A Node.js speed dilemma: AJAX or Socket.IO? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cubrid.org/blog/cubrid-appstools/nodejs-speed-dilemma-ajax-or-socket-io/#.UIpMM6a4eTc.hackernews <comment><USER2> Please post the full code and configuration you are using. Your results don't match what I have seen nor the expected results.

Some notes:

\- Socket.IO supports several different transports, including AJAX. To have persistent connections you need to make sure that you are using WebSockets (native or Flash) as your transport. Are you certain that you are actually using WebSockets? Socket.IO attempts to automatically pick the best transport and unless you verify, the only difference you will see is lower performance.

\- You need to compare Socket.IO using AJAX as a transport, vs raw AJAX so that you can control for how much overhead the Socket.IO library (client and server) is adding to the test. Actually, comparing all the Socket.IO transport options would be useful. Doing a Socket.IO disconnect is not a good way to trigger a non-persistent transport in Socket.IO; you are likely causing both client and server to do a bunch of extra cleanup (Socket.IO has some advanced features that require tracking connections/channels/etc).

\- If Socket.IO is using WebSockets as your transport, then your "Socket.IO non-persistent" test is still testing WebSockets, not AJAX or one of the other real non-persistent connections. I would not be surprised that WebSocket connection setup and teardown might be slightly slower than AJAX connection setup. HTTP connection setup has been around since the beginning and had a lot of time to be optimized. WebSockets are relatively new and connection setup time is not something that people will probably ever care about (WebSockets are not designed to be used this way).

\- You should really use something other that Date() for your timers. The accuracy of Date is close to the latency of WebSockets themselves and so I strongly suspect that if you are doing this to localhost, what you are actually measuring in "Socket.IO persistent" vs "AJAX" is the Date rather than the connection latency Note that the latency per request in either case stays around 3ms and the Date object returns a value in milliseconds. The "Socket.IO non-persistent" is probably just a measure of Date with the overhead of Socket.IO cleanup. I suggest using high performance timers: <http://updates.html5rocks.com/..>.

\- You need to do your test between two different computers preferably with at least a switch in between. There are a lot of network stack shortcuts that happen on modern computers when you communicate over the localhost/loopback network.

\- You are waiting 500ms between requests. I would suggest making that a variable. Interesting things will start to happen as you lower the interval. Also, as part of that, I think you probably want to put your start counter into the message data and then extract it on the other end to do the calculation. This is important because as you lower the amount of time you may start getting overlapping sends and receives (which is where things start getting interesting).

\- You should really generate your random string outside the send block so that you aren't adding latency and CPU usage to the performance loop. Also, it would be useful to be able to tune the size of the data being sent to both larger and smaller sizes than 4K.

Finally, you mention in your lead off that one of the problems with WebSockets is that they are persistent so you may reach your limit of concurrent connections compared to AJAX. But in actual practice, with well designed and configured servers, you will reach server limits with AJAX requests FAR sooner than with WebSockets.

For example, consider an application that occasionally sends updates to a few clients and has 10,000 clients "connected".

AJAX is the worst case because every client has to establish a new connection to poll the server for data so to get sub-second latency for updates, the clients would need to make a new connection every 500ms or so. This means the server is having to setup 20,000 new HTTP connections every second.

Using long-poll (server hangs onto the client connection if there is no data) the client will probably have to re-establish a connection every 30 seconds (depending on server/firewall config/etc) to poll the server. This is much better, but that is still over 300 connections being established every second to the server (and only if they are evenly spread out). Also it's worth noting that with a long-poll scenario, you have most of the clients with established connections most of the time. So you'll run into connection limits just as quickly (actually sooner for various reasons) than with persistent connections.

With WebSocket connections, there is the initial connection setup to connect the clients, but once the clients are connected, if the server has no data to send, there is essentially NO traffic between client and server.

Looking forward to seeing your code and configuration. How about posting to github so that others can try and replicate your results and suggest improvements?

<comment><USER3> The OP doesn't mention expected client count, but the number of concurrent connections is a crucial factor that these tests overlook.

I'm currently doing some Socket.io stress testing, and it's clear that XHR- polling is significantly harder on the CPU for the reasons you've mentioned. This detail is lost in the noise for single-client tests, but it will become increasingly relevant as more clients connect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Main advantage of Socket.IO is that you can do a push to the client over a persistent connection, that is not possible with Ajax in this way. Your results shows that, if you only need pulls from the clients, you could easily use ajax with all the landscape like jQuery and so on and it's not necessary to use Socket.IO.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why on earth would you use Socket.IO in a non persistant way?! That really doesn't make sense. But I'm glad you tested it out and didn't just assume that it was the fastest!

<comment><USER6> IE

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "AJAX is usually faster than Socket.IO to "code"..."

I tried node.js and some modules a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty easy to set up and I had a "working" chat application in few hours with socket.io. It was 20-30 lines of code, provided callback to send data immediately to other clients.

I don't think polling the server every 500 ms is a good practice, say 5-10 sec or more can be reasonable, but with socket.io you got it instant.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm playing with socket.io right now, and having trouble benchmarking it past 1500 concurrent connections on an 8GB RAM VM with unlimited file handles, using <https://github.com/michetti/socket.io-benchmark>

Anyone have any experience / advice?

<comment><USER9> You may find this thread useful: [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/nodejs/0...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/nodejs/0Z34PH_R88o)

</comment></comment><comment> johnx123-up "transport" of Socket.IO plays major role (but, it's not smooth/plug 'n play). Benchmark missing note about _chosen_ transport.

<comment><USER10> Was going to mention this as well.

socket.io falls back to long polling, so you have to be careful when trying to produce benchmarks based only on websockets. I didn't see this in the server code so I assume the default transports were used.

io.configure(ENV, function(){ io.set('transports', ['websocket']); });

more here: [https://github.com/LearnBoost/Socket.IO/wiki/Configuring- Soc...](https://github.com/LearnBoost/Socket.IO/wiki/Configuring-Socket.IO)

Also, Firefox version would be nice to know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Last time I checked Socket.IO doesn't support GZip compression. I found that, especially on mobile connections with larger datasets, it's just faster to use AJAX requests for client->server data requests, in combination with Socket.IO for fast server->client updates/notifications.

<comment><USER12> It does in fact support gzip ( see: [https://github.com/LearnBoost/socket.io/wiki/Configuring- Soc...](https://github.com/LearnBoost/socket.io/wiki/Configuring-Socket.IO) ), but there's an outstanding issue with spawning the gzip process ( see: [https://github.com/LearnBoost/socket.io/issues/932#issuecomm...](https://github.com/LearnBoost/socket.io/issues/932#issuecomment-6850772) ).

This should be fixed in the upcoming update to zlib.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You should have checked what protocol socket.io was using. socket.io fallbacks to xhr polling if WebSockets are not available in the client's browser, which is pretty much the same at ajax polling. WebSockets would probably give better results imo.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am sceptical. Other socket.io vs. ajax tests show opposite results.

<https://github.com/monteslu/jsonrpctest>

Here socket.io is at least 2-3 times faster than ajax.

</comment><comment><USER15> I use SockJS - www.sockjs.org

<comment><USER16> Yes, please. I switched from socket.io to SockJS a long time ago. I bought into it when I was first writing my app, but it is so unbelievably flaky and the design priorities are all wrong.

<comment><USER17> Does that actually mean "No thank you"? I can't quite work out whether you have had a good experience or bad experience..</comment></comment></comment>


62 Percent of All U.S. Jobs Do Not Pay Enough to Support a Middle Class Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/10/30/Analysis-Most-US-jobs-dont-pay-enough-for-middle-upper-class-life/7621540911653/ <comment><USER2> The actual study quoted:

[https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-opportunity-index- rankin...](https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-opportunity-index-ranking- opportunity-in-metropolitan-america)

Note that a middle class job in their definition pays around $44k to $80k while "professional" jobs are >$80k and the data is really for a family of four when accounting for middle class and professional.

</comment><comment><USER3> What percentage of those are transitional jobs? I left school and worked a few years at terrible pay. But I'm older now and earn a good wage. I don't see a problem with people following these steps.

<comment><USER4> A fine point, there definitely transitional jobs like you've described and a healthy economy needs that much the same way we need some level of unemployment.

However, should 62% of all jobs be transitional?

<comment><USER3> No 62% is too high for that. But knowing how many are transitional helps put that number in context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are 2 ways this happens:

1\. People are getting paid lower than the cost of goods and assets

2\. Goods and assets are priced above what people can afford

I suspect its number 2. All asset prices are completely out of whack with what people can afford.

The only only way out of this is a depression in asset prices.

</comment><comment><USER6> Labor supply is increasing due to more women and people from third world countries joining the global workforce. In longrun salaries should stabilize globally.</comment>


Thomas Schelling is dead - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling <comment><AUTHOR> Thomas Schelling was the author of _Micromotives and Macrobehavior_ and _The Strategy of Conflict_.</comment>


What It's Like to Lose $100M at Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/how-i-screwed-yasser-arafat-out-of-2mm-and-lost-100mm-in-the-process/

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops. I meant this one: [http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2014/08/whats-it-like- to-lose-1...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2014/08/whats-it-like-to- lose-100000000-at-facebook/)

<comment><USER2> Is that really the same guy? How can someone who claims to have cheated people into believing he had build a 100 million dollar business be afraid of asking for a discount or a favor?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This guy's brilliant. Love it.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I read technical documentation? - <AUTHOR> I am never confident that I understand the technical documentation of any software project. On StackOverflow, I tend to skip the documentation references because of this and keep looking for example code to understand. <comment><USER2> I have lots of experience with dense text, whether technical, theological, or mathematic.

