Make DuckDuckGo your Chrome default search engine - <AUTHOR> http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216440-chrome#manual <comment><USER2> OK, but tomorrow when I've forgotten that I've done this and I do a quick search, if the very first thing that comes up isn't what I want, I bet I switch right back.

<comment><USER3> Hacker news forgets that people need to get shit done, and all of this bullshit marketing is just a distraction.

<comment><USER4> Strong words coming from someone meta-commenting on a hacker news story instead of "getting shit done."

<comment><USER5> You have to do something on your Pomodoro breaks...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> DDG is nice initiative. The problem is that it does not solve any problem related to privacy because it is based on a matter of trust.

Distributed search, similar to bittorrent, DHT-based designs and the like are notoriously difficult.

I've participated in such efforts, like the Seeks Project [1], Yacy [2], and related initiatives like Unhosted [3], and it takes a certain amount of dedication (and suffering ;) ).

However, I believe it is not entirely impossible that we see a true alternative sometimes. From what experience, what is needed is a slightly better set of distributed algorithms, a business model with the ability to sustain such a technical effort, and a range of features that no search engine can yet offer (because centralized).

[1] [http://www.seeks-project.info/](http://www.seeks-project.info/) [2] [http://www.yacy.net/](http://www.yacy.net/) [3] [https://www.unhosted.org/](https://www.unhosted.org/)

<comment><USER7> Which of those is the best for the average joe?

<comment><USER6> Probably none yet, unfortunately. Seeks is usable because it relies on Google or any other engine in the background, when no results are available among peers.

Yacy is more advanced, uses a DHT, but does not really work for daily use, the accuracy being too low.

Unhosted is distributed architecture on top of the Web really. I've mentioned it because it may be useful and/or an inspiration to whoever interested in these matters.

<comment><USER7> I've tried to download seeks, but it's linux only. This makes it much harder to build a large user community and to develop a decent business model.

<comment><USER6> Right, one way is to share one instance with someone you trust (and who runs a linux server), and to use it remotely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love DDG and I used it for 6 months but the problem I had is that when I was looking for things related to coding or Linux--it fell short. I would type in an error from Objective-c, Node.js, Java, JavaScript or Scala and nothing helpful would return. This forced me to return to Google which I ended up doing so often that I switched my default search engine back :(.

<comment><USER9> have you checked out some of the !bang options available? I just took a look and here is a sampling of what you have available.

Sysadmin: !apache !awesome !bsd !chef !codeweavers !cookbook !cve !datasheet !distro !distrowatch !eventid !everymac !exex !exploitdb !filext !fsf !fsfe !funtoo !gdiag !gnomebugs !gnu !howtoforge (!htf) !ip !irp !iso !linode !linuxfr !linuxhcl !linuxmint !lxr !mysql !nginxwiki !openbsd !openbsdmisc !opensuse !oracle !osvdb !parabola !peppermintos !playterm !postgresql !psql !puppet !qth !salix !salixforums !sectube !senderbase !spice !splunk !sqlite !susebug !susepkg !technetlib !timestamp !tldp !trisquel !use !vmkb !vol !wog !zahe

Sysadmin (debian): !debbug (!dbugs) !debian !debianforums !debianfr !debml !debmla !debwiki !dfiles !dman !dpackages (!dpkg !dpts) !dtag !fanch

Sysadmin (FreeBSD): !bsdman !fports !freebsd !freshports !fxr

Sysadmin (Gentoo): !gbugs !gentoo !gentoowiki !gpackages !gwiki

Sysadmin (RedHat): !rbugs

Sysadmin (Solaris): !sunpatch

Sysadmin (Ubuntu): !askubuntu !docubu !docubufr !omgubuntu (!omgu) !ppa !puc !ubottu !ubuntuforums (!ubuntuf) !ubuntuusers !uman !upackages !upkg !uu !uude

[https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html](https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html)

<comment><USER10> Part of me thinks those are cool, but the rest of my shouts "why should I have to do that?!".

<comment><USER11> Because Google learns what your preferences are, DDG don't. This is why there is no "search bubble", unfortunately it comes at a price.

<comment><USER12> That would be reasonable, except that on all my searches that DDG fails on, Google works perfectly fine in private browsing from a different IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can support this, but only if it offers real safety as opposed to Google.

So does it? Or is it safe only because NSA hasn't bothered to go to DDG yet, or do whatever they are doing to get Google's search data (cable splitters or whatever)?

<comment><USER14> They claim not to record any data, so there's no worry about gov't requests. [http://donttrack.us/](http://donttrack.us/)

<comment><USER15> Oh wow. I didn't know this.

Interesting. This could become a real competitive advantage for them.

<comment><USER16> No, actually it will not.The vast majority of people using Google do not care whether their data search data is being recorded or not. Heck, most even do not know how Google search engine works from 'behind' let alone worry about the difference between Google and DDG.

So they will really need something more compelling to get the average Joe (who make up the vast majority mentioned earlier), who always get his results from Google's first page, to switch from Google to DDG.

Yet, in the context of search engines, I don't see anything that could be more compelling than always getting the most relevant search results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What kind of joke is this? You are telling us to use a US-based search engine in a propietary browser made by a US-based company that we already know has given direct access to the NSA? What the fuck.

<comment><USER18> We don't "know" anything such thing about direct access. We have no evidence other than interpretations of a vague slide that fly in the face other claims.

<comment><USER19> Do you need yet another individual to become a "traitor" to the US government on this specific assertion before you decide its good enough to "know"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> ...and you trust Chrome? Not even Chromium, but... Chrome. Google makes Chrome, you know.

<comment><USER21> Yes, I trust that Google has not shipped a binary modification to their open source software to track search terms, which would be (a) illegal, (b) easily detectable enough that someone would notice it eventually, and (c) pointless, since they're already getting the vast majority of users' search terms legitimately. Then again, I work for them, but I would have said the same thing a month ago...

<comment><USER22> Agreed. I just searched "PRISM" on DDG, and 8 out of top 10 results had some element loaded from a Google server (GA, fonts, jquery, search box, embedded youtube, etc.) Are you using Google's DNS server? Google owns the web. Face it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pretty lame of DuckDuckGo to use this controversy to gain some cheap exposure.

Besides, there are zero guarantees that they are immune to the kind of accusation currently aimed at Google and co.

<comment><USER24> It is just linking to the DuckDuckGo support page. You are talking as though they made a blog post saying "PRISM!! Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google" and posted it on HN.

<comment><USER25> On the other hand, they have been contacting bloggers and media in exactly such a manner. [https://plus.google.com/+JeffJarvis/posts/5X7nHcjijsC](https://plus.google.com/+JeffJarvis/posts/5X7nHcjijsC)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why would you use Chrome if you have privacy concerns and want to use DuckDuckGo? Google isn't exactly known for respecting privacy.

Install Firefox instead.

<comment><USER27> Chrome (or Chromium, if you prefer to have someone else run your builds) is open source. It's subject to inspection. It's got some known privacy issues (e.g., safe-browsing mode sends a file URL and hash which is stored with your IP for two weeks, then your IP is stripped).

But if there's anything really untoward going on and people learn about it, it's going to look _extremely_ bad for Google.

While I wouldn't say that's impossible, it's not a high-likelihood event in my book.

Of course, you're free to use alternative browsers.

Just ... keep in mind that if you're using a WebKit browser you're trusting Apple, and if it's WebCore, you're still trusting Google.

Mozilla's Gecko is still independent, however.

<comment><USER26> So basically it's got known privacy problems, requires trust of Google and you're winging it.

Lets also add that Chrome!=Chromium. Chrome is based on Chromium. Not all of it is open and it is not compiled in the public eye.

No thanks.

<comment><USER27> _So basically it 's got known privacy problems_

Most of which can be addressed. There's also a UUID in each build. Privoxy can remove that AFAIU. I don't use Chrome myself, but Chromium.

As I said: you're arguing in the absence of evidence on a pretty widely available and analyzed application. Rather than simply throwing out hypotheticals, a more interesting exercise would be to do some research of posted information to see if there are known issues. Might even make for an interesting HN submission.

I might do that myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I switched to DDG about 2 years ago and haven't looked back. My take is they have pretty good clue, are appreciative of security, and they use FreeBSD :)

<comment><USER29> And Bing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> DDG is a nice search engine for simple research, but I don't use it as much for its search purpose as for its !bang utility.

Being able to search on almost any website by adding a simple keyword is a real plus and I will go even further and say that sometimes it accelerates the search process (say you know you want to search on wikipedia for instance).

However, I have to admit that most of the times I end up searching on google :)

<comment><USER31> In regards to searching a particular site, is this the same thing as using the tag site:wikipedia.org on Google?

<comment><USER30> It's better, in my opinion, as it loads the website specified and use the website's search tool directly.

Give it a try, go on DDG and type !w to search on wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been using DDG as default search engine in Firefox, with Google on fallback under the keyword "g". You can make a bookmark with a URL like

        https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%s

and add arbitrary keywords to the bookmark, like "yt", "g", or "so". Then you can simply enter that keyword followed by the search term in the address bar.

DDG definitely doesn't have the same quality results as Google, but it's close enough in most circumstances for me that the times I have to search twice aren't a huge factor.

<comment><USER33> I use DuckDuckGoog. Non bash-syntax searches automatically hit google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The only thing stopping me from making this switch is that doing arithmetic in the url bar stops working... I use that quite a bit. Is this some deep integration with chrome or can it be made to work with ddg as well?

