Small Businesses Lament There Are Too Few Mexicans in U.S - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/small-businesses-lament-there-are-too-few-mexicans-in-u-s-not-too-many-1480005020 <comment><USER3> Hey, you know that lazy generation of kids coming through college right now without any experience actually holding a job? What if, bear with me here, what if, instead of illegal immigrants from all over the world who can work for less than minimum wage (because they're already breaking the law by working here in the first place), what if instead of illegal immigrants taking those jobs, American youth actually held jobs and got experience working? Wouldn't that be nuts? Oh you probably think Americans don't want those jobs, right? They don't. At least, not for less than minimum wage, because that's illegal and nobody wants to have that on their record. But teenagers definitely want money. Everybody does.

Imagine a world where there is ZERO illegal immigration to the US. Teenagers actually might learn the value of hard work. They might go to college with a strong work ethic and marketable skills. We might just be able to dig ourselves out of this massive college debt crisis.

<comment><USER4> You assume available jobs are located near where teenagers live? In many cases the jobs are located in remote areas with small populations (most agricultural work).

Also, I want mine and your teenagers to be studying and preparing for their futures. These are jobs with limited upside, for the most part.

<comment><USER5> These jobs aren't located near where Mexicans live either - they are actually on the wrong side of a heavily policed border in an entirely different country.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure I agree with the whole chain of logic, but at this point is seems fair to point out that the Mexicans aren't enrolled at a university that requires them to turn up for classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > In Dallas, the King of Texas Roofing Co. says it has turned down $20 million > worth of projects in the past two years because it doesn't have enough > workers.

Doesn't that mean that they aren't paying high enough wages?

<comment><USER8> " _In 2015, the average wage for roofers was $17.65 per hour, according to the BLS. Mr. Braddy says he has already raised wages twice this year, putting most of his workers above $20 an hour._ "

<comment><USER9> Roofing is difficult and dangerous work. It makes sense that pay would be high.

<comment><USER7> Dangerous to the point that not even $20/hour gets him enough workers. That's a job that cries out for automation.

<comment><USER10> sudo apt-get install roofer should do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Scarcity of building contractors will push up contract values until supply meets demand - and people actually get paid more. This is how the market is supposed to work.

<comment><USER12> The market isn't "supposed" to work like anything. It just works some way, just as gravity does. It doesn't have feelings, it doesn't have preferences, it just is.

You may support some nativist policies since they are advantageous for the group you are part of, but why try to make it sound like it's some kind of universally just way to do things?

<comment><USER13> People always seem to forget about this.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I see a lot of comments to the tune of "Well, don't foreigners deserve work too?" \- that may be so, but isn't it a countries' duty to place the interests of its own citizens first?

<comment><USER15> To a degree, specifically the degree to which those citizens want them to, but the world becomes a better place when we push tribalism to the sidelines.

Allowing illegal immigration isn't the way to do it, however. The _most_ important job of a state is to provide a level, predictable playing field.

<comment><USER14> "but the world becomes a better place when we push tribalism to the sidelines."

It seems we're putting the cart before the horse however - <USER2> immigration first, and trying (unsuccessfully) to get rid of tribalism second. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and_trust_within_communities)

<comment><USER15> Yeah. Unfortunately we don't know how to do this well, and it seems like political correctness (and fear of failure) is keeping us from experimenting.

I don't have any good answers here. People can't even agree on what their goal is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I guess they'll have to start paying them more. Maybe it will approach a decent living wage?

What a tragedy.

<comment><USER17> The problem with small business is that the way the economy is set up most of the money is available at the medium to big business side of things. Small business does not have the capital to pay employees properly. So really it should not exist in the way the economy is structured. So it won't exist if you take cheap labour out of the picture. It's not as if small business robber barons are making bank on the back of poor workers. They are not. They are barely surviving.

<comment><USER16> Yes small businesses employ a lot of low skill labor and therefore are hit in the short term the hardest with a lack of labor surplus.

In the long term, this is necessary for wages to rise. When all restaurants have to compete for a diminishing labor pool, they'll have have to raise their prices to pay people decently.

This is a good thing.

<comment><USER18> Beyond this specific case, the problem is the unfair competition for human resources between small and big companies. For example, how can you compete with Google for a software engineer? The unfair part is that Google can establish a company in Ireland to avoid taxes while you can barely organize your taxes.

I am not saying there are no ways to compete (e.g. give more equity, sell a startup dream) but that the inequalities are not only between the rich and poor gap, they are present in companies too.

<comment><USER17> It's not just that. It's that big business can have economies of scale which allows it to push out each unit at a cheaper price point. This then trains consumers to want things at certain price points which then makes it difficult or impossible to compete with larger companies. Further it is much easier for larger business to get investor money and debt financing, so if they want to expand it's much easier for them to do so than for small business. Also for B2B it's again much easier for big business because most of the spending done in the economy is by big business, and they don't care that much about price as consumers and can afford a lot more because they have lots saved up. So there are many factors that favor big business and shut out the little guy who is doing it because he wants more autonomy in his life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In This Article: businesses that exist by ignoring US immigration law

Imagine being a roofing company trying to compete against King of Texas roofing Co and their low wages?

<comment><USER8> $20/hour? According to the article, the average is $17.95.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Easy to solve, isn't it? Mandatory withholding with felony consequences. Felony to hire an illegal. Create an IRS verification program, the post office could do it, let them notarize documents if some one wants to claim more than two deductions for tax withholding purposes.

</comment><comment><USER21> $30bn per year leaves the US economy via wages to immigrant workers sending/taking it back to their home countries.

$25bn to Mexico alone, that's 2% of their GDP

[http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-05/trump-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-05/trump- would-make-mexico-pay-for-wall-by-blocking-money-transfers)

[http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/migrationremittancesdiaspo...](http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/migrationremittancesdiasporaissues/brief/migration- remittances-data)

<comment><USER22> You've identified part of the negative. Now what are the positive aspects? Cheaper buildings and labor for US companies, which improves their competitiveness against international competition, increased agricultural exports, cheaper services for American citizens.

You haven't even attempted to estimate the value of any of these things. You've just cherry picked one number. Your conclusion may or may not be accurate, but without trying to analyze both the costs and benefits, your way of arguing doesn't contribute much.

<comment><USER21> I didn't draw and conclusions, I just presented one bullet point of note and linked to the conclusions of experts.

> Cheaper buildings and labor for US companies, which improves their > competitiveness against international competition, increased agricultural > exports, cheaper services for American citizens.

Illegal immigrants pay no tax, no welfare contributions, are not protected under employment laws, work long hours with no holidays. Slavery increases your international competitiveness and provides cheaper domestic services too.

Our forefathers fought bloody battles against the excessive worker exploitation. Let's not slip back into the dark days. Although I do question the benefit of minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, you can speak of how markets would balance themselves. Sure... but in the short term:

\- Some people have built their business model on top of cheap labor. You take away the cheap labor, then the business model does not work anymore.

\- Some other businesses, rely on cheap products and services. If you make those products more expensive, their business model doesn't work either.

People would say then, "that's a good thing, because now supply and demand, wages go up, prices go up, etc...". Well, not so fast.

Local producers are not alone in the world. Instead of paying more, you will just start importing from cheaper countries. Does that help the local economy? probably not.

</comment><comment><USER24> If there is a business need then work in Washington to come up with a solution for legal immigration. This means having people go through embassies to get permission to immigrate. Heck have sponsorship by companies needing the workers or agencies willing to front them. Just like H1B those who come here need to not only be legal but not adversely affect employment opportunities for those already here.

</comment><comment><USER25> Tech companies complain there aren't enough high-skilled workers. Small businesses lament there are too few low-skilled workers. In the end, they are both saying the same thing: they want more workers for less money.

</comment><comment><USER26> I heard about this second hand from some Bay Area residents in their 70s: Back in the 60s a lot of the hippy communes were able to take over old run down mansions in the Bay Area in Marin and San Francisco. These mansions got run down because, due to no illegal immigration, construction and maintenance were very expensive and keeping old houses up was astronomically expensive.

</comment><comment><USER27> The problem is not a lack of cheap workers, the problem is the low wages. Someone doing hard or unpleasant work should bring home a six figure salary, not a developer sitting in a nice air-conditioned office.

<comment><USER3> It isn't how hard you work. It's how much value you provide that determines your salary.

You can work really hard smacking rocks together. It provides no value to the world at large, and thus, you cannot get paid to do it.

<comment><USER27> The price is not only determined by value but also by scarcity. If there is a lot of demand for unskilled work, then wages will go down and the business owner can capture the difference between the value produced and the wages paid.

It is of course more or less by design that several factors go into the price so that different feedback loops can affect different factors in an intertwined way. For example high demand for specific skills is supposed to lead to higher wages which in turn is supposed to encourage more people to acquire those skills which then finally satisfies the demand.

And in theory this is all fine but in reality it is not as easy as in the economics text book. Some of those feedback loops are slow and take years to react, some of the factors are constraint in one way or another and just can no go where one would like them to be.

And the article is not talking about smacking rocks, it is talking about building houses and producing food, things fundamentally more valuable than building websites. And if you are doing work that is valuable and physically demanding, then you should be able to demand compensation for your hard work and not have to accept whatever you are offered but that of course fails if people undercut each in order to get the job.

I am not sure that it is even possible to [easily] decouple price factors like value and scarcity without ruining the entire system, but one has to admit that at least in practice and at least in some situations mixing value and scarcity leads to undesirable results.

<comment><USER3> If what you say is true and you believe it, then surely you're for deporting all illegal immigrants who artificially deflate wages by working for less than is legal.

<comment><USER27> That does not follow from what I said, you can also just declare them legal and enforce paying them minimum wages. Heck, you can even try to keep them illegal and enforce minimum wages, if you discover an illegal immigrant working below minimum wage just go after the employer and leave the worker alone.