I will go to my grave telling everyone that the difference between understanding such texts and not is patience. I see a wall of text and it blinds me like everyone else. But I tell myself to just stare at it, if not understand it just yet. I will reread it or read another text trying to say the same thing. Soon, I start to understand.

Technical docs cannot be skimmed and so take a lot of time. But, it's the ones who take the time to read out who are able to do things like answer SO questions and design solutions for whole teams at work. It's totally worth it.

</comment><comment><USER3> When learning some new tool or OS related function that requires reading a lot of documentation, I will spend a couple hours just reading the documentation. I consider that part of the install/configure process. Even if you don't get to touch the tool on day one, it will be much easier on days two, three, four, etc if you have a solid understanding of how things work. This goes for anything, really.</comment>


Release Notes: How to tell a developer's passion - <AUTHOR> http://forrst.com/posts/Release_Notes_How_you_can_tell_a_developers_pa-9xd

<comment><USER2> You must be a developer yourself. Me too!

But I`ve found that nothing targeted at the general public should contain stuff they can`t understand or don`t care about. Just like when companies hire designers for front end stuff and a developer for backend, indie devs need to think like a marketing person when doing copywriting</comment>


EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes - <AUTHOR> http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2017/03/17/flint/99301466/ <comment><USER3> This is a disaster happening all over the country. The EPA estimates we will need $385 billion by 2030 to modernize water infrastructure.

Putting municipalities in charge of utilities is basically a failed model. Municipalities are too small a unit to be able to effectively take on the long term obligations that come along with infrastructure like this, or cross subsidize from richer residents to poorer ones. Even major cities like Chicago are poisoning their kids (to a lesser degree) due to inability to properly maintain infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> Controversial opinion: Governments are inherently bad at managing anything that stretches beyond the next election.

<comment><USER5> ...in America. There's lots of developed countries where municipal governments are generally well run as a rule, and while there's always grumbling things never get this out of hand. Lead is posion, for pete's sake. Where else in the developed world would poisoned drinking water be allowed for so long?

In Canada we had what we consider a big disaster 17 years ago:

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/inside-walkerton-canada-s- wors...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/inside-walkerton-canada-s-worst-ever-e- coli-contamination-1.887200)

The Premier (equivalent of a governor), was investigated by judicial inquiry, his offices searched, people went to jail, there were payouts for damages - and this is something that only affected a town of 5,000 people. More importantly, it was fixed as fast as possible.

My point being: it's not that there aren't screw-ups elsewhere, it's just that they're so rare that they cause a huge scandal and everyone runs around trying to fix things. In America everyone just seems to just get angry at each other and then do nothing.

So don't tar governments. They work well elsewhere. America's just doing it wrong.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. The question now is: why is American government so broken, and the corollary is: what can we do to fix it? Is American culture simply broken, so that only utterly sociopathic people go into government? Is America just completely filled with people who have been trained from birth to be sociopathic, as evidenced by the way they vote?

<comment><USER7> Empowering (electing) people who cannot govern, and are in fact utterly opposed to anyone governing, is having the expected outcome.

Because Freedom Markets[tm], booyah!

<comment><USER6> Yes, but that doesn't explain why our voters consistently elect such people, while voters in other industrialized nations don't (nearly as much).

<comment><USER8> America is the richest country in the world and as such attracts the best propagandists on the free market.

American culture has a long individualist streak that distrusts authorities, combined with our many entrenched sins regarding e.g. racism, leaves a significant fraction of the population vulnerable to many effective forms of propaganda... and that's just the right. Except for a few states like MA and VT, the left consistently fails to field candidates that will fight for ordinary people against monied interests because that's where their election funds come from. In the past, leftists were associated with official enemies of the state (e.g. communists, socialists) by major media organizations and trusted authorities. Now most people here distrust their gut instincts about fairness, inequality, the golden rule, and mutual caring.

Many forms of leftist organization were broken down and destroyed after the upheavals of the 60s, with especially aggressive pushes by Regan, but this has continued by both parties up to the present day with Republicans taking mainly larger digs at the integrity of the public trust. This story continues with rather emphasized savagery into the present day starting in 2017.

However, this is an interesting moment where it seems there is a big fight brewing between truly breathtakingly rapacious greed and a significant fraction of the public. It will be interesting to see who wins in the coming decades - it may determine the fate of the planet's suitability for human life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And how much did the city originally "save"?

This affair should be poster child for being pennywise and pound foolish with our infrastructure.

<comment><USER10> Framing it that way misses an important part of the story.

It was the institutional and regulatory failure during the switch away from Detroit city water that made the lead an emergency. Part of the reason that happened is that Flint had depopulated and was basically a failed city. It's not acceptable that it happened, but it didn't happen just because Flint was trying to skimp on infrastructure 40,50,60 years ago.

<comment><USER11> You're acting like this was forced on them from budget cuts. The city manager was warned about exactly this happening and still went ahead and did it because it was the city manager is appointed by their corrupt Republican governor [1]. The city manager should not have been able to make those decisions without a much more thorough vetting process.

1: [http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/02/flint_wate...](http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/02/flint_water_supervisor_warned.html)

<comment><USER12> The city manager was only appointed after Flint became effectively a failed city, and the state took over management.

In the US, cities manage their own municipal services including water supplies. The state only intervenes when the city runs out of money to provide basic services to their inhabitants -- and this happens very rarely.

If Flint had had a functioning government, the state appointees would have had nothing to do with the water supply.

It's a tragedy what happened, but at the point a city is unable to provide the most basic of services to its citizens like clean water, I think we need to consider whether it is worth pumping money into a city, or just call it quits and provide relocation funds to the remaining inhabitants, to get them to a region with actual economic activity.

<comment><USER13> Relocated like cattle to another pasture? I can't for the life of me understand this philosophy that financial economy under-girds life.

<comment><USER14> So you're proposing we throw good money after bad?

The city failed. It it's not financially feasible to fix it so it is self- sustainable at a level of investment that can be paid back in a reasonable amount of time, relocating is a perfectly acceptable proposal.

People have every right to stay there if they can afford to do so, but if they are going to ask others for financial help bailing them out, it's not in the least bit unreasonable for those spending the money to do so to dictate how that money is spent. If the city has no hope of recovery, then saying the money can only be used for relocation is perfectly acceptable. What's not acceptable is expecting others to support your unsustainable city in perpetuity.

<comment><USER13> I'm proposing we throw good money into basic human necessities instead of investing in weapons, and that our measures of success be linked to human health and wellbeing, not to level of absolute exploitation.

<comment><USER15> Who said anything about weapons?

The point being argued is that rather than spend $100M to fix a broken city, spend it to relocate the former residents elsewhere.

<comment><USER13> The President of the United States just proposed to raise the defense budget by $54 billion. That's 540x this fix in a single year.

<comment><USER14> While I don't agree on our defense spending budget and I'd love for us to cut back, there are a few things worth pointing out.

1) money spent on defense is orthogonal to the argument being made. Your point is a good one, but it still doesn't refute the point that it's good money following bad money.

2) While I don't think it's the best industry that we could be investing in, many people see defense spending as investing in the American people. One of the chief exports of the US is war, defense and weaponry. Lots of countries our customers of the US and there are lots of towns and cities that would be economically hurt (to the point of dying like Flynt) depending on how our defense spending was cut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _where lead-contaminated water damaged service lines._

This is wrong isn't it? My understanding is they changed water sources, which changed the pH, which resulted in lead being leeched out of pipes.

<comment><USER17> Yes, you're right: the original piece got the causality backwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Flint is one of thousands of places in the US with poisonous levels of lead. I wonder how this administration plans on dealing with it:

[http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa- lead-...](http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-lead- testing/)

<comment><USER19> > I wonder how this administration plans on dealing with it.

That's a pretty bold assumption you're making in that statement.

<comment><USER20> fwiw I don't really see anything inflammatory in the parent's statement, or any indication that they feel the current administration is any more/less equipped than previous ones to deal with the water crisis.

<comment><USER21> The parent comment's implication is that the administration does not have any plan for dealing with the problem. It was phrased in a sarcastic/jokey way, which doesn't always read clearly on the internet.

<comment><USER22> I wonder how you came to that conclusion.

(I am not implying you did not come to that conclusion.)

<comment><USER19> To be fair, his interpretation was my original intent. The "bold assumption" being that this administration has a plan or has any interest in developing a plan to deal with lead in thousands of municipalities' drinking water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good thing this was approved by the previous administration. The next Flint will most likely receive a tank to protect itself from rioters, given the EPA cuts and further bloated defense budget

<comment> d--b Flint is the symbol of mid-West's de-industrialization. Since this administration has vowed to give these people's jobs back, you can be sure that they're going to make sure Flint is better off in 4 years than it is now. So giving them federal money to fix their water pipes is a great way to be the good guys. They're going to be able to hire a bunch of people to fix it, and solve a health problem at the same time.

I'd be more worried about my water quality if I lived in a region with a lot of shale oil drilling...

<comment><USER24> I think you have missed the fact that this money was given during the Obama administration. Since Trump have cut funding to the EPA it's hard to believe that all the "Flints" out there will have it better after 4 years...

<comment><USER25> EPA 2016 budget: $8.16 billion

How many Flints were you planning to repair with the minuscule discretionary part of that?

