The Convergence of Modern C++ on the Lisp Programming Style - <AUTHOR> https://chriskohlhepp.wordpress.com/convergence-of-modern-cplusplus-and-lisp/ <comment><USER2> Saying it's converging on a Lisp is flexing a little bit of artistic license. It's fair to say C++ is becoming increasing accommodating to whatever you want to make of it _if_ you're willing to compromise and roll with it. For sure, it's one of the very best and most practical languages for writing extremely efficient implementations of algorithms.

I highly recommend watching Alex Stepanovs A9 lecture series, "Efficient Programming with Components" [0], where he covers the humble min() function, and variants thereof, for at least ~20 hours. During this time he also takes a minor digression in to writing a memory pool for linked-list nodes, while pointing out similarities in the design to a Lisp. It's extremely 'instructive', as he would say, in understanding how he writes C++ code. The sheer amount of code will horrify you, it may even seem unproductive, but I think his objective was really to get everyone thinking about the beauty of the algorithms and the details rather than the objective. His concern for performance, correctness of code, and composition of algorithms is interesting and something I haven't seen presented in real time, in C++, in such a manner before. One example for instance, are occasions where he insists on writing functions backwards, from the return statement up.

If you want a higher level overview on his opinions of C++ and programming etc. The less intense series, "Programming Conversations" [1], is worth a more casual watch.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHxtyCq_WDLXryyw91lah...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHxtyCq_WDLXryyw91lahwdtpZsmo4BGD)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHxtyCq_WDLXFAEA- lYoR...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHxtyCq_WDLXFAEA- lYoRNQIezL_vaSX-)

<comment><USER3> > It's fair to say C++ is becoming increasing accommodating to whatever you > want to make of it _if_ you're willing to compromise and roll with it.

It's also one of the few languages in common use that allows using a wide range of abstraction levels, whatever is desired - I'm not aware of any other language that lets you write inline Asm, procedural, OOP, and functional-style code, all conceivably in the same source file.

<comment><USER4> Now you are aware of another, Common Lisp (as implemented by SBCL):

[http://www.sbcl.org/sbcl-internals/index.html](http://www.sbcl.org/sbcl- internals/index.html)

<comment><USER5> You should underline that the ASM part is _extremely_ implementation dependent. There is absolutely no language feature, or even a convention, to have inline ASM.

Also I'd posit that inline ASM is a lot easier to reason about in C++ than it is in Lisp, given to the rigid type structure. You're bound to shoot yourself in the foot in Lisp, even more than in C++.

<comment><USER6> Inline ASM is implementation dependent in C++ too, isn't it?

<comment><USER5> Yes, but the two big names in C++ compiler technology—GCC and Clang—are largely compatible [1]. This is not the case with Lisp.

[1] [http://clang.llvm.org/compatibility.html#inline- asm](http://clang.llvm.org/compatibility.html#inline-asm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article seems to put Lisp on a bit of a pedestal when it comes to types, but languages like Haskell blow Lisp out of the water with respect to expressiveness. There's also a lot in this article that's plainly implying the wrong things about what Lisp is capable of doing.

If we are to talk about types, I'd hope people would look at languages like Haskell or Standard ML—or maybe even ATS, Agda, or Coq—for future direction, _not_ Lisp.

Unlike Lisp, C++ lets one write efficient, generic algorithms that can operate on several types of data. Lisp cannot, and falls back to dynamic type testing, which makes for slower code[1]. Basically your only option in Lisp is to specialize everything manually, or inline everything. Both approaches are extremely poor. As I hinted, Haskell and Standard ML do an even better job than both C++ or Lisp. This is talked about a good bit in this article [2].

(Also, for the record, Lisp has no concept of information hiding, interfaces, or APIs. And no, Lisp's packages are just convenient structures for grouping somehow related symbols together.)

The article talked about declaring function types in Lisp. Many implementations plainly _ignore_ those and they provide _no_ value. It doesn't help that idiomatic Lisp code usually doesn't include such declarations.

Lastly, a lot of the things in this article were SBCL specific, and had little to do with the Lisp language itself.

Like others have said, I don't think any points demonstrate that C++ is converging to Lisp. And if it were, that's probably a bad direction anyway, given the author's initial statements about heading toward an algorithmic language.

[1] No implementation of Lisp has true, flexible compile-time polymorphism or any type-algebraic structure; all inferred types must be concretely realized during the inference.

[2] [http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=1495](http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=1495)

<comment><USER7> What is up with Haskellers starting these irrelevant Lisp vs Haskell arguments? OP made no mention or implication that Lisp is better than Haskell. It's petty and counterproductive.

<comment><USER5> This isn't a Lisp versus Haskell argument. It's a matter of fact that the expressiveness of Haskell's (and others') type systems are more expressive than Lisp's, practically (and almost theoretically).

Also, I'm not a "Haskeller". I do program in Haskell occasionally, though. I'm actually, at this time, a professional Common Lisp programmer.

<comment><USER7> And how is that relevant to the OP? The OP made no counterclaim.

<comment><USER5> My bringing up of Haskell and friends wasn't there to counter, but to merely observe that there are better things surrounding type systems than what is provided by even Lisp. And I wished to add that _if_ one is to look for inspiration on building expressive type systems, then Haskell should be the place to look, not Lisp.

I also wanted to provide Haskell as a kind of system which provides an inference engine that is much stronger than Lisp's. I don't want anyone to get the idea that Lisp implementations' inference engines is even commensurable to what exists elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The latest revision to the C++ standard, including polymorphic lambdas, makes the xplusone definition much terser:

        auto xplusone = [](auto x){ return x + 1; };

While at it, here's how Paul Graham's accumulator generator looks in C++14:

        auto foo = [](auto n){ return [=](auto i) mutable { return n += i; }; };

This does not affect the point of the article in any major way; just a curiosity.

</comment><comment><USER9> At the risk of getting downvoted for what could be a humongous display of ignorance, although the theoretical grounding of the article seems interesting, I fail to see how any of this can get applied to "real-life" applications when this is basically ten pages of content to get to apply this to addition operation and for other problems which are, for most day-to-day practice, already solved quite succintly.

Perhaps it's just me, but it seems like an awful lot of conceptual baggage to do things that can be expressed with much greater simplicity and without resorting to concepts that need multiple years of expert knowledge of the language to get this "elegance". And i understand the theoretical elegance, it's just that I have to ask myself if this truly makes an actual difference in code style, simplicity, and clarity of language.

<comment><USER10> No, you are exactly right. The C community and its progeny has, over the years, dug itself into a deep, deep syntactic and semantic hole. It is now coming to realize that the Lisp folks had some good ideas after all, but because of the sunk cost fallacy the C folks are unwilling to just back out of the hole. Instead, they keep digging the hole deeper and deeper in the hopes that some day it will emerge into the light. C++11 is interesting in the same way that Brainfuck is interesting: it's remarkable that you can take such a horrible mess and make it do cool things. But it's just a parlor trick, kind of like escaping from a straightjacket while handcuffed. It's challenging, and it requires skill, but at the end of the day you're in the exact same place as if you'd never put the handcuffs and straightjacket on to begin with.

<comment><USER11> > at the end of the day you're in the exact same place as if you'd never put > the handcuffs and straightjacket on to begin with.

Do you have any suggestions on what tools the people doing 'parlor tricks' with C++11 should be using to accomplish them, then? That is, what would you suggest to get to that place without the straightjacket?

Note that at a bare minimum, these supposed tools should give the ability for fine-grained manual resource control, zero-(runtime)-cost abstractions, and performance roughly on-par with C++. As evidence that these hypothetical tools work well for the purpose, we could look for some complex _and_ high- performance software written in them: say, a browser engine, a 3d engine, a kernel, etc., but wait a minute -- these are all things that tend to be written in C++ or plain C.

Instead of glibly dismissing the language that's used to implement, say, every major browser engine, wouldn't it be more productive to ask questions about _why_ people use it? Bonus points if the answer is something more realistic than "They don't know Lisp".

That way, you end up trying to figure out how to make a replacement for it that is an actual replacement -- Rust is a fantastically exciting example of this.

It'll be great when we can all move away from C++, since it's a colossal clusterfuck of counterproductive complexity, but "C++ is a bad language" misses the point in a really uninteresting kind of way.

<comment><USER10> > Do you have any suggestions on what tools the people doing 'parlor tricks' > with C++11 should be using to accomplish them, then? That is, what would you > suggest to get to that place without the straightjacket?

Duh, Lisp of course. (Or Haskell.)

> Note that at a bare minimum, these supposed tools should give the ability > for fine-grained manual resource control

Check. Lisp provides garbage collection, but you don't have to use it. It's perfectly possible to write Lisp programs that do manual memory management. It isn't often done because it's hardly ever a win, but if you really want to you can.

> zero-(runtime)-cost abstractions

a.k.a. macros

> and performance roughly on-par with C++.

The SBCL compiler is pretty good. But one of the reasons that Lisp code is not generally as fast as C/C++ is that Lisp code is safe by default whereas C/C++ code is not. You can make Lisp code unsafe (and hence faster) but you have to work at it, just as you can make C/C++ code safe, but you have to work at it. I submit that in today's world, being safe and a bit slower by default might not be such a bad place to be in the design space.

