Why we moved away from GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://layer0.authentise.com/bitbucket-jira-integration-or-why-we-moved-away-from-github.html <comment><USER2> This article is low-content and reads like a paid shill for Bitbucket. Here's a summary if you haven't clicked yet:

* We think GitHub is expensive

* We use JIRA (no real justification given)

* Bitbucket has a better price for our use case and integrates better with JIRA

<comment><USER3> This is a short personal opinion. It is debatable how front page worthy it is, but calling it a paid shill is silly. After all, this isn't Russia Today's comment section.

<comment><USER4> I personally prefer bitbucket for all my personal repos. I get unlimited private repos for free.

<comment><USER5> This. While I don't know if they would do it if they were as popular as they want to be (maybe bitbucket desperately wants to charge but don't feel like they could compete if they did), I personally use bitbucket for this very reason.

Sometimes I also use bitbucket just to get away from hosting every single thing in Github. Nothing against Github (I use it quite a bit, and from what I've read their culture and ethics are good if not great), but regardless of their intentions, I'd rather not have one company monopolize mindshare

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is good to read. The marketplace needs healthy alternatives and it would be a shame if Github turned into the kind of natural monopoly that Ebay or Facebook are. I say this as a happy Github user who doesn't want Github to get complacent.

Bitbucket puts heavy effort into their integration with JIRA. Their pricing model is totally different. Yeay for choice!

</comment><comment><USER7> I moved to bitbucket as well but for the team features not for the ecosystem: I hate jira and confluence with passion.

<comment><USER8> JIRA is one of those things that I've always seen mentioned as amazing if set up properly... but I've never seen it set up "properly". It seems to always get harnessed to the needs of management and/or multipurposed for a hundred different uses, leading to a horrifyingly overcomplicated ticketing process.

<comment> james-skemp We're using it for agile and a number of us have realized that the tool (JIRA) dictates our workflow instead of the other way around.

So this rings really true to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I prefer VS Team Services. The Pull Request UI rules. [https://www.visualstudio.com/features/version-control- vs](https://www.visualstudio.com/features/version-control-vs)

</comment><comment><USER10> That GIF was super distracting while trying to read.

</comment><comment><USER11> Unless you are using Mercurial why use BitBucket or Stash? If cost is the main concern then it seems like GitLab would be a better option and it has great integrations available and is open source.

And if you don't mind hosting yourself then there are other options too like Gogs. My personal experience with BitBucket is that the feature set is poor compared to alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Github charges based on the number of repositories"

Might be worth noticing that this is for the SaaS. The enterprise install is charged per user.

Makes sense too I guess since then you pay for your own storage anyway, where for the SaaS most of the costs is, hence charged per repo.

</comment><comment><USER13> For those considering alternatives, here's another (currently also HN front page): [https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph@b1af2ab4761618930f6f...](https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph@b1af2ab4761618930f6f7e44eb775e08fac3f38e/.tree/README.md)

Key features: \- jump to definition right in browser \- find usage examples \- full text AND symbol search \- source code publicly available \- self-hosted, installable in 5 minutes

Full disclosure: I'm co-founder of Sourcegraph.

</comment><comment><USER14> My take is that there is real value by integrating your issue tracker with your source repo. If you start with Jira, it's not surprising you would end up with Bitbucket. If you start with Github, it is very easy to use the Github issues tracker.

And, if you want extra Github issues functionality (like a Kanban view), I recommend [https://waffle.io](https://waffle.io).

</comment><comment><USER15> The problem with Bitbucket is that it does not integrate with many dev tools and services. Even the most popular CI tools such as CircleCI and Travis do not support Bitbucket and work with only GitHub.

I don't mind paying a small price for these conveniences.

<comment><USER16> I find it hard to believe that any CI wouldn't integrate with any generic git repo.

<comment><USER17> TravisCI has the following issue about that: [https://github.com/travis- ci/travis-ci/issues/667](https://github.com/travis-ci/travis-ci/issues/667)

TL;DR: they use Github for auth, user management, ... and don't want to rebuild that stuff outside of Github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just a side question, if someone who uses Github as part of a professional organization could answer.

Has the limit on private repositories ever driven publishing of open source libraries for some of your repos?

</comment><comment><USER19> Setting up your own repo with push/pull via ssh is trivial. If your needs are just "company internal" that's the path I'd suggest.

</comment><comment><USER20> for my own use, I setup digital ocean droplet and installed redmine.org with mercurial HG

all for the cost of abou5 $5 a month.

</comment><comment><USER21> You may know about this already but Jira has Github integration as well [1]...

[1] [http://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/04/connecting- jira-6-2-githu...](http://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/04/connecting- jira-6-2-github/)

<comment><USER22> Noted in the article...

"Github _can_ integrate with Jira, but it has multi-minute delays before Jira gets all of the information. We got tired of it. Seriously. It only takes 30 seconds to break flow. Github's delay broke flow."

<comment><USER23> That seems like an issue for Jira, not Github IMO. Atlasssian owning both Jira and Bitbucket though, seems like they'd prefer to keep it the way it is for this very reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One of my clients moved their repos from Bitbucket to Github because Bitbucket's uptime had become a reliability issue. The team really dislikes the Pull Request interface of GitHub compared to Bitbucket (as do I).

<comment><USER8> Could you elaborate on what you prefer about the Bitbucket equivalent?

<comment><USER25> The biggest difference I see is that Bitbucket's diff view is a tree of changed files, rather than a unified diff. There are things I like about both -- I like that I can get an overview of what changed in Bitbucket, and have a better high-level view of changes.

