SpaceX update: The engine did not explode - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20121008 <comment><USER2> > SpaceX update: The engine did not explode

No, it just became a "Falcon 8" while enroute.

All joking aside, as a former NASA Space Shuttle engineer I'm very impressed by this private-enterprise venture into heavy-lift launch services. People have often speculated about how much cheaper launch services might be if they were in the private sector -- now we can find out. The preliminary signs are very good.

<comment><USER3> That reminds me of a euphemism that I found delightful that I heard once while working for a space company... "achieving submerged geostationary orbit," I think it was.

<comment><USER4> I assume this means "crashed into the ocean"?

<comment><USER3> Yep.

I feel like there was another word in the phrase as used by the engineer I heard it from, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was.

<comment><USER5> "Involuntary"? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was curious about how reliable we should predict a Falcon 9 launch to be based on the stated design parameters (survives the loss of any 2 engines) and current launch data.

I found that under a simple Bayesian model, the estimated probability of catastrophic failure during the next launch is 3.6%. See [http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-reliable-will- falco...](http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-reliable-will- falcon-9-be.html) for details.

 _Update:_ I made a careless calculation error. Change 3.6% to 2%. Oops.

<comment><USER7> Good stuff OP, nice to see Bayesian getting more attention recently. However, after reading your blog post, I can't help get the feeling this is how a natural frequentist would approach the problem. This method is effectively relying on known, statistical record of past events to form the priors.

Often a more useful and appropriate construct in the Bayesian world, is the use of a belief network or _Bayesian Network_. This is a probabilistic directed acyclic graph (DAG) that encodes priors, often in the form of _subjective_ beliefs (yes subjectivity can be useful), including specific domain knowledge.

Common example: Consider a naive Bayesian classifier (a specialized form of belief network) that identifies individual pieces of spam. Do we arrive at the spam score by entering the probability of past events into a simple model based of the Bayes theorem formula?

No, it's trained using the vast amount of domain knowledge and pattern recognition (through our experience and own estimation of what 'spam' is) encoded in our minds, that provide the priors. Thus, even though there is a large amount of subjectivity involved, the overall result can objectively be measured, within a given utility function. Incidentally, this is often what makes many hardcore empiricists 'nervous', and hence avoid belief networks altogether.

Coming back to the Falcon 9: A piece of prior information outside the scope of historic safety records, for example, one of the lead engineers having a nagging doubt about a particular technical risk based on some observed phenomenon, could have an impact on the real world probability of the next event being a failure. (Which is a pretty useful thing to know!)

In fact, this exact scenario happened in 2003 with the disastrous destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia. [1] An engineer spotted something wrong on previous flights, but management failed to heed the warning[2]. This could quite possibly have been averted, if a risk mitigation model were in place to account for such evidence.

Looking forward, it's quite possible to imagine a future where this decision making has been outsourced to a sophisticated AI based off a Bayes net, with far more accurate real world modeling of risk and failure probabilities, outclassing the amount of evidence and a human or committee could possibly hope to compete with.

While I've nothing against frequentist approaches (albeit Bayesian naturally makes more intuitive sense to me), a minor drawback is the reliance on the past to predict the future. For example if you had safety records on 1 million previous flights, then one might be tempted to say, "well that's that then, we now know objectively the probability of failures in the future -- end of story". But, the 1 000 001 flight may have been designed to fly on a completely different type of technology, that will change significantly change the safety record of space flight going forward for the next "x" years. Thus using a Bayesian approach account for all relevant priors, it would in theory be possible to reflect a more accurate probability for the 1 000 001 flight, _before_ it took place.

Lastly Bayes nets are not the best tool for every job, and do have drawbacks in certain situations. They are vulnerable to things like Bayesian poisoning or confirmation bias. A Bayesian approach is only as useful as the ongoing real world relevancy and accuracy of the priors. As the old adage goes, GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster>

[2] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/jun/22/spaceexplorati...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/jun/22/spaceexploration.columbia)

<comment> loup-vaillant > _for example, one of the lead engineers having a nagging doubt about a > particular technical risk based on some observed phenomenon, could have an > impact on the real world probability of the next event being a failure. > (Which is a pretty useful thing to know!)_

You should know that there's no such thing as "real world probability". The rocket will crash, or it will not, period.[1] Probability, as a measure of your own ignorance, is subjective.[2] Your main point still stands though: knowing about the uncertainty of that lead engineer certainly should influence your assessments of the risks involved.

[1] What will actually happen is, the universe splits into many "worlds" (blobs of amplitude in configuration space), a fraction of which will have the rocket crash, and the rest won't. That's the closest thing we have from "real world probability", though it really isn't: the laws of physics as we currently know them are still deterministic.

[2] <http://lesswrong.com/lw/oj/probability_is_in_the_mind/>

<comment><USER7> _> "The rocket will crash, or it will not, period."_

Indeed. We pretty much agree then. If you re-read the "real world probability" in the context, I was talking specifically about a _belief_ network. The degree to which a justified belief, in an outcome will occur. All beliefs are by their definitions _'subjective'_ and occurring in a mind.

Actually my current thinking over the last decade mostly aligns with what could be described as physicalist view of the reality, so even 'subjective' thoughts, ideas, concepts etc exist objectively in a physical sense as well (glia cells, neurons etc). (but that's a whole other topic ;)

I simply worded it 'real word' because I was attempting (perhaps ineloquently I will concede), to differentiate between frequentist and the Bayesian understanding of the term probability, because they differ [1].

Bayesian favors bringing in a priori beliefs into the model whereas a posteriori consideration of a problem, as occurs in frequentist approaches, favor isolation of the model.

 _> What will actually happen is, the universe splits into many "worlds"_

Interesting, you state that so.. assertively :p I'd give the chance of a _many worlds interpretation_ corresponding well with our physical reality, a low probability event, with a pretty high credibility interval ;)

[1] [http://www.experiment-resources.com/bayesian- probability.htm...](http://www.experiment-resources.com/bayesian- probability.html)

<comment> loup-vaillant > _Interesting, you state that so.. assertively :p_

Well, you probably guessed where I came from: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/>

I think most physicists agree that at the bottom, we have a distribution of "complex amplitude"[1] over a "configuration space"[2]. But as you can see from my second link, many (most?) physicists insist that we can derive a "probability" from a complex number. Note that such probability would then be an actual real world probability, where the universe itself is uncertain about what to do. True non-determinism.

It's only natural. At the experimental level, the researcher does observe Born statistics. Same setup, different results, so there _is_ probability in the territory after all.

There's a problem with that however: The equations, which make such wonderfully accurate predictions, (i) are dederministic, and (ii) do not state at any point that the blob of amplitude we don't see disappear in a puff of smoke. They merely say that the blobs eventually stop interacting. The same way that if you launch a photon to outer space, never to meet it again, it won't disappear the instant it reaches the boundary of our observable universe. If you insist on a mono world, you have to assert that the other blob, despite being predicted by those otherwise accurate equations, somehow doesn't exist when you don't see it.

One way to do it is to believe that, _contrary to what the equations say_ , the blob you don't see does disappear in a puff of smoke. Its amplitudes are literally zeroed out behind your back. In hindsight, this one looks nuts to me. I mean, how can we justify distrusting accurate equations in a way that doesn't even make experimental predictions?

Another way is to call the square moduli of those amplitude "probabilities", and pretend that because it's probabilities, the blob you are not in isn't real. But the equations do not make any difference between the two blobs. Then how come the other blob is less real than our own?

To me, those two explanations really feel bizarre. You have to start from a mono world assumption to come up with that. An easy mistake to make, since personal experience is telling us all the time that there is only one world. A bit like a leaf in a binary tree: its ancestors form a line, not a tree. But Kolmogorov complexity says a literal interpretation of the equations (which means many world) is simpler than anything else we currently know about. So to hell with personal experience (which by the way is responsible for much worse whackery than mono world).

Now there _is_ a way out: we can admit that _current_ physics imply many worlds, but insist that _real_ physics probably don't. Current physics are not complete after all. We may have big surprises. This argument is certainly be much saner than the Copenhagen interpretation. So much that it does lower my probability for many worlds somewhat. Just not enough to squash my confidence. :-)

[1]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_amplitude>

[2]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_space>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >"Panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to protect the stage and other engines."

Can anyone that knows something about the Falcon 9 design or rockets in general shed some light on this? That sentence makes it sound like the panels were purposefully jettisoned, which doesn't make sense to me. What do those panels do, what do they look like, and where are they?

<comment><USER9> Purposefully jettisonning panels is a way of preventing an explosion from damaging the rest of the ship. The rocket creates energy in a direction, but what if something prevents the energy from going in that direction? The energy, in the form of expanding gasses, has to go somewhere. If these panels didn't break away to give the energy somewhere to go, it could have forced into another rocket or into the ship's body, causing a much bigger problem.

<comment><USER10> When they say "Jettisoned", it makes it sound like one of the flight computers decided to drop the panels. Wouldn't it more be the case that the panels are deliberately designed to be blown off? I have a hard time believing that any control system could react in time in case of an engine explosion...

<comment><USER9> The panels may have been designed to jettison once they reached a certain pressure differential, or they may be jettisonned by computer.

How quickly do engines explode? Is it faster than 2 cars colliding? Computers deploy air bags quickly because electricity travels faster along wires in your car chassis than the car travels into something else.

