Race and Attraction, 2009 – 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-attraction-2009-2014/ <comment><USER2> I think one factor they forgot to add is culture.

When you're firmly entrenched in a specific cultural background, often it can be difficult to relate to someone who grew up in a different culture.

That being said, I'm white, married to a Caribbean woman (who herself is mixed though very dark skinned). Her family still drives me insane though. To say there are cultural differences would be a major understatement... And things I consider normal behaviour are often perplexing to them as well.

<comment><USER3> I'm white and married to a Vietnamese. The different culture in her family is a big attraction to me, so much more interesting than boring same old.

<comment><USER4> Same here. Like you, the initial attraction was the difference, but after a good while, the differences have become much more annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder what this would look like adjusted for income. The same author wrote about how much income matters in online dating, especially when over 23 and making less than 100k.[1]. Other studies have shown that income is unequal by race, especially for high-paying jobs. (Unfortunately I'm struggling to find a source showing _distribution_ rather than average, which is also lower[2].)

It'd also be interesting to see adjustments for height. I'd also think (see [1]) that that's where Asian men get lower response rates.

[1] [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in- online...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online- dating/) [2] [http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0882775.html](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0882775.html)

<comment><USER6> From [http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/single- female...](http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/single-female- seeking-same-race-male/)

      For equal success with an African-American woman, a
      Hispanic man needs to earn an extra $184,000; a white man
      needs to earn an additional $220,000.

      For equal success with a white woman, an African-American
      needs to earn an additional $154,000; a Hispanic man
      needs $77,000; an Asian needs $247,000.

      For equal success with a Hispanic woman, an African-
      American man needs to earn an additional $30,000; a white
      man needs to earn an additional $59,000.

      For equal success with an Asian woman, an African-
      American needs no additional income; a white man needs
      $24,000 less than average; a Hispanic man needs $28,000
      more than average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given that the racial categories used are American (White/Black/Asian/Latino) I'm guessing this is only or mostly American data. In which case it probably should say so. "Race" is a culturally mediated difference and the categories of prejudice in other cultures aren't going to map to this in any universal way.

Just a comment from someone not in the US :)

<comment><USER8> As an American who's spent the last ~10 years in Japan, the American idea of pan-Asian cultural/racial identity now feels extremely foreign to me.

<comment><USER9> As an Australian listening to a BBC interviewing a man about his Asian upbringing, it sounded weird. An unqualified 'asian' to Australian ears means South East Asian or Chinese. But to the British, it's apparently folks from the subcontinent. In neither case does it default to mean near/middle eastern or central asian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a black man, I'm proud to be the most egalitarian in romance. It really boils down to whoever smiles at me and tells me I'm smart.

<comment><USER11> So basically, you accept just about anybody, because you have either low standards or just want to be with as many woman as you can.

Not exactly classy, bro.

<comment><USER12> Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Many of the comments here focus on whether or not an individual's preferences are racist or not, but generally an individual being racist isn't going to cause anyone much trouble (except for extreme or violent cases.)

The major issue this illuminates is that the aggregate preferences of many people confer an advantage to some and disadvantage to others based on race. The value in having this highlighted so clearly is that some (many) people think that racism is dead, and this gives us something to point to when we ask them to reconsider that opinion.

<comment><USER11> The problem with today's liberal attitudes is that such attitudes wrongheadedly assume that racism = violence, when in reality, racism usually just means separatism, which if anything, decreases violence, as good fences make good neighbors.

<comment><USER14> For racism == violence:

One particular racist doesn't have to commit violence. The effect is systemic, and as a result law enforcement can be used to enforce violence on people of color.

Picture yourself in a convenient store. A black male with a hoodie on is shopping. You decide you don't like him, and notice an officer outside. You tell the officer that the man is stealing items from the store.

What do you think is going to happen? What would happen with a white male? The outcome you know would happen is what defines privilege.

<comment> guard-of-terra "You decide you don't like him, and notice an officer outside. You tell the officer that the man is stealing items from the store"

If I do that (with any "him") I'm a nut job, asylum material. Amn't I?

In my opinion that just does not happen by sane people.

<comment><USER14> My point is the fact that the situation outlined above is easily possible is a huge problem.

<comment> guard-of-terra To be fair, I don't really understand how it would resolve to anything than an awkward scene.

However, I understand that americans are so trigger-happy that any confusion can turn into tragedy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yup, that's why it majorly sucks balls to be an Asian man in online dating.

<comment><USER16> Maybe? But the neat thing about romance is that you just need one to work.

I once complained to a friend that my failure rate is going to be 95% if the normal failure rate is 80%. She replied, "Good then you'll succeed." because a 95% failure rate means there will still be 5 women out of 100 who won't reject me and that number increases the more women I meet.

Another good friend of mine who can be best described as a womanizer told me that it's a huge numbers game. He confided to me that he gets rejected all the time and for all sorts of reasons, most of it has nothing to do with him. His word of advice to me was "You got ten fingers, ten toes. There is nothing wrong with you."

Sure, some women prefer one thing over another but you don't need all the women to like you. You just need one. I am sure in the universe of women there is at least one who likes Asian men who read Hacker News and you have a better chance of finding her(or them) with online dating.

<comment><USER17> > Sure, some women prefer one thing over another but you don't need all the > women to like you. You just need one

i understand where you're coming from but let's be real. in order to retain the relationship(s) you are in, you need to understand what makes a man attractive to a woman. it has nothing to do with race but more to do with assertiveness, boundaries, ability to plan, get shit done, etc.

and if you have none of that, you better start working on it. "be yourself" is the worst dating advice ever. and "one out of a million will end up maybe liking you" is even worse.

<comment><USER16> I don't think we disagree on this. You should always work to improve yourself and love is a great motivator for doing that.

My point with the number is that to go on a date, to be given that chance to know someone better, isn't that hard even if the probabilities are low.

My 95% is actually crazy pessimistic. It actually ended up being closer to 50% success rate for first date. I am short, Asian, and introverted so I think most other men aren't going to do worse based on those attributes alone. Or maybe like you said, race doesn't matter as much.

That said, I don't really agree with that list of attributes you posted. Maybe on some level, yes those attributes matter but personal chemistry between two people matters much more, at least from my own limited experience.

<comment><USER17> > Maybe on some level, yes those attributes matter but personal chemistry > between two people matters much more

personal chemistry is required, but not sufficient.

these are things you learn the hard way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> nothing really shocking here, except that asian women rating asian men jumped from +10% to +25% in the last 5 years. this is somewhat surprising as it puts them at the same level that white women rate white men. (drag the slider all the way to the right).

in other words, at least on okcupid, asian women rate white men and asian men with roughly the same bias. that's a big swing in less than 10 years.

come to think of it, i haven't heard the familiar "i don't date asian guys" come from an asian girl in a very long time, possibly years.

<comment><USER18> I wonder how much of this is caused by OkCupid growing in Asia.

The study does not seem to be specific to the US...

<comment><USER17> that's a good point - curious as to what could possibly explain the drop in white/white ratings though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm amazed to note that black women face negative scores from men of all races, including their own! That sounds really disturbing, at least to a non- American.

<comment><USER15> Asian men and Black women are similar in that they aren't married out to other races at the same rate as their gender opposites.

Source:

[http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2012/02/sdt-2012-rise-o...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2012/02/sdt-2012-rise- of-intermarriage-06.png)

[http://imgur.com/V9w2k5m](http://imgur.com/V9w2k5m)

<comment><USER20> That's because Asians are perceived as feminine, while blacks are seen as masculine. Feminine men and masculine women aren't as attractive as masculine men and feminine women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a European I'm surprised by the very stark black-white separation in US culture. Why do the two (almost) not mix, even after centuries?

During my student year in the US, I was friends with students of all colors - culturally they were really the same. So what is it? Peer pressure?

Most young black women I see (over here) are incredibly beautiful, but then in my country they're mostly fresh immigrants - the cultural difference would be much stronger than a couple of White and Black Americans.

From watching TV my impressions are that there's especially a taboo for white guys to date black women, and the prejudice that "vanilla" just isn't cool. Can anyone enlighten me?

<comment><USER22> As an American living in Europe I'm surprised you could think that black-white separation in the US is so stark in comparison to Europe. Racism always felt like a European invention to me that the US just executes very well because it's a country founded by a bunch of European rejects. By in large though latent racism seems to be much stronger in the EU. They just aren't as expressive about it because... 1. most EU cities are not diverse enough to warrant much thought on the topic or even present an opportunity for division. 2. Europeans "respect" authority or their place more so the racists keep their mouth shut. But when they do open their mouth, oh my

> From watching TV my impressions are that there's especially a taboo for > white guys to date black women, and the prejudice that "vanilla" just isn't > cool. Can anyone enlighten me?

For a European, or Northern European, black falls under exotic because it is something so rare. Look at how your countrymen react to turkish, roma or other migrant races of the EU and then you'll hopefully shed a bit of the elitism.

<comment><USER21> Well, we don't have that many black people, but every day on the train I see, and where I live, I'm surrounded by lots of Turkish people, Polish, Russians, a few blacks (I think the family a few houses down is of French origin), Spanish, Italians, lots of south/eastern Europeans whose language I can't identify...

Most seem to be hard-working families, or working/school youth, and generally seem more or less well-integrated. Of course on average they are less educated than the natives, there is more crime among them, but the same is true for natives from a poor/worker's origin compared to academics.

I've seen a few Roma (or whatever they are; looked like my stereotype of Roma) whose "job" it is to ride downtown and beg for money all day. I suppose (and hope) there are also more integrated ones among them.

