My Co-Founder Doesn't Want to Commit. Pls Help. - <AUTHOR>

Hi Guys,
After almost a year of development and working part-time jobs, we launched our company last month and have gotten tons of great press, investor interest, customer interest, etc. Mashable just ran a story on us this week, a major magazine is coming over next week to do a photo shoot to accompany a story they're writing about us, major media companies have approached us to partner, and top tier angel investors are interested in doing a seed round. All awesome, except for one thing: My co-founder/CTO (50% shareholder with vesting) doesn't want to drop out of grad school and commit to going full-time.
Initially, this whole thing was my idea and I convinced him to do it with me because he's a super smart dude who gets shit done and has already helped one startup get to a successful exit. But that was a few years ago. Now he's in Architecture school and living in Europe. I'm here in the US. When I originally contacted him, we hadn't spoken for >5 years and he had just started this architecture program after a career doing film CG (like I said, super smart dude). He was bored with school (not technical enough, he said) and I talked him into building a prototype of our product (I'm not a programmer). Then I went out and pitched to a top-tier VC. He said he loved it and even wrote about it on his blog. At this point, my co-founder and I decided to split the equity 50/50, with half upfront, and the other half vesting over 3 years .
In the fall, I went to a job fair and recruited 3 more guys to join the team. Initially, they worked on a trial basis as contractors in exchange for iPhones, but now we're ready to give two of them serious equity (above market rates).
Since we launched, I've basically blown off my day job and gone very close to full-time on this, attempting to broker deals and raise money. Our initial capitalization came from $8k I put in (most of it a personal loan from my dad). This week, I quit my job and raised $10k from my brother and a high school friend. Big time angels and seed funds are actively interested and talking to us, but a sticking point is whether my co-founder will come to the US or not (we haven't even brought up the not-full-time issue).
For our launch, I flew my co-founder out here from Europe, putting the tab on my own personal credit card. I knew that he wasn't going to really get excited about dropping everything unless he was here talking to customers, investors and feeling the buzz, etc with me. At the same time, my personal credit debt has been ballooning because of how little paid work I've done.
Now my co-founder wants to finish the semester of grad school and work remotely from Europe until we know the company is going to succeed. There's still too much risk, he says, to drop everything. I can deal with him staying in Europe, but I'm going fucking insane over the idea that I'm taking money from my own family (not wealthy), letting my personal debt balloon and my co-founder, who owns half the company, isn't even willing to drop what he's currently doing to do this as a full-fledged effort.
To be clear, I don't want to fire him. Hell no. He's super creative and smart and he's built our core IP. And he's a great programmer. But the current state of affairs just cannot stand.
Suggestions?
Thanks. -Extremely Frustrated <comment><USER2> so are you more concerned that he's not dropping out of school and moving to the US, or that he's not putting up any money?

i can see both points of view, but it does kind of sound like you're asking a lot of him. from what you've written, he's created your core IP so he's put in his share of work (vs your money) and simply wants more than $10k from your brother in the bank before he drops out of school and moves to another country to work with you.

is his staying in europe really that big of a deal to your customers and investors? it sounds like he'd be willing to come over as soon as there's some serious funding available, or after he finishes school.

<comment><USER3> ask the CTO cofounder what it would take for him to drop everything and move to US, then either negotiate that or achieve what he's asking for.

from his perspective, he created the core product, and you've put in some initial seed capital and drum up interest. his opportunity cost is very high so he'll need something to balance out the risk..

<comment><AUTHOR> Doing that now. Not really getting answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could he just mentor a replacement for a portion reduction in his equity instead of him taking a major role in the company? a new partner would get the ball rolling. He would still be available for consultation but out of the business loop and this way he could continue doing his Arch. study.

</comment><comment><USER5> As it is now, there is you, your company/project and a developer (albeit a talented one) who lives in Europe.

I think you have yet to find a "co-founder," sir.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Initially, this whole thing was my idea and I convinced him to do it_

It sounds like you never had real commitment from him.

 _To be clear, I don't want to fire him. Hell no. He's super creative and smart and he's built our core IP. And he's a great programmer. But the current state of affairs just cannot stand._

Something you need to be clear about is that you cannot control another human being. You can only decide what _you_ will do. As someone else said, for him to do this involves a high opportunity cost right now. He has told you what it will take for him to commit:

 _Now my co-founder wants to finish the semester of grad school and work remotely from Europe until we know the company is going to succeed. There's still too much risk, he says, to drop everything._

Here is your piece of it (at least according to what you have said):

 _I can deal with him staying in Europe, but I'm going fucking insane over the idea that I'm taking money from my own family (not wealthy), letting my personal debt balloon and my co-founder, who owns half the company, isn't even willing to drop what he's currently doing to do this as a full-fledged effort._

Suggestions:

1) Stop borrowing from family.

2) See if you can get funding from elsewhere which will allow you to pay back your relatives so you can get this monkey off your back.

3) Come to terms with the fact that right now you are way more committed than he is (and apparently always have been) and _either_ lower your current commitment/investment level so this is no longer consuming you and destroying your finances _or_ begin formulating a plan to cut him loose and go whole hog on your own.

4) If you go with the route of lowering your commitment level (by, say, taking a job so you have some personal income coming in), it only needs to last until he has graduated school. If he won't make a commitment at that time, he will probably never make a commitment. If you are unable to cut him loose now, pick a date that has a logical basis (such as "3 months after he graduates") by which time he needs to be on board full time or he needs to go. You can let him know the deal and it can basically be his decision.

Again: You cannot control another human being. You can only take measure of the situation and make decisions about your own choices. Loyalty is a fine quality. But if it isn't a two-way street, the expression for that is "getting used". (Your description of the situation sounds an awful lot like some of the one-sided romantic relationships I have heard about. I don't imagine you would appreciate the comparison, so I have deleted those remarks.)

Good luck with this.</comment>


The Problem with Jeff Bezos's $2B Gift to Charity - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2018/9/21/17880000/jeff-bezos-amazon-philanthropy-gift-2-billion <comment><USER2> The sad truth is that endless money will not be able to buy or create a perfect world or significantly improve it unless their is an infrastructure and government in place. I would say it would make a lot more sense to use part of that 2 billion dollars on getting some good people into congress. Most elections sadly are simply decided by who has more campaign funding.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bezos knows how to measure results in complexed systems. I'm sure he has 100X the information this author has.

I wouldn't bet against him. He has the "against all odds" track record.</comment>


Ask HN:Which iOS library performs faster for async image loading? - <AUTHOR>

I am using SDWebImageCache for async image loading but it is still slow and sometimes takes a few seconds if the user scrolls too fast. What different ways have you used to make the image loading faster with fast scrolling? <comment><USER2> you need to watch the WWDC 2012 session 211 with teaches NSOperationQueue for touch processing

[http://pupuweb.com/wwdc-2012-session-211-building- concurrent...](http://pupuweb.com/wwdc-2012-session-211-building-concurrent- user-interfaces-ios-andy-matuschak/)

<comment><USER2> I do realize that isn't the best link, but you can at least see the full session title there.</comment></comment>


Automated Continuous Deployment at Heroku - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/automated-continuous-deployment-at-heroku <comment><USER2> I like posts like this. They share where they were, why they changed, how they did it, and were honest about the time it's taken to get there.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Incident. This check fails if there's a relevant incident open on the Heroku > status site.

Curious, what's a relevant incident in this context? (given you are using the PaaS you are developing) Like what if you are deploying an emergency fix to a service that is in the middle of an incident?

> GitHub. The deployer will only promote changes which are present on the > master branch.

