Ask HN: What is Wealth? - <AUTHOR> "What people want" is a common definition. Are there qualifiers to that we could flesh out? For example should we exclude things that people want simply because they believe others will want them more later (speculation)? <comment><USER3> Health.

Years ago, when my father was very sick, I made a stupid remark like, "Maybe you can get some financial benefit from this." He responded, "I'd trade everything to be healthy again."

Sometimes it takes extremely trying circumstances to really put things into perspective. Ever since that conversation, I have never looked at the subjects of health, wealth, or happiness in the same way.

<comment><USER4> You don't know the seriousness of the illness unless you get to that stage. Losing a leg isn't as easy as it seems. Human has a very strong relation with its' organs and he is very prudent/fearful about his health when he is ill.

<comment><USER5> Who thinks losing a leg is easy? It doesn't seem easy to me at all, it seems absolutely terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have always seen wealth as a function of time and choice.

I would echo the sentiments of thibaut_barrere, reasonattlm, and especially bmelton (as it pertains to time and choice).

In other words, I would call myself 'wealthy' if I had the opportunity to do what I want when I want to do it. I think in American society when we think of wealth we think of Wall St Bankers with multimillion dollar penthouses in NY, or we think of Ellison and his yachting, but I think we can boil it down to time and choice.

Ellison can _choose_ to pursue yacthing as a passion because he is wealthy, and the expense of that hobby is not a determining factor.

Gates can choose to spend his energies at philanthropy because the lack of income and time constraints associated with that endeavor are not determining factors.

For me, wealth would be 'the ability to follow curiosities and interests, whatever they may be.' If I have a 9-5 job AND trying to get a startup off the ground AND I have a family with young children, I am able to follow some of my passions, but not all of them, because there are large chunks of my time that I dont control.

<comment><USER7> > _wealth would be 'the ability to follow curiosities and interests, whatever > they may be.'_

How would you differentiate between the terms wealth, freedom, and happiness (or do you consider them interchangeable)?

I think from those 3, 'wealth' has the heaviest connotation of objective comparability and applicability to organizations in addition to individuals. (ex. a wealthy company or a wealthy country)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wealth = how long you could sustain your current lifestyle (same expenses) if your income stopped, today.

EDIT: what I like about this definition is that it is not subjective and doesn't imply any need for comparison. As well, it conveys the idea that time and mobility are the new currencies, which I believe.

(the definition I use; read it in a french book by Olivier Seban)

<comment><USER9> What if you have a cushy job that earns you $100k / year working 4 hour a week? (lifestyle business like Ferris like)

<comment><USER10> Protip: No one has that (including Ferris).

<comment><USER11> There is at least one person on HN who credibly claims to have that, and I know of a few software entrepreneurs who work about that much when in parking mode.

<comment><USER10> Mark Zuckerberg also exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Carving pumpkins with my daughter.

Taking my family to the Renaissance Festival and not having to worry about the cost of a Henna tattoo, or the cost of an elephant ride.

Time to sit down and play with the inner workings of celery, RabbitMQ, and just how exactly am I going to be able to leverage the subtask module for some high-latency network operations.

Vacations across the country, with the ability to go to Long Beach's quirky downtown and pick up novelties for my wife without worrying about what else I might be giving up later.

Taking my 8 year old daughter to breakfast and discussing how well her steak and eggs were prepared.

This isn't much of an answer, but looking over the past few months, these are the main reasons I enjoy making the money I make. The TV in my living room is broken. I'm in no hurry to fix it. I drive a Jeep Wrangler, though I can afford a much nicer car. I don't have to worry about the cost of gas (for now), which means I don't have to live in dirty old DC, and can instead enjoy being by the water in Annapolis.

</comment><comment><USER13> My take:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/02/what-is- wealth.ph...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/02/what-is-wealth.php)

"Wealth is a measure of your ability to do what you would like to do, when you would like to do it - a measure of your breadth of immediately available choice."

<comment><USER14> I've heard it phrased as "money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy options."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why do you want to narrow the definition? What about it isn't working for you?

I'm going to guess that you intuitively feel that there is "good" wealth, like a bicycle repair shop, and "bad", like speculating on housing prices.

The problem is that, at any given moment, you can't tell between the two -- they're both useful, and both have their places, and in some circumstances both are useless and counterproductive to have around.

I think the difference happens when you consider how useful they are over time. The bicycle shop is more useful in the set of all possible futures. Is there a word for that?

<comment><USER16> In my book, "bad" wealth (so to speak) would be any scheme for getting "money" (the paper thing, or the number in your bank account) without actually doing anything useful to anyone. For example, selling your shares in a bubble/ponzi company at a high price.

Sure, these shares might have been something that someone wanted, but it's a form of fraud. What you earned is what someone else ends up losing, for nothing.

I also consider most financial endeavours under a debt-money system to fall somewhere under the "fraud" category. This includes things like speculating on currency and house prices, or anything where your primary activity is hacking the monetary system.

<comment><USER15> I think we can all agree that fraud does not increase the general amount of wealth. That's why it's illegal.

As for your last paragraph, it sounds like you are in the grip of that "money as debt" video, or worse, the labor theory of value. You should also look at some more mainstream economics before you decide that the whole thing is fraud.

I'm sympathetic to your argument that some financial products are just "hacks", and don't generate value, but just like real hacking, there's another side. Such "hacks" expose weaknesses, inefficiencies, and irrationality. Now, there are some who believe in the efficient market theory, and thus believe that ANY self-interested economic action leads to an increase of information (and thus wealth) for everybody else. That's actually been pretty much empirically disproven, so it's true that there are certain financial "hacks" that are never socially beneficial. However, I would caution you not to conclude that the whole thing is just a drain on society.

<comment><USER16> > it sounds like you are in the grip of that "money as debt" video

I wouldn't word it that way. The movie, whether you like it or not, raises some valid points, and I think calling the whole system a debt-money system is a good thing, at least it raises awareness about it's nature. Most people don't have the slightest clue how money is made.

Not only that; but I think it's more accurate, factual, and honest to call it debt-money rather than "fractional reserve banking". Fractional reserve can have a different meaning: it could mean you lend out most of what people entrust you with. That would still be a fractional reserve, because you're only keeping a fraction of what's in your trust.

> but just like real hacking, there's another side. Such "hacks" expose > weaknesses, inefficiencies, and irrationality.

These hacks are legalized and institutionalized, it's basically a whole industry. It's very main stream stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth>

"Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions or the control of such assets."

<comment><USER18> Right on. I was just going to link to wikipedia, but you beat me to it.

Wealth has a very specific, easily quantifiable definition. For an individual or household, it's essentially your net worth. And you can actually have 'low wealth' (a.k.a you're poor).

I wish I knew what the subtext of the original question was. Can I be wealthy if I'm a school teacher or something like that?

If the question is really "What is wealthy?" I think Chris Rock's routine about 'rich' vs. 'wealthy' is as good as any. Wealthy is the point where your grandkids will never need to work a day in their life. Wealthy is getting foundations and libraries named after you. etc...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWERzwbobOk>

I'll never be wealthy, and I'm fine with that. I'd gladly settle for rich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In physics, energy is the ability to do work.

Wealth is the ability to do what you want to do.

I think wealth as money or futures contracts should be qualified as "potential wealth" (as in potential energy).

I don't go by definitions that rely on money or definitions that rely on the net worth of individuals. The power of money is not absolute. Net Worth is a false measure in our nonlinear world.

"What people want" is only wealth to you if those people have what you want.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wealth (what people want) can be divided into two subclasses: transferable (money, property, ...) and non-transferable (health, comfort, experiences, memories, fame, power, knowledge, ....) People generally use transferable wealth to gain the non-transferable.

People can be classified based on their patience in turning transferable wealth into non-transferable wealth. Wealth accumulators tend to be more patient in trading on transferable wealth than wealth dissipators who tend to immediately convert wealth into non-transferable form.

</comment><comment><USER21> Happiness and health for you and those that matter to you.

If you don't believe that talk to a billionaire that just lost a loved one to some disease.

</comment><comment><USER22> Related to your question: <http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

</comment><comment><USER23> Wealth is waking up this morning to a beautiful woman bringing me a cup of tea made "just so".

Philosophical sure, but wealth is definitely dependant on personal perspective.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have my own personal definition of wealth, which is "net contribution - <USER2> consumption". The bigger the gap you can create, the greater the wealth you experience.

Lasting wealth can only come from a pattern of giving much more than you take.

Simply making a habit of creating and contributing without looking at what you get back is the first step. Then creating the pattern of minimizing your personal needs is second. Managing risks and continuing to value things intelligently comes final.

I don't define true wealth as a numerical value. I think merely appreciating any moment in time can create true wealth.

However, I think us humans are builders and creators. We like to make new things, and coincidentally, everyone I know who is happy creates things. So no, I don't think you can be static, sitting on a pile of cash doing nothing, and still feel "wealthy".

