Berlin's Popular Shopping Streets Will Go Car-Free - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/08/walking-in-berlin-friedrichstrasse-tauentzienstrasse/595597 <comment><USER2> As someone who lived next to the main square in Amsterdam

I never understood why people choose to drive with a car on the roads that cross the city (if they don't live there/uber/taxi drivers)

Main streets in cities should be car-free

I'm glad to hear about Berlin decision. For many more to come

<comment><USER3> I really don't see why taxis or Uber should be allowed, at least if they are not fully electric. They are often larger than private cars, and they drive only the chauffeur and typically one grown up customer around, who could easily have walked, taken the metro or a bus. Half the time they are just waiting around for customers while the engine is on so the chauffeur can cool down or warm up inside.

A better exception would be EVs. Then lower their speed limit to 20 or 30 km/h in the city center, narrow car space to one lane in each direction, and free up the rest of the space on the streets for pedestrians, bikes, electric scooters, etc.

<comment><USER4> Not everyone is capable of walking long distances, using bikes or electric scooters. Taxis are a form of public transport.

I'm not saying everyone who uses them needs to use them, but if you ban them outright you ban certain people outright, which is discrimination in the absence of alternatives.

<comment><USER5> > in the absence of alternatives

Can't make this argument any longer. Plenty of electric vehicles which can serve as taxis, and in the UK they manufacture one especially for the purpose. [1]

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't even understand why anyone is driving down a road like that in the first place. Where are they coming from and where are they going? Where are they planning to park when they get there? They surely aren't parking outside individual shops?

I can understand taxis, delivery vans, busses, chauffeur cars, disabled people, but when I see a private individual in a small cheap car driving through the very centre of somewhere like London I can't think of any explanation for that whatsoever. I wouldn't attempt to drive through a major city unless my life depended on it. Even if you were radically pro-car there doesn't seem to be any logical explanation as for what these people are doing.

<comment><USER7> Berlin's public transport is notoriously bad (imho), a lot of it is owed to being divided for decades and the rest is just Berlin not taking care of it. Personal transportation is a much better alternative for many routes time wise, and hard to ever beat comfort wise.

There's a lot of commercial parking available, and it's not that expensive either.

<comment><USER8> Notoriously bad? Compared to what cities? It's certainly one of the better ones in Germany, if not even the best. You can absolutely get around in Berlin without a car.

The other larger cities and conglomerations in Germany don't compare favourably, with Rhine-Ruhr (which stretches roughly from Cologne to Dortmund) being particularly bad.

In Europe Berlin's public transport system probably is only rivalled by those in London, Paris and Amsterdam.

<comment><USER7> You _can_ get around in Berlin without a car, you're absolutely right -I've done it myself- it's just not convenient compared to using a car (or bike, if you're traveling light and reasonable distances), which is why, I believe, many people are using their cars despite the fact that public transportation exists. I very much prefer Hamburg's public transportation for speed, reliability and upkeep (though they often sucked at planning for rush hour and large events when I was living there), and the (albeit limited) experiences I have in Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and Bonn were better, too.

It wasn't my intention to insult anyone's home town, Berlin's history explains a lot of the situation, which I mentioned in my comment, so please don't take it personally.

<comment><USER9> Maybe you have a much higher level of stress tolerance than me, but driving though Berlin is anything but convenient.

And unless you are driving at night or the early morning it's also not faster than the S or U-Bahn with the added hassle of having to find a parking spot.

<comment><USER7> Possibly regarding the stress tolerance, the fondness (or lack thereof) of Berlin's specific culture likely plays a role as well.

And I'm not saying that the car is superior for any and all connections, but that it's superior for many that aren't easy to do by PT. It's similar with trains: Berlin to Hamburg is easy by train, but if your destination requires a switch or two, the car is often the quicker option on medium distances.

<comment><USER10> My partner drives to work by car from Fhain to Reinickendorf because the PT connection is not great and it takes more time. So that totally makes sense. For me commuting to work into Mitte is 20 minutes with PT with one change at Alexanderplatz, which is super easy. So it depends i guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good.

Where I live (town of around 250k inhabitants), cars were banned from the main shopping street in the city center in the 1970s. It was an extremely controversial decision. Today it is one of top 15 most expensive shopping streets in Germany and the 9th most visited shopping street [0]. If anyone would propose to again allow cars there, there would be an outcry from the public and the businesses.

Before: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Kreuzung...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Kreuzung_am_Bertoldsbrunnen_an_einem_SSV_Samstag.jpg)

After: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/2017-05-...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/2017-05-02_Altstadt_%28Freiburg_im_Breisgau%29_18.jpg)

They slowly extended car-free zones during the 80s and 90es. Five years ago, they closed down another major 4-lane street and made it a pedestrian or reduced traffic zone, which was also (again) hugely unpopular, but is now seen as a big success (despite minor controversies which have nothing to do with banning cars) [1].

Before: [https://deacademic.com/pictures/dewiki/85/UB_Freiburg.jpg](https://deacademic.com/pictures/dewiki/85/UB_Freiburg.jpg)

After: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Werthman...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Werthmannstra%C3%9Fe_%28Freiburg_im_Breisgau%29_jm57877.jpg) (the black building replaced the abhorrent building in the previous picture)

[0] [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser-Joseph- Stra%C3%9Fe_(Fre...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser-Joseph- Stra%C3%9Fe_\(Freiburg_im_Breisgau\))

[1] [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platz_der_Alten_Synagoge_(Frei...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platz_der_Alten_Synagoge_\(Freiburg_im_Breisgau\))

</comment><comment><USER12> To put this in perspective: The plan is to do this _for a single weekend_.

And maybe even more putting it in perspective: Berlin's senator of traffic and environment has announced a lot of things regarding "traffic change", new bicycle paths etc. But there's a really huge gap between announcements and what's really happening.

<comment><USER13> Correct. Living in Berlin for 5 years now and do almost everything by bike. Change is extremely slow or non existent. Some stuff is going on in Kreuzberg and Mitte, but it' Taking ages.

<comment><USER14> I can think of quite a few streets where one oftthe lanes were converted to bike lanes over the last few years. Still have a hard time believing they had the guts to do this to car owners. Yes, progress is slow. Especially compared to capitalistic endeavours like the recent scooter rollout. Who's it were faster, but also hate the "they are just talking" narrative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> munk-a Hooray! In my locale (Vancouver BC) we've slowly watched the city deploy more of those fake on-road-patios onto the main commercial street here and I'm hoping we'll just shut down car traffic soon since, honestly, if you're driving in downtown you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER15> i've been told by people in the planning office (in my town, not vancouver) that that's the main purpose of those on-street "temporary" patios - to get people used to the idea that streets are public spaces, not thoroughfares for cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Calling the Friedrichstraße a popular shopping street is not really correct. It's pretty crowded by foot and car traffic because it's close to Checkpoint Charlie and not far from the Brandenburger Tor. But it's not very popular. For normal customers, new soulless shopping malls have been built in other areas. For luxury shopping, people go to Kurfürstendamm. There's a small shopping mall that's 80% empty (Quartier 205 or 206). The idea to close the street for traffic is also to see if it makes it more popular again. But then it should be done during the week,too.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know the middle steps, but the end step is everyone wishing they had made the area car-free earlier.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looking forward to this. I've just spent two weeks in Kiev, where they block a large section of Khreschatyk St. (8 car lanes plus very wide side walks) around Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) plus some of the side roads each weekend. It makes for an amazing atmosphere and lots of people come out to socialize, chill, shop etc. and I'm almost certain business is better on pedestrianized days vs. 8 lanes full of cars for no good reason.

