Police allow car break-ins to become a Seattle growth industry - <AUTHOR> http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024924914_westneat02xml.html <comment><USER2> I used to commute between Manhattan to Stamford. A 5AM train would take me up and an 8, 9 or 10PM would haul me back. Staying awake for the duration of the return journey was rare. This led to curiosities: going to sleep in Stamford and waking up, four hours later, in Stamford again (Sartre had nothing on this fate) because you slept through arriving and then re-departing from Grand Central. Or waking up phoneless.

I lost my phone a few times. I have a habit of lolling over when dozing on trains. This encourages my polished iPhone to slip out. The Metro-North line tours a wide socioeconomic spectrum. I understand the temptation I was taunting some of my fellow passengers with.

Most of the time the opportunists were savvy enough to turn off the radio. Not always. Once I saw my phone blinking in from Rye. I stopped at their police station and showed the officer my iPad. Without question, we were on our way. The address I pinpointed resulted in a mother subjecting her son to an Inquisition. Nothing came of it. We apologised. Copper suggested we try the house across the street. Embarrassed from the last encounter, I demurred. He walked up to the door.

A young man answered and yes: he had an iPhone. A few minutes later, I was (mentally) $650 richer. (I went back to the lady at the first house with a bottle of wine and the local bookstore's encyclopaedia of steamships—he had boat models in his room).

New York City and State get a lot of shit for our police forces. And yes, we have a high frequency of idiocy. But swinging the other way, towards ineffectual policing—as Seattle appears to have—doesn't create strong societies. +1 New York.

<comment><USER3> I used to take Metro-North from New Rochelle down to Grand Central, and I miss it so much. Four trains an hour during the rush, always arriving within a minute or two of schedule. The 8:03 Amtrak between Baltimore and DC hasn't been on time in two weeks. As for the wide socieconomic spectrum--the only thing that ever bothered me about the crowd on MNR was the drunk suburban kids that'd take the 1am with me Saturday morning. Nothing like coming home from a long day at work and having some 19 year old Westchester brat puke all over the floor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the flip side of the new powers granted to police under laws such as the Patriot Act. Yes, they have more power than ever before to spy on you. No, they won't arrest criminals, even after you have tracked down the criminals yourself. The government needs expanded powers so it can spy on you, not the criminals. Certain classes of criminals are high profile (drug dealers!) and there is a certain prestige in getting them, so the government is happy to go after them. But if we are talking about ordinary criminals, then the government can't be bothered.

This is the flip side of increasing police powers: the police are increasingly immune to criticism, so they are increasingly lazy about going after the kinds of criminals that ordinary people actually care about.

<comment><USER5> > the new powers granted to police under laws such as the Patriot Act. Yes, > they have more power than ever before to spy on you. No, they won't arrest > criminals, even after you have tracked down the criminals yourself. The > government needs expanded powers so it can spy on you, not the criminal

Surely it's possible to use the same database collecting info on Patriot Act violations to sift through and report on petty crimes also, even predict where and to/by whom they might happen? If the police won't do it then surely there's someone out there who could hack into the machines running the algorithms for such terrorism and high profile crime prediction to do the same for car breakins?

<comment><USER6> >If the police won't do it then surely there's someone out there who could hack into the machines running the algorithms for such terrorism and high profile crime prediction to do the same for car breakins?

you were sane right up until you hit NCIS hacker territory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Take care of the small stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself.

 _The broken windows theory is a criminological theory of the norm-setting and signaling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti- social behavior. The theory states that maintaining and monitoring urban environments in a well-ordered condition may stop further vandalism and escalation into more serious crime[1]._

From the article: _There also was no proof who did the smash-and-grab, so even if [the police] had come, it would have been tricky to charge them with anything._

That's hogwash. Possession of stolen property is a criminal offence in Washington State[2].

The crime and disorder in downtown Seattle is shocking, even to people from other big cities[3]. In 2013, Seattle had 2,356 property crimes per 100,000 population[4]. By comparison, New York City had a property crime rate of just 795 per 100,000[5].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)

[2] [http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/possession-stolen- prope...](http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/possession-stolen-property- Washington-State)

[3] [http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021696782_westneat28...](http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021696782_westneat28xml.html)

[4] [http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2013/p...](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2013/preliminary-semiannual-uniform-crime-report-january- june-2013/tables/table-4-cuts/table_4_offenses_reported_to_law_enforcement_by_state_oklahoma_through_wisconsin_2013.xls)

[5] [http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2013/p...](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2013/preliminary-semiannual-uniform-crime-report-january- june-2013/tables/table-4-cuts/table_4_offenses_reported_to_law_enforcement_by_state_montana_through_ohio_2013.xls)

<comment><USER8> Just yesterday in the civic center area here in SF I'm getting a sandwich and this mentally ill (or really high, or both) bum lady walks into the shop and proceeds to howl at the top of her lungs for 10 minutes, dance around the shop, kick down a bunch of seats. Right next to her is a hole in the wall punched by some other mentally infirm person that same day.

Nothing. The staff is used to it, I'm used to it, the other patrons are used to it, we just let them do their thing and hope they don't throw anything at us in the process. This is right on Market St, you'd think the city would be proud of its downtown.

What am I supposed to do as a resident? I'm not a cop, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a psychiatrist, I can't fix this. I'm just a guy who gives away something like half of his income in taxes and it's not clear what's happening to all that cash. If we're going to keep this place in an embarrassing state, I would at least like some of my money back.

<comment><USER9> Are you suggesting that the police need to intervene if someone is howling at the top of their lungs and kicking seats? Did they do any damage?

Your attitude is the reason people with mental health issues often are reluctant to seek help. Because they are stigmatized, and mental health is quickly becoming criminalized.

<comment><USER8> Unnecessary staw man, you're putting words in my mouth, I did not ask for a police intervention or criminalization. I'm happy for this situation to be resolved in whatever most humane and compassionate way possible. I'm in no position to propose solutions, as I don't have any expertise in this field.

I would however love to feel safe when being outside of my apartment, instead of wondering if one of these dozens of visibly infirm people I pass by on the way to anything is about to assault me or do something else completely unpredictable to me.

<comment><USER10> People with a mental health problem are far more likely to be the victims, not perpetrators, of violence.

Most violent crime is not committed by people with a mental illness.

While I appreciate the concern you show for the piss-poor inhumane brutal lack of treatment your country provides to those with a mental illness (despite spending more per capita on health) it'd be nice if you could do it without stigmatising mental ill-health.

<comment><USER11> I appreciate what you're trying to say, but he's not talking about a random sampling of mentally ill people. He's talking about a person that's kicking a bunch of seats around and generally indicating a potential for violence. Whether or not we're talking about mental illness, we're talking about someone that's current _being_ violent.

<comment><USER10> There's a clear extrapolation from that one person being violent[1] to the idea that people with mental illness are in general violent.

> Right next to her is a hole in the wall punched by some other mentally > infirm person that same day.

BadassFractal didn't witness that, but assumes it was done by someone with a mental health problem rather than someone who's just an angry arsehole.

> I would however love to feel safe when being outside of my apartment, > instead of wondering if one of these dozens of visibly infirm people I pass > by on the way to anything is about to assault me

This is directly linking mental ill health to violence, and it's just as abhorrent as linking violent crime to African Americans.

Those visibly infirm people are far more likely to be the victims, not perpetrators, of violence -- even if you remove self-inflicted violence.

[1] to property, not as far as I know to people.

EDIT: [http://depts.washington.edu/mhreport/facts_violence.php](http://depts.washington.edu/mhreport/facts_violence.php)

> \- "Although studies suggest a link between mental illnesses and violence, > the contribution of people with mental illnesses to overall rates of > violence is small, and further, the magnitude of the relationship is greatly > exaggerated in the minds of the general population (Institute of Medicine, > 2006)."

> \- "…the vast majority of people who are violent do not suffer from mental > illnesses (American Psychiatric Association, 1994)."

> \- "The absolute risk of violence among the mentally ill as a group is very > small. . . only a small proportion of the violence in our society can be > attributed to persons who are mentally ill (Mulvey, 1994)."

> -"People with psychiatric disabilities are far more likely to be victims > than perpetrators of violent crime (Appleby, et al., 2001). People with > severe mental illnesses, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or psychosis, are 2 > ½ times more likely to be attacked, raped or mugged than the general > population (Hiday, et al.,1999)."

> The effects of stigma and discrimination are profound. The President's New > Freedom Commission on Mental Health found that, "Stigma leads others to > avoid living, socializing, or working with, renting to, or employing people > with mental disorders - especially severe disorders, such as schizophrenia. > It leads to low self-esteem, isolation, and hopelessness. It deters the > public from seeking and wanting to pay for care. Responding to stigma, > people with mental health problems internalize public attitudes and become > so embarrassed or ashamed that they often conceal symptoms and fail to seek > treatment (New Freedom Commission, 2003)."

<comment><USER12> OK. So now the question is "What can we do to help, given that there's already lots of money sloshing around"?

Rather than lecture on what not to do, what do you propose as steps towards resolving these problems?

