How Do You Know a Developer Is Doing a Good Job? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.professorbeekums.com/2017/01/how-do-you-know-developer-is-doing-good.html <comment><USER2> _Ideally, developers would be rewarded based on the amount of value they provide to a business. It's a simple concept: you make the company more money, the company pays you more money._

That sounds like an assertion that needs to be justified. _Why_ is that the ideal?

 _100 products, 100 lines of code!_

 _If you paid your developers per line of code, you would reward the inefficient developers._

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

 _An analogy to this is writing essays, novels, blog posts, etc. Would you judge a writer solely on the number of words written? Probably not._

That's exactly how a lot of professional writers are paid.</comment>


Phone Cameras and Apps Help Speed Calls for Police Reform - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/technology/phone-cameras-and-apps-help-speed-calls-for-police-reform.html <comment><USER2> I was always doubtful about David Brin's views on privacy and surveillance[1], mostly because I didn't want it to be true.

But I'm increasingly coming around to think that it might make sense to explore his model more.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society)

<comment><USER3> This wouldn't work for me at all. Actually it would put me right into a psychiatric hospital - repeatedly.

I expect it would do that for lots of other folks.

The last little while I've been thinking of buying a car or maybe a motorcycle. For quite a long time I've enjoyed the fine public transit we enjoy here in Vancouver and Portland, but I'd like to go camping in the desert.

The reason I haven't already done so, is that I know from experience that when you drive a car, the police find all manner of reasons to pull you over. The cops don't always have evil intent in doing so; consider that Timothy McVeigh was pulled over for expired registration a few days ago after he bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building. I expect everyone was getting pulled over back then.

I was appalled just a couple days ago to learn that the Feds have - or maybe they are working on - a nationwide license plate reader database.

Even were I completely law-abiding, drove my car legally, my physical location would be in that database. No matter where I travelled in my car or on my motorbike, my entire path would be in a computer file.

I've thought about that quite a lot; I am simply unable to tolerate such a thing, even today.

By contrast, one does not need a license plate to ride a bicycle. I'm rather out of shape but back in the day I used to ride my bike fifty miles on a regular basis.

I'm not dead certain but I might ride my bike from Portland to Burning Man this year. That's mostly desert, much of it mountainous. To do that wrong could be life-threatening but to do it right would be quite cool.

<comment><USER2> The point of Brin's ideas is that the police and the government can (and should) be surveilled by ordinary every day citizens.

We have seen how keeping cameras on police moderates their behaviour. I wonder if that "reverse surveillance" could also moderate things like unjustified stops when one is driving?

<comment> at-fates-hands >> We have seen how keeping cameras on police moderates their behaviour.

Apparently not in the most recent case in South Carolina where the officer's dash cam was running and didn't stop him from shooting a man eight times in the back, did it?

Also, the camera's are there for the cops sake, not for ours. I welcome having body camera's, but I think you'd be surprised at how many times a cop has justifiable means to use lethal force, and doesn't.

Sure, it helps us keep tabs on them, but I'm pretty sure the actual reality of what they put up with compared to how these situations are portrayed in the media, are going to be eye opening to a lot of people.

<comment><USER2> _Apparently not in the most recent case in South Carolina where the officer 's dash cam was running and didn't stop him from shooting a man eight times in the back, did it?_

Sure, it's no panacea.

But in San Diego:

 _Complaints have fallen 40.5% and use of "personal body" force by officers has been reduced by 46.5% and use of pepper spray by 30.5%, according to the report developed by the Police Department for the City Council's Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee._[1]

And the ACLU tends to think they are on the balance, positive[2].

I think Brin's argument would be that we've tried policing without cameras, maybe it is worth trying it with lots more cameras.

It's worth noting in that case you mentioned above it was mobile phone footage that led to him being charged, not a dash cam[3]. That's an argument for _more_ cameras, controlled by civilians.

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-body- cameras-201...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-body- cameras-20150318-story.html)

[2] [https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/police-body- moun...](https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/police-body-mounted- cameras-right-policies-place-win-all)

[3] "the video, which was taken by a bystander" [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south-carolina- officer-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south-carolina-officer-is- charged-with-murder-in-black-mans-death.html?_r=0)

<comment> at-fates-hands >>It's worth noting in that case you mentioned above it was mobile phone footage that led to him being charged, not a dash cam[3].

I do agree on your points, which are all well made.

Do you think he would have been charged had it not been for the civilian video? Or do you think it simply would've taken _longer_ to charge him since they would have to get the video off his dash cam, review it, and then decide whether to take action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been puzzling over a Killer App for a little while, but just don't have the headspace to deal with it. Take The Money And Run:

Write a mobile app - or maybe crowdfund a gadget - that would be an always on video camera, or perhaps just an audio recorder with a sometimes- but not always-on camera.

This would be done in such a way that it is simply not possible to erase the recording, not even if law enforcement confiscates your device. The most- straightforward way would be to upload it to a server however law enforcement could take your entire server, or block access to it &c.

Worse who ever operated the server could be subject to prosecution, say for enabling wiretapping. Yes, I know. :-/

However a solution would be for that server to be a Tor Hidden Service. That would make it difficult, maybe impossible to physically locate the server or its admins; it would also make it more difficult to block the communication between the recorder and the server.

Commonly overlooked is that it's not enough simply to operate a hidden service; if someone does grab the actual box, then they've got your filesystem. For this to really work you need a fully-encrypted disk. But then you have the problem that the OS as well as the hidden service require private keys. If you store them right on the box then you lose.

Possibly Trusted Computing would help somewhat. However another way would be for, when the OS boots, it cries out for help in some surreptitious way, say by posting a racy JPEG on imgur. When an admit sees that JPEG show up on Reddit, then he transmits the secret keys to the server.

There is also the problem that, were these recorders always on, then they would record things that anyone would want to be private. Typically we would want whoever possessed the device to choose which recordings to release to the public; however if they were required to do so under a subpeona, again we lose.

So there should be more than one person making the decision. Whoever has a legimate reason to want privacy, as well as someone who can deny a subpeona with complete safety, in principle the server admin.

This outline doesn't scale at all well. I've been puzzling over it for a little while and I can see that it could be made to scale.

But this is the very first time I've written down any of these ideas.

If you can make something of this, More Power To You.

<comment><USER4> A device that costs money, that you have to carry with you at all times, that you have to have connected to the internet, and you're likely to never use... I get your goal, but I don't think it's practical in the way you're thinking.

There are phone apps which do some of what your suggesting, but leaving them on all the time would mean that you would have to have an unlimited data package and lots of spare batteries.

<comment><USER3> That's a good point.

I did consider that one cannot always get on the Internet, but I didn't mention it in my writeup. The device could upload the recording whenever the Internet was available.

That would leave the problem that the cops know you've got such a gadget, so they prevent you from going to a wifi spot. For this we use the kind of mesh network as was used in the Hong Kong protests a few months ago. I think they didn't write that app themselves, it was already available from the App Store or Google Play.

Most phones have wifi, bluetooth and 4G. If any one of those can connect - somehow - to the Internet then we can upload.

The problem with battery life would be hard to solve on an actual phone but not hard at all to solve on dedicated hardware. A very, very large chunk of your power consumption goes into managing hardware security and virtual memory.

If you had no security at all, and no virtual memory, then you use quite a lot less power. That's quite common with embedded applications, such as TI DPSs running SYSBIOS (previous DSP/BIOS). I have some experience with DSP/BIOS it would not be hard at all to make a device the size of an iPhone that could run for a week or two between recharges.

The device would be a lot more acceptable to most people if it were not plainly visible. Suppose the camera lens could be clipped to your shirt, but the rest of the device is in your pants pocket or your purse, with a bluetooth connection between the two.

I fully understand there are many problems with this concept, but solving these kinds of problems is what engineers actually do to feed their hungry children. :-D

<comment><USER5> The problem to be solved here, as I understand it, is accessing the recording after someone takes the recording device away from you, and possibly also attempts to delete your recordings.

You don't need to upload to the cloud here. You just need to upload to a storage device that cannot be easily recognized as the upload target for the recorder, and would not typically have probable cause for a search.

These could be attached to the recorder using a wide variety of short-range wireless communications technologies. Maybe your pinky ring has a microSD card under the gaudy cabochon, and connects using IEEE 802.15.6. Maybe you get a parylene-coated implant in your beer belly. Maybe your eyeglasses can store 256 GB. Perhaps the label on your underwear can store more data than just your name. Or one of the keys on your key ring does not actually open any lock.

Maybe the "delete" function in your device's UI also activates a piercing audible alarm that screams " _SPOLIATION! SPOLIATION! SOMEONE IS TRYING TO DESTROY MY EVIDENCE!_ " and the real data-destruction function requires a pre- authorized device to activate.

The device itself would, of course, need a decoy SD card in it somewhere. People tend not to stop looking for something until they find it.

As for the recorder portion, it would have to be plainly visible to be legal in all US jurisdictions. Also, you need something obvious for the bad actor to take, so that he can believe that he has confiscated both your recorder and your recent recordings.

The data are the important parts, if you can give your attorney a recording of the cop illegally seizing your camera, it is a lot easier to get it back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a different take on the police.

I can't go into a whole lot of detail as it is late, I am tired and I have lots of work to do.

But more or less I point out to every cop I come across, that while I do know that there are some bad cops, there are bad people everywhere. It is wrong to hate the police despite that there have been lots of officers who have murdered innocent, defenseless people.

I don't judge individuals by the behaviors of other people. Recall what MLK said about "the content of our character". For me, I don't judge someone by the color of their clothes or whether they have a shiny badge affixed to them.

