Google Wallet and Softcard - <AUTHOR> http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/2015/02/tap-tap-whos-there-google-wallet-and.html <comment><USER2> I'm getting tired of "hey guys check out this really cool, half-baked, and for absolutely no reason, single-platform technology". Yeah iMessage/Facetime and Google Hangouts is really cool but we're still using SMS and voice calling because half of my friends have Android and half have iPhones. Worse yet, we're all using Facebook Messenger or Snapchat because at least there is some consistency between vendors there, unlike with SMS. Handoff/Continuity is great, but if I can't hand off calls from my iPhone to my Windows desktop or apps to my Linux laptop, who cares? I'm never going to have a chance to use that. Oh look at this cool site that uses Chrome's new features. What a shame I use Firefox. And Google Wallet/Apple Pay is nifty, but I have to enter my card info twice if I switch between phones, and if I'm using a Windows Phone, I'm still using my plastic.

We forced Microsoft to stop locking out their competitors with proprietary versions of things that should be standards, and we did that more than 15 years ago. What progress have we made since then?

<comment><USER3> > _And Google Wallet /Apple Pay is nifty, but I have to enter my card info > twice if I switch between phones, and if I'm using a Windows Phone, I'm > still using my plastic._

Are you personally using two or three phone platforms with such frequency that this is relevant?

<comment><USER2> I bought a Lumia 920 when it came out in October 2012. I used that as a daily driver until around March of 2013, when I bought a Nexus 4. I wasn't terribly satisfied with it when it came to the camera and GPS navigation, so when I went on trips or to events I would switch the SIM back to the Lumia 920. I got tired of this and bought an iPhone 5c in December 2013. My wife broke her iPhone 4 in June of 2014, so I gave her my 5c and switched back to the Lumia 920 until my work gave me an iPhone 5s in October of 2014. Luckily I'm using a carrier that doesn't care how often you want to switch your phone, doesn't lock their phones, and doesn't make you talk to them to activate a new phone. I think everyone should have that freedom.

So in the last ~2 years, I've used three phone platforms with some regularity. I also have a Windows desktop and I use a RHEL-based laptop for work. I like to use the best that I can get for the task I'm using it for, no matter what platform or ecosystem. Because of that, I make it a habit to not put things in my workflow that are not reasonably cross-platform, unless there is literally no better option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess the carriers are scared enough of Apple Pay that they're willing to work with Google now.

<comment><USER5> Or maybe they just realized that they were just putting good money after bad (because it wasn't succeeding) and decided to cut their losses and avoid the (small?) risk of alienating customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I want to know is when will Google Wallet introduce Apple Pay-like tokenization so merchants can't track your purchases?

Google is actually kind of doing the _opposite_ right now. It's tracking your purchases through a virtual credit card number and then giving all that data to merchants. Sure you can reset that number, but since it's not automatic like Apple's tokens, that means it will be used about as much as resetting the advertising IDs on Android phones - so almost never. It also doesn't help that Google is pro-actively giving that data to merchants (and now to carriers, too, I assume).

<comment><USER7> They already do according to the Google Wallet FAQ:

"Google Wallet stores your credit and debit cards on secure servers and encrypts your payment information with industry-standard SSL (secure socket layer) technology. Your full credit and debit card information is never shown in the app and won't be shared with the merchant. In addition, access to Google Wallet is protected by password or PIN. We also recommend locking your phone with a passcode for additional security."

"Your actual credit card number is not stored. Only the Google Wallet Virtual Card is stored, and Android's native access policies prevent malicious applications from obtaining the data. Even if the data is compromised, Wallet uses dynamically rotating credentials that change with each transaction and are usable for a single payment only. Finally, all transactions are monitored in real-time with Google's risk and fraud detection systems."

[https://www.google.com/wallet/faq.html#tab=faq- security](https://www.google.com/wallet/faq.html#tab=faq-security)

Keep in mind "Tokenization" has existed in the NFC industry for years, the only thing which changed last year is that the EMV standards body agreed and released a standardized way to do it in March 2014. Apple Pay is a branded solution over that.

So what it really boils down to is whether or not you take Google's word for it that their independent solution is secure. If not, you owe it to yourself to not be using a Google Android phone in the first place.

<comment><USER6> So there are two issues I was talking about:

1) rotation of tokens/virtual card numbers

2) giving the transaction data to merchants

From what you copied here it _seems_ that Google is rotating the virtual numbers - however, there's no way of knowing if Google isn't still _tracking_ all of those numbers through your account and linking them back together for data mining. I think there's a _high_ probability Google is doing that. Google only says it's rotating the numbers.

And that leads us to #2, which remains completely unanswered. Google says it doesn't give the _credit card information_ to merchants (as in your _real_ credit card number). However it could still give the transaction data.

<comment><USER8> Google is the payment processor, of course they track and store the transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And yet it still doesn't work in Canada which adopted the technology ahead of the US and has a much wider roll out.

<comment><USER10> Adopted what technology? Canada has had chip tech and tap-to-pay tech in their various debit and credit cards for a while but I've never seen tap-to-pay work with a phone here in Canada. On top of that, Google Wallet has not yet been rolled out to work in Canada or internationally for that matter, even with their physical Google Wallet cards. If you attempt to make a purchase with the physical card, it will be declined and you'll receive a notification saying that international (non-US) purchases are not supported. Apple Pay additionally does not work in Canada. Given the first point made, there's no reason for them to activate it soon anyway because our hardware won't work out of the gate regardless.

<comment><USER11> What?

Google Wallet not working is completely on Google/the issuing bank. That is entirely a software limitation. If you try using the NFC on the phone and it tells you it's not available internationally, then there's clearly no hardware incompatibility, it's just Google not supporting international transactions.

Apple Pay not rolling out is also, similarly, because Apple is not ready to roll out in Canada, it's entirely software-based. I had my iPhone region set to Canada (I guess I never switched when I moved down) and I couldn't access the settings. Once I switched to US, bam, there it was. There have already been people who confirmed[1] that Apple Pay works perfectly fine in Canada.

NFC transactions are standardized, there is no "hardware won't work" because the entire point of the standard is that it _will_ work. The incompatibilities are completely arbitrary, it's the respective companies not wanting to expand to Canada yet and using software to disable or limit the transactions based on transaction location.

[1]: [http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/how-to-use-apple-pay-in- canada...](http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/how-to-use-apple-pay-in-canada/51833)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If Google Wallet was to continue to exist this was inevitable because Softcard (formerly ISIS) had locked up the usage of the secure element inside all the Android phones coming from all the US carriers except Sprint and its MVNOs. And ISIS was having a very hard time getting retailers onboard with its platform despite offering 7 figure incentives and covering their implementation costs for integration with their point of sale systems.

<comment><USER13> Isn't there an EMV-NFC standard that eliminates the need for POS integration? IIRC CurrentC was the one that isn't using the standard.

<comment><USER12> Yes, there is a standard for payments on the PIN pads. However, the real push for ISIS/Softcard was that they could do more than payments. They wanted to be able to push coupons through the PIN pads to the POS from their app. That was how they were planning to monetize the platform. The fees they would get from banks to hook into the system were minimal.

Even if the PIN pads could support coupons over NFC, most large scale POS software could not. I had experience last year trying to integrate ISIS/Softcard into a large retailer that was running IBM/Toshiba ACE POS software and ISIS/Softcard support wasn't even IBM/Toshiba's radar. Many large retailers run ACE (Kroger, Safeway, Costco, Macys, etc.).

<comment><USER13> Ah, my mistake. I was thinking of the credit card system as a "dumb pipe" for money. Why would anyone want to build that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this an acquisition?

<comment><USER15> Google called it a partnership and Softcard said something along the lines of "Google is acquiring Softcard's technology" which leaves me a bit confused but I don't think it's an outright acquisition.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone with scaling skills to consult with us? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there.
We are an established company (telecoms field) that is embarking on an internal 'startup' project.  It will be self-contained, still linked to telecoms but we will have the need to scale, offer redundancy and have fast database access.  Basically we are taking call data for millions of calls and we want to be able to mine that information. Over a 5 year period we expect to have in the region of 2-5 billion records (call information from number dialled, originating number, length of call, and around 10 other pieces of information).
Basically my knowledge is good but not good enough for this level (just being honest). We've chosen Python and Pyramid to do this, but need help with database choice, how to scale apps across servers, etc etc.  We are looking for someone who has done this before. The company is www.performancetelecom.co.uk and we're based in the UK.
To get in touch you will find my personal contact information in my profile
Thanks.  Ade <comment><USER2> Hey,

I'm in a similar situation as you--my company does millions of calls per month (we're in the telecom industry in the US), and we use Django / python / Asterisk as our primary tools, along with OpenSIPs for routing SIP traffic.