> these are all things that tend to be written in C++ or plain C.

There is a world of difference between C++ and plain C. C is actually not a bad language if you want to write fast code with relatively little effort and don't care about reliability or security. The value add of C++ over C is far from clear. (I don't know of any OS written in C++. Linus wrote a famous rant about why Linux is written in C and not C++. There are, however, examples of operating systems written in Lisp.)

> wouldn't it be more productive to ask questions about why people use it?

I know why people use it: it's fast, there is a huge installed base, and it's an excellent platform for studly programmers to display their studliness. That doesn't change the fact that C++ has deep design flaws which result in its being incredibly hard to use and extend. And the existence of coders studly enough to be productive in C++ does not change the fact that it imposes an extremely high cognitive load on its users.

<comment><USER11> > a.k.a. macros

No, macros are not what I'm talking about here: I mean that C++ provides abstractions that only impose runtime costs if you use them. For instance, the cost of vtable lookup is only paid if you are using virtual functions; otherwise, you don't have any overhead for function calls beyond what's imposed by the hardware.

As noted elsewhere in the thread:

> Unlike Lisp, C++ lets one write efficient, generic algorithms that can > operate on several types of data. Lisp cannot, and falls back to dynamic > type testing, which makes for slower code[1]. Basically your only option in > Lisp is to specialize everything manually, or inline everything. Both > approaches are extremely poor. As I hinted, Haskell and Standard ML do an > even better job than both C++ or Lisp. This is talked about a good bit in > this article [2].

That's what I mean when I say 'zero-cost abstraction'.

<comment><USER10> Lisp is exactly the same. You only pay the run-time cost of generic functions and dynamic type dispatch if you use them. What many people get hung up on is that in Lisp you get generic type dispatch by default, so to not pay that cost you have to do some work (declare types).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a Lisp enthusiast who earns a living coding in C++ I can only say one thing: there's still a long way to go for C++. Very long, indeed.

<comment><USER13> You're preaching to the choir in my (personal) case, but what specifically do you have in mind?

<comment><USER14> I'll chime in. Macros and simple syntax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I last worked with C++ 10 years ago and never looked at it since then, it looks like it's some beast going through various stages of evolution. Perhaps in another 5 or 10 years it will emerge as something beautiful without any vestigial appendages.

What's interesting from a language perspective is that the C++ folks seem to take the approach of "ugly is better" by essentially not breaking backwards compatibility like Python 3 and Perl 6 did. The "clean break" approach seems to create a new species and hope that the old one goes extinct (didn't happen with Perl, probably won't). But C++ just keeps evolving.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is just embarrassing. Modern C++ is moving toward intricate types like Haskell, not parser and compiler mods like Lisp.

<comment><USER17> That's because, despite the article, C++ is not actually trying to become Lisp.

And, for all the smug superiority of the Lisp crowd, the niche that C++ is trying to occupy does seem to be significantly bigger than the Lisp niche...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The terminology appears to be somewhat mixed up. xplusone<int> is not a specializaton, just an instantiation of the template.

Specialization is when you tell the compiler to use a separate implementation of a template when some or all of the template arguments match something. Template specialization is used in the type traits section of the post.

</comment><comment><USER19> For someone who wants to learn "modern C++", particularly for number- crunching, without a strong C background (say... someone who develops predictive models who mostly writes Python and Java, not that I resemble that or anything...) – where would be a good place to start?

<comment><USER20> 0\. Books--one of these: [http://isocpp.org/get- started](http://isocpp.org/get-started)

Personally, if you aren't new to programming per se, I'd go with "C++ Primer" by Lippman/Lajoie/Moo since it smoothly integrates modern C++11 throughout the entire text (instead of sticking it into a separate section, as some of the other books do).

After that, "C++ Concurrency in Action: Practical Multithreading" by Anthony Williams: [http://www.manning.com/williams/](http://www.manning.com/williams/)

...and then the rest of the books from the isocpp list (e.g., Josuttis).

1\. Libraries:

The rich ecosystem of available libraries is one of my primary reasons for using C++ for numerics :-)

In fact, it's rich enough that it may be best if you were to specify what kind of number crunching you're interested in -- right now I can only try to give you a very broad/big-picture list of some that I've found useful.

The Standard Library supports (P)RNG with a variety of statistical distributions: [http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/numeric/random](http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/numeric/random)

\- Boost.Math Toolkit: [http://boost.org/libs/math](http://boost.org/libs/math) // and more broadly: [http://boost.org/doc/libs/?view=category_Math](http://boost.org/doc/libs/?view=category_Math) // and even more broadly ;-): [http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/?view=categorized](http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/?view=categorized) \- Eigen: [http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/](http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/) \- GPGPU: [http://www.soa-world.de/echelon/2014/04/c-accelerator- librar...](http://www.soa-world.de/echelon/2014/04/c-accelerator- libraries.html) \- MLPACK: [http://mlpack.org/](http://mlpack.org/) \- NLopt: [http://ab-initio.mit.edu/wiki/index.php/NLopt_C-plus-plus_Re...](http://ab- initio.mit.edu/wiki/index.php/NLopt_C-plus-plus_Reference) \- OpenCV: [http://opencv.org/](http://opencv.org/) \- Odeint: [http://www.odeint.com/](http://www.odeint.com/) \- POCO: [http://pocoproject.org/](http://pocoproject.org/) // note: not numerics, but when you need to exchange data over the net/web, these are pretty good for that :-) \- QuantLib: [http://quantlib.org/](http://quantlib.org/) // note: QuantLib is primarily for quantitative finance, but also has math components: [http://quantlib.org/reference/group__math.html](http://quantlib.org/reference/group__math.html) \- SOCI: [http://soci.sourceforge.net/](http://soci.sourceforge.net/) // note: not numerics, but for when you need database access, it has pretty clean API and is easy to use :-)

2\. Talks:

* C9 Going Native: [http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/C9-GoingNative](http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/C9-GoingNative)

In particular: \+ "Bjarne Stroustrup - The Essence of C++: With Examples in C++84, C++98, C++11, and C++14" \- [http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/2013](http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/2013)

\+ "Sean Parent - C++ Seasoning" \- [http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/2013/Cpp- Seasoni...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/2013/Cpp-Seasoning)

* BoostCon / C++Now!: [https://github.com/boostcon/](https://github.com/boostcon/)

There's _lots_ of interesting talks, so explore yourself :-)

For instance, 2013 Keynote: "Dan Quinlan: C++ Use in High Performance Computing Within DOE: Past and Future" // [http://2013.cppnow.org/session/keynote/](http://2013.cppnow.org/session/keynote/)

// IMHO, it's worth watching these for staying up to date with the broader developments in the field -- e.g., according to the speaker (given who he is I'd assume credibility) most national labs, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in particular, are quite actively adopting C++ (not C) and have been turning away from Fortran for some time now.

HTH! :-)

<comment><USER19> Thank you so much!

(To answer your question: linear algebra and optimization. I do a lot of Numpy right now, and I see Eigen in my future...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Feels more like Python because now we have lambdas and I can write auto everywhere.</comment>


Try Clojure in your browser - <AUTHOR> http://tryclj.com/? <comment><USER2> I found it fun to see division results returned as fractions. Has anyone here switched from Python to Clojure for data analysis? What has been their experience?

<comment><USER3> Not recommended. Matrix multiplication is really slow, even with Incanter. I doubt you'll get very far with data analysis without multiplying a few matrices so avoid.

<comment><USER4> Slow compared to what? Numpy (or equivalent) or optimized fortran?

<comment><USER3> You know what? I realized that I didn't read the whole question. I switched from Octave, not Python. Oops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To get help, you can type _tutorial_. I think it would be better to type _(tutorial)_ , or at least have both options available.

</comment><comment><USER6> Awesome, but _please_ highlight matching parenthesis.

</comment><comment><USER7> Linux + Opera here: After one has inputted a fifth line, the window will scroll to the top whenever one presses a key to type a statement.

I appreciate the effort by people creating repls for various languages. It was a similar repl for Haskell that was my entry point into Haskell and the wonderful world of functional programming.

</comment><comment><USER8> Try Common Lisp in your browser: <http://nostoc.stanford.edu/Doc/demointro.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> It's cool, but the REPL could let you do multiline stuff by detecting whether you've closed all the parentheses and quotes yet.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ummm....

Following the first thing in the tutorial:

Clojure> (+3 3)

java.lang.ClassCastException: java.lang.Long cannot be cast to clojure.lang.IFn

<http://gyazo.com/22c613f5bb4ebda5a36d0fbc0a85b83d>

What have I missed?

<comment><USER11> You need a space between the + and the first 3 (+ is the function you want to call).

