Don't Hire That Web Designer - <AUTHOR> http://isseriousbusiness.com/dont-hire-that-web-designer

<comment><USER2> "You should never allow anyone to put their own branding on your web presence. ... Most designers, once they ask for this, will allow you to decline, but the mere suggestion is an indicator of shaky practices."

Why? Many things in daily use do carry the name of their creator on them.

<comment><USER3> >Why? Many things in daily use do carry the name of their creator on them.

Indeed and I often come across fantastic inspiring sites via footer credits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Your website isn't going to look 100% the same in all browsers on all operating systems._

I don't know where this one comes from, a good designer knows about style resets to reset browsers to a common ground. As well with the JavaScript toolkits like Dojo and jQuery, there are a lot of off the shelf widgets that look exactly the same in all of the major browsers. I don't agree with this suggestion and think that you should actually be looking for a designer who can provide the same look across browsers.

<comment><USER5> keeping in mind that Lynx also fits within the "all browsers on all operating systems" statement.

<comment><USER4> Well yes that is a given that it will not look the same on Lynx. Most would assume that when a designer says "look the same" they generally refer to the top browsers and 2 to 3 versions back. It is pretty much a given that you are not going to get it to look the same on IE 5 or FF 2.

But you bring up a good point, designers should be specific with their client as to what browsers the design will look right in and the steps taken to deal with the ones that it wont.

<comment><USER5> At this point I'm going to assume you didn't actually read the article, because the article mentions this.

From the article:

Look for: "Your site will look great in modern browsers and degrade gracefully while retaining functionality on older browsers." Avoid: "All of my sites look perfect in all browsers, back to NSCA Mosaic"

<comment><USER4> Actually I did read the article, but I must have missed or forgotten the details of that section.

<comment><USER3> >Actually I did read the article, but I must have missed or forgotten the details of that section.

The section you chose to comment on!?

<comment><USER4> Yes, if you must know, I have dyslexia some times my brain can miss a sentence in a paragraph. Feel free to down vote the original comment if it is an issue.

<comment><USER3> That certainly sucks but it in no way negates the fact that you commented specifically on the part of the article you claim not to have comprehended. I don't have dyslexia and I miss words, sentences and paragraphs too.

I have no specific requirement to know details of your medical conditions, just a comment like "sorry, I missed that sentence" would be fine with no further explanation.

That said, thanks for the courtesy of explaining.

<comment><USER4> _sorry, I missed that sentence" would be fine with no further explanation_

 _Actually I did read the article, but I must have missed or forgotten the details of that section_

I thought that is what I said before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty simplistic and boils down to: don't hire super hungry, and over compensating noobs.

What about the evaluation of web designers who are either competent but lousy workers, or even those able to feign some level of sophistication and competence?</comment>


The Future of USDS: Trump, Civic Tech and the Lesson of GDS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@daeaves/the-future-of-usds-trump-civic-tech-and-the-lesson-of-gds-ccdc904976fa#.12d28q15c <comment><AUTHOR> I personally think the US Digital Service needs to reposition themselves as an apolitical organization. Patriots and techies who work on making America better.

<comment><USER2> Is it _that_ partisan? As I commented to the original Medium post, making themselves anti-fragile to the inevitable party change of controls between administrations should be one of their highest priorities, but if they're nakedly partisan, they should just admit to themselves the whole idea was a failure† and _de facto_ disband through resignations before the axe falls.

†And much more than a small failure if they're explicitly against the half of the nation that voted for Trump, Hillary's baskets of those needing reeducation or liquidation (the latter the "irredeemable" "deplorables" who "are not America"). If they, including most especially their members, were even the tiniest bit partisan after she made such an explicit declaration against half the country, their organizations deserve to be eradicated root and branch.

And to take your thesis further, replaced by ones that have very very explicit white line apolitical rules and even laws, see for example the military, which is expected to accept the lawful orders of whomever is the Commander-in-Chief, whatever their political differences might be.</comment></comment>


Alligator Eggs - <AUTHOR> http://worrydream.com/AlligatorEggs/

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was great fun when I stumbled on it, so if any discussions pick up, hopefully you will read the linked article first and enjoy the surprise :]

<comment><USER4> In the interest of what you say I decided not to spoil it with my comment. I will however, say the following things:

1) When I hit the surprise "my mind was blown", to use a phrase popular elsewhere on the internet.

2) I still don't have a snowball's chance in hell of understanding it. :)

<comment><USER5> I was a bit confused when solving the puzzle. It would have been clearer if he wrote that the game is over when nobody has anything to eat. This is implied. The other clarification he could have made was that if an alligator eats a family but itself has no eggs, the alligator simply dies and disappears.

The color changing rule is also a bit clumsy. If I were a kid I would wonder if the two question marks are the same kind in that puzzle. In fact, they may or may not be the same, but appearance wise they look the same.

Hope that helps with anyone who decided to sit down and figure out the puzzle on paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This guy (Bret Victor) also wrote an excellent essay a few years back, Magic Ink <http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/>

Every now and then, probably about twice a year, I come across something so good I print it out and keep it. This is one of those essays.

<comment><USER7> You should submit that

<comment><USER6> Thanks. It's now here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=600799>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was brilliant. Now all we need is an entrepreneurial guy to come along and actually make/market it. I'd be the first customer!

<comment><USER9> And only :P

It's waaaaaaaay too complicated for mass-market!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just teach lambda calculus and get it over with. That stuff's awesome without having to bring in scaly beings. Dealing with these inane pictures just adds too much overhead. I remember when we were learning about these in class - <USER2> was so confused about the ambiguities in the alligator representation, but everything became clear once we switched to mathematical notation. I'm quite convinced I would have learned it perfectly fine without these images.

This is a big problem with education today, IMO - trying to make everything 'fun' by dumbing it down and giving it pictures. Even college textbooks have started talking to me as if I were an 8-year-old. I prefer the converse - <USER3> I was 8, reading high school textbooks from the decade prior. I didn't understand much, but it was still quite interesting.</comment>


Game Job: Getting a job in the game industry simulator - <AUTHOR> http://www.rakkar.org/gamejob.html <comment><USER2> Brilliant. Every time someone asks me whether they should go to Harvard or MIT, I'll send them this link instead of my usual rant.

Moral of the game:

Connections trump everything. Talent means nothing. With seven billion people on this planet, what you can do means nothing. Your access to capital is all that matters. Making capital is insanely hard. Convincing others to give it to you is much easier. PG went to Harvard. Zuck went to Harvard. Gates went to Harvard. Go to Harvard. Don't drop out of high school, and don't listen to people who've only gone to Harvard.

</comment><comment><USER3> Spoiler alert

A would be game professional is born.

Background You drop out of highschool. You have enough social skills to make people think you are in the know when you are in the not. Your 'art' gives programmer's art a new, ugly, meaning Know that publisher? No? Well I do, he's my uncle.

Job Results You manage to convince your uncle that playing golf all day is a real job. Congratulations, you run a publishing house! Pay: $2,000,000 a year!

<comment><USER4> I think this is the crux of the game—some commentary on the advantages of life given your connections, status, and social skills which one is born into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You know what the best part about the game industry is? Leaving it.

<comment><USER6> It's like owning a boat. The best days of a game developer's life are the day they enter the industry and the day they leave.

<comment><USER7> I've heard the best thing with boats is to rent one. That way you get a first day, a middle day, and a last day, then you give the boat back and go home.

Maybe you could intern briefly in the game industry and have the same experience?

<comment><USER5> "If it flies, floats or fucks - rent it." That's the saying.

Also, I wouldn't recommend anyone join the game industry for any period of time. I've never been in it, but I know 7-8 developers and they're all usually miserable and stressed out. Not only that, they make about 60% of what I make and they have no equity or reasonable vacation schedule.

It seems to be a very rollercoastery industry, where one moment people love what you made and then hate it the next. If you're a developer, you're basically a tool to implement the nonsense game designers come up with and your project manager is a cross between Gordon Ramsay and Tim Gunn. It sounds like a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Intuitively, I chose two for connections and one for social skills. The results are exactly as expected, great:

"You drop out of highschool. You have enough social skills to make people think you are in the know when you are in the not. Your 'art' gives programmer's art a new, ugly, meaning Know that publisher? No? Well I do, he's my uncle.

Job Results You manage to convince your uncle that playing golf all day is a real job. Congratulations, you run a publishing house! Pay: $2,000,000 a year!"

</comment><comment><USER7> Lots of people play games and think "I'd love to make games!" Well guess what... every kid who loves games thought that.

The problem with game dev is the same as Hollywood, professional music, and popular pro athletics, namely that there are _waaaaaay_ more people who aspire to it than there are jobs. As a result, there's an extreme hockey stick distribution for success and a lot of exploitative labor practices like unpaid internships, long hours, unusually low pay, etc.

Connections seem to count for more in narrowly gated fields too. It probably has something to do with the number of top insiders being close to the Dunbar number, causing them to form a close-knit insular club of mutual back- scratchers. All the insiders know all the other insiders. Not an insider? Go home.

<comment><USER9> As a programmer working in games. I am afraid that what you say about getting into being hard without connections just isn't true. It is something I see written about a lot. The truth is that if you are a good programmer, comfortable working in C++ and can work in a team you will have no problem getting a job in games, connections or not. In fact, that is how most people I know in games got into games, myself included.

