Architect's Dream House: Less Than 200 Square Feet  - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2013/12/27/257560971/architects-dream-house-less-than-200-square-feet <comment><USER2> I think technology is the enabling factor behind the tiny house movement.

Books, CDs, movies, photos, files, paperwork, videogames: all compressed down to the size of a hard drive. So many random gadgets have been replaced by a smart phone, like camera equipment, phones, flashlights, calendars, etc. Now people are ditching TVs as well and just using iPads and laptops to watch video.

There are other more subtle things as well. For example, I haven't needed to iron a shirt in years because nice shirts come out of the dryer looking perfect. So no need for an iron or ironing board.

Then there's service-economy-ification. Most of my neighbors don't mow their own lawn, none of them fix their own cars, and several don't even clean their own house. I wonder how many brew their own coffee? That's a huge amount of equipment that is no longer needed. When I lived in New York, literally 100% of my local friends used wash-and-fold and owned nothing to take care of clothing. A close friend of mine confessed recently that he hasn't prepared a real meal in years; his kitchen cabinets are nearly empty.

The sharing economy is pushing this further. There's a tool-share co-op in my city for those things you need once-in-a-while, like a ladder. Car2Go and ZipCar mean people don't need 2 and 3 car garages at all anymore.

I can't wait to get rid of more stuff!

<comment><USER3> I just finished watching _BBS: The Documentary_ and noticed the same thing. It seemed like everyone they interviewed had an entire room full of old computer equipment. They had boxes of software, walls of hardware manuals, stacks of monitors, cabinets of capacitors and resistors, rows of soldering irons, and at least one fully-equipped workbench.

Up until the past decade or so if you wanted to be a serious computer enthusiast you needed an empty garage; now you just need space on your desk for a Macbook Pro.

<comment><USER4> i like minimalism but to a point. i have a full workbench for example as i like to fix stuff on m own. not just computers, mind you. i also like creating physical stuff - i think most ppl on HN revolve around creating non-physical stuff most of the time.

i also cook my own food more often than not. both are more economical _and_ i enjoy it. ive a 800sqft 1 bedroom in sf so its not that small either. workbench isnt in a garage so its pretty compact yet is a real, full featured bench. 2500sqft with unused rooms certainly is way too big tho.

<comment><USER5> I know what you mean about physical stuff. Many years ago, when I'd finish a cool software project, I couldn't really show it to anyone -- it was just a bunch of gibberish to them. But once I started some wood working... I can still to this day show people my home made computer desk, book cases, etc. But none of my early software hacks still survives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My wife and I live in a ~720 sq. foot loft we built inside of an airplane hangar. The story is here: [http://www.makingthishome.com/hangar-loft- remodel/](http://www.makingthishome.com/hangar-loft-remodel/)

We really love living in smaller spaces.

<comment><USER7> So ... I saw Katie's "Tire House" post. I've seen and read some of Mike Reynolds' work, but hadn't seen anyone specifically critical of the Earthship design. Is there a specific post which gets into the downsides of the mode of construction or do I have to read her whole blog to find out?

[http://www.makingthishome.com/2009/05/27/earthship-tour- aka-...](http://www.makingthishome.com/2009/05/27/earthship-tour-aka-tire- house-tour/)

<comment><USER6> In a nutshell, we encountered two problems (which may or may not be prevalent with all Earthships)

1\. Extreme temperature fluctuations. You're essentially living inside a solar collector. In the fall, the sun would blaze in through the windows, and I know you're supposed to have overhangs, shades and air vents and underground air circulation systems, all of which we used. The bottom line is you can't cheat physics. Even with the shades closed, the house is receiving over 300k BTU/hr of solar heat. This is just too much for any reasonably sized cooling system to handle. My infrared thermometer measured surface temperatures in excess of 140 deg. F on surfaces near the windows. In the winter, the same windows would leak heat like a sieve. Here in Montana when it's overcast, 10 deg. F, and the wind is blowing 30 mph the front of the house would barely reach 55 deg F. This was with the 30k BTU propane furnace going 100% duty cycle. I would work at my computer with long pants, a sweater, a blanket over my legs, and an electric heater blowing under the blanket :) The rear of the house is built into the hillside, so it would be warmer in the back, but you could never get the place past about about 65-68 in the winter no matter how much you tried. The sheer size of the front windows and lack of insulation again made the house design at odds with thermodynamics in my opinion.

For the sake of comparison, our place in the hangar has ~R30 walls to the hangar, and again about ~R25 walls to the outside. We have in-floor radiant heat provided by our geothermal heat pump. Earlier this month when it was -20 deg. F outside we were toasty warm at 74 (we have a newborn child in the house now). And we were using significantly less energy to heat than at the Earthship.

2\. Mice. The house construction methods are inherently porous, and mice have infiltrated the entire structure. They live in the cavities the walls form (and the roof supports), along the utility raceways in the ceiling, under cabinets, everywhere. I surmise that the mice have tunneled through the back of the hillside, between the tires, and up into the hollow cavities which support the ceiling. They then use this space to move around the inside of the house structure to other areas. No amount of trapping poisoning, etc. has slowed the onslaught of mice into the house. If the only way to prevent mice from infiltrating your supposedly green house is to use concrete in its construction and set outdoor poison traps which potentially kill hundreds of mice and may harm animals which then consume the poisoned mice, is this really such a green alternative?

I've visited an Earthship being constructed in Big Sky Montana by Mike Reynolds this year. The design changes I've seen may partially address point 1, but as far as point 2 I'm not at all convinced that this new house will be any better. I admire his vision, and that he's been able to take his ideas so far. From an engineering standpoint, even taking into account the ecological footprint of the structure, I'm not convinced that his approach is the best when you look at the whole picture.

<comment><USER8> These pushes for housing like Earthships are curious, especially in light of your comments (which mirror my expectations). Not curious by themselves, but curious in what they represent. Humans developed modern housing specifically to combat weather, slow ingress by pests, etc. I wonder if this Earthship (etc) movement represents a shift in where we are living. Ages ago, Europeans & Mediterraneans lived in a lot of unfavorable weather. Do more people live in temperate regions today, for a movement like this to happen? Why would that be the case? Perhaps shipping & the global economy have created a class of peoples that can live wherever they choose, where such a class of people did not exist before?

<comment><USER7> _Humans developed modern housing specifically to combat weather, slow ingress by pests, etc._

That's part of the push.

There's also a _lot_ of influence from real estate developers, financiers, and the like, to produce a, hate the word but it fits, "product" which will entice purchasers.

Much of the construction materials and standards are of the bare minimum to pass inspection. If you're in the trades you'll hear terms for wall blocks (the horizontal pieces placed between studs) depending on whether they're attached with one or two nails per end (the latter is marginally more expensive, but more robust), the thickness of studs, type of sheeting used, etc. Notably, contractor friends when building their own home significantly upgraded construction standards from code with an aim toward longevity and robustness.

The principles behind Earthships (and other sustainable designs) are to, generally, minimize both environmental impacts (through locally sourced and recycled materials) and ownership costs (through passive heating and cooling, water collection and reuse, etc.). Earthship Biotecture discusses the motives and evolution of their designs:

[http://earthship.com/a-brief-history-of- earthships](http://earthship.com/a-brief-history-of-earthships)

The key principles:

⚫ A structure built from largely recycled materials

⚫ Heating and cooling

⚫ Electrical system

⚫ Water harvest system

⚫ Contained on site sewage treatment system

⚫ Food production

The designs (or variations on it) are used in a wide range of climates, from alpine to desert to tropical to temperate.

As for the pest-resistance -- rodents and insects aren't unheard of in modern and/or traditional construction either, though it would be interesting to get a direct comparison of the Earthship vs. more conventional designs in similar areas.

<comment><USER8> You are starting to sound like you have a bridge to sell. I was just speculating about earthships, extreme climates, and the evolution of housing.

<comment><USER7> No bridges. However there's this phenomenal set of clothes which only the most discerning can appreciate ... ;-)

You asked a question. I answered it based on both 1) my direct experience with construction and constructions standards and 2) material which is directly viewable on Earthship Biotechture's website.

As I stated above: I've known of the general concept for years (decades -- first heard about "junk houses" in the 1970s), but really only started revisiting it in the past year or so. And I'm genuinely interested in what the negatives of the design are.

I'm also generally somewhat skeptical of alternative concepts. Widely used designs are, if not always ideal, at least generally well understood particularly in their shortcomings and/or failure modes. And a _lot_ of alternative concepts tend to be oversold, especially by their creators and proponents (and Reynolds is nothing if not a crusader).

If you're interested in the evolution of housing, it's helpful to realize that there's a _vast_ diversity of designs applied to many different locales. Much of the variance is due to local needs, materials, costs, and capabilities. E.g., building with loose or lightly mortared stone and mud brick is cheap, but not particularly proof against earthquakes.

