Ask HN: How was this ad targeted to me? - <AUTHOR> Apropos of the current discussion about dropping Google advertising [1], I'd appreciate HN's thoughts on how a very particular product was targeted at me yesterday: a semi-obscure muscial instrument (which I won't name, my paranoia is already piqued).
Yesterday morning at home I Googled the instrument, the name of which I didn't actually know but Google came to the rescue. I browsed Google Shopping [2] but didn't purchase one.
Later I went into work where Facebook displayed an ad for the instrument in its "sponsored" section and an inline "suggested post" for a manufacturer.
My home and work computers and networks are completely different. I typically use incognito mode and "do not track" in Firefox or Chrome. I sign out of all social media and Gmail. Yesterday I was working in a large building with tens of people all using wifi used by hundreds of people across several buildings.
I assume no outright nefarious activity, such as an illicit pipe of potential customer IDs between Fb and Google.
The best I can theorise is that I had an open Fb window at home, and one of the instrument manufacturers' websites had an embedded Facebook like button or similar tracker, and they are running targeted ads on Fb. But is this direct-to-an-individual targetting even possible on Fb? Perhaps the obscurity of the instrument meant that I was very likely to see an ad, and very likely to notice it.
I typically close Fb when I'm not using it, so this doesn't immediately feel like what happened. I'll be doubly-sure to close and log-out Fb now.
I can't think of other ways that my Google activity could get to Fb. Browser fingerprinting, cellphone location etc would allow Fb to understand my location, but I can't see how they'd match this against Google activity.
I'd be very interested to read how this is, or could be, achieved.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14094083
[2] https://www.google.com/shopping <comment><USER2> Facebook doesn't need to be open in a tab for it to know it was you on that site, and you don't even need to be signed in. You and your computers are connected, even if you think you are careful.

If you have ever signed into FB from home, they know that machine / ip / whatever fingerprint is you. Even after you sign out, its still out. Even if you are in ingocnito mode, its still probably you. Then you sign in to FB at work, and now the same thing happens. They may not know the specific computer, but they know the network you are connected to IP wise.

This happens across many different ad networks, and they are all connected to sell ads targeting the people something wants. If you leave a potential purchase not bough, and sometimes even when you do buy it, ads are going to make it back to 'you'. They may not know 100% that it is you, but they can cast a net to try and find you. And for something like a missed sale, its worth the cost.

Note it may not be targeting you specifically. It may just be closer to: Someone in this VERY specific demographic looked for this instrument, oh hey here is someone else that meets that same demographic on this other ad network. Lets try them.

The amount of tracking on the internet nowadays is absolutely crazy. Visit practically any website, and all the major players are going to know about it and add it to their profile of you.

<comment><USER3> > If you have ever signed into FB from home, they know that machine / ip / > whatever fingerprint is you. Even after you sign out, its still out.

Even if you signed out, they probably still have a cookie tracking who you are, and when your browser fetches that Like button, it will still send that cookie to the Facebook server. It'd be interesting on a shared computer where 2 people (e.g. a brother and sister) log in to FB alternatively, but I guess they can still distinguish who is who (e.g. person visits gaming forum, person visits this product page, person visits page with pics of a female supermodel: presumably it's the brother visiting all 3 sites. It's a bit sexist but that's what the algorithm would guess.)

<comment><USER4> 2 people sharing same computer has amazing effects on those trackers. My YouTube recommendations used to be awesome to my interests till I was single, Now it's all polluted and mostly useless after I married. ;)

<comment><USER5> The strange thing is sometimes I learn things about my wife from the ads that are served. Creepy.

<comment><USER6> I know of a guy who found out his wife was seeking divorce weeks in advance because he started noticing divorce lawyer ads in his browsing! He eventually asked her if everything was ok and she came out with it. Crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can (or at least could) absolutely target individuals with Facebook ads. Check out this prank: [https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation- pranking...](https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my- roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/)

<comment><USER8> Fantastic read. Reminds me of: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/robin- sloan/julie-rubicon/985...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/robin-sloan/julie- rubicon/985697811525170)

<comment><USER9> That was awesome too. The comments are great as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's called re-targeting.

You can use javascript to put users into a segment and re-target that segement; it's really easy. If you use the biggest ad-exchange (AppNexus) you can be sure to reach just about anyone anywhere.

<comment><USER11> How is it OK to do this if the browser is sending DNT? Is it really voluntary on the part of the ad network and they can just choose to ignore it?

<comment><USER12> Yes, DNT is an effort by the industry to self-regulate. If too many companies ignore it, it's much more likely that they will be regulated "externally" (by Congress, FTC, FCC etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I used to work in this exact industry and wrote my employer's tracking code. You didn't clarify whether you clicked on a google shopping product and landed on a product page. That's all that is needed.

Many ecommerce sites use both google and facebook for their campaigns. So by you landing on the product page, a standard facebook event would be fired. The website or the advertiser doesn't really need to know who you are but facebook does know who you are once that event is fired. Facebook can then tie you to a campaign around that product for that same website (if they have an active campaign going).

</comment><comment><USER14> Logging out of Facebook doesn't mean they won't be able to track you. Your browser fingerprint is likely tracked. If you've logged into Facebook at home, and you've logged into a computer at work, Audience Network likely figures out that your residential IP is your home, and an aggregated commercial network is your work.

If you visited the manufacturer's site, you would have hit a re-targeting pixel for the network, that will track you around the internet to remind you. At work, on your phone, at school, and at home.

</comment><comment><USER15> The other answers here seem to cover most of everything, but one more possibility to add to the mix - prefetching. Just because you don't click on a link doesn't mean that you aren't already going there. Chrome (and other browsers) prefetch pages so that they will load faster when you click on them.

I haven't delved into this in a while, so I can't say I've tested anytime in the last 5 years. I did a quick search and found this page that talks about how to disable the functionality in chrome:

[https://www.technipages.com/google-chrome- prefetch](https://www.technipages.com/google-chrome-prefetch)

I'm always surprised that more people don't seem to know about this.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are so many ways:

\- you opened a web page with a facebook's like button and facebook analyzed your browse history. If you browse for something in google shopping you might want to buy it, so facebook added it to your interests and showed an ad later to you. (Probably this was the cause)

\- google and facebook knows your location because you have a google/facebook app in your mobile. It is easy to know where you work and where do you live. Even without GPS, as they can use the wifi public IP to know your location (among other things)

\- your browse makes a fingerprint unique to you, even if you are not logged into any platform or you don't have an account on them they know you are you. So they can collect data. If you later login into facebook/google they match the fingerprint with your user. They can also use several fingerprint, because you use several devices. I think this is called supercookies. There are companies that just do this.

\- you have two different devices with two different accounts, but you have the phone number of the other in your contact list and sometimes you have both devices with you. Facebook/google will suppose you both share same interests and show ads that match one of your devices to the other.

\- "do not track" is a suggestion, some people ignore it because they really want to track you.

\- google and facebook probably use other ad networks to sever ads, so facebook probably asked google (or another ad network) for an ad for you. You probably shared your phone number / email in both facebook and google.

\- if you want to be fancy, machine learning could also help to target ads for you, but I think the other ways are so easy to do and work so well that you don't need complex things to show ads, just track the user.

<comment><USER17> > you opened a web page with a facebook's like button and facebook analyzed > your browse history

How could facebook (or any website) access your browsing history? they know what link you access from their pages, but apart from that, can they get any info from the browser?

<comment><USER18> More like 80% of the web pages you opened included the Facebook Like button, so they have 80% of your browsing history right there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I spent the last weekend in another city X. I took with me my macbook but I didn't used it, so it was closed in sleep mode the whole time.

However, I did some searches over the weekend on my iPhone, Safari in private mode, not logged in.

Back home, opened the macbook, did some search with an incognito browser window. And Google told me: You are in another city X, based on your browser history (!).