There are problems of exploitation of the workers but this isnt through people scared of getting work, I think everyone with a few years in the games industry knows they have the skills that would help them get another programming job without too much hassle. The problem is that people are passionate and that is being exploited in some places. The trick is find the good games companies and stand your ground on salary and working hours, admittedly this is probably easier in the UK than the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I worked in the games industry for 15+ years. It was a roller coaster of extreme highs and extreme lows: Getting my game painted on the side of Japanese bullet trains, succesfully pitching a game to a Hollywood film director, partying at an embassy in Germany, getting seriously alcohol poisoned, meeting with and shaking hands with Miyamoto and other childhood heroes, writing an email that got a French producer fired, having games succeed beyond anything imagined and having other games crash and burn hard. Now I am older and prefer a non-roller coaster lifestyle. But hey when you are young and full of beans, what is there to loose? That's the time to risk things. Just don't be naive about it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Soon as we fix the sexism in the games industry we will have more women working in it

</comment><comment><USER12> A would be game professional is born.

Background You are highly intelligent and decide to study programming. You have enough social skills to make people think you are in the know when you are in the not. Your 'art' gives programmer's art a new, ugly, meaning You're a nobody as far as the game industry is concerned.

Job Results You were smart enough to pass the programming tests, and did great in your interview. They hire you as a programmer! Pay: $60,000 a year!

<comment><USER13> 60k starting salary as a coder?

Where can I apply?

<comment><USER14> The salary numbers are all tongue in cheek, although its pretty common for entry level game industry programmers to make $60K or less. For comparison the producer makes $100K, which is way above the average producer salary (~$75K) and almost twice entry level producer salary.

<comment><USER15> You have to take into account where the game industry jobs are, too. I work across the highway from id, and around here I wouldn't be shocked to find out entry level programmers make $60k/year. It's low, but not unreasonable considering the glut of people who seem to want in to the industry.

<comment><USER16> I don't have any concrete numbers, but I can say with reasonable certainty that 60k/year is standard entry-level income at a couple large studios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's kinda sad that you have to use all 3 points, when creating a character in my own image I only ended up using 2 (or even 1, now that I think about it) points.

</comment><comment><USER18> Put 1 for social, and 2 for connections to run the place :D

</comment><comment><USER19> This is just a cynic view of game industry (and the world). Of course some people get a lot more that they deserve. But I have seen a lot of great professionals getting promoted thanks to their abilities and hard work. The world is not so black and white like this game. If you don't like it remember it and when you have a management role fight injustices and congratulate the people that deserve it.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised no one posted about the "2 artistic + 1 intelligence = $0" outcome yet :)

<comment><USER21> Also 2 social + 1 artistic = "You draw nice concept drawings which your friends like. However, none of them will pay you for it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The pop-up with the result just shows a blank screen until I double-click it. (Chrome 35 on Mac)

<comment><USER23> I was confused why you'd use a popup in this case, then I looked at the source and realized this has to be at least a decade old.

<comment><USER24> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

Indeed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Oh that's great. It wanted me just $20k :) intelligence + artistic + connections

</comment><comment><USER26> 2 intelligence + 1 social = blank popup

<comment><USER27> Job Results You were smart enough to pass the programming tests, and did great in your interview. They hire you as a programmer! Pay: $60,000 a year!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a pretty realistic simulation</comment>


Tunnel Boring Machines (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cat-bus.com/2018/01/far-from-boringmeet-the-most-interesting-tunnel-boring-machines/ <comment><USER4> There is a quality about TBMs which vaguely reminds me of the feeling of getting a new LEGO set and building stuff. Imagine if we had cheap ways to build tunnels, no more traffic, no more congestion, roads and parking lots would only exist underground and cities would have more space for gardens, parks, buildings, and walkways. We have these things - Subways but its very expensive to build that system. Elon has an itch to solve this problem and I want this dream to succeed! While that's going on, please someone make a game out of building tunnels, it would be super cool!

<comment><USER5> > Imagine if we had cheap ways to build tunnels, no more

> traffic, no more congestion, roads and parking lots would

> only exist underground and cities would have more space

> for gardens, parks, buildings, and walkways.

Or, skip the tunnel building and just ban cars from major cities.

Building more infrastructure to "reduce traffic" only makes using vehicles more attractive. The amount of congestion is approximately equal to the amount of congestion the average person using the infrastructure is willing to accept, so making it less congested just means more people use the infrastructure until the limit is reached again.

The real answer to the problem is to simply ban all but buses and delivery vehicles - even then you can incentivize that they are electrically driven. Space increases and infrastructure maintenance costs are reduced, not increased.

The real golden use for TBMs is for efficiency - i.e. Go around some mountain or go straight through it? Go around a city or go under it? I imagine buildings sharing a service elevator down to the tunnel where delivery vehicles can offload to and send goods up (rather than Musk's idea of trying to lift a several tonne vehicle in some personal elevator).

Would likely make sense for all kinds of maintenance this way to, servicing water/gas pipes or electricity/internet lines for example could be as simple as removing a service panel from the side of a tunnel, rather than the terrible solution we have today involving digging up streets over and over.

<comment><USER6> Why have technical innovation at all, let's just outlaw stuff...

I really don't get this desire to outlaw cars. I like walkable cities, but I also like the comfort and privacy of car transport. I live in a place (Germany) with good public transport. I used to live in cities with very good public transport. I still don't enjoy being squeezed in with thousands of other people. Does that mean that people like me have to be reeducated and/or forced to see the error of their ways?

<comment><USER7> Well, maybe actually. It's reasonable to suggest that your driving is creating personal gain at the expense of others (pollution, congestion etc), and thus should be treated like many other things that fall into this category (theft, speeding) and be outlawed.

Of course it's also totally reasonable to suggest that the harm to others is so small that it doesn't justify the erosion of personal liberty.

Point being, the question warrants reasonable consideration rather than immediate dismissal.

<comment><USER8> > Point being, the question warrants reasonable consideration rather than > immediate dismissal.

Sure, but it takes quite a bit of negatives to override the obvious and glaring benefits of anyone being able to transport oneself, one's family, one's stuff, at a moments notice, to any destination, in (almost) any weather, at an average speed of 30-60miles per hour, all at an amortized cost of approximately 50cents per mile.

The willingness and readiness of some people to disregard the large personal, societal, and economic benefits of having functioning automotive infrastructure - in concert with other methods of transit - quite frankly bewilders me.

<comment><USER9> > Sure, but it takes quite a bit of negatives to override the obvious and > glaring benefits of anyone being able to transport oneself, one's family, > one's stuff, at a moments notice, to any destination, in (almost) any > weather, at an average speed of 30-60miles per hour, all at an amortized > cost of approximately 50cents per mile.

The current discussion mostly centers on banning cars in cities or large agglomerations. In no city you'll reach average speeds even approaching 30 miles an hour - something around 20km/h is a more reasonable number to expect. That's btw. easily reachable with an electric bicycle or public transport. I can call a cab or a transport for larger goods at pretty much a moments notice, there's even car sharing services that have some parked in the street.

Also, you're disregarding that cars in cities have massive externalities - <USER2> current estimate for Berlin is that infrastructure for cars (roads and parking spaces) cost about 30% of the cities surface area at substantial cost to society (increased rent and building costs, maintenance etc) which is paid by the majority of people _not_ owning a car. Not all of that could be recouped if private car usage is reduced, but substantial chunks could. Not to speak of noise and other pollution, risks of accident and injury etc.

So you're overplaying the advantages and disregarding the very real cost that other people shoulder for a minority driving.

<comment><USER10> You are correct for the dense part of large cities, once you get outside that things change fast. Anyone not living in those areas sometimes need to get to the dense part of the city, and driving their own car overall has the speeds of the non-dense part they pass through not the slow dense part near their destination.

<comment><USER11> That's what park+ride is for — drive to a subway or train station at the edge of the city, leave your car there, and use transit in the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The cost of a TBM doesn't get much higher as you increase its diameter."

This is the key assertion, and it is unsupported.

\- heat extraction will become a bigger problem

\- debris extraction too

\- cost of parts, cost and speed of logistics like transport and installation of the machine will be worse

\- small number of exotic large TBMs will scale worse than large number of small TBMs in manufacturing cost and operating experience

\- I've seen elsewhere (citation missing) that small borers move much faster than large so any costs that scale with time will be worse.

\- risk-wise: a portfolio of small borers will have less risk than an all- eggs-in-one-basket gamble. a broken part delaying a big machine incurs more cost than ona smaller machine.

unless your project requires a single enormous bore I think you would prefer to use the smallest you can get away with.

The author does not seem to have any relevant experience, so I'm not going to take this on his authority; he's a programmer who has done scheduling software on metro projects and is working on an MBA. Interesting summary of types of machines though!

<comment><USER13> Key word "much".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have many questions,

1\. Are any of these TBM considered state of art? I dont see any tech inside those TBM that could not be done 10 years ago other than the cost of the machine. We are entering new Space Race era and yet some fundamental stuff still looks very, should I say "traditional".

2\. Why cant we build even bigger TBM? Like Double the current diameter. Or Bigger TBM that are Rectangular rather than Circle.

3\. The biggest problem with TBM is that they are slow. Even if we had made them 10 times faster I would still consider them very slow. Surely there could be technology that improve on it?

4\. Are there any reason why we dont use TBM for small pipes, ( like for electricity or fibre optics, )

<comment><USER10> Is there any improvement that can be made? Every time some engineer comes up with an improvement that is one more improvement invented. There is only so much improvement possible.

Slow is not a problem. A few meters a day sounds slow, but if you are going long distances you can scale by buying more TBNs putting them in a line and having each meet up to the next. Assuming you have the money. In practice the cost to build a tunnel is high enough that you probably can't afford to scale up too much that way.

