Umberto Eco and His Legacy in Open-World Games - <AUTHOR> https://killscreen.com/articles/umberto-eco-and-his-legacy-in-open-world-games/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised someone wrote an article about Umberto Eco and his influence on video games and neglected to mention Ultima Ratio Regum [0]. It's a roguelike under development that attempts to simulate an entire world with multiple civilizations and with some kind of conspiracy at play throughout the world's history.

[0] [http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/](http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/)

<comment><USER3> That's an interesting looking game, but I'm a bit confused by the reliance on the ASCII aesthetic. True, many people associate it with roguelike games, but when you are using ASCII generate portraits[1] of the fidelity they are, I can't help but feel a lot of time is being wasted on an aspect that matters little to the end result. It will either be fun or it won't, and ASCII is really just a highly constrained tile-set when used in this way.

1: [http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/files/2016/05/firstdr...](http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/files/2016/05/firstdraft.png)

<comment><USER4> It's not even ASCII. Blocks and "double pipes" fall out of the 127-character range easily.

I also agree that a lot of the benefits and crude aesthetics is lost on using extra codepages and fancy characters: I enjoy my NetHack on plain ASCII mode as it doesn't depend on any particular font for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of talk about Eco, not much on the article! For my money, it's off the mark. The 'freedom' in open world games is mostly an illusion, and we seem to be getting away from it, as the technological demands increase. Generally the only freedom is the order in which you undertake the pre-scripted missions. Years ago in Morrowind, you could kill quest giving NPCs and wreck the story, but in Fallout 4 all essential characters are weirdly immortal.

Your 'choices' are overblown. For example, in Far Cry 4 you have the option to kill a character or not (on the orders of another). In your report, you refer to them as having been "taken care of". You can't even change the dialogue. Your reward is a different epilogue movie. It's all more choose your own adventure than choose your own War and Peace. You can see the game designers dilemma - why expend massive effort on branching paths when any given player will only choose one? Far Cry 4 also had an amusing bug - you could also choose to destroy a temple or not. However the bug meant the game would show you the non-destroyed model when past a certain range, suddenly popping to the correct model as you approached. The mask literally slipping!

Even non-open world games stuggle to provide meaningful agency. The much acclaimed Walking Dead allowed many choices, from which all resulting divergences were soon neatly resolved funneling the player to exactly one ending.

Honorable mentions : Fallout New Vegas, which offered so many options it almost collapsed under its own weight, and until Until Dawn, an interactive horror movie in which every single character can live or die.

<comment><USER6> Your examples are all AAA titles, where the expectation is one of voice acting and highly polished animations, etc. It's pretty difficult branch plot lines when you carry such a high cost of production. Perhaps one day, computers will be able to improvise voice acting, plot lines and art. Until then, if we want any semblance of real openness, we have to stick to relatively low-cost of production / algorithmic / generated content, like Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, No Man's Sky, etc. These games are all limited in many ways, but at least use the player's imagination to fill in the gaps in creative ways.

<comment><USER5> For sure, but I would class those more as "sandbox" games, which the article specifically includes. But as always, indies are where the interesting experiments are!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > In his 1988 novel Foucault's Pendulum, Eco had three men feed an unwieldy > amount of esoteric trivia—involving Templars, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, > Illuminati, and a thousand other occult sects—into a computer that > synthesizes them at random to generate a master "Plan" explaining the course > of European history.

Either the author, or I, really misinterpreted this book. As I recall, it was Bembo's word processor that took a few dozen phrases—some of which were about occult sects, some of which were connectives "If this, then", and some of which were garbage "Mickey Mouse is Minnie's husband". And it didn't synthesize anything; it spat back a random selection of them, and the characters then attempted to synthesize the results. Which seems like a minor hair to split, but it really reflected one of the themes of the book, that humans keep trying to find patterns and order in the natural world, and will create it if it isn't there.

However, a similar remark is in the blurb on the back of the book, which has always annoyed me. So maybe it's me that's misremembering (or maybe the author of this article didn't really read much of Foucault's Pendulum.)

<comment><USER8> No, you're spot on. I just finished this book. The computer was used to generate nonsense, which they used as a creative prompt when they were at a dead end in the 'Plan'.

<comment><USER7> Oh, good. I liked it quite a lot, and hoped that the misunderstanding wasn't on my part! Thanks :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For the non-Italians: Umberto Eco is an extremely interesting figure for Italians.

Everybody admires his extremely deep knowledge of the Italian language and its nuisances, I would even dare to say "unrivaled" in our present day.

On the other hand, certain books he wrote are considered extremely complicated to grok, or too academic.

<comment><USER10> > Everybody admires his extremely deep knowledge of the Italian language and > its nuisances, I would even dare to say "unrivaled" in our present day.

I always found it strange that in the U.S., conversations about, say, Foucault's Pendulum, don't really touch on the fact that people are reading a translation and not the original work. The vast majority of the readers probably wouldn't even be able to tell you the name of the translator.

I always wonder how different the translation is from the original, and how different it would be from other possible translations. I remember looking at different translations of Lysistrata and feeling like they were almost completely different plays.

<comment><USER11> For better or worse, anything sufficiently subtle or complicated can't be translated 1-1 across languages. There are too many problems of context, meaning, etc. For a strange example - the Intuit have 50 words for snow. How much subtlety would be lost translating that into English? It just wouldn't work.

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/there...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/there-really-are-50-eskimo-words-for- snow/2013/01/14/e0e3f4e0-59a0-11e2-beee-6e38f5215402_story.html)

<comment><USER12> I guess if you live in SV you might not have direct experience with this, but English has a lot more than one word for "snow".

<comment><USER13> Really? Like what? I can think of things _like_ snow (sleet, flurries, blizzard, powder) but not any direct synonyms. We can't hold a candle to the Inuit.

<comment><USER14> Why would you have multiple words for the same thing, that don't carry different shades of meaning or uses? What do you imagine these 59 words are used for? Cute little nicknames?

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't say you should! I imagine the Inuit have a much more sophisticated understanding of snow than someone from Massachusetts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was looking at his Wikipedia page earlier just this morning and I didn't realize he passed away in February. Synchronicity.

</comment><comment><USER16> Truly a sad day when Eco passed. While all his work is well worth reading, his writing on lists should be of particular interest to people on this board. If you are looking for a good art book, a good coffee table book, or a good bathroom book, you could do a lot worse than History of Beauty, The Infinity of Lists, or On Ugliness.

<comment><USER16> P.S. On Ugliness might be the most metal book ever published.</comment></comment>


Drop-in replacement for Django admin (plugin support, Twitter bootstrap) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sshwsfc/django-xadmin

<comment><USER2> This is awesome...just tried to install it but needs Django 1.5 and django_crispy_forms>=1.2.3.

I am on Django 1.4 and it is kind of a pain to upgrade (lots of deprecation stuff I haven't dealt with yet).

Anyone up for a Django 1.4 to 1.5 upgrade party? haha

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks very cool, sadly someone's already changed the admin creds on the live demo...