What?! Privacy is hard nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER20> Here's the company behind that: [http://www.criteo.com/](http://www.criteo.com/)

Its a 3 billion French company whose sole job is to show ads for products abandoned in the cart or something you bought 6 months ago or something that their personalization algorithm suggests

<comment><USER21> Ironically, that's the only good tech employer in France :D

<comment><USER22> I wonder if the only action against them is sending them so much traffic their servers can't keep up.

I feel with the advent of internet of shit, this will start becoming more of commonplace

<comment><USER23> Client side re-targeting has two pieces to it: a "segment" code placed on the product page (a marker showing you have interest in this particular product) and a "burn" code placed on the conversion page (that removes the previous marker, so they can stop showing you ads for this product once you bought it).

One could add the "burn" code every time the "segment" code is detected. On some networks that may even result in an affiliate payout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Use Facebook only from their onion-service using dedicated (TorBrowser) browser. [https://facebookcorewwwi.onion](https://facebookcorewwwi.onion)

</comment><comment><USER25> The answer is cookies. Facebook sets multiple cookies on your browser that do not expire and are not deleted when you logout. By logging in at work and home, you are making it trivial for them to track you. They also set this cookie when you intract with a Facebook like, share, comment or use Facebook to log-in to a third-party site.

A few suggestions to help mitigate this:

\- Use a browser dedicated to all your social media browsing and another browser for everything else. Say Firefox for Facebook and Twitter, and Chrome for everything else. That will restrict what they can capture. \- Browser Facebook in your browser's incognito it private mode. \- Minimize third-party links you follow from your Facebook timeline. And don't shop and Facebook in the same browser! \- Don't interact with Facebook outside of their actual site. This includes likes and comments. \- Don't use Facebook as your log-in credential. \- Use an ad blocker! \- Have your browsers delete all cookies on log out. This is both your day-to-day and social media browsers. Facebook is not the only media company tracking you.

<comment><USER26> i assure you, that you can still be tracked without cookies. It's not as easy, but it's definitely possible to fingerprint a browser and track its requests to a server even if there aren't cookies. The level of confidence will be good enough for advertising.

<comment><USER25> Indeed. Which is why I like to use a separate browser for social media. Having said this I know it's a losing battle, but I see no reason to make it easy on the bastards.

(I've worked in ad tech in a previous life)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Adtech discussions like this always raise the hair on the back of my neck.

The only thing that makes me feel better is that "my data" is being handled by a piece of software somewhere for the EXPRESS purpose of pushing advertising to me.

I don't believe it will feel like a privacy violation for most people UNTIL we start seeing high-profile incidents where actual human beings get caught looking up and acting upon individuals and their data as people and not programmatically as GUID's with bunch of metadata.

It makes me wonder if entities are buying their way into these adtech data streams for purposes OTHER than market research or directed advertising ?

</comment><comment><USER28> Did you leave your email? If so, this is plausible flow:

1\. You visit website xyz.com

2\. You signed up at xyz.com and you dropped during checkout funnel

3\. You're email address is being added a FaceBook retargeting campaign and Adwords campaign

</comment><comment><USER29> This should answer your question -- straight from the horses's mouth! [https://www.facebook.com/help/206635839404055](https://www.facebook.com/help/206635839404055)

Edit: Using something like [https://www.eff.org/privacybadger](https://www.eff.org/privacybadger) helps avoid this kind of tracking while not being too painful to use visiting web- sites.

</comment><comment><USER30> Rather than speculating, you can find out why you're seeing a particular ad on fb. There's a drop down on each ad which includes a menu item which explains the targeting method used: [https://www.google.com/amp/www.business2community.com/facebo...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.business2community.com/facebook/seeing- ads-facebook-01564734/amp)

<comment><USER31> Yes, because when speculating about how much Facebook knows about me, the most likely source of truth is Facebook itself!

That said, thanks for pointing out this functionality. While I might be suspicious of the degree of truth it offers, it's at least something (honestly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I do everything you do, but recently I have added one more habit thanks to Opera's beautifully easy VPN: I google search on Opera using their VPN.

</comment><comment> ar-jan Here's an interesting read [0] about making inferences about such questions. Story of someone who deduces audio fingerprinting must have been responsible for a particular promoted tweet (before audio fingerprinting was known to be used).

0: [https://slack-files.com/T0317T6QB-F04FJ2YAC-88e35e6787](https://slack- files.com/T0317T6QB-F04FJ2YAC-88e35e6787)

</comment><comment><USER33> > But is this direct-to-an-individual targetting even possible on Fb?

Why not? If the FB like-button sends the cookie for your FB session, then it can make the connection between your account and the product.

Besides, it is also possible that you talked with a friend about the product, and this friend searched for the product in e.g. Facebook, and by being friends with this person on Facebook, they now show the ad to you as well.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is just FB tracking you everywhere and recognising your account even though you are logged out, from cookies (possibly local storage, IP address, other browser fingerprinting methods).

This just happened to me: I visited booking.com earlier today, then FB showed me a FB ad with the same hotels I had looked at.

</comment><comment> nommm-nommm This is pretty much the reason I block ads. If they weren't so intrusive and stalky I wouldn't mind them too much.

</comment><comment><USER35> Similar things happening to me in Youtube. I got suggestions about similar things I watch at work which I used totally different gmail account from my Android TV! So technically these two are not connected. Some times I use my work gmail account at my laptop at home so I assume Google is aggregating data based on IP address.

</comment><comment><USER36> Here is an interesting article about this topic: [https://cliqz.com/en/magazine/how-facebook-knows-exactly- wha...](https://cliqz.com/en/magazine/how-facebook-knows-exactly-what-turns- you-on)

</comment><comment><USER37> Former VP-Eng at a product-ads ad-tech company here...

You can think of this as a two step process. First, connecting your Facebook UID to structured data about a specific product in a product catalog. Second, connecting your FB UID to multiple devices/browsers without cookies.

I think the second part (cross-device matching) has been explained well by other commenters: tere are multiple techniques involving IPs, hardware footprints, browser footprints, browsing habits, etc.

I want to clarify a few things about how the first part most likely occurred. There's been a lot of emphasis in discussion on the FB "Like" button. It's true that this is a possible way for FB to observe you have visited a specific webpage. However, it's more likely that there was a Facebook "pixel" on a retailer's website (some commenters have been referring to this as "javascript" or "retargeting"). Most e-commerce sellers use these today. They're basically a FB web endpoint that the retailer can pass structured metadata to that lets the retailer communicate to FB that an event has occurred on their website. FB allows retailers to send all kinds of metadata about all sorts of events - page loads, add to carts, checkouts, purchases, in-app events, and custom events. The retailer can also send very detailed info about the content being interacted with on a webpage, down to sub-SKU granularity (e.g. not just a particular shoe, but a specific color/size/variant of that shoe).

Historically, the FB web endpoint would return a 1x1 transparent image so that a retailer could embed it on their website's HTML and a customer's browser is "tricked" into loading the image from a third-party domain. Thus the name "pixel". This is still frequently done, but nowadays the endpoint may just be a REST endpoint and/or may be called via AJAX (or via an SDK within a mobile app).

Facebook also allows retailers to upload their Product Catalogs to Facebook. These are basically a CSV of structured metadata about every product the retailer has for sale. Then, when the retailer sends a pixel event to say SKU 12345 has been interacted with by a user, Facebook can reference that SKU in the retailer's Product Catalog to learn all kinds of info about it.

A really interesting exercise is to install the FB Pixel Helper extension for Chrome (I'm sure there are equivalents for other browsers). It will show you all FB pixels loaded on a given page and what metadata was passed along. Keep an eye on it as you browse the web, especially the next time you browse an e-commerce website. Facebook basically sees everything that happens. They may as well be ingesting everyone's Apache/Nginx logs. :-P

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/facebook-pixel- hel...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/facebook-pixel- helper/fdgfkebogiimcoedlicjlajpkdmockpc) (Note: I'm not affiliated with this extension in any way)

</comment><comment><USER38> Lol! Free isn't free. Your desires are a commodity up for sale. The how doesn't matter. When you discover and block one way, another is created. This happened because you use Google and Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER39> [https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing- st...](https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing-strategies)

</comment><comment><USER40> uBlock, uMatrix & host based blocklists are the price of entry these days. [https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/tree/master/corporatio...](https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/tree/master/corporations) Block at your router if you can, then any mobile devices on your network enjoy ad/tracker blocking too.

