesian Now, but does this really seem like the way a "laboratory" ought to work? If fingerprinting really is a science, then it's a study of patterns and how they do or do not match. I'm pretty sure we have computers for that sort of task. Why isn't this totally automated by now? From the outside, the reason that springs to mind is because fingerprinting, as practiced by the FBI, is not scientific at all, and exists merely as window- dressing for the prejudice and misjudgment of agents.

<comment><USER22> [http://science.howstuffworks.com/fingerprinting4.htm](http://science.howstuffworks.com/fingerprinting4.htm)

Fingerprint matching is automatically done by computers. The FBI has 1/6th of the American population in its database. Prints found in the wild aren't whole, the are usually partial prints. They ran the partials, found 20 people who it could be from that database with whatever degree of probability, probably very small. This of course was misused, but it wasn't the science was wrong so to speak rather the humans utilizing it were wrong and acting without good judgement and ethics.

<comment><USER21> The problem then is that the FBI laboratory, without consequence, utilizes the science "without good judgement [sic] and ethics." Are there any forensic laboratories in the USA that operate _with_ good judgment and ethics?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No concerned citizen can allow themselves to be "terrified" by this story, if only because terror is the death of rational, effective _action_. We must be able to look at this situation, empathize with _both_ sides, and determine how things could have gone better. (Empathizing with law enforcement is particularly difficult for me, but I've come to realize that it is a crucial part of the puzzle.)

It is normal for law-enforcement to chase down a false lead. Most leads are dead-ends, from my lay understanding of detective work. In retrospect, Mayfield was a dead-end, but the key question is: when should the FBI have realized this? The actions that they took would have been justified, I think, if their suspicions had turned out to be valid. (all except the 2 week incarceration - and even that would have been clearly justified if Mayfield had been charged.)

In any event, this is one of those cases which highlights a growing problem in the US legal system, which is the redefinition of "punishment" to exclude pre- trial incarceration and harassment. Law-enforcement has attained an ever growing list of exceptions and ad hoc powers that override a man's right to a fair trial before being punished. City police can "detain" you for up to 72 hours, for no reason. The FBI (apparently) can "detain" you for at least 2 weeks, again without charges. I believe that these rights to ad hoc, extra- judicial incarceration need to be rescinded, by an act of Congress, as these rights enable systematically arbitrary and abusive behavior on the part of law-enforcement at both the local and federal level. I believe they make the general population, whether they know it or not, unsafe from predatory police behavior.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't see this as a question of confirmation bias but rather a more deeper problem in investigative law enforcement, namely the need to see things as part of a narrative relating to the sort of investigation. This isn't confirmation bias as usually understood, but goes one step before, namely in filtering out the details one can tell a story about.

In the end what criminal investigators do is they find details and piece together a narrative from those. One huge problem with massive surveillance is the ability to piece together whatever narrative the investigator wants to put together based on a much larger field of information to mine.

</comment><comment><USER24> The FBI is the modern day Gestapo, a bunch of poorly trained policemen with the right ideology turned secret agency.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nobody is perfect and institutions are no exception. However, I'd have to see more than a single datapoint to indite an entire system. Those who are anti- surveillance will no doubt exhibit confirmation bias when reading this article, which is ironic.

</comment><comment><USER26> Cardinal Richelieu had something to say on the topic.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think some of us are forgetting and are underestimating the human capacity for compassion. This is not just about American public, but all of the humans. What is struck between this uproar is the data security of all the 6billion+ people on this earth.If someone is to think, that it would be over, if they just stop spying on American citizens and their activity, he is grossly underestimating the rest of humanity, this wave won't end until lines are drawn, about what is totalitarian and what is the right line of conformity.

Whats happening right now is a organization and its supporting organizations, finding it hard to stay on the line of justice in a world, where America is a small word, compared to what it was like before. Patriotism is nice, but it has reduced meaning today, this is no longer a world, where you can stay within your borders and hurt everybody outside it.

A good example, is from the movie Hobbit 2, where the elf king is reluctant to look outside of his wooden kingdom.

With great power comes great responsibility.. if you have power over Americans, you have responsibility over Americans, but in case of NSA, they have power over the data of all the people, thus their responsibility is towards everybody.

</comment><comment><USER28> >He spent two weeks in jail, petrified that fellow inmates would learn he was somehow involved in the Madrid bombing and hurt him.

This is surprising to me, that he knew what he was being investigated for. Is there any reason why they would tell him?

<comment><USER18> So he can confess. You'll get confession you want more often if a person that is supposed to confess knows what he's supposed to confess to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What, exactly, is terrifying? The FBI did an excellent job of making connections between suspicious facts, the sort of connections that should have been made to prevent the 9-11 attacks.

It is absurd to claim that this should not have happened. All detection methods have a false positive rate. Judging by what has shown up in the media, the FBI has a counterterrorism false positive rate of one person every few years. That is a stupendously low rate for such a rare yet politically-charged task.

Let's not forget their other famous false positive terrorism case: the anthrax case. Their needle in a haystack search turned up a false positive, but it also turned up the true positive.

The only terrifying thing here is that they suspected him of being a serial mass murderer, and then proceeded to apply _such poor spycraft that a false positive was spooked_. There are going to have a hard time catching real baddies being that sloppy.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the part I find terrifying:

 _The only reason Mayfield is a free man today is that the Spanish police repeatedly told the FBI that the print recovered from the bag of detonators didn't match Mayfield's fingerprints. The FBI, however, continued to stand by its lab's findings until Spanish authorities conclusively matched the print to the real culprit, Algerian national Ouhane Daoud._

That "only" is not rhetorical -- the guy would probably be entombed in a supermax or frying in the electric chair if he had been flagged for a terrorism case in the US, in which case the FBI would have had sole jurisdiction and there would have been nobody with the power to say that a) you guys are mistaken and b) we've nabbed the actual culprit.

<comment><USER30> It is rhetorical, because in front a judge, you would have to have actual evidence.

 _Of course_ the burden of proof for investigating someone's behavior is lower than to get a conviction: if it wasn't, why would there be investigations? I don't want to defend the FBI's idiotic handling of this (namely ignoring all the evidence _against_ the theory), but acting like the FBI has sole discretion to throw someone into prison with so much evidence against their theory is very bizarre.

The only reason he might not be a free man would be that the court system can be very slow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Per the WP article on Brandon Mayfield, there was plenty of evidence, it's just that it was 'largely "fabricated and concocted by the FBI and DOJ"'. For example, the fingerprint was described as a "100% match", when it apparently wasn't even close. He was also arrested as a "material witness", not a suspect, meaning he was held incommunicado and without access to a lawyer.