I still miss the unified diff view from Github, though -- it seemed to work well for small changes, and kept me in the flow for reading, and worked better on a narrower screen (since it didn't need a left-side navigation section). That was the main thing I missed when I first moved to Bitbucket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Bitbucket was becoming more and more unreliable (server being down for no reason or due to "wrong config") so we had to switch over to Github

</comment><comment><USER27> If your startup cannot afford GitHub i suggest you sell the Ping Pong table</comment>


Ask HN: Is this selection process for an AI cog real or a gag? - <AUTHOR> Hi Bbb,
Welcome to the Aaa selection process, and thank you for applying!
The selection consists of the following steps:
Coding exercise @ rrr.com A three-hour programming assessment, consisting of three exercises to be executed in the online platform Rrr (www.....com). We suggest you familiarize with the Rrr tool, by taking the example exercises, and that you perform the actual assessment when you are sure you have three consecutive hours undisturbed, e.g. during a weekend, as the test can not be paused once started. The deadline is December 3.
Please use the following link to access your test. After clicking the link you will be able to practice with a demo or start the test.
https://rrrrrrrr
After submitting all your solutions you will be presented with your score for each task, so that you can find out how you performed. The score is based on automatic assessment. Please keep in mind that we may also take other aspects of your solutions into account.
Initial interview Phone interview about your past working experiences and your expectations for your role in Aaa
Technical interview Phone interview to assess your technical knowledge about the topics pertaining the current position
Scientific paper exercise You receive a recent scientific paper and are told to re-implement some algorithms or replicate a part of the analyses there described. You are expected to send back to us the code of your implementation and a brief report describing your activities.
Presentation and face-to-face interview You are asked to prepare a short presentation about your work on the scientific paper, to be given to us ideally in our Zzz office and to be followed by a face-to-face interview.
Good luck!
Aaa <comment><USER2> If I am hiring this sounds great. I get a test of programming skills before I invest any of my time and effort. And, the final step validates that you can absorb, learn from and apply leading edge academic findings and also talk about your work in an articulate way.

If I am on the other side this sounds very one sided. Automated tests are hard to do in a manner that is really fair and doesn't make too many assumptions. Also it seems like committing 3 high pressure testing hours before anyone from the company has even chatted with me about the position seems very odd socially.

The only way this would make sense to me as the applicant is if the job was at a highly reputable organization with compensation above market rate. And, even then I would interpret the high time commitment from me prior to even the most casual conversation and indication of interest and fit from their side as a potential red flag of corporate arrogance.

</comment><comment><USER3> What seems gag-worthy to you? Too much work? It is definitely a big ask, but not outrageous imo.</comment>


Average Office Worker Spends Less Than 3 Hours of the Day Working Productively - <AUTHOR> https://www.vouchercloud.com/resources/office-worker-productivity <comment><USER2> I had a manager once who would just divide the number of hours I stayed in office by two and then tell me that that was the time I was actually doing something useful. He did that for everyone in his team and kept it in mind when planning for long term projects.

This heuristic seems to work pretty well for him. His planning was never far from perfect and he did deliver quite a few large projects within the timelines.

<comment><USER3> How is it useful to know the number of hours someone is actually working on a project when planning? That seems to granular to be useful. It seems easier to have a sense of what can be done in a day than an hour. Each hour is going to vary a lot anyway.

<comment><USER4> How else would one forecast?

If you need to accomplish TaskX, you work with the team that will do TaskX to come up with a valid estimate of effort required to complete it -- say, 300 hours of work.

You _could_ just naively assume that this task would then be done in 300 hours / 8 hours per day / # of workers, but that assumes 100% productivity -- which isn't true basically anywhere.

Ergo...

<comment><USER3> Even if you are estimating your own tasks and there aren't many unknowns, as a developer I don't normally check in with myself every hour and ponder how much I've achieved, so my idea of how much I can do in an hour is not going to be too accurate. Then multiply the error by 300. At least if a team has daily standups they'd be used to assessing their progress per day.

<comment><USER4> (Nice name)

The thing is, though, for many business models being able to accurately estimate time and cost is critical, and so is executing vs. that estimate.

It's nice to be able to say "I have no idea how long this will take," but it's also a luxury not available to many (most?) developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ugh, just the idea that workers are "guilty of" stealing productive time from their employers by "Making hot drinks" or "Discussing out of work activities with colleagues."

<comment><USER6> Workers need unproductive activities, because otherwise the long days that the unproductive activities make necessary would be intolerable.

I'd much rather work 4 hour days with no hot drinks or chatting than 8 hours at a relaxed pace. I can do unproductive activities in my own time.

<comment><USER5> I couldn't do even 4 hours in a hyper-focused mode without taking 3 minutes to go get a cup of tea. That's not "unproductive activities", that's giving my brain a short rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The current standard working week is 40 hours. 40 is not a magic number and it's not a law of nature. We need to start a serious discussion about reducing it. 32 would be a good start. Retaining the same pay. In case you worry it will destroy the economy check out [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time)

<comment><USER8> When I work from home, I get far more done in less time, yet so many employers are stuck on discouraging working from home. In fact, I'm probably more productive working 20 hours focused at home then 40 in the office.

I changed my work setup to be contact based (by project, not by hour), and I now get more done in 20 hours than I did with 40 hours, and I feel that's because I can:

\- take breaks without getting flak for it from management \- interact with clients/partners when I choose to (email, IM, etc, all of which can be muted/ignored) \- work longer when I feel I'm doing well, work less when I'm distracted

However, every office has different expectations, so maybe mine was just particularly bad. IDK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The future is virtual, remote, and productive. It is cheaper, more robust to team life changes and can select from a wider net which ultimately makes for better people.

Offices are a distraction except for meetings, integrations, planning but for actual work they are horrible.

Think of all the greats, they all had their own lab/study and that is where the great work was done.

Funny thing is, even when we go to work at an office lots of the communication is virtual internally via text/email/systems with people an room/office over, next building, or other office in another city. When you deal with clients and customers it is mostly virtual.

We should focus more on virtual communication in modern project processes/management as it is the default even in an office for your co- workers, customers and more. Remote working and virtual communication helps that even if meetings/integrations are physical, focus and work flow can be more tuned in.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd be unsurprised to learn that people aren't productive for much of their work day in an office. I also don't think it's that big a deal – people aren't paid for the time they spend thinking about work outside the office, and thinking about work is often as important and valuable as completing it.

That said, this is a garbage study:

 _The study, conducted by www.vouchercloud.com, polled 1,989 UK office workers all aged over 18 as part of research into the online habits and productivity of workers across the nation. All respondents currently worked full-time in an office role.

Respondents were initially asked, 'Do you consider yourself to be productive throughout the entire working day?' to which the majority, 79% admitted that 'no' they weren't. Just a fifth, 21%, believed that 'yes' they were productive throughout the day.

The study asked then asked respondents, 'If you had to state a figure, how long do you think you spend productively working during work hours on a daily basis?' The results of this revealed the average answer to be '2 hours and 53 minutes' of actual productivity in the workplace across all respondents._

It's PR fluff and not worthy of serious discussion.

