My Summer at an Indian Call Center - <AUTHOR> http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/indian-call-center-americanization

<comment><USER2> _Today, almost half of BPO employees are women, many of whom outearn both of their parents. Free-market cheerleaders, conflating rising wages with rising spirits, are quick to applaud India's "maturing" markets. But the truth is more complicated: Studies show that once people move out of poverty, increasing wealth does not necessarily lead to happiness._

Yeah but it sure cuts down on malnutrition. The above paragraphs is a shibboleth for well-off far lefties. And boy does reading it piss me off. What a way to miss the forest for the trees!

This article started out great but then slowly started to go bad. Our plucky western kid, son of doctors, with a liberal arts education freely admits he just can't quite grasp the basic geography of Australia.

If that was a badly done attempt to compliment the Indians, good. Badly written, but good intent. If it was an honest admission of his... jeez is this what liberal education does to a son of two doctors!?

The writer also goes the extra mile by sharing a bed with a stranger, but all he seems to get out of it is a few sentences mentioning that he shared a bed with a stranger, and this one time the power went out. Not exactly many deep insights form all this self imposed hardship. Or as the kids say these days, cool story bro.

Lastly, the author spends a lot of time writing about one depressed guy.

There was some good stuff, globalization, the changes in Indian society, and it could have been a great article. But instead it seems to be just a vague money doesn't bring happiness story, also westernization is kind of sucky. You don't say.

<comment> brown9-2 Presumably malnutrition is not much of a concern after one has left poverty. The author is citing studies that show that once you are _beyond_ poverty and have the means to attain whatever things you want, then "increasing wealth does not necessarily lead to happiness."

<comment><USER3> Its probably not much of a concern for the person working in the call center, but what about the family they're sending money back to? I'm not sure if giving money to your relatives so they aren't malnourished will increase your happiness, but it should certainly increase theirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I submitted the same story in one page here yesterday <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2735814> , funny how things work here.

Having said that, this is a great read. What worries me about India is that we are producing a generation whose sole competency is in answering phone calls and faking who they are and the only selling point is that they are cheaper labor than the western workers. This isn't a sustainable in longer term. We are bound to find labor markets that are cheaper (we already are) or business processes that are more efficient (we already are). For a sustained development India needs to ramp up her infrastructure and invest in her people in a way which produces value rather than ups elling her people cheaply. Outsourcing should just be a stepping stone to industries that are more valuable.

<comment><USER5> Remember, the whole IT/BPO industry of India makes up just 5% of Indian GDP and it has directly employed just 2-3 million people. Most of the hype surrounding it has been created by the clueless western media - "OMG, India is eating our jobs".

India has achieved great strides in other industries in recent years (steel, coal, automobile, textile, agriculture, crafts, jewellery etc.) which should be highlighted and encouraged. Enough of this call-center nonsense.

<comment><USER4> 5% of world's 10 largest GDP is huge. At 5% of 1.5 Trillion dollars its about 250 Billion US Dollars. Also, the growth in BPO is also much more significant than the regular industries.

In any case, it is hardly insignificant (or nonsense).

<comment><USER5> Where did that $250 billion come from? Typo?

The Indian IT industry is worth $60-75 billion at present. Remember, it's the whole IT industry. BPO sector hardly touches even $20 billion. Given its value, the hype it has earned for more than a decade is ridiculous and unjustified.

<comment><USER4> Yea.. Sorry about 70 Billion. My bad. That's a valid argument to make. But given the growth that the BPO industry has seen and given the industry employs mostly young people. I think its still important to consider its cultural impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To work in a call center, you need to be able to speak, read and write English. You do not need a university degree, you do not need to possess a particular technical skill set. Most call centers will offer just enough training to get an employee going.

India has a huge number of young people who may not be able to join the IT companies, manufacturing industries, or the booming private financial sector because they may not have the education, inclination or aptitude to do so.

Call centers, much reviled as they are, provide an avenue for hundreds of thousands of people to hold down a well paying, stable job. I think the author's experience there is fairly typical, but there is a crucial difference in perception.

What the author finds depressing (or pointless) is actually a gateway to a "middle class" life for many thousands of people. I am sure if the author went back in time to Michigan in the 20s, he would have similar things to say about workers on the automobile assembly lines. But while the great American manufacturing boom of the early 20th century is celebrated as a gateway to prosperity, a fairly similar thing happening in India is looked upon with a somewhat negative bias.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Twenty years ago, before India opened its markets to the world, career prospects were bleak. Men might have been laborers or government workers, but even the most ambitious women often gave in to social pressure and stayed home."

My 70 year old Indian grandmother was a school teacher. She had five daughters and all of them became teachers or professors. None of them spent their childhood in cities.

<comment><USER8> It is a very superficial, stereotyped statement (not any worse than those about Aussies, I guess), and people were obviously doing things other than laborers, government workers, and homemakers. However, the BPO era has added a significant number of jobs of questionable worth and the statement does talk of a real sociological phenomenon.

<comment><USER7> >It is a very superficial, stereotyped statement (not any worse than those about Aussies, I guess), and people were obviously doing things other than laborers, government workers, and homemakers.

Yes. There were several statements that were plain false, and I picked that one because I had proof-of-falsehood.

>However, the BPO era has added a significant number of jobs of questionable worth and the statement does talk of a real sociological phenomenon.

I think it is entirely possible to write about this phenomenon without having to stretch the truth.

EDIT: I just realized that the article doesn't really say anything about Aussies.

<comment><USER9> One anecdote certainly isn't "proof-of-falsehood", be the veracity of the original statement what it may.

<comment><USER7> I meant proof-of-falsehood for myself. That is, I knew vaguely that a lot of things that were written in that article were not quite true, but I didn't have facts that showed them to be false, except for the quote in my original post. I didn't write all the facts I had against that because I felt that, if you do not believe my anecdote, offering more than one doesn't strengthen my case, and if you choose to believe it, I needn't offer more than one story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Call-center employees gain their financial independence at the risk of an identity crisis.

I don't quite understand this concern. Do people worry any other paid actor is at risk of forgetting who he is?

<comment><USER11> I don't think many performances go on for 10 or more hours per day.

<comment><USER10> "A star's day is generally a very long one (12-16 hours)"

[http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4778488_movie-star-spend- workda...](http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4778488_movie-star-spend-workday.html)

<comment><USER12> True, but most of that is not spent performing. It is spent waiting to perform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> (I'm Australian)

 _"Just stating facts, guys," Lekha began, as we scribbled notes, "Australia is known as the dumbest continent. Literally, college was unknown there until recently. So speak slowly." Next to me, a young man in a turban wrote No college in his notebook._

I can't comment on the dumbest continent thing, but it is true that the Indian accent often sounds very fast to Australians.

 _"Australians drink constantly," Lekha continued. "If you call on a Friday night, they'll be smashed—every time."_

lol.

 _"Oh, and don't attempt to make small talk with them about their pets, okay? They can be quite touchy about animals."_

WTF?? Where did they get this from? Can anyone explain the source for this?

<comment><USER14> Australian here too. They get this from the same place we get our ideas of Indian culture - urban myth and hearsay.

Regarding slow talkers, it depends on where you come from in Aus (stereotypically rural and/or Queenslander). I travelled across the US and when I approached NYC I was eager to hear people speaking at a 'normal' rate, as I was a bit fatigued from having to slow down my rate of speech (I'm also known as 'the quiet one' among by friends). And when I got to NYC... New Yorkers still didn't speak fast enough for me. I didn't have to slow down, but it was still noticeably slower than what I was used to.

As for college being unknown here until recently, maybe they mean recently compared to India? 150 years is a drop in the bucket to several thousand...

<comment><USER13> The speech thing is interesting. Thinking about it some more, I suspect the big difference with Indian English vs Australian is that the Indian version seems to have smaller gaps between words (to my ears at least).

On US accents - have you seen the US Accent Test[1]? taking it as a foreigner is pretty interesting. Apparently I have a Northeastern accent (I'm from Adelaide).

[1] [http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_ac...](http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_action=take&obj_id=9827)

<comment><USER15> Sydney-sider here. I got a Northeastern accent as well. Although it may be worth noting I was born in Adelaide but moved away while young.

<comment><USER16> Another Adelaidian here. Also Northeastern :S

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> highly recommend movie "Outsourced" <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425326/> \- funny, seems (never been to India myself) realistic while without extra cynicism, and personally it made me feel better toward the Indian guys/gals on the other end of the phone line.

<comment><USER18> Haven't seen the movie but there is also a TV series. Its not very realistic though (according to a real life culture trainer).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Truth is, 90 percent of the people there, you will find, they'll do the most stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world."

My observation as well :-)

<comment><USER14> Americans have a great can-do attitude and are lucky to have some of the wealthiest land in the world. These two things let them exploit their smarts very well. But bighearted? Not really. Domestic charity doesn't really stand out from the pack and foreign aid is a lesser proportion of GDP than their contemporaries. Their foreign aid is more effective than elsewhere because of the size of their economy, but as a proportion of what is earned, it's not competitive.

My personal experience in the US is that the people are very welcoming and friendly, which leads me to think that Americans are bighearted to people they personally know, but not so much to strangers - eg witness the powerful currents of public opinion against welfare or universal healthcare that don't really exist in contemporary countries.

<comment><USER20> Are confusing Americans and American politics? I haven't been to many countries but I find Americans the kindest and helpful people around.

