Asperger's and IT: Dark secret or open secret? - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9072119&pageNumber=1 <comment><USER2> It's important to note that it's not clear that Asperger's actually exists as a separate set of people, rather than simply as a group of people who's personality fits in some distant corner of the normal distribution.

I.e., I'm saying I want to see a continuous stable functional _with a margin_ (1) to distinguish between asperger's and non-aspergers before I take it too seriously as a "condition". As far as I know, this has never been done.

(Note that I'm not disputing full fledged autism. I'm just uncertain about aspergers.)

(1) For those unfamiliar with stats, this is what I mean. Let x be an N dimensional vector, representing the personality/physical features of people (i.e. x[1] = propensity for antisocial behavior, x[2] = seizure frequency, x[...] = other diagnostic criteria). Then I'd like to see a continuous function f(x) such that if f(x)>1, you have aspergers, f(x)<0 you don't, and _the probability that 0 <f(x)<1 is very small_.

</comment><comment><USER3> As an aspie myself, I generally try not to let people know about it, but I debated on something in my resume the last time I was job-searching.

I co-founded a major AS website with 17k+ registered users, but you definitely don't want to disclose a disability in the hiring process. But a cursory Google search on me would reveal the same, so I left the mention in. Additionally, it's well-known in the IT industry.

In retrospect, I should have left it out.

<comment><USER4> >In retrospect, I should have left it out.

No, in retrospect, the company you were interviewing with would not have enjoyed your services anyway, if your disability was indeed the key factor. More importantly, you probably wouldn't have liked the environment either.

You've created an immensely popular and beneficial website (no, I don't have AS), which is something to be proud of. You shouldn't be hiding that from potential employers, regardless of the fact that some of them may be unscrupulous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dark secret? No way.

I can't even count on my fingers and toes the number of people I've worked with that have been either aspies or HFA... every single one of them has been someone I'd want on my team again. You give them a little direction and they will just take off.

The hardest part is containing them and stop them. They have a tendency to keep going when something is obviously not working or to tangent or drift and not realize it.

</comment><comment><USER6> One thought.

What I dislike in this text is that it treats people with Asperger syndrome as people with a problem that needs to be addressed.

What if not Aspies are wrong, but rest of the world?

When I'm in a regular office the first thing that I notice is how unproductive an average worker is. Massive amounts of time burned in bureaucracy; hours wasted during the meetings etc., etc.

<comment><USER7> You don't have to have to be socially disabled to think bureaucracy, meeetings & office politics is boring unproductive BS. Why do you think people start starups :P

It's an interesting egotistical defense I notice most autistics use; saying that everyone else is WRONG and I am RIGHT; using derogatory terms such as 'neurotypical'; which all stems from their frustration in trying to work in a social world.

<comment> a-priori While I can't speak for all people, the aspies I know use "neurotypical" as a neutral label, not a derogatory one. What would you have them call everyone else?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since one out of 150 people have some kind of autism-spectrum disorder, then it should be easy for a reporter to find people with these disorders in a wide range of occupations. A plumbing-supplies Web site could run an article about how plumbers with Asperger's use their nonverbal skills to find clogs. UPS could put something on its intranet about an autistic driver who can plan a complex route just by glancing at a map.

But "aspie IT worker" reinforces hoary stereotypes, whereas "aspie plumber" and "aspie truck driver" don't.

<comment><USER9> Well, I can't really disagree, but I would offer a slightly different interpretation: The news media, especially print media, is written by and for white-collar, upper-middle class people. It's not just the _aspie_ truck drivers, plumbers, carpenters, cops, factory workers, taxi drivers, and salesclerks that aren't getting any press: _none_ of these blue-collar workers are getting any press.

One reason that aspie IT workers got enough media attention to become a stereotype is that white-collar workers actually have to interact with them from time to time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's only going to be a matter of time before the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV- TR) starts describing anything and everything. And, if it gets into the DSM, it's by their definition "aberrant" or a problem.

It's like ADD or ADHD was a couple of years ago, it's the current trend in news reporting. I'm sure that I have a bit of ADD, but it's rather helped my career as and ER nurse. You just have to pick the right environment. I'm sure it will help me in my pursuit of being a founder, too.

</comment><comment><USER11> We should note that IT itself is a kind of an "Aspergism-Amplifier": When one has an aspie-bias before, IT might make it stronger. And when one switches from math or IT to project management and similar social activities, aspergism steps a bit back (even if the untold rules, rituals, and mean social games can be a real pain). I experienced that myself several times and know of other people who told me that, too.

And sometimes I feel that being an aspie is even caused by a dumb social environment that isolates normal people with interest in math, tech, logic, a.s.o. as nerds.

</comment><comment><USER12> Douglas Coupland touched on the subject a few years ago in his book "jPod". After reading that, it really changed the way that I looked at all of the coders / sys-admins that I know.

</comment><comment><USER13> got me</comment>


Detecting HTTPS Interception – Caddy - <AUTHOR> https://caddyserver.com/docs/mitm-detection <comment><USER2> If I compile Caddy to use in my SaaS, do I need to add "Powered by Caddy" or something like that to my website?

<comment><USER3> No - Caddy is FOSS (Apache licensed)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the most complex commonplace consumer product? - <AUTHOR> I was thinking today that many of the really commonplace consumer products we have today involve incredible amounts of complexity...smartphones, electric cars (even regular cars!), smart tvs, laptops, etc. All of these are built on really incredible technologies not to mention deep supply chains with tons of steps.<p>What do you think is the most complex consumer product that's pretty commonplace today? <comment><USER2> Luxury hybrid-electric powered automobiles.

Even if you skip the mechanics of internal combustion, Luxury vehicles have terrible user interfaces, tons of features (GPS, audio video systems, cameras, auto pilot systems), and crazy complex supply chains required to produce. Not to mention things like regulations for emissions and safety concerns.

In fact they can only get away with it because design cycles are ~5 years with only minor cosmetic changes between those years (yep, your "new" vehicle started in a manufacturing cycle 5 years ago with a design cycle 7-10 years ago)

Add on the quackiest institutionalized distribution model (required franchises)... and certainly it could be argued that automobiles as a whole had to augment the entire physical landscape of the United States. I think its pretty safe to say they win the complexity award.</comment>


Specialising Dynamic Techniques for Implementing Ruby (TruffleRuby, 2015) - <AUTHOR> https://chrisseaton.com/phd/ <comment><AUTHOR> discussion from 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791428](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791428)</comment>


In Oracle vs. Google article WSJ states "Android == sh*t" - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703843804575534233143802558.html

<comment><AUTHOR> With one strategically looked-over space WSJ says "Android == sh*t".

"Oracle's suit, filed in August, is part of a surge in patent complaints in the fast-moving mobile-phone market--with >> Google'shit Android software << a particular focus."

<comment><USER2> I think it's typo, "Google'ish" became "Google'shit".

<comment><USER3> Actually, I think the author meant "Google's hit" as in "successful".</comment></comment></comment>


56% of Americans have Internet data caps; FCC asked to investigate - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/56-of-americans-have-internet-data-caps-fcc-asked-to-investigate.ars <comment><USER2> Verizon did something interesting with their wireless network: they track heavy bandwidth users and throttle them during peak traffic periods. [1]

That seems like a more reasonable option than hard traffic caps. It's no surprise more wired ISPs aren't using that strategy, though... hard caps generate revenue, while rate limiting heavy users doesn't. That wouldn't be such a problem if there were healthy competition in most metro markets, but there isn't.

Verizon FIOS is one of the few good [fast] U.S. wireline ISP options left that doesn't cap traffic. It's too bad many markets are still de-facto duopolies (from the days when there was a meaningful distinction between "telephone" and "cable" companies aside from layers 1-2). FIOS isn't available here, and if it were I'd switch in a heartbeat because of AT&T's incompetence [2].

[1] [http://www.tekgoblin.com/2011/02/03/verizon-to-throttle- high...](http://www.tekgoblin.com/2011/02/03/verizon-to-throttle-high- bandwidth-users/)

[2] [http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/users/2011-02/msg00...](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/users/2011-02/msg00074.html)

<comment><USER3> I full heartedly support throttling during peak traffic, but I don't see a reason for bandwidth capping.

We should all rise up as one and really ask, if we are now paying $X for $Y GB of data, why doesn't it roll over like Minutes or a persistent commodity.

I'd also like to point out Charter Communications doesn't throttle nor cap their bandwidth and yet the service is great!

<comment><USER4> _We should all rise up as one and really ask, if we are now paying $X for $Y GB of data, why doesn't it roll over like Minutes or a persistent commodity._

Because user bandwidth is not, by definition, a persistent commodity. ISPs do not accrue bandwidth every month they are under capacity, so why should users?

<comment><USER5> I disagree completely. It's just like real estate: since I only use about 50% of the floor space in my apartment at any given time, I roll over my unused square footage and only pay rent every other month.

<comment><USER6> The difference is when you don't use your bandwidth, the company benefits, but when you don't use your square footage, a company doesn't gain anything.

<comment><USER7> The ISP company only benefits if their pipe is saturated 100% at that moment. If they had spare capacity at that point in time, it's of no use to them and they can't carry it over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My I.S.P. (Frontier) wanted to cap DSL at 5 GB a month!

I'm not against metered billing, in principle, but the rates would have to be reflective of what it costs to provision the marginal bandwidth.