<comment><USER19> How do citizens who have limited mobility get around in the area this is enforced in? Huge proponent of these efforts (having experienced car free zones in Spain), but I'm always interested in how accommodations are made for people who have a hard time walking (whether it's due to age or an ailment).

<comment><USER20> They walk...

Check Google Maps for some representative distances (i. e. picl some apparment building, then map the route to the next supermarket, doctor's office, etc).

You will have a store within 500m for the vast majority of residential buildings, and often within 200m. The closest bus stop should also rarely be farther away than about 150m.

Wheelchairs and electric scooters are used almost exclusively by paraplegics, not by, say, elderly people with arthritis. Having far lower obesity rates compared to the US helps.

My impression is that car ownership is exceedingly rare among the elderly, below the already low 30% of households owning cars.

But these pedestrian areas don't make too much of a difference: they tend to be just single streets, so you can always park on the parallel streets and walk just one block.

<comment><USER19> > They walk...

My grandmother is 90, and is unable to walk more than a few feet at a time without being in debilitating pain from advanced arthritis and her being too old for knee replacement surgery. These are the edge cases I'm interested in, especially as the first world rapidly ages and the number of people in the population with mobility issues increases. If the solution is exceptional accessibility for wheelchairs and electric scooters, perfect!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a former delivery driver I'm curious how shops get shipments of multiple pallets of...everything? Early in the morning are trucks allowed? are the pallets broken down and handtrucked to each shop?

<comment><USER22> I've seen this in some cities (Vienna, for example), and the bollards are lowered (either manually or hydraulically) in the early hours of the morning so that deliveries can be made. They go back up around 7am.

<comment><USER23> I was in Denmark where they had that. Unfortunately, they'd constantly let through "special" vehicles, just enough to pretty much ruin it.

<comment><USER24> In many smaller Danish towns you _can_ drive on top the shopping streets, but there'll be big signs telling you that it's only allowed for "service/special vehicles".

If you get caught there you'll probably get a nice fine. And you can be sure all the pedestrians will make you drive slow.

Finally, the road usually has tiles so you don't get in there by accident, nor would you want to.

<comment><USER23> There were plenty of them driving, slowly, and loudly beeping. Enough so it was simply impossible to walk without constantly having to move over for them.

It didn't really work as a pedestrian mall. I've been in other European cities where it did work, i.e. no vehicles.

<comment><USER25> > There were plenty of them driving, slowly, and loudly beeping. Enough so it > was simply impossible to walk without constantly having to move over for > them.

Where in Denmark was that? I don't see any loudly beeping delivery cars in Copenhagen.

<comment><USER23> It was about 10 years ago. I don't remember just where it was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In the sixties it became popular among urban planners, at least in the American Midwest, to have shopping districts ban cars. It did not prove popular, in fact you could say it led to the rise of shopping malls. Most if not all of these car free plazas were torn out. Is history repeating itself in Europe?

What happens if everyone moves to electric cars and the pollution problem from car exhaust disappears or is greatly abated in the inner city? Does closing the street off still make sense?

<comment><USER27> You should visit Europe once, you'll see that life here is different.

Specifically regarding Friedrichstraße: It's in the city center, brimming with tourists. 3 major subway lines have stops there. Few cars drive in there as it is, because you have bigger streets nearby that are better connections. If you still want to go with your car, you just park in a parallell side street, there are even parking garages if you don't want to look for a spot.

Having it car free will be lovely for the tourists, cafés and restaurants will put out tables.

The same was done in other city centers like Budapest or Vienna decades ago, and it worked out extremely well for everyone involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Fun fact: I live in a car-free "downtown" area in Europe. I have to walk 15 minutes to reach my car... but just 5 minutes to the train station.

Not complaining though; it's a beautiful walk.

</comment><comment><USER29> What happened in Barcelona? I read that they are unwinding the superblocks (large, largely car-free zones). Is that correct? I t thought it had gone well.

<comment><USER30> I heard they did some prototype that ended up being successful once they added some green elements and child playground.

[http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/es/](http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/es/)

<comment><USER29> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The (European) city I live close to has done this very step about 30 years ago when their main shopping strip was converted to a pedestrian / bike-only street.

However, everytime I go there, the street is still full with cars: delivery trucks that bring the retail goods to the stores (which are not easily accessible otherwise), construction trucks for the apparently constant repairs they're doing on the road, ambulances, etc. Even when most of them are not _driving_ you're still constantly surrounded by (mostly big) vehicles.

<comment><USER32> In Vienna the central pedestrian tourist/shopping streets are open for deliveries until 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning, so if you go there at those times, it's quite chaotic. But then all the vehicles are gone for the rest of the day.

<comment><USER33> These days most shopping streets also tends to be closed from traffic for security reasons. So it is probably mostly an organizational issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Please please do this in the US too.

<comment><USER35> That's gonna take a while.. [https://granolashotgun.com/2019/05/13/obstacle- course/](https://granolashotgun.com/2019/05/13/obstacle-course/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The interesting part of the story is not so much that Berlin is finally making its main shopping street car-free, but why it hasn't done so before.

Dutch cities and towns have had car-free or car-poor shopping streets since as long as I can remember, certainly the early 1980s. It's not unusual even in smaller towns. And Munich shows that car-free city centers also exist in Germany, just not in Berlin.

<comment><USER37> We have a car free shopping street in Adelaide, Australia. It's fairly nice. I used to work in an office on that street and the one thing I miss that I didn't expect was how fast it was to get around. Now I'm working somewhere else and the places I get lunch from are the same distance away but navigating through the roads means it takes twice as long to walk to where I want to go. It's also just generally ugly and louder at the new place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Friedrichstraße is not a shopping street by any means. It's probably one of the most desolate places I can think of in the city 'centre' (Berlin has many city centres)

<comment><USER39> The official Berlin website disagrees with you, [https://www.berlin.de/en/shopping/shopping- streets/](https://www.berlin.de/en/shopping/shopping-streets/). I live in Berlin and disagree too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > At Tauentzienstrasse, the street is wide enough for a more radical makeover. > If it's fully closed for good, it could accommodate cafés and what Germans > call "lying meadows"—lawns intended for lounging and sunbathing—in its > median.

Wow, I was just thinking an hour ago that they should do that to queens boulevard, while crossing it (always very scary).

