How Ancient Rome's Concrete Has Survived 2,000 Years (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://time.com/4846153/ancient-rome-concrete-cement-seawater/ <comment><USER2> Related from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14690329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14690329)

2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5883443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5883443)

<comment><USER3> I really appreciate the good you do for the HN community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In an earlier thread someone working in the industry said that today the cement producers can make arbitrarily sturdy concrete, but almost no one wants to pay for the top-tier stuff.

Part of it nearsighted thinking, the other part is consideration that money could be spent on like nicer decor, or maybe build larger number of 100 year buildings than a smaller number of 1000 year buildings.

<comment><USER5> Isn't it the height of hubris to believe we could plan 100 years ahead? What cities haven't radically changed in the last 100 years, with nearly everything being replaced with something better than they could have conceived of?

<comment><USER6> > What cities haven't radically changed in the last 100 years, with nearly > everything being replaced with something better than they could have > conceived of?

95% of European cities downtown?

<comment><USER7> You'd be surprised. Almost all of the German cities were destroyed in WW2 (meaning their downtown area). The same goes for Polish cities, or further East cities like Kiev, Odessa or Kharkiv. WW2 was also quite brutal for Western cities like Rotterdam or London. WW1 obliterated most of the cities in Northern France and South-West Belgium. The streets of Madrid saw active and intense fighting in the Spanish Civil War. And many of the cities that escaped the wars relatively unscathed had to contend with the modernist movement of the 1960s and the 1970s, which saw many interesting buildings demolished because they didn't look modern or functional enough (Athens being a prime example for this).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For all of your internet-based concrete knowledge needs, I highly recommend Tyler Ley, a professor from Oklahoma State: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMed3YtN- Fo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMed3YtN-Fo)

</comment><comment><USER9> There's another ancient building technique that doesn't get considered in the modern era: cutting and moving gigantic 10-ton blocks of stone. Sure, it's expensive to cut and move, but a bunch of dudes with rickety boats did it across huge expanses of land and water, and their structures also still stand today.

If the carbon footprint is a concern, it might be a perfect opportunity to propose alternatives to the carbon-intense techniques we've adopted. For example, William Fairbairn invented a _hand-powered_ crane, whose 642-to-1 ratio meant two men turning cranks could lift 60 tons. Our land and water-born vessels could also probably be innovated on with similar efficiency, if it wasn't so damn easy to burn ancient vegetation.

<comment><USER10> If time isn't an issue, those techniques all are fine and are proven to work. Sadly, time IS an issue today, so 2 men on a paddle won't build the hoover dam. Even if they could.

<comment><USER11> Are you claiming that construction today is fast? I don't understand.

Are you claiming that a contemporary construction project would be able to build the Hoover Dam? That was almost 100 years ago and a lot of things have changed...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Funny that discovering how they did concrete 2000 years ago can be seen as progress..

<comment><USER13> that is a little funny you're right. It reminds me of something interesting I read, don't know if it's true or not. I heard that in the "middle ages" (or dark ages) it was taken for granted that the ancients -- meaning the Greeks and maybe even the Romans, not sure -- had been way wiser and more knowledgeable than them. (You know, as they read Euclid's elements and Socrates and stuff.) As I remember it, all the way through the Renaissance that was the thinking, that the ancients had known way more.

Imagine thinking that the ancients knew more than we ever will, and trying to study their works to get at just some of the wisdom they had held. I think few if any people read ancient authors that way today.

however my memory on this subject may be shaky.

<comment><USER14> There was this excellent video about the misconception that technology and knowledge advances over time.

It does not. It fades, gets lost. Where are the Steve Wozniaks and bill gates? Where are the people truely understanding this stuff. Where are the people who can optimize code like back in the days?

<comment><USER15> I think you are conflating the notion that, at a given time slice, a majority of the popular sentiment about the future may not have always been positive, with your own opinions of modern engineering.

For vast swaths of human mind, popular opinion tended to see the future as bleak and the past as filled with greater men, accomplishments, etc - the good days are behind us. Post industrial revolution thinking and adoption of science has mostly changed that opinion to hope - the good days are ahead of us.

As for people who can optimize code like back in the day: I am not sure where you work, but I bet if you look at the best engineers in the best tech companies today (google/ Facebook / Netflix / amazon / Uber / palantir) you'll find a lot to be impressed with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How ancient Rome's concrete has survived that long can probably be attributed to one main factor: no inclusion of steel rebar.

<comment><USER17> Raises an interesting question: how long can modern bridges last, given they consist mostly of steel?

<comment><USER18> The worst is when you combine materials who age differently or respond to temperature swings differently.

If that steel bridge can be kept from rusting, it can keep a long time.

<comment><USER19> Also steel has an endurance limit where material fatigue plateaus.

<comment><USER20> What's way stranger to me is that aluminum does not have an endurance limit (for non-Mech E's, this is worse for aluminum even though it sounds like it might be better).

<comment><USER21> Basically, there is no deformation so miniscule that it lasts forever. It just affects how many cycles/how long it takes. Steel however, if you deform it only very little, lasts practically forever. You just need to design it to not deform too much at normal operation.

Incidentally, this fatigue vs. approaching the strength limit issue is why airplanes have limited flights. The fuselage/hull is made to last long enough, but not necessarily do well longer than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Meanwhile the 20 year old office building I work just had extensive repairs to the concrete.

<comment><USER23> Survivor bias, we only get to see Roman successes today ;)

<comment><USER24> You're probably joking, but since "it's just survivor bias" is a popular take these days, I'll respond as though you're serious.

A bridge that stands for 2000 years without (much) maintenance isn't survivor bias, it's disruptive technology.

Yes, we only see the best of Roman architecture, and most Romans probably lived in wooden shacks or stone apartments that have long since crumbled or been demolished.

But Roman concrete is chemically different than the Portland cement that was invented in the 1800s, and although there's certainly a distribution of building quality and workmanship that will result in a wide spread of lifetimes, we don't have any reason to expect that any concrete building built from Portland cement and exposed to the elements like Roman seawalls were will last 2,000 years. The distribution just doesn't have that long of a tail to it.

<comment><USER25> An important component to the survivor bias argument in this case is: we have no way of knowing what roman concrete _didn't_ survive. Maybe the ones standing are atypical, or were in some way a fluke as opposed to the marvel they seem to be.

<comment><USER24> Sure, but that's also not really the point.

When we see these structures standing, our reaction should be "wow! How did they do that? What can we learn?"

Not "well, I bet they also built a lot of bad buildings too; nothing to see here".

When you build something twice as good as the average, it's a fluke. When you build something 20x as good as average, it's worthy of study. Even if these are atypically good examples of Roman architecture[1], you can't pull off the moon landings by launching a ton of backyard fireworks and hoping for a long- tailed success distribution.

The best buildings represent the state of the art of the best architects and the best masons working with access to quality materials and an adequate budget and timeline. Not dumb luck and guesswork paying off.

[1] Which there are decent reasons to not expect. For example, we know that many Roman buildings were demolished deliberately by later generations because they weren't Christian enough, rather than because they collapsed.

<comment><USER26> Sure, surviving for such a long time is a big accomplishment but compared to bridges today, they are relatively short bridges that cost more to build and allows less load. What is there to research other than figuring out how they work? They are well structured blocks of rocks that distributes the load well basically.

How they were built is probably more interesting, but still would be useless

<comment><USER24> As the article explains, the most interesting thing is their seaworthy cement. Although today's Portland cement is newer, it wasn't adopted because it was superior to Roman cement, but because (until recently?) no living person knew how to make Roman cement.

Hence, we can indeed learn something by studying it.

<comment><USER27> It's typically not the case that we can't make things as well as we use to. It's just that we've found ways to make them that are cheaper by an order of magnitude and last just long enough to do their job.

Roman concrete wasn't disruptive. It was disrupted.

<comment><USER24> > Roman concrete wasn't disruptive. It was disrupted.

I'm amazed by this mentality. It's like the very possibly of a technology being forgotten, rather than surpassed, is axiomatically impossible.

If "everyone who knew the recipe died" counts as getting disrupted, then yes, it was disrupted. And if Roman concrete counts as more expensive because the supply is literally zero, the yes, modern concrete can be seen as cheaper.