I've been working extensively with this stuff for the past 3 years--I'd be happy to give you some help, or talk you through some design decisions.

If you want to get in touch, feel free to email me (or get me on gtalk): email@example.com

Would be nice to talk to some other people in a similar industry, not too many telecom / web dudes around, afaik.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you've got cash <http://www.datastax.com/products/enterprise>

Otherwise a Cassandra cluster for quick OLTP that batches to an HBase cluster for your OLAP.

<comment><USER4> That is a poor choice for a non-expert user of Cassandra and Hadoop. The DataStax toolset is very rough. Definitely not an "off the shelf" solution like Cloudera.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With a dataset that small (1 billion rows of 20 columns of small data items per year), just use a regular RDBMS like Oracle or Postgres. A small cluster will be plenty of capacity.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just curious, why you have opted for Python when your primary goal seems to be scalability?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have standardised on Python as our language of choice as its the one that we have the most skills in and everyone in the team knows it</comment></comment>


The History of OS/2 (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/history/ <comment><USER2> Not a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924013) but we probably shouldn't have OS/2 x 2 on the front page, so I've moved most of the comments thither.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The 2001 date in the title is a guess based on the fact that it describes OS/2 1.3 in 1991 as "ten years ago", but I felt it important to include the date because a lot has happened to OS/2 since then!

eComStation came and went: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EComStation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EComStation)

And today you can get a brand new and frequently-updated OS/2 in the form of Arca Noae's ArcaOS! [https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/](https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/)

<comment><USER3> Any idea if the Odin project (running Windows apps 32bit on OS/2) is still active and works with ArcaOS?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't use it myself, but there are a handful of reports on the Wiki of people using it with both eComStation and ArcaOS: [https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Odin_Compatible_Appl...](https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Odin_Compatible_Applications)</comment></comment></comment>


Demonstrating Web Worker: Sorting a 50K array in your browser - <AUTHOR> http://afshinm.github.io/50k/ <comment><USER2> I don't know much about web workers. According to my understanding, they can only communicate by message passing. This means that, if I have a 50K array and wish to sort it via a web worker, I must copy it twice: once incoming and again outgoing. This copying is likely to be as expensive as sorting it (well, maybe not if you use bubble sort). How do you mitigate this?

<comment><USER3> Fortunately, Transferable Objects (which didn't arrive until a bit after Web Workers) solves this :)

[http://updates.html5rocks.com/2011/12/Transferable- Objects-L...](http://updates.html5rocks.com/2011/12/Transferable-Objects- Lightning-Fast)

<comment><USER4> If one wants to share data with two different web-workers (doing different computations on the same immutable data), there is still a problem. Or so I suppose (?)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, you'd have to clone the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Deeply misleading title. It's basically pointing out that if you use "Web Worker" then you can do stuff in the browser in background. It's really nothing to do with sorting the array - it's just using that as a task for the background work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I just updated the title.

<comment><USER5> You need to update the title on this submission as well:

      Demonstrating Web Worker: Background
          sorting a 50K array in your browser

Or something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, Updated.

<comment><USER5> I strongly recommend you update your web page title to say the same thing, otherwise the mods here may adjust this title to match that one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams Web workers would have been a must have for a project I worked in a few years ago. I had to write a real-time video allocation algorithm that had dynamic hardware with extreme combination constraints, and varying encoding rules for audio and video (think HD, SD, Dolby, stereo). It also had to allow for changes without moving existing allocations (otherwise viewers TV programmes would glitch).

The back-end was an embedded device that only accepted XML and could not do the calculation.

I had to have this do the allocation in IE8! So I wrote a timer based allocation routine that would release the UI thread enough to not lock up the browser. It worked (sort of), but was ugly and took way too long!

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it should be more clear that it's using bubble sort to purposely take a longer time than necessary.

I'd expect sorting an array of 50k elements to be instantaneous on a modern machine, even in Javascript.

My first thought was, "WTF? Sorting 50k elements is a big deal?"

<comment><USER7> It seems that there are significant differences in browsers as well.

      Windows 8
      </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--
      Firefox v38 | 2629ms
      Chrome v40  | 4281ms
      IE v11      | 7899ms

</comment><comment><USER8> I found this thread from about 3 years ago interesting:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2566365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2566365)

Basically if web workers could access the GPU as well via WebGL.

</comment><comment><USER9> ...with bubble sort.

Might want to mention that in the title.

</comment><comment><USER10> I did all the tests faster without webworkers than with them.

<comment><USER11> They're not faster. They take roughly the same amount of time, but with an extra bit of overhead for instantiating the worker and an event to say it's finished, so they're actually slower. But.. they don't block the browser doing things so the page still responses to input while they're working. If you need to do something that's doing to take 8s (e.g. this demo on my Mac Air), having the user still able to interact with the page while a progress bar updates is a _huge_ advantage.

<comment><USER12> It's trivial to periodically pass control back to the UI with setTimeout or setInterval.

So doing something that takes 8s doesn't have to block the UI at all. The "without webworkers" version should be renamed to "Naively programmed version" or something.

<comment><USER13> It gets ugly fast. Most tasks are not a simple sort. There's a reason that cooperative multitasking is not widely used in operating systems anymore.

<comment><USER12> Javascript is not an operating system.

There aren't many operations in javascript which will block. The only real issue is that your javascript code executes in the same thread as UI. Which just means you need to think a bit harder about keeping it responsive.

"Start threads!" in programming is usually a lazy hack.

<comment><USER14> Lazy hack, or using OS/browser/whatever features instead of reinventing them poorly?

What's the benefit you get from programming like that?

<comment><USER12> Because once you introduce threads, your program complexity increases massively. You're now throwing a few groups of instructions at the CPU and saying "Hay! Execute these instructions in any order you like". Then you're adding code to deal with the issues of that random execution entails.

Also, it's not faster, so what's the actual point?

The browser should use all CPU cores efficiently to make javascript fast. Exposing WebWorkers to javascript programmers IMHO is totally the wrong way to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is co-operative multitasking really as far as it's got, after two decades of web progress? Sheesh.

<comment><USER16> Mozilla is working on SharedArrayBuffer ([https://blog.mozilla.org/javascript/2015/02/26/the-path- to-p...](https://blog.mozilla.org/javascript/2015/02/26/the-path-to-parallel- javascript/)) which brings something like pthreads to the browser.</comment></comment>


Request HN: Notification Bell - <AUTHOR> It would be great to get a notification when a comment or submission is upvoted or someone has replied to it.<p>Will it be useful - Yes/No? <comment><USER2> This has been discussed many times and rejected.

I use [https://hnnotify.xyz/](https://hnnotify.xyz/) for notifications (there are several similar services).

<comment><USER3> There's [http://www.hnreplies.com/](http://www.hnreplies.com/) (via [https://github.com/cheeaun/awesome-hacker- news](https://github.com/cheeaun/awesome-hacker-news))</comment></comment>


Why CEOs Make So Much Money (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2015/06/22/why-ceos-make-so-much-money <comment><AUTHOR> One more reason is the lack of liquidity in the CEO job market.</comment>


Anatomy of a Program in Memory (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://manybutfinite.com/post/anatomy-of-a-program-in-memory/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussions: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Anatomy%20of%20a%20Program%20i...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Anatomy%20of%20a%20Program%20in%20Memory&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

(or click "past" under the title, also helpful to check when you submit a link)

</comment><comment><USER3> After reading many articles about virtual memory and how kernel space is mapped into every process I don't understand why it is necessary. Why can't process only have mapped it's user mode space? Also it only seems to be case of unixes and windows. Not sure how exactly it's done in OSX but "Mac OS X does not map the kernel into each user address space, and therefore each user/kernel transition (in either direction) requires an address space switch." [https://flylib.com/books/en/22.214.171.124/1/](https://flylib.com/books/en/22.214.171.124/1/)

<comment><USER4> On x86, I t was presumably for performance, so that the TLB does not have to be flushed when switching from user to kernel mode. x86 requires some kernel memeory to be mapped always, for example the stack for syscall and trap handlers. So by keeping everything mapped into memory, the kernel did not have to worry about which parts were needed to handle syscalls and which were not. These kernel pages were marked as "supervisor only", so only the kernel code could actually read and write them.

