Ask HN: Areas with poor accessibility that can be improved by technology? - <AUTHOR> My university is hosting a hackathon with the theme of "accessibility"--which we are allowed to interpret broadly. My team is currently brainstorming ideas. So HN, broadly speaking, what areas/industries/niches have you encountered with poor accessibility that can be greatly improved by an application? <comment> open-source-ux " _What areas /industries/niches have you encountered with poor accessibility that can be greatly improved by an application?_"

Huge swathes of the web (websites and web 'apps') are plagued by poor accessibility.

My suggestion is to build something that is not tied to a particular niche or industry, but almost everyone uses: email in the browser.

This would not be an actual working email service with a functioning back-end - it would be a front-end demonstration of how to implement a fast, accessible service.

Some things to aim for that will make it standout from existing email services:

\- The email service when rendered in a browser will load instantly without complicated JavaScript tricks. Your service will be accessible to screensavers without the need to have two versions (a 'basic', limited version and a 'enhanced' version you can overstuff with JavaScript).

\- The service is built with HTML with the correct semantic elements so that it can be navigated quickly by a screen-reader and by keyboard. JavaScript is perfectly fine, but the service should be functional even without JavaScript (e.g. progressive enhancement).

\- The email service when rendered in the browser can be zoomed into at least 300% without breaking the display of elements and still remaining usable. There will be sufficient contrast.

\- The site must load faster than any existing email service and be usable no matter what someone's connection speed (even a 2G connection).

\- Finally, it must look aesthetically pleasing too.

This might all seem impossible, but with HTML + CSS (and JavaScript when needed) it's perfectly possible to create something lighter, faster, less complicated and more accessible than what the major players produce.

Here is an example of an email layout from the Yahoo! Pure CSS framework - this is actually quite old, but the HTML source is less than 10kb: [https://purecss.io/layouts/email/](https://purecss.io/layouts/email/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks for the comprehensive reply! What would you recommend I use as a guide for the correct semantic elements? A11Y?

<comment> open-source-ux The Mozilla developer website has a complete reference site on HTML5 with examples of each HTML5 element and the correct usage:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/HTML...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/HTML5)

I also like the HTML5 Doctor site - they have a less formal, sometime more readable tone:

[http://html5doctor.com/article-archive/](http://html5doctor.com/article- archive/)</comment></comment></comment>


A LaTeX Resume Template that fits everything AND looks good - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/deedydas/Deedy-Resume <comment><USER2> I don't want to be rude, and I'm certainly neither a designer nor a real typographer, but IMO this looks awful.

First decide on a good page area. The margins are much too small.

Regarding whitespace: you need more. Much more. Especially between the two columns. Everything is flowing into each other. Look at "Over 1000 lines" and the next line, for example.

You probably need to cut quite some of the information presented. That's okay.

I don't understand which criteria underlie the categories' sorting. "Education" and "Coursework" is interrupted by "Links". I think those category headers should stand out more, but the problem may well be too few whitespace. Again.

Basically you really have to go looking for information, nothing is really standing out and guiding you to what you'd like to see.

Is "%ile" common? It looks a bit gimmicky, but I'm not sure about English microtypographic usage there.

But it is probably still way better than most CVs.

<comment><USER3> As someone who actually conducts interviews i must agree with you. I recently interviewed a girl who was actually very talented but her resume looked very much like the one in the link (maybe she actually got it off of there). I looked at her resume and thought in my head this is one the worst looking resumes i have ever seen. I did recommend hiring the girl because she was a talented developer, but the resume looked hideous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of people are criticising the condensed nature, lack of whitespace, etc.

A significant part of my job is to review CV's for a living and if I received a CV/Resume in this format, I'd be quite pleased as all the relevant info is easily spotted.

A good resume (with design related roles being an obvious exception) doesn't need to be 'pretty'. It needs to be easy to read and easy to find relevant info at an initial scan. Your template ticks both of those boxes.

I'm sure it could be prettier but when I'm reviewing resumes for engineering positions, I couldn't care less about aesthetics. I care about attention to detail and relevancy.

<comment><USER2> Yes, and this CV fails at being "easy to read" and "easy to find".

Typography is not primarily about "being pretty". It's about supporting the act of reading.

<comment><USER4> I guess it's a matter of opinion then as I found it very easy to read.

<comment><USER2> Well, typography at least has the claim to being somewhat objective, but as I said: you've probably seen much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, this hurts my eyes. I'm not a designer, but one very smart designer friend once advised: "never underestimate the value of white space."

Resumes really don't have to be confined to one page. The one page convention was really only applicable when you're using it in print as opposed to digitally. For templates that look great, I'd strongly advise looking at some inDesign templates that cost between $5-$10.

<comment><USER6> Print vs. digital makes no difference. When we interview people in the office, the first thing people will do is print the stack of resumes and take them to the conference room. People aren't going to spend long poring over every detail. One page imposes some discipline. This one has about as much as I would put onto one page. Sometimes two pages might be OK, but longer is not better.

<comment><USER7> In this case I find the single page much too busy, and I'm likely to miss important information simply because it is drowned in detail. I'm happy reading a couple of pages of a select few resumes. Which ones? The ones with a good first page. The first page should be all I need to begin with.

If using several pages, it shouldn't be half the info on the first page, other half on the second. Just put the important bits first and keep the details on subsequent pages. Anything that is too much detail goes on the second.

For example, you could outline previous work experiences on the first page, while going into detail on the second. You could specify programming languages you master on the first, while listing specific experiences/frameworks/systems built on the second.

Basically, just the headlines from this resume should go on the first page, while the lists of info beneath each headline could go on anotherpage. That lets it be scanned in seconds, lets it look good with good use of whitespace.

Obviously when applying for a job, the resume should be tweaked for the specific job. A very relevant experience from a previous job can be lifted to the first page and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure that I would look to this for a template. From its layout, the resume is highly dependent on the amount of particular categories of experience and content that the candidate has to add.

Clever attempt to get a lot of eyes on a resume, though.

</comment><comment><USER9> My own resume is a forked from this:

[https://github.com/afriggeri/cv](https://github.com/afriggeri/cv)

PDF:

[https://github.com/afriggeri/cv/blob/master/cv.pdf?raw=true](https://github.com/afriggeri/cv/blob/master/cv.pdf?raw=true)

<comment><USER10> Very handsome. I would suggest not having the boxes around the links, but that's my personal aesthetic judgement.

<comment><USER11> > I would suggest not having the boxes around the links

That's something added by your PDF viewer. It's not part of the document.

<comment><USER12> I'm not so sure the borders are due to the PDF viewer. For example, I've used the hyperref package in the past. If IIRC, the borders could be hidden using the "hidelinks" option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like it!

At some point I also created my own template, it is very different as it tries to be "classic" instead of "modern".

Find it here, and let me know what you think.

[https://github.com/cies/resume](https://github.com/cies/resume)

It's also on ShareLatex for those who want to use it straight from a great and free-for-personal-use web application.

[https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/cv-or-resume/cies- breij...](https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/cv-or-resume/cies-breijs- resume)

<comment><USER14> Any particular reason Education section comes towards the end. Almost all profiles I have seen it is at the top.

PS: What a coincidence I was born on jun 12 too.

<comment><USER15> You want the most important thing first. For new graduates education will (almost always) be first. For those with experience it typically comes last, where it's also distinctive but less prominent.

So I'm guessing you've mostly seen resumes for students and recent graduates.

<comment><USER14> Hmm. I am from India, and most resumes I have seen here, even for people with lot of experience, education section is at the top. I just stuck with that format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Hi. Thanks for applying. Sorry I can't seem to open your CV. Could you please resend it to me in MS Word?"

<comment><USER17> Almost everyone except for shitty recruiters take it in PDF. And that's because the recruiters want to fix things and add their own letter-head to it. Don't do that.

<comment><USER18> In Europe 90% of all companies and recruiters will demand a .doc file. You either accept this and do your CV in Gdoc or remain unemployed. Your choice.

<comment><USER19> Europe is not on homogenous region.

When applying for jobs in Sweden I have not had any problems using a PDF.

<comment><USER18> Well I'm Swedish and have also worked in Ireland and the UK, and have had more or less the same experience everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't get it. In my opinion LaTeX is very good to use iff:

\- your document is large (paper sized) or

\- your document requires the use of LaTeX's math typesetting

Why else would you go through the pain of using LaTeX when:

\- with only very few exceptions all templates 'suck', i.e. they show some lack of sophistication even to the untrained eye (including this one)

\- customizability is hard to get, which makes it hard to stand out (want to use a special font? good luck!)

\- controlling you document layout is a pain (want to have your picture appear in a fixed place? good luck!)

I'm genuinely curious why people choose to use LaTeX as a tool for this. If your word processor doesn't suit you, HTML+CSS, Scribus or InDesign appear to me as far superior. For the same reason, I'm curious why people continue to use LaTeX for presentations that don't require special LaTeX features like math or tikz. Can someone explain this to me?

<comment><USER21> LaTeX is good if you want something typeset well, and either you want to use free software or you want to version-control the document.

Customizability and control are really not hard to achieve in LaTeX. That's not to say that it's easy to wield the control you have; it may not be intuitively obvious which abstractions to use or disable, but you can in principle accomplish anything, and your results will be stable. Unlike with a word processor. InDesign admittedly is a great typesetter and an intuitive GUI.