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

<comment><USER21> The most disturbing thing for me about the wiki article is the part where an appeals court reversed the 4th Amendment claim on the grounds that Mayfield _didn 't have standing_. As in, a citizen who was jailed unjustly due to an ill-considered, unconstitutional law, _doesn 't have standing to challenge that law_. What a shithole this place has become.

<comment><USER30> [http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th- circuit/1499231.html](http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1499231.html) Here's the ruling on that case, because at first I found it odd too (search for "Redressability")

In order to have standing, one must prove that a favorable ruling would provide relief. Mayfield wanted information kept by the government from house searches to be destroyed, and the gov't argued that even if the FISA ammendments and PATRIOT act provisions were declared unconstitutional, that this information could still be kept.

Two arguments are pointed out:

>a Fourth Amendment violation occurs at the moment of the illegal search or seizure, and that the subsequent use of the evidence obtained does not per se violate the Constitution

>the Fourth Amendment does not provide a retroactive remedy for illegal conduct

The first point is based off of this case([http://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/criminal- procedure/crimin...](http://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/criminal- procedure/criminal-procedure-keyed-to-israel/arrest-search-and- seizure/pennsylvania-bd-of-probation-and-parole-v-scott/))... it basically says that the notion of illegal evidence only exists in a criminal court setting. In the case mentioned (concerning parole hearings, which are administrative hearings), this evidence can still be admitted. The argument can then continue that the gov't can hold onto the information, they just are not allowed to present it in court (supposedly).

I am not sure of this interpretation, but that was the argument.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the explanation, but I'm sure you can understand how one might be disappointed in caselaw that completely vitiates a basic tenet of the Bill of Rights. I mean, if there is no remedy for a violation, why does any asshole cop ever bother with the Miranda warning?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Trying to link this to the NSA data mining is absurd. They're tangentially related, but there is no process or regulation which is going to somehow help you when there's an _active_ investigation and agents are digging through your garbage and talking to past contacts.

That's the exact purview of the FBI - they weren't mining databases, all they have to do is send a guy out to chat with some local base personnel, find out where he used to live, look up neighbours etc. This is all active, in-person investigative work.

<comment><USER32> "Because the FBI agents had no concrete evidence that Mayfield was linked to the Madrid train bombings, they decided not to apply for a criminal wiretap, which requires probable cause to believe there is criminal activity or intent. Rather, they applied for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, ..." "The secret FISA court approved the request, as it almost always does, and the FBI began its surreptitious and incredibly intrusive blanket surveillance of Mayfield and his family."

<comment><USER33> Why the hell is FBI allowed to ask for a FISA "warrant" (god, I hate their 1984 newspeak)?!

<comment><USER34> I didn't think it could be used for anyone but foreign citizens to the U.S.!

The FISC is pathetic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Canadian resource to share appreciation during Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> http://togethernorth.ca <comment><AUTHOR> Our CTO put together this project to help Canadians share their appreciation for health care and other essential service employees during the current pandemic.</comment>


Airbnb for cars is gaining popularity in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/would-you-rent-out-your-car-to-make-money-ive-made-2300-in-two-y/ <comment><USER2> It is refreshing to see that they sorted out the insurance system as part of the product. The Airbnb and Uber equivalent was/is to get people to use their home owners/property insurance to deal with that and then offer a sort of backup system in case that didn't work. This app has got a solution that works from the outset which is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER3> The peer-to-peer economy is the path to reducing income disparity. Staying the course and fully realizing that vision in the face of political turbulence and ideological opposition from opponents of the free market, will be difficult.</comment>


Interview with the founders of 23andMe - <AUTHOR> http://pimm.wordpress.com/2007/11/18/the-new-faces-of-silicon-valley-biotech-savvy-co-founders-avey-wojcicki/#comment-52881 <comment><USER2> This company bothers me immensely. They take your $1000 and a buccal swab, and run it against an 550K SNP chip (beadarray, actually). That's all. The data which is generated effectively tells you what base your cellular DNA has at points along the genome where humans are highly divergent (these points, SNPs for Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, tend to be passed from generation to generation in blocks which are resistant to breaking up during recombination; therefore, they reveal a lot about a person's ancestry, and the combinations of blocks present can predict some types of disease risk). It _sounds_ cool; I'm not so sure that it's the best place to spend $1000 at this point in time, but hey -- SHINEY!!1 People will probably do what they're told and burn some cash on it.

This is all well and good, I suppose. You have a service of fairly dubious utility being offered, to a bunch of people who likely overestimate its utility. In other words, it's just like any other service in that respect. Maybe less useful than most. (edited to remove erroneous Affy/Illumina references -- with that sort of an error, you better not regard any of the rest of this post as definitive either!)

What sucks, in my mind, about this situation is that the company doesn't seem to be driving any real innovation. Right now, you can have your genome run against a dense panel of SNP markers, and find out what it contains at swab time. That's non-exhaustive, but statistically it barely matters because if you have major new mutations in conserved genes, you're probably dead. Most such mutations are fatal. The ones that aren't continue to be passed around as time goes on. But there are a number of other influences on the way your body ages, gets diseases (or doesn't), passes diseases on (or doesn't), and so on, which we DO know about. First off is epigenetic influences such as whether some of the cytosine bases are decorated with methyl groups. If 23andMe has any intention of offering new scans as the methylation chips become more useful, they're not telling. It will be some time before the success of genome-wide association scans, such as the successful efforts to locate SNPs and SNP (haplotype) blocks which put a person and their offspring at high risk for Crohn's colitis, is wide-spread enough that the genetic information is useful to the average person. The epigenetic and environmental information carried in a person's cells, and the interaction effects of all 3? Could be decades in the most optimistic case. If you think brute-force computational power will solve that, let me know how your protein folding programs are doing. Brute force CPU power was supposed to solve that, too.

Meanwhile, companies like Helicos and Pacific Biosystems are producing technology to cheaply and completely resequence a genome using whole-genome amplification from small samples. They're getting smacked around by the bear market in biotech, but if they succeed, and it looks like they will, then instead of a panel of 1000K SNPs, you'd get ALL of the information in a snapshot of your genome. All 3 billion bases, maternal and paternally derived copies -- remember, you can have different maternal and paternal alleles -- which means all the repeats, microsatellites, and other bits that the SNP chips don't get. (There are plenty of other gotchas as well -- but this is getting really long and I'm not in a mood to edit)

About the use of the word ''snapshot'' -- it's because cellular DNA appears to change in response to cellular RNA manipulation. Tom Cech won the Nobel prize for showing that RNA by itself could store, manipulate, and transmit information at a cellular level. More and more, it's appearing that RNA is actually running the show even in the presence of DNA, and DNA is more like short-term storage for the transient instructions from the RNA. So the DNA, rather than being static, is not just getting methylated and wrapped into bundles, but literally changed on the fly. (If the preceding story is correct -- which no one seems to know)