<comment><USER15> >>> you can scale by buying more TBNs putting them in a line and having each meet up to the next

What I'm picturing from your statement is two TBM drilling towards each other like ---> <\----.

Which would require the digging of a third hole where the TBM "drill heads" meet. After every TBM dig, the drill heads are left at the end of the tunnel b/c they are bigger than the new tunnel (as the head digs the tunnel, workers install support structure to prevent a collapse, so the just drilled tunnel is smaller than the being drilled tunnel). A 3rd dig would be required where the two TBM drill heads meet to retrieve them and connect the tunnels. That's a lot of $$$ :/

<comment><USER16> > Which would require the digging of a third hole where the TBM "drill heads" > meet.

In most projects it's called a station.

[http://www.crossrail.co.uk/construction/tunnelling/meet- our-...](http://www.crossrail.co.uk/construction/tunnelling/meet-our-giant- tunnelling-machines/)

Occasionally you'll have dive sites that are not at/near stations, but not that often.

[https://www.sydneymetro.info/station/blues-point- temporary-r...](https://www.sydneymetro.info/station/blues-point-temporary- retrieval-site)

[https://www.sydneymetro.info/tunnelling](https://www.sydneymetro.info/tunnelling)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not out to analyze the clearly knowledgeable content of this article, but I'd not be surprised if someone wrote something just like it when he (Musk) started the whole illogical "make a rocket come back and land" stuff.

It's not logical, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. Let him do his thing. Who knows?

<comment><USER18> The difference is we are building tunnels for many decades and making them smaller, reusing the ground material are not ground breaking ideas.

<comment><USER19> The ground breaking part is not the tunnel but the vehicles. Its extremely dangerous to use ICE vehicles in long tunnels without complex ventilation schemes. Electric vehicles solve this issue.

<comment><USER18> You need complex ventilation anyway. Imagine a fire breaks out.

<comment><USER19> True, however that requirements are more relaxed. The invention of electric train removed most of the problems with coal based (and other vehicles and helped in creation of subways).I think the movement to electric will create the same oppurtunity for cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Side note: Missed opportunity for the title "Interesting Boring Machines"

<comment><USER21> Actual title of article: "Far From Boring: Meet the Most Interesting Tunnel Boring Machines"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Musk could help with the back end of the problem. The TBM up front gets all the attention. Behind the TBM is usually a temporary two-track narrow gauge railway line, with muck cars carrying dirt and rock out, segment cars carrying tunnel wall segments forward, plus tool cars and worker cars now and then.[1]

Hanging off the back of the TBM is all the machinery to move all those heavy items around.[2] Including the machinery for laying more railroad track behind the TBM.

Self-driving electric muck cars, segment cars, etc, might replace that temporary rail infrastructure. That's something Musk's company could address.

The back end of the process seems to get less attention than the front end. Most of the length of the TBM is devoted to material handling, though, as is the rest of the tunnel all the way back to the entry. A big fraction of the cost is in moving all that stuff around.

[1] [http://www.zslocomotive.com/products](http://www.zslocomotive.com/products) [2] [https://youtu.be/SY3Q9GqUYro?t=115](https://youtu.be/SY3Q9GqUYro?t=115)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm uninpressed because it lacks _Nuclear Tunnel Boring Machines_ like in [1] and [2] as envisioned by [3] for [4] and [5] in 1972 and 1978. Which all Hyperloop afficionados should read, if they haven't done so already :-)

[1] [https://patents.google.com/patent/US3693731](https://patents.google.com/patent/US3693731) (I'm wondering about steam explosions when hitting ground water, which is not unheard of. But... _NUKULAR!_ )

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

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Salter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Salter)

[4] [https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html)

[5] [https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P6092.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P6092.html) (Lacking cheaply mass produced super-conductors here)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure that I agree with the author on Elon Musk's tunneling ambitions. Far more people are betting against him on Tesla and SpaceX without much success.

One thing lost in the debate is if the costs are lowered it will also increase the number of cities where a subway is possible financially. I see cities spending huge money on dedicated bus lanes. The bus companies adore it but I'm pretty certain that the return on investment is abysmal.

They tried to implement it locally and the grass roots groups put up such a huge fight the politicians withdrew support for it.

As far as the cost of the stations I wonder if anyone has given thought to using 3D concrete printing? Admittedly it would be easier if you excavated from the surface as opposed to widening a tunnel but I still think it has the possibility of losing costs.

[https://all3dp.com/2/concrete-3d-printing-how-to-do-it- and-a...](https://all3dp.com/2/concrete-3d-printing-how-to-do-it-and-applic)

<comment><USER25> "Musk says he can build tunnels cheaper if he just makes them smaller. But in reality, it's not small TBMs that are the future, but big ones. The cost of a TBM doesn't get much higher as you increase its diameter. Tt is therefore cheaper to build one very large tunnel, rather than two smaller ones."

If that is true, then Elon is betting on the wrong horse.

<comment><USER24> I can remember articles promoting hydrogen powered cars as the future. They even said Elon made the wrong bet with electric. Some company's are still hawking hydrogen as the future, the difference is no one is paying any attention to them any longer.

Someone else has made the bet for bigger tunnels and they're using a PR agency to push back. PG called out this tactic a few years back:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

<comment><USER10> The bigger tunnel people have proven success, while the small tunnel people just have hype.

People shut up about electric cars over hydrogen when electric proved itself. Note that back when this started there were many hydrogen naysayers who pointed out all the problems the hydrogen proponents have faced. The electric car people got lucky that lithium batteries advanced to where they could work - 20 years ago this wasn't a given to battery experts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> These animations are great, but for some puzzling reason they only advance while I am scrolling the page. To watch an animation I have to hold my thumb on the screen and subtly scroll up and down. This is on an iPhone X.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there a reason why cut and cover isn't used very much these days, apart from mild disruption to car traffic?

<comment><USER28> it is ridiculously labour intensive.

First, all utilities have to be mapped out, then any basements shored up.

Then once the cut and cover is in progress, all utilities have to be re- routed, during, then replaced after the tunnel is cut.

Then, the disruption of having major transit ways shut for _n_ weeks.

Lastly, there isnt a machine to do it. The TBM is pretty efficient labour wise.

<comment><USER29> This is only if you build subway tunnels which are very shallow.

Deeper tunnels for longer distance transport do not have any of these limitation.

<comment><USER10> Deeper tunnels cut and cover get expensive fast, bored tunnels are about the same cost at any depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I know this is probably a very stupid idea, but I was thinking what if we shot ourselves out of rail guns into the air into a bullet shaped craft with fins?

You could be shot out of one rail gun in San Francisco, glide for awhile, fall to the earth and caught by a "reverse" railgun in San Jose.

It'd be cheaper and safer than planes since no need to carry fuel or an engine on board, and could have an emergency parachute incase something went wrong.

Or maybe I've been dreaming about Kerbal Space Program projects too much lately. (I'm fully expecting to be flamed and jided for this)

<comment><USER31> Humans are comfortable with accelerations of maybe 1 m/s/s. So to accelerate comfortably to a plane-like speed of say 300 m/s, your railgun would have to be 600m long - comparable to the tallest skyscraper in the world - and likely pointing at 45 degrees up.

On the way down the vehicle would be going the same speed it went up at - <USER3> you're talking about plummeting ballistically towards the ground at 300 m/s. Even assuming you can steer perfectly, what happens if something goes wrong with the receiving railgun? You've got no way to abort and go around, and no time to do... well, anything, really.

Parachutes for vehicles the size of a passenger aeroplane are not practical. A few very small planes have emergency whole-aeroplane parachutes, but they're not to be relied upon. The German army experimented with parachuting a light buggy with two soldiers in and gave up after several failures. And even if you had a working parachute, it still requires a skilled operator and a safe landing zone - what if you hit power lines, or trees, or buildings?

<comment><USER32> Just gravity is more than 1m/s^2, around 9.8m/s^2

<comment> sean-duffy Is the implication that most humans are comfortable with freefall?

<comment><USER33> No, the implication is that humans are perfectly comfortable with way more than 1m/s^2, particularly if it is linear and you are comfortably seated.

<comment><USER34> As an example of Fermi estimation, it's pretty reasonable. 10 m/s is too much, given that most people wouldn't want to spend a lot of time accelerating at the rate of a Corvette on a drag strip. So the correct number is between 1 and 10.

<comment><USER33> First, we're talking about a short burst of acceleration, not a multi-day burn on the way to Mars. 1g of lateral acceleration is not a big deal for a few seconds. Most people think it's fun.

Unfortunately that was actually the least wrong thing about lmm's comment. We're not launching a rock, it will not come down as fast as it goes up. And I don't know what the mixup is around a "receiving railgun".

<comment><USER34> Perhaps, though not really. Commercial aircraft generally accelerate at takeoff at around 2-3m/s. For most people, that is quite enough, and that only gets you to 140kt. By comparison, doing 1g for 5 seconds (being generous) only gets you to 95kt. So you aren't really going to be able to get much flight out of that. More realistically, a gun would have to accelerate you to nearly the speed of sound or more. Mannned rocket ships have a (throttled) peak acceleration of 3G, so that sets a realistic upper bound and probably way over what might be considered reasonable. I've read that the Willis tower elevators accelerate downward at 8m/s and that is uncomfortable and just for a short time. It's likely the case that such acceleration would feel better if one were lying down. It's a curious question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The vertical shaft sinking machine process is basically just an automated form of the old-school manual method of digging a well with men and shovels.