...But I may have something wrong with me. Or I just might not have met that numeral that truly makes me feel wealthy. But then again, I am very skeptical of the power of money to make me feel wealthy. I just like to use it as an (inefficient) measuring stick.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wealth is the ability of an entity to create change.

Skills you know, your business network, your emotional support network, assets you can exchange.

People with great wealth can affect the world in profoundly positive or negative ways. In other words, wealth is closely tied to the notion of power.

A member of congress who has relatively low networth could have as much financial influence as Bill Gates. While this power is not as liquid or easy to exchange as cash, it is still exchangeable and a store of value.

[ To directly answer the OP: No we should not exclude speculation, everything is speculation to some small degree. Even holding everything in cash is a speculation on that nation's currency. We'd have to use other measures to estimate expected security\longevity, like liquidity of assets. ]

</comment><comment><USER25> Wealth is having the freedom to do whatever you want to do.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think you will never have a good definition, because if the answer is "what people want?" everybody want something different.

For my personal example, I do not have a lot (but a lot is here subjective) of money, enough to buy what I want (but I am frugal) and this enough for me to not think about money and have freedom of mind to think about my family, my friends and my startup. No million dollars bank account, but wealthy of experience, family with kids and friends (oh, and a lot of books, I love them).

</comment><comment><USER27> According to Bucky Fuller, "Real wealth is ideas plus energy"

</comment><comment><USER28> Wealth is both having enough to do (mostly) what you want in life and enough to help children and grandchildren if the need occasional help.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wealth = freedom. Freedom to do what you want, when you want to be happy. For some people, that freedom is the ability to take your kids to/from school every day, coach their sports teams, and go on a yearly vacation. For others, it's to buy expensive cars, live in big houses, and go on crazy trips. Totally different in terms of money, but the same in wealth.

</comment><comment><USER30> Wealth is an abstract noun encompassing all of the physical objects that are considered a store of value that one may possess. Of course now that some abstract entities like information or promissory notes also have monetary values attached to them, they too can be considered as wealth.

</comment><comment><USER31> You cannot exclude things that "people want simply because they believe others will want them more later". Money is one of those things. If an oracle told you the American empire will crumble tomorrow, you'd do well in getting rid of all your US dollars.

Speculation is underrated.

</comment><comment><USER32> Shaquille O'Neill is RICH

Guy signing his checks is WEALTHY

\- Chris Rock

</comment><comment><USER33> Ability to pursue higher levels of the Maslow hierarchy without fear for your basic safety and physical needs.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs>

</comment><comment><USER34> for me, wealth is potential for future freedom from constraints on life choices. Money is one format, relationships, friendships and favours owed are another; education also counts, as do health, fitness and certain key possessions (but not so many that dealing with them constrains you; thus actually, very few, and mostly of a tool-like nature). Some of these things are not distinct, exclusive goods, but can be shared or copied amongst large groups. Focusing on doing so without being distracted on needlessly stocking (maximising) the un-shareable (distinct) parts of wealth, is a productive way forward for humanity.

</comment><comment><USER35> In the new Wall Street movie, Gordon Gecko says the most valuable asset is time.

</comment><comment><USER36> It depends on your circumstances. If you're on your death bed, you want more time. If you are sick, you want health. If you are hungry, you want food.

I guess it all boils down to what people want, but it's different for everybody.

</comment><comment><USER37> Being rich is having money. Being wealthy is having time. \- Margaret Bonnano

</comment><comment><USER38> wealth is the freedom and ability to do what you want with your time.

</comment><comment><USER39> Wealth = Money + Power

</comment><comment><USER40> It strongly depends on the perspective. I think many people would define "wealth" as not having to go to bed hungry and being able to send kids to school.

</comment><comment><USER41> The ability to spend time doing what one loves is what I consider the point at which you can say one is truly wealthy.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn Wealth is reading a thread asking what wealth is and seeing all the interesting variations on the same answer.

</comment><comment><USER42> Wealth is well-being or quality of life. That accounts for your mind, body, and relationships..

</comment><comment><USER43> Wealth is an abundance of freedoms.

</comment><comment><USER44> Wealth is anything and everything that has potential future value.

Making wealth is tapping into that value.

</comment><comment><USER45> I like to think of it as how much you are worth to society (including yourself).

</comment><comment><USER46> Wealth is the future value of resource and human labor inputs that you control.

</comment><comment><USER47> When your ability to produce is much greater than your ability to consume.

</comment><comment><USER48> The ability to do what you want, when you want to do it.

</comment><comment><USER49> utility * scarcity

</comment><comment><USER50> Not having any logical reason to worry about money. Meaning that you have enough money so that should you care to set things up the right way, you'll likely have enough income to live where ever you want for the rest of your life. Happiness and health are another matter, but without money, it's difficult to have either of those things.

</comment><comment><USER51> This might not exactly answer the question, but it points out an interesting distinction between being rich and being wealthy.

Chris Rock on Wealth: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m37JkkGjAY>

</comment><comment><USER52> The ability to satisfies ones needs.

The entire economy is built around providing individual humans with the means to satisfy their needs.</comment>


Show HN: Line, my first Android game, built as a side-project - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nmssoftware.line.android

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys,

Just published my first Android game, built entirely off-working hours. This is kind of a major thing for me, being able to finally release a side-project and not just leave it unfinished. So, feedback is more than welcome, try it out!</comment>


Ask HN:  Where did the anti-VC vibe go? - <AUTHOR>

a couple of years ago, there was a big NoVC vibe around here that came to a head when DHH spoke at Startup School 2007.  I was reading a link on AVC from here today, and it occurred to me that the NoVC vibe seems to have disappeared.<p>Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> I think the anti-vc crowd became the pro-lean startup and pro-angel/super angel crowd. It makes sense... get something done (aka traction), then ask for a bit of cash, if you need more cash (or are in a land grab situation) then think about VCs, otherwise just grow organically.

</comment><comment><USER3> VC's got better at helping, not just giving money.</comment>


Ask HN: Why not rethink Web Identity with browser sync and push? - <AUTHOR> The primary (benign) reasons why websites/webapps needed account creation / registration were two;
- So that users could access their account from multiple devices at home / work, desktop / mobile etc.
- The Site/app developer had some way to reach the user for various reasons. They needed not just an identity but also a communication channel.
But today's browsers already support syncing across multiple devices AND push notifications.
Combining both of these, we can do away with signup and login forms - simplifying the UX a lot AND avoiding privacy dangers that come with server-side registration using email address / phone etc.
We may need to provide the users more control on filtering, searching, and archiving browser push notifications, but this would be a one-time effort per browser and would actually be much more empowering. We could even support multiple accounts using containers in browsers.
Has this been attempted? As a user, will you prefer this? <comment><USER2> I'd suggest thinking through the Usenet model. What it was, what worked, what did not.

And the design and flaws of HTTP basic auth.

Keep in mind that FB are now deleting ~1m accounts/dy, employing over 30k reviewers.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=FY_NtO7SIrY](https://youtube.com/watch?v=FY_NtO7SIrY) (at about 10m50s).

</comment><comment><USER3> One problem would be that we don't have syncing that works ACROSS browsers from different vendors. That might be easy to implement technically, but getting competitors to coordinate is going to be a tough battle.

Then there would be little UX issues such as not knowing the name of the user for using in messaging within the apps. You'd need a "Complete your profile" form instead of a "Register" form. However, I do concede that even that would be an improvement over current systems.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting idea. But do browsers sync cookies across devices? Are you suggesting that they start doing so for all cookies or a single one specially meant for this purpose?

This would also require browsers to implement unified notification view across all devices.

Both of these will be interesting features on their own.</comment>


Why Facebook Shut Down the Only Useful App it Ever Had - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Why_Facebook_Shut_Down_the_Only_Useful_App_it_Ever_Had <comment><USER2> I'm with Facebook on this one, users to some degree trust that their Facebook information isn't freely available on the web. Thats an integral part of their business model that the communication is only with friends. As most people find communication with friends to be more important than communication with others on the web i believe that facebooks business model is far superior to twitters and so there is no reason to change it.

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as business models are concerned, having data that is open is more likely to lead to better web monetization like contextual ads. The ability to have inbound links from referral sites and Google is important for ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Facebook always errs on the side of the publisher. Their guiding principle when it comes to user privacy is that if the publisher of some information doesn't want it to show up, or if they change their mind, applications must respect that preference immediately.

So, anyone who has worked in this space could've seen this coming a mile away. Anything that indexes even potentially private information, or makes it indexable by third parties, is inevitably going to be shut down.

</comment><comment><USER4> After reading the headline, I was expecting something about the One True Courses App (federated applications destroyed Courses, since there are too many and no one knew which one to pick). I still miss making new connections with people in my college courses.

</comment><comment><USER5> Facebook's new feed system has more features (privacy) than RSS, and therefor cannot be ported. It's really simple, but people still get all wound up about it. Twitter basically _is_ RSS, so it works great.

EDIT: You could have an authenticated feed, I suppose, but that's not what this app did.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can not decide where I lay on this issue.

