California officials reject subsidies for SpaceX over Tesla spat - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-california-spacex-idUSKBN22R389 <comment><USER2> Contrary to what Tesla told Alameda County, the Tesla factory is (illegally) in full production, producing cars sitting on Pier 80 for export to Europe and China. [https://tslaq.org/letter-from-the-saf-to-alameda-county- offi...](https://tslaq.org/letter-from-the-saf-to-alameda-county-officials/)

That's not an essential activity; it's just greedily risking California lives to serve luxury car consumers abroad. I'm not surprised that California is none too happy with Elon.

<comment><USER3> So are we going to ban all cars now? Average automobile deaths are ~30k per year. They're non essential. Let's all stop driving. "do whatever it takes to save lives"

<comment><USER4> That's not taking the argument in good faith. Car accidents aren't infectious and furthermore, we don't see 30k deaths in the span of 2 months.

I think Musk could have fared better working with the government to make it feasible to work in the Tesla factories and limit exposure and provide a model for other businesses. Instead he just went ahead and has no guarantee that his employees won't be exposed.

<comment><USER5> Road rage is infectious but I'm not sure why it matters anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "In my opinion, given the recent threats of the CEO to leave the state of > California, and everything else we've discussed today, this proposal does > not rise to the level for me to feel secure in supporting it," said Gretchen > Newsom, a panel member and the political director of an IBEW electrical > workers union local.

> Though a small amount of money, the funding was opposed by organized labor > groups. Tesla and SpaceX are both nonunion shops.

California is absolutely within their right to withhold these funds. Musk is well within his right to relocate his businesses to Texas (SpaceX engine facility in McGregor is a ~90 minute drive from Austin, ~2 hrs from Dallas) or another favorable state when the next Gigafactory is sited. Let rational actors go through their motions.

<comment><USER7> That is assuming that Musk is a rational person...

<comment><USER6> I actually quite enjoy when he's exuberant, makes it more interesting. Boring leaders are boring.

In this example, Tesla and SpaceX have created at least tens of thousands of jobs in the state (Tesla indicates 50k+ if you include supplier related jobs), and California might be cutting off its nose to spite its face over $600k. That's a very California thing to do, and if Musk loses his shit over that, it'd be a very Musk thing to do.

<comment><USER8> That kind of thinking got us #45. Some things are more important than entertainment.

<comment><USER6> Climate change is very important. Extinction level important. Don't like the horse, run a better horse. This horse is doing pretty well despite the occasional tirade or Twitter meltdown. I can live with that.

<comment><USER9> The horse that just fired the IG for investigating his friend Pompeo?

<comment><USER6> No, the rocket electric car one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Both sides look bad for me here. Musk for asking $655k of state money when he could obviously afford to foot such a bill on his own - just in April 2019 they raised half a billion, surely they could afford to spend 0.1% of that on "training funds" without milking the taxpayer. I understand that if the funds are available a savvy businessman would take them even if they don't need them - but that doesn't exactly elicit sympathy.

And California, of course, by conditioning distribution of tax funds which should be equally available to every qualifying business on kowtowing to politicians and denying the funds if somebody dares to challenge their policies. That's not how these funds are supposed to work, if they serve any purpose it's not to give Newsom or his minions a leverage to shut up their opponents.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like this is much more about organized labor trying to act like a mafia than it is about Musk; this is just a convenient excuse. They oppose the funding because it's nonunion.</comment>


In Praise of Security Theater - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2007/01/in_praise_of_securit.html <comment><USER2> If this was written recently, I'd almost think he was criticizing lockdown culture.</comment>


Hillary Clinton's Wall St Speeches Published by Wikileaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37595047 <comment><USER2> I've only seen a few quotes from these leaked transcripts, but they've been in articles claiming very damaging statements. Instead, the quotes seem to be mostly benign comments and nothing shocking.

<comment><USER3> I've noted several negative reactions toward Clinton based on prior leaks from people who had simply inferred wrong-doing on the basis that the most notable leaks tend to reveal duplicity. This handful of people whom I have observed felt it unnecessary to actually delve into the documents before passing judgment.

Anecdotal, but I'm convinced I'm not the only person with this experience.

<comment><USER4> You're missing the forest for the trees.

Did Clinton take money (either for herself _or_ for her campaign _or_ for her foundation, it doesn't matter which) from businesses that are canonical symbols of Wall Street money and power? Then she's tainted in the eyes of everybody that is against corporate influence on politics. The contents of the speech isn't particularly important, because it is the influence of money that matters.

Stop looking for traditional political "scandals", and start noticing the anti-corporate-power, anti-globalism revolt that is causing a lot of people to vote "anybody but the usual bribed politicians".

<comment><USER5> It is clear she took money from many people because they hired her to give a speech. This isn't really in debate. The core question is whether the money will influence her policies. Giving a speech doesn't mean you're bribed or influenced by default. The content of the speech is very important, so it's good we are seeing what was said.

<comment><USER4> > Giving a speech doesn't mean you're ... influenced by default.

No, but taking a large amount of money does. Even if you believe you aren't taking money for a "bribe" and maintain some level of independence in the actual content of your speech, there is a significant unconscious bias. If you want to get that kind of job again, you might not be as critical of the people paying you.

> The core question is whether the money will influence her policies.

Approach the question from the other side. No for-profit business is going to give large sums of money out without some expectation of a return on that investment. Someone is betting that they will be able to get more money having the ear of a politician than their other investment opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pardon my ignorance, but I cannot help myself understanding why WikiLeaks are pushing so much crap towards Clinton and not doing the same to Trump ?

Are they in-directly supporting Trump ?

I am far from USA and although who will be the next president most likely will affect everyone, I do not care that much for either one of them.

It is just strange for the russians to push so much for Trump and WikiLeaks are somehow assisting them.

<comment><USER3> One could ask a similar question about most media vendors, replacing Trump with Clinton. WikiLeaks, whether deliberately or not, is simply doing its part to redress the balance in negative and scandalising news coverage.

It should be made clear that I am neither a US citizen nor a Trump supporter. Huge emphasis on the latter!

<comment><USER7> That's based on a flawed notion of balance, the idea that news media should publish equal amounts of "negative and scandalizing news".

It's flawed in that it assumes that equal amounts of such information exist. When Trump shoots some grandmother in the face, people expect equal prominence for "Hillary came to my house and left the bathroom light on".

Parts of the news media have been bending over backwards to avoid the appearance of partisanship, which gave us the endless faux-scandal regarding her mailserver.

The same principle leads to news media sometimes creating the impression that global warming is some sort of scientific debate, because they feel the need to give equal billing to the doubters while reality is 99-1 lopsided.

Trump may actually have a positive impact in the end, in that he may stretch the concept until it breaks. Indeed we can see it breaking down in the last few weeks with, for example, newspapers publishing harsh editorials and endorsements against him whereas they remained quite in previous elections.

If the current trend could continue for another six months, we'd see every article in every newspaper end with "cetero censeo Trump delende est"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "After the dust has settled in this election, the divisions within the Democratic ranks will likely re-emerge" \-- as a lifelong democract/progressive I can say honestly that the divisions have NOT been mended for this election.

I'm supporting Jill Stein even though I feel she's a little over the top personality wise and a little odd. Bernie was the right amount of crazy progressive while working within the confines of what he was given. I will never support another Democrat until the party is ripped a part or totally reformed. Case closed. The only exception are ones that run under against trade, have strong climate change policies, and are against corporate money and corruption in politics.

We desperately need to pass the anti-corruption act on a national level getting all corporate donations out of politics. Money is a 'vote' and corporations should not have a say it's "we the people" not "we the corporations and a few people who we allow to matter".

</comment><comment><USER9> Can someone elaborate how pro-globalization speech can hurt her campaign?

As far as I can see the leaks are not corruption evidence of some sort.

Disclaimer I'm away from politics and US.

<comment><USER4> There is a rapidly growing group of people that are tired of the status quo. They are reacting strongly against the neoliberal and technocratic establishment. To the very large masses of blue collar workers, globalism means watching their jobs move to cheaper markets.

This is the environment where populist movements arise, which are not tied to traditional right/left politics. Hence the rise of populists like Trump, anti- establishment reactions like brexit, and a long list of similar movements that have been popping up around the world.

For a good explanation of this (with charts!), see Mark Blyth's recent lecture[1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Mrs Clinton told bankers that they were best-placed to help reform the US financial sector" \- which is true, but she failed to mention that was also the problem.

Bankers are in the best position to reform, but the most unlikely to provide meaningful reform.

edit: formatting, emoticon removal

</comment><comment><USER11> Not one mention of this on CNN or MSNBC this morning. It disappoints me how rigged this election.

edit 1: It is however on their websites. The Clinton campaign was smart to counter attack. I still would expect them to cover this on tv, though.

edit 2: CNN is covering it now.

</comment><comment><USER12> So this is the result of a pretty recent hack. Publishing the speeches would've done a lot more harm early in the primaries, making it harder for Clinton to shift her emphasis (and occasionally positions) in response to Sanders.

<comment><USER13> You're assuming that whoever leaked this primarily wanted to harm Clinton but the alternative is that they want to help Trump, which is not the same thing. In the latter case, the timing is perfect.

<comment><USER14> This election has been so bizarre that I now believe that none of it has been by chance.