</comment><comment><USER41> assume every time you hit a googlebook server they assign a confidence score related to potential identity or demographic and rank.

"what are the odds this is a woman? a doctor? a person living in Louisville? Is this Jane Doe?"

each of the answers to those questions get a confidence score and a rank. then you're shown ads based on whichever verticals you rank the highest.

I think it just means their statistical approximations are getting good.

theories idk

</comment><comment><USER42> > a semi-obscure muscial instrument (which I won't name, my paranoia is > already piqued).

It was a Theremin, wasn't it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> _" do not track" in Firefox or Chrome._

Completely ignored pretty much everywhere...

</comment><comment><USER44> > I assume no outright nefarious activity, such as an illicit pipe of > potential customer IDs between Fb and Google.

Where do Facebook or Google claim not to share advertising data with their partners?</comment>


Java was released 25 years ago - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language) <comment><USER2> I'm always surprised that Java is actually _younger_ than Python, and is as old as Ruby.

Hell even JavaScript is just 9 months younger than Java (both born in 1995).</comment>


Settle up: voicemails show P2P porn law firms in action - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/settle-up-voicemails-show-p2p-porn-law-firms-in-action.ars

<comment><USER2> I understand the disdain some people may have with the lawyer's tactics.

What most people don't understand, however, is how badly the adult industry is hurting right now.

In the late 90's, early 00's, the adult industry absolutely exploded thanks to the internet. Millionaires were being made every day. Really the only thing you had to do was put up a site with a few images and videos, pay someone to link to you, and you could see the money start rolling in.

Then, the affiliate model came into play, and TGPs were created (thumb gallery posts). Some owners complained that these would hurt sales because affiliates were giving away content for free. It didn't hurt - in fact, sales grew much stronger.

MGPs followed (movie gallery posts), where images were replaced with short video clips. Sales remained strong. The industry was quick to see how these tools benefited them.

What the industry did not see coming, however, were the tube sites. How can you have a profitable business selling adult videos and images online when some website is letting you stream full-length videos for free? Why would you pay for adult content? Thus, adult companies have been dropping like flies. Not only providers, but also payment processors. Millions have been lost or stolen.

I know, I know, "Boohoo those poor porn people aren't getting their money"... but what if you woke up tomorrow and realized that someone was giving away YOUR software for free (assuming you've created software that is not open sourced)? All of a sudden your income gets sliced and diced.

Nowadays, the only adult companies making a good amount of money are those that offer a more "personal" experience - live cam shows, girls/boys who blog with their members and do requests. Things you can't pirate: the human experience.

Oh, and gay sites. Gay always sells.

Porn companies can't really go after these illegal porn tube sites. Many are based in China, and the owners are hidden behind layers of privacy sheets. The know what they're doing is hurting thousands of people, but their greed for personal profits are first in their minds.

While I would not like receiving robocalls from lawyers threatening to sue me if I don't settle, I can see how some of these guys really have no choice but to turn to litigation to recoup some of their lost income.

<comment><USER3> People _are_ giving away software. It's called piracy. Millions of dollars worth of software is being acquired for free.

And yet Microsoft etc. don't feel the need to bully individual users into legal settlements.

<comment><USER2> Ah, but at least Microsoft has the option of requiring keys to use their products.

To watch a full-length video all you have to do is go to www.blahblahtube.com and click a thumbnail.

Also, Microsoft is making quite a bit of money off of corporate users... porn sites don't really have a place in a Fortune 500 board room.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has been going on for awhile. TorrentFreak reported on the law firm Davenport Lyons doing the same in 2008[0] and later ACS:Law[1].

[0] [http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-lawyers-start- protecting...](http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-lawyers-start-protecting- gay-gestapo-porn-081118/) [1] google "site:torrentfreak.com acs:law"

</comment><comment><USER5> Wonder if they bother pushing forward with an individual case against those that don't settle or just quietly stop contacting them. Would probably end up losing them money to with years of legal costs against someone who probably doesn't have all that much even if they win a massive amount.

Sure they have to push on with some high profile cases to prove that they actually would, but that has already been done. Interestingly if no one paid the settlement their model would fail pretty quickly.</comment>


Phone data showing where those Florida spring breakers traveled afterwards - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/MikaelThalen/status/1243281598037913600 <comment><USER2> The first 25s is a view of all users being spied on. At 25s they zoom into Miami location Spring Break (Mar 3-16) time and and then zoom out to show other locations those phones were seen.

People probably shouldn't have been traveling then, but a lot of shutdowns in US hasn't been announced yet. I wonder what the data looked like for the 2 weeks after as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is the data source used for this and who owns it?

</comment><comment><USER4> I assume this location data is harvested by users who allow their located to be tracked by various apps (e.g. facebook, random apps).</comment>


Cluster Computing with Ansible and the Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/life/16/2/cluster-computing-with-ansible-and-raspberry-pi <comment><USER2> this is helpful, thank you.</comment>


The programming talent myth - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/641779/ <comment><USER2> I see a lot of articles claiming that programming talent is a myth. Yet none cite a source or back up this claim.

The closest they get is arguing by consequence against it - if it were true, people might be discouraged. That's a logical fallacy since some things can be both true and discouraging.

This article is even worse. It drops this paragraph in: _The tech industry is rife with sexism, racism, homophobia, and discrimination...This is the "10x programmer" who is so good at his job that people have to work with him even though his behavior is toxic._

Arguing by juxtuposition, it's suggested that a belief in talent will somehow harm diversity. But that makes no sense - if talent is so important that we are forced to work with "toxic" 10x programmers, why aren't we also forced to work with black female 10x programmers no matter how much we might dislike them?

<comment><USER3> Except 10x programmers, if they exist don't just emerge fully formed into the world, they engage with some community somewhere to learn part of their skills. That community might be an online forum, a company, a tech meetup, university course etc.

If a hypothetical black female potential 10x programmer finds the first community is unwelcoming then she is less likely to stick around and thus become a 10x programmer.

There are plenty of previous articles on here from individuals who are "tech minorities" about the environment that we unconsciously create which isn't that welcoming to them. From assumptions about where and how we want to socialise, to dress codes, working hours, employee benefits etc.

<comment><USER2> Lets distinguish two separate concepts:

Unwelcoming: the community dislikes a person and behaves badly towards them. As an example, a recruiter told me not to bother with Warby Parker or Etsy since I'm not a hipster and they'll just reject me. (No idea if this is true, might just be #shitrecruiterssay.)

Not my thing: a person dislikes the community, it's norms and culture, and avoids it. E.g., I don't like banking culture.

You seem to be suggesting that "tech minorities" feel that tech culture is "not my thing" \- we socialize and dress in a manner they dislike, work hours incompatible with their preferred lifestyle, and don't give out the right employee benefit package. As a result, "tech minorities" don't put in the effort and don't build the relationships that would help them become 10x programmers. I get the impression you consider this a problem, but it's unclear to me why that is.

How you get from this to the idea that 10x programmers or programming talent are a myth is not something I could figure out from your post.

<comment><USER4> I think what he's suggesting is that minorities find our community unwelcoming, and by unwelcoming they're probably referring to the racism and sexism that's rampant in the tech community. Unlike you, they're not worried about being turned away from a job for not being a hipster, they're worried about being turned away from a job for being black or a woman. Or, worse, they're worried about the abuse and disrespect they will undoubtedly get while working in tech.

<comment><USER2> Cmdkeen explicitly refers to dress codes, benefits packages and socialization patterns, not abuse, disrespect and racism.

People constantly talk about racism and sexism being "rampant", but evidence of this would be helpful. Citing statistical disparities is insufficient since, as cmdkeen notes, this could also be caused by "tech minorities" disliking the culture of tech rather than techies disliking them.