On one hand I love the ability to interact with facebook through apps such as Tweekdeck (which I can only assume uses this API?).

However, this API can be abused by sites to publish 'closed' information. If I create a strictly private profile so that all my status updates are displayed only to my confidants, I have an expectation of privacy. Say Bob is friends with me, however uses this API to publish all my assumedly private status updates to the world on his website www.watch-woodsiers-status-updates.com, without my knowing. Is that right?

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing is, Bob doesn't need the API to publish all your private status to the whole world... he could already do it in plenty other ways. Same thing with email... many of them (eg. gmail) come with RSS feeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can read RSS along with Facebook's new stream (+Twitter, Flickr etc.) in my app, FriendBinder (<http://friendbinder.com>), I expect other apps will follow soon.

Though I wonder if I should be worried also, even though we don't re-share the data, they seem to be quite picky.

</comment><comment><USER8> But why did they need to cache data to provide this service? The script that generates the RSS feed could have just queried the FB API and generated a feed on every load.</comment>


Show HN: StackImpact – Python Production Profiler: CPU, Memory, Exceptions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stackimpact/stackimpact-python <comment><USER2> I got excited but then read that it's some kind of cloud-based web application thing.

Is there something like this (show memory use and call times for a Python process) that just runs on my computer to help me profile a long-running Python process?

<comment> alex- psutil ([https://pythonhosted.org/psutil/](https://pythonhosted.org/psutil/)) is awesome for collecting valuable monitoring information.

pyrasite ([http://pyrasite.com/](http://pyrasite.com/)) will let you inject code into a process. This can be used to add monitoring of private internal state etc (if you have no other options).

If you want to have locally hosted graphs then grafana and influx are my current tools of choice.

It is going to be more work than swiping a credit card, but not a crazy amount.

<comment><USER3> pyrasite can make the child process slow down markedly; this came up for me when injecting profilers into cinnamon-screensaver to try to root cause a memory leak ([https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1652489](https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1652489))

cinnamon-screensaver would take multiple seconds to lock the screen even after I'd stopped profiling and exited the interpreter I'd injected, and I wound up restarting it so I could lock my screen quickly again.

I don't know why this happened, but it's enough to make me think twice, and I'm definitely going to double-check my process is still performing as I hope after injecting it with pyrasite in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting project. It appears to me, based on the README and the name, that it was primarily intended to profile backend services in a web app.

I have a question for hacker news. Does Python still have a lot of momentum in this area? I love Python and use it whenever I can, but I find these days that most web frameworks assume right off the bat that you are using Node. The frontend landscape is so heavily tilted towards using js (and tools such as npm, etc) on the backend that fitting it into a Python flow is difficult, especially for beginners. In addition, we have the relatively fresh trend of using isomorphic code on both Node and the client. It seems like my beloved Python is being pushed to the background. Is there any truth to this? I would very much like to keep investing my energy into what I know, but if it is wasted effort, I will stop.

<comment><USER5> IMO having some Node.js experience and React experience are very helpful to get hired into any position that is remotely near the web these days. I have seen several of my clients introduce Node.js and of course everyone is introducing SPAs in some form or another, mostly React. Mozilla is even integrating React into Firefox's UI.

I am personally skeptical of these trends, but my skepticism doesn't change the shift of the industry. My advice would be to get some Node and React experience under your belt so that you can at least discuss it intelligently, and it shouldn't be too much of an impediment moving forward.

Python is in a tough spot for growth, IMO. The new generation of languages have internalized much of what made Python great, while leaving behind a lot of the inadequacies and cruft attached to CPython.

Like you, I will always have a soft spot for Python, but it's getting increasingly difficult to continue to see it as the default choice for new projects (outside of a few specific niches).

<comment><USER4> Thanks, good stuff to think about.

Do you think React is something to learn together with Node or would you recommend just getting to know React on its own?

<comment><USER5> Bolting React onto an existing codebase is probably best because it is more similar to what you'd see in the real world. Most people don't start a React/Node thing at the same time; they'll start integrating React into their frontend early because they can get little React-compatible widgets plugged in more easily than they can introduce backend changes like finding opportunities for Node.

React and Node are not really related other than they're both JavaScript- based, so the skills aren't really co-dependent. Node is used to execute JavaScript locally (in build tools like Webpack, for example), but beyond a small amount of local scripting for builds, they don't really touch (afaik; I have not yet completed a major project with either of them, just used them here and there).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems really interesting but a lot of companies are not willing or not able to send this to an unknown un trusted party.

Would it be possible to host this on premise?

Sentry seems to do quite well with a business model where customers are free to host it on premise. That might be worth a consideration.

I for one am interested but for me to become a customer I would first need to be able to trail it on my staging environment. Providing a docker container that I can host on premise would go a long way towards being able to do that.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no on-prem offering yet, since there was actually no demand/requests. At least with the Golang agent, which was introduced first. With Python agent we will reprioritise it. Thank you for the feedback! (Disclaimer: I work at StackImpact)

<comment><USER7> Also, it feels a little light on documentation and functionality for the Python agent considering it's the same cost as using the Go agent. It's hard to tell if I'm actually going to learn anything about what's causing the memory leaks in my app as a lot of the functionality seems to be Go only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I created a very similar project: [https://github.com/fieldaware/liveprofiler](https://github.com/fieldaware/liveprofiler) a few months ago.

Now, I am surprised I didn't push it forward.

</comment><comment><USER9> This interests me a lot because I'm using Azure App Insights (full disclosure: I work at Microsoft) after a couple of years of New Relic and I'm constantly looking for better takes on the "let's instrument this code and profile it remotely" thing, especially around gevent and asyncio (which have their own little challenges).

I've been thinking about building my own using Prometheus as collector/visualiser. Time hasn't been on my side, but eventually...

<comment><USER10> Is there a clear leader in the commercial space? It sounds like New Relic is the most frequently mentioned, maybe I'm asking who's #2?

I am particularly interested in who best supports .NET on Windows.

<comment><USER11> Try Dynatrace. Disclaimer: I used to work for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _> The agent overhead is measured to be less than 1% for applications under high load._

Do you have the methodology and data that you used to obtain this figure? Because to be honest I'm quite dubious, especially for an app which is CPU bound.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are measuring both, individual profiler overhead when active (printed by the agent in debug mode) and total CPU and memory overhead of the app running over long periods of time with and without agent.

<comment><USER13> Are these apps under load? Is there really only a 1% difference when running apache-bench or seige on the applications?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the apps were under simulated CPU load, memory allocations, etc. The good thing with sampling profilers is that overhead stays relatively stable even under high load.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Finally a NewRelic competitor... Their prices are killing me at scale

<comment><USER15> There are plenty of New Relic competitors. Datadog and AppDynamics both have APM products that support python, for example.

The feature set between this and New Relic is quite different. To oversimplify, New Relic works at the python library level, and StackImpact works at the python interpreter level. The functionality is potentially complementary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been trying ways to profile my django code on my dev server. Its using runserver and postgres on virtualbox (ubuntu in ubuntu) and takes 20s to display a page. This is not due to slow db queries, those are quick. strace says its making a huge number of calls to: futex(0xe9d550, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 0, NULL) = 0 I tried debug_toolbar, Silk, yet-another-django-profiler, these dont give me insight into where all that time is going and where those mutex calls are coming from.

Would this help? Any other suggestions?

Edit: Exact same code is hugely faster on a webserver in production. And its not the Vbox specs, i gave it lots of RAM and 4 CPUs.

<comment><USER17> My guess would be the filesystem, especially if you're using Vbox Shared Folders (either directly or through Vagrant.)

If you're on Mac or Linux, you can massively reduce the amount of filesystem overhead by using Docker (or Docker Compose) for local testing, since on Linux it'll get direct access to the FS and on Mac it will use the special osxfs driver. You can also try using nfs to mount your drives instead of vbox shared folders if you want a quick gain, but it will make hot reloading even less reliable.

You may also want to be sure your settings are really the same. Does DEBUG=0 change anything? What cache backend are you using? Etc.

Finally, if none of the above helps you can try a move of desperation: try to get the app working on your native OS with no container or VM layer.

<comment><USER16> Wow your suggestion really helped: Debug toolbar itself was causing this for some reason. How embarrassing. Thanks!

<comment><USER17> That is rather surprising, because I don't have the same issue with a pretty large production app. I wonder if there's a deeper underlying issue.

<comment><USER16> Ok I upgraded toolbar from 1.7 to 1.8 and problem is gone :)

There are a number of toolbar bugs at [https://github.com/jazzband/django- debug-toolbar/issues/943](https://github.com/jazzband/django-debug- toolbar/issues/943) involving keywords "slow" and "hang", not sure which it was.

But the meta-issue is, the profiling tools I used were not super helpful in discovering what the issue was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can you comment on how compatible this is with asyncio-based applications? Looks like an interesting product and I'm going to try it out regardless, but it would be cool to get some clarity since I couldn't find anything in the docs besides this:

> Time (blocking call) profiler supports threads and gevent.