I then point out that I have quite a profoundly serious illness: Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, and that it is much like being Manic-Depressive and Schizophrenic at the same time.

Being crazy gives me lots of real-world experience with law enforcement. Consider that I was once hospitalized involuntarily for ten solid days because I told some shrink that I planned to "go camping in the desert". See, I was completely unaware that in Reno, when one intends to "go camping in the desert", one intends to commit suicide.

It didn't help to point out that I had the Boy Scout Wilderness Survival Merit Badge, nor that I had camped in the desert just the night before.

I was once beaten unconscious by two cops by having my skull slammed repeatedly into concrete. When I regained consciousness three days later, while I could correctly visualize the spelling of my own name when I thought about it, I was incapable of spelling it when I attempted to write it on paper with a pencil.

You'd think that would make me hate all police officers but no, I don't even hate the two cops who assaulted me with a deadly weapon.

However, I do feel that they should be spending some time behind bars.

On the other hand there have been plenty of times that police officers have saved my very life. The ONLY time I ever saw a cop so much as set foot on the Caltech campus was when a Pasadena Police Department officer came to save me from the Caltech campus security guards who beat the living crap out of me then hurled me bodily down a flight of stairs.

Finally I write down the URL for "Living with Schizoaffective Disorder" then point out that "I wrote it in part to help people like you help people like me".

[http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective- disorder/](http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/)

Finally, I offer to shake their hand. Cops aren't used to members of the public offering to shake their hand. Quite commonly they are visibly moved by my simple gesture.

<comment><USER6> Certainly, but it also seems like some local police departments have institutionalized misconduct. And I don't think it's totally unreasonable to to expect cops to be significantly better than average people.

<comment><USER7> This a million times.

There's a Illinois State Trooper that lives in my neighborhood. He drives his work vehicle home and _ALWAYS_ parks it illegally. There's a sign saying "no parking" with an arrow pointing right at where he put his car.

Of course he's never ticketed. But this grates me every time I walk by. He is entrusted with enforcing our laws, but can't be arsed to follow them every single night when he parks.

It is a huge erosion of trust in their institution.

<comment> atom-morgan _This_ is the problem along with the parent's comments. They literally are a different class of citizen. Does anybody actually think another cop would see this and write the state trooper a ticket? That the state trooper would have to go to his courthouse and pay a fine? It doesn't happen.

At most, he'd be asked to move it. But until then he gets privileges us lower citizens don't have.

<comment><USER8> None if this is legal advice, and quite likely not all of of it would work. It's possiblpe that someone who thinks so little of obeying the law would be willing to hassle you personally constantly for such behavior.

Most of these ideas would be stupid, ineffective, or perhaps illegal, but my point is that you might indeed be able to creatively find a way to make sure that the trooper's illegal actions (off duty!)

\- Gather evidence. Take pictures every day that he does it.

\- Ask him nicely to park legally. Point out that his flagrant disregard for the law erodes everyone's respect for his profession.

\- Ask your local police to ticket him personally. They might not do it, but it can't hurt to ask.

\- Write to his boss. Write to the governor, call everyone up his chain of command. Point out the respect erosion issue, and ask that police be held to the same laws that they enforce.

\- Sue him on behalf of citizens of the city when you see him doing it. I'm sure judges would feel really happy about police officers who flaunt the law for personal benefit.

\- Campaign for a local (city/county) law that allows citizens to enforce parking laws (citations, towing, car boot) on any government-owned vehicle that is parked illegally. Make this your public example. (Of course, good luck actually doing that, but the media publicity might shame him?)

\- If the place he parks is a "no parking" area due to things like fire hydrants, consider talking to the local fire department.

\- Try to alert an impersonal bureaucracy that will treat his illegal parking as something tow-able or otherwise something they can escalate as part of their job.

\- Call or write his boss every time you see him do it. Report it by vehicle number.

\- Buy two extremely beat up cars and park them on both sides of his vehicle. (That might not be legal, now that I think about it.)

\- Propose a local ordinance to give you permission to install a concrete or otherwise similarly heavy / ugly public art work directly next to his car in such a way that it shames him, or makes it really inconvenient to park there.

0: [http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&Sessio...](http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=85&GA=98&DocTypeId=SB&DocNum=1342&GAID=12&LegID=71864&SpecSess=&Session=)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Barkley Marathons - happy-go-lucky https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/47040763 <comment><AUTHOR> There is a great movie on Netflix about this race by the same name. Definitely worth a watch.</comment>


Anglican – probabilistic EDSL for Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~fwood/anglican/

<comment><AUTHOR> Pleasee see here [http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~fwood/anglican/examples/index.ht...](http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~fwood/anglican/examples/index.html) for some very cool examples using Gorilla REPL.</comment>


Show HN: A chrome extension to help with code review on GitHub - <AUTHOR> This tool is for finding common mistakes in code that can get to code review without being picked up or lines containing debug or profanity.
It works off a single json file using regex and simple pattern matching The extension comes with a simple example json file example included but this can (and should be) edited  to match your own code problems. You can edit it in the 'Files changed' window of your pr
A basic readme is available here: https://github.com/whatever555/git_helper#github-code-review-helper
and the extension can be found here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-helper-code-review/aboioehhpmdocefcoofhpogffkdmdmga?hl=en
thanks for checking it out <comment><AUTHOR> link to extension: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-helper- code...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-helper-code- review/aboioehhpmdocefcoofhpogffkdmdmga?hl=en)

and readme: [https://github.com/whatever555/git_helper#github-code- review...](https://github.com/whatever555/git_helper#github-code-review- helper)</comment>


The Paranoid's Bible Infosec Guides - <AUTHOR> https://paranoidsbible.tumblr.com/infosec <comment><AUTHOR> Not sure what others think here, but I thought it was an interesting collection of tips for people trying to be avoid being doxed online, or who wanted to keep nosy companies and social media mobs out of their personal life.

There's also quite a bit about how you can not only keep your information secret, but seed the internet with fake information to throw people off and lead them up the wrong tree:

[https://paranoidsbible.tumblr.com/post/162576936634/uncle- da...](https://paranoidsbible.tumblr.com/post/162576936634/uncle-daddys-big- book-of-deception-20)

Also interesting to read this story about someone who did something similar:

[https://medium.com/@mombot/zachattack-how-i-tricked-anti- har...](https://medium.com/@mombot/zachattack-how-i-tricked-anti-harassment- advocates-into-doxing-me-4d9f055e2738)

Basically, they made a bunch of fake accounts which they pretended were 'secret', and filled them with details confirming their enemies every suspicion (in this case, cause they were conservative, the profiles featured a young, white hipster guy from an upper class background). Then all they had to do was watch their rivals find the accounts, falsely believed they'd doxed them and enjoy the fireworks.

There's some interesting stuff there.</comment>


Elon Musk invested early in DeepMind just to keep tabs on the progress of AI - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/27/elon-musk-invested-early-in-deepmind-just-to-keep-tabs-on-the-progress-of-ai/ <comment><USER2> This is basically an article abut an article in Vanity Fair, written by NYT oped columnist Maureen Dowd [http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk- billion-dol...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion- dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x)

'ELON MUSK'S BILLION-DOLLAR CRUSADE TO STOP THE A.I. APOCALYPSE Elon Musk is famous for his futuristic gambles, but Silicon Valley's latest rush to embrace artificial intelligence scares him. And he thinks you should be frightened too. Inside his efforts to influence the rapidly advancing field and its proponents, and to save humanity from machine-learning overlords.' \- headline is pretty much the tl/dr

More Musk pr IMO

<comment><USER3> Didi you read the article in its enterity?

Sure, the headline and introduction is 100% clickbait – the "musk" keyword brings a lot of traffic these days – but past the first quarter of the article, the content becomes a serious report about the conflict among SV leaders (technologists vs transhumanists).

It is well illustrated by this chart: [http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/58d570430920c94abb9619f6/...](http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/58d570430920c94abb9619f6/master/w_900,c_limit/elon- musk-AI-04-17-02.png)

The TechCrunch repost sucks, as usual. Seriously OP, why submit this sensationalist copypasta that only focus on Musk when the original article is about a dozens of interviews?!

<comment><USER2> I did read it, a lot of name dropping of very wealthy entrepreneurs that Dowd had lunches with. I wouldn't say it was a 'report', more a chattering classes 'let's worry about AI and maybe Musk is our savior' piece IMO...but then I'm an old cynic...

<comment><USER3> Could you point me to another article that resumed the positions about IA (cf. the chart I linked in my previous comment)?

I hate the tone of the journalist (so many meaningless anecdotes) but the substance is IMHO quite important. I'd love to consider a paper on these trends without the Musk hype (from the journalist, not Musk himself obviously).

<comment><USER2> I suggest focusing on source materials rather than articles in masthead newspapers (the financial press particularly seem to have endless third hand pieces about this, arguably as filler material) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_artificial_intel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_artificial_intelligence)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think Elon Musk's concern over A.I. has been widely misunderstood. His concern is NOT A.I. replacing the human species. As he clearly stated in this interview[1], his concern is that the immense power of A.I. owned by a small group of organizations or even individuals, which IMO, is well justified.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is old news. He said it himself in an interview like 2 years ago.

<comment><USER6> Source?

<comment><USER7> [http://www.popsci.com/our-savior-supervillain](http://www.popsci.com/our- savior-supervillain)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is interesting how much editorializing can be done with a single word or phrase.

Consider:

EM invested ... because he was interested in AI.