</comment><comment><USER40> So when does this begin? I'm about to go to Berlin for ICFP and would love to stand in a car-free street and imagine all cities were like this.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's starting. Finally.</comment>


Krugman Rattled On C-Span - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mises.org/archives/009443.asp

<comment><USER2> He didn't seem rattled to me... More like, amused, which was what I was as soon as I heard "Ron Paul" and "economy" in the same sentence. (Ron Paul wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve during his campaign for President. Imagine what life would be like now with no Federal Reserve to control interest rates; then put yourself in Krugman's shoes being talked down to by a random caller, after repeatedly calling attention to the housing crisis more than just about anyone else since 2006, and after winning a Nobel prize.) I'm pretty sure he wasn't rattled.</comment>


Pictures Show What the 1918 Flu Pandemic Looked Like (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gabrielsanchez/deadly-pandemic-world-influenza-world-war-wwi-flu <comment><USER2> from: [https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/14/8/07-1313_article](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/14/8/07-1313_article)

"Many influenza experts, policy makers, and knowledgeable observers believe that a novel influenza A (H1N1) strain directly caused most deaths during the 1918–19 pandemic, often from a hemorrhagic pneumonitis that rapidly progressed to acute respiratory distress syndrome and death (1–3). Not surprisingly, plans and resources to respond to the next influenza pandemic focus almost exclusively on the virus, i.e., preventive vaccines and antiviral treatment of infections with a novel influenza strain (4). However, healthcare providers, medical experts, and published data from the 1918 period suggest that most deaths were caused by secondary bacterial pneumonias (5–12); hemorrhagic pneumonitis that rapidly progressed to death was considered an alarming but uncommon clinical manifestation (8,11–13)."

The way I'm reading that, it doesn't seem that it's that clear that it was the flu that was to blame.

And it seems a pretty fair guess that the reason it spread was as a result of the end of WWI.</comment>


Killing a process and all of its descendants - <AUTHOR> http://morningcoffee.io/killing-a-process-and-all-of-its-descendants.html <comment><USER2> This is why cgroups were invented. They solve this problem. Start a process in its own cgroup, and you can later confidently kill the process and all of its descendants. Container "technologies" use cgroups extensively, as does systemd service management.

<comment><USER3> [CGroups original developer]

Yes, for tracking processes and reliable resource control. Prior to cgroups, in Google's Borg cluster management daemon the best strategy I was able to come up with for reliably and efficiently tracking all the processes in a job was:

\- assign each job a supplementary group id from a range reserved for Borg, and tag any processes that were forked into that job with that group id

\- use a kernel netlink connector socket to follow PROC_EVENT_FORK events to find new processes/threads, and assign them to a job based on the parent process; if the parent process wasn't found for some reason then query the process' groups in /proc to find the Borg-added group id to determine which job it's a part of.

\- if the state gets out of sync (due to a netlink queue overflow, or a daemon restart) do a full scan of /proc (generally avoided since the overhead for continually scanning /proc got really high on a busy machine).

That way we always have the full list of pids for a given group. To kill a job, nuke all the known processes and mark the group id as invalid, so any racy forks will cause the new processes to show up with a stale Borg group id, which will cause them to be killed immediately.

This approach might would have had trouble keeping up with a really energetic fork bomb, but fortunately Borg didn't generally have to deal with actively malicious jobs, just greedy/misconfigured ones.

Once we'd developed cgroups this got a lot simpler.

<comment><USER4> Was giving each job its own UID not an option? users are the original privilege separation after all and kill -1 respects that.

<comment><USER3> No, because multiple jobs being run by the same end-user could share data files on the machine, in which case they needed to share the same uid. (Or alternatively we could have used the extra-gid trick to give shared group access to files, but that would have involved more on-disk state and hence be harder to change, versus the job tracking which was more ephemeral.) It's been a while now, but I have a hazy memory that in the case where a job was the only one with that uid running on a particular machine, we could make use of that and avoid needing to check the extra groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The GNU coreutils timeout command encapsulates a lot of these issues. It's surprisingly difficult to handle all the edge cases and races.

[https://www.maizure.org/projects/decoded-gnu- coreutils/timeo...](https://www.maizure.org/projects/decoded-gnu- coreutils/timeout.html)

<comment><USER6> Cool. Anyone know how they make diagrams like those?

<comment><USER7> I was curious as well. According to the author, "All the diagrams were hand- crafted in PowerPoint."

[https://github.com/MaiZure/coreutils-8.3/issues/1#issuecomme...](https://github.com/MaiZure/coreutils-8.3/issues/1#issuecomment-455773553)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sometimes I wonder if I'm on a list somewhere for frequent Google searches such as this one - "How to kill a parent with all the children"!

<comment><USER9> Personally I use `killall` command and works as expected, at least on Debian.

For instance, when I want to stop conky, all I do is run `killall conky` and kills all of its processes at once.

Another longer way to do such thing is to run `kill -9 $(pidof conky)` which kills all returned processes.

<comment><USER10> Just be careful around Solaris!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bazel-watcher tries to accomplish this on Linux by using process group IDs. It works, if imperfectly sometimes. I ported this to Windows[1] using Job Objects. As usual, the Windows API was hell, and I made use of undocumented syscalls in order to make it work (though that part is partly Go's fault: when you start a process, it immediately drops the thread handle on the floor. If you start a process suspended, that means it's impossible to resume _using documented APIs._ )

Thankfully Raymond Chen wrote an article[2] about Job Objects which helped me figure out the last bits. I genuinely am not sure I could have gotten it right without that article. There's so many subtle ways to fail!

[1] [https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel- watcher/pull/144/files](https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel- watcher/pull/144/files)

[2] [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20130405-00/?p=47...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20130405-00/?p=4743)

<comment><USER12> I'm confused by this post, but I'm an ex-dev on the NT kernel.

ResumeThread is a well documented API. As is TerminateJobObject. The one thing I find a bit baroque is the recently added way to make sure a process is in a job on creation, which I believe is part is the ProcThreadAttributes mechanism.

<comment><USER11> Yes, ResumeThread is. NtResumeProcess is what I had to use, because Go immediately closes the thread handle.

I'm sure it's safe to rely on NtResumeProcess. I have used it since XP without issue. But I definitely wish there was a better way to go back from a process to a thread. The best I could find is using Toolhelp32 to iterate all the threads on the system, which I believe is just wrapping NtQuerySystemInformation. Would've worked but definitely wasn't fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> On Linux you can also use prctl with PR_SET_PDEATHSIG to set a signal that will be sent to all child processes when the parent dies. This is a syscall you'd need to make from in the program. See 'man 2 prctl'.

</comment><comment><USER14> One low hanging fruit I've thrown into my ssh-ing aliases/functions is is just throwing 'timeout' on the front. I usually exit cleanly and/or don't spin up zombie-prone processes, but sometimes I do dumb things, so to exit after a day...

timeout 86400 ssh email@example.com

I was reading the man page for timeout, and it looks like you can throw some kill options, but I never needed them, so I never looked for them.

</comment><comment><USER15> Really nice writing style on this article.

It covers everything that needs to be covered, but it also gets right to the point. Yet without being overly terse or dry.

And it explains everything clearly. So often the writer is good at understanding an idea but not conveying it. This lays it out where it's easy to pick up.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can somebody re-explain the last part about nohup propagation to descendant processes?

I don't quite get what the implications are. The author also doesn't seem to talk about their solution for it in the context.

</comment><comment><USER17> >but on BSD and its variants like MacOS, the session ID isn't present or always zero

Don't know about macOS, but session ID/pointer does present on FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

</comment><comment><USER18> Related post with interesting comments:

UNIX one-liner to kill a hanging Firefox process:

[https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2008/09/unix-one-liner-to- kill-h...](https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2008/09/unix-one-liner-to-kill-hanging- firefox.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't this exactly why you can freeze cgroups?