(from [https://stackimpact.com/docs/#getting-started-with-python- pr...](https://stackimpact.com/docs/#getting-started-with-python-profiling))

<comment><AUTHOR> We haven't tested the whole agent with asyncio applications yet. I guess only CPU profiler was tested during development. We'll do and include it in the docs. For now, if you see any problems, please just open a ticket. Thanks!

<comment><USER18> First! [https://github.com/stackimpact/stackimpact- python/issues/1](https://github.com/stackimpact/stackimpact-python/issues/1) :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's another nice profiler for Python: [https://github.com/nvdv/vprof](https://github.com/nvdv/vprof) (no history view though)

</comment><comment><USER20> How's it different from DataDog? considering you have same price tag

<comment><AUTHOR> StackImpact is a set of profilers, which continuously sample production applications at low-overhead. The result is line-of-code precision, not just application-level metrics. I think it doesn't really compare to monitoring tools such as DataDog. However, it also sends metrics as well (cpu, memory, GC). (Disclaimer: I work at StackImpact)

<comment><USER15> A more relevant comparison might be with their APM product.

[https://www.datadoghq.com/apm/](https://www.datadoghq.com/apm/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Now that this has come up, can somebody explain me how do profilers work? My main concern being regarding the overhead to the process it adds.

<comment> alex- PyCon 2017 had a really good talk about debuggers [1] which covered how PEP523 [2] is making debugging python 3.6+ code much faster. I think that a profiler is somewhat similar, however instead of, potentially, stopping execution on each line it is collecting data.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdObDUbLjdg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdObDUbLjdg) [2] [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0523/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0523/)

<comment><USER21> Interesting. Thank you for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Are there any plans for porting this to Android? For example by using Kivy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Current agent and the dashboard are designed for long-running applications, such as servers or scripts. There are no plans for end user devices yet. But because the agent is pure Python (it just relies on some system specific functionality, such as signalling), it could work with a few tweaks.

<comment><USER22> Fair enough. One use case I could think of for this is testing games for long periods on Android, and use this tool to find out where the bottleneck is if there is any. Though given that this is designed for long running apps I can see that it wouldn't be useful for quick profiling but rather for production testing (QA stage etc). There's something similar to that already called Gamebench but it isn't as detailed as this, so was keen on knowing whether this tool would make it to Android :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How would I configure StackImpact to run on my celery workers?

<comment><AUTHOR> We haven't tested it with celery yet. It looks like it should work. gevent is supported by blocking call profiler, and CPU and memory profilers as well as exception and metric reporting are library independent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> on premise pricing please

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

<comment><USER26> wrong thread?</comment></comment>


How To Develop Ideas That Will Disrupt Your Industry - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/02/17/disruptive-thinking-innovation/

<comment><USER2> How to disrupt an industry:

There are hundreds and hundreds of tiny industries that technology seems to have forgotten (I work in one of them). There is a forklift dealership that I pass on my way to lunch every few days, what type of computing infrastructure do you think they have? What type of information do you think they give to their customers?

I bet there is a lot of carbon-copy paper, and filing cabinets involved. If they're really advanced, I bet there's an old IBM baby mainframe sitting in a closet somewhere with some twinax terminals connected to it.

Here's a company that's throwing really really expensive "I need this" (a forklift isn't a luxury) equipment around. I'd bet you that they've got money to spend on tech, they just don't know how.

Howabout office automation? Do you know how many times I get pitched by "office solutions specialists" who have no idea what they're doing, or talking about? There is _definitely_ some space for somebody who Knows What They're Doing™ to get my money.

Do you know how terrible inventory management systems are? Pardon the language, but _fucking horrible_.

I think a lot of tech people forget that there a whole world out there that barely even knows that silicon valley exists. There are thousands and thousands of small business that will pay large dollars for things, and for these people (who are usually stuck in the technological late-80s/early-90s), being "disruptive" is what most programmers think is normal.

<comment><USER3> You'll have to pick a niche, understand it, build something, and then sell it. I think it's unlikely that a forklift dealer would want to pay the cost of a one-off custom system. I once was talking with such a business, their technology was antique and they knew they needed to modernize but viewed my $80,000 quote for custom software as too expensive. I considered pitching them on the idea of building it and then licensing it to them, as long as I could keep the rights to license it to other similar businesses. At the time I decided not to pursue it at all, but that may be an approach to take with small businesses that can't afford to pay outright for custom software or systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find this a welcome change from the "ideas are worthless, execution is everything" cult posts.

They are of course right on the money when the idea is "I wan't to build a WOW community" but that is at least in my view a very narrow definition of what ideas are all about.

<comment><USER5> I still thing there is merit to that notion.

I'd like to think of it this way: execution is the active searching of the problem space until you find a local maxima. The idea is only the starting point.

Sure, you can get lucky and find an idea that is already on a local maxima - but you wouldn't know that without verifying.

Simply thinking "what if you sold socks that didn't match?" is far from enough to prove that it's a good idea. If you gave it just five minutes you would probably come up with a hundred similar seemingly weird ideas.

Some examples:

What if TVs were not boxes but bubble-shaped?

What if cars bounced like rubber balls? Would that make them safer?

What if pants had four legs? Of different lengths.

What if shoes were glued together?

What if I had an internet connected computer in my sight of vision constantly? (This will happen, we all know that.)

What if books never ended?

What if people could grow all their food, including meat, at home, in a box like a micro oven?

I can go on like this forever. How do I know which ideas are the good ones?

By testing them in the real world - searching the problem space for a local maxima - that's the only way. And that takes execution and effort.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree with you.

But all you are saying is.

If you have an idea you have to try it out.

Yes obviously but try what out? What does it mean to execute.

And this is where it kind of falls apart from my point of view.

Saying "execution is everything" is as helpful as saying success is necessary to be successful. It becomes a tautology.

It's true but it's not really helpful unless you really think that just getting the idea is enough. But who here believes that?

What's great execution in one context is bad execution in another. Meaning that you have to execute to figure out whether you executed well.

You have to run the program so to speak.

<comment><USER6> "Execution is everything" is not tautological. It's not saying "execution is necessary" — it's saying that how you execute makes an order of magnitude greater difference than what idea you pick. Good execution will save all but the worst ideas, but an amazing idea will still fail if not executed well.

For example, Apple's Newton PDA: Great idea — it caught on like wildfire when Palm did the same thing a few years later. But it flopped when Apple did it, because Apple's execution was flawed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this article a lot.

How about a restaurant for three-somes full of tables for 3 and spring rolls that divide equally?

A clothing brand that only sells one color/type of jeans, one t-shirt and one button down. Instead of launching new collections every season, launch one new product. Like a belt. It would stand out.

<comment><USER8> or a restaurant for solo diners? wifi, space for a laptop on the table, and strictly one person per table, so you don't feel uncomfortable sitting all alone - everyone else would be in the same boat...

<comment><USER9> We have those, they're called 'couches'. The waiters deliver food on scooters.

<comment><USER10> LOL! Didn't get that at first. A restaurant with tables for 1 only reminds me of a classroom full of new boys. Make eye contact at your peril.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The book "Business Model Generation" by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur is mandatory reading wrt disruptive innovation. It's thorough, fun to read and beautifully designed. [http://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation- Visionaries-...](http://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries- Challengers/dp/0470876417/)

</comment><comment><USER12> An enjoyable read, and a worthwhile exercise for any business even if it has no intention of launching a disruptive business model (at the very least, they're thinking like the potential competition).

Worth remembering too - just because there's a gap in the market, doesn't mean there's a market in the gap. Cliches like 'scratch your own itch', 'do market research before product build', 'release early, release often' etc also have a place when disrupting.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is really good article, probably one of the best I've seen come out of Mashable. The exercise of determining what are the clichés of any industry seems something you'd want to tackle with a group - maybe a good geek-out exercise for entrepreneur meetups?

<comment><USER14> The book by the article's author (Disrupt) is quite good too. It takes he points in the article and expands on them, giving you concrete exercises to work through to generate new ideas. While I don't think you can systematize innovation, I do think there are certain things you can do to come up with interesting business ideas.

If you're like me and find developing applications easy but have a very hard time deciding what to create, I'd recommend reading Disrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 'So, what was the problem that the solution addressed? Well, there wasn't any problem, and that's exactly the point. '

Actually, there was a problem. Customers loose socks, leaving mismatched, or socks get holes, leaving only one, etc. etc. etc.

They recognized a problem. They just came up with a creative way of dealing with the problem which was to re-frame it as not being a problem at all.

The impressive thing is that you can disrupt a market through nothing but marketing. You don't have to create a new product, find a new market, etc. etc. It is possible to create a viable business through nothing but marketing.

</comment><comment><USER16> For lots of writing on purposeful creativity, have a look at Edward de Bono : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_Bono>

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a lot like the framework proposed in 'Getting to Plan B'. That book also has some nice spreadsheets to use.

