What side projects are you up to? - <AUTHOR> Please discuss why are you satisfied about it? <comment><USER3> I've got two hobby projects on the go.

I'm building a steam power plant simulator for students and trainees that won't cost upwards of $100K for a site license. It also has a plant builder interface, which lets anyone place and connect equipment, piping, instrumentation, and controls. Then, they can run the plant like a real operator would from a control room.

When I was at school for power/stationary engineering, we all wished we could use something like the school's simulator at home. So, maybe I'll get to fill that niche. (And, nothing out there has a do-it-yourself plant builder!)

I have mostly-complete prototypes done for the builder interface and numerical simulator. I like that it keeps the theory that I learned at school nice and fresh.

Also, I bought a gas turbine engine on eBay, and I'm working with a friend to get it running. We got an oil system hooked up yesterday, and we spun it up with the starter motor and a car battery. Lots of fun!

</comment><comment><USER4> I built a football betting algorithm and constantly play with that to improve the accuracy..

Generates a very healthy income!

betalyst.com

<comment><USER5> Is your income via ads?

I'm interested as to how your algorithm works. My girlfriends family invited me to their Super Six league (I don't watch football) and so I thought about building something like this.

<comment><USER6> Best gambling income comes from affiliation. They pay out $40+ for a new account that makes a deposit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm working on a search engine, [https://wbsrch.com](https://wbsrch.com). Most fun I've ever had. Not so great yet, but getting better every day.

</comment><comment><USER5> I work a lot on Cachet ([https://github.com/CachetHQ/Cachet](https://github.com/CachetHQ/Cachet)) it's an open source alternative to StatusPage.io and has garnered a lot of popularity among household names, universities and startups. It's cool!

Aside from Cachet, I work on StyleCI ([https://styleci.io](https://styleci.io)) which is self-sufficient. StyleCI is a PHP Coding Standards CI that currently works with GitHub. We're working on BitBucket support.

And finally I'm working on a couple of SaaS projects that have yet to launch.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for Cachet! Been definitely on the lookout for exactly this for our SaaS.

<comment><USER5> My pleasure! Let me know if you need anything; email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Writing a novel - a bit of a change from writing code ;-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Slowly (and ineptly) teaching myself how to develop in Hacklang and Vagrant by building a Hacker News like forum[0]. Also, four months into my first Game A Month project[1], a Berzerk clone that's not going to wind up being Berzerk at all.

[0][https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/based- hack](https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/based-hack)

[1][https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/berzerk](https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/berzerk)

>Please discuss why are you satisfied about it?

I really like Hack, although I am learning some of the assumptions I had about the way types work seem not to be correct, and I'm debugging through nano which is annoying. I don't like that it doesn't support ArrayAccess, but things like shapes and immutable types more than make up for it.

Teaching myself game programming at the low-but-not-bare-metal level of C++ and SDL is satisfying because of the problem solving challenges involved. I kind of know in the back of my mind that I'll probably never come up with a game anyone wants to play, though.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm working on a browser based snail simulation. I've been wanting to make this thing for over 10 years now and I am satisfied about it because there are so many aspects to work on. If I get bored of one part of the project I can move on to something else. If I get bored of working on snail brain infrastructure I can work on the breeding system. Or if I get bored of coding I can work on the front-end design or item illustrations. There is always something to hold my interest.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm working on an immutable Twitter especially for politicians or predictors. No images but all other features are there. Hoping for a better no bs society :)

HTTP://Writedown.co

<comment><USER13> How immutable is it? Is it using blockchain?

<comment><USER12> You can send a tweet to btc blockchain free of charge though currently.I am trying to convince free speech organisations to either hold a distributed db or run a sidechain for data verification because btc immutability has costs and I want it to be free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Making an instagram stat tracker, very similar to socialblade.

Socialblade's instagram tracking has went down hill in the past few months and also want to avoid the 5 account limit. Nothing crazy complicated, but just something that will make my life much easier.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have been working on [https://bestfoodnearme.com](https://bestfoodnearme.com) a little at a time. I used it to learn how to program in Go. The site works, but I am revamping the look.

I am happy with it, I learned quite a bit about Go and I was really able to focus on some interesting aspects of web app development that I would normally not get to work on at my day job.

One other big plus was that I have started using Go at my day job, and it has been a huge help with certain classes of problems.

</comment><comment><USER16> Working on my torrent tracker in Go ([https://github.com/GrappigPanda/notorious](https://github.com/GrappigPanda/notorious)), but I'm probably going to switch gears and work on a distributed cache in Erlang that supports easy key timeouts because my workaround in Redis for reaping expired peers is pretty ugly.

</comment><comment><USER17> Between working and freelancing, I am building an app alongside myself learning a new language. I found that lots of the current apps for this specific language are total crap. So I figured I should build a high quality one.

Also I don't really "enjoy" learning the language so doing something I really enjoy makes it quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER8> Building a marketing automation platform for small businesses ([http://orchestrahq.com](http://orchestrahq.com)). Not really satisfied with it at the moment as I would love to incorporate machine learning capabilities into the system. However, it's been a great learning experience.

<comment><USER18> Link not working!

<comment><USER8> Really? It worked for me. Try [https://orchestrahq.com](https://orchestrahq.com).

<comment><USER18> Working now. Strange...I got redirected to 127.0.0.1:8000

<comment><USER8> Thanks. I've noticed it did that once but I'm not sure if it's on my end or CloudFlare's end. I'll investigate.

<comment><USER19> Does it to me also. [https://127.0.0.1:8008/](https://127.0.0.1:8008/)

<comment><USER8> Does it happen to you when you use the http link or the https link? Or both?

<comment><USER20> Happened to me with http. Once you successfully connect to the https endpoint, HTTP Strict Transport Security kicks in and you no-longer see it. just fyi.

<comment><USER8> Any thoughts/ideas on how to fix this?

<comment><USER20> Somewhere in your config there's a 301 redirect (UHOH!) to localhost, either as a cloudflare page rule or a misconfiguration on your origin server. If you use chrome you can remove HSTS for your domain here: chrome://net- internals/#hsts , this should at least allow you to replicate the problem (just don't visit the https version or it'll be enabled again.)