Sure, LaTeX is good at dealing with various paper sizes and it has great math syntax. But fundamentally it's just a superb typesetting system that takes plaintext input and that you can use, learn from, modify, and share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it's a great start. I agree with most of the comments here: you have a lot of stuff nobody wants to read about, and not nearly enough white space!

Here's an updated version that cuts some of the junk (somewhat arbitrarily, but the point is you don't need 15 awards and nobody gives a shit about your society memberships), and notably increases the margins and space between the columns. Some of the text needs to be reflowed, of course.

[https://www.writelatex.com/1017504xwcfcn#/2366805/](https://www.writelatex.com/1017504xwcfcn#/2366805/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Am I wrong to prefer a .txt file?

Mine is out of date (and I'm not looking for a job), but it's this: [http://buro9.com/cv.txt](http://buro9.com/cv.txt)

When hiring, I found I didn't care for specifics, I just wanted an overview of someone's experience. Then during the interview I wanted to be able to quickly search for talking points.

So when I updated mine, I leaned towards throwing out far more than I kept in.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think moderncv has a very pleasing format.

My own based on modern cv:

[https://github.com/zhaphod/Profile](https://github.com/zhaphod/Profile)

PDF: [https://github.com/zhaphod/Profile/blob/master/cv_ksrini.pdf...](https://github.com/zhaphod/Profile/blob/master/cv_ksrini.pdf?raw=true)

<comment><USER23> Looks nice. I know you weren't asking for a review, but check the last line of the second page: "Led a team _of_ 6 engineers"

I'm curious, what does νε παβoρ mean?

<comment><USER14> Thanks for reviewing. I appreciate it. I will check the suggestion you gave.

Also, looking at my nick name here "zhaphod" you can guess I am a bit of Hitch Hikers nerd. So the most famous quote from DNA is "Don't Panic" which translates to "Ne pavor" in latin. Now write that in greek alphabet you get "νε παβoρ". I usually remove it before I send out my profile to companies.

<comment><USER24> Please excuse the following pedantry:

"pavor" in Latin is a noun, not a verb. If you want to say "don't panic" you either need some form of the verb _pavere_ (or _pavescere_ , which is to begin to be afraid rather than to carry on being afraid) or to use some circumlocution along the lines of "panic, go away!". There's a discussion at [http://latindiscussion.com/forum/latin/dont-panic-or- cease-t...](http://latindiscussion.com/forum/latin/dont-panic-or-cease-to- fear.3996/) with a number of decent suggestions.

Just out of curiosity, (1) why transliterate into Greek? and (2) is the extra "h" in _zhaphod_ just because someone else registered _zaphod_ 7 years ago and then hardly used it?

<comment><USER14> Regarding the correct form of don't panic, I am with you. I have absolutely no clue when it comes to Latin {on the other hand I can talk my way out of any situation in more than a few south Indian languages}. I was fooling around with Google translate and wanted a short form and settled on "ne pavor".

I used the Greek transliteration because I absolutely love how Greek letters look in latex.

Regarding the "h" : When I was choosing the nick name I thought there was an "h" in zaphod and realized the mistake way too late to change it in so many different places.

<comment><USER25> To add a little more Latin pedantry, "ne" is a defensible choice for a negative imperative (you'd use it with a subjunctive verb, I believe: "ne pavescas" or "ne pavescatis"), but not the only choice; the standard I learned was noli +inf ("noli pavescere" or "nolite pavescere").

Finally, the vowel of ne is long, and so if you want to write it in greek letters you should use an eta, not an epsilon (then again, you seem to be rendering vulgar latin into modern greek rather than classical latin into classical greek; I'm not even sure how to deal with a classical letter 'v' in greek).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It looks a bit too busy. I guess in a real case example, you would probably leave out most of that information?

</comment><comment><USER27> Ten years ago I probably could write a whole doc direct in LaTeX, and would have ripped this apart to find the cool hack used halfway down, but today I find it hard to bother with - a CSS/HTML5 template I would love, but I cannot see the LaTeX pipeline providing as much value.

Its a cool project, and more power to your elbow, but ... have we moved on?

edit: That said I loooove the "5000 lines of Java written" / "10000 lines of Python". Expect that to appear in job ads this year, replacing "3-5 years of"

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice template! Here it is on writeLaTeX, in case you'd like to customise it online:

[https://www.writelatex.com/templates/deedy- resume/sqdbztjjgh...](https://www.writelatex.com/templates/deedy- resume/sqdbztjjghvz)

I've made a few minor mods to get it compile on Linux --- mainly using Liberation Sans instead of Helvetica Neue, and a few other minor fixes.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's "asymmetric" not "assymetric", and I don't think it looks good (too crowded, irregular column edges).

</comment><comment><USER30> Moderncv is a great alternative :

[http://www.ctan.org/pkg/moderncv](http://www.ctan.org/pkg/moderncv)

</comment><comment><USER31> I made my own resume in LaTeX from scratch. I realized that no one else's template could fit my needs/wants just right.

[http://danturkel.com/resume.pdf](http://danturkel.com/resume.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER32> Nice one! Needs some color may be.

We have a website that takes in user data & gives out pdf made out of LaTeX. Mind if we use this template?

[https://www.cvsintellect.com](https://www.cvsintellect.com)

</comment><comment><USER33> I actually redid my resume yesterday. Am I crazy for doing it in Pages and not [La]TeX?

[http://aviromanoff.me/resume.pdf](http://aviromanoff.me/resume.pdf)

<comment><USER34> looks good, but my only complaint is the same of the submission - that it's a bit cramped, select the very core things you cannot leave out and use the rest as white space

Also as a fellow CMU student, welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> You can find some great templates on www.latextemplates.com

</comment><comment><USER36> The lack of spacing between the two columns makes it look odd. I would say, the words India, LaTeX and MySQL should have wrapped around to the next line.

<comment><USER37> I suspect that the spacing is meant to be there, but the TeX badness was huge no matter what, so it tried to do the "least bad" thing. I've run into this so many times when trying to make visually appealing layouts in TeX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It really does hurt eyes. Came back immediately looking at that design. Could have used a little more white space, grouping relevant things together.

</comment><comment><USER39> Definitely going to use this from now on -- will make my life so much easier.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think it's great. I'll be using it.

</comment><comment><USER41> I realize that doing this way, LaTeX becomes a dependency stack to build my resume.

I used to have my our LaTeX resume with fancy and flufs and etc... One day I was in a emergency without my laptop or any privilege to install/compile LaTeX to update to apply to a job.

Today I am glad to use my google account and driver/docs to keep my resume easily available and editable within reach of my hands :-)

<comment><USER42> That's a rather weird use case, tbh. I doubt many people edit their resume on a daily/weekly basis. Everyone I know update theirs rarely and they take their time to make it properly to not have any errors in it. So setting up LaTeX is part of the process, while keeping the actual CV code in a repo.

<comment><USER43> A contractor would actually update their resume pretty frequently, to tailor it to a particular client.</comment></comment></comment>


How Glide Solves Go Vendoring - <AUTHOR> http://technosophos.com/2014/09/22/how-glide-solves-go-vendoring.html

<comment><USER2> Can someone who has experienced dependencies problem in Go explain what doesn't work with vendoring, ie copying dependency code in a special "vendor" folder and importing it directly ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Go? Botched beyond hope. I choose to keep my sanity and stay away.</comment>


Searching for USB Power Supplies That Won't Explode - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2016/04/27/searching-for-usb-power-supplies-that-wont-explode/ <comment><USER3> Sometimes even a well designed and assembled power supply can be dangerous because of defective components. Big Clive on Youtube does many teardowns of cheap electronics, and here's one of a USB power supply that's dangerous because of internal damage to the transformer:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hdn0MuCK_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hdn0MuCK_0)

Because this is an intermittent fault it's possible that non-destructive testing would not find it.

<comment><USER4> That's not a random failure, though. The quality control for the transformer manufacturing was inadequate. This wasn't some difficult to anticipate error, either; maintaining the integrity of the winding insulation is basically the most important thing to monitor. The machines were either poorly designed or improperly operated.

Sourcing higher quality components would prevent such issues. I'll concede that nothing can be perfect, but this type of error is preventable. It starts to cost quite a bit when you move from 0.1% error to 0.01%, though.

<comment><USER5> It's not just quality control on the part of the transformer manufacturer. It was a cheap design. They could've completely isolated the two transformer windings, either with heavy tape, or wound them on two separate bobbins. That way, if the enamel on the wire wears off, the two sides are still completely isolated. I still agree with your conclusion, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I trust Anker's chargers more than anyone elses. (No association with them, just a happy customer.)

In general, chargers from big brands (Apple, Amazon, Samsung, even Ikea) are fine because they don't want to risk damage to their brand if one were to burn down a house or something.

If your charger has a brand you've never heard of, beware!

<comment><USER7> Me too - my Anker car charger delivers 1800 mAh as measured by an Android app called Ampere - I can charge my phone only during commute and use it for 24 hours. A cable I have from them is also high quality.

OTOH some Ebay cables might drop it down to 500 mAh. It was a shock to me because for years I exclusively bought Ebay chargers and cables (around 1/5 of the price of Anker) thinking they would work as specified (or not at all)...

