TSA is tracking regular travelers like terrorists in secret surveillance program - <AUTHOR> http://apps.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/graphics/2018/07/tsa-quiet-skies/?p1=HP_SpecialTSA <comment><USER2> I'm a remote worker and have travelled a lot for fun in the past two years. While checking into a flight from AMS headed to USA, I was told as a prerequisite to getting my boarding pass I needed to talk to an agent from the US Department of the State. He asked me many detailed questions about my travels and said I was considered a person of interest. He stressed that they may in the future not allow me to enter the USA (I'm a citizen of USA).

It seems likely he was just trying to scare me, but it was still was quite jarring. I'm a fairly normal US citizen (I don't associate with political people, no criminal record, never been to a country not known for tourism). I believe I was flagged just from traveling between Turkey and Russia.

Since then when I fly I cant use online check-in, my boarding pass is marked SSSS and I am taken into the backroom for questioning at border control.

Maybe these extra precautions keep the USA safe, but it certainly seemed excessively paranoid.

<comment><USER3> > they may in the future not allow me to enter the USA (I'm a citizen of USA).

I always thought that if you're a US citizen you cannot be denied entry into the United States, though you might be delayed.

<comment><USER2> That is my understanding as well, and the main reason why I thought he was just trying to scare me.

However, they can place me on the no flylist, but I believe that this is run by a different branch of the government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like the latest "mission creep" by the TSA in order to justify their budget and possibly ask for a budget increase. This would not be the first instance of "mission creep" by them.

See:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties- bey...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties-beyond- airport-security.html)

and

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa- is-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-coming-to- a-highway-near-you/#29ee469ddbee)

They are basically an entrenched part of the security-industrial complex at this point. It seems to be a vicious circle of "expand the mission to justify a bigger budget and ask for a bigger budget in order to meet the self-directed increase in scope." There seems to be very little practical oversight of this agency.

<comment><USER5> What I particularly loathe about TSA's constant mission creep is that at no point have they proven even minimally competent at any of the existing missions.

Nothing they do provides any meaningful security. They fail 90% of tests run by their own agency. They are useless and ever expanding.

By a medical definition, they are cancerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the natural evolution of the privatized prison. To treat an ever growing segment of the population in a carceral manner in ways large and small. Degrees of citizenship is now a thing in America. You can be graded on your credit, your connections, your history; the color of your skin or the shape of your face.

<comment><USER7> degrees of citizenship has always been a thing, but you're correct that it's an evolution of the carceral state, and by extension capitalism

<comment><USER8> > by extension capitalism

In communist states, you get degrees of citizenship. For example, are you a party member or not?

<comment><USER9> At the time when this really mattered, everyone was a party member as not being one meant not being to find a job and be practically outcast.

What mattered much more, was: are you _related_ to a high-ranking party member or not?

<comment><USER10> I guess it depends on the country, but in former Czechoslovakia, it wasn't true. There was about 1 million party members to about 10 million adults. Whether you needed to be a member depended on the nature of the job.

But you're correct that family relations played a big role, the nepotism was rampant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some of these behaviors are so benign that any regular person might exhibit these. Slept during the flight, changed clothes, boarded last (I hate standing in those queues), observed the boarding area from afar. Hell I do many of these things. I am sure their "ML" model must have spit these indicators but it's a waste of resources.

<comment><USER12> Also, they capture all ranges of behavior. Glazed over look? Suspicious. Intently paying attention to everything? Suspicious. Friendly? Suspicious. Cold to agents? Suspicious.

This is worse than criteria to pull you over when driving.

<comment><USER13> Extreme overfitting, where any data point outside the norm is correlated.

It makes a kind of perverse sense once you realize the stated point is/was to target extremists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >The teams document whether passengers fidget, use a computer, have a "jump" in their Adam's apple or a "cold penetrating stare," among other behaviors, according to the records.

I believe this isn't the first time the TSA has tried to do some sort of behavioral profiling and such. Previously it proved to be BS and did not show any ability to identify threats.

Considering TSA agents are leaking this to the press makes me think someone(s) at TSA think you can just spot a terrorist and the agents think it is ballony ....

<comment><USER15> How many airline terrorists have we had in the last 10 years? 2? How many travellers per year? 500m+. TSA is just really bad a math if they think they have any chance of actually profiling a real terrorist. They should just take the money and buy Powerball tickets, least then they have a better chance at a return of investment.

<comment><USER14> It does raise questions about the costs and actions for sure.

<comment><USER16> It allows more spending by taxpayers for the military industrial complex, more invasion of privacy, increased government power, and makes the populace mentally prepared to be repressed. It's a jobs program for people who don't want to do manual labor, and aren't smart enough to do anything else.

Perfect for power hungry organizations. Only solution to combat this is full transparency, or to join the game and make it to the "elite" and help suppress everyone else. It's a pretty good setup, you use the bottom 20% to help keep the 20% to 80% in line, and then pluck out a few of the smarter 20% to 80% and drop those in leadership positions in military or police and pay them a nice pension and keep suctioining up a bigger and bigger share of resources.

<comment><USER17> > and makes the populace mentally prepared to be repressed

First it was electronics. Then water/liquids. Then shoes. Lately, they've been asking people to get snacks/food items out. For what reason? We aren't given one. Just do as you're told, or else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Imagine the economic result if we got rid of the TSA (we did fine without it before 9/11 and they don't do shit now) and created jobs in rebuilding infrastructure using that budget.

<comment><USER19> Healthcare, housing, education, feeding the poor. You know, those things the US says are "socialist commie bullshit", but spending ~$8 BILLION a year on a bunch of untrained people given power over others is perfectly acceptable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This sounds like they've hired a bunch of air marshals but don't have much for them to do. Having them make observations on random people might be a way to make sure they're still doing their job?

<comment><USER21> It might be like the air marshal version of a security guard route patrol system, where the guard has to swipe a fob or access card at predefined locations in a campus or building periodically. Intended to enforce actually patrolling an area. Not saying it's a good thing, just that's the closest analogy I can think of.

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

[https://www.guard1.com/Products/Equipment/Checkpoints.aspx](https://www.guard1.com/Products/Equipment/Checkpoints.aspx)

<comment><USER22> <knee slap!> That's a good one!

The closest analogy I could come up with was the Stasi.

Okay, I'll concede, it's not really analogy, it's more like a 1:1 mapping: _" One of its main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants"_[1]

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

<comment><USER23> And this being a capitalist society, we pay our citizens (marshals and TSA) to spy on each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >A bulletin in May notes that travelers entering the United States may be added to the Quiet Skies watch list if [they] ... "are possibly affiliated with Watch Listed suspects."

What a beautiful qualification. Put one person on Quiet Skies, for any reason, legit or not. Now every known contact or associate of that one person becomes of interest to the Quiet Skies program. Every neighbor, even if they don't know the neighbor. Every work colleague, even if the colleague doesn't know that they work with the person. Every vendor. Every vendee. The air marshal assigned to watch them.

TSA seems to have taken a page from NSA. They aren't even "hop-limited;" they can continually go as far out on a person's network as they want, merely by including a hop in Quiet Skies. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/28/ns...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/28/nsa- files-decoded-hops)

</comment><comment><USER24> US Federal Tax dollars at work, infringing on our rights with no tangible benefits for the American people.

<comment><USER25> This is far more an issue of the Executive and Congress at work, than it is tax dollars at work. Let's lay the blame where it belongs—only then do we have the slightest hope of citizens recognizing how they can play a part in stopping this. Tax dollars aren't allocating themselves.

