China's New Bridges: Rising High, but Buried in Debt - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/world/asia/china-bridges-infrastructure.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Western media: "China is building infrastructure that doesn't make money!"

Beijing: "We are connecting economic development to border regions and neighbouring countries for geostrategic and unification purposes, we don't care about cost"

Personal observation: Beijing is smart. I personally lived on and near the southwestern Chinese border for most of the last 16 years and they are definitely kicking ass with infrastructure, including high speed trains, renewable energy (wind/hydro/solar) and highways. They have achieved their goal of economic integration for a lot of formerly isolated people. There were abuses earlier but now they generally give people who are moved a pretty good deal, eg. free rice and oil for life, free apartment plus a life long monthly stipend per household member (source: Personal interview with someone to be moved, Chinese New Year 2017).

Western media: "Build it and they will come!"

Beijing: "They are already here."

Personal observation: Beijing is basically right, except in some private sector residential building projects.

Another low quality China-bashing article from the NYT.

<comment><USER3> It might be politically motivated in that China shows a different way to progress but while they have lifted hundreds of millions out of utter poverty, their recipe to success includes union-busting, child labor, long work-hours, etc as well as their foray into "imperialism lite" in Africa. Everything the NYT stands against. So in that light they cannot possibly hold them as exemplars, given those things, even if ideologically the CN gov is leftist.

<comment><USER2> Children are required to be in school, by law. Some work as well (often in family restaurants as all over the world) or leave early and get low skilled jobs, but outside of purely agricultural areas this is pretty rare.

In my experience work hours are the same as the US (which itself is famously bad on holidays and worker freedom from a European or Australian perspective) for the most part, with a six day per week maximum but better holidays than the US. People who work hard tend to take longer holidays or contract work.

Re: 'stands for' ... not sure how valid bringing in to any discussion the supposed moral stance of a news outlet is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm honestly not sure what to think about China at this point because I've read so many news articles and reports from credible sources that paint seemingly contradictory pictures of the health of the Chinese economy.

Perhaps Quora would be a better venue for this, but I'm having a difficult time understanding what exactly may happen to the Chinese economy if all of the following are simultaneously true:

1\. China has a trade surplus in its favor, on the order of ~40B/mo

2\. China has an exceptionally high savings rate, ~50%

3\. China is in an incredible amount of debt

4\. China is experiencing a massive outflow of capital by firms and individuals

I understand that macroeconomics is a very complicated and nuanced subject, but would greatly appreciate it if a HN reader could point me towards a comprehensive article or is willing to share their own analysis.

[1] [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-trade-surplus- widens-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-trade-surplus-widens-as- momentum-slips-2017-05-08)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-01/chinese-c...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-01/chinese- consumers-cling-to-saving-suppressing-spending)

[3] [http://www.barrons.com/articles/why-chinas-debt-bomb-has- not...](http://www.barrons.com/articles/why-chinas-debt-bomb-has-not- exploded-1491885214)

[4] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/05/asias-top- ban...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/05/asias-top-banks-warn- chinese-capital-flight-becoming-dangerous/)

<comment><USER5> I am no expert, but my rough understanding is that China has 'trapped' itself in a tricky situation by relying on its export economy and on debt/investments to stimulate growth. Ideally, a 'healthy' economy is balanced between exports, local consumption, and debt/investment. But China has weak local consumption due to their high saving rates and their capital outflows. This means they have had to rely on the other two (debt, exports) to grow the economy. High debt normally isn't an issue because a healthy economy can always 'grow out of it' (i.e. over time inflation will make it more manageable). But because China is export driven, if their currency rises too much, that part of their economy will crash (because their exports get more expensive). Had they had more local consumption, the impact would be smaller because the stronger currency would mean increased buying power for local consumers. But because local consumption is weak, they have to hope that growth in exports outpaces growth in debt (which recently hasn't been the case).

The big question mark, is how actively the government will intervene if things go south. In a normal market, too much debt results in bankruptcies. This results in people losing money (all of those savers who have been socking their money away in banks). But a lot of institutions in China are state owned, so it's possible that they could prop up these institutions. No one really knows what that would look like, or how it would impact the economy, but the assumption is you will have a lot of zombie companies that only exist because the government is making good on their debt obligations.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for sharing, especially your concerns centered around government intervention in case things go south.

From my understanding, capital outflows seek higher returns in foreign markets which would eventually (in theory) be repatriated to drive eventual consumption. If the Yuan is strengthened, would this not make foreign produced goods cheaper to consume within the country? Would it truly be a "crash" if goods are consumed domestically instead of shipped to foreign countries? Considering the high savings rate, could these accelerated savings be used to purchase productive foreign assets?

Strange times, to say the least.

<comment><USER6> My understanding from what I've read is that the capital outflows aren't just seeking higher returns in foreign markets. Instead, they are also seeking to protect that money from an expected economic collapse in China and lord knows what means of trying to claw that capital back by the government.

So I'm not sure a strengthening Yuan would necessarily remove the need for that reduction of risk.

<comment><USER5> That is my understanding as well. These aren't your typical international investments, the goal is to get the money out of China entirely.

Worth noting, China is also trying to limit international investments (in addition to capital flight mentioned above) to try and encourage domestic investments[1]. If I had to pick one sign that there might be trouble ahead, it would be this one. It's one thing to try and clamp down on people dodging capital controls, but it's another thing entirely to try and limit international investments that would broaden China's economic footprint.

And one final thought. While there are some troubling signs, no major modern economy is or has been as tightly controlled as China's. So I don't think anyone really knows how this will play out. It's quite possible that they thread the needle and keep everything rolling smoothly. And as others mentioned in this thread, there are plenty of examples in history where massive infrastructure investments caused some big financial pain/failures in the short term, only to result in positive long term impacts. It's quite possible that China is playing the long game here, ready to suffer some short term pain, but looking 20-30 years down the road. As their economy matures, infrastructure projects will get more expensive (see the US for example), so might as well overbuild now.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/26/china-to- re...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/26/china-to-rein-in- foreign-investment-as-domestic-growth-stalls)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of the UK's railways were built on the back of a private investment bubble in the 19th century. Many of the schemes were caught up in corruption and many of the investors lost money.

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

Looking back though, those investments were absolutely without doubt a net positive for the country. It's hard to even quantify the benefit having 10,000 miles of railways cut through the country has brought us over the 150 years since. Building even a few hundred miles of railway now is extraordinarily expensive and mired in all sorts of legal issues.

I'm sure not all of these big infrastructure projects will succeed, but I bet they will be a net positive over the long term.

<comment><USER8> > A lot of the UK's railways were built on the back of a private investment > bubble in the 19th century.

A lot of the internet infrastructure was built out during the bubble period of the late 90's / early 2000's

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am not an economist but I suspect China's debt might not be such a big problem....until it is. But China is too big to fail and before it hits China hard the world will try to save what it can so it wont hit others as well. Ah the beauty of globalization.

<comment><USER10> In an economy the size and importance of China, what happens is protracted stagnation due to the debt, rather than a Venezuela style meltdown. China is repeating, almost perfectly, the Japan-scenario, with a similarly predictable outcome.

<comment><USER11> > China is repeating, almost perfectly, the Japan-scenario, with a similarly > predictable outcome.

My imperfect understanding of China is stagnation is tantamount to ouster of the Politburo members, or at least the Standing Committee; they will go to great lengths to avoid that outcome during their tenure. From what I've read, the population supports the political and economic _status quo_ so long as there is relatively discernible economic improvement decade-over-decade. If that is true, then a 3+ decade stagnation scenario might be difficult to sketch out, though the US middle class is going on 4+ decades of stagnation now [1], so perhaps that same scenario is possible in China, given enough variety of distractions from the general trend line.

China's infrastructure build-out will also lag behind the economic effects to follow by many years. I personally think it will eventually prove prescient, creating new markets for China's industrial output in the coming centuries, but it won't come without its own set of challenges. If China pulls a wildcard move like monetizing infrastructure debt, holding out promises of enormous growth on the back of that infrastructure, then they can perhaps forestall stagnation far longer than anyone anticipates currently.

[1] I've yet to see a credible rebuttal to the assertion of middle class stagnation that accounts for not just health insurance, land, and education inflation, but also terms and conditions inflation like smaller quantities for same price, or less or lower-quality health insurance coverage for same price, or inferior ingredients substitution for the same price, or better supply chain logistics yet still shipping enriched flour, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And we in the US struggle with getting anything built for less than eye watering sums - does anyone remember the recent bay bridge saga? Corruption, incompetence, etc?

<comment><USER13> > And we in the US struggle with getting anything built for less than eye > watering sums - does anyone remember the recent bay bridge saga?

You mean the one partially built by the Chinese?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html)

Also, don't assume those bridges are built particularly well and will last for a long time. The Chinese have their own fair share of corruption, incompetence, etc...