The bandwidth cap issue highlights two crises that the industry faces: (i) the nature of fiber optic networks is such that it's several orders of magnitude cheaper to move data between hubs in major cities than it is to move it over the "last mile" to the consumer and (ii) video streaming from Youtube, Netflix and other providers is starting to provide real competition for cable television.

(i) leads to pricing schemes that don't reflect the cost of provisioning services; installing the "last mile" might cost a few thousand dollars up front, but this gets amortized over bills that a customer pays over a long time. Upgrading a customer to a higher speed tier is the only way that the ISP can offer "better service for more money" to a customer but the increase almost certainly won't be reflective of the difference in costs. As we've seen in the airline industry, crazy pricing leads to pathology in the long time.

As for (ii), ISP's can't be seen as good actors when they are in the competitive cable television business. As customers turn on to streaming video, utilization is outpacing the rate at which ISPs want to invest in infrastructure -- and in the long term, the many ISPs which are cable providers realize that customers who've got access to Netflix and other streaming video services might decide they don't need to blow $80 a month for 500 channels full of crap.

<comment><USER9> (ii) is a real threat to the cable companies. My apartment building pays for basic cable, but I haven't even hooked up a tuner the entire time I've lived here. I pay for Comcast's 50Mbit/s plan and get my video from Hulu/Netflix/YouTube, and yet YouTube still stutters and buffers frequently.

<comment><USER8> you bet. one underlying problem is the pricing model. you get "take it or leave it" packages that were negotiated by guys in suits between cable companies and content owners (who are often different units of the same business.)

as a result, you pay for Fox News when you pay for basic cable in many places, but you can't get Al Jazeera English. The consumer's got no way to say "I don't care for Spongebob Squarepants" or "I don't want my kids watching those stupid live action shows about rich kids that are on the Disney Channel" short of withdrawing from the system alltogether.

With no market discipline on the individual channels, they can keep sucking worse and worse until people eventually give up on the whole package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why can't people apply non-internet concepts to the internet/ISPs? Do utilities give you unlimited electricity, gas, and water? Of course not. Does everyone who goes to McDonald's pay a flat fee of $5 and get as much as they want? Resources are scarce and the people who voluntarily provide them shouldn't be required by law to provide it infinitely without charging more or capping usage.

<comment><USER11> No one is saying caps, in principle, ought to be illegal, the argument you seem to be attacking.

The article is arguing that the caps are out of sync with the actual scarcity of the resource. Prices are rising and caps are dropping, even though bandwidth is becoming cheaper and more available. That suggests the caps aren't being used to make people pay for resources they use, but rather to trick people into spending money they didn't realize they'd be on the hook for. That's sneaky and skeezy.

It's like the banks that charge a $50 overdraft fee on each of six trivial transactions. No one is saying there shouldn't be a fee, but if it's turning into a significant profit stream, something's not right.

<comment><USER10> My point is also to counter the outrage over usage-based pricing. What is so unfair about the idea of ISPs charging per/KB similar to how an electric utility charges per/KWh?

Prices are rising for services and commodities in almost every industry. For instance, cotton has hit record highs this year, food is more expensive, gas is higher, etc. We're in an inflationary economy right now, so I don't think ISPs should be singled out for raising prices as their costs increase (e.g. they have to pay rising utility costs, salaries/benefits/health coverage, property taxes, etc). Perhaps what should be examined is change in net profit margins for ISPs that cap usage, but even if that rises, it is hard to know with certainty if the "sneaky and skeezy" "tricks" were the factor. One could argue if their tactics are indeed so "sneaky and skeezy" that they would loose business in the long run and negatively impact their profit margin.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure utilities are a good comparison point for two reasons. The first is that the marginal cost of internet data is near zero while the marginal cost of electricity generation is not. Secondly, utilities generally are more highly regulated than ISPs.

The reason it can be distasteful when an ISP raises its rates or limits its services is that ISPs often have a monopoly over many of their customers. At best most people get to choose from a duopoly, so the ISPs don't really have to compete in a free market.

<comment><USER10> The marginal costs of commercial software is even lower, but most vendors charge in a mostly linear manner; it's not like they decrement their prices for each sale they make to keep a steady cost-to-price ratio. Why should they? If enough people want to still voluntarily purchase their product/service, they should continue to try and make as much money as possible. If their are few good options, then the market is ripe for competition to help bring the incumbents back to offering better values.

Isn't this a site revolving around entrepreneurs in IT? Doesn't everyone want to make more money then they spend?

<comment><USER13> If the market was actually open for competition, then there _would_ be alternatives and no-one would complain about caps, they'd just move to another provider.

The fact that bitching about the caps is people's only option should tip you off to the fact that the market is not, in fact, open.

<comment><USER10> There is definitely competition, but even if there wasn't, that would mean that the existing provider was good enough. What's stopping more alternatives from appearing besides this? Probably looming legislation more than anything. If you really hate it, instead of spending your energy lobbying for regulations, go start your own ISP that gives everyone the world for a lower flat rate. I'm sure you'll stay in business for a long time.

<comment><USER14> In countries where there is actual competition between ISPs, such as Sweden, and other parts of Europe, there are no caps. And our ISPs don't seem to suffer for it. I'm sure they'd love to have caps, but the first one to do it will just start bleeding customers, and none of them can afford that since the market is saturated.

I have a throttle cap on my mobile internet though, I can use as much internet as I like on my iPhone for a flat fee, but if I go over 5GB in a month, they may throttle my speed for the next month. That's pretty fair, I guess, but they're building out 4G now with even faster mobile internet, so those caps are probably going to disappear slowly as people move over to newer technology with more bandwidth than the current 3G/EDGE systems.

Stop being an apologist.

<comment><USER15> > In countries where there is actual competition between ISPs

How do you define competition between ISPs?

<comment><USER14> Where I am, I can choose between nine different ADSL providers, one cable provider, and about six different mobile broadband providers. All of them want me to switch to them, and they differ slightly in pricing, bundling, triple- play, customer service, speed, etc.

<comment><USER15> That's not what I'm asking. I have multiple providers of DSL internet, cable, and mobile providers, all with varying services, pricing, etc. Each one applies caps.

Where you are, are their lies that affect providers in that area? Or is it all pure competition?

Did those 9 ADSL providers all lay their own line, or is their laws in effect that make those providers lease their lines out to other providers?

Basically, is it pure competition?

<comment><USER14> The copper network is owned by TeliaSonera, the former state telephone monopoly, but they were forced to open that up to competitors so anyone could install DSLAMs in the phone stations, etc. There's competing national fiber networks as well, so no ISP has a stranglehold on the DSL market.

There's no competition and choice for cable though, you have the cable company you have, and that's it.

For GSM networks, there's three separate, and two or three 3G networks, so there's competition there as well.

In a few months my house is gonna be hooked up to the city fiber network, at which point I can choose from another bunch of ISPs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What are these "data caps" you people are talking about? We don't have them on regular broadband, mobile broadband or mobile internet here?

Kind regards, Sweden

<comment><USER16> So what happens if you start using your internet connection at full capacity 24/7, and so do all the other customers of your ISP?

On the kind of fast connections you have over there, you could easily run up hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of bandwidth charges for your ISP. Will they just operate at a loss, or will the government step in and pay the bandwidth costs, or will they throttle your speed down?

<comment><USER14> I assume you can be throttled if you use too much, and in that weird scenario, I assume the ISP would throttle everyone to balance costs.

Then again, most of our ISPs are tier1 or tier2 networks, so I assume they don't worry too much about peering costs.

<comment><USER13> There wouldn't even need to be any explicit throttling - when a site gets slashdotted or whatever everyone trying to access it slows to a crawl, but it's not because individual user's ISPs are throttling them. An ISP that was saturating its outbound links might drop packets according to some algorithm to ensure "fairness" rather than at random, but that's still not throttling, that's "our network is too congested to keep up with demand".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The root problem is a lack of competition.

Ideas like government forcing service competition over the physical lines along easements granted by the a government should be explored.

<comment><USER18> It's more than just lack of competition. What's happened is all cable television and phone companies have realized they are completely fucked. The Internet is way more disruptive than they originally thought. With VOIP and Netflix/bittorrent nobody needs a phone or television anymore. So there is a conflict of interest growing among the only companies that are providing broadband internet.

These companies don't want to be relegated to simple utilities with low profit margins, and so they are doing everything in their power to keep the cost of data rising even while their cost of the bandwidth drops by half each year. With bandwidth caps and usage-based billing at 5000% profit margin they are simply begging the government to crack down on what ends up being highway robbery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Comcast has 250GB/month cap. If you go over it, you are put on the lowest plan (no matter what you are paying) until they decide you can handle it.

I went over it by about 100GB last month and I got my service turned off. I wasn't even downloading torrents.

<comment><USER20> That is a lie <http://i.imgur.com/12nWd.png>

Oops that's slightly outdated, here's a new one <http://i.imgur.com/p1ku3.png>

<comment><USER21> Ah, okay, your experience is different than his, so he's _lying_. Gotcha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And of course, as long as Canada has 2-15G caps, they can always point across the border and tell us how good we have it. Capitalism!

<comment><USER23> I'm in Canada and with Teksavvy.com -- 300G cap, as long as the CRTC doesn't take it away...

<comment><USER24> I'm hoping that a silver lining in the recent Tory victory is that the door could be opened to greater competition. The big telecom companies in Canada have had their way for too long, and the quality of our internet service has suffered mightily for it.

<comment><USER25> "Competition" is a funny old concept. When we're talking about competition among telecoms, it's usually strongest in countries where the government has mandated that owners of network infrastructure must allow resale. A hands-off approach from the government gives you natural monopolies, because that initial cost of building the infrastructure is so high.