<comment><USER8> FYI: "mAh" or milli-amp-hours is a unit of capacity, in this case it makes no sense. Perhaps you mean just "mA", a unit of current, which does make sense in context?

<comment><USER7> Sorry! You're right.. and the app is also right, I couldn't even copy from it properly :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From what I've experienced, most power supplies are just awful and don't hold up at all to their specs, especially current in excess of 500mA.

I've been working with LEDs recently (APA102s), and I attempted just doing some testing with 4 meters (60 LEDs/m) and a cheap old 5VDC laptop power supply that in theory was rated for 5A+. Didn't work so well. Overheating, not providing enough current to keep the LEDs acting stable, power on spike, etc...

To solve my problem, I've purchased two 5V 90A Meanwell power supplies, and those seem to work pretty well. But needless to say, I cannot imagine cheap/small power adapters working well at all.

At my day job, we have some hardware that requires 800mA at peak to run. Even many 1A USB supplies we've found to offer nowhere near that current capacity. And if they do, they frequently fail after a while.

<comment><USER10> > we have some hardware that requires 800mA at peak to run. Even many 1A USB > supplies

I've been doing this for 30 years now. My rule is. Power supplies? Derate by 50% or you will be sorry. That power IC that says it's good for 1.2A? Yeah read that as 600ma.

Capacitors are the same way, rated for 16 volts? Try 10 volts. If you look at capacitors specs you'll often see MTBF at rated voltage and temperature of 2000 hours which is three months.

<comment><USER11> Usually I see a big voltage sag when you get near the rated voltage on most wall wart type supplies. I try and stick to 50% or maybe 75% if I think it's quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the best power supplies are those commissioned by big manufacturers to go with their hardware. The HP Touchpad's power plug being a good example. These brands don't want a poorly designed adapter killing their products.

<comment><USER13> I was going to say something similar. I often use USB power supplies that came from old phones/laptops for my various little robot/gizmo projects. I do this with the (naive) assumption that If I'm Apple/Dell/Samsung/etc. I don't want to taint my products because of bad power supplies.

Other than using my non-pro knowledge and tools to roughly test voltage stability, sustained amperage, and output voltages on some of the power supplies, I don't have any hard evidence that this is true- but if I'm choosing between an Apple USB power supply or a no-name power supply from Amazon for a project, I'm taking the Apple one because I can assume it's a minimum level of quality that's good enough for my use. I've got a couple of iPad USB power adapters that I guard pretty closely because the other USB power supplies I have that say they're good for at least an amp or two are from no-name suppliers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Makes me wonder if DC wiring will ever catch on in newer homes. We don't have much need for AC anymore. The only places in a home where one needs AC is in the kitchen for large appliances, and garage/laundry room. And really that's just because of the motors. I'm not sure if those could be converted to DC motors and what powerloss that might entail. But the point stands; you could totally get away with building a new home where you drop AC to the kitchen and garage, and then 12VDC+5VDC everywhere else (12V on the wires, put a regulator to drop to 5V in the outlet for USB-C ports). The power-loss of DC in a home won't be that large. The end result is that the AC to DC transformer will be centralized to one location, where you can spend more money up front to get higher reliability, cleaner power, better safety, and better efficiency. Plus, if you have solar, you can avoid AC to DC conversation altogether, saving on a good chunk of powerloss there.

The caveat, of course, is that lots of devices don't natively support DC input. Phones, tablets, and modern USB-C laptops are fine. Lighting is easy; just do permanent LED installations. The LEDs will last a very long time since they won't have regulators in them. Desktops are an issue. I believe the only desktops that support DC input are HTPC builds, using those micro PSUs. Perhaps there's an HTPC PSU that's got enough beef to power a normal desktop? You'd also have to find monitors that accept DC input, which do exist but that will narrow your market significantly.

Rob Rhinehart is an early adopter (see: [http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331](http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331)) of this type of home. Sounds crazy, but it seemed like a glimpse at a hopeful future, at least everything outside of the kitchen.

<comment><USER15> Well, uh, AC vs DC and 100-250 volts versus 5-48 volts are two completely different dimensions to the problem here.

For example, there has been some standardization of high voltage DC power distribution for datacenters, seeing as that could simplify providing battery backup, etc.

But back to the residential case: As soon as you go to lower voltage power distribution, unless you spend a lot more on copper (larger conductors), you're really hurting as far as power distribution losses: your load uses 10 times as many amps running on 12 volts DC as it did on 120 volts RMS AC. Thus your loss due to the resistance of the wire is 100 times what it was, given the same wiring. (i.e. the same series resistance -- your loss is P = V * I = I^2 * R)

And no, you don't suddenly get much greater efficiency in the power supply of the device - a lot of off-line power supply designs today are already 90% efficient, and even if you provide 12 volts (or 12 and 5) to the plug, there's going to be a lot of things you want to do in the device that does not satisfy, and if you want _exactly_ 12, you're going to need some kind of DC-DC converter with regulation, because you cannot predict how the 12 volt supplied at the wall will go down due to other load at any given point in time -- so just like a laptop has various DC-DC converters from the 18 volts supplied by its power brick to the various internal circuits (Vcore logic, 1.8 volt logic, 3.3 volt, 5 volt USB, backlight circuits, etc) most devices will still have that. They might not require as much safety isolation, but you're not going to get them to be magically far more efficient than what we have today.

<comment><USER16> Lets not forget we could change the frequency. Running at 400Hz like aircraft do lets you shrink the capacitors, inductors, and transformers of your power supplies and your electric motors can make 10 times the power for the same weight.

Going to 3-phase instead of single phase probably also helps for power supplies. The power delivered across time is uniform so a sufficiently clever design doesn't need to store energy between cycles. Sure, its another conductor, but they can be slightly smaller so you use the same amount of copper in the end.

50/60Hz is better suited to long distance transmission, but you could put an inverter to 400Hz for the last 50 meters. Smaller, lighter, cheaper devices but with the efficiency loss in the inverter. I suspect it would be a win.

(Also, pick a new voltage, something in the ~100v+ range. High enough for efficiency, but then do the lethality tradeoff on picking the ultimate voltage. As long as its a new standard, build ground fault detection at the inverter as part of the standard. There are about 400 household electrocutions per year in the United States, so there is room to improve.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been searching for a good-quality usb hub. After a few years of intense competition, there are basically two options on the market: cheap chinese crap, and cheap chinese crap in an expensive designer enclosure.

<comment><USER18> It's not like any of it's made in America, so...

I have one of these and it's been fine so far.

[http://www.amazon.com/EasyAcc-Bus-Powered-Self-Powered- Ultra...](http://www.amazon.com/EasyAcc-Bus-Powered-Self-Powered-Ultrabooks- Microsoft/dp/B00ID270ZU)

To reiterate everyone else, Anker is great. I've had good results with TronSmart too. And the Amazon Basics lineup is universally reliable. They have all sorts of chargers/hubs/cables at reasonable prices.

<comment><USER19> If anyone can shed some light on the supply chain for these I'd be interested - I've seen Anker, Aukey and Tronsmart 5 or 6 port chargers that look identical (performance has been almost identical too, luckily). I can't buy Anker or Aukey in Australia (easily / for a reasonable price) but I can get Tronsmart through Geekbuying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is obvious to the point of not reiterating but don't ever plug your stuff into cheap/unknown chargers. I've seen the AC jump across to the low power DC side MANY times and it insta-destroys anything designed to just take the +5vdc.

I work in the event industry and we supply recharging cabinets for corporate events. We use Anker.

</comment><comment><USER15> I generally avoid anything that doesn't have legitimate safety certifications: UL, ETL, TUV, etc. ("CE" as printed on random imported crap seems to mean nothing in particular.)

Also, you can usually count on actual, non-counterfeit chargers from well- respected phone and tablet vendors being just fine. I've never thrown out an old USB charger from an iphone, samsung, motorola, asus, just put them in a box for possible later use :)

<comment><USER21>
      "CE" as printed on random imported crap seems to mean
      nothing in particular.

[http://www.icomuk.co.uk/News_Article/3794/17103/](http://www.icomuk.co.uk/News_Article/3794/17103/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> After reading Ken Shirriff's review a few years ago, I bought a bunch of Touchpad chargers off eBay (before the clones started appearing) and use them for tons of stuff.

[http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab- ap...](http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple- is.html)

Otherwise I stick with Anker/Aukey; am a huge fan of the 6-port "charger bricks" and have used one next to my bed (phone, two tablets, a couple of USB- powered devices like a sleep monitor) for 3-4 years now.

</comment><comment><USER23> Here are some good analytical reviews of USB power hardware, including safety: [http://www.lygte-info.dk/info/indexUSB%20UK.html](http://www.lygte- info.dk/info/indexUSB%20UK.html)

In general I buy Anker stuff - decent pricing and solid stability/quality/safety.

</comment><comment><USER24> There's a difference between active and passive protection systems - <USER2> to certain Lithium-ion batteries. A lot of the cheaper manufacturers skimp out on a lot of such components (hence why you hear of e-cigs blowing up, etc).

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been very satisfied with my charger from ChoeTech. I figure that if something is Qualcomm Quick Charge Certified, then it is probably adequate to charge my devices.

