Thunderbolt 3 Overview [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://thunderbolttechnology.net/sites/default/files/Thunderbolt_3_Overview_Brief_FINAL.pdf

<comment><USER2> WiGig is a more practical technology, in my humble opinion.

I have a WiGig-enabled laptop and a WiGig dock with 3 1080p monitors, a Ethernet cable, and all of my peripherals connected to the dock including a 10 port hub with a USB3 HDD.

I can transfer files to my HDD (80MB/s), to the network (90MB/s), play 1080p videos on 1 monitor, browser on another, and play games on the last one without noticing any latency at all.

And I can move my laptop to the other side of the room without any noticeable connection issues, which is pretty surprising considering they're advertising WiGig as a short-range wireless technology (although having large obstructions between the laptop and the dock will cause problems very quickly).

For a first-gen product, I'm pretty impressed. The room-wide wireless gigabit Ethernet alone is already a killer feature for me, but the multiple wireless displays and peripherals makes for an even more amazing package. Can't wait to see how they iterate on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really impressive that this can handle basically everything that's thrown at it. "Yeah, it'll provide power and is backwards compatible with other protocols. External GPU to game with your laptop? No problem. Oh, and the connector is smaller than before, too."

<comment><USER4> That was the promise of thunderbird 2 (or 1)...

<comment><USER5> Not quite, eGPU wasn't officially supported for instance. Port compatibility with USB (and thus not having to give up USB ports) might also be a big factor, and TB2 power delivery, while higher than pre Power Delivery USB, was only 10W IIRC.

The problem remains the extra cost of integrating TB. Hopefully the cost will come down with Alpine Ridge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can somebody give me a quick overview of how and when to spend my money on this?

<comment><USER7> As a video editor that deals with terabytes of footage, in practice thunderbolt is much faster than USB3. It's common that i have to copy 1-4 terrabytes onto several drives for editors, fx artists, archival, etc usually on deadline. I don't care that thunderbolt isn't as ubiquitous as usb, but like firewire before it, I'm glad it's there and common enough.

<comment><USER8> Except that many companies use large scale centralized network storage and are exporting the files over their network protocol of choice, and only need local storage for caching, temp, and swap.

<comment><USER7> That's nice in theory but every post house I've worked at still needs plenty of thunderbolt and usb drives. The footage isn't shot at the post house, it has to be transported and copied over to the SAN, and everything is on a tight deadline so it needs to be done yesterday. Or rather than using the in house colorist (or fx artist) the client decides to go with someone else, so that often means copying footage for that delivery. And the client wants two copies of it, one for archive and one because the creative director wants to dick around with it. Or the post house is over-booked and the only edit station is an imac not connected to the SAN, so copy it over to a drive so someone can start working. Plus with everything shot on digital it's not unheard of to get 20 or more hours of footage for a campaign. On a RED or ARRI, that takes up a lot of space.

Half my work now is out of my home now, I don't need a SAN, instead clients ship me a thunderbolt raid (typically a G-Raid) that I ship back once the project is finished. And I know more and more editors and motion graphic artists who are doing the same, less work in edit suites, more work at home. Fast, portable drives makes that possible (and efficient high quality codecs like ProRes and h264).

I've been doing this for 20 years, we'll still need fast, portable storage for many years to come and right now, for video editing, Thunderbolt is the best choice.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't something like eSATA be a better choice? The hdd's speed would be the limiting factor instead of the bus.

<comment><USER10> SATA tops out at 6Gb/s. One 7200 rpm spindle might not be able to saturate that, but a RAID array could, and any decent, single SSD would trivially saturate it.

So, for the kind of use case where you need to move lots of data, very quickly, eSATA may not be better :)

<comment><USER9> Well yeah, but a single ssd wouldn't hold lots of data, and for the use case described, I assume its a spinning rust drive. Also you wouldn't run a large raid array over a single sata bus, at the very least you'd use SAS and get multiple channels in one cable.

Edit: The g-raid mentioned looks like a 2x spinning array, so well within the limits of a single sata III bus.

<comment><USER7> esata is less ubiquitous than both USB and Thunderbolt (and firewire before it). External ports have never been standard on any macs and I don't ever remember them being standard on any of the HP machines we used (the majority of big budget editorial, i.e. feature films, tv, and commercials, are cut on macs, although fx leans heavily toward Windows and Linux). We use to install esata ports on some of our machine room systems, as the speed difference was definitely useful. I wish esata would have become more common but at the moment Thunderbolt makes it unnecessary (and USB3 seems to have stifled it's standard adoption across non-Apple systems).

Also, aside from the G-Raid, we also use 1 and 2tb SSD's (more for portability than the extra speed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Intel continues to refuse to deploy Thunderbolt by default on Z series chipsets (Z87, Z97, Zwhatever LGA1151/Broadwell uses).

I'd love to adopt Thunderbolt, Intel literally refuses to sell it to me.

<comment><USER11> There are plenty of Z97 motherboards with Thunderbolt: [https://thunderbolttechnology.net/products?tid=15&field_comp...](https://thunderbolttechnology.net/products?tid=15&field_company_nid=All&field_prod_os_value_many_to_one=All&field_prod_tb_version_value_many_to_one=tbv2) I don't understand why it matters whether it's default or not.

<comment><USER8> Neither of my Z97 motherboards come with it, it is roughly a $100 premium to get it.

If it doesn't come with systems by default, no one is going to use it. I'm interested in it purely for IP-over-Thunderbolt.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, in retrospect Intel probably should have forced millions of people to pay extra so that DiabloD3 could save some money on his home LAN.

<comment><USER8> Not really. It costs about as much to put Thunderbolt on a board (especially when the board already has a DisplayPort port wired into the on-die GPU) as it does to put USB 3 on a board.

It is merely a few cents in parts. There is literally no reason why Intel just doesn't put Thunderbolt everywhere.

<comment><USER12> > It is merely a few cents in parts

someone never worked with intel integrated.

<comment><USER8> That isn't the issue. Its an Intel platform and Intel _wants_ to lock everyone into their platform... which requires the platform to be as accessible and ubiquitous as possible.

Limiting Thunderbolt to a few computers no one owns (except Apple products, Thunderbolt is everywhere there) basically signs Thunderbolt's death.

Thunderbolt 3 is now fast enough that I can do 40gbit Ethernet over it. With the upcoming PCI-E 4.0 standard, that is 2-3 lanes worth of bandwidth.

Yet, Intel isn't storming the industry and trying to legitimately compete with USB 3.x.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem I foresee with Thunderbolt 3 is that it's serving a use that few people need at a price that no one wants to pay. The price-point issues might disappear with the USB-C compatibility, but even then, the only time I can ever foresee me actually reaching for Thunderbolt is for a display when DP 1.3 isn't an option or when huge data xfers were commonplace.

Unless it competes on price point with USB, I can't see this being any more popular than previous iterations of the protocol.

Maybe that'd change some if Intel actually put it on the enthusiast chipsets, but even then, I think the price point is a pretty big turnoff.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it will ever be as ubiquitous as USB, but it doesn't have to be useful. I'm a video editor and thunderbolt has saved me enough time copying files that i'll gladly pay the price. The cost typically gets passed along to clients and at rates of $100/hr or more for a single editor they'll happily pay the extra cost of the drives if it saves a few hours over the life of a project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> OMG external graphics card !</comment>


How to Land a Dream Dev Job Without Web Experience - <AUTHOR> http://lostmahbles.com/land-dream-dev-job-without-web-experience/

<comment><USER2> Become a lawyer. We don't need any more unskilled labor running around.

<comment><USER3> It may in fact be possible to have programming talent that doesn't involve the web.</comment></comment>


How to create HTML5 web apps with Xcode4 - <AUTHOR> http://antoinemercadal.fr/xcodecappcocoa/

<comment><USER2> That's a terrible screencast. Mostly just a tiny terminal window with barely any explanation of what's going on.

<comment><USER3> If you watch it on youtube.com ( <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpQcPzeBLaU> ) it's available in 720p. Very watchable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Better title:

How to create Cappuccino interfaces using XCode4

<comment><USER5> Better yet: iPhone development, still much more complex than most people think it is/should be.</comment></comment>


How LZ4 works (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://ticki.github.io/blog/how-lz4-works/ <comment><USER2> LZ4 is good engineering work, better than Google snappy (zippy) which itself was better than LZO (both have somewhat improved by looking at each other's code since then). The current best general purpose compressor for decompression speed is Oodle Selkie, but it is not open source. I don't if a fast compressor for Oodle Selkie exists - since it was developed for game assets, they don't care about compression speed.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's amazing how something useful and innovative gets invented, and isn't so much as documented, let alone patented or published in a journal.

<comment><USER4> LZ4 is only one of the _many_ variations on the basic principle of the LZ family of algorithms, which is to replace repeated sequences with references to where they were before.

What does amaze me a little, is the fact that the rather more complex Huffman algorithm was published and implemented decades before LZ.

The core idea of LZ, however, has been known for centuries: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iteration_mark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iteration_mark)

<comment><USER5> This is true, there is low algorithmic novelty in lz4.

However, that's missing the point: lz4's decompressor is simultaneously simple and also the fastest thing aroud, at least at the moment.