</comment><comment><USER20> Even _waiting for a process to exit_ is surprisingly hard (impossible?) in Linux, unless it's your child.

<comment><USER21> That is getting considerably easier with the addition of pidfds, though: [https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/794707/93ffb35438fd3710/](https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/794707/93ffb35438fd3710/)

<comment><USER22> > Beyond the ability to unambiguously specify which process should be waited > for, this change will eventually enable another interesting feature: it will > make it possible to wait for a process that is not a child — something that > waitid() cannot do now. Since a pidfd is a file descriptor, it can be passed > to another process via an SCM_RIGHTS datagram in the usual manner. The > recipient of a pidfd will, once this functionality is completed, be able to > use it in most of the ways that the parent can to operate on (or wait for) > the associated process.

So, to wait for a process that is not your child, do you have to get the relevant pidfd from its parent? In which case, this doesn't help all that much. Or is there some other way to get pidfds for arbitrary processes?

<comment><USER20> Perhaps pidfd_open(pid, ...)? [https://lwn.net/Articles/789023/](https://lwn.net/Articles/789023/)

I find it bizarre they called it "pidfd_" rather than just "process_" or "proc_"... almost seems like they deliberately avoided the obvious?

<comment><USER23> It's because the object you get is a file descriptor.

In fact it's exactly equivalent to getting a file descriptor for /proc/$pid -- Christian (the person who developed the patchsets) quite cleverly solidified a trick that some folks knew about for several years (that you could use /proc/$pid as a race-free way of checking if a process has died if you grabbed a handle while it was still alive). Before pidfd_send_signal(2) there wasn't a way to use that "interface" nicely. But now it's a first-class citizen (and Christian had to fight a lot of battles to get this in over several releases).

It's really cool work and I have high hopes it will be used far and wide because it solves so many individual problems in one fell swoop.

<comment><USER24> > It's because the object you get is a file descriptor.

It is, but you're opening the object, not the descriptor (which doesn't even exist yet). When you open a kernel object, you always get back a (new) file descriptor representing that object. It's against previous naming conventions too. It's not like mkfifo() was called mkfifofd() or socket() was called socketfd() or perf_event_open() was called perf_event_fd_open()...

I'm really amused that you're so excited about it and find it so cool. I mean, I'm not suggesting it isn't awesome that they added it, but to me, it's such a glaring obvious deficiency that I'm completely flabbergasting that a lot of battles had to be fought to include it. It should've been added and embraced with open arms over two decades ago...

<comment><USER23> > It is, but you're opening the object, not the descriptor (which doesn't even > exist yet).

pidfd_open(2) is still a proposed interface, and isn't in mainline yet (and if I'm remembering the ML discussions correctly, it might not even go in any time soon). The currently-available interfaces are pidfd_send_signal(2), CLONE_PIDFD, and the new pidfd_poll(2) support for pidfds. In that context, calling it "pidfd_" makes more sense (since you're operating on existing handles) and thus pidfd_open(2) also makes sense because otherwise the naming would be needlessly inconsistent.

There are also several pre-existing APIs that are called process_ (such as process_vm_{read,write}v(2)) which use pids and not pidfds -- so calling the new APIs process_ (or even proc_) could lead to confusion. From memory the first couple of iterations of the patchset changed the name several times until we landed on pidfd_ and nobody really complained much afterwards.

Also (and now I'm just nitpicking), mkfifo(3) doesn't give you an fd -- it's just a wrapper around mknod(2). But I do get your point.

> I'm really amused that you're so excited about it and find it so cool.

I might be a little bit more biased towards thinking it's cool, since the developer is a good friend of mine and we went back and forth on the design quite a lot (the fact he managed to get /proc/$pid fds to have these features is pretty remarkable and it's unbelievably cool that it didn't require having multiple classes of fds -- if you'd have asked me a year ago I would've said it'd be very hard to get right and would never be merged because it'd be so invasive). But thinking that it's neat isn't mutually exclusive with thinking that (something like) it should've been implemented a long time ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Off topic, but this headline makes me think "...unto the tenth generation upon the Earth..."

</comment><comment><USER26> advanced programming in the unix environment is an excellent book that dives more into this

</comment><comment><USER27> I just use rkill</comment>


FutureAdvisor (YC S10) Maps Your Investment Portfolio - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5611727/futureadvisor-maps-your-investment-portfolio

<comment><USER2> This looks like a cool service. However, there are only a few brokers (mine is not listed, boo).

I've also noticed every investment site (understandably) has no student options (i.e. no salary ranges below 30k, no way to say I expect to be making $x once I graduate and play around with it). It'd be cool if someone paid attention to us since some of us do invest, but I can understand the neglect at the same time.

<comment><USER3> Great feedback.

On the brokers front: we're working diligently on that, and should have many more brokerages supported soon. We'll post something on our blog, or if you'd like I can drop you a note personally (just let me know your email: firstname.lastname@example.com)

It's not neglect - honest. It's just trimming the feature set so that we could get to launch and get in front of real customers and start to get valuable feedback which would directionally guide the product. Students, both those starting out and those already investing, is on our list of folks we want to support.

You can actually use the product today to "play around": just put in your age when you graduate, and what you think you'll be making. The projections are admittedly pretty sensitive, especially when you're young, but it should give you a good overview.

Any and all feedback always appreciated. firstname.lastname@example.com is me. Thanks, -Bo

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that's definitely an accurate workaround I was just hoping I could factor in how my college years will affect my investments (like you said projects are pretty sensitive, so a few years and a few thousand each year may change things a lot)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm, looks like your mongrels are down. You're getting a 502 Bad Gateway! /trollface</comment>


Ask HN: Why is it so difficult to use Emacs for Web Development? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a Web developer. I have been using a variety of editors and ide-s for web development(php, javascript,html,css).6 Months before i decided to learn a true editor and started using emacs. learned all the basics, used the starter kit,practiced using buffer, windows  etc..
I got  a grip in 2 months.  Recently a month ago i started learning about vim and i found a lot of plugins to achieve the things i want.I'm finding to achieve the same effect in emacs you have to do a lot(for php/js/css/html editing).
Here are the list of things I'm finding hard. Note: These things are related when i'm editing php/html/css/js.
syntax hightlighting(php/smarty). -- the php major mode is too old and it always highlights html/smarty inside the php code incorrectly.
-- I love ido-mode but i couldn't find  how to define a project and fuzzy match files inside the predefined directory
--- I can setup nerdtree plugin to get a quick overview pane on the left with the files i'm working on with vim. But configuring speedbar and source code browser in emacs is bit difficult.
--- Context aware completion I really don't know how to do that. I have seen something like that in clojure mode where it shows the definition of a method in the messages area.
Tags-generation: The tags generated with excrebant-ctags doesnot always work with php.In vim it is easy i can open a file containing the definition right under the cursor.
---Manual lookup I want to lookup the manual for a particular word under the cursor without opening the browser.(in the messages area(mini-buffer))
<comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>- I love ido mode and switching b/w files in tramp,buffers,local files using ido-mode.
does anyone point me in the right direction? do you use emacs for same kind of editing i do? What is your work flow?.
Thanks </comment><comment><USER2> Instead of nerdtree, I use ECB

<http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/packages/html/ecb_2.html>

This screencast showed me alot of new things

<http://platypope.org/yada/emacs-demo/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using emacs for a few years for php/js/css/html. I think it's great as-is without any extra addons. I don't like context completion or tag generation though. Just not my thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/nXhtml/doc/nxhtml.html></comment>


Ask HN: Why are there so many apps? - <AUTHOR> There are millions of apps. Thousands of new ones get released every day.
I probably use 10 different messaging apps on a weekly basis.
Every car, appliance, city, school, bank, grocery store, airline, festival, celebrity, have their own apps.
I worked in mobile application development for the past 5 years. I know how much it costs to build even the simplest application.
Why are there so many apps? How is this sustainable? Why didn't anyone come up with a better solution? Why is nobody talking about this? <comment><USER2> > Why are there so many apps?