And I am not a US citizen or living in the USA, so I have no stakes in what happens to illegal immigrants in the USA and in turn also no well-founded opinion. On the one hand there is the law and if you violate it, you have to deal with the consequences, so there is certainly a point for expelling illegal immigrants.

On the other hand you probably should also take the lives of the immigrants into account. Can you justify the consequences? Ripping families apart, sending people back into unsafe futures or countries? And what about the economic consequences?

Maybe the USA could pardon all current illegal immigrants while then being more aggressive towards new ones? I really don't know what I would suggest, that is not a topic I ever really thought about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> People making arguments about free markets must remember that they assume free movement of labour - which we don't have.

</comment><comment><USER29> Whoa, so basically what this article is saying is that our increased border enforcement efforts are working!?!

I guess walls do work.

</comment><comment><USER30> The US attitude towards immigration is completely asinine and driven by ignorance. Immigrants are a huge sector in the economy.

This WSJ article, like so many others, is part of that ignorance in that it isn't about low skill or low pay workers. It is about filling jobs, regardless of pay rate, that US citizens are not willing to fill. A prime example is software developers.

In the US software developers make 2x to 3x the national average pay rate for full time labor. Despite the high pay rate and comfortable work environment there is a massive demand for skills that is not being filled domestically. From 1995-2005 there was a massive off-shoring to find low cost software developers. Since 2010 the off-shoring is entirely about finding competent employees to fill labor shortages opposed to reducing expenses. Americans are not willing to step up and take these available software development jobs at a level of competence demanded by employers regardless of pay rate.

A popular bitch-fest on reddit is that software developers are paid too low and if they were paid more this problem would be magically solved. First of all there is absolutely no evidence to suggest such. Secondly, software developers are already paid well and still there are massive shortages with high attrition. These problems are not related to pay rates, but are deeper rooted issues more related to outdated skills, low confidence, missing initiative, and poor education. These deeper problems are a hard pill to swallow considering they require some amount of time and investment and still result in an substandard result.

<comment><USER31> I've looked into some of those jobs and the guys on Reddit are right. A lot of those jobs don't pay shit. Developers will get paid 2-3x the national average in major cities and tech hubs. Outside of that expect an honest offer of 38-45k.

I've been in that call with a recruiter trying to fill a job in flyover state. I felt sorry for him because he really had an impossible task. He had gone through surrounding towns and states slowly widening that circle until he was now trying to find talent on the coasts. His client needed a developer with SC clearance but was offering low pay, stale benefits, and no relocation. No wonder he was having problems filling the job.

If you want skilled developers with modern skills be prepared to pay for it.

<comment><USER30> I work in a major metropolitan area (one of the 4 largest in the US). There is a large educated sector of the population and a huge number of software and technology companies here. Still, despite this, technology jobs cannot be filled. Half my coworkers have always been immigrants. Even when pay is high local people are not stepping up to fill the positions.

If you are in technology you can only continue to ignore that you work with a large number of immigrants and offshore teams for so long. Eventually, you will have to keep up with current skills, move to a low income market, or be content with being replaced by an immigrant who has more initiative.

> If you want skilled developers with modern skills be prepared to pay for it.

There is no evidence that increased rates have solved this problem as demand continues to outpace availability.

<comment><USER32> What do you mean by "high" wages? Would you post your region, along with the BLS salary for a software developer, a physician, lawyer, nurse practitioner, and dentist?

For dallas, here are the numbers:

[http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000)

Nurse Practitioner: $101,260 Software Developer: $97,930 Dentist: $177,130 Lawyer: $132,380 Physicians and Surgeons: $202,450

I understand there are some big differences here, and you could reasonably argue that software developers don't deserve such high wages (they often have graduate degrees but aren't strictly required to, for example). But this does show you the kind of options available in the US to those motivated, confident, educated people with initiative you described in an earlier post.

Personally, I think that if employers are having trouble getting people _with choice_ to work as software developers, that's the market's answer. There are a lot of different perspectives on this - I personally don't have a problem with immigration, but I have a huge problem with coercing immigrants to work as software developers as a condition of living in the US.

That's the real appeal of these corporate controlled immigration programs - create a pool of engineers who aren't allowed to go into higher paying fields. Free people are allowed to go to law school, open a sandwich shop, sell real estate, whatever they like. In response to market signals.

You know free markets, freedom, personal choice. Corporations hate that stuff. So they've invented this fake story of a "shortage", as if this shortage isn't a rational response among free people to the pay and working conditions that are below what they can earn in other fields. And their solution is to use a coercive visa program to create a pool of workers who don't have this freedom.

<comment><USER30> > I understand there are some big differences here, and you could reasonably > argue that software developers don't deserve such high wages (they often > have graduate degrees but aren't strictly required to, for example).

In my opinion this is the root of the problem. Schools are not preparing students with many of the practical skills of software development. These students enter the market with skills businesses claim to want, but often don't match with the reality of the position, platform, or technology. Businesses could solve this problem themselves by training their work force, but they don't. Instead it is entirely on the employee to get the skills (on their own time) the current employer demands. As a result many developers burn out and those who achieve this mastery of learning on their own time leave to get higher paying jobs elsewhere. Why wouldn't they since they have invested in themselves more so than the employer has, and such there is no loyalty earned. The end result is a talent gap. A large pool of barely qualified people that have trouble moving between employers and on the other side a couple of talented folks who can do whatever they want.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Linux AMI 2013.03 Now Available - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/03/amazon-linux-ami-201303-now-available.html <comment><USER2> This upgrade brings lots of great improvements: OpenSSH for multi-factor auth., 3.4 kernel, and a unified AWS control program written in Python. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that last one. The current tools are hard to use, hard to configure, and run as slow as molasses.</comment>


Ask HN: Non technical founder? - <AUTHOR> I don't coding, but I want to build a startup.I have lots of questions. How can I start turning my idea into a product? How should I hire programmer?<p>Post your advice for non technical founder. <comment><USER2> Before you build anything you need to find users that are willing to pay for a solution to a problem.

If your product is a viral free thing I would still find a user group similar to what your building and talk to them.

Also, I would check out some tutorials on user stores. The more details you provide on what you want the system to solve(not how it should do it) the better(less rework)

Try to get it in front of users as fast as possible.</comment>


How  I, As a Girl, Use Your Website Differently Than Guys - <AUTHOR> http://www.domain.me/blog/5-ways-women-use-the-web-differently-than-guys-2837

<comment><USER2> "Above is the overall summary of Internet usability by a specific gender,"

If you read the rest of the blog post, it's just some random person's opinions; there's no "usabulity" study to back up any claims.

<comment><USER3> Usability findings don't necessarily have to come as a study.

Neither the line you quote promises one specifically.

The article was an interesting read, anyway.</comment></comment>


Abandoned Project: Make every webpage viewable back to Netscape 2.0 - <AUTHOR>

Good Morning,
One of the hardest parts of working on a startup is choosing which ideas not to work on, however fun they might be; I'm sure that everyone here can relate to one degree or another.
Looking back over some of my old files I came across an very early sketch for a project that I think certainly could have been interesting; Since my time is all going into building a new web-based version of Chron X (The original online collectible card game), I thought that someone else here might be interested in building the project instead.

As browsers advance, they continually add new features- New rendering modes (SVG), New options for tweaking things to look right (Layer transparency). It'd be nice if there were a way to offer something to older browsers, however primitive and hackish it might be.
 From the other side, there are a lot of situations where you are forced to use an older browser- Company policy or a locked down workstation.. Sometimes the machine is just too old to run modern browsers at a decent speed. It'd be nice if there were a way to at least view these new-fangled CSS2 sites, even if it was a degraded experience.
 I thought about it, and realized that the capability exists to display almost every modern website back on every browser to Netscape 2.0, but it's nearly forgotten about. ImageMaps.
ImageMaps allow you to click on any X,Y on an image, and send that coordinate back to the server. No Javascript involved, and it works everywhere. It's an incredibly useful technology, which allows us to do a great hack.
We can take a URL in from a web form, and spit out a jpeg of the screen, as an Imagemap. The browser gets back something simple which it understands, and which works everywhere. They just see the site, as the only response in the browser window.
If the user clicks on the Rendered Page, the power of ImageMaps tell us the exact XY he clicked on; This means we can then click on that exact XY on the server-side, send a click to the browser, then send back the new page.
This allows the user to click CSS/Javascript menus, Follow Links, and have the site Just Work.
 On the back end, it's actually drop-dead simple to support. The way I saw it, you can just set up an EC2 instance, and install X11 and Firefox on it.. Then, install a script which lets you take screenshots of the active app, and send it mouseclicks with an XY relative to the program window, and get back screenshots.
Where would you get such a tool? It turns out, that today's your lucky day ;) I had one written, and you're welcome to it.
http://darkenedsky.com/ScreenshotTool.zip
 If you end up picking up this project and running with it, shoot me an email and we can work out some license that makes sense for you. Apache, or MPL, or whatnot.
 I think it's a fun idea, and could be useful both from the client side, and the web developer side. The same idea could be extended (trivially) to make a site that shows what it renders as using different browsers, for the web-developer who needs compatibility.
There are a few dozen different ways to take this concept, and I'm sure that if you run with it, more will come up. I'd love to be of any assistance that I can, and am certainly available to offer suggestions and advice.
Colin Davis
Producer, Darkened Sky Studios
ChronX.com
 <comment><USER2> Interesting .... one corner-case I see has to do with mouseover. For instance, some sites (<http://www.newegg.com>) use JS to dynamically expand/contract menus based on mouse travel. I don't think a simple ImageMap would hack it in that case. Do you have a workaround in mind?

(Granted, sites are typically built to not _depend_ on this sort of fancy JS.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting point, I hadn't thought about mouseover.