If you'll travel across the US, you'll find very, very similar designs being built independent of climate or location. I could speculate on specifically why, but a huge level of concentration in the homebuilding industry likely has a great deal to do with this. I'm also well-acquainted with fairly recent construction which has fared poorly even in only a few years, hence my comments on construction quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is fine in a warm country, or in a place where you're going to be in or out of your house all the time. Living in a cold and/or isolated place, being cooped up in such a small area would be unhealthy, you need to move around much more as a matter of course. Particularly if you're working at home, you'd have to be very proactive to avoid serious impacts on your health, because your lifestyle would be almost inherently sedentary. Exercise is not just doing a certain amount of cardio each week, you have to have movement interspersed throughout the day.

I reckon you could have various different 'pods', though, rather than a standard house. A small space like this, then an isolated office room five minutes walk away, perhaps a cafe/communal eating area somewhere else ,and so on.

<comment><USER10> Having been raised in a cold and isolated country (Finland) I think you incorrectly assume that means a lot of time spent indoors. This can be true, but does not have to.

I do think you are on to something with the idea of pods, most farmhouses where I come from are arranged in a number of small separate buildings.

<comment><USER8> Sure you went outside plenty, but did you go outside at night? Personally, where I live, when the temperature drops below freezing at night, I stop going outside when it is dark, and as the nights get longer that means at least 14 hours a day indoors.

<comment> SG- I go out every night and mostly only at night when it's -20C. I do stay in when it goes below that usually, you just need to get used to it and dress properly.

This is just something you need to change yourself and get used to, it won't get any easier if you just ignore the cold.

<comment><USER8> The problem isn't being cold; I have good clothing and don't mind 40F in the slightest. The issue is I haven't really discovered reasons to even be outside- good activities I can safely enjoy among the ice & snow and in the extra-dark of winter

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can compress these things and a lot of people have, but to live like this is another story.

I myself build homes, apartments, I also design kitchens, did flips, and I can tell you that I have not met one person that could live in a tiny box like that. Yes, it is a dream of everyone, to be very simple and live like this, but this is not going to happen.

She moved from 2,500sqft to 200sqft, why? You don't wake up one day and do that unless you cannot afford living in a house, and I don't care what she says. Maybe it's her cottage or trailer, I really don't know, but don't believe anything they say on the news.

A lot of people would go insane in a 200sqft space. It's like a cell. If anyone wants to try, please come live in my shed. It's very minimalistic, raw, super nice like this place.

:)

<comment><USER12> Agreed. Stunts like this are done by design students; what evidence that anyone lives in it, for any significant amount of time?

I've had a strange notion recently, that these things are actually not helpful in the larger scheme of things. Some creative person goes an lives in a shoebox; no room to design or socialize or have a hobby or even bring work home. Now we've taken a productive person out of society and turned them into a hermit. How does that help? It seems selfish at some level.

<comment><USER13> Octu in a capsule hotel sounds like hell on earth

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm in a wheelchair. Brand new houses built with stairs make me sad. I've often thought I'd love to work with an architect to design accessible houses: it's not just for me, anyone with limited mobility or energy would benefit.

<comment><USER15> This is basically a mobile home, which has no foundation. As such, there is nothing in the design which is not easily re-built to your spec. The design is inherently modular. When you are dealing with a 200sq ft living space, its best to have it tailored to your own needs, and not a random or lowest common- denominator-based spec. The common areas, however take on more importance in a community or non-remote setting ans thus are the relevant areas to consider from an architecture perspective.

<comment><USER16> "Tailored to your needs"

"Not a random or lowest-common-denominator-based spec"

So you want it to _cost_ what a 1,200 sqft building would cost, but you want to spend it on architects and custom builders instead of cheap efficient standardized parts & designs.

A wheelchair ramp, sure I guess... but the general principle of housing for most of us can't be "Find a way to occupy the unemployed architecture majors of the world".

<comment><USER15> No, the house in the article was built for $11,000 dollars. That's the cost of provisioning about 5 square feet of London real estate. You're mis-reading be- tween the lines, by a couple orders of magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My sister, who lives in midtown Manhattan, lives in an apartment smaller than this place. If you're downsizing from a bigger place, you basically get rid of everything. I have 30+ wine glasses in my condo in Chicago. My sister has two.

The other thing that happens in a tiny space: you end up buying quality. You will wait to find "just the right desk lamp" and then pay a premium for it.

<comment><USER18> With space you end up buying so much stuff you may end up not really using, or buy low quality stuff just to fill the space.

<comment><USER17> I've got 30 lineal feet of bookshelves in my house that are filled with books I bought over the last 30 years. If I lived in my sister's house, I'd have to get rid of 80% of them.

I could do that, but I don't have to, so I don't.

<comment><USER19> Books are the one thing that a subgroup of hackers has a hard time parting with. I'm fairly minimalistic with all of my possessions, but books... man, I would have a really hard time getting rid of my library :(

<comment><USER17> I'm a lot more pragmatic. If Amazon told me they would give me an ebook version of each book I sent to them, I would immediately get rid of 90% of my books (everything except my coffee table books and a couple dozen books that hold sentimental value.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you haven't seen the documentary "tiny house movement" watch it...

Personally, I think these efforts lack an understanding of basic annoyances:

Assume you want to sleep when others don't? Oh - the answer is this is for happy single people.

Assume you overcook your steak and the whole place smokes up and your bedding now stinks.

Assume you have more than (1) friend over.

Have kids?

I LOVE small/minimal spaces - but they are really not for the majority of people. They are too small cramped and inefficient for average living.

Christ, my closet is bigger than that unit.

<comment><USER21> Somehow most people living in dense cities make do with a small amount of space. For example it's not uncommon to find 300sq ft apartments in Manhattan. Some people even manage to raise kids in such space. Look at places like Hong Kong and similar where small units are the norm and yet people seem to be able to live with the issues you mention.

<comment><USER22> Some people live without a home at all. That doesn't mean it's a healthy way to raise kids.

<comment><USER21> Are you comparing living without a home to living in a small apartment in a major city?

Given people seemed to raise kids and survive in 983 sq ft during the 1950s (average house size) I don't see why people think we need massive houses to raise children in today.

<comment><USER23> _Are you comparing living without a home to living in a small apartment in a major city?_

No he's saying that an environment being "survivable" isn't an argument for what should be an acceptable environment for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you're interested in learning more about this, I highly suggest subscribing to Kirsten Dirksen on Youtube.

[http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDsElQQt_gCZ9LgnW-7v-cQ](http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDsElQQt_gCZ9LgnW-7v-cQ)

She publishes new videos every couple weeks or so and is intimately tied into the tiny house movement.

She also covers things involving alternate ways of living, diy, etc. Lovely person.

<comment><USER25> Yeah she has a bunch of interesting videos on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Living small(er) in order to minimize carbon footprint makes sense. _Green Metropolis_ by David Owen is a fantastic book that makes the case for Manhattan being a great blueprint for the ideal city of the future -- people living more densely = less energy use individually & less "space" to accumulate stuff and waste. Trash disposal in the city is such a complex problem that residents are literally forced to be economical about their consumption habits. Traditional concepts of homesteading on the plains, whether with large ranch houses or an "eco" house made of straw and mud are not necessarily ecologically friendly when there's imperative need to drive to get to the nearest urban area for work, school, shopping, etc -- these, he argues, are the antithesis of efficiency.

Small eco-homes are not just a trend; they are the new era in real estate development. But they need to be built such that they can collectively share infrastructures the same way city residents do. The project I'm working on, applied to YC with (and was rejected from) last batch is built on this idea of more ecological homesteading _in order to create better_ urban planning. Masdar City [http://www.masdarcity.ae/en/](http://www.masdarcity.ae/en/) is an interesting prototype for the future of cities. We've schooled our youngins enough for them to know that ecological awareness needs to be a lifestyle. They're surprisingly aware that the world they are inheriting has exponential population growth, limited resources, and that the "industrial revolution" model of economic viability just isn't going to work forever they way it has been working.

</comment><comment><USER27> Cute little cabin and amazing what you can put into 20 m2. And it must be nice to know that you've built it yourself.

But I don't believe for a second that this is the architect's dream house. Come on. It's like saying that a static blog is a programmer's dream project.

She may have had a dream one night about living in a small house but I am sure that as soon as she can afford to, she will move into something bigger. Let's not kid ourselves :-)

<comment><USER28> Yeah it is just a tricked out mobile home.