<comment><USER14> Yeah, except for the facts that the leaky bolts that were the primary source of consternation last year (?) weren't part of the Chinese-built part of the bridge.

<comment><USER13> The problem with the welds in the Chinese part of the bridge came much earlier in the bridge building process:

[http://media.sacbee.com/static/sinclair/sinclair.jquery/bayb...](http://media.sacbee.com/static/sinclair/sinclair.jquery/baybridge/index.html)

Overall, it looks like the Chinese didn't do that bad of a job here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can someone who knows more about economics than I do explain to me how China can be in debt while itself being the largest holder of American debt at the same time?

Don't the debts at least cancel out, or has China really borrowed more than the US borrowed from it? Or does this all only really matter on paper, but somehow in the real world it doesn't at all?

<comment><USER16> If you read the article it mentions that local governments borrow from government owned banks. Perhaps that explains some of it.

<comment><USER15> So is this a case of merely moving money from one pocket to another? Or are local governments actually independent of China's allegedly totalitarian central government?

<comment><USER17> We do the exact same stuff.

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/10/news/economy/us-debt- ownersh...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/10/news/economy/us-debt- ownership/index.html)

Also as for holders of debt. Japan beats China

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/16/investing/china-japan-us- deb...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/16/investing/china-japan-us-debt- treasuries/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> China does this for one reason: jobs, jobs, jobs. Infrastructure buildup (and maintenance) is surprisingly labor-intensive and so China trades (mostly internal) debt to build long-term-valuable infrastructure plus relieving job market stress.

The current Chinese model of exporting infrastructure (financing, materials and laborers usually come from China) is also quite interesting and fits in the same long-term worldview: they build trains and road infrastructure across all of Africa.

Most people think it's a waste of money, but they ignore that China is on track to prop up Africa, so that African countries can actually buy stuff once orders from the European and US markets fade (be it due to Trump protectionism or simple market saturation).

All in all, the Chinese government is probably the one single government in the world that actually looks into the future and not just to the next quarter financials (or the next elections).

</comment><comment><USER19> I've read that China is building massive infrastructure in Africa[1]. Are they doing this to have other sources of export? Think about this, America may eventually lessen consumption and as such, China will need some way to pay back/down debts. We may see China unload and drop US treasury notes when/if American consumption slows/halts. If China has other markets to consume their exports, then they will be safe. Does this scenario seem realistic?

[1] [https://www.fastcompany.com/3050167/in-africa-chinese- develo...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3050167/in-africa-chinese-developers- are-building-a-mini-china)

<comment><USER20> obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Its cost, $300 million

For a 1.4 mile bridge 100 meters off the ground? That is a fucking steal. How do they pull this off?

<comment><USER22> I didn't have an intuition for this, so I took a shot in the dark as a baseline. Wolfram Alpha suggests that the Golden Gate bridge was about $350M in modern money, and given length and height, I'd say they're pretty comparable. They're both within probably $25M of what you'd sort of expect of each other, with the Golden Gate being a little longer (0.3 miles) and the one you're referencing is much lower (GG is 120m higher).

Now, I'd guess there's some debate if the Golden Gate was worth it, but I think in the long run these sorts of things define regions and become essential.

EDIT: Noting I already did the 1930s money conversion.

<comment><USER20> it worth 350M in modern money does not mean you can build it today with 350M.

<comment><USER22> To be sure - and in fact people seem to debate the idea that the same bridge would even be built _at all_ these days. It was apparently quite the political undertaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Substantial amounts of overbuild in villages and creating new villages i.e. Apartment towers due to developers wanting to use credits offered by the government.

Source: was in mainland China recently

</comment><comment><USER24> each time US news talking about China's infrastructure, I am thinking about Seattle area's ST3 project. It's basically build 62 miles light rail with $54 Billion projected budget and 25 years construction phase. How it could be so expensive and take so long time? Isn't that a huge corruption with a legal name?!</comment>


FCC bans spoofed text messages and international robocalls - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/08/02/fcc-bans-spoofed-text-messages-international-robocalls/ <comment><USER2> Amusing that spoofing domestic calls is already illegal. Clearly there is no enforcement. Looking at my call history over the past week I have a grand total of 14 robocalls from a number that shares the first six digits of my phone (area code plus first three digits). I think there is a general consensus that these calls are obviously spoofed. I'm not even counting the numerous other 800 number (or non-800) calls that I have that don't fit the obvious spoofing criteria I have laid out there. I have zero international spoofed calls. Why even bother with the international problem when the domestic law, clearly being violated, isn't even enforced?

<comment><USER3> Is the interpretation that an international number can't be spoofed now, or that the source being international AND spoofing (which may include domestic numbers) is considered illegal?

<comment><USER2> I believe it is the latter. I have a USA number and when I travel abroad I get spoofed calls originating from USA numbers. The opposite pretty much never happens though. Domestically I almost never receive calls spoofed from an international number (outside of USA) calling to my number (Inside USA).

That doesn't necessarily tackle the scenario you're calling out (someone outside USA acts like they are inside USA when spoofing a call). That might be the loophole they are actually trying to close (this simply gives them a way to prosecute bad actors who are spoofing USA domestic calls but live outside the USA). Which if it is, great.

Otherwise if they mean international inbound calls it doesn't really affect consumers since if it is referring to calls originating from outside USA, those basically never happen in practice anyway and it would make this kind of enforcement pretty much useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recently some robocalls have been showing up as foreign numbers rather than from my own area code and prefix. Maybe that is some kind of progress... or maybe the robocaller's call spoofing wasn't configured properly. ;-/

It is surprising that carriers accept spoofed local numbers from robocallers.

I guess it's like ISPs who happily accept packets originating in their networks with source IP addresses from the other side of the world.</comment>


Eavesdropping on Expressions (Ruby) - <AUTHOR> http://moonbase.rydia.net/mental/blog/programming/eavesdropping-on-expressions.html

<comment><USER2> This is now in the Ruby 1.9 core:

<http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-1.9/classes/Object.html#M000309>

<comment><USER3> It's also built into Rails.

<comment><USER4> both of these points make me sad.</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla Enters "Whistleblower Hell" - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/tech/29089/tesla-enters-whistleblower-hell <comment><USER2> Tesla (or at least Elon) has a terrible habit of engaging with critics in deeply unproductive ways, such as all the anti short seller stuff they pulled. It makes them look very defensive and seem like they feel vulnerable/cant face the criticism, and maybe it's because they actually are vulnerable and doing things that merit short selling and whistleblowing.

At least from a PR perspective you dont want to engage like this if you have nothing to hide, so either they're doing something wrong or they have terrible terrible PR sense. Both seem equally likely right now.

<comment><USER3> If you have any examples of companies who _weren 't_ doing something unsavory and had a recurrent problem with whistleblowers I'd love to hear them.

<comment><USER4> Well, whistleblowing, by definition, requires the target to be doing unsavory things. Otherwise, it's just "leaking" and many companies have ongoing problems with things like product plans being leaked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I never see stories about Ford's current lawsuits, or GM or Chrysler. I'm curious what goes on behind the scenes to get stories like these published and pushed out onto social media sites across the globe. Must be a pretty expansive operation because I see it every week, same stuff week in and week out. Is it true that other companies don't have disgruntled employees? I find that difficult to believe.

<comment><USER6> There are trillions of dollars at stake in the auto industry that Tesla is trying to seriously disrupt.

There are trillions of dollars at stake in the launch industry that SpaceX is trying to seriously disrupt.

There are trillions of dollars at stake in the ride-share/taxi industry that Tesla/Elon is trying seriously to disrupt.

There are a lot of people who are working very hard to paint a very negative picture of Elon/Tesla/SpaceX right now.

It's amazing that stories like this make headlines while the news that the Tesla Model 3 is outselling every other electric vehicle combined doesn't make a blip.

Follow the money.

<comment><USER7> Over what timescale?

United Launch Alliance, SpaceX's main (only?) competitor pulls in a few billion in revenue a year. Profits are well under $100 million, so we're talking Trillions over a couple thousand years. Arguably, if we're disrupted into a spacefaring species, this could change, but there's physical problems with that.

You _might_ be correct about rideshare/taxi industries over a 100 year timespan or something, but not before Elon dies.

So that leaves car industries. Which are the closest, but EVs aren't going to take over any time soon, and other carmakers are better at logistics than Tesla, and that's the important part.

<comment><USER8> >EVs aren't going to take over any time soon, and other carmakers are better at logistics than Tesla, and that's the important part.

Ask Norway.

<comment><USER9> It's quite unlikely many other countries are going to go quite as far disrupting natural pricing to make Tesla look almost affordable as Norway did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Disappointing that the majority of the comments here are conspiracy theories about nefarious short-sellers somehow influencing coverage (including this article) and not a single person is discussing the seriously damning allegations of 1) millions of dollars of embezzlement 2) connections to organized crime and Mexican drug cartels 3) systematic firing of those who report impropriety to upper management and 4) using law enforcement to intimidate whistleblowers

Seriously this comment section of conspiratorial Tesla apologists is pathetic.

