Boulder Startup Week May 4-8 (free airplane tickets to HN) - <AUTHOR>

May 4-8 we are having Boulder Startup Week.  http://boulder.me/boulder-startup-week/  We have had quite a bit of activity for our small town on the startup front.  There are over 100 development jobs open now or opening up in the next month.
We are throwing a big week of events to welcome people looking to check out Boulder. There will be coffees, hikes, coworking, New Tech Meetup, Ignite Boulder, rides, tours, hacknights and a few parties.  Five days and about 50 events.  No launch parties or overbearing sales pitches, just a bunch of people living here welcoming hackers to town.
I would love to invite you all out to experience Boulder.   If anyone wants to come out, leave a comment and I will buy two commenters a round trip ticket to check out the week (most upvotes on why they want to come to Boulder).   Looks like I can buy a ticket from almost anywhere in the states for <$300 so ticket or voucher to fly out of $300.
http://boulderstartupweek.eventbrite.com/
http://plancast.com/a/25sh <comment><USER3> Hello, Jade here, just finished watching the "Never mind the Valley..." video. Pretty motivating - I've always respected the Threadless story.

I am Jade, 24, from L.A. California. I've never been out of the country and have only been to Vegas, Tempe, Arizona, and most recently San Fransisco for startup school <3.

I opted out of going to college because I didn't agree with the "go to school to get a good job and be forever happy" path to success. Though now I realize that's not what school _has to_ be about but I was young and dumb.

Instead I started a custom screen-printing company. I printed custom apparel for high school clubs and sports teams. I learned everything online and in my 3rd year I moved from my parents garage into an actual production warehouse.

During this time I dabbled in HTML because I wanted to create a website for my company. As time passed this hobby of mine turned into what I loved to do - <USER2> would work and work and work just so I could finish to go learn coding.

Finally about a year ago now, after my girlfriend and I parted ways, due to the fact that I was a dickhead that put work before her, I closed my company, ended the lease, and sold everything.

I used the year to learn programming full-time, and now I'm here, no money, no job, no credentials, and an annoying smallish debt to attend to.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

I would like to go to Boulder because my life is my work and my work is being an entrepreneurial programmer. I have to make things, even if that means I'll be living in a cardboard box while building, I have to create.

This is not a sob story, I don't want sympathy because my life is fantastic. Rather I want to convey that I learn the hard way. I willingly take these drastic and unfriendly roads. I'm too stubborn and hardheaded maybe but that's just the way it is. I have a lot to prove to myself and to others who grow increasingly worried about me.

Boulder sounds like a great place to do that! Oh yeah, p.s. I love "Man vs. Wild" and I even got to meet Bear Grylls at a book signing <3\. So even though I've never been exposed to the great outdoors; I love the great outdoors!

Thank you for you time. My plane ticket will cost $169.00. If I don't get voted up, perhaps someone here has some freelance work I could do to earn ~ $200.00 for the trip. I work with kohana php framework, jquery, and can do moderate design work. <http://plusjade.com>

<comment><USER4> You got my vote because I sincerely believe you deserve a break, it's not a sob story but it definitely sounds like someone trying _very_ hard and learning from their mistakes.

Best of luck to you, hope you make it out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a marketing guy not a dev guy. I went back to college at 38 to study Internet Marketing and get a degree to verify much of what I've learned on my own the last 5 years(Hurricane Katrina changed my life direction radically, in a good way). I want to partner with a dev guy and create a great startup but there just aren't that many here in my hometown, New Orleans.

I've seen so many good ideas languish because no one knew how to market them. Its a shame too because it is incredibly cheap today(in money, not time) to mount a great campaign to get your product seen. I hope that I can go to Boulder Startup Week, network with bright developers, and find someone to partner and build a company with.

This would also be the best way for me to convince my wife to consider moving to Boulder.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey smart idea for promoting Startup Week.

As a developer already living in Boulder, just want to back up what Andrew said - Boulder is great for startups and has a great community. It should be both really interesting and a lot of fun.

<comment><USER7> I'd love to come up for the week (from SF) because Jed still owes me a drink from SXSW!

(Best excuse to _finally_ meet you and Jo that I've ever had!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I took a trip to Boulder last year to check out the startup scene and it was awesome. Coworked at a few companies and coffee shops, went to the new tech meetup and opencoffee and met a bunch of really cool people.

When I came back, I quit my job and started working with startups. Boulder wasn't the only reason, of course, but the experience I had made the choice much easier.

Looking forward to visiting again in a few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think I might be able to make it (from Phoenix, AZ), but I don't want to eat up one of the giveaway tickets.

I already know Boulder rocks. I already know the people there rock. I already know Boulder startups rock. The tickets should go to people who A.) would be looking for work in Boulder or B.) would like to go but otherwise wouldn't have the means to get there.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am graduating from college (with awesome student loans of course :-) I want to work for a startup in not just a tech hub, but a place with a high quality of life. Of course, I want to start my own startup and have been keeping an eye on the Boulder area culture - it'd be nice to see the action and the people in person so I can invest my limited resources wisely.

</comment><comment><USER11> Madison has many parallels with Boulder but not necessarily in the realm of nurturing tech startups. So there is a lot to learn. Bring me to Boulder for the week, and I'll soak it all in and bring it back to Madison.

Hopefully, in a year or so, I'll have an opportunity to reciprocate.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was out in Boulder for Techstars events a few months back. Community and tech feel seemed better than when I visited Palo Alto (spent 4 days at both Palo Alto and Boulder with friends' startups). Would highly recommend it both as a place to live and as a place to start your company.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's a great week to see Boulder too. The weather should be awesome. Sunny, and amazing view of the mountains. Lots of hiking and climbing opportunities. -- from a guy who lives about 20 minutes away, went to school at CU-Boulder and visits Boulder regularly.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here in Boise we have a wee bit of "Boulder Envy" - but it's time to turn the tables, eh? But before we can dazzle you guys, first we need to learn from the masters! (Even if Paul Jerde is involved somehow...) @entrep_thinking

</comment><comment><USER15> Because Boulder Startup Week is the poor man's SXSW and after leaving my job in September to go freelance and doing my taxes in April, I just realized that I'm a poor man.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm based out of Denver but same area! I'll be there to represent our company Site5.com (old tech - web hosting) and a new startup!

</comment><comment><USER17> I will be flying into Boulder from Grand Rapids, MI. Look forward to meeting everyone and checking out the city.

</comment><comment><USER18> I would enter but it would force me to choose between Startup Week and my honeymoon :(

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd love to Andrew!</comment>


Could an Indian Hospital Help the U.S. Cut Health Care Costs? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/07/could_an_indian_hospital_help.html

<comment><USER2> Useless in the US. Suppose a mistake is made, or even just a bad outcome occurs.

Lawyer: "Big Medicine, as a cost saving measure, employed uneducated people like yourself to maintain equipment so they could pay unsympathetic shareholders more money. As a result, a sympathetic young child has died."

<comment><USER3> Biomedical maintenance is definitely expensive, but there are a lot of things which can be done technologically which improve quality AND lower costs: 1) Better remote diagnostics on equipment 2) Designing equipment to be maintained by operators, or shifting to disposable or "use once, return to depot" equipment 3) Generally, looking at life cycle costs for equipment vs. just the purchase price.

For a lot of equipment, the operator is actually highly skilled and trained, and in some cases, is cross-trained to maintain the equipment as well (more true in rural health centers).

Another innovation is moving the equipment around -- the MRI trucks get higher utilization in rural communities than a single MRI center would.

(I only really know the radiology side, although the military biomed shops usually maintain everything)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is a TED talk by one of the people behind Arvind Eye Hospital mentioned in the article -> [http://www.ted.com/talks/thulasiraj_ravilla_how_low_cost_eye...](http://www.ted.com/talks/thulasiraj_ravilla_how_low_cost_eye_care_can_be_world_class.html).

</comment><comment><USER5> I find "reverse innovation" a bit condescending, why not call it just innovation.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is perhaps the most dangerous fluff piece I have ever seen.

Most government hospitals in India reek of urine (people go on the walls), and have so poor hygiene standards that a slaughterhouse would be better. This "innovation" isn't something really ground changing people do this all the time around the world, but it doesn't happen in the US due to fear of lawsuits and other hassles.

I doubt that there is anything to teach to the US healthcare system. The truth is that almost all good medical professionals have answers and solutions to the problems that plague it, but the political climate doesn't allow it to happen. Those laws that straitjacket such cheap and sweet solutions while letting insurance companies get away with institutional murder.

On the other hand, in India such pieces create bursts of irrational pride and are oft quoted when people need a good cop out. According to most indians (citizens as well as politicians) silicon valley is powered by indianpride (tm), NASA runs on the backs of it's 60% indian workforce and so on. I truly wish that they would take a look around.

[edit: I am truly sorry if this sounds like an over-generalization. Beautiful examples of innovation exist in India as they do in every land on Earth, but the truth remains. Too many people live a life of suffering and die needlessly due to this system. India's HIV epidemic is comparable to that of Africa.

I exist in a place with excellent healthcare at an exceptionally cheap cost as compared to the US. Unfortunately the majority of people don't. There is a selection bias in operation over here. It is true that medical tourism is off the charts, but how many hospitals cater to them? What institutions do so? Also, there is almost no data available on the dearth of reliable doctors. This is a huge problem in rural areas where facilities exist only on paper.