<comment><USER29> Actually, no, it's not just a tricked out mobile home. Apart from size, it's constructed like most regular homes, but even higher quality. Most tiny houses are built using stick framing, same as regular houses, with 6" exterior walls and lots of insulation (higher insulation level than most regular homes), have level of interior trim that is similar to but usually better than regular homes. Also most tiny houses are built so at least part of structure has very high ceilings, 11 to 12 feet, which greatly adds to feeling of spaciousness. Tiny homes cost much more per square foot than regular size homes, but of course are much cheaper overall. Even though they're usually built on wheeled trailers and can be moved, they're not built for constant moving.

In short, tiny homes are built to "feel" like a regular home, even though much smaller. Mobile homes, in contrast, are not, generally feel cheap and light, much different experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Take a look at this: [http://www.cubeproject.org.uk/](http://www.cubeproject.org.uk/) Genius use of space.

Saw it on a great UK TV show called George Clark's Amazing Spaces, where there are lots of brilliant creative ideas.

Edit: Link to a brochure with a nice expanded drawing: [http://www.boltonbuildings.co.uk/PDF/Cube.pdf](http://www.boltonbuildings.co.uk/PDF/Cube.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER31> The difference is 'Family'. Inevitably you will need to have a partner and say, four children, for the human race to survive. At that point you have to go the traditional route.

<comment><USER32> There are many, many, many people producing children at well above replacement levels, and we are already well above the carrying capacity of our environment. I have no personal guilt at choosing not to have children.

<comment><USER28> Actually most advanced societies are not producing enough children to keep the population stable.

<comment><USER33> Which is a very good thing.

<comment><USER23> Is it? Advanced society's dying off isn't something people usual celebrate.

<comment><USER33> Nobody said dying off, but it's a well-understood fact that humanity is growing at an unsustainable rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Should be retitled "Architect randomly decides to build a single-wide trailer home"

</comment><comment><USER35> That's a great looking tiny house. If you're interested in seeing more and learning about other people's experiences building and living in tiny houses, I recommend checking out [http://tinyhouseblog.com](http://tinyhouseblog.com)

</comment><comment><USER36> My aunt and I think eight or nine sibling grew up in this house [https://maps.google.com/?ll=46.24838,-63.12407&spn=0.001167,...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=46.24838,-63.12407&spn=0.001167,0.002411&t=m&layer=c&cbll=46.248423,-63.123932&panoid=5LCBKNv5GdwogSFlCpYjYg&cbp=12,174.91,,0,17.74&z=19)

<comment><USER37> "eight or nine"!! You don't know how many siblings you have bro?

<comment><USER38> Siblings of the aunt.

<comment><USER36> To be fair I should have wrote that sentence a bit clearer, phone + cold fingers (-15C) + damn autocorrect + impulsiveness + poor spelling ( _her_ sibling _s_ ) don't work in my favour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I find a 37ft sail boat fits my needs completely. Some added benefits: relocatable, scenery and built in furniture.

</comment><comment> design-of-homes The house is lovely, but...tiny homes in the US are mostly detached and surrounded by wide open spaces or have long views out of the windows. They also have plenty of natural light. These factors don't make the homes feel tiny.

The real challenge for most cities is to build high-density housing where you might not have pleasant long views out of your window or lots of natural light. Higher-density housing doesn't mean high-rise, but it probably won't include building (many) detached homes. Apartments and terraced (row) houses are more suited to high-density developments.

Could you still live in a 200 square feet home if it was a single-aspect apartment in an apartment block? (Single aspect = windows along just one side of the apartment compared to a double-aspect apartment with windows at the front and back of the apartment). Or could you live in an equivalent tiny terraced house?

Just for comparison, London now has minimum space standards for new homes (but England and Wales do not). A one bedroom apartment for two people must be a minimum of 50 square metres (538 square feet). In Germany, the equivalent apartment is 60 square metres.

[http://designofhomes.co.uk/images/046/space-standards- london...](http://designofhomes.co.uk/images/046/space-standards-london-vs- germany.png)

To me these spaces are modest in size rather that palatial but space is relative and we all have different ideas of what tiny, small or large mean to us depending on where we live. New build homes in the UK tend to be the smallest in Europe and the quality of many new build homes is poor. Here's a comparison of the average size of new homes in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands and Denmark:

[http://www.withoutspaceandlight.com/resources/img/space/comp...](http://www.withoutspaceandlight.com/resources/img/space/comparison.png)

<comment><USER40> Here's a US architect that I think is more realistic towards downsizing: [http://rosschapin.com/Plans/plans.html](http://rosschapin.com/Plans/plans.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am going against the wind. It's not only stupid but also ugly.

Having your bedroom near or inside a kitchen is a total chaos.

>I think technology is the enabling factor behind the tiny house movement.

Technology has helped most persons own a 'palace' which was only possible for super-rich in the past, due to lack of 'economical' technology and advancements.

</comment><comment><USER42> The subreddit /r/tinyhouses has lots of this sort of thing, and is a pretty good collation of various blogs and articles on the subject, with some pretty decent conversation.

<comment><USER43> [http://www.reddit.com/r/tinyhouses](http://www.reddit.com/r/tinyhouses)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Just one small correction. The cost of a house like this is $11,000 + the money she never made because of her own time (18 months!) invested in construction. So the total, strictly speaking, is way way higher than $11k.

</comment><comment><USER45> I love that she designed and built the house herself, and I love that she did a great job on the interior design. I also like that there's a little bit of yard (perhaps a lot -- hard to tell from the photo).

I like the 200 sq. foot size a little less. My own dream homes (there are two):

1\. A small home (> 200 sq. feet) or perhaps unit in a larger condominium complex or communal living space in a denser urban conglomeration. The town/city is not so large that you cannot easily walk or ride a bike through the length of it. Lots of trees and green space. Light rail transportation to nearby urban areas. Not as dense as SF or anywhere near as dense as Manhattan. But not so suburban that you need a car. Building height is kept at or below five stories, and averages two stories. The buildings do not block sunlight. There are places at the edge of the town/city for long-term car storage, but driving is not permitted within it.

2\. A nice cabin or ranchouse (~1000-2000 sq. feet?) in the countryside with access to light rail within biking distance.

</comment><comment><USER46> Nicely efficient use of space. Reminds me of a motor home (as opposed to a 'mobile home' which tries its best to avoid reminding you it is only 10' wide). I enjoyed the comment that read "I only need 200 sq ft to live in but I need 4000 sq ft for storage." :-)

<comment><USER47> Storage actually makes a huge difference. I wouldn't be especially into 200 sq. ft. in any case :-) but the difference between a house that has X sq. ft. of finished room with minimal storage--no basement, attic, maybe no garage-- and a house that has one or more of those things is huge. To be sure, those spaces attract stuff that should just be unloaded, but it's a big difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What is the difference between this and a single wide trailer home?

<comment><USER49> This home is far smaller than the average single-wide. I looked around online for floor plans and it appears that the smallest plans available are 600sqft or larger.

[http://www.mheinc.com/singlewide.htm](http://www.mheinc.com/singlewide.htm)

[http://www.solitairehomes.com/models/single- wide/floorplans....](http://www.solitairehomes.com/models/single- wide/floorplans.aspx)

I'm also a delivery driver with a large (>200 unit) trailer park nearby and none of the homes come close to being this small. Additionally you will note that the trailer that the tiny house is situated on has a fifth wheel for being pulled by a truck, while a single-wide typically will be on a platform with a conventional style hitch.

<comment><USER48> Good points. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is there anyone on HN who doesn't aspire to the minimalist, tiny (usually urban) home, outsourced lifestyle (by that I mean, laundry service, car rental, eat out vs cooking, etc)? I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER51> Hi. The only part of that grouping I'm interested in is "urban". When you get enough people close together, you can do things that are otherwise unprofitable.

I live in a fairly large house on a road with real bus service that connects me to Cambridge, the Boston MBTA, and a commuter rail in and out. That means that we can get along with one car instead of two. We do our own laundry, cook most meals from scratch, and keep multiple cats. We have a standing arrangement with a housekeeper to help clean our house a few times a month.

My chief desire is to be comfortable, not to live a life of ascetic minimalism, aesthetic cleanliness, or meditative contemplation. There are books in every room in the house. There is always a computing device with internet access within a few steps. We have space for Lego, toys, hobbies and tools.

I understand how someone who lives alone might want to be in a tiny space -- because they don't really live there, they live outside the house anyway. But that's not what I want, and it's not what I have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> 200 sq ft would be hard for me personally, but mid-January I'm closing on a 375 sq ft building that I'm converting to a living space for myself, my wife and our dog. It will be short term for us while we restore the main building though... probably 18-24 months. After that it we'll use it as a guest house and I'll probably put it on Airbnb or similar as well. I've always wanted to live in a smaller space though so I'm excited. I'm used to about 1,000 sq ft, but we keep most of that empty really.

<comment><USER53> Super efficient apartments/small living spaces are very attractive to me. I've never tried actually calling one home though -- not very common where I live.

How creative do you expect you'll have to get in a space that size?