</comment><comment><USER11> How fitting that I'm reading this while at work.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is not surprising. People aren't "on" as soon as 8am hits and "off" at 5. Of course this can differ from occupation to occupation, but you can't strive to get people to 100%. You'll burn them out. You also can't say work at 100% for 3-4 hrs and then go home. Productivity doesn't work like that. You have to allow for ebb and flow of thought and interactions but also avoid productivity sapping interruptions.

</comment><comment><USER13> Unrelated but kind of related - when people hire freelancers, they may seem expensive by the hour compared to a full timer, but when you take into account this stat, that doubles the per hour cost of your full time employee, which makes hiring freelancers a bit more attractive.

<comment><USER14> Unless freelancers are equally subject to this, and I don't see why they wouldn't be.

<comment><USER15> When using platforms like Upwork, they are constantly being monitored and screen captures are taken to make sure the hours being charged are work hours.

<comment><USER16> How can a screen capture capture thinking?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "it's easy to be distracted" reminds me of what Cal Newport seems to like pointing out.

In "Deep Work", Newport also suggests distinguishing between 'shallow' and 'deep' activities. 'deep' = 'requires extended period of focus / attention'. Shallow = e.g. replying to messages. \-- I think an important point is: even without any of these distractions, you still wouldn't be getting more than 3 hours of deep work each day.

Albeit, not all work is deep. Meetings can be valuable. And not all the "unproductive distractions" given in TFA are bad.

</comment><comment><USER18> They just asked "If you had to state a figure, how long do you think you spend productively working during work hours on a daily basis?". There were no measurements made. So it is probably quite innacurate.

<comment><USER19> When I've tracked pomodoros, the average came to around three hours of productive time. Anecdotal, I know, but I've often thought that it would be nice to squeeze that three hours of work into three hours of clock time. Life would be considerably more pleasant.

<comment><USER20> Huh. This is my self-evaluation trick I've been employing for a year or two now.

I run pomodoros (standard, 25-min) whenever I'm trying to focus on work, and aim to have as much of them as hours at work. I have three marks here: the bronze standard = 100% ratio, i.e. 8 pomodoros for 8 hours of work. The silver standard is 150% ratio, i.e. 12 pomodoros for 8 hours of work. The gold standard is 200%, i.e. 16 pomodoros for 8 hours of work. Note that even the gold standard is only about 6 hours and 40 minutes, because a pomodoro has 25 minutes.

I consider a day in which I hit the bronze standard to be a good day. That adds up to about 3 hours 20 minutes of focused work time, so it's consistent with your result, with the article, and with what I've seen reported around HN. It's surprising how much you actually _can_ accomplish in that time, but I find it frustrating that it can be difficult to get to even that on a regular work day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The entire article is not much more interesting than the title. The more interesting question is why. Why do workers procrastinate, why do managers ignore it or don't do something about it. And while it might be true that office workers need unproductive activities, it's a bit of a stretch from that to "workers need 5 hours of unproductive activities for every 3 hours of work". There's got to be a saner balance.

I don't really care about what 1000 people don't do. I'd rather learn why 10 people work the way they do, and how to change it.

</comment><comment><USER22> RescueTime tells me I'm spending at least 7 hours / day productive in my terminal, IDEs, or web browsers. I'm obviously worth at least 3 times market rate then!

</comment><comment><USER23> As just commented on a related thread ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19198649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19198649)) this doesn't seem to be a problem for us, as since ever and always we gave people the choice to work as much as they want and when they want. People take breaks whenever they feel like. Go doing sports, play with their kids, run errands. They even take whole days off to go surfing or skiing. And I really don't mind. Because I do the same.

But then, if a server goes down late at night, people all the sudden show up by themselves and fix problems. Also on a rainy Saturday or Sunday, people will all the sudden be online and working.

Give people the opportunity to be in charge of their own work schedule, give them the responsibility, make them feel that they're actually responsible and they will shine.

I really don't want this to be a promotion and also because I just shared it on the other thread, but I really think people (both business owners and employees) should have a look at our just released company handbook which covers a great deal how we work. If anyone thinks this is unrelated spam I'm more than happy to remove it.

* [https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook](https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook) (landing page, if you want to get email updates)

* [https://mobilejazz.com/docs/company-handbook/mobile-jazz-com...](https://mobilejazz.com/docs/company-handbook/mobile-jazz-company-handbook.pdf) (direct link to the PDF for the HN crowd)

</comment><comment><USER24> What surrogate activities are you not doing right now so you can read this comment?

</comment><comment><USER25> I think most of the griping in this thread will be unrelated to the article. The article talks about real time-waste (surfing social media, personal communications). From the headline, I was ready to rail against the definition of "productively" but if you're on Instagram all day, that's a different story.

Nevertheless, remote teams and flexible hours and maker time and all that, yes!

</comment><comment><USER26> Many years ago, I worked as a proofreader for a company that had us keep time sheets for billing purposes. As I recall, my boss said that I charged about six hours of every eight, and that this was above average. I don't remember much idle time in there--perhaps some of it was waiting for proofs to be ready.

</comment><comment><USER27> Work distractions can be a bit misleading. A lot of work I do involves lengthy unit test runs. Often I don't have anything better to do, even if I wanted to work harder. I just have to patiently wait for my tests to finish because I can move on with my work.

<comment><USER28> In cases like these, we're often guilty of not finding something else to do in the meanwhile. There's almost always _something_ productive one could do, even something so simple as taking a quick look at your open issue tickets and decide which ones to queue up next, or writing a quick email that you've been putting off. The reason you don't do that is because you're looking for an excuse to take a break and aren't motivated to look for other tasks.

<comment><USER29> Actually, no, this isn't what they mean. The concentration level for unit test runs is distracted much more if your thought process is preempted by another work task, no matter how trivial. There's zero fall out from surfing the WWW for a few mins.

A case where it's more productive to be skiving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Obligatory Office Space quote:

Bob Slydell: If you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah.

Bob Slydell: Great.

Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door–that way Lumberg can't see me, heh–after that I sorta space out for an hour.

Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

... later ...

Bob Slydell: I'd like to move us right to Peter Gibbons. We had a chance to meet this young man, and boy that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.

</comment><comment><USER31> Don't have open office internet: run in through a proxy server so tracking can happen. People are free to use their own devices. Then, during a lunch period, open up the office internet to news sites. Social media should be used on personal devices off the clock. Not to micromanage or infantilize people, but to prevent distractions for me too. Guest internet with a simple self- registration should be a separate network (vlan & ssid) filtered for malware, hate/terror sites, illegal activity and porn.