<comment><USER11> I feel the same way. If I could find another tech forum where I could find topics like this and discuss them without hearing from anti-media conspiracy theorists I would join it in a heartbeat.

Even just a view of HN comments without having to weed out the threads complaining about fake news would be great. I bet it's not so hard to train a classifier to identify comments that amount to "This article is paid for by short sellers". They all make the same point and never address the issues in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 620 lawsuits over about 10 years seems remarkably small for a company the size of Tesla. Is there an attorney who can shed light on how many lawsuits a company with a 50 billion market cap would normally receive?

Anecdotally: I worked for a company with a sub hundred million dollar market cap and they had /thousands/ of open lawsuits every year.

<comment><USER13> What industry was the company in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone explain to me (a simple European scrub) why these sorts of lawsuits seem to invariably target Elon directly? Surely they should be directed at Tesla, you know the company that employed them? Does adding Elons name to the lawsuit actually do anything in US law? Or is it merely to gain publicity by adding celebrity to a complaint?

<comment><USER15> In at least one instance, there's evidence that Musk personally instigated an effort to use a Nevada Sheriff to retaliate against a whistleblower: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19378658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19378658)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Pablo Escobar's brother recently demanded $100 million in cash or Tesla shares from Musk for purportedly stealing his flamethrower idea, but the Escobars are Colombian."

(Edit: sorry, didn't see the first part where it is stated that the lawsuit includes Mexican nationals. But, I still think it's crazy that this is included in an article about Tesla and whistleblowers)

<comment><USER17> It's not clear from your one word comment exactly what you're "whatting" about. Perhaps it's the silliness of the demand. Perhaps it's the "Colombian" thing at the end?

If it's the Colombian bit, what you didn't quote makes clear what's happening. The lawsuit alleges links to a _Mexican_ drug cartel. The _Colombian_ comment at the end was to make clear that the Escobars are (allegedly) part of a different drug cartel.

Here's the full paragraph:

 _Paragraphs 16 through 19 of the lawsuit identify thefts ranging between $37 and $150 million dollars, along with links to a Mexican drug cartel. (Pablo Escobar's brother recently demanded $100 million in cash or Tesla shares from Musk for purportedly stealing his flamethrower idea, but the Escobars are Colombian.)_

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have no perspective on the merits of these claims, but the approach smells a bit off.

1\. Make a name as a whistleblower

2\. Invite further insiders to volunteer new negative stories

3\. Solicit "the right people" to fund your operation

The concern here is insider trading. It's implied that funding contributors (Tesla shorts) may receive preferential access to negative news stories.

Edit: insider trading is not the correct legal term. Extortion perhaps? Which law would prevent them from just coming out and saying "fund us and get the scoop on bad news for Tesla"?

</comment><comment><USER19> I have not been in a Tesla with Full Self Drive (FSD) and I was hoping someone here can confirm/deny my theory. The theory is that there will be this dangerous trough with the FSD feature. So at the no FSD end of the speactrum the driver is engaged mentally trying to safely get to were they want to go. At the other end of the spectrum, with fully working FSD that is better than people can drive you are are by definition safer. But! In the middle you have this dangerous middle ground. Its dangerous because the car is doing say 85% of the work, but, you need to be eagle eyed to grab the wheel and/or hit the brakes when the FSD falls into the 15% not working part. The fact that the car is doing most of the work is going to lead to people being bored and spacing out and not being ready to hit the brakes. For example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki9RK_JDtIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki9RK_JDtIg). To anyone who has spent time in a FSD car, is that the case? Or is it sufficiently fear inducing that you pay super attention?</comment>


Data Science and Product Management - <AUTHOR> What kind of dynamics between Data Science team and Product management team makes a good product that is based on some kind of AI/ML ? <comment><USER2> There's no point in using AI/ML just for the sake of doing something cool, and a good PM knows when to step back and admit that it isn't necessary. However, if a product meets the right criteria, the best thing you can do is have a good working relationship between the Data Science team and PM.

Here are some tips:

\- Treat your project as a partnership. Make sure everyone knows why you're making your decisions the way you are. You should have a clear problem, hypothesis, and success metric. Start from there and let everything else come later.

\- Be willing to make tradeoffs. Each one of you is there for a reason and their expertise. Understand the technological limitations and above all, understand your user. Just because the technology is new and exciting, it doesn't mean that the product needs ALL of it to be effective.

\- Remember to always be considerate: if you're the PM, you need to be aware of a scientist's time and momentum. It's important not to expect them to work at your pace or presume to tell them how they should organize their time. And if you're the DS, you must clearly communicate your work process and its limitations.</comment>


Rails 5.2 - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2017/11/27/Rails-5-2-Active-Storage-Redis-Cache-Store-HTTP2-Early-Hints-Credentials/ <comment><USER2> Say what you will about Rails, I find it hard not to love, despite having dealt with a couple of large Rails codebases that were woefully out of date and/or ridden with technical debt from programmers who were either unaware of or were compelled to do things against "the Rails way."

I've investigated several alternatives that offer significant advantages over Rails, like static type checking or simplicity or security or performance, but I still suspect that I would turn to Rails if I were to start my own web company or any non-trivial web app or API I intended to keep around for a while.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love Rails, but for me, it's missing the Daniel Kehoe style generators. As a web app developer, I don't want to configure omniauth, capybara, Twitter bootstrap, rspec.

Add that ability to the command line like:

rails new Blog —configure bootstrap capybara rspec omniauth=github

And then it automatically shows up. I get a landing page where I can login with github and get a skeleton spec directory where I can just start adding tests. And I can start using bootstrap css classes in my erb templates and they just work.

I love Daniel Kehoe's work (Rails Apps) and I'm surprised it's not being incorporated into Rails. His work makes Rails even more approachable and I think Rails is missing Daniel's little gem.

[https://github.com/RailsApps/rails- composer](https://github.com/RailsApps/rails-composer)

<comment><USER4> I love that style. Does anyone know if there's anything similar for React/Redux? An alternative to using large boilerplates and having to customize it ...

<comment><USER5> create-react-app has some basic generators, but I don't know if their system is extensible in the same way that rails' is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Currently ending year one of my new startup which is being built on top of rails. It continues to be a remarkably great platform upon which to build a real sustainable business.

Thank you to all the contributors who have contributed so far to this release and to all those who will test it prior to GA.

</comment><comment><USER7> As usual, Rails is impresive framework and this update addresses and eases pains (file uploads) and streamlines work (redis and cacheing).

Most people unfortunatelly are stuck with old codebases and will have to wait before they can use something shiny like this in daily work.

Last few years, majority of my work in Rails is upgrading older apps to current, for security mostly.

Really great update, congrats DHH and the team.

<comment><USER8> It's amazing how many apps for which this is true. I've spent more time in Rails land upgrading older microservices to latest rails. It's pretty crappy work actually.

<comment><USER7> I am fine with it, I do this as a service for other companies who's developers are too busy with feature work.

<comment><USER9> Being "too busy with feature work" is exactly the mindset that forces us to spend months and months of developer time every couple of years to upgrade Rails and an ever growing list of other gem dependencies.

<comment><USER7> It is hard for managers to organize developers and to uphold for good practices. That is why I created a service so people would not feel guilty, just hire us and we take care of things for you. :)

<comment><USER9> Nice for you. Not so nice for the companies wasting their money on paying you. Yeah, managing software teams is hard. But paying contractors every year to upgrade Rails is malpractice. Can you honestly say that you are capable of going into these legacy systems with thousands of lines of code and upgrading all of their gems, including Rails, without causing regressions? Maybe for a small project your approach is okay but it doesn't scale.

<comment><USER10> If you know rails well and keep current, upgrading is perfectly straightforward, if uninspiring, work.

It's a janitorial service of sorts, and it's totally appropriate for some corps to contract it out. It allows the developers with the best knowledge of the business to focus on that, where value is created. Regressions are mitigated by a strong culture of testing.

<comment><USER9> I've spent many months upgrading legacy Rails services. One particular project was upgrading several microservices from Rails 3.1 to Rails 4. The projects made use of Rspec, Test::Unit, and Capybara. There were unit tests, integration tests, and UI tests. There were over 5000 specs in total. The project also used many gems in production to accomplish its tasks. When you are forced to uprgrade: the testing frameworks themselves, the ORM, the web framework, static asset building tools, libraries for managing file uploads, map rendering, etc, all in one go, it's nearly impossible to get it 100% right. We upgraded minor versions one by one. We read the Rails release notes and any gems that had them. Every time we bumped a Rails version we broke thousands of tests. Even after months of meticulous work we had only managed to upgrade 3 of the 4 services up to Rails 4.0, with another stuck on 3.2. Is it possible to work this way? Sure. But it's insane and costly when you let it get this bad. I've yet to work on a large Rails project on a team that outsources their upgrades where upgrading was "perfectly straight forward". It sounds like you work for a company that actually cleans house. A company like that has no need to hire OP.