      $ curl -v orchestrahq.com
      * About to connect() to orchestrahq.com port 80 (#0)
      *   Trying 22.214.171.124... connected
      > GET / HTTP/1.1
      > User-Agent: curl/7.22.0 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.22.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1 zlib/22.214.171.124 libidn/1.23 librtmp/2.3
      > Host: orchestrahq.com
      > Accept: */*
      >
      < HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
      < Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2016 14:09:23 GMT
      < Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
      < Transfer-Encoding: chunked
      < Connection: keep-alive
      < Set-Cookie: xxx
      < X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
      < Location: https://127.0.0.1:8008/
      < P3P: CP="ALL DSP COR PSAa PSDa OUR NOR ONL UNI COM NAV"
      < X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
      < Server: cloudflare-nginx
      < CF-RAY: 28f5d13940ba0719-SJC

<comment><USER8> Thanks very much. Hopefully, it's been fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm working on a windows app to pull tabular data straight from a PDF into excel. [http://www.3xfour.com](http://www.3xfour.com) Currently working on adding a web hosted version to pull the data as a csv, but have way to go. Would welcome any feedback Thanks

<comment><USER8> Amazing. It's definitely one of my dreams as a financial analyst to be able to do that. Would be happy to provide any feedback.

<comment><USER21> Thanks that would be great, please send any of your thoughts to firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just launched a first version of FOIA Mapper, a tool for searching offline government records.

[https://foiamapper.com](https://foiamapper.com)

FOIA is a niche topic, which is not a bad thing for a side project - <USER2> eyeballs, more opportunity to really make an impact.

</comment><comment><USER23> A BDD testing framework for Go. I didn't really like any of the existing packages and am really just doing this as an exercise for learning Go. [https://github.com/claassen/gotest](https://github.com/claassen/gotest)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm trying to build a threat intel platform to gather data on threats delivered via spam.

</comment><comment><USER25> working on a wordpress plugin to create presentations/slides using revealjs. Work in progress. I work a lot with wordpress lately and surprised that there are no good presentation plugins available yet. I like revealjs so decided to use it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm working on a consumer social messaging app in the UK based on sharing just one thing a day...... need to find quality dev support to join the movement.</comment>


Show HN: Dominus - <AUTHOR>

Dominus is a multiplayer browser strategy game. The first test game just went up. Please help test it out.
http://dominusgame.net/
The basic idea is everyone has a castle. If you attack someone's castle and win then they become your vassal and send you 25% of their income. This includes income from their vassals. If everyone in the game is your vassal or a vassal of your vassal then you are winning the game.
Made with Meteor. <comment><USER2> Non-url posts are penalized, so you'd be better off submitting this with a url. You can always add the text description as a comment on the new thread. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, thanks for the tip.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Bestlaw - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestlaw.io/

<comment><USER2> "Copy a perfect Bluebook citation with one click"

Says a lot about the state of legal tech that a feature as simple as this actually got me excited. Much needed.</comment>


Show HN: Please review my Aviation Weather App landing page - <AUTHOR> http://takeoffaviationweather.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We have been working for over a year on this app, which takes data from multiple official sources, and synthesizes it using an aviation concept of 'personal minimums'. We worked hard to polish the app in a niche which otherwise contains some pretty ugly apps.

I would love some honest feedback on our landing page and how we could improve it to drive more conversions.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> >Personalized, color-coded weather reports and warnings based on your personal minimums.

Sounds weird to me, not sure why. you might want to consider alternate wording.</comment>


Spaced Repetition - <AUTHOR> https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition <comment><USER2> I had considered using spaced repetition software for a while after a long time of being frustrated with my poor memory. I finally started using Anki last September after reading _Augmenting Long-term Memory_ [1].

I started off with just putting in a new vocabulary word every day and have been gradually ramping up the amount of info that I put into it. Now, I will add anything from programming details (e.g. how do you get the number of characters in a Rust string?) to key facts from the books I read (e.g. in _The English Patient_ , who does the patient have an affair with?). My review sessions only take 5-10 minutes a day, and my only regret is not starting this habit earlier (especially in school). It's incredibly gratifying to review something, know the answer, and be very aware that without Anki, I would have forgotten it a long time ago.

[1]: [http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html](http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html)

<comment><USER3> Do you use multiple decks? I found myself creating several, and then finding it hard to follow up on many of them. It's a pity though, because some of the cards in them were interesting, but the whole deck wasn't. Maybe I should have a "misc" one.

<comment><USER2> I don't. Everything goes into a single deck so that my review sessions interleave[1] topics.

But if you have cards that you don't find interesting or useful anymore, maybe it'd be better to just delete them.

[1]: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the- interleaving-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-interleaving- effect-mixing-it-up-boosts-learning/)

<comment><USER4> Doesn't that mean you have to manually put the subject into each card?

E.g. I am currently using Anki to learn more keyboard shortcuts for Bash, Tmux, and vim, and the deck tells me which program the card is talking about. I already have to put context for vim visual mode keys in those cards.

Edit: Ah, just saw your other comment about doing something like it with tags.

<comment><USER2> I still manually add context to each card. I want each card to be self- sufficient, even without any tag data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been doing the "30 hour method" as described here: [https://azeria- labs.com/the-importance-of-deep-work-the-30-h...](https://azeria-labs.com/the- importance-of-deep-work-the-30-hour-method-for-learning-a-new-skill/)

It's sort of like the Pomodoro technique, except with 30-hour chunks instead of 30-minute chunks. (Obviously they serve different purposes.)

After studying a topic, while it is still fresh in my mind, I will make a few entries into my spaced repetition system (org-mode) and then I only review the entries between each of the 30-hour blocks. This means I'm only reviewing entries maybe twice a month at most. Yet, the spaced repetition still works well, and surprisingly, it doesn't take long before I'll only have one or two entries to review during my rare study sessions.

My point being, even if you study your spaced repetition entries only once a month, it will still work.

It also helps me not become too obsessed with creating cards for every little thing. I study a topic for a few weeks, and only at the end do I even think about spaced repetition and making cards. I review what I've learned (I do take notes sometimes) and make only a few cards for the most important topics. Ultimately I'm only thinking about or interacting with spaced repetition systems one or two days a month. Again, they still work even when used so rarely.