Or:

Musk invested... because he wanted to make sure AI developed ethically.

But that phrase "keep tabs", which means almost the same thing, suddenly gives it this nefarious twist.</comment>


Academics Against Mass Surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://academicsagainstsurveillance.net/

<comment><USER2> Instead of surveillance of the masses by secret government employees with cushy protected jobs; why not open surveillance of everyone to everyone and architect the infrastructure so you know who is watching you when they do. Like a distributed homeland security neighborhood watch.</comment>


Vibe: Video Human Pose Estimation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mkocabas/VIBE <comment><USER2> Restrictive license.

The have a nice comparison to T-HMR, but I did not see a comparison to OpenPose. If that exists somewhere, please give me a pointer.

[edit] OK, so I read a little further. Answered my own questions a bit, so here is what I found:

VIBE produces 3D pose from 2D video. OpenPose needs stereo video for 3D pose estimation. OpenPose can produce 2D joint position tracking from 2D video. OpenPose 2D annotations were used to automate labeling input data sets for training VIBE.

So, OpenPose: 2D video -> 2D pose estimate. VIBE 2D video -> 3D pose estimate.

<comment><USER3> You seem to point out the restrictive license (for non-commercial research purposes only) as if it's a negative, when I don't believe that it is.

Why should companies be allowed to profit from a proprietary wrapper around open-source software built on top of decades of open-access research? Open research should stay open.

<comment><USER4> It's not just non-commerical, it's for research purposes only!

<comment><USER5> That is not true, their license allows almost everything other than commercial usage. Quote from their licence: "...To use the Model & Software for the sole purpose of performing non-commercial, scientific research, non-commercial education, or non-commercial artistic projects; Any other use, in particular any use for commercial purposes, is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, incorporation in a commercial product, use in a commercial service, or production of other artifacts for commercial purposes. The Model & Software may not be reproduced, modified and/or made available in any form to any third party without Max-Planck's prior written permission."

<comment><USER6> > their license allows almost everything other than commercial usage

Nope. The license allows precisely three uses: research, education, and non- commercial art. That's it.

In other words, even use in FOSS-compliant plugin's (e.g. for Blender) isn't allowed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 30 FPS on 2080 is not exactly fast

</comment><comment><USER8> I think it can be used in building a workout app to assess whether your pose is correct or not for the exercise you are doing

<comment><USER2> Indeed. Or other sports applications. I have a friend that is an elite-level track coach. She has an iPad app that helps analyze running form from video. This tech could be used to improve apps like that.

My own little pet thought experiment for years has been an app that would track violin or 'cello bow motion to provide feedback to students on bowing technique. I am sure there are many similar applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Colab demo is quite nice. These kind of research projects should definitely provide easy to use Colab notebooks for users to interact.

</comment><comment><USER9> Are there any similar libraries to this or openpose that have FOSS compatible licenses?</comment>


Introducing The App Center - <AUTHOR> https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/05/09/introducing-the-app-center/

<comment><USER2> Facebook's App Center has a distinct advantage over alternatives: they have much more information on the users of their apps. Also, because ratings are based on real names, they'll have a much easier time preventing ratings spam.

Because of this, Facebook has the potential to develop a more accurate app recommendation engine and solve the problem of app discovery. If Facebook can make their platform more merit-based than the capricious Apple App Store, both users and developers will flock to them.

And this isn't even considering Facebook's social graph. Not only could Facebook recommend apps based on your demographics + interests, it could also recommend them to you based on how much you previously liked the games that some of your OTHER friends liked. Things like this could add a whole new dimension to app discovery - all completely exclusive to the Facebook platform.

<comment><USER3> > Facebook's App Center has a distinct advantage over alternatives: they have > much more information on the users of their apps. Also, because ratings are > based on real names, they'll have a much easier time preventing ratings > spam.

How bad is the ratings spam problem? (I'm not a mobile app developer)

Don't Apple and Google require a credit card to have an account, which means there's at least some barrier to making accounts to spam? They also have data on if a user actually downloaded an app they're rating, if they've made many ratings before or if this is a brand new account, etc. Meanwhile, there are already "Like" farms that you can pay to boost like counts on Facebook for your content.

It seems like if there's motivation to spam ratings, Facebook won't have a great advantage over the problem.

<comment><USER4> You don't actually need a credit card to open an iTunes account now. You didn't need one when I opened a Google account either and I don't think that's changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an app store for apps that only run inside the Facebook app. Facebook is a platform in a platform - the "Inner-platform effect".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect>

"The inner-platform effect is the tendency of software architects to create a system so customizable as to become a replica, and often a poor replica, of the software development platform they are using."

<comment><USER6> It's for more than just canvas apps that run inside Facebook. It's also for apps that use Facebook login, but they can be full-blown iOS or Android apps like Draw Something or web apps.

I wonder if they'll allow apps where Facebook Login is just one authentication option, like Draw Something. I'm guessing not for the little guys.

<comment><USER7> Eligibility

These apps are eligible for the App Center:

An app on Facebook.com in a canvas page A mobile app built for the web, iOS or Android that uses Facebook Login A website that uses Facebook Login and has an immediately logged-in, personalized experience (see App Quality for more info) An App for Pages built to manage or enhance other companies' Facebook Pages

<comment><USER6> Right, but what does "uses Facebook Login" mean? Can it be optional and still get in their App Center? They mention Pinterest but their app allows login via Twitter or their own account infrastructure. I guess we'll see.

<comment><USER7> It means (I believe) that the app needs to somehow use the FB api.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is fantastic. It might solve the issue of low quality apps on Facebook, and it's awesome to see that they're using their knowledge on who their users are in developer analytics - that's something Apple can't provide.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a good way for Facebook to leverage existing mobile App infrastructures without stepping on too many people's toes. Developers are responsible for developing an app, and putting it on as many stores etc as they like. In this sense, there is no additional lock in by using the Facebook App Center if you are already using Facebook Connect.

I think the big question is - what happens for paid apps? Will Facebook be asking for a cut of any referrals? Take Draw Something for instance, which is $1.99 (or free). I know Facebook gets benefit from people playing and using Facebook Connect, but they have essentially handed that store the sale. I would think they would want to monetize this, and will be interested to see how this plays out. I wouldn't be surprised if agreements are in place - as it would really be of mutual benefit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is total sales volume good metric to compare the Ubuntu, Apple App store, Amazon app store, Facebook App Center, the Microsoft Metro app store, and Google Play with one another?

Is the consensus that Google Play has too many free apps and they need to move many more apps for the same $ volume? Should app stores be working to establish a more enterprise-y (Amazon and Microsoft) or sophisticated (Apple) culture so that customers expect to spend money?

How serious is the potential for one successful store to sell HTML/CSS/Javascript apps that start eating the other stores' lunches?

Is Facebook in good shape because others' apps won't run directly in its domain? Or is it more vulnerable because it has so many vendors working against it to make "sticky" apps that could pull them away from the Facebook experience altogether?

<comment><USER11> App stores should make it _easier_ to pay for the apps without having to register a credit card. Going for an enterprise feel won't help if people don't want to (or can't) register a credit card but can't pay any other way.

Apple has done this _extremely_ well with the iTunes cards, which has made people more inclined to pay for apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I took a quick peek and am not familiar with the Facebook app ecosystem; but am I getting it right that if you develop an HTML5 Facebook app that it will be able to run inside of FB's native application on both iOS and Android?

Or is this just a showcase for Facebook enabled applications (native & web.)

<comment><USER13> Yep. It'll run within a Webkit frame on Mobile.

<comment><USER14> Performance would then be similar to a native app or similar to running on the mobile browser?

<comment><USER15> If I remember correctly, iOS Mobile Safari performance is significantly worse within App Store Apps, possibly a deliberate restriction.

<comment><USER14> Mobile Safari performance is absolutely worse than a native app. That is why I'd like to know how the HTML5 apps running within a webkit frame in the FB app will perform. If the answer is similar to a native app it would allow HTML5 apps to 'code once and deploy everywhere' within FB's apps. Which would be f%$&ing amazing.

I suspect however the answer is that they'll perform simliar to Mobile Safari, which as others have mentioned has some pretty severe limitations for all but the simplest HTML5 apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> HTML5 Apps for mobile are such a lost cause for non-trivial apps. Native apps have so much more control over the user experience and aren't crippled by poor performance. Facebook and other internet companies that think HTML5 is a viable choice for mobile are naive and putting their monopolies at risk.

<comment><USER17> It doesn't need to be an html5 app it can be a native app that uses Facebook login

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The most interesting thing about this is that it's the first app store that will be available across devices. You could (potentially) own an Android phone and an iPad; but today you need to buy two copies of the app. With Facebook, you only need buy it once.

<comment><USER6> It's not a store. There is no purchasing through Facebook (except for I guess apps that run on Facebook, rather than Android or iOS). It's just a user review site like hundreds of others except for the scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a good move. With the proliferation of Facebook apps there needed to be a better way to discover apps, especially ones that your social network is using. It is a social version of Apple's App Store.

</comment><comment><USER20> The app center will be a milestone in mobile computing process. The developers will definitely get their share of income by placing their android or iPhone based applications.This platform will be easy to find their app by the random users who will otherwise find it difficult to search the apps. <http://www.techendeavour.com/Mobile_Application_Development>

</comment><comment><USER21> What if this causes apple to pull the facebook app?

<comment><USER22> I'm Curious: what's the incentive for Apple not to ship the FB app w/ iOS like they do w/ Twitter? Seems like Apple would benefit from all the consumption of Facebook on the iOS devices.