Overall, sure there are also prejudices or racism, but the same is true in America regarding Mexican immigrants. As to elitism - I'm not sure what you mean by that. Yes, I'm a white, educated, good-looking guy; I'm lucky. Doesn't mean I think less of people from other backgrounds - on the contrary I respect them a lot if they don't just collect welfare.

<comment><USER22> There are prejudices and racism in Europe, indeed. Segregation is a much an issue in the EU as in the US but in very different ways. I can speak for Germany with some certainty where segregation can be found starkly in the education system to general social circles, in a manner that seems to come from a long ago era. Discrimination that is so clear and certain one might mistakenly assume it was institutionalised. Perhaps of interest is the Soros interviews from 2013 with teachers and students in Berlin and and General stats for Germany as a whole [1]. More disturbing is the arguments made by Gymnasium headmasters that argue immigrants would not benefit from being permitted in this higher "class" of school because it is dominated by a different culture (aka lets reaffirm our racist environments) and that they were not as capable academically. It's as if they never learned of research supporting the Pygmalion effect [2].

I know you are a modern open individual but just felt your method of using your experiences in Europe as measurement for the US just shows your lack of understanding of the actual situation in both places. This, is what I found to be elitist.

1: [http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/st...](http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/standing- up-for-equality-germany-schools-english-20131024.pdf)

2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect#Rosenthal.E2....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect#Rosenthal.E2.80.93Jacobson_study)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Read, researched and took a break. The first impression of this being something quiet interesting and perhaps revealing obscure questions... faded into the impression that this is statistician hogwash.

        Q: All this data is from a dating site. What does that have to
           do with my life?
        There are many situations that might not be explicitly romantic,
        but are nonetheless a lot like a first date. A job interview.
        Trying to rent an apartment. When you meet your freshman
        roommates. Anytime you're trying to make an impression on a
        stranger.

Be careful about turning this data from a dating site into another form of craniology. What biases people utilise for sexual and/or life-partner preferences cannot and should not be interchanged with biases exhibited in interviews or the examples given. I'm sure there is overlap but one thing his data shows is that the sway of sexual preference is volatile enough over short spans of time that a huge margin of error should be assumed for any other forms of generalisation. Your time would be better spent figuring out what hollywood star of what race popularity peaked to create a sway in volatility, than to take this data too seriously. Anyway, the guy has to sell books i guess.

</comment><comment><USER23> There was a lot of reassurance that people "not wanting to date [race]" are not racist. Can someone explain to me where the line for racism lies?

<comment><USER24> For one, I don't think preference has any bearing on this. By most accepted definitions, racism is the belief that one or more race is inherently better or worse in some regard.

So, unless you say "white women are inherently better at attracting me on dating sites" I'm not sure how it could be shoehorned into racism.

<comment><USER25> _By most accepted definitions, racism is the belief that one or more race is inherently better or worse in some regard._

What if that belief were true? Would it still be racist?

Concretely (since a reply brings up biology): I believe African women are "better" (taller, have larger asses, and less body hair) than White/Asian women. I believe these differences are primarily biological, likely genetic, in origin.

I do discriminate on the basis of traits correlated with race - I am more attracted to tall, dark women with larger asses. I've dated more women from Africa in the past 6 months than from any other continent.

Am I racist?

(Note: I'm not African, nor will I be offended if you call me racist, so don't hold back. I'm simply attempting to understand the viewpoint expressed.)

<comment><USER26> I think its racist. If you hold the belief for the group it means it can subconciously affect your beliefs about the individual in the group. i.e., prejudice.

<comment><USER25> To clarify, you believe I'm subconsciously believing certain individual black women are taller than they are in reality?

If I could persuade you that I were accurately measuring every woman's height (perhaps by making observations like "she's up to my shoulder" or "she's up to my jaw"), would you be convinced I am not racist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I really wish their analysis went beyond just heterosexual pairings.

Firstly because those who haven't dated outside their own gender like me can't really comprehend the significance of this and secondly because same-gender dating dynamics are profoundly different than their different-gender counterparts.

</comment><comment><USER28> It reminds me of this paper (look at the chart in page 2): "Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange?" [http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/cul...](http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/cultural_biases.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER29> Does this control for factors like age? For example perhaps people of some races/cultures are more likely to marry early (perhaps because of religion etc) so the people who end up using dating sites from that race are more likely to be divorcees (so older) or the sort who were passed over in real life.

</comment><comment><USER30> Black men are the least racist people.

<comment><USER31> How does not having an attraction to somebody make them racist?

<comment><USER32> If you are not attracted to someone because of their race, then you are racist.

<comment><USER33> Sexual attraction is not a logical choice. People become attracted to someone first (or not) and rationalize it after the fact. No one goes, "she's black, therefore I'm choosing to not have a boner."

<comment><USER32> I agree that sexual attraction is not a logical choice. If you tend not to be attracted to black women, that doesn't mean you're necessarily racist. It could just mean that, statistically, you have had a tendency to not be attracted to black women, and that can be for a variety of reasons, such as lack of black women in your vicinity. However, a lot of people, while not considering themselves racist in general, do in fact automatically rule out being attracted to people of specific races. In other cases, they have a fetish for a particular race. In both cases, that is in fact racist, because a conscious choice has been made on the basis of race. People's conscious choices can, to a degree, influence their tastes.

<comment><USER31> It's still not racism. Prejudice? Yes. But unless you're believing they're inferior because of their race then you're not being racist. I guess in the layman's version of racism you're being racist (regarding examples 2 and 3), but per the actual definition you're not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> 10~25% boost for Asian males.

You can thank Kpop for that boost. It's quite amazing what popular media catering to the female demographic can create a totally different image of the Asian male, unlike the American perspective which tends to degrade and emasculate Asian males through stereotypes. Even positive stereotypes are ridiculed (Good at math, plays classical piano).

In my experience, I had more positive experience with young non-Asian women (around 18~22) and don't think I ended up dating anyone around my age or older (unfortunately :D).

It's funny that most of my Asian friends also lie about being Korean when they are not. Even more insane is that they are able to get Asian women by getting past the filter which seems to favor Korean men.

Thank you Korean popular culture machine! Thank you Kpop!

<comment><USER35> As an Asian living in France I've always blamed it on the media. You will never see an asian man in a movie, and if you see one it's a ridiculous stereotype just here to make fun of asian people.

You're 100% correct when you're talking about kpop boosting our numbers. Japanese culture is a big deal as well.

<comment><USER34> How do you find the dating scene in France as an Asian male?

<comment><USER35> Harder than in China for sure. But I'm not really complaining since I'm a mix. I'm sure full asian have it harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So basically, this data confirms what everybody sees in reality: that white people are considered the most beautiful by every other race; even to the point that adding "whiteness" to your racial profile will increase interest in your overall profile. That's why in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia; the most successful, attractive people shown in the media have White features or are very light skinned.

Now, here's a better question about this data: would this study be considered "racist" if Black or Asian people were considered the most attractive?

I'm guessing no. "Anti-racism" is just another way to say "anti-white".

<comment><USER10> You got a zero from black women.

edit: I'm sorry - you got a zero in 2009. Now it's a -12%, twice the second lowest percentage.

<comment><USER36> Yup ... this one is particularly interesting/weird.

Black women carry this behavior over to black men they perceive as "white" ... (interests, speech that sort of thing). As a black man it really is kind of perplexing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is making a choice based of race inherently racism? And is racism inherently bad?

As someone who is new to this world i felt like things like race and racism don't matter if you are a nice person and caring about what others feel.

<comment><USER38> De gustibus non est disputandum.

It's Latin for "taste is not to be discussed" \- meaning that just because we like different things does not mean that our choices are bad. In fact, attraction/taste is most often not even a choice!

So, for example, just because I'm attracted to women (and not attracted to men), it doesn't mean I'm sexist. Likewise, just because someone isn't attracted to black/asian/redhead men/women, doesn't mean they are discriminating.

On the other hand, if you're making _choices_ that are based on race (i.e. not trusting someone who is black - apparently police in the US is quite prone to that), it's either discrimination or racism. Sometimes, discrimination helps us survive (that big dangerous-looking man coming your way? better run), but very often, it's based on irrelevant things (black man driving an expensive car? must be a drug dealer!!), or even institutionalized (women can't own property). I'd say that's inherently bad.

Edit: I personally consider _any_ institutionalized discrimination bad and immoral. Grants for black students are bad, IMO. On the other hand, grants for poor students (the majority of which will be black (in the US), but not all of them) are good.

<comment><USER39> "Indeed, in America there is a strange and powerful belief that if you stab a black person 10 times, the bleeding stops and the healing begins the moment the assailant drops the knife. We believe white dominance to be a fact of the inert past, a delinquent debt that can be made to disappear if only we don't look." Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case For Reparations [http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the- case...](http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for- reparations/361631/)

<comment><USER40> You can use violent language to sensationalize it, sure. But its always seen as a stretch to me, to use ancient history to explain the current generation. Native Americans are jobless and alcoholic? Must have been those Indian wars 200 years ago. African-American folks uneducated and over-incarcerated? Blame slavery.

Everybody is born into their own life, and make of it what they can. Some change their position dramatically, some sit where they started. How do we explain that? "My parents were poor and uneducated because..." is just an excuse for one's own failures.

I understand that culture can strongly influence outcomes. But do we really believe that ancient wrongs have so warped a demographic's culture to the point they are doomed? And need 'reparations' to make it all right again?