But understand that modern Portland cement wasn't invented to improve on Roman concrete, but rather as an attempt to replicate it, because nobody until then had any guess.

<comment><USER27> That's not my mentality at all. I understand technology can be lost and forgotten.

In this case, I actually think the naive mindset is the one that assumes, more durable is better. No, more durable is more durable. Is static typing "better" than dynamic typing? No, it's a different tool for a different task.

Please don't fall for clickbait. It sounds so cool to have lost a technology over time, and it certainly is possible, but I don't think that's what happened here.

Here's a quick Google source. Sorry for PDF. [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.ascconline.org/Portals/0/Technical- Article- Aug-2017_WebSC.pdf%3Fver%3D2017-08-16-144954-857&ved=2ahUKEwjPmP3frcfjAhWkKqYKHQuEDGEQFjANegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw1b6yy2D_RKlPg8nTAR-9-n)

<comment><USER24> Hmm, a few points...

1) This certainly doesn't imply that Roman concrete was discarded because a more cost effective formula came along. The fact is that it was lost to civilization for over a thousand years, and then Portland cement was discovered. There was no period of time in which a contractor could choose one or the other and selected Portland cement for price or performance reasons. So beyond a doubt the Roman technology was lost.

2) That article is pretty unconvincing, being basically just a blog post by a cement guy who points out the same things that anyone else should already expect, all of which were mentioned in the comments section here. And not only because the author misspelled Raman spectroscopy.

3) Survivor bias has been addressed in several other comments. It's a valid point if someone points to a 2,000 year old bridge and says "my building needed repairs after just 10 years; clearly no Roman buildings ever had that problem". Yes, I'm sure the Romans also built buildings that fell apart within 10 years and needed repairs. Those bridges don't say anything about the quality floor. But that's really missing the point.

The quality ceiling is also not an accident which is my point about the moon landings. Most rockets launched in the 20th century were backyard fireworks, so you could point to the moon landings as "survivorship bias that doesn't reflect the crude state of 20th century rocketry in which most rockets were just backyard fireworks and few even made it to space, we just only remember the ones that did".

But that statement, while true, also makes it sound like the moon landings were a statistical fluke in which a bunch of people who had no idea what they were doing got lucky and lauched some fireworks that made it to the moon. That would just be wrong. Likewise the best Roman buildings were not built by luck, but by skilled engineers with large budgets, and they are just as impressive as they seem. It's no coincidence that the structures that survive are high budget state infrastructure projects, government and religious buildings, and estates of exquisite craftsmanship, and not random commoners' houses, even though there were probably 10,000 houses for every aqueduct.

Survivorship bias also doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from those materials. Probably not every batch of Roman concrete was perfectly formulated to perform optimally, but that's no reason not to study the surviving samples and note their impressive durability.

Randomness isn't everywhere. If you dump a thousand ball bearings in the ocean and pull them up ten years later, you expect to see a thousand rusty ball bearings. If one of them is somehow still smooth and polished, you don't conclude that erosion just acts randomly and it's survivor bias. Instead, you should look closer and see if maybe that one was actually made of 316 stainless or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The Last Centurion of civil engineering.

</comment><comment> 867-5309 [https://youtu.be/3o-r1-AsmRU](https://youtu.be/3o-r1-AsmRU)</comment>


How Netflix's algorithm exposes technology's racial bias. - <AUTHOR> http://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a18817/netflix-algorithms-black-movies/ <comment><USER2> The posting is worth reading but the premise of bias is wrong. Technology (that is, Netflix's recommendation algorithm)does not have a racial bias _per se_ but it does discover the cohorts viewers belong to (using their behavior) and report categories of recommendations derived from the aggregate cohorts behavior. If race were not a distinguishing feature in the cohort's data, it would not be a distinguishing feature.

</comment><comment><USER3> Blacks are about 20% of the US population, while Netflix has some demographic information I can't really imagine they are tracking race of the viewer (I could just imagine the shit storm that could erupt if they did), they do however classify films based on various categories.

Netflix didn't invent black cinema people did and way before Netflix was even an idea in some one's head here are for example Black Cinema film festivals:

American Black Film Festival Freaknik Hollywood Black Film Festival International Black Women's Film Festival The Kidflix Film Fest of Bed-Stuy North Carolina Black Film Festival Pan African Film Festival Roxbury Film Festival San Diego Black Film Festival Women of Color Film Festival

The US also has "black only" film awards including the African-American Film Critics Association Awards, Black Reel Awards, Black Movie Awards and so on.

So after watching multiple movies that most likely their only common denominator was "Black Female Directors" Netflix suggested you a category that contain additional movies that fit your recent viewing habits.

On a side note, I watched the new Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Marco Polo special on Netflix recently and all of a sudden what would you know? Chinese / Asian martial arts films appeared and took over my suggestion feed.

However after binge watching Cosmos and The Inexplicable Universe I wasn't greeted with the suggestion of the category "Documentaries by Black Astro- Physicists" but rather with "Space and Nature Documentations".

<comment><USER4> As of the last census, blacks were 12.2% of the population, not 20%.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Title should say the algorithm exposes an average viewers preferences. The algorithm is making recommendations based upon user choices and isn't biased. Not really a fair characterization.

<comment><USER6> Yes and no. The algorithm works upon manually-defined tags, and one of the points being made is that those are too broad, possibly because the people tagging don't have enough insight into particular populations.

The example given of the person who got recommendations for films with lesbian sex scenes after watching _Blue is the Warmest Color_ is relevant. Yes, the film has such scenes. But it's also won the Palme d'Or, yet that isn't tagged and therefore used by the algorithm, when (I'd say) it's much more likely to have been the reason for a particular person to watch it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Recommender system algorithms typically personalize search results based on similarities to items recently watched, purchased or simply added to a shopping basket. More advanced recommenders suggest based on past history (well YouTube seems to). I don't find personalization by similarity offensive. If I watched a Netflix movie starring Sidney Poitier, I'd expect recommendations to view movies from top Black actors of all time. I see this as ranking on similarity not on racial bias. [http://www.imdb.com/list/ls051979184/](http://www.imdb.com/list/ls051979184/)

<comment><USER8> Exactly right, but that wouldn't result in as controversial a headline.

<comment><USER9> Yup. When I was reading the Horatio Hornblower books a while back, and Amazon suddenly started recommending books by Patrick O'Brian and Dudley Pope, I didn't arrive at the conclusion that Amazon's algorithm was "racist" with respect to 19th Century British naval culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > I could see the fact that to the new viewer, whose preferences aren't yet > logged and tracked by Netflix's algorithm, "black" movies and shows are, for > the most part, hidden from view.

So Netflix is biased because it doesn't feature African-American movies as a default category? What about Filipino movies? Should Netflix turn their default recommendations into a progressive stack?

</comment><comment><USER6> The article makes a few interesting points, particularly regarding the difficulty in choosing the categories/tags with which to classify things, and also regarding the dangers of filter bubbles in recommendation algorithms.

Unfortunately, it seems the conversation here is completely focused on defending Netflix from a perceived accusation of racism.</comment>


Zuckerberg Says Obama Steps on NSA Spying Not Enough - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-21/obama-invites-ceos-from-yahoo-facebook-to-talk-spying.html

<comment> emin-gun-sirer Just curious: of the data that Zuckerberg _could_ collect, what does he not collect?

It should be pretty clear that this is not an endorsement of NSA's broad data collection activities. But credible leadership in this area requires that Zuckerberg willfully constrain and limit the activities of his own company first.</comment>


Half of Fox News Viewers Believe Bill Gates Wants to Use Vaccine to Track You - <AUTHOR> https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fox-news-viewers-bill-gates-coronavirus-vaccines-tracking-1004415/ <comment><USER2> If Bill Gates wanted to do that, wouldn't he have done it through, I don't know, Windows? It was only the most widespread OS until a decade ago with a market share of over 90% worldwide.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the bigger story is how insidious online disinformation is, how quickly it spreads, and the underlying cultural/political factors that drive people to believe outlandish things no matter how irrational it is or seems.

This is the 2016 election on overdrive, yet few seem to be talking about it very seriously yet.