<comment><USER54> I scaled down to a ~550 sq ft unit a couple of years ago, but had an interesting realization a few months after moving in that the walk-through closet that leads to my bathroom (maybe 175 sq feet together) could theoretically work as its own micro-apartment. I closed the door, and started mentally fitting a bed, mini-fridge, microwave and hot plate, and desk into the space. It all fit, give or take a half a foot here or there, and assuming a bit of custom storage.

Admittedly, though, I must have limits for small living spaces. My favorite part of this exercise was opening the door back out into the rest of the apartment, upon which my studio suddenly felt palatial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I like the idea of efficient space and less to keep clean. But I want a well- stocked lab at home: toolboxes, musical instruments, books, hardware projects, cooking equipment. Piles of junk are hard to clean around. I've been thinking that a 'compactus' unit like this might serve all needs: [http://www.officecentre.com.au/prod1129.htm](http://www.officecentre.com.au/prod1129.htm) You could probably get it installed to house servers in the end-units.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've debating about doing this in the UK with a 32ft shipping container, and possibly straw bail externally for insulation, and a water collector on the roof for grey usage.

Seen some great projects in London & Brighton, but non in Manchester for homes yet. Though there's been a great use for offices in the Sharp project.

Anyone else in the UK looking at this sort of thing?

One question: Why the wheels if you're only going to move it every so often - say a couple of years?

</comment><comment><USER56> If you guys like this, then make sure to look at an interview with Marcin Jakubowski the founder of Open Source Ecology.

He said that you can build your own house for $2000 dollar.

I can't find that report now, but here is a link to their discussion form.

[http://forum.opensourceecology.org/discussion/903/building-a...](http://forum.opensourceecology.org/discussion/903/building- a-house/p1)

they even open source the design to build your own brick presser.

<comment><USER56> here is more detail. It is called a

OSE Microhouse

[http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSE_Microhouse](http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSE_Microhouse)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I like this idea a little better -- [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/9243318/Container- living...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/9243318/Container-living-a- home-for-under-50000.html)

</comment><comment><USER58> Macy Miller's Tiny House is _the_ trend but there are way nicer implementations for just double the price: [http://www.ecospacestudios.com/](http://www.ecospacestudios.com/)

</comment><comment><USER59> I think I saw this first on yahoo.com, but once on npr.org, top of hacker news!

</comment><comment><USER60> Is this to get people used to rising real estate costs?

</comment><comment><USER61> I'd totally live in a 200sqft apt in SF if someone were to offer one this well thought-out.

</comment><comment><USER62> Check out the tiny house blog</comment>


3D printing could reduce raw material needs by 90% - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/18114221?story_id=18114221&CFID=162367227&CFTOKEN=74435751 <comment><USER2> Good to see the Economist covering 3D printing - it's still amazing to me how much most people, even close to manufacturing, aren't familiar with it at all.

FWIW though - the 90% they're referring to is the delta between machining solid parts and printing them. It should be added that this is a rare use-case for 3D printing.

Usually it competes more directly with injection molding technologies that often have better material usage because there is no need for support material - which goes to waste holding up the hollow areas for the types of material- saving lattice structures they're talking about.

Sometimes you can get great savings, but 3D printing isn't a production materials panacea. Let's not even get into how to recycle composite materials (very energy intensive) and photopolymers (you can't).

<comment><USER3> Well, that's not entirely true. The lattice structures are internal to the object, and substitute for solid infill. Commercial FDM 3d printers use a crosshatch instead of solid fill, and the reprap toolchain has that as well as a number of cool ones like hexagonal infill. So you have lattices instead of solid walls in the microstructure. With powder printers, such as the metal printers described in the article, you can form hollow areas of any shape since the raw material itself acts as support. To get the material out they need to be open on one side, but that is hardly an issue with a design that airy. No additional material is needed. The only case where you need support is for FDM based printing with sharp overhangs. Even this can be mitigated with clever design, such as making overhanging parts with bridges (connecting walls with a stretched layer of material that spans a gap) or teardrops (closing gaps using low overhang structures, like the buttresses on gothic buildings). The main advantage of 3d printing is that it can produce structures internal to the object that cannot be made by any subtractive method, and that it makes production costs linear and design-independent. This is very cool, since it literally costs the same to make two identical or two different objects (with the same build time) and it separates cost from volume. The costs per unit are still high compared to injection or casting, but the tooling costs are essentially zero. And the costs per unit are dropping rapidly, particularly given that the FDM printers themselves are now partially self-replicating

It's a very exciting time to be living in. I have three printers. The first printed the second. The second printed the third. I've made a number of things which turned from idea to design to prototype within hours to days. Then I tweak, hit print again and I've got production. No tooling, no waiting.

<comment><USER4> Did you design your printers or buy them? You should write this up and submit to HN.

<comment><USER3> Bought the first from makerbot, was a huge pain and disappointment, but it got me as far as printing the parts for the second one, a Reprap Mendel. That one in turn printed me (and a number of other people) the more streamlined Prusa Mendel. I'm a contributor to the Prusa variant (I wrote the build documentation and the makefiles, and contributed to some of the parts), but did not design it. So yes, as others said below, I have two repraps (and one non-reprap), and I did build them myself.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I was thinking about getting a Makerbot. I'll look into these others.

<comment><USER3> Strongly advise against the Makerbot products. They cause the highest amount of headaches and are riding on mindshare and marketing rather than quality. Have a look at [http://repraplogphase.blogspot.com/2011/01/death-of- sub-1000...](http://repraplogphase.blogspot.com/2011/01/death-of- sub-1000-desktop-factory.html) for how it came to be this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This claim seem about as believeable as the claim that computers would create the paperless society.

<comment><USER6> The biggest thing that people forget when dreaming about 3D printers is that it doesn't making something from nothing: the materials have to come from somewhere.

Even once we get a printer that's easy enough for 'normal' people to use (hard) and a way for them to design the prints that go in the machine (hard) and we make them small and reliable enough that it's acceptable for normal people (hard) you _still_ have to have a big vat of plastic or whatever lying around, and feed it into the machine.

We've got a long way to go before 'a printer in every home' is reality, if it ever does.

My thoughts: it's like water. A big pipe of raw materials. Just imagine how long that'd take...

<comment><USER7> I think we are moving away from ownership and towards a more utility/service- oriented society, so I don't think a 3D printer in every home will ever become a reality.

<comment><USER8> These guys are working on it: <http://reprap.org>

An open source 3d printer design with the goal being to use it to print all the parts for then next printer.

<comment><USER9> It may be the problem is that we end up with _too many_ of these things self- replicating all over the place like rabbits!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Mr Schmitt says it should be possible for a robot builder to specify what a servo needs to do, rather than how it needs to be made, and send that information to a 3D printer, and for the machine's software to know how to produce it at a low cost.

This is where I will shamelessly plug my startup, DesignByRobots. The overview of the technology is here: <http://designbyrobots.com/2011/01/17/first-post/>

<comment><USER10> sorry, server went down. google cache here: <http://bit.ly/gPjVr9>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For me, the point of interest comes from locking down a blueprint distribution model. Everyone can print certain items depending on their access to raw materials/power/specification of fab, but depending on how much they pay for the 'blueprints' will be the difference between generic and premium branding with every tiny difference in between.

<comment><USER9> Why would someone pay more for "premium branding" on something they print on their own machine?

Granted I don't understand why people pay more for branded clothes either.

<comment><USER12> The point of premium branding is in fact to prove that you can afford to pay more. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The cheapest professional machines run into $50K unit prices. A RepRap will set you back under $1K, but it's not very useful at the moment.

<comment><USER14> They come a lot cheaper than that. The biggest cost is the proprietary materials they use, I'm guessing it would easily add up to more than the cost of the printer over time. Servicing costs should also be pretty high.

I've compiled a list of most cheap printers (slightly out of date, I am going to add more soon): <http://punkmanufacturing.com/wiki/>

As far as usefulness, the open-source printers are not that different from the cheap commercial machines. A well-tuned RepRap should have comparable accuracy. The printing materials are a lot cheaper, as well as the parts (which you can print) and servicing costs. The commercial printers have better resolution, better materials and better software, at least at the moment, but I think that's going to change.

<comment><USER6> Most of those materials are reverse engineer-able, though. This has a significant impact on the big manufacturer's bottom lines... they derive most of their profit from materials, just like regular printers.

I'll just leave this here: <http://open3dp.me.washington.edu/>

Specifically: [http://open3dp.me.washington.edu/2009/10/plaster-based- powde...](http://open3dp.me.washington.edu/2009/10/plaster-based-powder/)

See how cheap that is? Crazy...

<comment><USER14> You can probably get a spec-sheet for their proprietary materials if you ask. You might have to reverse-engineer cartridges with security features though.