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://www.littlemissmatched.com/Catalog/womens_anklet_socks...](http://www.littlemissmatched.com/Catalog/womens_anklet_socks/Kooky_Scroll_Split_Anklet_Socks)

 _"Our most popular style of socks. This pack contains 3 socks that don't match, but perfectly coordinate ! "_

</comment><comment><USER19> "What do I think?" is a simple -- potentially as powerful -- thought.

It can be "disruptive thinking."

</comment><comment><USER20> The number one way to "disrupt" your industry is to offer an expensive service at a SIGNIFICANTLY lower price (while maintaining equivalent quality).

There's usually an unofficial cartel no one speaks of and when people start to lose their margins, they start to take notice.</comment>


Researchers create personalised sound projector with $12 webcam - <AUTHOR> https://techxplore.com/news/2019-08-first-ever-personalised-projector-webcam.html <comment><USER2> And here, right now, we see the rise of personalized ads for every shop front. "you look hungry, what about eat at our restaurant?" "we have the perfect skin camouflage for your [white, black, brown, yellow] skin tone" "we see you will give birth soon, buy diapers now"

<comment><USER3> _In addition, our method has been designed to require user consent in order to function. This requirement ensures the technology cannot be used intrusively, nor deliver sound to an unwilling audience._

Golly I hope so.

<comment><USER4> Reading between the lines, is by removing a trivial module you can use it without anyone's consent.

<comment><USER5> This is a legal problem, not a technological problem.

<comment><USER6> I am not even sure it is a legal problem. How can the prohibit the creation of similar devices and limit their use?

In any case the approach is new, but we have had targeted audio for some time. Another method used in the past was done by two hyper sonic waves that when combined would reconstitute into a lower frequency. I forget all the details but it it nearly placed the sound in your head.

<comment><USER7> The same way they do a bajillion other products? You make it illegal, then you fine anyone who flouts the rule or throw them in jail.

<comment><USER6> What I am pointing out that the article talked about how they did something special to make it require consent. I don't think they have any legal grounds for preventing the use of, or could they alone pass a law.

I think you would have a hard time making this illegal in the US, as I am sure somebody will tie it to freedom of speech. If a bull horn is legal, then this for sure would also be legal.

It wold also be a legal quagmire depending on how the law would be worded. "Use of directional sound is prohibited."? Simply aiming my mouth at you is doing the same. There are also more than one way to achieve directional sound. I think it was at Fry's -- in their checkout line, they have highly directional speakers that aim down and talk to you, move a few feet either way and you no longer can hear a thing.

<comment><USER7> Public nuisance laws already on the books would likely do the trick. To use your example, it is already perfectly legal to own a bullhorn and even to carry it around downtown, but if I start setting it off outside a restaurant I'm going for a stay with the police pretty quickly.

Those laws are for sure not without theoretical constitutional issues, but in practice work well enough to keep the lid on.

<comment><USER6> Fairly sure YouTube is full of videos doing exactly what you described and no police stopped in.

Simply put, targeted protesting...

<comment><USER7> Even the idiots on YouTube are mostly smart enough to pack it in once they get too much attention. An installed device does not have that luxury-- nor, under your argument, should it need it.

If your claim is that you could stand outside a restaurant blowing a bullhorn at patrons and passers-by for long enough to get caught doing it and that there would be no repercussions, I think you're mad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Students at Southampton have done a similar thing with wavefront generation and are commercialising it: [http://www.audioscenic.com](http://www.audioscenic.com)

<comment><USER9> I've had the opportunity to experience theirs and it really was quite a unique experience - the locality of the audio was comparable to over-ear headphones (although the quality wasn't quite as good, but that's to be expected with most speakers). It'll definitely be interesting to see what kind of products they can get to market with this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmm, I could see some more sci-fi, dystopian applications:

\- Gaslight someone by making them hear voices

\- Threaten someone then arrest them when they attack since to bystanders it appears to be unprovoked

\- Similar to the previous one, provoke/trick protestors into "unprovoked" violence

\- Trick someone into walking into oncoming traffic

\- Harass someone without anyone else noticing

<comment><USER11> Making people hear voices has been done for advertising [1]. Here's a video of what it sounded like [2].

[1] [https://adage.com/article/news/hear-voices- ad/122491](https://adage.com/article/news/hear-voices-ad/122491)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwAeb3RBZ1Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwAeb3RBZ1Y)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll buy one the second it hits the market. Beamform the television sound only to {my wife, me} so {I, she} can sleep!

<comment><USER13> Man have i got some epic tech for you! Headphones, you're going to love them! They even can work without wires... ;-)

<comment><USER14> They aren't as comfortable in hot and/or humid areas.

<comment><USER15> I got some in-ear ones for $30 and they're amazing, I'm in love. Great quality, they always just work, and they're super convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article refers to 3D printed acoustic lenses, and previous research also uses 3D printed lenses ([https://courses.physics.illinois.edu/phys406/sp2017/Student_...](https://courses.physics.illinois.edu/phys406/sp2017/Student_Projects/Spring16/Dan_Gandy_Guangya_Niu_Physics_406_Final_Report_Sp16.pdf))

Does anybody know if any of the files for these are public? I think it would be fun to experiment with this idea at home.

</comment><comment><USER17> I understood correctly that are two innovations here? The face-tracking and the ability to direct sound precisely.

I would be very interested in the sound direction solely. My use case is to project sound to me, in a bed, without my wife, sleeping next to me, hearing a thing. I like to sleep with music and she doesn't. A directed alarm would be nice too.

Is this technology already available some where?

</comment><comment><USER18> Can I please have an electric car that is silent to everyone except people/animals that might need to be warned?

</comment><comment><USER19> The '6cm diameter sphere in front of the target' is kind of confusing, since most people's ears are further than 6cm apart and not 'in front of them'. I suppose this is a way that the whole thing isn't quite ready for 'personalised ads' just yet.

<comment><USER20> Will that be their maximum precision? If they can target a 6cm sphere, they probably can adjust to a larger volume.

<comment><USER19> I don't know, it seems a small goal to aim for if they specifically chose 6cm, so it'd seem like it's a (current) limitation of what they're doing. It doesn't seem like it'd be a limit that'd be too hard to increase though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> More about the metamaterials and sound lens tech here: [https://phys.org/news/2019-05-academics-spotlight-lego- like-...](https://phys.org/news/2019-05-academics-spotlight-lego-like- bricks.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> so what stops people intercepting these audio messages, using the same idea you could use a parabolic mic to track and hear the individuals audio

<comment><USER4> Shape of the wavefront. It is very directional elliptical, you would need very high sensitivity microphone to attempt a capture off angle.

Directivity is about -50 dB off axis potentially. You can further enhance it some with active noise cancellation.

<comment><USER23> What about capturing sound as it scatters on the listener's head?

<comment><USER24> I guess you need a good model of their head to post process a readable message out of the distorted audio.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The History of Computing at the Ballistics Research Lab (1992) - <AUTHOR> http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/hist.html <comment><USER2> My mother worked on some of this stuff back in the 1950s (though I think not at BRL). She wrote surface-to-surface missile trajectory simulations _in octal_. She thought it was great when she got an assembler.

First thing in the morning they ran a memory test. If the memory failed, they would slide out the failing tray of memory, slide in a new tray, and keep running while a technician diagnosed the failing tray of memory. A tray was perhaps 2 feet square, and contained 100 words of (36 bit) memory.

She complained to me about these "dumb physicists" who couldn't understand that changing a constant took 10 minutes, but changing an equation took all day. Note well: These people she's calling dumb are literally rocket scientists.

The most mind-blowing thing she told me: One of the early CPUs she worked on, you could change the instruction set with patch cords.

<comment><USER3> > She wrote surface-to-surface missile trajectory simulations in octal. She > thought it was great when she got an assembler.

Were her colleagues angry at assembler taking their craft away with subpar results ?

> change the instruction set with patch cords.

I guess processors at that time were switchboard hybrids, prototypical FPGA in disguise.

<comment><USER2> > Were her colleagues angry at assembler taking their craft away with subpar > results ?

I doubt it.

> I guess processors at that time were switchboard hybrids, prototypical FPGA > in disguise.

I hadn't thought of the comparison to FPGAs, but I think it fits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a fondness for the names of those first generation computers (my Mac Pro was named PROZAC in tribute) and I've always liked the name of the BRL Electronic Scientific Computer, BRLESC, which was surely pronounced "burlesque". It also had a cool control panel.</comment>


FluidDB Launches - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.fluidinfo.com/fluidDB/2009/08/17/fluiddb-launches/ <comment><USER2> Dear people who want their project to do well and become popular, make it easy to find out WTF your project actually _is_ and make it obvious wherever visitors end up.

I read this blog post, didn't work out what FluidDB was. Clicked on "FluidDB" and went to the main page of the blog - no help. Clicked on "About" in the left hand column.. it's just some default page with nothing about FluidDB. Googled for FluidDB and found the official homepage at position 4. Their homepage similarly does not explain what FluidDB is at all.. _groan_

<comment><USER3> Hi Peter - you're right, it could have been a lot better.