Very worrying trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here is a link to the original story with the Yahoo News / YouGov poll: [https://news.yahoo.com/new-yahoo-news-you-gov-poll-shows- cor...](https://news.yahoo.com/new-yahoo-news-you-gov-poll-shows-coronavirus- conspiracy-theories-spreading-on-the-right-may-hamper-vaccine- efforts-152843610.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad they are concerned about it.</comment>


How Google's flourishing social network Orkut killed itself - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-googles-orkut-killed-itself-my-random-theory-durgesh-kaushik/ <comment><USER2> I think it's super important for any social network to keep on innovatinga and evolving itself. It might not surprise us one day when Facebook just disappears and Instagram becomes the next FB. FB is so smart in predicting the future trends and it try to make sure that another FB should come out from its own ecosystem. Orkut was killed because "Facebook" was something new for people to brag about. Social network is and will always be about bragging which will only happen if that 'something' is constantly changing,evolving giving something new to people to play with or brag about.</comment>


Show HN: CanadaLive.ca made with Meteor - <AUTHOR> http://www.canadalive.ca/

<comment><USER2> Page loads kind of slow but I'll chalk that up to Meteor being in it's early stages. I like the concept.</comment>


AI Driven startup gazaro, find deals on Computers and Electronics - <AUTHOR> http://www.gazaro.com/

<comment><USER2> I know the guy working on the iPhone edition of this app. It's looking super slick.

Definitely worth a look!</comment>


How to Quit Your Job and Start Freelancing as a Software Developer - <AUTHOR> https://chrisachard.com/how-to-quit-your-job-and-start-freelancing <comment><USER2> it's easy to quit work; the main thing is to be able to do what you know and taught.</comment>


U.S. Fish and Wildlife Roadblocks Sequencing of Black Rhino Due to NGO Lobbying - <AUTHOR> https://experiment.com/u/yHldOQ <comment><USER2> It wasn't due to NGO lobbying, and that's not currently in the source title.

[https://experiment-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/file- attachments...](https://experiment-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/file- attachments/5332/HWRo6uQ5SCUiu7xLrFyN_Denial%20Letter.pdf)

Para 7 and 8 are pretty clear that Black Rhino is listed in Appendix 1 of CITES, and thus any import of material is subject to pretty fierce controls.</comment>


Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narhwal" Will Not Have A Release Candidate - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2011/02/12/natty-no-rc/

<comment><USER2> Interesting that, in these secular times, a stated reason for not doing a RC a week before shipping is that Easter weekend would overlap the crunch.

Not that it makes it _that_ different from previous releases, but with the Unity UI shift and related changes it seems like there's still a lot of work to be done before release. Viz [<http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/natty/alpha2>] and the description of the Desktop Edition:

"Unity is now the default in the Ubuntu Desktop session.

This is partially implemented. ...."

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr - No RC. Beta2 instead.</comment>


Ask HN: How to prepare laptop for 7 years old kid? - <AUTHOR> I want to prepare laptop for my 7 years old daughter.
- OS should be linux based - Only applications available: Anki, LibreOffice, some email client. No root privileges. Other applications like Firefox etc. not installed or blocked - Tux games available only Saturday 0800-1200
I was thinking about installing Ubuntu then creating separate user with limited access to each application as described [1]. And then some systemd script adding user to game group only during defined period of time - the same way as [1].
Is there any better way to do that?
Any other suggestions regarding the topic?
[1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/8149/how-can-i-restrict-program-access-to-other-users <comment><USER2> Regarding games schedule, if the user is not root you can use cron or systemd timers, but this could be more user friendly for a child:

Create a zenity, xdialog, or any kind of graphical dialog explaining why it's not gaming time (even remembering the allowed gaming time) and put it in /usr/bin/games-denied

Rename the games to /usr/bin/GAME-allowed

Then with cron/timers just symlink /usr/bin/GAME to one or the other, so when the kid click in the game will get a dialog or the game, depending on the hour.

Also, I could recommend:

1) Try to automate the re-installation (disk images, preseed/kickstart for the OS, ansible for the setup...)

2) Provide some way to make backups (the kid will create content, you may want to save)

3) Download a lot of content (drawings to colorize, songs, funny images, whatever may interest this kid) and put it in the Documents/ dir so the kid can explore. Install extra fonts, icons, and whatever may improve document creation.

4) You may explore the system package manager for educational, science or artistic stimulation packages. Kids are surprised when they see the can play the piano in the laptop, or they can see the stars, or ... :)

apt-cache show ubuntu-edu-preschool

apt-cache show ubuntu-edu-primary

apt-cache show ubuntu-edu-secondary

5) Put a sound recorder icon, and a cam recorder icon, right in the desktop (if there is sound card or web cam in the laptop), you may get surprised by their creativity :)

<comment><USER3> Big +1 for the automation of the re-installation. Maybe even have a pxe kickstart so the kid can choose to re-image their machine if they want. Add prompts that ask them twice if they are sure.

Automate OS patches. Set up game saves to an NFS server that takes snapshots with rsnapshot or lvm snapshots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have the perfect set of steps:

Put it in a closet and forget about it.

Sell it.

Give it away.

Don't give it to her.

It's way too early. You don't want to _destroy_ her attention span do you?

Why am I saying this? I have a daughter, same age. We gave her access to screen time too early.

It introduced a lack of ability to focus (even with giving it to her in limited doses).

Then shortly thereafter, it became the only thing that mattered.

Books? NOPE.

Art? NOPE.

Crafting? NOPE.

Lego? NOPE.

We ended up taking it away. The reaction was swift, but short-lived. Now all the other things that used to matter - matter once again.

I'm not a pro, I'm not claiming to be a pro. I'm just a fellow dad, who has been down this road… and it was ugly.

Save yourself the trouble. I _promise_ \- she won't be any worse off for waiting a little longer to be introduced to the vortex that is technology.

</comment><comment><USER5> Plastic wrap - you know where the juice will be spilled

Insurance - because you know the hands will slip

Make sure you do the backup. You will need to do a restore or complete wipe at least once if not twice. In addition if you have GREAT backups, or go virtual, you will probably do restores 3 to 4 times in the first year. Kids will hit buttons as they explore, this is a good thing, it is to be encouraged. And you will ask "Why on earth would someone take their root folder and throw it away?" Because kids learn by exploring. If you do a simple restore then they learn what they did and how to fix it. If you get mad, and spend a few hours fixing it, they learn not to explore.

<comment><USER6> 7 is how old I was when my second grade teacher taught us not to have drinks at the computer. It wasn't until college that I unlearned that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "off-side" message here :

I'll probably sound like an old man, you know this kind of people who says "It was better before" and "I used to play with only one toy back it time" and so on,

but isn't it too young to give a computer to your 7yo daughter ? I'm curious to know why she should have a computer ? does she need for her courses ?

Please do not think I'm saying that just to criticize you, I'm just curious.</comment>


WebKit Limit on Retina JPG Image Display - <AUTHOR> http://duncandavidson.com/blog/2012/03/webkit_retina_bug

<comment><USER2> When working in UIKit developers are warned now to use images that are larger than 1024x1024 because that is the limit on the size if a texture in openGLES. I wouldn't be surprised to see this being doubled for the retina and Apple using that as the hard limit.

( You should avoid creating UIImage objects that are greater than 1024 x 1024 in size. Besides the large amount of memory such an image would consume, you may run into problems when using the image as a texture in OpenGL ES or when drawing the image to a view or layer - [http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/...](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UIImage_Class/Reference/Reference.html))

<comment><USER3> I believe that limit was lifted as of the iPhone 3GS (i.e., for OpenGL ES 2.0 devices and greater).

<comment><USER4> There's also no reason you can't split the image up (e.g. 2048x2048 -> 4x1024x1024) and render it in 4 pieces. Where a hard limitation like that exists, implementations frequently sidestep them.

<comment><USER5> If you do this though, make sure you split at JPEG block boundaries. That means that every column should have a width divisible by 8 except the rightmost, and every row should have a height divisible by 8 except the bottom. Otherwise you may see a noticeable seam.

<comment><USER6> You can split the JPEGs at bit mapped images on the device before rendering. At that pointed you wouldn't be limited tithe block boundaries anymore.

