How should a company handle a racist CEO? - <AUTHOR> https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/07/07/racist-comments-asian-family-viral-video-san-francisco-tech-ceo-michael-lofthouse/ <comment><USER2> By recognizing pitchfork royalty for what it is (a chaotic mess of revenge, hate and anger without a head).

The twitter thread shows a feast of vitriol that attempts to mock racism. Unfortunately, the dancing over dead bodies metadata makes AI sad :(

Hate breeds hate... and their babies are ugly...

This is the reality of fact checking:

{GC @G3chan · 12h Replying to @JohnRizkallah @pattonoswalt i think a company also called solid8 in UK unaffiliated with him is getting abuse. Can we make sure at least their family business isn't ruined as they have nothing to do with him. They are receiving threats etc though and bad reviews in mistaken identity}

[https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnRizkallah/status/127991957841...](https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnRizkallah/status/1279919578416439298)</comment>


Pirate Bay Founder Arrested in Cambodia - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-arrested-in-cambodia-120901

<comment><USER2> Previous submission with lots of comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4464057>

(It looks like the duplicate detector on HN still needs some coding improvements.)</comment>


GM Cruise to delay commercial launch of self-driving cars to beyond 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gm-cruise/gm-cruise-to-delay-commercial-deployment-of-self-driving-cars-beyond-2019-idUSKCN1UJ1NA <comment><USER2> Cruise cars drive like a drunk grandma stopping short all over the place and regularly failing to take a protected turn at a green turn light because some pedestrian has a foot edging into a crosswalk.

The biggest safety issue associated with these cars is that everyone else honks and swerves aggressively to evade them when they stop short for dumb reasons like someone in the road waiting in front of their car for traffic to pass so they can get into their car —- these are actions I witness multiple times every day and if you look at every accident report associated with these cars you'll see almost every case seems like a driver frustrated about being stuck behind it trying to swerve around it.

What isn't recorded is all the accidents involving the cruise cars that don't actually impact the cruise car. Like when someone swerving around a cruise car side swiped my neighbors car on Fulton. I almost saw a biker on 14th street by Valencia get hit in a similar manner when someone trying to evade the cruise car in the left lane swerved quickly into the right lane while the biker was avoiding a car in the right lane trying to turn right onto Valencia.

They almost certainly don't collect statistics on accidents caused by other drivers who just want to get around these cars that clearly don't need to be tested in a way that makes everyone's commute just a little bit more obnoxious.

<comment><USER3> > _The biggest safety issue associated with these cars is that everyone > else..._

...drives dangerously and therefore illegally?

That's an indictment of human drivers, not self-driving vehicles.

So start aggressively ticketing all of the reckless humans and maybe that behavior will stop.

If you have to swerve, then you're not following at a safe distance. If you swerve without having to, that's also recklessly dangerous. Both behaviors _should_ be penalized.

<comment><USER4> There's more to it than that. Traffic is as safe as it is (I won't call it flat-out "safe"), in no small part because people can anticipate other drivers. A _predictable_ driver is a safe driver. Having self-driving cars randomly stop short is a quick way to rack up a lot of "not legally at fault", but perhaps morally at-fault, accidents.

FWIW, if you've ever done car/bike track days, this is a huge reason why it's so safe. People are split into groups according to skill level, with restrictions on passing (normally "only on the straights") for the lower groups. Much of the "skill level" here is actually just being predictable, not being outright fast. Someone can be in a Miata getting passed with a 50mph speed differential on a straight _because everyone is being predictable_. That same Miata might pass the same car with a huge speed differential at 90 mph in a turn, and it works because everyone is predictable.

<comment><USER5> >Having self-driving cars randomly stop short is a quick way to rack up a lot of "not legally at fault", but perhaps morally at-fault, accidents.

And I'm pretty sure, in most jurisdictions, slamming on the breaks unexpectedly and for no good reason, will get you at least a portion of the liability for an accident. The person who rear-ends you will get some too, but its not always true that you can't be at fault when you get rear-ended.

As you imply, no safety system should rely on others doing their job perfectly. That is an inherently unsafe system.

<comment><USER6> If there was an accident and the cops ask you "why did you break suddenly?" and you say something reasonable that's not "to commit insurance fraud" you probably won't be at fault. It's the responsibility of the person behind you to keep a safe following distance.

<comment><USER7> I have had the "pleasure" of driving alongside and behind Cruise's vehicles on many occasions here in San Francisco. They will stop dramatically in the middle of a block (empty, no traffic, no pedestrians), edge forward, dramatically stop again, go halfway through the intersection and again...dramatically stop.

It feels to me like whoever has written their braking algorithm is using bang bang control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a cyclist, I can't wait for self-driving cars.

I'll take a small chance of being accidentally killed as a systemic, correctable mistake over the small chance of being killed by the 5% of people who are consistently impatient, inconsiderate dangerous jerks.

<comment><USER9> I'm not a cyclist, but I want to be. I don't bike because doing so is way too dangerous with the number of drivers who are paying extremely close attention to their phones and not to driving. And yeah, some drivers are rude too.

I think the most dangerous time to be a cyclist or pedestrian is right now. Smartphones are ubiquitous, distracted-driving enforcement is very weak (non- existent in my area), and self-driving is alpha quality.

<comment><USER10> There's some truth to that, particularly the point about phones, but FWIW most cities have drastically increased the number and quality of bike lanes in the last 10 years.

SF is a completely different experience for bikes than it was 5 years ago, and 10 years before that it was even more different.

Ditto for NYC. You can ride up and down Manhattan in big separate big lanes very quickly.

It's obviously a personal choice, but I think cycling is a safe choice now. When I started 10+ years ago I would sometimes get off the road when conditions/traffic looked dangerous, and you should always keep that option in your back pocket. (i.e. don't insist that 100% of the route has to be bikable.)

But I don't feel the need to do that very much now. The exception is when there's unusual traffic and no bike lane.

It's even safer now that there are more cyclists on the road. Drivers do take some time to get used to cyclists.

<comment><USER11> I think the anecdote applies for some cities committing to Vision Zero plans - for example NYC has data showing fatalities decreasing (page 13: [https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/visionzero/downloads/pdf/vision-...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/visionzero/downloads/pdf/vision- zero-year-5-report.pdf) ), though injuries might be the same or increasing ( [https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/02/04/bloody-january- cyclis...](https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/02/04/bloody-january-cyclist- injuries-and-fatalities-soared-last-month/) )

But it isn't perfect - SF fwiw has had more pedestrian fatalities this year though they've had reductions in the prior couple years ( [https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp- content/uploads/2019/07/06.2...](https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp- content/uploads/2019/07/06.2019Fatalities_JuneSummaryMemo.pdf) )

Also average vehicle miles travelled in the US is up ( [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA/](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA/) ), and so are nationwide pedestrian fatalities: [https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/01/23/the-bible-belt- should...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/01/23/the-bible-belt-should- really-be-called-the-carnage-corset-for-pedestrians/)

Ride-hailing usage over transit may be part of the problem: [https://steps.ucdavis.edu/new-research-ride-hailing- impacts-...](https://steps.ucdavis.edu/new-research-ride-hailing-impacts- travel-behavior/) ) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The sad thing is that vapourware and the promise of technology to easily solve our problems has real impacts on delaying progress by other means.

Cars are the number one killer of children in America. Political action to reduce this number by redesigning cities to limit human/car interactions and providing safer transportation alternatives is stymied by opponents to who point to assuredly safe autonomous cars as being just around the corner.

See also Hypertube vs high speed rail and carbon capture vs carbon taxes.

<comment><USER13> Your examples just show our political system is corrupted by big money, it's not about tech and vaporware.

-Cars have power due to historical considerations: car lobbyists and rich car owners getting their environments designed for their own car-use.

-Hyperloop has almost nothing to do with high speed rail failing in the USA, it is a brand new concept and there were decades of destruction of trains by the auto industry and by the US's poor geographic make-up for trains.

-Carbon capture is just a fake-out by fossil fuel industry, there is no economic potential for CCS. Carbon taxes can't even pass in liberal WA in two referanda. Carbon taxes are simply extremely unpalatable, due to massive fossil-fuel lobbying against them and to subsidize fossil fuels. Therefore, most Americans are ignorant of just how much their fossil-fuel habits truly cost, since their other taxes and politicians ensure they are cheap and readily available with no taxation. Big moneyed interests have mortgaged our planet's future to keep gas at $2.50/gallon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wise move. Self-driving cars are likely to need a year more of testing for the next quite-a-few years.

<comment><USER15> Yeah it's been pretty entertaining to watch this shoe drop. I feel like 2 years ago the self-driving car manufacturers were releasing crazy deadlines, like full self-driving in 5 years. But they seemed very confident, so I believed them, despite my skepticism. Now they're walking all that back and removing any definite-ness from their timelines, which falls back in line with my picture of reality.

<comment><USER16> > I feel like 2 years ago the self-driving car manufacturers were releasing > crazy deadlines, like full self-driving in 5 years.