<comment><USER10> "don't stigmatise people with a mental illness" is the call to action.

Stigma prevents people getting help, even for mild MH problems that respond well to talking therapy. Stigma increases social isolation and reduces opportunities for work. We know that both of these make mental illness worse.

<comment><USER8> Respectfully, I don't see how this is actionable for me as an individual. Ok, I'm not stigmatizing people with mental illness, now what?

I still have hundreds, if not more people, with mental illness roaming downtown, living on the streets, regularly leaving feces on sidewalks, screaming at passerbys and expressing what appears violent behavior and nothing is being done about it.

<comment><USER10> I can't fix your police or healthcare systems, and I do appreciate that it sucks if you have people behaving unpredictably around you. We do need to remember that if they have a mental illness then they're probably not living on the streets out of choice, and that if they had affordable meds and healthcare you would be seeing a lot less people on the street.

What I can do is to ask you to not assume that violent behaviour is a result of a mental health problem; or to not assume that a person with a mental illness is going to be violent. (Apparently I can do that more politely than I have so far.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Its a stereotypical urban vs suburban vs rural thing. Its only new in the sense of it being hip to live in urban areas. Always been this way.

There has always been a different social contract between the cops and each social class. The cops have no idea why an urban person is calling them because if they're upper class they are rich so they don't care and a normal personal assistant isn't going to go all batman and hunt down thieves, and if they're poor then they have their own ethnic / gang type of ways to fix this in addition to deep seated victim shaming (she was asking for it, what kind of idiot leaves her purse in a car in an urban area, etc). The urban cops just don't know what to think about middle class people, or middle class outlooks on policing.

In the burbs they'd do exactly what the author was expecting, dispatch a squad, take care of business. In a rural area they wouldn't have a crime like this, but something similar would be handled like the burb example. There's a social contract and developed protocols and expectations and it would all be OK.

Not saying its right or wrong, just saying its a fact that pioneers skeletons always end up having arrows sticking outta their backs.

<comment><USER14> I agree with your point that that's the way things go in the city. I've lived in 4 major US cities in my life, and the cops respond to some things and don't respond to others. It's generally a numbers game. I also agree that in the suburbs and rural areas, the numbers work in the favor of the local police.

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean in regards to the the ethnic / gang type way of fixing things in poor neighborhoods.

Also, I'm not sure if you've been to Seattle. I lived there for two years, recently. I wouldn't really call Seattle ethnic, gang-type, or poor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand this story. Why wouldn't the police do anything? If I'm an officer who's motivated by helping others, it's a clear way to do that. If I'm motivated by a desire for justice, easy way to promote that. If I'm motivated by power, I can go take down the thieves and bring them down a notch.

Perhaps one explanation is that the police get enough zany people calling in about enough zany things that they don't take any info from ordinary people seriously because it's that unreliable. But not sure if I even buy this explanation myself.

Anybody with good knowledge of police workings have insight into why things happen like they do in the linked article?

<comment><USER16> The police are motivated by being _safe_ – actually dealing with criminals is dangerous, so the police are motivated to avoid them.

[http://www.cracked.com/article_21830_cops-wont-help- you-7-th...](http://www.cracked.com/article_21830_cops-wont-help-you-7-things- i-saw-as-real-slasher-victim.html)

<comment><USER15> That's a great Cracked article, one of my favorites. But one guy's perspective on a couple of cops in one specific incident is hardly conclusive. If being safety is what motivates you, there are more sensible career paths than policing.

<comment><USER16> But there are no career paths that offer the same amount of power and authority at the lowest level as being a police officer does. That is a powerful attractor for the power hungry, but once they have the power, they have absolutely no incentive to risk their personal safety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a silly op ed piece designed to generate outrage based on a single, biased, anecdotal incident. The Seattle media, from kiro to the stranger, has devolved to this on just about every issue. Whether the issue is crime, urban planning, or bike lanes its much easier to generate their pennies from outrage than actually reporting on a substantive issues. By reading these "stories" we do nothing but reinforce the negative feedback loop.

If single sourced anecdotal evidence is all we need I'll share mine: In the past two years my house has been broken in to once & prowled twice (that I know of). My car has been broken in to twice. My neighbors cars have been broken in to three times, at least. In every incident Seattle PD have been on scene within 7 to 15 minutes. Reports after the fact usually get a single car/officer. In progress has been multiple cars boxing in a sweeping the neighborhood. As I recall canine has come out twice to try and track perpetrators on foot. For the home burglary the responding officer spent about an hour walking the scene, taking photos, and trying to recover prints. Dispatch and responding officers have never been anything less than responsive, courteous, and professional. But that's not enticing link bait, is it?

Edit: The plethora of downvotes without comment are fun. Do you object to my characterization of seattle media as "link bait" or posting my own anecdotal incidents?

For context this is my neighborhood: [http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/24/shooting-suspect- in...](http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/24/shooting-suspect-in-custody- after-standoff-in-south-seattle/) [http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/18/police-arrest- man-f...](http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/10/18/police-arrest-man-for- shooting-which-sent-two-men-to-hospital/)

<comment><USER18> So police kept showing up. Did any of that policing actually solve anything? Sounds like a ridiculously high amount of crime for one person in two years.

<comment><USER17> No. And even if it had led to conviction every time I personally dont believe it would have solved anything either. However the main story is explicitly about our police departments lack of "appropriate" reaction. And so my own anecdote is explicitly about response and reaction, not results.

With regards to the high crime rate maybe Im just lucky. Some of those incidents had overlap, like both my car and the neighbors. It's totaled about 5 calls in the past two years. The city of Seattle does a good job on publishing crime & emergency services data in a timely manner. You're welcome to browse from the original source or a number of third parties. For reference my neighborhood is "Beacon Hill" bordering "Rainier Valley", south of I90. [http://www.seattle.gov/police/crime/onlinecrimemaps.htm](http://www.seattle.gov/police/crime/onlinecrimemaps.htm)

<comment><USER19> This is sure to be an unpopular opinion, but convictions and meaningful sentences would likely have a positive affect. If there are only trivial consequences to crime, then rational actors will be more willing to commit them. If there are bigger consequences, they will be less likely to commit them. Moreover, if the criminal is in jail; there is a period of time they are taken out of circulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You can try to forward links to this article to all the current + future politicians that is running in that area - anyone that is running for City, County, State, Congress - CC a few the reporters in the area and asked for statements from them on see what their responses, CC the head of police in the mailing list also and CC dispatcher's name / email if possible.

From time to time, post their responses on some public forums.

My mom has accident in Sacramento downtown uneven sidewalk once, bruise pretty badly. Her doctor take care of her. I just email the city manager + couple elective officials 's public email addresses. I got 10+ follow up emails from various folks in couple day and the issue was fixed in a few days.

</comment><comment><USER21> If it were a celebrity or any other high-profile citizen, you know they would bring out the SWAT team and the criminals would be locked up for 20 years.

But, when it's a "nobody important" tax paying citizen, then go f-yourself.

Congrats goes out to everyone who voted in the current representatives.

Wonderful job.

<comment><USER22> Do you really believe that voting in team A instead of team B would have helped ordinary citizens?

<comment><USER23> Yes, I believe that our republic is strengthened if, occasionally, "throw the bums out" occurs. Even if it results in "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

<comment><USER24> Not always. See: 2010 Tea Party backlash to Obama.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Seattle has half the cops that some big cities have (20 per 10,000 residents). New York and Chicago have around 40, Boston 33.

[http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police- offi...](http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-officers-per- capita-rates-employment-for-city-departments.html)

<comment><USER26> The level of public safety in a particular city frequently comes down to how much property tax its population is wiling to pay.

<comment><USER27> Property tax in King County is no joke; both percentage-wise and absolute costs. Real estate prices are very high here and taxes are not friendly, either (lack of state income tax is shifted elsewhere).

Spending two gazillion dollars on a stupid tunnel that is already going to cost 2x estimates is just another fine feature of this idiotic bureaucracy in my area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Perhaps this is a also a growth opportunity for a private security firm. Call us, we will use our trained armed personnel to confront the suspects and return your stuff.

I would hope that it would not take too many incidents of private security 'resolving' issues to see that a police force doing its job is a far more preferred solution.

<comment><USER29> I don't think it is legal to use deadly force to retrieve stolen goods, yours or anyone else's. You'd have to staff your firm with off duty cops or something to skirt that law.

<comment><USER30> In some states, you can use deadly force to prevent someone from stealing your stuff.

<comment><USER31> But after they've stolen it you don't get to track them down and use deadly force to get your stuff back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Home Invaders, call all home invaders, Seattle and big City USA.

0.) alleged the Police are out chasing bank robbers and allow car break-in

1.)why important? the new 'cartel' pays extra for your PERSONAL info for medical ID theft.

2.) the meth addicts who are up all night strike your mailbox to make sure they have a complete profile on U.

3.)since your garage door opener or home address allows the HOME INVADERS to get a copy of keys to your home.