The link on the right (Docs: fluidDB) is probably the best place for you to start <http://doc.fluidinfo.com/fluidDB/>

Terry

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I'm reading the high-level description correctly, the plan here is for this thing to be one giant centralized instance. Can anyone verify that I'm reading that right? Not that I have any pro or con feelings towards this architecture, just not sure if I'm fully grokking it.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's right. The control is centralized, but the storage and the computation are fully distributed. We spent a long time working on what we think will be a scalable architecture. The query language is deliberately simple to make everything fast (there's only B-tree lookups and set ops on object IDs) and easily parallelizable. And this is the 3rd implementation :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know if this has a Push/Subscribe functionality? Machine-oriented twitterpedia is too good a buzzword not to have an implementation somewhere..

<comment><USER3> Hi. We've built things in a way that will allow for multiple front ends. The HTTP interface is just the first. We'd like to do XMPP next, but haven't started on it.</comment></comment>


The Disadvantages of Being Stupid - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-war-on-stupid-people/485618/?utm_source=atlfb&single_page=true <comment><USER2> Excellent Article in the Atlantic

I think one major disadvantage of being stupid is in getting financial services. If you aren't smart, you'll get ripped off. Particularly pre- financial crisis, credit card companies, auto lenders, banks, etc. will come with a bunch of tricks that rip people off. These companies are much smarter than the average Joe. And then as a society, we often say the solution is financial education rather than treating people fairly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sometimes I got to talking to my passengers, and they'd soon ask, "what are _you_ doing driving a taxi?" They thought someone with a very expensive college degree ought to be doing something more remunerative.

Intelligence is not genetic, it is cultivated. I grew up upper-middle-class, and my mother made an effort to feed us well.

John Taylor Gatto says [1][2] that public schools are specifically designed to dumb down the vast majority of its conscripts, which makes sense to me.

[1] [https://books.google.com/books?id=OYzvBFsob0oC&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=OYzvBFsob0oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22John+Taylor+Gatto%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjln8PZ_6_NAhVWwGMKHbfdBqgQuwUIITAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) [2] [https://libcom.org/library/against-school-john-taylor- gatto](https://libcom.org/library/against-school-john-taylor-gatto)</comment>


Builders of Obama's health website saw red flags - <AUTHOR> http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/22/v-fullstory/3703850/builders-of-obamas-health-website.html

<comment><USER2> If this guy is such a rockstar at cleaning up the mess other people leave behind, why is he not leading these projects from the beginning? Or, since he is only one person, training and mentoring a staff of people who can manage the various projects in a similar fashion?

I feel like this is unfortunately just a typical response to a big issue like this ... "oh shit we've got a crisis, let's give everyone a hero." I think we can all agree that it'd be nice to have a full team of heroes leading all of the projects mentioned, instead of calling one in after millions of dollars have been spent on a failed system. _Measure twice, cut once._

Actually let's take it one step further, fuck all of these bloated and inefficient contracting organizations and the layer-cake of bureaucracy that has been established to glue them together with government projects.

We have a strong national military... what's to stop us from having a strong national development team? I'm 100%-for private industry and letting private companies bid and fight to build the best product for the job ... but time and time again the end product we're left with is total garbage. Maybe the contractors are managed poorly, maybe the people writing the proposals have not a fucking clue in the world of what they are asking for, maybe the developers are careless and put out shitty work. Either way, a TON of time and money is wasted. It's an embarrassment.

We need an elite squad of hackers and designers building out the services for our nation. One that's both carefully chosen as well as fully responsible and 100% transparent for the things that they create.

Hell, it creates STEM jobs.

<comment><USER3> >We have a strong national military... what's to stop us from having a strong national development team?

not having another $600-700B/year to spend?

<comment><USER4> Considering one would improve local healthcare and the other one is designed to destroy the health in remote places... the priorities on the existing $600-700B/year could be adjusted. Unless the global health of the world is treated as a zero-sum game...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even tough it's very easy to guess what's been going on for anyone who's ever been working on large dev projects, I can't wait for the full story behind this mess to appear on the daily WTF website.

</comment><comment><USER6> But everyone decided they just wanted a paycheck anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think I was attacked by a gang of angry buzzwords about halfway through this article.

I found it most enjoyable. Rarely do we see so much political spin and software development so close together in the news. Somebody should write a book about this.

<comment><USER8> I especially liked the frantic-nerds-with-energy-drinks picture that this article painted in my mind. Top-notch reporting, Miami Herald.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many Lines of Code do You Write Every Day? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering how productive my fellow programmers are. yesterday I spent 13 hours coding and someone at the end of the day, after writing, testing, re-factoring, deleting and re-writings chunks of code, I realized i only wrote about 800+ lines, which is pretty sad.<p>Any tips on how to increase productivity would be appreciated too. <comment><USER2> I only wrote 2500 LOC yesterday, I was disappointed in myself. _Normally_ I do at least 4000.

Also, my dad is 12 feet tall and he can beat up your dad.

In all seriousness, LOC will always be an almost-meaningless metric.

Sustainable productivity comes from good teams working on products that have user/customer feedback early on, and which actually solve someone's problem (a tractable one) in a reasonable way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Being a productive coder has nothing to do with the amount of lines you write.

Don't focus on this.

<comment><AUTHOR> What is a better metric?

<comment><USER3> 1\. Number of people happily using your code. 2\. Number of dollars in your bank from it.

"Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." \-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This question has been asked many times before, but to summarize my past answers briefly: It depends on what sort of code I'm writing (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36784>), but my long-term average is about 1000 LOC/month (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=105410>).

</comment><comment><USER5> "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." - Bill Gates

I truly don't understand why counting LOC is some sort of badge of accomplishment. I think once you've coded enough you'll realize that efficiency matters most. Efficiency and elegance is what I aim for.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt)

Or, if you prefer Dijkstra:

"In this respect a program is like a poem: you cannot write a poem without writing it. Yet people talk about programming as if it were a production process and measure 'programmer productivity' in terms of 'number of lines of code produced'. In so doing they book that number on the wrong side of the ledger: We should always refer to 'the number of lines of code spent'."

</comment><comment><USER7> I've never counted. But I'd guess not more than 300 or 400, and by the end of the week, if I've been thinking clearly, I'll have shaved the code written down to less than that. Probably my most productive week ever ended with ripping almost all of my code out, and replacing it with an SQLite module from CPAN. The program went from a few thousand lines to about 500, making the software O(1), instead of O(n^2) or something worse.

<comment><USER8> Well said! I usually consider a day productive if I've made some code smaller and faster, and just feel worn out if I typed a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> (I don't mean to disparage your coding ability or Prolog). If you have written 800 lines of ruby, you have earned yourself a 6-pack beer, go chill! If it was 800 lines of Prolog, go buy a bottle of Nyquil - you need to rest your mind and body!</comment>


Apple, is USB allowed now? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mronge/apple-is-usb-allowed-now-8da959394e82

<comment><AUTHOR> Building streaming video over wireless has been crazy hard. We are happy to answer questions on that and our trials with USB.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's fine if the rules change once in a while but apple should clearly and fairly communicate that to everyone.

Now you have to be a part of some good ol boy club with access to the right backchannels to develop software these days?

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple's inconsistency about what is and is not allowed in the App Store is one of the most frustrating things about developing for their platform. They should be clear and consistent. It's fine to expand the capabilities of the platform (it seems silly that iOS apps can't use USB), but Apple needs to announce when things that were disallowed are now OK.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you have any concerns about doing the research and confirming the market exists for this product and then getting 'Sherlocked'? Did you spend any time evaluating other platforms such as Android? I understand from my own experience how challenging that platform can be, just curious to see if you looked into it as an alternative or hedge.

<comment><AUTHOR> We didn't evaluate Android as we are long time Mac devs so we knew we could work fastest on iOS and Mac.

We are somewhat concerned about getting sherlocked, but I have no idea what to do about that other than push on!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honest question because I don't know either Apple's stand on this or the technical challenges you would have faced: Did you consider bluetooth?

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this actually intended as a question, or as an advertisement for the product?

<comment><USER7> Rant/opinion incoming because I honestly don't know all of the anti-trust rules and such.

I see this as a serious question for Apple because it is entirely their fault that they may have harmed this company from a lot of revenue if they were allowed to use USB like Duet can. I'd suspect Duet wouldn't come out if this company or others can use USB in the first place.

Seriously, while I love Apple, I actually want this company to file a lawsuit against Apple for anti-competition violations. Apple is intentionally allowing one company to succeed based on this sole feature while preventing others from using the same feature.

