Rethinking the scientific method - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer

<comment><USER2> Considering that most of these studies are by people with an interest in getting a certain result, it's likely experimental errors/not publishing some results will bias the published numbers in a certain direction.

The scientific method has never been proof against people that lie by omission.

<comment><USER3> He's writing about results that were validated through replication. That _is_ the scientific method. If what he's saying is accurate, the problem isn't a few bad apples (that's the proverbial reflexive defense of the status quo anyway).

 _But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain._

I have no idea if it's accurate, but Lehrer's a credible journalist, less prone to the sensational than most. If he's writing about this, it's probably because serious scientists are concerned about it.

(On another note, when I pasted the above, the following text showed up appended to my selection: _Read more[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer#ixzz17PM5acPA) _ How can such a venerable publication as the _New Yorker_ resort to such tackiness?)

<comment><USER4> The replication they are talking about in these particular pharma studies are of the nature that a pharma corp orders up twelve identical 8 person studies. Three studies come back showing their new pill helped a tiny bit, six show no the pill did nothing, and three show the patients got worse. They then cherry pick the three that showed it helped, and possibly toss in one of the ones that showed the pill did nothing just to cover up what they are doing. They then publish a paper showing that 3 out of 4 studies validated that the pills work. The other 8 studies are set on fire and never mentioned. And there is your multiple studies.

This is not some crazed conspiracy theory either, this (doing multiple very small sample size studies rather than one slightly larger study and discarding and never mentioning some of the studies with the least favorable results) is actually how it is now known to be done, and this methodology is the reason why some journals have started to say that all of the studies have to be registered in advance if they want to publish their results so that the companies can't selectively discard results like they have been doing.

<comment><USER5> A great article about how shaking our medical science is:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies- damne...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies- and-medical-science/8269)

And yet, surgeons and medicines have definitely helped me....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any non-paywall way to view the article? This looks like it might be interesting but I can only see the first couple paragraphs. The title makes me think of three things: Paul Feyerabend, Bayesian inference, and the increasing effectiveness of placebos. I'd be curious to see if any of them are in the article.

<comment><USER7> I don't know of any non-paywall way to view the article; I'm a (satisfied) New Yorker subscriber, so I've already paid.

It's a great article, by the way.

The answer to your latter (implied) question is "no"-- the article does not explicitly mention any of those three things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A rather sensationalist headline given that the scientific method already recognises the problems of human researchers and not only offers some mechanisms to counter those problems, but is eager for more.

<comment><USER9> I agree. The article's headlines has a distinct anti-intellectual flair, and yet the article itself points out human flaws in research rather than a fundamental flaw in the scientific method.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is not so much a problem with the scientific method as a problem with self-interested applications of statistics. F still equals m*a hundreds of years later, and that's not about to change.

<comment><USER3> Yet I wonder if "the" scientific method has in fact been overapplied way past its sweet spot of mechanics and so on. It's by no means obvious that it works as well in, say, medicine, let alone psychology, let alone sociology, let alone economics. The fact that it's the cult of our age perhaps blinds us from asking the interesting questions about its limits.

<comment><USER11> Why?

Medical science seems, sad to say, incompetent (<http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract> rediscovers integration, and statistical illiteracy among doctors has been repeatedly reported) and corrupt (conferences in lavish locations, vendor-sponsored efficacy research).

I'm sure there are good researchers, don't get me wrong, but I'm also not surprised that some really questionable stuff gets reported.

I'm sadly, even less aware of the state of research in sociology, but I'd like to point out that non-scientifically-tested psychological theories tend to be complete nonsense (cf. lots of Freud's work). With respect to economics: the field has many problems, but a book like Freakonomics is a very readable argument in favour of the use of statistics in (micro-)economical science and related fields. (Do note that the scientist-author, Levitt, actually understands statistics. This is, I suspect, important.)

That said, there _are_ issues with the scientific method, like the fact that it tells us to drop falsified hypotheses but does not, in itself, teach us how to find interesting results. That's not germane to your observation, though.

<comment><USER12> One reason the scientific method does not work on economics is that markets are anti-inductive[1]. If you can establish a regular pattern in their behavior, market participants start exploiting that pattern, and it goes away.

[1] <http://lesswrong.com/lw/yv/markets_are_antiinductive/>

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure this is such a strong attack on the scientific method. First, there's _much_ more to economics than predicting the stock market - a proper understanding of demand curves is useful even if everyone else has it as well. In fact, I'm not sure that predicting the stock market has more to do with mathematics than with mass psychology.

That said, I _do_ agree that properties of the stock market, once widely known, tend to be arbitraged away. From the article:

> There was a time when the Dow systematically tended to drop on Friday and > rise on Monday, and once this was noticed and published, the effect went > away.

However, that doesn't mean that the scientific method cannot produce true conclusions - it's just that those don't tend to _stay_ true.

lesswrong has much more impressive criticisms of the scientific method, IMHO. (The main one being that, while the scientific method will hopefully prevent you from endlessly clinging to a wrong hypothesis, it won't tell you how to find _good_ hypotheses.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's a PDF of the full article: <http://crayz.org/science.pdf>

<comment><USER11> It's interesting and all, but I think the New Yorker has a right to restrict access to paying subscribers.

EDIT: well, non-paying subscribers apparently. That makes me feel better.

<comment><USER13> I downloaded it by signing up for a free account, and it's littered with their ads

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The scientific method is fine. Note that this is about certain psychiatric pharmaceuticals being found not to have the efficacy that was earlier claimed, in studies done by pharmaceutical companies who doctored results and played statistics games and selectively hid results that didn't support profitability.

It's fascinating to see the level of hubris in the corporate pharmaceutical industry, that after cornered and confronted with the fact that for decades their self-serving fabricated so called research is fraudulent, they would now have a conference to announce that the scientific method has failed.

<comment><USER7> Did you read the article? It is not primarily about the pharmaceutical industry, or about doctoring results, although it touches on both of those topics. The argument is far more subtle, and more far-reaching.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The one that has me wondering how far off we might be is the idea that radioactive decay might not be constant:

[http://io9.com/5619954/the-sun-is-changing-the-rate-of- radio...](http://io9.com/5619954/the-sun-is-changing-the-rate-of-radioactive- decay-and-breaking-the-rules-of-chemistry)

<comment><USER4> That too demonstrates the scientific method in action. Experiments showed that the prevailing paradigm is likely flawed. Now we know more.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The TTY demystified (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/ <comment><USER2> I have read this with interest but the obsessive compulsive developer inside me keeps bothering me with questions like "isn't it worrying/depressing that today's best OS & applications are stuck with interfaces modeled with messy, leaky or no abstraction at all after devices used more than 100 years ago with no opportunity for radical improvement in sight ?". Sometimes I have the feeling that in software we are building skyscrapers on foundations of mud (usually after I read C code).

<comment><USER3> OK, but you have to admit it does the job and few (none?) people complain about the limitations of VT100 terminal emulation.

If we could start from scratch what would a contemporary TTY be like? Would it be better in terms of functionality, multi-platform capability? What would be the advantage?

<comment><USER4> I don't know if it's fair to describe this as a limitation of VT100 (and I haven't RTFA yet), but some things that AFAIK terminals don't get right yet:

\- Screen's scrollback buffer and my terminal's scrollback buffer don't know about each other. If I swap screen tabs frequently, my terminal scrollbar becomes useless. OTOH, if I use a tabbed terminal, I'm guessing it would use a different VT100 in each tab and that wouldn't work very well with screen.

\- I'd like to be able to drop a marker in my bash prompt, and easily scroll back to the top of the previous command.

\- For that matter, I'd like to be able to selectively hide the output of previous commands, and when I want to look at it again I'd like to be able to view it in less instead of just unfolding it in-place.

<comment><USER5> The scrollback buffer problem is annoying, but I just don't think there's a good solution to it.

screen (and tmux) basically store their own scrollback. The advantage here is that you can then page through the line history on another terminal or even another computer. The downside is that that your terminal (xterm/iterm/whatever) has to decide what to show when you page up. It has no way to read screen's internal scrollback, so it can either show you old non- screen lines, or hide the scrollback entirely. Switching into/out of screen will just add to the confusion.

(I think some terminals will hide the scrollback history when they spot the TTY in curses-style mode, and only bring it back when that process quits?)

One other annoyance for me is the behaviour of scrollback with a command like 'less' or 'more'. If you are paging down through a file, then scroll back up, some terminals will show you earlier lines of the file you are viewing, while others show you 'pre-less' scrollback.