<comment><USER10> Thanks. The tutorial didn't show that:

<http://gyazo.com/9d330e8bdb0537f9179c34ad2924928c>

And when I click the tutorial's "(+3 3)" grey box, it inserts what looks like no space between the + and 3, and lo and behold, it works (6). And when I type it in now with no space (+3 3) it works too. :/

<comment><USER10> oops - sorry - I'm totally misreading it. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have always been frustrated by tutorial REPLs that make me copy and paste example codes. I simply don't write them manually to CLI and I believe many people do so. Therefore maybe a link to directly paste and execute code on tutorial steps would be quite useful. Like "run this".

<comment><USER13> If you click some of the code examples in the tutorials, it will paste them into the REPL. You have to hit enter to run them though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I appreciate that it works very nicely on my iPad, as far as writing lisp on a touch keyboard goes.

</comment><comment> iso8859-1 Is there a Java Applet version available? Why run it remotely when you don't need to?

<comment><USER15> Why Java, if JavaScript is so fast nowadays?

But I agree, no point to run it remotely.

<comment><USER16> Presumably because Clojure runs on the JVM.

<comment><USER15> Java also runs on the JVM and there's GWT

<comment> iso8859-1 The GWT compiler doesn't ship with the Java standard library though. You're not gonna be able to compile most Java code with the GWT compiler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice to see this submission getting traction, especially given that the first submission got none at all. Clever of llambda to use the trailing question mark on the URL to confound PG's duplicate detection mechanism.</comment>


Making users feel special with an invite (or the Fabric invite email) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.benhall.me.uk/2015/01/making-users-feel-special-invite-fabric-invite-email/

<comment><USER2> Made a change to my welcome email based on this post. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> Crashlytics has been doing that for a while I believe.</comment>


The $1mil Netflix movie recommendations contest.. a year later - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-03/mf_netflix?currentPage=1

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=125401>

</comment><comment><USER3> $1Mil Netflix contest = free labor

<comment><USER4> if they're paying out $1M then it's not exactly free, is it?

<comment><USER3> _In October 2006, Netflix announced it would give a cool seven figures to whoever created a movie-recommending algorithm 10 percent better than its own. Within two weeks, the DVD rental company had received 169 submissions, including three that were slightly superior to Cinematch, Netflix's recommendation software. After a month, more than a thousand programs had been entered, and the top scorers were almost halfway to the goal._

 _We've entered the long twilight struggle of the Netflix Prize. "The last 1.5 percent is going to be harder than the first 8.5 percent," Potter tells me. In the past three months, BellKor's score has barely budged and now stands at 8.57 percent. Potter, meanwhile, is at 8.07 percent, and his pace has slowed, too. It's entirely possible that neither will ever make it to 10 percent. After all, there's a certain inherent variability to human choices that even the savviest computer can't predict._

sounds like free labor to me.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Edotor – Your Favorite Graphviz Editor - <AUTHOR> https://edotor.net <comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

I'm looking for some feedback on my Graphivz editor. It has a language service built-in and supports features such as autocompletion and refactorings. There is also a graph preview. This site uses a language service that is also available as a language server via LSP [0]. I'm open for questions and suggestions!

[0] [https://github.com/nikeee/dot-language- server](https://github.com/nikeee/dot-language-server)</comment>


Ask HN: Do posts that are potentially negative to China get flagged a lot on HN? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Are you sure this isn't the result of HK's "overheated discussion detector?[0]"

Threads mentioning China often seem to bring out a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment, which results in arguments, which results in heavy voting, which may trigger the flamewar detector.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089)

</comment><comment><USER3> You can easily answer this for yourself instead of posting off-topic metaflamebait (which please don't):

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china%20points%3E10&sort=byDat...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wanting to keep the forum honest isn't "off-topic", and I'm not sure what "metaflamebait" is.. Thanks for the link to the query, but would it show everything that has been flagged?

<comment><USER3> Meta posts like this one (posts about the forum itself) are addictive: it feels like they're interesting, but actually they are not. They're more like a waste product of the community, consisting of the same half-dozen points over and over. We've learned over the years that such discussions need to be managed like weeds.

In this case the post added nationalistic flamebait (cruising for a fight about China). That's close to the worst kind of flamebait we see, actually, because it leads to flamewars where people bash each other's countries. Since the post combined meta and flamebait I decided to join the words together.

As for that search query, it shows you that the countless active HN discussions about China aren't for or against China as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The guidelines essentially say that anything deeply interesting is on-topic, but there are inevitably people who will jump up and say that if it isn't Tech or science, then it doesn't really belong here.

Articles are flagged by users, not moderators.

(I'm not a moderator here, just a long time member who likes talking about social stuff.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Most recently this was flagged, but not sure why.. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17633498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17633498)

<comment><USER5> That was more likely flagged due to the MeToo topic and not the China topic.</comment></comment>


Apple's iAds still not working outside of the US & UK? - <AUTHOR> http://shiftyjelly.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/iads-shmiads/

<comment><USER2> Looks like Apple enabled non us/uk iads for a day or two and then turned them off. I presume they were testing for a later launch.

$6 for 400 impressions is $15 cpm which is amazing. You can't complain about it just because you have a low volume app. If you add default ads from other networks u can fill your intentional inventory now but the Cpm will be much worse.

Its like saying I just sold one book in my online retail store so online retail is a joke.</comment>


What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/11/car-free-pedestrianization-made-pontevedra-spain-kid-friendly/576268/ <comment><USER3> I lived in Germany for two years without a car. The public transportation there was amazing—I learned to appreciate how little I needed a car, provided the infrastructure was good enough/I had a bike.

In many cities there's a "Fußgängerzone": pedestrian-only areas; these were mostly found in the city center where the streets and shops are too dense to allow much traffic. I remember specifically in Frankfurt am Main and Göttingen that the biggest shopping centers were located within this zone. Didn't seem to be hurting their business.

The Fußgängerzonen seemed _alive_ , much more so than sterile car-optimized streets.

<comment><USER4> In the place where I live (Austria, town with 30k residents), the Fußgängerzone in the center is currently dying. Shops close left and right, and migrate to the three big shopping centers. This town is a strange mix because almost everybody needs to own a car (bus system is underdeveloped) to take kids to school or shop groceries, but the town itself is not that big (a lot of places are reachable by bike). Most people rather use the newly rebuilt, comfortable malls with free parking and major brand chains over the harder-to-reach-by-car town center with parking fees and mom-and-pop stores.

The administration is taking desperate measures now, trying to keep shops from closing by promising funding etc, but it turns out the big malls made exclusive deals with brands and there's not much anyone can do.

I guess Fußgängerzonen only work with an intact public transport system that people can rely on and that won't take you thrice as long to get there.

<comment><USER5> Why do parents feel the need to take children to school in a small town in a very safe country? Why can't they ride a bike or walk?

<comment><USER6> In the winter it is too slippery for bikes and it sometimes gets biting cold - or worse IMO: cold, wet and windy.

We pay for bus for our 3 oldest kids in the winter.

Also wolves are returningnin some parts of Europe and while people say wolves are so shy and afraid of humans I understand extremely well why parents don't risk _their_ kids in an experiment to see if the predator that lives off moose actually is afraid of children or not.

<comment><USER7> That's the first time I hear that parents take their children to school because they're afraid of _wolves_

<comment><USER8> In my town in Alaska a couple years ago we had a school child get mauled to death by a bear. In some parts of the world, man is still part of the natural eco-system and food chain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> unclesams-uncle Barcelona is an interesting case study. The city is currently re-doing some of the city's grid neighborhoods into superblocks. The concept is that for every 9 blocks, the interior roads get shut to traffic save for emergency and service vehicles.

Inside, the previously 3-lane streets get transformed into pedestrian avenues with vegetation, play equipment and benches/tables for the residents.

The contrast between traffic-filled streets and urban tranquility couldn't be starker.

Then there are neighborhoods like Gracia that largely closed off its streets to traffic. Going there is like escaping to a village within the city.

Finally, the city puts a huge effort into building dedicated bike lanes, usually at the expense of a car lane. They're also rolling out a new shared biking system, which will combine electric and traditional bikes in the same system.

It helps that the city has mild winters and 300+ days of sunshine a year, but in any case, they're definitely leading the way for large urban areas to give the city back the people.

</comment><comment><USER9> I live in St Kilda, Australia and our council recently changed one of our iconic streets to almost exclusively be for pedestrians and trams.

Businesses protested for months about potential lost business, however as a resident I feel so much safer walking down the street. It feels like foot traffic has increased there, too. It's such an improvement.

I also like to think tunnels to apartment buildings could help us take more cars of the road and create more green spaces for people in the future.

<comment><USER10> _our council recently changed one of our iconic streets to almost exclusively be for pedestrians and trams._

For whatever it's worth, Chicago tried both of these things, and they didn't work out.

The main shopping drag, State Street, was pedestrianized in 1979. You can see it for a few seconds in the film _National Lampoon 's Christmas Vacation_. It didn't work. It was re-opened to traffic in 1996, and is now far more vibrant than it used to be (though, with a number of other contributing factors since nothing exists in a vacuum in a large city).[1]

Maybe people weren't ready for that in the 1980's, though the region has a number of outdoor shopping malls, in spite of its cold weather.