<comment><USER5> In some (very loose) sense, those two things are the same thing. It's not that these people say to themselves "man, I hate how I can't wear X shirt to work, better quit" but rather "the culture here (dress code, socialization patterns, etc) seems to default to white, and people view me as an outsider." I think that that's probably much more common than explicit disrespect.

<comment><USER2> They aren't the same thing. One is something that is done to you, the other is something you choose to do to yourself (or not, if you find it more useful).

My company is about 95% one race (not mine) and there is precisely 2 people here of my race (since last week) and 4 of my nationality. I simply choose not to care, and define my work tribe as "folks who care about uptime and good stats" rather than "folks who are genetically similar".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First, I doubt that programming skill exactly follows a bell curve. Most people can't begin to program; conversely, most people can begin to run. There's a barrier to entry in programming that gives the distribution much positive skew.

Second, the criticised idea that "everyone is either an amazing programmer or a worthless use of a seat" is probably true in capitalism. Either you have skill enough for an organisation to employ you profitably, or you don't.

That difference might be a hairline's breadth. But it acts as a significant tipping point. It doesn't necessarily indicate anything about the true distribution of programming skill. It's just a cut-off point.

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."

<comment><USER7> Once upon a time, I inherited some code from a colleague who left for another gig. This particular fellow was well seasoned, had been in the industry for 20 years. The purpose of this particular code was something similar to parsing json (not really, but close). This particular json always came from the same source and almost always had the same format. My prdecessor, not having an understanding of recursive descent parsing, wrote the parsing impl by counting parentheses at the ends of lines, which worked for the fixed input we typically recieved.

As time went on, we started to receive the same input from other sources, who of course had different layouts for the their json. Of course the code broke horribly. Myself being well practiced in recursive descent parsing, rewrote his parsing code in a few days, the original had taken him many months. I was perceived to be a miracle worker, because my implementation fixed the problems, and worked mostly error free from then on.

Was my predecessor a mediocre developer? Not at all, he was actually quiet accomplished in his area of interest, he simply wasn't proficient with this one area (parsing).

I'd like to see these discussions of 'rock stars' and '10x' evolve to recognize that perceived talent is really just experience in certain areas, wether that experience comes from personal interest, or job function is immaterial.

<comment><USER8> I understand the point you are making, but would like to add one more discussion point (which detracts a bit from your point but I think is still valid).

Sometimes a developer implements the bare necessary required solution to the problem, i.e. not an over engineered expensive solution.

We'll then state that his solution was poorly engineered and he wasn't a good developer, but it's not fair to look at his solution in hindsight and judge it by the amount of scope creep it could handle(which it obviously had to handle in hindsight).

Your succesor might write here in some time that your solution, while being appropriate for json, didn't use x technique and so couldn't handle XML input, and had you only known about x...

(This isn't critique of your comment, which I found insightful and positive, just one more factor to consider)

<comment><USER9> > (This isn't critique of your comment, which I found insightful and positive, > just one more factor to consider)

It /is/ actually a critique. It isn't negative, but it is a critique.

<comment><USER8> Correct, but I do agree with the point the OP made as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The tech industry is rife with sexism, racism, homophobia, and > discrimination.

Talking about myth that needs to die. The tech industry is not rife with the aforementioned issues, they might exists, but not any more than other industries.

<comment><USER11> That's the sort of statement that needs evidence to show it's true. Anecdotally, from what I see based on 20 years experience working in software, it's a very, very discriminatory industry. People who are from an ethnic minority, women, and gay people find it much harder to find a job. Managers (particularly non-technical managers) assume that those people won't be as good or that they won't fit in with the rest of the team or the company culture. Startups are much better than established companies but it's still a problem.

<comment><USER12> How is this any different than all industries? Why should I believe this discrimination is worse in my field?

<comment><USER13> Why does it need to be worse to deserve attention? To paraphrase Office Space, do we really want to do the bare minimum?

<comment><USER14> It doesn't, but a lot of people try very hard to imply that it's worse in the technology industry. If this is not the case, then this sort of rhetoric is just adding noise that distracts attention away from just fixing the issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was just posted a few weeks ago, refer to discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9486391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9486391)

<comment><USER16> True. Its interesting to observe the results of the discussion, the conclusion and relevant tangents, not just have the initial (emotional?) discussion.

The tangent of the theoretical bell curve applied to employers is interesting. Most job positions are mediocre, which explains why things work fine when an average dude gets an average job, despite weird demands for rock stars.

There were also interesting related dating analogies, if there actually were a 1M shortage of (insert your preference) then when everyone's personal ads demand only 10/10 supermodel rock stars need reply, they better get used to being very lonely or start rephrasing their personal ads. "Looking for rock star girlfriend named Taylor Swift, only she need apply" yeah good luck with that, better hope there's some good star trek reruns this friday night cause you aren't going out.

Another tangent was strange selection criteria have strange results where you end up with people having a very high opinion of themselves and being very good at selling themselves, but not being selected for actual real world talent. The author almost but not quite makes the point that short term flashiness in an interview has little correlation, perhaps none at all, with likelihood of successful long term execution. Or you end up with people suffering from feelings of inadequacy and impostor syndrome, what a lovely workplace (sarcasm)

A final interesting discussion tangent was there is no shortage or even theoretical shortage, whenever anyone in management says there's a shortage of a million workers, they always truncate that statement before "at our desired wage of $7.25/hr" or "who are willing to work for lunatics who can't lead starving dogs to raw meat in an open office next to the foozball table" or "willing to take an immense standard of living hit". There are, of course, plenty of fish out there, just not enough desperate or spineless ones. Gimmie an office with a door so I can concentrate, and $350K to handle the staggering cost of living hit, and a "rock star" boss (LOL), and I'm there. Oh wait you're offering less than I get here to work in an insane call center-like environment in one of the worlds most expensive neighborhoods at a rudderless company, LOL enjoy your "shortage", although everyone else is fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This keeps coming up on HN, which leads me to think a lot of people don't trust the 10x language, and/or they feel inadequate in some way and want to feel better about themselves.

In my experience, there are 10x programmers (just like there are 10x musicians and 10x doctors and 10x pretty much everything). Of course, a 10x functional developer isn't inherently a 10x OOP developer, just like a 10x trumpeter isn't inherently a 10x drummer.

I don't think we need to kill the 10x developer myth, but that _all_ we need are 10x developers.

I think a much more interesting discussion would be what a really good 1x developer would look like. I.e., what is a good baseline? How do we nurture more people to reach for competency? And in growing the overall talent pool, identify the 5x, 10x, or even 100x developers.

<comment><USER18> I just take issue with the nomenclature. It fits in to a general narrative that I dislike in our industry. Of course there is a long tail in terms of productivity, that's just how life is. But turning that into a buzzword does a great disservice.

You don't see companies in other industries pretending that their product is a special snowflake and demanding rockstar 10x whatevers. No, they manage to be more mature about the whole process.

<comment><USER19> IB, Management Consultancy and Law certainly have that aspect - even if you are realy paying $2000 a day for a wet behind the ears MBA with no experience.

If your a rich person with legal trouble you want a rockstar lawyer like Cherie Blair as your Barrister. Just Like the NI journalists who got off from bribing cops - they had the most expensive lawyers money can buy

<comment><USER18> I didn't say it didn't exist. I was saying that the verbiage is different.

IOw I have no problem with accepting that not all people are created equal, I just find the way that notion is handled in our industry to be childish

<comment><USER19> How is it handled differently in tech vs say big FTSE 100 companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As someone that has been involved in hiring processes in a South American country. I can say that the "myth" does hold truth.

For each position I tend to filter 100 people just to have a couple of real candidates. The real candidates weren't spectacular but they could get the job done in a reasonable time frame.

Once in a while there were a person who can get the job done with less supervision, better quality and faster. Usually that person could build systems within the software. Something like :

[http://xkcd.com/974/](http://xkcd.com/974/)

That person is the one that gives some gas to the "myth". A good developer that is probably at the %90 percentile.

The problem with people in denial is that they have an strong bias when (s)he compares with their coworkers (who probably are just smart or smarter). Forgetting that for each coworker there were a lot of developers that applied and couldn't solve a fizzbuzz.