<comment><USER4> There may not be a good solution currently, but I don't believe that no good solution is possible even in theory. Which makes me wonder if the VT100 paradigm is holding us back.

Like, if a VT100 understood the concept of tabs natively, it seems like this wouldn't be a problem. Screen could just map its windows onto VT100 tabs, and the terminal would know what to do with that.

I don't know if adding tabs to VT100 emulators would be remotely feasible, or a good idea if it was, but I expect there's _something_ in this space that would be an improvement on what we have.

<comment><USER6> Eh. A real VT100 should understand tabs, you can set them with 'Esc H' oddly the DEC manuals don't say what the effect of resetting tabs would be (I'd guess it defaults to multiples of 8 characters).

<comment><USER7> Not \x08 tabs, but tabs like recent firefox and chrome use (as if you had several terminal windows with separate ptys and screen contents, but all in one window-manager window).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fantastic!

This comes at a good time for me -- I'm getting interested in TTY emulation.

Currently on a learn-Emacs kick. Every couple of years I start using it then back off due to general cruftiness. However, it is undeniably featurefull, and the idea of just learning one last editor rather than a bunch of half-baked ones is appealing.

What about embedding Emacs, through a TTY interface in whatever new fancy cool TM editor experiment you want?

<comment><USER5> emacs is almost exactly the other way round - it provides its own TTY interface so you can run a shell or UNIX command inside its own buffers!

Good luck with the emacs learning. I've been a user for years and have barely scraped the surface of its features. Luckily, you don't need to be an expert in emacs for it to be a good editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The classic MacOS (not the UNIX-based one) has no terminal abstraction. The basic mechanism of the system is a GUI. That was a good move. (Not having a CPU dispatcher was a bad move; the underlying MacOS is very DOS-like.)

Then there's X-Windows, which was explicitly designed as a terminal system. There were special-purpose X-terminals once.

In the phone space, things are less terminal-like. Although, amusingly, the interface to the phone modem usually accepts the Hayes AT command set.

</comment><comment><USER10> Excellent article. Helped me to clearly understand tty. Thank-You :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Several times I've experienced unintentional humour arising from how "TTY" is usually pronounced.</comment>


Four things I want to explain to my past self as a Front end Developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.blaipratdesaba.com/four-things-i-want-to-explain-to-my-past-self-as-a-frontend-developer/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just want to share my first "real" blog entry. I'll appreciate any comments and suggestions :)</comment>


52 Lessons on the Psychology of Human Nature - <AUTHOR> https://www.arilewis.com/aris-posts/52-lessons-on-the-psychology-of-human-nature <comment><USER2> Lists are great but what am I supposed to take away from this? What is the context of each rule? What are examples and situations in which the rules apply? What are counter-examples? Where is the author's commentary associated with each rule? Where is a summary explaining the top 5-10 rules that everyone should be aware of so they can improve their lives?

My point is 52 is too many. Without further guidance it's lazy writing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked the list. It's easy to read.</comment>


Linus: ...documentation should be laughed at, peed upon, put on fire... - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2001/1/12/24

<comment><USER2> His point was that documentation shouldn't be taken as the final word since it is not always 100% accurate. Especially when writing kernel drivers.

So you do all the dramatic laughing and peeing and ... "THEN, and only then, have you reached the level where you can safely read it and try to use it to actually implement a driver."

So you're reading urine soaked documentation at this point. But I guess you're now going to be reading it with the appropriate level of skepticism.

A little over the top perhaps, but kind of entertaining.

<comment><AUTHOR> Linus' facility with language never ceases to amaze me. Even when he's over the top, he makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is operating systems development really such a horrific dystopic world full of jagged-teeth hardened programmers?

<comment><USER4> It is when you're famous enough for people pull out 12 year old (!!) posts without context just to flame about them. Sadly [https://www.kernel.org/doc/](https://www.kernel.org/doc/) isn't ever going to get the upvotes that junk like this does.

<comment><AUTHOR> What makes you think it was pulled out just to flame? I thought it was a colorful use of language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> well, documentation and reality easily get out of step - plus, documentation is a form of advertising.

Unit-tests, that you can run yourself to verify, are better documentation. Static typing is another form of reliable documentation.</comment>


'Angel particle' which is both matter and anti-matter discovered - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/angel-particle-anti-matter-quantum-physics-discover-stanford-university-california-irvine-a7851661.html <comment><USER2> Most of the discussion is here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839427)

And there's another comment here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14818725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14818725)

There are also other submissions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14817206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14817206)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14833208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14833208)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14840123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14840123)

</comment><comment><USER3> > It is thought the existence of fermions could be used to help bring about

Uh, this probably could have been worded more clearly. Presumably they meant the existence of that specific type of fermion?

Also, I got the impression that this is a quasiparticle, not like a proton or electron. If I'm correct about that, I think the article should have made it more clear?

<comment><USER4> Yep, it's a very badly written article.

It´s a quasiparticle that lives only in some types of superconductors, i.e. it´s a weird configuration of the electrons in the superconductor.</comment></comment>


Passengers pay more to jump taxi queue - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/smartphone-apps/passengers-pay-more-to-jump-taxi-queue-20120225-1tv4z.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The taxi industry is heavily regulated throughout Australia. The article points out how the powerful lobby group controlled by a few big players makes competition difficult for new entrants.</comment>


Web 2.0 is so over. Welcome to Web 3.0 - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/07/technology/hempel_threepointo.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009010815

<comment><USER2> Youtube was the only big sale? MySpace sold for $580M. Bebo sold for $850M. Last.fm sold for $280M, Facebook could (and probably should) have sold for over $1B. Surely there's more. They even talk about MySpace, just a couple sentences before saying YouTube was the only big sale.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well its CNN Money, they are used to dealing with bigger numbers. Probably ignored everything that was less than 1 billion

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow...quite ridiculous...and on cnn.com to boot!</comment>


Show HN: Runc – Compile and run C in one command - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alcover/runc <comment><USER2> This looks fun. I can't imagine it being directly useful but the idea itself is fun.

Couple of immediate issues with the repo:

\- Sample output in the README should not be prefixed with a "$". That's only for the shell command prompt.

\- Use ``` blocks in your README file. It's easier to format multi-line text.

\- Don't use $RANDOM, it's not secure. Use mktemp: [https://github.com/alcover/runc/blob/73aaecea5a4cd357f7172dd...](https://github.com/alcover/runc/blob/73aaecea5a4cd357f7172dd1618d98f0b5b45a01/runc#L122)

\- Don't exit with success if the command failed: [https://github.com/alcover/runc/blob/73aaecea5a4cd357f7172dd...](https://github.com/alcover/runc/blob/73aaecea5a4cd357f7172dd1618d98f0b5b45a01/runc#L131)

\- Use Bash strict mode: [http://redsymbol.net/articles/unofficial-bash- strict-mode/](http://redsymbol.net/articles/unofficial-bash-strict-mode/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Done, done and done. Thank you !

I need a little time to study your 'strict mode' suggestion. I used 'set -e' before but had problems with it.

Would you know how I could detect that input is cat'ed into the script ? ($ cat snippet.c | runc -i). So that I can suppress 'Type your code then CTRL+D'.

<comment><USER3> > Would you know how I could detect that input is cat'ed into the script ? ($ > cat snippet.c | runc -i). So that I can suppress 'Type your code then > CTRL+D'.

Stack Overflow suggests [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10022323/ddg#10022396](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10022323/ddg#10022396)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is not a complaint about the name. Just that as a command from the command line, "runc" may clash with the runc container running utility due to potential overlap in the likely users.

Again, it's not the project name just the potential clash at the OS level. Because over the years, I've done it to myself.

[https://github.com/opencontainers/runc](https://github.com/opencontainers/runc)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh. Especially if one puts my script into ~/bin and calls '$ runc ..'

I admit I didn't research the name 'runc'.

Should I rename it ? I like this one because it's short and explicit.

<comment><USER5> instead of runc, I think ccrun would be a good name. cc is usually the c compiler so ccrun would make sense and be short and explicit.

<comment><AUTHOR> 'ccrun' is nice, thanks. 'crun' would work also.

<comment><USER6> crun is actually a project that competes with runc. runc (run container) is implemented in go, and crun is a mostly drop-in reimplementation of it in C that is more faster and simpler, it's currently gaining traction in rhel/centos/fedora and suse linux as it was first to implement newer features such as cgroup v2.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well.. it looks like .com domains : all 4-letters taken ;)

<comment><USER7> Other ideas: execc, cexec, cmk, mkc, exc, cex (my personal favorite :p).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neat. It wraps GCC.