 _I also like to think tunnels to apartment buildings could help us take more cars of the road and create more green spaces for people in the future._

Again, Chicago did this. 40 city blocks are linked underground (and a few via bridges). I like the Pedway, but it's mostly vacant space, sleeping homeless people, and bad smells.[2] Except for rush hours, it's pretty much derelict.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Street_(Chicago)#State_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Street_\(Chicago\)#State_Street_shopping)

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

<comment><USER11> I think the right conditions have to exist for pedestrianization (don't ask me what they are -- I have an intuition about them but can't really articulate them). Lincoln Square for instance would a great candidate for pedestrianization -- lots of nice little shops in a high density location.

As for the Pedway, one of problems is like most underground walkways, navigation is difficult. There's no official map that tells you what destinations you can reach and how to reach them. You can't navigate with Google Maps, and signage is poor to non-existent. Also, most areas of the Pedway are quiet, secluded and feel unsafe. My sense is that the Pedway was designed for hyperlocalized usage (moving from one building to the next) and not as a network of passages.

<comment><USER12> I think they're pretty obvious. Either you need good public transport (New York, London, etc.) or you need a lot of reasonably priced parking near the pedestrianised zone (Bristol, Ipswich, etc.)

There are some special cases - tourist / student towns, but I think the gist is that people need to be able to get there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't get why cities are built around cars. As much as I love to jump into my car right outside my house, I'd love it even more when there was no car sound in the streets and children could safely walk everywhere. In densely populated cities cars should be banned outside of major roads

<comment><USER14> This was brought up in Adam Ruins Everything, and his Automotive episode was so misleading that I don't trust anything he says.

>I don't get why cities are built around cars.

Sure there is a fantasy that we could have cities that don't require roads. However our modern 5,000,000 population Metro areas wouldnt exist. Instead housing prices would skyrocket, and the lowest income people would be forced to live in rural areas.

> In densely populated cities cars should be banned outside of major roads

>I'd love it even more when there was no car sound

These are short sighted.

EDIT: I'm sorry to kill the fantasy, but wouldnt you rather hear why an idea doesnt work? Or maybe this is another case of 10%ers that care more about quiet streets than societal impact.

<comment><USER15> You assume the issue is binary: cars or no cars. Nobody is asking for no cars. We want _less_ cars.

Right now, cars are first class citizens in every American city. Motorists get what they want, and walkers, cyclists, and transport users get what's left over.

It doesn't have to be that way. European cities get by fine without cars in city centers.

Do you _really_ need a car to get to work in midtown Manhattan? Why are the 2 subway systems with stops every 5th block, 3 rail systems, and 2 bus systems that serve it not good enough? Do you really need 6 car lanes on 6th Ave while cyclists fear for their lives in the traffic and pedestrians smoosh on the sidewalks?

<comment><USER16> > European cities get by fine without cars in city centers.

Where did you get that from? Some of them, sometimes, with exceptions, with mixed success. Certainly not Prague (which is where I live). The public transport system is absolutely fantastic, but as of now it's at 100 % capacity (locally) and the city center is still full of cars. People need to move stuff, plumbers, electricians can't haul their tools around in a bag, the streets need to remain perfectly accessible for ambulances and firetrucks.

Don't forget that most European cities are hundreds of years old, built on river banks, rocks, hills, the complete opposite of most US cities.

<comment><USER15> > Don't forget that most European cities are hundreds of years old, built on > river banks, rocks, hills, the complete opposite of most US cities.

What, do you think that North America is a minecraft flatworld? Plenty of American cities are built on variable terrain. The city I live in, Weehawken (Lenape for "rocks bigger than trees"), is bisected by a 300 foot sheer cliff called "The Palisade" because it looks like a castle wall. You have to take an elevator or a long staircase if you want to get uptown.

The only US cities designed from the ground up with cars in mind are in the western desert valleys where nobody could reasonably live until air conditioning was invented: Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles. Many German cities were being rebuilt almost from scratch at the same time. Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin all had to be almost completely replaced. Their maps were redrawn with cars in mind, and they managed to stay largely walkable.

Meanwhile, London has roughly the same transit woes as New York. Was London founded after the invention of the car? No! Unlike the planners of Munich and Dresden and Hamburg, London's rebuilders after the war prioritized automobiles over people, and it shows.

New York got its modern street layout in 1807, the same year Napoleon conquered Bohemia, and I'm pretty certain he didn't enter Prague in an open- top car.

Car-centric city planning isn't a natural phenomenon, it is an intentional choice, and it can be undone at any time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Few years ago I visited a large apartment complex about 30 minutes south of Seoul in South Korea. The complex has Dozens of 30+ stories high apartment buildings. Assuming 30 stories high, 8 units per floor, and 25 buildings, we are talking about 6000 units. The unit I visited had 4 bedrooms. Despite such a high concentration of population, the complex itself felt like it was in the country side.

The key factor was underground parking (resident and visitor), with entrance to the underground parking connecting directly with the road. Within the complex are streets for cars with sidewalks like normal street, but strictly for emergency vehicles and moving trucks.

As I walked around the complex day and night, I couldn't believe the peace and calm I sensed as there were no cars moving around me. I kept looking around as I crossed the street as a reflex, but there were no cars to worry about.

<comment><USER18> A few weeks ago, I looked at a large number of cities and their surrounding suburbs using google earth in VR. It was extremely interesting to see the different styles of building cities.

Soviet bloc countries really built their infrastructure with brutal efficiency in mind. Huge populations in tall, mathematical buildings with lots of open space between them. Almost like someone copy-pasted a few buildings into the middle of the wilderness.

To me it looks like the new infrastructure in countries like South Korea or Japan is an evolution of that, although the buildings look a lot less foreboding than Soviet buildings do. In between them you still get the sense that you're out in the country. It's deceptive because once you fly up (in VR), you can see a sea of buildings going all the way to the horizon.

Compared to the population centers of American cities, which look like irregularly shaped sand dunes made out of shingles as far as the eye can see.

Suburbs in the UK are similar to the American ones, except that the houses are all very neatly aligned on a grid with less space between them and the streets are often one way streets with parking on the curb.

Suburbs in Nordic countries are made of small, taller houses. Each floor looks only big enough for 1 or 2 rooms, but the houses are 2-4 stories tall. It looks really cozy.

If you have the hardware and a few hours to kill, I strongly recommend trying this. Tokyo is just jaw dropping. It's on an unimaginable scale compared to other cities around the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My city (Lublin, Poland - about 350 000 people) is doing something similar (if not on this scale).

They introduced long pedestrian street in one of the busiest streets in city center in 90s, it worked pretty well - created lots of restaurants, clubs and shops.

In 00s-10s some of them failed (I blame internet shopping and malls in the outskirts), especially the shops, and mostly banks and mobile phone booths replace them. But the restaurants and clubs remain, and the street is very pleasant, always full of people. It helps that Lublin is an university city (about 20% of population are students).

Recently the city created some more pedestrian streets, invested into biking infrastructure (lots of bike routes, city-funded bike rental system). It's OK, but the city is on hills so biking is quite demanding, mostly young people do it.

Also the public transit is very nice in the city centre, but there are no trams, only trolleybuses and regular buses (because hills). So - <USER2> transit waits in traffic jams just like cars.

There's one night each summer when they turn big part of the city center into pedestrian area, put artificial grass on many streets, people sunbathe there. It changes the city completely. I know it's not realistic to make it permanent, but it's so nice.

</comment><comment><USER20> According to Richard Branson "Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients." The same goes for cities. Take care of the citizens, and the citizens will take care of business.

Removing parking may be bad for local shops in the short run, but good for the citizens and the city in the long run.

<comment><USER21> That's only true in some instances for some combination of high margin, not easily reproducible, or low volume products that serve wealthy purchasers.

The reason Walmart killed everyone was because purchasers valued saving a few dollars rather than being taken care of by employees. Similarly with airlines, which Branson wasn't really able to expand beyond the wealthy NYC-LA-SF routes.

<comment><USER22> Another reason Walmart killed it was because they offered more convenience at a lower cost. That's what people choose.

It's also why people choose vehicles over public transit: point-to-point convenience for comparable prices to stringing together public transit and car services to get around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> You can also have more parks and fields that are well-maintained and available in proportions appropriate to the local population (i.e. not held at existing supply through density changes). It is a false dichotomy to suggest we have to choose between kids playing outside and having streets for transportation.

Not to mention that anyone who grew up pre-Internet or pre-smartphones knows that the real barriers to kids playing outside are more cultural/societal.

<comment><USER24> I think the ability to _get_ to the parks and fields without parental intervention is important in itself. I live in a neighborhood in Sydney where many of our streets are traffic sewers that people blast through at amazing (relatively speaking) speeds. As a large, visible adult, I walk the dog every day and 1-2 times out of 10 some idiot on a street 50m from my house doesn't know what the rules on a crosswalk are. People love to go on tirades about helicopter parents but given the quality of driving (also something that seems to have taken a hit from "Internet and smartphones") they haven't spent too much time thinking about the implications of what it's like to be an impulsive kid who will be mostly invisible stepping out behind a car, in a world where a lot of drivers are impatient and distracted.