Every supermarket chain in Germany has their own branded mobile network reseller with prepaid SIM cards, and prices keep going down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One day we'll have a solid wireless option that can compete with physical lines. It will be just as disruptive as cell phones were to land lines. That's the only way you get around the massive barrier to entry that is running physical utility lines. One day.

</comment><comment><USER27> FCC can't even enforce net-neutrality, they certainly will not be able to do a darn thing about caps (if they even really care).

250 GB cap seems huge to me though, unless maybe you have a multi-user household. I have a 50 GB cap but it doesn't seem to be enforced (yet).

<comment><USER28> 250 GB is very roughly* about 12 movies worth of Netflix. Higher than the average user will use but nowhere near "huge" or unreasonable usage.

*(depends upon bitrate, sd vs hd, etc, so YMMV).

<comment><USER16> It's 2.16 GB/hour at the highest bitrate Netflix streams HD. That's 115 hours to hit 250 GB. At two hours per movie that's 57 HD movies a month.

<comment><USER29> Sigh... I meant to upmod, not downmod.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> In Australia, it's more like 95%... unless you pay for the super expensive Unlimited plan

</comment><comment><USER31> How many ISPs actually enforce their caps? Genuine question- my ISP, Cox, technically has about a 100GB limit, but I know I've downloaded close to 1TB in a month with no overages, throttling, or anything.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had no idea data caps were this frequent. I am all about net neutrality and the more selective throttling and data caps our data providers implement, the less innovation we will see.

<comment><USER32> Here in Australia, pretty much EVERY broadband provider has caps (there is only one I know of that gives unlimited, although I can't get this because the companies DSLAM isn't in my exchange). Don't even get me started on mobile internet caps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> 250GB is about my cap for the YEAR.

<comment><USER21> Well, your ISP is shit.

<comment><USER33> Typical plans for our ISPs:

<http://www.orcon.net.nz/home/plans/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "This will be my greatest lawsuit since 'The Never Ending Story'!"</comment>


Drug makers feel burned by string of vaccine pleas - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/11/vaccines-drug-makers/ <comment><USER2> It's almost like government should have a bigger hand in healthcare.

<comment><USER3> The post is an essay about how the government has historically misdirected private resources by poorly assessing threats in times of crisis. Why does that make you think that government should be _more_ involved in healthcare?

<comment><USER4> The government doesn't require a profit before working on a vaccine. The article clearly states that private companies will not work on new vaccines unless there's profits to be made.

<comment><USER5> "The only real expertise in the world to make these vaccines in a quantity and a safety environment is in the private sector," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy. "If the private sector isn't fully engaged and involved, it's a show stopper."

That doesn't sound very hard to me. Hire people who have the skills necessary, pay them a fair wage (lower probably than they'll make in a corporation, but they'll be working for the people rather than a robber-baron), and let them make vaccines. Aside from the cost, is it really that difficult to do this? We've spent much more on war.

<comment><USER6> I don't know why you got down voted for sharing what sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea...

<comment><USER3> We have several centuries of evidence that private industry is better at bringing innovative products to market than centralized governments.

<comment><USER4> A vaccine or a life-saving medical treatment is not a product in the traditional sense of the word. You can't comparison shop when you have 2 weeks to live.

<comment><USER7> It is definitely a product. It's not a commodity, but lots of real products aren't, despite how the logic of the perfection of markets only works with commodities (in fact, the goal of everyone starting a business is to make their products non-commodities.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Venturing a Perspective on the Drug Pricing Debate: [https://lifescivc.com/2019/12/venturing-a-perspective-on- the...](https://lifescivc.com/2019/12/venturing-a-perspective-on-the-drug- pricing-debate/)

</comment><comment><USER9> This feels like it raises the question of what kind of drug development pipeline we want to invest into.

Drug company profits generally come from serving the needs of the well-to-do in the global north. We will obviously need new vaccines and antibiotics as time goes on. I wonder if the expensive research infrastructure setup to target the high-profit drugs is the same as the one we would build to target vaccines and antibiotics. There's an element of systemic & structural dissonance here too - if we start dying from drug resistant strains of endemic diseases, those high profit drugs probably aren't going to keep selling well.

We need to think seriously about how to construct a drug development ecosystem that balances our needs. I don't think it's as simple as "nationalize the drug companies" (though I think they are pretty morally bankrupt).

<comment><USER10> It would be nice if we could come up with a system that rewards doing the most good.

The problem is, does "the most good" mean treats the largest number of people, or treats the most virulent conditions, or something else.

Right now, we're largely using "the most good" to mean "the most good for shareholders," which is how we ended up with a bunch of different wiener pills and breast cancer is still a thing.

<comment><USER11> Viagra exists yet breast cancer is still a thing because cancer is way harder to solve. And there is an enormous amount of money in cancer. Cancer drugs are some of the most profitable drugs to research right now.

And discovering viagra was a complete accident while trying to develop a pill for cardiovascular disease.

<comment><USER12> > Viagra exists yet breast cancer is still a thing because cancer is way > harder to solve.

I am not sure that breast cancer is a good example. There have been a lot of exciting advances in breast cancer therapy including therapy that tries to cure the cancer but still preserves the breast. Five year survival rate is near 90%. [https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html](https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If the people want's vaccines, then the government should pay these companies to develop them. No different than the people/government/military wanting new planes and paying defense contractors to develop them.

There's a military-industrial complex that isn't perfect, but works. If it's important enough then there should be a health-industrial complex to develop the technologies, medicines, treatments, etc.. that would be too expensive/unprofitable to develop otherwise.

Total privatization is not a good idea, as having companies bid for contracts at least introduces some competition into the process, and some incentive to innovate.

<comment><USER14> One issue is that intellectual property is vastly different in military and healthcare industries. It'd be a monumental task to re-create an aircraft carrier or fighter jet in another country, but recreate a drug that's taken billions to develop? Well that takes a small team of organic chemists and a small factory in India or elsewhere. Furthermore, vaccines are not typical drugs, they are one-use only, which is not a good profit-generator...there is not a good corollary in the military space for one-off vs. chronic drugs.

The comparison of the two industries is a stretch, IMO. Completely different business models.

<comment><USER15> >It'd be a monumental task to re-create an aircraft carrier or fighter jet in another country, but recreate a drug that's taken billions to develop? Well that takes a small team of organic chemists and a small factory in India or elsewhere.

So what's the problem here? Do you _want_ people in other countries to die of preventable diseases or something?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is concerning because it is clear that we'll need more and better vaccines (and new antibiotics) in the years to come. The impact of every mosquito borne disease entering and re-entering North America, along with the already surging cases of tick borne illness means pretty soon the United States will either be afraid to go outside or considerably worse off than people even realize. The nCOV outbreak is just the latest in an ongoing string of pandemics that modern air travel brings along with its benefits.

Renewed funding heavy vaccine and antibiotic development would save millions in the US and abroad, sooner than we think.

<comment><USER17> I strongly agree that this matter really is a matter of funding priorities. Regardless how it is funded, taxpayer dollars or medical costs, this should be funded for the benefit of society.

And as far as I can tell, Pharma cos stand to make some solid revenue from this, so lets get the risk/reward commensurate with the value society gains from this line of work.

<comment><USER14> How do you wager Pharma makes good revenue from this? Compared to a chronically used drug like a statin, they DON'T stand to gain that much. It's a tragedy of the commons...any one company or nation could invest heavily, but it's a vaccine...therefore, it'll be widely disseminated once and it'll be cheap. It won't be taken years on end like a statin: MUCH less revenue; I'm not sure pharma would be interested without great incentives.

<comment><USER18> furthermore, I think there is a decent amount of abandoned IP from antibiotic companies that folded. I don't think anyone has found it viable to even manufacture them at a profit.

<comment><USER19> There probably is, but have any of them been approved for commercial sale? That's the bottleneck that controls the industry. Creating a new antibiotic that might work is not that expensive, relatively speaking. Neither is manufacturing at scale. Proving that it's safe and effective to the current standards is extremely expensive, and risky - you get nothing at all if it eventually proves not to be effective enough.

<comment><USER18> There are examples linked elsewhere in this thread of novel antibiotic companies with FDA approval declaring bankruptcy due to lack of revenue. We intentionally want to limit the use of novel antibiotics to as few cases as possible to minimize resistance. Combined with price controls, this kills the economic viability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I actually sympathize with the drug makers here. This type of work is a public health priority, why not just white-label it and have the government just fund it?

It's particularly bizarre to me that flu shots just deliver an amazing public benefit, why charge anything? The government spends a fortune on development and distribution costs. Why not just pay for the administration, or even provide incentives to drive more adoption? If you paid a bounty to CVS/Walgreens/WalMart, they would hand out coupons or free donuts to lure people in and get much high vaccination rates.

<comment><USER21> The government already funds most of the research, the least big pharma can do is not be greedy for a minute. Salk gave away the polio vaccine in the 1950's eradicating the disease, missing out on selling it for billions in 1950's money value.

<comment><USER22> Government funds the _foundation_ research, yes. But commercialization, especially certification, goes into billions of dollars that governments worldwide have decided that should be taken on by private companies.

What a goddamn waste. I would hope someday all governments pay a fixed share of national income / national budget to the UN which then centrally funds vaccine and other pharma (antibiotics!) development and distribution worldwide...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Should probably have (2018) appended to title.