An app allows a company to stick their logo (as an icon) on the customer's phone, where they'll see it constantly. It's a form of advertising.

Having an app on the customer's phone allows a company to track that person and push messages to them.

A business might feel compelled to have an app because their competitors have apps. They may believe that they need an app to attract the younger generations of customers.

> How is this sustainable?

For a large company like a bank, airline, car manufacturer or grocery store chain, hiring a few developers to build and maintain an app is a trivial expense. They have IT departments with hundreds or thousands of employees. For many businesses (banks, airlines, etc.) the APIs that an app would use to access the customer's account already exist for their web sites.

Celebrities can make a huge amount of money selling products and ads on their app (I seem to remember reading that the Kardashians made many millions of dollars from their app).

</comment><comment><USER3> Why are there so many of anything? How many brands of canned tuna are there? Toilet paper? Etc. Because the market allows for it. I believe this is a good thing. You don't want to be stuck in a situation like the former Soviet Union where you could only find one kind of jar of pickles.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are that many apps because we have so many people capable of building apps. This probably means it has become fairly easy to build an app. Let's say there are 70 million apps. Compared to 7 billion people, still not a lot of apps.</comment>


A Double First in China for Advanced Nuclear Reactors - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/a-double-first-in-china-for-advanced-nuclear-reactors <comment><USER2> Here are three videos that describe the passive cooling mechanisms in the AP1000 during a blackout (total loss of onsite and offsite power); passive core cooling[1], passive containment cooling[2] and passively cooling spend fuel[3].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCorzfw5liQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCorzfw5liQ) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghy9aba3kHU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghy9aba3kHU) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzBe_kwIs28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzBe_kwIs28)

Basically the reactor will cool itself without operator intervention and without power for 72 hours. After 72 hours the operator must use various on site equipment and coolant supply to maintain cooling and/or provide coolant from some off site source.

<comment><USER3> I wonder what prevents them from capturing the steam from the spent fuel storage and running it through a condenser that is connected to a ground heat exchanger (basically tubes run into the earth)

<comment><USER4> Guess: tremendous amounts of heat needing to dissipate would overwhelm all but an enormous ground heat exchanger?

<comment><USER3> True, but space is generally not a problem at nuclear plants because there is a huge area around them to protect against the accidental release of radiation. Fourier's law for heat conduction would suggest that if you had enough surface area in just steel pipes you could dump a megawatt or more of excess heat into the surrounding atmosphere. In an unconstrained atmosphere (like your heat exchanger structure is outside) that would induce an air current that would further enhance the ability to dump heat into the air passively.

If you had a larger water reserve you could also build the equivalent of a Watt steam pump that could use the heat in the steam to pump water from the reserve into the cask pond. Time to run some simulations to see whether that is doable at all.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure how much heat a typical commercial nuclear reactor designed for power generation produces, but the reactors at Hanford and Savannah River (used for plutonium production, not power[1]) generated heat measured in gigawatts[2]. That's why they were built next to large rivers - because of the massive cooling requirements.

Maybe you were taking that into account, or maybe heat production drops by a factor of 1000 during an unexpected shutdown, but I read your comment as being that the design you have in mind is limited to a few megawatts.

[1] Except for the N reactor, which was dual-use. [2] [https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/pu50yc.html](https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/pu50yc.html)

<comment><USER3> I was specifically commenting on the _spent fuel pool_ which generates much less heat (at most about megawatt as far as I can find in the literature). However those pools have been a source of issues at Fukishima as there were some indications that the pool could reach criticality under the loss of cooling. (which rapidly escalates the heat production!) The referenced video talks about cooling the spent fuel passively for 72 hrs and then having to turn on a pump to add more water. (it doesn't say where the steam is going, presumably its being vented) So that got me thinking about letting the steam go through pipes forming a heat exchanger (either in the ground or in the air, and after this discussion the air would be better) so that as it condensed it could be returned to the spent fuel pond rather than lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meanwhile, solar appears to be leaping forward in China. From the end of the article:

"All the while, nuclear is falling further behind renewable solar and wind power. As Schneider notes, the 3.3 GW of new nuclear capacity connected to the grid worldwide in 2017 (including three in China and a fourth in Pakistan built by Chinese firms) pales in comparison to the 53 GW of solar power installed in China alone. "

</comment><comment><USER7> Why is the nuclear industry plagued with cost and schedule overruns? And shouldn't they have thought by now, "hey our estimates are always off so let's double them"?

<comment><USER8> As the article states, they lost their competency. Here in France, the reason is poor planning, focus on cost-cutting and lack of long term vision by top management and government. EDF, the historical state power company turned into a private company in 2004, laid off most of the technicians that built the power plants over the years and subcontracted all the maintenance work to hundreds of subcontractors that fight for the lowest bid and employ only underqualified people, who often work in illegal conditions. The latest EPR reactor in construction in France is riddled with defects, the pressure vessel, built by Framatome, also absorbed by EDF, has uneven carbon content which means it could crack. The concrete enclosure has many large holes due to poor work. The bridge on top of the reactor was made of low-quality steel bought in Russia and had to be replaced. Basically everything is badly done, because they constantly try too make it in the cheapest way possible. But it's not working out for them because fortunately the nuclear safety authority is there to force them to redo things correctly. In its current state, the nuclear industry is basically dead in France. As another example, they can't decomission the plants arriving in end of life, and EDF officially postponed it until 2100.

<comment><USER9> >As the article states, they lost their competency.

I think people undereatimate how bleak the short term future (50-100 years) is looking right now. We've forgotten how to properly build many of the things we once touted as the pinnacles of modern civilization and the current societal status quo is too fractured and stressed to ever pursue the kind of learning process needed to reaquire that knowledge. This is but one example among many.

<comment><USER10> We have plenty of competence in wind and solar energy. What we need to pay attention to is that many of the nuclear plants built in the past are flawed, and so we always had less competence at building them than we thought.

<comment><USER11> Not at all. We had plenty of competence. We just chose to save a buck instead of using it.

And the risk ? "You cannot blame me for that !"

(especially since this is taxpayer funds, ie. everyone, decided by democratic vote, at least in France and the US. The democratic contract ought to mean that since we collectively decided to do this, we are also collectively responsible for the results, and yes, even if you voted for the other guy)

<comment><USER10> You appear to be certain that you know a lot about whom to blame, but the reality is that it's unclear that we ever had the ability to build a large number of reliable nuclear power plants.

<comment><USER12> >…it's unclear that we ever had the ability to build a large number of reliable nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power plants have been safer and more reliable than other forms of power.