Laborers excavate at the bottom while new bricks are laid incrementally forming the casing at the top. The whole column of bricks slides down as a cylinder whenever progress is made at the bottom.

I've long wanted to dig a well that way, it's gotta be surreal to be at the bottom digging away with a little shovel and seeing a towering column of bricks move as one to fill in the progress.

It can't be terribly safe :)

<comment><USER36> Here's an absolutely insane guy's channel

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCti7FZiCHC5fhvgN_Ns_5ew](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCti7FZiCHC5fhvgN_Ns_5ew)

He digs wells by hand. Very scary videos.

<comment><USER37> There we go: [https://youtu.be/5-j-EHXhBh8?t=465](https://youtu.be/5-j-EHXhBh8?t=465)

<comment><USER38> Whatever you do, keep your fingers and toes out from under the lip of the lining - and have a pump running to keep the water level down, in case you do get snagged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I _think_ one of the major causes for the high cost of tunneling is that it is done too seldom. Any major city in the world probably has room for 10 or so additional tunnels, so why do they not operate a fleet of TBMs constantly for the next n years?

</comment><comment><USER40> > Rather than including a facility for assembling the tunnel lining (out of > multiple segments) inside the TBM, complete rings are inserted at the > insertion shaft, and the whole tunnel is jacked forward one segment at a > time.

This seems inefficient.

<comment><USER10> Looks to me like they are looking at only going a short distance. I doubt you could get more than 100 meters like that, but if you only need 100 meters of tunnel it is probably cheaper because it is faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Or you could just move the surface streets a couple of stories up like they did in the early 20th century in Chicago. Trucks (for deliveries, etc) are not allowed on the surface, only below.

<comment><USER42> A lot of early cities jacked up their buildings. Chattanooga did due to flooding.

I somehow doubt such things could happen today considering the superstructure foundations under a lot of our modern buildings.

<comment><USER41> Definitely easier to keep the buildings at their current level and just make a new entrance on the second (or higher) floor.

<comment><USER31> You can't bootstrap having a nice walking environment at above-ground level that way. Who's going to open the first cafe where there's no foot traffic? Why will anyone spend a lot of money on entrances that no-one's going to walk to? What pedestrian is going to want to keep walking up and down stairs while the network is partially complete. The City of London tried to do what you're suggesting and it was a total failure, because while it might have worked if it could have magically all been done in one go, there's no way to get to there from here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Here's interesting tidbit: Vast majority of underground railway network in Moscow was built in 1950s. Cost of building a mile of interstate highway in US is about $5M. Interestingly this cost hasn't changed since 1956 in inflation adjusted dollars when new 41,000 miles of interstate highway in US was laid out. It seems major cost is not tech but quite possibly regulation and/or government inefficiency/corruption.

<comment><USER44> We have also use highways a lot more and accordingly require better construction. I'm not saying nothing interesting is going on, but construction+maintenance over 20 years, adjusted for vehicle miles traveled (or rather semi-truck-miles traveled) would be a much better indicator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is Elon Musk a Samuel Beckett fan? I can totally picture a city council asking what's taking a tunnel project so long to complete, and Musk answering, with a straight face, "Oh, we're just waiting for Godot."

</comment><comment><USER46> Why can't we just vaporise stone with lasers..

<comment><USER44> The boiling point of limestone is around 825°C or 1515°F. Heating up a tube of multiple meters diameter and multiple kilometer length to that temperature would require insane amounts of energy. A laser makes it possible to efficiently heat a small spot to that temperature which helps reduce waste heat, but you still have to heat every spot at some point.

<comment><USER47> I wonder what you do with a jet of vapourized rock too, once you've got it to that temperature!

<comment><USER36> Well I guess one can suck the plasma into a condenser unit and then on to a conveyor belt for extraction.

Now what you do when those lasers hit a high-water-content sediment and cause a vapor explosion, loss of integrity of surrounding rock and flooding?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Article does not seem to understand what Booring Company trying to achieve. It does not even seem try to understand.

We all know it's very popular to love Elon Musk. But it's generally more attractive to one-up those who do and hate Elon and his "fans".

As a disclaimer: I am in the wagon of "please leave this guy alone so he can do his thing, whatever it might turn out to be".

And I do not see any value in this article. Booring Co. is about creating rich network of very small tunnels _to solve urban traffic,_ whereas article only talks about creating huge tunnels for longer distance transportation.

Article seem to be making a comparison while things it compares aren't in the same category nor does they try to solve the same problem to begin with.

Incoherent and poorly thought-out", if not straight clickbait.

<comment><USER34> The article only briefly mentions the Boring company and Elon Musk, because it's mainly about how cool these large tunnel are and how the machines are large enough to allow multimodal transportation in a tunnel. The comparison to Musk is that his company is making a bet the rest of the industry has rejected. They are all building large, versatile tunnels. Musk is betting that small tunnels will be the future. Who knows?

What I got out of the article was definitely not an "anti-Musk" vibe. Not even super critical of the Boring company approach. It was more of a "modern marvels" type of article.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I heard you like sample code - <AUTHOR> https://lucybot.com/docs/request

<comment><USER2> I didn't understand it until I read a lot, but seems good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking a look!

The main takeaway is that it allows you to embed sample code in a few different programming languages inside your API documentation, blog posts, or READMEs.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve the docs, let me know!</comment></comment>


Admitting that Functional Programming Can Be Awkward (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/3.html

<comment><USER2> I think we need a new paradigm name, something like denotational programming. I think very few people who are into functional programming argue that functions are the right abstraction for expressing every problem, which is why there are things like monads ,which in a sense generalize functions, including the IO monad.

The reason Haskell is such a nice language also for imperative programming is that everything is "tangible", i.e. you can talk about the "action" 'x := x + 1' as a value (in the IO monad), that is, it has a denotation. It also gives you a purely funcitonal way of combining side-effecting actions, rather than having the two worls of pure/stateful merged into one.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author doesn't know it, but the issues he raises are what functional reactive programming approaches aim to solve.

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


'Heads we win, tails you lose': how America's rich turned pandemic into profit - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/26/heads-we-win-tails-you-lose-how-americas-rich-have-turned-pandemic-into-profit <comment><USER2> Wealth tax - any assets you hold over $2M is fair game.

Surely now people can see there is not much connect between how hard you work and how much wealth you have. It's a lottery, lets redistribute the proceeds.

<comment><USER3> Wow. Just, wow.

Let me read what you said another way: "let's tax old people"

Young people don't have money compared to older people because old people have generally spent their lives saving it. So if you put that wealth tax in place, why the heck should any of them save.

What you suggest will lead to disaster. Getting old is not a lottery.

<comment><USER4> > because old people have generally spent their lives saving it.

Hah

My old man and his wife have a couple of million in real estate and paper assets. For the most part they didn't 'save' any of it. It's theirs due to policies that promote asset inflation.

Seriously. They bought houses in the early seventies for probably around $80k total. Adjusted for wage/price inflation, $500k. Financed natch. Now worth about $4 million. Yeah their 'savings' amounts to about 12% of their real estate wealth. Likely even less percentage of their paper wealth.</comment></comment></comment>


Netbeans for PHP gets an enthusiastically positive review - <AUTHOR> http://unseen.ws/2009/03/netbeans-for-php-ftw/

<comment><USER2> 502 Bad Gateway

Here's google cache: [http://184.108.40.206/search?q=cache:JmLFJmyhjPUJ:unseen.ws/...](http://126.96.36.199/search?q=cache:JmLFJmyhjPUJ:unseen.ws/2009/03/netbeans- for-php-ftw/+netbeans-for-php-ftw&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca)

Netbeans for PHP FTW

I ran across a post a while back talking about how Netbeans now has PHP support. My first thought since I had never used it, and the name makes no bones about it's target language, was that this must just be some gimmick aimed at Java devs to make it comfortable for them to slide over to other languages. The world already had one bloated, slow, Javaesque IDE that could do PHP…. Eclipse…. So why make another?

Curiosity got the better of me after hearing about some of the great stuff they were baking into the latest version. So I downloaded the 6.7 M2 PHP version and have been using it exclusively for the last week. Boy were my initial reactions dead wrong. This thing absolutely rocks for PHP development. It actually feels like and IDE built for PHP and not at all like PHP stuffed into a Java IDE (like Eclipse does). Its fast and packed with features. Some of the best features are not even the PHP ones. The HTML, CSS, JS, and SVN support all seem top notch as well (something sometimes lacking in PHP focused IDEs). The only sucky thing about it so far has been it's name. If any one is listening, please change the name to something that will not scare off non java-heads from trying this awesome IDE.

There is even a blog for the Netbeans for PHP.

I've used quite a large number of IDEs and editors over the years for my PHP hacking. I'm not talking fired it up and made a bogus sample page, I'm talking using for months at a time to write real world projects. Here is a quick rundown of some of my past PHP hacking tools of choice to give a perspective of where I'm coming from on this topic (these are in chronological):

* Textpad

I was n00b at one point :)

* Vim

Just too lacking in features for my taste, but still use for server side hacking and locally for quickly popping open a file. Though I usually use MacVim these days.

* Dreamweaver

When I was still a bit wet behind the ears and not as hard core on the server side this helped to make me more productive with client side coding and was sufficient for my server side needs (especially since I was also doing ColdFusion work at that time).

* PHPEdit

Back when this was free and I needed something more robust than Dreamweaver for PHP coding this fit the bill quite nice.