The EPA has never had the budget required to build and rebuild hundreds of billions in infrastructure.

The "Flints" in the US will be better off when the US starts focusing on infrastructure as a critical spending necessity again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone feel like this is a political move to say "hey, we're good people, keep us around and make sure your congress(wo)man knows hears about it"

Not a bad thing by any means, but heaven forbid it took them this long.

<comment><USER27> This was put into effect under Obama, it seems, by the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016, an act introduced and sponsored by a Texan Republican.

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate- bill/612...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate- bill/612/text)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As I suspected this was signed by President Obama.

</comment><comment><USER29> Relevant:

* The Real Reason Your City Has No Money — Strong Towns || [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money)

* Why Many Cities Have No Money | Hacker News || [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13370310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13370310)

<comment><USER30> Strong towns makes a compelling argument that the reason we've invested so poorly in infrastructure that we can't possibly hope to maintain is that we don't conduct government business using accrual accounting. I wonder - <USER2> local governments anywhere use accrual accounting? It would be so much harder for government to spend money we don't have with good accounting practices in place, which leads me to believe that this is uncommon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "The state of Michigan is contributing matching funds of $20 million for a total award of $120 million."

So, not really matching?

<comment><USER32> "matching funds" can (and very often do) have matching ratios other than 1:1; it's the general term for a required proportional cobtribution.

<comment><USER31> Then I would have clarified that sentence, by saying matching funds UP TO $20 million. If my employer says they are matching my 401k contribution, I'd expect that is 1:1, not a hidden, oh we really only meant 20%. I'm just being pedantic.

<comment><USER33> You'd be assuming poorly, then. The most common 401k(k) matching is actually 50%.

<comment><USER31> So you would just go into a 401k plan assuming 50%? My company has ZERO matching for 401k. You'd be assuming poorly, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is anyone using an under-sink water filtration system? If not, why?

</comment><comment><USER35> Looks like Trump administration is really doing something for the poor of flint.

<comment><USER36> Except it was Obama pressuring congress. The legislation was passed in December

[http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/17/politics/epa-100-million- flint...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/17/politics/epa-100-million-flint/)

<comment><USER35> If he had done this in last two years when the problem came out, the election result may have been different.

<comment><USER37> How about first admitting that you were wrong in crediting Trump for this?

<comment><USER36> I've now seen this devolution in argument a number of times. Here, Facebook, and Reddit

Trump Supporter: Look what Trump Did!

Answer: Obama Pressured Congress, the bill was passed in December

-Obama waited till he was on his way out so what's the point. He was ineffective.

Answer: Actually the legislation was drafted much earlier, but republicans didn't want to pass it. Obama used his office to raise the profile of the crisis to help convince Republicans to get on board.. Congress hands out Money, not the President

-So Obama fixed his own mistake in poisoning Flints water. A lot of good the EPA does.

Answer: Actually it was a Republican governor who assigned "emergency managers" to take over Flint. He superceded the democratically elected Mayor. The new managers shifted the water source from Detroit to the Flint Michigan. The EPA told them they needed corrosion controls, but the response was by the managers was there was no law requiring the controls. Flint was a financial disaster before, but the emergency managers came in and started doing whatever they wanted regardless of the outcome.

\- So the EPA just let it happen.

Answer: The EPA escalated up the chain of command. The argument went on for six months, but they didn't hold press conferences with news organizations, which was probably their last option.

-Because the EPA is ineffective, and that's why it's funding should be cut! Totally Useless!

The final answer from Trump supporters is either a) you can't stop another Flint Water issue so just get rid of the EPA, or b)getting rid of all regulations will allow the free market to naturally fix the issues.

It's no longer possible to have rational discussions. Anything positive is directly attributed to Trump, and anything negative is the fault of Obama.

<comment><USER37> I think you replied to the wrong guy, you should reply to user [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=svsjc](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=svsjc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is great news from my vantage point. a +1 for Trump and his team for taking care of this mess. Throwing a lot of money may not be the right solution but it does fix a lot of pipes.

<comment><USER39> From the article: > The funding was approved by Congress in December and signed into law by President Barack Obama, but the EPA had to review and approve a formal request from state officials detailing how the city intends to use the grant money.</comment></comment>


Colossal Holograms - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/through-the-looking-glass/colossal-holograms-b7f86f5925bd <comment><USER2> The camera motion makes it look like they're trying to hide something... like the effect only works horizontally, not vertically.

<comment><USER3> The looking Glass display is horizontal parallax only (HPO). HPO is a common information reduction method in the 3D display world. Most holographic stereograms, all rainbow holograms, and all 3D lenticulars are HPO. Occlusion, horizontal motion parallax and stereoscopic cues are preserved, which are our primary 3D cues.

The loss of vertical parallax changes computation from an N squared to N problem. An interactive display like the looking glass provides vertical parallax cues as a result of user interaction (rotating the object vertically with user interaction).

This class of display also does not have accommodation cues, but in the range of 3d cues accommodation is the weakest.

Looking Glass displays are great! Shawn and the team has done careful, practical engineering work to get these displays out there.

Ref: I have a PhD in 3D display technology and worked with holography pioneer Steve Benton and his group at MIT to develop the most advanced holographic stereograms at the time. I own a Looking Glass display.

<comment><USER4> Are the Looking Glass display real holograms with light interference patterns ? Or are they emitting different pixels in different view angles ?

<comment><USER5> Aren't those two things essentially identical, at least as far as the resulting wavefront goes?

<comment><USER6> The Looking Glass only has 45 discrete views projected across 50 degrees (25 degrees left and right of center). I have one of the smaller ones and it's a very nice effect, but it's not the same as a "real" hologram.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do you know teh technical specs ?

\- horiz/vert max angle (to be able to walk around): the widest=the best

\- horiz/vert max angular resolution (to avoid the step effect while walking around): the finest=the best

\- of course, the usual suspects: refresh rate/resolution/number of colors/color accuracy/luminosity

<comment><USER8> gathered from the website and comments here:

horizontal: 40-50 degree viewing angle, with angular resolution of 45 steps. vertical is not paralax at all. recommended 1 - 30 ft viewing distance.

the 8k measurement is the total of all the display layers, so what you'll see is a fraction of 8k resolution. refresh rate: 60Hz.

i think all those measurements are true for all three display sizes manufactured by looking glass, except the smaller screens are 4k.

the blog also mentions "over a billion-count color gamut".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The video game Prey2 features similar technology also called LookingGlass. It has a fairly prominent role in the story line.

I wonder if the naming is a coincidence or a nod.

<comment><USER10> It's also the name of a game studio with a number of neat titles, some rock band, and perhaps most importantly, sequel to Alice in wonderland: _Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There_

All of which were probably referring to the same concept: viewing the other side of reality

<comment><USER11> Looking-glass was just a peculiar literary term for a mirror in the 1800s. A reflective glass you would look at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can we change this URL to the original post at [https://blog.lookingglassfactory.com/announcements/colossal-...](https://blog.lookingglassfactory.com/announcements/colossal- holograms/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I have 4k version and it is very very bad. 4k is actually 4k/30 (number of angles). Pixels have the size of a fist.

<comment><USER14> Based on that, how do you think an 8k version would compare? Enough resolution, or still lacking?

<comment><USER13> For me it just have incorrect hm "angles" just like misplaced glasses or something like this. 8k won't help much since it is just bigger, not better PPI.

It is just like decade old stereo camera like this: [https://www.amazon.com/Fujifilm-FinePix-Real-Discontinued- Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/Fujifilm-FinePix-Real-Discontinued- Manufacturer/dp/B003ZHV70M).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have one of the smaller versions of the Looking Glass and it's genuinely like looking into the future. It's a remarkable thing to see live. My main complaint is the low resolution (4k divided into 45 layers).

Bigger size and bigger resolution is a great step up here - I hope they get to continue in that direction!

</comment><comment><USER16> Do you think something like this would significantly improve experience for remote workers?

<comment><USER17> No. Better video won't help you with the basic struggles of social life, isolation and having to be on chat large portion of your working day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This reminds me of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid- Uw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw) (2007) Johnny Lee's demonstration using head tracking with infrared led's and a wii remote to implement the same thing. Obviously that limits the effect to the individual's head being tracked, but its amazing its been 12 years since that demo and we're still trying to commercialize the same affect.

<comment><USER19> That was a great video, and highly hackerific. "That would be a bit goofy" is an expression you don't hear very often these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not a hologram in the sci-fi sense, but still very cool.

From what I gather, this is the same tech used in a 3DS - scaled up to an impressive scale.

<comment><USER21> its not. lightfield techonology is a completely different beast from parallax stereoscopy.

<comment><USER22> It's the same thing in reverse. You can use a camera to capture a light field, and then a screen with a complementary lens to project out (roughly) the same light field.

In fact, given the principle of the reversibility of light, if you had a screen the same size and pixel density as your camera sensor you could use the exact same lens array to output a close approximation of the captured light field, without any post-processing of the captured pixels!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A 3D hologram doesn't get you 3D medical records magically.

And if you have them, I reckon a screen with a mouse is all you need to view them to technically know how to proceed.

Usual marketing scam, make the public think creating a 3D hologram device will somehow get them 3D things.

</comment><comment><USER24> This seems too good to be true.

<comment><USER25> Note that this "only" adds depth. It can't make anything appear to "come out of" the screen, the effect is more like a window. It's not like holograms in science fiction.

It's still pretty impressive tho.