May be there are some advantages to a 2 party system but it left the whole country divided and there seems to be no middle ground anywhere in sight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I feel sorry that they have to put up with abusive behavior. Just hang up and move on. But can you really just ignore abuse? It must be leaving a mark somewhere. I have also had abusive users and customers and I also ignore them. But can't get it out of my head sometimes. It keeps bothering me.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what all these people would do if we ever managed to build a voice recognition system that actually works.

<comment><USER23> Well, a call centre _is_ a voice recognition system. It's a black box, you plug phone lines into one end, and your back-end corporate databases into the other. Artificial artificial intelligence, I've heard it referred to as.

<comment><USER22> It's really sad that its cheaper to have a person act like a computer than vice-versa. Its like we are going through the industrial revolution, only backwards.

<comment><USER24> It's a matter of algorithms and processing power and data points at this point. With the number of people working on it, we're close. Computer systems have come leaps and bounds in the last 5 years, and computational linguistics is not an easy problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd be happy if such _outsourcing_ jobs stop flourishing in India. By cutting the amount of _easy_ options to make money, it will motivate/challenge students to do well and aim for a much better career.

<comment><USER26> But alas, my friend, as long as the current exchange rate prevails, there would be many opting for the _easy way_.

<comment><USER27> One, being a bit pedantic but exchange rate has nothing to do with the income gap. If I measure distances in feet and you in metres, would you say that distances in my country are 'smaller'? The term that you should be looking at is per-capita income at purchasing power parity.

Two, economies go through development cycles. They start out in the low-skill jobs and then move on. For example look at the shipbuilding industry. Moved from the west to Japan in the 60's, who then used it to move to other heavy industries. After Japan had grown skills and incomes increased the industry moved to Korea. The same cycle is in process right now, with the industry now moving to China. Don't hate outsourcing, but use it to build a better future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You've gotta check out the troll comment by emmarose on that page... highly recommended.

<comment><USER29> Troll comment? She was illustrating how clueless SHE was and how it must be hard for CSRs to deal with customers like her.

<comment><USER28> "Troll" as in I'm pretty sure she was making the story up. Judging by her perfect writing style and the degree of tech-literacy necessary for her to find the narrative to begin with.</comment></comment></comment>


The fallen price of indie games - <AUTHOR> https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/02/09/the-fallen-price-of-indie-games/ <comment><USER2> There has to be a better way of pricing games than picking a number out of the air and sticking it on your product.

Consider how an IPO used to be priced, they'd just crunch some numbers in a spreadsheet, add in a heavy helping of fudge factors, and it'd spit out a number that was completely arbitrary. Now it's done by auction so it's much closer to the market's expectation.

You'd think Steam's Green Light program would help people feel out a price, it's positioned in the right place. Seeing what people are willing to pay for your game in terms of hard data would help considerably.

<comment><USER3> I think there are a few problems with how the video game market functions;

The first is off-pc, theres an explicit monopoly on each platform, and the producers amount to a grand total of 3.

Second is the lack of control game producers have on off-pc pricing; every game is $60 (iirc $40 for wii) and thats the end of it. "Arcade" games (small, no hard copy games on consoles) are set at $20, or $15, depending on console. And thats the end of it. There's little flexibility, a right only granted to those who manufacture little xbox indie titles, or maybe for emulated games and such ($0.99 super mario!)

A third is that media industry surrounding video games is generally irresponsible; they either refuse to touch a game, or bring it up every other moment if they like it (for indie games, AAA are clearly paying for it)

Which in turn leads the consumers to be generally irresponsible; games blow up, and are bought independent of price (ie reddit users often bumrush kickstarters and other video games, and it's not clear to me an educated decision is being made), or a game is ignored. If the price is abnormal for the genre, its often brought up, but I doubt its the _real_ reason the game was dropped (my opinion, lack of a network)

Another is the lack of a resale market, and a lack of open source. The xbox one, for example, merely uses the disc as a code to download the game, and afaik, locks the game to your xbox. Gamestop simply doesn't lower prices beyond 10% of its initial sale (except in rare cases), and its common to find wii games still at $40. Ebay and craigslist tend to be the only hope, and there's not much hope.

For pc, the indie game community operates as a smaller version of the AAA industry, with an apparent amnesia of its predecessors, and somehow a lack of awareness towards the open source community in software. For reasons I don't comprehend, there is almost no open source standard within indie communities, outside of game engines and a few of the elder genres (ie roguelikes) and thus there are relatively few games of significant complexity actually produced. Any game with significant complexity often raises straight to the top of the market, where it is again often purchased independent of price.

In general, the market lacks the competition necessary to make pricing function correctly, and the consumer base is generally uninformed, and those who should be informed, the "journalists" and "critics" are even less informed, if not outright malicious (in terms of promoting a healthy market).

Im of the belief that gauging the market price is a mistake; the market will not conform to expectations.

<comment><USER2> You make a lot of good points about expectations driving prices more than any traditional "value" here.

Steam has games ranging from pennies to hundreds of dollars if you buy them fully loaded. Clearly there's varied demand.

Maybe the indie developers have an image problem where their titles aren't deemed worthy of a >$10 price-point regardless of the effort involved in producing them.

That being said, I know people who've succeeded despite their crazy low prices ($0.99 on sale, $3.99 regular) because they make up for it in volume. Steam isn't their only source of income, either, they have a foothold in the PS4, Vita, iOS and XBox space. As an indie you need to port to as many languages, platforms, and regions as you can afford to cast as big a net as possible.

Remember, one of the best-selling games of all time is Minecraft which was, for the longest time, put out at the remarkably cheap (in terms of $/hr. of fun) price of $9 during beta.

> For reasons I don't comprehend, there is almost no open source standard > within indie communities...

Ogre3D and a few sound-libraries notwithstanding, you're right. It's terrible. While there are tools like Blender (and Blender Game Engine) there's relatively slim pickings compared to things like the wealth of resources a typical web developer enjoys.

It's not about people giving away their hard work, it's about people sharing and through that making it easier for everyone to produce games. The Pixar initiative to share their OpenSubdiv project is a great example of how that could play out: Now you don't have to waste your life writing a sad, non- performant version of subdivision surfaces. You can do more productive things.</comment></comment></comment>


Intern dies after 'working until 6am for three days' at Merrill Lynch - <AUTHOR> http://metro.co.uk/2013/08/20/intern-moritz-erhardt-dies-after-working-until-6am-for-three-days-at-bank-of-america-merrill-lynch-in-london-3930924/

<comment><USER2> There was almost certainly drugs or some sort of heart condition involved. Unfortunately, congenital defects can go unnoticed until circumstances like these.

The idea that three long days, alone, is what killed him is ridiculous. Going a few days with just a couple of hours of sleep a night is something many people do at points in their lives (e.g. working parents with small children when they get sick). And the "100 hour" weeks mentioned in the article are stressful, but again, nothing a working mom (or dad!) with a baby hasn't experienced.

<comment><USER3> agreed. what ridiculous sensitization of long work hours and "banking culture".

none of this stuff is unique. people can survive a week with 4 hours of sleep, while performing physical labor 20+ hours per day...all without dying.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_SEAL_selecti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_SEAL_selection_and_training#Phase_1:_Physical_Conditioning_.287_weeks.29)

how about 260 hours with no sleep?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Gardner_%28record_holder%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Gardner_%28record_holder%29)

every time stuff like this floats to HN's front page, i wonder where this community is heading.

[EDIT] Seals can sleep up to 4 hours in a 5.5 day period.

<comment><USER4> _people can survive a week with no sleep, while performing physical labor 24 /7...all without dying_

Sure, most people can survive like that. Others probably can't. I would like to think that being a banking intern is less physically taxing and dangerous than being a Navy Seal.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention that the SEALs that make it to hell week have been sifted quite a bit already. The "weakest" are already gone by then

<comment><USER3> yes, probably not the best example. however, i'll put my money on 99.99% of participants not dying from 2-3 hours of daily sleep for 3 days.

i dont remember myself dying while pulling this off more times than i care to count.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sensationalism aside, this kind of work culture makes for pretty grim reading.

"One intern, who worked at one of the American "bulge-bracket" firms, memorably described the experience of working all night only to start the new day an hour later: "Every intern's worst nightmare is what's called 'the magic roundabout'," he told the Standard, "which is when you get a taxi to drive you home at 7am and then it waits for you while you shower and change and then takes you back to the office.""

[http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/inside- the-w...](http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/inside-the-world-of- the-all-night-army-of-banking-interns-8776134.html)

There's a certain machismo attached to pulling all-nighters. I think many developers can relate to that.

<comment><USER2> Lame. My last job had showers on site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> BTW a question regarding HN ranking.

This story has now 26 points after 41 minutes and is placed 83th (was 30th when I entered) whereas a story posted 4hrs ago ("Mattermark Index: Y Combinator Summer 2013 Companies") has 27 points and is on the front page.

Can someone explain that? I though that new stories with similar score should be much higher.

Are there negative votes on submissions possible (and I don't see them due to karma thresholds)?

</comment><comment><USER8> Makes no mention of the hours he worked being actually tied to his death. Sensationalism and baiting much?

</comment><comment><USER9> Back when I was a junior developer, I spent months working literally 16-18 hours a day for weeks. There were also my fair share of 26 hour days. I burned out eventually which lead to depression, and lack of motivation, and all kinds of bad things personally and professionally.

But I didn't die. I'd be willing to bet there were more relevant health related issues with this young man.