I say all of this in the past tesnse, since Meltdown makes it possible to read all that kernel memory. Kernels now keep most of the kernel memory unmapped when user mode is executing.

<comment><USER5> >"x86 requires some kernel memeory to be mapped always, for example the stack for syscall and trap handlers."

Can you elaborate on what you mean be x86 requires that the kernel stack always be mapped into a process address space in order for system calls?

The kernel always knows where a process's kernel stack is located as there is a pointer to it in the user process's task_struct. It is only in kernel mode that the kernel switches the CPU's stack pointer to use that that processes kernel stack.

<comment><USER6> You can't unmap the kernel stack in Meltdown mitigation, because the syscall instruction will want to push to the kernel stack before you as the kernel has a chance to map the kernel stack.

<comment><USER5> It sounded like the OPs comment wasn't strictly about the post-meltdown era and that they were commenting on the general case. But maybeI misinterpreted that?

<comment><USER6> Oh, sure, my bad.

OK, in the context of 'why can't you cleanly have the kernel in a different address space from user processes on x86', the same reasons apply. It's a chicken/egg thing, as a syscall instruction executes and touches the kernel stack before you have a chance to change mmu mappings.

There are versions of Darwin for x86 (but no released versions of full OSX AFAIK) that separate the address spaces, but they reserve a (albeit much smaller) piece of virtual address space at the top for the kernel in all address spaces in order to facilitate the transition to the full kernel address space.

<comment><USER5> Right that would be a pretty awful place to segfault :)

Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author states:

>It is also possible to create an anonymous memory mapping that does not correspond to any files, being used instead for program data."

This isn't strictly true though is it? It was my understanding even mmap() MAP_ANONYMOUS used a file interface, and that the way the kernel creates anonymous maps is by creating an instance of /dev/zero in tmpfs. Although I believe the file descriptor might be ignored however.

<comment><USER6> It seems to just pass around a null struct file pointer and special cases that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> if the process depicted in the diagram were to start a second thread, where would that second thead's stack go in the diagram? The two threads would share the same heap.

<comment><USER6> Another ~8MB(8MB plus guard pages) chunk of virtual memory that's free up there near the shared mappings.

You're totally right though, that threads complicated the traditional "stack grows down heap grows up" view of a Unix user address space.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. So can I check I'm understanding correctly

\- If a process has many threads, their stacks are all located within a single virtual address space corresponding to the user process?

\- If one thread grows down and is about to overwrite the top of another thread's stack, does the OS detect this automatically and do some sort of reallocation procedure?

<comment><USER6> > If a process has many threads, their stacks are all located within a single > virtual address space corresponding to the user process?

Yep!

> If one thread grows down and is about to overwrite the top of another > thread's stack, does the OS detect this automatically and do some sort of > reallocation procedure?

The kernel reserves a 8MB region for each stack and that's it (even the initial stack). So you wouldn't get overlapping stacks per se; the regions are preallocated. The kernel does try to detect stack overflow/underflow with guard pages, but that's just a best attempt kind of thing, and of you underflow by more than page you can just end up just corrupting memory.

And all of this is for C's sort of standard model. 'Split stacks' is a scheme closer to your second question, but there's a lot of overhead of that model, and not a lot of runtimes use it.

I've also even more rarely seen a model that allocates stack frames on the heap and links them together in a linked list.

But like I said, these schemes are _very_ in practice.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >> In Linux, kernel space is constantly present and maps the same physical memory in all processes.

That's right there together with the city states of Greece and other ancient memories. Meltdown and Specter happened.

<comment><USER6> You could still make an argument for that if you squint hard enough. The virtual memory is still reserved, and a transition to kernel mode still has user space mapped, and the kernel's view of memory as well.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for clarifying! Is whatever the kernel does now in transition to user space expensive because it's somehow proportional to the amount of actual memory that the kernel is using or has reserved?

<comment><USER6> No, it's still more or less a O(1) operation, it's just expensive to fully flush TLBs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The title needs 2009 in it, since this article is from that year.

<comment><USER10> 64-bit update would be great.</comment></comment>


72% in U.S. say driving must be preserved - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3089363/car-tech/though-most-back-self-driving-cars-72-in-us-say-driving-must-be-preserved-too.html <comment><USER2> Many people in the technology industry suffer from living in a bubble. Yes, self-driving cars are the future, but people will NEVER give up driving if they have a choice. This is true especially for Americans, where having the freedom to drive where you please is ingrained in the public psyche.</comment>


32 Ways to Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve (and All You Need to Know about It) - <AUTHOR> https://selfhacked.com/2015/07/30/28-ways-to-stimulate-your-vagus-nerve-and-all-you-need-to-know-about-it/ <comment><USER2> That nerve is large and has many interactions but it is silly to categorize or attribute all of that to "stimulating the vagus nerve". Its pseudo-science.

But most of what you mention do seem like they could be beneficial activites.

<comment><AUTHOR> They provide lots of references to scientific articles, so I'm not sure why you would call this pseudo-science.</comment></comment>


America's elite: An hereditary meritocracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21640316-children-rich-and-powerful-are-increasingly-well-suited-earning-wealth-and-power <comment><USER2> For millennia, being "elite" meant owning land. In a primarily agrarian society, owning land is a _huge_ advantage. So then, if that land is passed along hereditary lines, the establishment of a "landed aristocracy" is inevitable.

The risk in "meritocracy" is that we no longer live in an agrarian society. In the modern economy skills, training, and education are the surest means to success. We've replaced the "landed aristocracy" with the "educated aristocracy". This could only be considered a meritocracy if the potential to become educated was equally available to all, but the situation in America is further from that ideal than almost any other place in the world.

<comment><USER3> >In the modern economy skills, training, and education are the surest means to success.

Nope. Still land _:

[http://mattbruenig.com/2013/06/13/whats-more-important-a- col...](http://mattbruenig.com/2013/06/13/whats-more-important-a-college- degree-or-being-born-rich/)

_ actually it was never just land either. It used to be about owning land, debts, gold and slaves

Now it's about owning land, debts (bonds), gold and shares.

<comment><USER4> I can't find numbers on how many Americans own homes, but 67% of homes are occupied by their owner. That's quite a large aristocracy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_States)

52% own stocks.

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/162353/stock-ownership-stays- reco...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/162353/stock-ownership-stays-record- low.aspx)

I'm too lazy to google bonds and gold (both easily available to anyone with a brokerage account).

The means to success seem pretty accessible based on these numbers.

<comment><USER5> Thee is a meaningless difference between renting and owning 50+% the value of your home.

Looks for the % of Americans that own 95% of their home and try again.

PS: Out of 300 million There are under ~21 million households that own their home actually own their home.

<comment><USER6> Actually, there is a very substantial difference. The world recognizes and honors that 50%. Particularly the credit markets do and in a liquidity event, you walk with the 50% in cash.

Now if you were to just up and stop paying your debts, you can lose it.

<comment><USER5> Assuming the market does not tank. Plenty of homes have lost more than 50% of their value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a red herring!

I can believe the argument of hereditary meritocracy for an academic middle class, where children grow up in houses with books in them, rather than 24/7 TV, and parents who are able and willing to help their kids when they struggle with their school work.

But it does most definitely NOT apply like this for the "elite" \- that is when you get a cushy, highly paid job where you can virtually do no wrong because you studied at the right university, visit the right clubs and (therefore) know the right people. And that is only until you come into your inheritance, when your "work" will consist of raking in the huge rent you are receiving because you are rich already.