* Eclipse

Yes, I have actually used this quite a bit. At one point I was juggling lots of projects in lots of different languages at the same (PHP, ColdFusion, Python, bash, MySQL, XML, …) and wanted a way to streamline my workflow. Eclipse got the job done. It felt totally half baked and was full of bizarre Java language and concepts, but I was able find pluggins for everything I wanted it to do and it worked pretty well.

* Zend Studio <= 5 (before it sucked ass)

Once I was able to focus on strictly a LAMP environment I started looking for something more suitable. I ran across Zend Studio and the wonders of server side debugging in PHP and I was hooked. I used this IDE for almost 3 years and loved it (it's non PHP support was a bit weak but…)

* Zend Studio 6 (when it sucked ass)

With version 6 of Zend Studio that decided to turn it into Zend Studio for Eclipse. I've never seen such a colossal step backwards for a piece of software (with the possible exception of Windows Vista). It didn't support half the features it had in previous versions. The old studios was fairly lean, but the new one came with all the Eclipse bloat and could barely get off the ground with the main project I was working on at the time. Even though I could sluggishly code… I could not use the debugger without the thing crashing. The love affair with Zend Studio was over and was time to move on.

* Komodo

I really like Komodo. It was my ZendStudio rebound, and is more or less still my IDE of choice until I burn NetBeans in a little more. I appreciate its support for multiple languages (use it for Python/Django on the Smoron project) and the javascript debugger. Not exactly sure how I put this… its good and functional but doesn't exactly have a huge WOW factor.

* NetBeans

Not sure if it is because its the "new" thing for me, or if it is because it is really that good. But I'm currently WOWed :)

<comment><USER3> What "features" is vim missing that you use for php?

<comment><USER4> Heh bugged me too, I hear this statement often and it's coming from people who believe vim is only about 'i' and ':w'. vim has quite a steep learning curve, especially comparing to TextMate, but feature-wise it's all these editors and more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is also pretty good for Ruby on Rails coding, and getting better.

Ruby parsing is pain and a half, particularly for half-written Ruby code, but if you type something like

validates_(hit your autocompletion key)

in a controller you'll get a list of all the built in validations plus any you added which are in scope, and if you do something like

validates_acceptance_of (hit your autocompletion key) it will even tell you what all those wonderful damnable optional parameters are. It also saved my bacon once this weekend for

render :action => whatever, :layout => nil , which actually rendered the layout for quite some time until I backed out the "=> nil" and was told by autocomplete that what I really wanted was "=> false".

<comment><USER6> Netbeans is my favorite Ruby editor, much to my own surprise. One thing I don't like, though, is how much extraneous autocomplete information it provides. If I'm in a controller and type the name of a model object and then type period, it shows a dizzying dropdown list of thousands of methods, including several hundred different versions of the "new" method. Maybe it's just me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to be a TextMate/Vim person, but NetBeans just has some really nice abilities.

It integrates so well with version control systems. The auto-complete isn't what I'd like it to be for Ruby, but seems better for other languages. It will run your program in NetBeans which makes it easy to fire up a development server without another window. It will handle lots of tasks like plugin management or rake tasks. Oh, and the refactor browser - I don't know how I ever renamed things without it.

Now, it's absolutely ugly (at least on OS X), but it's relatively straight forward which I can't say for Eclipse. It might not be your cup of tea, but at the price of free, it's worth seeing if an IDE's tools such as its ability to spot parse errors, code completion, versioning integration, etc. will help you be more productive/happy.

<comment><USER8> the latest beta version isn't ugly under OS X any more. My concerns about line endings and trailing whitespace (see other comment) still keep me off using this though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I stumbled onto using Netbeans for PHP a few months ago while doing some Java work. I use it almost exclusively for PHP now (I also use geany for quick edits). While it's not quite as slick as the Java support, it is a world better than anything else I've used. Also the subversion and mercurial integration kicks ass.

Hope oracle continues to support development, but if not, we have the source.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been using Netbeans for PHP for about 6-months exclusively now and I can say I too am extremely impressed with its speed, functionality, and most importantly, reliability.

Zend Studio was the last IDE I used before this, and I was pretty upset with what I found. Not only was it sluggish, but it would randomly crash on me, causing me to lose some of my work.

Netbeans FTW

</comment><comment><USER8> as long as Netbeans does not let me specify the line ending style of newly created files and does not provide me with an option to remove trailing whitespace on save, it's just not usable for my purposes.

Where I work, we have a very strict policy concerning these two things - actually it was me to formulate that policy in the first place, because having strict line endings makes the codebase look ever so cleaner.

Having clean line endings really helps with applying patches.

Not having options to fix these two aspects is just unprofessional - no matter how good the rest of the editor might be.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone share their experiences with coding PHP in Emacs?

</comment><comment><USER12> Wake me up when it does Python. Oh, and it would need mercurial support too.

Until then, I'll stick with Textmate. (Already tried Eclipse. Hated it.)

<comment><USER9> Wake up, it's supported both at least since 6.5. I've used mercurial in netbeans for several months and it works great.

<comment><USER12> Ah. That's it. My Bad. I was looking at their download bundles, and just assumed that was everything. PHP and Ruby are listed, but Python is not:

<http://www.netbeans.org/downloads/index.html></comment></comment></comment>


Sweden Twitter Experiment Goes Painfully Awry - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/06/12/sweden-twitter/

<comment><USER2> I'm swedish and this is really not that strange. She's just an ordinary Stockholm hipster with an odd sense of humor. We got a bunch of those here. We've sort of had a tradition of that kind of very politically incorrect and absurdist humor here at least since the mid 90s. I would even go as far as to say that it is considered a bit chick in some circles to behave like that.

But I can see how an american/international audience wouldn't get the joke.

<comment><USER3> <http://meloukhia.net/2009/07/hipster_racism.html>

> Hipster racism involves making derogatory comments with a racial basis in an > attempt to seem witty and above it all. Specifically, the idea is to sound > ironic, as in "I'm allowed to say this because of course I'm not racist, so > it's funny." It's an aspect of a larger part of the hipster culture, which > wants to seem jaded and urbane and oh-so-witty. Using language which is > viewed as inflammatory or not appropriate is supposed to push the boundaries > and make someone look edgy, but it only really comes across that way to > people who buy into that system. To everyone else, it's just racist.

So no, this isn't some unheard of Swedish phenomenon, it's "hipster racism," as described above. And god help us if you are going to tell me that Swedes just aren't racist like Americans.

<comment><USER4> The linked blog post is a bit of a rant. Sounds like the author really hates hipsters and just wishes to accuse them of being racist without actually providing any substantial evidence to back the claim. If "hipster racism" is a legitimate phenomenon, I'd like to read about it from another source.

On the main point, the Swedish troll isn't really saying anything overtly racist. She is just mentioning a number of things that make people feel uncomfortable and making some questionable remarks that are obviously designed to be incendiary. I'm not sure this fits into the "hipster racism" model, as described in the linked blog.

<comment><USER5> [http://jezebel.com/5905291/a-complete-guide-to-hipster- racis...](http://jezebel.com/5905291/a-complete-guide-to-hipster-racism)

<comment><USER6> I am tempted to believe this article is a troll. But on second thought, the author is probably just projecting imaginary racism on at least half of the so-called hipster racists.

The author suggests that the use of the hashtag #thuglife is racist. What kind of moron thinks pointing out the _lack_ of behavior attributed to a "thug" (which, by the way, _is not even racial in nature_ ) in an ironic way is exhibiting a form of racism?

Then the author attributes the word "ghetto" with racism. News flash: ghettos are never fun to live in, much less visit. Certainly there's racial undertones because traditionally ghettos were populated by a single ethnic group, but even the explanation of the example by the author disregards race and focuses solely on the poor conditions of the area.

I won't comment on number 3 because there's no arguing with emotional instability.

On number 4, I have to say that it is definitely racist to say any ethnic or other group in general is bad or sucks, etc. That being said, I have lived with white anglo-saxon protestants for most of my life, and they can definitely be super lame. Perhaps it's an excessive amount of lameness that forces people who deal with it on a regular basis to lash out at the whole populous. Not good, but at the same time, I totally understand what the hipster is saying. And is it hurting anybody? I don't think so. The least- oppressed group can stand to take a few knocks for their flaws every so often.

<comment><USER7> ... _behavior attributed to a "thug" (which, by the way, is not even racial in nature)_

The denotation of "thug" may not be racial, but it has racial connotations in many contexts.

<comment><USER6> What's the racial connotation? The fact that black people refer to themselves as thugs in music and culture in a quasi-romanticized way of expressing who they are? The term is significantly less racial than words like "goyim" which explicitly refer to race, yet are completely benign in everyday speech. The only difference I see is that if a word is tangentially related to black culture, it's racist for non-black people to use them.

The phrase in question, "thug life", is an attitude and a way of life. It originated from 2Pac who defined it as an acronym meaning "The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone" as well as a code to live by (which gangs such as the Crips and Bloods signed a peace treaty based on). It never had anything to do with one's race. Of course the majority of the gangs that were attracted to this phrase were african-american, but included white, latino and asian members.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems to me that she has been given a platform to stir the pot and has taken the opportunity to do so. This seems like trolling to me, plain and simple. Use strong words/imagery that incite emotion and blind the reader from noticing that she isn't really saying anything that bad. That said, I'm sure the Swedish tourist board wasn't quite expecting this...

<comment><USER9> You didn't think calling a photoshopped picture of Freddie Mercury "hungry gay with aids" _that bad_?