<comment><USER35> Use AlfredApp for arithmetic ;)

<comment><USER36> or the command line utility _bc_

<comment><USER37> If you use bash, you can also use _$(( 3 + 2 ))_. More often than not, if it gets cumbersome to fit it into Spotlight, I'm going to fire up a Python console.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Stop using your credit cards while you're at it...

</comment><comment><USER39> How to make Blekko default search engine in Firefox : [http://chepurnoy.org/blog/2012/11/how-to-make-blekko-your- de...](http://chepurnoy.org/blog/2012/11/how-to-make-blekko-your-default- search-engine-in-firefox/)

</comment><comment><USER40> i always make ddg my default... but then ill just use google for a sec and forget to change my search back to ddg and then without noticing ill be using google for the next week.

.... so my project for the weekend is to make a firefox extension that resets your search default every X hours/days.

<comment><USER41> Have you seen the ! queries on DuckDuckGo? If you add !g to a search, it redirects you to Google. !i goes to Google Image search. I guess there are others.

<comment><USER42> There are quite a few! And the list is growing... :)

[https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html](https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html)

<comment><USER43> Like a previous commenter noted, the instant math portion of google is a good feature. Any way to do this with DDG?

<comment><USER44> Simple queries are done in just the same way: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=42*PI](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=42*PI)

More complex queries are typically done with Wolfram|Alpha. This goes a long way: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=graph+y+%3D+x%2Bcos^2%28sqrt%2842*...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=graph+y+%3D+x%2Bcos^2%28sqrt%2842*PI*x%29%29+-+z)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I don't trust Chrome, DDG w/ Firefox is easy and at least they are open about their practices.

</comment><comment><USER46> Better on Firefox Aurora give it a try

</comment><comment><USER47> I trust Google than Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone who tried to find news about the Boston Marathon Bombings on the day they happened via DDG should be aware the engine's inferiorities.

</comment><comment><USER49> DDG is already my default search engine, and landing page (in FF, mind you).

However, honestly, I prefer Google's results. Has anyone else had this experience?

<comment><USER50> If you're typing !g more often than not. What keeps you using it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> DDG when searching for reference: yeah; bang syntax is great.

Google for everything else.

<comment><USER52> !g everything else

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> How does this help? Isn't DDG still located in the US?

</comment><comment><USER54> Chrome passwords have an export feature, right?

</comment><comment><USER55> Better Privacy VS Tailored Search.

</comment><comment><USER56> Using DuckDuckGo in Chrome is like asking for privacy while walking around naked in Times Square. Chrome has 100% unrestricted access to anything your user can access on your PC, no matter what search engine you choose.

<comment><USER57> Here's a full list of what data is sent back to google: [http://lifehacker.com/5763452/what-data-does-chrome-send- to-...](http://lifehacker.com/5763452/what-data-does-chrome-send-to-google- about-me)

Do the autocomplete results still go to google? If so, then enabling DDG on chrome is indeed fruitless.

<comment><USER58> Just as an FYI, new versions of chrome also sends back the full URL and the hash of any file you download or save. I bumped across this when I was trying to download light table and it din't let me open it. After a bit of research I found file scanning to be the new addition to chrome's malware checks. With all the NSA debacle going on now, I am feeling even more paranoid. I love chrome but I will be switching to Firefox or IE10 soon.

<comment><USER59> No, it doesn't. I've detailed how safe browsing works in Chrome, Firefox and Safari works before[1]. tl;dr only partial hashes are exchanged, so you can't reverse it even if you really wanted to.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5588362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5588362)

<comment><USER58> Yes it does. Check this page out [1] and this stackoverflow question.[2]

"If a file isn't from a known source, Chrome sends the URL and IP of the host and other meta data, such as the file's hash and binary size, to Google."

[1] [http://blog.chromium.org/2012/01/all-about-safe- browsing.htm...](http://blog.chromium.org/2012/01/all-about-safe- browsing.html)

[2] [http://superuser.com/questions/387724/how-to-disable- downloa...](http://superuser.com/questions/387724/how-to-disable-download- scanning-protection-of-new-chrome-17)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It's only really meaningful if their operations and management are outside the u.s. Is this the case? Are there search companies with their engines in Switzerland or even the EU?</comment>


Get Loopt on the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=281952554&mt=8

<comment><USER2> My thinking on Loopt and GPS is that when you're in a big city, the cell phone towers can triangulate your location to within a block. And when you're in the suburbs, although the cell phone triangulation isn't very accurate there also isn't really any use for the software. So while there may be some app released in the future that makes it compelling to upgrade to the new iPhone for the GPS, I don't think Loopt is it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gah! No Anti-Web links!!!

(just kidding)

<comment><USER4> There's nothing to kid about. Linking to the iTunes store is just stupid. It's the kind of thing that makes me think submissions should also be down- moddable.</comment></comment>


"We'll pay you $1,500 per year to drop your LinkedIn account" - <AUTHOR>

"We'll pay you $1,500 per year to drop your LinkedIn account"
Employers pay big money to recruit people.  How about they start to pay their employees NOT ot be on LinkedIn to stop the recruiters sniffing around.
Does anyone think we'll start to see employers paying employees to "disappear" from sites like LinkedIn? <comment><USER2> I'll take that. I haven't found LinkedIn useful for anything other than getting LinkedIn invitations.

<comment><USER3> Me too. Colleagues keep adding me like they want to collect Pokemon. The only thing I find useful is the LinkedIn Groups.

<comment><USER4> Hahaha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You could not pay me enough to stop networking and that's basically what you are asking me to do. Changing jobs comes with a significant salary increase usually (or you are doing it wrong) Agreeing to a deal like this would be foolish.

</comment><comment><USER6> I got my current job from LinkedIn, and my network isn't all that big. I actually use LI for keeping up to date on industries and certain interests via the groups. So, no, there would be no incentive that would keep me off my personal networking. Besides, where do you think alot of these recruiters go to find talent?

</comment><comment><USER7> I would hate to be controlled so much. They better pay me a lot of money to "restrict my freedom" so much.

Unless I was breaking some sort of ethical/moral code of the business, then it's stupid to try and control the personal life of people. That is just me though.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think it's a tough sell as networking can also help companies to broaden horizons, make new business leads, and grow. Is there any research into employees who leave based on LinkedIn contacts rather than just searching a dice.com or monster.com?

</comment><comment><USER9> I never hear from recruiters on linked in. Am I doing something wrong?

<comment><USER10> Chances are that yes you are doing something wrong...if you goal is to attract recruiters. Linkedin has some secrets just like any other platform and one of them is that recruiters tend to like 2nd or 3rd level connections so that they can see who you network with.

There are also ways to add keywords to your profile that make it easier for them to search by certain competencies or experience.

The number of recruiter requests that I get has increased steadily as I have increased the size of my network. Once you hit over 500 connections it seems to be a tipping point.

There are some other settings that indicate that you are open for conversations on hiring, business opportunities etc - that make it easier for them to contact you. Good luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll do it for $1. Let me know if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll do it for $50.</comment>


A very cool dude and his ski clothing company: Klaus Obermeyer - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQdFjO7mgnY Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Obermeyer <comment><AUTHOR> Wikipedia article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Obermeyer></comment>


RFC 1135: The Helminthiasis of the Internet (1989) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1135.txt <comment><USER2> The Morris worm has had some other postings here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5302924](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5302924)

Here's Eugene Spafford's write up: [http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1701&...](http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1701&context=cstech)

Here's Seeley's _A Tour of the Worm_ : [http://www.cs.unc.edu/~jeffay/courses/nidsS05/attacks/seely-...](http://www.cs.unc.edu/~jeffay/courses/nidsS05/attacks/seely- RTMworm-89.html)

And here's _With Microscope and Tweezers_ : [http://www.mit.edu/~eichin/virus/main.html](http://www.mit.edu/~eichin/virus/main.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> For some context, this resulted in the author of the virus in question, Robert Morris, being the first person ever indicted under the CFAA. Morris later became one of the four founders of YC.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wikipedia article about the worm:

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

</comment><comment><USER4> HTML version:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1135](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1135)</comment>


New UK Health Secretary likes homeopathy, wants 12 wk limit on abortions - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/9520269/Jeremy-Hunt-is-controversial-appointment-as-Health-Secretary.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a more policy-relevant view which isn't good either: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19476608></comment>


Airbnb partners with NYC for Sandy relief. - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/07/airbnb-nyc-sandy-free-housing

<comment><USER2> Wow. They went from hated by the city for hotel/etc. issues, to heroes post- disaster. This was excellent positioning and will help them for a long time, not just in NYC.

(somehow I suspect Ron Conway was involved...)</comment>


Even more compute shaders (execution units and caches) - <AUTHOR> https://anteru.net/blog/2018/even-more-compute-shaders/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone know of a compute shader playground that is as easy to learn/prototype in as all of the pixel shader playgrounds out there?</comment>


Jwz's Tent of Doom at Netscape in 1995 - <AUTHOR> http://www.jwz.org/tent-of-doom/

<comment><USER2> Pretty cool free documentary titled Code Rush that films Netscape engineers during the Mozilla source code release.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig>

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait.

Netscape was at 650 Castro?

Mozilla is at 650 Castro now.

Freaky.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice! I love little glimpses like this to hacking and the web and the culture around it all in the 90's.

I used to read this during finals, when not sleeping enough and needing some motivation: <http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html>

Finals are in full swing again, time to re-read it.