Also, productivity requires motivation and mission. If people aren't paid enough or don't get to share in the profits, why should they kill themselves for more company-only money? Meaningful co-ops and worker profit-sharing has a chance to remedy the situation and make people care about a venture. The other part is giant organizations having BS jobs without very much to do, let dead weight type jobs accumulate because large organizations make managers look good. OTOH, smaller shops tend to be more agile and not put up with any dead weight. Perhaps a solution is a Richard Branson one: keep splitting up organizations before they get too big so they're a loose-coupled confederation of business units. Since big business pyramids drain money and agility from an organization, try not to go there.

PS: I know a former DIA sysadmin who said numerous classified researchers lost their careers by surfing for porn on known monitored networks. Why would someone do that? It seems a shop like that should have monitors in the hallways anonymously listing non-official business URLs people are visiting from classified/unclassified networks to make publicly-obvious.</comment>


Stanford scientists develop new type of solar structure - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/april/fan-solar-cooling-041513.html

<comment><USER2> _The new device is capable of achieving a net cooling power in excess of 100 watts per square meter. By comparison, today's standard 10-percent-efficient solar panels generate about the same amount of power. That means Fan's radiative cooling panels could theoretically be substituted on rooftops where existing solar panels feed electricity to air conditioning systems needed to cool the building._

This isn't quite true. The electrically powered cooling system is likely driven by a heat pump with a coefficient of performance of around 3.5, meaning that it moves 3.5 times as much heat from inside to outside as it consumes electrical power.

If they can manufacture this for significantly cheaper than solar panels they might catch on, but it doesn't sound like the performance is competitive. I doubt the savings from a smaller AC system will be enough to make it viable.

</comment><comment><USER3> These accomplishments are huge, even historic, when they come in pairs. The second half of the pair is broad deployment.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that such structures don't exist in nature yet? You'd imagine they could be useful in some desert organisms for example? Maybe they'd cool too much during the night.

<comment><USER5> Maybe butterfly wings? Maybe tree bark? Who knows, who studies the cooling properties of materials in nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sound like it would be awesome for Burning Man.

</comment><comment><USER7> I clicked through because I thought they had developed a new structure of solar systems.

<comment><USER6> It's pretty exciting. As an energy saving device in hot climates, it can have a larger impact per square meter than the equivalent in solar panels -- all while being cheaper to buy and maintain.</comment></comment>


Wake Up, Geek Culture, Time to Die - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/all/1 <comment><USER2> > In Japan, the word otaku refers to people who have obsessive, minute > interests—especially stuff like anime or videogames. It comes from a term > for "someone else's house"—otaku live in their own, enclosed worlds.

Wow, when Glenn Greenwald spoke about the "worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired", I didn't realize it also included being too lazy to spend 1 minute looking up the subjects of articles on Wikipedia.

The use of "otaku" by the Japanese community and foreign communities interested in Japanese culture to refer to nerds (often themselves) actually originates from the (absofuckinglutely awesome, if I may add) 1982 anime series Super Dimension Fortress Macross, in which one of the characters used it to refer to other people. The original meaning of "otaku" not only includes "someone else's house" - it can also be used to politely refer to the person you're addressing.

It spread from there, first into print media geared towards the otaku (though it didn't go by that name yet) community and then into use by the community at large. In fact, the polite word for (someone else's) house, 「お宅」, and the slang for "nerd", 「オタク」, while both pronounced "otaku" are written differently and have very different connotations in contemporary Japanese.

<comment><USER3> Except that this isn't journalism. It's an essay written by comedian Patton Oswalt, presumably to publicize his upcoming book.

<comment><USER2> And that makes factual inaccuracy permissible? As a reputable publication, Wired has an obligation to uphold certain standards for all pieces it publishes, regardless of their purpose or format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know how a handful of people carrying the banner of "geek culture" can make all culture suck by making lists of lists. I also don't know if we'll actually reap benefits from having culture-fallow years.

Should we be happy that everyone has access to our wonderful nerdy thought- caves? Instead of using geekdom as a refuge (from sports, girls and jobs) it is becoming mainstream! Our geeky curiosity is being celebrated! Now we can give comic books to our girlfriends, and they won't roll their eyes!

<comment><AUTHOR> _The fans of Real Housewives of Hoboken watch, discuss, and absorb their show the same way a geek watched Dark Shadows or obsessed over his eighth-level half-elf ranger character in Dungeons & Dragons. It's the method of consumption, not what's on the plate._

This part is actually more exciting to me. If one group is passively absorbing TV "content", and the other group is actively remaking and remixing that content, it's going to be hard for those groups to relate to each other. But this might make the "geek"/"normal" division irrelevant and maybe people will relate to each other better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Fast-forward to now: Boba Fett's helmet emblazoned on sleeveless T-shirts worn by gym douches hefting dumbbells._

So no, it wasn't simply a collection of interests. You saw it as a marker for certain virtues that "gym douches" did not have.

As an aside, the more I read things written for a particular in-group, the more it seems like for subgroup in the world there is something about me that marks me as outside and below them. Geeks, dumbbells, check. Does anyone else feel that way? Does _everyone_ else feel that way?

 _Well, I've got news for you—pop culture is nerd culture. The fans of Real Housewives of Hoboken watch, discuss, and absorb their show the same way a geek watched Dark Shadows or obsessed over his eighth-level half-elf ranger character in Dungeons & Dragons. It's the method of consumption, not what's on the plate.

Since there's no going back—no reverse on the out-of-control locomotive we've created—we've got to dump nitro into the engines. We need to get serious, and I'm here to outline my own personal fantasy: We start with lists of the best lists of boobs._

My advice is that if you're feeling competitive and threatened by the massive amount of geekery in the world today, don't try to escape by getting meta about culture, because that isn't exactly a green field.

In all seriousness, I understand where this guy is coming from, and I feel a loss of identity going online and immediately finding myself surrounded by like-minded people. I don't think we should try to regain that feeling, though. It was childish to begin with, and it served its purpose for us. Leave it for the next generation.

</comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr Oh noes, geek culture is becoming mainstream, let's ruin it so nobody likes it anymore!

Alternate take: maybe we should embrace the modern renaissance of diversity in entertainment and ride it for all its worth rather than pouting about loss of uniqueness and pseudo-authenticity like some sullen teenager (or indy rock pete: <http://www.dieselsweeties.com/irp/>).