<comment><USER26> For inexpensive USB power, Anker has been my go-to. They also do the Qualcomm quick charge with many of their products. Related, I liked their stuff so much, and was so impressed when ripping apart one to use for lots of 5V amps, that I bought their LED desk lamp (Lumos A2) which I've been very satisfied with. They also have the E1 out now, which is more powerful as lumens go.

Edit: tear down of the charger I like by Anker (thanks binman): [http://lygte- info.dk/review/USBpower%20Anker%2040W%205-port%...](http://lygte- info.dk/review/USBpower%20Anker%2040W%205-port%2071AN7105%20UK.html)</comment></comment>


Ausie court holds media responsible for defamatory comments of readers on FB - <AUTHOR> https://www.smh.com.au/national/media-companies-lose-appeal-over-facebook-defamation-ruling-20200601-p54y8s.html <comment><AUTHOR> An interesting development from an Australian Court. If you can't hold Facebook accountable for defamatory comments on posts, make the organization who posted the original article and "invited comments"</comment>


Obama Ambassador In Cambodia On Day Pirate Bay Founder Was Arrested - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/obama-ambassador-in-cambodia-on-day-pirate-bay-founder-was-arrested-120903/ With the destruction of The Pirate Bay seemingly an impossible mission for the time being, seeing that the site's former operators serve their sentences appears to be the next best thing for the authorities. <comment><USER2> Identical story to the Demonoid bust:

 _The nightmare week for Demonoid has just reached a huge crescendo, with news coming out of Ukraine that following a massive DDoS attack the site has now been busted by local authorities. Those looking for a U.S. connection to the raid won't be disappointed – a source in the country's Interior Ministry says that the action was scheduled to coincide with Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky's trip to the United States._

Why are these countries offering up sacrifices to the U.S.?

<comment><USER3> They are used as bargaining chips in the negotiation of trade and military agreements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like my claim[0] wasn't quite as far-fetched as most HNers thought it was.

0: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4464102>

</comment><comment><USER5> A serious question here: why does this matter to most readers of Hacker News? What is the connection to the concerns of people who are developing new technologies, possibly to use those technologies in software-as-a-service businesses based on the World Wide Web?

<comment><USER6> To the extent that business models are highly responsive to the legal environment, events that signal broader trends in the way laws are (or aren't) being enforced seem entierly relevant to those operating under them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> interesting.... since when did Cambodia start caring about intellectual property issues

<comment><USER8> They are probably just interested in the "American aid". No wonder the US Government doesn't want to cut the aid to other countries. It's not about "not helping the poor there anymore". It's about being able to bribe the Governments there to do their will.

<comment><USER9> The peak aid to Cambodia seems to have been in fiscal year 2007, at about $57 million. I'd say that dangling the carrot of trade agreements is more effective than threatening to cut off aid.</comment></comment></comment>


In Memory of MIT's AI Professor Patrick H. Winston: Stories Are the Answer - <AUTHOR> https://sketch.nono.ma/stories-are-the-answer <comment><AUTHOR> You can now listen to this at [https://gettingsimple.com/stories-are-the- answer](https://gettingsimple.com/stories-are-the-answer)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'll release a Getting Simple episode with an extended audio version of this story. =)</comment>


"I don't own or understand stocks." - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/AnnaKrukCorbin/status/1050478803682775041 <comment><USER2> I don't understand stocks anymore either, but I own them anyway.

It seems like the original idea of "share in the profits" (i.e. dividends) has been entirely replaced with "guess which companies will have the most hype in X years." The role as capital allocation seems have diminished too - it seems like no one goes public to actually raise money anymore, just to cash out.

Knowledgable Internet, please educate me.

</comment><comment><USER3> This tweet is not at all about understanding stocks and more about how the overall state of the economy is not reflected in the lifestyles of the working class.

The working class does not care if the DOW is up and unemployment is down if the majority of people are still living paycheck and have to make tough financial trade-offs daily ( food or gas or doctor ? ).

<comment><USER4> > the overall state of the economy is not reflected in the lifestyles of the > working class.

The lifestyle of the masses _is_ the overall state of the economy; every thing else is just (often poor) indirect measures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why high schools should teach financial literacy.

If you do not understand what terms "interest", "bond", "stock", "401k", "mortgage" mean...

</comment><comment><USER6> I was at Aldi yesterday. 1 dozen eggs were $0.69. A 3 lb bag of apples was approx $1.99. Lots of fruit and vegetables at incredibly low prices (Bananas $0.29 lb). At Sprouts a big head of Green Leaf, Romaine, Red Leaf are all $1.29, Organic Grass Fed Beef was $3.99 and you can find Ground Beef as cheap as $0.99 at some stores like Walmart. Roma Tomato's were $0.48 a lb at Walmart and rBST free Milk was $1.29/Gallon, Avocados were $0.50 each. Chicken livers were $0.99 a lb.

I have noticed that many prepared Frozen Foods (Pizza, Pancakes, Waffles, Dinners) were very expensive. Snacks also were very expensive, things like Chips, Cookies, and Pop. I don't consider them in the food category. I filled up at Costco for $2.47 a gallon and I get 4% back. I have never lived in a time when real food was so cheap and plentiful.

You don't have to understand Stocks when you can just invest in a Index Fund. It would require very little time and effort to learn and you can get started with just a few dollars.

There are those who really don't have enough, I'm not disputing that. But a lot of people have more than they think, it's sometimes their lifestyles that make them feel poor.

</comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of the Simple IRA match no one took part in last year at my (small) company. Student loans and rent trump free retirement money.</comment>


How Culture Influences Debugging - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/how-culture-influences-debugging-747f5358c9b8 <comment><AUTHOR> There's also a follow-up that goes into more detail about how researchers attempt to measure and quantify culture: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com/measuring-values-and- culture...](https://email@example.com/measuring-values-and- culture-264205035c87)</comment>


Is The Economist left- or right-wing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/economist-explains-itself-0 <comment><USER2> The economist is further left than throwback traditionalist movements like Islamism or the US Evangelical Right, on the rightward side of the consensus liberal-democratic center, certainly right of socialist movements. It uses a sort of high-handed pseudo-objective tone but is actually highly political and opinionated.

<comment><USER3> This is pretty much the best short description of The Economist's editorial policy I've seen, though I don't think like you do that it has a pretense of objective tone. For one, literally the entire article you just discussed openly regards The Economist's editorial stance (i.e. bias).

<comment><USER4> The best description of The Economist's editorial position I've come across is the one mentioned in the linked article: classically liberal. The preceding comment about left-and-right clarifies nothing and is ironic given that the original article rejects the left-right characterization.

Also, you only need to read a few articles in the Economist before coming across the phrase 'this newspaper believes' which should eradicate any suspicions of objectivity, pseudo or otherwise.

<comment><USER5> 'Classically liberal' is a gesture of self-congratulation, not a useful descriptor.

<comment><USER6> How so? "Classically liberal" is a way of differentiating oneself from the modern definition of liberal and is basically a friendly way of saying "libertarian" without invoking images of Glen Beck.

<comment><USER7> 'Classical liberal' evokes thoughts of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who have little in common with the staff of 'The Economist'. 'The Economist' is not alone in claiming this mantle, as Alan Wolfe has made similar statements (though his claim may be on shakier ground), but it is speculative and presumptive. The classical liberals did not envision many policies put forward by this magazine, and it is doubtful that Smith and Ricardo would have supported them.

<comment><USER8> > ...and it is doubtful that Smith and Ricardo would have supported them.

Examples?

<comment><USER7> Well, the simplest evidence of the statement you quoted is that they did not even agree with each other on many issues. A slightly less glib answer is that many of the policies which "The Economist" endorses, including fiscal, and monetary policy did not exist at the time, and/or were dismissed.[1][2][there are many more possible citations]

If you want to understand Smith and Ricardo's views in full, I suggest that you read "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" and "On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation". There is simply no evidence in either of those books that the classical economists would support many policies outlined in "The Economist", other than free trade and free markets. The books describe more limited roles for government than you will find in the magazine.

It is equally obvious that the current classical, neoclassical, and Austrians have not and do not agree with "The Economist"'s advocacy for activist policies. Note: I view the Austrian school as the most evolved direct descendant of the classical school.

[1] Adam Smith-"The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money." [2] [http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/ricardo/bullion](http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/ricardo/bullion)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been reading The Economist for well over thirty years. In England I think it's clearly identified as a paper of the right. (Correct me if I'm mistaken.)

The only reason it might not be seen as right wing in the US, is that the right wing here is so batsh*t crazy: Banning abortion and birth control, blaming gay people for earthquakes, carrying assault rifles around in public, genuinely believing that the world is 6000 years old - these are not part of educated discourse in the rest of the OECD.

<comment><USER10> > Correct me if I'm mistaken

Some corrections about the US:

\- Abortion is legal as is birth control.

\- A very few crazy people blame gay people for earthquakes but I'm sure such people exist everywhere.

\- Very few people carry assault rifles around in public.

\- Very few people believe the world is 6000 years old. Again, I'm sure such people exist everywhere.

Please, stop caricaturing.