<comment><USER8> So much this. That merit is hereditary is a problem, but merit was never that important anyway. The thing that really drives me up the wall, though, is popular culture's insistence on hard work as the key to success, when really the most common way to success is various variants of interest(investment returns etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Our Enemy, The State", by Albert J. Nock - 1935. CHAPTER 4 </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>===== AFTER conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with the land. The State assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the State. In its capacity as ultimate landlord, the State distributes the land among its beneficiaries on its own terms. A point to be observed in passing is that by the State-system of land-tenure each original transaction confers two distinct monopolies, entirely different in their nature, inasmuch as one concerns the right to labour-made property, and the other concerns the right to purely law-made property. The one is a monopoly of the use-value of land; and the other, a monopoly of the economic rent of land. The first gives the right to keep other persons from using the land in question, or trespassing on it, and the right to exclusive possession of values accruing from the application of labour to it; values, that is, which are produced by exercise of the economic means upon the particular property in question. Monopoly of economic rent, on the other hand, gives the exclusive right to values accruing from the desire of other persons to possess that property; values which take their rise irrespective of any exercise of the economic means on the part of the holder.[1]

Economic rent arises when, for whatsoever reason, two or more persons compete for the possession of a piece of land, and it increases directly according to the number of persons competing. The whole of Manhattan Island was bought originally by a handful of Hollanders from a handful of Indians for twenty- four dollars' worth of trinkets. The subsequent "rise in land-values," as we call it, was brought about by the steady influx of population and the consequent high competition for portions of the island's surface; and these ensuing values were monopolized by the holders. They grew to an enormous size, and the holders profited accordingly; the Astor, Wendel, and Trinity Church estates have always served as classical examples for study of the State-system of land-tenure.

</comment><comment><USER10> > they meet the standards of meritocracy better than their peers, and are thus > worthy of the status they inherit.

Or maybe the education system ended up being tailored for well minded people, and not for the others ? Education involves a lot of human interaction, it's pretty difficult to teach and learn.

> Neither has plausible ideas for what to do about it.

The purpose of education, in my mind, is to lift people out of poverty by just teaching them a job that their parents don't have any relationship with, and will never have.

If you put competition in something that is made to reduce inequality, you will be disappointed. Maybe expensive schools should be taxed to fund more public schools too. There's a student loan bubble, so why not tax it to fund community colleges ?

To be honest, I live in france, I think the problem with the US education system is what the education quality students are exposed to from age of 8 to 16. I think it's very heterogeneous in the US, and that might be the source of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER11> Unsaid in the article: 1. 85% of America's millionaires are self-made ("The Millionaire Next Door" by Stanley) 2. there's never been more free opportunities for self-education, from the Khan Academy to MIT lectures free online.

<comment><USER12> 1.85% is pretty small. (EDIT: This is incorrect. I take it back!)

And learning online may teach you the skills, but won't replace the prestige you earn or the connections you make at an ivy league university.

The fact that you're at a prestigious university in the first place means there's a good chance you're already rich. And the easiest way to get rich is to be rich in the first place. This is the point of the article. Not that education makes all the difference, but that being rich has so many advantages.

<comment><USER13> 85% not 1.85%. There is a formatting issue with the parent post

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of the problems with social mobility in the US could be solved if universities didn't get to handle their own admissions. Interviews and "letters of application" are just a way to let wealthy sponsors get their kids into the best education. Why not just say universities either hand over their admission to a central agency OR agree to base all admission on objective parameters like standardized tests or grades?

<comment><USER15> My country uses exact system that you're suggesting and I am jealous of US system of interviews and letters of application.

Over there, potential students submit their high school performance reports to a centralised system and select programmes they want to study. Then system selects students based purely on their academical performance. It includes high school exam and average grades at final year of high school. Few top performers in each programme get all expenses paid, a bunch of good-but-not- best get partial coverage.

All seems good on paper, but it gets nasty during the last few years at high school. People do whatever they can to increase their grades. Including cheating, manipulating teachers and so on. In addition to that, people learn solely for the exams. Instead of gathering general knowledge, previous exams are studied to prepare for questions that may be in the upcoming exam. So it's either studying for grades or paying for studies.

Another problem is that some people graduate with the best grades and don't know what they want to do. But they're pretty sure to get a free spot thanks to good grades. They apply for random programme that has a cool title. Sometimes they end up enjoying it, sometimes they just sit through it and end up working in a different field. While people who were genuinely interested in that subject, but had lower grades, may not get even a paid spot.

It may be grass-is-greener thingie, but interviews and letters of application seem to be much better way. Grades do not show if particular person is a good fit for the specific programme. Different schools/teachers rate their students a bit differently as well.

<comment><USER14> Interviews and letters of application might seem like a good idea, but on closer inspection it isn't. As you could expect, an industry of "consultants" has emerged, helping rich kids get into Ivy League schools, by interview training and "helping them" write letters of application (i.e. writing it for them). So the grass doesn't seem much greener.

Perhaps the best system would be a combination of anonymized grades/scores combined with anonymized interviews?

<comment><USER15> There're always people who want to game the system :( I still think that interviews/applications are better on theoretical level though. Maybe it's because I didn't do very well in high school :)

Anonymization definitely helps. It's strictly enforced on national exams there and it seems to work pretty well. I'd focus on ensuring that applicants themselves do the job though. For example, application letters could be written in a controlled environment, without any help from 3rd party. Some people would memorise prepared letters, but it would make it a wee bit more fair.

P.S. Anonymous interviews would look great. Live Robot voice converter, full face (body?) mask... I'd watch this movie.

<comment><USER14> I think the catholics have all but perfected the anonymous dialogue...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "The children of the rich and powerful are increasingly well suited to earning wealth and power themselves. (elite is producing children who not only get ahead, but deserve to do so: they meet the standards of meritocracy better than their peers, and are thus worthy of the status they inherit) That's a problem"

Actually, this kind of thinking in itself is a problem. If there is any deterrence in social mobility where potential value does not get the chance to become true value then by all means - address that deterrence. But taking a political standing questioning the moral for current state where (although resourceful) potential value becoming true value? This is wrong. Humanity getting better (through non-destructive ways) does not need justification in someone's eyes or qualification in some political doctrine's view, because it is in itself more important than any of these.

<comment><USER16> Got down-voted pretty quickly! Was it after a rational analyze of the contents I've written or was it just an emotional response?

<comment><USER16> More karma burn and no explanation whatsoever. I think this answers not only my parent question, it also gives a glimpse on human nature of our time and what are we currently surrounded by. The humanity that I've mentioned earlier has apparently still a long way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Caltech, a university which admits purely on academic ability, has more > Asian students than other elite schools.

Caltech is unique in other ways - it's the only university with an honor system top to bottom.

</comment><comment><USER9> We abolished "titles of nobility" but forgot to address the government privileges, such as patent "royalties" and land- _titles_ , which yield the payments that monopolists like to rent-seek.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> source <[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264>](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264>)

<comment><USER17> HN doesn't interpret <> correctly. Here [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264)

<comment><AUTHOR> thx @blfr

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> When I step back and take a look at modern America, I don't see much of a meritocracy. It looks much more like a mediocrity.

</comment><comment><USER19> It wouldn't be a complete solution, but a 100% estate/inheritance tax would go a long way to correcting this. Without that you can't even remotely pretend everyone in this country has equality of opportunity.

<comment><USER16> I haven't down-voted you, but I must say it's a crazy idea. We may try finding ways to impose some handicap to some people for... what exactly? For some political/social sense of rightness? In the end, the fact is, the entire society benefits from having competent people around, regardless of their pedigree chart. Moreover, like the article mentions, the inheritance isn't just estate/material any more. It's a broad spectrum that starts from (probably controverted) genetic advantage up to the process of being groomed for high-level positions in society. Say, how would we tax the parent's reputation and her network of social connections that somehow spills over the off-springs?

<comment><USER19> It's very possible that I'm missing some vital concept but start from the other direction, as if inheritance never existed: The point of taxes is to contribute to society for the help they have given you for resources we all share (infrastructure, national defense, education, etc). After you die, why should your accumulated wealth, produced with the help of society, go to only your offspring instead of society at large?

<comment><USER20> Because our theory of justice and government include property rights. Those rights include the privilege to gift legally acquired property, while we live, to our children.

Turn that question around. What is society at large going to do for my children if I die today that I couldn't do better if I was living and directing my efforts toward them?