In fact, it is so fast, it can be used to accelerate local data transfers over "slow" links like bonded 10GBit ethernet and arrays of PCIe SSD's.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't that also explain why it came later? The low compression ratio is useful nowadays, with large throughputs.

<comment><USER5> Maybe. It might just be that the tricks it plays matter a lot on newer CPUs, and older fast compressors played older tricks.

I think the ratio of CPU cycles to i/o bandwidth is what really matters. Presumably the optimal tradeoff between CPU throughout and compression ratios depends on that and varies over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> LZ4 is beautiful.

<comment><USER8> Just like DEFLATE.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but faster.</comment></comment></comment>


The Crusade Against Multiple Regression Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://edge.org/conversation/richard_nisbett-the-crusade-against-multiple-regression-analysis <comment><USER2> One of the must-read papers in this area is a very short, very readable piece by Chris Achen called "Let's Put Garbage-Can Regressions and Garbage-Can Probits Where They Belong." [0]

The basic idea is that if your data experiences non-linear coding errors due to some external process before it gets to you, then as related to the true causal relationship between your variables, you're actually fitting a (possibly) non-linear transformation.

If you do this and still use the classical cook-book t-stat / p-value stuff, you can run into big problems. As the paper shows, even for an extremely simple data set where there is merely a non-linear coding error, the coefficient can be very statistically significant (t-stat magnitude > 2) and yet _it will have the wrong sign._

This is a really remarkable thing. By just jittering your data a bit, you can obtain a result that passes the usual, simplistic significance tests but for which the effect size _is negative when it should be positive_ (or vice versa).

I remember when I worked in quant finance and we were using a terrible, shamefully bad automated framework for frequentist model fitting, the sense of dread was huge. If the data we used had been jittered by the data vendor, or if there was a slight bug in the code that did variable cleaning, outlier manipulation, or scoring, or any of a hundred other steps where tiny non- linearities could be introduced, then it would be entirely possible for us to see "significant" results that pointed in the opposite direction from the truth.

There are many other papers which point out the pitfalls of naive dump-it-all- on-the-right-hand-side regression models, but I think this one from Achen is unique in that it is extremely short, extremely simple to follow, and yet it is fully devastating to this entire technique of modeling.

[0] [http://www.columbia.edu/~gjw10/achen04.pdf](http://www.columbia.edu/~gjw10/achen04.pdf)

<comment><USER3> There certainly are poorly done regression analyses out there and yes, things like coding-errors and correlations of variables can screw things up. But the point of regression (at least in the natural/medical sciences) isn't to give a definitive answer but to suggest actual experiments to be done. I think it isn't coincidence that both your link and the original link are from social scientists. There it is much harder (and often impossible) to conduct followup experimental studies based on the regression and so the regression often ends up as the end result.

<comment><USER2> I don't think very many practitioners share your view that regressions are meant to be simplistic first steps on the path to more sophisticated analyses or experiments. If that were true, then I would definitely agree with you that we can forgive most of the shortcommings of frequentist regressions.

In practice and in academia, though, I've only ever experienced researchers who see regressions as the main result, and they intend on exclusively using regression models even before they have any sense of what the data is or what the challenges will be.

In a lot of cases, they even go out of their way to build frameworks that hard-code in the assumption that whatever model is used must be representable as a set of coefficients and their standard errors. It's painful to see it happen: people have been using regression models for so long (due to the easy manipulation of what the results "mean") that they can't even imagine any other way of doing things.

Even in cases where someone might want to earnestly prioritize a move to a more accurate or more flexible modeling framework, they often can't because decades of legacy code has been tailored to work solely with coefficient-based regression models. The software development cost of switching would be so high that they would rather just find excuses to hide the model's inaccuracy and "sell" the results than to bite the bullet and invest in systems where the results are actually statistically rigorous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One interesting point about regression analysis though is that its outcome is perfectly fit to be exploited by marketing & advertising. explaining all the caveats of an experiment is hard, but saying that "people who eat X have less probability of getting cancer" is very powerful. So, in a way, I suspect these type of studies (regression) are "pulled" by marketing rather than pusghed by Research (at least for corporate sponsored studies)

<comment><USER2> The trouble is that researchers and universities also act like marketers, and also even different factions within a single company will act like marketers to self-promote their work in order to compete for a better bonus or promotion or something.

Since regression type analyses are so amenable to this, and it's so easy to data mine for arbitrary thresholds of success, like "significance" levels, the problem tends to spiral out of control.

I wish it was just confined to advertisers and SEO stuff. But the ugly truth is that if you peel back the layers in many organizations that claim to do "quantitative" or "data-driven" business, it's just more of this same poor statistical hygiene.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does factor analysis/principal component analysis help any? The article begins by talking about how looking at a single variable (vitamin E) that is strongly correlated with a bunch of other variables (healthy lifestyle) points one in the wrong direction. If you attempt to capture "all" (I know - not a priori possible) the relevant variables, are you going to do better?

<comment><USER2> Factor analysis can sometimes help by removing human biases in the feature / covariate creation stage. If you can devise a statistical process that reliably identifies which features are important, most would tend to agree that is better than relying on human intuition or first-principles from some domain science field to simply assert what they are.

But once you've constructed the features via that statistical process, and you plan to just dump them onto the RHS of a regression formulation, then it's no better. The same kinds of non-linearities can creep in whether you manually computed a human-level-description of a factor, or you let a statistical decomposition pop the factor out automatically.

The main point is that you cannot use most of the success metrics from a frequentist regression for the model selection and policy selection outcomes that most people want to use them for. Theoretically, it is just unsound. You have to dig deeper into the data, look at conditional views of your data, and try to use model fitting procedures that are provably robust to these kinds of artifacts, multicollinearity, and so forth.

I think the biggest problem is that non-statistician practitioners who work under tight deadlines in a domain science field tend to just want some kind of cookbook system that "just works 100% of the time." But there simply is no such thing. There is no cookbook procedure for you to take a bunch of variables, dump them into some fitting procedure, and automatically get comparable, consistent results that report back relationships according to the pseudotheorems of the Achen paper.

We need for practitioners in fields like quant finance, quant marketing, chemical informatics, and so on, to stop _mis-wanting_ a cookbook, and to instead embrace that to create robust and trustworthy research results, it simply has to be done slowly and with great care. It's a corner that you just cannot cut, and you have to stop wanting to cut it.</comment></comment>


The issues with traditional blogging - Why we created Glipho - <AUTHOR> http://glipho.com/roger/the-issues-with-traditional-blogging-why-we-created-glipho

<comment><USER2> Not sure, but this looks like Pinterest combined with Blogger. I can see some of the ways you might be able to get the word out more, but also think that you have those same options, with some effort, on the other platforms. Guess I'm still missing what makes this "non-traditional"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not trying to say Glipho is non-traditional at all. By traditional I mean writing blogs, not the latest I blog a picture or video craze, makes sense?

Where do you see all the content in blogger listed in a single place? Where you can search for any post written by any writer in any topic?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are so many people on Glipho who have left their blog because it's simply that much better. When I think blogging, it's not just the writing/reading, it's add this, modify that, update this, change that, add this colour, change this font, then on top of all of that go out and get your audience..When do you actually have the time to write on your blog when you have all of the above to do?

With Glipho, you just have to read and write.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks promising. Two questions: what would it "cost" for people to blog? And why not have a sign-up of your own?

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by "cost"?

At the time we decided it was better to spend our time creating features and improving the site than create our own sign up. It will come soon.

<comment><USER4> Cost as in, how are you planning to sustain your site if I were to blog?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Glipho for me is about sharing opinions not standing by them!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Let's Develop an Entanglement Clone Using D3.js and TypeScript - <AUTHOR> http://cacodaemon.de/index.php?id=67

<comment><USER2> Do you know more materials/examples of SVG-based games? (Especially puzzles.)</comment>


San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-05/san-francisco-tech-firms-see-workers-flee-from-4-500-rents <comment><USER2> It's hard to overstate the impact this is going to have on San Francisco, long-term. As Technology becomes the most important industry in America, a well-governed San Francisco could have positioned itself as the next NYC. The hub where all of tech gathers, the same way all of finance gathered in Wall St. Replace the 70 year old 2-storey homes with Manhattan style apartment buildings, and rent in San Francisco would have remained very reasonable, despite the rapid economic growth. This would have prevented exactly this problem where tech workers are forced to disperse to other mini-hubs, due to lack of capacity in San Francisco.

20 years on, San Francisco could have become what New York City is today. One of the top 5 cities in the world, and the undisputed hub where all of technology resides. Instead, it's on track to be just another major city, in the same league as countless others like Chicago/Seattle/Boston.

<comment><USER3> _" a well-governed San Francisco could have positioned itself as the next NYC. The hub where all of tech gathers, the same way all of finance gathered in Wall St. Replace the 70 year old 2-storey homes with Manhattan style apartment buildings, and rent in San Francisco would have remained very reasonable, despite the rapid economic growth. This would have prevented exactly this problem where tech workers are forced to disperse to other mini-hubs, due to lack of capacity in San Francisco."_

...or we could move to a _sensible_ model, where software delivers on its promise and allows people to work _anywhere_. The cost of living here is the invisible hand of the market showing you that you're making a mistake by locating your company in the bay area. Yet the dominant techno-nerd narrative continues to be that the bay area has somehow made a mistake in not anticipating the bizarre fetish that global wealth has developed for local real estate since the early 1990s.