</comment><comment><USER24> And so the human race goes extinct because private companies delayed making a vaccine because it wasn't profitable enough.

<comment><USER18> And because taxpayers didn't want to pay for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cry me a river.

</comment><comment><USER18> >The only real expertise in the world to make these vaccines in a quantity and a safety environment is in the private sector ...

>A number of flu vaccine manufacturers were left on the hook with ordered but unpaid for vaccine during the mild 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic.

Expecting pharma to act as charitable NGOs seems like an unstable solution. Moreso as the PR vale decreases with public attention span.

Who is working on the vaccines for 2019-ncov?

</comment><comment><USER26> What happened to the old wisdom "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?"

We know how many diseases start, why almost no discussion of prevention when vaccines are brought up as if they are the only way (or even best way) to deal with diseases?

<comment><USER12> > why almost no discussion of prevention when vaccines are brought up as if > they are the only way (or even best way) to deal with diseases?

I would love to hear your thoughts on how flu or measles can be reliably prevented on a population basis without the use of vaccines?

<comment><USER27> For flu: elderberry extract.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190423133644.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190423133644.htm)

<comment><USER15> According to your article, this might help ease the symptoms of the flu. So it's just as useful in _prevention_ as decongestants, cough drops, expectorant, and other such drugs: not at all. It just helps you get through the infection.

<comment><USER27> Anecdata: I got the flu a couple years ago. I didn't go to the doctor to get it "officially" confirmed, but I've had the flu many times prior in my life. It was the flu. I was laying in my bed literally crying, sleeping, sweating, or some combination of the 3 all day. My wife knew about this property of elderberry and had already made some extract with the highest grain alcohol she could get in the store and fresh elderberries from our bushes.

She fed me several spoonfuls through the day. The next day I was working in the yard. It was by far the shortest episode of the flu I have ever had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think it's more important to talk about air travel. Not only it's bad for the planet, it essentially turns every new flu virus to a pandemic. School holidays, travel, normal holidays/recess, remote work could and should be used for public health purposes. [Edit: what i'm saying is there should be motives to limit air travel during flu season, and maybe schools could align holidays / recess with flu season]

As for pharma, well they 've contributed to the establishment of the current model according to which their FDA-approved monopolies are their moneymakers, everything else is a loss. The solution is to deregulate both ways, shorten or partially abolish drug patents

<comment><USER29> > Not only it's bad for the planet, it essentially turns every new flu virus > to a pandemic.

So you want to go back to the days of growing your own tomatoes in your own garden, and abandon trade and modern technologies?

<comment><USER28> of course not. just realize that it's a disease vector and motivate people to limit air travel during flu season

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> They don't want to do this anymore? No problem. We'll just withhold FDA approval from all their drugs until they do. Problem solved. It's amazing what you can do when you're not in the pocket of big phrama. We're supposed to believe these companies that ravage our nation with all sorts of fucked up drugs (opiates being only one of many) deserve pity or mercy or compassion as if they were people? Ludicrous. No, they deserve the complete and total brutality of our nascent authoritarian state. Of course, this is a fantasy and that authoritarianism will only be used against individuals to protect such disgusting entities as the pharma companies, but one can always dream.

<comment><USER31> > We'll just withhold FDA approval from all their drugs until they do.

Do you believe this "we" will include mothers with children dying from currently incurable cancers?

<comment><USER30> You think these companies are the only ones that can develop such drugs?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ideas on getting inflatable rafts for flood rescue - <AUTHOR> My home state in India is experiencing its worst flooding in 100 years [1]. While there are rescue efforts going on; there are small groups of people who are stranded in the second floor of their house in sparsely populated areas.
As the rain continues, the water level is rising to the top of house where people are seeking refuge. There are many heart wrenching videos of people with babies and elderly pleading for rescue. Most of them have already been there for a couple of days and running out of food and water.
I feel small inflatable rafts could help the locals find and rescue stranded people and was wondering if anyone had ideas on how to deliver some ASAP.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/world/asia/kerala-india-floods.html <comment><USER2> I'm sorry I'm not an expert and cannot bring much help but we all remember how Elon Musk was all in to help a dozen kids stuck in a Thai cave, maybe you should try to get him to help out. At the very least you will create public awareness which ultimately will get more people's attention and focus on helping. Good luck

Ps: Elon Musk seems to be quite easy to contact on Twitter

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll give that a shot

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there not an Indian superstore that imports cheap $150 dinghies to the local capital city?

Very sorry for your hardship and loss.</comment>


Yahoo Chairman Fred Amoroso Resigns - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-chairman-fred-amoroso-resigns-221456082--sector.html

<comment><USER2> > Yahoo Inc Chairman Fred Amoroso is resigning effective immediately, the > _struggling Internet company_ [my emphasis] announced on Thursday.

Ouch. I know the article comes from Reuters, but that phrase looks extra bad on news.yahoo.com.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Yahoo Inc Chairman Fred Amoroso is resigning effective immediately, the struggling Internet company announced on Thursday._

 _Amoroso said he had informed the Yahoo board when he became chairman in May 2012 that he intended to serve only one year_

This is either shoddy journalism, sensationalist lede, or both. There's clearly more here but I guess the writer said, "Meh - this is good enough. I'll just post this" instead of researching deeper and finding out "Was the resignation planned far in advance or was this a shock to the Yahoo! folks?"

</comment><comment><USER4> Does this mean anything? I doubt that he had much influence on Yahoo's future. I think the responsibility falls squarely on Marissa. Maybe they didn't get along? Another boardroom drama to surface soon?

<comment><USER5> 'In a statement on Thursday, Amoroso said he had informed the Yahoo board when he became chairman in May 2012 that he intended to serve only one year "in order to help Yahoo during a critical time of transformation."'

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny that Yahoo! News is sourcing from Reuters.

<comment><USER7> Why is that funny? Yahoo's news strategy has always been centered on aggregation. Do they even have any staff writers any more?

<comment><USER8> Yes, for blogs like these: <http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/> <http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/></comment></comment></comment>


Is Perl syntax better than randomly chosen syntax? - <AUTHOR> http://wadler.blogspot.com/2013/11/is-perl-syntax-better-than-randomly.html <comment><USER2> In the brief example shown, I note four features that distinguish Perl: sigils, braces, parenthesized control expressions, and lack of type declarations. The second and third it shares with "C world", the majority of the C-descended languages such as C++, C#, and Java. Lack of type declaration is common among "scripting" languages, and sigils pop up here and there.

There are many things to object to in Perl, but without buying the paper, I can't say whether this establishes any new ones.</comment>


Ask HN: How to make an use of old smartphones? - <AUTHOR> I own several android and iOS devices which just lay down at the bottom of a drawer. I'd like to make an use of them. What are you using your retired devices for? Surveillance cameras? Time lapse? WiFi scanners, anything else? I'm looking for projects that I can make with my kids ;-) <comment><USER2> Kids. I have a great idea but no one to play them with.

You can make a game that runs on all the phones and uses motion sensors and knows the relative ordering of players. Imagine hungry, hungry hippos (or other game idea) with each phone being the controller. You could even put an iPad in the middle for a shared display.

You could play cards with the hand being dealt to each phone and the iPad showing common cards.

Edit: I'd try to use Flutter/Dart to target both Android/iOS using a reasonable language/api with some native functions being in Java/Kotlin and Swift.</comment>


Tell HN: Predictions on the Future of Freelancing - <AUTHOR> 1. Most companies will rely on freelance workforce and have several freelancers in each department.
2. There will be a huge rise of freelancing schools. Courses to learn about writing, sales, front-end design or no-code. Most of those programs will be project-based and online-first.
3. A large part of freelancing will move from custom project proposals to packaged services with a fixed scope and price.
4. Companies will start hiring "Head of Remote" or "Chief Freelance Officers"
5. No-code tools, platforms, and software will give rise to millions of new freelance jobs. Think about "Shopify experts", "Salesforce consultants" that already exist now.
6. Those freelancers will be "Super freelancers", augmented by AI and the tools they use.
7. A lot of companies will move from hiring in-house CFOs, CMOs, CTOs to fractional executives-as-a-service to be more cost-effective.
8. Countries will start creating freelancer visas, remote worker permits, and special economic zones to attract freelance talent. This is already happening in Estonia.
9. There will be a company similar in size to Amazon that will be the "Amazon of services"
10. The fastest growing category of service will be called "Service with a software" (SwaS): Tech-enabled services.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Based on what?

Is the 9th stuffing company?</comment>


Quantopian: algorithmic investing platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantopian.com/home

<comment><USER2> "Algorithmic investing has long been a high-priced, secret weapon used by Wall Street" Fails to note most algorithmic trading on the street is HFT. Being a retail investor running your own algorithms would be extremely difficult to profit from. Great coding practice though.</comment>


Fast food software - <AUTHOR>

The software development has entered on the fast-food era: tasteless and nutrition-free softwares made in series, just to fill your stomach, but with any real contribution to the gastronomy. <comment><USER2> Agree. Everyday many software-as-commodity are released.

The goal now is not to write good softwares, that makes the difference. People are doing the same boring software several times, each time faster and over a new "revolutionary" technologie/method/approach.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hint: move out of Silicon Valley.</comment>


Understanding python *args and **kwargs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dpeepul.com/2009/10/02/django-guys-let-us-understand-python-args-and-kwargs/

<comment><USER2>
      def test(a, b, *args, **kwargs):
        print a, b, args, kwargs

      >>> test(1, 2, 3, 4, aa=5, bb=6)
      1 2 (3, 4) {'aa': 5, 'bb': 6}

'nuff said

</comment><comment><USER3> Jesus, does this really require such a long article? Just open the interpreter and check it out. Took me 5 minutes when I decided to figure it out.