So what they're assembling at 23andMe is a big tissue bank, a collection of mailed-in buccal swabs, and they're offering the (IMHO, dubious) service of guiding you through that information. There are some useful things you can learn from your genome even now. If you and your spouse have certain mutations -- say, you're both carriers for Tay-Sachs -- then you know right off the bat that 25% of your children are likely to have the disease. If you have certain variations in, for example, _TCF7L2_ (see [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7130/full/nature0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7130/full/nature05616.html)) your risk of type II diabetes is increased (though this is not nearly as conclusive as studies such as those for Crohn's). But most diseases aren't as simple genetically as Tay-Sachs or cystic fibrosis. Most are complex, apparently the product of environmental, genetic, and ''other'' influences. So what you are _NOT_ going to find out definitively is what treatments you might respond to, _WHETHER_ you are more likely to die of colon cancer than anything else... not solely from 23andMe. Not at this point, when there is a very great deal of uncertainty even within the statistical genetics community as to the overall utility of many of these expensive genome-wide association studies. Are they producing results? Fuck yeah! Are those results directly translating into cures or treatments? Uh...

If the current perception is correct, and RNA + environmental/epigenetic influences are in fact changing the genome on-the-fly, then a tissue bank that can re-run the snapshot you sent in (as a buccal, aka cheek, swap) against newer technologies may be of limited utility. The inherent utility is, in that scenario, delivered by the newer technology, and the expertise to run a 'hot' scan on affected, unaffected, or potentially-affected individuals at a particular point in time.

It's unclear to me how their infrastructure could help with this final item, and for all of Brin's wealth, I still don't see them bringing humanity closer to that point. The information could hurt you, by making you uninsurable, but I can't see a snapshot of potential risks helping people the way that newer technologies offering time-lapse snapshots of a person's genome may. That's why it bugs me.

Had to get that off my chest, I guess.

JMHO.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure your anger is well placed. 23andme gets an undue amount of attention so it's natural to feel frustrated by the media hype. But 23andme aren't (at this stage) lying to customers about what it does, and I'm pretty sure most customers will be interested in the knowledge not simply the utility. Also ruling out strongly genetic diseases is probably quite interesting to a lot of people, regardless of how useful it is in a public health sense.

Most likely their initial scan procedure isn't of great utility but does set up a market for people based on their genetics. A whole realm of industries could spring up which could be very interesting. I don't know why you think its 23andme's job to carry the entirety of biotech research, but if no one can make any money from personal genetics until we know everything there is to know about the genome then I doubt we'll advance the field at a great pace.

<comment><USER2> It's not their responsibility to do much of anything. But they're uniquely well positioned to push a lot of these things along, and it's a bit disappointing that they opt not to.

Plus, selling genomic information from your customers, in aggregate or not, is a rather evil thing to do given the potential for misuse. Hopefully there will not be any phenotypic information provided, but if they somehow manage to run out of money, who knows? Not all phenotypes require a whole organism, as I'm sure you know.

Also, I'm not saying "wait until we know everything there is to know". I'm saying "let's not go off half-cocked -- didn't we learn anything from the schizophrenia 'gene' study?". I am more than a little concerned about this.

<comment><USER3> Selling the information along is another thing, I'm just responding to your comment I'm not saying 23andme are a great company.

I've noticed myself that when I know a bit about an area, its easy to look at a particular company and see how far behind the research they are. 23andme are trying to take genome sequencing and give it to the masses. Is it very useful? probably not, but they are trying to hit a consumer price point - so doing a whole bunch of original research on genome sequencing, or making a sequencing chip of their own just isn't practical.

A lot of Brin's money is and no doubt will go to good causes, but this isn't suppose to be a charity. Even if it doesn't take off, it's likely to be a positive thing for the personal genome industry not a negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an email conversation I had with the company:

<http://kirubakaran.blogspot.com/2007/12/introspection.html>

<comment><USER5> They certainly benefit from people that think this is whole genome sequencing... the media tends to confuse the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's $1000 dollars for a kit? Seriously?

Wow. Up until that it looked kinda interesting.

<comment><USER7> People generally shell out a lot more than that for many tests.

I thought it was pretty cool. The only reason I'm not paying is that they do not seem to have a service to keep my info updated based on new discoveries.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but there's a reason that traditional genetic tests are expensive: they're carefully developed, calibrated and tested to tell you something reliable about a specific gene or condition (they're also usually FDA- regulated, and therefore subject to clinical trials. This is not a trivial expense. It also happens to be an expense that 23andMe has bypassed.)

If a regular genetic test is equivalent to obtaining the contents of a single page in a very large book, what 23andMe is doing is closer to quickly skimming the index. It's cheaper to do on a large scale, but much less detailed. It's therefore a vanity expense, which has to affect the price point.

<comment><USER5> 23andme's test is decidedly non clinical and decidedly non FDA approved.

<comment><USER8> Yup. That's part of the reason why it's a vanity expense (I edited my comment to be more clear.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> which one is Sergey Brin wife?

<comment><USER10> Brunette.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is it so hard to read comments? - <AUTHOR>

So radurls.com doesn't have comments and that's fine.
However, I clicked on their link to http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2015/03/08/startups-lets-talk-about-depression/ and let's say I read the article and now I want to read peoples' comments about the article (okay, I was going to skip the article and read the comments/[aka reviews] before investing my time in the article).
thenextweb.com provides me with little social icons to click and share the article on facebook, twitter, g+, reddit, HN, but it shows that 295 people have already done that. There are probably several lively discussions occurring out-there, somewhere. With every share, that discussion becomes further fragmented.
Rather than starting my own discussion about the article, I want to find, read, and join the conversations that are taking place and they're clearly not in the Disqus box at the bottom of the article. So... As a user, how do I do that? <comment><USER2> I suspect you're in a minority for wanting to read all those threads together. My feeling is that people usually will only read discussions that fit their expectations.

Depending on the service, the average commenter's profile will be very different. On Facebook, it's a random man-on-the-street. On Twitter, a besserwisser posing for her own followers in cryptic abbreviations. On HN, an autist who believes he deserves to be a billionaire. On Reddit, someone who lives in a basement. On G+, either a Google employee or Linus Torvalds because nobody else uses it.

Personally, I'm firmly in the autist-with-billionaire-delusions camp.

</comment><comment><USER3> My guess would be that they want you to share the article but not to leave their site for some other just to see the discussion. Or maybe it's just how the widget was implemented and no one gave it much of a thought.

It would be a cool browser addon or maybe a service that tracks articles online and shows you comments about it from other sites.

<comment><USER4> I also thought about this. Something like Hypothesis (chrome extension) but more focused on public commenting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The reason why they provide icons for sharing is not to foster discussion but to generate pageviews. They probably have zero hopes for in-depth discussion but rather want their links spread to many places. Ad-driven websites work on pageviews, not community or quality.