It's insane that an industry of otherwise-intelligent people insists on cramming itself onto a tiny peninsula with seismic development challenges, and I chuckle every time someone draws the comparison to New York, which has _seven times_ the land area, a capable and efficient transit system that has been developed over more than a century...and one of the highest costs of living in the world. Development is not a panacea.

I live in SF, but I wouldn't make the choice to move here today. It simply isn't worth Manhattan prices to live in a city full of tech bros, where you can't get a good meal after 9:30. Increasingly, the choice not to locate your company in SF is a sign of competitive intelligence.

<comment><USER4> The fact that everything closed so early blew me away, when I moved there. Compared to the middle of nowhere WV it made zero sense. Even the grocery stores closed by midnight in SF.

In WV, you can find food at most places until 12-1am 7 days a week. And the major local grocery is a Walmart, which is open 24 hours.

Last Easter I had no clue nothing would be open, and didn't prepare for that. So I just had some crap picked up at a gas station to hold me over until the next day. It's a really bizarre situation compared to most other metros, but even compared to a bunch of small towns.

<comment><USER5> Everything closing at 9PM is pretty much par for the course here in Vancouver, another city with the skyrocketing cost-of-living thing going on. I wonder if there's a correlation. Maybe everyone is rich enough to pay delivery services or maids or something to get their shopping done while they're at work, so there's no demand for 24-hour businesses?

Then again, another thing with Vancouver (that I think I've heard said a bit about SF, but less-so) is that there's no night life. The _bars_ close at midnight. (Actually, you can't even get a license to operate a "bar" here; you have to build a sit-down restaurant in order to serve alcohol.) I wonder if the correlation is actually between this sort of Victorian-era teetotaling "healthy living" sensibility, and the sort of generalized NIMBYism that prevents highrises from deflating housing pressure.

<comment><USER6> Vancouver anecdote; bars are not night life. I visited for two weeks and discovered a local music festival (music waste), befriended random folks at parks (parks were everywhere, and people actually used them!). East Van seemed to have a lively night life on par with SF/LA, people hosting live bands in their loft, avant-garde burlesque theater, house parties etc. It sounded like there was a lively festival scene in BC too, and not just electronic, stuff like the Peppermill Festival [http://www.peppermillrecords.com/](http://www.peppermillrecords.com/). Quantity of cultural hubs in Van might not be as expansive as other major cities, but the quality certainly sprouts up. That city seems more suited for people who enjoy nature though.

Really sad to hear that Vancouver and San Francisco are plagued by real estate siphoning out all the potential of what those cities could be. Feudalism seems to be a trend everywhere though.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-14/millennial...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-14/millennials- flee-vancouver-for-cities-with-more-affordable-homes)

<comment><USER7> They have the parties at home in east van because it is impossible to get a permit and/or a suitable venue for most events. There are very few venues for hosting parties and virtually no practice areas for bands. I've been to a number of events that were held in death-trap condemned buildings. I've even been locked in one illegally because someone called an ambulance and they didn't want to "blow their cover" so nobody could enter or exit for 30min while my friend waited outside in a back alley. Much prefer other cities where I can just go to a normal bar and not deal with entrapment issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lots of naysayers on HN, but I left SF last year and moved to Austin. I have zero regrets.

In SF, my 1 bedroom, 650 square foot apartment in SOMA went from $2,600 to $3,200 over 3 years.

In Austin, my salary went down $10k to $120k/yr. My 2 bedroom, 1,100 square foot apartment is $1,150/mo.

The tech scene here isn't as vibrant as SF, but there's still plenty of great meet ups.

All in all, yes there are some things I miss about SF, but the benefit of having way more cash month to month outweigh the negatives.

Edit: Clarity.

<comment><USER9> Sorry if this is off-topic (and maybe a bit personal), but as a recent graduate, I'm not sure what I would do with all that extra money. What do you (or most people) generally spend it on? I make less than that, but if I didn't have student loans, I wouldn't know what to do with it besides leave it in the bank.

<comment><USER10> If you're not already married, you should be using it to date. College is hands-down the best place to find a significant other. Once you've graduated, the social life you took for granted quickly fades away and finding people to spend time with and then actually spending time with them becomes vastly more difficult. If you're a cisgendered male, it can be absolutely brutal. Cisgendered female, much less so but still a problem. One of the few things that makes it easier is the willingness to be generous.

Leaving it in the bank is an excellent option. You've got two main things to save for, a down payment for a house and your wedding. Better still is a balanced and sane investment portfolio, but leaving it in the bank is better than a bad portfolio, so take some time to learn how investing works if you choose to go that route.

<comment><USER11> What are some smart dating strategies for a straight white male new grad in the Bay Area with 6 digits of disposable income? Dating market seems extremely competitive here.

<comment><USER12> > What are some smart dating strategies for a straight white male new grad in > the Bay Area with 6 digits of disposable income?

Spend the money on a plane ticket to somewhere with women?

<comment><USER13> This is a funny comment, but it's also better advice than it might seem, for reasons Jon Birger describes in _Date-onomics_ : [http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/19/briefly-noted-date- onomics...](http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/19/briefly-noted-date-onomics-how- dating-became-a-lopsided-numbers-game-jon-birger/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I live in a high rise in SF and pay $4400 for a one bedroom. Although it sounds expensive but it's like $800 more than the least expensive place we could find near this place but it's a well built apartment with lots of amenities.

I thought about moving out of SF but I don't have any social connection outside of San Francisco. Plus weather is very nice here and there are lots of diverse cultural events happening in San Francisco. Add very thick job market on top of it. I was able to interview 50 companies when I was looking for a new job.

I'm saying I, as a case study is paying this rent because of reasons and I'm well aware how much more it is compared to other cities. There are 600 apartments in this high rise and out unit is one of cheapest ones. Most of units are having residents, so there are people who pay those rents.

<comment><USER14> I don't know why I'm getting downvoted! Don't you want to hear WHY people paying those rents or you want to believe everybody paying those rents are just plain stupid?!

Markets are smart!

<comment><USER15> Up-voted, Are average SF rents that high? Boston is probably less than half that cost, with salaries comparable to the west coast and similar cultural events and excellent public and private schools. Weather is not that great though. Genuinely asking - So what makes SF so worth it, that it justifies its high cost of living? in comparison to other top class states, is it just the weather?

<comment><USER16> jobs. You can be a half-assed engineer here and be employed; if you're good, you have dozens of choices of place to work. Whenever I ponder leaving (and I'm a data scientist, so more specialized) I look around at cities like Salt Lake or Denver or other places close to good skiing and see like 3 employers. Total. What happens if I don't like my job / my boss changes / whatever? I'd probably have to move. It's just a ton of risk for the employee.

And not just jobs, but other people who do the same thing that you can learn from. And full stack: from the people building javascript libs to new programming languages (swift, rust) to chips (Apple, Intel, hardware startups), etc.

Proximity to the outdoors. If you want great surfing, hiking, skiing (well, ex the drought years), climbing, camping, etc -- it's here. And the state is dry, so no mosquitos or flies. ie it's _much_ more enjoyable to be outside than in the midwest. It's fun to be outside 340+ days/year.

Non-competes are invalid by state law. And this isn't a theoretical problem; I had a job offer withdrawn in NY because the new employer's counsel determined they were covered by then-current employers non-compete contract and they didn't want the hassle.

People who view quitting their jobs and starting companies as merely modestly crazy/risky, instead of something only a lunatic would do.

Oh, and as for your average rents: yes. You can get cheaper rents, but at the price of shitty public transport, a terrible commute, and a lack of local services where you live. Which is particularly punishing if you don't own a car. sf as a city is run by worthless idiots who decided to play city, so big pieces of it have terrible (unreliable, slow, unsafe, etc) public transport (yet it manages to be some of the most expensive transit in the nation as the cherry on top). Plus there are 3 public transport systems that essentially were built independently and operate without any coordination, two of which only serve pieces of the city (muni, bart, caltrain). And until the age of uber a taxi system that specialized in shitting on their customers. Because where, besides sf, would a taxi _that actually comes_ be worth paying a 50% premium ala uber when it debuted? So yeah, wildly incompetent city government.

<comment><USER15> thanks but I find none of those unique to SF, you can get the same in other top cities. I don't know about Denver but in Boston/NY you have tons of good job opportunities, excellent engineering and scientific community with top firms/startups and excellent eng, business, and med schools. Close proximity to outdoors (New Hamshire, Maine).

No doubt there are more startups/jobs in SF but at the same time it seems that its very exaggerated.

<comment><USER16> I don't know about Boston, but Maine is not in any sense close to nyc. I think the difference is distance. In sf, world class skiing is 3 hours away; the beach is 20 minutes in much of the city; great hiking is across the bridge in Marin or south along 1, well under an hour away. It's not a trip; enjoying the outdoors takes an afternoon. I have an acquaintance who works near the presidio and surfs over lunch. When I lived in Manhattan, you could definitely get to the outdoors, but it wasn't anything like this close.

As for jobs, I disagree. see eg:

machine learning, nyc: 1 responsive ad (plus ads for jobs in sfbay, nonresponsive android stuff) [http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learn...](http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learning)

same search, sf: 10-15? [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learnin...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=machine+learning)

indeed has similar ratios.