In terms of reliability, nuclear has had the highest capacity factor of any source of power: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor)

In terms of accidents, nuclear has had a much better safety record than any other form of power up this point: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents)

(They don't cover ground based solar which I would think would actually be the safest. Why do people keep wanting to subsidize roof top solar?)

Some other links on deaths due to energy production: [https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by- ener...](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy- source.html) [https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate- worldw...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by- energy-source/) [https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of- energy](https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy) [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys- deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#25416d10709b)

Unfortunately anything at all related to nuclear is covered by the media orders of magnitude more than other power sources so people have an understandable perception that it is much more dangerous than other sources of power. What if the Alison Canyon was a nuclear storage site (instead of a natural gas storage site) and 11,000 people had to be evacuated - how much would the media have covered that? Another recent example would be the evacuation at the Oroville dam - almost 200,000 (YES 200 thousand!) people were forcibly evacuated since the worst case failure scenario would have have been a tidal wave of water 30 feet high rushing down stream. This made the news for maybe a day. I can't blame some for being afraid of nuclear power, but there are many who should know better.

<comment><USER13> _"Why do people keep wanting to subsidize roof top solar?"_

Ground-based solar has a cost in terms of the land being unavailable for other purposes, such as agriculture or housing or even just maintaining ecosystems in their natural state.

But roof-top solar is making use of a resource that is otherwise unproductive space anyway. There are also benefits to having energy production right at the point of use, since you avoid grid losses and are offsetting the retail cost of energy rather than selling into the grid at wholesale prices.

<comment><USER12> >...Ground-based solar has a cost in terms of the land being unavailable for other purposes, such as agriculture or housing or even just maintaining ecosystems in their natural state.

True, but I was mostly comparing the safety record. The death rate for rooftop solar is probably at least an order of magnitude worse than ground based solar. Even with subsidies it is also much more expensive.

>...There are also benefits to having energy production right at the point of use, since you avoid grid losses and are offsetting the retail cost of energy rather than selling into the grid at wholesale prices.

Very little of rooftop solar is used on site - it is just added to the grid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's left of Westinghouse is now owned by some private equity firm.

<comment><USER15> It's sad that, as evidenced by the AP1000 Youtube videos, the nuclear industry (at least in Westinghouse's case) appears to have become sclerotic and unable to even hire a dynamic visual communication team. You can't disrupt a reactor, which leads to understandable caution, but surely they could have understood that, given nuclear power's ominous reputation, you need to have the best PR and visualizations money can buy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm all for safer reactors coupled with expansion of nuclear power, but how is China buying yet another a packaged product from the west a "double first"?

<comment><USER17> Because they are the first exemplars of these packaged _products_ (note: plural, one each from Framatome|Areva/EDF/Siemens in Europe† and Westinghouse in the US‡) to be built anywhere in the world ahead of other construction projects. Thus: "double first".

† [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_\(nuclear_reactor\))

‡ [http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/New- Plants/AP1000-PWR](http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/New-Plants/AP1000-PWR)

ps: it's a _little_ bit worrying I can't find any single commercial page detailing the EPR

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> why are they using this unsafe tech (Pu-U) when molten salt reactors are safer? [https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Wish we had news on the Pebble Bed stuff.

<comment><USER14> Well, Mammoet, the heavy-lift company, was able to move the jammed German pebble bed reactor to a new location where it can cool down for 60 years or so until somebody figures out how to dismantle it.[1]

[1] [https://www.mammoet.com/cases/avrjulich/](https://www.mammoet.com/cases/avrjulich/)

<comment><USER20> The link indicates Mammonet moved a reactor built in 1950. Are you sure it is related to pebble bed design at all?

<comment><USER21> I don't know why that article says it was built in the 50's, it was built in the 60's [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_(Jülich)](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_\(Jülich\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "The White House cited this nuclear nexus in a May memo instructing Rick Perry, the Secretary of Energy, to force utilities to buy power from unprofitable nuclear and coal plants."

I hope people noticed the part about subsidizing coal. Natural gas is so cheap that coal is no longer competitive, which is a good thing.

The administration is extending the life of coal plants that aren't profitable.

<comment><USER23> No, this is not what this is all about. It's about national security and grid resiliency. When all you have is 2 pipelines with first dibbs on residential heating purposes, it can lead to blackouts. We almost had a major one in 2014 when there wasn't enough gas supply to New England. 80% of the coal that's supposed to retire in 5 years had to be brought online else several states in New England would have had rolling blackouts with millions in damage.

Some would argue coal has to go at all costs, and I understand it is awful for the environment and kills people due to pollution (absolutely horrible). However, getting rid of nuclear and coal completely is premature according to much of the literature put out by independent and neutral parties. It's ok for places like Germany to get rid of Nuclear power when they can get it from France down the road.

<comment><USER24> > national security

That's a bullshit ticket to do anything they want. Next.

> grid resiliency

As others have mentioned, batteries. Next.

> unprofitable nuclear (from GP)

> However, getting rid of nuclear

Do you recognize the difference between antiquated, unprofitable nuclear power plants and modern ones like those in the article? Your comment seems to lump them all togther, which suggests you don't. The US has many of the former and none of the latter. The latter would be beneficial.

<comment><USER23> No my friend. It isn't a joke. This is being taken seriously throughout the entire industry. Batteries are nowhere near where they need to be. If we lose a pipeline in New England, batteries will not last long enough to serve load along with solar and wind. That might be viable in 10-15 years, but not now. Look at all the latest reports from ISO-NE. They are the neutral party running the grid in that area. I understand very well that the majority of nuclear plants slated to retire in the US are doing so because of economics. I'm not interested in something that isn't slated to be built over here anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Advanced + nuclear sounds scary to me.

<comment><USER26> I would think 'primitive + nuclear' the scarier prospect.

<comment><USER27> May I intrigue/terrify you with naturally occurring fission reactors: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor)

<comment><USER28> Of the kind that can't stay hot without water moderating, which is a different category in my book.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Please review my ebook on entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/ebook

<comment><AUTHOR> this is the second edition of my 99 cents ebook on entrepreneurship. please download the epub file and drag it into your iphone or ipad (thru itunes), your android device, or nook, etc. would really appreciate it if you could review on amazon. thanks.

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0054ECIV6></comment>


Ask HN: How do I seek work as a self-trained programmer? - <AUTHOR> So unfortunately I'm not doing too well in my CS program, particularly in the mathematics. I enjoy the intellectual engagement but I have difficulty keeping pace with a full course load. At the same time, programming is one of the few skills I have and feel like I can consistently exploit, next to maybe report-writing and to an extent public speaking. AFAICT the latter are auxiliary to careers and are difficult to make as a primary thrust with living pay. (I'm not too confident this is 100% true, but I suspect that it is true.)
So irregardless of my academic performance I wish to develop my programming ability. Becoming a competent self-taught, self-marketing programmer seems like a fairly large task. I am wondering how the self-taught among us broke into the industry, whether the same industry conditions hold now as then, and how to go about finding gainful employment as a self-taught programmer.
If anyone has any insight or advice on these questions, I humbly accept it. <comment><USER2> I started (a long time ago) as an intern. If you can find some internship or temporary position where they're willing to try people with little experience (but at least some working knowledge of programming), go for it.