<comment><USER23> There were many rumours of forthcoming iOS/Facebook integration a while back - but then it all went silent.

I guess they couldn't agree legals, but all we have is speculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Apparently developers will be able to charge fixed price for their apps: [http://gamasutra.com/view/news/170047/Facebook_now_allows_de...](http://gamasutra.com/view/news/170047/Facebook_now_allows_developers_to_sell_their_games.php)

Wonder what this means for the App Center running on iOS?

<comment><USER24> I suspect the Facebook Apps will be HTML5 embedded in Facebook? The Apple App Store still has the advantage of native apps. Is this basically the Chrome Web Store but built within Facebook (full access to user's data)?

<comment><USER25> I think the App Store terms forbid that, though- that's why game emulators have so much trouble, they're not allowed to download remote code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am wondering how this will be implemented on iOS without violating the App Store Review Guidelines.

> 2.7 Apps that download code in any way or form will be rejected. > 2.8 Apps > that install or launch other executable code will be rejected

<comment><USER27> JavaScript executed through the SDK-provided API are exempted — otherwise you couldn't have any apps that displayed the Web at all.

<comment><USER26> I believe the rule is that the Javascript cannot be dynamically downloaded. It must be a static resource that ships with the phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Their screenshot of a fake phone is interesting.

I've been convinced for a couple years now that Facebook's next big thing will be a Facebook phone (likely based on Android, but partnering with a single manufacturer).

<comment><USER29> Fake phone? I see a Galaxy Nexus and an iPhone.

<comment><USER30> _Ceci n'est pas une pipe._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd like to get my start-up (Verelo.com) using this, but its more suited for technical/IT guys.. is this something that would fit in? We've been mostly going with places like Heroku Apps, Wordpress plug-ins, etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> Apple: App Store

Google: Android Marketplace

Facebook: App Center

If you take all combinations of similes for "App" and "Store/Market/Center/Hub" and trademark all of them, I wonder if some random company could become a _trademark troll_.

<comment><USER33> You missed Amazon: Appstore

And Apple went after them for trademark infringement, so we already have our trademark troll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Finally!

This is the beginning of the end for Zynga. Quality will now drive users to new games, not news feed spam and who has the biggest userbase to promote to or the biggest marketing budget.

Bravo Zuck! Though I suspect Zynga's declining growth led to this decision more than them wanting to level the playing field.</comment>


Fictionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.colyvan.com/papers/fictionalism.pdf <comment><USER2> It is interesting to interpret the body of mathematics as you would a collection of fictional tales. However, the philosophy begins to unravel (to me) when it asserts that "8 is larger than 5" is false while "Sydney is larger than San Francisco" is true because the latter statement "has referents".

What is it that makes Sydney and San Francisco real objects with meaningful sizes while 8 and 5 are not real and do not have meaningful sizes? Sydney and San Francisco are defined by political and legal "stories" in the same way that 8 and 5 are defined in mathematical "stories". The theory only seems to be consistent if all out-of-context falsifiable statements are taken to be false.

This theory placates me, since it leaves the truth value of mathematical statements (in the context of the mathematical story) to mathematicians. However, it renders any conclusions meaningless to mathematics, even if it is meaningful for a philosophy dealing with human stories.

<comment><USER3> I've always considered true and false to be properties of models, which are (necessarily) approximations of some underlying reality. So I'd say "8 is larger than 5 _in some sense_ " and "Sydney is larger than San Francisco _in some sense_ ", where we might admit that the senses differ, and maybe 8 > 5 is 'truer' because the senses in which it are true are more general and require fewer experiences to verify.

But at the end of the day, you don't want to just say "everything can be true if you stretch far enough", you want to say that things are true only when we've demonstrated some utility in saying that they're true. So we just defer the issue: if you want to say something is true, you always need to know what difference it makes.

<comment><USER2> > if you want to say something is true, you always need to know what > difference it makes.

Absolutely. It seems that fictionalism avoids both the "in some sense" qualifications and worrying about what difference it makes by asserting that statements out of context are simply false. While consistent, I'm similarly not convinced that its useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm having trouble understanding the significance of Hartry Field's work. It sounds like he replaced the axiomatic system of what we call mathematics with an axiomatic system that he developed specifically for Newtonian gravity, and based on this he was able to claim that mathematics is dispensable. As an undergrad in logic class, I got the impression that mathematics is the discipline that studies axiomatic systems, so if you build an axiomatic system, you're doing mathematics. If that's true, then isn't all he did is just redefining the word mathematics in a very narrow sense and then dispensing with that narrowly defined notion?

<comment><USER5> The question concerns the quantifiers that you see in math ("there exists an even prime number", "all numbers have a unique prime factorization"), etc.

Field shows that for the theories necessary for Newtonian mathematics, we can treat those as quantifying over points in space-time, as opposed to anything distinctively mathematical. So we avoid Platonism.

It sounds like you, like most people who haven't studied philosophy of math, assume some sort of pseudo-formalist account, and therefore don't find the question very compelling. Please don't take that disparagingly (most mathematicians are in the same boat, and I'm not sure I have much of an opinion at this point, save to note that people who haven't studied philosophy tend to think the issue is obvious in a way that a lot of philosophers don't).

<comment><USER6> I think most mathematicians are more likely to be Platonists than formalists. Formalism is also a real position in philosophy of math, but a minority one for I think two reasons. One is that the math we've developed seems significant enough and effective enough to deserve more explanation than just "it's one of many possible formal systems". Second, if you take a straightforward formalist approach, then there aren't really any interesting questions in philosophy of math, so people who think that are less likely to become philosophers of math.

<comment><USER7> It's possible that a mathematician with philosophical commitments is more likely to be a Platonist than a formalist, but I suspect that most mathematicians are neither ("Philosophy is for the philosophers"). The so- called "naive" view that most mathematicians may be described as having ("I'm discovering something real when I prove a theorem", "Mathematics is objective", and so on) certainly sounds similar to the language used by Platonists, but I have yet to run into a mathematician who is comfortable with the logical conclusions of a strict Platonism. In particular, there are epistemological problems with Platonism (how can we know anything about non- physical entities?) that cause problems in the justification of mathematics and would be nice to be able to ignore.

<comment><USER6> I think we mostly agree on the empirical issues -- mathematicians usually don't care about the philosophical issues, and espouse naive Platonism which they haven't thought through.

However, I don't think it's right to say that they're formalist just because they wouldn't agree, upon reflection, with Platonism's conclusions. I (like a lot of computer scientists) am a formalist, but it's not fair to say that other people secretly agree with me because I think Platonism has major flaws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does this represent the state of philosophy of mathematics, because I find this view quite naive. Mathematics is in the business of making a model of the real world and then making falsifiable predictions with it, just like science. Take Fermat's last theorem: for all positive a,b,c and n>2, the value a^n + b^n - c^n never comes out 0. This is an empirically falsifiable statement. You can even make it a statement about real world objects if you wish: represent a number by a jar of coins, and do addition C=A+B by filling jar C with the coins in jar A and jar B together, multiplication AB by taking a whole jar B for each coin in A, etc. Rules of mathematical deduction are just devices for making predictions. So mathematical objects are neither "real" as in platonism, nor meaningless as in fictionalism.

<comment><USER9> Embodied mathematics is what you are describing I think. The idea is that mathematics arises out of ordinary experience extended by metaphor. It charts a pretty satisfying middle ground between Platonism and Fictionalism. Mathematics is a story, but it is "at the bottom" tied into our experience of everyday reality. Do real numbers exist? Probably not, but the the continuum is like a long stick you can make marks on.

Can you have a trillion apples, so you know that a trillion + a trillion is two trillion? No, but you can reason about "trillion" as existing metaphorically.

<comment><USER5> That actually just sounds like good old fashioned nominalism or fictionalism-- you'd have to sketch out a more detailed story, but I don't think it's actually distinct.

<comment><USER9> I'm (probably badly) summarizing Lakoff & Nunez's book:

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

Neither are capital-P Philosophers, and I don't remember if they actually make a claim that their ideas are philosophically distinct from fictionalism- they're more worried about platonists!

The other approach I'm fond of is saying mathematical objects exist but only inside the heads of mathematicians. As long as mathematicians share a particular idea and can talk about it, it's math. So when I point to the real numbers, I'm pointing at a real thing: the shared idea of them. There's no Platonic realm, but they exist in the mind. It parallels how mathematics is really done (a proof is only a proof if it convinces mathematicians) so I find it compelling on that front.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a bit of a litmus test you can apply to belief systems to find out if they're definitely objective.

An intelligent alien species that's never met humans would almost certainly invent math. The syntax and organization would probably be different, but the rules would be the same.

On the other hand, aliens would almost certainly not write The Hobbit.

<comment><USER11> I don't know, it may be the current intellectual culture's speciesism that we often think that. For instance, they may have many modes of perception better than math. Or even if they have a "math" sense that's oddly like ours, they may be unaware of it because it's unconscious... in their underlying circuitry... just like we're not built to directly introspect many of our own capacities.

We may even be in constant contact with "aliens" now, but unable to perceive them meaningfully. Like most lifeforms maybe couldn't tell us apart from a rock or rubber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is absurd. Clearly mathematical statements are highly predictive of the real world. They aren't false.

These people seem confused over the meaning of the word "exist". Regardless of whether or not numbers "exist", we can show that objects in the real world can obey the same laws as abstract numbers. If I have 2 apples, and take 2 more apples, I will never have 5 apples. The properties of math are real and apply to the real world.