Edit: I also developed an unhealthy addiction to energy drinks and caffeine. I gave up the energy drinks because my chest started to hurt, but the caffeine is still required to fend off head aches.

</comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of the Ogilvy employee who died, allegedly of overwork.[1] With the risk of being seen as a corporate apologist, I'll say that it's really tough to tie this directly to overwork and not to a preexisting condition.

E.g., { People Who Die } ∩ { People Who Are Overworked } ≠ { People Who Die From Overwork }

[1] [http://adage.com/article/global-news/young-ogilvy-china- staf...](http://adage.com/article/global-news/young-ogilvy-china-staffer-s- death-raises-issue-overwork/241500/)

<comment><USER11> _preexisting condition_

I appreciate what you're saying, and of course we don't really know what happened here, but outliers are people too. Humans vary in a number of different traits. If 1% of interns will suffer an injury from working 100 hrs/wk, (hopefully a larger percentage will "suffer" from fuck-you-i-quit- itis) that is an argument for interns not working 100 hrs/wk. It might also be an argument for not hiring "weak" interns, if it's possible to weed them out in an interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I absolutely hate this shitty type of journalism. Not only is the implication that this would directly kill a young man absolutely false - it is also disrespectful both to the deceased and to his family to turn what would otherwise be a normal death (most likely caused by a seizure) into a political spectacle just to deplore banks.

The lengths we go to promote our own political agendas is sickening.

My condolences to the family.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think you can die from overwork at that age. This is, frankly, nothing compared to some of the long hours we worked in project groups at Georgia Tech from CS class final projects.

It's more likely that he had an unknown condition that surfaced due to bodily stress than that he dropped dead from overwork. Well, that or he was keeping himself awake with pills.

</comment><comment><USER14> A decade ago I would go weeks working 18-20 hour days, 7 days a week. It wasn't good for my health, cost me my marriage, and started a dependency on alcohol. However, it certainly didn't kill me. I'd like to know the cause of death here, because working 100 hours a week isn't entirely uncommon in our line of work.

</comment><comment><USER15> I saw in another article that Erhardt had been reportedly died due to a seizure. What happened to him is absolutely horrible. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable about such matters can chime in about whether exhaustion actually might have triggered the cause of death.

<comment><USER16> Even if his death isn't related to his work schedule in any manner, 100+ hour work weeks are an absolutely insane concept.

<comment><USER17> /s/100+ hour work weeks/100+ hour unpaid work weeks

<comment><USER18> implying that ibanking interns do not get paid.

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Intern-Salary/Merrill-Lynch- Interns...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Intern-Salary/Merrill-Lynch-Internship- Salary-E440.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Mandating them encourages drug use to get there, stay awake, etc.

They ARE dangerous. It isn't like humans stay awake on their own for 3 days. Drugs are required to do that practically speaking

</comment><comment><USER11> " _Bank of America_ Merrill Lynch"

</comment><comment><USER20> This title is about as meaningful as saying, "Intern dies after taking shower" or "Intern dies after moving to United States."

Correlation does not imply causation; 100 hours of work is something parents in their 30s and 40s frequently do. For a 20 year old, this alone would just be tiring. He died from something else.

Flagged for sensationalism and linkbait.

</comment><comment><USER21> Correlation does not imply causation.</comment>


A game to learn/practice Vim commands (html/javascript) - <AUTHOR> http://portnine.com/vim/game

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this game as a fun project to learn javascript and jQuery, and to work on my web design skills a bit. Let me know what you think and if it is any fun! :)</comment>


A Programming Hobby - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/07/12/a-programming-hobby <comment><USER2> I think building stuff is hugely underrated. When I look around most people are working on stuff that concerns being interfaces to complex systems (lawyers, doctors, customer service), communication (formal and informal jounalism, technical writing, making data comprehensible), or management (making projects happen).

There are, of course, much pleasure in these things, but what I enjoy most is building and releasing new "stuff" into the world. There is perhaps something primitive about building articfacts that give you pleasure, enhance your life, or make you more productive.

<comment><USER3> Building things is awesome. It's too bad that the people who get more respect tend to be managers. Think Jobs vs Woz. I bet a good number of apple users don't even know who Woz is.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, Woz hasn't had direct involvement with Apple (other than as a shareholder) in decades. He's definitely not responsible for "new" Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" In many ways, I always kept my distance a bit, never caring much for advanced methodologies, studying design patterns, proving algorithms, or learning cutting-edge languages before they're stable and practical. I've always written code for the sake of making the product I wanted, not for the code's own sake."_

Refreshing to read something like that here on HN, especially when you share this instrumental approach. If I remember correctly, DHH also said something along those lines somewhere.

<comment><USER6> So did Rasmus Lerdorf. Ick.

I prefer a hybrid - choosing to care about the craft and take it seriously, but make the improvement thereof useful to producing things.

<comment><USER3> PHP originally stood for "Personal HomePage tools". My guess is that it was never meant to be what it is today.

While PHP has some rough edges and language level design flaws, it supports everything one needs to write structured and well designed code.

This PHP hate shit is just stupid.

Disclaimer: I use python.

<comment><USER7> It was definitely never meant to be what it is today, and that's one of the reasons that most informed people with a choice choose not to use it. It may support everything one needs to write structured and well designed code in theory, but it makes it far easier to write poorly structured and poorly designed code. I've never seen a real-world PHP codebase that wasn't a disaster.

<comment><USER8> Little known fact, PHP was created by a grad student from Miskatonic university.

<comment><USER3> Linux was created by a student, too.

<comment><USER6> Google "Miskatonic" so you can be in on the joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ah self awareness is a curse. I can certainly relate to Marco's and by reference Matt's struggle.

Early on in life there is the ever present exchange "Hi, I'm Chuck I <foo>" where <foo> is some tag, some referent, that hopefully is common with the person you are talking too and that sets up a series of linkages, defines behaviors and expectations, and can inform on conversations that may or may not be interesting. When I was in my mid twenties I realized I was saying by rote "I'm an engineer." And that would then grease the conversation along.

But after a while I had things I did at work, and things I did as a hobby, and things I was interested in, and had a few awkward sort of exchanges that went something like "Hi I'm Chuck, I'm an engineer" ... various technical discussions ... "what do you think of the hypothesis that petroleum is a biologic process?" ... pause ... "Uh, I thought you were an engineer."

Then once I realized the conversational rut I was in I started just cutting it off, "Hi, I'm Chuck."

Now that is really funny around introverts since you leave them with no place to go. And a lot of folks I socialize with are fundamentally introverts. So that isn't a good conversation starter. :-)

But once you realize its a conversation starter, not a definition of who you are, you can go back into discovery mode, like "Hi I'm Chuck, I'm curious about that gizmo you're carrying ..." etc.

And you realize, as Marco and Matt have you want to know "who" you are. I've decided I'm the equivalent of the 'curiosity' thing you pull out of GLADoS in Portal.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, but is it really that complex? You could "I'm a software engineer" or "I'm an electrical engineer" and the it doesn't have to go into aquifer building or whatever. Anyway, I don't really think it matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Programming is to Software Entrepreneurs what Mathematics is to Architects. Means to an End.

<comment><USER10> I think this not true. When you say "Software Entrepreneurs" I feel like you are thinking of it only as a set of people trying to make quick photo sharing apps and sell them for a $1B valuation. There is a large amount of software "entrepreneurism" where programming is more than simply a "means to an end" ... unless we reworked your example as " ... Architecting is to Architectural firms" ... sure on some level the firm is more interested in getting their clients separated from their money, but architecture is prime part of it.

<comment><USER11> When people say Software is eating the world. What does that mean ? Software is being used as a tool in many different domains to solve problems. I think people who focus on software development to serve software development is in the minority.

<comment><USER10> It's a cute thing to say is all that really is. It's also fun to say that a "A lawyer's job is winning cases for their clients. Using the knowledge of the law is simply a means to an end." But the reality is two, the goal and so- called "means" to achieve the goal are closer aligned than you suggest.

Sure, OK, perhaps for a very simple SEO based scheme software product, maybe the "programming" is a trivial part of the whole deal.

On some level, it's like a fruitless discussion. Unless, you or anyone seriously claims that for the majority of software, the actual programming is really trivial or tertiary part of the process, then you would just be wrong. Otherwise, I don't really see what the usefulness is in debating programming as "simply a means to an end."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like Marco is in the same place I was in my late 20s: burnt-out.

<comment><USER13> How did you end up moving past that (assuming you did)?

<comment><USER12> This could be the subject of an entire series of blog posts. Look up adrenal fatigue; which is a controversial and not medically recognized diagnosis. I basically followed the approach others have outlined.

I didn't take the gingko, black liquorice, and pig adrenal tissue cause that wasn't a thing in 2008. But everything else. Remove toxic people. Quit your crappy job. Remove dreadful stuff from your TODO list. Tea instead of coffee. Sparkling water instead of booze. Sleep a lot. Do yoga. Figure out which foods upset your digestive tract (for me that was dairy and gluten).

Burn out is a real thing and almost every person I know in tech that has been doing it for a while has dealt with burn out.

I hope to write out my thoughts and experiences but I'm wary because I want to be helpful without coming across as a medical professional, a new age guru, or a self-help blogger.

<comment><USER14> I'd love to hear more. I've been through this more than once and don't have a good answer on how to get out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes! The tools are a means to an end. The goal isn't to impress other developers with advanced knowledge of design patterns. The goal is to impress users. If your products impress users (which Instapaper and Tumblr certainly have) I think that makes you a damn good programmer.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. It's completely possible to impress users while simultaneously writing code that is abhorrent. It makes you a good "UX guy" I suppose, but not a good programmer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you have barely touched code in 6 months, you are not a programmer. Moreover, if you haven't bothered to learn design patterns, you probably never were.