If the myth weren't truth I don't think there would be so many people failing the fizzbuzz test: [http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers- program/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/)

You could argue that those people are not developers but the truth is, they are often graduated from college and somehow manage to get hired in some place.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think the biggest driver of the "10x programmer" concept, the thing that validates it, is the related concept of the "negative net productivity programmer."

Some programmers, in some environments, produce less than they cost to supervise and for others to fix their mistakes.

Some programmers, in some environments, look productive because they do the 20% of the work that gets you 80% of the way there. They start a whole lot of projects which almost work, then it takes a really good programmer a lot of time to repair the relationship with the customer.

At this point in time, however, I see the productivity of the organization as the real issue. Even a 10x or 100x programmer is only going to be that way if they are in a zero-bullshit environment. It takes one bad co-worker or bad boss to turn somebody like that to an 0.1x programmer. A lot of it is choosing your environment.

<comment><USER22> It sounds like you're suggesting that the person who gets the project 80% done and needs a "closer" to help finish it is a bad thing. Isn't this a perfect example of good teamwork?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As much as I'm pro-diversity, pro-inclusion and whatnot, I don't want to be associated with people who self-labeled themselves as "mediocre programmers", even if that group only includes Mr Kaplan-Moss. I want to aim to be as good as the best people in the industry. I think every profession needs its heroes to motivate everyone to move forward.

Will I be more insecure and anxious because of that? Even if I will, it's none of Mr Kaplan-Moss' business. I don't need him to be protected from the real world where people have different level of skills; sometimes higher than mine, sometimes lower.

<comment><USER24> "Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre [programmers]. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance?"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Hruska#Mediocrity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Hruska#Mediocrity)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are we doing this again? The whole thing is a straw man argument which deliberately conflates _having_ talent with _acknowledging_ talent.

It does so with such patently absurd examples (people who's totally obvious programming talent is not recognized for some insane, usually just sexist, reason), that one assumes the author already knows he's making this shit up.

Added to the mix is the red herring about being a "mediocre programmer". Being a mediocre musician still requires talent, mediocrity doesn't mean shit when asking the question if something requires talent. I personally have a talent for drawing an painting, but I'm a shit artist because I have no artistic creativity and I haven't made the effort to hone my skills.

Although I seriously doubt it, there may be a good argument to be made that programming does not require talent. But this isn't is, this is just political garbage with no merit whatsoever.

<comment><USER26> I wish people would stop insisting that there is such a thing as talent.

People who try hard at something and put a lot of time in to doing and learning about that thing, will improve.

Some people are a lot more interested / motivated and so will try harder, spend more time and will be better than others. This should not be mistaken for some innate "talent".

<comment><USER27> It's because there is an enormous body of evidence that talent exists. It exists in the form of different levels of cognitive processing, in different levels of hand eye coordination, in, you get the idea. We know this exists. We can voluntarily affect cognitive processing with cocaine or oxygen deprivation, and involuntarily affect it with things like strokes or head damage (some head damage leads to mastery of skills like music, though most usually it is damaging). Any number of tests show that people learn at different rates, rates predicted by cognitive abilities. I've excelled at things I didn't much care about or practice, and lagged on stuff that I put my heart and soul into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _It 's not a talent .... it's just skills to be learned_

This to me is a bit of a contradiction. "Talent" to me is what says if you will take a long time to aquire a skill or not. Almost anyone can reach a good level of skill of something. Not all can be pro athletes without a certain genetic talent, and I believe the same would hold for, say, being a mathematician. But not everyone has to be a pro athelete, nor a top .1% programmer (or anything else).

> _This belief that programming ability fits into a bi-modal distribution_

Who believes that? Is it really a widespread belief? I could see why you would think it was a bell curve or a power law of some kind. But bimodal? why?

> _Things like design, communication, writing, and debugging are needed._

Yes, those are the things I like to call programming.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm an example how this myth can destroy you. I was programming for 6 years in normal projects and I thought I was not talented. I left job, came to research degree. Now I realized I'm terrible at maths and advanced algorithm techniques. I think about going back but since it has been 3 months I haven't worked in a company, I feel I am a very bad programmer and no one will hire me. I'm depressed and paralyzed. All I do all day is look into HN and read articles, think how all these people are talented and I'm so dumb.

<comment><USER30> There is more worth in a dumb but hard-working person, than in a smart and lazy one. Too many people strive to be the smartest around but few try to work hard and consistently.

I can't be a judge of how smart you are, but being hard-working is a choice you can make. Blocking HN is a good start.

<comment><USER31> > I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, > and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever > and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid > and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine > duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest > leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the > composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who > is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility > because he will always cause only mischief.

\- Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord

<comment><USER30> The same quote is often attributed to Napoleon and probably suits the army well. There is also a world of a difference between enthusiastic and hard- working. I'd say being energetic falls into the same bucket as being smart (lets call it 10x things), whereas working steadily or being careful and methodological into the other, of things useful for building larger structures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The worry that we're running out of programmers is rather overblown and proposed solutions are mostly counterproductive. We're not living in a planned economy - salaries and free movement of people will not allow there to be a gap for long. This is one of the greatest strengths of capitalism and if that sounds tired and obvious it's only because it is but that doesn't make it less true.

<comment><USER33> We certainly haven't run out of programmers.

It does seem like we've run low on companies willing to invest the time and money in their employees in a way that would create the "10x programmers" that they all want, as opposed to horse-trading the relative few that already exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Nothing I dislike more than the ads looking for a "rockstar programmer". I don't know if this is representative of where I live, but we use a simple assessment to assess candidates (create a DB and tables, submit a form, put things in the database), and the number of people who can't do that in a reasonable timeframe is like 14/15\. And even then, I've seen people hired who couldn't debug (this usually hints lack of experience as opposed to inability to code), and we had one candidate who did well on the assessment but whose personality was too confrontational. This assessment was similar to the one that was used in my last job, where results were somewhat better (1/8 people did well on the assessment, though that one didn't touch the database).

So in my extremely narrow experience, I haven't seen a 'talented' programmer, and I doubt there really is such a thing

<comment><USER19> Was this for entry level first jobers? I remember some one else (in the uk) saying that doing a basic join of two tables was not a given even for experienced developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The actual talk is available. I don't know why we should discuss an article that basically explains the talk instead of watching and discussing the talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE)

</comment><comment><USER36> > Kaplan-Moss then asked what a 10x programmer looked like and put up a series > of pictures of "Mark Zuckerberg". > The first was actually the actor who > played Zuckerberg in The Social Network movie, while the second was the > > >Saturday Night Live cast member who satirized the actor in the movie. The > third actually was Zuckerberg. All three > were young white men, which is > the archetype of a "real programmer", he said. > > When we see someone who > does not look like one of those three men, we assume they are not a real > programmer, he > said.

So the fact that a businessman, and two actors portraying _that same businessman_ , are all white males means that programming culture has to apologize for the impression of its white-male-ness?

</comment><comment><USER37> This article is submitted over and over again, and discussed over and over again, making the same points over and over again.

It's really annoying.

<comment><USER38> Some issues are just 10x others, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I liked the article, but I may be coloring it with my personal biases: while I have good software engineering skills and have had a wonderful career, I have never considered myself to be a really great programmer. I just try to work with people who are better developers than I am and I really enjoy my work.

The author has a good open source track record and is the head of security at Heroku. I think he was also talking about other skills for success in the tech industry besides just programming.

Obviously there is a vast difference in skill levels between developers, and some people should probably not work in the field, but good attitudes towards work and continual learning go a long way to success.</comment>


Edgertronic - The first affordable high speed video camera - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1521768569/edgertronictm-the-first-affordable-high-speed-vide <comment><USER2> The edgertronic camera was designed to fill a huge hole in the high speed video camera market.

Currently, at one end of the market are consumer cameras where high speed is basically an afterthought (there's only so much you can do with a rolling shutter). At the other end are the ultra high end cameras used for big buck productions that cost $250K and up.

The edgertronic has a global shutter and all the other specialized design features that make it a straight up high speed video camera.