There's a huge change in the vibe of having older kids (who can, despite the roads, go out and freely interact with their peers) and younger kids who aren't sensible enough to deal with the streets (and yes, this isn't just paranoia, we had a couple bad incidents in the peer group).

It's not an either/or with the Internet/smartphones, either. I think there's a lot of interaction between these factors ("kids go out less because games/internet are so compelling" vs "kids spend long hours on devices because they are stuck at home") in both directions.

<comment><USER23> That seems to me like a different problem (one of education or enforcement of traffic laws), although I acknowledge that a middle ground helps. I have not had the same experience as you where I am - maybe that is because we have traffic signals in some places, or crosswalks with flashing lights in others, or more courteous drivers for the rest of it (unmarked crossings), but I definitely feel plenty safe walking around.

I also wanted to add one more thought: kids are a lot more capable than parents give them credit for. This underestimation of kids' abilities is particularly prevalent in modern Western societies - if you travel to less developed nations, young children are able to successfully navigate complex cities with much more unforgiving streets unsupervised, with confidence.

<comment><USER25> > _That seems to me like a different problem (one of education or enforcement > of traffic laws), although I acknowledge that a middle ground helps._

The choice boils down to a dense, very large police force, versus streets designed to make good behavior natural. The latter can be a lot cheaper (and will involve many fewer tickets) than the former.

<comment><USER26> > and will involve many fewer tickets

Given that many cities and police forces _rely_ on traffic fines (and in the US, on civil forfeiture), the choice for city governments is skewed towards more enforcement...

<comment><USER27> There's no reason why this couldn't be replaced by tax revenue though. I know I'd vote for a tax to fund police if it was explicitly stated that this would allow them to stop picking people up on petty crimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I live downtown Minneapolis and live near Nicollet Mall [0]. Which only allows pedestrians and busses. It's quite nice. They put out chairs for people to sit on and at times have things like a connect four and corn hole games. There is a regular farmers market that happens also.

I love how safe it feels. It's almost like a giant side walk. I'm always surprised that the chairs don't get stolen. I walk down it multiple times a day usually (unless I take the Skyway because of weather).

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

<comment> unclesams-uncle In Amsterdam, the corn hole games are limited to a few car-free streets directly outside of the main train station.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Yeah, they're doing this plan to Evansville, IN. And it's one hell of a job. They've killed downtown, since there's no 'outer areas' to park. Sidewalks are in complete disarray, and cars still zoom on past.

But the center areas where there are no cars also is set up for no people to move about. The road ledges are still there, so handicapped people cant just use their wheelchairs. It's the worst of both worlds.

<comment><USER24> It's possible to do this well and badly. Bad iterations of this feel like urban renewal - like those horrifying stunts they pulled in the 70s where they closed half the streets in a given area, put huge ring roads around the area, and then wondered why a urban paradise didn't spontaneously spring into being.

It needs to be done along with public transit (usually the missing link it the US and Australia) and a reasonable attitude to deliveries and whatever parking needs remain.

<comment><USER30> > Australia

As an anecdote, close to where I live is a suburb called Wellard. They basically have a small shopping district (One Woolies, Subway, Pizza shop, Cafe, Postie etc) right next to the train station. In fact, walking out of the train station, you're bound to walk through the shopping area as that's sort of the way people walk to get to their houses. Its kinda perfect position.

What they did was to simply make it that street between the shops is closed to cars on the weekends. Its an amazing place during that time, and allow people to set up stalls in the parking lots around the road. Its an awesome place to just sit and talk on a weekend. The parking is behind the shops so its not like one can't get there on a car either.

The speed on the road during normal days is also something like 20-30km/hr and they have that brick-like road which means driving your car fast on the road isn't that fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What I find funny is that the American mall that so many people disparage (like citylab) is a place where the streets are closed to cars. Cars are not really the problem and people should really stop focusing on this object as the reason of so many social problems that exist. The car is used by individual people and families to somewhat mitigate these large scale problems.

Lots of cool main streets have cars going through them. It is just the post war, huge road, big-box chain stores that suck. Maybe we need to go back to where a corporation is only allowed to form (get a charter) if it is planning on doing something that takes a lot of people and capital to execute. Like building an airplane, or a car, or a computer chip, not anything like a retail store. Leave that to the sole proprietor. We don't need corporations, and all its inhumanity, to run burger joints.

<comment><USER32> At a given mall, quite a lot of property is devoted to surface lots which go unused from 10pm-10am, not great for a growing urban environment! The problem with cars is how inefficient they are just from the physics of them.

A given car is maybe 3000lbs. A person is maybe 150lbs. 95% of the gas you pump into your car goes to just moving around this hunk of metal wherever you go. And then you gotta have an empty 18'x9' spot available wherever you are going? How many 25lb bird scooters can you pile up in that spot? Even self- driving cars aren't going to solve the issues with wasting energy and space for the two tonnes-or-so hunk of metal that you require to deliver you door to door on demand. Try to have a horse pull you around town in a tesla, and it would die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This reminds me of a dead end alley in San Francisco where the residents got the city to allow them to install a gate.

Suddenly you can allow your four year old to go out the front door by themself.

</comment><comment><USER34> Of course, this could never happen in the United States. A friend of mine, a single mother, was arrested and charged for letting her kids play without an adult present in the park across the street from her apartment. There are lots of scary people with guns out there, you see. If only it was possible to do something about that.

<comment><USER35> I've heard more stories about kids in the US not being allowed to play outside. Of all the bizarre stories I read about life in the US, this one is still the most baffling to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wish my city was more livable without a car, but we have more land area than London with 1/4 the population density. The only way to get anywhere is by taking the interstate highways that pass through the middle or else circle around the outside highway. This is Jacksonville, FL.

There are some pockets that are walkable and safe, but nothing at scale.

</comment><comment><USER37> Over here in San Francisco, I find the problem isn't so much cars as curb cuts. "Curb cuts" are those little sections of the curb that are cut out so that cars can drive over the cross walk to get to driveways and garages.

[https://ggwash.org/view/673/the-san-francisco-way-curb- cuts](https://ggwash.org/view/673/the-san-francisco-way-curb-cuts)

[https://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist- article/2008-06-0...](https://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist- article/2008-06-01/eye-street)

</comment><comment><USER38> There is one major reason why this isn't practical in the United States yet: Europe has a well developed, often tax payer or state subsidised public transport network. Americans don't have that at scale: they must use their cars to go to work, else they cannot work. Solve the problem of public transport first. You can start with tax payers' funding and move on to a purely for-profit, no subsidies model gradually by incremental optimisation.

<comment><USER39> A lot of Americans I have spoken to have the opinion that public transport is only for homeless people and is always slow and dirty.

<comment><USER38> That is because that is currently the reality. The buses are dirty and with exceptions here and there, mostly poor or the working poor ride them. The system is currently inefficient and focused purely on profit. Since there is usually a monopoly on regional public transit, the reality is exactly what other people told you. I myself rode the intercity bus for a year and half when I was a poor hungry student, although that was several decades ago, but not much has changed since then. Monopoly and lack of public awareness and activism does that.

That doesn't mean that the perception cannot be changed, or that the reality cannot be changed. People have to demand it and it will start somewhere. Small steps. Incremental optimisations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't drive but I am into electric cars. I was in a ICE car over Christmas on a drive across country to see some relatives. We went through a local town that I didn't value much when I was growing up, with 'fresh eyes' I think I could see what the problem was, and it wasn't the car. The pollution is the real problem why people shun the street in front of their door. This pollution being the fumes and the noise.

With electric cars there is no reason why we can't get our streets back and for not just kids but for everyone to start to be part of their local community, not just hiding behind doors, curtains closed, putting up with where they live instead of enjoying it.

We have 20 mph city speed zones which are great. But when cars are noisy and polluting these streets are far from tranquil. The dirt from automotive isn't just the smog that comes out of exhaust pipes, there is also brake wear and the micro-particles that come from that. We have ended up with cities that are toxic to plant life as a consequence of this.

With cars that can float along on electric power we need not close off our streets, we need not even banish traffic jams.

Bus transport also needs a bit of work, with electric power they can be the modern transport that people deserve, not these noisy things that vibrate and feel hellish inside. We want the bus to be nice to be on, particularly for those with pushchairs, wheelchairs, kids in tow.

Yet we have an old population of people who seem to have a fetish of loud exhausts, V8 engines, turbo engines and this fuddy-duddy idea that electric will never replace these naff petrol and diesel engines. Hopefully these people will die off soon and Chinese electric cars will show Western auto makers how to make a car properly.

<comment><USER41> as an extensive walker, car fumes are never a problem for me.

usually the biggest problems are lack of mixed zoning and really wide streets which leads to very long walking distances.