I think that each one of us should experience the brutal poverty that most people face in this country before leaping on to such things. There are people working to change this. Let us respect them not write fluff pieces that encourage the divide between myth and reality.

I admit that I am not patriotic and I rebel against the concept of nations states, but those statistics are real live people and they matter. The only way to help them is to swallow the bitter pill and work on this.]

<comment><USER7> Think you are generalizing a bit. I admit government hospitals here in India are not exactly world class, but 'reek of urine' is not there in every hospital. Atleast the hospitals in my part of the country (Kerala) are way better than you describe it to be. Whether they are the answer to US customers is a different thing.

Also about the part that 'most' Indians think of indianpride(tm) is unacceptable to me. I agree I used to get forwards during my college days about this, but as I grew older, I am smart enough to realize this is not the case. I guess most of my fellow citizens do too.

<comment><USER6> I am sorry if it sounds like that, but Kerela is better off because of its massive investment in infrastructure as compared to other parts of India, but the truth is that most clinics in rural areas exist only on paper. I am sure that you know the story pretty well.

I have access to a pretty good healthcare facilities in my city, but that doesn't mean that every case is like that. The overwhelming majority points in the opposite direction and it is important to accept that the problem exists before correcting it.

I see fluff pieces everyday in newspapers. If a researcher is somehow related to India then the newspapers give headlines like; "NRI Discovers XYZ". Or, "Indian Led Team Discovered XYZ" and so on. There are specific patterns in the almost all of the leading dailies except for The Mint (<http://www.livemint.com/>) and a few other business newspapers. There is hardly any news of any significance whatsoever. The world is reduced to 2 pages along with vivid bikini shots of celebrities. In fact, a lot of global news is about how Britney Spears baked her baby in the oven. The myopia used to shock me, but I now know that the newspapers are not at fault they are simply catering to the audience.

>>>I agree I used to get forwards during my college days about this, but as I grew older, I am smart enough to realize this is not the case. I guess most of my fellow citizens do too.<<<

Of course, they're smart enough to realize this, but people tend to believe things often because they believe that they ought to believe them. Further, the circles in which we exist are not varied enough to make a conclusion like this. There is a selection bias in our peers. If you go out of the way and talk to people then you will be shocked and amazed with the replies you get.

At the end it doesn't matter much to me. I don't like the concepts of demarcating plots of land and building elaborate belief systems based on that concept. To me it's a lie and a sham. What matters more are the people who live a life of suffering with no escape and die everyday in inhumane conditions that somehow never make the headlines. The AIDS epidemic in India is comparable to that of Africa. _Africa_.

There's a lot to solve over here and creating fluffy pieces simply won't do it.

I am really sorry if this appears rude to you. That is not my intention, but I am afraid this is the truth and we ought to do something about it.

<comment><USER7> That is a better clarification. I guess I took it in a different angle. I agree about the part that the mainstream media is not helping with its shock- jock journalism.

PS: Nothing about 'rudeness' at all. Response was not triggered by that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Probably the only way to genuinely reduce costs by an order of magnitude would be to create a "cash and carry, no recourse except gross/criminal negligence" parallel system. Given US society, the only legal way to do this would be a public health system directly operated by the government.

I am a libertarian and aesthetically opposed to this idea, but I think realistically the least bad option would be universal coverage by a "designed to a price" public health system, maybe on par with the UK NHS, with better quality private care and private insurance for those who can afford it. Allow the government to provide scholarships (similar to ROTC) to promising studies to become doctors in the service, with MD salaries on the 80-150k range, and a focus on providing cost-effective routine and emergency care, and on cost effectively managing any expensive treatment. Roll Medicare into this. You could cut expenditures 50-80% while only reducing outcomes slightly, and cover everyone.

The AMA, industry, etc. would all be against this, but I think the total number of people employed in the medical industry is still low enough that "see, universal coverage" AND "50-80% cost savings" would win out politically over the libertarian arguments and the "death panels" arguments. By establishing that private health care can still exist, and be best in the world (unlike the Canadian system), reasonably wealthy people shouldn't be too opposed.

The risk is that a system of initially limited scope and budget would expand -- any given case where the public system didn't cover an illness might get up to a thousand constituents writing to their representatives. 1000 people highly motivated by an issue would trump 250 million people paying less than a cent each for the increase in cost in that one case. Eventually we would end up with a gold plated system like we have now. The only way I can think of preventing that would be for the US government to be starved of revenue (which it is working on!), or a constitutional amendment setting a certain standard of public care which cannot be legally exceeded.

</comment><comment><USER8> Look, there are many ways that US hospitals could cut costs by reducing the standard of care in one way or another. Some of them would be safe, some of them would be dangerous, and some of them probably look safe but would turn out to be way more dangerous than you'd think.

Sure, it's a great idea to save money when money is being wasted, but I'm really skeptical of this new fashion of claiming that the US's worst problem is that our standards of healthcare are _too damn high_.

<comment><USER9> >> I'm really skeptical of this new fashion of claiming that the US's worst problem is that our standards of healthcare are too damn high.

I don't think anyone is advocating lowering of standards. The Aravind Eye Care and similar success stories are all about innovation in the model of delivering healthcare. They excel in lowering costs through scale while ensuring high standards. The founder of Aravind was inspired by the process standardization of McDonald's and succeeded in replicating that in healthcare. The doctors at Aravind are actually considered to be among the best in the world simply because they perform far more surgeries than doctors elsewhere. Others like Narayana Hrudayalaya are replicating the model in areas like treatment of heart disease in India with great success. So, there's definitely room for process innovation which can improve the standards while reducing costs at the same time.</comment></comment>


When To Work For Free - <AUTHOR> http://shiftingcareers.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/when-to-work-for-free/

<comment><USER2> Totally agree with this one. There's nothing more annoying than someone telling you that a certain gig would be great exposure, as if they're granting you the privilege of working for them for free.

Writing is work. Not everyone can do it, and even fewer can do it well. Do yourself a favor; if you're good, don't write for free. Let these companies settle for a lesser crop of talent.

</comment><comment><USER3> Steer way clear of free work, unless you're building your first 1 or 2 sites in your portfolio. You only need to prove that you can build something really good, and you could pretty much do a side project or two to do that. Your clients will want to dictate what the design looks like, so in many cases, you'll end up with a project that you're too ashamed to put on your own portfolio. Unfortunately, designers don't always get to do their job because the client thinks they can do it better with zero experience in the field. "What's this? White space!? That's absurd! I'm paying you, I can't have any of that nonsense!"

Working with the wealthier clients (ie startups who are funded) is a world more rewarding than the nickel and dime people who want everything and then want to negotiate for a lower bid. Wealthy clients are decisive and they let you do your job, so everyone wins--they get a good website, you get payment, and you can be proud to put the work on your portfolio.

</comment><comment><USER4> My friend's father would always say (and meant it):

"I've never had a problem finding work. Getting paid for that work, now that's a different matter."

</comment><comment><USER5> We frequently will do a free smaller project for someone we term a "center of influence." So, if we deem that doing work for this person could lead to many more referrals and jobs in the future, we'll do a free project. Common example is putting an Ad Agency's website onto our CMS for free, so they can see our service and software, and then they will recommend us to clients in the future.

We've had great success and got into bed with some of our biggest clients this way. Also, there's probably a little guilt on their end that after we completed something for them for free that they "owe" us business in the future.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of Mark Evanier's great 'unfinanced entrepeneurs' post: <http://www.povonline.com/cols/COL209.htm>

</comment><comment><USER7> ..or you are the founder. :P

</comment><comment><USER8> Although pro bono work has its place, this can easily turn into a trap. While you're giving it away (sometimes for good reason), you may be losing paying opportunities because you're too busy to notice them.

Just ask my friend Ben Dover.

<comment><AUTHOR> Using the phrase "pro bono" probably highlights the one time it is a good idea. If you're making lots of money (like a high-priced lawyer), then some well chosen philanthropic or interesting projects can be a good choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never freelanced before, but what I've heard is that it's a lot better to offer up a freebie than a low price, as long as (1) the freebie is small and fixed in scope, and it's mutually understood that any substantial support/follow-up work will be paid, and (2) there's a pre-existing relationship with the client, so that it can't be construed as a desperate/promiscuous willingness to do free projects for anyone.

The reason a low-priced project is bad is that it's difficult to raise to a decent price without upsetting the client. Whereas for a freebie, there's an expectation that the price can go up. Moreover, low asking prices tend to lead to low-end work.</comment>


Ask HN: Need iOS development links for Google Custom Search engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=018044173091751457654:adldt8f6xwq

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a Google Custom Search Engine that I've set up. I'm focusing on sites that would be useful for new iOS developers, specifically sites with good tutorials, examples, or articles. This is my site list so far:

<http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/> <http://cocoadevcentral.com/> <http://www.iphonesdkarticles.com/> <http://iphonedevelopertips.com/> <http://mobileorchard.com/> <http://maniacdev.com/> <http://mauvilasoftware.com/iphone_software_development/> <http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/> <http://www.icodeblog.com/> <http://theocacao.com/> <http://www.mlsite.net/blog/> <http://petermcintyre.wordpress.com/> <http://blog.sallarp.com/> <http://wiresareobsolete.com/> <http://vellios.com> <http://www.themikeswan.com/blog/> <http://themikeswan.wordpress.com/> <http://longweekendmobile.com/> <http://www.duckrowing.com/> <http://www.peterfriese.de/>

Any suggestions for any more sites that I should add to it?