<comment><USER19> Property rights are already voluntarily violated through taxation, this is just a more thorough example. Why should someone who hasn't earned property get to exercise rights over it? Society contributed to the wealth, the offspring may or may not have, but if they did they should have been paid before the elder in the situation passed on.

And to your second point, it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Because taxes are so vilified, we don't have the fiscal ability to take care of people as we should (in my opinion). If society at large had a form of basic income, that would answer your second point and one way to fund it would be to massively increase estate/inheritance taxes.

<comment><USER16> I never thought of taxes as property violation. I guess I had perceived these through their original concepts - from the roman right. There a property was rightly yours in the society that considers you a part of it. At your turn, it was your duty to make sure the society that recognizes your rights stays in one piece, which meant protecting it with your life if necessary. That was your contribution to society. Later the citizen's contribution become solely financial and it's somewhat understandable now why it's perceived as a racket. You've suggested that after you die the property should go to society, which is totally outside the roman right tradition and hard to swallow in west. However in east (or at least in China) you may find your suggestion already implemented. I'm not aware of all details, but I remember that a "property" there (like a house to live in) is yours only for a limited time and your children have to buy it all over again!

<comment><USER19> Interesting, I didn't know that about China.

And regarding taxes as property violation, it's a very popular meme in the American Right/Conservative/Libertarian groups that "taxes = theft".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bluefin Tuna on the Verge of Extinction? - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862255,00.html?cnn=yes

<comment><USER2> Let's be more precise: the article speaks about bluefin tuna, one of the many tuna species, the high-end expensive one used for sushi.

Other tuna species (that are usually sold in cans) seem to be doing ok.

Just to get the perspective - three bluefin species all together make just over 1% of all tuna catches:

<http://www.fao.org/fishery/statistics/tuna-catches/en>

<comment><USER3> IIRC, the other tuna species are _not_ doing ok. They are projected to be gone within 40 years if current consumption trends continue. Of course that disqualifies them from "on the verge," but 40 years is hella fast in terms of extinction, or even from totally safe to not-safe.

<comment><USER2> We are speaking about self-replicating beings. This is not oil, that once drilled is gone forever. Predicting 40 years into future is hard.

But there is definitely a problem. A fundamental one. Overfishing is a classical "tragedy of commons" example. There are no easy solutions.

<comment><USER3> Actually it should be possible to construct a model of oil quantity as if oil was a self-replicating being. After all, we are talking about conservation of matter (and matter-energy conversion which I suppose is negligible here). In this sense, oil self-replicates as animals (that have consumed the benefits of oil) die off, and fossilize over billions of years.

That's just P(t) - C(t) + K for P = production, C = consumption, and K = amount available at t = 0.

So for oil, we have small P, large C, large K. For tuna, we have small P, large C, small K. As such, projection estimates should rest on similar assumptions, and extinction models should be as realistic as you can get.

I agree that there are no easy solutions, but the problem is there; it's the elephant in the room, in all aspects of consumption.

(this was posted as more of a thought experiment than anything else).

<comment><USER2> Maybe the proper solution is to increase the production?

I found a much better article on bluefin tuna troubles in Scientific American - indeed there are attempts to farm tuna:

<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=bluefin-tuna-in-peril>

BTW that's also one of the reasons why I think predicting populations 40 years in advance is hard. Even for a good model assumptions can change. And for systems of nonlinear differential equations even small differences in constants can lead to widely different outcomes.

<comment><USER3> IMHO, the "best" countermeasure is the most inconvenient one, which is not only inconvenient on personal levels, but also on social levels. The inconvenience is evident in another posting on this thread and extends to areas beyond tuna -- which is why I am bearish on whole matter (just imagine the number of people with that sentiment), even if you increase production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> i know this is a terrible thing to say... but...

I love bluefin tuna. its delicious. knowing that i might not be able to eat it in a few years leaves me conflicted between increasing consumption for my personal enjoyment (at the cost of the burden of knowing that I'm accelerating bluefin toward its extinction) and decreasing personal consumption for the small moral victory that I at least tried to help keep a species on earth (at the cost of decreased sushi enjoyment).

If God wanted bluefin to survive, maybe He should have made them less tasty.

</comment><comment><USER5> "...the world's remaining stocks of bluefin tuna, 90% of which are in the Mediterranean, could be on the verge of extinction." "...biologists predict that this year [2006] approximately 50,000 tons of tuna will be caught in the Med."

They fish Bluefin Tuna where I live (PEI, Canada) but it's one at a time with a rod sort of like Marlin or Swordfish. The quota here is 100 to 200 tons, I couldn't imagine 50,000 tons!

</comment><comment><USER6> You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tuna fish...</comment>


Show HN: Use a Passphrase - <AUTHOR> http://www.useapassphrase.com/

<comment><USER2> No HTTPS, seriously?

Shameless plug for mine: [https://www.wordentropy.org](https://www.wordentropy.org)

<comment><USER3> I'm all for https everywhere...but really, what's the issue here? There's no data being transmitted over the wire on the OP's site. No sensitive data anywhere. There's little gained by putting this site under a SSL cert.

<comment><USER4> I think there are times for not having secure stuff. Like when page loading times are slow and having an additional security layer would slow things down more.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Communicate if Your Government Shuts Off Your Internet - <AUTHOR> http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Communicate_if_Your_Government_Shuts_Off_Your_Internet <comment><USER3> My advice is: If Egypt is anything to go by, use the same tech as the government.

While all other internet connected devices started to go down - <USER2> Blackberries stayed up.

<comment><USER4> Blackberry doesn't have some magical powers to connect to the internet. It's just an average GSM/3G device. Do you have evidence to suggest authorities were filtering out non-Blackberry 3G traffic?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes...everyone thought I was MAD for researching autonomous solar-powered UAV data relay stations but now who's mad eh?

...seriously it's like the poor-mans communication satellite...

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't it be an order of magnitude easier to make a simple gas powered balloon? You could hook it up with an altitude sensor and make sure it doesn't drift away.

<comment><USER5> Simpler yes, but where does the gas come from?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They should have mentioned FidoNet(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet>): email, file transfer, newsgroups -- over telephone.

<comment><USER8> FidoNet over WiFi nodes that only activate intermittently on a varying schedule would be very hard for the authorities to track down. Just use a strong stream cipher to produce the schedule.

<comment><USER9> Sorry for downvoting, I literally fat fingered the arrows on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's worth pointing out that 'broadcasting' is specifically prohibited by ham (amateur radio) licenses and so Wired's advice to 'broadcast' would be breaking the license. Clearly, if you are in a country that's disintegrating you might not care.

<comment><USER11> Most non-hams don't seem to be aware of the distinction between "transmit" and "broadcast" (transmit to the general public, no reply expected). There are likely to be other legal issues involved anyway (e.g. restrictions on handling international third-party traffic: I cannot legally receive a message from an Egyptian ham to pass on to a non-ham recipient).

This discussion also reminds me that I ought to get PSKmail set up.

<comment><USER12> This seems like a fine line. You can talk to an Egyptian ham about what's going on and then decide yourself to pass on the information.

Also, how does the prohibition on passing third-party messages mesh with packet radio equipment? Am I not allowed to send email over packet? I thought that was one of the main uses back in the 90s.

<comment><USER11> _You can talk to an Egyptian ham about what's going on and then decide yourself to pass on the information._

As I understand it, this is acceptable. The FCC defines third-party communication as: "A message from the control operator (first party) of an amateur station to another amateur station control operator (second party) on behalf of another person (third party)." If there's no particular person for whom the message is intended, it would just be something I heard on the radio.

 _Also, how does the prohibition on passing third-party messages mesh with packet radio equipment? Am I not allowed to send email over packet? I thought that was one of the main uses back in the 90s._

For domestic traffic (with no encryption, pecuniary interest, etc.), email over packet should be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> On a local level (which is on par with this whole open insurgency thing), opening up your WiFi and using Bonjour services (and why not some kind of custom landing page) seems like a brilliant idea. Big plus: it doesn't require a computer degree so that's something that can spread easily, and cover a wide range.

Maybe it's just me, but I find it amazing to have all the elements at hand and already working, and never having thought of this

</comment><comment><USER14> IP-over-carrier-pigeon.