I dislike conspiracy theories, but lately I've actually been wondering if something really heavy has been brewing in the basement of the illuminati.

<comment><USER15> I can't imagine that they all are of one mind on which candidate is better for them, assuming such a group exists and meets in secret.

<comment><USER14> It's pretty clear to me that Trump is the ideal Putin-like character. He just took out an entire political party like it was nothing. When he destroyed Jeb Bush with almost no effort, I was convinced that he would win the presidency, easily. My liberal friends thought I was crazy. But, at this point, there's nothing that can be done but enjoy the ride.

The US is an economic and military superpower that has been ripe for the taking for decades. It has a weak, fractured, and anemic culture and political environment. And, while internally its citizens bicker about the edge cases of wedge issues, it has been easy to inject Trojan horses and more political instability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So.. what is the worst that has come out of these speeches? Clinton probably withheld the speeches to disarm her opponents, not because she said something so outrageous that in itself would destroy her chances of presidency.

<comment><USER13> She needs Bernie Sanders' supporters but for these people the transcripts show that Clinton is the devil, friends with Wall Street, not trustworthy, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Meta-question, is this considered on-topic for HN? I wonder how it is distinguished from another notable leak about another candidate that hasn't made the front page.

<comment><USER18> It just depends on the amount of user flags and whether there is a relative lot of comments (when points < comments "flame war" detector is usually triggered).

P.S. I recommend [https://news.ycombinator.com/active](https://news.ycombinator.com/active) for the biggest discussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone think that if the corporate news media, owned almost exclusively by avid Clinton supporters, would hold _anything_ back on Trump if they had it? Maybe there's just more data on Clinton, dirty or clean.

It's amazing how quickly they blame Russia. Russia may be a shrewd international manipulator, but that doesn't mean that every time data come out on the Clintons, they're from some 400 pound dude in the Kremlin.

Have people considered that Trump has had considerably less public interaction, and is not tied to as many organizations as Hillary is? I mean, there could be lots of good reasons why all the dirt we can find is on her.

<comment><USER20> "Does anyone think that if the corporate news media, owned almost exclusively by avid Clinton supporters, would hold anything back on Trump if they had it? Maybe there's just more data on Clinton, dirty or clean.". It is all a matter of timing releases for maximal impact or damage control, so yes, they hold back data until it is needed. Do you think the timing of the Trump sexist video release is coincidental and unrelated to these Clinton speech releases?

<comment><USER21> What I've seen of the Trump soundbites is pretty tame, if people are going to be honest and cut the hypocritical faux outrage. Moreover, it seems like an idiotic angle to play if it was orchestrated by Clinton's camp, given old Billy's escapades over the years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> i suspect Assange is going to be enemy #1 of the Clinton administration...

<comment><USER19> Already the enemy of most national governments, with a personal vendetta from the most powerful secret agencies in the world... Yeah, Julian is probably going to be captured and tortured if he hasn't already been.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> what systems are in place to prevent posts like this one from disappearing off the front page thanks to flag brigades?

</comment><comment><USER24> Anyone got a link to the transcripts?

<comment><USER11> Check out wikileaks on twitter.

[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/784572142444740615](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/784572142444740615)

<comment><USER24> I'd really like to see the full transcripts.

<comment><USER11> As far as I know, there are only excerpts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nothing game changing, but she's obviously very happy with the current status of this--great economy, and our wonderful foreign leaders. These fair, moralistic, truthful, immune to corruption Foreign leaders.

"My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders,"

Yes--it worked well for her, and the wealthy.

It hasen't helped me much? Oh, wait----I'm waiting on 6 X 6v halogen bulbs for my microscope. They are coming from China. It's been 26 days. They cost me $9.99. Free shipping picked up by the Chinese government. If I get them; I will have benefitted! Yea!

"Mrs Clinton told bankers that they were best-placed to help reform the US financial sector."

Oh really? Banks won't lend to me. They raised my fees to jaw dropping levels. I sometimes wonder why I even have a bank account.

I probally won't vote this year. I don't think it will matter who gets into office. Part of myself is hoping for Trump. He will throughly piss everyone off, and maybe we can regain some democtractic congressional seats?

As to the all important Supreme Court nominees; just because they go in conservative, doesn't mean they won't do a bed flip while in office? History has proved this, or at least that's what Dr. Helbright said in political Science 101 in that hot classroom years ago. I did double check his claim, at the time. Why did that conservative justice (Robert's) save Obamacare? They are not robots. They seem to get more understanding with age? It's not so black/white when in their glory days, with the exception of Clarance Thomas. He is quite the consistent guy?

I'm not a Rebublican, or Democrat. I'm still waiting for the right party/person. And it's not that other idiot. Forget his name, but my goodness --is he fried, or just </comment><comment>?</comment>


I simulated California housing and learned about simulators - <AUTHOR> https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201809#18 <comment><USER2> When I bought, I noticed that every 10mins closer (rush hour driving) to Google was worth US$100k, and every point on the school rating was worth another US$100k. This led to an interesting gradient between downtown San Jose (bad schools) and Mountain View (good schools/close to Google).

The same thing applied to Cupertino/Apple, with Willow Glen having better schools but a longer commute.

We drew a circle on the map showing the longest distance I was willing to commute (on a bike), and bought on the circle.

<comment> chroem- Malicious startup idea: a company whose business model is driving rent-seeking real estate speculators into financial ruin. The company would buy residential real estate in a low cost of living area, followed by setting up offices there and paying its employees a high salary to do absolutely nothing. When rent- seekers inevitably drive up housing prices to as high as wages will tolerate, the company sells its real estate holdings in that location and moves somewhere else.

<comment><USER3> Non-malicious startup idea: What if you bought houses in bad school area, created a great private/charter school in that area and sold your houses at much higher price? From OP's calculation, a great school may cause at least $200K price increase per house and depending on capacity of the school you need to build, I think this can turn out to be pretty good business.

<comment><USER4> > What if you bought houses in bad school area, created a great > private/charter school in that area and sold your houses at much higher > price?

It's not easy to create a good school. Certainly, simply throwing money at the problem doesn't work, as shown by an example of US public schools. The most certain way to achieve it is to heavily preselect the attending children, but that presupposes the existence of such quality base in the area around the school. The problem is that if it does, then their parents are usually already rich themselves, and so the house prices are already high.

<comment><USER5> Are these assumptions, that throwing money at the problem characterizes US public school, and that quality children usually have rich parents, anything like justified?

<comment><USER6> They must be. Public schools are underfunded. Also, who measures children by "quality"? Jeez. This part of SV culture I would like to unsubscribe from.

<comment><USER7> Public schools are not underfunded. The inflation adjusted per student k12 spend in the us has gone up over the last 30 years.

It seems like school teachers are dramatically underpaid (a matter of opinion but I feel it's probably true in the median), but not the system as a whole.

<comment><USER8> it really varies, its not fair to say that all schools are well or poorly funded. in california, it is dependent on local taxes for example. so palo alto has incredible schools, and LA and Oakland have some of the worst in the country

<comment><USER4> Palo Alto spends only 10% more than Oakland per student, which itself spends more than both national and state average. If Oakland schools are worst in the country, the funding has minor, if any, impact on it.

<comment><USER9> The difference is "PiE" Partners in education, which is a non-profit voluntary parent-led organization which supports "All" the extracurricular activities plus for in-class aides for all classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Author has a great grasp of the market, and this simulation is pretty cool.

Another way to look at it is the house-price-to-income ratio, San Jose metro is the highest in the nation for individuals, #2 for households. [1]

Even better IMHO is price-to-rent ratio, which is the rental price of a home compared to the purchase ($360k home rented at $36k/yr is 10x). SV runs from 35x in SJ to 45x in SF (highest in the nation). Home values can't rise much above this unless income rises. [2]

1\. [https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house- price...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-price-to- income-ratio-is-most-out-of-whack/561404/)

2\. [https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-in-us- ci...](https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-in-us-cities)

<comment><USER11> A Price-to-Rent ratio of 45 is indeed crazy. Implied total return only slightly above 2% with quite some downside risks AND running costs + depreciation.

Rents are also quite high and it would still take 45+ years to have it paid off!

Any reasonable person would want to rent in such a situation.

<comment><USER12> There are two options here:

1\. People value owning a home irrationally, the price is disconnected from fundamentals

2\. People are pricing in future growth. With interest rates being low, this growth can be fairly long-term. The growth is primarily in future rent increases, but also potential interest rate decreases or irrational future growth (as in point 1).

Now, for point 2, we can actually calculate implied future growth, and then try to decide whether it is rational or not - e.g. given the market future interest rate expectations.

It would also be interesting to know who owns these houses. Did they buy them by really stretching themselves, and any downturn in the area would result in loads of forced sells, temporarily collapsing the market? Or are the owners in no danger of having to sell?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A ton of good and interesting bits in here, but the real payoff I'm pasting below as I fear others might not make it to the end of the article: _________________________________

In turn, what this means is that the NIMBYs are not all crazy. If you try to improve your home, the neighbourhood, or the region, you will not improve the property values, so don't waste your money (or municipal funds); the property values are already at maximum. But if you build more housing, you run the risk of putting DSR below 1.0 and sending property values into free fall, as they return to "normal" "healthy" market conditions.