<comment><USER11> " Since 1982, between 40% and 50% of adults in the United States say they hold the creationist view that 'God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years'. "

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

<comment><USER12> I don't know a thing about religion or theology, so take this with a huge grain of salt.

But I still don't really buy the accuracy of these numbers for the matter at hand here. I suspect that when asked by a pollster, someone who answers affirmative to this question is doing so because their religion has told them to believe that.

The pollster probably doesn't ask a follow-up question of the form, "C'mon, really?" I suspect the answer would often be, "Yeah, not really. But the priest/minister/religion-dude/whatever says it a whole bunch, plus it's in that book we are forced to read over and over."

People like to have their pet beliefs that they know to be factually incorrect. I like to believe my taste in music is superior to just about everyone else's. But it's not.

Apologies for my sacrilege here if you are religious.

<comment><USER13> > _The pollster probably doesn 't ask a follow-up question of the form, > "C'mon, really?" I suspect the answer would often be, "Yeah, not really. But > the priest/minister/religion-dude/whatever says it a whole bunch, plus it's > in that book we are forced to read over and over."_

Yes, if the pollster started bullying people who answered one way, that would probably warp the results... those polls are performed by polling organizations that are well regarded because they _don 't_ try to warp their polling results like that.

The mere fact that so many Americans would answer that way, even if they didn't honestly believe it 6 days out of the week, is 1) notable, 2) disturbing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This editorial is self-serving in the extreme.

> _When The Economist opines on new ideas and policies, it does so on the > basis of their merits, not of who supports or opposes them. Last October, > for example, it outlined a programme of reforms to combat inequality._

Most people believe that they make judgments based on merits, but that does not make it so. Even avoiding ad hominem arguments provides no guarantee of objectivity. For example: this idea that inequality is a problem is completely normative, and the ability of policymakers to solve it from the top down is unproven, and still uncertain. In addition, making US presidential endorsements (democratic for the last 3 elections) does not help them look like an impartial spectator in the political game.

The proposals which "The Economist" proposes do not always align with any specific political or interest group, but they are almost universally (monetarily or fiscally) activist.

<comment><USER14> Who can guarantee objectivity? No one. That doesn't mean it is not possible to pursue it or even gain a good measure of it. Do you really believe it makes the Economist look partisan to support Democrats since 2004? What about before that?

From 1996 - 2012 it was Dole, Bush, Kerry, Obama, Obama.

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/11/us...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/11/us- presidential-endorsements)

Isn't it possible to support certain ideals no matter which party they come from? The fact that their proposals do not always align with specific interest groups supports a claim of impartiality.

<comment><USER7> I agree with you that it is difficult, and perhaps impossible to measure or achieve objectivity, but that is what they claim to have already done.

In addition, it is somewhat absurd to pretend that a magazine takes a position, when it is really the editorial board that makes all the decisions. If one wants to examine any potential biases, one should examine the record of each editor or columnist, not the entire 100+ year history of a collection of their works.

I also agree with you that they may not have any source-based bias, but their claims are much broader:

> _The Economist has no permanent address on the left-right scale._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Although I don't always agree with the Economist's position, e.g. right to bear arms, it's always refreshing to read a media that is not pigeon holed into the traditional left / right that we today are accustomed to. Liberal in values, conservative in its economic views, while not being to the extreme of today's libertarians. Total win imo ;)

<comment><USER16> What is their stance on the right to bear arms? Do you have a citation.

<comment><USER17> They are a U.K. publication. As far as I know, there isn't much diversity of opinion on the topic of gun control in the U.K.

They don't like guns, but they don't like impractical or pointless gun control measures either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Economist paints itself as classically liberal, but this is something of a farce. They criticized Mises, sometimes called the last knight of liberalism, for his liberalism. And they have been consistently pro-war for the last decade. What is classically liberal about that? Not to mention they favour all kinds of economic interventionism - boosting demand by "stimulus" for instance, is one of their go-to suggestions for an economy in depression. Classical liberals of the 19th century would recoil in horror at the Economist's current "classical liberalism"

<comment><USER19> > Mises, sometimes called the last knight of liberalism

By whom?

<comment><USER20> >> Mises, sometimes called the last knight of liberalism

>By whom?

Jörg Guido Hülsmann wrote a book titled _Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism_ (2007):

[https://mises.org/daily/6022/](https://mises.org/daily/6022/)

PDF and epub here:

[https://mises.org/document/3295/Mises-The-Last-Knight-of- Lib...](https://mises.org/document/3295/Mises-The-Last-Knight-of-Liberalism)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I always admire The Economist's willingness to have political ideals, be explicit and unapologetic about them and to be pragmatic about them. It's an attitude that should be standard in the media.

<comment><USER22> It is standard in British media.

<comment><USER23> I always wondered if that was because the British media are full of students of _English_ , while the US is stuck with students of _journalism_ (eg [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity)). The latter seems to correlate with a _delusion of grandeur_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I cancelled my Economist subscription recently due to finding myself frustrated with their political bias. It seems they often assert controversial opinions as accepted truth. I would much prefer that any statements of policy preference were backed up by references, data, or at least given with a nod to opposing viewpoints. Although, that would probably make publishing on a weekly schedule more difficult.

<comment><USER25> > due to finding myself frustrated with their political bias.

... in which direction?

<comment><USER24> Echoing what they said in the linked article, it doesn't fit into a left/right paradigm, so "direction" might not be the right word. Instead I'd elaborate: editors there have opinions about political matters, and they frame their own political opinions as fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> IMO, most people hold the described political view of being leftie in social and rightie in economic questions. To me the biggest challenge/question is how we can escape the current "local optimum" we are in in which you have to effectively choose between social and economic values (at least in the US).

It seems highly unlikely that we will see the emergence of a third party, so I wonder when either the Democrats or Republicans realize the potential of being a true centralist majority party. I tend to think that Democrats are better positioned, but thought that in the 2012 Elections, the Republicans had a great shot with Huntsman.

<comment><USER27> > IMO, most people hold the described political view of being leftie in social > and rightie in economic questions.

I think that, to the extent the economic half of that is true, its only on the very high level, where almost everyone holds what is generally held out as the economically conservative view of "government should expend resources only on those things which are essential government functions".

What distinguishes people rather radically is what they see as essential functions of government.

> To me the biggest challenge/question is how we can escape the current "local > optimum" we are in in which you have to effectively choose between social > and economic values (at least in the US).

Its not really all that difficult: having an electoral system that produces more proportional representation results in more than two viable parties and more than one main axis of political variation. This is well demonstrated among developed democracies.

> so I wonder when either the Democrats or Republicans realize the potential > of being a true centralist majority party.

There is no advantage to that if you have actual policy preferences that are not centralist.

And there's a big disadvantage to it if political views tend to be bimodally distributed rather than normally distributed.

<comment><USER28> That's not necessarily true. Proportional representation often has the undesirable side effect of dramatically increasing the power of small minority parties. The reason is that in order to gain majority control of the government larger parties often have to make significant concessions to a smaller minority party to get the votes. Also, you can end up with a lot of gridlock if no coalition can reach majority.

Two party systems have it's flaws, but what we are seeing now is more typical of a proportional system. Due to overly effective gerrymandering, the Republican hold on many congressional districts is so secure that the only real threat to those seats is from party extremists. Under our normal two party system with less polarized districts, extremist politicians couldn't win in general elections, but now that so many Republican districts are so secure, the party has essentially been captured by extremists (it's not a stretch to call the Tea Party a third party). In the past, the two party system worked by consensus, the more moderate members of each party would work together to carve out solutions to a problem, and keep in mind, the more moderate party members were typically from contested districts, so they needed to demonstrate leadership and good results to get re-elected. The end result was that the party that demonstrated the best leadership would get re-elected.

The Republican 'take no prisoners' strategy can probably be traced back to Gingrich. We are now seeing a culmination of that strategy, and I think most would agree that it has backfired. If I was in the business of making bold predictions, I think I would bet that the Republican party might get replaced by a new, more moderate party in the next 20 years. More realistically, they are going to shift back to the middle. Two party systems won't work otherwise, and our government isn't really designed to allow multiple parties.

<comment><USER27> > That's not necessarily true.

What's not necessarily true?

> Proportional representation often has the undesirable side effect of > dramatically increasing the power of small minority parties. The reason is > that in order to gain majority control of the government larger parties > often have to make significant concessions to a smaller minority party to > get the votes.

To the extent that's an effect of PR, its mostly an effect of PR _in a parliamentary system_ , where one needs a stable majority in the main house of the national legislature to establish a government administration.

If you keep the structure of the US government but change the electoral system for the Congress to one which produces more proportional responses, you don't have the same degree of incentive for disproportionate concessions to a minor party to form an administration.

> Two party systems have it's flaws, but what we are seeing now is more > typical of a proportional system.

Er, no, dysfunction caused by extremism in the activist base which has disproportionate influence over one or both of the major parties is pretty typical of a two-party system, not a proportional system, as in a system which structurally can support more competitive parties, such extremism will more quickly drive moderates into other (existing or new) parties, and is thereby limited.

> Due to overly effective gerrymandering, the Republican hold on many > congressional districts is so secure that the only real threat to those > seats is from party extremists.