<comment><USER26> Complaints about "tax dollars" or about 'tax payers' seem like stalking horses for the whole Reagan-esque 'drown government in the bathtub' thing. It's weird to me that the most jingoistic Americans are also the ones who are most hostile to the concrete manifestations of America.

Back to the topic at hand: I agree wholeheartedly with you and I hope that you and everyone else here votes in their primary and general elections. Headcount is a good, nonpartisan resource for finding out more about this: [https://www.headcount.org](https://www.headcount.org)

<comment><USER27> > I agree wholeheartedly with you and I hope that you and everyone else here > votes in their primary and general elections.

I doubt that either major party plans to reform the TSA or the Department of Homeland Security.

<comment><USER26> If you believe that, then you should seek to change the policy priorities of either major party. Fatalism in a two party system is neither useful nor indicative of a keener understanding of early 21st century American politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _Agency documents show there are about 40 to 50 Quiet Skies passengers on domestic flights each day. On average, air marshals follow and surveil about 35 of them._

Wow... reminds me of good old East Germany

<comment><USER29> There are 2 million people on domestic flights daily, if I checked correctly. If 30 get followed, it is a few orders of magnitude lower than in East Germany.

<comment><USER28> My comment was meant to be sarcastic. Maybe I should have made that more explicit

I think 30 per plane would be really bad. 30 per 2 million is probably just a normal rate

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This seems mostly harmless (insofar as tailing random innocent people could be) but also a collosal waste of time that could be spent doing nearly anything else.

Mind you, it's hard to see it as security theater (they won't admit it's happening!). It sounds like they have a power envy thing going on vis a vis the FBI, but even the actual marshals doing it seem to think it's dumb. If it were the FBI just tasking FBI Surveillance Vans onto random people without a predicate, there'd potentially be hell to pay as they generally have regulations on what is a valid reason for opening an investigation.

<comment><USER31> > It sounds like they have a power envy thing going on vis a vis the FBI

What makes you say that? I didn't see it in the article, but maybe I missed something.

> mostly harmless (insofar as tailing random innocent people could be)

Hmmm ... I hate to start from scratch this very common discussion (i.e., the harm in surveillance). Is there anything new to add?

<comment><USER30> I mean, it's obviously bad for the same reasons dragnet surveillance is always bad. But this particular instance so ham-handed (tailing an executive that went to Turkey one time?) and so manpower intensive it's kind of hard to take seriously.

> What makes you say that? I didn't see it in the article, but maybe I missed > something.

The article mentions that they first got into the business of tracking people through airports and in the sky after the FBI asked them to help on existing investigations, so I wonder if they are just trying to show that they can do investigations on their own like big boys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The most likely explanation I can think of, is that this is work to establish baselines against which to run mass automated surveillance.

So, it's not just this. Consider where it's going -- what would induce this level of effort and expenditure?

P.S. It will also be "interesting" when parallel construction enters the picture -- if it hasn't, already.

</comment><comment><USER33> Next headline: NSA is tracking regular Americans like terrorists in secret surveillance program.

</comment><comment><USER34> >> the program could pass legal muster if the selection criteria are sufficiently broad

and...

>> surveillance of travelers without any suspicion of actual wrongdoing

Those seem to play off each other in a weird way. The program is legal because the selection criteria are so broad that no one under surveillance is suspected of any evildoery? It would be really interesting to find out what kind of records on these surveillance activities are kept.

Having been the subject of covert surveillance at multiple points in my past (and future probably) there is a certain amount of shrugging it off that is necessary. The real concern for TSA, or Neighborhood Watch, is whether they are sharing records with any other agencies. Congress would potentially have a Pinata party if that came to light.

</comment><comment><USER35> TSA employees are generally not well-paid and not well-educated. They come from the bottom third of the economic advantage spectrum. As a result, most of them have probably never visited a foreign country; many have likely never even been on an airplane.

So their opinion of "foreigners" is skewed by their anti-terrorist training to think that people from outside the USA are mostly bad and wish us harm.

TSA employees should be required to visit a foreign country at least once a year--paid for by their employer--so they have direct experience with the vast majority of non-US citizens who are simply normal people living their normal lives.

</comment><comment><USER36> While we are on this topic, what I find to be a complete sham is TSA-PRE (a US preflight registration program). The pre-screening is valid for 5 years, in exchange you don't remove your shoes or have to remove electronics and liquids. Basically, what you did BEFORE the TSA program was put in place.

I presume they are OK with taking the chance that a TSA-PRE enrolled individual is not turning into a shoe-bomber in year 3 after preenrollment? Why not just abolish all the checks and selectively pull people to remove liquids, shoes and electronics. You'd lose the $99 revenue/passsenger that TSAPRE generates.

</comment><comment><USER37> This program sounds like a huge, irresponsible waste of public resources. However I don't exactly see how merely being observed in public amounts to the dystopian surveillance state this article seems to imply. Is going unnoticed in public reasonably considered to be a right? I would suggest the problem here is the extent of resources that are wasted by the government watching the innocuous behavior of arbitrary people in an airport.

<comment><USER23> > This program sounds like a huge, irresponsible waste of public resources. > However I don't exactly see how merely being observed in public amounts to > the dystopian surveillance state this article seems to imply.

It's the same argument against "I have nothing to hide."

Consider two people, both objectively innocent. One is surveilled, one is not.

The surveilled person, merely by coming to the attention of the government, is at risk of mistakes, misjudgment, quota satisfaction, resume building, budget justification, extortion by criminal government employees bad personal life and resulting sour disposition of the watcher, etc. Just because they became noticed.

The unsurveilled person is safe.

In firearms training, you learn not to point a gun at something unless you intend to destroy it. You should also not point a government at someone unless they have at least shown some reason beyond existence that it's worth potentially destroying their well being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Subject was abnormally aware of surroundings"

Isn't that the whole point of being vigilant?

</comment><comment><USER38> OT, but I just get

"You're using a browser set to private or incognito mode.

To continue reading articles in this mode, please log in to your Globe account."

Should that even be possible?

</comment><comment><USER39> Seeing my 12 year old daughter groped by a TSA agent because she "moved her hand too early" in the x ray machine really put things into perspective for me.

TSA is the department of domestic fear mongering. That's it.

</comment><comment><USER23> "But some air marshals ... say the program has them tasked with shadowing travelers who appear to pose no real threat .. a fellow federal law enforcement officer, in a third."

Who watches the watchers? Why, the watchers!

</comment><comment><USER13> "Subject slept during the flight" ??

You got me, guilty as charged.

<comment><USER40> Hitler and Bin Laden both slept sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Could a program like this just be practice?

</comment><comment><USER42> I dunno about TSA, but I'm am Indian male and I keep a beard and visited Sydney and Melbourne recently. I was singled out for "random" checks at every single airport. Even though the metal detector thing didn't go off at all. They were very nice and polite but I was a bit annoyed. After 9-11, it seems most western countries have become cautious to the extent of paranoia and cause inconvenience to normal people.

<comment><USER43> (Tagging dang -- am I crazy here for the following observation? Please advise.)

What is it with all the random European-Caucasian men coming in and commenting on how they're randomly selected all the time?

When someone feels like they're being selected-against for bias and when popular and well-researched evidence of such exists, you're minimizing and trivializing their suffering by making the same observation of yourself when you're the majority party. It's a form of passive and latent bigotry you might not even realize you're expressing. I'm commenting publicly and _separately from HNthrow22_ because plenty of you seem hideously blind to this.