<comment><USER17> So, I occasionally hear someone espouse the utility of design patterns. As a Haskellite, I tend not to see the point, and wonder sometimes whether they're all just kludges to, e.g., work around not having first class functions. I've actually written more Java than Haskell, and have taken a (not great) class on design patterns, so I'm aware of these concepts; I'm just yet to see the point.

Is there a good explanation of design patterns conducive to a "functional" programmer's point of view? Most importantly, one that doesn't motivate the _problem_ in terms of objects? (Objects in the solution are fine, but if the problem only arises when you use objects I might as well go back to Haskell.)

The one pattern I know holds its water is the Visitor pattern.

<comment><USER18> Yes, you're looking for Norvig's "design patterns in high level languages" presentation, here:

[http://norvig.com/design-patterns/](http://norvig.com/design-patterns/)

Fair warning: it reiterates Rayiner's point upthread.

<comment><USER17> That is _precisely_ what I was looking for (and from Norvig, no less). Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Optimally plan your Christmas meals with PingPots - <AUTHOR> http://pingpots.com

<comment><USER2> If this is your personal project, you should add "Show HN:" to the title. This draws more attention and feedback (sometimes a little harsh).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a little hacked together holiday project, interested to hear how you find it useful/useless!</comment>


Why I Joined HackerOne as CEO - <AUTHOR> https://hackerone.com/blog/marten-mickos-why-i-joined-hackerone-as-ceo <comment><USER2> Wow, ok. So I took a look at their sales video[0] to figure out what they product is about. And well ...

Today I learned that people in Siberia don't have mailing addresses - at least that's what they claim in their sales video. But luckily with Hackerone you can pay

> [a] security researcher in Siberia who doesn't have a mailing address

...

I find this horribly insulting. (And I'm not even from Russia).

[0] [https://youtu.be/1T6GSa0qPNk?t=99](https://youtu.be/1T6GSa0qPNk?t=99)

<comment><USER3> That's me, and I'm quite embarrassed as I never paused to consider how it could be interpreted.

That was a real story. Shortly after we established Facebook's bug bounty program, we received several vulnerabilities from a brilliant computer science student at Tyumen University (in Siberia). His dorm did not accept international mail, he did not have an accepted government ID (didn't drive), and figuring out how to pay him was a multiple month ordeal that Facebook's accounting team was completely not prepared for. It's something that we take for granted but international dispersements to _every_ individual with internet access is actually an extremely challenging and unsolved problem.

<comment><USER4> That's interesting, and a really good answer. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PR piece.

"Because I want to win in the start-up lottery and cash out." would be more honest - and there is nothing wrong with that.

but this claim of making the world a better place - oh come on.

<comment><USER6> Didn't he already do that? And maybe its some of both - help others, while looking for a good opportunity for self.

<comment><USER7> He presided over the sale of MySQL to sun. We, non VPs, got screwed there. 5 figures for the top developers, 7 for the vps, 8 for the CEO, and 9 for the founders!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > __ _$5 million in bounties has been paid to 2,000 contributing hackers for > finding over 14,000 vulnerabilities_ __

Thats an average of $357 /vuln - or $2,500 per "hacker" \-- or if you assume everyone shared the 357/vuln that would only equate to $.17 per hacker per vuln.

That seems really really low.

What % of the $5MM or the 14K did the top hacker or group take home?

How long is the tail of zero $$ per hacker in the community of the 2K?

(I met the founder on bart some time ago and was trying to get their services at my last company, and I was just literally this morning thinking about H1 as I need to have my PII SaaS system evaluated... but I am interested in the economics of this as well)

<comment><USER3> Great questions. We'll line up a more analytical post on the topic as I don't know all the answers here, and we all should. In the interim, here's a few rough from memory answers:

> Thats an average of $357/vuln

The 14,000 includes resolved bugs where no reward was offered (Bounties are optional with ~40% of programs not offering any. i.e., "responsible disclosure", a drop in replacement for email@example.com). If you reduce the set to reports where a reward was offered, the average is closer to $750.

> What % of the $5MM or the 14K did the top hacker or group take home?

The top earner last year took $280k.

> How long is the tail of zero $$ per hacker in the community of the 2K?

This is a diverse group. Several hundred are active "hackers" driven financially. The rest are developers, hobbyist, technical consumers, who just happened to get curious about something in particular or even stumbled across a security problem in passing (this is far more common than you'd reasonably expect).</comment></comment>


PHP Scalar Type Hinting RFC Accepted - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/scalar_type_hints_v5

<comment><USER2> Already submitted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9214464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9214464)</comment>


We plan on not breaking code after Rust 1.0, except for gated features - <AUTHOR> https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2013-December/007588.html <comment><USER2> We said this in the early days of Ember. Specifically, that while we were still making a lot of changes to Ember before 1.0, that we were going to go to strict SemVer compatibility post-1.0.

This made it clear to early adopters that things were rapidly changing, so you needed to be comfortable with that. It also helped people understand _why_ there was so much breakage leading into 1.0, because it was in service of a much more stable post-1.0.

Since 1.0, we take Semver pretty seriously, and I think the strategy of being pretty unstable pre-1.0 in service of a very stable post-1.0 has paid off.

<comment><USER3> Actually, this is already built into Semver. 0. _._ is reserved for development and conveys no stability promises. See point 4 on [http://semver.org/](http://semver.org/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It still feels too early to say that. Every time I look at Rust, it _still_ feels incredibly different from the last time I looked into it. I'm excited about this language, and I hope they get it out of the gate and popularized before Microsoft's counterpart is ready... but it's so far from solidified right now that I'm worried they might be rushing into 1.0

Of course, nobody wants their language to be forever a toy instead of something actually _used_ , so I get the the pressure to settle things.

<comment><USER5> > Every time I look at Rust, it still feels incredibly different from the last > time I looked into it.

I think this is a _good_ sign, as far as stabilization goes. It means they're frontloading all the experimentation, rather than saying "maybe next version."

<comment><USER6> But when does the front-loaded experimentation phase end? When is it "good enough" to get a stable, usable release out there into the wild? It's easy to say "Before the end of 2014." but I think we potential users need to start seeing something more definite. While Rust isn't at a Perl 6 type situation just yet, it creeps closer ever day. There are a lot of us who want to use Rust today, and we can settle for some imperfections. What I don't think we can settle for is a language that remains in an alpha or beta state after 5 years, or even 10 years.

\- Pacabel

<comment><USER5> > but I think we potential users need to start seeing something more definite.

Why? A potential user isn't owed anything; Mozilla hasn't done a marketing push to capture you, gotten you to sign up for a developer program, or offered Rust up as the solution to any given problem you have. They haven't promised you anything. They're just tinkering with Rust like you'd tinker with a custom car in your garage. Also, unlike Perl 6, there's nothing that's laying fallow in an increasingly-desperate way while they work on Rust.

On the other hand, a programming language is forever. I'd rather have a programming language a decade late, that I can use for 40 years, than a programming language right now that gets outmoded after four.

<comment><USER7> _there 's nothing that's laying fallow in an increasingly-desperate way while they work on Rust._

Oh, don't worry. There's plenty of activity in Perl and the CPAN that's not waiting on Rakudo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Go also has a very strict compatibility promise: [http://golang.org/doc/go1compat](http://golang.org/doc/go1compat)

This has been fantastic because I know my Go program won't break anytime in the foreseeable future (Go 2, if I were to guess, is still a decade away). Additionally, since the compatibility promise is not only in the language but also in the standard lib (to be expected, perhaps), I know that that isn't going to break either.

It is pretty neat for a new version of a language runtime/compiler to be released and to just recompile your app and see dramatic improvements.

This is in stark contrast to a language such as Ruby, where each version released, even when they say is backwards compatible, has been at least a minor headache to upgrade to due to behavioral differences.

NOTE: I'm NOT NOT NOT comparing Go to Rust. Let's not open that can of worms.

<comment><USER9> The golang link says "binary compatibility for compiled packages is not guaranteed between releases." Compare to, say, g++, which takes ABI compatibility very seriously, even to allowing you to select an ABI at compile time: [http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/abi.html](http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/abi.html) (maybe Go has that feature too, I don't know).

Anyways, I can see how from a Ruby perspective, Go's policy may appear strict. But from my C-family perspective, "we reserve the right to break ABI compatibility with each release" is a liberal policy, not a strict one. What's even neater is seeing your app get better without a recompile!

<comment><USER10> Three main issues:

1) GCC didn't stabilize its C++ ABI until GCC 3.2, released almost 15 years after C++ support was initially added to GCC, and 4 years after the ISO standard was finalized.

(This is where I say "You damn kids get off my lawn!".)

2) At this point, ABIs simply don't matter for the Go in the same way. There is no dynamic linking in the original Go implementation, and you're not expected to be static-linking modules that you don't have the source for. That's just a basic assumption of the Go ecosystem: You have the source.

Once the binary is built, it will continue to run so long as the kernel's userspace ABI remains compatible.

The GCC Go implementation can, of course, implement a stable ABI if it wants, and that will probably become necessary if and when it supports dynamic linking (I'm not sure if it does yet, I've only used the original Go suite).

3) Go is designed to compile extremely quickly. Fast enough that you really shouldn't care if your program has to be recompiled. It should take seconds, not minutes or hours.