<comment><USER2> <http://sealedabstract.com/category/iphone/></comment></comment>


Easy API Scaffolding with Simple-API and Node.js - nodejs-news http://flippinawesome.org/2013/09/23/easy-api-scaffolding-with-simple-api-and-node-js/

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who do not use coffee script, it would be nice to provide a java script parallel example.

<comment><USER2> That was entirely readable even for those without coffeescript experience. It's just nested objects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool stuff! I added this to [http://blog.mashape.com/post/60820526317/list- of-40-tutorial...](http://blog.mashape.com/post/60820526317/list- of-40-tutorials-on-how-to-create-an-api)</comment>


US Supreme Court: Cops can take a routine DNA swab at time of arrest - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/supreme-court-cops-can-take-a-routine-dna-swab-at-time-of-arrest/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29

<comment><USER2> You don't have to love his politics to admit that Scalia's reasoning is, usually,[1] a beacon of clarity: "I cannot imagine what principle could possibly justify this limitation, and the Court does not attempt to suggest any. If one believes that DNA will 'identify' someone arrested for assault, he must believe that it will 'identify' someone arrested for a traffic offense. This Court does not base its judgments on senseless distinctions. At the end of the day, logic will [win] out. When there comes before us the taking of DNA from an arrestee for a traffic violation, the Court will predictably (and quite rightly) say, 'We can find no significant difference between this case and King.' Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today's decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason."

Even in Lawrence v. Texas, when he was wrong (in the macro sense), he was right in pointing out that, despite the Court's maneuvering, its opinion left no room in the future to find gay marriage bans anything other than unconstitutional.

That being said, I'll go ahead and be a little contrarian. Kennedy isn't really wrong: if you accept that routine fingerprinting is okay, there is precious little you can invoke to say that routine DNA swabbing is not okay, other than the fact that DNA swabbing is far more effective.

The precision and effectiveness of DNA makes it scary to people, but look at the flip side. We might actually want a world where DNA is the go-to tool for convictions, because everything else is so much worse: <http://lst.law.asu.edu/FS09/pdfs/Koehler4_3.pdf>. If routine DNA swabs lead to the use of DNA evidence being routine, then juries might come to demand DNA evidence to deliver guilty verdicts, which would marginalize the other, highly unreliable, forensics techniques.

There is also an important fairness aspect: unlike eyewitnesses, DNA evidence is not subject to cross-race identification bias: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- race_identification_bias...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- race_identification_bias#Cross-Race_Identification_Bias).

[1] As long as the topic isn't drugs or homosexuals.

<comment><USER3> It's scary because while DNA is more accurate, it's not 100%. Nobody wants to be the one that is thrown under the bus by a bad DNA result that is given more weight than it should because, "well it's DNA, it's a fact."

<comment><USER2> It's true that people think DNA evidence is more accurate than it is.[1] That said, juries think all "scientific" forensic evidence is more accurate than it is. The difference is that DNA evidence is actually pretty accurate, while things like hair analysis are wildly inaccurate. And eyewitness testimony tends to be insanely persuasive, even though its also insanely inaccurate.

[1] Generally, juries are instructed about random-match probabilities, but aren't usually allowed to be told about lab error rates, which totally dominate the random-match error rates (1-2% error in typical scenarios).

<comment><USER4> Why does then the defenders not attack the eye witness testimony on these grounds - that people and memory are unreliable, so what this guy remembers even if honestly believe so is not to be trusted? They could also throw some Bayesian math in the mix.

<comment><USER5> They can attack the eye witness testimony on those grounds.

Of course if the witness is a cop (community hero!) or god forbid a girl scout delivering cookies, then legitimately attacking the credibility of eye-witness accounts can put you in a _very_ unsympathetic light before the jury. An attack on the poor recall abilities of homo-sapiens becomes warped into an attack on the character of a _plainly_ honorable witness.

Public understanding of even the basics of Bayesian thinking is _abysmal_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its an interesting (if controversial) theory, that your DNA is no more private to you than your fingerprints, and they already fingerprint you when you are arrested and put those fingerprints into a national database.

The sticky thing for me though is that DNA not only identifies an individual, it also identifies their parents and possibly their siblings. So now we've got more than just our poor arrestee's id we've got some 'known acquaintences' and it gets worse if people start getting arrested for misdemeanors just so that the cops can take a swab to check.

No doubt there will be more to this debate before the dust settles.

<comment><USER7> The fact that they take fingerprints and put them in a national database, without even a _conviction_ (you can be arrested for _anything_ , and never convicted), should worry some folks, but I suppose we gave that battle up long ago.

<comment><USER8> > _you can be arrested for anything_

My favorite is being arrested for resisting arrest...for that arrest.

<comment><USER9> You can't be arrested for resisting arrest alone. You can be charged with resisting arrest and nothing else. This is an important distinction.

Imagine someone is suspected of murder. There is probable cause that this person has committed a crime so a judge issues an arrest warrant. A police officer finds this murder suspect and arrests him. The suspect resists but is ultimately taken into custody. Under interrogation, the suspect gives an alibi that ultimately checks out. This person isn't charged with murder because it's apparent he didn't commit the murder. However, the arrest was legal and resisting it was a crime. So the suspect is charged with resisting arrest with no other charges.

<comment><USER10> It's all a matter of perspective. If you come to arrest me for a crime I know I didn't commit, then no, the arrest is not "legal" per my definition of "legal". The government might, indeed, be following it's own rules (and getting to that on a consistent basis would be a slight improvement over where we are now) but my rights have still been violated.

<comment><USER11> There is only one definition of "legal": allowable under the law.

The constitution and the laws of your state outline your rights (if you live in the US). Part of the deal is that sometimes you can be arrested for crimes you didn't commit. But that's why we make sure that people who are arrested are guaranteed a speedy trial from a jury of their peers, etc.

<comment><USER5> > _The constitution and the laws of your state outline your rights (if you > live in the US)._

It seems fairly uncontroversial that the constitution and laws are merely _imperfect_ encodings of your rights. The encoding is necessary, since our legal system runs on it, but due to its imperfect nature it cannot be considered the master copy. Pre-1960s, many of our laws did not reflect what we expect of them and as a consequence of this the rights of countless were 'legally' trampled.

Lectures about the law are rarely of comfort to those that are a victim of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> there should be a requirement to destroy the DNA if no conviction is attained. the fact that the gov't can store your fingerprints forever simply because someone accused you of something is insane to begin with. using this as further justification for DNA storage is misguided.

your DNA is more private than your medical records, because much of the latter and a whole lot more can be decoded from your DNA, maybe not now, but it will most certainly be done in the future.

"just give us the keys to your house, we'll only use them when we (or our associates) deem necessary"

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm a grudging holder of a view I deem the "rag doll" theory of identity & evidence gathering: if they can get it from your limp body without coercion or harm (needles & "intimate" contact included), they can have it. Facial photos, fingerprints, DNA ... things which can on the whole be obtained by just following you around (touched surfaces, fallen detritus), and which circumstances may dictate a more manipulated form of acquisition (hold face up for frontal photo, manipulate fingers for prints, mouth swab for DNA). Anything involving jabbing, yanking, or threats - no. This view does presume the existence of enough evidence for warrantable arrest in the first place, which should entail a high legal barrier: a judicially signed warrant should be required prior to arrest if possible, and acquired promptly thereafter if impractical; failure to obtain one (before or after, independent of information acquired during holding) should require immediate disposal of anything gathered including arrest record.

<comment><USER14> This might be a simplistic view, but my fingerprint is a symbol of me which can be used to identify me. My DNA _is_ me, just the smallest piece of me that is in fact, me. What makes taking DNA any different than taking blood, or one of my fingers? If I were to leave DNA behind somewhere at a crime scene, I would expect it to be gathered, but removing it from my body "routinely" rubs me the wrong way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As I say in a comment elsewhere in this thread, I find the dissent on this extremely illuminating and tend to agree with it. One thing the court can't consider right now (since it's a hypothetical future and that's rightly not their business) is that some day, DNA sequencing is going to be dirt cheap and super fast. It is only a matter of time. When that happens, what will the court think about the police driving around hoovering up all the hair and cells you shed every day? You know, just to solve those cold cases to see if anyone turns up?

People get all worked up over automated license plate readers but the thought of the above happening makes GATTACA (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1>) look like Disneyland.

<comment><USER2> > When that happens, what will the court think about the police driving around > hoovering up all the hair and cells you shed every day? You know, just to > solve those cold cases to see if anyone turns up?

What, in itself, would be wrong with that, as long as the police were catching people who were actually guilty?

This is kind of the same thing as the fear of self-driving cars. Why would it be better to depend on things like eyewitness testimony (which is hugely unreliable, especially for cross-race identifications), when we have much less fallible DNA evidence?

<comment><USER15> Well let's make it super-easy and nip this in the bud: let's just store a DNA sequence of everyone when they are born. That way, we can skip the whole hoovering up business and for sure identify people. Are you ok with that?