As for jobs in general, if you're a good js or rails engineer with a reasonable network of friends / former coworkers, starting now at 6pm Tuesday night you could have interviews on Friday, maybe even on Thursday. And start a new job next week. I believe there's a qualitative difference.

<comment><USER17> How many jobs if I'm getting close to 50? :-)

<comment><USER16> on the peninsula, plenty; in sf, work for a larger company or at least not for yc-aged / early 20s founders and you'll do ok

my oldest coworker, and this was at a < 10 person startup, was not a founder and was a line level search engineer and over 65.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I pay about that for rent - it's the most I've ever paid for housing by a long shot, and it regularly freaks me out. I just can't get used to it. The thing that gets me is that I'm barely paying the property taxes on the place I rent. The landlord isn't gouging me.

It's just the way it is here. Housing is so expensive because everyone wants to be here, and for good reason. This is the most thriving technical community in the entire world. We live different lifestyles as a result. It's not better or worse, just different.

It seems like there are a fair amount of people who come for 2-3 years and then go back to wherever it is that they came from, but I think the amount of people who actually leave the bay area for tech jobs in Seattle/Portland/LA is pretty slim. I'm sure it happens, but if there's an exodus happening I for one am completely unaware of it.

<comment><USER19> Really - "This is the most thriving technical community in the entire world"? I'm calling BS. Have you been to New York City recently? Rents for a 1 bedroom are nowhere near that. Lets talk about that community - there are meetups? Wow. You can go to a meetup on any night of the week in New York or Austin. Besides that explain "the community"? Oh you go out and drink craft beers after work? You can do that anywhere.

Whats this different lifestyle of which you speak? Dodging panhandlers on Market Street? Stepping over human excrement? Using Uber b/c the city in which you have chosen to piss away your money doesn't provide decent mass transit for most?

People like you perpetuate some myth that you have to pay $4500 a month if you want to work in tech. Nonsense.

<comment><USER20> I don't agree with the amount of vitriol in your comment, but I agree with the overall sentiment.

I feel like tech workers in San Francisco are fully bought-in to the "this is the best and only place to be if you're in tech" idea. So much so that they can't quite see that the grass is just as green on the other side, so to speak. You _have_ to be fully bought-in to it, there's no other way you would be able to justify the cost of living there.

I'm curious about the different lifestyles- I live in Seattle and there's startups and meetups and hacker spaces all over the damn place, with decent public transportation, awesome coffee and beer and restaurants and anything else you could want. Maybe not as many conferences, but they're a quick flight away if you really want to go.

<comment><USER21> I'm curious if you've lived in the Bay Area for any length of time.

I used to live in Boston (which at the time was the #2 tech scene in the country, but has probably been eclipsed by Seattle/NYC/Austin by now). There were startups and meetups and hacker spaces as well, including a number of famous ones.

The Bay Area is a huge difference in degree. The difference is that you had to find the "tech scene" in Boston, while in Silicon Valley, _tech is the scene_. If you go out for coffee, nearly everybody in the coffeeshop will be working on some tech startup. If you sit down at a restaurant, there's a good chance that the table next to you will have a group of engineers from some large tech company, or an investor being pitched by an entrepreneur, or a group of friends planning a startup. If you go to a random party - even ones thrown by non-techies - half the people there will work in tech.

<comment><USER22> > If you go out for coffee, nearly everybody in the coffeeshop will be working > on some tech startup. If you sit down at a restaurant, there's a good chance > that the table next to you will have a group of engineers from some large > tech company, or an investor being pitched by an entrepreneur, or a group of > friends planning a startup. If you go to a random party - even ones thrown > by non-techies - half the people there will work in tech.

What you describe is an unbearable nightmare.

<comment><USER21> Depends who you are and what you want, like most things in life.

It was great for my first couple years here, when I really wanted to go deep into the field and learn all I could. I had my "become a well-rounded person" phase in college, so by my 20s I was happy to specialize deeply. It was less great for years 3-5, when I ended up meeting and marrying a non-techie. It's been good again for me now, founding a startup, because of the huge number of potential customers everywhere. There's a huge difference between an abundance mentality vs. a scarcity mentality that having a large number of customers/employees/investors nearby creates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is the result of people trying to get rich quick by simply having stuff rather than producing and maintaining stuff. I don't know what the answer is. I do think that San Francisco is poorly planned out based on my observations last year when I visited to see if I could live there. There is no mass transit system on the scale of NYC or one that's even trying to be. Everything seems really spread out. I felt like you needed a car to really be able to adequately take advantage of the area. I'm not really a fan of expensive rents and car culture. I also noticed people cheering when Twitter announced layoffs. I didn't leave with the impression the community had adequately benefited from the tech industry being in the area. The people I spoke with felt that the tech industry takes away but doesn't give back to the community.

<comment><USER24> A car won't help you much in SF. You can get to where you want to go, but not park there. People end up using Uber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Portland resident here. What this article doesn't cover, is now locals are victim of gentrification. Rent prices are almost 2x, out of state buyers are throwing all cash offers on houses, and overall housing supply is low... I'm sure the commercial market is just as bad.

Interesting times.

<comment><USER26> It's 2016, and people still think that if someone moves into your neighborhood, someone else has to move out.

Rising demand is great. It means people want to enjoy your neighborhood. You can either meet that demand by increasing supply, or you can restrict the demand, and let certain people be outpriced by the market.

Locals aren't victims of gentrification. They're victims of zoning laws and nimbyism.

<comment><USER27> So consider a nice, quaint neighborhood. Person A lives there. Person B wants to live there too, because it is so nice.

Ok, let's say we double supply.

All the houses are now either twice as high, or half as big, or maybe the trees were cut down and the bushes ripped out to make room. There's twice as many people & everything therein. Is it still the same nice neighborhood?

<comment><USER28> You're right, of course, but this sentiment amounts to little more than stomping your feet and wishing the world were different.

As long as there is high demand, you can either build more or expect higher prices and more sprawl. I get that people don't _like_ those choices, but that's what's on the table.

<comment><USER29> Or you can do neither. It's not like the false dichotomy you're presenting is true.

<comment><USER30> Not in a free market. If demand is high, and supply doesn't raise to meet it, then prices will increase unless artificially suppressed.

Rent control could do that for rent, but has its own problems. As for owners, how do you tell someone they aren't allowed to sell their house for what someone else is willing to pay them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm a contrarian voice here, but I strongly value my day-to-day encounters and connections with exceptional individuals who I cross paths with in daily life... moreso than the exorbitant cost-of-living in the area. The access to opportunities, collaborations, and community here is unparalleled (comparisons: Taipei, New York City, Boston, and London, all of which I've spent prolonged periods due to business).

Spend one weekend hiking in Yosemite, another working on a digital arts project in Oakland, and you still got plenty of bandwidth to sip your fancy coffees and swing by Stanford for some lectures and run into competent friends to solve some business problems for fun and profit... life is pretty damn good for work and play.

Caveat: Of course, this is coming from a position of privilege: that I spent both undergrad and grad in the area and have built up a strong base of connections here within the profession world and academia, and that the $10k-20k net salary optimization does not meaningfully affect my quality of life.

</comment><comment><USER32> We've just setup a new office for our company ([https://raygun.com](https://raygun.com)) in Seattle. We have a small office in SF, but going to building a much larger one up here (we're HQ'd in Wellington, New Zealand)

Seattle locals complain a little about all the cranes across the skyline. I see it another way - Seattle is absolutely going to eat SF's lunch if it doesn't change.

You already have Microsoft, Boeing, etc here. Google, Facebook and Space X have now opened offices too. This city seems to be fully engaged handling that growth and how to capitalize on it. We've been receiving flyers about developing the transit system for the next 25 years. A far cry from the sassy (and painfully accurate) BART twitter account calling out the lack of investment in it.

I'm not saying it's perfect, but there's some real problems with the inelastic supply of housing in the SF/Bay Area.

<comment><USER13> _Seattle locals complain a little about all the cranes across the skyline. I see it another way - Seattle is absolutely going to eat SF 's lunch if it doesn't change._

One underestimated part of CA's success, though, is the fact that non-competes are illegal: [http://asr.sagepub.com/content/76/5/695.short](http://asr.sagepub.com/content/76/5/695.short). If Washington State banned non-competes, it would have a really tremendous long-term advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yes, rents are high, but if you invest even a little bit of time you can find a fine residence in the Bay Area for a lot less than $4,500.

I rent a two bedroom house in Oakland for $2,200. My commute is not too much longer than it would be if I live in certain parts of San Francisco.

There's simply little advantage to living right in the heart of a major city.

You have to ask yourself:

"Instead of renting in a high-profile location, what else could I buy with an extra $24,000 a year?"

Yes, average rents are too high, but nobody says you have to pay the average rent.

<comment><USER34> Well you also have a significantly higher probability of getting shot when you live in Oakland. So there's always that.

<comment><USER21> Depends which part of Oakland. Some parts of Oakland (eg. Rockridge, Temescal) are significantly nicer than SF. They aren't exactly cheap, but your safety : price ratio is significantly better than in say, the Mission.