As someone who's spent a few hours reskinning things and trying to change out some stuff in the admin panel, this is a breath of fresh air.</comment>


Google employees confess everything they hated most about working at Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.afr.com/technology/technology-companies/google/google-employees-confess-everything-they-hated-most-about-working-at-google-20161213-gtak7q <comment><USER2> Direct link to the quora thread which is the source: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-negatives-in-working- in-a...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-negatives-in-working-in-a-too- good-to-be-true-offices-like-Google?share=1&redirected_qid=1080239)

</comment><comment><USER3> To be honest, around 7-10 of these are either redundant or completely irrelevant. For example, look at #28 and #30. Why would anyone be complaining that mediocrity isn't accepted at Google? In fact, from a hiring perspective, that should be heralded as a great thing.

This article is clearly clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some of those are humblebrags but plenty are well known problems of being a googler. At thanksgiving our east-coast host was dumfounded that anybody might _not_ want to work at Google. I mentioned when they had given every person at the company a raise to keep them from leaving and he remembered that, and said he couldn't understand why they did it.

Those of us in the Valley really do forget what life is like outside (both what is great here and what is better elsewhere).

</comment><comment> io-io Sounds like Google needs an across the board 20% RIF. Then take the savings and provide the stockholders a nice dividend.

</comment><comment><USER5> Google was never attractive to me, it just seems like an real-live walled garden combined with an digital walled garden.</comment>


The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate (1992) - <AUTHOR> http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html

<comment><USER2> For a good book on the subject try "Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution"

[http://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Code-Linux-Source-Revolution- ebo...](http://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Code-Linux-Source-Revolution- ebook/dp/B005I57NZ2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1439389014&sr=8-2&keywords=rebel+code+book)</comment>


Opera 44: Meet The Very First Reborn Build - <AUTHOR> http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2017/02/opera-44-developer-with-reborn/ <comment><USER2> > a brand new refresh of our user interface

Before I opened the page, I hoped it was something else: rebirth of the features lost by switching to being a Chromium clone.

<comment><USER3> Sigh. Me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm wondering what their target audience is. There's not very many power-user features left over from Opera 12. And the Facebook Messenger feature seems like it's targeting casual users.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's now pretty confusing. Because there is/was an extensions sidebar. Which is still in there. Which is pretty much the same thing. You can turn both on and they seem to accept different kinds of extensions. Pretty confusing.

</comment><comment><USER6> OSX 10.9 or later only. But you have to download it to find that out (bah!)</comment>


Vi Hart explains network neutrality in the US - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAxMyTwmu_M

<comment><USER2> A cogent explanation of net neutrality which any internet user can probably understand.

Script at original site: [http://vihart.com/net-neutrality-in-the-us-now- what/](http://vihart.com/net-neutrality-in-the-us-now-what/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. I've always been impressed by these videos - they always seem to cut right to the important-to-understand part without sacrificing broad appeal/understanding. This video is no exception, and might be one of her best works yet.</comment>


CNBC interview with Carl Schramm (CEO Kauffman.org) on how start-ups create new jobs. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.drchrono.com/index.php/2009/03/11/dr-chrono-on-street-signs-with-erin-burnett-and-carl-schramm/

<comment><AUTHOR> I put the video links on our company blog so people without Windows could watch our cut of the clips. This was our first TV appearance for our start-up DrChrono.com and a great chance to talk about creating a start-up in this economy. I think this was the first optimistic segment on CNBC in a long time.</comment>


"Programmer Left Hungry" - <AUTHOR> http://thiscomiclife.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/programmer_left_hungry/ Another edition of This Comic Life <comment><USER2> i can totally relate.</comment>


The Canadian 'N' Word or How to Offend a White Canadian - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/05/22/how-to-offend-a-white-canadian/ <comment><AUTHOR> One of the reasons I posted this was that I previously thought this was rather well known.

I recently was in a discussion on FB with a well-known VC who used that word and was apparently totally unaware of its significance.

<comment><USER2> There _are_ truly offensive terms for people from Quebec and Atlantic Canada, particularly French speakers. Terms that are said and used with malintent.

This particular "Canadian N Word" is not one of them.

As a direct parallel, does anyone from the American North East in what is traditionally thought of as "New England" find the term "Yankee" offensive? That is essentially the same situation.

As a Canadian (who is now a Yankee) with descendants from Quebec and Labrador (an historic "Canadian N Word"), I am stunned that people would take any offense at all with either of these terms.

I'm not sure if this is an example of "any term being offensive" if used with malice or that some people will be offended by any "label" used by an outsider even if there is no ill will attached.

Seems to me that it is the latter and I find that slightly depressing.</comment></comment>


Clean Contracts – a guide on smart contract patterns and practices - <AUTHOR> https://www.wslyvh.com/clean-contracts/ <comment><AUTHOR> Smart contract development requires solid engineering practices, testing, and a security mindset. This guide covers patterns, practices, and principles to reduce the associated risks.</comment>


Trying to 'Save' the Rural Economy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/14/opinion/rural-america-trump-decline.html <comment><USER3> speaking as someone who works in a small town in the midwest as an auto mechanic, the people that shot themselves in the foot with this idea were the very ones who proposed it.

I got 5 months of free online Python classes from the local government. This was part of some larger state plan to 'revitalize' us as a 'web 2.0' something or other for the 'silicon valley' of the midwest. The whole thing read like snake oil but I learned some pretty good skills in python and a lot more about Linux than I knew before.

Our state has these lofty goals but couldnt attract more than a mega-truck- stop diner in the past 8 years. The reason for this is that unless you have a winning complexion (are white and male) you arent going to have a lot of fun here.

Want birth control? well thats a 2 week waiting period and a mandatory consultation. Did you run out? well you have to renew that script every month. Want it covered by your insurance? tough, legally, our state outlawed that. Need an abortion? book a flight, we require a trans-vaginal ultrasound and a waiting period.

Are you LGBTQ? enjoy our bathroom law. adoption providers can also legally discriminate against you for even asking to adopt. theres also no protections in the workplace, so enjoy being fired for "gay."

Are you a blue-collar minority? Unless you know exactly when and where to go to get a license, then voting is practically impossible. our bowling alleys and food courts/theaters also enforce a dress code thats loosely translated to "no blacks."

<comment><USER4> What state is this? How do they require minorities to have ID but not whites? Apologies if these questions are naive, I'm not particularly familiar with midwest politics.

<comment><USER5> > How do they require minorities to have ID but not whites?

By only asking minorities to prove they are carrying ID. "The law" is what gets enforced, not what it says on the books.

Edit to add: as people are getting all up in arms about rural areas, they should recall that this tactic was broadly applied by the New York City police department too.

<comment><USER6> > _" The law" is what gets enforced, not what it says on the books._

> _Edit to add: as people are getting all up in arms about rural areas, they > should recall that this tactic was broadly applied by the New York City > police department too._

"Organized Democracy" by Melanin 9: `youtube-dl -f mp4 'QPls-Gi_4Ig'` speaks to this very much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For what it's worth the submission title here ("Turning small towns into tech hubs isn't working") doesn't appear in the article.

The basic reasoning of the article:

 _...the high-tech industries powering the economy today don't have much need for the cheap labor that rural communities contributed to America's industrial past. They mostly need highly educated workers. They find those most easily in big cities, not in small towns.