<comment><USER2> Sure. I can easily imagine it doing more good than harm. The fact is that police and juries, in the absence of very precise evidence, don't just go "geez, guess we gotta leave this one unsolved." Not with families and communities devastated by rapes, murders, etc. If they don't have precise evidence, like DNA, they will depend on less precise evidence, like finger prints or hair samples, or god forbid eyewitness testimony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Did anyone else here get fingerprinted in elementary school, when the cops stopped by to say hi and talk about safety? We all were. This was in the mid 80's in Maine. I thought it was cool at the time, but I feel violated now. And I'm pretty sure my parents weren't asked.

More to the point: how would this generation feel about the police coming to school and taking DNA samples?

<comment><USER5> > _Did anyone else here get fingerprinted in elementary school, when the cops > stopped by to say hi and talk about safety?_

Boyscout "fingerprinting merit badge". Interestingly they had us do none of the actual requirements (well, at least from the 2003 requirements, I don't know what they were at the time); the only thing we did was get fingerprinted by the police.

Were it not for that, I would remain un-fingerprinted to this day. I am somewhat upset about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it should be pointed out that the information the police get back from a DNA sample is NOT a fully sequenced genome. It contains enough information to find high confidence matches, but they can't go through the information and start looking for pepole that have rare genetic diseases or anything like that. I still view it as a privacy issue by taking DNA from people who are never convicted (they should delete the info of innocent people). However, DNA samples from the police do not contain much 'confidential' beyond a fingerprint other than determining parents/siblings/cousings.

Source: [http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/fore...](http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/forensics.shtml)

<comment><USER5> You forgot the word "Currently."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Gattaca!

</comment><comment><USER19> And all politicians and senators must have their DNA samples taken and posted online, with photo and name, as a show of good faith that it's not a big deal to let some cancerous arm of the government keep your specific blueprint for bootstrapping a human.</comment>


Ask HN: Product management or startup marketing quizzes? - <AUTHOR> One of the ways to understand marketing (in a  consumer oriented startup) is to read about some situations and think how you would have acted in such a scenario. I am thinking of "Suppose this was day one of Instagram. How would you acquire users 100 to 1000? Option A: Give a talk in photography class. Optiob B: Post on reddit".
Do you guys know of any quizzes/marketing exams like this?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> You can't really learn consumer marketing like this. Hindsight is 20/20 -- successes like Instagram are mostly throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. B2B marketing is a little less luck-driven, but not that much. There's a lot of data-gathering, trial-and-error, etc., and what worked in the past for one product isn't going to work at a different time or for a different product.

If you want to learn product marketing, find opportunities to practice it in real situations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I kind of agree with what you are saying. My problem is that I have a few consumer app ideas (like Photo deduplication). I am completely lost how to market these, except for posting on forums and buying ads. Was hoping to get some resources which force me to think through issues.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best place to celebrate New Year's Eve. - <AUTHOR>

I've realized that it's only 25 days left and I still don't know where to celebrate New Year's Eve. Where are you going to celebrate it? <comment><USER2> I'll be at my local ski hill to go to the unofficially annual igloo party. The igloo gets bigger every year - last year there were 5 rooms, a dance floor, and kegs...</comment>


The NYPD Tapes - <AUTHOR> http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-nypd-tapes-inside-bed-stuy-s-81st-precinct/

<comment><USER2> Haven't read beyond the first page of the article yet... saving for later. But I'll share an experience of mine.

I lived in the 79th precinct, adjacent to the 81st. It's less dangerous, but not much -- still Bed Stuy and very block by block. I was there for about 6 months in late 2007.

The area is tense at times -- much of New York's prosperity over the last two decades hasn't trickled down to the people living there aside from landlords selling their buildings to gentrifies or speculators. There was an incident around this time where an unstable young man was shot because he had a comb the police mistook for a weapon in the dark. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had escalated into riots. Gentrification is welcome by some, protested by some, and many are indifferent to it, I think. There are very few nice places to eat or socialize or even get groceries, but there are a ton of bodegas and fried chicken/pizza places and dollar stores. It can be a very rough place, which is too bad as I got to know some very nice people on my block.

Certainly there are institutional problems in the NYPD, but also I have the suspicion that many rookie cops eventually get rotated into areas like this -- Bushwick, Bed Stuy, East New York and this contributes to much of the stuff you will learn about in these tapes. The penis jokes, the confusion on what to report and not gracefully handling tension within the communities -- I wonder if it is inexperience.

Comparisons to The Wire are natural, but in the time I lived in Bed Stuy, the only similarity I really observed was that the NYPD guys never seemed to interact with the people of the neighborhood as if they too were part of that community. Never said hi while walking their beats, never stopped to talk to the kids or the corner boys, they mostly walked in twos or threes, chatting with each other. I think for the people that live there and the cops that work there, there is us and them and not much in between.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to blame the cops for not interacting with the community, though. I lived in a similar neighborhood in Oakland, and saw 75 year old grandomthers calling the cops "pigs" to their face.

Some of the hostility toward the police is justified, much of it isn't. But whether it is or isn't justified, it exists, and it's hard to blame cops for not going out of their way to be sociable with people who, more likely than not, hate them because they are police.

<comment><USER4> It's an interesting cycle, really. The hate perpetrated by the civilian to the servant is returned by aggressive actions towards the civilians and a less hospitable attitude.

Ideally, civilians should respect the police, and attempt to make a connection with those who are employed to serve them, while at the same time, the police should be accommodating for their constituents and dignify them much as civilians should.

The animosity can easily be attributed to the lack of respect and proper protocol for both parties. Someone needs to step up.

Alas, one can only hope for a better world.

<comment><USER5> The thing of it, to me, is that policemen carry an array of weapons. Mace, a taser, a tonfa (a nightstick), and a gun. A person that heavily armed is a force to be reckoned with. Intimidating, deserving of fear.

If you're the man with the gun, you must go out of your way to be respectable and approachable, or you will not be - you'll just be a man with a gun.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. That is their job as _our_ servants (civil servants, that is). The cop is supposed to be more respectful and willing, and they should be working on that. They are people though, and as such we should afford them some respect, not for the weapons they carry, but the way the act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah this is the reality of police work after Guliani. Guliani discovered that the best thing for a politician to do is to reduce crime so he tells his cops "reduce crime or else" and the easiest way to do it is to cook the numbers.

The funny thing is that sometimes cooking the numbers works. That is if you create a perception of lower crime you get gentrification and a lot of middle class people move in and crime may actually go down. But nobody should confuse the talk of politicians with actual reality, new york is much more crooked and crime ridden than any of those "tough on crime" politicians would admit. Some times that crookedness bubbles up to the surface, for example couple of summers ago when cranes started falling from the sky and killing people and destroying entire buildings.

I have to say that I feel bad for these cops. I was hoping that being a beat cop was one of those rare fields of endeavour where one could do their job well as driven by their own conscience and their own initiative and sense of self worth and not have to go by some ridiculous metric, but alas even the police departments have been invaded by modern MBA thinking. So apparently even in the police force it is all about performance metrics and making your numbers -- writing a sufficient number of tickets and stopping and frisking a sufficient number of random people, while making sure not to notice too many crimes.

Maybe in the end of the year the mayor looks at the numbers and sees -- wow, we frisked 10 million people and brought in 5 billion dollars in fines, we must truly have a fine police force.

<comment><USER7> I dunno bout you, but I actually live in New York City and although the police can be heavy handed at times, ok... a lot of the time, I can assure you that new york is a lot safer than when I was growing up in Queens in the 80's and 90's. I specifically recall leaving for university in the fall of '96 and returning summer of '98 to a completely different atmosphere. And for that I tip my hat to Giuliani.

<comment><USER8> Seriously. The NYC of the '80s and '90s was much different from that of the '70s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Highly_ recommended reading in conjunction with this article: [http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop- Reveals-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals- Arrested/dp/1556526377/)

E.g. note the item on page two of the Village Voice article on "points".

</comment><comment><USER10> _the true value of this "activity," the tapes indicate, was that it offered proof that the precinct commander and his officers were doing their jobs_

Apparently cops have their own value of kloc metrics.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. And that's why when a cop harasses someone, e.g. trying to provoke them into something arrestable, it's often "nothing personal", they're just trying to get enough points to keep their superiors happy, maybe get promoted, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't read the full article but I imagine this illustrates the darker side of CompStat.

Along the same lines, some book recommendations:

_Armed and Dangerous: Memoirs of a Chicago Policewoman_, by Gina Gallo

_Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District_, by Peter Moskos

The second title covers the real-life setting for "The Wire."

<comment><USER12> If you want the real setting for "The Wire", read " The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood" by David Simon and Ed Burns.

The depiction of one of today's most derelict inner-city neighborhoods is heartbreaking and disconcerting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's the non-paginated version: <http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/1797847>

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone else thinking "The Wire"?

</comment><comment><USER15> Welcome To The New World Police State</comment>


Never realized that Gmail has a Storage Limit - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6558?hl=en

<comment><USER2> It does, but not really. You can get another gmail account and have another 15GB.

There are tools to sync and use multiple gdrives.</comment>


You Should Become A Hybrid Web Developer - <AUTHOR> http://collaborable.com/blog/you-should-become-a-hybrid-developer

<comment><USER2> It's interesting to hear about these emerging hybrid niches. Clearly the idea of hybrid positions extends beyond just art and engineering. It can span across many different kinds of disciplines: content, instructional design, business, programming. Those that can cross between these different areas can really tie together the threads of communication and understanding across different parts of a project.