<comment><USER26> This looks like _" coming out of the screen"_ to me: [https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*-nm0AvcydVzyhgDFdh6V2g.gi...](https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*-nm0AvcydVzyhgDFdh6V2g.gif)

Do you mean the effect doesn't work with back to front motion? Like that pan can't start in the back and move forward?

<comment><USER25> Too late for an edit but I was going by what was shown in the video, which very much didn't look it could do that.

That said, that's still basically "3D but without glasses", not exactly the Holodeck "hard light" future tech many people think of when they hear "real hologram".

<comment><USER27> I mean, a real hologram (made using light interference) is also not Holodeck hard light.

<comment><USER28> Yes, but at least a real hologram creates an actual depth sensation as the eye's focus needs to adapt.

This means 3d impression works even for people with reduced stereoscopic eyesight, and does not create headaches due to a mismatch of scene depth vs. physical display depth.

Such holographic displays do exist, e.g. www.seereal.com (which BTW recently received an investment by Volkswagen).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Any info on how it works?

<comment><USER30> There are multiple transparent lcd (or maybe led - idk) screens layered on top of each other. A different image is rendered on each layer to appear 3D. A single 8k video stream is sent to the display. Each 8k image is subdivided into multiple smaller images, one for each layer. So the entire image is 8k, not 8k per layer.

I know one of the cofounders, Alex, a bit. He's a really earnest and excited person. He's been working on 3D led tech for a long time. It's been fun to see how's his ideas have progressed. I have no reason to doubt their claims.

FYI, they are not the only company working on these types of displays. There is also an Irish company (I forgot their name) working with panels made by Panasonic. I think theirs are higher res than 8k.

<comment><USER31> Is this essentially the technology the 3DS used, only scaled up?

(I ask for clarification, not to diminish the achievement. If it is, and it works well, it's still a nice advancement. Nor am I saying it was invented for the 3DS.)

<comment><USER22> As I recall the 3DS used a lenticular lens: you see different images based on the angle to the display. Wikipedia has some more information: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_lens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_lens)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > That's why five years ago, my co-founder Alex and I started a company to > prove that holographic displays were possible

This is spam

<comment><USER33> It's an ad, but it's the sort of ad I sincerely desire to see. C'mon, this is immensely cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are two types of "this isn't a hologram" people in this thread. The first is the group of people that think holograms are the things in Star Trek. Those are _not_ holograms, and neither is this.

</comment><comment><USER35> You would need a beefy machine to render 45 8k images per frame.

<comment><USER36> This is 45 image segments encoded into a single 8k signal. I have a smaller one, and it's amazing, but its 4k image input results in approximately 800x600 equivalent for each rendered angle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Anyone know how much these are going for, roughly?

<comment><USER38> A tiny version costs about $600, so probably a lot.

<comment><USER39> How tiny?

<comment><USER40> 9"

The 15" is $3000

They're amazing though; I've seen one in person and it's pretty much exactly as described.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Suddenly I see a consumer use case for Gb fttp.

</comment><comment><USER42> looks sketchy as fuck - it's a marketing piece put out by the company. Don't bother.

</comment><comment><USER43> can anyone provide a reference for the artwork of Alice at the top of the page?

<comment><USER44> Eugenia Loli

[https://www.facebook.com/pg/EugeniasCollages/photos/](https://www.facebook.com/pg/EugeniasCollages/photos/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> How does this product change prospects for Magic Leap?

<comment><USER46> There's overlap between the potential client domains, but this doesn't encroach on the AR domain covered by products like Magic Leap.

And there are legitimate commercial use case for AR - e.g.: automotive manufacturing and building construction.

The biggest impacts to Magic Leap's prospects came from the premature over- hyping of the product as well as microsoft beating them to the punch with the HoloLens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Off-topic: Can someone please write a Firefox extension that removes that _stupid_ fucking popover on medium "Pardon blah blah give us your money". Does that shit really need to take over the entire fucking screen?

<comment><USER48> Really nice tip: Click the little keylock on the left side of the address bar when on medium, go into site settings, under javascript block it and medium articles will now load as just pure easy to read text :)

<comment><USER49> For me it removes images when doing this. I'm only surprised they don't require JS to display text yet.

<comment><USER50> The next version will use microservices where every single character on the page will be downloaded and rendered by a different web worker. Good for concurrency!

<comment><USER51> Plus, makes it easy to slap on a paywall for the vowels.

<comment><USER50> And an extra paywall for ligatures. That's the ultra-premium gourmet club.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Looks like 3D inside a tv. It ain't holographic unless it projects enough for you to touch thru it.

<comment><USER33> Projection is entirely impossible. The photon's path has to back-track through the device; this is true regardless of the type of device you're using to make it.

<comment><USER53> I would think that the limitation is that, for both eyes, the ray from that eye through the simulated voxel has to intersect the screen.

There are voxels in front of the screen for which that holds.</comment></comment></comment>


How to weed out tire kickers from your freelance business - <AUTHOR> http://nathanpowell.me/blog/how-to-weed-out-tire-kickers/

<comment><USER2> There are three broad classes of clients:

\- The Newbie has never hired anyone to do this sort of job before. They don't know what to expect, and they don't know what it will cost. They may not even have an idea of how much the work is worth to them. They do know that there will be a bill, but they haven't matured into either of the other two types yet.

\- The Black Hat is a malicious client. They will try everything they can to exploit you for their own benefit, while giving up as little as possible in return. These are the people who ask for work for free, ask for fixed cost projects with unlimited scope, and dodge your invoices.

\- The White Hat is the client you actually want. They have hired people like you before; they know what it costs, and they know how much value they to receive up front. They have reasonable specs, or a loose spec that they work with you to define tightly before they ask for a commitment. They have a preferred deadline and a drop-dead date, and they tell you about both of them.

Your goal is to identify White Hat prospects and avoid the other two. Sometimes a Newbie will develop into a White Hat, but they will always take more hand-holding and reverse-management than a mature White Hat. As a single- person operation, you don't have the resources to take care of them efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER3> These days I bill like a lawyer: Up to two hours free of charge as a consultation and then the clock starts at my full rate. If you're not OK with that, you don't value my time enough for this relationship to work out.

And that's a much more generous strategy than say a plumber where you have to pay just to get him to listen to what the problem is.

But it's all supply and demand. Lawyers and plumbers who bill like that typically have more work than they can handle. I didn't when I started out as a developer, so I worked long hours for little pay for bad clients. Those were rough times, but looking back, those experiences are really what led me to being successful later on.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great advice!</comment>


SF people, you are hypocrites using services like Uber and Lyft - <AUTHOR> http://www.fesja.me/sf-people-you-are-hypocrites-using-services-like-uber-and-lyft/ <comment><USER3> > really good public transportation with buses and trains. I'm completely sure > private cars or taxies would be discarted.

Wow. Talk about thinking everyone is exactly like you, and only your transportation needs need to be met.

What about the elderly? (Who can't walk the last mile from the bus.)

Or young children? What about a large family that needs a full car load of groceries - you're going to put that on a bus? And somehow carry it home?

Inevitably every single person who writes about public transportation is young and single, or at least no kids, and they think: No more cars, problem solved.

News flash: The entire world is not like you. Getting rid of cars is a complete non-starter for a HUGE segment of the population.

<comment><USER4> This. A thousand times.

My work gives me a (hybrid) car. Almost (~95%) every day I let it home and take the train to get to work.

But I have three kids and my wife is pregnant, so there's no way she could do almost anything without having a car.

<comment><USER5> Sure, it is harder without a car, but it not impossible. Somehow we have survived for a long time before cars.

<comment><USER6> We have also survived without electricity for a long time, so I'm not sure it's a convincing argument.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but one has lots of environmental and societal costs, while the other doesn't. If electricity were bad overall for society, his argument would apply to it too.

<comment><USER6> Isn't most of electricity these days obtained by burning coal? I remember figures around couple hundred thousand yearly just from that. Here is one of the sources

[https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/...](https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/pollution- deaths-from-fossil-fuel-based-power-plants)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Let's be serious, people are paying $12-25 for taking a Uber or Lyft when > they could be paying just $2.25. Does it take longer? Yes. So much longer > that you willing to pay 4-11x? I don't think so. People are wasting money.

Disclaimer: I don't live in SF.

Yes, a million times yes it is worth it. The bus system where is I am from is far worse than SF but still, google map from location A to B and toggle between car and bus options. I can get there in less than 15min by car but unless I time it perfectly (and the bus is on time) it will take over an hour to get there by public transit.

Not to mention there are times when the busses do not run where I live. The author seems to think it's: busses or lyft/uber (and again that might be the case in SF) but where I am from your options after 11pm is taxis or lyft and I will easily pay more (though the rides so far have been nearly the exact same as the taxis I've taken) for a ride that I know is coming, I don't have to give turn by turn directions to, and I can pay by CC (completely impossible with taxis in my town).

So the author's argument of "Lyft/Uber sucks because busses" seems quite BS to me...

</comment><comment><USER9> The central assumption of his whole argument:

> If you had to think what the transport systems would be on a sustainable > modern city, I'm sure you would think that the solution would be a really > good public transportation with buses and trains. I'm _completely sure_ > private cars or taxies would be discarted. (my emphasis)

is mere opinion. I like libraries and think the are great, but I still want my own books. There's no contradiction there.

Additionally, the title is inflammatory by calling people hypocrites instead of trying to understand why people use the services mentioned.