<comment><USER7> I didn't have the patience to read the whole thing, but the tl;dr I walked away with is "old person is getting old".

<comment><USER8> Yup, when he declared that 1987 was "the last year that a T-shirt or music preference or pastime could set you apart from the [normals]" it was pretty clear that he was simply unable to differentiate him growing older from society as a whole undergoing a massive shift.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook considers itself malicious - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://facebook.com

<comment><USER2> They either warn or block all urls:

warning: [https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://afsdfsfsfsdfsddsddd...](https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://afsdfsfsfsdfsddsddddddd.com)

blocked: [https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://facebook2.com](https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://facebook2.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's just a standard notice, warning you that you're leaving Facebook and going to an external page. Most likely to prevent phishing.

Did you create that link manually or did somebody actually try to share Facebook through Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://it-works-with- any-u...](https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://it-works-with-any-url- dumbass.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Priceless. This shows that generic messages can convey bad messages.</comment>


Chile unveils Patagonian Route of Parks hiking trail - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45663960 <comment><USER2> This is great. What the Tompkins did was very controversial at the time (rich white couple from the U.S. buying up a ton of Chilean land) but I'm hopeful that over time, Chileans will come to appreciate the park and the opportunity to preserve and enjoy it.

When Denali National Park was first created, most Alaskan locals hated the idea. Today it is quite popular in the state and Alaskans are generally proud of it.

<comment><USER3> >rich white couple from the U.S. buying up a ton of Chilean land

The "white" part is unnecessary, as we don't tend to racially classify our population, or we don't use it as a hate tool as in the US, we have better ways to hate each other: Income level, political ideology, etc.

<comment><USER4> I have a passing outsider's knowledge of Chilean history and I think it's worth noting that Chile stands out among South American nations in how thoroughly it eradicated and assimilated the indigenous populations.

Once upon a time (even up to the latter part of the 20th century) that would have been considered by most in the West[1] as a laudable achievement, and in Chile it still largely is considered so, AFAIU. Not the eradication of indigenous people's per se (which is conveniently glossed over or minimized), but in the social equality wrought by the strong cultural homogenization through waves of immigration.

But the West in the 21st century has put much more value on diversity and on preserving cultural and ethnic identities, calling into question the morality of Chilean national identity. In other Andean nations skin tone is still very much a thing; not necessarily negative--i.e. being more brown isn't necessarily negative--but nonetheless something that can figure prominently in both social and friendly discourse.

Just thought I'd mention it. Not trying to cast value judgments, but it's worthwhile to note that Chile is very much in a different place than the rest of the West in how it contextualizes these issues.

[1] Chile being politically and culturally Western no less than France or the U.S.

<comment><USER5> > _But the West in the 21st century has put much more value on diversity and > on preserving cultural and ethnic identities..._

Only minority identities, and only the approved ones. The West's "noble savage" narratives are almost as offensive as how it treats Wallonia or the Basques. And America loves you if you're Kurdish, but if you're a Yezidi woman they'll prosecute you for being a sex slave (forced concubinage to Da'esh apparently counts as material support of terrorism).

<comment><USER6> This is a horrific thing you have just described. Where is it documented how Yezidi women are prosecuted for supporting terrorism?

<comment><USER5> The case below isn't a prosecution, but a deportation of a Salvadoran slave. Forced to serve terrorists under threat of death = material support for terrorism. One of the experts consulted in the preparation of the article appears to have speculated that Yezidis would be treated similarly, but I can't find an actual example of that yet.

[https://theintercept.com/2018/06/09/immigration-terrorism- pr...](https://theintercept.com/2018/06/09/immigration-terrorism-prosecutions- material-support-united-states/)

<comment><USER7> So what you're saying is that you fabricated a horrific example that you can't back up with any information for to make your point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Torres Del Paine is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I traveled through much of Chile, and if I could do it again I would spend more time in Patagonia. The Argentinian side is also supposed to be spectacular, and would make a great addition to such a trail.

</comment><comment><USER9> I volunteered for Tompkins in '94 (?) when I was in university and had a 3 month block to donate to his efforts. He had a friend and I help him survey a portion of land that he ended up purchasing. I never went back to see the land or him before he passed. I do want to go back though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Some corrections to this misleading article:

It's not a hiking trail. It's, in part, a "rebranding" of the existing Carretera Austral (a previously dirt highway built under the orders of Augusto Pinochet, now partially paved), combined with a tour ship cruise (between Tortel and Puerto Natales), and then a "rebranding" of Highway 9 down to Punta Arenas, and perhaps another cruise from there to Cabo de Hornos.

There is a Sendero de Chile (Chilean Trail) project, started by the government in 2000, which would have been a hiking trail that extends the full length of Chile. But that's a different plan, and has unfortunately been stalled...

The big Tompkins/Buckley bought-and-donated National Park, Corcovado, was established in 2005, and still has no access to the public available: there are no roads there, and no trails.

In the newer Tompkins park, Yendegaia, the Chilean government has begun to build a road through it. Access to the public is still limited.

His first park, Pumalín, was operated as a publicly-accessible private nature reserve from 1991, when Tompkins purchased the initial estate, until two years after his death, in 2017, when his widow finally turned over the reserve to the national park service.

The "Route of Parks" rebranding "es una propuesta de Tompkins Conservation" (is an initiative of the Tompkins Conservation foundation).

In my opinion, although it's wonderful what the end result of the Tompkins/Buckley efforts to conserve this land has been — let's not ignore the ugliness of how it happened. Wealthy American businessmen buying large swaths of the most spectacular parts of a South American country, using them as a private retreat during their lifetimes, and then turning them over posthumously, is not really a model to be idealized.

To flip the scenario: How would you feel if Jack Ma had bought Yosemite in 1991, set up the valley as a private retreat, lived down in the Ahwahnee until his death, and had his widow donate it to the federal government?

 _Edit:_

For more context, two of the best-written, most balanced, English-language pieces on the Tompkins legacy and controversies are both from the Atlantic:

Eden: A Gated Community (1999) [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/06/eden-a-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/06/eden- a-gated-community/304919/)

The Entrepreneur Who Wants to Save Paradise (2014) [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/the- ent...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/the-entrepreneur- who-wants-to-save-paradise/380116/)

<comment><USER11> """

To flip the scenario: How would you feel if Jack Ma had bought Yosemite in 1991, set up the valley as a private retreat, lived down in the Ahwahnee until his death, and had his widow donate it to the federal government?