Visualize a bumper with sensors - as the bumper is deformed by a collision, a sensor shifts an electron in the copper wire, and the electron next to it shifts. There's a cascade of shifting electrons along the wire, and it races backwards through the car's body, chased by the destruction of the car as it collides with another object. The cascade of electrons hits the air bag computer, which begins another cascade of electrons to the air bag. The wave of destruction has covered most of the distance to your windshield by now. The air bag deploys as molecules of air rush from their high-pressure canister to fill it. As the bag hits its most pressurized point, your car is coming to a stop as its kinetic energy is combined with energy from the other object.

<comment><USER11> Beautiful. A small correction – most airbags use pyrotechnic inflators, not compressed air.

Sidenote about airbags: they have to be folded to fit inside their module, so as it inflates it's also unfolding. In order to make sure it unfolds properly they coat it in a lubricant that can't evaporate – either talcum powder or cornstarch depending on the vehicle.

I learned this only _after_ I scrambled out of the car my sister put in a ditch thinking it was on fire. The best part? It was a diesel car.

Who knows, maybe the engineers consider it a feature because after an accident it sure gets people out of the car quick!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Falcon 9 did exactly what it was designed to do. Like the Saturn V (which experienced engine loss on two flights) and modern airliners, Falcon 9 is designed to handle an engine out situation and still complete its mission. No other rocket currently flying has this ability."

Chills down my spine as I read this. I try to write eloquently, but sometimes the fact should stand alone: "No other rocket currently flying has this ability."

<comment><USER13> This reminds me of a major feature Chrome had when launched - to withstand a crash of any of the opened tabs. I thought it's a funny feature to have... other browsers just preferred not to crash in the first place. Then I tried Chrome and realized it was a great feature for them, because Chrome kept crashing all the time (back then).

What I wanted to say by this is that while it's a great thing for Falcon 9 to have fail-over in its maiden flights (as we could see yesterday), I wouldn't worry too much about "other rockets" not having this. Soyuz rockets are a great example (100% success rate for manned flights to ISS and over 97% success rate for all Soyuz rockets (that's since 1966)[1]).

1\. my numbers are only from wiki: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-7_(rocket_family)> and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_manned_space_mi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_manned_space_missions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I saw the engine flame out and the panels come apart during the launch. I expected _some_ comment on the launch radio because it was obviously not SOP (engines shouldn go out with debris), yet, due to good design, the entire launch remained nominal.

I am now getting hopeful that I'll be able to experience zero-G before I die. SpaceX team, you are my heroes. Keep up the great work!

<comment><USER15> The main mission (Dragon/ISS) wasn't affected, but a secondary payload (an ORBComm test satellite) was left in the Dragon's insertion orbit, and didn't get the scheduled secondary boost --- apparently because, after the delayed orbital insertion, the reboost would have gone too close to ISS, according to an ORBComm press release:

www.orbcomm.com/Collateral/Documents/English- US/ORBCOMM%20Launches%20Prototype%20OG2%20Satellite%20FINAL.pdf

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who got confused by the first sentence? "The Dragon spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station this morning and is performing nominally...".

Is everything fine now, or is it not? "Nominally" in this sense to me means that something is amiss, but reading the rest of the article seems to imply that everything is on track.

<comment><USER17> It seems to have a special space meaning:

"Aerospace & Engineering. According to plan or design: a nominal flight check."

<http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nominally>

<comment><USER18> Having listened to 5 decades of rocket launches, I would say that nominal means that it is working within mission parameters. There may be glitches, but it is going to work, i.e. the payload is going into orbit. The engine failure wasnt planned, but there was enough redundancy in the system for it to succeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> following the Engine-1 failure, did Falcon 9 continue w/ six engines operating, or was one of the two previously shutdown engines re-engaged?

<comment><USER20> The engine failed prior to MECO-1 (where the first two scheduled shutdowns occur) so there were still 8 lit engines. There's no capability to restart the engines that have been shut down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's amazing that this could have worked as a Dragon 7. One engine failed and they still could have made it with one other engine malfunctioning. Bearing in mind the cost of the launches for SpaceX are forecasted to be significantly lower than old shuttles, this is all the more impressive. There was a misshap though, since the Orbcomm satellite wasn't nearly put on the right orbit. I have no idea whether the onboard propulsion of the satellite will be enough to get into the desired orbit, but if they do manage it, it will be a testament to the quality and interest of fault-tolerant space operations.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have to admit that I'm impressed at how well the system they build compensated for the mechanical failure. It looks like they have some good people building things.

One aspect that's worth consideration is the private/corporate aspects of spaceflight. When there were failures in Apollo and the shuttle, the public had a right to know everything that happened since we'd paid for everything. SpaceX has been super cool about disclosure here, but how long can we count on that? At some point, there's too much money at stake for them to maintain full transparency.

<comment><USER23> What's more important than disclosure to the public after something has gone wrong, is disclosure to the customers (e.g. NASA) and future astronauts ahead of time if something has been identified as a potential problem before launch. The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred because managers failed to acknowledge the warnings of engineers, who recommended postponing the launch due to cold weather which could prevent some O-rings from functioning properly. Having the ability to acknowledge and correct problems ahead of time, even if it means a launch delay and potentially some lost profits, will ultimately pave the path for a sustainable private space industry.

But I think that SpaceX understands that NASA is funded by the public and it will be easier to get the support of NASA if they have the support of the public. I would suspect that for this reason they will continue a decent amount of public disclosure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I saw the launch live and I saw the debris ejecting about 90 seconds in. What I found particularly amazing was that SpaceX either didn't know it, didn't want to confirm it or just realised that their design worked because all I heard after that was my favourite aerospace term "Situation nominal".

<comment><USER25> Simple efficiency of communication. The guy saying "situation nominal" was the one looking at the engine data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I bet the ISS crew yelled the ice cream noo!

</comment><comment><USER27> I am speechless in amazement. So badass!!

</comment><comment><USER28> If anything, this shows the fault tolerant design that works.

<comment><USER29> It's essentially a RAID6 design for rocket engines.

<comment><USER30> RAID5, they can only sustain one failure.

<comment><USER29> Incorrect. From the fine article (SpaceX's release):

      "It is worth noting that Falcon 9 shuts down two of its engines
       to limit acceleration to 5 g's even on a fully nominal flight.
       The rocket could therefore have lost another engine and still
       completed its mission."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FSF speaks against patent and DRM provisions - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-speaks-against-tpp <comment><USER2> "TPP is being negotiated between nine countries that border the Pacific: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States of America, and Vietnam. _While the official text is being kept secret,_ a leaked draft and other reports indicate that the United States intends to use TPP as another opportunity to spread its draconian copyright and patent laws around the world."

Here we go, again. As far as I'm concerned, if there's no transparency, there's no legitimacy. I understand not everything government does is publicized, but the base motivation for this seems manipulative and undemocratic. (It's not a warhead design; it's a economic negotiation about who gets what.)</comment>


Zero money down, not subprime loans, led to the mortgage meltdown - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html <comment><USER2> Wow that article is a perfect example of how people bastardize statistics. Correlation != causation, people, say it with me! It's also pretty clueless in general.

Stuff like:

> But the focus on subprimes ignores the widely available industry facts > (reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association) that 51% of all foreclosed > homes had prime loans

Yeah, that's because only a small % of all mortgages are subprime! But a _huge_ percentage of subprime mortgages have defaulted, much higher than prime mortgages (as you'd expect).

> The analysis indicates that, by far, the most important factor related to > foreclosures is the extent to which the homeowner now has or ever had > positive equity in a home.

You mean the most "correlated" factor. This doesn't imply causation. But of course, if you have to ask _which_ borrowers are most likely to just walk away, it's the ones with _nothing_ more to lose!

Such a sad, pointless article. If he is on to anything, you can't even know it because his analysis is so poor.

If you really dig this stuff, follow this blog:

<http://www.fieldcheckgroup.com/blog/>

<comment><USER3> While correlation doesn't imply causation, I don't think that's quite what he's doing here.

To your first point: even though the rate of default of subprime mortgages is much, much greater, the massive losses that are bringing down banks are the problem. So his point is that the rate of foreclosure doesn't matter so much as the volume: so focus on what is causing foreclosures in the biggest category.

To your second: the remedies currently being considered by congress all focus on regulating the interest rate of mortgages. His point is that the rate, while a factor in determining foreclosure, is much less important than negative equity, and the remedies for preventing negative equity are different.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough rebuttal.

I do agree with a lot of his conclusions, but some are misguided.

He seems to think that only one factor can be the critical factor, but I think he's missing the point. If someone cannot afford their mortgage, they are pretty much going to get foreclosed on. It's just a matter of time. However, the more negative equity they have, the sooner they are likely to do this.

Also, he craps on Obama's "making homes affordable" plan because of it's target of 31% housing-to-income ratio. But this program is _only_ available for those with Loan-To-Value ratios under 105%, precisely because frankly it's pretty obvious that if you are way underwater on your house you are better off walking away from it.

Now, I don't really think that we should've spent the money on pretty much any program to save homeowners. Giving $3000 to a mortgage company for refi'ing a loan that empirically goes to foreclosure anyway 50% of the time is a giant waste of time and money. Both the banks and homeowners got screwed by entering these loans, and they should be left to rot with them.

It probably would've been better to try to convince banks to just turn the owners into renters for a 3-5 year period to let the mortgage market meltdown run its course while somewhat punishing both parties that entered such horrible deals.

Oh well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is more of an insight into the perverse incentives created by bankruptcy/foreclosure law than it is about the way in which un-hedged systemic risk led to the crisis.

Still an interesting article.