That said, I think it's also really crucial for every member to be a specialist in something. The most productive group dynamics I've been in have been the ones where each member clearly understands their role and can execute it with flourish. Most of the talented bright people I know are usually hybrids in some regard anyway but above all, they are outstanding in a specific way which the other team members recognize.

If I had to choose between 5 people each with their respective DEPTH of knowledge and ability vs. 5 hybrids with breadth, I'll take depth in a heartbeat. Although, it might be cool to have 1 hybrid with excellent communication skills and 4 specialists!

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a great point. I was going to title the blog "Hybrid Developer Bridge the UX Design Gap", which is really what I believe happens, but figured the title sounded confusing for those who aren't into UX design. It really does span disciplines, not just web design/programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Coding is hard enough. The last projects required design from scratch, so I did it (and people even kind of liked it, "clean and functional" ;) - but it's not my first love. So I'm a semi-hybrid.

On the other hand, I used to have a hard time finding graphic designers, who can think about usability and elegance and can actually implement the thing in a great and maintainable way. Would welcome these hybrids, really.

(And a last bit: One of the nicer designs I dealt with directly was imagined and implemented by a perl hacker, hehe.)</comment>


Cannabis Company Med-X to Sell Shares Under Reg A+ on StartEngine - <AUTHOR> http://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2016/02/81328-cannabis-company-med-x-to-sell-shares-under-reg-a-on-startengine/ <comment><USER2> Posted this a few weeks ago! Very cool company :)</comment>


Yet another proof of mediocrity, Google? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pluggd.in/google-to-pluggdin-you-guys-sell-products-297/

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it really surprised me that Google couldn't differentiate between a news-blog and a self-promoting product company? If there is no product for them to sell, as the blog claims, what could be the motive for a ban by Google?

For I know that pluggd.in is the TechCrunch of India, and they are not hackers but only news reporters.</comment>


Gresham's Law - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law <comment><USER2> Is this a implication about Bitcoin, Toilet Paper or something else?

<comment><USER3> It's probably referencing the quantitative easing plan which is being presented as analogous to debasement of coinage.

<comment><USER4> Still not clear how it relates though. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar. It's not like old dollars are gold and QE dollars are copper.

<comment><USER5> A bitcoin is a bitcoin is a bitcoin. People aren't concerned about whether or not a dollar is still a dollar. They are concerned about whether a dollar (more specifically their savings) can still buy the same amount of goods and services.

<comment><USER6> That, however, has nothing to do with the subject of the article.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Debugging Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackerdashery.com/2008/04/debugging-science.html

<comment><USER2> Clever! And I do think that if we think of debugging as scientific experiments than that will improve our debugging. But if debugging is science, isn't all engineering science? It's not like the process of testing, identifying problems, and fixing them is unique to software engineering vs. other types.

<comment><AUTHOR> Debugging other engineered systems is clearly just as much a science as debugging software. But there are other aspects of engineering that don't seem like science to me, like design and optimization.

<comment><USER3> Optimization most definitely _is_ science - if done right, anyhow. You conduct observations (benchmarks) and form a hypothesis about what will improve speed/memory usage. You make the changes and conduct experiments to see if your hypothesis was correct. You draw conclusions based on the results and if your hypothesis was wrong, you change your hypothesis and try again.

Is optimization not science?

Edit: But yeah, design IMO will always be art as much as science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a nice piece about debugging in the light of scientific methods (and vice versa). One detail, though:

 _The idea goes back to Francis Bacon, who, using modern CS terminology three hundred years ahead of time, called it a "conditional inductive tree"._

This is an anachronism. There's no way Bacon or anybody else used the phrase "conditional inductive tree" in 17th century English. Bacon may have anticipated the idea, but the phrase itself, and that way of formulating it, are modern constructs.

Edit: by "that way of formulating it" I mean the idea of a conditional tree with branches as alternatives. It would be interesting to know the origins of the logical tree metaphor and how it evolved as part of logic/CS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, you're right. I misunderstood Platt to be quoting Bacon where he wasn't, and didn't check up on it when I skimmed The New Organon. I'll update to point out the mistake.</comment></comment>


Leaving California: Half of State's Voters Have Been Considering This - <AUTHOR> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/96j2704t <comment></comment>


Has this man unlocked the secret to Internet anonymity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3049569/has-this-man-unlocked-the-secret-to-internet-anonymity

<comment><USER2> Keeping your picture off the net isn't hard. I've been online longer than I want to say, except to mention I started out on a 200 pound standalone tele- typewriter terminal and had to ask an operator for a special data line to connect to the university mainframe with an AJ acoustic coupler (75 baud).</comment>


The Worst Programming Languages in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/worst-programming-languages-7b98c749ec36 <comment><USER2> It's a little harsh and inaccurate to say that Erlang has no use outside of the telecom industry. WhatsApp and RabbitMQ are both written in Erlang and the popularity of Elixir is that you can use Ruby-esque syntax AND reap the benefits of running your app on BEAM. Erlang might be in decline but the Erlang ecosystem is on the rise thanks to Elixir.

</comment><comment><USER3> To quote sergiosgc, popularity does not imply quality. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19757625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19757625)</comment>


Would You Pay $30 a Month to Check Your Email? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-email.html <comment><USER2> Can't read the article, due to paywall, but there's been some research on the personal value of things like email.

[https://www.nber.org/papers/w24514](https://www.nber.org/papers/w24514)

Also Tim Harford has had some interesting things to say on the topic.

[http://timharford.com/2018/05/how-much-would-i-have-to- pay-y...](http://timharford.com/2018/05/how-much-would-i-have-to-pay-you-to- quit-facebook/)

</comment><comment> pickle-wizard Anyone have a non-paywalled source? Looks like they figured out the private mode work around.

<comment><USER3> Superhuman, which plugs into your existing email account, works with only Gmail and Google G Suite addresses for now, but the company plans to expand to other providers soon.

Some of the app's features — such as ones that let users undo sending, track when their emails are opened and automatically pull up a contact's LinkedIn profile — are available in other third-party email plug-ins. But there are bells and whistles that I hadn't seen before. Like "instant intro," which moves the sender of an introductory email to bcc, saving you from having to manually re-enter that person's address. Or the scheduling feature, which sees that you're typing "next Tuesday" and automatically pulls up your calendar for that day.

<comment><USER4> I have heard this for years. Android support as well.</comment></comment></comment>


A Simple Strategy for Start-Ups to Kick Fortune-500-Butt - <AUTHOR> http://www.baymard.com/articles/a-simple-marketing-strategy/ "Would you like to outsell your worst competitors and build a life-long relationship with your customers?" A marketing article for entrepreneurs and start-ups explaining niching with text, video and examples. <comment><USER2> The video in the middle of the article was good. But it didnt work in IE 6, used firefox instead.</comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on my startup www.dojolearning.com - <AUTHOR>

We're now ready to launch our new startup, with the press release going out next week, and wanted to get a bit of feedback from the HN community ahead of that for any last-minute glaring oversights or suggestions that might improve things.  The site is:
http://www.dojolearning.com/
Our idea could be described as the Basecamp model/philosophy applied to training, which makes online training affordable to a much wider range of companies and trainers.
Beyond that, I'll let the site speak for itself :)
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I wish you luck :)

You are in a highly competitive market since there are so many sites like this; I would be afraid that you cheapen yourself to nothing more than a commodity. My first thought when I click through your site is, "Why would I use this over YouTube?" You have a lot of competitors in the "Anyone can create/share training videos" space so I guess I would need to see something unique before it piqued my interest.

I guess what I don't see is, "What are you doing that makes you different?" Allowing anyone to upload/create training is not new.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment! Maybe our marketing is off in describing our service. I'll try to describe it better and maybe that will help show where it's off.

Where our idea is different is that we're not just offering video upload or a quick how-to site, but a complete training system for a fraction of the cost of any of our competitors, and with zero technical setup. We do much more than text or video in our lesson builders, but we also combine that with lesson delivery, sales, communication and assessment tools, and various privacy levels as well (free public lessons, paid public lessons, private lessons, etc).

We don't see YouTube as a competitor, since they just provide video delivery, which isn't functional or private enough for companies to deliver their private training through.

We've taken the essence of online learning and built a simple way of achieving that all in one place. That certainly has similarities to other services like YouTube (we both allow video upload), but I wouldn't use Flickr for training either, now that they do video as well... ;)

What is new about Dojo versus our competitors is that it provides an informal learning experience specifically for companies and trainers (no grades :), and is technically and financially more affordable for anyone. The existing solutions are prohibitively expensive for most companies, and most including the open source tools are geared towards formal learning institutions as their primary focus.

After that mouthful, I guess we'll go back over our site and see if we can hone the message a bit now :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And here's a clickable link to the site:

<http://www.dojolearning.com/></comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with this domain? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN. We have the domain improvethings.org and we'd really like to make good use of it.<p>I'm interested in hearing what comes to mind! What would you do with improvethings.org? <comment><USER2> A site in india, jaagore.com(means wakeup), allows people to volunteer for a good social cause, or start a movement themselves. I think this domain could be helpful for similar site. You can also make use of Facebook/Twitter api to bring the social element into it.