That's not due to "overly effective gerrymandering" (the fact that Republicans have substantially greater share of House seats than their vote share may be, but there is pretty much no way to divide up single-member, FPTP districts in the US that _isn 't_ going to result in lots of safe seats for both parties -- heck, a lot of Senate seats are similarly safe seats, and they _can 't_ be gerrymandered.)

And, in any case, _gerrymandering itself_ is a high-stakes operation that can seriously effect representation only in single-member, FPTP districts, so insofar as the current problem is a result of gerrymandering, it is a direct result of the structure of the electoral system.

> Under our normal two party system with less polarized districts, extremist > politicians couldn't win in general elections, but now that so many > Republican districts are so secure, the party has essentially been captured > by extremists (it's not a stretch to call the Tea Party a third party).

If you look at the history of the US, a national two-party system with extremely polarized districts and often a large number of states each effectively dominated by a single one of the two major parties is the norm, not an exceptional state. Your idea of "our normal two party system" is unconnected to reality.

And, yes, its a stretch to call the Tea Party a third party; since shortly after it became visible on the national stage its support has usually been about equal to that of the Republican Party (sometimes a bit more, and sometimes a bit less) and, more to the point, almost entirely overlapped with that of the Republican Party. The Tea Party is just a new branding for the activist base of the Republican Party.

> In the past, the two party system worked by consensus, the more moderate > members of each party would work together to carve out solutions to a > problem, and keep in mind, the more moderate party members were typically > from contested districts, so they needed to demonstrate leadership and good > results to get re-elected.

In the past, the two major parties largely represented different _regional_ interests, but represent the same kind of elites, to the extent that their platforms differed it was more driven by difference in the interests of the capitalist class is different regions rather than ideological differences; this started to break down in the New Deal era in a major ideological realignment of the parties, which wasn't really complete until Clinton's first term. The main drivers for this were probably the labor movement and the reaction against it and the development of mass media which facilitated the development of national ideological communities.

> The Republican 'take no prisoners' strategy can probably be traced back to > Gingrich.

Sure, the 1994 Contract with America was a watershed moment of the solidiying ideological alignment of America's two parties.

> We are now seeing a culmination of that strategy, and I think most would > agree that it has backfired.

That's what people said after Gingrich did the same thing and "failed". The thing is, it hasn't really failed -- that is, done any worse than _not_ doing it -- either for the interests it served, or for the people who executed it who, even if they lose elected office, will end up in well-paid sinecures in the network of corporate, media, and propaganda/think-tank operations that support the ideological Right. Which is why the "defeats" suffered by Gingrich _isn 't_ seen as a defeat -- its only a defeat from a perspective which keeps score by political offices held, not substantive influence exercised.

> If I was in the business of making bold predictions, I think I would bet > that the Republican party might get replaced by a new, more moderate party > in the next 20 years. More realistically, they are going to shift back to > the middle.

Sure, what I'd say that's the most likely case: what we are seeing right now is an extended rear-guard action by a faction that maintains disproportionate influence on government despite its shrinking support; if it doesn't turn around support for its ideology, its either going to be replaced as the dominant faction of a major party, have the major party it is the dominant faction of replaced, or establish a non-democratic regime, and the latter seems like the least likely alternative by far.

But the kind of extended rear-guard action it is fighting is only possible because it this faction is both the activist and funding base of a major party in a two-party system. In a proportional system, it wouldn't be possible.

<comment><USER28> I was making some very large generalizations in my original comment for the sake of brevity and argument. Thank you for taking the time to pick them apart;)

> If you keep the structure of the US government but change the electoral > system for the Congress to one which produces more proportional responses, > you don't have the same degree of incentive for disproportionate concessions > to a minor party to form an administration.

My original point was that the Tea Party has essentially shown that a more proportional system of government isn't any more functional or effective than a two party system. The Tea Party has essentially captured the Republican Party, not too dissimilar to how a minority party would make out-sized concessions of a coalition government in a parliamentary system. Both cases result in gridlock (or something that closely resembles it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Almost a year ago to the day, The Economist ran a leader ([1], also cited at the bottom of the OP) that described itself as "radical centerist", blatantly "stealing" ideas from both right and left. The surprisingly poor article posted here not only fails to clarify or improve this position, but actually muddies the waters of discourse, because it fails to spell out what it means when it uses terms like "left-wing" and "conservative". These definitions are particular and subtle, and it is worth explaining what The Economist _actually_ means in this article. This is especially true given the international audience of the paper (and HN), where these terms sometimes appear to mean contradictory things.

I won't pretend to be a master political theoretician, so corrections are welcome, but at a high level here is what is going on.

In most of political theory, the spectrum breaks down roughly into two huge types of political party (and yes this is a massive generalization):

* those on the right wing, which are typically _fiscally liberal_ and _socially conservative_ , that is, they believe that companies should behave as they like, but people need to be told how to behave even in their private lives, and

* those on the left wing, which are mainly _socially liberal_ , that is, they believe that the government should tax and regulate more heavily, but that people should be able to do what they like privately.

Across the globe what it means to be "a liberal" is different. In the US, the "liberal" signifier refers to the fact that the person believes that the government should not regulate personal decisions like gay marriage. In France, it is the opposite: the "liberal" signifer refers to the fact that they like less regulation on the markets.

The Economist, simply put, is liberal in the sense that it tends to favor less regulation on _both_ these fronts: it favors legalization of drugs and gay marriage, but also less regulation for markets.

There are of course exceptions (it favors gun regulation for example), but this is basically the position that it has come to call "radical centerism". The magazine is often called libertarian, but only conveniently so -- the gun control exception in particular casts this supposition into doubt, and rather than accept this branding, the editorial staff has evidently decided to pick this new title.

This is probably the right move. For all its flaws, this is something that the article did get right.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/node/21564556](http://www.economist.com/node/21564556)

<comment><USER30> > _In most of political theory, the spectrum breaks down roughly into two…_

As a Ph.D. candidate in a top tier political science program, let me just stop you here and assure you that whatever follows is almost certainly categorically incorrect. Political theory is so wildly diverse that one strains to appreciate the relevance of large chunks of it, but it, without a doubt, does not generally/roughly/approximately break down into the positions of the U.S.'s two major parties.

> _I won 't pretend to be a master political theoretician, but…_

This is kinda like when someone starts a sentence, "I don't want to be an asshole, but…" or "I'm not a racist, but…" or "I don't want to interrupt, but…".

Please don't pretend to be a political theorist.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for the spirited reply, Perceval, but I don't see a place where you justify a disagreement with the substance of my position. What I _do_ see is you bragging about your acceptance to a nice school. Not to belabor the obvious, but lording your supposed superiority over opponents is not a good way to conduct a discussion.

Maybe the first part is going in the direction of a productive discussion -- are you complaining that the split between "right wing" and "left wing" is so general as to lose all salience to the discussion at hand? I assume that can't be your position, because that's pretty obviously wrong.

<comment><USER30> > lording your supposed superiority over opponents is not a good way to > conduct a discussion.

It wasn't really an invitation to discussion.

> the split between "right wing" and "left wing" is so general as to lose all > salience

No, the left–right split is just fine for talking about U.S. politics. It becomes more problematic when you begin to include other countries whose political divisions split along different issues.

But it becomes almost totally useless if you try to shoehorn "most of political theory" into two categories based on only two criteria (social, fiscal) that, gosh, just happen to match up with the two present day U.S. political parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A cynic could probably describe this position also as pseudo-intellectual populism, i.e. catering to the last bastion of print magazine buyers?

<comment><USER3> The Economist has held its editorial stance for over a century. Your language thus suggests that the print magazine was on its last stand even in the late 19th century.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Excellent illustration of the fact that anyone who claims to be neither left nor right wing, is actually right wing.

<comment><USER33> And what is your definition of right wing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, I'm a little confused about this article. It's probably one of a few fun little fluff pieces commemorating the anniversary.

I don't even read it much and I've always understood, and think most readers understand, that The Economist has a somewhat undogmatic mixed left/right stance endorsing both liberals and the occasional Neo Fascist, at once backing universal healthcare (which they acknowledge in this article) and destructive warfare (which they do not).

</comment><comment><USER34> I really like the idea of a "radical centre" even though it could mean almost anything.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think while it likes to present itself to be above the fray it actually has an editorial policy to favour and endorse candidates according to a proximity model:

1\. sort politicians by perceived direction of views - PV, 0 being the most right, 100 the most left.

2\. Their preferred PV* is something like 45.

3\. Proximity to that number is favoured, not the actual positions.

This of course is pretty easy to do and that may be the reason why editors are anonymous. You can pay relatively little to make endorsements using an algorithm.

This is of course a horrible way to choose a candidate or a policy, but does it really matter? The readers seem to like it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Thank you Economist for saying this!

I really hate when people shove others into right or left categories - that's as dumb as it gets. Like it's impossible to have different opinions on different things, or what?

</comment><comment><USER37> >We like free enterprise and tend to favour deregulation and privatisation. But we also like gay marriage, want to legalise drugs and disapprove of monarchy.

Sounds like they're libertarian.

</comment><comment><USER38> Most party-based political systems seem to stabilize in the form two parties. Which ideas these parties support is often pretty random and is often not self-consistent.

</comment><comment><USER39> 'People on the left paint us as right, but we are actually liberal in the classical sense of the term' is not a refutation of being right-wing.