Everything is _always_ five years away. That's the sweet spot for getting lots of funding while allowing time for the wow factor to wear off so you can backtrack on what you really intend to deliver (if anything at all).

<comment><USER17> This isn't unique to car AI, every software project looks doable at the start, you can even get "90%" there where it looks and feels like a real solution. But then real life usage testing starts or the implementation process exposes a thousand small problems you didn't except in the last 10%, or your own original design wasn't flexible enough for some constraints requiring a significant rethinking of that 90%. Just ask Jeff Hawkins.

This is going to be a huge business opportunity for car manufacturers and software companies, two industries with access to plenty of capital. So the not being left behind risk (FOMO) is naturally going to be high.

Combine that with potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives from car accidents and being able to look at your phone instead of driving (freeing up countless human hours) and you have the recipe for extreme optimism.

The only important question is whether x company overpaid in the short term for acquisitions or scaling up ... and/or lack a runway to really achieve their goals. Otherwise it's pretty par for the course, especially for software/innovation at this scale.

It's quite possible we'll hit these goals sooner now that industry went full bore on solving these problems and we'll benefit as a society in many ways besides transportation from the AI work.

Most importantly, who cares if some pension funds and wealthy investors involved in high risk capital investment lose some money in the short term.

<comment><USER18> _"This isn't unique to cars, every software project looks easy at the start, you can even get "90%" there where it looks and feels like a real solution. But then real life usage testing starts or the implementation process exposes a thousand small problems you didn't except in the last 10%, or your own original design wasn't flexible enough for some constraints requiring a significant rethinking of that 90%."_

Yep, and in silicon valley, anyone who seriously plans for the consequences of this is dismissed as insufficiently futurist.

It's hard to thrive as a responsible engineer when there's always another huckster around the corner, willing to promise that 5-year future today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Perhaps someone with more self-driving car knowledge can help enlighten me, but from everything I've read it seems like the biggest problems are from unexpected behaviors in urban environments (e.g. cyclists going the wrong way, stopped delivery vehicles that folks behind must scoot out into the oncoming traffic lane to drive around, police officer directions, etc.) and I just don't see how those problems can be solved without artificial general intelligence, which is a long ways off.

For restricted access roads (i.e. highways), though, the technology seems ready to go. I know there is a lot of concern about the "hand-off problem", but that doesn't really seem like an insurmountable issue. If say 35 mins of a 45 min commute is on a highway, and only the last 10 mins are in a city, that seems like it would be a huge noon to tons of people if the car could take over, completely, on the highway. Are manufacturers likely to take this middle step first?

<comment><USER20> Yes, see Tesla Autopilot...

<comment><USER16> ... run right into the side of an 18 wheeler.

<comment><USER21> once. they still crash less often than human drivers crash their cars on the highway. I don't want to say Autopilot is good, but everything else is also terrible.

<comment><USER22> those are bullshit stats.

They compare overall crashes in all kind of normal highway environment and all kind of drivers and vehicles with the very selective places where the Tesla users decided to enable autopilot. Tesla users are also more educated and have better vehicles which has been shown to reduce the comparative crash rate by a lot.

We don't have data to compare but if I had to take a wild guess on crash rates I am pretty convinced that Tesla crashes more than the equivalent driver on the same stretch of highway as of today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not sure if anyone can speak to it but looking through recent Glassdoor reviews for Cruise suggests a lot of issues with management from engineers...

</comment><comment><USER24> Happy to see this, my reaction is that they are serious about pushing the plan forward in the long term; and they are careful about managing the risks. That's the type of innovation I admire and enjoy the most.

</comment><comment><USER25> Just curious to me how so many "experts" called this a solved problem in the early 2010s, and only just now are realizing the n² * n² * n² edge cases that seem difficult to handle.

<comment><USER26> Meanwhile Waymo doesn't ask anything to anyone and just do their thing, repeatedly seeing competitors move ahead through PR move before dropping back through reality. If there is one company I would bet money on actually getting there, it's them.

<comment><USER25> You may be correct, and they do seem to be making real strides. I hope its not because they have been lucky until now. (which statistically speaking is unlikely)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Welcome to the trough of disillusionment.

</comment><comment><USER28> Quite sad, I worked on one of these cars, and spent late nights getting my part ready on time.

Then I was a GM tariffs sacrifice.

My understanding is that 5G should fix the winter/rain issues, as you can calculate location more precise.

<comment><USER29> 5G won't fix anything. The location precision is worse than what you can usually get with the latest GNSS receivers. And what happens when the 5G tower is down because a construction crew accidentally cut the backhaul fiber?

<comment><USER30> > And what happens when the 5G tower is down because a construction crew > accidentally cut the backhaul fiber?

I assume the cars would stop and we would have to go back to driving them manually for a few hours or days

<comment><USER31> The goal is eventually to have vehicles without manual controls, so this won't be an option.

<comment><USER29> Outside of a few limited areas, that goal won't be achieved in our lifetimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> To all the naysayers saying, "I told you so!", keep in mind this is a perception problem, not a technology problem. I've been in a self-driving car -- it drove better than just about any Lyft or Uber I've ever been in. They're already safer than human drivers, with fewer accidents per mile than humans.

And if you eliminate Tesla from the category, since they aren't using LIDAR, you can also point out that a self-driving car has never killed a passenger.

The only reason they have to wait is because they know the public expects perfection. The public doesn't understand statistics. If a self-driver kills a person, it would set the entire industry back decades, even though humans kill people with cars every single day.

People just aren't ready to accept that self-driving cars are safer, even if they aren't perfect.

Edits to reply to comments:

To those saying "It wouldn't work in my climate", that's probably true, but they aren't trying to make it work in your climate. All the self-driving companies are trying to release taxi services that work in cities with good weather.

To those saying "But pedestrians are important too", yes I agree with you. I was trying to point out that the fears of being _inside_ a self-driving car are unfounded, because they are very safe. I still think I'd rather be around a bunch of self-driving cars _outside_ too, but yes, they have killed people outside the car.

And on a side note, this is my most controversial comment ever. I've watched the points on this post as I reply elsewhere go from +3 to -3 and everywhere in-between. I think this right here sums up the public perception issues self driving companies have ahead of them.

<comment><USER33> >And if you eliminate Tesla from the category, since they aren't using LIDAR, you can also point out that a self-driving car has never killed a passenger.

Umm, this is leaving out the very relevant fact that a pedestrian WAS killed near Phoenix by a self driving Uber.

<comment><USER32> That person wasn't a passenger. My point was that people who are afraid to get _in_ a self driver aren't looking at statistics correctly.

<comment><USER34> So you're safe if you're _inside_ a self-driving vehicle at all times? That's reassuring.

<comment><USER35> That's true of regular cars too. If you're on a road you're much safer in a car than outside one.

<comment><USER36> Yes, walking on a road is unsafe. Glad we settled that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The City of the Eternal Boom - <AUTHOR> http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/austin-and-the-city-of-the-eternal-boom/ <comment><USER3> Contrast this article with the techcrunch one ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11190942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11190942)). It's just like Seattle really. It almost makes me want to move there from Seattle :-) How hot is it there in the summer, really bad, right? Seattle is where people come to die, don't move here either.

Are we just going to centralize ourselves in entrepreneurial Athenian city- states, while the rest of America groans under job loss and decay? I want to believe it's not true, but it seems like we are heading that way.

<comment><USER4> Native Texan here: the "average" is in the high 90s but July and August regularly hit--and stay at--100-and-above afternoon temperatures. The hot weather starts around late May and doesn't really wrap up until September. Temperature swings can also be brutal, 101 at 2pm, 50 at 10pm.

Yes, there's air conditioning but you will pay handsomely and but you have to be inside to "enjoy" it. My two-month bill from Seattle City Light last August was 1/3rd what my last one-month August bill was in Texas.

One of the big reasons I left Texas for Seattle was the weather.

<comment><USER5> I don't know about Austin, but 90 in LA is more like 80 somewhere else, due to our lack of humidity, so there's that to consider.

<comment><USER6> The humidity in Austin is absolutely ridiculous. It's not Houston by any means, but it's not okay.

I used to think San Diego got a bit humid around May gray, I was fucking wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Austin is an interesting town as an example of the flaws of law enforcement. It widely considered this liberal paradise, as noted by the article, but the abuses by the police and city government are like anywhere else. Power corrupts and the system is flawed-

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

[http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/29/is_filming_a_police_o...](http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/29/is_filming_a_police_officer_a)

<comment><USER8> I live in Austin and have to agree that the headlines made by the Austin Police Department are just as depressing as anywhere else. Interestingly though, I've heard (but can't say I know for fact) that APD actually pays well, is highly competitive to get in to, and recruits nationally. If accurate, it makes it all the more unfortunate that they can't seem to be an exemplary law enforcement institution.