Another use that comes to my mind is to use this domain to power a review site, may be a community powered startup review site where hackers, designers and entrepreneurs can review startups and provide suggestions for improvement. Think over this. If successful, it can turn into a good place for budding entrepreneurs to look for relevant information.

</comment><comment><USER3> A platform for people to submit ways to improve the current state of anything they think is sub par, like a school curriculum, bad traffic intersection, poor park maintenance, etc. it could show you suggested improvements near to you, and people could upvote ideas they believe in. empowered people could see what the community wants and volunteer time towards improvements, or some could be used as petitions for local govt, schoolboards, etc

<comment><USER4> I was just thinking something similar. I would put more emphasis on the volunteering, as petition based stuff doesn't really improve things. Turn it into a location based community task site.

People and charities can pitch to projects that require volunteers in their area. Each project can be discussed with threads. Could be as simple as "We're landscaping the local park at the weekend, turn up bring the kids and help" one day stuff, to "shelter needs volunteers for ongoing stuff". The project could be discussed and planned in their own threads, and users gain karma for their volunteer work.

<comment><USER3> would be a great place for classrooms, 4h groups,churches, etc to find a place or task for volunteering. Maybe groups cou lk d have their own pages where it shows their past and upcoming volunteer stuff, and how it overlaps with what others in the community are doing</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Quotable – scan, save and share book quotes on iOS - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quotable-scan-book-quotes/id1453927545?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, a few months ago I realized that my phone's photo library was filling up with pictures of book quotes that I wanted to share and look back on. It's hard to organize these and writing down every quote is too time consuming. I decided to build a solution that allows you to scan/save/share quotes using OCR. It's super simple - no bells and whistles - but (I'd like to think) it _just works_. Let me know what you think!</comment>


China starts major trial of state-run digital currency - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/china-starts-major-trial-of-state-run-digital-currency <comment><USER2> This is very interesting. It's hard to find information about underlying technology but according to this link[1]:

"Payments via the e-RMB could be contactless and transactions can be conducted via bluetooth and encrypted NFC when two mobile phones with electronic wallets get close to each other. This is different from Alipay and WeChat Pay, that rely on cellular networks, and one can use the e-RMB without the internet, just like paying physical cash."

and

"Meanwhile, the PBoC's Digital Currency Research Institute that is tasked with the research and development of the e-RMB, advised against a blockchain-based approach to digitalizing the currency or related payment systems, stressing that blockchain's decentralized and distributed digital ledger that records transactions across many computers runs counter to the PBoC's role of centralized bookkeeping and administration."

So, it'll be able to work offline. It'll basically act like cash but it's also centralized. How are offline transactions implemented? What happens when you do an offline transaction and then drop both phones into the water? (Schrodinger's transaction?) Is it a surveillance tool on cash payments? I'd definitely like to get my hands on that app.

[1]: [https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/china-trials-digital- payments-...](https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/china-trials-digital-payments- prints-less-cash/)

<comment><USER3> Is it a surveillance tool for cash payments? Yes:

" Xu Yuan, associate professor at Peking University's national development research institute, told broadcaster CCTV that because cash transactions were offline and transaction data from existing payment platforms was scattered, the central bank was unable to monitor cash flow in real time.

"Although there is little change from the perspective of user use, from the perspective of central bank supervision, future forms of finance, payment, business and social governance etc, this is the biggest thing ever."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some best micro web framework? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Depends on your use case and programming language you feel convenient. Fo example: Flask is great if you like python: [http://flask.pocoo.org/](http://flask.pocoo.org/) If you are more on the Java side you might give Spark a shot: [http://sparkjava.com/](http://sparkjava.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Best for what? A hammer and a screwdriver are both the best tool, but not for the same job.

</comment><comment><USER4> As a language its falling out of favor I think, but there's nothing simpler than Sinatra in Ruby</comment>


Bind 10 is now a community project named bundy - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/isc-concludes-bind-10-development-with-release-12-1900868.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> so, what does that mean? is isc going to develop it further, or not? i cannot really see through the marketing speak.

will it supersede bind9 or not?</comment>


Job Market 2009 (one view) - <AUTHOR> http://www.frogsoda.com/video/jobmarket2009

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty funny if you've ever hired day laborers... :D</comment>


The Hidden Connection Between Morality and Language - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/the-hidden-connection-between-morality-and-language

<comment><USER2> >" _Decisions made by people speaking their non-native languages appear to be less concerned with morality and more concerned with rationality and utilitarianism._ "

Well, now that explains my embarrassingly immoral uses of Perl.

Speaking of embarrassing, I'd still really like to know why every time I hack Perl code, the following song comes always to mind?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPkTGm4RtVM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPkTGm4RtVM)

On a more serious note, I wonder if our "favorite" (native?) programming languages are the cause of some of the far too common overly emotional responses seen in language discussions?

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if people will ever realize their morals are wrong despite being popular. We're so quick to judge people in the past or other countries (gay sex is illegal, say) but ignore our own backyards (sibling sex is illegal).

The comedian Lois C K made some bold steps exploring this. "I'm not saying I would kill a kid and fuck him, I'm saying that if I found a dead kid in a field, and it wasn't raining, I might take a shot, I don't know." I wonder if in another 100 years we'll escape our cultural cage and realize it's harmless to have sex with a dead child after all. It's a huge hurdle and there are lot of smaller ones on the way, but we overcame the sex between two men thing, maybe we're making some kind of gradual progress?

<comment><USER4> > I wonder if in another 100 years we'll escape our cultural cage and realize > it's harmless to have sex with a dead child after all.

The problem is that dead children are not yet public property, so any defilement becomes an issue of vandalism.

Even if the child is subsequently buried on public land and allowed to decay into the earth, any aspiring terraphiliacs would then create a tragedy of the commons problem.

Of course, if you're Vinod Khosla, you could buy adjacent land, lock a gate, call upon ancient ancestral rights, have your way with the dirt, and tie the case up in the courts for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> // "the use of a foreign language, as opposed to a native language, elicited less harsh moral judgments."// I thought this is a common observation.

Indian movies, writings, conversations openly curse in English, but the exact words in native language would be considered as blasphemy.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can attest to the observation about being more open in second language. I'm native Russian speaking English and I find that I can talk e.g. about sex in English much easier than in Russian where the right words seem too loaded, obscene, scientific, or euphemistic. But then, I think, the experience oozes back to the native part as well. Maybe speaking more than one language should steer people into being more open and accepting in general? If so, then Dutch people should be among the champions :)

<comment><USER7> I'm a native Russian speaker as well and can second that exact perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> An interesting corollary to this is the effect that the specific symbol map and grammar of a language has on native speakers. Do languages which have only an active voice, or only the imperative, lead to a more authoritarian culture? What of languages like basque which almost exclusively use the gerund?

I don't know the answer but it'd be fascinating to find out.

<comment><USER9> There is a number of widely spoken languages that lack a grammatical future tense. Chinese and Japanese spring to mind, but there are more, like Finnish and Hungarian. There must be an extensive body of research comparing cultures that have a future tense in the language to those who don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Say, wasn't it yesterday we were talking about how science in psychology is crap and full of poor reasoning and overdrawn conclusions? I mean, how can you go from this narrow laboratory observation to "illegal immigrants have different morals" without pause?

</comment><comment><USER11> This is redirecting to the Nautilus home page.

<comment><USER2> I got redirected too.

It seems this is the correct url:

[http://nautil.us/blog/the-hidden-connection-between- morality...](http://nautil.us/blog/the-hidden-connection-between-morality-and- language)

<comment><USER11> Thanks! Fixed.</comment></comment></comment>


Automatically Parse Resumes Using CandidateZip - <AUTHOR> https://zapier.com/blog/updates/1496/candidatezip-integrations <comment><AUTHOR> Unleash the power of automation to get the perfect candidate for the organization. Find out potential candidates from your resume database.</comment>


The Socialist Revival - <AUTHOR> https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-socialist-revival/ <comment><USER2> This piece contains quite a good canvassing of the current socialist political climate, but it appears lacking in discussion of Climate Change and it's relationship with a revival of anti-capitalist movement.

I have a lot of problems with Capitalism theoretically, but in practical terms it's most unquestionable error is in the role it played in decades of Climate Change inaction and ecological destruction. Foster Wallace decried the existential emptiness of capitalist consumer society, and yeah that sucks, but if left alone by activists Capitalist systems would quite possibly destroy the entire planet or if we're lucky _only_ kill hundreds of millions of people who had no part real part in the system's insatiability.

Some left thinkers I respect a lot are saying we might be choosing between socialism and 'climate justice' for the third world, or eco-fascism.

With Facebook recently installing Breitbart in their 'quality news' section, I'm not happy just fence-sitting and letting capitalists reorganise society in response to our climate emergency.

<comment><USER3> This is quite an interesting piece as a survey of some of the Left and its relation to the climate crisis [https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4404-eco- fascisms-and-eco-s...](https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4404-eco-fascisms-and- eco-socialisms)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > As the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989, so too, it seemed, did the dream of > socialism.

Did the author actually live in East Germany? Nobody forced anyone to break down the wall. That wall was a symbol of oppression. People died trying to escape that damned "dream of socialism." Not too many people died trying to get _in_ to East Germany. Dream of socialism? More like a nightmare. I hate to sound like a grandpa, but "kids these days.."