See also Cling, an interactive C++ interpreter.

[https://github.com/root-project/cling](https://github.com/root-project/cling)

</comment><comment><USER9> Quick and ugly alternative is chmod+x and add something like this to the top of your file:

      //$(which gcc) $0 -o a.out; ./a.out $@; rm a.out; exit

<comment><AUTHOR> Clever polyglot file!

Does not work in the spirit of my script though, since you would still need to add headers and main():

      //$(which gcc) $0 -o a.out; ./a.out $@; rm a.out; exit
      int i = 10;
      printf ("%d\n", i);

_. /snip.c:3:9: error: expected declaration specifiers or '...' before string constant printf ("%d\n", i);_

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is definitely helpful for testing.

Also related is the tiny C compiler and its `tcc -run` command.

<comment><USER11> I was just about to reply about the same thing:

      #!/usr/bin/tcc -run

      #include <stdio.h>

      int main() {
        printf("Hello\n");
        return 0;
      }

<comment><USER12> Or even

      tcc -w -run - <<< 'main() { printf("Hello\n"); return 0; }'

However, runc seems more convenient to pass in just the statements.

<comment><USER11> That wasn't quite what I was trying to show with the snippet - I was intimating that you can use tcc to run C directly in something like a shell script.

If you want to make `tcc -w -run` etc. more convenient then:

      alias trun='tcc -w -run - <<<'
      trun 'main() { printf("Hello\n"); return 0; }'

\---

I can't edit my parent comment now, but it can be improved with e.g.

      //usr/bin/tcc -run $0; exit
      main() { printf("Hello\n"); return 0; }

<comment><USER12> > That wasn't quite what I was trying to show with the snippet - I was > intimating that you can use tcc to run C directly in something like a shell > script.

I know, but the first example in the link was:

      $ runc 'printf("%s\n", "Hello!");'
      Hello!

So I figured I'd complement your example use with one that was more analogous to that.

> I can't edit my parent comment now, but it can be improved with e.g.

To be honest, I liked your original example more. Using that `//` "shebang" depends on what shell it's invoked from, and it wouldn't work when calling exec from other languages. For example, with your last example using `//`:

      $ python -c 'import subprocess; subprocess.run(["./hello-tcc-double-slash-shebang.c"])'
      Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
        File "/usr/lib/python3.8/subprocess.py", line 489, in run
          with Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs) as process:
        File "/usr/lib/python3.8/subprocess.py", line 854, in __init__
          self._execute_child(args, executable, preexec_fn, close_fds,
        File "/usr/lib/python3.8/subprocess.py", line 1702, in _execute_child
          raise child_exception_type(errno_num, err_msg, err_filename)
      OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error: './hello-tcc-double-slash-shebang.c'

while it would work with the `#!` shebang, since that's handled by the kernel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> why not call it rungcc, like the FSF t-shirt: [https://shop.fsf.org/tshirts- hoodies/run-gcc-shirt](https://shop.fsf.org/tshirts-hoodies/run-gcc-shirt)

</comment><comment><USER14> D has the `rdmd` command for running D code in one command.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of [1] "c" a utility which allows you to execute C code as if it were a script. It's a shame the name is almost unsearchable in Google though...

[1] [https://github.com/ryanmjacobs/c](https://github.com/ryanmjacobs/c)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wrote something similar a few years ago: [https://github.com/neilparikh/crepel](https://github.com/neilparikh/crepel)

I wrote this for a hackathon, so please excuse the messy code :)

</comment><comment><USER17> This idea has a lot of history behind it. The traditional term is "compile and go".

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

</comment><comment><USER18> I really like Tom Duff's [http://www.iq0.com/duffgram/com.html](http://www.iq0.com/duffgram/com.html) to compile and run in two commands.

</comment><comment><USER19> Another take on the same idea: [https://git.zx2c4.com/cscript/about/](https://git.zx2c4.com/cscript/about/)

</comment><comment><USER20> why not just do

        gcc main.c && ./a.out

<comment><USER7> That doesn't include the headers. It also leaves a.out on your system.

<comment><USER21> What are the headers in this context that are not getting included? Shouldn't main.c include any necessary headers?

<comment><USER7> Yes, but runc includes the headers for you.

<comment><USER21> I'm sorry, I don't see the benefit of runc including a small list of headers for me. A small test program like main.c ought to be self-contained and might need headers not supplied by runc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why is this submission submitted a day ago showing up as new again? @dang</comment>


SpaceX Crew Dragon Splashes Down After Historic Test Flight - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacex-crew-dragon-splashes-down-after-historic-test-flight/ <comment><USER2> This is a better article on the recovery than the one I linked from TechCrunch.

I would like to reiterate the point made before which is that SpaceX is on the verge of being in a place that no company has ever been before with regard to space.

The are on the cusp of having a capsule that they can send into orbit for days and then return to Earth. They already have rockets capable of putting tons of material into every orbit level (Low, mid, and geo-stationary). SpaceX is also nearing completion of their own launch facility in Texas.

When all of those things are added together, SpaceX can do space 'tourism' like nobody else. They could offer a 'day trip' on a Dragon into orbit. By partnering with Bigelow Aerospace[1] they could launch a habitat into orbit where they could ferry their own paying customers to spend a week in space. With their own launch facility they are freed from the scheduling hassles of the dozens of other clients who compete for space on those launch pads.

That would definitely feel like living in the future to me.

[1] [https://www.bigelowspaceops.com/](https://www.bigelowspaceops.com/)

<comment> Tuna-Fish They are unlikely to do this at this point.

The big problem is that while the capsule will be reusable, since NASA killed the propulsive landing for Dragon 2, it now needs to splash down in saltwater and therefore is not considered safe for humans after the first use.

This makes Dragon 2:s too expensive for large-scale space tourism. Unless there is suddenly a huge market for this, I think SpaceX would prefer to sell interested space tourism customers flights on Starship instead.

<comment><USER3> where did you hear that dragon 2 is not safe for humans after splashdown? that's not accurate

<comment><USER4> Can confirm it's not accurate.

<comment><USER5> thank you for the confirmation trashaccount123

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And it's a wrap! A big congratulations for all those who made this possible, public and private entities. The United States has almost restored its ability to send manned crews to space, via re-usable, cheap, and privately funded/sustained spaceflight as a bonus.

To LEO, the Moon, Mars, and beyond!

</comment><comment><USER7> SpaceX is an antidote to the idea that home food delivery is great innovation. It's a beacon to nerds everywhere. You may not be able to build a space company, but spend at least some of your time and skills doing things that are truly _new_.

<comment><USER8> Space is cooler than home deliveries, but pretty much all economic evolution comes from ordinary things getting much cheaper, not crazy things becoming possible but still absurdely expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there any more technical data on performance during re-entry (was there any issue will roll?) and at splashdown (how did the parachutes perform?)

Those were the two big question marks from what I understand.

<comment><USER10> There is a great 2h+ video, recorded live from earlier today, that soft- answers a couple of these questions. There was a panel discussion with NASA folks [2], where they talk about some successes of re-entry and parachutes deployment. You can watch the parachutes deployment yourself [3]. But, I think they will be sifting through this data for a few weeks before you have hard answers. Reddit is also a super active place for early news via [https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex).

It is also incredible that we can watch all this real-time too. Just amazing!

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aAe0GWIWGI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aAe0GWIWGI)

[2] [https://youtu.be/8aAe0GWIWGI?t=6219](https://youtu.be/8aAe0GWIWGI?t=6219)

[3] [https://youtu.be/8aAe0GWIWGI?t=4303](https://youtu.be/8aAe0GWIWGI?t=4303)

<comment><USER11> I watched and and while to me it seemed like there was a whole lot of buffeting / oscillation it very well could have been much less or more than a Soyuz. Unsurprisingly I don't have the domain experience to judge it and would appreciate some perspective from those in the know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am so damn proud of what SpaceX has accomplished!

At the same time, it just seems a bit lame to watch this whiplashing splash down in the ocean with parachutes instead of a perfectly smooth VTOL landing on a pad.

Particularly as the chutes seems to billow and twist, one seemed to trade positions with another which I'm sure is fine but in the moment seemed worrisome, and the craft bobbing and twisting at the end of the ropes...

Is the ultimate longer term plan a Dragon that can land properly under its own power?

<comment> grey-area They thought about it, but no, the ultimate long term plan is that huge shining steel starships will take off and land on the same pad carrying lots more people or cargo. Some things are easier when you're bigger.