<comment><USER6> Or, less cynically, because people want to share the article and having little icons there makes it easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To answer your question for this specific article: dump the url into the twitter search box(there is a lot of activity there and not a lot elsewhere).

Though in general people have selected to have such discussions off site because they want to talk with people within their chosen communities. To facilitate this it is not always in the best interest of the network to invite outsiders into the discussion.

Just look at Twitter for an example of what happens when you don't do anything to insulate communities from outsiders. If you post an article to have a conversation with people in your network, an influx of outside voices can just show up and make that extremely difficult or unpleasant.

<comment><USER8> > _Though in general people have selected to have such discussions off site > because they want to talk with people within their chosen communities._

This, in a nutshell, is why the tech utopia that we imagined in the 80s never materialized. We thought that democratized publishing and having access to all information would make everyone better informed and politics would function better. But instead we just getting virtual tribes warring with one another at the edges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you figure out a way to mix facebook discussions with HN discussions I will actively avoid your "solution" like the plague.

I'm on HN solely for the comments, and it's an oasis of intelligence in a vast, arid desert.

</comment><comment><USER10> What I would do is search reddit for the article URL, if there have not been any submitted yet, then I would submit it to the appropriate subreddit and hope a discussion forms.

Unfortunately, with the way reddit works a lot of times this fails for larger subreddits, because your submission gets burried, but it works just fine with smaller subreddits.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been using the bookmarklet from here for a while: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8583275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8583275)

Basically when there is an article I get to from elsewhere and I want to check if there are HN comments I simply click it and it takes me straight there.

</comment><comment><USER12> Seekr[0] was posted to HN 2 months ago. It is described as a Reverse Search Chrome Extension, and it supports Reddit / Hackernews / Twitter / Facebook / Google+ Discussions.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8854712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8854712)</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you find javascript gurus? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for javascript gurus to help me out with building a webapp.<p>Does anyone know a good site for finding javascript(with specific focus on jquery) gurus ? <comment><USER2> Are you looking to hire? Are you looking to find freelancers? Are you looking for support forums and mailing lists?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. Freelancers specifically it's about building a wire framing tool;

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> i know a guy that does contract work and is good with jquery..

otherwise, maybe u could try elance :-/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, would you mind introducing me to him. I'm email@example.com

<comment><USER3> ok i sent my friend aaron an email and copied you.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Value of "Shares of Stock options" when joining a startup - <AUTHOR> I got an offer from a US start-up (well +25 employees) which has an office in EU where I would join them.
The offer's base salary is good (ie. higher than average  for senior positions for that location) but I intend to negotiate it further, as I have possible other options. patio11's negotiation guide was a great read in that regard.
However, I'm relocating from a non-EU/US country, and I don't have a single idea about the financial systems, stock markets, and how to evaluate "15k shares of stock-options" or what "Stock Option and Grant Plan" means, I'm asking you fellow HNers about this part.
Do I just treat them as worthless and focus on base salary (as some internet sources suggest) or is there a formula to evaluate what they would be worth in say 2 years for instance ? <comment><USER2> It would not hurt to ask about current and future dilution and how exactly the company is currently estimating share value. Getting a straight answer is likely going to be a challenge though.

Assuming the company in question is not "public" then yes it would be good to be conservative about the valuation of their stock. It would be safe to assume that _any number_ of shares of stock (options or grants) are worthless.

From my personal experience, you will likely be disappointed in whatever is left after investors and principles take their cut. They are almost certainly going to be privileged in a buyout over the holders of "common" stock. I have been in acquisitions where my option price was more than the value of my shares. I don't think this is uncommon.

Sorry, I see you also asked what "Stock Options" and "Stock Grants" are. Grants are like a flat out gift. The company gifts you some number of shares. Options give you the opportunity to purchase shares for a set prices regardless of what the current value of the shares actually is. Options are great if the option price is less than the actual price. They are worthless if it is the other way around.

Again, remember that "investors" and "principles" will almost certainly be compensated first out of the pot of money from an acquisition. After that, whatever is left (usually little to none) will determine the actual share price. However with a "big exit" what is left might make you rich :-) Just don't bet on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Do I just treat them as worthless and focus on base salary_

Yes. Always assume the value of stock options for startups is zero. If you ever happen to benefit from that equity ownership in any way, treat it as "found money".

 _is there a formula to evaluate what they would be worth in say 2 years for instance ?_

You could come up with an infinite number of such formulas. And they'd all be based on assumptions which you have no way to validate, until the two years has actually passed. And most of those things are also things that you can't control, or even influence very much. Ergo, startup stock options are basically a lottery ticket.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are a number of options/equity calculators:

[https://tldroptions.io/](https://tldroptions.io/) ("~65% of companies will never exit", "~15% of companies will have low exits*", "~20% of companies will make you money")

[https://comp.data.frontapp.com/](https://comp.data.frontapp.com/) "Compensation and Equity Calculator"

[http://optionsworth.com/](http://optionsworth.com/) "What are my options worth?"

[http://foundrs.com/](http://foundrs.com/) "Co-Founder Equity Calculator"</comment>


How to find top talent?  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.huntshire.com/2013/02/how-to-find-best-talent.html#.USnUGKL-E5E

<comment><USER2> Getting 1000 applicants is fine but at the end of the day, the important number is how many of the applicants were so talented that they were _hired_.

I initially skip the "sales pitch" part of job ads ("why we're so awesome") and look at what technologies the company is using and then at how interesting the problems they are trying to solve are.

<comment><AUTHOR> True! in this case 60% of the applicants were from the relevant industry.

Though I too had a initial apprehension about people not being interested in company information, analytics on the tests we ran said otherwise.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Room open in Hacker House in San Jose - <AUTHOR> We have a room open at our awesome hacker mansion in San Jose. The house is ~4000 sqft, on an _enormous_ lot. Spend all your time coding? Do it with deer and wild turkey hanging out by your side. This is the most serene hacker house you've ever seen.
The house is 4bed, 4bath, and filled with hackers. Right now the population consists of the founders of Tinfoil Security (http://www.tinfoilsecurity.com) and Welcu (http://www.welcu.com), both companies backed by 500startups. Genders: 1 Female, 3 Male, and 1 Female part-time; we don't care about your gender. :)
The room is 14x12 (large for anywhere in this area), enormous kitchen with an island and Viking professional stove (and griddle!), restaurant-sized fridge, washer/dryer in house, and of course, 20mbit internet via Comcast. 4 decks, grill outside. And the views you have to see to believe.
It's a new house, and the culture is new too, so we're looking for anyone who is personable, clean, and can contribute to the culture and shape it into whatever it will be.
To get in touch, just email me: firstname.lastname@example.com
Photos of living space, view, room, and (your own) bathroom: http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/3010745/2/4055Soelro/Room%20Available?h=d544bc <comment><USER2> This place is pretty sweet! I know Borski personally and he'll make sure you are taken care of and that everyone's happy. He's a man of drive, passion, and integrity. If you ask nicely, he'll make you pancakes in the morning. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> <3 pancakes.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Price is $1100, utilities split amongst the rooms in the house. :)

<comment><USER3> sounds like the 1 M on his own is over paying...