In a report published in November, Mark Muro, William Galston and Clara Hendrickson of the Brookings Institution laid out a portfolio of ideas to rescue the substantial swathe of the country that they identify as "left behind." They identify critical shortages bedeviling declining communities: workers with digital skills, broadband connections, capital. And they have plans to address them: I.T. training and education initiatives, regulatory changes to boost lending to small businesses, incentives to invest in broadband.

...the authors concede that they may not be up to the task. "I don't know if these ideas are going to work," Mr. Galston acknowledged when I pressed him on the issue. "But it is worth making the effort."_

The article is essentially laying out the idea of encouraging the tech sector to develop in rural communities and says it might work, but notes that even proponents aren't certain. The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry, and that concentrates jobs in big cities.

<comment><USER8> In theory all you need to make it work is good internet connection. Especially if its remote.

If there was a serious offer from some company where for the same amount of rent in SF, I could have a mortgage on literal acres of land, thats attractive.

Less attractive is the crumbling infrastructure, opioid wildfires, actual wildfires, and aggressively conservative culture.

Gotta try something though, right?

<comment><USER9> People drastically understate the infrastructure and other issues you note in places outside of major urban centers of technology. My children do not have a net benefit from a huge home on a huge plot of land if the schools are garbage, there are few or no parks, the politics are very conservative, and diversity is lacking.

<comment><USER10> As someone coming from Poland, a country that's pretty much 100% white and Polish, I don't feel that the lack of "diversity" has negatively impacted my development. It seems to me that people in the US have been brainwashed (in schools, by media etc.) into believing that diversity is always good and lack of diversity is always bad, while in reality it's not that simple.

<comment><USER11> It's more the "reaction to diversity" that's the issue, in my opinion. Some areas unfortunately are not terribly friendly to non-white or non-Christian people. This sometimes is reflected in certain laws and may reflect in other cultural ways. This probably is not something any international-oriented company would look positively on, since international companies will have employees from a wide variety of cultures.

I remember when one of the consequences of Alabama's 2011 immigration laws was them ticketing or arresting two automobile executives. ([https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/02/alabama-car- bo...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/02/alabama-car-boss- immigration-law)) I thought at the time that was a (sarcasm) _great_ promotion to international corporations of the benefits of putting an office in Alabama.

As an atheist I certainly wouldn't move into any very religious area, which unfortunately is a fair bit of rural places. (For examples why, see: [http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/24/atheists-in-the- bib...](http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/24/atheists-in-the-bible-belt-a- survival-guide/))

<comment><USER10> That cnn article sure is interesting. Poland is supposedly one of more Christian countries in the world, but nothing even close to the stories from that article (losing job or customers after coming out as an atheist) ever happens here. I wonder how common such incidents are in the US.

<comment><USER12> I grew up in a rural part of Florida, and while I do remember atheism having a stigma about it in high school, it was more of a mild distaste people would share about it (mostly based on predispositions about it). That being said, religion is a Federally protected classification, so no one can fire someone over atheism and not risk a lawsuit in the U.S. Some of these articles are written by people who are as far removed from rural American life as they are from Poland...and I would take such articles with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I suspect this is a much bigger deal in the US, since we have rural power bias built into our political system. Thus, the rural voter has a much bigger "say" in how things run.

(Subsequently, if their life continues to get worse, well, I suspect more tendencies towards authoritarianism.)

This is where I sense the tension. At least in the US, the political system seems to want to maintain people in rural areas, but the economic system doesn't. And I'm not sure a politician running on a platform of "we're gonna get you out of dodge" is going to be very popular.

Advocating for moving people out of rural areas seems like political suicide. I can't find anyone pushing for this idea.

<comment><USER14> What was different about America that small towns thrived?

The economic system is short sighted, and doesn't always have to drive politics - this may be a recent phenomena.

<comment><USER13> When the US was founded, about 95% of the population was rural, and notably, Thomas Jefferson was famously pro-rural, and viewed cities as corrupt.

You can just search "thomas jefferson agrarian quotes" and get tons of pro-ag, anti-city statements from him, such as:

"Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds. As long, therefore, as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else." –Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1785.

<comment><USER14> We've become a nation of employees.

<comment><USER15> Microserfs

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Small towns cannot be tech hubs, because that's not even what a 'hub' is. It would be the end node, or an outlier constantly. I'm from a small town but we have one huge industry which employs around 80% of the local community. The rest of the folks are in construction, service industries, schools, etc. No amount of effort would turn that region into a tech or innovation hub without it also turning it into a city.

Instead of trying to shore up the weaknesses of rural communities how can they play to their strengths? A small community and lifestyle has lots of benefits over living in the city but you have to value both working in tech (remotely) _and_ what a small community has to offer.

<comment><USER17> The biggest problem for small and medium communities is brain drain. It's a vicious death spiral because the smart and ambitious kids basically have to move away to large cities to get quality jobs.

The only solution I can think of is incentivizing remote work so people don't have to be concentrated in cities. You might not even have to incentivize it because it's a tremendous advantage as a tech company to be able to recruit from any where in the country where lots of talented people don't want to move for family reasons or don't want to live in a city

<comment><USER18> The only incentivizing needed is to provide fiber to the home so everyone has ample connectivity to compete on a level playing field, and then businesses will figure out which mix of remote and in office employees works for them and allows them to best position themselves in the market.

<comment><USER19> Fiber to the home may be desirable but it's overrated. I've had tech co- workers who managed with satellite because that was their only option to live on a rural property they wanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I grew up in a small town in the Berkshires and recently went back there to see family. It is interesting to see the shift from where it was 100 years ago to where it was when I was a kid, to where it is today (and where it's heading).

100 years ago there was a ton of industry: paper mills, textile mills, marble and limestone quarries. These were supported by a train that ran through town to transports goods to and from Boston, and the town sprouted up organically around these industries.

One by one, they all faded away but when I was little the town still had much of the residual glory: a downtown full of shops, a mahogany-lined library and school, plus a big new mall 15 minutes away. Then as I grew up all the things started to go away. The two drive-in theaters, the entire downtown shopping area, the malls. All of it bottomed out when the Walmart came to town (familiar story...)

But now there is a bit of a revival around art, nature and tourism, which they have been pushing my entire life. The old train tracks are now a walking/bicycle path. The old textile mill is a modern art museum. The shell of its former existence gives the town a very unique character now. But there is a big disconnect between people who grew up there and the tourist mindset, and it's interesting to be able to see and understand both sides of it. The people that are moving there or want to visit there have a COMPLETELY different mindset than the people who do live there, even most the people trying to drum up the tourism.

Most small towns aren't going to revive via tourism, of course, but I think the bigger problem is every small town is trying to find some big "thing" to come save them. A new plant, a new business hub of some sort. Instead they should be focusing on their strengths, such as they exist: cheap housing, open spaces, access to nature, no commuting traffic. Cut out red tape and let people redefine these town husks like hermit crabs changing shells. I think the best approach is to focus on local community elements that are attractive to people who can work remotely. It's got to be success by a thousand cuts, because most of these communities have no chance at a real influx of business.