I favor the process in the parent post - help those in need, sure, who demonstrate a willingness to use that help (send the poor to college etc). Blindly. That's important because people game any system, and others use quotas and officially-sanctioned profiling as further proof of whatever bigotry they already harbor.

<comment><USER14> > But its always seen as a stretch to me, to use ancient history to explain > the current generation.

Calling it ancient history is disingenuous. History does repeat itself, and as any historian will tell you "If you don't know history, you are a doomed to repeat it".

> African-American folks uneducated and over-incarcerated? Blame slavery.

You are reducing it into something much less believable than:

"Blame the current people in power (white) for African-American folks having a harder time because there are still racist effects, cultural ideologies, subconscious denigration, uncaught biases, and traditions passed down from their great-grandparents who were slave owners."

<comment><USER40> Ok blame whomever you like. The issue of 'reparations' remains cloudy, and I for one don't see the argument.

<comment><USER14> > Ok blame whomever you like.

I love how you frame things as if I'm just pointing fingers and may just as well blame inanimate objects.

> The issue of 'reparations' remains cloudy, and I for one don't see the > argument.

I'm unclear on my position here, but I do see the argument for reparations.

<comment><USER40> Sorry, I meant blame-throwing is an interesting exercise, for a sense of history if nothing else. But 'reparations' means payment for having wronged someone, usually a group. Using historical precedents of harm seems very indirect to me, to justify handing a check to someone born a century after that harm. Clearer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > While OkCupid is large enough that its demographics reflect the general > Internet-using public

Statistically, speaking, that is false. Unless the OKC user base is over half the size of the Internet-using public, which I doubt. Any number less than that does not guarantee it is representative (but it might be weak support for it being so).</comment>


'They Don't Make These Anymore': Maintaining the MBTA's 100-Year-Old Signals - <AUTHOR> http://www.wbur.org/2016/03/07/mbta-signal-maintenance <comment><USER2> The Atlantic did a great longform piece last year all about NYC's (also past- useful-life) signaling infrastructure by asking a simple question: why is it so hard to build a train arrival countdown clock?

They go into a lot of detail on how the past-useful-live infrastructure works, modern replacement technologies, and even a race between infrastructure-giant Siemans and a bunch of hackers kludging together a countdown clock:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why- do...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-dont-we-know- where-all-the-trains-are/415152/)

A more interesting read than this blog post.

\</comment><comment>----

On a different note, these "they don't make these anymore" problems make me wonder if maybe we should be pushing government to look for open-source hardware for these types of infrastructure work.

When you have equipment lifetimes of (officially) 35 years (realistically up to 100 years), can you really rely on the same Sieman's division to still be in business supporting it? In this Boston story, I wonder how much of their repair workshop is reverse-engineering some hardware whos blueprints long ago decayed in some rusting factory.

Given the right open-source hardware, could you make "they don't make these anymore" obsolete because the technology has become accessible enough that you could build it yourself? (And in the process employing "New Economy" type high-tech jobs). More importantly, should a public entity push for making it's infrastructure publicly accessible? (Pragmatically, could you find someone to build it under those terms?)

<comment><USER3> For most of the (new) equipment procurement the MBTA does now, they actually own the specifications for the equipment, which means that if they want to make more, they put out an RFP for companies to manufacture new equipment based on their spec. The downside to this is that the T likes to over- customize their orders, which drives costs up compared to buying more standard "off-the-shelf" equipment, and if no responses to the RFP come back, they have to relax some of the requirements and put it out again.

<comment><USER4> While its true that they own the specification, in practice the large company (i.e. Siemens in this example) is the only one capable of producing the product at a non-prohibitive rate.

I suspect what they'll find when they finally rip out all this equipment is that the new system will be unrepairable without huge long term contracts with the original vendor.

These old mechanical systems have their own problems, but repairability is not one of them. Almost any competent machining shop could duplicate one of the switches in the article.

<comment><USER2> Is owning the specification really the same thing as owning the hardware source? Why is it that you need the long-term vendor contracts? If you go beyond the spec and make all the hardware control boards, software, etc. open, could you lower that cost?

Boston has one unique feature that makes public-ish ownership of specifications and the hardware running more plausible than other cities... it has a large number of technically-sophisticated potential stewards for such a program who aren't going anywhere: all the colleges and universities.

MIT and Harvard are something like the largest land owners in cambridge and boston... they're not leaving anytime soon, and ideally they have an interest in maintaining relationships with their community. They're invested in the area, and as academic institutions, inclined to support open source initiatives like this (how many of you use the MIT keyserver for your PGP keys?) Imagine a "civic service" initiative where the area universities are stewards of the open source implementation for the city's infrastructure.

Not at all saying you want the T to run on overworked grad student code -- outsource that in a professional RFP -- but if the concern is that technical stewardship might be out of the realm of a municipal infrastructure agency, Boston's academic population could make for an interesting partnership.

Hairbrained stream-of-consciousness idea, but hey, that's what internet forums are for ; )

<comment><USER5> As the first example of the money involved in railway signalling, in 2012 "Siemens has entered into an agreement to acquire Invensys Rail, the rail automation business of Invensys for approximately €2.2 billion"

That's presumably not the kind of operation that can be run in someone's spare time, and exactly the kind of work that graduates from these universities are training towards, and would expect to be well-paid to do.

> if the concern is that technical stewardship might be out of the realm of a > municipal infrastructure agency

...then they really must employ someone to do that work. Except perhaps for the tunnels, the signalling system is their most important asset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> live in MA and take the T (what we call the subway/bus service here). Public transit is a major problem in this city and surrounding areas. It what make this city OK and expensive vs being great and affordable.

While the transit system here needs upgrading badly, this piece is very political. The quoting of Charles Chieppo is a give away.

"For many systems, Chieppo said, the focus is on improving stations or opening new ones rather than fixing the core infrastructure." The T is working on the first expansion of the subway rail system since the 1980s. Its going into the neighboring city of Somerville and "surprise" its over budget. They might kill the expansion with the focus on "fixing the existing" as kind of justification, instead of doing both at once? They're also reducing late night service for the extra couple hours they tacked on to friday and saturday, while proposing a fair hike. Things cost money, but people don't like to pay more to get less.

(I'm actually usually on one of the MASCO "private" buses that supplement the T for its failure to provide adequate routing to the Longwood Medical area.)

<comment><USER7> Green line expansion (two stops) initially budgeted at $954M in June 2010.

5 years later, costs estimated at $3.09B and project is terminated.

      A Reliable Project Budget is Defined as being
      within +10% and -5% of what it would Cost
      to Design and Construct the Project

Costs went up over 300%. The level of incompetence on display here is borderline criminal. Have a friend who works at one of the big 4 who is being called in to audit this failed project. Should be interesting to get an insider perspective on where taxpayer money was spent.

[http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Board_Meetings...](http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Board_Meetings/3-BRGLookback.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Wow, $3.09B for 4.3 miles of track and 4 stations? In possibly 7 years, if everything goes according to plan?

Elsewhere in the world, the Delhi Metro Phase 2 cost $2.9B and took 3 years. 77 miles of track, 85 stations, and countdown clocks. The Bangalore Metro (phase 1) is expected to be $2.5B (including a 25% cost overrun) for 26 miles and 40 stations. It also includes countdown clocks. Barcelona spent $200M for a 5.8km rail tunnel.

Where's your money going?

<comment><USER9> Have you looked at the wages of Indian labourers versus American construction workers lately?

<comment><USER8> In fact, most of the cost of train construction is _not labor_ (except in the US). That's why the Egypt, China and India (low labor costs) aren't significantly cheaper than Spain or Korea (high labor costs).

[https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...](https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comparative- subway-construction-costs-revised/)

If only I thought of this - then I might have cited a _Spanish_ construction project in the very comment you replied to, so that no one could cluelessly bring up labor costs.

In any case, even if your claim were true, there is an easy solution. Import Indians to get the job done. The goal is fixing our crumbling infrastructure rather than union featherbedding, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > It's not as simple as just changing the signal. In order to change it out > and modernize, you need to update the entire system.

Does anyone have any idea why this is? What prevents new signals from being backwards compatible with the old system?

And if this were true, wouldn't all of the signals need to be the same hundred year old type? How would line extensions ever be able to be done in that case? Is the system segmented in some sense? If it is segmented, what prevents further segmentation to allow incremental updates of the signals?

<comment><USER11> Because the old signals systems are analog or electromechanical, all modern signals systems are computerized. You'd essentially have to build something custom from scratch to do so, which would be way more expensive than simply replacing everything. Since both options sound unappetizing, they end up doing patch repairs like this to keep the system going, but that can only last so long before it just breaks down.

<comment><USER12> ^ that

The Atlantic article linked above covers this in more detail, and is an excellent read all-around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I work in a 50 year old hospital. There was some work on the nurse call bell system and the maintenance staff had to scour eBay for old parts to fix the outdated system. I think procurement had a fit when they saw eBay receipts show up.

<comment><USER6> I worked on a radar project with a similar problem. The target system was a computer called HP superdomes. HP discontinued those (the PA-RISC version anyway) . I think they bought a couple spares. Ebay was mentioned as a source for parts, which doesn't always give you a good feeling.

<comment><USER14> In a previous job at a University, we had a couple SGI big irons from the 1999-2002 era. A 64-way Origin 3800 and a 16-way Onyx 3800. Along with a similar vintage SAN and some misc bits.

When I left in 2010, eBay was the source of something like one replacement HDD per 10-14 days for the SAN (73GB dual-port fibre channel, full-height...) and the two machines (made of modular "bricks") had been whittled down to a single franken-SGI of something like 20 CPUs. Some of the older processing workload still ran on there (i.e.: the student graduated ages ago...)