<comment><USER9> Apparently the SuperDracos have the necessary thrust and fuel to bring Dragon to a stop from terminal velocity, Dragon just lacks the landing gear.

So then why not use that to slow down just before a splash down?

Perhaps if you throttle them down to the point where the G-force is reasonable, the losses to gravity add up too quickly and you run out of thrust. Too bad :-(

<comment><USER12> The primary reasons they don't do this are likely economic, but the hypergolic fuel used by SuperDracos also isn't particularly healthy [0].

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/29qwj9/how_toxic_wi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/29qwj9/how_toxic_will_the_superdraco_exhaust_be/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Goin a little 'get off my lawn' : what's the big deal here? What's it leading to? Where is it taking us? What's the return on all of the investment (except further enriching a few of the right pockets)?

We aren't going to the stars. We're not colonizing space. Do we need to mine resources off-planet because we waste so many resources on-planet? Our robotic solar system explorers don't really need any help.

OTOH, we are destroying the spaceship we were born on, with so many indifferent tactics that it sometimes almost seems planned. Other, helpless species are disappearing regularly. So I find it hard to feel celebratory about these minor victories on the way to ... ???

</comment><comment><USER14> Who knows the actual weights? How much did the capsule weight dry? Consumables ex. fuel and pressurization gas for it? Fuel and pressurization gas? Trunk section? All data i can find is extremely contradictory and makes an impression that project went way way way out of it's initial mass budget and SpaceX is trying to conceal it to avoid losing face, as it exposes troubles managing the project. Ofc it's not a deal breaker, as F9 rocket has grown in capability a great log along the way too, but still?

</comment><comment><USER15> SpaceX has single handedly revived the space industry over the past decade. Kudos and Good luck!

<comment><USER16> Rovers on asteroids, landing on comets, exploring rocks on the edge of the solar system, returning asteroid samples to earth, landing on the far side of the moon, orbiting mercury

But sure, single handedly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice work, but they have flown and landed capsules for many years already.

It's still well possible congress will find a way to prevent crewed flights. Or there might some Falcon 9 mishap.

</comment><comment><USER18> Could anyone explain what is historic about this test flight? Why is that so different from a bog standard Soyuz or Mercury/Gemini/Apollo?

<comment><USER19> If you read the article you'd probably be able to work it out, but essentially:

\- it marks the return of American human launch capabilities after a several year hiatus from the retirement of the space shuttle

\- it is being done on by a private company (with government funding), which is unprecedented

\- dragon crew is intended to be reusable (in opposition to Shuttle/mercury/Gemini/Apollo

\- the capsule is designed to have inflight abort capability, which is unprecedented and a differentiator from the Boeing effort (previous abort capability came from a 'towed' approach (the big pointy thing on top of Apollo) and was only available on the pad, not in-flight, so if something goes wrong during flight the crew is probably buggered)

(Edit: removed Soyuz from list of non-in flight abort capsules)

<comment><USER20> Question about the inflight abort: Soyuz has this too. It was used a few months ago when a launch to the ISS went non-nominal. How is the one on Crew Dragon different?

<comment><USER19> You're right. I believe the Soyuz uses two modes, the first is architecturally similar to the Apollo system (ie uses the 'towed' mode) whereas the crew dragon has abort built into the capsule.

<comment><USER21> Soyuz has one "tower", which can work both before liftoff [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No._16L](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No._16L) and in flight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How do they plan to land it when humans are aboard?

<comment><USER23> Into the ocean just like the test. This is how it is always done with the exception of the space shuttle program I believe.

<comment><USER24> In terms of capsule spacecraft, by volume of recoveries, mercury/gemini/apollo using the ocean are actually a statistical anomaly compared to the total number of successful land based Soyuz + Shenzhou recoveries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Film...

[https://youtu.be/gsIkeFaC1vg](https://youtu.be/gsIkeFaC1vg)

</comment><comment><USER26> I wish they wouldn't call it historic. What word will they use when it Carrie's actual people?

<comment><USER27> That will also be historic. History is made every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So I'm a fan of spacex in the sense that they're taking an atraditional approach to space exploration and colonization. However, our current ride to space has been operating reliably since 1978, we've been building and sending large space stations up since the early 70s. Spacex only very recently got their closed cycle engine working, the pinnacle of rocket efficiency, catching up to, again, early 1970s Russian technology. Taking the human out of the loop by automating Dragon is great, but remember, we sent three humans to the moon in, you guessed it, the 70s, with less computing power than my toaster oven. Hats off to the team for what they've done thus far. it's a momentous achievement for the private sector, but they have a ways to go before any kind of groundbreaking achievements. Fantastic marketing though |)

<comment><USER29> I like how you list all these things and entirely leave out the landing an orbital class rocket, which no private company nor governmental agency has ever done.

They're also pretty much doing it all themselves for a fraction of the price due to vertical integration, which is also unique.

Raptor is a full-flow staged combustion engine. Others have been made, yes, but none have flown. Right now Raptor is the only methalox variety of such an engine to ever reach a test stand.

<comment><USER21> Agree. As it's usually the case, they achieve a lot by standing on the shoulders of giants, but they achieve nevertheless. Space Shuttle was splashing down solid boosters since early 80's - but SpaceX lands softly liquid first stages, which require much less pampering to prepare for the next flight. Capsules are built and flown since early 60's - but SpaceX first tests a capsule for more than 3 people. And reuses a cargo spacecraft after splashdowns. And has lots of launches per year of a rather heavy rocket (previously some years have seen similar activities with Soyuz rockets, but then a government was fully behind it). And all of that in commercial environment, not when a government first articulates the orders, even though SpaceX has to adapt to then a great deal.</comment></comment></comment>


The Best Textbooks on Every Subject - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subject/ <comment><USER2> I looked through the list a little bit, but it seems a bit haphazard. It would be nice if it were organized hierarchically, and there were some indications as to how many people concurred or disputed various recommendations.

There used to be a website, one canonicaltomes.org that did these things: there was an organizational scheme in place, and a voting mechanism, and the number of votes a book received was displayed. Unfortunately it became defunct long ago. You can still browse what they had, back in early 2006, on archive.org [1]

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20060214203037/http://www.canoni...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060214203037/http://www.canonicaltomes.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Each recommended book comes with a link to the comment of the person that recommended it. Click on the link that says recommend. Then you can read their comments to know the reason for the recommendation and look at how many upvotes it has to see if other people approve.

I agree it's very haphazard.</comment></comment>


I quit my job at the age of 36 to be happy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/goodnightjournal/i-quit-my-job-at-the-age-of-36-to-be-happy-d42f9809b75e <comment><USER2> Or more accurately 'I quit working in a job for someone else, and switched to working in a job for myself writing a web app that has paying customers.'

When I see 'I quit my job' I tend to think that the person _no longer works for a living_ , which is not what this article is about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did medium just start blocking content if you dont log in? Used to be an annoying popup..

<comment><USER4> Use NoScript extension and you'll be fine. It works with other sites too and make some of them load faster.

<comment><USER5> Another good extension for selectively blocking JavaScript, cookies, etc. is uMatrix (from the maker of uBlock Origin). (I've been a happy user of it for many years.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Must be nice.</comment>


HN-Books - <AUTHOR> http://hn-books.com/ <comment><USER2> Please provide normal links, because I always (always, always, always...) open lots of links in new tabs. Not being able to middle-click/control-click the links is a huge usability defect.

<comment><USER3> The site was virtually unusable for me due to this, it really is critical.

<comment><USER4> It will be fixed very shortly. I appreciate the comments.

These are some HTML5-ish buttons I borrowed from another site. I had a bit of trouble with the links, so I just added the onclick code. Never occurred to me the different usage pattern.

EDIT: Ctrl-Click now working in dev. I should have it pushed up to production in the next few minutes. Sorry about the trouble. -- Done.

<comment><USER3> Thank you very much for taking notice. :)

I'm an inveterate multitasker and if my middle-click/vimium breaks or the links are otherwise odd (not to mention the noticeable lag the html5 elements were causing for google chrome OS X) it throws me way off my rhythm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice, very nice. There are a lot of good critiques in the comments and I might agree with some... But my initial gut reaction was 'yes - I get what this is and like the basic design...'

I would imagine in time links to the actual HN discussions of the book might be nice (though it would not be too hard to google that oneself).

I open links in tabs too - so I would agree with that comment.

More 'click to sort' options, maybe by language.

For a Beta example site I liked it. Good start.