<comment><USER6> +1 for using org-mode and org-drill.

Also means that you can export it all to a well structured PDF and use on any device that can read PDFs.

Downside is one cannot do drills unless at the PC.

<comment><USER7> ... another downside is that I don't know how to include audio (useful to learn to pronounce a foreign word).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone's studying Japanese, I made two iOS apps for spaced repetition systems specializing in the unique needs of learning Japanese.

The first is a flashcard application called Manabi. It uses a similar algorithm as Anki with a priority on UX.

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

The other is Manabi Reader, which complements the flashcard app. It curates feeds of interesting short-form content, has one-tap dictionary lookups, optional furigana injection and JLPT level tagging, and it lets you create flashcards from the words you're learning as you read.

[https://reader.manabi.io](https://reader.manabi.io)

Glad to hear any feedback. I'm currently working on word tracking functionality for Manabi Reader, to track your reading progress and let you see which and how many words in an article you should know already vs. words new to you.

<comment><USER9> This looks really cool. Do you have plans for an android version? I wouldn't mind paying for this.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, no, they're completely native apps so I would have to rewrite from scratch on Android. Would rather focus my time on improving these. Cheers.

<comment><USER9> That's too bad :(. Although, I admire your attitude of focusing on improving the iOS apps rather than branching out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I mentioned it before, but [https://ncase.me/remember/](https://ncase.me/remember/) is a verily accessible read on the subject of spaced repetition.

<comment><USER11> I have often tried finding the actual research articles that describe the increasing half-life at the "nearly forgetting" point.

Does anyone know where I can find the equations that model this qualitatively? (of course there's no expectation that it will list actual quantitative coefficients for my brain)

<comment><USER12> Scroll to the bottom of the SuperMemo homepage ([https://www.supermemo.com/en](https://www.supermemo.com/en)) and look at the list of articles. Some of them are rather informal, others are more academic, although I'm unsure if they were peer reviewed and published or not.

<comment><USER11> thanks for roughly pointing me in the right direction, but at [http://super- memory.com/help/fi.htm](http://super-memory.com/help/fi.htm) it states:

>It is difficult to determine exactly what forgetting index brings the highest acquisition rate. Simulation experiments have consistently pointed to the value of 25-30%. You can even plot speed-vs.-forgetting graph using your own actual learning material in SuperMemo 98 or later using Tools : Statistics : Simulation. You will probably also arrive at similar results

How can simulation provide us with actual real world data?

How do we know that the forgetting index _sweet spot_ is independent of the number or even history of recall attempts? If I write R to denote _remembered_ and F as _forgotten_ , then I can imagine RRF, RFR, FRR (variable ordering of failures for a constant recall rate), and RRF, RFF, FFF (variable retention rate for different factoids), and R, RR, RRR (number of recall attempts) to influence the _sweet spot_ level.

Does Anki support plotting plotting such a user's graph? If it does I might consider rewriting the code such that it can generate multiple plots (to find sweet spot at N-th recall attempt, N-th recall attempt with M succesful out of N-1 previous recall attempts, ...)

in the above "simulation experiments" links to [http://super- memory.com/articles/theory.htm#maximum%20speed](http://super- memory.com/articles/theory.htm#maximum%20speed)

which doesn't describe any simulation, but just shows a plot, presumably generated by supermemo statistics for an individual?

If someone has a large homogenous set of Anki cards, I'd like to experiment myself. Perhaps vocabulary of a foreign language? If I'm going to use a vocabulary dataset, I'd need a dataset where the responses are sense disambiguated though (i.e. the sense in parentheses), otherwise I am cramming wrong associations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If anyone's interested, I've compiled a lot of strategies and tips around spaced repetition and Anki that I've learned over five years and ~11k cards.

[https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-strategies- tips-a...](https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-strategies-tips-and- tricks-for-spaced-repetition-anki)

<comment><USER14> Neat! I have a similar page I put up at 10k cards. We should be friends

[http://rs.io/anki-tips/](http://rs.io/anki-tips/)

<comment><USER13> YOU'RE ALIVE! I spent a few hours two years ago wondering what had happened to you (your blog and twitter went quiet). I had presumed the worst.

Thought rs.io is/was really well done, great curated stuff. Added a reference link to your pages.

Hit me up at firstname.lastname@example.com anytime! I sheepishly already follow you on Twitter lol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find it very exciting that spaced repetition is find some interest here recently.

There recently was another discussion related to spaced repetition[0], and at the time I dismissed it. I mostly thought "huh, bad memory never really held me back in software engineering, so I don't really care", and that with the fact that my factual memory is probably the worst it has ever been.

Fast forward a month. My biochemistry university studies have started, and I'm absolutely in love with spaced repetition. It's been one of the best learning experiences of my life. I don't think I've ever acquired that much (factual) knowledge about a new field in such a short timeframe, though there a probably other factors at play too, like motivation.

I write Anki cards on my computer and sync them to my smartphones, and then do them on my commute and before I go to sleep. Every time I go through some of my course material and encounter something where I'm not sure what it means, I note the word (with context) down in my notebook and then later sit down to write a Anki card for it.

The first exams for the semester are still to come, but largely thanks to spaced repetition, I feel very confident about them. Really looking forward to applying it in other parts of my life in the future!

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19529236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19529236)

</comment><comment><USER16> A very useful and quick reference to be productive at Anki itself is Anki Essentials and after working through that, I find my useful using Anki the right way. Though I don't think having multiple decks is a good idea and have found using single deck to be much more mimicking how consolidation of what you have learnt happens in real life, randomly across different subjects.

Does anyone here have tips to memorize the standard library of the programming language you use say Python using Anki? While yes there is the quick look up to the lib using a standard dev environment, what I am pointing to is having to lookup for details for the library function assuming that you know the function is the right choice because you have added it your long term memory. If this is useful for nothing, it will be useful at least for the algorithmic interviews which should be aptly named harakiri :-) [2]

[1] [https://alexvermeer.com/anki-essentials/](https://alexvermeer.com/anki- essentials/) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku)

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been using spaced repetition to do algorithm puzzles. I find them really fun, and I'll be looking for a job in a little less than a year. So, I thought I'd get a jumpstart on preparing.

