The YouTube Time Machine - <AUTHOR> http://yttm.tv/v/1934

<comment><USER2> If ajax was ever under-utilized, it would be on a site like this. Great idea. Annoying refreshes.

<comment><USER3> Much agree. I see how you want to have a unique url for each year. I think that's a cool idea too, though each time you slide I think it's fine if the url doesn't update. Maybe unique year urls are only for inbound links.

<comment><USER4> You can use unique urls with ajax. Just use location.hash (url/#something).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome, but the "Watch Next Video" button doesn't seem to be working for me (starting in 1860).

All in all, the video does make me realize just how far we've come in 100 years. I'm so happy to be during the turn of this century versus the turn of the last century.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure they said they same thing at the turn of last century. And the century before.

<comment><USER7> But this could be the century where people will be comtemplating more than 100 years lifespan!

Imagine all the old people becoming youthful overnight, changing plans for hundred of million of people. No longer will they remain feeble adults living in their twilight years, they will be badass on the market using their superior experience to out-compete us youngsters.

<comment><USER8> If we ever "fix" aging, imagine how paranoid people will be of traumatic injury.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps, and I've certainly thought this. But as the devil's advocate: would the net present value of 60 years of life is much different from 600 years of life, after discounting?

If we use the prevent value of recurring payments equation ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_value#Annuities.2C_perp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_value#Annuities.2C_perpetuities_and_other_common_forms)) to consider the present value of 60 years, with a modest discounting rate of 6%, we get:

> = 16.161427705238

The same number for 600 years is:

> = 16.6666666666667

For context, the incremental difference between 50 and 60 years is about the same as for the additional 500+.

That far out the incremental present value of a year of life drops to basically zero. Which is to say, for many people (the vast majority, I might guess), the value of these far-off experiences may end up being academic, and thus not factor into their decisions particularly strongly.

Certainly some people would be affected - those with low subjective discounting rates, which is to say, future-oriented people. And certainly on the margin it would make people more cautious, but if the premise holds, the effect might not be as far-reaching as you suspect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So looking at this, and extrapolating I see some people in the future picking a time period and living there in all but fact. I envision the matrix, but set in whatever time period people choose. I can see people choosing to live in say the roaring 20's or the 1970's...

In fact, now that I think about it places like that do exist... While on vacation I think I visited a place where people lived and worked as if they were in colonial times.

<comment><USER11> I think "vacation" is a critical consideration.

I'd _love_ to spend a few days living 'in' a particular time period. And then get back to reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> great idea!

could be useful resource for folks studying history of a certain year or period</comment>


Brendan Eich's JSConf Talk / Participate in the Future of JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://brendaneich.com/2011/05/my-jsconf-us-presentation/?

<comment><USER2> People who are interested in the future of JavaScript ought to check these out:

<http://groups.google.com/group/altjs>

irc://irc.freenode.net/altjs

<http://altjs.org/> (credit given)

It's only new, but it's an attempt to draw a circle around the movement without being biased towards promoting any one brand or language.</comment>


Microsoft fleshing out requirements on bringing its Edge browser to Linux - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-linux-developers-we-want-your-help-to-bring-edge-browser-to-linux/ <comment><USER2> I don't know who thought this would be a good idea and what the use-case for Chromium Edge would be for apart from replacing the CharkaCore-based Edge. But I would like to know why to bring Edge onto other platforms when it is based on the same browser engine, JS engine, etc. Perhaps something like Office would be more beneficial to Linux users rather than another Chromium-based browser.

It's like Apple coming along and replacing the WebKit-based Safari with 'Chromium Safari' and pitching that to Chrome users. I'd prefer neither and keep using Firefox.

This tweet looks more like they are 'selling' Microsoft-branded igloos to eskimos and penguins.

</comment><comment><USER3> We don't want it.</comment>


The Z3 theorem prover is now open source - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/leonardo/blog/2012/10/02/open-z3.html <comment><USER2> This is great news! When I was at MSR I heard the rumor that they wanted to _sell_ Z3, not open-source it!

Some context, as not everybody may have heard about it.

Z3 is an SMT [1] solver. Since SMT generalizes SAT, it is clearly NP-hard, so a number of heuristics are needed. In particular, Z3 won several SMT speed competitions, so it has been for long the fastest SMT solver.

You can play with it online using its Lisp-like native language [2] or using the Python bindings [3]

The reason SMT is important is that several static analysis tools work by encoding the program constraints (such as pre/post conditions, invariants, ...) into a big formula. The satisfiability of this formula determines the correctness of the program, and sometimes assignments can be translated back to counterexamples to program correctness.

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

[2] <http://rise4fun.com/Z3/bit-count>

[3] <http://rise4fun.com/Z3Py/nonlinear>

<comment><USER3> what is the practical uses of this (or SMT in general)? i've read the referenced Wikipedia but still don't understand.

<comment><USER4> Solvers are somewhat popular in software security, both for automatically uncovering invariants (and exploitable lack of invariants), and also for modeling program binaries and solving for collections of basic blocks that can executed during a memory corruption attack to accomplish attacker goals.

<comment><USER5> Things like automatic exploit generation[1] and exploit hardening[2] in particular rely on SMT solvers to accomplish their goals. They allow for some truly remarkable things to be done. Expect skynet to utilize them heavily in its distributed automatic exploit generation (global autopwn) tooling!

1\. <http://security.ece.cmu.edu/aeg/> 2\. [http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~ejschwar/bib/schwartz_2011_rop- abs...](http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~ejschwar/bib/schwartz_2011_rop- abstract.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The limitation to non-commercial use means it's not quite 'open source' in the common meaning established by the Open Source Initiative. (Discrimination against a 'field of endeavor', such as business use, is not allowable under their definition.)

<comment><USER7> It's not open source by any stretch of the imagination. The Microsoft blog is quite simply lying.

<comment><USER8> Or the poster doesn't understand what open source really is, or their definition of open source is different from yours. Honestly, GPL screws up commercial use almost as much as a non commercial use restrictions. But I totally agree that open source are not the right words to use in this situation.

Full disclosure, I work for Microsoft.

<comment><USER9> GPL has no restrictions at all on commercial use and in commercial use places no obligations on you at all.

If you distribute GPL code you then become subject to its restrictions and must provide the code.

<comment><USER8> Sure, I'm aware of this. My point was that GPL is almost as poisonous as a non commercial use restriction in terms of distributing software. GPL works great on the server where this isn't a concern, but doesn't work for almost any other commercial use case. Very arbitrary but at least very clear.

<comment><USER9> You seem to have a VERY narrow definition of commercial use which involves selling software or being a software service provider. There are a vast majority of companies manufacturing/distributing/retailing and providing services for whom the GPL imposes no restriction at all. The MS release seems to prevent all commercial use not just commercial redistribution/binary release making it a FAR broader restriction than the GPL.

For MS and a surprisingly small (in terms of total global economy) number of other businesses selling closed source software (or software dependent on other non-Free software components) the GPL imposes very real restrictions.

I would argue that they are in no way arbitrary but have a clear purpose and objective to further increase the amount of Free software in the world. You may or may not support or want to assist this objective but it certainly doesn't feel arbitrary to me (I've taken the 'capricious; unreasonable; unsupported' definition of arbitrary from Dictionary.com as my interpretation of your meaning).

Edit/reply:

Can't reply to you for some reason. No citation but you have missed my point. I wasn't comparing Open Source Industry to closed source software industry but really the software industry to ALL Other industries (and individuals) in the world. Basically software consumers rather than producers (of which closed source companies like MS form a large part).

<comment><USER8> Citation needed on how the open source software industry is so much larger (money wise) than the closed source software industry. I'm sure its much more of a mix, plus closed source software is more often sold, meaning more money is involved in say oracle DB vs. MySQL. Also, most of the OSS industry prefers apache/BSD style licenses that aren't viral.

If RMS was true to his principles, he would make GPL more viral to cover every deployment and co-deployment. But they leave this huge server hole instead. That is what I mean by arbitrary. Why a hole there and not elsewhere?

<comment><USER9> I don't say anything of the sort. Please read again. I am saying that total global commerce and use of computers is greater than the software industry (not the world's greatest insight I know).

Don't want to answer for RMS. I can't think of less arbitrary way of achieving their aims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Non-commercial only. There are several similar projects some of which are _really_ open source: <http://smtlib.cs.uiowa.edu/solvers.html>

<comment><USER11> Sadly, none as good as Z3. I'd want to _study_ Z3, even if I'd rather _use_ something else. The current license is good enough for studying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think one of the problems with it not being true open source is that they are selling a commercial version @ the microsoft store for 14,950. I suspect this is why they choose this license.

I'd be interested if they would provide different terms for the source for the people that bought the commercial version, or if you would just be stuck with the binaries.

Here is the link to buy the commercial version: [http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/pd/Microsoft- Res...](http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/pd/Microsoft- Research-Z3-Theorem-Prover/productID.242666500)

</comment><comment><USER13> It seemed really exciting until I realized that it is only available for non- commercial purposes.