If you insist on modelling philosophy on the language we happen to use, then just treat numbers as adjectives. As if 5 is a property an object can have, rather than a physical object itself. You don't need to worry about 2 "existing" any more than worrying about "tallness" exists, when talking about objects that are taller than other objects.

<comment><USER13> You think that they are confusing the term exists but the reality is that what "exists" means is very hard to define.

Where is the line between abstract objects and the real world you mentioned? Can you give a rule that separates the two?

Do black holes exist? Electrons? Magnetic fields? Is one of these a model but doesn't _really_ exist?

<comment><USER12> Arguing about the definition of a word is a huge red flag that a discussion is going nowhere. Sadly a lot of philosophy seems to be basically arguing about words.

>Do black holes exist? Electrons? Magnetic fields?

Yes. I mean we might not know what they are exactly or how they work, but they are clearly real phenomena that we can observe. In the same sense, "twoness" is a real property that a set of objects can have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whatever one chooses to say about the truth or falsity of mathematical statements (& imo, calling them all false is ludicrous), it is hard to refute the argument that they are quite _effective_. See Hamming and Wigner[0,1]

[0][http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Hamming.htm...](http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Hamming.html)

[1][https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.htm...](https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> > Fictionalism in the philosophy of mathematics is the view that mathematical > statements, such as '8+5=13' and 'π is irrational', are to be interpreted at > face value and, thus interpreted, are false.

Arrrgh! So annoying! How much time will it pass until philosophers of mathematics finally understand that mathematical truth has nothing to do with philosophical truth?

> Fictionalists are typically driven to reject the truth of such mathematical > statements because these statements imply the existence of mathematical > entities, and according to fictionalists there are no such entities.

Crash course in logic: If mathematical objects don't exist, then statements about them aren't "false" - they're _meaningless_.

<comment><USER7> A disclaimer: I am not currently a fictionalist, but I find it remarkably interesting to consider.

Fictionalists are not making claims about mathematical truth; they are making claims about philosophical truth. When Colyvan (who I believe is not a fictionalist) describes fictionalism as an error theory of mathematical discourse, he does not mean that mathematicians incorrectly assign the label of mathematical truth to statements that are mathematically false, but rather that it is an error to conflate mathematical truth ("true in the story of mathematics") with philosophical truth. In other words, you and the fictionalists are in agreement on your first point.

I don't quite understand your second point, or its justification. For example, would you consider the statement "All even primes greater than 2 are divisible by 1001" to be true, false, or meaningless? I think most people will agree that even primes greater than 2 do not exist. Fictionalists would assert that this statement is false; with my background in formal logic, I tend to believe that this statement is vacuously true. I would be interested in seeing an argument for the claim that this statement is meaningless.

<comment><USER16> Even while Captain Obvious is not wrong, eyes will rightly glaze over.

Double negative--I'm not a mathematician, I paint, but Mom taught me right and wrong, two of the latter do not make a right.

"All even primes greater than 2 are divisible by 1001." => "everything else in this analysis will be ignored"

(because it's not math)

<comment><USER7> Could you clarify who "Captain Obvious" is?

<comment><USER16> The Wikipedia link is the reference I intended. "Captain Obvious" refers to the one in a group or conversation who states what everyone else knows, and as such impedes the group's progression toward their shared goals.

Thanks, HN user "douche", you nailed it.

Strange to me how folk wisdom is so unwelcome in a philosophy discussion. While not explicitly stated, the subtext appears to be putting my comment as the "Captain Obvious." I'll avoid commenting in this context in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fictionalism, and other formalist theories, will have to confront that problem that when we speak of mathematics as abstract rules governing strings of symbols, these rules themselves are mathematical. So it only replaces "numbers are real" with "abstract symbols are real". There are axiomatic systems that are strong enough to express manipulations of abstract symbols, but weaker than the usual systems that mathematicians deal with (e.g. see the work of Edward Nelson on so called predicative arithmetic). But to my knowledge these have not been explored much.</comment>


Ask HN: Any recommendations for Latin American VPS providers? - <AUTHOR>

I've searched and searched, but I can't find a single HN discussion about hosting providers - specifically VPS providers, shared hosting's no good - in Latin America.<p>I'm in need of a small server with really good latency to Brazilian cities, but I can't find any highly-rated hosts south of San Diego! Can anyone recommend a good option? <comment><USER2> AWS is great, just switch to Sao Paulo region.

There is also Locaweb.com.br which is a bit cheaper than AWS, but their service is cheap also.

<comment><AUTHOR> AWS, sadly, is a bit slow for what I'm doing, or so I'm told - lots of rapid database writes and needs _extremely_ low latency. (I believe their I/O has some issues?)

<comment><USER3> It seems that I/O differs on which type you buy: <http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/>

Maybe you would have better luck finding a dedicated server/servers in Brazil.</comment></comment></comment>


Email and meetings aren't work - <AUTHOR> http://tomtunguz.com/back-to-fundamentals <comment><USER2> This just isn't true. I've gone through plenty of meetings where I've talked to my boss or manager to try and find out the specs of my current project. This is work.</comment>


Aptly: Debian Repository Management Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.aptly.info/

<comment><USER2> Looks great for when you need 37 3rd party repositories to get decent versions of software, and a couple of them screw up badly. Definitely going to give it a try.

<comment><AUTHOR> olgeni, I thought aptly would be useful even if you use only upstream repositories: they get updates and sometimes you don't want all updates to be installed (or you would like to control exact moment to install those updates).</comment></comment>


Top Open-Source Static Site Generators - <AUTHOR> https://www.staticgen.com/ <comment><USER2> [https://staticsitegenerators.net/](https://staticsitegenerators.net/) has the most comprehensive list of static site generators I've seen.

At this point what we really need is a list of static site generator lists.

<comment><USER3> That list also includes all kind of stuff that's not actually static sure generators, like BitBalloon (hosting service) or Kirby (flat file CMS), etc...

At staticgen we have far stricter rules of what we accept in the list. See [https://www.staticgen.com/rules](https://www.staticgen.com/rules)

<comment><USER2> They're fairly clearly labelled and categorized. Might be easier to build a frontend to their open Public Domain data rather than asking everyone to re- submit their projects: [https://github.com/bevry/staticsitegenerators- list/](https://github.com/bevry/staticsitegenerators-list/)

<comment><USER3> As far as I can see there's no categorization. The only way to find the list of actual static site generators is to read through the description of each of them. And since some don't have descriptions, the only way to know for sure is to visit their website and try to read through the docs to figure out.

That said it's a great list of tools around static web-tech - just not super useful if you're strictly looking for static site generators.

<comment><USER2> [https://github.com/bevry/staticsitegenerators- list/blob/mast...](https://github.com/bevry/staticsitegenerators- list/blob/master/list.yaml)

There are License and Language keys for most entries. Sounds like you want to filter out the Commercial and Web ones. If you find any that aren't categorized properly, I'm sure they'd appreciate a PR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Skribilo is missing: [http://www.nongnu.org/skribilo/](http://www.nongnu.org/skribilo/) Guile for the win! :)

<comment><USER5> I'm also writing a Guile program specifically for the static site generator workflow called Haunt: [http://haunt.dthompson.us/](http://haunt.dthompson.us/)

I'm currently adding support for the Skribe syntax that Skribilo uses and it will be available in the next release, after I convert my existing blog to Haunt from Pelican and work out any transition pains.

<comment><USER4> OK, Haunt looks pretty nice. According to my TODO, i'm still supposed to convert my website from Hakyll to something with parens sometime in the future, so i'll definitely keep Haunt in mind :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jekyll is used by github, each gitub project can roll its own jekyll blog, therefore its usage numbers are very high.

[https://help.github.com/articles/using-jekyll-with- pages/](https://help.github.com/articles/using-jekyll-with-pages/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Java and Java 8 are really the same language at the level of granularity you use for the site :-)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, good catch - just pushed a fix for that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised [http://www.webhook.com](http://www.webhook.com) is missing.

Edit: it fails rule #1: "The program must be able to output a static website that can be hosted in places like Netlify, S3 or Github Pages"

</comment><comment><USER9> No listing for vi/vim/emacs/your-favorite-text-editor?

Seriously - does nobody just do simple HTML sites by hand anymore?

<comment><USER10> I'll typically make a fairly simple template by 'hand' in my editor, then port it to Jekyll or WordPress or something else like that.

As far as writing + deploying a simple HTML site, it's been 2-3 months since I've done that, if only because no one I contract with or work with wants to spend the time or money on me hand-writing and pushing a site-- templating it and then generating the rest of the site is at least a little quicker than that, and still doesn't come with the burden of using a backend language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> emacs-muse is also missing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Emacs' org-mode is missing.

<comment><USER13> Yes, even though Sphinx seems the most obvious miss in the list, since it powers readthedocs.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> is there any one of these that will let me produce blog content like Medium? Really like how easy Medium is to read

<comment><USER15> Yes, go with Jekyll and use this 'Clean Blog' theme: [https://github.com/IronSummitMedia/startbootstrap-clean- blog...](https://github.com/IronSummitMedia/startbootstrap-clean-blog-jekyll)

There are probably multiple ways to do it given Medium's clean design and popularity, but that's the way I've done it and I can recommend it.</comment></comment>


California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-cost-overrun-20180116-story.html <comment><USER2> There is high speed transit from San Francisco to Los Angeles today. It's called Southwest Airlines. Tickets are $45 for SFO-LAX each way in February right now (less than the expected cost of the train ticket). Other pairs (OAK- BUR, SJC-BUR) are similar ($49-$57 each way).