Of course that can be easily thwarted by government agents with shotguns, so maybe multiply redundant routes?

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not completely familiar with these yet but to have them separate from mega-corporate networks would be great:

\+ <http://www.villagetelco.org>

\+ <http://openbts.sourceforge.net>

OpenBTS Egypt - <http://openbts-egypt.org/blog>

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how easy it would be to improvise a "software" modem using the mike and headphones. Should give around 1k, plus compression... much better then nothing.

If there's any way to directly connect phones (mobile or landlines) to a computer without any wiring it would be even better. Come to think of it, could't one make an android or iphone app for this?

<comment><USER17> IF government will shutdown even Internet, will it keep land-line phones online?

You can start from linmodem project: <http://bellard.org/linmodem.html> , it may allow to create 9600 connection on 1GHz processor.

Of course, phones have built-in DSP processor, but each phone model has it own DSP. Some OpenGL chips are able to do FFT using vDSP (e.g. iPhone4), so it can be used to accelerate soft modem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really like how easy it is to set up an ad-hoc network using Mac OS X. If the government shuts off the internet Apple computers would probably be foremost in the creation of a private ad-hoc internet.

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately, the range of a single computer is very limited, and an ad-hoc wifi network requires that all computers be in range of one another. What you would really need to do is create a mesh network, where each host relays messages to other hosts within range. This way, you can communicate with hosts that aren't within direct range of your wireless radio.

</comment></comment><comment> s-phi-nl Has any of this been used for natural disasters where the internet (but not necessarily telephone or power) went down?</comment>


Django System Monitor - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hakanzy/django-system-monitor/

<comment><USER2> Can I ask why? The information presented is really very basic. There are more in depth tools to get, and record, this information.

Personally, I would rather get system information from outside the running webapp.

<comment><USER3> It's an easy way to keep an eye on things.

Site a little sluggish? This provides a way of quickly checking to see if it's anything obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A related project that I find very useful is django-memcache-status:

<https://github.com/bartTC/django-memcache-status>

Update: though of course these both use the same hack to work (overriding admin.site.index_template) so they won't work at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just incase anyone is wondering, psutil is the real magic behind these kind of projects. Those guys did a heroic job on making that app.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to see this work with django-admin-bootstrapped: <https://github.com/riccardo-forina/django-admin-bootstrapped>.

I wonder if it'll be compatible with a future official update of the admin, though.

</comment><comment><USER7> I get NoSuchProcess exceptions whenever I try to access the admin with it enabled. I love the idea though.

<comment><USER8> Usually you can inspect the frames of your stack trace and find out which program your are missing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice, anyone tested?

<comment><USER10> Me here. The only thing you need to do is that adding one line to INSTALLED_APPS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Plug and play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> works good! Awesome job</comment>


How AT&T's Bell Labs shaped modern art - <AUTHOR> http://littleatoms.com/how-att-shaped-modern-art <comment><USER2> It seems to me that art and science need to go together. Places rich in technological development are also great art, culinary, literary, ... hubs. To feed the cutting edge you need crazy analogies that only diverse fields provide.</comment>


Is Eeyore Designing Your Software? - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001082.html <comment><USER2> Actually, his example was the SIMPLE case. It was an enhancement. For a real change, you'd have to add everything needed for regression testing. That would double again what was needed.

Once I was doing service work for a large software house and had to enlarge a dictionary for one customer by 2 characters to handle some of his data. 11 weeks and 4 committees later, my mod was rejected because of impact on other customers. Bottom line: 5 minutes dev work, 50 hours overhead for that change.</comment>


Ask HN: is it just my eyes? - <AUTHOR>

Is it just my eyes or do you have trouble getting your web designs to look good on windows?
I don't know what rendering engine windows uses to render colours but it's very difficult to get colours that don't look sickly when viewed on various PCs. I'm not talking about images as such (although they always just look mediocre) but CSS designs that no amount of tuning can liven them up.
What's your experience? <comment><USER2> I noticed the fonts always render poorly in Windows. But apart from that, the actually css design should look the same (unless of course you're using IE).

</comment><comment><USER3> Obligatory question: are you using the same computer/monitor to view both versions?

</comment><comment><USER4> Use the diff renderer here to check: <http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php>

</comment><comment><USER5> Compared to what? Are you using different browsers, or the same on different OSs?</comment>


Nets on the outlets of drainage pipes save waterways from pollution - <AUTHOR> https://themindcircle.com/save-water-from-plastic-pollution/ <comment><USER2> I kayak and fish in the bays of NYC. A fact not known by much of the population of the city is that almost every time it rains, the sewage treatment plants release raw sewage into the ocean. This is due to the storm drains being drained by the same system that sewage is treated from. Due to this the water is filled with trash, floating condoms, and wet wipes. So this isn't just third world countries. It is bad enough that bacteria and nitrogen wastes get into the water when this happens. They should at least capture the trash and disgusting sewage products.

<comment><USER3> Because this is top comment and no one has provided further explanation yet, here is a link: [https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/stormwater/combined_sewer...](https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/stormwater/combined_sewer_overflow.shtml)

Most older cities have what are called combined sewers (there is a good wikipedia article on it) and have to deal with this problem in various ways.

<comment><USER4> Not just older cities. I live in San Diego and we have exactly the same problem here. Can't swim or surf after the rain. Not exactly sure why it was done this way - maybe because it rains very rarely and they just did not design the sewage system to handle rare (but sometimes heavy) rains.

<comment><USER5> California built a ton of great infrastructure and then people decided they didn't want to pay to maintain it. The entire state is full of projects where the people who ran them are begging for money to avoid needing to spend even more after it finally breaks. One of the big problems was the sprawl due to the highway system – when San Diego raises its property taxes that means people may still work and play in the city but will buy a house somewhere else, paying no taxes at all.

This is a common story around the world but Prop 13 adds the wrinkle that it mostly affects new buyers and people who haven't figured out how to pass property to their descendants without resetting the tax assessment. That guy who bought a place in PB with his back pay when he got out of the Navy is still paying $100 a year in taxes. He has a massive incentive not to do anything which will reset that, so the city won't be getting more revenue that way until he (or his heirs) sell the place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems worse in almost every respect than a hydrodynamic stormwater separator. With the latter, you pop open a manhole cover and suck out the goo with a vacuum truck. With a net, you have to somehow pick it up without spilling the contents. Then you hope you can empty it without destroying it or you replace it. This sounds much harder.

Oh, and hydrodynamic separators claim to catch oils, too.

<comment><USER7> That only works for vertical storm drains, no? Could it be installed in outflow pipes as seen in the pictures?

And what about cost?

<comment><USER8> Looking around, a number of widths exist for these systems, and installing what is called pre-cast units would start at about 10k$ for the smallest (4ft in diameter), and go up from there (see EPA paper below for additional details). Maintenance costs are said to be really low in what I could find (1000$ a year or so), as maintenance (emptying the trash) can be done by one vacuum truck in 30 minutes. So it may be a better choice for systems that are there to last rather than nets, but nets would still be best for temporary sites. [http://www.water- research.net/Waterlibrary/Stormwater/hydrod...](http://www.water- research.net/Waterlibrary/Stormwater/hydrodynamic.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wet garbage is extremely heavy and hard to clean up. These socks typically require heavy equipment to remove/maintain. These filters also only work well in very specific drain configurations. Not as effective as the article suggests.

<comment><USER10> What is specific about a circular drain opening for this to work?

<comment><USER11> I think the answer to this is the same as the answer to the classic interview question, "why are manhole covers round?" With a round hole, a ring of slightly larger diameter (to hold the net in this case) cannot pass through the hole, no matter what angle it gets turned. With any other hole shape (eg rectangular), the "ring" that sits outside the hole to hold the net can be turned such that it can go through the hole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Strayan here. These nets are used quite widely by a number of local councils including Greater Sydney. They are not universally used though. Larger waterways may have a boom, a number have these nets, some have something like a metal sieve and many have nothing

Some people have suggested a vacuum may be easier. But a council in Australia always has bulldozers and rubbish trucks available, so it may fit better into that existing infrastructure

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder why we don't have them at every level.