<comment><USER14> IMO it's still exciting. Sure, you cannot use it directly for commercial purposes, but having the source for something like this is great to learn from.

And it means that it can be ported to platforms it's currently not available for.

<comment><USER15> > Sure, you cannot use it directly for commercial purposes, but having the > source for something like this is great to learn from.

As long as nobody sees you, otherwise you are vulnerable to a lawsuit. If I had serious plans to make my own implementation I would purposefully avoid even running this program.

<comment><USER14> Right, if you intend to make your own implementation and profit from it, it's wise to avoid it. But for the rest of us it isn't that black and white...

<comment><USER16> Do you think Microsoft will be around in 10-20 years? Do you have a good idea of what you'll be working on (or interested in) in 10-20 years? Do you think laws regarding the forms of IP will be much better in 10-20 years? Do you think you'd get caught now or in the next 10-20 years if you do use this as research (or even rip code directly from it) and get sued for making money off it? Plug in your guestimations and make a decision. I looked at it, myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's excellent (good to learn from, shame it's only non commercial; it's a step forward though)! I was accidentally checking rise4fun for open source just last week. I hope they open source more; unfortunately the project I'm most curious about at the moment (quickcode) will not be open sourced as it is officially part of Excel now.

</comment><comment><USER18> As a plain old programmer, would a tool like this be useful to me? How can I use a theorem prover to improve my code, or make it easier to write my code on a day to day basis? I've heard that Z3 is used for demonstrating security properties, how would I apply this to ensure my own systems are secure?

</comment><comment><USER19> Wish someone would update the topic here, since it's not open source as per the generally understood definition ... (as the article's source has updated / corrected on his blog)

</comment><comment><USER20> Anyone able to find a link to the code? I have been looking around but I can only seem to find the binaries.

<comment><USER21> It's on codeplex [http://z3.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/9823ee3b...](http://z3.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/9823ee3b4481)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> People bitching about MS misusing the term "open-source" are, IMO, ungrateful SOBs who have never attempted to implement a non-trivial algorithm based on nothing but a stack of academic papers.

For me, the greatest value in having the source is to _learn_ from it, not to hijack it.

<comment><USER23> I think a lot of people appreciate the move MS made while simultaneously condemning them for their casual appropriation of a term having a well- established meaning. They've updated the blog post in the meantime, so this is a non-issue.

Resorting to ad-hominems does nothing to strengthen your argument, btw.

<comment><USER22> Care to show some signs of appreciation by those who complain?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Could this be used to tes ZED models?

</comment><comment><USER25> From the license text:

> Microsoft is granted back, without any restrictions or limitations, a non- > exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, assignable and sub- > licensable license, to reproduce, publicly perform or display, install, use, > modify, post, distribute, make and have made, sell and transfer your > modifications to and/or derivative works of the Software source code or > data, for any purpose.

The above I can understand. MSFT claims ownership of any modifications you make to its software. Be aware.

> [A]ny feedback about the Software provided by you to us is voluntarily > given, and Microsoft shall be free to use the feedback as it sees fit > without obligation or restriction of any kind, even if the feedback is > designated by you as confidential.

This I don't get. Why would MSFT want to publish confidential feedback?

> That if you breach this MSR-LA or if you sue anyone over patents that you > think may apply to or read on the Software or anyone's use of the Software, > this MSR-LA (and your license and rights obtained herein) terminate > automatically. Upon any such termination, you shall destroy all of your > copies of the Software immediately. Sections 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11 and 12 of > this MSR-LA shall survive any termination of this MSR-LA.

This part I certainly understand. "Sue us and you can't use our toys anymore."

> That the patent rights, if any, granted to you in this MSR-LA only apply to > the Software, not to any derivative works you make.

This, again, is unsurprising, but good to keep in mind.

<comment><USER26> The 'confidential feedback' boilerplate language would especially apply to projects with potential security implications. Your 'confidential feedback' might be disclosure of a security vulnerability and they'd want to choose to patch or not patch and publicly divulge or not divulge the vulnerability your feedback reveals.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: App idea for travellers - <AUTHOR>

While on holiday last week, I went on a day trip to see Antwerp, Belgium. There was no way we were going to be able to look up and discover all there was to see on our own, so we decided to do the touristy thing and take the one hour tour bus.
As we were driving around, the tour guide was telling us about each sight and providing a little info about each attraction. At some point during the tour, I thought to myself how nice it would be to come back and see all these places my self, while riding around on a bike or walking around. But there was no time to write every thing down. Then I realized it would probably also involve looking up each attraction on the web and plotting my trip on a map and would eventually become this whole to-do. I thought to myself how nice it would be if I have my own little tour guide to guide me around - I just pick the city, arrive and he takes me through it. He tells me where all the nearest tourist attractions are based on my position and provides me with directions and a brief overview of each atraction so I can walk / cycle there and take a look if I want.
That's when it dawned on me, this would probably make a good app. It's kind of like GPS, but more for tourists walking / cycling around. I could just rock up in a city and start browsing attractions based on the suggestions from the app that sounded good to me. It could give me a brief history / overview of the attraction, directions and even a link to the website if I wanted to research further.
So, before I pretend like that I'm the only person to ever think of this, let me ask - are there any apps like this already? Any good ones? Recommendations? As a new but regular traveller, I really hate planning every little stop or checking maps before the time. It would be great to just arrive somewhere and start exploring from there, with some knowledge of what was around me and take things at my own pace with my virtual tour guide (audio preferably so you dont have to have your head buried in your phone the whole time) helping me along the way.
If there isn't anything along these lines, what do you think of the idea? It would mainly be for travellers so I'm not quite sure non-travellers would see the need (I may be wrong). Does this have merit? <comment><USER2> The closest thing to this I can think of is an offline TripAdvisor app (TripAdvisor City Guides). The app downloads city data straight from TripAdvisor to use on your phone when your internet / wifi is switched off.

Their huge database of places & reviews is combined with a section on 'walking tours' which seems very similar to what you're describing. A great bonus with this is that GPS services still work without internet.

A great addition to this would be bespoke intelligently generated tours based upon your likes or interests.

Also a limitation of the TripAdvisor app is the number of cities offered (though this seems to be increasing)

</comment><comment><USER3> As a note there are some apps that do this, and one I saw in offered some gaming elements to help you 'discover' the sights and information about them. Looked pretty cool but I don't know if they released it.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only problem I could see is that when I personally travel due to ridiculous data costs I turn roaming off and tend to avoid mobile apps unless connected to wifi.

<comment><USER3> I was looking into an idea similar to this and I started looking at using open street map to generate map data to solve this issue. Open Street map db has tons of info that you don't see on the normal 'maps' so making custom maps was really the way to go. The idea being to download map 'packs' that contain sufficient detail to get to the areas of interest then more detailed maps only for those areas (to avoid having to download huge datasets before you travel and to make it possible to download new ones from wifi points while away)

This idea really interests me and as I am about to embark on long term travel I intend to explore these ideas more.

The audio though, thats another story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem of implementing an app like this is that you need data. How can you gather those information?

<comment><USER6> tl;dr: acquire data through crowdsourcing, it will create an awesome edge above and beyond making data acquisition easy

The data acquisition could be organic and crowdsourced. For instance, it is possible that some people take pride in their home cities and then would take the time create a "tour" in order to share their unique perspective with outsiders. The motivation for a person to take the time to do this might be as simple as wanting to present's one proud city in the best light. A karma feature would be solid as well. There would still be the "chicken and egg" problem to get content and users, but maybe there is a creative solution for that.

This happens on an ad hoc basis all the time. Take me for an example. I'm a long-time Philadelphia resident. When friends or family (or friends thereof) visit the City of Brotherly Love, I'll often get an email, FB message, or call asking, "What should I do when I'm in Philadelphia?" (Unfortunately, I also get "Pat's or Geno's all too often, too) I'll then take 20 minutes to type a message with my "insider" perspective on how to get the most out of a touristy trip. I could do a write-up for this particular service on Philly in 2 minutes just by searching my gmail and finding my last recommendation email.

The social/crowdsourced data acquisition could have cool implications. \- First, it would be an insider perspective and everyone loves to feel like they experienced the "real deal" instead of scratching the surface of various tourist traps. \- Second, rather than having one generic tour for each city, there would be a menu of user-created tours to choose from. I know if my mother were visiting Antwerp, she would have a much different agenda than I would. Therefore, the social aspect of this method would enable a user to filter "tours" by the demographic profile of the "tour guide." I'll look for 20-something "tour guides" who posted activities with an active tilt whereas my mom will look for recommendations on art museums and sites with historic value.

Revenue model (long-term) is obvious. Sell advertising. Local businesses can target advertising to a desirable audience: one that is captive and more likely to spend money. Think restaurants, bars, hotels, hostels, rental cars/scooters, entertainment, tourist attractions. With this app, there will be great info on where the tourist plans to go so the advertising will have exceptional value. Obviously the service can't cheapen the value of the "insider info" by drowning a user in ads, but thoughtfully placed ads would probably be tolerable (and effective).

I like this idea. I would use it all the time, personally. Let me know if you end up pursuing it and want some help!