<comment><USER11> Just wondering how much of this upgrade pain is Rails-specific? How about Spring, Play and Django? What's so different about Rails?

<comment><USER9> I ran into such serious issues with Django and Django-CMS that we were unable to upgrade a Django 1.7 app to 1.8 without a ton of work and the possibility of data corruption. "Kitchen sink" frameworks like the ones mentioned above often lead to issues like this. I don't use Play framework any more when writing Scala. That being said, Rails truly was the pioneer for this type of web application programming. Many of the other frameworks are just copy cats.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I had a feeling Rails was getting singled-out unfairly. There's nothing about Rails which is more monolithic than, say, Spring, Django, Play or Laravel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Have to say it again: I love Rails. Thanks guys.

Active Storage looks amazing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Just 4 comments in 2hrs? Hallmark of a mature technology.

</comment><comment><USER14> Active Storage looks nice, and perfect timing for me, I'm looking to add generic file blobs to my toy project in Rails pretty soon.

</comment><comment><USER15> Rails introduced me to software development. From the beginning I felt really comfortable in Rails, and that's part of what gave me the confidence to switch careers.

I don't write Ruby for a living anymore, but I am super appreciative of all the things the Rails team has done.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a pretty good update from the looks of it. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised by the low votes and comments? I did expect more though.

<comment><USER7> It seems that Rails for some reason completely falled out of grace. Which is a shame. When you do Rails, you are supposed to uphold to a ton of good practices, that are for most part missing from Javascript world.

Elixir is not big enough to have all good Rails people.

<comment><USER16> Yeah. Bit sad how much Ruby and Rails have fallen from graces. I'm fine with Python so not all bad with wanting something nicer than JS, I just have a kinship with Ruby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Rails is amazing! :)

</comment><comment><USER18> What's coming in 6.0? If this is 5.2 It seems something much bigger is in the work.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yay Rails! Kudos to the whole core team for the continued work on the platform.

</comment><comment><USER20> Great to see Rails chugging along and focusing

</comment><comment><USER21> Kudos guys!</comment>


True Fatality Rate of Covid-19 could be 10x lower - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/_LG-so-8qwg <comment><USER2> Great video thanks for posting</comment>


What Gets Stolen from Restaurants? Everything - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-31/what-gets-stolen-from-restaurants-everything <comment><USER2> I have seen a woman take all of the sugar and artificial sweetener packets from the holder on her table and cram them into her purse.

</comment><comment><USER3> While these are very weird stories, are they saying this is different than any other type of commercial establishment? Do retail stores, for instance, have less instances of stuff being stolen?</comment>


Zerigo has an expired SSL, Google Chrome won't let you browse - <AUTHOR> https://manage.zerigo.com/accounts

<comment><AUTHOR> You can browse to your homepage <http://www.zerigo.com/> and then click on Manage Account on top right menu.

Heroku offers Zerigo as a partner and I believe many others use them. This is really sad from a technology company.</comment>


30k unsuspecting Rose Bowl attendees scooped up in a facial recognition test - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/90-000-unsuspecting-rose-bowl-attendees-were-scooped-up-in-a-facial-recognition-test-18c843909858 <comment><USER2> I was at the Rose Bowl this year and something I noticed was how much of the game was spent staring at the jumbotron rather than watching the game live.

Sitting in the stands no longer feels like you're watching an incredible game. Instead it feels like you're watching the game live on ESPN(given the level of advertisements) but sitting in the stands.

I'm certainly not the first to point out how commercialized sports have become, but it's disconcerting seeing stadiums try to hook you into staring at an ad for four hours instead of enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Another example was the flyover: A B2 flew over just before kickoff[0] and I, along with almost everyone else, had never seen one before. An announcement over the loudspeakers asked that everyone hold up a small sign so that the stadium looked like the American flag from above. This was great for viewers at home and horrible for anyone in the stands because all you could see was the back of the sign you and everyone else were holding up.

We seem to have gotten so far away from what sports are about(two teams competing to see who's best) that we've landed on milking as much money out of the fans as they possibly can.

Facial recognition, in this context, seems to be doing the same. Rather than giving fans a fantastic experience, the folks running these games are trying to monetize them instead.

[0] - [https://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/2020/01/check-out-this- aeri...](https://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/2020/01/check-out-this-aerial-photo- of-the-b-2-bomber-flyover-at-the-2020-rose-bowl.html)

<comment><USER3> >that we've landed on milking as much money out of

I take issues with your use of the word "we". If you asked them, 95% of people would say this should stop. In the past, economic and political leaders were drawn from the nation as a whole, and had a sense of loyalty and social obligation to their fellow countrymen, even if it meant leaving a few dollars on the table. Globalization and the increasing cultural and ethnic divide between the upper and lower classes in western countries has ended that fealty. May it soon return.

<comment><USER4> 99% of people also hate how airlines treat them and think appliances should last more than a few years, but then when faced with a purchase decision, choose whatever is cheapest. Unfortunately, money talks and bullshit walks. :-(

<comment><USER5> I've had to purchase a new fridge lately, the old one finally is giving up the ghost after far too short of a lifespan. I decided I was fine investing in a good, solid fridge...

Quite frankly, none exist. Every fridge on the market in a regular kitchen size (smaller than industrial) is an entirely plastic piece of crap with a life expectency of 5-10 years.

It wasn't an issue of money, of searching, or willingness to wait. There just wasn't any alternative.

<comment><USER6> Add to this the way they try to require you to have subscriptions for your appliances now. My fridge has a water filter. They want me to subscribe to filter replacements. They have a light that tells me when to replace the filter. I suspect it's based on time rather than volume of water filtered. Sometimes the water continues to taste fine, so I don't replace it immediately. They do have an attachment you can use to not filter the water, but the filter does actually seem to do something I like. I just wish it didn't feel like such a ripoff. And this is after replacing the fridge our house came with and which couldn't have been 5 years old when we moved in. We went with a different brand but I'm not sure it will make any difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Facial recognition tech should really have more regulations in place. What if this was done at the recent protests and there's now a database full of facial data that associates those people with likely political affiliations, etc.

Imagine in hitler had access to this tech and simply purchased a database of "Likely Jewish" facial data?

<comment><USER8> That and more has been done at the recent protests.

Do you genuinely believe those drones flying over every major city taking high resolution photos of everyone within 30 miles are there for fun?

<comment><USER9> This is a PR issue I'm dealing with right now. I'm the founder of a nascent startup that uses commercial flights to crowdsource aerial imagery on a massive scale. I was anticipating skepticism around the feasibility of our approach, but I ended up entertaining many more concerns about surveillance and governmental access. Because we leverage commercial flights, we're able to update our map hundreds of thousands of times/day. The majority of people immediately start thinking of all the uses cases made possible by that kind of temporal resolution, but there's a very vocal, skeptical few. As much as I'd like to brush them off, skepticism is critical and I'm forcing myself to listen and take notes in order to address those concerns in our marketing and content moving forward. It's a fine line.

<comment><USER10> I don't envy your position.

Your stakeholders have all been burned before either personally or by other vendors and you will have to somehow built trust against those mental barriers.

I personally treat any company who can access my information as if they are willing to undermine their previous statements, have non-public contracts which sell/trade my information with disreputable companies, can pivot in a moment of desperation to do everything they previously promised not to do, may be M&Aed in such a way that all previous contracts are significantly modified, could have terrible security controls of their data, or may not actually _delete_ all copies of data when they say they do.

<comment><USER9> That's certainly a good rule of thumb.

The mental barrier is difficult to overcome, and you can't win them all. Distill the message too much with "We make money by selling data" and you'll never see a customer, but the opposite is true as well; "The startup doth protest too much, methinks"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sports attendance is way down, I don't care what the sports themselves say.

During the NFL Playoffs they couldn't show crowd shots because there were enough empty seats that it was noticeable. I saw empty seats at the super bowl.

I saw highlight on ESPN of an NBA game before the lock down, and it looked like a high School basketball game because of the number of empty seats.

Considering every player in the NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL are all part of the 1% I'm done contributing to the rich.

I'll go see minor league baseball games, they are much more fun anyway.

<comment><USER12> > During the NFL Playoffs they couldn't show crowd shots because there were > enough empty seats that it was noticeable. I saw empty seats at the super > bowl.

I am pretty sure the Superbowl was sold out. People just didn't show up or were stuck in traffic. I believe this will be true for any NFL playoff games.