<comment><USER4> The number of upvotes such a content-lite article gets on HN is interesting, and maybe an indicator of a changing demographic here.

What's next? a few pages on Ruby's method_missing? :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've noticed quite a bit of introductory level Python stuff showing up on HN lately, and while there's nothing wrong with that (and I appreciated the link to the Decorator PEP because I'd forgotten about the decorator generator 3rd party module), I wonder what's driving it.

<comment><USER6> Because there're unqualified hackers here.

<comment><USER7> I was unfamiliar with args and kwargs in Python, despite using the language for lots of scripting, and liking the language immensely. It's a simple concept and now I get it, but I'm still unclear on what _star_ and _starstar_ mean, which is something I keep meaning to look up.

Does that make me an unqualified hacker?

<comment><USER8> [http://docs.python.org/dev/tutorial/controlflow.html#unpacki...](http://docs.python.org/dev/tutorial/controlflow.html#unpacking- argument-lists)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Napoleon's Equine Strategy in 1813 (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.napoleon-series.org/military/organization/France/Cavalry/Remounts/c_remounts1813.html <comment><USER2> It is worth reading about the impact of supply chain on the other front of the Napoleonic Wars, the Peninsular War in the Iberian Peninsula, especially Wellington's defense of Portugal and the Torres Vedras.

The French forces largely relied on foraging an pillaging for supplies when operating in the Iberian Peninsula, which initially gave them a strong advantage, being able to operate inland without support. But eventually it also became a problem.

As they went deeper into Spain and then into Portugal, the lack of well established and guarded supply routes meant that messengers and envoys had to cross enemy territory filled with partisans, resulting in the birth of the guerrilla.

When they invaded Portugal and headed for Lisbon, matters became far worse. Wellington had secretly fortified the peninsula leading to Lisbon with a massive set of three line of hill forts (the Lines of Torres Vedras), and used scorched earth tactics to wipe out any resources beyond the lines, while Lisbon was well supported by the British Navy (that had complete control of the waters after Trafalgar).

As the French forces approached, they were utterly surprised to find the heavy fortifications, and the barren land meant they had no resources to maintain themselves, as there was no supply chain.

Running out of food and unable to break into any of the fortifications, they were forced to withdraw completely after a month going back to Spain and losing 1/3 of its men in the process due to the harsh winter.

 _The Peninsular War_ by Esdaile is a great book about this front, and the Sharpe series by Cornwell complement that with a historical novel aspect, and astonishing attention to detail.

<comment><USER3> The Lines of Torres Vedras were an incredible engineering achievement, especially considering they were kept a complete secret from the French. We're talking about 30 miles of continuous fortifications.

Among the problems the French had in the peninsula, it seems Napoleon underestimated the poverty of the countryside and the poor quality of the roads. An army could live off the land just fine on the banks of the Danube, not so much on the high plain of Castile. The marshals would get orders as if a line on the map was an actual road, then find themselves marching tens of thousands of men over a glorified goat track through barren and almost uninhabited hills. Add in the guerrieros and you've got a big problem.

I suppose for us it's a reminder to not mistake the map for the territory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you like this, then it's well worth attempting Clausewitz's famous _On War_. It's long and slightly fragmented but it does drive home how very little of war in the Napoleonic (and indeed present) era is about weapons and how much is about logistics.

<comment><USER5> Information (intelligence, counter-intel, deception), logistics, maneuvering, and geography, are quite often the deciding factor; more-so than actual combat or the weapons used. It's quite amazing how few leaders/generals truly understand _The Art of War_. Early on I believe Napoleon understood the framework (see: Austerlitz), but as what usually happens without fail: he got greedy (e.g. invading Russia).

This quote in particular resonates:

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near." Ch1, verse 18

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a very fascinating account of the logistics behind war. I'd love to read more about modern equivalent of this, can someone suggest a few books on the subject?

<comment><USER7> You would probably enjoy "Six Frigates" by Ian Toll and "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden.

<comment><USER8> Six frigates was a wonderful account of a fascinating time in American history. For those who have not heard of it, it is about the founding of the American navy.

I loved the glimpse of innovative American culture in those times: individuals with no experience building warships developing vessels capable of standing toe to toe(and in some cases, defeating!) the otherwise dominant British navy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is no accident that the WWII Allies chose a logistics expert, Eisenhower, as their supreme commander in Europe.

The 1993 Gulf War supposedly lasted 7 months, only the last six weeks of which were active combat ("Desert storm").

</comment><comment><USER10> It's one thing for humans to go to war and kill each other for nothing, but when they have to drag animals into it...

<comment><USER11> Then they have a higher change of survival, and we humans tend to value an animal's life much lower than our own.

<comment><USER10> Which supports my point.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple teases secret surprise "that you'll never forget" - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-teases-secret-surprise-tomorrow-is-a-day-that-youll-never-forget-2010-11

<comment><USER2> Whatever it is, it's going to be on HN tomorrow when it's released so posting a meaningless "teaser" is just that: meaningless. Flagged.</comment>


Text-to-image - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/harmankang/text-to-image-php <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ha, I thought this project would generate a realistic-looking photo based on a text description... using deep nets</comment>


High Performance Z80 Emulation - <AUTHOR> https://floooh.github.io/2017/12/10/z80-emu-evolution.html <comment><USER2> I've gone deep in the hole on Z80 emulation more than a few times as a result of my all-time favorite video game (Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System). I wrote some debugger emulators just to step through the game's code and analyze it.

If you've never tried to write an emulator I highly recommend it. In my opinion it's an exercise on par with writing a compiler, in terms of how much one can learn about these machines we work with and just developing a richer appreciation for the craft of software.

</comment><comment><USER3> > So currently I don't see how JIT-ing could work with reasonable programming > effort and performance for emulating entire 8-bit computer systems.

I don't know about the reasonable effort part, but I was able to get decent performance with this approach in BlastEm. It takes about 33.5s to run zexdoc on my laptop, which is faster than even the "instruction granularity" version in the article (~37.5s) despite running on a slower machine (2.2GHz base clock vs 2.8GHz base clock). It can pause both at the beginning of an instruction and at any non-instruction fetch memory access. Unfortunately, it can't currently accommodate wait-states on instruction fetch.

Fixing that is on my to-do list and I have a decent idea of how to do it without killing performance. I'm also flirting with a re-write of that will enable better performance generally. My current approach is pretty naive (doesn't even do redundant flag calculation elimination), but my handling of self-modifying code makes it hard to safely improve that without some fairly major changes.

</comment><comment><USER4> In the very early days of general purpose 16 bit computing there was a lot of interest in emulating the Z80 and 8080 since the huge amount of legacy 8 bit code was still very important. Unfortunately the emulations were inherently around 10 times slower than native code since around 10 overhead instructions (a jump table, save and restore flags, and a loop) were needed for each emulated instruction.

I made my own emulator with no jump table or loop, and so no need to save and restore flags. It comprised just three instructions.

      lodsb
      mov ah,al
      jmp ax

These instructions were appended to the emulation code for each of the 256 opcodes which were distributed sparsely through 64K of memory at 0x0000, 0x0101, 0x0202 etc. (no such thing as a free lunch - spending 64K of RAM to get some speed seemed like a daring decision at the time). So my emulator was inherently only 4 times slower than native, and faster PC hardware made up the difference much earlier for me than for people stuck with 10 times slower emulators.

Of course these days it would probably mean the difference between running the 8 bit code 1000 times faster or 2000 times faster than native (something like that). Rather than going as fast as possible, the challenge now is accurately reproducing the original timing, as discussed in the article.

I'll quietly admit that the 8 bit software I was using extensively at the time ran happily on an 8080, and I never did all the extra work required to get Z80 emulation.

</comment><comment><USER5> I did something similar on the Trillek virtual computer, but without the trick of the 64bit int to store the bus state. Instead I used a bit high level aproximation as the CPU is far more simple, there isn't a IO address space, and there isn't wait states. What I did was a tick-instruction hybrid approach instead a tick-instruction cycle hybrid.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's so awesome. I love the Z80 because its so simple yet also complex.

Like others, my dream is writing a Z80 emulator, even though others exist, just to do it. I'm going to write mine in Objective-C (my favorite language) to provide and interface to emulators (like a TI-8X one).

Reading this just gets me excited.

</comment><comment><USER7> Would it be possible to emulate whole Z80 or CPC platform at a transistor/circuit level (as in Visual 6502 [1]) in real time on a modern PC with a GPGPU?

[1] [http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/](http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/)

<comment><USER8> IIRC the Visual 6502 talk, it's just visual so basically each simulation (it's not emulation) step can be a GPU compute dispatch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm sorry but I found the constant comma splices genuinely distracting.

<comment><USER10> A common mistake for us Germans. Especially if one hasn't worked in an English-"speaking" environment (US/UK/..., international company or publishing in English academic proceedings/journals) and/or learned how to write idiomatic English. Abusing and over-using relative clauses is a favorite speaking and writing technique in these parts. ;)

<comment><USER9> It's common among native speakers too. You might even say it's stopped being 'wrong' and started to become just 'informal'. I just find it really jarring, unless the clauses are really short.

I hope my comment didn't come across as anything other than the constructive criticism it was intended as.