We could have come out with a camera that's faster/higher resolution but it would cost more. Just like with cars: "Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?" This camera strikes a nice balance between price and performance.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1521768569/edgertronict...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1521768569/edgertronictm- the-first-affordable-high-speed-vide)

Mike

<comment><USER3> Can you guys tell us more hardware specs like the processor/fpga (I would assume fpga?), sensor (pixel count, pixel pitch), ram size and speed, etc?

Wondering if it would be possible to cool the sensor to lower the noise floor and thus require less light. Will you guys also allow programming of the fpga for image processing and other uses?

Appreciate it!

Edit: Also, why 100Mbps Ethernet?? Almost all networks are GigE and with the frame rate you guys are talking about it could use the faster speed!

<comment><USER4>
      Also, why 100Mbps Ethernet??

1.) It records to SD card. Ethernet is just used for live preview, not production footage.

2.) The bottleneck is the internal buffer. (and H.264 encoding) Gigabit ethernet wouldn't be fast enough to stream uncompressed high-speed video. Upgrading to either 10 gigabit ethernet (expensive!) or realtime 1000FPS H.264 encoding (really expensive!) would break the $5,000 budget.

      cool the sensor to lower the noise floor and thus
      require less light

Difficult...

A high speed camera obviously has to have very short exposure times in order to work at all. (Can't get faster than 2FPS with a 1/2s exposure time)

The general rule of thumb is that you can trade off one "stop" in either direction-- 1/100, f/4, ISO200 is the same as 1/50 f/5.6 ISO200 is the same as 1/100, f/5.6, ISO400.

My guess is that even with heroic cooling (liquid nitrogen) you'd only get from the usual wildly excessive lighting needed for high-speed cameras, down to merely "really bright." You'd never get to a point where you can light a scene with just indoor lighting.

<comment><USER2> sbierwagon,

Thanks for the excellent response to reportingjr. You beat me to it.

I spent a lot of time making the edgertronic a balanced design. All the parts work well together. On the computers we've tested with, the speed of the web browser and cpu/graphics processor is the bottleneck, not the ethernet.

I did look at GigE but it would have increased cost, size, and power without adding any real benefit.

With this type of sensor, cooling won't measurably improve noise.

We'll design other cameras in the future, but we had to start somewhere, and this is it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> adam-a Curious if this will find support with the media industry. The first thing that jumps out is that it doesn't use the standard TV and film resolutions 1080/720/480\. From talking to film makers I know about digital photography I think they would find that list of resolutions quite alienating and possibly assume it wasn't suitable for their needs.

The quality of the images and the price look very good however.

[edit] I see it does have 720 and 480, but not the important 1080, which would make it "HD". Having had a brief look at some of the competitors though, most of them seem to operate on weird resolutions like 1024x1024[0], so I guess it must be expected from a slo-mo camera.

[0] [http://www.photron.com/?cmd=comparison](http://www.photron.com/?cmd=comparison)

<comment><USER5> It does do 1280×720 which is 720p, most people would call that HD.

True its not 1080P but at 700 frames/s at 720p you are going to get incredible pictures.

<comment><USER6> Minor note, but the p (or i) is not important here, so it would just be HD720 or HD1080. The p/i denotes a method of displaying the image, either through interlacing[0] or progressive scan[1].

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlaced_video](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlaced_video) [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_scan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_scan)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Backed. I've used a few different high speed video cameras for walking robot research, and this seems like exactly what I want.

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome. There's been a lot of neat optics work in the last few years driving costs down. I can't wait for every camera to be able to do this and this: [https://www.lytro.com/](https://www.lytro.com/)

<comment><USER9> I also have hopes for [http://www.muoptics.com/](http://www.muoptics.com/) too!

<comment><USER10> With respect to Mu, check out this EEVBlog thread: [http://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded- projects/m-thermal...](http://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded- projects/m-thermal-imager-real-or-fake/) .

As a disclosure I backed just for the fun of it and haven't asked for a refund yet but with each new "update" their "CEO" releases I grow increasingly skeptical that Mu Optics are ever releasing a real product. Not only did their pricing seem too good to be true to begin with but their updates are needlessly vague even with IP concerns in mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really hope they get funded, but for a hobbyist the camera is still pretty expensive. I suspect there are many "weekend" GoPro users who would love to have a supplemental camera that shoots at 240 or 480 fps instead of of the GoPro Hero3's max of 120 (ideally also getting rid of the rolling shutter). But, I think a camera like that would only really sell if you can get the price down to below $500. That way you can use the camera in interesting, somewhat risky locations, but while it still hurts, it's not the end of the world if you lose it or break it.

<comment><USER12> the max framerate for the go pro is 240fps at WVGA resolution.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I forgot about that, but it has a max of 120fps in HD quality (720p) / Protune video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone explain to me some things that I'm too lazy to Wikipedia?

How long can this camera shoot continuously for? And what frame rate can it transfer image over its I/o ports?

</comment><comment><USER14> Nearly $5k is 'affordable'?

<comment><USER15> Maybe they're trying to be modest by not mentioning the prices of their competitors which are $100K or more AFAIK.

<comment><USER2> In many parts of the country, a nice house costs less than the high speed camera used in the last World Series.</comment></comment></comment>


China Turns to $503B Rail Expansion to Boost Growth - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-29/china-to-have-30-000-kilometer-high-speed-rail-network-by-2020 <comment><USER2> The new silk-road project with Germany is also very interesting.

[https://www.thelocal.de/20161229/german-rail-giant-steps- up-...](https://www.thelocal.de/20161229/german-rail-giant-steps-up-silk-road- freight-line-to-china)

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't this put Germany at the mercy of Russia? edit: Downvoted for asking a question. It seems people forgot that Russia is always threatening with cutting the gas supply.

<comment><USER4> Any reputable media with 'Russia is always threatening with cutting the gas supply'? Especially Germany which has direct Nord Stream and upcoming Nord Stream2 ? It's other way around, Germany harass other countries,like Bulgaria and prevent them to build South Stream. Looks like you are victim of anti- Russia propaganda. Russia WANTS to expand it gas export.

<comment><USER5> Russia has cut gas supplies the Ukraine multiple times: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–Ukraine_gas_disputes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–Ukraine_gas_disputes)

<comment><USER6> Western European countries are the best gas client of Russia; Ukraine often didn't have money to pay Russia, as well as political disputes.

<comment><USER7> > Ukraine often didn't have money to pay Russia

But Russia cut _all_ gas supply, stopping gas flow to Germany and other customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One theory is that China spends heavily now to build up the infrastructure while the labor cost is cheap. Once labor cost has reached certain level, these kinds of projects will be prohibitively expensive, just like in Japan or in U.S.

<comment><USER9> It makes sense, but I also wonder how much they're really saving by building the infrastructure now and then having to maintain it. One of the greatest lessons SimCity teaches about infrastructure is that you've got to pump a minimum amount of money into the transportation department for your roads -- with very little wiggle room -- or everything seizes up and goes to shit. Even not being used, that stuff costs money, and I can't imagine that a half- trillion-dollar rail project won't need a _ton_ of maintenance. I guess the rights-of-way issues would be much easier to sort out now rather than later, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone else find it fascinating that over time larger numbers mean less and less? Growing up it was unheard of to hear a project of that size. 1/2 of a trillion dollars is a lot of money, now we are discussing projects of that cost.

<comment><USER11> Iraq war cost around 1 to 2 trillion dollars ? Proping up the the failed banks in 2008 cost as much. If you can just print the money(or add zeros in computer systems ) it's not that expensive.

<comment><USER12> You're right about Iraq, but I thought TARP actually turned a profit? [http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/news/companies/government- ba...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/news/companies/government-bailouts- end/)

<comment><USER13> It doesn't matter that it turned a profit. That wasn't the point; and in some ways that makes it worse! PNC bought National City for $5 billion. National City (an Ohio only bank) was not allowed to apply for TARP. Then PNC got a $5 billion tax credit. They bought a bank for free.