<comment><USER10> Not everyone wants to ride in a bus. In fact, in my country people are stopping using buses, and doing some kind of car sharing, because it's much more convenient (available when you need it), they charge the same, and even though it's not much better space wise, a lot of people prefer riding with 3 others, than 20 others. This has been a growing trend, and I think it's inevitable that it will happen _everywhere_ in the world.

Also, this is exactly the kind of service self-driving cars would offer in the future.

<comment><USER11> The funny thing is opinions like this are basically just fashion, they tend to change pretty quickly. For example, just fifty years ago in the US the new buses were viewed as a high-class affair and train travel was left for the lower classes. That position is basically completely reversed now.

Also, I find it hard to believe that a vehicle for hire could possibly charge the same as mass transit for a comparable journey. I don't know which country you live in but that's certainly not the case anywhere I've been.

<comment><USER12> Not as same, but relatively close:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7888339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7888339)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "I'm a young master engineer"

I'm an old engineer (electronics and software), and as I age and gain experience I realize I still have a lot to learn. I don't think you can be a "young engineer" and a "master engineer" at the same time - and I think those who truly master engineering have become _MORE_ adept at questioning their abilities.

I think the attitude conveyed by his tag-line is repeated (several times) in the article's body ... one mind-set, one "best" and everyone else must be wrong. His ideal seems to be centered around Madrid's transportation systems, but if your (singular) goal is what's good for the environment, I've seen many Asian cities that easily beat buses and trains (with walking and bicycling).

If you're living an unhurried continental life, walking to the local market and carrying home your fresh-picked vegetables might be an alternatively to taking the bus/train to a larger grocery store. If you're a hurried SF-based founder, a door-to-door service is optimizing for a limited amount of time. Why does there have to be just one "best"?

Here's an example ... suppose Elon Musk flies around the country in a corporate jet while working to promote solar energy at prices that will ultimately lead to a significant decrease in emissions. Should he instead bike across the country so his jet isn't polluting the skies? Or would the duration of each trip simply make it impossible to accomplish his goals?

</comment><comment><USER14> > Is $2.25 for a single ride expensive? Is $76 for the monthly cost of the > BART and bus expensive? If you take into account what tech people earn is a > ridicoulus price. So price is not a problem for tech people.

> Let's be serious, people are paying $12-25 for taking a Uber or Lyft when > they could be paying just $2.25. Does it take longer? Yes. So much longer > that you willing to pay 4-11x? I don't think so. People are wasting money.

Regardless of whether you believe public transit is the solution, the statement that people "are wasting money" is entirely subjective and dependent on what they perceive value to be. In fact, if tech people are indeed earning so much money (as is implied by the first sentence) then the higher they earn, the less of a "waste" the extra cost of private transportation would be be due to the factored in time-savings.

<comment><USER15> That's how I feel in Boston. I pay $75/mo for an MBTA pass, but usually take Uber/Lyft once or twice a week. To get from Allston to Jamaica Plain, at night, I either need to: take a train into the city, and then a different train out of the city (well over an hour), or, wait up to 15m for one bus, then wait up to 15m for another bus, which means it will take anywhere from 30-60m to get home. In the meantime, I can have a cab reliably get me home in 15 minutes for all of $12. It's quite lucrative when one has work the next day..

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "I'm sure you would think that the solution would be a really good public transportation with buses and trains. I'm completely sure private cars or taxies would be discarted."

This is something I always wondered, WHY? Have you calculated the numbers yourself? I don't believe so.

In Europe most people repeat this phrase, without knowing why, or just looking at the numbers.

I was born in Madrid, It looks to me like government propaganda too. You find ads on TV that tells you something like "a bus could carry 50 people, if everybody used buses we will be saving that much".

But most of the assumptions are wrong, E.g Most of the time the buses or subway are less than half empty.

And when they are full, people don't want to use the services. In Madrid, subway trains are designed for 4people per square meter!!!

Politicians want people to use public services(while not a single of them uses them). They want to raise taxes, people not being able to buy private cars, but giving the money to politicians in order to make big public works(and enrich themselves by the way, the bigger the amount of money they handle, the easier it is).

On the other hand, moving 2 tons for every 0.1 tons person does not make sense. We need individual alternatives like electric motorbikes or something.

<comment><USER17> Yes, but public transport is going to have to cope with elastic demand, so you can't base carriage sizes on the average number of passengers.

Here in Barcelona, it seems that the metro starts off quiet at the ends of the line (easy to get a seat), then as you approach the city centre it fills up (difficult to get a seat near these stations). Then it starts to empty on the way back out.

Electric bikes makes sense though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As someone who lived in SF for a while, I found that SF public transit was utter shit. Muni delays could be as bad as 20 minutes in the tunnel between two stop or a line showing up 45 minutes late. Or even catching everything on time getting from the middle of the Sunset to the middle of the Richmond took over an hour.

On the other hand, I've never had Bart break on me or be delayed (in SF itself).

So yes, when people have be money and want to take a cab, it's usually a better bet.

<comment><USER19> If you've never had Bart break on you or be delayed, then you weren't taking it enough.

SF public transportation is limited in its geographic coverage and the fact that it's not 24 hours. And that sucks. But San Francisco is also a much smaller city then Madrid, New York, Chicago, and the other places listed. Add a couple more million people to SF, South SF, and East Bay, and you can bet that public transportation will improve.

<comment><USER20> Sorry, but that is BS. SF too small? Really.

Go and visit other countries in the world. Public transportation works pretty well also in smaller cities with a couple 100.000 people. Go look to Nuremberg, Germany with about 500.000 people. Go look to Jena, Germany with about 100.000 people. Cities in France or Spain or Estland or Lithuania. Look in Denmark or Sweden.

The reason in the US is simple: you love cars.

<comment><USER21> We love cars simply because of the fact we could fit all of Europe INSIDE the US and still have room left over for Japan, the Philippines and a few other Asian countries.

It's about the only way to get around if you are traveling from one state to another - which we frequently do. Also, ~330M people.

<comment><USER22> That's kind of odd as Europe (the Continent - 10,180,000 km2) is actually larger in area than the United States (the Country - 9,826,675 km2).

I take it you mean the EU - which covers less than half the area of Europe?

<comment><USER21> Yes, you are correct. I pulled up a map off Google that overlayed 'europe' over the continental US. That map omitted Ukraine and Turkey, which are included in Europe (among other non-EU countries).

<comment><USER22> Only a small part of Turkey is in Europe - making Istanbul one of the few transcontinental cities :-)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_spanning_more_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_spanning_more_than_one_continent)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Of course this article is a lot of hyperbole, and whether you agree or not depends on your worldview. But one bit I couldn't agree more. Uber and Lyft are NOT examples of the sharing economy. Just adding an element of technology to good old fashioned capitalism does not a sharing economy make.

<comment><USER24> Think of it in terms of resource utilization. In the old model, there's tons cars that need to be parked somewhere within SF while completely unused. In the Uber/Lyft model, these cars usually enter the city while they're actively transporting people, then they go back to the suburbs when they need to be parked.

Sure, one could easily argue that parking spaces aren't the most pressing resource shortage, but the point is that these types of changes do create value by sharing resources. The same concepts can be applied to more pressing domains as well.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Think of it in terms of resource utilization. In the old model, there's tons cars that need to be parked somewhere within SF while completely unused. In the Uber/Lyft model, these cars usually enter the city while they're actively transporting people, then they go back to the suburbs when they need to be parked."

Didn't we already solve this problem with taxis more than 50 years ago? It was already a 'sharing economy'. Uber/Lyft just made it more convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So following the same thinking, we should burn the restaurants to the ground, because we can all cook, and we pay 10x more. Waste of money.

We should also stop buying clothes at more expensive brands, because Primark clothes are also wearable and will keep you warm. What else can we downgrade?

Dear OP, people do things because they like conveniences, coolness and everything. If it works that way for you - great! But it doesn't mean everyone has to be the same, have the same values and attitude :)

EDIT: Am I saying that because of the tone of the post? maybe. Because, like other people are saying, I don't like tone of this post :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Hypocrite isn't the word the author is after, but even if it were, effectively just insulting people you disagree with will not bring them around to your view point.

Uber and Lyft may well be 10 times the price public transport, but the services are otherwise barely comparable. It absolutely _is_ worth $20 to me versus $2 to get where I'm going in a fast, comfortable, and private manner, in exactly the same way as I don't baulk at a $3 Starbucks, despite being able to brew a coffee myself for 1/20th that price.

Public transport is never going to win simply by being a cheaper option, you have to appeal to other motivators, such as sense of social responsibility.

As an aside, my "future city" vision of public transport would be publicly available, self-driving, electric "cars" recharged with renewable energy. Not mass-transit. I don't want to be forced into a shared space with strangers, if I can avoid it, thanks.

<comment><USER27> _Public transport is never going to win simply by being a cheaper option, you have to appeal to other motivators, such as sense of social responsibility._

Yes, that's what the author is doing: "If we want to live in a walkable and clean city, we have to start acting the same way we think. And in this case is by taking public transportation."

<comment><USER26> My argument is that the author should have made that his leading premise, not a secondary point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The tone of the article is not relaxed, however I'm a bit perplexed of reading here that many don't believe that the author main argument is right, which is: sustainable transportation for the future needs to be, mostly, public. I don't mean public as necessarily "provided by gov/city", but in which the common routes are handled by busses or trams or similar systems where, unlike cars, the weight of the moved people is not minimal compared to the weight of the moved vehicle.

Taxies have their place of course, you can't serve everything via public transports. Also one thing is normal people moving inside SF, another thing is arriving at the SF airport with a business meeting 45 minutes later. But the _bulk_ of how people move, should be, mass-transport systems.