<comment><USER11> No worries! The blog post came out much longer than I intended. I was writing it in one sitting and when I was finally done I didn't feel like going over and editing it. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter blog post (and sentences) ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Grafátko – An interactive graph (algorithms) visualizer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/xiaoxiae/Grafatko <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN!

I just finished (re)writing an app for visualizing graphs and graph-related algorithms (for a Uni course of mine) and thought it was interesting enough to share here. I'd love to hear your feedback!</comment>


Thoughts on women in tech - <AUTHOR> http://christinetsai.tumblr.com/post/1079630351/one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other

<comment><USER2> I think those women in tech that are successful are not going to be too busy with what sex they are (or where they were born for that matter, whether you're an 'asian' minority or an 'east european' doesn't intereest anybody when you're a male, I don't see why it would make a difference when you're female, both the writer _and_ commenters in the article make that extra minority claim, which is utterly irrelevant).

The successful women in tech are doing just what their male counterparts are doing, they are focusing on the job at hand and doing it the best they can.

Once you choose the entrepreneurial path 'details' like whether you'll be funded or not are mere speedbumps, you forge ahead regardless and you make those that had the opportunity to invest in you at an earlier stage eat their hats in frustration at having passed up on the chance.

Because of your success, your drive, your determination and your ability to take a licking and keep on ticking.</comment>


UPS and the art of sorting a million packages a day - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-9974653-52.html <comment><AUTHOR> See also: <http://news.cnet.com/2300-13576_3-6242193-1.html>

(related photo set, that doesn't seem to be linked in the article...)</comment>


What the Web's most popular sites are running on - <AUTHOR> http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=95 <comment><USER2> "TechCrunch, FeedBurner, iStockPhoto, YouSendIt, Meebo, Vimeo and Alexaholic. These are some of the most popular websites on the Internet. "

Huh?

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't comment on what those sites do, as I've never heard of any of them. However it must be hard to get ahead of the herd when you are following it with technology like LAMP. I developed mod_libpq specifically to explore new technological pastures and it seems to be working very well. e.g. tracktype.org

</comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone make me a list of 6 microsoft powered sites and one ruby on rails site? This is too silly to have so many points.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Good rundown, they must not mean "most popular" literally though.

<comment><USER5> I don't know, I really don't feel like this article contributed much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Never heard any of those sites. Must be popular in some other village.</comment>


PayPal cuts off payments to UnoTelly Netflix-unblocking service - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/unotelly-paypal-1.3435740 <comment><USER2> "Paypal indicated that UnoTelly is not allowed to provide services that enable open and unrestricted internet access."

I don't agree with that intreptation, I'm assuming that the Paypal ToS (like many payments providers) has a line that states you cannot use the service to provide services that enable or facilitate copyright / intellectual property infringement. Accessing Netflix where they are not allowed to stream content due to copyright law would be an infringement.</comment>


Adding Drag and Drop to Your Web App, the Simple Way (demos) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theodo.fr/blog/2017/04/adding-drag-drop-to-your-web-app-the-simple-way-demos/ <comment><USER2> Great article!</comment>


YouTube automatically deletes Chinese epithet 'communist bandit' - <AUTHOR> https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3933777 <comment><USER2> Google is not even in China so why would they even do this? I don't think that YouTube is either.

I wonder if this is just some lower level software engineer or product manager taking a unilateral decision, for whatever reason, or if this came from up above...

<comment><USER3> "Communist bandit" is highly inflammatory rhetoric because it references the traditional Chinese term for a regime that has lost legitimacy and must soon fall: "bad men and bandits". It is roughly at the same level as "Fuck the King". Harmless words for people living in modern democratic states, but plainly out of line for people under authoritarian control.

<comment><USER2> I don't disagree with that. Though not clear if you were replying to my point about where the order to block it came from. Unless I missed it..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> on a related note, i am getting a massive amount of propaganda via youtube's ads. i have personalization turned off on youtube and google, so these are i guess from youtube's default ad pool or whatever. the ads i see are all sorts of propaganda either for or against places like israel, china, and all other sorts of issues. it is insane. i've never been under assault of more propaganda, even when traveling in china, and i've greatly reduced my use of youtube because there's been no way to stop these ads. all i watch on youtube are random interest clips (e.g., guitar) that have nothing to do with politics, news, etc.

one of these is from the organization "epoch times" or something like that which are bluntly anti-chinese propaganda. i have no idea what's going on, but it's clear youtube and google are sellouts to the highest bidder.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there an analogous epithet use to describe the Taiwanese? If so does YouTube also delete that when entered?

<comment><USER6> I wonder if there is a list of English and German phrases to automatically delete. The amount of phrases you should utter in public in these languages is considerable. (IDK about other European languages.)</comment></comment>


Postmates Launches Courier Delivery Service To San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/15/postmates/

<comment><USER2> I'm confused. Why are there so many deliveries happening _in the middle of the bridge_?

<comment><USER3> Apparently it's a heat map of courier paths, not endpoints. So the dots on the bridges just signify that deliveries are going out of the city.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mike, you are correct. It is a heat map of the paths taken by the couriers while doing deliveries. I work at Postmates.

<comment><USER4> Ahh, it isn't just bike couriers then?

<comment><USER5> No we have couriers on bikes, cars and trucks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robot reports for security duty in Atlanta - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-na-bumbot23mar23,1,7817410,full.story

<comment><USER2> I used to pass by that area every day. The problem is not that the shelter is there, but that the bums are always hanging out outside the shelter. 24 hours a day, there are bums hanging out there harassing people.

I have no problem with homeless people in shelters. But when they're out in the street making people's lives miserable, you have to do something. A robot isn't the best solution, but when the city won't do anything, it might suffice.

</comment><comment><USER3> I live in midtown/closer to downtown Atlanta and know about this homeless problem. It's pretty bad and sometimes the sidewalks can get crowded at night.. even worse is the park across from Coca-Cola headquarters.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you visualise new ideas and concepts? - <AUTHOR>

By visualise I mostly mean the first thing that comes to your mind. For example, considering the term "search" you may visualise a text box or a relational database or a business plan or some software specifications.
I know there are many programmers/engineers in this community but also many designers and business-oriented people. I think this would make a nice discussion and help us all understand a bit more about how others see things.
As for me, I tend to visualise interfaces and interactions. For "search", I will think of a text box first and then try to think something better (or at least different) than a text box. <comment><USER2> Honestly, the first thing that came to mind when you said "search" was "search space" - an abstract Cartesian landscape like something out of Tron. I'm probably abnormal...

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe it helps to think more abstractly.

Search is literally finding things. Think of a dictionary, a stack of papers, a filing cabinet, a helicopter with a spotlight, a bloodhound, triangulation, and on down the scale of abstraction.

Get to the core of what the user is trying to accomplish. Come up with some crazy ideas as well as incremental improvements, then talk to people about them and see what resonates.</comment>


Solar and Wind need exponential energy storage growth. Why UPHS is our best hope [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/syllable-hq/uphs-feasibility-study/blob/master/resources/underground-pumped-hydroelectric-storage-feasibility-study-summary.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> One more thing.. For quick vetting that this idea is legit:

Here is the original research paper where I source more of my info:

Underground pumped hydroelectric storage Allen, R.D., Doherty, T.J., and Kannberg, L.D., for the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, sponsored by the United States DOE [https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6517343](https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6517343)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here,

Yesterday I posted my full research report on this topic. I wanted to also post this short summary presentation which explains this technology.

Here is my post for the full version if anyone would be so kind as to help spread the word. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20690640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20690640)

Peace, love, and climate stability, Eric</comment>


Ask HN: How do you identify good people to work with? - <AUTHOR> Warren Buffett says that he only works with people he likes, admires, and trusts. I read that he can determine within 5-10 minutes of a call whether he'd be interested in working with the other person or not.
In Ray Dalio's Principles, he says that when you find the right person for the right role that it's like an audible click. He also says that he hires on values > abilities > skills in that order. Similar to Buffett who hires for character, intelligence, and energy. Character always come first.
My question is- so how do you identify "good" people to work with? I don't have much experience or role models of good people that I have been able to learn from directly. I need to get better at picking the right people to work with. What are some of the ways you identify or have identified good people? <comment><USER2> It would help if you provided more context here. You are not in the same situation as Warren Buffet or Ray Dalio, so you should pause before trying to apply their advice to your own life. Are you a student? An employee? An entrepreneur?

Of the attributes they listed, I imagine it is easier to narrow people down by skills first, then intelligence and then character won't necessarily be something you can judge easily and accurately. In any case you will probably have to work with them for at least a little while until you could confidently consider them "good" though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much. I run a small Amazon business so I have to make the following business decisions and I don't think I've been learning from my mistakes:

\- Manufacturers/Clients: How do I choose the right people to work with? Sometimes manufacturers do not create great products, sometimes clients lie. What are some signs to avoid bad business relationships?

\- Hiring: How do you hire people with "good" character? I learned the hard way of abilities/skills with my first few hires.

\- Co-founder: I need a technical co-founder for a software I'd like to build, someone who has previous experience building a great team (my weakness). Because I'm terrible at team-building, I have no idea what to look for.

\- Investors/Advisors: People have expressed interest in investing in a software I am building. I know I need help and guidance- but I don't think investing in me would be the right decision for them because I have 0 unicorn aspirations.

So far my strategy has been to be brutally honest but I have found that it doesn't work all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No idea. The "good" news is that you'll rarely be able to choose who you work with in any case.