<comment><USER9> 1\. Yep. A stable C++ ABI is hard, and limiting, and in a practical sense, C++ has never had one. You simply can't do something like return a `vector<int>` from a function and have it work reliably across different dylib versions. Your options here are "distribute the source" (Microsoft with MFC) or "don't use C++" (Apple with ObjC).

2\. Right, they don't matter _yet_ , because Go has pivoted to target servers instead of end user software. ABI compatibility is a first world programming problem: "we are so mature that we care about applications that have already been distributed to end users running correctly against later versions of libraries that will also be distributed to end users." Go isn't there yet, but it can cross that bridge when it reaches it.

3\. Aw hell naw. If my end users have to recompile my software after reinstalling anything, then I've failed as an engineer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not an expert in Rust, and things are moving too fast to keep up, but does anyone know what UI bindings is/will-be available for Rust.

After all, it is intended as a browser development language. I wanted to try it out versus Vala - but am not sure if GTK is going to be the official binding.

</comment><comment><USER12> I just studied Rust tutorial and my GOD it is amazing! I love RUST.

</comment><comment><USER13> investing in creating a new language is too much risk, very few languages get the popularity needed to guanranty their longivity

i really wonder why so many are so willing to take this risk, google with Go the mozilla foundation and Rust

<comment><USER14> Seems more languages catch on the last 5-10 years than they did in previous decades.

Here a few that weren't around (or just starting) 5-6 years ago, but have nice communities and even industry adoption now: Go, Scala, Clojure, Clojurescript, Coffeescript.

> _I really wonder why so many are so willing to take this risk, google with > Go the mozilla foundation and Rust_

What risk? Google spends all of like 10 million dollars per year for Go (if we are to count the salaries of several developers, which it also uses to make other stuff), which is spare change for them.

And the reason is that they find that there is a need that isn't properly covered.

<comment><USER15> The risk is that you are using a legacy language in some of your products which no one else knows how to write in.

<comment><USER14> Noted how Google didn't wholesale adopt Go? And also how they started using some of it here and there (a YouTube MySQL balancer, a downloads tool) AFTER there was decent adoption of it already?

Not to mention that at the scale of Google, they can pay for the continued development of 5 or 10 languages and/or compilers to suit their needs (and, well, they do: Dart, Closure, Go, V8, their Unladden Swallow experiment etc etc), as well as train stuff to use it. And it's not like an half-competent Google employee can't learn how to "write in" Go in a week or so.

So, it's not a case like some random startup chosing to use an obscure language -- those indeed would have the problem of not finding enough hires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Offtopic but are there any good examples of projects using Rust?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Rust compiler itself and Servo are the two largest. There are a bunch of smaller projects on GitHub too, if you search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Still hate the name 'Rust'</comment>


Scott Kelly Reflects on His Year Off the Planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2016/03/01/468239527/scott-kelly-reflects-on-his-year-off-the-planet <comment><USER2> I love space stations and astronauts and that robotic arm! Makes me feel like a kid again.

Which is probably why, every time I see photos of inside of the international space station, I think: _Damn, I 'm cool! I use the same laptop that astronauts use!_</comment>


Our secret sauce - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/our-secret-sauce.html

<comment><USER2> This article is completely missing the point of what makes Google successful. It might have been having a better product that helped them at first, but right now the single most important factor keeping people coming back to Google is: habit.

Everyone is used to going to Google to search. Heck, you often hear people use the word google instead of search. This habit is hard to break. Switching to the competitor is not just a few keystrokes away. It takes breaking the habit of reaching for Google whenever I need to search.

It takes more than a slightly better product for folks to break this kind of habit. It's the same reason why Google has trouble competing with established search engines in other countries, even if Google has better results.

When Google came out it was a LOT better than everyone else, so people switched. Now the competitors are barely catching up to Google, or at best making incremental advances over Google: not enough to get people to switch.

<comment><USER3> altavista.digital.com was a reflexive habit two years before Google was. Now, there are kids who have never heard of it.

There's no doubt in my mind that if Google had failed to keep up with SEO spammers, someone else would have replaced them just like they replaced AltaVista. The value proposition would be simple: No more poring over search results to find the one non-spam page you were actually looking for buried on the fourth page.

<comment><USER2> sure. If google didn't manage to keep their results relevant then a competitor could provide a significant improvement and a good reason for folks to switch. Google however doesn't need to have the best product however, they just need to keep the gap between them and their competitors and their momentum will keep them ahead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 'Google has been searching the web for nearly 10 years, which is far longer than our major competitors.'

As far as I know Yahoo has been around for just as long as Google. Cool article though.

Side note: I think it's cool that both Google and Yahoo came out of projects started by Stanford students.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Supply side economies of scale" - Google must enjoy extraordinarily low costs per hardware, given the sheer amounts they keep. Based on their volume, their discounts must be at least around 90%. I wouldn't call that a "reasonably small scale".

"Lock-in" / "Network effects" - I would argue that both come into play by the sheer fact that almost all web sites are being optimized towards the way Google's algorithms (are supposed to) work.

</comment><comment><USER6> Once again Google plays down the significance of the PageRank patent. Is search amongst the giants really as similar as he says here? I know that Google has had to do a lot of tricks to avoid gaming of PageRank, but isn't PageRank still the core?

<comment><USER7> What's more significant is the theft of the Yahoo text ad model/patent, and the multi-billion $ payoff for its use. I don't know exactly how they pulled that off, but the patent's worth must be around $100 billion.

As a postscript, that patent came from Overture (which came from the Idealab incubator), which itself was a billion-dollar buyout. I wonder if a company will in turn buy its use off Google for even more?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does external threats ("competition is just a click away") work as such a great motivator after the company's headcount passes 1000?</comment>


PHP for Pirates — Interactive Debugging in PHP - <AUTHOR> https://presentate.com/bobthecow/talks/php-for-pirates

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing, very interesting! I'm a var_dump(); die(); type of coder. I'm still going through the sliders but this got me very excited to find solutions, or better ones at least. Though I'm a Linux user and codebug and macGDBp are not supported - hope to find more tools, or other solutions while reading the slides. Nice post!</comment>


Is there a future for a social aggregator aimed at personal use? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mygarble.com/ Garble's my creation but I'm wondering, will this idea ever take off? Alternion seem to manage to stay afloat but nobody I know has even heard of it, let alone uses it. Threadsy tried and failed. There's NetVibes, but, again, nobody ever uses it for personal use as far as I know.<p>Technically Garble is possible. But can it ever take off? I think I've been wasting my time. <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the text as a comment, because I can't see how to view it...

+++

Garble's my creation but I'm wondering, will this idea ever take off? Alternion seem to manage to stay afloat but nobody I know has even heard of it, let alone uses it. Threadsy tried and failed. There's NetVibes, but, again, nobody ever uses it for personal use as far as I know.

Technically Garble is possible. But can it ever take off? I think I've been wasting my time.

+++

I'm looking for other people's views here, essentially.</comment>


Amazon Reviews - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1001250201 <comment><USER2> Fun fact: Placards of these reviews are scattered around some of the new Amazon buildings in Seattle

</comment><comment><USER3> I was unable to find my all-time favorite review, which is for a 55 gallon tub of lubricant. Here's an excerpt:

"So I "took the initiative", as women like men to do, and rolled the barrel out into the living room. "Ready to tap the keg?" I joked, and by "keg" I meant "55-gallon barrel of personal lubricant." She looked at me all shocked, and said "That's it, I'm out of here!" I asked why, since she didn't need to run to Walgreens for more lubricant - there was plenty right here. But she didn't answer, and got up to leave anyway."

Find the rest here: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B005MR3IVO/R1LF7VHD9NF8G...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B005MR3IVO/R1LF7VHD9NF8GI?ref_=glimp_1rv_cl)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you like that there's an entire subreddit almost dedicated to funky Amazon reviews: /r/wtfamazon. Not everything there is great but there often is a few gems :).

</comment><comment><USER5> The uranium one was good:

> "I purchased this product 4.47 Billion Years ago and when I opened it today, > it was half empty."

<comment><USER6> I cannot resist picking nits: shouldn't it be: "... when I opened it today it was half lead?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're wondering where _A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates_ is, it's on the second page.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was checking if [http://amazon.reviews](http://amazon.reviews) existed. Indeed it does, and its sole purpose is to redirect to this page.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why is it on the front page and, most importantly, why is it #1? Just because Amazon selected top 3 most helpful reviews for some random products? I honestly don't get it.</comment>


'Climate change is water change' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/08/19/climate-change-is-water-change-why-the-colorado-river-system-is-headed-for-trouble/?utm_campaign=buffer&utm_content=buffer66a9d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=.560bb81cb01a <comment><USER2> People talk about this being "unprecedented" however there is ample evidence that the Pueblo people lived in the Colorado River watershed, and then moved on after an extended drought. That was a few thousand years ago, and frankly I don't see the residents of Las Vegas moving on, but I can imagine that changes that happen with or without anthropogenic contribution have been affecting communities in the area. Where is the story advocating a 'keystone pipeline' type effort to carry excess water from the inland river systems over to the west?

My point is we're going to continue to suffer from too much and too little water across the country. Why not build the equivalent of the Interstate highway system to give us the power to redistribute water to where ever it is needed and route it around vulnerable cities and communities when there is too much?