A few dual 5300-series (8 cores) Xeons had replaced the SGIs in most workloads and left the old 500Mhz R14000 far in the dust. Lots more RAM too. Let's not even get started on the advantage as far as HVAC and power went.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> FWIW, the same thing goes on in Miami. I've been in the electronics shop for Miami-Dade Transit and there are always a bunch of electronic signs and signals of different vintages under repair.

</comment><comment><USER16> A lesson in bad UX, or perhaps just bad editing: Nowhere in the article is the abbreviation MBTA expanded. I shouldn't have to guess at or Google for your article's main actor.

<comment><USER17> WBUR is Boston's NPR radio station. It's the 21st Century equivalent of a local news piece, while they could work harder to adapt it for a global audience it isn't really in their remit to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For a century, replacements were not much of a problem. Most of the components were either from Union Switch and Signal, or General Railway Signal, both in the US, and they still made them. Then US&S (which used to have www.switch.com [1]) was sold to Ansaldo and then to Hitachi, and General Railway Signal was acquired by Alstom. Alstom continues to make some GRS relays.[2] But not the whole line of them. Ansaldo offers a remanufacturing service for the older components.

The New York City system uses mostly General Railway Signal components, while Boston uses US&S. NYC had to rebuild old relays after the big flood a few years ago, because all available spare stocks, both theirs and the manufacturers', had been exhausted. But they were able to get new ones from Alstom over time. Boston seems to be having more of a parts problem.

These relay-based systems are designed to fail safe, in a very literal way. "Vital" relays (the ones in safety-critical circuits) open by gravity, and the open direction is always towards a red signal. Broken wires always force things towards a safer condition. This is not a property of computer-based systems. There are modern replacements, such as Ansaldo MicroLok II, which are programmable logic controllers which emulate relay systems.[5] These, unfortunately, can be Internet-connected.[6]

Here's a simulator for a GRS relay-based signaling system, down to the relay level.[7]

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20080103132002/http://www.switch...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080103132002/http://www.switch.com/) [2] [http://alstomsignalingsolutions.com/OurProducts/WaysideProdu...](http://alstomsignalingsolutions.com/OurProducts/WaysideProducts/Relays/BSeriesRelays) [3] [http://www.rrsignalpix.com/grs_relays.html](http://www.rrsignalpix.com/grs_relays.html) [4] [http://www.ansaldo-sts.com/en/about-us/ansaldo-around- world/...](http://www.ansaldo-sts.com/en/about-us/ansaldo-around-world/our- companies/ansaldo-sts-usa) [5] [http://www.ansaldo- sts.com/sites/ansaldosts.message-asp.com/...](http://www.ansaldo- sts.com/sites/ansaldosts.message-asp.com/files/manuali- ansaldo/ServiceManuals/SM-6800A.pdf) [6] [http://www.westermo.com/web/web_en_idc_com.nsf/AllDocuments/...](http://www.westermo.com/web/web_en_idc_com.nsf/AllDocuments/56D68128C008FAD9C1257B90002FC54D) [7] [http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/NXSYS,_Signalling_and_Interloc...](http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/NXSYS,_Signalling_and_Interlocking_Simulator)</comment>


Magan – A DoH Server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/evuraan/Magan <comment><USER2> Am I right that this is a forwarding, non-caching DNS server?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, currently these two variants don't cache; my primary use case was to use as source for PiHole/dnsmasq. I've a Python version in the works that would cache based on TTL.

<comment><USER2> OK, thank you. I will keep following this project. I see two main reasons to run my own DNS server: privacy and performance. DoH sufficiently solves the privacy aspect, but for performance a caching mechanism is necessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point.

Can you pls give the Python3 variant a try? It supports caching:

[https://evuraan.info/evuraan/stuff/magan/magan.py.txt](https://evuraan.info/evuraan/stuff/magan/magan.py.txt)

You'd need scapy for Python3:

      $ pip3 install scapy-python3
      $ wget https://evuraan.info/evuraan/stuff/magan/magan.py.txt  -O magan.py
      $ chmod 755 magan.py
      $ ./magan.py --help
        Usage:
        -h  --help         print this usage and exit
        -p  --port         alternate port to listen
        -v  --version      print version information and exit

I'd love to hear your feedback, thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SIRC Guide to Flirting - <AUTHOR> http://www.sirc.org/publik/flirt.html <comment><USER2> I'm not the greatest looking guy around, but I've dated some very hot women by breaking most of these "rules".

When you can sit down at a table of 4 gorgeous women without being invited you've hit gold. I'm ballsy, bordering on arrogant and women always know where I stand. Women respect that.

If you see a woman and you want to ask her out, do what it takes to make that happen. Women respect that.

You won't learn that in an 18 page PDF.

Guys focus way too much on the mechanics of flirting when they should really be developing their inner confidence, self-worth, and certainty.

<comment><USER3> Your main points are worth emphasizing but they _were_ reflected in the article and we should appreciate what a fascinatingly detailed study of human behavior this is.

I would hazard a guess that in fact you have mastered the nuances of flirting and just aren't conscious of the degree to which your successful behaviors are reflected in the guide or when your rule breaking is not beneficial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought most of the article was pretty standard stuff, but I was interested in this part:

 _Researchers have found that nodding can be used to 'regulate' conversations. If you make single, brief nods while your partner is speaking, these act as simple signs of attentiveness, which will maintain the flow of communication from the speaker. Double nods will change the rate at which the other person speaks, usually speeding up the flow, while triple nods or single, slow nods often interrupt the flow altogether, confusing speakers so much that they stop in their tracks. So, if you want to express interest and keep your partner chatting with you, stick to brief single nods._

<comment><USER5> One of the best ways to get out of a conversation involves breaking the other person's momentum - as soon as you can, ask three close ended questions. For example, if the person is talking about their favorite dog. Ask 'How old is the dog?', 'Do they like cats?', 'Is it 730 already?' - then excuse yourself politely. It's not the most tactful way to extricate oneself from a running- over conversational hog but it works effectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You know how you tie your shoes every day, but then one day you stop to think of how to tie your shoes and you find that you don't know how! And the only way to tie your shoes is to stop thinking about it and let your muscle memory take over.

That's how reading that article made me feel about social interaction.

<comment><USER7> This is a terrible guide for analytical people who over-think things to begin with.

 _When you first approach an attractive stranger, having established at least an indication of mutual interest through eye contact, try to make eye contact again at about 4ft away, before moving any closer. At 4 ft (about two small steps away), you are on the borderline between what are known as the 'social zone' (4 to 12 ft) and the 'personal zone' (18in to 4ft)._

If you're having problems socializing with people, drawing 'zones' around them and following strict rules of interaction isn't going to help.

<comment><USER8> People who over-think things are paralyzed by uncertainty when it comes to social interaction because it seems so intellectually intractible. The rules and guidelines aren't meant to encourage their compulsive ratiocination; they're meant to serve as a security blanket, to give people enough courage to actually start interacting. Simply by being short and comprehensible, they provide authoritative reassurance that flirting doesn't require a highly sophisticated understanding. Once a person is reassured enough to get started, the rest will come with experience.

<comment><USER9> Actually computing equilibria in even toy mathematical models of social collaboration is horribly intractible even at a single time step. So what you wind up being best off doing is randomly choose your initial location and just follow the local gradient of fun, then iterating this a few times and choosing the best one.

<comment><USER10> Nobody is suggesting doing game-theoretic analyses before engaging in social interaction. Obviously someone who thinks that they can completely derive their actions from formal rules of behavior is doomed to fail, but it's not like the only two possible choices are "behave completely randomly" and "perform a game-theoretic analysis of the situation based on formal rules". Guides like this provide a good set of heuristics and help the socially unskilled people understand the general ideas and general concepts which socially skilled people seem to just pick up from their environment. This is important so you can pick a reasonable starting location before doing your hill climbing algorithm -- if you just choose a completely random starting point, everything is just extremely discouraging, there's no useful feedback from the environment (other than "YOU FAIL"), and there's absolutely no fun gradient to maximize. (Or at least, the fun gradient is so negative in all directions that it's difficult to figure out which way is up.)

It always amazes me how socially skilled people apparently can't even understand what it means to be socially unskilled. It would be as if everyone who learned to ride a bicycle later completely forgot that they had to _learn_ this skill, then just went around telling everyone who didn't know how to ride a bicycle, "you just get on and pedal, it's so easy, I don't see why you keep falling, you must not be trying".

<comment><USER9> regarding the first part, you're absolutely right, but understanding the worst case computational complexity of a problem does lend a certain appreciation to the average case complexity that happens when people implicitly approximately solve those problems.