[http://www.newsproject.org/node/181/](http://www.newsproject.org/node/181/)

All the consolidation meant that banks gained a lot of money, and the US government bought debt $1 for $1. Instead of TARP, the US government could have done something for...the people you know? The attorney general could have pushed prosecuting all the people who committed fraud (forging income documents for home loans was rampant, lying to people about home loans, etc.) from the top to the bottom. Banks should have been forced to sell loans back to consumers for quarters on the dollar (you know, what the homes were actually worth now).

We saved some retirement accounts, and everyone above 50 at the time was very thankful for that, but young people lost their homes, tons of money and the banks didn't take a hit at all. They just got stronger and swallowed other banks.

<comment><USER14> When the statement was that TARP cost $1 trillion, the fact that it actually made a profit very much IS the point. Your entire rant is what's not the point in this discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think this is super cool contrast with the US government's decision to expand the interstate highway system after WWII. While highways certainly were able to connect American cities in ways which were never before possible, the bet on cars has had long-term repercussions, arguably contributing to the failing of many American metro commuter rail systems which, in turn, created the traffic problems that plague places like New York and LA.

I would be shocked if this doesn't improve the lives of the average Chinese citizen, and I think it likely that a long-term move towards public transportation will help China meet its carbon emissions goals.

<comment><USER13> The state of American rail is tragic. People continually make excuses about how America isn't structured for rail, but that happened systemically over the course of decades. Most small cities had street cars, but they were removed around the 1950s or 60s.

Interstate highways barrelled their way though the hearts of cities, destroying poor/low-income neighbourhoods. If at any time US policy makers decide to push for rail, we could see dramatic turnarounds over the course of the next two decades.

Seattle is building ST3 and California is building its high speed network. It's a start, and we're still ahead of Australia when it comes to inter-city rail, but no where near close for urban/light rail (which every Australian state capitol has except Darwin and Hobart).

By comparison, Russia is less densely populated, yet they have a both better high speed rail and last-leg commuter rail between/in major cities and they are actively expanding their high speed systems.

Self driving cars are realistically a decade away and they cannot solve the capacity problem:

[http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not- sol...](http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the- transportation-problem/)

..and they can only solve the last leg problem if we have better inter-city rail infrastructure.

<comment><USER16> > The state of American rail is tragic.

[https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0362](https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0362)

The US has one of the best freight rail systems in the world. As a country we ship freight not people. Its not tragic, its damn amazing. I'm sorry they didn't specialize it for the use case you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They're super smart for funding high speed rail at the federal level.

High speed rail is the solution, not a pipe dream, the issue in the USA from what I've observed is that we don't fund it at the federal level.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. In the US, our lack of infrastructure spending has been a Republican effort to stymie Obama. Now suddenly they want to spend on infrastructure.

<comment> shawn-furyan I would challenge that narrative, because Trump clearly wasn't "The Party's candidate". He was a populist candidate, and populists gon spend (or at least say they are).

There still seem to be deep misgivings within his cabinet about the spending, but Trump seems to tend to get what he wants, and is quick to fire people who aren't making it happen, so...

<comment><USER18> By definition, Trump was the Republican Party's candidate.

<comment><USER5> This kind of pedantry provide no insight: Trump doesn't represent the small government wing of the party that opposed infrastructure spending

<comment><USER18> So where did this _small government wing_ go?

You're saying that it existed before and that it _opposed infrastructure spending_ doubtfully out of heartfelt principle. Now that the Republican Party candidate has been elected, does this wing still exist? If it exists then surely it can be depended on to resist any large government infrastructure spending that a populist candidate would propose.

Surely this is the case.

<comment> shawn-furyan With the scare quotes, I was drawing a distinction between the pre-Trump Republican establishment [meaning the incumbent Republican leadership along with the ideas that they stumped on to get into that position], and Trump. Trump is very different than the pre-Trump Republican establishment, and they clearly preferred other candidates (principally, Marco Rubio).

There were clearly vast distances between the Pre-Trump Republican establishment, and the Republican electorate, and so it would make sense for the post-Trump Republican establishment to move in Trump's direction. That process is currently nascent, and the differences have, if reports are anything to go on, yet to have shaken out.

Because of the way Trump operates, and because of the populist shift of the Republican electorate, I'd expect Trump to win most of the internal battles on spending. The winds are at his back. He will probably also flip many Republicans who previously positioned themselves as staunch fiscal hawks.

<comment><USER18> So you're saying that the principled opposition by the _small government wing_ will wilt in the face of populism, _wind at his back_ and whatnot. You're right about this, except for the principled part.

<comment> shawn-furyan Close. I wasn't claiming that it was principled. I was claiming that it's what they stumped on in course to their leadership positions. Reversing themselves on those positions violates the narrative that they've been crafting, which probably has negative political consequences.

<comment><USER18> It wasn't principled and so the pivot to infrastructure spending will come without any political consequences because the Republican opposition was strictly partisan. It wasn't against the _idea_ of improving infrastructure. It was against _who_ was improving infrastructure.

If Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice do something, that's OK. If Hillary does the same thing, it's treasonous. Got it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Damn I wish the US would do this. Both because I've been taught that infrastructure spending is a good idea, and because I fucking love riding trains.

Seriously, is a 2 day sleeper HSR from SF to new York with damn good internet really less productive meams of emloyee transport than trains? You spread out the pain of time zone shifts, avoid all the bullshit at airports, an and work much more effectively.

I think I rather take a train for any trip short of being intercontinental, and would be a more productive worker because of it.

<comment><USER20> I live in Atlanta but originally from South Florida. Spent 13+ hours (lots of stops with a baby) driving for the holidays to see family. I would have much rather done a train and rent a car for a few days. Unfortunately, the Republican governor of Florida rebuffed any thought of high speed rail because it's from Obama.

Trump has an infrastructure plan, maybe he'll see that China and Europe has better trains and that would spur him to propose HSR (being cynical, but he can power it by coal since he wants to bring back coal to the US :) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> the sidenote being that they'll probably develop nuclear power to power all those trains, and become the first nuclear powered economy. they'll both developp energy,transportation and reduce their pollution.

<comment><USER22> [https://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/06/china-renewable- growth-...](https://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/06/china-renewable-growth-soars- fossil-fuel-use-declines/)

"IEEFA forecasts that China will install an additional:

* 22GW of wind

* 18GW of solar

* 16GW of new hydro

* 6GW of nuclear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> US could do that too. Iraq war bill 2 - 6 trillion. Oops! Nevermind!

</comment><comment><USER24> Boost growth, boost growth, boost growth...have to keep growing more, and faster, otherwise the whole thing breaks down, no?

Seems sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER25> China won't be able to afford this; China's pretty broke already in 2016. It's approaching 300% debt ratio in combined corporate + government + individual. Its gross reserve is down to 3T (IMF believes China needs at least 2.5T to operate). Its net reserve (gross - debt) is down to 1.7T. It had a capital outflow of 1T again in 2016. Yuan fell the most in 2016, since 1994. Next year, Japan/US/EU is going to impose import tariff on China, and further crash China's economy.

<comment><USER26> China's saving rate remains at 45% of GDP. Most other countries have it around 10-15%. Savings have to go somewhere, and this is why China accumulates debt. Every yuan of savings turns into one-plus yuan of debt. The current debt ratio adjusted for savings is comparable to the US's, for example. Unlike US, they put it into infrastructure because people don't spend growing income on consumption.

To put it simply, the US worker gets a salary and buys a car, while the Chinese worker makes a deposit in a bank for a construction firm to borrow and build a railroad. Both cases describe transportation services, but they look very different in national accounts.

As for the exchange rate, it's not that relevant for local investments since China's going to pay in yuans anyway.

<comment><USER27> That is a very old number and anyways only comes from consumers who are not consuming but saving for emergency health care, or increasingly unaffordable housing. China desperately needs for its consumers to actually consume to move away from an export oriented economy, which is especially sensitive to trade friction.

So yes, you are talking about China's biggest problem (inability to consume what they produce) that even the Chinese leadership has acknowledged is a huge problem.