<comment><USER5> No, the point is that unhedged systemic risk is only one component of the crisis, despite what the rest of the media is blaring. The other, and perhaps more important, component was zero down mortgages and cash-out refinancings that left borrowers with no equity in their houses. Borrowers were just as irresponsible as bankers and haven't gotten the bad press they deserve. "It's the leverage, stupid" should be the mantra of this crisis.

<comment><USER6> "Borrowers were just as irresponsible as bankers"

The borrower never has been and never should be the party to determine if they can repay a loan or if the assets being leveraged will retain their value through the life of the loan. This is the job of the lender. Yes, it was "irresponsible" for people to borrow so much, but the burden goes to the lender...and the regulators that allowed the lenders to behave that way...and the people that voted for elected officials that enabled regulators to do what they did.

In short, if you make money so freely available, you can expect people to take it.

<comment><USER4> Ironically, the borrowers just acted according to incentives, as did bankers. Everyone knew fannie/freddie would get bailed out if mortgages went south, and this fact drastically reduced anyone's incentive to care about how risky MBSs were.

There is moral hazard created by the way bankruptcy law works (for people who are significantly underwater) and also in banking regulations (and GSEs).

<comment><USER2> Ironically?!

People _always_ behave the way they're incentivized (unless it's egregiously immoral).

I've always found it pretty easy to predict the eventualities of markets based on how the system works. You can't predict the twists and turns along the way, but you usually know what the end looks like. Sadly though, not when.

On average people behave pretty predictably...

<comment><USER4> I was being sarcastic :) I totally agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No, the only thing that happened is that lots of people bought things they couldn't afford and, unsurprisingly, couldn't pay for them. That's it.

It doesn't help at all to blame banks for this. It's readily apparent that if you purchase a house, regardless of the terms, you will eventually need to pay for a house. It's not rocket surgery. The corollary to this is that "if you can't afford a house, don't buy a house." Anybody ignoring that simple fact is likely to run out of money.

Many of us realized this, didn't buy things we couldn't afford, and therefore still have money. It's amazing that people would expect to blame some random 3rd party for their own foolishness.

[http://www.hulu.com/watch/1389/saturday-night-live-dont- buy-...](http://www.hulu.com/watch/1389/saturday-night-live-dont-buy-stuff)

</comment><comment><USER8> this guy needs to familiarize himself with Bayes' theorem. I don't know the real numbers, but I would hope and think that the number of prime mortgages that we're given is 10-20 times larger than the number of sub-prime mortgages.

So, a better question might be what percent of prime mortgages and what percent of subprime mortgages go into foreclosure. Not what percent of foreclosures comes from prime vs subprime.</comment>


National Day of Service - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/national-day-of.html <comment><USER2> Great idea Seth, there's a lot of really driven, sometimes older people that contribute heaps to society that would be able to leverage their effort with a little help from someone with tech skillz.

But let us not forget that many people involved in startups and open source are already benefiting society in immeasurable ways, by doing what they love the most.

I suppose however, that the spirit of the day, helping others selflessly, is what counts, ultimately.</comment>


A Sick Giant - <AUTHOR> https://waitbutwhy.com/2020/01/sick-giant.html <comment><USER2> I've been reading Tim Urban's writing for a while. One of the most valuable things in his writing isn't originality, but delivery.

He might not be coming up with original ideas (he regularly references the research he consulted to form his writing) but he _does_ do a great job of breaking down complex ideas into a form that's easily digestible.

The first several chapters of this series (worth a read, even if it's the only thing you read this year) are devoted entirely to building the vocabulary needed to discuss these concepts. He works hard to help build a mental model for the reader, which makes his writing significantly more accessible to the average human.

<comment><USER3> I think that breaking down the concepts is also helpful for Tim, as well as anyone who's trying to wrestle with complex ideas, in addition to the audience. Making sure your concepts are well-defined and clear is key to building them into something greater. So many flawed ideas are flawed because they're built off of a shaky foundation. Unfortunately analyzing those foundational ideas critically is difficult. I've found that writing essays helps force you into doing the hard work, but it's very time consuming.

<comment><USER2> I agree with this! I recently had the opportunity to write an outline / script for a TEDx talk, and I found it clarified my ideas _significantly._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> He makes plenty of good points, but completely fails to make mention of how plurality voting (also known as "first past the post") results in two dominant parties, rather than electing people who represent the preference of the median voter. This is known as Duverger's Law, and I would argue it is about 90% responsible for everything he speaks of.

Voting systems that don't do this exist. Approval voting is one of the better ones (unfortunately, Ranked Choice voting doesn't do much at all to alleviate this). Approval voting has been enacted in Fargo, ND and is being considered for St. Louis, MO.

The charts he included show that there actually is a reasonable middle ground and lots of voters are there. The problem is that candidates that are in the middle can't get elected. Imagine how different things would be if our election system tended to elect the first choice of the median voter.

<comment><USER5> I'm a fan of single transferable voting, but the claim that FPTP is responsible for America's politics does not seem well borne out by the evidence. As the Wikipedia article on Duverger's Law notes: "In practice, most countries with plurality voting have more than two parties." The USA is very much an outlier here. Even if there remained only two _dominant_ parties, a significant third party like the NDP in Canada, or the Liberal Democrats in the UK, would reshape congressional politics very significantly.

<comment><USER6> I think the reason why US has two parties is that most States apply FPTP at a district level, but then also have a winner-takes-all at State level based on the districts result. So one district selects one party, and then the State gives all its N votes to the majority party among districts, selecting N people of the same party. UK only has FPTP at constituency (district) level. So one constituency selects one person (one MP belonging to one party).

In UK when voting you have to chose among the top two parties _in your own constituency_ in order to have a chance to get the MP you want rather than throwing your vote away. Votes distribution at national level doesn't really count from the voter point of view.

In US when voting you have to chose among the top two parties _in your own State_ because if your district picks a third party and no other district does, your whole district vote is thrown away. Votes distribution at State level really counts from the voter point of view.

<comment><USER7> It isn't thrown away, though. If your district picks a third party, you send a third party representative to Congress. You'll have different choices in district-specific and state-wide races but you could also have a third party senate candidate and no realistic third party house candidates (for example Maine in 2018, though they had ranked choice voting). I don't see how having multiple levels of elections changes things beyond larger populations making it harder to coordinate outside the parties.

<comment><USER6> I stand corrected. Thank you for pointing out my misunderstanding of US elections.

So what is the main difference? size of districts (constituencies) by a factor of ~10? Gerrymandering?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I basically disagree with this formulation on the grounds that it does not sufficiently respect political opinions as being reflective of self-interest; these opinions are often a result of not just consistent messaging but tangible incentive.

It's much more straightforward to view the public politics and culture as a primarily top-down construction: "let's make these groups more upset at each other; let's make these other groups reconcile". This decision, made for cold reasons of accumulating power for oneself and immediate cronies by herding public opinion, subsequently filters down through the system via funding grants, access to information, and the occasional revolving-door or literal kickback. It gets amplified because job holders and job seekers spot the opportunities and threats awaiting them through a simple agreement or disagreement: they therefore start conducting themselves accordingly in "the way of the times", taking up the causes of the powerful with a bare minimum of overt messaging, hoping that they have backed a winning horse. This scramble happens across a broad range of industries, at many levels of the career ladder, and in seeking friends and relationships. There is a lot at stake in having "right opinions," in fact. The way in which the country seems to "come apart" or "come together" on issues is therefore most reflective of disagreements at the top, and produces a four-year cycle in a political- cultural feedback loop tied to electoral results: the politics become the culture, disseminate through media, and in turn inform the politics of the next cycle.

The wedge that breaks the cycle, on an individual, issue-by-issue level, is good storytelling. Stories have the power to change self-narrative towards a direction independent of the structural narrative, and their fulfillment generally comes with some way of overcoming structural forces.

But as for why there's the specific conflict we're experiencing today, it's pretty simple: it's a local vs global conflict; when you globalize, there are some "powerful losers" at the local level. And so the narrative has been a competition of these interests, proxied through various parties and institutions.

<comment><USER9> I don't think that most political questions pit people's _actual_ self- interests against each other. The biggest exception of course are some policies like affirmative action where the lines of self-interest are obvious. But for many other issues e.g. drug policy and climate change there are a great deal of _factual_ misconceptions driving policy by causing people to think their self-interests lie other than where they are. Engaging the rational mind is usually considered important in dealing with this situation because it does better with facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have enjoyed WaitButWhy articles in the past but with this new series the author seems to have spent a huge amount of time, energy and words coming up with ideas that aren't that new. I keep skimming through them waiting to find the big point.

<comment><USER11> I think to gain anything from long form articles, you need to read and consider what's being written, rather than skimming, looking for the holy grail.

<comment><USER12> What the author says here is better said by a dozen others. I just had an overwhelming feeling of _no shit sherlock_ when reading this -- yes, it's obvious our media is polarized, for obvious reasons.

I'm going to guess his next chapter is about how money ruined the media and politics, which is "why you shouldn't write about these things" \-- because the people with the loudest voice have the most to gain from the polarization of the media. Again, this is pretty obvious. The loudest voice becomes the only one you hear in an echo chamber.

It was insightful the first time I read it from Socrates and Aristotle. But at this point it should be common knowledge for anyone interested in philosophy (literally: the study of knowledge).

<comment><USER13> > What the author says here is better said by a dozen others. I just had an > overwhelming feeling of no shit sherlock when reading this...