I think it is supportable, though, but the UI isn't perfect. You could easily have a UI toggle that says "Move mouse to", versus "Click on", when you press a X,Y on the screen.

Granted that isn't as clean as it could be. How would you solve it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I find two issues relative to using this (sorry to be so quick on negativity):

\- Screen readers. They won't work! \- Usability is somewhat odd, as the entire time the mouse cursor will be a "hand", making everything seem clickable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Screen readers won't work- True. But keep in mind, this isn't a primary design for any site.. It's a work around for un-supported browsers. People browsing with a screen reader would probably be using something which gave a user-agent of IE6 anyway.

Alternatively, if you really wanted to ensure that it supported people who it isn't intended for, you could always include the text of the page you're Translating at the very bottom, as black on black in a 1 pt font. The Screen Readers would still pick it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i don't know if 'old browsers' is the target market, unless there's some funny niche somewhere that can't upgrade their browser.

maybe a neighboring idea would be creating a proxy for low-bandwidth devices -- e.g. transparently compressing/downsampling images, CSS, JS, HTML so that browsing on EDGE is a little more bearable with an iphone or other mobile device. (this might already exist, but i haven't heard of anything like it)

although i guess that wouldn't really use your imagemap hack or screenshot tool :)

<comment><AUTHOR> As you mention, It would also work well for phones with bad web browsers, or devices who's browsers will become out of date, such as the browser for the Dreamcast.

I suspect there are more people on older browsers than you might suspect- There is a staggering number of people still using browsers which don't natively support simple things like PNG transparency, or Properly nested layers.

Essentially, you could think of it as a last-ditch fallback, which ensures that it displays properly, even the UI experience is no longer ideal.

The nice thing is that you wouldn't need to run it on the client-side.. They could just browse to <http://fixthispage.com/news.ycombinator.com> and it would give them a version as an imagemap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How would you make forms fillable?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's easy. Give the user a blank form underneath the picture. Click on the form in the Imagemap, type the form into the picture, and hit submit.

Boom! Text is now in virtual-browser.</comment></comment>


HN Speaks: Music for Coding - Master Compendium - <AUTHOR>

A recent comment thread [1] turned up some killer links to  HNer's favorite coding music. I pulled the links from the comment thread to my Evernote, and thought I'd submit here for anyone who's interested.<p>[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3900711.<p>[In reply for clickability] <comment><AUTHOR> <http://soundcloud.com/kapslap/kap-slap-spring-break-mix>

[http://soundcloud.com/juliengray/julien-gray-gondwana- extend...](http://soundcloud.com/juliengray/julien-gray-gondwana-extended)

<http://soundcloud.com/monca/djuma-soundsystem-les-djinns>

<http://soundcloud.com/jaytechmusic>

<http://somafm.com/play/suburbsofgoa>

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

[http://soundcloud.com/designerdrugsmusic/sets/datamix- mixtap...](http://soundcloud.com/designerdrugsmusic/sets/datamix-mixtapes/)

<http://di.fm>

<http://hypem.com/popular>

<http://soundcloud.com/3lau/sets/top-10-downloaded-tracks/>

[http://www.themusicninja.com/live-set-full-kaskade- coachella...](http://www.themusicninja.com/live-set-full-kaskade-coachella- free-download/)

[http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/porter-robinson- essential-m...](http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/porter-robinson-essential- mix-live-from-hull-bbc-radio1-01-28-2012)

[http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/knife-party-essential- mix-l...](http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/knife-party-essential-mix-live- from-hull-bbc-radio1-01-28-2012)

<http://soundcloud.com/dirtysouthjoe/luvstep-2-5>

<http://soundcloud.com/cberra88/straight-bass-to-the-dome>

<http://soundcloud.com/erwtenpeller/war-of-the-worlds>

[http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/flux-pavilion-essential- mix...](http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/flux-pavilion-essential-mix-bbc- radio1-14-04-2012)

<http://soundcloud.com/qrip/flux-pavilion-essential-mix>

[http://soundcloud.com/somejerk/moombahton-over-miami-vi- some...](http://soundcloud.com/somejerk/moombahton-over-miami-vi-somejerk)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBIYl88Zwyc>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AooMCiV2eb4>

<http://bootiemashup.com/>

<http://mashupbreakdown.com/nhh>

<http://www.audiogalaxy.com/mix/11997-The%20Coding%20Zone/>

[http://www.mixcloud.com/alec_empire/alec-empire-atari- teenag...](http://www.mixcloud.com/alec_empire/alec-empire-atari-teenage-riot- collapse-of-history-dj-mix-pirates-vs-the-copyright-cartels/)

[http://open.spotify.com/user/czstrong/playlist/2Vw6VBC3BDKGc...](http://open.spotify.com/user/czstrong/playlist/2Vw6VBC3BDKGc96bPxpdpy)

[http://open.spotify.com/user/whalesalad/playlist/6nRqAHIzMFd...](http://open.spotify.com/user/whalesalad/playlist/6nRqAHIzMFdjxBg0Zb1mNs)

<http://soundcloud.com/djsfrommars>

<http://soundcloud.com/sunnyventura>

<http://soundcloud.com/featurecast>

<http://friskyradio.com/>

<http://somafm.com/play/groovesalad>

<http://kohina.com/>

<http://epiphanyradio.org/>

[http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/above-and-beyond-live- group...](http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/above-and-beyond-live-group- therapy-miami-wmc-22-03-2012)

[http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/mat-zo-live-group- therapy-m...](http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/mat-zo-live-group-therapy- miami-wmc-22-03-2012)

[http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/arty-group-therapy-miami- wm...](http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/arty-group-therapy-miami- wmc-22-03-2012)

[http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/andrew-bayer-live-group- the...](http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/andrew-bayer-live-group-therapy- miami-wmc-22-03-2012)

[http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/boom-jinx-live-group- therap...](http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/boom-jinx-live-group-therapy- miami-wmc-22-03-2012)

[http://soundcloud.com/prettylights/pretty-lights-the-hot- sh-...](http://soundcloud.com/prettylights/pretty-lights-the-hot-sh-t-16)

<http://musicforprogramming.net/>

<http://soundcloud.com/dubsef/dubsef-filthwater-mix-www>

<http://soundcloud.com/dubsef/dubsef-broverload-vol-2>

<http://soundcloud.com/dubsef/dubsef-all-your-bass-are>

[abakus on pandora]

</comment><comment><USER2> I'll add a couple techno acts that I like:

<http://soundcloud.com/mike-vaeth>

<http://soundcloud.com/aka-aka>

They've both got a lot of long (1-3 hours) live sets available for download. Energetic beats, but the progressions are gradual enough that they're not at all distracting.

</comment><comment><USER3> dubstep can fuck right off</comment>


JavaScript Library to Work with Subtitles in New Easier Way - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/parallelizer <comment><AUTHOR> I think a lot of developer who's learning foreign language is starve for a good library to work with subtitles. And here we go</comment>


Is Quarantine over Yet? - <AUTHOR> https://is-quarantine-over-yet.com/ <comment><USER2> For which country ? Or maybe you divide the world between San Francisco peninsula and places that do not exist ;-).</comment>


AT&T copies Google, names 100 cities where it could offer gigabit fiber - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/04/att-copies-google-names-100-cities-where-it-could-offer-gigabit-fiber/

<comment><USER2> As with AT&T renaming their 3G HSPA+ network "4G" in most part a of the country, this Gigapower network is mostly already installed and is simply a "flip of the switch" for very small and few newer developments and neighborhoods (newer areas are easier and cheaper to lay fiber rather than run cable on existing streets). To me this is much more of a marketing ploy than a serious commitment.</comment>


An integer formula for Fibonacci numbers - <AUTHOR> http://paulhankin.github.io/Fibonacci/ <comment><USER2> Nice. When I was a teenage self-taught programmer, an article like this one, but about the superiority of quicksort to insertion sort, was the trigger that got me to understand that thinking mathematically about algorithms could lead us to a kind of understanding that transcended mere coding (although I couldn't have put it in those words at that time). It was quite an epiphany.

I can imagine, today, a young enthusiast having learned Python and maybe done a few Project Euler exercises, stumbling upon that post and being amazed that you could generate Fibonacci numbers that way, and thinking that maybe there is something interesting about that "generating functions" thing.

If that's you reading this, it's dangerous to go alone. Take this: [https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/DownldGF.html](https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/DownldGF.html)

<comment><USER3> And then after Wilf, read Flajolet and Sedgewick: [http://algo.inria.fr/flajolet/Publications/book.pdf](http://algo.inria.fr/flajolet/Publications/book.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is another method I wrote where you compute in the Q[√5] field. It can be modified to work over Z[√5] as well:

[http://ideone.com/NWQe38](http://ideone.com/NWQe38)

<comment><USER5> I implemented the same in Haskell a while ago: [https://github.com/xyzzyz/FibBinet/blob/master/FibBinet.hs](https://github.com/xyzzyz/FibBinet/blob/master/FibBinet.hs)

With yours, both make interesting comparison of how similar problem is solved in different languages.

<comment><USER6> Why did you define both negate and (-)?

<comment><USER5> I don't know. I probably shouldn't have. I accept pull requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        def fib(n):
            return (4 << n*(3+n)) // ((4 << 2*n) - (2 << n) - 1) & ((2 << n) - 1)

Looks like there's a small bug in this code.

fib(0) = 0

fib(1) = 1

fib(2) = 2

fib(3) = 3

fib(4) = 5

etc.

But there should be two values at the beginning that evaluate to 1. (Whether it's fib(0) and fib(1), vs. fib(1) and fib(2) is just a matter of convention. But there should definitely be two of them.)