<comment><USER17> > sustainable transportation for the future needs to be, mostly, public.

As I bike owner I would disagree with that.

<comment><USER27> Bikes can be public too. I've been recently to Budapest, and their public bike networks that was about to open seems excellent. Cheap, with stations everywhere around the city and renting bikes with just a cellphone.

If you live in a small place, and you just bike around the city, I'm not sure it's worth buying your own.

<comment><USER17> We have a public bike network here in Barcelona (I think it was one of the first).

Sure public bikes will do, but for me its kind of like the difference between my car and a bus. You have to wait for stations to become free a lot (usually commuting from my house to my work involved getting up half an hour before the crowds took the bikes). The bikes often have slight problems (loose breaks, squeaking, won't go into gear). Most people don't seem too bothered, but as somewhat of a bike enthusiast, I find it frustrating to know that its like just a spanner turn or two (end the bolts are usually non standard to prevent theft).

Its a great idea, but not without problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Author misses the point that transportation in SF/Bay area sucks for two reasons:

1) Mismanagement of the infrastructure. MUNI couldn't manage its way out of a wet paper bag, AC Transit tackles increasing ridership by replacing transbay buses with smaller capacity local buses. To get anything done you have to organize across 30+ agencies. Lack of investment in the public infrastructure verses the increasing population. The list goes on...

2) People want public transit just not in their back yard. Witness the central subway debacle of it not going all the way to North Beach/Fisherman's Wharf. Witness Marin voting not to extend BART to their cities. Witness the Marin SMART line first phase not ending at the Larkspur ferry terminal. Witness the high speed rail link mess and the fact that it's impossible to take a train from San Francisco to Sacramento without having to transit through about 3 different systems.

So it's no wonder that companies are running their own buses or people are looking to alternative services like Uber or Lyft because it's their only option for getting around, and as a wise man once said "There ain't no getting 'round getting 'round"

</comment><comment><USER30> This article is misguided. Using a taxi is good for the environment exactly because it is expensive. You use a taxi first of all because you don't have a car. You don't have a car because you either ride public transport or you walk/cycle.

Don't get mad at people who use taxis a few times per week for short distances. Get mad at people who clog highways with their polluting owned cars.

<comment><USER27> With enough income, riding taxis daily becomes feasible. I think the question is distinguishing the two, instead of accusing everyone who uses them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I seem to recall reading that the city of SF (or another municipality?) had conducted a study that found, perhaps counterintuitively, that improving taxi service would actually end up increasing transit ridership and decreasing overall vehicle miles traveled. Improved cab service, it was claimed, would let people get rid of their own cars and begin using more convenient, more sustainable modes of transit for most things, resorting to a now more reliable taxi service as a crutch when necessary.

Taxi industry bullshit? I don't know, because unfortunately I can't find reference to this study at the moment—does this ring a bell with anyone?

</comment><comment><USER32> > You may have to leave your home 10 min earlier, or arrive your home 20 min > later; but it's a small price to pay to build the city we want to live in.

Given that most people will not take a job that is further than 30 min away[0], that actually makes a big difference

[0][http://www.citynews.ca/2013/12/03/commuting-times-key- factor...](http://www.citynews.ca/2013/12/03/commuting-times-key-factor-for- job-selection-among-younger-workers-survey/)

</comment><comment><USER12> This guy gets the wrong impression because he doesn't understand that uber is growing to something totally different:

1.Uber recently started to offer it's uberxl suv service, which carries upto 6 passengers and in sf costs $5 base fare + the lowest of ($0.45/minute or $2.15/mile)[1].

2.Given enough demand, uber can offer a highly efficient personalized route service, which builds optimal routes needed to transport 6 people. Let's assume such routes can be only 25% longer than normal routes , on average[2].

Combine both of those, we can replace 6X30 minutes car trips , with a single 37.5 minute suv trip, which will be charged $21.87 for 6 passengers, or $3.64 per person.

If we wanted to have a similar trip in public transportation, it would probably take around 1.5-2 hours , but might cost $2.

And if we compare this to a normal car trip, the uber experience could be much better - you could watch a tv episode on your tablet after a long work day and unwind, instead of the stress of fighting traffic. And it's priced pretty closed to the cost of personal transportation.

And the secondary effects from shifting so much traffic to highly efficient forms would greatly decrease traffic jams and further increase speed.

TL;DR - with it's new offering uber is evolving to be a much better, new mode of public transportation, both cost effective and a great experience.

[1][https://www.uber.com/cities/san- francisco](https://www.uber.com/cities/san-francisco)

[2]research of "demand responsive transportation" talks about similar efficiencies.

<comment><USER11> This is a well-reasoned analysis but there are a few weaknesses:

\- Are those 6 people travelling together (relatively unlikely), or are they being stuck in a shared vehicle with strangers? If it's the latter it seems likely to be much _less_ comfortable than a bus, where there's usually a potential to move around a bit and you go into it expecting to make intermediate stops (and knowing where/when they are!).

\- After taking plenty of effort to get the dollars right you gloss over the most important issue: routefinding. Mentioning some hypothetical "similar trip" is not all that meaningful. If you live near one stop and work near another on the same line it might be much faster to take transit. If you live in a world built primarily for cars with no regard for other modes, you may find it difficult to find _any_ public transit option for your route.

\- And a shift in traffic is laudable only if it doesn't serve to induce further demand [0].

[0]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand)

<comment><USER12> True , some of those points i didn't take into account, but:

> Similar trip

I once read a research paper about "demand responsive transportation" that simulated such route aggregation in realistic traffic over a large part of a city(probably in finland), and got similar results with regards to route efficiency, as far as i can remember. Can't seem to find the paper , will look later again.

> induced demand

It's really hard to predict how much induced demand this will cause ,because:

1.Big efficiencies - hard to imagine all we be "eaten".

2.It lengthens trip time.

3.Once it's running, we have a software layer on top of transportation, which might be a powerful new tool for transportation management - which might greatly affect demand.

> comfort

You might be right on that, although for bus riders the decreased travel time will surely be worth the extra inconvenience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [http://www.sengifted.org/archives/articles/can-you-hear- the-...](http://www.sengifted.org/archives/articles/can-you-hear-the-flowers- sing-issues-for-gifted-adults)

> __Perceptivity: __[...] Adults gifted in this way detect and dislike > falsehood and hypocrisy.

Having issues with hypocrisy (outward or inward) is something that "gifted" people typically have an issue with. Extreme intelligence (which is an indicator of being "gifted") is something that pervades our industry - <USER2> our industry generally has a strong reaction to hypocrisy.

Don't believe for one second that the average person (or SFer) cares how hypocritical they are being, don't think for one second that pointing that out to them will change anything.

The only way to change their behavior is to the remove or resolve the problem that causes their hypocritical behavior.

</comment><comment><USER34> I live in New York where the subway and bus system is pretty extensive, and taxi and livery cabs are relatively plentiful in Manhattan. I take public transit every day, but I still take cabs and own a car as well. Subways get me to work and home every day. Taxis are nice for me and my wife to have a pleasant evening together. I've even used a Uber on days when the subways are failing me so I can get back home in time to relive my babysitter. The car is nice so my wife and kids can go shopping or take trips out of the city. These are all valid use cases equally applicable to living in San Francisco (where I've lived as well.) I see no hypocrisy here, nor any room for someone else's judgment that I'm a hypocrite.

</comment><comment><USER21> > Public transportation in San Francisco doesn't suck.

Moments later...

> The BART sucks.

That's a bit of cognitive dissonance right there. It's understandable given utopian transportation won't arrive overnight, ESPECIALLY in San Francisco. When I first moved here, I was totally blown away by the lack of a major highway connecting the North Bay to the South Bay. Yup, you gotta take Van Ness!

The fact there is massive inertia on infrastructure change in San Francisco is part of our moral system here, like it or not. That doesn't make me, or others like me, hypocrites, nor does it mean others aren't working on solving the problem. Personally, I'm working on implementing morality in other systems in which I have experience.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't think I've seen anyone suggest that Uber is cleaner compared to other forms of transport, just merely more convenient than normal taxi services. I also don't think switching to pure public transportation is a viable solution in a lot of circumstances. Yes it can be very good when you're travelling between common destinations, but once your destination is more than 10 minutes walk from the train/bus station, the journey time quickly starts becoming burdensome. It's also nice to have a redundant system in place for the rare occasion that the public transport network fails (line upgrades, malfunction, bomb scares, etc).

</comment><comment><USER36> Did he ever travel to the South Bay from San Francisco? I have to doubt it, because I never saw the word "Caltrain."

By US standards, yes, SF has good public transit, but its incredibly shitty by the standards of the civilized world. I'm as progressive as you can get, have relied on Bay Area (VTA, Caltrain, MUNI, BART) public transit since 2008, and I'm the first to admit there are _major_ problems with it. I don't think he's lived in SF (or the Bay Area in general) long enough.

</comment><comment><USER37> Public transport?! European Communist!

</comment><comment><USER38> I was in SF recently. BART is awful.

BART to a restaurant took over an hour. 9 minute walk to the stop, 12 minute wait for the train, 30 minute train ride, 15 minute walk. Even in the best case scenario of 0 train time, that's 19 minutes of walking.

The restaurant had a huge wait, so I used Uber to get back to where I was staying. 1 minute wait, 19 minute drive.

The Uber trip cost $10 more than BART for two people. I don't know how you value your time, but $10 for 50 minutes of time for two people is always worth it.