Your case may be true; I'm not disputing that, but the consensus research position is that "people of color are more often mistreated" and this anecdote by the OP fits that position. Your anecdote fits the less frequent occurrences ("more often against minorities v. less often against the majority"), and so by mentioning it, you diminish and belittle the minority person who's being mistreated by suggesting your experience is of equal likelihood; it's not, and you're not being considerate of that fact.

As for me, I ambiguously appear to be of Middle Eastern or Cuban descent-- Persian, for the record--and noticed that I'm consistently selected-against for screening about 50% of the time whenever I have either a beard or an extremely well-maintained fade. Of the many, many times I've been down to scruff or a clean-shaven face, it has happened only once, with that singular exception being this past Tuesday night in Tom Bradley International in LAX.

In closing: there's nothing preventing you from voicing your less-likely experience, but by doing so, you're diminishing the more-likely experience faced by minority parties because there's inherently no differentiating context in individual anecdotes.

<comment><USER44> You are 100% correct, I made a similar post and had it flagged/deleted, albeit with a bit more anger in mine. Give up man, this is a safe space for the white SV bros to hang out, they delete articles about minorities/black people in tech are regularly, check out [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) to see what they remove. Don't mistake Hn for a discussion platform like I did, this is a curated SV accelerator funded PR platform to promote YC companies before anything else, the anger/frustration comes from this place parading/dressing up as a discussion forum, it is NOT.

<comment><USER45> I'm sorry you feel that way and would be glad for an opportunity to persuade you otherwise, but there's no mystery in why users flagged [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637105): it broke the site guidelines. Comments here need to be better than telling others to "fuck right off", even when they're wrong, even when the feeling is understandable. eganist's comment makes the same point more thoughtfully, and didn't get flagged.

<comment><USER46> Not making any statements about the post in question, but I do think it would be more helpful if posters where given reasons for why posts are being flagged and/or downvoted.

The legal profession exists because rules/laws are subject to all sorts of interpretation. And just as is the case in the outside world, it seems that, if at all, _the rules_ are cited quite frequently for no other reason than someone decided that they didn't/don't agree with something that someone said.

Hell, I've been downvoted a number of times for relaying _facts_ that answer questions people here are asking or for pointing out a duplicate post. As you can imagine, such experiences detract from the experience, but perhaps that is the point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> [https://my.mixtape.moe/ohbnhi.jpeg](https://my.mixtape.moe/ohbnhi.jpeg)

The website detects and blocks private browsing on iOS, but you can bypass it using Reader View.

<comment><USER48> "Look how terrible it is that the TSA may track you!

If you make it harder for us to track you, go away"

The double standards are amusing.</comment></comment>


Superblocks: Barcelona's plan to take back streets from cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/9/18300797/barcelona-spain-superblocks-urban-plan <comment><USER2> I have lived in Barcelona for about four years, and have followed Superblock development closely. Last Friday, I visited the site in the St. Antoni area. It was awesome to see the former intersection filled with people. They were seated, standing, walking, talking, having a drink, playing. It is a stunning transformation and an awesome improvement in the city. It makes me want to move to that neighborhood - Superblocks won't reach my area for a couple of years.

<comment><USER3> Are there any US cities doing experiments similar to this? All I hear in the news are NY's subway problems and crumbling infrastructure across the nation while politicians do nothing. A whole lot of innovation in the public sector seems to be happening in Europe and Asia.

<comment><USER4> Times Square itself was mostly pedestrianized about a decade ago and a smattering of other cities have done similar things.

The problem is that the way postwar cities were built in North America has meant that the overwhelming number of people still need a car to _get to_ the pedestrianized areas, so over the years most of them have failed.

<comment><USER5> I was going the comment that I wish American suburbs (even the inner-suburbs that are dense by US standards) were laid out in such a way that "Superblock" style redevelopment was possible.

The neighborhood in which I live (Reston, VA) was originally supposed to have several walkable "town centers", but all but two of them were built as standard strip malls, and one of the two that was built to original plan was demolished for a strip mall in 1994.

By happy coincidence, I can walk to work. But, grocery shopping is still a car ride away. And even if I could walk, I'd have to cross giant asphalt wastelands filled with distracted drivers.

<comment><USER6> Another case in point: Seattle has an outdoor mall called University Village. On a map, it looks like a walkable urban paradise but actually being there is a dramatically different story. There's a wildly-popular multi-use trail--the Burke-Gilman--that goes right next to the mall but direct access to UVillage from the Burke is not well-marked and involves crossing at least two roads. Access by bus is OK but you can tell that pedestrian access doesn't rank in the top five of priorities since one set of bus stops ends in three steps and the other set of bus stops accesses a pedestrian path that's almost always closed for one reason or another due to "construction."

Meanwhile, UVillage has an extensive set of interior streets with pretend stop signs for pedestrian crossings that drivers often ignore. And the mall owners keep building parking garages, closing off sidewalks for a year of construction in the process.

I have high hopes for the rebuild of Northgate Mall, on Seattle's north end next to a light rail station. The owners of Northgate filed their 129-page development plan with the city and they spend quite a few pages on how pedestrians will access the property, where people can congregate and play and exist without cars, and how the two additional interior streets will have calming and slowing measures to put pedestrians first. If the owners of Northgate Mall's written plans come to fruition as written, I hope UVillage's business will drop so they'll be forced to adapt in the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ahh this is a new article from 2019. I remember the 2016 Vox video when they were putting in the first Superblocks. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZORzsubQA_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZORzsubQA_M) Good to see Barcelona is going ahead with the Superblocks. Found a 2018 video by those great Streetfilms folks: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq2yd4QgL5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq2yd4QgL5I)

</comment><comment><USER8> Superblocks again! Popular idea in 1930s-1950s public housing. Peter Cooper Village in NYC is laid out that way.[1] The units near the roads are more desirable and higher priced.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%93Peter_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%93Peter_Cooper_Village)

<comment><USER9> There aren't a whole lot of businesses or transit stops inside Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village [1]. Barcelona, in contrast, is apparently planning to encourage multi-use development.

[1] I considered moving there, but much of it is actually not convenient to the subway or Citibike. And my prospective roommate wanted to be closer to the East Village. So, anecdotally, lack of transit and businesses is what makes the interior less desirable, not lack of car access.

<comment><USER10> Stuy Town is great. Gets so much hate. But I actually miss walking my dog around Stuy Town and speaking with elderly locals who had lived in the same apartment for 50 years more than anything else in NYC. The inner walking loop and fountain are great and they added a cafe a few years ago. Only issue is the distance from the subway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I note the opening says: "(Municipal elections today, May 26, will provide a crucial test for the plan.)"

Does anybody with familiarity with the area have a sense of how that test panned out? I can look up the basic results but wouldn't be familiar with how parties stood on the plan, and accordingly if people who backed it were successful or otherwise.