<comment><USER14> This might also be useful knowledge to the currently non-voting renters who one day hope to enter the market. It's about half-and-half own vs rent for the Bay Area as a whole, but SF and Oakland are majority renter. Vote now to increase housing stock, and you might soon be able to buy in at a reasonable price!

<comment><USER15> For some definitions of "soon" :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great article, this you articulate perfectly what has been on my mind lately "It means raising engineer salary to match the higher cost of living ("cost of living adjustment") is pointless: it translates directly to higher housing prices (X goes up for everyone, so R*X goes up proportionally), which eats the benefit."

<comment><USER17> Slightly off topic, but this has been my fear with the push for UBI, it feels like rents/costs will just go up as they did with gov't backed student loans..

<comment><USER18> Except that UBI is/was supported by realllly savvy economists. Like Milton Friedman.

A similar argument could be made about public spending on education, that it only creates inflation. But of course education is a great way to increase productivity. Similar effects would probably follow from universal healthcare and a UBI: namely healthy, financially secure people can do things that have short-term costs but long-term benefits, like starting a new business, or doing a low-paid internship, learning new skills, and so on. Also, fewer sick- hours leads directly to increased productivity.

<comment><USER19> > A similar argument could be made about public spending on education, that it > only creates inflation. But of course education is a great way to increase > productivity

Uh yeah, but that doesn't make it a good thing. If the expense of education puts you into a debt hole that is so deep that it's impossible to make up for it with increased productivity, that is a net negative.

And what does this have to do with housing? Increased housing costs is like the exact opposite of increased productivity. Limiting supply of housing is a rent-seeking behavior.

<comment><USER18> Its made it good enough a thing that nearly every nation on earth has made in a priority.

Seeking to limit supply is not necessarily rent-seeking (which is a motivational state), but sure.

The comment was directed toward the issue of whether UBI is inflationary, not whether housing supply should be increased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Simulation is nonanalytical way to model complex phenomena and try to understand dynamics of it. Just like purely analytic mathiness, the main benefit is that others can point errors and omissions. Peter Norvig does it too: [https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/blob/master/ipynb/Economic...](https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/blob/master/ipynb/Economics.ipynb)

What you are simulating is just tiny part of the Economies of agglomeration [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration)

The only working solution to housing is building more densee cities with more housing. Productivity of workers and companies increases as the result of various agglomeration effects.

<comment><USER21> Or to figure out how to get an effective distributed work force...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So does social housing make the situation better or worse?

Looking at London, for example. There are surprisingly few nice areas in London to live in with a family, in close proximity to the City, _even_ if you had loads and loads of money. That has always seemed very odd to me. As a result, the few reasonably nice houses that you do find, have prices that are "maxed-out" \- that is, if you are in the "high-earning class" \- e.g. working in finance in London - and buy them, all your "excess earnings" are sucked into mortgage or rent, and you are left no better off than if you were in a median job, except now you live in an ok neighbourhood close to work.

If you had no planning laws etc. and it was easy for property developers to develop how they like, you would think that the area around where the highest paying jobs are would be more uniformly nice, developed in such a way that the people working in those jobs would want to settle there. So the supply of houses for those workers would increase. At the same time, low-income workers would likely be pushed further out, with some finding that the extra commute makes working in the city centre not worth it. Thus the wages for the low- income workers will probably go up as the supply of labour goes down.

It seems like the overall utility would go up - London would become a nicer place to live in, crime rates would drop, etc.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately for London property has become a massive asset. If you look at who owns most of the houses you'll see that it is foreign buyers, the wealthy with multiple houses, and extreme landlordism. This is artificially raising the price, even though there are plenty of empty lots sitting around, forcing crowd out without actually creating any better property.

Socialized/affordable housing might help, but typically once the market is so distorted not many people can afford to live there and thus even if their rent is cheap they're going to leave. This property is then bought by the wealthy and traded for an asset, repeating the cycle.

<comment><USER12> But is the price really disconnected from rents on comparable properties?

The way I think about it, is that if buying a house can yield you 2-3% - either through expected house price growth or through rental income or both - _someone_ will be buying it at that price, because it makes economic sense in a low interest rate environment (i.e. you won't find any other assets with similar risk that will give you a higher yield). Who ends up being the buyer is not particularly relevant - as long as the yield is there, somebody will be buying at that price.

The question then is,

1\. Are rents too high? Unlikely, rents are very much supply/demand driven. 2\. Are yields too low than what is justified? Possibly. Rental yields in central London seem to be around 3.5%, which seems quite low if you take into account the costs and the risks. 3\. Are investors pricing in too much price growth? Possibly - related to point 2 above.

But it doesn't seem like current buyers are paying completely irrational prices for the houses. So it does not seem like we are in a bubble. Of course, if interest rates go up, we will see housing drop, and as expectations of future price growth are reduced because of that, we should see a bigger decrease in house prices than is warranted by interest rate increase alone. Add to that the potential of some people not being able to pay their mortgage at higher interest and being forced to sell, and the prices should dip even more than "intrinsic value". If this effect propagates to the wider economy, people might lose their jobs, forcing more people to sell, resulting in a full-blown liquidity event where it becomes a buyers' market for a short while.

Now, whether interest rates will go up significantly and whether once there are signs of such a liquidity event they will stay high is anyone's guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is the talent pool more valuable there than elsewhere in the US or elsewhere in the world? Even if you allow for the effect of having drawn talent there over decades, is it _that much_ more valuable?

If not, it seems like corporations are making a mistake by investing there. If the government can't be convinced to change the zoning rules, then companies should take some attrition and expand elsewhere.

<comment><USER24> There's a certain critical mass to it. We moved out to SF for five years while I worked at YouTube, then back to Atlanta to be close to family (and afford a house).

There are two or three awesome places to work in Atlanta. In SF I knew I could get out of bed, trip over my shoelaces, and accidentally land on six fantastic places to work before breakfast…

<comment><USER24> btw, if you're in Atlanta, or interested, you should come have (free) lunch with us sometime at Square Atlanta.

If you're experienced, and interested in Go+Java infrastructure/tooling work, hit me up: I'm trying to help get an Atlanta PlatEng ("Platform Engineering") presence off the ground and might be hiring soon…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think simulation's scientific utility is misunderstood. A model with honest parameters and predictive ability can be used to hypothesize effectively about changes in policy or or the effects of external factors.

<comment><USER26> Just call your model "AI" and people will become interested. You're not p-hacking, you're hand-tuning hyperparameters!

<comment><USER27> > hand-tuning hyperparameters

This is a delightful phrase. I'm going to try to find opportunities to use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> so basically we need to reduce zoning laws and kill the market which has always been in my mind. No one wants to say it but the truth is a healthy market means housing isnt worth that much which means its not a good investment (which it shouldnt be, it should be a place to live)

</comment><comment><USER29> I really Identified with 'Is simulation "real science"?'

IMO it's no small wonder that AI look and feel human to us. As a heuristic we've prematurely discarded all the ones that don't.

</comment><comment><USER30> I loved the reference to the Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Like you, A colleague of mine saw parallels in the book to data science (He wrote a series of talks about them. Here's a video with me explaining some of them [https://youtu.be/iYRtVwqxjzM](https://youtu.be/iYRtVwqxjzM)).

</comment><comment><USER31> Another "solution" \- one that requires no action from homeowners - is to fix the demand side of things. Engineers without family could park a van nearby and (optionally) commute in and out over the weekend to a nice area further out. For the cost difference I'd be willing to put up with a pretty significant amount of hassle like that.

<comment><USER32> My manager's manager kinda does this. She flies her airplane back and forth between Yosemite area and the Palo Alto airport everyday. She loves flying and the numbers apparently penciled out for her to be able to afford to buy a house in Yosemite with access to a private landing strip, and buy the plane, fuel, and maintenance for cheaper than she could buy a house in the bay.

<comment><USER12> How long is the overall commute? That sounds like a potentially interesting solution.

<comment><USER32> I think flight time is around 50 minutes. Depending on what time I leave the office she sometimes gets to her house up there before I get to mine in Cupertino.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Funny startup idea: buy a bunch of real estate in those areas, then rent out capsule homes for a hundred bucks a month. Stuff them into these overpriced homes and take a bunch of cash-strapped renters away from those that are pushing the rent up.

You'll lose money on upkeep and taxes probably, but its still a fun idea.

</comment><comment><USER34> BTW, I'm a bit disappointed that this didn't use pysim.</comment>


Independent Contracting & Estimates - <AUTHOR>

I'm in a bit of a pickle. I'm trying to generate an estimate for an app built around Twitter for a regulated industry with compliance considerations. The interfaces and base functionality alone are probably 170 hours or so of work. Reporting, given the nature of the auditing and compliance involved, is probably another 100+ hours. Somehow I have a feeling that 270*$85USD/hour is not what this client is expecting to spend. What kind of money would you find to be "minimally acceptable" for 250+ hours of web-based and service-exposed (API to allow integration with their legacy apps) work around Twitter and several other APIs? <comment><USER2> Your description doesn't reveal very much about the project, but if your time estimate is anywhere close, I would personally charge in the ballpark of 25k, and bill 1/3 up front, 1/3 at a midpoint, and 1/3 at the end.