I think what is most disheartening is how divergent the culture of the law enforcement community and the culture of the communities they serve* have become increasingly divergent. From my own perspective, it appears that law enforcement nationally is predominantly white and conservative, while the US population is growing more diverse and culturally more liberal. I believe this divide is really what exacerbates the tensions with police and communities we're seeing a lot of right now. They're fundamentally different cultures the power relationship between the two makes conditions ripe for conflict (its not inherent, just more likely). Perhaps that's why Austin, the "liberal" outpost of Texas sees this "surprising" degree of police conflict - the cultural chasm between the law enforcers and the citizens.

* Also depressing, when it seems more like law enforcement is terrorizing the communities within their jurisdiction rather than serving them.

<comment><USER9> If a department is recruiting outside of their communities, it would seem that it might be more likely that the culture of the department and the community _would_ diverge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In this new world of sub 3% growth, Austin is lucky to have this problem. The only thing worse than getting pushed out of an area because of it's success, is no success at all--especially for a younger generation who just wants to make a go life. There are boom towns in every generation.

<comment><USER11> Maybe, but no growth towns like Austin was in the late 80s/early 90s are pretty great for younger people who aren't all that concerned about making "a go at life."

<comment><USER3> Sounds so similar to Portland, and maybe Seattle in the 70s and 80s after Boeing shrank and before Microsoft came to town.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Most talked about city in the world? What?

<comment><USER13> Probably sounds better than "300th most talked about city" which would probably be more accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article sure smells like it may be calling the "top" in the current Austin "unstoppable" growth phase.

</comment><comment><USER14> The problem with Austin - I grew up there, went to school there - is, as nice as it is, it is surrounded by Texas, which is fine if you can stand the right- wing politics and the pushy religious people.

</comment><comment><USER15> Grew up in Austin and turned out to be a hardware/software engineer - <USER2> surprise with the number of tech jobs. I recently moved away to raleigh, nc due to the heat (you never get used to it), traffic, and cost of living. Raleigh reminds me of austin 25 years ago.

\-- edit should say if your life goal is launching a tech startup austin is the place to be (outside of excessively expensive silicon valley)

<comment><USER16> I've lived all over the US, but went to college in Raleigh and it is still the only place I actively miss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Charlotte, NC has seen a similar growth over a similar time period, with the area population quadrupling over the last twenty five years. Unlike Austin, it seems like the majority of people who move to the Charlotte area are families.

It's not a "cool" city like Austin or Boulder, but it's seams to have no end of jobs, or comparatively inexpensive housing.

Does anyone have a graph of US cities growth rates over the last 25 years? Maybe these aren't outliers?

<comment><USER18> I wondered the same. Here's the Current-dollar GDP for the top 50 metro areas (2009-2014)[1]. The top 10 metro areas by 5 year CAGR are...

      7.417%	San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA MSA
      7.230%	Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington, TX MSA
      7.167%	Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX MSA
      7.062%	Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown, TX MSA
      6.310%	San Antonio–New Braunfels, TX MSA
      5.542%	Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN MSA
      5.290%	Oklahoma City, OK MSA
      5.086%	Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC MSA
      4.928%	Raleigh-Cary, NC MSA
      4.885%	Detroit–Warren–Livonia, MI MSA

4/T5 were TX metros. Austin isn't even the top in TX.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_area...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_areas_by_GDP#Current- dollar_GDP_by_metropolitan_area_.28millions_of_dollars.29)

<comment><USER19> Everyone is talking about and gravitating towards Austin but the DFW area is an absolute hotbed for jobs. It seems like every other month some large corporation is moving their HQ to Dallas or the suburbs. It's a seller's market for labor.

<comment><USER20> Dallas vs Austin is like Enterprise vs Startup. DFW is where the most growth is and by end of the decade DFW will be hitting 8 million. Texas boom may have slowed in Houston because of Oil woes, but DFW and Austin are still high- flyers. Lot of OLD MONEY in DFW though.

<comment><USER19> That's a great analogy. Definitely a lot of old money as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I can't wait for Austin salaries to catch up to the other tech epicenters. I graduated and left to Seattle for a 2x pay increase over many of my peers. Now in NYC riding the tech bubble and missing the rich family and social networks I have down there. I've never come across any interesting jobs in the area that didn't feel 2nd rate.

<comment><USER19> Have you adjusted for cost of living? Austin salaries are lower but probably not much lower if at all when adjusted for cost of living.

<comment><USER22> _Have you adjusted for cost of living?_

Seattle's raw rent / housing costs are much higher than they used to be (i.e. see [http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/home- prices...](http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/home-prices-in- seattle-pop-nearly-19-percent-for-the-year/) for one example), but Washington State still has no income tax and its land-use policies are somewhat more sane than tech hubs like SF or NYC ([http://www.geekwire.com/2016/redfin-ceo-glenn- kelman-shares-...](http://www.geekwire.com/2016/redfin-ceo-glenn-kelman- shares-data-on-the-seattle-housing-crisis/)).

Austin is much, much less expensive than SF, but not that much less expensive than Seattle. A 2x salary or even 1.5x salary is going to make Seattle much more appealing on a purely financial basis.

NYC is costly but has interesting dating dynamics for straight guys: [http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/19/briefly-noted-date- onomics...](http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/19/briefly-noted-date-onomics-how- dating-became-a-lopsided-numbers-game-jon-birger/).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome read. Austin has been such a large part of my life I really enjoy hearing opinions about the city's changes over the years.

"The only way to stop people from coming to Austin is to make this an unattractive place to live."

I thought this really resonated. Austin, if changed for the worse, really is a victim of how cool it is. Since Austin I've lived in Lubbock and now Dallas. There really aren't people who move to these two cities for things other than work or school. On the other hand I have countless friends who move to Austin just to be a part of the city and experience all it has to offer.

</comment><comment><USER23> I love the navel gazing attitude that Austin is the most talked about city in the world. Um... no.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it just me or there has been a wave of posts about Austin on HN? Is it the pre-SXSW anxiety?

</comment><comment><USER25> All my friends are buried there.

.

And, some of them are dead. [0]

.

[0] "That Godforsaken Hellhole I Call Home", The Austin Lounge Lizards</comment>


From tl;dr to Techcrunch: My Rumble app's story - <AUTHOR> http://omgbloglol.com/post/1373695996/from-tl-dr-to-techcrunch-my-rumble-apps-story

<comment><USER2> [http://omgbloglol.com/post/1373695996/from-tl-dr-to- techcrun...](http://omgbloglol.com/post/1373695996/from-tl-dr-to-techcrunch- my-rumble-apps-story)

->

<http://tldr.it/summaries/7744>

Short, Medium, and Long show the same short piece of insignificant text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, incredibly ironic actually. :)

I know why that's happening, but I unfortunately can't fix it due to Rails Rumble rules. I'll be overhauling the content extraction over the next little while using what I've learned from stuff you guys have submitted. Example: Did you know a lot of sites don't actually use <p> tags? Or that some sites have a metric ton of JS (many times more than the HTML in the <body>!)? It's awesome! :(

<comment><USER2> I have been working on a similar problem and was surprised to find that there isn't a solution that can extract text perfectly (or is there?).

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately there isn't anything near perfect as far as I've found.

There are a lot of clever things you can do, but markup is incredibly hard to parse (in the "What's actually in here?" sense) and it's even harder to determine the original author's intent for elements. HTML 5 sites makes this much easier, but that's like 0.00000001% of pages on the Internet at this point. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I made a similar site a year or so ago called synopit.com but that relied on user generated content rather than algorithmic summarizers. I had some good traction early on, covered by readwriteweb and a few other decent publications. Me and a buddy were generating most of the content, usually of popular stories on reddit or digg, to which we would link in the comments. That generated a good amount of traffic, but we kind of got busy and then let the idea fall by the way side.

I still think user generated content is the way to go. A good example is this summary posted in the comments of the Ars Technica review of the Windows 7 phone: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1818782> \- that kind of summary just can't be programmatically generated (yet, anyway). I'm glad tlrd.it is having such early success, it kind of validates the market for me and may inspire me to pursue my idea further.</comment>


Internet raises $150K for bullied bus monitor in one day - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57457935-93/internet-raises-$150k-for-bullied-bus-monitor-in-one-day/?tag=mncol;cnetRiver

<comment><USER2> This video was clearly taken by some of the kids involved. I'll bet they really regret posting it on the internet now. I guess they're young, but I'm often shocked with how little people think about the negative consequences to allowing a video you post to become publicly available on youtube.

<comment><USER3> I find it interesting that this is what you took out of the story. I'm not suggesting it's wrong. My immediate reaction was:

1) These kids are evil. 2) Are they spoiled rich kids? 3) How do I reduce the odds of my kid behaving like that in 10 years.

btw - I'd like to hope the kid who video-taped it knew exactly what he /she was doing. Maybe a silver lining in an otherwise depressing bus ride (that and the 100k).

<comment><USER4> The kids are probably in even greater need of compassion than the lady they were harassing is, because they probably learned this attitude at the core of this behavior from their parents.