<comment><USER21> My small city of approximately 60k is doing just what you describe to bring in people from all over not only for tourism but to live. Relatively cheap housing, easy and relatively quick access to millions of acres of nature, cute downtown, low commute times, etc... There are tech incubators and work spaces here with younger more progressive groups working together in ways this city has never seen. We have growth rate percentages on par with major cities and the area will become more appealing as the larger cities continue to make housing unaffordable and traffic gridlocked. I appreciate what they're doing and know that this change was inevitable. While I hate what it is now I know there are people moving here who love it and I want them to love it as much as I used to.

I have found a new place where the topography essentially places a hard limit on growth and provides me with immediate access to all the things I love to do outdoors. While this makes me part of the problem I know what I want my town/city to be.

So my point is I agree that there is no one solution but rather a holistic approach of building up your best features to appeal to many is the only way for these towns to prosper in the future.

<comment><USER22> What different people regard as big and small is always amusing to me.

The town I grew up in was ~3k people, and was the biggest in the county. The biggest city in the area was 30k. You had to drive at least an hour and a half to find anything bigger.

The place I live now has a population ~60k, and seems quite big to me. But to a lot of people that is still just a little spot in the middle of nowhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd love the idea of living in a quiet, small community, were it not for a number of practicalities:

Schools -- We're trying to provide the highest possible quality education for our daughter, which means living in the best public school district we can find or within range of the best private school we can afford. And while I'm sure there are exceptions, this means living in a city.

Jobs -- Even though in theory I could work remotely, my wife (a lawyer) couldn't. Wherever we live has to be able to provide employment opportunities for two disparate professions.

Arts/Culture/Etc... -- I take my daughter to the Thinkery (a neat kid's museum here in Austin) monthly. She takes ballet and swim lessons, perhaps music lessons soon. It's important for our family to be in proximity to a vibrant art/music scene.

None of this is meant to denigrate small towns or rural areas, and perhaps there are some areas that provide the above (I'd be curious to hear about them if there were, actually...) I merely mention this to indicate how difficult the project is.

<comment><USER24> >None of this is meant to denigrate small towns or rural areas, and perhaps there are some areas that provide the above (I'd be curious to hear about them if there were, actually...)

Many rural areas in Vermont (particularly in the Northeast Kingdom) will give you a school voucher to use at any school you want (public or private) because there isn't a local public. As a consequence, there are some really good private schools up there. The public schools are good too. It has actually created somewhat of a culture of upper class people moving there.

<comment><USER25> > It has actually created somewhat of a culture of upper class people moving > there.

Depends on the Vermonters you ask. I take it you weren't canvassing a trailer park.

A lot of people will give you some wise ass answer that people from MA and NY made their money in NYC or Boston and once they had a family to raise or when they were ready to retire they realized had to move to a state that hadn't been turned to crap by the people in NYC or Boston.

Considering the political difference between NY/MA and (a good chunk of) people in rural areas of VT (or any other state in northern New England) you can see why they might say something like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I recently applied to be part of Tulsa, Oklahoma's program offering $10k for tech people to move there. I'm a high income tech person and I love to teach and mentor others (it's literally my business). I never received a response. Not even a, "hey we can't offer you $10k, but here are some other reasons you may still want to move here...".

I can live anywhere in the country. I'm not tied to Houston, TX where I live I just haven't been motivated to move since I travel to fun places so much anyway.

I flat out do not understand the strategies of these cities who are trying to become tech hubs. I also don't understand the "economic development" consultants that advise them. You want remote workers? That's a strategy, but you have to work at it. You want tech companies to move there? You have to work hard at it. The best kept secret about business in Texas is how our previous Governor got on a plane with pitch deck in hand and worked hard to lure businesses to Texas. This even included ad campaigns in other states.

The mentality of most city councils, economic development committees, and governors seems to treat "building a tech sector" as some kind of magic requiring a secret incantation.

It's sales, beat the bricks.

<comment><USER27> > I flat out do not understand the strategies of these cities who are trying > to become tech hubs.

The known-good approach, of spending decades building educational, financial, cultural, and business conditions that enable tech hubs is difficult and slow and expensive. Cities are looking for ways to shortcut this that are palatable to voters who often don't really see a need to change things.

I think you've hit on it: a lot of people and places see tech businesses as something not significantly different from a car plant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Maybe we shouldn't be trying to keep these small town alive. Maybe we should focus on shutting them down in an orderly fashion and help the residents move to more dynamic areas, probably in large part by helping them acquire skills that are actually in demand there.

<comment><USER29> I am a data scientist and work remotely, living in a small town on 3.6 acres. Moving to a city would be terrible, living within a 40 minute drive is plenty close enough.

Why do you feel the need to shut down entire communities?

<comment><USER30> I don't think it's fair to say this person is shutting down entire communities. Isn't the market doing that? The reality of the article is not every town has a flourishing future in the economy. Although the way it is phrased suggests, they are going to pick you up and walk you out of town even if you disagree.

Do we subsidize their lives as some have suggested with UBI? Do we try to revitalize industries that failed? As someone who lives in a small town, what do you think would help those towns and their residents?

<comment><USER29> In all honesty, the biggest issue particularly in the south (Hawaii as well) is that most people are content with their lives. They aren't trying to move up the corporate ladder, learn the latest tech etc... They are happy with their jobs, culture, families, and traditions. This mindset clashes with the rest of America, particularly the West coast, were having a family, culture, and traditions are seen as negative to society.

We are trying to solve regional issues from a national perspective. Local government and issues needs to become more important. Locals need to solve local issue. People in Portland, OR aren't going to to solve issues in Mandeville, LA.

<comment><USER30> Yes, that's likely the best way to solve it by tackling it locally. I grew up in a rural town in Georgia, and I am all too familiar with the "southern gentleman's pride" which is just a polite way to say my family is stubborn to a fault. I know we will need tradesmen for the foreseeable future so I always try to take that approach instead of the almost cliche "go into tech!" advice. Let's say we could change the narrative, so folks don't depend on the federal level to solve their woes. Would rural America want to change or accept the assistance?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think if (and that's a big if) our tech sector begins to wholly embrace remote work, even that would probably not be enough. Most likely, most highly educated tech workers who don't like the city would still prefer typical postwar American suburbs where they can occasionally drive into the city for pleasure and still have access to a first rate health care system, education system, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER32> Personally I feel that one way to help small towns is more companies embracing remote work and the benefits that remote work provides. Additionally companies or municipalities must continue to build out high speed infrastructure to support those workers and empower the residents of those areas to have the opportunity to be highly connected.

For many companies, embracing remote work when possible is to their benefit. No longer do they have the small hiring pool of a handful of office locations, but they now have the entire country at their fingertips at very little effort.

My personal experience is that I work remotely outside of a small rural town, and I know two others in my area who do the same, so it seems like this trend may already be happening. The nice thing about this is that there is no hub required! If the job doesn't need an office, why have one?

</comment><comment><USER33> It seems to be working for the small town I grew up in. However, it gained its tech industry rather organically with a tech business in town hitting the tech lottery. It comes as no surprise that you cannot force an industry to flourish in small towns, or even big cities for that matter.

<comment><USER34> So your small town has now several small tech companies? Or one that grew and employs now a considerable percentage of the workforce?

<comment><USER33> Both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ultimately, if you're going to do it, do it the way TI did.