 _edit for clarity:_ don't manipulate images in the JPEG domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We ran into this issue while building our HTML5/Mobile Webkit panorama viewer. It took a long time to figure out what was going on, I almost feel that webkit would've been better to just _skip_ the image and log an error to the console, since by resizing your image without your permission typically causes rendering bugs since they literally resize your image down in-line without telling you.

We didn't realize it could be circumvented with PNG's, that's an interesting idea, though it certainly hurts on the bandwidth side.

<comment><USER8> You could just slice it into multiple JPGs. It's probably even better for parallel download.

<comment><USER9> Better? Wrong. Please read "Minimize HTTP Requests" here:

<http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html>

<comment><USER10> That's a great rule for general purposes, but it's intended for situations where you have lots of small assets that you are asking the client to download.

In this instance we're talking about 2 megapixel images, so the extra HTTP requests are not even going to register in the mix. With modern browsers pulling down 6+ parallel downloads, breaking the image up might make plenty of sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tested and confirmed that if you save the JPEG using Progressive formatting, then it displays fine on the iPad. The Apple "Big Hero" image also has progressive JPEG formatting.

This doesn't explain why regular JPEGs are treated special though.

</comment><comment><USER12> Another issue, but also there: PNG images above a certain height failed to load on the iPhone 4. We were facing that problem with our mobile testing tool. Converting the images to JPG solved the problem.

<comment><USER13> In case you're wondering why that is ..

> JPEG images can be up to 32 megapixels due to subsampling, which allows JPEG > images to decode to a size that has one sixteenth the number of pixels. JPEG > images larger than 2 megapixels are subsampled—that is, decoded to a reduced > size. JPEG subsampling allows the user to view images from the latest > digital cameras.

Reference: [https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/Apple...](https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/CreatingContentforSafarioniPhone/CreatingContentforSafarioniPhone.html)

<comment><USER14> Yes. libjpeg can generate scaled previews faster than decoding the whole image. Maybe that's why Apple didn't bother to implement this for png images.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Had this problem with a large background image (over 2 Megapixels, I believe). The solution that we came up with was to split the image in two, and then use css3 multiple backgrounds on the ipad, iphone. At that time, those were the only culprits.

</comment><comment><USER16> I remember hitting a similar limit in webOS. There's a WebKit image cache setting set either at build time or startup time about how large of an image will be allowed to persist in the internal decoded image cache. When an image exceeds that, the decoder produces a scaled down version that's grown when displayed. We could adjust it on our platform with a setting in /etc/palm/browser.conf, but it wasn't adjustable without making the core file system writable and restarting the system manager.

</comment><comment><USER17> This bug is sort of funny (in the frustrating way) when you're looking for high-resolution wallpapers for the iPad - At least on InterfaceLIFT on-device, you get a 1024x1024 image when trying to fetch the iPad3,x version.

</comment><comment><USER18> > _That's 2,150,400 pixels, which is bigger than the 2 megapixel limit above. > On the other hand, those dimensions are evenly divisible by 16._

JPEG block size is 16, so this must be an alignment related.

</comment><comment><USER19> Question: does the HTMLImageElement actually contain fewer pixels, or is it just displayed low-res? Could you take your jpeg, paint it on a canvas using script, and then display it full-resolution?

</comment><comment><USER20> Some excellent snooping and calculations there!

<comment><USER21> Or simply looking at the source code would have found an authoritative answer.

<comment><USER22> Simply? Why don't you post the location of the bug-feature?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ran into this a couple days ago. Thanks for the heads up, clarifies some confusion I had.

</comment><comment><USER24> On a mostly unrelated note, I wish blatanly marketing driven terms like "retina display" would stop getting thrown around like this. Thanks to Apple's latest marketing adjustment for the iPad 3, it turns the phone I've owned for over 2 years now actually posesses a "retina display" (N900 for anyone wondering). At the viewing distance specified by Apple, the human retina is in fact capable of discerning a far higher pixel density anyway.

<comment><USER25> How is he "throwing around" this term? He's specifically talking about the iPad 3. Apple uses this marketing term to signal to the purchaser that they are going to get a certain pixel density. I see retina display, I know I will get a "good looking" display by Apple's standards. If I trust Apple, it means something. That's the purpose of marketing and branding. So what if your phone also has the same pixel density?

Do you have a problem with marketing in general? Is it a problem that Audi makes quattro cars or that Volkswagens have 4motion or BMWs have cars with 'x' in the model number? They only signify 4WD after all.

BTW, iPhone 4 is a 3.5 inch 640×960 resolution (326 ppi). N900 is 3.5 inch 800 × 480 resolution (267 ppi). Not that it matters either way.

<comment><USER26> >BTW, iPhone 4 is a 3.5 inch 640×960 resolution (326 ppi).

But the new iPad is 264 PPI.

<comment><USER25> I included the screen size, because it's a proxy for working distance, and thus pixel density per viewing angle.

<http://punchingin.com/chasing-the-6-4-megapixel-unicorn/>

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/03/welcome-to-the- post...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/03/welcome-to-the-post-pc- era.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Groupon IPO: The Silver Lining - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturebent.com/2011/08/groupon-ipo-the-silver-lining/

<comment><USER3> If indeed it comes down to the lifetime value of a subscriber, assessing the viability of Groupon is difficult when the company is so young and growing so fast.

Given that difficulty, the key metric I would want to know is:

Acqusition Cost - (Conversion Rate to Buying a Groupon x Avg Groupon Cost x Avg Groupon % Split)

(eg, $5 - (25% x $20 x 50%) = +$2.50

If the end result is a negative, it means, on an overall average, Acquisitions pay for themselves with the first Groupon they buy. Get that outcome, and any further lifetime purchases are cream.

If (as I assume it currently is) the answer to that is a positive number (like my example) then they need repeat purchases. You need to add % Repeat to the formula - not an easy number to know, given (as noted above) how young the company is and how fast they're growing.

Groupon are obviously optimistic, hence the ACSOI figure which is predicated on the assumption that subscribers will stay loyal, make repeat purchases, and so marketing costs will significantly drop in the future.

And obviously lowering subscriber acquisition costs is also important - <USER2> figures in the OP showed these were down by almost 10%, which takes the result of my metric closer to the desirable $0 and below.

<comment><USER4> I can almost guarantee that number is positive and % Repeat is something they closely monitor and consider in their internal equationss. As any direct response/lead gen marketer knows, customer retention rates/repeat buyer % is a crucial element in the formula. I suspect they have a very clear idea of what this rate is right now, and as their business grows, this number only gets more accurate. Right now, operating costs aside, they only need to get their lifetime value per customer above $5.75 in North America, which isn't entirely unfathomable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're right that they track this very closely internally. You hit the nail on the head with LTV - with the amount they spent to acquire what they already have, the outlook for clearing that LTV hurdle doesn't look that bad.</comment></comment></comment>


After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/10/06/her-disability-check-was-gone-and-now-the-only-option-left-was-also-one-of-the-worst/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_economydisabled-702am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory <comment><USER2> I'm not as bad off as this woman but the difference is irrelevant in the big picture as I won't survive either. I am in my 40s with no skills, a dead CV and the expectation that if I really wanted it I would just pull on my non existent bootstraps. Over a decade ago my life was ruined by medical mistakes. It cost me my career and everything I had worked for. It started a long road of being denied assistance from disability and other programs as I fell in every crack or got unfair adjudicators. I was not able to navigate the legal system for recompense as it was loaded on the side of the doctors despite common belief.

I survived this long on a partial pension from my job, a large savings since I lived frugally, and occasional assistance from others. My health has worsened, problems and needs have piled up, the occasional assistance has tricked off mostly, and I have no hope.

Most people ignore me, some give useless advice that makes them feel like they did something, and nothing changes. In the end it comes back to victim blaming and me not trying hard enough. People who have health, security, and lives and cannot imagine what it's like to live in so much pain and have no real options love to judge.

I have tried and considered all the usual advice like "learn to code" or "just do content writing" that comes along to disabled and isolated people. At my age and with the stability issues I have it's not realistic. People don't seem to get that. I should be getting assistance but this country doesn't do it like the rest of the first world so I am expected to suffer more just to stay alive in pain. I am moving abroad to a cheaper country to try and stretch my pension but I won't survive there either without earning and I cannot find any feasible way to earn that doesn't make things worse. Seeing people talk about people like me here in terms of "usefulness to society" enrages me. I served society...I did good in the world...that life was stolen and society rejected me. We are legion.