The Fab@Home guys are trying out various different materials, since their syringe-based extruder allows more flexibility than the RepRap.

<http://fabathome.org/wiki/index.php/Fab%40Home:Materials>

As far as cheap materials go, it doesn't get much cheaper than garbage plastic.

<http://reprap.org/wiki/Recycler>

<comment><USER6> > You can probably get a spec-sheet for their proprietary materials if you > ask.

Or you could just go here (this is my old startup): <http://marketplace.cloudfab.com/fab_facts> (click through for every datasheet on every machine and material)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to be a good technical team leader - <AUTHOR> Those of you, who have been promoted from senior dev / architect roles to team leads or product owners - can you point me to some good resources or give some experience-based advice about how to successfully lead a dev team, and how to stay on a good enough level of technical knowledge to evaluate solution  proposals while retaining sanity?
Background: I started at my current job 2 years ago and quickly moved up from dev to architecture. As time goes by, I get more and more involved in high level discussions about our products and need to delegate almost everything that is not talking, listening and doing powerpoints to 'my team' (I decide what they are doing day-to-day, but I do not have recruitment or budget responsibilities) which currently consists of 10 people, but will soon double in size. I am not overexcited about this, as I would have liked to spend more time understanding nitty gritty technical details, poc coding and having fun with solving problems, but in our current situation there is nobody else who can take my role.
Problem is, I consider myself to be bad with people. I am female (my team is exclusively male), and neurodivergent, and while I have reasonable general social skills, I feel like I need a lot more data to know how to handle various situations, especially not-happy-path. I understand that nothing replaces hands-on experience, but any advice is highly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Have no fear. With a bit of commitment and practice, you can learn to be really good with your people. Just a few key actionable skills can turn you into a great team leader. In addition to telling and reminding your people to do things, make sure you PRAISE in one way or another, after they have done what you asked them.

Here's something I wrote recently on the key tips to becoming a great team leader: [https://blog.leadingup.co/almost-everything-weve-learned- in-...](https://blog.leadingup.co/almost-everything-weve-learned-in-30-years- of-leadership-coaching/)

But, there's only so much reading online can help. You mentioned that you don't know how to handle various situations. You need situation specific advice, not general. To me that sounds like a management/leadership coach. We run an unlimited coaching service for people exactly like you: [https://leadingup.co/](https://leadingup.co/) or email me: email@example.com

Hope we can help you!

</comment><comment><USER3> I may have just the book for you. The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier is a great book with lots of examples on how to be a manager in tech. She structured her book very sistematically in a way from junior developer all the way up to CTO. On each level she talks about the job description, the hardships to endure and how to solve them.

</comment><comment><USER4> A couple of points:

1\. Provide developers with convincing reasons for important product decisions.

2\. Developers do not like to be led by someone they think isn't technically capable. Being a smart rubber duck for the team works in most discussions, and when niche technologies are presented, you can always buy time to read up on it before greenlighting solutions.

3\. Be proactive in resolving internal team conflicts, in an amicable and respectful fashion.</comment>


World-renowned AI experts duke it out on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2018/11/29/world-renowned-ai-experts-duke-it-out-on-twitter/ <comment><USER2> Alot of this feels pretty close to AGI

[https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/10/curiosity-and- procrastinat...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/10/curiosity-and- procrastination-in.html)

[https://worldmodels.github.io/](https://worldmodels.github.io/)</comment>


Google App Engine Mini Profiler - <AUTHOR> http://bjk5.com/post/6944602865/google-app-engine-mini-profiler

<comment><USER2> Just put it in a GAE project I've been working on for the past couple weeks. Looks great so far!

<comment><USER3> Thanks Tyler, thrilled to hear it might help. Always comforting to know it didn't explode the first early adopter's project ;)

<comment><USER2> Yup, it's working as advertised (a.k.a. awesomely!) Had to modify how the template tag was being imported for Jinja2, but that was dead simple.

<comment><USER3> Makes sense

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone recommend a rails utility with similar functionality / UI ?

<comment><USER5> You don't mind paying, <http://NewRelic.com> is excellent.

<comment><USER6> It actually appears that their tracking can be used free in development mode without their server; it could probably be adapted to be used on a live site without their service as well.

<https://github.com/newrelic/rpm>

<comment><USER4> I've used NewRelic quite a bit in the past, but only in production. I never really though of using it in dev. It would be good if there was a browser plugin or something to give immediate feedback about the most request that loaded the current page, as shown in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great demo! One of the most interesting ones I've seen. I liked seeing the AJAX requests appear as I was playing chess.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can you provide some info on how this relates to AppStats?

The American Psycho copy on the page gave me a lol, btw :)

<comment><USER3> Appstats is used to capture all the RPC timing and call stacks, but unlike ordinary setups you don't have to configure AppStats or unleash on a minority of real users to avoid perf overhead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> care to share about on how it works? i'm thinking of porting it to gae/java.

</comment><comment><USER10> It looks great!

Could it also work for regular WSGI webapps outside of GAE?

<comment><USER3> While this specific project relies on a lot of GAE's batteries-included stuff like memcache and Appstats, please feel free to fork and support new environments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thank you, this looks great.</comment>


2016 European Software Development Salary Survey - <AUTHOR> https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/2016-european-software-development-salary-survey <comment><USER2> why on earth should I log to view this content. Screw this website. have the direct link here [http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/2016-european-...](http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/2016-european- software-development-salary-survey.pdf)</comment>


The Second Coming: A Manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter/gelernter_index.html

<comment><USER2> _42\. To send email, you put a document on someone else's stream. To add a note to your calendar, you put a document in the future of your own stream. To continue work on an old document, put a copy at the head of your stream. Sending email, updating the calendar, opening a document are three instances of the same operation (put a document on a stream)._

Sounds like a gap in Unix's file metaphor. Would it be reasonable to copy a file to /firstname.lastname@example.com/ and have the right thing happen?

 _57\. Nowadays we use a scanner to transfer a document's electronic image into a computer. Soon, the scanner will become a Cybersphere port of entry, an all-purpose in-box. Put any object in the in-box and the system develops an accurate 3D physical transcription, and drops the transcription into the cool dark well of cyberspace. So the Cybersphere starts to take on just a hint of the textural richness of real life._

I think mobile phone cameras will be the "scanner" here.

<comment><USER3> > Sounds like a gap in Unix's file metaphor. Would it be reasonable to copy a > file to /email@example.com/ and have the right thing happen?

Sound's reasonable. Though you would probably have to set write-new-files-only permissions in that directory, to capture the semantics of email. Reading and modifying files and even listing directory contents should not be allowed. Perhaps it would be better to make email@example.com a special file that you can write to, instead of a directory?

<comment><USER2> It's an interesting argument, but if you make it a file, will the system know that:

cat file1 > email@example.com

cat file2 > firstname.lastname@example.com

are two separate messages?

<comment><USER3> Good question. I don't know. That why I put the question mark in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm having a heated argument with a person who _refuses_ to read past point 30, because he understands files and hierarchies and thinks that anybody that can't organize their computer files is just hopeless and shouldn't bother. He's the kind of person keeping this whole thing back.

The future of user interfaces is one without named files and directories, I'm 100% positive about that. Real-life hierarchies of information are more organic than named things belonging to one category. Ideas are not grouped so rigidly, and neither should last year's tax return (it's financial, and it's personal, and it's governmental, and it's a form, you created it about a year ago, etc. etc. etc.).

Pieces of information should be known for what they are, not what they are named. Naming them is tedious.

<comment><USER5> I know it's not a new idea, but I wonder if the time has come when the filesystem model is replaced with the database model. I realize that a relational database simply trades one hierarchical structure for another, but it seems that the schema-free and arbitrary structure of a "NoSQL" model might make a better fit for the globs of data that comprise a modern storage drive. The key is in having a powerful and intuitive enough searching algorithm that you can actually find what you need.

<comment><USER6> Relational databases are not limited to hierarchies. You can create complex graphs if you want. It's all how you model your information. They were created due to the limitations of hierarchical and network db systems.

There was an interesting discussion on Artima ("Software Development Has Stalled") last week that touched on the schema-free idea. One of the participants suggested that computers could use inference to determine data relationships. (In his words, the computer is hypothetical and would need to be infinitely fast.) Presumably by computer he meant some agent doing machine learning on top of the "infinitely fast" hardware.

If your idea is along the inference line, then it would be interesting to see how far inference could go. However, if you mean to simply encode relationships into each program (or into a library), then it's just a re- invention of a schema.