<comment><USER3> > Why not build

This is a fair question, and pops up in nearly every thread about this topic, usually replied to with a link to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance) and/or [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recycling_and_Northern_D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recycling_and_Northern_Development_Canal)

The idea has been raised before, and dismissed because of massive costs, unprecedented environmental impacts, and the like.

<comment><USER2> Yup.

And to put my biases on the table, I believe this is where the climate change disaster is heading. Nobody, and I mean really nobody, with any scientific training believes that humans can _control_ the climate (yes we _affect_ the climate but we don't yet have any way of telling it to do one thing or another). Further, our models for the ways we are _affecting_ the climate indicate that massive changes in the way water is distributed across the country are _inevitable_ (see this article as another example of that).

As a result we will either decide to spend the money and apply our technology to mitigating the _impact_ of climate change on the humans, or we may (some consider it likely) experience a massive _die off_ of humans. (which oddly some people are hoping for, they don't think it will be them. See the preppers in Montana for example)

There are many ways to create the GDP for this, one would be to employ the under employed[1]. We could allocate two trillion dollars over the next 5 years and put 10M young people to work. Or we could spend the two trillion dollars like we did over the last 5 years, adventuring in the middle east.[2] Personally, I would prefer fighting a war we can win, we understand how to survive climate change.

[1] _" From April to July 2016, the number of employed youth 16 to 24 years old increased by 1.9 million to 20.5 million, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This year, 53.2 percent of young people were employed in July, little changed from a year earlier. (The month of July typically is the summertime peak in youth employment.) Unemployment among youth rose by 611,000 from April to July 2016, compared with an increase of 654,000 for the same period in 2015. (Because this analysis focuses on the seasonal changes in youth employment and unemployment that occur each spring and summer, the data are not seasonally adjusted.)"_ \-- [http://www.bls.gov/news.release/youth.nr0.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/youth.nr0.htm)

[2] [http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic](http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think as climate change really starts getting going the American Southwest including California will need to start desalination on a massive scale or risk mass emigration. The current situation is sketchy at best, give it 20 years and most of that area will be bone dry.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't it make more sense to build a gigantic pipeline from Oregon/Washington to California?

<comment><USER6> I believe the cost of pumping it outweighs the cost of more desalinization plants.

<comment><USER7> Desalination needs energy (so does pumping of course). As long as you're not getting that energy 100% (including supply chain) from renewables you're making climate change worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For all those claiming the solution is as easy as "just moving out of the desert", people aren't the only major issue when it comes to the Colorado River's water.

So unless you're willing to forego vegetables every single winter, those farms in the southwestern desert (as backwards as it may seem) are there to stay until they're too expensive to maintain.

<comment><USER7> Why is such a large fraction of vegetables grown in a desert in the first place?

<comment><USER9> > Why is such a large fraction of vegetables grown in a desert in the first > place?

Because the soil and climate (but for, you know, the lack of rainfall) is otherwise fairly optimal for it, and it is easier to move water to the desert than soil and desirable aspects of climate to the not-desert.

<comment><USER8> Correct. The soil is incredibly fertile, and at least around the Yuma/imperial valley area, it's literally the sunniest place on earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about living somewhere more environmentally friendly? Like... Not in a desert. Plenty of water elsewhere in the USA.

</comment><comment><USER6> Where is all the water going, if it's simply not precipitation enough in these areas?

<comment><USER11> It's a combination of factors. Some's being exported as food (nuts, beef). Some isn't being recaptured, as aquifers are being depleted to the point of collapsed. Etc.

<comment><USER6> But where does it all end up? In the ocean? In the atmosphere? Frozen in glaciers? Is it that global warming is making it rain in other areas instead?

<comment><USER12> Some combination of those things--warmer air holds more moisture, which leads to more rainfall in some places. Rain patterns shift. Some places will get more, other places less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The arctic is, as usual, going crazy this summer. Terrible weather for sea ice melting (lots of clouds, storms), but we'll probably still end up at the 2nd lowest sea ice extent when the minimum is reached in Sept. Happening right now is what will become the longest-running arctic summer storm since records began. Even more intense storms are forecast for 10 days time. Read more here. neven1.typepad.com/blog/

</comment><comment><USER14> Meanwhile solar panel manufacturers are suffering from oversupply, meaning not enough purchasing. This despite the fact that prices are now down to 60 cents a watt or less.

Solar will never be cheaper than coal because coal is a rock. it'll always be cheaper to go dig coal than to make something else. Politicians need to deal with this or we are all doomed.

<comment><USER15> Coal is a rock, but you still need to build a plant to burn it, and ship the coal continuously. With solar when you set up the panels you're basically done.

<comment><USER16> > With solar when you set up the panels you're basically done

Unfortunately, you're done only when the sun shines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Using squaponics seems like an ideal solution. Food can be grown in a greenhouse to minimize evaporation. Water doesn't escape into the soil, and it can be done pretty much anywhere, this leading to less fuel consumption and transportation costs. Fish require much less water and feed than cattle per pound of edible flesh.

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://youtu.be/P0q4o58pKwA](https://youtu.be/P0q4o58pKwA)

</comment><comment><USER19> #phoenixdownthetubes

<comment><USER20> as the parent comment is possibly hinting at, a relevant novel exploring this is "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi

it's a bit of an unpleasant read in parts, but it is exploring a future where there isn't enough water for everyone, and many people are only left with bad options, or never really had any.

<comment><USER19> Thanks - was wondering if it was a bit obtuse. Just finished reading "The Water Knife" and yes I agree it is a bit unpleasant at times, but I find Bacigalupi's world-building quite compelling.

I might read 'Cadillac Desert' that is referenced by and inspired "The Water Knife".</comment></comment></comment>


California fire near nuclear accident site - <AUTHOR> https://thebulletin.org/2018/11/california-fire-near-nuclear-accident-site/ <comment><USER2> IMO this is the laziest kind of fearmongering. There's nothing wrong with being skeptical of government claims, especially ones that are unverifiable to the average person (are there WMDs in Iraq? Who killed JFK? What happened in the Gulf of Tonkin? etc). However, this is not one of those unverifiable things. You can get a geiger counter on Amazon for less than $200.

It seems, well, socially irresponsible for the Physicians for Social Responsibility to make statements about radioactive contamination that contradict both government and independent tests.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's lazy, I think it's intentional. The cleanup efforts have been in the planning phase for 22 years, so perhaps some fear mongering to drum up more public outrage/outcry is what needs to happen to make someone do something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's how you know they aren't just reporting but have an angle:

"...one of three major, climate change-charged conflagrations now afflicting California"

You _know_ it's climate change charged? As in for sure, have evidence?

</comment><comment><USER5> It is pretty hard to burn 100000 acres of California without hitting a toxic waste cleanup site of some kind or other, unfortunately.</comment>


Why are there so few games that manipulate time and/or space in interesting ways? - <AUTHOR>

Portal and Braid come to mind.  There's also an upcoming time travel RTS.  But why are there so few such games? <comment><USER2> Have you tried developing one? ;)

In my experience, unusual game mechanics breed terrible edge cases. It's difficult to handle these gracefully and consistently. I'm developing a new Flash game called Toaster Bro: [http://blog.zacharcher.com/2009/03/20/toaster- bro-alpha-10-d...](http://blog.zacharcher.com/2009/03/20/toaster-bro- alpha-10-days-later/)

The basic concept is simple: you have a magic wire. You plug outlets together to produce various effects. Hopefully it's not evident to the casual user, but this has been extremely difficult to smooth out. There are many types of outlets (not just electricity); wires can stretch between rooms (but only the player's room receives tick events, so the toaster rooms trap you inside, preventing you from remotely plugging in the toaster); there's a full scripting engine but you still have to handle all the state changes, ...

To keep this game simple, I made an early compromise: only one disconnected wire is allowed at any time. If you start drawing another wire, the original vanishes. Otherwise it becomes a topological nightmare, as users want to connect the loose ends of 2 wires, it's just very confusing to play, or understand what's happening.

A friend asked me if I could put logic gates in the game. This is probably superfluous (couldn't you just run electricity to the final destination?) but this could be used to break the system, because you can plug electricity into the logic gate's output. What now, bitches?! So you need even more rules, then.

Also I think basic "warfare" games are easier to contemplate, because we're all familiar with throwing pellets at our grade school friends, and whatnot. Most of us didn't grow up warping the fabric of time and space, so it's hard to think in that context ;)</comment>


IMF Move Would Pressure China on Management of Yuan - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/imf-expected-to-name-chinas-yuan-a-reserve-currency-1448769634 <comment><USER2> FYI: this WSJ article is behind a paywall.

<comment><USER3> Please do not mention the paywall.

<comment><USER4> why? it is extremely annoying.

is it in the guidelines or something? i can't see anything...