As far as I can tell, other writings on the topic haven't had any noteworthy effect in rectifying the problem.

Do have any insights on what we should do about the situation?

<comment><USER4> I do. Get rid of First Past the Post voting and replace it with something like Approval voting.

As it is, candidates in the middle can't get elected. Two dominant parties is an entirely predictable result of FPTP voting. Approval voting (or ones that tend to elect the Condorcet winner, which also should be the first choice of the median voter) would solve 90% of the problems cited in this article.

<comment><USER14> I suspect that proportional representation is even more important to establishing a multiparty system that forces cooperation rather than polarization.

<comment><USER15> I would say almost the opposite.

[http://asitoughttobe.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/score- voting/a...](http://asitoughttobe.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/score-voting/amp/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a long and interesting article that, because it is attempting to preserve the system, ultimately misses the mark:

 _My obsession over the past three years has been trying to figure out how our national immune system works, where it draws its strength from, and how we can get it working again._

There is no national immune system because there is no nation. The US has never been a nation. It was a loose amalgamation of many nations on a huge continent under a commercial republic, then a warring set of nations, then an oligarchic industrial powerhouse that finally matured into a financial/military empire. All of the internal conflict we see benefits the ruling class and, therefore, will continue and, in all likelihood, get worse.

<comment><USER17> Much to be made about Zizek's observation that there are false characterizations of the problems of a situation emerging from those same situations. Proposals are made to solve the problems that society faces, which are broadly in agreement with the systems that produce the perceived problems, so rather than retarding societies progress toward a certain predicted endpoint, it actually gets society to where it was already going, quicker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > I recently engaged in a fun, joint Psych Spectrum roller coaster with a > stranger on an airplane. We were on the runway, getting ready to take off, > and I was doing my typical "I know the flight attendant said to turn all > phones onto airplane mode but the whole policy is really quite inane so I'm > just gonna keep texting until we take off and I lose service" thing, and a > woman next to me decided I was an asshole and loudly told on me to the > flight attendant, who was busy and didn't hear her. So I did the only > reasonable thing—I stealthily turned my phone onto airplane mode, re-opened > my texts, and very out in the open, started typing a long text. The woman—my > new eternal arch-nemesis—took the bait. She saw me texting and again got the > flight attendant's attention, saying, "Excuse me but he's still texting." > When the flight attendant asked me to turn airplane mode on, I showed her my > phone and calmly explained that airplane mode has been on this whole time > and I just like to get some texting out of the way during flights—texts that > don't send until I land and re-connect to the internet. The flight attendant > said, "Oh then that's totally fine—my apologies." I replied, "that's okay," > and did a little "it's amazing how awful people can be right?" sigh. Satan > watched the whole thing and then just sat there silently, hopefully very > embarrassed. It was an unbelievably satisfying, triumphant moment.

Not the main point of the article obviously but man, the writer makes himself sound like a bit of an asshole with this story. Didn't encourage me to listen to his other opinions.

Edit: I kinda regret making this comment since I think it detracts from discussion of the article itself, which is very thorough and thoughtful in general. Maybe this is a meta Psych Spectrum commentary.

<comment><USER19> Literally the next paragraph he writes:

"But that's not what happened, because her aggressive tattletale move immediately threw my Primitive Mind into a rage, plummeting me down the Psych Spectrum. This banished my Higher Mind to the closet of my subconscious, allowing my Primitive Mind to come up with a genius-yet-psychotic plan for revenge. Which worked, and made my Primitive Mind feel deeply satisfied in a very not-grown-up way."

His entire point is that the average person acts like an asshole some of the time and like a kind person some of the time, and that it is incredibly easy to cherry-pick examples to paint someone in a bad (or good) light.

Which is exactly what you have done here, proving his point!

<comment><USER18> I'd like to think most people would act more civilized initially in that situation. In fact the most civilized thing to do would have been to simply follow the rules in the first place, knowing that most passengers will believe they must be important.

<comment><USER20> Why? The rule is absolutely stupid, and pointless. It's about as meaningful to airplane security as TSA. In other words, none at all.

I mean if rules say you need to report your fellow Uighurs, you should follow them because other will?

<comment><USER18> Because it's likely to cause discomfort and negative attention from the other passengers who will worry it could jeopardize their flight, and not using your phone for a little while isn't a big deal. It's not so much about following a rule or not, as just being socially responsible.

<comment><USER21> Pantomiming the lie isn't being socially responsible

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a branch of analyzing US politics through the lens of "primitive" and "civilized" brains that stems from Haidt's old ideas ("elephant and the rider"), which I still to this day do not find compelling.

If part of my culture's routine every day is kicking a kitten and my society near-violently disagrees whether it should be 2 kittens per day or just 1, and instead of comparing cultural notes with the 10k+ other cultures of the world (to realize this isn't normal) I spend time talking about human brain hacks which preserves the hideous self-righteousness of my ego and my culture of kicking kittens, then I've effectively absolved myself from personal responsibility like a good Kantian ethicist and can keep kicking kittens without remorse (and, _not hold anyone else accountable for kicking kittens_ ) because "My selfish lack of critical thought is forgiven because my brain is just wired to be hacked that way, same for my peers and their brains".

Take responsibility for how you use your brain and what you expose it to, and do the same to your peers. You are so much more than just a brain being hacked upon.

</comment><comment><USER23> I skimmed this, and there's some good and interesting data and analysis here. The one aspect that seems to be missing, by its own admission, is how this fits in with the rest of the world. This is looking at the USA in a vacuum, which is not without merit, but countries no longer exist in a vacuum, especially the USA.

As mentioned in one of the last "Fun and Procrastinatey" footnotes:

> The U.S. Left has moved enough that it now matches Europe's leftness. The > U.S. right remains further right of most of the European Right.

Viewed globally, according to this link, the US Democratic Party only crossed to the Left of the median party in the past 5 years. There are very few parties in the world as far Right as the US Republican Party.

This article sounds like it's trying very hard to stay neutral and simply point out the increased polarization. Left and Right are Blue and Red, and are only compared to each other. It neglects to show full context: that US Left is actually Middle, and US Right is actually Far Right.

<comment><USER24> > It neglects to show full context: that US Left is actually Middle

The US Left is Left, but the US has three big factions: a very large Right faction and smaller Center and Left factions, and he Democratic Party is an uneasy Center-and-Left coalition, where the Center faction has been dominant for the last couple decades but has lost some ground in the last few years to the resurgent Left.

<comment><USER23> If that's so, it's an even bigger USA-specific fact that was completely omitted from this analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very well written piece, lots of supporting data. However- it bears pointing out the focusing on norms and compromise and mutual understanding is a squarely _liberal_ stance. Remember the John Stewart "Rally to Restore Sanity" which basically made the same points as the article. And unfortunately, Obama discovered that the political right was decidedly unwilling to reciprocate any sort of offers to compromise. So it seems that unless both sides are ready to back down, we are stuck where we are.

</comment><comment><USER26> everyone on HN should read the entire series.

It's a commitment, but there is no better writing happening right now.

</comment><comment><USER27> I haven't read the series but it seems that political polarization is the topic.

This is perhaps the biggest mystery I'm aware of in the world today, especially because it's not specific to America, I'm seeing the same trends in my country as well:

\- Extreme polarization along similar axes (conservative/liberal, urban/rural, age, ...).

\- Outright hatred of traditional political parties.

\- Rise of populist and non-traditional politicans.

\- Distrust of traditional media, rise of low quality media (fake news in the extreme).

There's surprisingly little discussion and research about the cause of this. One interesting theory I recently came across is that the driver is the process of people moving from rural to urban areas. People who make such move are demographically distinct - more liberal for example. So over time this has cumulative effect and leads to increasingly distinct demographies.

<comment><USER28> >(can I say more intelligent and ambitious?)

Seriously? As someone in a rural area who is not particularly deficient in intelligence, who regularly keeps up with research and innovations in a variety of industries, who bootstrapped my own consulting business & hired two more employees this year, and who regularly deals with the mess created by a regulatory situation where policy makers and voters in CA forget there are a lot of very rural areas in this state and that a one-size-fits all approach is actually crippling to people outside of the bay area and LA: NO. You cannot say that.

And even being so willing to jokingly suggest it is an enormous part of the rural/urban political divide. I'm frankly pretty incredulous to see you do that in a post noting this very issue. The reality is, and I understand that this seems like a hard pill to swallow for the urban elite, different people in different places have different needs and issues.

That said, prior to your dig on rural people, I agree with everything else you said, and I find the trend deeply troubling.

<comment><USER29> > Seriously? As someone in a rural area who is [...] NO. You cannot say that.

Sure but you're just one person out of millions. We're trying to compare populations. And obviously the prior poster didn't mean that every rural person who moves to a city is more intelligent/ambitious than every person who stays, but you knew that already (note how you didn't object to more liberal, presumably because it doesn't carry a value judgment with it and also because it's clearly _true_ in an important sense).

I haven't seen any studies, but it is very plausible to me that people who up and leave tend to be more intelligent and ambitious, if only because it's a costly thing to do and income/wealth correlates with everything good.

<comment><USER12> I think the definition of "intelligent" and "ambitious" will differ based on who you ask. A lot of folks in rural areas think taking out debt to go to school is not a very intelligent thing to do. Likewise a lot of urban dwellers would likely say that going to college is the intelligent and ambitious thing to do.

It really depends on your previously-held beliefs, which are only reinforced by the echo chambers we live in.