<comment><USER5> Maybe a solution will lie in adaptive neural networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is all a little bit out there for me, but Gelernter is a great mind. I still think Linda will take over the world. The most interesting part of this, for me, was this quote: "The computer mouse was a brilliant invention, but we can see today that it is a bad design. Like any device that must be moved and placed precisely, it ought to provide tactile feedback; it doesn't." It's only funny as hype builds for the ipad and mobile internet devices, almost all based on touch screens. Even before that, trackpads and membrane keyboards were all slow and steady movements away from strong tactile feedback. The "minority report" interface that people love so much is even further along, there is no contact at all. None of this is to say Gelernter is wrong, but, if he is right, I wonder when we will see the movement towards increased and/or more intelligent tactile feedback.

<comment><USER4> At least touch interfaces remove a level of abstraction that currently exists between moving a mouse on a desk and moving a pointer on the screen. A touch screen with tactile feedback (the iPhone already has vibration... more apps should make use of this) would be nearly ideal.

<comment><USER8> Prediction:

Touch interfaces will comprise the new end-user interface vocabulary. As happened with mouse/keyboard/overlapping windows, a de-facto standard set of UI conventions will be established as a new mainstream.

Apple will be a trailblazer of this with the iPad. They will be too greedy with their IP and their closed corporate policies will drive the creation of a different but similar standard that they do not directly control. Hopefully, it won't be Microsoft that jumps in and does it this time.

<comment><USER3> Interesting.

Could you put any money, some odds and a timeline on your prediction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The most interesting part imho is the lifestream he talks about, as well the implied "eternity service" for information management. I wonder besides Linda, why more of these ideas didn't see implementation. I am assuming the Internet and the open source collaboration came too late.

Linda for sure will see reincarnation, but can't stop thinking how funny it is that old technologies are coming back in big fashion, as "innovations". PG might be right, all languages seem to be evolving into Lisp. :D

<comment><USER9> Regarding a return of Linda, I couldn't help but note similar themes when first learning about Amazon's Dynamo and later, the Apache Cassandra Project. I'm not saying that there's a perfect match, but when one's imagination has academic roots in the era of Linda, it was easy to see a connection through that lens.

Anyone else see the potential there?

At the very least, it influences how I might use something like Cassandra (or dbm files for that matter), and I've been planting the meme for others to approach their designs that way too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 19\. The power of desktop machines is a magnet that will reverse today's "everything onto the Web!" trend. Desktop power will inevitably drag information out of remote servers onto desktops.

20\. If a million people use a Web site simultaneously, doesn't that mean that we must have a heavy-duty remote server to keep them all happy? No; we could move the site onto a million desktops and use the internet for coordination. The "site" is like a military unit in the field, the general moving with his troops (or like a hockey team in constant swarming motion). (We used essentially this technique to build the first tuple space implementations. They seemed to depend on a shared server, but the server was an illusion; there was no server, just a swarm of clients.) Could Amazon.com be an itinerant horde instead of a fixed Central Command Post? Yes.

Now the network 'edge' is physically the the carrier owned physical location nearest the end user. This suggests that edge will be moved to the physical location of the end user. Financially this makes sense since it would move some of the carrier hardware and compute costs to the customer thus lowering the service costs as well as decreasing latency. It could be the next step in development of the compute cloud.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe he is talking about large scale, generalized p2p and finally merging the web app benefits with supercomputer's power of our desktops, coordinating power across the net, and having information "fly around" in cyberspace.

sexy.

<comment><USER10> Yes I agree he is talking about p2p. ISPs could start deploying devices on customer premises to provide caching, storage, compute and wireless network services. In densely populated areas this would essentially be a local CDN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _1\. No matter how certain its eventual coming, an event whose exact time and form of arrival are unknown vanishes when we picture the future. We tend not to believe in the next big war or economic swing; we certainly don't believe in the next big software revolution.

2\. Because we don't believe in technological change (we only say we do), we accept bad computer products with a shrug; we work around them, make the best of them and (like fatalistic sixteenth-century French peasants) barely even notice their defects — instead of demanding that they be fixed and changed._

Collorary: If you want aim for something world-changing, you need to aim high enough that most Slashdotters won't immediately get it and say "meh."

I think this level may be out of the reach of most startups now. (Google, Facebook, and Twitter are notable exceptions. But I think the low-hanging fruit has been largely picked from the current set of user interface kit.)

</comment><comment><USER11> Very fascinating vision. It isn't clear when this was written. Also, for some odd reason, number 15 is missing.

<comment><USER12> June 2000, deducing from the dateline of the quoted/linked NYTimes piece, which mentions "last week".

Amusing typo in the collected reactions: "Feeman".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was struck by this paragraph in John McCarthy's detailed critique that followed the manifesto and thought it pointed out a real issue for many systems:

       "Unfortunately, the making of computer systems and software is dominated
       by the ideology of the omnipotent programmer (or web site designer) who
       knows how the user (regarded as a child) should think and reduces the
       user's control to pointing and clicking. This ideology has left even the
       most sophisticated users in a helpless position compared to where they
       were 40 years ago in the late 1950s.

</comment><comment><USER14> 57: Compiz actually has a small hint of part of this with their rain effect. A "butterfly effect" would be awesome. References to chaos theory included.

</comment><comment><USER12> I appreciate #30-34, on file names, which opens up with

 _30\. If you have three pet dogs, give them names. If you have 10,000 head of cattle, don't bother._

The count of "eight possibilities" on #34 puzzles me a bit.

I also sympathize with the (time) streams idea further down. Archeological strata are a very efficient concept for storage, and not the worst possible one for retrieval ...

<comment><USER15> Actually, I thought the cattle analogy missed the point - surely the reason we don't give names to each of our 10,000 cattle is that we don't care which one is which? I don't find that to be true of data. Also, file names are often used to describe the data to which they relate; in that sense, we actually do give names to each of our 10,000 cattle - we call them 'cows' - it just happens that we use the same name for each individual because they are identical at the abstraction level we care about.

Or maybe it's me who missed the point? :-)

<comment><USER16> actually it's not true of cattle either.

We care about the individual cattle when we process it.

I.e. when it goes to the slaughterhouse we want to make sure it's not contagious, that it's not a kid cattle etc.

We might even group them males or females.

The answer is context not categorization.

<comment><USER5> Processing cattle is a kind of filter/map operation: walk the list of cows, assessing each one on a set of criteria, and then processing the cows that meet the criteria.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mathematical Components: formalized mathematics for the Coq system - <AUTHOR> https://math-comp.github.io/mcb/ <comment><USER2> IIRC, the only reason mathcomp isn't in the Coq standard library is because the license isn't free.</comment>


Twitter OAuth Switchover Postponed to August 16 - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/dfb89d9f29f339a2?pli=1

<comment><USER2> They should take the time to implement OAuth 2.0 like Facebook did.

Much easier to use (simply relies on SSL over HTTPS instead of signing tokens/keys).

<comment><USER3> I don't think OAuth 2.0 is ready for prime time yet because the standard is still a draft, and, more importantly, because there is a lack of client libraries.

<comment><USER2> OAuth 2.0 is sooo simple, you don't need a library.

I implemented it with about 10 lines of PHP via CURL.

My twitter OAuth 1.x version for the same action is like 100 lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was hoping they were going to do this. I kept trying to get started, Twitter would go down, I would get pissed and back up and start over.</comment>


Everything I Missed in "Vim After 11 Years" - <AUTHOR> http://statico.github.com/vim2.html

<comment><USER2> > But have you ever heard of :g//? I hadn't.

> :[range]g[lobal]/{pattern}/[cmd] (default 'p')

This is the origin of _grep_ , i.e. g/re/p!

<comment><USER3> My first reaction to that was "surely grep is older than vi" - but the grep wikipedia page points out that the g/re/p pattern dates all the way back to ed - which vi extended

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On EasyMotion:

        " let g:EasyMotion_leader_key = '<Space>'
        let g:EasyMotion_keys = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
        let g:EasyMotion_mapping_f = '<space>'
        let g:EasyMotion_mapping_w = '<space><space>'

This lets you type space then a character then jump. Space space jumps words. I'm fine with my leader on \\. I had my space toggle folds but easymotion is a MUCH better use of the key. I also remap 's' to surround.vim keybinds:

        ""s/S is pretty useless. :help text-objects
        nmap s      ysi
        nmap S      ysa
        nmap s$     ys$
        nmap sv     gvs

</comment><comment><USER5> This is one of the things I love about vim. After 11 years, there's still so many new things to learn and improve your experience. I've been using vim just over a year now, and it seems every week or so I pick up a new trick that significantly improves my workflow. I had always remapped ; but after learning its actual purpose here, I may reconsider.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have similar thoughts towards Vundle. It seems to solve a problem that simply doesn't exist for me with Pathogen, and is slightly more annoying to boot.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a little jealous of the CSS Color Plugin. Wish TextMate had something like that.</comment>


Managing generated files in GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@clarkbw/managing-generated-files-in-github-1f1989c09dfd <comment><USER2> There are a couple of other attributes that can be useful from Linguist.