4.) Mexican drug cartels have great stories they tell the neighbors, including pesticide pest control, lost cat animal control with uniforms, etc. when a gun is held to the head of your children, you will give up your pin, passwords to online bank accounts and combination number to the secret safe.

5.) USA citizens Trust the Police, especially the Detroit ones who never sent the rape kits to the lab. So, the serial criminals kept raping and home invading.

6.) This pattern is nationwide. Police never use the Internet. In Florida, the popular women fitness center car trunks break-ins target your wallet. Someone keeps an eye on you while you are exercising at the fitness center. The new master keys make it easy to take your WALLET, smartphone, HOME KEYS and even spare set of car keys.

Does this happen during the day in broad daylight, with visitors from out of town driving a 'rental car'?

when is your HOME INVADER going to invade?

</comment><comment><USER33> Car prowl reports are generated by social networks in Seattle. Everything from Facebook groups to community based Twitter accounts and blogs. Most everyone here knows that the Police will do nothing so they have turned to a method that basically tells people when prowl rates are up in their neighborhood. I guess at least then they might have a chance to look up their insurance policy info ahead of potential breakin activity.

</comment><comment><USER34> Washington is a conceal carry friendly state, I wonder how reporting an attempt at a citizens arrest would have changed the situation.

Here in Santa Cruz we have a very high property/lifestyle crime problem, thankfully the PD haven't given up, but the courts have made things here basically catch and release.

The story basically comes down to laziness on the part of the police. Seattle doesn't have the budget problems of Oakland where this same situation has basically been going on for a decade.

<comment><USER23> > Washington is a conceal carry friendly state, I wonder how reporting an > attempt at a citizens arrest would have changed the situation.

I'm a big believer in the Second Amendment. It's not about duck hunting. And in an ideal world what you suggest would be OK.

HOWEVER, we don't live in an ideal world. So IMO concealed carry is now about _personal protection_ and not about retrieving stolen iPhones.

<comment><USER30> "It's not about duck hunting"

Yeah, it's about suppressing slave revolts.

<comment><USER23> It's about a lot of things, not just slave revolts. E.g. the whiskey rebellion:[1]

       [President] Washington responded by sending peace
       commissioners ... while at the same time calling on
       governors to send a militia force to enforce the tax.
       With 13,000 militia provided ...  Washington rode at
       the head of an army to suppress the insurgency

And also to help protect individual rights against an overbearing government. Of course now that we've been providing every small town sheriff with APCs and military weapons, that deterrent effect might no longer be as relevant as it once was.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It seems like a day doesn't go by when I don't read an article like this one and think of NWA's succinct summary of police in America.

</comment><comment><USER36> So 911 honestly believed the thieves were armed and dangerous and refused to dispatch? There's a lawsuit right there.

If they thought the victim was going to get shot, then you should have said, I am going right over there now to 123 Main Street to confront them in so-and-so colored car.

Then you wait and when the police show up at that car THEN you go over and make the theft claim.

Victim was entirely too polite with dispatch.

</comment><comment><USER37> When this happened to my friend in Berkeley CA we called the police and after waiting almost an hour the officer that came didn't even get out of his car, he told us to file a report online. There was a security camera pointed at the lot which he said was "pointless" to try to access.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is the kind of environment that leads to the creation of vigilante brigades and mafia-style syndicates.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wish insurers could pay the direct costs of having state police (I think there's statewide jurisdiction for all law enforcement agencies in WA, but WSP would certainly have jurisdiction), bait cars, and some serious resolution/retribution here.

</comment><comment><USER40> While a sad and interesting story, why is this on HN?

<comment><USER41> Probably the same reason it's making the rounds on Facebook at the moment. All else equal, this kind of website tends towards resharing/retweeting/upvoting identitiarian, political, and outrage type stories. The management does make an admirable effort to nudge it away from that, so a somewhat lower percentage of HN stories are in that category, but it's still quite a lot of them. (Also, it hits the "things of concern to affluent white American urbanites living in the U.S.'s somewhat dysfunctional cities" category, which is somewhat overrepresented here.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm learning Javascript and the MEAN stack right now, and I'm really interested in building a small crowdsourced website for this.

</comment><comment><USER43> The Seattle police lost a lawsuit about the ability to use overwhelming force:

[http://crosscut.com/2014/10/20/law-justice/122409/judge- toss...](http://crosscut.com/2014/10/20/law-justice/122409/judge-tosses-out- officer-lawsuit-against-use-force/)

But they won't use _any_ force against known criminals who are right in front of them.

Could the two be related? Especially because the "non-arrest" policy for break-ins appears to be recent.

<comment><USER30> Telling cops not to use overwhelming force is like telling white people not to use racial slurs, the good ones are 'oh ok' and the others, hoo boy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Call up your local news stations and see if they can put some pressure on the police department?

</comment><comment><USER45> What you do when dispatch refuses to help you? you suddenly remember perp was smoking pot and/or had a gun.

Or you could become an important politician. Couple of years ago whole police force of my country capital city was mobilised because member of parliament wifes car got stolen. Took them an hour to track it down using GSM triangulation (purse with phone in the car).

Guess what happens when you tell cops your car was stolen, but you have active tracker in it and can tell them where it is. Easier to get few big guys and deal with it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER46> Again, the police are never there to help you.

<comment><USER47> I disagree, and I don't think hyperbole furthers the discussion. I've been helped by police in many cities (in America and elsewhere) on several occasions. I've also witnessed harassment, abuse of power, and indifference- fortunately less so than the former.

<comment><USER48> The above commenter stated "The police are never there to help you". as in, that it is not their purpose. Although I have no doubt you have encountered some police that went above and beyond their job description to help you, this does not change the fact that helping you is not their job, or purpose.

<comment><USER49> Many police cars used to have "To protect and serve" painted on their sides. I certainly remember that, although I haven't seen it in years.

No one is saying they expect the police to carry your groceries inside. They are law enforcement officers whose job description is to enforce laws. If they can't/wont' do that because of external factors, then citizens should be told the truth about why that is. Vigilantism comes from a sense of injustice, that the system doesn't work for unknown reasons. Without that transparency, we are left to fill that void in understanding with our imaginations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> What??? I thought that if marijuana was legalized in Washington, that the world would be a better place... Cops will be freed up to deal with "real crime" and people would magically be better citizens...

What could have gone wrong? Nearly all crime rates have gone up.

</comment><comment><USER51> "Help! A van with license plate XXX-123 just shot at a guy in the parking lot here...hold on, what did you say...[muffled sound]...there's a badge on his belt, I think he's a cop from (insert adjacent town). I can still see the van, it just parked down the road at..."

You get the idea. Call it in from the nearest pay phone and leave. Guaranteed response.

I'd only do this if I lived in an area with a bunch of deadbeat cops. In MA our cops do their job without having to be tricked into doing it...the courts on the other hand seem to let everyone off.

</comment><comment><USER52> This article is beyond stupid. The author spends a thousand words or more whining without once mentioning either budgets or civilian oversight of the police force. It's like the policy was created from thin fucking air, for no reason at all! A cursory googling found this:

       In the weeks before Monday's formal unveiling, McGinn released several
       details of his 2012 proposal, which will now be scrutinized by the City
       Council. Councilmembers, who will pass a final plan in November, have
       already indicated they're leery of the mayor's idea to reduce the Seattle
       Police Budget by $2.4 million by keeping 26 sworn officer positions vacant. [1]

Wow, is there a possibility that could be related? I actually don't know; I don't live in seattle and I don't really care. But a minimal amount of effort for his readers would be asking the police chief or PR person why this policy was created.

[1] [http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/McGinn-budget- cuts-11...](http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/McGinn-budget- cuts-112-jobs-deficit-90-mil-thru-2189304.php)

</comment><comment><USER53> I really hate to see blind hatred for the police on HN. It's a tough goddamn job, people, made all the more so by political pressure to improve statistics. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, police are forced to focus on serious crimes and solvable crimes and avoid minor and unsolvable crimes. Nobody wants it to work that way, but departments are hammered when they bring down crime stats.

This story is pretty outrageous, but I understand why cops are leery of having citizens pursue and enforce vigilante justice. This could EASILY have led to a shootout. I have no explanation or excuse why the cops refused to investigate the caller's lead -- and maybe there is no reasonable explanation -- but I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt than insist "police are never there to help you."

<comment><USER54> Blind hatred for police seems to stem from experience. My father said once (after I had a particularly horrible, and unfair besting, by the police) that I had no respect for the police because I had never been in a situation where I had seen heroism, or been helped. The police have never stopped a robber from burgling my house, or stopped a violent crime from happening to me or anyone I know.

The point is, that anecdotally, the police have never appeared to be a positive force around me, except intangibly. They only seem to focus on things I myself, and many of my peers, consider acceptable victimless crimes. They focus on padding revenue by stopping speeding violations, and petty drug offenses.

Largely, police appear to regularly abuse their authority, ignore relevant data, and serve an agenda I am diametrically opposed to. Obviously, this isn't a scientific study, but I think it encapsulates the hatred for police.