> Sports attendance is way down

Citations needed. Other than baseball, I highly doubt this is true for any sports in the US. Unless it's a team like Phoenix Suns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not the first such tests -- there was a trial in Boston in 2013, at a music festival on municipal property (City Hall plaza). [https://digboston.com/boston-used-face-recognition-before- de...](https://digboston.com/boston-used-face-recognition-before-despite- potential-ban-it-likely-will-again/)

</comment><comment><USER14> This somehow doesn't violate any ethics concerning experimentation on humans?

<comment><USER15> Can you make an ethical argument against it? What ethical principle is violated by photographing people in public? By classifying those photographs?

<comment><USER16> The golden rule is a solid ethical foundation.

"I would not want my photograph being surrepticiously collected and used by an entity/organization for an indefinite period of time, stored in an indeterminate number of locations, and with unknown goals that may be related to mass surveillance; therefore, I will not perform that same action against others"

And based on others HN comments, even if it's not the majority opinion, it is not an _exceptional_ opinion.

<comment><USER17> Are you saying that if the team who did this is okay with having their own photographs collected, analyzed, and stored by a third party, then they have a solid ethical foundation to do it?

I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Inevitably when GDPR comes up, there are always HN commenters talking disparagingly about the "nanny state" in Europe. However, I'll take some annoying cookie banners over an ad tech company scanning my face any day of the week. If this was in Europe, they would've gotten hit with a fine of 4% of their revenue.

<comment><USER19> "4% of their revenue" sounds like a "cost of doing business" fee.

<comment><USER20> > "4% of their revenue" sounds like a "cost of doing business" fee.

Really? Are you sure you're not confusing it with profits?

Isn't 10% of revenue considered a decent profit margin? If a fine eats up half of that, it sounds pretty major (and reasonable) to me!

<comment><USER21> "These types of infringements could result in a fine of up to €20 million, or 4% of the firm's worldwide annual revenue from the preceding financial year, whichever amount is higher." \- [https://gdpr.eu/fines/](https://gdpr.eu/fines/)

Definitely revenue. The point of the GDPR is to have some teeth when dealing with companies that are large enough to shrug off lesser fines.

<comment><USER20> I know. I was replying to a comment that suggested it was toothless, so I wondered if the author had mixed revenue and profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think people might be freaked out if they learned just how many stores/attractions already have similar tech implemented. Ah who am I kidding, the average person doesn't seem to care all that much - quite unfortunate.

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance- te...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance- technologies/are-stores-you-shop-secretly-using-face)

</comment><comment><USER23> It seems a bit weird to say that something hasn't been reported in the mainstream media, and then link to a Rolling Stone article on it from two years ago...

</comment><comment><USER24> Guess what happens with the data in all those apps people download to attend big festivals (e.g. Coachella). User data is a big business.

</comment><comment><USER25> I emailed a CCPA request to their info email. Will report back with what I hear.

</comment><comment><USER26> This can't be stopped. Better to stop resisting tech advancements and instead learn to adapt. Airports are starting to do this scanning as well, and they won't go away; travellers don't know they exist and have few rights when in secure environments.

<comment><USER27> The "right to not be observed" is not a natural right, nor should it be. The "right to absolute privacy in all places at all times" is also not a natural right, nor should it be.

People should only be entitled to privacy in their own homes/current dwelling. That's it (with a few exceptions). People should not be entitled to privacy in public.

I get that privacy zealots have to take extreme stances in order to counter- balance anti-privacy trends, but in real life, a world where absolute perfect privacy is the 24/7 default (public and private), is a world devoid of meaningful interactions between humans and also a world where criminals flourish.

<comment><USER28> _The "right to not be observed" is not a natural right_

Rights are granted through legislative processes. What is not a right today may be a right tomorrow.

 _The "right to absolute privacy in all places at all times" is also not a natural right_

Is anybody asking for that? I haven't seen that anywhere. Can you provide a link?

<comment><USER27> > Rights are granted through legislative processes. What is not a right today > may be a right tomorrow.

There's a difference between "natural rights" (rights that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government) and what you describe. The type of right you describe is capricious and whimsical.

GP was complaining that airport travelers don't have privacy. So it seems like people are asking for it.

Can you name some places you believe right to privacy should not apply?

<comment><USER29> Privacy (at least some form of it) is generally considered one of the key "natural rights" that all people have.

Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ([https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human- rights/ind...](https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human- rights/index.html)) and EU Convention of Human Rights ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conv...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Convention_on_Human_Rights)) include privacy as one of the unalienable human rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why is football such a big deal? It isn't worth it to give up your identity or privacy to see other people wrestle on the grass for a ball.

<comment><USER31> > It isn't worth it to give up your identity or privacy

From the article:

>Three fans who attended the Rose Bowl game and spoke to OneZero said they didn't remember seeing any notice that they were being surveilled.

It's unlikely that anyone knew enough to be able to make an informed decision.

Sadly, legally, "privacy" is something you're not generally entitled to when outside in public (in the US AFAIK).

<comment><USER32> Correct. There is no expectation of privacy in public spaces.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy)</comment></comment></comment>


HIV/AIDS Rethinkers - <AUTHOR> http://www.aras.ab.ca/rethinkers.php <comment><USER2> THE GEOGRAPHY INDUSTRY AND MEDIA WANT YOU TO THINK THERE ARE ONLY A HANDFUL OF SCIENTISTS WHO DOUBT THE SPHERICAL EARTH THEORY.</comment>


Ask HN: Good role for an ex-software engineer? - <AUTHOR>

So I've decided I'm no longer going to be doing development, and curious about what business roles I can transition into. I don't think I can be a manager because all I've done is just do development for about 4 years and not anything at all to do with management.
Having run a SaaS, selling makes me feel alive. but I'm a bit of introvert. I did most of my pitching through email or phone.
I'm thinking sales but don't know what the different routes are or how I can transition into which. In particular, sales development representative sounds interesting but I'm open to anything else I could do. <comment><USER2> Wouldn't it make a little sense to do a small SaaS project and get a little money trickling in? Especially if you enjoyed it?

Technical sales always pays well. There are not that many people that can do both selling and tech well. Many introverts do well at selling, since listening to the customer is more important than talking at him.</comment>


How sleep deprivation affects memory-making in the brain - <AUTHOR> http://exactlyscience.com/archives/11931.html <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/releases/24741-sleep-on-it- resea...](http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/releases/24741-sleep-on-it-researchers- find-what-makes-memories-tick)</comment>


Kenji Ekuan, industrial designer of bullet trains and soy bottles, has died - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/10/kenji-ekuan-industrial-designer-of-bullet-trains-and-soy-bottles-dies <comment><AUTHOR> _"... He has said he wanted to design a small bottle because of his childhood memory of his mother pouring soy sauce from a big half-gallon bottle to a tabletop dispenser. ..."_

Kikkoman introduced this bottle in 1961, and a favourite of mine because it's easy to locate and use.

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow, the things you learn from HN. I'm a huge fan of the VMax, its a dream motorcycle for me .. and now whenever I use it to go get some good grub, I'll have a connection with the Soy bottles at the good grub place. Its the little and trivial things like this that make life pleasant. (Actually, I think Kenji made many, many things pleasant.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I added kikkoman soy sauce to my food from the moment I stopped eating baby food. RIP Kenji! Thank you for your contribution. I enjoyed using it every day of my life.</comment>


Energy of the 229 Th nuclear clock transition - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1533-4 <comment><USER2> Alright!

I did research for my PhD working towards this. We trapped and laser cooled Th3+ with the intent to isolate and measure this transition optically that way.

[https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.10...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.233004)

<comment><USER3> Neat work! Question from someone who's familiar with RF atomic clocks but not optical -- how do you steer a laser in frequency? For RF, it all comes down to VCOs: if you want a different tune range or different frequency, you just pick a different VCO.

But for lasers, I thought the frequency was driven by the energy difference between electron states for a given species? How do you synthesize an arbitrary frequency for a laser without something crazy like a FEL?

<comment><USER2> Atomic physicists use mostly semiconductor diode lasers.

You need to narrow their emission wavelength to something ~ the atomic transition (MHz) and then carefully tune it as you say.

Typically diffraction grating is used to carefully feedback some of the laser's output (<10%) back into it, and this can be used to to narrow the emission from several nm to MHz, and to coarsely tune the frequency to few 10-100 Ghz.

Fine tuning is done by changing the current flowing through the laser or the temperature of the junction. These both cause a frequency shift on the MHz scale scale.

You might fine it interesting, you can also use VCOs for fine tuning, but you take the generated RF and send it into a crystal called an Austo-optic modulator. The laser light refracts from the RF phonons propagating through the crystal and this can be used to shift the laser light by the RF frequency.

<comment><USER4> Typical optical clock transitions have ~Hz linewidths, not MHz.