<comment><USER29> My argument that leaving your home town is costly stands regardless of what your definitions are. For a similar example, tall people tend to both be more intelligent and to come from richer families because malnutrition as a child negatively effects both height and intelligence.

You may ask if I'm not using a pedantic, irrelevant definition of correlation that captures even tiny correlations we don't care about, but when we're talking about politics (where swings of a few percent can reliably flip elections), and polarisation (which is pretty much defined to be the amplifying of small differences), I think this is very relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> These are very long articles, and this is long chapter number ten out of twelve. So it's hard to TL;DR with any respect to a series of articles that's trying to TL;DR sociology, politics and polarization over the last half century.

The gist is that we have internal struggles between survival through power compared to thriving through critical thinking. This struggle is affected by the people around us; amplified because being part of a group pulls us in some ways towards survival instincts, and if we're lucky also pulls us towards critical thinking. As groups, we kind of have the same collective struggles as well.

The latest article uses ideas and terminology from the previous nine articles that I've attempted to summarize in a tiny paragraph above. It goes into some depth explaining how our country has slid, politically, from critical thinking and having opinions slightly one way or the other off from center (a center that has shifted over time) to having opinions grouped much further apart. Aka polarization.

And I'm not even done reading it. I enjoy it, and I'm optimistic models like this can help us, but I know that some people believe the models cut too many things out. I think that's problematic, because it is a very complex issue with a multitude of variables, and I think simplified models (and terminology) are necessary to explore the ultimate problem and potential solutions.

</comment><comment><USER31> TL;DR: political polarization in the USA has measurably increased, and this is bad for the country and its citizens.

However, some data suggest that that two-thirds of Americans fall into what they call the "Exhausted Majority", people who are fed up with both major parties, and politics in general.

<comment><USER32> Especially since we live in an oligarchy but everyone still thinks in terms of red vs blue or us vs them. It is quite the trick to misdirect blame to people who are just like you.

<comment><USER33> I find it ironic that you respond to a comment about political polarization increasing with a polarizing extreme of a comment...

<comment><USER34> There's nothing polarizing or extreme about noticing oligarchy. It is a prominent feature of contemporary life.

[I was tempted to respond with something _actually_ "polarizing extreme" and thus actually "ironic", but I've been warned...]

<comment><USER33> > There's nothing polarizing or extreme about noticing oligarchy.

See, you and snarf21 keep _assuming_ that we live in an oligarchy (perhaps snarf21 more strongly than you). You keep _assuming_ that everyone can see that. Not only can't I see it, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. And I suspect that, if you polled HN, you'd find that about 80% of people believe that we do _not_ actually live in an oligarchy (all numbers made up on the spot with zero statistical evidence). I refuse to allow you to just assume oligarchy as "everyone knows, everyone can see". You don't get to assume it; you have to prove it.

The reason I said snarf21's remark was polarizing is because, in terms of conventional left-right divisions, the claim that we live in an oligarchy is almost exclusively a claim of the far left.

(Disclaimer: When I claim that we do not, in fact, live in an oligarchy, I am _not_ claiming that the rich don't have too much influence - just that they don't have enough power to qualify as an actual oligarchy.)

<comment><USER34> Which is it? Do the bastards "have too much influence" or don't they? Not all elections are decided by massive campaign contributions from the wealthy, but lots of them are. We haven't bombed or sanctioned every nation populated by brown people, but we've bombed or sanctioned lots of them. Real wages haven't been stagnant forever, but they have been stagnant since 1973.

If you want to draw a line just this side of "oligarchy" and say we aren't there yet, you can, but you've got to admit that trends are pointing in that direction...

Let's ignore all that. ISTM you've made a basic logical error. The topic ITT is "polarization", which is considered a bad thing. GP suggested a way to reduce polarization, by realizing our true interests. How could it be polarizing to suggest a way to reduce polarization?

<comment><USER33> The definition of oligarchy (I looked it up) is "rule by the few". Not "the rich", but "the few". So: Are we ruled by the few? Not "do they have outsized influence", but "are we _ruled_ " by the few?

I would say no.

If you think we are, then do you think that Warren's tax on the rich is just a smokescreen that those in control are putting forth to hide that they are in control? Or do you think that Warren will not be allowed to win? Or do you think that, if she wins, she will never actually do what she says she's going to do? Or do you think that the tax on the rich is really what the few want to do? (At that point, your hypothesis is unfalsifiable, because anything that happens is what the few wanted to happen.)

<comment><USER34> Any analysis that relies on Warren will be "unfalsifiable". We don't have to watch the news much to realize that they're not afraid of Warren. Is that because they think she's fibbing about how she's going to crack down on the 1%? Maybe that's part of it, but the bigger factor is that they know Trump won't lose to "Pocahontas". The coverage she gets is very different than what e.g. Sanders or Gabbard get, because they're real in a way that neither Trump nor any opponent he has faced has been.

(Your back-and-forth about "few" vs "some" vs "1%" or whatever just proves the point about oligarchy.)

<comment><USER33> > (Your back-and-forth about "few" vs "some" vs "1%" or whatever just proves > the point about oligarchy.)

I don't think that it proves any such thing, except apparently in your mind. Nor do I think that I was going "back and forth" between "the few" and "some". The 1%, perhaps, if you accept Warren's plan as targeting them.

By the way, this oligarchy that you think rule - are they more or fewer than the 1%?

I think that your point about Sanders is rather a large concession on your part. You seem to be saying that "the oligarchy" are concerned that Sanders might win, and therefore are orchestrating press coverage against him. But if they are concerned that he might win, then they clearly don't _rule_. Otherwise, they would have no such concern.

<comment><USER34> Well, they haven't assassinated him yet... you seem sort of eager to shit on my hope. The last three presidents ran for office promising no more stupid foreign wars. Are you trying to force me to admit that democracy in USA is a sham?

[EDIT:] Sorry, it's clear to me now that this is what you intended with your whole "how few is few?" routine. Clearly you _don 't_ consider it "oligarchy" when 51% of votes are used as toilet paper.

<comment><USER33> I deny you the right to put words in my mouth. Please stop misrepresenting my position and my words, trying to make it sound like they support your ideas. They don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Urbanization of america, that's the trend. Stick figures make it all so simple and palatable :-/

</comment><comment><USER34> One imagines wise boomers carefully examining the intricately arranged series of "Media Matrices" and sagely nodding at the subtle points illuminated in each. "Yes, I've heard of this 'Onion'; really not a very useful source of news!" "I wonder why they didn't draw the firm who employ my favorite news personalities here in this 'North Star' area?"

Do we really think the main problem in USA is that not enough people consume median journalism? This veers dangerously close to an assumption that our only real problem is that the "Fairness Doctrine" no longer protects us from Badthink. I'd propose a different idea. _If_ there are actual problems of long standing, e.g. myriad interminable wars or shocking incarceration rates, they might owe their durability to the fact that few people really oppose them as hard as some other aspects of modern life are opposed. What sort of coverage would we predict of these problems from "the North Star"? Might that segment of the "matrix" elide such coverage altogether? When we do hear opposition to or even coverage of morewaralwaysmorewar or similar issues, and it comes from kooks like TheNation or ZeroHedge, does that reinforce the marginal importance of these issues, or perhaps does it call into question this matrix picture altogether? What was the point of the internet, if we all ought to watch the same news?

</comment><comment><USER36> I quit reading this dude when his stuff got too long. Paragraphs and paragraphs of rambling.

</comment><comment><USER37> The liberal worldview thinks that everything is basically ok and that the problem is that "norms" are being violated and bad information leads to pointless conflict.

Liberals are wrong. There are fundemental structural problems with this country and the current psychosis is the result of neither political party addressing them while going war and profit crazy on the backs of the working people that slave and die without improving their position.

<comment><USER38> The comment is not fitting to the article, but I wanted to respond to it anyways because I found it interesting and it's not something talked about here much, for obvious reasons.

The problem is going to escape many on the left, including most people here as well, as many people here are mostly agnostic/atheistic/anti-faith and believe having faith is somehow anti-intellectual. The reality of the situation is the US was founded, both socially and politically on Judeo-Christian principles of morality, and the nuclear family and it is undeniable the evidence to support this in our laws and constitution.

We have seen more upheaval and social change in the last 10-15 years than the previous 50 all in the name of "progress" (never mind it is those very people who subscribe to that "progress" that are leading the way in unhappiness, depression, low marriage rate, low birth rate, and suicide).

There are positions now being held by major political frontrunners that are simply not compatible with any person of faith, or any sort of compromise with the opposite political party. There is simply no compromise to be had. The biggest elephant in the room is abortion. My two favorite writers on this subject are Caitlin Flanagan for a left-side perspective, and Alexandra Descantis for a right-side perspective. Both write very thoughtfully on this issue: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-democrats- purged-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-democrats-purged-safe- legal-rare-from-the- party/2019/11/15/369af73c-01a4-11ea-8bab-0fc209e065a8_story.html) [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2019/11/16/an_honest_abort...](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2019/11/16/an_honest_abortion_debate_response_to_caitlin_flanagan_492615.html)

Many people call America a Christian nation. I know this will get downvoted to hell here. I consider myself a well traveled man, and I will quote one famous professor I had the pleasure of listening to a lecture of that rings especially true to me: "The only country in the world that doesn't know America is a Christian nation is America."

<comment><USER39> The backbone of the USA in its formative years was slavery and outright slaughter of native Americans. By people who went to church.