I've always preferred the pattern Github uses internally of deploying feature branches and merging when deployment succeeds. Otherwise, there's weird behavior that requires manual intervention to fix in some edge cases, since deployments can fail, and it ends up cluttering the git log with operational noise.

<comment><USER4> Where is the GitHub part documented? What does "internally" mean? Like a shadow deployment strategy?

Thanks!

<comment><USER5> [https://github.blog/2015-06-02-deploying-branches-to- github-...](https://github.blog/2015-06-02-deploying-branches-to-github-com/)</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft pushes ads for Windows 10 in a security update - <AUTHOR> http://iskandar.ml/2016/03/11/microsoft-pushes-ads-for-windows-10-in-a-security-update/ <comment><USER2> i recently got me a wireless adapter for my xbox one gamepad (to be used on my PC). turns out that I needed a firmware update (!) on said gamepad to be able to use the adapter. wow. of course this wasn't documented, i just figured it's the last thing to try.

that's not the worst though, turns out it is also only possible to update the firmware through an app running exclusively in win10, to be downloaded only through the MS store. so of course I also need a windows live login to use their shite store.

once i started the win10 VM i was seriously flabbergasted about the actual amount of advertisments, news and whatever that was presented to me. i mean it was friggin everywhere. as soon as i typed sth into the startmenu bing(?) results popped up even before local results. wtf. No way I will _ever_ use that piece of crap os. hopefully valve gets their steam os running soon. btw, at least the controller works as intended now.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess MS wants to concede even more of the high-end desktop market to Apple. Shrug.</comment>


Embezzle a bit more of your building's heat - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/270919755 <comment><USER2> So, a box fan that looks roughly like the one pictured seems (from a quick poking around) like it uses 80-150 Watts. Intuitively (not measured, not scientific - just a hypothesis) it seems like a box fan will also move much more air than is really optimal for this application. Also, optimal results are probably obtained by drawing in air close to the ground and forcing it up through the radiator, not grabbing air from all around and pushing it through.

This seems like an area for experimentation, modeling, and maybe even product design. Would a few computer cooling fans produce as much benefit at a fraction of the electricity cost? Even better, maybe, can a very quiet and just-enough air circulation be built that operates solely on the thermal energy generated near the hot input side of the radiator? A probably absurd suggestion but I can think of one past apartment where I would have considered it: duct work (e.g., dryer vent tubes) combined with computer cooling fans drawing air from the coldest part of the apt. and pushing it towards the radiator....

<comment><USER3> Natural convection will do what you want. (If he removed the bookshelf,) air will get sucked in from the bottom, heat up, and then rise. The problem is that the warm air will sit under the ceiling. I think circulation would be better used to make sure the air doesn't stratify, ie blow some of the warm air under the ceiling downwards.

It's funny you should write this, because I've been meaning to try exactly this: I have a 12V cable lighting system running over the steam heat radiator in the room I'm sitting now, and I was going to put a 200mm computer fan across the cables blowing down. Power is already up there... ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand the premise of what he's trying to do. It seems to allude to a system where someone else decides how hot your place should be, without any thermostat feedback. In Sweden, there are apartment buildings that have centralized hydronic heating, but in those cases the hot water is on all the time and you adjust the temperature in the apartment by changing the hot water flow using the valve on the rad. If the system turns itself off when it is too cold in some parts, then he really should demand to have a professional look at the system instead of hacking it. A heating system that's unbalanced and not running optimally is likely to waste a lot of energy.

<comment><USER4> > In Sweden...

New York has old, old, old, old infrastructure. It might surprise you to know that they still dump their trash onto the streets, where it rots in the summer heat and mixes with AC condensation that drips down (because their AC units hang out of windows) and creates giant rivers of foul smelling shit water that you must step over carefully to avoid.

<comment><USER5> IIRC a fair amount of the steam used in NYC is actually generated in NJ and pumped under the river.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Passive solar heating worked remarkably well for me when I was living abroad in a place with so little electricity that I wasn't permitted by the landlord to have a space heater. I just opened my shades all day during daylight, and closed them at sunset. That's all, but that was enough to make my room noticeably warmer than ambient outdoor air temperature--so much so that my visitors from other units in the same building kept asking me if I was using a space heater on the sly. Try it; you might like it.

<comment><USER7> Good passive solar design (with the right surface of window to thermal mass) should be part of the education of all architects, IMO. Would make for more comfortable buildings and save a lot of fossil fuel energy that we could better use for something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> He seems to have a shelf of books on top of the radiator, which will limit its effectiveness, box fan or not.

<comment><USER9> I would have to disagree. It certainly limits effectiveness without the fan, but I expect the fan to more than counteract that.

<comment><USER3> That's what I was going to say: Maybe he wouldn't need the fan if he removed the shelf.

<comment><USER10> Forced airflow is several times more effective than relying on convection. Remember that hot air rises, so if the room was narrow, removing the shelf would indeed be sufficient. However, if the end of the room is quite far, it will take a quite a little while for heat to circulate.

The fan speeds up the process by sucking a lot more cold air in through the radiator, forcing it against the warm metal and blowing it out into the room. (Think why the heatsinks in your computer have fans.)

The shelf may act as a way of ensuring air blows through the entire depth of the radiator, but I doubt it has any significant effect either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is brilliant. I could have used this in draughty old apartments in Montreal, with their 12' ceilings and giant old radiators. Yet another of those "Why the ass didn't I think of... ah forget it" ideas.

</comment><comment><USER12> This won't work for long if everyone in the building starts using the same trick. Better keep that box fan hidden from the neighbors.

<comment><USER9> That assumes that there's a fixed amount of heat being input into the hot water (steam?) circulation system.

Are there modern boilers that adjust the amount of fuel added and/or the burn rate, based on the incoming water temperature? Did traditional boilers just eject the excess as waste heat (perhaps through a steam pressure relief valve)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is surprisingly, and unfortunately, relevant to me. Nice hardhack.

<comment><USER7> Is that The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker?</comment></comment>


My Grandma Can Trade Better Than You… She's Dead - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@TradeKeeper/my-grandma-can-trade-better-than-you-shes-dead-8a80449a8f9e <comment><AUTHOR> Insider trading data can be mixed into a buy-and-hold strategy to beat the market.</comment>


Mysterious Android codebase commit - <AUTHOR> https://android.googlesource.com/platform/libcore.git/+/51b1b6997fd3f980076b8081f7f1165ccc2a4008 <comment><USER3> To explain if you are just joining in: This pretty much means Oracle v Google, a case with major ramifications for the industry has been settled out of court. I don't see how this can be interpreted any other way.

<comment><USER3> If this inference is right, I hope this means that Google will enable the web community to use the JVM with or as an alternative to WebAssembly. Hotspot is absolutely incredible technology, and it's competitors are still many years away from coming close to matching it's capabilities.

<comment><USER4> And throw out the hard work __ALL__ browser vendors are doing TOGETHER on WebAssembly? In favor of a VM that clearly has restrictions and is owned by a litigious organization? Bloating browsers by adding another VM, which will hurt throughput by having multiple GC's to synchronize?

The JVM ecosystem and Hotspot are certainly modern marvels, but there's hurdles greater than the potential benefit.

<comment><USER3> The JVM is already open source. If this matter has indeed been settled, then the litigious organization issue might have been too. WebAssembly doesn't have a GC, and probably won't for some time. It also doesn't have ~20 years of performance tuning on different microarchitectures the way the JVM does. Benefits include getting scala, clojure, jython, jruby, and about 30 other languages working client side in the browser for free. Not to mention the languages that have been statically compiled will run way faster than the equivalent JS. That would be great for mobile, and the spread of the open web.

<comment><USER4> > The JVM is already open source.