<comment><USER10> What exactly is bad about it? It seems as if it should be bad, but if you think about it, why?

<comment><USER11> It's either because the guy died from AIDS so the comment is insensitive, or the OP is homophobic and thinks calling people gay is always used as a derogatory.

It's probably the former though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't this mean the experiment has been a success? The experiment is "... based around the idea that no single voice can represent the country, so a slew of guest Swedish curators will do the best job to portray the national character."

Take a cross section of any society and you're going to get people of all kinds, including people like Sonja.

<comment><USER13> Professional trolls are not part of any society

<comment><USER14> Meanwhile in Norway <http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/>

<comment><USER7> I was trying really hard to work some sort of joke about Norwegian trolls into this Swedish trolling story.

If anyone reading this is on the fence about watching the linked film, I would be honored to nudge you to the "yes, watch it!" side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't see what's the big fuss here. Maybe a few edgy comments, but nothing "painfully awry". I would say kudos to the organizers for their trust in their fellow citizens to speak out freely without censorship.

Btw, her profile [1] on the project's page is up and straight about her agenda (and her character, as well): "I'm gonna tweet about my thoughts and being me, about having children and living my life and what not."

There may be a day when we become so politically-correct about everything that we can't speak out minds anymore.

[1] <http://curatorsofsweden.com/>

<comment><USER16> You don't think the string of tweets starting with

"Whats the fuzz with jews. You can't even see if a person is a jew, unless you see their penises, and even if you do, you can't be sure!?"

is "painfully awry" for a twitter account intended to promote tourism to Sweden? What about the tweet about the "hungry gay with aids"?

I doubt those encourage anyone who's jewish or homosexual to visit Sweden.

<comment><USER17> > _twitter account intended to promote tourism to Sweden?_

Isn't it just some personal twitter account?

<comment><USER16> Based on the news reports, I thought it was controlled by the Swedish government's tourism ministry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems Sonja did a good job. We're talking about Sweden, right? How often does that topic come up in daily conversation for non-Swedish people?

</comment><comment><USER19> My troll-dar isn't as sharp as it used to be as I get older, but it seems quite likely that they've just got a troll on their hands here from reading the Tweets.

Either way, anything like this was a time bomb waiting to go off if there wasn't any vetting process at all.

<comment><USER20> She might be a copy cat of "hanna widerstedt" who got really "famous" in Sweden after saying similar things on YouTube. After that she got featured in several magazines and in Big Brothers as well and got her 5 seconds of fame!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have known a few Swedes and have owned 4 Saabs and none have them have ever behaved like this. There's always 5% of a population that can make the other 95% hide in embarrassment.

<comment><USER22> Really? My last Saab was a great car, but showed an odd racial insensitivity sometimes.

<comment><USER21> Hmmm ... there was a period when my car seemed to dislike any cars in front of it at red-lights. Once we realized the turbo's waste gate was stuck closed, we sent it to sensitivity training and it's behaved perfectly ever since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cant blame Americans for being uptight. You'd never understand Sweden's freedom of speech :P

</comment><comment><USER24> I see nothing wrong with this.

</comment><comment><USER25> As a Swede, I might be biased -- but given that Stephen Colbert has asked to be an "Artificial Swedener"[1][2], I'd say it's a roaring success!

[1] <https://twitter.com/StephenAtHome/status/212753977018810368> [2] [http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report- videos/41519...](http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report- videos/415197/june-12-2012/operation-artificial-swedener)

</comment><comment><USER26> The NY Times article was written in TROLLHATTAN. I thought that's a joke too. It seems it's a real city.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think this is the funniest thing i've ever seen. Troll or not, this is hilarious

<comment><USER27> Yeah! She's still tweeting some hilarious stuff on that account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm from Sweden, and I have never heard of this before.

<comment><USER20> You must have missed "hanna widerstedt" :)

<comment><USER28> Indeed, it seems that way. The world of bloggers is to me, as we would say in Sweden, ointressant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can't emphasize enough: it is remarkable for Sweden to hand real power over to individual citizens. Totally wonderful. While she is acting like a git, she is also not the polished PR machine that most countries feel the need to use to present themselves. Humor or not, her words are real.

I really, really applaud Sweden and would love to see something similar in the States. I have _no doubt_ that the USA version would put the spotlight on some really horrible sentiments - but again, that is what is _real_. It's just like Borat, highlighting whitewashed racism that is ever-present in the US. In the end, it's a very good thing to just be honest.

<comment><USER30> Dunno bout you but a twitter account does not quite scream "real power" to me.

<comment><USER29> Haha, no, but it's a start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's a fine line between master troll and dimwitted psycho. Which is she?

<comment><USER21> I think she actually fits into a third category ... those who perceive themselves to be Internet personalities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> These are so good they cannot be real (humourous).They read like a Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G, Borat) film script. Here I thought the Swedes were the more intelligent inhabitants. Sonja has proved us right/wrong? Can't wait to see this new meme go viral.

</comment><comment><USER33> That's just bizarre --off the rails. It's not as if she has the excuse of being an actor and could blame this whole episode on being high or coming down hard off of something.

Pity the kids. What a mom.

</comment><comment><USER34> The guy is definitely getting questioned by authorities at an airport if he comes to the USA.</comment>


Fake it until you make it - without becoming a fake yourself - <AUTHOR> http://subimage.com/blog/2013/10/27/fake-it-until-you-make-it/#.Um3RhIEZNQA.hackernews

<comment><USER2> I like the sentiment. And for the most part I do agree with you that many wantrepreneurs are looking for funding. There are a few who really can bring that vision to life though. Many of my friends have gone on to get funding without having any revenue. It's how well you can convince someone that the vision is possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a whole different discussion for another article. I'm of the opinion most people should not chase funding - especially without revenue. :)</comment></comment>


Computer glitch costs Georgia taxpayers - <AUTHOR> http://www.ajc.com/news/computer-glitch-costs-georgia-573045.html

<comment><USER2> >> The large number of claims caused a computer program that tallies who should be getting benefit checks that week to run too long, Winter said. Another program that deposits the checks directly into recipients' accounts started before the first program finished. That caused the computer to be confused about which claims were paid and which weren't.

Checking the preconditions for running the next program was a bit too much strain on the old brain cells?</comment>


Ask HN: Hacker Resume - <AUTHOR>

I want feedback/constructive criticism from HN community. I know it should've been plain text/markdown; I actually wanted to write in in markdown, parse it, and display in HTML5 + hcard + hcal + hresume. But didn't have enough time :(
Here's the PDF - http://advancewith.us/stuff/Resume.pdf
Anyways, from today I am starting being active on HN. Hello, people! <comment><USER2> Let's start with the critique, then move on to the compliments.

I'm not sure that the icons in your introductory statement help your cause. They look cool and professional, but make reading the statement a little disjointed. Sometimes you're using the icons like a noun ("Thumbs Up" is smart, and gets things done), while other times they seem to be just images off to the side. I would put one (1) icon per sentence, at the end of the sentence so as not to make the paragraph seem disjointed.

You should read your resume aloud so that you catch any typoes. For example, you say 'having wore multiple hats,' but that should really be having _worn_ multiple hats.

You say 'he' a lot, while speaking about yourself in third person. If this is supposed to be an 'objective' statement, it's okay to actually make it about you.

I like the nice layout of skills and interests, but some of them seem totally pointless. Freenode does not need to be on your resume. Unless you're working on or with them, neither do the plethora of blogs and people you have listed (Joel on Software, Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, _Steve Jobs?!_ ). Honestly, all of those things that aren't a skill you have or a tool you use shouldn't be there. A hiring manager does not care that you like xkcd or read _How to Win Friends & Influence People_.

The 'Experience' section, however, looks great! I love the little skill buttons that you put under each position: great call! It might not hurt to have a small blurb about what exactly you did there, but with the buttons I'm not even sure that that is necessary.

The tl;dr here is that you have way too many gimmicks and unnecessary information on the first page (although it _does_ look pretty, you UX Engineer, you), but the second page is almost perfect.

Good luck in your job search!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think your feedback about icon placement is quite correct; they should be uniformly placed at the end of sentences. Also, thanks for pointing out typos. The initial section is indeed about an 'objective'.

There are some of the points that I would like to explain (and not defend ;-)). I'm based out of India, and a lot of companies here are quite traditional - upto an extent that they block facebook and gmail in the office.

I have listed a set of things which are out of context, but then I want to ensure that I want to get hired by somebody who actually understands the importance of IRC, Joel's views, etc. How to win friends and influence people = people skills, which I think connects with other aspects like Peopleware, Developer happiness and motivation, etc.

Finally, having an objective insight from another perspective is very helpful, and thanks for doing so! All the inputs that I'm getting are being taken into consideration and will help me further refine the CV.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You have cool ideas for your cv. There is style. I like your idea of the icons and the writing style you have there.

From a purely graphical point of view, you may want to check spaces and line.For instance, looking at vertical lines from the right side, you may notice that the codebar is not aligned with the right border of text, or with the border of titles on the second page. Also, the second page give me a different stylistic feeling. Took me a little while to figure out that it is because there is no black used there. There is some green used, but this green cant be found on the first page. I think that by looking at that kind of things (line, colors, spaces between paragraphs) you can make sure that you design is more homogeneous. Oh and i did not know that you are a motorcycle maintainer. I'll probably ask you a few questions in the future..

-olivvv

<comment><AUTHOR> Heyo olivvv!