Texas Instruments set up their headquarters next to Richardson, TX. When they realized there weren't enough engineers in the area, the TI founders started their own university so they could farm engineers to grow TI.

Ultimately, once the university got big enough, they turned it over to the state, and now the University of Texas at Dallas is the largest engineering- centric university in the southwest, and its existence is probably responsible for the Silicon Prairie and the Telecom Corridor being a thing.

</comment><comment><USER36> This looks somewhat familiar with the centralization vs decentralization debate in tech. It seems the network effects benefits don't apply only for tech products, but for cities as well.

While there are many efforts in overcoming those effects through decentralization in various aspects (from remote work to blockchain projects), it seems none of these really achieved as much success as we were expecting, probably because the benefits of decentralization don't outweigh (yet) the advantages of strong networks.

Perhaps once we solve this equation in tech, and make decentralized options more appealing than their centralized counterparts, we may be able to transfer that knowledge to city planning somehow.

</comment><comment><USER37> Are these same small towns also insulated from market crashes and recessions?

Is there some benefit to greater America from their existence?

Edit: apparently people are interpreting my comment negatively. I was seriously asking if these small town communities can act as a sort of buffer during recessions because of their relative isolation, thereby limiting negative effects. I'm not questioning whether they should exist or anything nonsensical like that.

<comment><USER26> _Is there some benefit to greater America from their existence?_

Are you asking if there's a good reason why these small towns should exist?

<comment><USER38> Maybe rural america (energy, food) do Master Blaster style embargo on big cities.

<comment><USER39> "Rural Americans" own neither the energy nor the food production located near them.

By and large, rural America is subsidized by the rest of America, be they urbanites or large companies. And to be frank, that's fine; I support generally allowing people to find the best way for them to live, within reason. (Where people like me start getting snippy--and we do, we aren't saints--is when that's not acknowledged. "Real Americans" and the like.)

<comment><USER40> The Rest of America

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I can't read the article - did it mention globalization? I don't know why you'd want to hire someone remotely in small country town USA when you could get 10 people for the same price in other countries.

Now there are pretty resort towns where skilled people want to live, that is different. But old Mid-Western agricultural towns don't have that draw.

<comment><USER42> Here's two reasons to hire small town USA:

1\. Culture fit. (This is a huge reason for customer service centers onshoring.)

2\. Same/similar working hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Whenever people question the concentration of tech jobs in cities like SF it always makes me think: 1) Why do most jobs related to show business(movies) are concentrated in LA? 2) Why are most jobs in banking concentrated in NYC?

<comment><USER18> Face to face, non audit-able interactions are important in finance. Maybe the same for show business, plus LA has really nice weather and scenery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think the only realistic solution here is to offer relocation assistance to folks to migrate to urban areas.

America's backyard is _enormous_. Attempts to make it more prosperous are basically urban development. There's just too much of it to make any kind of dent in with any kind of money. We can't make cities everywhere like China and wait for people to move in, we just don't have that kind of population.

We need to move the people to the cities. That's the only real solution.

</comment><comment><USER45> I feel a sense of inevitability with rural America fading in importance and massive hubs being the dominant players. The only solution I can think of is pushing for more remote labor in these rural areas as an acceptable lifestyle choice. Maybe restructuring the towns with more of an appeal for 30-45 year old software engineers to work out of. The biggest problem I see though is top tier education systems in these places being the biggest deterrent.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think some small towns become retirement targets because outside of California the spots that fit multiple dimensions of quality like (1) good schools, (2) good incomes, (3) good weather, (4) affordable living, (5) decent commercial activity, etc., you end up with a narrowing space of options.

Some of those towns grow enough to attract a tech company, and will continue to attract growth because it's just harder and harder to get the nice balance of factors.

</comment><comment><USER47> I work in information systems in a manufacturing company in a small town. The power of agglomeration is quite apparent in its absence.

Most everyone in this company has only ever worked there and accepts the status quo of how things are done. Typically, "the worst way that works."

It would be nice to be in an area where we could have some turnover and occasionally get people from more mature/professional companies.

</comment><comment><USER48> In the mix with this are the tax incentives that are being offered up for tech companies to move into rural areas. While there has been a lot of attention on HN focused recently on Amazon's and Apple's move, the really interesting one to me is Foxconn.

Foxconn really seems to have suckered a small Wisconsin community (and the state) into giving them an incredibly lopsided tax incentive deal - <USER2> detailed in this amazing episode of ReplyAll [1]

I think a far smarter idea is to pay tech workers an incentive to relocate to the state, as Vermont is doing [2]. The payback is quicker and the results far easier to scale.

1 - [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/132-negative-mount- ple...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/132-negative-mount- pleasant#episode-player)

2 - [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/us/vermont-moving- money.h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/us/vermont-moving-money.html)

</comment><comment><USER49> The only solution that will save small towns is dismantling some of the industrialisation that freed people up to work in the factory or mill that no longer exists. It's a trivial example, but ban preservatives in bread and now they need a bakery that can deliver bread everyday. Bread that lasts two weeks on a shelf is an optimisation for communities that support advanced professions. Heavy industrialisation is a model that no longer fits these communities and while some might be able to attract select tech workers--in effect patchwork, others should realise that they're optimised for a workforce that no longer exists.

All of that may not even be possible. First try and sell your community their way of life is unsustainable, then try and shake the Walmart, McDonalds dependency.

<comment><USER20> There is a bit of this idea emergent in some small towns. I know a chef in Vermont who focuses on foraged ingredients, smaller farm-sourced produce and getting everything fresh and local. Which is also much a fad in places like SF! It is one area where small towns can actually show uniqueness via their geographic differences. And if it continues to develop naturally as a choice (rather than a ban on preservatives...) it could contribute to giving small towns a reason to persist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> If a small town in the US could become a tech hub, then every capital in the world would already be one. Significant amounts of money are spent around the globe, yet it seems tech hubs are the one thing you cannot disrupt. :)

</comment><comment><USER51> I think there is a reckoning coming in terms of what "educated worker" means, as increasingly, it does not mean "competent."

Competence and specialization is what drives rural economies. Machine repair, fabrication, feed mills, legal services, construction, teaching, child care, animal and livestock services, all require physical competence. These are considered blue collar jobs, because they require someone to actually _do_ something to create value.

I would argue that the soft skills that corporate environments require do not create value, they at best manage capital, and usually deal in the factors and derivatives of negotiating wealth transfers and businesses that reduce to forms of amusement, posterity, and entertainment.

The urban/rural resentment has a lot to do with the relative dependency of each on the other. Cities need food, and farms need capital. Globalization means cities can get food for less from around the world, and the margins on farming are so thin that capital is mostly only accessible at the conglomerate scale.

Competence can be bought from a global supply chain, so rural economies are collapsing precisely because of globalization (e.g. international trade liberalization), and because of distorted fiscal policies that destroy local wealth in favour of centralizing it from global sources. The results have been, and remain predictable.

What is very likely is that city housing prices will become so high that companies will have to use remote workers to produce goods while paying the cost of living, and this will drive broadband investment.

However the real crisis is that the traditional urban/rural dependency and cultural divide is polarizing in favour of the urban side, who can be defined as the sort of people who use phrases like, "left behind," and who lack an apprehension of what follows ecological imbalance at this scale.