This dark legacy stretches into today - the last lynching was in 1981, and white Christian America still worships a vision of a nice, pearly white European looking Jesus, presented by millionaire preachers in mega churches who say "just give me some money and you too can be redeemed".

And not to mention their pseudo worship of a man who is so laughably espouses the exact opposite of the Christian teachings. A man who had sex with a pornstar while his second (or third?) wife was pregnant at home and has never read the Bible.

I'd appreciate knowing how you can reconcile thinking what you commented with what actually happened, and how you can view a system of oppression, control and political propaganda (USA's brand of "Christianity") as anything but that.

<comment><USER40> > The backbone of the USA in its formative years was slavery and outright > slaughter of native Americans.

Actually, most founding states sought to abolish slavery when the Constitution was being drafted. The Southern States were vehemently opposed to such action to the point that they would not ratify the Constitution. As a compromise, slavery was allowed, and no law could be made restricting the importation of slaves until 1808.

Consider, though, that the importation of slaves was banned on the first day which was legally allowed.

I think your problem is that what you refer to as "the USA" is really "the South." The South fought hard for slavery because of economics; slaves were cheap, and plantation owners were powerful. My view is that the powerful Southerners who benefited from slavery created a cult which poisoned the minds of other Southerners into believing that slaves were necessary. It takes a long time to erase all that.

> the last lynching was in 1981

And a school district in Alabama was ordered to desegregate less than ten years ago. What's your point? These are outliers. They don't represent the majority view. You're cherrypicking to make things seem worse, which is exactly what the post discusses.

> white Christian America still worships a vision of a nice, pearly white > European looking Jesus

Consider that the book (and movie) "The Shack" portrays the three parts of God as an African-American woman, a Middle-Eastern carpenter, and an Asian woman as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively. "White Christian America" still ate it up. But, according to your logic, they never could have because Jesus wasn't presented as white. Perhaps your viewpoint isn't actually correct here.

> And not to mention their pseudo worship of a man who is so laughably > espouses the exact opposite of the Christian teachings. A man who had sex > with a pornstar while his second (or third?) wife was pregnant at home and > has never read the Bible.

Should a Muslim hate Trump? Should a Jew? Should he only be loved by athiests? What are you saying? People are far more than their religions.

I am close to someone who does things I could and will not do in my regular course of life. I see their lifestyle as degenerative and a coping mechanism, and that's my damn right. Yet, I still bought them a book on their least- harmful hobby.

People can still care and want to see others do well for themselves while recognizing the limits of their ability to affect change. Should we hope that Trump is a failure? That's like hoping for the bus driver you hate to crash into a tree; if that happens, you're gonna get hurt as well.

Maybe those people just see the world from a different perspective than you. It sounds like you're pretty "woke," but have you ever had a kind, thoughtful conversation to genuinely understand their point of view? By mocking them in this way, you're invalidating their opinion. But wait, isn't the left tolerant...

<comment><USER39> > Consider, though, that the importation of slaves was banned on the first day > which was legally allowed.

None of this counters my original point. Cotton was an utterly crucial crop in the USA's development, and the total value of all slaves was 48 times the expenditure of the federal government, and 7 times the total value of _all_ the currency in circulation at the time (1860). I'd call that a pretty important backbone, even if it was localized to mainly the south.

> And a school district in Alabama was ordered to desegregate less than ten > years ago. What's your point?

My point is that the last lynching was in 1981. That's utterly ridiculous. It only trailed off in the 1950's. Also here's a map of the lynchings[1], see a pattern? Maybe if you overlay a map of the bible belt[2] it becomes clearer. Love thy neighbour, right?

> Consider that the book (and movie) "The Shack" portrays the three parts of > God as an African-American woman, a Middle-Eastern carpenter, and an Asian > woman as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively. "White Christian > America" still ate it up.

To quote you: What's your point? These are outliers. They don't represent the majority view. Maybe they ate it up because it was "wacky" to see a brown Jesus on screen. Only on screen mind you, I don't expect many of them would want that imagery taught in churches! God forbid.

> Maybe those people just see the world from a different perspective than you.

Yeah, I expect their tax-excempt churches had a pretty fair and balanced discussion about both sides. No wait, riling people up about abortion then using that as a device to get people to vote your party into power, so you and your tax-excempt gravy train can continue to benefit is far too much of a good thing to risk. Especially by discussing how we can adapt society for the future rather than harking back to the good, clean family-friendly past (lynchings or not).

Everything is about control. Some people form opinions from TV, some from church. Just because a man stands at a pulpit doesn't make his words any different from a news anchor behind a desk. It's just unfortunate for their followers that they support such a regressive party. And as certain segments of the population age out and Christianity continues to shrink you'll see them ratchet up the furor to stay in control. Control people like you.

But hey, hold your nose and vote for the candidate that was sent from god[3], right?

1\. [https://s.abcnews.com/images/US/lynching-memorial-graphic- ap...](https://s.abcnews.com/images/US/lynching-memorial-graphic-ap- ps-180425_hpEmbed_7x4_992.jpg)

2\. [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/BibleBel...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/BibleBelt.png)

3\. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/03/trump- florid...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/03/trump-florida- evangelical-rally-king-jesus)

<comment><USER40> > I'd call [slavery] a pretty important backbone, even if it was localized to > mainly the south.

The localization of the issue to the South is incredibly important to consider, though. They actually seceded and became a different country for around four years because they felt slavery was that important to their economy. And, as another poster mentioned, the South (primarily agrarian) was much poorer than the North (manufacturing and agrarian) and had staggering levels of inequality compared to the North.

You say it's a "dark legacy," but what do you want to do about it? Crap all over the country for something which was last actively practiced 150 years ago? My ancestors were still poor farmers in Hungary at that point; they didn't have anything to do with slavery in the US. Slavery is awful and unjust, but don't expect me to hate others today for the injustices of the past.

> My point is that the last lynching was in 1981. That's utterly ridiculous. > It only trailed off in the 1950's.

Racism is learned and taught. During the Reconstruction, the South reinvented their economy and culture, since slavery was dead and the white Southerners had to live near the newly-freed black Southerners. Unfortunately, that reinvention of culture included the significant perpetuation of racism.

It takes a long time to erase all that. Unless they're willing to sit and reason, there's nothing you can do. We can, however, raise our kids right so, with time, the racists will die off.

> Only on screen mind you, I don't expect many of them would want that imagery > taught in churches!

Have you ever been to a majority-white Christian church in America? What about a majority-black Christian church in America? They all sing, pray, and listen. There's no discussion of Jesus' skin color, because that's not why they go to church. They go because they want salvation.

> riling people up about abortion then using that as a device to get people to > vote your party into power

> you and your tax-excempt gravy train

> good, clean family-friendly past (lynchings or not)

Ok, it's clear you're hateful toward Christians. But are you really hateful toward all of them?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelical_Lutheran_Church_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelical_Lutheran_Church_in_America#Beliefs)

Yes, it's possible for a liberal Lutheran to exist. Do you still hate them? Would they hate you?

You lump white Christians together as some massive homogeneous blob, but you just can't do that because it's not fair. Also, do you think all sermons are just political rants? I can tell you they absolutely aren't. In fact, many people will go to church to get away from politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Very impressive research

<comment><USER41> To whomever downvoted me, sorry for giving a compliment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This comes across as meandering and juvenile.

</comment><comment><USER43> This article was highly disappointing to read. No mention of how Conservatism is effectively dead in the US (Donald "Bibi" Trump is basically a Democrat). No discussion of Federal Reserve and how it's contributing to inflation. The author also seems to be a textbook narcissist given his overreaction to being told to shut his phone off on a plane. The only thing "Giant" about this article is this dude's ego.

</comment><comment><USER44> Had a quick look, and can't figure out what this post is about.

The cartoon at the beginning makes it appear this is about the decline of the US.

Then there's a bunch of meta background I don't care about.

Then this:

> 1) Seeing in 2D. Getting to know what I see as the core human struggle: the > tension between our genes' will to survive—a primal flame that burns > brightly in everyone—and the human capacity to override that flame when it > makes sense to do so, with rationality, self-awareness, and wisdom. ...

Huh? Is this written by an AI? It's an honest question.

I kept scanning looking for something - anything - concrete. Nothing.

Apparently, the author has a following, but I can't understand why.

I shouldn't need to read the last 8 chapters to figure this out. It's not my responsibility as a reader. It's the responsibility of the writer to ensure that when a reader jumps into a chapter, there's enough context and substance to figure out if it's worth reading.

<comment><USER45> > I shouldn't need to read the last 8 chapters to figure this out. It's not my > responsibility as a reader. It's the responsibility of the writer to ensure > that when a reader jumps into a chapter, there's enough context and > substance to figure out if it's worth reading.

What an absurd thing to say. Would you say this about jumping into chapter 9 of a book? What about part 9 of a guide to learning a new programming language?</comment></comment>


Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06/wikipedia_and_overstock/

<comment><USER2> It's certainly a reassertion of michel's iron law of oligarchy.

That said, the article seems a little overzealous, a little like the accused poster's editing. Still, it's good to sully wikipedia's reputation a little because some people put far, far too much faith in wikipedia's "facts".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes,the Register is shrill to the point of borderline tabloid status. But they do put out a significant amount of original work.

Just to see for myself, I went to the Wiki page for Gary Weiss' bio and saw numerous attempts had been made to add a link to this Register article and all had been undone immediately.

Hopefully, Citizendium (like Wikipedia, but no anonymous editors and there is an editorial board) will be able to gain some traction:

<http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page>

<comment><USER3> it still faces the same problem.. a small group of members can block information if they wish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wisdom of the Crowds at its finest.