Whether china can afford this or not is less relevant than "bang for the buck", china has already built out lots of HSR, some of it very lightly utilized (my own trip from Beijing to a city in south Hunan, the train was mostly empty most of the time). China builds mostly as a stimulus program, because if consumers aren't consuming its one of the only tools they have, but also focuses on flashy projects that they can brag about in articles like this. However, much of this infrastructure is going to be underutilized for decades, while really needed infrastructure, like adequate flooding drainage, doesn't provide enough "face" to be considered instead. So every year, we see pictures of flooded out cities...but at least you can get to them quickly on empty trains!

<comment><USER22> >That is a very old number and anyways only comes from consumers who are not consuming but saving for emergency health care, or increasingly unaffordable housing.

They're still saving and those savings keep a lid on Chinese inflation which makes projects like this affordable.

>China desperately needs for its consumers to actually consume to move away from an export oriented economy, which is especially sensitive to trade friction.

There's a lot of talk in the CCP about shifting China's economy to becoming more consumer driven but there isn't a lot of appetite to _actually_ do the things which would make that happen - namely some sort of social security/nationalized health insurance system.

The Chinese will thus continue to be terrified of getting old and sick and will and save accordingly, and those savings will no doubt continue to get recycled into projects like this as well as subsidizing state run SMEs with cheap loans.

<comment><USER27> I agree with this. Savings keep a lid on inflation but also distort money supply and demand, just like the real estate bubble distorts supply and demand for housing. A lot of distortions with temporary fixes to keep things going.

2017 will be very interesting. Can't wait to see what happens in Tuesday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well. It's probably better than other things they spent their money on. Like empty cities.

<comment><USER29> Curiously, one difference with planned economies like China is they can build ahead of demand. Here in the USA there has to be a demand for housing before it gets built. I.e. folks have to be crowded and homeless. So those 'empty cities' build for 10M people were not as senseless as they seem. 10M people in China is less than 1% after all.

<comment><USER30> That's an interesting point. I just checked, and China is about 56% urbanized, whereas the United States sits above 80%. If we assume that China will reach the same levels, that leaves another 250 million people yet to move to urban areas. Even with the aging population, then, it may be able to use those spaces.

Otherwise, it may be able to take advantage of anti-immigrant sentiment in the developed world. That's what intrigued me about your point. China has started to invest in African infrastructure, so why not leverage that to supplement its population when the aging curse kicks in?

<comment><USER31> > _China has started to invest in African infrastructure, so why not leverage > that to supplement its population when the aging curse kicks in?_

Perhaps because the entity is not "China", a state, but China, a culture and a specific population with a shared history etc? So arbitrarily supplementing the population as a means to keep it going doesn't make sense?

<comment><USER30> It seems that you're assuming that there is some Real Chinese Culture that has never evolved or integrated another population or culture. Maybe I've heard wrong, and there are in fact no substantial differences between Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong (let alone Xinjiang[1]). That seems incorrect, though.

Edit: Anyway, it's besides the point: we were clearly talking about China the state (the same one that built those empty cities).

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

<comment><USER31> > _It seems that you 're assuming that there is some Real Chinese Culture that > has never evolved or integrated another population or culture._

I'm only recognizing that there is a Chinese culture that has been shaped by various forces (including population migration, trade, and even war and invasion) over long historical periods (keyword: long).

Which doesn't translate to some "Since we had e.g. the Mongols in the 13th century, and they are now part of Chinese culture, it's no biggie to just get some hundreds of millions of people that don't share our culture to replace our aging population" \-- any more than "Since we were subjects to the Queen before 1776 it's no biggie to subject ourselves to being a UK colony again".

> _Maybe I 've heard wrong, and there are in fact no substantial differences > between Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong_

That only matters if they are also more substantial than those between "Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong" to Berlin, Phoenix, Santiago, Accra or London.

Otherwise, all, or almost all, countries have regional differences within the country's culture. Beijing and Shanghai are not more different than, say, New York and Savannah or New Orleans and the Quad Cities. As for Hong Kong that has been, for over a century, shaped from being a UK colony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Fascist government with zero transparency or accountability announces big public works project.

This is just what fascists do.

<comment><USER33> Are you talking about the US or China?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Meanwhile, we're stuck with a ruling party that is absolutely against anything involving steel tracks, so we have to spend similar amounts just to maintain our roads.

<comment><USER35> Does the US need more railway lines? The US already has ~2 times the railway lines of China with virtually identical area (~3.7M square miles).

FTA:

      "At the end of 2015, China had 121,000 kilometers of railway lines,
      including 19,000 kilometers of high-speed tracks, according to a
      transportation white paper issued Thursday. The U.S. had 228,218 kilometers
      of rail lines as of 2014, according to latest available data from the World
      Bank."

<comment><USER36> You are magically ignoring the "19,000 kilometers of high-speed tracks" and will have 30,000 kilometers while we have 0.

<comment><USER35> I'm confused. How am I "magically ignoring" that?

I was addressing "against anything involving steel tracks."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


JustGage - JS plugin for generating SVG gauges  - <AUTHOR> http://justgage.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks good and simplistic. +1 for ease of use...

We use D3 for data visualization and graph something similar to <http://bl.ocks.org/3202712></comment>


Mitigation for Intel GPU Vulnerability Obliterates Gen7 iGPU Performance - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-gen7-hit&num=1 <comment><USER2> List of recently released Intel security updates (including this one): [https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/current- activity/2020/01/14/int...](https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/current- activity/2020/01/14/intel-releases-security-updates)</comment>


Show HN: EverydayCheck – Every day, it gets a little easier - <AUTHOR> https://everydaycheck.com <comment><AUTHOR> I added some fancy color customization :-)

I also added it to ProductHunt in case anyone feels like giving it an upvote: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/everydaycheck-2](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/everydaycheck-2) ty! :-p

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks great, will you offer an android app too at one point?

</comment><comment><USER3> site down? Accessing from India.</comment>


Introducing the YUI Compressor - new JavaScript minifer/compressor - <AUTHOR> http://www.julienlecomte.net/blog/2007/08/13/introducing-the-yui-compressor/

<comment><USER2> Their name is somewhat misleading, because it does not appear to be from the YUI (Yahoo) Javascript API team.</comment>


Show HN: Pine.blog – An Open Web Social Network - <AUTHOR> https://pine.blog/?ref=hna <comment><USER2> And by "open", you mean $5/month barrier. I don't even like the social apps I get for free, I doubt many will pay for it. And I'm certainly not going to start contributing content to make your platform successful without a cut. As much as we dislike youtube's imperfections, at the end of the day there is a reasonable attempt to pay creators for their content which makes the platform money. I don't see that here.</comment>


Crowdfunding Pack - <AUTHOR> http://crowdfundingpack.org/#

<comment><USER2> Pretty nice collection of discounts. How did you manage to coordinate all these?

<comment><USER3> networking over time

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how they select the winners.

<comment><USER3> randomly

<comment><USER4> How randomly? Is there a lottery system? Would be awesome to see what hashing algorithm is used to determine the winner.

The NBA draft has a "random" selection process with lottery balls, yet every year people think it's rigged.</comment></comment></comment>


Paychecks Disappearing from Capital One Checking Accounts - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/capital-one-outage-keeps-customers-from-accessing-their-money/ <comment><USER2> They've been down for hours for me.

Probably not so funny if you're really impacted, but Twitter is pretty funny:

[https://twitter.com/search?q=capitalone](https://twitter.com/search?q=capitalone)</comment>


A man is running for governor of California so he can run false Facebook ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/28/tech/facebook-false-ads-california-governor/index.html <comment><USER2> Hey it's worth a shot :) It's a stunt but anything that calls attention to Facebook's BS is probably worth it.

It won't work. It should be clear to anyone that Facebook's policy is really just for allowing the conspiracy theories that are loved by the political extremes. At this moment in time, it's mostly for the right wingers. Zuck has been meeting with prominent right wingers and I'm sure they've told him that if he blocks their nut-job politics they will break up the company. He knows the Dems want to do it, all that protects his monstrosity is the GOP, so they are going to dictate the terms.</comment>