</comment><comment><USER4> What is your definition of a good person? In my experience, 99.99 % of all people are "good people" because they try their best to abide by the law (speeding is a major exception), be truthful, honest and so on. Those who aren't, generally have some kind of psychiatric disorder. In my experience, truly evil persons are incredibly rare.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, your question made me realize that I had no idea what I was looking for. After thinking I would like the people I work with to have virtues like:

\- integrity

\- agreeableness (easy to work with)

\- accountability/reliability (ability to admit mistakes and fix them as well as deliver on agreed deadlines)

\- humility (open-mindedness)

\- courage (to voice their thoughts even if it's different from everyone else's, a growth mindset to pursue things that scare them like new skills or projects, and to speak up about their needs as well as reinforce boundaries)

\- perseverance (ability to fail and try again)

\- mission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do something before with them and ask them to recommend you other peoples after.</comment>


Why I Started A School - <AUTHOR> http://recraigslist.com/2014/01/why-i-started-a-school/

<comment><AUTHOR> It took me a few years to gain the knowledge and experience to put a course together, but I finally did it. I really appreciated the encouragement I got from HN two years ago. Just wanted to share the update.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3515294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3515294)</comment>


Touching the Hot Stove – Experiential versus Theoretical Learning - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2009/08/13/touching-the-hot-stove-experiential-versus-theoretical-learning/

<comment><USER2> An interesting article. I definitely agree that business in general is definitely something learned experimentally.

In a related note, one thing I've found is looking at students and how they perform at a job based on how they were initially taught computer science. Students with more experimental learning made much different types of decisions than students that were taught more theoretical stuff. Neither of the decisions are better, but they are significantly different schools of thought.</comment>


Jasmine 2.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://pivotallabs.com/jasmine-2-release/

<comment><USER2> So, um, what's new? I really wish that projects would make it a habit, especially with new releases, to tell folks what's so new that required a new major (or .1 minor) release. After 10 minutes of looking around, I haven't been able to find what's new in 2.0 vs. 1.3.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Most obvious feature seems to be the adoption of the done() syntax for async tests from Mocha, instead of the needlessly complicated runs/waitsFor syntax from 1.3.</comment>


The Lance Decision - <AUTHOR> http://juniormiller1310.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-lance-decision.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent read on the Lance Armstrong fiasco. There is mixed reports on whether USADA can repeal Armstrong's tour wins, though. Most amazing revelation: all seven runner's up to Armstrong have either been found guilty of or admitted doping.</comment>


Electric Pickup Truck Launches - <AUTHOR> https://www.barrons.com/articles/electric-pickup-truck-what-you-need-know-lordstown-tesla-nikola-51593008050 <comment><USER2> Wake me up when the first of these reaches the market that's not from Tesla (maybe I should say "or from rivian" but they aren't out yet). Too easy? I'll believe these companies will survive when they have made a 1,000.</comment>


Using Grand Central Dispatch and C++ for inter-thread communication - <AUTHOR> http://wagerlabs.com/grand-central-dispatch-c-and-inter-thread-com

<comment><AUTHOR> A bit of context is probably due...

I wrote a user land USB driver and packaged it in a framework. The framework starts the driver in a new thread upon initialization. I needed the separate thread and needed a way to talk to it.

I explored Mach ports but these turned out to be too painful. Grand Central Dispatch, on the other hand, turned out to be the answer to my prayers. I can shuffle code and data back with no problems whatsoever.

As a bonus, my API calls are queued and serialized for me so I don't need to lock portions of the driver for concurrent access.</comment>


America needs more software experts, Defense Department says - <AUTHOR> http://job-news.odesk.com/hiring-trends/america-needs-more-software-experts-defense-department-says-613

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but there are significant differences between "software expert", "computer science students", and "software developer".</comment>


Lord of the Files: How GitHub Tamed Free Software (And More) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/github/all/1 <comment><USER2> Ryan Blair, a technologist with the New York State Senate, thinks it could even give citizens a way to fork the law — proposing their own amendments to elected officials. A tool like GitHub could also make it easier for constituents to track and even voice their opinions on changes to complex legal code. "When you really think about it, a bill is a branch of the law," he says. "I'm just in love with the idea of a constituent being able to send their state senator a pull request."

\</comment><comment>-

I find this quote fascinating. This would be fantastic if it actually gained traction. It would democratize the process of actually writing a bill. People could actually vote for/against sections for inclusion.

<comment><USER3> Docracy (basically GitHub for legal documents) is going to do exactly that at the next legal hackathon <http://legalhackathon.blipclinic.org/>

<comment><USER2> The question is how do we incentivize politicians to start using this. This will not gain any traction if meetings and discussions are held in secret (like ACTA).

Maybe as a start, we can just track what has changed throughout the different revisions of ACTA. Maybe this is something you could do as part of your hackathon.

I'm picking ACTA as it's something that is relatively current and at the forefront of people's minds right now.

<comment><USER4> One way is to push it through something like Code For America who could then bring it to interested city governments.

<http://codeforamerica.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gah, why would they use a bar chart for the "Getting Into Github" diagram and then not stick to anything resembling a consistent x-axis - at first it looked like it might be exponential, but it's not even that. The bar sizes are nearly meaningless, because different segments of them are to wildly different scales. All it actually conveys is "this one is more than this one".

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me or are there a lot of errors in this article? Scott Chabon?

I wonder if they intentionally did that so people would fork the article and fix it.

<comment><USER7> Could be! The article itself is open source, too:

<https://github.com/WiredEnterprise/Lord-of-the-Files>

<comment><USER8> I wish all technical books did this.

<comment><USER9> The gold standard might be the way Mark Pilgrim wrote _Dive Into HTML5_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh my god:

> GitHub.com is best thought of as Facebook for geeks

Really?

<comment><USER11> Yes. Including countless memes in comments and pull requests.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, the most infamous example of that (Bumblebee's 'rm -rf /usr/' mistake) seems to have been removed:

> > [https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/commit/a047be85247755cdb...](https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/commit/a047be85247755cdbe0acce6f1dafc8beb84f2ac)

<comment><USER13> Fortunately...

I wrote a comment under it, and since that day my mailbox was flooded with notifications about other replies for months to come. I think about doing some analytics on them; say, plot the number of comments per day over time - I'd expect to see something like e^(1/x) - 1.

<comment><USER12> You should do that - though I doubt it'd be an exponential decay. You're going to get a series of bumps every time a post about it pops up on HN (or similar site), and those bumps will probably be positively correlated with one another (note how top posts on HN are oftentimes top posts on related subreddits on Reddit, for example).

Would be interesting to see, though - let me know if you do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The old regime "makes it very hard to start radical new branches because you generally need to convince the people involved in the status quo up-front about their need to support that radical branch," Torvalds says. "In contrast, Git makes it easy to just 'do it' without asking for permission, and then come back later and show the end result off — telling people 'look what I did, and I have the numbers to show that my approach is much better.'""

Substitute "business" for branch and "startup" for git.

Startups are git branching for the economy.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting hearing about how they want to tackle the Microsoft ecosystem.

As someone who spent years in that ecosystem and recently left it for OSS, I'll be curious to see what kind of success they see and who they are targeting.

<comment><USER16> Phil Haack is one of the people who recently joined Github from MS developer tools division, with the aim to make the github experience better for those same devs.

He blogs, maybe you'll find more info on the subject there: <http://haacked.com/archive/2011/12/07/hello-github.aspx>

I wonder who the other person who joined Github from Microsoft was?

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure the other person is Paul Betts. They are working on Github for Windows (i.e. a Windows version of what they've done with Github for Mac).

<comment><USER16> Related, I never really _got the point_ of "Github for mac". Do we need a fat- client app when we already have a first-rate web app? What does it do/enable/make easy that github the website doesn't? A Mac or PC isn't a tiny phone screen with no keyboard, where native apps are more usable than websites.

I use TortoiseGit as well for the rest of the github experience, since I'm not a git master and I can pretend it's SVN with pull requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was really quite surprised at the way this article was pitched. I'd expect to read this airy, hand-wavy level of detail in a news magazine, not _Wired_.

<comment><USER19> I actually find it entertaining and fun - specially the bits about history, how they found common vision etc. It was an interesting human take to subject that could be inherently jargon-laden and boring

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow! Linus is using a Macbook Air!

<comment><USER21> I remember reading about his hardware set up a few years ago and yes, he was using apple hardware.

It's almost certainly running linux though.

<comment><USER22> For a while there he was running Linux on a PowerMac G5 tower as his primary desktop:

<https://lkml.org/lkml/2004/2/12/13>

Many open source OS projects have core developers on non-x86/amd64 platforms so as to find errors, x86isms, and other code quality issues reveled by fundamental differences in the underlying architectures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Quadrupling the number of employees in a year is damn impressive.

<comment><USER23> From 14, yes. From 1 it wouldn't be - so it's not just 'quadrupling' itself that's impressive here :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I did a double-take at the title and am left wondering whether or not the one- letter difference between this and William Golding's Nobel Prize-winning "Lord of the Flies" is purposeful or not.

<comment><USER25> Uh, yes.</comment></comment>


Facebook Removing Gmail From List Of Third Party Email Providers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/20/facebook-google-2/

<comment><USER2> Google should disable "I'm feeling lucky" for facebook.com, 80% of their users won't be able to find the site anymore. /s

<comment><USER3> Since Google have the motto "Dont be evil", doing that will undermine their own motto and Google could risk that move blows back on them one way or the other.