<comment><USER39> Really? You can't walk a few minutes, so BART sucks?

BART does suck, but for entirely different reasons. Its dirty, worn, loud, pretty much like riding in a cattle car with extra smells.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> You're assuming that _not_ getting to your destination on time is an option when taking public transportation around and especially in SF. At any point a MUNI bus/train can stop for extended periods of time with no explanation. Other times, there is an explanation like agents checking tickets and other idiocies. Either way, there's a great chance you're not making that 9am meeting with the VCs to secure funding.

</comment><comment><USER41> One case where I use Uber/Lyft over a regular taxi is when I am at places/times where/when taxis are not readily available..Uber/Lyft works well in those situations as the drivers know the exact coordinates to show up at and do so relatively fast.

</comment><comment><USER42> I thought the argument was going to be something like "SF supports restrictive practices in house building and rents, and therefore you should support restrictive practices in taxi service". Instead, it was even more dumb than that argument.

</comment><comment><USER43> I used to live in Los Angeles (talk about Carmageddon) and I moved to New York 4 years ago. Since then I've sold my car and use subways, trains and my legs to get me to almost everywhere I need and once in a while I use a taxi or car service to get luggage somewhere or if it's late and I just need to get home without subway hassle.

I'm deeply considering moving to the Bay Area for reasons I won't go into here but I am really concerned that I will need to buy a car to survive. I spent 10 days there recently and I clocked almost 4 hours a day on the road to various places. In all fairness I had to commute in from up north (think Santa Rosa) for family reasons but I still had flash backs to my life in Los Angeles and the absolute necessity of having a car.

I'm doubtful that if I do move that I can find a commute to work as sweet as my current job. I walk (by choice) about 9 blocks and subway 9 more and can make the entire trip in 22 minutes anytime of day I like regardless of other commuters. In SF you have to consider traffic, bus overloading, being in just the right place at the right time to optimize your commute, or just buy a car or just use Uber and get there when you want on your schedule (still fighting traffic but that's the driver's problem).

Having grown up in Los Angeles I used to think SF public transportation was pretty advanced, but having lived in New York and the area here I realize trains, subways and the like are just much more effective here. My uninformed guess is because trains where ingrained in the local culture investments in subway, commuter trains and the like where easier to justify. In California the car was able to take hold early because of the sprawling nature of population distribution and since then it's been near impossible to convince tax payers to build public transportation in face of all the other priorities for public tax dollars.

I think the "advent" of the electric car has made people feel they're "doing the right thing" meanwhile it will not solve traffic issues and will only stall investment in public transportation by another fifty years.

I acknowledge the fact that many factors feed into transportation choices (Children, Luggage, Time, Schedules, Costs) but I also think underlying issues in a locality have a greater impact then individual choices. Walt Disney and Ray Bradbury both tried to fight the "good fight" for years in Los Angeles proposing Monorail systems and you can see where they managed to get.

To condemn individuals who use Uber and Lyft is like treating the symptom rather then curing the disease. Until we have real plans to make better transportation options available to the public they will continue to solve their daily problems using their own resources however they feel meets their needs. If you doubt this consider how many people ride horses to work these days…

</comment><comment><USER44> I appreciate the sentiment of the post, but cannot quite relate it to the Silicon Valley ethos. Isn't it the natural progression that we are seeing here?

</comment><comment><USER45> Sure Madrid has pretty good public transportation. But it also has an almost mysterious lack of bicycles. I have maybe seen a handful of them outside of parks. Not that I needed one myself, but it was just surprising to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> finally they are coming in 10 days! You can see some photos of the electric bikes we will have [https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1...](https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=670&q=bicimad&oq=bicimad&gs_l=img.3..0j0i24l5.358.1234.0.17188.8.131.52.0.0.0.161.688.0j6.6.0....0...1ac.1.46.img..1.6.686.2V4baRHt0Cg&gws_rd=ssl)</comment></comment>


Google Chrome SVP says Portable NaCl will ship "in six weeks" - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57534803-93/google-offers-low-budget-arm-based-chromebook/ It's in the context of the Chromebook but probably it will be a general Chrome feature if it's to be useful.
This is great news for NaCl fans who have been mourning its limited potential due to its previously x86-bound nature.
The PNaCl project has been around for a while, but AFAIK this is the first time Google have actually announced it's going to be productized. <comment><USER2> Can someone enlighten me about the Pepper API? Could I run a server with it? What would sort of limits does the network connection have? How many requests per second could it handle? How many simultaneous connections? What about bandwidth? etc. etc.

<comment><USER3> Pepper is a new Plugin API for browsers proposed by Chrome: <https://code.google.com/p/ppapi/>

Plugin API is the magic responsible for Java or Flash in your browser. A plugin once installed on your PC may run in a number of browsers, as all use the same API - currently it is NPAPI.

NPAPI (Netscape Plugin API) is very old and Chrome with Pepper wants replace it.

Mozilla doesn't like Pepper, so at least for now Pepper is a Chrome-specific thing: <https://wiki.mozilla.org/NPAPI:Pepper>

<comment><USER4> Do you know why Mozilla does not seem interested in Pepper?

<comment><USER5> Both Google and Mozilla wants to obsolete your OS and move general computing in the browser; Google is more pragmatic and sees the need for native code apps on the client side (like games, image processing, etc) so they wants to transform the browser into distribution platform for such apps. Mozilla crew, on the other hand, holds high moral ground and lives in imaginary world where _everything_ can be made with Web technologies, and if something isn't possible right now, we should just wait couple of processor iterations and couple of Web standard iterations.

If companies are people, Google would be someone like Linus, and Mozilla would hang with RMS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if Apple will selectively sue Samsung because it's a thin, rectangular, silver clamshell with black keys and a screen? (I like the Macbook Air btw)

<comment><USER7> Samsung can claim they didn't copy Apple because their design has a big ugly hinge visible on the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice to see Google delivering on their promises here. I look forward to trying out PNaCl apps on Android in Chrome!

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm sure Google's PNaCl ARM solution took this long only because they were waiting to have an easier technical time of it with A15 cores and hardware virtualization. My bet is that they've saved themselves a lot of hassle and gone with implementing a lightweight hypervisor for untrusted native code.

<comment><USER10> PNaCl is quite well documented. It involves LLVM bitcode and a verifier to prove it doesn't do anything naughty.

Requiring HW virtualization would defeat the purpouse of portability. It wouldn't fly on desktop or Android because of the HW and OS requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone know how these work without an active internet connection? Is there an offline / synch option? I think the folks who most need cheap computers are also the ones with the spottiest access...

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a very big deal for that new $249 ARM Chromebook they just announced, right?

This means apps!?!

<comment><USER13> No, Chrome already has Apps.

It means faster, native apps.

<comment><USER14> No, Chrome already has native apps -- NaCl. This headline is about PNaCl, the attempt to make native apps portable.

<comment><USER15> NaCl for ARM isn't shipping, is it? Last I heard, there were some serious issues with it, but that may have changed (I hope!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's neat, but an odd thing to incidentally mention.

<comment><USER17> The announcement is about the new ARM-based Chromebooks, and PNaCl is the way to write performant native apps that run on all architectures supported by Chrome.

<comment><USER16> Of course, but surely this really cool project that Google has been working on for years and years deserves a bigger announcement than an aside in a netbook preview. Hopefully one will be coming along soon.

<comment><USER17> PNaCl was announced quite a while ago, and is a publicly developed open source project. The new detail here is just when it should start shipping to stable for use in Apps and Extensions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Buy a brand new Commodore 64 with bluray and more - <AUTHOR> http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx

<comment><USER2> "Buy a brand new PC in a Commodore 64 case with bluray and more"

FTFY.

<comment><USER3> Indeed.

"A Keyboard Better Than the Original" but they messed up the Control key. _Sigh._</comment></comment>


Plain Text Accounting [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r5Cp66k4PA <comment><USER2> ironic it's presented in a video</comment>


Twitter's Ill-Timed 'Frat Party' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/business/twitters-ill-timed-frat-party.html <comment><USER2> The comments so far seem to be ignoring how the frat culture at American universities contributes to a culture of gender discrimination. This issue has been discussed for years, and was highlighted further with the (discredited, but important) Rolling Stone article about frat culture at the University of Virginia.

The problem is not just the name, and I recognize that drinking games are not fundamentally sexist, but the structure of a party with this kind of theme pays homage to a culture that has some deeply-ingrained gender discrimination issues.

It's not "ill-timed", it's just wrong.

<comment><USER3> > discredited, but important

It was important only insomuch as it highlighted extreme bias in mass media. It was a wholly fabricated story and should not be used to shame frat culture.

Edit: to those downvoting, I'd love to hear how a fabricated story is somehow important. It was a huge blemish on Rolling Stone.

<comment><USER2> It's important because it focused national attention on a very real issue for awhile, before the story shifted to be about journalism. It's also an important moment for journalism, but that's not what I was referring to.

The UVa story was largely fabricated, but that doesn't mean that no one gets raped, shamed for being a victim of rape, ostracized for being a victim of rape, or encouraged to be silent when raped at a frat party at many universities. One of the most telling responses to the article _before_ it was investigated was the fact that very few people were actually surprised.

That's important, even if the media successfully dodged having to deal with the deeper issues for another few years.

<comment><USER3> This is pure speculation on your part. The reporter for Rolling Stone went out in search of this story and interviewed at many campuses. The only account she came across was the fake Jackie story.