Adding educated workers to small towns will not revitalize them, and nor will building public works with public administrative jobs. Until there is a way to generate productive and competitive capital and build real wealth in them, without suffering predation by both their respective governments and globalized markets, they will continue to disappear.

</comment><comment><USER52> I tend to agree with an idea that's mentioned in the article. Perhaps much of the land in certain flyover states should just return to the bison? While it means most of the towns would disappear, some would greatly succeed. I'd be FAR more likely to regularly visit Podunk-Nowheresville if I could witness the annual migration of 10 million bison. After having traveled to the other side of the planet and seen such a migration, developing an American safari industry seems like an outcome worth pursuing.

<comment><USER53> It's all mainly farmland.

<comment><USER52> But if left to it's own devices (or with a little assistance from the bison), may return to prairie very quickly. I suspect it wouldn't take long for native grasses to outcompete any residual farmable crops.

<comment><USER53> We need this farmland, right?

<comment><USER52> Nope.[0]

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> A bit off-topic, but I love the "Population density by county" graph. Is there any way to plot the whole world that way, and then make an animation of how it changes over time?

</comment><comment><USER55> Reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful)

> Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered is a > collection of essays by German born British economist E. F. Schumacher.

</comment><comment><USER56> I grew up in a town of 2,000 in rural Illinois. My parents ran a business, until it shut down of course. A lot of people have this idyllic vision of small town life. Everybody knows everybody, you can let your kids walk home from school, happy cows chewing cud in verdant fields.

I will add a caveat to this: I lived in a small town during the decline. The place my parents grew up in was a much more lively, happy place. There were jobs and prosperity, it made sense for them to not leave. My town no longer has a grocery store, has a single restaurant, and I am hard pressed to think of a small business doing well. There are other small towns in the US that I am sure are lovely. I'm just speaking from my own experience.

Unstructured list of thoughts about small town life:

\- People are poorly educated and constantly make bad decisions about everything.

      - Years of poor decisions and management have buried my town in bad expensive infrastructure.

      - Our mayor was an extremely incompetent, unqualified barber.

      - The schools are falling apart and the good teachers quickly move on to more lucrative jobs in other areas. The good ones leave. The bad ones stay.

      - Picture the Simpsons monorail episode, but replace the ambitious public transit project with a strip mall they can put a buffalo wild wings and a huge parking lot into

      - Picture the Simpsons monorail episode, but instead of the town agreeing to build affordable housing, they reject the free government development because, and I was at this meeting, `They don't want the black people from Chicago moving into town.`

\- The people... kinda suck.

      - Conservatism in small town America exists, it is not some abstract concept. They are racist. They are poorly educated. They think global warming is a hoax.

      - There is a special breed of large, swaggering, ignorant, low, angry white men that tend to live in small towns. They exist in cities too, but there are also other people around.

      - As the article suggests: The educated leave. The info-wars fans stay.

\- Poor diversity. Still know 30 year olds who think it is edgy/cool to slur constantly. Experiencing other cultures breeds empathy. Full stop.

\- RAMPANT drug abuse. Alcohol. Meth. Opiates. You name it.

\- Mind numbing boredom.

      - Just because there is less civilization does not mean it is a beautiful forest.

      - Is often a polluted creek people would be happy to replace with a Walmart, or a corn field that stinks of fertilizer for months on end. ( poop )

\- There is no culture to interact with.

      - Want an education?

        - Good luck finding a decent college nearby.

      - Want to see a band? Too bad. You will have to drive 4 hours to see anyone.

      - Want to start a band?

        - Good luck finding a community.

        - Good luck finding an audience.

        - Good luck finding a mentor.

        - Good luck finding a place to perform.

      - Who you surround yourself with matters.

        - Who are you going to hang out with?

        - Who is going to be hanging out and collaborating with your kids? Would you rather it be the smart, cosmopolitan Muhammad, or Cletus the pig-farmer's feral son?

\- Kind of obvious, but: What are you going to do for a living?

      - There is nobody to network with.

      - What are you going to do when you lose your remote gig?

      - Personally I would rather have the opportunity to get a local job if remote work goes out of style.

\- Small town gossip is a THING.

      - People will see your success, covet it, and hate you for it. They will want to knock you down.

Small towns destroyed themselves by deciding to build giant roads, shopping malls, and walmarts instead of maintaining their main street, building parks, and upgrading their schools. You know, enhancing the life of people living in your city, instead of enhancing the lives of the people who drive through it at 60 miles an hour.

Now the malls are empty ( They were always a bad, dumb experiment ). Now all of their pointless expensive roads are crumbling and eating up a massive amount of tax revenue. Walmart pays the community a pittance and funnels all of their wealth to the CEOs.

It stinks people are suffering and losing a way of life, but I feel that much of this pain is self-inflicted. So to small towns: Bye, Felicia.

Some interesting reading:

\- [https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi- scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme)

</comment><comment><USER57> We've spent so much time and money gentrifying urban areas, now we're going back to the burbs. This is like going back to the mainframe, or from the cloud back to physical hardware. We toggle between the two extremes.

My only hesitation is that the burbs haven't historically been so diverse and welcoming in the past and likely part of the reason "the kids" flee to the city. Maybe that will change.

</comment><comment><USER58> Counterpoint: I hear there are some startups thriving on Vancouver island in a few small towns.

<comment><USER59> That's not a counterpoint. Of course _a_ (or some) startup can thrive there, or anywhere. That is not what a hub is. We don't have to change small towns at all if all we want is a diverse assortment of small businesses, some of which may be tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> > For the last quarter century the story of these places has been one of > relentless economic decline. [...] The election of Donald Trump, powered in > no small degree by rural voters

Counterpoint: "Trump Voters Driven by Fear of Losing Status, Not Economic Anxiety, Study Finds" [0]

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump- economi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economic- anxiety.html)

</comment><comment><USER61> Halifax anyone?

<comment><USER62> I would think that having multiple universities within the city disqualifies it from being called a 'small town'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> As someone who has lived in a small town, I'd suggest Government to offer:

1\. Cheaper and faster internet in the remote locations. Then people can work remotely, have skype HD chats which don't disconnect in middle. Even free internet with 400gb limit per month per house would be good enough.

2\. Faster ecom delivery - If we can order the same machines which city dwellers use, well it would suck less.

Leave the rest on the people.

The people who lived around me in the small town weren't less intelligent, they had to keep up with more issues like flaky internet, not finding the supplies, not getting the work.

Internet/ecom can solve many of those issues.

<comment><USER64> Meanwhile in China [https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/why-the-future-of- chinese-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/why-the-future-of-chinese-e- commerce-is-in-its-rural-areas/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Dirt can't be turned to gold. Film at 11.

Unfortunately, it can still vote for some reason.

<comment><USER66> Posting like this will get your account banned. If you can't comment civilly, don't.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Edward Snowden petition only needs 9,500 more sisgnatures to reach goal - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD?

<comment><USER2> And when it reaches 100,000 they have to pardon him!