</comment></comment><comment> saiko-chriskun sounds like it would be pretty darn awesome to me :). and I haven't even gotten the chance to go travelling yet, hehe.

but I really do want to. if you end up pursuing this and need some extra dev help, lemme know ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, I know of a similar app. I think the name is "storytelling".

</comment><comment><USER8> How would you promote your app to travelers?</comment>


Ask HN: What's the next $1 billion dollar acquisition?  - <AUTHOR>

What's going to be the next big acquisition in consumer internet? <comment><USER2> Yahoo buys Pinterest for $3B.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pinterest, Whatsapp, Viber.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whatsapp +1</comment>


The flaws in the recruitment procedure of Shell - <AUTHOR> http://theblogbowl.in/your_voice/the-flaws-in-the-recruitment-procedure-of-shell/view/

<comment><USER2> Tests are very legally hard to do in the US for recruitment. The firm has to prove they don't exclude any sub-group.

From the post it sounds like RDS pulled it off in the other direction.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no such issues in India. Companies that come for placement just give out a few papers for students to fill. Unfortunately, they don't seem to care the huge number of students who cheat in the tests and the results don't truly represent what you are!

<comment><USER2> I've always thought that cheating for online tests would be a big deal. I guess you get caught eventually in the interview, but you never know.</comment></comment></comment>


Compiling a Static Web Site Using the C Preprocessor - <AUTHOR> http://ithare.com/compiling-a-static-web-site-using-the-c-preprocessor/ <comment><USER2> Nice piece of history. You can see its age showing:

"Rather quickly it was realized that if you want to ensure a reasonable user experience both on desktops and mobiles, there is absolutely no way you can use the same HTML for both sites."

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats, you've re-discovered the same origin where PHP started nearly 20 years ago.

Maybe you could replace the generic c preprocessor dialect with a new domain specific DSL. For instance one where macros can simply be embedded directly into HTML. For instance everything between the <? and ?> is parsed as macros. /s

<comment><USER4> I wonder if one could propose that "any sufficiently complicated static website compiler contains an ad-hoc, informally specificed, bug ridden, slow implementation of half of PHP..."

<comment><USER3> Haha, I never thought of it like that before.

That probably holds true for any one written in C. Maybe even some others that use server-side view generation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > In fact, almost any kind of text processor can be used to compile web sites > in a similar way to what has been described above (for example, m4 ...

I thought about m4 all the time while reading through that post...

<comment><USER6> The only time I ever used M4 was when trying to create a Sendmail configuration. I really disliked it.</comment></comment>


This technology is saving lives in Africa - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1707667/hp-and-mpedigree-fight-counterfeit-drugs

<comment><USER2> This is very interesting. Did not realize that mobile phones are so common in Africa.

What kind of makes/models are typical? I would imagine that they are more low- tech than in the first world?

Ideas for startups focused on this market? Highly relevant e-learning delivered via mobile? Low-tech version of Facebook? Mobile-centered food bartering auction site?

<comment><USER3> Healthcare is a good place to start. Using mobile devices to educate consumers on health needs, and to build awareness on any outbreaks of diseases where they live. Think basic needs crucial to survival, not "nice to haves" like an African Facebook.

<comment><USER2> Also, might there not be legitimate uses for eg "Afribook"?

-Keeping track of displaced relatives

-Organizing for social change

-Spreading info on best practices

-Building connections that might lead to income

-Strengthening communities

Facebook isn't ALL Farmville and teenage gossip, y'know :)

<comment><USER4> Not really. The rot is such that the basic human rights and needs such a platform implies are non existant. Anyways, Facebook already has very high penetration and organizing for change is met with blackberries. A tool akin to twitter but specialized to anonymity and security would be far more useful.

<comment><USER5> Not really. That is imbuing the situation with your political preferences re: privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, how do they deal with a counterfeiter who simple copies these "unique codes"? All the counterfeiter needs is access to new OR used pill bottles. Not very hard, IMO.

<comment><USER7> I'd assume they'd flag anything that gets checked by a consumer. It wouldn't stop everyone, but a pharmacy wouldn't need too many false alerts before customers would start going elsewhere, encouraging distributors to be more careful.

Customers would need to be educated to tear up the code after use, but the pharmacy would probably handle that ("OK, go to this site, look, it's legit, now tear up that code").

<comment><USER6> I guess, one easy way to solve this would be to flag whatever has been checked, and let the customer know someone else has checked the code before them.

No one in the original distribution would feel the need to check a code, thus this would alert consumers of something fishy.

<comment><USER7> Or distributers could use a special interface, which won't flag it as "dirty". They would use it, because it could help them track how fake goods are getting fed into their system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting. I'm so inured to consumer-unfriendly uses of verification codes and authenticity mechanisms -- it's nice to see one that is genuinely useful.</comment>


Looking for a technical Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> Airow - Fast business payments.
I'm starting a B2B payments company addressing the $17.1 trillion a year US market that is massively under served and outdated. 50% of business transactions still occur using checks!
I want to approach this segment with a robust  platform. Think Venmo transactions meets cloud collaborative invoicing, slack channel communications and more.
I'm looking for a bright individual that wants to take on this project with me. 50-50 ownership.
Ideally you'll have. -Full stack engineering experience. -Knowledge of how the US banking system works -Experience in Payments. (Gateways, Processors, Merchants) -Enthusiastic and determined to work for yourself and take on a challenging project until it's complete. -Experience building PCI compliant products. -Web/Android/IOS development experience. -Ability to vet and manage bright developers to work beside you. -Ambitious
Want to be apart of something huge? Think this sounds like you?
Get in touch email@example.com <comment><AUTHOR> Don't be afraid to reach out! Looking for ambitious developers ready to work for themselves and build a team!</comment>


David Pogue on Quora - <AUTHOR> http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/quora-raises-questions/

<comment><USER2> I think it is hilarious that the Quora's home page does not have any questions and answers actually. When I visit a new service or portal I would be delighted to see what it's about.

</comment><comment><USER3> I fully concur with how annoying it is to have to enter a password and email, even though I used FB Connect. Totally takes away the convenience.</comment>


Tiny video cameras protect cops, suspects - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Tiny-video-cameras-protect-cops-suspects-4754265.php <comment><USER2> I'm partial, because I shot the video, but The Verge did a large feature/report on this back in April that I think explains both sides of this pretty well:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/5/4162478/tasers-axon-flex- co...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/5/4162478/tasers-axon-flex-cop-camera- takes-aim-at-privacy)

<comment><USER3> (Thanks for the link it's interesting.)

"because I shot the video"

I've watched about 5 minutes and so far I see where you are interviewed but what part did you shoot the video on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now if only our elected officials had to wear them while on duty with the ability for the public to view after a period of time...

</comment><comment><USER5> Good to see we're moving on from arresting people for videotaping cops doing things they shouldn't be doing.

<comment><USER6> You remind me the innocent dog who got shot in the face by the police because it's owner were videotaping them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Previous HN discussion: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6257896](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6257896)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'll toss a link to this article along similar lines.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/nyregion/order-that- police...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/nyregion/order-that-police-wear- cameras-stirs-unexpected-reactions.html?_r=0)

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems like teachers and students could benefit from this as well. Teachers are often accused of being unfair or acting unprofessionally. Parents may not know who to believe when a teacher and a student flatly contradict one another.

<comment><USER10> Parents and children too! Also, couples. And football players--the refs can't be trusted. And my boss. We should probably just videotape everything, come to think of it.

<comment><USER11> All in good time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence Where can I purchase one of these cameras?

<comment><USER12> The police models are actually made by Taser.

[http://www.taser.com/products/on-officer-video/axon-flex- on-...](http://www.taser.com/products/on-officer-video/axon-flex-on-officer- video)

<comment> X-Istence I've contacted them, they are supposed to give me a call back. Wonder if they will sell them to a consumer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is rather silly isn't it ? I hardly think you can enforce good culture with negative operant conditioning.

Why is it that Microsoft's silly ranking system is much criticized, while this is one is being applauded ?

<comment><USER14> Emmmm... negative operant conditioning? There's no stimulus that's being removed depending on officer's behavior. In fact, I wouldn't call it operant conditioning at all - there's no new punishment or reward here, just increased certainty that both officers' and suspects' actions will be known and provable to third parties.

<comment><USER15> He was probably trying to comment over here, on this other article, about Microsoft's Stack Ranking program:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266863)</comment></comment></comment>


Alexis Ohanian speaks out against "always-on" work culture - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/always-on-work-culture-creating-broken-people-says-reddit-co-founder-11558464608 <comment><USER2> I don't get "hustle porn" in the slightest - I want to see people who succeeded by doing the _least possible_.

You have a private jet because you worked 18 hours a day 7 days a week for 10 years? Sacrificed evening meals with your partner and kids, missed spending time with your parents before they got old, and generally only commit to "quality time" (which is largely bullshit) for self and social care? Nah thanks pal.

You're driving that Ferrari because you make something that makes money, you pay people a decent wage and give them good working conditions to take it all off your plate so you only spend a few hours a week doing the bits you enjoy? That's the sizzle right there.