<comment><USER5> This line has haunted me for years: "It's hard for someone to hold it against you when you miss a meeting because you've been at work so long that you've passed out from exhaustion."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had the same setup once; mostly because the $#!# $#!$# light above the desk was too bright, but I totally credit jwz with the idea having read about it in... '95 or so?

I got the camo net from an army-navy store, and went in on a weekend to set it up. 1 other guy was in working, and as I rolled it out, he and I agreed it just smelled too bad to be able to work. Had to take it home, set it out on my lawn (this was the summer, in Georgia) and let it "bake" the stench out for a day or so. Couple days later it was fine, and I cherished my dark hidey-hole for a year or 2 afterwords.

Internal light source was a lava lamp (red wax, clear liquid).

Good times.

</comment><comment><USER7> I remember reading about JWZ when I was 15 in the mid 90s. He was a hero of mine: when I grew up, I wanted to work at Netscape.

It worries me he runs a nightclub now:

if your idols want to leave the industry, what does it say about the industry?

<comment><USER8> Given how much trouble he has had running a nightclub, for years and years, I don't think he picked that for any reason other than it being what he really wanted to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> These are exactly the kinds of antics I want out of a coworker. So far, nobody has lived up to this expectation.

<comment><USER10> I used to work in a shared space that was once a dance studio - high ceiling, polished timber boards, etc. A freelance copywriter who was in the mix used to have a cheap white gazebo around/over his desk space.

It was novel but tacky so I set to cutting a couple of gazebo threads each day with a scalpel to hasten its demise. He never noticed and ended up moving out before the thing collapsed.

<comment><USER11> So, uh, you destroyed someone else's property just because you didn't like it? I hope I never need to work in the same office as you, then.

<comment><USER10> It was a $20 tent, much despised by others in the office. The person in question thought it was hilarious when I later told him about the scalpel treatment and stays in touch 5+ years on even though he's 20 years older and works in a different field. He was just that sort of larrikin who appreciated that sometimes a scheme trumps an easily replaceable product. We frequently collaborated on other mischief around the office.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Openworm: c.elegans worm simulation - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/openworm/

<comment><USER2> This is definitely the way forward.

In the past, the research has focused on re-creating non-trivial neural networks. However, the network is nothing without the organism - sure, you can examine the internal oscillations - but that hasn't led us anywhere. (See "Perfect C.Elegans" research paper, 1998). One can't debug without seeing the results, and that's the case with a neural network without the rest of the organism.

Why C.Elegans? It's the simplest organism with a nervous system (302 neurons), and the connectivity has been completely mapped. It's a hermaphrodite, with a fully-sequenced DNA. It's also one of the more studied organisms out there.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, how long until we're sending Russian lobsters into space?

<comment><USER4> The lobsters weren't Russian. They were uploaded in San Diego.

<comment><USER5> They did hack into the Moscow Windows NT User Group to escape though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Best of luck to them. I hope they succeed to the point where interesting ethical issues are raised.

<comment><USER7> Considering that nobody outside the jains seems to think there is an ethical issue with experimenting on invertebrates like insects, and those are significantly more complex than c. elegans...

and that not even the jains have said anything about computer programs symbolically representing a real animal...

<comment><USER2> I think what he meant was: "Let's hope that this research leads to some simulated animals [much later down the road]".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I might be asking a dumb question here but can it be possible to eventually simulate the worm's reproduction cycle so that we can fast forward the simulation to millions or even billions of generations to see more complex organisms evolving?

<comment><USER7> It's not a model of the worm's genome, let alone its full development required to actually produce the worms, let alone of populations of the worms, let alone populations of the worms interacting with a full blown natural environment. Which is what determines what happens in natural selection.

Evolution does not naturally tend toward complexity, it tends toward fit to the environment. In one case that may be specializing in eating eucalyptus leaves. In another case it might be having a big brain. We tend to think that the whole direction of evolution is toward producing us but there is no basis for that in evolutionary theory. We ended up with particular traits because they were available in our population and gave our ancestors a leg up in their specific environments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like the beginning of Permutation City[1] - won't be long now (relatively) until we won't be able to observe a difference between real c.elegans and simulated c.elegans, simulate its environment, simulate other organisms, etc. Will these worms be _alive_? What happens when computers become advanced enough to simulate humans? What if they already are? o_O

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City>

<comment><USER10> Well, hold on a second. Even if we know the worm's neural network and how it's connected, that doesn't necessarily mean that a computer simulation of it will do exactly what the worm does. The problem is that we're not doing an atom-by- atom simulation of the worm but rather we're hoping we've extracted the important logical features of how the worm works, so that the thing will run on modern computers.

This is actually the more exciting part of the research. Serious ethical questions aside[1], imagine if you _could_ simulate a human's neural network. Probably your first simulation would seem unbelievably stupid. Perhaps you find out that you didn't account for the ways certain neurotransmitter concentrations will "leak" data from one synapse to a nearby one, without which the system becomes radically disconnected because evolution was lazy and connected them without a specific wire. (I don't know; I'm being hypothetical.) So now you get to introduce some sort of adjacency matrix which manages which neurons are "next to" each other and receive these "secondary signals." Then it seems to be able to learn language, but it still can't balance in the world, and working it out, you find out that there is a big failure in the motor regions because they only work when the right signal propagation delays are introduced, and you were propagating them all instantaneously, and so on.

In the distant past, we had hoped that chess was so complicated that it would only be solved with some great insight into human understanding -- but instead it was solved with brute force. This is one of the first cases where I see that the brute force might be finally able to give us a test model by which we might better understand understanding itself.

The only worrying bit is the neural nets themselves. Neural nets are notoriously difficult to interpret and understand. Even the calculus-based approach of "I'm going to make a tiny tweak to the network and see how it changes the output" offers only a little enlightenment.

[1] I do think ethical questions about killing artificial consciousnesses deserve discussion time; I just don't have much to spare at this moment and it's kinda tangential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the way they are executing it. Interacting with the people, not just sitting in the lab doing random science.

</comment><comment><USER12> Would doing a kickstarter be useful for these folks?

<comment><USER13> It is part of their roadmap:

Component: Kickstarter EPIC-8 As an open worm team member, I want to launch a fundraising campaign to raise money for the project

taken from <https://code.google.com/p/openworm/wiki/Roadmap></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Finding work at a start up? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a start up to work with.<p>Do you know of any websites aimed at connecting start ups with developers? <comment><USER2> triplebyte.com specializes in this.

</comment><comment><USER3> product hunt might have some</comment>


Nokia phones sent identifiable data to Chinese server - <AUTHOR> https://nrkbeta.no/2019/03/21/norske-telefoner-sendte-personopplysninger-til-kina/ <comment><USER2> We have nothing whatsoever against Norwegian, but HN is an English-language site, so this is off topic here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood. Google Translate does a formidable job of rendering the story in English, so I've resubmitted the translation.

<comment><USER2> We mostly treat those as off topic too except in rare cases. If a news story is significant enough to appear on HN, there is almost always (or soon will be) an English language article about it that can be submitted directly.

But I appreciate your desire to submit a relevant story and will leave that one unmoderated.</comment></comment></comment>


Bike Baron, iPad/iPhone game, tops charts in 62 countries in less than a week - <AUTHOR> http://www.arcticstartup.com/2011/10/28/bike-baron-tops-app-store-charts-in-62-countries-in-less-than-a-week

<comment><USER2> So much for yesterday's article about occupying the app store because it's so hard to break in if you're not one of the self-reinforcing chart toppers that are already there.

I was pretty sure that the article was bullshit when I read it (because every week when I peek in the app store I see a different range of big name and indie things), but it's nice to have so definitive an example.

Congrats to the bike baron folks!

</comment><comment><USER3> Heard about this one from my friend - just a flat-out awesome game with a level editor included. As an app developer I have to admit it's hard to swallow, but the hard truth is that the most effective and sure-fire way to make a lot of money on the app store is to make your app absolutely excellent.</comment>


How long will the seed-stage bubble last? - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchen.co/2012/08/20/how-long-will-the-seed-stage-bubble-last/

<comment><USER2> There really is no Seed Stage bubble because there is no market mechanism that will force a "correction".

First, if you add up all the seed investments happening in tech and assume that 100% fail, the money lost would be the equivalent to a few medium to large'ish VC funds failing. It's not a huge deal in terms of $.

But 100% failing is not going to happen. So there will be stories of some angel or seed investor making a killer return on a deal and that brings more people into the market trying to emulate that. So even though some angels/seed investors will get totally washed out and stop making investments, there will be a new supply coming in. The "corrections" will be mini-corrections, i.e. people stopping angel or seed investing cuz they didn't make money.

But there will always be someone new who fancies themselves as a "smarter picker" of companies and who will continue to make these investments.

The only thing IMO that could trigger a correction would be if all the prominent seed & angel investors came out and said they're stopping making investments. That would change the supply/demand characteristics as well as the overall sentiment towards these deals, but that is not going to happen because each thinks they are smarter than the other, has better proprietary dealflow, is more disciplined, etc.

We're seeing (my company sells data to investors) lots of people try to set up Seed VC funds these days ($25 to $100M) so this appears to just be getting started to be honest.

<comment><USER3> Can you elaborate on how this reasoning doesn't apply to the first dotcom bubble? Is it that more companies were publicly traded during the first dotcom bubble? How do companies like Zynga and Facebook factor in to your analysis?