<comment><USER5> It's in the FAQ. It's ok to post articles that are paywalled when the paywall has a known standard workaround such as an incognito window or clicking a search link.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><USER4> > known standard workaround

that is a little bit hand-wavey, but fair enough. thanks. :)

<comment><USER5> > _that is a little bit hand-wavey_

True, but the internet abhors a vacuum and your fellow users are typically eager to show up with details.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Functional Programming Principles in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://blog.maddevs.io/functional-programming-principles-in-javascript-37339f7c9e60?source=friends_link&sk=7ed82308783fb3f3c645d10e0c2fb176 <comment><USER2> How can I convince my colleagues that FP beats imperative style for building SPAs? That's the $100,000 question. I've seen the light, and it'd be nice for them too as well.</comment>


Ask HN: How does Instagram know who I am on Facebook? - <AUTHOR> I recently had an interesting observation concerning the Instagram app and the account matching algorithm(s) that Facebook uses and would like to ask for your opinions.
Following scenario: I have an iPhone X running iOS 11.3.1 with FB Messenger and Whatsapp installed, but not the Facebook app. Messenger doesn't have access to my contacts but WhatsApp does. A couple days ago I installed Instagram from the App Store and created an IG account using an email like this <lots_of_gibberish>@<domain>.com (I have a catch-all setup for this domain). I didn't give IG access to my contacts, didn't provide my phone number nor connected it to Facebook.
At first the suggestions for new contacts in IG were completely random. However, after about 20-30 seconds the list of suggestions updated and showed me IG accounts of friends on Facebook.
I repeated this experiment, deleted / installed the app, checked the iOS privacy controls, made sure not to enter the phone number or allow access to contacts, and again, I got the same account suggestions from FB friends.
I don't undestand how Facebook / Instagram is able to pull this off. The Instagram account email hasn't been used at all before, the app doesn't have access to my contacts and doesn't know my phone number. AFAIK iOS apps are sandboxed and can't fingerprint the device nor access each others cookies? So that leaves matching by IP and / or location, however in a large building that would be quite inaccurate?
So how does Facebook do this? <comment><USER2> Probably your device id, or the so-called advertiser id, which might be at the company level, and thus shared across FB services.

<comment><AUTHOR> See the other reply, if "Limit Ad Tracking" is enabled, this should not be possible, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your device has a several unique IDs that can used by apps to link your "profile" across unrelated services. Most likely [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/adsupport/asidenti...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/adsupport/asidentifiermanager)

<comment><AUTHOR> I just checked and "Limit ad tracking" was indeed turned off (thus enabling the unique identifier). However, I turned it off and reset the ID, reinstalled IG, created a new account and it _still_ showed FB contacts.

<comment><USER4> Since iOS 11 (I believe) the "keychain" persists across app reinstalls. Shitty apps thus put a tracking ID in there to guard against app reinstalls.

If you reinstall your entire device (thus clearing the keychain) you should be able to break the link.

There's also the issue of App Groups, which means that apps from the same developer (Facebook) can share data between them, so if you have Facebook or WhatsApp installed along they can all talk together and figure out what your other accounts are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I actually never heard of App Groups before. But this totally explains it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most likely some sort of fingerprinting of your device..

Since you use three different facebook services as well providing the access to phone number of the device to whatsapp, facebook has a pretty solid idea who the device belongs to.

This is an opinion not a fact but is something that is extensivly used to identify returning users (on i.e. different browsers / devices etc.) To services

</comment><comment><USER6> Your wifi id, private ip and public ip.</comment>


Django-app-engine development halted - <AUTHOR> http://www.allbuttonspressed.com/goodbye

<comment><USER2> It looks like our projects will get a new maintainer. So, it's not as bad as it sounds. It's only us leaving the project. Follow the discussion group for more updates:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/django-non- relationa...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/django-non-relational)

Oh and sorry for the disgusting site "design". Our site isn't running on Django-nonrel, anymore, and I still didn't get to making a nicer design (not that the previous one was much better ;).

<comment><USER3> Thanks for all of your contributions. Hopefully it will live on in your absence.

Out of curiosity (and as a user of Django-nonrel), what are you using at your start-up?

<comment><USER2> I've built a custom micro-framework and an async ORM based on a few ideas I had while working on Django-nonrel. The result is wonderfully small, simple, and expressive. We're using it at our startup. I'm just trying to bring back the fun of exploring new programming concepts. In this regard, open-source really doesn't work for me.

<comment><USER4> Any plans on releasing the code for your framework/orm?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never been completely convinced by the idea of hacking the Django ORM to be able to talk to non-relational data stores - if you can't do joins, you lose most of the stuff that makes the ORM useful.

I'd much rather see tools like the Django admin evolve interfaces which can be plugged in to the Django ORM or plugged in to some other backend (PyMongo, CouchDB, SimpleDB, AppEngine DataStore or whatever). That feels to me like a more natural point for an abstraction layer than the core ORM itself.

<comment><USER6> I have a Django site with its admin running off mongodb <http://django- mongodb.org> , everything runs off the box except for these couple changes: <http://django-mongodb.org/troubleshooting.html> .

And I agree, I don't see for now much use of the django models and ORM for mongodb, I just use pymongo code in my views.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used various versions of Django when I first started hacking on Appengine. Eventually I just gave up and switched to Tornado. Why? Django is a large and tightly coupled beast of a framework. It's very likely that a given plugin reaches down to the DB level meaning that it'd have to be manually ported to Appengine.

Every single project which tried to port Django to GAE relied on either monkey patching during runtime or forking the codebase. This was an enormous amount of work as you can imagine, and the benefits grew smaller and smaller as simpler frameworks became available.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not ragging on Django just because it's large. I'm sure at one point, Django started out as a simple, and clean framework. I am starting to see the same changes in Tornado -- the more people who use it, the more features (and code) are added to keep them satisfied. This goes on until a certain point where the underlying technology (the DB in django's case) changes and it's easier to just start again from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER8> I commend Waldemar and Thomas for announcing their decision so that someone else can take the reigns, rather that letting things die slowly and quietly.

On the other hand, I can't help but think that "development halted" and "no longer maintained"[1] headlines do the Django community a disservice, as evidenced by comments here[2] asking if Django is dead.

Django is alive, active, and serving many of us very well, thank you. IMHO the reason you don't hear much about it compared to the latest hot shit framework is because it usually "just works", leaving us more time to deal with more important things, like actual business problems.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3274697> [2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3275484>

</comment><comment><USER9> This is why we stopped using App Engine frameworks at my gig. I'm not sure why, but they tend to die off rather quickly. App Engine Patch, Kay, and Tipfy have all become unmaintained.

My theory is that the critical mass for App Engine frameworks just isn't there. Most people either use the Django that's packaged with the SDK or straight up webapp (or now, webapp2, which is pretty great). Slicing the already small userbase into those willing to use a third-party framework is just too few people to make maintaining it worthwhile.

<comment><USER10> OTOH, webapp2 was incorporated into the platform. There are a lot of interesting things you can do under app engine and, maybe, platforms as monolithic as Django have a hard time living on Google's platform.

<comment><USER9> I don't think webapp2 is a framework, though. It was designed to be compatible with webapp2, and then add some niceties, so it's a drop-in replacement for webapp. Even with webapp2_extras, it doesn't contain half of what Django or Rails does.

And note that the author abandoned Tipfy for it.

<comment><USER10> No, it doesn't. It's very hard to build something as complete - and as self- dependent - as Django on top of something that moves as fast as Google's App Engine.

The only thing I miss when using Django on EC2 is the automagic zero-admin scaling Google provides. The only thing I miss from Django when using App Engine is the admin (which wouldn't work on top of the datastore anyway)

<comment><USER11> > The only thing I miss from Django when using App Engine is the admin (which > wouldn't work on top of the datastore anyway)

It does, though, it works fine with django-nonrel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't Django on app engine turning more towards Google Cloud SQL? Don't mean to be offensive to anyone but Django-app-engine and Django-nonrel has always seemed to be a bit of a stopgap to me for using Django models and admin with app engine.

<comment><USER12> further explanation: Since the whole ORM is designed ground up for relational databases, it has always seemed very hackish to me to add the non relational support. IMO better to use the ORM and Admin for what it was intended and just add further upon the stack with pymongo, redis-py etc for those that want to interact with non relational databases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> is django dead? just wanted to give it a try...

<comment><USER14> No. This is a project that lets you use Django on Google App Engine, nothing more.

(It also has a new maintainer, so no issues there either. See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3274745> )

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The one thing you cannot describe Django as is 'fun'. Django has the unique property of being able to suck the fun out of any project.

<comment><USER16> It's too bad that you're being downvoted by people who only know Django and not Pyramid, Flask, Twisted Web, Nevow, or any other serious Python web framework.

<comment><USER17> For the record, I didn't vote (and generally don't vote on HN). But maxklein's comment wasn't really constructive and didn't offer any specific criticism. I've said before in replies to his comments that I'd love to hear specific constructive criticism:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2778375>

But, sadly, it never actually happens.</comment></comment></comment>


Mock Islam over Twitter, end up losing 1 Million customers - <AUTHOR> http://arabcrunch.com/2011/08/mock-islam-over-twitter-end-up-losing-1-million-customers-and-possibly-the-collapse-of-your-empire-naguibsawiris.html <comment><AUTHOR> the person in Question is Naguib Sawiris, some call him the Rubort Murdokh of Arabs.</comment>


Longreads is increasing reporting - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/05/amid-the-wreckage-of-fallen-startups-longreads-is-increasing-the-original-reporting-it-funds <comment><USER2> I like the idea of so-called "long reads" but generally hate the execution. There's a standard longform template I can't stand:

1) Personal anecdote from the author

2) Description of what the weather is like outside the diner where they're meeting for an interview

3) What the two people ordered for dinner, with a long description of how they stir their coffee

4) Excerpts from the middle of the interview which are meaningless out of context

5) Another anecdote

6) Jump-cut to something tangentially related on the other side of the country

7) Back to the original interview

8) THE LEAD, conveniently buried 2 pages in, where I finally learn what the stupid thing is about

9) Not sure what comes next, because after wasting 10 minutes of my time I've lost interest.

So many of them are a standard 800 word article padded out to 5000 with no extra substance.