Also, there are many instances on youtube and the news, of them either covering for fellow officers, or ignoring basic laws, like speeding, cell- phone use ore petty drugs. They need to wear cameras for objective scrutiny rather than be allowed to BE the law.

EDIT: I should say that of course, there are police officers who work hard, are incorruptible and are genuine upstanding citizens who enforce laws and are just. The simple fact is that a percentage of bad actors can disrupt the flow enough to severely damage an institution if given significant power. See the banking industry for an analogy of this. I do not mean to discount all police, and many do positive things in society.

<comment><USER53> By comparison, have you ever had a really positive experience with the dentist? Like cops, they're there to solve painful problems that cause very unhappy memories. Anything that compels you to visit the dentist (or the police to visit you) is not going to be associated with positive forces.

It's a tough job to recruit for, since so many people hate you:

1) Minorities hate you, since an overwhelming proportion of criminals emerge from our ranks and successful crime prevention means locking up our families and neighbors.

2) Liberals hate you because rappers do, and also everyone knows cops love to frame black people for crimes nobody committed, and if they were committed it was probably by a cis-male white patriarchy.

3) Conservatives hate you, because you're a public employee and an agent of the gubmint that wants to seize everyone's guns and force gay sex on God- fearing Americans.

Unsurprisingly, it's tough to recruit for the job. Plus, a huge number of cops need to go undercover and are thereby recruiting from cultures that don't share wealthier standards of etiquette. And even cops that don't come from rough backgrounds are forced to constantly interact with awful people who understand nothing but violence and rage. Mother Teresa would adopt thuggish behavior after five minutes on the force.

This isn't to say there aren't bad cops, but they're a tiny minority of all cops and largely reflect their communities. Isn't it weird how there are no bad Canadian or Swedish cops? When you aren't faced with hatred and violence all day, it's easier to be chill at traffic stops.

<comment> vezzy-fnord _By comparison, have you ever had a really positive experience with the dentist?_

Not the OP, but yes. All the time, in fact. Then there's also the crucial difference that going to a dentist is a voluntary exchange, whereas being stopped and frisked by police is an unsolicited act of aggression no matter how you put it.

 _...successful crime prevention means locking up our families and neighbors_

Hardly. Locking up families and neighbors is the exact opposite of crime prevention. It's treating the aftermath. Crime prevention should be analogous to preventative medicine: minimizing the possibility of it occurring to begin with.

Police by definition are reactionary agents. They don't have the competence or the will to do anything other than handle aftermaths and create intimidation in a dubiously effective attempt to scare off bad guys.

 _This isn 't to say there aren't bad cops, but they're a tiny minority of all cops and largely reflect their communities._

Pareto principle: 20% of people do 80% of the work, or in this case make most of the difference. It's also the reason why "Not all -ists are like that" arguments don't work: they fail to realize that minorities in an in-group can still be highly influential and destructive.

 _Isn 't it weird how there are no bad Canadian or Swedish cops?_

They aren't typically covered in international media. You don't see any bad Serbian cops too often, either. Do they not exist?

<comment><USER53> "Hardly. Locking up families and neighbors is the exact opposite of crime prevention. It's treating the aftermath. Crime prevention should be analogous to preventative medicine: minimizing the possibility of it occurring to begin with. Police by definition are reactionary agents. They don't have the competence or the will to do anything other than handle aftermaths and create intimidation in a dubiously effective attempt to scare off bad guys."

So... in your opinion, there's no value in removing criminals from the streets because locking them up "is the exact opposite of crime prevention." There is no such thing as a repeat criminal, and the fact that a small number of criminals commit a disproportionate number of crimes is false.

In fact, black and Latino neighborhoods are enriched by the activities of violent felons. Their presence inspires children to study and ensures the safety of women young and old.

I would be very interested to visit your city and see this wonderland.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you stay focused and get s**t done? - <AUTHOR> Over the last few months I've been analysing my coworkers' and my own behaviour at work. I quickly noticed the incredible number of (self) interruptions we encounter during a work day and how this affect our productivity, work quality and more importantly our stress-level. After researching online and reading couple of books I'm now convinced that distractions and interruptions are the root causes of many sufferings at the work place. So convinced that I am now building an app that mixes time management features, immersive soundscapes and distraction blocker to solve this. My question is - do you manage to stay focused at work? If yes how do you personally manage to block distractions and avoid (self)interruptions to do your best work? <comment><USER2> When working I always maintain a portion of focus on main task. Even if someone interrupts me I can easily jump back. I can juggle multiple dev tasks by maintaining multiple clones of repos and a good setup.

Another important thing is to remove interruption you control. I only check email once per day, reject or "forgot" to attend meetings I deem not important. I gave up on some social aspects like small talk or water cooler chats. I would interrupt people if they get sidetracked too much.

I am doing very good as IC but I would never get promoted in current role.

In my opinion the biggest productivity killers in dev project:

      1. Special/overhyped architecture
      2. homemade tools and anachronism
      3. in house frameworks
      4. Lack of testing
      5. Red tape and compliance

</comment><comment><USER3> Once you realize that your life is like a piece of string, with a beginning and an end, yet you never know where you are currently on that string, it's somewhat easier to focus. Bullshit tends to become more obvious and avoidable. If there's a lot of BS around, call out the people spewing it. Either they'll go away, and you'll get more done, or they'll fire you, and you'll get more done.

</comment><comment><USER4> * Set up "office hours" where coworkers can come and ask you questions. Even if you don't actually have an office, this is just a set period of time that you've blocked off for people to visit you at your desk and receive assistance.

* Turn off notifications on Slack, e-mail, etc., and only check those things periodically throughout the day. If you're cruising on some new feature, don't switch over to Outlook. Keep cruising.

* Don't be afraid to say "sorry, I'm in the middle of working on this thing -- I will follow up with you later." You are the only protector of your time. Everyone else will steal as much as you allow them to steal.

* Wear headphones. People are less likely to interrupt when you wear them.

</comment><comment><USER5> I stay focused and get things done by cultivating an environment that enables me to do so. I'd imagine the environment is different to every person. Within the context of working in any organization, there's only so much you can change. Consequently, creating that environment may or may not be possible within certain organizations. For example, speaking personally, but autonomy in my work keeps me motivated, focused, and delivering much more than I would otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> What does your environment look like? Any special tips?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone that gets in the way of you reaching your goals is not your teammate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe there is also clearly a lack of education at the workplace (at least mine) on distractions and interruptions. I don't think people want to annoy me, it's just pure ignorance. Or maybe it's my responsibility to protect my attention and my time. Not theirs.</comment></comment>


Do modern tech companies ever move to mainframes? - <AUTHOR> In my mind, mainframes are associated with either:
1. Old software
2. Large not-tech companies who outsource their IT department.
Do any modern tech companies actually migrate to mainframes? <comment><USER3> I've never heard of one doing so. I'd attribute it to a few things: 1) modern tech companies already have a workforce that's familiar with the cloud and modern technologies. They're unlikely to have many employees with Cobol experience (both coding experience and general Cobol interaction) 2) few of these companies want to be beholden to IBM and the like for their mainframes. 3) Many of these tech companies have requirements for near real-time streaming whereas Cobol's wheelhouse is batch processing 4) Reputation that it's difficult AND expensive to keep cobol/mainframe divisions well-staffed as there aren't many new developers coming onboard and many of the existing developers are retiring 5) Relative uncoolness of Cobol

<comment><USER4> Minor note, CICS (and impls with screen divisions) implement psuedo-stateful interactions similar to http with tempoary storage queues in place of sessions. The 3270 client is textual as opposed to graphical like html of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Only when someone is extremely stupid (or has a stake in the outcome) and falls for the marketing bullshit like the following: [https://www.ibm.com/it- infrastructure/z](https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z) (warning - <USER2> content)

</comment><comment><USER6> Once you had database clusters, it became possible to run a bunch of machines rather than one giant machine. That turned out to be less expensive for most people. The machines were cheaper, because they could be commodity machines, because each individual machine didn't have the insane reliability requirements that mainframes have.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, MPI and HDF5 are still a thing and processing on a supercomputer is still orders of magnitude faster than the usual distributed approaches.

However applications would likely be science, engineering and finance.

All you have to do is go to a vendors page and check out the flagship customers.

</comment><comment><USER8> For me, the mainframe is a big expensive box. Vertical scaling is still a thing. Most RDBMS work best on big boxes. Some Java applications would require hundreds of GB of ram. There are use-cases for mainframes but people prefer new shiny Kube clusters.

</comment><comment><USER9> What's the difference between a mainframe and 'the cloud'?

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure you're being facetious, but I'll answer anyway for anyone reading this that doesn't get it.

There was a great article a few years back talking about how mainframes and the cloud were similar architectures with a focus on the challenges of multi- tenancy and focused on the fact that the cloud companies were hiring some people who had helped develop mainframes. For the life of me, I can't find it now (all my searches just bring up articles about migrating mainframes to the cloud).