<comment><USER8> A couple of commenters have mentioned this, but with his definition of fib that's given right below in the 'overview' section, the function works:

      Fib(0) = 1
      Fib(1) = 1
      Fib(n) = Fib(n−1) + Fib(n−2)

So n has a constraint of n > 1, for which the function works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another obscure way to generate the fibonacci sequence - Compute the fibonacci sequence on a hand-cranked mechanical computer: [http://www.chrisfenton.com/the-turbo- entabulator/](http://www.chrisfenton.com/the-turbo-entabulator/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice. A cut down version using base-10:

      X = 10**3
      print X**16//(X*X-X-1)
      # 1001002003005008013021034055089144233377610

It's like a sideways addition version of the standard Haskell lazy list version:

      fib = 0 : 1 : zipWith (+) fib (tail fib)

</comment><comment><USER11> n*(3+n) on the right side of a left shift, you're only moving the iteration into whatever big number library is executing that monster division

<comment><USER12> Yep, he explains that already in the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice post.

I never really thought about evaluating a z-transform at a particular value, so I tied together some of the various solutions with derivations and greater generality here:

[http://bit.ly/1WQ0Zkn](http://bit.ly/1WQ0Zkn)

</comment><comment><USER14> He says that this is an inefficient way to generate the nth Fibonacci number, but since it actually gives you the first n Fibonacci numbers, thats not the fairest comparison. (Especially since the fastest methods for finding the nth Fibonacci number don't generate all the intermediates.) Just for curiosity sake, how does using this formula to generate all of the first n Fibonacci numbers compare to other ways of doing that?

(You get all n with the same formula by replacing the mod 2^(n+1) (or reading the last n+1 bits) by splitting the whole integer that is generated into n+1 bit chunks.

</comment><comment><USER15> The difference equation approach (computationally fastest) can be used to derive a elegant closed form solution that relates to the golden ratio.

Fn=(1+√5)^n−(1−√5)^n\2^n√5

This deravation is pretty accessable and if you want to show off in code tests :)

[http://www.cut-the-knot.org/proofs/BinetFormula.shtml](http://www.cut-the- knot.org/proofs/BinetFormula.shtml)

<comment><USER16> That's given early in the article, but requires arbitrary precision arithmetic:

Another method is to find a closed form for the solution of the recurrence relation. This leads to the real-valued formula: Fib(n)=(ϕn+1−ψn+1)/5‾√) where ϕ=(1+5‾√)/2 and ψ=(1−5‾√)/2\. The practical flaw in this method is that it requires arbitrary precision real-valued arithmetic, but it works for small n.

<comment><USER17> If you add a "round to integer" step at the end, it doesn't require arbitrary precision arithmetic. Careful numerical analysis can tell you how many digits of precision you need to compute fib(n).

I would guess the end result would be similar to that of this method (2n bits being more than sufficient), the difference being that this method puts all the digits before the decimal point.

Also, for large n, you may be able to assume ψ = 0 to speed up computations (given ψ < n, its nth power will get vanishingly small)

But the matrix method is the easiest fast method one can write and prove robust.

(It is not fastest because the trivial binary approach doesn't product optimal addition chains. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addition_chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addition_chain) or (dense writing, as is normal in HAKMEM) [http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/hbaker/hakmem/recurrence.html](http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/hbaker/hakmem/recurrence.html))

Also, there is a very simple method for implementing "isFib":

      isFib(n) := isSquare(5n^2+4) or isSquare(5n^2-4)

<comment><USER10> Most fast methods for computing fib(n) come down to some variation of repeated squaring, so the time is dominated by the last multiplication (since the number of digits is doubling each time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice! Next time I have a job interview, I'll look this up the night before and confound the interviewer when it works!

<comment><USER19> I like this one as well:

        Fibonacci(n) = (Φ^n - (1-Φ)^n) / √5
        (Where Φ = (1 + √5) / 2)

<comment><USER20> Mathematically they might be the same, but they reduce to different problems in computer science. The OP uses algorithmic approaches, but yours requires finite-precision root solvers (for the calculation of \Phi ) and some numerical analysis to determine how many bits of \sqrt(5) are needed to be correct to yield a calculation of Fibonacci(n) which is correct to the nearest integer.

<comment><USER21> You don't need to use a root solver. If you represent numbers as "a + b sqrt(5)" you can do algebra directly in that space.

<comment><USER20> I take it you are making a joke? Heh.

Otherwise, I'd point out that any result where you ultimately need to use Fibonacci(n) as an actual integer, you can't represent it as an algebraic combination of "sqrt(5)".

<comment><USER21> No joke! See this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11561336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11561336) for some real-life implementations of this technique. Since the Fibonacci numbers are integers, at the end of your computation you'll get a number like "a + 0 sqrt(5)". Then you can just take the "a" part.

<comment><USER20> Ah! I see what you're saying. Thank for the link, that is a clever approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My recollection is that the closed formula (with phi) is derived from the generating function as well, though the derivation was nigh miraculous when I saw it done.

<comment><USER23> It's not miraculous at all, and doesn't need to involve generating functions :-)

Consider all sequences f(n) that fit the constraint f(n) + f(n+1) = f(n+2), with arbitrary initial values. Such sequences form a vector space, because adding them together or multiplying by a constant doesn't break the constraint. That vector space is two-dimensional, because the two initial values determine the rest of the sequence. Now we just need to find two different sequences that form a basis of that space. All other sequences can be expressed as linear combinations of these two.

How do we find the two basis sequences? Let's make a lucky guess that they are geometric progressions with some constant c. Then we have c^n + c^(n+1) = c^(n+2), or equivalently 1 + c = c^2. That equation has two solutions, phi (the golden ratio, about 1.618) and psi = -1/phi.

Going back to the original problem, we need to express the usual Fibonacci sequence (which starts with 1,1) as a linear combination of the sequences phi^n and psi^n. We just need to match the two initial values by picking the right coefficients, which turn out to be 1/sqrt(5) and -1/sqrt(5), giving you the desired closed form formula.

The above approach generalizes to any recurrence of the form a * f(n) + b * f(n+1) + c * f(n+2) + ... = f(n+k). All such sequences will form a k-dimensional vector space, and you can find k different geometric progressions by solving a polynomial equation of degree k which has k roots. All other solutions will be linear combinations of these geometric progressions. (There will be complications if some roots coincide, but it can be worked out.)

To me the whole chain of reasoning feels very natural and almost inevitable. If I didn't know anything about Fibonacci numbers but had a good grasp of popular math, that's how I would approach the problem right away. Does that make sense?

<comment><USER22> It does- I remember enough from Linear Algebra that vector spaces aren't completely foreign, which helps a lot.

I think the generating-function method[1] is a case of pulling out a powertool (generating functions) to prove a simple thing to demonstrate the power of the tool, whereas your explanation takes the direct route and connects more of the threads about why it's true.

[1] found an instance here: [http://austinrochford.com/posts/2013-11-01-generating- functi...](http://austinrochford.com/posts/2013-11-01-generating-functions- and-fibonacci-numbers.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can anyone explain what's meant by this?

> Multiplying by x^(n+2) and summing over all n, we get

Is n the iterating variable, or the domain? What are the possible values of n? Wouldn't "all" values (whichever set that may be) give an infinite sum? I thought that infinite expressions did not obey the same laws as finite ones, and couldn't be generally used with algebraic transformations.

I guess I don't know as much math as I thought.

<comment><USER25> Disclaimer: I have studied these functions a long, long time ago. I barely remember anything.

In that particular point in the article, n is both. It is a natural number that is the domain of Fib, and the iterating variable of the generating function. As you've noticed, the sum is indeed infinite - this does not matter, however, as at no point is the actual sum of a generating function series important - the whole series mechanism is just a nice conduit to reason about the coefficients (subsequent values of Fib, in this case) using more familiar and developed mathematics for infinite series (divergent or not).

I remember being fascinated by generating functions in college. I viewed them as sort of a beautiful hack in how to tie various combinatorial structures to the more ordinary algebraic operations. This mini-field is called enumerative combinatorics. The only part of discrete mathematics that I've actually enjoyed :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great! Somehow reminds me the Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula for computing the nth PI digit [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey%E2%80%93Borwein%E2%80%9...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey%E2%80%93Borwein%E2%80%93Plouffe_formula)

</comment><comment><USER27> Is anyone able to show how you get from this line:

ΣnFib(n+2)x^(n+2)=ΣnFib(n+1)x^(n+2)+ΣnFib(n)x^(n+2)

to this one:

F(x)−x−1=x(F(x)−1)+x2F(x)

I haven't managed to figure it out and have a couple of colleagues that haven't been able to work it out as well.

<comment><USER28> ΣnFib(n+2)x^(n+2) is F(x)−x−1 because it's an infinite series of powers of x, except since it's x^(n+2) then x^1 (x) and x^0 (1) never appear, so you need to subtract them from F(x) which is ΣnFib(n)x^n. I hope that's clear and explains the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hmm, I think there's an edge-condition bug. Starting with fib(0), its values are (0,1,2,3,5,8...) instead of (1,1,2,3,5,8...).

<comment><USER30> 1 must all appear twice in the sequence. Otherwise I agree: it ought to begin at 0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The Lucas numbers are more interesting. Instead of starting with 1, 1, which is kind of arbitrary, start with 2, 1. The resulting sequence is exactly round(phi^n). Which is a much stronger link to the golden ratio. And is found just as often in nature.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's nice to see something about the fibo numbers that has some real math in it, as opposed to the articles that make it big in proggit everyday that functional programming fanboys think are cool but that really discredit FP in the eyes of everybody else.</comment>


Scholar Karen King finds ancient reference to 'Jesus wife' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19648862

<comment><AUTHOR> I was a bit reluctant to post this - it is not trolling, honestly.