Since there aren't actually any examples of this happening, it certainly doesn't seem pervasive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No matter which way I look this at this article it sends my brain into a recursive loop that terminates in WTF

1) NYT, this is not 'ill-timed'... this would be dumb at any point in history.

2) Anyone that can't/won't understand that 'frat party' is at best not inclusive but more likely degrading and offensive is completely unqualified to lead people or organize anything. They should be fired immediately but I doubt anything meaningful at all will happen to them.

3) Who even thinks this kind of thing is fun? Chugging beer... seriously? How old are the people who work at Twitter?

Ugh... this kind of thing makes me so mad. Makes me ashamed for my vocation and for my gender. These idiots get all the attention from the slobbering tech media who perversely loves to perpetuate the culture... grow up, get a life, and stop the madness already.

</comment><comment><USER5> The party's theme seems fine, it's not as if they're encouraging people to wear offensive costumes. Maybe they just shouldn't have called it a frat party.

<comment><USER6> "College Party Themed Party" doesn't roll off the tongue as well.

<comment><USER5> Just call it a Beer Party. That's what frat parties are, really.

<comment><USER6> Well, on second thought, a Beer Party isn't a good idea for a party. What about employees who don't drink or wouldn't be comfortable around a bunch of drunk coworkers? They should change it to a fruit parfait party.

E:

Being downvoted by a bunch of alcoholics I see /s.

The issue I'm pointing out here, in case anyone missed it, is that the party isn't _welcome and opening to an entire group of people_ based on it's "theme". In this case: frat excludes females.

I don't drink. I actively avoid being around drunk people (though I don't care if they drink - so long as I don't have to be around them). So a _beer-themed party_ would be very exclusionary of people like me.

I would not feel _welcomed_ at this party. I would feel _excluded_ and that _I don 't belong_. So why isn't that an issue?

<comment><USER7> _In this case: frat excludes females._

A typical American university "frat party" is _hosted_ at a fraternity, and also welcomes attendees of both sexes.

The drinking-to-excess issue is a separate issue from the party theme. It sounds like they were going for a "college throwback" concept rather than "drink to excess".

(One hopes that professionals in the workplace realize that they probably shouldn't drink 'til they puke and fall under the beer pong table.)

<comment><USER6> I'm not saying my personal beliefs - I'm saying what others are taking issue with. The Thought Police are taking issue with it being a "Frat Party" because it "excludes women and makes them feel unwanted".

Or am I not understanding the backlash properly?

<comment><USER7> I agree - I think the backlash is because "frat party" is supposed to exclude women. Never mind that "frat" refers to the location, and not the attendees. Any actual "frat party" that I ever attended in college welcomed women with open arms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unless the females in twitter were somehow forbidden to attend, I see no problem at all with that. Beer and beer pong sounds like a lot of fun.

Anyway - Newton's fourth law - "for every action there will be SJW overreaction". The SJW are losing a lot of credibility behaving like that.

<comment><USER9> I'm picturing some slaveholders in the mid-1800s tut-tutting John Brown, saying how they see no problem with slavery (naturally they treat their slaves with respect and no slave has ever complained to _them_ ), saying how the abolitionists are losing a lot of credibility behaving like that.

<comment><USER10> Your comment is so hyperbolic, it's as if normal logical discourse is a puppy and your comment is a hammer that you are using to bash it's head in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How many men here would feel invited and included if their company threw a "Sorority Party" or, for the Brits, a "Hen's Night Party"? And that's before we even get to this being one thing among many in that environment alienating and marginalizing women.

<comment><USER12> > How many men here would feel invited and included if their company threw a > "Sorority Party" or, for the Brits, a "Hen's Night Party"?

If the announcement said it was open to all, I'd feel invited and included.

The reason you don't see a lot of open sorority parties at colleges is that most sororities are not allowed to serve alcohol at events they host or cohost. That's a rule of the National Panhellenic Conference. This saves them about $100 per year per student on insurance, which is passed on to the students via lower dues.

There have been some sororities at some colleges trying to get permission to hold parties with alcohol, open to men, so that they can mingle with and drink with men but where they are the ones controlling the alcohol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How long do we have to wait before the Pao case stops being dragged out as proof of 'sexism in tech'?

It seemed to me that certain parts of the media decided the case was a slam dunk, Pao lost, and now it's still being mentioned because...?

<comment><USER14> I think the article didn't have much to say about this story, and decided to throw in content from other articles to pad it out.

<comment><USER13> Or the writer has already decided 'tech is sexist' and then tries to slant the story to reflect that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty ridiculous that there would be outrage over red plastic cups!

I like how the very first sentence claims discrimination against women in tech and links to Ellen Pao LOSING her case as proof.

</comment><comment><USER15> This might be problematic but it isn't sexist, and the media's obsession with linking every tech story to the Pao case is getting old.

If anything, this discriminates against older employees. When I was in college, there were always a lot of girls at house parties, but never any 50-year-old VPs of Engineering.

</comment><comment><USER16> Really? Now you can't have company parties with a college party theme?

When are we just going to come out and say that all of this moral outrage has jumped the shark?

<comment><USER14> Fraternities generally don't include women.

<comment><USER17> Fraternity parties sure do.

<comment><USER18> ... and so the role women play at a frat party is the role the company thinks women should play in the company? You're not making this look any better an idea.

<comment><USER17> I'm not defending Twitter, just pointing out a basic fact. I have no real horse in this particular dogfight.

<comment><USER18> Fair enough!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lots of comments here focusing solely on the beer pong aspect of frat parties. You guys aren't wrong: there's nothing sexist about beer pong.

The use of the word 'frat' really is the difference here. Beer and beer pong are the obvious connotations with frat parties. Scantily clad women, roofies, and rape, are some others, even if those associations are unfair. Why in the world would you associate your company with something like that?

The party itself isn't some egregious, unforgivable mistake, but the fact that while under investigation for gender discrimination, it does something like this, illustrates to me that Twitter is pretty oblivious to the problem.

<comment><USER20> Perfect summary. Don't forget racism as an additional association. I'm not sure why there is an overwhelming atmosphere of denial on HN whenever the topic of women in tech comes up. What's the deal? Do you think women are adequately represented in tech jobs? What about minorities?

<comment><USER21> I assume it has to do with the meritocracy myth. There's quite a bit of good writing about it. Here's one piece: [https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/techs-meritocracy- proble...](https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/techs-meritocracy- problem-a6e5e0a56157)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is a big difference between a party themed "Corporate CEO's and HOES" (Penn State+) and people getting together to play beer pong. Beer pong's likability is analogous to Corn Hole. Anyone can do it. Almost anywhere.

The sign than reads "Twitter Frat House" is unnecessary.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is feminism gone insane. Do these people go around _trying_ to find stuff to be offended by?

"Frat party" is offensive now? What about the very existence of frats altogether. Should we ban those? Oh what about men's clubs? What about groups of men? Tell you what, why don't we ban men gathering in groups of 3 or more. That oughta correct sexism.

<comment><USER24> > What about the very existence of frats altogether. Should we ban those?

A lot of people think so. ;)

<comment><USER23> Yeah that's true. But my take on that is if a group of people wants to self- segregate and socialize separately then the state or society ought not to have authority to stop that.

<comment><USER24> Circular logic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Email clients for SMTP/POP3 email address - <AUTHOR> I have a domain through Register.com. I'm trying to find free email clients that I can just subscribe(?) to this/these new email addresses for my website.<p>What free clients are out there to handle this? Can this just be done in Gmail? <comment><USER2> I think you men just put in the email address and the application will set itself up. Microsoft Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird ([https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/thunderbird/)) will do that for you for the most part. Gmail will let you link up to 5 external email accounts. ([https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/import- manage-multiple-email-a...](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/import-manage- multiple-email-accounts-gmail/)) You still may have to do some configuration but they're the easiest I know of.

Hope that helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's exactly what I wanted.

Now I have a problem with either Gmail, or Register.com because the username/password for my new domain-specific email address is not working. I've reset via register.com, then going back to gmail, still doesn't work. Awesome! (insert sarcasm here)</comment></comment>


Why we should stop worrying about our wandering minds - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151106-why-we-should-stop-worrying-about-our-wandering-minds?ocid=twfut <comment><USER2> I'd be curious to see a similar study on active meditators. People who actively work to quiet their minds might have a better chance of doing so in a study.

Meditating makes you realize just how much noise is in your head. Between starting meditation and where I am now I notice a stark difference in my brain. A lot of it comes from the environment too. We listen to songs on repeat, advertisements are burnt into our memories, we have emotions, there's just so much for our brains to drone on about.

It is absolutely possible to quiet your inner monologue. I'd be really interested to see what it looks like in a brain scan.

</comment><comment><USER3> There have been several similar posts to this recently. (Acceptance of boredom, melancholy, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER4> A question of ignorance, but people really worry about a wandering mind?

<comment><USER5> I imagine the majority of people on this forum are pressuring themselves to focus on something, a project, work, or relationship. Inevitably you'll have to battle a wandering mind. Maybe that's where burnout comes in, not letting your mind wander anymore.

<comment><USER6> I feel like those who are good at letting their minds wander are also good at concentrating when the need arises.

I can knock out a feature in 3 weeks or in three hours. I could do 13 features in a week, if there were that many to do. My ability to get things done is limited not by my own time, but in my company's ability to put projects on my plate.

Letting my mind wander, even when I'm pretty busy, allows me to think about the context of my work and is a pretty clear force-multiplier.</comment></comment></comment>