Telling Gary Vee to put a cake in it would be a good start.

<comment><USER3> Gary Vee is a snake oil salesman. He knows the right things to say and he's incredibly charismatic. But from a business point of view, his hustle-porn guru business is way more successful than anything he did previous to that. Sure he's a successful business person but he wasn't something special. It was his "motivational talks" that are his real claim to fame, so he's basically famous for being famous.

<comment><USER4> My anecdote is that people I come across who quote him tend to have a lot of anxiety and pent-up energy around the idea of wanting to be in business but they don't have an idea, skill, or plan.

So, the business proverbs they live by both give them hope and amplify their anxiety that their opportunity is slipping away with each day that they're not hustling.

<comment><USER5> > the idea of wanting to be in business but they don't have an idea, skill, or > plan.

Speaking as someone who just does what he enjoys doing and ended up with a marginally successful business as a result, I have to say that I genuinely don't get this mindset.

Then again I don't "hustle" either. I (and my employees) just write code that solves problems and creates value for bigger businesses and they pay me good money for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find the effects of overwork to be quite interesting- a lack of space for self makes it impossible to perform actually life enriching behaviors such as retreats, meditations, socialization, and hobbies. This means there's simply no room for any other entertainment or enrichment beyond the most shallow/fast/addictive stuff - social media, twitter wars, the thrill of buying nice things.

(EDIT: I should emphasize why it's so interesting to me because people often overwork with the justification for life enrichment, but the actual act of overworking reduces space/time for life enrichment!

<comment><USER7> Conveniently, consuming shiny things and lowest-common-denominator mass media is what the Western society very much encourages us to do. Work, consume, repeat.

<comment><USER8> And it's still less toxic a hobby than being annoyingly smug on the internet.

<comment><USER7> I doubt it's being smug on the internet that has brought us to the brink of a global ecological disaster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "All of us who decide to start a company, we're kind of broken as people," > because founders are often singularly-focused on the success of their > venture, said Mr. Ohanian. Even with great mentors and investors supporting > their vision, entrepreneurs tend to put a great deal of pressure on > themselves to work harder than anyone else to achieve success and > profitability. That psychological pressure is compounded by what he and > others refer to as "hustle culture."

> "You have this culture of posturing, and this culture that glorifies the > most absurd things and ignores things like self-care, and ignores things > like therapy, and ignores things like actually taking care of yourself as a > physical being for the sake of work at all costs. It's a toxic problem," > said Mr. Ohanian.

<comment><USER10> They admit it but don't do anything about it. The very definition of a psychopath. I have no issue with people who are driven, mind you. The issue is that it leads to quality of life suffering for everyone in the company as expectations continue to ramp.

I just don't buy into it anymore. Management where I work attempts to pressurize people and I just laugh. Yes, the "hustle" culture is right--so your boss's boss's boss can make $20M last year while you have to cut coupons.

<comment> ryan-allen Which is, why I wonder, is a VC of (presumably?) tech companies trashing the hustle culture? If he lends some founders some money, does he want them to be home to spend time with their kids and their spouse, or is he seeking a return?

I can't help but think this is just some PR for Alex. Maybe someone can prove me wrong?

<comment><USER11> This is basically his content marketing[0]. Whether he believes it or not, it doesn't matter, because this topic is on trend right now. He's likely taking what he believes is the most attractive option to early stage entrepreneurs right now.

[0] - [https://avc.com/2016/08/understanding- vcs/](https://avc.com/2016/08/understanding-vcs/)

<comment><USER12> Dunno, he seems pretty legit in the documentary about Serena and them having their kid. I don't get a "do as I say not as I do" vibe from watching that, but who knows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find the idea of working more than 40 hours a week to create something ultimately optional and meaningless... Just utterly preposterous.

People treat the "crunch" as if it's an epic accomplishment of world shaking importance to write a slightly better Android food delivery app, or slightly optimize video ad delivery.

I have worked on networking and IT projects in immediate post-disaster relief environments, and in active combat zones, where it might be justifiable to work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.

But it's just laughable that some corporation expects people to do that for something which is frivolous. Look at the recent news article about the abuse of their staff involved in the development of the recent Anthem video game...

[https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went- wrong-1833731964](https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went- wrong-1833731964)

<comment><USER14> Most of the tech companies these days speak in terms of "revolutionizing," or "reinventing," or "re-imagining," and it's all fluff. I don't even suspect this is strictly deceptive. I think people (and founders in particular) are starving to be meaningful and important. They need it in their lives. And so, they tend to describe their work aspirationally. Claims such "No one's ever do this before" will accompany a website that sells goods and services. People are clamoring to be important, and aren't really sure how to get it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe this is a bit cynical but is this not like if the CEO of Pepsi spoke out against sugar?

He and his VC partner are both YC-insiders. I don't necessarily follow his tweets as much as his partner's but his partner tweets are what I'd call classical hustle porn tweets that he spews all the time. And YC is almost certainly the epi-center of hustle porn.

</comment><comment><USER16> The "hustle porn" is also quite frequently a coverup or distraction from general failure at other parts of life. Those that are super successful in perhaps their career but have no personal life, no partner, no kids, no real existence outside of their company tend to be quite boring people. These types keep promoting themselves and their "hard work" but it seems lost on them that others aren't really all that impressed.

Those that are super impressive and truly accomplished are the ones that have successful careers but also have actual lives with families and a real life. Doing both well and not stressing out is a true accomplishment worth celebrating and promoting.

</comment><comment><USER17> I worked for years in a role that was "always-on". To the point it cost me more than I gained. I've lost years of my life through that experience, and only towards the end could see the toxicity of it all. I'm finally free with a healthy work life balance and can't understand what I was thinking, if I was thinking anything at all.

<comment><USER18> Congrats on the escape. Champion the idea of shedding toxic employment to others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> While certainly true, statements like these fail to ignore why tech folk grind so hard-- because if they don't and someone else does then they are at an objective disadvantage. That's not to say that means they cannot or will not succeed, but if one tech founder is working 60 hours a week versus 40 hours a week (assuming they are both efficient) then there is a clear advantage.

If your going to hustle, do it young when you don't have responsibility. Don't be the dude with a kid missing dinners and school plays. But if I'm young and want to grind to build something I'm passionate about then I don't think that is so wrong or toxic-- just don't fucking post about it on social media.

<comment><USER20> > ...but if one tech founder is working 60 hours a week versus 40 hours a week > (assuming they are both efficient) then there is a clear advantage.)

There really isn't a clear advantage here either since no one is achieving 100% efficiency like that week after week. [1]

[1] [https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours- bac...](https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for- people-and-for-companies)

<comment><USER21> Efficiency isn't the metric people care about on either side of the equation though. Management only cares about results. If you work 3 hours at 100% efficiency, 5 at 75% and 3 at 50%, that's still more results than working 4 at 100% and 4 at 75%. On the other side of the equation, the worker gets to see and handle more technology with the longer hours, which make them more attractive in interviews. If you're working 50 hours of week instead of 40, even with productivity hits, you're still "gaining" a week of experience roughly every month. That means at 2 years, you're actually at almost 3 years of experience, and that pays off. Repeat this for a few more years, and the difference adds up and matters.

I'm not advocating for that lifestyle at all, but there is something to be said for just having more time with code. You obviously need to have an endgame plan, as staying at one company often doesn't scale your career, but if that 2nd year dev is able to get a prime spot because of his extra "year" of experience, and repeat a few times... There is money to be made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a tragedy of the commons, where the commons is our individual and collective mental health. Working your ass off might be an individually rational choice, but even if that's true (opinions definitely vary) the result of _everybody_ doing it is a significantly crappier society.

</comment><comment><USER23> My last job was managing product security for a company that has customers worldwide. The first and last things every single day I did was check my email on my phone, weekends and holidays. When I got out of the job my health greatly improved to the point where I had my blood pressure medication lowered. "Always-on" is a killer.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Always-on" can kind of sort of work out, for a couple of years -- provided all 3 of the following simple conditions are met:

(1) You're getting a decent base + health insurance

(2) The equity is in proportion to the sacrifice (this can be difficult to quantify; but in any case not a microscopic share of the pie); and

(3) You actually have some say in (and responsibility over) the outcomes.

(4) And of course you aren't throwing anyone under the bus in your family or personal life.

On of the reasons our industry is so toxic is that you're expected to be "always on" even though there's not even a pretense of (2) or (3) being met -- and quite often the numbers for condition (1) are sketchy, or far worse.

</comment><comment><USER25> The fundamental engine of growth in the economy is the continual increase in productivity.

that is the increase of unit of work per staff head.

Having staff work hard, not smart lowers productivity, and therefore profit.

For example uber:

IF they were a company capable of making a profit, it is because currently they have a virtually staff free monitoring and dispatch system (that is, no branch offices, no radio dispatcher, no mechanics etc.)

However thats only a small part of thier overheads. The vast majority comes from paying their drivers. Adding more drivers adds cost linearly.

However if they were to somehow manage to perfect driverless cars, their productivity would smash through the roof, as they can replace linear cost increases with an upfront capital cost (ie, buy loads of self driving cars instead of paying a per mile cost.)