<comment><USER35> They may appear nicer but when I read Yelp reviews in Rockridge and Temescal they occasionally mention the bars on the windows or robberies taking place which I've never seen in San Francisco. Not trying to say the average person will encounter problems but I do think even those areas have more crime than you'd think.

As someone who lived in Oakland and now has rent control in the Mission, I would say that my safety : price ratio is significantly higher here in SF after a relatively small period of time.

<comment><USER35> Wow, very surprised to see I got downvoted for sharing a perfectly valid anecdote after living in Oakland and San Francisco. I'm sorry if you feel differently but downvoting comments just because you don't agree with them is rather immature and only serves to limit discourse by discouraging people from sharing their opinions, experiences, and facts. I was polite in my response and even pointed out that the average person is unlikely to encounter problems.

Here are some further details for those who care about the facts:

1\. This is a representative review for one Thai restaurant that I wanted to go to in Rockridge where I noticed _many_ reviews mentioned them being robbed _repeatedly_ and now the restaurant has to buzz customers through the door because of it (read the first review or search for "robbery"): [http://www.yelp.com/biz/saysetha-thai-cuisine- oakland?hrid=u...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/saysetha-thai-cuisine- oakland?hrid=uI5-SqeMPAZb1pLojXdaPQ&utm_campaign=www_review_share_popup&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=\(direct\))

2\. Here is a recent article about how middle class residents of many neighborhoods including Rockridge and Temescal have resorted to hiring private security forces due to the rampant crime problems: [http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/30/oakland- priv...](http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/30/oakland-private- securitypatrols.html)

3\. Here is an article describing why robbers like Rockridge and other "target rich" neighborhoods where it is easy to rob rich people and escape: [http://patch.com/california/rockridge/why-robbers-like- rockr...](http://patch.com/california/rockridge/why-robbers-like-rockridge- report-from-the-north-oakland-crime-meeting)

<comment><USER21> I wasn't the one who downvoted you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Lots of people want to live in an urban setting. Build more urban neighborhoods, everywhere.

<comment><USER37> This is the answer. Deregulate housing/small businesse spaces/offices and let the market do its work. It's crazy the amount of regulation there is that pretty much dictates single family detached homes for large swaths of the country. Here in Bend, for instance, you _must_ have a driveway with not one, but two parking spots. Land of the free indeed...

[http://marketurbanism.com/](http://marketurbanism.com/)

Also, this book, although it's pretty high level: [http://amzn.to/1qsn2RD](http://amzn.to/1qsn2RD)

I think this is one of _the_ most important issues in this day and age. It's happening everywhere, and things need to change.

 _Edit_ : downvoters, care to actually state your opinions? I'm hardly a libertarian, and neither is Matt Yglesias, author of the aforementioned book. I don't think 'free markets' are the answer to all the world's problems. But I do think a more liberalized market would help housing a lot. These areas need more supply, and if you don't want LA style sprawl, the best way to do that is via density. And the best way to accomplish that is probably by letting the market work, within reason: I don't suppose I'd be in favor of allowing an outdoor thrash metal venue in the midst of an otherwise quiet neighborhood, but there are a lot of things you could add to make places more livable and walkable without cars.

<comment><USER38> "Here in Bend, for instance, you must have a driveway with not one, but two parking spots. Land of the free indeed..."

Where I live people don't leave any room for parking on their own property and all of the streets are completely jammed with cars, every inch. You don't hardly dare move your car if you've been able to find a spot.

Is that freer?

<comment><USER36> Forcing everyone to build parking makes building more expensive ([http://www.thestranger.com/news/feature/2015/07/29/22612207/...](http://www.thestranger.com/news/feature/2015/07/29/22612207/the- hidden-reason-behind-seattles-skyrocketing-housing-costs)) and spread out (google "parking crater" for examples, e.g., [http://www.gcpvd.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/parking-cris...](http://www.gcpvd.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/parking-crisis-illustrated-834px.jpg)) which makes it harder to walk, bike, and take public transportation, which causes more people to drive, which causes more need for parking.

Parking your car costs money. People should pay to use it if they need it, but the rest of us shouldn't have to. Right now, drivers are subsidized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "They've increased 38 percent in Seattle, 12 percent in Austin and 6 percent in Phoenix."

The article names the usual suspects for engineer emigrants (Austin, Portland, strangely no mention of NYC or Raleigh RTP), but why are people moving to Phoenix? Isn't living in the less sexy areas of South Bay (Sunnyvale, Milpitas, South San Jose) pretty much on par with urban life in Phoenix?

<comment><USER40> It's interesting that Seattle's rent has raised 38 percent, but I am left wondering if some of that is related to their ~37% minimum wage increase in the last year.

<comment><USER41> What possible connection could there be? Does minimum wage now change property values? Are all housing units in Seattle occupied by minimum wage workers? The average rent in Seattle for a one bedroom apartment is around $1600, which is around 100% of what a minimum wage worker made there two years ago - coincidence or no?

It's all just so interesting, I think?

<comment><USER40> No need for the snark, friend. Is it really that much of a stretch to think that minimum wage increases (more money in the hands of lower-income earners) semi-proportionately increases localized prices?

Do you truly think it's necessary that all houses in Seattle must be occupied by minimum wage workers in order for it to affect the cost of living?

<comment><USER42> It's a lot easier for people to see this argument with basic income than with minimum wage, but the signaling on property owners ends up being the same whether you know for certain all your tenants now have an extra $x in funds or just some of them might now be getting a raise to the new minimum wage. From the property manager perspective, suddenly they're getting more demand on units than they were previously, so they balance that by increasing rents. An increased minimum wage can play a part in that rise in demand even if no single person can afford an apartment on their own at minimum wage. For instance perhaps there's a group of 4 people cramped in one apartment, but now with all of them getting more money, they can afford to split off into two groups of 2. Until the landlord raises rents, anyway, because they aren't enough units for everyone to do that and building new units takes time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> At least SF still has the jobs and industry to drive the insane housing prices. Try somewhere like Vancouver where the prices are just as crazy but minus any connection to an actual economic or technological driver; there's zero industry left, zero investment, and a pervasive Stockholm syndrome where the entire city population convinces itself it's the 'best place on Earth.' It's turning into an epic ghost town of real estate speculators and low-rent TV post-production sweat shops with all the real tech talent draining to places like SF and NYC.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, the existence of Vancouver, London, and Hong Kong's housing markets make me feel grateful that at least SF isn't _that_ bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's worth mentioning: This isn't just causing people to flee. It's actively repelling people from moving there.

(Personally, I've turned down job offers for ~2x what I make now just so I don't have to endure today's rent prices, which I anticipate are only going to increase.)

If you're in SF and you want better access to talent, consider a distributed team instead of expecting everyone to move to SF.

</comment><comment><USER45> Los Angeles got lumped in with other places in this article, but it completely misses the sprawl problem - you want to pay less? sure! Just sit in traffic!

>$569,500 in Los Angeles, Zillow data show.

If you want a decent quality of life without 1-2 hour one-way commutes and you work in tech, most likely you need to live either in Sillicon Beach (Santa Monica/Pacific Palisades to about Redondo) or Pasadena or Irvine areas. None of these are as cheap as $600k. Rents are catching up quickly as well.

If you are trading traffic for cheaper rent, Bay Area has those options too.

</comment><comment><USER46> Fuck. And I thought paying $1k a month in Toronto was too much. I've been looking for work in cheaper cities like Hamilton or London literally because what I make versus what it takes to survive don't sit well with me - and never have.

<comment><USER47> As someone who lives in Toronto proper, $1k/month is ridiculously cheap unless you live in a basement apartment with possibly a roommate, depending on location.

<comment><USER48> What are the typical going rates for basement apartments downtown or close to downtown? An apartment from what I've seen is at the very least $1200 a month.

<comment><USER47> It varies quite a lot from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, and of course proximity to major public transport ingress/egress points.

I haven't looked recently, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find anything below $1000/month that wasn't out in the middle of nowhere.

Also: beware. Some basement apartments aren't actually legal; make sure you sign a legitimate lease agreement, and get confirmation from the landlord that the unit is up to code with the housing board. Happened to a friend of mine not very long ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So are there any tech hubs right now that _aren 't_ dealing with issues of rent increases, gentrifications, and growing pains?

<comment><USER49> Try North Carolina, which has regrettably chosen to become a former tech hub.

<comment><USER50> Not what I hear from various co-workers complaining about the prices of buying or renting condos in downtown Raleigh.

<comment><USER51> He is referring to the anti LBGT antidiscrimination law just passed.

<comment><USER50> Oh sure. Which I was certainly aware of. Unbelievable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> if anyone is interested in solving the problem, im putting together a campaign for major housing reform through the ballot measure. email me greg@gregferenstein dot com

<comment><USER53> you should probably mention what state/city/whatever your ballot measure is intended for...

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> In the immediate sense, this is bad, long term one hopes, this will just accelerate the diffusion of technology centered companies away from the bay area and to the valleys and prairies and cities around the country, slowly transforming the economy as they spread out, or likely just spread out from these distant outposts.

Once the startups make it, rather than develop large campuses in the bay area they can expand elsewhere and take advantage of those workforces.

</comment><comment><USER55> Many problems with this article.