The intrinsic frequency stability of almost all lasers is by far not good enough to be able to probe such transitions. Therefore, ultra-stable optical cavities are used as a frequency reference, and the laser is constantly steered to stay on the cavity resonance by a fast electronic feedback system. In this way, laser linewidths in the sub-Hz range can be achieved. Then an acousto-optic modulator is used to scan the laser frequency across the clock transition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is suuuuper interesting! All atomic clocks since the first alkali metal ones operate by syncing a an oscillator (either a radio or optical source) to precisely known transitions in the electronic structure of specific atoms, and then counting how many cycles elapse on the source oscillator to measure time. A clock using this thorium transition has the potential to be even more precise than contemporary clocks since it syncs to a transition in _nucleus_ of the atom: it responds to rearrangements of the protons and neutrons instead of the electrons. This kind of transition is less affected by external factors like fields and temperatures[0] and so should be a more stable frequency reference.

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_clock#Principle_of_Ope...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_clock#Principle_of_Operation)

<comment><USER6>
       precisely known transitions

There is an interesting philosophical conundrum here, in that one could argue it's the other way around: the precision you mention is a _consequence_ of the fact that we currently _define_ time relative to atomic transitions (the Caesium standard [1]). So if atomic transitions fluctuated (relative to some abstract standard that we are currently not having access to), then this would _not_ affect the precision you mentioned. Wittgenstein famously made a similar argument about length in the _Philosophical Investigations_ §50: _" There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris. – But this is, of course, not to ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language-game of measuring with a metre-rule."_

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

<comment><USER7> So, the thing about all the definitions now is there are no prototypes (the kilogram was the last one). So Wittgenstein's observation now becomes an actual claim about how our universe works.

It feels intuitively obvious/ redundant that a prototype metre is one metre long, but a statement that light in a vacuum travels a fixed distance in one second is not so obviously redundant. It doesn't matter what colour the light is? Nope. It doesn't matter when I measure? Apparently not.

<comment><USER6> You cannot measure how fast light travels in a fixed time unit without reference to time: you need to define length! Length is currently defined with reference to caesium time: the 2019 SI definition of metre takes "the fixed numerical value of the speed of light in vacuum c to be 299792458 when expressed in the unit m⋅s−1, where the second is defined in terms of the caesium frequency ΔνCs." (From [1].)

As far as I can see, measuring time is the foundation of all definitions of other units. And the core reason why time is used to define everything else, is pragmatic: it's just technically easier to count (photon absorption) than to do anything else.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_ba...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_base_units#Metre)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nuclear isomers are a fascinating subject. I like to fantasize about batteries with energy storage of KeV stored per element as opposed to chemical batteries which would be limited to a few eV per element. This is of course limited by our ability to effectively turn x rays and gamma rays into useful energy and preparing meta-stable samples.

<comment><USER9> Well I wouldn't keep my cellphone in my pocket in that case, but joking aside, that would solve the energy density issue for electrical planes.

<comment><USER10> That's an understatement. Li-air batteries would solve the energy density problems for electric planes. Storing energy in nuclear isomers would be more suited to like... single stage to orbit electric scramjets. Hovershoes and laser guns, that kind of thing.

<comment><USER11> Well among other things, one problem to solve is, how to control the output power. If you were to just charge a bunch of nuclear isomers, they'd afterward release the energy by a regular decay process with a given half life (or call it nuclear "flourescence" lifetime, or whatever). This puts them on the same conceptual stage as RTGs.

It should be possible to stimulate the emission of radiation, i.e. build the nuclear isomer equivalent to a chemical laser. That'd would allow to control the release of power and not depend on random decay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Full preprint/paper:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.11398](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.11398)

<comment><USER13> That's a 2017 paper. This one looks more like it: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.06308](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.06308)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting. In principle this could be used as a battery, then, emitting UV (instead of harmful penetrating gamma radiation).

7.9eV worth of energy for each 229 atomic mass units gives a specific energy of: 925 Wh/kg.

...unfortunately, it's only stable for long periods of time in an ionized state. In the neutral state, it decays within microseconds.

But fantastic for a clock application. They mention a solid state nuclear clock. Imagine an extremely precise clock able to measure _altitude_ (well, gravitational altitude) using relativistic time delay... You could use this for mapping mineral deposits. Could enhance GPS precision on both the satellite side and the receiver side. Very interesting.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, the stated transition wavelength of 149.7 ± 3.1 nm is well outside the range where practical laser sources exist. There is a proposal for driving the transition with a vacuum ultra-violet frequency comb generated by high harmonic generation [1], but such systems easily fill a lab with no clear path for miniaturization.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08060](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08060)

<comment><USER14> There are some lasers near many range (Ar2* Excimer), but not many (as you mention) that are tunable to that exact wavelength.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thorium-229 Nuclear Clock - Benedict Seiferle @ ThEC2018 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrbGhAy- fXI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrbGhAy-fXI)</comment>


While42 – the French Tech Engineer Network - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140707215842-5064395-while42-the-french-tech-engineer-network

<comment><USER2> Where did you get the idea that there is no French tech alumni network in Silicon Valley? There are plenty of meetings of French tech professionals. DBF is the one running the longest. The French chamber of commerce also organizes a lot of thematic events.

We even have a few "Grandes Ecoles" based events, which tend to do poorly.

<comment><AUTHOR> DBF is for Entrepreneurs, not tech ENGINEERS. In fact we talk a lot to them they are our friends :)

Same for French Alumni Network, which is a good network, but the members are not tech ENGINEERS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm very surprised this didn't exist already as most places I've worked have had a number of French nationals.

How strict is the French national or degree granted from French uni rule? I know a few who are in tech and bilingual but degrees were granted in the US.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, I might stop by if I'm ever in the area and say hi to fellow Supinfoers :)</comment>


iPhone development tip:  pick a name starting with an early letter in the alphabet. - <AUTHOR>

Notice that the releases for a particular day are sorted alphabetically.  Moreover, at most the first 25 are shown automatically.  So this will normally require users to tap "Twenty Five More..." to see apps with names starting with later letters of the alphabet. <comment><USER2> This has been used and abused by business who wanted to list themselves in the first entry for a category in the phone book: "1AAAA Auto Insuranace" and such. But the practice became obsolete when the phone directory publishers allowed business to pay for graphical, sometimes full-page ads.

The introduction of an "app recommendation" algorithm will make these cryptic names moot.

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't need a recommendation algorithm to solve this particular problem. Apple could just sort by the release time.

Maybe it was done this way to be more user friendly and/or to get full apps to appear in the same place as their lite versions.</comment></comment>


Reddit Is Hiring a Senior Rust Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7utj4t/reddit_is_hiring_a_senior_rust_engineer/ <comment><USER2> I'm monitoring Rust jobs for a while (on Stackoverflow mostly) and this makes me pretty excited. The more firms jump onto the bandwagon and the more high profile they are the better for the Rustaceans.</comment>


A low-profile, Chinese handset maker has taken over Africa's mobile market - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/africa/1374404/chinas-transsion-dominates-africas-phone-market-with-tecno-itel/ <comment><USER2> "Transsion's success has hinged on a glocalization ..." a great word, this is the first time I've read it but the connotation is obvious and I'm sure this word will be popping up more often.

I apologize if I'm the only commenter who has never read that word before and am now going to get trolled for my stupid comment.</comment>


A Berlin Borough Buying Out Private Landlords - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/08/berlin-rent-control-neighborhood-protection/536325/ <comment><USER3> The developed world really needs to start building new cities. People shouldn't be deprived of the opportunity to live in an downtown area just because the people already there feel entitled to their way of life. But, people can lose everything if you economically force them from their homes. That's not desirable either.

My proposal for new cities involves strictly limiting the foot print to enable it to be completely walkable. That would mean you don't have any cars, which is good for many reasons. A lot of what local governments do is complicated by having to service so many different residences over a wide area (think sewage and water, mail, policing/fire protection, road maintenance, etc). If you mostly just build up, then that all becomes much easier, which means government can be much smaller and cheaper. And I think the city becomes much more livable, as a large area around the city is green space, and the streets can be taken over by open air restaurants/cafes/bars on weekends.

<comment><USER4> This is an incredibly US-centric way of looking at it, the rest of the world really doesn't have the same problems as the US in any of these areas. I lived in Berlin for a time and many places in the UK and around Europe and really none of this applies. People live where the work is, commutes are generally under 30 minutes.

The US owes it's "walkability" or lack of due to Blockbusting by property developers in the 50s that used racism to drive the middle classes out of the cities into the newly built suburbs. No such thing happened anywhere else.

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

<comment><USER5> One shouldn't forget that suburbisation was a Cold War move - a very effective one and something Soviet Union could not even remotely afford to follow. Quite likely that it eventually prevented nuclear war by making it clearly unwinnable for the Soviets.

<comment><USER6> How so?

Do you suggest that sprawling suburbanised cities were too big to bomb effectively?

<comment><USER5> It also prevented firestorms by making buildings less dense - there wasn't enough density of combustible material. And made it possible for every family (middle class family - which in 1950s timeframe, meant qualified industrial workers, engineers, and the military - those a nation would need most in case of major war) to have a basement to escape fallout. Downtowns have been left to the part of population deemed useless and dispensable.