Or the number 100,000 is arbitrary and asking for legally meaningless things, like a "pardon" when he hasn't even been charged with anything, isn't going to impress the executive branch.</comment>


Kotlin M7 Release Available - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2014/03/m7-release-available

<comment><USER2> Seems like Kotlin is stabalizing, does anyone know how close Kotlin is to 1.0?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're aiming to go beta sometime in the middle of this year hopefully.

<comment><USER2> Great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kotlin is Scala--

<comment><USER2> Which isn't a bad thing

<comment><USER3> Nor a good thing. My point is that it doesn't really add much ("simplicity" included) to justify itself. It's like Eclipse's Xtend (ever heard about it?): a nice and clean language, but one that doesn't bring enough to the table to be worth switching to.

<comment><USER4> Agree. Especially after Java 8, it will be hard to justify investing in Kotlin.

If you decide to pick something which isn't syntax compatible to upgrade (Java 6/7 -> Java 8), why pick something which is basically Java 8, just slightly different (Kotlin), over something which is just better overall and inspired the features of Java 8 in the first place (Scala)?

<comment><USER2> Kotlin is a good improvement over Java 8 for three reasons, in my view.

Less verbose: Not everything has to be in a class. Structural typing: val/var a = 5; Explicit null: String? can be null, String can't.

It also helps that Kotlin has a decent JavaScript compiler (and thus can share code between backend/frontend). The compiler is fast (unlike Scala) and it's still a simpler language than Scala.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Working Remotely - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
Recently, I've been dealing with a lot of personal issues (break-up and discovery of a mental illness) that are pretty rapidly wearing me down. Living in the same apartment my girlfriend and I shared is not an option anymore as it is driving me nuts, I need to get away from Eastern Canada. Luckily, I work for an incredible start-up that has been offering awesome support and have always been here for me so I've been looking at the possibility to work remotely from somewhere else in the world in order rejuvenate myself and clear my head.
Now this is where the community at HN will come handy, what would be an ideal destination that would be relatively cheap, offer an okay internet connection, that does not block VPN and if possible has a certain start-up community that would allow me to meet people? To those that have tried it, has "exile" brought you a certain sense of rejuvenation? Any other tips to share?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'd recommend Buffalo, NY but the winters can be long - it's 0f today but wednesday will be 40f...

Depending where on the east coast of Canada you are, it might not be a bad drive to get home on occasion. Buffalo is about a half hour drive to the Canadian boarder - 1.5 hours into Toronto and 6 hours (ish) into Montreal.

Housing (rent or own) is super cheap in the city and it's suburbs. We own a 1700 sq ft house and bought it for about $120k (3 bedrooms, 1 bath)

Traffic is never a problem. It's always been said you can get anywhere in Buffalo and it's suburbs within a half hour drive. Food is great and there's plenty to do outside when the weather breaks.

I'm not 100% on our startup culture here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, Buffalo does seem like a nice place. I've been there a couple of times and I always enjoyed it. However, I guess I've been thinking of leaving all behind, for a month or two and going somewhere where the culture is different (less hockey, less winter, less "american" if I could say).

I just feel like a need "culture chock" therapy in a way.</comment></comment>


Apple has been ordered to repay €13B in tax by the EU - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/apple-has-been-fined-by-the-eu-2016-8 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12385232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12385232)</comment>


4 days == 27 million - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125729222815826639.html

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately requires subscription but looks like an interesting tale.</comment>


Amazon's Kindle 2 Will Debut Feb. 9 - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/amazons-kindle-2-will-debut-feb-9/

<comment><USER2> _the new device corrects some of the design flaws of the first model, adding round buttons instead of those strange angular ones, and smaller side buttons to avoid accidental page turns._

I received a Kindle as a gift and at first I hated the buttons. Now having read a dozen books or so, I think they are genius. I am sure they are making this change to satisfy the initial-reaction reviewers.

It can be a little to easy to accidentally press the side buttons on the original, something that happens to me a couple of times per book. This is greatly outweighed by the thought that went into them. It is really easy to press the buttons with an elbow, pillow or even your nose when need be. It makes reading a book a one- or no-hand operation.

Behind the screen, I would put the weird and unique buttons on the kindle as a top feature.

<comment><USER3> All buttons should be eradicated.

I can't wait for the day someone creates an affordable brain-to-computer interface. (And one that doesn't require you to drill holes in your head.)

Man, that was a huge tangent. Anyway...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would like a 100$ e-book reader with an electronic paper display and pdf support, with no extra features, please.

<comment><USER5> <http://www.foxitsoftware.com/ebook/>

Not the right price, but the PDF support is build right in. alt.binaries.e-book.technical will finally realise its promise.

<comment><USER6> Not supporting SDHC cards (the 4gb limit) in 2009 is pretty bizzare, and makes the device look quite suspect to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always imagined this thing similar to consoles - you sell it at break-even (or even at a loss) to encourage the purches of books over its service.

Lord knows that if all it took was a quick bit of navigation on the Kindle itself to buy any book at Amazon, I'd have a full Kindle and an empty wallet.

<comment><USER8> that is actually exactly how the kindle works. not any book, but many books.

<comment><USER9> Except the Kindle's entry price is still quite high (at least for me).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just want it to be GSM-friendly and to sell for less than US$ 100.

For the $100 to $500 range, I can use a full-featured entry-level notebook or a cheaper, lighter netbook. The Kindle has a big problem then.

</comment><comment><USER11> I, for one, hope that "leaked" design isn't the actual redesign since judging by the pictures I liked the original better. The shape, while weird at first, works well for something you can hold easily in one hand. The large buttons allow you to hold it in much more varying positions without having to worry about have a specific finger rested in a specific place on the device to perform an action you are going to be doing quite often.

Plus, the new one looks quite a bit larger.

</comment><comment><USER12> We haven't even got version 1 in the UK yet!

</comment><comment><USER13> Hopefully Amazon made changes to their final design based on feedback on the Boy Genius Report 'leak':

[http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/10/03/amazon- kindle-2-eb...](http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/10/03/amazon- kindle-2-ebooks-its-way-to-bgr/)

 _"...the battery does not look to be user-accessible, and there's no more SD card slot..."_

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm wondering when Amazon will bundle Audible's digital audiobook tech into the Kindle. Amazon acquired Audible last year and for some markets, like children's books, it's a no-brainer to sync narration with the written word.

</comment><comment><USER15> Kindle should be software, not hardware. And it should run on as many different devices as possible--including my mobile phone, on which I read the newspaper and HN every day.

<comment><USER16> There is already such software it's called PDF.

<comment><USER17> No, it's called a web browser. (I don't think HN publishes an updated PDF every time someone posts a comment)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Years ago, when laptops where over $1000, an ebook reader for under $299 was a good idea.

Netbooks changed the game...

<comment><USER19> Do you regularly read full-length novels on your laptop?

<comment><USER20> Not infrequently.

There's a lot of "personal taste" involved in this domain. Some people can't seem to stomach reading for a long time on anything short of a Kindle, whereas I used to read Project Gutenberg books on my 160x160px monochrome Palm Pilot with reasonable comfort.

I understand the personal taste in general but have always been surprised by programmer's problems with electronic displays. Reading a novel is way easier than reading code. If you can handle reading code, surely you can deal with a novel... but again, personal taste.

<comment><USER21> You think widely available eInk displays will bring improvements in code?