<comment><USER42> Diesel car fumes smell bad. It's not an issue in Canada/USA because only bigger trucks use diesel. However, many European cities are full of diesel cars and polluting mopeds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> this would be great, cars are the only reason why i would be afraid to let my child go by himself to kindergarten/school

</comment><comment><USER22> I had a university professor in the transportation department (technically "Operations Research") who used to joke that transportation policy was mainly receptive to emotional arguments about children. "We should increase investment in autonomous vehicles. But, oh! The children!" He would cry out in class, making all the students chuckle. I thought he was joking! Reading through the article and the comments, I think he may not have been joking, but merely wryly cynical after many years of trying to research and advocate.

</comment><comment><USER44> Meanwhile, whenever the subject comes up in San Francisco, everyone trots out the excuse that "families with children need the city to be car-friendly".

(I've never met a kid who didn't love riding buses and trains.)

</comment><comment><USER45> This is unexpected but great!

Here in the Bay Area suburbs, cul-de-sacs seem to be always be deserted, which is so unlike what it was when I was growing up. Kids seem to be almost exclusively interacting indoors / online.

</comment><comment><USER46> Nothing happens if you keep them inside feeding their tiktok and fortnite addictions. I can't even recall the last time I broke up a hockey or streetball game driving through neighborhoods.

<comment><USER47> A large reason kids play Fortnite is because it provides a space to socialize - it's a lot harder for kids to get anywhere without a parent driving, these days, and the parents are a lot less likely to leave the kids unattended, which tends to put a damper on things. Even malls often try to discourage crowds of teens, if you can even get there without a drive.

<comment><USER46> If you think fortnite is healthy socializing, i cant argue. I do not agree in the slightest.

<comment><USER48> That's very obviously not what they were saying. You sound like you're stuck on a point you want to make about "damn kids playing Fortnite" and not bothering to listen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> One of my favorite streets in Madison, WI is no car traffic. Really great for business, getting across town, and general atmosphere.

</comment><comment><USER50> I feel really bad for the children who seem to grow up in the backseat of some monstrous luxury SUV. I can't imagine it leads to the best types of citizens.

<comment><USER51> You can spot a few in this thread..

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This stream of "cars are the devil" articles from citylab is growing rather monotonous.</comment>


Does venture capital kill great ideas? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.smh.com.au/innovator/archives/2007/11/does_venture_capital_kill_grea.html <comment><USER2> It depends on the venture capitalists themselves. Our start-up has little to no interference from our VCs. It feels very much the same as before we got funding, now we just get to keep working. But again, that only says something about our particular VCs.

If they allow you to keep working, I don't see how you can claim that "venture capital kills great ideas."

<comment><USER3> Is your goal to maximize customer satisfaction? Is their goal to maximize return on investment? Might their goals and yours conflict at some point?

<comment><USER2> Sure, they'll want to cash in on their investment in a few years, so the exit might be different from what we would do if we were on our own. But we would have already had to go get real jobs if not for them, so in that sense they've enabled us to work on good ideas.</comment></comment></comment>


The Difference Between Funny and LOL - <AUTHOR> https://readtapestry.com/s/ww3HtHfmW/ <comment><USER2> I remember back in the days of HTML 1.0 or 2.0, they suggested not using the words "click here" in a link since some day you might be able to indicate other ways of following a link besides clicking (or you could already through non-graphical browsers). I think this is the first time I've seen "tap here" when I had to click. It was kind of a weird feeling, like I was pretending to tap by clicking. But my point is "tap here" and "keep tapping" is just as incorrect as "click here."

And as Donald Norman would point out, you shouldn't have to put instructions on your interface telling people how to use it (e.g. "push" and "pull" on doors).

It seems that everyone who uses this site to create a presentation is going to have to put "tap here" and "keep tapping" on the first two slides to get anyone to understand what's going on.

It looks like I wasn't the only one confused by the user interface. Losing the ability to go back and forward is also kind of annoying (tried right click).

<comment><USER3> I actually think "push" and "pull" make sense on a door since it can go both ways (although you can solve that one by using a handle on the pull side, and a flat rectangle on the push side).

The real thing you shouldn't need to put on a door, though, is how to _use_ it: "Use as an entrance."

<comment><USER4> Norman's point is probably precisely that you should put the flat plate/handle on as appropriate.

<comment><USER2> It was. He also had some other more elaborate examples, but I couldn't think of any. I believe he is coming out with a new edition of The Design of Everyday Things which is mostly rewritten. Looks like it's coming out November 5th.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That was actually a really cool presentation. Are there any papers out there for someone who is interested in segmenting data like that?

Also, on the topic of "LOL", and the related acronyms, I think this little cartoon explains it well: [http://www.27bslash6.com/lol.jpg](http://www.27bslash6.com/lol.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> Slightly off topic, but the font used in the slides is Vollkorn:

[http://friedrichalthausen.de/vollkorn/](http://friedrichalthausen.de/vollkorn/)

[http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Vollkorn](http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Vollkorn)

I figure there are some designers or people interested in typography that might appreciate this information. It was rather easy to eyeball due its strong and distinct serifs at large point sizes, although the stylesheets verify it as well.

Even more off topic: you'll also find that Vollkorn is one of the fonts available for use in the Google Play Books app on Android. If you use Google Play Books, I recommend trying it out. It's a fantastically readable font, especially white-on-black, for late night readers like myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a great "workhorse" font. Awesome for noticing it. When Tapestry first launched it was the only font offered because of it's readability in most cases. An artist made this Tapestry story breaking it down: [https://readtapestry.com/s/C9M36zhFA/](https://readtapestry.com/s/C9M36zhFA/)

<comment><USER6> That was a great, and very accurate, description of Vollkorn. The more I use it, the more I fall in love with it. So happy to see it go around. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Took me a while to figure out it was more than a gif.... on hacker news. Eventually I clicked and figured out it was a slideshow. Is it possible to go back a slide?

<comment><USER8> I installed the app, and part of the welcome tutorial was that they seemed excited about how you couldn't go backwards "so take your time". They advocate using it for "storytelling": it seems like an irritating medium for a semi- scientific slide deck.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, the most annoying thing ever. Didn't they ever attend a real presentation where people actually asked questions about things that were shown on past slides?

<comment><USER10> Or, accidentally click too many times, skipping a slide?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Welp, I admit it. I'm finally too old to use the Internet. I tried clicking the "tap here", but that didn't do anything. I have a touch-enabled tablet, and I tried tapping there. That didn't do anything either. Then I gave up.

Why does my VCR blink 12:00 all the time, anyway?

<comment><USER12> You, sir, have easily made my evening. Also, I've found that "right arrow" seems to go forward, but it's impossible to go back. As for your VCR, you may have just found yourself in an endless time loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I worked on a project with a guy who did network analysis like this. It was pretty cool... the first three times. After that it seemed like every problem had to involve a whizbang graphic - then I realized he didn't actually know how to program at all. His whole job was 'analysis', which was using Tableau and a graph partitioning program to produce visualizations (pretty much using the defaults), and then try to explain what they meant.

I was kind of in awe that this was a whole job by itself - I've never really seen an analysis of one of these graph diagrams that wasn't really superficial, like the examples in this presentation. It kind of makes me wonder if the "complexity" of the graph visualizations doesn't cow the viewer a bit, and make them more impressed by subsequent, not-super-interesting insights. I'd be interested in a comparison with and without the graphics.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I'm always skeptical about how much information those kinds of visualizations really reveal. How much of the pattern is truly present in the data vs. a result of making it pretty? Is it possible to gain insight that wouldn't already be just as easy to see by looking at the data in a simpler way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> From Wikipedia:

 _Modularity is one measure of the structure of networks or graphs. It was designed to measure the strength of division of a network into modules (also called groups, clusters or communities). Networks with high modularity have dense connections between the nodes within modules but sparse connections between nodes in different modules. Modularity is often used in optimization methods for detecting community structure in networks. However, it has been shown that modularity suffers a resolution limit and, therefore, it is unable to detect small communities. Biological networks, including animal brains, exhibit a high degree of modularity. A 2013 paper shows that modularity in biological networks may have evolved due to selection pressures to reduce connection costs._

Paper on Modularity Maximization algo to identify communities in graph is at [http://www-scf.usc.edu/~gaurava/modularity.pdf](http://www- scf.usc.edu/~gaurava/modularity.pdf)

There are many other ways to cluster the graph.

</comment><comment><USER16> What software was used to make those graphs? Or did I tap through it

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure he used Gephi - gephi.org. You can ask him though :-) @gilgul on twitter

<comment><USER18> There is also a course involving network analysis on Coursera, [https://www.coursera.org/course/sna](https://www.coursera.org/course/sna)

EDIT: The relevance being that it involves the use of Gephi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bit annoying that they took the name of a startup I used to work at:

[http://www.tapestry.net/](http://www.tapestry.net/)

</comment><comment><USER20> It's ironic that "funny" is people laughing out loud and "lol" is "funny" (read: odd) things.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Interesting" visualizations. Could someone without an understanding of lol and funny create this? Visualizations, in this context, show what you already knew to be true. How well can it be used to find something new, instead of novel?

</comment><comment><USER22> Talk about over analyzing something to death.

</comment><comment><USER23> The presentation is actually quite interesting and very badly named in terms of describing what it does.

Do not be put off by link title.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's like [http://zeega.com](http://zeega.com) but without the music.