There is the constant refrain of "socialism (or communism) would be great if it worked as designed." But it never can work as designed because human beings are involved. Orwell and Animal Farm was correct in the depiction of socialism/communism.

"On ne fuit pas d'omelette sans casser des oeufs"

Of course the omelette never gets made, no matter how many eggs are broken.

<comment><USER5> But Orwell himself was a socialist and did not conflate socialism with communism, or either with authoritarianism or totalitarianism. If anything, Animal Farm was a critique of Leninism and Stalinism. So, what, Orwell was a näive idiot who just happened to write a good book?</comment></comment>


Android Things – IoT Platform - <AUTHOR> https://developer.android.com/things/ <comment><USER2> We've been working with the Android Things team at Google to create a great experience for getting started with Android Things on Raspberry Pi.

The end result is Rainbow HAT - a mixture of sensors, displays, sounds, and inputs all on a single HAT: [https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/new- products/products/...](https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/new- products/products/rainbow-hat-for-android-things)

If you have any questions feel free to ask!

</comment><comment><USER3> Most interesting part: it has Java APIs for direct access to hardware over GPIO, PWM, UART, SPI, I2C. The intention is that all device access happens from application-level Java code, not at the kernel/HAL/framework level. This means devices will get kernel/framework updates directly from Google, no OEM in-between.

> Note: You cannot customize the behavior of device drivers in the Linux > kernel or Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) to add new functionality to a > device.

[https://developer.android.com/things/sdk/drivers/index.html](https://developer.android.com/things/sdk/drivers/index.html)

<comment><USER4> What will this mean for speed/timing? Some IO is very timing sensitive, so much that python is too slow to handle it; I wonder if these abstractions will cause any problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's the Google "dogfooding" scenario.

Because, absent that, I'm not going to place any trust in longevity.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know of a super cheap GSM network to utilize all these new IoT contraptions?

<comment><USER7> Appropriately enough, if you have Project Fi service you can request up to 9 data-only SIMs[1] that are only charged for however much they are used.

1: [https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6330195?hl=en](https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6330195?hl=en)</comment></comment>


Rockstar Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/RockstarLang/rockstar <comment><USER2> Wow, this is really interesting! You developed this yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I just stumbled upon it and thought I should share it :)</comment></comment>


RIP CityDesk - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/rip-citydesk/ <comment><USER2> > By the time this site was over 1000 pages, even on modern super speedy > computers with flash drives, it took something like 5 minutes to publish

Wow, that's like 3 pages per second. Are static site generators really that slow?

I can't find any published performance comparisons, so... yeah?

<comment><USER2> Apparently Hugo 0.17 can achieve 1000 "rendered content" per second.

[https://gohugo.io/meta/release-notes/](https://gohugo.io/meta/release-notes/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to do with two old desktop machines? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
I have two desktop computers with 2-year-old quad cores and 8gb of ram. They are still somewhat powerful machines, but they sit in my closet because my MacBook has all of my needs completely covered.
I thought about donating them to a hacker house, like noisebridge - but I hear that they'd probably end up in pieces and never really used.
What should I do with these machines? Happy to donate processing power (put them online in my apartment), but I'd rather just physically give them to a good cause.
Cookie points for crafty ideas.
Thx HN & merry xmas :) <comment><USER2> > _"I'd rather just physically give them to a good cause."_

Step 1: Identify a good cause, preferably local. Identifying a local good cause, however, will make transporting the computers less work and cheaper...Yes, this will require some work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Donate them to a school if possible.

<comment><USER4> Was thinking the same thing.</comment></comment>


NoSQL Smackdown with Werner Vogels and MongoDB, CouchDB and Cassandra devs - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/post/457259567/episode-0-1-8-nosql-smackdown

<comment><USER2> Is there a transcript for this?

<comment><USER3> I can summarize. Mostly just people making snarky comments about opposing products. The guy from CouchDB is particularly annoying. Apparently he feels like he has to raise his voice and cut people off to defend his product.

<comment><USER4> One the other hand, the discussion is punctuated with the audience yelling "Louder!" and "We can't hear you!" on top of a lot of background noise (including various interruptions from the audience). I got the sense you almost had to be loud and aggressive to be heard. It got kind of stressful to listen to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Listening to this, I'm struck by how wimpy and tame all the journalism/media panels were by comparison. We need to raise our game!

</comment><comment><USER5> The guys on this podcast mapped it out at the SXSW table I was sitting at over lunch. It seemed pretty clear to me there was going to be some spirited arguing when they got down to it.

</comment><comment><USER6> this was really great to see/hear these guys duking it out. props to @pengwynn for holding it down for mongodb against the big boys.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, @pengwynn did a great job!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If it doesn't have a theme song, it ain't NoSQL!

<comment><USER9> I hear you have to have a dance too?</comment></comment>


Newspapers escalate their fight against ad blockers - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/27/newspapers-escalate-their-fight-against-ad-blockers/ <comment><USER2> Irony #1: _this_ article is itself paywalled.

Irony #2: they actually use "paywall" as a term in the resulting URL (subscribe.washingtonpost.com/acquisition/?prompt=1&promo=digital03_paywall...)

</comment><comment><USER3> Missed opportunity: the photo editor could've folded out the newspapers and shown ads below the fold. Would've looked great paired with the headline</comment>


The Killer App: Wired Magazine, Voice of the Corporate Revolution (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://thebaffler.com/archive/the_killer_app_wired_magazine_voice_of_the_corporate_revolution <comment><AUTHOR> "Wired's distinctive maimed typography and its fluorescent hues may be interesting, but the magazine's truly marvelous feature is its corporate- cultural mission. Wired is technology's hip face, an aggressive apologist for the new information capitalism that speaks to the world in the postmodern executive's favored tones of chaotic cool and pseudo-revolution."

"Wired 's vision of the good life is impressively consistent: money, power, and a Game Boy sewn into the palm of your hand. Equally consistent is the absence of any serious consideration of the problems that come with business control of information technology. In order to reconcile its standard pro- business politics with its rebel image, the magazine makes a great display of embracing a certain strain of extreme information antinomianism."

"Another Wired cause célèbre is the outlaw hacker. In almost every issue, it seems, the editors find a new way to stir readers' outrage over the fate of one Phiber Optik, a jailed hacker described as having a "colorful urban style and a near suicidal willingness to demonstrate his prowess at picking the locks on telephone company systems."2 While Wired's ongoing loyalty to the troubled young man is admirable, its frequent stories do little more than use him to reaffirm the myth of the rebel entrepreneur so celebrated in contemporary management literature."</comment>


Top Checklists on HN - <AUTHOR> https://hn.algolia.com/?query=checklist&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story <comment><USER2> This is a great way to find many great posts and learn from HN:

"things i learned" [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=things%20i%20learned&sort=byPo...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=things%20i%20learned&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

"wish someone told" [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wish%20someone%20told&sort=byP...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wish%20someone%20told&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

"how did you" [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=how%20did%20you&sort=byPopular...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=how%20did%20you&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

I'm sure there are many others like this too!

<comment><USER3> works for comments too, although it's pretty much hunting for long-tail keywords

"pm me"

"opportunity"

"pent up demand"

"I'd pay"

"I miss"

etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At the time of this writing, this post (89 points) is already in the second page of its "own" list.

<comment><USER5> It's now on the first page for me, very meta. Does anyone here use checklists in their day to day? My work tends to shift daily/weekly/monthly, I'm not usually doing similar things most days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are these checklists updated?

The "Web Developer Checklist" was 5 years ago.

And the "quick website launch checklist" was 7 years.

<comment><USER7> No, this is just a search for old posts with the word 'checklist' in it. The actual quality and timeliness of any given list is something you'll need to judge for yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does hn.algolia.com require JavaScript to work? Seems somewhat counter to the philosophy of HN's web design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Algolia and HackterNews (Y Combinator) are two different parties. Algolia implemented the HackerNews API (which is based on Firebase). Agolia uses their JavaScript library to enhance the user experience (for near instant search results).

<comment><USER9> General commentary based on your use of the words "enhance" and "near instant":

Especially in places of higher latency (e.g. Australia), using JavaScript for things like this does not enhance the user experience, but rather increases the delay, because additional round trips are required, especially when it's over TLS on a different host as in this case.

On a good connection at these latencies (~300ms), these _near instant_ search results you describe take around four seconds to load, rather than under a second and a half as it would be if it just served the final DOM directly—or 100ms if it could serve the whole thing from an edge location. (Having to execute _half a megabyte_ of JavaScript for a search page before it will actually do the search seems fairly absurd too.)

Subsequent searches without a page reload will also often take 2–3 seconds due to the connection having been closed and the DNS TTL being only one minute, so it's got to resolve that again, open a new TLS connection, _et cetera_.

I really wish people would actively _avoid_ the fancy JavaScript SPA approach. (And I work on such an SPA.) There's a place for them, but this is not a good demo of that place.

<comment><USER10> _I really wish people would actively avoid the fancy JavaScript SPA approach. (And I work on such an SPA.) There's a place for them, but this is not a good demo of that place._

Or just have a button somewhere for a "basic HTML" version.