"""

If the government had never set aside Yosemite as a park, and it had been private land that Jack Ma bought, I would be thankful for him to donate it.

It would be terrible conservation policy to rely on private individuals to donate land. But if people do, I would be thankful.

The fact that Jack Ma is a Chinese national feels like an irrelevant distraction. Why would that affect my gratitude?

<comment><USER6> Jack Ma's Chinese nationality speaks to his alienation from the needs, desires, traditions, and sovereignty from the local flora, fauna, and peoples indigenous to (or settled in) the region.

<comment><USER12> But his Chinese nationality doesn't preclude him from being a good steward of the land.

Or is there some rule about who can tend to what land beyond the legal issues of permission and authority?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> On the topic of parks, "American History Tellers" ([https://wondery.com/shows/american-history- tellers/](https://wondery.com/shows/american-history-tellers/)) has an excellent series on the history of parkland in the USA. I highly recommend it, and the rest of their series.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's really sad that some of the most beautiful places in the U.S. are among the hardest hit for climate change. Montana and California are burning, annually. The National Parks are not what they once were and seem to be disappearing at an alarming rate. I wonder how climate change is affecting southern South America?

<comment><USER15> This is probably the most striking example:

* [https://www.enel.com/media/news/d/2016/12/climate-change-exp...](https://www.enel.com/media/news/d/2016/12/climate-change-exposed-by-glaciers)

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upsala_Glacier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upsala_Glacier)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good for humans bad for animals. Hopefully Chilean government is as aggressive about preserving the wildlife as about tourism.

<comment><USER17> Can you elaborate further on this?

In the US we have many parks that have high tourists rates yet also have large and healthy animal populations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Regarding the Southern parts of Patagonia, I've found the Who Will Remember the People... book by Jean Raspail to be a haunting account of the area and the people living there, before their disapearance.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good article.

Is anyone else scratching their head at the exclusion of the Pacific Coast Trail from the list of "Other famous long-distance trails?"</comment>


U.S.A., Land of Limitations? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-usa-land-of-limitations.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share <comment><USER2> I have said this to so-called progressives until I am out of breath. Class and economic inequality is the most pervasive and dangerous form of inequality facing us today in the rich world. We dwell on forms of inequality that are broadly ostracised and largely eliminated, while the elephant in the room is economic inequality that our business and political leaders endorse as enthusiastically as Confederate leaders embraced slavery.

Many people today believe that the poor deserve their lot in life, just as people would have said about African-Americans a century ago. Presidential candidates and senators say it openly and without rebuke. Both houses of Congress are controlled by people who talk euphemistically of the super-rich (who increasingly derive their wealth from inheritance not ingenuity) as "job creators". Meanwhile anywhere from a quarter to a third of our population is languishing with no jobs or shitty jobs, poor health, broken families and is always one parking ticket away from financial ruin.

This is the greatest challenge of our generation. We have to fix this.

<comment><USER3> You said many people today believe that the poor deserve their lot in life. I think the people who believe that are ignorant or indifferent or both.

However, an ugly bit about the poor that no one wants to confront is culture. What is to be done about the culture of the poor that locks them in poverty? I don't think throwing more money and resources at the poor helps -unless- it is somehow coupled with culture change.

Wasting money/health on cigarette smoking and booze and drugs, credit debt and payday loans and living paycheck to paycheck, dropping out of school, lotto, endless streams of chaotic drama-filled relationships and unprotected sex and babies outside of marriage, junk food and fast food and drinking pop instead of water at every meal... These things to me aren't -only- an education problem, they're -also- a culture problem.

It's judgey for a well-to-do guy like me to talk this way, sorry in advance. I just find this culture thing very depressing because I don't feel there is much that can be done. It's very tempting for me to pick a single group to blame, like the banksters (especially re: payday loans) for being the secret hand in causing all this. But in my heart, I know the culture of the poor just really sucks in America, and there's a lot of wasted human potential. Nothing is being done to change that culture based on what I see on the boobtube.

If you ask me, the victimhood status we confer upon the poor only serves to lock them in their place. The greater society could do well by shaming bad behavior and try to steer poor culture people onto better paths.

<comment><USER4> This is the big mistake that the left makes in their thinking about poverty. They believe it's a fundamentally material problem. In fact, the material outcome is just the end-result of the real underlying causes: poor education, broken families, and other cultural dysfunction. There's obviously a feedback loop between material poverty and cultural problems, but you can't break the cycle by just throwing money at people.

We can't forget about historical injustices such as slavery and Jim Crow. The nation has a moral duty to especially help those communities. But what we're doing now, spending billions of dollars on dozens of anti-poverty handouts, is clearly not working.

I agree that the politics of victimhood is especially damaging. It robs the poor of their agency and sells them the lie that the only thing between them and prosperity is oppression by the rich. It's a politics of helplessness and envy.

A man who does not believe that he is master of his own destiny cannot thrive. When he is sold a life of dependence, he is made a serf.

<comment><USER5> > but you can't break the cycle by just throwing money at people.

At least for those where money is currently the hindering factor you actually can. Financing students for example.

You also reduce the feedback loop to which you alluded. There are lots of factors where it might not be that obvious that it exists. Stress factors like poverty can greatly reduce mental capabilities for instance.

And in the end you make the lives of the poor people suck less with that money.

<comment><USER4> Financing students is a great example of how government ends up getting it wrong. In the US, we finance college students with grants and subsidized loans. But rather than making college affordable, this aid has had just the opposite effect by driving tuition up across the board. Flush with public money, colleges have become wasteful bureaucracies that are unaccountable to their customers, students and parents.

But once an entitlement exists, it's almost impossible to take it away. As Reagan said, "The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this Earth is a government program". So it just becomes a permanent structural deficiency of our society.

<comment><USER6> > In the US, we finance college students with grants and subsidized loans. But > rather than making college affordable, this aid has had just the opposite > effect by driving tuition up across the board.

Increasing price (outside of aid) isn't actually the opposite of the effect aid is intended to have -- subsidies always increase the cost before subsidy; the intent is that they will decrease the cost after subsidy for those receiving the subsidy since, under most reasonable supply/demand conditions, the amount of increase will be less than the amount of the subsidy.

And this would probably work fine for grants taken alone, but we can't really isolate the impacts.