<comment><USER5> Mmmmm..... as someone who works for a huge school district with hundreds of schools with students running the gamut from poorest of the poor to richest of the rich, I can tell you they didn't LEARN this behavior from their parents. Rather, they have never been taught to NOT behave like that. Even those with decent parents will sometimes act like horrid little turds. The natural state of the 12-13 year old Middle School Child is that of a vicious, immoral monster. Most will eventually mature into normal, empathetic humans, but at that age, they're ALL terrible.

I neither feel compassion nor hate for them. I detest them for their behavior, and think what they need is some sort of long, unpleasant punishment (e.g. grounded for 4 weeks, during which they clean out the Augean stable) but this is not worthy of any permanent judgement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is amazing. I remember being horrified after seeing this on reddit a few days ago. Glad there's somethiing we can all do -- this campaign really shows internet support and kindness in a great light.

</comment><comment><USER7> link to funding campaign: <http://www.indiegogo.com/loveforkarenhklein>

at $273k now, just 1 hour after this post.

<comment><USER8> $420k now, just 8 hours after your post!!! Goal was $5k. Still 29 days left...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excuse my ignorance, but what's a bus monitor?

<comment><USER10> You ought to be able to google it, but it's a person assigned to assist the bus driver - mainly with keeping order among students - so that the driver can concentrate on driving. Reasonably common on American schoolbuses, depending on the district.

<comment><USER9> "You ought to be able to google it", I know, but I figured there might be something specific to this case, so I thought I'd ask.

"but it's a person assigned to assist the bus driver" Should she maybe not have been doing a better job of keeping the kids in line? Does she not have the power to stand up, tell them to shut up and pull the bus over? I'm not excusing their behaviour in the slightest, it just seems that she wasn't really performing the task she was hired to do.

<comment><USER11> It wouldn't surprise me if she had the responsibility for keeping order but not the authority or support (from administration and parents) to do so.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cisco routers now lock you out unless you join their online service - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/105059362788808645801/posts/atGdBueaGjH

<comment><USER2> Well, the linked page crashes embedded WebKit, mobile Safari, and Instapaper. So I can only scan it quickly before it disappears.

Cisco is consumer-dumb/hostile, and out of touch in many ways, but I'm highly skeptical of this claim. There's a link that seems to be included as supporting evidence, but I can't click it before it disappears.

If anyone can copy it here, please do.

<comment><USER3> Link to original news article:

Cisco's cloud vision: Mandatory, monetized, and killed at their discretion

[http://www.extremetech.com/computing/132142-ciscos-cloud- vis...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/132142-ciscos-cloud-vision- mandatory-monetized-and-killed-at-their-discretion)

<comment><USER2> OK, my skepticism was misplaced. Thanks for posting the link. Cisco is entirely emphatically in the wrong here.

I think this is indicative of a much bigger problem than the article suggests. Cisco is falling way behind in their core hardware market (routers and switches), losing in VoIP, never could write acceptable software, failed and unwound their consumer services push from a few years back (social networking sw), abandoned their consumer non-networking hardware (Flip, that tablet thing), and are now getting tone-deaf "creative" in their low-margin consumer networking hardware (Linksys) division??

What's left?? Scientific Atlanta set top boxes?

Not to be overly dramatic, but this speaks very very poorly for Cisco's vision of itself, and I think we can learn something here. Chambers is starting to look a lot like Ballmer. The clock is ticking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I had one of these (I have an older Linksys), I'm pretty sure I'd go buy one from some other company, then take my formerly viable Linksys router, smash it to bits, put it and a fuck you note in a box and send it to Cisco.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is just amazing, and it makes me glad I haven't bought a Linksys product since the merger.

Enough parties can already track what we do online. Why should we pay Cisco for the privilege of adding them to that list?

</comment><comment><USER6> I assume (hope) this doesn't include enterprise products.</comment>


Ask HN: How do i become inventive? - <AUTHOR> If "inventiveness" can be described as a skill,how can anyone acquire it? <comment><USER2> Build upon an existing or your very own idea but don't make it a one-off. explore at least a dozen different ways to make it better.

Artist Winslow Homer would do sketch after sketch, study after study, before he did his final "one-off" masterpiece. Keep improving the idea. It is astonishing what serendipity that can occur.

Here is a visual example: Andy Warhol's skulls:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=warhol+skull+collection&tbm=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=warhol+skull+collection&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIkamXmYjLAhVHRyYKHW9nCpUQsAQIJw&biw=1163&bih=631)

<comment><USER3> This is a pretty good answer!

For another example, in information architecture, one way to do that is according to LATCH, which I've previously written about here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554237)

Another exercise is what I call "counterparts," what are all the ways other industries, other organizations, other people have solved this problem? And not just the problem as-is, but, when you simplify or abstract the problem, or you turn it into a process, or you approximate it into steps, how do those solutions go? Following a recipe in a cookbook feels very different from stepping through a software installation wizard, and yet they are both guiding us through a process.

Take the time to actually explore the entire possibility space. You can't get to the really crazy, novel solutions until you've thought through all the _obvious_ ones. "If you didn't have to build it" and "if money and physics were no object" are valuable constraints.

Finally, spend your "inventive" energy where it matters, and don't value inventiveness for inventiveness' sake. Design has to serve masters: users, and business goals, and success metrics. If you're not testing your creative solutions against those and proving their value, then your "inventive" solution isn't any better than anyone else's "obvious" solution. An "obvious" solution that's cribbed from another industry but that tests out as a viable solution is way better than something super original that you have no idea how it's going to perform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While some of the approaches mentioned below do work to some extent (TRIZ, etc.), they won't really make you "inventive". Personally I think they're all gimmicks (although to be fair they are gimmicks that work). I think what you really want is to "become" an inventive person instead of trying to force invent stuff. Read this book for starters: [http://www.amazon.com/Where-Good- Ideas-Come-From/dp/15944853...](http://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come- From/dp/1594485380)

<comment><USER5> TRIZ was not the only Altshuller invention.

He was mostly interested in how exactly to develop a creativity trait, and came up with something called a "Theory of a Creative Personality Development", a further generalisation of TRIZ.

There are some anecdotal confirmations from various schools across the former USSR that this approach is known to produce some stable results. So at least it worth looking into.

<comment><USER4> As i mentioned it _does_ work. And it is a good guideline to look at when you're stuck. But it's not the fundamental solution. TRIZ teaches you to emulate creativity. The whole idea is "how can an even ordinary person come up with creative ideas?" My point was that's all fine and it's good to learn that skill, but it would be better if you shoot for actually "becoming a creative person" instead of "ordinary person coming up with creative ideas". I suggested that book above because I found it helpful from that point of view.

<comment><USER5> I suspect, there is no such a thing as an inherently "creative" person. I very closely followed the biographies of many of the greatest minds, and I'm yet to see a compelling evidence that creativity is some kind of a special trait which cannot be acquired.

There are just people who somehow know the creativity tricks (either deliberately learned or randomly discovered), and the "ordinary" people who happen to have a little gap in their education. Learning the formal approaches to creativity could help to close this gap.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm basically agreeing with you that there is no inherently creative person and you can acquire it. I'm just making a distinction between becoming actually creative vs. emulating creativity. I would rather "become a creative person" than "use techniques to come up with creative solutions" if I were to pick one.

<comment><USER5> Firstly, as I said, all the post-TRIZ works by Altshuller were exactly about training the creativity as a personality trait, not about the formal invention methods.

Secondly, if _simulating_ creativity is indistinguishable (by the outcome) from a "true" creativity, then the very existence of creativity is questionable, and it is likely that all forms of creativity can be explained by simply knowing (maybe subconsciously) a number of techniques of "simulating" the creativity.

<comment><USER4> I didn't say TRIZ is bad. I even said it's a good technique to learn. I just pointed out that anyone can be creative without "training". The concept of training is based on the assumption that people are not naturally creative. I think anyone has potential to come up with creative achievements in their lives but only small number of people get the opportunity or motivation to do so. I think in many cases it's just a matter of changing your mindset and putting yourself in the right environment. Anyway, if you haven't read that book I recommended above please take a look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd say by broadening your interdisciplinary skills and life experiences. From first hand and what I've read others claim, these 2 things are key. Without a wide range of experience and knowledge it's still possible, but more of an innate skill. These characteristics allow you to pull different parts of knowledge and experience and combine, mix and match, and adult them to the real world.

</comment><comment><USER7> Develop your imagination and learn how to find solutions to problems. Then figure out how to make those solutions real and workable. Break each detail down into a list of things you need to write code for in order to solve them one by one. Then build data structures and a database behind them. Build algorithms to solve them and make it into a program you can market and sell.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not necessarily a "skill":

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ)</comment>


Thought Driven Development a Methodology of Abile Development - <AUTHOR> http://littletutorials.com/2008/09/29/thought-driven-development/

<comment><USER2> I think that his argument is based on fundamentally different assumptions than the Agile practices. One of the most obvious is the idea that programming is engineering or architecture; however, there are quite a few people who disagree that software can be developed this way. Robert Martin suggests that programmers are craftsmen, not engineers; others suggest that gardening is a good metaphor (<http://www.artima.com/intv/gardenP.html>).