(I was just a kid during the dotcom bubble, so I appreciate any insight you can shed.)

<comment><USER4> The first bubble was characterized by massive speculation in public tech stocks completely detached from fundamentals.

Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga getting kicked in the nuts on the public market is the opposite of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Given that this whole ecosystem is supported by the team acquisitions..."

If that's what he's starting from, you can't trust any of the conclusions here. We make next to nothing from HR acquisitions.

<comment><USER6> They're probably better deals than if the companies went under. I think his point is that the possibility of an acquihire removes a good deal of risk.

<comment><USER5> HR acquisitions have such an insignificant effect on returns that they're indistinguishable from failures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "we're currently in a golden age for early stage startups, and the early stage market will stay hot for at least the next 3-5 years"

"VCs are seeding deals without any price sensitivity, and a lot of angels seeing exits even when the teams fail"

"Angels are willing to invest because they have downside protection due to acquihires"

"downside protection is driven by acquihires from companies paying $1M-3M per engineer"

Fascinating observations. For me this is not a bubble. It is a fail safe investment opportunity. If you are an accredited investor just sign up for AngelList and start investing in seed rounds for startups that you understand. There is too much upside and too little downside. No wonder the funding environment for seed stage startups is red hot.

</comment><comment><USER8> _The downside protection is driven by acquihires from companies like Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, and others which are paying $1M-$3M per engineer._

All these companies seem to be headed for a dose of some very strong medicine though. Without the acquihire safety net I think the seed stage investment game looks a lot less certain.

Of course, all the traditional investment vehicles look even less appealing lately.

<comment><USER9> I notice many players these days that their entire strategy is based on aqui- hire. Essentially building a "feature company" and trying to grab a user base to piss off the company that "should have the feature anyway". If you ask me, thats a rather narrow game plan and it leaves a lot of risk in case something changes. If the "target company" implements the feature themselves, well, then you either need to pivot or continue in the delusion that the company can stand on its own (hint: It wont because it wasn't ever part of the plan).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the seed-stage boom is because companies generally need much less money than they used to. There are no significant costs except salaries for software businesses. So why take more money? It is more a reflection that the larger VCs have less opportunities, so seed stage will continue to grow.

</comment><comment><USER11> Andrew, why do you call there is a bubble? From what I know, it's still very hard to raise seed money. Last week, founder of Launchbit posted her seed round on her blog (and it made it to HN front page), it didn't seem easy at all.

You are the man in the investor's arena, so I'm curious to know what has become easier (in obtaining seed funding) compared to say 5 years back.

</comment><comment><USER6> I nominate the title for the loaded question of the month club. When will the author stop beating his wife?</comment>


How to move your domains off GoDaddy - <AUTHOR> http://robsanheim.com/2008/03/29/how-to-move-your-domains-off-godaddy/ <comment><USER2> This How-to is missing the first step (disabling the "domain proxy") which GoDaddy automatically configured if you registered the domain in the past few years.

\- log in to GD and go to the domain manager. Go to each domain individually and check to see if the domain privacy proxy is turned on. If it is, it means that your whois info is being proxied by <http://domainsbyproxy.com/> (it seems to be a sister site to GD). You need to find your account number for DBP which they would have sent to you when you reg'd the domain. You need to login to DBP and disable the proxy for all of your domains.

<comment><USER3> I had read from various places that if you do that you'll end up in the 60 day 'purgatory' where you can't transfer your domain. Why would you need to disable this feature in order to transfer -- does it implicitly lock you out from getting the auth code?

<comment><USER2> As far as I know, the domain purgatory is only when it's close to it's expiry date.

The reason you need to disable the domain proxy is because they replace your admin contact email address with one of theirs (they also replace your phone number and address with theirs). In order to receive the transfer request to your Administrative Contact email address, you need to turn off this proxy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is hard to believe the author because he uses a referral id in his link to Namecheap without a disclosure: "www.namecheap.com/?aid=88&rid=136544"

Having saying that, I don't know if Namecheap is better or worse than Godaddy.

<comment><USER3> Fixed.

If you can point out namecheap doing something like this: <http://nodaddy.com/mystory.html>, then I'd agree with your second point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I spent a couple weeks moving all my domains off of GoDaddy last year. All the registrars I used ended up sucking even more. I then reluctantly moved them all _back_ to GoDaddy. It was a painful experience I don't plan on repeating.

<comment><USER6> I'd like to know who you moved them to and then off again. (Either here or in the 'Favorite Registrars' thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150561> )

I'm about to buy another domain, and am considering not going with GoDaddy (due to their annoying upsell spam and the myriad of horror stories)... So naming names is appreciated.

<comment><USER5> I remember that Register.com sucked. I tried a couple others, but I think they're repressed memories now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are plenty of stories of registrars going out of business, killing websites in the process when their lookups die.

I have never had a problem with GoDaddy and use them for all of my own domain names as well as my clients'. I've never had anything but good experiences with them and I'm not worried that they'll shutter the place tomorrow.

If you feel good about registering your names with "NameCheap" and confident they'll be around, go for it. I wish you the best of luck.

<comment><USER8> I, too, have been using GoDaddy for some time now, and haven't had a problem.

The biggest annoyance is the hyper-colored ad-noise they throw at you when buying a domain. It's pretty cheesy, but having experienced it i know to look for the "No Thanks" links towards the bottom and move on.

(Note: I do not use them for hosting or DNS, just as a registrar.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> i hate how godaddy's advertising. it is so in your face that even when your a customer it is a pain to get anything done. even if you purchased everything they offered you still see it all.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can pretty much Google "[any company] sucks" and get a billion hits. It hasn't meant anything in roughly 5 years.

"Apple sucks" returns about 8x as many entries as GoDaddy. All it really means is that way more people use Apple products than GoDaddy.</comment>


Ask HN: Why such a high upper bound of starting salaries for IIT CS graduates? - <AUTHOR>

Undergraduate Salary Ranges:
Georgia Tech CS [$24.960 - $125,000]
Stanford CS [$10,250 - $175,000]
IIT (Kanpur) [upper bound: $210,000]
[1] https://www.adors.gatech.edu/cfcampus/adors/commencement/salary_report_result.cfm?college=2&level=1&surveyid=77&Submit=Submit
[2] http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/cdc/jobs/salary-grads
[3] http://ibnlive.in.com/news/no-slowdown-at-placements-iitk-students-bag-210000-pay-package/437865-3-242.html
I'm curious what is the reason behind such an upper bound in the IIT salaries? Aren't there equally intelligent students at Stanford, Georgia Tech, other colleges in the US? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to sources:

[1] [https://www.adors.gatech.edu/cfcampus/adors/commencement/sal...](https://www.adors.gatech.edu/cfcampus/adors/commencement/salary_report_result.cfm?college=2&level=1&surveyid=77&Submit=Submit)

[2] [http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/cdc/jobs/salary- grads](http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/cdc/jobs/salary-grads)

[3] [http://ibnlive.in.com/news/no-slowdown-at-placements-iitk- st...](http://ibnlive.in.com/news/no-slowdown-at-placements-iitk-students- bag-210000-pay-package/437865-3-242.html)</comment>


You Should Write Blogs - <AUTHOR> http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/you-should-write-blogs <comment><USER2> I know some of you have put your blogs under your user profile, but in any case, who here has a blog? mind us having a look?

<comment><USER3> juwo.blogspot.com</comment></comment>


Turboencabulator - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboencabulator <comment><USER2> There's nothing worse than side-fumbling of your dingle-arm. Glad they fixed that, even if it does need pre-fabulated amulite.</comment>


Ask HN: Does Product Name / domain name Matter? - <AUTHOR> Any examples to back your thinking? <comment><USER2> I would say to an extent, yes, but not really in the grand scheme of things excepting some edge cases.

If Google started with the name ShittiestSearchEnginePossibleEverLetsStoreYourData, I doubt it would have been as successful as it is.

On the flipside, if you make a good product and your name isn't extremely obtuse, I don't think it matters at all. Cockroach Labs seems to be doing just fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> Although `.com` domains seem to do better for any product not for devs.</comment>


Aligning Engineering and Operations at Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/06/23/facebook-managing-epic-growth-in-real-time/

<comment><USER2> Is there any meatier information on this topic?</comment>


Fly Over the 'Brainbow' - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/32423/?p1=MstRcnt <comment><USER2> Neat. And pretty. And a _heck_ of a lot more detailed. One of the best combinations science can produce - useful _and_ crowd pleasing!

I'll be all pie-in-the-sky and ask: how much longer until we can use this to duplicate something in software, and see if it still runs? I'd like to upload my consciousness before I die, kplzthx.

<comment><USER3> Anders Sandberg has a great Google TechTalk on Whole Brain Emulation you may find of interest here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRB6Qzx9oXs&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRB6Qzx9oXs&feature=player_embedded)

<comment><USER4> thank you this is the best summary of hurdles we need to clear I've seen yet.</comment></comment></comment>


The toilet paper shortage is more complicated than you think - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/4/3/21206942/toilet-paper-coronavirus-shortage-supply-chain <comment><AUTHOR> Key paragraph:

> _Collectively, we probably still use the same amount of toilet paper as we > did before the pandemic, but suddenly, we're expected to use more of our own > supply. Most people are no longer eating out at restaurants or going to work > or school — places where we conveniently use the restroom and the available > toilet paper. Georgia-Pacific estimates that the average American household > will use about 40 percent more toilet paper than usual if people spend all > their time at home._

So the main culprit now isn't hoarding -- it's that consumer demand is legitimately way up, while commercial demand is way down. And they're different types of toilet paper.