<comment><USER3> I don't give this advice often since for most people it's the "moving abroad" part that's the deal breaker, but since you mentioned you're doing it already, I'll throw out teaching english as a foreign language. Depending on the country/school you might need a small certificate from a month-long-type training course, or training from the school itself, but for the most part you just need to be able to speak English and have a heartbeat.

When I did it I met other teachers from every conceivable walk of life, some with a situation that sounds similar enough to yours. It's the most realistic way that someone down on their luck can "start fresh" in this day and age (IMO). Good luck.

<comment><USER2> I've done it part time in the past when I attempted this sort of desperation move that failed. It wasn't sustainable and took too much out of me being "switched on and sociable" like that. On top of that the barrier to entry even if I could manage is higher than people think...I dont have a bachelors degree and am old. Schools want young, degreed and flexible. If all you have is being a naive speaker you get private under the table lessons for cash that constantly cancel and every other broke expat is undercutting you for.

If I am ever going to earn it has to be remote and flexible but I just dont have the skills or stability etc to learn them so far. I've tried "DIY learn to code various things" sort of ideas before but something always interrupts it and I suck at it frankly. Then I read how old and inflexible people cannot get hired for anything and I get even more down. I have not heard a new idea that seemed workable in so long I cannot remember.

<comment><USER4> If you go international to someplace cheaper and with any kind of tech scene you may be able to find at least a bit of work assisting software developers with English for apps & sites. There may be a bunch of people able to do that, but "local and able to meet" may have a quality all its own (along with "willing to be paid local rates in local currency").

You say you don't have skills, but at the least you write and presumably speak good grammatically correct English. You might also have at least a little bit of still relevant domain knowledge from your previous career - it may not get you in the door in that industry, but it may open doors in related ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I cannot find it in my heart to admire the people who comment here proscriptively, without any attempt to signal empathy. Its understood few of us (myself included) will be doing anything to ameliorate this situation, and that empathy signalling is at best chest beating, but I still find the lack of compassion in the responses chilling. Yes, not smoking would reduce health risks and spend. so what? If you haven't tried to survive on minimum wage, I am very unsure your critique of their behaviour, which is essentially poverty shaming: you are only poor because [lazy | stupid] forms of logic, adds anything. If you walk over a begger muttering "get a job" you deserve contempt.

If you hate America, vote capitalist, randean individualism.

<comment><USER6> I don't disagree with you, but I think there's a lot of people see the kind of people in the article as the opposition to progressive social issues like #BLM, acceptance of immigrants and the very same socialist policies that they survive off of and need to be expanded if these people are to see their lot in life improve. Rural communities overwhelmingly voted for Trump and they form the core of the Fox News constituency. The government they elected is now trying to take away their health care and give a massive tax cut to the top 1%. You'd probably see a lot more compassion among big-city liberals if these communities had embraced Bernie Sanders' agenda which would have redistributed a lot of wealth into their communities. But with their embrace of white nationalist policies and rhetoric, I think you see a lot of liberals feeling like they don't have the energy to care about all of the powerless people in this country and, instead, are focusing what limited resources they have on trying to help other oppressed groups (minorities, undocumented immigrants, etc.)

<comment><USER7> > You'd probably see a lot more compassion among big-city liberals if these > communities had embraced Bernie Sanders' agenda which would have > redistributed a lot of wealth into their communities.

Blue Blood Democrats pushed Bernie off the national stage attempting to elect Hillary Clinton, leaving the disadvantaged to only vote for the candidate who offered to champion their cause (Donald Trump). I don't fault most Trump voters one bit. The superior option they had was scuttled by a power hungry candidate _who lost to the worst candidate for presidency ever_.

> But with their embrace of white nationalist policies and rhetoric, I think > you see a lot of liberals feeling like they don't have the energy to care > about all of the powerless people in this country and, instead, are focusing > what limited resources they have on trying to help other oppressed groups > (minorities, undocumented immigrants, etc.)

Which causes conservative America to double down on conservatives in office. Wash, rinse, repeat.

EDIT: "Undocumented immigrants" are not citizens being oppressed; they are illegally in the country and should be deported unless covered under DACA (having arrived in the US as minors).

<comment><USER6> > Blue Blood Democrats pushed Bernie off the national stage attempting to > elect Hillary Clinton

What the DNC did in last year's primary was shameful, but...

> leaving the disadvantaged to only vote for the candidate who offered to > champion their cause (Donald Trump)

Laughs...he never championed their cause. He told them all their problems were because of minorities and that he'd return the country to a time of bigotry and racism where things would magically be better because they were white. He's since taken the office of The President and used it to try to screw over poor whites in every way imaginable and tried to placate them by making it even worse for minorities. It's hard to blame under-educated people for falling for Fox News propaganda, but you still can't deny their complicity in enabling their own situation. What they did in the general election to defeat Hilary they could have done in the Primary to support Bernie. They didn't.

<comment><USER7> > Laughs...he never championed their cause.

This stance is part of the problem.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=bring+jobs+back+trump+youtub...](https://www.google.com/search?q=bring+jobs+back+trump+youtube)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+coal+jobs+youtube](https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+coal+jobs+youtube)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+carrier+jobs+youtube](https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+carrier+jobs+youtube)

He promised the disadvantaged he'd get their jobs back from Mexico and China, he promised to bring coal jobs back. Whether he did those things or not doesn't matter. _That 's what he promised_.

> It's hard to blame under-educated people for falling for Fox News > propaganda, but you still can't deny their complicity in enabling their own > situation. What they did in the general election to defeat Hilary they could > have done in the Primary to support Bernie. They didn't.

I don't blame undereducated people. I blame people who care more about illegal immigrants than the disenfranchised citizens suffering in poverty in the US. I blame urban liberals who have no comprehension of the plight the poor in the US are suffering through. I blame upper management of the Democratic Party, who rigged the nomination (along with super delegates) against Bernie Sanders, and I wish nothing but terrible, terrible things on those people.

EDIT: Hillary Clinton is nowhere to be found after her crushing defeat, and Bernie Sanders is still out there every day fighting for universal healthcare and other pro-citizen policies (alongside Elizabeth Warren). We suffered a terrible loss because of Clinton's vanity and pride.

<comment><USER8> > I blame people who care more about illegal immigrants than the > disenfranchised citizens suffering in poverty in the US.

Would you like to blame me?

But, from my perspective, I heard very little Trump say that would affect illegal immigration (his only proposal for that was to build a wall), but I heard lots of things that sounded like heavy bigotry to me. He wanted to ban muslims, ban refugees from the very places where the US instigates wars, and generally said a lot of vile stuff.

I may have taken it all a little too personally. Trump literally advocated for banning my future wife from the US. I'm too old for DACA, but when I tried to get a passport I discovered I didn't have paperwork to get a passport. Recent changes in laws mean our families literally can't visit each other, and we are discussing what to do.

On the other hand, I imagine some people would like their mother-in-law banned from the country. It would at least make a good joke for someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No shit. The tricky thing with this kind of work is it has to be all cash- only, under the table. Best if nobody sees you doing it, which rules out a lot of the more legitimate kinds of side work - if you're supposed to be 80% disabled, it looks a little fishy when you're out cutting lawns or splitting firewood or caretaking... I grew up on the northern end of Appalachia, and huge numbers of people there supplement their income growing a little cash crop out in the woods - you had to be a little careful in places that you didn't blunder into a plantation when you were out deer hunting. I wonder whether the recent legalization pushes are putting a hurting on that front.

<comment><USER10> I grew up in the california mountains. Marijuana was a notable factor in the local economy. When CA passed medical marijuana I dont recall any adverse impact on prices. My supposition is this basically used existing supply and allowed for very small scale personal production. As recently as 2010 wholesale prices were in $3000/lb range.

When CO & WA legalized recreational use they followed the liquor industry producer/distributor/retailer model. This explicitely provided for large scale commercial production. By 2014-15 wholesale prices had dropped to $2000/lb or so. Today I think wholesale is down around $1000/lb on the west coast. In some shops retail prices are $1250-1500/lb.