I can picture Google's lawyers using that in court against Oracle.

> then the litigious organization issue might have been too

That might is a big MIGHT, the same kind that keeps browser vendors from shipping various media codecs and news companies from using various media streaming protocols.

> WebAssembly doesn't have a GC

The GC all browsers currently have and will not get rid of that I was referring to was the JavaScript VM.

> It also doesn't have ~20 years of performance tuning on different > microarchitectures the way the JVM does.

And the JVM doesn't have the start up performance of any JS VM. I would estimate the number of exploits to be significantly higher for the JVM, but worth less.

> Benefits include getting scala, clojure, jython, jruby, and about 30 other > languages working client side in the browser for free.

JS is the most compiled to language in existence. Also, my point has been none of this would be free. How do you integrate JVM with DOM? Who's going to rewrite all that? Who's GC cleans up around here?

> Not to mention the languages that have been statically compiled will run way > faster than the equivalent JS.

Are you talking about WebAssembly here? Cause it sounds like you are.

<comment><USER5> The startup performance of HotSpot is largely related to the SDK and class library. Remove it and you have a very expedient startup.

<comment><USER4> Pull an engine out of a car and it gets lighter, too.

<comment><USER6> Funny ;-)

I actually worked for Sun/Oracle on VM's but on the embedded not hotspot team. The trick is actually simpler and its called MVM, which is something Sun kept avoiding on the desktop/server for some stupid reason but we did do it on mobile and it made startup almost instant.

The trick is to share one VM instance between multiple apps. So when the OS starts you start the VM process and then fork with a lot of the JITted code already in place so you get almost instant startup and reasonable process isolation.

In mobile where there are some restrictions this is very practical. On the desktop/server this gets a bit tricky with bytecode manipulation, classloaders etc. But this is totally doable.

My personal uninformed theory is that Sun or Oracle didn't do this because they didn't care. MVM has two use cases: faster startup/lower overhead on desktops (they don't care about that).

Server efficiency in small scale deployments (which they don't care about either). AFAIK Google did some work on MVM for App Engine Java, but those are just rumors.

<comment><USER7> MVM relies on the runtime system to enforce security isolation. In a system like Android that allows unrestricted loading of native code, this scheme can't work, since there's no way to get arbitrary native code to play along with the runtime security model.

Personally, I feel much more confident with the kernel enforcing application isolation than I would feel about relying on the Java security model.

<comment><USER8> As a sibling comment pointed out, Android already does this. To learn (an insane amount of) more detail about how this works, read this article I wrote a while back on how Process Loading on various systems is optimized.

[http://www.cydiasubstrate.com/id/727f62ed-69d3-4956-86b2-bc0...](http://www.cydiasubstrate.com/id/727f62ed-69d3-4956-86b2-bc0ffea110c1/)

<comment><USER7> It's not the same thing at all. Android first makes a process template, then takes clippings for each process it wants to run. That's not the same as running different applications in the same process.

<comment><USER8> The person who worked for Sun/Oracle, the one who first mentioned this technique earlier in this thread, was quite clear that the technique involves loading a single VM and then " _fork[ing]_ with a lot of the JITted code already in place _and reasonable process isolation_ ". You are, of course, correct that this is not the same as "running different applications in the same process", but that is not the technique that was described.

> The trick is to share one VM instance between multiple apps. So when the OS > starts you start the VM process and then fork with a lot of the JITted code > already in place so you get almost instant startup and reasonable process > isolation.

<comment><USER6> FYI that's how we implemented MVM in CDC mobile which isn't necessarily applicable for hotspot.

The MVM RFE for hotspot has been something desktop developers have asked for since JDK 1.2 days. It sort of got sidelined when the JDK started sharing loaded classes (the rt.jar) which is important but not quite MVM. Even the weakest of Android devices is probably more powerful than our "smartphone" targets in terms of heap. Using process isolation was often not an option back then since common OS's at the time (symbian) didn't really have isolation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This diff is more explicit about what's going on:

[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/libcore.git/+/aab9...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/libcore.git/+/aab9271edee6cc8b4dd460977cad65efe52d16b0)

        Change dependency from libart -> libopenjdkjvm.

There are also diffs adding lambda support, tweaking various classes for compatibility with applications that use reflection to access internal capabilities, and fixing lots OpenJDK compatibility bugs.

Android still needs to run dex bytecode _somehow_ , so there are two possibilities for how N will work.

Option one is that Android stick with ART and replaces Harmony with OpenJDK: from a technical perspective, that wouldn't be the end of the world, especially since the Harmony implementation is rather inefficient.

Option two is that Google ports Hotspot to run on Android and, then has PackageManager convert dex bytecode _back_ to Java bytecode on device. That would be awful, since ART is built for low-end devices and, well, Hotspot isn't.

In favor of option one is that Google is still developing ART. In favor of option two is Oracle being Satan incarnate.

I also wouldn't be surprised if Oracle has compelled Google to simply _ship_ a copy of Hotspot, allowing developers to ship "authentic Java" APKs instead of dex-bytecode ones, with the two environments running in parallel, with two different zygotes.

<comment><USER9> Option two wasn't even worth mentioning. There is absolutely no way Google is going to abandon ART and switch to a significantly less performant VM. AOT is here to stay.

<comment><USER10> A JIT makes many tradeoffs but it is always capable of producing code _at least as good_ as an AOT. How much better that code is depends on many factors, such as the language, the application, and how much time/energy you're willing to spend on optimization (the latter might lead to choosing to generate code that's less optimized than an AOT).

A slightly bigger difference is not between JIT and AOT, but whether you can dynamically load code at runtime or not. If not, that opens the door to some whole-program optimizations, or, at least, removes the need for guards, generated by the JIT, that are triggered when new code is loaded. In any case, mobile applications don't load code dynamically.

<comment><USER11> > the latter might lead to choosing to generate code that's less optimized > than an AOT

With ART compilation happening on the device (during installation instead of runtime, but still) it suffers of the same trade-off of compilation performance vs. performance of the generated code.

> In any case, mobile applications don't load code dynamically.

Android has a DexClassLoader. I'm sure some people use it.

<comment><USER10> > it suffers of the same trade-off of compilation performance vs. performance > of the generated code

Sure, which is why HotSpot _may_ be better.

> Android has a DexClassLoader. I'm sure some people use it.

I didn't know that (not an Android dev), but that only means that some form of JITting may be beneficial anyway (depending on how popular this feature is).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious about big commits like this one:

In the context of the recent juniper attack where some unauthorized code was committed without anybody noticing for years, it seems like it would be easy to hide a backdoor in such a big commit.

How do you go about checking the integrity of the code when you have so many files?

8902 files were changed, most added, and the commit says it's just importing openJDK files. Is there anybody checking that the source file imported haven't been modified to include some kind of backdoor?

edit: replaced "cisco" with "juniper"

<comment><USER13> > ...recent cisco...

you mean juniper perhaps?

<comment><USER12> Woops... it's fixed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The commit references ojluni. This relates to "luni" in Android source which stands for lang util net io. Sounds like there are plans to replace the harmony implementation with OpenJDK one. License differences are definitely interesting but could be also related to performance and completeness - <USER2> is fairly small set of classes whereas ojluni import brings in a ton more.

But what I don't understand is why they're importing the full AWT API! That's nuts.

<comment><USER15> I took a closer look at the commits, and I think it's not as bad as it looked at first. They imported all classes of OpenJDK in the February commit posted here, but then removed things like Swing at some later point of time. It's not there in the master now.