</comment><comment><USER6> Feature request: Please detect user's country and use appropriate amazon locale. eg I need to see .co.uk links not .com

<comment><USER7> What is the practical difference for you between the sites? Do the books ship faster and cheaper for .co.uk? I wonder why wouldn't Amazon's backend just figure it automatically and just ship locally anyway.

<comment><USER8> I spent a good deal of effort on the issue of Amazon locales for my book web app. There are quite a few reasons for this:

* Some books will exist in one locale but not in others;

* Some books will be in stock in a locale but not in others;

* Some books will have a different cover and/or slightly different edition if it's a UK or USA version;

* If you are buying the Kindle version, availability varies by country, but only UK residents can buy from the UK Kindle store.

* If you buy many books from the States and you live in the UK, you'll end up paying hefty import charges.

* Delivery from your closest Amazon is usually faster (provided the books are in stock) and free (or cheaper for expedite shipment).

If you go to the Staff Picks of the Week section of my site (<http://anynewbooks.com/staff-picks/>), you'll notice how under each book I'm forced to place up to 5 links (US, Canada, UK, Kindle international, UK Kindle). It may be slightly confusing, but in my experience international readers appreciate the effort (the rest of the world is quite sick of US only web apps to be frank).

<comment><USER9> Removed (redundant).

Saw just after posting that a good few other people already offered the same information.

<comment><USER8> Did you mean to reply to me with this comment?

<comment><USER9> I originally posted that I thought books were exempt from charges, but then saw someone right below had already said (and with more certainty than me!).

Sorry, probably should have either left it there or deleted it entirely.

<comment><USER8> Oh OK, no worries. My comment went from many upvotes to several downvotes, because people assumed that you were saying that my information was redundant and should be removed. We got to experience a bit of a hive-mind on HN. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice start and a good reaction to the information overload of book recommendation threads :)

A few comments:

\- Zooming on image covers seems pointless to me (is it just me?)

\- I'd like to see some kind of indicator of usefulness/relevance of books (books 1 person recommended vs books that crop up in every single thread), whether you just open it up to upvoting and downvoting, pull in review data, or get more complex

\- One step further, crowdsource book summaries - let a contributor submit 'cliff's notes' for a book rather than just a review.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very clever idea. If you are looking for a complimentary service to discover new books, you could signup with my site <http://anynewbooks.com>, and select categories like Programming or Business and Investing. The latter is one of my favorite categories, because there are always great new titles for it. (Warning for the tech crowd: you will receive one weekly email per category you pick, so don't go crazy. :))

</comment><comment><USER11> Well executed. There are a lot of books on the list I'd never heard of, but look interesting.

Also, nice monetisation idea, jacquesm!

Do you intend to use this site for profit (nothing wrong with that..) or have some ideas to promote "hacker culture" with the monies.

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't mine, it's DanielBMarkham's site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there any reason the links to books use javascript instead of a regular anchor?

<comment><USER13> To mask the affiliate links perhaps.

<comment><USER14> That was my thought. And if it's correct, it's not worth it given the aff link is visible at the Amazon page, and if there was ever a crowd that would know to check for it, this is it.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with the aff links. Profit is fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very nice idea!

I would also like to see links back to collections of the discussion pages - maybe scraped and organized automatically?

I might be biased since I've been reading these books now, but I think there should be more Lisp books. It might not be strictly correct to put On Lisp, SICP, and Paradigms of AI Programming in "functional programming" (although I am not sure about a JQuery book in that category) but there are a few threads in the HN archives with solid discussion on Lisp books so I think they do deserve a place somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice site Daniel, any chance of some RSS feeds or an API?, I'd love to integrate this with <http://hackernewsers.com/books.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> excellent idea. i'd love to be able to sort by format and price, though. rather than voting to select personal preference, how about having order-able lists that i can share?

<comment><USER4> Don't know if you saw this or not, but the lists are orderable and sharable now -- as you make changes, the link changes at the top. Just copy the link for whatever settings you like.

Needs to have format and price, though. Right now it's only sortable by experience level and question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> No SICP?

Also, Javascript: The Good Parts is duplicated.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great site, a successor to the defunct Programming-Books.com. /bookmarked.

Question: What's the source of your book info?

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow, that BIOS book is a great find. Thanks!

<comment><USER21> I thought so, too, until I saw that it's selling for $679. Then I saw that your account was created an hour ago so I wonder if you're being sarcastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wonderful! I've been looking for a resource like this for a while. Many blog posts, but nothing like this.

</comment><comment><USER23> Thanks for doing this. Just a point about the site itself: scrolling seems to lock up while items are loading (which it does for some time). Maybe you could make it less aggressive with the async loading of items (load a few, load more when I get to the bottom)?

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Just wondering why you chose to require JavaScript for this site? It strikes me that it would have been just as easy to write it without any JavaScript, but then adding a small amount of client side JS for client side sorting when JS is available?

</comment><comment><USER24> There is going to be a lot of books in there, so _filtering_ is a must, sorting just isn't enough.

EDIT: I mean this for "Noob ... Expert" selection. Also simple tags would probably be better than those "How to xx some xx"

</comment><comment><USER25> I really like it. One suggestion: changing the "How to" section to radios so I don't select two at once. As far as I can tell, any two "How to"s result in zero result.

<comment><USER4> The combinations work, although not as much as I'd like

For instance, here's the list of books about how to tell people about your business and run a killer startup, for folks who already know a bit:

[http://hn-books.com/#1=Q1V1&10=Q10V0&11=Q11V0&12...](http://hn- books.com/#1=Q1V1&10=Q10V0&11=Q11V0&12=Q12V0&13=Q13V0&14=Q14V0&15=E1V0&16=E2V0&17=E3V1&18=E4V0&2=Q2V1&3=Q3V0&4=Q4V0&5=Q5V0&6=Q6V0&7=Q7V0&8=Q8V0&9=Q9V0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Was this an off shoot of a previous Show HN?

I remember a similar concept based around topics within books, but I've not been able to find it again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it was. Daniel's been busy :)

<comment><USER26> You don't happen to have a link do you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It should be noted that this is a great way for the site owner/creator to make commissions on each purchase through the provided links.

</comment><comment><USER28> hi nice site, please consider having a table view that have the following columns: Book Title, Author, Publication Date (make the table sortable by any row)

And if I click the table row, it can expand to the long descriptions and cover shot you added to each book. What first at attracts me to a book is the title, author and how recent it is!

</comment><comment><USER29> please implement pagination. Firefox froze for a few seconds while rendering your page.

</comment><comment><USER30> There were a few threads on non programming books too. You could add them to that list.

</comment><comment><USER31> It would be great to be able to see the HN comments about a book, and who made them.

</comment><comment><USER32> JavaScript: The Good Parts has a duplicate!!

UPDATE: many books are duplicated.

</comment><comment><USER33> Feature request: Ability to see only books that have an e-book version available.

<comment><USER34> Amen. Almost any time anyone recommends a book on here, I immediately go for the eBook on Amazon for my Kindle app on my iPhone/iPad. The most annoying thing about Steve Blank's book was the fact that there's no electronic version. For me, that's almost always a deal-breaker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Are you violating any copyright laws because you're using Amazon's images?

<comment><USER36> I'm pretty sure that's allowed. Amazon has a really nice xml interface designed to make it easy for you to sell books for amazon.com. I'm fairly certain that they provide photos for the same reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Well done. I have one request: The ability to filter by language

</comment><comment><USER38> Not reachable at 23.37 EST

</comment><comment><USER39> Hey it would be nice to add a discussions/comments page. Of course we can have the discussions here on HN but the site will keep it active for much more time.

</comment><comment><USER40> clickable: <http://hn-books.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the link in the submission not clickable for you ?</comment></comment>


What It's Like to Live on Low Pay in a Land of Plenty - brown9-2 http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/12/17/251992536/security-guards-at-big-tech-companies-struggle-with-low-pay <comment><AUTHOR> I never know what to make of these articles. I started out with low pay in Silicon Valley, too; I took a job at a startup in 1999 making $15/hour doing IT desktop support. In 2002 (edit: this was 2002, not 2001), when I quit to do consulting and start my own company, things were miserable in the Valley--and my salary as a developer was still only $49,500/year then.

I am a college dropout. By traditional standards, then, this guy has more than I do: He has a college degree. Working at a tech company, he had to see that the developers/sysadmins/computer folks made more than he did.

I find this juxtaposition interesting because, certainly, a similar article could have been written about me in 1999. $15 an hour was a terrible wage then in the Valley, too.

Faced with something similar, I asked several of the developers at our company to teach me development. They were amused at this young 18-year-old girl asking them what a "for loop" was. But they taught me.