The vendored can help maintain your language stats which show up on your repo page and in GH/explore.

For rails you could add something like this so all the JS you've imported isn't counted.

``` vendor/* linguist-vendored ```

\- author</comment>


Email encryption for everyone via fsf - <AUTHOR> https://u.fsf.org/zb <comment><USER2> Thanks! It's great to see this sort of thing.</comment>


Chromebooks Unlocked Automatically When Your Smartphone Is Near - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/chromebooks-could-soon-be-unlocked-automatically-when-your-smartphone-is-near/

<comment><USER2> I had this setup 5 years ago using Bluetooth. When my laptop detected my phone was paired and connected, it would unlock. When the phone disconnected, it would lock.</comment>


Could an AI coding assistant understand what you want it to code on line #? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> An interpreter understands what machine instructions you want it to execute at line #. Which seems to me pretty close to what you describe. I mean programming with a natural language interface seems possible but lacks the precision and so programming would probably wind up with a technical language for instructing to behave predictably and I am back at interpreters and programming languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe adding voice to vim commands would achieve the same thing.

but who'd want to be in the same office as someone talking to a computer all day.</comment></comment>


Show HN: YouRepl – Watch video-tutorials and write code at the same time - <AUTHOR> https://yourepl.tumblr.com/post/180936303347/announcing-yourepl <comment><USER2> It's crazy (to me) that people will install extensions like this. Seems like there's very little advantage over just keeping two windows open, and who knows what else the extension could be doing without telling you.

<comment><AUTHOR> This extension only ask permission for youtube.com and repl.it so any "potential malicious damage" is limited to those 2 sites. The code of the extension itself is pretty readable, you can open the Chrome developer console and check out yourself what it does.

About the tiling manager: I tried dozens of configurations and it doesn't come close to this, specially due the lack of mouse-wheel zooming feature.

<comment><USER3> > This extension only ask permission for youtube.com and repl.it so any > "potential malicious damage" is limited to those 2 sites

That's not true. It also asks for the ability to 'read your browser history' _and_ to 'communicate with cooperating websites'.

Furthermore, as I understand it, the extension can easily be updated in the background to do stuff that it didn't do when you looked at the code and installed it. I imagine one of those things might be uploading your browser history to a 'cooperating website'.

Correct me if I'm wrong though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Couldn't find another way to address your note at the bottom of the tumblr post. Inquiry posted below:

Hey Ivan, just saw your repl video on the other page. Cool work! I'm working on technology that will revolutionize many industries. It's called knophy.com and I am actively working on it myself. The core philosophy of knophy is that we can realign incentive structures in social media and online interaction to favor the competent rather than the loud. The website doesn't show much yet, but I'll have a prototype available soon and always love sharing and discussing the idea with others.

My email is in my profile. Let's link up if you want to talk more about it. I don't have any funding yet but am very confident that funding will come and I have a very sane business model that I think can again, help revolutionize many industries in our zero sum times.

</comment><comment><USER5> You lost me at "extension".

I'm probably not the target audience for this, but I'm not going to install an extension for something like this. I feel installing the framework/language/servers/etc on my machine is part of the learning process and I prefer coding locally. Not to mention the privacy/security issues with extensions in general.

If it helps others get into programming, then so be it. Best of luck to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally understandable, if this could be implemented as a website I would do it but is just not possible; maybe someday the guys at repl.it will implemente this themselves (so it wouldn't need to exist as an extension)

<comment><USER6> Repl.it cofounder here. Pretty soon we'll open up our IDE for external plugins. I talked about it here with a demo near the end of what extensions could like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhECubL0R3U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhECubL0R3U)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great stuff!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I want feedback about it so please try it out and tell me what you think; thanks.

</comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of this video player for screencasts and code tutorials I want to build where you could see someone code, and you could copy the code straight from the video/cast.

So basically a google doc where the caster is typing code and you are able to pause and speed up.

How difficult would it be to build that? :thinking:

</comment><comment><USER8> I see one potential problem: external dependencies. Does it allow to install external packages?

What if I need a GPU to run PyTorch examples?

And how about graphical output/interaction, such as in Jupyter notebooks?

PS: I couldn't test it because I'm on Firefox. The video looks nice though!

<comment><USER6> Repl.it cofounder here.

>I see one potential problem: external dependencies. Does it allow to install external packages?

Yes. Repl.it allows external dependencies in some of the languages we support using our Universal Package Manager: [https://repl.it/site/blog/packager](https://repl.it/site/blog/packager) (more language support coming soon)

>And how about graphical output/interaction, such as in Jupyter notebooks?

Any image output you generate we show you in the IDE so it can feel interactive. Docs here: [https://repl.it/site/docs/repls/python- plots](https://repl.it/site/docs/repls/python-plots)

We have some experimental features that allow graphical output in the terminal. More on this soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd love to see a real comparison of the effectiveness of video learning vs more traditional, skimmable text.

</comment><comment><USER10> Scrimba.con does this elegantly at the server level, so it even works on tablets with no browser extension needed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Safari can easily display a YouTube video picture in picture like that natively

</comment><comment><USER12> why isn't it just a website? Having to install an extension just for this seems a little much...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's impossible for it to be a website, because to be able to modify the HTML response repl.it shows on the browser it has to be an extension. Maybe someday repl.it will implement this functionality themselves, then this extension wouldn't be needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think Scrimba has the best execution of this concept.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I will check it out.</comment></comment>


How to Get Investors to Read Your Updates - <AUTHOR> https://medium.dave-bailey.com/how-to-get-investors-to-actually-read-your-updates-b2945e09f948?source=friends_link&sk=68983aed6a84e2513da9666f8d00868e <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious whether there are any other tips to improve engagement on investor updates...</comment>


Worstsort - <AUTHOR> https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/worstsort/ <comment><USER2> I'll give it a try at defining the author's intuition of "doesn't cheat" in the sense that it is always "making real progress". I'll define it as every intermediate value that is generated in the computation is eventually consumed. If a function, say, computes Ackermann(5,5) and throws away the result and then starts the actual sorting process, then the Ackermann(5,5) is unused and would be considered cheating. In a sense we can draw a data-flow diagram of the computation and everything has at least one outgoing edge, except perhaps the final output.

<comment><USER3> Problem is we can define a function mix(a, b) which intermingles two arguments and produces a new value dependent on both- for example, sha256(a.concat(b)).

Then we can take any randomized algorithm and, for its random values, use mix(real_rng.random(), Ackermann(5, 5)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another "don't cheat" intuition is "you can't statically know that a function call prior to the final result produces the correct answer".

This fails that criterion, as you can just throw away all the calls except badsort 0.

My criterion isn't well defined, because what you can statically know isn't well defined, but I know a cheater when I see one :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me a little of _reluctant search_ from _Pessimal Algorithms and Simplexity Analysis_ ([http://www.bowdoin.edu/~ltoma/teaching/cs231/fall13/Material...](http://www.bowdoin.edu/~ltoma/teaching/cs231/fall13/Material/broder86pessimal.pdf))

</comment><comment><USER6> Are there competitions for this? If not, I think there should be; designing the worst possible, but provably terminating and finite and non cheating (as in the author his definition which I think is a good one) versions of algorithms. The proof has to be provided by the author ofcourse.

<comment><USER7> There's the mathematical competition to define the largest precisely defined number, i.e. "largest number defined by humans so far, plus one" is not ok, but "largest finite number of cells visited by Turing machines of 7 states on an initially zeroed tape" is ok. It's obviously about finding new tricks rather than rehashing the existing ones.

It seems like the tricks from this competition would be reusable for the slowest algorithm competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So

      sort ≡ head ∘ sort ∘ permutations

I wonder if there is some neat (and totally useless) algorithm for _sort_ using that info.

</comment><comment><USER9> When wondering what's the point in trying to find bad sort algorithms, I shed a few tears thinking about a few StackOverflow questions in its early days where a programming beginner would ask for basic algorithm implementations and a few mischievous answerers would suggest things like boggle sort.

<comment><USER10> [https://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/](https://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would a Haskell implementation of the second step (recursively call badsort and pick the first) actually exhaust all permutations of permutations before picking the first item, or would this have O(n) (or at least less than O(n!)) complexity due to lazy evaluation?

<comment><USER12> The foldl in `badSort 0` has to evaluate its entire argument list. As far as I can see, this behavior propagates through to all functions shown in the article since they all call `badSort 0` eventually.

<comment><USER13> It's foldr, not fold. That's what makes it consume absurd stack space, creating a stack of thunks of length (n-factorial-iterated-k-times, including the nested towers of folders inside each element) before it can use any laziness to shortcut the actual comparisons applied by `insert`.

It creates the whole monolithic expression with all the parenthesis in pessimal positions, forcing all the comparisons in the wrong order (back to front, aka least-significant-bits first), which makes it impossible to use the short circuiting of lexicographical comparisons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Surely worstsort would be