After that, you may be offered a permanent, entry-level position, or at least you'll have some experience when applying for other jobs. And, most importantly, you'll start developing a network of people that have seen what you are able to do, which is one of the most effective ways to get job offers.

But, I would also take some time to consider the meta thing, i.e. why you're having difficulty keeping up with college work. Do you have trouble focusing? Or with abstract thinking? Some of the, let's say, personality traits, that mathematics requires are similar to the ones that programming also requires. So make sure that programming is a good fit for you. Also, again, probably the best way to find out is trying in the way I suggested above.</comment>


Why startups aren't bothering to go public anymore - <AUTHOR> http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/11/08/regulations_force_the_rise_of_private_stock_markets_98746.html <comment><USER3> _Why startups aren't bothering to go public anymore_

As the cliche goes, "there's no percentage in it," at least for now.

These things do go in cycles and the current down cycle reminds me of the 1970s, when the public markets were in a shambles and it took almost a decade to recover. Technology had captured the public fancy in the 1960s and brokers were trumpeting the so-called Nifty Fifty (i.e., stocks on which you could never lose, such as IBM and Xerox), only to have the markets fall and fall hard by the early 1970s. Throughout that decade, then, the public markets featured primarily old-line industries/companies with low P/E multiples, with dim prospects for any form of startling growth, and with limited appeal for the mass of investors. Then, too, that decade featured economic malaise, 14% annual inflation, 18% interest rates, ultra-high individual tax rates, and an absence of vehicles by which individuals could easily participate in the public markets (e.g., no widespread 401k-type vehicles).

This all changed with the flowering of startups in the early 1980s, as Regulation D (1982) cleared the way for a healthy investment environment to get companies launched easily and as the macro-environment became more favorable to investors (low inflation, low interest rates, lower capital gains tax rates, etc.). Startups essentially changed all of world commerce during the next two decades (and beyond) and this led to the unparalleled growth of the NASDAQ as a repository for successful startups whose stock became liquid and freely tradeable. During the early part of that era, the barriers to going public were very low (e.g., little tech companies would go public in the late 1980s to raise as little as $2M). There was a cost to going public even back then in the need to file quarterly and annual disclosure documents, in the need to do formal audits, and the like, but these costs were minor in relation to the upside of gaining liquidity.

All this culminated, however, in the mania of the internet bubble which peaked in 2000 and this in turn led to countless junk offerings made to the public in order to capitalize on the frenzy. Essentially, worthless "concept" companies were offered in droves to public purchasers looking to get rich quick and these all collapsed when the bubble popped. This in turn caused a loss of public confidence in the markets and led to a new malaise from which we have never recovered. Add to that the catastrophe of the meltdown during the past couple of years and we will be lucky if we get any semblance of robust public markets again before perhaps another decade passes.

However, just as the low barriers of the 1980s, etc. led to some excellent outcomes for startups, followed by a speculative orgy and a collapse, so too the regulatory reaction to all this has gone to excess and is plainly limiting companies from wanting to go public. The article does a pretty good job of pointing out some of this excess and, regardless of details, the result is that only a very few startups can even _begin_ to contemplate going public, with many not bothering to do so.

A few consequences of all this (affecting startups at _all_ stages):

1\. Most startups are forced to go the M&A route to get liquid and this in turn allows acquirers to low-ball on price and to squeeze on terms (e.g., more earn-outs, more gotcha terms, etc.).

2\. The regulatory mindset (which I see as a reversion to 1970s-style thinking) is dominated by lawyer-like concerns and is by no means limited to public companies. For example, IRC 409A was passed to ensure proper valuation of options and other forms of deferred compensation. It now requires even the earliest-stage startups (which have been funded) to incur needless compliance costs by getting "independent valuations" at many stages where no one would have even thought twice about the subject before. Another example: the tightening up of requirements on who is an "accredited investor" - people were relieved when startups were able to dodge a bullet in the Dodd-Frank legislation concerning this issue but even that legislation opened the door to the SEC to add new rules and burdens in the not-too-distant future (efforts are already afoot, e.g., the NASAA is proposing that the SEC limit accredited investors to those who have $1 million in liquid investments - <USER2> <http://www.startuplawblog.com/?p=650>). It is easy to brush this sort of thing off but there is a clear pattern of reverting to 1970s style regulation and hence _increasing_ barriers to investing, all in sharp contrast to what we have known in the recent past.

3\. Auditing procedures have been affected by SOX to the point where even routine audits can run into six-figure costs for small companies. Public audits are now horrifically expensive, where even a small NASDAQ company can easily have such costs run up to close to $1 million annually.

4\. Sitting on the board of a public company is now something of a menace. Therefore, those who make the key decisions whether or not to take a company public have a natural disincentive to wanting to go in that direction, quite apart from regulatory compliance costs.

The point is that there are now huge barriers, economic and legal, to going public - the exact opposite of the climate of the 1980s when we last busted out of a malaise and saw an explosion of companies availing themselves of the public markets. These barriers exist because of larger trends that took quite a while to develop and they will not go away soon. I am an optimist about this issue but also a realist. The problems will eventually be corrected but not in the short term. It will take considerable time.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the insideful comment. Do you know something about the situation in other countries? I could imagine startups floating their shares in, say, London, Hong Kong or Singapore instead. (Or would this not change the regulatory regime?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few years ago, I invested in a small private company. I could call the CEO and he could tell me all his problems and prospects. I couldn't trade the stock very easily but I knew how the company was doing.

Then it went public. Suddenly the access to the CEO ended and the only information I got was from a 10Q. The company changed strategy to one that I didn't like, and I never got a good explanation.

Ironic that public = opaque, while private = transparent.

Our regulations are too much aimed at promoting liquidity and not at promoting correct valuations. We would be better off if investors were paid to make their horses run faster rather than switching horses in mid-race all the time. But they can't do this without real transparency.

<comment><USER6> I'm not well versed in stock/securities laws, but I would imagine it would have to do with this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading>

The CEO couldn't possibly take personal calls from every investor after going public. I don't feel particularly bad that someone can't get privileged information from the company that wouldn't be available to other investors. These regulations are for fairness.

<comment><USER5> You are correct that the CEO cannot favor investors due to SEC regulation and simple fairness. However, the issue raised is that companies use these regs as an excuse to draw the curtains and provide _less_ information on the whole.

This is bad for economic decision making on the whole. For example, it leads to greater volatility and securities prices that don't track value. It also places managers into a kind of priesthood with privileged access to information. Abuses ensue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not convinced a company like Facebook is avoiding going public because of SOX. Facebook has >2,000 employees and massive revenue, they can't afford to have a decent accounting department? Facebook is significantly larger and has higher revenue than the majority of publically traded companies.

And considering how many Facebook employees have stock, you would think they would all be clamoring for an IPO.

Facebook has a shockingly high valuation, perhaps they are afraid that if they IPO it will not match expectations during this economy. Better to wait until boom times and get great return on your IPO than do it now with stock prices depressed.

</comment><comment><USER8> SOX is the reason why pretty much everyone avoids going public in the US anymore. Many international companies that would have previously floated in NY now do so in London (which has now overtaken NY as the largest foreign equity market). The cost (typically in the couple of millions for a small company) is simply too high.

<comment><USER9> The cost is small compared to the stifling rules imposed on IT...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Profitable, high flying startups like Facebook and Zynga don't bother going public anymore."