<comment><USER14> Oh cool, so just a new libcore implementation based on openjdk, which should be a good thing actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Maybe related: [http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/announce/2015-Septemb...](http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/announce/2015-September/000200.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Its exciting to see all the goodies from java sound finally coming in. I could care less about cobra though Im just glad we get better support for audio coding from java without having to resort to jni and the native layer in c/c++.

</comment><comment><USER17> What's mysterious? Legit curious.

<comment><USER18> Google has made a point of not using GPLed code (except Linux) or Sun/Oracle code in Android, for technical and legal reasons. There's even a lawsuit about it. So it's surprising to see GPLed Oracle OpenJDK code being committed anywhere near Android.

<comment><USER5> Interesting, isn't Android ASL?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recall seeing a "libopenjdkjni" related review on android-review earlier today. It was just a makefile change though, no real code diff. Unfortunately I can't find the review anymore.

<comment><USER20> This one: [https://android.googlesource.com/platform/libcore.git/+/aab9...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/libcore.git/+/aab9271edee6cc8b4dd460977cad65efe52d16b0%5E%21/#F0)

        -LOCAL_SHARED_LIBRARIES += libart libnativehelper libdl
        +LOCAL_SHARED_LIBRARIES += libopenjdkjvm libnativehelper libdl

Replacing ART with OpenJDK JVM?!?

<comment><USER19> This is the one I was thinking of: [https://android- review.googlesource.com/#/c/193835/](https://android- review.googlesource.com/#/c/193835/)

It was 'libopenjdkjvm' not 'libopenjdkjni' as I recalled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Change dependency from libart -> libopenjdkjvm.

Does this mean they're discarding ART for OpenJDK's VM?

<comment><USER22> It could. Not a bad thing, the HotSpot VM in OpenJDK is incredibly fast.

<comment><USER23> It does seem bizarre that Google would put in all the effort to develop ART and then retire it so quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a tangential note, I guess this means Android is finally getting Java 8 support as well as Java 9, 10, 11, etc

</comment><comment><USER24> Does this mean no more DVM?

<comment><USER25> Dalvik was replaced by ART in Lollipop

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So Lambda's are finally comming

<comment><USER27> oh, i hope so!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was hoping this would be a link to code committed by AI. More of those, please?</comment>


The New Intolerance of Student Activism - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Those students should be embarrassed. Yelling at someone who gives so much of their time to help build up the students. In such an belligerent way at that - either my way or the highway. On to of it all, the have the lack of dignity to suggest that because of an email that hurt their feewwwings they can't live in their luxurious dorms... Give me a break. What's are some of our people turning into?

<comment> norea-armozel That's not the full story. It seems much of the issue revolves around a series of complaints at least going back to last year where separate incidents of racism (one case where Swastika labels were found in a dorm hallway) that went unanswered. At this point in the story, I'm not buying the theory that one letter is the cause of the mess. Bureaucrats are always lazy and unwilling to address concerns in any situation/setting in my experience. Yale wouldn't be the exception is my bet on this heuristic.

<comment><USER2> I'm Polish. Honestly, if I found a Swastika, I'd say a prayer for the sorry sh1t that has such a messed up mind as to even use a Swastika. People are so sensitive and I'm sorry but I think I have a bigger beef with a Swastika than any person of color will ever have.

<comment> norea-armozel That doesn't justify such things happening on a campus. I'm sorry, but if I found another student doing that sort of nonsense I would file a complaint with the university to have them ejected just on the matter of defacing property alone (the racism component just is salt in the wound imo). If people can't act with some taste or courtesy then they don't need to be in any university or college, imo. I already had my fill of shrill conservatives at Wichita State to deal with this nonsense.

<comment><USER3> If it's for defacing property, sure. That should be punished. But I'm not cool with punishing people for expressing an idea. Lots of people believe things that I strongly disagree with, or even find deplorable/offensive/vile/whatever. I acknowledge my difference of opinion and get on with my life without acting like a crybaby. That's part of being an adult.

Free speech is more important than your feelings, or mine. This might not be a popular opinion anymore, but I don't think anybody should be kicked out of school _just_ for drawing a swastika, or saying anti-semitic or racist things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow this is disturbing. One wonders whether this is a transitory time for kids that they grow out of, or if the future becomes more dystopian quickly.

I also wonder if this is a just a symptom of rich-kid schools. I can only hope your typical state-school student body is more rational.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel The conclusion of this article I think is overly simplistic and it's driven by a need to justify various forms of bigotry under the guise of free speech, imo. Certain ideas shouldn't have an airing since their time has come and gone. We no longer need to 'learn' about eugenics since it's been shown to never fit with the scientific evidence.

For example, transphobia has been deliberated in the marketplace of ideas and they lost out to the evidence to the contrary on numerous points (ex. claims that transgender individuals commit more suicide post-GRS has been proven false by numerous studies). There's no more room for debate on such issues. If people want to continue to "teach the controversy" or whatever, they can do it on their own time but not that of other's.

<comment><USER5> lol at this prole defending orthodoxy in the hallowed halls of Wichita State. umm there is NO room for debate heretics, the matter is canon

<comment><USER3> I think he's criticizing your idea that:

>There's no more room for debate on such issues.

There is always room for debate on any issue. It might be a one-sided debate, but you're clearly implying that the debate should be suppressed, which is absurd.

<comment> norea-armozel So, human rights should be debated as to warrant their existence? I don't think so. If that makes me a the "big meany weany" for folks like him then good. I don't have time for it. Being transgender myself and having to deal with all the issues that it comes with on a personal level makes less empathetic towards non-transgender people's concerns. Simply put, if he and others thinks my life should be contingent on his feelings then I'm just not going to discuss the matter with him. I'll just cut them out of the conversation entirely. Nor do I owe them or other people with similar sentiments a say in my life. If I pay my way (which I do) then you get zero authority over my life: fact.

I've heard for _years_ that being transgender is bad, evil, and all other kinds of undesirable adjectives without a hint as to how or why. And when something that resembles a coherent argument is made, I often find it's dependent on an irrational belief that's easily dispelled. Even when the arguments are dispelled the opponents refuse to acknowledge it and move on. They just double down on the vitriol and expand their program to deny rights to even access opportunities in the marketplace, be it healthcare or employment opportunities. When it becomes a choice between living in the closet (probably killing yourself in said closet) or living outside the closet and getting abused for being transgender (physically, economically, psychologically, and so forth) then enough is enough. There's literally zero excuses to be made. And many like myself now have a zero tolerance policy in debating the matter.

Either you're on board for civil rights or you're not. There's no nuance from the opposition. The opposition made their argument and it was lacking. Deal with it.

/rant

<comment><USER6> > So, human rights should be debated as to warrant their existence?

Yes. Everything can be debated. If you are unable to defend your preferred position in a debate, maybe it isn't as perfect and obvious as you thought it was.

> And many like myself now have a zero tolerance policy in debating the > matter.

Great! It's a free country. You don't have to participate in any debate you don't want to. But if, rather than just bowing out of debates, you start to demand that everyone else just step in line with your position, and threaten and mob them if they don't... well. Then I'm afraid we have a problem.

<comment><USER7> > Yes. Everything can be debated.

Fundamental moral axioms _cannot_ really be debated (in the sense of rational argument based on logic and evidence); they can only be accepted or rejected.

Furthermore, if you can't agree on them, _nothing that rests on them_ (that is, any question of _should_ rather than _is_ ) can be debated either.

<comment><USER6> Let's say that you're right about that.

What's the consequence, then? War of all against all, as the Yale students seem to want? Or we learn to coexist with people who have different fundamental moral axioms from us?

I vote for option B.

<comment> norea-armozel If you want people to peacefully coexist then you have to establish civil rights. No one's existence should be contingent upon personal sentiments or arbitrary morals. Either, we all have the same rights or we have none. There should be no debate as to who should have these rights as they benefit all.