Admission: My current research project involves studying the computational complexity of socially inspired optimization problems. Turns out that even the simplest nontrivial ones are PPAD Hard or #P hard. (so special cases or approximations become key very quickly)

This is why its useful to put social problems into at least semi-mathematical language to make it easier to spell things out to the socially oblivious (but still logically endowed, which sadly isn't always the case) or to make it easier to discuss a complex social issue with a friend

<comment><USER8> This reminds me of an article I read years ago about cognitive psychologists trying to model how outfielders catch fly balls. Evidently, even given the massively parallel nature of the brain, it was very hard to come up with a model that was effective enough to explain the performance of real outfielders (Little League to Major League) but was simple enough to be neurologically plausible. Just like the social models you describe, none of the mathematically straightforward ways of modeling the fly ball problem were cognitively feasible. Yet, if you were teaching an engineering student to catch a fly ball, they would probably be helpful, even though the final goal would be to induce an entirely unrelated cognitive structure in the engineer's mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Guides" on social behavior are by definition an awkward mix of over- generalized observations and overly-specific deductions. This one is no exception:

 _In pubs, for example, the area around the bar counter is universally understood to be the 'public zone', where initiating conversation with a stranger is acceptable, whereas sitting at a table usually indicates a greater desire for privacy. Tables furthest from the bar counter are the most 'private' zones._

 _When you first meet new people, their initial impression of you will be based 55% on your appearance and body-language, 38% on your style of speaking and only 7% on what you actually say._

That isn't to say they have no value. It's helpful to be aware of the various aspects of social interaction, like how eye contact and the distance you keep affects a conversation. The danger is that the ideas are presented as definitive facts, as though all you need to do is follow their prescription to success:

 _When you first approach an attractive stranger, having established at least an indication of mutual interest through eye contact, try to make eye contact again at about 4ft away, before moving any closer. At 4 ft (about two small steps away), you are on the borderline between what are known as the 'social zone' (4 to 12 ft) and the 'personal zone' (18in to 4ft)._

The truth is, there is no prescription. At least, not a universal one. If you need a place to start, try simply to enjoy yourself when you're out. Being social comes more naturally when you're having a good time.

<comment><USER8> Pop culture is the best and only guide we have. Dave Hickey said the cultures that write love songs are the ones that don't have rigid scripts for love and courtship. We listen to love songs because we accept few limitations and instead use a shared collection of stories to orient ourselves in the vast space of possibilities.

So, what part of pop culture tells us how to flirt? (If you say reality television, I will climb out of your monitor and stab you in the face.)

<comment><USER11> Our own experiences are the best guide we have.

Although I can't say I didn't learn anything from Fifth Wheel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> May be off-topic, but I found it very interesting and not at all obvious. The stereotype of a hacker tends to be very socially oblivious, so this is perhaps relevant. Read before you kill.

<comment><USER12> This article is what I love about HN, geeky yet giving you an informative approach about certain aspects of life.

I guess that it's the whole point of the "hacker" thinking, having the knowledge of what's happening behind the scenes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Link to pdfs:

<http://www.sirc.org/publik/flirt.pdf>

Also, their _advanced_ guide to flirting:

<http://www.sirc.org/publik/flirt2.pdf>

<comment><USER4> From the advanced guide:

 _27 percent of those in social class AB found this unacceptable, increasing to 35 percent of the C2s and Ds, and 45 percent of those in social class E._

I'm sure whoever wrote this was just trying to refer to the different groups in a succinct way, but to me this classification system is amusingly reminiscent of a Brave New World's.

<comment><USER14> These are pretty standard demographic classifications in Britain, used in marketing and such-like:

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

In, for example, the media you'll quite regularly come across such things as "Over 50% of our audience are ABC1s".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While some may find this guide a bit obvious, I find it an interesting read, and somewhat fitting here in HN. I say this because when I think "hacker", I think of someone who knows more than just the correct API call to make, but the reason why. Well, this guide goes beyond stating what or how, but goes into why as well, in a way that reminds me of technical articles written for those who are past "Hello World".

</comment><comment><USER8> "Almost any participant sport or hobby can involve flirting. The level of flirtatious behaviour, however, often tends to be inversely related to the standards achieved by participants and their enthusiasm for the activity."

Damn, so much for meeting someone while doing something I actually _like_. The good news is I've always wanted to join a book club but never have because I don't like the books they read. I didn't realize my distaste for chick lit would actually work to my advantage.

</comment><comment><USER16> I stopped trying when I realized I needed a guide like this.

<comment><USER8> Don't stop trying. Remember the world is full of girls who are a bit more awkward than their peers, not to mention girls who had socially awkward fathers. As long as you're making a sincere effort to interact pleasantly with people, without pretending that you don't have a problem, you will find girls who are willing to overlook your awkwardness. It's just another unattractive characteristic that some people mind and other people don't, like being chubby, short, boring, badly dressed, poor, always late, glib, irresponsible, whatever. People can even find it endearing.

Good intentions + sincere effort + honesty about who you are = nothing to be ashamed of.

<comment><USER17>
      chubby, short, boring, badly dressed, poor, always late, glib, irresponsible

Please... just stop describing me

<comment><USER18> Ah, so you are the chubby, short, boring, badly dressed, poor, always late, glib, irresponsible guy who gets all the women with his sense of humor!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I never thought that HN would be a place to discuss my Grand Unified Theory of Flirting!

It is based in negotiation theory, which always struck me as a good starting point.

<comment><USER20> It would be awesome to finally reconcile Quantum Love-chanics and Feynman's Theory of Flirtativity.

<comment><USER21> Feynman was definitely an expert on this.

[Insert xkcd-comic link here.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> After you're finished that cosmo-style psyhology text, take a look at our favion.ico. =)</comment>


Reddit IAMA: former Entrepreneur who built a company w. $50,000 a month turnover - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cmht0/ima_former_entrepreneur_who_started_a_company_in/

<comment><USER2> My take away:

\-- build the product by yourself

\-- don't take any money where you give up control

\-- grow slowly, don't over-market to avoid unnecessary competition

\-- have direct relationships with clients, have a 800-number

\-- aim to charge yearly

\-- do not spend on people unless you get busy 7h each day, then train someone for replacement

\-- the biggest mistake - giving up control by taking money and trusting strangers

</comment><comment><USER3> Who is he?

<comment><USER4> Carl Herold founder of Clickalyzer (a google analytics competitor) and author of <http://www.highercomputingforeveryone.com/>

<comment><USER2> In his words his service wasn't a GA competitor, also he's saying most of what he did isn't provided by anyone even today. His service was analysing traffic for how to boost the sales</comment></comment></comment>


Store and Share Ancient Rocks - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01366-w <comment><USER2> Once samples are broken out of larger rocks to store as shown on these shelves, they're exposed to different conditions such as extra oxygen, CO2 and all combined perhaps with ambient water vapour. Could these storage conditions alter rocks over a shortish amount of time to affect tests?</comment>


Show HN: News, calm. Read your news once per day - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone, this is my first "Show HN", so i apologize in advance if I'm messing something up!
I've recently released "News, calm", which is a way for you to follow any website and get an email once per day with the updates on each website (new articles, for example).
It's an overhaul of something I released in September of 2018, called Focusd at the time. That product/service was only focused (ha!) on being a daily digest for RSS feeds, and the main thing I learned from customers using it in this period was that they didn't really care about the technology powering it, and that many websites people like to follow didn't have any RSS feeds.
This concept is something I've been using for years (even before I converted it from a few lambda functions into an actual product) that has helped me tremendously to stop from spending too much time on news.
To read HN I use the app's API and HN's API to get the top 3 stories per day, instead of everything new. It's OK to miss stuff.
The URL is https://news.calm.sh/ and there's a free trial for 14 days without any limitation, so I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts on things I could improve on this.
Thank you for your kindness and attention! <comment><USER2> You can get top 3 stories per day on Hacker News, which is aggregates posts based on community votes but how does your service determine top posts for a news website for example - Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg?

Your product's design is really cool, great job on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great question! In short, it doesn't.

If the website has no RSS Feeds, it scrapes the website and gives you the articles (if it can guess what are articles, otherwise, just gives you the link to the website — in this situation it's more helping you create a habit to only visit that website once per day, and if you tell me which website it is, I can go in and tweak the logic for it).

Also, thank you so much for the kind words!</comment></comment>


Starting an Engineering-Driven Initiative - <AUTHOR> https://slack.engineering/starting-an-initiative/ <comment><USER2> Great post !</comment>


Yahoo's troubled advertising business - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/07/yahoos-troubled-advertising-business.html <comment><USER2> As far as the click fraud goes, that's not unique to Yahoo, I constantly see this issue with Facebook, for example [http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-advertising-fake- lik...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-advertising-fake- likes-2014-2o)

The infrastructure issues may come down to the fact that scaling up large platforms is not easy and they have trouble attracting top talent to oversee this stuff, but that's just a guess.

I feel a lot of nostalgia for Yahoo, I hope they can turn things around. They have the money and brand to be successful but their margin for (continued) error appears to be very thin these days. I hope their next move is a smart one.</comment>


Facebook agrees to pay fine but settles without admitting liability - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/30/facebook-agrees-to-pay-uk-data-watchdogs-cambridge-analytica-fine-but-settles-without-admitting-liability/ <comment><AUTHOR> _Facebook has reached a settlement with the U.K.'s data protection watchdog, the ICO, agreeing to pay in full a £500,000 (~$643K) fine following the latter's investigating into the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal._</comment>


Review my project: notefeeder - <AUTHOR>

http://notefeeder.heroku.com
note feeder lets you save notes and urls from your current page and turns them into RSS feeds so you can quickly access them later.
I use it to tag pages I want to finish reading at home, or things that are blocked at work. Its also handy if you share your feed urls with friends or blog readers so they can see things that your liking at the moment.
I wanted the user to be able to do all this without having to ever visit the site(after the initial login).
* I found a similar site after I finished mine which was disappointing but I would still really appreciate peoples thoughts or criticism. <comment><USER2> It's a great idea, I use hacks to get around this problem from time to time. However, I've never bothered using a service to solve this problem because I can't be bothered to sign up. You made it easy enough I think I'll finally give it a try.

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome, thanks. Let me know how it goes if you have a second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clickable: <http://notefeeder.heroku.com></comment>


Tokyo Station's new guidance robot is extremely terrifying, pretty helpful - <AUTHOR> https://soranews24.com/2019/06/08/tokyo-stations-new-guidance-robot-is-extremely-terrifying-pretty-helpful%e3%80%90video%e3%80%91/ <comment><USER2> Rather ingenious head. It's translucent plastic, and they project a moving face on it. Looks pretty good.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is quite creepy. To me at least.