<comment><USER2> From the embedded GP link

" Based on IRI panel data, along with the US Census, the average U.S. household (2.6 people) uses 409 equivalized regular rolls per year. Using our own calculations, staying at home 24-7 would result in 40% increase vs. average daily usage. Therefore, to last approximately 2 weeks, a 2-person household would need 9 double rolls, or 5 mega rolls. A 4-person household would need 17 double rolls, or 9 mega rolls to last approximately 2 weeks."

Contrary to popular opinion, hoarding has been a completely rational response for people thinking they might be locked down for a month or more and/or wanting to minimize exposure at covidmart.</comment></comment>


JupyterLab: the next generation of the Jupyter Notebook - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jupyter.org/2016/07/14/jupyter-lab-alpha/ <comment><USER2> Beaker Notebook (posted several times, but without much attention[0]) does something similar: [http://beakernotebook.com/features](http://beakernotebook.com/features)

It supports these languages: Python, Python3, R, JavaScript, SQL, C++, Scala/Spark, Lua/Torch, Java, Julia, Groovy, Node, Ruby, HTML, and Clojure.

It has an experimental native version: [https://github.com/twosigma/beaker- notebook/wiki/Electron-Be...](https://github.com/twosigma/beaker- notebook/wiki/Electron-Beaker)

Talk at SciPy 2015: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMPfLz6kKv8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMPfLz6kKv8)

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8364237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8364237)

<comment><USER3> Does Electron really count as 'native'?

<comment><USER4> Definitely not in my book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > JupyterLab adapts easily to multiple workflow needs, letting you move from a > Notebook/narrative focus to a script/console one.

I'm not sure I like where that design is going. It's starting to look an awful lot like RStudio and Matlab and I moved _away_ from those tools for a reason. My favourite thing about Jupyter is that it _is_ focused on notebooks and narrative. It brought about a revolution of sorts; now we have people blogging and writing papers in Jupyter, github is full of random useful notebooks.

This design almost seems like a step backwards in that regard.

<comment><USER6> Context: We use Jupyter _heavily_ (mostly against Spark).

In my experience there is a set of things that "traditional" Jupyter notebooks does really well. Anytime you have a linear flow of steps the notebook metaphor works really well.

However, if you are doing things approaching traditional development, where you have multiple sources of data, or loops that require debugging, or basically anything that isn't linear in nature it doesn't work so well.

I wouldn't want to lose traditional notebooks, but I'd love to be able to offer people something like this that offers better debugging and some development tool support, rather than jumping to a full desktop IDE.

<comment><USER5> My experience is in line with yours, debugging loops and functions is a big pain point.

However, I think there's a much better solution to be had here, which is to add more powerful debugging capabilities to Notebook. I think Notebook has potential for new debugging paradigms, imagine for example being able to break anywhere in a cell and get a new 'forked cell' which operates in the context of the code that you just broke into. I think that's the better direction to go instead of reverting to the very interfaces and paradigms that we moved away from.

<comment><USER7> This sounds like a promising idea.

As someone who still reaches for a Smalltalk environment when I need to prototype something, ipython notebook is about the closest thing I've ever found to the style of interaction you get with a Smalltalk REPL (aka "workspace"). Smalltalk deliberately blurs the lines between a text editor and REPL, and the debugger takes this a step further - a combined editor and REPL, within a suspended execution context. It could be argued, for example, that coding within the suspended context of a failed unit test, while the code underneath your cursor has this REPL-like liveness, is the non-cargo-cult way of doing TDD.

I'm not trying to claim Smalltalk as the Greatest Thing Ever, but its existence (and its "otherness" \- from the point of view of today's conventional style of development) are evidence that there are useful tools to be had, somewhere down a road less travelled.

<comment><USER8> I learned enough Smalltalk to make prototypes with Seaside. I love the way notebooks work and to make them more Smalltalky would be wonderful not only for programmers but for the field as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love how notebooks allow the mixing of code and output and support incremental development by letting you choose which cells to execute. But I find the semantics horrible. Each time you execute a cell you do so in an environment that depends on your entire history and cannot be figured out by simply reading the notebook. I wish for a environment which would have the same semantics as a script but which would snapshot the environment at the entry to each cell so that when a cell is modified execution does not have to resume at the beginning. Even better if downstream data dependencies are tracked so that after modifying and reexecuting a cell we know which downstream results have become stale. Does such an environment exist?

<comment><USER10> I think this persistent state is one of the main advantages of the notebook environment, or the Matlab workspace, which I guess it was inspired by. It allows you to quickly try alternative values for certain variables without having to re-calculate everything. Saving snapshots would not be feasible if the project contains large amounts of data. If you want to reset everything, just "run all" from the beginning, or use a conventional IDE with a debugger.

<comment><USER11> No, not Matlab but Mathematica: "We were inspired originally by the excellent implementation in Mathematica" [1].

[1] [http://ipython.org/ipython- doc/dev/whatsnew/version0.12.html...](http://ipython.org/ipython- doc/dev/whatsnew/version0.12.html#an-interactive-browser-based-notebook-with- rich-media-support)

<comment><USER12> And that came from Emacs and old Lisp environments---and perhaps something yet earlier?

As late as 2000, this was the single biggest advantage and single biggest impediment to new programmers in MIT's 6.001 lab: a bunch of nonvisible state, mutated by every C-x C-e. The student has tweaked two dozen points trying to fix a small program, and re-evaluated definitions after many of them, but maybe not all. The most straightforward help from a teacher is to get the buffer into a form such that M-x eval-region paves over all that, sets a known environment of top level definitions, and---more than half the time---the student's code now works.

I have similar concerns about much of Victor's work, for the same reason. Managing a mental model of complex state is a n important skill for programming, but it's best learned incrementally over long experience with more complex programs. These very interactive environments front load the need for that skill without giving any obvious structure for helping the student learn.

Contrast Excel and HyperCard, which have no invisible state: you can click and see everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love Jupyter notebooks, I just wish I could use them in a dedicated program instead of having to run a server and using a browser based client. It feels hacky and I just prefer native apps for coding and the browser for reading documentation and similar. Even an Electron based program that could be associated with notebook files and hide the server-client model would make it nicer to use. At the moment I like to open notebooks in a tab in the browser built into Visual Studio, with the editor open in a tab next to it. With some custom CSS this can be made to look pretty nice, although it's far from perfect.

There's of course value in being able to share notebooks and view them in browsers, I'd just prefer a more native experience when editing them. Maybe an extension for Visual Studio Code would be a good idea?

<comment><USER14> You should check this [https://github.com/nteract/hydrogen/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/nteract/hydrogen/blob/master/README.md) out.

<comment><USER15> Holy cow I never knew that existed! My life could have been so much different the past few months had I known.. I bet I even skimmed past it on HN without even looking.. Shame on me

<comment><USER16> Ditto! Amazing. Seems the inverse of notebooks where it is a notebook with predominantly text and a box with code and results. I'm going to take Hydrogen for a spin.

I still rely heavily on Mathematica, since the notebook interface won me over years and years ago. I think the next Mathematica paradigm to be redone in JupyterLab is easy connections to data without all the connection string fuss. You can just put in some basic phrases in Mathematica, and you are connected to the data, albeit curated by Wolfram, but still simple and immediate.

I can link to Mathematica from NetLogo and other programs I use too.

<comment><USER17> I found Jupyter notebooks more stable than Mathematica.

<comment><USER16> In what sense? I only get glitches in Mathematica when I am hitting extremely huge curated data from Wolfram and trying to do something at the same time. I have only used Jupyter notebooks for a page or two, and mostly toy problems, so I can't say I have stress tested them. I do like Hydrogen, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> (disclaimer: I'm one of the authors of the scipy talk the post is about...)

First: JupyterLab is definitely still alpha-level software, and is undergoing very rapid iteration.

I notice that a lot of comments are missing one of the most important ideas behind JupyterLab. It's built on a very flexible plugin framework (provided by PhosphorJS), and all components are provided as plugins. JupyterLab essentially is a reference set of components, but we really see people creating their own components, and a rich 3rd party ecosystem. This also sets a foundation for exploring other ideas for what a web notebook might look like, etc, and provides an easy way to distribute such a component. More than just extending via components, we've paid a lot of attention to getting having a good keyboard shortcut system, a good command/command palette system, etc. The video of the talk shows some simple examples of how JupyterLab can be extended: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejh0ftSjk6g&list=PLYx7XA2nY5...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejh0ftSjk6g&list=PLYx7XA2nY5Gf37zYZMw6OqGFRPjB1jCy6&index=58).

Also, I see several people talking about having a UI that is really focused on notebooks. We definitely plan on an easy way to maximize a single pane (which might be a notebook, etc.) to be able to focus on one thing.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the video. Looks really great!

One thing I missed is a more detailed discussion of the Command palette. Will it also be extensible? Can plugins add their own commands to it for example?