<comment><USER12> Ada Colau, which was the major behind the Superblocks proposal, was elected once again, although with some turmoil (basically she's from a left-wing party and got elected thanks to the votes of the previously France Prime Minister Manuel Valls who was running with a right-wing party). More info [https://www.thelocal.es/20190616/barcelona-mayor- reelected-a...](https://www.thelocal.es/20190616/barcelona-mayor-reelected- after-beating-separatist)

<comment><USER13> How is Valls seen in Spain? His public image in France was not amazing when he left (he was a socialist but left the party to join macron, and now you're saying he joined the right wing? )

<comment><USER14> well, spain... keep in mind he's only involved in the politics of barcelona, which is the capital of catalonia, which is only a part of spain. and he didn't even get that many votes, despite pairing with a well-established party as "ciudadanos". which have already broken the deal with him anyway.

in general, I'd say the consensus is that he's an opportunist. he knows how to play politics, but he's an opportunist. we are aware of his image in france.

in my opinion, he only joined ciudadanos for convenience, so he could enter the game in a decent position, and now he will attempt a transition towards the socialist party (if they want him, and it's still way too early for this, we probably need to wait 4 years until he's free of his current responsibility in barcelona). this is highly speculative on my part, but it's the way I see it. enter the scene through ciudadanos, and then distance himself through his actions, not leaving ciudadanos himself, but rather being rejected by the party itself. first by criticising the idea of ciudadanos being part of an agreement in madrid to have the support of an extreme-right party (Vox) so the right-wing parties could have the city council, and later, just a few days ago, by giving Ada Colau the support to be named mayor in barcelona, in exchange for "nothing". he's good at navigating the waters, he has experience at that, but everyone knows he's just an opportunist. he's already in the middle of the first scandals regarding some businessmen paying him 20.000€ each month for his involvement in politics. anyway, there are bigger things at play in catalonia with the independence process and all that, so in general people doesn't even care much about him. he's lucky to have that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> toper-centage I was hoping for more pictures. I wonder how this is different than other shared roads around Europe.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a series of 5 articles, each article having at least ten pictures. Not sure if you missed those, or you're asking for even more pictures. Could probably dig out some from the city government if it's the latter.

<comment><USER15> I didn't even notice it linked out to stories. I read it as five slides.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter is low-expectation IRC - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/10/twitter_is_lowe.html <comment><USER2> "[IRC] is the geek equivalent of being stoner, by the way, with roughly the same effect on cognition."

That's hilarious b/c I've been in previous lives, both a stoner and an IRCer, and I can't believe I never thought of this.</comment>


The Big List of Game Postmortems - from indie to AAA - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-postmortems/

<comment><USER2> Here's a good developer's postmortem from Secret of Evermore. I am including the web archive link because the original site is now hijacked by online casino spam.

There are lots of interesting nuggets about the scripting language developed for the game, banging against hard limits with cartridge sizes, multiple domain-specific compression schemes, etc...

He also talks about the making of the soundtrack, which was the first project done by the then-19 year old Jeremy Soule, who has gone on to developing the soundtracks for big games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, etc.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080701132130/http://www.super-n...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080701132130/http://www.super- nes.com/evermoreinterview.htm)

<comment><USER3> That sounds really fascinating, but I'm having a hell of a time loading the page. Do you know of any other way to get ahold of that postmortem? Can you pastebin a text-only version or something?

<comment><USER4> <http://pastebin.ca/2103365>

<comment><USER2> Thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the most part, this is an incomplete index of Gamasutra's postmortem articles. A _complete_ list of their articles can be found at: <http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/>

<comment><USER6> Quite a few of the late-90s post mortems (post morta?) were collected in a book called _Postmortems from Game Developer_ , which I learned about from Coding Horror.

[http://www.amazon.com/Postmortems-Game-Developer- Developers-...](http://www.amazon.com/Postmortems-Game-Developer-Developers- Top-Selling/dp/1578202140)

There's a kindle edition too. Recommended reading IMO.

<comment><USER7> Seconded. There's some technical content in the postmortems, and a lot of practical observations on teams and project management.</comment></comment></comment>


Neven's Law Predicts Double Exponential Growth for Quantum Computing - <AUTHOR> https://www.analyticsindiamag.com/can-nevens-law-take-us-closer-to-quantum-supremacy/ <comment><USER2> Quantum computers are really great at solving specific complex math. How long until they're great at solving easy math? How long until someone plays Quantum Doom?</comment>


How your looks betray your personality - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126957.300-how-your-looks-betray-your-personality.html?full=true <comment><USER2> I have a speculative (read: probably garbage) theory, orthogonal to the one in this article, that you can get some idea of a person's personality from their looks. My hypothesis is that as long as you are not too young, then the most common expressions that your face assumes - frowning, smiling, scowling etc - have some effect on your wrinkles and facial muscle development. So maybe by looking at someone, you can see some aspect of the history of their facial expressions and hence guess if they are generally a cheerful, miserable or sneering kind of person.

A corollary (also probably garbage!) is that one of the clues that helps you guess a person's nationality by looking at them is these similar aspects of 'face-shaping': either through the most common sounds they make while speaking their language, or the typical mannerisms of that culture. Obviously this would only work within a group of people that have broadly similar racial characteristics. My 'sample group' is mainly from western European countries.

<comment><USER3> My untested hypothesis is that your parents and peers expect you to act a certain way (based on your appearance) and many people accept these subtle nudges without resistance. So, it basically becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

<comment><USER4> I think that is a form of operant conditioning [1] mostly through subtle cues and social pressure.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's some (unofficial) theories that you can judge a person's MBTI type by looking at their facial features.

<http://www.socionics.com/advan/vi/vi.htm>

I don't think there's hard evidence of it though - just one's own experiences.

I can guess the P/J split (J types have a serious look) and the F/T split (F types usually indicate to you their mood with their expressions) with a quick glance at the face, but haven't done anything in a controlled setting.

<comment><USER6> Their MTBF, on the other hand, can be gauged by calculating a smoothed poisson distribution over their smoking, drinking and swearing habits.</comment></comment>


Feds announce they will stop regulating the number of cherries in cherry pies - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/articles/feds-announce-they-will-stop-regulating-the-number-of-cherries-in-cherry-pies/ <comment><USER2> Quoting from the article:

> " _...the agency is re-examining current regulations dictating that frozen > cherry pies are required to be at least 25 percent cherries by weight..._ "

The tone of the article seems to suggest that we should sympathetic to this deregulation but, if so, it's backfired since the implications are that cherry pies will be allowed to be arbitrarily less than 25% cherries by weight, presumably to save on costs. That doesn't seem like a good thing at all.

<comment><USER3> The pies that don't end up tasting good will all go away.

<comment><USER4> They very well will not. I can currently go to any supermarket and pick up a whole range of horrible (but cheap) products. The free market isn't magic.

<comment><USER3> > They very well will not.

True. There are always people who are willing to buy products that others don't like. However, you can probably find a premium cherry pie in that supermarket also. I'm sure that consumers can tell the difference between a cherry pie and a cherry flavored pie without packaging requirements.

> The free market isn't magic.

It is what it is. I used to work in a supermarket, and when a product's sales dropped, we removed that product from the shelves. This usually happened after we brought in some better, competing products. That was the free market magic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How To Pick An Ad Network? - <AUTHOR> http://howtosplitanatom.com/questions/how-do-i-pick-an-ad-network/ <comment><USER2> Just as my own personal anecdote, I've found that CPC AdSense style ads are near worthless, at least on non-targeted sites. I've had ads on the forums of my medium-sized site (<http://starmen.net/forum/>) and not received very much money.

The AdSense ads a lot of times don't even make sense. If you look today, there's a lot of ads about termites, which really is only visible in the title since a goofy server administrator changes the title to a random movie quote every once in awhile. Originally there was a lot of ads for 'mothers', but that's only because it's a website dedicated to the MOTHER video game series.

Of course I'm in the unholy combination of 14-25 year old technically-savvy viewers who pay no attention to advertising at all, whether by willful ignorance or intentional AdBlock. It's why Facebook can't generate any cash: Anybody below the age of 25 does not click on ads at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can choose more than one. A site I run shows adverts from about 10 ad networks. It's more to manage, but it's worth it to get the full range of offers out there. Also quite often you'll find advertisers are on multiple networks, offering different rates because of the networks differing cuts.