The article implies that one must write all of your tests first when using TDD, but it fails to mention that they don't need to all be written before the first line of non-test code. When designing a bridge, one does need to design it in great detail before beginning construction, but gardening can be more...organic :)

</comment><comment><USER3> TDD is great in Smalltalk, Ruby, and other late-bound languages. Otherwise it's just a safety net against regressions.

I think that the author's point can be summed up as: think about what you need to do, and then write the code to do it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fairly incoherent rant... not much value to be found in here.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was dead sure 'abile' was a typo until I reached the end of the post.</comment>


Show HN: Exploring the US Budget, 1962-2019 - <AUTHOR> http://learnforeverlearn.com/usbudget/ <comment><USER2> The government really is an insurance company with an army.

<comment><USER3> When you think about it, that's not a bad definition of government in < 140 chars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like this.

First response: I'd prefer the _total_ spending was more clearly highlighted (larger font and/or to the side).

Inflation-adjusted or percent of total GDP would also be useful.

The detail pop-ups are pretty sweet. A little hard to navigate (somewhat a property of space available). Maybe give them more of the window -- if someone's looking at the detail _show them the detail_ and allocate display space to it.

</comment><comment><USER5> How does the national debt increase from $5,656,270,901,633.43 to $5,674,178,209,886.86 during a year with a $200,000,000,000 surplus?

<comment><USER6> It wasn't a real on-budget surplus. It was only a surplus if you took the revenue from Social Security tax and ignored the obligation to later pay Social Security with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey dripton - curious what your thoughts are on this: [http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit- unde...](http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under- clinton/)

I think that this gets into what the deal might have been with respect to whether you count the social security tax or not. I think that they conclude there is a "surplus" either way, although it is of course smaller. However, you might be referring to something else.

<comment><USER7> That seems to be saying that accounting for social security would eliminate ~99% of the surplus. But what about medicare and the like?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This would be more helpful is it was indexed to inflation, the numbers are quite misleading otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER9> Did some math for fun:

DoD 2000-2014 = $282 billion to $587 billion = 2.08x increase over 14 years.

Total 2000-2004 = $1.79 trillion to $3.65 trillion = 2.03x increase.

So since 9/11 DoD seems to be expanding at the rate of total government expansion, which is pretty rapid. Compared to the 14 years before that from 1985-1999.

DoD 1985-1999 = $246 billion to $262 billion = 1.065x increase over 14 years

Total 1985-1999 = $946 billion to $1.7 trillion = 1.7x increase

So the total government is growing at a similar rate, but DoD exploded in size in the last 14 years.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunatly the US budget is intentionally misleading in a wide number of ways.

For example there is a lot of DoD spending that's not included in those numbers. Such as veterains affairs. Also, those numbers don't take into account inflation or the current GDP.

<comment><USER11> They split it up by discretionary and mandatory.

Supporting veterans or paying government employees' promised pensions is considered mandatory. Buying 12 new aircraft carriers is not mandatory.

<comment><USER7> > They split it up by discretionary and mandatory.

Which has always been a bit of a lie for political expediency. Most of the "mandatory" expenditures aren't actually fixed amounts. For example, changing the retirement age or what benefits government health plans provide will directly impact "mandatory" spending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Beautiful visualization! I really like it.

Only semi-related, but something I've always wondered: Like a lot of other sources, this graph shows us running surplus in '98 & '99.

At the same time, the federal debt increased in those years:

[http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histd...](http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo4.htm)

Can anyone explain why?

<comment><USER13> Without looking at the issue, I can say that the "deficit" and "surplus" are for the budget. Actual spending may differ, which may explain the rise of the debt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The projections show the deficit being almost equal to the debt service payments in 2017-2019. There's a lesson about debt in there somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER14> Inflation-adjusted version would be useful.

<comment><USER15> But would also be difficult, and introduce a political element to it

<comment><USER16> Uhm, no. Inflation is a given; these numbers aren't very useful without adjusting for inflation and population and/or GDP growth.

<comment><USER17> Inflation itself is a fact. The exact amount of inflation in any given time period is subject to differing points of view.

The choice of "which inflation measure" can be viewed as a political choice because it could be carefully chosen to tell the story you prefer. (choice A might yield "Look how much worse measure X was during party Y's tenure" which choice B could tell an even-handed or even opposing story)

<comment><USER16> We have had and do have independent agencies to measure inflation. But if you wish, we also measure GDP which is an absolute number. Here is the budget with respect to GDP:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_Revenues_and_Outlays...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_Revenues_and_Outlays_as_Percent_GDP,_2014.png)

We start out with outlays at under 16% GDP in 1970, and go all the way up to 20% in 2014, with a spike up to 24% during the last crisis. Not surprising, shocking, or daramatic at all. This is better than even the inflation adjusted numbers; e.g.

[http://www.glencoe.com/sec/socialstudies/economics/econprinc...](http://www.glencoe.com/sec/socialstudies/economics/econprinciples2001/pdfs/C10-01C-820487.pdf)

Well, W2, we spent a lot of money then, but even still, federal spending by 2000 was 8X that of spending in 1940. Why is that? Well, population growth obviously, higher expectations as another.

By going with ABSOLUTE numbers with no context on population, inflation, and GDP...that's very biased.

Edit: the charts are still useful, if you look at them only for relatively distribution of spending. They don't convey how spending compares to the overall economy, however.

<comment><USER7> > But if you wish, we also measure GDP which is an absolute number.

Of course, using GDP rather than inflation is also a political choice because GDP has on average increased more than inflation.

Also, comparing the government budget with GDP will never show more than a modest increase because a "large" increase (e.g. quadrupling the government budget as a percentage of GDP) would require the government to be consuming in excess of 100% of GDP.

On the other hand, if compared with inflation there is an exponential increase in the federal budget over time. For example, the 1962 budget of $107B would be $884B in 2014 dollars (using CPI) but the 2014 budget is $3650B, which exceeds the real 1962 GDP.

<comment><USER16> It definitely does show large increases during the depression (when the economy shrank) and during WII, when we went all out into war. Fluctuations since then have been quite boring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Really nice visualization - helps to put things in perspective. Interesting how 2009 shows a US deficit in the trillions.

</comment><comment><USER19> Over time comparisons should be inflation adjusted, and optionally adjusted by total population or gdb.

</comment><comment><USER20> Good job, great visuals make it easy to understand the numbers.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this on github/bitbucket/google code or am I going to have to dig around the JS to mess around with it?

Regardless, pretty cool.

<comment><USER21> Your possibilities aren't mutually exclusive: There are many unminified javascript files floating around that are not OSS.

> Is this OSS

Unless the author releases it under an open source license, the answer is no

> am I going to have to dig around minified JS to mess around with it?

The unminified source is available at [http://learnforeverlearn.com/usbudget/dist/usbudget.js](http://learnforeverlearn.com/usbudget/dist/usbudget.js)

The source data is available at [http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/supplemental](http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/supplemental) (note that XLS files are the normative versions)

<comment><USER15> Edited comment to change tone and clarify what I was asking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sigh, another fancy site that doesn't work on mobile, but could be presented with simple divs/tables or even ASCII art.

<comment><AUTHOR> judk - not sure if you're checking back, but wondering what device you are using. It has some responsive design stuff that should let it be usable on an iPhone in portrait (it just shows the two main bars). Small screen landscape is another issue.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would you do joining a new team as a manager? - <AUTHOR> How would you onboard a new team as an engineering manager starting a new job? <comment><USER2> First, if I were in your shoes, I would approach this from a different direction. You are onboarding yourself, not the team. If you approach it from the opposite angle, you will piss off the people you need to be most helpful.

The first step is to introduce yourself. This will be supremely unhelpful, but maybe someone with a better memory/filing system can chime in with some more help. A few months ago, there was a post on the front page about developer READMEs. There were a couple of great examples in there written by new managers to introduce themselves to their new teams. My Google skills are failing me now, but I'm sure that I'll find the article about five minutes after I can no longer edit this post. :)

I wish I could give you that link because those readmes are a great way to introduce yourself to a new team.

Aside from that, I'm a big fan of changing absolutely nothing and getting your hands dirty as soon as possible. There's nothing better than a manager who comes in with respect for how you have done things and helps solve some major problems. You will get bonus marks if you're very humble. I would pair with members of your team and get them to teach you the system. Thank them, praise them when warranted, and try your best to avoid playing those shitty developer "whip it out" games. Keep note of the developers who play those games. They might be lacking confidence, or they might be a cancer...

I'm not saying that you can never change things because you will. But it's dangerous to change things until you understand exactly why it was done the old way. You'll be surprised how often things that seem really dumb are actually necessary.