In Soviet Union, that kind of the most important members of society, lived in apartment blocks in city centers. And because Soviet Union did not have, and could not afford, mass automobilisation, they were stuck with that.

It made war clearly unwinnable for Commies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's always interesting to see which parts of our lives are incompatible with free markets (at least for a majority of society). It's a very peculiar moral that you mustn't evict people from their homes after they've lived in a place for a certain amount of time. It shows that being a renter in a neighbourhood after a while creates some sort of (legally enforceable) kinship that is incompatible with a free market for housing. But I think it's very arbitrary that we don't have a problem saying to outsiders "we won't allow you to live here (even though you'd be willing to pay a lot for it)" however saying to someone "you can't live here anymore (unless you pay more)" is a cardinal sin.

<comment><USER8> It's also interesting that people genuinely believe this is going to solve the problem rather than exacerbate it.

There is nothing any politician can do to change the laws of supply and demand. If this district in Berlin is in high demand, they're not going to fix the "problem" of high rents by keeping the supply fixed.

The only solution to this "problem" is to let people build additional housing to increase supply.

Instead of keeping the same people in their current units, overtime what will happen is people who currently rent apartments in this district will start to sub-let their apartments to the people who are willing to pay higher prices, acting as a wealth transfer from landlords to current tenants. And yes this will occur even if it's made "illegal" to sublet these apartments (this exact situation exists in NYC with people who have rent controlled apartments and people still do it all the time).

<comment><USER9> Ditto.

> "The only solution..."

I wonder as a thought experiment, if the city keeps buying more houses to fix the "problem", it might eventually become the dominant landlord, and then in order to raise revenue, it might find that it has to increase rents on its rent-controlled housing...

<comment><USER10> Rent control is an instance of "chang[ing] the laws of supply and demand". If you need it, you didn't provide a solution. The "build, baby, build" solution would keep supply in line with demand, and prices would be stable on their own. Having rent control even if you don't need it (out of concern for long term tenancy security), you will just create a constituency with a vested interest in you not building any more.

Also, strictly speaking, building is not the only solution. Curbing demand by making the city less attractive would also be a solution.

<comment><USER8> Ha, you're right that making the city less appealing would also fix the "problem" (lower prices), and I almost included that in my post because strictly speaking it's true...but honestly I didn't want to give politicians any ideas!!

<comment><USER11> I've occasionally suggested* a dirty bomb as the only way to make London livable again. Just enough radiation to scare away the rich, not enough to actually harm anyone ;)

And in Berlin, I've sometimes seen graffiti along the lines of "cleaner walls == higher rents". So making the city less appealing is already part of the anti-gentrification arsenal.

* for the record, I'm not actually planning to nuke London.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a small world. Until tonight I had never been to Kreuzberg, let alone Berlin. My friend recommended this as one of the more hipster neighborhoods. After realizing that this building is only a 25 minute walk away, I decided to go around and take a few photos of it and the surrounding neighborhood:

[https://imgur.com/gallery/cSpgv](https://imgur.com/gallery/cSpgv)

This area has a fun vibe and it's easy to see why it's rising in popularity.. my Airbnb host grew up here and told me that it used to be very poor. This particular building is well painted, but doesn't really stand out.

As someone who grew up in Palo Alto, gentrification just feels so.. normal. Although it's priced out most of my friends and family, I've always seen it as something inevitable.

This is such a strange precedent to set.. how many of these dwellings is the city prepared to buy? How can they possibly stop the free market?

</comment><comment><USER13> I am curious how this decision will impact the neighborhood and city in the long-term. Unless the city spends more to educate existing residents or finds a way to bring in a more qualified workforce, higher-paying jobs won't come to the city and tax revenue will stay flat. I'm afraid this will hurt the city more in the long-run than any gentrification would.

This is probably also infuriating to other parts of Germany, which pay substantial subsidies to Berlin and a few other poorer states.

<comment><USER14> >This is probably also infuriating to other parts of Germany, which pay substantial subsidies to Berlin and a few other poorer states.

It can be annoying but that's what being a unified country is about. Can't say those of us here in California or in NY are too happy about our massive subsidies that go to the red states that accuse us of being full of "welfare queens" but that's the cost of being a country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As long as they're paying more than the investors offered, it seems fine. Article makes it unclear how the price they paid compares to what the sell price would have been.

<comment><USER16> They get right-of-last-refusal on any offer. Meaning they pay whatever the investor was offering.

<comment><USER15> Does the investor have a right to bid higher in that case?

<comment><USER17> If I understand it correctly, the district takes over at the price the investor signed a contract for. So no, they can't outbid the district afterwards, they only can put a higher bid initially, which they'll have to pay if the district doesn't make use of their interception right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm interested to see how this plays out. Some cities have opposite approach. These are older articles, but it might be a reason why Berlin decided to try new approach: [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/31/inside- londo...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/31/inside-london- billionaires-row-derelict-mansions-hampstead) [https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2015/jan/25/its-like-a-g...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2015/jan/25/its-like-a-ghost-town-lights-go-out-as-foreign-owners-desert- london-homes)

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder what the zoning laws are like in Berlin. Specifically, I wonder if zoning laws prohibit small homes that allow for pretty good high-density housing. Such zoning laws could contribute to the high rents in the center of town.

In any case, this method is much better than rent-control. There is still then monetary incentive to skip on maintenance, but the institution should insulate from that. The biggest potential downside I see is a slowing of development in general. That might obstruct development of cheap rents more than it saves.

In general I wonder what prevents building higher, cause you can build high and cheap and if there is demand, why not?

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure what you mean by "small homes". Here, take a look at the house I live in, which is very typical of the buildings in central Berlin: [https://email@example.com,13.4168985,3a,75y,199...](https://email@example.com,13.4168985,3a,75y,199.05h,101.08t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sSlbQbKKWe2BjeVennexFpw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DSlbQbKKWe2BjeVennexFpw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D55.752544%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656)

Generally, Berlin has mixed zoning with retail on the street level, apartments above, and offices and small manufacturing in the back. You can't build higher than what you see in the photo (the old limit for fire ladders), unless it's in an area with other higher buildings already.

Rents are rising as a return to normal. Most people pay around $1.2/ft^2 (sorry, I have no idea what unit the US uses for rent)

<comment><USER19> For small homes I'd say < 40m^2 spaces, getting as small as 25m^2. Those allow young single people to live where they want at prices they can afford. A related factor is required parking space. Such space, when there is no demand, makes high-density housing take up much more land.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Other cities do this as well, like Vienna, or Zurich.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've thought in the past about the possibility of a network of enterprises that would seek to eliminate or at least minimise profits and to exclude profit making companies from participation in the network. For example, the Goldman Sachss of this world would find the doors firmly shut via some kind of legal structuring. The eventual goal would be to drive profit out of the system completely, which surely would convert all profit into pure inefficiency, and thus slowly destroy the profit making enterprise as a viable model. Intrigued therefore to see this and also a report on TV about how Hamburg voted (narrowly) to take back control of their electricity network, and how this has the big power companies seriously concerned, no doubt because their parasitic extraction of profit is threatened.

As may be obvious I am not an economist, so anticipate and welcome the flaws in my idea being pointed out!

<comment><USER19> Forcing out profit means there is less money for reinvesting. This would mean your network would fall behind in the quality it provides, until the profit enterprises are a better deal, even after their profit is extracted.

You could go against that by having the intention of turning a profit but committing to reinvesting, but that is still extracting that profit. Moreover, it encourages the same exploitative behavior.

In general, profit isn't bad. Trades are only made when both parties are better of afterwards, so in principle, more trade means everyone is better off. The devil lies in the balance between how much better off both parties are.

<comment><USER21> OK, so then include a percentage of price for reinvestment and eliminate all other profit? Or put all of this profit into a socialised pool? Also for- profit competitors would be effectively shut out of the network by agreement. The vision would be vertical integration with minimal profit at each step, thus opportunities for concentration of wealth are minimised. Interestingly this seems to be happening to a degree with Amazon, where profits are arbitraged out of the system (though to varying degrees between participants).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some people prefer this some people dont. I honestly detest interfering like this.

<comment><USER23> Why? It gives the government financial incentives to build more housing or deregulate zoning laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> That's too bad, the Kreuzberg part of this dual district really needs a lot of improvement. One may risk saying needs a bit more gentrification.

<comment><AUTHOR> This move of certain municipalities buying housing appears to be one of many tactics being used to address housing shortage. I recall recently reading elsewhere that Berlin govt is also planning for building additional housing and conversion of large unused industrial spaces into housing. I wouldn't be surprised if improvement of certain areas is also part of the renovation/conversion tactics used in their housing strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am quite not sure how it would be expensive for existing residents even after sale to so called foreign investor. As far as I understand, in Germany, rents are fixed for existing residents and landlord can not evict them (few exception exists, probably won't work for investors).