"A software engineer in Austin earning $110,000 would need to make $195,000 in San Francisco to maintain the same quality of life"

Would they? They point out the median in the bay area is $118k, but there's no indication that the median in Austin is $110k; maybe they just pulled that number out of thin air?

They cite slowing tech employment growth in SF, but it seems clear that it's a result of near-0 tech unemployment.

They talk about the exodus "in the past year" as if it suddenly started happening; people have been bitching about the most recent cycle for years, but it's been going on for decades.

"They've become tech hubs in their own right in a way they weren't three to five years ago"

What?

"We bought a beautiful Craftsman home in an awesome neighborhood and that just would not have been possible in San Francisco."

I have no problem with people moving and displacing others, but you have to be clear that the reason you can afford that is bringing the fruits of a higher- cost-of-living area to a lower-cost-of-living one, not because it's inherently more affordable for people who actually (already) live there. In this case, he's .. moving his company? So I guess he's able to keep his pay the same (??).

<comment><USER56> I assume it's based on this report, which has the same numbers: [http://get.hired.com/rs/348-IPO-044/images/Hired-State-of- Sa...](http://get.hired.com/rs/348-IPO-044/images/Hired-State-of-Salaries.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> People who are saying that you should be able to work on software from anywhere are underestimating the importance of IRL network effects.

</comment><comment><USER58> As a software developer already living in Portland, I'm loving this. I have no quantitative proof, but it feels like, even as recent as 10 years ago, the high tech in the Portland area was very hardware oriented. These days it seems like there are more software startups, and more high profile software companies (Amazon, Google, Ebay) with offices in the area.

</comment><comment><USER59> Another angle to this is cost of sending kids to schools (my kids are elementary school age). I support public schools and frequently volunteer to teach stress management programs in public high schools. However, few years back, to cut down on housing costs, I purchased a condo in "very low API score school district". When my kids were ready for school, we hesitated to send to public school and choose private school. Now, my wife and I are shocked with the costs and have been inconclusive on private school vs owning a house in "good" school district.

I learnt from others that in other parts of US, we get good schools and decent house at reasonable price in Seattle/Portland/Austin etc. But uprooting entire family looks extreme at this point and we don't have stomach to do it.

Curious, as to what others in similar situation are doing.

</comment><comment><USER60> I keep saying it, and I'll keep on saying it..

Who is going to be the first to move? The capital or the talent?

One has to drive the other out. VC money isn't going as far as it used to, and talent has to increasingly eat more ramen just to live and keep the lights on in their company.

</comment><comment><USER61> As soon as I have sufficient savings I plan to move to Texas. I will work for 30% less salary than paying 50% of my salary as rent for a completely worthless apartment that is not even being maintained properly.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm about ready to cry uncle. Maybe now tech companies will consider remote work. Everyone will be happier.

<comment><USER12> Careful what you wish for. If your job can be done from home, it can be done from India.

<comment><USER17> You can collaborate effectively with remote people a couple time zones away. India is much harder -- also much harder to periodically bring everyone together for a few days.</comment></comment></comment>


Interesting online collaboration tool from Minneapolis-based startup, Yugma - <AUTHOR> http://geekheartland.com/2007/10/08/minneapolis-based-yugma-is-gaining-momentum/

<comment><AUTHOR> Its strange, but I think they may have found an interesting equilibrium point where they can reach larger organizations but without alienating smaller firms. I have no idea what their numbers are like but it'd be interesting to see where the numbers go at different price points.

</comment><comment><USER2> At $90 / month for 500 people to collaborate, I'd say they aren't charging nearly enough.

<comment><USER3> It's common problem of startups: undercharging.</comment></comment>


First Maine inmate enrolled in graduate school conducts research in prison - <AUTHOR> https://portlandphoenix.me/degree-of-difficulty/ <comment><USER2> Portland, ME is a place where within an hour you could walk from the suburbs of the city to downtown to the very end of the peninsola.

I'm really glad he turned his life around, but I'm also terrified at the thought that someone got shot at a place where I've walked countless times at night after school. The Old Port is a very small district, and life just seems ridiculously safe there.

I think ideally this is the path that should be encouraged for inmates. We already spend so much feeding and housing them, what's more to try to educate them some more? Obviously not all inmates fit this description such as the Unibomber, but it seems like job training or preperation for getting degrees seems like a better investment than letting them out of prison without anyelse to do but more crime.

<comment><USER3> > I think ideally this is the path that should be encouraged for inmates. We > already spend so much feeding and housing them, what's more to try to > educate them some more?

Part of the problem, in my opinion (which may be wrong; this is just how I view it), is that our penal system focuses on punitive measures rather than rehabilitative.

It's the same for drug addicts. While rehabilitation might be most costly upfront, the reduced risk of repeat offenses would almost certainly pay for itself, not to mention the related drop in crime stemming from such activities. I recognize it's not perfect, but it's certainly better than throwing otherwise non-violent offenders into jail with no hope and no help.

<comment><USER4> Our system isn't really punitive or rehabilitative, though we pay lip service to both. (truly punitive would involve torture, and truly rehabilitative is simply impossible)

What we are really doing is called incapacitation. For a period of time, we eliminate the possibility of performing the crime. You can't rob a bank if you can't get to a bank. If a person does a mugging every week, but that person spends 80% of grown-up life in prison, we reduce muggings by 80%.

<comment><USER5> This seems like it's missing the punitive character of imprisonment.

But even ignoring the suffering inflicted by the prison system, both on the incarcerated person and their family, your example should make us ask -- when does it even make sense to put a person in prison to remove the opportunity to do crime?

How much do you think a person takes per mugging? People don't carry that much cash these days -- suppose one mugging gets you $100 (seems high). Apparently the cost of keeping someone in prison varies by a lot from state to state, but an average value is around $33k, which comes out to around ~$630 per week -- i.e. we're likely paying more to keep your hypothetical criminal in prison than they would cause in crime on the outside.

And when you look at stuff like drug crimes, it gets hard to even figure out what the actual cost to society is for the crime -- but we put a lot of people in prison.

Even if you disregard the suffering inflicted by incarceration, even if innocent people are never convicted, sometimes prison is a bad deal for _everyone_.

Also,

> truly rehabilitative is simply impossible

How did you reach that conclusion? Surely such a broad statement deserves some support.

[https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of- prisons-2015-stat...](https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of- prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending- trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends-prison-spending)

<comment><USER6> People carry out muggings with the threat of harming and killing people. A mugging isn't a mugging unless the person is willing to back up and sometimes follow through with their threats. The punishment for them is high because sometimes people die.

Muggings without violence or threats are called pickpocketing. Penalties are far less severe. If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets.

<comment><USER5> > If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, > Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets.

This is a good point!

But I think this effect is less about the "incapacitation" issue discussed above (i.e. we would have muggers on every train because we wouldn't have detained the muggers for long enough), and more about deterrence (i.e. we would have muggers on every train because pickpockets would lose a disincentive from mugging).

There are multiple dimensions to picking how societies respond to crimes:

\- denunciation: we publicly send the signal that your behavior was bad

\- retribution: we want you to suffer

\- rehabilitation: we want to help you become a better citizen

\- incapacitation: we want to stop you from committing crime

\- deterrence: we want other people to be afraid to commit crimes

\- ...

And all of these carry different associated values. My suspicion is that when people attempt to justify the prison system based purely on the incapacitation effect, they're trying to don some faultless, sterile, harmless guise. "I'm not a bad guy for wanting people to be in prison; I just want my neighborhood to be safe!" But I think often a desire for denunciation, or retribution, or even angst about deterrence is at play.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't trying to justify the prison system based on anything. We use incapacitation, but that doesn't justify anything.

I wasn't trying to don some faultless, sterile, harmless guise. To eliminate your suspicion: my preference is for a combination of retribution, deterrence, and restitution. I'm in no way ashamed to say that I prefer those over incapacitation. Sadly, the USA mainly uses incapacitation, probably because it causes the least outrage.

BTW, you left some items off your list:

\- restitution: the criminal must pay back the victim or the society for the harm caused (with money, organs, etc.)

\- religion: we must do something (crucifixion, stoning, amputation, etc.) demanded by God

<comment><USER7> Perhaps it is useful to separate means from ends. Of course, we both agree that we want less crime (as an end), but I might favor rehabilitation as an end - I want prisoners to find their way back to productive society because I care - but not as a means - I might not think rehabilitating inmates reduces crime.

Do you favor retribution as a end, or a means?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Getting a database error currently: [https://web.archive.org/web/20200128215945/https://portlandp...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200128215945/https://portlandphoenix.me/degree- of-difficulty/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably slashdotted by HN users heh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The United States is a prison, the world's largest prison. You don't realize how quickly you can be accused of a crime you didn't commit, standing in front of a judge that doesn't care about truth or justice.

<comment><USER10> It's crazy how easy it is to end up in prison in the US compared to Europe. Most people don't realize this. The consequences are also radically different. Former inmates are fucked for life in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://web.archive.org/web/20200128215945/https://portlandph...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200128215945/https://portlandphoenix.me/degree- of-difficulty/)

</comment><comment><USER12> >At the last graduation ceremony at Maine State Prison, Brown delivered a speech in which he spoke of the potential for prisons to become hubs of education, because of the power of education to change lives.