</comment><comment><USER40> the best summation of the Economist's editorial viewpoint is that it's aimed at rich businessmen, & consequently combines tacit support for economic inequality w/ choice morsels of liberalism - viz. healthcare & gun control - in order to differentiate itself from "unsophisticated" paleoconservatives

<comment><USER41> I think it's a bit cynical to read it that way: there's good reason to be anti-inequality but also skeptical of naive wealth redistribution as the solution to it.

What we are left with is the European social-democratic welfare state, which seems to work well enough if you have a base of natural resources to work from. I notice the Economiat generally isn't too critical of most European tax rates (a typical cry of rich businessmen) but rather is critical of countries that have widespread and systematic structural barriers to economic freedom - the UK, pre-Thatcher, and modern France, for example.

France represents a fun eternal potshot game: they keep claiming doom yet France keeps chugging along with its massive civil service, huge employment regs, and longest vacations on Earth...

<comment><USER40> "naive wealth redistribution" seems to be a bit of a strawman to me. re: European tax rates, perhaps it would be more accurate to describe the Economist as supporting the current economic status quo. besides, while Europe does have a much stronger safety net, it's almost as unequal as the US - it's not like the well-off are any less hegemonic there.

<comment><USER41> Admittedly it is a bit of a strawman, because we haven't really defined "smart" wealth distribution in this thread :)

Re: inequality [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/the- inco...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/the-income- inequality-boom-its-real-and-its-everywhere/249561/)

So you have a point that the status quo isn't actually all that great except in the one country that The Economist always yells at.... France and Belgium. Though the Scandinavian countries also seem to do well (lots of natural resources help).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The best way to describe The Economist is "liberal communist". They serve Samuel Huntington's Davos Man, Christopher Lasch's Revolting Elite.

[http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n07/slavoj-zizek/nobody-has-to- be-v...](http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n07/slavoj-zizek/nobody-has-to-be-vile)

</comment><comment><USER43> This is one of those cases where the inadequacy of trying to describe our politics on a simple, single left-vs-right axis shines through so starkly. If we used a two-axis system, where one axis is economic and the other social, The Economist would (mostly) fall in the socially-liberal, economically- conservative quadrant.

</comment><comment><USER44> "We like free enterprise and tend to favour deregulation and privatisation. But we also like gay marriage, want to legalise drugs and disapprove of monarchy. So is the newspaper right-wing or left-wing?"

Eh what? All those stances are almost text book libertarian... so how could anyone be in doubt.

</comment><comment><USER45> Bypass this if you dislike jokes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M)

I have to post this clip from "Yes Minister" every time there is a discussion about political bias in the media.

</comment><comment><USER46> Hooray, as someone who feels similar, we don't all have to "pick a team".

<comment><USER47> [http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/how_does_the_shutdown...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/how_does_the_shutdown_relate_t.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> So the Economist is like... me!

</comment><comment><USER49> Does anyone remember when the media used to pride itself on objectivity?

</comment><comment><USER40> in other words: "bipartisanship"!</comment>


Are Compilers Getting More or Less Reliable? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1036

<comment><USER2> I heard a lot of the people who develop / _GNU /_/Linux are paid for their work. I'm surprised this is not the case for open source compilers. It begs the question, what is more important, an operating system or a compiler? I would say a compiler is more important, since not many coders will want to write an operating system in assembly. On the other hand, I would have much trouble using a compiler with no operating system.

<comment><USER3> Several engineers working on LLVM or Clang are paid by Google or Apple. The reasons these two companies are not funding GCC are political, not technical, otherwise I bet they would gladly fund both efforts, if only for the healthy emulation.

<comment><USER2> When you say political, are you referring to the licences? GPL seems to be losing popularity at the moment.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN Europe: anybody using Mangopay? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the market for a payment provider, and somebody just sent me a link to mangopay.com .
They look somewhat suspect to me, especially the fact that they have unusually low transaction fees of 1.8% / 0.18€ and no chargeback fees.
I've also never heard of them or any of their references. Is anybody here using them or have experience dealing with them? <comment><USER2> It looks like a spin-off from leetchi.com [1] crowdfunding site.

My impression is that the mangopay itself is also more geared towards group- buy etc ventures.

If they do not provide a credit card vault that you can take to another payment company as needed then It's a high-risk option. Just like any other payments company without a vault. Vault is not an issue if the customers making one-time purchases and there's no recurring subscription.

If your biz is with recurring billing then you don't want to run parallel payment systems or ask users to resubscribe whenever there's a need to move somewhere else.

I'm in EU as well and things do not look good for small startups with a need for recurring "mutable" payments. The only reliable option is braintreepayments but 100eur minimum is high and there's an uncertainty with the pricing because of the rumors on Paypal/eBay takeover.

I'm waiting for Stripe to expand to all EU countries. PayMill is very similar to Stripe but their biggest problem for me is not having the vault -- I would not be able to transfer my subscriptions to a new provider if needed (AFAIK, please prove me wrong).

[1] [http://www.mangopay.com/about-us/](http://www.mangopay.com/about-us/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thankfully I don't require recurring payments for this project, so this would not be a show stopper for me.

Have you seen any other reputable provider that does not levy chargeback fees?

<comment><USER2> I'm afraid all reputable providers have chargeback fees.

That's something banks charge from the merchant [1] so it doesn't make sense for the provider to take that risk. Provider does add a bit of extra to cover their side of the work, no idea how much.

[1] [https://support.braintreepayments.com/customer/portal/articl...](https://support.braintreepayments.com/customer/portal/articles/1080669-chargeback- retrieval-overview-tips)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I haven't made myself clear - I meant that question in terms of "this is too good to be true, right?".

<comment><USER2> Ah no, my English sucks, had no idea what "does not levy" meant :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kickoff 2.0 is out  - <AUTHOR> http://kickoffapp.com

<comment><USER2> Without anymore than a cursory glance it appears all the love went into the Mac app. What we got for iOS is, by all accounts, barebones. That said, I'm still hopeful that this tool finds more teams; it's great.</comment>


Ask HN: Forums on the Internet to discuss real-world non-tech manufacturing? - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in manufacturing of non tech stuff.
Specifically I want to know how to get an image printed onto a tabletop or plastic surface in the cheapest and easiest way.
I also want to find out how to get very cheap shippable plastic tables made.
In software development there are any number of forums to discuss how to do things.
Where does someone go on the Internet to ask questions about real world manufacturing?  Are there active forums anywhere? <comment><USER2> Are you thinking of getting things made to your exact specification, or ordering existing designs with some cosmetic customisation (e.g. existing plastic tables with your design printed on them)? These two are quite different.

I suggest you start by:

1\. Looking at Alibaba.com to see what types of products are already available, without you needing to design from scratch.

2\. Reading China Law Blog, which has a bunch of stuff about manufacturing agreements and things to watch out for.

3\. Reading blog posts written by people who have gone through the process. Search for things like 'got product manufactured in china' or similar. Focus on the longer posts which talk about all the back and forth and issues/problems, as they will give you a better idea of what you're getting in to.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you wish to import plastic products from a country like China that has something printed on them?

I did find this:

[http://www.wholesaleforum.com/discuss/](http://www.wholesaleforum.com/discuss/)

These manufacture markets are at least 10 times as huge as the software/services market (IMHO).

As far as getting info about it, I'd preferably talk to someone who is in the manufacture/wholesale business instead of going to a forum.</comment>


Show HN: A Rogue State Along Two Rivers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/03/world/middleeast/syria-iraq-isis-rogue-state-along-two-rivers.html <comment><USER2> This is one of the most effective infographics I've seen, right up there with Napoleon's March to Moscow[1]. I spent at least an hour with it this morning and it changed my understanding of Iraq, Syria and ISIL.

I'm used to thinking in terms of national borders, but this shows how the population is organized by the Tigris and Euphrates, not by artificial lines on a map.

ISIL understands this well, making the Iraq/Syria border into a pretty meaningless imaginary line. The ISIL blitz seems like it came from nowhere, but this dramatically illustrates their methodical progression, over time, following the rivers.

I found myself wanting to know more about the communities, lakes, dams, roads, borders, sects, nationalities other features highlighted in this piece, so I spent another hour manually linking to Google Earth and Wikipedia to drill into more detail.

Along the way I found a lot of content on YouTube of ISIL takeovers of cities, burning of vehicles and disturbing images of executions and crucifixions. I'd seen some of this before, but it would be really powerful to link selected videos and images from the ground directly to places on the map.

I'd be interested in the editorial process at the NYT, how this evolved from idea to realization, who supplied the content, and how the development team coordinated with the reporters.

And I'd like to understand more about how the autonomous Kurdish region fits into this story, both geographically as well as politically and militarily.

[1] [http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters](http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters)

<comment><USER3> "I found myself wanting to know more [...], so I spent another hour manually linking to Google Earth and Wikipedia to drill into more detail. / Along the way I found a lot of content on YouTube..."

Completely off-topic, but _this_ is why network access should be considered crucial to human existence.

<comment><USER4> Technically not off-topic, just a digression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is not working at all on either Firefox 30 or Chromium 34 (both Ubuntu). All I see is two large maps and a bit of text in between.