While list not sorted { Random(list) }

?

<comment><USER8>
      for x in 3 1 2 5 4; do (sleep $x; echo $x) & done

<comment><USER15> I think that is equivalent to selection sort: You put all numbers into the scheduler which periodically checks all scheduled threads and selects the one which timer elapsed, i.e. it sequentially selects the scheduled tasks with increasing timer duration value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The use of "foldr insert []" makes this redundant nonsense.

<comment><USER17> I disagree. The scientifically interesting thing is that we can have such exploding complexity, while at the same time every step of the algorithm still actively works towards a solution.</comment></comment>


Privacy and security - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/privacy-and-security

<comment><USER2> You say "I don't worry about the NSA having my call records". The trouble is a lot of people are worried about it. Every despot in history has gotten away with oppression because of the silent majority who tolerates, or supports it in the name of some ostensible benefit they perceive to themselves.

Regarding the benefits, they are dubious at best. The probability of being harmed by a terrorist attack is vanishingly small; you are orders of magnitude more likely to die in a car accident, and more likely to die from being hit by lightening. For that risk, why should the rest of us tolerate being spied on, being groped at airports, and being told the state is free to act outside the bounds of judicial oversight (one of the bedrocks of common law)?

Not to mention, the US government does more to foster terrorism than to fight it. This is easier for non-Americans to understand, because they don't have the concept of exceptionalism baked into their head from childhood. Animosity toward America does not come from the success or freedom of her people (that's why people LOVE America), the animosity comes from imperialism and American troops stationed in parts of the world whose people take it as an extreme affront.

It's hard to produce any evidence regarding the NSA because it's so secretive and companies and individuals that are forced to deal with it are put under gag orders. That's why it's so amazing this information finally got out (thank god for whistleblowers who literally put their lives on the line to bring this awful behaviour into the daylight - I have no doubt that the leaker, if ever revealed, will have his or her life ruined by the justice department). But consider sister agencies like the FBI, which have a long history of abusing surveillance powers ([http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-releases-report- fbi-cru...](http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-releases-report-fbi-crusade- against-martin-luther-king-jr-urges-ashcroft-not-relax-)). It's very easy to find the history of abuses from various government agencies (for instance, the census bureau using its data to round up Japanese-americans into concentration camps in World War 2), so why should the onus be on those of us who oppose domestic spying to prove that the NSA isn't abusing its power?

Also, you say "I am delighted that we can all express our outrage online without fear of disappearing in the night—that's pretty remarkable. I am happy that citizens can own guns (I have gone a little off the deep end as a prepper…). If all this stops, then it'd be time to worry."

This doesn't happen in one step. No society goes from freedom to Nazism overnight. The progress from freedom to oppression happens in a succession of baby steps, each of which are tolerated, or even supported.

You have mentioned your view is a minority opinion. Quite the contrary. You form the silent majority who assents to this sort of state behaviour. Your opinion is very closely aligned with the opinion of the power structure itself, and this baneful behaviour can only come about if the vast majority of people are essentially ok with it. The people complaining about it, although loud and visible, are a minority, who have long been accused of being "crackpots" or having a "penchant for conspiracy theories", to use your words.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" I believe the world is more dangerous than it used to be"_

I don't understand this belief. Since the 90's, we've lived in a world without a nuclear armed superpowers with a hostile relationship. Trade has made war so costly that developed nations just don't do it with each other anymore. More Americans die trying to end civil wars in other countries than die from terrorism. At this point, we should be reaping a peace dividend not only in dollars, but in rights.

Members of Congress have tried to justify the revelations about spying on Americans by claiming that it has prevented a terrorist attack. If a decade of spying on Americans prevents just one 9/11-scale attack, I'd choose the attack. Three thousand deaths over a decade is a rounding error. Let's start a war on traffic accidents and metabolic syndrome instead.

</comment><comment><USER4> "I believe the world is more dangerous than it used to be, and that as technology develops things generally get more dangerous."

I don't think this is true. A great book that discusses this is Stephen Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature," which essentially shows that we're living in the least violent, most peaceful era of human history. Fareed Zakaria's "The Post-American World" also discusses how we're currently in the most peaceful, economically prosperous time in world history. Despite the violence and unrest presented daily in news media, life is far better now than it used to be by almost any metric.

That's why I agree with the people referenced in Sam's second footnote, who believe "the amount of effort spent on the war on terror is disproportionate to the actual risk." As terrible as the September 11 attacks were, ten times as many people die in car accidents every year. David Foster Wallace's brief essay, "Just Asking," really hits this point [1].

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just- ask...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just- asking/306288&#x2F);

<comment><USER5> Mildy bad things are less common, but very bad things are possible now that were not 50 years ago. One individual can have a much worse impact.

<comment><USER6> Regarding your concern about biological weapons... I'm not convinced all this State surveillance could plausibly have any impact on an individual actor, developing and using a sophisticated biological weapon. I think we're at (or near) the point where individuals can engineer / grow their own viruses in home laboratories. The risk is that one whacko grows SARS v456 and unleashes it, resulting in a _The Stand_ scenario. But if he/she is truly working alone, monitoring their communication probably won't help.

Now thermonuclear is different, because - AFAIK - it would take a massive engineering effort involving lots of people and sophisticated equipment to build a nuke. But that's the same reason that it strikes me that it's less likely that terrorists will ever get one. Even nation-states like N. Korea struggle to develop nukes, and do so undetected. A terrorist group building a nuke seems like a plot from a Mack Bolan novel, not a real-world possibility. Now, buying a nuke on the black-market, from a former Soviet state, might be doable... so I'm not saying there's zero chance of this happening. But weighed against the clearly non-zero chance of our government decaying into a totalitarian / fascist regime like something out of Orwell; I'd err on the side of restraining the government.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Counter point: They catch moonshiners by staking out the places you can buy large volumes of corn and sugar. They catch meth cooks by monitoring large quantity purchases of those ingredients (whatever they are...). They bust up grow houses by finding higher than average power bills due to all the climate control equipment used. It is not beyond reason that they could catch (or at least become aware of) individuals with home labs by flagging purchases of those supplies and/or equipment.

<comment><USER6> _It is not beyond reason that they could catch (or at least become aware of) individuals with home labs by flagging purchases of those supplies and /or equipment._

Fair enough. I don't actually know enough about the details of doing home virus experimentation and engineering to know for sure. I just have a vague recollection of having heard some stuff about how those abilities are filtering down to DIY land.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My thoughts exactly, thanks for this refreshing blog post. There's definitely a lot of security value for the intelligence agencies to mine our data and they've been able to stop several terrorist plots because of being able to access that data. Like you said, I just wish they would be more transparent about it. Of course the other danger is that if they're too transparent, the people who WANT to be anonymous for bad reasons will know exactly how to avoid leaving digital trails. It's tough to balance privacy & security but I definitely think the intelligence agencies could care less about what drug dealers you talk to or how much porn you watch and legitimately care more about threats to the country.

<comment><USER6> _but I definitely think the intelligence agencies could care less about what drug dealers you talk to or how much porn you watch and legitimately care more about threats to the country._

That might be true today... but what about tomorrow? Or what if one individual at the NSA starts finding enough dirt on enough powerful people, to start exerting an undue degree of influence / control on our society? It's not like intelligence collected by government agencies has never been used for political purposes before.

I also disagree with their BS about it being "necessary" to collect ALL this data. I'm sorry, but if they're telling the truth about not collecting names, etc., then I do not believe they can detect "terrorist activity" by simply analyzing patterns of phone calls, durations, etc., among _random_ people. And if their analysis is based on analyzing connections to and from _already identified_ suspects, then all they need to do is get a warrant to collect information on people calling (or being called by) the known suspects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great post. I would add that sometimes revealing the plots that have been stopped or uncovered would itself destroy the intelligence value of whatever means was used to uncover it.

But certainly it should be possible to say _something_ or otherwise have a timeframe after which it's considered safe to mention.

And for the rest, the data collection, analysis, etc. absolutely we need more transparency. The bad guys should already be assuming NSA sees all and knows all, the rest of us need to know what rules the government and public are playing by, and we need to be able to trust and oversee our own leadership in Washington. And _that_ requires transparency.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sam, you say "I don't worry about the NSA having my call records". I wonder if you would be OK posting your phone records for the last 5 years online, so anyone can see them. Who you called, who called you, how long you talked. What if this was mandatory?

<comment><USER5> I think that's totally different than the NSA having them, but yes, I would.

It's not really the point, though--I can have opinions about whether specific practices are overreaching, but what I really care about is disclosure.

<comment><USER9> Fair enough!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't think probable cause exists just to protect Sam Altman.</comment>