Of course, if they don't want to spend that much money, then it depends on how badly you need the project and you'll need to decide how much you're willing to come down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply! Right, and I don't really want to reveal too much more at the moment. I guess I really just want outright opinions, out of one's a$$ or otherwise. There's nothing abhorrently difficult about the work, there's just a fairly significant amount of it to be done. I'm just wondering how low my peers would go for 250 hours of light-to-moderate difficulty mostly web form and simple database work, integrating with multiple external APIs.</comment></comment>


In Defense Of Leakers: Snowden and Manning - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/08/in-defense-of-leakers.html <comment><USER2> I was recently reminded in a conversation with my in-laws how far we have to go. Not only do they not really understand what the NSA is doing or why it matters, but they still see both Manning and Snowden as "traitors."

Coming out in support of whistle-blowers may seem non-controversial on HN and similar sites, but we do have a long way to go before swaying public opinion. We can help a little by discussing it with friends and family, and by letting our politicians know we're not OK with it.

I'm not sure what else to do or whether it's even helping. I wonder what kind of response we will get to the White House petition to pardon Snowden, but I expect it to be one-sided nonsense.

<comment><USER3> It's possible that the public does understand the issue and disagrees with you. I'm reminded a little of the rabid followers of Ron Paul... they couldn't understand why the general public ignored their candidate when they were so beyond certain that he was not only the best choice, but self-evidently the only choice for the continuation of the American experiment. Their supporters called on each other to pester their friends and family and hijack every poll and discussion on the Internet, which is very similar to what I'm seeing called on in many threads here and on reddit.

It could also be that a small majority do agree with you, but simply don't care. I'm sure you can think of some policies of the federal government you don't like, but you just don't spend any time trying to fight, other than the occasional Internet comment (you have gone beyond the occasional Internet comment on this issue, right?)

When the public doesn't agree with you, or just doesn't care that much about your issue, it doesn't mean they are lazy uninformed idiots. That is a sophomoric way of looking at the world, it's not true, and it's not useful to think that way.

<comment><USER2> > _" When the public doesn't agree with you, or just doesn't care that much > about your issue, it doesn't mean they are lazy uninformed idiots. That is a > sophomoric way of looking at the world, it's not true, and it's not useful > to think that way."_

Would you like to point out where I made such an idiotic claim? I didn't mean or intent to imply that the only reason people don't agree with me is because they don't know. My point was simply that a lot of people are ignorant. What's _not_ useful is this sort of straw-man pedantry.

As for those who agree but don't care: it's hard to blame them. I signed petitions, I sent letters to my elected representatives. I tried to attend a protest, but it was so pathetic that I left. I try, but there's a sense of futility to it all.

I'm very open to suggestions on how we can have a greater impact.

<comment><USER4> > I sent letters to my elected representatives.

Were they stuffed with cash? Nothing talks like campaign donations.

All the vote promises in the world don't mean squat if they can't print enough flyers so that Joe Blow will recognize their name when they step into the booth.

Of course, no politician is going to care about donations on the level that your average middle-class American can afford to give. Maybe crowd-fund a large sum for donation whose receipt is contingent upon an agreement to vote a certain way on certain issues, with highly public and embarrassing repercussions if they do not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Russia's action today is a disgrace and a deliberate effort to embarrass the United States." \- John McCain

The US needed no help to embarrass itself. It chose the course it has taken with Guantanamo and Manning and Binney and Drake, chose to lie repeatedly to Americans about what it's been up to, chose to subvert the FISA's original purpose. It's up to Congress to end the embarrasment.

</comment><comment><USER6> Imagine if the NSA creates all this terrorist hype in order to maintain funding...You know, in order to protect American's we must maintain our surveillance and to do that we must create all the hype, just in case the real thing comes along (like Boston?).

So I wonder if they reduce program size if all the sudden there will be terrorist attack. Wouldn't that be interesting.

Also, if we spend 10 billion on the NSA and what does our terrorist enemies spend?

<comment><USER7> Well, it gets a bit more sinister when you learn that the FBI actually creates "terrorist plots" by sending spies into mosques etc to radicalize otherwise ordinary Muslim men.. this is common knowledge to those following what's been happening to the civil liberties of Muslims. The NYPD does this also [1] but you can easily websearch for either case.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/the- horr...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/the-horrifying- impacts-of-nypd-ethnic-profiling-on-innocent-muslim-americans/274434/)</comment></comment>


If We Upvote Everything, We're a Dumb Pipe - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/10/30/if-we-upvote-everything-were-a-dumb-pipe/ <comment><USER2> I've done my part and not upvoted this.

<comment><USER3>
        (defun should-upvote? (post)
          (if (produces-irony? (should-upvote? post))
              (progn (upvote post) t)
              nil)))

<comment><USER4> First of all, that will go into an infinite recursive loop and blow your stack.

Second, why would you call the upvote function here? The name suggests that it's a pure function that returns a boolean, but for some reason you've introduced side effects. Naughty, naughty!

Third, you seem to be using Common Lisp, but you're using Scheme's naming convention for predicates. In Common Lisp, you would name it should-upvote-p, for consistency with everybody else's code.

(I've been grading papers all morning for an introductory programming class, so this post was a reflex.)

<comment><USER3> Aw, c'mon man, it was a joke. I know it wouldn't run...I was trying to express the ambiguity of the recursive irony, or something. I would never put side effects in a real predicate if I were really writing this.

But I would still name the function whatever the hell I want because it's Lisp and I can. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ireland is to close a tax loophole used by Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24542794

<comment><USER2> A loophole used by Apple.

And Google, and Microsoft, and Adobe, and Facebook, and Oracle, and Pfizer, and Starbucks, and General Electric.

But Apple makes the headline. Normally this would be headline whoring by the predictable media, except that this is the BBC, and I thought Starbucks was made the whipping boy for tax evasion in the UK.

<comment><USER3> I _think_ the difference is google and microsoft are using a different loophole (double irish), which by the way wouldn't be closed by this change.

EDIT: to clarify: apple is playing with one subsidiary being resident "nowhere", whereas other companies have subsidiaries being resident in tax havens. The reform will forbid the former, not the latter.

<comment><USER4> So the headline should be, "Ireland to close Apple's tax loophole, but leave bigger one open"

<comment><USER5> More accurately: "Ireland will not close Apple's tax loophole; won't close the other one either.", since the article explains that all Apple needs to do is to declare it's Irish subsidiary to have a tax domicile of Bermuda (or anywhere else without corporate income tax) and Apple's current loophole remains intact.

<comment><USER6> Exactly

There are ways this can be worked around (quite easily as pointed)

Nothing changes in practice

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't ask me exactly how, but Apple (and others i guess) manages to get paid by Spanish taxing organism by declaring negative results. They do redirect the benefits and payment of taxes to Ireland, where i guess that happens again. Spain pays Apple in concept of fiscal help, they might need some, right?

[http://cincodias.com/cincodias/2013/05/22/empresas/136920666...](http://cincodias.com/cincodias/2013/05/22/empresas/1369206664_728892.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Apple made profits outside of the US and is keeping that money outside the US. They are also in full compliance with tax laws. They have no obligation to pay more in taxes than the law requires.

The whining here smacks of envy.

<comment><USER9> The article here explains how according to tax authorities, a Apple's Irish registered subsidiaries avoided Irish tax by being based _nowhere_ for tax purposes (earlier in the year they had the cheek to issue a corporate communication stating they didn't use tax havens...). Legal or not, if you think that's anything other than a perversion of the truth I have a bridge to sell you.

The apologism here smacks of someone that didn't read the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Headline should be 'Apple forced to use other Irish tax loophole'

</comment><comment><USER11> I noticed something interesting the other day on my bank statement as I pay for a LinkedIn premium account and it says, "LinkedIn Ireland" or something along those lines. LinkedIn uses Ireland to dodgily get out of paying tax too. Every major company does, its been a known loophole for a long time now.

<comment><USER12> Google bills most non US clients from Google Ireland too. Obviously there are tax considerations. But Google (non US) and Linkedin genuinely have big presences in Ireland. They do account management, customer service, accounting, etc out of massive Dublin offices. Language, availability of educated generalists and willingness of European employees to immigrate to Dublin are also big considerations. They aren't billing to shell companies.

This is a genuine loophole that is being closed, not an intentional piece of policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A more extensive and detailed explanation here: [http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland/ireland-w...](http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland/ireland- wants-to-play-fair-over-international-tax-competition-says-noonan-1.1561583)

</comment><comment><USER14> The only efficient way to combat such tax loopholes is to abuse them. I'm not claiming that Apple or any other of these behemoths is doing it for that purpose of course, but smaller companies should do the same until it hurts governments enough to get them to act. They don't care about a few huge companies avoiding taxes as long as all small companies are paying theirs.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just curious - you hear rumors that the E.U. is considering clamping down on Ireland's tax laws.

Is there any truth to this? Could it happen anytime soon?

If so, does Ireland then consider leaving the E.U., or is Ireland's E.U. membership more important to those U.S. companies than the tax benefits?

</comment><comment><USER2> More information about the underlying tax loophole: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement)

<comment><USER16> It says that the Dutch Railways company (Nederlandse spoorwegen) uses that scheme, which is interesting, because that company is state-owned. You wouldn't say that that company is interested in tax evasion. Crazy world that we live in.