<comment><USER4> How is helping people kick their facebook habit evil? Sounds down right humanitarian to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Facebook,your britches are looking a bit small these days. IPO dreams sure do lead to mediocre results.

</comment><comment><USER6> They need to make a Taiwanese news animation of this drama. Better than daytime TV.

<comment><USER7> More: <http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/mf_appledaily/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a bad thing?

Could they please de-list AOL as well so my computer-noob friends will stop giving out their login to facebook?

I am tired of the creepy spam from Facebook that has learned my name and location and harasses me to join because my friends don't realize what they are doing.

</comment><comment><USER9> /Grabs another bag of popcorn and sits back to enjoy the show.

Doesn't look like this squabble is ending any time soon. Unfortunately, it just seems like it's going to have a negative impact on both sides.

<comment><USER10> From what I can tell, the loss of functionality has been entirely on Facebook's side to this point. Right?

<comment> mike-cardwell The people who have lost out have been GMail users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google and Facebook are starting to get more and more boring and annoying. I am starting to think they are doing all of this petty fighting just to get even more press and free marketing. Sometimes it seems like some of the management from both companies took this fight personal and now fight for their own pride.

Why don't we start talking more about new and interesting stuff, and leave this two to just cool off and start working on making their services better, instead of spinning in circles and trying to catch their own tail.

<comment><USER12> No one outside the industry cares about this tiff. It's hardly a PR stunt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> They still have the "other e-mail service" option, I imagine they just moved the functionality to there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ah, this makes filtering people out even eaiser. Time to auto-delete *@facebook.com

</comment><comment><USER15> Facebook and Google could write the book on passive aggressiveness.

</comment><comment><USER16> but it appears orkut has not been removed yet. [http://techshrimp.com/2010/11/21/facebook-list-of-third- part...](http://techshrimp.com/2010/11/21/facebook-list-of-third-party-email- providers-doesnt-include-gmail-now/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks like mutually assured destruction.

This is hardly a zero sum game.

</comment><comment><USER18> how long will orkut last on the list <http://bit.ly/aXAwVT>

</comment><comment><USER19> can anybody really blame facebook for not allowing export? your contact list (with email) is basically their golden goose. if they let other services suck this data out, their competitors only need to sign 1 person per social circle for pretty much everyone on FB to get an invite to leave.

in the spirit of openness, it sucks, but if you owned facebook would you welcome that risk?

<comment><USER20> Yes, we can blame Facebook for not allowing export of emails. Several people on here have said that Facebook has learned their name (and some other information) without them having an account.

If Facebook does X using other companies' data, Facebook should allow other companies to do X using their data.

<comment><USER19> Saying they should is the easy response, and will surely receive many upvotes, but my point was it's hard to judge them. I suspect many people here would hesitate to open up like that if in a similar position. Facebook is a business after all.</comment></comment></comment>


Credit Card Fees Take Effect Sunday - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Business/credit-card-fees-effect-sunday/story?id=18316310 <comment><USER2> This is a good thing. Currently the credit card companies can basically charge whatever fees they like because (1) the customers who choose a card don't see the merchant fees (2) most shops can't afford to not offer credit card payments.

By making the fees explicit to the customers ("you pay $1 extra for Visa/Mastercard / $2 extra for Amex / debit card is free") many customers will choose what's cheapest for them, forcing the credit card companies to compete in the area of merchant fees.

<comment><USER3> Credit cards and merchants should be able to have any arrangement that they want. A credit card that has no customer fees seems like a nice one to have. From this article, I assume this will not be possible.

<comment><USER2> As far as I understand the situation, in the past credit card surcharges were prohibited by law. So credit card companies and merchants will have more freedom in regards to their arrangements now. Credit card companies can still have a contract with a merchant that says that surcharges are forbidden (Amex does that according to the article), but otherwise there's no law anymore that prevents merchants from adding the surcharge.

<comment><USER4> The situation is the exact opposite. Previously, Visa and MasterCard prohibited merchants from charging more for credit than cash. It was a term required in all merchant account agreements with member banks of those networks. In the federal court settlement, Visa and MasterCard agreed to drop that clause from their contracts. There was no federal law prohibiting surcharges, and you can't eliminate laws through court settlements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And the obvious point: we're all paying these fees already, only they're spread indiscriminately across all customers, including those who pay cash. Saying a surcharge is 'penalising' me for my payment choice isn't much less silly than saying that a retailer's pricing structure 'penalises' me for preferring a luxury brand.

<comment><USER6> There's cost involved with handling cash and checks not to mention the risk costs. Checks can bounce and have to be transported to a bank. Cash can be stolen and requires secure transportation to a bank. Cost of doing business should be factored in the price. We are moving towards a pricing structure where the advertised price is not the price you pay. Just look at your cell phone bill.

<comment><USER5> _We are moving towards a pricing structure where the advertised price is not the price you pay._

I'm from the UK, but my limited experience in the US says: that ship has well and truly sailed. I'm never quite able to get used to sales tax added at the checkout, and substantial and essentially-mandatory tipping across many services.

In Europe you basically always pay the advertised price in a shop or pub, and you can do so at a push in a bar/cafe/restaurant. (In France, I believe even a service charge is included in restaurant menu prices).

<comment><USER7> Is VAT (which, from the standpoint of a consumer purchasing something at retail, acts as a "very large sales tax") not added at checkout? Is it normally listed on the sticker prices throughout the store?

<comment><USER8> In some European countries, not only is the VAT included price legally required to be the most prominently displayed price for any products advertised at consumers, but a consumer can legally demand to pay the most prominently displayed price even if it is VAT exclusive, and the seller will be on the hook for the VAT.

It acts as a very effective deterrent for companies to try to play games with VAT exclusive pricing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The legal minimum of 1.5% is fascinating, i wonder if it was put in by the credit card lobby.

Overall, this change should accelerate evolution in the payments space. Customers choose the payment type, so when merchants have to eat the fee and hide it from consumers there's little downward pressure on fees.

The minimum looks like an attempt to put a floor of 1.5% on the fees. Does anyone know what happens to any payment technology that wants to charge 0.5%? Does a merchant who passes along such fees have to eat it if its less than 1.5%? Or is it disallowed?

</comment><comment><USER10> _but the amount legally permissible will be between 1.5 percent and 4 percent of your purchase price_

What's the reasoning behind a legal minimum? Why prevent a 1% fee?

<comment><USER11> Perhaps it's a range of maxima.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For me, credit cards are a tool that gives me a 1% discount on purchases, and protects me from fraud.

I've made over $1,000 in cash back rewards and was refunded $250 in charges from 2 different purchases that turned out to be fraudulent.

I always pay my balance down to $0 at least once a month.

<comment><USER4> Your credit card didn't protect you from fraud, it exposed you to it. It's only because you paid for something by giving away a number that gives anyone arbitrary access to your bank that you had money stolen, had to watch your statements to notice it, and had to file a chargeback to get the money back. Hackers on the web can never reach into your wallet and take $250 -- this is a drawback of your credit card, not "protection" offered to you.

<comment><USER13> Not true. When making a purchase using a credit card, you are not giving "arbitrary access to your bank", rather you are giving access to your line of credit. There's a difference. In the case of fraud, the credit card company still has to collect from you. You can always not pay and dispute the charge. This is why I prefer credit cards over debit cards. In the case of a fraudulent debit transaction, my money is gone, and the burden to recover it is on me. In the card of a fraudulent credit card transaction, the bank is out the money, and the burden is on them to recover. Furthermore, federal law gives credit card holders protection to dispute charges over $50.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At lot of gas stations in my area offer gas cheaper if you pay cash. Usually it's around a 10 cent difference in price. Is this something that shouldn't be happening?

<comment><USER15> It was ok to offer a discount for cash, but it was not ok to have a surcharge for credit cards - and now it becomes ok to have such a surcharge.

Yes, these things are mathematically equivalent. And yet, that's what the law said.

<comment><USER16> If there was a programming language named Law it would be a freaky beast.

<comment><USER5> Well, there kind of is, no? It runs on judges.

My wife is a government lawyer, and I sometimes reflect that our jobs both ultimately involve writing _words that do stuff_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Have a debit card, or slip and extra $20 in your wallet."

Off topic, but why is it that the word "an" is so commonly misspelled as "and"? I've done it myself many times, but it doesn't make sense- why do our brains insert an extra letter where it should not be?

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't categorize it as a misspelling. It's more of a typo because our brain is so accustomed to telling our fingers to type "and". It's kind of like how I can't remember some of my passwords unless I'm actually typing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Any smart merchant won't add a Surcharge for credit, but instead a discount for cash.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's annoying as I use credit cards ONLY for building credit and cashback. Credit cards for me are a tool, not something that costs me money. If it will cost money to use it then I'll just stop using it :(

<comment><USER21> The cashback reward programs are funded by the fees merchants are paying. The fact that you are using credit cards to get free money from merchants seems to be an argument in favor of this change.

<comment><USER20> Yes I haven't thought of it this way :/. Credit history just shouldn't be based of the amount of usage of credit cards.

<comment><USER4> It isn't. I had a FICO score of 795 with no credit card utilization at all. I get the best loan terms and was approved for a mortgage of up to a million dollars recently. No credit card utilization ratio is required to have an excellent credit score. Simply having a card and stuffing it in a drawer for a few years, while never missing a utility or loan payment, will hit all the marks that matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how this will affect things like Walmart's Bluebird? It seems like, given the economy, the debit style cards offered by alternate sources than the banks might grow.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is absolutely fine with me. It's about time.</comment>