Some of the main differences is that mainframes had an integrated coding environment (and usually no dev/staging/prod separation). Probably more important is that mainframes are usually built to be highly reliable (hardware failures are rare), whereas most cloud providers are using commodity servers that are meant to fail often (If you're using AWS at any sort of scale, you've probably seen a server go down because of a hardware failure). With mainframes you're typically paying the cost upfront (CapEx) and amortizing the cost over time (with mainframes being expected to last 10+ years?) vs the OpEx cost of the cloud.

<comment><USER9> I have read some similar article(s), I think.

Pricing models don't necessarily rely on the underlying technology, IMO. (Consider the ol' paid-for vs vendor-bundled browsers.)

I'm not sure whether reliability makes for different categories either: different OSes have different focus on reliability, but are all OSes, after all. Definitely makes for different use-cases, though!

I also wonder whether the integrated coding environment and staging aspect primarily reflects general developments in coding workflow. That is, whether they are an incidental or intrinsic difference. It would probably have been much easier to make up my mind on that if I had any mainframe experience.

Categorization depends on how you draw the lines, and I definitely have a bias towards assuming hyped-up stuff is probably less interesting or new than the hype makes it out to be. Though, I haven't made up my mind whether to consider mainframes and 'the cloud' different instances of the same thing.

Thanks for the reply, interesting stuff!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mohsen the Doorman – Half Slack, Half RaspberryPi - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/optima-blog/the-doorman-eea38815cc4f#.hsqe51sdc <comment><USER2> Maybe the new tasks will be more interesting, but, really: what about duplicating the working keys? Would that really take more than six hours?

I don't mean to be rude, but to me it seems an abuse of technology to solve a problem lying somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Author Here: If you have ideas for what we could get Mohsen to do next, we would love to hear them. Please drop us a comment

<comment><USER4> It'd be great if you could alert people who might have a meeting with that person (at the gate) or who are working with that person on a project that they have arrived. Awesome project.</comment></comment>


Columbus Was (Not) the First to Cross The Atlantic - <AUTHOR> http://lostislamichistory.com/columbus-was-not-the-first-to-cross-the-atlantic/

<comment><USER2> "The important part of this account is the existence of an Arabic speaker among the natives, indicating that there must have been more unrecorded contact between the Arab world and the Americas."

Or the account is incorrect. Just like Coronado's "Seven Cities of Cibola" was incorrect, or how Plato's allegory of Atlantis was treated as history. Or perhaps how the Kensington Runestone "proves" that Scandinavian explorers made it to Minnesota.

"Early Spanish explorers and pirates recorded abandoned cities in Brazil that had inscriptions identical to the language of the Mandinka (the people of Mali). More inscriptions in the Mandinka language were found in the United States as well."

Um. No.

Yes, there were abandoned cities. But no, they weren't colonized from Africa any more than space aliens helped built the pyramids. It isn't even internally consistent. In less than 200 years, and even with 2,000 ships (giving what, 100K people?), how did they built cities in Brazil and get up to the US. Did they walk through the Darien gap and the Aztec Empire, or did they have boats that could make it all the way there, but not back to Mali?

This web site is mythologizing history to bolster support for Islam. There's no need to fake history. Real Islamic history is impressive enough that it doesn't need to be tarnished by lies.</comment>


How is the Internet changing the way you think. - <AUTHOR> http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge310.html

<comment><USER2> Don't be put off by the verbiage/newsprint up top. The meat is available here below from 167 contributors:

<http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_print.html#responses>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, won't repeat next time.</comment></comment>


Sam Simon, Who Helped Shape 'The Simpsons,' Dies at 59 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/arts/television/sam-simon-who-helped-shape-the-simpsons-dies-at-59.html

<comment><USER2> What a great article. And this was my favorite part. After making many millions of dollars from The Simpsons...

"Mr. Simon put his money toward his passions. He started a foundation that trained dogs to help disabled people, including veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he gave generously to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, among other groups."

<comment><USER3> An observation on what the super-rich never do for their legacy:

There's something that super-rich individuals can do that vastly richer governments, organizations, and companies _can 't_ do. They can make long shot bets. That is, they can invest in something that needs a large concentration of capital (an idea, research, enterprise, discovery) that carries very long odds but could have massive world-changing effects if it succeeds. Those are things that neither governments (too many people need to agree) or companies (no short- or medium-term profit) can normally do.

I'm avoid giving examples here because it'd detract from the point. Besides, there's an infinite number of such long shot bets.

It's sad and ironic that people are more risk averse with what happens to the money _after_ they pass away than when they're alive.

<comment><USER4> Yeesh, that's a high horse you're on. He donated _his_ money to causes that _he_ finds important, as you say. It's not always about the "big picture"; the little things can change people's lives in the here and now, and that's worth something. The world has room for both sorts of philanthropy.

<comment><USER3> > _It 's not always about the "big picture"._

No, it's _never_ about the "big picture".

High net-worth people almost never leave their money to a "space shot" type of endeavor.

<comment><USER5> So Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson don't count? Those last three are literally going to space.

How fitting to see so much horse-beating from someone called shutupalready.

<comment><USER3> The topic was what people leave their money to (after death). All of the people you mention are alive.

<comment><USER6> Is that important?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I cannot recommend the interview he did on marc marons podcast enough

[http://youtu.be/2lNgzZP4SQA](http://youtu.be/2lNgzZP4SQA)

</comment><comment><USER8> I ran against Sam for senior class president in high school. The top way to campaign in our school was with one large poster. I was, to put it mildly, outclassed.

I actually outcampaigned him in some other ways. It didn't matter. His poster smashed me. :) The guy was a serious cartoonist even then.

R.I.P.</comment>


What's Your Mental Model Of Innovation? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/02/14/whats-your-mental-model-of-innovation/ <comment><USER2>
      Conventional financial measures such as maximizing shareholder value are
      subordinated to the new bottom line [delighting customers]. Profit is a result,
      not a goal.

I like this way of expressing it.

      "the fear of cannibalization or disruption of one's self just melts away".

They mention Apple as exemplifying this, and it's true: many people who buy an iPhone don't need an iPod. (Though I can't see iPads cannibalizing iPhones in turn.)</comment>


Whistle-blower post secret report to 4chan but users dismiss as 'fake and gay' - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/spy-agency-whistle-blower-posted-top-secret-report-4chan-users-called-it-fake-gay-1514330

<comment><USER2> > implying this is neither fake nor gay</comment>


7 years ago broke my back.Is now inspiration for my first iPhone game - <AUTHOR> http://www.brokenbackgames.com

<comment><USER2> Can you talk a little bit about what the development process was like? How did you pick the developers you worked with, what did the iterations look like, what did you provide them, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure - i started with stick figure drawings whihc I put on 99designs to crowdsource design. These design solidfied vision and allowed me to put together a reasonable tech design doc . I then put on elance.com and interviewed my favourite three on skype. Iterations used design assets so always looked the same but gameplay changed so much and a lot of things were descoped to save money

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting! Will it be on Android too?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers for comment. Only iPhone at the moment unfortunately. If successful then will look at expanding</comment></comment>


What does - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> ... and how do it be?</comment>


Thing (listening device) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_(listening_device) <comment><USER2> Invented by Leo Theremin, no less.

<comment><USER3> More specifically - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin#Espionage>

Him inventing an infrared microphone in _mid 1940s_ is no less impressive than The Thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is this "predecessor to RFID technology" business scattered all over the place in this article? RFIDs have a set, small amount of data that can be read off of them, while this is a remotely-powered audio transmitter.

<comment><USER5> They aren't talking about data, they are talking about power transmission: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_energy_transfer#Electr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_energy_transfer#Electrodynamic_induction_method)

<comment><USER4> Fair enough - thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please review Twollars - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN Members,
I've been here on HN for almost a year now and time and time again I see the most valuable comments come by on Ask HN Review posts. To be honest, they are by far my favorites.
I am very happy to now be posting my own. Last month my co-founder and I launched Twollars. Twollars is a Twitter thank you currency. Simply by tweeting "Give 5 Twollars @username" - there is no registration - you can send Twollars to someone. (You can also use any of the other commands - here is a list on our Wiki with all the commands we are experimenting with: http://thinktank.twollars.com/wiki/71163)
Where we hope to do a lot of good is by allowing people to donate their Twollars to a charity. The charity in turn is sponsored by a company who pledges to donate the real amount in hard currency.
We are also very close to launching multi-currencies. Which will allow anyone on Twitter to start their own currency. The thoughts behind this are to allow people to setup their own community currency (similar to many open money concepts that are being tried).
URL: http://Twollars.com
Any feedback is really appreciated!
Thank you so much,
Eiso & Mac <comment><USER3> Eiso,

Twollars is a cool idea. How do you bridge the thing? Real money vs Twollar money. I mean, do you actually donate money when someone donates money? or is it just a service where you allow others collect donations?

P.S: I've been noticing you've been using using Twollars a lot yourself. Did you launch it from a cafe? I think I saw a pic of you in a green shirt and a laptop :) I've been spying on Twollars for a while LOL :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Akash,

The way it works is that companies who are interested in donation money to a charity and getting visibility on Twitter can chose to sponsor a charity. So then if for example a 1000 Twollars are donated, the company sponsoring the charity will donate a $1000 Dollars.