It took me a while to pick up Linux system administration, bash shell scripting, Perl and PHP (this was in 1999-2000.) When I dropped out of school in 2001, my parents cut me off financially, so I shared tiny apartments, slept on couches, and made ends meet.

Now, at age 32, I've bootstrapped a startup to a 7-figure sale and am now the CEO of a funded startup.

For most of my life, I've dealt with depression and believing I was not "good enough." In that way, I empathize with Manny. If he's reading this, I would like to say to him: I stand here as proof that a minority with no college degree and no formal education can make it in this world. You live in Silicon Valley. If you really want to pull yourself out of poverty, all doors can be open to you. The first step is believing that you can do it.

<comment><USER2> > _things were miserable in the Valley--and my salary as a developer was still > only $49,500 /year then._

You were making $50k - (in 2001?) - that's $65k in 2012 dollars.

This guy is making $16,800 ($1,400/mo). That's 4 times less than you were, and you think you're comparable?

<comment><AUTHOR> I started out doing desktop support for $15/hour. (I actually think I started out making less, but I'm not sure how much "less" was--perhaps $12/hour? so I quoted the higher number.) $49,500/year was _after_ I spent over a year learning development, and our startup got bought out by a huge company, and I interviewed into a role at the big company as a developer.

I also started out working for a subcontractor, much like Manny in the article. Indeed, I do think it's comparable.

Manny also has lower expenses than I did, since he lives with his mom, and in a traditional way of looking at things, he has more "opportunities" open to him since he has a college degree and I was a dropout.

<comment><USER3> Implicit in your reasoning is the suggestion that a security guard doesn't deserve a dignified living wage. I disagree with that -- I think in a civilized society he should be able to afford his own place, provide for his daughter, give her rides as needed without sacrificing job security, etc. As the other poster mentioned, we /need/ such people... we need people who mow the lawns, people who flip burgers, people who shovel snow. We shouldn't think of them as humans that don't deserve a respectable living wage.

re: luck, and making it in the valley

Consider the fact that if there was someone quite like Bill Gates, same skillset, same personality, etc. starting out today, how far he'd be able to get. I would assert that it's unlikely that he'd be able to maneuver the SV world today and be able to get more than about 300k. But the real-life Bill Gates has some 60 billion dollar worth... so what's the issue? Clearly luck is a big factor.. you have to be at the right place at the right time, with the connections, with the money, etc. I have known _way_ too many poor people who work _unbelievably_ hard... so I just couldn't disagree more with what you have to say.

I would like to respectfully suggest to you that you take some time out and maybe volunteer at a soup kitchen so that you are made more familiar with the real battles a lot of people face today. People like you and I, but without the social support, without the coveted connections and networks, without the job security, without the time to be able to learn a programming language without external pressures (like the pressure to just make money for this month's rent, so your daughter still has a roof on her head). It's very tough for them out there, and getting up is not as easy as you think it is.

<comment><USER4> "In a civilized society one should be able to afford his own place, provide for his daughter, give her rides as needed without sacrificing job security, etc" \- should society provide a place for a person in a location of its choosing?

<comment><USER5> Should the door in the location of your choosing have a guard?

Two questions, same answer.

<comment><USER4> I don't see how this question fits anywhere in this discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know, maybe some people who lives there might find some sense in the story, but to me it just doesn't make any sense (I'm east European living in London). Seems just like another try to blame someone else for his own choices how to live a life.

In the end, if you want to be equal with other employers, maybe it is time to consider what makes them being more equal and try to reach it yourself instead of just telling the world how unfair the world is.

But that just my personal opinion, maybe now it is considered O.K. to act like that.

</comment><comment><USER7> I dislike the implication that external contractors are basically second-class employees that are being exploited by the hiring company. Google has no idea what this person makes. Google hired a security company to perform a service. Event/site security is not Google's core competency.

I am well aware of the external contractor dynamic. I work at a small company that provides services to $Fortune_500_company. My access badge is a different color than $Fortune_500_company employees, and I am not allowed to partake in certain employee perks. In fact, $Fortune_500_company is very clear that despite working on their computer, having their email address, having an assigned seat at their campus, and being on their phone system, I am not an employee of theirs. I am OK with this.

There are plenty of ways to be screwed in your career. Your contractor/staff status should be considered an unrelated byproduct.

<comment><USER8> > Google has no idea what this person makes.

They can certainly find out. Just like ethically sourced coffee beans are a thing; ethically sourced menial labour can be a thing. It's hip and cool to use ethically sourced labor that isn't toxic to the society you live in. :-)

<comment><USER7> How would you define an ethical wage for menial labor?

<comment><USER9> How about a wage that was at least a decent amount above the federal poverty level?

<comment><USER7> By most measures the man in question does earn a rate higher than the "federal poverty level". It seems like the issue is that he doesn't work enough hours.

<comment> lhc- The federal poverty level isn't particularly relevant if you are in a place that is considerably more expensive than average. Also, its not that he does not want to work enough hours, his employer doesn't allow him to work more. Plus, by that token, I could argue $7/hour is a livable wage, as long as you work 100 hours a week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> /s

Does anybody see a link to this guys github profile? I wonder how far along he is on any side projects that he's working on. Surely he must hang out at any of the many coworking spaces in SF on the weekend, right?

I don't mean to be crass here, but...there are SO MANY programs available for this guy to learn to code, and then get the employee benefit of taking home free food from his employer (seriously? He's upset they don't let him take free food?)

I don't really buy the excuse anymore that people are just being held down by "the system", _especially_ in tech.

I've tried with /so many/ people who are in similar "woe is me" situations to teach them to program. I've bought VPSs for them, I've set up curricula for them, I've invited them to hackathons, offered to work on projects with them, etc. etc. etc.

And they don't take it.

One friend, who I got a job with my employer as a part time support person, needed help building his resume. At the time, I was building a new mail server for us, and I told him I wanted him to help me with it so that he could add some linux sys admin work to his resume.

Did he accept it? Nope! He spent his time at home watching Netflix and playing WoW, or age of empires or something.

A month later these people are on facebook complaining about how the evil wealthy people are holding them down.

\--

He's working 30 hours a week, and lives with his mom. C'mon, man, you're being handed the ability to learn to code and build a github profile of a freaking golden platter. Get to it! Or...stop complaining about making $18/hr and only getting to /eat/ the free gourmet buffet, when you wish you could take it home.

\--

Furthermore, move out of the bay area, man! That's one of the most expensive places to live in the country! Go move to Iowa, or North Dakota. Those places have high qualities of life, good wages, and low costs of living.

The Bay is one of the most desirable places in the WORLD to live. I'd love to have sympathy for a guy making $18/hr and living the San Jose, but I just can't bring myself to.

<comment><USER11> _Furthermore, move out of the bay area, man! That 's one of the most expensive places to live in the country!_

Whenever I see these articles, I think about what makes the Bay Area expensive. The key factor is housing prices.

There's a limited amount of land available near the centers of SV because of mountains and natural areas. Supply is strictly constrained and demand is very strong because of industry growth. The result is spiraling prices far above what would seem reasonable elsewhere.

Supply constraint isn't really a natural limit, though. Bay Area housing is spread out, low density, even sprawling. Even San Francisco is only half the density of Brooklyn. San Jose and San Mateo county mostly look like a suburb of Omaha.

Market demand would indicate big profit opportunities for anyone who can buy up a subdivision and build a neighborhood of three story flats on wide sidewalks and two lane streets. That would be over double the density of San Francisco and ten times the density of a typical San Mateo subdivision. You could easily afford to buy up property, knock down current buildings and carry away a huge profit. But you can't get permission from planning boards.

Or you could build like Tokyo, which is a little less dense than Brooklyn. You'd make free standing two or three story single family homes with very little yard on 15' single lane streets and small blocks. That's the same density as Brooklyn, 2.5 times San Francisco.

Or you could even build like San Francisco, but in San Jose. That's efficient enough in land per housing unit to make big money.

But it's all prohibited.

The Bay Area has chosen to be unlivable and unpleasant by its choice of public officials. Those city officials have prohibited the practices that make city living affordable. The result of bad public officials is an unhappy public.

<comment><USER12> > The Bay Area has chosen to be unlivable and unpleasant by its choice of > public officials.

You seem to confuse "high density" with "livable" or "pleasant". I don't think that makes a lot of sense.

> Those city officials have prohibited the practices that make city living > affordable.

San Francisco -- whose development policies you suggest would make San Jose more affordable -- is more expensive to live in than San Jose. Tokyo and New York City -- your other comparators for the Bay Area -- aren't exactly bastions of affordability.