And no, a legal wall garden or monopoly should not be allowed to favor one company over the rest. It must be equal to everybody or they should be fined severely and/or prevented from doing this again.</comment></comment>


What problems do autonomous vehicles have in geospatial awareness? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to hear more about what problems autonomous vehicles have in recognizing traffic situations. I want to build a platform for V2V communication and mapping</comment>


Django 1.4 release candidate 2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2012/mar/14/14rc2/

<comment><USER2> This release brings some really great features to the table. Here are some things that affect me directly:

        - Lots and lots of improvements to the admin app. Also, dropped support for IE6 in the admin ;)
        - Better password hashing.
        - A cookie-based session backend that uses cryptographic signing to store session data in the browser.
        - A new form wizard. This is a big one for me since I needed something like this for one of my side projects.
        - Improved WSGI support.
        - Custom project and app templates.
        - OMG OMG OMG timezone support. "When it's enabled, Django stores date and time information in UTC in the database, uses time-zone-aware datetime objects internally and translates them to the end user's time zone in templates and forms." You could always do this manually, but it's one of those things that should be handled by the framework.

Pretty nice stuff. Best part is, since I'm in very early stages of building a personal website using Django, I can start using this release right now.

PS: does anyone else think activity around Django has increased ever since Adrian started spending more time on it? (see <http://www.holovaty.com/writing/back-to-django/>)

<comment><USER3> You're right that velocity has picked up. It actually picked up about a year and a half ago. I would say the main driver was the Django core expanding to include people like Carl Meyer (look him up on stack overflow if you want to learn how you help a community. He also appears to be an absolute monster at crushing bugs) Alex Gaynor, Andrew Godwin, and a bunch of other people:

[https://code.djangoproject.com/log/django/trunk/docs/interna...](https://code.djangoproject.com/log/django/trunk/docs/internals/committers.txt?rev=15890)

I think that Django went through a rough period of growing pains there but now seems back on track.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am so looking forward to QuerySet.prefetch_related as I can finally optimize M2M-relationship data-prefetching in my views.

<comment><USER5> prefetch_related is by far the best feature in this release. Huge improvements in efficiency. :)

<comment><USER6> What is that?

<comment><USER7> QuerySet.prefetch_related lets you fetch related objects in a batch for the whole query set. In other words it does joins in the application. A really nice stuff. Take a look at docs for more info:

[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/querysets/#...](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/querysets/#prefetch- related)

<comment><USER6> What's the difference between that and select related? Edit, nevermind I read the link ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone have any pointers on upgrading a decent sized project from 1.3? I'm looking to do it shortly and hoping for some premptive expertise with the inevitible gotchas... e.g. using a lot of local datetimes and sha2 passwords.

<comment><USER9> The password updating is pretty seamless (so long as you don't need to share the database with an older Django project).

      PASSWORD_HASHERS = (
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.PBKDF2PasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.PBKDF2SHA1PasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.BCryptPasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.SHA1PasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.MD5PasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.CryptPasswordHasher',
      )

You get a tuple of password algorithms that are supported. The higher on the list the greater priority it has, so if you have SHA1 passwords in your database, they will get converted to PBKDF2 when the user logs in the first time.

If you decided to switch to BCrypt, you would first install py-bcrypt and change the tuple to put BCrypt at the top:

      PASSWORD_HASHERS = (
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.BCryptPasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.PBKDF2PasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.PBKDF2SHA1PasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.BCryptPasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.SHA1PasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.MD5PasswordHasher',
          'django.contrib.auth.hashers.CryptPasswordHasher',
      )

and you're done.

HOWEVER, if you are sharing the database with an older project that is still using Django 1.3 or less, make sure that 'django.contrib.auth.hashers.SHA1PasswordHasher' is on the top of the list (until all your projects are Django 1.4 or higher) otherwise your other installations won't be able to read the passwords since they won't support any of the newer password hashes.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the detailed replies.</comment></comment></comment>


Payment Request API for Apple Pay - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/blog/8182/introducing-the-payment-request-api-for-apple-pay/ <comment><USER2> The importance of this cannot be overstated. ~25 years after the web was first popularized, we have an open payments layer API that is supported by the most popular mobile wallet.

I know Apple Pay's killer app when it was first announced was the ability to pay easily in-store, but I feel like this is actually a bigger deal. I never had much annoyance with whipping out a card at a grocery store, but paying for things online in a way that's ridiculously fast as well as secure has always been a dicey proposition. This is a huge leap forward.

<comment><USER3> "most popular mobile wallet"

Citation? PayPal/Venmo seem far, far ahead.

<comment><USER4> Venmo is not a mobile wallet. It's for bank transfers (i.e. ACH), not credit/debit card payments.

PayPal is widely supported online but I doubt they are far, far ahead in the real world, which I think is what people mean by "mobile" wallet.

<comment><USER3> Your statement regarding the "real world" being equated to "mobile payments" is confusing. FWIW, PayPal cleared $155B in pure mobile payments volume in 2017. Apple Pay on the other hand hasn't published any numbers (apart from a 450% "growth" which every analyst knows is a cop out because the raw numbers themselves are likely not impressive.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice! I just tried out the demo and it seemed to work (hopefully I don't have a charge on my credit card tomorrow, though!). One thing that I saw was that it took a while to do processing, though; something like 30 seconds. I'm not sure if this could be improved.

<comment><USER6> I've used Apple Pay on the web before and it's quite fast. My guess is that some sort of side effect of the sandbox that I assume that little demo is running in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does Safari only supports Apple Pay, unlike the Chrome implementation and the actual W3 Payment Request API specifications?

[https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/payments/](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/payments/)

[https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/](https://www.w3.org/TR/payment- request/)

<comment><USER8> The Payment Request spec is agnostic to payment methods. It doesn't require implementors to support any particular method(s).

WebKit implements Payment Request, and Safari supports Apple Pay as a payment method. Other browsers that implement Payment Request might support other methods.

Edit: spelling

<comment><USER7> > WebKit implements Payment Request, and Safari supports Apple Pay as a > payment method. Other browsers that implement Payment Request might support > other methods.

So Safari ONLY supports Apple Pay?

<comment><USER8> Yes.

<comment><USER9> What about the reverse, will apple Pay work in Chrome? Assuming ofcourse you have set it up on a apple device first.

<comment><USER7> Chrome does support other payment apps, not sure if Apple Pay blocks Chrome.

Also, Chrome on iOS has to use the Safari rendering engine, since Apple blocks third party rendering engines, so not sure if that would actually work.

Essentially, that's Apple making sure that if you have an iPhone, you can use any payment method, as long as it is Apple Pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very nice. The web shops that've implemented Apple Pay already are much nicer to use than your average shop between elimination of the need to fill (or even auto fill!) addresses and the security of single use tokens.

Once web payments is implemented widely I'll likely start avoiding shops that don't implement them.

</comment><comment><USER11> I know they don't take 30%, but I can't figure out what the cost is. According to Apple, it's free, but does the seller generally have to pay more in CC fees to get Apple Pay support?

<comment><USER4> That's up to the processor you (the merchant) sign up with, just like anything else. Apple takes 0.15% and that comes out of the card issuing bank's end.[1]

Quick 101 on how card fees work generally:

Card issuer banks (Citibank, Chase, Bank of America, etc.) contract with a card network (VISA, MC, etc.) and earn a standard fee schedule called Interchange (it's public, you can look it up, typically 1.x-2.x% depending on the card type). This is the bulk of where the card fees go, and often funds card rewards and benefits.

Meanwhile merchants contract with processors (e.g. Chase Paymentech, Heartland, First Data, Square, etc. etc.) who interface with all the card networks, marking up those interchange fees with their own margins. The processors may set up merchants with equipment, or maybe a third party POS vendor does that. But most fundamentally processors are responsible for any merchant-related fraud on the network.

That is why processor markups and merchant vetting procedures can vary -- and why Apple would never take the place of the processor. It's merchant-specific work and involves financially vouching for them. The less vetting the processor does (Square, Stripe), the higher the markup. The more vetting, the close to interchange the fee is going to be.

[1] [https://www.digitaltransactions.net/apple-pay-no-charge- for-...](https://www.digitaltransactions.net/apple-pay-no-charge-for- merchants-but-transaction-security-fees-for-issuers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great to see. I knew they were working on it (since they're transparent about what features they're working on) but I figured they would end up in iOS 12 and Safari 12 in MacOS Tuscaloosa.

Great job guys!

</comment><comment><USER12> Does Apple take 30% on the web?

<comment><USER13> To add some context to the other reply: Apple doesn't take ANY cut of Apple Pay payments, even on native mobile apps. Apple does, however, require that app store apps ONLY allow the purchase of physical or similar goods with Apple Pay. For instance, they'll reject an app that uses Apple Pay to allow the purchase of eBooks, instead of the in-app-purchase API (which does take a 30% cut). This is why Kindle forces you to the web to buy eBooks, but allows you to buy physical amazon goods in the native app.

Similarly how you can use Apple Pay to call an Uber/Lyft in-app.

That said, Apple Pay is just a layer between you and the user's credit card - there's no functional difference at the transaction layer between accepting Apple Pay and having a credit card form in your App. This is why Stripe/Paypal et al. all 'support' Apple Pay. You still need a payment processor who can take the Apple Pay token and turn it into a transaction that puts money into your account.