Yup, I had launched it from a netbook in a hotel lobby/restaurant in London since I was traveling at the time and we really wanted to get it out there (someone posted a Twitpic of that). It was a great experience and got to meet up with some great people via Twitter. One guy even found a problem in the code and averted disaster.

All the best,

Eiso

<comment><USER4> OK, so the actual transaction here, isn't Twitter users donating to the charity, it's Twitter users donating publicity to a company which is donating to charity - correct?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool - I recently thought about the same thing, when I wondered what happened to "kudos". Hope it works out for you - the idea with the charities is great!

</comment><comment><USER6> Eiso mentioned you but I never made the connection. It's a great idea! I work with a few charities who are looking to leverage social media to help them through these tough times. I need to talk with one of you about this more. BTW I know I don't comment here often, but I read you posts regularly and share your link's as well. Congrats, I have a feeling this is going to take off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds great! Just drop me a mail at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER6> I will in a couple of days. I would love to be able to mention it at their next meeting. I'll fill you in with all the details! BTW, I love this blog

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> whats stopping the Charity-Water to make a fake twitter account and do Give 1000000 Twollars @username.

Also, you need to give an incentive for the businesses to use this, instead of sending the $$$ directly. For that you'll need to build up your core group of users, and then tweet stuff like "IBM has donated $15,000USD to _____ Charity thanks to your efforts"

<comment><AUTHOR> Every Twitter account has a starting balance of 50 Twollars. So if you would tweet that - you would get a message saying you don't have sufficient balance.

The incentive for the businesses is exactly what you're mentioning - <USER2> visibility on Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You're using the @ symbol incorrectly.</comment>


How I took my web-app to market in 3 days thanks to common services in the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.tawheedkader.com/p=210

<comment><USER2> A lot of the comments here are kudos to the dev for his app - which is awesome. But what people are missing is how powerful services like Heroku can be for devs. I have students that I mentor building projects with Heroku and Rails, and it's amazing to see what they can do. Yes, prices go up when you need to scale out, but getting an idea out in front of people and seeing if people will _use_ the product is so important. Spending weeks implementing a difficult payment gateway and setting up a scalable infrustructure only to find out that nobody cares about what you built is so costly compared to banging something out in a weekend.

In 3 days you can prove it. I built <http://rendera.heroku.com> in 1 day and launched it. People liked it enough to convince me to add all sorts of fun things to it. It still runs on the free plan, but if nobody liked it, I could have found that out and moved on to something else.

To the OP, nice job!

<comment><USER3> That's pretty darned neat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like it but outlook has templates and Gmail has canned responses. Email tracking is nice but it's commonly used by your customers and it's a flawed metric as images are not always displayed (and counted).

It's a nice piece of work. Please update us after a month with how it's going.

<comment><AUTHOR> The beauty of this is a) I get what I need for my primary business because Outlook and Gmail wasn't good enough and b) even if NO ONE else likes this, I've only lost 3 days, which I'm OK with.

I'll do a reflection on this in about a month or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Inspiring! A question: How much did it cost (in dollars, not sweat) to get these services started, and how much is it monthly?

I'm surely off-base, but I _feel_ like it "should" all be free for something getting started (ie with very little traffic), because it would be a great way for all these services to get many initial users, some of which will become paying.

 _EDIT_ answers:

Heroku: free for dev, $15/month for production (it seems?) <http://heroku.com/pricing#blossom-1-0>

Sendgrid: free for 200 emails/day <http://sendgrid.com/pricing.html>

Charify: free for 50 customers <http://chargify.com/pricing-and-signup/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Quick feedback - it was quite hard to spot a price without registering. I usually go to "sign up" page to see all of the packages, yet in this case the only place to find a price is to scroll down the front page and find it buried there after a few screens of text.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice copy on your site. It appears you are a good marketer :).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but I actually consider myself to be a TERRIBLE marketer. However, I've been doing a lot of reading and learning around this and even tried to distill what I've learned into principles around effective landing pages: [http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/03/9-principles-behind- an-e...](http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/03/9-principles-behind-an-effective- landing-page/)

Your positive feedback is encouraging, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe with a longer development time you could have built something that would incur lower overhead over the long term. Heroku and Chargify become quite expensive if your business grows to any significant degree. Instead, building directly on top of the Paypal API and deploying to a hosting provider that will not bankrupt you as you scale would be a more optimal approach -- you won't get your site up in 3 days but with higher margins you will likely have fewer regrets down the road.

<comment><USER9> You can always reduce overhead after you gain some traction.

<comment><USER10> The principle is good. But is it really painless to change payment API and hosting platform?

<comment><USER11> That is a "good pain to have" as it were, and the reduced friction gets you iterating more quickly.

<comment><USER12> I call those "Maserati Problems", as in, "I'll think about how to deal with that as I drive around in my Maserati."

<comment><USER13> Eric Ries calls it Technical Debt

<comment><USER11> Technical Debt is different. Technical Debt slows future velocity for feature development / changing to fit customer needs. That you are "leaving money on the table" with these choices does not impede feature progress at all.

<comment><USER13> Thanks. Can you please elaborate with an example? :)

<comment><USER14> Here's an example for you:

I use Slicehost, which is rather more costly than similar VPS options such as Linode. This costs me something on the order of $2,000 a year -- but it works, almost flawlessly. With sufficient time available, I could theoretically migrate to Linode (or EC2 or wherever) and shave off ~40% of that bill, but I don't _have_ to. There will never be a day where I say "Aww effity I wanted to develop features or do marketing today but I can't because if I don't get off Slicehost right the heck now I will suffer angst-inducing downtime."

Technical debt, on the other hand, looks something like this: the printing code in the Java version of my software is an offense against God, and I _cannot_ incorporate new features into it without a complete rewrite. No kidding -- I want to be able to put a title on those bingo cards, but it architecturally just will not support that. It is a mess of kludges and a class hierarchy descending from FailFactoryServiceLocator, held together by duct tape and prayers. The fact that it functions at all is a miracle.

That is technical debt: I would _like_ to incorporate new features my customers want into that version of the program, but I just _can't_ until I rip its rotten heart out and start over. That is, in fact, so much technical debt that I'm probably just going to End Of Life the sucker and concentrate on the web version and my new projects rather than deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice work!

Since you're already letting people login with google, it might make it easier for people to pay if you accepted payment via google checkout.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that guys, I was trying to write a little script to auto-post and it had a bug.

Correct link: [http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/04/how-i-used-heroku- chargi...](http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/04/how-i-used-heroku-chargify-and- sendgrid-to-take-my-web-app-to-market-in-3-days/)

<comment><USER16> Maybe you can you put in a redirect using mod_rewrite

<comment><AUTHOR> done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> After reading the blog post, I decided to hook up my little web app that I have been working on to use SendGrid. Although I had some trouble configuring it to work with Godaddy's Shared Hosting, I quickly took advantage of their email api. This is a pretty neat service and having 200 emails/day for me to use is great for testing.

Thanks for the insights and highlighting this service :)

</comment><comment><USER18> nicely done! this post inspires me to take action and create some of the ideas i had, seeing that they can be done so quickly.

</comment><comment><USER19> For some reason, the link is here: [http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/04/how-i- used-heroku-chargi...](http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/04/how-i-used-heroku- chargify-and-sendgrid-to-take-my-web-app-to-market-in-3-days/)

</comment><comment><USER20> HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found

</comment><comment><USER21> Not trying to be a jerk but your logo is quite similar to Socialwok.com

<comment><AUTHOR> dude... my "logo" is two pieces of text because I was too lazy to create a real logo

<comment><USER22> He's talking about the BrainTrust.io logo in the sidebar. They do look quite similar, though it's not relevant to this thread at all.</comment></comment></comment>


Minneapolis Confronts Its History of Housing Segregation - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/business/2018/12/minneapolis-single-family-zoning-housing-racism.html?via=homepage_recirc_engaged <comment><USER2> San Francisco please pay attention

> abolish parking minimums for all new construction, and allow high-density > buildings along transit corridors

<comment><USER3> We're trying! Here are two takeaways from this week:

"Minimum parking requirements on their way out in SF" [http://www.sfexaminer.com/minimum-parking-requirements- way-s...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/minimum-parking-requirements-way-sf/)

"The basic plan: upzoning near transit and jobs" [https://www.vox.com/policy- and-politics/2018/12/7/18125644/s...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2018/12/7/18125644/scott-wiener-sb-50-california-housing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a native of Minneapolis, I support the gist of this policy.

But I also have knowledge of the zoning history of the city, and the narrative in this story seems incredibly wrong. Minneapolis actually had "Manhattan" zoning in many areas up until the late 1980s. There had been very little new development in the prior 20 years, so the code became completely unrealistic. Local community groups pushed for zoning reform to preserve the as-built environment and communities.

Now those well-meaning progressive 1980s folks are being portrayed as "segregationists", despite the fact of who they actually were. They were trying to save their neighborhoods, but I guess every hero becomes a villain.