In short, yes prices have dropped precipitously in the past few years. And Id expect further decline as large commerical operations continue to grow in well regulated states. Small personal grows will still be strictly profitable. But the small "family business" black market operations are being squeezed quite hard.

Caveat, numbers from memory and im not in the business myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not sure why this is an article. This is just normal life in many parts of rural America from Pennsylvania to Washington to Arizona.

When I lived in West Virginia, I did note that the Washington Post had a weird fascination with the place. Whenever things got slow, you could expect some big exposé about what a bunch of uneducated, dirty bumpkins we were.

WaPo even once held a contest to come up with a new slogan for West Virginia when it didn't like seeing "Almost Heaven" on the license plates. The winner was "Almost Haiti."

<comment><USER12> > _Not sure why this is an article. This is just normal life in many parts of > rural America from Pennsylvania to Washington to Arizona._

Plenty of people have no idea that there are people living like this in America.

<comment><USER11> This is true. Whenever I see people on TV or the internet or wherever raising money for clean water and basic sanitation or basic electricity in other parts of the world, I think about the THOUSANDS of homes I've seen in West Virginia, Tennessee, and especially Texas that lack water, toilets, and electricity.

Somehow America's dirt poor aren't as exciting or trendy as the exotic overseas dirt poor.

<comment><USER13> > Somehow America's dirt poor aren't as exciting or trendy as the exotic > overseas dirt poor.

It's not that poverty is exciting. It's that abject poverty in the richest country on Earth is shocking and goes against assumptions people had as correct since ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of a few articles I have bookmarked - more about suburban than rural, and how the people get by:

[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/12/6/best- of-2016-s...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/12/6/best- of-2016-suburban-poverty)

[https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/15/suburban- poverty/](https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/15/suburban-poverty/)

[https://granolashotgun.com/2015/03/30/affordable-housing- mau...](https://granolashotgun.com/2015/03/30/affordable-housing-maui-style/)

[https://granolashotgun.com/2017/08/04/the-precariat- shoppe/](https://granolashotgun.com/2017/08/04/the-precariat-shoppe/)

</comment><comment><USER15> That is so depressing. No wonder suicide rates are up.

You know there's a difference between "give a man a fish" and "teach a man to fish", but what do you do when the fish are just _gone_?

It was mentioned in the article, but not extensively discussed. I think maybe the largest distinct segment of the economy in ex-coalcountry regions is now pharmaceuticals, legal and illegal. There's the legal root and mushroom hunting, which go into supplements, but a large fraction of the people are growing marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, collecting sassafras root bark for MDMA cooks, and reselling their prescription opioids, in addition to the older traditions of moonshining and tobacco cigarette smuggling.

And _everyone_ is on social security disability. If all you ever knew is coal mining, _that 's_ your condition that prevents you from finding gainful employment. If you need to see what happens with bare-bones basic income, that's it. The whole community barely scrapes along, and everyone has to do some niche hustle to earn their gas money a dime at a time. If you threw out the penalty for working, most of those people would be doing something productive, even if it's manufacturing ugly tchotchkes to be sold in a tourist trap, because whatever it is would give them beef in their stew instead of just barely enough gas in the tank to keep going.

<comment><USER16> This is replicated all over the rust belt. One of the saddest portrayals of this is the photo essay, The Ruins of Detroit[1]. These once mighty economic engines have been silenced: manufacturing, coal, etc. What happens next is that the people who depend upon these industries to make a living, and live ... do less well of a job of this.

Some argue that unions would help (they wouldn't), or anti-globalism would stop factories/industries from moving (maybe temporarily). The sad fact remains that industries are, to a degree, tied to regions, and people grow up depending upon those industries in those regions. Once the industry finds a lower cost mechanism to come to market, those dependent people are cut free.

Its the short term, profit focused mindset and all it brings that is a huge part of the problem. Note that I am a staunch capitalist, and I see this.

I don't have a solution to this. I wish I did. None of the political parties have anything close to a solution for this. Giving money directly to people may help for a while, but is likely to spark inflation, which will cause this to repeat in a few years.

I remember one of the political parties crowing about how they saved the auto industry in Michigan during the last major financial crisis. Funny, as I live there, and I remember one of the people who lives in my sub whose business was destroyed by this "saving" thanks to many long held overdue invoices at one of the car company's being zeroed out, coming to my front door, with his son to ask for help. Food specifically.

Foolish policies that do not contemplate consequences for actions, apart from the groups that the politicos favor, help decimate regions like this. Coal is evil as I've heard. And the people who mine it? They are the ones now suffering because, you know, its evil, and coal must die.

Every decision, every policy has consequences. There are never any easy solutions.

(edits to correct spelling/punctuation errors)

[1] [http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit](http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit)

<comment><USER17> > "Coal is evil as I've heard. And the people who mine it? They are the ones > now suffering because, you know, its evil, and coal must die."

That's a strawman. Coal isn't dying because it's evil. Thermal coal is dying because it can't compete with cheaper, more efficient natural gas generation.

<comment><USER18> The Democratic Party Presidential candidate in the last election openly boasted about plans to "put the coal companies out of business" after she would be elected, so it's not entirely a straw man to say that there are people who would kill coal at a rate faster than what competition would achieve.

<comment><USER17> Yes, it's a strawman. Coal's present predicament has exactly _nothing_ to do with political disfavor. Coal remains heavily subsidized [1], under-regulated [2], and enjoys entrenched support at all levels of government. And yet it still can't compete with newer more efficient alternatives.

Note that the Trump administration is now pushing to give coal _massive_ new subsidies in the form of forced extra payments to coal-fired power plants. Also note that the money will be taken directly from us, the ratepayers; they will be charges added to our electric bills.

1\. For example, the federal government has long arranged the bidding and royalty system in a way that ensures the lowest possible lease rates for coal mining, and coal companies are allowed to self-bond, so that when they go bankrupt, the public has to pick up the bills for cleanup and remediation.

2\. See the TVA's recent coal ash disasters for a prime example of an under- regulated industry. Other examples abound.

<comment><USER18> You've missed the point I and the GP are making completely. GP is making an argument about what is happening to displaced people, not about what is happening to the coal industry.

The claim in the GP is _not_ that coal "is dying to political disfavor", the claim is that political disfavor of coal exists and is not helpful _to the people who used to mine it_, for whatever reason those people were displaced.

It really doesn't matter if coal is dying because alternatives are better or if it's the Illuminati doing it, because that doesn't change the fact that politicians are not doing anything to address the effects of it and in some cases are being explicitly callous towards people who used to be employed mining coal.

<comment><USER17> Yes, I get it, you really don't like what Hillary said. Neither does she; in her new book she calls that statement one of her biggest mistakes.

But one politician's ill-considered indulgence in the heat of a campaign does not make your case that "politicians are not doing anything" to help coal miners.

Quite clearly, the opposite is true. Coal miners are America's most fashionable symbol of blue-collar righteousness, and politicians on both sides of the aisle are tripping over each other to be seen "doing something" for them. In both state and national politics, this has given coal miners influence way out of proportion to their constituency, and far beyond that of any other jobless group such as former steel-workers or loggers or out-of-work retail store workers.

Invoking the bogeyman of coal-hating elites is nothing more than a way to keep a political football inflated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ive been there. Years ago.

Back in '07 got laid off. Company shut down. Lots of us tried to scramble to get jobs, and all the quick low paying jobs filled up. I got into unemployment and started collecting the $207/week. And this, obviously, wasn't enough. It certainly didn't equal to the part that was taken out of my paycheck for "unemployment insurance".

2 weeks turned into a month. Which turned into months, then into a year. Then the '08 recession hit. I saw people with graduate science degrees working at McDonalds. There was no fucking way I could get a job, even with blanketing my resumes and filling out webforms that are never responded (Thank you for submitting your application. You will never hear from us).

And im still struggling with the $207/week. So I start hustling on craigslist, doing odd jobs. Of course I'm supposed to report this. Well, guess what.... I used this money to relocate myself to a better location, and got a job.