Then, try to set yourself up as someone who will advocate for your team. It's hard to prove this without actually doing it. But, you have a new job, so you'll presumably want to avoid ruffling any of the feathers that hired you. This is a tough one to balance and I'd be lying if I said I had any specific advice beyond going with the flow and being careful.

If you do this for two to three months, you'll have the capital to really lead.

Finally, good luck. You're making the hardest transition in our industry, but I believe in you. You'll be a great manager - posting this ask HN is a very good signal. Have fun, be you and kick ass!!

<comment><USER2> I found the link:

[https://hackernoon.com/12-manager-readmes-from-silicon- valle...](https://hackernoon.com/12-manager-readmes-from-silicon-valleys-top- tech-companies-26588a660afe)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot guys. That is some serious badass content here!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Listen to the team. Spend time observing and getting to know the systems, the people, the processes. Don't try and make major changes on day one because you cannot possibly understand the reason things work they way they do at that point.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Introduce yourself, your background, your values

2\. Announce your intentions (see below)

3\. As robertcope suggests, start off by observing and building relationships. If you have experience in what the team does, pitch in and get your hands dirty and learn the [codebase, processes, etc.]

4\. A couple months of step 3 will accomplish 2 things: it will give you insight into what really is and isn't working well for the team; and it will build you the political capital you need to get people onboard with changes. At this point you can start making suggestions. You should also by now be making yourself an advocate for your team's needs with upper management.</comment>


Google Yourself to See How Other People See You - <AUTHOR> http://www.caycon.com/blog/2011/06/google-yourself-to-see-how-other-people-see-you/ <comment><USER2> Or maybe the filter bubble will just show how the web sees you.</comment>


Discovering a Soft Spot for Circuitry - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/science/05robot.html

<comment><USER2> An important quote, IMO:

> _Part of the seal's appeal, according to Dr. Takanori Shibata, the computer > scientist who invented Paro with financing from the Japanese government, > stems from a kind of robotic sleight of hand. Scientists have observed that > people tend to dislike robots whose behavior does not match their > preconceptions. Because the technology was not sophisticated enough to > conjure any animal accurately, he chose one that was unfamiliar, but still > lovable enough that people could project their imaginations onto it. "People > think of Paro," he said, "as 'like living.' "_

Looks like they're landing pretty near the non-living side of the uncanny valley. Enough to talk to / think more about, but not enough to be weird.

There's also quotes from patients with them, and about how a blinking-bear didn't work in the least, and how a number of patients are rather drastically improved by having one / being around one.

Some of which is probably the shiny-new-thing glow, but some of it isn't. Also, many people around those ages are near-hostile to tech, but are accepting of this. Interesting.

<comment><USER3> More importantly, this suggests a potential direction for UI to take in a wider range of applications. I know Clippy was a dreadful failure, but maybe the tech just wasn't up to it yet. With all the extra cores that are coming on line in modern computers, we are going to have processing cycles to spare, and this would be a way of using that power in a way that would directly benefit the user experience. To give an example, in my flat, my PC is always on and always has a webcam plugged in - I'd pay good money for a program that identified when my flat was getting messy and started to nag me to clean up. Something like that that actually works, I'd be willing to spend 100E on without even thinking about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Single page: [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/science/05robot.html?_r=1&...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/science/05robot.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sign-in required.</comment>


Yet another Microsoft Gimick - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/default.aspx Check out Microsoft's latest twist to ramp up Internet Explorer 8 usage <comment><AUTHOR> I seriously think we can reverse engineer this. what technology could M$ have possibly used to make this clue only visible in Explorer 8</comment>


Saudi Arabia Shelves Work on SoftBank's $200B Solar Project - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-shelves-work-on-softbanks-200-billion-solar-project-1538328820 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/wLsRa](http://archive.is/wLsRa)

> An alternative plan is to be announced in late October 18.

</comment><comment><USER2> '...the officials and the adviser said the Saudi kingdom is working up a broader, more practical strategy to boost renewable energy, to be announced in late October around the time of an investment conference in Riyadh. The announcement will help clarify the kingdom's renewable energy goals, a Saudi official said'.

SA/MBS & Softbank are making some big bets and are being pretty agile about it IMO, this isn't another big project that's out of date by the time they get going on it...

</comment><comment><USER3> Its a wise move considering solar might get much cheaper by 2030.

At this point though the main expense is not the panels but the more complex task of logistics, operational, etc.

It could also generate a lot of jobs for Saudi citizens but I do not think the average Saudi would be interested doing the job of installing solar panels.

Solar is a really good bet for the Saudis, they just need to execute it well.

<comment><USER4> Why 2030 specifically and why di you think Saudis don't want jobs installing solar panels?

<comment><USER5> Over 2/3rds of Saudi nationals are employed by the government in relative cushy jobs. Manual labor is done by foreigners.

Same reason as the US and farm workers, natives don't want to do it.

<comment><USER6> ">> _Same reason as the US and farm workers, natives don't want to do it. "_

$30 an hour and I'd do it. Immigrants do it because the cost of living in _their_ country is like 10 times less than in USA. They sacrifice for x years, almost live off the grid here until they build a house, open a business and stay in their country.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Guardian – DevTools reveals they are hiring - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone ever seen anything similar - i.e. embedding hiring links/contact info hidden in HTML/JS?

Or indeed has anyone had any success on either side of such hiring tactics?</comment>


How to Price Your Hardware Product - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackthings.com/how-to-price-your-hardware-product/

<comment><USER2> Not mentioned is kickstarter which essentially tells you exactly up front what some customers will be paying for the initial volume.

You can also set your prices even higher but then use discounting. The higher price implies a better product, and who doesn't like to save money?

</comment><comment><USER3> A cached version:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hackthings.com%2Fhow- to-price-your-hardware-product%2F)

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, what I should charge using his bottom up pricing is way more than I had initially thought. We'll see how this goes.

<comment><USER5> I would say that his costs are a bit conservative even. $10/hr is not realistic for providing support unless you outsource it (I don't have a clue how much that would cost). The actual employee price is significantly higher than just the wage. Even if you aren't selling by retail, there is going to be costs associated with selling the product which he seems to ignore.

It is somewhat shocking the first time you hear about how much products have to be marked up to actually make a profit. In some industries you could expect the markup to be a factor of 10 higher than the COGS.</comment></comment>


Integrated information theory: from consciousness to its physical substrate - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v17/n7/abs/nrn.2016.44.html <comment><AUTHOR> oops meant to post link the full article here: [https://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v17/n7/full/nrn.2016.44.h...](https://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v17/n7/full/nrn.2016.44.html)</comment>


Show HN: Five new royalty free, no copyright tracks every week - <AUTHOR> https://no-lick.com/?ref=HN <comment><AUTHOR> This was initially a side project of my side project (which is an online multiplayer synthesizer), and right now it's #1 on Product Hunt :)

Hope you guys appreciate it too.</comment>


Git-appraise: Distributed code review system for Git repos - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/git-appraise <comment><USER2> Upvoted because this looks cool and I'm definitely your target audience. The README doesn't give me a great sense of how this actually works, though. A 5 minute video, or even a hypothetical example with some screenshots intermixed, would help a lot.

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/google/git-appraise- eclipse](https://github.com/google/git-appraise-eclipse)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like an awesome tool. Sadly my comment has more to do with Go, as I'm new to the language and trying to learn.

When building a tool that uses git I'm wondering if it is better practice to use git2go ([https://github.com/libgit2/git2go](https://github.com/libgit2/git2go)) or to do what this author did which is wrap the git command line tool: [https://github.com/google/git- appraise/blob/master/repositor...](https://github.com/google/git- appraise/blob/master/repository/git.go#L37-L42)

<comment><USER5> Nothing wrong with calling the git command directly since this isn't an app that needs to scale past 1 human user. It could be some busy work in the future to translate it all into git2go, I have a project like this. It's a personal tool I use to write my journal and it wraps git to manage the entry data by placing it in a git repository.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always thought that built-in comments and docs are an excellent feature of Fossil [1], and wished git had it.

Kudos to the author.

[1]: [http://www.fossil-scm.org](http://www.fossil-scm.org)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What's interesting is that this project seems to be using itself for code review.

Clone the repo and then fetch notes manually:

        git fetch origin refs/notes/*:refs/notes/*

After installing it through "go get" check existing code reviews with "git appraise list".

There are notes from Jenkins and comments from developers as far as I can see.

Seems to be a little bit slow on my computer but the idea is really brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't find any mention of GUI frontends for git-appraise.

While I prefer to write code in my terminal, I like to switch settings for reviewing code — with GitHub's Pull Requests, I can just do it in the browser. Can I use git-appraise in my browser? Is there a stand-alone tool?

<comment><USER8> Looks like it's a standalone cli tool but I imagine you could get it to work with something like kdiff

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this compare w.r.t Gerrit?

I see that an advantage is that it doesn't require server-side setup. But wouldn't one require some sort of central repo to coordinate code reviews and CI tests?