<comment><USER17> Why not? Even our Dutch Royal Family have such constructions. (Via the palace and Guernsey).

<comment><USER16> Because normally the profits would go into Dutch treasury, either in the form of tax or dividend. This way a part goes to the Irish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a non-accountant, what's the permanent solution to these types of race-to- the-bottom tax-shelter problems? I mean, other than all countries everywhere agreeing on taxes?

Increased sales tax paid where the consumer is located?

</comment><comment><USER19> The real loophole is in U.S. law, which allows Apple to make large profits selling things in the U.S. but not pay any tax on them through the magic of self-dealing transactions.

It's as if you gave all your income to your cat - whose bank account you happen to control - and then were able to deduct those gifts fully from your tax return, leaving you with no income and no tax liability. The tax man wouldn't look kindly on individuals doing that, but does look kindly on large corporations doing that. Odd.

<comment><USER20> Can you point to an article that explains this better? Because if not, I call shenanigans.

<comment><USER21> [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732403480...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324034804578348131432634740)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this going to hurt the (currently thriving) tech/startup scene in Ireland?

<comment><USER23> I would say having the big tech giants in Ireland has virtually no impact whatsoever on the Irish tech scene. There doesn't seem to be any movement of staff from tech giants to startups for example, or any investments by tech giants in Irish startups. Israel is way more successful at the latter, also at achieving acquisitions by major US tech companies.

Disclaimer: I live in Ireland, and have worked in a startup and interned in Apple.

<comment><USER24> Yep, totally agree.

There's almost no interaction between the big tech multi-nationals and local tech scene. This is mostly because the large "tech" companies mostly employ finance, sales, support and logistical staff in Ireland rather than the raw technical talent of the "startup" scene</comment></comment></comment>


IoDrive, Changing The Way You Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.jdconley.com/blog/archive/2009/03/12/iodrive-changing-the-way-you-code.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> My main point was not really this particular device, but parallel SSD's in general. It's changing the way we think about persistent storage for write- often data.

</comment><comment><USER2> From a quick google, it looks like the 80GB model starts at $2400. Hard to call that competitive with SSDs, except soley on performance.

Should be very interesting for "dream machine" desktops once you can boot from one.

<comment><USER3> No, it is competitive with the _24_ SSD monster. That is, it is competitive with putting 24 of the SSDs in RAID, which is estimated to be... $12k IIRC. Granted, you get less storage space, but this is for pure IO goodness.

Edit: From the Tom's Hardware article at ( [http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/493-8-x25-e-fusion-...](http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/493-8-x25-e-fusion- io-iodrive.html) )

The database I/O benchmark results are quite interesting. Intel's X25-E reaches 6,500 to 10,000 I/O operations per seconds at small command queue depths, but drops to a little more than 4,000 I/Os at deep command queues. The ioDrive is different. While it reaches 2.5x more performance than the X25-E at executing individual commands, it drops to a bit more than the Intel's performance at longer command queues. Switching the ioDrive to one of the faster write modes, which results in reduced capacity, results in more than doubling I/O performance. In such a case, a RAID array of Intel X25-E SSDs could not catch up for the same cost of an ioDrive.

<comment><USER2> My point was you get (comparatively) a heck of a lot of storage plus pretty decent performance with a SSD. You better /really/ care about IO to be paying that much per GB - and some people do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, thinking about the "standard" MySQL scale-out approach of master/slave coupled with memcached, what's the new best practice if you have a stack of iodrives sitting around?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I think you're probably solving a different problem with the master/slave. If you're scaling out and caching because you're CPU limited then nothing changes. If you're scaling out because your disks can't keep up with the parallel read/write traffic then I'm thinking you can drop the cache and master/slave in many cases (unless you want the hot server for HA).

<comment><USER4> I worked on a pretty big site where we read from the slaves and wrote to the master, but we were still on 4.1 with MyISAM. Given the current size of the iodrives we would have to shard a lot more than we were, especially for a few large tables. But, it would drastically reduce deployment complexity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or you could simply use lots of RAM?

<comment><USER6> I think the point of the article is they needs a lot of _persistent_ storage. you'd have to constantly write that RAM back to disk, and then you've either bottlenecked again or have to come up with some queue system where you drop so many changes because of the disk bottleneck. This is a clean solution that does really change how you think you can interact with persistent storage. All those little reads and writes without the performance hit.

<comment><USER5> I guess I say that because they talk about game-based workloads... I'd assume that only a limited number of events are persisted indefinitely (and/or need to be atomic).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> heh. IOdrive. Like striping 3 intel X25-X SSDs, only more expensive.</comment>


Astronomers have found a planet like Earth orbiting a star like the sun - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/05/1002831/kepler-160-koi-456-04-earth-sun-exoplanet-habitable/ <comment><USER2> 3000 light years away...

Can we detect if it has life without going there? Even just an yes/no answer would be immensely important.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps, if gasses produced by life could be detected?

But we've detected life in volcanic vents, in arctic ice, in the upper atmosphere, in pretty much every niche on our own planet. Apparently life is pretty adaptable. So we have some clues already.

<comment><USER2> Detecting (or not-detecting) life on a planet similar to Earth would be groundbreaking. Currently we know of only 1 instance where life arose, and only 1 planet where it's reasonable to expect it to arise.

If we detect life on Mars or Europa it would likely be related to our own, so that's not an independent data point.

But if we detect that there's definitely life on a planet 3000 light years away, or if we exclude that possibility - that's a massive change in our model of universe, understanding of Fermi paradox and our origins.

<comment><USER3> Still, life on Earth are of a baffling variety. It seems it rose up in every environment possible for stable carbon.

Yes, I'd like to learn of life elsewhere. But life here is amazing too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quote: "Three thousand light-years from Earth sits Kepler 160.."

To put some thing in perspective. If we get an instant teleport technology to go there tomorrow, it will be a planet that had passed 5 times more time then we know since our humanity almost went extinct 60k years ago.

If we get technology to go at speed of light we'll get there in 300k years, again 5 more times then our modern humanity as we know it.

Yeah, space is vast.

<comment><USER5> >If we get technology to go at speed of light we'll get there in 300k years

Light takes 3000 years to travel 3000 light-years, not 300k years

<comment><USER6> He means relativistic speeds which is optimistically .01c making the trip take 300k years. He doesnt actually mean violating physical laws.

<comment><USER5> I don't think he does. He says "If we get technology to go at speed of light", "at speed of light" the speed of light is 1c.

His previous sentence also makes no sense

> To put some thing in perspective. If we get an instant teleport technology > to go there tomorrow, it will be a planet that had passed 5 times more time > then we know since our humanity almost went extinct 60k years ago.

The light we see from the planet is 3000 years old not 5 times 60k. Space is big, but not as big as OP seems to think. The diameter of the Milky Way is only 150,000–180,000 light-years light years. All the exoplanets we have detected are within the Milky Way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GMail is down - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/gmail <comment><USER2> Works fine for me. Perhaps its regional? I'm in FL.</comment>


Facebook: The Most Searched for Term on the Web? - <AUTHOR> http://www.leveragingideas.com/2009/09/20/facebook-the-most-searched-for-term-on-the-web/

<comment><USER2> because almost everyone enters "facebook" into either their address bar or google search box to get to facebook.

<comment><USER3> I recall reading at some point that the most-searched term on Yahoo was "Google" and the most-searched term on Google was "Yahoo", for exactly that reason.

<comment><USER4> And in the good ol' days, Pamela Anderson topped these charts. (At least on Lycos.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i'd be curious to see what the trend is going to be over 10 years or so.

possibly like myspace?: <http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=myspace></comment>


Apple devices are leaking sensitive data over BLE - <AUTHOR> https://team.inria.fr/privatics/apple-devices-are-leaking-sensitive-data-over-ble/ <comment><AUTHOR> "We found that when using features such as Airdop and Nearby, devices emit messages from which __email addresses __and __phone numbers __can be extracted. Continuity services allow to seamlessly share resources with nearby devices: Airdrop to share files, Nearby to share Wi-Fi network credential. Prior exchange of information, the devices establish their identity by exchange identifiers over BLE: email addresses and /or phone numbers. Those identifiers are not sent in clear but are rather hashed using a cryptographic hash-function. This obfuscation can be bypassed __in most cases and the identifiers recovered __. "</comment>


Facebook Connect. Thoughts from YC community? - <AUTHOR>

Kinda weird... Haven't seen any discussion about this. Personally I am pretty stocked about it. I know its not anything new, there is OpenID and what not. Although, I really like the facebook implementation. I think it will really help startups/companies in all fronts, easy implementation, support, security, data portability and even generate marketing.<p>Thoughts? <comment><USER2> _"... allow users to "connect" their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any website ..."_

Facebook connect ??? (I didn't know) you can read more here: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/09/facebook-responds-to- my...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/09/facebook-responds-to-myspace-with- facebook-connect/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it going to be built on open standards though? I think that's an important differentiator.</comment>


How to Do Code Reviews Like a Human - <AUTHOR> https://mtlynch.io/human-code-reviews-1/ <comment><USER2> > Let computers do the boring parts

It's hard to overstate the positive changes having good test coverage can make on your code reviews. You get to switch from discussing potential mistakes to discussing strategy, almost wholesale.