<comment><AUTHOR> If recent news reports are accurate, it appears that Wikipedia may be devolving into a Web 2.0 version of "Lord of the Flies"

<comment><USER5> Well said. Wikipedia has become a giant mess full of hidden agendas and now that we've had a peek behind the curtain, I'm worried about the quality of information that's there. Powerful interests have managed to infiltrate Wikipedia and are changing the reality.

<comment><USER4> This is a weakness of user-generated-contents. We have seen this on Reddit and Digg and now Wikipedia.

<comment><USER5> That's true but at least Digg and Reddit have been working on busting up these "mobs" while Wikipedia has been supporting them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AI Researchers on AI Risk - <AUTHOR> http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/22/ai-researchers-on-ai-risk/

<comment><USER2> > Elon [Musk] is very worried about existential threats to humanity (which is > why he is building rockets with the idea of sending humans colonize other > planets).

It's an odd solution. Won't a capable AI be able to reach humanity even on Mars if it needs to?

<comment><USER3> >AI is practically the only major x-risk that doesn't make only the Earth uninhabitable. Out-of-control replicating nanotech, engineered pathogens, extreme radioactivity, etc. The distinguishing factor of strong AI as an x-risk is that it will come and get you on Mars, which is the reason why Elon Musk is worried.

(Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/36proz/how_to_nai...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/36proz/how_to_nail_down_the_origins_of_a_martian/crganqg))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I got bored of the repetition about 2/3 of the way through, which makes it a pretty good demonstration of not being a niche view.</comment>


Why did the Respect for Tech Skills get Lost? - <AUTHOR> http://coding.abel.nu/2014/03/why-did-the-respect-for-tech-skills-get-lost/

<comment><USER2> _In the end it is the skilled programmers that write the code that forms the product._

No, it's really not. It's the _users_ that form the product. Everyone else is below them. They are _by far_ the most important people in product design. Users communicate their needs to architects[1], who write specifications for designers[2], who design products for developers to implement. The architects, the designers and the developers all serve to enable the user to access whatever value the product gives them. They're all equally important in the process - no part can function without the rest. Management should enable the product guys to serve the users without getting in the way too much.

[1] Not necessarily directly - architects should talk to users, sure, but they should also watch users, look at logs, read complaints, analyse business needs, etc.

[2] Designers in the sense of people who figure out how things should work, not 'people who draw stuff'.</comment>


Recourse for travel agency error? - <AUTHOR> If I paid a travel agency in full for a week's hotel stay, and then travel agency comes back stating they messed up on original price, should I have to pay "new" price?  Or should they honor the original price?<p>Here's the situation: my brother is getting married in August in Mexico (destination wedding thing), and he used a travel agent for setting up the room block package, etc. But I didn't reserve hotel before the group rate expired.  Fine, no problem: I paid the higher amount without question; paid in full with credit card.  Nearly a week after i paid, i get a call from said travel agency stating they messed up, and the person who booked my trip gave the wrong info, etc. (And this is after my card got charged, and i received electronic receipt.)  I've been hassling with this travel agency because they don't want to honor the price that I paid, citing that they know its their error, but "they can't do anything about this", and i have to pay an even higher hotel room amount.  It sounds fishy to me at worst, and negligent at best.  Besides the obvious full refund, do i have any recourse here?  (And, yes, i know travel agencies suck in general, but was going along with what my bro had set up.)  Any suggestions, or should I just give up and get refund??? <comment><USER2> First step would be to call the hotel to verify / check to see if the reservation exists for you. Depending on if they used their card or yours, you might be able to possibly grab it by making sure the contact information/authorizations on it is for you. This is risky especially if they didn't use your card for the reservation because they could get mad and try to cancel it if you refuse to pay more.

You could try to contact the hotel directly and see if you can appeal to someone to get you a deal. If the prices are similar to the new quote from the travel agent, if it were I, I would just tell the travel agent to stuff it and book directly.

If the wedding is something beachy, note that August is in the middle of hurricane season. Travel insurance is something you might want to consider too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great advice, thanks so much!</comment></comment>


Why Vagrant? - <AUTHOR> http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/why-vagrant/index.html <comment><USER2> Creator of Vagrant here. Pleasantly surprised to see Vagrant on top of HN! Vagrant has matured a lot in the past year (since it has been on HN) both in the core but also in the community. There are now tons of plugins available, there is an O'Reilly book out, and much more. Most importantly, I think, is that the project has added 3 more core committers in the past few months.

And Vagrant 1.4 is also under heavy development with tons of great new features and bug fixes upcoming. See my Twitter stream for more info.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. And thanks for the support!

<comment><USER3> Hey Mitchell,

Thank you for producing such an awesome piece of software. I have been doing my local development on a Vagrant box for about a year now and in that time I have been able to move from OS X to Linux almost seamlessly thanks to Vagrant.

The only problem I have with it is the slowness of the default shared folders mechanism. Guess I need to bite the bullet one of these days switch to NFS.

<comment><USER4> Are you using Virtualbox VMs, or VMware VMs? My seat-of-the-pants experience is that VMware shares are more performant.

<comment><USER3> Virtualbox VMs. Never tried the VMware ones.

The performance is acceptable most of the times, other than when I am running one of those PHP frameworks that includes a million files to process each request.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently acquired a Macbook as my laptop. Vagrant had been a ridiculous blessing. Instead of fiddling around with Macports and Brew and all that nonsense[0], I just Vagrant Up a Ubuntu instance and tadah!

[0] Seriously, developing in R and Python in a OS X environment where you need stuff like Gtk and CairoDevice, it can drive you to tears. Go on OS X was a pleasure.

<comment><USER6> How do you use Vagrant, exactly? Are these Ubuntu instances VirtualBox instances, or are you interacting over SSH, or what?

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/AnthonyNystrom/python-dev- bootstrap](https://github.com/AnthonyNystrom/python-dev-bootstrap) ;

Also check out Rove.io (formerly called Hospice.io)

Basically, I code in OS X (sublime text), but the environment the code is run in is essentially Ubuntu (or whatever nonsensical CentOS slow ass thing that I may have to deploy for)

<comment><USER6> Ah I see, very cool. You mentioned something about Gtk and Cairo — do you ever interact with the VM graphically, or do you only use it as (what amounts to, I suppose) a networked Linux sandbox running inside OS X.

Also, how do you push code to the instance to run/deploy the code?

<comment><USER7> Vagrant mounts a filesystem at /vagrant on the guest vm with the contents of the folder where your Vagrantfile is. Typically this means you include a Vagrantfile in the root dir of your project, and then your entire project folder is available on the guest box.

I strongly suggest investigating the NFS mount option for this feature if you're using Virtualbox, as the performance difference is substantial over Virtualbox shared folders (which is the default for the /vagrant mount).

Edit: typo

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I still don't get vagrant. I create an image in VirtualBox. clone it, then provision with Ansible. The thing that has always bothered me about vagrant boxes is it has stuff baked into the image. I want state EXACTLY like I get on a bare VPS, which is just SSH and root account.

Reverting to a snapshot is faster than using vagrant command line and rerunning all scripts.

<comment><USER9> You are not the only one.

I also can't get why people are so excited about vagrant. To start a VM from a base image and invoke Ansible to deploy just require a few commands - The good thing is you can make sure the deployment procedures is the same no matter in development or production environments, as the only dependency is Ansible.

<comment><USER10> Have you tried scaling that to a team of at least ten, including a designer? I find Vagrant to be a big help for collaboration.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately even that's not enough. Vagrant has a lot of dependencies for designers on OS X, and if you bring in NFS (instead of the nearly unusable folder sharing), becomes insanely complicated to explain. Prebuilt Vagrant package with reasonable OOTB folder sharing speed would be perfect IMO.

<comment><USER12> You can sort of hide the dependencies (while making them easy to clear out) using Homebrew...

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSkL raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

...and brew-cask...

brew tap phinze/homebrew-cask && brew install brew-cask

...Just...

brew cask install virtualbox brew cask install vagrant

Also... brew install ansible

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of my coworkers turned me on to vagrant. I set up virtualbox manually once, and vagrant seems far superior.

The biggest issue for me is that I have some largish databases I need to be loaded as part of the vagrant install, and these are a pain to distribute.

The best solution I have come up with is an external drive.

<comment><USER14> You can also make your own images with the data pre loaded. At one point I was creating/updating/destroying a lot of VMs via Vagrant so to speed things up I made my own images. Then instead of fetching the base precise-64 image and provisioning atop it I could start off with an up to date fully baked VM.

As a bonus you can put them on a local http server and your whole team can download them. Just update the URL in your Vagrantfile.

<comment><USER15> This is actually what I'm attempting to do right now. Our prod database is Oracle, and trying to automate the installation of Oracle is a huge PITA. So I'm doing it once manually (or somewhat manually at least), and I'll just freeze that vm into my own box that other devs can use at work.

I'm really really enjoying working with Vagrant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't use Vagrant, but it is on my radar. I have a manual virtualbox setup and a few shell aliases that enable me to quickly boot/shutdown virtual environments I need. To anyone who wants to do the same, read a bit about VBoxManage [0]. You can do a lot to manage virtual machines on virtualbox through it.

That said, the nice thing Vagrant brings to the table is it supports multiple providers. I can't seem to see a solid listing of which in their documentation, but they mention by name at least virtualbox, vmware, and AWS. The use of a Vagrant file to configure a new machine is also nice. You can get similar behaviour with Chef/Puppet, or as I do scp in a shell script file and run it.