<comment><USER8> But rights depend upon 'personal sentiment or arbitrary morals' all the time. Who I rent out my upstairs room to - I'll decide. Which clubs I join; what movie theatres I frequent. And these things have economic/social impact beyond me - the theatre will close if it doesn't show movies acceptable to a large enough population etc.

So we argue about 'privilege' like that can make a difference. Its at root, the majority vs minorities. The game will always be slanted toward the majority, because free market etc.

I'm in favor of peaceful coexistence, and treating everyone fairly. But I'm only one. The market (there are markets even in non-commercial/social transactions) will dominate the game.

I'd be more interested in following the dialog, if there was one. We have folks making up rules on every side; inventing new words and theories and constructs. And shouting down folks from other viewpoints. Its all designed to impede real dialog.

<comment> norea-armozel "But rights depend upon 'personal sentiment or arbitrary morals' all the time. Who I rent out my upstairs room to - I'll decide. Which clubs I join; what movie theatres I frequent. And these things have economic/social impact beyond me - the theatre will close if it doesn't show movies acceptable to a large enough population etc."

Economics doesn't factor into law. SCOTUS on the matter of Equal Protection has already spoken so economies adjust to legal realities (not vice versa).

"So we argue about 'privilege' like that can make a difference. Its at root, the majority vs minorities. The game will always be slanted toward the majority, because free market etc."

Privilege in racism is the concept that you and I based on our ethnicity can take certain conditions for granted. For example, I'm white so I rarely feel need to change my behavior when a police patrol car passes me on the road but a person of color is acutely aware of the situation and must act above/beyond what the well adjusted citizen should act (more polite, more timid). Privilege is the freedom to not notice a power disparity since you have all the power or the social norms in your favor to acquire it. Markets don't factor into it either. Markets are the affect of social orders not their cause.

"We have folks making up rules on every side; inventing new words and theories and constructs. And shouting down folks from other viewpoints. Its all designed to impede real dialog."

Okay, I'm not going too mean here but do you realize that POC aren't a position of power, right? If I get caught with a blunt I'm more likely to get a slap on the wrist since I'm white versus a person of color who may get a judge who'll throw the book at them. Just by being white I have a statistically better chance of lesser sentence for just about any crime.

Just because POC say mean things to you on Twitter or to your face doesn't equate being shouted down. They (and you) have a right to not associate nor to consider any ideas if they (and you) so wish. So, please don't assume the "truth is the middle." It's time for people to just accept that the truth in this matter be it racial equality or LGBT (emphasis on the T imo) rights is very clear. The only debate should be on how best to handle the injustices in question.

<comment><USER8> Sure I've followed the issue enough to know (some of) the jargon. But labeling it doesn't solve it, that's my point.

That's all fine theoretically. But in the end, a theatre showing films of interest to a minority will close, if they haven't got enough population to support them. Markets squeeze folks out all the time. All the laws in the land won't change that.

Training, oversight, education can all make a difference. I'm with you on what's right. But its tilting at windmills to try to legislate much of it.

<comment> norea-armozel "Sure I've followed the issue enough to know (some of) the jargon. But labeling it doesn't solve it, that's my point."

Labeling is part of identifying problems which is necessary to figure out what needs to be fixed.

"But in the end, a theatre showing films of interest to a minority will close, if they haven't got enough population to support them. Markets squeeze folks out all the time. All the laws in the land won't change that."

Again, your example isn't even applicable to the real world problems that pose POC and other minorities. Can you actually stay on topic?

"But its tilting at windmills to try to legislate much of it."

And yet even George Will of all people in an interview on Econtalk (years ago) said that affirmative action may have done some good considering the time it was enacted.

So, I think you're in the minority here in terms of opinions.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Audio Adversarial Examples: Targeted Attacks on Speech-To-Text - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.01944 <comment><USER2> This will be really interesting when people start attacking the visual networks of autonomous cars. That giant poster at the side of the road that looks like an ad for toothpaste, but that all autonmous cars seem to slow down for...

Maybe the happy path of current autonomous cars isn't that they are tested in Arizona or Californa with traction and sunshine- but that they aren't being attacked by adversarial input. (I do remember that guy that painted a line on the ground that trapped cars though).

What will it mean if we suddenly realize that convolutional neural network object recognition is too easily fooled to be a secure part of autonomous vehicles? Would that push the state of the art backwards a long way, or would it not matter because there are other alternatives?

<comment><USER3> The autonomous cars could check some some official database of road signs and report if something is off and even put the strange sign in captchas for humans to check it :)

<comment><USER4> > _even put the strange sign in captchas for humans to check it_

"Please select all pictures that look like a legitimate street sign. Please hurry."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Audio Adversarial Examples [http://nicholas.carlini.com/code/audio_adversarial_examples/](http://nicholas.carlini.com/code/audio_adversarial_examples/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember there was an advertisement on TV where an actor would say "okay google, what is X?", and the phones nearby would search for that phrase. With this, any advertisement could be made to activate nearby phones to search for any phrase or do anything really, without the ad itself containing any google- related phrases.

<comment><USER7> Not yet.

 _The audio adversarial examples we construct in this paper do not remain adversarial after being played over-the-air, and therefore present a limited real-world threat; however, just as the initial work on image-based adversarial examples did not consider the physical channel and only later was it shown to be possible, we believe further work will be able to produce audio adversarial examples that are effective over-the-air._

<comment><USER6> Weird, I'd expect that since they've achieved a 100% success rate, they could get at least 50% in real life scenarios. Also this could be played in stores to get the phones of customers to search for certain phrases.

<comment><USER8> Their 100% success rate requires perfect fidelity. If they're saying it doesn't work over the air, they probably have close to 0% success on store speakers.

<comment><USER9> Right, it looks very similar to the early adversarial visual examples. At first they only worked on direct simulated inputs with perfect clarity, then images, and now live camera feed of arbitrary 3D printed objects from any angle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can't the technique itself be used to better train the speech recognition systems?

Using the first example where it sounds like "without the dataset the article is useless" but the speech recognition thinks it hears "okay google browse to evil dot com"; you could use that to train the recognition system to recognize it correctly as what humans think they heard.

Of course, many attacks would need to be used to create lots of training data.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not ready to call BS on this, but I'm deeply skeptical of the general language they're using. They might have iteratively gotten particular recognition to do what they say, but I don't think they've gotten recognition in general.

I plugged the first 4 examples at [http://nicholas.carlini.com/code/audio_adversarial_examples/](http://nicholas.carlini.com/code/audio_adversarial_examples/) into Google Docs' own Voice typing, and got:

1: At the yard course Eustis

2: Set the Artic course Eustis

3: (nothing, it's an operatic wall of sound)

4: (nothing, it's an operatic wall of sound)

<comment> Ar-Curunir Given that Nick is one of the world's experts on adversarial examples against NN, and given that he already has another paper attacking voice recognition systems, i'd hold off before calling this work "BS"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does it require perfect knowledge of the object?

<comment><USER7> Not sure what you mean by "object", but this is a white-box attack against Mozilla's DeepSpeech model that relies on being able to compute gradients for the complete pipeline. They didn't test whether the adversarial examples transfer to other models.

<comment><USER12> Ooops, my model was flooded with beer when I typed it. Indeed I meant model...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the abstract: _Given any audio waveform, we can produce another that is over 99.9% similar, but transcribes as any phrase we choose (at a rate of up to 50 characters per second)._

<comment><USER7> That sentence is quite easy to misunderstand. The 50 characters per second are the capacity of the attacked model (it chops the audio in frames of 1/50th second), and what they want to highlight is that they can cram the maximum amount of text into the adversarial example.