If we make it legally mandatory to put such a filter in every house then it will often get clogged and cost money and people will learn not to flush down the waste in toilet.

I read somewhere that people learn best when mistakes cost them money.

Imagine hotels having a massive filter then some might want to install sensors in individual drainage pipe coming from the individual units and charge their customers based on the amount of waste they flush down the toilet which ends up costing the money to hotel on subsequent cleanup.

<comment><USER14> It looks like these are applied to waterways that are largely free of faeces, such as storm drains.

A net applied to pipes intended to transport faeces would presumably need holes so big it couldn't catch condoms, sanitary products or wet wipes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _Though the installation and the manufacture of these nets cost money (about > $10,000 each)_

That seems exceedingly expensive for a net and a metal ring to hold it (maybe because drainage outlets aren't standard sizes?), but I'm impressed with the claims of how effective it is.

<comment><USER16> The city's website [1] says that cost includes the design, manufacture, install and associated civil works.

[1] [https://www.kwinana.wa.gov.au/our- city/news/Pages/City%E2%80...](https://www.kwinana.wa.gov.au/our- city/news/Pages/City%E2%80%99s-Drainage-Nets-Post-Goes-Viral.aspx)

<comment><USER17> Plus, it goes on to indicate that's a cost savings over the old "roam around and pick it up by hand" approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Australian. I've seen this circle the internet many times, but I've never seen one in the wild at any beach or river outlet.

<comment><USER19> I doubt that "Australia" Found a Way is putting credit where it deserves to go. It's not exactly a national priority.

<comment><USER20> You make it sound like Australia has a huge problem with plastic/trash in waterways that "Australia" is actively ignoring.

In general, Australian's culture is to use rubbish bins and keep things tidy.

Sidepoint: I am not sure if it is something only Australians do, but whenever something about Australia comes up, there will be an Australian there bemoaning how badly we do things. Yes, there is always room for improvement, but Australia is so far ahead of most countries in just about any measure that you choose, that one has to wonder where this sentiment stems from.

<comment><USER21> It's probably because a lot of people feel we could _easily_ do better when it comes to the environment - regardless of what other countries might be doing.

And there are a number of areas where we certainly aren't ahead either.

<comment><USER20> Oh I agree that we can do better, and should do better. I am more taking issue at people who make it sound like Australia is terrible compared to just about any other country, no matter what the discussion is about.

Whether the discussion be about environment, politics, innovation, corruption, you name it, some Australian will start moaning about how badly we do X.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I assume this can only work for outflows near a road in order to provide access to the machinery. Outflows in forests, and at the foot of cliffs might go uncaptured, but its a good stab at a solution.

In the Thames they have flotsam collectors that rubbish ends up as the tide tos and fros along the river, it's called a passive driftwood collector:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7YJXNfJwdg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7YJXNfJwdg)

<comment><USER23> I noticed this one a few weeks back when I was at the shops. There seemed to be a weird crane-line contraption hidden in the woods where I knew there was a creek or canal. Thinking it had something to do with canal boats I wanted to have a closer look. [https://goo.gl/maps/FuXrmR7TFRmm4r1r5](https://goo.gl/maps/FuXrmR7TFRmm4r1r5)

It's very much like those carnival crane games where you try to lift a prize out of a glass box. I'm not sure how often it's emptied, but at the time it was full of rubbish.

Seeing as a city reservoir is not far away I can understand why they would want to filter as much as possible before it floats that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is great! It certainly helps but we humans also need to change our behavior about littering.

<comment><USER25> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting, I'm curious about the impact on wildlife and the way they switch the full nets for empty ones. They imply there's an overflow system in place I'd love to know how that works

More info on the company manufacturing those [http://stormwatersystems.com/trash- traps/](http://stormwatersystems.com/trash-traps/) They also make trash collecting bots boats.

<comment><USER27> At least one of the pictures shows the nets are on pipes that drain an open cistern. It appears that if the nets get clogged, water will fill the cistern and flow over, bypassing the nets. Seems like a fairly reasonable fallback solution until the nets can be cleared and put back into action. Other pictures show netted pipes that don't appear to have such a cistern, so I do wonder how overflow is handled in those cases - maybe a cistern upstream that's not visible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nets on the inlets to storm water systems help a lot too. Leaves, rubbish etc get trapped and collected. I used to see them around building sites here in Auckland, but they have started cropping up in other areas too. It probably makes sense to filter it at multiple points.

</comment><comment><USER29> this is so damn simple, that I fear for us, for not having thought of it sooner ><

<comment><USER30> Exactly what I thought first too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Expected this article would be about the series of tubes know as the Internet of Drains.

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313366896_Internet_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313366896_Internet_of_Things_in_Drainage_Management_System)

[https://www.terratrenchless.com/7-things-you-need-to-know- ab...](https://www.terratrenchless.com/7-things-you-need-to-know-about- internet-of-things-in-engineering/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Holy crap. I did not realize this much litter came down drains. Insane.

</comment><comment><USER33> What a weird country, on the one hand they want to save environment from plastic pollution.

On the other one tho.. invest in coal power plants, which will only make drought issues bigger.

<comment><USER34> Trust me, a lot of Australians hate the current leadership and would love to see them gone. Unfortunately we are tending towards the trial version of USA.

<comment><USER35> But didn't the public just vote for coal?

<comment><USER36> The people I know who voted for the libs preferenced the greens first and only voted for the libs because labor would leave them financially worse off.

<comment><USER21> And we have to put our own finances before the environment! (Screw our children, after all.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 800 pounds in a couple of weeks... kind of dispells the notion that it's not coming from western countries.

<comment><USER38> 800 pounds? China pumps 4,800,000,000 pounds (2.4 million tons) of plastic into the ocean each year.

No, western countries are not perfect. Yes, the vast majority of ocean waste comes from poor, non-Western countries. The US, 3rd largest country by population, is #20 for ocean pollution. China alone produces 1/3 of all ocean waste.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-s-oceans- cl...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-s-oceans-clogged-by- millions-of-tons-of-plastic-trash/?redirect=1)

<comment><USER39> Western countries export most of their plastic waste to the countries named in the article. Substantial amounts of the plastics China spills into the ocean are ours, exported there for "recycling"

<comment><USER10> Why does that matter? The issue is that they claim to be recycling and then just dump it in the ocean instead.

<comment><USER40> That's quite disingenuous to what's really happening. The companies in the US claiming their "recycling" service are probably well aware of what's going on, and China probably isn't making any promises that they're recycling anything. The US companies accept money for "recycling" material, maybe cut off the power cord for reuse, then pay China to take the rest as junk.

And it's a given that if you're transporting garbage to a landfill, some of it isn't going to make it that far and will eventually end up in the ocean. Maybe they are just dumping it as you say, but just the fact that some of it ends up there isn't evidence of that fact.

<comment><USER10> You contradicted yourself in your own post. If there's no evidence that they're dumping it in the ocean then what exactly are the US companies supposedly aware of?

The fact is that US companies are paying for a disposal service. What that disposal service does is up to them, and if they just throw in the water then it's their fault alone. Maybe there should be some regulations there to ensure recycling companies actually do some recycling.

<comment><USER40> _> what exactly are the US companies supposedly aware of?_

That it's not being recycled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This merely puts the plastic pollution somewhere else (into a dump near the ocean most likely), so it doesn't really save anything.

The problem is still the production of the materials in the first place.

<comment><USER42> Sorry, that's just ludicrous.

Putting plastic in a dump is much better than letting it kill animal after animal, decomposing into smaller pieces and getting into the food chain.

Ideally we design most plastics out, but barring that recycling would be fine - and just burying it is still much better than either burning or letting it drift into oceans.

<comment><USER43> Your comment's great, except for the first sentence, which is what the site guidelines refer to as calling names in arguments. Would you mind reviewing [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and editing those bits out of your HN comments in the future?

I know it seems small, but it has a downgrading effect on conversation. Also, it often doesn't seem small to the person being addressed that way (or some other readers who happen upon it).

<comment><USER44> Thank you for being the net on the outlets of our drainage pipes! Subtle & not unnoticed work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The History of Development of Norton Commander (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/Ch03/norton_commander.shtml <comment><USER2> I am still using total commander which has proven as by far best gui replacement while I have never found any text based even close (any suggestion is welcome but mc is not it) as far it goes regarding tc tooling and integration of plugins. Or search (and replace) for files etc. I never really understood why something like explorer copies are used on all systems.