I am fascinated by the early Christian Church and its role in Rome. I am really not trying to start a flame war (if HN have those) over Jesus' religious status, but just to flag up there has been some interesting, but not definitive, movement on roles of women in early church and how their history got edited over time (esp near 365AD)

Anyway, some links of interest

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Jesus%27_wife> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Leigh_King>

In expectation of link being dead before I type this :-0</comment>


Fungal infections are acquiring resistance to medicines - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/27/millions-at-risk-as-deadly-fungal-infections-acquire-drug-resistance <comment><USER2> Funny thing is that fungi are the opposite of bacteria and to some extent viruses.

Didn't had to worry about athletes foot when I was living around the 30th parallel.

Haven't even seen anti fungal cream over the counter at the drug stores and pharmacies not because they required prescription but because they were so damn rare that they weren't worth the shelf space so they probably only carried a couple of tubes behind the counter.

The foot care sections had rough loofahs and moisturizing creams. Moving to the UK the picture is completely different, fungi is everywhere.

On the anecdotal side after never having it in my life I got ringworm(it's a fungus that feeds on hair and creates small red circles on the skin that look like curled worms) like 4 times in the first 6 months of moving into the UK.

It would be really ironic if the magic 15 degrees centigrade mark which made the northern hemisphere mostly free of bacterial and viral diseases compared to the warmer parts of the globe would some how unleash a fungi epidemic due to the developing resistance.

P.S.

Sony and naughty dog if you are trying to remaster the last of us again; stop, You are really doing it wrong!</comment>


YC's Online Class (Sign Up at StartupSchool.org) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/onlineclass/ <comment><USER2> I noticed that Pieter Thiel is not a guest lecturer for the MOOC. IMO, his lecture in the "How to start a Startup" series titled "Competition is for losers" was just eye opening. Very contrarian and it changed the way I think about competition.</comment>


Building a Database System in Academia - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/2017/03/building-a-new-database-management-system-in-academia.html <comment><USER2> The database he's referring to is Peloton ([http://pelotondb.io](http://pelotondb.io)) and it appears that its "killer feature" is that it's self-managing or self-tuning for highly concurrent workloads. That's certainly an interesting idea. I wonder how closely that kind of functionality will parallel the logic in superscalar CPUs where instructions are run in parallel so long as those instructions can be determined to be independent of each other. In practice, that usually works well, but it can work even better with programs specifically designed for superscalar CPUs. In other words, I wonder if Peloton will offer reasonable performance improvements for concurrent workloads, but at the very high end of the spectrum, specific design and/or tuning will still be required for maximum performance.

The article mentions that it's currently single-node but multi-node support is planned. If it's a fully ACID-compliant database with support for horizontally scaling with multiple nodes, that's an area where there's plenty of room for another database.

</comment><comment><USER3> Andy Pavlov's course offering 15-721 Advanced Database Systems at CMU is publicly available through recorded youtube lectures, the spring 2017 offering [1] and the spring 2016 one [2].

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjYgTIlqf4Dy...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjYgTIlqf4Dy9KQpQ7kn1Tl0)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjbisIGOepfn...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjbisIGOepfnlbfxeH7TW-8O)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a good open course if you're interested in Peloton or designing your own dbms [http://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2016/](http://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2016/) other versions [http://db.cs.cmu.edu/courses/](http://db.cs.cmu.edu/courses/) didn't see this linked in the article.

</comment><comment><USER5> Major upvote, its nice to have a useable DB you can hack on i.e Peloton ([http://pelotondb.io](http://pelotondb.io)) and a course that backs it.

I just spent 3 hrs browsing through the listed papers on the course site.

Looking forward to being a commiter...

</comment><comment><USER6> > PhD students obviously stick around for longer but they are in graduate > school to do research.

I've spent my first two years of grad school working on NEXT [1], a system useful for active machine learning but not a real paper producer.

I'm planning a conversation with my advisor about getting less involved in NEXT and more involved in research very soon (hopefully in the next week). This article validates this conversation.

[1]:[http://nextml.org](http://nextml.org)

</comment><comment><USER7> A little OT, but my first thought of the kind of databases that academia would inclined to pioneer was MIT's BayesDB, "A Bayesian database table for querying the probable implications of data as easily as SQL databases query the data itself":

[http://probcomp.csail.mit.edu/bayesdb/](http://probcomp.csail.mit.edu/bayesdb/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, we need this - we need more people exploring and building databases. The more people we have tackling interesting problems the better solutions we will develop.

No, building a database is not hard. We need to stop propagating this message, because it deters newcomers from trying. And the less people that try, the more of an echo chamber we get (like everybody building on top of Postgres again and again), with no new ideas. This comment on another current HN homepage article sums it up the best: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13933572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13933572) .

I'll share my story here, since I seem to be an outlier:

\- In less than 2 years from building a database from scratch (no forking other database), we had a prototype that could save 100M records for $10/day: [https://youtu.be/x_WqBuEA7s8](https://youtu.be/x_WqBuEA7s8) .

\- In 2 years we had a system that can outperform Redis on the same test on the same hardware: [https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/100000-ops-sec-in- IE6-on-2...](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/100000-ops-sec-in-IE6-on-2GB- Atom-CPU)

\- Within 2.5 years we've built a system that can do on low end hardware across a federated system 1750 table inserts a second (we hope to get this up to 10K inserts/sec across a distributed system), a slower demo here: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/amjlr5gqk23et51/load.gif?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/amjlr5gqk23et51/load.gif?dl=0)

\- To do this, we even had to build a fully featured distributed "coordination testing" framework so others can build tests that verify things work even in the harshest of conditions (it is for doing Jepsen like testing), check it out here: [https://github.com/gundb/panic-server](https://github.com/gundb/panic- server)

\- And we've managed this without locking the data to any particular model. Graphs let you do key/value, relational, table, document, or graph type data.

This story is important, because it shows what can happen when people just try. Referencing the quote from the other thread: Ivan Sutherland replied, "Well, I didn't know it was hard."

<comment><USER9> Ok, but where is the material to learn from? How see the "baby steps"?

With compilers you have a lot to get from, but database building are more hard to find.

\--

One of the problems is that "databases" are assumed to be a ALL-OR-NOTHING system, with a lot of parts (like storage, transactions, invisible-indexes, triggers, cross-table validations, crash-recovery, query-optimizer) so is assumed a huge undertaking, instead of something more small and contained.

\--

BTW, I'm on the hunt because I wish to build a relational language (alike kdb+ but with more "normal" syntax), for build the same kind of apps as with c#, python, etc.

I only need on-memory processing and not storage or transactions (or maybe transactions? I don't see how practical it could be for normal coding)

<comment><USER8> This is a good point, there is not much good/accessible material on databases - because a lot of that material is considered academic.

Honestly, I learned mostly by experience of what frustrated me with current databases and then trying to come up with workaround solutions.

Then I practiced by playing around with new ideas and making small prototypes in code. And then I would whiteboard out all the possible combinations of those ideas.

Once I had all combinations listed, I reduced them all into their generic rules and which ones depended upon others. Finally, based off those constraints I worked out the mathematics of the system, the constraints, and tradeoffs.

Maybe I should write a more intensive article on this to help other people. In the meantime, I think if anybody can read/watch classes on data structures, algorithms, etc. that will benefit them the most.

Recently, we have worked on a some interactive animated explainers. Not quite database stuff, more like security (cryptography) and algorithms / data structures. Let me know if they are helpful:

Cartoon Cryptography - [http://gun.js.org/explainers/data/security.html](http://gun.js.org/explainers/data/security.html)

Cartoon Conflict - [http://gun.js.org/explainers/conflict/lexical.html](http://gun.js.org/explainers/conflict/lexical.html)

Cartoon Sorting Algorithms - [http://gun.js.org/explainers/basketball/basketball.html](http://gun.js.org/explainers/basketball/basketball.html)

Cartoon Concurrency - [http://gun.js.org/distributed/matters.html](http://gun.js.org/distributed/matters.html)

And hopefully more to come. :)

I know those are probably not immediately useful for your kdb+ like language. But, I'd love to learn more about what you are trying to do. :D

<comment><USER9> >Maybe I should write a more intensive article on this to help other people.

This will be great. Look for example how this make "easy" to understand how a (basic) GC can be _implemented_ :

[http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/12/08/babys-first- gar...](http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/12/08/babys-first-garbage- collector/)

Exist a lot of material in how understand at conceptual level things (that is what papers are for) but the actual implementation is "left to the reader". The trouble with that is that if I'm first learning about a subject, and I only see the final result but not the steps to get there, I get lost in why the final result is like that!

So, I imagine something along the lines on how a nano-database could work (like, that only is a couple of tables (arrays or hash tables), and build from first principles the relational operators, then maybe later this is how you build the ACID, the query planner, etc). Not even necessary how build the sql parser because that part is covered elsewhere (and also, I think SQL _distract_ from the understanding on this matter, because is a half-good and limited API to interact with a relational database).

> But, I'd love to learn more about what you are trying to do.

Most people have a pet theory that try push (like "make programming pure"). I just wish to recapture the experience I have building apps with FoxPro -that was more pleasant for database-based development than most- but with a modern twist and without the limitations of the past.

I arrive to the conclusion that a relational language (in CONTRAST with a relational database!) could be in fact great.

For example, in Fox you can write this:

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa978284(v=vs.71).a...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa978284\(v=vs.71\).aspx)

        SCAN FOR UPPER(country) = 'SWEDEN' AND isActive
           ? contact, company, city
        ENDSCAN

(This is a FOR specialized to walk a table with WHERE and other stuff. A imperative ... WHERE sql + map + project)

Some example along this is:

[http://www.try-alf.org/blog/2013-10-21-relations-as-first- cl...](http://www.try-alf.org/blog/2013-10-21-relations-as-first-class- citizen)

My bet is that because the relational model is actually simple and provide "universal" query abilities is possible to build a language similar in scope to python+pandas, to build full apps, not just as part of the data manipulation side of the equation in a rdbms in the server.