And, without even getting into it, Minneapolis was built up when the state was 97.5% white people. You could maybe find a class angle to this, but come on.

<comment><USER5> For most of the 20th century, parts of Minneapolis and surrounding areas had racially restrictive deed covenants which prevented the sale or rental of property to people of color. So, those neighborhoods they were trying to save may have a legacy of structural racism.

Examples and interactive map here: [https://www.mappingprejudice.org/](https://www.mappingprejudice.org/)

<comment><USER6> Such covenants were made unenforceable and rendered moot in 1948.

[http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1948-Shelley-v- Kra...](http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1948-Shelley-v-Kramer.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems very exciting. It will be fun to follow it's effects in the future.

</comment><comment><USER8> This issue came up in Seattle, where I read that they are also going to do some rezoning making it possible to replace houses with small multi-family dwellings. I'm sure it will be controversial in the same way there.

</comment><comment><USER9> An amazing and radical new direction for housing. Maybe now people will find room to build tiny homes and cottages because they don't feel a need to wallow in excess from (disappearing) box stores.

</comment><comment><USER10> We need this in the Bay area suburbs... badly

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd like some data that supports the claim that the zoning was racist by design.

Minneapolis is a farming transit hub that expanded organically. I don't understand the underlying claims of racism here.

<comment><USER12> There is a book, a mapping project, and a museum exhibit all linked in the first couple paragraphs of TFA. I encourage you to look at them as a jumping- off point into the 40 or 50 years of accumulated historical scholarship on the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's actually more racist, the single-family zoning, or the welfare subsidies tearing apart minority families in the first place?

<comment><USER14> What is your proposed mechanism here?

<comment><USER15> It looks like a 'what-about-ism'.</comment></comment></comment>


Your Thoughts Can Release Abilities beyond Normal Limits - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/your-thoughts-can-release-abilities-beyond-normal-limits/

<comment><USER2> Quote "There seems to be a simple way to instantly increase a person's level of general knowledge. Psychologists ..."

Psychologists? In a science journal? When will people learn? The claim ("a simple way to instantly increase a person's level of general knowledge") is absurd, and the source is predictable.

I worry about Scientific American's future when they descend to printing absurd, contentless pop-psychology articles.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you satisfied with Btrfs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Used btrfs with Concourse CI on med/large AWS EC2 instances with local RAID SSDs worked great. Every few months the installation would get hosed if allowed to run low on resources. The DB was postgresql on RDS.

Just ended up saving an image with instance data for secrets and two scripts. One to init the RAID and the other to init Concourse. The DB could start from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why use it instead of zfs on Linux?

</comment><comment><USER4> short answer: yes :)</comment>


This is what a Google server looks like (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html <comment><USER2> "Google has patents on the built-in battery design,"

In 1992 we built PCs for a low noise astronomy camera with the PSU replaced by a 12V car battery to avoid the noise of a switchmode PSU

<comment><USER3> I think the google patent is on their implementation of the battery design not _All_ implementation of built-in battery design.

<comment><USER4> I don't think Google has it's own battery design.

<comment><USER5> Why are either of you hypothesizing about publicly available data? Read the patent application yourself: [http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Se...](http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220080030078%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080030078&RS=DN/20080030078) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> this video

Google container data center tour <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRwPSFpLX8I>

provide even more details on the cooling system etc.

and yep that's NOT an april fool

<comment><USER7> I have read this article when it first appeared on Hacker News: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542531> and I was in doubt whether to believe it or write it all off as April's Fool joke. The design looks interesting and reasonable, but... who releases serious information on April,1 really?! If they were actually serious, I was sure they would release this a day later or earlier.

Now, quite some time later, I read this again and I am not convinced by the article. The comments also do not offer evidence that this is not a joke. Nor the video that you posted, until the second part. In the first part all it shows are some containers and industrial machinery; nothing indicates that there are really servers in those containers or all of this stuff is actually Google's. Now after the second part I believe that it all was for real, after all.

I wonder if Google is playing with us on purpose, releasing the information on April,1. Or Maybe they just don't care a single bit about such things?

<comment><USER8> Well, gmail was announced on April, 1, with an unheard of 1 Gig of storage, so I think Google likes to do this sort of thing on purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fascinating! That's an off-the-shelf SLA (sealed lead acid) battery like many UPS/alarm systems use, which need replacement at least every 3 years (or much sooner if they are deeply discharged).

But I would happily pay $2, even $5 more for that feature on a motherboard.

<comment><USER4> it seems to be connected directly to PSU?

<comment><USER10> From the article, the motherboard only requires one 12V input only, instead of the usual array of voltages (+-5, +-12, +3.3, etc). Having charging circuitry to keep the battery operational (trickle charge) and being able to provide power to the motherboard when mains power fails is mostly straightforward and cheaper in this case. Not much different from what you would find on a regular UPS, but removes a few conversion steps - (DC 12V) ->(110/220V AC)-> DC - improving efficiency and reliability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yep. This is old news. But more recently other companies have also decided to implement on-board batteries on their custom servers, most notably Facebook:

[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/11/27/shoul...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/11/27/should- servers-come-with-batteries/)

And yes, this story was real, despite the April 1 date. I attended the event, and saw the server. It definitely seemed odd to schedule a technology unveiling on April 1, but Google apparently launched Gmail on April 1 as well.

<comment><USER12> That's getting kind of sad if we have to flat-out stop using the internet on 4/1 from now on because we can't believe a single page that loads.

<comment><USER13> I avoid the net on 4/1. It's like every site is taken over by the "Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays" lady.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So given the amount of research that Google pump into getting the best components for the job, are we to take it that all their testing has concluded Hitachi hard disks are better than the alternatives?

<http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.html>

<comment><USER15> "Hitachi manufacturers the safest and most reliable hard drives, according to the Storelab study. Of the more than 200 Hitachi hard drives received, not a single one had failed due to manufacturing or design errors."

Study: A Look At Hard Drive Reliability In Russia (August 13, 2010) [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-reliability- storelab...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-reliability- storelab,2681.html)

// WD and especially Seagate (Barracuda 7200.11 had major firmware problems) failed miserably. 500Gb or bigger drives were the worst for all manufacturers. Samsung was almost as good as Hitachi.

"Storelab notes that read/write head failure is somewhat characteristic for WD drives. Failures primarily occur as a result of physical impact or overheating (WD heads can be sensitive at temperatures above 45°C). Western Digital's construction makes drives particularly vulnerable to shocks and pressure. Unlike other manufacturers, WD does not secure the hard drive axle with a separate screw to the drive cover. "

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Google has patents on the built-in battery design, "but I think we'd be willing to license them to vendors," Hoelzle said."

Can you patent a device you use as part of your business but don't sell? I don't think you could get away with calling it a business practice, and I don't think you could get away with protecting a patent on a device you never try to market.

<comment><USER17> > Can you patent a device you use as part of your business but don't sell?

Yes; I can't think of any familiar examples offhand, but it happens a lot. As a baby lawyer I wrote a patent application for an automatic pizza-making machine, invented by the owner of a mom-and-pop restaurant, who IIRC never marketed the machine.

> I don't think you could get away with protecting a patent on a device you > never try to market.

In the U.S. (and most other industrialized countries AFAIK), the patent laws don't require a patent owner to market, or even try to market, a patented invention. If the patent owner was just trying to keep others out so that _no one_ was using the invention, a court would probably take that into account in determining (i) whether to grant a injunction against further infringement by the defendant and (ii) what a reasonable royalty would be for the defendant's infringement. But that wouldn't affect the validity of the patent itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A patent, really? My laptop has a battery too.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know how the Gigabyte mobo outputs 5 volts? Is that a custom hardware module or part of the mobo?

</comment><comment><USER20> That's from 2009, I'm sure they've since switched to different motherboards / cpus.

<comment><USER21> I'm sure most of their operations are still running on this hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Old news

</comment><comment><USER23> Old article.

<comment><USER24> Well you could have linked to the original discussion :)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542531>

I think the link may have changed which is why it got past HackerNews's dupe mechanism.

<comment><USER25> I believe that the dupe detector only compares against stories in memory, so old links that haven't been loaded in a while will not be caught.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there an actual reason why you guys don't think it's an April fools prank? I'm reading thru the comments but couldn't find one :-z

</comment><comment><USER27> This April Fool's prank is soooooo old..

</comment><comment><USER28> Talk about not hacker news; this article is from 2009 and the server is from 2005.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, totally irrelevant. Today's servers are powered by pixie dust and rainbows instead of batteries and circuit boards. I learned nothing from this article!

<comment><USER28> I learned from this article _the first time it was posted_ ; I have learned nothing further from the following N reposts. If we allow "new to you" articles on the front page it will be filled with old stuff.

<comment><USER30> A certain amount of churn is required to continually inform new users. Yes, too much causes the older users to leave from boredom. To little, however, and the newer users cannot gain an appropriate grasp of the common knowledge expected, so references and assumed points will pass them by in conversation.