> Never say "you"

Do use "you" when complimenting someone. Think twice when critiquing them.

There was a fabulous article that passed HN once on how to communicate with optimism. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298898)

The main point I took away from it was to use specific, personal and permanent language when complimenting someone. Use general, impersonal, and temporary language when criticizing someone. Positives are things people get personal credit for, negatives are forgivable temporary behaviors that can change and everyone is prone to.

> Tie notes to principles, not opinions

Like most programmers, I automatically enjoy discussing principles. But, most often principles _are_ opinions. I try to keep them out code reviews when I can (which is perhaps the majority of the time, but definitely not always). I like to focus solely on what works and what needs to be done, if I can. Being too "principled", in my experience, often leads to not looking for, and not understanding situation specific reasons to go against a given principle, or to prioritize one principle over another. Plus, almost everyone is applying their principles when they code, it's just frequently not the same principles you think of when you review the code.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I've been asked to make an implementation worse before because it didn't look like the reviewer's code. I used a static pure function to implement some basic functionality and made that function public so that it could be unit tested. The reviewer asked me to make the pure function impure and protected and then use the friend keyword to couple the class to the unit tests. When I asked him about it all of his responses were on the principle that we shouldn't use too many techniques from the language, and we're already using friend to do what I was doing with the static function.

Needless to say since this was a favor for the reviewer and his feedback was basically "completely reimplement the solution for a totally arbitrary reason," the pull request languishes to this day.

<comment><USER4> If I'm reading this right, it sounds like the reviewer was arguing for consistency with the rest of the code base. If so, I can agree with the reviewer but I would have added that if the static function was superior how much work would it be to make them all consistent.

<comment><USER2> Being a programmer, it's _extremely_ likely that @jschwartzi was already trying to be consistent in every way he knew how, and every way that mattered to him.

Bringing up a random and surprise way to make something consistent in a code review, for reasons not already written down and agreed upon in your team's coding standard, should generally be deemed inappropriate.

I recommend codifying the axes of consistency in your org's coding standard and style guide -- that's what they are, after all. Make sure everyone agrees. If a new consistency rule seems important after multiple similar PRs, it should go through a process where the whole team discusses whether it should be adopted into the style guide.

In my experience, "consistency" is one of those abused opinion-principles. Everyone has a different idea of what it means to be consistent. Some consistency is a great idea, but in general, appeals to consistency that aren't already in the coding standard should be prioritized lower than simplicity, and lower than whether the code & tests work as designed.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that what I'm talking about is not style based. In a simple, made up case if I have a class that contains utility functions and I task someone to add a new utility function I would expect it to end up in the already existing class.

Making a new utility class for the new function because the old class is too large in the new programmers opinion is breaking consistency. The class _may_ be too large, but putting the new lone function off by itself is now an exception that everyone else will have to deal with. That one inconsistency then leads to others adding their own utility classes and then you have a big mess with some functions scattered across new utilityX, utilityY, and the old utility.

As I said above, I would have handled the review differently and suggested/asked if all of the functions involved could be refactored to use the new improved method. In my example above, I would have asked if he/she could go ahead and break up the utility class as part of the change to add the new function. If the work was too much to bring it all up to date, then fit with what already exists and put a ticket in to do the explicit refactor later.

<comment><USER2> I understand and appreciate your point. And there are definitely situations where I agree with your take. Also I'm glad you'd phrase the review as a request and not a demand, that is closer to the right approach.

But, as an engineering manager, I'm making a procedural point about code reviews, not disagreeing with your opinion. If the type of consistency being requested in the code review is not in the coding standard, then it's not fair game for blocking a PR or even making judgements, pure and simple. It's certainly okay to discuss it, and for the reviewer to ask questions and see if the submitter would like to improve consistency according to the reviewer, but if it's not part of the standard, then it's not a rule.

"Consistency" is not a rule by itself anyway, it's a vague unspecified idea. There's no such thing as 100% consistency in multiple pieces of code, unless they're 100% copies. Every single file has unique differences that the team has to deal with. There's not much evidence that being extremely nit-picky about consistency improves safety or productivity, and in general, there's no reason in advance to think the "exception" will cause anyone else any trouble. Worrying about it may be premature optimization.

To be more specific to the example above, there are times when visibility of functions should be limited, for safety reasons. Exposing functions selectively using friend declarations is generally seen as good practice in many situations, it's not a bad default choice. But, static public functions absolutely have their place too, and moreover they are a simpler language feature than friends. Simplicity is (to me) more important than consistency. In the example above, @jschwartzi's reviewer should have asked the question "hey do you think it would be more consistent to use friend instead of static public?" even before making any actionable requests. And if the answer is no and backed up with reasons, which it was, and if there's no rule in the coding standard on this point, then the reviewer should have said okay and approved it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice one. It always bothered me that code review is talked about as something completely different then any other supervisory/controlling or people managing (in the sense of trying to make people do what you want) work. It is not, it can demotivate people and rob them of any motivation the same way as any other supervisory function done badly can. The most important point would be to distinguish between bad code and "I would have done that slightly differently". The two are not nearly the same.

Through, I dont thing "we" is better then "you". The most maddening for me was when reviewer attempted to take complete control and responsibility over task as if it would not be me who was supposed to do it in the first place. It is not us, it is you telling me what to do and me then doing it (oftentimes regardless of what I think due to time pressure or simply because reviewer has higher status in the company), so lets not lie about it. Speaking about feelings, let people feel like they did work when they did task, don't take it from them.

The impact of this "actually it is our task lets do it my way" on juniors was quite visible - they essentially stopped to think for themselves or stopped to look proud of their work. They became quite passive as if working in a factory, you did not seemed them to make suggestions how to make something better even if they knew the way (based on personal discussion) and shyied away from any dilemma or initiative.

</comment><comment><USER6> Bookmarked, and I'm excited for part two.

Most of these points, I think, generalize to all code review workflows. Some teams, though, put a high priority on individual ownership and accountability, which creates a few interesting dynamics. First, code reviews were mostly treated as nonblocking. With high trust, we assumed that most code was good by default. From that perspective, it was also discouraged to drop everything to do a code review. You were better off focusing on being productive until you found a natural breaking point. Because the code was often already shipping when it got reviewed, small style changes were typically moot and the focus was higher level.

There's definitely a trade-off with that approach in terms of catching bugs early, and it does depend on a high level of trust in developers. But I didn't feel like the posts assumptions quite covered that.

<comment><USER7> I have never seen bugs caught in code review. I did see plenty of bugs go through code review just fine. I'm sure bugs might be caught occasionally, but I doubt code reviews are an effective tool for this.

<comment><USER8> I have seen and prevented bugs in others' code, and by others in my code. I've seen important misunderstandings unearthed by a few questions during code review, leading to certain design changes.

If I never saw bugs during code review, it might be due to my peers producing flawless code, or me not looking hard enough. I see the latter as more probable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One more thought: some code review comments are basically feature requests. E.g. they are improvement on functionality that were not required by original requirements (but may be still good ideas). It is often the case that reviewer found another solution wants it even more configurable or something of the sort.

The best way to treat these is to open new issue in whatever tracker you use instead of blocking already done features and forcing long live branch. This way they can be prioritized properly, pm or analyst gets to have say on whether they are in line with what customer needs and most importantly are not endangering next release. We promised X to customer and while X+Y might be better, holding needed X as hostage to just proposed Y is not a good process.

<comment><USER9> Blocking such changes might be an entirely reasonable thing to do. I've seen it a number of times.

CL author implements some feature, touching a library in the process. The changes made to the library help them match their requirements but are awfully specific to whatever feature it is they're implementing and don't make much sense in the context of the existing library API.

Sorry, but NAK. Don't increase the API surface with one-off additions just because it is the most convenient way to implement some feature. If you can't do with the existing API and don't think there's a nice and general abstraction to add to the library, you might want to figure out the absolute minimum API modification necessary that lets you achieve what you want to do. It might require more effort in the user part of the code, but is also that much more likely to be acceptable.

<comment><USER5> Then the code review should said: this function does not match library abstraction level. It should not said: make default search string configurable in settings and while you are at it, refactor settings page. Nobody asked for configurable default search string, customer is cool having it empty.

If your required abstraction level forces new requirements (instead of just forcing code to be moved elsewhere or written differently while keeping requiremnts), then your abstraction is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I mostly agree, with one exception: the author prefers "sucessfully -> successfully" to "You misspelled 'successfully.'". We have a lot of these kinds of comments at work and I find both equally frustrating. I wish reviewers would just make those simple changes themselves, it's almost the same amount of effort as writing a comment.

<comment><USER11> So you want reviewers to drop what they're doing and take the time to pull in your changes to fix the typo, break up commit history by adding their change, instead of you fixing the mistake when it's found, especially if it's newly introduced? That's pretty inconsiderate/lazy.

Don't be that teammate please.

<comment><USER12> Where I work the reviewer can seamlessly make a (suggested) edit to the change request which the author can accept with a single button click. So I guess it depends on the toolchain you have available, might be that GP has better tools than what you're used to.

(To be clear, on submit the edit you make would appear as though author had did it themselves, so it doesn't polluted commit log at all)

<comment><USER5> What tool do you use? That feature sounds cool.