The in-app-purchase API, however, directly charge's the user's credit card on file with Apple and is credited to your developer account as a payment.

TL;DR Apple Pay is a layer between customer and payment processor, IAPs are a layer between customer and merchant. Apple takes 30% of IAP. Payment processors of Apple Pay take a cut before passing payment on to merchant (Stripe is 2.9% + 30c/transaction, for instance).

<comment><USER14> You sure about those TOS requirements? Last I checked all you needed was a separate website providing equivalent service. If you charged for a subscription on the website, and you have an app too, then the user should be able to use your app since they've already paid the subscription.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, I may have been unclear. If you've _already paid_ outside of the native app Apple won't prevent users from accessing the content (Netflix is an example of this). The rule only applies to purchasing within the app itself. Apple requires that if your app allows a user to purchase digital goods it must be via an IAP. There's no restriction on users accessing content they've already payed for elsewhere.

Somewhat related: It doesn't seem to be the case anymore but I have the distinct recollection of paying for Hulu through the iPad app as an IAP at a subscription price of $13.99/month only to discover Hulu was charging $11.99/month if purchased through their site. I think Apple cracked down on folks with different IAP pricing vs. direct subscription pricing, but for a while it was a very frustrating effect of the 30% cut that you're forced to give to Apple if you want to allow any in-app subscription on an Apple device.

Edit: I was right, they just recently dropped it when they rolled out their redesign

[https://www.macrumors.com/2017/12/21/hulu-apple-itunes- billi...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/12/21/hulu-apple-itunes-billing- price-drop/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nginx Api Gateway with testing for continuous delivery - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/meltwater/api-gateway-demo <comment><AUTHOR> Generally when running nginx as an api proxy it can be troublesome to get the routing correctly the first time, therefore testing is required. This repository showcases how to do nginx api-gateway route tests using RSpec.

This repository also got a blog to explain it in detail: [http://underthehood.meltwater.com/blog/2017/12/12/lightweigh...](http://underthehood.meltwater.com/blog/2017/12/12/lightweight- tests-for-your-nginx-api-gateway/)</comment>


Sutro Tower: San Francisco's least appreciated landmark - <AUTHOR> https://sutrotower.org/

<comment><USER2> "...residents at this time focused on their belief that the installation of digital antennas was not allowed per the conditional use permit originally granted. Beyond seismic safety, the other chief complaint from residents involved possible electromagnetic effects on humans."

Never mind that DTV is broadcast on the same UHF band that's been in use for decades. Or that because of the increased resiliency to noise a digital signal can be transmitted at a lower power level while covering the same area. No, let's just ignore scientific fact and whip up a bunch of anti-radiation hysteria.

But I was amused that the old mansion rather than cut down a tree built the front steps around the trunk.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sutro Tower is one of my favorite radio towers in the world. The design is unique and beautiful. I have a thing for aviation orange, I guess.

On a purely pragmatic level, Mount Sutro (née Parnassus) is the only place to put radio antennae in San Francisco. They could have built the standard array of 1000' standalone guyed towers, but instead they went to great effort to come up with a distinctive design.

Either way, the tower(s) were going to get built, and would be visible from every point in the city, so I feel lucky that they didn't take the easy way out.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sorry, but I don't like it. I think it looks ugly and you can see it practically from everywhere. I never liked it...

<comment><USER5> > you can see it practically from everywhere

Kind of the point for a comms tower, no?

<comment><USER6> to be heard, not seen

<comment><USER7> ever heard the phrase 'line of sight'?

<comment><USER6> Is that why its so ugly? No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I live in the Twin Peaks neighborhood, and regularly run up to Sutro Tower on my morning workout. You can get surprisingly close to it, and there's an oval track adjacent to the tower where you can run. Highly recommend! It's quite breathtaking looking up at it from the ground, in a strange way.

<comment><USER9> there's a pretty fun dirt trail right around the hill that it's on, too.

It always amazes me how specific the moisture deposition is from the fog up there. One side will be muddy after a foggy day, the other side will be dry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live not too far from Sutro Tower. One use for it: fog indicator. I used to commute from Pleasanton back into SF. I'd always take a look at Sutro Tower. If it was shrouded in fog, I knew my house would be too. If it was sunny on Sutro, I knew I'd see blue sky at my house as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> I always say that Sutro tower is way more "San Francisco" than Coit Tower. Coit Tower is pretty much just a tourist destination whereas every time I'm traveling and get back to SF, I feel at home when I see that big antenna.

<comment><USER12> Coit tower looks a lot blander to me. It just isn't distinctive and mostly blends in with its surroundings. Whereas Sutro has a nice interesting design, is high enough that it can poke out from under Karl the Fog, and it can be seen from a great radius around SF. I've also seen it from the East Bay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I lived across the street from Sutro tower for 5 years, there is a great paved path around a water reservoir where you can run or walk your dog. Once a year they bring in a herd of goats to clear out the vegetation - very fun to see this happening in the middle of San francisco.

[http://youtu.be/LkSzoM__1O8](http://youtu.be/LkSzoM__1O8)

</comment><comment><USER14> Fascinating read - nicely done. Interesting suggestion that planning objections were late possibly because the media outlets that wanted the tower also suppressed news about its construction!

</comment><comment><USER15> It is absolutely the #1 most visible landmark in the city.

When you are hiking far the north up the coast -- say, Mt. Wittenberg -- you can just barely make out the city to the south ... it's so tiny ... and you can distinctly see "the big bug." Or, from Mt. Diablo, or from Russian Ridge down on the peninsula. This is in addition to being visible from practically everywhere within the city itself.

It's an amazing landmark and, I've come to be quite fond of it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I try to go to Twin Peaks park every time I go to SF. It's such an awesome view and it's so easy to get to. Such a great way to start a trip!

</comment><comment><USER17> Sutro Tower is unappreciated? Not among my friend group. I have friends who have suggested Sutro Tower would make a great tattoo.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I live right by the thing and love staring it when the fog is rolling over it. Would not call it unappreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I visited San Francisco for the first time for JavaOne last year the Sutro was the last landmark I saw and finally got a glimpse of it on the highway back to the airport. It's a cool structure and I definitely felt it was iconic "San Francisco" after the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, Transmerica Pyramid and Coit Tower.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm reminded of the not-quite-as-tall equivalent Crystal Palace transmitter tower in London (which I can see in the distance outside my window)... [http://www.thebigtower.com/live/CrystalPalace/Index.htm](http://www.thebigtower.com/live/CrystalPalace/Index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER21> It's too bad the tower isn't open to the public. I bet the views from the top are incredible. (As evidenced: [http://kiehart.tumblr.com/post/74847934277/up- above-it-all-s...](http://kiehart.tumblr.com/post/74847934277/up-above-it-all- sutro-tower-san-francisco))

<comment><USER22> Are you aware of any active microwave communication towers [0] that are open to the public?

[0] This means structures whose primary purpose to to act as a communication tower, rather than a tourist attraction (Eiffel Tower) or office building (er, every tall office building ever?).

<comment><USER23> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernsehturm_Berlin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernsehturm_Berlin)

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

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

Plenty of examples like this.

Not really comparable to Sutro Tower but they are there.

<comment><USER24> In Brazil: [http://www.curitiba.pr.gov.br/idioma/portugues/linhaturismo/...](http://www.curitiba.pr.gov.br/idioma/portugues/linhaturismo/torre)

It was built to provide telephonic transmission and has two floors specially built to be visited.

<comment><USER22> Ooh! Thanks to both you and jnsaff2. Those towers are pretty nifty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This was one of the most terrifying sights in San Francisco when I was a kid, and the best my parents could do to explain it was to say it had something to do with TV.

</comment><comment><USER26> The players of [http://sf0.org](http://sf0.org) certainly appreciate it. If you can put a flag on top, you win the game.

</comment><comment><USER27> On a foggy day, seeing the top of Sutro Tower poke out, looking like a ship in the sea.

I spent 7 years working on the footstep of Mount Parnassus, and I love that tower.

</comment><comment><USER28> I always call it Twin Peaks. I guess it's wrong.

</comment><comment><USER29> is THAT what it's called! I have a 1/30th scale model in our home. My grandfather calls it the Devil's Pitchfork :P

<comment><USER30> My friends all call it The Claw :P

<comment><USER31> There are some people who call it the Space Claw: [https://www.flickr.com/people/spaceclaw](https://www.flickr.com/people/spaceclaw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Pretty cool picture, I love how Orion is in the sky and the tower itself looks somewhat like my favorite constellation ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> Where does the overly-opinionated title come from?

Currently: Sutro Tower: San Francisco's least appreciated landmark

</comment><comment><USER34> yeah okay, totally unappreciated.

give me a break, it's not 1995.

that's like saying oakland is the new brooklyn.

</comment><comment><USER35> tear it down. and those damn Hollywood letters too. some people have no taste.</comment>