The profits for developers if your proposals were adopted are, of course, clear. The mechanism by which "affordable", "livable", or "pleasant" come out of them is far less clear.

<comment><USER11> I've seen dense pleasant and unpleasant and rural pleasant and unpleasant and most possibilities in between. I don't mean to equate the one axis with the other. It is very challenging to build mid-density pleasant surroundings without making car traffic impossibly nasty, though. The DPZ architecture firm in Miami has proven that heroic effort can answer even that challenge.

San Francisco is more expensive than San Jose because more people want to live in a city built like SF than one like SJ. Building more SF and less SJ style will make people happier and produce more housing per acre.

 _Tokyo and New York City ... aren 't exactly bastions of affordability_

Correlation isn't causation.

The laws of supply and demand show that more supply will lower prices and less supply forces prices up. Building more quality higher density neighborhoods will make housing more affordable.

Historically very desirable areas became expensive which led to denser construction so more people could afford them. Now the denser areas that were so desirable are often still desirable and still expensive. It wasn't the density that led to the expense, though; the density is mitigating the expense.

There is a limit to what you can do with density to mitigate expense before things get unpleasant and Manhattan is near the limit. Tokyo is not. San Jose is nowhere near the limit.

<comment><USER12> > San Francisco is more expensive than San Jose because more people want to > live in a city built like SF than one like SJ.

No, its more expensive than SJ because it has a major port (driving commercial value) and substantial beachfront, and because groups attracted directly by those two things also, themselves, produce additional indirect demand.

California communities with even one of these things that are built more like San Jose than San Francisco are often more expensive than San Jose -- and even can be more expensive than San Francisco.

> Correlation isn't causation.

But the absence of correlation is pretty clear disproof of causation.

> The laws of supply and demand show that more supply will lower prices

Sure, more housing supply will lower housing prices -- and the resulting increase in population will increase the demand for _everything else that plays into affordability of living in the city_. What do the laws of supply and demand say about that?

<comment><USER13> > Sure, more housing supply will lower housing prices -- and the resulting > increase in population will increase the demand for everything else that > plays into affordability of living in the city. What do the laws of supply > and demand say about that?

Yep. You're exactly right. Population is increasing, driving demand, raising prices. Problem is, population will continue to increase for the projected future. Since it's unconstitutional to prevent people from moving somewhere, this needs to be accommodated.

Building more housing will induce demand. But it will also mitigate against a future where growing demand and fixed supply raise rents even more.

The _ONLY_ way to substantively lower rents is to increase supply or decrease demand. Nothing else will solve this. And for what it's worth, rent is about 65% of my monthly budget; lowering rents would substantially increase affordability/cost of living in this area

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So let me get this straight. This guy got a girl who wasn't (or isn't anymore) his wife pregnant when he was 20 and didn't have a college degree. _No shit_ it's going to be hard to get along. _For fuck 's sake_, you can get FREE condoms from Planned Parenthood or another local health clinic. The sense of entitlement people have is just astonishing to me.

<comment><USER15> I think you're forgetting the phrase "shit happens". There is no way of knowing what happened to the mom or their relationship. And I don't think it matters either. How would his having a wife have any impact on his situation? If she didn't work, it would be another person to take care of. If she did work, they'd have the same childcare problems mentioned in the article. He seems like he's working hard to take care of his kid but like most people wishes the huge company he works for would help a little more. Where's the entitlement?

<comment><USER14> > I think you're forgetting the phrase "shit happens".

Oh come on. There is _no excuse_ for not using contraception when you're not financially, emotionally, and maritally prepared to have a child. I don't know about this particular man's case, but 95% of unwanted pregnancies are due to failure to use contraception or use it properly [0], which is nothing more or less than sheer irresponsibility on the part of the future parents.

> How would his having a wife have any impact on his situation?

Seriously? It's _much_ easier to raise a child when both parents are present. It gives you more flexibility in terms of work, even if both parents are working. You save a lot of money because you're not paying individual rents. You save money on food as well. You get tax benefits from the government. If one of you has a job with health insurance that includes dependents, then the other gets it too. The list goes on and on.

> He seems like he's working hard to take care of his kid but like most people > wishes the huge company he works for would help a little more. Where's the > entitlement?

He irresponsibly had a child when he wasn't prepared to raise one, and is now expecting others to help him out. _That_ is entitlement.

0: [http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2008/05/09/ImprovingContracep...](http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2008/05/09/ImprovingContraceptiveUse.pdf)

<comment><USER16> > but 95% of unwanted pregnancies are due to failure to use contraception or > use it properly [0], which is nothing more or less than sheer > irresponsibility on the part of the future parents.

He made have made sure that she was using contraception, and not known that she was doing so incorrectly. Or maybe she had some medication interaction that no one warned her about. Or maybe they were one of the 5%.

<comment><USER14> > He made have made sure that she was using contraception, and not known that > she was doing so incorrectly.

This is also being irresponsible. Don't stick your dick in crazy.

> Or maybe she had some medication interaction that no one warned her about.

Not sure what you mean by this, but if she had a latex allergy, there are non- latex condoms as well. Either way, there is no excuse for not using one.

> Or maybe they were one of the 5%.

Maybe, but then you can get an abortion. And besides, the real point of this article isn't about this one individual, but about the large segment of society that is in a similar position to him. And on average, 95% of those people who had unwanted pregnancies fall into the "lack of or incorrect use of contraception" category.

<comment><USER16> Female birth control pills have a variety of fail methods.

> Don't stick your dick in crazy.

What a vile comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think it's a bad thing that Google treats each employee differently.

There's no reason why contractors should have the same benefits as regular employees. Google is a business, not a charity. When Google gives engineers to-go boxes, they don't do it because they like them better than other employees, they do it because it's a competitive market out there, and they want to keep the best.

Besides, maybe letting contractors take food home is too expensive for the company. Maybe they couldn't afford free food at all if they give to EVERYONE.

If the security guard wants to earn more, he should either start a business on his own or improve his skills to get a better job.

People who make this argument tend to make it sound as if it were a discrimination issue, it's not. The reason engineers get paid better isn't because they're white, taller or prettier, it's because they're more prepared and thus add more value to the company.

<comment><USER18> > If the security guard wants to earn more, he should either start a business > on his own or improve his skills to get a better job.

Part of the reason people are engineers is because they've been exposed to good examples and opportunities over a lifetime, not because they are especially or particularly motivated over anyone else. There are all sorts of factors which lead to people having the profession that they do. Work ethic is one among many, and probably not very high on the list.

And, being taller and prettier is absolutely a predictor for being better paid.

[http://www.livescience.com/5552-taller-people-earn- money.htm...](http://www.livescience.com/5552-taller-people-earn-money.html) [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020368750...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203687504576655331418204842)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting to note that this guy NEVER gets more than 30 hours. This is most likely to make sure the employee can't be considered full-time. I'm sure Google would rather hire 15 guys at 40-60 hours instead of 40 guys at 20 hours, but the sad reality is that the costs of compliance for a full-time employee are just not worth it.

<comment><USER7> Google hasn't hired anybody. The security company was awarded a contract to provide security services, which is fulfilled by employing some people at < 30 hours/week. If there is an issue with the < 30 hours/week loophole, the security company is where it should be addressed.

"But Google is benefiting from this exploitation!" you might say.

Yes. Google can pay less for security services because the guards ultimately cost less. If the guards worked 40 hours/week, the contract cost would have to increase, and another lower cost security company may have won the contract. The reality is that security services are only worth so much. Not every job (even at full time) can or should be expected to pay a livable wage.

<comment> lhc- What do you propose for those people who work these non-livable jobs (including security jobs, janitors, restaurant service workers, and whatever else) to allow them to, well, live? Because you can't just ignore it and say they should get better jobs: someone has to do these things.

<comment><USER7> I apologize for the late reply.

The truth is some jobs are simply not worth much to the employer. The minimum wage laws generally are designed to ensure a livable (albeit uncomfortable) income for a single adult working full time. In California, the minimum wage is $8/hr, and scheduled to increase to $10/hr within a couple years. This combined with government assistance programs will generally ensure that individuals with the will to work can afford to live near their livelihood ($500/month room with utilities in the bay area with BART access [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/roo/4250779898.html](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/roo/4250779898.html)). Of course there are several other factors that impact one's ability to sustain themselves:

Dependants - There is government assistance available for dependant children.

Lack of work - The man from this article does not work full time. The availability of full-time jobs aside, it is not reasonable to expect a livable income on part time, unskilled work.