<comment><USER18> That's the only way commands are added. Every command on there was added by a plugin. You can see a simple example in the about plugin: a command is created at [https://github.com/jupyter/jupyterlab/blob/6d540709ad64e7767...](https://github.com/jupyter/jupyterlab/blob/6d540709ad64e7767085eeb3e05d2d6f859333fe/src/about/plugin.ts#L158), and is added to the command palette at [https://github.com/jupyter/jupyterlab/blob/6d540709ad64e7767...](https://github.com/jupyter/jupyterlab/blob/6d540709ad64e7767085eeb3e05d2d6f859333fe/src/about/plugin.ts#L173).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Jupyter started from ipython, originally mostly written in python and for python. But the project was so successful that it extended for other languages using cell magic and then kernel system. The team is now mostly using JavaScript, Typescript, except for ipython sub-project. Although it's obvious choice for schools, research, analytical work, and publications, still I really wish for more adoption in corporate environment, that got stuck in proprietary tools.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like the idea of executable cells for developing.

It's been a couple of years since I played around with Jupyter notebooks, but then I got frustrated quite soon:

Stepping outside my preferred editor (vim) was annoying, likewise I had no idea if (how?) I could export the code out of notebook to a regular .py text file (without clumsily copypasting each cell). And the .ipynb files itself seem quite terrible to manage in Git: write something and if you want to 'git diff' the changes, sometimes what you see is okay, sometimes it's not very... easily decipherable. (Text encoded image/png's?!)

My preferred workflow with R is to open the files I'm working with in both RStudio (with vim keybindings) and vim. Maybe if I just strictly restricted the use of notebook cells just for calling scripts and functions written in external files, and use the notebook as a whole just for presentation purposes, but then it wouldn't be that much an improvement over regular IPython. Any thoughts?

<comment><USER20> There's a one-line terminal command to convert to. It's like `jupyter nbconvert -o python` or something. Works okay out of the box, and has some meager customizability.

<comment><USER21> Yep, it's 'jupyter nbconvert --to python'. Docs here: [http://nbconvert.readthedocs.io/](http://nbconvert.readthedocs.io/)

It actually has a lot of customisability if you're willing to get into Jinja templates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It looks nice - I kind of wish a lot of these features would have been put into jupyter itself, though. The lack of configurability in jupyter drives me insane. Sure, the configs are editable, but the lack of proper documentation makes it incredibly difficult.

Things like turning off autocomplete and limiting jupyter's ability to freeze my browser after an accidental infininte loop would go miles for me. These days I've just gone back into vim..

<comment><USER17> Have you tried stopping or killing the kernel? I found jupyter user group on google very responsive when something is not clear or needs to be extended. Google search on jupyter is pretty bad since still points at old ipython docs, although they do have updated docs for jupyter.

<comment><USER22> Of course. Problem is, a lot of the kernel halt requests don't seem to make it 90% of the time and restarting the kernel gets annoying when using it on larger datasets. Though, it has forced me into writing easily re-runnable code which is kinda good.

<comment><USER17> There is cell magic to cache your long-running cells.

<comment><USER22> Didn't know about that one - thanks!

Any thoughts on the infinite loop problem, though? I've seen tons of threads for it in stackoverflow/github and not much ever comes from them. Lots of dev he-said-she-saids, though. Pretty big problem for a lot of us.

<comment><USER17> I replied above - could not reply here somehow initially

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So RStudio in a browser? Jokes aside, this looks great. The biggest frustration I've had with the notebooks is the organization of code. Nice to see that become a bit more compartmentalized from the execution window.

<comment><USER15> Totally agree. My larger notebooks get pretty ugly and I have to spend a fair bit of time cleaning them up. But that's probably because I am not the most organized person ever.

<comment><USER17> That is why it is better to keep a jupyter terminal or qtconsole around for quick and messy experimentation connected to the same kernel before pushing it to notebook

<comment><USER24> How?

<comment><USER17> Type in jupyter notebook the %qtconsole magic!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It seems to me that Wolfram Research missed a huge opportunity here with regards to Mathematica Notebooks and the Worlfram Cloud. They didn't see or ignored the momentum that open source and the web can gain.

</comment><comment><USER26> I love the notebook paradigm and executable cells and sharability of the whole thing (from ipython notebooks). Those still seem to be there, but the look and feel seems to take the system a step back towards a 90's style IDE with the tabs and file management.

that said probably still probably a good system on balance..

</comment><comment><USER27> How does this differ from Rodeo [1]?

[1] [http://blog.yhat.com/posts/introducing- rodeo.html](http://blog.yhat.com/posts/introducing-rodeo.html)

<comment><USER17> Rodeo is python-only last time I checked. Also it is missing notebooks, widgets, extensions, rich outputs, server architecture, multi-user support. Rodeo is closer to spyder than jupyter.

<comment><USER27> Thank you for the answer! So JupyterLab would have much more funtionality

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I see lots of "this is turning into RStudio" comments- but that's kind of the point of jupyterlab. Brian Granger was on a podcast recently[1] and spoke about how he feels RStudio has been great for the R community and wants to Proliferate that for other languages.

I think it's easy for us to forget we are the developer minority. Many, many developers (especially hobbyists and researchers) live and love the safety and guiderails of an IDE.

[1] [http://partiallyderivative.com/podcast/2016/07/11/brian- gran...](http://partiallyderivative.com/podcast/2016/07/11/brian-granger- interview)

<comment><USER6> I think this misinterprets what people here are saying.

I suspect that many people here like IDEs, but think that notebooks are a a different thing that is valuable in themselves. I feel this way myself, but provided the notebook-style interface remains I don't see that exploring other options is a bad thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> also Pharo smalltalk is a wonderfull context for live immersive coding. Try to see this video with Roassal 2 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXUZiFtnxK8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXUZiFtnxK8)

</comment><comment><USER30> Am I crazy for thinking this might replace my current IDE (cloud9) for some workflows??

<comment><USER17> Not if you are doing significant refactoring and debugging

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does it include a variable Explorer? That's the main thing I'm missing

<comment><USER18> It doesn't (yet). I really hope eventually it will include a number of debugging tools, a variable explorer being one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Jupyter is a pain to sto a set up and configure for PHP on windows. I love it on Linux but Anaconda isn't exactly an out of the box solution.

</comment><comment><USER33> What is the advantage of the graphical console vs. the notebook? I don't get (yet) why I would need the console when I have the notebook.

<comment><USER18> One thing people use it for is ephemeral computations that they don't need/want to be saved, so they don't want to bother with dealing with a notebook file.

Another thing we could support in the future is easily switching kernels mid- stream in the console. Maybe that makes sense---it did come up in conversation yesterday night here at scipy.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can technology increase accountability? - <AUTHOR> Wondering how we can increase "skin in the game" and accountability for politicians, governments, and companies... <comment><USER2> Ive always though about something like a project planning. They have to submit the project (proposals) before election and once elected, update their status, giving feedback later. And maybe even a kind of point systems, where if they dont get a minimum, they are out and we elect another one for the position.

Something like this: I want to make illegal to ride bikes. So i have to draft the law, maybe meet someone against and in favor, redo if needed, pass by review, submit it to the congress (or whatever), work on the "comments" made at the discussion, etc.

Each of these steps are kind of "taks" in the sense of the project, and so, trackable. All can be done through technology and can even have some kind of automatic test of acceptance. And it can be acessible to everyone.

Anyway, it is just an idea. Never thought about that very deeply, and even the example may be wrong in steps haha.

</comment><comment><USER3> The cash register was used as a way to prevent theft. It seems so obvious now because it's everywhere, but this was once high tech.

I think technology can definitely do the same. We've got Charity Navigator auditing charities to keep them on track, or at least helping people funnel their donations to the right charities. Something similar could work for politicians, it's just a matter of time and donations for someone (else) to do it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm sad to think "No." only because it seems to me to come down to a combination of education (make people trust your information and get it in front of people), money (to pay the lawyers and pay for education), and charisma (that kind that cult leaders have, but in this case used for good).</comment>


Google Bug Hunter University - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/bughunteruniversity/

<comment><USER2> Turns out that the site accepts bug reports in klingon - "(And yes, Klingon is OK.)"

[https://sites.google.com/site/bughunteruniversity/improve/us...](https://sites.google.com/site/bughunteruniversity/improve/use- your-native-language)

<comment><AUTHOR> They probably put this as a joke, but someone should try sending a report in Klingon ;)</comment></comment>


Webpack 4: released today - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/webpack/webpack-4-released-today-6cdb994702d4 <comment><USER2> Some previous discussion on the GitHub release, which HN incorrectly flagged as a dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16456855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16456855)</comment>


A New Real-Estate War in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-real-estate-war-in-silicon-valley-1476829387 <comment><USER2> If you want to fight unaffordable rents, you've got two real options. The first is to do a revenue-neutral tax on landlords - preferably through a land- value tax in order to remove incentives against building tall. The related second choice is to lift development restrictions, up-zone things, and build public transit infrastructure.

Rent controls are just a short-sighted way of giving hand-outs to people who are politically connected or otherwise good at navigating bureaucracy. It's a price ceiling, with all the classic issues of them: shortages, quality reduction, search costs, deadweight loss, and misallocation of resources.

Shortages: More people want apartments than can get them.

Quality reduction: if you're in a rent-controlled apartment, the landlord knows you aren't going anywhere, so why would they improve the building in any way that they can avoid?

Search costs: joining a decade-long waiting list for an apartment. Fun.

Deadweight loss: Developers want to build places that people would benefit from renting, but they don't, because it's illegal to charge rates that would make them money.

Misallocation of resources: someone with a $400/mo rent-controlled apartment in a prime location in downtown SF will keep it forever, even if they only use it a couple weekends a year. Or people commuting from SF to Mountain View can't trade apartments with people commuting from Mountain View to SF, since they're locked into their rent-controlled place.