<comment><USER10> To me it looks like something that could be used to implement Gerrit, but it doesn't come close to what Gerrit offers, having used it for a few years now. Gerrit is excellent at what it does.

<comment><USER11> I like Gerrit features, but it always seemed too complicated to integrate into usual coding workflow, especially with people always even complaining about git being "hard to use". This tools seems simpler compared to Gerrit, and more flexible compared to GitHub pull requests.

I would appreciate advices on introducing Gerrit to my team and make it somehow transparent in development workflow.

<comment><USER12> I wrote about Gerrit a few years ago:

[http://alblue.bandlem.com/2011/02/someday.html](http://alblue.bandlem.com/2011/02/someday.html)

I recorded a video showing how it worked together:

[http://alblue.bandlem.com/2011/02/gerrit-git-review-with- jen...](http://alblue.bandlem.com/2011/02/gerrit-git-review-with-jenkins- ci.html)

Once you understand the workflow it's actually easy to adopt. The biggest challenge is getting people to think in terms of push requests instead of pull requests. If you configure the remote as "git config push HEAD:refs/for/master" then it becomes as simple as doing "git push" to upload changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems solid, are there any editors for this?

<comment><USER14> There's an Eclipse plugin, if that's what you mean: [https://github.com/google/git-appraise- eclipse](https://github.com/google/git-appraise-eclipse)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice ! I guess storing issues and comments is possible too ?

<comment><USER14> Yes, this includes comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Damn, feeling completely dumb. I have installed the tool, and am trying it on one of my projects. After I do some local commits `git-appraise request` returns `There are no commits included in the review request`. Is there any tutorial or more documentation available somewhere? Or do I need to dig into its code to find the issue?

</comment><comment><USER17> Trying to use this and I get "exit status 128" for all reasonable invocations of "git appraise request ...".

Looks seriously cool and I am sad!

</comment><comment><USER18> How does this handle identity? For example, what's preventing me from just changing my name and reviewing myself?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably the same way that git handles author and committer fields see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005577)</comment></comment>


Systems programming as a Swiss Army Knife [video] - <AUTHOR> http://vid.plus/yt.php?fu=5v6o-VsLAew

<comment><USER2> Pretty sure this is the same video, but on youtube itself.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v6o-VsLAew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v6o-VsLAew)</comment>


Pwning a Spammer's Keylogger  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2012/04/pwning-a-spammers-keylogger.html <comment><USER3> > Well, for the dump file BPK.DAT, the XOR key partially worked, but to make > it more readable I XORed it using two bytes 0xAA, 0x00

I'd say the older version that was analyzed before wasn't using unicode yet, whereas the later version was.

Very cool how you see the effects of character encodings all over the place - even where you don't expect them.

Also, if done right, the "encryption" should IMHO have been done after the file has been written in its native encoding using an input byte sequence. But seeing that the XOR key had that second 0 byte, I'd say that the encryption was done using a "string" key instead of plain bytes.

And don't get me started on the idea of using XOR as "encryption" - <USER2> with repeated pattern like this, this can't even be reasonably called obfuscation IMHO.

<comment><USER4> Peeve: Not unicode, UTF16. Unicode apps aren't synonymous with wide characters (though on Windows you're pretty much stuck as that's what the API picked, sigh), and in fact UTF8 is an objectively better encoding for almost all users.

<comment><USER3> Yes. Probably even UCS2 - I stopped doing a lot of Windows API stuff before I was running into situation where I need characters outside of the basic multilingual plane, so I couldn't say how wcslen("💩") would behave.

But I was talking about the build of the software. The old was probably a build linking against the old ANSI API ("A" suffix), whereas the new one is using the wide version ("W" suffix), usually referred to as the Unicode variant of the API - hence my incorrect terminology.

Looking at the screenshots of that application, if I had to take a really wild guess, I would say that the application might have been built in delphi which moved to the Unicode API with Delphi 2010 IIRC.

That changed the byte-width of a the standard Delphi string (and the more basic PChar type) to 2 bytes and switched over to using the W-suffix API.

I guess all those years of doing Delphi work are rubbing off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ah good old HIEW. It's the simplest and nicest disassembler - open a file switch to disassembly with one keypress. Move one line or one byte at a time for defeating code that jumps in the middle of instructions, edit the assembly (ok code bytes) in place with live preview what instructions you're writing. All in 130KB of code :) <http://www.hiew.ru/>

EDIT: I wonder why is the author using a version from 2004 though... I had to double check the date of the article. This tool is well worth the money!!!

<comment><USER6> > This tool is well worth the money!!!

To you, maybe. I have no use for it, so it's not, especially when it costs $200.

<comment><USER5> ...version 6.86 is the most spread cracked version

<comment><USER6> What do you mean? We're talking about buying it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although a year old, Mark Russinovich's posts talking about analyzing Stuxnet using only Windows Internals tools is another really interesting read: [http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/03/3...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/03/30/3416253.aspx)

It is fun to figure out how malware works.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reverse engineering stuff like this can be fun. I remember trying to reverse engineer some random .exe that got emailed to me once.

I disassembled it but all I found was some basic initialization code and then a jmp to an address that didn't seem to exist. However when I ran it (in a VM) with a debugger it seemed to go through all kinds of Win32 Calls.

Very odd

<comment><USER9> It's very common for malware (or other code that doesn't want to be reverse engineered) to be decrypting itself in the that initialization loop to generate the code that is jumped to. It is also very common for malware to use exception handling as control flow, which could also explain a nonsense jump.

<comment><USER8> That certainly makes sense, I wonder if it is encrypted using any proper scheme or something simple like XOR?

If it is strong encryption I suppose the thing to do would be to capture the key in memory, but that would require more patience than I have.

<comment><USER10> Usually it doesn't matter, you just let the exe decrypt itself, then grab the decrypted code and rebuild the PE with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great post, really enjoyed following the trail along with the author. The sad part is, knowing how useless a lot of ISP's abuse@ emails are, the FTP might never be taken down this way.

<comment><USER12> I'm hoping that "emailed the ISP" means "deleted the contents of the server and emailed the ISP".

<comment><USER13> Deleting the contents is illegal, heck, even accessing the server is illegal. Furthermore, it destroys evidence the ISP needs to shut it down.

<comment><USER12> That's why I hoped it was code. He wouldn't want to acknowledge illegal activity on his blog; though technically logging into the FTP server is probably illegal in itself.

<comment><USER14> depends I didn't see any banner and one could argue that his posting was covered by hue and cry :-)

"In common law, a hue and cry is a process by which bystanders are summoned to assist in the apprehension of a criminal who has been witnessed in the act of committing a crime."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would have replaced all the existing keylogger files with pictures of Rick Astley and Rebecca Black, but that's just me.

<comment><USER8> You're getting into dangerous legal territory there (technically you are by just connecting to the FTP I guess).

Bear in mind that many of the servers used by these guys do not belong to them and are probably a neglected server somewhere that was setup by an innocent party for other purposes but was subsequently pwned by the malware people.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but I was disappointed that he didn't at least change the password so that future FTP connections from the bots were refused.

<comment><USER8> Still arguably breaking the law. You'd also most likely need more access than just FTP to do that so that so that would involve having to break into a shell or something.

It would difficult to know what to do in these situations because your choices are going to be limited to doing nothing and letting them get away with it or going vigilante and possibly exposing yourself to legal risk.

You could inform law enforcement but they are likely to either do nothing or decide to arrest you instead (I knew someone who had the police come to his house and confiscate his computer for over a year because a fellow student saw him using DOS prompt on a school computer and decided to report him for "hacking").

<comment><USER17> I find this very hard to believe (the last part). With any confiscation, you can argue in court. 1 year without a computer was his fault. I'd slap that agency with a lawsuit.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure he could have got his computer back much sooner if he was sensible but he was a dumb kid, I imagine he just waiting for the police to give it back to him (probably low on their list of things to do).

He had a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way, bragging about being having 'leet' computer skills (he didn't) and doing idiotic things like mass net sends at school so I'm sure it was in many ways his fault. Does show how paranoid the police can be about "hackers" though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hey, let's use XOR-encrypt -- it works so well in the movies!

But seriously, it's nice to see this sort of post about breaking into the inbreakers' code.

I'm a little surprised that people are treating logging into the FTP server (if not deleting the keylogs) as a legal gray area. I understand the _moral_ dilemma of vigilante justice, but in principle, just doing an FTP connect and LIST seems to be well within your right, given that they gave you software which logs in and makes a directory and sends your keylog. Is there a real concern that someone will take you to court for that?

<comment><USER19> > _Is there a real concern that someone will take you to court for that?_

I think the concern is more along drawing a bright line between black hat and white hat.

Researchers have to do stuff which is borderline illegal; at least it's sometimes tricky to know if they're breaking any laws. Thus, they'll create a set of clear and easy to understand rules and work to those, which means that they reduce their risk of legal action.