If you are working your staff 996, not only are they going to burn out, they are going to be inefficient. There are legions of studies that date back to the early 1900s that prove this. In china there is an abundance of staff, so one does not need to worry, as if you burn out 35% a year, they can always be replaced, cheaply.

but you can't afford to do that if you have a limited talent pool.

</comment><comment><USER26> Recently heard a good ted talk and good podcast with Andrew Taggart who is using the term "Total Work" to describe this phenomena.

He leans a lot on this old german book called "Leisure: The Basis of Culture", and asks the question "Why do we work?" His answer is that work should be a means to an end, and that end is to be able to lead a life where we engage fully with love, art, philosophy, and spirituality. This seems to me to be a bit too tightly defined, but definitely made me think more intentionally about what it is I'm living for.

Ted Talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7UonZl- Gis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7UonZl-Gis)

Podcast: [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/andrew-taggart- philoso...](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/andrew-taggart- philosophizing-in-the-age-of-total-work/id1397139116?i=1000435020386)

</comment><comment><USER27> Paywall bypass link:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/always-on-work-culture- creating...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/always-on-work-culture-creating- broken-people-says-reddit-co-founder-11558464608?mod=rsswn)

</comment><comment><USER28> Based purely on chewz' quote, since paywall: the problem isn't just the impact on founders, it's all the employees who get screwed as a result of the founders' misguided beliefs.

If the person on top works long hours, they pressure their underlings to work long hours in a whole bunch of different ways ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/06/21/why-company-want- lon...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/06/21/why-company-want-long- hours/)).

See also JWZ on VCs: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190425140352/https://www.jwz.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190425140352/https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch- a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/)

(Updated with archive.org link)

<comment><USER29> FYI the JWZ link redirects to [http://i.imgur.com/32R3qLv.png](http://i.imgur.com/32R3qLv.png) when HN is the referrer and you've never visited the site.

<comment><USER28> Interesting. I switched to an archive.org link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Full Text: ALWAYS-ON WORK CULTURE CREATING 'BROKEN' PEOPLE, SAYS REDDIT CO- FOUNDER

Alexis Ohanian speaks out against toxicity of 'hustle porn' that glorifies 'most absurd things'

Alexis Ohanian, venture investor and husband of tennis superstar Serena Williams, loves getting asked how he balances family life and his career as managing partner of Initialized Capital.

He and Ms. Williams became first-time parents in 2017, and in the months that followed, Mr. Ohanian frequently spoke out about why it was so important for him to take time away from the Bay Area firm he co-founded to bond with their daughter.

Parental leave wasn't only a fun way to spend 16 weeks with their newborn Alexis Olympia Jr., he said at The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything Festival on Tuesday, but it was also a reminder of why work should never be the only metric for measuring success.

"I've spoken out quite a bit about things like 'hustle porn,' and this ceremony of showing off on social [media] about how hard you're working," said Mr. Ohanian, who previously co-founded online discussion forum Reddit. "Y'all see it on Instagram and you certainly see it in the startup community, and it becomes really toxic."

Business men in his position are rarely asked about juggling the requirements of their roles outside of work, like in their family, he said, and that contributes to unrealistic expectations that a job can reflect the entirety of anyone's identity as a human being.

"All of us who decide to start a company, we're kind of broken as people," because founders are often singularly-focused on the success of their venture, said Mr. Ohanian. Even with great mentors and investors supporting their vision, entrepreneurs tend to put a great deal of pressure on themselves to work harder than anyone else to achieve success and profitability. That psychological pressure is compounded by what he and others refer to as "hustle culture."

"You have this culture of posturing, and this culture that glorifies the most absurd things and ignores things like self-care, and ignores things like therapy, and ignores things like actually taking care of yourself as a physical being for the sake of work at all costs. It's a toxic problem," said Mr. Ohanian.

This issue isn't limited to technology companies, he added, noting that his acquaintances in finance and other industries also promote an unhealthy attitude that encourages 12-hour work days and few breaks.

"Social media has made it possible to weaponize it to the point where, if [bragging about your difficult workweek] gets hearts, you're incentivized to keep pushing" the limits.

</comment><comment> purple-again Can some kind soul provide the body of the text for us poor souls or instructions for how to access the article? No luck with the web button or outline.com.

<comment><USER31> I don't really see why it's okay to submit paywalled articles to HN to begin with. Either a) someone finds an open source for it, which the OP should've done instead or b) only a small subset of the users can actually access the content being discussed.

<comment><USER32> I find the paywalls on NYT and WSJ a bit bizzare to begin with, especially now that they're closing the loopholes to read an article now and then. Certainly any business has the right to charge for its content, but as newsrooms have shrunk and journalists have been retrained for the clickbait era, these articles are typically worthless fluff or outrage porn. Though I can't actually read this article, I assume that the catchy title references a breif moment from an interview, not a deep cultural analysis. I would pay for the latter, but not the former.

<comment><USER33> > _I assume that the catchy title references a breif moment from an interview, > not a deep cultural analysis._

That assumption is correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Actually, another way to look at it is, are you going inside work culture as a broken person? Meaning, do you have a choice to be healthy and balanced in life? And if you don't, what is standing in the way of that?

If the answer is "hustle", then you ought to take responsibility rather than crying about it.

<comment><USER34> Aww, the HN crowd couldn't take a pinch of salt in their sugary sweet dream.</comment></comment>


Patent Racism - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/transcripts/876097416 <comment><USER2> I listened to this the other day. Extremely interesting, both the loss of wealth to directly affected individuals, and to the general economy, both measurable.

The guy that got the Nobel for the theory she scrutinized encouraged her to publish.

And her troubles publishing were themselves troubling, and vaguely supportive of her thesis.</comment>


All faiths uniting for Good Friday fast and prayer - <AUTHOR> https://www.ksl.com/article/46740224/all-faiths-uniting-for-good-friday-fast-and-prayer <comment><AUTHOR> I'm guessing if you are religious you probably have heard about this. If not, I invite you to join in fasting and prayer today.

<comment><USER2> The praying for the non-religious?

How does that work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The link is returning a 403 Forbidden error.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it works for only the chosen ;-)</comment></comment>


Introducing Vaultenv: Keeping Your Secrets Secure with Vault and Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://tech.channable.com/posts/2017-07-06-introducing-vaultenv-keeping-your-secrets-safe-with-vault-and-haskell.html <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, if there is interest, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)</comment>


What happens if building more housing doesn't work? - <AUTHOR> https://alexdanco.com/2019/05/22/what-happens-if-building-more-housing-doesnt-work/ <comment><USER2> San Francisco has basically dug it's own grave. By refusing to construct enough housing it has created a massive shortage. Even if it starts construction today the backlog is high enough that there will "never" be enough housing. It will take decades to undo the damage. Americans are migrating away from SF, (international migration still high). People are still living with their parents or with roommates, so if you build more housing then people will move out into their own apartments. Useless NIMBY metrics like average rent don't seem to reflect the increased quality of life of those people who get to stay in SF. What counts is that the population in SF can keep growing. Because new construction serves the top end of the market first, NIMBYs attribute the increase in rent to the new construction as the primary source of high rent although the increases would happen regardless of new construction.

The answer doesn't change: if there is not enough build more of it.

<comment><USER3> Isn't the problem also about the 2D aspect of cities and the fact that certain jobs tend to accumulate in certain spots/centers?

So, no matter what, you get a certain radius around which you can actually live and humanely commute to work.

Basically you cannot actually scale a 2D structure beyond a certain point?

<comment><USER4> You can scale it a lot, with infrastructure SF lacks like subway lines, public transport and underground parking. These are even trickier to pull off than housing.

You can also just build lots of high rise buildings like in South Korea and Singapore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How would it be possible for building more housing to /not/ work is the real question. The cost per square footage may have constraints with overhead and not operating at a loss but adding more housing should slow the rate of growth at very least.

Even if taken to the illogical extreme of "what if the entire population of earth was concentrated in San Francisco" adding in sufficient infastructure and housing would lower costs compared to not doing so. Even if it is higher than before it became so dense that the Sears Tower is now considered a mid- rise.

There is this disturbing trend of supply and demand denialism for housing which simply cannot end well.

<comment><USER6> >> How would it be possible for building more housing to /not/ work is the real question.

Buildings full of giant luxury condos. That would soften the higher end of the market but not address the real affordability crisis. Similarly, mcmansions have very high maintenance costs. Vast tracks of six-bedroom single-family suburban homes wouldn't work either if the people who need housing cannot afford to maintain them. And at a more basic level, creating new owner- occupied housing opportunities only helps those with the credit+capital to purchase them. What is needed to get rents down is more rental properties on the market.

Vancouver is seeing this. The boom over the last few years has created oversupply at the very high end of the market. Houses over $5million aren't selling like they once did. That doesn't do anything for working people looking to rent apartments.