Why are modern developers and UX designers so averse to giving users control over their experience?

<comment><USER11> Honest answer to your question: Because they have to-do lists a million miles long, and "make an HTML-only version" is often at the very bottom of that list, because it may require high investment while providing few benefits relative to other things on the to-do list. Also, because "giving users control" can mean a million different things… colors, fonts, sizes, dimensions, HTML vs JS, etc.

<comment><USER9> And if it's not the same code base, it'll probably be buggy, because it's not the UI people normally use.

Server-side rendering of the _same_ UI avoids that hazard, at a much lower cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These are so so so useful for self teaching.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is great! So many great posts!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I was quite surprised myself. Thought it was worth bookmarking and sharing ;)</comment></comment>


Cross the world four times - <AUTHOR> https://sivers.org/4 <comment><USER2> Years ago I realized sitting at a desk was not making me happy. So I quit my Software Engineering job and took 2 years to drive from Alaska to Argentina, having the time of my life. [1]

Then I worked for a bit again to save money, and quit again and just got back this year from 3 years driving all the way around Africa. [2]

The people I met, the places I saw and the lessons I learned will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I personally love the life.

I've decided I want to be a travel writer and photographer, because it makes me happy. I have way less money, but I'm happier than I've ever been. I have written a couple of books about my adventures, and I write for a slew of magazines now too.

Do what makes you happy.

[1] The Road Chose Me Volume 1 - [https://amzn.to/2wkxceX](https://amzn.to/2wkxceX)

[2] 999 Days Around Africa - [https://amzn.to/2H93IUH](https://amzn.to/2H93IUH)

<comment><USER3> I have been working as a JS dev for the past 17 years, I'm now 40, and what you wrote resonates with me so much. Even though I like coding and learning and trying out new stuff, I've developed this love for Spain's coasts, I just wish I could be there discovering it every single minute, being outside, being physically active. And the older I get, the more I feel this urgency to stop wasting my life at the desk. On the other hand, I have 2 small/ish children and a wife I need to provide for, virtually no savings, living in a landlocked Central European country with dark, cold winters. I wonder if I'm ever going to be able to escape this somehow and really do what I love, or be where I want to be, before I turn into an old man unable to do any physical activity.

And the winter is coming...again. :-(

;-)

P.S. Will definitely buy your book, so I can daydream with you.

<comment><USER2> You absolutely can do it. I met plenty of families living on the road, home schooling their kids, etc. etc.

For me, it all starts with savings. If you really, really want to break out of your current lifestyle, you have to start putting money away, and you have to start now. It might take 5+ years, but if you want it badly enough, you will find a way.

Keep in mind it's a lot (A LOT) cheaper than you think. Most people spend around $1500/mo for absolutely all expenses to drive around the entire world. [1] If you already have a place to live, it's really common to air b n b it out and live off the income from that while you're on the road.

We only get one life. Make sure you're doing what you want with it.

Good luck!

[1] [http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of- adventure](http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're going to travel the world many times, learn to sail and favor trains. Or define "world" as smaller than the actual globe.

The benefits of travel are numerous. They were there before our understanding of global heating and pollution. Times have changed since sentiments like in this post.

We have to factor our new understanding into our models for a good life. Seeing as how billions of people before flying led happy lives, flying around the world four times isn't necessary.

(To clarify, Derek didn't say you have to fly around the world four times. He wrote it generally enough that you could interpret it several ways, but I expect many people will interpret him to mean fly around the world four times.)

<comment><USER5> >If you're going to travel the world many times, learn to sail and favor trains.

Don't do it just for "the climate". There's something magic about sail and rail. Traveling this way makes the world feel _immense_. And it is. We just mostly miss it now riding in sky-cans from one Starbucks to the next.

<comment><USER6> We've travelled to Europe by train instead of air, and the journey is as much part of the experience as the destination. The cities we've stopped at, the new and often mostly tourist free places we've found, that still have unique national flavour. The travel time is no longer wasted, but part of the holiday. Some of the most magic views have been from the train.

We've also discovered far, far more nationally, and a lot of jewels off the beaten track away from the famous and touristy.

We'd miss that if we started going by air again. We mostly don't want to.

<comment><USER7> I once traveled Europe by car with a friend. Some 8000 kilometers, 13 or 14 countries, 1 month. It was magical.

Will never forget the owner of a small camp in rural Spain who didn't spoke a word of English and was sooo excited to see foreigners that he fed us homemade grappa basically until we dropped. His treat of course.

Or the random village on the border of France and Belgium where we had a flat and had to ride our longboards into town and mime to people that we need help. They got us a tow truck from 2 villages over on a Sunday. All without us knowing a word of French or them a word of English.

Don't waste travel time folks. It's the best part of a vacation.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it's exactly these sorts of lucky encounters in tiny restaurant or village, with a few local characters, or the bar lock-in you didn't even know you were invited to etc that stick the longest!

Sure beats 2 hrs in departures. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's nicely written. I have personally always felt traveling is very underrated as a means of education. In my late 30s now and feeling I missed a lot in my 20s. But life moves on.

<comment><USER9> If you don't have kids you can still do it.

Edit in response to replies: Going on vacation with kids is not the same as traveling the world and doing that with the family only works if you're upper class and have no worries about mortgage payments or job security so it's definitely not an option for most people.

<comment><USER10> You can also do it if you do have kids.

Way too often we think about kids as limiting factor. We try to tell them what they should do, while all we need to do is to show them.

<comment><USER11> This. I'm in my 30s, and have two kids. On my 3rd trip of the year as I write this and my wife and are planning trips 4 and 5 before the year is up. First trip of next year is in the works as well.

Is it easy? Absolutely not. It's difficult and at times frustrating, but absolutely worth it.

<comment><USER12> The way I think about it is: kids are difficult at home or abroad. You might as well go on an adventure and do something interesting with them regardless.

I'm Australian, married with three young kids. Earlier this year, we flew to the US, bought an old bus, renovated it cheaply in Walmart carparks and drove across the continent twice. 20+ states over three months, including a lunch in Mexico. Slept in the bus, in motels, etc. Kids are 1, 4 and 6. It was brilliant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> it is metaphorical. (to the people arguing how expensive it is to travel)

very nicely written, but i disagree with it because i believe that we have to look more inward than outward in order to be able to die (not sure how to express that correctly, but i hope you know what i mean).

<comment><USER14> I wonder how many of those commenters didn't even read TFA before commenting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Taking advantage of it. Mid 20s, Moved my stuff to parents house and exploring Asia while working remotely. Sometimes it's lonely and pricey, but its one of a kind opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER16> And lastly hackernews: cross the world infinitely by allowing future generations to turn us into data

<comment><USER17> You are already data. Energy is essentially bits. Matter is an arrangement of information. Biological life and your conscious mind is a temporal phenomenon that arises on the gradient of density.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> To the people saying it's too expensive for most people to travel: you can work and travel simultaneously. Lots of hostels offer room and board in exchange for working there, others pay cash. You can work as a club promoter or a laborer or as a freelance programmer, since this is HN, abroad. I have met people that have been on the road for over 5 years continuously; I assure you they didn't start out with any significant savings.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention travel is almost definitely cheaper than rent in San Francisco.

The real trick is not keeping your apartment while you go travel for a long time.

<comment><USER19> Jesus christ hackernews, not everyone lives in SF

<comment><USER7> Well I do and it crosses my mind often how much I could travel on a $3500/month budget :D

But anywhere you are, foregoing a home base makes travel a lot more affordable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > To find old friends, and find that they're gone

That line almost made me cry.

<comment><USER21> The pain of loss. I know. Your mind always tells how different things could have been if only if you did that one thing differently. I wish I could travel the fifth time to the past and probably change my stupid and cruel ways. If not that at least say sorry to them. I can now say sorry to the image I hold of them in my head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice if you can afford it.

</comment><comment><USER23> tldr; travel the world in your 20s, 30s, 50s, and at the end of your life.

I'd actually change it to 20s, 40s, 60s, and 80s.

<comment><USER17> I'm 40 now and I know nothing.

<comment><USER24> I'm 21 and I know everything. Or at least I think I do...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This feel excessively glib

<comment><USER26> I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is pretentious and pretty bad advice.

Does the author believe most people can afford to quit working for a period of time, let alone afford to travel around the world? Does this author look down upon those who aren't so well traveled, view them as lesser or less deserving?

<comment><USER28> > This is pretentious and pretty bad advice. Does the author believe most > people can afford to quit working for a period of time, let alone afford to > travel around the world?

It's a metaphor.

<comment><USER27> I don't see how this is a metaphor, it seems to be pretty much on-the-face as recommending people travel the world four times.</comment></comment></comment>


Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2003/08/19/loners/index.html

<comment><USER2> Perhaps I am "just" an introvert, and not a loner -- the author _does_ say they aren't the same thing -- but I didn't so much care for the tone of this article and thus will probably not read the book. I much prefer Jonathan Raunch's article, "Caring For Your Introvert": <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch></comment>


Finding The Missing Memristor (Video) - <AUTHOR> http://ee380.stanford.edu/permlinks/Williams.html

<comment><AUTHOR> There have been some problems with the video. If you experience difficulty, sent email to firstname.lastname@example.com. If you find this talk interesting, you may want to check the program for the series at <http://ee380.stanford.edu>.</comment>