The developer console has a few CORS errors, though:

> XMLHttpRequest cannot load > [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/06/18/tigris-...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/06/18/tigris- > and-euphrates/d4a56d136bb9d40ec16f882df983fe464c4cf69c/syria_and_iraq.json). > No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested > resource. Origin '[http://www.nytimes.com'](http://www.nytimes.com') is > therefore not allowed access.

> XMLHttpRequest cannot load > [http://core2_euw1.fabrik.nytimes.com./info](http://core2_euw1.fabrik.nytimes.com./info). > No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested > resource. Origin '[http://www.nytimes.com'](http://www.nytimes.com') is > therefore not allowed access.

I suppose accessing through nytimes.com would work, but it redirects to www.nytimes.com...

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems odd that browsers on Ubuntu would be getting CORS errors — while the same browsers for everyone else would not. CORS, being a policy, should apply consistently, no? Perhaps you've changed a setting somewhere?

Either way, I've made a note to look into setting Access-Control-Allow-Origin headers on all the static assets we publish out to Graphics8...

<comment><USER5> OK, I've been digging into this a bit further. When I do a request from a remote machine, I do get an Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * header, but from my local machine, this header is missing.

I assume that the proxy on this network discards the header and thus breaks the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for following up. That'll save me some time ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Happy to answer questions about this, if folks have any...

<comment><USER6> It's incredibly cool that you got a by-line, and the lead position for that matter. Is that due to the work you did coding the project, or because of your role coming up with the idea, mentioned in your other comment [1], or because of some other journalism you did on the project that you haven't mentioned?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7986383](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7986383)

<comment><AUTHOR> Bylines are alphabetical in this case.

Since folks seem to be curious, here's the division of labor:

I pitched the idea, stitched together some Landsat photos as a proof of concept and a rough design, built out and implemented the page, worked on labels and city outlines, and helped out with picking some locations and editing.

Karen did most of the reporting and research on this. She's also responsible for much of the reporting on the ongoing map stack graphic.

Derek helped out with the Landsat color toning and burning in city shapes, built the locator map and the Baghdad odometer, and confirmed some of the statuses.

Archie worked on a ton of the writing, polished the design, and did a mountain of editing to boil it down to the essentials. He also kept everything coordinated, as a good Graphics Editor will do...

Nilkanth did some yeoman's work on tracing city shapes...

Bostock provided the final projections for both the Euphrates and Tigris maps, fixing my original broken projections.

The Baghdad bureau confirmed Karen's reporting, and added helpful notes and suggestions which were incorporated.

(apologies in advance if I forgot anything...)

<comment><USER7> You know, I'm so conflicted about you. On the one hand, I greatly admire much of the open source code you've released, while on the other, it irks me considerably, the way you glorify working at such a despicable imperialist propaganda machine; a veritable house of lies.

A site partly created by Julian Assange with lots more great information: [http://www.nytexaminer.com/](http://www.nytexaminer.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this a legit Show HN? It looks more like an article from the New York times to me.

<comment><USER9> I think so, based on my reading of the guidelines. jashkenas, a regular poster here at HN, is almost certainly designed and programmed the scrolling illustration.

<comment><USER10> He created Coffeescript, Backbone.js, and Underscore.js. Now works at NYT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Content aside, I think it's really cool how the map area expands with the window and the mini-map's red rectangle accurately represents your view in the browser window. Very neat.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow. This is one of the best graphical presentations I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, this is beautiful work. Kudos to the authors.

Now, to go examine the actual content.... Eh, never mind, it's too depressing. I think I'll just jealously admire the scroll down again.

</comment><comment><USER14> I read this article the other day, and I really enjoyed both the presentation and the content. The historical and (especially) geographic context provided by the article is really helpful when it comes to trying to understand where ISIS came from, and how it could have taken over so much of Iraq so quickly.

</comment><comment><USER15> Impressive mobile support as always. Very well done, kudos nyt!

</comment><comment><USER16> Sorry, how is this a "Show HN"?

<comment><USER17> It's something the submitter (along with others) made, and other people can play with it—in this case, because it's interactive. So I'd say it meets the definition at [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).

We don't want to be too strict about this because creative work can take many forms. Mostly we just want to exclude vaporware.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to look for jobs in silicon valley , especially start ups - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone!<p>I was wondering, what is the best way to expose yourself to a lot of start ups in silicon valley, is there like some site that lists all the hot start ups that are hiring? <comment><USER2> The best advice I can give, if you're looking to get hired, is to find a startup that is fixing a problem you're interested in. See if they have an API, and if they do, build something with it. If they don't reach out to them expressing interest in one, and take it from there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Working on one. In the meantime, every 1st, they have a who's hiring thread here. There are a few other mailing lists and places that have startup jobs posted such as StartupDigest or GitHub jobs. There's a few more that escape me at the moment but they're around. Ultimately the list is long. Find areas you have interest in and research the market that way.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can find a list of a few YC companies that are hiring by clicking on 'jobs' on this site. At the top of that page, you'll see that YC will be hosting a "work at a startup" event which you can sign up for that will feature many YC companies.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.startupjobs.com/> maybe?

</comment><comment><USER6> Look at the startups who've just closed VC rounds</comment>


The sorry state of the programming world as of the end of 2016 AD - <AUTHOR> https://dorinlazar.ro/the-sorry-state-of-the-programming-world-as-of-the-end-of-2016-ad/ <comment><USER2> _reads title_

"I bet this is going to be another protracted, entitled rant that boils down to 'I hate JavaScript'"

 _clicks_

"Yep."

If you've read any of the 1000s of identical whinefests that has been upvoted on HN in the past few years, then save yourself the bother of reading this one as well.

<comment><USER3> Damn, read article before comments. (OK, skimmed). You could have saved me 5 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do so many people expect everything to be perfect all the time? Why does it always seem to be the ones that aren't doing anything to help the situation that complain the loudest about it?

Yes, we've got a _lot_ of tools that solve a lot of problems, most of which an individual probably doesn't need. Sounds pretty awesome to me, actually. It means we're experimenting and making progress.

Nobody is forced to use those tools, despite what so many people claim. If you don't want to work in the same way as other developers at that company, don't accept the job. Find somewhere else. Be a freelancer.

On the other hand, if you do manage to find that magical unicorn of a job where everything is perfect, take it! I've never seen it, and I doubt it exists, but it'd be awesome if it does.

If you try to fix the problem, you'll end up in the same situation as all the people you're screaming at: Yet another tool that fixes all kinds of problems, but nobody other than yourself will actually need that exact set of problems fixed. (And you probably don't, either.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's the thing. The state of programming will always suck.

We now know how to create a CRUD web application that scales well enough for most businesses, using little effort, with well-established authentication and session management.

Twenty years ago, writing such a thing would have been a big deal.

In twenty years (or maybe sooner), that won't even involve programming, much like clicking things in a spreadsheet doesn't feel like "real" programming anymore. Maybe we already have point-and-click applications for creating such applications. Dunno.

It's just that nobody is interested in simple CRUD applications anymore. Today, you need live data and streaming, responsive design, autocomplete for every input box etc. The interesting stuff in programming is always going to be at the edge of what's possible (or what's practical), and that will always be in a sorry state, almost by definition.

</comment><comment><USER6> Check out what I did in one commit several years ago. Maybe you can get a multi-million dollar idea from it like others have (meteor, app.js, etc)

Somehow people could change the internet to suit this project to fix everything. Single files of jquery on disparate servers that connect to one frontend could transform the web and undo the big problems.

[https://github.com/tblobaum/nQuery](https://github.com/tblobaum/nQuery)

</comment><comment><USER7> _We have the most sophisticated tools ever, in the history of man-kind._

The debugger I use in Chrome is a worse experience than the Visual Basic debugger I used 20 years ago.

Programmers have very weak institutional memory.

 _And the real problem is not Javascript, is not, really. The problem is the HTTP + HTML model. It no longer works. And we work around it the wrong way._

I disagree strongly with this. We know how to use HTML and http very effectively. And there are ways to address the UX shortcomings of standard HTML that avoid writing reams of JavaScript.

People underestimate HTML.

<comment><USER8> > The debugger I use in Chrome is a worse experience than the Visual Basic > debugger I used 20 years ago.

I've used both the Chrome debugger and the VB debugger (so you know how old I am!) and I won't speak to your comment directly, but...

You have no idea how many times the Chrome JS debugger has saved my rear. :) I've been able to fix JS issues that used to take hours to debug in a few minutes since Chrome came out with its JS debugger.

Firefox and IE's debuggers have gotten better - but not as good as Chrome's.

And the reason I think JS debuggers aren't as good as, say, VB or Java's, is, IMHO, purely a language issue.

With an interpreted language like Javascript that allows re-definition of any function or object ("prototype") or variable, I don't think the debugging tools can get any better until the language changes (which, as the author points out, is a hard sell.)

<comment><USER7> Oh, absolutely: the Chrome debugger is the best of the bunch and a huge step forward from where we were a few years ago.

On the other hand, it shows just how little historical knowledge programmers have that many people don't recognize that it isn't better than technology from decades ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR: Javascript sucks, Frameworks suck, Agile sucks.

</comment><comment><USER10> The level of vitriol here put me off, so I didn't bother reading all of it. Does he actually propose any solution to this so called problem he whines about?</comment>