</comment><comment><USER4> A lot of ad networks suck big time. AdSense is decent if your site is content oriented, e.g. articles about specific thigns or whatever. If you run a service like I do however (getclicky.com) then these types of ad networks don't work at all. Plus AdSense seems to be real anal and your account can get canned at any time without explanation and no chance of getting it back. Wow, that's fun.

A lot of ad networks also have a 30-90 day pay delay which sucks when you're just getting started.

If you have a decent amount of traffic, say at least 2,000 daily visiors or 20,000 daily page views, you should be able to sell ads directly without any problem. You set your own price and cut out the middle man and swim in the money.

However the problem with this is that you have to deal with inquiries all the time, worry about billing (unless you have an automated billing system setup already for something else that you can integrate ads into as well). So this service came along called BuySellAds.com that we now use on getclicky.com for our ads. We still set the price and decide how many ads we want to sell, what size, etc. And they deal with all teh billing and take a 25% cut. I think that's reasonable for the automation they provide. Before we switched to them I was dealing with advertising billing and inquiries for many hours every month. They also allow you to cash out at any time. Because of this I highly recommend the service.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for that detailed reply, I've been looking for ways to sell ads directly and that site should come in handy. Appreciate the tip!</comment></comment>


Why I Think Go Package Management Is Important - ardan-bkennedy http://dave.cheney.net/2013/10/10/why-i-think-go-package-management-is-important

<comment><AUTHOR> package management important everywhere install app</comment>


Amazing new wireless tech: Breaking Shannon's Law - <AUTHOR> http://onlivespot.blogspot.com/2011/06/steve-perlman-unveils-amazing-new.html

<comment><USER2> "They don't use wireless energy."

Please tell me more about your magical energy-free signal propagation!

In all seriousness, Shannon's entropy limit only applies to a single variable, modulated at a certain frequency. The only reason we apply this limit to radio is because we treat each radio frequency in a given zone as a single variable. In fact, you're perfectly free to use directed antennas or interferometry to establish multiple communication variables on the same frequency.

Ah, and indeed, at 1:19, Perlman mentions each cell phone on a separate spatial domain.

Since they say it's a single cell phone antenna, I'm guessing we're looking at multiple towers and interferometry between them, possibly taking advantage of the intensity dropoff with distance and timing data for spatial discrimination.

<comment><USER3> That explains the "bubble" comment. Things could be addressed somewhat by location. However, a moving target would be tough to track.

<comment><USER4> Aren't we using some interferometry techniques to communicate with the Voyager spacecraft?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I very much hope I'm wrong but it sounds pretty fishy to me. When the guy in the audience asked the question about what modulation this new radio uses he got a marketing babble answer unworthy of a university audience.

Working in sensor networks we could really use one of these breakthrough technologies and in the past year or two I've heard at least three vendors give the exact same pitch but as of today there's no technical detail that gives me much hope.

<comment><USER6> Also, transmitting 30 miles. Is this an unlicensed frequency?

<comment><USER7> They have developed on amateur frequencies since the FCC denied them an experimental license.

<comment><USER6> So, 5.8GHz or 2.4GHz or 900MHz, or what? Are the 40s (MHz) still available?

I wonder how this beats the curvature of the earth, or is it being bounced of the ionosphere, or penetrating through the earth?

It is either a lost work of Tesla or a bad version of this Douglas Rushkoff novel...

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1887128905/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1887128905/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=littdidd-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=1887128905)

<comment><USER7> Amateur, not unlicensed:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocations)

While the 40M band beats the curvature of the earth quite reliably, I would expect that they are doing something in the UHF band if they plan on deploying this in licensed cell-phone frequencies.

Also the amateur band lets them transmit at much higher power than the ISM bands:

[http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2010/octqtr/47cfr15.245.ht...](http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2010/octqtr/47cfr15.245.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like interferometric based MIMO from the description. Not breaking Shannon's law in that case.

<comment><USER9> It is, I've been doing a bit of poking around in the patent applications filed by this guy recently and that seems to be the gist of it. Unlike normal MIMO though, only the base station has multiple antennas, the mobile stations have one antenna each.

This leads to the downstream bandwidth being much higher than the upstream, but given that video is going to drive mobile bandwidth growth that is ok.

Basically what's happening is that a training signal from each of the base station antennas is constantly being monitored by the mobile station, channel information gets calculated and sent back to the base station.

The base station uses the channel vectors for each of the mobile stations (updated frequently because this is _spatial_ multiplexing and mobile stations... move) to compute the signals for the entire antenna array.

The odd seeming stuff about energy not being transferred has to do with using a sort of inverse spatial coding where you can _aim_ signal nulls at mobile stations that don't want to receive particular signals.

Relevant patents: <http://patents.com/us-20110044193.html> [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch- adv.htm&r=6&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=pall&S1=\(%22Perlman,+Stephen%22.INNM.\)&OS=IN/%22Perlman,+Stephen%22&RS=IN/%22Perlman,+Stephen%22)

<comment><USER10> Can get the pdf here. Nice, Mvandenbergh! [http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT741...](http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT7418053) and here [http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATAPP...](http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATAPP12917257&id=qbcnAQAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=SYSTEMS+AND+METHODS+TO+COORDINATE+TRANSMISSIONS+IN+DISTRIBUTED+WIRELESS+SYSTEMS+VIA+USER+CLUSTERING+&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The "interesting" bit starts at 55 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER12> So are we supposed to believe that incumbent tech companies have no investments in new tech?

Canon is not working (or already passed) on the same stuff as Lytro? Samsung is not working (or already passed) on the same stuff as Nanosys? Cisco (or whoever) is not working (or already passed) on this type of stuff?

Anybody have examples of modern (within 10 years) stealthy startups/incubators that invented new hardware that revolutionized something?

<comment><USER13> _Anybody have examples of modern (within 10 years) stealthy startups/incubators that invented new hardware that revolutionized something?_

Tivo (just outside your 10 year limit though)

Flip Video

Roomba

SpaceX

Telsa

<comment><USER14> Can you really call something like Roomba a revolution? I've met a single person in my life with a Roomba. People everywhere still sweep manually.

<comment><USER13> You have to look at it context - not every market works as quickly as the consumer tech market.

In the vacuum cleaner market there have been two major revolutions in the last 30 years.

The first was the Dyson. It was launched in _1986_ and has slowly taken over the high end vacuum cleaner market.

The Roomba seems to be following a similar path. I know a few people who use it, and it has been a huge success for the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seemed more like a plug for opposition of America Invents Act than some new wireless tech to me..

Not to say they haven't made some astounding break-through, but I didn't get the impression that they revealed anything of substance. They claim to have some experimental radios working that are able to beat Shannon's law, but reveal no details around it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm really excited for the potential of wireless technologies like this to break the last mile death grip companies like AT&T and Comcast have. We are at the point where spectrum regulation/management isn't even necessary, except for legacy devices.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the meaning of 'law' has been lost here. When I was doing my masters in Info./Comm theory I remember coming across a much ridiculed paper that claimed to break Shannon's law. It was pretty funny but of course I can't find it now since a google search only turns up hits for this.

</comment><comment><USER7> What are the odds the FCC allows it?</comment>


Octopuses and squids can rewrite their RNA - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/04/06/octopuses-and-squids-can-rewrite-their-rna-is-that-why-theyre-so-smart/ <comment><USER2> Original paper: [http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6](http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(17\)30344-6)

Does anyone know if RNA recoding happens in other species, or where it started from? The paper mentions that RNA recoding sites slow down genomic evolution, so what species out there have the most conserved genomes + recoding sites?