Eventually I found the APL/J/KDB+ family and have some similar ideas (only is based on arrays, than in relations).

This is something I know can work. Fox was fairly popular in my time and it die not for lack of people but because MS kill it (along classic VB) to focus on .NET

<comment><USER8> Very much agreed, good thoughts/ideas - I'll keep these in mind! Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hiring Advice Taken from "Peopleware" - <AUTHOR> I just read chapter 16 of the book "Peopleware", and the suggestion to use an audition-based interview really resonated with me.
Basically the idea is a candidate would present on a technical topic of her choosing in the as part of the interview (Using redux in a vue.js project, understanding the borrow-checker in rust, etc).
It's not something I've ever come across in an interview, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Anyone here had experience with this type of process? Any obvious drawbacks? I'm curious to maybe use this in a future interview. <comment><USER2> The one drawback to audition interviews is that they can be influenced by the same kinds of social biases of any interview. "blind" auditions of this type are very difficult, and somewhat impractical, to achieve. They can also be a problem if the job they are interviewing for doesn't have a performative aspect similar to the performance found in the interview. For example, if the only presentation they are ever going to make is in the interview, it's not obvious if a "good" performance indicates fitness for the position.

<comment><USER3> Presenting an idea to the team or the boss probably isn't written into the job description, but it's probably something every engineer will do from time to time.</comment></comment>


Submarine Cable Map - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegeography.com/telecom-maps/submarine-cable-map/index.html

<comment><USER2> I can't be the only one very bothered by the choice of projection. Despite its rounded corners, it's still very much Mercator.</comment>


Russia's Election Interference Is Digital Marketing 101 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/russia-trump-election-facebook-twitter-advertising/553676/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> So was Trump's election campaign. I've been saying this since he announced his candidacy. Convincing people to walk to the polls and vote for a certain candidate is no different than convincing them to buy a product. It's marketing. And in marketing, black hat tactics always win, at least in the short term. They lose in the long-term because some controlling algorithm adapts to their strategy.

An election is a short term ad campaign. Convince people, get the vote out, then it's done. So black hat tactics will be successful against white hat tactics because there is no time for the system (often the same used in advertising) to evolve to respond to the tactics.

Unless there is a force to stop this sort of weaponization of data, the problem will proliferate and the strategies will evolve. Only structural forces against such weaponization of data can allow the "white hat" strategies room to thrive.

Our political system selects for rule breaking, obstruction and obfuscation.</comment>


OOP in C - <AUTHOR> https://www.codementor.io/michaelsafyan/object-oriented-programming-in-c-du1081gw2 <comment><AUTHOR> I have always been thinking about the other way, i.e. using a subset of C++ for a better C, e.g. using its class data type but not those template and abstract/virtual/lambda functions etc.</comment>


Single demographics (or, why you can't get a date) - <AUTHOR> http://jonathansoma.com/singles/

<comment><USER2> Has this been updated since 2008?</comment>


Dyson sphere - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

<comment><USER2> Back in the day I was member of the L5 Society and SSI, and of course I'd assume that by the year 2015 i'd be living in a O'Neill cylinder:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder)

In my heart of hearts I view the current state of technology as primitive...</comment>


Maturing markets = higher stakes, closing doors - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ev/maturing-markets-higher-stakes-closing-doors-ae69da6c764 <comment><USER2> I love reading things like this where you stop and go "Huh, I think that is exactly correct." So the follow up to that thought is what is the fate of software? Specifically when people figured out that the value wasn't in having the factory, but in the final product + design, they outsourced all the factory work to where it was cheapest to get get done. I could see this becoming a huge business for a country with a relatively low cost of living but a large supply of very capable coders.

<comment><USER3> Could that be India ?

I mean this place you speak of already exists. It's called Bangalore :-) . Without IT it would be but a shadow of its current self. You can't walk down the street without running into a coder.

Both India & China are experiencing startup booms of their own and this is definitely having knock on effects on the developer eco systems here, though not enough of an effect to overcome the damage caused by a shoddy education system.

But even if the current Indian start up bubble bursts , there'll still be lot of really good devs on the market who're as good anyone else in the world and much cheaper. And thanks to Github and Stackoverflow the playing field is being levelled because it gives us access to the kind of peers and role models we may not find at our day jobs.

Beyond the stereotype of the shitty Indian coder and the outsourced mega IT projects gone horribly wrong , there are lots of smaller firms who do really good work but aren't really well known.

Also firms are coming up in the smaller Indian cities where the costs are dramatically lower. As our infrastructure improves these could take off in a big way.

I worked at a place where lots of startups outsourced their apps and it went well most of the time. Many people might be surprised to know that even Slack was developed by an external consulting agency (in the US not India).

So this could definitely end up happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The most recent companies funded Y Combinator seem to exist in the intersection between code and domain expertise in law, medicine, finance or other advanced industries. It seems to be harder to make it work with a "pure code" startup.

<comment><USER5> I thought Paul Buchheit had a seminal insight about this last fall: [https://twitter.com/sama/status/652242405966483456](https://twitter.com/sama/status/652242405966483456).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best simulators for inventing from your desktop? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, I'm a long time hacker who's always wanted to give inventing a try, despite not having an engineering background.
What are my best bets for experimenting from my computer?
They seem very expensive, but Would I need something like Hyperworks, Autodesk, or Wolfram?
I'm noticing some interesting open source projects here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_simulation_software
Are any of these worthwhile? <comment><USER2> Depends what you are trying to do, your question is not narrow defined.

If you want to do electronics you will end up with mostly with some variant of SPICE, which is quite an old simulator.

Let other people give you other solutions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Yaa101, thanks for the response. I probably should have been more clear that I was talking more about classical engineering than hardware hacking.

Things like mechanics, fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, magnetism, and maybe even some chemical and materials science.

Like if Tesla or Edison were alive today, what would they be using... Or if Elon Musk or Dean Kamen couldn't afford Autodesk :)

Hyperworks seems like the best fit, but I'm definitely looking for lower cost alternatives.

Anyway, thanks for suggesting SPICE.

<comment><USER2> It seems that a lot is done nowadays in Python, though then you must be able to program, it is rapidly replacing more traditional platforms.

Success further.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some great startup engineering blogs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I have interest in video, cloud and scale so <http://techblog.netflix.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Etsy has a great engineering blog-- <http://codeascraft.etsy.com/></comment>


Ask HN: features you'd love in a hiring app? - <AUTHOR>

I'm thinking about creating a hiring app. Do you hire people? If so, I would love to hear about your process, and about the parts that you would like to see automated. Hiring is painful, I'd like to make it just a little easier. I'm especially focusing on people hiring for web product teams, ie. hire designers, devs, ... <comment><AUTHOR> Additionally, I'd love to hear from people who I can contact personally to discuss their hiring needs :)</comment>


Uber's board clips Kalanick's wings, clears way for SoftBank deal and IPO - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/uber-board-clips-kalanick-wings-clears-way-for-softbank-and-ipo <comment><USER2> I'd like to understand how the Board was able to do this with Travis having his special class of shares which I believe is giving him board control. Or was it because he had not yet appointed the two new members, that the Board had the votes?</comment>


NBC Universal's Home Transformers copied Xcode logo? - <AUTHOR> http://hometransformers.tv/

<comment><USER2> It would appear that way.

Xcode Icon: <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/Xcode_icon.png>

</comment><comment><USER3> yep - an identical lift. I'm sure NBC lawyers will be getting a hello call from the Apple guys soon. Though this isn't the first time NBC legal beagles screw up - years ago they redid their logo and had a hugely expensive launch to rebrand themselves - only to find out that a a TV station out west already had the exact same logo - oops.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can even see a tiny apple logo in the lower left corner as well as the word Xcode in the lower right corner.

</comment><comment><USER5> Blame it on the intern...</comment>


Show HN: Gencexcept – Uber simple exceptions in C - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/iainmeikle/gencexcept <comment><USER2> I haven't tested your project yet but your idea is very interesting.</comment>


WordPress Agrees to Add In-App Purchases After Apple Cut Off Updates - <AUTHOR> I'm surprised that this was worth only an (somewhat hidden) update on the The Verge article (which can't be resubmitted) and didn't pick up any additional reporting, articles or notable tweets:
> Mullenweg tells The Verge he's not going to fight it anymore, though — he will add brand-new in-app purchases for WordPress.com's paid tiers, which include domain names, within 30 days. Apple has agreed to allow Automattic to update the app while it waits. (The last update was issued yesterday.)
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/21/21396316/apple-wordpress-in-app-purchase-tax-update-store
Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24238229 <comment><USER2> If this forced use of a payment system was done by a Chinese or Russian business they would be banned from the US and sanctions put on customers.</comment>


Open Source Node.JS PaaS - <AUTHOR> http://nodester.com/index.html <comment><USER2> This is awesome! How difficult is it / how long did it take you to build this man? I'm a CS / Math undergrad student and I see so many cool projects like these but don't even know where to begin to build something like it!