Before you say that it's ridiculous, consider how else $64 billion (current official estimated total construction cost of the project -- not counting operating cost)[0] could be spent:

\- Commercial air travel costs around $0.10 per passenger-mile if you buy in bulk[1]. That means $64 billion could buy 640 billion passenger-miles of air travel. If allocated to the 11 million people who live in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties, the state could buy each resident 58,000 air miles of travel -- equivalent to about 88 round-trips between LAX and SFO.

\- If the LAX-SFO air corridor becomes too busy, that $64 billion could also be spent upgrading existing fleets by buying 147 brand new A380s at an average list price of $435 million each. [2]

\- If the environmental impact is a concern (not that laying tracks and punching holes through the Central Valley is free of impact), then buy new Teslas instead. Lots of them. At $35,000 per Model 3, you could buy 1.8 million new Teslas using that money. Add some solar panels to each purchase and you could still buy more than a million -- more than enough for every San Franciscan to get a brand new Tesla.

[0] [https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/13/confidential- report-c...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/13/confidential-report- california-bullet-train-could-cost-billions-more-than-expected/)

[1] [http://www.opshots.net/2015/04/aircraft-operating-series- air...](http://www.opshots.net/2015/04/aircraft-operating-series-aircraft- operating-expenses/)

[2] [http://www.airbus.com/content/dam/corporate- topics/publicati...](http://www.airbus.com/content/dam/corporate- topics/publications/backgrounders/Backgrounder-Airbus-Commercial-Aircraf- price-list-EN.pdf)

(Edit: added citation for $64 billion official estimate)

<comment><USER3> I do SFO to LAX, SNA, SAN weekly. It is not really fast and you are highlighting a special rate. Tickets easily go for $150 depending on the day, time, etc.

First, you have to deal with the security boondoggle. Add 30 minutes for that, because you never know what you are going to get.

Because of how SFO was built and the fact that they can't use both runways simultaneously with even a hint of bad weather, good luck leaving on time. Pad at least 30 minutes to your destination arrival time to be safe (but I've had plenty of early morning flights get delayed an hour or two waiting for fog to lift).

And then when you get into LAX… good luck getting out. Add an hour just to get out of the airport traffic. Unless you want to go north, you are better off flying into SNA… but tickets into SNA cost $175.

On a good day you can do it in 3 hours. On a bad day it's 6. The cost is $50-$200, and it's always a stressful and shitty experience.

I just recently took the Amtrak all the way down. I took 12 hours and cost $93 for a business class ticket. Yeah, it took forever. But it was really pleasant. It just takes forever. It be nice to have something in-between.

<comment><USER4> > [Amtrak] was really pleasant. It just takes forever.

Absolutely -- IMHO for mid-distance (200 mi to 500 mi or so) trips, Amtrak is a really underrated option. I travel semi-often from Pittsburgh to NYC (450 mi) and choose train over flights because it's actually not _that_ much slower (consider to/from airport, security, and (de)boarding, as you say) and it's much more comfortable: I can walk up and down the whole train, with no fasten- seatbelt sign to stop me; there's a cafe car; I have about 2 feet of legroom; there is reliable AC power and functional wifi. I just make it a work-from- train day and all's well.

<comment><USER5> Having just moved to PGH, I had wondered about the viability and comfort of riding the rails for a weekend trip to the Big Apple. This is encouraging news.

<comment><USER6> Another Pittsburgher here endorsing the Pennsylvanian! From PGH to NYP, it runs from 7:30 AM to 4:50 PM, which is a workday plus lunch and a nap. Really nice. It's longer than it should be; you take those turnpike tunnels for granted until you're in a train and you have to navigate the mountains.

If you want to spice it up, check out Southern Airways Express[0]. You can fly between Pittsburgh and Lancaster for as little as $30 on a tiny little 8-to-10-seat plane, which is a really unique and scenic experience. Catch a ride to the Lancaster Amtrak where there are a lot more options for getting to NYC.

I've done Megabus and Greyhound on return trips. You get what you pay for. But if you happen to live in the North Hills, the bus depot for Megabus is in Ohio Township and if you ask nicely they'll let you ride up there.

[0]: [https://iflysouthern.com/](https://iflysouthern.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Worst case scenario? Plenty of time for costs to exceed even these projections by the time the initial segment is due to be completed in 2025.

The $6 billion price tag was ridiculous. That's as much as the D.C. Metro Silver Line cost, and that was only 22 miles long. This HSR segment is 119 miles long. Yeah, it's probably cheaper to build through the Central Valley rather than the D.C. exurbs, but that much cheaper?

<comment><USER8> > The $6 billion price tag was ridiculous.

I looked up construction costs for European high speed rail lines earlier. The best estimate I could find state costs between 12 - 40 million euros per kilometer.

For the 119 miles of this train, that lands you between 2.3 to 5.7 billion euros. So the $6 billion doesn't sound that unreasonable.

<comment><USER7> It costs us 5-7x as much as Europe per mile to build rail: [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york- subw...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway- construction-costs.html). That article addresses tunnels, but there is no reason to expect it would be different for above ground rail. Indeed, it could be worse. The eminent domain and environmental review problems that plague our system are worse for an above ground project.

<comment><USER9> Subway!=ground rail. The former is _vastly_ more expensive. Brand new, two line high-speed ground rail costs 10-30 millions €/km[0], while the cost of underground kilometer typically is 200-300 millions €/km in Europe and sometimes up to _billions_ in USA[1].

0\. [https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-construct- a-k...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-construct-a-kilometer- of-railway-track-in-Europe) 1\. [https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new-york-second-avenue-subway-phase-2)

<comment><USER7> OP suggested that the HSR budget was realistic if we looked at the per mile cost of European high speed rail. My point is that if it costs us 5-7x as much as Europe to build subway, it's unrealistic to expect we can build above ground rail for the same price as Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> According to the article pretty much everybody else in this project said that it's going to cost $10B, and only the guy in charge was still living in the fantasy land where it could be done for $6B.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, the cognitive dissonance is only among the leadership of the project here. Big projects like this are chronically underbudgeted (or "optimistically budgeted"), and leadership always jumps through various mental hoops to attribute cost overruns to unforeseen factors, where more than half of the factors were easily foreseen by commentators.

That being said, I sympathize with the nigh-impossible pressures here: it's difficult to convince an entire, diverse state to contribute funds to a project that will take a long time to come to fruition, and whose benefits will be broad, but marginal, across a variety of metrics. So there's a pressure to deliver an ambitious project at prices that are scarcely realistic. Being able to lead this does invite a certain amount of cognitive dissonance; in the famous words of Upton Sinclair, "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it".

<comment><USER12> So far no evidence has been shown for these "broad" benefits.

<comment><USER13> Yeah exactly. Considering in many cases a plane ticket from SF to LA will cost less and get you there faster, the high speed rail project makes little sense

<comment><USER14> Trains are better than planes along several dimensions, if done right. "Why would I take the train when I could fly for the same price?" isn't a very good question. The answer is that (again, when done correctly):

\- Trains are generally more comfortable

\- Trains allow you to use your cell phone

\- Trains can take you from city center to city center

\- Trains don't have the same security requirements

\- Trains are safer

\- Trains are cheaper to operate (and so should actually be cheaper in the long run)

Planes are better over very long distances. But trains are better for regional travel.

<comment><USER15> Are trains safer? I am not sure the statistics support that.

<comment><USER14> You are right. Sorry about that one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some food for thought: Congress just passed a tax cut bill costing $1.5 trillion over ten years, or $150 billion. That's enough to build a California HSR _ever year_ for the next ten years, accounting for 50% budget overrun, and still have $500 billion or so left over.

<comment><USER17> It's a peeve of mine when analysts refer to a tax cut "costing" the government money. This is a deliberate dishonest re-framing (not your invention, but I blame those who invented it as trying to mislead people.) One could equally frame is as the taxpayers "recovering" $1.5 trillion that would have normally been taken from them. A better framing is "is expected to reduce tax revenues by XXX amount."

Not to mention that projecting tax cut "losses" is a game of prediction anyway. Taking that projection, and then backing out "how many HSRs will we have saved" makes even less sense than taking the projection itself as gospel, because the HSR is also a projection, and also paid out over time, and also subject to inflation, etc etc.

IOW this kind of analysis has the surface qualities of pointing out an interesting comparison but I don't feel it's conveying anything meaningful.

<comment><USER18> >This is a deliberate dishonest re-framing

"Dishonest" is a massive overstatement at best.

It's completely reasonable to state that the government has lost $1.5 trillion in revenue, no matter what frame you choose. "Cost" would be one way to refer to that. I suppose I can imagine someone nitpicking that "cost" should refer to only expenditures, but that's an uphill battle against colloquial speech and even some formal usage (an opportunity _cost_ is not an expenditure).

The general argument that taxation itself is theft is stronger than the argument that reduced revenue is only referred to as a cost dishonestly. And that's not saying much.

> Not to mention that projecting tax cut "losses" is a game of prediction > anyway.

IIRC, the $1.5 trillion figure is among other things the prediction of the legislators who created the policy when playing by the required legislative rules.

<comment><USER19> > It's completely reasonable to state that the government has lost $1.5 > trillion in revenue

Unless you don't really believe the state owns that money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the state just needs to gulp the costs here. There are a few large bets which every state should make every decade to make landmark progress. For California, having this bullet train will be it. No matter what happens, California needs to build this infra to help easier transportation and leisure travel for generations to come. The cost equation will seem peanuts in comparison to the benefits offers for multiple decades thereafter.

Otherwise, we won't even know where this $64B went.