This paper was freaking fascinating.

<comment><USER3> According to [1, probably paywalled], it's present in both vertebrates and invertebrates, but not plants or fungi, indicating that it's animal specific, but still quite ancient. What the authors have found is not that cephalopods can edit their RNA, but that they do it a lot more than has previously been reported in other animals.

I assiduously avoid studying the brain and behavioral complexity because that stuff is incredibly complicated, but I'm pretty skeptical about the authors' claims in the popular press that this is likely responsible for---or even particularly connected to---cephalopod intelligence or learning. My bet would be that in general, you get intelligence by complicated wiring, but that you don't necessarily need complicated neurons to do that wiring. By analogy, what makes the latest Intel processors so much better than an 8086 has a little bit to do with the 64-bit architecture, but a lot more to do with the radically smaller transistors.

[1] [http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev- biochem...](http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev- biochem-060208-105251)

<comment><USER4> > By analogy, what makes the latest Intel processors so much better than an > 8086 has a little bit to do with the 64-bit architecture, but a lot more to > do with the radically smaller transistors.

I'm not sure you can draw that distinction. I don't program the transistors, I program the architecture, and the 64-bit architecture is massively better than the 8086 architecture. But the 64-bit architecture would not be possible without the radically smaller transistors, because it requires so many more of them, and that wouldn't be possible (on a realistic die size) without the smaller transistors.

<comment><USER5> Alternatively, on on 3,000 nm a scaled up 64 bit CPU would actually be slower due to latency issues for many workloads than the 8086. Further a scaled down 8086 would be slower on modern transistors than a 64bit CPU on most but not all workloads so transistors are the most important difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Taking inspiration from the cephalopods, our definition of intelligence also needs to be revised more frequently. Recently, we've started acknowledging more of the complexity in other animals, like dolphins for example.

I like their color changing behaviors as well[0]. It's is a form of communication we don't fully understand yet.

[0] [http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/how-octopuses-and-squids- chan...](http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/how-octopuses-and-squids-change-color)

<comment><USER7> I've thought for a long time that before we focus on communicating with extraterrestrials, it makes more sense to find ways to communicate more fluently with existing beings on our planet, starting with ones we share a common intelligence with (dolphins, raccoons, cephalopods, etc).

We take the animals on this planet for granted, as "lesser than," but what's to say they aren't as intelligent and just express it in different ways? You could say "well dolphins don't build cars or xboxes!" and I would say "dolphins also aren't systematically destroying the planet they live on."

I know we're slowly bridging the gaps of communication with animals (for instance, dogs who can understand verbal language or dolphins who can associate objects with words), but it would be interesting if there were more fluent ways of communication besides verbal. I think it would do us well to master these.

<comment><USER8> I agree, learning to really communicate with some other species on earth seems like a worthwhile challenge that would push us in interesting directions.

On another thread (about dolphins finding ways to eat octopi without getting suffocated by still-alive-and-fighting disembodied tentacles), some similar thoughts came up.

I have to wonder if one reason for slow progress is that we've bored our subjects. Maybe we should send poets and musicians as ambassadors, not literal-minded scientists.

I read of a researcher who played recorded dolphin sounds for dolphins, and she wanted to teach dolphins to say names she made up for three objects. I don't think the results were very encouraging. But that might be because the dolphins found it pointless.

Dolphins are aware of one another's sonar. So, they would never need to vocalize "Look at that over there." They already know what pod-mates are paying attention to. Why would they verbalize about things that are already obvious on the pod's echolocation radar? They might not have a use for concrete nouns. Dolphins' vocal communications might deal with abstract things like social dynamics, emotions, intuition, and humor.

One other clue: I read of a recording of an upset, irate dolphin. When slowed down significantly, it was clear the dolphin was mimicking it's trainer's reprimands. So, we have to start by admitting that their processing speed is way higher than ours. They're also the only animal with a more highly folded cortex than ours.

These are creatures that can be taught a command that means "innovate" \- do something different that you haven't shown me yet today. Maybe innovation is a key aspect of their language. Maybe we need to think way outside the box about what a language could be.

As for dolphins and building ... they don't need protection from sun, rain, and snow; vast swaths of ocean are just the right temperature for them; they can sleep with half their brains at a time while swimming; and they are not interested in stockpiling food for later. What do they stand to gain from building?

What dolphins lack in material culture, they might make up for in social life, poetry, philosophy, and music. Maybe they're looking at us with pity: "Their pod dynamics wouldn't be such a mess if only they didn't waste so much time and effort building stuff..."

<comment><USER9> -What do they stand to gain from building?-

I would assume dolphins still die from lack of food, disease, and predation. One(human) would assume they might want to build something to reduce those odds?

<comment><USER10> You're assuming another intelligence values the same things as humans.

> I would assume dolphins still die from lack of food, disease, and predation.

Hell, we can find humans that don't value such things. Take a look at Christian Scientists, they'll forgo treatment of disease out of fear of rejecting the "divine Principle".

Dolphins use tools to hunt and catch prey. They also engage is pretty complex behaviors to eat.

It took humans roughly a hundred thousand years to find a solution to death from a lack of food through agriculture and we have opposable thumbs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really don't like their cookbook metaphor. It does nothing to really illuminate the crux of what this allows the creatures to accomplish. As a lay person with a strong interest in such things, I very much wish this article were written with more of an eye towards "Because they can edit their own RNA, they can do thus and such in real terms." instead of hand-wavy metaphors that "it is like the scribe was changed to a master chef and now he can alter recipes."

<comment><USER12> Do you have a better metaphor?

<comment><USER11> No. That would require understanding what this means and I don't understand it because their explanation is lame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't more that that their RNA is constantly being rewritten than the cephalopods themselves doing writing? What force is responsible for choosing the new RNA?

I would not say it is the animals themselves doing the writing as a force of will, sentience, or consciousness, which is what the headline implies.

The article itself says:

> _Their RNA is extensively rewritten, particularly the codes for proteins > found in the animals ' neurons._

Tune in next week for more headline pet peeves

<comment><USER2> That's a valid question, for which you shouldn't be downvoted, but you should know that it's not anything about it being a force of will by the animals, more that it's a new behavior of how the animal cells are diverse. In other words, maybe the animal is in higher temperatures that trigger a gene to begin executing this particular 'circuit', which causes proteins to form that make slightly more responsive nerve cell ion channels. Where previously we assumed that variation was spread mainly through genes in DNA, this headline shows that there are other ways beyond just DNA-> RNA-> protein.

I may have totally borked this attempted analogy, so hope that helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Self modifying code! Maybe nature uses Common Lisp macros.

<comment><USER15> [https://www.xkcd.com/224/](https://www.xkcd.com/224/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Original Article (thankfully not behind a paywall):

[http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6](http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(17\)30344-6)

<comment><USER17> Looks like cephalopods have useful, active, and conserved ADAR activity that changes an Adenosine to an Inosine in many RNA transcripts.

ADAR (Adenosine Deaminase acting on RNA) is a protein that recognizes specific RNA sequences (likely, specific structures) [1]. And upon recognition it switches an RNA's 'A' to an 'I' (a non-canonical base pair (RNA is usually made of A, C, U, & G only)). The ribosome compiles a non-canonical 'I' as if it were a 'G'. So this process effectively intercepts some DNA sequences prior to compilation and swaps some (very particular) A's to G's with respect to coding a protein. This process was found by noticing this very consistent 'mistake' between DNA and and expected sequences in high-throughput analysis.