<comment><AUTHOR> Bigger room, and we split utilities evenly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Potentially silly question, but is that 1100 per month or per week? Not specified anywhere and the duration varies by nation, and I'm not sure what it is for the US?

<comment><AUTHOR> Per month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 4br, with 4.5 people currently occupying it? Where's the open room? (I'm not in the market, but clarification might help. g'luck!)

<comment><AUTHOR> 1M & 1 part-time F in one room. 1 M & 1 F in another room. 1 M in a third.

Fourth is open. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aww, I wish you guys had posted this a few weeks ago, I would have loved to live with borski. But alas, I just signed a lease.

</comment><comment><USER7> How far you are from the caltrain station? I have to commute to Menlo Park every day ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> About a 5-10min drive. There is a bus that takes you there, also. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm looking for a hacker house in the Bay Area at the moment, but I wish there were more hacker houses in a more reasonable price range. $1100 is a lot for anyone trying to bootstrap and keep their burn rate as low as possible.

<comment><USER9> $1100 is cheap for the Bay Area ... You might be able to do better in Oakland/Berkeley. Not ideal, but more and more things are in SF these days, and they're a quick BART ride from SF.

<comment><USER8> $1100 is cheap for a nice room or studio with your own bath, but there certainly are many options cheaper than $1100. I've stayed with friends spending $400-600 in SF in the Mission, Downtown and Tenderloin areas, and these aren't people that have been living there for years under rent control. A search on Craigslist shows a lot of options in SF for under $800.

Hacker Houses of course have the added benefit that they are also a productive place to work and thus don't require you to pay for an open desk in a co- working space.

Artist houses are a much better example of how low you can go insofar as living costs are concerned. I wish there were more hackers that were interested in the approach artists take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All of these people are awesome and $1100 is cheap to live with them!! Great place!

</comment><comment><USER11> That's a great place -- $1100 is a quite reasonable price for something like that.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone have a similar hacker house in Manhattan? I am looking for a place and would love to be a part of such a culture.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would love to set up a Hacker House in Thailand.

I'm just not sure how much actual coding would get done.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow that's a nice place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, you should live there. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why doesn't someone just make a hackerhouse.com?</comment>


Grammar Annoyer: chrome extension to annoy grammar sticklers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sursh/grammar-annoyer

<comment><USER2> We have enough stupid around without adding more to it. This kind of trollery is cancerous.

</comment><comment><USER3> I cringed at the "in you're life" bit...then I realized it was intentional.

And the trolling begins...</comment>


Show HN: I'm writing an ebook about adventure and giving it away for free - <AUTHOR> http://www.adventureplaybook.com <comment><USER2> If you've got something that I can do with a wife, a 6-year-old, and that won't make me lose my job or blow through my savings, I'm interested. Otherwise, I'd just be reading fantasy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there,

I am still mapping out the 100 different adventures and plan on having a range spanning a bunch of skill and difficulty levels. So hopefully you will find some that you can take your wife and a six year old on.

There are so many adventures out there though that I could write an entire book on "100 Adventure To Take Your Wife and Child On". If enough people want it anyway.

The other aim of my book is to spark ideas for adventure. So perhaps, even if you don't find something you like, it might prompt you to think of something similar that's adapted to your needs.

<comment><USER3> I think you might do well with the "100 Adventures To Take Your Wife and Child On". There are many adventure type books out there (none as good as your's will be, of course!), but most of us married-with-kids types will pass them up as we'll automatically decide its not relevant to us (and the lucky few without kids may already have bought the other books!).

Selling "the dream" to people with kids is something few try, and it's a very large market.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm starting to see this more and more. Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love the look of this. A small suggestion: why not challenge the notion of 'adventure'? From the site copy, I'm thinking you'll be writing mostly about scenic voyages abroad. It would be cool to see some city adventures documented as well (e.g. urbexing, underground scenes, the kind of stuff not usually covered in travel guides).

<comment><USER5> You mean something like: [http://www.ninjito.com](http://www.ninjito.com) [http://sleepycity.net](http://sleepycity.net) etc?

<comment><USER6> Awesome links! Thanks!

sleepycity has the best noscript I've ever seen:

      While sleepycity will (mostly) function without javascript, your experience will be improved by enabling JS for this site. Only google analytics is embedded, which you're already blocking anyway if you value your privacy. Suggested firefox add-ons: Adblock edge, noscript, request policy, betterprivacy. Save money, time, CPU cycles, electricity and tell advertisers to fuck themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, but you should probably add an example on your landing page.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm still writing the structure of the book, but as soon as I can, I will post an example adventure on the landing page for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clark, this is a neat idea. I signed up.

A bit off topic, but what tools (if any) are you using to write, publish and distribute the ebook? Are you using version control, by chance?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm still in the 'butchers paper and lots of planning' phase of the book so have not yet chosen a suitable publishing tool. If you've got any suggestions I'd love to take a look. I've not yet decided about version control, but it's probably a smart idea.

<comment><USER2> Check out Scrivener. I've written a number of books on it, and it's the best way I've found to contain and organize a gazillion different ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Scrivener has been suggested by a few people now. Time to check it out me thinks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Registered. Just came back from an eight-month backpacking trip. Looking for something a little more unique though. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. I guarantee you'll find some unique stuff in the book.</comment></comment>


JQuery plugin - styleJSON - <AUTHOR> http://codephined.com/projects/jquery-plugin-style-json/ StyleJSON is a work-in-progress attempt at "styling" an arbitrary JSON object as simply and comfortably as possible with HTML and CSS. <comment><USER2> So basically it turns json into html?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, using a parallel object you can supply a template to parse what you need displayed from a json data source.</comment></comment>


Research Help Request: How do you teach yourself new things? (5-minute survey) - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Hze1bLlmWjJY90FAyZfYM1G8lHBYKCeqejfnsIaJWGU

<comment><USER2> Just commented on this - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6611521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6611521). Looks similar?

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, thank you, I'll definitely check it out.</comment></comment>


10 Most Common Rails Mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.toptal.com/ruby-on-rails/top-10-mistakes-that-rails-programmers-make?utm_source=Engineering+Blog+Subscribers&utm_campaign=cfd491c651-Blog_Post_Email_Top10RailsMistakes&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_af8c2cde60-cfd491c651-109835873 <comment><USER2> Personally, I wouldn't make current_user return "guest". That would be surprising. I would just return nil. There are lots of places in an application that you'll want to conditionally show logic, like whether or not to show a "reply" button, and it is more natural to say "if current_user" than "if current_user.name != 'Guest'".