</comment><comment><USER25> This might seem like a childish query: would anyone know where to find that flying horse gif? I think I cracked a rib laughing.

</comment><comment><USER26> An on-topic question: what software was used to create the network visualisations in this presentation?

<comment><USER17> I think Gilad used Gephi for the networks visualizations: gephi.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Funny means funny.

LOL is just unnecessary punctuation.

</comment><comment><USER28> Le sigh. All of the comments are on the UX of the site, and not the content of the article. Come on guys.

This article was really interesting to me (though obviously he doesn't get terribly into depth). I find data vis like this, whether it be super meaningful or not to be really cool. I'd like to see more analysis like this done with it.

<comment><USER29> This is what happens when your UX is so bad it's a distraction. It's like complaining that nobody is listening to your lecture on particle physics just because you are delivering it in full bondage gear. I personally was too dumb to figure out that the OP isn't just a link to a gif, and came to the comments here to see what the deal was.

Given all the distraction and lack of attention to whatever the subject actually is, I'd hope the author might reconsider the delivery method.

<comment><USER28> In this case specifically, since multiple comments addressed people being "unable to find" the content, you might have a point. I don't feel like that's typically the case on HN, though.

It more commonly seems like "this wasn't immediately obvious or in a format I'm already comfortable with, shame on you." That, to me, seems like (UX) innovation killing potential. I'm sure that's an entirely different discussion, but I don't think experimenting with new things like this is a bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is the Japanese Python community really that big? What do they use it for?

<comment><USER31> The japanese Twitter community as a whole is actually really big. I believe Twitter has most of its users in Japan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anyone have a link of how to do this kind of analysis yourself?

</comment><comment><USER33> Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!

</comment><comment><USER34> That was pretty cool. Also, Tapestry is insanely cool!</comment>


Of URL shorteners and the neutrality thereof - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/buzz/dclinton/JKoWPTAAyvw/More-thoughts-on-URL-shorteners-This-post-explores

<comment><USER2> All very excellent points, and I'd like to add one more: URL shorteners came into existence because of a need in the market. Removing this need will pretty much kill all shorteners. All articles on this topic I've seen miss this point entirely. They dive into why URL shorteners are bad but ignore why they're here, i.e. how they provide real benefits to their users.

Some history:

1\. TinyURL was started because emails had a character limit per line (Campaign Monitor suggests 65 characters, but it's more than that: [http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2075/update- recomme...](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2075/update-recommended- width-for-t/)).

2\. When Twitter came along, there was a massive need to squeeze in a URL in a small space, and tinyurl.com is just too long. At the same time, 2-letter ccTLDs became very easily accessible to the average hacker, and the market exploded.

IMHO, this is all Twitter's fault. They should have seen the massive usage of URL shorteners early on and created their own or changed the way the 140-char limit is calculated. t.co is coming late, but better late than never.

The final need in the market is analytics. Social media link sharing is mostly about creating a link on a website you don't own (like Twitter) that points to another website you don't own (like google.com or nytimes.com or the BBC). How do you know if anyone cared?

My hope for t.co is that it will have real-time _good_ analytics built in to help marketers. Otherwise, they'll all keep using bit.ly or Cligs or home- grown shorteners. This is a genuine need that won't go away for now.

My point is simple: if you don't like URL shorteners, don't just bash them but fix the underlying cause instead.

Disclosure: I built Cligs and sold it late last year.

<comment><USER3> Here's my question: If Twitter is replacing all links with their t.co AND including the full URL in the API, why doesn't the API just put the full URL in most "full" versions (web, RSS, API) and only use the shorturl on extreme bandwidth situations like SMS (or arguably a very compressed mobile API.)

It will break the holy 140 characters, but as you said, the reason for the shortener is because the 140 limit.

<comment><USER2> Having both is very good. Look at what Backtype does with their Twitter search API. The HTML of each tweet will have its links be:

SHORT_URL

I think that's perfect because I know which URL shortener was used and can follow up if needed (e.g. check the bit.ly analytics).

What you're proposing would support exactly this scenario, and as a marketer of my web apps myself, I like. But their ToS changes the OP mentioned go exactly against that, and I don't like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I understand the need for analytics, but I _think_ most twitter users don't care about that. Couldn't twitter just not count the URL towards the 140 characters? (Yes, more complicated than that in order to prevent spam or whatever, and yes backward compatibility sucks. But basic auth is being killed too.)

<comment><USER5> That would break the SMS functionality, which is why they limited posts to 140 chars in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> check out <http://mug.gd> the eevil URL shortener

</comment><comment><USER7> _This post explores the phenomenon of URL shorteners, discusses the potential impact of the recent announcement by Twitter (a favorite site of mine) to rewrite all links shared through the service, and makes a few specific recommendations on how to improve on these implementations._

What a god-awful way to start a post. Nothing of interest to hook the mind.

 _What is a URL shortener?_

 _You've all seen short URLs before — the links to tinyurl.com, bit.ly, wp.me, etc., recently popularized as a workaround to fit more content into smaller spaces, most notably within Twitter's 140 character limits. URL shorteners work by taking any arbitrary URL (which can contain hundreds of characters or more) and creating a new URL, typically only a handful of characters plus the short domain name, and returning a 301 or a 302 HTTP response code that redirects the browser from the short URL to the original._

More factual pointlessness. There is nothing whatsoever that is _interesting_ in that second paragraph.

 _scrolls down_

3.5 thousand words written in that style? No thanks.

Writing is designed to be read by people. If you have a point, present it digestibly or keep it to yourself.

<comment><USER8> I think you've been spoiled by twitter-stlye "articles." 140 characters, bluntly to the point, with no appreciation for the arts.

<comment><USER7> No. I've been spoiled by articles that justify their existence in the first few lines, instead of requiring the reader to make a leap of faith and trust the author with half an hour of their precious time.

Actually, I haven't been spoiled, they're still fairly rare.</comment></comment></comment>


How badly do most/all YCNews-ers suffer from confirmation bias? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I can see this... but the best way to judge whether such bias exists (and is also a bad thing) is by looking at the success or failure of our startups, right? The free market ain't perfect, but it's better than most other methods of deciding value. This point assumes that we take each other's advice here ;)

Also, I recall a BBC article a while back citing a study showing that ~half of all scientific studies turn out wrong because they failed to exclude variables. The study, below, needs to be supported by other studies in other circumstances (and maybe those exist -- I don't read psy journals).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias:>

In January 2006, Drew Westen and a team from Emory University announced at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Palm Springs, California the results of a study[2] showing the brain activity for confirmation bias. Their results suggest the unconscious and emotion-driven nature of this form of bias.

The study was carried out during the pre-electoral period of the 2004 presidential election on 30 men, half who described themselves as strong Republicans and half as strong Democrats. During a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan, the subjects were asked to assess contradictory statements by both George W. Bush and John Kerry. The scans showed that the part of the brain associated with reasoning, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, was not involved when assessing the statements. Conversely, the most active regions of the brain were those involved in processing emotions (orbitofrontal cortex), conflict resolution (anterior cingulate cortex) and making judgment about moral accountability (posterior cingulate cortex).[3]

Dr. Westen summarised the work:

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones....

Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts'."[4]

\---end of wikipedia excerpt---

As nearly as I can tell, this kind of bias afflicts most/all of the folks who frequent YC News. To understand why I think this, review my previous submissions and the non-response each received. It seems that (aspiring) entrepreneurs who are pure tech (I'm a hybrid of comp sci & comedy writing) just don't want to believe that, going forward, their companies will probably have to market _profitably_ through branded entertainment to be competitive.

<comment><USER3> This has to be the most elaborate gripe I've ever heard from someone whose stuff got ignored on a social news site. I don't remember any of your other submissions, but if they had as low a signal to noise ratio as this one, I can see why they might not have got many votes.

Basically this post = "Everyone here is so deluded that they ignore me!" and not even in your own words.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm just positing a hypothesis. Why so gratuitously ad hominem? At least gather some data first...

(But thanks for the interesting data point :-)

<comment><USER4> It's rather disingenuous to say "you all suffer from confirmation bias because you ignore my posts" and then claim ad hominem attacks when people point out that your posts are not that interesting. _You_ are the one who started the conversation focusing on you and your posts.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linux ate my RAM - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxatemyram.com

<comment><USER2> You're also spreading misinformation, and you don't even understand memory optimization. Your swap statement is a lie.

Actually swapping is good, it's not bad at all. I personally just don't get where people get stupid assumptions like free ram is good and swap is bad.