Loans, however, aren't subsidies, they are cost-deferment measures. They aren't meant to make college more affordable (in terms of lower net cost after the policy) for those who get them, they are meant to allow people who could not afford college up-front but who would benefit economically from college so that college would be affordable if it could be paid for on a deferred basis can afford it.

College loans, however, are problematic because humans (in general, and those younger than mid-20s in particular) tend to be irrational and to -- as has, I believe, been shown in numerous studies -- overly discount deferred costs, so that loans have the _effect_ of subsidies on near-term costs while at the same time just being deferred costs. So they increase the pre-policy cost without _actually_ being a subsidy to those who qualify for them.

<comment><USER4> Subsidized loans _are_ subsidies, in the form of 0% interest when you're in school and very low interest rates after. Those both cost the government a lot of money that the borrower would otherwise pay.

<comment><USER6> > Subsidized loans are subsidies

They are subsidies on the cost of borrowing money, but not on tuition (except at a very small ratio); but they act (in terms of effect on tuition prices, for the reasons discussed in my previous post) like a much larger direct tuition subsidy. because of this, it is much more likely that loan subsidies have a perverse effect on affordability than grants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "We like to boast of America as a land of opportunity, and historically > there is truth to that"

I keep hearing this, but where is the evidence? Was there any objective research done to figure out whether at any point there was _really_ some sort of magnificent economic mobility in the U.S.? There's lots of anecdotal evidence, sure -- stories of people who immigrated here with nothing and made it big, movies, novels, etc... but how do we know we're not just hearing about the exceptions, and that in the vast majority of cases, which do not capture people's imaginations, the poor stayed poor and the rich stayed rich?

<comment><USER8> Germany, for example, had officially recognized nobility till 1919. There were official classes and you could not become military officer or government bureaucrat if you was not born in the right family. First German experiment with democracy and equality under law was after WWI and failed spectacularly.

America, with democracy and no nobility laws was rightfully called land of opportunity compared to that.

<comment> saiya-jin that's 100 years old history, and true. now let's talk about these times...

<comment><USER9> Well, let's stop at 70-year-old history on the way. At the end of WWII, the US had _not_ been bombed nearly into oblivion, had _not_ had large fractions of its population killed off, and had _not_ been occupied (or ruled) by psychopaths trying to kill off everyone who wasn't like them. In the US, you could spend your time trying to build the future instead of trying to rebuild from the damage of the past. You also could live your life with less fear of a return of the days of killing. So, yeah, that looked a lot like opportunity in those days.

Today? That's less clear cut, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aside: I met Rick Goff when I was in high school. My dad lived in Yamhill and was friends with him. One day we drove out to his place, turning off the gravel road toward a barn. Stepping inside the barn was a surreal experience. There, out in the middle of nowhere, in a fucking barn, was a freshly painted 1950's Rolls Royce. It was beautiful.

I don't know if he's a good example of the economic class divide, though. I understand Kristof's larger point and that he's writing from his own life experiences, but I think Goff's situation is more demonstrative of the rural- urban economic divide than a class divide.

He had a skill that people were willing to pay him for, but he chose to restore cars out in the country, in his barn. I can't speak for Goff's life choices, but during my summers in Yamhill and having relatives that lived in rural areas, I met a lot of people who would rather eke out a meagre existence in the countryside than move to where the jobs are. Part of economic mobility is just plain mobility.

</comment><comment><USER11>
       Rick acknowledged that he had made bad choices. He
       drank, took drugs and was arrested about 30 times. But
       he also found the strength to give up alcohol when he
       felt he was turning into his father. What distinguished
       Rick wasn't primarily bad choices, but intelligence,
       hard work and lack of opportunity.

If you were arrested 30 times, I'm going to guess that bad choices are, in fact, one of the primary distinguishing characteristics of your life. There are a lot of poor people with backgrounds ranging from unexceptional to tragic who haven't been arrested once.

This doesn't invalidate Kristof's larger point, of course, but it does mean he's not very good at picking reasonable, actionable examples. Short of taking away Rick's free will, _Clockwork Orange_ -style, there may not be much we could have done for him. I disagree that Rick's life story invalidates the "American Dream," or even calls it into question.

</comment><comment><USER12> My wife was listening to Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People," a book written in 1936 aimed at sales and business people. One thing that struck me was a chapter where he talks about empathizing with people. He gives the example of Al Capone. If we had been born with Al Cappne's body and mind and his circumstances, we would have been him. Therefore, people deserve very little credit for what they've accomplished and conversely very little discredit for what they've not. He ends the section with the saying "there but for the grace of God go I."

It's interesting because the intended audience of the book was not social progressives. It seems like a concept that wouldn't have been controversial at the time. It rings very differently in today's culture, where we like to talk about choices more than circumstances.

<comment><USER13> You might be interested in this ted talk, it touches upon this subject 6+ minutes in, but the whole thing is interesting.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_ph...](http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success?language=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's very hard to get even not particularly wealthy middle class people to see this. People have very aggressive in debates with me about how hard they worked and how they should be allowed to pass their advantages on to their kids. There's also an oft repeated trope about how it's about values and character, which isn't entirely false, but besides the point.

It seems to be a basic human bias; we think everything positive that happens to us is due to our own merit, and everything bad is due to circumstance. In a country like the US, where I'm guessing people don't really mingle, you end up getting some very bitter people who either think they are being pulled down by the rabble or they are being held down by the aristocrats.

<comment> saiya-jin > It seems to be a basic human bias; we think everything positive that happens > to us is due to our own merit

not all, but if one decides to move for work and opportunities, giving up close family, many friends, various safety nets that they bring (financial, personal etc.), start from 0, working hard relentlessly and then is successful (whatever that means), then coming back and listening some envious BS talk about privileged/lucky/whatever by people who eat junk food not because they have to, sit their evenings in front of TV consistently, never ever considered learning something in their (massive) free time etc. They started on +- same level, have same internet as me.

Do you really blame anybody successful? I don't. I want to give back, and I am doing that. But not to random Joe, but to my dearest - family and friends. If everybody does that, the very few truly unlucky remaining can be dealt generously with state social systems.

This is what made US so famous and strong in past - that your success won't be averaged with those that don't break a sweat, your success will be yours. And more you work on it, bigger it might be. Remove this incentive, and many very bright people will steer their energy elsewhere, and humanity gains less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> On the other hand, it's never been easier to:

1\. get educated 2\. start a business 3\. access the global marketplace 4\. invest

<comment><USER15> Given the downvotes, I'm curious. Does anyone care to dispute the correctness of any of the 4 claims?