<comment> k-mcgrady If your aim is 'the lead' why would you want a long form article? Personally, the elements you feel aren't substantive I like. They set the scene. If your goal is information that is obviously not very useful but if your goal is an enjoyable read that's entertaining and informative those elements are important.

<comment><USER3> Not the GP but I recognize the format he's posted. I have problems with articles that follow that sort of format because usually the author is taking an interesting story and bulking it up by talking about themselves instead of the subject. I want to get lost in the subject and my feelings about it. I can't really get lost in the author narrating their own feelings about the subject, it pulls me out of the story.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, they're imitating Hunter S. Thompson without really getting what he was doing.

The point of "Gonzo Journalism", as I understand it, was that the narrative around certain subjects (politics, drugs, America, etc) had become so toxically self-referential that there was simply no way to approach them objectively. Even if you could apply some strict journalistic standard, the reader would read it through such a noxious filter of propaganda that nothing would get through.

The only sane response in that case, from his perspective, was to simply throw one's entire self into the fray, indulging your neuroses, compulsions, and desires in and amongst the people you were reporting on, then to pour your whole self onto the page and simply allow the reader and you, through the sacred bond of reading and writing, to commune in some kind of spirit plane above the propaganda and doublespeak.

This leads to an (at the time) shocking blend of personal experiences and "on- topic" reporting. Of course decades later this kind of intermingling has become common and no longer shocks people.

I think the essayists you are complaining about are adopting the "Gonzo" form, blending the personal with the topical, but without actually throwing their full selves into the world they are reporting. Thus the personal bits don't really bear any connection to the topical, and don't aid the reader in seeing _through_ the subjectivity to the subject, the way Fear and Loathing did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano For those who like long form reading, this site is great: [https://longform.org/](https://longform.org/)

I usually send the articles to my Kindle (with a Chrome extension). It makes for comfortable reading.

<comment><USER5> Same here, I love Longform! I save them to my Instapaper and read them when I have downtime or am stuck somewhere (like a waiting room).</comment></comment>


The True Size of Africa - <AUTHOR> http://twitpic.com/2woim6/full <comment><USER2> I'm not sure a clip of the West Wing has ever been more on-topic: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM>

See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection>

<comment><USER3> I love that clip (and pretty much everything else in The West Wing).

But there is actually a reason the Mercator map (which distorts size) is so widely used, which isn't really mentioned in the clip.

EDIT: Actually it is mentioned in the clip! Treats me right to rely on memory :) I'm leaving the explanation here for anyone that hasn't seen the clip. Thanks yummyfajitas for pointing out my mistake.

The gist of the reasoning is this: take any 3D object, and try and map it onto a 2D surface, and you're going to have to distort _something_. In the case of the Mercator map, the plan was to make a map that clearly showed "shipping lanes", i.e. if you draw a straight line on the map from one point to another, you can travel in a straight line in the real word between those points. This is important for sea travel (the Mercator map was created in the 1500's). The trade-off to this decision was that sizes were distorted.

More reading: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_map>

<comment><USER4> _But there is actually a reason the Mercator map (which distorts size) is so widely used, which isn't really mentioned in the clip._

Not a West Wing fan at all, but the reason for the Mercator projection was mentioned in the clip at about 1:10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a Brit and had a similar moment of realisation when I discovered America wasn't about the size of Spain + France. I think it was the facial expression my (American) girlfriend gave me when I suggested we drive for a weekend away in Florida (we were in New Jersey at the time) that tipped me off.

America is basically the size of Europe, which really surprised me. But then, it's not knowledge you ever really need to know.

<comment><USER6> No, America (meaning the USA) is somewhat smaller than Europe, especially if you count European Russia, another country whose size is often underestimated. Though, it is helpful to realize that the United States is, in fact, larger in terms of landmass than China, and is exceeded only by Canada (the _other_ North American Anglo democracy, much of whose land is largely empty due to the extreme cold) and by Russia, (another country with a lot cold, mostly unused land.)

Russia, even in its post Soviet scaled-back state, is in fact largely an empire. Most of its land was conquered from indigenous peoples who still inhabit it, this it not too different from both the United States and Canada, though the circumstances are somewhat different.

<comment><USER5> It's smaller, yes, but not by much. The USA is 9.8 million km^2 and Europe is 10.2 million km^2. Though that does include Alaska.

I think the thing that took me the longest to "get" was simply the distances between things. If you'd asked me a few years ago how far one coast of the USA is from the other, I'd probably guess at around a thousand miles. Top to bottom maybe 500.

Mind you I also didn't realise Washington wasn't in Washington state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since this visualisation is dedicated to the fight against "immappancy" I'd like to mention that Eastern Europe generally doesn't include any of Austria (Central Europe), Greece (South Europe) but it definitely does include the Baltic states, Belarus and the European parts of Russia. Just sayin'.

</comment><comment><USER8> Am I an outlier in not being at all startled at this? They compare one of the World's largest continents to one of the smallest, plus some other countries (some of which are large; but not the two largest).

Perhaps this is due to being British, I am used to the fact that my country is small and that the rest of the world is in fact, very large.

To be fair, I am reminded of when I mentioned to a friend I was considering emigrating to Montreal, and she replied that she might be moving to Vancouver and we could meet up at weekends...

</comment><comment><USER9> I make this little app some time back to compare the size of various countries/continents - <http://mapfight.appspot.com/>

So, for example, <http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-europe>, <http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-cn>, <http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-in>, or my favorite <http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-gl>

<comment><USER10> I was amused by <http://mapfight.appspot.com/us-vs-cn>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Okay, I'll bite:

I truely feel sorry for being one of these ignorant people. Looking at the image I can confirm that I'd have answered the question _way_ off (USA, India, China? No way!).

This makes my day. I learned something, feel humiliated enough to go on and read more about Geography for the rest of the evening - and all because of a creative illustration.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think non-continuous maps also illustrate the point quite nicely. Example: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dymaxion_map_unfolded.png>

Other examples are welcome.

<comment><USER13> Yes, that was what I just meant to google up as well. These maps were made by the venerable Buckminster Fuller. And he explains really nicely, how the Mercator projection was really sufficient when you navigate with ships, and how it even helps that the distortion gets you constant compass reading when you follow a "line" on the map, and what is a delicate curve in reality. It only entered the (first military, later public) conscience when air travel and intercontinental missiles became available that the geographic distance between Alaska and the USSR was quite small in places.

I know Fuller is a bit of a persona non-grata among scientific-minded people, because of his fantasy approach and his rejection of mathematics. But it was Einstein who said "imagination is more important than knowledge."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The U.S has a population density of 32/km^2 which is only slightly higher than the population density of Africa, which is 30/km^2.

That's why both the U.S and Africa seem spacious, with lots of empty space between places.

</comment><comment><USER15> In other news: Neither Europe nor the USA are at the 'center' of the world. Nor is there a particularly compelling reason for north to be 'up'.

All this and more, from critical cartography: <http://www.acme- journal.org/vol4/JWCJK.pdf>

<comment><USER16> At least the placement of Europe in the middle of the map makes sense, because then the map edge occurs in the middle of the Pacific and doesn't cut anything important in half (no offence, Aleutian Islanders!) Similarly, Australian-made world maps stick the map edge in the Atlantic. But putting the Americas in the middle of the map makes no sense, you have to cut Eurasia in half somewhere.

<comment><USER17> I for one prefer this map with New Zealand in the centre ;) <http://flourish.org/upsidedownmap/mcarthur-large.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Small point - The map makes the UK and Madagascar look about the same size; Wikipedia reveals Madagascar is about twice the size of the UK.

I suspect somebody did not use an appropriate map projection.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this by _the_ Kai Krause?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause>

</comment><comment><USER20> Left off Alaska, but there is plenty of unallocated gray area in the Africa outline so I'll call it a wash.

<comment><USER21> Leaving off Alaska is pretty significant, indeed: [http://www.usmarshals.gov/district/ak/images/alaska- small.gi...](http://www.usmarshals.gov/district/ak/images/alaska-small.gif)

I assume that the numbers to the left of the image (area of USA) include Alaska, so I think your comment actually is pretty accurate: the unallocated gray area and the area of Alaska must be pretty close to the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> africa 30m km^2 moon 38m km^2 asia 44m km^2

</comment><comment><USER23> I have to ask then, Why is Africa in SUCH poverty. Compared to the rest of the world, Africa as a continent is third world. Why the hell has it never been better than what it was when kings and queens had control of Africa. Did it have a brain drain when the slaves were exported?

</comment><comment><USER24> I indeed thought it was like 40% smaller, probably because rectangular world maps are so distorted.

</comment><comment><USER25> So.... about 3 Alaska's

</comment><comment><USER26> Why do Africans have to have everything bigger than the rest of us? :(

:)</comment>


Show HN: ElemX – Native Web Components and MobX with Vue-Like Binding Syntax - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/agquick/elemx.js <comment><AUTHOR> Developer here. Yes I know, it's yet another JS library. I primarily wrote this because I was a fan of KnockoutJS, but have since switched to React and then Vue, and each time something felt a little off. I also wanted to try out Web Components.

The current state of the library is very much a proof-of-concept, so thanks in advance for taking a look, and definitely appreciate any feedback you might have. I'm more so just curious if this is useful to anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting. I use mobx with React and generally prefer it to the standard state management. Might have to give this a shot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks it's still a early in development, but I'd be interested in any feedback you have</comment></comment>