<comment><USER12> It is an internal only tool, idk of a public equivalent. Indeed a cool feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Frame feedback as requests, not commands

On my team, PRs do not require approval to be merged by the author. This gives the author full autonomy. They can entirely ignore any/all feedback if they so choose. (However, they are also held responsible if ignored feedback results in problems after the work is merged.) As such, feedback is always framed as a _suggestion_ , not a command or a request. Suggestions must be supported by evidence, or they're challenged (or ignored). It's a lot easier to discuss a suggestion than a command or request.</comment>


8 hour trance to hack/study/do-things - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk26FUe38y0 <comment><USER2> Thanks for this. I would recommend [http://www.thegrandsound.com](http://www.thegrandsound.com) as well.</comment>


Which Job Skills Will Be Most Important In The Coming Years? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/09/average-is-over/

<comment><USER2> This is a very good inteview. It talks about several labor-related and economic issues that will be extremely important in the coming years. Chief among them: the criticality of marketing. In a world where things get easier to produce, convincing people to buy them becomes crucial. It also touches on how autodidactism will essentially be required as required skills/technologies continue to change quickly and information is abundant - but motivation is still a scarce resource. This also reinfoces that the old idea of "go to college, get job, never have to worry about learning again/just focus on your interests or personal relationships" or whatever should be considered a relic of a dead era.

My picks for jobs of the future: software developers in general, and robot developers in particular; robot hardware designers and maintainers; politicians; business owners/managers; "personal service" assistant types; and marketers. As things progress, today's equivalent of "telephone sanitizers" will vanish, and the job market will only get more polarized and become hypercompetitive.</comment>


TopSim – Efficiently search the most similar strings in CLI or Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chuanconggao/TopSim <comment><AUTHOR> Search the most similar strings against the query in Python 3.

State-of-the-art algorithm and data structure are adopted for best efficiency. For both flexibility and efficiency, only set-based similarities are supported right now, including Jaccard and Tversky.

Can be used both on CLI and as Python package.</comment>


The Great American Single-Family Home Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/business/economy/single-family-home.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Duplicate post discussed more here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827177)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, we've moved the comments there.</comment></comment>


Independence Day – War of 1996 - dan-silver http://www.warof1996.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> interesting but what is it?</comment>


From 0 to 49k: The Story Behind My First Tech Article on Medium - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@moskovski/from-0-to-49k-the-story-behind-my-first-tech-article-on-medium-df14df2604c3#.r7g1ne7o9 <comment><AUTHOR> I published the first article about my SaaS webservice here on January 1, and it went viral collecting more than 49000 views, and 920 recs and made it to the biggest Russian startup news publisher where it had additional 24000 views.</comment>


How a Man's Bad Math Helped Ruin Decades of English Soccer - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-one-mans-bad-math-helped-ruin-decades-of-english-soccer/ <comment><USER2> If you're going to interpret stats, you need a lot of them. Reep obviously could not gather everything required to make a sensible conclusion by himself.

For one thing, Swindon Town has been a middling team since forever. No particular innovation in strategy would be happening there at the time when Reep was watching them. So he was probably not sampling nearly widely enough to notice anything.

If you look at Wilson's book called Inverting the Pyramid, there's a great history of football strategy.

There's no particular thing to do that will win you the game. There's always been a tug-of-war between pressing, passing, sitting back, and pressuring. Ukrainian coaches IIRC started to do high pressure, where you try to annoy the opposition into making mistakes high up the pitch. The riposte to that is that opponents who are comfortable on the ball will just... not lose the ball so much. And you'll get tired running after it, and you'll lose. This sort of balance thing comes and goes. Witness Barcelona passing it dozens and dozens of times to win a huge trophy haul a few years ago. And then they ran into a combined 7-0 beating by Bayern. Look at Mourinho, he somehow won the CL with Inter, parking the bus infamously against possibly the greatest Barcelona team of all time.

There's a big issue with using stats for adversarial games. It may be fine -though non trivial- to use stats to judge players by (tackles, red zone shots, etc), but you don't know how the opposition will react to your strategy. It's even more non trivial to work out how the other team will reshape itself given what you do, which depends on what they do, which depends...

It will be interesting, though. Stats is seeping into soccer steadily. We'll see better analysis and innovation, for sure.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't really like the article, the problem is that time of possession is a decent proxy for better team, or actually a proxy for team A is better at retaining the ball than team B is at getting the ball. So their counter claim is roughly, be the better team. Thanks, we already knew that one.

Actually that ties into nicely with a general problem of the presentation of statistics, anything involving numbers is usually presented as incredible reliable, while actually it is just an additional argument. A statistic may be trivial, like the one above, it may be bullshit or it may be conclusive, but the use of numbers by itself is not some kind of magic that reveals a hidden truth. Statistics is just a powerful method to construct arguments.

<comment><USER4> > the problem is that time of possession is a decent proxy for better team

Decent, but by no means perfect. In Atletico's La Liga winning season of 2013-2014, they enjoyed exactly 50% possession. The following year they actually had 45%, despite finishing 3rd. Leicester City won the league with 46% possession.

The problem is not just the presentation of statistics, it's the assumption that if you do the same things title winning teams do, you will enjoy the same success. It may well have been that hoofing down the field worked for some teams (it did for Leicester), but that is no guarantee of success if you don't happen to have a fast center forward and a holding midfielder who runs like crazy. On the other hand, Spain won Euro 2012 without a proper center forward (Torres won the golden boot with only 3 goals, but don't let that fool you, Spain's goals were widely spread out and Torres scored one in the final long after the game was won) by playing possession football.

<comment><USER5> Going into a discussion related to statistics with a couple of anecdotes - tut.

Reep only seems to have followed one team - albeit playing against many others. If he'd got other like minded people to do the same for their teams (ideally all teams in all leagues!) as well then that would help to control one or two of the huge number of variables.

Then as the article alludes, if he'd looked at the sequences that lead to a score, rather than working back from a score to the sequence that lead to it, something really useful might have emerged.

One thing is certain however: whatever the English national (soccer) team decides is a good idea - it isn't. It's a bit embarrassing to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So that is why the English game was 'known for long balls'.

I wonder if Arsenal ( which used to play possession football some time back ) was successful in England on account of this.

Also, teams like Barcelona which play the game with long periods of possession and are extremely successful.

<comment><USER7> Arsenal still play possession football. They have not won anything for a while, to the point "playing like Arsenal" (i.e. hogging the ball without actually winning) has become a joke. Their early-'00s success was due as much to an exceptional generation of talents (Vieira, Bergkamp, Pires, Henry...) as to any other factor.

The same for Barcelona - Pep Guardiola, known for being the most successful manager to insist on "possession first" football, was not particularly successful at Bayern (he inherited a team winning _all_ domestic and international trophies in 2013, and only managed to win domestically for the following two years), and is somewhat struggling at Man City.

Famously, Leicester City won the Premier League last year playing the exact opposite of possession football. Someone like Jamie Vardy, capable of quick bursts of speed but with relatively poor skills on the ball, would be embarrassing to watch at Arsenal or Barcelona, but was absolutely lethal for the Foxes last year.

Possession football, like "moneyball" baseball, looks nice on paper but IMHO is a red herring. Technically gifted players will like to hold the ball, and gifted players naturally tend to win more _because they are better_ , so people link this and that and say you have to hold the ball to win. What you _really_ need to be successful is to play a style that suits your players. If you have Messi, Xavi and Iniesta, you play possession; if you have Vardy, Mahrez and Kante, you play counter-attack and long balls in space.

<comment><USER8> > They have not won anything for a while

Back to back FA Cups in 2013-14 and 2014-15? I think the rest of your analysis is pretty valid however.

<comment><USER7> Eh, I tend to forget the FA Cup and the FL Cup - after all, major clubs will happily sack managers who can "just" win one of those in a season (like Van Gaal last year)...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the previous few years Liverpool had been very successful by concentrating on possession to the point of working the ball up from the backs rather than hoofing the ball up with a big goalkeeper kick. They were a clear counter- example to this admonition that the way to win was hoof it and chase.

Sounds like "horses for courses" to me [the correct advice varies according to the characteristics of the situation].

<comment><USER10> Not really up on Football (soccer) but this reminds me of the puck possession vs dump and chase zone entry debate from hockey.

For a lot of reasons (up to and including global geo-politics) North American teams for a long, long time over-emphasized dump and chase The basic tactic is that you carry or pass the puck up until it will no longer cause an icing call then throw it into the other teams defensive corner and send your forwards in to generate a turn over.

Until reasonable statistical analysis this was thought of as the "right" way to play the game. Actually it was long AFTER the statistics showed it because politics was playing a role in what the statisticians wanted to find. They wanted to prove that the NA way of playing was "right" so they went and found stats to prove it. It wasn't until a combination of the NHL rising ascendant, the fall of the Soviet Union and I would argue the fact that Canada missed Gold in the '92, '94, and '98 Winter Olympics that forced Hockey Canada to look at their developmental programs and do some honest analysis.

Today though, much like in this article short quick passes and maintaining possession through zone entry is preferred and the statistics back that up. I'd imagine that if what you say Liverpool has been doing it true it's for similar reasons, maintaining possession allows you to generate more shots, shots are important if you want to score, ergo keeping possession is important for scoring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Err, ahh, English soccer... that's American football, right?