<comment><USER7> Even if all new construction was luxury apartments and condos it would still help. Right now if you make $120,000/yr in SF as an entry level software developer you might pay $2500/mo for an old one bedroom. If new luxury buildings go up, you might be able to upgrade to a nicer one bedroom for $2500 and now the old one bedroom will be available for someone making $90k/yr and so on.

<comment><USER8> Only if you assume the current population of the city is held steady and you are not beaten out by new arrivals.

Every law of basic economics exists only under very narrow conditions where all but one factor is controlled. Expecting the real world to conform to theoretical models is about as sensible as looking for rocks that happen to be perfect platonic solids. Pointing this out is not a rejection of economics any more than pointing to the variegation of rocks indicates a dislike of geometry.

<comment><USER9> > Only if you assume the current population of the city is held steady and you > are not beaten out by new arrivals.

The population does not have to be held steady for the new high-end housing to lower prices for mid and low-end housing.

The only assumption the parent makes is that the aggregate desire of people not currently living in SF to move to SF is not affected by the increase in supply. This is an assumption, but I don't think an outlandish one.

Yes, of course some of the newly opened mid-level apartments (when their previous inhabitant moves to a high-end apartment) will be filled by new comers. But aren't those new comers going to compete for the existing space whether or not a more high-end space gets built?

<comment><USER8> Their decision to move here is probably a function of the (perceived) available housing stock.

<comment><USER9> How does that make sense? What about all of the people that have moved to SF in the last few years? Did they come because hey thought there was availability?

If availability was a major factor in where people wanted to live, Detroit wouldn't be half empty.

Now if the increase in high end housing makes housing across the board cheaper, then yes, it makes a lot of sense that more people would want to come. Because the plan worked and housing got cheaper.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps housing availability is sufficient but not necessary in drawing people to a desirable region, in a manner akin to the idea of induced demand in traffic engineering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Based on who you ask, Seattle is adding between 18,000 to 30,000 new people a year.

If somehow 100k new houses appeared on the market, prices would plummet. Sure the dropping prices would cause more people to move here, but not 70k more.

And even if 70k more did move here, add another 100k houses and at that point prices will go down.

Right now Seattle adds _less housing_ per year than the # of people who move here. Of course housing prices are shooting up.

In regards to only high end housing being built, this is due to three factors:

1\. The price of land, speculation has made land incredibly valuable, partially because

2\. The only market being served is the high end, until that market has been saturated with housing, housing developers will continue to target it. 100k new high end housing units and that market will have been rung dry and land prices will start to come down.

3\. Building regulations encourage high end housing to be built. This is starting to change, but low price housing isn't really buildable now days, though I imagine if #2 is solved, builders will start lobbying and this will get fixed. (If that is the route that is taken, society may not enjoy the long term repercussions but that isn't new! Best to have the building codes amended now in a reasonable forward thinking way)

<comment><USER12> > In regards to only high end housing being built

In any case, someone moving into a high-end home means they left some other less high-end home available for someone else.

<comment><USER13> This. I really don't understand how so many people don't understand this.

<comment><USER14> Because there's no such thing as a "less-high-end" home.

Person A leaves the housing unit they bought for $100k (back when housing had sane prices), to move into a $800k condo. Person B is trying to buy housing in a $200k neighborhood, where everything is currently priced at $600k. Person A's housing unit they just "left", gets listed for sale at $650k.

By your perspective, you perceive this as a "less-high-end" home just opened up. But for 95% of everyone in the country, this is perceived as yet-another $50k jump in the market price.

There is no such thing as "less-high-end" homes anymore. There is no such thing as trickle-down housing. Property values rise too fast (even in areas where construction outpaces population growth).

<comment><USER15> The condo is worth however much people will pay for.

Presumably when person A's old condo is up for sale at 650k there's a buyer.

Person A moved to condo B for 800k, and freed up condo A worth 650k, and there fore someone else with 650k can move in (which in turn frees up their old place).

I dunno what's trickle down if this ain't it.

<comment><USER16> What if "someone else" doesn't own "an old place" in the same housing market? Like say, all the new people moving to an area?

<comment><USER15> If the area is attracting immigrants from other counties/states, then it means demand is increased. It doesn't change the fact that building an expensive condo will only decrease demand (even if it's the high-end demand).

Unless the thesis is that high end condos themselves attract immigrants. I don't believe that to be the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "The problem is not _this_ or _that_ or _some other thing_!! The problem is there is not enough housing!"

This is what people/companies say who are deeply invested in making scads of money from sky high housing prices.

It's a ruse, a distraction, a canned answer designed to ensure the finger is not put on the real problem.

The real problem is that housing cannot be both affordable and a financial instrument.

<comment><USER18> > The real problem is that housing cannot be both affordable and a financial > instrument.

Can you elaborate on this? I don't know much about financial instruments and would like to know why these two are mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER19> I'm no economist but it seems blindingly obvious. To be an interesting financial investment, a house must appreciate faster than other means of savings. If that happens, houses will inevitably be unaffordable, because they rise in value faster than people can save to buy them.

<comment><USER20> That assumes an "interesting" financial investment has to appreciate faster than all other investments that exist and that nobody would ever trade returns for less risk.

People buy bonds, so I don't think that maximizing ROI is always necessarily the criteria for a desirable investment.

<comment><USER19> So you think people that want to buy a house just need to take on more riskier investments before buying a house? Get lucky, buy a house, get unlucky, ...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it that building housing doesn't work? Or is it that building housing doesn't work unless you build _enough_ of it quickly enough?

Doing better than SF at building housing is a pretty low bar. I see no evidence that the high-demand cities that are building more housing are building it at a rate that keeps up with demand. As it is, what housing they are building is probably helping keep rent prices rising gradually instead of spiraling out of control as they are in SF.

<comment><USER22> Note his hypothesis that _condos_ are the core of the problem -- they aren't rented, they're purchased with credit by young professionals who "spend the creditworthiness" they gained by moving to a creative-class city, and live in them until they sell them to other incoming young professionals. There could be plenty of _rental_ demand that isn't affected by building lots of dense primary-residence condos that just attract more of the same. He does wonder at the end what would happen if you built so much housing that you broke that cycle, but that would be hard.

Basically he's saying there are two tiers of housing consumers, and building dense condos does nothing at all for the lower tier who can never bridge the creditworthiness gap to get into them.

<comment><USER23> For everyone who was renting and decides to buy a dense condo surely opens up a rental unit for someone who can't afford or chooses not to buy.

<comment><USER22> But they weren't renting…they came from out of town to get to their high- paying creative job.

<comment><USER21> But they're going to be doing that (coming from out of town to take a high paying job) anyway. Without condos being built they'll just be putting that pressure on the rental market.

Also, a lot of the condos being built - at least here in NY - are rental units.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not so convinced by this. The "evidence" he links to is an opinion piece, not an empirical paper. The anecdotal evidence of prices going up in Toronto despite supply increases is equally unconvincing. For all we know prices would have gone up much more without supply increases. And at the end of the piece he even admits that prices would go down if supply increases were truly large... Well then do it. Build a huge amount. In the case of SF, level SOMA and put up 20 story apartment blocks. What do we have to lose? It's not like SOMA is picturesque.

<comment><USER25> > _What do we have to lose? It 's not like SOMA is picturesque._

Well, some people in SF will lose some additional profits if zoning laws are changed, so there is political pressure both ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is one way that it would not solve the problem to build more housing. That way would be that most renters and homebuyers are basically irrational, or systematically overvaluing the location of their residence when better options exist. I would argue that this is actually the case in the SF Bay Area.

For example, I live in Pittsburg, almost at the very end of the yellow line (it recently got extended to Antioch). I work in SF making a decent salary. My commute is pretty long, nearly an hour one way, sometimes longer. My rent? Well, for a two bedroom, two and a half bath condo with a garage, porch, and backyard, it costs me roughly $2100/month, and we don't have rent control here. My rent has been raised only twice in the 3 years I've lived here, and only by about $50 each time. The same amount of space in San Francisco, by my best estimate, would cost somewhere between $4k and $5k a month. Also, that space would probably be in a much much older building, in a denser and more dangerous place than my town.

So, one could immediately ask, if I'm able to work in SF with an SF- commensurate salary, and pay this low in rent, why is no one else doing this? As far as I can tell, people even living in SF are very lucky to have less than a 30min commute one way. So I tack on an extra hour per day of commute, or, lets say, roughly 20-25hrs per month.

People do vary in their subjective valuation of a long commute. I probably do consider it to be less of a problem than most people. But do people really consider it to be worth _nearly $2k-$3k_ a month? For someone making near what I am that would be more than my average hourly salary for time spent on the train. Again, people do vary in their respective valuations of time spent doing something other than optimally, but I would be surprised if it was worth that much.

Also consider that housing _is_ continuing to be built on the other side of the mountains in the east bay, and that in Pittsburg and especially in Antioch it is possible to get a lot of space for very cheap, still. Its not unreasonable to expect transportation to get better over time, either.

<comment><USER27> > People do vary in their subjective valuation of a long commute. I probably > do consider it to be less of a problem than most people. But do people > really consider it to be worth nearly $2k-$3k a month?