<comment><USER20> That's the exact opposite of what I think. If you can read code on a monitor, surely you can read a novel.

(Personal taste! Personal taste! Don't flame me!)

<comment><USER21> Yes I see that - but if people who don't want to read a novel on screen, yet who code at the moment, could use a new display that they would read a novel on happily - would that also bring any improvements to their coding?

<comment><USER22> Clearly you are all missing the insight here: where are our widescreen e-ink displays for writing code? Who needs color? Just give me paper-like readability and bold and italic.

<comment><USER23> _where are our e-ink displays for writing code_

They take too long to refresh.

<comment><USER22> You're so right. I just finally looked at a youtube video of the display tech in the new kindle (the "broadstreet" version of e-ink) and it is indeed far slower than is necessary even for simple text editing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This thing is becoming quite powerful... However, I expect the economy will hit their sales hard.

<comment><USER25> Somehow I trust that Amazon will know how to navigate these waters. They're one of the few retailers that have not seen a major drop in profits.</comment></comment>


Bradley Manning Charged With 22 New Counts, Including Capital Offense - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/bradley-manning-more-charge/ <comment><USER2> From <http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/>

"Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process."

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, he's being subjected to a military justice process with a different set of rules which is largely biased or inherently unfair against people the military doesn't like.

<comment><USER4> You give up many of your civilian rights when joining the military and agree to be bound by the UCMJ, not civilian court. How can the UCMJ be biased against people the military doesn't like if it only applies to the military?

I agree his detention is horrific, but he's bound by rules he agreed to, and rules which are probably not (I assume, and in general) that biased or "inherently unfair" when viewed from the perspective of the military--which is the perspective to which they solely apply.

<comment><USER5> that always seemed weird to me.

The constitution guarantees inalienable rights, yet apparently the government thinks that you can sign your rights away

<comment><USER6> Good point. Plus there is that bit about people not being able to give up those rights, even if they want to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Per this article [http://news.scotsman.com/world/Tunisia-Uprising-called- first...](http://news.scotsman.com/world/Tunisia-Uprising-called- first-39Wikileaks.6692071.jp) these leaked documents were an impetus that led to the fall of Tunisia's monarchy. Which then has brought on a domino effect in the Middle East; Egypt, Libya, Yemen, etc...

Depending on the long term out-come of the change in the Middle East(for the better) this guy's actions might not seem so bad in ten years?

</comment><comment><USER3> The military justice system in USA is a human rights joke: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_Guant...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_Guantanamo_Bay_detainees_accused_of_possessing_Casio_watches)

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bradley_Manni...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bradley_Manning#Detention)

<comment><USER8> There have been some (recently a lot of) problems, but speaking in general terms, the US courts-martial have been and are a _model_ of military justice the world over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courts- martial_in_the_United_St...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courts- martial_in_the_United_States) The main trouble lately has been the use of military tribunals against civilians or "enemy combatants" instead of courts- martial or civilian courts. I'm all for calling out abuses, but I think it's a bit much to say the whole justice system is a joke.

<comment><USER3> True. However, justice systems tend to be absolutists. That's why confessions under duress aren't admission-able for example. To see a select few can abuse the due process when they can, means that the system needs improvement.

Plus, as you say, it's being used against civilians and enemy combatants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's impossible to feel sorry for this guy. How could you ever think this was a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER10> So the USA is executing dissidents now?

<comment><USER11> He's not being charged with being a dissident, he's being charged with treason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Flagging this because too many people are downvoting people they politically disagree with, meaning this is going to become a worthless discussion.

<comment><USER13> Nah, I'm downvoting people (like you) who aren't bothering to read people's posts properly.

I think the main problem is that the American media is ridiculously pro- military/anti-wikileaks, so it's hard to get unbiased information.

<comment><USER12> You've now twice accused me of improperly reading other people's posts. Yet your reply to my comment about the risks in the unedited documents showed that you certainly are not reading properly.

<comment><USER13> I read what you wrote - I just disagree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not exactly sure what punishment he should get, but it's definitely not the death penalty (or life in prison either, for that matter). You know who should get life in prison? Whoever wrote up SIPRNET's network security policies and whoever's responsible for implementing them.

<comment><USER15> Pretty sure SIPRNET IA policies were relaxed dramatically as a response to 9/11, when there was a strong belief that various agencies and groups restrictive data policies were hurting AT cooperation. Now, of course, I'm sure they've been tightened again. Kind of a damned if you do scenario.

<comment><USER16> I would think the people who designed the system would have had several layers of security as it relates to their database. I've only designed a few myself, but even I know all your users shouldn't have the same privileges. The more I read this story, the more I wonder why a private 1st class had full blown access to classified documents. It seems like security was an after thought, and now they're paying the price.

<comment><USER15> It's the same issue to, in addition to interdepartmental sharing the belief was that overly restricting information inside organizations could keep it out of the hands of the one analyst that would put "plot x" together.

Keep in mind Manning was an intelligence analyst, and the documents he distributed were of low classification levels.

<comment><USER17> I think the bigger issue was with allowing him to retain access to classified data while obviously disgruntled and having issues with his chain of command. His unit should have pulled his clearance (if it ever should have been granted) once it became clear he was going to be separated from the army for cause, etc.

I hope his (transgendered, or gay, or something) sexual identity doesn't color public perception of the end of DADT; there are plenty of non-heterosexual members of the military who are not security risks. However, if he was getting separated over some "transition" related issues, that information would be relevant to a security clearance review in his particular case.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mysterious Dead Sea Scroll Deciphered in Israel - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42773878 <comment><USER2> *deciphered in Palestine</comment>


Now Browser for Android - <AUTHOR> http://nowbrowser.eu5.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> A fast and light web browser (171kb) for android, well designed, full-featured with tiny impact on RAM and Flash Player support.</comment>


Nest is being rolled into Google's hardware team - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/07/nest-is-being-rolled-into-googles-hardware-team/ <comment><USER2> Already posted one hour ago (Nest Blog): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16327103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16327103)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, we've moved most comments there and turned off the flamewar detector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think they need cheaper satellite products for both Nest and Nest Protect. $120 to $250 a pop for multiple identical smart products is overkill for everyone. This needs a master and slave sort of system.

From their web page I can't figure out how you'd use Nest thermostat in a home with two or three existing dumb thermostats. Buy two or three Nests? Really? $500 - $750? Umm no.</comment>


Ask HN: Web app that provides analytics info from lots of different sources? - <AUTHOR>

I remember seeing it once on HN. It's a site that displays lots of info about how your site is doing based on lots of different sources (stuff like mentions on Twitter, links saved to Delicious, pageviews in Google Analytics, etc.). IIRC, each source gets a little box on the overview page.<p>Does anyone know what site this is? I can't find it anywhere. <comment><USER2> <http://geckoboard.com> is a pretty good example of this.

<comment><USER3> Geckoboard is the best! Some other dashboard alternatives I collected over the last few months;

<http://www.leftronic.com>

<http://statusboard.supersteil.com>

<http://www.chartbeat.com>

<http://www.campaignmonitor.com/worldview>

<http://ducksboard.com/>

[http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/white-house-it-dashboard- op...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/white-house-it-dashboard-open- source.html)</comment></comment>