So, what excites me most about projects like Vagrant and Docker getting popular is that I hate flailing around with build dependencies. I was amazed with apt-get build-dep the first time I used it, but even that has let me down a few times in the past. It's much better than it used to be, but all I want for Christmas is every project to provide a easy to access environment I can grab and build their project with. We seem to be getting closer and closer to this being provided by default, instead of an exceptional circumstance.

[0] [http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html](http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Check out Mitchell's sister project, packer, on Github. Vagrant and packer are an unstoppable in any Unix-geek toolkit.

I also saw Mitchell's videos on middleware-style coding in Ruby, also posted here, and that was a really insightful view on programming libraries.

I greatly respect this guys work. He is a definite role-model to me.

</comment><comment><USER18> We use Vagrant/Chef as part of our production and development workflows at Conspire. Anyone can trivially spin up a complete dev environment—DB, frontend and backend—on their local machine or log in to our staging machine (an EC2 instance) and interact with our production cluster using Vagrant.

Plus, deploying to production is just a matter of a quick "git pull && ./build.sh && vagrant provision" and checking that everything came back up correctly.

Setting all this up took a long time but it was worth it in the end. At the moment we're just using Chef Solo because we only have four machines to deal with. I imagine we'll move to Chef Server at some point in the future.

<comment><USER15> I'm unsure how exactly chef does its thing, but I found that using puppet apply (similar to Chef Solo), was far superior to using puppet server (which we use for production).

Maintaining usable certificates, sharing them with other devs, synchronising puppet plugins etc was just far too much work, and very time consuming. I also found it a lot nicer to have the explicit puppet configuration right next to the code that runs on it.

I don't know if these kind of setbacks will be similar with Chef Server or not.

<comment><USER18> After spending two weeks getting Chef Solo set up for our requirements, we aren't exactly giddy about running into Chef Server's open arms.

<comment><USER19> Check out salt. Simple and amazing.

<comment><USER15> I've tried looking into salt a couple of times, but I find the documentation really lacking. The information is too spread out. I just took another look at the docs and it appears to do just about everything puppet does, but is much easier to configure (puppet-db/mcollective salt-alternatives are default).

Is there a canonical tutorial that's worth reading?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone with experience setting up a win7 under vagrant? All the instructions I found online were cumbersome to the point of not offering much above a basic VirtuaBox setup (E.g. They require you to activate your windows and then re- image).

</comment><comment><USER21> I think there are two big deterrents for our development team in switching to Vagrant. The team currently works on a single m1.xlarge development server so that they don't have to download the mysql databases to their laptops. That's one. The second one is that they frequently send links to their sites for client review.

I love the concept and would love to make it work for us if we could somehow overcome these.

</comment><comment><USER22> Beautiful package. I use it on my personal 13" MBP for R, Python, Go, and C++ development, and I'm impressed. No seams so far and low overhead :)

</comment><comment><USER23> What kind of dependencies do you usually have in a web app that would lead to the configuration problems described in the designer part? Our designer only needs to to check out the code and make an ssh tunnel for the database for it to work (PHP and webserver already installed on Macs) so not sure what good Vagrant would do.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've had vagrant pop up, but have yet to explore it. That said, I have many fabric scripts for setting environments up. The link has little detail (first page) on how it would benefit me with an existing toolset.

Are there examples where vagrant compares to something like an existing fabric script?

<comment><USER15> Vagrant is great if you want to share VMs with co-workers. If you're using Windows and I'm using OSX and we're working on the same project that will be deployed to an Ubuntu machine, we can each `vagrant up` our own virtual machine and they will be exactly the same. Puppet or Chef provisioning of that vagrant VM will be very similar to using fabric to fully configure everything, with the added nicety that there are a tonne of puppet and chef configs that can be reused (not so much with fabric I've found).

So vagrant doesn't give you anything you don't already have if you're just configuring a VM, except maybe the networking and shared folders. But being able to share that VM, destroy it, and rebuild it is where vagrant makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER24> Thanks. I wish links where X will solve Y addressed related w/o digging. Sometimes mobile clients aren't the best to search for the related comparison.

Btw, I find the unrelated downvote on my original comment amusing. I wish we could see those doing up/down votes.

<comment><USER15> On my comment or yours? I haven't got enough rep to see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have a Linode. It's available anywhere. e.g During I code, my brother asks me to watch his soccer game, and I keep working from a soccer field with my IPad; [http://instagram.com/p/dNcNfREmwT/](http://instagram.com/p/dNcNfREmwT/)

<comment><USER26> I live on a big island in the southern hemisphere. Working remotely on a Linode is painful due to latency even with mosh. I tied Fremont for ages but the latency was too much so I moved to Tokyo which is a little better but I still prefer to work with a VM locally. Vagrant gets the job done but I would prefer an alternative.

I don't like Ruby. I don't like running virtualbox when I could be running an lxc jail with something like docker. I think I will be ditching OS X and moving back to a Linux desktop as soon as I find the right laptop.

<comment><USER25> My VPS is in London, never noticed any latency in Turkey and US. I guess Linode now has bunch of more cities, check them out.

For laptop, I recommend Macbook Air. The design, is a master piece of minimalism. As a guy who used Xmonad for years, I think OSX and a Linux VPS is the zen combo.

<comment><USER26> Turkey is really close to London. Domestic traffic in Australia travels further than that. It is quite a different matter round tripping packets across the pacific to another continent. I can do minor edits on a Linode but I much prefer using a local solution like vagrant. I would like to ditch OSX but the hardware/os combo is hard to beat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Vagrant is extremely useful. It basically allows to automate builds/deploys that require a non-host-OS setup.

By doing that, you also make your builds/deploys reproducible, by making all the dependencies explicit (in a human- and machine-readable way).

</comment><comment><USER28> Docker or Vagrant? [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16647069/should-i-use- vag...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16647069/should-i-use-vagrant-or- docker-io-for-creating-an-isolated-envinronment)

</comment><comment><USER29> Great timing! Getting a virtualbox dev environment set up with Vagrant was literally on tomorrow's to-do list. Now I know where to start. :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Naive questions. Doesn't VirtualBox create overhead? i.e You will be a lot slower using it then running something on Barebone?

<comment><USER31> From another comment: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16647069/should-i- use-vag...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16647069/should-i-use-vagrant- or-docker-io-for-creating-an-isolated-envinronment)

Mentions the overhead of running VirtualBox.

<comment><USER32> This clojure code takes six seconds to run in an ubuntu 12.04 vbox guest, two seconds on the ubuntu 12.04 host.

[http://clojure.org/agents#Agents](http://clojure.org/agents#Agents) and Asynchronous Actions--Example

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> i really like the concept of vagrant and have been using it for all my development for a couple of months, sadly even with using NFS(on OSX) its quite slow when working with larger frameworks.

So i might be going back to local servers and just put DB server and services inside a VM.

</comment><comment><USER34> I do all of my coding in Virtualbox, and Virtualbox will not run within itself. Frustrating!

</comment><comment><USER35> I love vagrant but I'd be interested to know if any _pure_ designers really get much use out of it. It seems a shop that is so well-run as to provide a great vagrant setup for designers would also be a shop that creates project separations/workflows that don't require designers to have a running environment to do their job.

(yes, only in unicorn-land are code-bases separated so cleanly that developers are far-away from application logic...but I'm just speculating that a scenario in which it's more beneficial than time-consuming to setup a turnkey Vagrant solution for a _pure_ designer is also a rare scenario)

<comment><USER36> I think most designer even don't know how to install vagrant or virtualbox and how to use command-line. In my opinion, it might be better to provide another tutorial for pure designers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I vagrant because windows</comment>


Show HN: Device for Biofeedback Hackers - <AUTHOR> https://www.aidlab.com/research <comment><AUTHOR> Hello! It's Jacob from Aidlab here.

A bit of background: Aidlab is a biofeedback wearable in a sense that you can get the data out of it without proprietary software. You can just sync and manage your data by yourself. + we have free SDK with Python, iOS, Android and Unity bindings.</comment>


Yahoo Letter to US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://s.yimg.com/ge/lg/Letter.pdf <comment><USER2> This is a glorified email. The only respectable thing to do, at this point, is go to court to unseal the illegal orders.</comment>


NoSQL Job Trends - <AUTHOR> http://jobs.nosqlweekly.com/blog/nosql-job-trends/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if the Hadoop numbers will drop in response to the new LexisNexis database</comment>


Entrepreneurship idea - <AUTHOR>

Is there any requirement in the business sector that needs to be addressed technologically ? <comment><USER2> Talk to people in the business sector. As many as you can. See what they complain about. Usually the best way to solve a problem for an advantage.

Don't limit yourself to technological problems. eg Zerocater. Although they present a technological interface, they still do the grunt work in talking to restaurants on issues.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're looking for some "seed" ideas or "food for thought" you might check this list out:

<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure that there are tons, but do you honestly think if someone had a million (or billion) dollar idea that they would just give it to you?

<comment><USER5> Some people would actually. There are lots of ideas I might not be interested in personally but would love to have exist. In some cases, I don't really care if I build it or not, it'd just be cool if a service did exist. It varies from person to person but there are people who don't mind giving away ideas they themselves may or may not want to build out just to see the service exist.

<comment><USER4> Good argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Will there be any funding if i have a startup, since i am from the subcontinent(south asia) and not living close to any Sillicon Valley.</comment>