Yes. Two hours of commute every day make me extremely impatient and unhappy. And grump with coworkers and just generally fellow humans. Even 30min one-way, especially on BART, would make me unhappy. 30min on a bike is OK though.

If it were on a nice train, with seating and desks (to work on a laptop), it'd be a bit different. But BART definitely isn't that.

Before I started to mostly WFH, I had a ~7 min bike ride to work, that was fairly nice.

> Its not unreasonable to expect transportation to get better over time, > either.

Do you see any realistic signs that BART into the city will become meaningfully faster or more pleasant in the next ~10 years?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The article argues that more housing would increase the value of the housing already there and thus the prices would not decrease.

First, it's odd that the people who would ostensibly benefit, the NIMBY crowd, typically oppose new housing. Second, if this analysis were accurate, building more housing still seems like a good idea. It won't lower the cost of housing but would increase the value and let more people get housing.

Finally, the author also mentions that most new homes are put to their intended purpose - housing local residents. Perhaps that's true of "most" homes, but I've seen statistics that a hundred thousand Toronto homes are unoccupied [1]. Toronto homes are typically bought by Air BnB types and speculators, foreign and domestic.

In my view building houses is a good answer. Building new houses should be accompanied with taxes on unoccupied homes. If the cost doesn't go down but the value goes up, as the author suggests, that will be unintended but not bad.

1 - [https://betterdwelling.com/city/toronto/toronto-has- over-990...](https://betterdwelling.com/city/toronto/toronto-has- over-99000-unoccupied-homes-heres-where-they-are-interactive/#_)

</comment><comment><USER29> Building more supply may not work when you're dealing with hundreds of billions of dollars of money laundering from China

In BC, we have at least $5B of money laundering in real estate per year, and an absurd number of empty apartments / houses. They will pay obscene amounts to park their money here

We added a vacancy tax and foreign buyer tax to combat this, which has helped to an extent

</comment><comment><USER8> After jacking up the rent at every opportunity and ejecting one after another of my neighbors over the last ~decade, the landlord of the buildings next door (12 or 15 apartments altogether) sold the properties to an investment firm that boarded them all up and has been keeping them empty for about a year and allowing trash and demolition rubble to pile up. As the price continues to rise they are running out the clock to get permission to restructure the properties as condos and sell at a hefty profit.

Meanwhile the buildings lie empty while poor people live in tents in the park across the street. They do a much better job of keeping the little park clean than the property-rights-fetishizing assholes that are holding perfectly good housing off the market and trashing most of my block.

<comment><USER30> So the city has a rule that's preventing the firm from demoing and rebuilding and you're mad at the property owner?

<comment><USER31> Some people have a fixed enemy that will always be the bad guy no matter what.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The argument makes sense to me. This is a problem in Australia that is exacerbated by the tax write-offs investors get in the form of what they call Negative Gearing. My possibly flawed laymen's understanding of it is that for each property owned in addition to your primary home, any losses incurred through the ownership of these additional investment properties can be claimed as a tax write-offs. Couple this with short term interest free loans and a continual rise in prices (a trend that may be disappearing, at least temporarily) and the ability to leverage the home you already have, then you encourage speculative investment. Buy now and sell higher in a few years.

It's much harder for first home buyer's to break into the property market by the very fact they don't own property to leverage in the first place. And this isn't necessarily something only particularly wealthy people do. It's become ingrained in Australian society to treat housing as a financial asset and use it to generate wealth. The problem is if you don't already have one, or substantial means to acquire one, you are at a much greater disadvantage.

I only have my own perspective to rely upon after trying and failing to buy a home a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER33> The author Alex Danco's link that supposedly proves that building housing doesn't improve affordability is a poor review article by Michael Storper and Andres Rodríguez-Pose that is rather thoroughly debunked by their own colleagues Michael Manville, Michael Lens, and Paavo Monkkonen here: [https://twitter.com/mc_lens/status/1129502980498022401](https://twitter.com/mc_lens/status/1129502980498022401) In summary, Storper badly misrepresents or misunderstands the economic literature, and attacks strawman arguments, to try to avoid admitting that supply improves affordability.

The author also says, "The third factor that somehow gets left out of a lot of armchair debates about housing and yet is an essential (possibly THE essential) element in all of this is credit." As Kevin Erdmann explains in _Shut Out_ ([https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Out-Shortage-Recession- Universit...](https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Out-Shortage-Recession- University/dp/1538122146)), the opposite is true. Credit is the factor that people jump to to the exclusion of _rent_ (and expected rent given the low rate of homebuilding), which is directly related to supply constraints. Housing prices are high in the Bay Area because rents are high; low interest rates did not detach prices from rents.

Yes, there are a lot of factors in the housing market if you want to get deep in the weeds. But in my opinion, attempts to elevate second and third order factors to avoid dealing with the first-order factors of supply and demand are sophomoric.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm starting to believe that a fixing inequality will help the most. A $20 minimum wage and 70% tax rates on those earning more than $50k will end a lot problems. A job in SF, NYC will not look so great. People will move back to the mid-West because it'll make financial sense. Fewer immigrants would move to these high priced cities, the demand bubble would pop, and entrepreneurs will start companies all over the world instead of the Bay Area.

<comment><USER35> 70% tax rates on $50K? Total non-starter, even in CA. No chance of the Federal tax rate hitting that high, so CA State tax would have to jump up to 45%? Good luck getting that passed in the Legislature.

Thinking that inequality can be solved by taxing the rich ignores history, as well as the relationship between correlation and causation. Just because tax rates in the past were higher doesn't mean they were the cause of the lower inequality rates.

Oh, and it already makes financial sense to live in the Midwest. The problem is that many don't make the majority of decisions with their wallets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is a very thoughtful and well-reasoned piece, with the money line right at the end:

> My worry, and I hope I'm wrong here, is that on average, adding more housing > units just makes this cycle spin faster. (Unless you could add SO MANY > housing units that you could actually break through the wedge, that is. But > that seems to me like it'd be hard to do! That would also be quite unpopular > locally, as it would undermine an awful lot of locally built up wealth, and > any move to do that is usually unviable politically.)

I'm strongly in the pro-building camp, but I agree that it won't be enough unless you could build enough housing to break through the pent-up demand, and doing so would be challenging in the superstar cities.

Living in San Francisco, I suspect that if you could magically add a million new housing units this year, they'd sell. (I do think that would be enough to make a dent in prices, but with the entire state of California so deficient in housing I don't know how big the dent would be.)

The more important point that he makes is about the self-reinforcing positive feedback loop that drives homes as a financialized investment vehicle.

There's an easy, but politically unviable, fix for this, in the form of high taxes. The taxes strictly reduce the rate of return on your house, while conveniently paying for public services, and building in a self-interested reason to oppose ever-increasing home prices.

It's no surprise that the housing crisis is less acute in Texas where the property tax is high, and most acute in CA where the rate is very low AND assessment are effectively static.

I think that serious discussions of how we address the housing crisis must include not only increasing supply but also breaking the positive feedback loop on housing as a high-return investment in the hot economic centers.

</comment><comment><USER37> Every time this comes up I just can't escape the notion that it's really just because SF, geographically and culturally, has more desirable traits than other places. Temperate climate year round, travel hub, diverse thought, tech opportunity, walkable. What else has this? More people want to live there than it can handle. Build more housing, perhaps the price drops for the people who are there, but then that price will mean more people will want to move there. Wouldn't it be better to have another high quality population mecca nearby?

It's the same with homeless policy - if you make it attractive enough, you attract more homeless, unless surrounding areas have also implemented similar homeless policies.

Building more housing is a supply-side argument - what are some positive ways to reduce demand to move to SF?

<comment><USER2> Kick out the tech companies and prevent commercial construction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have come to expect bad articles about housing but I have to say this one was fairly on point and succinct.

The trend towards urbanization is obviously a factor so it's not just a question of building houses, it's a matter of building up enough to soak up demand and then some.

I see three big problems:

1\. Many cities incentivize building the wrong kind of housing. Look at Manhattan where most new housing below 125th street is not the least bit affordable, some exceeding $5000/sq ft.

2\. Capital is essentially global. Real estate in urban centers has become the de facto way to park money. This is a problem.

3\. Tax structures encourage this. I like the Swiss system that punitively taxes short term capital gains and property (and makes owning property in Switzerland reasonably restrictive). You need people to own housing units they don't live in. Who do you think you're renting that apartment from? But residential real estate has moved away from being an income-generating asset to being a speculative asset. Low capital gains tax rates encourage this. Also, for some reason, real estate assets tend to be exempt from AML type reporting like FATCA, FBAR, etc. No idea why. But this needs to end.

I think you could go a long way to fixing this by saying that if you own property in a given city you are a resident of that city, state and country and your worldwide income is taxable. This needs to be coupled with stopping the hiding of ownership through corporate shells.

<comment><USER39> >Who do you think you're renting that apartment from?

If enough of the housing market were publicly owned (see Vienna) or decommodified (meaning, it is illegal to own more than one housing unit/to rent property out. If you own a residential property you must live in it) the laws of supply and demand dictate that the price of the property would be lowered until the point that the people who would like to rent there, in aggregate, would be able to afford to purchase instead.