I wonder how children growing up with this sort of thing will think of human interaction, and how it will differ from our generation in that regard.</comment></comment>


Fraternity of the Wired Works in the Wee Hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/technology/26night.html?_r=2

<comment><USER2> i find being around people, though not necessarily interacting with them, can be very focusing. i wonder if it could be evolutionary - it makes sense to expend productive/creative energy while around other, who could incidentally pick up or contribute something you've created.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a huge fan of this. I'm up working during that time most nights anyway, and it would be great to be able to work with other people.

Can we get one of these going around in atlanta?

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. Might have to look into this should I get back into coding and people in Chicago are interested. Might be a little tougher for us married folks though.

</comment><comment><USER5> This sounds really cool. I wonder if we could get the Epicenter café in San Francisco or some other spot to stay open late one night a week. Something critical mass-style where no organizer is necessary, just a place and a time.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love working late, but my health suffers a massive decline with sleep deprivation. My immune system takes a beating and I invariably get sick after an all-nighter.

</comment><comment><USER7> Any Portland, OR night owls interested in starting a group?

</comment><comment><USER8> Any nightowls in Paris? Is anything like this organized in this city?

</comment><comment><USER9> I found this interesting. Proof of mobile app bubble?

 _"I don't code very well, and a developer working here might be able to solve a problem in 30 seconds that might take me three hours," said Jonathan Wegener, _who creates mobile applications.__

<comment><USER10> Information-rich app. Very nice marketing. It's always good to be modest.

<http://www.exitstrategynyc.com/>

The interesting thing is PositionApp shows it ranks in the top 300 in the Navigation category in countries outside the U.S.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SecureSend share passwords, like fileshare but for short msgs - <AUTHOR> https://pkhub.io/securesend <comment><AUTHOR> Some notes from myself (the author):

I strongly have to insist that when sharing credentials/passwords you should be using a service like a secrets manager or password manager, ideally you'll use my service [https://pkhub.io](https://pkhub.io) :)

This quick share mechanism is made for that time when you are about to send a password over slack and delete it afterwards. You know its wrong but its just so convenient :/

With [https://pkhub.io/securesend](https://pkhub.io/securesend) you can send it, have a optional passcode and the message expires either on read or after the expire time set.

The advantage is the message is not somewhere in a text transcript that can be harvested, and is deleted permanently after expire. Its also stored encrypted where only the link holder can decrypt the message.

The link will be available for harvest if you send it over email or slack but the temporality of the message solves this i.e the link becomes useless after the message expires.</comment>


Who is showing Charlie Hebdo's new cover? CNN, NYT, WP no, WSJ yes - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/12/media/charlie-hebdo-magazine-publish/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "The chosen cartoon shows Mohammed holding up a sign that says "Je Suis Charlie," the now-famous slogan that became a rallying cry after 12 people were killed at the magazine's offices on January 7. The cover illustration also includes the words "All is Forgiven" \-- a message that is open to interpretation." A picture is worth a thousand words...</comment>


Show HN: EasyLlama – Sexual Harassment Training Made Easy (Required in NY/CA/IL) - <AUTHOR> https://www.easyllama.com/ <comment><USER2> I just attended one of these. Guess we won't be having the 'best bodies in tech' competition this year. A lot of people pay their kids to take the classes. Once you've seen it once it is extremely boring. There's about five minutes of content in each hour, and no way to test out of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just took the EasyLlama training at my company and I LOVED it! It's really different than boring courses that I took in the past, it works on mobile phone and it is truly interactive, lots of videos, quizzes, etc... very engaging. If I had my own business I would definitely think about them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Citizen of Poland here, I had to have a double take on this because I thought it's a joke at first. It's not. Way to go USA.</comment>


China Bans Internet News Reporting as Media Crackdown Widens - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-25/china-slaps-ban-on-internet-news-reporting-as-crackdown-tightens <comment><USER2> Not good news at all. My strong wish is that China, the USA (my country!), and Russia all 'do well' economically and not do poor judgement things like stripping citizens' rights and instigate military conflicts. This wish is for selfish reasons since there is probably more chance of a major war now than anytime in the recent past. History shows that when things go bad, governments tend to act badly. My country faces some real economic challenges which is why I think we are starting to act more aggressively internationally.</comment>


Why C can be faster than assembly - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.mentor.com/colinwalls/blog/2013/02/18/why-c-is-faster-than-assembly/

<comment><USER2> The title is a bit misleading. It should be "How I can get to the optimum solution faster in C than in assembler." However, it is still a good read.

A quote from the article: "The reason C is faster than assembly is because the only way to write optimal code is to measure it on a real machine, and with C you can run many more experiments, much faster."</comment>


Oculus sunsets Go, will add easier Quest app distribution - <AUTHOR> https://www.oculus.com/blog/an-update-on-the-evolution-of-the-oculus-platform-/ <comment><USER3> I hate to keep saying "I told you so" but I've had many conversations at Oculus Connect & elsewhere about the abject failure of 3DoF with few people seriously considering that the market has spoken. 6DoF standalone VR is the minimum bar for success with spacial computing. Forget 3DoF & AR. Focus on what's growing and retentive. That's 6DoF VR standalones and currently Quest is king.

<comment><USER4> I'd go so far as to say 3DoF was a massive setback for popular perceptions of VR.

Low-resolution spherical imagery and video is just not that impressive, and that's all you get with 3DoF. Contrast with the presence and immersion you get with even the cheapest 6DoF headsets, and it's not even the same technology category.

So, now we have a bunch of people walking around thinking they "tried VR" because they had a Gear or a Go or a Cardboard, but they didn't get what the big deal was about.

<comment><USER5> Yes, 3DOF was a gimmick and lead to the perception that VR was another 3DTV waiting to happen. Turns out "VR" is, 3DOF devices and phone holder VR of the mid-2010s had a similar adoption and failure curve as 3DTV. I didn't really get excited about VR until I tried Vive, as tracked controllers are important also.

<comment> dylan-m I bet there are a large number of people who have felt sick because of 3DOF "VR", as well, and have since written off VR because they don't want to feel sick again. Having a system that ignores most of your movements but not all of them is a recipe for motion sickness, even if it _is_ running at 90 frames per second. Developers at Oculus and elsewhere have poured tons of energy into solving that with stuff like Asynchronous Spacewarp, where the goal is to respond to every little movement your body makes as soon as possible. As it turns out, this is really important. And I think we've all learned here that simply having hands is huge. (It doesn't even matter if they do anything: being able to see your hands is immediately reassuring). So it's really sad to me that the product people went on to ignore (might even say sabotage) that effort with the Go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm still annoyed that they don't have multiple user profiles for Quest. What kind of gaming device doesn't support that in 2020? Every time I hear an announcement from Oculus, I have a little hope they'll announce support for this, and every time I'm disappointed.

<comment><USER7> Yeah this is the dumbest part of using a Quest right now. No profiles means no separate save data, so I can't differentiate my high scores in Beat Saber from my wife's, which is really annoying.

And then of course in some games with a story mode, if they didn't build in multiple save files into the game then you're just kind of screwed.

<comment><USER8> Totally. When I make Oculus friends, I hate that I have to tell them to find me as [my husband's username] because he signed up on the device first, so now I can never have my own Oculus account.

I solved the Beatsaber highscores problem by being really really good at Beatsaber, so I only play on Expert+ and he only plays the lower levels. That way our high scores are separate. :)

<comment><USER9> I use party mode for this. It lets you enter your names etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > That's why we're going all-in, and we won't be shipping any more 3DOF VR > products.

This is not exactly surprising, but still a bold and absolutely correct move from Oculus.

As a developer who was rejected from the Oculus Quest store before, it's great to hear that they now how concrete plans to start opening up the store.

<comment><USER10> I'll believe their new distribution method when I see it. How will they handicap it? How will they maintain their requisite absolute control? And we won't see it until sometime next year? Hmm. (Spoken as someone who was rejected from the Rift store.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm imagining you'll just have a direct link to your app in the store that you can use e.g. on your website or submit to SideQuest. Your app won't be findable on the Quest store otherwise. Why is that hard to believe?

<comment><USER10> > Why is that hard to believe?

Because they haven't given us any of these details that you're imagining. Will there still be an approval process? Will Facebook give up any control? Will this be just like "keys only" distribution, a return of the Concepts/Early Access channel, or something like the old Oculus Share? So...I'll believe it when I see it.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the linked blog post, they say that apps will be still subject to their policies (same as when you want your app in the iOS app store or Android Play Store), but that you'll have a direct link to distribute.

<comment><USER10> The direct link mention is encouraging, I hope they do something interesting with the opportunity

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In case you're not into VR but is curious about it from time to time: DoF means degree of freedom and you can easily imagine the tech leap from 3 to 6 (X, Y & Z axis of movements of the head plus surge [back and forth], sway [sideways] and heave [vertical] movements of your body).

<comment><USER12> 3DoF -> looking around

6DoF -> looking & moving around

<comment><USER13> 6DoF -> looking around and moving around

<comment><USER12> Right!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Go is a great piece of hardware for what it is.

In my opinion, working with it since day one: It isn't going anywhere. You can still sideload, you can still tinker and the tooling is there to do this in pure android studio + 3d engine.

You don't need anything from FB / oculus for hobby projects as long as the driver is available (and they're already "out" so hopefully FB just puts it on GitHub or similar).