</comment><comment><USER3> The source code is available at <http://github.com/nodester></comment>


Researchers extend WiFi range by 200 feet with a software upgrade – Engadget - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/22/wifi-onpc-protocol/ <comment><AUTHOR> More info in their Mobicom paper: [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3345436](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3345436)

</comment><comment><USER2> Can I read this without being directed to [https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers](https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers) first? uMatrix kicks in.</comment>


Show/Tell HN: Finally made it to alpha - <AUTHOR>

TL;DR - Site in alpha after previously treating my coding projects as hobbies. Dug deep and got it done.
I am a self-taught coder. This is my (short) story.
Built first site in geocities in late 90s. HTML w/scrolling java. Pure comedy.
At school, built site to highlight social events in the area. Ended up scoring free stuff and some local DJs called to get events on my site. Got in trouble w/group in my technology entrepreneurship class for skipping (was working on my site). Turned out okay.
Fast-forward #1 - Went to work in the big city and started a niche social networking site, but didn't have much time to work on it--also worried that my coding skills (such as they were) had diminished. Got someone to help me, and got some users, but just couldn't do it and practice law. Too much to manage. Plus it didn't feel as good not coding it.
Interlude of some years - more work
Fast-forward #2 - About a year or so ago, I posted about the Joy of Coding, and also shared a landing page for the app I was building part-time (got some snark for it, but didn't care). Started with an iOS app, but then switched to building the web app first.
Currently in alpha and am getting ready for private beta. It's called Toour (ontoour.com)--so far it's been mentioned in Techcrunch, Tnooz, and in one of AngelList's email updates.
(Full disclosure: I have another developer that helps me with some of the database stuff and other advanced functions. But I can legitimately say that I built most of this site myself). <comment><USER2> The idea is nice - when my fiancée and I travel to Taiwan for our honeymoon, I'd probably want to read reviews from people who travel like us (or have also planned out a couple vacation) rather than just any tourist.

Some comments on design: the images and text were a bit dense for me - yet I also felt I didn't get enough of a sense of the UX. For me, I'd like to envision the ACTION I would be taking on your site - what links would I click on, theoretically, to search for information, how would I find users like me, etc. Also, because the images were circumscribed by circles, it felt like the screenshots didn't capture enough for me to REALLY want to learn more. It felt like I was peering through a tube, unnecessarily constricted in my access to information.

Anyway, just my 2c. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> @tonyjwang, thank you for this feedback. I'm hoping to add a screencast soon that will provide a fuller sense of what you can do with the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clickable link: <http://ontoour.com></comment>


BMW delivers its 100,000th electrified vehicle this year - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2017/12/18/bmw-hq-giant-batteries-100000th-ev/ <comment><USER2> [https://electrek.co/2017/12/18/bmw-hq-giant- batteries-100000...](https://electrek.co/2017/12/18/bmw-hq-giant- batteries-100000th-ev/)

Probably the original source, it has more information, quotes from BMW chairman Harald Krüger (he uses the term "electrified cars", i.e. HEVs and PHEVs too). In the article, it is mentioned that 28040 units of i3-s were sold, which is the only full-electric car in BMW's line-up.

<comment><USER3> Excellent, thank you for this research! So the correct headline would be more like,

> BWM sells 28,040 electric cars, plus ~72,000 hybrids in sales year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently bought a 2017 BMW i3 REx edition and love it. Considering you can buy a used i3 in Denver for 20k or less it's by far the best deal in EV's right now.

The only downside to the pre-2017 models is the range on pure battery is something like 60m; the 2017 edition roughly doubled that to 111m on a charge.

So far I have not need the range extender and have run it on electric only the past 2.5 months.

Also, it's exceedingly quick off the line - the fast BMW ever made 0-30 which is mostly when I need that capability. Also fun to see the look of shock on Raptor drivers faces when I zip by them in the blink of an eye.

<comment><USER5> Seeing as you can get used 2nd Gen Volts for 20k I'm not so sure about that, and used 1st Gens for around 10k.

I cross shopped the i3 to the Volt when I was looking and the i3 feels like a car you can only justify by looking at the badge, it's _seriously_ overpriced for what it is. Getting it used helps to some extent, but only by so much.

Leasing EVs is also not a bad deal, there's people who've gotten brand new Volts for ~150 a month with a minimal downpayments.

<comment><USER6> You can buy a new volt for 20-21k after rebates.

Volt also gets 50-60 miles electric range. And can do full speed on ice unlike the i3 Rex

<comment><USER7> Which rebates?

Wife and I tried a Volt, but the rear leg room was horrid. I'm 6'5" and need to put the seat all the way back. Though for $21k by kids can suffer behind me.

Holding out for the Hyundai Ioniq plug-in hybrid. Looked at Prius Primes, but the Toyota dealers here in flyover country are all assholes (to deal with), and they won't stock any.

I have a Leaf, but my wife calls it a golf cart and refuses to drive it due to range anxiety. Thus she wants a plug in hybrid.

<comment><USER6> It's been a while but it's federal and state rebates. Then dealer sticker + dealer list rebate. farmers guild rebate (500$ and it costs 50$ to register). Then we got 0 down 0% financing.

This was in Santa Clara, CA. At freemont Chevy. I believe they sell the most volts of any dealer in the world.

<comment><USER8> Is the Farmer's Guild Rebate still available?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish they wouldn't call hybrids and "electrified" (whatever that means) vehicles "electric vehicles," which at least in my mind, refers to fully battery-powered cars. I think it's quite established that this is what the term means.

The other cars can have their own names. They don't have to call hybrids electric cars, nor do they (like Toyota) need to call their hydrogen-powered cars electric cars, either.

They're only doing this to be misleading, create confusion, and make it look like they're more ahead in the EV revolution than they really are.

However, if they continue to be misleading like this, then we and the media need to start using more specific names for battery-powered electric cars (BEVs, I guess), to make it hard for these car makers to abuse the term by using it to refer to something else. But even BEVs probably wouldn't work, because they'll then say "well, our gas-powered car has a battery in it, and it has electricity, so I guess we'll call it a BEV, too. Look here, we now sell 300,000 BEVs a year! Take that Tesla!".

<comment><USER5> If your car can make your daily commute without ever turning on it's gas engine, so you end up going thousands of miles without using gas, is there really an issue?

I _have_ seen some cars abuse the term PHEV. To me a car that gets a best case of 13 mi of EV-only range isn't really helping things ( _cough_ Volvo _cough_ ). But in general PHEVs are pretty much EVs with range extenders at this point. You could take out their engines and sell them as EVs if charging infrastructure was where it should be. We're seeing numbers that earlier BEVs came with in PHEVs

<comment><USER10> Actually, yes. That PHEV (i3+REX, Volt, PIP, etc) has far more mechanical complexity and parts that can break. A pure BEV ends up being cheaper to maintain (because there's less to maintain).

(Disclaimer: I've put over 40K miles combined on my 2013 LEAF and 2017 Model S).

<comment><USER5> That's not the whole equation.

A Volt is a Chevy Cruze with a Voltec powertrain. If a Volt gets in an accident, for the most part any old auto body shop can fix it as easily as any GM car.

Teslas have been totaled over routine fender benders because of complicated body work.

A Leaf is a BEV based on Nissan's B platform and is closer to the Volt in repairability.

There are Volts and i3s doing hundreds of thousands of miles without issue. The ICEs aren't hardly being pushed in PHEVs since they only need to turn on in nearly optimal performance conditions, and the technology there has been done to death, so they tend to be bulletproof.

EVs in general have lower maintenance costs because things like regen saves on brakes, and PHEVs inherit those lowered costs as well.

Overall maintainance costs end up being a complicated multi-faceted subject that's a little more nuanced than "more parts = more expensive".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Number includes cars that are partially gas burning.

> That includes fully electric cars, as well as electrified vehicles like its > plug-in electric Active Tourer 2-Series, Reuters reports.

is the euphemism for that. It's good news that the cars are selling well but it's basically so misleading as to be a flat out lie that those cars are electric.

Edit: Also, the Reuters 'source' for that is actually an article about US congress tax overhaul and has no number to back up the article.

<comment><USER11> The iPerformance 3 series can do 25 miles on battery which while isn't a lot is well below the average daily commute distance in the UK.

Don't get me wrong it would be great if it had a proper battery but and it's a big but it's still a £34,000 car which is 1/2 of the starting price for a new Tesla model S in the UK and in all honesty after having the pleasure of driving both on more than one occasion the BMW is a much nicer car to drive, the car feels premium, the interior design is far superior and if I'll ever decide to actually buy a car to own rather than rent or use zip car on the weekends I would go for the iPerformance vs a Tesla in it's current state in a heartbeat.

I had a few short drives in an i3 and it's also a pretty good car, but I don't have enough time behind the wheel to form a good opinion and to me it's just too damn ugly. I really wish they would've dresses the i3 like a series 3 or 2 car.

<comment><USER12> I like to drive to Goodwood Motor Circuit once a month or so, which is about 80 miles each way and 160 miles round trip.

The drive takes me on some of the best roads in West Sussex, with some truly amazing cars (think Lamborghinis from the 70s and 80s, Porsche Carrera GTs and old 911s) and as such you can imagine we're too busy having fun to worry about economy.

I can do the trip there and back in 3/4 of a tank (11l/100km, or 25MPG). However, I genuinely worry that if I bought a Model S I would not be able to make the same trip on a single charge. There is a video on YouTube of someone driving their 85D on the Nurburgring and in 10 minutes the car has gone from 90% to 60% charge. Given that these roads allow for a lot of throttle use I expect I'd run out after 100 miles at best.

Sure, you could argue that we should drive slower, more economically, with less throttle. However, if electric cars are going to be fun and appealing to enthusiasts I think electric cars need to start matching ICE cars when it comes to range under high load, and I think the leading cause of such poor range when driving the car in a more demanding style is the extra weight electric cars have to carry over their ICE counterparts (a P100D is almost 40% heavier than its ICE equivalent, such as a BMW F80 M3).

<comment><USER13> Model S is equivalent to a 7 series, not a 3 series. P100D is 4960lbs, 750 xDrive is 4623. That's not 40% heavier.

<comment><USER11> The Model S is heavy because of the battery.

Finish, comfort handling and in many other ways it's much lower than the high end series 3/5 yet alone 7.

BMW just like Benz has a big overlap between its series.

The model S is an amazing car but it's handling is subpar mostly due to its weight and it's furnishing is a joke compared to even entry level luxury sedans.

<comment><USER13> Agree furnishing isn't up to the others, was comparing similar sizes. Comparing to 3 series is the silly part. 5 series is more accurate comparo, tho its not exactly apples to apples due to interior size differences w electric. Doesn't really matter why a car is heavier.