<comment><USER3>
        Deadweight loss: Developers want to build places that people would benefit from renting, but they don't, because it's illegal to charge rates that would make them money.

Is this because rent control would drag down market rents below the profitability level for developers? Why can't the developer charge the rent they want for new builds? Or is it because most developers expect some high amount of rent inflation when the puts units on the market?

<comment><USER2> Deadweight loss doesn't affect things that are already obviously good ideas or obviously bad ones. It only affects things on the margin - the least profitable units that developers would still be interested in building.

Suppose a developer can build as tall as they wanted to, but each additional floor is more expensive: the break-even point is that each extra floor needs $100/month additional rent per unit. If you use law to force prices $100/mo lower, then the tallest floor doesn't get built anymore, because now it's not worth building.

(And if rent controls don't actually reduce the rents that people pay, then the controls aren't actually doing anything, so why have the overhead of the law? If you're reducing prices by law, things that people want to buy at or above the reduced price and sell at or below the market price don't get traded.)

<comment><USER4> Here's a lesson from a finance course that I thought was thoroughly non- obvious: all change happens at the margin. For instance, interest rate changes cause real estate appreciation or crashes by changing the decision of buyers that are just on the cusp of being able to afford a home or not.

This is not a 100% rule, just 5 or 6 nines.

<comment><USER5> Such as with the $15 minimum wage - it's the marginal businesses that will shut down, and the people with marginal job skills who will be shut out of the job market.

<comment><USER6> In a toy economy that's definitely true, but the empirical results are mixed in the real world, where there are lots of complicated dynamics.

<comment><USER5> Any business that buys inventory at $15 and sells it for $10 is going to go out of business. What complicated dynamic would change that?

(Yes, I know that often businesses miscalculate the value of an employee, and it may have other sources of profit that cover the losses, etc., but it doesn't change the reality that the profit motive will squeeze such things out.)

<comment><USER7> People are not inventory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't supporting rent control a little like denying climate change?

When so much research and expert analysis shows something is bad, lay people are somehow oblivious "eh, I just don't believe it".

Worse yet, why is it so easy for people to like the idea of rent control but dislike the idea of cash assistance? If you want teachers (or whomever) to be able to live nearby, fine then _just give them a cash subsidy_.

Giving out cash doesn't kill the market economy, allows the benefit to be given out precisely, and anyone you want can pay for it via a tax - landlords, rich people, sales tax, whatever.

Do nothing or do something, just don't do rent control which hurts everyone.

<comment><USER4> It has the same problem as climate change: it directly and obviously impacts their personal economics on a big scale. Global warming regulation makes companies that employ millions say they'll have to start firing people, and they will if it passes, and anti-rent-control measures mean a lot of current San Franciscans would have to move because in the short term any change in the regulations will cause their landlord to eject them (raise prices beyond what they can pay, not that raise prices by itself wouldn't be enough).

People are always saying that it's bad that people don't vote for their own self-interest but forget that there is a reasonable time horizon for decisions, and it's not infinite.

For people living at the margin, for whom it matters most as they'll be the ones affected, that time horizon is zero. At a zero time horizon the decision is obvious : no to change ! Yes to more rent control !

The minimum time horizon for considering these economics would be the amount of time it takes for new buildings to get built, which I imagine would be 2-3 years at least. If you consider the reasonable time needed for the building supply in San Francisco to exceed supply, we should say this measure will only start helping people when the market is oversaturated. That may never happen. Realistically, anything less than 10 years seems to me a very long shot.

<comment><USER9> " Realistically, anything less than 10 years seems to me a very long shot."

Except in the case of climate change the time horizon under consideration should be more like 100 to 1000 years.

<comment><USER4> This is known as a fallacy in economics. You should have a time horizon on your decisions, and of course, it should not exceed, let's say, 10 years less than your expected lifespan.

So something like 50-60 years is the longest considered timespan. Rewards on that sort of timeframe have to be extreme (essentially 1.04 __50=7, as in 7 times ROI would be the risk-free rate. For an investment with minimal risk a factor 30 or so would be required)

<comment><USER9> Indeed, I was pointing out that anti-global-warming policies are not likely to be economically viable on a living individual's time scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rent control is a terrible idea for controlling cost. This is basically universally agreed upon by all economists. You just artificially reduce the supply of housing because people in rent control places will not leave. On top of that it actually makes it more difficult for low income people to rent since you have to have a sterling rental history to get a rent control apartment.

So you actually just exacerbate the situation. Rent control is one of those things that sounds good at face value but once you think about it a little more you realize it's a terrible idea.

<comment><USER11> Well, for the people who have a tent controlled apartment it's certainly not terrible for controlling cost. Be more specific.

<comment><USER12> They were specific to the situation you mentioned.

>because people in rent control places will not leave.

What kind of details are you looking for here? That they don't leave because it's likely the lowest possible they would be able to find, and that the tenants would be increasing their cost otherwise.

<comment><USER13> Wouldn't another apartment they might move to also be rent controlled?

<comment><USER12> that's if there is one open. argument made is that people that have rent controlled apartments don't leave for economic reasons. this would mean it lessens the supply of rent controlled apartment in the area.

the competition for a place is high in the bay area, so even if they find and apply for an apartment doesn't mean they'll get it. my personal situation is worse due to me finding rooms instead of entire apartments. lived in 4-5 different places in last 4 years. I would get a response rate of ~5% from craiglist when looking in SF, percentage better in the peninsula. Usually competing against 10+ people viable applicants each time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Rent control just creates an even less regulated, shady sub-industry of subletting, where the lucky ones who got in under rent control basically keep the apartment for life and skim the difference between what they pay, and the real market value.

<comment><USER15> In SF it's illegal to charge more than the actual rent to subletters.

<comment><USER16> That's never stopped people in NYC. Not sure about SF, but I imagine it is similar. The profit motive is too huge.

<comment><USER17> It's never stopped people in SF. I know a couple people renting extra rooms and making a profit off of it. That is, their rent is zero and they actually pocket money each month.

<comment><USER18> So do I. Also in NYC, West Hollywood, and Santa Monica. And the subletter is also getting a deal, so they stay quiet.

<comment><USER17> Exactly, the rent control can keep rents so low, that the subletter gets a great deal even though their rent for one room pays for the whole house. Why would they bring it up with the tenant board?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We have a pie. It only has a certain number of slices. Unfortunately there are more people who want a slice than there are slices. That sucks.

There's a lot of way we could determine who gets a slice and who doesn't get a slice. We could give slices to people who have been there longer. Or we could let people who have more money and value the pie slice sufficiently high to spend their money buy a slice. We could give some money to people who really really want a slice but just can't afford it. We can debate and argue about all the ways we could pick the pie slice winners.

But at the end of the day it doesn't matter. The exact same number of people will get slices. And the exact same number of people will not get a slice. All we're doing is picking winners and losers in different ways.

The only debate that matters is the one that grows the pie. We need more pie so more people can have a slice. Taking a slice from Peter to hand to Paul is an utter waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER20> This sounds like a left-wing/market-sceptic attempt to solve a very real problem.

I wonder what a more broad-based proposal would look like, one that also had some right-wing/market-friendly features. The left gets rent controls, and the right gets what? As-of-right construction? Relaxed zoning rules? Whatever it is, it would have to be pretty major for the right to put up with rent controls.

(By "the right" I mean pro-business democrats mostly, because we are taking about a very blue area of the country.)

<comment><USER21> As of right construction is probably the best solution, and it was recently proposed by the governor of California, who is a Democrat and is generally perceived to be very liberal.

The problem with the Bay Area is not just zoning -- it's the fact that even when land is zoned for housing, all kinds of local advocacy groups can prevent development by filing frivolous lawsuits and demanding further environmental reviews (even when thorough environmental reviews were already conducted).

As of right construction would prevent many of those kinds of lawsuits.

Jerry Brown's proposal was probably the kind of compromise you are looking for: as of right construction would apply to developments with a certain percentage of subsidized housing. (The nice thing about subsidies versus rent control is that they are means-tested, so you won't end up with high-income earners taking advantage of rent control and low-income earners paying market rate.) Unfortunately, his proposal did not get anywhere.

<comment><USER20> It would also help if the incentives shifted. Right now, cities make money on business land use, but lose money on residential land use (on average). So either residents need to lower their expectations of services, or start paying more taxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Question to landlords: does rent control hurt your bottom line?

I understand the opportunity costs of rent control: if rents in your neighbourhood have gone up 50% this year you feel like a sucker if you can only raise them by 5%.

Similarly you might put off minor renovations (that don't require the tenant moving out) because you won't necessarily be able to charge more to make up for the cost (apart from selling the property).

But is it common to rent out a property below cost, assuming you can make it up later with rent increases? E.g. you just bought a property in Mountain View so your mortgage payments are high, plus the cost of all of the new appliances, and maybe it's an older house so labour and maintenance costs are higher than the $4k/mo you charge in rent.

<comment><USER2> Forget the cash flow of renting out a property for a second, and just consider selling it. If you have an apartment with a tenant paying below market rate, that property is worth less money to potential buyers because of the rent- controlled tenant they'd be stuck with.

And buying or building real estate for speculative purposes is extraordinarily common.

<comment><USER23> No one has ever shed a tear for real-estate speculators.

<comment><USER24> >real-estate speculators

Also called "every house owner in the western world".