I don't use them to memorize the answers, but more as a cue to do the problem. I add 1-5 new cards a day. The cards aren't facts, but actual problems. It's been really effective so far. I can pretty easily recognize what the pieces I need to apply on novel problems much more quickly.

<comment><USER18> Can you share an example card? I can't picture what you're doing.

<comment><USER19> Other examples of cards that I made and found useful during my job-hunting process: [https://cards.c13u.com/browse[0]](https://cards.c13u.com/browse\[0\])

[0] Disclaimer, I made cards.c13u.com for a class project

<comment><USER20> You copied the link incorrectly, it throws a 404. [https://cards.c13u.com/browse](https://cards.c13u.com/browse) works instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I use Anki, but I have the problem that I tend to associate the specific form of the question, a particular latex formula etc. with the answer. As soon as I look at the question or read the first couple of words, the answer already pops up, so I'm afraid that I don't actually learn to remember the concepts but rather question/answer pairs. Does anybody have some recommendations for dealing with this problem?

<comment><USER22> Good recommendations so far, but personally I find one method to be the most effective : multiple question versions in conjunction with randomization

Say you have decided to brush up on your first grade math, and you make a card for multiplication. Instead of just making one "2 _2 = 4 " card, you make one card containing three potential questions, so you add "5 _ 4 = 20" and "3 * 3 = 9" to the _same_ card. Each time this card is scheduled to appear, Anki will randomly choose one of the questions to display.

This way you prevent your memory from overfitting to the irrelevant context and force it to remember the actual concept, because you have to use your knowledge of how multiplication works every time. You have to pick a large enough selection of possible questions for that to work, for me three is usually enough. Additional bonus : anki reviews get less tedious, because you don't feel like always seeing the same old stuff.

Here's a template for creating such cards: [https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/947272864](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/947272864)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Oh! cool! As someone who's bad with remembering names (but who feels that using names is REALLY important to making people feel welcome) I use spaced repetition to better match names to faces as a Meetup co-organizer.

I basically wrote a CLI tool to auto-generate an Anki deck from a Meetup.com event URL, using the publicized names and profile pictures :) [https://github.com/CivicTechTO/anki-meetup- memorizer](https://github.com/CivicTechTO/anki-meetup-memorizer)

We have a script that runs weekly via CircleCI, before the event, and drops the file into a GDrive folder for me to easily load up on the way to the Meetup: [https://github.com/CivicTechTO/civictechto- scripts/blob/b1cb...](https://github.com/CivicTechTO/civictechto- scripts/blob/b1cbfe4110a36c553e705fca482b44e5f5b1354e/.circleci/config.yml#L236-L259)

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's an obscure video[1] of Jeremy Howard (Fast.ai) talking about how he used spaced repetition to learn Chinese and which helped him to better other students learning Chinese in a university in China!

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwH7bJibmdM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwH7bJibmdM)

</comment><comment><USER25> I love the layout of this website and how well it uses the horizontal space.

I wish more websites would create templates like that.

<comment><USER26> Not so much to complain, but a thing I noticed while scrolling fast is that the screen is black for a split second, and then text appears. I wonder why that is?

<comment><USER27> Probably because he's using google fonts.

<comment><USER28> It doesn't use Google Fonts, and even if it did, I don't see why that would cause screen rendering issues on scroll (as opposed to rendering delays on initial page load).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've had very good results using memrise's spaced-repetition tool to learn Korean vocab. I find it's a good way to get words into this unindexed "staging area" in my brain. And then when I need them during a real life situation, they sort of pop into my consciousness out of nowhere.

I also built a tool to build spaced repetition flash cards from the captions in YouTube videos. This uses the SuperMemo-2 algorithm, the same algorithm as Anki. This has helped me a lot with my listening comprehension.

[https://www.captionpop.com/flash- cards/splash](https://www.captionpop.com/flash-cards/splash)

</comment><comment><USER30> A great book that covers this topic is _Human Memory_ by Gabriel Radvansky. A used copy of the second edition goes for around $15.

</comment><comment><USER31> Been using space repetition since 2013. It's unbelievably useful. Wrote about it in my blog with examples: [https://www.blinkingcaret.com/2016/05/04/hack- your-brain-lea...](https://www.blinkingcaret.com/2016/05/04/hack-your-brain- learn-faster-better/)

</comment><comment><USER32> What kind of things should everyone memorize using spaced repetition?

Most people seem to use it to learn languages and technical subjects. I'm looking for things that most people would find useful in their daily lives:

\- Social security number

\- Credit card number

\- Passport number

\- Multiplication tables

\- Unit conversion tables

\- Emergency phone numbers

\- Recovery codes and passwords

\- Basic recipes and cocktails

\- First aid techniques

\- Survival techniques

\- Phonetic alphabet

\- NATO phonetic alphabet

\- Basic words in foreign languages

</comment><comment><USER33> This is a great essay. An exciting practical use case is seen in Duolingo. They use a regression model to learn the half-life of individual words for users.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvgGSg- VWAE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvgGSg-VWAE)

</comment><comment><USER34> It is nice that this is reposted so often here. It is quite apposite to the nature of the phenomenon.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have created a flashcards app for Android that tries to use sort of a spaced repetition system, just if anyone is interested in trying: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flashcards.wor...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flashcards.words.words)

</comment><comment><USER36> If you are using Evernote, I've built this little tool that adds spaced repetition and flash cards capabilities to your notes & highlights. [https://neuracache.com/](https://neuracache.com/)

</comment><comment><USER37> So, Vulcan teaching technique works?</comment>


A HTML/CSS/JS editor that fits in a tweet (140 chars) - <AUTHOR> http://xem.github.io/miniCodeEditor/tweet.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the final iteration of the code golfing game started last thursday, aiming to create a Codepen/JSfiddle/JSbin clone in less than 256 bytes:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6860642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6860642)

This one fits in a single tweet!</comment>


Living Room of the Future (From 1979) - <AUTHOR> http://bp1.blogger.com/_sGYULzoQCgA/RsKFY_kKluI/AAAAAAAAA_w/mx8-xn8n7oA/s1600-h/1979+Living+Room+of+the+Future+paleo-future.jpg

<comment><USER2> Aside from the robot to bring me beer, this is one of the best prediction-sets I've seen. I shop online at Peapod for groceries, and I'm scanning some docs to email to my accountant, so the "mail-slot" is about right too. Although, looks like they're predicting this for 1989, so they were a little optimistic. The funny thing is that this seemed wild and futuristic then, and now it's just mundane.