The actual generation takes an hour on an nVidia 1080Ti, but they can parallelize the process to compute multiple examples on the same GPU, giving an amortized cost of a few minutes.</comment></comment>


The Decline of the English Department - <AUTHOR> http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-decline-of-the-english-department/

<comment><USER2> While there may be a decline in admissions, this article discusses a decline in % enrollment.

This is similar to talking about the decreasing average height of Americans: you need to account for the change in demographics over time.

It's entirely possible that the groups who made up college enrollment in 1972 are still showing up in the same % in English departments.

I suggest that the increase in public school enrollment corresponds to college becoming attractive/available to a wider group. I'd suggest looking at the enrollment patterns of people who are the first in their family to attend college--it seems like they would concentrate on the "sounds good" majors like business more than English.</comment>


Infants May Be More Likely to Die in America Than Cuba - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/opinion/sunday/cuba-healthcare-medicare.html <comment><USER2> "Cuba does have a very low infant mortality rate, but pregnant women are treated with very authoritarian tactics to maintain these favorable statistics," said Tassie Katherine Hirschfeld, the chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma who spent nine months living in Cuba to study the nation's health system. "They are pressured to undergo abortions that they may not want if prenatal screening detects fetal abnormalities. If pregnant women develop complications, they are placed in 'Casas de Maternidad' for monitoring, even if they would prefer to be at home. Individual doctors are pressured by their superiors to reach certain statistical targets. If there is a spike in infant mortality in a certain district, doctors may be fired. There is pressure to falsify statistics."

[https://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2014/jan...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2014/jan/31/tom-harkin/sen-tom-harkin-says-cuba-has-lower- child-mortality/)

Can we base our universal healthcare proposals on countries that have done it without the authoritarianism and human rights violations please? There are a few other examples.

<comment><USER3> The 'pressure to undergo abortions in case of fetal abnormalities' sounds the only potentially troubling part of that, but I don't exactly get what's 'authoritarian' about insisting women with complications stay and be be monitored in the hospital, or firing people based on poor performance?

Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER4> The only group of women who would feel oppressed would be the CEOs that can afford fully-staffed private hospitals in their own homes and wouldn't be caught dead resting alongside the unwashed masses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The data regarding infant mortality is collected differently in different countries, so this is like comparing apples and oranges. In the US, more events are included in the umbrella of "infant mortality" than in most other countries, which use narrower definitions. Neither way is more "correct" than the other, but the varying definitions mean that it is very difficult to make meaningful cross-country comparisons, as Mr. Kristof is trying to do here.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/physiciansfoundation/2016/04/12...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/physiciansfoundation/2016/04/12/infant- mortality-not-a-true-measure-of-a-successful-health-care-system/#1829290631f0)

<comment><USER6> Similar issues comparing crime statistics across countries. What falls under "assault" can vary quite a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I at least have the author credit for stating that the statistics should be taken with a grain of salt.

 _How is this possible? Well, remember that it may not be. The figures should be taken with a dose of skepticism._

The US actually has very generous social services when it comes to medical care for pregnant women and their babies. CHIP and Medicaid cover pregnant women up to 200% (~$30K) or sometimes 300% (~$50K) of the federal poverty level.[1] Waiting lists are non-existent for most states as they have an exemption for pregnant women or newborns..[2]

[1][https://www.medicaid.gov/chip/eligibility- standards/index.ht...](https://www.medicaid.gov/chip/eligibility- standards/index.html) [2][https://www.medicaid.gov/chip/eligibility- standards/waiting-...](https://www.medicaid.gov/chip/eligibility- standards/waiting-periods/index.html)

<comment><USER7> Very generous compared to what? Don't most other wealthy nations also offer this kind of care, along with continued free at point of service care for life?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the US there's a patchwork of programs that vary according to the state and even the city you live in. The tragedy of the situation is that prenatal care is literally a case of spending pennies and recouping many, many dollars down the line in health costs for both the mother and the child. When you ponder the situation, it's truly a WTF moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When we were getting ready for our first child, looking for a hospital, I went deep diving on infant mortality rates in the US in general, and specifically in our area's hospitals.

At least in my area of the country, the higher infant mortality (outside birth defects) rates are almost entirely driven by a tiny percentage of the overall population - extremely young mothers with substance abuse problems. The biggest portion of the effect is not a result of medical care differences. According to the CDC, "Asians" in the US have almost a quarter the infant mortality rate of "Blacks".

[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_09.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_09.pdf)

\--

The article mentions that the US infant death rate is 5.9, and the Cuban infant death rate is 4.0. However, according to the CDC report, Cuban ancestry, living in the US, has an infant death rate of 3.0!

</comment><comment><USER9> _All this [these prenatal home visits] is possible because Cuba overflows with doctors — it has three times as many per capita as the United States — and pays them very little._

 _The country has an unusually high rate of late fetal deaths, and skeptics contend that when a baby is born in distress and dies after a few hours, this is sometimes categorized as a stillbirth to avoid recording an infant death._

</comment><comment><USER10> Skeptical of these numbers:

1\. "4 (Cuban) vs 6 (American) deaths per live birth."

Are we sure they're measured the same? Are we sure that the count for deaths starts at the same time? Could easily be that Cuban mothers are more likely to lose a baby at an earlier stage of pregnancy (for example Cubans measure it from 2nd trimester on, Americans measure it from conception so Cubans fail to count early stage deaths).

2\. "7500 deaths per year in US".

The author does not seem to have his figures correct. Approximately 3.8 million american babies are born per year. If 0.6% of them die that's 228,000 total deaths and a differential of about 60,000 between US rates and Cuba's. Not to nitpick here but if you can't get these objective facts right how can I take you seriously about other things you're saying?

<comment><USER11> > _Americans measure it from conception_

A pre-birth death can't be counted among the 'per live birth' deaths, and would have to include estimates of miscarriage rates since those are woefully underreported everywhere. Pretty sure every country starts the clock at birth.

<comment><USER10> I wasn't implying they DO measure it from conception I'm just an example that could explain a discrepancy that is not indicative of better results

Agree on the point about underreporting everywher

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The country has an unusually high rate of late fetal deaths, and skeptics contend that when a baby is born in distress and dies after a few hours, this is sometimes categorized as a stillbirth to avoid recording an infant death. ... I'm not in a position to judge who's right, but any manipulation seems unlikely to make a huge difference to the reported figures._

What are we to make of that last sentence? The author seems to be saying "I don't know enough to judge" but then immediately follows that with a strong opinion as to who must be wrong. How are we as an audience supposed to gauge whether Kristof (the author) is right that the effects will be inconsequential even if the accusations of manipulation were true? The implication would seem to be that because he's writing his (clearly labeled) opinion in the New York Times, we should trust him as an expert, despite his disavowals.

While we can't easily answer the question as to whether the statistics are manipulated, it turns out that there are at least clear answers to what the effect of the manipulation would be. In a 2015 article entitled "Infant Mortality in Cuba: Myth and Reality", Roberto Gonzalez runs the numbers and shows that the effect of reporting Early Neonatal Deaths as Late Fetal Deaths would be enough to completely change our interpretation of the statistics. Here's a summary of the paper's conclusions: [https://thecubaneconomy.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/02/Infan...](https://thecubaneconomy.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/02/Infant-Mortality-in-Cuba.pdf)

What should we make of this? Certainly a problem with a small detail like this doesn't mean the overall question isn't worth asking, and the "human interest" aspects of the story are certainly interesting, but it sure make me wonder how much we should trust the author's intuitions about other details in the story.