<comment><USER11> Series the 530e is what £45k? The weight of the car doesn't matter here if anything the Tesla performs rather poorly because it's breaks and suspension aren't that great for its weight class.

<comment><USER14> Personally, I prefer that high-powered cars don't have great brakes; people who use the brakes that much are bad drivers.

I saw a talk from the data guy at Progressive car insurance, he said that the only signal from their "black box" monitoring of drivers (opt-in) which predicted accidents was extreme braking. Not strong acceleration, not anything else.

<comment><USER15> ...and that shows why high quality brakes don't usually change driving behavior. Go ahead and test the quality of the brakes in your car. _Nobody_ brakes remotely like that outside of a racetrack. It feels (at least to me) like something is happening that shouldn't be happening, so you don't get the crazy idea to rely on it in your driving. The braking power of modern cars is in the range of 600 hp when braking from 100 km/h to zero.

That said, my driving instructor said "if you use your brakes on the autobahn in normal driving, you are doing it wrong". That is because you can see far and air resistance slows you down quickly enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Clickbait title!! I thought BMW sold 100,000 Tesla like electric vehicles, and clearly it didn't.

<comment><USER14> Yes, I also imagined they were talking about 100% electric cars, and not plug- in hybrids or hybrids.

[edit: The title was just changed from "electric cars" to "electrified vehicle", which is an even odder way to put it, but at least most people know they don't know what that means without looking at the article.]</comment></comment>


Coronavirus research: The nose could be the body's entry point to infection - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00502-w <comment><USER2> Nature takes the Lancet paper on HCQ for granted: but the current debate shows that it may not be the case. Even if the conclusion is the same (it may as well be), it is no excuse to not do one's homework properly, and instead may just worsen the public perception of science.

Some references:

\- [https://zenodo.org/record/3871094#.XtSHr6-Xz_8.twitter](https://zenodo.org/record/3871094#.XtSHr6-Xz_8.twitter)

\- [https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/05/25/hydroxychl...](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/05/25/hydroxychloroquine- update/) (and follow ups)</comment>


Tesla Temporarily Stops Model 3 Production Line - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17245186/tesla-model-3-electric-car-production-shutdown <comment><USER2> My father is a shop floor worker at a major car manufacturer.

Stopping a production line during a ramp up for days is a normal part of the business. When the line is already running, it is not the best of all news, because something malfunctioned -- like a big press putting errors into some bigger parts -- and needs to be reworked. Sometimes, however, they are reworking the line. So these stops are planned and there usually also exists a very detailed plan how to approach this. This is usually a high-stress situation due to a standing production line causing a loss to the company, and a separate specifically for this trained team is doing the rework with the workers being concerned with the parts of the production line being the 'consultants' to this other team. Resp., helping operationally. During the setup of the production line for a new model it is standing for weeks. Hence, no one is having unpaid enforced vacation whatsoever. At least in Germany.

Smells like clickbait here.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't seem like your dad's experience applies. Tesla workers are being asked to take vacation days or to stay home. It's also the second stoppage in 2 months.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-model-3/tesla- tempo...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-model-3/tesla-temporarily- shuts-down-model-3-production-in-fremont-idUSKBN1HN347)

<comment><USER2> They cite BuzzFeed:

        BuzzFeed, which first reported the news, said
        workers were expected to use vacation days or
        stay home without pay during the four- to five-day
        production pause.

The thing is, during a ramp-up there are incentives to get the workers working seven days a week, because they want to minimize the time the line stands still. So usually he's taking that extra cash (and that's also how I found out, as I was wondering why he's gone for the weekends, too).

<comment><USER2> OK, so, I showed the article to my dad. He wasn't surprised at all and told me quite some stuff. Here is the summary of the interesting points:

* It is normal that people have (paid!) vacation when there is stuff to be done where maintenance only works. It is called 'Werksurlaub' (roughly: 'factory vacation') and this you-have-to-take-vacation-period is announced in the beginning of the year and it has been like that since 30 years him working there.

* When they need to retool, if possible (most of the time) the new tool is put in line behind the to-be-replaced tool without stopping the production line and then they run-in the new tool with taking over cycles gradually.

* When there are 'incidents' or the production line has to be stopped, this is announced ahead of time and the production workers have to take a so-called 'Kollektivfreischicht' (roughly: 'collective non-working shift'), where the whole line works overtime prior to the incident and then take time in lieu collectively. There is also a funny German word for this 'taking time in lieu', it is called '[Überstunden] abfeiern' (lit: 'to party down [overtime]').

Also, he told me some not very nice things about the automotive industry. Especially when final assembly is standing still (unforeseen incident in production line) - that is, hundreds of people unable to work and costing money. I interpret this, however, as general property of the (automotive) industry and you can read about it elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> You're talking about a German, highly regulated situation, which, while interesting, might not really apply to the situation in the US and more specifically at Tesla.

It's apparently quite sudden and unpaid, very different from your father's situation.

<comment><USER2> I agree. Nevertheless, considering the topic of being pushed/forced to take vacation because of maintenance: Same thing in 'traditional automotive industry' in Germany is my impression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Tesla, however, says this is part of a planned period of downtime that was similar to another shutdown in February, and it isn't intended to have an affect on the company's current production targets for the car.

This seems like a story that is being pushed just because sites know it will drive clicks but the actually news is well not really news.

<comment><USER3> The original article said this:

> _The announcement of the four- to five-day production pause for the Model 3 > came without warning, according to Tesla employees who spoke with BuzzFeed > News. During the pause, workers are expected to use vacation days or stay > home without pay; a small number of workers may be offered paid work > elsewhere in the factory._

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/tesla- model-3-prod...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/tesla- model-3-production-shutdown-delay-elon-musk)

<comment><USER6> Many of those workers have probably been racking up the overtime, so the break shouldn't be bad financially and good for the mental health. But to do it without warning is really shitty: a little bit of warning would have let a proper vacation be planned. You know that vacation requests will be denied once it gets started again.

<comment><USER7> These kind of mindtricks to justify situations where workers are fucked is exactly the reason why I support laws that protect workers from this.

<comment><USER8> The other thing that I find really odd about American working conditions is that it seems quite routine for leave requests to be cancelled. What if you've already booked a holiday, or promised family you'll go somewhere?

Apple rumour sites always giddily report cancelled leave requests. I find it bizarre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised no one has mentioned the likely true reason behind this stoppage: the "burst rate" production and other shenanigans Tesla has put on at the end of its most recent quarters.

These tricks artificially boost its weekly production for the quarterly reports. After the cameras are off, the burned out workers and other resources need time to recuperate.

This shutdown period conveniently conceals this burnout. This is part of the shell games Tesla has played, robbing from its future self to manufacture the narrative it needs to maintain its share price in its stricken state.

<comment><USER10> Reminds me of working in a telecoms manufacturer in 2000 before the .com crash. There were times before end of quarter when unfinished devices were put in trucks and sent for a drive around town, to return after inspections were finished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Related to this? [https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-16/analyst- spots-14-b...](https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-16/analyst- spots-14-billion-hole-teslas-balance-sheet)

</comment><comment><USER12> From the BuzzFeed article that is linked [0].

> During the pause, workers are expected to use vacation days or stay home > without pay; a small number of workers may be offered paid work elsewhere in > the factory.

For these downtimes that are planned by the company, is it typical across the industry that workers have to use vacation days or go without pay? Or is Tesla shortchanging workers relative to other car manufacturers?

0\. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/tesla- model-3-prod...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/tesla- model-3-production-shutdown-delay-elon-musk?utm_term=.jnL1P5p2O#.xlqPwzjeG)

<comment><USER13> GM, for instance, has a shutdown almost every summer. It's usually around two weeks. It can be more, and a few workers stick around for the machines they can't really turn off. They also get to do some maintenance as well as let workers take time off in the summer, without affecting regular production.

Sometimes (when sales are slow and inventories are full) the shutdown lasts longer than two weeks.

<comment><USER14> To give a bit more context, hourly employees are laid off and draw unemployment during these planned shutdowns. It sounds super weird, but it's been happening for over 50 years, so everyone knows what they are getting into. The same hourly employees are hired back again at the end of the shutdown.

I'm not exactly sure what happens for downtime more than a couple shifts, but I'm sure the union remembers it in the next negotiations.

<comment><USER15> Lots of people who work construction draw all winter.

<comment><USER16> Where? Here in the D.C. area, construction does not stop because of weather. The exception would be extreme weather such as hurricanes, lightning and rain if the building was not closed in. It actually seems that construction increases in the winter, I guess because of fresh budgets. There is a joke that they only start breaking ground when it is the coldest time of the year.

<comment><USER15> This happens in DC too, although perhaps to a lesser extent due to your mild climate. Some construction continues through the winter, and most carpenters and laborers are happy to work instead of draw, but nobody is framing in the snow. It's true that excavation is easier when the ground isn't muddy, so "breaking ground" in the winter could make sense. You can't pour concrete when it's freezing, though, so if the timing is wrong the rain could mess up the excavation before you get a chance to place your forms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I suspected this might happen after Musk said that Tesla would be profitable soon.

If they're losing money when they make cars, the logical choice should be to stop making cars. By doing so they should achieve profitability.

This is why Musk is an icon. He sees opportunities others don't and is willing to defy convention.</comment>


Symantec is purchasing Verisign's SSL Cert and PKI business - <AUTHOR> http://www.symantec.com/about/news/release/article.jsp?prid=20100519_01

<comment><AUTHOR> First question: Will they issue a new Root CA?</comment>


Deep Shot uses camera to move application states between PC, phone - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/06/deep-shot-uses-camera-to-move-application-states-between-pc-phone.ars <comment><USER2> Another article, video and discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2665417></comment>