So during the minification of the genetic code prior to compiling, under certain conditions some very specific characters are swapped for out-of-bounds characters that are read-through as an alternative character (if the surrounding code suggests it should). So you can have alternate builds without changing either the source code or the compiler, but instead by turning on/off a bit in the the minifier (expression of ADAR protein).

This process happens a bit in humans and flies, but seems to happen a lot in squid - specifically in the code around compiling neuronal proteins.

Curiously they show that this editing process slows down the evolution around those neural proteins that utilize this mechanism. Because the ADAR protein recognizes the structure of an entire sequence set in order to perform its A->I swap, if there is any mutation in the entire sequence set, no A->I swap occurs. And if no A->I swap occurs, the neural protein likely doesn't work as well, lowering the fitness in any individual that has sequence drift anywhere in that entire recognized region. In organisms that do not have this A-I shift mechanism there is more evolutionary sequence drift in similar proteins than in Cephalopods which utilize the A->I swap. Super cool!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADAR1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADAR1)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the summary. You should be happy to know that because of this I went to your company's website, and realized it was the second time I have done so after reading a good in-depth comment of yours (or perhaps another cofounder).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does that mean that techniques such as RNA-Seq ([1]) will fail on these species?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA-Seq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA- Seq)

<comment><USER19> RNA Seq will still work, but you'd probably notice more variation over time within a specific individual if you did multiple sequencings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> there was a 2015 paper (same lab I think) that showed very widespread A-to-I editing in squid also [https://elifesciences.org/content/4/e05198](https://elifesciences.org/content/4/e05198)

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if this might account for the relatively short life-span of cephalopods?

</comment><comment><USER22> Pfft! Altering RNA. That's nothing. Once I was in a Los Angeles book store, named Bodhi Tree, where a woman was giving a lecture on altering human DNA using psychic power.

</comment><comment><USER23> Do this mean we need to eat more of them? I'm all for it :)</comment>


San Francisco real estate going to collapse: Angel investor Calacanis - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/nTg5cw1YeAs?t=290 <comment><USER2> My wife and I live in the SF Bay area and we own our primary residence. I would _love_ to see real estate prices collapse. Why? Because we would like to do a lateral move (i.e. sell our house and buy a different one in our area for about the same price) but right now it's too expensive. The price of both our house and the one we'd want to move to have both doubled since we bought ten years ago. If we moved today we would have to pay capital gains tax and our annual property tax would nearly double. If housing prices collapsed and went back to where they were when we bought we could make the move essentially for free.

That's the insidious thing about rising housing prices. In order to cash in on your gains you have to actually sell your house. But then you still have to live somewhere.

<comment><USER3> FYI you would not have to pay cap gains on your primary residence. But yes, I feel the same way. I'm stuck in a starter house because I couldn't easily get back in the market.

<comment><USER4> I thought the capital gains exclusion ended at 500k? Because if a house in SF doubled in value, the gain is likely more than that.

<comment><USER2> Yes, exactly right. We have considerably more than $500k in gains. It's a nice problem to have, but it's still a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the things that I think rarely gets mentioned WRT remote work, especially when the "you can hire workers anywhere in the world" platitudes get bandied about.

While distance may not matter as much, _time zone_ absolutely does. I think many companies have finally realized that for software teams outsourcing to Indian and East Asia, with a colocated team in the US, is _horribly_ inefficient. As a sometimes dev manager I refuse to manage people where one of us has to be online from 10-midnight or some nonsense like that to get a teeny window of overlap.

<comment><USER6> You can usually find a way to make it work with any pair of timezones (e.g. North America and Europe, North America and Asia), but when you throw in a third distant timezone it becomes a huge pain.

At Mozilla, we had people working on the same project in North America, Western Europe, and Australasia. The meetings alternated between inconveniencing Europe / Australasia, but the additional latency of having all 3 timezones involved in decisions really slowed things down.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I agree, you can "make it work", but not without a real negative cost to efficiency and employee morale. I don't know anyone that doesn't hate that "super early or super late" time span, and it just sucks for everyone. Over time I think many of your best employees will just refuse to work those kinds of hours indefinitely if they have other options.

I specifically contrast that to when I worked with some excellent devs in Brazil who were only a couple hours off and the whole project and relationship was fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a short term prediction - it will be interesting to see how remote work plays out over time.

I had done it a few years back and it is very disconnecting, that human interaction is important. Remote staff might be fine for a few months, but those remote people may be without local community - being a nerd in rural parts, I don't relate as much to this community as I would in a more nerd populated area. I think a lot of the dynamics of the bay area is there is a lot of competitive dynamics at play not just in your company but peers in your community,

I can see where on both sides (management/staff) it can add additional stress with lack of immediate one-to-one interaction and increased distance monitoring/recording.

<comment><USER8> It makes a huge difference where you're living while doing remote work. Living just outside the reasonable commute range of a major city, but close enough to get there outside of rush hour is IMO a great compromise.

<comment><USER9> This is my dream scenario. I couldn't fathom having to fight horrendous traffic for 2 hours every day, but I'd be fine to do it once a week/on an altered schedule that avoids rush hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can't help but wonder, is this going to be like offshoring, where we thought it was a good idea, but it only works for some tasks and companies? Will we go through a phase of globalization of hiring (for remote) then pull back into onsite?

</comment><comment><USER11> The assumption that economies of agglomeration just don't exist because it's possible to increase remote work seems like wishful thinking.

Hopefully increased remote work eases the diseconomies of agglomeration in expensive areas like SF.

<comment><USER12> I think that makes sense. Always seemed strange that you wouldn't want to break the strange-hold on "setting up your company where the talent/expense" is. I'd have thought a decent model for something leaving incubation would be to almost build a campus/kibbutz somewhere nice and cheap. You're leaving education, we'll give you a nice house, a salary that leaves you better off once rent deducted - and base yourself somewhere nice. For starting out, gives you an opportunity to build up some cash. For the employer your staff are less likely to quit on you. For wherever you choose to base the company, you're providing infrastructure, young/educated tax-payers etc. Plus as people do eventually leave, they're reasonably likely to remain in the area to start their own startup.

<comment><USER13> Many companies do break that strangle-hold, deciding that saving money is more important than finding good talent. It's a perfectly reasonable and very common business model. There are niches that generate $5m per year and require exactly 5 talented engineers but have no use for more; if you find one, you can just settle yourself into it and there's no reason to locate yourself based on talent availability. There are even niches where it just doesn't matter whether any of your engineers are talented.

You don't hear very much about those companies on most discussion forums because they're not very exciting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > it's interesting what you say about talent, you know, it can be found > anywhere. [...] they didn't realize that they could literally find talent > anywhere around the world and hire people in ways that they never even > thought they could prior to covid 19.

Sorry, but that exchange is complete bullshit. Nobody in 2020 believes that talents only exist in SF. Any successful company in SF has other offices around the world, so they know as a fact that talents can be found elsewhere and know how much that costs. Remote work is well known since decades by companies, they definitely knew that was a thing and decided (for the majority) to not do it while being aware that was an option.

If that's the case, that you are managing a company or HR team and didn't know that was an option, I'm sorry, but you're completely clueless and shouldn't be the one allocating/managing resources.