Brown is on to something here. Our current prison system could use a lot of improvement, current recidivism rates are out of control. [https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6266](https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6266)

<comment><USER13> For profit prisons create incentives to boost recidivism

<comment><USER14> Okay so what's driving recidivism in the 92% of the former prison population that wasn't housed in a for-profit prison? What's driving recidivism in states like Illinois and New York where private prisons have long been banned? Or the 23 other states where, although private prisons aren't banned per se, private prisons hold 0-1% of inmates?

<comment><USER15> What many people seem to miss in the "only 8% of prisons are private prisons" claim is that large amounts of services and functions are run by private contractors and companies even in "public" prisons. Just because the land and building are owned by the state doesn't mean some CEO is raking in the money off of pseudo-slave labor, extortion for basic things like phone calls, and profiteering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Inmates have nothing but time on their hands. We should give the mathematically inclined unsolved problems to turn over, and simple Raspberry Pis (even disconnected from the internet) for the means to code new software. If you have nothing but a wall to stare at for 12 hours a day, you may create something useful.

If I had the power I would free every non-violent prisoner. Any person in jail for putting a substance into their own body, or for selling such a substance, does not deserve to be there. Such a waste of society's resources and talent.

<comment><USER17> I argued this with my dad saying that people deserve our compassion and someone could discover a cure for cancer.

He said he'd rather die from cancer than help someone who committed a felony.

<comment><USER18> Unfortunately a very american view. Hope new generations can right our wrongs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard this from the EU, China, Australia, India, Canada and Japan... It seems to be popular in "law and order" societies.

<comment><USER18> I am not sure if i call all of the countries in this list "law and order".

It kind of just sucks that people and their offspring has to suffer through a bad decision this bad. I wish we had better use of the downtime they have in prison, to societies benefit, onstead of the private corp that is the prison operator.

<comment><USER19> You are making an unfounded assumption that prisoners on the whole desire to benefit society. I certainly know convicted felons and former inmates who truly do fit that mold, but I also know vastly more who could not be bothered to give a single seconds thought for society or what benefits it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I too have personal examples on both sides.

I have an acquaintance who was convicted of fraud, sentenced to 5 years, got out early due to performing community service in jail. Haven't heard much from him after he got out though.

I have another friend who was convicted of manslaughter, he's been a very productive member of society since he was released and I feel that he's very trustworthy. I've known him for 15 years and maybe he's had some parking tickets...

A former peer was convicted of sex crimes in the early 2000s, he's reoffended in multiple countries.

A friend of a friend was convicted of eco terrorism, they've been on the run but keeping in contact somehow, they've apparently destroyed millions of dollars in properties and have yet to be caught again.

If you look at the police blotter in my city, its pretty much all repeat offenders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Me: working full time just to make ends meet, not a lot of time for college and don't want to take on more than a year of my income as student loan debt that will take a decade or more to pay off.

Convicted criminal: all the free time, working on masters degree (possibly considerably subsidized, if not for free as there are various programs that provide college courses for free to inmates).

Good for them I guess. Rehabilitation is truly a great thing, doesn't make it sting any less though. I play by the rules and have to struggle to attempt to get ahead, they break the rules to the point of being ordered to live in a cage for a period of time and are afforded the opportunity of unlimited studying time and degree programs.

And before someone says "but their crime will make it hard for them to get a job" so does my bankruptcy from 7ish years ago. Anything dealing with money and companies won't touch you with a bankruptcy and anything requiring a security clearance wont touch you either.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's time to move to what criminal reform activists call 'restorative justice'. We lock you up, possibly contract your labor to some shady organization, and don't provide enough tools for those who've served their time to get back on their feet and contribute.

We can see these effects in the economy if you look closely, the labor participation rate among men is declining, most new jobs (which are service jobs) go to women, millions of men are missing in our society due to this system which throws away human capital. For what?

<comment><USER22> > We can see these effects in the economy if you look closely, the labor > participation rate among men is declining, most new jobs (which are service > jobs) go to women, millions of men are missing in our society due to this > system which throws away human capital. For what?

Is that the cause? I've always heard it was due to changes in education policy/practice that resulted in lower graduation rates for males (I know some people here will reflexively think I'm challenging something; I'm not, this is a genuine question, and for the little I know about it, restorative justice sounds like a pretty good idea).

<comment><USER21> I don't believe the cause has been definitely described. Education plays a part, the transition to a service economy plays a part, perhaps even video games play a part. I do believe that it's clear that labor force participation among males has been declining in past decades while the number of folks incarcerated has risen and that there is no doubt a relation between the two.

<comment><USER22> > labor force participation among males has been declining in past decades > while the number of folks incarcerated has risen and that there is no doubt > a relation between the two

Would be interesting to look at male education outcomes, labor force participation, and incarceration rates and compare them against their female equivalents. I know for fact that female education and labor force outcomes have been improving at the expense of male outcomes, but I'm not sure about female incarceration rates. My guess is that they are also increasing, but perhaps not at the same rate as male rates?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I get Error establishing a database connection

</comment><comment><USER24> Does the website not work for anyone else

</comment><comment><USER25> As a fellow graduate student (but not inmate), I also feel like I am conducting research in prison.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's honestly insane how a prisoner gets free healthcare, education, shelter, food, etc. and yet those who do not commit crimes are (ironically) "chained" by debt instead to pay for all those things.

Honestly if you're in bad health, old, and have limited savings it would probably be better to just commit a white collar crime and go to prison than to die in sickness and poverty.

<comment><USER27> On the other hand, if you're young, one route is to join the military for a lot of those same benefits. That's what I should do honestly, but I value my free time and peace of mind as a civilian too much.

You should look at it this way. You either pay in money through debt, or you pay with your mind and body as a military personnel or a prisoner. Both sucks ass and none of us are any better under this rotten system.

<comment><USER19> Your assertion that military service in the US "sucks ass" is rather inflammatory. The United States Military has provided a life changing means and opportunity for many. I'm not denying that the risks and imposition is not substantial. Speaking for myself, I am permanently disabled as a direct result of my period of service in the Army. But, I would not change that decision for anything.

I know people will make a judgement about the sacrifices entailed in service, but "sucks ass" is too broad and too far a generalization.

<comment><USER27> Context here matters a bit. Having to choose between going to prison or joining the military just to get education, shelter, and food is a very "sucks ass" situation.

<comment><USER28> I don't think your context is as vindicating as you might think.

That's not a decision, let alone a difficult one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's a Shawshank Redemption joke hidden in the headline, but I'm just going to go with heartfelt congratulations instead. Good job on turning that spiral upwards!</comment>


Wingsuit crash with honest analysis - <AUTHOR> http://topgunbase.ws/i-flew-my-wingsuit-into-trees-and-woke-up-in-a-hospital/ <comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this but am neither the author nor subject. Like many, I've been awed by wingsuit videos (starting with Jeb Corliss several years ago), but this accident analysis is one of the first articles I've found that explains what goes into wingsuit training and ongoing practice. I must admit I've been tempted to try skydiving and learn to BASE jump, but never got started. This shows it is way more difficult and long to learn than I imagined.

It also ties in nicely with the related discussion 2 months ago: "Why are so many BASE jumpers dying?" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418937))

</comment><comment><USER2> This film is a great intro to Wingsuit BASE jumping and participants; it pops up on local PBS stations every so often:

[http://www.birdmenthemovie.com/home/](http://www.birdmenthemovie.com/home/)</comment>


Solar energy in Israel: It's a knockout - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14082027 <comment><USER2> Just goes to show, it's only a matter of time before enough breakthroughs occur that solar power overtakes fossil fuels.

<comment><USER3> How much of this is scientific breakthroughs and how much is the climate? Israel is hot and sunny for most of the year, the same is not true of the upper Midwest US for example.

<comment><USER4> Israel for the most part (then again the Negav Desert is 1/3 of Israel) is not exceptionally hot and sunny. But Israel does have an exceptional motivation to be energy independent. It is a county in the middle east with no oil surrounded by political enemies with oil. When there is a will and that will is backed by cost, there is a way.

<comment><USER5> None of Israel's direct neighbors is even close to being a significant oil producer - those are mostly in the Arabian peninsula.

<comment><USER4> I used 'neighbors' very loosely, speaking more about Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc. But you are right.

       Oil Produced: (Wolfram Alpha)
       Israel       |     5 966   bbl/day  (barrels per day)
       Syria        |   381 600   bbl/day  (barrels per day)
       Egypt        |   664 000   bbl/day  (barrels per day)
       Saudi Arabia | 9 200 000   bbl/day  (barrels per day)

Israel for the political reasons can not afford for its economy to rely on exported oil from Arab states. I'm not even sure if Iran, Saudi Arabia, or the UAE would be willing to export oil to Israel. It's expensive to import it from farther so Israel spends 73.43B/year on oil imports[1]. The opportunity cost of not developing alternatives has been high so solar panels are already a part of the infrastructure (ie: to heat the water in almost every single home).