I try and maintain my sense of wonder...

<comment><USER3> Weren't faxes around in 1989? That's what the mailslot really is.

<comment><USER2> It mentions the mailslot displaying things on a "screen."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48816>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anything related to technology is surprisingly accurate.

Anything realted to style or culture is hilarious (check out his outfit & the drink robot).

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Why is every future always depicted with us suddenly losing all fashion sense and running around in unitards with dorky boots? Its a problem that's plagued sci-fi and futurology since at least the 20's as far as I can tell.

My vision of the future is that we've enabled such accurate control of our environments and such precise manipulation of our genes that we are all naked, all of the time, and its OK.

<comment><USER6> "Agreed. Why is every future always depicted with us suddenly losing all fashion sense and running around in unitards with dorky boots?"

Is it that far off from everyone hanging out in jogging outfits or other "athletic" apparel, and overpriced sneakers, whether or not engaged in any actual athletic activity?

<comment><USER7> I figure about as far off as Bermuda shorts are from Speedos.

And dang it, where's my flying car?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are they wireless headphones I see as well? Genius.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1989</comment>


What Math Looks Like in the Mind - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/just-how-visual-is-mathematical-thinking/500621/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> great article</comment>


Show HN: DB-SQL – an easy to use, webbased query tool for PSQL and MySQL DBs - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/lebalz/db-sql <comment><USER2> I used a similar tool called Sqlectron in the past, which would hang for queries returning more than about 500 rows. This tool seems to be much better at that. I don't really feel comfortable providing my database credentials though. I will probably host it myself for any serious work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm coming from Sqlectron too - i used it for my database classes with my students. The main reason i created db-sql was that schools and universities block almost all ports, so my database could not be reached. This is solved by db-sql. And yeah, the results are displayed on demand :)

Good news about security - your db credentials are stored encrypted and they can only be decrypted when you provide the encryption key, which is available client-side only (it is created on login).

Suggestions to further improve security are warmly welcome. A good starting point to get in touch with the code would be [https://github.com/lebalz/db- sql/blob/master/app/models/db_s...](https://github.com/lebalz/db- sql/blob/master/app/models/db_server.rb#L90)</comment></comment>


Study finds that basically every single person hates performance reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2014/01/27/study-finds-that-basically-every-single-person-hates-performance-reviews/ <comment><USER2> If it hurts, bring it forwards. We need feedback, so why not do it more often? That way it will hurt less.</comment>


Congress Cuts Debit Fees In Rare Loss for Largest U.S. Banks - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/business/15credit.html <comment><USER2> For all the complaining that "small businesses" do about bank fees, I wonder how many stop to think about how much extra volume those cards generate (albeit at a smaller profit).

I'm old enough to remember the days when people had to carry cash or a checkbook to pay for their retail purchases. I cannot see any way that impulse purchases are not way up in the age of debit/credit card payments compared to then. And online businesses certainly wouldn't be where it is today without the existence of debit/credit transactions.

I'm not speaking from firsthand knowledge, but I think that for the lower barrier to impulse buying, the reduced need to handle cash or worry about bounced checks, that it might well be worth fees that "averaged 1.63 percent of the transaction amount"

<comment><USER3> obviously it's worth it to the merchant, or the businesses wouldn't be accepting credit cards at all.

The problem is that there are two payment processors that matter, visa and master card, and both charge quite a lot more than it costs to provide the service.

Now, normally, this would just mean another competitor would come in with lower prices. The problem here is first that the person who pays for the service (the merchant) is not the person who decides what processing network to use (that's the consumer, deciding which brand charge card to get. ) This is further distorted because the fees that the payment processors charge are partly given back to the issuing banks who then give some of that back to the consumer.

so... as a merchant, either you pay exorbitant fees to a credit card processor, and essentially give a discount to every one of your credit card customers (but not your cash customers; the visa agreement states you can't discount your product for not using visa) or you turn away the charge card sales. That's what this law is trying to address.

<comment><USER4> AFAIK, the Visa agreement says that you can't charge more for using Visa. "3% discount for cash" is very common still, common enough that Visa would be able to find out about it and stop it if their agreement permitted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note that consumer card rewards programS are paid by the merchant. Lowering the fees is unambiguously a good thing. I wish regulations were such that caps needn't be mandated, but barriers to innovative entrants are just so high.

I wish congress would regulate some minimum standards for merchant services. That space is a total clusterfuck.

Regulation should either be wise or gtfo. This layer on top of unwise regulations is unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love that added incentive on top towards small banks: this only applies to the biggest banks. It's a small, but clever, change.

</comment><comment><USER7> Dick Durbin speaks truth.</comment>


Inventor mocks up a crazy awesome ride: The Rings of Saturn - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=588VHx6BgVI

<comment><USER2> The people in the outer ring, near the axle, will experience almost no gees. Kind of useless, really.</comment>


Introducing the Humble Music Bundle - <AUTHOR> http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/28062087940/introducing-the-humble-music-bundle <comment><USER2> I think this won't catch on because it's not more convenient or a really great deal (compared to listening to youtube videos of songs)

<comment><USER3> The selection is also very strange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was primed to buy the bundle when I saw it was available, but I really don't like any of the options so it's probably the first bundle I won't snag.</comment>


CEO of NPR: News won't go paywall. Calls it a "mass delusion" in the industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/id/208703/

<comment><USER3> News may be a commodity, but quality isn't.

I'd pay $6.99/month to access all NYTimes content online, if not paying meant not being able to get beyond the first page of any story over 24hrs old.

That said, NPR might be the only brand able to compete for my attention online, if they really put muscle into web content and develop "print" talent to rival the likes of the Times.