Thanks for your feedback man; your input on making the design more homogeneous is certainly worthy; I didn't notice it from that perspective. And umm, well, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance is kinda more of a philosophical / metaphysics of quality book :p

Cheers,

Dhaval

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems simple to me: the major issue with this resume is the amount of _noise_. If you're submitting this via email or through online application forms you should stick to one page. If this is to be displayed on your website then I would just reduce the number of images(possibly all of them), and do a spelling check. Objective statements should be short and to the point. Same with descriptions... I really don't see the need for the long paragraphs and the bloated number of tags you're using. Whether it's a site or as a printout on paper, the hiring manager is limited on time.

Take a look at some of these examples, a lot of them are ideal in terms of efficiency and noise. Best of luck.

<http://microformats.org/wiki/hresume-examples-in-wild>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this will be really helpful. I've looked at hresume microformat and as I mentioned in the original post, I was actually going to implement it that way.

The reason for including a lot of other non-professional things was that I would like to be hired by somebody who understands a lot of them; be it a one man startup. I have often found that 'jelling' is more important than technical competencies.

Thanks for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bonus points for going outside of the stock resume and trying something new.

I really like that you're thinking out of the box - that gets noticed - but a lot of what you're forcing into the resume format should be in your cover letter: your objective, the tag cloud, and the icon-centered text at the top.

That said, I can't read this. Keep in mind that in a lot of places you may be applying a non-technical person may be reading the resume, so having it built in a certain way can work against you.

Rand's has a great article (<http://bit.ly/hd7fRt>) on resumes and their function that can help focus you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm I think you made a point - of having the cover letter content into the resume. I have especially noticed one thing with some start-ups - they prefer a 'cultural, personal' jelling. I put personal information, thinking of that.</comment></comment>


Apple expected to adopt keyboard with scissor mechanism for 16-inch MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2019/07/25/kuo-16-inch-macbook-pro-scissor-keyboard/ <comment><USER2> Now if only they could also get rid of the TouchBar. Most frustrating "feature" ever as I keep accidentally pressing some parts of it while resting my hands or typing. Not to mention that I don't look down at the keyboard area as I type.

Keep the TouchID button, get rid of the rest, just like the current Airs.

<comment><USER3> I really thought the Touch Bar would grow on me, and now a year or so later it's just as frustrating and unintuitive as it was on day one.

My wife and I rarely watch television, but when we do it's on our MBP. There literally isn't a way to adjust the volume on full screen video using just the keyboard; you have to exit full screen mode (to revert the Touch Bar to its default set of buttons), and _then_ adjust the volume slider (which is still another screen deep).

It's infuriating.

<comment><USER4> If you go to System Preferences > Keyboard, you can change the "Touch Bar shows" option from "App Controls" to "Expanded Control Strip" to have the default set of buttons showing all the time.

<comment><USER5> Default keys won't prevent the touchbar from freezing or bugging out, which has occurred multiple times for me. It's odd to make such important keys software based and prone to non mechanical failure.

<comment><USER6> I wonder what fails more often, the touchbar or mechanical keys. In any case, though, the touchbar is the anti-feature nobody asked for.

<comment><USER7> I've had a TouchBar MacBook Pro for about 2 years now. The TouchBar has frozen or crashed on me multiple times. Apart from the terrible butterfly keyboard on this same computer which also tends to fail, literallyt never in 35-ish years using computers I had a mechanical key failing on me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Negative public opinion, multiple lawsuits, and ongoing issues with all > keyboards in Mac notebooks released since 2015 have led Apple to launch a > keyboard repair program that applies to all Macs with a butterfly keyboard, > including 2019 models.

Kind of glossing over the rather important detail that Apple's keyboard repair program entitles you to an exact replacement of the same broken-ass keyboard design that caused your issue in the first place. If I remember correctly, they won't even upgrade you to their later-generation butterfly mechanism; if you go in with a membrane-less 1st-generation keyboard, that's what you get as a replacement.

<comment><USER9> I think that because the keyboard is connected to the logic board it is literally impossible for Apple to give you a newer keyboard without also giving you a logic board for a later gen pro which won't work with the later gen MacBook. That's also (part of) the reason why repairs are so expensive, most of the parts are connected into a few large chunks that have to be replaced all at once.

<comment><USER10> Completely Apple's own fault, too. A rating of only 1 on iFixit's "Laptop Repairability Scores":

"The top case assembly, including the keyboard, battery, speakers, and Touch Bar, is glued together—making all those components impractical to replace separately."

[https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability](https://www.ifixit.com/laptop- repairability)

<comment><USER11> Apple was also one of the first companies to solder in the RAM so it couldn't be upgraded. I miss being able to make my laptop significantly faster without upgrading it completely.

<comment><USER12> There are still companies which allow that. Support them instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I actually got used to the 2018 MBA butterfly despite my initial dislike and hesitation. That being said, I'm grateful for all the lobbying to improve butterfly keyboards because I got a much improved version with a replacement program in case one of these horrific ghost finger bugs or malfunctions occur. I definitely would not have bought this MBA if it had the same butterfly keyboard as a MacBook or pre 2017 MacBook Pro.

I just hope that the next incarnation of scissors keyboards or whatever mechanism they adopt doesn't go through another multi-year cycle of defective hardware, denials and silent upgrades.

I wonder if this move will trigger people who prefer butterfly keyboards or only know butterfly keyboards if and when it gets released.

</comment><comment><USER14> Now drop that f-word TouchBar and I'd buy a MacBook again!

</comment><comment><USER15> Butterfly Keyboard Mechanism Illustration - [https://theengineerscafe.com/butterfly- keyboard/](https://theengineerscafe.com/butterfly-keyboard/)

<comment><USER2> For anyone curious to compare, an animation of a mechanical keyboard switch: [https://www.cherrymx.de/en/mx-original/mx- brown.html#techSpe...](https://www.cherrymx.de/en/mx-original/mx- brown.html#techSpecs)

Click on top of the page for other switch types.

<comment><USER8> Gotta flex my (amazing) Topre keyboard, which is "mechanical" as well but works on a totally different capacitive touch mechanism:

[https://i.imgur.com/SnfIDbe.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/SnfIDbe.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can we get MagSafe back too? The thinness thing went way too far.

<comment><USER17> MagSafe caused fires.

<comment><USER18> How so? What is the mechanism?

<comment><USER17> Don't know why I got downvoted. This happened a lot in the 00s, including to someone I know.

[https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/05/apple- sued-over-reputed-fire-hazard-of-magsafe-power-adapter/%3famp=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They're most likely getting rid of it (if they do) because of the high failure rates, rather than for any other reason. The keyboard works fine when it's working—it just constantly fails due to dust.

<comment><USER20> It's not likely dust because if it was, there would be random key issues but most people report similar keys (E for an example).

This redditor's research should explain why it is not likely the dust and why Apple is having a hard time pinpointing it on the first few tries; [https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/bjw4js/macbook_pr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/bjw4js/macbook_pro_keyboard_failures_why_apples_dust/)

I'd place my bet on the metal materials they use; which is why they've replaced it in the 4th retry.

<comment><USER17> It's dust.

<comment><USER21> Nope, not just dust. :)

My keycaps came off because I don't hit them square on, and perhaps I'm a tad more aggressive than most (emacs + vim user). It put stress on the two C-clamps at the top of those keys and they weaken their grasp before ultimately breaking from wear. I'm on my third keyboard replacement, the exact same keys failing first (ERTSDF). 2017 Macbook Pro.

I am familiar with the dust issues. And I yearn for the days where those were my only issues. Now I can't even type without having to put keycaps back on to keys.

<comment><USER17> Parent post said if it were dust, the keys would be randomly affected. Which AFAICT (after discussing with Apple store employees) is indeed the case. Some keys are slightly more prone to dust, eg the space bar because of its size, but any key can fail.

Your concern is I'm sure valid, but orthogonal to the post I was replying to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The butterfly mechanism is fine, as a class of mechanism, it's Apple's implementation which pushes the limits of sound engineering. It's perfectly possible for that kind of keyswitch to have large travel and a good actuation threshold.

<comment><USER17> The problem is that dust gets trapped underneath it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of the VAG TSI problems - people avoid VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat gasoline cars with those engines from around 2007 to 2013 (don't remember the exact years).

</comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps they aim to get rid of the keyboard completely, replacing it with a haptic feedback capable device and a glass plate with the keys inscribed?

<comment><USER25> That would have all the pleasures of typing on a table, hitting your fingertips on a hard surface. Try it.

<comment><USER26> I actually think that there might be something to it. The current keyboards already have a small key travel. A solid-state keyboard with "taptic" feedback from individual keys could feel ok.

<comment><USER27> The current haptic feedback on the touchpad works fine because all you need to know is _that_ you pressed the touchpad, not _where_ you pressed it.

That's no longer true once you have a range of keys that you are pressing. You need to ensure your fingers are properly aligned so that you press the key you intend _before_ you press it. Without some actual structure, you don't get that feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just in time for me to start thinking about replacing my 2010 mbp!

<comment><USER29> It still has iPhone slice, doesn't it? I'll wait with mine.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure what that is.

<comment><USER30> The Touch Bar. Makes more sense to call it iPad Slice though.

<comment><USER28> I thought it was actually running watchOS.

[https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13454052/apple- macbook-p...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13454052/apple-macbook-pro- touch-bar-apple-watch-features)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The words "butterfly" and "die" never came together in my lexicon until I encountered the butterfly keyboard

</comment><comment><USER32> With RSI, I don't want more key travel.

<comment><USER20> Key travel isn't the single cause for RSI. I don't have RSI pain with a mechanical keyboard with huge key travel for an example.