<comment><USER21> I'm going to guess the one way price when completed is going to be more than an airline flight.

<comment><USER22> I'll place my bets tonight for 2X the fare.

<comment><USER23> The only upside will (briefly) be not having to deal with the TSA and showing up ~2 hours before the flight. Unfortunately, the TSA is making an appearance in local metro and train systems more and more, so I expect them to show up pretty quickly.

Then we'll have an grossly underestimated project with higher than "expected" costs with high ticket prices and no tangible benefits over the alternative - and likely faster - mode of travel.

And odds are, the system upgrades will need to start immediately so the ongoing maintenance will not be significantly cheaper than construction.

Yay?

<comment><USER24> The Transbay Terminal is in a lot more convenient location than SFO. Lyft to- and-from the airport adds $60 to your fare.

Also, I don't know what the price model will be. In Italy, for instance, you buy a ticket reflecting the route you want to take and you can get on any train you want. Miss the 4:05? Take the 4:25. I wouldn't be surprised if this was similarly flexible. Most airlines, on the other hand, charge change fees unless you are a frequent flyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The California HSR makes sense if you consider it not a railroad but a jobs program for eminent domain and environmental lawyers.

</comment><comment><USER26> >Hill said the cost increases were mainly driven by problems including higher costs for land acquisition, issues in relocating utility systems, the need for safety barriers where the bullet trains would operate near freight lines and demands by stakeholders for the mitigation of myriad issues.

There could of been an entire article written about these issues. Instead we got a bunch of stuff about politics. What's the point of writing an article about problems with a major infrastructure project without any discussion of the problems?

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm constantly struck by how much we're willing to spend on military costs but not willing to shell out on infrastructure.

<comment><USER28> If only an Infrastructure Industrial Complex could be established...

<comment><USER29> There are small ones within each major state. They keep costs insanely high for basic maintenance and also keep repair times extremely slow, versus comparables in Europe or Japan. Just compare how well the roads crews do in California versus Germany, it's night and day. California roads are an embarrassment at 4x the cost of German roads.

<comment><USER30> > Just compare how well the roads crews do in California versus Germany, it's > night and day.

Well as a German I can say that most road workplaces aren't even worked at during the day - you need to be lucky to see a worker there, and heaven forbid working on weekends or during night. In addition it's _rare_ that politicians have the guts to say "okay we close $Autobahn totally for a year instead of having a 2-to-3 years halfway usable Autobahn", even though this mode of work is way more efficient. Something like the 48-hour sinkhole repair in Fukuoka/Japan or the Russians repaving a whole massive street in a single day ([https://sploid.gizmodo.com/watch-a-huge-swarm-of-machines- pa...](https://sploid.gizmodo.com/watch-a-huge-swarm-of-machines-pave-a-road- in-russia-1784417285)) would be unthinkable in Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> From the article, it sounds like the biggest obstacles are "land buys" and "delays relating to land buys".

We need to strengthen eminent domain for transit projects so that we don't end up wasting tons of money appeasing corrupt landowners trying to hit the jackpot.

<comment><USER32> No, eminent domain is already a questionable practice of screwing over the individual in the name of the collective. The state should never be able to simply co-opt private ownership just for "reasons".

<comment><USER33> I hate this argument. "Property", as in land ownership, does not exist outside of the State. You "own" land only by the consent of society. Conceptually, land ownership is inseparable from the State.

<comment><USER34> I don't understand how an American can manage this thought. It runs in the face of every stated ideal and philosophical underpinning of this dear republic. I'll refer you to the concept of natural rights, Locke, Paine, the Deceleration of the Independence, the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution, and the entirety of classical liberal philosophy.

<comment><USER33> I don't buy the idea of "natural rights" in general. That doesn't mean I think constitutional democracy is a bad idea. It's just a good idea for different reasons.

Believing that the concept of owning property is inseparable from a government that defines property and resolves property disputes doesn't make me un- American. Sheesh.

<comment><USER35> The argument is absurd, because anyone more powerful than you can and will take your property by force unless you have the backing of a society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The worst-case scenario has not yet happened. We can't call it that until it's actually built and we know how much it REALLY cost.

</comment><comment><USER37> Big items in the United States are incredibly expensive to build. Nuclear reactors, high-speed rail, etc.

China, for example, has almost 18,000 miles of high-speed rail, and they're on target 23,000 miles by 2025. They are going to finish another 2000 miles in 2018:

[http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2126548/full-...](http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2126548/full- speed-ahead-chinas-fast-rail-network-us112-billion)

China has hit been hit with delays in nuclear power, but they are nearing completion of their first AP1000 reactors:

[http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/UF-Chinese-plant- produces-...](http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/UF-Chinese-plant-produces- AP1000-reload-assemblies-0801175.html)

<comment><USER25> It's easy to build infrastructure when labor costs are around $3/hour, eminent domain payment can't be litigated, and environmental impact studies are effectively not required.

<comment><USER38> What you say is true, but there is also this: political certainty to get something done once decided.

<comment><USER39> Sure, when you only have one political party and your government is authoritarian, that's pretty much a given.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The most predictable worst case scenario of all time.

I'll be shocked if it comes in under $15B.

<comment><USER10> The article says the cost is ballooning from $6B to probably $10B.

<comment><USER41> And that's _just_ for 119 miles of track in the Central Valley. How much will it cost once they get to populated areas?

<comment><USER42> In the article it says the cost for the entire project is currently $64 B. I can't fathom that kind of money

<comment><USER43> Think of it this way... we're going to end up spending about $7 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan having accomplished essentially nothing good.

$64billion is a rounding error for our government.

<comment><USER44> That doesn't really work though. If you earn 70k a year, $640 isn't a rounding error, that's still a significant part of your budget.

<comment><USER43> Yeah, but we're not talking about total budget, not even the total _military_ budget; that's $7 trilllion _just_ on two losing wars. You need to lose another decimal place, and remember that you also print your own money and can levy taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I can't help but think that the California bullet train is solving the wrong problem. How much would it cost to extend BART into the Central Valley? And for that matter, extend BART all the way around San Francisco Bay? And can you do that for less than 60 billion dollars? And what kind of ridership could such a system attract?

<comment><USER11> A lot.

It's also not a good use of money, as BART has an unusual track gauge, strange engineering decisions, and is operationally and mechanically incompatible with other commonly deployed rail systems. Not to mention, even with BART fulfilling a strange role between an in-city rapid transit and far-exurb commuter rail, extending lines further out from the operating core comes with issues around trainset supply and capacity allocations in congested areas, like the Oakland Wye, the Mission Street Subway, or the Transbay Tube. It's far more likely to "extend" fringes of the system with other modes that can then operate independently, like the eBART [1], ACE, or the Capitol Corridor, or even a bus line.

Extending the BART entirely around the western side of the bay won't happen, disproportionately due to the city of Atherton [2]. It's also silly, considering Caltrain fulfills a very similar role in transit to what BART would bring to the table, along the identical corridor.

I once wrote [3][4] about why the geography of the current transit options in the Bay are unfortunate, and single mode of transit completing the entire circle would do little to alleviate the problem that so much of transit around the Bay is already around this circle.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eBART](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eBART) [2] [http://sfist.com/2016/07/11/atherton_wealthy_will_still_mayb...](http://sfist.com/2016/07/11/atherton_wealthy_will_still_maybe_t.php) [3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12282756#12283335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12282756#12283335) [4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277421#14278045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277421#14278045)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> "Moving forward, he said, the authority will not start construction on future segments until all the land is in hand, a practice that outside experts have long said is prudent project management."

Seems like they believed their own optimistic outlooks.

</comment><comment><USER47> I wish that voters and leaders could've seen a menu of policy options when they approved this. I think they wouldn't have gone in for such an irreversible project.

For example, electric bus technology has been getting better and cheaper and seems will continue to get better in the future. So for all the money we'll be spending on this throughout the 2020's, we could've been converting buses, where practical, to electric. And if electric buses don't work that well (few US models have yet been in operation for a long time), we can always just upgrade many thousands of regular buses to cleaner and more comfortable modern models.

Incremental improvements are nice because they can be reversed and right- sized. It seems HSR is setting the size of its budget itself, as no one wants a half finished rail system. This wouldn't be too bad except that there is a risk California will face pension problems in the future. The less money we tie up in debt now, the less chance there is for terrible cutbacks to critical services if a recession destroys tax revenues and pension assets.

<comment><USER39> Agreed, and to take a bit further: I don't think we should be tackling projects of this size and scale when we don't even have good local and regional rail stories. They are the squeakiest wheel that should get the grease.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is exactly the same pattern that you can observe in government projects in Eastern Europe that we call corruption here.

</comment><comment><USER49> > Moore said the surge in costs is likely to foreshadow even greater future > increases. On the horizon are more difficult segments, such as the long > underground passage through the Tehachapi and San Gabriel Mountains and the > route into the urban San Francisco Bay Area.

...

> In Hill's presentation to the board, he said intrusion barriers will cost an > extra $450 million; land buys, $400 million, delays for not acquiring land, > $325 million; satisfying issues raised by localities, $250 million; and > relocating wires, pipes and cables used by utilities, $350 million.

These issues are all related to surface land acquisition and management (except piping/cabling relocation). Hopefully tunnel boring won't come up with new unexpected problems; they're far enough from built-up areas that there shouldn't be too much underground infrastructure to work around.

</comment><comment><USER50> We need a high speed train connection. But the Federal government should be building such infrastructure, considering we pay 35% of our taxes to the Fed. In most countries, the central governments builds infrastructure at this scale.