<comment><USER4> Exactly, and there are a good 50-100 thousand of folks like you. Er, maybe total in the world. Now will that pay the infrastructure and salaries of the business like the Times? But that's probably true for only one newspaper, will you also pay $6.99 to the Seattle PI, Dallas News, Minnesota Star Tribune? Perhaps the news industry is at the moment of metamorphosis just before it becomes a beautiful online butterfly, it'll be incredible after the transition but it's very vulnerable in the pupa stage...

<comment><USER5> Your numbers are a bit off. New York Times circulation:

1,039,031 Daily

1,451,233 Sunday

<comment><USER6> Don't both of those cost much more than $6.99/mo?

<comment><USER7> A lot of the value of a newspaper is the physical manifestation of it. If you're in front of a computer there are many other sources that are free, whereas if you have a paper you can easily read it away from a machine, and people understand the costs involved in manufacturing/delivering it.

I think paywalls will exist for content that provides value or that one is assumed to read, but for general news it probably won't work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "News is a commodity; I'm sorry to say."

But quality, unique content is not...

There are many viable solutions that have yet to be tested & they might not resemble "paywalls."

Media outlets need to understand & appropriately segment their _customers_ i.e. people willing to pay for specific products/services.

Regarding who might pay and how much, if content providers can tease out WTP across their viewer base, they are much more likely to build a paid model that could work.

Finally, what's that ubiquitous phrase..."And from viewers like you"? Oh that's right, NPR is kinda free - it's just that without _paying viewers_ it would cease to exist. Strange how that works...

On a side note: The rest of the article about NPR.org was useful to see how a radio oriented news org is moving content online.

</comment><comment><USER9> NPR is also gov. and listener supported. Not the same model employed by other news outlets.

<comment><USER10> I didn't think it was government supported, so I checked - <USER2> <http://www.npr.org/about/privatesupport.html> :

"A very small percentage -- between one percent to two percent of NPR's annual budget -- comes from competitive grants sought by NPR from federally funded organizations, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts."

So I was wrong. That page also says that NPR's revenue mostly comes from membership dues and fees from stations, sponsorship and retail sales.</comment></comment>


Apple's 'The Morning Show' one of most expensive TV shows ever: report - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-morning-show-reportedly-one-of-most-expensive-tv-shows-2019-8 <comment><AUTHOR> This is not going to end well for Apple.</comment>


Child finds Xbox security flaw - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26879185

<comment><USER2> Some of the previous submissions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7530904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7530904)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7531140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7531140) : Many comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7533540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7533540)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7534131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7534131)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535123)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535185)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7536137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7536137)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7536166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7536166)</comment>


Business Models For the New Web (Really long but insightful) - <AUTHOR> http://raquo.org/openfiles/business-models-of-the-new-web.pdf

<comment><USER2> Nice, I went to the same (very small but kinda 1337) college as this guy and very surprised by such an un-boring topic for a thesis.</comment>


Uncensored social media network - <AUTHOR> what comes to your mind when you think of an uncensored social media network? what limits if there should be? <comment><USER2> No limits, otherwise what's the point?

All you need to do is give the members a way to control what they see, that's the most important aspect.

If you get someone uploading actually illegal stuff (cp etc) you just shadow ban them so only they can see their posts or people visiting the post directly can see it so they've no idea they're banned and report them to the authorities.

Disclosure: I run a network of extremely successful uncensored social networks. Never had problems with payment processors or anything like that, because unlike some other places _cough_ gab _cough_ we don't make waves or cause trouble.

</comment><comment><USER3> "what comes to your mind when you think of an uncensored social media network?"

\- irc comes to mind

</comment><comment><USER4> limit of 1 post per account per day.</comment>


White House calls Dvorak's report "a lie" - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/08/12/dvorak-raises-doubts-about-us-cio-vivek-kundra/ <comment><USER2> John C. Dvorak has been on my list of "journalists who not to take totally seriously" for a long time.

<comment><USER3> I just posted this on the other thread. It is in the University of Maryland system, it is not "University of Maryland". "University of Maryland University College" is not "University of Maryland".

<comment><USER4> And look_lookatme posted the following nugget as a reply to a post similar to yours. Quoting verbatim:

From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Of_Maryland>

"However, in 1997 the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation allowing the University of Maryland, College Park to be known simply as the University of Maryland, recognizing the campus' role as the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland."

No one of thinks "oh one of those Maryland universities with different faculties and different quality of education" when they hear University of Maryland. They think of College Park.

It may be splitting hairs, but we shouldn't even be having this conversation, as it should be clear on the bio page.

<comment><USER5> Again, your information from Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Maryland Annotated Code, Title 12 of the Education Article, 12-101(b)7 informs that the definition of the University of Maryland includes all the colleges and universities as the University System of Maryland. And, you are making assumptions that everyone knows that University of Maryland implies College Park. It doesn't. As well as the fact that the University of Maryland, University College is locating directly on the College Park Campus in College Park, Maryland. As well as the fact that the University of Maryland College Park campus includes courses that are similiar in content at UMUC. If you doubt that this is the case, I would suggest you ask UMD-College Park to present their 2001 - 2009 Graduate School course listings for their software engineering Master's degree and compare it with UMUC's software engineering degree. You will find similiar courses between the two. Yes, you are splitting hairs and doesn't help your argument at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is gonna get ugly quick.

By even responding to the report, instead of relying on its network of bloggers, the White House has just unleashed every mainstream political journalist in the country on this guy's history. Now everything will be examined, Creostar, the DC web sites, how a guy with no budget management experience is chosen to over see billions in government contracts. I hope, now that they have gone on record calling the report a lie, that none of it turns out to be true.

I'm reminded of the young lady, Mary Carol Turano, who was in charge of security at Boston's airport before 9-11. Although she was reassigned right away and the administration was able to hush a lot of that up by waving the flag and screaming patriotism. Or that 24 year old kid that was given the job of re-establishing Iraq's financial markets after the invasion. And cooly handed control of a US$13 billion budget. (Article by Matt Taibbi at <http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/War_Profiteers_Iraq.html>).

What is this guys budget?