I still prefer the Go for watching content on planes, to "zone out" with virtual zen spaces, etc.

<comment><USER15> And go is still great for watching porn (maybe not in airplane though) for as far as Im aware all of it is 3DOF 180 fov movies.

<comment><USER14> There were similar comments in a thread I commented on in 2018. It's interesting that a lot of people immediately jump to porn. The Redbull content is really good and watching regular content in the void or similar is a novelty, IMO, when you don't do it everyday.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17509327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17509327)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What a dick move. I can understand that they won't accept any new apps, but also not accepting updates?

A lot of apps for media playing and social media for the Go are still under active development. Not allowing updates will effectively cut off Go users from social media.

I sense a class action coming.

</comment><comment><USER17> So, for someone who isn't gonna drop a grand on a Valve rig, what's the right purchase for a gamer today?

<comment><USER18> Quest is better just because you can buy it relatively quickly, and for Valve Index you have to wait many weeks in line. Valve Index (or Rift, for example) is lighter, because it doesn't have battery, and has better tracking (pros), but is connected by cable (cons). But you need cable for Quest to play PC games anyway!

But it's not significantly cheaper - you want 128GB version because games are huge, this is $500. Then you need a case - this is relatively fragile equipment, and you don't want your lens to get dirty since it's hard to clean - $40. Then you need Oculus Link cable to play Half Life: Alyx or other more demanding games - $80. Quest doesn't have built-in headset - $50 more (I'm actually using over-the-ear headphones with $10 short cable). You may also need grips (magnetic battery cover is the most stupid thing!). You can buy cheaper accessories, but they are hit or miss, so I opted for first-party case and cable at least. Anyway, this is $670, which is getting into Valve Index territory.

<comment><USER19> The Link cable is totally optional & only if you want a 15ft super-light USB3 cable. You can use any USB cable you want including USB2 cables, 26ft cables, cables you already own, the in-box charging cable.

On price, the Valve Index is $999. $999 - $670 = $329. Generally a $300 price difference at this level puts you in a very different market price point targeting different users. You may also not already have a Windows gaming PC. Then the TOC difference rises to $~1329-2000 between the two setups because the Quest works just fine without any extra hardware.

Regarding the case, it was unclear to me if you're implying that the Valve Index is more robust & thus doesn't need a case?

Disclaimer: I work on Oculus Link.

<comment><USER18> For 15ft you kinda want light cable. Also you want L-shaped connector on one end. From the speed test it does during setup it kinda looks like it needs USB 3 speeds, so USB2 presumably won't cut it. Anyway, I was going to get one of the cheaper cables from Amazon, but after reading bunch of problematic reviews for cheaper cables I ponnied up for the Oculus cable since I didn't want to deal with potential problems.

Sure, there is a price difference, but my point was that Quest needs a bit more accessories than Index, so it pushes the price a bit up. I still would recommend Quest to anyone, because people who get Index (or other PC-based headset) know what they need already.

My plan is to store Index in the original case. It didn't work out for Quest because case is not that convenient for reuse, and Quest is not actually stored in the office next to PC (and at the kitchen area I prefer smaller footprint). Also Quest is moved around way more.

>Disclaimer: I work on Oculus Link.

I sure hope you'll fix the problems because some VD users report better colors (deeper blacks specifically) and better latency (hard to believe, but still). ;) ;) ;)

<comment><USER19> We still officially recommend USB3 but USB2 is still functional.

> after reading bunch of problematic reviews for cheaper cables I ponnied up > for the Oculus cable since I didn't want to deal with potential problems.

That is your choice as the consumer to make. A non-trivial amount of users are using USB2 cables & there are lots of successful reports on the subreddit discussing cables that work.

> but my point was that Quest needs a bit more accessories than Index, so it > pushes the price a bit up.

In my experience I haven't observed the need for these accessories personally but YMMV. Still, even with all the extra accessories, you're still $300 cheaper than the Index. I wouldn't put them in the same pricing category. The pricing disparity grows significantly if you consider someone knew to VR without a gaming PC. The TOC for just trying VR content is significantly higher as is the setup complexity.

> I sure hope you'll fix the problems because some VD users report better > colors (deeper blacks specifically) and better latency (hard to believe, but > still). ;) ;) ;)

I have not heard any feedback that indicates that VD latency is better than Link. There are some color differences. IIRC VD uses the wrong color space for its rendering (intentionally or otherwise) which can make things seem more vibrant, but that reproduces if you compare against Rift/Rift S as well. "Deeper blacks" generally wouldn't be impacted by anything in the Link stack & this is the first I'm encountering of anything like that.

If you have any actual links to such reports (lower latency, color issues) that would be helpful so we can make sure to be talking about the same thing. If you have links for reports of these problems that would be helpful. Given what you've described it's hard to link it back to anything actionable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > [https://developer.oculus.com/blog/the-next-chapter-of- > oculus...](https://developer.oculus.com/blog/the-next-chapter-of-oculus- > development-and-a-new-quest-distribution-path-coming-in-2021/)

Still lots of content censorship requirements for this new way to distribute.

Why does content have to submit to a blanket rejection of dealing with any sexuality when it's not even going through their store?

[https://developer.oculus.com/policy/content- guidelines/](https://developer.oculus.com/policy/content-guidelines/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been thinking of getting one now that it is a pretty well supported target in Godot ([https://godotengine.org/article/godot-oculus-quest- support](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-oculus-quest-support)), which means I could easily get prototypes running on it with little hassle. Am curious about when they'll refresh the hardware, though, because it comes across as a little underpowered on the standalone front (and I don't have a beefy machine to use Oculus Link with it).

</comment><comment><USER22> > People have spent more than $100M on Quest content and more than 10 titles > have generated over $2M in revenue on Quest

That sounds weird: The only numbers they can share with us are that people have spent $100M on game development, but they only point to a total of $20M of revenue. Obviously $20M isn't the entire revenue on the platform... but since they didn't share any other numbers, the default assumption would have to be that they aren't very flattering, either.

"Come develop on our platform! Spend $100M to make $20M in revenue!"

<comment><USER23> They are saying $100M in transactions have taken place on their app store, and a handful of the most popular titles have made $2M each. Not that developers are burning $5 to make $1.

<comment><USER24> Also, at least $2M... it's probably like #1: $20M, #2: $10M, #3: $5M, and so on. So probably half the $100M went to the top 10?

<comment><USER25> Probably a huge chunk of it is $30+ never-on-sale Beat Sabre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> When this happens, will we still be able to sideload into the Go? Haven't found a solid answer for this yet.

</comment><comment><USER27> Focusing their product line like this is a great move. I hope that they do more to hone in on overall usability for the average user, and continue to expand beyond gamers as their core persona. Focusing on standalone VR, hand tracking, and hopefully more social and productivity apps like Facebook Horizon will be the best way to grow.

</comment><comment><USER28> As an old VR developer, this is great news. I agree with you all - <USER2> 3DoF, it's "diluting" the experience, and not in a good way. In the apps themselves, too many design sacrifices have to be made to account for this narrow use case. The price point was great - but for overall flexibility standalone devices are the future.

</comment><comment><USER29> I bought a Go recently because it was the only VR platform I could afford and... it was cool for a minute but quickly felt like a gimmick, so this isn't surprising.

I'd still like to develop for "real" VR and play around with it in the future but this is out of my league at the moment.

<comment><USER30> Definitely try the Quest if you have a chance.

Real VR isn't about the 3D effect it's about having body and hand presence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Unfortunately just the kind of experience you can expect when buying non-open systems. Company loses interest in hardware - it can stop everyone developing for it. If they would at least open it up for sideloading so the hardware isn't doomed to become electronic trash.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's like saying the Palm handhelds should still be supported.

<comment><USER31> I don't know about Palm as I never had one. But I can still code for my first Android phone. And I do not ask for support, but for opening up sideloading so users can install apps from PC when the shop closes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> To paraphrase, we want a way you can distribute crappy games but no way they're going in our store.

</comment><comment><USER33> How easy is it to ship exemplar apps to Quest? Can I just pick up Unity XR, riff a little on the FPS example, and compile it straight to something I can load on a Quest?

<comment><USER34> I don't think there's a pre-built FPS VR template from Unity, but it is pretty simple for basic projects. Word of warning, though: VR locomotion is very different from FPS locomotion, and gets very complex pretty quickly.

<comment><USER33> Ah, that's a shame. I naively thought the Unity FPS game would load onto Oculus Quest.

My real goal is to have students ship content of their own to the Quest, to dive a little deeper into programming and technology than they might do as mere consumers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How does Quest compare to Rift for anyone who's used both?

<comment><USER7> I own a Quest and Rift CV1. It's hard to go back to the Rift, even with the extra computing power. It's just a pain to clear enough space, whereas I can be more flexible with where I use the Quest. Plus, the cameras are an eyesore, think I might just take them down.

The resolution on the Quest is better too, and when I really need my gaming PC for some VR title I can always use link with it.

The Quest has a lot of cool titles on it, though I'd be lying if I didn't admit that most of the time it's a Beat Saber machine for me. Beat Saber is fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> After a few years with an Oculus Touch, my basic conclusion is that I'm too good at immersing myself in standard games to ever be truly excited about VR. For me there just isn't a big enough difference to justify all the inconveniences.</comment>


S3 Distributed Version Restore - <AUTHOR> http://eng.climate.com/2015/01/05/s3-distributed-version-restore/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the author of this, and I'd be happy to answer your questions.