</comment><comment><USER2> Windows does exactly the same. There's nothing new about it. Has been standard operation for modern operating systems for more than 10 years. Shouldn't really require any site dedicated to it.</comment>


Ask HN: Want to move to San Francisco/Silicon Valley - how would I do it? - <AUTHOR>

A bit about myself, I'm a 21 year old British Citizen, currently living in The Netherlands. I currently work as a frontend Web Developer. I started building sites when I was 13, doing freelance jobs on the side. My passion keeps on growing and growing, and I've come to a stage where I want to begin my own startup. I have some ideas and am refining them now, but I think I'd prefer to work on them part-time whilst working.  As such, I probably initially am looking for work and later will look to pursue the startup<p>San Francisco would obviously be the ideal place for me to live if I want to begin my startup, and after my visit to San Francisco last year, I know that it's the right kind of place for me. I'd like to find a job over there for a while and work on my prototype on the side. I'm looking forward to hearing some advice on the best way to approach it - both in finding the suitable position as well as anyone who has navigated the visa minefield.  Thanks in advance. <comment><USER4> Hey - as a new SF transplant (from the East Coast), I definitely understand your excitement about getting over there. The visa issue is really tough - <USER2> I haven't had to confront with our company luckily.

In terms of work, my honest answer is be good. SF has a ton of developers (front end, back end, and everything in between), but a huge portion of the contract work force is just really, really bad.

If you are already a front end guy, I would think about how you could turn yourself into the ultimate web experience designer with graphic design skills, some background knowledge of user experience design, and the ability to hack it together. There are few people that meet that bill anywhere, imo.

Another way to approach the visa question, depending on what else you have to learn, is looking into a program at one of the university. California College of the Arts is good, as is SF State, etc. Not sure what the financial situation is like, but that might be a way to get your feet settled and build even more skills in the meantime.

Once you get here, just network like crazy. Meeting people is the best way to find great projects. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Why do you think you need to move to SF? If it's a software startup couldn't you just do that now (on the side) instead of moving?

<comment><USER6> I did not post the original, but I can see why. I've run a few businesses from the UK and after visiting San Jose (and surrounding area) a great number of times I can see the benefits of being in the area - from the general buzz, through to the quality of people and support available

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, and networking with like-minded people.

<comment><USER5> Yes but it's expensive to live there. See this article which was posted today which may be as relevant to people starting software companies as it is to writers: [http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/blog/2010/02/fanmail-q- advice...](http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/blog/2010/02/fanmail-q-advice-for- new-writers.html). You can have more time to start your company if you're living cheaply (assuming you're not independently wealthy).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As an H1-B holder in a similar situation, I advise you not to do this. It's not as simple as Europe.

The USA makes it _very_ hard to get a visa. Also, even if you _do_ get a job, working on your startup part-time is yet harder. Valley jobs typically take much more than full-time hours and have little time off. Welcome to the USA.

Also, you haven't really defined what your goals are, other than just being in SF and working on a prototype. Without the motivation of being in a program like Y Combinator (not to mention all the introductions and networking they can arrange) this doesn't sound like a great plan to me. If you want to sprint for a prototype in some cheap apartment, you can do that anywhere.

I'd advise you to do this instead.

1) You seem to want to soak up SF & Valley culture, so do that first.

\- Get an internship at one of the better companies, ideally Google

\- Participate in one of Google's Summer of Code projects.

\- Visit SF on a tourist visa and just hang out. Meet a lot of people in the hacker and startup scene.

Then:

2) Invigorated with all these new ideas and contacts, go home, get some partners, and work on the prototype.

You may not appreciate how much simpler this is right now, but you will if you try to live here for a short while. You can probably even live with your parents, since you're so young. Or go to one of the cheaper European countries, and hack by day, enjoy yourself by night. You're only young once so why not do it in style? It's called the _World_ Wide Web for a reason.

3) _IF_ you think you're picking up momentum then try to find people who can bring you into the USA again. Hopefully you will have met enough people in stage 1 to do this.

P.S. There are a few tricks out there to establish an American startup with non-American workers, but they are very high risk. Even if the INS buys it, you will end up signing most of your rights over to someone American. For obvious reasons I will not detail the legal tricks here, nor do I advise that you get into this without advice from a lawyer. But just be aware that there are possibilities _if_ you find someone here that you can really, really trust.

</comment><comment><USER8> Your best bet is to get a job at big software company. I know that my employer, Microsoft, has a legal department JUST for this problem. If you can get an in with a company like Google, Microsoft, or etc., then you can get into the area.

After that, I think you could find a native co-founder and then rig it so your company employs you after you leave the big company. Set up the contract of the company so that you cannot easily be terminated (otherwise you'd lose your visa if there is a falling-out between you and your co-founder).

The process of becoming an American sucks right now; everyone who is not a fear-mongering cave dweller knows this. It is especially irritating to us in the Valley as we Just Don't Care about nationality and it can be so difficult to find a qualified candidate. Good luck.

<comment><USER9> You cannot just "rig" it; if you've looked closely at the law (I have), there's a whole checklist of items that prevents you from doing exactly just that. For starters, the company that employs you has to show a track record of profitability, and they need to show that they are paying you the market rate. So you can't just start a company tomorrow that profits $1 a month and say you're taking a $1 salary. If your title in the company is "web developer", then the USCIS will find out what the average salary for a web dev is in SF and say you need to pay that much. And you cannot say you're the company's official janitor either - the job has to require at least a bachelor's degree. You (the immigrant) definitely cannot start your own company and hire yourself.

I'm an immigrant, I've been looking closely at these laws specifically for startup founders, and what you said makes it a lot simple than it sounds - <USER3> I can assure you that as of today, it is simply not. From the immigration front there's no clear cut answers.

Advice on getting a job at a big company makes sense, because they can easily pay you market rate, and show a track record of profitability.

The trouble is, also because of the laws - most big co's are incentivized to hire locals, since it's so difficult to bring an immigrant to work in the US. Also, immigrants who are already physically in the US (from another job, or just fresh from a US university) has a better chance than an immigrant still outside of the country (can you imagine the cost the company has to pay for just a face-to-face interview?) But if you're a superstar and can convince them to want you that much - then you're golden. As in, you can get in the US and live and work here.

Then the next challenge begins, once you're already here. How do you start a company? Because permission to work for someone else != permission to start a company & work for yourself. But that's a whole different topic. One step at a time.

The US has a different relationship with every country, you said you're British. Look up to see if there is any special exceptions to the law (they call them "treaties" between the two countries). I know Singapore, and Canada has them, not sure about the UK. Perhaps, just do you homework - its all on the Web.

But immigrant to immigrant I understand the draw to the valley - best of luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll wait till I make $2 million. I figure it will be an easier problem to solve then.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do you have a degree related to your profession? If so, find a job and get an H-1B. Working "on the side" isn't technically legal but if you kept it low level to start with, it might work out.

No degree? If so, I hope you're famous or rich and can get an O-1 (alien of extraordinary ability) to work someplace else, E-2 (treaty investor into a business - $100k bare minimum), or E-5B (wider scope of investments but at a higher level - $500k/$1m).

If you have an existing company with staff and potential for expanding to the US (guessing you don't!), the various L-* visas could also be useful.

Alternatively, and not entirely legal, go and study in the US (on an F-1 visa) and then do your startup on the side. Be prepared to show that you have money to support your living for this time though (or a source of external money).

Want a story to read about the E-2 process? Well, TechCrunch ran one a year ago :-) [http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/02/coming-to-america- getting-v...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/02/coming-to-america-getting- visas-to-do-business-in-silicon-valley/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a degree related to Web Development, I started doing one while I was working at a web development company. My knowledge was way higher than the teachers (which was very disappointing!) so I left quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reconsider.

Why move when you can just startup something wherever you like?

</comment><comment><USER13> I lived in New York for a year and it was really vibrant, I loved it. The only problem I had was staying... I couldn't get the visa to stick. Good luck with it

</comment><comment><USER6> Hi there

I nearly moved in 1999 but because of family I stayed in the UK. Even though I've had success with what I've done, I think I would have found more if I'd been in San Jose (where I'd planned to locate). If you have a business idea maybe it would be enough to go for funding?

</comment><comment><USER14> dice.com and craigslist.org are two major job sources for SF bay area

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_city>

Just come illegally. If you're white, you can probably get away with it for a long while, especially if you freelance.

<comment><USER9> Beware of the downsides: e.g. if you accrue many days of "illegal" status, then let's say your mom is sick back in the UK, you go home to see her, and now when you want to re-enter, immigration's going to say, "yeah - sorry, we remember you." Who knows if that ban will ever be lifted, but would that be worth it ?

Plus, there are other things to consider that would be difficult if you got here illegally, e.g. driver's license, or renewing your passport at your own embassy here in the US (they'll ask you for documentation)

That said, I'm sure it's worked out for some, but .. there are certainly risks involved here that you need to be aware of.</comment></comment>


Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do - <AUTHOR> http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200911/why-your-friends-have-more-friends-you-do <comment><USER2> This is relatively well known in (Complex) Network theory as applied to Social Networks. You're always more likely to be connected to a Hub (someone with high degree) that to a "leaf" (in the tree sense). If you plot the average number of friends your friends have versus the number of your friends on a log-log plot, you'll see a decreasing line. (See Fig. 2 of <http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.0450> for a recent example).

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks like the only difference allowing for more friends is that those people are specifically more likely to befriend people with fewer friends. (Sue and Alice, in the example.) One could take away from this that the secret to having many friends is to excel at befriending those who don't make friends easily. In some cases, you may be the only friend they have.</comment>