<comment><USER3> nil is annoying and should be avoided when possible. nil gives no useful feedback when blowing up and communicates nothing about the intent of the code. Using a Guest object is a great use of polymorphism and duck typing, which are great features of Ruby (and object orientation). Having nils all over the place and having to do `if some_obj` all of the time is messy.

Your example is pretty simple, so my solution will sound like overkill, but I would use some other type of object such as a Presenter to handle the rendering logic.

<comment><USER2> Naw, you're complicating things. Nil should not be avoided, it should be accepted. If there isn't a current user then don't pretend that there is. Anywhere you are doing `if some_obj` in view code you'll probably be doing `if some_obj.is_a? Guest` or `if some_obj.guest?` anyway.

I've worked on very large and well used applications (billions of loads, multiple data centers, hundreds of thousands of lines of code), not that that should really matter to the argument (logical fallacy and all that), but the thing that I've found messes up Rails applications is large model objects ("god objects"), poorly thought out data relationships, and inconsistent assumptions across systems that lead to hacks. Not nils.

<comment><USER3> > _Anywhere you are doing `if some_obj` in view code you 'll probably be doing > `if some_obj.is_a? Guest` or `if some_obj.guest?` anyway._

Sorry, you're completely wrong. Polymorphism and duck typing exist specifically so that you don't have to do `is_a?` checks.

> _but the thing that I 've found messes up Rails applications is large model > objects ("god objects"),_

How do you think god object models get created in the first place? By not extracting out logic. When you have models that have very different state, you actually have very different objects. Those differences should be extracted into different classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a Rails newbie (~3 months), I found this list very useful. I'm very mindful of the difference between doing something vs. doing that thing correctly, and even when I write a piece of code that works, I often stop and ask myself, "OK, but is this the best way to do it?" I try to avoid dirty hacks, and if I'm on a time crunch where I don't have time to figure out the right way, I postpone the feature to the next release rather than putting in a temporary dirty implementation.

One thing I've been having trouble with as my project gets more complex is when to refactor. I guess I'm not yet at the stage where I can accurately judge the benefits of refactoring a code vs. the cost. To use an analogy, am I just re-arranging the furniture to change the look-and-feel of the room (superficial), or am I actually making it easier for the guests to make themselves comfortable (real benefit)? I've read books like Pragmatic Programming [1] that advise refactoring whenever possible to avoid technical debt build-up. But it seems to be that there are times when working on a new feature would result in more value-add for the project as a whole.

Another thing is motivating myself to write test cases. The Hartl tutorial taught TDD, but when I started my project from scratch I quickly realized that TDD would slow down my progress significantly, and I didn't yet have enough experience to assess how a feature _should_ work to be able to write tests for it. This did bite me in the ass just last night though, as I spent three hours troubleshooting a bug that a test case would have caught. Oh well, live and learn, right? :)

<comment><USER5> > _Rails newbie (~3 months)_

Don't know if you have seen [http://railscasts.com](http://railscasts.com) yet. But it really helped me.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I love Railscasts. I'm sad Ryan stopped doing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not a bad list, but I think many of those are not unique to Rails and just look like common anti-patterns.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is the first article of this kind that I actually agree with. Usually, these things are "5 Popular Rails Mistakes: 1) Your code Book Of Fours the SRP concurrency something something don't use the database in tests blah."

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I think "too much automated testing" is a more common problem in rails apps than "too little automated testing". With a corollary being that "too little non-automated testing" seems to be a common problem with rails _teams_.

</comment><comment><USER9> I agree with the gem list. I think it should have been #1.

Using OpenStruct as a replacement for a user doesn't remove the conditionnal, it just removes it from that use case. You still need to know if the user is logged in or not.

<comment><USER10> Glad to see some support on the gem list. That was one of the items I really hadn't seen discussed anywhere else and was wondering if it only bothered me. I did some dev ops for a project that turned out to be what would have sounded like a fairly simple, small Rails app on a rather low-traffic site. I kept having to increase the server instance size as the team cargo-culted more and more gems into the Gemfile and the multiple Rails executables run under Unicorn continued to grow in size and eventually run out of memory on the server. I agree that my example using OpenStruct only moves the conditional but in this case it moves it out of a place where I find conditional logic much harder to reason about. Also, if there were more attributes than just name that come out of that object you could potentially be eliminating many more conditionals with just the one in current_user which also seems like a win.</comment></comment>


How Sherry Became the Secret to Great Scotch - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-great-scotch-needs-sherry <comment><USER2> Sherry is the reason people like Macallan, but:

* lots of Scotch has no sherry, and, particularly, the smokey peaty Islays tend not to be sherried at all. Sherried Scotch is a distinctive style, mostly centered in Speyside.

* There are better, cheaper sherry bomb whiskies than Macallan; try Aberlour A'bunadh (cheap, excellent) and Glendronach (still substantially cheaper than Macallan, and I think much better).

The big trend in Scotch is towards "no age statement" (NAS) bottlings, because Scotland is not keeping up with resurgent global demand. NAS bottles are younger spirits, but tend to have more interesting casks, which is a bonus if sherried whiskies are what you're into.

For what it's worth, my mental model is that ex-bourbon casks add basically no flavors other than the wood; I think of them as "neutrally casked".

<comment><USER3> > Aberlour A'bunadh

Where are you getting cheap Aberlour A'bunadh?? It's my favorite scotch but I cannot find it for less than 2 to 3 times the price of Macallan 12.

Also, Glenmorangie is a delicious sherry scotch. Tastes a lot like Macallan and usually cheaper.

> The big trend in Scotch is towards "no age statement" (NAS) bottlings, > because Scotland is not keeping up with resurgent global demand. NAS bottles > are younger spirits, but tend to have more interesting casks, which is a > bonus if sherried whiskies are what you're into.

Interestingly, Macallan in the US still has an age statement. This, however, is not the case in other countries. They have names instead (like "Ruby").

<comment><USER4> > Where are you getting cheap Aberlour A'bunadh?? It's my favorite scotch but > I cannot find it for less than 2 to 3 times the price of Macallan 12.

I was going to ask that, as well. :-) In Chicagoland at least, there isn't a huge price difference, though ($67 for Macallan 12, $90 for A'bunadh). On the other hand, last time I had a bottle of A'bunadh, it was in the $60-$65 range.

Fortunately, being cask strength, the A'bunadh bottle can go farther, provided you dilute it properly.

While I like the Speyside style, I like peated Islays as well. I'm interested in the Lagavulin 8 - the 16 is still just a bit too dear (though down in price from a few years ago).