You can bet that guys like Taibbi are going to be all over this.

</comment><comment><USER7> Jeez, you guys. Dvorak is just promoting his podcast, "No Agenda." If you've never listened to it, it's the most bizarre combination of kooky conspiracy theories from former MTV VJ Adam Curry, mostly of the "9-11 never actually happened" variety, and typical right-wing radio yammering about how Obama is selling the country down the tubes. I get the feeling neither of them really believes a thing they're saying (they refer to themselves as "crankpot" (Adam) and "buzzkill" (Dvorak)) but they have hit upon a formula that attracts a lot of listeners so they're running with it.

<comment><USER8> Dvorak is, and has always been, the Rush Limbaugh of tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm struggling to put together why we even need a "CIO of the United States". Shouldn't all of these things be managed by the relevant department's professional IT staff, not pointless bureaucrats? If they're trying to coordinate an IT strategy between the departments ... didn't they learn anything from DHS? Adding more layers doesn't make anything any simpler, just creates more neglect, more waste, worse policies, and slower response times.

If they were serious about streamlining IT, or anything else in government, they'd focus on paring down to a manageable size, not creating new bureaus and departments to oversee the old bureaus and departments.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why go through Om Malik on this? Why not contact Dvorak directly? Why not use that awesome, expensive whitehouse.gov to interact with us directly? Why say Dvorak is lying? Do you honestly thing he is fabricating things or really doesn't believe what he has written?

Ugh. So many failures of communication at so many levels with this shitshow.

<comment><USER11> Why satisfy/dignify Dvorak's need for attention with a direct response? What should they do when the next person makes a claim? And the next? And the next? Why don't they have a direct line with Lou Dobbs or Glenn Beck?

<comment><USER10> What's so difficult about having a PR person contact a blogger who is getting significant play on a story he wrote? Just contact him, clarify the situation. If he is reasonable, he or she will write an update and we move on.

I don't care about who Dvorak is, or his history, or "satisfy"-ing his need for attention. I'm looking at this from a broader perspective: is this administration as in touch with the minute by minute news cycle as they claim to be? Are they able to recognize a story as it grows from one blog post to thousands of retweets and facebook messages? Do they know how to handle that kind of brushfire exposure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> John C. Dvorak vs. the White House spin doctors. Sit back and watch the mud slingers and the muck rakers do battle, and just have fun, because it doesn't matter who wins.

<comment><USER13> Are you high?

<comment><USER12> No, actually, I'm quite serious. Dvorak is a hack. Has been a long time. But the White House retort is worth about the same. A big battle for what, exactly? Dvorak won't even put a scratch in Kundra's reputation. And the White House, for their part, will put whatever blah-blah spin on it they wish, just like they always do. It's PR management, and you are kidding yourself if you think it is anything else.

In other words: A whole lot of to-do about absolutely nothing, that doesn't matter in the slightest.</comment></comment></comment>


A "Leap Second" will be added to the atomic clock on June 30, 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://gma.yahoo.com/leap-second-why-june-1-second-longer-162054543--abc-news-topstories.html

<comment><USER2> The biggest issue last time around is that there was a bug in a number of Linux kernel versions that threw things for a loop - they'd spin the CPU 100% busy, or some other issue, and that's largely what caused the issues last time - the actual addition of a second wasn't a big deal, it was that the kernel didn't cope with it.

Some applications are a little picky about seeing timestamps in ascending order, and when the leap second actually occurs, you have a one-second period where a timestamp can be older than a previous one, because system clocks will show the 23:59:59 second twice. At the millisecond level, you can have a timestamp of 23:59:59.100 that actuall occurs after, say, 23:59:59.900 if it occurs in the leap second.

In general, the leap second in and of itself isn't a huge deal, it's more that systems don't cope with it well because it's a rare event and not well tested.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The articles touches on this second being added is a problem for systems not designed to handle it. They cite Amazon, Yelp, etc.

Why is this an obstacle for systems?

I get that it would mean that your system is one second off the atomic clock, but if you sync with a time server wont't this remedy itself if the time server was updated, if it fell behind?</comment>


SF's appalling street life repels residents – now it's driven away a convention - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/SF-s-appalling-street-life-repels-residents-13038748.php <comment><USER2> I'm sure it's driving out smaller meetings as well, which might not make big news but might add up to even bigger losses overall.

Some of my team went to a meeting in SF a few years back. They described "running the gauntlet" from the hotel to a Mexican restaurant in an area where the streets were full of homeless people. While none of them ran into direct trouble, they felt uncomfortable and unsafe, and were disgusted at the state of the place (human waste on the streets etc), "like a third-world country".

In subsequent years, when the company asked for volunteers to go, no one wanted to, and no one volunteered. A week long all-expenses-paid trip from the UK to SF is something which would previously have been considered a huge perk, but is now considered to be a dangerous punishment. I certainly had no desire to visit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Part of the problem, if not a large-ish part of the problem, is that apparently drugs and alcohol are usually restricted from homeless shelters.

And addiction is a large component of homelessness, but if you're still addicted you're obviously not going to spend much time in a place where you have to go cold turkey to enter.

So, my ( probably naive ) suggestion would be to allow drugs and alcohol in the shelters, hopefully giving the residents long enough of a chance to receive some help. No it's just a revolving door that doesn't appear to be helping anyone.

Universal basic income too. :-)

<comment><USER4> I think for people working at a shelter, that might be pretty annoying. To be honest, the fundamental problem is obvious: SF has too high rent. Until serious money and resources are devoted to solving that, you will have homelessness.

<comment><USER5> You think that people who are now homeless should be looking for legitimate residential opportunities in the most expensive city to live in in the world...by mechanism of lowering rent in said city?

<comment><USER4> What? It's like a conscious strategy on the part of homeless people? That would be cool.

No, I really just think that people should stop overthinking problems like this. You don't need to go around asking everybody's life story to work out that homelessness is tightly coupled with rent prices. Fix one, you fix the other. Or, if you think that's too expensive or onerous, own it. Accept that you're basically OK with other people being homeless. Everything else is just crocodile tears.

<comment><USER5> My first question is, which I think you missed, is why do they need to be given housing in the most expensive city in the world? There is a lot of space in this country.