[1] <http://www16.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=oil+import+israel></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Long-Term Clean Energy Optimism, Short-Term Caution - <AUTHOR> https://about.bnef.com/blog/long-term-clean-energy-optimism-short-term-caution/ <comment><USER2> "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run." \- Roy Amara</comment>


Akinator – the web genie - <AUTHOR> http://en.akinator.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Never seen a decision tree (if so) implementation more accurate than this.</comment>


Analyse Asia Podcast #1: Mobile Ecosystems in Asia - <AUTHOR> http://analyse.asia/2014/09/02/episode-1-mobile-ecosystems-asia-micromax-xiaomi-samsung/ <comment><AUTHOR> Synopsis for Episode 1: We kicked off the first episode of Analyse Asia with Sameer Singh, author of Tech Thoughts. Our first conversation centers on the mobile ecosystems in Asia, focusing on a few interesting topics: (a) the mobile operating systems in Asia with Apple iOS and Google Android leading the way, and the implications for platforms with small market shares: Blackberry, Windows Phone and Firefox OS, (b) a deep dive into two dominant Asian players: Xiaomi & Micromax, (c) what are their core competencies and competitive advantages that they are able to erode Samsung's market share in the low and middle markets in Asia?, (d) Samsung's defense against these players and what does that mean for other OEM players such as HTC and Asus?</comment>


Startup School 2008: Impressions. - <AUTHOR> http://kontsevoy.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> Visual Studio guy was likely me. I actually didn't resize the form even once; maybe you're just using some poetic license there. Since the internet connection was slow, I couldn't get to my server, so I decided to do one of my favorite 'programming kata' projects: writing a function plotter. I had never done it using GDI, and since I work for Xobni I already had Visual Studio on my laptop (no cloud necessary). The form was 'empty' because the only element in it was a panel. Funny enough, the only guy I remember sitting next to me (that I didn't already know) was also using a Windows laptop. Was that you?

The truth of the matter is, my company has used Sheridan's firm before; we've since moved on to another. I've also incorporated companies before. Next time I incorporate a company, I will still be hiring a high dollar lawyer to handle it. I came to startup school for the other 90% of talks, for which my laptop was put away, and my eyes were glued to the front (Altman, DHH, PB, Bezos, Andreesen, Norvig (who was a childhood hero of mine)).

It's pretty arrogant of you to pontificate about what should be important to everyone else. I doubt Sheridan was insulted that I was quietly using a laptop in the back of the room. Anyway, it seems like _your_ eyes must have been quite a few other places than his presentation to keep such good track of what everyone else was doing.

<http://www.thinkgeek.com/books/humor/8e6c/images/2070/>

P.S.: I agree with you about the reception of DHH's talk, and I felt like one of the only ones to take him very seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I don't think that was you :) That guy simply kept moving his finger on the touchpad and jerk that for around throughout the entire talk, I tried not to look at it but it was right in front of my nose :)))

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "By the way, I simply could not believe my eyes when I saw on average about 20% of the attendees spent a fair share of their time there surfing freaking reddit, slashdot and checking their emails. There was one dude right next to me who had Visual Studio open (yes, a fucking Visual Studio) and kept resizing an empty form non-stop without paying any attention [...]"

Funny another rundown of the event commented that the fact that there were so many people "coding" meant it was a meeting of true hackers and not a bunch of people who waste time in meetings all day. I tend to agree with the former assessment though, this just seems rude.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey, Ev, nice event rundown. I didn't know you were here for the event. Sorry I missed meeting you. Look me up if you're still here during the week.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am slow... I should have dropped you a line before I had gotten there. What a pity. I'm out of SV already, heading to Boston.</comment></comment>


"Nothing like this will be built again" - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/rants/nothing-like-this-will-be-buil.html

<comment><USER2> Cool. I for one would very much like to see more hacker tourism stories, though they probably have a higher research cost than fiction. Maybe a Kickstarter project to at least get Stross and Stephenson some plane tickets…</comment>


A Short Introduction to Implicit Computational Complexity [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.unibo.it/~dallago/FICQRA/esslli.pdf <comment><USER2> What a pity that all the references are missing [?].

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see all the references listed here with hyperlinks: [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-31485-8_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-31485-8_3)</comment></comment>


Java on iOS, for Real - <AUTHOR> https://gluonhq.com/java-on-ios-for-real/ <comment><USER2> This seems to be pretty much the same sort of thing as GraalVM native-image.

The real question is, does anyone actually _care_ about Java on iOS at this point in time?</comment>


A 12-year-old bug in JDK, still out there leaking memory - <AUTHOR> http://plumbr.eu/blog/12-year-old-bug-in-jdk-still-out-there-leaking-memory

<comment> brown9-2 The odd behavior of java.net.HttpURLConnection should be a lesson to language/framework designers everywhere: don't attempt to implement caching/object reuse/connection keep-alives deep in underlying API code with no way for the end user of the library to control the behavior.

java.net.HttpURLConnection and java.net.HttpURLConnection will attempt to use Keep-Alive and keep connections open for you (which should be a great performance boost if you are making many connections to the same hosts over and over again), but they do so silently and without any obvious documentation on how you can control that behavior in your own code. This leads to lots of headaches if you as a developer actually want to be able to control the connection behavior - for instance, there are quiet and undocumented bugs with HttpsURLConnection not being able to reuse the connection unless you consume all of the response stream (even if you call connection.close() and stream.close() explicitly).

There is also no obvious way to monitor the sun.* code that does the actual keep-alive work to see how many connections are open, to verify if it is able to use keep-alive or if it has to keep opening new connections, etc (without resorting to tcpdump).

The classloader leak is the root problem but the trigger in this case is the fact that the framework code is trying to a whole lot of extra, undocumented, silent work for you. The ability to disable keep-alives in the code that caused the initial report could have been a viable workaround.

</comment><comment><USER2> As indicated in the article it's not still "out to get you" since it was fixed in March 2011.

From the bug report: Submit Date: 2010-12-22 Resolved Date: 2011-03-10 That's less than 3 months.

<comment><USER3> I'm using 1.6 for development purposes (I will change to JDK 7 very shortly, but it hasn't been possible until now for other reasons), and I am literally plagued by the PermGen problem every single day, perhaps up to 3 times an hour. Increasing PermGen space is not a solution, as it only means that - yes, it'll take longer for PermGen space to run out, but the Application Server (e.g. Glassfish) will become incredibly slow before it breaks.

<comment> brown9-2 Are you doing lots of redeploys? Can you alter your workflow to just restart the server process instead?

<comment><USER3> Yes, doing a lot of redeploys. Restarting the server process takes a bit too long. E.g. if I have 50 EJB's and 20-30 JAX-RS type web services, it does take the application about 15-20 seconds to load each time. Sometimes even longer. So incremental redeploys are really great, as it usually takes 2-3 seconds instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Frustrating but, I am sad to say, not unexpected. I myself have submitted major bugs in core Java code (java.util.Random, java.util.ArrayList, etc.) which have gone ignored for a decade and in fact are still there. If they can't fix core code, they're hardly going to fix HttpURLConnection.

<comment><USER5> What sort of bugs did you find in ArrayList?

<comment><USER4> For ArrayList, it was a huge speed regression. get(), set(), and add() were not inlineable for ten years due to an error fixable with a single line of code. The problematic code is still there even now, but it's moot because sometime between Java 5 and 6 the Hotspot team special-cased it.

Over the years I've found that while the Hotspot team seemed pretty sharp, the monkeys writing the library code were incompetent in implementation and negligent in repair even for core stuff. I eventually gave up submitting error reports. Don't even get me started on java.util.Random. :-(

<comment> brown9-2 Do you have links available for your bug reports?

<comment><USER4> Not since Sun->Oracle totally changed the bug reporting system, sorry. It was long ago.

In the ArrayList case, IIRC (it was years ago) the issue was the now-notorious RangeCheck function. For example, get(index) does this:

        RangeCheck(index);
        return elementData[index];

get() could be inlined, but because RangeCheck threw an exception if the index was >= size, RangeCheck was not inlined. But if you did this:

        if (index >= size)
            RangeCheck(index);
        return elementData[index];

... you could bypass it and calls to get() would involve inlined code unless the exception was triggered. Same went for set and add. Recent versions of HotSpot have mooted this now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The PermGen is a Sun / Oracle JVM specificity and these classloaders leak issues have been plagguing Java since years and years.

Back in the days (circa 2006 or so) when similar issues were very common but the knowledge wasn't that much out, we'd fix the issue by changing one of the "Sun JVM / Tomcat / I-don't -remember-which" component. For example switching to a non-Sun JVM or switching form Tomcat to Caucho/Resin etc.

Or simply just starting the SUN JVM with a bigger PermGen.

It's kinda sad to see how many PermGen issues there has been throughout the years.

<comment> brown9-2 I think this kind of behavior has led to a lot of teams discovering that it's just easier to stop and start new JVM/container instances rather than hoping that the "web application reload" feature of the container will actually work without errors.

<comment><USER7> I've never had redeploys work well. Restarting the JVM/container is the way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seeing as you're not supposed to use sun packages, if this one bites you it's your own damn fault. Quite the linkbait title.

<comment> brown9-2 If you look at the bug report cited in the article, use of sun.* classes is not required. Using java.net.URL or java.net.HttpURLConnection causes the behavior - because the implementation of these classes uses sun.* classes.

<comment><USER8> Hm, my mistake. I did not follow the referenced link. The article states "...last in this hierarchy is sun.net.www.http.HttpClient" which led me to assume you had to explicitly go mucking around with something access- restricted.</comment></comment></comment>