For me, key travel isn't the issue, it's the bottoming out impact. A lot of people are hitting the bottom really hard, which actually increase the chances of RSI.

My mechanical keyboard also has a soft bottom out so that I don't actually have to hit anything, just gentle tap and it's all good. I can't actually learn to tap gentle with low key travel like Apple's keyboards. Strangely, I don't seem to have the same issue on the iPad's smart keyboard.

Apple keyboards are the worst for me with RSI, it hits bottom hard and it's too thin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Could not Apple place the touchbar between touchpad and keyboard and leave the function keys alone? That might please both camps and rid of controversy.

<comment><USER34> Right where you might rest your wrists while typing?

<comment><USER33> Not really. Wrists never rest between touchpad and keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I use Karabiner Elements to allow me to press and hold space while hitting 1234567890-= to get F1 through F12. I find this to be an acceptable workaround.

</comment><comment><USER36> Too little, too late. Already switched off of Apple.

</comment><comment><USER37> what is a scissor mechanism?

<comment><USER38> I searched _"wiki keyboard scissor mechanism"_ on Google [1] and found the answer [2].

And since you didn't know, you may find this comparison very helpful [3].

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=wiki+keyboard+scissor+mechan...](https://www.google.com/search?q=wiki+keyboard+scissor+mechanism)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_technology#Scissor- sw...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_technology#Scissor- switch_keyboard)

[3] [https://www.quora.com/What-precisely-is-a-butterfly- keyboard...](https://www.quora.com/What-precisely-is-a-butterfly-keyboard-on- a-MacBook)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Slow news day?

</comment><comment><USER40> I really wish Apple would stop messing around and give me a touch screen MacBook.

</comment><comment><USER41> If they made a cherry mx notebook it would sell like gangbusters despite probably being heavier and thicker

<comment><USER42> [https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7495073/msi-mechanical- key...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7495073/msi-mechanical-keyboard- gt80-titan-laptop-ces)

Just to give you a sense of what you're asking for.

<comment><USER43> I used to carry a separate keyboard with my laptop for some classes I was talking....I would do that again rather than use the monstrosity you linked to.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CryptoFinalFour – Tradable March Madness brackets as ERC-721 tokens - <AUTHOR> https://cryptofinalfour.com/ <comment><USER2> This is actually really interesting when you're dealing with large pools.

Last year, I was in a pool with 10,000+ people and serious $ were on the line and I actively negotiated with other brackets to buy them, split ownership, etc.

A few questions/comments: \- Would you also be able to sell a % of the bracket rather than just all of it? \- Would you also build out tools to predict the current odds of the entries?

<comment><USER3> Technically the bracket could be owned by another contract rather than a normal account so in theory at least it's possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> ^^ this. The base contract allows only a single owner at a time, but you can end up with some pretty exotic ownership structures if you want ...

<comment><USER2> That makes sense - cool idea and definitely see the value if and when sports gaming becomes legalized...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know next to nothing about this domain (sports...), but I guess you need to have the outcome of the matches to make this work? How is that information entered onto the blockchain? I guess there is a trusted party somewhere that acts like an oracle?

<comment><AUTHOR> The smart contract has a method called updateState that allows a privileged address to update the brackets. That's essentially an Oracle.

Aside: in the future where smart contracts are broadly usable, there needs to be some way (even centralized) to identify who's trusted in such a contract and why you should trust them. In a normal office pool, it's just Dave from accounting who runs the pool, but on the block chain that breaks down.

<comment><USER5> I was wondering how Augur got around the need for an oracle, since on that system (iiuc), one can create a prediction market around _any_ publicly- observable outcome.

 _In centralized markets, one person determines the final market outcomes - which means there can be mistakes or outright manipulation. With Augur, we 'll have thousands reporting on market outcomes using a one-of-a kind consensus based system and a unique token called REPutation. As a reporter, you'll report on events every two months and, in return, receive half of all fees in the system multiplied by the percent of REP you own._

via [http://www.augur.net/](http://www.augur.net/)

<comment><USER6> The answer is within your quote:

 _With Augur, we 'll have thousands reporting on market outcomes using a one- of-a kind consensus based system and a unique token called REPutation. As a reporter, you'll report on events every two months and, in return, receive half of all fees in the system multiplied by the percent of REP you own._

So, what they are relying on is that multiple people reporting a particular event can avoid manipulation. This is something which is touched upon extensively in the book "Wisdom of the Crowds" [0].

But, they also know that people might not be interesting in reporting an event. So, they are provide an incentive which is something like a PoS mining system - you earn coins for reporting based on the percentage of coins you hold in your wallet.

Obviously, this can turn out to be very bad because crowd wisdom doesn't always work. But, it will be an interesting experiment. But, not an experiment worth a billion dollars - during early Jan.

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool idea. Now I need to figure out what Cipher Browser is.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a ethereum wallet/browser for distributed apps for mobile: [https://www.cipherbrowser.com](https://www.cipherbrowser.com)

Meta mask is the equivalent for chrome.

Cipher allows you to store some eth (or other ERC20) tokens on your phone, then use them to play with disturbed apps (like this one).

<comment><USER7> Cool. I'm in. This reminds me of another business idea that I had. A way to track down all the places I have ethereum stored. For loved ones. If I get hit by a truck. I don't understand why a unique browser is needed to store ethereum. Couldn't there just be an add-on for chrome/firefox/safari? Sorry, just talking out loud, I'm sure that's for a different post. Let the games begin!

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a chrome extension that also acts as a wallet and allows you to interact with dApps called meta mask ([https://metamask.io/](https://metamask.io/))

Cipher is interesting because it's built for iOS/Android and allows people to use dApps on mobile (which Metamask can't do). In fact, CryptoFinalFour was designed for Cipher/mobile browsing first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is the oracle for telling the blockchain which team won? Do we just trust the person who wrote this contract?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, have to trust the contract owner. You can imagine other scenarios where it's some voting scheme, but generally feel like decentralized != trustless for a lot of things. You have to trust _something_ at some point. What's cool (imo) about smart contracts is that the terms (ie, code) are transparent and that enforcement of those terms is automatic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an interesting experiment. I have been interested in building a derivative of sorts using tokens but never got around to learning ERC-721 token. Any good tutorials out there?

</comment><comment><USER9> How do you get the actual results into the Blockchain? And how can we trust that part?

</comment><comment><USER10> Link to the smart contract?

<comment><AUTHOR> Source: [https://gist.github.com/vincentchu/a4429de38ae15419f3b08c86c...](https://gist.github.com/vincentchu/a4429de38ae15419f3b08c86c2bffd84)

Contract address: [https://etherscan.io/address/0x100cc2fa0ea14bf9b0740aeb8f66f...](https://etherscan.io/address/0x100cc2fa0ea14bf9b0740aeb8f66f7cc6c37165b)

<comment><USER11> Can you please verify your contract on etherscan.io. It makes it clear that the code is what you say it is and people can interact with your smart contract too.

[https://etherscan.io/verifyContract2?a=0x100cc2fa0ea14bf9b07...](https://etherscan.io/verifyContract2?a=0x100cc2fa0ea14bf9b0740aeb8f66f7cc6c37165b)

<comment><AUTHOR> I spent 10 minutes before work today trying to get it working, but couldn't do it. Any hints? The contract was developed using truffle and the solidity files for the contract, ERC721, and ERC165 interfaces are split apart.

<comment><USER11> [https://etherscan.io/verifyContract?a=0x100cc2fa0ea14bf9b074...](https://etherscan.io/verifyContract?a=0x100cc2fa0ea14bf9b0740aeb8f66f7cc6c37165b) This page does not work for truffle deployed contracts. You will see a new Beta Source Code Contract Verifier link on that page (thats what I linked to above) , this will allow you to verify. Set the Optimized to No and Runs (Optimizer) to 0. This is how I got my hello world contract verified on the rinkeby test chain: [https://github.com/Tri-Valley-Blockchain/blockchain- playgrou...](https://github.com/Tri-Valley-Blockchain/blockchain- playground/tree/master/ethereum/hello_world)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there an interface for trading these?

</comment><comment><USER13> is this a sports sweepstakes but with cryptocurrency? is the contract itself implemented in Ethereum?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not quite a sweepstakes- it's just a standard March madness pool. The one interesting thing is that each bracket confirms to the ERC721 token standard, which means you can trade, buy, or sell brackets.

In that sense, using the ERC721 standard allowed me, a simple dev, to assertive/tokenize a simple digital good. Pretty fascinated by that possibility.

And yes, all written on ethereum. I can post the solidity source of people are interested.

<comment><USER14> Hi, looks great! Yes, can you please post the solidity source code? I've just started learning solidity last week, and I like any understandable real world example I can get my hands on. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Source: [https://gist.github.com/vincentchu/a4429de38ae15419f3b08c86c...](https://gist.github.com/vincentchu/a4429de38ae15419f3b08c86c2bffd84)

Contract address: [https://etherscan.io/address/0x100cc2fa0ea14bf9b0740aeb8f66f...](https://etherscan.io/address/0x100cc2fa0ea14bf9b0740aeb8f66f7cc6c37165b)

<comment><USER14> Awesome, much appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> IS this legal?

</comment><comment><USER15> Not crypto related.

HN is a technical forum. Maybe 'March Madness on Ethereum' might be a better title / name.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree that "crypto" is generally short for "cryptography" and not "cryptocurrencies"— i myself have been annoyed by that in the past. But now that I've drunk the Kool Aide .... ;)</comment></comment>