Of course this will probably never happen because too many people would have the rug swept out from under them in terms of net worth, but it is possible.

<comment><USER21> A city where no one can rent will die because young people can't move in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> While the article is correct that the machinery behind turning housing into an investment does warp the market, that's not the whole story. Something that's often weirdly missed in these discussions is the change in housing availability versus the change in population. SF and the Bay Area are not building enough new housing to match the population growth. I suspect the same is true of Toronto and other hot spots of unaffordability.

</comment><comment><USER41> For all the people talking about how of course we should increase population density: what should someone like me do? I'm neurologically over-sensitive to certain noises like subwoofers or dogs barking. So what should I do when all the housing is bulldozed and replaced by high-density apartments? Be forced to go move into the woods? And then who will provide food for my young children?

<comment><USER42> Newer apartments are pretty well insulated against noise. In fact some of the newer apartments in San Francisco are quieter than houses because the houses were never that great to begin with. And for what it's worth, growing up in a house in suburbia I heard dogs barking on a regular basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I feel like a crux of the author's argument (and not deeply discussed), is the process where increasing population and density leads to higher wages for the highly educated.

We could imagine new companies moving to the area, with their complete team in tow. This creates a new opportunity for me to jump ship in return for a raise. My employer then has some incentive to 'steal' someone from elsewhere and may offer higher wages. The net result being little change, but higher wages for us both.

Is that enough to feed into the loop that keeps housing costs high?

Maybe the key step is the arrival of new employers, which bring the credit and wealth that soaks up the space created by any new housing. Some employers, and those employees not paid enough to keep up will choose to exit. But those spaces will be filled by the highly-motivated quickly. Meanwhile the relatively poor will continually suffer, there is nothing created that satisfies them.

So, dear leaders, build new housing but restrict employers, to make the bell curve that matches the people you want to populate your city.

</comment><comment><USER44> The author's argument is that creating more supply will further increase housing prices because more educated professionals will move into the city. I see two issues with this argument. One, I don't think it's the limit of affordable housing that's preventing educated professionals from moving here. They're already coming here in droves, which is the initial cause of this problem (according to the author). Who says adding more housing will further increase the influx of these people? Two, suppose the above hypothesis is correct, then wouldn't their salaries go down? This is the entire basis of the author's argument as to why housing prices keep climbing; because by moving to the city, these professionals are immediately increasing future earning, which they borrow against from their well-to-do families. So doesn't increasing the flow counteract the forces driving prices up by decreasing these future earning?

</comment><comment><USER45> Just keep building housing until people don't want it anymore. The affordability will arrive when people who don't want to live next to a high- rise decide to move out.

</comment><comment><USER46> This author doesn't give enough deference to the market. Building more housing will not work, not if the current economic incentives exist. I would love to build housing in compact cities; I could make a fortune. It will take significantly more housing before the market will start to feel the impact, and will be forced to reduce prices due to too much supply. More housing, more affordable housing, more taxes, all of it will still be at the whim of the market.

</comment><comment><USER47> Counterintuitive as it may seem, basically you want to prevent job growth, because that's where housing demand comes from. Instead of competing with other places to get more good-paying jobs, play to lose. Encourage companies to move away. Cooperate with the many smaller cities that could really use more jobs.

It's load-balancing, basically.

</comment><comment><USER48> Demographically, we are almost out of the bubble. Currently the children of the Boomers have been buying houses, hence the serge in price. But most have now settled in, the market is starting to slow in most 'hot' cities, across N.American and Europe.

</comment><comment><USER49> It's not just housing that's the issue, it's zoning. Flexible zoning laws will reduce living costs,not just by reducing house prices, but by reducing transportation costs.

</comment><comment><USER17> Here in Melbourne vast numbers of skyscraper apartment towers have been built by greedy, short term developers aimed at making a quick buck.

Now we have apartment towers every full of too-tiny-to-be liveable apartments built to shoddy standards - many of them constructed using fire risk cladding which has made them effectively worthless.

That's what a house price boom buys you.

[https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/hundreds- of-b...](https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/hundreds-of-buildings- potentially-covered-in-flammable-cladding-that-caused-catastrophic-fire/news- story/9b55bb837db68e721d9fb888aa07ddf3)

<comment><USER50> _Here in Melbourne vast numbers of skyscraper apartment towers have been built by greedy, short term developers aimed at making a quick buck._

Right, and back in the day housing was built by non-greedy, long-term developers aimed at making a long buck.

Something must have happened to housing developers to turn them from being very kind to very rapacious.

Yeah, that must be it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Condos are miniature money machines in a low-interest-rate environment. There always will be a high demand for money machines.

When/if we cross over to a secular bear market for credit in which interest rates broadly increase reliably for a number of years, the problems with affordability largly will subside. Until then....

</comment><comment><USER52> Well, let's try it and find out. What we doing now ain't working.

</comment><comment><USER53> Let's try it and see.

</comment><comment><USER54> As an analyst who works a lot with housing data. The dynamic in Melbourne is very similar to what is seen here in Toronto. I particularly agree with the comments regarding the economic leverage and wealth effect built into home ownership. It has been the classic way of building wealth in Australia for all income groups. And it is indeed powerful. The effect for home asset class is particularly high to by the Basil II (and probably Basil I) banking regulations which allow banks to lend out much higher ratio of loans to capital where the security is housing. I believe this is the primary reason why home loans charge a lower interest rate than say a loan to buy stocks or a business loan. It is indeed a powerful 'gift' to be lent money at a subsidized rate. And this has been given to all home buyers. I also feel that eventually this positive feedback loop will stop or go into reverse. My guess is a new equilibrium point of housing value will occur at about the point where the long term interest rate + turnover costs = rental yield + long term rent inflation. At that point borrowing money to invest in housing should not in the long run make or lose you any money. Unlike housing prices, rents are tied to what people can afford. Over the past 10 years in Victoria rents in metro Melbourne have increased by 3.3% p.a. This is actually lower than regional Victoria (3.6%). This is higher than inflation but quite close to income growth. Note: Metro Melbourne makes up 80% of the states 6.4 million population and the higher rates in country areas probably represents bleed over from the Melbourne into satellite commuter towns. Gross rental yield (rent/property value) is 2.5% for houses, 3.5% for flats/apartments (probably what you call condos). But this is probably on the high side. Maintenance costs are probably at least 1% for houses, and probably higher for flats due to their higher depreciation and construction costs. Call it 1.5% for houses and 2% for flats. Houses have a premium due to their ability to be developed more easily into higher density housing. Cost for selling a house is about 8-10% of value. If you sold every 20 years that would be 0.4-0.5% p.a. Current interest rates in Australia for a home loan is about 4%. So the current equation for flats would look something like 4% + 0.5% < 2%+3.3%. The right side is higher than the left, so flats might be below the long term equilibrium price, but not by much and if you need to put a 20% deposit down, then the opportunity cost of not having that 20% invested in, say, shares might mean that it is already at equilibrium price. Interest rates could drop, but currently in Australia, the banks have shown little inclination to drop their rates even if the central bank has. Back to the original post. I don't count housing affordability as property prices. I would count it in rental prices. And for this I do think that building new homes does effect housing affordability for renters. From the data I have tight supply or surging incomes = increase in rental prices. While loose supply or low income growth = stagnant rents.

</comment><comment><USER55> Why don't we try it first?

</comment><comment><USER56> Building more housing will not work. Unless you force builders and owners do you sell less than what the market is willing to pay, building more will only lead to more expensive housing. At some point there will be saturation, and the market will have to start reducing its prices, but that is a very far off Hope

</comment><comment><USER57> Building more housing in existing urban areas as a practical matter just means increasing the real wealth and income of the landlord class. If we _really_ wanted to solve the housing crisis, it would be through a homesteading program where new cities were created in empty land and people were encouraged to move there by being offered a plot of land for a filing fee and the promise to actually live there.

<comment><USER58> Don't small towns have plenty of cheap housing already? The shortages are in commuting distance of strong labor markets.

<comment><USER57> It's all about creating an economy of scale. Nobody wants to be the first one to spend $100k+ to live in a meth addled opium pit with no future. On the other hand, if you offer thousands of people a fresh start it could work. Imagine for example if Amazon built a warehouse, err I mean "fulfillment center" in the middle of nowhere on federal land with highway access and at a reasonable distance from existing markets and offered their standard wage, and then in addition there were a homestead opportunity. No, think bigger and don't just limit it to Amazon or any other single company. There really is room for a public/private partnership here to grow the middle class and free workers from having all their marginal wage increases (and then some) go to rent increases.

If there are existing small towns where the local landowners would be willing to participate in a homestead program then sure that would be great.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ricey – Cross platform system information tool - <AUTHOR> https://rubenrocha.github.io/ricey/ <comment><USER2> I think if this was available in some package managers, it would be pretty useful. I mean being able to apt-get/yum/brew/choccy "ricey" and have it work on all of them would make this a deal breaker

<comment><AUTHOR> If people actually like the idea, I'll most likely try to get it in some/most package managers</comment></comment>