</comment><comment><USER13> This article is extremely misleading. One of the main causes of infant mortality is parental obesity. [1] As America becomes more and more obese we're going to see more and more of these sort of consequences. For instance our declining life expectancy is also related to this. Diseases ranging from cardiovascular to cancer had been steadily retreating, but as our waist lines expanded the frequency and mortality of these sorts of things have once again begun rising. Better healthcare is not a magic pill for unhealthy lifestyles.

In other words, this is about a healthier people - not about a comparable people with better access to healthcare. I'd expect to see these numbers level out in time. Cubans have also been thickening up as the article does mention, but they're still quite far behind us.

[1] - [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2674328/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2674328/)

<comment><USER14> > One of the main causes of infant mortality is parental obesity. [1]

The article you cite does not say that it is a main cause. It says it is a cause, and that it doubles the chance of infant mortality in obese mothers, but it makes no comparisons with other causes.

> In other words, this is about a healthier people - not about a comparable > people with better access to healthcare.

We can test your hypothesis. Let's compare two countries that happen to have female populations with the same average BMI, with similar cultures and dominant ethnicity (both former colonies of the British Empire):

* USA -> Female mean BMI: 28.8; Under-five mortality rate: 6.5

* Australia -> Female mean BMI: 28.8; Under-five mortality rate: 3.7

For Feamle Mean BMI I used World Health Organization data from 2015: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_body_mass...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_body_mass_index)

For Under-five mortality rate (deaths/1,000 live births) I used World Bank data from 2016: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_and_under- five_mortality_rates)

While obesity clearly plays a role in increasing infant mortality, it fails to account for the big discrepancy in infant mortality rates between the USA and the other western nations. One compelling explanation remains: the USA is the only one of these countries without some form of universal healthcare.

<comment><USER13> You need to compare maternal obesity rates, not mean BMI. The two are not correlated because there are major biases in maternal demographics. For instance in the US most children born are now non-white and there is a strong inverse correlation between income and fertility rates. Both those characteristics (non-white, low income) in turn correlate strongly with increased obesity rates. There are an immense number of studies on this topic. Without link bombing an easy way to find more data is to check out google scholar: [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=US+infant+mortality+obe...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=US+infant+mortality+obesity)

Something that might help clarify matters most is this [1] paper. It not only gives specific figures but is over an extremely large and comprehensive sample, most of the data is from a ethnically homogeneous sample, and is in a region with nationalized healthcare (Sweden). So it helps remove confounding variables. And there too we find that infant mortality for normal weight women was 2.4/1000 while it was 5.8/1000 for those with obesity grade 3. There was a linear scaling of risks and mortality that mapped directly against obesity. Interestingly enough even being just overweight also corresponded to a slightly increased rate of infant mortality.

Crucially, what obesity tended to lead to was preterm deliveries, congenital birth defects, pregnancy complications, and sudden infant death syndrome. The reason I say crucially is that these [2] are the leading causes of infant death from the CDC. Those issues that arise from obesity are literally the top 4/4 causes of infant death.

[1] - [https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g6572.full.pdf+html](https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g6572.full.pdf+html)

[2] - [https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/...](https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/infantmortality.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "the infant mortality rate in Cuba is only 4.0 deaths per 1,000 live births. In the United States, it's 5.9. In other words, an American infant is, by official statistics, almost 50 percent more likely to die than a Cuban infant."

Is that right? Or is it 0.19% more likely to die in the USA. This is why I never win on the horses.

So perhaps the answer is that they are both pretty safe? I would think more elective caesarians and traffic accidents could account for much of the differences but it must be getting pretty close to the margin of error?

<comment><USER16> No, you may consider the statement misleading, but it is correct. 100% of 4/1000 is 4/1000, 50% of 4/1000 is 2/1000, so 50% more likely than 4/1000 = 4/1000 + 2/1000 = 6/1000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How reliable are the Cuban statistics?

<comment><USER18> Regardless of reliability it's important to mention that mortality rates isn't the be all end all of healthcare quality. Many people contrasting Cuban mortality and life expectancy statistics against the US have a political axd to grind, and they fail to mention key nuances. Chief among them, the fact that it's drastically easier to curb obesity when the government rations food.

<comment><USER19> The government provides _a ration_ , you can buy more food.

I'm not saying food in Cuba was available in the same kind of quantities and choices as in the states, but portions were almost on par (which is to say, enough to floor a European for several hours after a meal!)

The article even states that the primary weight problem faced in Cuba is over, not underweight people.

<comment><USER18> Buy more food with what money? Average wage is $18-20 a month from 2008 to 20015, as per some quick googling. Even if we trust the Cuban government's states wage, that's still $25 per month. Some make more on the black market, but for the most part the government rations dictates your diet. Apparently wages have risen after slightly more normalized relations with the US and greater tolerance of private enterprise on behalf of the Cuban administration, but it's still pretty poor.

I come from a family of Cuban immigrants, and have some distant relatives still in Cuba. Some of my family has visited over the last few years. It's a tacit understanding that the visiting relatives will bring money or valuables to sell on the black market to help pay for the feast that Cubans will inevitably throw for visiting relatives, because otherwise several months worth of income will be spent on food (which would only cost maybe a few days wages for the person coming from abroad).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cuban statistics cannot be trusted.

[https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/33/6/755/5035051](https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/33/6/755/5035051)

Key quote: "(...) evidence that physicians likely reclassified early neonatal deaths as late fetal deaths, thus deflating the infant mortality statistics and propping up life expectancy."

</comment><comment><USER21> thanks anti-vaxxers

<comment><USER22> Actually it's likely our broken healthcare system and poverty. But they certainly aren't helping.

<comment><USER23> Don't forget obesity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They state themselves the figures aren't to be trusted. This makes me unsure how to feel about the subject. If Cuba's just lying about infant mortality (I don't know how feasible that would be) it invalidates a lot of things.

I find the point about local, conveniently-accessible doctors leading to earlier diagnoses interesting, too. That seems like a fair point: I've heard a lot about the automobilised nature of america, where cities are built for cars rather then people. If you can't just walk over to the local doctor you've known for the last 5 years to ask about the lump on your back because going to the doctor is seen as a big deal- you can imagine this leading to fewer check- ups.

I've heard a point that the US is in a hellish middle-ground between socialised healthcare ala euroland and hypothetical free-er market healthcare: you can't actually shop around for cheaper treatment, because the government's teamed up with big pharma to reduce competition and obscure pricing.

edit: Just read a comment mentioning obesity as a factor. That makes a lot of sense, as well. Of course a country as fat as america's going to be in a worse health state than one like cuba where people are only starting to bloat up after starving a while back.

</comment><comment><USER24> Infants are definitely more likely to die in the USA than in any almost any other OECD country (the exceptions being Chile, Turkey, and Mexico).

[https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/infant-mortality- rates.htm](https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/infant-mortality-rates.htm)

<comment><USER25> Are these statistics standardized in methodology? Many countries don't count certain types of infant mortality that the US does.</comment></comment>


Null is your friend, not a mistake - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@elizarov/null-is-your-friend-not-a-mistake-b63ff1751dd5 <comment><USER2> Ideally, as the article suggests, you should use a language which supports null and not-null types, with compile errors if you call a method on a type that might be null before checking to make sure it's not null.

However, if you're stuck with Java, which doesn't do that, you can annotate your types with @Nonnull and @CheckForNull. (At least) SpotBugs and IntelliJ respect such annotations.

I have done this to every parameter type, return type, and instance variable on a 15 KLOC codebase and it's been a great success.</comment>


Locksmiths Pissed Off At Geeks For Letting Out The Secret: Lockpicking Is Easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080711.wlpicking11/EmailBNStory/lifeMain/ <comment><USER2> I am always amazed how much it feels like we are in a world of guilds who are concerned their "secrets" will escape.