</comment><comment><USER15> Calcanis is framing this as a victory for globalization: create a global rat race to employ people all over the world in their homes, pay them less money and have them eat the costs of eating, heating etc. Many businesses already attempt to operate in this way, with massive outsourcing of just about everything. These same companies are often heavily financialized and some are zombie companies today in the current economic reality. The reality is that it takes a huge effort to get a good collaborative team of people to work together well on multiple levels. It takes even more effort to keep morale and momentum up. It only takes a few poisonous office politics players to wreck the above. You have to have a strong core and clear direction and that is much harder if remote participants have never physically met. I do think silicon valley is going to take a big economic hit for the next ten years but reinvention is synonymous with the area so it will be interesting to see what emerges next...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To be clear - he specifically says collapse will come to commercial real estate, he also mentions 10-20% reduction in rentals/homes.

<comment><USER16> The rental market in Beverly Hills has already deceased 15-20%. The number of people moving out of luxury condos like 10000 Santa Monica Blvd seems extreme (30-40 available units).

<comment><USER17> How much are those condos? Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it's clear to see that corporate real estate is going through a paradigm shift. Before this crisis, I remember Stripe was having a lot of trouble finding a big enough space in SF before deciding to move to South SF. What if Stripe just didn't have a big office and expected most of their base to work from home?

What isn't clear to me is what happens to residential real estate. Sure, some of us, who would prefer to live in suburbs out where it's cheaper, or maybe in comitted relationships with kids would prefer that. But I don't think the the group of people who are maybe single, or prefer the recreational aspect of living around people in a city would go away. There's a balance which isn't immediately clear to me. If more people exit the city, does this effectively reverse a lot of the gentrification we are seeing and sharply stop growth? Or if it goes the other way does the city become _more_ exclusive for those who want to live there?

<comment><USER19> There will always be places that are safer, more fun, better schools, etc. Proximity to work opportunities is only one factor. Also, commercial real estate can shift to co-working spaces which will have higher demand as more companies move remote (many people prefer that than working from home, esp if it's a short commute and paid by their company). I think the biggest impact would be on the suburbs as families would have more flexibility in picking where to live. We'll likely see some price drops but as he mentioned I don't think we will see dramatic price drops. Not to mention that most companies still plan to go back to the office when things reopen. Might be too early to make predictions about remote work.

<comment><USER18> It would be funny if WeWork comes out ahead after all this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Its still going to be expensive. Maybe a 1000sqft house in the hood will be 800k instead of 1.2 mil.

</comment><comment><USER21> People and businesses may well choose to move out of the city for quality of life reasons, but the other claims he makes seem weak due to some assumptions he seems to be making:

People in occupations that could work remotely have not been looking for remote work positions.

Increase in demand for remote workers will not increase price paid to remote workers.

</comment><comment><USER22> Keep in mind a lot of people are associating remote work with "remote work during a global pandemic."

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting point about why does being a contractor vs employee have to be binary? Couldn't there be a third option for gig workers where employees have flexible hours with progressive benefits e.g. pension + sick days after working a certain amount

</comment><comment><USER24> I would love for this to happen as it's quite a shame really how most companies still require you to move to US to work despite being a tech company.

So much talent is not even considered due to archaic immigration laws of US.

<comment><USER25> It's miserable trying to schedule meetings between Europe and the US/Pacific time zone. Even if every is remote, being in the same time zone is everything.

<comment><USER26> Latin America solves this nicely. I've done a significant amount of work with teams in central and south America. It has been fantastic.

I also relocated to Puerto Rico myself at the end of March. The rise of remote work and the tax benefits here make it too good to pass up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not going to collapse. The factors that drove it up, lack of willpower to build anything, growth in workforce, not being Texas, are staying.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have been saying real estate is not going to do well long term even before the plague. Absolutely no reason for real estate to represent > 60% of wealth in the future. Breathing the same air as someone else usually a liability, only rarely worth the risk. Once people start doing remote relationships only meeting for procreation, real estate will go to zero. Yes this might take a while, and I am not waiting for it... but it's going to happen.

<comment><USER29> Location isn't important just for procreation. There are reasons that certain places are more attractive to live than others other than that (climate, accessibility for trade goods, proximity to natural physical recreation venues, etc.) Shifts in technology may change exactly what locations are more attractive, but they won't change that some locations are more attractive and that land in attractive locations is scarce.

<comment><USER28> Agree. But there will definitely be a lot of losers in the locations that lose value...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So does this solve the housing crisis?

<comment><USER31> Not when supply is constrained by mountains and political policy and the price is set by a pair of married engineers buying a house..

<comment><USER32> Married, childless engineers, with a couple of success startups...</comment></comment></comment>


How Culture Affects Hallucinations - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/how-culture-affects-hallucinations/ <comment><USER2> > In our culture, people suffering from schizophrenia or other forms of > psychosis are more likely than members of other cultures to recognize their > hallucinations as a symptom of pathology, but they also tend to have > hallucinations that are very violent and negative.

I can see how encouraging positive relationships could be beneficial for anyone with such a symptom, regardless of figuring out if it's a symptom of pathology (depending on the culture context.)

<comment><USER3> I wonder if this also has to do with the mythology of Western religion that says humans are fundamentally flawed and bad. Western religion tends to promote this idea that we are fundamentally bad and our only hope for salvation lies in Jesus. With this mindset then of course if you hear a voice coming from inside your head it must be bad and violent.

I grew up in an extremely fundamentalist Christian cult and I heard many talk fearfully about demon possession and experiencing supernatural phenomena that they attributed to the Devil. Of course later in life I realized that many of those people were probably mentally ill, and not recognizing the symptoms for what they were because they saw things through a different lens, which was one of a world in which Satan was out to get you.

It makes sense that in a culture that reveres the ancestors one would tend to attribute hearing voices to ancestors as well, and could have a more peaceful relationship with their own abnormal experience.

<comment><USER4> That should be easy to study. Both Judaism and Islam don't know the concept of original sin, that's a Christian idea. Judaism holds that humans have capacity to do good and evil, and that everyone has a choice. Islam teaches that humans are fundamentally good and have an innate capacity to follow the will of God. Someone must already have looked at how schizophrenia manifests itself in devout Jews and Muslims.

<comment><USER5> > Someone must already have looked at how schizophrenia manifests itself in > devout Jews and Muslims.

That'd be an interesting study. If this exists I'd love to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading about DMT hallucinations is pretty fascinating, but at some point it conincidental to DMT's popularity, I became firmly convinced that a feedback loop had developed.

More people took trips after hearing wild trip reports, and with those in mind, either seemed to fixate on the reports they read, finding their version what they imagined the report to be, or told tall tales to be cool.

Much like the guy who turned into a glass of orange juice while tripping on LSD, the interdimensional elf gnomes seem to be this legend lore of the DMT trip now.

Nonetheless, whatever the fad imaginary spirit animal is these days, it's interesting to see clinical proof that most hallucinations require a priori knowlege to envision. The mind doesn't seem capable of conuring concepts never experienced.

<comment><USER3> Yeah it isn't so much conjuring new concepts as it is that the hallucinating mind connects existing concepts in ways never experienced before. So someone would never normally connect the concept of their self identity with the concept of a glass of orange juice while sober, but while high on LSD this could seem like a plausible scenario, and the synaptic connections made during that trip can persist afterward and leave a lingering sense of bizarre connection.

I read a very interesting piece on the use of LSD by creative people and how some felt they benefited immensely from taking LSD precisely because of those random connections that they formed between mental concepts that they had. The basic theory was that creative people in these scenarios had minds full of concepts that would tend to work well together and could benefit because there was a high probability that the connections that formed were valuable and useful ones.</comment></comment>