My second question is, how exactly do you propose rent be lowered? Do you just think that rent is made up on the spot by evil rich white people, and we should have the government force them to charge less? The reason rent is so high in the first place is largely to do with government restrictions on new developments...Rent is also high here because there is a large concentration of high paying work in the area. Are these high earning people going to be allowed to benefit from your proposed arbitrary lowering of rent, so that we only disproportionately punish the wealthy landlords but not the wealthy tech workers? If not, how many tech workers would you like to displace to make room for homeless residents, and how do you determine which?

I feel foolish for not realizing how simple of a solution it was that you were proposing, but not all of us operate in the intellectual 4th dimension.

<comment><USER4> Look, don't believe me. Just look at the history of public housing. It's expensive. It works. People like to pretend there's a lot of complexity to issues like these because they couldn't really care less about homeless people, and they'd rather not spend the money to give them homes. Talking about complex social issues is a great way to come across as both clever and caring. Paying more taxes, however, is a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER6> Naive, but honest quesrion: why don't homeless move to where housing costs less? That's what I do if I can't afford something: I find an alternative.

It seems to me something else is going on that pulls homeless people into San Francisco. But I readily admit I don't understand it all very well.

<comment><USER4> I think generally speaking, lowering housing costs isn't to allow a homeless person to save up for a deposit and rent an apartment. It's to increase the likelyhood that the sibling they always got along with will have a spare room, or to increase the buffer between losing a job and being on the streets, or to make it so the old friend doesn't mind it that much that somebody is sleeping in their spare room, since they have a spare room.

On the individual level, I expect the reason why people stay is that being homeless makes you very dependent on local knowledge and social network. Knowing what bins contain food, where is good shelter, which police officers are dangerous, and so on - is very important. If you move city, you're not suddenly going to have the kind of money to pay a deposit. You'll just be homeless in a place you don't know. That, and a lot of homeless people have jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been to SF once for 3 days, and I have never seen so many frankly mentally ill people wandering the streets. This always seems to be downplayed as a factor in the homelessness problem. Difficult to be a part of any solution when you have untreated chronic schizophrenia.

</comment><comment><USER8> One person told me that area is so bad in particular because that's the area unemployment checks are obtained. So a lot of the poorest people without an address besides a shelter have to go there regularly, and they don't exactly have spare money to travel much. It might be better for them and the rich doctors who want to run their conventions if the city found a better site to disburse the checks.

The city built a transportation center, surely they can dedicate a government building to being a combination shelter and benefits center. Or place it near a place that handles the homeless better like people's park does in Berkeley where, yes there are campers, but they keep it pretty clean and respectful.

<comment><USER9> Why would the _city_ be disbursing unemployment checks?

<comment><USER10> Who else would?

<comment><USER11> It's usually a state department.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The open drug use, rampant homelessness, and shit on the sidewalks is really sad, and has been that way for at least 10 years.

Given the high gdp and high tax rate, why isn't SF better than it is?

I'm would really like to understand this. Is it politics, economics, cost of living?

<comment><USER13> Serious response: where do you propose someone go who's been high or drunk for 30 years?

<comment><USER14> Serious answer: to the countryside, away from the city and its lures, away from the dealers and with a bit of luck also away from the legal dealers of alcohol, even though that would be harder to achieve.

<comment><USER15> It seems to me it would be cheaper to give the committed substance abuser their drug of choice for free in a safe, separated and controlled setting, rather than maintain this magical thinking that one day they will turn things around on their own in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

<comment><USER14> Cheaper money-wise, maybe. Probably if and when the supply of those drugs has been taken out of criminal hands - something which is long overdue as the 'war on drugs' does nothing but guarantee high prices for criminals while it does next to nothing at all to limit the amount of drugs on the market. As to whether the 'move to the country' scenario works depends on the reason for the addiction. For some it probably will, others will either keep their addiction or change it for another one.

It will improve the quality of life for the addicts as well as the city climate, as to whether this is worth the extra costs compared to a state- supplied drug stash is up to society to decide.

<comment><USER15> I was thinking move them to the country AND supply them with their drug of choice, at least until hopefully someone discovers a miracle cure for addictive behaviour, which would be a better solution. Or why not relocate them to a closed environment with no abusable substances whatsoever?

Some people are incapable of looking after themselves, or fall into addiction after horrible experiences, and leaving these people to stew in their own juices rather than intervene is inhumane. We do after all section people that are a risk to themselves or others, so this is not without precedent.

<comment><USER16> Opposition to institutionalization (which any program of isolation will tend to be) is not particularly rooted in magical thinking.

A slim majority has recognized that consent and autonomy are important rights and chooses to deal with the consequences of maximizing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's hilarious to me that this _exact same newspaper_ ran an article less than a week ago showing that by all available measures, homelessness is improving and there are fewer people on the streets in San Francisco. ([https://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/2018-state- of-h...](https://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/2018-state-of- homelessness/))

Just like our current national hysteria around crime or immigration, the notion that homelessness is somehow getting worse, or that San Francisco is doing a bad job handling it, are flatly contradicted by the data. San Francisco is in fact doing a better job handling homelessness than most of its peer cities in the United States.

Readers of Hacker News should go to the data first. Matier & Ross have a long history of this kind of ugly sensationalism and it has no place here.

<comment><USER18> Things have gotten worse in the last decade, with homeless invading hotel lobbies and scaring people checking in.

Market St. is a war zone.

The city spends $300 - $400 million a year on the homeless industry, but virtually none trickles down to the actual homeless.

<comment><USER19> In 2017 SF had about 7500 Homeless people, if your numbers are correct (cannot find the source), then it means city spends per homeless person annually somewhere between $40K to $53K, which seems to be insane amount of money.

<comment><USER20> It is and its worse than you think. Here's a 2016 article [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends- recor...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends- record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Medical association feels uncomfortable around mentally ill people. So much for trying to "get rid of the stigma".

<comment><USER22> Multiple coworkers of mine have been assaulted in that area. And from the article:

> It didn't help that one board member had been assaulted near Moscone Center > last year.

It's not just a stigma. It's not safe.</comment></comment>


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