Major unplanned expenses - Things such as unplanned medical expenses or enormous college tuitions or loan repayments will be a burden to someone making minimum wage.

My point is, 1) I do not accept the assumption that certain jobs are non- livable by definition. For an individual working full time without dependants or edge-case financial burdens, you can generally get by in America. 2) "non- livable" jobs only exist when certain edge case financial hardships arise. In general, assistance is available in these cases, and we have systems in place to support people who fall on hard times. Whether these systems are working as intended is beyond the scope of employee compensation, although there is definitely a case for improving these systems.

There is a third, unspoken point about "non-livable" jobs. People who work these jobs are usually not expected to stay very long. Sometimes these are "stepping-stone" opportunities for the young and inexperienced. Other times these jobs act as a safety net for workers who have lost their higher-paying jobs and need to survive until they can be fully employed. I accept there are people who have no plans or hopes of moving on from these jobs, either due to a lack of marketable skills or even language barriers. I don't believe the answer is in regulating these jobs to pay better. I think the answer lies in educational outreach. Instead of bettering the job, let's try to better the individual so they can get a better job.

Finally, I agree that "someone has to do these things". The market will ensure that the things that need to get done are done. Assuming that everyone "gets better jobs", the supply of unskilled laborers will decrease. From economics, I would guess that a lack of supply for certain menial tasks will have one of two outcomes: the price for the menial task will increase ("non-livable" jobs now become more livable), or a substitute will eliminate the need for the work (automation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is explored to a degree in a pop psychology book by Daniel Gilbert called "Stumbling on Happiness". There are certainly better sources, such as the papers Gilbert uses as his primary sources, but the book is an accessible way to learn about the high degree to which our happiness depends on subjective interpretation of our self-comparison to others.

There's a theory out there that we evaluate ourselves mostly against people we can reasonably consider our peers (e.g. college classmates or the kid who grew up down the street, not Barack Obama or Steve Jobs) because they are the best proxy for what our lives could have been like had we made different choices with the same starting point (e.g. medical school instead of starting a business). These peers represent our best experimental data given a world of singular outcomes.

The double-edged sword of you achieving success is that those hundred or so people you compare yourself to sit high up on an asymptotic curve of outcomes. That is, if your peer group all has advanced degrees and decades of experience, the outcome-difference between the least and most successful will be extreme. "Low success" peer groups sit at the flatter part of the curve, so peers you compare yourself to will "look more like you", thus avoiding the unhappiness of comparative failure when you judge yourself.

I'm forgetting whether this particular idea comes from Gilbert's book or another source, like perhaps "Status Anxiety" by Alain de Botton.

<comment><USER21> That was your takeaway from the article? Really?

<comment><USER20> I was attempting to introduce another, separate subject of intellectual interest to build on the conversation, not trying to provide my takeaway from this article. If my comment came across as a callous attempt to make the topic about the subjective happiness of the privileged rather than the objective disadvantages of those in need, it was not my intention. I'm sorry for my inappropriateness.

I did not think my takeaway from this article added to the conversation. Since I've been prompted for it, all I can say about the situation is that I'm appalled by income inequality and an apparent lack of empathy, but I don't know enough about the subjects of this article, or the people examining the article's subjects, to pass judgement. I can only empathize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I work for a major telecom company doing field service.

I'm a contractor, I get a fair wage, but not much else.

Real employees get, company truck, 20% more pay, 100% paid benefits, company phone and a bunch of intangibles.

Like a good example when my manager goes on vacation even though I drive my own vehicle and am paid mileage, none of my mileage requests are paid, right now I'm floating about a month worth of mileage and other expenses, to the tune of 700+ dollars. If I were an employee, I would have a company vehicle, company gas card, company expense card, and it wouldn't be coming out of my pocket.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is a sad consequence of the dynamism of the tech economy, and while no individual is directly to blame, it behooves us to do what we can to help out those around us. Pointing fingers at this guy, blaming him for his own mistakes, while possibly true (who's to say?) isn't worthwhile.

The rising inequality in the bay area is spurring the protests in SF aimed at tech workers, and are just the beginning of a turning point which will result in the tech elite becoming demonized at large[1], and by extension (and likely less so) your average tech worker.

Becoming involved in the community, expressing sympathy, volunteering at food banks, what have you, are all ways in which we can help avoid that fate.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will- join-...](http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will-join-bankers- and-oilmen-public-demonology-predicts-adrian-wooldridge-coming)

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it better to have """low pay""" in San Jose or low pay in Tijuana?

<comment><USER25> Tijuana. Is there any question?

<comment><USER26> The question is "What is the question?"

\- Would you rather be on $24k/p/a in Tijuana?

\- Would you rather be in the bottom 10% income bracket in Tijuana?

<comment><USER24> I definitely meant something like the latter!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If everybody learns to code, who's going to be the security guard?

<comment><USER28> Well...just because someone learns to code, does not mean they will be able to do it full-time. I don't think we'll run into that problem anytime soon

<comment><USER27> You're right. But, to elaborate, it seems to me that the answer to 'these jobs don't pay enough' is 'get a better job'. The bottom line seems to be 'do what's hard and in fashion (coding), or you can't eat.' Reminds me of the Glengarry Glen Ross contest: 'First prize is a Cadillac, second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is you're fired.' Is this really how we want to run a society?</comment></comment></comment>


Please Stop Using Ruby - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/jimsy/please-stop-using-ruby-4lf1 <comment><USER2> I did one rails project a number of years back. When I had to learn NodeJS it wasn't that surprising because so many things in Node borrowed ideas from Rails (and part of why the module ecosystem developed so fast).

From what I recall from Rails developers, you end up having to focusing early on removing duplicated effort from the system, whereas Node seems to be just enough faster that nobody worries about it.

The project I'm working on should be able to run with a third of the hardware and a quarter of the round trip requests to the server room, but it's fast enough that they just keep doing CPU intensive work instead of calculating subsets of the data ahead of time.

And once you start down that route you find the spaghetti has gotten pretty challenging, and weird little requirements that are super-expensive to implement have snuck in. It's hard to walk these things back.</comment>


Google to kill domain tasting - <AUTHOR> http://blog.domaintools.com/2008/01/google-to-kill-domain-tasting/

<comment><USER2> I really doubt this will have much of an impact on domain tasting at all. At worst, they will make slightly less money because they'll have to use an ad service that won't target ads as well as Google.

Domain tasting will be alive and well until ICANN puts a stop to it.

<comment><USER3> Exactly even if no ad network works on non permanent domains they'll still try to gauge domain value by number of visitors in the five day period.

The solution isn't even to abolish it, just make sure even a test domain costs something, even a few cents, much like the economy of SPAM you don't need to fight it by identifying SPAM just make every email you send cost a tenth of a cent.

<comment><USER4> Unlike spam this one is actually easy to stop. The registrars could just say "no more tasting" and that would be the end. There is a final authority who can stop it or make it cost something.

This has been nothing but bad for the web in general. Its time to say "no more tasting". I hope google starts a trend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "However some advocates of Domain Tasting say that perhaps no one will be able to serve the niche for some ads and no one will make money on the unserved ads."

Who cares if nobody's able to serve the "Poop in a Can(tm)" niche anymore?

I wouldn't mind if the "Get a free iPod!" "Press the Fart Button!" "Your computer might have viruses!" etc. "niches" weren't addressed anymore

</comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately, the HTTP protocol supports redirects. Nice try, though.

<comment><USER7> I would vote that up, but the "unfortunately" is misplaced. Redirects are pretty darn important.

<comment><USER8> I believe there is a subtle undertone of sarcasm in the use of unfortunately. But then perhaps you are being sarcastic too. Maybe I am too. Hmm

<comment><USER6> You are correct about the sarcasm. I'm surprised the author of the article didn't realize that a domainer could easily redirect traffic from the tasted domains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know exactly what the article means when it says Google is going to "stop monetizing" domains, but I hope it means they do something serious like automatically pushing the domain to the very end of any search result unless a special "advanced" search option is given. Who wants a page which isn't likely to exist a week from now to appear in their search results anyways.

<comment><USER10> No, these pages aren't indexed anyway because they contain no useful content and Google already has a "sandbox" to penalize brand new sites.

The article is about Google ads that are placed on these tasty pages. If Google refuses to serve these ads, the tasters make less money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great news.</comment>


What Is Static Electricity? We May Finally Have an Answer - <AUTHOR> https://www.freethink.com/articles/what-is-static-electricity <comment><USER2> Static electricity was where the term was electricity comes from</comment>