</comment><comment><USER12> However the mighty Wimbledon, (now AFC Wimbledon) play a passing game of football now, time moves on.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand, Leicester, last year, played to get the ball towards the opponent's goal ASAP, not for possession ([http://www.bodhiresourcing.com/rise-data-analytics- football-...](http://www.bodhiresourcing.com/rise-data-analytics-football- rise-rise-leicester-city/), [http://www.skysports.com/football/news/30385/10267972/leices...](http://www.skysports.com/football/news/30385/10267972/leicester- win-premier-league-how-they-did-it-differently))

That didn't end up badly for them.

<comment><USER14> If you think Leicester played anything like the Sheffield united, Wimbledon, PNE et al of old you need to check your history!

The main issue I have with Reep's analysis is he seems to ignore the defensive benefits of possession.

<comment><USER13> I not think that, but they did show that _" Not more than three passes"_ doesn't imply kick-and-rush. My comment was triggered by your statement _" time moves on"_.

So, the math still may be right.

For an extreme example, scoring without possession is as good as impossible. That could lead to a rule _" keep the ball"_

However, that doesn't imply one should optimize for possession alone, as the way to maximize possession is to play backwards when even pressed a tiny bit, scoring own goals if needed to keep possession.

Also, I don't see huge defensive benefits of possession if you want to win. In the end, it is about two teams both getting equal number of possessions (+/\- 1), so to score (which is needed to win), teams will want to maximize their chance of scoring on possession and to minimize that of their opponent.

Only if your chance of scoring is lower than that of your opponent or if you are ahead 'enough' (where 'enough' depends on time to play and speed of you opponent), you will want to minimize the number of opportunities both teams get, even if it means your probability of scoring on possession goes down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Leicester City adopted this guy's style and won the league though :D

</comment><comment><USER16> Was it a case of confusing correlation & causation?

<comment><USER17> Soft of, but it was more precisely the Bayesian fallacy.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure what the Bayesian fallacy is (I find several papers with the term in the title, but couldn't find a definition) but it seems like this could be the base-rate fallacy (most goals come after short sequences of possession, neglecting the base rate: most sequences of possession are short).

<comment><USER17> P(A|B) does not equal P(B|A). The Bayesian fallacy is inappropriately conflating the two. In this case, The commentator confused P(scoring | long possession) and P(long possession | scoring). It is very similar to the base rate fallacy to the extent that if someone commits the Bayesian fallacy they almost always also commit the base rate fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Damn it. I misread read the title. I was just having am argument about B.O. I guess that's why I read "breath" instead of "math." I read the article twice looking for how his breath changed things. So disappointing. Good article, though.

<comment><USER20> I did the same, odd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Niggle: The title should be "How _One_ Man's …", not "How _a_ Man's …". This reflects the actual title of the article, and avoids an ambiguous reading (was this bad math attributed to _men_, or a singular person?)</comment>


TribalContact - The hammer that breaks PRISM (Encrypted web based chat) - <AUTHOR> http://www.tribalcontact.com

<comment><USER2> Oh boy, Yet Another "Secure" Web-Based Encrypted Communication Application(TM)!

Initial thoughts after a quick look:

I see mention of code/libraries that are being used, but no link to the source code.

I don't normally bother pointing them out (such as here in the comments), but the numerous spelling and grammatical errors don't exactly instill confidence.

Liam -- what are your (or your "co-programmers") qualifications? Why should the "community" trust/have faith in your cryptographic and/or programming skills?

Ironically enough, "the hammer that breaks PRISM" apparently doesn't even use SSL/TLS (click link above to the web site then click on "App").

 _> Privacy - because it matters

> Anonymity - because you are worth it

> Security - because you need it_

I fail to see where TribalContact provides any of these.

 _sigh_

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, indeed, it is another encrypted web based communication app. I personally, am not aware of any others, thought I do not doubt that some might exist. There are a number of apps out there, but websites that offer mil-spec encryption? I have never seen any.

There are, in fact, no libraries being used, and while we do mention credit to those who developed code or algorithms, all code is in-line, and therefore viewable from the browser. (At present leaflet is included but, as soon as we have integrated the latest version, it will be in-lined)

In our opinion, it is this ability for a competent technical person to confirm the absence of back-doors, and it is this that offers protection against surveillance.

We do not use SSL as there is absolutely no point. We know that it is NOT secure against government snooping. As the encryption offered by TribalContact is double layer we feel that to use SSL is simply a waste. If we know it is broken, why bother using it?

I am sorry that you seem to have found a number of spelling mistakes, but I do wonder if maybe this is because this is written in British English rather than American English. Neither I nor MS Word have found any errors. If you can identify any errors I would be most appreciative if you could point them out, and I will correct them.

I think that I have been quite clear that I do not expect nor require trust from the community. The source code is viewable, and before trust can be established verification should be completed. Perhaps it sounds rude, but it is not for me to prove that I am trust worthy, that, after all, is a fools errand. Only by the community verifying that what I say is true can that trust be gained.

I still feel that the combination of perfect forward security, ephemeral keys, and double layer encryption offers the claimed privacy, anonymity and security.

One final point that I think has been overlooked, is that TribalContact is designed to be a simple, zero install, easy to use solution to the problem of wall-to-wall surveillance. Most other encryption apps are so hard to install, configure and use that people such as Glenn Greenwald are not able to reliably use them. TribalContact was designed from the ground-up to be usable by anyone, and as such offers significant utility above any other encryption application I have ever used.

I hope that these comments answer some of your questions.

I am very grateful for your feedback, and am always more than prepared to answer any questions. If you have anything else that you would like to discuss please feel free to contact me, or add a new comment on hacker news.

Liam Carton email@example.com</comment></comment>


A Father's Video Game About His Son's Terminal Cancer - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-video-game-about-terminal-cancer?intcid=mod-latest

<comment><USER2> Despite the tough subject matter, these are my favorite kinds of games.

Maybe it's because I played so many video games growing up, but now that I'm in my late twenties most of them don't really capture me anymore. I get bored of them quickly. I find the ones that I enjoy most are often shorter, but deliver a powerful narrative experience. Titles like Dear Esther, The Walking Dead, Proteus, and especially Gone Home are looked down upon by many to be just "walking simulators", but to me they're the best gaming currently has to offer. I played through GTAV for a few days and haven't thought about it since. But because of the focus on the narrative experience, games like these stay with you, like a good book or movie.

While this game will likely be tough to get through, I'll probably get way more out of it than a few hours in the latest cookie cutter RPG or FPS.

<comment><USER3> > looked down upon by many to be just "walking simulators"

I played through Dear Esther in a single session in VR. It was a magnificent walk.

<comment><USER4> I couldn't keep interested in Dear Esther, but _Korsakovia_ , by the same folks, is a tremendous experience. (Also may bring modern computers to their knees because of some bad technical choices, but having everything go choppy and weird when you're under terrifying stress is not a bad side effect.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes there are games that are awesome and important and I am glad that they exist… but that I don't think I ever want to play. Pretty sure this is one of them.

<comment><USER6> When I was 20 I would have loved games like this that share experiences and deep truths.

Now that I'm a bit older I just want games that help me escape those experiences and deep truths.

<comment><USER7> Got a chronic illness at 2012, my closest lady friend died this year after a long battle with schizophrenia, and I'm just 26... yeah, I'm sure many people have it worse but after a while you can barely deal with your own baggage to be willing to imagine getting any more.

So yeah, escapism is the best thing there is around, if just to avoid going mad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll try to pretend that I didn't tear up reading that story but it would be a lie.

</comment><comment><USER9> "That Dragon Cancer" if you're looking for more info.

[http://thatdragoncancer.com/](http://thatdragoncancer.com/) and the kickstarter [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/godatplay/that- dragon-c...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/godatplay/that-dragon- cancer)

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks really dumb. The gameplay's going to be crap, it's probably going to wildly overuse cutscenes, and the game's message isn't subtle at all.

It's supposed to be all literary and pretentious, but it's not going to be fun. I can't believe backers want to waste real money on this garbage.

<comment><USER4> The use of the word "game" to describe interactive media is an unfortunate one, largely because your reaction is understandable through the parsing of the word--though you must couple it with aggressive rejection of context, as you have in this case, to find strict parsing to be a good way to derive meaning.

Or, put another way: I don't think your distaste for what other people think of the potential of a piece of art oozes through quite sufficiently. Could you perhaps try to be a little bit more of a jerk about it, while doing even more to assume facts not in evidence?

Thanks in advance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some gameplay demo footage: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4ivCwjnQ6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4ivCwjnQ6I)

Here is a teaser trailer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHPc2zwVEn0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHPc2zwVEn0)

From the footage I saw, this game is like a novel in that you are getting inside of the head of someone else and experiencing life from their view point. A "Being John Malkovich" video game.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was able to play an early version of this at sheffield doc fest ([https://www.sheffdocfest.com/interactive/overview](https://www.sheffdocfest.com/interactive/overview)), and was really impressed. It is one of the better examples I've encountered of somebody using the mechanics and language of video games to tell a truly personal story.

Very worth encountering if you have the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here's the Polygon article about the game, which IMHO is far more detailed - [http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/16/8374481/that- drago...](http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/16/8374481/that-dragon- cancer)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's now truly possible to walk a mile in a someone's shoes.</comment>