That 10% increase rule is only for new tenants.

<comment><USER17> Rent can be adjusted up to match prices in the area (with a limit of 15% increase per 3 years), and modernizations are a valid reason to increase prices above that. Which is the typical gentrification scenario Berlin is worried about: old buildings are bought, improved to a more luxurious standard and then rented at accordingly higher prices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Berlin is lead by a left-far left-green coalition and gets billions of € every year from the Länderfinanzausgleich. Basically, other germans pay for their citys reckless spending on questionable projects. High rents need more living space, not payed-by-other one

<comment><USER27> It's been said the majority, or a large part, of the electorate of Berlin consists of people receiving welfare or other community/state benefits in some form or another, including the large number of state employees living in Berlin. It's a very unhealthy situation going forward, since the government of Berlin must appease that part of the electorate, rather than attracting eg. investors or people who can sustain themselves.

That the state or municipality is an actor on the housing market really is a perversion and outright declaration of defeat on behalf of politicians. With the negative interest rate set by the European Central Bank and thus lack of investment opportunities, and given the growth of population in the metropolitan areas of Germany, you'd think this market should be able to see after itself, like it is in other areas of Germany.

Even more so since housing has traditionally been an investment for people seeking to build up a rent for when they're old, a problem that will come big time to Germany in the years to come, the demographics being what they are.

But social-democratic politicians in Berlin are generally incompetent or corrupt in the extreme; at the expense of other German's money, they rather want to be perceived as acting in the interest of their electorate.

<comment><USER28> How are employees of the federal government "receivers of state benefits"? It's a job like any other job - they work for money.

<comment><USER26> They are - in a sense - by taking 40 paid days off/year on average for being 'sick'. [1] That's two month out of every year in addition to ~10 holidays and 30 days vacation.

[1] [http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/gesundheitspolitik-in- berl...](http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/gesundheitspolitik-in-berlin- beamte-sind-im-schnitt-40-tage-krank/11971286.html)

<comment><USER28> These are not employees (Beamte are not employed) and they're not federal government. So the article kind of does not apply twice. These statistics also counts weekends and holidays as sick leave, so - as the article mentions - <USER2> data cannot be compared with the usual averages which do only count work days. On top, the groups with the highest sick leave are people in high risk jobs - policemen and firefighters. These are definitely not rent-seekers from the government.

<comment><USER27> My post wasn't an insult on state employees of any kind, or some such. The point was that the electorate consists to a very large extent of receivers of tax payer's money, and that the Berlin Senate buys their electorate with money they receive via cross-financing from other German countries ("Länderfinanzausgleich"), which I do not approve of.

Edit: cf. rsync's quote

<comment><USER28> This is not a case of the senate buying anything. The district of Kreuzberg uses it's right to preempt the sale and direct it to a public housing association. The voters in that building a most certainly not government employees, but low-income residents. You're mixing up things in a disingenuous way.

<comment><USER27> In other words, they're pulling a publicity stunt here, with the elections conveniently coming up in two weeks. Interfering with the market is uncalled for here, even though it might make good appearance in local media, and resonates with the intellectually challenged.

The government's job sure is to provide economic conditions such that a market for housing and other basic needs can sustain itself. But what they are rather doing is publicly blaming investors as "evil insects" ("Heuschrecken") in the worst socialist or even Nazi tradition, and making construction expensive by laws such as EnEV (law putting absurd energy efficiency burdens on new buildings) and asymmetric, unreasonable rights in favor of tenants.

Really, if there's a housing crisis, it's entirely the fault of the government, by definition.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programming Language Popularity (StackOverflow & Ohloh) - <AUTHOR> http://www.r-chart.com/2010/08/programming-language-popularity.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but the idea is that data from two different sources on the web can be quickly compared and correlated. The differences between the data can help reveal the biases at play.

</comment><comment><USER2> Sort of an apples and oranges comparison? StackOverflow has a pretty significant Microsoft bias and Ohloh is all about Open Source.</comment>


Omni Group: 30-day guarantee on Omni's App Store apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.omnigroup.com/blog/30_day_guarantee/

<comment><USER2> I suspect this has to do with their prices. At $50, OmniGraffle was one of the most expensive iPad apps I spotted in the app store. I think iWork apps being $10 each acts as an anchor. At $50, I have to ask myself whether I'll really use it.

Unfortunately, these offers leave me with a net-negative feeling. Money back guarantees remind me of mail-in rebates, which work through the power of procrastination. At least mail-in rebates don't make you explain _why_ you want your money.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple has easy refunds for at least 30 days on all apps you buy, the developer has no involvement in it at all. It just shows up as a negative sale on their daily reports.

Also, although Apple has said that they'll reserve the right to take their 30% cut from the developer, I haven't heard of them actually doing it. They certainly don't do it to us.</comment>


Cat parasite toxoplasma uses 'Trojan horse' to infect human brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/cat-parasite-toxoplasma-uses-trojan-horse-to-infect-human-brain-and-may-cause-suicidal-thoughts-and-risktaking-8390165.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to the cited research paper:

GABAergic Signaling Is Linked to a Hypermigratory Phenotype in Dendritic Cells Infected by Toxoplasma gondii

[http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2F...](http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1003051)</comment>


Bill Gates Goes Back to School - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1630188,00.html

<comment><USER2> there have been so many times when microsoft could have easily wound up like lotus and ibm, i.e., unable to embrace change and suddenly irrelevant. but bill was always there to see the problem and point the company in the right direction. classic example: the rise of the internet in 1994. what happens when the next big inflection point comes and bill isn't there to turn the ship? personally i don't think ballmer can possibly fill that role.

<comment><USER3> We always hear about this so-called classic example of how Microsoft made a huge change and embraced the internet back in 1994, but did they really? What did they do? They created Internet Explorer, destroyed Netscape, and that's about it. And Internet Explorer is really just another desktop application.

In fact, Microsoft let IE languish for years precisely because they explicitly do NOT embrace the internet. They know that the internet is a platform in direct competition with Windows. They saw that. They "embraced and extended and extinguished" the web browser in order to prevent it from becoming a new platform.

Microsoft did not change direction for the internet, they are the same company pre and post internet and this example should stricken from the literature once and for all.

<comment><USER2> oh, microsoft very much _did_ change direction for the internet. i'm sure the company's first response, right down to the core of its being, was to try to ignore the internet out of existence. "so people want to get online now? fine, let them sign up for msn." i'm sure that's what billg wanted to do as well, in his heart of hearts. but he was smart enough to know that it was a battle that microsoft was going to lose, monopoly power or no.

who remembers trying to get on the internet with win3.1? it was abysmal. it had either horrible tcp/ip support or none at all, i can't remember which. everybody i knew bought trumpet winsock. all microsoft would have had to do, to follow its usual modus operandi, would be to go on pretending that the internet didn't matter. but then win95 came out, and it's tcp/ip support was outstanding. it was actually easier to set up than the unixes of the day. and its various office apps gained the ability to export to html, amongst other internet-friendly advances.

yes, internet explorer is stagnant now, because it no longer serves any purpose for ms to improve it. netscape is already dead, after all.

<comment><USER3> What you describe is Microsoft doing the absolute least they could do to accommodate their users who wanted to get online. Things like making the technology a little easier or having Word export to HTML -- I don't consider this "embracing the internet". I don't see how these can be considered as changing the direction of the company. The direction of Microsoft was not changed at all. Their cash cows were the Windows OS and the Office Application Suite before the internet got big, and those products were still the main focus and direction of Microsoft afterward.

<comment><USER4> 40% of the Web sites on the Internet run on Microsoft's IIS, according to Netcraft...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a pretty old article.

</comment><comment><USER6> _He's all for capitalism...but he gets that it's not going to take care of everybody. The financial incentives to take care of the disadvantaged just aren't there._

Maybe something was lost in the translation from reportee to reporter, but capitalism doesn't "take care" of anybody. And the incentives to "take care" [ie subsidize] the disadvantaged are never going to be there. This is a point of mathematical certainty.

The incentives are of a strictly different type--for instance, the incentive of an evil old billionaire trying to buy his way into heaven.

<comment><USER7> The standard of living has increased seven-fold in the past century. As a result, the definition of "poverty" is no longer homeless people starving to death, but a family living in a small house who own a car, TV set, and other "luxuries." Yeah, I think capitalism has done a lot to "take care" of people.

And actually, the incentives to "subsidize" the disadvantage have always been there (why do middle-class atheists give to charity?), but that gets into sociobiology.

<comment><USER8> That's the definition of poverty in the U.S. For the poor in Asia and Africa poverty still means not getting two square meals a day and sometimes starving to death.

<comment><USER7> Yes, of course.

Uncoincidentally, most of Asia and Africa are not very capitalistic</comment></comment></comment></comment>