Ideally, if you make 1$ on unemployment, you are supposed to report it, and you get $1 less. And if you do work a low paying job, then you get worked to the bone for 30 hours, and get minimum wage which is $187 after taxes. And minus gas, minus lunch, and too tired to look elsewhere. So you hold out for a better one that can get you out of the hole.

Yeah, it's just a bad situation all around. And it turns everyone into criminals.

<comment><USER20> >It certainly didn't equal to the part that was taken out of my paycheck for "unemployment insurance".

You were getting more than $207/week taken out of your paycheck for unemployment insurance? That's highway robbery!

<comment><USER19> When you work for 5 years at a place, and unemployment law only recognizes the last 2 years as history, yes, I am getting cheated.

The point of unemployment insurance is to cover things like this. And when the govt's law intentionaly blinds them to your previous payments, there definitely is something wrong.

Did I calculate exactly how much I paid in? No. But do 5 years of being paid reasonably well; I paid in plenty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >because disability payments on average amount to less than minimum wage, sometimes much less, ...

Why is this? How are these people expected to survive, if they are disabled to the point that they can't hold down a job, and aren't allowed to work without the risk of losing their disability payments? Busking? I know that's been one traditional job for disabled people over the centuries, but I feel like we should be able to do better.

<comment><USER22> Disability is often done on a percentage basis. If you're completely unable to work you get 100%.

If you can't stand for a long time, but can sit and work, you might get 30% disability.

Even at 100% it's not a lot of money, but I've heard it's enough to exist.

<comment><USER23> > but I've heard it's enough to exist.

How does health insurance/care work for these people? Do you automatically qualify for the government programs (MA?) if you are even partially disabled?

<comment><USER24> Medicaid, funded by the state.

Some food subsidies via EBT or WIC.

The more 'entrepreneurial' folks can also sell their prescriptions, subsidize other's food purchases w/ the EBT card (in exchange for cash), and make/sell moonshine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The real shame in the article is that rent of $300 per month is being charged on an unimproved 10x20 shed, which you can buy for under $5k almost anywhere in rural and suburban areas.

Who set up that deal? How did they get a certificate of occupancy without a toilet?

</comment><comment><USER26> Once again, I'm probably breaking the rules.

Consider this person: [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hestipod](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hestipod)

> I made an account just to comment on this issue after lurking for a long > time but it's surely just another pointless action because it's the same > story over and over. Empathy is not common.

Three (at this time) comments that seem to be very relevant to this topic and discussion, yet all [dead].

> Most people ignore me, some give useless advice that makes them feel like > they did something, and nothing changes.

Indeed.

<comment><USER27> If the comments are [dead] but not [flagged][dead], the account is banned. If a past commenter has been egregious enough, the mods will ban not only the main account but also put in some checks to prevent a user from creating new accounts to otherwise circumvent the ban--comments from such new accounts are also marked [dead]. As others have pointed out, if the comments are worthwhile, they can be vouched. There are differing opinions on this method of banning, but it does allow comments to be vouched for.

<comment><USER28> > _If the comments are [dead] but not [flagged][dead], the account is banned._

That's not quite right. These comments were killed by anti-spam software. When this happens to legitimate accounts we rely on the community to vouch for them or email us at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER27> Cheers. Thanks for filling in the blanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> (edit: I finished it,as I should have the first time. Not that i change my point of view though) <s>I couldn't finish the article, not because it was too heartbreaking, but because of the stupidity of the author.</s>

..."went to the already-crowded Dollar Store and Dollar General and bought dog food, dog treats, Slim Jims, three six-packs of Milwaukee's Best, pruners for digging roots and a backpack to carry it all."

I have been on the poverty line, I'm damn close to being there again. You have money for dog food and beer? Also earlier noted in the article smoking.

I'm not sorry to say, fucking pull your head in.

I have had to grow my own vegetables and cut lawns to feed my family (when I was 14!), None of us had money to mnoke, drink or have pets.

Oh you spent your day digging up roots? Why not plant something then?(if you're already stealing from public land, why not at least try and utilise it somehow?)

"I worked underground until I started having anxiety and I couldn't stand to go back underground,", I sure hope that doesn't deserve a disability payment, there are many more deserving than that. Shit I don't like underground either, doesn't mean I'm disabled, just means that I don't like the idea of that much mass over my head. I can still do other work.

My opinion on this piece is that the author was trying to pull heart strings without actually being objective.

<comment><USER29> So to the downvoters, do you actually have a logical response, or just a knee jerk reaction?

I have been there, I grew up not knowing where each meal was coming from. I have lived next to and interacted with people who can't make logical decisions about what to do.

I have seen people pull themselves from there, to actually attain something worthwhile, (I'd like to believe I am one of those people), and I have seen and interacted with those who will use any excuse to avoid actually working, or bettering themselves.

So again, would you like to have a discussion about it? I'm more than willing.

I am disappointed about the downvotes without a good reason though, this is why we come to hn after all.

<comment><USER2> So what about those of us, who are despite common belief the majority, who are in between? Those too old or broken or indebted to work like a 14yo and hope for a future? Those who lost everything after doing what you did and building a life. Those of us who WANT to better ourselves and be independent but cannot get the support to do so? What do you expect US to do? You are falling victim to survivorship bias and victim blaming when you say "I did it and know others who have therefore anyone can". Do you really think I would CHOOSE to live like this if I had an alternative? You need to believe it's all bored, lazy people so you can hold on to your point of view and feel safe yourself. You are afraid and you take it out on those suffering. I have seen this over and over. Any "discussion" people with such views ever have is full of blame and assumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It reminds me of this incredible HBO documentary from 2009 chronicling the daily life of a (pretty crazy) rural family called "The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQBiXDNVeSA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQBiXDNVeSA)

</comment><comment><USER31> Is there a non-paywalled link available? I'm not finding anything via the web link.

</comment><comment><USER32> Logan County, West Virginia, where this article is set, voted 80% in favor of Trump, giving him 10,000 additional votes. [1] The entire state of West Virginia went to Trump.

If Democrats want to change the current political landscape in this country, they might start by addressing some of these peoples' problems while they're campaigning on everyone else's problems too.

Trump (and conservatives) aren't going to do a thing for these people, but at least they mentioned them.

[1]: [http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/...](http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/west- virginia/)

<comment> 549362-30499 Clinton did campaign on a jobs and retraining program specifically for these people. But how can you compete with someone saying they'll hand-wave away your problems and return your old way of life?

<comment><USER33> How appealing is a retaining program when you're dirty, tired, old, and not able to get to a class room?

She didn't campaign on a jobs program, or at least not one that would matter like a jobs guarantee.

<comment><USER13> Should they just lie instead?

Sometimes reality is not appealing.

<comment><USER33> _Should they just lie instead?_

What's the objective?

I think the retraining is a neoliberal dog whistle for 'these people deserve their current lives'. If the objective is to run a campaign that's consistent with (or an affirmation of) elite coastal values, then harping on retraining is exactly the right thing to do.

If you want to want the most votes, you have to appeal to the most amount of people. Making coastal elites the outgroup is smart because there aren't that many of them and they probably support one of their own anyway.

<comment><USER13> If you want to know what I would do to make these lives better, it'd be campaigning for universal basic income.

Unfortunately, that would be labeled "socialism" and made political suicide in seconds. An alternative would be to heavily subsidize housing, food, gas, healthcare, medicine and do that disguised as an attempt to bootstrap a local self-sufficient economy. It'd actually be a lot more socialist than UBI but politics is the art of the possible and not all state transitions are allowed.

<comment><USER33> _Unfortunately, that would be labeled "socialism" and made political suicide in seconds._

If you think that's true then it is, right?

I have dissident rightist view points. I hang out with dissident rightists. I've never once heard them say that UBI is worse than the status quo, and I think pairing UBI with reduced low-skill immigration is something 95% of them could get behind.

Sure, the Paul Ryans and Pelosis of the world might gnash their teeth over UBI but it's something that nearly everyone outside the status quo supports.

<comment><USER13> Most of my right wing friends are the Ayn Rand kind and are deeply offended by the idea of paying other people to live.

<comment><USER33> Ask them whether they'd prefer UBI or the current system assuming both cost the same.