"Don't fight abuse with abuse" is (at least was) very common phrase. That's pretty good idea, when some people aren't capable of knowing who the bad person is. We don't want denial of service attacks against innocent people.

Having said that, it's annoying as hell that ISPs don't do more to stop this kind of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "This keylogger program can be legitimately purchased and used, ostensibly for monitoring your kids' or employees' browsing habits, etc. As you can imagine, PK can also be used for badness."

Is this person suggesting that using a keylogger to spy on your employees/children without their knowledge is not 'badness'?!

<comment><USER21> Recording your employees' use of company computers, given proper disclosure, is an employers prerogative. It's also legal (in some locales) for parents to do this to their children. I find it immoral, personally (the latter), but this is _not the point of the story at all_ and the story was interesting and highly relevant, so I'm really disappointed to see this is the top comment.

<comment><USER8> Yes, although usually a keylogger is not necessary. A few places I have worked the IT dept/Management had a VNC server running on every desktop (it showed up in the process list, I wasn't working in IT at the time).

I pointed this out to a few people who would use IM programs to 'flirt' with each other all day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I remember coming across a malicious piece of javascript that found its way onto some websites a few years back. Just for fun, I traced it through the various stages to find out what it did. I decoded the js to find out that it downloaded an executable. I used objdump to look at the executable and through some tinkering and google searching found out it was packed with upx. So I unpacked it and I think I went through one or two more stages (with the help of people on various forums) before we got to the raw binary. Someone on the forums also ran it in a VM and we found out it connected to one of a handful of ip addresses. After some tinkering and looking through the code, someone on the forums figured out that it stole WoW account passwords.

It was a lot of fun and felt a bit like being a detective of some kind.

</comment><comment><USER23> Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the additional benefits of using a password manager such as 1Password is that it thwarts keyloggers. They may only get your master password (which shouldn't be your password on any site) but your site specific user name and password are never actually typed.

<comment><USER24> I don't know if you're wrong but how do those password programs work? If they emulate a keyboard by sending keystokes to the appropriate input field they are most likely logged by programs like these. (not HW keyloggers tho).

If the password programs use the clipboard, then it is just another source for the keylogger to capture and trivial to add. (edit: a screenshot lower in the article of the 'Perfect Keylogger' options screen shows a clipboard option.)

<comment><USER25> Its been a while (AOL ;), but IIRC the Windows API lets you SET_TEXT directly by window handle.

Assuming that's how 1Password works, it should be safe. I think that's a fair assumption because using the clipboard or SendKeys to an input box is all kinds of trouble in practice, and the API is easy.

<comment><USER24> But isn't that in itself another vector to 'hook' and redirect (just like the keystokes and clipboard)?

I'm going to agree with jiggy2011. Once you are compromised at that level then it's pretty much game over.

<comment><USER25> Definitely. I meant that it probably didn't use the clipboard or keyboard emulation, and so it would be safe from those particular attacks. Didn't mean to imply it would be safe from everything.

To nitrogen's point, there's definitely a corresponding GETTEXT message. There's even hooks[1].

But that's about all I know. Haven't written a desktop app in > 10 years.

[1] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms644990%28v=vs.85%2...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms644990%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how he just happened to notice the keylogger connecting to FTP? Did he have a monitor in the background or something? Seems like that would be a good practice for doing things like this, and this guy obviously knows his stuff.

<comment><USER27> I guess he simply had a firewall that monitors active connections on his workstation (when an unregistered program tried to access the network an alert showed up).

<comment><USER28> It looks like the author of the article was using Wireshark to intercept network traffic. In the article there is a screenshot of a window with the title "follow TCP stream" and a headline "Stream content", exactly like in Wireshark.

I have used the same trick sometimes when nobody could remember the FTP credentials, but they were stored in the FTP program and a connection to the FTP server was still possible. Sometimes the guy with access to the admin panel is just not available, so a possible solution is to use Wireshark to retrieve the password, which is usually transmitted without encryption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is an awesome post! I want to see more of this on HN. There is a mac program called Private Eye that monitors netstat and shows if programs connect to remote addresses. I always run it after downloading a new app so I can see where it's phoning home too

</comment><comment><USER30> Would be nice if there would be a community site for stuff like this where people would work together. A bit similar to <http://www.419eater.com> but then just only the technical stuff.

</comment><comment><USER31> Google cache version: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.spiderlabs.com/2012/04/pwning- a-spammers-keylogger.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> Why didnt the attacker directly use the details in his code, rather than creating a configuration file and decrypting it from the code?

</comment><comment><USER33> I _love_ stories like this. Victory over the dark side, muahaha!

</comment><comment><USER34> I inspire to be like you when I am older, great work :)</comment>


Teen dies at 17 after suffering from progeria, which accelerates aging - alok-g http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/11/us/progeria-sam-berns-dies/

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw the Ted talk a couple months back. It's so sad to hear. But through his efforts at raising awareness and all of our advances in medicine, we are making progress in preventing more tragedies like this from happening. Just look at other diseases. Cystic Fibrosis was once a death sentence. Now people can make live 30/40+ years with it.</comment>


A coder's guide to coffee (cheap, easy, and delicious) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.moertel.com/pages/coders-guide-to-coffee

<comment><USER2> I really wish I liked coffee. I've tried time after time to get hooked on coffee but couldn't manage to stomach it - even loaded with cream and sugar. It smells great, has ample caffeine, can be bought cheap, all the makings of a perfect drink.

<comment><USER3> I used to hate coffee most of the time but gulped it down since it kept me awake.

And then I visited Barcelona. The coffee I had in the small cafes in the town was the most awesome, fresh and tasty beverage I have ever had. Interestingly, Barcelona's airport had the same stale, tasteless coffee that Starbucks sells!

<comment><USER4> Hey, hello from Barcelona. Well it's curious here in Barcelona I always used to drink "cortados" or "tallats", an espresso with a little bit of milk. Until I visited Roma, where I tasted the best coffee!

I think you should visit the Italian capital ;)

And yes, Barcelona's airport food/coffee is awful.

<comment><USER5> Albania has some great coffee too. I think it is the Mediterranean thing, when people are more calmed down, go out with friends every day, sit down for a coffee, talk and enjoy life.

Coffee to go, or in a paper cup is a very foreign concept. Impossible to find actually.

When I visited Instabul, I was really suprised that people didn't drink coffee at all, but mostly tea after meals.

Figure it out. The people that introduced coffee to europe, don't really drink it. So, the phase "Turkish coffee", is pretty inacurate. Should probably be called "Ottoman coffee".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Two cups of Vietnamese coffee (cafe sua la) each morning hit the mark! Brewing details at <http://www.ineedcoffee.com/04/vietnamese/>

I may like iced Vietnamese coffee (Ca phe sua da) even more on sultry summer days. Just pour the above into ice: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca_phe_sữa_đ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca_phe_sữa_đa)

While I've used other coffees, Cafe du Monde has almost a monopoly among Vietnamese restaurants. Cafe du Monde is a blend of coffee and chicory easily identified by it's bright orange container: <http://www.cafedumonde.com/coffee.html>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way, similar things apply to tea.

The stuff you buy in grocery stores is dust from leaves. It's a stretch to even call it tea.

Buying in bulk over the Internet and making it with a French press is much, much cheaper and amazingly better.

<comment><USER7> I already said this below, but check out Adagio.com if you haven't already. They have a plastic tea brewing device somewhat similar to a french press but easier to clean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mmm, just now I'm enjoying a wonderful Nespresso espresso. It's an easy and clean way to have good (by Spanish standard, which are pretty similar to Italians...) coffee at the office. It's more expensive than buying the coffee beans but a lot cheaper than a coffee shop (about 0'30EUR per coffee), the biggest drawback is that you become bonded to a single vendor :(

</comment><comment><USER8> <tease>

Coder/Hacker needs coffee to code

Coder/Hacker needs weed to code (yesterday post? coder high?)

Coder/Hacker needs MacBook to code

Coder/Hacker needs Hacker-Music to code

Coder/Hacker needs Coffee Shop to code

Coder/Hacker needs super-genius teammate to code

Spoiled?

</tease>

</comment><comment><USER9> A trip to Italy sounds great... but until then, how do the coffee shops in North Beach stack up for espresso? I've heard that this was the spot on the west coast to get good coffee (long before good coffee was much of a concept in most of the US). Anyone know a spot that gets it right?

</comment><comment><USER10> Hi, you should look into air-roasted coffee. Most coffee is drum- or surface- roasted, resulting in the typical sour, stomach-gnarling liquid that most pass for 'coffee.'

Air-roasted coffee exhibits more body, complexity, aroma and isn't nearly as hard on one's stomach.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nespresso is great. At $0.50 per pod, it's pricey, but for such painless cleanup and consistently good shots, worth the price. Hands down the best teas I've had come from Upton Tea (uptontea.com).

</comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting. I'm more of a tea drinker, and highly recommend Adagio.com for that.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hacker - a machine that transforms caffeine to lines of code</comment>