<comment><USER16> Not until you demonstrate that they are correct. Hard to dispute platitudes.

I'll start, that first one regarding education. Is it easy to learn now with the internet? Sure, undoubtedly true. Is that measurably better than before for any person? Probably not. Cost per semester hour at a college I went to 10 years ago, is over four times as high now.

That is just the first bullet point. I tend not to even consider the rest if the first point is so... out of touch might be the best way to phrase it.

<comment><USER15> As I pointed out in another reply, a higher percentage of Americans have college degrees than ever before.

<comment><USER17> Because you basically need a college degree to have a decent chance of getting a job at above the minimum wage. Semi-skilled labour in places like factories has gone and isn't coming back and jobs that didn't used to require a degree are demanding them because why the hell not?

<comment><USER15> Something like 28% of American adults have college degrees.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States)

0.8% of Americans over 25 are earning minimum wage.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/01/30/almost...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/01/30/almost- everything-you-have-been-told-about-the-minimum-wage-is-false/)

That leaves 70% of American adults do not have college degrees and are earning above minimum wage. Of course, depending on how one defines things those numbers can go up and down, but it's not a stretch to say that most workers do not have college degrees and earn above minimum wage.

One last observation - starting your own business does not require a college degree. (Probably the most famous of those is Microsoft, and Microsoft has hired programmers without degrees.)

<comment><USER18> That you quoted the percentage of total population rather than the percentage of total workers suggests that you're trying to spin-doctor. The same link calls $9.50 "well over" the minimum wage of $7.25... conveniently ignoring that $9.50/hour is _still a shit wage._ That link clings to the literal minimum wage like a limpet - notice how it never tells us the numbers of people barely above minimum wage? Earn $7.50/hour? Well you're too well off to be part of those statistics...

The author then has the gall to accuse others of using selective statistics to make their argument, and even throws out the 'class warfare' canard.

<comment><USER15> I did believe I was accounting for spin doctoring by increasing the 0.8% to 20% when I acknowledged different definitions and said "most".

<comment><USER18> Your link that you are taking as minimum wage doesn't account for people trivially above minimum wage. Yes, 'most people earn above minimum wage', but that's not the spirit of the discussion - someone earning 25c/hour more than minimum wage is still earning a crap wage. There are significantly more people on a crap wage than "the numbers go up and down a bit from 0.8%".

Similarly, that link only takes the federal wage into account - of course it's going to be abnormally low, given there are states with higher minimums. For example, Washington state has a minimum wage of $9.47/hour. A minimum wage worker in Washington won't show up in a study claiming $7.25 is the minimum wage.

Also, where do you mention 20%?

<comment><USER15> "Most" means >50%. 70 - 50 = 20

<comment><USER19> If it's such a small number of people, is there a problem with substantially increasing the minimum wage?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This was also true when i took Economics of Inequality at university in 1997. Western Euro countries and Canada were ahead of America back then. From an outsider's perspective, if you're gonna make it rich, do it in the USA to make it crazy rich, but you're going to have a hard time making it from the bottom 10th to the top 10th.

<comment><USER21> So, you should leave the US to become rich, then return to turn that wealth into superwealth?

<comment><USER20> If you can swing it, sure

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [http://www.businessinsider.com/social-mobility-is-a-myth- in-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/social-mobility-is-a-myth-in-the- us-2013-3)

</comment><comment><USER23> Why didn't Kristof help this guy? It's not a systemic failure when a congenital alcoholic ruins his life, it's a human one.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd be interested in the stats in the other direction - how low of a chance of someone born in the upper quintile ending up in the lower quintile. The u.s. seems to be disproportionally high in mediocre people being at the top, being there through famil money.

Basically britain's upper class twits satirized by Monty Python.

<comment><USER25> Brookings, a center-left think-tank, has a pretty good summary of a lot of stats about income-mobility [http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2008...](http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2008/2/economic%20mobility%20sawhill/02_economic_mobility_sawhill_ch1.PDF)

(Also, a shorter note from the center-right AEI [https://www.aei.org/publication/tracking-the-same- households...](https://www.aei.org/publication/tracking-the-same-households- over-time-shows-significant-income-mobility/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Basic Income.

</comment><comment><USER27>
      ?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

Please, don't do that.

As for the article itself, I thought it's common knowledge that in most civilized world, social mobility is decreasing and income gap is increasing.</comment>


BitTorrent Partners with Tim Ferriss to promote The 4-Hour Chef - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/49854082

<comment><AUTHOR> Tim went with Amazon as his publisher. As a result, Barnes and Noble and many other retailers refuse to stock his book in store.

As a self-published author who sells mainly on Amazon, this is a VERY interesting story to me.

If Ferriss hits #1 NYT OR sells a large number of books despite a dearth of physical distribution, it could signal big changes in the publishing industry.

(The NYT list is biased towards physical stores, so that may be out of reach)</comment>


The Surveillance Paradigm - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Exolymph/the-surveillance-paradigm-e3b9f99ab4a2#.q71du89x7 <comment><USER2> The artist's works from her website: [http://placesiveneverbeen.com/index.php/body/](http://placesiveneverbeen.com/index.php/body/)</comment>


Ask HN: Running your web app on top of a python http server - <AUTHOR>

When I noticed (via firebug) that Cuil (http://www.cuil.com) uses CherryPy as their web server, Three questions popped up in my mind:
a) Is it a smart decision?
b) Does it explains why they were down so many times in the last 24 hours.
c) Does anybody else is known to be using python servers in production instead of python application integrated via (cgi/fcgi/mod_wsgi) with apache/lighttpd/nginex and alike? <comment><USER2> Looks like these guys are using Twisted:

<http://www.python.org/about/success/projectpipe/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I use CherryPy too, but it runs behind nginx. ( <http://www.nairalist.com/> )

</comment><comment><USER4> Justin.tv uses a custom twisted-based server for all of their media serving. They consider it part of their proprietary advantage.</comment>


Rent the Backyard - <AUTHOR> https://www.rentthebackyard.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> What this startup is proposing to do to help alleviate the SF housing crisis is probably unsustainable, and probably won't pass NIMBY scrutiny there. And it will revert to the property owner in 30 years, after which it will be landfill. But it's interesting how they propose to handle the legal stuff.</comment>