The other option is the one humans generally end up with. Knowledge barriers between generations. There would need to be different versions of the site every year or two so that new users could go through their learning period uninterrupted, and older users could be secluded to their advanced topics. This makes it harder for older users to educate newer users, and leads to rehashing of debates once closed. The older users will peter out over time, while the newer will waste time spinning wheels they could easily have been advised were explored and pointless.

Complaints are only needed if there is an excess of redundant articles. The occasional rediscussion simply keeps ideas alive and flowing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why 1 && 2 == 2 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chewxy.com/2013/07/19/why-1-2-2/

<comment><USER2> In C++, << has higher precedence than &&, so in effect what is being done is

        (cout << 1) && 2;

...which is not an error, since the result of operator<< is an std::ostream, which is convertible to bool. Therefore operator&&(bool, bool) is invoked but the result is, of course, discarded.

Disambiguating the expression with parentheses should output 1 in every case.

<comment><USER3> I wrote the article (didn't plan on HN traffic, thanks Boyter). I've fixed it with your comment.

Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For Python, a common idiom is to do this:

condition and truecase or falsecase

See "Boolean operations" and "Conditional expressions":

[http://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#boolean-...](http://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#boolean- operations)

<comment><USER5> ah! I've been trying to write Python lately (I'm more of a Rubyist) and the internet suggested:

truecase if condition else falsecase

which is so inside-out that it hurts.

It didn't occur to me to use the boolean style - I guess I think of that as a perl idiom, and assumed that it would get sneered at in py-land

<comment><USER6> I've never seen:

      $CONDITION && $TRUE_CASE || $FALSE_CASE

used as a Perl idiom in lieu of:

      $CONDITION ? $TRUE_CASE : $FALSE_CASE

I can't claim to have worked with Perl much prior to Perl 5.6/5.8 though, so it may have been an older idiom (though I doubt it as one of Perl's influences was Awk, which also has a C ternary operator, IIRC).

That said, using truthy/falsey values in Python doesn't seem super common. I surprised a couple of interviewers by doing that while implementing some tree manipulation functions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How did he get an expression that shouldn't involve any memory references to segfault?

<comment><USER3> I suck at C?

<comment><USER8> He probably thought pointers are the only kind of variables and that he needed to dereference them. I imagine something like

        int *a = 1, *b = 2;
        printf("%d\n", *a && *b);

Either that or he used `%s` as a format specifier. That seems more probable.

Edit: Or, as I just realised the people below me meant,

        printf(a && b);

<comment><USER3> Nah mate, it's just some compiler flag that I didn't turn on (don't know which. my gcc-fu is fail since it's been really a long time since I touched C)

<comment><USER8> Just for my curiosity's sake, would you mind posting the code you tried that segfaulted?

<comment><USER9> Yeah I'm dying to see the original C code but it isn't on the page anywhere, AFAICT.

From the article, about the C version: "Mine hadn't worked, which I suspect is some sort of compiler issue."

Yeah I'm going to go out on a limb and proclaim that there's no way this was due to a compiler "issue" in gcc. Not that gcc is perfect, but there's no way it is barfing on one of these handful of line programs that does nothing but some logical operations and printfs.

<comment><USER3> Nope. The answer is still I suck at C.

Parts of the blog post was written late last night (about 3 am), and parts of it was written on my commute to work. I tried to rewrite what I wrote last night and tried to compile it on my work computer, and all I got were warnings.

So... can't recreate. Sorry

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Once you understand short-circuit evaluation, it opens up certain coding tricks.

The line "[operation] or [error condition]" will attempt the operation on the left. If it succeeds, the program continues on the next line, ignoring the part about the error condition. If it fails, the error condition will execute instead. This might be something like "open file or die".

Likewise, "[operation] and [success condition]" will attempt the operation on the left, and if it succeeds, perform the operation on the right. This might be something like "read input and process it", which will perform the (possibly expensive) processing step only when input is received.

Code written in this style is sometimes, but not always, faster to execute. It's also sometimes, but not always, clearer.

See also [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short- circuit_evaluation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-circuit_evaluation)

<comment><USER8> This is commonly seen in Perl and PHP with stuff like

        launchMissiles() or die('failure');

<comment><USER11> Ugh, `or` is mostly useless in PHP.

That code is identical to:

        launchMissiles() || die('failure');

<comment><USER12> That code is the same, but or has a lower priority than ||, so they are not the same is the code before the or is an expression.

Also, using or instead or || for these types of things is more readable since it makes your intent of conditional code execution (as opposed to boolean evaluation) clear.

<comment><USER11> Meh, it's not more unreadable unless you have issues understanding || in the first place... and "or" is still a boolean operation.

Considering 99.9% of it's use in PHP is some variant of "connect() or die()", I stand by my statement. Besides, those "connect() or die()" expressions are widely considered bad-practice in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You wrote at the end that you weren't sure why literal values were returned instead of TRUE and FALSE. The practical answer is that literal values are far more useful. The simple answer is that, since the literal value already represents TRUE (or FALSE), returning it makes just as much sense as returning a literal TRUE/FALSE, and is simpler to do.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just FYI, you are doing something wrong if your C code segfaults.

EDIT: Oh, missed the errata.

</comment><comment><USER15> Common Lisp treats any non-nil value as "true," so the behavior is not _bad_ for the "and" macro (yes, it is a macro). Additionally, the standard says that "and" should evaluate to nil if any argument evaluates to nil, or to its last argument otherwise:

[http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/m_and....](http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/m_and.htm)

</comment><comment><USER16> Worth it for the memoization (I guess that's not really a word?) in Ruby. Cool new operator I did not know about.

<comment><USER17> It's not a new operator, but rather the X= form, where `foo X= 4` is sugar for `foo = foo X 4`

Just be careful with this in JavaScript, as the greater number of things that are falsy can bite you if you do `a = a || 10;`, which is a very common JS bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thank god he didn't try php.

        echo 2 && 1; // 1
        echo 1 && 2; // 1
        echo 2 || 1; // 1
        echo 1 || 2; // 1
        echo 2 ?: 1; // 2

In php ?: is javascript's || Unfortunately there is no && that works correctly.

<comment><USER19> Came here to say this. If you use var_dump you can see it's coercing the result to a bool.

        $ php -r 'var_dump(1 && 2);'
        bool(true)

<comment><USER20> Exactly, it's not _that_ bizarre. PHP assumes when you're using && you're going to have a boolean outcome.

The odd bit is that casting a boolean to a string[0] with echo coerces the result to (string) "1" for true and (string) "" for false.

[0]: [http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#langu...](http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.casting)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am not a programmer, but it seems to me the logical thing to do would be to operate on the binary values of 1 and 2.

Since 1d = 01b and 2d = 10b...

1 AND 2 = 01 AND 10 = 00 = 0

1 OR 2 = 01 OR 10 = 11 = 3

<comment><USER3> That's kinda what binary logical operations are for. Typically AND is denoted by the symbol '&', and OR is denoted by the symbol '|'

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like how

      cout << 2 && 1

demonstrates the lameness of the whole C++ iostreams syntax. I'll have to remember that the next time an argument arises.

<comment><USER8> Feel free to change it to how you like it if you feel that another syntax would be more convenient. You can choose another operator or just create a variadic template function and use function syntax to avoid operator precedence issues.

<comment><USER22>
      printf("%d", 2 && 1);

seems to work OK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think it's a sign that I've been programming (predominantly in ruby) too long when I didn't think twice about why 1 && 2 == 2.

</comment><comment><USER24> I sometimes wish that x * y would short circuit on x = 0. Just because you could.

<comment><USER25> You mean, like, in the compiler? If x is actually a macro that expands to zero, that will (or at least should, for a sufficiently smart compiler) happen. Otherwise, I can't imagine a runtime check of this being appreciably faster than hardware multiply. Right?

<comment><USER26> I would guess he/she meant something along the lines of x * some_really_complicated_expression. If x is 0, you would not need to evaluate the other operand at all. It may even be a faster, but I doubt any compiler does this sort of optimization, since it is not safe in languages with non- pure functions. The complicated expression could change some global state or perform input/output.

E.g. in Haskell, it would be possible to do this safely, because it is guaranteed by the type system that there are no side effects. However, even with literal 0 in the code the other operand still gets evaluated.

<comment><USER25> Ah OK. That makes sense.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Indiegogo Project for Star Trek Pilot Directed by Tim "Tuvok" Russ - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/star-trek-renegades

<comment><USER2> Just donated at the LIEUTENANT level.

Hopefully they can reach their $90,000 milestone for better costumes. Only $6,444 to go at the time of this comment.

<comment><USER3> All goals met, with the exception of the final goal of 200,000, which would get us the new bridge designed by John Eaves. 21 hours to go at the time of this writing.</comment></comment>


Make the Censors Watch 'Paint Drying' by Charlie Lyne - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/charlielyne/make-the-censors-watch-paint-drying <comment><USER2> See also the brilliant "How long will 'Paint Drying' be?": [http://paint.ginnter.net/](http://paint.ginnter.net/)</comment>