Anyway if someone wants to try, [https://www.ghisler.com/](https://www.ghisler.com/) while here are 3rd party plugins: [https://totalcmd.net/](https://totalcmd.net/) There is more than meets the first glance and one huge benefit is that you dont need to use mouse. At all.

<comment><USER3> I'm currently developing another file manager for macOS, Windows and Linux named 'cryo' which also has a dual-pane mode.

It's not yet as future rich as other commanders but hopefully will be in the upcoming months.

[https://cryonet.io](https://cryonet.io)

<comment><USER2> A suggestion, study very closely how plugins in TC work and even more on which places: like file system plugin also working in search dialog. Implement support for TC plugins, you will gain enormous ecosystem for almost free.

Check its viewer and find in files options (utf8+utf16+regex+office files and then combining everything with git plugin (or one of other plugins) where commit comment contains something not matching to another regexp. And on top of everything it is very simple to make it happen).

Do study TC, it is by far the most complete file manager on any system, in any time and extremely well thought of. There is just nothing that compares beyond "I have two pane file manager".

It is visually outdated and it doesn't run on all platforms but it is really really hard to beat in features (like rename all *.cpp in all directories and subdirectories to #filename#-#dateofcreation#-#gitrevision#-#gitbranch#.cpp or use parts of exif header to rename file). I would love to have multiplatform alternative (as I have dumped the windows due to w8 and w10 abominations) for TC but I just dont see how this could be achived without really, REALLY huge engineering effort.

You might figure out that it is not worth competing against it for its licence price of 37 euros (27 for students) and "shareware" version without limitations except nag screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Edit: URL changed from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander).

This is probably too well-known a topic to justify a generic Wikipedia link. There are better articles available - for example, [http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/Ch03/norton_command...](http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/Ch03/norton_commander.shtml), which can be found either by web search or HN search. Perhaps we'll swap that URL in.

This issue with Wikipedia submissions has been coming up a lot lately. Recent explanations:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23249978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23249978)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239405)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23117614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23117614)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041)

</comment><comment><USER5> There also was Volkov Commander (VC) - a faster and smaller clone of NC. [1]

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

<comment><USER6> There is also Dos Navigator, a slower and bigger clone of NC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was always a fan of XTree[1], was always more intuitive to me than norton commander.

Still have the shortcuts in muscle memory `xtg` for the win

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

<comment><USER8> I liked Xtree. I actually had my own DOS file manager (Directory Freedom) but that was deliberately kept very small and fast. I liked Xtree for when I wanted to look at or work with the whole directory structure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I never used NC much, but I recall a friend of mine having a DOS PC that booted into it.. When I first ventured into linux, I was not good with the command line, and was very pleased to find MC, it helped me a lot until I got the hang of the CLI.

</comment><comment><USER10> FAR manager is still a nice way to manage files in a 2-pane mode on Windows

<comment><USER11> Left windows years ago and not looking back, and FAR manager is the only software I miss on Ubuntu. midnight commander doesn't even come close, unfortunately.

<comment><USER12> There is a port of sorts: [https://github.com/elfmz/far2l](https://github.com/elfmz/far2l) Still an early stage but nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have stopped using Windows, but the only software that I miss is a modern NC clone called Far Manager [1].

[1] [https://www.farmanager.com/](https://www.farmanager.com/)

<comment><USER13> Have you tried Midnight Commander?

<comment><USER5> Of course, but MC is (to put it lightly) not feature complete :) Ended by using MC, far2l (Far Manager 2 Linux clone) and Far Manager 3 under Wine depending on a task, but nothing can compare to native Far on Windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Norton Commander is to DOS as Directory Opus is to the Amiga.

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

<comment><USER14> I noted with some interest (now about 20 years ago) that Directory Opus had gotten a Windows version. It still seems to be alive and kicking, which is good to see!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Norton Commander was in the autoexec.bat of virtually every computer I saw between ~1992 and 1998. Dos Navigator replaced it for a while, then Windows Commander, later renamed to Total Commander. I still have Total Commander pinned to the taskbar of every computer I use, I bought a few dozen licenses back in ~ 2008-2009.

In ~ 1994 I wrote a limited feature clone of NC in FoxPro just to show some colleagues in college that it can be done fast and easy. It motivated them to learn FoxPro and a few become developers using it for the next 5-10 years.

<comment><USER16> Dos Navigator was such a great productivity tool! Guys who made it (Ritlabs) went on to develop TheBat! email client which was also pretty amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sweet memories... [1] is a great walk down memory lane.

[1] [http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/Ch03/norton_command...](http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/Ch03/norton_commander.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER18> Nimble Commmader ([https://github.com/mikekazakov/nimble- commander](https://github.com/mikekazakov/nimble-commander)) is the real deal for dual panel managers fanboys with macs.

</comment><comment><USER19> I still use Midnight Commander on the daily basis. It is immensely useful for e.g. exploring a large codebase. I don't know why it is frowned upon by many people.

<comment><USER20> Meant genuinely and with 0% troll: why? What does it get you that ls (-ltr and optionally |less) doesn't? I know that some people _love_ mc and I've never...got it. I've never really asked them in great detail.

What are the 'killer features' of MC over the more "usual" *nix tools of find/grep/ls/awk/sed/vim? I'd love to know if I'm missing a trick!

<comment><USER21> What I like most about MC is oddly off by default. Under "Options" > "Panel options" there is an option under "Navigation" for "Lynx-like motion". Once this is on, you can navigate in/out of directory structures with the left and right arrows on your keyboard. It makes it super quick and easy to move around a file system without a bunch of successive cd/ls/etc commands (or other tools)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I remember Volkov Commander too. From Wikipedia :"Volkov Commander (VC) is a file manager for DOS inspired by the Norton Commander. Volkov Commander is purely written in assembly language, and is thus very small (less than 100 KB) and fast". It was really fast and really small when we had the 1.4 mb floppy disk back then.

</comment><comment><USER23> Still using Total commander on my android phone

<comment><USER24> IMO, this port is subpar. Ghislers original is "the best thing since sliced bread", I'm using it for more than ~20 years and it is the first software I have on USB flash drive or install (copy) to a new Windows machine. But the mobile version never clicked for me. I'm using X-plore on Android for ~2 years now and I'm quite happy with it. It is also the only app I could find, that supports Windows shares in a rather hassle-free way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> On Windows FreeCommander is a good free Commander. [https://freecommander.com](https://freecommander.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I remembered about Norton Commander today when I opened a second window of "Files" in Ubuntu to do some tidy up and moving around of files.

<comment><USER26> Why not use midnight commander on ubuntu?

<comment><USER27> mc is disgusting.

<comment><USER28> Care to elaborate on that? I use it for navigating quickly and i'm just a C-o away from the unbridled shell. I find it very useful.

Also, do you have another command line mc alternative to suggest? I'm always open to try new tools.

<comment><USER11> It fails to do the 'just works' magic. Selecting files, moving them from place to place is always weirdly unpleasant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I know someone who still uses ZTreeWin (a clone, for Windows) all the time. It looks incredibly quick, with lots of useful shortcuts.

</comment><comment><USER30> Norton Commander is the reason I still use Midnight Commander on my servers !

My fingers know all the key shortcuts for decades now

</comment><comment><USER31> Some people might not be aware that dolphin is pretty good split window file manager.

<comment><USER24> I have to agree. As a heavy user of Total Commander and fighting the Krusader as well as Double Commander clones for some time, I switched to Dolphin after setting up a KDE-based Linux distribution. Its been years, since I did it the last time and I was quite reluctant. But it worked out much better than I thought in the beginning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I started my computing career as a 5 yo in Norton Commander on a 8088 Intel machine.

</comment><comment><USER33> Pre-Windows 95 every PC I owned or configured booted into this.

</comment><comment><USER34> ahh the only useful product Norton ever released :)

<comment><USER35> Norton editor was another masterpiece.

Pre acquisition Norton products were amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Darn. I loved NC.

</comment><comment><USER37> LOVED it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Url changed from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander), which points to this.</comment>