<comment><USER39> Most countries don't have strong states/provinces like the US does.

Regardless, part of the funding for the CA HSR project _does_ come from the US federal government[0]. It's pretty common in the US for infra projects like this to have multiple funding sources.

[0] [http://www.hsr.ca.gov/About/Funding_Finance/index.html](http://www.hsr.ca.gov/About/Funding_Finance/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> One significant downside is the way the bonds and ballot measures work. In CA, we're asked to approve a few billion for the project in each election. Failure to pass means sunk costs or higher costs in the future to re-start efforts.

If the state asked upfront for $2B/year for 15 years, I doubt it would have passed.

<comment><USER52> > One significant downside is the way the bonds and ballot measures work. In > CA, we're asked to approve a few billion for the project in each election.

No, it was all Prop 1A in 2008 for ~$10 billion. Voters have not been asked for additional CA HSR bond funds since.

Presumably, given the level of other funding that has been secured, additional bonds will at some point be necessary, but the "every election" thing is not even remotely related to reality.

<comment><USER53> $10B will likely end up being 10% of the total cost. Not to mention all of the Prop 1A mandates that the state has already violated, such as the requirement for private partnership, and ridiculous ridership estimates...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > The repayment of the existing bonds will cost about $18 billion in principal > and interest over the next 30 years, money that is coming out of the state > highway improvement fund.

Great. Not only is this thing a waste of money, it's also sucking the air out of existing projects. Fuck this shit.

</comment><comment><USER55> China will have nationwide hyperloop before this thing gets built.

<comment><USER39> I guess that's one of the "benefits" of an authoritarian government: you just tell people what's going to happen, and they either agree, are ignored, or get fined or jailed.

<comment><USER56> And the people love the bullet train very much. As a matter of fact, the bullet train is making profits. [http://www.rediff.com/business/report/pix- beijing-shanghai-b...](http://www.rediff.com/business/report/pix-beijing- shanghai-bullet-train-worlds-most-profitable-high-speed-rail/20160720.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Why are they wasting cycles buying land and dealing with right-of-way and safety issues? They could just buy 100,000 shipping containers for $2M (50,000 each way), stick them together, seal them up, and sink them off the coast.

</comment><comment><USER58> My objection to the bullet train is that we could get many more people much more effectively to work/home with local transit, which largely doesn't exist, than with this boondoggle out in the central valley.

</comment><comment><USER59> Any infrastructure project. Always. Wherever.

</comment><comment><USER60> Never been to California, using motorcycle as main transportation is not a perfect solution there?

</comment><comment><USER61> How is this train going to be useful again?

</comment><comment><USER62> Lol at anybody who is surprised by this event.

</comment><comment><USER63> I wish they instead built more airports within each city linked by short high speed rail lines. LAX is overcrowded and getting to it is a nightmare in any traffic (which is most the time). The traffic within the airport drop off circle is also ridiculous.

Imagine an LAX2 and LAX3 in different parts of the city with short high speed links between them.

Airports cost (only) about $10 billion to make. And each could be smaller with probably only 1 runway. [https://www.quora.com/How-much-would-it-cost-to- build-an-air...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-would-it-cost-to-build-an- airport).

<comment><USER64> Airports are very loud. No one likes living near one.

<comment><USER65> Plus, multiple airports close to each other must be a traffic control nightmare.</comment></comment></comment>


The iPhone Crapp Store? - <AUTHOR> http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/the-iphone-crapp-store <comment><USER2> Think about it this way, you can crank out 10 apps a month and your bills get paid OR you can work on one app for 6 months and risk crashing and burning or even getting rejected. Its not to hard to see why the apps are low quality. Its a symptom of the iphone app market.

The console game industry has the cure to this but it isn't pretty: $30k dev kits, minimum funding/budget requirements, and long approval processes

Personally I would rather stick with the current apple approach. The crap apps are cheap (or free) and if you have the guts to make a serious app its easier to stand out.

</comment><comment><USER3> So RussB is looking at the summary of all these apps and declaring them crap? Sounds something like the flood of bogus app reviews in iTunes put there by people who haven't even downloaded the apps.

But he has a point - In a (somewhat) open catalog like the App Store, we as users desperately need a better filtering mechanism than the one iTunes currently has. The answer isn't to restrict app entries to someone's definition of quality or marketability, but to provide tools to make the user's decision making process simpler.

I think there's a startup opportunity in there somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is another problem with apples 'App Store Only' policy. If they weren't the only possible provider of Apps then they could legitimately reject ones they didn't like. The authors would just have to sell it somewhere else. But because they are determining whether an app can exist on the platform they have to be a lot more carefull about what they reject.

</comment><comment><USER5> So far, Apple has done a pretty poor job of managing the store. Look at all the '...zomg, you're charging for this!!?!!1!eleven' "review" posts.

I'm hoping they throw someone at the project that has some common sense.

<comment><USER6> I agree with the article and probably with you too on the large number of low- quality applications, but there is no obvious solution to the problem of decreasing quality coming with an increasingly large population (of developers, of HN users, of Usenet posters...)

In your opinion, what would common sense be in that case? Apple got criticized for censoring applications; True, that was because these applications were competing with Apple's own services, but the move still sent a strong message. Apple will probably want to retain a large control over what can go on an iPhone (hint: Flash wouldn't), and an arbitrary decision on what is acceptable or not in terms of quality can be a very bad thing. IMHO, the review process is probably the best hope in this case, the first few people buying an application rating it to warn (or invite) other customers.

<comment><USER7> There is a great solution... Only accept high quality apps but then let developers distribute on their own. That way all the stupid repackaged public domain books can be sold, but don't have to litter the app store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think every open store will have the same set of "crapp".

</comment><comment><USER9> One man's crap app is another man's treasure app.</comment>


Ask HN: Denied US Visa As I am too young to be a CTO, Now What? - <AUTHOR>

I am a 24 year old guy who is the co-founder and CTO of a 1.5 Million dollar web / mobile software services company based out of Mumbai. Most of our clients are from the US. This was my first US visa interview and I got rejected.
The consul officer asked me how could I become a CTO a such an young age and it does not make any sense to her.
I was asked only four questions by the Consul Officer:
Officer: What do you do
Answer: I am a software developer and currently working as a CTO at XYZ
Officer: What is your age
Answer: 24
Officer: You are too young to be CTO. Whatever you just said does not make any sense. How long is your visit?
Answer: 1 month
Officer: Who will sponsor
Answer: My client is sponsoring my visit (I had relevant documents but she did not want to see them when I handed over to her)
Now I am confused that even if I re-apply, I will be asked the same question again right? Any suggestions from someone who might have faced a similar situtation earlier? <comment><USER2> Having been through this process once and hoping to never have to do it again - my sympathies.

I have one piece of advice for next time. The visa interviewers are usually rushed and trying to move on quickly. Slow them down and address their concerns.

You response to Officer: You are too young to be CTO. Whatever you just said does not make any sense. How long is your visit? Answer: 1 month

is not enough. The officer mentioned a concern but didn't phrase it as a question. Nevertheless you need to address it head on and put their doubts to rest. Give them the full story on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm an attorney. I don't know a whole lot about immigration policy, but I know some fantastic immigration attorneys in the Boston area that I can put you in contact with. I'm sure there is a solution to this that won't have you hung up too long.

My email is Chris at LexSpot dot com.

</comment><comment><USER4> As an American, I am truly sorry. Depending on the size of embassy/consulate you may have lost the which person sees your case lottery. If you could find someone else there to talk to about the situation it might help. Also perhaps try going to the American Chamber of Commerce. I believe they help business people get visas (although you may need to become a member).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion ohashi. I will give a 2nd shot at the visa interview. If they reject me again, I will probably approach the American Chamber of Commerce then!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is just one of many examples of how the global immigration system is completely failing to stay relevant to today's globalised society. I'm a global citizen...If I want to go on holiday, or a business trip, I don't want to have to apply for a Visa weeks before. I don't want to have to carry a physical passport about with me that expires when I have too many stamps. As a country, all you really care about is that I'm not a security risk, I'm not an illegal immigration risk, I'm not a criminal, and I'll pay whatever taxes are due. I'm ok with that, but surely there's a better way for both of us?

<comment><USER6> The problem is not the "global immigration system". The EU has extremely liberal policies with other EU countries, for example. It's the U.S. immigration system. It sucks balls.

<comment><USER5> The EU (or at least the Schengen countries) are getting there, but there are plenty of other countries that are problematic as well as the US. I'm British, so the EU is easy (still need a physical passport though), the US isn't too bad for tourism, but was painful to get a work visa for. I live in the Middle East, and love travelling to India which means a mountain of paperwork and a 3-month freeze-out each time I go. I could visit east Africa for a weekend on a whim, but I never do because of the visa lead-times. It strikes me that the best thing some countries could do for development is streamline their visa processes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Answer: talk to a lawyer who knows the ropes

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply michael. But can you please elaborate how will consulting a lawyer help my case?

<comment><USER8> You were treated wrongly.

A good lawyer who specialises in immigration will know what to do next.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Use an attorney for important requests such as visas. Immigration employees are overworked and underpaid, and sometimes rush through their decisions.

An attorney will help ensure that you have all the right papers in order, and give you important advice for the visa process. Now that you have one rejection on your file, it is especially important to get it right next time.

</comment><comment><USER10> The ridiculous thing is that he's only 7 years younger than the CTO of Facebook, and a mere 3 years younger than the CEO.

</comment><comment><USER11> #SiliconValleyProblems</comment>