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting. We have a massive versioning system in [http://Clara.io](http://Clara.io) but what we do is we store everything and we have a front end DB that tracks versions, thus accessing a file from S3 is a redirect through another identifier. This allows us to have multiple concurrent versions all accessible without relying upon S3 features. We also cache the hell out of S3 because we find it slow.</comment>


How YouTube's Algorithm Works If You Are Not Logged In - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/how-youtubes-algorithm-really-works/575212/ <comment><USER2> I thought that they use some kind of fingerprinting, so being logged in or out doesn't matter much. I stay logged out all the time on the web and on my phone but I have little illusions of not being tracked. At least I dont't explicitly give them my name.</comment>


Killing Primitive Loops and Conditionals - <AUTHOR> http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2010/07/24/killing-primitive-loops-and-conditionals/ <comment><USER2> Looks like the object-oriented version of what's possible in the lambda calculus:

      true = lambda(x,y) -> x
      false = lambda(x,y) -> y
      if = lambda(pred,then,else) -> pred(then,else)

</comment><comment><USER3> Groovy, helped me learn something about conditionals without the extra syntax for brevity.

I'm partial to iterators that look like "for each" for loops. You say recursion, I say tomato.

</comment><comment><USER4> His while can be written more concisely, I think:

      Ether :: while: condition do: block {
        if: condition call then: {
          block call
          while: condition do: block
        }
      }

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like Smalltalk.</comment>


How Streak built a graph database on Cloud Spanner to wrangle billions of emails - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/how-streak-built-a-graph-database-on-cloud-spanner-to-wrangle-billions-of-emails <comment><USER2> I'm the post author and happy to answer any questions people might have!

<comment><USER3> What is the actual graph engine to query edges and nodes using traversals and shortest paths?</comment></comment>


Jupylet: A marriage of Jupyter and the pyglet game programming library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nir/jupylet <comment><AUTHOR> Jupylet is a library that enables creating and running pyglet games inside Jupyter notebooks both for kids learning to program and for researchers of reinforcement learning. RL researchers and developers can use it to easily create new environments, and to programmatically control and render thousands of frames per second.</comment>


Alfred Lin Has The Midas Touch: The Man With $2B In Acquisitions Under His Belt - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/28/alfred-lin-has-the-midas-touch-the-man-with-2-billion-in-acquisitions-under-his-belt/ <comment><USER2> Not trying to be critical, but any position that is associated with managing revenue tends to have a high correlation with success. What kind of startup hires a CFO? Exactly. I know a controller who has a similar track record.

<comment><USER3> Venture Frogs (VC) sounds like it did well. My bet is that Mr. Lin knows how to pick them. Perhaps by asking himself if an opportunity "needs a CFO?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      I highly recommend interviewing at whatever company he ends up at next.
      It's likely to be a big winner.

What a sad statement. Going to work for another company because they employ someone? You'd think TechCrunch would rather say something like, "go start a company good enough to attract people like him"

</comment><comment><USER5> Given the sheer number of startups, isn't this a rather statistically likely outcome for at least one individual from a purely random perspective?

</comment><comment><USER6> If you consider the set of all technology execs, there's probably at least one with an even better records. See James Randi's psychic television special thought experiment.

I came to the conclusion while driving to work today that social investing sites will fuel the next giant financial collapse, because most people are just completely incapable of internalizing "past performance is not a guarantee of future results."

<comment><USER3> The Trust Economy Bubble - it does have a certain ring to it.</comment></comment>


Oregon redefines "Abundance of Caution" by shutting down online schools - <AUTHOR> https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/03/29/oregon-redefines-abundance-of-caution-by-shutting-down-online-schools/ <comment><USER2> The linked weblog simply quotes from this more objective news-story in the Willamette Weekly.

[https://www.wweek.com/news/schools/2020/03/26/oregons- virtua...](https://www.wweek.com/news/schools/2020/03/26/oregons-virtual- charter-schools-are-the-definition-of-social-distancing-the-state-shut-them- down-anyway/)

<comment><USER3> Relevant quote: "Because online charter schools already have fully developed curricula that can serve idle students right away, parents of children who attend brick-and-mortar schools might be inclined to transfer their students to the virtual schools. That could have budget consequences for traditional schools because they are funded based on enrollment. If enrollment goes down, funding goes down as well."

<comment><USER4> I guess their funding doesn't scale? Someone break this down, how are education systems funded?

<comment><USER5> Per student in attendance (daily) for state base funds, and the same per school in locality. Most school funding is from local property taxes.

That's the super rough answer - and no funding doesn't scale, they don't have the money. Schools will do almost anything to keep kids in attendance because that's what their budget is determined on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An important clarification that came out after the linked article:

"Earlier in the week, we had some misinformation come out that made it look like we had to close, and then we had formal guidance come out yesterday evening that said, 'no, we can continue to operate," Nicholaus Sutherland, ORVA's executive director, said. Although normal classes can resume, the virtual school has been told it won't be able to enroll any new students as of March 26.

[https://www.kptv.com/news/some-oregon-schools-face- challenge...](https://www.kptv.com/news/some-oregon-schools-face-challenges- in-move-to-online-learning/article_ef9078fe-7083-11ea-adfc-934f8eb3e8a6.html)

<comment><USER7> That's still shitty, isn't it? Telling parents they can't get their kids a better education because of bureaucratic knee jerk defensive measures against competition?

<comment><USER6> Oh definitely. It's just a little less bad then shutting down current students, which would make no sense at all (they're already not in the brick- and-mortal system so there's no funding moving).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

But it is really hard to imagine that Oregon's governor is this stupid.

So either there's some political gains, or she simply just hates charter schools, their students, or the student's parents.

<comment><USER9> Don't sell Oregon's stupidity short. It's a hot-bed for anti-vaxxer sentiment. And Eugene might be the largest city in America that doesn't fluoridate its water.

<comment><USER10> Portland doesn't flouridate its water it is far larger than Eugene.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Adapt or die just doesn't apply to really big government funded stuff. I'm a bleeding heart liberal and understand the undercurrent of current pushes for Medicare for all, but I also worry about this kind of shit. State schools don't have to compete?

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone know how the funding works in Oregon? If the state closes the school, does that mean they don't need to pay for those days of instruction?

</comment><comment><USER12> A lot of Online classes require students to come on to campus for proctored exams and lab time. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case.</comment>


The Paradox of the Black Feminist Panda: Godel and Intersectionality - <AUTHOR> http://cultstate.com/?p=125 <comment><AUTHOR> Let theories be a set of theorems.

Let a theorem be a set of proofs that predict and detect oppression.

Let intersectionality imply inversions (!) to be:

\- The intersections (∩) of the complement (c) of a theory with its overlapping theories and non-overlapping theories.

\- The absolute complement of an theory and all non-overlapping theories.

Let intersectionality deny complements of a theory as a complete theory.

Let intersectionality treat all intersecting theories as new theories.

Let A, C, D be overlapping theories, thus:

Let D = B ∩ C

Let E = C ∩ A

Let F = A ∩ B

Thus, inversions can be defined as:

!A = (A ∩ B)c ∩ C

!B = (B ∩ C)c ∩ A

!C = (C ∩ A)c ∩ B

Thus:

!A = D !B = E

!C = F

But:

(A ∩ B)c ∩ C = B ∩ C

(B ∩ C)c ∩ A = C ∩ A

(C ∩ A)c ∩ B = A ∩ B

This is logically false since B ∩ C contains not just (A ∩ B)c ∩ C, but also A ∩ B ∩ C.

Intersectionality's implications of inversion, then, is false.

To further demonstrate the point, let X be a different theory of oppression that has no intersecting theorems. Thus:

Ø = X ∩ A

Ø = X ∩ B

Ø = X ∩ C

Ø = X ∩ D

Ø = X ∩ E

Ø = X ∩ F

Thus:

X ∉ B ∩ C

X ∉ C ∩ A

X ∉ A ∩ B

However, due to the second rule of inversion, X is part of all inversions. Thus:

!A = D

Ø = X ∩ D

Ø = X ∩ (B ∩ C)

But:

!A = (A ∩ B)c ∩ C

Ø = X ∩ !A

Ø = X ∩ (A ∩ B)c ∩ C

Is a false statement.</comment>


Royal Canadian Mint to sell advertising space on currency - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thisisthat/ads-on-money-trudeau-impersonator-canada-fails-summer-american-refugees-1.3751774/royal-canadian-mint-to-sell-advertising-space-on-currency-1.3751945 <comment><USER2> "This is That is an award winning satirical current affairs show that doesn't just talk about the issues, it fabricates them."</comment>


Podcast Feed of YCombinator Startup Schools 2005-Present - <AUTHOR> http://feeds.feedburner.com/Ycombinator-StartupSchool <comment><AUTHOR> This podcast contains all the published podcasts from the last 3 years of Startup School. Talks from 2005 and 2006 are linked to the official recordings and those from 2007 are linked to my lower quality recordings until the official ones are released.

If you were not there this year and are short on time - I'd recommend listening to Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, and Greg McAdoo first.

<comment><USER2> thanks for the link Matt, many hours of listening will follow. Do you know the location of the images for '2007 Recent founders Panel' that match this talk? <http://weblava.net/2007-03/startup- school/Startup_School_2007-Recent_Founders.mp3>

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure ;) I did look around to try and find those slides. I should probably just email those guys and ask for it. Here are a couple of shots I found: <http://flickr.com/photos/bluesmoon/tags/reddit/> <http://reddit.com/static/spreddit/reddit2mockup.jpg>

<comment><USER2> Beaut. Now I can listen & see the shots :) thanks for the effort.</comment></comment></comment></comment>