<comment><USER25> I'm a home owner in the Western world and I don't consider myself a real estate speculator. I "bought" my house because I really, really liked it and wanted it to be my home for a very, very long time. Buying the house gives that a better chance of happening, as my payments will remain consistent and I get certain protections as a homeowner I wouldn't otherwise have. Whether I make money on it or not is immaterial to me as I don't plan to sell. While I'd like the value of the home to go down (taxes), it hasn't influenced my decision to stay in it -- so far.

I think a lot of homeowners feel this way and aren't in way "speculators", but they're a non-vocal population.

By the way, I put "bought" in quotes because it often seems like I'm renting it from the state.

<comment><USER26> Meanwhile most Americans first home purchase, if they can even afford one, is not their forever home.

Due to all the handouts to banks through the mortgage industry that have in part caused house prices to go up like they have (ie. QE), many first time buyers have to leverage themselves to the hilt for their first underwhelming home in order to hopefully one day sell for enough to let them ladder up to a nice home.

People would much rather own their forever home and not have to worry about selling at some point like you, but that just isn't the reality for most. So speculation is almost forced in the sense that if you want to own your forever home at some point, you have to play the leverage game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> High apartment and real estate costs are the outcome of a variety of factors. I.e., it's a multidimensional equation. Attacking it by capping the rents is like saying that we are going to legislate 2 + 2 = 3.75.

</comment><comment><USER28> The way to stop rents from rising is simple: Make sure there's enough new supply of housing to meet new demand. A lot of people are moving to the Valley but environmental / historical / construction / neighborhood regulations slow down new housing because existing residents don't want their neighborhood "ruined" by new residents and traffic. Attempting to solve rising rents by legally regulating what the market can charge is not a great idea. It will be even harder to find a vacant apartment as people hang onto their rent controlled units, and landlords will have a big incentive to find a way to throw people out of their homes to collect a higher rent as prices rise. Basically existing residents get subsidized as new people trying to move in get fucked over, which works perfectly for politicians who are not elected by people who don't live here yet.

</comment><comment><USER29> Japan seems to be in vogue here on HN atm but I think we in the west could learn from their zoning laws. All they do is set the maximum zone that can be used.

[http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/japanese- zoning.h...](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> I keep seeing stories about rents falling like this one: [http://www.siliconbeat.com/2016/10/14/hard-believe-rents- fel...](http://www.siliconbeat.com/2016/10/14/hard-believe-rents-fell-san- jose-san-francisco/)

<comment><USER3> I'm in a new apartment building (I'm the first tenant in my unit) on Ocean Ave about a 10 min walk from Balboa Park. There are still a handful of units in this building of about 30 units that are unoccupied, almost a year after construction finished. Admittedly, most of the empty units are 2 beds, which I can see being harder to fill than the 1 beds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Mirror, non-paywall. [http://www.nasdaq.com/article/a-new-realestate-war-in- silico...](http://www.nasdaq.com/article/a-new-realestate-war-in-silicon- valley-20161020-01097)

</comment><comment><USER32> For those of you living in the bay area what's your take on the future of this situation?

I'm genuinely curious because I think in a few years from now Denver will be in the exact same boat.

<comment><USER33> My feeling is firm pessimism.

Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" As the WSJ says, we have "tenant organizations, unions and church groups" fighting to pass rent control. They all face imminent declines in power if their constituents have to leave. I guess they are hoping for breathing room, until either the economy collapses or "permanent BMR units" can be built to help with the inevitable churn. But rent control by itself makes the situation even worse for the working class.

No amount of science and repeated real-world demonstrations seem to matter to the self-appointed "soul" of the community.[0] The people are, on the whole, just looking for somebody to follow, and the activists are indoctrinating the kids early and often. Horrible legislation has a decent chance of becoming law.

[0][http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/san- fran...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/san-francisco-is- confused-about-the-villain-thats-making-it-unaffordable/422091/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> No mention of Prop 13?

<comment><USER35> I was thinking the same thing. Prop 13 is basically rent control for homeowners/landlords. It _dramatically_ increases friction in the real estate market, and increases NIMBY'ism by giving people huge incentives to avoid doing smart things, like downsizing from a house into a condo due to tax increases.

While I lived in Mountain View, I rented a house built in the 50s that was renovated in the early 2000s (but renovated carefully to stay within the prop 13 guidelines). Houses up and down the street were selling for well over $1M, and they were smaller and in rougher shape than our rental. I've recently seen some houses in that neighborhood go for $1.4M So let's assume our rental was worth 1.2M The landlord bought the house in the 70s. I just checked the Santa Clara county property tax for this house: $1760.36 / year on an assessed value of $130K. This is for a house whose market value is roughly 10x that!!

So an owner of a house has a roughly 90% discount on his property tax, but only as long has he neither moves, nor improves his house. This causes lots of older folks to remain in houses that are far too large for them. Like older people everywhere, these people oppose "change". They want the neighborhood to look exactly the same as it did 40 to years ago when they moved in. They don't want condo or apartment buildings. The oppose new development of any kind. Meanwhile, they pay next to no property taxes, and the schools are falling apart, and there is no money for improvements that could help with traffic (like more bridges over or tunnels under the Caltrain tracks) or other services.

I'm so glad that I'm back to living in a sane market on the East coast, and don't have to deal with this issue anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> _In all, the proposals ' opponents have raised more than $1.8 million against the measures in the five cities, according to campaign finance records, largely from groups like the National Association of Realtors and an array of landlords including apartment giant Equity Residential. That far outstrips the roughly $200,000 reported raised by various groups supporting rent control._

Real estate is a broken industry. Moreso in the Bay area, but the negative effects there ripple outward. See: [http://ecosteader.com/alternative](http://ecosteader.com/alternative)

In the Airbnb story yesterday, my comment (which was maliciously downvoted), was this:

"Landlords and Realtors get their cut every time there's a turnover in occupancy. Interestingly, this is the root problem at both ends -- from people living in poverty (Portland's sidewalk tent campers who get shuffled around), those suburbanites affected by the housing "crisis", and those who can afford to own in any upscale hip-n-trendy neighborhoods where Airbnb rentals are desperately sought. Those rooting for turnover are usually those who profit the most from it.

Sure, people travel and need to rent rooms once in a while. People like to rent while they're young and mobile, but the two use cases need very serious and separate delineation from each other. Airbnb is pushing them more into "overlap" territory. Airbnb's expansion into "subletting" was the kicker.

So, long story made short: it's an interesting economics problem I've been working on solving in my spare time, as a very long and iterated side project with Ecosteader (ecosteader.com). Some of the details emerging need a better format for communication; however, the most clear thing to come from my research is that people need to _own_, and they need to be able to transact with each other directly. Middlemen (Airbnb is the middleman here) taking significant commissions is part of the problem.

But the middlemen problem has sort of an obvious solution: to tax rental income so aggressively that it's just not an appealing source of investment to people who invest in rentals. Use the tax generated from over-inflated rents to build properties for sale, and/or figure out a way to use that money to grant-deed land on which people can build. This last option seems the more fun opportunity to me, and is what I originally had in mind building an eco- site.

The homesteading movement needs to come back, adapted a bit for the 21st century."

Disagree if you want... but explain how the problem can be solved better any other way.

<comment><USER37> Most Americans do not have the savings required to own in cities. Ownership might be a solution that works for you, but penalizing landlords penalizes renters who can't afford ownership.

<comment><USER38> Whether it's affordable to own in cities isn't entirely independent of what restrictions we put on landlords. To take one end of the restrictions scale: if being a landlord were simply banned, i.e. you could occupy property but not rent it out, purchase prices of apartments in most situations would end up lower. Copenhagen does that in large swathes of its property market, for example, by requiring owner-occupancy in some categories of housing. And you can clearly see the price differential: apartments in the buildings that allow unrestricted rental have much higher purchase prices than otherwise similar apartments in buildings restricted to owner-occupancy, by often a factor of 2-3x. (That isn't to say as a policy proposal this would fix SF's particular problems, just that purchase prices aren't independent of landlords' role in the property market, as prospective owner-occupiers have to bid against prospective landlords in cases where landlordism is permitted.)

<comment><USER37> We agree with each other. Restricting rentals reduces competition for owning homes, which lowers the price to purchase a home. You'll get more homeowners. Everyone who still rents is worse off because the supply of rental housing has been choked off. They will live in less desirable neighborhoods than they would in a world without such restrictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Rent control is going to happen. What it will do is set the price level where it is currently at. It will only be for apartments and those built before 1995 and it will become hard to get into those apartments. Condos, SFH, duplexes etc.. won't be affected but maybe those rents won't rise "as much".

</comment><comment><USER40> Can somebody TL;DR this one? I don't want to subscibe/register.

<comment><USER20> "Voters in five small and midsize cities in the Bay Area are set to decide Nov. 8 on whether to enact various forms of rent regulation that would keep rent increases for existing tenants pegged near the rate of inflation.

"Tenant organizations, unions and church groups are knocking on thousands of doors in an effort to drum up support for measures designed to protect apartment dwellers from runaway rents.

"On the other side, landlords and real-state agents are pouring money into mailers and television ads in a vigorous effort to battle the initiatives."

You can get around the paywall by typing the title of the article into Google, and clicking on the link to wsj.com.

<comment><USER40> Thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Reactiflux Slack community shuttering - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/reactiflux/volunteers/issues/17#issuecomment-147300333 <comment><USER2> Kind of sad about this.</comment>