<comment><USER2> Weird. I just paid mid-60s for a bottle, from Binnys, off Instacart no less, but yeah the price right now is just shy of $90.

It's not worth $90. You can get a Dronach for that much.

A good relatively inexpensive sherry Speyside is Dailuane (in my experience _only_ the cheap Dailuanes are good).

<comment><USER5> Whisky became hip in the last 5-ish years and all of the stuff I used to recommend to people has gotten too expensive. I've expanded significantly towards other matured spirits where the prices haven't gotten as redonkulous yet: rum, brandy, and even some good tequila.

<comment><USER6> Weird side effect: I found Scottish whiskeys were cheaper in Japan for the past 5 years compared to the US. That and buying in a spirit's native country saves me a chunk of change. I'm almost out of good rum, so I might need to plan my next vacation to the Caribbean..

<comment><USER7> Go Barbados or Jamaica.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> fraa-orolo I've got a bone to pick with the article - it makes it sound like the Scottish only invented whisky in the beginning of 19th century:

> So it was only a matter of time before the Scots started storing their local > moonshine, a clear distillate called uisge beatha ("water of life"), inside > them. "Around 1800, distillers in Scotland realized that putting this clear > spirit in a barrel not only made financial sense, but also made the liquid > look and taste better,"

whereas Scotch whisky has been around for at least 500 years. In the second half of 18th century and early 19th century making distilled spirits was outlawed in Scotland, so, naturally, people turned to moonshining - much less risk in that than storing casks for decades to mature into proper whisky; that's the reason for the prominence of clear spirits.

</comment><comment><USER8> One thing to know : I had always had the idea that Whisky tasted basically of the barrel, with the implication that the stuff put in the barrel doesn't taste of much -- like pure ethanol. This turns out to be not the case. I happened to visit a distillery where they let you drink the liquid straight out the still (that, in turn, because this particular distillery hasn't been in business long enough to have final product ready to sell). I was surprised to find that the distillate liquor tasted very much like Whisky.

<comment><USER9> Harris?

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately no. It turns out there's a distillery in Fife now : [https://www.kingsbarnsdistillery.com/](https://www.kingsbarnsdistillery.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sherry is definitely underappreciated in the US. One of my favorite aspects of it is how it is poured in Spain. A Venenciador uses a long rod with a thin cup to dip into a cask and pour the sherry into a small glass from high up in the air. This is a regular part of the sampling process in bodegas, but it is also performed at parties, weddings and fancy restaurants. It takes a lot of practice to get good at it, so good Venenciadors can make a living just pouring sherry. Really good Venenciadors can pour accurately over a meter in distance. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kcmhtGvsc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kcmhtGvsc4)

<comment><USER10> Interesting it's so firmly a part of the ritual of serving sherry. But then aeration is known to improve the flavours of many types of spirits and even electronic wine bottle toppers are available to spin the air.

<comment><USER11> A classic trick in restaurants for serving older red wines that need to breath a bit is to just pour it through a sieve when pouring it into the decanter (it should be poured into a decanter to pour it off the sediment in the bottle) to aerate the wine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I do love single malt scotch whisky.

But I will say...Sherry by itself is totally underated.

I spent a week in Jerez a few years ago studying Sherry and it is truly an art.

If you like Single Malt and Sour Beer, you owe it to yourself to seek out a Sherry bar and explore the magic of Fino, Amontillado, and the ever evasive Palo Cortado.

<comment><USER2> The tough thing about sherry is that it doesn't keep. I can keep 5-6 different interesting whiskeys in my house for months, but a sherry bottle has to get drunk within a week.

We had a restaurant in Chicago, Vera, with a huge sherry list. It was kind a of a miracle; I'd rather go there than to Longman with their equivalently long whiskey list. Gone now though :(.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting how simple coincidences and accidents can become such a fundamental part of the character of a product.

The peat smoke in Scotch is another good example of this. They only used peat to dry the malt as coke was too expensive and hard to source in Scotland.

</comment><comment><USER13> For me, a great whisky is "spirit led" i.e. the flavour is dominated by the flavours present in the spirit itself before maturation.

It's difficult and expensive to make a really good "spirit led" whisky so many distilleries use casks as a way to imbue more flavours. Of course, a good cask helps (and you can't have whisky without casks) but beware of marketing departments trying to bamboozle you with fancy barrels.

The real art is in the distillation itself.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Macallan is kind of a special case of sherry barrel aging nowadays.

Because of US laws that require aging bourbon in new, freshly charred, American oak barrels, a large quantity of the barrels sold to distillers across the globe are "ex bourbon."

So, now, an awful lot of booze out there -- and not just whiskey, but also American brandy and some Caribbean rums -- tastes sorta like bourbon.

<comment><USER2> It tastes sort of like American oak, but not so much like bourbon. To a first approximation, everything not aged in Sherry butts has basically always been aged in ex bourbon casks, and lots of Scotch varieties have never been sherried.

<comment><USER14> > To a first approximation, everything not aged in Sherry butts has basically > always been aged in ex bourbon casks ...

What historical evidence supports the notion that rum and brandy were, even to a first approximation, basically always aged in ex bourbon casks?

<comment><USER2> Scotch. All the scotches. I'm not talking about rum and brandy (I am however at this minute getting tipsy on a pretty amazing Plantation rum aged in cognac barrels, so I guess I could nerd out on rum a bit too --- though all I know about rum is "buy the Plantation rums that are aged in interesting barrels").

<comment><USER15> Which Plantation rum?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some of the most lovely bourbons I've had recently are port barrel aged, so this isn't a surprise!

<comment><USER2> Which one? The only wine barrel bourbon I've had is High West's Midwinter. I'd be interested in other ones.

Kilchoman's port cask Scotch is really amazing.

<comment><USER16> Local one in the Pacific Northwest - Cadee distillery Cascadia

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those interested in an Irish version check out Green Spot and Red Breast. Some of my favourites...</comment>


Bumpy Ride:  Why America's roads are in tatters - <AUTHOR> https://harpers.org/archive/2017/11/bumpy-ride/ <comment><USER2> > Each American driver pays about $450 per year toward roads, according to the > Journal of Infrastructure Systems. Europeans fork over on average 2 to 3.5 > times as much — the difference is largely in fuel taxes.

You get what you pay for I guess. Keep in mind that per capita income in America, both nominal and at PPP, is much higher than Europe (even excluding Eastern Europe). Even a relative poor state like Michigan (the setting of this article) has a GDP/capita comfortably exceeding Germany, France or UK.

<comment><USER3> To people who haven't been to Germany: the roads there are not great. Germany did the same thing as the US has: cut funding.

You never EVER cut funding on infrastructure. Not even in a recession. It will come back to haunt you.