<comment><USER3> Anyone who relies on restricting information to stay in business is in trouble these days.

I'm pretty sure (and there's a quote in the article about this) that thieves pretty much ignore locks and just smash and grab. Locks keep honest people honest.

<comment><USER4>
      "Anyone who relies on restricting information to stay in business is in trouble these days."

That would be the "SEO" industry ( _not the entire industry.. just 90%_ ).

<comment><USER5> Add (management, strategy) consultants to that.

<comment><USER6> And illusionists.

<comment><USER7> Actually, a lot of them(Derren Brown, Penn & Teller, James Randi) do reveal a lot of their tricks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Surely locksmiths should be happy if ordinary key locks become insecure -- they're the ones who are going to be called out to replace them with higher- tech locks.

It's the rest of us who should be pissed off, we're the ones who'll have to pay them money to replace our locks.

<comment><USER9> A lot of the high tech locks have key backups - so it makes me wonder if they can easily just be bumped too.

I want to get one of those fingerprint ones soon - because I am horrible with keeping track of keys.

<comment><USER10> unfortunately fingerprint recognition is notorious for bad security. there are exploits for various systems out there that involve sophisticated techniques such as gummy worms and replay attacks carried out by gently breathing on the fingerprint reader.

<comment><USER8> Personally I'd be happy to unlock my house the same way I unlock my car -- by pressing a button on a device in my pocket. Better still, it would be the same device. Better still, I wouldn't have to press the button at all, it would unlock as soon as it noticed I was approaching, and then re-lock itself as soon as I was inside. That's probably the best solution in the longer term.

<comment><USER11> Business Idea: the same thing, but with a chastity belt. eh? million dollars, easy. >_>

<comment><USER12> Yeah, and as a web-service

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a home made kit made out of big paper clips. Its not that good, and im a bad picker, but i find it interesting. Its a nice hobby. I feel safe because my dad installed a good lock that uses an electromagnet to unlock our metal door. Eastern Europe in the 90's(and now too) required such measures.

<comment><USER14> I've never heard of that. Does it use the magnet to hold the door locked, or to unlock it? If the latter, what happens when power goes down or the battery runs out and you want to get in or out? If the former, what stops people from disrupting the power supply to bypass the lock?

<comment><USER13> The magnet opens the door. Its basicly home made, and its security through obscurity. Only some nabors and friends know about it, and about 4-5 people know how to unlock it(it doesn't use a key, it has a metal detector and a fake door bell, you put a bolt on the metal detector, which is hidden, and pres the fake door bell, and it opens, then open the door). You don't know it's there if you look at the outside of the door, you just see a standard lock. Its actually not that secure, anybody that knows how it workers can open it, we only use it if we are outh of town for more than a day, most of the time there is at least one person home. If the power goes down, you have to wait for it to come back. You can get in from a window if that happens and unlock it from the inside. It's not a problem from the inside, you just pull the lock. Ooops, i said too much :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Banana?? I admit, I was curious... <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbOajWDg_Ts>

<comment><USER15> I was a little curious too - I was expecting something more like macguyver where he used only a banana.... a little disappointing, but does have merit I guess.

</comment></comment><comment> a-priori How do you become a locksmith anyways? It seems to me they'd start as amateurs like these.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps today. Earlier it was: Belong to the right family - a family that did log picking for ages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> i suppose its good that this is staying within geek culture as opposed to spreading amongst high school students or something -- imagine if they all saw that youtube video on how to pick a masterlock with a soda can??

</comment><comment><USER12> So what exactly lockpicking has to do with Geeks?

<comment><USER18> 'Driven mainly by computer geeks who see parallels between hacking networks and picking locks, the hobby has exploded online.'</comment></comment>


This App Can Get You Anything (Legal) from Anywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/grabr-launches-anything-delivery-peer-network.html <comment><USER2> It seems to me that the viability of this likely depends very heavily on people evading visa rules and/or customs duties.

Even if a good is _legal_ in the country to which it is imported, its often _not_ legal for someone without a particular license to bring it in except for personal use (that will return out of the country with them) or as a gift with restrictions on who the gift is for, etc.; it seems like this is an unlicensed commercial import/export arrangement -- or, put more directly, a smuggling arrangement (and, unless I'm mistaken, not the first of its kind that has been discussed on HN -- or maybe its the same one that has been discussed previously.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey,Dragonwriter! Thank you for asking! Grabr works within the legal framework of each country to make sure all the goods are allowed to be brought in with the traveler. We also encourage all travelers to declare and work with customs for each country. Each country has their own criteria on what is to be declared, dutiable and what their declaration process looks like. We do all of this to avoid conflict with import/export arrangement. Also you bring up a great point around gifts and other various ways people are legally allowed to bring in goods into a country. We have done a lot of work so far to position grabr as a platform more aligned with Airbnb's host/guest relationship versus a courier delivering goods model like postmates. So in this context, you may actually make some friends along the way too. Hope this helps!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't this already exist: [https://getmagicnow.com/](https://getmagicnow.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, Magic_beans! Great question. Startups like Magic and Postmates typically address last-mile and solve for sourcing requests locally. Magic does a little more heavy lifting by tackling other requests similar to postmates, thumbtack, fancy etc. Grabr is different because we're more like postmates with a guest/host relationship like Airbnb. We solve for purchasing items globally/abroad that are not readily available to you in your area. While this really isn't a problem for the U.S., most of the world does not have access to the assortment of goods we have or even the basic level human needs like baby- formula, advil, vitamins, etc. Grabr helps facilitate purchases like this by connecting travelers from that country/city with shoppers in the city they are visiting. The more appealing piece to the U.S we're finding is the travel aspect. The new ability to travel more and see the world more often the way Europe has access to travel. Travelers in the U.S. help meet this demand by bringing items (items they've purchased themselves) with them on their travels and earn money to subsidize some if not all of their trip.

So think of it this way. Grabr is the first peer-to-peer service that utilizes travel to bridge the gap in the global shopping market. Shoppers now have access to goods that are widely unavailable or expensive in their country. ———— Travelers are able to use the extra room in their suitcase to earn money while making amazing new connections in our international Grabr community.

Hope that helps!</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley prepares for financial storm of century - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2008/09/30/silicon-valley-prepares-for-financial-storm-of-century/

<comment><USER2> Strangely, perhaps, our sales are up a lot lately...like 20%-30% in the past two months. Maybe it's just that we do a lot of international business and our products are on sale because of the USD deflation, I dunno.

But, I'm having a hard time seeing the storm from where I'm sitting. I know it's coming, and I'm tucking away a little cash and being cautious about spending, but so far, we're doing better than ever.

Anybody actually feeling the pinch yet, or is it all just a "something bad is coming" feeling?

<comment><USER3> If your business is making money, Scoble isn't talking about you</comment></comment>


POST Data Viewer - http://learn.db-dev.info/tools/postviewer - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys! I've been created a website that will eventually have a library of information, and some useful tools for web developers.
I just put up my second tool, which I figure might be of use to some of you, it's a way to view POST data for doing tests with forms.  It doesn't collect or store your data, it only processes it for viewing and then forgets it was ever there.
You can access it from: http://learn.db-dev.info/tools/postviewer
If you want to see more features on this, or think there is anything I should change then just let me know!  If you want to see any other little tools that you can add to your toolkit, then again, just let me know and I'll see what I can come up with! <comment><USER2> F12

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think I get this reference...

<comment><USER3> F12 brings up the developer console in some browsers, which lets you view post data.</comment></comment></comment>