Aren't Facebook and Zynga widely expected to go IPO soon?

<comment><USER11> "Profitable, high flying startups like Facebook and Zynga don't bother going public anymore."

Um, Facebook and Zygna aren't startups anymore. Startup != privately-held company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This strikes me as a good thing. For those who want the wild west, go to a private exchange. For those who want well-regulated companies, go to a public exchange.

<comment><USER13> To my knowledge, one must be an accredited investor to go to the private exchange. Thus, the rich are the only ones able to take the risks to become richer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's that pesky Sarbanes-Oxley I tell ya!

</comment><comment><USER15> > _Why are we content allowing Washington to replace the judgment of millions > of private investors with the whims of a handful of bureaucrats trying to > score political points playing with taxpayers' money?_

Nice try, but two can play at that game:

Why _not_ allow 300 million individuals the ability to influence the ecological destiny of their own land and country through democratic means, rather than of a handful of billion-dollar investors who pledge allegiance to no one but themselves?

I will _always_ support one vote per person over one vote per dollar.

<comment><USER5> Hang on a second. Let's look at the full quote and then think for a minute.

> _Meanwhile Uncle Sam pours hundreds of millions in grants and loan > guarantees into half-baked "green" startups, an industrial policy tailor- > made to attract charlatans and losers. Why are we content... allowing > Washington to replace the judgment of millions of private investors with the > whims of a handful of bureaucrats trying to score political points playing > with taxpayers' money?_

That's a better version of the quote.

The government _could_ have a different policy. Leg #1: Tax the hell out of carbon emissions (since the price of energy doesn't include the harm of carbon emission). They could even lower other taxes and write poor Grandma a check. Behavior would change and any idea that will save energy will find investors. This is not enough though: Leg #2 Pay people to sequester carbon, as long as it can be verified scientifically. Nobody would undertake this activity without subsidy.

Under this policy what role is there for government officials to decide what is the best technical means to reduce carbon emissions? Not much. Would it be less effective than current policy? I think it would be _more_ effective.

Why don't we have this policy? Two reasons: Government wants to be handing out the checks--one by one. They always opt for the solution which empowers them. It's human nature.

The other reason: Voters. We all keep hanging on the dream of a technological fix coming out of nowhere at no cost. No price tomorrow is too high to pay for comfort today. Part of our sick values that promote consumption as the cure for every economic ill. I'll trust the voters more after they detox.</comment></comment>


Green tea compound may halt molecular cause of often-fatal condition - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/10091.html <comment><USER2> I always find it funny how they test Green, Black, White or Oolong Teas separately. All teas (Not herbal infusions) are all from the same plant, Camellia sinensis. The only difference is when they are picked and for black tea they are oxidized.

The only thing chemistry I have found is caffeine levels. The old belief was the highest Black and the lowest was White. This has proven to be untrue.

Pill form would equal KIDNEY STONES if they contained the leaf. Tea leafs are one of the highest in oxalates (Causes most kidney stones) but tea is low/moderate in oxalates.

<comment><USER3> I drink a fairly high amount of black tea (about 1.5L/day) and I had read about this before a bit, but couldn't find any clear answers - what's the risk of developing kidney stones and will I have fair warning signs before permanent damage?

<comment><USER2> I drink about 1L/day I use to get kidney stones all the time. Told to stop drinking tea and dark sodas. After researching it for 10 minutes my Urologist didn't know what he was talking about.

Contents of Oxalate:

black tea 15 grams for 1 liter equals 15 * 5.11 = 76.65 milligrams of soluble oxalates

Spinach has 645 milligrams of soluble oxalates per serving size!

Cola sodas has 0 as in ZERO soluble oxalates per serving size.

My doctor told me that was all new to him. I stopped going to him as a doctor. I ate spinach everyday. I stopped eat spinach I stopped having kidney stones.

<comment><USER4> Exactly what kind of tea do you drink? Is it iced tea, a brand?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Keep in mind that you'd need to drink about 1 gallon of green tea every day (which would cause nausea and pain) to have an increase in the EGCG levels in your blood of less than 60%.

[http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/9/9/3312.long](http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/9/9/3312.long)

So it seems unlikely that drinking green tea would be a viable treatment.

<comment><USER6> Actually your statement is false. I drank a gallon of green tea for years before switching to a gallon of white tea every day. I've never been nauseated or had pain from that. Ever. I pee every 20 minutes but it's never made me sick.

<comment><USER7> Is this serious? If so, any particular reason why you did?

<comment><USER6> I started this well over a decade ago, perhaps 20 years? The average person does not get NEARLY enough water per day. That was one reason, but the main reason was I knew about the anti-cancer affects of green tea as well as other healthy effects. And over the years I had nurses and medical doctors in my family tell me white tea was healthier for you that green tea. Lower caffeine, more of the same compounds and benefits green tea had. So I switched over to white tea. I am still drinking a gallon each day. Will I still get cancer? Maybe. But it won't be from a lack of doing everything I can to prevent it.

<comment><USER8> > But it won't be from a lack of doing everything I can to prevent it.

You eat a large quantity of red meat and processed red meat.

That increases your risk of cancer.

<comment><USER9> Wat? How do you know OP's protein preferences?

[EDIT:] ...wow. Just, wow. Do you use a spreadsheet to track the dietary preferences of various HN commentators, or do you have a frighteningly effective memory?

<comment><USER8> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11947340#11948143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11947340#11948143)

> Ive been an atkins follower for... 20 years. I eat mostly meat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In my opinion tea is the most underrated hacker drink, at least in Germany. In all companies everybody drinks coffee all day long. If u drink tea, you are an alien. Especially if u prefer loose leaf tea over the the dust in bags from the supermarket, you are a little weird. I hoped the big Club Mate hype could bring some people into the tea camp, but omg even the most of the few people who drink tea doesn't know why chamomile tea isn't actually a tea...

<comment><USER11> Never heard of the "club mate hype" before. Would that be yerba mate drinks?

Edit: Just dug a bit more. Yes it is, carbonated and mixed with some sugar. Yuck. I prefer my yerba mate the traditional way, thank you very much. Also, what's with everybody's obsession with caffeine and productivity? Why not just inject adrenaline right into your heart? Come on, people should use some "more common sense" and not overuse these substances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> can we update the title to reflect what the condition actually is?

Green tea compound may halt molecular cause of often-fatal multiple myeloma

<comment><USER13> No, it affects protein folding in light chain amyloidosis, which often accompanies MM, but is a disease in itself.

"The ECGC pulled the light chain into a different type of aggregate that wasn't toxic and didn't form fibril structures," as happens to organs affected by amyloidosis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> AL (light chain) amyloidosis is a protein folding disease that causes an accumulation of amyloid protein in the organs, and is usually fatal. This green tea compound, EGCG, seems to transform light chain amyloid, "preventing the misshapen form from replicating and accumulating dangerously". More information on the disease here: [http://www.amyloidosis.org/facts/al/](http://www.amyloidosis.org/facts/al/)

<comment><USER13> Film actor Michael York has become a spokesman of sorts for people with the disease. [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/20/michael...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/20/michael- york-battle-with-amyloidosis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2015-2016/green- tea](http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2015-2016/green-tea)</comment>