<comment><USER4> New York City learned this lesson only after infrastructure got so bad in the 1970s that a concrete truck literally fall through an elevated highway.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/16/archives/truck-and-car- fal...](http://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/16/archives/truck-and-car-fall-as-west- side-highway-collapses.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The root of the problem seems to be that those causing the most damage to the roads aren't paying enough to maintain them. A semi causes _1,400x_ more wear on the same stretch of road than a car! [1].

[1] [https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf](https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf)

<comment><USER6> There are some similar externalities when it comes to emissions. It's something you can't fix with a fuel tax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > When Hulka started the job in 2003, asphalt cost between $24 and $27 a ton. > "We're seeing sixty-four dollars and up right now," he said.

We've heard so much about the impact of today's dirt-cheap oil prices versus the $100+ prices of 2014, but petroleum was substantially cheaper in 2003 than it is now.

Maybe there is a non-petroleum binder that could be used instead of bitumen to make asphalt cheaper.

The article mentions chip sealing, which should cost half as much as asphalt. On a motorcycle trip in Mexico, I encountered a four-lane highway where the left (passing) lanes were of lesser pavement quality than the smooth asphalt right lanes. The idea being, you don't do distance travel on the passing lane so why not reduce the cost by paving that lane in a less expensive fashion. Of course, even that level of pavement would be farfetched for many degraded county roads, but it's a clever way to reduce the cost of a four-lane highway.

<comment><USER8> I'd first want to see a breakdown of the other costs. For asphalt roads, most of the mass is the aggregate, so a ton of asphalt should make a fair amount of road.

(apparently hot mix is between 3 and 7 percent asphalt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's incredibly sad that we've basically given up on paved roads. Regression to gravel represents the loss of important social technology for building and maintaining infrastructure.

<comment><USER9> More like it's incredibly sad that we've basically given up on rural America. We have no issue with paved roads in the biggest cities in the nation, but if an area isn't economically profitable in a global marketplace, it's being left to wither and die.

<comment><USER10> Counterpoint: Why spend (a lot) more on roads for a few instead of for the many?

<comment><USER11> That's exactly what unchecked capitalism says.

If there is no redistribution of wealth by any other mechanism, those who have no money will by and large not get any resources.

While that may work well for LLCs, when it comes to people we don't want that.

<comment><USER12> Why should the poor urban people pay to subsidize the lavish rural lifestyle?

No one is forcing people to live out in the boonies.

<comment><USER13> No one except all those folks running rent up in cities. Landowners and renters are both to blame here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At the same time, more Americans are buying higher-clearance vehicles as the price and mileage improve. Maybe there are some places where enough people have vehicles with clearance and decent tires where gravel is ok? If gravel is well done and has something to control the dust, you can go 40mph in it.

America is also a really really spread out country. I have a hard time seeing why every secondary road needs to be blacktopped if it's just servicing residential areas.

<comment> cup-of-tea And those bigger and heavier vehicles destroy the roads even more quickly. In some parts of the UK the roads are really bad if you don't drive a giant 4x4 (medium sized by US standards), so more people get them, and the roads get even worse. What's more is these giant vehicles make using the road less pleasurable for everyone as now every road is essentially more narrow due to the width of the vehicles and the damage at the edge.

It seems obvious to me that these larger vehicles should pay more tax to compensate for the damage and the inconvenience for other road users, but they pay exactly the same amount as small cars.

I've driven on gravel roads in South Africa and they often get this bumpy texture to them which is due to people driving on them really fast with big cars. It means if you have a medium-sized car you're stuck doing about 20mph and buggering up your suspension.

<comment><USER3> Aye here in the Netherlands because of the extremely high traffic density they have to do maintenance on highways every 7 years. When they planned the road network nobody imagined that there would be so many automobiles.

First world problems!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Upgrading to gravel indeed.

My parents house back in Wisconsin has the bitumen roads all around the area. They litterly slap down tar, then pile small rocks on top of it, occasionally they take a roller to if but mostly they don't and leave the weight of the cars to finish the road. So there is no such thing as a flat road, and continuous tire dips are formed along the whole length of the road for water, snow and ice to collect in.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you think roads in the US are bad, come to Quebec...

<comment><USER17> Amen! It's the worst I've seen. Slightly for different reasons. The only plant that makes asphalt in Montreal uses used engine oil as binding agent which destroys roads much quicker. Common QC corruption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there a version of this that doesn't split it over three pages to try and get me to load ads that ad and script blockers will just break anyway?

<comment><USER19> There's a "Download PDF" link right before the start of the article.

<comment><USER18> It's javascript, not a link.

Though I did miss that the single page option wasn't actually JS, because I stopped looking.

[https://harpers.org/archive/2017/11/bumpy- ride/?single=1](https://harpers.org/archive/2017/11/bumpy-ride/?single=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Without reading it, is it because in the U.S. no-one wants to pay tax?

<comment><USER4> I'd call it a loss of the ability to pull together for the common good, part of the continued fracturing of western society into individual-sized pieces.

<comment><USER21> > part of the continued fracturing of western society into individual-sized > pieces.

For the US, yes. For (some) European countries, not so. There's still a strong concensus around paying taxes and getting your money's worth in education, social security and paved roads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I doubt I'd be able to find anything to cite, but having lived in east Asia, I think part of the problem is that Americans take substantially longer to perform any kind of construction or repair. Things that would happen practically overnight take weeks or even months in the States.</comment>


Epic Games renews legal request to bring Fortnite back to Apple store - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/05/tech/fortnite-app-epic-apple-lawsuit/index.html <comment><USER2> I am with Apple on this one, apparently Epic would rather pay the royalties required by mobile operators on the age of Symbian, J2ME, Brew, Blackberry.

30% was nothing compared with values all above 50% and that would vary per operator, country and global region, so naturally everyone jumped of joy into iOS.

They started the fight, lets see if they brought enough ammo to the party.</comment>


Google provides data on U.S. political advertising - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-advertising/google-provides-data-on-u-s-political-advertising-idUSKBN1L022Y <comment><USER2> possible duplicate of yesterday's [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17768877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17768877)</comment>


How to Build and Sell a Product While You Still Have a Fulltime Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.codemyownroad.com/building-a-product/

<comment><USER2> The advice here is pretty general, and I fail to see how this applies to the situation of having a fulltime job versus just being time-constrained (which we all are). The advice is fine, but I claim there's nothing new to see here.</comment>


Uber bringing 3k jobs to Dallas with major hub - <AUTHOR> https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2019/08/20/uber-dallas-corporate-hub.html <comment><USER2> Uber also just announced a 10-year lease on 450,000 square feet in Chicago - double their current space.

[https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/8/19/20812323/uber-old- main-...](https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/8/19/20812323/uber-old-main-post- office-chicago-downtown-office)</comment>