<comment><USER13> I did. It's a principle thing. That odd notion that if you can't feed yourself you don't deserve to be fed.

<comment><USER33> They might have fooled you with that answer but that doesn't address the question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > She lit a home-rolled cigarette and, getting to work with a mattock, tried > to ignore the weather. _She had lately been telling herself that she had to > stop taking these risks._ They were more than an hour from the nearest > hospital, and what if she had another heart attack?

Yeah...she seems to be ignoring the heart-attack risk she is pumping into her lungs while she says that. I get that it's an addiction that is hard to kick, but come on. If you've already had _quintuple_ bypass surgery, maybe it's time to give up smoking?

<comment><USER35> This article makes plain that she, and everyone she knows are, economically speaking, dead-men walking. And there is a certain dignity offering someone a smoke before they accept their doom.

The question that plagues me is: can _I_ give her a job? What could this woman do, online or off, that would be valuable to society? Is Mechanical Turk, marketed to the rural poor, a solution?

<comment><USER11> This is why West Virginia, North Dakota, Nevada, and other low-education states are magnets for call centers coming back onshore.

They may be dumb as a brick in American terms, but they're able to function at a higher level than the average Indian call center employee, at a comparable salary, and they have the right accents.

<comment><USER24> Need AFFORDABLE internet connections first.

<comment><USER18> The call center can afford an internet connection; it's cheaper than the people they'd be hiring.

<comment><USER24> Really?

A T-1 around that area is almost $700/mo.

A 100Mbps symmetric connection is several thousand dollars per month.

<comment><USER36> Minumum wage in the US is $7.25/hr. In West Virginia specifically it's $8.75/hr.

That means that a full-time minimum-wage employee in West Virginia costs about $1460/month (assuming they get paid for 50 weeks a year and take 2 weeks of unpaid vacation; if they get paid for 40 hours every week, that's $1517/month). That's just for their salary. Employers also have to pay half of the FICA tax (7.65%), unemployment taxes (several percent, typically; no idea what it's like in West Virginia), provide the actual space to work, etc.

So you can get 2 T-1 lines easily for the cost of a single minimum-wage employee. Assuming your "several thousand dollars" is less than $10k, that corresponds to about 5 minimum-wage employees.

And maybe, just maybe, there might be an incentive structure that involves wages above minimum wage for people who do a good job.

<comment><USER24> So, why would anybody want a call center in WV if bandwidth and minimum wage are more expensive than Florida, for instance?

...and all employees would pay state income tax

<comment><USER36> How do the real estate prices compare?

But yes, in general the answer may be that they wouldn't put such a thing in WV.

<comment><USER11> Three seconds of Googling shows you're oh so wrong.

<comment><USER36> Oh so wrong about what, exactly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Welcome too late stage capitalism

<comment><USER38> Just so you know, you're being downvoted not because of your views on capitalism(a critique of which was the point of this post), but rather because of the lack of substance your comment contained. In the future, your comments will be better received if you state the reasoning behind your viewpoint so that we may learn from and discuss it.

Edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Because I'm just trying to maintain the productive, thought-provoking culture that HN contains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

</comment><comment><USER40> So why can't we invest enough time and money in these people to make them engineers and technicians? Then they might be able to start shops that make and distribute the tourist trinkets mentioned by another poster. Why is the only solution that a large company that someone else creates moves in and provides low skill jobs?

<comment><USER41> What makes you think these people wouldn't already have jobs as engineers and technicians if they were capable of that? It even mentions in the article that the one lady lives down the road from her nephew who has a nice house with trucks and a boat. He was pulling down 100k at a coal related job, that might mean in a labor role but there's a good chance he's the type of person you're talking about; someone capable of filling a sort of lower-level engineer/technician role.

Edit: That's not to say there aren't a few capable folks that fell on rough times or came from a rough background and never quite got a good enough opportunity to make something of themselves. Certainly it would be nice to have programs to help those folks reach the full extent of their capabilities. But that's definitely not a solution for the broad majority of people in this situation.

<comment><USER40> I am amazed by the pervasiveness of the assumption that most of the human race is inherently just too stupid to become upper middle like us.

<comment><USER42> It's not stupidity, it's a combination of factors.

1) Lack of knowledge of options. Let's say you wanted to get into the oil business. Without Googling anything, what job would you want? What skills and credentials would you need to acquire to get that job? How would you go about getting those?

2) Lack of education - Imagine trying to learn how to program without knowing what variables are. And then let's say you struggle and become capable of doing junior web dev work. What happens when you encounter even an easy interview question like "Write a program to find the first n prime numbers"

3) Lack of time - Most adults don't have time to focus full time on training, even if they aren't working. Children and elderly family members can suck up a lot of time.

<comment><USER43> 1) Without googling anything, I'd need... presentable clothes, good hygiene, and to be able to make sense when I talk and respond sensibly to questions. Get into the oil business? Everyone's got a mail room, janitorial staff, etc. Get a job doing that and show them that you can show up for work on time and do a good job at the mundane stuff with a friendly attitude, no complaining, and not causing drama. That goes a LONG way. The other items follow this one.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steve Blank: Why Companies are Not Startups - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2014/03/04/why-companies-are-not-startups/ <comment><USER2> The repetitive theme in this excellent post seems to be hard coded KPIs/Metrics.

For those of us who work at large organizations & who have to deal with metrics/KPIs, We need to understand that every time we track a metric/KPI, something else dies.

As Marc Andreessen, said this about metrics: [http://pmarcatweetsasblogposts.tumblr.com/post/73631082205/m...](http://pmarcatweetsasblogposts.tumblr.com/post/73631082205/measure- performance-with-paired-metrics-for-best)

"The problem with arbitrary metrics in complex situations — they tend to backfire. Give emergency services drivers rigid response time metrics, and they'll tend to stay close in to urban centers. Surprise! Andy Grove had the answer: For every metric, there should another "paired" metric that addresses adverse consequences of the first metric. Many companies and especially governments violate this principle continuously, and are startled by the result — every time."

\----

Also Clayton Christensen identified KPIs & Metrics that did not change as underlying customer behavior/industry changes as a key factor.

Here is an example:

[http://harryjan.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/innovators- dilemma/](http://harryjan.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/innovators-dilemma/)

"At a certain point however the very metrics that the market leaders used to rate and sell their products reached a point where it was 'good enough' for the majority of customers. When the average Hard Drive's rate of failure reaches <1% over a three year purchase period, there is little incentive for the customer to pay a big premium to purchase a drive with <0.8% rate of failure for example." \---</comment>


Derek Powazek - Your right to comment ends at my front door. - <AUTHOR> http://powazek.com/posts/2463 <comment><AUTHOR> Highlight:

 _I don't think the problem is that people are stupid. I think that people, when given crappy tools, with almost no oversight, no incentive to behave, and no semblance of real identity, often behave stupidly._

<comment><USER2> The lack of any real community at many places that have comment threads is one of the big problems imo, which would create some of the "incentive to behave" and "semblance of real identity" (even if "real" is pseudonymous, it's real within a community). And it's pretty hard to build a community around one person's personal blog, unless it's a very small one (their circle of personal friends).

That's one reason I think the HN comments are often better than the comments on the posts HN links to. It's also one reason I think there are significant downsides to the de-centralization of tech blogging: where in 1998 someone with an article to post would have posted it within a community (say, submitted it to Kuro5hin, or Metafilter), today they often post it on their personal blog. There are definite pros to the ability of anyone to publish anywhere, but I think it makes everything more disjointed on the discussions.

<comment><USER3> Or the problem could be that the decentralization hasn't been taken far enough. Why should comments be tied to a particular website at all? Comments can be federated in exactly the same way people are talking about opening up Twitter and turning it into a "distributed service" or even a "protocol". Even without true federation, you can still extract comments from the major aggregators via their APIs. So the notion of where a comment ultimately "lives" starts to get blurry.</comment></comment></comment>


GM Can Manage an EV's Batteries Wirelessly–and Remotely - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/energy/batteries-storage/ieee-spectrum-exclusive-gm-can-manage-an-evs-batteries-wirelesslyand-remotely <comment><USER2> Lots of breathless claims here. If I didn't know better, I would think this is a GM press release. IEEE, wherefore art thou?</comment>